December 6 2024

VINEETO: In her period of being out-from-control Pamela commented on how much better this experience (of being in an ongoing excellence experience) was compared to her 5-months PCE, and she explained that her PCE was a static experience while being out-from-control was exemplified by the progress of coming closer and closer to the actual world. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 5 December 2024).

ED: Is it considered dynamic because there are still dips in affect?

VINEETO: No, it’s because one is moving closer and closer to one’s final goal.

*

VINEETO: From here you can look closer at what possible objections there might be for ‘you’ to abdicating the throne, and whatever else prevents you from allowing the final transition to happen. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 5 December 2024).

ED: Is it because these objections are present as presence in the excellence experience? Thus preventing the PCE but a presence to reflect upon & explore?

VINEETO: No, they are not “present as presence”, they simply can make themselves felt unlike in a PCE where ‘I’ am in abeyance.

*

ED: Feeling-being Vineeto must have been feeling good before her immolation, but can you recall the dirtiness that you were still dealing with at the time? Might you be able to recall any objections or worries you had moments before becoming free? Hours before? Days before? [I blew the last remaining cobwebs of seriousness, cautiousness and social correctness out of the corners of my psyche. – were there any beliefs behind the seriousness, cautiousness, and social correctness you can recall?]

VINEETO: You can read more details in my answers in the Direct Route correspondence, where I recorded the events at the time. All I remember now is what has been written on the AFT website. ‘Her’ emotional memories (“the dirtiness”) have disappeared along with ‘her’ identity. Besides, everyone has their own sequence of dismantling their social identity and remnant obstacles to becoming free. Viz.:

Richard: Of course, the situation and circumstances (cutting down long grass in an abandoned cow-paddock preparatory to planting trees) were peculiar to me and my context at that time and had I been some other person in some other context I could very well have been washing the dishes, for example, or riding a bicycle.

And had I been some other person in some other context the salutary realisation would have been different too ... meaning that only the particular person can know what they must do – and they will not know what that is until it happens – and when they do know what to do it will be too late to stop the happening.

Hence all the procrastination – it means the end of ‘me’ – because it can, and will, happen just here right now. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 94a, 30 December 2005)

ED: And did this out-from-control excellence experience (?) cease being excellent during the mutiny – which seemed to cause alarm for feeling-being Vineeto? Did the out-from-control experience lose its excellence during this time and was it just a matter of ‘coming-down’ from the initial high of the alarm? Was there any contemplation going on, conflict between staying or going?

VINEETO: You are probably referring to this –

Vineeto to [List D, No. 4]: “In the early morning of December 29, 2009, feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ was overtaken by a panic attack, which convinced ‘her’ that, although everything written on the website was coherent, correct and a valid description of the actual world as ‘she’ had experienced it in ‘her’ own PCEs, seeing Richard to be insane who needed to be feared and avoided. (The reason why Peter wasn’t infected was because he had seen it all before when this happened to Devika/Irene).

This second panic only lasted for 3 days but because it happened during the out-from-control virtual freedom it turned into an out-of-control panic mode. Only ‘her’ decade-long training in keeping ‘her’ hands in ‘her’ pockets and neither repress nor express the intense feelings racing through ‘her’ allowed the extreme situation to subside so soon afterwards … and look where I am today.” (Actualism, ActualVineeto, No. 4(D), #fas)

The explanation for it can be found in the first third of that message I wrote to [List D, No. 4] on January 7 2013 and it is self-explanatory –

Vineeto: Now I know, from personal experience, what the underlying cause is for [No. 4’s] whole elaborate international campaign. First let me present it in his own words –

Epitaph

[No. 4]: ‘The principal ‘mutineers’ were Pamela and Vineeto, both of whom are now actually free.

They were experiencing something that seems to be almost mandatory at some point on the road to actual freedom: *seeing Richard as a dangerous lunatic*.

Welcome aboard ;-)

Cheers, [No. 4.]’ (Message 9229, 5.3.2010) [emphases added].

It appears that this “almost mandatory” experiencing is no longer “mandatory” because several people have become actually free since 2009/2010 and none of them reported a significant fear of insanity.

Ha, can you see how it becomes easier and easier for each subsequent pioneer?

