Selected Correspondence Peter

Peace-on-Earth

You also said... ‘I had actually experienced what it is that makes people kill others, to die for their belief or to protect their leader.’

And maybe to protect a loved one? Or am I not being cynical enough?

The reason I asked myself this question this question 2 years ago was that I was exploring what aspects of the Human Condition that I saw (and condemned) in others was present in me. I always liked that line from John Lennon’s song –

‘Imagine there’s no countries ... it isn’t hard to do,

Imagine all the people ... living life in peace ...’

As a child it was always so strange that if there was such a thing as a God-creator, how come there were so many different versions and how come people fought wars over which one was right. I could never quite get enthusiastic about Christianity – the idea of a white-bearded God sitting on a cloud and overseeing all this was pretty silly to me. And as for sending his Son down so he could do a few miracles, start a Religion, be nailed to a cross, and after a few days go back up to sit alongside Dad and see how it works out...!! If there was a God, how come he made the mess in the first place, and if he was responsible for this mess, why the hell didn’t he just come down and sort it out!

But I have digressed off on to another of my ‘raves’. The point is that I was concerned about what was it that caused the Religious wars on the planet. When I contemplated on my Sannyas years I had to admit that I probably would have killed to protect my Master – exactly as the followers of any other Master, Guru, Prophet, God would do. The killing is done to ‘protect a loved one’ as you rightly pointed out, but it is killing, whatever the motive.

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

As I said recently on the list –

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

Or am I being too naïve ...?

It may be that we mean different things by ‘ego’. Ego is often used as a synonym for self, but to me ‘ego’ simply denotes a constructed thing in psychological space, in the same way that ‘house’ denotes a constructed thing in physical space. ‘Self’ is the supposed real and independently existing entity or being I take myself to be. That self rests on a sense of identity with some thing, or set of things – my house, my ego, my soul, my idea that I Am. In the course of practice, both material and mental things are seen to be neutral in themselves, fundamentally insubstantial and not capable of providing a convincing basis for a real self. There is no need to take quarrel with houses or egos or altered states per se as obstructions to freedom; the obstruction lies in taking these things to be real and substantive, us and ours. Since the sense ‘I Am’ is itself an idea, then the self can be dropped without the need to demolish anything other than the delusion that supported it: the thinker and feeler can be absent without annihilating thinking and feeling.

Rather than ego death, I think that for the practical purpose of living in the world, just as it is useful to have a house with walls and a roof to offer shelter against the elements, so it is useful to have a sound and mature ego structure to enable us to act with optimum wisdom and compassion, to express the goodness and Love of Truth with least distortion. What is not needed is the self arisen from identifying with the ego because that leads straight into conflict, greedy consuming, fighting and defending. Being free of attachment to substance and self in physical or mental things means we do not believe that the building defined by the walls of the house is independently real or absolute, we are not fooled into believing that the person defined by the egoic boundaries is a separately existing being. Knowing the true nature of things we can live peacefully and joyfully within the world, using everything skilfully for the welfare of all.

Well I don’t doubt the sincerity of your beliefs but the fact of the matter is people are not living peacefully and joyfully in the world.

It is well-documented that the last century was the bloodiest to date – over 160 million human beings were killed by their fellow human beings and over 40 million people killed themselves in suicides – and there is no end in sight to this human slaughter and bloodlust. These are real human beings, on this planet and not illusionary human beings, in an illusionary world. That means at least 200 million of today’s children will suffer a similar fate.

I know that while I was in the spiritual world I had the feeling that if only everyone could feel what I feel then the world would be awash with peaceful and loving people. But I eventually became aware that this feeling was still self-centred, ego-centric, me-oriented, ‘inner’, private, etc. It was after all, only a feeling that ‘I’ had, not a fact that I or anyone else I had met, or read about, was living. The other fact that shook me up was that a sincere Christian has the same feeling, a sincere Buddhist has the same feeling, a sincere Muslim has the same feeling and yet when push comes to shove people are willing and eager to kill and die for their beliefs – so passionately and fervently do they believe in their feelings and their Truth or God. This is not only a well-documented historical fact, it is clearly in operation today amongst the New Dark Age religions. In the town where I live the Rajneeshees are involved in public conflict with the Poonjarians, the Course of Miracle followers are squabbling with the Christians, and the splits and chasms that are inevitably forming amongst the followers within the various spiritual groups, particularly after their Guru dies, are anything but peaceful or joyful. When I was on the spiritual path I always felt that ‘my’ Guru, ‘his’ teaching, which became my Truth, was superior to everyone else’s belief – this is the very nature of spiritual belief for one is extolled to trust one’s feelings, have faith, and above all, don’t doubt (which means don’t dare question the teacher or the teachings).

I know that you have these affective experiences, knowings and feelings of goodness and Love of Truth (God by another name), for I have had them myself – I know them well. But the fact is that religion, be it Eastern or Western, actively contributes to malice and sorrow as is evidenced by the countless religious wars, persecutions, sacrifices, penances, recriminations, repressions, ostracizations, denials, retributions, perversions and conflicts that are ever ongoing ...

What has always been avoided up until now is the fact that the affective instinctual passions are the root cause of human malice and sorrow – the loves and loyalties, impulses and urges, ideals and beliefs that human beings are willing and eager to fight and kill for, or to suffer and die for. One’s own ‘self’-inflicted problems lie in the feelings and emotions that arise from the animal instinctual passions – and the PCE experientially confirms this fact.

The ancient eastern philosophers, being ignorant of modern empirical scientific research that establishes that fear and aggression, nurture and desire are genetically instilled characteristics, wrongly assumed that wrong or evil thinking was the source of malice and sorrow. Some 3,500 years on, in these modern times, we now know from the empirical research of LeDoux and others, that it is the instinctual passions that infiltrate thought and are experienced as emotions and felt as feelings are the source of human malice and sorrow. It is vital to explore and investigate the affective feelings and emotions that arise from the instinctual animal passions – both the supposed ‘good’ and the supposed ‘bad’ – for the secret to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow lies in this very exploration.

It is essential to understand and fully comprehend that one’s feelings and emotions are part and parcel of the Human Condition and not a personal fault, failure, stigma or ‘evil’. Fear, aggression, nurture and desire are innate passions that every human being is programmed with by blind nature. This program is automatic and often psychic in nature, it is programmed within the primitive or reptilian brain and ‘felt’ in the body due to the resulting chemical surges. This blind and senseless survival program can now be safely deleted for the human species has not only survived ... it is now beginning to flourish.

