Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on Fear

The method does bring up fear and resistance, because one is dismantling one’s very ‘self’, those very beliefs one holds so dearly.

It sounds so simple, but most people who had talked to Richard were not even willing to take a small step along the way. Most people would seemingly like their life to be better, but faced with the prospect of actually having to do something themselves, or having to change the way they are, they soon turned away, only to re-run the ‘tried and failed’ methods. Of course, the major fear is that it will work and the ‘self’ will go! For me, I just figured that I had ‘nothing left to lose’, it was either a slow, miserable, painful, death-like life or a quick death of what I saw as the problem – the ‘self’ or ‘psychological and psychic entity’ within. Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

The layer of programming beneath the social identity is the instinctual self – who we ‘feel’ we are, consisting of a primitive sense of self and the survival instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, instilled by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species. This instinctual programming has been held as inviolable and unalterable, and, as such, has remained un-investigated up until now. The only superficial ‘tinkering’ that has been undertaken to date has been to emphasise the so-called ‘good’ instincts of nurture and desire and repress the ‘bad’ instincts of fear and aggression. The social application of morals and ethics provides the ‘carrot and stick’, but police, laws and armies are ultimately required to keep the instinctual passions in check. The whole of our supposedly civilised world is still, at the very core, based on the suppression and control of these primitive instincts. When this veneer of suppression or control substantially breaks down we have riots, wars, anarchy and genocide resulting.

Actual Freedom offers for the first time the experiential evidence that this instinctual programming can not only be radically altered, but completely eliminated. The price paid is a complete eradication of one’s ‘self’ – the alien psychological and psychic entity within the body. This eradication allows an actual freedom from the instinctual passions, that are evidenced as the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. Being free of malice and sorrow, one is able, for the first time, to be actually innocent, pure, perfect and benevolent, to wallow in the sensual delights of the actual world – this paradisiacal magical physical universe. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

In my case I was challenging and dismantling my very maleness – ‘being a man’ and all that it entails. I was actually eliminating a significant part of the psychological and psychic entity within me. This may appear simplistic and easy, but to understand that ‘I’, the ‘self’ who I think and feel I am, is made up of nothing other than these very beliefs and instincts, and then to actively challenge them, and dismantle them, such as to actualize a change in ones behaviour, is a process that most lack the courage to tackle. I was actively and knowingly dismantling and eliminating part of my ‘self’, and I was to tackle not only my fears but the atavistic fears of billions before me who lived with this same fear. This fear is felt most strongly as a fear not only of leaving the herd and striking off on ones own, unprotected, but of being actively ostracised and punished by ones peers. This is, in the end, doing it ‘cold-turkey’, against all of society’s values and morals, and without the salve of the spiritual – but it works. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

Another doubt that emerged about this time was that if I was to throw out spirituality could it be that I would just end up back where I had started, but without love, trust, faith and hope: the very things that made life at least bearable? Would I find myself in some bleak awfulness, some grey world, empty of everything? One day I had a flash of stark barrenness, a glimpse of stark reality – but I knew from my peak experiences that this was simply fear and, sure enough, being only fear, it did not last. I also knew the planet as a safe and wondrous place and the physical universe as indeed perfect in every aspect and I was increasingly experiencing this perfection as an actuality in my life.

I was able to go to bed at night-time saying I had had a perfect day – which was extraordinary and an undeniable fact. I remember it struck me at one point that this effortless, constant, actual experience of stillness was vastly superior to any blissful meditative state, with all its struggle, torture and temporary fickleness.

I also reached a stage where I felt torn apart, as though there were two of me inside. One who believed in the spiritual world – the world of spirits – and was hanging on to it for dear life, and the other me that was simply this body with its physical senses, a delicious calmness and a sense of wellbeing that had replaced the neurosis and swirling roller-coaster of emotions. I was split apart, and it felt like past and future – the person I had been and the ‘whatever I was becoming’ – as layers were falling off me.

