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Selected Correspondence Peter Truth
I am happiness to follow the authority of truth (and I am the assumption that you would have me be the following of no other authority?). Speaking personally, I am no fan of the truth as the term is used in the spiritual world. The Godmen I have known flaunted the word in their Godly work but have all shown by their personal behaviour, words and deeds anything but up-front honesty. All of them blatantly contradicted themselves, all of them hid their private indiscretions from their public, all of them reverted to blaming their followers, all of them cunningly did all they could to further Themselves at the expense of everyone else and all of them took the moral high ground while their off-stage life and relationships were a sham of deceit. From my readings and investigations it appears that these are traits common to all God-men. As for ‘the authority of truth’ – spiritual truth only has authority if you believe it to be true. Once you stop choosing to believe, what is factual and actual is increasingly revealed, as layer upon layer of belief and fallacy simply drops away. What is revealed is not grim reality, for that too is a human creation. What is revealed is neither terror nor dread, for these emotions are but instinctual animal passions and these too can be stripped away. But when you stop choosing to believe, what is in fact revealed is the perfection and purity of the actual world.
The God-business is a curious business, hey? With a little clear-eyed looking at the whole business, it can be seen that any belief in a God – by whatever name He or She or It is called in whatever tradition and in whichever culture – arises out of and is dependant upon human suffering. No feelings of sadness, misery, anguish, resentment or animosity – no need to dissociate from being here, no need to believe in a redemptive God and no need to believe in life after death. If one dares to dig deeper into the God-business it gets a whole lot murkier because it can be seen that religiosity and spirituality feed off human suffering, rather as a predator feeds off carrion. In religious belief, Good is sustained by a belief in Evil and the notion of Salvation is promulgated by a belief in Damnation, whilst in spiritual belief the feeling-fed conviction of a peaceful ‘inner world’ is reliant upon a feeling-fed belief in a chaotic ‘outer world’ and the much-lauded dissociated state of Enlightenment feeds off the belief that suffering is part and parcel of being here on earth. What we are talking of on this mailing list – a do-it-yourself method specifically designed to eliminate the animosity and anguish that ensue from the primitive genetically-encoded instinctual survival programming – pulls the very rug out from under all religious and spiritual belief. An end to feelings of sadness, misery, anguish, resentment or animosity brings with it an end to the need to dissociate from being here, to the need to believe in a redemptive God or to the need to believe in life after death. T’is no wonder the objectors to becoming happy and harmless are so numerous ... and so persistent. First and foremost I’m in the Truth-business, Peter. The reason I said God-business is because you have used the word God in the past –
If you now want to call your God by another name then you are in good company – keeping God anonymous, impersonal, obscure or shrouded in mystery has become very fashionable nowadays given that Eastern religion has so heavily infiltrated Western philosophy and religion in the last century. My point was that actualism is not about the God-by-whatever-name-business, it is about the business of becoming happy and harmless – a soul destroying business and not a soul enhancing business, if you like. I find your ‘rubber stamp’ critique/rant on ‘believers’ to be old hat and rather simple minded, even though it’s indeed fairly accurate. I like it that you see my comment as simple-minded – taking a clear-eyed look at something can be seen by some as being simple minded. But I do wonder how you make your judgement of ‘fairly accurate’ – what part is accurate and what part is not accurate. Does ‘fairly accurate’ mean that it is an accurate statement about some believers and/or some Gods but not about other believers and/or other Gods? Believer, agnostic, atheist, whatever the label, genuine freedom is about abandoning the false conditioned self … I remember when I first came across Eastern religion I felt like I had discovered ‘the Truth’, or the meaning of life, and that all I had been conditioned to believe, mainly materialism and monotheism, was nothing but false conditioning. Now I know that the Truth by whatever name is a fabrication based on the notion that there is a conditioned Non-Truth by whatever name. The Truth and its hand-in-glove Non-Truth are but products of impassioned human imagination – neither have any existence whatsoever in the actual world of the senses. … and becoming fully human-fully alive, and I’ll throw in here, for more complete measure, fully male. Does your desire to become ‘fully male’ refer to a prior anatomical incompleteness? And of course leaving NO stones unturned in this ultimate adventure, as I mentioned previously. Unless you are interested in investigating whatever is under the stone you label ‘the Truth-business’ you are wasting your time on this mailing list. Actualism is entirely upfront about the necessity of abandoning all spiritual beliefs if one aspires to become free of the human condition – for the obvious reason that spiritual and religious beliefs are part and parcel of the human condition.
