Selected Correspondence Peter

Nurture

And if you were to raise a child, how were you to deal with the free operation of the child instinctual passions? Wouldn’t you instil in him some sort of values in order to curb these passions, some form of psychological control?

Probably not that much different than the way I did – I have been the biological care-taker to two children. The only difference, and it is a significant difference, would be that I would not have been plagued by feelings of doubt, anguish, guilt, possessiveness, jealousy, remorse and so on whilst doing the job of care taking for my children.

The most obvious of the instinctual passions that a parent or carer has to deal with in children is anger and there are several ways of dealing with it. In very young children one ways is to ignore it and let it run its course as it always does, but when the anger is expressed by hitting people or breaking things then the carrot and stick approach is next on the list. When my children got to the age that I was able to reason with them then I could point out that hitting others usually meant you were liable to get hit back or suffer some form of punishment and that breaking things meant that when you calmed down all you had left was a broken thing.

Generally I, along with my wife, established a few sensible rules so that the family unit could function as reasonably as it could – given that we were all of us subject to our moods, feelings and emotions. I also let them know that society at large had rules, be they laws or conventions, that it was sensible to obey or conform, otherwise they would find themselves in trouble of some sort. I didn’t put the fear of God in my children because that seemed a weird thing to do – I simply taught them the essential rules of the game as it were.

Now that I am virtually free of malice and sorrow, I still play the game by and large by the same rules I passed on to my children – except that playing the game and complying with the rules is effortless nowadays because I am no longer prone to be antagonistic or abusive and nor am I inclined to feel sad or to wallow in melancholia. There are a few rules and customs that I find non-sensical and weird but nowadays I rarely, if ever, find myself getting upset or angry about them.

But in spite of the feelings of guilt, I find that I’m not in any way less caring. Instead of feeling that I’m part of a network of people whose fates are intertwined, I’m looking at my ‘near and dear ones’ as ordinary fellow human beings, and I find that compassion and loyalty are being replaced by simple, good-natured playfulness. (There is definitely still affection here, but not of a possessive kind).

I can relate to what you are saying because I have had the same experience myself, most particularly in relation to my son. I came to notice that whenever I regarded him as ‘my’ son then a whole lot of feelings stood in the way of the intimacy of experiencing him as being a fellow human being. I became aware that whenever I felt him to be ‘my’ son then I found that I was needlessly protective, compulsively possessive, demanding, interfering, dismissive, expectant, and so on, which meant that I felt proud, hopeful, despairing, loyal, disappointed, annoyed, jealous, controlling, frustrated, and so on. I also noticed that whenever I had these feelings I could not help but impose them on him – no matter how hard I tried not to there was always a subtle, and sometimes a not so subtle, leakage.

The only reason I stopped being a player in this game was because I came to my senses in that I saw that it was ‘my’ feelings that stopped me from simply sitting down with him when the opportunity arose and having a down-to-earth intimate chat about things of mutual interest, exactly as I am wont to do with any of my fellow human beings when the opportunity arises.

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Gary,

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

The envy can be for the child’s spontaneity and energy – they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of spontaneity, wonder, and excitement. And children can say things that are remarkably perceptive and ‘off the cuff’. This contrasts with the adult mode of functioning which seems to be ever-vigilant lest one defies some social convention or one of one’s imbibed and socially inculcated ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘ought to’ irrational beliefs. The spontaneity of childhood is soon enough trained out of one by one’s teachers, parents, etc. and the social identity becomes calcified and rigid. Then people try, through various means, to regain that ‘lost innocence’ but never seem to succeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I seem to recall, as a child, having times when I had the most intense fascination with what I was doing at the time, whether I was playing with something or studying something, or just experiencing something. Later, these experiences I tried to re-create through drug use. The ordinary cares and woes fell away and there was this intense fascination and absorption in the moment and what I was experiencing. Later, and more recently, I found in the Pure Consciousness Experience what I was looking for: this incredible vibrancy, aliveness, scintillating, coruscating (all those Richard-words and more to describe the experience) quality. It is the most amazing thing when one shifts into apperception, and one experiences naiveté.

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

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

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

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

You went on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

You have again hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with this observation, and I must say that it is a remarkably persistent notion. I find myself falling into it too – that if these children only had enough love, everything would be all right. It is the old ‘What the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ idea, sung once as a pop music, expressing the hopes of a Generation, but repeated yet again and again.

