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RESPONDENT: So far I have found Richard to be non-contradictory, sincere, open, considerate and hilarious … and I’m trying really hard to find something against him.

VINEETO: And I would encourage you to continue to carefully scrutinize all that is on offer here because this is the only way you can establish a prima facie case from where you can then begin the practical part of the investigation into the human condition.

Unlike the spiritual path, which is undertaken with both eyes closed and one’s head in the clouds, the path to actual freedom is undertaken with both eyes open and one’s feet firmly on the ground.

RESPONDENT: I’ve stumbled across actual freedom in my web meanderings (can’t remember the actual path, might have been via some UG gleanings) and it hit a major chord. It was clear that this was the refinement of a very similar process I’ve been following for the last several years. I’d been drawn to Buddhism for its seeming sparseness/simplicity, but always got bogged down at the mandatory requirement that compassion be a major component of the path. Seemed like the cart before the horse. (I do think Gautama got most of it right, but somehow 1400 years of revisionist history has muddied the picture a tad.)

The key element I did come away with was the importance of self-observation. Clearly, it was I who was having all these feelings and reactions, not the one who provided some external stimulus. For some time, the self-observation process has been very valuable, and there has been that fascinating natural process of the simple observation somehow causing a diminishment in the visceral response. I can’t explain this analytically (nor am particularly disposed to), other than it seems to be a case for the brain-as-programmable-entity model, which seems clear to me. (I do have to mention that I am an engineer by trade, so I appreciate the mechanistic universe.) However, lately I have felt stuck at the next step to take – enter AF. Elegantly simple principles and techniques, now all I have to do is the WORK.

VINEETO: Gautama Buddha’s self-observation has nought to do with the ‘self’-awareness that an actualist practices by asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ There is plenty of reference on the website relating to how you can determine that an actual freedom from the human condition is 180 opposite to the spiritual freedom – 180-degrees Opposite in The Actual Freedom Trust Library is just one of them.

Actualism is certainly not a ‘refinement’ of spiritual practice, on the contrary, actualism is a method for demolishing all of one’s spiritual concepts, images and beliefs, in short, one’s spiritual identity, questioning one’s good and bad feelings and bringing about the ‘self’-immolation of one’s very being. And there will be no phoenix rising from the ashes. So if you are looking for a ‘refinement of a very similar process I’ve been following for the last several years’ then actualism is the wrong place to come to, because actualism means a complete break with all concepts one has ever believed and all previous teachings one has ever followed or practiced.

However, if you are searching for something that can free you from the impediments and shackles of the human condition in toto, for something that will make you a happy and harmless human being, then I can confirm by my ongoing experience that the method of actualism works, utterly and irrevocably. With the sincere intent to eradicate malice and sorrow from my life I have succeeded in eradicating all of my beliefs and in examining all of my feelings to the extent that I am no longer run by swaying moods and driving passions.

But before you go ahead and apply what you consider ‘elegantly simple principles and techniques’, I suggest you take some time and diligence to read what is on offer. It is not just a modern-day clever spiritual advertisement to say that actual freedom is non-spiritual – actual freedom is non-spiritual in the literal meaning of the word. And because this discovery is something entirely new to human history – it does not aim to transcend the ego while aggrandizing the soul but is designed to eradicate one’s very being – it is worthwhile to very carefully study what is being described.

It is part of our human automatic ‘self’-defence-system to fear and avoid change, to look for the familiar and safe in new situations, to keep the values and practices that one has grown up with and lived with for so long. A radical change can only be the result of a thorough disillusionment with the status quo, a dissatisfaction with every solution and technique one has tried so far. Therefore, should you still be interested, I suggest that you study the actualism writing by deliberately focussing on what is different between actualism and spiritualism rather than looking for what seems similar.

RESPONDENT: I don’t normally forward news items, but this was kind of interesting. Besides, if No 23 can do it....

From Mark Morford, SFGate.com ....

It leaves you with the feeling that there is really nowhere to turn but inward, to perhaps follow what the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders have said recently, that if we really want to help fight the hatred and terrorism following the horror of 9/11 we really need to fight the hatred and terrorism we have inside us.

Of course you are first required to step outside the bleeding-heart pacifist New Agey sentimental cliche and get down and dirty with the self, because this sort of peace has nothing to do with chanting and wind-chimes and licking trees, but work, real work where you reevaluate and question and peel away preconceptions and false patriotism and blind faith and really get down and dirty with the self, generate peace from within, the hard way.

Because it’s certainly easy to scowl and shake our fists at foreign countries and weird religions and blame everything on others, easy to ignore our own issues of hate and corruption and our own inner terrorists and merely react to all the mealy-mouthed confusion and rage by pointing the finger elsewhere.

When in fact getting at the truth of what we are and what we do and how we fit into the world can be much more awkward and painful and frustrating, and not nearly so easy. But it is so worth it.

Because the bottom line is, if you really want to know peace in this time of confused all-American warmongering, if you really want clarity and a sense of certainty about where we stand as a country and as individuals – and if you really want to infuriate our increasingly paranoid and secretive and invasive government – you really gotta turn that pointed finger back at yourself.

