Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on Love, Divine Love and Intimacy

The major puzzle at this time, however, remained – why did all my relationships fail? Why was it that there seemed to be things that both I, and whoever I was with at the time, would not, or could not, talk about? Why did every attempt to do so seem doomed to end in emotional scenes, covert battles, confusion and final withdrawal? It felt to me that if I ‘surrendered’ on an issue I was dismissed as a wimp, and if I ‘won’, I would have to pay for it later. I hated the conflicts and in the end hoped they would simply pass by, or I would ‘tread carefully’ so as not to upset things. The battles would pass – but then eventually, so would the relationship.

Why did I yearn to be with a woman when I was alone, and yet feel trapped when I was in a relationship with a woman and secretly yearn to be free again? Was it that I had to accept the bad times in a relationship on the basis of ‘this too will pass?’ or ‘that is the way it is – the ups and downs of life.’ In the end, like everyone else I knew, I gave up on relationships; it was just that some chose to stay in their relationships on the basis of it being as ‘good as it gets’. Others stayed because the thought of starting again was too much. I chose to give up. I simply wasn’t willing to get to the same place of ‘stuckness’ and compromise, nor did I want to inflict that on anyone else.

As I look back on these relationships I find it amazing how my attitudes and actions were formed by my social conditioning, and that those instilled beliefs, ‘truths’, ethics, values and morals inevitably ensured the failure of an unliveable ideal. I had simply been re-taught that which had caused the failure of men and women to live in peace and harmony since time immemorial. It became obvious that there was something dramatically wrong with the whole male-female relating business, and that the problem was universal. I simply played out, like a puppet on a string, ‘my’ particular role in a play that was pre-scripted to failure or, at best, a second-rate compromise. Such was my disillusion with the whole business that, by the time I met Richard and Devika, I had not been in a relationship for some three years and had also been celibate for the same period. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

Well, here we go! Love is definitely the most sacrosanct of all the beliefs and ideals that human beings hold dear! What would we be without the hope of love? At least something or someone to make it better, something to look forward to, some value that we all hold in common? When I first read Richard’s journal and saw that he had eventually challenged love, it was a bit confronting to say the least, but then again I could not deny that my love life had always failed. The principle of challenging beliefs – ‘to fervently wish to be true’ as per definition – and looking at the facts of the situation made enormous sense to me, so I was willing to withhold hasty condemnation and find the proof in my relationship with Vineeto.

After all, the very aim of being with her was to prove that I could live with a woman in peace and harmony – come whatever! I won’t bore you by going through the litany of failure of all my love affairs. One thing from my teenage years I find worth mentioning is that whenever I fell in ‘love’ with a girl it was a curious thing. To be accurate and honest what had happened was that – using the current jargon – I had ‘fallen in lust’. At that age I would do anything to get into a girl’s knickers, and then along would come a set of totally confusing and bewildering emotions that sort of ‘came with the territory’. In particular I remember my first serious love affair. We were both about sweet sixteen and very horny; the complication being my fear of getting her pregnant. The sexual tension mounted to an excruciating level, but I was terrified of the consequences of going all the way. After one excruciating evening of ‘almost’, she suddenly disappeared out of my life, to turn up dating someone else. Sure enough, she immediately became happily pregnant by him, and I heaved a sigh of relief. But it did seem odd at the time – was that all she had been with me for? And what about love? Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

It was only when I was finally with Vineeto that I was able to experience, investigate and make sense of the full range of emotions involved in love between a man and a woman. As you know by now, there was an unusual start to our relationship. I had met Richard and Devika some weeks earlier, had been impressed by their story, and was determined to try it out for myself. After deciding Vineeto was the one to approach, and finding her willing, we began our association. I told her I wanted to prove that I could live with a woman in serenity and equity; that I wanted to look at whatever was in the way, and that I was willing to give it one hundred percent. All of these propositions appealed to her very much, although she later admitted that I was not the type she’d usually been attracted to. Our first three weeks were a sort of sounding-out period, a getting to know each other. Sex was pretty good considering that both of us had previously been on sexual diets – more like starvation in my case. What proved excellent and decisive was our willingness and ability to talk and to explore beyond what we had tried in the past: the ‘tried and failed’, as Richard describes it.

