VINEETO: You have written, commenting on a remark that No 38 made –

RESPONDENT No 38: …actual freedom might be only a unique quirk of nature, located at Richard.

RESPONDENT: I have wondered that too. Is Actual Freedom a quirk of nature located in Richard. The facts as expressed by Richard make the most sense to me that I have come across in my 30 odd years of searching. I’m just in the beginning of applying the method and could not call myself happy and harmless at this point. When I try to lean on memory of the old PCEs I get suspicious of myself that I’m faking or misunderstanding the PCE, and I just keep discovering more fear and malice and compassion.

VINEETO: It appears by your post that you are well on your way to freeing yourself from your ‘old spiritual self soothings and sense of entitlement to the divine kingdom’. In my experience of actualism, I always found it encouraging when I noticed that I could not go back to my old ways although it was often a shock to discover that the bridge was burnt. After all, this not being able to go back to being ‘who’ I was means that I am actually, i.e. irrevocably, changing and that I am not just kidding myself.

When you really discover something to be ‘obviously false’ then there is indeed no way to go back and that realization accounts for the anxiety that ‘I’ generate whenever ‘my’ status quo is challenged. It reminds me of a certain type of spiders, which begin to strongly vibrate when their net is being touched so as to deter any attack. In the actualism practice of dismantling my ‘self’ I soon learnt to see my anxiety attacks as sure indicators that I was on the right track to becoming more happy and harmless because ‘I’ was rocking at my core.

As for ‘I just keep discovering more fear and malice and compassion’ – it is quite amazing what is revealed when the light is switched on in the hidden corners of one’s psyche, so to speak, and all the previously unseen and unknown ‘ghosts’ come to the fore. Whilst this can appear at times as if things are getting worse, this discovery is the very result of taking the lid off the hypocritical morals and ethics and paying exclusive attention to what is really going on.

It is important to always keep in mind that actualism is not about abandoning the spiritual world and going back to reality. Actualism is about leaving both grim reality and its panacea Greater Reality behind and stepping into the actual world of benevolent perfection that is temporarily but unmistakably evident in a PCE. As such, it is vital to remember that actualism is not about dwelling on the invidious emotions that one invariably becomes aware of in the process of actualism but that the aim of the process is to encourage the flourishing of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – those that are happy and harmless.

As for being ‘suspicious’ that you are ‘faking or misunderstanding the PCE’ – the most obvious and certainly stunning quality of a PCE is the sudden recognition that the world is already perfect – when ‘I’ am out of the way. From the way you described both pure consciousness experiences and altered states of consciousness you seem to know them both well and also can tell them well apart. Personally I was never much plagued by suspicion but I remember doubt being a considerable obstacle in my early days when I had cycles of fear turning into doubt turning into stagnation turning into more fear and more doubt and more stagnation. Eventually by observation, I learnt to recognize my diffuse feelings of doubt as a component of the feeling of fear and learnt that it is easier and more practical to stay with the feeling of fear and waiting for it to run its course, as it inevitably does, rather than letting fear deteriorate into debilitating feelings of doubt.

Doubt can also arise when one is questioning one’s beliefs because doubt is simply the flip side of trust. I learnt to replace specific doubts I had about certain beliefs with the certainty of the facts of the matter and to contrast unspecific doubts with the confidence of the practical successes of utilizing the actualism method.

Now at last to your first question – ‘Is Actual Freedom a quirk of nature located in Richard.’

As we are the pioneers of a brand-new discovery to human history right now, there are no others who are actually free and thus it could be assumed that actual freedom is merely a ‘quirk of nature’. However, from the standpoint of a PCE where the perfection and benefaction of the universe becomes so stunningly apparent, such a view is plainly cynical because how in a perfect and pure universe can a permanent actual freedom be available to one only person and out of reach for everyone else? Or, to put it in other words, the perception that human beings should forever be doomed to live in misery, suffering and violence without the prospect of a cure is but to view life on earth as a sick joke. For that very reason I have never subscribed to the view that Richard’s actual freedom is just a quirk of nature. He is simply the first.

An actual freedom from the human condition is neither esoteric nor unrepeatable. Speaking personally, the reason why Richard is still the only one to be actually free is that I simply do not have the courage yet to become permanently free from the human condition – there is always this last bit of ‘me’ hanging onto ‘my’ precious existence. ‘I’ am tethering on the edge, toying with my thoughts of, and my longing for, ‘my’ extinction but I am putting off the final, irrevocable, jump. Lately I have experienced the beckoning of sweet oblivion whereupon ‘I’ will finally resolve the conundrum that ‘I’ can never be perfect by disappearing forever – but so far I’ve been too scared to take the plunge. Yet I know by my experience of the utter perfection of this actual physical universe that it is only a matter of time until one of the practicing actualists will dare to take the final plunge and prove to all the doubters and cynics that Actual Freedom is possible for everyone on this fair planet.

Until then second place is still up for grabs.

Nice to chat with you.

30.3.2003

VINEETO: As for ‘I just keep discovering more fear and malice and compassion’ – it is quite amazing what is revealed when the light is switched on in the hidden corners of one’s psyche, so to speak, and all the previously unseen and unknown ‘ghosts’ come to the fore. Whilst this can appear at times as if things are getting worse, this discovery is the very result of taking the lid off the hypocritical morals and ethics and paying exclusive attention to what is really going on.

It is important to always keep in mind that actualism is not about abandoning the spiritual world and going back to reality. Actualism is about leaving both grim reality and its panacea Greater Reality behind and stepping into the actual world of benevolent perfection that is temporarily but unmistakably evident in a PCE. As such, it is vital to remember that actualism is not about dwelling on the invidious emotions that one invariably becomes aware of in the process of actualism but that the aim of the process is to encourage the flourishing of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – those that are happy and harmless.

RESPONDENT: Thanks for writing Vineeto, coming from a military family I tend to forget that it’s not just about whipping myself into shape. I can get stuck there like a fly to fly paper. It is possible to get back to being happy and harmless, thanks for the nudge.

