Selected Correspondence Peter

Materialism

Perhaps I might spread my load a little and direct a few questions to the virtually free, to Peter and Vineeto:

Is there a difference between the benevolence of the universe and the universe actively conspiring to give me things I want to be happy? I want a good job, a good woman and a good house.

Speaking personally, I discovered in my own experience as well as by observing others that ‘a good job, a good woman and a good house’ are in no way a guarantee of happiness. <snipped>

Lordy no. <snipped>

If you have already understood this in your own experience, then why bother to ask me a question about the universe actively conspiring to give you these things you said you want in order to be happy?

Because although they don’t guarantee happiness they do seem to bring it in some sense, and, perhaps more the point, when these things are not there, it does seem to be painful.

If I can just backtrack a bit, you may have noticed I snipped quite a lot out of the previous post – a good deal of supplementary information I supplied in order to flesh out my response as well as whole raft of supplementary questions that you asked, all of which moved the conversation further and further away from the topic at hand. The reason I did this was to avoid having a conversation that was so wide-ranging and meandering as to be meaningless and to attempt to focus in on one issue only, in this case that ‘‘a good job, a good woman and a good house’ are in no way a guarantee of happiness’.

In my many conversations with Richard over the years I have learnt the art of thinking in a linear manner – examining and investigating one particular matter by sticking with the issue, no matter how uncomfortable or confrontational – in order to get to the bottom of the issue. To put it quite simply and succinctly, I wanted to get to understand the fact of the matter under investigation – to get a factual answer to my question – such that I could then be confident in once and for all dismissing all of the beliefs that normally relate to this particular matter. This simple act of thoroughly investigating, understanding and unreservedly acknowledging the facts of the matter then enabled me to act upon the fact and not remain suckered into believing what others believed, or would have me believe was the truth about the particular issue.

It does seem somewhat odd to me to have to point out the value of finding out the facts of the matter and acting upon the fact of the matter given that this type of straightforward down-to-earth thinking is often used by people in practical pragmatic problem solving. But I do acknowledge that it is difficult to apply such thinking in investigating the human condition in action – in particular with such close to the bone issues as the societal and instinctual causes of malice and sorrow – because not only is there are plethora of beliefs disguised as truths and wisdom that need to be investigated and thought about in order to get the facts of the matter but one also discovers experientially that the human psyche itself has innate resistance to being exposed. The latter is no doubt the reason why so many people are so adverse to using the actualism method of moment-to-moment ‘self’-investigation – indeed the very act of conducting such an investigation into one’s own psyche in action means the investigation is an experiential hands-on investigation rather than the dissociated intellectual-only analysis that has thus far masqueraded as investigating the human condition.

I don’t know if what I am saying makes sense to you or not but I can only suggest as someone who is experienced in these matters that it may be worthwhile contemplating upon because it is central to your being able to gain something meaningful for yourself from the contributions of others on this mailing list. After all you did ask me a question (presumably because you were interested in my answer) and as such would it not be sensible to pause at least for a moment to consider the answer you got before summarily dismissing it by immediately launching into objections, diversions and a long list of further questions.

Having said that I’ll now get back to the topic at hand – your yes-but acknowledgement of the fact that ‘‘a good job, a good woman and a good house’ are in no way a guarantee of happiness’.

This was something I personally discovered to be a fact in my twenties, not only from my own personal experience but also from close association with people who were above my rank on the materialist ladder of success as well as from copious anecdotal evidence that even those who are at the top rungs of the ladder – the much-envied rich and famous – invariably suffer from bouts of sadness, melancholy, anxiety, insecurity and the like. This combination of my own experience and the understanding that the experience was universal as in common-to-all with no exceptions meant that I never went down the path of materialism in the belief that it could, despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, be the means to happiness.

Clearly seeing and acknowledging the fact of this particular matter, fully taking it on board with no ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ or ‘maybes’, combined with an innate sincerity I seem to have had at the time, meant that I didn’t waste my time in a fruitless search for happiness in the fickle and fierce world of materialistic pursuits. Clearly seeing and acknowledging the fact of the matter meant that I was compelled to act on the fact rather than take it on board as a feeling–only agreement (a moral stance) or as an intellectual-only understanding (an ideal or an ethic) – which would have only meant merely continuing to be a combatant in the materialist rat-race whilst feeling guilty about it or sprouting the ethics of equity all the while frantically squirreling away as many nuts as I could lest others get more than me.

