Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.
Selected Correspondence Vineeto Authority and Expertise Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: I do have some questions regarding my current activities. I know you once worked two years with drug addicts and saw that you couldn’t help them. Would you go back to working with them now – if you had the chance? VINEETO: When I left social work because I realized that had nothing to offer, I went to the East and immersed myself in spiritual therapy groups in order to find some answers. I then worked for about three years as a helper and administrator with group leaders and came to observe that therapists didn’t have an answer to their own problems in life, let alone for others. As an instance, the person who lead the most popular relationship groups had more trouble with his personal relationships than most other people I knew. I also learnt a lot about power, reverence, subserviency and dependency, both front stage and back stage, as it operates in the therapist-client business. When I came across actualism, this was invaluable experience as it made immediate sense that anybody who wants to change themselves can only do so out of their own intent, by themselves and for themselves. Only when I change myself out of my own intent can I be autonomous. RESPONDENT: I ask this because I am teaching people who are bordering on poverty and some basically see life as something terrible, even the young ones, and this fuels their malice and so consequently there are victims … well you know how it goes. VINEETO: You put your finger on the nub of the issue. The strange thing is that most people who have enough money to live comfortably also ‘see life as something terrible’. The feeling of resentment as in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ and ‘I don’t want to be here’ is something that is common to the human condition – whatever class, race or nation people are coming from and whatever age-group they are in. The persistent stranglehold that religious and spiritual pursuits and teachings have over humankind – all of which are predicated on the promise of some kind of an afterlife – is potent evidence of the basic resentment that human beings feel at having to be here. RESPONDENT: All this is really helping me to understand the human condition, and wanting to be completely free from it, but I see no solution I can offer to ameliorate their present condition … one thing I have noticed though is that they are taken aback at my refusal to get angry and blame them when they become mischievous. RESPONDENT: They don’t yet know what to make of me ... but I do wish I could teach them something more than just English. VINEETO: Yes, I can understand your wish very well. When I meet clients for bookkeeping I sometimes drop a few sentences of common sense into the conversation when they tell me about the big and little problems of their lives, but irregardless of whether they agree with the common sense or not, there is little sign of them wanting to actually change to ameliorate their situation. You are already offering them the best there is – an ongoing genuine demonstration that one can be happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are and live in peace and harmony with one’s fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Well that’s it for now. Feeling happy and harmless, VINEETO: It is a pleasure to hear from you. I thoroughly enjoy your posts and your humour, namely when you said – ‘Ha! Try bonding with an Actualist.’ Isn’t it so much more gratifying to stand on one’s own two feet? GARY: I identify a lot with your writings, Vineeto, about struggles with authority. The whole issue of mentorship that I brought up in a post with Peter triggered off for me investigation into this issue of authority. I have been reading what the website says about authority. For me, the issue of authority has been a big one, a stumbling block to freedom that has to be thoroughly investigated. I was trained and raised to be obedient and not to think for myself. At a certain age, I rebelled totally against this authoritarianism in my upbringing and suffered dire consequences as a young person as a result. For me, there has always been a resentment of the authority of others, which leads me to experience fear and the desire to attack or dig my heels in and stubbornly resist their authority. Usually it is the latter quality, which is evident, but ‘I’ will attack if I feel cornered. VINEETO: I had always thought that my issue with authority resolved when I finally realized that there was no God and in a way God’s authority was the final piece of the puzzle for me. Thinking about authority, however, I now understand that any issue of authority is inextricably intertwined with the desire to pass on the job of living my life to others who then became the authority figures. It was my hope for shortcuts, help of the powerful ones, the father’s money, the boyfriend’s promise of sympathy and security, the girlfriend’s support, the Masters Grace, God’s miracles, etc., that have fuelled and maintained my reliance upon, and fighting against, authority. Now I can learn from whomever I find worth emulating or learning from, whilst remaining perfectly autonomous. First I had to acknowledge that I am utterly on my own – nobody, but nobody can do anything for me, can change me, can give me happiness, redeem me from fear or fulfil my desires. It is all up to me. VINEETO: Some complaints however, such as the knee-jerk rages against authority and authority figures or feeling sad and sorry for a blighted humanity run very deep and as such take a bit more digging into in order to fully understand and undo. Such complaints are rooted deeply in the core feeling of ‘we are all in the same boat’ which gives rise to the nonsensical belief that ‘we can only become free together all at once’. It is obvious that there are no practical lifestyle changes that I can make to diminish these complaints other than cutting the cord each time these feelings arise and, each time again, step out from humanity, the sad and sorry cesspool of malice and sorrow. GARY: While I don’t often have rages against authority, I often regard myself as a moral authority to be reckoned with and am liable to fly into rages when others defy my imagined authority. This pattern, once blatant and destructive of personal and professional relationships, is progressively drying up. But it still takes quite a bit of ferreting out what underlies these difficulties and I do not mean to imply that I am free from these insidious passions. There has been progress but not perfection, as ‘I’ am still in evidence. VINEETO: Yes, having expertise in certain areas is one thing but an emotional claim to authority certainly spells trouble. To fight for one’s place in the pecking order of rank and honour is not only an issue of ‘my’ social identity but the fight has its roots in the instinctual need to define and defend ‘my’ territory. My intent to abandon this pecking-order fight taught me to rely on facts instead of my opinions, which in turn diminished the urge to defend my knowledge and/or authority. JAMES: My previous teachings to me are about the actual. For example, a key ingredient of my previous teachings is about having a direct experience of the actual which I feel is necessary to having a PCE. VINEETO: I am stunned that you can call Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teaching being ‘about the actual’. If you had followed a bit of Richard’s extensive correspondence with many, many people on this very same teacher’s mailing list, you would at least have noted that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s concern is the transcendental and nothing but the transcendental. Viz: [quote]: ‘If you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness ... ... therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being ... ... the discovery of truth, or God demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth – and I say such a thing does exist, I have realised it – to recognise that, to realise that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages’. (The Book Of Life: Daily Meditations With J. Krishnamurti’, December Chapter. Published by Harper, San Francisco. Copyright ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation of America). In order to be able to say that Mr. Krishnamurti’s teachings to you are ‘about the actual’ you have to either ignore 90% of Krishnamurti’s teachings or twist the meaning of the word ‘actual’ into meaning spiritual and transcendental. ‘The key ingredient of [your] previous teachings is about having a direct experience’ of the divine, not the actual. Viz: [quote]: I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated. (‘Krishnamurti: The Years Of Awakening’ Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York, 1991). * (...) JAMES: I was talking about the teachings themselves such as being aware of what I am actually doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment and you have added a quote from his early years and what he may or may not have meant by truth at that period of his life. VINEETO: I find it interesting that you should object to the relevance of the above quote from J. Krishnamurti by saying that it was ‘from his early years’. This is one of the several stock standard responses that were used by several faithful followers of Krishnamurti when Richard introduced quotes on Mailing List B to prove a point he was making. Only in September last year Richard had a lengthy discussion with one correspondent about that very same argument ... ‘from his early years’. You were also writing on the list at the same time but maybe you missed the exchange. I have copied the relevant correspondence at the end of this letter. I had posted this particular quote because I know from my thorough investigation into my years of spiritual dependency that you cannot separate the teachings from the teacher and just pick out a some advice that seem worth applying in your life and ignore the rest. The above quote shows clearly, as do many others from his later years, that J. Krishnamurti was a through and through spiritual person – ‘God-intoxicated’ – and his declared purpose was to teach people how to achieve this experience for themselves. Viz.: [quote]: ‘Those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end ... ... will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose’. (J. Krishnamurti, 1929). Therefore, following his method can, at the most, lead you to what he achieved – becoming yet another spiritual teacher immersed in ‘that which is eternal’ – and not knowing anything about a ‘direct experience with the actual’. JAMES: I have been spiritual in my life but I am not spiritual now. Truth to me is what I am actually doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment. I’m sorry if I have wasted your time. I will continue to look and see if I have any spirituality. VINEETO: Personally, I was never attracted to J. Krishnamurti or his teachings as I considered them too dry and theoretical at the time of my spiritual involvement. Instead, I got sucked into the emotional indulgence and the escalating esoteric extravagance of Mr. Mohan Rajneesh. Yet the relationship that I had to him as my master differs not from the relationship that other followers have to their particular master – is it invariably epitomized by unquestioning adoration, deep felt loyalty, a love that excuses and defends the master’s every word or deed and the pride of being a disciple of such rare outstanding and powerful personality. Krishnamurti’s claim that he did not want to be a master nor want his followers to be devotees only created an apparent intellectual coolness but it never altered the fervent emotional ties that each of his followers had, and still has, with him. If you take the time and read through some of Richard’s correspondence with Mailing List B you will quickly understand what I mean. Before I could learn, explore or even consider that there was any new approach to life I had to question this highly emotional relationship to the one teacher that I had considered to be the only authority and fountain of wisdom. My worldview was coloured and measured against the authority of his words and teachings. If others stated similar views and ‘wisdoms’, I considered them right, if not, they were wrong. My judgements had nothing to do with my personal investigation of facts at all; it was solely a ‘feeling right’ decision according to my preconceived convictions solely derived from the master’s viewpoint – and the fact that he had been dead for 10 years did not change my emotional dependency on his authority at all. An honest and in-depth investigation of the facts of the situation was only possible after I ‘tore Rajneesh out of my heart’, became a traitor to his message and his ‘sangha’ and thus became independent of his imagined approval or condemnation. Only then was I able to listen to his discourses and judge with my newly freed intelligence instead of ‘my heart’ and to discover his mindless twaddle and ‘compassionate lies’, his manipulation and deceit, his outright distortions and underlying ancient rotten Indian belief-system. Now I could start the long and fascinating journey of unravelling the intricate web of the psychic world – the Eastern spiritual fears of endless karma, the hope for transcendence, the reverence for intuition, love, compassion, bliss and enlightenment. Once one starts to see the psychic world and how it functions, the word ‘spiritual’ is revealed in its fuller and more comprehensive meaning. You felt moved to defend your teacher the moment I quoted him in order to prove that he is concerned only with the spiritual and the divine and not with the actual. This reaction indicates where to look when you want to ‘see if [you] have any spirituality’. So in order to ‘continue to look and see if [you] have any spirituality’, you will first and foremost have to consider and investigate your affective relationship to your ‘previous’ teacher and teachings. Otherwise any factual discussion about what Krishnamurti said or meant will be distorted by the emotions that are instigating automatic instinctual (or, as LeDoux calls them, ‘quick and dirty’) reactions rather than considered intelligent responses. * JAMES: I really don’t want an authority. If I have any questions hopefully I will be able to ask someone without them acting like an authority like they know what I said or meant and add to what I actually said and like they are an authority on what a previous teaching said or meant. VINEETO: I have been contemplating about the issue of authority a bit in the last few days. Apart from the discoveries I mentioned in my last post about authority I have found one basic theme that is common to all issues on authority. Whenever I have made someone an authority in my life and either sucked up to, loved or envied, it was for the simple reason that the person had something that I desired at the time. These qualities were mainly status, luck, money, fame, knowledge, power, enlightenment or freedom. Always combined with that desire was the belief that the other person could either give or withhold the desired quality, a belief that established my emotional dependency on the other. I always loathed being emotionally dependant on such an authority – which gave rise to either fight, rebellion and resentment or faith, trust, cow-towing and surrender. Yet I instinctually kept creating and maintaining such relationships while at the same time struggling to become free of them. It was only when I learnt about Actual Freedom and began investigating the underlying beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions that form my identity, did I start to understand the reason for my need of authority and was able to incrementally free myself of this very need for emotional dependency. In order to break free I had to overcome the fear of standing on my own feet, the need to belong to anyone or any group as well as my innate laziness. I had to learn to rely on facts rather than beliefs, and to use my capacity to think and investigate for myself rather than feel, trust and intuit my way in the world. It is an absolute fascinating adventure once one starts to debunk the big authorities, particularly the Gurus and God-men, and starts finding out for oneself. A whole new, factual and actual, world starts opening up. Knowing the facts for oneself gives a confidence that makes emotional authority issues utterly redundant. The second benefit of investigating the emotional part of authority was that I could finally fulfill my life-long yearning to live with a man in perfect peace and harmony, equity and intimacy. Before that, my instinctual reactions to seek and then reject authority had always spoiled the relationships with men and reduced the living together to shallow compromises, temporary ceasefires to the ongoing battle and the subsequent frustration. The third benefit was that I did not have to reject another’s expertise in a particular field for the mere fear of being dependant. I can now value expertise for what it is – a great support to discovering what I want to understand or accomplish. Richard was, and is, a perfect source of expertise because he has discovered Actual Freedom by using the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ He has debunked the grand delusion of enlightenment – having been there and done that – and he continues to unveil, in his correspondence, all the so-called mysteries of the spiritual and pseudo-scientific world. Without an authority-problem we can simply stand on each other’s shoulders, learn from past mistakes and failures, apply current cutting-edge knowledge and put into practice