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 Thought Actualism Homepage VINEETO: But then it is, of course, up to you what words you use in order to determine if a certain feeling or attitude or decision or action is appropriate or inappropriate in your aim of becoming more harmless and more happy. RESPONDENT: Oh, in actualism my own thinking is respected and I don’t have to just use all of Richard’s terms? VINEETO: Doing your own thinking is an unavoidable necessity because you will have to do the whole process on your own, by yourself and for yourself. Other vital ingredients are a memory of a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience (PCE) and pure intent – because the memory of the PCE will act as your guiding light as well as your touchstone or benchmark. Discussions with fellow actualists can also facilitate your own investigations so as to determine the facts about certain topics in order that you can discover the full extent of the beliefs, morals and ethics and dimwitticisms that one has unwittingly, inadvertently or deliberately taken on board in the course of one’s life. RESPONDENT: I think a lot of people think they must use Richard’s verbal constructs exclusively. I’m VERY glad to hear this is not the case. VINEETO: In order to understand other people’s reactions to the writings of actualists it is useful to keep in mind that because actualism is about becoming actually free of the human condition in toto, it questions everybody’s dearest beliefs. Whilst people might at first be attracted by the vivid descriptions of life in an actual freedom or even by the pleasure and ease of a virtual freedom, many soon discover that they don’t want to pay the prize and then they begin to snipe, object, argue for arguing sake or begin bargaining to keep at least some of their pet beliefs. What you sometimes find in the discussions on this list are situations where clear thinking is muddled and prevented by emotions, feelings and beliefs (emotion-backed thoughts) even to a point where cognitive dissonance or denial make any further understanding of actualism impossible. RESPONDENT: Though I understand why he keeps his words consistent and I am learning to speak the founding actualist’s language. VINEETO: When I discovered actualism I found that I had been conditioned not only by the content of my particular spiritual teaching but also by the specifically loose and often deliberately vague use of language within the group of followers. I have since discovered that spiritualists like to keep the language they use vague, ambiguous, unclear and imprecise. They do not like to ascribe clear meanings to words – they prefer instead to intuit their own personal meanings to words, ascribing affective meanings to words that often are at odds with the actual meaning of the word itself. Many uphold this inability or refusal to communicate accurately as a virtue, claiming the word is not the thing, maintaining that words are merely concepts, alluring to ‘things that can’t be described’, and so on. When I became an actualist I learnt to be specific in what I wanted to convey because accuracy in expression aided my accuracy in thinking and in order to be accurate I often use the English dictionary, more especially so given that English is not my first language. There is no such thing as ‘the founding actualist’s language’ – it’s a furphy invented by objectors. Apart from a few catchy phrases such a ‘happy and harmless’ there are very few words that are used different to dictionary definitions – Co-Respondent: You yourself give a particular meaning to the word ‘affective’. Richard: No ... I use the dictionary meaning, actually. The only words I give a particular meaning to are ‘actual’ and ‘real’ (because people have made the word ‘real’ mean pretty well anything metaphysical at all) and the words ‘fact’ and ‘true’ (because people have made the word ‘true’ mean pretty well anything at all). When people stop using ‘real’ and ‘true’ to mean metaphysical things I will go back to using them. (Richard, List B, No. 4a, 9 December 1998) Additionally Richard coined the term ‘pure consciousness experience (PCE)’ in order to specifically describe the ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience in contrast to other altered states of consciousness where the ‘self’ is not only still present but has become rampant. * VINEETO: I am bound to as becoming actually free is the overarching passion to which all other instinctual passions have become deferential. Yet each time when I experienced a bout of impatience I have come to realize that it never serves to speed up the process, on the contrary, impatience, if left unchecked, can fester into doubt and throw me off the wide and wondrous path. So I have learnt to recognize the symptoms of impatience earlier and quicker in order that I can nip them in the bud more easily before the feeling takes over entirely. RESPONDENT: Ah ... have a passion for H&H but not impatience. That is a good distinction. VINEETO: No that is not what I meant. RESPONDENT: While I can see how your meticulous replies can be tiring to others, I more and more see it as a welcome sign of thoroughness. VINEETO: Good, because thoroughness is all it is. I found that if I wanted to get to the bottom of my problems, I had to be thorough, much more thorough than I had been in my spiritual explorations and much more thorough than I had been in all of the therapy groups I had done. In order to do so, I had to dust off my capacity to think and reflect, something which I had left with my shoes outside the gate. I then had to learn how to think something through from beginning to end and, when distracted, pick up the thread again, get back to the point and continue on, until I eventually unearthed the facts of the matter in question. I became aware of the many tactics I employed in order to avoid a thorough investigation particularly when the topic was scary or uncomfortable – feeling tired, wanting to blame, getting confused, feeling numb, playing dumb, forgetting the subject, confusing the issue, seeking a distraction, becoming emotional, and so on. It needs a good deal of persistence and intent to bypass all those ‘self’-created obstacles … but then again I was thoroughly fed up with suffering and thoroughly fed up with being angry. It was clearly time to change. RESPONDENT: Comments from any interested parties welcome... A little while back (or maybe it was in the archives... I can’t keep track of everything), Vineeto (I think) said that when she wasn’t focused on a specific task, she actually stopped thinking. I remember from my zen sitting days being amazed at the cacophony of voices in my head. If these have stopped for Vineeto, then presumably the voices are the constant background ramblings of the ‘I’. VINEETO: This is the piece of conversation I found about stopping thinking – [Respondent]: Beats sitting on your butt for hours, not-thinking. [Vineeto]: Funny, you should say that. Nowadays, thinking seems to simply switch off when there is nothing to think about. Lying on the couch and letting my eyes cast over the various colours, shades and forms outside the window, listening to the bird-sounds on Richard’s screensaver while sipping a fresh hot cup of coffee is one of my favourite pass-times on a weekend. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 38a, 16.1.2002). (Editor’s note: The screensaver is no longer available due to its incompatibility with Windows 8) I described a similar experience somewhere else – [Vineeto]: The other day I noticed with astonishment, and a little bit of disorientation, that I would look at things and no thoughts occurred, just the visual intake of colours and forms, shades and movements. Even trying to crank up a train of thought was not very successful. Life just isn’t that complicated that I have to think about it very much. I remember from my spiritual days that I would have given an arm and a leg for hours without thought – and then, when I occasionally succeeded, I was not only afraid to lose it any minute but I would also be very dazed and foggy – and filled with ‘good’ feelings, of course. Now, thinking is available when necessary or when I want to nut out something but the rest of the time I simply enjoy being alive. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, James, 11.1.2000). My observation during the process of actualism was that it was my emotions that were responsible for my brain rambling on when there was nothing practical to think about – the worries, fears, desires and hopes that kept the constant flow of neurotic thought going. Consequently, when I began to investigate my beliefs, feelings and emotions, and dismantled the affective identity that feeds and maintains those beliefs, feelings and emotions, my rambling thoughts slowly began to disappear into thin air. The spiritual concept of blaming thought for all the evils of mankind – and the solution of trying to stop thought – does not work because ‘the cacophony of voices in [the] head’ is caused by the feelings and instinctual passions that occur prior to thought. Feelings and instinctual passions trigger off a lot of thoughts but for peace of mind one has to dig deeper into one’s feelings and emotions. The solution lies in questioning and examining not only the little person in the head, the ‘I’, but simultaneously the little person in the heart – ‘me’, the core of my being. PS: Richard’s selected correspondence on both ‘self’ and ‘thought’ might give you some further food for thought. * VINEETO: I have found that my pace of writing on this mailing list has slowed down mainly because information about how to become free from the human condition can now be found on the ever increasing website. My motivation for writing has changed as well. In the beginning I had a lot of enthusiasm to share with my fellow seekers my discovery of actualism. But the longer I engaged in conversation with people about becoming actually free from the human condition I discovered that everyone has to make their own choice as to what they want to do with their lives. Those who are discontent enough with the way human beings treat each other will be ready to enter the process of changing themselves. So my initial enthusiasm has changed into understanding that ‘I’ am redundant, yet again. But I do enjoy a good conversation about the adventure of being alive and about the successes and pitfalls on the path to becoming free from the beliefs and feelings that arise out of our instinctual programming. RESPONDENT: I’m finding more and more often that I’ll type up a note with some miscellaneous query, only to discard it when I realize that that information is already to be found on the site. Or, I actually know the answer already. There’s always a tendency to over-intellectualize, which I suppose is not atypical of newbies. Sometimes, I ask questions within the framework of what has gone before, but there’s no escaping the simple approach stated repeatedly via the site and this list. There comes a point where one has to stop talking, and start doing. Thanks again to you (and all) for the feedback. VINEETO: I did not mean to discourage you from writing, far from it. In my own process of actualism, I found talking to people and writing to various mailing list a substantial part of the actualism practice. The many conversations I had aided me in questioning my familiar thought-patterns, beliefs and particularly my feelings – they were an essential part of the ‘doing’ of becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow. I also benefited a lot from reading Richard’s web-correspondences as they kick-started my then rusty and spiritually trained brain into using my intelligence instead of the habitual feelings and intuition. When I made the effort to put into words my own understanding, it further sharpened my attentiveness to the finer details of ‘self’-observation and ‘self’-investigation … and it is a lot of fun, too. A good conversation is in fact something immensely enjoyable and satisfying because just as our senses enjoy sensate stimuli, so does the brain enjoy thinking. And the less one’s thinking is polluted and hampered by one’s feelings and beliefs, the more enjoyable it is. 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. * 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 to No. 8: When I came across actualism, the first thing I had to do was dust off my brain and shift it back into thinking gear – discovering how to think, contemplate and inquire in a way that there is some result. I found it useful in my contemplations to always remember to keep coming back to the question or issue, and not – as our usually untrained brains tend to do – get lost in the different alleys and branches of speculation, imagination or irrelevant side issues. I became aware that whenever the subject was too close to the bone, whenever a dearly held belief was questioned, I was usually very quick in changing the subject and steering away from the ‘dangerous’ area. I remember being surprised to discover how roundabout and aversely my way of thinking often had been. Mind and thinking has such a bad press in the spiritual world where one is taught that the gateway to ‘inner peace’ is to ‘follow your feelings, trust you intuition and leave your mind at the door’. When I started on the path to Actual Freedom it was a pleasure and delight to re-instate, lubricate and develop my common sense and intelligence in order to make sense of all the beliefs that I had adopted, the instinctual passions that I was driven by and begin to understand the actual world. It was fascinating to observe and experience my brain clicking into clear