So – in the interest of at least finding some common ground for continuing this discussion– I ask you, do you agree with the statement I made that ‘‘a good job, a good woman and a good house’ are in no way a guarantee of happiness’? In other words, do you agree that it is a fact … or do you not agree that it is a fact as your yes-but, yes-maybe qualifications and your yes-but-what if, yes-but-what-about questions appear to indicate?

I think it is an apt opportunity to more fully explain to you why I have said that the whole ongoing issue of the meanings of the words spiritual, atheist and materialist is a beat up.

Vineeto and I occasionally watch a television program devoted to exploring all things religious, spiritual and metaphysical and a recent show featured a debate between a priest and a spiritualist on one hand and a well-known avowed atheist and an academic secular humanist on the other. The to-ing and fro-ing went on with the priest and spiritualist holding the moral high-ground whilst the atheist and secular humanist presented reasoned arguments that spiritual belief was unnecessary, puerile and very often the cause of human conflict and animosity.

As the debate went on, the spiritualists eventually reverted to the fall-back position that spiritual belief is the only effective way to assuage feelings of sorrow and grief and they presented several heart-rendering examples of this. In a counter move the atheist immediately went into ‘life-without-God-is-jolly’ mode in order to prove that an atheist’s happiness is better than a spiritualist’s happiness-born-out-of-compassion. The presenter of the program, a spiritualist herself, then interjected, making the comment to the atheist ‘but I know that you get very depressed from time to time’ and immediately the wind went out of his sails. The debate continued on but in the end the telling point was that the spiritualists had an answer to emotional suffering (succour) and the atheists and secular humanists clearly didn’t.

The whole debate encapsulated the spiritualist vs. materialist debate – the spiritualists will always maintain the moral high-ground over the materialists because materialists have no solution to the feelings of sorrow that invariably afflict all human beings from time to time.

This is why I say that all of the discussions on this mailing list as to the meanings of the words such as spiritualist, atheist, materialist and so on are but a beat-up. Whichever side one chooses to sit on, or believes oneself to be on, or whether one sits in the middle or refuses to sit down, it is clear that neither the spiritualists nor the materialists have any workable solutions to bringing an end to human malice and sorrow. When you sit down and think about it, does not it strike you as being somewhat bizarre that all this running for cover, duck-shoving, side-stepping and re-labelling goes on on a mailing list that has been set up specifically in order to discuss a proven method of bringing an end to human malice and sorrow?

Being ‘normal’ was never ever satisfactory, particularly as the pursuit of material wealth and financial power never appealed to me – I somehow knew that ‘something’ was missing but I didn’t know of any alternative.

Same here. To cut a long story short, as a teenager I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew what I didn’t want. Actually, for me it wasn’t just a case of not wanting it, or feeling something was missing. I hated ‘the system’ (but not individuals) with a passionate intensity. Toward my late teens, I saw people’s modes of existence in one of three ways: they were servicing the ‘machine’[*]; they were blithely unaware of the existence of the ‘machine’; or they were working in whatever way they could to subvert the ‘machine’. In the mid-eighties when I left school, everyone was ‘servicing the machine’. They were rebelling against parental control, but not rebelling against the values and goals that underpin it. My beef with civilisation ran a lot deeper than parental control, so I fancied myself as a radical of sorts. My ‘allies’ were political dissidents, artists, madmen, saboteurs, mystics, spiritualists, subversives of any kind who refused to play the games that keep the wheels of the machine turning smoothly.

I wasn’t outwardly radical in any obvious way. I didn’t belong to any organisations (because although plenty of people were looking for the answer, they didn’t have the right answer). And on the outside I was a fairly casual, caring, easy-going person. But inwardly I burned.

It took me a long time to recognize that my riling against ‘the establishment’ was simply a convenient outlet for my own resentment and anger. It’s not necessarily socially-acceptable to take out one’s anger on individuals but taking it out on an amorphus concept such as ‘the machine’, ‘the system’, the government’ or ‘the establishment’ is very socially-accepted within the multitude of competing and waring groups, be they racial, ethnic, tribal, political, social, economic or ideological. And there are none who feel more aggrieved than the self-righteous who hold to spiritual morals or humanitarian ethics.

