Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.

Vineeto’s Correspondence on Mailing List D

Correspondent No 8

Topics covered

Universal vs. pure consciousness, I stopped the practice of dis-identifying, the folly of ‘uncontracted consciousness’, Galileo *  his teachings of LISTEN and KNOW, ‘unseparated consciousness’ being rude, egocentricity, your own metaphysical interpretation, I wanted to know, discontent with spiritual teachings, Actual Freedom not for you, clip-on terms * blustering , cheap ploys, verifying information, ‘soul-centricity’, PCE, seeing instinctual program in action, no tradition?, ‘actual not be put in words’, distorting, dishonesty, propaganda, instinctual program, outside of tradition, converting, twisted knickers * ‘we are basically the same’, standing alone, ‘what I am I am’, actual freedom, ‘uneventful death’, humility, human developments * exploring the psychic web, ‘ we are all basically the same ’, Poona experience, research of writing on Mailing List B, observing grand Self in action, stepping out of humanity, everybody is actually different

 

12.9.2000

VINEETO: I am curious as to why you would want to use actualism terms to describe your own teachings – like ‘pure consciousness experience’, ‘the purity and perfection of the physical universe’, ‘genetically and socially based reactions’? Can what you teach not stand on its own two feet or be described by its own terms? What is it that attracts you about this third alternative that now you seem to be trying to clip on to your outdated wisdom?

RESPONDENT: I have never read anything about actualism except for the few times I read some of your and Richard’s postings. So why would I borrow ideology which to me seems no less mythological than the traditional? I don’t teach. That is what you do. I question and challenge, and you duck and distort. You really are going over the edge when you tell yourself that I’m attracted to ‘actualism’ in ANY respect. But it is becoming more clear with each paragraph, the emotion-based, ‘affective’ behaviour which you can’t help but evidence when your beliefs are questioned or denied. Just read what you wrote again and listen to yourself.

VINEETO: Those ‘few times [you] read some of ... Richard’s postings’ are a bit of an understatement, as your correspondence with Richard alone amounts to 45,000 words. So you could have easily picked up some good sounding words to integrate into your own ‘question and challenge’ of others. Your habit to chop and change the meaning of what you write and to present your own personal interpretation of words does rather seem to fit your own description of ‘duck and distort’. You also forget that it is impossible to question my beliefs as I have done that myself so thoroughly in the past 3 years such that I have no spiritual other-worldly beliefs left. Now I solely rely on facts and sensate experiences.

*

VINEETO: After 17 years on the spiritual path I simply became dissatisfied with having to maintain and defend my spiritual universe with my beliefs, feelings and occasional spiritual experiences, and I inquired into that which lies beyond my beliefs and beyond my impassioned feelings, both personal and universal. What I found was mind-blowing and beyond my wildest dreams.

RESPONDENT: So what? Many people are disenchanted and discontented with themselves. That is why religion-new aged or otherwise – philosophy, politics and all other forms of self-escape are so universal. Drugs are also mind-blowing. I am just asking why you feel that you, who are presently learning about yourself, can presume, within the imperfections of a learning mind, to be so haughty and ‘verbally absolutist’ – as if you are already ‘there’ or wherever you think you are going? The practical energy of a clear mind is humility, not assertion and dominance.

VINEETO: Ah, I am beginning to understand what your ethics are – humility, is that the problem? I am not demonstratively humble as one should be according to the commonly held religious/ spiritual ethics. ‘Be the last and you will be the first’ was one of my first social conditionings that I learnt from parents, priests and teachers. Now this religious and ethical rule is being reintroduced as the height of Eastern wisdom. Now I am told that ‘don’t dare report your successes to others’, ‘stay a humble learning mind’, your silence is ‘long overdue’, ‘you are too haughty’, ‘you are arrogant’, etc. etc. The humility you preach is nothing but pride standing on its head; it is as much an affective feeling as pride.

In the beginning on this new path to freedom, pride was one of my major stumbling blocks as an actual freedom lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the tried and failed concepts. Actualism involved the demolition of my feeling of pride – and most particularly my spiritual pride – as I recognized that everything that I had believed and held dear was nothing but an elaborate fairy-story taught from birth and given false credence by Ancient spiritual teachings. To admit that I had been hoodwinked – and willingly at that – was such a blow to my pride that I now understand why people who get a whiff of the consequences of actualism usually turn away to re-run the ‘tried and failed’ yet again.

*

VINEETO: When you say that ‘you don’t feel that the journey to organismic freedom ... can be gauged’, you are talking about the journey to spiritual freedom which has been written about as a blinding flash of God-realization by countless sages, shamans and Gurus over millennia. I am talking about an actual freedom where the ‘self’, both ego and soul, has to be dismantled incrementally, step by painstaking step.

RESPONDENT: You really need to stop telling me what ‘you [me] are talking about’. I really don’t care what any sages have said, as my life is not dependent on their words the same as it is not dependent on your assessments and imagination. Now by your own description of yourself as programmed, you are either lying or you are terribly confused. You said that you are programmed both genetically and socially, yet you try to define to me what is the actual freedom from the self, ego and the soul. That sounds to me ‘self/ego/soul’-like some propaganda with which you identify yourself but within the encapsulation of which, you fancy yourself to actually BE what you have accepted as the truth. There are no steps to freedom: it is the ending of both the steps and the imaginary feet that walk up and down them.

VINEETO: You may declare that you ‘really don’t care what any sages have said’, yet you are repeating exactly the same gobbledygook as all the saints and sages were doing and teaching over millennia. Maybe it would be worth your while to read up on Ancient Eastern Wisdom, in case you think that your propagation of an ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ and ‘that universe itself as the human mind, which is ‘cleansing’ itself of the contamination’ is something different, original and unique.

In Eastern Religions the mind is seen as ‘the problem’, and puerile belief-systems and associated practices have evolved over centuries, deliberately aimed at stifling and eradicating sensible thought, such that imagination and impassioned feelings are given absolute reign. The aim is to rise above the animal-instinctual mortal into the good, divine and immortal, whereby one disassociates from one’s bad feelings and identifies with one’s good feeling to such a degree that the mortal ‘me’ becomes the immortal universal ‘Me’ in one sweeping blow. Hence you say that ‘there are no steps to freedom: it is the ending of both the steps and the imaginary feet that walk up and down them.’

Actualism is 180 degrees opposite to that imaginary feeling of freedom. In actualism one abandons and dismantles all of one’s ancient spiritual beliefs and impassioned feelings – the lot, every morsel – and one investigates by ascertaining facts and relying on sensible and sensate experience instead of ‘Self’-centred narcissistic affective experience.

Proceeding on the path to an actual freedom from the Human Condition meant that I stopped the practice of dis-identifying from my thoughts and bad feelings, that I came back to earth from any imaginary ‘universal consciousness’ of blissful feelings and that I started to acknowledge and investigate the facts of ‘me’. This practical investigation is about being aware of and investigating beliefs, feelings and emotions as they happen moment to moment with the aim of debunking beliefs and eliminating the root cause of one’s feelings and emotions. The resulting success is incremental, tangible and demonstrable. My life has become easier and easier, the burden of my beliefs, morals and ethics have vanished, my social identity and my instinctual passions have disappeared to almost non-existent. As actualism is about the genuine elimination of one’s beliefs, feelings and emotions, and not just a change of identity as in a sudden dissociation, the results are gradual, step-by-step, irrevocable and verifiable, i.e. factual.

*

VINEETO: Further, ‘uncontracted consciousness’, as in a mind unbounded by any common sense whatsoever, where the ‘feeler’ is very much alive and strutting the stage, has nothing at all to do with a pure consciousness or an apperceptive awareness that is free from feelings and instinctual passions – in fact they are 180 degrees apart.

RESPONDENT: What I refer to as uncontracted consciousness is merely consciousness without ‘you’, the body freed of the redundant and habitual cycle of self-centeredness.