Cheers Vineeto

March 6 2025

Richard: I was therefore commenting that (in this specific instance) Indias’ paramount contribution to the retardation of evolution over the last 3,000 to 5,000 years (in that after maybe the millions of years of evolution necessary to evolve thought, thoughts and thinking (intelligence) in one animal species alone, the Masters and the Gurus and the Avatars and all the God-Men would have us value being thoughtless and mindless as if that is the highest virtue one can aspire to) is part of the mosaic of the evolutionary process and would soon become superseded when a mutation more fitted for survival takes precedence over such fantasy. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 33b, 29 Nov 1999).

(Actualism, ActualVineeto, Kuba 5, 19 February 2025).

KUBA: There is no reason why those holy men could not have gone all the way, instead they became enlightened and brought insanity back with them.

ED: Many of those men were uneducated and steeped in religious beliefs during a time-period lacking the scientific discoveries we enjoy. It’s possible they had strong religious beliefs in place before their enlightenments, and would have little to no reason to question it if they did not have a memory of the PCE.

Religions would have existed with or without enlightenment as a means to explain the world. And feeling beings would have fought to protect those beliefs. It’s hard to separate the enlightened men from it as they were influenced by religion and they influenced religion.

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

You gave an exonerative speech why nobody before Richard could have discovered an actual freedom but your facts are incorrect.

For instance, Richard was not “reasonably wealthy” – he had to work hard for his living, including from early childhood.

Richard: Having been born and raised on a dairy farm in the south-west of this country I have an affinity for the remote lifestyle (my progenitors were pioneer settlers carving a farm by hand out of virgin forest and sowing grasslands for animal husbandry). In this context I had a normal birth and upbringing (a bucolic lifestyle); I was educated in a normal state-run rural school (where being dux of the class came easy); I took on a typical occupation at age fifteen (full-time farming) becoming a high-school dropout in the process; I volunteered for a six-year stint in the military at seventeen (in a water-transport unit); I served my time in an overseas war at nineteen (on an army landing ship); I entered into a commonplace marriage upon my return (a knobstick wedding); I had a regular family, just as most peoples do, and, although I had about forty-to-fifty different jobs during my post-military itinerant-lifestyle working life – such as First Mate on an Arnhem Land landing craft, for instance, and as barman-cum-deckhand on a Coral Coast tourist ship, for example – my main occupation, having obtained a tertiary education with certified accreditation in the fine arts in my late-twenties, was as a part-time art teacher and a practicing artist (mainly in ceramics).

As both a boy and as a youth I personally used hand-held cross-cut saws and axes to help cut down and/or ring-bark the trees to make pasture land; I was involved in the fencing and ploughing and sowing and harvesting; I hunted game in the forest and helped raise domesticated animals; I tended the gardens and orchards and crops; I assisted in building sheds (barns) and outhouses from forest timber and learned improvisation from the ingenuity required in ‘making do’ with minimal commercial supplies. There was no plumbing, sewage, telephone, or electricity umbilicals (in effect, living the ‘off-grid’ lifestyle some forty years before the term was coined) – I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lantern – thus no freezer, no electric kitchen gadgets, no record players, no videos, no television, no computer, and etcetera. (Richard, Personal Web Page)

He also had to work up to 12-14 hrs a day 6-7 days a week to support a family of six –

Richard: I found myself in a situation where I was married and raising four children. (Richard, AF List, No. 27e, 5 April 2003).

Richard: I gradually transformed myself from an itinerant worker (I worked at maybe 40-50 different jobs during my peregrinations) into a full-blown artist by enrolling at an art-college, full-time for three years, and practising same 12-14 hours a day 6-7 days a week, in the years after graduating, so as to support and provide for five other peoples as well as myself. (Richard, AF List, No. 25j, 7 May 2006).

After he became enlightened, he was even less “reasonably wealthy” to the point where he had

Richard: “... whittled my worldly possessions down to three sarongs, three shirts, a cooking pot and bowl, a knife and a spoon, a bank book and a pair of nail scissors. I possessed nothing else anywhere in the world and cut all family ties. During that period I was homeless, itinerant, celibate, vegan, (no spices; not even salt and pepper), no drugs (no tobacco, no alcohol; not even tea or coffee), no hair cut, no shaving, no washing other than a dip in a river or the ocean ... in short: whatever I could eliminate from my life that was an encumbrance and an attachment, I had let go of.” (Richard, List B, No. 21b, 23 March 2000).