A bit later on, I realised that these political and economic systems don’t just descend on us out of the blue. They’re the products of a million compromises. They’re all attempts by our predecessors to balance material, social and spiritual needs while preserving enough social stability to keep the species surviving.

Now that I have finally stopped my mindless riling against these systems, I have come to see how successful democracy and capitalism – when combined with effective public welfare and health systems – have been in providing an ever-increasing proportion of the growing but stabilizing human population on the planet with ever-increasing wealth, health, lifespan, clean air, pure water, nourishing food, leisure, pleasure, safety and comfort.

To use one of Richard’s metaphors that has stuck in my mind, I found that I needed to do a good deal of work before I could take off both my grey coloured glasses and my rose coloured glasses in order that I could begin to get a glimpse of the fact that grim reality is an illusion which is created by ‘me’.

So then I turned inwards and tried to have a good look at the heart and mind that lies right at the centre of everything I experience. At that time I wasn’t too far away from Richard’s starting point.

I knew that wherever I went, whatever I did, I would be there looking over my shoulder, and although I didn’t have any conscious recollection of an I-less state at that time, I still knew that ‘I’ was gonna be a terrible burden to lug around for the rest of my life. But, unlike Richard, I accepted that ‘I’ was inescapable – and, as it turned out, I spent the next 20 years trying out various alternative forms of ‘me’. None were satisfactory.

Yes. And it wasn’t as though I was doing anything ‘wrong’ in my search for freedom – it was just that ‘I’ along with everyone else on the planet, and everyone else who has ever been on the planet, have got it 180 degrees wrong. What Richard’s discovery reveals is that there is no freedom to be had within the human condition – the answer lays in becoming free from the human condition in toto.

I am not interested in ASC’s or spiritual, mystical or religious traditions. Never have been.

It will be interesting to see whether this lack of interest impedes your exploration of actualism. I say this because thus far it seems that those who are interested in actualism have also been those with a previous interest in spiritualism – in other words they have been interested in finding answers to what is sometimes termed the human dilemma.

Are you saying that those from the non-spiritual realm, or with material interests, are not interested in finding answers to the human dilemma?

No. What I said was ‘thus far it seems that those who are interested in actualism have also been those with a previous interest in spiritualism’ and your comment below –

‘I read some JK many years ago, but that goes nowhere other than to break down the structure of thought. A nice analysis is all. I read some Gurdjieff, but that was an endless infinite loop going nowhere. Some Castaneda ... that was too occult and mystical for me to apply. Some UGK, I liked him but there is nothing one can do with that.’

seems to bear this out.

Different approaches to the same problem perhaps?

As a generalization, for what it is worth, I see materialists as being mainly interested in finding political/ social/ economic solutions to the human dilemma whereas spiritualists by and large despair that any of these solutions will ever bring peace on earth and as a consequence they actively practice dissociation from being here on earth. This distinction is a black and white one, whereas most people I have come across play it safe by having a leg in both worlds.

I think I was neither here nor there and that created difficulties for me. Lately more materialist, in the sense that I am trying to make a living and secure some financial security and freedom. Is that at odds with actualism?

Not at all. There is a popular myth that spiritualist do not have to make a living – that somehow ‘Existence’ provides for and looks after the Chosen Ones. If one looks at the facts of the matter, Mohan Rajneesh made a far better living by teaching Eastern Religion to Westerners than he did by teaching Eastern philosophy to Indians. Likewise Jiddu Krishnamurti made a very good living out of his Guru business. He was well supported by his followers – it was they who paid for his food, lodgings, clothes and travel. The thousands upon thousands of Buddhist monks in Asia make their living by being monks and their food, lodging, clothes and travel are paid for by others.

As an actualist the business of making a living – selling my time to others in return for tokens to purchase food and clothes and to rent shelter – became progressively easier and more stress free the more I have become happy about being wherever I happen to be doing whatever it is that I am doing … or not doing.

