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 Psyche, Psychology and Psychiatry Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: Thanks for the very lucid and succinct description of the actualism method; I would like to just add my observations to what you said (I have divided your description into three parts): a) feel the feeling b) label it, sort it out, understand it in the context of my social identity and figure to which part of ‘me’ was responsible for my emotional reaction in order to become free from it c) go back to feeling excellent again I think a) is extremely important. If not done diligently, it leads to denial of the feeling and also distortion of steps b) and c). If I don’t fully feel and acknowledge the feeling/ emotional reaction, it means that I have not fully come to terms with the whole of the feeling; I still have some vested interests in continuing to feel that way and I would trick myself to lie in the surface if I don’t take a good look at the whole of the feeling. It seems to be so difficult to stay with the feeling. (...) When b) is done without a) (not exactly, but somewhat in ‘cognitive therapy’ and some psychoanalytic methods dealing with the cognitive distortions – or as in watching the ‘thought’ as opposed to the feeling) I think the root cause is not seen and a lot of effort is spent in trying to sort out and it gets very complicated and does not produce a fundamental solution (results in better coping-up). Also not having acknowledged the feeling, the feeling is at work when doing b) – so there are lots of distortions and confusions that can arise. Moreover, the situation can get complex because of further triggers in feelings and the crucial information is lost because of not doing the a). Since the issue with this step is complexity, trying to keep it simple (or trying to find that which ‘ticks’ is very useful. VINEETO: The very reason why psychoanalysis and other self-investigative methods of dealing with one’s feelings do not work is because the necessity that human beings remain ‘feeling beings’ is never ever questioned. That’s why ‘you can’t change human nature’ can be seen as the mother of all beliefs – this fundamental belief prevents any sincere exploration and keeps any method of self-investigation superficial at best and delusionary at worst. To change human nature is a risky business – you actually need to change. RESPONDENT: I’ve found that while some issues have been explored thoroughly, they do continue to pop up. I too can nip them in the bud, but I’m careful to ascertain that the instance is one of the ‘old ones’ and doesn’t bear too much more investigation. It’s important to ensure that it is fully understood as the identity is a slippery devil. This is too serious a business to let down the guard too far. On the other hand, too much ‘analysis is paralysis’. Is this roughly what you’re getting at? I noticed that in your correspondence with Gary you changed your expression of ‘letting down the guard too far’ for ‘monitoring’. I like the expression of monitoring because it describes well the process of being attentive to everything that is happening in one’s head and one’s heart with the sole aim of becoming happy and harmless. Once this aim was clear, my persistent and sincere monitoring has resulted in increasingly detecting my automatic ‘self’-sustaining reactions, such as my ‘self’-perpetuating indulgence in feelings or my ‘self’-preserving denial of unwanted feelings. As for ‘too much ‘analysis is paralysis’’ I’d like to take the opportunity to discriminate between ‘self’-investigation and ‘self’-analysis as it is used in psychoanalysis. Psychological ‘self’-analysis prescribes a process of ‘self’-validation via dreams and memories in order to strengthen one’s identity so as to better cope within the human condition. Psychology, psychoanalysis and new-age therapy have no intention of diminishing the ‘self’, let alone eliminating the identity altogether. In actualism, ‘self’-investigation is a process that not only has the opposite intent but it also goes far deeper – it is not rearranging bits of one’s identity but it is a tangible weakening of the ‘self’ via eliminating beliefs and moral and ethical values. Each time when I hit a major issue and proceeded to examine it, I came to a point where I understood the issue so clearly that I had no choice but to take action and drop that part of my identity in question if I was at all sincere. There were several loud ‘clunks’ that I distinctly remember, some of which I have described in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’, and very often the letting go of the investigated part of identity resulted in a pure consciousness experience where the actual world became stunningly apparent. * RESPONDENT: You have way too much spare time for this sort of attention to minutiae. Are you sure you are not trapped by your 4+Mwords of history? VINEETO: No, the reason I am spending my time writing to you is that you once did understand what actualism is about and you had an insight that ‘‘I’ have a vested interest in making sure that the fundamental experience of the actual never happens’ – and this is no little thing to understand. RESPONDENT: That statement still stands and has great significance to me. However, actualism doesn’t have a monopoly on it... in fact, it’s common as dirt. VINEETO: The only ‘fundamental experience of the actual’ that we are talking about on this list is the pure and perfect actuality that only becomes apparent when the ‘self’, in its totality, disappears along with all of the animal survival passions. Actualism is indeed unique in that neither Buddhism nor Jiddu Krishnamurti, neither U.G. Krishnamurti nor any of the many Advaita teachers and sages nor any other spiritual teaching come anywhere close to comprehending that the root cause of the human condition is genetically-encoded as a rough and ready survival package. Nowhere else will you find this being talked about. RESPONDENT: It’s Psych 101. VINEETO: You must be joking. I have studied psychology in my university days and I am also experientially acquainted with a multitude of psychotherapy methods. Nowhere in psychology or in psychotherapy is there any reference to the fact that the pure and perfect actuality only becomes apparent when the ‘self’, in its totality, disappears along with all of the animal survival passions. None of the various schools of psychology propose that the solution to the root cause of all human misery and aggression lies in altruistic ‘self’-immolation, let alone propose a method as how to achieve it. The practice of psychology is concerned with ensuring that people maintain a socially acceptable state of normalcy – not eliminating the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. If you want to discuss this matter more fully I would encourage you to look into psychological theory and practice and bring any evidence that contradicts what I am saying so that we can discuss the matter. This is precisely the way I demolished the beliefs and notions I held – I looked into the facts of the matter and if the facts contradicted my belief and notions then I saw that it was silly to keep believing what I believed – simply because it is a belief or a notion and not a fact. It is apparent that your insight – ‘‘I’ have a vested interest in making sure that the fundamental experience of the actual never happens’ – is not about the ‘self’-less actuality that is talked about on this list, but more likely the affective everyday reality that Jiddu Krishnamurti calls ‘the actual’ – [quote]: … to understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels and does from moment to moment. That is the actual. (J. Krishnamurti, from: The Book of Life). VINEETO: Taking people’s word’s at face value has nothing to do with trust or mistrust, but is a matter of a simple and straight-forward way to communicate. A ‘hidden double meaning’ is almost always an emotionally charged meaning and trying to second-guess what this is in any situation does nothing to enhance sensible communication. Nowadays I always assume that if people find it important that I take notice of any ‘hidden’ meaning then they will tell me – it is not my responsibility to discern what another is trying to convey through unmentioned hints and allusions. As for being ‘distrustful of the words of some’ – the good news for me was that by examining and understanding my own social and instinctual identity I had less and less reason to fear that people would emotionally hurt me with insinuations or outright sarcasm – identity-slashing intimations from others now rarely reach a target. RESPONDENT: Understood. My problem is that I sometimes forget to focus on the content because of distractions of how it is conveyed. VINEETO: Of course, that is the very purpose of people conveying a message in an emotional way. Those ‘distractions’ are the very stuff to explore in order to determine how you are in relation to other people. Other than the words themselves there is usually a whole layer of invisible and inaudible interaction happening and this is how Richard explained it – Richard: All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. Feeling threatened or intimidated can result from the obvious cues – the offering of physical violence and/or verbal violence – or from the less obvious ... ‘vibe’ violence (to use a ‘60’s term) and/or psychic violence. Similarly, feeling accepted can occur via the same signals or intimations. Power trips – coercion or manipulation of any kind – whether for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ purposes, are all psychic at root ... the psychic currents are the most effective power plays for they are the most insidious (charisma, for example). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27, 6 November 2002). VINEETO to No. 47: Taking people’s word’s at face value has nothing to do with trust or mistrust, but is a matter of a simple and straight-forward way to communicate. A ‘hidden double meaning’ is almost always an emotionally charged meaning and trying to second-guess what this is in any situation does nothing to enhance sensible communication. Nowadays I always assume that if people find it important that I take notice of any ‘hidden’ meaning then they will tell me – it is not my responsibility to discern what another is trying to convey through unmentioned hints and allusions. As for being ‘distrustful of the words of some’ – the good news for me was that by examining and understanding my own social and instinctual identity I had less and less reason to fear that people would emotionally hurt me with insinuations or outright sarcasm – identity-slashing intimations from others now rarely reach a target. RESPONDENT: Understood. My problem is that I sometimes forget to focus on the content because of distractions of how it is conveyed. VINEETO: Of course, that is the very purpose of people conveying a message in an emotional way. Those ‘distractions’ are the very stuff to explore in order to determine how you are in relation to other people. Other than the words themselves there is usually a whole layer of invisible and inaudible interaction happening and this is how Richard explained it – ( (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 47, 4.11.2003). Richard: All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. Feeling threatened or intimidated can result from the obvious cues – the offering of physical violence and/or verbal violence – or from the less obvious ... ‘vibe’ violence (to use a ‘60’s term) and/or psychic violence. Similarly, feeling accepted can occur via the same signals or intimations. Power trips – coercion or manipulation of any kind – whether for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ purposes, are all psychic at root ... the psychic currents are the most effective power plays for they are the most insidious (charisma, for example). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27, 6 November 2002). RESPONDENT: This could explain why I have a sense of not belonging here or anywhere else for that matter because there is no psychic connection. I am an actualist in the sense that I have seen that matter is animate thru a pce although I am not positive of this because it could be a physiological process in my own body that makes matter look that way. Also, I don’t practice Actualism per se because it seems that would connect me to the group I see here. I also don’t feel I belong on any spiritual list or group. Not having any psychic connection could explain why I don’t belong and don’t want to belong as opposed to the usual use of belonging which means one wants to belong. Makes sense? VINEETO: I didn’t want to tell you, but since you have been so persistent I will let you in on the secret. There are regular out-of-body group meetings with members of the Actual Freedom mailing list each week where we come together in a sacred hall, worship Richard, chant hymns such as ‘Freedom, Freedom, from the Human Condition’ and ‘Happy, Happy, Happy and Harmless’ and at the end of the gathering slaughter a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people-eater which symbolizes the instinctual passions in everybody. The holy smoke of the burning of this wild animal is then spread onto everyone as a blessing to be protected for the rest of the week until the next disembodied ritual meeting. We have never invited you to those gathering for all subscribed members of the mailing list because you were so insistent that you don’t want to belong but you must have picked it up via the psychic web anyway. Makes sense? RESPONDENT: No, it doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t have anything to do with what I said but I like your humour anyway. :) VINEETO: Okay. The connection between this joke and what you wrote is that your belief that actualists are a group or a cult to which you don’t want to belong has persisted despite continuous explanations that this is not the case. So in reply to your latest protestation, rather than yet again explaining that there is nothing to belong to in actualism, I followed your lead and jokingly volunteered that actualists are cult-members performing dark spiritual rituals in out-of-body meetings. If you can see the humour in the above description maybe you can also see the humour in your belief that actualists are members of a cult and understand that your belief has no existence outside of your own head and heart. RESPONDENT: I was looking to see if the psychic web or lack thereof may or may not have anything to do with my sense of not belonging. VINEETO: The psychic web is a network of emotional currents or vibes that connects impassioned human beings and every impassioned human being is embedded within this net via their own emotions. Thus like-minded people feel they have a connection with other like-minded people (and as a consequence feel antipathy towards those who are not-like minded), people of the same cultural conditioning feel that they are connected with those of the same cultural conditioning (and as a consequence feel alien towards those who are not of the same cultural conditioning), people of the same religious or spiritual belief feel that they are connected with those of the same religious or spiritual belief (and as a consequence feel separate from those who are not of the same religious or spiritual belief) and so on. By investigating these feelings and emotions – both the ‘good’ feelings of belonging and the bad’ feelings of not-belonging – and by examining how they formed part of my social identity I incrementally unhooked myself from the psychic net. That means that psychic vibes have almost no effect on me and the psychic barbs cast by others don’t find a responding hook in me and thus miss their target or go unnoticed. When I started to investigate the emotional makeup of my social identity I discovered that the issue of belonging is solely an issue of ‘I’, as a social identity, belonging to a group of people with a similar social identity – ‘Vineeto the German’ belonged to the German people, ‘Vineeto the daughter’ belonged to my biological family, ‘Vineeto the sannyasin’ belonged to followers of Rajneesh, ‘Vineeto the woman’ belonged to the sisterhood of like-minded women, ‘Vineeto the lover’ belonged to the man I loved, and so on. And just to head off a popular objection before it gets resurrected yet again – ‘Vineeto the actualist’ has no chance of ever being an identity because the only thing that happens when I am using the actualism method is that all aspects of my identity are investigated and eventually dissolved to the point of ‘self’-immolation. In other words, anyone sincerely practicing actualism does not belong to any group, let alone a cult, because an actualist’s sole aim is to take one’s own identity apart in order to become unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless and ... autonomous. As such I am now un-afflicted by a need to belong or not to belong, I relish in standing on my own two feet and I enjoy being autonomous. VINEETO: I too was hung up with the abandonment theme for many years and, following the fashion, made an early childhood experience responsible for all that later felt wrong in life, until I simply grew tired of continuously complaining that nobody loved me. At some point I had worn the abandonment theme to death and its ending was marked by a short PCE wherein I suddenly realized that I am already here and if nobody liked me, so what. But as I had yet to become aware of and thereby understand the mechanism of the social-instinctual programming in me, this experience remained but a pleasant yet exceptional memory and I fell back into creating bonds – and problems – with people in order not to feel so lost, lonely and to give my life meaning and purpose. GARY: Interesting you should say ‘I fell back into creating bonds – and problems – with people...’ For quite some time, I have been deliberately not forming bonds, not seeking support or comfort from the herd in order not to feel so lost and lonely. This is one of the things that seems so dangerous, yet it is precisely the kind of action which leads to an expansive, penetrating sense of freedom, and a simple delight in being here. Perhaps the danger is only imaginary: ‘I’ imagine all kinds of dreadful, baleful results from my going it alone. I know that one of my fears has been a complete mental collapse with complete madness as the result. I wonder if that is a common fear that people have as they get involved in actualism. Perhaps it is stronger in me based on some early childhood experiences with madness and insanity. Again, the childhood memories that, in part, make up ‘me’ hit the alarm warning button when I get too far away from people and ‘creating bonds’. VINEETO: The incident of the short PCE I was talking about happened years before I came across actualism. Socializing with others was then a strong need lest I would feel lost, lonely and very frightened. But I can relate very well to your fear of ‘mental collapse with complete madness’. Some fifteen years ago, a close friend of mine went through a 3-months period of schizoid madness which scared the hell out of me, but I think, apart from everyone’s individual experiences in that field, the fear of madness is part and parcel of dismantling one’s social identity. After all, you are dismantling all the rules and regulations that have been put in place in order to curb the madness of the instinctual animal passions. I remember a period when I read all the personal accounts of Richard regarding his period of mental anguish after becoming free and asked a lot of probing questions in order to satisfy myself that leaving my ‘self’ behind was indeed safe in regards to my mental health. I have collected all the relevant quotes under ‘Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative’. As a result of this probing I took another look at what is generally regarded as sane and insane and it was sometimes quite shocking to realize that there is only a quantitative difference between the two – ‘insane’ people are often those who are less able to control their instinctual passions or who have developed particularly peculiar and socially-unacceptable ways of dealing with them. I began to establish my own definition of what I regard as salubrious and sensible for my life, i.e. what I consider as mental health, and that is nothing short of being completely free of the madness of the instinctual survival passions. RESPONDENT: Just recently, scientists discovered something they call mirror neurons. These mirror neurons are used when we learn by copy or mimic someone we are observing. Another peculiar thing is that the mirror neurons make it possible for us to understand the feeling or mood of another just by looking. A similar pattern of neurons firing, representing a mood or feeling, in the brain of the person we observes fires in our own brain. You know the saying, smile and the world smiles with you, it is some neurological explanation for this. VINEETO: ‘Mirror neurons’ discovered by G. Rizzollati, M.A. Arbib and others in the ventral premotor area were first studied in macaque monkeys and from these findings deductions were made for human beings and their possible evolutionary development of mimicry and language. Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran says in his essay about mirror neurons: [quote]: Giaccamo Rizzollati recorded from the ventral premotor area of the frontal lobes of monkeys and found that certain cells will fire when a monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, grasping, picking up and putting a peanut in the mouth etc. different neurons fire in response to different actions. One might be tempted to think that these are motor ‘command’ neurons, making muscles do certain things; however, the astonishing truth is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g. tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: ‘mind reading’ empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to ‘read’ and understand another’s intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated ‘theory of other minds.’ (http://www.feedmag.com/brain/parts/ramachandran.html). His deduction in the second paragraph is purely conceptual guesswork (as in ‘might fire’) and has not yet any factual scientific evidence. His theory is still hotly debated in university circles. Marc D. Hauser from the Reality Club discussion group comments on it – [quote]: Although mirror neurons were first discovered in macaques, and have been implicated as crucial in imitation and theory of mind, there is not a shred of evidence for imitation or theory of mind in macaques. In my own experience, the recognition of feelings in other people not only transmits via ‘looking’, as you say, but via an invisible psychic net of vibes that emotionally connects all human beings together. Anybody with strong enough feelings can trigger those feelings in others and some people are particularly receptive to those ever-present psychic transmissions. One is affected by other people’s vibes and feelings because of one’s own psychic entity, an entity that both creates and receives those vibes and feelings, be they sorrow, aggression, fear, nurture or desire. In my spiritual years I had learned to suss out other people via my psychic antennas and I used this knowledge to guard myself, as well as to manipulate others. However, when I came across Actual Freedom and learnt that one can become actually unaffected by any psychic influence whatsoever, it seemed a much more sensible solution rather than continuing the psychic power game. Whatever the pattern of neurons firing in our brains may be, I now know by experience that it is possible to investigate and successively eliminate the psychic entity and thus to be genuinely free from receiving and sending psychic vibes, moods and feelings. RESPONDENT: My husband recently returned from a weeklong retreat given by an American, who is an Eastern type spiritual teacher. One of the main premises of this man’s teaching is that he ‘transmits’ Being-force that then ‘templates’ on those who receive the transmission and catalyzes the recipient’s own realization of Being. My husband said that after a week in that environment of transmission by the head teacher and other teachers that he felt an amplified ‘spaciousness’ that was conducive in bringing a lot of stuff up for him. We have talked quite extensively about the discoveries I am making re: actual freedom. At breakfast the other morning he asked me how my ‘transmission’ is different from the teacher’s he spent the week with. I said that I don’t transmit anything. He was pretty critical of that, asking how I could deny transmission, that even a tree transmits a kind of ‘presence’. I said, why can’t I just see the tree for what it is, a material entity. I can say it’s a big tree, a healthy tree, a sick tree, whatever, but why do I have to feel it has some underlying presence? I told him I certainly understood what he meant by experiencing the effects of so-called transmission. I’ve experienced all kinds of spiritual phenomena, but the way I look at it now, it was all a dissociative strategy to shield myself from my own very real mortality. I was, in fact, looking for some eternal me that would defy death, and that desire enabled me to experience all kinds of ‘real’ experiences to validate my need to be immortal in some fashion or another. So, he asked me what I thought the phenomenon of experiencing ‘transmission’ really was. I said, I honestly don’t know for sure, possibly a form of hypnosis, group hypnosis, self-hypnosis. I wasn’t sure. Anyone have any ideas of the how we humans actually produce the astoundingly real when you have them spiritual phenomena? VINEETO: The idea of the psychic world had captivated me for years and the mystical-psychic playground was a big attraction on the spiritual path at the time. Consequently, when I took up actualism, I was immensely curious to really find out as much as there is to know about psychic phenomena, psychic powers and the ‘rules’ of the psychic world. I was fascinated to learn that Richard not only said he lived without feelings and emotions but also admitted to not having any psychic powers like telepathy, ‘energy’, psychic influence or mystical secret knowledge. One area of my investigation was how I was influenced by, and connected with, other people’s vibes and feelings. I remember one incident with the woman I had lived and worked with for several years. One day in the office she received a phone call and, being the secretary, I took it, recognized her partner’s voice and transferred it to her into the next room, saying nothing but hello to the man. I didn’t hear the conversation as my door was closed, and just kept working on the daily accounts. From the moment of the call I had fierce pain in my stomach and thoughts of intense fear racing through my head that had nothing to do with my personal situation. After two hours it finally clicked – I went over to ask her if she had a fight with her partner on the phone. She said they did. My pain disappeared immediately. After this incident I investigated what made me so receptive to her vibes and feelings and I came to understand that my feelings of love for her were enough for me to be psychically connected to her fears and pain. I see the psychic world as an invisible spider’s web that connects people together via their fervent beliefs, feelings and passions. The key to understanding and breaking out of the psychic web was questioning love and, in the spiritual world, my love for and the authority of those ‘who know’, the revered and adored masters. I began to understand that the feeling of love based on the instinctual passions of nurture and desire is just as much part of ‘my’ identity as the opposite passions of fear and aggression. Slowly, I started to see the psychic power battle that goes on between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, higher powers and lower powers, master and disciple, between teachers and between disciples of various ranks. Just as normal reality is a dog-eat-dog world, spiritual reality is a God-eat-God world and the fight is fuelled by the same merciless survival instincts. Seeing that the psychic web is about transmitting or exchanging vibes, feelings and emotions in order to gain power and influence over others, I was then only interested how to disentangle myself from this insidious web that tied me to authorities, groups and friends, engulfing me in invisible power struggles and everyone else’s beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions. When I experienced my first full-blown Altered State of Consciousness replete with feeling Love for all, with Truth continuously streaming into my head and the bliss of unlimited psychic power and knowledge, I came to understand even more how this whole psychic world works. In such a state one can tap into the pond of all of humanity’s so-called wisdom – the collection of ancient religions, beliefs, superstitions, atavistic feelings and passions. That ‘pond’ provides the ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ for spiritual teachers – the very reason why their teachings seem to be so true and familiar. Having risen to the top of the psychic ladder, God-men can choose to swan along in the ‘good’ feelings and push the ‘evil’ passions to the bottom – or blame their disciples for causing their anxiety and divine anger. The transmission of Energy – a feature of all master-disciple relationships – can only work because the disciples are looking for a short-cut to happiness and love by receiving seemingly ‘free gifts’ from the master and thus get trapped into the addictive bargain of giving love and gratitude in return for dependency on his or her authority. In actuality there is no such thing as psychic transmission of energy because to become free of the Human Condition is to become free of the psychic web itself. Such perfect freedom. * VINEETO: I see the psychic world as an invisible spider’s web that connects people together via their fervent beliefs, feelings and passions. RESPONDENT: Do you see this web as an actual structure, or an imaginary, albeit real structure? VINEETO: It is a psychic web and as such not actual as in tangible, audible, visible or tastable. But it is very, very real because every human being is a psychic entity and therefore connected through this psychic web. RESPONDENT: Re: The web and pond idea analogies. For most of my life, I considered myself to be very intuitive or psychic. I had a strong ability to ‘feel the shape’ of someone. I didn’t predict things for people, like she’s going to marry a tall, rich man, etc., but I could feel where people were coming from, what motivated them, and pretty well predict what their most obvious responses would be to a situation based on their feeling configuration. During my 20’s and 30’s I felt that this was quite a gift. VINEETO: I can relate to this from similar experiences, although I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘feel the shape’. The more I learnt about my emotions and reactions, gathered intimate knowledge about friends and observed other people’s behaviour, the more I ‘intuitively’ assessed others