Richard always maintained the Saints and Seers and Holy Men had ‘Feet of Clay’ because just like Richard they would be well aware at some instances of their enlightened state that there was a flaw, in that they experienced occasional bouts of anger or sadness, and furthermore that enlightenment was only a ‘perfect’ solution after death and therefore useless to every single human being still living. As Richard reported that everyone he spoke to at length could remember a PCE, often from childhood, your absolvitory argument falls flat on its face on that account as well. And as for certain recent discoveries, at least the enlightened masters of the last century since Darwin could have made use of this knowledge.

In, short, it was not the extraneous circumstances, which enabled Richard to go all the way, no matter the difficulties involved, but ‘his’ personal mettle. Additionally ‘he’ had the plain common sense not to fall for the fallacy, which “would have us value being thoughtless and mindless as if that is the highest virtue one can aspire to”. After all, it was the mailing list established to discuss Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Teaching on which he wrote the above paragraph. This attitude of disparaging thought and thus human intelligence, and not religion in general, is what made India stand out in its “paramount contribution to the retardation of evolution”.

Why are you so eager to exonerate the enlightened masters and the ancient wisdom they peddled for 3000-5000 years of human history, and why you even try to argue that only Richard’s circumstances were propitious enough, of the 12-15 billion people who have lived until now and/or are alive now, that he was the only person to be not “influenced by religion”?

I just want to have it on record that it’s not extraneous circumstances, with all the modern technology thrown in for good measure, which allow a person today to become free from the human condition. Something else is required.

Cheers Vineeto

March 7 2025

Richard: I was therefore commenting that (in this specific instance) India’s paramount contribution to the retardation of evolution over the last 3,000 to 5,000 years (in that after maybe the millions of years of evolution necessary to evolve thought, thoughts and thinking (intelligence) in one animal species alone, the Masters and the Gurus and the Avatars and all the God-Men would have us value being thoughtless and mindless as if that is the highest virtue one can aspire to) is part of the mosaic of the evolutionary process and would soon become superseded when a mutation more fitted for survival takes precedence over such fantasy. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 33b, 29 November 1999).

Vineeto: I just want to have it on record that it’s not extraneous circumstances, with all the modern technology thrown in for good measure, which allow a person today to become free from the human condition. Something else is required. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, Ed, 6 March 2025).

ED: I appreciate you going on record to clarify that it’s not extraneous circumstances which allowed Richard to become actually free in case someone else might be confused. I don’t want my comments on circumstances to appear reductionist.

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

Thank you Ed.

What I appreciate about Richard’s original quote is that it emphasized the wide-spread presence of the teachings and ramifications of enlightenment having been the summum bonum for millennia. Out of this arose the morals and ethics, many of which still hold sway world-wide. Love/ Divine Love, and compassion/ Divine Compassions were not just mere ‘human’ values to choose or not to choose but inherent features of the human condition itself and as such almost universally valued. That means, if one goes far enough into the ‘good’ feelings then one automatically transfigures malice and sorrow into Love and Compassion, i.e. enlightenment. Hence it took Richard 11 years to investigate the powerful ‘holy cows’ of those highly passionate feelings of Divine Compassion, Love Agape, pacifism, Beauty and timelessness (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Enlightenment Resume) until he finally arrived at the actuality which had been revealed in his pure consciousness experiences.

As Kuba said:

Kuba: I remember when I first read Richard’s journal I wondered why he wrote so much about spirituality, of course it was a huge aspect of his dissolving of the enlightened state but initially I thought it does not apply to me. But it is clearer and clearer now just what role it played in the current state of affairs and just how deeply it runs. That the very parameters of reality were set up by those enlightened beings, the ‘wisdom’ they brought back was rooted in hallucination. Human kind has since been refining those truths into various belief systems, trying to refine that which has its roots in madness, so of course ‘humanity’ is well and truly lost, it cannot be fixed.

