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Selected Correspondence Peter Love, Love Agapé and Intimacy
I can only talk about a virtual intimacy – an experience that far exceeds the ‘normal’ fickle feeling of love and so-called intimate relationships. In a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow, ‘I’ and ‘my’ thoughts and feelings are so weakened and emaciated that I am unable to impose, let alone sustain, any emotional demands or expectations on any fellow human being – let alone the one I have chosen to live with. By becoming virtually happy and harmless, I am more able to be what-I-am as opposed to ‘who’ I think and feel I am and this has resulted in an on-going, virtually constant, sense of well-being. This on-going sense of well-being in turn negates the need to constantly seek emotional succour or support from others in a vain attempt to assuage ‘my’ feelings of loneliness and alienation. In virtual freedom, there is a palpable sense of autonomy based upon the factual evidence that I am perfectly capable of looking after myself and providing for all of my needs. The overarching and debilitating sense of needing to survive has been replaced by the simple need to ensure that, when I place a plastic card in a machine downtown and type in a few numbers, that sufficient bits of paper come out to meet my food and shelter requirements. Similarly, my need for a ‘relationship’ has been replaced by the fact that I do not live alone but that I live with a companion with whom I am able to share the delight of living on this verdant planet. And not only do I get to do things together with a fellow human being that I would not have necessarily done had I been living alone, but I get to wallow in that most intimate of human one-to-one activities – the sensual mutual pleasure of sex.
In chewing through this recent lab experiment, I also came to understand something that Vineeto had stated a while back that has been puzzling me. She stated that true intimacy is unilateral. By our sociological definition, intimacy (or rather its alter ego – love) is bilateral, requiring two or more cooperating participants. True intimacy cannot require the involvement of another person for its fruition, as that immediately creates a ‘relationship’ with its attendant rules, roles, and expectations, rather than the simplicity/clarity/honesty of an individual bringing happiness and harmlessness to the table. What I soon discovered in my first months of actualism was if there is going to be peace on earth between human beings then it was up to ‘me’ and it had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. This understanding can be a daunting challenge because once you let it in completely you put yourself on the spot, as it were. What ‘I’ did was take up the challenge and make becoming actually happy and harmless my primary aim in life and put everything else second. ‘I’ saw that it was the very best thing ‘I’ could do with my life. Every other challenge paled into insignificance – others could pursue security, wealth and fame if they wanted to, others could pursue immortality for their souls if they wanted to, but ‘my’ work became the real pioneering work inherent in the pursuit of an actual freedom from malice and sorrow. I like what you have reported because it is your own observation of your own feelings, in other words it is an experiential understanding of what has been reported by Richard and the other actualists. As you would know from your own life experience, an experiential understanding based on hands-on experience is far superior to an intellectual understanding of the words of others. No amount of intellectual understanding can substitute for hands-on experience, and the only way to become free of malice and sorrow is to become aware of all of the nuances of malice and sorrow in action in your own psyche, and as your own psyche.