VINEETO: Yes, the social conditioning of ‘whipping myself into shape’, be it the practice of beating yourself up or the practice of ‘self’-empowerment, is just as interfering with one’s being happy and harmless as indulging in emotions or expressing them towards others. The actualism method is specially designed to detect these deeply imbedded patterns. Increased attentiveness to either ‘self’-punishing or ‘self’-indulging behaviour reveals that I can stop acting along those lines and that I have a choice to be sensible. It takes a good deal of persistence because not only have those patterns been imbibed since very early childhood, they are also literally the building blocks of one’s precious identity, ‘who I think and feel I am’. As you seem to be discovering, it needs sincere intent and investigative attentiveness in order to bring about lasting change.

*

VINEETO: Now at last to your first question – ‘Is Actual Freedom a quirk of nature located in Richard.’

An actual freedom from the human condition is neither esoteric nor unrepeatable. Speaking personally, the reason why Richard is still the only one to be actually free is that I simply do not have the courage yet to become permanently free from the human condition – there is always this last bit of ‘me’ hanging onto ‘my’ precious existence. ‘I’ am tethering on the edge, toying with my thoughts of, and my longing for, ‘my’ extinction but I am putting off the final, irrevocable, jump. Lately I have experienced the beckoning of sweet oblivion whereupon ‘I’ will finally resolve the conundrum that ‘I’ can never be perfect by disappearing forever – but so far I’ve been too scared to take the plunge. Yet I know by my experience of the utter perfection of this actual physical universe that it is only a matter of time until one of the practicing actualists will dare to take the final plunge and prove to all the doubters and cynics that Actual Freedom is possible for everyone on this fair planet.

Until then second place is still up for grabs.

RESPONDENT: Called again on my cynicism. It’s a defence mechanism – the citadel of fear and cynicism, the last stronghold of myself. Thinking of giving up cynicism makes my head spin. This should be interesting.

VINEETO: When I said ‘all doubters and cynics’ I did not mean you in particular. The comment alluded more to the common-to-all belief that humans should forever live in misery, fear and aggression, which is a deeply cynical worldview, one that is firmly entrenched in the human condition and one that underpins all of religious and spiritual belief.

Cynicism is indeed a major defence mechanism and everyone in one way or another holds the belief that ‘life is a bitch and then you die’. In the real world this defence mechanism is apparent as criticism, sarcasm, doom and gloom beliefs and eternal scepticism and in the spiritual world it manifests as the passionate conviction that life on earth is essentially suffering and peace and true salvation can only lie elsewhere.

In my spiritual years I had shied away from the world and refused to read newspapers, watch television or listen to the radio – I stuck my head in the clouds and did not want to see suffering and aggression. I built an imaginary castle of inner peace and attempted to set up permanent residence ‘inside’. But as years went by I had to admit that my ‘defence mechanism’ failed because suffering and aggression was still present in me as it was in my fellow spiritual seekers.

When I came across Richard, I learnt that I could actually become free from malice and sorrow and that I could become free from taking offence and free from aggression. I decided to take up the challenge. I began to investigate what it was that I was defending with my cynicism and aloofness, with my imagination and denial. What I was really defending – for the sake of ‘me’ staying in existence – was the conviction that there will never ever be an end to misery and mayhem amongst human beings. In the course of my inquiry into my defence mechanisms I discovered that these very mechanisms are responsible of locking me out of the wonder, peace and perfection of the actual world.

To abandon cynicism in all its forms and rekindle one’s naiveté is a deliberate choice that one needs to make if one is ever to be happy and harmless and it is the only way to overcome, as you say, this ‘stronghold’ of the ‘self’. The question I asked myself was what did I have to loose? I had abandoned life in the real world when I was 26 and when I took stock of my life at age 45 I found that the spiritual life did not deliver the peace it promised. So I threw in the towel once again, abandoned my spiritual beliefs and decided to start afresh – wholeheartedly , as I had done with the other two previous options.

It is an act of daring to let one’s cynic guard down and re-engage one’s own naïve curiosity. At first I was sometimes overwhelmed by the sorrow, fear and aggression that I had tried to escape from when I retreated into my inner world. I began to feel and observe not only my own feelings of fear and aggression, but also the malice and sorrow in others – I began to grasp the enormous scope of the human condition in action. Compassion is a good example of such a universal feeling. It sometimes overwhelmed me to the point that I seemed to drown in sorrow, swallowed in a feeling of never-ending human misery. One time I went to the very edge of this feeling of overwhelming compassion and I dropped into a bottomless abyss of dread the likes of which I hadn’t encountered before. This is what I wrote at the time –

[Vineeto]: ‘Watching a film on WW II, I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the collective sorrow, guilt, depression and dread that made up the ‘dark part’ of the ‘German soul’. The feeling became so bizarre and threatening that I started to desperately look for something to bring me back here into the actual world. At the same time I was curious to experience and explore this new intensity of feeling. I seemed to be standing at the edge of an immense abyss of hell, which emanated all of the terror and dread of humanity, stretching endlessly into a grey dead infinity with no hope and no way out, ever. My eyes were searching for something physical to anchor on. I stood at the window, repeating to myself, ‘this is a fence, this is grass, this is a flower.’ The bright redness of the bougainvillea outside in the garden penetrated a little into this powerful magnet of dread that was threatening to swallow me for eternity.

Above the abyss of dread appeared enlightenment, seductively blinking, promising bliss as the solution to this overwhelming hopelessness and sense of ‘evil’. But as I had seen through the illusion the enlightenment option only a few days before, I was not convinced to go down that land of imaginary bliss – I wanted freedom from illusion, any illusion. So I fixed my eyes on the red flowers, until slowly, slowly the dread lost some of its power and turned into the familiar feeling of fear. But it was far from being over! I started to look for more actuality, longing for the taste of coffee in my mouth, for sounds in my ear and wind on my skin. Nothing else would get me out of this powerful collective and atavistic passionate dream. Peter had told me about a similar experience that he had had just a few days earlier and had seen that there is no solution to be had in feeling everyone’s dread, everyone’s hopelessness.