Wow it is really something, it must have been the most peculiar (this is way too lukewarm of a word actually) experience for Richard when he dissolved the entire psyche. He would have lived as the only person existing outside of the sanity/ insanity spectrum which itself is based in madness. He was a classified madman and yet what exactly was the rest of the population living?

These divine feelings being inherent in the human condition is the reason why feeling beings ‘Vineeto’ and ‘Peter’ were well aware and weary of the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ during their actualism period, before a direct route was established when they became actually free. It was indeed an “epoch-changing event”. (Long Awaited Announcement).

I like what Claudiu wrote to Andrew –

Claudiu: You will really have to uncover the naiveté you have buried under all this cynicism and recognize just what a wonderous, unique, and fleeting opportunity we are all presented with. The universe in no way will guarantee that the world will become actually free – we are among the most well-positioned humans on the planet to be able to do everything we can to have it happen.

Possibly fleeting, depending on how many daring pioneers take up the challenge and pass on reports of their success.

Cheers Vineeto

April 7 2025

ED: With the recent discussion regarding Pure Intent and rememoration, I thought a thread sharing PCE stories might be a good exercise to do from memory. Additionally, I’ve been wondering about some of the discussion specifically revolving around different flavors of PCEs. Having only one from memory, I have no other point of comparisons.

I sometimes wonder due to the profundity of the experience if I’ve set the PCE up to be something out of reach. It seems so extreme and radically different. BUT, it is also everything I have ever wanted from life. Double-back to this later.

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

Thank you for your long and extensive description of your memorable PCE.

It indeed sets an excellent benchmark for you to access pure intent by comparing your experience during the height of the PCE against your real-world experience, knowing that what you are aiming for is “night-and-day difference between feeling-being mode”, the “ultimate fulfillment” and “everything I have ever wanted from life”.

Even though not every PCE is a meaning-of-life experience, this experience nevertheless represents your ultimate destiny – the meaning-of-life freedom aka full freedom.

ED: I believe I’ve shared details but have never written a complete report so I’ll do that now. There will be spiritual details since that was where I was at, at the time:

An extremely pleasant feeling arose in the solar plexus. At the time, I described it as being completely fascinated with what was happening – but also at the time, I took this feeling to be something other than myself. It seemed like it was coming from me but also something other than me. Trying to comprehend this feeling of total fascination, I concluded that this must be what pure love is.

VINEETO: If ever you are wondering how to provide the conditions for a PCE to happen without drugs, here are some clues in your own description how it started – “I was marinating in it [the relaxation] instead of trying to do it”. … “I described it as being completely fascinated with what was happening”. And you allowed the fascinated contemplation to continue even though “it seemed like it was coming from me but also something other than me”.

When you compare this to the following description you understand why I picked out those sentences of yours –

Richard: Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts.

The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that can be arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord ... and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity ... as a sensate body only, one is automatically benevolent and benign. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

ED: It was the coca-cola can on my desk which first caught my attention. Something was different about it. It was like it had come to life and this fascination was embedded in its very fabric. This fascination was embedded in everything. Everything was alive somehow. Scintillating. Bright.

Still, I was enjoying the relaxation. At some point I decided to go outside and it was on the steps of my apartment when everything stopped and was still. I said out loud, “you mean I’m already here?” Ha, ha.

VINEETO: You probably figured it out already – this is where the PCE proper starts.

ED: Things were utterly perfect. The perfection was experienceable. I was completely fulfilled. All of my aching desires, concerns, responsibilities, were gone and replaced with this perfection that was everywhere. It was so clean and still. It was so enjoyable and invigorating.

And it had been here this whole time. That was another conclusion I came to. It was me that was missing out on it. I actually considered maybe everyone had been enjoying this perfection my whole life except me.

VINEETO: I do appreciate your conclusion at the time, especially the first one that you had been “missing out”. In a PCE, when you are actually here, at this moment in time, you can realize that you have always been here – as flesh-and-blood body that is – and only the ‘loudmouth’ of an identity had been standing in the way of experiencing this actuality.

That you then “considered maybe everyone had been enjoying this perfection my whole life except me” looks like an assessment made by the returning identity. It is indeed a totally different perspective when you are in the actual world than when ‘you’ live in the real world.

