Selected Correspondence Peter

Innocence

Isn’t it astounding that what lies beyond the mystique of the ‘spiritual world’ is not barrenness or ‘evil’ but the actual world of perfection, delight, innocence, intimacy and benevolence.

In a way, it almost seems that it is exceedingly difficult for a human being to recognize the immediate and actual as exactly what it is, rather than what it is not. I wonder if it would be possible to raise children with an immediate appreciation and delight in what is actually present, something they have innately anyway, with no imaginative fabrication of what is not there.

Also innately present in children are the instinctual passions and these passions will always take precedent over any potential for an ‘immediate appreciation and delight in what is actually present’ – in fact, the crude animal survival passions exist to do precisely this. Which is not to say that it makes good sense not to indulge a child’s natural tendency for fantasy and imagination – a tendency that will anyway be fostered by interaction with their peers, despite the wishes and actions of any parent.

Yes, of course. In hindsight, I see I made a rather big speculative leap in considering the raising of children who are devoid of the instinctual passions. While such speculation is interesting, it is just a sidetrack from the main event: freeing oneself from malice and sorrow. In my work with children, it is amazing to me to see the degree to which malice and sorrow are inveterate to the human condition. I have also seen a large degree of denial about the presence of malice in children – people are wont to believe in the innocence of children and cannot seem to see that sometimes their actions are most malicious. I was at a training recently and the trainer was describing a child lashing out in anger and hurting someone else’s feelings, and added the proviso: ‘But it wasn’t really a malicious action’ or something of that sort. There seems to be a deep-seated human need to believe that childhood is a time of innocence which malice and sorrow cannot intrude into. But this is obviously not the case.

Whenever an adult observes a child there can be a degree of envy at what seems to be a carefree state. This is due to the fact that the instinctual animal ‘self’ is not substantially formed until about age 2 in children, i.e. the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are not yet fully functioning. The other relevant aspect is that the child’s social identity – the befuddled mishmash of an individualistic persona and a collective social conscience – is not yet fully formed until the age of about 7 years, which means much of the childhood years are spent in ignorance of the grim everyday reality that every adult experiences. Whilst very early childhood is an ignorance of the grim instinctual battle for survival in the real-world – as well as the repercussions of the socialization process – this psychological and psychic battle will inevitably be experienced first-hand by every child in family interactions, playground exchanges and, after puberty, in the world-at-large.

The deep-seated belief that the ignorance of the formative, preoperational years of childhood is an innate innocence is what fuels the whole fanciful notion that nurture is the panacea for instinctual malice and sorrow, and that ‘proper’ nurture can even prevent their onset. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the faith that nurture can assuage or overcome malice and sorrow is seen as inviolate within the human condition. Like all belief and faith, it only has legs for want of a new and effective workable alternative.

Hi Gary,

Whenever an adult observes a child there can be a degree of envy at what seems to be a carefree state. This is due to the fact that the instinctual animal ‘self’ is not substantially formed until about age 2 in children, i.e. the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are not yet fully functioning. The other relevant aspect is that the child’s social identity – the befuddled mishmash of an individualistic persona and a collective social conscience – is not yet fully formed until the age of about 7 years, which means much of the childhood years are spent in ignorance of the grim everyday reality that every adult experiences. <snip>

It has been a good many years since my days of being a father, but I have recently had occasion to observe a 2½ year old, which rekindled my memory of my own children. What I observed is that there is a ‘natural’ – as in instinctually programmed – emergence of a very distinct ‘self’-awareness at about this age. There is a growing realization in all children that others think and feel differently to them – that other children, parents and adults, are separate and alien beings who had thoughts and feelings that were not only different but very often at odds with the child’s own thoughts and feelings. This stage of growing up sees the emergence of a natural cunning in the child, whereby the child learns by trial and error to be controlling and manipulative – to seek reward and avoid punishment by whatever means.

Whilst this ‘loss of innocence’ is to some extent socially learned by the child’s observation of parents, siblings and other children’s behaviour, the underlying and primary impetus is instinctual – the result of a natural development of rudimentary survival skills as opposed to imbibing social skills. Observation of other animal species confirms that both cunning and forcefulness are essential qualities needed to enhance the chances of any newborn animal’s survival and an observation of human infants reveals this same basic animal functioning at work.

I remember seeing in my own children the emergence of what could be described as an independent will at about age 2 – an independence that was definitely not taught, as it was very often displayed in behaviour and moods that were contrary to the children’s social training and the best intentions and efforts of both parents. This observation, combined with the fact that my two children had such distinct and divergent personalities, first led me to be suspicious of the nurture-can-cure-all belief.

After my younger son died, I found that I really had to question and examine this belief deeply or else I would have spent the rest of my life wallowing in guilt and sorrow because I had not been ‘loving’ enough as a parent. The belief that nurture can counter, cure or overcome the instinctual passions of malice and sorrow serves to cripple all parents and child carers with guilt, as well as being an all-to-convenient excuse for the human need to lay the blame at someone’s door rather than look deeply within themselves.