We humans simply need to abandon the old ancient mystical beliefs in ‘other worlds’ cooked up by long dead shamans to instill fear in others in order to maintain their power or inane philosophies dreamed up by fearful monks in order to while away their timeless hours. It’s time to stop praying for peace, roll up our sleeves and get stuck into the job at hand – to contribute to peace on earth in the only way possible by totally eradicating malice and sorrow from within ourselves.

Something I am curious about is that you stated that –

‘I, too, have seen the madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that.’

and yet you continued on following Eastern religion and philosophy. Did you not see the madness in Eastern religion or was your seeing based on a rejection of the Western religious world-view and the adoption of the Eastern religious world-view? Many spiritual seekers tend to wear rose coloured glasses when looking at the East and fail to see the appalling ignorance, arrogance, oppression, poverty, class structure and religious persecutions that is the result of thousands of years of intense devotion and practice of Eastern religions and philosophy. It is only now that some brave scholars are beginning to question, investigate and document the Eastern religious ‘madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that’. Two of the studies that I found particularly revealing about the Zen tradition is ‘Zen at War’ by Brian Victoria Weatherhill, 1997 and ‘The Rape Of Nanking’ (The Forgotten Holocaust of World War I) – Iris Chang, Basic Books, 1997.

Methinks the next generation may not be so blindly infatuated with the East as ours was.

It was only then that life started to show where the real problems were and what could be done about them. I will try to condense what I have come to see in as few words as I can. After my first awakening/ Satori/ enlightenment it was clear that life was one. That some how all the seeing of separate parts was a trick of the thinking mind. This left me with a deep love for all being, but it also brought up more questions. It had turned my life inside out.

When you say ‘it was clear that life was one’ you must be referring to a feeling that life was one. As I look about me I see that there are 6 billion human beings on the planet all battling it out in a grim instinctual battle for survival. And this same battle has been going on for millennia while half the world thinks that suffering is God’s way of testing us and violence is the work of the Devil, and the other half keeps insisting it is all an illusion.

The fact that over 160,000,000 human beings have been killed by their fellow human beings in wars in the last century alone, that over 40,000,000 humans killed themselves in suicides and that over 1,000,000,000 human beings were affected by warfare belies you feeling that ‘life is one’. These are flesh and blood human beings, not illusionary and not ‘a trick of the thinking mind’.. And much of the killing was done in the name of love, be it earthly or Divine.

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The fear that we are nothing can rarely surface. As soon as some doubt starts to arise it is blocked so we never see what is really going on. We add all sorts of other identities to our own false sense of self to help us feel we are in fact who we think we are. We cling to ‘our’ family, ‘our’ country, ‘our’ race, and on and on always trying to build up walls of ‘us’ against ‘them’. There is in reality no such entity. All wars, all hatred, all suffering ultimately comes from that process.

I see you are claiming there is no such entity as ‘our own false sense of self’ thereby obviously implying that either there is a real sense of self or a real self. The great realization in the spiritual world is that there is a false self who is an illusion because ‘it’ lives in the illusionary physical world but there is a Real self who lives in the Real spiritual world.

The spiritual view is that ‘I’ as the thinker is the issue and then one is extolled to actively encourage ‘me’ as the feeler to run rampant. My experience when I started to run with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ was that it was feelings which continually and relentlessly emerged as my experiencing. Thus ‘I’ needed to feel grateful for being here in order to transcend the underlying feeling of resentment at having to be here at all, and ‘I’ needed to feel love in order to bridge the gulf that ‘I’ as an alien entity feel between ‘me’ and other human beings. ‘I’ feel compassion for others as a way of being able to indulge my own feelings of sorrow and ‘I’ feel indignant when someone else suffers injustice as ‘I’ really like a good fight. ‘I’ am ever fearful of what others think of me or feel about me, ‘I’ am ever on guard, ‘I’ am ever ready to defend myself against having ‘my’ feelings hurt. ‘My’ ploys are many in the battle with others – confrontation, withdrawal, snide remarks, denial, a bit of undermining, a bit of cutting down to size, a bit of a whinge to someone else – ‘I’ can be as cunning as all get-out in these battles, if need be.

‘I’ readily believed in the spiritual beliefs and wallowed in the blissful feelings as a welcome escape from everyday reality and the promise of an after-life was poetry to ‘my’ ears and salve to ‘my’ heart. ‘I’ felt deep-down that there was no hope for Humanity and no hope for me, and from these feelings were born a desperate belief in an after-life as an escape from the despair of life on earth. The list goes on and on as ‘I’ fight it out for survival with others in a grim world, and ‘I’ will ultimately do anything to stay in existence. ‘I’ am rotten to the core – the combination of animal instinctual passions and an ability to think and reflect make the human animal not only malicious but cunningly malicious. This lethal combination allows the human species not only to wage wars, inflict genocide, rape, murder, torture and pillage to a scale unprecedented in any other animal species but allows for the psychic warfare and power battles, blatant denial, fantasy escapes, corruption, deception and deceit that is endemic in all human interactions.

It soon became obvious to me that freedom from being an identity – social and animal-instinctual – was the only way to get free of this constant emotional churning and the constant selfishness of indulging in denial and fantasy escapism.

You are firstly inventing a ‘false sense of self’ and then you go through a process that leads you to declare ‘There is in reality no such entity.’ Thus your real self is then free to blame the ego or false self as the reason for ‘all wars, all hatred, all suffering’. Thus your real self survives as an increasingly dissociated and disembodied entity and meanwhile ... ‘all wars, all hatred, all suffering’ continue given that the real culprit has got off scott-free

The spiritual search will never bring peace on earth. ‘Self-immolation is the only solution.

First I would like to say that we are more alike in our thinking than not. I, too, am a product of the 60’s, and 50’s, and I had, and still have, all the feelings about the way this world is ran by our governments.

No, No. 8, we are not alike in our thinking. I gave up blaming others for the violence and suffering in the world and saw that I was the cause of violence and suffering for those very same feelings were in me. It was only by firmly grasping this fact, which is startlingly obvious in a pure consciousness experience, was I able to even begin doing something about it. It was only by seeing the inherent power and crippling humility that causes so much malice and sorrow in the spiritual world, which was startlingly obvious in the pure consciousness experiences I had while in the spiritual world, was I able to dig myself out of religious/ spiritual belief and to begin to tackle both the good and bad emotions in me that give rise to human malice and sorrow.