VINEETO: Mark Morford has certainly written an enthusiastic speech and his call to ‘turn but inward’ and search the ‘peace from within’ reminded me of my own experience two years after I finished university. I had checked out various aspects and/or paths of living in the ‘normal’ world, such as liberal and left-wind politics, marriage, feminism, therapy and a career as a social worker with drug addicts, and had them all found wanting. The newly-starting fashion for Eastern Mysticism seemed just the right solution, and so I decided to ‘turn inward’, change myself and search for ‘peace within’. I had been brought up in post-war Germany with its explicit education about the devastating results of Nazism and patriotism and for years I had great trouble understanding how the previous generation could have done – or have silently tolerated – such horrendous acts of terrorism. Yet in 1985, when the terror acts of Rajneesh’s administration crew in Oregon came to light, I painfully realized the fact that I, as a Rajneeshee, had been doing the same thing as the generation of Germans before me. I had blindly pledged my loyalty to a charismatic leader who promised peace and glory, only to generate a communal passionate righteousness that resulted in crimes against innocent citizens. See http://www.empnet.com/imageworks/Raj1.htm and following pages

After that I could easily understand how the ‘Third Reich’ had come about – I had, in fact, discovered the blind loyal follower and the passionate believer in me.

RESPONDENT: How this comes about is clear, esp. if you have been reading about recent events in this country. I’m sure that Bin Laden et al didn’t intend to precipitate the sort of knee-jerk patriotism evidenced of late, but it certainly has crippled us in many ways. The flap about the pledge of allegiance is particularly interesting. In case you’re not familiar with the story, in 1954 the words ‘one nation under god’ were inserted into the previously secular motto. A judge recently ruled that this violated the constitutional separation of church and state (which it does), hence precipitating a hue and cry from ‘real’ Americans. Of course, to these folks, god is the Christian god, never mind all the other world’s deities. So, we have apparently rampant suspension of any form of critical thinking, and toeing the party line. Sound familiar?

VINEETO: The point I was trying to make is that I unearthed the follower, the fanatic and the passionate believer in me. These aspects of my identity not only applied to my belonging to a spiritual or religious group but also to my belonging to a national group – in other words, my continuing to maintain and hold on to such beliefs only served to perpetuate my malice and sorrow. As an actualist I am not interested in others changing their beliefs but solely in ending malice and sorrow in me.

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VINEETO: However, such is the power of belief and hope that it took me many more years, and many more eye-opening events, to finally admit that I was on every account as mad and as bad as everyone else. This acknowledgement was the prerequisite for stopping blaming others and beginning to sincerely ‘looking within’ – and what I found ‘within’ was anger and aggression, fear and imagination, hope and sorrow. When you look within sincerely, bereft of spiritual hope and imagination, there is no peace ‘within’ – there is a social-instinctual ‘self’ within. A lost, lonely frightened and very cunning parasitical entity, to use Richard’s description. This social-instinctual ‘self’ is the very reason that the already always existing peace on earth cannot prevail.

RESPONDENT: Agreed. I’ve had some painful recent experiences that reflect once again how devious that ‘self’ is. At least I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t beat myself up for my ‘bad’ behaviour any more ... just have a look at it, recognize/ explore it, move along. At some level, I am no longer vested in its continued existence.

VINEETO: You are spot on in that beating oneself up is of no use – actualism for me is a scientific trial and error investigation into how ‘I’ tick, a process with an end-point aim of completely stopping ‘me’ ticking. The significant difference between my former spiritual practice and the practice of actualism is the understanding that both my good and bad behaviour need scrutinizing because both the good and the bad emotions that underpin human behaviour are an indivisible part of the same root problem – the animal instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire genetically encoded in each and every human animal.

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VINEETO: SF Gate columnist Mark Morford certainly uses catchy words when he urges everyone else to ‘really get down and dirty with the self’ – but he himself has not even rolled up his sleeves, let alone started to look at ‘the hatred and terrorism we have inside us’. How could he be looking within when he continues to point the finger at ‘our increasingly paranoid and secretive and invasive government’ – not only to blame but wanting to ‘infuriate’ this government and thus start the hatred all over again.

RESPONDENT: Because, like most of us, he’s merely dimly aware of the actual processes in play, and that the answers will only come from within. And that will take some hard and painful work. Until this all becomes self-obvious, we just follow our noses.

VINEETO: Whenever someone says the answers come from within, what they are eluding to is listening to, or connecting with, their soul, the voice of God, the Higher Self, the wisdom of their innermost being. These answers from within, however, are nothing other than one’s own, utterly ‘self’-centred, instinctual passions – manifesting as self-love, righteousness, hypocrisy, narcissism, omniscience, virtuous anger, universal sorrow or whatever.

In the process of actualism, however, the answers come from ‘without’ – questioning one’s (inner) beliefs juxtaposed to sensate experience and empirical (outer) facts and investigating one’s (inner) feelings juxtaposed to a sensuous awareness of the actual (outer) world and a sensible judgement as to what is silly and what is sensible. This process is 180 degrees opposite to the traditional spiritual approach of going within and hiding from the world as-it-is and people as-they-are.

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VINEETO: His call to ‘perhaps follow’ the teachings of ‘the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders’ is nothing new for the West – Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have been preached and practiced for many years in the West and its long tradition of failure in the East is blatantly obvious for those who are ready to investigate it. Mark Morford wants to change the world by telling everyone else to change – his way.

RESPONDENT: The quote actually reads ‘to perhaps follow what the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders have said recently’.

VINEETO: I rather fail to see the difference between ‘the teachings’ and ‘what … have said recently’ – spiritual teachers are bound to be espousing their teachings when the say something in public.

RESPONDENT: I am interpreting the word ‘follow’ as:

To watch or observe closely: followed the bird through binoculars.

To be attentive to; pay close heed to: too sleepy to follow the sermon.