VINEETO: No, No 8. You are franticly back peddling yet again. You have defined your version of consciousness as ‘universal consciousness’ –‘ the energy of the universe’ – which is hardly a ‘merely’.

RESPONDENT: Apperceptive awareness is just another intellectual term to describe uncontracted consciousness. Uncontracted consciousness is a term that originated out of my own perception.

VINEETO: Do you mean to say you coined the term ‘uncontracted consciousness’ because nobody else had a similar experience and therefore nobody else had described that particular experience before, that the experience is original, that it is non-spiritual, purely No 8’s own? Let’s see in what context you are using your new term –

  •  [Respondent]: If in fact, that state of uncontracted consciousness was the state of his [Krishnamurti’s] mind, he would have been uniquely qualified to make the statement that he made because he lived it.

  • [Respondent]: That is because consciousness that is uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’ can only occur instantly, as this moment – which is the only moment possible.

  • [Respondent]: ‘That state of uncontracted consciousness was the state of his [Krishnamurti’s] mind’ is clearly a meta-physical affective experience that includes Krishnamurti’s teachings of love, compassion, beauty, deathlessness and ‘supreme intelligence’. Adding words like ‘the body freed of ... self-centeredness’ does not make this ‘uncontracted consciousness’ any less spiritual.

  • [Respondent]: A ‘consciousness that is uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’’ points to a timeless consciousness separate from the body’s innate ability of being conscious – it points to the expanded ‘universal consciousness’ freed from the bondage of a conditioned body/mind – nothing but ancient spiritual teaching wrapped in one of No. 8’s new terms. [endquote].

There is no such thing as a universal consciousness other than in the hearts and minds of human beings. The physical universe has no consciousness per se.

In your eagerness to explain yourself using terms of Richard’s description of Actual Freedom you have conveniently overlooked that apperception is the brain’s ability to be aware of being conscious. This has nothing to do with the meta-physical ‘universal consciousness’ ‘uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’’ that you have accurately explained in your recent post to No 1 as –

[Respondent]: ‘Consciousness is the energy of thought that is the thinking of the entire species. It is the energy that the brain produces as a species’. [endquote].

This ‘uncontracted consciousness’ is when ‘you’, the ‘self’, are expanding into the consciousness of the species, also known as the psychic web. All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ and from the Divine to the Diabolical.

With apperception one becomes aware of the folly of ‘uncontracted consciousness’, one becomes aware of the psychic powers and grand feelings that are part and parcel of this collective consciousness and in that clear awareness of the nature of ‘uncontracted consciousness’ itself one steps outside of this psychic web, outside of humanity, outside of ‘the energy that the brain produces as a species’.

When the astronauts orbiting the moon in Apollo 8 first saw our planet earth rising from behind the moon, one of them said ‘I saw the earth as it really is’. The photo of the earth rising over the moon’s surface has become famous ever since all over the Western world. The astronaut saw the earth from far, far away, and saw it as a whole blue planet, magnificently hanging in space. Only by being separate from the earth could he see what this planet is in fact.

This is analogous to what apperception is to ‘uncontracted consciousness’. When one develops apperception one becomes aware of the ‘consciousness,... the energy of thought that is the thinking of the entire species’ and by seeing it for the folly it is, one then steps out of it. With apperception one steps out of the real world and the psychic world into the actual world. Apperception is to be the senses as a bare awareness, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer and ‘me’ as a feeler to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another.

RESPONDENT: Apperceptive awareness is a term you borrowed from somebody else. When you don’t borrow from another’s knowledge, then what will you do?

VINEETO: No, No 8, using the same term for the same experience – apperceptive awareness – is not a problem but a useful practice for clear communication. When I write I only use terms i.e. language, that someone’s else has used before – but I make sure that the terms are specific and according to the facts. When I use the term apperceptive awareness then I make sure that I have thoroughly understood that my experience refers exactly to the same experience that Richard is describing.

This is called calling a spade a spade and not ‘a conglomerate of vegetable and mineral matter most commonly used by animate life to excavate and move vegetable matter’. Whereas you prefer to invent your own terms for your experiences and then substitute them arbitrarily with whatever other terms you read, without taking the care to ascertain that the experience being written about is in fact the same as your own.

*

VINEETO: Hence with your judgement of ‘self-deception’ you are only shooting yourself in the foot, as you have built your teachings on an Eastern religious philosophy that has accumulated and been widely promulgated for over 3,000 years. Your teachings may be unorganized, but they are nevertheless Eastern religious philosophy.

RESPONDENT: Is your middle name Richard? Please, it is like listening to a broken record.

VINEETO: No, I don’t have a middle name. Are you running out of arguments such that you have to revert to schoolyard tactics? As I already said to No 1 when she said exactly the same thing, I only have one point to make – everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

RESPONDENT: I wouldn’t say it is shameful to attach oneself that deeply to another, but it is futile and silly.

VINEETO: Says he who has been defending Krishnamurti’s teachings like all get out, only to deny, true to the teachings, that you have ever followed any teachers or teachings at all. You also seem to persistently and stubbornly ignore the fact that I fully acknowledge drawing from Richard’s expertise and that I am applying the method he developed in order to become free of the Human Condition in me. This has zilch to do with worshipping a master with love, dedication and humble gratitude. I don’t expect that you will understand the difference because it is apparent that you have not explored the true nature of power and authority in the spiritual world.

RESPONDENT: I have read little of eastern philosophy or religion. That is just the No 8 of your fantasy, the one you NEED to see as anti-actualistic.

VINEETO: If that little you have read equates to the little you have read about actualism, at least 45,000 words, then that is more than enough to get the gist of any teaching. I have no ‘need’ to see you as ‘anti-actualistic’ – it is blatantly obvious that you are bent on rejecting everything and anything I am saying, come what may. I know the spiritual world, No 8, I spent 17 years in it. You know not a fig about actualism because your anti stance will prevent you from even beginning to enquire and investigate.

*

VINEETO: First you must carefully read what is written rather than rewrite what is written so that it suits your own teachings and wisdom. Your carelessness keeps you stuck to the Tried and Failed methods of Krishnamurti’s teachings and prevents you from carefully considering the third alternative that is being offered. I do understand that you might still not quite understand what is being offered for it took me months and months of careful considered word for word reading and a good deal of reflecting, contemplating and nutting out to begin to get a glimpse of the vast poles-apart difference between what is spiritual and what is actual. But the rewards of abandoning the Tried and Failed spiritual path and applying the method has resulted in a freedom, peace and happiness that is already beyond my wildest dreams. The result far surpasses anything offered or achieved in the spiritual world, for this freedom, peace and happiness is actual, palpable, tangible and eminently liveable in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are.

RESPONDENT: First of all, I regard Krishnamurti’s words as art, as literature: nothing more. As I said above someplace, I wanted to challenge your cock-sureness that your actualistic ideas are some kind of Truth, which all other poor, unfortunate human beings have missed out on. You see, all philosophy is the ‘tried and failed’.

VINEETO: Ah, now you finally reveal your motivation for this conversation. You are not writing to another human being in order to compare notes and convey experiences, you merely want to ‘challenge [my] cock-sureness’ in order to cut me down to size, to subdue me into ‘long overdue silence’, to put me in my place and teach me the ethics of spiritual humbleness. I must acknowledge that you are putting a good deal of effort into cutting me down to size.

This attitude against anything new that is not ‘corroborated by others’, as you said before, reminds me of Galileo Galilei who stood trial for his empirical confirmation that the earth, in fact, moves around the sun and not, as was generally believed in those days, the sun around the earth.

[quote]: ‘His position represented such a radical departure from accepted thought that he was tried by the Inquisition in Rome, ordered to recant, and forced to spend the last eight years of his life under house arrest.’ Encyclopaedia Britannica

VINEETO: Galileo was ‘cock-sure’ because he had factual evidence of Copernicus’ mathematical calculations, but it took another 350 years before the leader of the Catholic Church would acknowledge these findings as factual.