what someone else has already discovered and investigated. After all, actualism is an empirical science, a practical brain-engineering process and not a religion or a belief-system. (see Selected correspondence on authority). JAMES: Krishnamurti does say accept no authority and I see this to be valid. If this makes me spiritual in your book then so be it. Right now you appear to be coming on as the ultimate authority. I’m not running with my tail between my legs just because I don’t accept your authority without seeing it for myself. If you or anyone wants to write me I will answer. VINEETO: Just as Richard is an expert and an authority on Actual Freedom and enlightenment, I am an expert on Virtual Freedom and on the method of how to eliminate the social identity and investigate the instinctual passions. I have ‘walked the walk’. Peter, Alan and I are pioneers on the direct path to an actual freedom from the human condition without taking the torturous route through enlightenment. You can make use of our expertise, hints and information for your own journey or you can object to it, reject it and try to do it solely on your own. The great thing about Actual Freedom is that everybody has to do it for themselves and thus nobody has any power over anybody else – either actual or psychic. There is nothing but a website with plenty of information and facts about the Human Condition and a mailing list with a few people sharing their discoveries and experiences on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom. Unlike the spiritual path, there are no gurus and no psychic power except for the imaginary power-play that happens in people’s passionate hearts and recalcitrant minds. Krishnamurti seems simply to have been passing on his own authority problems to his followers due to his own torturous authoritarian upbringing. His advice also works as another version of ‘thou shalt not worship any other authorities except myself’. If you prefer to accept his authority rather than investigate the issue of authority for yourself, then that is your choice. VINEETO to No. 1: Personally, I can understand what Richard writes, and the longer I read the easier it is for me to understand his explanations about animal instincts, the human condition and a way to peace-on-earth. I am applying the method that he has described on the list many times since two years, with great success. Therefore your argument of him being ‘the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands’ is simply a silly excuse – for if you actually understand what Richard talks about, peace-on-earth in this lifetime, then that understanding calls for unilateral action, for changing oneself. And who would want to give up their comfortable concepts and theories and start actually investigating themselves and changing their behaviour in order to become actually free of malice and sorrow? It is so much easier to find fault with the one who is talking about peace-on-earth than to get off one’s bum and investigate one’s own emotions, isn’t it? (Vineeto, List D, No. 1, 6.8.2000). JAMES: Looks to me like you wanted to defend your guru, Vineeto. VINEETO: Those living in the spirit-ual world can only see spiritual relationships, epitomized by love and authority. My own ultimate authority is the pure consciousness experience where one can experience the actual world undistorted by any ‘self’ whatsoever. Given my intent to live this ‘self’-less experience 24 hrs a day I then proceeded to eliminate all that prevents this happening. I have left the self-deprecating reliance on authority as in a guru-disciple relationship behind a long time ago. It sucks. Of course, Richard’s discovery of Actual Freedom enabled me to stop believing that you can’t change Human Nature. You can change human nature, radically and irrevocably. There is nothing as valuable as expertise in all areas of life. Yet most people are not able to differentiate between an emotion-backed belief in Authority and drawing on the obvious expertise of a fellow human being who has discovered something far superior to Enlightenment. JAMES: This is interesting. You are dead sure that I am in a spiritual world and following a guru yet you have totally denied your own words that you wrote above. Let me play your own words back to you. This is how you like to do everyone else to prove that you are right and that ‘ALL’ others are wrong. [Vineeto to No. 1]: Personally, I can understand what Richard writes, and the longer I read the easier it is for me to understand his explanations about animal instincts, the human condition and a way to peace-on-earth [endquote]. So, the longer you read Richard’s explanations, the easier it is for you to understand his explanation of a way to peace on earth. Personally, I understood what Richard was saying the first time I read it and I was interested in learning more about the instincts. However, I was completely choked and stifled by you and the ‘ism’ you have made out of it. VINEETO: Oh yes, as I said, I am dead sure that ‘those living in the spirit-ual world can only see spiritual relationships, epitomized by love and authority’. As you have classified my drawing on Richard’s expertise as a guru-disciple relationship, I can only conclude that for you Richard’s expertise falls into the category of spiritual teaching, otherwise you would not call him a ‘guru’. Guru according to the Oxford dictionary is ‘a (Hindu) spiritual teacher’. Methinks when you call Richard a guru you have not at all ‘understood what Richard was saying the first time [you] read it’. JAMES: That’s ‘ism’ as in ‘actualism’. One can’t even participate on your website unless they want to be an ‘actualist’ who wants to practice ‘actualism’. This is what all the ‘isms’ have done thru organizations, religions and cults. This is what has been ‘tried and failed’. You have taken what’s actual and turned it into a super cyber cult. Some of us might actually want to learn more about the instincts without being completely choked by your assumptions and pre-conceived notions. You aren’t going to fool anyone here by denying that this is a cult and you are not following your guru. You told me that I was either blind or in denial. This could be. However, you were also obviously talking about yourself. VINEETO: Why would you want to participate on the Actual Freedom mailing list if you are not interested in actualism? Actualism is the application of the method, and the undertaking of the process, which enables one to live the pure consciousness experience 24 hrs. a day, every day. That you don’t want to undertake the process is entirely your choice, but to rationalize your disinterest by saying that its name bears ‘i-s-m’ and you don’t like those three letters is merely confusing the word with the thing. This obfuscation surely prevents you from any further investigations as to what Actual Freedom and the process to achieve Actual Freedom (actualism) is all about. * VINEETO to No. 1: I am applying the method that he has described on the list many times since two years, with great success. (Vineeto, List D, No. 1, 6.8.2000). JAMES: So, you are applying the method that he has described for two years with great success. Oh, and you just happen to live close to him also. VINEETO: Can you explain to me what ‘living close to him also’ has to do with the subject on hand, i.e. emotion-backed belief in Authority versus drawing on the expertise of a fellow human being? * VINEETO to No. 1: Therefore your argument of him being ‘the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands’ is simply a silly excuse – for if you actually understand what Richard talks about, peace-on-earth in this lifetime, then that understanding calls for unilateral action, for changing oneself. (Vineeto, List D, No. 1, 6.8.2000). JAMES: Here you refer to what Richard talks about and what that calls for. By my count you have referred to Richard eight times in what you have written above. Oh, and you constantly quote Richard and ‘ALL’ 6 billion others of us are wrong including K and all sages, saints and gurus throughout history. VINEETO: I was referring to ‘what Richard talks about’ because I answered No. 1 who pretended not to understand what Richard is talking about. JAMES: Making everyone on earth who has lived and is living wrong is not the way to get your message across even if it is right. Making everybody wrong is what has been ‘tried and failed’. VINEETO: And yes, everyone has got is 180 degrees wrong – this is not an individual blaming of people, this is just the way it is. Human beings, without exception, are genetically-encoded with instinctual passions. Everybody up until now has tried to either repress or control these passions or follow the traditional path to a transcendental spiritual freedom. Either coping with or transcending malice and sorrow has failed to bring peace on earth. Therefore everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong. If