In this case your quoted position is – ‘There is no objective standard defining real/unreal ... There is no objective anything’ Have you been wrongly misquoted perhaps? No. I have already acknowledged that my thinking was ‘wrong’ in your terms, but that does nothing to alter the fact that you regard all that is physical as being illusionary – i.e. spirit-ual or ethereal in nature. *deep bow* Respectfully, I do not regard all that is physical (of or relating to matter and energy or the sciences dealing with them, especially physics) as being illusionary. Being respectful of the material under study, I will not offer further explanation of the truth of all that is physical here. *Mind the keyboard ...* Thank you for not sharing your truth. In my experience God-men tend to get almightily convoluted when they attempt to explain their Truth – that which cannot be described but can only be experienced as a feeling.
One is wise to side-step passionate feeling in any form. Just an observation that may be useful. Be wary for the words wise and wisdom are loaded with emotive meanings. It is common for wise men to end up living in caves or ivory towers, or else sprouting their wisdom from podiums and making a living selling it to others. When I first came across Richard I naturally saw him as a wise man until I realized he was speaking facts and actuality, not wisdom, truth and spirituality. Actualism is not about being wise and there is no wisdom in actualism.
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. It is obvious to any one who thinks that we are all part of the problem. Who was I blaming? So, are you now switching positions and saying you like the way ‘this world is ran by our governments’? Because I see what you see. Even to the unawakened mind it is obvious that some things are worse than others and even the people in government can control the madness to some degree, but far too often they choose not to. How do you think that ‘the people in government can control the madness to some degree’? Are you advocating more police, more armies, more laws? Or should they adopt the Tibetan Buddhist government’s pacifist approach of fleeing to the next country and leaving the people to fend for themselves when madness manifests as invasion by a neighbouring country? This is choosing not to ‘control the madness’ in action. How would you go about controlling the madness given that it is all so obvious to you? Of course they are acting from the same illness as every one else. I shouldn’t have to say anything about this, it is all so obvious. Aye. The illness, as you see it, is that most people are un-Enlightened or un-awakened to the Truth. To use your words, the Truth is
Hence the way to cure ‘the illness’ is to stop identifying with human fear, suffering and hatred. This approach does nothing at all to cure the illness but it does offer a way of psychologically distancing oneself from the illness. This approach to dealing with trauma is commonly known as dissociation.
In the case of spiritual Awakening or Enlightenment, the resulting condition is of an altered state of consciousness where certain concepts such as ‘beliefs, images, fear, suffering, hatred, etc., etc.’, are separated from the conscious personality. Thus, the illness continues unabated and untreated but the traumatized victim no longer associates with the symptoms of the illness and no longer believes he or she has the illness.
Truth is self evident when looked for honestly ... no excuses. Truth, when intentionally hidden, becomes heavy and burdensome. The more one feels oneself to be Divine, the more one is burdened and obliged to spread the message. After all, one has discovered the Truth that we are not mortal grubby flesh and blood bodies, that there is no death, that this physical world is just an illusion and ‘who we really are’ is an Immortal Spirit. The problem is that this is purely a Self-centred realization for the realization is that ‘I’ am Divine and every thing, and every one else, is but an illusion. This inherent Self-centred nature of the experience is exactly why all of the Enlightened beings, why each claim they have a unique message, why they are apt to put down or criticize the Teachings of others and why they compete with each other for followers. This inherent Self-centredness of all spiritual experiences is the direct cause of all the disharmony and rivalry amongst the present crop of teachers and Gurus and all the ongoing religious conflicts and wars between the followers of Long Dead Gurus on the planet. This inherent Self-centredness applies whether one calls one’s new identity an Impersonal Self or a Self – it is still a Self-experience. Purity and perfection can only be realized when both the personal self, as ego, and the instinctual self, as soul, are extinct, and this is clearly evidenced in a pure consciousness experience of the actual world. Doing only half-the-job – sublimating the ego and becoming a Self – does nothing to eliminate one’s malice and sorrow.