I have also seen what a mess we are in and how much needless suffering is going on and want only to see an end to it.

I don’t doubt the sincerity or fervour of your belief. All the priests, shamans, God-men, Gurus, Enlightened Ones and their followers for thousands of years, have offered the same spiritual message and yet the last century was the bloodiest to date.

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This is all too important to take lightly. We either change ourselves, which will change the world, or we go on destroying this beautiful planet and cause untold suffering.

On this we agree. My point was exactly this –

As I dug deeper in to spiritual belief I discovered that peace on earth is not even on the agenda of Eastern religions – life on earth is meant to be a suffering existence and it is an endless cycle of misery – it is deemed to be a necessary, essential and unchangeable part of some greater cosmic plan. This ‘necessary suffering’ is the human condition of malice and sorrow and includes all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, despair and suicide.

Being vitally interested in peace on earth, I decided to question spirituality, the belief in God and the idea of life after death – to dare to question the sacred teachings.

Your immediate response was seemingly unequivocal –

I, too, have seen the madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that. It is very clear that religion has failed to bring about anything close to peace, and in fact has caused far more suffering than any other system in the world.

Since then you have been attempting to defend the indefensible by somehow excluding Eastern religion from your statement even to the point of declaring your own teachings non-spiritual and even humbly down-grading your own Enlightenment.

The great human adventure is to travel up the stem of the lotus plant until we reach the state of the flower (enlightenment) and are free of the mud (material world) at the bottom of the pond.

My radical proposition is that all the facts point to the unmitigated failure of this ‘great human adventure’ that has been on-going for thousands of years. T’is but a tragic human struggle betwixt good and evil based upon a fervent belief in a higher ‘spirit-world’ that is above and beyond the earthly ‘mud’. There is no good or evil in the actual world – it exists only in the heads and hearts of human beings

Should we humans give the ‘great human adventure’ of following the spiritual teachings another millennium to deliver the goods? Perhaps two ...? Should we wait for Christ to come back, Maitreya to finally appear or for everyone on the planet to become magically enlightened? How long are we willing to continue with this ‘great human adventure’? The New Dark Age has now been superseded by the Next Age in some countries, so do we mark that bit of the adventure as a failure or do we look forward, with hope, that the Next Age will bring peace on earth?

In terms of the 60’s movement, it is most certainly not dead, but lives on in a million small ways in many organizations and government departments, schools, etc. But we, as humans, are so impatient for it to revolutionize our world, that we feel disillusioned by its slow progress, especially as we see the devastation of war and pollution.

Again my question would be how long do we wait – isn’t 3,500 years being patient enough? And who or what are we waiting for?

What got me off my bum, and my head out of the clouds, was – accepting the down-to-earth challenge that if I couldn’t live with one other person in utter peace and harmony, equity and parity, 24 hrs. a day, every day, then life on earth was indeed a sick joke. I took peace on earth as a personal challenge.

Intelligence and gentleness will win out and the pain of the current age will be largely forgotten.

Again do you have a time frame for this to happen? Human malice and sorrow has been on-going, and despite all the good intentions, prayers, consciousness-raising, trust, faith, hope and belief the last century was the bloodiest to date. Given that at least 160 million human beings died in wars in the last century and at least 40 million human beings killed themselves in suicides, that means at least 200 million children born this century will meet a similar fate.

I recently saw an interview with a monk who said that the first question he was going to ask God was ‘how come there is so much pain and suffering?’ Given that God is a fantasy the question to ask is ‘Why am I malicious and sorrowful ... and what can I do about it?’

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We can see in our modern world many signs that humans are becoming more and more conscious of the need to reform human characters and solve our problems with dialogue, not violence.

Usually we divide our instinctual passions into groupings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and try either to repress or deny the ‘bad’ ones – fear and aggression – while giving full vent and validity to the ‘good’ ones – nurture and desire. Unfortunately the well-meaning attempt to curb fear and aggression by moulding ‘good’ and ‘loving’ citizens has had precious little success as is evidenced by all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, corruption, loneliness, despair and suicides that are still endemic on the planet. The passions of love and hate, forgiveness and retribution, compassion and selfishness, etc. come inseparably in pairs, as is testified by the continual failure of humans to live together in anything remotely resembling peace and harmony. We still rely on lawyers and laws, courts and jails, police, armies and guns to enforce law and order – a poor substitute for actual peace and harmony. The failure of morals, ethics, values and ideals to bring anything remotely resembling peace to this fair planet is legendary. The currently fashionable ideal of Human Rights serves only to reinforce the rights of various ethnic, religious and territorial groups to firstly, hold conflicting beliefs and then, to fight for those beliefs. Retribution is also highly valued as the right to ‘justice’ and, as such, resentments and grievances between rival groups of humans or individuals are passed down from generation to generation.

When appeals to moral and ethical values fail to end human conflicts, temporary ceasefires are maintained at the point of a gun. Whenever conflict erupts again a truce is then renegotiated and a ceasefire reinforced and the whole cycle of suppression, justice and retribution is set in motion yet again. Given the human genetic-heritage of animal instinctual passions, it is a tribute to human perseverance and stubborn will that the species has survived and flourished as well as it has. It is obvious that a new solution needs to be found, for the traditional solution of instilling unliveable ethics, preaching pious morals and maintaining law and order at the point of a gun has clearly failed in the past, is still failing, and always will fail to bring actual peace on earth. The next great challenge for human beings in this time of increasing safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure is to eradicate and eliminate human malice and sorrow. To do this means to actively challenge and confront the ‘mother of all beliefs’ – that ‘you can’t change human nature’.

The questions I asked myself were ... ‘why not?’ ... and ‘who said you can’t?’

Just in my area, the West Island of Montreal, I can count hundreds of mini-organizations (tens of thousands of people) involved in fighting poverty, pollution, war, etc. It won’t be long that the material world will collapse and a new kind of thinking will replace it.

