Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on our Animal Instincts in the Primitive Brain

‘Everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong.’ We had been talking for about an hour. They were the latest of the ‘spiritual people’ who seemed to be coming into my life like a flood at the time. My flat-mate had invited them to dinner and I was curious to listen to their story and hear of what I initially took to be their spiritual experiences and words of wisdom. Broadly, what emerged that I could relate to was that I, as a human being, had been programmed since birth with a set of beliefs, which formed my identity, and that by identifying, challenging and investigating these beliefs they could be eliminated. Further, I had come into the world pre-programmed with a set of instincts, and these instincts too could be similarly eliminated. The ‘I’ that I think I am and that I feel I am, that troublesome psychological and psychic entity, was actually nothing more than the sum total of these beliefs and instincts! And the whole package could be got rid of! Not transcended as in the spiritual world, but actually annihilated. It sounded good to me ... if a touch scary. Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

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 we also come into the world already equipped with the basic instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, 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’

The first layer to be tackled is one’s social identity, the set of beliefs one has been taught by well-meaning parents, teachers and peers and that is constantly reinforced by society at large. We are taught to believe what is right or wrong, good or bad, proper or improper, valuable or harmful, true or false, etc. One undertakes a ruthless and relentless investigation into all of these beliefs, testing them against what are the facts, do they work, have they ever worked, is it sensible or silly? By replacing belief with fact one is weakening and demolishing the very need to believe itself, and one’s freedom from one’s socially-imprinted identity is tangible and palpable. This programming of the social identity is the ‘guardian at the gate’ of instinctual passions, its very instilling is designed to suppress, modify and control our instinctual behaviour.

As such, it is necessary to incrementally free oneself of the associated beliefs, morals and ethics to be able not only to investigate but instigate a radical freedom from instinctual behaviour. For the male of the species these behaviour patterns are well documented with only a few minor variations due to cultural influences. This instinctual behaviour, necessary in ancient times for the very survival of the species, is simply no longer relevant and, in fact, dooms any attempt at equitable companionship to failure. It became obvious to me that I no longer needed to hunt for food to provide for my mate and offspring – I simply work to provide sufficient money.

In days of old, with the dangers and unreliability of hunting, enough was always only temporary; hence the constant drive for more and the constant fear of too little. It was necessary to compete and fight with other animals and humans for scarce food, shelter and territory and it was also necessary to physically protect the women and helpless offspring. Indeed, survival was a grim business – an instinctual obsession.

This is just not the case with me, here, now, in modern times. I simply do not need to behave in this manner any more, it’s plain silly. So much for the need to be constantly driven by this cave-man era behaviour. In ancient times the men would band together in order to hunt, attack and defend more successfully; hence bonding, leadership and group behaviour codes were developed. All this nonsense, however, is simply not applicable to me here, now. What a freedom to realise that I am now free to leave the men’s camp and be rid of this rubbish – to at last leave the protection of the cave and walk upright, safely and autonomously, and freely enjoy the sensual delights of this paradisiacal planet. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

We also discovered that Vineeto was similarly able to leave the female camp. Women no longer need to allow themselves to be driven by the blind urge to produce children, nurture and protect them, while desperately holding on to their man for survival, or having to instinctually ‘rely’ on any man for that matter. No longer is it necessary to provide comfort and succour when he returns from the hunt. No longer do women need to gather ‘around the fire’ with the children, telling stories with the other women, wondering if the men will return. The modern equivalent of this instinctual protective huddle is the feeling of belonging to the ‘sisterhood’, the blind continuation of which only serves to maintain and reinforce the gender battle-lines.

For Vineeto, a major issue was the final dissolution of male authority; of relying on, or rebelling against, a man’s presence or opinion to guide and protect her in everyday life, or of searching for a strong and powerful man to follow or worship in spiritual life. Tackling this issue allowed her to eliminate the patterns of dependency and rebellion, expectation and blame, frustration and withdrawal – and to finally become an autonomous human being, in every aspect of life. What a joy it is to be in the company of a woman who has done this – I am full of admiration for her courage and common sense. With an end to the social and instinctual gender divide, at last equity, a vital ingredient for peace and harmony, is possible between man and woman. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

We went for the jugular and eliminated the very cause of the battle. The answer proved to be 180 degrees in the opposite direction from all the traditional ‘solutions’. The answer lay in thoroughly investigating all the beliefs and instincts that have entombed the sexes in separation and isolation. In seeing and fully understanding the appalling consequences of following the ‘tried and true’ there was simply no way to continue on repeating this behaviour. The answer, after all, could not be found in any variations of the old methods, or they would have worked by now!