*

When I recalled my first PCE, it became clear to me that the way to get from ‘A’ – being normal – to ‘B’ – having an ongoing direct experience of actuality 24/7 – was that ‘I’ had to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless … and that this commitment had to be so total as to be an all-consuming obsession. I don’t want to gallop ahead too much, but the reason I mention this is to point to the essential link between becoming happy and harmless and becoming free of the human condition – they are one and the same path.

Are you suggesting that if I was really serious, I would have to leave my job to pursue this 24/7?

Not at all. Actualism is about becoming happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are and the way to do this is to practice bringing one’s attention to being happy and harmless right here in this very place in physical space and right now in this, the only moment that you can ever experience being alive.

What you happen to be doing at this moment and where you are at this moment is besides the point – if you are sitting at a desk working, or laying on the couch watching TV, the question is still the same – ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ … or to put it another way ‘am I being harmless and am I feeling happy right now and if not, why not?’

You say that in your case actualism is the third alternative to both materialism and spiritualism.

Yes. This is how I put it recently in a post to No 52 –

It occurred to me then that I have always avoided struggle ... looking for an easy way.

Me too. That’s why I abandoned materialism – I could never see any sense at all in wasting one’s life in a constant struggle for a never-ending pursuit of more and more material possessions, status, wealth and power. That’s why I opted out of the real-world struggle into spiritualism … only to discover that similar struggles permeate the spiritual world. The only thing that really got me off my bum was the challenge to be both happy and harmless and while it did take a bit of effort to get the process up and running it has been a grand adventure since then – simply the best. Peter to No 52, 5.10.2003

Many people seek happiness via the relentless pursuit to amass more and more material possessions, the idea supposedly being that the accumulation of financial wealth with its associated power over others is the meaning of life on earth. In the dog-eat-dog materialist world success is to be the biggest dog on the block.

Running parallel with this materialist viewpoint within the human condition is the ancient belief in a spiritual world – an ethereal world of spirits – in essence a place where the human spirit or soul or atman supposedly goes after the death of the physical body. Because these archaic spiritual beliefs still maintain a tenacious grip over human beings, many people run a bet each way – whilst still pursuing materialism they also take care to indulge in some form of religious/spiritual belief to varying degrees of intensity. And there are a small percentage of people who are so disenamoured with materialism that they devote their lives to spiritual pursuits becoming priests, monks, nuns, sannyasins, teachers and the like and in doing so becoming dependant on others to provide for their sustenance as well as their status.

As you can see materialism and spiritualism are not necessarily black and white distinctions, as most people seem to dabble in both with nay a blush.

Although spiritualism is largely discussed on this mailing list and on the site, why there is no such discussion concerning materialism (as there are far more materialist practitioners around me and in the world than convinced spiritualists).

The reason that spiritualism is discussed more than materialism on this mailing list is that this is an uncensored mailing list and what people choose to write about reflects their interests and passions. The comment that I would make is that I would assume that those who are currently interested in actualism would have already seen and experienced that the pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life is not to be found in materialism and would therefore have gone seeking both happiness and the meaning of life in spiritualism – the only alternative previously known to them. It follows that the reason that we have a lot of discussion about spiritual beliefs on this list is that a prerequisite to becoming an actualist is to abandon one’s emotional ties to spiritualism.

Having said that, I also think that this will only be the case in these early years of actualism, because as actualism becomes more widely known, those who are sufficiently disenamoured with materialism will increasingly be aware that there are now two other alternatives – the down-to-earthness of actualism or the other-worldliness of spiritualism.

And just as a footnote, it also seems to me that those who have expressed an interest in actualism to date have not needed to trod the spiritual path as intensely as did Richard, nor for that matter, as did either Vineeto or I. They can read our ‘been there, done that’ reports and make up there own minds as to what they want to do with their lives.

And if peace-on-earth is your aim, then this might be a major topic to tackle as there are far more wars for oil then for religious purposes.

I have written about the shortcomings of materialism on this mailing list before because once I finally stopped believing in spiritual beliefs, I then had to take a clear-eyed look at materialism once more so as to finally remove all of the beliefs, notions, psittacisms and passions that give substance to the universal belief that human existence is, and hence always will be, a grim battle for survival.