I know, from the perspective of being actually free, that everyone is missing out, every moment again, because actuality is available right here, right now – but I also know that they don’t know this, because I remember well how it was for feeling being ‘Vineeto’.

ED: At the time it was occurring, I considered this experience to be the meaning of life. That is to say, the meaning of life isn’t some sort of secret explanation to be revealed, but rather a way of experiencing being alive that is perfect. A gift but also a birthright in stark contrast to the alienation I typically felt in regards to the world and others.

VINEETO: Well said.

ED: I can see why some describe this experience as otherworldly but clearly upon reflection I was not in another world. I was right here. I even said it out loud. While otherworldly may give some indication to how radically different it is, I think it is a confused way of describing the situation and setting the actual world up to be somewhere distant when it’s not.

VINEETO: During the experience itself the actual world is not “otherworldly” at all – during the experience one is right here in the actual world. From the real-world perspective, of course, the actual world seems to be far away – another world altogether.

ED: This perfection didn’t last long. I didn’t even notice it diminish because I was too busy trying to make sense of what was happening. What happened next was the oceanic experience and I became everything. It’s experienced to be real, but much like the real-world or a belief is experienced to be real. It is like a belief with no doubt involved. Where as the perfection seemed to be the result of an absence of something, this was more like an exotic feeling state. A shift in one’s reality.

It was an intuitive apprehension and considering oblivion caused a lot of dread. I noticed how much I wanted to live which betrayed the previous months of depression and wishing for death.

VINEETO: While your PCE devolved into an ASC, most likely inspired by memories of religion and your spiritual quest you nevertheless focussed on one significant insight – “that I must die to enter that dimension of perfection”. Naturally, this triggered the identity to return in full force and this insight was accompanied by the ‘appropriate’ and natural passionate emotion when ‘you’, the identity experiences a threat to ‘your’ survival.

ED: Nothing much happened for a while but one more remarkable event did occur. While I was laying on the floor and my thoughts were winding down I was staring at the ceiling fan. Again, not thinking about much. All of a sudden it was as-if an invisible layer was peeled away. My problems, worries, responsibilities were gone as-if they never existed. I could hear how quiet and still everything was. It was like a noise I had become used to had stopped and its absence is what alerted me to its former presence.

BUT, there was no meaning-of-life perfection. It was still tremendous and a wildly better way of being alive than normal. There was nothing to hide. But the perfection and purity wasn’t present.

VINEETO: It could have been a short-lived excellence experience or something similar but not quite, certainly not the lodestone experience you described before.

ED: (…) I think the moment of perfection ceased when I began wondering/ believing that everyone else had been enjoying this perfection except me. I think that’s when I came back into the picture in a big way and I remember feeling confused, but still feeling amazing. (…)

VINEETO: Yes, you are correct and “in a big way” as well, the identity returned vindictively and ‘with a vengeance’, as the saying goes, creating the perfect ‘me’ against ‘me’ scenario designed to keep one locked in under the control of ‘me’.

ED: In the ensuing years much investigation has taken place, my baseline has raised significantly, and I’m a more liking and likable person. But I think what I’m missing is that connection to pure intent. I haven’t been able to develop it.

VINEETO: As I detailed above, there is certainly much potential to forge a clew to pure intent if the re-vivified flavour of your memory of this PCE is as clear as your excellent verbal description.

ED: For similar reasons to Josef, I haven’t spent significant time rememorating that night. Only recently have I started to cipher out the meaningful qualities in an attempt to hone in on them. The current discussion has been motivating and I think it could be more useful to work with what I got than try to resolve these questions and concerns that breed like rabbits and seem sillier by the day.

Regardless of how it happened, it serves as my peak experience to benchmark everything against. Perfect and effortlessly enjoyable – if only I had the muscle of appreciation and down-to-earth attitude at the time.

VINEETO: You can still apply “the muscle of appreciation” for this memory and can choose to enjoy that you had the opportunity and remembrance of such an outstanding experience.

ED: The one thing that I have been curious about in regards to recent discussion is the moments where one wonders if they’re in a PCE only to evaluate that they’re not. I have had moments of feeling still, happy and harmless, almost perfect. At times I’ve wondered if I might be near a PCE and perhaps in one.

