Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on Freedom from the Human Condition

What is the Human Condition

The Human Condition is a commonly accepted term for human beings as-we-are in the world as-it-is. Despite the enormous technological changes and organizational development of the human species on this planet the Human condition is still epitomized by two major factors. The history of Humanity is essentially a history of warfare between various groups on the basis of territorial disputes or religious or ethical differences. The other major feature is the underlying feeling of sorrow and despair that wells within the human bosom. War, violence and anger and at one end and sadness, despair and suicide at the other, mark the range of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

All sentient beings are born pre-primed with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. They are blind Nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to give one a start in life and to ensure the survival of the species. While absolutely essential in the primitive days of roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease and high infant mortality, it is these very same instincts that we humans have turned into a ‘will to survive’ and this on-going battle of wills now threatens the very survival of the species.

Fear hobbles us with a desperate need to belong to a group, to cling to the past, to hang on to whatever we hold ‘dear’ to ourselves, to resist change, to fear death and to desperately seek power or immortality. Aggression causes us to fight for our territory, our possessions, our ‘rights’, our family and our treasured beliefs – seeking power over others. Nurture causes us to care, comfort and protect but also leads to dependency, empathy, sacrifice and needless heroism. Desire drives us to sexual reproduction, avarice and greed.

We are relentlessly driven, despite our good intentions and moral codes, to act instinctually in each and every situation in our lives and this is the base cause of all our angst, suffering and confusion.

We, as human beings, also have a highly developed sense of self, a sophisticated development of the crude animal sense of self that is clearly evidenced in our nearest genetic group – the primates. This human sense of self is overlaid with a social identity, consisting of the beliefs that had been instilled in us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’, or punished for ‘bad’, behaviour and includes the morals, values and ethics that ensure we are a fit member of the particular society into which we are born. These beliefs we then take on and develop as our ‘own’ identity.

This innate sense of self, reinforced by our social identity, is the very ‘guardian at the gate’, sabotaging any previous well-meaning, but inevitably futile, attempts at fundamentally and radically changing the Human Condition of malice and sorrow within us.

This illusionary self, an alien psychological and psychic entity which takes up residence in the human body, will do anything it can to ‘survive’, including eagerly embracing the imaginary, illusionary ‘spirit-ual world’, complete with the seductive offer of ‘life after death’ for itself.

It is only by sensibly tackling and completely eliminating this instinctually based sense of ‘self’ and its habitat of the ‘spiritual world’, that an actual freedom from the Human Condition is possible. The very ‘me’ who ‘I’ think and feel ‘I’ am is but a software program of beliefs forming ‘my’ identity overlaying an instinctual program and given that they are only software they can be deleted – one can free oneself of malice and sorrow.

A genuine freedom from the Human Condition is now available for those who want it.

Freedom from the Human Condition

Richard had got himself Enlightened some seventeen years before by an intensive method aimed at finding the state he had experienced some time earlier in a ‘peak experience’. He achieved an altered state of consciousness complete with feelings of Oneness and Timelessness, Love for all, Compassion, and a drive to spread his Message. What in fact he had been aiming for was what he had experienced previously – a direct experience of the purity and perfection of the physical universe, but what he had attained he eventually called ‘Absolute Freedom’ – an extraordinary state of bliss and self-aggrandisement. He became at one with God or the ‘Absolute’, as he named it.

As he began to talk to people they told him that what he was saying was very like what the spiritual Masters were saying, and he then discovered that he was in a state known in the East as Enlightenment. Despite the extraordinary wonderful feelings, a few doubts remained simmering beneath the surface: Why was this state different to what he had aimed for, why was he driven to save mankind, why did he feel timeless when the clock still ticked away? He travelled to the East seeking answers but came back even more troubled. Over a period of twelve years he was to question all of the sacred tenets of the Enlightened Ones – the massive delusion as he puts it – and emerged some six years ago into what he now calls ‘Actual Freedom’. The man I sat talking with for hours and hours in his suburban living room had actually forsaken the Glamour, the Glory and the Glitz of Enlightenment! In Eastern Spiritual terms, he had eliminated not only the ‘self’ but the ‘Self’ as well, not only the ego but the soul.

I thought his credentials were impeccable, and he was willing and able to talk clearly about his experiences and discoveries. He had had a female companion for the last eleven years and together they have investigated what is called the ‘Human Condition’ – that set of beliefs, conditioning and instincts that is the program by which human beings have operated ever since they emerged from the caves or trees. Further, they had developed a method for actually ridding oneself of malice and sorrow, the very core of the Human Condition. To become happy and harmless was the term I liked. It seemed to me an eminently sensible aim in life!

I was fascinated to learn that Richard had been Enlightened and had now found a state that he said was vastly superior to Enlightenment. Given the doubts I was beginning to acknowledge to myself about the ‘tried and true’ methods of Religion and Spirituality, I became intrigued that here was something that was new and totally different. The other attractive part was that Richard and Devika had investigated together all the conditioning and beliefs that prevented men and women from living together harmoniously. I decided – after my fifteen years of failed attempts to find any sensible meaning in life – to give this particular way my total effort.

The next thing I determined was to find out in a practical manner if what they were saying was true, factual. Could I live with a woman as I had longed for – free of jealousy, dependency, bickering, compromise, resentment, withdrawal, moodiness, etc? It seemed I had run the full range of failure in relationships, and all around I saw only failure. What the hell, I obviously had nothing left to lose, and I disliked failure intensely!

So, within a few short weeks I had several goals – to experience living on this earth as I had in the peak experience, and to live with a woman in peace and harmony. And I had a new method to follow for possibly achieving it! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

I remember one story that Richard told where he compared coming into the world to joining the army. You stand in a line, naked, and you are given, one by one, the various items you need for army life – underwear, shirts, trousers, helmet, shoes, bag, shaving gear, toothbrush and so on, and you emerge the other end ‘equipped’ for duty. Similarly, my parents, teachers and others had equipped me – as a new recruit to the human race – with the beliefs, values, morals and ethics necessary to join and play my part in the human race. This made sense to me, and I was soon immensely fascinated in uncovering, discussing and investigating each one of these beliefs.

soldier-recruting

I was challenged to investigate the validity of each of them and to determine for myself the facts – what was sensible and what was silly? Had any of these beliefs and values worked, and if not, why not? As human animals we also come into the world already equipped with the basic instincts of fear, aggression, desire and nurture, pre-wired in the brain. These instincts have been instilled by ‘Blind’ Nature to ensure the survival of the species, and it is common wisdom that ‘you can’t change Human Nature’. ‘Of course you can – why not?’ said Richard, and I liked that. Why not indeed? Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

In our investigations we discovered that the very beliefs and instinctual passions which separate man and woman are very similar to the software in a computer. They form the very ‘operating system’ of human behaviour, feelings and thoughts and are the cause of very distinct and repetitive behaviour patterns, but being software, they can be altered and, given sufficient intent, can even be eliminated. The surface layer is one’s social identity – who we ‘think’ we are. This consists of the beliefs, ethics, morals, values and psittacisms instilled in us since birth to make us ‘fit’ members of society. The mere fact that this social imprint varies from culture to culture is clear indication that this programming can be altered. The price one pays for eliminating this programming is social ostracization and alienation from the group, and the subsequent loss of one’s social identity. What one gains is an immeasurable and tangible freedom from the all the beliefs, ethics, morals, values and psittacisms imposed on one since birth.

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’

Being a practical man I went out and found a woman to try out the living-together theory. Simultaneously I proceeded to investigate with Richard all things religious and spiritual. What became apparent was that he was no spiritual Master whose ‘Energy’ created blissful feelings. There were no discourses, no spiritual practices, no meditation – just a frank and open discussion ranging over all facets of the Human Condition. What these investigations started to reveal was confrontational to the very core of ‘who’ I thought I was, because I was one of those human beings suffering from the Human Condition. Every time we would talk about something that I took as ‘right’ or ‘true’ or ‘real’, I was challenged to look at it afresh. Was this just something I had heard or read and assumed to be a truth – or was it that I simply believed or wished it to be true? Was it silly or sensible? What were the facts of the situation? What was my actual experience about this?

My mind would sometimes go into a sort of gridlock, unable and unwilling to withstand what it took as an assault. Rightly so, because the very ‘I’ who I thought I was, was being found out as made up of nothing more than the beliefs of others, society’s conditioning and a set of primitive animal instincts! It was both exciting and terrifying at the same time as I found myself questioning all that I held to be true. I was conducting an investigation into my very own psyche – how extraordinary!