So I activated all my willpower to manoeuvre myself back into the physical world of the senses, where neither dread nor enlightenment exist – and I eventually succeeded. The experience left me shaking for another day, and I am glad to know that the door marked ‘dread’ is as much a dead-end-road as the door marked ‘enlightenment’. Quite a Rocky Horror Picture Show, just more real – and yet, all happening inside one’s own head! Vineeto, Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness

Because I remained attentive as the experience was happening, I could clearly see that there is no solution inherent in feeling compassion – nobody is being helped by my own feelings of sorrow, however deep, and all I am doing is wasting this moment of being alive by wallowing in sorrow to the point of experiencing the deep feeling of instinctual fear, or dread, that is the very root of human sorrow. I also understood that no matter how many people I felt compassion for and whatever violence I felt revulsion about, these were still my own feelings. They arise out of my own psyche and therefore it is in my hands, and my hands only, to do something about those feelings in me.

There is an inherent propensity within the human condition that one can call on to counter the human propensity for cynicism and that is naiveté. Naiveté is the closest thing to an actual innocence within the human condition and it is absolutely essential to muster in order to counter any fear and its subsequent defence mechanisms that arise. With pure intent garnered from the perfection and purity of the PCE acting as a golden thread and with naiveté as a constant companion, one pulls oneself up by one’s bootstraps and discovers, step by step, that becoming free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is indeed possible.

Since writing this a later post has arrived in which you appear to have demonstrated by your experience how it is that naiveté can circumvent fear as you invite the benevolence of the actual universe to become apparent. You will notice – and I can confirm it by my own experience – that the longer you dare to weather the storm of such intense emotions as fear, the more their grip will weaken.

It is an exciting adventure indeed.

7.4.2003

RESPONDENT: A couple of quick comments on fear – which I have intimate contact with these days. Since taking up AF several months ago I have experienced a steady ratcheting up of the level of fear. I noticed it as a basic background behind my self created defence mechanisms. The defence mechanisms had helped me to ignore, for the most part, the pain of the fear for all these years. I guess I could identify the defence mechanisms as the many stories I told myself to make it seem that ‘I’ was getting what ‘I’ wanted or needed from others, from the world.

VINEETO: When I read your post I was reminded of the occasional bouts of fear I had in my early days as an when my old world started to fall apart. I had investigated Actual Freedom for several months to the point that I was getting some tangible results. At the time I was working in a company owned and run by Rajneesh disciples and was relatively happy in my job as secretary and bookkeeper. However, as I started to investigate my former spiritual beliefs and began to understand that it was absolutely impossible to marry my previous search for enlightenment with the discovery of Actual Freedom, I also became fearful that my colleagues at work and my spiritual friends would expose me as being a traitor and a heretic.

One morning while driving the 25 km or so to work my fear became so overpowering that I began to not only understand what the source of this fear was, but I also understood what practical steps I had to take in order to get back to being happy and harmless again. What became apparent when I thought my situation through was that I was indeed a traitor to a cause, in this case the belief in the teachings of Mohan Rajneesh and the sooner I admitted to the fact the quicker I could stop being afraid of being exposed. By the time I reached the office I knew what to do – I decided that I had to do something about this particular fear once and for all. The most practical solution that came to mind was to precipitate what I feared most – losing my comfortable job within ‘the fold’. Therefore I decided to give notice that I would quit at their earliest convenience.

Although I was fearful about what others could do to me, I was also acutely aware that I had brought on this situation of my own volition – it was my choice to leave the spiritual fold solely because I was not content with what was on offer in the search for enlightenment. None of the sweet dreams of spiritual freedom would ever do for me any more because I knew, after 17 years of hands-on search, that spiritualism never delivers what it perpetually promises. In other words, I made a deliberate and distinctive choice to abandon the past and devote my life to becoming happy and harmless. In this case, the thrill of daring to take appropriate action rendered my previous feeling of fear redundant.

RESPONDENT: Now that I’ve told myself I don’t get to have anything, not love, not security, not immortality, well, the fear is profound.

VINEETO: Nowhere in the process of actualism did I tell myself that I ‘don’t get to have anything’ – I conducted an investigation into the issues at hand that prevented me from being happy and harmless when and as they arise. When feelings of love prevented me from being unconditionally happy and harmless, then I investigated my feelings of love and their respective counterparts. When fear for my security prevented me from being unconditionally happy and harmless, I investigated the facts of the situation to find out if and where my security was actually compromised and if I was physically in danger. When desire of immortality crept into my thoughts and prevented me from being unconditionally happy and harmless, I investigated those desires and did not stop until I uncovered the source of those desires and their respective fears.

Once I investigated these issues, traced them back to ‘my’ core and understood in what way they are the building blocks of my identity, I did not have to ‘tell myself’ anything – seen in the bright light of awareness the issue stopped being an issue … it became indubitably apparent that all I had lost was one dream after another. Being able to dismiss love and immortality as dreams was a tangible freedom gained and a notable step towards an actual intimacy with others and the confidence and integrity of beginning to be able to stand on my own two feet the first time in my life.

The reason I say this is that actualism is not about adopting a set of should’s and should not’s – a set of non-spiritual moral and ethics if you like. If anyone treats the writings of actualism in this way they are in danger of ending up less happy than they were before – a sure sign that they have left the wide and wondrous path. The writings of actualism have to be confirmed as being fact by the on-going awareness of your own everyday experience in order for actualism to be a life-changing matter.

RESPONDENT: Simultaneously I have noticed that I’m much more alive and energized. I’m in pain much of the time from enduring this intense fear, but I’m not depressed. I feel like I’ve been dozing for years and wasted a lot of time. I’ve thought about people watching frightening films – they (I) get some sort of rise from that – there’s an attraction to the fear that can’t really hurt the body and for some an attraction to the fear that can hurt, like war. Thanks for the fear discussion. I was already dabbling with the exciting aspect of the fear, now I will dive right in.

VINEETO: As I contemplated your post, I came across a bit of correspondence that Richard had with No 23 a while back and it seemed relevant as Richard describes the quality of the process of becoming free from fear and from all of ‘me’ –

Richard: There is neither ‘small me’ (‘I’ as ego) or ‘big Self’ (‘me’ as soul) outside of the human psyche. It is all so simple here in this actual world.