function – at first only once in a while with what one would call a ‘striking thought’ and then I noticed that I could actually make sense of a down-to-earth conversation about Actual Freedom I had with either Richard or Peter. Eventually I was able to think straightforward thoughts, unclouded by fear or imagination and come to startlingly obvious conclusions. The outcome of such application of common sense was often very staggering, new, fresh and shockingly different to what I had believed, ‘felt’ or ‘intuited’. Down-to-earth practical common sense, of course, has nothing to do with rational theorizing, useless philosophizing, cerebral masturbation or conceptual imagination. For me, the crucial test of common sense always is – how can I put my understanding into practice, how can I actualize my realization, how can I act on the ‘striking thought’. In my spiritual days, striking thoughts would come and go and I did nothing but revel in the feeling of ‘knowing’. Those insights, even when they were sensible realizations, disappeared without a trace after a few hours or days and didn’t have any impact on solving my problems. Nowadays, because I am vitally interested in being here, I enjoy the stunning clarity that the human brain is capable of and I also put my understanding into action – and what excellence, what a thrill! 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. The other aspect of going mad is that I am experiencing the limitations of sensible thought in comprehending the infinitude of the actual world. The other night, in a flash of a PCE, I looked at Peter and experienced the abundance of an exquisite intimacy with another human being in our mutual delight of being alive, while thinking at the same time – ‘I am glad that I don’t have to believe it, it is unbelievable and incomprehensible. It is simply too vast to understand.’ I can only sensately yield to the immensity of the experience of copious perfection and magical actuality. Freaky stuff. My thinking has been, up to now, the reliable guide for making sense of the world, after I had abandoned feelings as dependable arbiters of understanding. Yet this experience was so stunningly obvious that it cannot be brushed aside anymore – the making sense of the world, that up to now gave me confidence and security, has very clear limitations. Beyond those limits lies the thrill of the coruscating (thanks for the word, Richard) abundance of the infinite and eternal universe, clearly experienced with my senses but beyond comprehension through thought alone. As I see it, the first stage on the path to Actual Freedom was epitomized by questioning beliefs and eliminating emotions and feelings and making sense of the world by using thought, reflective contemplation and common sense. This exercise has been a major part of the journey out of the Human Condition, leaving belief, feeling, intuition, imagination and Ancient Wisdom behind. By applying common sense I could venture out of the restrictive and myopic self-centredness of my social identity and discover the underlying bare instinctual passions at the core of my being. These passions can be experienced and sensibly understood by reflective comprehension but not eliminated. As Richard made it clear again in his latest correspondence – Richard: Okay ... this is important, vital, pivotal: ‘I’, the thinker, know that ‘I’ cannot do it ... ‘I’ cannot disappear ‘myself’. Only the ‘utter fullness’ can, and the ‘utter fullness’ is ‘calling one’, each moment again, and it is only when ‘I’ fully comprehend – totally, completely, fundamentally – that to be living this ‘utter fullness’ is to be living ‘my’ destiny will one be able ‘to answer that call’. This full-blooded endorsement means it then becomes inevitable. (Richard, List B, No. 25, 18 June 2000). Experiencing the limitations of thought and understanding in an undeniable obviousness created a ‘glitch in the program’ that floods me now with sensate experiencing without the usual stifling attempt or ability to categorize it or intellectually comprehend it. My brain is at times as though wrapped in cotton wool, stunned by the change of perspective and the immensity of the experiential understanding that nothing is merely passive. It is utterly thrilling to be alive. It is great that you are back on line, Alan. I always enjoy writing to you because I never know what observations and experiences of the adventures on the path to freedom will emerge from the keyboard. RESPONDENT: Thanks for your answer to my questions. I need to ask you about two things. First, in your everyday life, is there a centre in your mind or is it that all centres have been dissolved due to the process of disintegration of your psyche? And also, what is your relationship to your thinking mind (verbal thoughts in your mind). I mean, what priority it has in your everyday life. If your feelings are gone, then does it mean that you pay more attention (or maybe act upon these thoughts if there is no ‘self’ to pay attention to it) to your rational mind. Another, opposite possibility would be that the mind is chattering, thoughts floating in the consciousness (this is probably not the case since you said there is no witness personality in yourself). VINEETO: A centre in my mind? I had to think about what that could mean? The brain is functioning, thoughts are going through the head, sometime in contemplative way if there is a particular subject that I am focussing my attention on. At other times there are just bits and pieces of thoughts floating about ... just like now, the thought about a cup of coffee floated in, and since it was the second time, I got up to make us a cup of coffee. While I made the coffee I was thinking about telling you that little bit about thought... Brain is a fascinating thing. It can also be not engaged. Hearing the traffic noise and the drip of the coffee doesn’t require thinking, whereas writing about it does. So the brain swings in motion when attention is applied and idles in rest-mode when it is not needed. While apperception, the awareness of the senses and the brain’s activity is always happening, while I am awake, thoughts are not always happening. The sense of ‘centre’ or sense of ‘being’ is a function of the psychological and psychic entity. I once compared it being the imaginary cord that ties each moment to the next as emotional, ‘meaningful’ past, present and future. Once this entity is gone, each moment is fresh, only happening now. One could imagine this as very chaotic, without proper order, but it is actually a delightful sequence of moments, lived sensible, sensately, delicious, alive. VINEETO to James: The other day I noticed with astonishment, and a little bit of disorientation, that I would look at things and no thoughts occurred, just the visual intake of colours and forms, shades and movements. Even