I would put it to you that if you believe and pray that the material world will collapse – an apocalyptic scenario – then you believe and wish that billions of human beings will undergo immense suffering, pain, injury, death and hardship in the resulting chaos. This is old religious fear-ridden doomsday thinking, designed to put the fear of God in ancient people. This is old superstitious belief, not ‘a new way of thinking’. A genuinely ‘new way of thinking’ will only eventuate as individual human beings ‘get down and get dirty’ and get on with the job of firstly freeing themselves from ancient belief and superstition and then freeing themselves from the crippling effect that the emotions that arise from the instinctual passions have on their own thinking and actions.

The other relevant point is that in my years of being involved in ‘fighting’ for an end to war, for the environment, for my spiritual beliefs, I came to see that I was, in fact, fighting someone else. Any protests were angry protests either covertly felt or overtly expressed. It was always ‘someone else’s fault’, someone else who was ‘bad’, someone else who was ‘wrong’, someone else who was angry, someone else who was not aware or conscious enough. Realizing this fact was essential in understanding that the only one I can change is me and, if I’m sincere in my interest in peace on earth, then I had better get on with proving it is possible.

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But you are right that ‘spirituality’ is not the be-all-and-end-all, it is one facet of change.

No, I didn’t say that at all. My point is that ‘spirituality’ – the ancient belief in God, Gods, spirits and other worlds – has miserably failed to bring peace on earth. In fact, if you read the ancient texts peace is not even on the spiritual agenda. Spirituality, rooted as it is in ancient belief, is not a facet of change – it is, and has always been, a fear-driven force of resistance to change.

Others are laws, globalization, the Internet, Greenpeace, educational and scientific advances – in fact, we are all, even those who seem to be going in the opposite direction, part of this great drama which will end in World Peace. Please, let’s pray for it to come soon!!

Okay. ‘Laws’ are maintained by armed police, lawyers, courts, fines, goals, and they do manage to keep the lid on overt violence in many countries. But I fail to see how the threat and imposition of punishment can bring about a genuine freedom, peace and happiness. A little reading of what happens to the rule of law, morals and ethics in times of threat or war will point to what a fragile system we live under. ‘Civilization’ is indeed a thin veneer.

‘The Internet’, on the other hand, is proving to be a remarkable network whereby we humans can share our experiences and knowledge as to what works and what doesn’t work in order that we do not unnecessarily repeat the mistakes of the past. It can be a remarkable facilitator of change. This mailing list that dares to question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ is an example of a free, open and world-wide exploration that would have been impossible only a few short years ago.

‘Globalization’ – the increasing world-wide trade of goods, information, knowledge and resources, the standardization of laws, language and culture and the phenomenal speed of global communication, all act to break down the tribal differences that have plagued human existence. But all does not bode well for economic pragmatism, for there is an emotional backlash as people fearfully seek their roots in the past and return to old tribal cultures and superstitions. The bold post WW2 idea of a united Europe seems to be now fading as even smaller regions within countries seek ‘autonomy’. I also find it kind of cute that many of the people who claim to feel that ‘we are all one’ or ‘the earth is all one living organism’ are often the ones who rile against the practical manifestation of one species of humans on the planet – fellow humans beings who happen to live somewhere on the globe.

‘Greenpeace’ is an organization that proudly fights for the environment, confronting others who they see as wrong or doing evil. Environmentalism has now gained the trappings and status of a full-blown pantheist religion, whereby the planet is seen as a living entity, populated by earth spirits and energies and we humans are made guilty, once again, for being here. Environmentalists continually present doomsday prophecies as scare tactics, they eagerly accept and promote any theory that supports their passionate belief, continually rile against non-believers and actively resist any progress or change – all signs of religious fervour in action

As for ‘educational’ changes, I see the Internet as the best thing to happen in the free exchange of information since the invention of the printing press.

As for ‘scientific advances’, I concur, with the proviso that one ignores the fanciful theories and imaginary postulations of theoretical mystical science that is currently fashionably influenced by Eastern philosophy and religion – theoretical cosmology and theoretical physics are particularly suss. Empirical science, largely practiced by engineers and chemists investigating, manipulating and constructing wonderful things from the elements of this planet, is indeed bringing to human beings unprecedented levels of safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure. In fact, it is empirical science that is now providing the evidence as to the source of human malice and sorrow – the genetically inherited animal instinctual passion.

And now that we have empirical scientific evidence of what causes we humans to be malicious and sorrowful, it’s simply a matter of acknowledging the facts, abandoning all the failed old spiritual theories and solutions and real-world theories and solutions, and – for those intrepid adventuresome pioneers – setting about the process of deleting this redundant instinctual programming.

Good, Hey.

I was curious about some statements you made in your post, so I thought I would reply.

Hi (again) all, Benevolent living, concern for all and quality of life improves because of, and in spite of, Human Nature. Warring, vicious and malicious behaviour is on the decline in this new millennium, in this perfectly improving perfect universe.

Why? Because it doesn’t work as a life style in most cases. People eventually are learning.

There is a good deal of factual information and statistics available that document the fact that the last century was the bloodiest to date. Given the present millennium is only two months old, I think it is too early to document a decline and I see no reason to predict a decline, given the natural predilection of human beings to fight and feud with each other and their on-going blatant state of denial of their animal instinctual passions.

War deaths have risen dramatically in the 20th century.

**20th century data is up to 1995.

(Source: William Eckhardt, ‘War-Related Deaths Since 3000 BC,’ Bulletin of Peace Proposals, December 1991 and Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1996)

The universe is perfect, infinite and eternal – it is not ‘perfectly improving’, for it would have to be less than perfect in order to improve. What is less than perfect are human beings and this is only so because they insist that human nature is indeed Human Nature – a set-in-concrete inviolate condition epitomized by malice and sorrow.

In many places on the planet a degree of what is termed civilization is imposed by strict enforcement of a moral, ethical and legal code reinforced and maintained by police and armies, lawyers and judges, fines and jails, Gurus and priests, etc. In these places, war, rape, murder and torture is kept to a tolerable minimum and human malice and sorrow is evidenced in more cunning and subtle ways such as corruption, fighting for causes and rights, innuendo, gossip, sad and violent entertainment, etc.

All this is accepted as a life style – to be the best one can be within the Human Condition is a poor second-rate life whereby an actual freedom is sacrificed in order to remain part of Humanity, the fighting and feuding mob. To feel above it all, or to feel superior to others, is a poor substitute to stepping out of it all. The Human Condition has been on-going for thousands of years and there is no sign of any change eventuating. This is particularly so given the current fashion of denial and acceptance of ‘Human Nature’ that masquerades as some sort of wisdom or means to cope with life as-it-is.