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

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

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

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

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

As another form of ‘nurturance’, apart from what is commonly called Love, is ‘understanding’.

It is often thought that if only we ‘understand’ and acknowledge the grievance or sorrow of a person or people, then the solution can be found, or at least the ‘understanding’ will ameliorate the person’s sorrow. From this arises the old adage, sometimes used to quell another’s disturbance: ‘I understand your pain’. Internationally, warring nations and other parties sit down at the conference table to hash out and ultimately accommodate to each other’s grievances in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and ‘understanding’. Such an approach does not address the ultimate cause of war in the first place and only produces yet the need for more conferences, more negotiation, and more accommodation. Accommodation seems to be one of the outstanding characteristics of the Human Condition, as we are using the term here. One makes countless accommodations in order to continue on ‘being’.

And a little reading of history reveals that these international accommodations produce at best a temporary lull in hostilities and a provisional cessation of suspicions and grievances, whilst many only serve to become the basis for future resentments. Inter-tribal suspicions and grievances run far too deep to be ever eliminated via accommodation, conciliation, compromise, pact or the like. The first and only step towards a practical workable solution is for sufficiently motivated individuals to take unilateral action by ceasing to be tribal members – to be a pioneer global citizen rather than continue to be a paid-up passionate member of one or other of the warring tribes.

The very same thing applies to being a paid-up passionate member of one or other of the warring sexes – the only way to begin to end the cycle of hostilities, grievances, suspicions and resentments is to firstly stop being a part of the male tribe or stop being a part of the female tribe. Having done so, one rids oneself of most of one’s social masculine or feminine identity such that the deeper instinctual levels are more readily available for scrutiny. This is the only practical way to bring an end to the battle of the sexes that invariably prevents an unconditional and actual intimacy between the male and female genders.

Now – on to ‘relationships.’ I think I can ask this one pretty simply.

If one is slowly whittling away at love, compassion, nurture, desire – then is there still room for rearing children and ‘sticking with’ your marriage partner come what may?

Being virtually free, my experience is that once you free yourself of the shackles of your social-spiritual conditioning and are free of being driven by your instinctual passions, you are then free to do whatever you deem appropriate in any situation. If the situation is that you have children to rear then you do the job much, much better by being virtually free of malice and sorrow. Similarly, if you decide to ‘stick with’ your marriage partner come what may, at least you free your partner from the imposition of your moods and emotional demands.

Is the actuality of benevolence enough to keep people together as long as it’s a sensible thing to do?

When you tap into the already existing benevolence that lies crippled by your instinctual passions everything – including whatever obligations remain – becomes easy and effortless.

Or is there still some cultural factor that makes it ‘sensible’ to ‘care’ for spouse and child?

In virtual freedom from the human condition, no cultural factors remain to restrict or impede sensible action. These include the social, cultural and spiritual mores that conspire to lock one into any of the traditional social identities of being a father, mother, son or daughter. Remaining ensnared by this socially imbibed role-playing acts to prevent the possibility of an unfettered intimacy between what are, in fact, fellow human beings.

In other words, where does the ‘continuity’ required to care for a child come from in actual (or virtual) freedom (where ‘continuity’ doesn’t exist)?

‘Continuity’, as you put it, ceases to exist only when there is no psychological or psychic identity to harbour past hurts, nor to conjure any future expectations. It follows that the very best thing that you can do in caring for a child is to free him or her from ‘your’ hopes and fears as well as ‘your’ resentment, anger, frustration, sadness and misery.

It’s easy to think that caring for your child is only based on the nurturing instinct. Does the ability to raise a child necessarily disappear along with the nurturing instinct – or is the benevolence of virtual or actual freedom enough to maintain ‘parenthood’?

Speaking personally and in hindsight, the only reason I married was because it was the only socially acceptable way to have sex when I was young and randy. Having children came with the package, so to speak. Then the instinctual drive and passion of nurture took over my life, causing me no end of pain and suffering and causing me to inflict no end of pain and suffering on my wife and children.