Having previously experienced that nurture fails to shelter children from the ills of humanity, the death of my son convinced me that I needed to devote my life to seeking a way to open the possibility for future children to escape from suffering the inevitable trails and traumas of being a human being within the human condition. My father’s advice to me, post Second World War, was ‘be happy’ but he wasn’t able to tell me ‘how to’. Standing beside my son’s coffin, I was suddenly faced with a task in life – I passionately wanted to be able to pass on to the next generation the missing ‘how to’.

I know I am at risk of labouring the point about nurture as the cure-all, but I do so with good reason. Understanding and acknowledging the fact that the genetically-encoded instinctual passions were the root cause of human malice and sorrow – the root cause of every war, of every murder, of every child molestation, of every rape, of every suicide, of every act of violence, of every bout of despair – was crucial to my turning away from being a believer in the tried and failed truisms and beginning to looking deep within myself in order to root out these instinctual passions.

It is not for nothing that Richard describes naiveté as ‘the closest approximation to innocence one can have whilst being a ‘self’’. In this state of naiveté, there is such an experience of wonder and one is in touch immediately with the purity and pristine-ness of the physical actuality of the world around one. When this happens, one has connected with the long-sought Meaning of Life. The search is over – there is nowhere else to go.

One thing about the spiritual path that did not sit well with me, apart from feeling increasingly isolated and dissociated from the world of people, things and events, was the fundamental cynicism that underpins all spiritual belief – that the human experience is one of essential suffering. Because of this spiritual cynicism about life on earth meeting Richard, hearing of his experiences and reading his words was quite literally a breath of fresh air.

By taking on board what he had to say, and being able to relate to what he was saying by my own experience in a PCE, I was very soon able set off on the path to actual freedom. In doing so, I was able to forgo my cynicism and reconnect with my naiveté, I was able to cease practicing dissociation and begin being fascinated with being here, and I was able to begin the enthralling business of investigating all of ‘my’ beliefs and passions that make ‘me’ an inseparable constituent of the human condition of malice and sorrow.

Cynicism is the pits. It’s so delicious to have abandoned cynicism, to get in touch with my naiveté and devote myself fully to the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow.

You went on to say:

‘Whilst very early childhood is an ignorance of the grim instinctual battle for survival in the real-world – as well as the repercussions of the socialization process – this psychological and psychic battle will inevitably be experienced first-hand by every child in family interactions, playground exchanges and, after puberty, in the world-at-large’.

At the present time, since the ‘real world’ is such a grim, dangerous place, there is no alternative but to shelter the child from the ‘grim instinctual battle for survival’ as long as possible. This only makes sense from a real world perspective.

Speaking personally, I very quickly came to understand that sheltering my children from the world as-it-is was not only impossible but not even a good idea. Even in those days I had the acumen to know that learning happens only by the trial and error process of lived experience, and the wider the experience and the more completely involved in the experience the better chance of learning.

Since humans are for the most part all engaged in this grim instinctual battle, too many children unfortunately fall prey to the predatory nature of human beings. Compared to spiritualism, Actualism has its eyes wide open to the widespread phenomenon of child abuse. This is one of the things that attracted me to Actualism – we are concerned with finding a solution to problems which concern everyone and which are universal – although the ultimate solution of these problems is most radical indeed ... only when humans cease ‘being’ will there be an end to all the child abuse, war, rape, murder, torture, etc.

Yep. Actualism is as hands-on and as down-to-earth as you can get.

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The deep-seated belief that the ignorance of the formative, preoperational years of childhood is an innate innocence is what fuels the whole fanciful notion that nurture is the panacea for instinctual malice and sorrow, and that ‘proper’ nurture can even prevent their onset. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the faith that nurture can assuage or overcome malice and sorrow is seen as inviolate within the human condition. Like all belief and faith, it only has legs for want of a new and effective workable alternative’.

As I understand it, you have been trained as a social worker and core to this training would be the belief that nurture is the panacea for malice and sorrow. As such, it is no wonder you find it a remarkably persistent notion. I know that it has taken me a long time to prise apart the beliefs and passions that were instilled in me as part of my training in architecture.

I was taught that there was a higher spiritual good in architecture – that ‘good’ architecture could nourish the soul, raise the spirits and make the world a better place. The instilling of these beliefs and passions formed the backbone of my identity as an architect and gave ‘my’ work a higher, nobler meaning. This meant that not only did I bring ‘my’ demands and expectations, worries and anxieties to my work and to all interactions with others through my work, but also a good deal of self-righteousness. Not only did ‘I’ always come first, but ‘I’ always knew better and ‘I’ was always right – whereas everyone else came second, never understood and were always wrong. It was a recipe that invariably led to conflict at worst or begrudging compromises at best.

As I began to realize how much these instilled beliefs and passions prevented me from being happy while working and caused me to be in conflict with others while working, I began the procedure of investigating the nature of them every time that I became aware of these beliefs and passions in action. This being aware of the tell-tale signs of holding a belief dear to your bosom reveals reactions ranging from feeling personally affronted or defensive if your belief is questioned, to denying, dissociating from or obscuring any facts that contradict or make your precious deary-held belief a non-sense.