As for ‘cynical disillusioned’, I have had this charge levelled at me countless times. Below is a typical exchange from the Sannyas mailing list before I was cyber-executed from the list for being too heretical and iconoclastic ... <Snip>

That’s a pretty clear statement. You never thought for one second that the New Man was going to happen and you never thought for one second that peace on earth would ever happen. And you don’t want to talk about or debate about peace on earth. It keeps up the 100% record of Sannyasins who are either in denial or don’t care.

What I find fascinating is a movement that was supposedly altruistic and caring has degenerated into a self-centred social club’ totally lacking in any direction or motive apart from self-fulfillment – both as a group and as individuals. No wonder peace on earth forever remains an unfulfilled dream. Peace on earth is literally sacrificed at the altar of dead God-men.

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I am left wondering why you are so concerned about the image of Sannyasins.

At one time I had many friends who were Sannyasins, as I was, and most were very sincere and totally dedicated in their search for freedom, peace and happiness. As I have said before, at the time Sannyas was the best game to play. I now see a watering down of this search amongst many Sannyasins to the point were many are ‘happy and content’ exactly as they are, with no desire for change. I think this is evidenced by the fact that many are attracted by the teachings that ‘you are already That – all you have to do is realize It’.

To me this is a sorry and lamentable demise of a movement that began in the fervour of 60’s and that was going to change the world and bring peace to this fair planet. This passionate search for freedom, peace and happiness has degenerated into an utterly self-centred fashionable New Dark Age spiritualism that cares not a fig about peace on earth. The current image of Sannyasins in the wider community is that they at the forefront of this self-centredness and are deliberately turning away from the original spirit that was around in the ‘early days’.

Perhaps this just makes me an old fogie but I, for one, still remain vitally interested in actual peace on earth.

Sannyas has become yet another ‘old time religion’ and peace on earth is sacrificed yet again. As you can see, I am more concerned about the content and consequences of the Sannyas message than the image of Sannyasins. That’s why I write – purely and simply to say to anyone who is discontent with the spiritual path that there is a now a third alternative available to remaining ‘normal’ or becoming ‘spiritual.

The reason I wrote to you guys was to warn you of the apparent perception of intolerance towards other religions in your magazine. But you don’t seem to see what I see, so I see no point in continuing to flog a dead horse.

Another ‘new millennium’ message that is worth thinking about –

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s (the incarnated Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion, the Holy Lord, the Gentle Glory, the Compassionate, the Defender of the Faith, the Ocean of Wisdom, the Wish-fulfilling Gem) New Millennium Message

[Quote]: ‘This past century in some ways has been a century of war and bloodshed. ... If we are to change this trend we must seriously consider the concept of non-violence, which is a physical expression of compassion. In order to make non-violence a reality we must first work on internal disarmament and then proceed to work on external disarmament. By internal disarmament I mean ridding ourselves of all the negative emotions that result in violence.’ http://www.tibet.com/NewsRoom/millennium-message.html

With Wisdom like that, let’s not hold our breathe for peace on earth. I saw him on television recently saying the next century should be the ‘century of dialogue’. Fighting with words instead of guns is obviously regarded as the best Humanity can hope to achieve in the next century. The letters to the editor page of the local newspaper where I live are increasingly full of vitriol, and most often from the ‘really-aware’ crowd. More and more people are turning to lawyers, courts and tribunals to fight others or seek retribution so the fashion for standing up for oneself, defending one’s rights – or sharing one’s truth – represents an escalation in malice, not a diminishing.

What happened in Tibet is a classic case of the ideal of non-violence in action. The Good and Holy Leader and his lackeys took the money and fled in the face of aggression, abandoning the ordinary people to their fate. The D.L went to seek shelter behind the Indian army, leaving those behind with no means to defend themselves. Pacifism is like hanging up a sign at the border saying please invade or a sign on your front door saying the doors open, help yourself..

To put one’s faith in the ideal of non-violence is to stubbornly remain in ignorance of the source of violence within the Human Condition.

Contrast the above piece of wishful thinking with an item that cropped up recently –

ABCNEWS.com

Deadly wars may be the result of modern technology blended with our Stone Age instincts.

Humankind has lived through a hideously violent century.

‘There’s always conflict in societies’, says Neil Wiener, an associate professor of psychology at York University. ‘The issue is, when do these conflicts erupt into violence?’

So, a bit of ancient spiritual denial and transcendence contrasted with the dawning of scientific recognition of the facts about the Human Condition. The psychologists all say the instincts are ‘hard-wired’, for to contemplate and investigate further to even consider that they are only software would be devastating to their professional pride and their very livelihood. A bit like the Dalai Lama saying we should stop believing in God because he doesn’t exist and stop attempting to embellish the ‘positive emotions’ because it won’t bring an end to malice and sorrow – not only livelihood threatening in his case but threatening his reincarnation as well.

*

P.S. The leader of the strongest country in the world, Mr. Clinton, gave his ‘new millennium’ message saying that ‘we human beings need to have dreams that are stronger than our memories’. In other words, let us all try to forget the fact that the last century was the bloodiest to date and dream for some miraculous peace in the next century.

Yet, despite the religious prayers and unrealizable dreaming, the facts are –

<see graph on war death at the top>

War deaths have risen dramatically in the 20th century.

**20th century data is up to 1995.

(Source: William Eckhardt, ‘War-Related Deaths Since 3000 BC’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals , December 1991 and Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1996)

I always like the way that a situation, a meeting with someone or some words will twig a particular understanding of some part of the Human Condition. Each such understanding is invaluable, a gold nugget for an actualist, and needs not to be glossed over or fritted away. It is only by musing over these discoveries, contemplating upon them and milking them for all they are worth that one can ‘re-wire’ the brain, reprogram it to delete its instinctual and social programming. It is this very programming that has ensured, until now, only two options for every human being – either a real life of malice and sorrow or a spiritual life of malice and sorrow with the additional programming of denial and transcendence.