As I came to become aware of what was going on, I deliberately aimed to suppress these feelings, to concentrate on the more pragmatic, practical aspects of caring and to allow my children as much freedom as possible to live their own lives. When their school years came, I realized that a peer-driven socialization process had kicked in and that my influence as a parent declined dramatically.

By then, it was simply a matter of providing food, shelter and money for as long as was needed. In hindsight, this was the best I could have done in the circumstances, given ‘who’ I was then. It is impossible to save children from the inevitability of being socially conditioned, and it is impossible to free them from their genetic-endowment of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

The only advice my father ever gave me, apart from practical matters, was to ‘be happy’, but he didn’t tell me how because he didn’t know. He had also fought in the Second World War and consequently abhorred violence, something he passed on to me. This influence was to emerge in my spiritual search as I threw myself headlong into a search for happiness and peace, so conceivably my own influence on my children was that life was a search for happiness and peace.

When I became an actualist and found out how to be happy and where peace really lay, I wrote my Journal and sent my son a copy. What he does with what I have found out is his business, which is as it should be – and is – in this perfect actual world we live in.

It is as much an imposition to bring up a child as an actualist as it is to deliberately impose any beliefs on a child – for the simple fact that a child lacks sufficient life experience and erudition to distinguish between belief and fact, to know what works and what doesn’t work. The best an actualist can do is to provide practical care, pass on practical survival skills and ... eliminate his or her own malice and sorrow so as not to impose either on the child.

This best far outstrips what passes for parenthood in either the normal or spiritual worlds.

Does the fact of raising a child necessarily indicate the continuing presence of ‘nurture’?

Just as the elimination of the instinctual passion of aggression does not mean that one cannot defend oneself appropriately if physically attacked, the elimination of the instinctual passion of nurture does not stop one from rearing children. In both cases the job is done much better without the blind crude instinctual imperative operating. In a similar vein, the elimination of the instinctual passion of desire does not mean one ends up being a celibate monk – or a globe-trotting Guru – sponging off others for food, shelter and veneration.

Rather than suppressing or denying, a progressive elimination of all of the instinctual passions means one discovers that one is already living, and always has lived, in a sensual paradise, the earthy incomparable cornucopia of this planet we call Earth.

I’m sorry, but I’m not planning to raise my children to live ‘death-like’ lives – holding out some pathetic hope that maybe, just maybe they will eventually become virtually or actually free at maybe age 40 or 50 – after being knocked around by the ‘real world’ awhile. Lived from within the ‘real’ world – one’s attention gets focused on a smaller horizon than the universal point of view can afford – it’s only when one looks at it from the point of view of Perfection does one become disillusioned and want something more. I realize that I’ve extended the discussion into other areas at this point. I don’t mean to distract current issue of the use of the ‘death-like’ phrase. I just thought this might be a good time to add some thoughts that have ‘spun out’ from this.

I have commented on the matter of raising children in previous posts and received no reply so I had assumed you were not interested in pursuing the topic. If you want to pursue the subject further, just let me know. However, the main issue at hand on this list is not the raising of children but how adults can become first virtually, and then actually, free of the human condition. There is a belief amongst many that adults can learn a lot from the’ wisdom’ and ‘innocence’ of children – a belief that only points to the paucity of a sensible down-to-earth approach to the greatest challenge facing all human beings – actualizing peace on earth.

If adults are not willing to make the effort to do it by their own practical example, how can we ever expect our children to learn?

I have a series of questions that go out to all who are interested. I’ve been asking the actualist question now for several months with some success at times – occasional glimpses what it is to be free – but very temporary. What I find as an even more common theme is worries arising about what I might have to ‘give up’ if I continue further and the difficulty of ‘seeing what is on the other side of a ‘problem’’.

What about when they become ill and die? Am I to treat them like strangers? It seems to me that even though I am ‘severing emotional’ connections – isn’t there still a connection with my biological parents more than just biology? I mean they did raise me and provide food and shelter and all. Do I only feel a ‘debt’ toward them? Or can I still maintain relating with them just based on the fact that they are biological parents? Also, I read Richard say once that basically parents are just ‘human beings who happened to be your biological parents.’ (my paraphrase) I wonder though, isn’t there just a little more to it? For example, one of my sons is adopted. My wife and I ‘play the role’ of parents – but I am working at not ‘being’ the role. Aren’t we ‘parents’ in any other way than merely biology?