Peter makes a very important point about attaching any kind of credit to teachers instead of the Truth of the teachings. I truck not with the Truth, for the Truth is but a lie told over millennia and blindly believed by everyone. I say ‘everyone’, for scratch an agnostic and you will find an ‘I’ll wait and see’ fence-sitter. God is not dead, He/She/It is still very much alive and thriving, which is ridiculous given that He/She/It was nothing but a fear-filled fairy story to begin with. Many organizations require subservience of some kind. There is a great difference between required subservience and the exercise of true surrender within a guru-disciple relationship. If you are saying that disciples willingly surrender, I agree. Few people have the courage to stand on their own two feet and the lure of leaving it all up to, Big Daddy, God, Existence, the Teacher by proxy, etc. is legendary in the human species, as in ‘place your fate in the hands of the Lord’, ‘trust in me and have faith, my son’, ‘Bow down to the Buddha’, trust Existence’ ... Many individuals with a glimpse of the sublime find themselves caught within the Egotism of their own authority. It’s called the instinctive lust for power where I come from, and there is no more powerful feeling than feeling Immortal. This leads them to use their authority to remain an authority and in the ensuing egotistical exercise the value of these individual’s teachings, which in many cases was very useful in the beginning, becomes a muddled ego-mish-mash. In case you haven’t noticed, all teachers ultimately use the ancient teachings as their ultimate authority for there is no greater fear than the fear of God and no greater love than the love for God. What most people miss is the fact that if there is no fear of God, then the desperate need to love and revere God, or His/Her/Its earthly representative, disappears. So I understand Peter’s frustration with the whole process. I am not at all frustrated for I no longer believe in God or the whole ingratiating ‘ surrender and humble yourself before God’ business. There is not a skerrick of spiritual belief left in me. However, it is not just the teachers who are responsible in these cases. Much of the time the students are at least as responsible. There is a paramount unwritten commandment in all religious teachings that has been specifically developed to quell any questioning of the ongoing perennial failure of religion to produce the goods. It goes – ‘regularly and persistently blame the followers for not being good enough, but never, never, never, ever question, let alone blame the sacred teachings, for that is Blasphemy ... and it shall bring down the Wrath of God, or the mob, upon you’. Given that God is a myth, it is always left to the faithful mob do the job. As soon as someone manifests some form of Divine Inspiration there are a host of people just waiting to credit that person. As if the person created something. The Gurus and shaman have created an illusion of their own Divinity in a Greater Reality out of the illusion of Evil in a grim reality. If someone becomes completely deluded such that they are absolutely convinced they are Divine, then they are compelled to spread the message. Being a Saviour of Mankind is part and parcel of the grand delusion – not an optional extra.
To quote the spiritual version of fact vs. truth from Rajneesh aka Osho –
I think it is true that the anticipation, excitement about the expected ‘final event’ in one’s brain is a form of dreaming, escaping the reality. Is it a final barrier? I don’t know. Of course there is only one way for you to find out for yourself, otherwise you will never know or you will have to resort to believing what others say. Merely believing is a poor substitute for a full-blooded finding out for yourself. The act of finding out for oneself, by oneself, is the adventure of a lifetime. And who would have it any other way. This patent nonsense of sitting at the feet of Masters who then tell you in mystical poetic terms of a Truth that cannot be spoken of, cannot be put into words is nothing but twaddle. “The Divine Mystery that can only be lived ...” The reason is that their Truth is nothing more than a feeling – a splendid, all encompassing, overpowering, enveloping, Self-aggrandized feeling of Unity, Oneness, Divinity and the like. Beneath the wonderful feelings lies a dim, dark and ancient ignorance – a turning away, a turning “in” that is epitomized by the aesthetic retreats and lives of denial and renunciation lead by the spiritual pundits, monks, Gurus, etc. The classic expose of the pride of ignorance of the “Ones Who Do Not Know” was Richard’s meeting with a contemporary Guru. Richard stated that he had been Enlightened and had found something that was beyond Enlightenment and was he interested in knowing about it. The Guru said he doesn’t know with firm conviction as though “not knowing” was in itself the Answer. When asked straight up whether he wanted to know, the answer was no. You hear it often in spiritual ‘jargonese’ – “I find I know less and less nowadays and its SO good” What they mean is they can’t make any sense of anything on the spiritual path, so they give up any common sense and let their feelings and imagination run riot – and run riot they do! Ignorance is proudly proclaimed in the spiritual world as Wisdom and this is most clearly evident in Eastern Spirituality.