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 ostracized 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.

An important point to make here is that in becoming free of the beliefs and instincts, which make us either ‘man’ or ‘woman’, we are now free to choose whatever is appropriate and pleasurable. A man could well be husband, father, provider, home-carer, or businessman – whatever he desires. A woman could well be a wife, mother, provider or pursue a career if she wants to. In freedom, there are no limits – there is such an ease and delight in just being sensible, in not being instinctually driven or socially constrained and bound. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

What we found in our investigations has been quite shocking – a blow to that insidious feeling of pride that inevitably causes human beings to refuse to admit that their behaviour is just plain stupid and that ultimately prevents any possibility of radical, effective change. How could I have been so stupid? But the facts spoke for themselves. How could I have believed that simply because ‘everybody behaves that way’, I should also behave that way? How could I believe that everybody else was ‘getting it wrong’, and not me? Was I going to endlessly try and change every woman I was with or somehow try and find the ‘right one’ amongst the billions? How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me?

But now, I have discovered that it is possible to change – to rid myself of the beliefs of who I ‘think’ I am – my social identity relative to others; and the instinctual passions of who I ‘feel’ I am – the ‘self’ as in self-preservation, fame. Now I am left with ‘what’ I am: a sensate, thinking, flesh and blood body able to reflect on what an amazing universe this is – perfect, except for human beings, and even that is now possible to change. Not merely to superficially change or alter ones human behaviour but to become actually free of the Human Condition in its entirety – to become happy and harmless. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

Over the following weeks we delved into exactly what love is; recounting all the experiences that had caused such difficulties between us, as well as our experiences with others in the past. The ‘falling in lust’ syndrome is an obvious one and the fact of being sexual mates seems to automatically spark off the instinctual primitive behaviour patterns that I have mentioned in the previous chapter. Over the centuries we humans have formalized these instincts of protection and caring into the institution of marriage. Strangely enough the concept of romantic love seems to have only come to real fruition in the Middle Ages when it was idealized in ballads, mythical tales and fables. The beliefs and myths surrounding love are mammoth, but I was only interested in the facts of how this ideal translates into human emotions and behaviour – and mine in particular.

Those facts were that I had wanted to possess, control and manipulate this woman. I would make her into ‘my’ ideal, ‘my’ woman. This behaviour is strange indeed, because one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place was her strength of will, her independence. I remember clearly in past relationships when the battle of wills would surface as a ‘tis / ‘tisn’t, right / wrong undercurrent which would occasionally arise over the pettiest of issues. There would also be a subtle (or with some people not so subtle) putting down of the other, as though trying to keep the other from getting stronger than me, or getting more than me. If the other was getting more attention than me, jealousy would enter. If there was a hint of another man around her then jealousy raged up like some out-of-control monster and I would find myself driven to do utterly stupid things, or be driven to the brink of madness as my mind raced out of control. Crimes of passion and lovers’ suicides are horrific extremes of the destructive power of jealousy.

One of the prime reasons I used to have for wanting to be with a woman was the feeling of emotional support, someone to be with to ‘help me make it through the night’, as the popular song goes. I was actually seeking an antidote to living in this sorrowful world, as I experienced it then. But in fact, whenever I was really in the pits or emotionally needy, a curious thing happened: the woman would lose respect for me or regard me as a wimp.

The same would happen to me when the woman was needy. Eventually I came to the realization that we are actually on our own in the world, and what a good thing that is!

I saw that demanding emotional support from another was a lot like being in a three-legged race as a kid. At school sport days we would have races where you put your arms around your partner’s shoulder, tie your adjoining legs together and hobble along in a race against others. That we should look to each other for emotional support actually handicaps both of us, trapping us forever in mutual misery and sorrow. Ultimately we could reject love by regarding it as supporting the ‘self ‘or the Human Condition – the very thing that both of us sought freedom from. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

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 dis-appointment, 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. Peter’s Journal, ‘Sex’

It is very interesting what happens with this method of ridding oneself of beliefs and instincts. It actually works! I had been around the spiritual/therapy world for years, had probably heard parts of this before, done ‘work’ or groups on the issue before, but here I was able to go straight for the jugular. This was the core of the problem, it was in the road between us, and I needed to be free of it! After all, it was preventing my happiness and enjoyment of life now! I recognized the behaviour and feelings in myself, saw the appalling consequences both to my happiness and that of others ... and then they simply disappeared. The complete and total understanding of a belief or instinct actually results in its elimination. It took a little time, a lot of diligence, introspection and plain ‘self’-obsession – and the will to keep going, to find out. It was often very fearful and I found myself not only dealing with my fears but also with the fear of all humans now and who ever have been. And then, as though by magic, one day I realised I was no longer driven. It had been a gradual process but it had come to an end – it worked. The sex drive, or instinct, had actually disappeared from my life.