The other day I was watching a news report of the current peace talks between Israel and Syria and an Israeli expert was being interviewed. He said peace with Syria was difficult because ‘we don’t know and trust the Syrians’. He said, ‘peace with the Palestinians was easier because we have conquered the Palestinians’. A brief scan through my knowledge of history suggested that his observation could be applied to all peace deals and peace treaties. For peace to reign, one side must be victorious over the other and, as such, these peace deals are in fact surrender deals. These treaties set out the terms of surrender and the other side ‘naturally’ builds up resentment and anger in order to do battle again, be it overt or covert. The battle inevitably resumes, if not with guns then with words or feelings of resentment that are inbred as a social conditioning in each tribal member. Many current conflicts have their roots in conflicts that are hundreds or thousands of years old – so much for the promise to forgive and forget and the ideal that ‘we are all one’ and that one day there will be peace.

I further remembered how this exact same scenario forms the basis of all human relating – battle, victor / loser, surrender, withdrawal, ‘peace’ deal, resentment, plotting either overt or covert revenge, picking a time when other is vulnerable, strike back, battle, victor / loser ... What Vineeto and I did was stop battling in our relationship and begin an investigation as to why the battle of the sexes exists in the first place. One can do this with every other relationship until the desire, the need and the will to battle withers and eventually dies. It is only by stopping and changing that something else can happen, otherwise what is, and always has been, will continue.

Every discovery and insight into the Human Condition is useless unless one applies it with honesty and sincerity to how one is living one’s own life, for unless one is actually free of the Human Condition, one is not exempt. As we know, one can easily feel free but it is in the ‘push comes to shove’ moments that one is tested. It is in these moments that the instinctual passions will always over-ride the good, the well-meaning and the rational. It is when jealousy rages to violence that the sexual instinct and associated nurture – the emotion that humans fondly call love – is shown as nothing other than a powerful and blind animal instinctual passion. It is when one’s spiritual beliefs are questioned that the raw instinctual fear of death will arise and cause one to act in ways that are both desperate and insane. When one is threatened with ostracism or isolation from the security of whatever group or relationship one feels one belongs to, that one literally will do anything to avoid being an outsider or on one’s own.

The chemical surges that cause us to automatically feel and act fearful, nurturing, aggressive and desirous are primary, ‘quick and dirty’, thoughtless and instinctual-emotional and, as such, ultimately uncontrollable by moral and ethical training or by denial and imaginary transcendence. These chemical surges that arise from the instinctual passions are most definitely not an illusion that one can deny or pretend that one has overcome them – they are very real – readily measurable in response times, sourced from a particular location in the physical brain and empirically observable in action. It was only when this chemical flow ceased that Richard became actually free of the Human Condition. To quote Richard from the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ –

‘My’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent presence. I have always been here, I realize, it was that ‘I’ only imagined that ‘I’ existed. It was all an emotional play in a fertile imagination ... which was, however, fuelled by an actual hormonal substance triggered off from within the brain-stem because of the instinctual passions bestowed by blind nature. Richard’s Journal, Article No 18

An actualist will not skip over the ‘however’, for in that one word is the key to the difference between an actual freedom and an illusionary freedom from the Human Condition.

In the past, the feeling of freedom was the best on offer – feeling ‘above it all’ was better than feeling ‘part of the rest’ – but it did nothing to stop anyone from being driven by the instinctual passions. In fact, to follow the spiritual path was but to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The religious wars, the spiritual perversions of celibacy and Tantric teachings, the teachings of suffering, doom, evil and fear, the battle of the religions and God-men for ever more numbers and ever more power, the ongoing humiliation of human beings prostrating themselves before mythical Gods and humbug God-men – all this attest to the institutionalized insanity of any and all spiritual belief-systems.

These ancient beliefs do nothing but cloud over, divert, deflect, distract, sidetrack, compound and ultimately cause one to turn away from the only sensible human freedom – a freedom for human beings to stop instinctually behaving like animals and treating each other like animals.

Well, all that came out of one little news report about a ‘peace’ negotiation to stop two groups of humans waging war against each other. Good to sheet it back home and see where one is ‘waging war’ oneself and to see what I can actually do about peace on earth.

No 13 wrote recently that

‘The actual revolutions start here as a matter of course each time a new wonder manifests itself into consciousness or a physical sensation. I can only help myself each moment again. I can only partake of all that is on offer.’

Being pragmatic I would say that ‘the actual re-programming of one’s brain – the deleting of one’s social and instinctual programming – can only start and continue by investigating each time that a new feeling manifests itself and prevents me from being happy and harmless.’

These thoughtful investigations can be so revealing, so insightful, so blindingly obvious that synapses in the brain can snap, clarity can result and behaviour can be changed and – provided ‘I’ don’t claim the credit – PCEs can result.

Ah well, Alan, this has turned into another of my raves, but life continually presents one with serendipitous opportunities to study the Human Condition, to see it in operation as one’s ‘self’ ... and countless reasons to be actually free of the lot.

And I do enjoy writing about the Human Condition.

What amazes me is that very few people take into consideration what enlightenment, ego-lessness, emptiness means in terms of other people. May be I’ll feel this and that, experience this and that, but like my Dad used to say: ‘What good is it, if I don’t benefit from your wisdom?’ (He’d use that at the end of just about any argument I had with him and it really enraged me back then, but today I wonder. I actually think he’s right.)

So what about that? I find that just about the most challenging thing of all.

My father’s only words of advice to me were ‘it doesn’t matter what you are in life, or what you do – just be happy’. Of course, he didn’t offer any advice as to how to be happy for he didn’t know, but his words did stick with me. He had fought for God and country in the jungles during WW2, had provided for wife and 2 kids and was a good community member, but was dead by age 45 – so his whole life was involved in doing his male duty for others, both socially and instinctually.

However, I always suspected his advice essentially came out of his war experiences for there was a touch of ‘get it while you can, life is short’ about his words. I always suspected the 60’s and 70’s peace movement that blossomed amongst the children of those who fought, suffered and died in WW2 received covert support from some parents who endorsed the passionate drive for an end to the endless cycle of wars, conflicts, recrimination, retribution and suffering.

It’s interesting that the peace movement should have been be sucked into a spiritual movement where all earthly existence is upheld as essential suffering and the solution to conflict and unhappiness is taught to be a withdrawal from the physical world and the physical body – a turning inside into a metaphysical, feeling-only world of ancient fairy tales, beliefs in Gods and an ultimate peace only after death.

Eastern religion and wisdom has been around for over 3,000 years with billions of followers and millions of ardent practitioners and has done bugger all good for people on the planet. The East is a cesspool of repression, suppression, bigotry, conflict, superstition, renunciation, corruption, deceit, pious righteousness, etc., exactly as the West, and so much of this appalling misery is the direct result of following ancient wisdom and religious belief.