When I finally traced the passions evoked by my work back to my training, I could see that all vocational training is spiked with beliefs that would have us fighting for the good in the battle over evil – be they a social worker combating the evils of society, an architect combating the evils of bad design or a doctor fighting the evils of death and disease. A PCE finally revealed the fact that my identity as an architect was made up of a mishmash of ‘my’ instilled beliefs and ‘my’ personal passions and to be able to do my work when free of this identity is to be unconditionally happy and effortlessly harmless.

So I wouldn’t be at all concerned that you find yourself falling back to the notion ‘that if these children only had enough love, everything would be all right’. Because of your vocational training you have had the belief that nurture is the cure-all for the ills of humanity doubly reinforced, as it were. You have had an extra layer of belief laid on top of what everyone else believes, in a similar way that I had another layer of beliefs about beauty instilled into me. I found that after a good deal of investigation I was able to identify ‘my’ belief as being nothing else but a belief in that it had no basis in fact … and then I ‘had the bugger by the throat’ as it were. Then it was only a matter of being attentive as to when and how the belief manifested itself. Each instant of awareness threw more light on the belief and its associated passions, enabling me to dig a little deeper into my psyche and discover its workings.

That is really what the mind is: a program full of someone else’s ideas based on the past. In our natural state the mind does not judge, because the mind is lean and clear and carries only neutral information, such as what name you are calling yourself, your address, the practical things needing your attention. That is the function of the mind in its natural state, but its natural function has been distorted and it has developed in such a way that it continually judges. P. Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

The old Tabula Rasa theory trotted out again. ‘Born innocent and only corrupted by evil since birth. Naturally good and pure, tainted by evil or wrong thoughts’. Superstition, fear and ignorance persists in the face of current empirical scientific research of the animal instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire genetically programmed in the brain and universally operational in all humans by the age of about 2 years – no matter what one’s upbringing is. One does have social conditioning layered on top of this core programming but to perpetuate the denial of the instinctual animal program in us is insanity in the extreme. We can no longer hide behind ignorance. The earth is round, the earth orbits around the sun and we are born with animal instinctual passions. The question then is what one does about this fact.

This Eastern religion solution is ‘disconnecting’ as in

Presence is being in this moment with acceptance, including all the facts and disconnecting from them. Oxford Dictionary.

An actualist is committed to deleting this instinctual programming – to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow.

A world of difference – to be here in the actual world as opposed to ‘being there’ in the spiritual world.

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This indescribable state exists equally in everyone. It has been covered up by what we have been told is and is not possible. From this conditioning, we have created patterns of behaviour that have literally buried our essence, our joy and our spirit. P. Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Here he adds a dash of ‘we are born innocent’ – the ancient Tabula Rasa theory – which is always music to the soul. It means that ‘I’ need to do nothing, that everything is okay with ‘me’, ‘I’ simply have to realize ‘I’ am That or ‘I’ am God.

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However, your conditioning on this has been so pervasive that most of your life revolves around the belief that you are controlled by external events. P. Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Spiritualism has it that we are ‘conditioned’ by evil and wrong thinking since birth, an adaptation of the root belief that humans are born innocent and then ‘possessed’ by evil spirits. The ‘conditioned-since-birth’ theory has been strengthened and given a false credence by Mr. Freud and others who combined their avid interest in Eastern philosophy with their studies of human behaviour and collared together some very unscientific theories. The denial of animal instinctual passions in humans is deep-set, ongoing and entwined not only as religion, but in all human thought, literature, philosophy and theoretical ‘sciences’.

On the path to Actual Freedom it is this quality of altruism, or benevolence in action, that readily becomes more and more evident in one’s thoughts, behaviour and actions. This quality is startlingly different from the spiritual love and compassion – ‘I am God acting for the good of others less fortunate’ – and from being a goody two shoes in normal society with its subsequent rewards. Benevolence in action is free and spontaneous – there is nothing in it for ‘me’ at all, in fact, it only happens when ‘I’ am absent. However one can be observant of it happening and, in seeing its ‘self’-less purity and perfection, energize this quality of altruism to initiate the process of self-immolation in oneself.

The path to Actual Freedom is not at all attractive for there is nothing in it for ‘me’ – no phoenix arises from the ashes to claim the glory, no acclaim of adoring disciples, no wonderful overwhelming feelings, no fame, no recognition, no power – neither overt nor covert. Extinction is extinction. It is for this very reason that one needs a goodly dose of altruism.

In my experience there is yet another quality which may well be as important, if not more important, than altruism in evincing self-immolation. This quality is integrity –

‘the condition of having no part or element taken away or lacking; undivided state; completeness. 2 The condition of not being marred or violated; unimpaired or uncorrupted condition; original state; soundness. 3a Freedom from moral corruption; innocence, sinlessness. b Soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue; uprightness, honesty, sincerity’ ... Oxford Dictionary .