Thank you Peter for your willingness to go into these things with me. It’s just such good fun to swap stories and experiences. To be able to talk to someone about how they see things, what their experiences are, what sense they make of this business of being a human being. To be able to let one’s guard down with a fellow human being is what actual intimacy is about. To have no defensive guard up and no secrets to hide. Most people think of intimacy as sharing one’s feelings, which is entity-to-entity relating with all its implications and limitations. When we talk of eliminating one’s social identity the most startling result is that everyone magically becomes a fellow human being – not a woman or man, not an Arab or an American, not a Christian or a Rajneeshee, not a Greenie or a capitalist, etc. Because one has eliminated one’s own social/ religious identity one simply does not automatically stigmatize others, for a social identity is clearly seen and experienced as a folly, a primitive ball and chain, imposed by other, usually well-meaning people on all helpless infants. One also sees the inevitability having a social identity and understands the feeling of ‘freedom’ that arises from swapping this initial humdrum identity for a new spiritual identity, so all blame or fault is simultaneously expunged with the elimination of one’s own social/ religious identity. In a similar vein, when we talk of eliminating one’s instinctual passions there is no psychological or psychic fear of, or aggression towards other human beings, no desperate discriminatory drive to nurture one’s own, no relentless unquenchable drive for power over others and, as such, everyone magically becomes a fellow human being. This change is not ‘me’ trying to be accepting or tolerant of others, or ‘me’ feeling ‘at one’ with others or feeling love towards all. It is something that happens by itself, as it were. So, whenever ‘I’ am not here, which is most of the time lately, all my interactions with others are fair, magnanimous, considerate and delightful. Some people do get defensive and offended by what I say about my investigations and understandings of the Human Condition but they are always free to exercise the ‘delete’ option on the computer at any time and not read what is offensive to them. Those who do read, and write to me with their objections to being happy and harmless, will simply be presented with more facts, which usually serves to make their further objections quite silly and finally they tire of the whole business. To plagiarize Richard, yet again, – it is only recalcitrant egos and contumacious souls that get offended – the flesh and blood humans miss out. It is becoming of greater and greater importance to me to have people like yourself and the others here on the list to talk to and compare notes with. I have also noticed the ‘herding instinct’ operating, in the sense that I am aware of the desire to have friends and people to talk to. So I am trying, in my own mind, to separate out the real work that goes on here on and off the list (maybe this is wrong way to put it) from those instinctual rumblings of wanting to belong to a rather exclusive club or group of people who often speak in the same terms. The value of being able to talk to others who are also doing what you are doing is invaluable. Goodness knows how Richard did this by himself and no wonder he went through a period of ‘adjustment’ after he became actually free of the Human Condition. In comparison, those who follow have it cushy. It is such a sensible thing to do – to follow in the footsteps of those who know the path and the pitfalls and who are willing to describe them to others. You also get to know where you can take shortcuts with confidence, because someone else has tried that way and it produced no results, or it was simply a dead end diversion like the usefulness of trolling in the dustbin of past hurts. As for exclusive club ... it is totally inclusive for anyone wishing to join. The primary qualifications are a sense of adventure, and a sense of humour so you don’t take your self, or anybody else’s, too seriously ...
Actual Freedom is not a belief, it is a fact. And now Most people try to resolve their different beliefs through compromise. Two people, holding on to their own beliefs, will get into an argument, a fight. They are separate. One is always trying to get the other to believe in their own belief through manipulation and persuasion ... and by giving or withholding love. The one who is stronger, the most adept in this, wins the other over. As neither can stand separation, they will grab any means to come together – even if this means mutual concessions, or the swapping of one’s belief for the other’s. Seeing that both beliefs are irrelevant, by virtue of the fact that they are beliefs anyway, they can dissolve completely. Then there is nothing to resolve, the problem itself is eliminated. Hence a permanent lack of conflict. With the absence of belief there is no more power battles over whose belief is ‘Right’. Separation is no more ... equity prevails. The result is actual intimacy between autonomous individuals. As you can see, you can’t have beliefs and be harmless and you can’t have beliefs and regard and treat others as fellow human beings. It’s a simple choice and one that defines and identifies an actualist. An actualist is a relentless pursuer of what is factual and what is actual.
The other alternative was the licence granted to men over women and girls by cultural and religious authorities, whereby women and girls are seen as just cattle, for the men to use as they please. It lies all in the mistake of man believing himself to be the authority over woman, as was decreed by their ancestors who were to be believed to be in direct contact with a creator-god. If men and women will ever want to live in peace and harmony, the very root-cause must be addressed: a law can only be fair if both genders define that law, not only men. But men would not voluntarily choose to share all responsibilities and rights with women, because they are too proud of and too used to their supremacy, plus they would – quite understandably! – feel afraid that they might become redundant altogether, once women were given the chance to have equal say in the decision-making processes that are necessary for the organization of all men, women and children into a peaceful and fair living together. So maybe this will illustrate the point as to why I truck little with those who accuse men of having no feelings. Feelings rule and ruin the lives of both men and women equally; this is my experience. After a near fatal illness, my father deliberately went back to work with the avowed intention of at least leaving something to my mother – he died two years later and she got a house. One night I witnessed a car crash. Going to help I was confronted with a seriously injured teenager who muttered over and over through the blood ‘she left me, she left me’. I have suffered from the fear of getting a girl pregnant and of being forced to become a husband and provider in my teens and as such was a fearful bumbling virgin when married. I have suffered heartbreak, jealousy, dependency, loneliness – need I go on?