I thought to respond to this post, even though you have since reported that you have had some insights about these issues.

I like it that you are having your own insights about the issues that are relevant to you in your life, and that you have had your own experience that has apparently shed some light on what is on offer in actualism. Whilst the writings about actualism and actual freedom are already quite extensive, broad ranging and catalogued, this source is but information to guide and aid your own personal investigations, insights and experiences on your own path to becoming free of the human condition. In other words, actualism is a do-it-yourself process, not a blindly follow-the-leader belief system.

Having said that, however, you are not alone in the process of actualism and much information can be gained from the experience of fellow human beings who have managed to rid themselves of malice and sorrow. I have learnt a good deal from observing Richard’s common sense approach to the business of being a flesh and blood human body in the world as-it-is, so I’ll pass on my experience about the consanguineous issues you have raised since I have been both a son and a father in my life. I’ve also written on this topic in my journal, so I’ll try and keep this brief.

Perhaps the most significant event that gave me cause to think about the whole issue of family happened a few years after my father died. Both my sister and I were at the age where we had left home and were capable of looking after ourselves financially and we then agreed that it would be good for our mother if we released her of her obligations to continue to provide for us. We told her that she had done a good job in looking after us whilst we were growing up but that now her time and money was hers again, to do with as she wished.

I remember at the time thinking what a freeing thing this decision was, both for my mother and for myself. This realization meant that later on, when I became a father, I did exactly the same. Although one of my sons died at an early age, I released the other son of the burden of the expectation that I would continue to provide for him beyond the point where he left the nest and also of the burden that he would have to provide for me in my old age. This simple unilateral action – one that can be taken by either a parent or an offspring – means that one is well on the path to seeing, and treating, one’s parents and children for what they really are – fellow human beings.

The only reason I was willing to take this step as a father was that I had by then set my sights on becoming happy and harmless and this meant that I had to release my son of my continually interfering in his life – of wanting him to do things my way. By setting my sights on becoming happy and harmless, I became aware of the issues around family that made me unhappy and the times when I did something or said something that caused ripples in other family member’s lives. As a practicing actualist, I came to see how both my societal and instinctual programming pervaded every aspect of my interactions with my son and how the combination of both actively conspired to prevent peace and harmony between us.

The first thing I found I needed to do was to become aware of what was going on, to understand the nature of this programming. The second was to see and acknowledge my part in the emotional turmoil that this programming generates, and the third and most important was to have the courage to change. Such radical change inevitably means going against what society regards as ‘normal’, ‘right’ and ‘good’ – the eons-old code of conduct based on the moral codes and ethical standards that have been unquestioningly passed down from generation to generation. This act of ‘breaking free of the mould’ then enabled me to clearly see and experience the underlying instinctual animal programming in action – those very crude, ‘self’-centred genetically-encoded compulsive drives that act to sabotage even the best of intentions of human beings to live together in peace and harmony. By being attentive to this genetic programming in action, I then became progressively less susceptible to the consuming power of both the savage and tender instinctual passions.

My experience is that once you have gone through this process with the major issues that prevent you from being happy and harmless, you then find yourself virtually happy and harmless – happy and harmless 99% of the time. At this stage the changes ‘I’ can instigate tend to be more minimal as ‘I’ have done most of the substantive work that ‘I’ can do and the resultant feelings of redundancy eventually lead to the realization that the extinction of ‘me’ is the next step to be taken.

As you know, this is a report of work in progress on the path to actual freedom, but I have always written on the basis that my experience will be of interest, and may be of use, to those interested in becoming free of the human condition, in toto.

The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

Having had children myself and watched others, it is readily apparent that fear, aggression, nurture and desire are instinctual passions and not something that is taught or picked up from others or one’s environment. Chinese anger is the same as African anger and Australian anger. As for the nature vs. nurture debate – the instinctual passions are ‘natural’ in that they are genetically encoded and ‘nurture’ plays a minor role in the degree and manner of suppression or expression of these passions. Even then, the role of ‘nurture’ in the suppression and control of the instinctual passions is by no means certain as innate differences can be readily observed in very young children even with identical upbringing.

Just as an aside, the whole nature vs. nurture debate as to which has most influence on human behaviour is really a debate about instinctual passions vs. social conditioning. While it has always been generally accepted that nurture and desire are natural attributes of the human species, there is an increasing amount of empirical research that confirms the fact that the instinctual passions of fear and aggression are also natural to the human species.