As for ‘there are far more wars for oil than for religious purposes’, I don’t have a sufficient grasp of geo-politics to know one way or the other. In my somewhat limited knowledge of the history of human conflict, it would seem that the very early wars between humans were scrappy affairs fought over territory and resources. As tribes were eventually amalgamated into nations the motives for war would appear to be increasingly about power and prestige rather than territory and resources per se. In these early years it would appear that the priests and shamans simply went along for the ride garnering what influence and power they could by playing on the fears and superstitions of the kings and emperors. Over time the priests and shamans appear to have wheedled their way to the top of the heap and it could be said that many wars were fought largely in order that the Godmen, Popes or High priests could then strut their stuff on a larger stage. The Dark Ages in Europe comes to mind as an example of a prolonged period of inter and intra-religious conflict and persecution.

Your comment may be a particular reference to the two recent Gulf Wars, both of which are seen by some people as being wars fought for oil. Whilst I think it’s a reasonable comment to make about the first Gulf War – at the end of the war Kuwait’s oil passed from Iraqi control back into Kuwaiti control – I would see the second Gulf War as being more ideologically driven than economically driven. It is pertinent to remember that after terrorist’s attacks on the very heart of the U.S.’s economic, defence and executive might the U.S. was forced to respond and they initially did so by striking back at the heart of the terrorist group responsible for the attacks, which meant sending troops into Afghanistan.

The U.S. then decided to do something about the other long-term thorn in their side, Saddham Hussein, who had been merrily thumbing his nose at the U.S. for years by persistently flaunting the ceasefire conditions he had agreed to after his defeat in GW1. As I understand it, the ideology behind the toppling of Hussein was to end his dictatorial reign and bring democracy to Iraq – an ideology based on the fact that democratic nations have been proven to be much less prone to wage war than dictatorial regimes, Monarchies or Theocracies.

So whilst oil may have been a footnote on the agenda somewhere, I don’t see it as being the main motive for GW2 and as I understand it, Iraq’s oil will now be in Iraqis’ control and not Saddham Hussein’s personal control.

But that’s just my understanding of the matter based on information I have gleaned and I am more than willing to change my view if I came across fresh information to the contrary. As I said, I don’t have a great interest in or knowledge of geo-politics and the only reason I have commented on your comment is to illustrate that many things I would glibly accepted as being fact in the past I now put in the ‘maybe’ box. Nowadays if I am interested in the subject I take care to check the source of the information that is being put out so that I can understand the slant that is being put on it – for an example I check if the source is anti-U.S., anti-capitalism, pro-capitalism, anti-authority, pro-socialism, pro-Environmentalism, anti-change, academic, pragmatic, and so on.

I ask this as I find myself spending at least 8 hours a day as a ‘materialist’ and less then ½–1 hour/day investigating the human condition operating as me. Spirituality is not on my agenda anymore, yet fear of not having enough money to pay for rent, food, clothes, car, etc. is a major issue to deal with at least right now.

I found that the only way to investigate the issues and feelings that arise from working for a living was whilst I was working for a living. I didn’t have an on-off attitude to being an actualist – I didn’t, and eventually couldn’t, switch off attentiveness for any reason. Actualism is about being happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are … and that obviously includes being happy and harmless in the time you spend working in order to earn ‘enough money to pay for rent, food, clothes, car, etc.’

I’m also a great lover of comfort, so the fear of not living in comfortable conditions gives me the necessary will to get up every morning and go to work.

I can remember in my spiritual years, that many people were anti-materialist to the point of actively resenting the fact that they had to work for a living – having to be in the real-world as they called it. This resentment at having to work for a living is why many of them wanted to become Gurus and ‘get their money for nothing and their chicks for free’. Basically if you became Enlightened, you assuage the fear of survival by bludging off others. In India I found that they were quite upfront about the whole business – you either got a job struggling in the real-world or you became an apprentice to some Guru with the hope of one day maybe becoming a God-man in your own right.

The actualism approach is radically different in that the aim of an actualist is to more and more facilitate the felicitous feelings about being here in the circumstances you find yourself in right now – including having to get up in the morning and having to go to work if that is your circumstances right now – whilst simultaneously being aware of any feelings that inhibit your happiness and cause you to be belligerent to others.