Quite so. I have just heard about a fence go up between two properties. A fence built by human conditioning, between people who are not able to ‘actually be’ the loving people they want to be or ‘believe’ they are. Yes indeed, this fence is an imaginary fence with good on one side and evil on the other, or right on one side and wrong on the other, or loving on one side and unloving on the other, and the whole fighting over the fence is fuelled by the animal instinctual passions that are still rampant in human beings. The whole point of actualism is to remove your own beliefs that you need to be on one side of the fence or the other, remove your own morals, ethics and values that causes you to be on one side, feeling superior and riling against others – and finally to quit the whole passion-fuelled grim game of survival. To become free of the Human Condition – and all it entails. It is impossible to ‘actually be’ loving, for love is not actual. It is an instinct-fuelled emotion that only exists in the heads and hearts of human beings. There is no love or hate in a tree, a keyboard, a cloud, a coffee cup. There is instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire in animals for it is literally a dog-eat-dog world. There is instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire in the human animal but we have been socialized to mask our fear, be cunning with our aggression, be proud of our nurture and devious with our desire. The most amazing revelation of Actual Freedom is that when one dares to strip away all of these instinctual passions the senate-only experience of pristine purity and perfection of the actual world comes tumbling in to fill the vacuum left by ‘me’ and my passions. More and more, a ‘self’-less sensuous experience of the actual world replaces the overwhelming gloom and doom reality of the real world or the phoney rosy Reality of the spiritual world.
Maybe becoming free of depression, sadness, loneliness, boredom, resentment, anger, animosity, annoyance, etc. is not of interest to you. No, Peter, your speculation about me is way off the mark. At present I am learning where my anger is coming from. I think my need for love is bringing that and lately I am trying to find where the need for love is coming from. I am also looking as to where do the random feelings of unconditional love I get, come from. No, it is neither speculation nor ‘way off the mark’. Up until now the only way to become ‘free’ of malice and sorrow has been to indulge the imagination and affective faculties (feelings) such that one achieves a ‘spiritual’ freedom – usually referred to as Self-realization, or in its full-blown delusion, as Enlightenment. This is done by negating or denying the ‘bad’ feelings of malice and sorrow and giving full reign to the ‘good’ feelings of love and compassion. To call this figment of the imagination ‘freedom’ is to abuse the meaning of the word which is why Richard used the word Actual Freedom for his discovery. Given that you are firmly on the spiritual path, as is evidenced by your objections and refusal to want to even begin to understand what Actual Freedom is really about, you are obviously only interested in an imaginary freedom. The traditional ‘beam me up, Scottie’ solution, or the ‘beam me up, Bhagwan’ version. This is not a criticism of you personally – these spiritual fantasy ‘escapes’ have, after all, been the only thing available up until now. But you are writing on the Actual Freedom mailing list and any efforts to convince us, deride us, condemn us, or put us down will fall on deaf ears. We actualists stubbornly refuse to settle for a second-best freedom – a synthetic freedom that leads to the Master-disciple system which perpetuates the fantasy world of good and evil spirits, after-life, God, Religions and all sorts of meta-physical mumbo-jumbo. An actualist rapidly moves from learning, thinking, trying, and looking to investigating, pursuing, discovering, uncovering, finding, implementing, activating, challenging and dismantling feelings, emotions, beliefs and instincts. From a mere snorkelling around on the surface to a bit of sincere deep sea diving into one’s own psyche.