To grasp the meaning or logic of; understand: Do you follow my argument?

rather than...

To accept the guidance, command, or leadership of: follow a spiritual master; rebels who refused to follow their commander. Definitions courtesy of www.dictionary.com – American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

Clearly two very different meanings.

VINEETO: OK. The questions for me would be what does one find when one ‘watch[es] or observe[s] closely’ or is ‘attentive to’ what the Dalai Lama said recently. What is the outcome of ‘grasp[ing] the meaning or logic of’ the Dalai Lama’s teaching, not to mention all of the other spiritual teachers? Such probing investigations are bound to bring to light the down-here-on-earth results for millions upon millions of people who have faithfully and mindlessly ‘accept[ed] the guidance, command, or leadership’ of those revered spiritual teachers. After all, it is the results that determine the value or uselessness of spiritual teachings and according to my observations the results have been disastrous.

RESPONDENT: I’m not privy to the inner workings of Mr Morford’s mind, but do read his material on a regular basis, and he appears to kowtow to no one.

VINEETO: When I began to look into ‘the hatred and terrorism [I had] inside’ – to quote the words that come from Mr. Morford’s mind – I discovered that, as a result of investigating my own fear, anger and frustration, my perception of others changed accordingly. I began to perceive people, as well as organizations such as the government, not as ‘paranoid and secretive and invasive’ but rather as my fellow human beings, similarly inflicted with the same human condition as me. By blaming the government Mark Morford clearly shows that he does not practice what he preaches, he does not walk the talk.

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RESPONDENT: So, are you suggesting that the Dalai Lama couldn’t have something useful to say, even though it may be flawed or incomplete? I suppose you are, as he’s ‘180 degrees wrong’, hence completely wrong.

VINEETO: In my life I have for a long period ‘accept[ed] the guidance’ of spiritual authorities and later, with the actualism tool, ‘observe[d] closely’ the spiritual teachings of many revered authorities. They say that the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is that nobody is free from malice and sorrow as a result of such teachings.

In various pure consciousness experiences it has become indubitable to me that the solution to mayhem and misery cannot be found by indulging in spiritual escapism – ‘the feeling that there is really nowhere to turn but inward’ . In a PCE the ‘inner world’ – one’s soul, one’s true self, the deepest core of one’s being – is clearly seen as the problem, whereas when one is devoid of ‘self’, one knows by moment to moment experience that the actual world is already perfect, pure and peaceful.

‘180 degrees wrong’ is not a moral or ethical judgement but literally points to the fact that everyone is, and has been since ancient times, searching 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Actualism offers an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism – both of which are not only ‘flawed or incomplete’ but have abysmally failed to deliver the oft-promised-but-never-delivered peace on earth in this lifetime.

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VINEETO: To really get down and dirty one would question one’s own beliefs, not the doings of one’s government. One would investigate one’s identity as an American, a Christian, a believer in Eastern Mysticism, a liberal, a democrat, a man, a woman, a father, a son, a patriot, a rebel, a cynic, a journalist. One would examine one’s own feelings of righteousness, anger, hostility, blame, sorrow, guilt, compassion, pride and loyalty and discover the source of those feelings – the alien passionate social-instinctual identity inside this flesh-and-blood body.

RESPONDENT: Isn’t that what he’s saying? – ‘real work where you re-evaluate and question and peel away preconceptions and false patriotism and blind faith’.

VINEETO: I don’t see that his article ‘generate[s] peace from within, the hard way’. I read several of his other articles and I found all of them angry, cynical and bitter, mostly blaming others or ‘the government’ for everything that is wrong in America.

RESPONDENT: Anyways, no need to respond to this as it would probably be repetitious. I merely sent the original clip as it is so rare to read anything that remotely addresses the fundamental human condition in any sort of accurate manner.

VINEETO: I can relate to your search for ‘anything that remotely addresses the fundamental human condition in any sort of accurate manner’ because for five years now I have been looking in all nooks and corners of the earth via reading and television reports for people that would suggest sensible solutions to the emotional mess we humans live in. What I discovered is that the world is full of pundits who rile against the wrongs of materialism, is replete with shrews who ridicule spiritual belief and is rife with cynics who rant against both materialism and spiritualism but all they offer is a re-hash of the old tried and failed solutions.

Actualism on the other hand offers a never-tried-before alternative to both materialism and spiritualism. The longer I practice actualism, the more obvious it is how simple the solution really is, and so I am rather surprised that everyone else keeps on searching in the wrong directions.

This may have been somewhat repetitious, but I know from experience that turning round to practice a solution 180 degrees opposite to everyone else is a tough challenge for anyone to tackle. But once I experienced the ‘self’-less actual world for myself in a PCE, it became glaringly obvious that I had been on the wrong track all my life.

RESPONDENT: Hmm, as long as the questioning is running there is sensation but no struggle so I would have to say that absence of self-awareness in any particular moment is what creates the struggle.

– Just had a thought. Surely if you are aware of emotions and struggling and goals of PCE, all must go for the actuality of PCE.

VINEETO: From your comments it looks to me that you are using watching and the identity of the ‘watcher’ to get through the day without much struggle.

For me, once I understood from the peak-experience that I wanted to go for Actual Freedom and not for any substitute like enlightenment, I went for it ‘boots and all’. That also meant abandoning everything that I had learned in my spiritual years – the terminology of the ‘inner’ world, the meditations, the mind-twisters. I understood – and strangely enough it happened after a small car-accident – that I cannot drive two cars at the same time – especially when one – actual freedom – goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the other – the spiritual.