The recognition, acceptance and understanding of the fact that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire, as well as fear and aggression, are genetically encoded in each and every human being is brand new territory – and scary territory at that. For starters, it directly contradicts the universal belief that children are born innocent – a corner stone of most spiritual beliefs. Also, if one also accepts the other universal belief that ‘you can’t change human nature’ – presumably because nature is the work of some creator God – it leaves the human species apparently with no way to bring an end to malice and sorrow.

Enter the discovery of actualism and the solution to the conundrum becomes evident.

There is another thing about nurture, aside from the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. There seems to be a feeling among those who I am going to dub ‘nurturists’ that if only enough nurture is supplied to each and every human being, the problems of humanity will be solved and there will no wars, no violence, etc. It’s the old ‘what the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ syndrome, and it is strong among those who are positive, nurturing types. Obviously children need a great deal of nurturing, and I am not suggesting to stop nurturing them. But nurture does not eliminate the genetically encoded instinctual passions of aggression and fear.

That love fails, and always has failed, can be seen in the bitter-sweet sadness of love songs and the tragedies and melodramas that pass for great love stories. Only in the fairy stories do people live happily ever after and only in mythology do loving societies exist.

My experience is when the instinctual passion of nurture kicks in with regard to caring for children, it invariably triggers off the full range of associated instinctual passions. Fear abounds in protecting and providing, aggression kicks in the form of jealousy and possessiveness and desire simply changes focus from sexual hunting to nest-building security, both of which are pursued relentlessly. Exactly as love always fails, the instinctual passion of nurture also fails to deliver the goods for the simple reason that it is impossible to separate the good from the bad in the intertwined package of instinctual passions.

Actualism is 180 degrees opposite to the spiritual escapism and as such I was delighted to read of your experiences, Alan. They accord with my own everyday experiences and are evidence of the success being reported by the handful involved at the moment. Mark summed up the success he is having compared with his years in the spiritual world so well recently, and it is well worth repeating what he wrote – ‘Yes, my reference in this case to love and compassion should have been ‘Love and Compassion’. From my viewpoint at this point in the journey I must be aware of any ‘good’ behaviour and its origins, for I do experience a growing feeling of altruism and ... it is the type of feeling that one in the spiritual paradigm ‘tries’ to ‘generate’ and ‘nurture’ through ‘feelings’ of love and compassion. So, here I am arriving at a place (genuine goodwill towards fellow humans as opposed to a managed, ‘being loving’ discipline) for which I was searching for 20 years or more on the spiritual path of love and compassion and arriving here by giving up all feelings of love and compassion. So, spooky in that I arrive by going 180 degrees in the opposite direction to what is collectively perceived to be the best way to get there. Understandable in that as ‘self’ disappears purity is that which is left, evident in a PCE.

This is written by someone with 20 years experience on the spiritual path – an experiential understanding of the significance of those three words, ‘fellow human beings’. Whomever you meet is simply a fellow human being – and one finds oneself increasingly regarding and treating others as such on the path to freedom from malice and sorrow. Those three words – ‘fellow human beings’- are the very key to peace on this planet and it will eventuate incrementally as more and more people have the experiential understanding that Mark has written of.

Other than spiritual and religious morality the ‘best’ that Humanity has come up with in order attempt to bring some semblance of ‘civilized’ behaviour to the planet is the ethical concept of Human Rights. Human Rights do naught but enshrine the differences and separateness in noble moral and ethical codes that are not only unliveable but actively perpetuate the continuation of division, conflict and war – an endless fight for one’s Rights, and the endless despair at having them ‘denied’ by others who are fighting for their Rights. One man’s God is but another man’s Devil. What is right for one is wrong for another. Justice for one means that someone else has to have revenge wrought upon him or her. Retaining one’s ‘heritage’ means retaining the prejudices, superstitions, ‘hurts’ and angers of one’s parents and tribe. The concept of Human Rights is a well-meaning, but futile, attempt to force human beings to try and stop the instinctual urge to kill each other. ‘Twill never bring peace and harmony.