As for why I got offended, I am looking into it and if I find something new and interesting I will let you know. I am also looking into the origin of my need-for-love and its implications. Aye, ‘tis a fascinating journey into one’s very own psyche. I’m going back through my journal editing it at the moment, in the light of conversations I’ve had with people since first writing it and I have just finished re-writing the ‘Living Together’ chapter. It now contains a bit more nitty gritty, nuts and bolts information on the process of awareness, ‘looking’, investigation, discovery, realization and eventual actualization and elimination of such issues as being offended and giving offence and needing love and giving love. It will be up on our site under ‘Living Together’ ... ‘Living Together’ is essentially about the gender divide between men and women that ultimately dooms any attempt to live together in peace and harmony. I’m well pleased with the re-write, I think it will be more helpful and useful to others who will follow. ‘Love’ is the next chapter which may be of interest to you as well and I’ll let you know about that one as well when it is edited. So that’s it – a bit of a rave and a plug for the journal. I do like it that you are looking at feelings and emotions, so few people bother to make the effort. Most take the easy way out and go for transcendence and ‘rising above’ them, or the even lazier simply opt for doing nothing and loving one’s self – the ‘You are already That’ school of modern mysticism. To go the other way and look into feelings and emotions is new territory completely. It is the same with beliefs – most people are comfortable with, even proud of, their beliefs but to look into them, and to dare to ascertain the facts, is new territory completely.
Osho’s quotes you cite are irrelevant to my experiences and hence the comments you wrote in reference to those quotes are useless for me. What you are you saying is that what Rajneesh said is irrelevant – you will follow him anyway. This is what is known as unconditional love. Unconditional in that the Master demands love from his disciples regardless of what he says, what he does or doesn’t do, no matter what promises are broken, no matter that the dream is unliveable and unrealisable. The disciple then plays his role in the game being trusting, being grateful, being loyal, being loving – unconditionally and unquestionably. This is not only confined to Rajneeshees – it is the same for followers of Krishnamurti, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Christ, Da Free John, Gangaji, Papaji, Andrew Cohen, Barry Long, Samdarshi, Baba, Tyohar, etc. The Master-disciple business takes two to tango – no disciples, no Masters.
And I have said I agreed with you when I agreed and when I did not agree with you I did not. It is not debate ploys. I feel that you just labelled me with concepts and categories. You are the one who insists on wearing the label of disciple, even to the extent of wearing a mala with his photo on it in everyday life. I live in an area where there are many Sannyasins and I have never seen anybody wearing a mala in public. Methinks you do wear your label proudly. The label clearly points to your belief in Rajneesh’s ‘concepts’ and your ‘category’ of Disciple of Rajneesh. You happily ‘label’ yourself, and then try to blame me for it. Any sort of disciple-hood, be it love, gratitude, trust or surrender, is the very anti-thesis of freedom. To be actually free is to be free and autonomous, to be beholden to no-one.
Everybody has what they fondly declare to be their ‘own’ truth and passionately defend it – even declaring their ‘right’ to do so. Every body? You know this or the dictionary? So why do you stubbornly insist that you are uniquely different from everybody else? It seems to be a constant theme of yours. I see that the evidence what I said is quite clear. There are about 6,000 religions on the planet and the country I am in, and many others, have laws that enshrine the principle of Religious Tolerance. Indeed, it is part of what are deemed the basic Human Rights. These laws and rights are aimed at preventing individuals or groups from attacking, defaming, discriminating against or persecuting another on the basis of differing religious beliefs. In other words, we need laws and ethical codes to prevent humans from fighting, killing and persecuting others because they each believe their God or Truth is the best. Imposing and policing these laws do manage to ‘keep the lid on things’ a bit ... except for Northern Ireland, Israel, the Balkans, India, Afghanistan, Africa, Iraq, Indonesia, Malaysia ... Sannyasins had direct experience of this at the Ranch when both sides armed-up. That’s where it really hit home for me – that I would have been willing to kill for, or die for ‘my’ Master. It’s just par for the Human Condition – the more you love someone – the more you are willing to kill others to protect him/her and to sacrifice your life in order that they can live. And billions of people are currently playing out this scenario all over the planet, right now, as I type these words – and not only that, they are defending their right to do so. This is what Richard calls ‘institutionalized insanity’.