I went through a period of anguish and dis-orientation because all the tricks and disciplines of the spiritual and therapy world did not apply for the path to freedom. But once I had set my mind on the goal, there was no turning back. I already had understood too much about the act of believing itself – everything that I believe is not actual, because it is ‘me’ who is doing the believing. That gave me enough back-pressure to keep going despite the doubts and fears.

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RESPONDENT: Yes, I have considered this. It is always a hurdle getting out of struggling and the agitated state of objection to an emotion. So when that state of struggling ends it does feel like a reward of sorts. My solution is a permanent ‘no objection at all’. That at the present is not a one off and requires continual effort of inquiry.

VINEETO: When an emotion is happening, for instance anger, it is harmful in two ways. Firstly I am not happy because I am angry and second I am angry at someone else and may cause harm to that person, be it by snide remarks, withdrawal or any other action. Of course I don’t want to be angry. If the aim is to be happy and harmless then I no longer tolerate anger in my life. One does everything possible to eliminate it and not merely watches its rising and falling in the mind or heart.

But the only way to successfully get rid of anger is to examine the root cause of me getting angry in that particular situation, find the expectation, the frustration, the ‘self’ in operation. Once I found the root cause and ‘got it’ – as Alan says – it is immensely rewarding, a great relief and a joy to have dismantled yet another obstacle to being free.

And with every success there was more eagerness to find the next hurdle. The obsession for freedom takes a life of its own, wearing down the original objections. And then it is like Mark was writing on the list a few days ago:

[Mark]: ‘After reading Richard’s and then Peter’s writings I could see similarities in what they were saying to the experience that I was having and started to apply ‘how am I...’ as diligently as possible to my life. The result of this exploration has been more freedom and autonomy than I have experienced before in my whole life with some wondrous times of virtual freedom lasting sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days.’ Hello, 7.2.1999

And:

[Mark]: ‘My journey so far with this ‘way’ has yielded more freedom and unconditional happiness than any thing I have experienced before and I have reached the point of no return – normal or spiritual are no longer options.’ Hello, 7.2.1999

Your ‘permanent solution’ of ‘no objection at all’ sounds a pretty dry experience to me. Freedom from the churning emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts, which is freedom from ‘me’, results in a delicious, sensuous continuous enjoyment moment after moment, fresh each time, rich and magnificent, crisp and perfect. An ongoing delight to be alive.

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VINEETO: Your ‘permanent solution’ of ‘no objection at all’ sounds a pretty dry experience to me. Freedom from the churning emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts, which is freedom from ‘me’, results in a delicious, sensuous continuous enjoyment moment after moment, fresh each time, rich and magnificent, crisp and perfect. An ongoing delight to be alive.

RESPONDENT: My ‘permanent solution’ is not a final statement as such it is just that I realised that any revealing investigation will not proceed when there is an objecting ‘I’. So that is a prerequisite.

VINEETO: It has been one of the spiritual and new-age therapy devices to split up the ‘I’ into various parts – the male and female side, the child, the angry ‘me’, the vulnerable ‘me’, the indifferent ‘me’, observer, the judge, the loving ‘me’ etc. ad nauseam. The outcome is utter confusion and merely rearranging the furniture on the Titanic in endless variations. Whereas the path to actual freedom is characterized by determination and pure intent born out of one’s peak-experience which drives one to simply get on with the business of eliminating malice and sorrow because one wants to get rid of malice and sorrow. No psychologising needed. Once it became clear that ‘I’ am in the road of experiencing the already existent perfection and purity of the physical universe it became also obvious that it is the whole of ‘me’ that would have to disappear, the objecting, the feeling, the believing and the instinctually driven ‘me’, the whole bucket. It is all so devastatingly simply, obvious and apparent.

KONRAD: I am still communicating with Richard. I am beginning to suspect, that both he and I have ‘switched on’ the same ‘apparatus’ in our mind, and that there is no difference after all between him and me. I am beginning to suspect, that the differences between him and me are more due to the difference in background, and therefore in how we express ourselves than that there is a real essential difference. Especially his remark, that ‘something turned over’ at his brain stem, and his constant referring to ‘apperception’ as a kind of awareness without a distorting intentionality in the form of an ‘I’ makes me suspect this.

Richard: The day finally dawns where the definitive moment of being here, right now, conclusively arrives; something irrevocable takes place and every thing and every body and every event is different, somehow, although the same physically; something immutable occurs and every thing and every body and every event is all-of-a-sudden undeniably actual, in and of itself, as a fact; something irreversible happens and an immaculate perfection and a pristine purity permeates every thing and every body and every event; something has changed forever, although it is as if nothing has happened, except that the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending. Richard, A Précis of Actual Freedom

I am beginning to suspect, that what has happened to him is the same as what happened to me, for, if I really look close at what he describes about how he experiences the world, I do not see any difference between his experience and that of me. Even that ‘brain stem’ part is consistent with how ‘I’ am aware of ‘the process’. For that is exactly where the most intense part of ‘the process’ is active. I am also beginning to suspect, that this ‘apperception’ of him is the way this organ, that has taken one million years to develop, is the way it is functioning in him.

VINEETO: Now, that you acknowledge the sense that Richard’s discovery makes, we can really start talking. You say that you have come to understand that the ‘I’ has to be eliminated, that it consists of beliefs and emotions and instincts.