RESPONDENT: You may now add actualism to the junk pile, as it too is but another philosophy, another method. Krishnamurti did say that he proposed no method, and, having read some of his words, I am inclined to agree, as his is ‘find out’, whereas yours is ‘follow me’, or as it were, ‘actualism’.

So Krishnamurti’s often repeated admonition to ‘not follow’ is dutifully followed in that you also don’t follow? However, Krishnamurti consistently referred to all his words as ‘Teachings’ and he proposed a method all right, which was the very point where this conversation started. He said –

[quote]: ‘Observing thought I must love the very thing I am studying. ... Similarly, to understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels and does from moment to moment.’ J. Krishnamurti, from: The Book of Life

However, this proposed method, combined with the admonition not to follow did not produce the desired result – nobody ‘got it’. Vis:

[quote]: ‘You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence, operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get in touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so that’s that’. (pages 148-149: ‘The Open Door’; Mary Lutyens. London: John Murray 1998).

So then, what are the actual benefits of Krishnamurti’s ‘no method’, and his admonishment to ‘find out’ and not follow? One outcome I see is ‘they’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get in touch with that’ and that everyone will frantically assert that ‘I don’t follow’, thereby loyally following Krishnamurti’s admonitions. His admonitions really put people’s knickers in a twist!

Personally, I have chosen to stand on my own feet and have investigated all my beliefs in authority, whether the authority says ‘follow me’ like Mr. Rajneesh or ‘don’t follow me’ like Mr. J. Krishnamurti or ‘you are just a follower’ like No. 8.

What I did three years ago was check out the bona fides of a fellow human being and see whether what he was saying was factual and whether the method he was proposing to become free of the Human Condition worked. I am reporting that it does, not that I expect you to believe me in order to investigate for yourself, for your anti-stance blinds you to what I am really saying here. You can rile against me and protest all you want, you are just missing the point of what I am saying.

RESPONDENT: Why do you rely on the authority of experience, of ‘months and months’ of this and that effort when humanity has undergone centuries and centuries of the same and to no avail? And what is a method if it isn’t some program of knowledge, i.e. ‘the tried and failed’?

VINEETO: Are you advising me to resign because ‘humanity has undergone centuries and centuries of the same and to no avail’? You are a true nihilist after all. To even deny the ‘the authority of experience’ is indeed denying anything actual, factual, tangible and demonstrable.

Again you are missing the point. What is on offer is brand new, non-spiritual and down to earth – something that has not existed before, something new under the sun, new knowledge, a new discovery. We humans don’t rub two sticks together to make fire, we don’t ride on the backs of animals to get around, we have got beyond grunting and hand signals, we fight with guns and not sharp sticks, we use computers rather than count with an abacus or dip a feather in tar. Things do change, new discoveries are made, extraordinary progress, advance and innovation has happened as the result of individual human endeavour.

Yet despite this technological evolution human beings are still stubbornly stuck in the ancient spiritual/religious fear-ridden beliefs about the nature of consciousness, awareness, human behaviour, human existence, the physical universe, death, sex, the tender and savage passions, intelligence, the evolution of life, etc. etc.

There is far, far more to be discovered than the Tried and Failed ancient spiritual beliefs.

20.9.2000

RESPONDENT: With this last section, I would like to suggest that part 1 and 2 be dropped. I know it took you time to write it, but I feel that a lot of what is being said is redundant and, for me, too time consuming. Can we just reply to what has already been posted today? And I am considering dropping even some of that. I apologize be- cause I know the care and time you have taken to write all your responses. So can we stick to part 3 and 4?

VINEETO: I agree that it takes a long time to reply to all the points you raised and I will therefore drop the parts where you merely repeat an opinion expressed earlier.

*

RESPONDENT: Perhaps at some point when the futility of chasing your own tail dawns on you, you will be shocked by the suddenness and finality of it, into a long overdue silence.

VINEETO: ‘A long overdue silence’, eh! So you think it is long overdue that I should shut up! Well, No 8, if that is your conviction, you can easily save your time and thoughts and send me an appropriate song... (You will find it under this address: http://www.twistedtunes.com/frames/dedication_frame.asp?werydui=107296: I wish you weren't with us).

RESPONDENT: Angry are ya? Well, in all honesty, I didn’t mean ‘shut up’. I meant LISTEN for a change, to something besides your own propaganda. No, thank you. I have no desire to listen to some twisted tune. I am hearing enough of that already.

VINEETO: Where do you get the idea that I was angry – it’s a very nice tune, if you had checked and not ‘known’ in advance.

Just to remind you how our conversation started – I had a correspondence with No 2 about Krishnamurti’s understanding of ‘actual’ which you intercepted with your interpretation of Krishnamurti’s words. When I replied, you disagreed and now in the third round you are telling me to LISTEN in capital letters, which in internet language means shouting, while you already ‘KNOW’ what I am saying because you ‘see’. The following excerpts from your latest post make your attitude towards me very clear –

[Respondent]:

  • My words are derived from what I see. From where are your’s derived? From Richard? From Actual-‘ism’? You keep falling into the same dumb trap of ‘actualism is the only truth’. It is just another system of belief.
  • Listen. I’m glad it is blatantly obvious to you that I’m bent on rejecting everything and anything about actualism – excuse me – about ‘what you are saying’. I’m not interested in being proselytized by you. But don’t get me wrong. I KNOW about actualism. It is an ‘ism’ which, therefore, can never be ‘actual’. I’m not ‘anti’ anything, not even ‘anti-actualism’. Why would I be anti? It would be a waste of time and energy. I simply think it is dumb, like most other religions, or, using your favourite term, ‘the tried and failed’.

  • You see, you jump so quickly to conclusions without really listening ... I place importance on communication. I don’t know, and don’t care what experiences others have had. I see and say.

  • I place no importance on terms. I place importance on communication. I don’t know, and don’t care what experiences others have had. I see and say.

  • You are a perfect candidate for medieval, Christian, ‘onward Christian soldiers’ fundamentalism. Just disguised as actualism. That’s all.
  • No thanks. I’ve seen very clearly what your actualism has done to you. If you feel that you’re free, happy, in contact palpably with life, then good for you. I don’t need actualism or any other ism. Why would I when I can see what life is by simply looking?
  • Don’t you see that you are merely following some hocus pocus given to you by another, some system you are mindlessly acting out; that you are measuring each ‘instalment’ or investment of your chosen conditioning by comparing yourself to someone else each step along the imaginary way? Such behaviour is simply outrageous!
  • Yet, actualism is still belief, still a method, a plan of action, and therefore, a vehicle of self-absorption, just like all these ‘eastern’ religions. But you won’t see that.
  • The key here is ‘in actualism’. You are IN actualism. You are NOT actually understanding what you ARE.
  • Was it you or actualism that led you to all you say? If it was actualism, then I regret to inform you that you have merely exchanged one system of delusion for another, as it is only ‘you yourself’, unaided by any system of second-handed knowledge, which can be present enough, accurate enough, original enough to comprehend what ‘you yourself’ ARE in each moment of your so-called existence. People don’t run ‘from’ actualism. People run ‘through’ actualism, as they run by means of all other paths and systems of beliefs they either subscribe to or have invented, regardless of what they are called. You cannot ‘recognize’ what you are doing, because to recognize it means that you are still there, YOU, the past, the confusions and anxieties of yesterday, trying to make sense of yourself.
  • Just wipe the snot and dry the tears, cause it ain’t gonna happen no time soon. You are not standing on your feet. You are standing way up on a mountain hidden in the clouds of actualism. And you cannot, at this time, see that.
  • When you give your full energy and focus to actualism or to anything else, you become almost totally absorbed in it. You become dead, but you think you are living, vibrant, alive – problem free. That is why the ‘tried and failed’ is so historically prevalent. It is also why your own actualism, as the premier point of your focusing, is also the ‘tried and failed’, because it deludes you into thinking that you have overcome, gradually, step by step, the encapsulation that is self, when, in reality, you are only forging – in another way – another prison made of ideals, hopes, and the need to escape present suffering. Take any drug. Take novocaine.
  • When you’re caught, hand and foot, in a system of belief, you don’t even know you’re relating to everybody and to everything through that belief. All believers think that their beliefs are undeniable fact. Thought can say to itself, ‘I’m not that dreaded word ‘spiritual’ ... I’m fact, flesh and blood.’ And it thinks that having denounced to itself what it regards as meta-physical, and having replaced it with another word or belief, actualism, for example, that it is original, actual, and fact. It is just common self-deception, thought at war with itself.
  • You don’t feel the pain, but it is still there. Stop taking it and the pain comes right back. Belief, when extremely focused, does the same thing. Drop actualism, and see if you don’t panic. The mind is extremely self-deceptive, and can produce in the body any sensation – or lack of them – one desires.
  • I have seen no ‘facts’ that you have written about.
  • Wake up. Please. Life is not actualism. It is simply, and knowledgeless, living. I have no teachings. What is there to teach? Can you teach life? Can you teach awareness? But you surely can teach actualism, can’t you? You are a wonderful student and future teacher-unfortunately.
  • As I said above someplace, I wanted to challenge your cock-sureness that your actualistic ideas are some kind of Truth
  • Being the farmer that I am, I have no objections to evicting another’s manure from my own pastures, especially when the crops are already grown and ready for the harvest.
  • Take it from me: There is NOTHING radical about actualism.
  • Believe me. It is simply not worth that much attention.
  • Don’t become paranoid on me. Why would I ‘rile against you’? Lol. What makes you significant?
  • Take care, No. 8 [endquotes].