P.S. The night before last I had a wonderful dream that is still yanking my chains. I was traveling in a mini van type of bus with a group of people and Osho. We were going to meet up with a large group of people and we were asking Osho if he was willing to speak to the people... He turned around and looked deep into my eyes and said: ‘I’m amazed that after all these years you are still attached to my words!’ and I responded, ‘oh, no, it’s not for me... It’s just that so many people there have never heard you speak’... and he just smiles and turns back around in his seat... But of course I do have attachments to his words. And I watch them all the time, the attachments and the words floating around in my brain. But two days later from that dream, I still feel that love stuff from him and from me for him swelling my chest...how can I let go of an attachment like that? It feels the same as it did many years ago... It’s weird too...I’ve never owned a white robe and no plans of getting one. The whole Eastern spiritual world is based on ‘feeling’ devotion and love, either for a god or a Master. This feeling good, when practiced assiduously, leads to bliss, Divine Love, Universal Compassion, and Timelessness, Oneness with the Whole, Truth, That, God or whatever. If successful one becomes One, self becomes Self, separation becomes Unity, and away we go again as yet another Divine Saviour is born, to eventually ‘leave the body’, leaving yet another Religion on earth. It is all a passionate dream which most people can see clearly played out in other Religious beliefs but love, loyalty, devotion and gratitude prevent from seeing let alone acknowledging it in themselves. It is an insidious trap, one at which the Enlightened Ones are indeed Masters at playing.
P.S. The night before last I had a wonderful dream that is still yanking my chains. I was travelling in a mini van type of bus with a group of people and Osho. We were going to meet up with a large group of people and we were asking Osho if he was willing to speak to the people...He turned around and looked deep into my eyes and said ‘I am amazed that after all these years you are still attached to my words’ and I responded, ‘Oh, no, It’s not for me...It’s just that so many people there have never heard you speak.’.. and he just smiles and turns back around in his seat... But of course I do have attachments to his words. And I watch them all the time, the attachments and the words floating around in my brain. But two days later from that dream, I still feel that love stuff from him and from me for him swelling my chest...how can I let go of an attachment like that? It feels the same as it did many years ago... It’s weird too... I’ve never owned a white robe and no plans of getting one. The whole Eastern spiritual world is based on ‘feeling’ devotion and love, either for a god or a Master. This feeling good, when practiced assiduously, leads to bliss, Divine Love, Universal Compassion, and Timelessness, Oneness with the Whole, Truth, That, God or whatever. If successful one becomes One, self becomes Self, separation becomes Unity, and away we go again as yet another Divine Saviour is born, to eventually ‘leave the body’, leaving yet another Religion on earth. It is all a passionate dream which most people can see clearly played out in other Religious beliefs but love, loyalty, devotion and gratitude prevent them from seeing, let alone acknowledging it, in themselves. It is an insidious trap, one at which the Enlightened Ones are indeed Masters at playing.
If by Agapé you mean DIVINE LOVE ... it is wasted on me. I am one of a only a handful of atheists on the planet. When one is truly free...there is no need for such nonsense as believing there is no Divine Love, then one is a Gnostic, one who knows, one who has no belief. So, one who is truly free is one who is not merely pretending, I take it from the first bit. There are about 6,000 religions who all believe that they have the ‘true’ version of Truth, or Liberation, or Freedom. The truth is such a woolly concept it seems to me. You then say ‘there is no need for such nonsense as believing there is no Divine Love’. I take it then that you believe there is Divine Love, or are you saying that The Divine (God) is a fact. I take it that you are saying you believe in God. A Gnostic is one who claims to have ‘superior knowledge’ of spirit-ual things (Godly matters) and therefore believes in Gods and spirits. Are you saying you are a Gnostic? I am trying to make sense of what it is that you are saying. * I take it then that you believe there is Divine Love, or are you saying that The Divine (God) is a fact. I take it that you are saying you believe in God. No. Agapé is the essence of all there is. It is a word fraught with other meanings to other people, but it is shorter than Unconditional-Love which is what is meant. So, as I understand, you see Unconditional-Love (Agapé) as the ‘essence of all there is’. I guess, when you say the mystical experience is a ‘realization of what is’, it is a realization of Unconditional Love, and definitely not the human love that mere mortals struggle with and fail to live in there every-day lives. Do you live in this state of Unconditional-Love permanently and is that why you use it as a blessing/signature to others, or is it a fond wish of yours to one day realize this state?
