Selected Correspondence Peter

Spiritualism

The point I am making is that even before I recalled having had a pure consciousness experience I had satisfied myself that an actual freedom from the human condition was indeed non-spiritual, which in turn meant that it was brand new – there being no evidence whatsoever of it ever having being a lived experience in any of spiritual teachings, any of the ancient folklores or any of the secular consciousness studies.

With this kind of statement I have no issue – that you consider there to be no evidence of it ever having been lived before.

Again it is not a matter that I ‘consider’ there to be no evidence of it ever having been lived before – there *is* no evidence of it having been lived before. Can you provide any evidence of it having been lived before, let alone having been spoken about or written about before? Have the hundreds of correspondents, many of whom who experts in spiritual teachings, philosophical hypothesises and psychological theories, who claimed there was evidence that it has been lived before provided any evidence of it having been lived before? If somebody does come up with the evidence, then that is a different matter but until then …

Well I haven’t decisively concluded that Bernadette Roberts being actually free as I am yet to read her books. I have only read the material available on the web and some passages sent me by Vicky. But they were sufficient for me to keep the topic open in my mind that she may be actually free. I of course have read most if not all the material on the Actual Freedom site about BR. It did not convince me. That’s why I say that you consider there to be no evidence. I have read what I consider to be preliminary evidence. Unfortunately I will not be able to examine her books for a couple of months but after that I will let you know if I have changed my mind :)

I see. You do realize that what you are saying is that I should ‘consider’ there to be no evidence rather than say that there is no evidence because you choose to remain open to the possibility that someone else might be actually free from the human condition but that you are not quite sure whether or not she is but she might be and that you will let me know in a couple of months time.

Why you need to wait a couple of months before putting the evidence on the table is beyond me – all I needed to do was type her name into Google and within minutes I came up with many quotations that make it perfectly obvious that she is living in an altered state of consciousness of the spiritual ilk and that she is no way actually free of the human condition in toto.

On many occasions people have told me that actualism is similar to spiritualism and whenever I have questioned them it soon became clear that they read what is on offer in actualism looking for the similarities to spiritualism whilst turning a blind eye to the obvious differences and that they in turn read what is on offer in spiritualism looking for the similarities to actualism whilst turning a blind eye to the obvious differences – which only serves to illustrate how belief and conviction prevents one from seeing the facts of the matter.

I found some of what he wrote insightful (of course I think he is at some level deluded with all his god talk delusions). He is clearly on record in his article ‘Love is not an Emotion’, saying that one must end ALL one’s emotions – the good and the bad. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone besides Richard say something like this. He also is against ALL religions and spiritualities (well he is clearly spiritual himself, but he is against ALL TRADITIONS of spirituality-yeah that’s more like it) ‘just like’ Richard. It was funny ‘watching’ the WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT editor fumble over himself in trying to comprehend how someone could live w/o emotions in an interview with BL.

I am somewhat bemused that you should write to me asking questions and making comment about a man who declared himself to be God-realized and yet write to someone else on the list stating –

I am enjoying my emancipation of what I consider a enormous delusion (God, angels, demons, afterlife) very much. There is no need/desire/want to go back to creating a fake mental reality. To me a Higher Power of any kind is like Santa for adults. Life is very simple and fun without all the spiritual stuff ‘junking’ it up. I’m so glad that the disappointments in my life have opened me up to leaving a superstitious way of living behind. AT beatup 30.12.2004

In the light of this, why you would still be interested in the preachings of a self-declared God-realized ‘Western Master’ has got me well and truly stumped.

As to your statement that he is ‘he is against ALL TRADITIONS of religion and spiritualities’ –

Barry Long – ‘What it finally comes down to is that in reality there is only spirit. Spirit embraces eternity and all the other superlatives relating to the unending wonder of God. Every object and thing in existence, from the starry heavens down to the smallest microbe, is spirit. We can’t register this because the human brain is a vibratory sensory mechanism which can only reproduce an infinitely degenerated version of the unmoving power of the surrounding spirit. The brain – itself a creation of the spirit – repeats the infinity of spirit by producing infinite varieties of creatures, things and conditions in a ceaseless stream of perceptible forms. http://www.barrylong.org/what_it_is_to_die.htm

… this sounds mightily like very TRADITIONAL spiritual-speak to me.

I have no interest in writing yet more about my experiences of the hypocrisy of the spiritual teachings and the duplicity of spiritual teachers. If you are interested you will find that I have already written a good deal on both subjects, much of which is catalogued for easy reference on the website.

The following comment I recently made to a spiritualist is relevant to your current interest in spiritual matters –

‘I am not ‘throwing stones at’ either U.G. Krishnamurti or any other spiritual teacher, be they dead or alive – I am simply pointing out the inherent flaws of the spiritual teachings and of the very state of enlightenment itself, no matter who presents it and no matter whatever form it takes.

I’ve done my ‘road trip’ to the East and discovered first-hand the failings of spiritual teachings and the experienced first-hand the duplicity of spiritual teachers. I’ve sat at the feet of more than a few God-men and delved into several teachings sufficient enough to know that the whole pursuit of spiritualism is passé.

There is nothing to be found in searching through the dustbin of history, finding a discarded belief or philosophy, dusting it off and re-running with it. It will become, and indeed is already becoming, increasingly obvious to the astute seeker that only a radical new approach will actually bring an end to human malevolence and sorrow … and that is the total elimination of human malevolence and sorrow.’ Peter, List AF, No 58, 9.4.2004

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, to summarise: in my opinion there is quite a difference between ‘spirituality’ that is characterised by (a) impassioned investigation that is satisfied only by truth/factuality; and (b) impassioned adherence to and defence of a set of ideas, principles or practices that provide emotional comfort and/or promised benefit to the believer, regardless of their truth/falsehood.

Any and all spirituality is a crock – I wonder why you bother to make a distinction between the differing passions and motives of spiritual followers.

It may be a bit like the difference between a religious fanatic and a scientist. But perhaps you (pl) don’t consider that distinction useful either, since both scientists and suicide bombers are ‘spiritual’ per actualist usage.

I take it from the thrust of your conversation that you regard yourself as being more of the scientist type. If so, the following conversation may be worth revisiting –

Several of my peers would be in the same position. They (naturally) feel themselves to be someone, but they do not have overtly spiritual beliefs, and would not recognise themselves as ‘spiritual’ people because their beliefs are based on a combination of science and 20^th century psychology.

Many of my peers, including those who were once full-on on the spiritual path, are now seemingly content with combining more-watered down spiritual beliefs with their normal materialistic pursuits, so much so that they would have no interest at all in abandoning their beliefs and becoming actually free of the human condition.

These people would be both confused and annoyed, as I was, to defend themselves against the charge of ‘spiritualist’ or ‘mystic’ – because these words already have a different meaning to them. Peter, List AF, No 60 12.4.04

The point being that one does need to have trod the spiritual path experientially to have taken on board spiritual beliefs as they are rife in many aspects of Western science and psychology, not to mention philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, eduction and medicine.

*

If you speak to a skeptical/ secular spiritual ‘being’ as if s/he is a supernaturalist/ religious spiritual ‘being’, you are wasting your time, your energy and theirs.

The advantage of writing on a public mailing list is that others may well be interested in investigating whatever religious, spiritual, metaphysical, mystical, humanistic, atheistic and materialistic beliefs they hold to be truths whether they are dearly held beliefs or the less obvious ones that one has imbibed via the inevitable childhood socialization process.