you had ‘understood what Richard was saying the first time [you] read it’, this would be all very clear to you. * VINEETO to No. 1: It is so much easier to find fault with the one who is talking about peace-on-earth than to get off one’s bum and investigate one’s own emotions, isn’t it? (Vineeto, List D, No. 1, 6.8.2000). JAMES: Here again you are referring to Richard as the one who is talking about peace on earth in a way that you are obviously defending him. VINEETO: I was referring to Richard ‘talking about peace on earth’ because I answered No. 1 who pretended not to understand what Richard is talking about. It is obvious from amount of objections and denigrations that Richard has had on this mailing list, that he is quite capable of defending himself and needs no help from me at all. JAMES: As far as getting off one’s bum is concerned, I don’t think you know your bum from a hole in the ground. VINEETO: Can you explain to me what ‘I don’t think you know your bum from a hole in the ground’ has to do with the subject on hand, i.e. emotion-backed belief in Authority versus drawing on the expertise of a fellow human being? The expression ‘get off one’s bum’ is a colloquialism meaning ‘rolling up one’s sleeves’. I used it in reference to actually doing something about one’s own malice and sorrow instead of merely playing silly. * VINEETO: I have left the self-deprecating reliance on authority as in a guru-disciple relationship behind a long time ago. It sucks. (Vineeto, List D, No. 1, 13.8.2000). JAMES: If you think you have left the guru-disciple relationship behind you are either blind or in deep denial. That’s what you told me on ‘your’ website. VINEETO: You will have to give some evidence for your assertion that I am ‘blind or in deep denial’. I run the search function through the whole of our previous correspondence and nowhere did I find the words ‘blind’ or ‘deep denial’. * VINEETO: Of course, Richard’s discovery of Actual Freedom enabled me to stop believing that you can’t change Human Nature. You can change human nature, radically and irrevocably JAMES: So, Richard’s discovery of Actual Freedom ‘enabled’ you. Enabled is a word used by addicts in recovery. VINEETO: Oh, do addicts now own the word ‘enable’? enable – a Give power to; strengthen; make adequate or competent. b Make able, give the means, to be or to do something. 2. Become able, gain strength or power. 3. Make (an action) possible or effective; make (a device) operational, turn on. Oxford Dictionary Methinks, you are clutching at straws here. * VINEETO: Yet most people are not able to differentiate between an emotion-backed belief in Authority and drawing on the obvious expertise of a fellow human being who has discovered something far superior to Enlightenment JAMES: So, you are ‘drawing on’ the expertise of a fellow human being who has discovered something far superior to enlightenment or anything that anyone else has discovered throughout history. VINEETO: What are your objections that I draw on the expertise of a fellow human being who has discovered something far superior to Enlightenment? Whose expertise are you drawing on? RESPONDENT: Oh yes, and by the way you have your own language and terms in actualism which is what the other ‘isms’ and cults have done. VINEETO: No, we write in English and use dictionary meanings of words so as to not confuse. I you prefer I can describe actualism equally well in German. VINEETO: Of course, Richard’s discovery of Actual Freedom enabled me to stop believing that you can’t change Human Nature. You can change human nature, radically and irrevocably JAMES: So, Richard’s discovery of Actual Freedom ‘enabled’ you. Enabled is a word used by addicts in recovery. VINEETO: Oh, do addicts now own the word ‘enable’? According to Mr. Oxford’s dictionary – enable – a Give power to; strengthen; make adequate or competent. b Make able, give the means, to be or to do something. 2. Become able, gain strength or power. 3. Make (an action) possible or effective; make (a device) operational, turn on. Oxford Dictionary Methinks, you are clutching at straws here. JAMES: Oh really, then let’s use your dictionary definition. You are then saying that Richard enabled you by ‘Giving power to, give the means, become able, gain strength or power, make an action possible’. VINEETO: A guru’s authority relies on his divine energy – which is directly transmitted via the feeling of love as long as he is alive and by mystical communion after his death – and of his ‘knowledge’ of the Unknowable, the timeless, the unfathomable Truth. By that very ‘knowledge’ of the Unknown the master stays in power and remains the authority of what he ‘knows’. Should anyone realize the Unknowable himself, he then becomes an authority for others eager and willing to be a dependant follower. Many gurus do not leave others in their wake, thus their authority is irrefutable after death, while other gurus anoint successors who then become part of a lineage à la H.W.L. Poonja. Whichever way, the authority and the disciple’s dependency on the master’s teachings are perpetuated. Whereas Richard’s discovery and method ‘made an action possible’, the action to free myself from the grip of the instinctual passions. With this action and the experience of the ongoing success I have become my own authority because I know by tangible, repeatable experience that and how the method works. Now I am neither run by my emotions nor driven by instinctual passions but free to sensately and sensibly enjoy a happy and harmless life. By the way, the only power that someone has over you is when you willingly surrender to someone, which is such a demeaning thing to do. * VINEETO: So it looks as though now you want to continue our discussion that ended so abruptly on the Actual Freedom mailing list about exactly the same issue – emotion-backed belief in the spiritual teachings of an Authority versus drawing on the obvious expertise of a fellow human being who was Enlightened, emerged from the delusion to discover something far superior to Enlightenment. JAMES: I guess the main point you are trying to make is the difference in belief in the spiritual teachings of an Authority and drawing on the expertise of a fellow human being who was Enlightened, emerged from the delusion to discover something far superior to Enlightenment. However, there are some major flaws in this statement: Someone who claims to be the only one who has ever lived to have achieved the state of actual freedom and is the only one who is right can hardly be considered just another fellow human being. You have assumed that I am a believer in the spiritual teachings of an Authority and that I am seeking Enlightenment. This is not true. VINEETO: I would be interested to learn about someone else who is permanently living in the state of actual freedom. As for being a fellow human being – so far I have only met people who are busy assessing others as friend or foe, follower or heretic. Only someone without identity can meet other people simply as fellow human beings, as is evidenced by the fact that you consider Richard as something other than a fellow human being. If you say that you are not a believer and not seeking enlightenment, then that must be true for you. However, I will make my own judgements based upon what you write. * (...) JAMES: Actually I do understand it and I have experienced it. The main problem I have with it is you have made it into an ‘ism’ which makes you the authority and essentially has shut almost everyone off from benefiting from it. VINEETO: The outstanding feature of actualism, which sets it apart from every spiritual/ religious/ mystical teaching, is that there is only one ultimate guide and authority and that is one’s own pure consciousness experience of the actual world. A PCE is the glimpse one gets into the purity of the actual world, and PCEs have given me the insights, realizations and knowledge about my ‘self’ and about the way to explore and eliminate my ‘self’. Reporting about my own process may look like a belief and an ‘ism’ to you, unless you can verify my statements with your own pure consciousness experiences. The moment somebody has expertise, new knowledge or makes a unique breakthrough in any field, there is a predictable emotional reaction – a propensity to follow or fight, appreciate or denigrate that is common to all human interaction and a major contributing factor to the ongoing battles and disputes. It is the emotional reaction to expertise that creates the problem, not the expertise itself. Without emotional reaction I can assess and ascertain the facts presented and draw on the expertise of a fellow human being without losing my dignity or surrendering my independence. Then it is always me who decides what is useful information for my aim – the total eradication of my malice and sorrow – and what may, or may not, be applicable