Co-Respondent: Yes. It’s all so simple the brain needs to understand how it’s own action (on various levels) brings about this sense of an identity. YET the energy that is required for this understanding is extraordinary: that what needs to be grasped maybe utterly simple the grasping itself (as action) is incredible hard.

Richard: First, it is only ‘all so simple’ here in this actual world ...and, as it is only too easy to unduly complicate and convolute something so simple whilst living in the ‘real world’, it is vital that one knowingly imitates the actual for as far as it is humanly possible.

Second, it is a feeling of identity, at root, which is the problem ... and not just ‘a sense of an identity’ .

Third, the energy that is required to become free of the human condition is not ‘extraordinary’ (à la Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘immense energy’) as it is the genetically-inherited instinctual energy (the instinctual passions) which fuels the ‘self’-immolation.

Lastly, the ‘action’ of becoming free is not ‘incredible hard’ at all ... it is the easiest thing ‘I’/‘me’ will ever do.

Deliciously easy. Richard to No 18 (=23), 20.6.2001

…

Well, it’s time for me to join ‘the coalition of the willing’ and follow Peter to the bedroom …

Nice to chat again.

5.5.2003

VINEETO: You mentioned two topics in your last letters that I would like to make comment on. The first is the topic of fairness and justice that you described in your recent letter to Gary –

RESPONDENT to Gary: Yes, so all my obsessing about what is just and fair for the world and also what is just and fair treatment from those beings close to me is just that, obsessing. How am I experiencing this moment?

VINEETO: When you use the method of actualism then the question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ needs to be asked with the clear intent to become more happy and more harmless. Without that intent any observation, however specific, remains just that – an observation. It is the intent to pinpoint, understand and eliminate the cause of malice and sorrow in me that ensures that my observation will result in appropriate action or appropriate change of action.

Therefore whenever my fervent belief in ‘justice and fairness’ causes feelings of pain and sorrow, then it is apparent that holding to the belief is obstructing me from being happy and harmless. Have you ever observed that all ethics, including the principles of fairness and justice, are always relative to the eye of the beholder? Ethical judgements as to what is right and wrong, just and unjust, fair and unfair have been established by human beings solely in order to curb the ‘self’-centred instinctual survival passions of fear and aggression, nurture and desire and because of this they vary according to different cultures. This means that justice and fairness mean different things to different people in different situations at different times. To fight for your version of what you see as justice and fairness in the world is simply blaming and controlling others in a futile attempt to impose your favourite world-order on others.

When I had my first major pure consciousness experience, in a single moment of clear understanding, I popped out of my own ‘self’-created world of affective thoughts and imaginations and saw and experienced the actual world for the first time in my life. In that clarity of ‘self’-less seeing, I also understood that all of my life I had lived in my own ‘self’-created private world, a world formed by ‘my’ beliefs, governed by ‘my’ ethics, ruled by ‘my’ morals and encapsulated as my world-view – all of which only serves as fodder for ‘my’ feeling of ‘self’-righteousness that is inherent to the instinctual survival passions. This clear understanding of a ‘self’-less experience was significant in that it meant I could never again believe with the same conviction in the rightness of ‘my’ beliefs, morals, ethics and spiritual views. There was a substantial crack in the walls and floor of ‘my’ private world – and from then on I took every opportunity and made every effort to widen those cracks.

That brings me to the second topic that you have brought up in you recent letter to No 23 –

RESPONDENT to No 23: I thought I might get corrected if I used the word ‘friendship’. I had missed that part of the site. Fellowbeingness, is it? I can appreciate that. It gets a bit prickly for me navigating through the word usage. I know I’m often bringing on unwanted responses by the words I use. (Unwanted in that I desire approval and flinch at correction – there’s me again.) It’s a little like when I speak French. I usually get my point across, but I know I often say things I didn’t mean because I make mistakes.

VINEETO: It is understandable that when you join a new mailing list that you would want to use the ‘right’ words . A few participants have reported a similar desire. However, actualism is not about changing one’s terminology or writing style, actualism is about changing oneself – or to put it colloquially, actualism is not about being able to talk the talk, actualism is about walking the walk. Merely adapting the words used in the writings of actualism to mean something they were not meant to mean would be comparable to adjusting your set of rules to what you imagine the actualism set of rules might be – you would simply replace the word ‘friendship’ for ‘fellowbeingness’ – a word that No 23 coined for his personal liking. What I did as an actualist was to investigate the connotations the word friendship had when I called someone a friend, my feelings of loyalty and trust, my expectations and disappointments, because I wanted to find out how ‘I’ tick as a social and instinctual identity.

My examination of the nature and integrity of my relationship to other people subsequently changed the way I now relate to people. I do not see people as either friends or non-friends because the more I investigated my social conditioning and the underlying feelings of aggression, fear, nurture and desire, the more my need for alliances and belonging has disappeared. As a consequence, I mostly perceive people as what they are – fellow human beings who go about their business of being alive just as I do. I put the horse before the cart – sincerity meant that the change of words only came hand-in-glove with a change of understanding, a change of attitude and a change of behaviour.

As for being ‘extremely explicit about the meaning of the old words’ – when you practice attentiveness to this moment of being alive with the aim of becoming unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless, then you will inevitably want to be very precise with the words that you use to describe your experience because a precise description is a necessary precursor to obtaining precise information from your observation. After all, you want to find out exactly how ‘you’ tick. Similarly, an actualist would want to take care with the use of words when communicating with others simply because it makes sense to do so. Contrary to Mr. Wittgenstein’s philosophy, it is possible to call a spade a spade and to know that it is ‘a tool for digging or cutting the ground, now usually consisting of a sharp-edged rectangular metal blade fitted on a long handle with a grip or crossbar at the upper end.’ Oxford Dictionary. If any confusion occurs in the meaning of a word then clarification can easily be given or a dictionary reached for.