It is not a lovely thing to see world financial collapse due to ignoring that which is obvious, driven by short-term profit motivations and the idea that this is an ‘us vs. them’ game we are playing here on Earth. These results, however, are what we will ‘enjoy’ if we continue to make choices that ignore this basic truth – the truth that We All Are One. I see you use the word ‘truth’ rather than fact. That ‘We All Are One’ is a belief, and belief means ‘to fervently wish to be true’. The fact is that 5.8 billion of us fight it out for survival against each other.
What you say above here: ‘Certainty and surety comes from facts and common sense’ doesn’t fit my experience. My exp. of certainty and surety comes from knowing who I am, knowing my own truth. And my truth is for me what your facts are for you. This you shouldn’t argue on, ... Everybody has what they fondly declare to be their ‘own’ truth and passionately defend it – even declaring their ‘right’ to do so. Unfortunately, what I discovered was that ‘my’ truth was no more than ‘me’ taking on some particular versions of Ancient Wisdom and interpreting them to fit ‘my’ selfish motives. This ‘I’ did in order to become a member of some particular group and gain a sense of belonging – all to soothe the lost, lonely, frightened, and very, very cunning entity ‘I’ really am. ‘My’ truth was nothing more than a phantasm, designed to perpetuate ‘my’ existence and once I saw and acknowledged this, it was impossible to defend any more. All this would not matter one iota but people do fight with each other as to whose ‘truth’ is ‘right’, or gang together in religious or social groups and fight horrendous wars as to whose collective ‘truths’ are right.
... That the next generation will finally get around to doing something about the endemic suffering and fighting on the planet. Why is it always the ‘next’ generation that is going to find the answer as this generation fails yet again to find the solution to the Human Dilemma and inevitably turns to praying to the Gods for salvation and redemption? Indeed. Absolutely. Why? It is because this generation hides behind political, religious and spiritual answers. In other words this generation, like those that have come before, hides behind fantasies, reacts against the truth. Doris Lessing, ‘This planet is allergic to the truth.’ No, there is this myth that everybody reacts against the truth. Each peddler of the Truth accuses the other peddler of the Truth of missing the point. Thus, Mr. Rajneesh attracted many Western followers with the simplistic message that all Western religions are at fault, while he himself was merely a peddler of Eastern Religion. Thus his followers were seduced into the idea that what he was saying was revolutionary, and of some significance. Everyone loves to rebel and fight against authority and perceived evil and wrongs. Rajneeshees against Christian, Christian against Muslim, Catholic against Protestant, ... the slaughter that has resulted from inanities like that of Doris Lessing or Rajneesh’s tirades against the Christians is legendary and the near-disaster of the Ranch did little or nothing to stop Rajneeshees from desperately clinging to their version of the Truth. The solution lies not in the Truth – or it would have worked by now. It is as simple, clear, obvious and direct as that. Just like your computer, if the program not only doesn’t work but has a serious virus, then just get rid of the lot, and the result is a freedom the likes of which has never been before in history. True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover the facts for oneself – no matter what the dire consequences may appear to be. I can reliably report that the Devil and Evil is as much a fantasy as God and the Good. There is indeed a perfect and pure actual world right under our noses, right now, right here. * I am surprised that you do not find it a fact that people react against the truth. You say it is a myth. This seems strange to me. As I read your correspondence on the sannyas list one of the most outstanding things is the extent to which people react against facts. This is exemplified by the resistance or refusal of some people to have their words fed back to them. Most people want to tread lightly, sticking in the arena of beliefs and spiritual ‘experiences’. You tend to bring in facts, and people just don’t like it. I can see much evidence of an allergy to truth. What does the word truth mean? It means that which is in accordance to the actual state of things; conforming to fact. Truth is not about beliefs. Certainly, as you rightfully point out over and over again, the proponents of each belief system or religion