for this process. Personally, I had to dig deep into my psyche in order to explore the root cause of the reoccurring problems that I had with authority figures in my life, which spoiled my relationship with every person I met, particularly with men. For me it was a stunning surprise to find that my belief in a higher Authority – God by any other name – was underpinning my emotional reliance and sticky dependency on authority, which inevitably resulted in feelings of gratitude and resentment. I had thought that my belief in the god of the religions had been left behind long ago for I had been involved in a spiritual search and not a formal religion, but I was surprised to find that the belief in a higher force had survived. This belief was that the Universe will take care of me but will also judge me one day if I don’t live according to the ‘universal laws’. Acknowledging, then questioning and ultimately eradicating this passionate imagination or ‘instinctual knowing’ left me with the shocking realization that I am entirely on my own, without guard or guide. It also gave me the freedom to decide for myself what is silly and what is sensible, to walk upright in the world and be beholden to no one. Since then, the feeling of needing a higher authority has ceased to be an issue in my life. From my experience, tackling one’s dependency on and resentment against authority is one of the major obstacles to be removed when one wants to relate to other people as fellow human beings. JAMES: The main problem I have with it is you have made [actualism] into an ‘ism’ which makes you the authority and essentially has shut almost everyone off from benefiting from it. How many years and how many people will it take before you realize it is not working under the authoritarian system you have set up? VINEETO: I am simply reporting the results of applying a practical down-to-earth method. It is you who is making this report into a belief, who has a reaction to ‘ism’ and who considers me a supposedly stifling authority. You are making me far too important, for I have no power over anyone whatsoever. The essential prerequisite for starting on the path to freedom is the understanding that it is useless to blame anybody else for my feelings, emotions, my behaviour or my situation. I am the one who wants to get rid of my identity and therefore I am my own detective setting out to find whatever causes me to react in a certain way. This approach has two obvious benefits – first, I can fix myself up and do whatever is needed to become happy and harmless, and second, I am free of being responsible for somebody else’s feelings if I have acted without malice or sorrow. In short, I cease to blame anyone else for my feelings and emotions and I cease to impose my feelings and emotions on anybody else. This way, relating to people is imminently easy, benevolent and straightforward. JAMES: I am essentially telling you what No. 12 and No. 13 told you. [on The Actual Freedom List] VINEETO: I prefer to discuss their views on the Actual Freedom list where they have the option to join the discussion. JAMES: You have choked me with assumptions and preconceived notions. You have assumed that I am living in a spiritual world, which I am not. I don’t have any beliefs in life after death and such as that. VINEETO: I have not assumed anything, you have told me about your spiritual view yourself. You said that PCE equals God and actualism equals religion. Further you said that Krishnamurti’s teachings were for you about ‘the actual’. Someone who describes himself as ‘God-intoxicated’ and teaches people how to reach this state simply does not live in the actual world and does not know the actual, which becomes only apparent when the affective entity inside the body has ceased to exist. The actual world is impossible to experience as long as there is a belief in God, Truth, Intelligence, etc. or if one is intoxicated by affective feelings. JAMES: Actually, I like Richard and I agree with most of what he says. I just don’t want to be labelled and bottled up by an ‘ism’ which to me represents a belief. VINEETO: In the course of the last two years there has been quite a number of people who liked what Richard had to say and were eager to learn more about Actual Freedom. However, what to them first appeared to be an interesting new philosophy quickly faded the moment Peter and I joined the conversation, and their interest in Actual Freedom turned into finding fault with those who have actually applied the method in their daily life. I take it that you are not one of those people – for to replace one philosophy or belief with another is of no use at all. JAMES: I guess I am anti-authority which comes up when I talk to you. Thanks for pushing my buttons. VINEETO: I am not at all interested in pushing your buttons, because sorting out the sore spots of your identity is entirely your business. When you write to an actualist mailing list and feel your buttons pushed when you are presented with facts and expertise in how to become free from malice and sorrow then this is indeed a reaction of one’s anti-authoritarian social identity. Before I came across actualism I had plenty of trouble with my rebellious anti-authority attitude – apart from being attracted to the words of anti-authority worshipping snake oil sellers this highly emotional attitude also prevented me from living in peace and harmony with my fellow human beings. As I explored my issues about authority, I came to understand that the whole issue has been inextricably intertwined with my desire to pass on the job of living my life to others who then became the admired or feared authority figures. It was my hope for shortcuts, for help of the powerful ones that had fuelled and maintained my debilitating reliance upon, or mindless rebellion against, authority. I desired my father’s money and approval, my boyfriend’s promise of love and security, my girlfriend’s sympathy and support, my Master’s psychic Power, Compassion and Grace, God’s miracles, Mother Nature’s Intelligence, the Supreme Power of the Eternal Unknown, etc. In order to break free of all of these issues about authority I first had to acknowledge and then experience that I was utterly on my own – nobody, but nobody could do anything for me, change me, give me happiness, redeem me from my fear, malice and sorrow or fulfil my desires. It is all up to me. Now I am free to learn from whomever I find worthy of emulating or learning from, whilst remaining perfectly autonomous. * JAMES: I think I have fully investigated emotions and passions but am still wondering what’s missing if anything. VINEETO: Given that you said to me ‘I am anti-authority’ which is an emotion arising from one’s social identity, there may be the possibility that other emotions and beliefs are still waiting to be investigated. You also said ‘thanks for pushing my buttons’ and ‘buttons’ usually stand for one’s beliefs and feelings that are being challenged. It is only a guess but one of these may be the belief that you already have ‘fully investigated emotions and passions’. Richard puts it this way on the opening page of his website – Richard: The instinctual passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the ice-burg and not the main issue at all. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. (Richard, The Third Alternative). JAMES: When I saw the title to your post to No. 18 about ‘Abandoning beliefs’ I wondered exactly what you meant by that. I wrote to ask you what you meant by that and you explained. That was all I wanted to know. VINEETO: Yet that wasn’t all you wanted to know because after I explained what I meant by abandoning beliefs you continued the conversation by asking ‘how did you investigate those feelings and link the identity to them?’ (25.11.2004) to which I responded. JAMES: The conversation then deteriorated into you making a lot of assumptions about me … VINEETO: As I already explained, I did not make assumptions about you specifically but passed on some observations about the human condition in regards to how people I know try to manage their feelings. Instead of taking what I said at face value you took this observation personally, i.e. you presumed that I had made ‘a lot of assumptions’ about you and as a result you decided that you ‘find it near impossible to have a conversation’ with me. Here is the paragraph you consider to contain ‘a lot of assumptions’ about you personally – [Vineeto]: *I know of quite a few people* who manage to feel good most of the time as a consequence of practicing dis-identification, and detachment and emotionally retreating from the world-as-it-is but in the end they are all unable to raise the bar to thoroughly enjoying life and delighting in being here by practicing this technique. This stands to reason because it’s impossible to unequivocally and unconditionally delight in being here whilst simultaneously practicing aloofness to one’s fellow human beings and indifference to the human condition that afflicts all human beings while cutting oneself off from the purity and perfection of the actual world. [endquote]. JAMES: [The conversation then deteriorated into you making a lot of assumptions about me] and now bringing up long past conversations to back up your assumptions. VINEETO: The reason why I referred to information you had given me in the past was to explain to you why I had chosen to impart this particular observation about the human condition. You had asked me about investigating feelings and knowing that both you and I had trodden the spiritual path for many years, I told you about one of the cunning tricks the identity applies in order to avoid further investigation into one’s feelings … because daring to undertake such a hands-on investigation would inevitably threaten ‘my’ very existence. Or are you now retracting your comment that you have been on ‘this path of self-discovery for 30 years now’? JAMES: As always, you have assumed an authoritative teacher role which makes discussion impossible. VINEETO: Well, you did ask me a question about ‘how did you investigate those feelings and link the identity to them?’ and I gave an answer to you based on my expertise on the subject. Would you have me pretend that I don’t know what I know about the human condition and how it operates in order that you can feel equally authoritative about the subject? Whilst ‘dumbing-down’ is part and parcel of belief-based spiritualism, it has no role to play in fact-based actualism. If you don’t want to talk about abandoning beliefs and investigating feelings, then why bother to ask in the first place? If one wants to discuss the human condition and such matters in particular, one inevitably ends up triggering-off one’s own emotional reactions for the obvious reason that ‘I’ am humanity and humanity is ‘me’. It takes tremendous guts to dive deep into one’s psyche and bring to light one’s familiar patterns and beliefs. That’s why I always recommend putting the topic under discussion on the table, remembering that it is the human condition that we are talking about, not some personal flaw or individual error. The human condition is common to all, genetically encoded, and in one form or another shared by each and every human being. However, there is no avoiding of sensitive topics if you really want to become free from the human condition. JAMES: Anyway, thanks for answering my original question about abandoning beliefs. VINEETO: Can you now understand the qualitative difference between abandoning one’s beliefs and questioning other people’s beliefs? ALAN: Your mail has prompted me to investigate further the ‘zombie state’. I discovered that I was waiting until I had more ‘time’ to actually be ‘here’ – what a joke – this moment is all I have and here I am waiting – and what a lovely excuse for not being ‘here’. I discovered doubt – doubt that you, Richard and Peter are living a delusion, doubt that you and Peter are blind followers of Richard – and what a lovely excuse for not being ‘here’. VINEETO: Yes, I do understand the doubts you are talking about. After all, we are just a handful of pioneers compared to the whole world of believers. I had these doubts again and again, they usually took the form of doubting my effort, ‘Am I really on the right track’?, ‘Am I doing all that is needed’? or ‘What if I end up enlightened?’ Peter and I found emotions going round and round in a circle: fear – frustration – doubt – fear and the only way out was to muster our intent and investigate the facts of the situation. I take it that when you are ‘here’ there is no doubt that you are not following a delusion?... or following the only sanity there is? As for being a blind follower of Richard – Konrad’s favourite objection – yes, I did and do watch Richard very closely, taking him as a mentor and teacher to find out as much as possible about living in freedom for 24 h a day. And compared to Osho and other authority figures which I had tried to emulate in my life, Richard is the most candid, the most approachable and ‘ordinary’ teacher I ever had. On the other hand I notice again and again with delight that there is no authority issue neither from my side nor from his, our discussions are lively, equal and open, and never before have I been able to ask so many questions, investigate all my objections and pursue my own trail of thoughts without restriction. By now, the ‘madness of 180 degrees in the opposite direction to normal and spiritual beliefs’ has reached such a degree that there is no way back – so I might as well ignore upcoming doubts and pursue what I have experienced so often as an actual experience of delight. IRENE: You are not yet aware of it, you are displaying the classical symptoms of disciplehood – although I must commend you on your sincere devotion to Richard’s method! – like your zeal in defending Richard (as the originator of your newly adopted practical life philosophy) and yourself plus attacking anybody who still questions it or has pointed out the flaws in it. The typical ‘us and them’ scenario that you would remember from following your other masters. VINEETO: Richard has, like Pythagoras for geometry and Galileo for astronomy and physics, found out the facts about the Human Condition, which nobody has ever discovered before. Applying those facts is a scientific process. Does it work or not? I found that Richard’s method works. I found that it makes me incrementally free from the Human Condition. So I use it. By telling other people about it I refer to Richard as the discoverer. Moments and hours of pure consciousness experiences give me enough proof of the efficiency of Richard’s method that I am confident to use it and to talk about it. I am experimenting with Richard’s findings and find that they work. Nevertheless, I know very well that Richard is completely free of the Human Condition, while I am still in the process, living in Virtual Freedom, a state which, as you know well from your own experience, is not irreversible. This discovery about the Human Condition is neither male nor female, it is not another belief, but a way of looking at my life. When I examine my failures of being happy and harmless up to now and the failures of Humanity and its Ancient Wisdom to live in peace and harmony, everything makes sense, ‘falls into place’. In times long past the observations of Galileo resulted in that all astronomical data could fall into place and in that a new science was born and, despite much objection, his discoveries eventually replaced the previous Aristotelian Wisdom of the false geo-centric system. Newton stood on Galileo’s shoulder and so does the whole of modern practical physics. Notwithstanding the facticity of his discoveries did the church prosecute him and tried to suppress his findings because it was so radically different to what everybody believed up till then and it was flying in the face of the current religious beliefs. So the difference between believing in a Guru or an authority and applying an experimental method is the same as the difference between believing someone and finding out facts for oneself. I don’t need to believe a fact, it is obvious. If you don’t find it obvious in your experience, then you may have your reasons. But why is it so important to prove me wrong? Why not just get on with what works for you in your life? * IRENE: It lies all in the mistake of man believing himself to be the authority over woman, as was decreed by their ancestors who were to be believed to be in direct contact with a creator-god. VINEETO: According to my own experience, once I freed myself from the belief in an authority – which you say rules my life and which you suggest that I fight against in any man or woman I meet – I was then able to use my intelligence cleared from resentment and doubt, revenge and righteousness. It was the emotional belief in the reality of this authority that held me in the bondage of having to either follow or fight. Now authority is of no concern. This in turn freed me to find out for myself what life is all about. I am autonomous to weigh the facts and decide accordingly. VINEETO: You mentioned ‘approval of your achievements’, so I use it as an example. I found that wanting approval – or pretending to reject it – was based on the belief in authority. I believed that I was not authority enough to judge my doings and leavings, to approve of me or judge certain behaviour silly. As a woman I had it especially with men and thus had spoiled all my relationships with men. It took quite a bit of digging into the causes of why I believed everybody else more competent to judge me, to judge right and wrong, than me. One thing is, it is a strong part of every upbringing. But underneath the conditioning I found an immense fear to stand on my own feet, alone, by myself – the survival instinct of belonging to a group or a person. I was continuously looking for an authority to protect me, guide me, love me, and for a gathering around those authority figures. Now it looks silly to me but at the time it produced immense fear-attacks, days of wanting to hide, to run away, a nightmare to decide between Richard/Peter as the supposed authority figures or Rajneesh and his disciples as the guiding principle. To dissolve the nightmare I decided to not stop until I had found the root cause. And the root cause was, strangely enough, a belief in God. I had thought I had dismissed God years ago, when I went to Poona and left Christianity behind. But the Christian God was just replaced by Rajneesh then. Questioning and understanding my fear as the fear of a judging, punishing and very powerful suddenly made it all very clear – finally I could step out of the circle of creating and then fighting human authorities (God’s representatives) and simply decide for myself, with my own intelligence and common sense, what I wanted to do with my life, in each particular moment, in each situation. It has been a fascinating and liberating discovery. To sort out and eliminate authority was essential for living with Peter in peace, harmony, equity and intimacy. And it was necessary for avoiding the trap of believing anybody – and that includes Richard – and now I am happy to find it out for myself, in my own autonomous experience. Of course, Richard is still the expert on actual freedom, but not an authority figure to be believed and followed. If you are interested, I have written more about it in ‘a bit of Vineeto’ on our website. (Just type ‘the next major issue’ into the find-function, if you don’t want to read the whole chapter.) RESPONDENT: Yes, authority has been one of my main blockages, this dependency on someone to tell you how it is, how it should be, what to do and so on. Being used to someone telling you what to do and then not having it can induce fear which helps to maintain that dependency. Of course a grownup has there own internal authority which when falters causes one to rush to find a better authority. VINEETO: Isn’t it incredibly complex how much this authority issues spoils the quality of relating to people? But simple mental understanding has not been able to eliminate the problem. I had to dig deep into the underlying emotions and dearly held beliefs and fears behind the apparent issue. But what a freedom to have no one as an authority over me now! It needed a lot of questions like ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ and ‘Why am I doing this, why am I upset now?’ to discover the roots of any emotion or feeling. RESPONDENT: What surprised me, however, was that you and Peter went in so much lengths to trash Osho in particular and eastern religions in general. And for what, a simple technique which perhaps everyone knows, at least, I believe, everyone on the sannyas list does. VINEETO: Doing the ‘technique’ has helped me to get rid of my issues with ‘authority’ – wanting and needing someone, for instance Mr. Rajneesh, to tell me what is right and wrong – or rebelling against a supposed authority. I am free now and fully capable to judge silly and sensible for myself. Questioning and eliminating the emotion and the belief in love and Love was another consequence of applying this method sincerely and diligently. This grand and to much praised emotion could no longer hold its credibility in the light of honest investigation and awareness, it is, after all, just the cover-up and band-aid for the instincts and ‘bad’ emotions that trouble everyone so much. But in order to ‘trash’ a master of 17 years, one needs to be ready to look afresh, to question every dearly-held belief and dare to stand alone on one’s own feet, without a group or a master. Without the ‘support’ of my belief in authority and my need for love and the hope for Divine Love I was then able to really check out what Osho what proposing, offering and delivering. And I found it very wanting and intentionally confusing, to say the least. As Richard said to you, when you start ‘seeing without sannyas eyes’ you will discover the full benefit and life-changing consequence of this question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ and you will find out that what you and supposedly everyone on the sannyas list does is something completely different. It is not just noticing or ‘watching’ feelings and thus creating a new identity – the watcher. With the ‘watcher’ you transcend feelings, usually for the time being. They are not eliminated, they return. With a ‘watcher’ you can pretend this body installed with the Human Condition is not really ‘it’, but you are ‘Consciousness, eternal and pure’. You detach yourself from the body and its imminent emotions, feelings and thought and live as this new identity, the ‘watcher’ or ‘Consciousness’. If successfully applied one ends in the delusion or an Altered State of Consciousness aka enlightenment. Richard’s method, on the other hand, is designed to question and eliminate every single emotion, belief and instinct in order to be completely free of ego and soul, ‘self’ and ‘Self’. Then one can live in this actual physical world and delight in its infinitude, magnificence, perfection and purity. Then one can be ‘the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being’ – not a small outcome. * RESPONDENT: It is an individual’s responsibility to do the work and individual’s fault if one does not remain alert to look into oneself. It can happen anywhere. I could do the same on this list and be greedy for ‘Actual Freedom’ without working for it. In addition, my interest at present is: to see what love does to me. VINEETO: Sure, it is the individual’s responsibility to look into themselves. But you can only effectively look into yourself without the guidelines of those gurus, teachers, Enlightened Beings, ‘Mr. Wise Guys’ and Masters who tell you to look into yourself according to their particular ‘Truth’ or belief-system. As long as you are lead astray on a path of fairy-tale and fantasy, glory and immortality, good feelings and bliss, how can you clearly and honestly look into your ‘self’? You will only be moving deck-chairs on the Titanic again, rearranging feelings – good ones to the right and bad ones to the left – and then end up with a polished, but same old identity of No. 5. To investigate thoroughly and sincerely into your ‘self’ you will need to investigate into those who have programmed you – parents and peers, teachers and Masters, and you will have to question all of their passed-down values. For Actual Freedom you will have to investigate into your spiritual identity as much as into your moral or ethical identity – the whole lot. There is no other way to clean up the Human Condition in oneself other than to first question those whose authority one holds in high esteem. Otherwise you will simply remain a believer. This is not a small thing we are doing. RESPONDENT: Well I’ve spent enough time reading the site to know that my letter will be blocked by Richard’s ego as No. 4’s was or replied to ‘predictably’ with Richard’s usual over excited egotistical arrogance, feigned harmlessness, cut and paste laziness and of course those impressive ‘big words’ that make him look like an inconsiderate idiot. Then one of his parrots will come to their guru’s defence using his cloned vocabulary and corrupted aggro attitude. Yet after all this ridiculous ‘get out’ my question is; why do none of you have the intelligence to work out why the list only gets 2 letters a day! Why does it not dawn on your thick skulls how alienating your exaggerated attitudes are and why on earth is Richard trotting out a May [Mailing List B] post? To keep something already dead, alive and wanking??? VINEETO: I am one of Richard’s parrots, called Vineeto. He feeds me weekly with bits of actualism, and I have grown very tall and tame from that, and in return I am willing to proselytize about His method and message on His Actual Freedom list. This time, as you have already so well predicted, you are to be the receiver of my ‘cloned defence’ of the guru. It is so much fun writing about actual freedom that it far exceeds everything I have ever done in my life, including 17 years of worship and meditation with the Indian self-proclaimed God-man Rajneesh and heaps of New Dark Age therapies that teach you how to be more surrendered and more loving with your inner man and inner woman, with the suffering souls of humanity and in tune the Higher Self of Existence. Now at least I am having the fun of doing something so unpopular that there are only 2 mails a day because nobody is actually interested in changing, in becoming happy and harmless themselves – let alone willing to make any effort in this direction. Are they so busy in needing to being loved or are they trying to lovingly save the