It’s simple... love is the answer, and don’t hurt each other anymore... duh. If love is the answer, how come it hasn’t worked, and if it hasn’t worked why do we still advertise it as ‘the’ solution. If it was on sale as a product the makers would have been sued for misrepresentation centuries ago. All parents, teachers, priests, gurus, pacifists, moralists, ethicists, humanitarians say, ‘let’s don’t hurt each other’ but we still do. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to try something else. Maybe the problem lies within each of us and that is also where the solution lies. This would mean that the only person who can fix me up is me. It is radical I know, but maybe, just maybe, it is worthwhile a moment or two of reflection. Do you think you’re the best guru ever? No. If you had read anything of what I have written, you would have realised I regard Guru-ship as a demeaning profession, both for the disciple and He/She who swans around demanding trust, surrender and worship by others. The whole rotten set up has had its day. It was so good to get out of it and regain my will that I had surrendered. P.S. What I found with Richard was a mentor, a guide, an expert on the Human Condition – and a fellow human being.
To Vineeto – I have perceived your care, which with pure love is compassion by the way, in most of your posts. So my next question is, How did you get stuck with a head-fucker like Peter? ;-) Love ... I assume from the above that you are also saying that you find my posts lacking in compassion. Given that compassion is
you are right. When one has eliminated sorrow in oneself it is then an impossibility to share it with others. To uphold compassion – an agreement that we all must suffer together – as a Noble ‘set-in-concrete’ feeling is to forever condemn Humanity to suffering. I simply stepped out of the whole mutually-agreed scenario that says ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy, you only grow through suffering, no pain – no gain, you can’t change Human Nature, etc.’ I could only manage this by fully experiencing the range and depths of human feelings and emotions, by not ‘turning away’, by neither repressing nor expressing, but looking with open eyes at the Human Condition and acknowledging the facts. This then evinced an action such that the only option open was to do what I could about the appalling situation we humans find ourselves in on the planet. That action was to do all that was possible to actually eliminate malice and sorrow in me. With the elimination of malice, the need for love is extinguished to reveal what is intrinsic in the actual world – benevolence. With the elimination of sorrow, the need for compassion is extinguished to reveal what is intrinsic in the actual world – delight.
You didn’t comment on what was the main point of the story – a disciple’s willingness to kill and be killed for the love of his Master. How do you stand on this? What were you willing to do if the National Guard came over the hill? I guess it is relevant to your ideals of pure-love and trust. Putting words in others mouths to make your points is malicious, shame on you, Peter, your mind will stop at nothing to prove yourself right. You are ridiculous! hahahahaha I did put the question quite bluntly, but haven’t you ever wondered what it is that causes us human beings to fight and kill each other for love of Country or love of God? I don’t see at all that I ‘put words in your mouth’. It is your stated position, as it was mine at the time of the Ranch. If you are one of those who would not have killed or been killed then fair enough. Maybe I was the only one who loved Him enough, after all. First of all, I had no ‘stated position’. Where do you get this stuff? Pure love and trust has got to do with killing for the master? How you try and confuse everything. This gets a bit silly here. Are you saying you have not written about your valuing pure love and trust? The reason that I probably would have killed or died for Rajneesh was out of ‘love’ for him and because I put my ‘trust’ in him. We are usually willing to kill in order to protect those we love – be they kin, kind or leader, and further, would often sacrifice our own life in order that they may live. This is a common reaction – a direct product of our instinctual programming. This is all very straightforward and basic stuff. * Where was I, oh yes, would I kill for the master? Well I didn’t have a weapon (that’s what we army guys called pistols and rifles), but if I did and they came shooting to kill all of us, which I’m sure they would have done if Osho hadn’t found a safe way to get us all out safely, you can bet your sweet bippy I would have loved to shoot it out. Why not? What’s wrong with it? I just watched a TV program on war and it highlighted the main causes of warfare as territorial, religious and ideological. Territorial conflicts are perhaps understandable, but religious wars over whose God is the only God defy sanity. And ideological wars are equally inane as both sides always believe they are right and the other is wrong. Whatever the reason, it is always one group against another group.