Should you, however, notice that your desire for approval gets in the way of an accurate exchange of information or an in-depth exploration of a subject, then that desire is something to be investigated. Should you notice that your own particular social conditioning causes you to misinterpret and affectively colour the words you read, then this particular emotional ‘reference’ is something to look at. My aim as an actualist is to become free from my affective interpretation of words, things, people and events, to divest them from the veneer of my personal, cultural and instinctual ‘references’ in order that the actual world becomes more and more apparent.

Actualism is a do-it-yourself-for-yourself-by-yourself job – and this is not just a throwaway line. You are indeed on your own, there is no language-test to be passed, no club to be inaugurated into, no inner circle to be part of and no gold medal to be won. What can be won, however, is peace-on-earth for the flesh-and-body called No 49 and the subsequent sensate experiencing of the splendour of living in this actual universe.

And that is extraordinary.

16.5.2003

VINEETO to No 4: The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings.

Similarly, in interactions with your fellow human beings the aim to be harmless will ensure that you rate other people’s happiness as much as your own, simply because if you harbour acrimonious feelings towards another, neither they nor you can be happy in such a situation. The more you actively pursue harmlessness and investigate the social and instinctual mechanisms that cause you to have aggressive, resentful, insulting, blaming, sorrowful and anxious feelings, the less ‘self’-centred, more considerate and more benevolent you are towards all of your fellow human beings.

Of course, you will very quickly experience, if you are scrupulously sincere in your pursuit, that one invariably feels happy whenever one notices that one is spontaneously harmless. Such a happiness only needs enough intent to make the first commitment – to become unconditionally harmless and do whatever is necessarily to attain and maintain such harmlessness. Then the more harmless you are towards your fellow human beings, the more happy you become and this results in even more harmlessness and even more happiness – i.e. success breeds more success.

RESPONDENT: This brings up something for me that I read from Richard a while back concerning what I would call ‘vibes’. I forget the exact text, but the gist was that the emotional states we have running inside us affect the local atmosphere, and even contained internal disturbance affects those around us in a negative way. Did I understand this correctly? And did I use the right word, is it really affect, or is it effect? This is not an idle question and I’ll wait for a response before I go on with where this leads me.

VINEETO: Is this the relevant text you are talking about? And yes, you did understand correctly –

Co-Respondent: I have a question for anyone kind enough to answer. How do I relate to someone who has physically harmed me? Who wishes to harm me again?

Richard: Unless it is a sociopathic stranger prowling the streets taking any victim at random, the physical harm one receives is invoked by the way one feels about one’s assailant ... whether one’s feelings are acted upon in behaviour or not.

And controlling one’s attitude towards them does nothing to stop the other picking up on one’s vibes (to use a 60’s term). If one has the slightest trace of malice or sorrow toward the other, the prevailing wisdom is to be loving or compassionate ... yet it does not work in practice. This is because there is a psychic connection between humans who have feelings.

Modifying one’s negative feelings toward the other by coating them with positive feelings may fool some people for some of the time. Usually, however, one is only fooling oneself, because the positive is born out of the negative. Without the negative feelings there are no positive feelings. No feelings at all means one is happy and harmless and the other leaves one alone ... which does away with the need for that dubious remedy of pacifism (non-violence).

Until one is interested enough with the workings of one’s psyche to dig deep into one’s feelings – into the core of one’s being – and uncover the root of all malice and sorrow, one has no choice but to apply the ‘Tried and True’ remedies again and again ... and fail and fail, again and again.

The pertinent question to ask oneself is: ‘Why do I have the need to relate to anyone at all?’ Richard, List B, No 2, 31.7.1998

You can find some more links to correspondence on vibes in Richard’s catalogue.

As for ‘is it really affect, or is it effect’ – I don’t think it makes any difference as one of the synonyms for ‘affect’ in the Oxford Thesaurus is to ‘have an effect on’ and the effect in case of emotional vibes would undoubtedly be an affective effect.

The way I approached the task of becoming harmless was that I first sought to stop any of my harmless actions or verbal expressions of harm towards other people. When I got to the stage when I could rely on my attentiveness such that I could detect my aggressive mood before I verbally expressed it to those around me, I then raised the bar to detecting any aggressive moods or vibes as soon as they arose. It became readily apparent that a bottled up aggression or resentment towards others only served to make me unhappy and did not count as being really harmless because any such feelings are detectible by others and have an influence on others.

This meant that I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated.

RESPONDENT: And then, to No 4: I wonder if the reason that you experience relative happiness in your life is that you grew up in a relatively undisturbed way – something that I did not. I grew up with a distinct distaste for the human condition as it is because of my experience with it. I’ve often wondered that if my experience had been kinder would I have sought liberation. And I would reissue No 38’ question to you. Why are you interested in Actual Freedom when you are relatively happy? I’m quite interested in your response, because for the human condition as a whole to change it will require people who believe themselves to be ‘relatively happy’ to even so want to engage the demolition of the ‘self’.

VINEETO: I don’t want to pre-empt No 4’s reply but as far as your conclusion is concerned I would like to point out that pioneers in any field have always needed a good dose of panache, stubborn determination, whole-hearted intent and a dash of daring. For those who follow in their footsteps the task becomes easier and the peer review less fierce until the day comes when becoming free from the human condition is the fashionable smart thing to do because it simply makes sense.

Be that as it may, I am always on my own in this enterprise of becoming free from malice and sorrow and I am having the time of my life.

11.8.2003

VINEETO: You wrote in response to my letter to No 38 and No 37 –

RESPONDENT to No 38 and No 37: I don’t blame anyone for not being extremely interested in animals as I happen to be. But to say that even prey animals don’t have a fully rounded emotional life seems to come from lack of interest/ observation.

VINEETO: What I said in response to No 38’ post was –

[Respondent No 38]: Regarding your last sentence above... the implication is that the underlying human intelligence (including the unique personality components) by its very nature is ‘happy and harmless’, sensately revelling in the universe. Is that a general case or could there be instances of specific human intelligences that do not have that nature, but revel in e.g. causing misery to others? Animals appear to thoroughly enjoy life, unless they’ve been damaged psychologically. Is being happy our birthright, which we typically squander?