Or to put it another way, eight hours a day is a lot of time to waste being grumpy and resentful – if you have to work for a living, as most people do, why not enjoy your time working by being happy and harmless?

So how have you made the distinction between being an actualist instead of a materialist,

As a generalization, a materialist is someone who has never bothered to question the selfism inherent in the relentless pursuit of amassing more and more material possessions, whereas an actualist is someone who is sensitive to the selfism inherent in both materialism and spiritualism and, because of this sensitivity, seeks to be free of this selfism.

… and where is the line between laziness and giving yourself more time to investigate?

Well for a start, as an actualist the time I spend ‘investigating the human condition operating as me’, to use your words, is the time that I am awake, conscious and aware. It starts from waking in the morning, continues through the day, no matter what I am doing or not doing, and ceases the moment consciousness seeps away and I go to sleep at night-time.

As for laziness, even as a young man I was never impressed by materialism and this has meant that I have been able to spend less time working for a living than those who pursue materialism. When I came across actualism, the last traces of my materialistic beliefs and urges eventually wilted on the vine, which meant I have trimmed my material possessions down to the necessary luxuries – good food, comfortable shelter and clothes, computer, TV, necessary furniture. By being sensible I found I was able to halve the money I had previously needed to earn in the days when I was a driven being, which means that I now have much more time to savour doing nothing in particular.

And what the hell is a materialist? I ask this as one cannot be both an actualist and a materialist, yet at the same time one has to work in order to survive and live a comfortable life.

A materialist is someone who is instinctually driven to accumulate more and more material possessions. This is not the same thing as the fact that most people in industrialized countries have to sell their time in exchange for money in order to buy food and clothes, pay rent and pay for transport. As an actualist I came to experientially understand that to resent a fact or rile against a fact or complain about a fact – in this case the necessity to sell one’s time in order to buy food and clothes, pay rent and pay for transport – is but to waste this opportunity of sensually delighting in this on-going moment of being here in this actual world of the senses.

On the other hand, I do understand at least intellectually the form in which aggression, nurture and fear usually manifest themselves. I’m not that sure if I understand the part desire plays in my life and in humans in general. Can you provide some examples in which desire deviated your efforts of being happy and harmless?

Curiously enough I was thinking about this the other day whilst watching a TV show about the material excesses that the rich and famous are required to indulge in in order to demonstrate to other people that they are rich and famous. It led me to reflect on why I was never impressed by the pursuit of material possessions, financial wealth and power and I traced this disinterest back to a seminal event in my youth.

During my university years, we had a compulsory year off in order to gain some practical experience and I travelled by ship to London to work in an architectural office for a year. At the end of the year I decided to return home overland through the Middle East and Asia. The further I travelled from Europe, the poorer the people were, culminating in seeing the streets of Calcutta packed with sleeping bodies at night time and being accosted by children in Madras waving their leprosy infected limb-stumps in my face and begging for money. And then immediately after, still in a state of shock, I boarded a plane for Australia to stay at a friend’s house in Perth, only to find myself the very next day decadently lolling about in their swimming pool with a glass of wine and a plate of snacks on the edge.

This contrast between the have’s and have-not’s was so obvious, and so in my face, that I was never again to be tempted by the desire for material excesses – and the payoff was that I didn’t have to work for the excesses that I no longer desired. And nowadays, with the instinctual passion of desire no longer dominating my life, I am thus more and more able to enjoy what are termed the simple pleasures of life – such as the freshly brewed cup of coffee that Vineeto has just placed on my desk above my keyboard. A sign perhaps that it is a good time to end now and indulge in some of the other pleasures of life.

But before I do, in an attempt to avoid any misunderstandings, I should point out that I am not anti-materialist in the sense that I am in any way against material possessions and physical comfort, i.e. I am neither a Luddite, nor a pejorist, nor a miserabilist. Far from it in fact – I want all of my fellow human beings to have what I have, to have at least the same level of safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure that I enjoy. Those people who live in the wealthier, more technologically advanced countries lead longer, healthier lives, need to have fewer children, have better housing, have access to better medical and educational facilities, drink cleaner water, breathe cleaner air, eat more nutritious food, need to work less, have more time for leisure, have better police, fire and rescue services, are less prone to die or be injured in earthquakes, floods and cyclones ... and so on and so on. And, as more of the world’s population are becoming wealthier in a stabilizing global population, increasingly more and more people are enjoying the material benefits of wealth and increasingly less and less suffer from the deprivations of poverty.