trying to crank up a train of thought was not very successful. Life just isn’t that complicated that I have to think about it very much. I remember from my spiritual days that I would have given an arm and a leg for hours without thought – and then, when I occasionally succeeded, I was not only afraid to lose it any minute but I would also be very dazed and foggy – and filled with ‘good’ feelings, of course. Now, thinking is available when necessary or when I want to nut out something but the rest of the time I simply enjoy being alive. Such marvellous excellence! RESPONDENT: I don’t understand how can anything be wrong in this universe. According to Richard (in fact, according to many Enlightened ones, but Richard never accepts it), the world is so perfect that nothing can be wrong here. Then where is the question of bringing peace to earth. I must mention here that I am not against Richard or pro Eastern thinkers. This argument is just to understand the so called new thinking. VINEETO: There is nothing wrong with the universe. But there is something fatally wrong with humanity, with every human being, in fact. We are born with the core instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, overlaid by our social and religious conditioning and then have built our own so-called identity on top of it. We call it the Human Condition. This condition is responsible for all the wars, murders, rapes etc. on this planet, it is the source of sorrow and malice in each of us. And it is deleteable. The Eastern thinking talks about stopping thought, removing ‘the little man in the head’, the ‘thinker’ – but the identity only shifts to ‘the little man in the heart’, the ‘feeler’. Emotions and instincts (the soul and the ‘core of our being’) remain untouched and are operating in every meditator, in every enlightened one, better than ever. As Richard says, the ‘I’, the ego dies, but the ‘me’, the soul, becomes even more rampant. The ‘new thinking’ is not ‘so called’, it is that both, ‘I’ and ‘me’, ego and soul, ‘self’ and ‘Self’, have to die in order to experience the world-as-is, radiant, perfect, alive, pure and benevolent. This is peace-on-earth. It can only be achieved by each individual becoming free of their respective psychological and psychic entities. RESPONDENT: Thanks for the response, it was very interesting, especially the part where you discuss real and spiritual. My concern though was about abstract concepts and if they exist in the real or actual world. VINEETO: The real world is chock-a-block full of abstract concepts and passionate imaginations, whereas by stepping into the actual world any abstract cerebral-only concepts are instantaneously supplanted by sensuous and sensual information and the sensibility of reflective thought that is stripped of social morals and ethics and freed from instinctual passions. And when it comes to understanding and experiencing the vastness of this infinite and eternal universe or the fact that we are speeding on a rotating globe in the middle of nowhere, then abstract concepts fail miserably – one can only stand in wonder at the endless delight and perfection, abundance and sparkling diversity. RESPONDENT: Another question I have if it is possible for the human brain to operate without these concepts. Our brain works with information, it’s a computing organ. Not at all similar with a computer in design or internal operation, but still it’s some sort of computing device. The brain is processing information and information is in some sense abstract. Even if information needs some kind of physical entity to exist it is still not physical in its nature. All our senses are detecting information from the nature surrounding us. VINEETO: The information that the brain processes is information that is obtained by the physical senses and, as such, the information is directly related to the physical material world – smell, touch, sound, vision and taste. The brain works like a big fast biofeedback computer, processing the sensual information about the physical world via millions of neural connections and switches. The process of clear and pure thinking, i.e. without an interfering and ‘self’-centric interpreting identity, is remarkably simple, straightforward and effective. The reason why our sensual information is not being perceived in such a pure and clear way is because of our animal instinctual passions and the culturally imposed ethical and moral conditioning – the Human Condition. The way human beings usually process sensual information is primarily instinctual and the result is that the information is ‘abstracted’, separated from its physical sensual source, generalized, theorized, symbolized, conceptualized, intellectualized, idealized, scanned by moral/ethical evaluation and topped up with plenty of intuition and imagination. As such, the initial sensory information is, usually without noticing, removed from physical facts, edited, twisted and adjusted to the rules of our cerebral-abstract and affective-metaphysical world of belief, opinion, viewpoint and theory. To illustrate the nature of the physical process that gives rise to the emotionalising of incoming sensory input it is useful to look at the findings of empirical science – Peter: The most significant of LeDoux’ experimentation with regard to fear is that the sensory input to the brain is split at the thalamus into two streams – one to the amygdala and one to the neo-cortex. The input stream to the amygdala is quicker – 12 milliseconds as opposed to 25 milliseconds to the neo-cortex. Less information goes to the amygdala quicker – it operates as a quick scan to check for danger. Indeed LeDoux regards the amygdala as the alarm system, for bodily safety – hence the necessity for a quick scan and an almost instantaneous instinctive (thoughtless) response. This ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ results not only in a direct automatic bodily response to either an actual or a perceived danger, but because the amygdala also has a direct connection to the neo-cortex – it causes us to emotionally experience the feeling of fear – i.e. we feel the feeling of fear a split-second later than the bodily reaction. (Actual Freedom Library, Our Instinctual Passions in the Primitive Brain). What LeDoux has investigated is valid for every sensory input – the information is already filtered and distorted at the gateway, causing us to instinctually react to our sensory experience before we are aware of what has happened. This split-second later awareness is then experienced as an emotion or feeling, leaving scant opportunity for any sensible thought-process to even begin to happen. The actualism method of asking oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is designed to dismantle the social and instinctual programming that interprets and distorts, imagines and