You are inviting unnecessary misunderstanding and conflict.

Indeed, but there is no other way to say that the only way to become actually free from malice and sorrow is to devote one’s life to becoming happy and harmless.

Distinguishing between these two types of ‘spirituality’ is very easy, and it could resolve potential misunderstandings quickly and effortlessly, allowing people to move onto more interesting stuff. It sounds reasonable to me.

Once upon a time I was keen to leave any mention of spirituality out of actualism altogether but this proved impossible because it was obvious that those who would be interested in actualism would be those who found materialism wanting and those who have found materialism wanting would have at least checked out spiritualism to some degree, be it experientially or intellectually. As such, their idea of what it is to be free of the human condition would be inevitably coloured by Eastern spirituality and Eastern philosophy and they would inevitably confuse the actualism method with the passive awareness widely practiced in both the East and the West.

The best I could come up with as a straight-forward secular presentation of actualism was ‘Introducing Actual Freedom’.

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why it meets with such dogged and boneheaded resistance, but so be it. That’s the way things are around here, evidently.

When I became an actualist I never had a dogged and boneheaded resistance to investigating my spiritual beliefs because I had walked the Eastern spiritual path for years and I knew experientially that the beliefs were a sham in that they did nothing but produce delusionary states and they do nothing to address the problem of eliminating the instinctual malice and sorrow that plagues humankind.

*

Perhaps I can just add to this in another way that might make sense to you. Whilst one can be on the path to ‘transcendence of the human drama’, or contemplate taking the path, without having a belief in a supernatural entity – as was my case – it is pertinent to take on board that the whole notion of transcendence is based on the ancient belief that the ego is the problem and that the solution is to ‘realize’ that one’s instinctual being is one’s ‘true Self’ … and this belief is a spiritual belief.

And I’ll just finish by repeating what I have written to you several times before in the interest of clearly communicating what I am saying –

Abandoning the spiritual path and turning around proved to be only the start of a long and intense process of exposing all of the beliefs I either held dear or had not previously bothered to investigate for lack of interest and intent. I was not only amazed at the extent to which Eastern spirituality has permeated Western philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, science, eduction and medicine, but also at the extent to which I still held many religious/spiritual beliefs, values, morals, ethics, ideas and opinions as a result of my childhood social conditioning – the beliefs that I thought I had rejected or thought I had transcended still lay dormant for lack of the pure intent to actively dismantle my social and instinctual identity.

You have evidently spoken to a lot of people with spiritual beliefs, and people who practice spiritual disciplines over the years. I think this makes you tend to see it, or suspect it, where it is not actually present. The only ‘mystical’ aspect of my world view or direct experience of life occurs during ASCs, but I do not take those ASCs authoritative insights into how things actually are. (I try to keep an open mind, keep what is valuable, useful, consistent with known facts, if anything, and reject the rest).

I have yet to meet or speak to any people who are not affected by spiritual beliefs, either they are believers or they are agnostics, i.e. they remain ‘open’ to the possibility that all beliefs being truths – in other words, either way they are affected by belief because they have not supplanted beliefs with facts. Spiritual belief is part and parcel of ‘the human drama’ as you put it. I have had many people tell me they are not spiritual only to have them tell me a while later about an acupuncture session they have had, or asking me what my star sign is, or telling me that they have just bought a Buddha statue for their garden, or that Evil Mankind is wounding Mother Earth or that living a Puritan lifestyle or eating Puritan foods not only can cure disease but can ensure you won’t get sick in the first place … and so on

The discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition renders the whole mystical tradition not only irrelevant but it exposes it for what it is – an aberration from the dim, dark ages of humanity.

Maybe I should have asked you from the start: what precisely do you mean by ‘mystical’?

Yea. My knowledge of the spiritual world was an experiential ‘insider’ knowledge and it was only by undertaking a clear-eyed investigation into the spiritual world that I came to have a more intellectual understanding of its various nuances. Perhaps the following explanation from the Encyclopaedia Britannica will serve as a useful beginning to understanding mysticism –

Mysticism is that science in which the psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God. The major change or orientation is from the level of the profane to the sacred, an awareness of the divine in man and outside. A mark of the mystic life is the great access of energy and enlarged awareness, so much so that the man who obtains the vision becomes, as it were, another being. Mansions of the mind, maqam (Arabic: ‘place’), and bhumi (Sanskrit: ‘land’), open up to the gaze of the initiate, a wayfarer of the worlds. This means a renewal or conversion until one knows that the earth alone is not man’s teacher. The mystic begins to draw his sustenance from supersensuous sources. He has ‘drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine,’ and a hidden bliss, knowledge, and power begin to sweep through the gates of his senses.

Mysticism, a quest for a hidden truth or wisdom (‘the treasure hidden in the centres of our souls’), in the 20^th century is undergoing a renewal of interest and understanding and even a mood of expectancy similar to that which had marked its role in previous eras. Such a mood stems in part from the feeling of alienation that many persons experience in the modern world. At times a protest against heteronomy (i.e. external authority and ecclesiastical machinery), mysticism has expressed itself in diverse backgrounds and flourished during dark periods of history.

The goal of mysticism is union with the divine or sacred. The path to that union is usually developed by following four stages: purgation (of bodily desires), purification (of the will), illumination (of the mind), and unification (of one’s will or being with the divine). If ‘the object of man’s existence is to be a Man, that is, to re-establish the harmony which originally belonged between him and the divinized state before the separation took place which disturbed the equilibrium’ (The Life and Doctrine of Paracelsus), mysticism will always be a part of the way of return to the source of being, a way of counteracting the experience of alienation. Mysticism has always held – and parapsychology also seems to suggest – that the discovery of a nonphysical element in man’s personality is of utmost significance in his quest for equilibrium in a world of apparent chaos. Mysticism’s apparent denial, or self-negating, is part of a psychological process or strategy that does not really deny the person. In spite of its lunatic fringe, the maturer forms of mysticism satisfy the claims of rationality, ecstasy, and righteousness.

The relationship of the religion of faith to mysticism (‘personal religion raised to the highest power’) is ambiguous, a mixture of respect and misgivings. Though mysticism may be associated with religion, it need not be. The mystic often represents a type that the religious institution (e.g., church) does not and cannot produce and does not know what to do with if and when one appears. The founders of religion may have been incipient or advanced mystics, but the inner compulsions of their experience have proved less amenable to dogmas, creeds, and institutional restrictions, which are bound to be outward and majority oriented. There are religions of authority and the religion of the spirit. Thus, there is a paradox: if the mystic minority is distrusted or maltreated, religious life loses its sap; on the other hand, these ‘peculiar people’ do not easily fit into society, with the requirements of a prescriptive community composed of less sensitive seekers of safety and religious routine. Though no deeply religious person can be without a touch of mysticism, and no mystic can be, in the deepest sense, other than religious, the dialogue between mystics and conventional religionists has been far from happy. From both sides there is a constant need for restatement and revaluation, a greater tolerance, a union of free men’s worship. Though it validates religion, mysticism also tends to escape the fetters of organized religion. Compiled from the Encyclopaedia Britannica

*

The discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition renders the whole mystical tradition not only irrelevant but it exposes it for what it is – an aberration from the dim, dark ages of humanity. Far from being outside of an actualist’s area of expertise, the mysticism still taught and practiced in current day science is precisely the field of expertise of an actualist. A practicing actualist has a hands-on experiential understanding of the workings of the human condition (including the instinctive lure of mysticism and spiritualism).