[Vineeto]: <snip> I don’t know which kind of animals you have in mind, but animals on farms or in the wild do not enjoy life – they are driven by the survival instinct of ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’. In the wild animals are constantly on the alert, vigilant for predators and scanning for attack on prey. Vineeto to No 38, Cosmological Clarification, 2.8.2003

If by a ‘fully rounded emotional life’ you mean the same as ‘driven by the survival instincts of ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’’ then I agree with you. I have seen many animals cowering in fear, being aggressive, looking sad as they licked their wounds or missed their prey and so on.

RESPONDENT: I’ve watched rabbits play. And they play a lot and very enthusiastically. I even heard of a rabbit eaten by a coyote after he/she spent too much energy playing.

VINEETO: This anecdote seems to verify substantiate my comment that ‘in the wild animals are constantly on the alert, vigilant for predators and scanning for attack on prey’ – if they don’t they aren’t fit for survival.

RESPONDENT: In fact the amount of time most animals, even prey animals, spend sleeping, mating, courting, playing, and eating tasty tidbits is greater than the amount of time they spend fleeing. The animals don’t have the thinking reasoning neocortex, but to assume that that denies them pleasure as well as pain in life seems silly to me and flies in the face of my own observations of both wild and domesticated animals. Similarly the tribal peoples who are still living pretty much in their natural habitat today spend most of their time in what would be considered the simple pleasures of life. I don’t see why it is necessary to assume that instinctively ruled beings constantly suffer in order to justify actualism.

VINEETO: I did not say that ‘instinctively ruled beings constantly suffer’ – I said that they do not enjoy life. And before we head off in a discussion about what enjoying life means let me make it clear that the enjoyment I am talking about in the context of actualism is the awareness of the intrinsic enjoyment of being alive when not being driven by instinctual passions.

I have no interest in philosophizing about the subtleties of the degree of enjoyment that both animals and humans derive from satisfying their instinctual urges. This type of enjoyment is mostly achieved at the expense of others and is both conditional and fickle. My understanding of enjoyment in the context of actualism is a pure enjoyment – the sensate enjoyment that is possible only when one is either temporarily or permanently free from being an instinctually driven ‘being’.

RESPONDENT: For me actualism stands on its own as the next intelligent, reasonable step in the unfolding of the experience of the universe as an aware being. It’s not possible for us as individuals to comprehend all the myriad facts of existence, even those on this one planet. For that reason I welcome factual information that comes from others as well as challenging questions that bring about increased understanding.

VINEETO: The ‘facets of existence’ that we are talking about in this post are the instinctual passions, both in humans and in animals – and these are possible ‘to comprehend’ as one proceeds to experientially understand the animal survival passions in oneself. Just as the instinctual survival passions are instilled in every human being so they are present in all animals that have a reptilian brain. When I experience the bare instinctual passion of fear or aggression or nurture or desire in me, then this experience arises from the reptilian part of the brain, and this has been clearly and repeatedly demonstrated my Joseph LeDoux and other researchers.

Because I have experienced these passions in action in myself I know that animals experience the same kind of bare fear, aggression, nurture and desire – bare means a direct experience of the raw instinctual passions when the restrictive layer of one’s social morals and ethics is not sufficiently established, inadvertently fails or has been sufficiently dismantled via the actualism practice.

When I first started to come face to face with the deeper instinctual passions in me that were lurking underneath my initial emotional reactions, I realised why no one has dared to fully acknowledge this instinctual animal heritage both in themselves and in every human being. The power and rawness of my bare instincts was so overwhelming at first, that had I not known that it is actually possible to eliminate these instincts, I would not have dared to let them come to the surface in their full repellence. Only because I know that I can, and want to, get rid of ‘me’, the root of these survival instincts, has it been possible to face this atavistic evil force. With the knowledge that there is life beyond instincts I was able to sit out the turbulent storms of fear without scurrying for safety, acknowledge my instinctual lust to kill without denying it and experience the dread and sorrow of humankind without wallowing in it or grasping for the ‘redemption’ of enlightenment. It is all very real when it happens, but once the storm abates, which it inevitably does, there is not a trace of it left in the delightful clarity that follows.

It is perfectly understandable that most people have a romanticised view about the happy and carefree lifestyle of animals because they rarely dare to become aware of their own passions in action. All of human wisdom so far has only blamed social conditioning for human suffering and the instinctual passions have come away scot-free.

18.8.2003

VINEETO: It is perfectly understandable that most people have a romanticised view about the happy and carefree lifestyle of animals because they rarely dare to become aware of their own passions in action. All of human wisdom so far has only blamed social conditioning for human suffering and the instinctual passions have come away scot-free.

RESPONDENT: What I’m trying to say about animals is that since they do not have the same brains as we do they can neither suffer nor enjoy life in the same way that we do. I agree that we share nearly all the same survival oriented instincts that animals have, both the pleasurable ones and the painful ones. I don’t assume that I know exactly how they experience their lives. I can only speculate based on observation and study.

VINEETO: The thread on the topic of animals started with me answering a question from No 38 –

[Respondent No 38]: Animals appear to thoroughly enjoy life, unless they’ve been damaged psychologically. Is being happy our birthright, which we typically squander?

[Vineeto]: I don’t know which kind of animals you have in mind, but animals on farms or in the wild do not enjoy life – they are driven by the survival instinct of ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’. In the wild animals are constantly on the alert, vigilant for predators and scanning for attack on prey. Vineeto to No 38, Cosmological Clarification, 2.8.2003

To which you responded –

[Respondent]: I don’t blame anyone for not being extremely interested in animals as I happen to be. But to say that even prey animals don’t have a fully rounded emotional life seems to come from lack of interest/observation. No 49, Bunnies, 6.8.2003

The point of the discussion that is relevant to actualism is not how animals experience their instinctual passions but that they are instinctually driven, exactly as humans beings are. The discussion then lead on to the widespread romantic notion that animals, having no social identity – no moral or ethical constraints – lead a happier and more carefree life than humans do. It is interesting to observe that most discussions begin with someone presenting an observation to which a response is made and then the discussion often degenerates if participants insist on maintaining their moral stance or beliefs about the particular subject, which in turn usually results in the end of discussion.