We would do well to learn from the failures of the past – to have the courage to free ourselves of the dissolute fallacious wisdom of the Ancient Ones and to set about the pioneering work of becoming actually free of the encumbering Human Condition we find ourselves entrapped in.

T’is the most challenging urgent enterprise on the planet and, as is evident and readily apparent from one’s pure consciousness experiences, ‘self’-sacrifice – both ego and soul – is the most worthwhile contribution one can make to actualizing peace on earth.

Universal life, Oneness includes all dimensions of being, to try denying anything is to live in fear of it ... including your emotions.

I see you have reduced your position about peace on earth to a simple one-line statement. I do appreciate you clarifying your position.

By the term ‘Universal life, Oneness’ you are no doubt referring to a universal force, energy or unifying feeling – i.e. God by another name.

By the term ‘all dimensions of being’ you are no doubt referring to ‘all that is’ on the planet – including all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, conflicts, poverty, tyranny, corruption, religious persecution, sadness, depression and suicides.

By the term ‘to try denying anything is to live in fear of it’ you are espousing the Eastern religious and philosophical view of acceptance of all that is. I don’t know if you have been to the East but this attitude of acceptance is typified by a shrug of the shoulders, a wobble of the head or a vague waving of the arms to indicate a helplessness at being able to do anything about one’s lot in life or to change anything. Acceptance runs deep in the East and includes the hapless and helpless concept of re-incarnation in an endless cycle of earthly suffering.

Your stated position about peace on earth can be summarized as – God is everything and we therefore should accept everything as it is and not try and change anything. What everyone misses when they take on Eastern belief is that this act of acceptance of the way things are includes denying that we humans are able do anything to change the way things are.

Acceptance always comes hand in glove with denial of the possibility of changing the way things are.

And as you said – ‘to try denying anything is to live in fear of it’. The fear of change runs deep in humans particularly when it involves radical and fundamental change. To accept all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, conflicts, poverty, tyranny, corruption, religious persecution, sadness, depression and suicides as simply the way things are and thus deny the possibility that peace on earth is possible is a deeply cynical outlook on life.

A constant theme in your posts is your use of the statement that to ‘deny anything is to live in fear of it’. What got me off my bum and my head out of the clouds was that I stopped denying the fact that I was as mad and as bad as everyone else on the planet.

• As mad as everybody else because, despite my seeing religion as silly in my youth, I ended up in a religion in my middle age as an escape from the ‘real’ world. New Age spirituality was cunningly disguised as an altruistic movement in those days but when the altruism faded, as it inevitably does in religious movements, I came to see pursuing Enlightenment as an utterly selfish attempt at self-aggrandizement.
• As bad as everybody else because I could no longer deny that I got angry, resentful, pissed-off, jealous, peeved, sad, melancholy, etc. In other words despite my good intentions and spiritual practice and ideals, I was malicious and sorrowful, exactly as everyone else.

By taking this fully on board it became glaringly obvious to me that only a complete, utter and radical change would bring me peace on earth in this lifetime and the only thing stopping me was fear. And, as you know, complete utter and radical change is ‘self’-immolation and not the usual finding solace and succour in religious belief and spiritual experiences.

It’s enough to put the wind up anyone, really, but the rewards are commensurate with the fear faced, for actual peace on earth lies beyond psychological and psychic death.

*

There is no substitute for a sensible discussion based on facts in order to decide what works and what doesn’t work to bring peace on earth.

Of course, that is what I try to do. But if who I am trying to communicate with is so dead set on a belief what can I do? Of course, that is how many people may see me, and most likely do. Which is always a problem because there are truths that are facts that I couldn’t change and wouldn’t change. To those I speak to about these truths I may seem dogmatic. That is why I say you have to find this out for yourselves. I can’t do anything but point.

Okay. The one truth you seem most consistent about is the truth that your being is one with life or all creation. You also say everybody else’s being is one with all except that they haven’t realized it, or awakened to the fact, like you have. Now the realization of this truth is common to religious experiences both in Western religions as in – ‘We are all God’s children’ and in Eastern religion as in – ‘We are all One’ or ‘We are all Buddhas’. And yet, despite this realization in many teachers and their followers, a Buddhist still steadfastly remains a Buddhist, a Christian steadfastly remains a Christian, a Cohenite steadfastly remains a Cohenite, or the teacher immediately sets up his or her own teachings which he or she steadfastly insists is different from all the rest of the spiritual/religious teachings.

As you said in a recent post to the list –

‘I can see how some, mostly Buddhist, may stay within the same group they belonged to, after awakening, to teach. I couldn’t, ...’

You too seem to have been compelled to set up your own independent shop despite your realization that we are all one. Does this not seem a glaring contradiction between your realization and your subsequent actions?

This irrefutable pattern of behaviour, evident across all cultures and religions, makes a mockery of the realization that ‘We are all One’ for none of the Awakened or Realized Beings put their money where their mouth is, or should I say where their feelings are. And as we both know, this dogmatic insistence on the uniqueness of various religious teachings and experiences is the very stuff that breeds religious division, conflict and war.

The spiritual realization that we are all one is nought but passionate imagination that in fact causes abominable separation and conflict between humans.

I have also seen what a mess we are in and how much needless suffering is going on and want only to see an end to it.

I don’t doubt the sincerity or fervour of your belief. All the priests, shamans, God-men, Gurus, Enlightened Ones and their followers for thousands of years, have offered the same spiritual message and yet the last century was the bloodiest to date.

Is that the guru’s fault? Were the warring parties enlightened? I too would wish that the teaching of so many enlightened people had changed things to where we stopped all the needless killing. Again, is that the teachers, or teachings, fault? Of course it isn’t.