or spiritual path take it that they have found the truth and that the others have not and many are prepared to fight bloody wars to support that. You say ‘True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover the facts for oneself’. Yes. That is so. True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover truth for oneself. Have you not discovered facts? Have you not presented those facts to people on the sannyas list. Have you not presented truth? And do you not find a gross allergic reaction to the truth – the facts – that you are presenting? I agree with Doris Lessing. It is my observation also. The more one presents the facts, the more reaction is generated. This is nonsense. Doris Lessing was talking of meta-physical truth not facts. They have as much similarity as Santa Claus and his ‘flying reindeer’ do to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo moon mission. One is a fairy tale belief and the other is factual – as evidenced by sufficient witnesses, written, audio and film evidence, as well as physical objects, such as capsule, rocket, etc. such as to very reliably taken as a fact. No wonder people ‘assume wrongly’ what you say. As you yourself said – ‘I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly.’ It does seems a deliberate policy in that it enables you to attempt to assimilate what is obviously new and factually based, into what is obviously the same old fairy tale of truths. The spiritual world is literally twice removed from the actual world, in that common sense is completely absent in the spiritual scriptures and in those who follow them. To equate a ‘truth’ and a fact is nonsense. Yes Peter, ‘There is indeed a perfect and pure actual world right under our noses, right now, right here.’ And most people are allergic to being told anything about it. As you yourself said – ‘I can report what I like, to myself or to you. It does not necessarily make it true.’ And just because everybody believes something to be the true, doesn’t necessarily make it a fact. A brief, open eyed, look at history will affirm this as a factual statement. At one point everyone believed the earth was flat. At one point everyone believed the sun went around the earth. At one point everyone believed that there was a physical bit in the body called the soul. At one point everyone believed malice was the result of evil spirits possessing the body. At one point people believed that we humans were meant to forever suffer on earth as some sort of cosmic penal colony – woops ... I’ve jumped ahead a bit there ... Oh well, It’s all such good fun, such a delight to be free of ancient truths – such a liberation, such freedom. * It does seems a deliberate policy in that it enables you to attempt to assimilate what is obviously new and factually based, into what is obviously the same old fairy tale of truths. The spiritual world is literally twice removed from the actual world, in that common sense is completely absent in the spiritual scriptures and in those who follow them. To equate a ‘truth’ and a fact is nonsense. I think before we talk further about this you might consult a good dictionary. You might add a definition of ‘truth’ to the Glossary on your web-site. I like the definition in Macquarie, which reads, in part ‘the true or actual facts of a case’, ‘conformity with fact or reality’, ‘a verified or indisputable fact...’ We have been corresponding with the Sannyas list for about three months and have made it a constant point, in many, many posts, to distinguish between the spiritual truth and facts. The spiritual pundits have made the word truth meaningless to give credence to their particular philosophy or mythical tale. Many, many times in the spiritual world one will see the word truth used, often with capitalisation to denote a Divine Truth. Given that there are about 6,000 religions on the planet, there are at least that many versions of truth or Truth (as in God’s Word). My local new-age bookshop has thousands of books all proclaiming a truth about human existence – and most, if not all, offer contradictory versions, and wildly so. Even within one religion, such as Rajneeshism, there are so many versions of the truth, as he spoke on so many religions and philosophies offering a broad church of Eastern Mysticism to his followers. It is in this context that the word truth, both in the spiritual world and the real world, has lost any meaning, any sense, any credibility as to what may have been a useful dictionary definition. It is for this reason that the words actual and fact are used in our correspondence and deliberately so. We leave the word truth to the duplicity and deviousness of the spiritual world.