and even dabbled a bit in Tarot-reading. In fact, what people usually call intuition is an assessment of another’s feelings and behaviour based one’s own collected experience and observations. The rest tends to be 50-50 guesses, with the failed 50% ignored and the successful 50% given undue credence. However, I was always wary to use my intuition as a power over others. In the end I came to see that every power used is misuse of power. RESPONDENT: However, into my 40’s I started looking at this ‘gift’ and realized that my feeling into a person was a way to protect myself, to know ahead of time how a person would most likely act and react, so that there would be no unpleasant surprises. I found I had a strong need to ‘know ahead of time’ so that I wouldn’t find myself in situations where I would feel vulnerable and not know what to do to keep the situation under control, to keep myself intact, unharmed, safe. I pretty much stopped my deliberate reading of people when I began to see it not as a gift, or power, but as a strategy for protecting a very demanding and voracious self. VINEETO: The most I learnt about using and misusing power was in my longstanding relationship with my former boyfriend, as in a man-woman relationship there are usually no holds barred and our extensive power battles were rather overt than covert. By using every psychic weapon to win a battle I came to know about my female psychic weaponry, consisting of my instinctive intuition to create emotional confusion, to blackmail with guilt, to make unsubstantiated accusations and to use my seduction. Needless to say moments of intimacy were very rare. It was painful to see myself over and over again trapped in the same instinctual reactions of jealousy, fear, hate, comparison, resentment, etc. and, despite years of spiritual group-therapy and meditation, there was no sign of resolving my re-occurring instinctual reactions. When we finally, after 11 years, we both gave up trying and separated, I vowed to never ever have this kind of power battle again with a man. This determination to find a peaceful way of living with a man gave me the necessary backpressure to question love itself and to leave the old familiar spiritual environment. (...) RESPONDENT: I’m finding that so much of my interactions with people is based on maintaining a comfortable feeling state for myself. For instance, I can readily sense when my husband is upset with me, even if it is out of the blue, with no obvious situation to explain it. I feel very comfortable when he is angry or upset with me, and I immediately begin to manipulate the situation to make him feel better, so that I feel better. Does this me that is upset really care how he is feeling? I think what I primarily care about is how I feel, and what I really care about is how he feels makes me feel. In fact, that exact situation came up just yesterday, and I told him exactly what I was doing and why. It was almost like giving up a secret weapon. But, maybe I’m getting to where I’d rather deal with my discomfort straight on, than to keep playing games. VINEETO: Did you mean to say you ‘feel very comfortable when he is angry’ or ‘very uncomfortable’? I found giving up my secret weapons was the first step and good fun, too. Once I became aware what I was doing, each of my secret weapons became useless, because I couldn’t use it anymore without blushing for being so silly. Consequently I had to find an alternative to be comfortable with people as they are – and the challenge became to find out what is needed to not feel uncomfortable when someone is angry or sad. I eventually wanted to become emotionally un-affected by others, not just trying to ‘accept’ them, which is only putting a feeling of acceptance on top of the feeling of aversion. Well, I found that it was always my own anger, my own sorrow and my own fear that others stirred up in me. The good news is that as I dealt with my own anger, sorrow and fear I ended up not needing any psychic power over others or psychic defences – which makes life a great lot easier and enables me to have peace and harmony with the other person. ALAN: I also found a great reluctance to examine the above two subjects (a sure indication they were of importance). Any distraction would do, just to get me away from looking closer. I had incredible difficulty focusing on (or even remembering) what I had been contemplating, just a moment before. Then the heart palpitations started, the sense of dread. Then the ‘am I thinking this because Vineeto mentioned it?’, ‘who am I?’, ‘what is real?’. Perhaps this is the ‘tumbling’ you described. Today, I wrote a mail to someone, which caused me tonight, while in the bath, to question what I am doing. In writing that mail, and the words above, what am I doing? – seeking approval, desperately wanting someone to say I am doing well, on the right track. Then an investigation into praise – a discovery that all praise achieves is to perpetuate and reinforce ‘my’ existence. VINEETO: I can well relate to those experiences. The whole time of my ‘mad scientist’ period, I was trying to work out a scheme, a psychic map, symbols and strategies of where I am going and what I am doing. To discover that all those grand experiences were nothing but figments of my imagination was a great blow to the ‘self’ in general and to my orientation in particular. Since then, I think, I lost most of my contact with ‘reality’, at times drifting about in an apparent limbo, because none of the old measures of orientation apply anymore. Very strange indeed. Richard is right, it requires pure intent and nerves of steel, but then, who wants to go back and be ‘normal’ again? Now I seem to be standing firmly on the ground of my senses but with the head and eyes in the thickest fog, unable to locate myself. I have the choice to freak out about it, which I sometimes do, or to adjust to this new situation and enjoy it. I have no idea, if that ‘fog’ will ever settle or if I eventually will stop worrying about it. It’s just another picture of my imagination, after all. I am not surprised that you are looking for approval and confirmation, that you are on the right track. Going mad all by yourself is a giant task, and I am full of admiration for your courage. I had and have Peter to go mad with together, so it did not seem so weird all the time. A bit like walking on your feet while everyone else is walking on their hands, getting blisters and headaches and finding it perfectly normal. It is weird. I think, from what I read, you are doing very well in your post office in good old England without even a dog to talk common sense to. Quite thrilling too, isn’t it? ALAN: ... as this concurs with my own experience, which is in the current correspondence with Richard. I think all one can do to ‘warn’ another is to say watch out for this feeling of Love, which is definitely located in the belly, the seat of being. As we have both demonstrated it is possible to turn away from this blissful state, whether using ‘native intelligence’, ‘pure intent’ or whatever name. VINEETO: Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. And recently, when somebody asked me about Akashic Records, I experienced that bliss-state for about an hour, the state Mrs. Roberts seems to describe in her book. I finally got a grip on it – I could experience it and describe from the ‘outside’ what was happening. This blissful state seems unemotional, no love or compassion is felt in the heart, everything is a cool ‘oneness’. One feels all-pervading, ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is divine’. The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling’ intimate with the TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’ prior to this experience). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is virtual, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up. This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world as a flesh and blood body, with the senses. Boy, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket. But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual. It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of dis-association that people suffer from who are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line – until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, i.e. mentally deranged, forever cut off from common sense. * VINEETO to Alan: Leaving the herd has been an ongoing theme for me. It started with leaving the woman’s camp, leaving the Sannyas fold, the work place and closest friends there, leaving the group of seekers, friends and well-known ways of relating. Now, when writing to the Sannyas list, whiffs of fear sweep through, sometimes for minutes, sometimes longer – it becomes so very clear that I am not only leaving one particular religious group, I am leaving the whole of the psychic world behind. By ‘psychic world,’ I mean the ability to ‘feel’ where the other is at, to intuit his or her position, to understand them psychically and psychologically. It is like speaking a different language – the language of emotions vs. the language of common sense and facts. Very often there is no communication possible. But, as I told you before, whenever I go back into the psychic world of feelings and emotions, I only get confused, and then I can’t communicate clearly at all. It is an old rut, a habit that I am determined to eradicate along with its accompanying fear. VINEETO: What a pleasure and what a surprise to get your response. So I am not writing on a ghost-list after all. Firstly, just for the fun of it, I want to let you in on the latest joke, that took me a full day to comprehend – so don’t give up too quickly ... You may have noticed Richard’s latest correspondence with someone on mailing list C that I found highly entertaining, informative and hilarious. The joke that cracked me tonight was this bit: Co-Respondent: The correct understanding is that you have three bodies, physical, astral and causal. Richard: May I ask? Which body (or bodies) contains the cause that makes the ‘Enlightened Being’ still suffer? Co-Respondent: The mind is the cause. Errors in thinking and feeling. Reactivity. Egoism. Richard: I do appreciate you publicly explaining why Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages both can and do display anguish and anger and yes, it is indeed ‘errors in thinking and feeling’ (mainly feelings) which does cause their ‘reactivity’ ... but it is soulism and not ‘egoism’ that is manifesting itself. One does not get to be enlightened unless there is an ego-death (as you would well know from your own experience 24 years ago, of course). Co-Respondent: You still have it. Richard: I can assure (for what that is worth) that there is not the slightest trace of either egoism or soulism in me whatsoever. The identity – in toto – is no more, finish. Extinct. Co-Respondent: You just refuse to see it in yourself. Richard: Hmm ... anosognosia plays no part in my life. (Richard, List C, No. 3c, 8 April 2000). If you look up the word ‘anosognosia’ and compare it what psychologists have accredited Richard for, you will understand. It is such a mind-boggling business to toss around the ‘real’ world’s definition for ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ when one is stepping out of exactly this same, ‘sane’ world of malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: I would like to discuss with you on matters regarding paranormal phenomenon such as telekinesis, Randi James, and the Universe. In a few places on the AF site I’ve found a regulation to the Randi James institute, by you or Richard, as part of an answer in case of the question being about a prove or lack there-of of a paranormal phenomenon. It is interesting to mention though, that telepathy and feeling of the emotional vibes of souls around you do exit ‘when’ there is a soul, as even evidenced by yourself and Richard. Question no.1: Why if telepathy is indeed self evident, and Randi James can’t prove it (the telepathy), even not for a million dollars, he actually debunks this phenomenon (it is also impossible to manifest a genuine (belly) laughter for a million dollars, as this event is of a spontaneous nature that requires the right vibes to happen) you still give reference to his site? VINEETO: To emphasize that anything pertaining to the psyche is not actual – that it does not exist in the actual world. RESPONDENT: Question no.2: And as telepathy in fact exist, in the real world, ‘where’ there’s a soul, and Randy James can’t prove it (the telepathy), what about a phenomenon such as telekinesis? There are plenty of reports on this. How would you regard the following reports? : (http://www.jackhouck.com/pk.shtml, http://www.ppsociety.com/forumtopic.php?id=1378 http://www.victorzammit.com/skeptics/winston.html). there are of course many, many others. So would you say they are just plain lying? Doesn’t sound sensible to me. I have never evidenced telekinesis, so for me it’s a belief it does actually exist. But so never have I evidenced that the world is round, or neither did the scientist 2 centuries ago suspected microbes exist. There are many, many reports of people doing telekinesis. Are all of them just lying? If they do, why do they lie? What is the motive of those who anonymously claim it? After carefully reading what do they have to say, it is silly to just regard it as a non-sense and a blind lie. Question no.3: So if telekinesis does exist, how does it come up with Actualist word-view of the physical universe, especially with the fact that it isn’t a projection of a metaphysical self? VINEETO: Firstly, actualism is not a world view but (1) the direct experiencing that matter is not merely passive and (2) a practical down-to-earth method that enables anyone who is interested to become free from the human condition in toto. Secondly, telepathy, telekinesis and all other paranormal phenomena are pertaining to the psyche, as the author of the website you quoted is well aware of, and the psyche, or soul, has no existence in the actual world. Viz – Co-Respondent: What changed? Something about consciousness that was, is no more. What is left is not limited by the same emotional/cognitive software so to speak. Richard: The ‘emotional/cognitive software’ which was deleted when ‘being’ itself became extinct had a reach far beyond anything conceivable, imaginable, comprehendible or believable ... just for starters the word psychic, or psychical, refers to anything of or pertaining to the energies of the psyche or ‘being’ itself – the soul, the spirit or the self parasitically inhabiting the flesh and blood body – any non-material, incorporeal, other-worldly, unworldly, unearthly, non-human or inhuman currents or emanations. Any energy flow which is ethereal, ephemeral, intangible, cryptic, inexplicable, enigmatic, unfathomable and which is instinctual, intuitive, prescient, telekinetic, telepathic or clairvoyant ... anything extrasensory. It refers to anything occult, arcane, esoteric or ghostly – anything to do with witchcraft, sorcery or wizardry (be it either white magic or black magic) – everything supernatural, supernormal, preternatural, preternormal, transcendental or numinous ... anything religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical. The metaphysical includes the hallowed, consecrated, sanctified, deified, beatific, holy, divine, heavenly and sacred – including anything saintly, cherubic or angelic – and the sinful, black-hearted, damnable, sinister, fiendish, infernal, diabolical ... anything demonic, devilish, hellish, satanic and evil. In short: there is a lot more to being happy and harmless – free from malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion – than meets the eye. (Richard, List B, No. 12p 21 November 2002). And in short – Richard: I will say it again for emphasis: it is identity which generates all that which you ask about (further above) ... and concomitant to the total demise of that entity all that also ceases to exist. As do all gods/ goddesses (by whatever name). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 37, 6 August 2005a). RESPONDENT: So actualism sacrifices the error-prone, suffering/malice inducing measurement device called feelings for happiness/ harmlessness and a possibly less aware state? VINEETO: First, feelings are not a ‘measurement device’, they are directly arising from the instinctual survival passions which every human being is endowed with by blind nature for the sake of survival at any cost of the individual and/or the species. RESPONDENT: Aren’t they ‘sixth sense’ (albeit error prone) that senses the external world (hence a measurement device)? VINEETO: Intelligence unimpeded by instinctual passions beats your ‘error prone’ ‘sixth sense’ by a country mile. I know because I’ve been doing the switch for years now and it works like a charm. RESPONDENT: Has this intelligence unimpeded by instinctual passions been able to ‘actually’ help another person come out of his/her suffering? How many? VINEETO: For a start, my becoming free from malice and sorrow has freed the people I live with, work with, socialize with and casually interact with from the capriciousness and trouble of my fickle moods, my graceless demands, my ‘self’-centred behaviour, my avarice, competitiveness, melancholy, jealousy, guilt, shame, fear and so on. I am no longer an emotional burden to anybody in any way and neither do I need or expect anybody to do something to help me alleviate my suffering. If everyone became virtually free from the human condition there would be no need for anyone to help anybody and all the millions of missionaries, social workers, therapists, psychologist, psychoanalysts and do-gooders would be out of a job. Apart from that I have no idea, nor do I want to know, how many people have gained an understanding from reading about my experiences with the actualism method, thus helping them to become more free from the human condition themselves. Sharing my experience about the success I have is a pleasure to do but not the main event. Now that an actual freedom has been discovered and the experience of how to achieve it is being reported on the Actual Freedom Website, anybody is free to do with the information what they want. RESPONDENT: What I wanted to say is that the scientific method can be successfully applied to the physical world, an objective world, a world that can be touched and measured, but not to the meta-physical, the world of the psyche, which by its very nature is subjective, elusive and illusory. One cannot observe/measure subjectivity with objectivity, it is subjectivity that measures its own subjectivity. The first world is governed by cause and effect relationships, whereas the psychic world is not governed by this law. One can ask himself ‘Haietmoba?’ till the cows come home, if the other ingredients necessary for success are not present, it’s a futile masturbation/ self-preoccupation, resulting in that person becoming a member of the wankactasaurus family. VINEETO: I wonder if your comment that the world of the psyche cannot be observed objectively is based on personal experience because I have found that this is not the case. I spent many years subjectively exploring the psychic world in my spiritual years, so I know that it is a very limited world, varied only by cultural conditioning, and given an apparent veracity by the fervent beliefs and heartfelt feelings of billions upon billions of humans over thousands upon thousands of years. It was only when I began to extract myself from this world was I then able to clearly – as in objectively – see that the psychic world is nothing but a collective illusion: rooted in instinctual fear, hindered by unawareness and mired in superstition. Your conjecture of repeating senselessly a certain sequence of words ‘till the cows come home’ is not an accurate description of the actualism method – you left out some vital ingredients. It is sincerity that reawakens one’s dormant naiveté, which then gives rise to sincere intent, which in turn is essential in the process of allowing the PCE to happen. With the clear memory of a PCE and guided by the pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent one cannot go wrong. * RESPONDENT: Hey Vineeto, your comments are also welcome in regard to the different types of ‘knowledge’ derived from consciousness experiencing, as I remember you described both an almost full-blown ASC and a PCE VINEETO: Any ‘knowledge’ from full-blown altered states of consciousness is purely affective, and as such subjective, as you may remember from your own experience. In a spiritual altered state one usually feels as though one has entered into an ethereal reality. Whilst in this greater reality one feels as though one is above and beyond the social morals and ethics and as such is one prone to not only feel compassion for those ‘poor humans’ who are still enslaved by society’s rules and regulations but also feels that one knows all about this part of the human conditioning temporarily left behind – the outer layer of the ‘self’. In such a state one can have access to what are termed the ‘Akashic Records’, an expression to describe contents of the psychic web in which all sentient beings are more or less entrapped and entangled. In an altered state one can be psychically sensitive to what humans through the ages have affectively thought (all of the accumulated truths and wisdoms) and felt (all of the accumulated suffering) … and the power and glory of this feeling of omniscience and of being one with the ‘higher Being(s)’ is the trap that no enlightened being so far has been able to escape from, let alone even wanted to escape from … with one exception. A PCE is very different. One can have a PCE without much thinking happening – so delightful and magical is the direct sensate experience of the actual world that the notion to take notes as it were rarely occurs. Because I was on a quest to find out about the human condition and what to do with my life, during each PCE that I had after encountering actualism I was careful to take note of what was different in a PCE to normal experiencing and to ASCs and as a consequence had direct insights into what exactly is the difference between a ‘self’-centred and a ‘self’-less experience. My intent in a PCE was to gain as much insight about life without ‘self’ as possible and consequently I obtained valuable information that I could use once the PCE faded. The ‘knowledge’ I gained in each PCE was about that which is actual, i.e. that which remains when the affective faculty responsible for both my automorphic worldview and humanity’s anthropocentric view of the universe itself does not interfere with direct experiencing. It is as simple as taking one’s pink and one’s grey glasses off and then what has been lying in front of your eyes all along becomes readily apparent. VINEETO: This is how you described your experience with the visualisation – [Respondent]: For one thing, there was definitely a psyche present, even though there was no trace of emotion. <snip> (Interesting Experience, 11.12.2003). The psyche, which you said was present, is the visualizer. RESPONDENT: No, I’ve tried to make this clear: it is not the ‘doer’, it is not an ‘entity’. The brain is the visualiser, VINEETO: This seems to be the crucial point of disagreement, which I think can only be settled as an experiential answer achieved by meticulous and ongoing observation. From my own experiences of ASCs I can understand why the psyche does not appear to be the ‘doer’. In an altered state of consciousness ‘I’, the doer, makes way for ‘me’, ‘being’ itself, and the feeling of this expansion is so grand, so vast and so impressive that the ‘being’ itself does not even appear to be an entity because one does not see or feel the edge of it. It is not for nothing that before Richard’s discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition, a permanent Altered State of Consciousness, be it spiritual or secular, was considered the summum bonum of human experience. RESPONDENT: … just as the brain (not the ‘self’) is the ‘thinker’. VINEETO: Only in a pure consciousness experience does the ‘self’ not interfere with the brain thinking. RESPONDENT: The brain can produce images of its own accord without ‘me’ painstakingly constructing them in ‘my’ mind. VINEETO: It is the affective faculty born of the instinctual passions that generates ‘images of its own accord’. Imagination is so immediate, automatic and effortless, it is my experience that it takes some practice in observing one’s psyche in action in order to discover that imagination is a function of the affective faculty. RESPONDENT: I guess it comes down to this: I don’t understand the actualist’s distinction between visual thought and non-visual thought. VINEETO: This recent conversation might clarify the issue – Co-Respondent: What is memory if not partly mental images (along with words, sounds etc)? Richard: For me memory is intellectual – the referent words only – with neither images nor sounds. Co-Respondent: If I say to you get me an egg, there must be some kind of visual image of an egg to compare it to the real thing? Richard: No, there is sufficient familiarity with eggs to intellectually know what one is by now. Co-Respondent: How else can you link the word egg to the actual object? Richard: If no actual egg be present ... intellectually. Co-Respondent: What is the exact mental/physical process involved for one with no identity? Richard: If the egg be present ... the direct (unmediated) perception; if the egg be absent ... the intellectual memory. Co-Respondent: Sorry for being a bit slow here, but when you say intellectual memory what do you mean? Richard: I mean the cerebral, or mental, recall of that which is not present. Co-Respondent: It seems to me there are only three options: 1) The ‘sound’ of the word egg. 2) The ‘visual’ image of the word egg. 3) The ‘visual’ image of an actual egg. I can’t see any other way of remembering an object. Presumably when you read the word egg, you know what I am talking about. How can you know if not through the visual memory of an actual egg? Richard: It may help to recall something without a tangible shape or form such as an egg has – maybe helium for instance or some other colourless and odourless gaseous substance – and you might get an inkling of what an intellectual memory is. Co-Respondent: Are you distinguishing between visual memory and active imagination? Richard: No ... visual memory *is* active imagination. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 54, 27 November 2003). I know from my own observations that visual images connected to words are often so immediate that it appears as if ‘I’ have no part in conjuring the image, that the image appears of its own accord. It took practice in being attentive to all of my feelings before I began to become aware of the myriad of thought processes that ‘I’ can cause to happen in the brain including the capacity for imagination and visualization. RESPONDENT: I understand that, when Richard broke through into ‘actual freedom’, his capacity to imagine or visually recollect disappeared at the same time as his affections. Whether this is cause or correlate is unclear. VINEETO: No, Richard made clear that they correlate – Co-Respondent: Is all imagery connected to the limbic system, to feeling, as the synesthetes above? Richard: All imagery is a product of the imaginative/intuitive facility contained within the psyche – the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions. When the instinctual passions are deleted, the entire psyche itself ceases to exist ... thus the imaginative apparatus also disappears in toto. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 10, 25 May 2000). RESPONDENT: Suppose I have a toaster and a radio plugged into the same power point with a double adapter. I flick off the power switch, and both radio and toaster cease to work. Would I now be justified in saying that the music I heard a few minutes ago was an epiphenomenon of the toaster? For all I know, Richard may be exactly right – but I would like to know once and for all, what basis is there for saying that the brain’s capacity to generate images is an epiphenomenon of an affective ‘self’? VINEETO: The basis is apperception. RESPONDENT: Is it just that the two disappeared simultaneously, or is there a more solid factual basis for claiming that one is caused by the other? VINEETO: If one takes notice of the reports of others and relates the data from the PCEs (no imagination, no ‘self’) to one’s normal day experiences (imagination, ‘self’) and to an ASC (extra-ordinary imagination, ‘Self’) there is a strong indication that ‘self’ and imagination are correlated. These contrasting experiences are indication for a prima facie case to be made such that can eventually be verified by your own experience. Then there is your own pure consciousness experience – you yourself reported no imaginative activity happening in an experience in which the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. This is experiential, empirical evidence. * VINEETO: Whereas in a PCE the ‘self’ /the psyche, which is not only the ‘Human Drama’ but the very motor for ‘images and symbols’ is absent. RESPONDENT: Is the ‘self’ is the very motor for ‘thoughts’? Your experience (and mine too) confirms: no. But try explaining that to someone who hasn’t experienced the temporary abeyance of ‘self’. They’d assume the self is still there, you’re just unconscious of it, or something of the sort. VINEETO: The ‘self’ – the psychological and psychic entity arising from the instinctual passions – is the ‘very motor’ for emotional thoughts, also known as feelings. However, many people don’t bother to make a distinction between their feelings and their thoughts and this includes all the spiritual authorities that have been so influential in Western society in the last half-century. * VINEETO: In a PCE I am this psyche-less flesh-and-blood body only, apperceptively aware of the sensual delights and reflective thoughts while they are happening on their own accord. RESPONDENT: So how are ‘reflective thoughts’ occurring without ‘psyche’? VINEETO: Thoughts are an activity of the human brain. When the ‘self’ or psyche is temporarily absent in a PCE then thoughts are no longer influenced by impulses from the amygdala and the limbic systems and intelligence can function unimpeded. RESPONDENT: I asked Richard to clarify the difference between ‘mind’ and ‘psyche’ as he uses the terms, and his answer was quite clear: his description of ‘psyche’ was a supernatural ‘life-force’ of sorts, a ghostly metaphysical entity or presence or power or force that is assumed to inhabit the flesh and blood body. VINEETO: When you use words such as ‘of sorts’, ‘ghostly’ or ‘is assumed to’ you indicate that Richard’s description that the psyche is a meta-physical entity inhabiting the flesh-and-blood body is not your experience. However, this is how you described your PCE – [Respondent]: Then, all of a sudden, literally in a moment, all traces of anxiety dropped away completely, and it was as if I had walked through an invisible membrane into a bubble of perfection. (PCE / ASC / psilocybin, 7.11.2003). This ‘invisible membrane’ that you seemed to ‘had walked through’ *is* your