Having experienced this integrity of innocence, benevolence and undividedness in pure consciousness experiences it then becomes a prime motivation to experience it 24 hrs. a day, every day. The absence of conflict, confusion, deceit and duplicity – the absence of both the social and instinctual entity that are in constant battle has to be experienced to be understood. One cannot understand it unless one experiences it although it certainly helps if one is prepared to risk rocking one’s boat. By digging into one’s self one is certainly much, much more likely to induce a pure consciousness experience. By doing nothing, one gets nothing in return. Unless one investigates, one never finds out. Unless one changes, one stays the same. Unless one is motivated by integrity then one will remain a very, very cunning entity either fighting it out in the ‘real’ world or travelling on the spiritual path of self-discovery seeking self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement.

Being guided by integrity or being guided by pure intent, to use Richard’s term, ensures that I will not deceive myself, that I will be honest with myself, that I will not settle for second best – that I will not stop until I live the pure consciousness experience, 24 hrs a day every day, until I am irrevocably free of the Human Condition.

Let me start by explaining my understanding of a few concepts that I mentioned in my mail a little further.

Humility: My view is that there actually is something that could be called true humility, not meaning that we should bow to higher powers or to some authority. Not some kind of pretense that we’re trying to portrait in a suitable manner. True humility can be expressed as openness, spontaneity, non-rigidity and lack of self-consciousness, at least to some degree.

Well, openness means

‘absence of secrecy, or reserve; frankness, candour, sincerity’ Oxford Dictionary.

I think you might agree that these qualities fall into the ‘ideal’ basket as far as human beings are concerned. The lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity that dwells within the flesh and blood body of every human has a dark side of instinctual passions that needs to be hidden from others. It is only when this entity is absent, as in the ‘self’-less state of a pure consciousness experience, that the ideal of openness is seen as but one of the many unachievable human ideals that attempts to mimic actual innocence and perfection.

The spiritual version of openness is being vulnerable, which means

‘able to be wounded; (of a person) able to be physically or emotionally hurt; liable to damage or harm, esp. from aggression or attack, assailable’ Oxford Dictionary.

Many spiritual seekers distort the word vulnerability to be a sign of being ‘sensitive’ to others or being psychically ‘tuned in’ to others. However, human beings are sometimes open, sometimes closed, sometimes defensive, sometimes attacking but always wary and on-guard, for this is our instinctual programming in operation. Whilst one remains a ‘self’ one cannot help but have one’s guard up, both psychologically and psychically, for the body is programmed for self-defence, which the entity inside automatically interprets as ‘self’-defence.

The other qualities you mention are also ideals that humans struggle to maintain in a constant battle to control their instinctual emotions. Most do reasonably well, except when push comes to shove, and all ideals, morals and ethics are off in times of threat, conflict and war.

Actual innocence lies beyond ‘self’-immolation. Given that the very nature of the actual universe is both pure and perfect, these same qualities are then automatically and spontaneously the qualities of one who lives in Actual Freedom.

I think I am on a rave again. So back to the BrainBomb web-site whose address you sent. It would seem that many people will use the research on instincts to justify the ‘bad’ in us and continue to flog the old ‘be good – find God’ methods that have relentlessly failed to end suffering and failed to bring peace, despite the sincere efforts of billions upon billions of people. This ‘wishful thinking’ involves nothing more than accentuating and identifying with the so-called good instincts and sublimating and dis-identifying with the ‘bad’ instincts. If one is successful in the effort one becomes totally identified with the Good and in full-blown delusion one can even become God or Cosmic Consciousness, so self-aggrandizing is the exercise in the end.

But given the current research efforts, at very least, the ancient belief in Tabula Rasa will be harder to maintain in the face of scientific fact.

A little definition may be appropriate at this point –

Tabula Rasa – Latin: ‘scraped tablet,’ i.e., ‘clean slate’), in epistemology (theory of knowledge) and psychology, a supposed condition that empiricists attribute to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects. Comparison of the mind to a blank writing-tablet occurs in Aristotle’s De anima (4^th century BC), and the Stoics as well as the Aristotelian Peripatetics subsequently argued for an original state of mental blankness. Both the Aristotelians and the Stoics, however, emphasized those faculties of the mind or soul that, having been only potential or inactive before receiving ideas from the senses, respond to the ideas by an intellectual process and convert them into knowledge. A new and revolutionary emphasis on the Tabula Rasa occurred late in the 17^th century, when the English empiricist John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), argued for the mind’s initial resemblance to ‘white paper, void of all characters,’ with ‘all the materials of reason and knowledge’ derived from experience. Though Locke himself fell back on ‘reflection’ as a power of the mind for the exploitation of the given ‘materials,’ his championship of the Tabula Rasa signalled even more radical positions by later philosophers. – Encyclopedia Britannica.

It is hard to conceive that there are no pre-natal emotional memories stored in the Amygdala of a new-born baby. Medical evidence of the transmission of narcotics and other chemical substances to the foetus through the mother’s placenta would very strongly suggest that emotionally-sourced chemical substances also are transferred. Thus the foetus would be experiencing the effect of these substances that are the tangible physical evidence of fear, aggression, excitement, sadness and the like. The emotional-chemical pattern is set, the pump is primed, and the baby’s emotional memory has a preview of life in the world into which it will soon emerge.