... a Truth must be told, must be passed on, otherwise it withers. And when the truth is beyond words...then the telling is less than the truth, is it not? I think you missed the point here. History is littered with teachings of Gurus and Masters whose profound Truth and Divine message has withered on the vine for want of re-telling or being ‘kept alive’ by followers and disciples. I recently saw a TV. program on the last of the Shakers in America who are down to seven people after numbering in the tens of thousands only last century. No-one worships the Greek or Roman Gods any more. Zeus worship is not at all big, even in this New Dark Age, although the female Gods have recently had a fashionable comeback. The point is, One needs One’s followers in order to keep the message ‘alive’, or the Truth withers – it is after all but a fairy tale given validity and realness only by the re-telling. When I was a kid I was told there was a Santa Claus who came in the middle of the night and left presents. I would try and stay awake so I could see him sneaking in. It was only after someone told me he didn’t exist that I realised he had never existed. He was just a myth, a tale re-told over the centuries – but I believed he was real at the time.
I just watched a TV program on war and it highlighted the main causes of warfare as territorial, religious and ideological. Territorial conflicts are perhaps understandable, but religious wars fought over whose God is the only God defy sanity. And ideological wars are equally inane as both sides always believe they are right and the other is wrong. Whatever the reason, it was is always one group against another group. So, what’s the problem? This is how it is on Earth right now. To quote Doris Lessing, ‘This planet is allergic to the truth. That you don’t see the problem, obviously relates to your being on a higher level of consciousness. The only higher level of consciousness that exists in the spiritual world is the level of Divine delusion that one can imagine and sustain. To be Enlightened is the ultimate altered state of consciousness whereby one is convinced one is God or at one with God, a sort of ‘God and I are best mates’ scenario. As for ‘That is how it is on Earth right now’ you should have added ‘and that is how it always will be’ – according to Ancient Wisdom. As for Doris Lessing, she also wrote – ‘We are all of us made by war, twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it.’ Then in the 70’s and 80’s she got in to Sufi Mysticism and ‘evolution of consciousness’ theories. She then wrote cosmic fantasies, dreamscapes, and science fiction and she turned away from the concerns of war. She indeed seemed ‘to forget it’ herself in her later years.
I’m wrong. I know I am wrong, you don’t need to keep telling me. I turned around 180 degrees from where everybody else is headed and went down the wrong path. I simply stopped ding the ‘right’ thing, being ‘right’ and insisting I was ‘right’. I put on my dunce’s hat, went back to school and unlearnt all that I had been told was right. You are also very busy with the issue of me being a liar. Of course I am a liar from your perspective because what I am saying is not your truth, let alone the Truth. However by insisting I am wrong and a liar, you ignore the very point of actualism – it has nothing at all to do with the traditional, the ancient, the normal or the spiritual wisdom of what it is to be human. Actualism is radically different, it is diametrically opposite – it is a path never travelled before. It literally involves going where no man or woman has gone before – from a real-world perspective it is madness and from a spiritual world perspective it is a complete and utter rejection of everything spiritual. Consequently I gave up the traditional well-worn spiritual path years ago. I no longer believe in animating spirits, Gods and Goddesses, ancient healings and esoteric medicines, divinations and prophecies, energies and auras, folk tales and legends, gurus and shamans, fairies and goblins, sacred sites and cosmic planes, chakras and pranas, telepathy and spiritualism, visions and entities, ESP and UFO’s, Chi Gong and Feng Shui, somas and souls, mysticism and meditation, rituals and rites, reincarnations and past lives, karmas and dharmas, other-worlds and other-dimensions, devils and demons and the like. Then, when I was halfway ‘normal again’, halfway and no more, I then finished the job I half-started before I got sucked into the spirit-ual world – I got myself free from the clutches of the real world. Having done that, I found I had literally taken the wind out of my instinctual passions. I can’t remember the last time I got annoyed by something or someone, let alone angry. Sadness has passed so long ago I still am a bit taken aback at how people manage to complain about life and bitch about other people. But I’m getting used to the fact that being malicious and feeling sorrowful is what passes for ‘being normal’, whether it be in the real world or the spiritual world. I’m definitely wrong from your point of view and I am decidedly on the wrong track ... and all I can say it is wonderful to be here. Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