Yeah, but does he have a privileged insight into the ultimate nature of the universe? I need to hear more about your basis for arguing this with such surety.

I am not arguing anything, I am only pointing to the facts. You made the statement that it is a bit rich to label Paul Davies as being spiritual and I simply posted a quote in which he champions metaphysical science. I didn’t need to rely on my ‘privileged insight’, as you put it, I simply went to my bookshelf, pulled out one of his books – it happened to be one of those ones that I read when I was investigating the extent to which spiritualism still dominates science – and sat down and typed out the quote. Given that you didn’t reply I then added another quote for further clarification.

As for your reliance on Paul Davies’ expertise and his insight into the ultimate nature of the universe, you might have noticed that his own research was conducted on a ‘toy universe’ that had only one spatial dimension and not the three spatial dimensions of the world that you and I live in. So much for down-to-earth common sense.

Altered states of consciousness are far more tempting because denial and dissociation are easier options ...

Jeez, not for me. I’ve found ‘denial and dissociation’ so bloody boring as to be an impossible way to live.

I made the comment because this was my experience – even a good many months after I had a good intellectual grasp of the fact that actualism had nothing to do with spiritualism and that any ‘self’-aggrandizing states were but a wank, I gradually became aware that I was having subtle behind-the-scenes ‘self’-aggrandizing feelings. The only reason I discovered them was that they came bubbling to the surface such that I could neither deny them nor dissociate from them. I mentioned it in my journal so as to flag a warning as it were to others who might tread the path –

‘About this time I started to come to grips with an undercurrent of feelings that had been welling up in me as I got further along this path to freedom. As I began to increasingly understand the full extent of what Richard had discovered, I had begun quite cunningly to plot my role in the Movement that would sweep the world. Images of money and fame began to subtly occur – and sometimes not so subtly. I would see myself travelling and talking to halls full of people, spreading the message! Yes, it was good old power and authority again – the attraction of the Glamour, Glory and Glitz. No wonder the Enlightened Ones are seduced and then trapped by it! It seemed to me an instinctual grab for power by my psyche, which rightly felt threatened with elimination. I also had to admit to myself that power and authority was a definite attraction in my desire for Enlightenment – a sort of spiritual version of ‘Money for nothing and your chicks for free’. Peter’s Journal, God

At various times (being aware that ‘I’ am the thorn in ‘my’ side, but unable to penetrate through it) I’ve looked into various spiritual teachings that are light on metaphysics eg. J Krishnamurti and Zen.

Perhaps a better way of saying it is that they are very careful to couch their teachings in words that can’t readily be seen to be meta-physical. Jiddu Krishnamurti played largely to Western audiences so he was usually very careful to couch his teachings as being non-religious and was very careful in his use of words so as to disguise the religiosity of his message. Zen’s metaphysics on the other hand have been penned by men who have spent so long isolated from the world-as-it-is and people as-they-are that their teachings are but rarefied nonsense … which apparently is why they have such widespread appeal, particularly amongst those with an intellectual-only bent.

Oops, there I go again being politically incorrect …

The result has invariably been a numb stupidity, a state of absolute paralysis of will, and a dullness like living death. Obviously never succeeded in breaking down the ego, and without that the ‘spiritual life’ would be intolerable (for me).

I got into spirituality because it promised peace on earth and living in spiritual communities was to be the proving ground of whether this was possible or not. When that turned out to be a furphy, I then figured that the personal pursuit of an impersonal freedom, aka death of the ego, was the go. Over time, it gradually dawned on me that this meant that if I was successful I would end up being a God-man compelled to gather followers in order that they revere me as a being a God-man. About this time the whole spiritual pursuit began to have a sour taste for me.

I’m probably not the best one to judge, but I reckon the psychedelic experience (esp. LSD) is as dramatically different from ‘spiritual’ experience as it is from ‘ordinary’ experience.

Well given that you have considerable experience of being ‘normal’, that you apparently have had psychedelic experiences and that you have had at least one pure consciousness experience that you can remember, you may also come to have an ASC spiritual experience if you hang in with being attentive to your feelings on the path to actual freedom.

The reason I say this is because Vineeto had a full-blown altered states of consciousness experience when she was exploring the issues of love and compassion – in-depth explorations can bring in-depth experiencing of the emotions and passions that are integral to the human psyche. I personally didn’t have an ASC in my explorations perhaps because I had had one previously towards the end of my spiritual years, but I did hit the bottom of fear one day only to experience excruciating dread in a hellish realm that was not dissimilar to Dante’s fiery inferno or the descriptions of Christian Hell.

Not that I am saying that anyone who is now interested in treading the path to actual freedom will have to experience what I experienced, or what Vineeto experienced, or what Richard experienced for that matter, but some degree or type of ‘plumbing of the depths’ is essential in order that one is able to experience for oneself, first-hand, the instinctual passions that lay at the very core of the human psyche. But it is your journey to make, if you want to make it, and only you can make the journey – all I am offering is tips and hints based on what it is that I have discovered thus far. In other words, take these words at face value and decide for yourself in your own experience as to whether they are relevant or not or if they make sense or not.

I’ve never read of a spiritual experience that reveals a universe teeming with self-similar fractal structures at many different levels of abstraction, with the abstract and the concrete interwoven in ways that the most gifted human imagination could *never* devise. I dunno though. Maybe Richard has experienced something of the sort.

I have had only one psychedelic drug experience in my life and that was when I was a 20yr. old travelling around Europe. Someone offered me a pill that they said ‘would make me feel good’ and me, being a gullible lad from conservative suburban Australia, took it thinking it was some type of vitamin pill. I can only presume it was LSD as what followed was a complete distortion of all my sensory inputs which was quite something as I was then driven through downtown Frankfurt for a night at a bar. Lights, noise and movement were but a jumble and any attempts at orienting myself or making sense of what was happening or of what I was experiencing as apparently happening were impossible.

I didn’t experience the psychedelic experience as being an expansion of consciousness as some say it is but rather as a distortion of sensory perception which usually entices the mind to imagine all sorts of weird and wonderful scenarios, and sometimes downright terrifying ones by all accounts. Presumably one could have a spiritual experience in such a state, imagining there to be fairies at the bottom of the garden or that it is all God’s ‘Leela’ or even that all of what one is experiencing is but an illusion staged solely for my benefit, but I am no expert in drug-induced experiences. I do know that one psychedelic experience was enough for me … I never hankered for more.

Anyway, you can assert all you want, the plain fact is, you’re saying nothing different from what Zen, Dzogchen, Advaita and several other systems, Eastern AND Western, say. I wouldn’t say your message is exactly common as muck, it’s quite rare, but not all that rare, and certainly not unique as you claim. I guess the sort of ‘Ayn Rand on acid’ aspect of what you’re saying is slightly unusual, but even then, the combination of pure objectivism and materialism with mysticism isn’t all that unknown. With genuine enlightenment comes an understanding that both ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ are sort of hokey, and the truth is quite at right angles to either, so either can be used quite comfortably by the experienced mystic. So, the fact that you claim your schtick is unique, what can that mean? Giving you the most benefit of the doubt, it seems to mean that you’re not very well read in this business. Perhaps you immersed yourself for a long time in some obscure, out-of-the-way system that doesn’t interact much with others, and doesn’t recommend much triangulation or ‘cross-training’ (so to speak). I guess living in Australia, that’s possible :-) Either that, or (less charitably) for some reason you haven’t recognised what you’ve read, and you think this thing you’ve stumbled on is something different from what you’ve read about. (That’s possible – it’s not always easy, because of the fact that much of this stuff is not in English, for English speakers to understand what the ‘Sages’ were on about – especially when you take into account translations by mystically inexperienced Westerners with ‘West Bad/East Good’ axes to grind.)