So Mark, you have ‘hit the nail upon the head’ in your seeing through of the failure of the ideals of Love and Compassion in the spiritual/religious world. It is, after all, no different to the love and compassion that continuously fails in the real world. All are but failed attempts to ‘keep the lid’ on the animal within us. The only way to peace and harmony is to get rid of the animal in us completely and Actual Freedom does just that.

Actual Freedom heralds the beginning of peace on earth for human beings, an end to the appalling suffering, violence, oppression, corruption and despair. An end to all the wars, ethnic cleansing, sectarian troubles, fights for Rights, revenges, genocides, repressions, rapes, murders and suicides. One at a time, we will step out of that real world and leave our ‘selves’ behind. Fear and aggression – the animal survival instincts of a dog-eat-dog world – are now redundant for modern human beings. They need to be eliminated in order that we can begin to treat each other as fellow human beings and not as ‘friends’ or ‘enemies’ in a perpetual battle for succour, security and survival. Its such a buzz to get to the bottom of what it is that ails the Human Condition. To see that it is naught but the ‘self’-centred survival instinct that is at the root of sorrow and malice and to set about eliminating it in oneself. What an amazing time to be alive ...

Also, I think that there is nobody in heavens stuffing our physical bodies with some recycled immortal souls.

The soul is the big one! For what is a human being without a soul. Ancient Wisdom has it that a body without a soul is but an animal. A body without a soul is inhuman and evil. I’ll let Mr. Oxford give the full story on the soul –

1 The principle of life in humans or animals; animate existence. 2 The principle of thought and action in a person, regarded as an entity distinct from the body; a person’s spiritual as opp. to corporeal nature. 3 a The spiritual part of a human being considered in its moral aspect or in relation to God and his precepts, spec. regarded as immortal and as being capable of redemption or damnation in a future state. b The disembodied spirit of a dead person, regarded as invested with some degree of personality and form. 4 a The seat of the emotions or sentiments; the emotional part of human nature. b Intellectual or spiritual power; high development of the mental faculties. Also, deep feeling, sensitivity, esp. as an aesthetic quality; zest, spirit. 5 Philos. The vital, sensitive, or rational principle in plants, animals, or human beings. arch. 6 The essential or animating element or quality of something. Oxford Dictionary.

Seems pretty impressive for something that does not factually exist. The instinctual programming of the amygdala or primitive brain includes a primitive animal self that is most highly developed in the primates. This self in relationship to other members of the species is most evident in apes and chimps and leads us to see in them human behaviour at a less sophisticated level of operation. Fear, aggression, nurture and desire are seen operating unimpeded by developed intelligence, which simply translates to apes and chimps being less cunning and less efficient in killing than the human animal. We think them cute when they display instinctual nurture but are in denial of the mounting evidence of rape, murder, infanticide and war in chimps and apes that are the result of instinctual fear, aggression and desire.

This very-same primitive self, complete with its automatic survival program, operates in humans, but we manage to divide the instinctual passions into two groupings – the good passions and the evil ones. The self that is the good instincts we term ‘me at my core’, the ‘real me’, or my ‘very soul’. We simply deny the existence of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, as it is usually too shocking to contemplate these aspects within us. Thus we are usually ‘overcome’ or ‘overwhelmed’ by anger or violence or despair, for that is what appears to happen when instinctual passions surface. The amygdala automatically responds to a threat, real, perceived or imagined, and the hormones automatically flow – flooding the neo-cortex and away we go... Murder, rape, revenge, despair, torture, war, etc., all occur in a ‘blind’ rage – be it hot or cool.

Therefore my brain or this personal entity manufactured by the brain based on the social blueprint has arisen at random, by chance only, depending on which sperm participated in the beginning of the life. My personality was determined by the physical features of this brain.

Well, this sounds a bit like the little man inside the sperm theory, i.e. who I am depends on which sperm of the millions got to fertilize the egg. Certainly genetic information was passed that determined my physical characteristics but my social identity was purely the result of information inputted into the brain after birth.

‘Who I feel I am’ is essentially instinctual, fated by blind nature; ‘who I think I am’ is essentially social, fettered by nurture.

It’s just serendipitous that I came across Richard who had managed to escape his fate and realise his destiny – to be free of the Human Condition. Millions upon millions of humans have devoted their lives to escaping the Human Condition but were ultimately diverted by the alluring promise of immortality and instinctual desire to save their own souls. Richard is the first to actually escape from the Human Condition and he has laid a trail of over a million words for those interested in emulating his feat.