We arranged to spend the weekends together, plus one night during the week. I wanted to live together right from the start, but Vineeto preferred to maintain her ‘independence’. The arrangement, however, proved perfect for me. I soon scheduled my time with work in the mornings, Richard and Devika in the afternoons and Vineeto at the weekends; an arrangement that was to continue for six intense months. I had read a good deal of Richard’s journal at this stage and, of course, understood very little as it is so radical and confronting, but I did glean enough to know that the solutions to the problems of men and women relating were to be found beyond the norm. If this meant challenging love as a way of relating then I was willing to at least consider it. When I talked to Vineeto about this idea she was understandably more than a little sceptical! Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

Then subtly things began to get a little awkward, which I first attributed to the radical issues we were discussing and my particularly chaotic and nomadic life at the time. But something else was at the root of the problems between us – something else was causing this ‘dis-ease’ I felt.

I found myself continuously bringing up the issue of her not wanting to live with me and would strongly question her motives for wanting to maintain her independence. She was more cautious about what Richard was saying, quite rightly stating that she didn’t want to just take on another set of beliefs, but I took this as stubborn resistance. I began to become jealous of her around other men and of her time when we weren’t together. We both started to get anxious about meeting times and some misunderstandings occurred because of this. Once I misunderstood something she said, didn’t bother to check, and took it completely the wrong way. By the time a few hours had passed I had made a mountain out of a molehill, interpreted what she had said as her wanting to get out of the relationship, decided this is how women always treated me, and that I wasn’t going to stand for it any more! However, finally I came to my senses, thinking what a good boy I was as I had seen through an old pattern. Little did I know that what I had discovered was to prove to be but the tip of the iceberg.

The final straw came as I waited to meet her one evening and she was late. As the time ticked away, so my mind raced away, and after about thirty minutes I was furious. How could she be late? How could anything else or anyone else be more important in her life than me? As my fury built and built, as my mind churned over countless possibilities as to why she was late, suddenly I began to see the stupidity of it all.

Here I was, comfortably sitting at a seaside café, drink in hand, looking at a spectacular sunset on a warm summer’s evening. I’m involved in the adventure of a lifetime, I’ve found out more about what it is to be a human being in the last months than I have in a lifetime, there is this wonderful woman in my life – and I’m being neurotic because she is thirty minutes late! Gradually I came out of it and was able to be where I was, delighting in the balmy evening air and the gaiety of the scene as the last of the beach-goers drifted home. When Vineeto arrived she apologised for being late, and I explained what had happened to me. We had a beach walk, dinner at a nearby restaurant, and tootled home to bed.

Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why were there increasingly misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. Further, I realised that I had been jealous, possessive, demanding and obsessive with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when the impossible demands of love are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to disappointment, resentment and eventually hate. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that unless I changed my behaviour this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure. This was my last chance and I was watching it wilt away ... and I was actively causing it to happen. At this point I wasn’t interested so much in why I was acting this way, I realised I had to stop! Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

Armed with the conviction of the blindingly obvious, I confronted Vineeto with the news. I told her I was simply going to stop battling her and acting the way I had been. I remember her response as somewhat bewildered and unbelieving, but then again I knew that at least I had to stop the torment in me. What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention made me able to completely drop this destructive behaviour. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. If I was going to beat this thing I had to do it now!

A wonderful calmness came over me; no longer was I thinking about Vineeto when we were apart, and when I was with her I was no longer suspicious, doubtful, impatient or moody. I began to accept her as she was. I was no longer driven to change her. This then brought a corresponding ease in myself for I was able just to be me. After all, the only person I can change is me and I was working on exactly that. In the end I had to assume that Vineeto was with me because she wanted to be with me, as simple as that. And I was with her because I wanted to, as simple as that – no conditions other than our agreement to look at anything in the way.