Or perhaps (and now we’re getting down and dirty) you’re just a not-very-clever con artist? (What could you get out of it? Well, what do males who play the enlightenment game get out of it? Chicks, and a living, I suppose – but mainly adulation. Adulation. Adulation.) Or perhaps (perish the thought!) it’s something different: perhaps you’ve fallen into what the Tibetan Tantrists call ‘vajra hell’: your ego has subtly inflated itself to the point where you think you’re some kind of Saviour or Redeemer. You’ve come here to save poor little Us, have you? Come to show Us the Way? Is that it? Which is it ‘Richard’? It’s certainly not what you claim it is, because, as I’ve said, what you’re talking about is not unique at all. No system of any note or repute that I’m aware of (certainly not ‘biggies’ like Zen, Advaita or Dzogchen) view ASCs as Enlightenment. They all say ASCs are a blind alley. They all say ordinary, fresh perception, but without any self-sense present, is the genuine Enlightenment, and that the only ‘training’ required is getting used to THAT. The very essence of the Buddha’s enlightenment was that too. Buddha = Awake. Awake to what? What else is there to be awake to? Great, grand symphonies of unusual and wonderful experiences, cultivated through odd practices? Well, possibly – that fellow Gotama certainly tried all that stuff: but what happens when you stop cultivating such experiences? What’s still there, all along? What do you think ‘Middle Way’ means? So what’s it to be? Who is this ‘Richard’? Not very widely read? Not linking what he’s read with what he’s experienced very well? Vanilla con artist? ‘Saviour’? It’s got to be one of these, or something like one of these, because (for the last time) the notion that what this ‘Richard’ character is offering (however true and worthy it may be) is unique is ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, laughable.

Your post is an excellent example of why the revered wisdom of Eastern spirituality has had its day.

The clamouring for the moral high-ground has indeed become frenetic as each new pundit on the block not only routinely bites the tails of others but feigns to bite their own tail in some sort of ritual public display of male, or female, superiority. If you had cared to skim through the correspondence on the website you would have seen that we have had a good many such types who have regularly paraded through this list, offering nothing but vacuous objections. None have had anything original to say because all of them desperately cling to the narcissistic feelings that come from over-immersion in spiritual beliefs and none have stayed because in the end they have nothing at all to say about peace on earth.

As we say in Australia, come in spinner.

I don’t think you even understand the first thing about Eastern spirituality. Nor Western, come to think of it.

I was never much interested in the philosophy of either Eastern spirituality nor Western mysticism for that matter – being a practical person, I was more interested in finding out how Eastern spirituality worked in practice, i.e. in garnering an experiential understanding.

When I got the spiritual ‘bug’, I turned my back on the materialist world, abandoned my worldly goods, literally wore the orange robes and lived full-time in several spiritual communes – which is to say I lived the spiritual life fully for a period of 17 years. I sat at the feet of arguably one of last century’s most influential Enlightened Masters for a good many years and was eventually able to get to see first-hand the behind-the-stage goings-on of his rise and eventual demise. I then sat at the feet of another, lesser-known Enlightened Master for several years and had yet another opportunity to experience first-hand the behind-the-stage shenanigans … and I was about to join yet another commune of a New-Age Guru when I finally came to experientially understand that the whole of the famed Eastern Spirituality was nought but ‘Olde Time Religion’.

Nowhere did I experience the peace and harmony within the communes that I expected would be the result of devotees who passionately believed ‘We Are All One’ or ‘We Are All That’ or ‘We Are All One Consciousness’ et al.

At present I live in a town that is a Mecca for spiritualists of all ilks and again no-where do I see anything that remotely resembles peace and harmony within the spiritual communities, let alone between the various spiritual communities. Not only that, the spiritualists hold themselves aloof from the rest of the community in which they live by clinging to a spurious moral high-ground based solely on the belief that their particular beliefs are superior to the spiritual/religious beliefs of others. And from this righteous lofty perch they look down on the unwashed, the unaware and the unawakened on whom they lay the blame for the all of the ills of mankind – all the while in denial of the part that they themselves are playing in sustaining the fictitious, but played-out-as-if-it-was-real, battle between Good and Evil, the mythical battle that is the very crutch upon which of all spiritual and religious beliefs are founded.

In other words, spiritualists are busily attempting to rise to the top of a heap which has no existence outside of human imagination – both the heap and the top.

Maybe by now you are getting the gist of why I was attracted to becoming actually free of not only the instinctually-fuelled battle of materialism but also of the instinctually-fuelled fantasies of spirituality as well. Contrary to your assertion that I ‘don’t understand the first thing about Eastern spirituality’, it was because I lived Eastern spirituality for 17 years and found it wanting that I was attracted to something that clearly delivers what spiritualism professes to offer but always fails to deliver – the day-to-day, moment-to-moment inherent peacefulness and perfection of the actuality of this, the only universe there is.

Just wanted to pop in and say hi! My name is <> ... and I just discovered this site yesterday ... and so far, it is just what the doctor ordered. I have been working for some time with #1 bringing in more awareness to the present moment and #2 dropping belief systems/ reference points. There is rich material on this site to assist with this.

As you will discover when you dip a bit deeper into the AF website, the actualism method is not about ‘me’ ‘bringing in more awareness to the present moment’. Such a practice can only result in an increased ‘self’-centeredness – not only do ‘I’ think and feel myself to be the centre of ‘my’ world but, with time and effort and practice, ‘I’ can eventually get to think and feel ‘I’ am the centre of the whole world, and all sorts of narcissistic feelings and altered states of consciousness can result. Actualism, on the other hand, is about being attentive to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive with the committed aim of doing whatever is needed to become as happy and as harmless as humanly possible.

Richard explicitly describes the actualism method in his article entitled ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

As for #2, if you are sincere in working on ‘dropping belief systems/ reference points’ then this sincerity will serve to provoke you into examining the nature of your current spiritual practices and beliefs. The first part of this examination is to determine whether your spiritual beliefs can stand up to intellectual scrutiny – i.e. do they make sense? Most people who have come across actualism have baulked at this preliminary stage of questioning their beliefs and have resorted to raising objections to the central tenet of actualism – objecting to becoming happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they are.

Should you manage to get beyond the stage of defending your spiritual beliefs – defence being the first naturally occurring instinctual reaction – then the possibility arises of being able to read what is on offer on the AF website with clear, non-spiritual, eyes and then the unbridled fun of investigation and exploration as to what it is to be a human being can really begin.

I have been discovering so much within myself ... that in the past I could only see in others ... and I have been discovering that so much of the time I appear to be ‘lost in thought’ ... and that the great majority of my life has been this way.