To insist on the belief in Tabula Rasa in the face of these facts, all easily observable by anyone willing to look with both eyes, is to bury one’s head in the sand. Human beings will do anything but admit that we are but animals ‘at heart’, that indeed what we share with animals is our instinctual passions and emotions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

Our dearly held feelings and emotions – the same feelings witnessed in animals, are the cause of all the malice and sorrow, violence and despair, and we come pre-wired, at birth, to be animal at heart .

As Mr. Mohan Rajneesh said in reply to a question –

Beloved Master,

Q. – Why do you go on speaking against knowledge? I have never heard you speak against ignorance.

A. – Knowledge hinders, ignorance never does. Knowledge makes you egotistic, ignorance never does. Knowledge is nothing but hiding your ignorance, covering it up. If there is no knowledge, you will know your ignorance because there will be nothing to hide it. And to know that ‘I am ignorant’ is the first step towards real wisdom. Hence I never speak against ignorance, ignorance has something beautiful about it. One thing about ignorance is that it can give you the right direction to move. <snip> And when you are ignorant you don’t have any pretensions, you are simple, you are innocent. Ignorance has the quality of innocence about it. That’s why children are so innocent because they are so ignorant. <snip> Ignorance is pure, unadulterated. From ignorance move towards wisdom, not towards knowledge. <snip> Put your knowledge aside, just go in deep innocence, in deep ignorance, and then you will be able to find what truth is. Truth is not found by knowledge, it is found by silence. Rajneesh, The Dhammapada: the Way of the Buddha, Vol 6, Chapter 8 – Everything is possible. Q.3.

Behind the lauding of ignorance and the perverse relating to a supposed childhood ‘innocence’ – the ancient Tabula Rasa theory – there exists nothing more than a belief in a ‘Something Else’ or a ‘Somewhere Else’ – traditionally masqueraded as the Truth.

Look, all I am saying is that the facts, the results, don’t stack up with the beliefs and hopes.

What I now live as an actuality 24 hrs. a day, every day, no matter what I am doing, or not doing, far exceeds anything that I have experienced or know is possible to achieve through meditation. I live in the actual physical world and nothing churns in my head or heart. There is direct sensate experiencing that is magical, fairy-tale like, perfect and pure. Colours are vivid, hearing is multi-layered, tastes are sensational, touch is exquisite, interactions with people are invariably delightful, events are serendipitous. The brain is capable of astounding clarity, I can communicate directly with others and reflect on my actions and thoughts. An innocence is readily apparent that has only been wished for before in humans and is beyond my wildest dreams.

This is far superior to Enlightenment. This way you get all of the benefits of Enlightenment and none of the down-sides such as power, delusion, being a Saviour of others, having to spread the message, having disciples follow you, celibacy ... to name a few.

But you can’t get that by clinging on to any beliefs at all – we are, after all, talking about an actual freedom, a freedom from all the Ancient Wisdom. That appears to be the tough bit, but it is only fear that stops us trying anything new.

What I was interested in was the willingness to kill – the instinct of aggression. This instinct is often triggered by fear, but has been implanted in humans to ensure that the offspring are protected sufficiently to ensure the survival of the species. Having had 2 children, one of whom died at an early age, I know the powerful urge to give my life as a sacrifice to ensure my offspring’s survival. It is this ‘blind’ instinct in me that I was interested in investigating, understanding and eliminating. Such that I would never again blindly kill, or be killed, for ‘love’ of country or ‘love’ of God. To free myself of malice.

As I said recently on the list –

‘To even consider a journey into yourself to free yourself of the Human Condition requires a burning discontent with life as it is – both for yourself and for your fellow human beings’.

Or am I being too naive ... ?

T’is interesting writing on this list. When I said I was a Sannyasin to find peace of mind and peace on earth (the New Man), I was told I was silly. When I said I was seeking Enlightenment, I was told I was silly. When I said Rajneesh was talking about God, I was told I was silly. When I said Rajneesh was teaching in the Eastern spiritual tradition, I was told I was silly. When I said I saw the Religion forming, I was told I was silly. When I said that I probably would have killed to protect Rajneesh – all of a sudden I am the only one who loved him that much!

The level of denial is quite breath-taking. Most take the facts we are talking of and take them personally, whereas we are talking of the Human Condition – common to all. Any personal experiences we relate, as evidence of the Human Condition in us, is then used against us, as a defence for the status quo.

Maybe I am just too naive ... but I do like naiveté – it’s the closest quality to innocence that we humans can muster.

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I assume you are talking of the Divine ‘pure innocence’ that includes such things as Divine Anger – as a ‘device to wake up the sleepy’, Divine Jealousy as in ‘I am the Only God’, Divine Sorrow as in ‘feeling Compassion for all sentient beings’.

No, No. 30, innocence is only possible with the complete and utter eradication of both ‘self’ and ‘Self’. The total extinction of ‘me’ who is sorrowful and malicious is the only option.