conceptualizes, and, given diligence and perseverance, one then starts perceiving things as they are, and, even more wondrously, starts seeing people as they are. Then the sensual information is not distorted by a fearful, sorrowful and malicious program, our identity, but is very concrete, direct and intimate, ever fresh and utterly fascinating. Reflective thought, as opposed to abstract concepts, will always instil practical application and down-to-earth sensibility into the biofeedback loop of the information and thinking process and therefore integrate a constant flow of physical sensual information. You can also look at the problem of abstracted thinking and feeling this way. ‘Who’ I think and feel I am is not a physical entity – ‘I’ experience myself as a meta-physical, psychological and psychic entity dwelling inside the flesh and blood body, looking out through the eyes, hearing through the ears, tasting with the tongue, feeling by touch, smelling through the nose. ‘Who’ I think and feel I am, as opposed to what I am, therefore always thinks and feels he or she is isolated from, and different in nature from, the physical world I actually live in. ‘I’ therefore can only gain a second-hand abstracted impression, via the physical senses of ‘my’ body, of what actually exists. ‘I’ am therefore always lost, always lonely, always frightened and always rely on cunning to get ‘my’ way. In a pure consciousness experience there is no abstraction or disconnection between the sensorial input and what is being seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelt. In a pure consciousness experience the vibrant physicality of the universe becomes immediately apparent and the sensuous actuality of its perfection and purity is such that ‘I’ am not only made temporarily redundant but ‘I’ can be clearly seen for the spoiler ‘I’ am. Actualism is the method and the process of coming to one’s senses, both literally and figuratively. RESPONDENT: Information is perhaps best described as difference. Scientist is saying difference, which makes a difference. Information have a peculiar intrinsic abstract property, you cannot always pinpoint where it is in time or in the room. Consider that I am holding one red book in one hand and a blue in the other, the difference is information, and the information is in the relation between the books. But we cannot say where in the room the information is, it is in the abstract relation between the two items. Looking at something, the light carries the abstract relations of the physical world to our brain, through the eyes and mirrors it in the brain. VINEETO: The ‘intrinsic abstract property’ that you ascribe to the sensual information itself is added by our totally ‘self’-centred thinking about the information we receive. There is nothing abstract about a tree, its green leaves or needles, its massive or slim trunk, its tall or sturdy figure. In your example of the blue and red book, the subject of your sensorial information is clearly in your right hand and in your left hand – demonstrably in space, in your hands, and in time, now. I cannot see anything abstract about the information of the objects being books or the fact that one is red and the other is blue. If you think the book in your hand is abstract, you only need hit your head with it to confirm that it physically exists in fact – that despite whatever metaphysical theories your mind may conjure up, the books do physically exist. Abstract conceptualizing means separating the information from its sensual context – the observable physical object. Our psychological and psychic entity is inevitably prone to feel it is a mirror, reflecting, distorting and tainting the actuality of the world around us. To discover what is actual, one needs to question one’s psychological and psychic entity – the distorter, separator, spoiler. To maintain an abstract concept or meta-physical belief of people, things and events that make up the physical world will only serve to prevent you from experiencing the perfection and purity of the actual world we live in. * VINEETO: The other night Peter and I went out for dinner and by chance met a couple we knew from our spiritual days. As we started discussing about life, the universe and what we have discovered in about being a human being, Peter talked about the difference between actualism, reality and spiritualism. The man responded that you could never really know what is actual. He touched the table we sat on and said ‘this is not a table – it is just the word ‘table’. For Australian Aborigines it would be a pile of firewood and not a table at all.’ Therefore, by his abstract thinking, he can never really know if what we call a table is really a table or in fact something completely different. <snip> His stated position was that we cannot know anything as a certainty and he had made that into his prime spiritual belief. Thus he made the sensual concrete experience of a simple wooden table into a spiritual experience of ‘Not-Knowing’ – another word for connecting with the Divine Unknowable. RESPONDENT: I also understand your friend’s statement at the dinner, that the table is, in some sense, a table because we compare it with an abstract concept in our brain. Without this comparison, and recognition, the table would have no meaning for us at all. Most scientists also believe that most of the processing in the brain is pure pattern recognition. But instead of storing all patterns and then try to compare all new ones with all previous stored, the brain works with abstracts and ideal ideas. We have a concept of the table stored, the concept is not necessarily associated with a certain physical table. VINEETO: By accident Peter and I met the same couple a few days later in another restaurant. They had finished their meal and, as the restaurant was full, they insisted that we should take over their table when they left. We had a short amicable chat and then they left. The man, who had previously said that he did not know if a table existed in fact or not, was now, by his very actions, neither questioning the function nor the existence of this table – he rested his elbows on it, he confidently placed his wine and meal on the table, he also without questioning communicated to us and the waitress about passing the table on to us for our use. His theories of ‘not-knowing’ were merely philosophical, conceptual and disconnected from his daily actions. His stated position of ‘Not Knowing’, derived from Eastern Spiritualism, turns the world upside down – everything physical is a mere concept and the only real thing is ‘Me’, the one who makes those concepts. No. 22’s philosophy reflects this Eastern spiritual concept, he is an expert in this field of [No. 22]: ‘I create what is by becoming what is’. By asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ you can, one by