But despite all the facts I was still reluctant to completely let go of God. And the reason was becoming glaringly obvious to me, not just a theoretical understanding. I knew what it meant by now. Believing in God, or some Thing, or some Energy meant that I had always abdicated the responsibility of how I was as a human being and therefore would never take the necessary steps to fix myself up. I trusted or hoped that someone or something else would do it one day. If there was no God, then the responsibility was mine. Nobody can fix me up but me. Of course! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

Often it all felt too much as yet another wave of fear swept over me, but three things kept me going. One was the memory of the purity and perfection of the peak experience I had had some ten years previously – and I was beginning to have similar experiences again, little reminders of my goal. The second was my intent. I wanted to live as I had experienced living the peak experience. I had arranged my life in such a way that I could devote almost the whole of my time to this investigation, whether being with Richard and Devika, Vineeto, or taking the time to contemplate by myself. I was also reading prolifically to investigate what was the current wisdom on a wide range of subjects relating to the Human Condition. I soon found myself obsessed, so fascinating was it to discover, for myself, exactly what it is to be a human being. Therapy had been like fiddling with the parts, rearranging the furniture to suit the particular beliefs of the therapist. Here I was taking the whole package apart – stripping away and delving deeper than I ever had before. It occurred to me that no wonder nearly everyone else who had come across Richard had run for the hills! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

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’

My investigations into fear were most revealing. What I came to discover was that human beings are born with an instinct of fear. I only had to observe the animal world to observe fear in action. That world of varying species, all somewhere on the food chain for another species; that world of death and carnage, fight, defend and attack. Kill or be killed, mostly for food to survive, often just for the killing’s sake.

Human beings come programmed with exactly this same instinct, of course. My old ancestor Cro Magnum was, after all, an animal fighting it out with other animals for food, territory and survival. Can you imagine waking up one morning in your cave, the kids are hungry and crying and a bear, tiger or pack of wolves is sniffing around outside, waiting to have you for breakfast. Or you are coming home after a hard day’s hunting and you run into another human on the path with a long spear and he wants you for his supper. Now that’s actually fearsome. And night-time must have been horrendous – so many animals have better night-sight than humans. The noises in the night must have sounded like demons. No wonder the sun was worshipped. So Cro’s fear was the fear of an animal, and very real – the fear of survival; the survival instinct.

But we present-day humans are also ‘wired’ with that very same instinct to survive and as such are forced to go on repeating the same patterns even if it is no longer necessary – even if it is harmful to ourselves! I see this in documentaries of animal behaviour – some of the great migrations in animals are actually suicide runs where birds will fly for thousands of kilometres over areas of good feed and climate to go to some particular spot, and only a tiny percentage survive. But the pattern is repeated again and again and again – for generations and millennia. And it is not only taught to the siblings but comes pre-wired as an instinct. Similarly I was born with a set of instincts that in present times are not only redundant but are actually harmful in that they cause malice and sorrow in me. Blind nature – the animal instinct in me – cares not for my happiness and wellbeing: in fact, it is the very cause of my misery and pain!

Of course it gets a lot more complex than that, because humans have a highly sophisticated brain, able to reflect and communicate, and also a rudimentary ‘self’. This ‘self’ has developed into a cunning and perverse entity, layered with beliefs, myths, morals, fears, fairy stories, gods and devils. The ‘psychic world’ was born and flourished in fear and superstition, peddled by the witches, shamans, priests and God-men. A world of spirits – the spirit-ual world of Good and Bad. The world of ritual and ceremony, prophecy and divination, belief and faith, charms and omens. Supreme in this world on the side of the Good are the saints, popes, and the Enlightened ones, not to mention a few thousand Gods. And a continual battle is fought against Evil, the non-believers, the heathens and the godless. It is all fought out in the ‘cosmos’ – some sort of ancient mythical version of cyberspace. And it is fought over vast eons of time in alternate universes, on different planes or astral dimensions.