Given the abounding cynicism of the spiritual world, it is an essential quality to re-discover one’s naiveté in order to even begin to contemplate innocence. One needs to travel 180 degrees in the other direction from a cynical view-point.

This is important, how to eliminate these ‘instinctual survival passions’? This is where I’m getting stuck, I think. You mean that repressing the ‘negative’ instincts and indulging in ‘good morals etc’ is the spiritual predicament and what we need is to free us from ALL survival passions, good and bad, and in doing so we’re released from our ‘instinctual cage’. So I suppose the outcome of this would be that we aren’t creating suffering for ourselves and others through our ignorance anymore. Is that it? When we see actuality there’s no need to for pretense anymore ...?

It is not a matter of ignorance. This is the spiritual concept whereby we are born innocent and then corrupted by ignorance (or evil, in the more fundamental traditions) and it is only when we discover the truth or Truth do we become free of ignorance ... or evil.

By the time one reaches adulthood one has a fully developed sense of ‘real’-world cynicism. This attitude to life on earth is fuelled by societal spiritual and religious beliefs that life on earth is meant to be a suffering existence and that ultimate peace and happiness is only possible after physical death in a mythical after-life. This view is further reinforced and strengthened by the commonly-held ancient belief that children are born ‘innocent’ and are corrupted by ‘evil’ or ‘wrong thinking’ since birth. These beliefs combine to form the unanimous views that ‘life’s a bitch’, and ‘you can’t change Human Nature’ – the deeply cynical concepts that underpin the Human Condition.

Abandoning these cynical ‘real world’ and ‘spiritual world’ beliefs about human existence is essential if one is to even consider becoming free of the Human Condition. In order to begin the process of changing human nature in oneself, one needs to re-activate and cultivate one’s innate naiveté – the closest one can get to innocence while still remaining a ‘self’.

In the PCE, the direct experience of the purity and perfection of the actual world becomes suddenly apparent and ‘who’ one was literally moments before falls away as though a distant and discordant memory. One’s fears and battles, troubles and worries, anger and sadness disappear along with one’s very persona, for the PCE is a ‘self’-less state. In the PCE it becomes inconceivable that human beings could be malicious to each other to the point of waging war and sorrowful to the point of suicide whilst living on this delightful, bountiful, paradisiacal planet. An Introduction to Actual Freedom, Pure Consciousness Experience

The understanding that we are born the way we are and are fated to be ‘who’ we think and feel we are is enormously liberating in itself. No longer do we need to feel guilty for the way we are, no longer to we need to pray to God or grovel before God-men, no longer are we helpless victims, no longer do we need to feel resentful at having to be here in the first place.

The fact is we are here and the challenge then becomes how to fully embrace being here.

Questions:

Does this mean that there are no good or bad actions!?

Until one is actually free of one’s animal instinctual passions, all actions, no matter how well intentioned, are liable to cause harm to others, no matter how minor.

As for our ‘essential non-dual nature’, I take it you are talking of the idea that we were born innocent, the ancient Tabula Rasa theory. The spiritual aim is then to return to our natural state of innocence – our true selves as we came into the world and before we were corrupted by evil. This is old-fashioned and out-of-date thinking that requires a blatant denial of modern empirical scientific research on the subject of human genetically encoded instinctual behaviour.’

I’m not sure that this is what the term non-dual is getting at. The fact that we are animals driven by instinctual behavior (and I agree with you on this) in no way means that it is a forgone conclusion that another human possibility, one that enables us to care rather than compete, create rather than destroy, give rather than take – because we are not separate from a greater whole – does not exist.

Western spiritual seekers have only discovered Eastern spirituality in the last 50 years, yet they arrogantly think that it is some new discovery or new possibility. I know I felt that way when I ‘discovered’ it and was full of enthusiasm. The possibility to feel ‘not separate from a greater whole’ has existed and has been thoroughly investigated by billions of people both in the East and the West for millennia with no perceivable reduction in human malice and sorrow. ‘We are all God’s children’ is a common feeling in monotheist religions as well, and yet despite all these good intentions and good feelings ... the last hundred years are well documented as being the bloodiest century to date.

My point is that despite all the well-meaning efforts and heart-felt feelings the human condition is still one of malice and sorrow. Which is why I pose the question, for anyone daring enough to investigate further –

Surely it’s time to consider a third alternative?

*

As for our ‘essential non-dual nature’, I take it you are talking of the idea that we were born innocent, the ancient Tabula Rasa theory. The spiritual aim is then to return to our natural state of innocence – our true selves as we came into the world and before we were corrupted by evil. This is old-fashioned and out-of-date thinking that requires a blatant denial of modern empirical scientific research on the subject of human genetically encoded instinctual behaviour by Josef LeDoux and others
(http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/overview.html). A sensible clear-eyed observation of the startlingly obvious similarities between human beings behaviour and that of other animals is further evidence of human instinctual behaviour. Most animal studies focus on the similarities of the passions of nurture and desire, but murder, rape, infanticide, warfare, cannibalism, sorrow, despair and suicide have all been documented in our closest genetic cousins, the chimps. Jane Goodall was shocked when discovering and documenting this behaviour and she has since backed away from further research. Other research on human behaviour that I personally found profoundly revealing were the studies by Stanley Morgan that clearly indicate ordinary human beings’ willingness to inflict pain on their fellow human beings. The results were so disturbing in their revelation of our human nature that any similar studies have been banned as being ‘unethical’.