A week later we both realised that a dramatic change had occurred. A certain excitement seemed to be missing, a passion and bond in our lives. It was quite tangible, and a sense of loss overwhelmed us. It dawned on me what had actually happened. Despite my intentions I had fallen in love about three weeks after we met and had been in love for about six weeks until I had called a halt to the battle. I hadn’t recognised at the time that this behaviour of mine was really love in operation; I only saw it in the end as behaviour on my part that was destroying my enjoyment of being with Vineeto. So this was love, this set of emotions and behaviour: a practical demonstration in our lives, not just a theoretical concept. There was a fear arising in me that by changing my behaviour towards her I could risk losing her, but at least I would not be acting in a way that was destructive to my happiness or hers.

As we sat down to talk about what had happened we both had tears in our eyes. I knew that for me whatever had changed was irreversible. I could not go back, nor did I want to, nor could I pretend. As for Vineeto, she wasn’t any longer with a man who responded in the normal way, a man no longer in ‘love’. This was definitely not the usual male response I had in the past when I would repress or deny my feelings. Indeed, it was because I had experienced them so strongly and understood them so well that I was not prepared to tolerate their destructive powers any longer. In refusing to allow the feelings of love to ruin the peace and harmony with her they actually wilted and eventually died. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

In my life it has only been when I have deeply experienced, investigated and understood my emotions and feelings that I have been able to begin to become free of them. And of course to fully understand that the root of all emotion is malice and sorrow is devastating, to say the least. To see my precious emotions and feelings as nothing more than the bleating of the lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning self – me.

This was appalling enough; but then to realise that not only do I suffer, but that I inflict suffering on others, in this case Vineeto, is to say enough is enough! So I said to myself – ‘Enough of believing in love, there has to be something better.’

At the time it was quite drastic for her; she was bewildered and confused that I no longer was ‘in love’ with her, because at the same time I still wanted to be with her. However, when we were together it was even more intimate and easy. She noticed – as I did – that the pining and longing in the times we weren’t together subsided and she could be at ease and autonomous again in her daily work. The idea of a life without love was still a very strange, awkward matter; it questioned most of what she had ever learned about how to be with a man or another human being. What is left of a woman when she is not in love or hoping to be in love one day; love being such an important, integral part of the female identity and conditioning? Where then is the role of the feminine in life? Yet she could not deny that the actuality of being together without love had improved our association quite remarkably. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

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 formalised 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 idealised 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. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

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 realisation 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.

Love, particularly in the early cyclonic days of a relationship, evokes an obsession to be in the other’s company – here at last is one’s soul mate, someone to spend the rest of one’s life with. No more loneliness. Well, as we all know, this never works out, even if some sort of friendship or bond remains after the fire of love burns out. If, after some time, the couple are separated by death or other circumstances, I have often witnessed that the one who is left behind pines away, his or her life finished, meaningless. This has always appalled me, and I have seen it happen with my mother and countless others. When one’s partner goes, so does the reason for living. These people either live in misery and loneliness, or die very soon after the death of the partner – a form of suicide, as they will themselves to death. Others form in their memories an idealised version of the lost love, to be forever achingly recalled throughout the remainder of their lives.

It was obvious to me that love had failed in my life again and again. Also I have never seen any love affair between a man and woman that lasted; or if it did, it wilted into some sort of sad compromise or bargain. I simply wasn’t prepared to accept that this was the best possible. The cynicism and the general acceptance of the continual and inevitable failure of love in relationships begs the question why people even keep trying. Hope of a True Love rings eternal in romantic novels and women’s magazines while at the same time all the ‘love’ songs croon of the pain and suffering of lost love! Surely love is supposed to be the cure-all for suffering?

It’s just that it doesn’t work and never has. Is it that human beings suffer love because they love suffering? I have experienced this bitter-sweetness of sorrow many times in the past. It’s that ‘At least I’m alive because I’m feeling something’ syndrome. We seem to be as attracted to the suffering of love as we are to the bliss of love. I’ve often heard the saying that people grow and get strength from their suffering – it definitely makes more sense to me to stop inflicting it on myself and others. Love is, after all, an agreement to suffer together. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

Given the failure of love between man and woman, many people resort to unrequited love or Divine Love where the feelings are simply generated and played out in the imagination, uninhibited by any reality. This may be a sufficient substitute for some but I always sought a tangible experience with an actual flesh and blood woman rather than some love and devotion for some God-man, who is usually dead anyway.

You also get to have the wonderful enjoyment of sex, which is not God’s thing really. My experience with Vineeto is that love and its accompanying roller-coaster of emotions and feelings is what really prevents actual intimacy – the direct experience of the other. How can two people relate to each other as human beings with this constant churning of thoughts and emotions? Love is but a failed antidote to fear and loneliness, an attempt to bridge the separateness that inevitably occurs when two lost, lonely frightened and very, very cunning people attempt to live together. The only solution is to get rid of the fearful and lonely ‘self’ in order to allow the direct intimacy hidden beneath. To get rid of imagination and belief is to enable one to begin to experience the wonder of the actual and physical. We have found that living without this emotional burden of love allows us to live together with an ease, comfort, delight and level of consideration that we never thought possible. Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

Of course there is something which is an alternative to love, something vastly superior, and I knew it the day I looked out over the ocean. There is an ease, a simplicity, and a delight in being in the company of a fellow human being who is equally committed to discovering and permanently experiencing this very perfection that is the physical universe.

There is a contentment, satisfaction and exhilaration in knowing we have eliminated sorrow, resentment, jealousy, dependency, moodiness, pining, competitiveness, neediness; indeed, all the emotions and feelings of love. The reward is an actual intimacy that is tangible, sensual, priceless, magical, alive, ever-fresh and ever-present. And this direct unfettered experience of the other is both delightful and delicious! We now get to constantly enjoy the fruits of our own labours. Cute hey!

We do indeed live in peace and harmony... Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

What Vineeto and I experience in our companionship is the direct result of mutual hard-won effort and not of some hand of fate or Karma. It is silly to worry whether this will last forever or that, given a change in circumstances, either of us may have a different companion at some future time. But I live with her as though it will be forever; totally, with no doubt – one hundred percent!

No emotional bond binds us, and because we are free to be together, there is simply no feeling of separateness. Indeed, we no longer belong to, or identify with, the camps of men and women; we have actually removed ourselves from the battle of the sexes and, as such, are regarded by both sexes as traitors to the cause. Seemingly, one is supposed to forever fight for sexual and gender equality, and to simply stop the fight is regarded as an act of extremely naïve foolishness. We have set up as two human beings living together, and it is delicious to share time in talking, shopping, watching TV, eating, and of course sharing the luscious, sensual pleasure of sex. It is all so easy, peaceful, harmonious and equitable. I thoroughly recommend becoming a traitor to both sides in the battle of the sexes. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

At the time life had come to another of those ‘comfortably numb’ stages: good job, house, wife, two kids, two cars. My wife then started to make a few new ‘spiritual’ friends, all while I was at work, so I knew little about what she was becoming involved in. I knew nothing at all about anything ‘spiritual’ and we talked little if anything about it. Suddenly one day she announced she was leaving, taking the children and going to live at the local Rajneesh commune. My mind went into denial, but as the day of her leaving came closer, the enormity of my life falling apart became brutally apparent. I had lived life as well as possible within the value systems that had been instilled in me and now, in a few short weeks, it was all shattered.

I plunged to the depths of despair as all that I had loved, valued and that gave my life meaning was torn from me. One particularly ghastly night I idly picked up a book by Rajneesh and began to read. He talked against religion and society, and alluded to a way of becoming free of sorrow. What he said appealed to the rebel in me, for I was a typical baby-boomer and had been attracted to and done my bit in the anti-war and environmental movements, but this was truly revolutionary! I remember looking at his picture and my heart doing a flip. This was the answer to the mystery of life! It all made sense to me; this was what I was missing all my life. He had come into my life, and I was in love with him. The saviour, at last. Also, it was particularly strong for me to meet all the people in the commune – here was a place of true rebellion!

The communal way of life was a complete reversal of society’s values, those that had failed to give me happiness. Rajneesh and his disciples were devoted to change. Love, peace and Enlightenment promised a way out of the world of violence and misery. Peter’s Journal, ‘Spiritual Search’

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. Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

If the aim of the spiritual path was to deliver to me the much sought-after ‘peace of mind’ then I had to admit that it had also failed. It was possible, through intensive effort and surrender, to still the mind, but from what I had experienced and seen in others, this involved a ‘getting out of it’, into some ‘other’ world. I came to see meditation as no more than sitting in the corner with my eyes shut, pretending the world didn’t exist. When they say the ‘real’ world is an illusion, they do indeed experience it that way. The inner, imaginary world becomes real and the actual physical world becomes an illusion!

I myself have known this when, after six months of withdrawing from the world, intensive spiritual reading and meditating, I was walking along a beach and had an experience of being ‘pure love’. I was Love, and love for everything poured out of me. ‘Existence’ and I were one, and all was love. I, as I normally was, was definitely not there – I had become pure love. Or, put another way, I had an experience of the ‘self’ becoming the ‘Self’. It eventually wore off after about two hours but, on reflection, if I had continued on the spiritual path for longer with the same intensity, I could well have been typing very different words now – no doubt proclaiming myself as the latest saviour of mankind!

Somehow I knew that this was not what I was after, as I wanted to be an ordinary human being, not an extraordinary one like the Enlightened Ones. Besides, I had not met one whose life I would like to emulate. I had also seen enough of the power and authority, with its subsequent demand of worship and adoration, to be dismayed at the thought that this system represented the pinnacle of human endeavour. Some spiritual teachers, seeing this objection in people, are now deliberately trying to appear ‘ordinary’ and make much of the fact. Was it set in concrete that the only way to get rid of the ‘self’ was to become the ‘Self’? Was the only way to escape the misery of being a human being to become a God or God-realised? Well, not according to Richard, and that was encouraging – and inspirational! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

Richard had the courage to leave God behind and he has charted a course to freedom that I was able to follow easily. There is now a third alternative to being either ‘ordinary’ or God, and it works! You simply get out of the world of imagination and into the actual world, and leave both your ‘self’ and ‘Self’ behind. Now there is an escape route that does not involve becoming God, or cunningly becoming ‘one with him’ – a sort of a ‘God and I are best mates’ scenario that men have used to wield power over others and to wage horrendous wars for centuries. It is good to have left God, including all of his aliases (Truth, This, or That, Energy, Tao, Consciousness, Something Else, The Source, Nothingness, Love – either Divine or Universal – Gaia, The Universe, Mother Earth, Aliens, etc...) where he belongs – in the world of imagination.

Finally, it was just a matter of seeing the idea of God or anything else apart from the physical universe as pure imagination. The idea of God, the Good and Love to fight the Devil, the Bad, and Evil is ingrained in us as the only solution to fight the malice and sorrow that we are born with. But now there is available a direct, actual method of ridding oneself of that wiring in the brain – and it works! It does involve having the courage to leave the imaginary world of Gods, Spirits, Love and Good behind, but the understanding and experiencing that the Devil, Bad and Evil are equally illusory is the key to the door. One is then simply able to step out of the so-called real world and into the actual world and leave one’s ‘self’ (and ‘Self’) behind.

To be free of both God and the Devil, both Good and Evil, and enjoy the vast freedom and physical delights of the actual infinite universe ... is to be actually free! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

I no longer run emotions or feelings like sympathy, empathy, love, compassion any more – they are a failed cop out, a film I used to put over things to avoid seeing the actuality of my behaviour, and of doing something about it. Now that I know there is an alternative that works, and that malice and sorrow is optional for people, I regard those who reject this alternative as suffering needlessly and inflicting suffering on others needlessly. One of my prime motives has been that I saw my very interactions with other people as causing pain and suffering in them, even when I was being ‘good’ and ‘loving.’ To suffer myself is one thing – to inflict it on others is malice.

I cared enough to eliminate my selfish malice and sorrow and I will stand no nonsense from others about not being ‘caring’; when what they really mean is not being ‘loving’. Like Richard, I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say, ‘All you have to do is get rid of your ‘self’ entirely, and then you will enjoy unparalleled actual peace for yourself twenty four hours a day, every day.’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

© The Actual Freedom Trust