Should you one day decide to become a practicing actualist, you will discover that rather than being ‘lost in thought’, you are in fact ‘wallowing in feelings’, as is every other sentient being on the planet – which is precisely why the salient traits of the human condition are feelings of animosity and anguish. Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. With the discovery that it is now possible to become free of the human condition in toto, a grand opportunity beckons for those who are sufficiently motivated to become free of this instinctual and social heritage.

With all of my heart, I want to know more about life. I have been down many spiritual roads ... dead ends to be sure.

Yep. There’s far more to life than the pursuit of spiritual fantasies. What actualism points out, in clear and unequivocal terms, is that there is a perfect and pure, peaceful and pristine, actual world – right here in this moment in time and this place in space, under our very noses as it were. And not only does actualism make this clear, it also provides a pragmatic method to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ – to get from being an instinctually-driven socially-embroiled being trapped within a grim instinctual reality to incrementally becoming what you are – a sensuously aware flesh and blood corporeal body able to think and reflect on the infinitude of this, the only universe there is.

I am left again with just me ... and I am happy with that ... for there is much to see, feel and explore with this alone.

If you aspire to be an actualist, you will have to set your sights a good deal higher than being happy being just ‘me’. The Eastern spiritual teachings of ‘be content with being ‘who’ you are’ has enticed so many seekers to give up seeking peace on earth and conned them into settling for second best. I couldn’t do it.

I am fascinated right now with intent ... to use intent in the most fierce way to #1 live in the present more and more ... and #2 to shed the numerous skins of beliefs and identities.

Well, you are on the wrong mailing list if your intent is for ‘#1’ but you are on the right mailing list if your intent is for ‘#2’. You seem to have serendipitously come across a fork in the road – which way you go is solely a matter of your intent.

And, as you said, your hands are on the steering wheel …

*

Peter ... thank you very much for your feedback. After considering your response, it is evident that, at times, I do not communicate accurately.

Having just re-read your post, I cannot see that you have not communicated accurately. Such a statement could also imply that I have misunderstood what you said – which is a different matter all together.

In the interests of accurate communication, would you like to re-visit the content so that we can sort out the matter?

And also, that I harbour some spiritual beliefs that I wasn’t even aware of.

You certainly are not alone in this. Spiritual and religious beliefs are part and parcel of the human condition – as a human being one either believes in some form of spiritual or religious belief, is tolerant of religious or spiritual beliefs, is antagonistic towards spiritual or religious beliefs, or is agnostic towards spiritual or religious beliefs. There has been no other alternative up until now.

If I may point out, when you said –

‘I am in the course of a long practice of emerging into conscious awareness ... over the course of many years.’

– this was a dead giveaway that you have been practicing Eastern spiritual beliefs for a good while.

And again, when you said –

‘I am left again with just me ... and I am happy with that ... for there is much to see, feel and explore with this alone.’

– this clearly indicated that you believe in the Eastern spiritual practice of accepting and being content with ‘who’ you are.

You might find the following link useful as it points out many of the fallacies and failures of Eastern spiritual belief. You may well be able to easily relate to it as the writing is in the form of a book review of a Western man who has written about Eastern spirituality, in other words it is an easily understood debunking of what has come to be known as the spiritual path.

To relevance to actualism: If in fact the universe is electric, or if in fact it is filled with rubber duckies ... how is it relevant to actualism?

If you want to contemplate on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being, ...

Most assuredly.

… and your contemplations are based on the currently-fashionable pseudo-scientific theories of an expanding universe – replete with a Big Bang beginning, full of or even empty of, all sorts of unseen, unseeable and unmeasurable phenomena and which will suffer some Diabolical End –

Most assuredly not.

... then you will remain in the grip of spiritual belief.

What few spiritual beliefs I had in the past are gone now. That was the point of describing a bit of my history ... how it was not a spiritual path.

Are you saying that reading Eastern spiritual texts, liking what you read and being attracted to the teachings is to be not on a spiritual path? ‘Path’ as in a motivational direction or line of enquiry or the pursuit of an interest or course of action. Perhaps because you took no action, i.e. didn’t get involved in the nuts and bolts of applying any spiritual teachings, you don’t see it as having been on a path but your point does seem somewhat moot to me.

I have always assumed that those who are at all interested in life, the universe and what it is to be a human being would have found the grim dog-eat-dog reality of materialism to be unsatisfactory and would have explored what was on offer in spiritual teachings and the spiritual world – i.e. to have checked out the spiritual path. At age 32 I found by experience that the grim reality of materialism sucked, by age 49 I found by experience that spiritualism’s Greater Reality is a wank – which is why I moved on to the nuts and bolts of actualism. It makes sense for anyone interested in life to explore what is on offer, to find out if it works and, if it doesn’t work, to move on.

I did not bring that particular kind of baggage, but a whole truckload of many others.

Speaking personally, I found bits of my spiritual identity – be it a Christian moral, a Buddhist ethic, a New-Age psittacism, a Mother Earth belief or such – popping up in my baggage for several years after I abandoned the spiritual path. But then again that is hardly surprising for finding such baggage is the whole point of the process of actualism – to do all ‘I’ can to root out every thing that prevents me from being happy and harmless.

As you said ‘all religion and spirituality is rotten to the core’ – so any skerrick of religious/spiritual belief, no matter how seemingly innocuous or apparently well-intentioned, has to be scrupulously investigated, clearly seen for what it is, and deleted from one’s psyche – firstly as an effect, and then as a fact, i.e. it doesn’t resurface.

Given that have said you welcome feedback, I’ll just round off with a comment on – ‘it seems that mental effort automatically implies a division we experience as ‘self’’. If I read you right, this supposition seems to be a hangover from Eastern religious belief wherein the ‘self’ is believed to be a thinking-self or ego-self only and a spurious feeling of freedom is gained by abandoning common sense thinking in an attempt to become a feeling-self only.

As you know by now this is old archaic thinking – superstition based on ignorance of fact and empirical observation. To suppose that one can become free of being a psychological and psychic ‘self’ without ‘mental effort’ does not make sense. After all, ‘who’ you think you are is the result of thousands of years of cultural and social programming and ‘who’ you feel you are is the end result of billions of years of the genetically-sequenced struggle for survival of life on this planet. To become free of all of this programming in order for intelligence to be freed from these brutish instinctual passions is no easy task – to abandon thinking in favour of feeling is to forsake this task in favour of ‘self’-preservation.

I’m not sure if my comment on ‘mental effort’ is a hangover from Eastern religious belief – I don’t think so since it stems from my own experience.

I don’t know what your particular social programming has been but where I live Eastern religious belief has well and truly permeated all levels of society. Western religions have absorbed many of these beliefs, rednecks spout spiritual psittacisms, schools teach that the ills of the world are due to the evils of materialism and technological inventiveness, the mind-less escapism of meditation is lauded as being the panacea of the stress of a ‘Western’ lifestyle and the popular press and the entertainment industry is awash with spiritual wisdom. Eastern religion and philosophy has gone beyond being a fashionable alternative and has become mainstream respectable. Indeed a whole industry founded on Eastern religious belief has been formed with practitioners, teachers and masters offering cures, healings, therapies, retreats, meditations, and so on.

From observation, the same seems to be the case in almost all western countries, the US included. I only need to tune into Oprah Winfrey in order to comprehend that not only has the US mainstream taken Eastern religious belief to heart but that many have done so by perverting the famed Eastern pursuit of spiritual ‘self’-aggrandizement into an equally selfish pursuit of real-world ‘self’-aggrandizement.