one, discover and strip away your abstract and spiritual concepts in order to free your senses so you can directly and intimately perceive the world and people around you. RESPONDENT: To understand new things, for example in physics, we can learn from books and create images of a reality, which we cannot see, smell and touch. These abstract concepts or models are absolutely essential for us to be able to grasp scientific ideas about nature. We are learning about the world by experience, which includes the creation of abstract concepts and ideal ideas. This is true when we learn to understand the nature of the physical world, but also true when we learn about ourselves and about our fellow man. VINEETO: ‘Creating images of a reality’ happens via the affective faculty in our brain. An example might help you to experience this fact rather than thinking it out theoretically – When someone talks about cars and you create a particular image of a car in your mind, upon closer examination you will find that this particular image of a car, the brand, its colour, size, speed, etc. is directly linked to a feeling. In this case it would most likely be a desire, a liking, or a favourable memory. If there is no particular liking of this or that car, you won’t produce an image when hearing the word ‘car’ but nevertheless you will know what the generic term ‘car’ stands for. As for ‘scientific ideas about nature’ – scientific ideas are but working models or theories for exploration purposes that will have to be proven to be verifiable, objective actuality in order to be considered scientific facts. And a fact is – ‘What has really happened or is the case; truth; reality: in fact rather than theory, the fact of the matter is; something known to have happened; a truth known by actual experience or observation: scientists work with facts.’ Oxford Dictionary 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: So my concern really is, if our brain works with abstract ideal ideas or concepts, represented by neurons working with different patterns when firing. And if these abstract concept represents knowledge of the physical world intermingled with concepts representing experiences and knowledge about feelings, both our own and our fellow man, and also about accepted social behaviour. Is it then possible to separate or remove all of this or even parts of it and still have an operational brain? VINEETO: Neurons do fire when emotions are triggered in the brain, this is something you can experience yourself quite easily the very next time you are emotional. However, just because there is more and more detailed physical evidence that maps some of our emotional and instinctual behaviour does not mean that this behaviour is unchangeable. Human beings can in fact learn to stop being a malicious and sorrowful entity by starting to investigate the entity in action. Eliminating the entity, and with it the automatic instinctual reactions, frees the brain for sensible and intelligent functioning when needed. There are three ways we experience the world – Cerebral – mental, conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, ideal, intellectual Affective – emotional, passionate, intuitive, compassionate, fiery, zealous Sensate – sensuous, visual, auditive, tasting, smelling, vivid, directly experiencing Cerebral interpretation and affective reaction are the only ways ‘I’, the psychological and psychic entity, can respond to the sensory information of the world around me. In order to directly experience the world around me, unimpeded by ‘my’ meta-physical concepts and emotional interpretations, it was vital that I inquired into the underlying emotions that were producing those elaborate concepts and beliefs in the first place. In order to make sense of the world around me, I developed a keen awareness towards my then permanently triggered emotional reactions and my uninterrupted flow of beliefs and imaginations. Slowly, slowly I was able to poke holes into this intricate web of emotions, affections, imagination, intuition, spiritual beliefs, truths, rights and wrongs and get glimpses of the astounding perfect actual world that lies beneath the human-made world of suffering, malice, fear and love. The adventure is to find out that ‘I’ am not needed for the brain to think, and that the brain is perfectly equipped for the job it does – the sophisticated biofeedback process of thinking, reflecting, planning, communicating and also of being aware of itself in operation. ‘I’ am not needed to process information through eyes, ears, skin and nose – the senses and the brain are perfectly equipped to collect, process and make sense of that information, if required. The human body and brain is, as far as we know, the pinnacle of the development of animate life in the universe and everything operates wondrously and perfectly without ‘me’, the instinctually driven entity that is continuously interfering in the ongoing perfection with ‘my’ fears and desires, aggression and nurture, morals and ethics, concepts and imagination. Yes, the more you remove parts of this ‘abstract ideal ideas or concepts, represented by neurons working with different patterns when firing’, the better the brain can operate and the more sensible you become. When you remember a Pure Consciousness Experience, as everyone had at least once in their lives, you will know, by direct experience, what clarity a non-cerebral, non-affective brain in operation is capable of. Freed from the crippling effect of instinctual passions and their resultant spiritual beliefs and meta-physical concepts one is able to be aware of the delightful process of the brain in operation ... ... or at rest, which I will do now. Actualism is the method and the process of coming to one’s senses, both literally and figuratively. RESPONDENT: Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?) seems to immolate the self ... does it make sense to anybody? VINEETO: No. Contrary to popular opinion, controlled thinking does not alter anything in your feelings and emotions, it only pushes one’s ‘self’-centred feelings and thoughts further under the carpet, so to speak, and thus it becomes more difficult to observe and investigate the ‘self’ in action. The ‘self’ can be likened to the little controlling man in the head and the little passionately driven man in the heart, and can only be tackled successfully by bringing them out into the open, into the bright light of awareness, for observation, examination and investigation so as to discover exactly how ‘I’ and ‘me’ operate and prevent the possibility of anything remotely resembling clear thinking from happening. ‘Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?)’ is comparable to re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, whereas by applying the method of actualism one does exactly the opposite – I acknowledge that all my feelings, emotions and emotion-backed thoughts (i.e. beliefs) are ‘me’, the ‘self’, the alien entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body. Thus I am un-doing the spiritual training of dis-identifying from unwanted feelings and emotions as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the self, I am not the bad emotions’, etc. By acknowledging that every feeling is ‘me’ in action I am then able to identify, label and observe each feeling, investigate its cause, its trigger and its source and once an affective feeling is understood experientially in its totality, it will disappear. In this way you nibble away at the ‘self’ bit by bit, affective feeling by affective feeling, self-centred thought by self-centred thought until ‘I’ and ‘me’ become so thin and transparent as to hardly interfere with the pure delight of being here. 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: 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: 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. JAMES: I was talking about an incident in which I was feeling the feeling of sorrow. The feeling became very intense and then there was a sudden flash of insight and the feeling of sorrow immediately vanished. This could be likened to a switch but I don’t know if this is what you were talking about. VINEETO: I cannot tell if this ‘sudden flash of insight’ was an understanding of the source of your emotional behaviour and of the part of your identity that had caused your feeling of sorrow. Humans also have the possibility to opt out of, or temporarily disassociate from, intense feelings of sorrow or fear. Personally, I started to pay particular attention to those deep feelings of sorrow in order to fully understand the implication and causes of my sorrow in order that I could practically apply the understanding when the next incident of feeling sorrow occurred. I began to extensively explore for myself in order to experientially understand how the programming of my brain works. After all, the human brain’s function is to think just as the eye’s function is to see and non-affective thinking combined with non-spiritual awareness is capable of immense clarity. JAMES: [UG]: 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. 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. 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 are 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. (Vineeto, List D, James, 14.9.2000). RESPONDENT: I wonder Vineeto, are you Richard, using the name Vineeto, if not you are for sure ‘trained’ by him. No. 7, sphereing! VINEETO: Ah, No. 7, you shouldn’t have any difficulty figuring this out for yourself. Wasn’t it you who wrote just recently – [Respondent]: The we and the me is an interesting concept, for the we means the me, and the me means the we, only however if ‘thought’ is not there, for if thought is there, there ‘is’ an actual we and me, if thought is absent the we ‘is’ the me, for we are the world, all the same, yet we are ‘thinking’ we (me) are different, idiots chasing their tails. [endquote]. So if ‘the me means the we’ and ‘we are the world’ then ‘thought is absent’ – so your comments must be thoughtless and not the result of thinking. You are but ‘sphereing’ in the common feeling-sphere of collectively shared feelings. Fortunately, the results from your ‘thoughtless’ feeling approach to figuring things out is not factual. I can and do use my brain – my intelligence and my awareness – to sort things out and arrive at factual conclusions. I don’t need to be ‘trained’ to recognize a tree as a tree and a coffee-cup as a coffee-cup, these are simply facts. What I first did was get rid of my spiritual conditioning that made me think ‘we is the me’ and feel we are all one Consciousness. I was then freed to observe and explore my beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions and become aware of the common feeling-sphere that connects all sentient beings. But people who think for themselves and investigate what is fact and what is belief are summarily dismissed in the spiritual world of ‘thoughtless’ endeavour where ‘we are the world, all the same’. For you, any people involved in a sincere in-depth investigation of spiritual conditioning and spiritual teachings are just ‘idiots chasing their tails’. This stubborn pursuit of thoughtless traditional solutions is the reason why the world is still in the mess it is today and there is no peace on earth in sight. To use your term – it has 100% failed. VINEETO: As it is my life and there is no God to reward or punish me before or after death, I can do with it what I like. And I chose to go for the best – an actual peace on earth in this lifetime. RESPONDENT: The idea of this life being ‘mine’ to do with as I chose with or without an imagined God is something extra added by thought. VINEETO: Are you hinting at being humble or grateful in the face of the Life-giving Force aka God? That life is not ‘ ‘mine’ to do with as I chose ’ but that ‘it is your’s my Lord’, or that ‘I am part of a Greater Existence and the closer I get to feeling It, the greater I get’? This ‘something extra added’ by passionate feeling can even lead to feeling oneself to be God himself/ herself/ itself. I said ‘as it is my life’ because I don’t owe it to anyone or anything else, there is no Higher Force, no Universal Consciousness, no Supreme Intelligence, no Immortal Being. My life started when I was born and will end when I die. I am alive as a result of a sperm meeting an egg and I will die as a result of old age, disease or an unexpected accident. There is no immortal soul in this body that existed before birth and that will continue after death and the acknowledgement of this fact gives me the freedom to do with my life as I choose – and I choose to become free of the genetically-encoded instinctual survival package instilled in every human being. Further, I don’t subscribe to the belief that thought must vanish in order to become free – this is but an ancient belief invented and maintained by those who didn’t know anything about genetically-inherent animal instinctual passions. The shamans, Gurus and teachers have always – for their own Self-interest – actively discouraged their followers from thinking for themselves and have always laid the blame for Evil at the door of thinking. How long do you want to continue with this superseded non-scientific twaddle that human beings are born innocent and only corrupted by society’s thoughts? T’is but a slightly adapted version of the ancient superstition that suffering and malice is caused by evil spirits that have to be driven out of the possessed person by prayer, ritual or sacrifice ... or giving the shaman a chicken or a chick. To try to stop thought only makes one passionately stupid, it doesn’t eliminate the instinctual passions – the