Isn’t that astounding … and all this beneficence is solely due to human ingenuity.

The crux of what I am saying in this post is that the meaning of life is not to be found in materialism, nor is it to be found in spiritualism – it is to be found right here, right now, in the astounding sensual world we flesh and blood bodies live in.

This response has been delayed due to my dipping back into the dog-eat-dog world of business recently.

No condolences necessary. I had great fun for 99.9% of the time – and this was made even more obvious by the fact that I was the only one who was having fun. The 0.1% not-fun time was another reminder that the business of actualism is not over whilst ‘I’ still lurk about in the shadows.

*

By choice I left this world many years ago to become self-employed whereupon I could do business on my terms – favouring harmony and consensus in preference to aggression and competition. By circumstance, I found myself temporarily back in the grim reality I left behind when I went tripping off into the spiritual world and it has been a good reminder that both worlds suck.

Not at all. By the time I was in my early thirties it was apparent to me that there was no happiness to be had in the pursuit of materialism and that those who rose to the top of the heap usually did so at the expense of others. This understanding was experiential in that I had given it a good bash but then circumstance led me give it up entirely and leap into the spiritual world. When that petered out I came across Richard and started to become interested in what he was saying. Pretty soon I began to see the folly of the spiritual world and I soon found myself abandoning that world as well.

Simultaneously I instigated some substantial changes in my life. Being no longer in the spiritual world meant that I lost my client base for my design-and-build business so I took the opportunity to stop building – by about age 45 the physical work of construction had become increasingly physically tiring – in order to do design work only. I also decided that I wanted to work less as I wanted to devote as much time to actualism as possible. Working less meant spending less so I reduced my overheads as much as possible. I sold my truck, which helped a good deal and not working full-time meant my expenses reduced dramatically.

Perhaps one of the major changes in this period came when something Richard said stuck in my mind – ‘learning to do nothing really well’. This struck a chord because I saw that everybody is driven to ‘do’ something and if they are not ‘doing’ something then feelings of boredom rapidly set in – the swing of human emotion goes from manic at one extreme to stressful through to listless to boredom and on to depression at the other extreme. This is typified by the question that people often ask – ‘are you busy?’, the implication being that it is good to be busy.

I took ‘doing nothing really well’ to be a challenge because I knew that the issue of boredom had to be tackled if I was ever to be unconditionally happy and it also suited me to work as least as possible – as I have a wonderful companion who is a delight to live with 24/7, I have no need to take my own space or escape by having a career.

So, my recent experiences were a reminder of the dog-eat dog business world that I had found so vicious all those years ago and that I have sensibly managed to circumvent almost entirely since becoming an actualist. I also found that I can be both happy and harmless in the dog-eat-dog business world should circumstances require, but it makes sense to me to seek out the most comfortable and harmonious way of earning my living expenses. For a long time I had the notion that actualism had to work ‘in the market place’ but I confused being a participant in the real-world battle for survival with doing whatever was sensible in order work to get money to pay for my living expenses – a world of difference.

Many of my former spiritual friends divide the world they live into two realms – the outer real world and their own inner world, and seemingly the current wisdom has it that it is good to be seen to be successful in both. I watched bemused as those who I saw as committed spiritualists started playing the stock market or the real estate market, became highly-paid therapists and pseudo-gurus, and franticly competed with each other for status, wealth and security. This idea of having a foot in each world – ‘trust in Allah but make sure you tether your camel’ as someone advised me at the time – seemed to me hypocritical to say the least. I, for one, couldn’t go back to pursuing happiness via materialism because I had seen that it didn’t work.

When I started pursuing happiness via actualism my remaining affective connections to both the grim real-world materialism and the fantasy-world of spiritualism increasingly dropped away, so much so that I am nowadays rarely affected by either world – either as feelings of repulsion or feelings of desire. Materialism and spiritualism is simply what other people believe in and feel passionately about – neither are my cup of tea because I have checked them both out thoroughly in my lifetime and both pursuits are decidedly weird.