As for our ‘non-dual’, ancient spiritual belief has it that we are a spirit trapped in a physical corporeal body in a physical material world and the only way to transcend this duality was to becomes spirit only, or pure being. This duality is most often expressed as material / spiritual or evil / divine for in ancient times the material world was imagined as evil and the spirit-ual world was felt to be divine. Anyone who has plumbed the depths of their  essential non-dual nature’ sees the terror, dread and the diabolical and goes for the divine feelings which does nothing but confirm, sustain and make very REAL the human invention of good and evil.

There is no good and evil in the actual world.

There are simply human beings who are still driven by their instinctual passions and rather than ditch the lot, they deny the ‘bad’ ones and pump up the ‘good’ ones like all get out. Better to ditch the lot and then one is aware that any ideas of duality, non-duality or even beyond non-duality are but figments of human imagination and not actual.

1) ‘Life and death at Gombe’ Jane Goodall National Geographic May 97

2) ‘Obedience to Authority’ Stanley Morgan Harper and Row 1975

At the core of the Eastern religious view of the world is the concept that all humans are born ‘innocent’ and have only been corrupted by ‘evil thoughts’ since birth. It is further believed that it is possible for a chosen few to regain this mythical ‘natural’ innocence, in this lifetime on earth, hence the search to find one’s ‘original face’ or Divine Self. Meditation, turning ‘inwards’, or ‘right thinking’ in accord with the Ancient Texts, is rigorously practiced in order to transcend the ‘illusory’ physical world and enter more fully into a meta-physical, spiritual ‘inner’ world. In this ‘other world’, one connects with, and identifies with, the ‘good’ and holy feelings of bliss, oneness, unity and wholeness.

The other fundamental concept underpinning Eastern religion is that life on earth is ultimately ‘unsatisfactory’ and that the true meaning and fulfillment of human existence lies ‘elsewhere’ – after physical death. Journeying ‘in’ to find one’s true spiritual self or soul is deemed to be the answer in an attempt to facilitate an altered state of consciousness known as Enlightenment. Enlightenment is seen as a highly-prized earthly experience of Godliness and bliss, prior to a final release from the endless miserable cycle of re-birth upon dissolving into an ‘other-worldly’ spirit-ual realm.

Billions of humans have done, and still do, search for the ‘liberation of the human spirit’ in whatever way this search is historically or culturally manifest. There are by some accounts 1600 still-active religions in the world today and from what I see millions of people are giving their all for their particular version of the search for liberation of the human spirit. Not only that, all of those passionately searching are absolutely convinced that their way is the only way, and that the members of their group are the chosen ones. Doesn’t this make you just a little suss?

Surely it’s time to abandon the search for a ‘liberation of the human spirit’ and seek a liberation from the human spirit.

To become this flesh and body only, free from any alien entity, self, or spirit whatsoever, magically frees one to directly and sensately experience the ever-present sensuous delight of the actual world. It beats enlightenment by a country mile.

Paradise is on this very physical earth, here and now.

Can the peace and harmony you are experiencing with your partner remain inviolate when all about you the ignorance and suffering of human misery abounds?

Firstly, the word ‘ignorance’ is usually used in spiritual terms as meaning ‘those who are ignorant of the Truth’. Spiritual seekers who have the Truth revealed to them feel both specially blessed and humbly grateful to Existence, God or the Guru, for having seen the light, felt God in their heart, etc. From this exalted position, they see others as ignorant – as in following a false Guru or God, having ‘false’ beliefs, being the perpetrators of violence and the cause of suffering in the world. When I abandoned my skewered good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, enlightened vs. ignorant, them and me view of the world, I was able to clearly see the fact that I am one of 6 billion human beings on the planet.

When I was born there was little programmed in my brain, in fact, I remember nothing of my first years and my earliest memories are about age four. Before that I was like this computer before the Windows operating system was installed. This fact is confirmed empirically by modern brain scanning equipment. There was, however, a DOS-like base operating program – genetically encoded – and this began to fully kick in about the age of 2 years. This is easily observable in children when fear, aggression, nurture and desire begin to surface, no matter how or where the infant is raised. We are, contrary to ancient belief, not born ‘innocent’ but every human being comes into the world pre-primed with a set of crude animal instincts. With the first signs of the emergence of this instinctual behaviour we all begin to be instilled by our parents and peers with a social identity consisting of morals – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – and ethics – ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – together with a full set of social beliefs and psittacisms. This social identity is instilled essentially to curb the excesses of the instinctual passions and to make one a fit member of society.

No one escapes this instinctual and social programming – it is the way-it-is.