The third thing that kept me going was confidence. What gave me the confidence to continue was my experience that this method actually worked. Every time I looked into a belief and saw that it was only a belief, not a fact, it would soon be demonstrated in my life that I was free of it. I was indeed becoming free, actually, bit by bit – my life was indeed ‘getting better all the time’ (as the Beatles sang). This progress made the spiritual years seem like kindergarten. My relationship with Vineeto had rapidly gone past the point of previous failures and was sailing into untroubled waters. Despite the occasional fear attacks, I was experiencing life as happier, less neurotic, less emotional and much stiller. It actually worked as it went – and, magically, the next thing to look at popped up at the right time. Always the aim is to be happy now, not in some future time. Of course as this succeeded, I simply raised the stakes – what about experiencing life as perfect for twenty-four hours a day, every day? Thrilling stuff indeed! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

Ah! We have come to what Vineeto and I refer to as our second favourite subject.

By freeing ourselves of all the beliefs and instincts that had prevented us from living together in peace and harmony, the pure natural delight of freely enjoyed sex was revealed, step by delicious step. The very process of investigating the Human Condition and putting the issues on the table to be mutually resolved rather than fearfully coveted, allowed us to penetrate this most personal, most intimate of subjects.

More than this, we also dug deep to tackle the instinctual behaviour patterns that ultimately doom human sex to failure, resulting in disappointment, resentment and eventual abandonment. What an utter tragedy as one can have such extraordinary sensory delight from the pure physical sexual play between a man and a woman.

It requires, though, a thorough investigation of all the taboos, mystique and conditioning which have been largely imposed by the priests and gurus – the very same priests and gurus who declare sex to be sinful or to be eventually transcended – abandoned on the path to the Higher. For centuries they have practised their denial and celibacy with monumental hypocrisy and torturous selfishness. They obviously have not a clue when they talk about sex ... and yet it is their Wisdom that we follow! Very curious.

This has been deliberately placed in this sequence in the book, as the free enjoyment of sex is a delightful by-product of the complete process of dismantling the psychological and psychic entity within. In other words, two people have to be equally committed to the process. It takes two to tango of course; human bodies do it easily and naturally – it’s simply a matter of getting rid of absolutely all of the mental wiring that is in the way. It was also essential to bring a halt to the battle of the sexes between us, because in my experience the bed becomes a major battleground. It was also essential to free myself of the set of emotions and instincts called love that prevents the actual intimacy necessary for complete sexual enjoyment. Peter’s Journal, ‘Sex’

The first obvious thing was that the problem lay in my mind. I called it the neurosis – that constant delving into past events and suffering them over and over again, and that continual rehearsal and fear of future events. Some people seem to not even get to this stage of recognising that the problem is inside themselves and not elsewhere. I had always assumed that anyone on the spiritual search had this basic understanding, and that was why they were searching. I am astounded at the number of seekers who still blame other people or events for their own unhappiness.

So the first thing was to recognise that I suffered from an ailment, a dis-ease, called the Human Condition – the core of which is malice and sorrow.

 Sorrow was easy to see in operation in my life – it is a sad world full of suffering, and I have felt the bitter-sweetness of suffering as a human being. Indeed, being and feeling sad is held up as the essence of being human. ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’, ‘It was hard but I learnt a lot’, ‘No pain – no gain’ – all those sayings bear witness to the exalted place that suffering holds in our psyche. I also knew and recognised the self-indulgence of prolonging grief, of soliciting sympathy or – better still – empathy from someone else for the sorrow and sadness in me. To cry on someone’s shoulder or to have someone cry on yours is considered a noble bond – to have a best friend that one can share one’s deepest sorrow with.

Rajneesh invented a group meditation based on sorrow, which I did – two hours of crying, wailing and sorrow for seven days, following seven days of laughing. The big hit for everyone, of course, was the sorrow. It amazed me at the time that during the crying part there was an endless supply of sad songs, but there was no music that made you laugh. In fact, there was no music played at all during this part. I remember experimenting with Vineeto with some CDs I had in the house and, as we listened, almost all of the music invoked feelings of sadness and melancholy. They are called ‘Songs of the Heart’. Now I realise that most of what we regard as entertainment, be it movies, television or books, is but the perverse pleasure of wallowing in sorrow. The lowest of the descending rungs of sorrow I ever got to was despair, both times over women leaving me.