lives of enlightened beings prove beyond doubt that enlightenment, a supposed thoughtless state, does not mean they don’t think, plot, plan and scheme, let alone become free one from the instinctual passions. For peace on earth to become actualized the soul, the instinctual ‘self’ has to become extinct along with the ego. Nothing less will do. * RESPONDENT: A seeker that deems himself better is the one that asserts that I (as opposed to most others) have realized. It doesn’t matter whether it is unity consciousness or an actual world of sparkling vibrant purity that is allegedly realized. Either way, the self is established in it. VINEETO: Your using of the term ‘allegedly’ points that you don’t know such sparkling vibrant experience of the actual world. What then puts you in the position of declaring with certainty that ‘the self is established in it’? The three ways a person can experience the world are cerebral (thoughts); sensate (senses); affective (feelings). In meditative dissociation one moves away from sensate and cerebral experiencing and aims to experience only the good part of the affective feelings. In Eastern religions and philosophy, this practice of suppression and non-attachment has been raised to a high art whereby one can, through assiduous practice, create a whole new, utterly dissociated, identity based solely on feeling Good-ness and God-ness. This process of becoming non-attached to feelings that are not desirable and identifying with the feelings that are considered desirable and are highly valued by our peers can lead to an Altered State of Consciousness whereby a mortal human being imagines and feels himself or herself to be above it all, as in Divine and Immortal. A normal ‘self’ experiences the world cerebrally and affectively as a grim and instinctual struggle for survival. A pious ‘self’, conditioned by the Eastern philosophy of right thinking and highly selective affectations, produces an illusion of unity consciousness that bears absolutely no relationship to the rampant fear, malice and sorrow that epitomizes the Human Condition. To stick one’s head in the clouds and imagine and feel a unity consciousness always has been, and always will be, a cop-out for there is in fact no God, no unity consciousness. When you say ‘either way, the self is established in it’, you are talking about an affective experience that can never be ‘self’-less. However, the ‘self’-less body, physical matter, is perfectly capable of experiencing both thought and sensation (cerebral and sensate experiencing). ‘Sparkling’ and ‘vibrant’ is the sensate description of the purity that prevails when there is no ‘self’ present to spoil the sensate and reflective experience. Thinking is nothing but biofeedback, although incredibly sophisticated. It is a perfectly physical phenomenon, which gets polluted and distorted by social-psychological and emotional-instinctual ‘self’-centredness. Awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings and sensate experiences is an even higher developed form of biofeedback. Such highly developed biofeedback can even observe its own instinctual-affective programming in operation and, given sufficient intent and persistence, systematically eliminate it. What an utter serendipitous outcome of animal evolution! RESPONDENT: All that ‘one’ can do is to be quiet, still, with no thought about ‘what is;’ then, ‘one’ is that originality that is occurring at that moment. VINEETO: I disagree. As it is proven fact that the instinctual passions are the root of the ‘self’, a pursuit of ‘no-thought’ is not sufficient to get rid of ‘me’. It is, at the most, doing half-the-job – eliminating a personal ego while freeing an impassioned thoughtless soul to wander around preaching God and God-realization, ensnaring yet more hapless victims in ancient fear-ridden beliefs. I do find it amazing that you who know the power of rage and the depth of sorrow and despair so well still espouse that one only needs to stop thought in order to ‘discover that which is original’. Or are implying that anger and sorrow are an integral ingredient of ‘that which is original’ as in ‘be quiet, still, with no thought about ‘what is’’ and practice dissociation such that one is Life itself? RESPONDENT: In your ‘veritable garden of paradise’ there is one who is experiencing, and in the unknown there is not an ‘experiencer’ who is separate from the garden itself. Where there is an ‘experiencer’, there is a lag, a tail. VINEETO: Just as it is the capacity and the function of the eyes to see, so it is the capacity and function of the brain to think and also to be aware of sensate experiencing and of thinking itself. When the ‘I’, the ego, and ‘me’, the soul, step down from the throne, the brain is merely being aware of sensate experience, thinking and being conscious. As you are only talking about removing thought and not the instinctual passions, what you call the ‘experiencer ’ is only the thinker, and not the feeler. Therefore, what you call ‘the unknown’ is a no-thought, feeling-only experience whereby the feeling entity has not disappeared, but become aggrandized and expanded into feeling overwhelming universality. Why not do the whole job and question and eliminate feelings and instinctual passions as well as your conditioned ‘self’-centred social and spiritual thoughts? VINEETO: In an actual freedom there is no thinker as an ‘I’, so there is no question about being capable or not of ‘abstract thought’. Thought happens or is used when it is needed, abstract or concrete or practical or humorous. And a lot of time you don’t need thought at all. To enjoy a cup of coffee, you need taste-buds, for sex you need other senses, you use your ears to enjoy the rain falling softly on the ground, soaking up the soil, you let your eyes roam on a magnificent tree outside your window, there is no thought needed at all. One is simply doing what’s happening, thought, no-thought, senses, wake, sleep, communication and contemplation. Once I get rid of the ‘I’, which is the thought-structure and feeling-concept we perceive ourselves to be, there is not question of right and wrong, you just use the obvious tool to respond to each situation. I noticed that you like the word ‘man’s potential’. KONRAD: As I have tried to make Richard aware of, and now you too, thought is needed to act purposefully. This is not a theory, but a fact. VINEETO: Not thought, but will. Thought follows what will has considered the next act to be accomplished. Will is needed to become free of the Human Condition, to work oneself out of the mess we are born into and conditioned with. Once I am free, I am then doing what is happening. Thought works out how to do it in the most sensible way.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence | Library – Topics Index
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