Yesterday when I was contemplating on ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, I realized that I am not really understanding the word ‘experiencing’. What I was asking myself was, in fact, ‘How am I feeling in this moment of being alive’. This is so because I was always coming out with answers like ‘happy’ or ‘not happy’ or ‘gloomy’ etc. Which are all feelings.

Aye, indeed. And until ‘you’ leave the stage your experience of life will be an emotional, feeling interpretation of the actual. It can not be any other way – human beings are wired that way. The amygdala – the primitive lizard brain – is an organ that is designed as an early warning system to quickly scan the sensorial input for any real or perceived danger and react with fear and aggression. This constant ‘on-guardness’ can be seen in any of the animal species, and in the human animal it produces feelings of fear and aggression. The amygdala is also the source of instinctual nurture and desire producing feelings that again actively conspire to ruin our happiness. So it sounds as if you are starting to realize the primary role that feelings play in the Human Condition. ‘You’ as an entity, existing inside the flesh and blood body can only think or feel about the actual world, and the only direct experience possible is when you cease to exist – either temporarily in a PCE, virtually in Virtual Freedom or permanently in Actual Freedom.

Firstly, there is most obviously an instinctual sense of self-recognition, a faculty we share with our closet genetic cousins – apes and chimps both recognize ‘themselves’ in a mirror. This instinctual primal ‘self’ is made more sophisticated in humans, for the cognitive neo-cortex (the ‘conscious’ to use LeDoux’s term) is only capable of detecting the chemical flows of the amygdala (non-cognitive and ‘unconscious’), and these are ‘felt’ as basic passions or emotions and interpreted as feelings – ‘my’ feelings. Thus, we ‘feel’ this genetic instinctual programming to be ‘me’ at my core. This program thus gives every human being an instinctual self which is translated into a ‘real’ self that is both psychic – LeDoux’s ‘unconscious’ made obvious and real by the ensuing flow of chemicals from the amygdala – and psychological – interpreted as thoughts by the modern cognitive brain. (The modern brain is also taught much after birth – one’s social identity – but I’m interested in the deeper level at this stage.)

This explains that the spiritual journey ‘in’ is thus a journey to find one’s instinctual self – one’s roots, one’s original face, the Source, etc. If, on this inner journey, one ignores or denies the passions of aggression and fear and concentrates one’s attention on the passions of nurture and desire, one can shift one’s identity from the psychological thinking neo cortex – the ‘ego’ to use their term – and ‘become’, or associate with, or identify with, the good feelings of nurture and desire. This is a seductive and self-gratifying journey, for one is actively promoting the flow of chemicals that give rise to the good, pleasant, warm, light-headed, heart-full and ultimately ecstatic feelings. These flow of chemicals overwhelm the neo-cortex to such an extent that they become one’s primary experience, and the input of the physical world as perceived by the senses and the clear-thinking ability of the cognitive modern brain are both subjugated – or ‘transcended’ to use their term. One then ‘feels’ one has found one’s original ‘self’, which one has of course, though t’is all but a fantasy of one’s imagination.

I particularly remember when I first came across spiritual teachings, the mythology and poetry that alluded to this ‘inner’ world seemed to strike a deep cord with me – the tales of Ancient Wisdom ‘connected’ with this deep (unconscious) level which was a connection with the instinctual memory in the amygdala. I had ‘found’ someone who had the answers, was in touch with the Source, knew the meaning of life, the truth – I had come Home. I began a journey into the inner world of good feelings, made real by the ability to enhance the chemical flow of nurture and desire and dampen, suppress or ignore the feelings of aggression and fear. I was literally leaving the real world behind and seeking solace and succour in the spiritual world. I was thus forfeiting any chance of breaking free of my instinctual passions, in total, for a selfish bid for personal bliss and a permanent place in an imaginary ‘other world’ composed solely of chemically-supported blissful feelings.