If you have managed to escape from all of this influence, then you start the actualism process from a different point than I did. I spent years believing much of Eastern spiritual belief, in spite of my doubts. It was only when I came across Richard that I found that there was now a third alternative to both materialism and spiritualism.

It’s true that Eastern spiritual belief has permeated the US mainstream, but for many it’s still at a rather superficial level. My programming growing up was Christian – specifically Mennonite. Mennonites are known for their anabaptism and pacifist stance. ‘Anabaptism’ being the doctrine that one should not baptize infants like the Catholics – rather wait until a person can personally accept Jesus Christ as their ‘saviour.’ The pacifist stance is the more popularized trademark of being a Mennonite. I was registered a ‘co’ (conscientious objector) – which at 18 I hadn’t thought about what that meant so much, just that I was glad that I had an easy card to play to get out of going to war for my country – should that situation arise.

I’m not sure this gives you any vital information about our current discussion, but I thought it might be time to lay some of my cards on the table.

From what you write, we seem to have had very common experiences. Both born into Western monotheistic belief, found that unsatisfactory, moved on. Both checked out Eastern polytheistic beliefs, found them unsatisfactory, moved on. Both found actualism, checked it out, liked what we read, dug in deeper.

So when you say ‘It’s true that Eastern spiritual belief has permeated the US mainstream, but for many it’s still at a rather superficial level’, it does seem to have had more than a superficial influence on your life.

The reason I made the point in the first place is that is was my experience that it took me a good deal of time and effort to divest myself of all of the aspects of polytheistic beliefs I had taken on board over my years of treading the spiritual path. And, as I did so, I was astounded to discover how much these once alternative beliefs had been absorbed into mainstream life, particularly over the last half century.

The other revealing aspect of my investigations into my beliefs was that I also discovered my underlying Christian beliefs emerging as I began to peel away the layers of Eastern religious beliefs. This made me realize that in my spiritual years I had simply layered a new set of beliefs over my original beliefs – and a slightly revised set of morals and ethics layered over my original programming.

*

I find that I spend a good deal of time wanting to sort of ‘jump’ into actual freedom. In other words, it does seem ‘daunting’ at times what’s between here and now and the goal of this process – which seems to bring a kind of ‘self’-loathing – but this must be some sort of cop-out – a refusal to put forth the required effort. It’s possible that the ‘self’-loathing is related to the feeling of ‘not being here’ when I’m not feeling good – so that is probably a good area for investigation.

Yeah. Morals and ethics – the social programming that produces feelings of guilt and shame if you fail to repress or deny your feelings of malice – are part of what I came to experience as ‘the guardians at the gate’. Guardians in that they prevent you from opening the gate to investigating the brutish animal instinctual passions that each and every human being is genetically-encoded with. I only made substantive progress towards becoming harmless when I dared to allow myself to acknowledge the full extent of my instinctual passions and then to dig deep enough to experience them – to feel them in action. <snip> To feel self-loathing, shame or guilt in the face of the fact that you – along with each and every other human being – is programmed with instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire – through no fault of your own or anyone else – is to remain bound within the straightjacket of societal morals, ethics, values and beliefs. Anyone interested in the actualism process will inevitably come across this social conditioning – the ‘guardians at the gate’ – and will become aware of, and experience, the feelings this conditioning is intended to provoke.

Though the self-loathing that comes from shame and guilt is definitely present at times and something that requires detailed examination – I am actually referring to the feeling that ‘I’ don’t want to be ‘me’ anymore. In other words – a strong urge to self-immolate – being depressed at times about the human condition. I’m not really referring to ‘self-esteem’ issues here. Rather, the recognition that ‘I’ cause suffering can bring on the desire to get rid of ‘me’ –as quickly as possible. It could be compared to the resentment that can happen when a PCE is over and one is going back into the ‘real’ world. Maybe what I’m referring to would be better called ‘resenting the self’ as to distinguish it from the moral connotation of ‘self-loathing.’

I have noticed that a lot of people give themselves a hard time – they continuously berate themselves for not being good enough, etc. It’s not an infliction that I particular suffered from but Richard has noted that self-loathing is turning malice in on oneself. I don’t know if you can relate to that.

For me, one of the major hurdles I had to overcome at the start of actualism was pride and there is no greater blow to one’s feeling of pride – or pride’s alter ego, one’s spiritual humility – than to realize how gullible one has been in being a believer in fairy tales and nonsense. The other blow to my pride was that after all my years of searching I had not a clue about the human condition, let alone had I ever been really aware of, let alone understood, how ‘I’ had been programmed.

I’ve included a piece I wrote in my journal on the topic of pride as it may well be useful to any who have trod the spiritual path for a time and are now faced with having to abandon all their cherished spiritual wisdom.

‘Fear welled up in me as I realised I no longer believed in the Spiritual – it was obviously just the religion of the East, and religion had obviously failed in the East as it had in the West. After thousands of years, nowhere is there peace on earth or happiness. But I knew I could not just believe Richard either. The enormity of it all was beginning to dawn on me. Nobody could help me. I could only rely on the facts, my own intelligence and experience. But the facts were undeniable. And a fact is a fact, whereas a belief is only a belief. In short it meant everybody else has got it wrong and I have got it right. I knew that would place me as a heretic – the very people who are persecuted and burnt at the stake! Besides, what about all those years of belief and faith – how could I have been such a fool!

Pride reared its ugly head, but I recognised it as the same pride that had bound me to the spiritual path in the first place and had given me a feeling of superiority. I then realised the connection between pride and humility, so subtly hidden beneath the ‘good-ness’ of the spiritual world. In the end I came to realise that I would be a greater fool to continue pursuing something that didn’t work, simply because everybody else was! It was useful to see Vineeto also struggling with exactly this same pride, as I often saw something in someone else that was relevant to turn in on myself. In the end I realised it was my life, and to worry about what other people thought is not to be free – and freedom was the very thing that I was after.’ Peter’s Journal God

I am this body and the rest is illusion.

If I take what you are saying at face value, I am left wondering how far ‘the rest is illusion’ extends? When you mentioned ‘preparing a nice breakfast, getting dressed a.s.o.’ – is the food you eat in order to sustain ‘you, this body’ also illusionary? Are the clothes you put on ‘you, this body’ illusionary clothes? Is the computer screen you are reading these words on illusionary? Are the fingers tapping on the keys of the keyboard actual, whilst the keys are an illusion? I only ask because tripping off down the path of regarding everything, and everyone else, but ‘you’ – by whatever name you label yourself – as an illusion is to risk becoming utterly and completely ‘self’-centred.

In the latter stage of my spiritual years I had an utterly ‘self’-centred altered state of consciousness – a four-hour experience whereupon ‘I’ was the very centre of a dream-like Universe. It was certainly a blissful and aggrandizing experience – if you don’t want to be here, then being ‘there’ is a great place to be. However, what made me suss about the experience was that not only did the physical world become illusionary, so did all other human beings. It was only when I became a committed actualist and became vitally interested in being here that I came to understand that such ‘self’-centred spiritual experiences are the antithesis of a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience of the actual physical universe that all mortal flesh and blood bodies have sensually experienced at some stage in their life.

Spiritualists have, since time immemorial, made a virtue out of not wanting to be here. For an actualist, wanting to be here is a prerequisite to becoming interested in how I am experiencing this moment of being here – need I say, the only moment you can actually, as in sensately, experience being here.