If nothing else, discussions such as these demonstrate that the only way to determine the facts of the matter is to experientially discover for oneself the facts of the matter – in this case to experience the full range of the raw instinctual passions in operation in oneself, as one’s ‘self’. And yet this is impossible to do whilst one insists on holding on to one’s moral stance or romantic beliefs about the instinctual passions themselves – insisting that some passions are so good that one could never do without them and begrudgingly acknowledging that whilst others may be bad they are nevertheless necessary to maintain.

In order to find out about animal instinctual passions it is necessary to experience them in oneself – only then you know with certainty if being instinctually driven is a pleasant lifestyle to be envied. And only when you know with certainty can there be action and change.

Connected to the romantic notion that animals lead a more enjoyable life than humans is the idea that less cultured or less civilized peoples lead a happier life –

[Respondent]: Similarly the tribal peoples who are still living pretty much in their natural habitat today spend most of their time in what would be considered the simple pleasures of life. No 49, Bunnies, 6.8.2003

This notion is derived from the fashionable belief that it is thought and social conditioning that are responsible for human malice and suffering and all people would be happy if only we all returned to live like in the ‘good old days’.

I can recommend the article from Napoleon Chagnon about his studies of the primitive Yanomamo tribe in Venezuela to gain some more insight on the life of ‘tribal peoples’.

RESPONDENT: I have a question for you and Peter and Richard. What is your definition/understanding of instinct? I have looked for it in the AF glossary and I was surprised not to find it there.

VINEETO: The page you are looking for is called ‘Our Animal Instinctual Passions in the Primitive Brain’.

RESPONDENT: Do you think instinct is something we receive in the DNA?

VINEETO: There is substantive evidence that animate life on this planet blossomed during what is known as the Cambrian period and there is speculation that this burgeoning of complexity coincided with the emergence of predation – animate life feeding on other animate life. If this is the case, then it is reasonable to infer that predation also coincided with the emergence of a rudimentary instinctual cunning – the constant need to be on alert based on a ‘what can I eat-what can eat me?’ survival scenario.

Regardless of when they emerged, these instinctive survival reactions are to be seen in all current animate life on the planet that is an integral part of the animate-life food chain. The current species are the successful survivors of this battle and from what we now know, it is reasonable to assume that it is mutations in the DNA structure which have produced the successful survival strategies and life forms whilst other mutations that have produced less successful survival strategies and life forms have perished.

I say ‘reasonable to assume’ because the only objections to this scientific explanation of the evolution of animate life on this planet that I have discovered comes from those who see it as a threat to their spiritual/ religious beliefs.

RESPONDENT: If so, are you saying that one can learn to supersede it by cerebral action?

VINEETO: This query is best answered by a piece from the Introduction into Actual Freedom –

Peter: The modern scientific empirical discoveries of neuro-biology and genetics, with regard to the human brain and how it functions, have revealed two very fascinating aspects –

1. That the brain is programmable in the same way a computer is programmable. The program is formed by physical connections or pathways between neurons, and this program is mostly formed after birth. These pathways (synapse) are also capable of being changed at any time. The old connection simply ‘dies’ for lack of use and a new one is formed.

2. That the human brain is also pre-programmed, via a genetic code, with a set of base or instinctual operating functions, located in the primitive brain system which causes automatic thoughtless passionate reactions, primarily those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, to be transmitted via chemical messages to various parts of the body including the neo-cortex. Physiological alterations that could eliminate this crude programming, as a biological adaptation to changed circumstances, are well documented within the animal species.

• The first discovery accords with the practical experience of being able to radically change one’s social identity – the program instilled since birth that consists of the morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that make up our social identity. It stands to reason that a psychological identity that is malleable to radical change is also susceptible to total elimination.

• The second discovery accords with the practical possibility of eliminating one’s very ‘being’ – the emotive source of the instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. This blind and senseless survival program is now well and truly redundant for many human beings and can now be safely deleted, for the human species has not only survived … it is now beginning to flourish.

Human beings are unique amongst the animal species in that we have a large ‘modern’ brain, the neo-cortex, capable of thinking, planning and reflecting overlaying the primitive reptilian brain – the source of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Introduction into Actual Freedom

RESPONDENT: I don’t think you are saying that one gets rid of the physically inherited instincts, but one changes the emotional charge attached to the instinct. Is that correct?

VINEETO: It is not the instincts, such as the startle reflex, the swallowing reflex or other reflexes controlled by the central nervous system that are under scrutiny in actualism but the instinctual survival passions such as fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Instinctual passions are ‘the emotional charge attached to the instinct’ and there is no t way to change the ‘emotional charge’ because the emotional charge is inherent to the instinctual passion itself.

Further, as ‘I’ am my instinctual passions and my instinctual passions are ‘me’, it is impossible to get rid of one’s instinctual passions whilst remaining a ‘self’. The result of trying to do so would be a stripped-down rudimentary animal ‘self’ (seemingly) divested of feelings ... somewhat like what is popularly known as ‘psychopath’.

The only way to get rid of one’s physically inherited instinctual passions is to ‘self’-immolate … which is what the method of actualism is all about.

However, actualism is not an all or nothing business as the process of actualism is about being as happy and as harmless as one can be – right here and right now. The very process of actualism involves dismantling one’s social identity and dis-empowering one’s instinctual passions such that one can become virtually free of malice and sorrow, the essential first stage if one at all aspires to becoming actually free of the human condition of malice and sorrow.

29.4.2004

RESPONDENT: My formal education is in psychology. It’s been a while, but reading all the psychological terms used here on the list have encouraged me to refresh my memory. Cognitive dissonance is a theory of one of the ways the mind or brain functions. What it says is that if something is presented to a mind that is different enough from the thought/ memory/ belief of that mind, the mind receiving the dissonant input will not recognize it. The dissonant input will not be consciously recognized. It may not even be accepted on an unconscious level (we don’t know yet). Getting annoyed at something is not cognitive dissonance. We can be aware of annoyance. The theory of cognitive dissonance is that we are not aware of the too-foreign input. Why it is interesting in the context of this group is that it may be that some ideas do not get across because they are so at odds to what has been previously accepted or believed that those ideas are not even accessible to the person receiving them. I’m not saying that this is happening in the case of No 60 – I actually don’t know. I do think that AF has a lot to say to psychology and I’d like to see the terms used in ways that I understand or at least redefined so that we all know what we are talking about.