Great start! But don’t spoil your understanding and realisation by trying to sneak in just repeating verbally and intellectually what you have seem to understood. With freedom you cannot start at the top. You have to come down from your throne of having something to teach and get down to earth experience. ‘Get dirty’, as the Australians say. Get dirty means to admit that deep down you are still run by the Human Condition like everybody else, that means being malicious, sex-driven, sorrowful, lonely, fearful, resentful and power-hungry for disciples.

And that is the preliminary to get rid of it all – to recognize it is there. The rest is easy going, just 180 degrees in the opposite direction as you are going right now – away from great enlightenment, away from being a novelty-teacher, away from the all-knowing, fatherly advising guy to being an ordinary human being, just here and free from all this ancient Eastern rubbish. Now it is to be proven by your every day life, that you are happy and harmless, that you live in peace, equality and harmony with your girlfriend and that you are sincere and benign with your fellow human beings.

So, welcome on the path of freedom! I am glad you can see now that Richard has painted you into a corner from where you can only admit that he has got the facts on his side. But once the pride is conquered, then why not be sensible and admit facts. That is much less embarrassing than insisting on the wrong version of looking at the world anyway.

RESPONDENT: Hi Vineeto, Well here we go again! We are not really meeting in our dialogue due to misinterpretation. I will try to clarify.

VINEETO: You may insist to call this ‘not really meeting’ a mere mis-interpretation – on my side, of course – whilst I maintain that the actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow, that I am talking about, lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to all spiritual beliefs. In other words, everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong.

In a pure consciousness experience (PCE) where the complete self, both who we think and feel we are, is temporarily absent one can clearly see that the spiritual world is merely a product of the vivid and passionate imagination, fuelled by the primitive instinctual passions. I had pursued the spiritual path for 17 years with enthusiastic and loyal devotion and only now, by abandoning the spiritual belief-system and by diligent and persistent examination of all beliefs and feelings, am I able to see through it and step out of this illusory psychic world. The first major break-through experience of this stepping out of the spiritual world I have described to you in my last post. Vis:

In seeing the fact, everything stood still and the whole construct of beliefs suddenly disappeared. Then, for the first time in all my years of the spiritual search, I experienced several hours outside of the ‘psychic world’. Being outside, I could see that this ‘world’ is a huge, all-encompassing construct, created and held in place by the dreams, beliefs, bonds, power-battles, emotions and different spiritual ideas of all of humanity.

To avoid continuing the tis/ tisn’t style of this conversation I will post a number of statements outlining the third alternative. Should your experience match all those points without exception, then we know that we are talking about the same thing. This test should settle the question of ‘misinterpretation’ very easily.

Richard:

• Time and space and form are actual (the timeless, spaceless and formless reality is a dream).
• This physical universe is infinite and eternal (boundless and limitless).
• This physical universe is beginningless and endless (unborn and undying).
• This physical universe is the source of human life (matter gives rise to consciousness).
• One is this flesh and blood body only.
• Physical death is the end, finish: mortality.
• The soul (by whatever name) is an illusion.
• Based on facts substantiated by rigorous empirical objectivity (individualistic commonality).
• Peace-on-earth is possible as this flesh and blood body.
• Suffering is eliminated (via immolation).
• Both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul are extinguished.
• Any ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dichotomy is not actual.
• Love and compassion only exist as long as malice and sorrow exists (both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ become extinct).
• The facts are the key to success and are to be sensately found in the actual.
• A sensate-feeling experience (sensation only) empirically experienced as a body-mind only (human consciousness).
• A temporary pure consciousness experience (PCE) such as a peak experience provides a glimpse of one’s actual destiny.
• By being born a separative ‘self’ one lives in a painful reality (being detached from actuality) and sensuousness ends this detachment with the resultant apperception revealing the actual world.
• Total elimination of the rudimentary ‘self’ born of the instinctual survival passions (due to the altruism inherent in the survival instincts).
• Belief, faith, trust and hope play no part.
• Intuition, imagination, visualisation, prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy and divination are non-existent in actual freedom.
• Actual freedom is consistent: it is neither contradictory nor hypocritical.
• Through methodical moment-to-moment examination of feeling-fed beliefs disguised as ‘truths’ there is incremental success.
• Autonomy and independence (through altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice) are the hallmarks of actual freedom.
• Gratitude is a hindrance on the path to an actual freedom.
• Dignity is both the means to the end and the end in actual freedom. excerpt from Richard’s Article, 180 opposite

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RESPONDENT: I have the distinct impression that there is nowhere to ‘go’ and nothing to ‘do’ to realize the Truth of Being

VINEETO: The only thing one has to do is to identify with the good instincts while transcending and sublimating the bad instincts – thus the feeling of ‘nowhere to go and nothing to do to realize the Truth of Being’.

It’s just that sublimating and transcending instinctual passions by emotionally disidentifying from the world is not the same as extinguishing them and with them one’s very being, in fact, it is 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

RESPONDENT: I am not talking about identifying, transcending or sublimating.

I am in no way interested in sublimating or transcending instinctual passions by emotionally disidentifying from the world or by extinguishing them. I am not speaking of shifting to good emotions or avoiding ‘bad’ emotions, and I am certainly not speaking about complete disassociation from the flesh-and-blood body. If anything, I am more alive in the body than ever before, definitely grounded in my present and very real experience... open, vulnerable and ready to respond.