The Heaven I was told about as a kid – and thought to be silly – has nothing on this! The whole world is increasingly becoming a psychic battleground as New?-Age bookshops, magazines, therapists and gurus provide the ammunition. They are selling medicine and remedies for fear, while at the same time actively fuelling people’s fears, as it is good business to do so. The predictions and prophecies of doom and gloom, the stories of suffering and mental anguish are insidiously spread, reinforced and embellished to actively promote and maintain fear. Peter’s Journal, ‘Fear’

However, I found, as each of these fears was investigated, contemplated upon, made sense of, and understood completely, the belief that supports the fear wilts in the face of facts. And each of these fears then disappears, one by one, demolishing the bricks forming the illusionary ‘wall of fear.’ I simply keep going to where I want to go and the fear melts away – remarkably leaving no emotional scars. It was, after all, just an illusion; the instinctual, primitive ‘self’ hanging on for dear life – silly bugger!

I remember at one point looking at all the beliefs that made up ‘me’, and I saw them as a mountain, dauntingly impossible to climb. I remember fearfully holding on and desperately clinging to ‘my’ beliefs – a sort of a ‘If I let go of them, what will happen to me?’ However, that fearful image disappeared with the passing of time through the diligent and constant questioning and examining of each of these beliefs.

What happened for me in the later stages was that fear would return in small and intense packages, which could be termed ‘panic attacks’. ‘Am I mad?’ ‘Am I a fool?’ ‘How come nobody else has seen this before?’ ‘Why me?’ etc etc. At some stage there was nothing to do but recognise that this was fear itself, and just ride out the swing, but only if, after assiduous searching, I found no particular cause to be investigated. Then I became aware that the issue was the very instinct of fear itself.

Gradually the attacks became weaker and further apart. Finally a ‘sit and wait it out’ period seemed to come about. Then I started to realise that it required no effort to be here, nothing was needed to be done beyond a few practical considerations to maintain my existence. This meant letting go of control, having confidence that I, this body, will simply do whatever is required to sensibly maintain my existence. Of course. The experience of effortless ease and delight that I have increasingly experienced on this path to freedom serves only to emphasise that the fearful and aggressive entity in me is both senseless and destructive. This ‘I’ is definitely the only thing in the way of my freedom.

It is obvious that this body, does very well itself to survive; in fact, any emotions on top of are actually a hindrance in a genuine situation of danger. I remember recently walking across a field and coming upon a snake. By the time I had registered any emotional reaction, I had seen the snake and had responded automatically before my attention even became focused. I noticed that fear was a redundant emotion, occurring after the fact. And it could well have turned the situation into a danger if I had ‘frozen’. As it was, it was nice to stand and watch the creature for a while, and then move on, giving it a suitable wide berth.

It is well chronicled that many people who have experienced life threatening situations have not had an emotional feeling of fear during the event. Often a feeling of calmness or bare awareness was apparent. I see this as the innate intelligence of the body over-riding the ‘natural’, emotional fear. To live in this unemotional calm state of bare awareness permanently is possible if the psychological instinctual fear is eliminated. Peter’s Journal, ‘Fear’

Once I got the knack of it, I would use the fear in rather the same way people do with parachute jumping and in other dangerous sports. I would take the fear and the obvious excitement, and combine them to experience the thrill of what was happening. Here I was digging into what ‘I’ am made up of, looking inside my head at ‘who’ I am, and how it works, how it operates – fiddling with and adjusting the programming, re-wiring my brain! I was fixing up all the stuff that I’ve been told, throwing out all the falsehoods, myths and beliefs – looking at the facts, discovering and understanding them. Allowing the brain to operate freely, uninhibited by the restraints of past wisdom and animal instincts – a vast and actual freedom.

And once in a while I would come across fear and I would either wait until it went or ride on the thrill of the fear and excitement combined. But the danger was to let it fester into doubt. Doubt is the very ‘self’ rearing its ugly head again! In the end I knew that whenever fear would come up, I was on the right track – I was tackling fear, wearing it out. And, of course, it is but a mirage that soon disappears, and I never had more than I could deal with at one time. But do beware of doubt – the alternative is to freeze in the headlights and suffer a slow fearful death as the years ebb by. Get it over with quick, was my motto. And what an adventure! It beats parachute jumping. Rather than twenty seconds of calm, serene, peaceful, carefree wonder and amazement, you get it twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your life. Peter’s Journal, ‘Fear’

© The Actual Freedom Trust