Secondly, the other faculty I see as essentially pre-coded is an instinctual need to ‘belong’ to the herd – the herding instinct, as Vineeto puts it. It might seem banal and obvious given that humans, as a species, have perennially needed to maintain, at very least, a family grouping in order to ensure the survival of the species. Given that the human infant is helpless for such a long time compared with most other species, the immediate family group was the basic minimum need, and the chance of survival was considerably increased with larger and stronger groupings. This is an instinctual program that over-rides the individual’s own survival instincts for one is ultimately programmed to ensure survival of the species – not one’s own, as in self-preservation. Given that these involve more sophisticated programming than mere instantaneous ‘fight and flight’ reactions they must be encoded in the genetic memory of the amygdala, passed on from ‘way back there’, in the mists of time.

This instinct, implanted by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species, pumps the body with chemicals that induce the feeling of fear whenever one is straying too far away from the herd, abandoning other members of the family or group or being on one’s own. I remember particularly, in my early twenties, travelling across Europe and the Middle East on my way home from London and arriving at the border with Iran. I was turned away at an isolated border post as I didn’t have a visa and I was struck with a deep sense of panic, a feeling of utter loneliness. Looking back, it was as though I had gone too far striking off on my own and had hit the limit. This feeling of loneliness was to haunt me for many years – the image of becoming a lonely old man on a park bench, outcast and abandoned. It coincidentally was to prove one of the images that made me leap into the spiritual world with such gusto. I was to lose this fear later in life but living alone was always accompanied by a bitter-sweet feeling of loneliness. My major period of living alone was also the period when I began to have spiritual experiences, Satoris and an experience of Altered States of Consciousness aka Enlightenment.

From my investigations and experiences it is obvious that ‘who’ I think and feel I am – ‘me’ at the core – encompasses both a deep-set feeling of separateness from others and the world as perceived by the senses as well as a deep-set feeling of needing to ‘belong’.

This over-arching feeling of separateness – of being a ‘separate self’, who is forever yearning to ‘belong’ – is the root cause of sorrow in me and the all encompassing ‘ocean’ of human sorrow in the world.

The tradition approaches to these conflicting feelings has been either –

1. to make the best of one’s lot in life, promoting the good feelings and chemical flows as much as possible, being a good and moral real-world citizen, or
2. to throw one’s lot completely into the fanciful spirit-ual world, practicing ‘right-thinking’, ‘good-dreaming’ and ‘blissful feeling’. This transcending of the real world is a disassociation from the world-as-it-is. It involves identifying oneself with the instinctual passions of nurture and desire – the soul – and also satisfies the need to ‘belong’ with feelings of ‘Union’ and ‘Oneness’. It’s a very powerful instinctual lure, given substance and credence by the chemicals that flow from the amygdala. Most importantly, it not only maintains the instinctual self in existence but it also enhances it – ‘I’ become noble, grand, all-encompassing, all-powerful, rising above the world-as-it-is and people as-they-are – in short, Divine and Immortal.

Thankfully I’m pursuing a third alternative, which is the total elimination of my ‘self’ in total – the whole of the amygdala’s instinctual programming that gives rise to the animal passions. The startle quick-scan function of the amygdala still operates but the chemical surges that give rise to the emotions of fear, anger, nurture and desire have almost ceased to be of influence. I am left with a lot of shifting sensations in the head, neck, heart and belly that tell me something chemically is still happening but these very rarely translate into emotions or reactions.

In what way may caring about other people be ego-transcending or ego-supporting affair (or is there no contradiction at all)?

A psychological and psychic entity, the ‘self’, is imbued with tender and savage passions and is taught to be fixated by morals of good and bad and ethics of right and wrong and therefore all acts of caring, no matter how well-meaning, will ultimately be ‘self’-centred and selfish.

Sacrificing for others probably does little to erase the ego. Think of the mother who sets aside her own needs for those of her child.

Again two aspects operate – one’s social identity of morals, ethics and beliefs and the instinctual drives. Many parental acts of sacrifice for their children are accompanied by a feeling of resentment that often bubble to the surface in times of stress, or in later life when one has done one’s social and instinctual duty.

There is, however, a predisposition towards altruism in human beings that is at the core of many of these acts of sacrifice. It is this propensity that one can tap into if one wants to make the only sensible sacrifice possible in order to facilitate peace on earth – self’-sacrifice or ‘self’-immolation, as opposed to the religious/spiritual senseless and selfish action of killing their own bodies or the bodies of other spirits.

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