VINEETO: OK, if you do neither dis-identify nor transcend nor sublimate, what is it then that you do with your instinctual passions when they arise. What do you do when you get irritated, annoyed, bored, lacklustre, dissatisfied, angry, sad, terrified, loving euphoric, compassionate, lonely, needy, or tense? Are you saying that by ‘doing nothing’ those instinctual passions disappear of their own accord, never to return again?

The other question I have is about being ‘vulnerable’. Who is it that is vulnerable, who can be hurt or wounded? According to the Oxford Dictionary vulnerable means:

2 Able to be wounded; (of a person) able to be physically or emotionally hurt; liable to damage or harm, esp. from aggression or attack, assailable. Oxford Dictionary

In a pure consciousness experience, with the self in temporarily abeyance, there is nobody to be hurt or emotionally wounded, there is no psychic entity to affectively feel anything, be it good, open, vulnerable, surrendered or present. From these experiences of purity and perfection I glean my intent and direction to attempt to live that state 24h a day, every day.

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RESPONDENT: But rather than trying to figure out all the self-created madness and judging or condemning others for their views, we can accept the unconsciousness when it appears and remain focussed and conscious ourselves. Fighting is what the ego loves. Saying ‘yes’ to whatever appears on the inner or outer fields of our experience and then watching as the correct response occurs spontaneously through the clarity of awareness is what I am experiencing.

VINEETO: I am not ‘condemning others for their views’, I am presenting a scientific and experientially verified third alternative to being morally ‘good’ or spiritually ‘beyond it all’.

It is a common belief, particular in spiritual circles, that human beings are born innocent, ‘tabula rasa’, a clean slate, without any malice and sorrow, and that all evil – fear, anger, sadness – is only created by bad treatment or ‘misunderstandings’ in our childhood years called conditioning – or maybe by ‘memories’ of bad past lives. The very premise of that belief is factually wrong.

Peter: All sentient beings are born with certain distinguishing instinctual passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to ensure the survival of the species. These species-specific instinctual survival passions were absolutely essential in the primitive days of free-roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease and high infant mortality and yet despite the fact that the species has not only survived but flourished, these same instinctual survival passions have transformed into a personal psychological and psychic ‘will to survive’. Thus it is that currently over 6 billion humans are still actively involved in a grim and desperate battle for survival against their fellow human beings – a senseless ongoing competitive battle solely fuelled by the brutish animal instinctual passions. Introduction to Actual Freedom, The Human Condition

So on the premise that we are not born innocent but with a full set of animal survival instincts it becomes clear that ‘saying ‘yes’ to whatever appears on the inner and outer fields’ is not going to do the trick of ridding myself from this instinctual programming. ‘Saying yes’ is exactly the technique designed to ‘sublimating or transcending instinctual passions by emotionally disidentifying’ even if you say that you are not interested in doing so. How can you say ‘yes’ to murder, rape, suicide, war, child abuse, chemical weapons, corruption, poverty, torture and domestic violence without distancing yourself? How can you say ‘yes’ to what human beings do to other human beings?

The approach of Buddhist religion and all Eastern spiritual practices is to remove the self from the source of trouble which at the same time removes one from the experience of the sensuousness of being alive. Spiritualism moves away from sensate and affective feelings in order to not be here while I as an actualist question and eliminate affective feelings because they prevent me from being here, being the senses-only, the flesh-and-blood body only, experiencing the delight of being alive in this actual perfect abundant magical world.

Spiritualists are exercising a technique to remove themselves, to dis-identify and finally to dissociate from either unwanted feelings and emotions, implying that there is a true self, which one wants to keep and which says ‘yes’ to the wanted feelings. In actualism, good and bad emotions are experienced by neither repressing nor expressing, neither pushing nor grasping and thus one is able to examine it in reflective contemplation so as to explore the very nature of this emotion. One does not remove the self from the emotion but whittles away at the self which is the very program producing the emotion in the first place. This process, if undertaken diligently and persistently, will inevitably lead to self-immolation.

As you can see, the third alternative lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to all religious practice and belief.

RESPONDENT: I am speaking of being alive, awake, present and clear...right here, right now in the very actual world.

VINEETO: See, I don’t doubt that you have found what you were looking for and believe that you have arrived where you wanted to arrive and I have no doubt at all that your experiences are real and convincing for I have had many spiritual experiences myself.

From what you write I know that we are not talking of the same experiences – I talk of the actual world, as in palpable, tangible, tactile, corporeal, physical and material. The world which you are experiencing includes ‘Truth of Being’, ‘Presence’, ‘Isness’ ‘openness’, ‘distinct impression’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘surrender’. Those terms indicate feeling, intuition, trust and the belief in something greater than yourself that you surrender to, feel its presence and accept its terms.

Those two worlds will never meet. One can only abandon one in order to live in the other.

I have headed off in the opposite direction to tackle the illusion of darkness and Evil rather than settle for transcendence into Truth and God. The only reason I was able to do this was because I acknowledged the failure of any form of ‘saying yes’ and ‘watching’ to bring peace, on this earth, in this lifetime ... and I found something that works in that it confronts and eliminates all illusion.

My choice is the spirit-less sensuous physical world and my aim to abandon anything that is not perceivable by the senses ie. all beliefs, feelings, emotions – the very self. This actual world has neither Presence nor Being and there is clearly nothing that survives my physical death.

If you can be content with the fact that there is a markedly different third alternative on offer and you don’t want to investigate it, then we can call it a completed game. Otherwise ... your turn.