psyche and this entity, presence, power or force is experienced as something very real when one leaves it behind in a PCE – there is nothing ‘of sorts’, ‘ghostly’ or ‘assumed’ about it at all prior to or subsequent to a PCE. [Respondent]: Something else that accompanied the experience of passing through this ‘invisible membrane’ was a peculiar sense that I’d entered into a new ‘day’. Hard to describe, but you probably know exactly what I mean. I knew perfectly well it was the same day that I’d set out for my morning walk, but the ‘me’ who had set out for a walk that morning seemed to be aeons ago (metaphorically, not literally) – an artifact of a different time altogether. (But there was no loss of common sense. I knew it was still ‘today’). (The ‘Process’, etc. 29.11.2003). As you said yourself, past this ‘invisible membrane’ the world is then perceived as perfection and ‘the ‘me’ who had set out for a walk … seemed to be aeons ago’. This ‘me’ is your psyche – so palpable as to be experienced as real and so all-consuming that it produces it’s own self-centred reality. However, when the PCE fades and one is back to normal, it is inevitable that most of the experience is forgotten. That’s when paying attention to one’s thoughts and feelings comes into play because only by paying ongoing attention to how one experiences this moment of being alive can one begin to observe and understand the psyche in action and become familiar with all of its aspects. And to pay attention to one’s psyche in action is part and parcel of fully leaving it behind. RESPONDENT: What I am calling ‘psyche’ is not in any way separate from the brain or the flesh and blood body. VINEETO: It seems that you are making a case for your second experience (the ‘interesting experience’ with a psyche present) to be not only equivalent to but better than a pure consciousness experience. Your claim that ‘psyche’ is not in any way separate from the brain or the flesh and blood body’ contradicts your own experience that in a PCE there was no psyche present – therefore it must be possible to separate the two. RESPONDENT: The only difference is that in my mind/ psyche, images are not evidence of a ‘self’, whereas for you (for reasons still unexplained), images (but not ‘thoughts’ or words or actions) are a manifestation of a ‘self’. VINEETO: From the perspective of the psyche images are not ‘evidence of a ‘self’’ because the psyche is the ‘self’. In a PCE, however, when the psyche is entirely absent and with it the action of imaging, apperception is freed to operate and the full scope of one’s psyche can become apparent if one is observant. Then, when one returns to ‘normal’ and begins to practice being attentive to one’s feelings and thoughts the various aspects of the ‘self’ will gradually become more apparent. (...) * RESPONDENT: I would argue (not to be contrary, and not to suggest that you are wrong to do so, but simply because it seems like the truth to me) that it is indeed ‘one of your tricks’ to treat as ultimately valid only those experiences in which ‘you’ are entirely absent. Within the terms of your goal (actual freedom), this is understandable. But that goal is necessarily ‘one of your tricks’, even if you choose to define it as the only thing that is not a trick. VINEETO: What you are arguing is that ‘my’ experiences of ‘my’ psyche are as equally valid as the only experience that is common to all flesh and blood bodies – the pure consciousness experience of the already-existing purity and perfection of the actual world. I can only suggest that you contemplate on the fact that it is precisely because everyone values their own psychic experiences so highly that peace on earth between human beings remains but a pipe-dream. RESPONDENT: Yes, that is very clear. (But see how it reads if you substitute ‘mind’ for ‘psychic experiences’ in the above passage.) VINEETO: Okay, this is how it reads now – [Vineeto]: What you are arguing is that ‘my’ experiences of ‘my’ mind are as equally valid as the only experience that is common to all flesh and blood bodies – the pure consciousness experience of the already-existing purity and perfection of the actual world. I can only suggest that you contemplate on the fact that it is precisely because everyone values their own mind so highly that peace on earth between human beings remains but a pipe-dream. [endquote]. The fact remains that you are talking about ‘your’ visualizations produced by ‘your’ mind – and not the activity of the brain when the ‘self’ is absent. Also, it is obvious that the visualizations of ‘your’ mind are not common to all flesh and blood bodies – we wouldn’t be having this conversation if they were. To replace a word to make the experience appear more actual is not going to do the trick – and you said yourself that there was a distinct difference between your PCE and your ASC. You even gave your experience a new name – ‘Neo-Virtualism’ – which you described as [Respondent]: ‘a state in which all of the benchmarks of the PCE are met, but without any loss of higher-level cognitive faculties, including imagination.’ (Neo-Virtualism’, 27.12.2003). * (...) VINEETO: I know, it is hard to remember what a PCE was like when one returns back to normal and often one begins to doubt that the experience was only a dream. But during a PCE I know with absolute certainty that this actual universe has always been here – I only missed it whilst I was busy being ‘me’. And the realization and recognition of this very fact is what has become my benchmark for determining how to proceed in the process of becoming free of malice and sorrow. In this process ‘I’ willingly decide to instigate ‘my’ own demise and then it is simply a matter of applying attentiveness – something that anyone can cultivate if they so desire. RESPONDENT: Yes. I think the main difference between us at this stage is that I’m experiencing a certain something which you suggest is caused by ‘me’, whereas I experience it as something that is a perception of me (or rather, something in the brain which generates this virtual ‘me’) rather than something which ‘I’ do. Regardless of whether we agree on the value of this, am I at least making it clear what I mean? VINEETO: Yes, you do make it clear and in much of your descriptions I recognize my own altered states regardless of the fact that mine were full-on spiritual experiences and yours appear to be, at this stage at least, a bit more secular. And I also understand from my own experiences the overwhelming attraction of these extra-ordinary experiences, if only because the feeling of expansion from one’s normal day experience of being shackled feels so fulfilling and feels so liberating. The ‘certain something’ that you experience is indeed rather something that you are instead of something that you do. In an ASC the identity shifts its focus from ‘I’ the doer to ‘me’ the ‘being’ which is experienced as something like ‘one’s true nature’, the real Me, pure being, the One behind the throne – the expressions vary according to culture but essentially point to the same experience. If you are sufficiently motivated to explore your experiences then earnest and diligent observation will eventually reveal experientially that this ‘certain something’ is indeed ‘caused by ‘me’’, the instinctual identity. * RESPONDENT: However, I am now starting to think that one can have one’s cake and eat it too. VINEETO: Before you get carried away with this thought let me ask you how you think this would work in practice. The cake we are talking about is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, a ‘self’-less flesh-and-blood body living a pure consciousness experience 24/7. To ‘eat it too’ means to simultaneously have a psyche, which perceives the world as ‘pure’ in images and symbols? RESPONDENT: No, a psyche which is as pure as the actual world. (And no ‘me’ there to ‘have’ it). Rather, it is the very thing that generates the virtual ‘me’. VINEETO: The psyche, the generator of ‘the ‘virtual ‘me’’ is the very thing that generates the human condition. Whereas this generator of ‘the ‘virtual ‘me’’ is temporarily switched off in a PCE, which is a temporary experience of being free from the human condition in toto. You yourself reported that there is a complete absence of any psyche whatsoever, be it pure or impure, in a PCE. RESPONDENT: To put it another way, ‘I’ am an epiphenomenon of ‘it’ (which is nothing more than the brain in operation), rather than ‘it’ being an epiphenomenon of ‘me’. VINEETO: You are correct when you say ‘‘I’ am an epiphenomenon of ‘it’’ because ‘it’ is one’s innermost ‘being’ expanded thin and wide to such a degree that ‘it’ can appear to be as vast as the universe in which case one can feel oneself to be the universe experiencing itself. In this state ‘I’, the small s ‘self’, is experienced to be an epiphenomenon of ‘it’, the large s ‘Self’, also known as ‘the Ground of Being’. (...) * RESPONDENT: Yep. The PCE I had last summer had none of this ‘pattern matching’ or ‘symbol-generating’, or ‘plasticity’, and the psyche was not ‘visible’ at all. There was an underlying similarity though that I can’t quite put my finger on, except to say that both seemed to have had a pure and perfect basis. VINEETO: Would it be right to say that the first was a pure, i.e. ‘self’-less, experience while the other was an image of a pure experience created by your psyche? RESPONDENT: Not quite. The other was an experience in which psyche was present, but it was not created out of or by the psyche. In both cases there was an underlying purity and perfection; in the latter case it was manifest in mind as well as in world. And the presence of a mind-medium (unlike ordinary ‘imagination’) did not in any way diminish the perfection and purity of the actual world as experienced by the senses. VINEETO: The purity of the actual world means that there is no ‘self’ or psyche present and it is the affective ‘self’ or psyche that distorts the clear perception of what is actual. If you decide to reinterpret ‘the perfection and purity of the actual world’ as being an experience of the psyche ‘manifest in mind as well as in world’ then we are talking about two different things. It does make communication a little confusing though. RESPONDENT: No, not ‘psyche manifest in mind as well as world’. Rather, purity and perfection manifest in mind as well as world. VINEETO: Okay, I have read you wrong here. What still stands, however, is that ‘the presence of a mind-medium’ seems to be what is responsible for ‘this ‘pattern matching’ or ‘symbol-generating’ or ‘plasticity’’ – the very events that differ from your PCE. (...) * VINEETO: Actuality is magical not because there is a hidden meaning or mystery but because everything is palpable, tangible, actual, not passive and right here and this actuality is available to each and everyone in the same magical vibrant coruscating way – if and when the obstructing blinkers of the human psyche are removed. RESPONDENT: Or, it seems to me (so far), looked through rather than from. VINEETO: In your latest post you made it clearer what you mean by ‘looking through’ – [Respondent]; … this representational system which generates the sense of self and world is none other than the thing that I was looking at, rather than through. I spoke of it as being like an amphibian who sees the water that a fish cannot see. In other words, psyche (and its self-and-world generative mechanisms) itself somehow became visible in a way that is usually completely transparent. The hidden infrastructure of the psyche became exposed, and what was most interesting was not the content of psyche but the structure of psyche as medium which is normally invisible. (I tried to emphasise that there was nothing ‘metaphysical’ about it, but it seems that anything non-actual can easily be taken for a a cunningly disguised form of something ‘spiritual’). All of this happened on top of the pure substrate of the PCE, and did not taint its purity or distort its clarity it in any way. (Quite the contrary). <…> It is possible to experience (temporarily at least) all of the above benefits of actualism without any permanent self-immolation or loss of any mental faculties. If one can clearly look at the self-generating psyche which one normally looks through or from, then it becomes unnecessary to actually eliminate it. It is rendered harmless by becoming explicit (and plastic and malleable) instead of being a ‘fictitious fixed point’ as it ‘normally’ is. (Neo-Virtualism, 27.12.2003). Despite the fact that you stress that there ‘was nothing ‘metaphysical’ about it’, the ‘psyche as medium’ is non-physical, non-material and as such non-actual, which is exactly what the word ‘meta-physical’ means. RESPONDENT: Certainly no more ‘metaphysical’ than ‘thought’. VINEETO: Not so. Thought, when unimpeded by feelings and passions, is a function of the physical brain just as seeing is a function of the physical eyes and hearing a function of the physical ears. * VINEETO: And bit of research into the methodology of Eastern Mysticism will reveal that the technique to ‘clearly look at the self-generating psyche’ instead of ‘through or from’ is precisely the technique of dissociating from the ‘self’ in order to transcend it. RESPONDENT: Is that so? I didn’t know that. VINEETO: There is lots of information on various Eastern methodologies of dissociation and transcendence available and if you are interested then Peter’s article on spiritual awareness might be a good start. * VINEETO: And, as Peter put it in his journal – Peter: Transcending, per definition, is to ‘go above and beyond’, which is really ‘Above and Beyond’, as we all know. (Peter’s Journal, Time) The picture next to it speaks for itself. RESPONDENT: LOL! There is no ‘Above and Beyond’ here, just a body-mind looking at itself and the world. If I do happen to become God, I’ll send you a postcard from the asylum ;-) VINEETO: At least you can’t say you haven’t been warned. RESPONDENT: Only got time for a quick response right now, but this little passage has turned on a huge light bulb for me: [Vineeto]: This ‘invisible membrane’ that you seemed to ‘had walked through’ is your psyche and this entity, presence, power or force is experienced as something very real when one leaves it behind in a PCE – there is nothing ‘of sorts’, ‘ghostly’ or ‘assumed’ about it at all prior to or subsequent to a PCE. [endquote]. Thank you! That this ‘invisible membrane’ actually is my psyche had not occurred to me. It has a genuine ring of truth about it. VINEETO: This is excellent because now you know a bit more about the nature of the difference between a PCE and your second experience. This is good news indeed. RESPONDENT: Yeah, I think so. Let’s see how this sounds ... In a ‘normal’ state of mind, I walk around in the ‘real world’ that most people share. In this state, I experience the mind/psyche as a bundle of personal thoughts, memories, feelings, desires, fantasies, etc, all emanating from ‘my’ brain, all revolving around ‘me’ and ‘my’ world. This is ‘reality’. Walking out of this felt like walking through an invisible membrane, right out of the (comparatively) grim, grey, miserable world of reality and right into the sparkling clear, brilliant, wide open spaces of the actual world. VINEETO: Yes. And as Richard puts it, in doing so, you leave your ‘self’ behind. RESPONDENT: I’d always thought of ‘me’ as something contained wholly within the body; I didn’t realise that the miserable bugger actually creates a virtual bubble of ‘reality’ that encapsulates and distorts the whole of the ‘real’ world as I experience it – but it’s obvious now. When I walked out of that, I walked out