So to answer your question, I do not relate to the ‘real’ world, meaning that I no longer have strong meaningful affective ties to the grim reality that both materialists and spiritualists feel – no grim reality, no need whatsoever to believe in a Greater Reality. The affective ties that do remain are now so weak that they rarely cause me to feel animosity towards, or pity for, others for what they think and feel, do or don’t do, or are supposed to have done or not done. I take this to be a sign of the very tangible freedoms gained on the path to an actual freedom.

I’d like also to pass on something that I personally found useful, nay essential, to contemplate upon.

There is a world of difference between the world as-it-is – the actual world of people, things and events – and the veneer or veil of grim reality that ‘I’ impose over the actual world. Every human being knows this by experience because every human being at some stage in their life – very often in childhood but often later in life – has experienced the perfection and purity of this actual world we live. It is vital to understand that actualism is not about leaving the spiritual world and going back to, and making the best of, the real world, grim reality, the normal world, everyday reality, or whatever other name one calls it. Actualism is about stepping out of both the real world, and the spiritual world, into the actual world and leaving your ‘self’ behind – and the actualism method is specifically designed to facilitate this.

Richard states that if he were locked in a prison with nought but bread and water, it would not affect his happiness and harmlessness one whit. I suspect that he is not blowing smoke, based on everything else he has written.

Not that he would choose to do so, or be so silly as to get himself into a situation where he had broken the law of the land. But yes, he is not blowing smoke. Both Vineeto and I have observed him very closely over a period of 6 years and he is what he says he is and he does what he says he does. You don’t need to believe me that this is so because everyone has had a glimpse of what Richard says he is – a flesh-and-blood body sans identity – and how he experiences being alive, because everyone has had at least one self’-less experience of the utter purity, the consummate stillness and the peerless perfection of the actual world. In other words, it is possible to verify what Richard is saying by your own experience – there is no need to rely on belief.

However, as one who lives in virtual freedom, did you find that the conditioned and/or instinctual passions re-emerged to some degree? Your statement perhaps hints at such. Did anger still rear its head?

I make no claims whatsoever that a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow is an actual freedom from malice and sorrow. The comment I made about ‘dipping back into the dog-eat-dog world of business recently’ was not meant to indicate that I went back to participating in the battles that inevitably go on, it was rather that I had an in-my-face reminder of why I exited the battleground all those years ago.

I was surprisingly unaffected by the emotional goings on that people went on with, but I was occasionally perplexed by the level of both covert and overt animosity that human beings feel towards each other. By deliberate choice, I have been living in effortless harmony with another human being for so long now, I am somewhat bewildered that other people not only find it impossible to do so, but that many aren’t even interested in making the effort to do so.

I always took consideration for one’s fellow human beings to be a given.

I suspect that this is why I found actualism irresistible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I personally have no problem in interacting in the business world and it doesn’t seem to me to be a ‘dog-eat-dog’, I enjoy much of the interactions, deals, presentations and the like. It requires some skills to be successful as in any other work or craft, yet that’s it. You do your job and you get paid for that. That’s because you have to work some hours in order to eat, clothe, shelter and live, yet most of the time is fun. The logic is simple: I don’t exist so there is nothing that can affect me apart from this physical Universe either in the form of things-events or physical people. If something or someone affects me, then this is an opportunity to inquire and to discover why is this so. If ‘the real world’ has an influence on me to such a degree that I immediately want to exit, it might be the case to take a good look at the ‘virtual freedom’ I’m so fond of. As 99.9% pleasurable existence is equivalent to 99.9 self-less existence, I wonder if living in the real world of battling selves would change that ratio for you.

This may be your logic, but I chose not to live in ‘the real world of battling selves’ – as I said, I don’t believe in right suffering.

I remember thinking at one stage early on that Richard has dropped out, he has abandoned ship, he no longer fights the good fight, which makes him a deserter or a traitor in the eyes of most. My recent dip back into the midst of someone else’s battlefield made me realize that now others would also see me as being a drop out, a deserter and a traitor.

Such is the price for becoming happy and harmless. Weird isn’t it?

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