RESPONDENT: Someone who believes that they have become extinct but continue either sporadically or consistently in some athetic state of organismic actual or other ‘ism’, is obviously playing a heavy dangerous and confused psychological self-game of ‘extinct self-continuity’. I think you slightly missed my point. When there is nothing present that is psychologically identifiable as you, there is also nothing present that ‘you’ can psychologically identify as an ‘other’. In that case, being unable to choose this over that, your actions are wholly beneficial to your own body as well as all other bodies. There is no reaction manifesting that can block such wholistic intelligence from responding to all life without malice/ generosity and any other cause-effect contradictions.

VINEETO: You might have ‘slightly missed my point’ in that I have never said that I ‘have become extinct’. You even refer to this fact further down in your letter as ‘you, who are presently learning about yourself’. I wouldn’t go as far as saying you are ‘obviously playing a heavy dangerous and confused psychological self-game’, but you are certainly rapidly shifting the ground and twisting the facts in your argumentation.

Further, your categorizing me as being in an ‘athetic state of organismic actual’ is your very own non-sensical invention. Then you proceed in knocking down your own invention. Where I come from that is called cerebral self-gratification or straw-man argumentation. I wonder who is really ‘missing your point’! Neither athetic nor organismic are words that have any meaning to me. Is this some sort of schoolyard prank where you make up names to call the other – sort of a pseudo-intellectual name-calling?

Also, actualism is not only about the extinction of the psychological entity aka ego, but – and this is where you and I are talking of different things – about also the extinction of the psychic entity aka soul. With the extinction, or more correctly transcendence, of the psychological entity only, one is then free to expand one’s feeling identity into feeling Oneness as in ‘there is also nothing present that ‘you’ can psychologically identify as an ‘other’’. Whereas with the extinction of both the psychological and psychic entity, both ego and soul, there is no ‘me’ that can possibly feel to be tapping into some imaginary ‘wholistic intelligence’.

This play-safe, only-do-half-the-job approach of the traditional spiritual path has proved a lamentable failure in manifesting anything remotely resembling peace on earth.

I see you have coined the phrase ‘wholistic intelligence’ to mean Higher Intelligence or God by another name. There seems no limit to the inventiveness of religious/ spiritual people’s use of words to describe or denote a Big Daddy of some description that is looking after everything in general and ‘me’ in particular.

*

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

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

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

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

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

RESPONDENT: Osho says: meditation and love go hand in hand. Is it not the same as what you guys have been saying? Meditation defined as aliveness, watchfulness, investigation, paying attention to one’s feelings.

VINEETO: When you are trying to fit what we say into what Osho said you will miss the point entirely. In the last days I have talked to two old girlfriends, both enthusiastically and devotedly on the spiritual path, and I have tried to tell them about my findings and experiences. It was bewildering to see how they both said it was all the same like the spiritual. It leaves me at a loss what words to use. But, I will try again –

Actual freedom is 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Meditation is based on the watcher. You watch your thoughts and feelings in order to rise above them, to dis-identify from them, which in the end amounts to going somewhere else, where you are not the body, not the mind, not the emotion. You are to identify with the watcher and thus move away from the source of your troubles, your body and brain inflicted with the emotions and instincts of the Human Condition. If you persist and identify with the watcher strongly enough, you become the watcher and simply ‘watch’ your body doing its number. Nothing is changed in the Human Condition except ‘you’ become someone other than this flesh and blood body. Then you become the ‘soul’ (the heart), and maybe you even become so deluded as to flip into an altered state of consciousness, aka enlightenment.

Actual Freedom is firmly based on this flesh and blood body with its physical senses as the only actuality there is. Everything that not perceivable by the physical senses is feeling and imagination, deeply ingrained in our genetic heritage and our socially absorbed psyche, but nevertheless imagination and as such non-actual. The aim of the path to actual freedom is to come out of the psychic and psychological structure of the ‘real’ world, the instinctual passions, emotions and beliefs, and step into the actual, sensate and sensual world of the physical universe, where everything is already here, perfect, magical and pure.

RESPONDENT: I end my discussion with you with this:

[Vineeto]: I have answered all your objections as clearly as possible. One thing strikes me as curious: You seem interested enough to engage in a detailed and inquiring conversation with Peter and me. Yet you have enough objections to not investigate any further into what actual freedom is all about.

Aren’t you beyond curiosity?? I am not interested in discussing, I have already told Peter that. And since you two seems to be one, I have mailed either one of you, not bothering whose name was on top. My only issue all along has been – and you haven’t answered that: why do you criticise what doesn’t work for you but which might work for others? why put Osho and his Sannyasins down? what makes you think you and you only, has the truth?

VINEETO: Curious you are ending the discussion when you run out of objections. For me, that would be the point when to really start the discussion.

What you may perceive as a criticism, for me is simply a presenting another option. That this option is so radically different to everything else I have come across in life seems to be the thing that’s bothering you – if Osho works for you, if you have no doubts about it, than that’s fine.

I don’t have the truth, because truth is different for everyone. I had similar objections in the beginning, having been a devout Sannyasin, and therefore I understand the various objections. But after thorough investigation and experiencing both the realm of enlightenment and the actual world I am now able to confidently state that they are opposite states to live in – truth and enlightenment are faculties of feeling and imagination, while actual freedom is an experience of the physical senses and apperception.