It was extraordinarily freeing to no longer be led around by my dick, to no longer revert to fantasy and imagination, to no longer eye off other women. And I am free of the seductive power of women, that ultimate power that women exert over men. Of course, it was not merely an intellectual understanding and it translated gradually over the months into an actual free enjoyment of sex with Vineeto. With fear, guilt, imagination and blind nature no longer present, the physical act of sex reveals its delights – with a real woman, lustily sexual, eyes open, actual, delicious, tactile, sensual, immediate, body-tingling pleasure. The actual physical pleasure of sex revealed was to far exceed the imaginative and fantasy world of sex I had previously lived in. Peter’s Journal, ‘Sex’

Digging into the female sexual instincts also proved illuminating. Although Vineeto had largely come to terms with the desire to have children and had been sterilised when quite young, the instinctual behaviour still continued. We contemplated the fact that blind nature has equipped the female of the species with an instinct to procreate. This means she needs to attract a man to impregnate her, and preferably a physically strong one, in order to then protect her and the offspring. Then comes the need to keep the man around to provide food, shelter and defence. To accomplish this, being physically weaker in general, women had to develop what is known as feminine guile – a series of emotions, games, seductions, ploys, etc.

Even if a woman had a man, this offered no security, so she had to continuously hone and test her seductive powers on other men in case they were needed at any time. She knew that when these powers failed, when beauty faded, when old age set in, she was useless, on the scrap heap. This behaviour is all too evident in current times: women’s magazines bear testimony to this, with their endless beauty and seductive tips. The threat of failure or loss of male protection meant that the support of the other women around the campfire was all she could fall back on; hence the woman’s loyalty to the ‘sisterhood’ is ultimately much stronger than her loyalty to her man.

The elimination of the sexual instincts meant that each of us had to give up all that we thought was essential and set in concrete. It was to give up all that we regarded as her very femaleness and my very maleness.

The results of this investigation are indeed quite interesting. We have discovered a heightened sensual pleasure in sex. We have stripped away all the emotions, fears, blockages, hesitancies, guilt, and any withholding that occurs around sex. It is simply a matter of when to comfortably fit it in to the day, as the resulting sensations can last for hours. It’s that ‘Wow’ or ‘Hmmm’ that we can get at the coffee shop later on that is so good. It is usually obvious when it is a good time to jump into bed, and not being driven takes all the ‘will we – won’t we’ nonsense away. It simply happens whenever it suits us both. Without the sex drive operating we are able to enjoy the whole of the sexual act; it is not just a blind rush to orgasm. We enjoy the heightened physical pleasures of touch, smell, sight and sound, the senses building and building to become purely sexual. Peter’s Journal, ‘Sex’

It felt like I was actually re-wiring my brain, and that is exactly was I was doing. I, as a human being had been wired or programmed in a certain way. This wiring consisted of the beliefs that had been instilled in me from the time when I was first rewarded for ‘good’, or punished for ‘bad’ behaviour and included the morals, values and ethics that made me a fit member of society. On top of it, and developing from the age of about seven were the beliefs and traits I would take on and develop as ‘my own’ identity. Underlying all of it were the animal instincts of aggression, fear, nurture and desire that we are born with.

I remember lying in bed one night and seeing all of this programming as a huge mountain that loomed over me – vast and impossible to climb. Then I went to sleep, forgot about it, and the next day found I was busy demolishing some particular part of it. It reminded me of how I would deal with fear in my life. I would stop my mind from going off into all the worst possibilities and just do the next thing that needed to be done. Applied to the process I was involved in, it worked well, and if it sometimes didn’t, it just meant waiting for the fear to wear itself out – which it always does – and then getting on with the job. So, I found myself using my own intelligence to re-wire my brain. 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’

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 well-being: 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’

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’

© The Actual Freedom Trust