of ‘me’. In hindsight it makes a lot of sense. (As Richard said, not ‘into a bubble of perfection’ but ‘out of a bubble of imperfection’). VINEETO: Yes. Not that anybody did the ‘walking’. I would describe my transition into a PCE more as if a curtain rips, a bubble bursts, a shell breaks, and then suddenly I, this body only, am here in this sparkling actuality, which has been right here all the time. And when the PCE fades ‘I’ know that ‘I’ have work to do, the work of thinning, diminishing, weakening the shell that ‘I’ at the centre create and which in turn separates me, this body, from experiencing the sparkling ever-present actuality. RESPONDENT: It also sheds some light on the ASC. In the ASC, the personal self, the ego, is gone – but the psyche remains. In that state, the psyche has a wholly different experiential character. It is experienced as something impersonal, something ‘I’ could never produce. And yet it is not actual, not physical, not available to anybody else’s gaze, therefore it is specific to this brain. VINEETO: Yes, any ASC experience is ‘specific to this brain’ because it is produced by the affective/instinctual part of the brain, the limbic system. RESPONDENT: It is experienced as a jelly-like medium in which thoughts and images arise. I think the images that arise from this ‘medium’ are probably what Jung called the archetypes of the collective unconscious, but Jung was mainly interested in their mythological meaning … VINEETO: When I explored my instinctual passions, loosely classifiable as fear, aggression, nurture and desire, I recognized quite a few of what Jung described as archetypal features and a few more to boot – they are the basic emotional patterns that everybody has regardless of cultural differences or idiosyncratic predispositions. Given that in the altered state of consciousness only the ego is temporarily absent, the archetypal instinctual features come to the fore, stripped of the moral and ethical limitations acquired in one’s conditioning. In an ASC the personal ego and its associated notions of what is right and wrong, good and bad is no longer functioning, which means that all of one’s instinctual passions are then perceived in a new light. With guilt and shame, fear of punishment and hope for reward no longer functioning, an ego-less person then re-interprets all of their instinctual passions as being good, beneficial, justified and/or glorified by the Divine. If you study the lives of people who permanently live or have lived in such altered states of consciousness – Ramesh Balsekar, Da Free John, Mohan Rajneesh, Jiddu and U.G. Krishnamurti or those who occasionally experienced an altered state by chemical stimulation such as Timothy Leary or other drug researchers – you will find that they not only espouse the tender instinctual passions but also defend their savage instinctual passions as not only necessary, but right and just – a clear indication that an altered state of being is within the grip of the passions that underpin the human condition. RESPONDENT: …whereas, for me, any mythological meaning (including the whole ‘human drama’) was entirely eclipsed by the ‘psychedelic’, geometrical, mathematically perfect structure of the medium in which they arose, and of the actual world in which this body was moving about. (I am quite certain that these ‘structures’ are direct experiences of actual neural mechanisms that underpin perception and cognition; they are not produced by imagination. The similarity of ‘psychedelic’ experiences across cultures and eras tends to bear this out too). VINEETO: Although your psyche felt itself to be impersonal, it nevertheless overlaid, tainted and re-interpreted the physical world ‘in which this body was moving about’ and thus actuality was as much distorted as it is in normal reality. ‘The similarity of ‘psychedelic’ experiences across cultures and eras’ is due to the fact that the psyche of all humans produces similar images and feelings in similar circumstances – the very basis for Jung’s observation of archetypal emotional patterns ‘across cultures and eras’. It might be useful to reflect on the fact that your PCE accorded with those that others describe as being a brief glimpse of being actually free from the human condition, whereas your psychedelic experience accords with those who take psychedelic drugs in order to temporarily escape grim reality. RESPONDENT: This is my current (tentative, provisional) model of self/ world: To extend the physical metaphor of the membrane for a sec, bearing in mind that it’s only a model ... consider a virtual egg. The yolk is the normal self, wherein ‘I’ and ‘me’ exist. Surrounding the yolk is the clear jelly-like goo which is the medium of the impersonal psyche. VINEETO: I think the egg is an excellent metaphor. Generally I use the terms ‘I’ and ‘me’ according to how they are used in other consciousness studies whereby ‘I’ stands for ego or the small-s ‘self’ and ‘me’ stands for soul, psyche or the higher, big-S ‘Self’. In an altered state of consciousness one experiences that the centre, the yolk in your metaphor, has disappeared which results in a feeling of freedom and an expansion of consciousness. But only in a pure, both ‘self’-less and ‘Self’-less, consciousness experience can it become apparent that there is another part to the human condition, the very core in fact, the ‘jelly-like goo’ of the egg-white, which is as much contained within the hard shell of the egg as is the yolk. RESPONDENT: Outside the shell is the actual universe as experienced in the PCE. VINEETO: Yes. RESPONDENT: In the ASC, the centre of experience/awareness/cognition is situated not in the yolk or outside the shell, but in the jelly. VINEETO: Yes, or more accurate, one experiences oneself to be centre-less – without a centre as in not having a personal ego or identity but affectively experiencing oneself as boundlessly living in one’s own version of a perfect world. RESPONDENT: From there, it is possible to look outward to the clear open spaces of the actual world, without any distortion (just as in a PCE), VINEETO: No, the ‘the clear open spaces of the actual world’ are images ‘I’ project on the inside of the eggshell, not a direct perception. The ‘jelly-like goo’, the sticky instinctual substance of the psyche, prevents any direct perception of the actual world outside of the shell, while it simultaneously creates the feeling of boundless freedom. RESPONDENT: … or to look ‘inwards’ at the virtual entities emerging from the yolk. VINEETO: The one who is looking ‘‘inwards’ at the virtual entities emerging from the yolk’ as well as looking outwards its projected image of ‘the clear open spaces of the actual world’ is but another aspect of ‘me’ … and the most cunning of them all. RESPONDENT: I understand that the goal of actual freedom lies outside the ‘egg’ altogether. VINEETO: O.K. Do you also understand why? RESPONDENT: I am still not 100% sure, but I suspect that being outside the ‘yolk’ is sufficient to enjoy the same results with fewer compromises (and perhaps even some as-yet-undiscovered benefits). VINEETO: With this assessment you are in agreement with all of Eastern mysticism, Western mysticism, Sufism and the secular branches of human consciousness studies. The search for ‘some as-yet-undiscovered benefits’ of altered states of being within the human condition has been going on for at least 5000 years of human history, so you will find the supposed benefits listed in the literature of spiritualism and mysticism as well as in the results of psychedelic experimentation. As is apparent from the way human beings, nations and cultural and racial tribes relate to each other, peace-on-earth is not amongst the benefits of ‘being outside the ‘yolk’’. RESPONDENT: It seems to me, and this is the key point, that the instinctual passions are operative only within the ‘yolk’, but I need more experiences to make sure. VINEETO: What is not operative ‘outside the ‘yolk’’ are the morals and ethics that one normally uses to assess one’s instinctual passions and this is what causes the deception that the instinctual passions themselves are not operating. However, the more you become attentive to, and familiar with, the cunning disguises of the identity and the more you become sensitive to the feelings hiding beneath denial and transcendence – a well-known toxic side-effect of an altered state of being – the more you will come to experience for yourself that the instinctual passions are fully operating ‘outside the ‘yolk’’. Richard has lived an altered state of consciousness –‘outside the ‘yolk’’ – for eleven years without interruption and he was able to step out of the ‘Self’ into the purity and perfection of actuality only by systematically investigating the instinctual passions, particularly the tender instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: If I’m wrong about that, the whole egg is shattered, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can all go home. VINEETO: In order to find out that I was wrong about my favourite beliefs I needed a good reason to doubt them and the only reason good enough to doubt my identity-sustaining beliefs was my passion for peace-on-earth – something which all of my well-meaning beliefs had not been able to deliver. In my experience, the process of becoming actually free from the human condition is not a matter of hoping for a one-day sudden shattering realization but it is a steady effort to firstly acknowledge, become aware of, discover and diminish and then to successively abandon one’s beliefs and feelings of malice and sorrow, one’s schemes and dreams, one’s hopes and fears that prevent me from being harmless and happy. Then, one day, with apperception more and more in operation, the last of the weakened ‘me’ will simply wither of starvation. It being an actual and not an imagined felt freedom there is neither a leap nor a short-cut. I think No. 32 put is very well when he said to No. 58 – [Respondent No. 32]: ‘I don’t intend to gain anything, I intend to lose something’. (No. 32, Re: Popcorns, 16.1.2004). Nothing’s for free, not even freedom. ALAN: Nor is there any sense of ‘the feeling is that one cannot survive this appalling emptiness without going mad’, as Richard described it. VINEETO: Well, the issue of ‘going mad’ has been on my mind a lot for the last few months. I find it very reassuring that psychologists have classified Richard as mad in real-world terms, which is only logical as he has stepped out of the ‘sane’ world of wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide. However, it is quite a challenge to get used to leaving humanity behind and going mad – ‘mad’ according to my previous standards and to society’s standards. Sometimes there is an almost audible ‘clack’ in the brain, when an old synapse snaps, when I fail to understand how other people think and feel. More and more I fail to understand people’s emotional reactions, their psychological reasoning or the psychic vibes that I occasionally pick up, when people report that they are feeling insulted, misunderstood, threatened or when they are desperately defending some non-sensical belief. It is sometimes very strange and bewildering indeed. ALAN: I would hazard a guess that the three of us would now be classified as ‘insane’ by any ‘self respecting’ psychiatrist. Cute phrase that, isn’t it? When I first started to explore this actual world of the senses, there was a definite sense of ‘you must be mad’. As I scoured the texts, and then the Internet, seeking others’ descriptions of what I had experienced, ‘madness’ was a definite ploy ‘I’ employed in the attempt to keep ‘me’ sane. Fortunately I came across the website of someone who had been certified as insane and the rest, as they say, is history! VINEETO: As far as I can still make sense out of what is happening, my ‘going mad’ is a feeling response to going 180 degrees in the opposite direction of everyone else and of my own old beliefs and emotions and my natural instincts. Further, there is the continuing disbelief that ‘how come it is so simple?’ and ‘how come, if it is that simple, nobody is doing it?’ – or almost nobody. Actual Freedom is like the magic elegant equation of mathematicians – one single solution for the whole bloody mess of the problems of the Human Condition, all of them are going to be wiped out in one stroke, forever! In the last days I have been busy coming to terms with the fact that I am locked into ‘here’ and there is no escape possible. Since my last PCE, which I described to you in my post, I have experienced the limitations of thinking whenever I tried to use thought in order to grasp or comprehend the vastness and magic of the actual world, the immensity of this moment, the aliveness of being here. For a few days it was rather shocking, I felt disoriented, as if grasping for an outline that no longer existed. Thinking now is more episodic, stimulated when needed for practical situations or sorting out a particular issue. The outcome is that I am here in this moment with no way out – no imagination, no feeling (t’would be silly, I tried...) and no intellectualizing. There was a feeling, though – a disorientation, a feeling of being trapped, a feeling of it all being too much. I was reminded of Michael Ende’s ‘Unending Story’ – the boy has a wish granted and he wants to be not fat anymore. In the first stage he enjoys being thin and beautiful, but to complete the satisfaction he then has to forget that he ever was otherwise, that he had been ridiculed and suffered before for his appearance. In a similar manner, with each item of identity that is eliminated, I am going through a transition period until the old synapse in the brain atrophies and emotional memories of former events disappear. Then the unfamiliarity, the oddness, the feeling of ‘going mad’ simply evaporates. As I know well from other issues, like believing in God, I now consider everyone else silly who believes in a bodiless entity, a divine spirit, a God or suchlike. It is all a matter of perspective, you see. Such fun! RESPONDENT: My formal education is in psychology. It’s been a while, but reading all the psychological terms used here on the list have encouraged me to refresh my memory. Cognitive dissonance is a theory of one of the ways the mind or brain functions. What it says is that if something is presented to a mind that is different enough from the thought/ memory/ belief of that mind, the mind receiving the dissonant input will not recognize it. The dissonant input will not be consciously recognized. It may not even be accepted on an unconscious level (we don’t know yet). Getting annoyed at something is not cognitive dissonance. We can be aware of annoyance. The theory of cognitive dissonance is that we are not aware of the too-foreign input. Why it is interesting in the context of this group is that it may be that some ideas do not get across because they are so at odds to what has been previously accepted or believed that those ideas are not even accessible to the person receiving them. I’m not saying that this is happening in the case of No. 60 – I actually don’t know. I do think that AF has a lot to say to psychology and I’d like to see the terms used in ways that I understand or at least redefined so that we all know what we are talking about. VINEETO: I don’t know whose correspondence in particular you are referring to but since I have written about cognitive dissonance I will attempt to clarify the issue for you. Here are four instances where I have written about cognitive dissonance and each time I made it quite clear that it is a very common reaction whenever one comes across new information that contradicts previously-imbibed ideas, understandings and beliefs – [Vineeto]: In the years of exploring my psyche, both in my pre-actualist years of spiritual-based therapy and in the beginning of my interest in actualism I experienced in me, and even more so observed in others, what is termed cognitive dissonance – a powerful characteristic of ‘me’, the lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity inside this body, primed to surface in order to defend ‘my’ beliefs and ‘my’ existence at all cost. This is what Richard has written about it – Richard: The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory ... such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures. However it is more than merely a foolish head-in-the-sand psychological aberration, because the new, the fresh, the novel is oft-times met with determined resistance, disagreement, opposition and hostility. (Richard, Abditorium, Cognitive Dissonance). It takes great determination, constant attentiveness and a sincere, naive intent to become happy and harmless in order to be able to break through this archaic means of ‘self’-survival. To deliberately add feelings of doubt and suspicion to the already existing ‘self’-preserving defence mechanism would be foolish, to say the least, because it will only exacerbate any chances of your becoming free from human condition. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 59, 13.11.2003). And … [Vineeto]: What you consider ‘reasonable doubt’ is more likely ‘information’ that ‘contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’, in other words, cognitive dissonance in action. <…> In order to tackle one’s own cognitive dissonance – the feelings and beliefs that prevent one from taking on board new information that is contrary to the previous information that one has assimilated – one needs a clear incentive to want to move past one’s ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’. In my case this incentive was the dawning of a recognition that my ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’ had made me neither happy nor harmless nor enabled me to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. <snip> Cognitive dissonance is something quite different to ‘unreasonable doubt’ and by its very nature it is not easily recognized when it occurs. It is important to consider and recognize that cognitive dissonance is a significant defence mechanism to understanding anything new and even more so when the something new is as radical as actualism. Cognitive dissonance is an automatic defensive reaction that takes place before one even becomes aware of what information has been ‘distorted’, ‘reinterpreted’ or ‘warped’. One needs determination and pure intent to want to forego one’s own feelings of apprehension – to want to go into the lion’s den, so to speak – in order to be able to investigate the information that one’s cognitive dissonance has ‘warped’ and which, upon seeing clearly, may cause ‘mental-emotional distress’. Quite a few people on this mailing list have reported that recognizing the scope and the wide-ranging ramifications entailed in an actual, non-spiritual freedom were ‘a big thing’, not easy to take, difficult to understand at first, caused them to have head-aches, were a blow to their pride, shattered their existing beliefs, questioned their present life-style, and so on. Actualism is no little thing to take on. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 59, 17.11.2003). And … [Vineeto]: When I started to look into actualism as an alternative to the spiritualism that I had practiced so long with unsatisfying results, the mind-boggling radicality of the 180 degrees opposite statements often caused my mind to gridlock. From whatever angle I looked at certain issues, I simply could not understand what Richard was saying. However, I had the burning desire to find out all there is to know about this third alternative because I had already experienced for myself that something was greatly amiss in the venerated teachings and practice of spiritualism. In those situations when I couldn’t think my way out of my mental block, a condition which I later discovered to be cognitive dissonance, I used to ask myself what it was that was preventing me from understanding. Rather than accusing Richard of being bone-headed, stubborn, silly or wrong, I instead chose to question why I was so bone-headed that I could not understand what he had discovered and what emotional investment ‘I’ had in maintaining ‘my’ status quo by not understanding what he presented as his ongoing delectable experience of the actual world. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 60c, 26.1.2004). And … [Co-Respondent]: Cognitive dissonance works two ways. There is a possibility that some of you see Richard as something he is not, and will desperately resist ‘seeing’ aspects of his behaviour that are not exactly consistent with someone who is ‘actually free from the human condition’. If No. 59 sees something, No. 58 sees something, I see something, no-one speaks about it – it’s all too easily swept under the carpet, because there is a vested interest in not seeing it. Everyone knows what kind of scenarios that can lead to. [Vineeto]: First, cognitive dissonance is a mechanism that ‘I’, the entity, use in order to keep things as they are, to maintain ‘my’ status quo as it were, whereas ‘being open’ to understanding actualism requires a 180 degree turnabout in how one has been unwittingly taught to viscerally think about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. My own cognitive dissonance stopped when I had my first major pure consciousness experience. I had desperately wanted to know if actual freedom was indeed actual, as in universally applicable to all human experience, independent of anyone’s personal viewpoint and the PCE undeniably proved that it is – when ‘I’ temporarily disappeared the actual world of the senses became apparent. Then I also knew that the actual world Richard describes is the very same actuality that I briefly experienced in my own PCE. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 60c, 14.2.2004). Nowhere in those correspondences did I indicate or imply that ‘getting annoyed at something’, as you say, was the same as cognitive dissonance. I am well aware that they are not the same thing. What is clear, however, is that the misunderstanding and confusion that invariably arise from cognitive dissonance can very easily lead to feelings such as frustration, annoyance, irritation, and even anger. This is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica says about cognitive dissonance – [quote]: Cognitive dissonance – the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in a person is relieved by one of several defensive manoeuvres: the person rejects, explains away, or avoids the new information, persuades himself that no conflict really exists, reconciles the differences, or resorts to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in his conception of the world and of himself. The concept, first introduced in the 1950s, has become a major point of discussion and research. © Encyclopaedia Britannica VINEETO: As for old fears and insecurities, there were plenty of them. Some of them were so old they dated back centuries and more – the archaic fear of being burnt as a witch, for instance, for daring to question the existence of god, heaven and afterlife and the archaic fear of expelled from society or of being executed for daring to lift the taboos of sexuality and begin to enjoy it for its own sake. RESPONDENT: Whoa! this sounds almost like reincarnation. I assume you are referring to genetics, passing the memory on from one gene-ration (never noticed before how this word broke down- love words!) to another. VINEETO: I was not referring to genetics, the hardware, so to speak but to the collective software of the human condition, something that in spiritual circles is known as the Akashic Records or etheric knowledge. When a child is conditioned, parents, teachers and peers not only pass on their personal knowledge, their morals, ethics, beliefs and experiences but also impart, on a non-verbal emotional-instinctual level, the taboos, fears and rules of survival that they themselves have imbibed, going back to the beginning of humankind. Additionally, in an altered state of consciousness one can consciously access those records of various cultures and explore the ancientness of human ‘wisdom’ and experience and its instinctually-based fibre. RESPONDENT: I know Richard mentions this in his book, but is there anywhere on the site, were it is expanded on. I find this subject fascinating. VINEETO: Here is one example – Richard: But I was talking of the psychic realm – access to the ‘akashic record’ or the ‘collective unconscious’ – and not just psychic powers (‘akasha’ is the Sanskrit word for ‘ether’). I gained a lot of ‘knowledge’ from the ethereal realms ... all my information of the implications and ramifications of attaining to the ASC is not just through book-reading and day-to-day physical experience. When they say that ‘The Truth’ is ineffable ... they mean it. Mystical ‘knowledge’ is gained by osmosis, as it were. (…) When I use the term ‘psychic’ I am referring to the whole esoteric and arcane metaphysical package ... not just the preternatural and occult. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan-a, 25 February 1999). You find a little bit more in Richard’s catalogue on ‘ether’ and in his selected correspondence on ‘Psyche’. RESPONDENT: I read ‘Osho: The God that Failed’ by Hugh Milne and learned a few interesting things that went on in the movement. He and a few others unquestionably seem to suggest that there is this ‘aura’ or ‘presence’ in people like Osho that made even the westerners with a scientific/skeptical bent of mind lulled into this kind of stuff. VINEETO: Oh yes, there certainly was a rather powerful aura with Rajneesh as is with every genuinely enlightened person. They emanate Love and Compassion and people flock around them to lap it up and in turn give the guru devotional love, material goods and the power to mould their lives. Similarly, non-enlightened people can emanate some or a lot of charisma which then seduces others to follow the charismatic person’s suggestions, as you can see happening in the political arena, in sports and games, in religious movements or in any other group-and-leader activity. RESPONDENT: Perhaps this is the psychic web or the vibe that has been discussed to some extent in the topica list. VINEETO: It certainly is part of it, yes. RESPONDENT: Have you felt that yourself in any encounter with anybody? VINEETO: Of course. I was a very devoted disciple of Rajneesh for many years until a couple of years after his death. RESPONDENT: What kind of phenomenon is that? Is it a willing protocol buried in the subconscious of the Guru and the Disciple – coming to the surface? Or is there some kind of mysterious transmission in the ethereal space? VINEETO: Following a charismatic leader or wanting to lead willing followers is part and parcel of the human condition. I am somewhat reminded of the genetic setup of ants or bees who are born to act as is best for the survival of the tribe. In the case of humans there are other aspects, the lust for power on the side of the leader and the fear of standing on one’s own feet on the side of the follower. There is also the longing for the grand feeling of belonging to a powerful group, to be one with a crowd under one common theme, the sense of unity with others under one aim. Have you never experienced feelings like these? Those ‘transmissions’ not so mysterious after all – they consist of feelings being transmitted and received between humans and the more unconscious but strongly felt the transmissions the more powerful they are. RESPONDENT: Do these kind of things puzzle you anymore? VINEETO: No, I have thoroughly felt and understood them – what sometimes puzzles me is that people do not desire to become free from their grip. JAMES: [quote]: Where is this conditioning you talk of ...? Where are the thoughts located? They are not in the brain. Thoughts are not manufactured by the brain. It is, rather, that the brain is like an antenna, picking up thoughts on a common wavelength, a common thought-sphere. (UG Krishnamurti, Mind is a Myth, chap 3). Does anyone understand what he is saying here? Theories and opinions are also ok. Maybe we can come up with something. If anyone out there does understand this I would appreciate it if you would tell me about it. I am listening. VINEETO: In my experience, what UG Krishnamurti is talking about is that there is a psychic web, consisting of the thoughts, feelings and passions of all human beings. Some people are more sensitive to picking up these types of feelings than others, be they euphoria, excitement, empathy, sadness, anger, revenge or fear, but everyone does this automatically to some extent. JAMES: He may be talking about psychic thoughts although he didn’t make that distinction. I guess that would explain his statement. VINEETO: Yes, he used the term ‘common thought-sphere’ because he, like all other Eastern spiritual teachers, derives his wisdom from the philosophical tradition of Eastern teachings which fails to make the distinction between thinking and feeling. I offered a different experience, a fresh viewpoint to the Eastern belief, which proposes it is thought only that is supposedly responsible for human misery and anguish, aggression and fear. In fact, the psychic world is a web of psychic feelings, not thoughts. What UG Krishnamurti is talking about is picking up psychic fear, psychic anger and collective euphoria, and this is most evident when a large group of people gather together. Mass hysteria, mass grief, mob riots, national fervour or patriotism, sporting crowds, religious/spiritual gatherings, etc., all attest to the overwhelming power of these common psychic feelings. * VINEETO: Although it is common belief, particularly on this list, that it is thoughts and conditioning which are the cause of the problems in the world, there is overwhelming anecdotal, empirical and personal observational evidence that it is the genetically-encoded instinctual passions that produce feelings, i.e. emotions-backed thoughts, of fear and aggression in each and every human being. Therefore, this ‘common thought-sphere’ that UG Krishnamurti speaks of is, in fact, a collective feeling-sphere. JAMES: If this is true that might explain our subconscious reactions in that the instincts are reacting to this collective feeling-sphere. VINEETO: What is your personal observation and experience of your ‘subconscious reactions’ ‘reacting to this collective feeling-sphere’? Maybe you recall incidents where you had the distinct impression that the feelings you experienced were also feelings picked up from the people around you, either in a mass-event, an election campaign or in a gathering of friends where a sudden shift of atmosphere calls for you to shift your feelings about something so as to fall in line with the collective? There are many more examples where one can observe ‘ this collective feeling-sphere ’ in action, if only one shifts the focus of attention and awareness from a thoughts-only perspective to one’s feelings and emotions. JAMES: However, my most recent personal observational evidence is that thought does control the instincts. VINEETO: Indeed. The only way up to now has been thinking and acting in accordance with a strict moral and ethical code in order to control one’s instinctual passions. These morals and ethics are socially and spiritually