I don’t think that Zen practitioners are encouraged to be emotional (loving)! Indeed it hard to find any mention of love in Eastern Teachings – it seems to be only a modern Western adaptation. Eastern religion and philosophy place great emphasis on suffering and compassion, and love is not even mentioned. In the East, what we interpret as ‘love’, is actually devotion, sublimation and surrender to whatever God or Master has the power to transmit the Teachings.
Then get back to being happy now. As success comes you are able to get free of more of the feelings, emotions, moods, instinctual passions, etc that prevent you from becoming happy and harmless. As I was talking to her face lit up, at the enormity of realizing and experiencing that there is only this moment to experience. All of a sudden she was here, fully occupied with the business of being alive. She was not ‘somewhere else’, there was no ‘guard up’, no ‘interpreter’ – and we were able to talk human being to human being – intimate, direct. She and her partner had read my journal some months ago and have been musing things over. She said that things have been up and down between them, and felt it was the right time to try to get a little deeper in their relationship – to set their sights a bit higher. We had a great conversation about this business of being a human being, past experiences and aims in life. What they make of it is up to them, of course, but it was so good to talk of these things. A rare privilege. A rare privilege. Receptivity. A flow. An insight with another. For me the privilege is that intimacy is possible – the direct experience of meeting a fellow human being with no guards up. Simple, direct down-to-earth stuff about what sense do we make of it all, how do you see it, how do you experience being a human being.
But Petertje (as we say in Holland) People are still weeping with gratitude when they read Kabir, or Rumi, or Osho, or Basho, or Meister Eckhart, and on and on ... What else is there to say? You raise a good point here, when you mention ‘weeping with gratitude’. Have you ever noticed the connection between sadness and love, the bitter-sweetness of sorrow, the tug on the heart strings of a particularly sad love song? How we humans turn to believing in God in the face of depression, or death? Have you ever thought that humans need to feel gratitude because we resent being here, having to ‘fight for survival’ in the ‘real’ world. Have you ever considered that is why we seek solace in, and are grateful to, the Masters who promise us there is a better world awaiting us ‘somewhere else’? It was becoming aware of these emotions and feelings in me and questions like these that I would contemplate upon obsessively until I got an experiential answer. In other words, an answer that provided me with freedom from sad and sorrowful feelings and, even more difficult to acknowledge, my feelings of malice and aggression. Initially, I got thoroughly sick and tired of being sad and suffering from love, and further I saw that I was inflicting my suffering and need for love on others. That was the starting point – to make becoming happy and harmless the unrelenting, unabashed ambition in my life. It is so good to be free of malice and sorrow – whatever the cost.