VINEETO: I don’t know whose correspondence in particular you are referring to but since I have written about cognitive dissonance I will attempt to clarify the issue for you. Here are four instances where I have written about cognitive dissonance and each time I made it quite clear that it is a very common reaction whenever one comes across new information that contradicts previously-imbibed ideas, understandings and beliefs –

[Vineeto]: In the years of exploring my psyche, both in my pre-actualist years of spiritual-based therapy and in the beginning of my interest in actualism I experienced in me, and even more so observed in others, what is termed cognitive dissonance – a powerful characteristic of ‘me’, the lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity inside this body, primed to surface in order to defend ‘my’ beliefs and ‘my’ existence at all cost. This is what Richard has written about it –

Richard: The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory ... such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures. However it is more than merely a foolish head-in-the-sand psychological aberration, because the new, the fresh, the novel is oft-times met with determined resistance, disagreement, opposition and hostility. Richard, Abditorium, Cognitive Dissonance

It takes great determination, constant attentiveness and a sincere, naive intent to become happy and harmless in order to be able to break through this archaic means of ‘self’-survival. To deliberately add feelings of doubt and suspicion to the already existing ‘self’-preserving defence mechanism would be foolish, to say the least, because it will only exacerbate any chances of your becoming free from human condition. Vineeto to No 59, 13.11.2003

And …

[Vineeto]: What you consider ‘reasonable doubt’ is more likely ‘information’ that ‘contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’, in other words, cognitive dissonance in action. <…> In order to tackle one’s own cognitive dissonance – the feelings and beliefs that prevent one from taking on board new information that is contrary to the previous information that one has assimilated – one needs a clear incentive to want to move past one’s ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’. In my case this incentive was the dawning of a recognition that my ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’ had made me neither happy nor harmless nor enabled me to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. <snip>

Cognitive dissonance is something quite different to ‘unreasonable doubt’ and by its very nature it is not easily recognized when it occurs. It is important to consider and recognize that cognitive dissonance is a significant defence mechanism to understanding anything new and even more so when the something new is as radical as actualism. Cognitive dissonance is an automatic defensive reaction that takes place before one even becomes aware of what information has been ‘distorted’, ‘reinterpreted’ or ‘warped’. One needs determination and pure intent to want to forego one’s own feelings of apprehension – to want to go into the lion’s den, so to speak – in order to be able to investigate the information that one’s cognitive dissonance has ‘warped’ and which, upon seeing clearly, may cause ‘mental-emotional distress’.

Quite a few people on this mailing list have reported that recognizing the scope and the wide-ranging ramifications entailed in an actual, non-spiritual freedom were ‘a big thing’, not easy to take, difficult to understand at first, caused them to have head-aches, were a blow to their pride, shattered their existing beliefs, questioned their present life-style, and so on. Actualism is no little thing to take on. Vineeto to No 59, 17.11.2003

And …

[Vineeto]: When I started to look into actualism as an alternative to the spiritualism that I had practiced so long with unsatisfying results, the mind-boggling radicality of the 180 degrees opposite statements often caused my mind to gridlock. From whatever angle I looked at certain issues, I simply could not understand what Richard was saying. However, I had the burning desire to find out all there is to know about this third alternative because I had already experienced for myself that something was greatly amiss in the venerated teachings and practice of spiritualism.

In those situations when I couldn’t think my way out of my mental block, a condition which I later discovered to be cognitive dissonance, I used to ask myself what it was that was preventing me from understanding. Rather than accusing Richard of being bone-headed, stubborn, silly or wrong, I instead chose to question why I was so bone-headed that I could not understand what he had discovered and what emotional investment ‘I’ had in maintaining ‘my’ status quo by not understanding what he presented as his ongoing delectable experience of the actual world. Vineeto to No 60, 26.1.2004

And …

[Co-Respondent]: Cognitive dissonance works two ways. There is a possibility that some of you see Richard as something he is not, and will desperately resist ‘seeing’ aspects of his behaviour that are not exactly consistent with someone who is ‘actually free from the human condition’. If No. 59 sees something, No. 58 sees something, I see something, no-one speaks about it – it’s all too easily swept under the carpet, because there is a vested interest in not seeing it. Everyone knows what kind of scenarios that can lead to.

[Vineeto]: First, cognitive dissonance is a mechanism that ‘I’, the entity, use in order to keep things as they are, to maintain ‘my’ status quo as it were, whereas ‘being open’ to understanding actualism requires a 180 degree turnabout in how one has been unwittingly taught to viscerally think about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being.

My own cognitive dissonance stopped when I had my first major pure consciousness experience. I had desperately wanted to know if actual freedom was indeed actual, as in universally applicable to all human experience, independent of anyone’s personal viewpoint and the PCE undeniably proved that it is – when ‘I’ temporarily disappeared the actual world of the senses became apparent. Then I also knew that the actual world Richard describes is the very same actuality that I briefly experienced in my own PCE. Vineeto to No 60, 14.2.2004

Nowhere in those correspondences did I indicate or imply that ‘getting annoyed at something’, as you say, was the same as cognitive dissonance. I am well aware that they are not the same thing.

What is clear, however, is that the misunderstanding and confusion that invariably arise from cognitive dissonance can very easily lead to feelings such as frustration, annoyance, irritation, and even anger. This is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica says about cognitive dissonance –

[quote]: Cognitive dissonance – the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in a person is relieved by one of several defensive manoeuvres: the person rejects, explains away, or avoids the new information, persuades himself that no conflict really exists, reconciles the differences, or resorts to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in his conception of the world and of himself. The concept, first introduced in the 1950s, has become a major point of discussion and research. © Encyclopaedia Britannica

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