Malice is a bit different as it is generally not upheld as a human virtue and most people even manage to deny it in themselves. It is always someone else who is cruel, jealous, vindictive or violent and I am simply responding to their malice! It was amazing to see in my own children unprovoked and unlearned acts of aggression. The idea that children are born innocent is just an idea, not a fact. I have some memories, even as a kid, of plotting revenge against someone – but of course most of the actual malicious actions were condemned. One didn’t break things, hit people, or say certain things – I was taught to behave ‘properly’. The trouble is, all the malice was then forced into cunning, clever and subversive actions that were to persist in my life. The willingness to tell a tale on someone as a subtle revenge is a classic. We call it gossiping, to disguise the maliciousness. I remember a few times actually having to will myself to stop, biting my tongue. The worst situation, of course, is in ‘relation-ship’ (or ‘battle-ship’) with a woman.

The malice often took the form of withdrawal – an insidious revenge, but also a self-inflicted pain; a terrible price to pay in the long run. I came to see a lot of New Age-spiritual-therapy behaviour as only thinly disguised malice. ‘I have to be honest with you’ or ‘I would like to share something with you’ is usually the opening line of someone who is about to take revenge or be spiteful. Again much of what we humans regard as entertainment is but our pleasure at witnessing malice and violence inflicted upon fellow human beings. Competitive sport is another arena for malice to be played out, whether watching or participating.

A few times in my life the lid would really fly off and rage would surface, quickly followed by shame. In particular I remember a time when we were working with some Indian stonemasons in Poona. One of the workers was doing something wrong despite my having just warned him. Well, I gave him a full serve of rage, only to discover afterwards that he really was doing it right all along. I was deeply ashamed, not only that I had lost my temper, but that I had done the typical thing at the time – chosen an Indian as my victim. A few months ago I even felt the thrill of what it would be like to kill someone, after reading a newspaper article about a murder, and that really brought malice home to me. To experience it in me that intensely was shocking indeed. Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’

This process of identifying various aspects of the human condition within me became a full-time occupation. Whenever I was not experiencing myself at the optimum level possible at the time, I had something, some aspect of the Human Condition, to look at. This constant looking within myself – my psyche – would then expose that particular belief or instinct as silly, not sensible, and it would eventually disappear. Often the change was sudden and dramatic with a corresponding thrill of freedom, while other issues brought a slow, sluggish release. Often I found myself impatient at an apparent lack of progress, just to realise that this was exactly the issue to look at – perhaps the desire for excitement and achievement, or good old boredom. It was extraordinary that the next thing would come along, and the right circumstances and events would occur, confronting and aiding me. Sometimes, seeing through some part of ‘me’ as a mere belief or instinctual pattern would come as a flash of realisation, sometimes as a slow painful dawning, which I would fight tooth and nail, reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone throw out. But gradually I could notice the psychological and psychic entity becoming thinner, actually weakening its hold over me. It then became apparent to me that I was indeed fixing myself up! Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’

Since I met Richard I have been challenging the very act of believing itself, and I am actively dismantling all of the beliefs that I find so as to strip away the veil of misery and sorrow, which they maintain and constantly reinforce. No longer seeing the world through grey or rose coloured glasses, no longer with my head in the sand or in the clouds, means that I am different from other people. I actually experience the world as it is as a perfect place (except for human beings, of course). It requires no belief, faith, hope or trust that this is the case; the physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment. Human beings have just been programmed into believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition.

Further the advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible! The Mother of all beliefs!

It is only a belief-system, but it is very insidious. It creates an imaginary world, made of beliefs, that is so dense, so elaborate and so convincing that it seems real. But it is not actual or factual. And when one first peeks through a crack in the door out from this world it can look overwhelming fearful – that is why it takes pure intent and a certain courage to tackle the journey out. Peter’s Journal, ‘People’

One of the authors I used to like reading was Kurt Vonnegut Jr, and one short story of his particularly struck me. It was set in the future in some mythical world enslaved under the tyranny of a totalitarian government. The authorities had devised various devilish means to prevent excellence from occurring – a sort of levelling out process to ensure everyone was ‘equal’ and kept in their place. He described going to watch the ballet where the ballet dancers had bags full of lead weights strapped to their ankles so they couldn’t leap so high – the better the dancer, the more weights. I have come to see fear and doubt as these weights on my legs, preventing me from being the best I can be.