I was trying to influence others, and when their opposition to what I was saying became even more determined (naturally so), I felt misunderstood and frustrated. I then commenced to ask myself why I was trying to influence others, questioned myself on my stake in the discussion, and investigated into my own deeper fears, conflicts, and doubts about love and compassion. Because I was deliberately questioning the emotion of love, and I was getting determined opposition from others, it really highlighted for me just how highly love is sought, coveted and valued by human beings. Love and compassion (and their allied emotions: pity, sympathy, empathy, etc) are really regarded to be the pinnacle, indeed the summit of all earthly dreams and hopes. To reject love is to be dead, according to what I heard these other people to be saying. Since I have begun to investigate into these tender instincts, I have been able to see what a hold they have on Humanity, indeed what a hold they have on ‘me’. ‘I’ need love in order to confirm my existence. Without love, ‘I’ am nothing – I might as well be dead. Love, if I was following the thread of these conversations, is the do-all and end-all of earthly existence. Without it, life has no meaning, no reason. So, even though I was taking one side in the discussions, the discussions themselves were reflecting back to me the deep questions and doubts that I myself have on the topic in question. In hindsight, in similar types of conversations I see I was simply presenting the fact that the much-vaunted feeling of love didn’t work because it has always failed to bring about peace between human beings. The same is evident with the revered spiritual feeling of unconditional love-for-all – it also has failed miserably in eventuating anything remotely resembling peace on earth. I was not presenting a viewpoint nor taking a side, I was simply stating a fact ... and offering an alternative. But like you, these discussions did serve to make me look even deeper into ‘me’ than I would have had I not discussed these matters and been challenged. What I also found was that often people liked the discussions, provided they didn’t become too offended, because they rarely if ever talked about their feelings in such a way, rarely if ever sat back and reviewed how they lived their lives, what beliefs they held, in terms of what worked and what didn’t work and why not. You may have noticed a peculiar twist in that if the person you are talking to takes a discussion about the human condition personally then they invariably become offended. If they don’t take it personally it is a sure sign they are dissociated in some way from their own complete range of feelings and beliefs that epitomize the human condition and the discussion usually trips along as a philosophical-type conversation with no depth at all. * In this way fear can be a signal for what change I am avoiding – remembering I am talking about something to look at and change in myself and not seeking the thrill of physical danger or the thrill of confronting someone else, as is common in the nonsense of ‘standing up for one’s rights’. Excellent point. In my ‘self’-investigations, more and more I find I am able to investigate into the tender passions. This is a fascinating area of investigation. I had been doing a lot of investigation into fear, anger, doubt, etc. I agree with you that investigations into the ‘negative’ invidious passions is a relatively easy matter compared to the investigation of the ‘positive’ tender passions. I am seeing more and more the truth of this statement. It was my experience recently, in the context of resigning my job and, given that I was feeling lonely, desperate and in turmoil, that I craved love and validation from my partner. It was interesting to note that feelings of despair were followed by attempts to cling and depend on my partner for her continued love and assurance. I seemed to be veering back and forth between experiencing the depths of despair followed by desperate clinging to her. Whereas in the past I would have probably tried to stifle or suppress this movement back and forth, or become condemnatory to myself for acting ‘childish’, I found it most interesting to observe myself in action. At times I found it almost impossible not to give vent to these feelings, so strong they were. But at other times I found that I could observe myself, neither repressing nor expressing the feelings. Also, if one observes oneself carefully, in the midst of these ‘love storms’, one can really see the genesis of ‘crimes of passion’, the violence that results from love spurned. It’s powerful stuff. When you realize and experience for yourself the full range of emotions we so fondly call love the tendency can be to withdraw or retreat. I know this tendency well, and I see it not only as a male thing but it is a common reaction to failure and emotional pain in all humans, no matter what gender. ‘Once bitten, twice shy’, sums up the common reaction that ultimately stalls and then stifles all human relationship. As I put it a touch poetically in the Glossary –
Actualism is not about avoiding, withdrawing, hiding or suppressing. Actualism is not about becoming a hermit or a monk or a nun. Unless one is fully engaged in the world, unless one is fully prepared to investigate all of the major issues that prevent an actual intimacy with one’s fellow human beings, fundamental change is impossible. It looks as though this is exactly what you are in the process of doing. I can only say that any efforts in this direction will not only bring you tangible reward but, of even more benefit, it means that less of ‘you’ is imposed upon others.
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 20th 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. Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