conditioned thoughts, underpinned by peer instilled feelings of guilt, fear and shame – ‘this is good’, ‘this is bad’, ‘this is right’, ‘this is wrong’, ‘you are bad’, ‘you are wrong’, ‘you will go to hell’. This straight-jacketed restraint and training is so strong that one can control one’s instincts to a certain degree, until push comes to shove and control is temporarily lost – a flare of anger, a sexual flash at the ‘wrong’ moment, an overwhelming fear, a feeling of desperation ... everybody knows those moments when control is lost or overcome or even in some cases readily abandoned. JAMES: This could be related to the ‘switch’ that you previously mentioned. VINEETO: I had said – [Vineeto]: Linking an unwanted automatic behaviour or emotional reaction to a childhood memory is the traditional approach to looking at emotions but it doesn’t reveal the functioning of one’s instinctual program. But as you explore a particular emotional reaction and come to experientially understand how ‘you’ at your core is functioning in this particular aspect, then you will eventually see the switch to turn this function off. For instance, once I know by experience that I am, like all human beings, instinctually programmed to automatically and instantly react in ‘self’-defence, then I can focus my awareness to this instant automatic reaction until ‘I get a foot in the door’, de-automatize my instinctual reaction, understand that it is silly to act that way, until it stops occurring by itself. But the exploration needs to be experiential – cognitive knowledge doesn’t scratch the surface. [endquote]. In order to find the ‘switch’ to permanently rid oneself of a particular emotional reaction one needs to first become aware of it in order to explore the origin of this reaction. That origin is very often related to one’s social identity like national pride, gender identity, religious, spiritual or philosophical viewpoints, belonging to a family, a professional self-image, etc, etc. Finding the source of one’s emotional behaviour, i.e. finding the part of identity that is related to this particular emotional behaviour, is not merely a thought activity, one will have to conduct an experiential dig into the psyche, a ‘feeling it out’ while being aware of one’s feelings at the same time. A control via thought will repress (stop) the instinctual reaction for the time being and thus avoid its investigation and prevent one from eliminating the cause of the reaction. * VINEETO: All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via this feeling-sphere or psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ and from the Divine to the Diabolical. When ‘you’, the ‘self’, actively practice expanding from a personal consciousness into the collective consciousness, those vibes, energies or currents are more clearly and distinctly noticed and the instinctual battle for survival is then fought on another, ‘higher’ and grander scale. With apperception, the brain’s ability of being aware of being conscious, one becomes aware of the folly of this collective consciousness and one becomes aware of the psychic powers and grand feelings that are wielded by the gurus as part and parcel of this collective consciousness. In that clear awareness of the nature of collective consciousness itself one is then able to step outside of this psychic web, outside of humanity. Only by stepping outside of the psychic web or the common feeling-sphere is there complete freedom from emotion-backed thoughts. JAMES: Are you saying that the only way to step outside of this psychic web is to eliminate the instincts? VINEETO: Yes. ‘Who I think and feel I am’ is a psychological and psychic entity. Unless this entity is totally eliminated one is forever trapped in this psychic web. JAMES: Are you saying that the instincts are what connect us to this psychic web? VINEETO: Yes. All human beings have the same set of animal instinctual passions, the survival instincts. The core of these passions is the instinctive psychic self – who we feel we really are, deep down inside. JAMES: This could be true but also could be illusion. VINEETO: I am reporting ‘personal observational evidence’ and the evidence of other pioneers who have explored and investigated their emotions and instinctual passions. The only way for you to find out how the psychic web functions, is to experiment and gather ‘personal observational evidence’. The psychic web is an illusion in the sense that it is not actual as in tangible, audible, visible, etc. But it is very, very real for every human being, evidenced by the unmistakable grip that emotions and instinctual passions have on people and on humanity as a whole. Unless one becomes aware of the psychic web’s functioning in oneself this illusion is one’s everyday reality. Yesterday I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and found it an excellent example of the psychic web in action. A band of 2000 musicians from all over the world was playing, all nationalities wearing an identical blue-red-beige uniform, everyone marching in exact formations while playing the various national hymns from all over the world. The audience’s spirit was soaring high, cheers and tears, overwhelmed by the feeling of ‘we are all one’, ‘we are the world’, feeling unity, glory, bliss and love. It is amazing how simple methods – heart-stirring music, uniforms and people marching in formations – can cast an effective spell on the collective human psyche. However, the feeling of ‘unity’ immediately dispersed as soon as the athletes of all the countries started marching into the stadium wearing their national costumes, under individual flags. Then the psychic scene changed, the feeling was now of individual national pride. Each nation was now separate from the other and soon each athlete will be competing against the others for the glory of their particular country and for their own personal fame. The feeling of Unity is but a short-lived feeling ... the psychic vibe changes readily when the music changes. RESPONDENT: When I studied psychology some years ago, for only about three months because it’s really dry stuff, the main psychology course was taught by a professor who didn’t believe in the psyche. The book he warmly recommended to us was titled ‘Der Geist Fiel Nicht Vom Himmel’ (The Spirit or Psyche didn’t Fall from Heaven). The professor surely was a man of common sense, wasn’t he. He really believed that the Psyche is created by biochemistry of the body. It was a socialist university. In Louvain, at a catholic university, the psychology professor believed a soul or psyche exists, of course. Socialists tend to be materialistic, don’t they, maybe because of their long struggle against the church-supported governments, and they tend to be physical because of belonging to the working class, using their body a lot. VINEETO: What do you want to prove by giving me the example of two professors believing opposite theories? But then, what were your conclusions of their teaching? What facts did they give you, what were your investigations? You are presenting opposite beliefs, not facts. As I see it, psychology in itself is based on one assumption after the other, and the different schools are all unable to produce valid empirical facts to prove their theories. This is because psychology itself – I have studied it for four years – is trying to conceptualise, understand and change human emotions and behaviour. Behaviour is one thing, one can produce some empirical data on behaviour. But Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Fromm and others were trying to conceptualise something that is part of the collective psychic construct, produced in the head (or heart), feed by the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. From within the Human Condition, influenced by their current concepts, beliefs, upbringing or environment the particular psychologist is as trapped in his belief system as are his clients. Psychology tries to produce maps for the psychic world, whereas the fact is that the psychic world is a huge construct of imagination and instincts, and can be eliminated entirely (both ego and soul). Once you have stepped out of the real world of emotions and beliefs into the actual world, with the ‘self’ in temporary abeyance as in a pure consciousness experience, you can see the root cause of human emotions and beliefs very clearly. No psychology needed. * VINEETO: Once I saw with apperception – bare awareness – what I was doing, that I was joining this ‘real’ world of feelings and concepts, it disappeared in a ‘pop’. Now, being back here, I can communicate again about this so wondrous, fairy-tale-like, sensuous, obvious actual world... RESPONDENT: hmmm, sounds really Osho-like VINEETO: It is very hard to talk about something outside of beliefs to a believer. And I am still new in this business of describing actual freedom. I only know how I got out of my spiritual beliefs and that it rocked me to the very core. I have seen the psychic world from the outside like planet earth from a space-ship. Once you dare not to assume or imagine anything and only rely on your physical senses, this psychic world is seen as the imagination it is, woven by all of humanity since humans have lived on earth... quite a challenging thing to question or leave behind. Or do you say that Osho was not talking about transcending the body, transcending sex, in order to become enlightened? ‘Sensuous’ includes all physical senses – but definitely not the sixth sense, which is imagination. * RESPONDENT: I don’t think you read Akashic records, do you? VINEETO: Yes, I have been tapping into those Akashic Records when ‘I’ still lived in the psychic world, and I have been studying the phenomenon as such on my way to freedom. It is a fascinating subject. As I have seen it, ‘Akashic Records’ is another word for the whole of humanity’s beliefs, the whole of Ancient Wisdom. For some reason this collective belief is accessible to whoever expands his or her ambition and search in the direction of collective beliefs and feelings. Nevertheless, those ‘Akashic Records’ are nothing but humankind’s collective imagination with millions of details and variations. They are the whole of the atavistic beliefs and, as such, an intrinsic part of the Human Condition. In that collective psychic world one finds Universal Sorrow with its opposite – Compassion and Universal Dread with its opposite – Bliss. Those feelings, when one taps into them, are very powerful and convincing. You have probably experienced them yourself. They seem so all-encompassing as if there has never been anything as compelling and true as this experience. So powerful as to be convincingly real – one feels that one has discovered the Hidden Secrets of Humanity – that All has been revealed! That is simply due to the nature of the collective. And yet, these compelling feelings and thoughts are not actual. They only exist in the head (or heart). The moment I become aware of what is happening and, as a result, stop feeding them, they shrink into normal size emotions and eventually die away. Here is a bit that I wrote when I had an experience of Universal Dread – if you are interested... The desperate feeling of being forever trapped in the psychic world that I experienced during that dread is summed up in the saying that you keep quoting: ‘There is nothing new under the sun’.
> | [Vineeto]: ‘Watching a film on WW II, I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the collective sorrow, guilt, depression and dread that made up the ‘dark part’ of the ‘German soul’. The feeling became so bizarre and threatening that I started to desperately look for something to bring me back here into the actual world. At the same time I was curious to experience and explore this new intensity of feeling. I seemed to be standing at the edge of an immense abyss of hell, which emanated all of the terror and dread of humanity, stretching endlessly into a grey dead infinity with no hope and no way out, ever. My eyes were searching for something physical to anchor on. I stood at the window, repeating to myself, ‘this is a fence, this is grass, this is a flower.’ The bright redness of the bougainvillea outside in the garden penetrated a little into this powerful magnet of dread that was threatening to swallow me for eternity.
> Above the abyss of dread appeared enlightenment, seductively blinking, promising bliss as the solution to this overwhelming hopelessness and sense of ‘evil’. But as I had seen through the illusion the enlightenment option only a few days before, I was not convinced to go down that land of imaginary bliss – I wanted freedom from illusion, any illusion. So I fixed my eyes on the red flowers, until slowly, slowly the dread lost some of its power and turned into the familiar feeling of fear. But it was far from being over! I started to look for more actuality, longing for the taste of coffee in my mouth, for sounds in my ear and wind on my skin. Nothing else would get me out of this powerful collective and atavistic passionate dream. Peter had told me about a similar experience that he had had just a few days earlier and had seen that there is no solution to be had in feeling everyone’s dread, everyone’s hopelessness. |
So I activated all my willpower to manoeuvre myself back into the physical world of the senses, where neither dread nor enlightenment exist – and I eventually succeeded. The experience left me shaking for another day, and I am glad to know that the door marked ‘dread’ is as much a dead-end-road as the door marked ‘enlightenment’. Quite a Rocky Horror Picture Show, just more real – and yet, all happening inside one’s own head! (Vineeto, Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness). This drama was one of the many that I encountered when dismantling the psychic entity in me, the very ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. It is an enormous drama, played out on the stage and along the script of humanity’s past. The more the ‘self’ felt exposed and threatened, the more the drama changed from being personal into being felt as the vastness of the collective psyche. It was an incredibly fascinating time, discovering the emotionally compelling, yet dreamlike fantasy world that the Human Psyche is capable of producing. As one piece after another of the psychic construct fell off ‘me’, it simultaneously removed another layer of the dampening and distorting veil that had covered my physical senses. The colours are now more vivid, the sounds multi-layered, the skin awake to feel the temperature and consistency of the air, the tiny hairs on the forearm being touched by the soft breeze, everything is alive, throbbing, delighting in the smorgasbord of the unending sensual pleasures that this world presents. Everybody teaches, believes and hopes that love and compassion are the remedy for misery and hate, and nobody told us that those ‘good’ emotions are as much part of the disease as the ‘bad’ emotions. To free oneself from the whole disease of the Human Condition, the Psychological as well as the Psychic World, is to arrive in the actual world of people, things and events. A flesh-and-blood body innocent of any ‘being’ whatsoever is benevolent, free of both good and evil, delighting each moment in the infinite magnificence of being here and being alive. Wow, what a big loop that was – from the Akashic Records back to the benevolence of the actual world – I am still catching my breath. I really enjoy this conversation. Tell me what you make of it.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence | Library – Topics Index
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