The very shackles that I would feel, holding me from breaking from the safety of the herd, from striking off to explore and find out for myself. I doubted that I could do it – and I feared the consequences if I did it. In the end a spirit of adventure drove me on from a life merely lived: suffering a slow death of ‘comfortably numb’ with the herd. I was damned if I did try this, and yet I knew I was doomed to a life of slavery to the Human Condition if I didn’t.

I knew the problem lay in my ‘self’, this imaginary construct or wiring in my head and I equally knew I was dealing with imaginary fears and doubts – yet real enough in that they can cause physical reactions in my body. Tensions, stomach upsets, cold shivers and heart pounding reactions are possible, but the source was in my head. I was tackling demons, if you like – and ‘sacred’ ones at that. As much as people believe in good spirits or Gods they believe in evil spirits or Devils. After all, the Good is created to fight the Evil – but both are imaginary.

In abandoning god and the spiritual path I was abandoning the good, striking out on my own with neither the protection of the herd nor of the gods. I guess, looking back, it took a certain psychological courage. Richard likens it to everyone huddling in fear around a fire on a dark night, and he wandered off into the darkness and found it to be both safe and delightful. But people, looking at him as he says ‘it’s okay – there’s nothing to fear out here’, see only demons and the devil. I can also now report that they are indeed only imaginary, and it is safe and delightful in the actual world. Exactly as it was in the peak experience I had all those years ago. Peter’s Journal, ‘Fear’

The means to finding peace for oneself and harmony in living with others is actually so simple and easy. In fact it is devastatingly easy; it obliterates and eliminates malice and sorrow. It involves nothing more than looking at the facts of living as a human on this earth and courageously investigating all of the beliefs held as sacred or set in concrete. We, as human beings, seem to intrinsically know that something is wrong. Is life really a sick joke? Are human beings doomed to forever live in misery, suffering and violence; living in eternal hope that some imaginary God will come back to stop the suffering? Is this really some sort of halfway house where we have to suffer rightly according to some Ancient Wisdom of some long dead Guru or mythical God? Is the best that we can aspire to become either a Saint or an Enlightened One – those appallingly arrogant and deluded God-men? Or are we part of some vast cosmic game-plan in which the Chosen few will be whisked away to some utopia either in this universe or another? Of course not!

If, as a human being, you are concerned with these matters, this book offers the solution ... not as another solution within the ‘tried and true’ system of beliefs that has forever bound human beings to the concept of ‘it’s impossible to change human nature’. The fact is that an evolutionary change has now begun, pioneered by a human being who simply dared to question the accepted wisdom of ‘Long Dead People’.

There is simply no ‘Wisdom’ to be had in believing what Zoroaster, Jesus, Buddha and the like are supposed to have said precisely because they lived thousands of years ago. They lived in a primitive time when humans had only recently emerged from the caves, believed the world was flat and the sky was another world inhabited by Gods. It is now time for an evolutionary change that will simply make the past beliefs and animal instincts not only archaic and redundant but silly. The way is now open for a new species of human beings to supersede the old. The method to achieve this is simple, direct and straightforward; the results immediate, actual and apparent. You actually change yourself. When you are ready to give up on the idea that there is ‘someone’ or ‘something’ else that is going to fix you up, then you are ready and able to do it yourself. As it begins to work it becomes obvious that no-one else could do it anyway. A confidence gathers, soon an obsession takes over and it quickly becomes the adventure of a lifetime.

The fact is the human brain has been wired with a particular belief system and a set of instincts. Long ago they were necessary for the survival of the species but now they are redundant. It is now time for a human evolutionary change and it is fascinating to be here, on earth, at this time and being aware of the re-wiring happening in my brain and watching it happen in others around. It is fascinating to actually be alive as a sensate, thinking, human being doing this thing and being able to write and describe it as well! Peter’s Journal, ‘Evolution’

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

© The Actual Freedom Trust