Adding to that, that it takes (that is for me it still does) to have that fully integrated into the system which happens when by and by the myopic veil of hope for a better moment than this moment or the fear for a worse moment than this, is being removed which indeed is a wonderful experience. end Intermezzo.}

If you regard ‘the rest is illusion’, if that is what you are really saying, then ‘self’-centredness can indeed be a wonderful experience. What I do notice, however, from my perspective of increasingly delighting at being here is that those who regard the physical world as being illusionary do so only by stifling their emotions and disregarding their sensual experiencing.

It is no little thing to question such ideals as pacifism – to not only understand that they fail but to also understand why they fail. It is only by thinking about why conflict is the norm within the human condition that you start to become aware of your own genetically-encoded contributions to the well-spring of malice and sorrow in the world.

This way you move from having an ideal about peace on earth to being interested in actually doing something about peace on earth – in other words, you resurrect your naiveté and take unilateral action.

Pacifism, like all belief systems, has an agenda and protocol. It’s really become clear to me that once one decides what’s good and what’s bad, that critical thinking goes out the window.

What I discovered was that the monotheistic religions tend to be more concerned with morality, with good and bad. The Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, tend to be more concerned with ethics, with right and wrong thinking. Maybe that’s why spirituality has such a strong appeal to men and intellectuals. It has certainly dominated much of the 20^th Century literature, philosophy, theoretical science and thinking to an extent that is amazingly wide-ranging.

That’s the appeal of religious groups ... they’ll quite willingly take over the responsibility for your thinking. There’s a long line of people who quite willingly give up that piece of hard work.

What I discovered was that the Eastern religions were even more insidious than the monotheist religions because their adherents are encouraged not to think about the human condition, not to think about the world as-it-is – not to be at all interested about what goes on ‘outside’, as it were. The followers of Eastern religions are encouraged to ‘accept’ that the physical world is a grim reality and that the only escape is to dissociate from the inherent evil of a grim reality and go ‘inside’, where peace, tranquillity and meaning is to be found.

Over the past few years I have had occasion to have some discussions with a Buddhist and I am continuously amazed at how quickly he can assimilate anything I may happen to say about actualism into his own religious beliefs. He does not even blink an eyelid, let alone stop to think or contemplate. These interactions continue to remind me of the overwhelming power that the sense-numbing combination of belief and passion has over human thinking – so much so that this disability has been recognized in psychiatry and given the label of cognitive dissonance. The other aspect that always stands out in these discussions is that he is so totally self-centred that he has no interest whatsoever in what is happening in the world, i.e. he is so much is he concerned with maintaining his own ‘inner peace’ he doesn’t give a fig about peace on earth.

But what is most fascinating is that I can recognize myself in him, he is exactly how I was when I was trapped within the spiritual world – so convinced I was right that I was completely closed to even considering that there could be a third alternative.

The funny thing is that in my dealings with people who sign on with a religion, there’s an initial rapture as the burden of dealing with life’s issues is lifted, but it doesn’t last, and they tend to slide towards bitterness. Religion is the greatest obstacle to the human race really advancing.

I remember as a kid thinking that religion was silly, the very idea of a white-bearded God sitting on a cloud in heaven seemed really weird. What really shocked me one day was when I realized that the Eastern spiritual group I was in was nought but ‘olde time religion’ cunningly dressed up as something different. A classic example of cognitive dissonance on my part.

From that very first glimpse it took me years to painstakingly extract myself from the spiritual world and in doing so I eventually lost all my friends, all of my clients, and two relationships. To take the step from realizing to action does take both sincerity and effort and the subsequent changes always come at a cost. Needless to say, the tangible rewards for this effort – a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow in my case – far exceed whatever the ‘peace-parkers’ could imagine.

That ‘religion is the greatest obstacle’ is a spiritual-world psittacism often trotted out by spiritualists in order to separate their own spiritual-religious practices from that of the herd. And perhaps the most devious of all of the Eastern religions is Buddhism, despite the fact that Buddhists have been forced into adopting a pre-emptive defence by declaring that ‘Buddhism is not a religion’. Spiritual beliefs are a far greater obstacle than religion for those who are genuinely interested in peace on earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body.

What does separate spiritual people from materialists is that at least some of those from the West took up Eastern religious belief because they questioned the veracity and sensibility of their first religious conditioning – monotheistic religions. Having done so they have unwittingly landed themselves in an even more insidious belief system, one that scorns the worship of One God and yet encourages the followers to feel themselves to be God. However, if a spiritualist has been able to question at least some of their own childhood beliefs, then he or she may be better equipped to question his or her own new beliefs than someone who has yet bothered to question any of their beliefs.

Indeed. History is littered with the bodies of those who were foolish enough to question the belief of others. Whereas actualism is utterly safe, because the only beliefs you need to question to become free of the human condition are your own.

Well, safe is a stretch. Once one questions beliefs to this sort of extent, it’s a one way street.

It sounds as though you have got the gist of what is on offer in the process of actualism.

Radical shifts in perception are usually a one-way street. That’s one of the reasons they’re radical.

Actualism involves much more than a ‘shift in perception’, it involves the deliberate dismantling of one’s social and instinctual identity, a process which will not only bring about a change in your thoughts and feelings but also your actions. Whilst questioning and challenging the beliefs of others is by no means a safe and sensible thing to do, questioning your own beliefs is safe in that the only thing you are doing is diminishing your own miserable and malicious ‘self’. This process is utterly safe because ‘you’ are in control of the extent and pace of the process of your own ‘self’-investigation – only ‘you’ can challenge your own beliefs, no one else can.

You can escape your fate and become the master of your own destiny – the experience of actualism is that no one is standing in the way of you becoming free of the human condition.

*

I’ve been amazed at the chameleon like characteristics of Buddhism ... that’s the primary factor in its spread. It always struck me as odd that Tibetan and Zen flavours bear almost no resemblance.

There have been some examples of spiritualists who even manage to absorb some of actualism into their spiritual beliefs and some have even started to teach their own personal hodgepodge version of actualism to others. What they don’t realize is that they stand out like dog’s balls because they come across in the vein of spiritual teachers – seeking power and authority by questioning and probing the beliefs of others while blithely never daring to question their own beliefs. The reason they don’t dare question their own beliefs, as you put it so well, is that ‘Once one questions beliefs to this sort of extent, it’s a one way street’.

Oddly enough, the principles of AF are similar if not identical to how I interpreted Zen in my early days of study. It has that pure direct simplicity that I thought the Zen guys were trying to convey. Then they got tangled up in much dogma and it started to stink to me. Before you jump on this statement, I must re-emphasize the ‘how I interpreted’ fragment. Or perhaps I was projecting my own view on to their offerings... Who knows, and it’s all moot anyways.

I do recommend spending some time dipping into the spiritual teachings that have lead you up the garden path in past years. I found by deliberately doing this, I learnt a good deal about what makes ‘me’ tick and came to understand exactly what is seductive about spiritual teachings. I also learnt how deeply rooted spirit-ridden beliefs are within the human psyche and how they fit hand in glove with both our social identity and our instinctual identity. Dismissing beliefs or swapping beliefs is not the same as investigating and demolishing beliefs.

Exactly as in my building work, it was not enough to know that something failed – I needed to also know why it failed so I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake again.

*

That ‘religion is the greatest obstacle’ is a spiritual-world psittacism often trotted out by spiritualists in order to separate their own spiritual-religious practices from that of the herd.