rest of the planet, including endangered species of tigers, elephants, sharks and blue-dotted beetles? I am happy that you started writing because I had opportunity to read your writings on the Mailing List B and enjoyed them very much. At last, I thought, a woman who is standing on her own two feet and interested in finding out about herself and about the actual world. Why you chose to empty a drawer of dirty socks on this list is a bit of a mystery to me – Richard must have stepped on a sore toe or a whole sore foot of yours. Isn’t it strange how easy it is to accuse someone of not being harmless because one is feeling hurt, and to fire off a whole volcano of hurt feelings to everybody on the list who are actually doing something about their own malice? It has always amazed me how sincerely hypocritical spiritual seekers can be without even blinking an eyelid. In America they call it ‘venting’ nowadays and consider it to be of great therapeutic value. Not that I don’t know this attitude from my own spiritual years, but I can claim that I have seen the uselessness and stupidity of it and have turned around, stopped blaming the whole world and started to actually investigate my own root-causes for emotional eruptions. What I found was very fascinating indeed. It has brought the inner volcano to a halt, and for the first time in my life I am reliably free of emotions. RESPONDENT: I have had a struggle on the Sannyas list about the religious issues (and in Pune also) for a long long time. I am so often on the ‘wrong’ side of the track as you may have noticed there. So I was very happy when Peter and Vineeto came on the list. It was so enlivening to examine these things! As far as having the guts to ruthlessly examine, well yes. What choice is there – to be blind to myself? and unhappy? furious or mute? No. VINEETO: To rebel against religions and religious authorities is one thing, but up to now there hasn’t been much of a choice, hasn’t it? Exchanging Christianity for Eastern Religion, a 2000 year old Jesus against a living ‘Buddha’ has been all very fascinating in its time – but, as I said before, so many things didn’t work out. Now we have a third alternative – to live here in this actual physical world and eliminate the sorrow and malice brought on by the Human Condition. One of the first issues on this path to freedom has been to examine and eliminate by ‘authority complex’. I have written about it in our journal (search: dependence on male authority). What a delight now to stand on my own feet, unafraid to examine the Ancient Wisdom of hundreds of revered authorities, and discovering that they all did not have the solution to being happy and harmless here on this planet. VINEETO: The second point I wanted to comment on is about being right and being wrong. You wrote – [Respondent]: Yes you are free. I estimate 73% free. Which is at least double the national average and 70% more than your disciples and 10% less than me. The position I take has not changed an iota. I take the position that Your disciples are more interested in being right than being free; and that the cult they are subsequently developing is as irrelevant to Actual Freedom as any other religious doctrine. You simply select facts and logical connections between those facts to support and verify to yourself that your viewpoint is correct. This situation is no different than when you were enlightened, my friend. No different at all. You need to be right. Perhaps you could examine this need further. The talk of email aliases has led me from a suspicion to an obvious fact. It is Obvious to me now that in fact No. 8, you do not exist. ‘No. 8’ is quite obviously an alias for the man we know as Richard, who is quite obviously amusing himself by playing devil’s advocate with himself. This is obvious to me, and I will prove it by selecting 10 lines from No. 8’s correspondence, and 10 lines from Richard’s and throwing in 10 lines from Mr Ed, the Talking Horse for good measure, and drawing it all together with logic and an underlying derision and superciliousness and sense of superiority and Prove that I am Right and You are wrong, which, as we see is the point of this Game. In four different mails you are stressing the topics of feeling belittled, blaming others, belittling Actual Freedom, and the issue of Richard and ‘[his] disciples’ being right and you being wrong. The trouble for people with facts is that facts are always ‘right’. One can choose to ignore facts, deny facts, blame others for facts being what they are, get angry about facts and feel sorry for oneself that facts are what they are – to no avail. A fact stays a fact no matter what affective response one chooses to have about it. The other trouble that most people have with Richard and with Actual Freedom is that life without the ‘self’ (ego and soul) is utterly superior to life fettered by the social and instinctual identity that we humans are inevitably, programmed with, through no fault of ours. For me, once I perceived in a direct experience of the actual world what life in Actual Freedom will be like, once I had smelled the honey-pot, so to speak, I was trapped, hooked, caught and seduced. I wanted more of this exquisite quality of experience and I wanted it all the time – and I still do. However, years of trying to find the solution in spiritual therapy have taught me that mere emoting, throwing a tantrum, sulking or blaming others is not going to give me the life experience that I want – I know now that it is simple silly to run with my head against a wall or pretend that I have already got it. These methods had sometimes worked in my past relationships when, by blustering or emoting, I could fool my partner into feeling inferior, guilty or angry, but I simply failed to permanently fool myself. So I got off my bum and started the investigation into the facts of the Human Condition. So here I am today, living a life that, by measure of my past 40 years, is already utterly superior to anything I have experienced before – and I am not even actually free yet. But I know that the method of cleaning myself up, bit by bit, works, incrementally, irreversibly and infallibly. Facts are superior to beliefs and the extinction of the ‘self’ is superior to remaining a puny ‘self’ or flesh-and-blood-body ‘self’ or Actually Fucking Free ‘self’, who can only perceive the world by feelings, beliefs and imagination – that’s simply the way it is. No right or wrong about it at all. The only sure and permanent way to actual superiority is to become ‘self’-less, extinct. RESPONDENT: If your boss was able to answer simply & directly, as he says he does, and not play his clever lawyer debating word games, I would not have to ask him multiple times. A simple yes or no response was requested. You still fishing for that mirage bequeathed by your latest master who replaced your previous master and the one before that? VINEETO: You know just a well as I do that there is no ‘boss’, no ‘master’ or any other kind of dominion in actualism and this fact is exactly what attracted me to it after I finally admitted and recognized that I had been sold a dummy by Mr. Rajneesh and his empty promises. In actualism I can verify for myself in a pure consciousness experience, and I have done so many times, that Richard’s report of the actual world is indeed factual and that the actual world is right here for anyone to experience when ‘I’ and ‘me’ disappear from the scene. Once I experienced the actual world for myself I was able to stand on my own two feet and rely on my own attentiveness, my own investigations and judgment. Of course I am also keen to learn how to incrementally and permanently diminish the dominance of ‘me’ and who better to learn it from than the person who has already succeeded in the task and living it for 24hrs a day. Just as for learning how to drive I had chosen someone who knew how to drive, for learning m professional skills I had chosen someone who was an expert in accounting procedures and for learning to repair computers I chose someone who already knew the ins and outs of computers. As for Richard not answering the questions you ask – you know perfectly well (unless you are mentally challenged) that your questions are leading questions, made up of lies and distortions and cannot be answered with a yes or no as they are. It is telling that you have to resort to such measures in lieu of honest and straightforward discussions in order to support your case in your self-appointed job as the watchdog for newcomers at the door to actual freedom. From what you write, for you the problem for human beings is not that there are wars and murders and suicides and rapes and child abuse but instead you’ve devoted your life to warn people from learning how to become happy and harmless. Such is the perversity of the human condition.
This Topic Continued
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