It is not a matter of criticising Osho or Sannyas, actual freedom is a different, non-spiritual approach to life altogether. I am saying everybody got it 180 degrees wrong. I understand that this statement is offensive to almost everybody – who wants to admit that they barked up the wrong tree? You could compare Richard’s discovery to what Galileo discovered a few centuries ago. With his self-built telescope Galileo proved the theory of Copernicus, that the earth is actually revolving around the sun and not vice versa – as everybody believed then. He was persecuted, mainly by the Church, and it took a few centuries until his discovery became general accepted knowledge.

So, our discovery is similarly radical, new and a quantum leap in evolution, and as such will appeal to those with a pioneer-spirited.

RESPONDENT: People are brainwashed with teachings, religions, conditionings and lots and lots of words that do not mean anything at all (like the THREE EGGHEADS – Peter, Richard and Vineeto).

VINEETO: Yes, I agree, I am definitely an ‘egghead’ in a ‘square’ world, continuously saying that the solution lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to where everybody else is seeking it. But 6 billion people insists that their particular belief must be the right one, ‘they are just not trying hard enough’ – and they don’t seem to notice that their supposed only true solution has not eliminated the malice and sorrow of the Human Condition.

VINEETO: When you say you are ‘dropping’ an emotion, that simply means letting the idea go in favour of ‘going past it’ to the bigger idea of ‘becoming one’, of ‘evolving consciousness’, of enlightenment where you then become one with everything. This identity of the big ‘Self’ has never been questioned before. Dropping is not the same thing as eradicating at all. It is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spirituality.

RESPONDENT: Dropping the ego doesn’t bring anyone to any new idea.

VINEETO: Actual freedom is about being here in this physical universe only, as this physical body only, perceiving as the physical senses only. There is neither god, nor soul, nor compassion, nor witnessing, nor feeling, nor intuition in actual freedom. There is only this abundant, magical, perfect, infinite and pure universe, experienced through the physical senses of this flesh-and-blood-body.

Can you see the difference?

RESPONDENT: So if you only live in the physical, who is writing to me? And why are you bothering to write to anybody?

VINEETO: Look, I have no idea where you are heading to in this conversation. Are you trying to convince me that what you say and what I say are not so far apart. Are you trying to pull me back into the spiritual camp? Or are you just contradicting as some kind of ‘sport’?

I have lived long enough in the spiritual world to know all its options, seductions and failures. There is nothing there that would pull me back into the world of spirits, gods and demons, dharma and karma, bliss and dread, compassion and sorrow. I know, that where I am, in the actual world, life is far superior to any of the time that I have lived in the spiritual realms of emotions, feelings, beliefs and their underlying instinctual passions. So I will not budge an inch from my aim to completely and irrevocably extinguish the remainder of my self, the psychological and psychic entity in me.

RESPONDENT: Isn’t this inventing of new terms a playing with words only to separate yourself from other similar sounding statements made by, say, sannyasins? To emphasise that they are 180 degrees wrong and you are right?

VINEETO: Well, it you who insists that both should be the same thing. I am not inventing new terms for the same thing, I am using words to describe a different thing. When airplanes were invented, they weren’t called ‘cars’. Two different words for two different things. Love and compassion are feelings within the Human Condition, they are a well-meaning but futile attempt by the psychic entity to mimic the actual intimacy and benevolence which become apparent when ‘I’ disappear. Why shouldn’t it be possible that there is something new under the sun, something that actually works?

It is my very experience, every day.

RESPONDENT: Likewise it could be said that it is you who wants it to be different. If you insist on being different you may end up creating another movement thus adding to the division in the world and hence intensifying atrocities already there.

VINEETO: ‘It being different’ and ‘me wanting it to be different’ are not the same thing. ‘It’ is different and that is a fact. Me objecting to that fact would simply be silly. To acknowledge the fact that compassion is a feeling of ‘me’ within the Human Condition and that benevolence is a quality experienced with ‘me’ absent is anathema to ‘me’. It is not something ‘I’ would want. Actualism is not a movement and never can be, only individual people can clean themselves up and discover the actual world for themselves. Everybody has to do it for him/herself. In actualism, power and compassion simply do not exist, and they are very ingredients needed for atrocities to happen. No passions, no wars.

VINEETO: Since you commented about Peter, Vineeto and Richard, I consider it appropriate to comment on your comment.

RESPONDENT to Respondent No 8: The mind will always look for an answer it thinks it can answer. These people: Peter, Vineeto and Richard have opted for a psychological answer to a question their minds cannot answer. That question is ‘Who am I’. This question cannot be answered by the mind, it can only be experienced without the mind! For truly hard and fast head fuckers, this is a really hard path to follow! It involves the surrender of the mind, a product of which is the opening of the heart. I love your questioning of everything, all your belief systems warrant examination.

It is not my belief system that is in place when I say, who you are is beyond the mind; it is my experience!

VINEETO: You are speaking from the spiritual world. The actual world lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
An actualist could translate what you are saying into something like this:

The identity will always look for an answer it thinks or feels it can answer; these people – the spiritual seekers – have opted for a spirit-ual and ‘other-worldly’ answer to a question which their practical common sense has not been able to answer. That question is, ‘What am I’? This question cannot be answered by the heart or the soul, it can only be experienced without any psychic entity whatsoever! For truly hard and fast soul-fuckers, this is a really almost impossible path to follow! It involves the death of the identity, which is a product of instincts, beliefs and emotions.

It is not a belief system when I say, ‘who’ you think you are and ‘who’ you feel you are is an identity that can be eliminated – it is my everyday experience!

RESPONDENT: A life unexamined is a life unlived.

VINEETO: Well said. Why stop examination at spiritual so-called ‘Truths’?