Well, you could hardly accept that it is the fault of the teacher or the teachings for you are one of the teachers teaching those teachings. In order to avoid a confrontation that might raise your defences, let’s have a look at the sacred teachers and teachings of Zen Buddhism as exposed in two recent books –

‘Zen at War provides some significant missing pieces in helping us comprehend the underlying mind of the Japanese military. As Chang relates: ‘Some Japanese soldiers admitted it was easy for them to kill because they had been taught that next to the emperor, all individual life even their own – was valueless.’ Japanese soldier Azuma Shiro reported that during his two years of military training, ‘... he was taught that ‘loyalty is heavier than a mountain, and our life is like a feather.’ ... to die for the emperor was the greatest glory, to be caught alive by the enemy the greatest shame. ‘If my life was not important, an enemy’s life became inevitably much less important. This philosophy led us to look down on the enemy and eventually to the mass murder and ill treatment of captives.’’ It is crucial not to dismiss this as merely a Japanese political problem. The Zen leadership did not just go along with the wartime bandwagon, they were often the band-leaders. Placing what happened in context of history and politics in no way reduces the responsibility of the Zen tradition.

In Zen, there is the ancient image of a red-hot iron ball stuck in your throat that you cannot spit out or swallow. For Japanese Zen, the war is this iron ball. It is one gigantic living koan. It will not go away, even when the last survivors die off. It must be investigated honestly if Zen is to remain a meaningful and real tradition. Truth denied is enlightenment denied. This total betrayal of compassion did not just take place during World War II. For six hundred years, one Zen Master bragged, the Rinzai school had been engaged in ‘enhancing military power.’ For centuries, Zen was intimately involved in the way of killing. This is the simple truth. Of course, only some temples and some teachers were involved, but this aspect of Zen was a significant part of Japanese culture and became dominant for nearly one hundred years. In fact, the extremes of the war were the full flower of this heartless Zen that had been evolving in Japan. The sword was real and millions died.

The most excessive situations show us the inherent distortions that exist from the beginning. For many Zen students, the most difficult aspect will be how to face the words and actions of these highly esteemed Zen Masters. How can we hold these overwhelming contradictions? These were the living Buddhas of the Zen tradition – men regarded as ‘fully enlightened,’ who had Satori experiences, underwent intense training, received the official transmission and teaching seals. Many were brilliant charismatic teachers and koan masters. And simultaneously, these same Zen Masters were swept away in nationalist delusion, perverted Buddhist and Zen teachings, and exhibited a total lack of compassion and wisdom. They participated directly in the deaths of tens of millions of people. <Snip>

What is going on here? This simply can’t be ignored or casually brushed aside as a minor matters. Either these masters weren’t ‘enlightened’ or their ‘enlightenment’ did not include compassion and wisdom. What Zen is this that they are masters of? These questions are not supposed to be thought about, let alone openly considered. If they can’t bring up these questions in Japan, then we will do it here in the West. We have to ask these questions even if they are difficult to answer and make us uncomfortable. It is just too important’

From a review of the following books by Josh Baran – ‘Zen At War’ – Brian Victoria Weatherhill, 1997 and ‘The Rape Of Nanking’ (The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II) – Iris Chang Basic Books, 1997. The review was published at: http://www.darkzen.com/  (see also link at library )

It does seem that at least some are willing to lay some blame for war and suffering at the feet of the revered and sacred teachers. There are some serious cracks beginning to appear in the ‘sacred ceiling’, No. 8. It could be a good time to consider a career change.

But to me peace on earth and actually being happy and harmless must take precedence in a human life if we are to live life fully and survive successfully as a species.

Yep. 160 million died in wars in the last century, an estimated 40 million committed suicide, not to mention all the murders, rapes, torture, corruption, despair, loneliness, domestic violence, child abuse ... and there is no end in sight. It’s clearly time for intelligence to be freed of its burden of the animal survival instincts so we humans can live in utter peace and harmony, perfection and purity.

*

It is an instinct-fuelled emotion that only exists in the heads and hearts of human beings. There is no love or hate in a tree, a keyboard, a cloud, a coffee cup.

And of course when presenting this analogy to any human being, not only those relentlessly inquiring into the human condition, their first response is, but for heaven’s sake! A human being is not a tree, a keyboard, a cloud, a coffee cup! Most of us consider mental activity and emotions as a whole new dimension on earth that we have barely explored. There is so much to investigate, to reflect on, before the human psyche can come to the conclusion that there is no alternative, that its death and extinction is the only way to bring happiness and harmlessness to humanity.

Yep. Human mental activity and emotion has resulted in an estimated 160 million deaths in wars in the last century, over 40 million suicides, not to mention all the murders, rapes, torture, corruption, despair, loneliness, domestic violence, child abuse ... and there is no end in sight. It’s clearly time for intelligence to be freed of its burden of the animal survival instincts so we humans who want to can live in utter peace and harmony, perfection and purity. Only if you want to, of course, for there is no imperative in Actual Freedom. The universe, being infinite and eternal, has all the time in the world. It was only by abandoning any notion of a life after death, or there being a ‘somewhere else’, could I muster sufficient impatience and urgency to overcome my lethargy.

Anyone can peddle a dream, an ideal, a possibility and people will flock and join in. Anyone, be it an Emperor, a Dictator, a Revolutionary, a Faith Healer, a scientist or a Guru. An excellent study known as the Milgram Experiments was conducted which documented this very willingness to believe, and willingness to follow, and I have written about it in the Peace chapter of my journal

It is fascinating that this particular line of study was stopped as being ‘unethical’! We either deny our instinctual malice (bury our heads in the sand) or seek refuge in fairy tales (stick our heads in the clouds). But everyone, be they ‘normal’ or ‘spiritual’, manages to shift doing something about peace on earth by blaming someone else. Looking forward to your comments...

I see. I think the only way to peace on earth is peace on person at first. But I don’t agree with that ‘everyone’, be they ‘normal’ or ‘spiritual’, manages to shift doing something about peace on earth by blaming someone else. I think not everyone.

Okay – tell me who. Even the pacifists run on the theory of ‘if only everyone stopped fighting ..’, and those who march and demonstrate for peace do so at angry rallies. There are curiously those like the Buddhists monks in Vietnam who will suicide for peace but few who are willing to change radically, completely and irrevocably to actually eliminate sorrow and malice within themselves.

Still it’s early years and this is new and radical.

But, you have found the very place, the very mailing list, at the right time, for we actualists recognize and acknowledge the factual source of fear and aggression – and we have a proven method for its eradication.

I couldn’t take it all in at the start – the enormity of being able to be free of the Human Condition and its radical consequences for the human species. I just figured someone has to do it – and why not me? Richard was just a normal human being, a boy from the farm, as he puts it, and I had the necessary qualifications – I was just a normal human being, a boy from the suburbs, I could say.

Good Hey...

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