I wonder what has ‘challenged’ you so strongly that you have allowed the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ to appear so rude.

There is a precise word for presenting your particular ‘universal consciousness’ to another – it is called egocentricity as in –

[quote]: ‘Holding the view that the ego is the norm of all experience; viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own ego (also ‘ethnocentric’: judging people through a belief in the superiority and rightness of one’s own ethnic group; racism; nationalism)’. Oxford Dictionary

One could also call it soul-centricity, holding the view that the soul is the norm of all experience, viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own soul. This viewpoint is available for two bob a dozen on the internet. (for reference see http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm)

*

RESPONDENT: Something that is actual cannot ever be put into words. Words can only describe it. Words can also deceive you when you use them to tell yourself that you are living in actuality, when, in fact, you are living through a philosophy of actualism. Ah! But of course, actualism is REAL, whereas, universal consciousness is only a troubled theory, right? What I am describing is what cannot be known because it is not of thought. The eyes never know what they are and what they see. The hands never know what they are and what they feel. The whole body doesn’t know what it, itself IS. Nor does it actually know what anything is. And when you so live in the body, that is, when the body is YOU and not the you of thought, what is operating that body is the intelligence that operates all other bodies. It is not your intelligence. Now if you can see that much, it will become clear to you that such presence of living is living ACTUALLY, not living through actualism. That means that your actualism is a synonym for the god you so heartily reject. If the body is living itself without your interference, why would it need actualism, or any other beliefs and methods to ‘become alive’? So you are ‘actualism intoxicated’. Ring a bell? Now if I call ‘the body living itself without interference from you’, transformed or universal consciousness, then I am not using the word consciousness meta-physically. It is another term for ‘body in harmony with all other life’.

Or it may be referred to as ‘being totally down to earth’.

VINEETO: As you insist on having your own meta-physical interpretation of the word actual and therefore of what the term actualism means to you, I again see, as a fact and not a feeling, the futility of any further communication. To try to talk sense to someone who is proud of being ignorant – as in not knowing and most definitely not wanting to know, let alone listen – is nonsense.

As you said to No 1 –

[Respondent]: Not knowing it is the only sane and truthful way to talk. It’s futile only to the one who wants to ‘know’ what you’re talking about. If somebody says ‘it’s impossible to know’, and you’re really listening to that and SEE the impossibility, how can the search to ‘know’ continue? It would be instantly clear – but not to ‘you’. [endquote].

Ah, No 8, we do indeed live in two completely different worlds.

I, for one, wanted to know, I wasn’t content with the kafuffle that the spiritual teaching presented – ‘Thou Art That’ in many colourful variations, invented by ancient soma-drinking Vedic ‘seers’, regurgitated by hundreds of sages, and presented in yet another ‘new and originally’ phrased language, shrouded in mystery to hide its fallacy. No. After seventeen years I started to doubt, things did not add up, meditators couldn’t live happily in the marketplace, wars did not stop, petty fights between followers did not stop, religious rites and fights sprung up the moment the master died – all of this did not make sense.

Strangely enough, the simple, actual, sensible approach of Actual Freedom can only appeal to those who have tried all the other nonsensical but highly ‘self’-gratifying approaches to finding freedom, peace and happiness and found them badly wanting. Unless one has an utter discontent with both the real world and the spiritual world, proud and self-respecting seekers are not ready and willing to give up faith, trust and the hope of attaining ‘supreme intelligence’.

So, even if you clearly understood what Actual Freedom is about, it would not be for you, as you seem proud and happy with what you have found and experienced so far.

*

PS: I noticed that, seemingly for my benefit, you have now adapted your teachings so you are ‘communicating something actual to a fellow human being’ and that you also have ‘looked beyond the image into the actuality’. I appreciate your special consideration, you know very well indeed how to adapt your terms. Should you want more of those truly-actual words for further description of your experience or for amusement, here are a few more examples of other adaptations for your convenience –

[examples only]: Flesh-and-blood body mindfulness, apperceptive presence, non-spiritual reality, direct actual experience of truth, factuality of one’s ordinary self, a feeling of pure consciousness approaching, direct divine experience of the physical universe, non-spiritual self, spiritual ... oops, non-spiritual intimacy, thoughtless perfection, emotional facts, virtual commitment, uncontracted flesh and blood body, physical Being, psychic flesh-and-blood body, ever improving perfection, extremely free, actual divinity, exploring beyond appearance into actual reality, true facts, greater apperception, the all-consuming universe experiencing the moment, greater apperception, the actuality of being, personal sensate-only experience, such sensuous no-mind image, natural non-spiritual living, factual emotional remembrance, timeless sense of actuality, apperceptive creativity, watching without being a watcher, unfragmented observed actuality, virtual facts, greater actuality, beyond the realm of the apperceptive mind-entity. [end examples].

You are not the first one to use actualism terms as a clip-on.

25.9.2000

RESPONDENT: With this last section, I would like to suggest that part 1 and 2 be dropped. I know it took you time to write it, but I feel that a lot of what is being said is redundant and, for me, too time consuming. Can we just reply to what has already been posted today? And I am considering dropping even some of that. I apologize be- cause I know the care and time you have taken to write all your responses. So can we stick to part 3 and 4?

VINEETO: I agree that it takes a long time to reply to all the points you raised and I will therefore drop the parts where you merely repeat an opinion expressed earlier.

RESPONDENT: Ditto

VINEETO: You say you agree and yet you go on to repeat all your previous opinions about actualism, about my beliefs and No. 8 absolutely knowing the true answer to life – this is not corresponding, this is simply stubbornly repeating your stance without listening and responding to what I said.

*

RESPONDENT: Perhaps at some point when the futility of chasing your own tail dawns on you, you will be shocked by the suddenness and finality of it, into a long overdue silence.

VINEETO: ‘A long overdue silence’, eh! So you think it is long overdue that I should shut up! Well, No. 8, if that is your conviction, you can easily save your time and thoughts and send me an appropriate song... (Twisted Tunes, I wish you weren't with us).

RESPONDENT: Angry are ya? Well, in all honesty, I didn’t mean ‘shut up’. I meant LISTEN for a change, to something besides your own propaganda. No, thank you. I have no desire to listen to some twisted tune. I am hearing enough of that already.

VINEETO: Where do you get the idea that I was angry – it’s a very nice tune, if you had checked and not ‘known’ in advance.

RESPONDENT: I just didn’t care to listen to it. That is reason enough not to.

VINEETO: Where did you get the idea that I was angry, was it that you ‘just didn’t care to listen to it’? – you haven’t answered my question at all.

*

VINEETO: Just to remind you how our conversation started – I had a correspondence with No 2 about Krishnamurti’s understanding of ‘actual’ which you intercepted with your interpretation of Krishnamurti’s words. When I replied, you disagreed and now in the third round you are telling me to LISTEN in capital letters, which in internet language means shouting, while you already ‘KNOW’ what I am saying because you ‘see’. The following excerpts from your latest post make your attitude towards me very clear – <snipped a few>

[Respondent]:

  • My words are derived from what I see. From where are your’s derived? From Richard? From Actual-‘ism’? You keep falling into the same dumb trap of ‘actualism is the only truth’. It is just another system of belief.
  • Listen. I’m glad it is blatantly obvious to you that I’m bent on rejecting everything and anything about actualism – excuse me – about ‘what you are saying’. I’m not interested in being proselytized by you. But don’t get me wrong. I KNOW about actualism. It is an ‘ism’ which, therefore, can never be ‘actual’. I’m not ‘anti’ anything, not even ‘anti-actualism’. Why would I be anti? It would be a waste of time and energy. I simply think it is dumb, like most other religions, or, using your favourite term, ‘the tried and failed’.

  • Just wipe the snot and dry the tears, cause it ain’t gonna happen no time soon. You are not standing on your feet. You are standing way up on a mountain hidden in the clouds of actualism. And you cannot, at this time, see that.

  • I have seen no ‘facts’ that you have written about.

  • Wake up. Please. Life is not actualism. It is simply, and knowledgeless, living. I have no teachings. What is there to teach? Can you teach life? Can you teach awareness? But you surely can teach actualism, can’t you? You are a wonderful student and future teacher-unfortunately.

  • As I said above someplace, I wanted to challenge your cock-sureness that your actualistic ideas are some kind of Truth

  • Being the farmer that I am, I have no objections to evicting another’s manure from my own pastures, especially when the crops are already grown and ready for the harvest.

  • Take it from me: There is NOTHING radical about actualism.

  • Believe me. It is simply not worth that much attention.

  • Don’t become paranoid on me. Why would I ‘rile against you’? Lol. What makes you significant? [endquotes].

I wonder what has ‘challenged’ you so strongly that you have allowed the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ to appear so rude.

RESPONDENT: You know, Richard does the same thing: takes lines and lines of another’s discussion out of context, then shapes it all into some ‘proof’ about a theory of another that he has invented.

VINEETO: Ah, whenever you don’t want to respond to the content, you revert to the ‘broken record’ of comparing me to Richard – quite a schoolyard ploy and not adding anything to a meaningful discussion. An ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness’ seems to have an innate ability to waver and bluster – perhaps you should add confused to your adjectives as in confused, unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness.

RESPONDENT: Don’t you think that is doubly dishonest? First, it is dishonest because you are borrowing another’s bad habits. Secondly, it is dishonest because your ‘collected thoughts of No. 8’ are presented out of context. And you say I’m ‘rude’.

VINEETO: I merely shortened the letter by leaving out the endless repetitions of the same basic theme. For clarification you could point out exactly what essential words I have left out that make the representation of No. 8’s collected thoughts ‘dishonest’ or distorted ‘out of context’. Is it not your unchangeable opinion that ‘Take it from me: There is NOTHING radical about actualism’ or that ‘Listen. I’m not interested in being proselytized by you’? Are you just finding another excuse not to say anything to the content but complain about the wrapping, i.e. the presentation of the words? Such cheap evasive ploys!

As for ‘you say I’m ‘rude’’ – being rude is being rude, in whatever context ... unless, of course, you are of the widely spread and fashionable opinion that the end justifies the means. For me, the end never, ever justifies the means because then the end will always be identical to the means. If I have to be rude to reach an end that end will contain rudeness and can never be pure and perfect. But I am not fooled by your blustering, nor fazed by your rudeness. The church has always been threatening in its response to anything new and anything that threatens its absolute power.

RESPONDENT: I would say that your ‘flesh and blood’, ‘all the way in the body’, ‘affectiveless awareness’ mode of existence has been assassinated by an itty-bitty little egotistical lie of dishonesty that has escaped your notice.

VINEETO: You have put words in my mouth, another cheap ploy when you have no argument to the content. I never said ‘all the way in the body’ and I never use ‘affectiveless awareness’. If you insist on having a discussion, then why don’t you first read what I write? Further, your premise of my ‘itty-bitty little egotistical lie of dishonesty’ is based on the false presumption that I distorted and shaped your words, whereas I merely copied and pasted them in one lump, and therefore your conclusion is false. They are your words I posted, No. 8, listed to show the obstinate tone of your posts. Far from listening, you simply keep piling on the personal accusations rather than discussing anything in a sensible and civil manner.

To come back to the original subject, my question is still the same: I wonder what has ‘challenged’ you so strongly that you have allowed the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ to appear so rude.

*

VINEETO: There is a precise word for presenting your particular ‘universal consciousness’ to another – it is called egocentricity as in –

[quote]: ‘Holding the view that the ego is the norm of all experience; viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own ego (also ‘ethnocentric’: judging people through a belief in the superiority and rightness of one’s own ethnic group; racism; nationalism)’. Oxford Dictionary

RESPONDENT: Ho hum. Does that also apply to your continued attempts to convert the world and [Mailing List B] to your hand-me-down actualism? Let me guess: It doesn’t, does it? Right.

VINEETO: If you would come off your high horse and investigate what I write instead of being blinded into preconceived assumptions by the three letters of ‘i-s-m’, then you would have noticed that in comparison to all spiritual teachings, which only talk about death of the ego, actualism is about the death of ego and soul, the whole of the ‘self’. There is no phoenix rising from the ashes – neither egocentricity, nor soul-centricity.

RESPONDENT: Again, everybody is wrong but you, the flesh-and-blood actualist. Oh well.

VINEETO: Yes, 180 degrees. This is why there is still so much suffering in the world after thousands of years of mindless pursuit of religious/ spiritual belief. The gurus are never ever wrong for they have God on their side and they know the Truth. Oh well.

*

VINEETO: One could also call it soul-centricity, holding the view that the soul is the norm of all experience, viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own soul. This viewpoint is available for two bob a dozen on the internet. (for reference see http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm)

RESPONDENT: Let me explain something. You have allowed yourself to be propagandized. You think you have discovered something wonderful, something new, exciting, and you feel it has given you the results you wanted. You see life almost entirely through the propaganda, but the propaganda is invisible to you.

VINEETO: No No. 8, I have discovered something far beyond any spiritual experiences, and I have had plenty of them in my time, so I do know what I am talking about. And I am not seeing life through a supposed propaganda, I have tested out and verified every bit of information that I have drawn from Richard’s reports. In don’t believe in believing, not-knowing and having faith, trust and hope. I always verify information for myself. There is no invisible propaganda – that is part of your imagination about me. Your attempts to denigrate what I am saying by your false assessments of me are an irrelevant and erroneous diversion.

*

RESPONDENT: It is like you are actually a new person, free of self, of egocentrism. You can’t see how others could possibly reject what you offer them, as it has made such a difference in your own life. How could they possibly not see this wonderful thing?

VINEETO: Oh, I can see very well how and why others reject what I offer and report – to pursue actual freedom is the most scary thing to do because one aims to not only dissolve the little ego but also the ‘uncontracted’ collective universal soul, one’s very being. Personally I was simply not content with the outcome of spiritualism – it didn’t put a stop to my malice and sorrow nor has it ever put a stop to the squabbling, bitching and fighting amongst all spiritual/ religious followers, the fact of which you can verify on this very list.

*

RESPONDENT: So something must be wrong with them. They are thinking in the old tried and failed ‘eastern’ mode of selfishness and ignorance. They simply won’t see that they are caught in ‘ego’, ‘me’, and ‘soul’. The language you use to express your ‘experiences’ is ‘new’, ‘original’, which means that the ‘experience’ itself must be new and original.

VINEETO: You don’t need to be so supercilious or sarcastic – it is not an easy thing to see the instinctual survival program in action when one is in the midst of it. In order to understand the full impact of one’s animal survival program in oneself one needs a pure consciousness experience where the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. Everybody has had such non-affective PCEs in their lives – it’s simply that these experiences end up corrupted by one’s soul desperately seeking salvation or God-realized immortality.

You have to remember it is early years for actualism – the church took hundreds of years to acknowledge Galileo whereas actualism will mean the death of the church and any belief in God. You are but at the forefront of a long line of objectors that will offer stubborn and belligerent resistance for centuries to come.

RESPONDENT: But you don’t see that the language, the propaganda is all borrowed from another and that it has been intellectually and emotionally glued to your psychological reality. The propaganda says you are free so you really MUST be free; otherwise, you have ‘tried and failed’ again. When you look at the world of people and events therefore, and these people and their lives don’t corroborate the world you have invented for yourself, it becomes almost impossible to acknowledge even a little doubt in yourself that perhaps your world, like theirs, is ‘just another world’, just another ‘tried and failed’ attempt to achieve happiness, to escape the mediocrity which has defined your life so far, to escape the pain of being YOU. That is old hat. For thousands and thousands of years, people have been doing exactly what you are doing: Seeking escape through ideology, through devotion to others, through mutilating themselves yet again to conform – through the horrors of ‘discipline’ – to some promised outcome of bliss and relief from their own, self-made catastrophe which they call their lives. You, my friend, have become the classic devotee, just like all those whom you feel are caught in some ancient patterns of ‘eastern’ thought. So whether you call your conditioning eastern or not, you are standing in the same circle that encapsulates the rest of humanity and can’t get out of it.

VINEETO: Are you saying your experience is not in the traditional experience – do you not align your experiences with J. Krishnamurti’s who spoke from a heritage of Eastern spiritualism? Is No. 8ism somehow outside of tradition? Is your universal consciousness somehow unique – as in non-universal perhaps or are you summarily dismissing each and everyone who has had similar experiences to yours? If so, you are merely exhibiting the classic traditional behaviour of all the awakened, realized or enlightened ones who somehow think that their version of the Truth is unique, special and non-traditional.

What I am talking about is a sensate and reflective experiencing of the actual, tangible, visible, audible, tastable and sensuous world without the affective filters of an instinctual ‘self’. For that, one steps out of Humanity and all its past beliefs.

RESPONDENT: So there is no other way to avoid disillusionment than to shout and shout to the others that you are free and that they are stuck. But it is all dream, a carefully invented self-escape.

VINEETO: I am not shouting No 8, I simply refuse to bow to your blustering interjection of my original post to No. 2 about the meaning of actual in J. Krishnamurti’s writings.

RESPONDENT: You are here with everybody else, chained to the wheel of desire trying to dream your way out. How I wish you could see what you are doing to yourself. But then, it doesn’t matter in one sense. It is just one dream amidst the infinity of other dreams which collectively compose the mind of humanity.

VINEETO: Wrong premise – wrong conclusion. May I ask why you say ‘I wish you could see what you are doing to yourself ’? What is your investment that I see the world as you see your world? Do you need to convert others to maintain and sustain your feeling of ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness’?

*

RESPONDENT: Something that is actual cannot ever be put into words. Words can only describe it.

VINEETO: What a load of rubbish. Actual is the opposite of that evasive ‘collective consciousness’ aka God, that ‘cannot ever be put into words’. If you care to stop translating what you read into your spiritual context you might even start to understand something that is 180 degrees opposite to the passionate feeling-Reality of a ‘universal consciousness ... which, in itself, cannot be put into words but is nonetheless actual’.

RESPONDENT: Words can also deceive you when you use them to tell yourself that you are living in actuality, when, in fact, you are living through a philosophy of actualism. Ah! But of course, actualism is REAL, whereas, universal consciousness is only a troubled theory, right? What I am describing is what cannot be known because it is not of thought. The eyes never know what they are and what they see. The hands never know what they are and what they feel. The whole body doesn’t know what it, itself IS. Nor does it actually know what anything is. And when you so live in the body, that is, when the body is YOU and not the you of thought, what is operating that body is the intelligence that operates all other bodies. It is not your intelligence. Now if you can see that much, it will become clear to you that such presence of living is living ACTUALLY, not living through actualism. That means that your actualism is a synonym for the god you so heartily reject. If the body is living itself without your interference, why would it need actualism, or any other beliefs and methods to ‘become alive’? So you are ‘actualism intoxicated’. Ring a bell? Now if I call ‘the body living itself without interference from you’, transformed or universal consciousness, then I am not using the word consciousness meta-physically. It is another term for ‘body in harmony with all other life’.

Or it may be referred to as ‘being totally down to earth’.

VINEETO: You are really getting your knickers in a twist trying to describe your ‘uncontracted’ Reality with words like ‘actually’, ‘totally down-to-earth’, ‘the body living itself’, etc. It does not make a difference, the ‘uncontracted consciousness’ is spiritually intoxicated and you obviously have a lot of personal ego investment in not questioning it. Universal consciousness, God by any other name, does not exist except in the convoluted minds and impassioned hearts of human beings.

Wake up and hear the crickets, smell the blossoms and taste the coffee, as a sensate-only experience and not as an affective experience.

25.9.2000

VINEETO: As you insist on having your own meta-physical interpretation of the word actual and therefore of what the term actualism means to you, I again see, as a fact and not a feeling, the futility of any further communication. To try to talk sense to someone who is proud of being ignorant – as in not knowing and most definitely not wanting to know, let alone listen – is nonsense. As you said to No. 1 –

[Respondent]: Not knowing it is the only sane and truthful way to talk. It’s futile only to the one who wants to ‘know’ what you’re talking about. If somebody says ‘it’s impossible to know’, and you’re really listening to that and SEE the impossibility, how can the search to ‘know’ continue? It would be instantly clear – but not to ‘you’. [endquote].

Ah, No 8, we do indeed live in two completely different worlds.

RESPONDENT: Not actually. There is only one world artificially separated by belief. And when you live in that world, the thought of ‘completely different worlds’ vanishes like so much dust being wiped off the living room table.

VINEETO: No No 8. There are two worlds artificially created by belief and instinctual passions – one is the world of grim reality and the other is the flight of fantasy, Greater Reality. One is the creation of a normal self, the other the creation of a super-charged Self. There is, however, an actual physical world which humans all know exists but feel forever cut off from.

You described your own stance very well to No 1 the other day –

[Respondent]: When I say ‘you’, I am referring to the words on the page, to what has been said.

Also, I am aware of ‘you’ as being anybody because we are all basically the same. But that is not totally the case at all times. There are times when I imagine that there is a ‘you’, a No 1, and get hooked by the image. That is not usually the case. It has not been the case in this discussion so far. But it might be at some point. [endquote].

VINEETO: ‘We are all basically the same’ means that we are all part of No. 8’s ‘uncontracted consciousness’ and nobody really exists apart from No. 8’s ‘uncontracted consciousness’. You may have outbreaks of common sense when you can see that there are actually other people in the world apart from you, but these moments of clear understanding are quickly labelled as ‘I imagine that there is a ‘you’, and get hooked by the image’ and then you can return again to the belief of ‘we are all basically the same’. In Western psychology this egocentric world-view is called solipsism and considered a psychiatric disorder, in the East it is called Advaita Vedanta and has a tradition stretching back thousands of years.

Human beings all have the same instinctual programming, and by tuning into that collective instinctual programming you do indeed share the same ‘natural’ feelings with everyone else. However, when one becomes aware that one’s true self is nothing other than the instinctual self, one can then take steps to get out of this programming. But in order to become aware of it you would first have to give up the cosy imaginary feeling that we are all immortal souls and Life is living us.

RESPONDENT: What would be your reality if you dropped your actualism? What would be the action of your living if that living was unsupported by your beliefs? What would occur if you stood in life alone, with nothing to recognize, no actualism to orient you to the world, to make artificial sense out of your confusion? And you must be confused or there couldn't possibly be a system of philosophy which gives you identity, the feeling that ‘you’ have attained ‘this’, which is the ordinary split, cut, slice in human consciousness that invents two: the sufferer and her attempt to escape herself through any means – actualism or otherwise. Why do you fear to cut the cord, to stand alone, without knowledge, to give back that proverbial ‘apple of self-consciousness’?

VINEETO: You are starting from a wrong premise again – I do not live in ‘a system of philosophy which gives [me] identity’. Can’t you stop your ‘broken record’ for a while and take a fresh look, unclouded by your feeling of ‘we are all basically the same’? You and I are not the same. There is an actual physical world to be discovered underneath all those passionate feelings and instinctual ‘knowing’ of being the ‘uncontracted consciousness’ and ‘universal consciousness ... that represents something which, in itself, cannot be put into words but is nonetheless actual’?

If you read the replies to me on the list it should be pretty obvious to you that I do in fact ‘stand alone’ – everybody, but everybody objects to what I write. I cut the cord to spiritualism, spat the dummy of believing in God by whatever name, and threw away the crutch of belonging, a good while ago. Maybe you failed to notice?

*

VINEETO: I, for one, wanted to know, I wasn’t content with the kafuffle that the spiritual teaching presented – ‘Thou Art That’ in many colourful variations, invented by ancient soma-drinking Vedic ‘seers’, regurgitated by hundreds of sages, and presented in yet another ‘new and originally’ phrased language, shrouded in mystery to hide its fallacy. No. After seventeen years I started to doubt, things did not add up, meditators couldn’t live happily in the marketplace, wars did not stop, petty fights between followers did not stop, religious rites and fights sprung up the moment the master died – all of this did not make sense.

RESPONDENT: I am glad that you doubted yourself. But you must not assume nor take for granted that others, because their self-doubt has led them on a journey different from yours, that their journey is invalid by comparison to your own. For then you stop listening, stop hearing, stop learning. I know about that, as many times I was forced to realize that what I had thought was IT was just another dream, another encapsulation. And I once thought what you think:

That the whole world must be blind not to have seen what I thought I saw. But each time I ran up against the blank wall, the realization that however palpable it seemed, however freeing it appeared to be, however blissful, secure, ‘revolutionary’ I thought it was, nothing substantial had actually occurred. And so, seeing the impossibility of ‘the tried and failed’, that is, the impossibility of freeing myself ‘by means of’, I realized that there was nothing to free, nothing which was bound: And there was a great, abiding fear. Nothing made sense anymore. I felt let down by the world, fooled by it, deceived, and there was no escaping that.

So there was and is no further belief that there is a world that can help me understand myself. There is no further reliance on anybody’s ideologies. What I am, I am. I can neither accept it nor reject it. And, you know, the simplicity of that, the simplicity of standing alone with no ‘mother/father-as-ideological-protection’, has been the opening of the door, the shedding of the cataracts. I don’t think of freedom now. What is happening is happening. I make big mistakes, yet those mistakes don’t linger because a mistake is just another word for learning, creativity, the forward movement of life which doesn’t stop to look back, but makes something brand new out of each circumstance. There is neither purity nor corruption. The eyes don’t know what they see, yet they respond to it efficiently. So I don’t see the need for any beliefs to sustain a tired and failing ego. When that ego is there, it has a right to be there. When it is not, it’s simply not. Nothing more to prove, nothing to feel safe about. Life knows how to live HERE, whether No. 8 is here or not.

VINEETO: If I understand you rightly, you are saying that you have become Life and that this Life is living you. But then, how does the ego ‘has a right to be there’? What makes you call it ego and not ‘life’? And who is writing when ‘No 8 is ... not’? I don’t quite understand who is who in all this set-up of various identities. ‘What I am, I am’ am has the ring of ‘I finally gave up and accepted myself as I am’, ‘I love myself as I am’, or ‘I just realized that I am what I have always been’. It all sounds a bit like Oprah Winfrey type fashionable spiritualism to me. Or is it more a replica of the Jehova’s statement when He introduced himself to Moses with ‘I am what I am’?

*

VINEETO: Strangely enough, the simple, actual, sensible approach of Actual Freedom can only appeal to those who have tried all the other nonsensical but highly ‘self’-gratifying approaches to finding freedom, peace and happiness and found them badly wanting. Unless one has an utter discontent with both the real world and the spiritual world, proud and self-respecting seekers are not ready and willing to give up faith, trust and the hope of attaining ‘supreme intelligence’.

RESPONDENT: You see, ‘actual freedom’ is a word, a belief, and as such doesn’t indicate to any degree what is actual, what moves, and is, and can’t be defined by any word whatsoever. Why make a big to do about your experiences and those of others? To feel that only you and perhaps those who share your beliefs and their methods, are the sole inheritors of intelligence, is direct PROOF of unintelligence.

VINEETO: Yes, I see that ‘‘actual freedom’ is a word, a belief’ for you and that for you it ‘as such doesn’t indicate to any degree what is actual, what moves, and is, and can’t be defined by any word whatsoever’.

For me, I had glimpses of what actual freedom is during numerous pure consciousness experiences where both ego and soul were temporarily absent. An actual freedom is a far superior to a spiritual freedom, where one only sublimates one’s personal ego and supernaturally enhances the soul, the animal instinctual ‘self’.

RESPONDENT: You have absolutely no means to know who, in the long, long history of humanity, did or did not die to their confusion and were born again.

VINEETO: No. 8, if you had bothered to read – I am not talking about being born again, as in God-grateful or God-realized. You consistently put words in my mouth and then criticize and berate me for supposedly saying them. Is this a sign of desperation or a deliberate ploy of belligerence or just another symptom of the belief that ‘we are all basically the same’?

RESPONDENT: You simply have NO facts to corroborate your view that your actualism is the means to human freedom.

VINEETO: Oh yes, I do have facts. I have had sufficient spiritual – egoless – experiences and, for comparison, ‘self’-less pure consciousness experiences to know that spiritual freedom only tackles half of the problem. Further, you only need to read about the venerated gurus and masters to know that their instinctual passions have not been extinguished. J. Krishnamurti is no exception, having had a long-standing secret affair with his best friend’s wife.

RESPONDENT: All those systems of knowledge that you denigrate have one thing in common with your own system: They are a system, a collection of knowledge, a ‘plan’.

VINEETO: There is nothing wrong with a plan, one only needs to adjust the direction – by 180 degrees.

RESPONDENT: And only an ego can have a plan, follow a system, or employ a method. You simply cannot liberate yourself. It is a contradiction in terms. The self as the entirety of ‘you’ can see its total uselessness, artificiality, and futility. That seeing is what ‘freedom’ IS. But that is too simple.

VINEETO: No, I have planned, followed a system and employed a method for many practical things in my life – it is something that is sensible to do if one wants to achieve results. I check around, see what is on offer, what I want to do, what works, what doesn’t work and settle on a plan of approach. When I discovered grim reality was a bummer, and that spiritual Reality was but a dream world, I re-settled on my original naive plan from my teenage years – to find freedom and peace on earth.

As I now have become aware of my programming, both my social identity, the ego, and my instinctual passions, the soul, I am pursuing the ending of ego and soul, not only a transcendence of the ego into ‘me’, the ‘uncontracted consciousness’, the immortal soul. In your whole imaginary assessment of me you persistently ignore the fact that I am talking about acknowledging, understanding and eliminating the animal instinctual passions that are part and parcel of our genetically inherited programming.

RESPONDENT: That is why ego demands belief, as belief is complex, it ‘involves’ you, preoccupies you, sustains you while you continue to avoid the simplicity of imminent, uneventful death.

VINEETO: It seems that you have settled for accepting yourself as in ‘what I am, I am’. I simply refused to accept myself as I was and wanted to irrevocably change to become actually free of malice and sorrow. Rather than avoid death as in seeking immortality, I actively court psychological and psychic death – the extinction of my ego and my soul. Such death won’t be ‘uneventful’ but ‘my’ moment of accomplishment, the fulfilment of ‘my’ destiny. To call any psychological and psychic death ‘uneventful’ shows that you do not know what you are talking about.

*

VINEETO: So, even if you clearly understood what Actual Freedom is about, it would not be for you, as you seem proud and happy with what you have found and experienced so far.

RESPONDENT: You are correct. Actual Freedom – the belief – is not for me.

VINEETO: Wrong premise – Actual Freedom is only a belief for you but not for me. I have tasted it, lived it in PCEs and aim to live it 24 hrs. a day, every day. It is everyone’s birthright. Maybe you care to reinvestigate.

RESPONDENT: And for me, there is nothing to be proud about.

VINEETO: Are you saying you are being humble, as you have suggested that I should become humble as in ‘the practical energy of a clear mind is humility’. I read a very good description of humility from a self-realized being the other day –

[quote]: Humility is when you look out of your eyes and recognize that everything you behold, is you... [endquote].

Does it ring a bell?

RESPONDENT: But if you look at your own behaviour, how you regard the whole world as less developed than yourself, less ‘free’, you would see how the word ‘proud’ is actually a self-description. It is too bad. You have such vital energy but you squander it, waste it on this vain mission to define and change the world. And you don’t see that you NEED this very world which you define as totally different from yourself. You need it because without it, you would have no identity at all. The world you reject with such force, is what fuels your mission in life.

What you reject so passionately is merely that which you ARE that you dislike.

VINEETO: You are putting words in my mouth again. I never said that I see ‘the whole world as less developed than [my]self’ – I said that everyone is genetically endowed with malice and sorrow and everyone looks for the solution 180 degrees in the wrong direction. The traditional spiritual solutions had at least 3,500 years to contribute to peace-on-earth and have failed miserably; to the contrary, they have only contributed to more wars, more diversions, more passions and more suffering. The churches have a well-known record of waging holy wars, persecuting non-believers and standing in the way of human progress.

In the field of human safety, comfort, health, leisure and pleasure, however, there has been much development and there have been many discoveries, many inventions and many, many improvements since the first humans roamed the earth. Similarly, a new discovery has now been made in the field of animal instinctual programming in humans that means it is now possible to have an actual peace-on-earth in this lifetime.

12.10.2000

VINEETO: As you can see, I lost interest in the t’is / t’isn’t that our conversation has turned out to be. As I pondered about attentive, naïve and fascinated listening, I have come to see that the major impediment to such listening is the conviction and instinctual feeling of ‘we are all basically the same’. This worldview is prevalent without exception in all the Eastern religious pursuits that are on offer today and stops people from considering or desiring anything outside of the all-encompassing Human Condition. It plugs the receiver into the sender, so to speak.

When I say ‘explore’ I talk about me exploring the feeling experience of ‘we are all basically the same’ and at the same time being aware of what feelings, thoughts and sensations are happening in the brain and in the guts. I found that however seductive and soothing the overwhelming feeling of ‘we are all basically the same’ was, it was nevertheless a feeling and not a fact and as such observable in operation in me. This passionate belief of ‘we are all basically the same’ or ‘We Are All One’ acts as the very glue that holds the psychic web of humanity together – the fervent belief and passionate hope that we as humans are not lost, lonely frightened and very cunning, struggling for survival and desperately hoping that there is a Divine Intelligence, a caring Earth, and a nurturing existence that knows what It is doing.

When I lived in the Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, the feeling of ‘We Are All One’ was based on the love for and devotion to one single man – the director of the psychic orchestra, Rajneesh himself. During the day in the ashram there were so many factual proofs that we were not one at all, that all had different aims and desires, that we were continually engaged in a psychological and psychic battle fighting each other, resenting and complaining about each other. At night-time however, when the great psychic show, the evening discourse, started, we were blissfully back in the feeling that We Are All One. Today, ten years after the death of Rajneesh, his cult is a well-established New Dark Age religion with the usual religious squabbles and legal battles between numerous parties who claim to have the right interpretations or application of the teachings.

The experience of writing on this list has been valuable research for me into the legacy of spiritual teachings. I have learnt how the ‘Friends of J. Krishnamurti’ interact with each other, what they believe, cherish and fiercely defend, how they live their lives, how the Enlightened Ones on this list write, act and live and what solution they offer for malice and sorrow in the world. The solutions offered by various teachers and Gurus may vary at first glance and, as such, cause much dispute and fight amongst their respective followers, but I discovered that every Eastern spiritual advice, teaching and method is about stopping any sensible thoughts and changing how one feels oneself to be – ‘Realize who you Really are’.

Writing has also been a valuable experience about sticking my neck out and proposing something so unpopular as an actual, practical, down-to-earth freedom. It has certainly desensitised me as I discovered yet again that except verbal abuse there is nothing to fear about being a heretic.

Well, No. 8, in these last two months I have had yet another thorough examination of the seductive and, at times, overwhelming feeling of ‘We Are All One’, both as an experience in me and as an active observation of how that feeling manifests in others. It was also fascinating to observe how my fear of psychological and psychic death floods the brain with dopamine and other euphoriant chemicals that can readily bring on the oh so famous Altered State of Consciousness that can turn into a permanent state of Enlightenment. But as my intent lies in the actual, sensate and ‘self’-less experience only possible through ‘self’-immolation, I resisted succumbing to the feelings produced by the euphoriant chemicals and ancient seductive teachings and kept observing the workings of the grand Self in action.

Only by having this overview of spiritual passion in action can one eventually see the psychic web as a whole structure, with all the ongoing psychic interactions, bonds and power fights and collective longing for Love and Oneness. By being fully aware of all the ingredients of this emotional-spiritual psychic web I am now no longer part of it and all the emotional, psychological and psychic bonds with humanity ceased to exist and have no more effect on me. First I expected that the ‘connection’ would come back as it is quite bewildering to experience oneself outside of humanity’s woes and hopes, loves and hates, fears and bliss. My head is empty of feelings and neurotic thoughts and my brain often kicks into action only when I need it for work, shopping, driving or writing. The peace of mind that I had sought to attain through anti-thought meditations, has now eventuated through investigating and eliminating the beliefs, feelings, emotions and instinctual passions – the tentacles of the psychic web within humanity.

And now, being outside of the human psychic web, epitomized by the passionate belief of ‘We Are All One’ or ‘we are all basically the same’ , I can see that matter-of-factly, actually and physically, every human being is different, nobody is the same at all. Everyone is the product and combination of a different sperm and egg (except identical twins) and every human face is distinctively different. Everyone’s life is unique and completely different. It is only within the Human Condition that ‘we are all basically [programmed and conditioned] the same’ – driven by the same desires, the same fears, the same urges to nurture and the same aggression. Stepping out of the psychic web of instinctual passions one becomes an autonomous individual for the first time – able to be what you are rather than who society and blind nature fated you to think and feel you are.

To study the Human Condition, live, in one’s own skull – what a thrilling game to play.


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