The recognition and acknowledgement that this simple biological and social programming forms the very substance of ‘who’ we think we are and ‘who’ we feel we are deep down, is in itself immensely liberating. One can then begin the process of gaily abandoning the whole duality of good and evil, resentment and gratitude, and guilt and pride that underpin all the religious beliefs as to why we are here, and why we are the way we are.

An essential liberation is from the feeling of sorrow, both from having being born into this world in the first place – ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’ and from feeling sorrow or pity for others – compassion. Compassion literally means suffering together and being free of sorrow means being free of the mutual agreement that human life on earth is ultimately a suffering existence. In the spiritual world compassion is upheld as a virtue as it justifies one’s feeling of superiority by looking down on, or back at, those who are suffering. To be free of sorrow one must be free of the mutually-agreed sorrow that is inherent in the human condition.

By becoming free of the feeling of sorrow is it possible to take a clear-eyed look at the world-as-it-is and people as-they-are. Then one is moved to get off one’s bum and do something about the appalling malice and sorrow that is endemic in the human condition.

Benevolence is the innate disposition or quality of the actual world and, as such, of anyone who is free of the Human Condition.

Any attempt to appreciate the benevolence of the actual world requires one to cultivate and maintain naiveté, which is the closest human quality possible to actual innocence. One needs to abandon the cynical and resentful ‘real-world views’ epitomized by such sayings as ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’ and ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die’. Similarly one needs to abandon the spiritual mind-set that merely sets these ‘real world view’ in stone, as it were, while affectively cultivating a fairy-tale ‘inner world’ of denial and fantasy, complete with it’s seductive promise of a greater Reality and a ‘better life’, after death.

The naïveté‚ required to question the gloom and doom of ‘real-world reality’ and the seductive delusion of ‘spiritual-world Reality’ is accessed from the actual innocence of the peak experience or PCE, when the perfection and purity together with the innate benevolence of the physical universe is readily and obviously apparent. Benevolence is then seen clearly for what it is – an intrinsic quality of the actual universe, and not, as is commonly imagined, a quality of some mythical Creator-God or some meta-physical energy of a sprit-ridden mother-earth, or some other esoteric Divine force.

In the actual world benevolence is a palpable and innate disposition of the growth force to attain the best possible result in any situation. At its simplest level it is readily seen in the plants as each does the best to adapt, survive and thrive in each situation. In animals this tendency can be a more sophisticated reaction as the options for action, mobility and adaptability are increased in a more complex life-form. In human beings, with the marvellous intelligence of the brain operating, we see this innate benevolence at its most stunning. The technological development in agriculture, health, communications, transport, services, etc. all move inexorably towards more comfort, more safety, more pleasure, more leisure and more ease. This is benevolence in action, the direct result of the human brain – the only intelligence in the universe. And the time has now come for the next stunning breakthrough – an actual freedom from the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. This will have the benevolent result of a gradual reduction and eventual elimination of human violence and suffering – an end to malice and sorrow, as each individual does it for his or herself.

The benevolence of the actual physical universe is the catalyst for this new development of Actual Freedom, and naïveté is the key for anyone wishing to access it.

So Alan, always good to get a post from the over there ...

The first step in being able to examine one’s own dark side is to be able to acknowledge that you have a dark side – something we have been taught by carrot and stick never, never, ever to do. For those who have a hefty personal investment in being Good, or in being God – be it kudos, fame, glory, or simply making a living out of it in some way – the idea of backtracking can be quite daunting because they fear they will only end up in despair and fear again – the very feelings they sought to escape from.

This fear is unfounded because what the actualism process offers is a method of coming here to the actual world, a paradisiacal world of sensual pleasure, innocence and delight. Everybody has briefly experienced the actual world at some stage in their lives. Often in childhood, despite our own instinctual malice and sorrow, we had occasional glimpses of the magic and purity that is this physical world we humans live in. In hindsight, I can recognize that as I became an adult I always had an unquenchable yearning for those innocent experiences of perfection that had sometimes occurred in childhood – sometimes as flashes of intimate mateship with another or sometimes as what is termed nature experiences.

When I came across Richard and discovered that he lived this innocence, but with all his adult sensibilities fully intact, I was intrigued. When it became clear that the belief that we are born innocent and only corrupted by our parents, evil forces, or the like, or that suffering and evil are essential parts of some Grand Plan, was based on ancient ignorance and superstition, I was fascinated. When Richard talked about the purity and perfection of the actual world, it rang a bell with me because I remembered having had similar experiences myself – and when he explained how it was possible to live that experience as a constant on-going experience, I knew I could never settle for second best, no matter what.

I do acknowledge that what goes on in one’s own head and the heart can be tough stuff to sort out. All human beings, through no fault of their own, live their lives either trapped within the real-world or within the spiritual world ... or within both, which is most often the case. Actualism offers a way out of being imprisoned in these psychological and psychic worlds and all the help you need to become free is available on the AF web-site.

If you want to discuss the process of actualism or the delights of the actual world, you have my ear, but if you come to this list not to listen and discuss but to preach and pontificate the virtues of the spiritual world, I’ll pass, because I’ve been there and done that and found it to be rotten to the core.

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Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust