Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

Peace-on-Earth

So I’m writing to tell the story of how it is possible for any man and woman to live in peace and harmony, for indeed my companion and I are anybody - very ordinary, mortal human beings. Of course, it has only been possible because I have rid myself of malice and sorrow. By following a simple process, alluded to in this book, it is now possible for any human being to free themselves of malice and sorrow, should they so desire. Therefore, it is possible for any man and woman to live in peace, harmony and equity. It is then obvious that all humans can live in peace and harmony on this lush, verdant planet. Should they so desire.

However, nobody but me could rid myself of malice and sorrow - it involved none of the spiritual, social or political ideals, no energy or karma, no trust, faith or hope, and no belief in or surrender to, some Guru or God. I had to do it for myself, by myself, and I had to make it the most important thing in my life. Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

The essential method was to undertake a total investigation into anything that was preventing me from being happy now – after all, the point of living is to be happy now, not at some time in the future, or at some time in the past. The question to ask myself was, ‘How do I experience this moment of being alive?’ Now is, after all, the only time I can experience being happy. Any emotion such as anger, frustration or boredom that is preventing my happiness now, has to be traced back to its cause – the exact incident, thought, expectation or disappointment. At the root of this emotion is inevitably found a belief or an instinct. The ruthless challenging, exposing and understanding of these beliefs and instincts actually weakens their influence on my thoughts and behaviour. The process, if followed diligently and obsessively, will ultimately cause them to disappear completely. The idea, of course, being to eliminate the cause of my unhappiness, so that I can experience life at the optimum, here, now.

It soon presents success incrementally, as freedom from these beliefs and instincts is indeed an actual freedom that results in increased peace and harmony for myself and in my relating with those around me. The method does bring up fear and resistance, because one is dismantling one’s very ‘self’, those very beliefs one holds so dearly. Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

‘It is possible for a man and a woman to live in peace and harmony.’ The idea set me on fire more than anything else that was said, and when I first read Richard’s journal this was what interested me most. The journal explained that he and his companion had, over years of investigation, delved into the beliefs and instincts that are the very root cause of the battle of the sexes. A trenchant and no-holds-barred approach had resulted in eliminating those beliefs and instincts to a point that allowed them to live together in peace and harmony.

This idea is quite the opposite to spiritual teachings that simply give no credence to men and women living together. In fact, success on the spiritual path traditionally meant one ended up alone, celibate and Enlightened. While this has somewhat loosened in modern times, one’s companion then is but a disciple, a disastrous recipe for an equitable companionship between two human beings. The appalling attitude towards, and treatment of, women in the East and their standing in society is ample evidence of centuries of Eastern Spiritual teachings put into practice. And, of course, the pleasure of sex is a definite no-no for the serious meditator and spiritual aspirant.

What was on offer was clearly radically different to both the ‘normal’ and ‘spiritual’ approaches to men and women living together but, as I had always wanted a companion to happily share life’s pleasures with, I decided to ‘give it a go’. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

However, the actual changing of behaviour required my total self-obsession in order to be aware of what I was doing or feeling at every moment. What is it, in me, which is in the road between us? Why am I upset? Why am I annoyed or moody? What is it now that is preventing my experiencing peace and harmony? I was totally interested in what it was in me.

If Vineeto had an issue she wanted to talk about, fine, and if she was willing, and we could look together at something, even better, but it was my peace and harmony in living with her that I was interested in and focused upon. And Vineeto was interested in her peace and harmony. We were then each responsible for our own actions and feelings and for doing whatever was necessary to ‘clean’ ourselves up – to free ourselves of the Human Condition. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

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’

Buddhism is another kettle of fish – or should I say bucket of worms! The core of modern Buddhism, while conveniently ignoring the inanities of its ancient God-ridden scriptures, seems firmly rooted in the principle of compassion. The dictionary definition of compassion is ‘common pathos’, i.e. ‘suffering together’. What I came to see in Buddhists was a moral smugness or superiority in following a higher code, which, of necessity, requires a lesser, poorer class to be maintained in order to practise one’s compassion on. Compassion actually works to maintain and perpetuate misery and suffering. You only have to look at the East with its appalling ignorance, arrogance, oppression, poverty, class structure and religious persecutions to see the results of thousands of years of intense devotion to Eastern religions.

To believe that spirituality holds the solution to violence and misery is to maintain faith, hope and trust in the face of the fact of total and continuing failure, after thousands of years, to bring even a semblance of peace to the planet. 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! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

When I was growing up, as a teenager, it seemed there was a revolution happening on the planet. My father had fought in the Second World War but didn’t talk about what had gone on at all. His sole piece of advice to me was, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do in life, what job you have – be happy.’ I guess he saw that the next war would be fought with Really Big Bombs – atomic bombs – so I might as well make happiness my goal in life, because the next world war would be the last one. In fact the world was facing global suicide, with two nations, each with tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, facing each other in a Mexican stand-off; a bit like two kids in the school ground saying, ‘Go on, I dare you.’ The Cold War was to prove a watershed; from then on world wars meant possible suicide for the species.

I remained in childhood ignorance of the historical significance, but my father surreptitiously passed on his warning – a sort of a secret message against society’s values. Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

University days were filled with a wonderful optimism and naivety as the sixties’ youth revolution gathered momentum. We were going to change the world! Socialism, peace, love, sexual freedom, environmentalism – anything was possible to have or to change. I marched to stop the Vietnam war, I poster-pasted to save the forests, I grooved to the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in London, I hung around in Amsterdam, I travelled to the East, I became politically and socially concerned and involved. I’ve thought about these times during the last twelve months – what happened to the dreams, the enthusiasm of those times?

Remember John Lennon singing ‘Imagine’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance’, or watching Woodstock? We were going to change the world! And then it all started to fade a bit – I got rather lost in the daily business of wife, two kids and two cars. And then, when that crashed, I was off to the East with thousands of others, seduced and fired up by the promise of a New Man, Peace, Love, Utopia and an end to my personal suffering. In fact, the whole of the revolution of the sixties was simply sucked into the mystery, confusion and ‘mindlessness’ of the Eastern religions. Of course spiritualism failed – there was nothing new in it at all, now that I look back. How could the solution lie in the past? There would have been peace and happiness in the world by now if it worked – it has had at least 3000 years to prove itself.

So when the social revolution and the promised spiritual solution failed, I was back in ‘comfortably numb’ normal, but I couldn’t rest there – that naivety was still burning within me, that refusal to accept that this was all there was to life. I am amazed to see that so many people of my generation have reverted to ‘comfortably numb’ – have lost their naivety. Surely the purpose in life is to be the best I can – to be the best possible. Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

I remember a major turning point came for me when I realised I was causing ‘ripples’ for other people by my every action: however subtle sometimes, however unintentional, however well meaning, but ‘ripples’ nevertheless. And by seeing it I wanted it to stop! It became yet another motivation to getting rid of my ‘self’. I wanted not only peace for myself, but for others too.

That is why I stopped battling with Vineeto. To want her to change is the traditional ‘it’s the other’s fault’ syndrome. No, if I wanted peace with her, it was up to me entirely. It had nothing to do with her – it was what I wanted, and what I could actually do, that mattered. So if I want peace in the world, it has nothing to do with anyone else; I simply need to do whatever I need to do to become a non-contributor to malice and sorrow on the planet. It is up to me, not anyone else. If I can’t do it – how can I expect anyone else to do it? But if I can do it then anyone else can! Cute, hey! I have had people accuse me of not caring about the world because I don’t join and believe in the usual efforts to change it. I find this curious because caring about the world is one of the major burning drives in my life and a major motive for ridding myself of malice and sorrow. Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

At one point in my investigation of the Human Condition I was studying what the psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and the like had discovered about human behaviour. I came across an experiment the results of which rocked me to my very core. A series of experiments were conducted at Yale University in the early sixties to test people’s obedience to authority. The most famous was the ‘Milgram experiment’. Stanley Milgram advertised for participants to undertake a ‘memory study’, and subsequently pairs of people would turn up at the laboratory at the appointed time.

One was designated as ‘teacher’, the other as ‘learner’, and it was explained to them that the study was concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The ‘learner’ was then conducted into a room, seated in a chair, his arms strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode attached to each wrist. The real focus of the experiment was the ‘teacher’.

After watching the ‘learner’ being strapped into place, he was taken into the main room and seated before an impressive shock generator. It had a row of thirty switches ranging from 15 volts – ‘Slight Shock’, to 450 volts – ‘DANGER, Severe Shock’. The ‘teacher’ was then told to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the ‘learner’ responded correctly, the ‘teacher’ moved on to the next item; when the other man gave an incorrect answer, the ‘teacher’ was told to give him an electric shock. He was to start at the lowest level and increase the level each time the ‘learner’ made an error.

The ‘teacher’ was a genuine ordinary participant, but he did not know that the ‘learner’ was actually an actor who received no shock at all, but was faking a response. The real aim of the experiment was to see how far a person would proceed in a situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. The actor-learner’s ‘response’ at about 150 volts was a demand for release, at 300 volts an agonizing scream; at 450 volts he was writhing in tortured agony.

In the test every participant went on to administer 300 volts to the learner, with sixty-five percent going to the full 450 volts! Most participants obeyed the instructor, no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seemed to be, and no matter how much the victim pleaded and screamed to be let out. This experiment was then repeated thousands of times at different universities, with identical results. And those participants were just the ‘you and me’ of this world! Ordinary, average, typical human beings!

This experiment and others of a similar vein were the subject of much opposition and were declared ‘unethical’ and soon forbidden. It was considered ethically wrong to conduct experiments that not only proved the willingness of people to obey any authority, however malevolent, but that also revealed the inherent malice in human beings.

Reading about this experiment had an earth-shattering effect on me. I had already had glimpses of this behaviour in myself. The willingness to kill for a cause in Rajneeshpuram, the thrill of killing that I had felt, the joy of revenge – and this is me – in me! What more incentive did I need than this to rid myself of this lust for violence? This instinct of aggression that blind nature has programmed in us all. I also read books and watched programs on TV about that horrendous outbreak of genocide – the Holocaust; the systematic starving, gassing and burning of millions of people. The camp guards were ordinary 50-year-old men and women – just ordinary people like those in Milgram’s experiments, the ‘you and me’ of this world. When push comes to shove, human beings become monsters, and it does not take much pushing – we even seem to enjoy it!

Another TV program I watched reported on the fire bombing of Dresden and other German cities during the war. Vast areas of these cities were turned into raging firestorms of such intensity that people were sucked off their feet into the inferno, and babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms. This was a deliberate policy of revenge for the German bombing of English cities. Civilians were deliberately targeted. The Americans similarly incinerated Tokyo, causing more deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Of some 50 million killed in the Second World War, 30 million were women and children.

When the Americans saw the German concentration camps after the Second World War, they put hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in open fields – in winter – and surrounded them with barbed wire.

They then fed them below minimum survival rations and slowly starved or froze thousands of them to death over the winter. To increase the torture they backed open truckloads of food up to the perimeter fence and left them there to rot. They were the ‘good guys’ and the other side had to be punished for their wrongs! What we call justice is, after all, nothing more than revenge and retribution. An eye for an eye! Such is the appalling extent of malice and sorrow in this world. Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

Ultimately I was seeking peace for myself, of course, but I found it extremely useful to gather as much motive and intent as possible. It can be useful fuel or ‘back pressure’, as Richard calls it. And what better motive to find peace for myself than to become a non-contributor to the malice and violence on this fair planet. To prove peace as an actual fact – for it not to forever remain a hope or an ideal. Isn’t it extraordinary that it is now possible? I’m not asking you to believe me: but I’m unabashedly trying to inspire or seduce you to ‘give it a go.’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

It is so amazing to at last find ‘peace of mind’ – that for which I had searched so long. Most people seeking peace of mind have to withdraw from the real world and find that ‘peaceful place inside’. This is the traditional meditative approach, notoriously so hard to maintain outside of meditation. This approach simply develops a ‘watcher’, another superior, spiritual identity who watches and observes the normal neurotic ‘self’. This watcher or second ‘I’ can then, given sufficient intensity (or a poisoned lolly), be permanently created in the psyche as the ‘Self’ or ‘God-realisation’ or even ‘God’. What a delusion of grandeur on a massive scale if ever there was one. That it has remained unquestioned for so long is tribute only to the desperation of the followers of the various God-realised men and women.

Therein lies the cause of the problems that Richard calls the ‘institutionalised insanity’ of the spiritual and religious worlds. That delusion is definitely not what I refer to as peace of mind. What I experience now is a lack of anything that causes any disruptions, neurosis, worries, emotions or feelings. Waking up in the morning knowing I will have a perfect day is what I call peace of mind. This contrasts markedly with the so-called peace or transcendence of the Enlightened Ones, some of whom I have personally witnessed as being angry, frustrated and wearied. Reading biographies of others served to shatter the myths of those ‘held in esteem’, and I do not regard the legends of the long dead ones as worth the stone they were supposedly chiselled on (...or the rice-paper they were supposedly written on!)

The actual, continuous experience of the much sought after ‘peace of mind’ is proof that this method works. The total elimination of malice and sorrow is now an option. There is now a third alternative available for the adventurous and caring. Now it is simply a matter of choice. The remarkable thing about actual freedom is that it indeed does make peace a fact for me. Not only to be happy but to be harmless as well is to enjoy peace for myself and to be a non-contributor to suffering and malice in the world.

So why not ‘give peace a chance...’ for yourself and others? Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

In my life I have been involved in many revolutionary movements and I had many ideals about changing things. In some thirty years of adult life, I have been involved and concerned with movements for peace; for environmental, political, social and spiritual change. And I have come to see all of them as revolutionary – in other words, going around in circles. I remember watching a TV program about the Hungarian uprising and those that fought and died for freedom. Some twenty years later the Russians simply walked out anyway. I participated in a spiritual revolution with a living Guru deriding the past traditions and the idea of religions only to see him eventually form his very own Religion and become part of the traditional religious warring campus. And the so-called ‘New Age’ of today is really nothing but a return to the Dark Age of spirits, omens, divination, witches and shamans.

And so it has been going on for millennia ... round and round in circles ... revolution after revolution. It is so good to be free of that nonsense and to have found a process that is evolutionary, that actually works. A process that is easy, simple, uncomplicated, describable, direct, and that produces both instant results and an assured evolutionary change for me – becoming actually free of malice and sorrow. It is now possible to change Human Nature. There is now a cure available for the disease called the Human Condition – for those who want to be free of it. Peter’s Journal, ‘Evolution’

I am now actually becoming a free autonomous human being. The idea of causing harm to another human being has simply disappeared: I am free of malice. And also the idea that this wondrous, bountiful, beautiful earth is a miserable place to be has simply disappeared: I am free of sorrow. This is indeed a perfect, delightful universe I am in, and I experience myself as perfect and delightful. After all, what else could I be? I am, after all, one of the ‘human being bits’ of this marvellous universe, made of the same stuff as the universe.

So it is possible for me to evolve myself. And it beats sitting around waiting for Godot. It’s the most thrilling and fascinating journey ... I can’t recommend it highly enough. This is a new, non-spiritual path to a down-to-earth freedom – an actual freedom. All my wishes have come true and more. Life was meant to be easy, friendly, comfortable, peaceful, harmonious, ever-changing, fresh each moment, direct, obvious, and my senses allow my intimate involvement with each person I meet, each event happening, each place I am in. And I can think, reflect, talk and write about what sense I have made of living as a human being ... pure delight...

It is a fact that it is possible for any human being to live without malice and sorrow. And I now await the day for the change to be ‘set in concrete’, as it were. For that curious happening in the brain-stem that Richard has experienced. That bit obviously can’t be ‘my’ doing, but I’ve given it one hundred percent, so success is guaranteed. And it is thrilling to know that the moment is coming.

It is a fact that men and women can live together in peace and harmony; I have proven that with Vineeto.

It is a fact that peace and harmony is possible on earth. Peter’s Journal, ‘Evolution’

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