But that perfection isn’t there, and so it’s obviously not a PCE. Is it that there are more milder forms of PCEs? Perhaps the second moment when my ‘invisible layer’ was pulled off was such. Things were “perfect” so to speak because all of my problems, sense of time, and responsibility were gone, but the experiential perfection was missing. However, even that was night-and-day different to how I normally am and unmistakable.

VINEETO: The “milder forms” you are asking about are better described as excellence experiences in order to have a clear distinction between an outstanding delectable experience of well-being and a PCE, where purity and perfection and magicality are experientially obvious (and not just in comparison to real world experiencing).

ED: Finally, I think I may have set the PCE up to be unreachable due to not only how profound it was, but also due to feeling threatened by it. It seems so immense. I’ve heard it described as a down-to-earth perfection but the only part the seems down-to-earth about it is that it’s happening right here. (And would be immensely sensible to be, damnit it is down-to-earth but it’s so amazing too.) (…)

VINEETO: Why should “the PCE […] be unreachable” because it was “profound”? You have certainly described the actual world in great detail and quality and other actualists can confirm this.

And it is not necessary to allow yourself to continue feeling threatened by it – it is natural/ intrinsic for the identity to fear for ‘your’ continued survival but that is the very nature of the purity and perfection – that nothing dirty can get it. This is why purity and perfection are the “utter fulfillment” which you aspire to.

In regards to “feeling threatened” – this is where the actualism method comes in handy. By observing and acknowledging the fear when it comes up, and being the fear instead of having fear, it will substantially diminish when you stop objecting to it. This allows you to eventually recognize that the perfection you experienced is worth every sacrifice, all of ‘me’, in order to live the purity and perfection 24/7.

Watering down the standard would be equivalent to settling for second best.

Cheers Vineeto

April 10 2025

VINEETO: And it is not necessary to allow yourself to continue feeling threatened by it.

ED: During my path thusfar, the PCE has actually been a REALLY threatening thing. “I” would get scared at times when my baseline would improve, or when I would feel happier. “Scared” that I could slip into a PCE or die at any moment. All irrational but felt!

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

Every feeling is irrational, no matter if common wisdom says that some fear is rational. Today I saw a clip from Elon Musk on another matter and one quote of his at the 1 min mark struck me – he said “when thinking about fear, look fear straight in the eye and it will disappear, (…) look at it directly and it will be gone.” I was struck by his insight because I so far have heard nobody say anything like this except in the AFT writings. ‘Vineeto’s’ experience was that when she stopped objecting to fear, running away from fear, fighting against fear, it would diminish substantially and eventually subside.

However, at the end of the post, you say –

ED: I’m constantly on the lookout for a PCE.

VINEETO: How can you be “constantly on the lookout for a PCE” and simultaneously consider “the PCE has actually been a REALLY threatening thing”? Is it any wonder that the PCE is so far unattainable – or rather that you avoid the PCE like the plague despite your constant lookout for it at the surface level.

Unless you face the fear – stop objecting to it, stop running from it, and allow to feel it as what you are, the experience you are constantly looking out for will remain elusive.

ED: A pang of fear would pop up and diminish the movement towards happy & harmless – presenting a boundary for the happiness and harmlessness. It was like I kept having to see it was safe to go a little-bit further. Or kept having to see that what was keeping me in place wasn’t what I wanted at all, providing some needed gumption to move forward.

VINEETO: Instead of inching forward towards being happy and harmless tiny step by tiny step you also have the option to take the bull by the horns, as the saying goes, and face the core of your feeling of fear –

Richard: What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be ... just like before birth. Where is the problem? (Richard, List B, No. 21, 10 Mar 1998)

And –

Richard: Now, whilst the word ‘fear’ is not the feeling itself, the feeling is very, very real whilst it is happening (as real as any ‘I’ is). By ‘being with it’ as it was happening – without moving in any direction whatsoever with escapist thoughts, feelings or urges – ‘I’ would come to experience ‘being it’ ... and ‘I’ am this fear and this fear is ‘me’. Thus ‘I’ came to experience ‘myself’ in all ‘my’ nakedness. All ‘I’ am, is this fear ... and fear is but one of the instinctual passions that blind nature genetically encodes in all sentient beings at conception in the genes ... ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. (Richard, List B, No. 33a, 8 Oct 1999).

I presume you read this yourself at one time or another, so what I ask you, what is it that prevents you looking at the one obstacle which so obviously stands in the way of what you presently want most (a PCE) and what you want for the times in between PCEs – feeling happy and harmless?

*

VINEETO: – it is natural/ intrinsic for the identity to fear for ‘your’ continued survival but that is the very nature of the purity and perfection – that nothing dirty can get it.

ED: Let me see if I understand what you’re pointing out. The nature of purity and perfection provides the security I’m looking for since nothing dirty can get into it. Since it provides security, there is no need to fear it as something that is a threat to my survival as I have been doing thusfar?

VINEETO: What I am confirming is that what you are looking for – “the security I’m looking for since nothing dirty can get into it” is also the reason for your greatest fear, because in order to live where nothing dirty can get in, ‘you’, the identity, will have to die in its totality.

However, ‘you’ don’t have to die to have a PCE, ‘you’ only have to go into temporary abeyance. And ‘you’ don’t have to die in order to become more happy and harmless, ‘you’ only have to give up some, or a lot, of the control ‘you’ have at present over your flesh and blood body and Ed’s life.

*

VINEETO: Why should “the PCE […] be unreachable” because it was “profound”? You have certainly described the actual world in great detail and quality and other actualists can confirm this.

ED: I think the unreachable element may have something to do with feeling like an imposter.

Feeling like I’m falling into a repeated trap here and like I have to let something go but I can’t because my mind is always on these things. 

VINEETO: How close you are is not measured in inches or feet or hundreds of feet – existentially it is a very short step –

Richard: In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ (and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’; ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’; ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’).
The direct experiencing of this is the ending of ‘me’ ... and I am this flesh and blood body only being here now as only this moment is. (Richard, List B, No. 33a, 8 Oct 1999).

If that is too scary for now, which is natural, then you can begin with, bit by bit, letting go of aspects of control and start allowing yourself to first feel the feeling (instead of merely thinking about it) and then begin to acknowledge that you are the feeling you feel instead of having the feeling. From there it is easy to be a different feeling.

Cheers Vineeto

April 17 2025

VINEETO: How can you be “constantly on the lookout for a PCE“ and simultaneously consider “the PCE has actually been a REALLY threatening thing”?

ED: I think there are two issues in one here. The first is that I think that this relates to what y’all talk about when you refer to getting “all of your being” on-board. It feels like I’m split here. There’s a part of me that’s fearful.

I’ve been catching it more, and writing about it certainly helps to recall.

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

You are certainly onto something here – every “reverie“ takes you away from this moment where life is happening and where you can be attentive and change. The past is a memory and the future a reverie (or fearful fantasy) – only this moment is ever actual.

So, your challenge is to pay affective attention to how you experience this moment – and it is in this moment where you can experience being the feeling you feel and fully being it (without objection or endorsement) choose to be. For instance if you experience being angry (or fearful, or sad) you recognize and acknowledge that you are this feeling (that is all you are as an identity when you are ruthless honest with yourself). Experiencing that you are this feeling then you have the choice to be a felicitous feeling instead (recognizing that it is silly to be anger or fear or sadness).

*

VINEETO: Instead of inching forward towards being happy and harmless tiny step by tiny step you also have the option to take the bull by the horns, as the saying goes, and face the core of your feeling of fear –

Richard: What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites … there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be … just like before birth. Where is the problem? (Richard, List B, No. 21, 10 March 1998)

ED: I remember in your video with Richard the two of you talking about the absolute end of everything. Was oblivion on your mind back then? How were you relating to it at the time?

VINEETO: I remember that well. Oblivion was on ‘her’ mind, as you put it. ‘She’ yearned for oblivion.

However, when Richard told ‘her’ (after the end of filming) that ‘she’ had been “very close“, ‘she’ panicked and avoided intense conversations with Richard for two years. Obviously more had to happen.

ED: After the PCE and when I thought that I must die, even though I knew it wasn’t to be a physical death, it felt like the absolute end of everything. But that seems like a trick – because immolation isn’t the absolute end of everything. Life continues on. The body continues on.

VINEETO: Oh, but it is “everything” because ‘you’, the identity, has such a complete hold and control over you that nothing else exists and nothing else matters but the survival of ‘me’. The only time you can experience life without identity is during the identity’s abeyance. So it is not “like a trick”, it is the deeply felt truth (albeit not a fact).

As such, the only way to deal with the fear is to take the bull by the horns in that you stop fighting the fear – it will instantly diminish because you stop feeding it (via the resistance).

Respondent: When I feel fear, fear seems to reinforce itself and stays put.

Richard: It is not all that uncommon to feel fear feeding off itself, as it were, and mounting in intensity almost exponentially – as in a panic attack for instance – yet closer inspection reveals that it is none other than ‘me’, a fearful ‘me’, who is fuelling/ refuelling the fear (‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’) with ‘my’ own affective energy.

Respondent: When I think of any belief about the fear trigger, the fear seems to reinforce the belief.

Richard: Oh, indeed so ... that is a phenomenon well-known by many a draconian.

Respondent: Each fear is a self perpetuating.

Richard: The key to success lies in realising that fear does not go anywhere (meaning that nothing ever happens except more fear). [Emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 79, 21 June 2005)

ED: I guess I wonder if you ever resolved that fear of oblivion or if instead you took that leap of faith. Maybe it looks like a mix of two. I wonder if the immanence of immolation at that moment brought this resistance up.

VINEETO: ‘Vineeto’ did not take “a leap of faith” at all but relied on and strengthened ‘her’ connection to pure intent. Without pure intent one is trapped in the human condition, but with pure intent operating there is an alternative way of experiencing life and a way out.

ED: This fear of oblivion feels like what I am at the core. I understand this echoes Richard’s language, but I can remember a few years before my PCE lamenting to an enlightened guy that all I am is fear. A fear-driven problem-solving machine.

To me, the issue of oblivion seems like a big deal – like if I could resolve it, there’d be nothing left to keep me around.

VINEETO: Ha, here you demonstrate it again, this all-or-nothing approach. Has it ever occurred to you that this is exactly how ‘you’ avoid ever doing something practical, something tangible, which would bring about a change for the better in your life, which would work to diminish the control ‘you’ have over your life? By telling yourself that “all I am is fear” and imagine that this is the sign that you are close to immolation (“if I could resolve it, there’d be nothing left to keep me around“) you remain stuck in fear and imagination.

You are indeed “tricking” yourself but not by your intellectual projection into the future but by avoiding to even start the first step in actively applying the actualism method – “the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive” – and start feeling good/ looking at the obstacles to feeling good now.

*

VINEETO: From there it is easy to choose to be a different feeling.

ED: My experience of this thus far is that I don’t have the ability to immediately control how I feel.

VINEETO: Of course you don’t, nobody asked you to “have the ability to immediately control how I feel”. What I said was –

Vineeto: “… start allowing yourself to first feel the feeling (instead of merely thinking about it) and then begin to acknowledge that you are the feeling you feel instead of having the feeling. From there it is easy to be a different feeling.”

Please read these two sentences again and tell me if you see the difference between what I suggested and what you made of it. If not, read it again until you do. Then put it into practice before dismissing it out of hand, or out of past experiences.

In case you have trouble understanding my summary suggestion with the relevant words made bold here is a more detailed description from a co-respondent when the penny had dropped for them –

Respondent: ... incidentally, Richard, how can they be ‘an hereditary occurrence’ and be of my choosing at the same time?

Richard: You do comprehend that you are your feelings/ your feelings are you (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’) do you not? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between *having* feelings and *being* those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.

This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to “do something“ about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I *am* the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.

This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.

I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST).

And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 30 October 2005a).

ED: (…) But I can’t necessarily choose from that point to start feeling excellent. Or can I? If that’s the case, why not choose to go into a PCE or immolate?

VINEETO: Here it is again – the all-or-nothing approach, or the search for a short-cut, just so you don’t have to apply yourself to do it step by step. How much longer do you want to procrastinate doing something practical and tangible that has worked for others? Why waste all this time waiting/ searching for instant gratification when you take your life into your own hands and start feeling good now, the only moment you can actually experience.

I highly recommend re-reading Richard’s Article of This Moment of Being Alive, including the very helpful tool-tips.

Cheers Vineeto