Well of course. I tend to lump ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ together. Regardless of the dogma, they tend to smell the same to me.

It takes a good nose to sniff out spiritualism precisely because of its chameleon-like character. As your investigations proceed you may well be surprised at the extent of its almost complete infiltration into every aspect of Western society. I know I was.

Are you discriminating between spirituality and religion? As I said, I tend to lump them together (in one big compost heap), but if you have anything to say on the subject, I wouldn’t mind hearing/reading it.

I certainly discriminated between spirituality and religion for some 17 years. I gave up both real-world materialism and religion for spiritual communes and Eastern spirituality. For me at the time, there was a world of difference between religion and spirituality, they were chalk and cheese. For 17 years I experienced that there were only two alternatives until I happened upon actualism. What I discovered was that I could not just throw away a lifetime of conditioning overnight but that it took a great deal of meticulous effort and a constant attentiveness to become aware of how insidious this programming was such that I could weed it out.

I would assume as more is written and published debunking the myths of spirituality that it may be easier for future generations to see through the myths and legends of spirituality, but at the moment spirituality is the predominant influence in all human social programming. Human beings have come to accept that their instinctual ‘self’ or ‘being’ is a soul or spirit that has a life independent of the physical body and can even survive the death of the corporeal body. Because of this all-consuming belief the only way out of spirituality is the extinction of the soul – the ending of ‘being’ and the becoming of what you are – a mortal flesh and blood body.

It is one thing to read about other people’s discoveries and other people’s debunking of spiritualism and to agree with them, it is another to deliberately set off on a path that leads to ‘self’-immolation. Because of this, an actualist has to make their own investigations into the insidious nature of spiritual teachings and the influence of spiritualism on their own thinking and feeling so as to incrementally free themselves of all spiritual beliefs, concepts and feelings.

Easy is clearly not the right word. Obvious would probably be more suitable. I do have to watch my word selection in this list. ‘We’ cling to our instincts with an iron grip.

I had similar problems with words when I first came across actualism. I started to become aware how loose I was in the meaning of words but that this was generally the case in any discussions about freedom. I realized that it suited me not to question too deeply what was being said because the freedom I was seeking was a feeling-only, other-worldly experience and not a sensate-only down-to-earth experience. After writing my journal, I set about writing a glossary of common terms used in actualism, giving their dictionary definitions and an explanation of the difference between the word’s actual meaning and its varied and confusing spiritual meanings.

It’s really a substantial paradigm shift. The spiritual traditions do adhere to a the-truth-that-can-be-spoken-is-not-the-truth kind of schtick.

Not to mention that other traditional spiritual teaching – the-word-is-not-the-thing. I remember having a conversation with an ardent spiritualist in my lounge room one day and he started down the spiritual line that matter does not exist and that only spirit or energy exists. I picked up a coffee cup and said ‘Are you telling me this coffee cup doesn’t exist?’ He said something like – ‘That’s the word coffee cup, not the thing’ to which I replied ‘No, that’s the thing we call a coffee cup’. He looked at me bewildered for a second because he almost started to consider that the coffee cup might be actual, i.e. existing in fact, in this case made of the material stuff of the earth, exactly like he and I. He quickly continued on with his particular spiritual party line for a bit until I pointed to the television set and asked him what he would call that? ‘God’ he replied and the conversation was all down hill from then on.

Maybe I have it wrong but it looks to me like sorrow comes from fear. For example, if there is a fear of not surviving then there will be sorrow. In other words, isn’t fear underlying the sorrow?

The predominant instinctual passions are those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Although these passions are aspects of a single instinctual genetic program designed solely to ensure the survival of the species they are distinct and separate passions that can be discerned and experienced quite separately and distinctly.

This is not good news for the spiritually indoctrinated, for ancient wisdom has it that the savage passions of fear and aggression are the work of evil spirits whilst the tender passions of nurture and desire are the work of some God, by whatever name. In order to perpetuate this fairy tale, and defend their own cherished spiritual identities, spiritualists must deny the very existence of the four fundamental instinctual passions ... lest their whole world of beliefs come crashing down.

Speaking personally, I started to become suss of the benefits of spiritual practice and the motivations underlying spiritual beliefs after repeatedly observing the fact that the acclaimed Godmen were driven by desire for fame, were often angry and arrogant, cared only for themselves and demanded humility and surrender of their followers. Not only did I see the instinctual passions still present in the revered Gurus but I also acknowledged that, for all my sanctimonious feelings, I was also still capable of being angry, feeling resentful or envious, forlorn or melancholic. And as for fear, I began to see that the way the Gurus overcame the feeling of fear was to trip off into a spiritual la-la land – an inner fantasy world where they imagined themselves to be immortal Beings and therefore transcendent of the instinctual fear of survival.

I fully acknowledge the difficulty of breaking out of the fixed mindset of spiritual conditioning that locks one into seeing everything in terms of good or evil spirits, right or wrong thinking, desirable or undesirable feelings, fearful and mortal or fearless and immortal ... but what to do? Once I understood that the whole concept of spirituality was simply a belief, and a very, very archaic one at that, I was able to stop practicing selective awareness – a polite phrase for blatant denial and sheer hypocrisy – and get on with the business of being attentive to my own feelings of malice and sorrow.

And as I wrote to Gary, once you are attentive to these feelings you immediately have the opportunity to conduct your own hands-on, do-it-yourself investigation of what makes ‘you’ tick.

I cannot find anywhere that David Bohm has mentioned the words ‘evolutionary conditioning’ or anything like these words let alone where he indicates that the instinctual passions are the root cause of human malice and sorrow – all I could find made it patently clear that he lays the blame for the ills of humankind on thinking and not feelings. Given that you have made the claim, perhaps you could provide the evidence that any of the spiritual teachings mention ‘evolutionary conditioning’ … or did you just coin the term on the fly, as it were?

Interesting person that No 58 mentioned a while back: John Wren-Lewis. Wren-Lewis has also been thinking about the effects of instinctual conditioning. Here’s a quote and reference:

‘The hypothesis I’ve come up with is that the block which cuts off so-called normal human consciousness from its roots in that other, impersonal consciousness, is some kind of inflation or hyperactivity of the psychological survival-system. Exactly how or when this originated in the history of our species I have no idea, and at present don’t propose to speculate.’ www.globalideasbank.org/befaft/B&A-5.HTML

However he does not come up with a system for dismantling the psychological survival-system, which is where Actualism is to be commended.

For a start, there is no such thing as ‘instinctual conditioning’, a point I made clear in the last post and one which you chose to ignore.

Secondly, Mr. Wren Lewis makes reference to what he terms a ‘psychological survival-system’, indicating that the survival-system is a mental process – and not a sequential process that is firstly physical, secondarily affective and only lastly cognitive. Not only does he not understand how the survival-system operates, he has no idea how it is passed from one generation to the next and it has apparently never occurred to him that it originated in the human species because the survival-system is common to all sentient animals.

So much for Mr. Wren Lewis’ thinking about the effects of instinctual survival passions – he is doing no more than trotting out the Eastern spiritual party line that thinking and conditioning ‘cuts off so-called normal human consciousness from its roots in that other, impersonal consciousness’, that which is also known as God by whatever name.

I can only assume that this will be another of those quotes you offer in support of your stance but then don’t necessarily endorse?

Actualism Homepage

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust