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 People Actualism Homepage VINEETO: When I began the hands-on process of doing something practical to become actually free from the human condition I noticed that I not only stopped indulging in my own malicious and sorrowful feelings but also found it impossible to support my former friends and allies in their passionate fights against what we had previously conceived as ‘our common enemies’ – within the sisterhood: ‘chauvinist men’, within the Sannyas community: ‘all non-Rajneeshees’, within the lefty’s network: ‘all capitalists’, within the purist community: ‘all non-vegetarians’, and so on. RESPONDENT: Right ... I can see how abandoning these causes (or, rather, going for the more comprehensive solution) could make one a traitor in some people’s eyes. Personally, I had already given up on social / political solutions before I encountered actualism, so I won’t have to deal with that one. (That is to say, I knew that with humanity in its current state no political change or social movement could stand a chance of lasting success, so my focus shifted to an individual psychological revolution / neurological evolution. I didn’t follow any spiritual tradition (apart from reading a bit of JK and Zen), but psychology, philosophy, drugs and music became my defacto ‘religion’). But this one ... [Vineeto]: Correspondingly I also ceased to actively support and encourage people in their sorrow and resentment of being here because I could more and more see the silliness and harm of doing so. [endquote]. ... is a different kettle of fish. I can see how the withdrawal of tacit support for the continuation of suffering (particularly the withdrawal of support for people’s personal sorrows and grievances) could undermine the foundations of a friendship. VINEETO: When I stopped supporting both my own feelings of sorrow and those of others I became increasingly aware of the extent to which my relationships were built upon mutual support for common grievances and loyal allegiances against what we perceived as difficult to deal with people, upsetting things and worrying events – in other words, when I sorted my own feelings out for myself I lost interest in other people’s sad stories and subsequently we had less in common to share. Friendships in the real world are by and large emotional allegiances against an adversarial world – where there is neither sorrow nor enemies, there is also no need for loyal and emotionally supportive friends. RESPONDENT: Next! A little advice for you Vineeto – get a life! VINEETO: Let me describe to you how I experience every-day life – Apart from very rare emotional wobbles I spend my days in perfect peace and harmony with everything and everyone around me. When I wake up in the morning I know that I am going to have a perfect day and when I go to bed at night-time I do so knowing that I have had a perfect day. I am not bothered by petty worries, jealousies, competition, arrogance, grumpiness, impatience, frustration, annoyance, anger, malice or irritation, nor do I get sad, miserable, gloomy, heart-broken, bored, tired, uneasy, embarrassed, disgusted, anxious or depressed. I very rarely come across an emotion in me, and when that happens I simply investigate into the root cause of the emotion and then immediately get on with enjoying life. In other words, cleaning up my grotty ‘self’ does actually work in everyday life in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are. Each day is a fresh day, I don’t know what surprises it will bring, but I know that I will enjoy it, for the grumpy, soppy, fearful ‘me’ that used to interfere with my enjoyment is greatly diminished. Every day is holiday-like regardless of whether I am going to work or whether I am staying at home because each moment I enjoy doing what is happening. Sometimes I work 5 days a week, sometimes only two or three, sometimes I spend all day updating the website and sometimes I work for hours in the garden. Writing on this mailing list is also one of my favourite hobbies – because actualism works so well for me I am pleased to let other in on the secret in case they are interested. I am living in peace with the people I work for, I have no grudges against the system or the country I live in, the neighbours, other drivers, the community, the government or whomever else I used to begrudge or complain about. I am able to see and meet people as they actually are without the need to categorize them in moral and ethical terms. By using a combination of attentiveness and intent I have incrementally dissolved my emotional affiliations – both alliances and animosities – with people and am therefore able to meet and treat people as fellow human beings. Now with no identity to defend, I relate to people as they are, respond to what they are actually saying instead of feeling, intuiting, assuming or imagining what they might mean and thus interactions with people have become an intimate, refreshing, utterly simple and enjoyable affair. For five years now I live with my companion in utter peace and harmony night and day without bicker or quarrel, crisis or boredom without disagreement or compromise, nagging or sulking, role-play or restriction. Because I dared to examine and abandon my female conditioning I am now able to live in peace and harmony, ease and equity with another human being 24 hrs a day. Because I investigated and abandoned the ever-promising but never-delivering dream of love, an actual intimacy and a genuine benevolence are happening of their own accord. Peter is my best mate, a companion with whom I share the delights of everyday living, such as shopping, cooking, watching TV, having a cup of freshly brewed coffee, walking on the beach, playing in the garden, going down-town, comparing notes, working or playing on our computers, chatting about whatever seems worth sharing or simply being quiet while each goes about their business. With the instinctual sex drive all but gone I can now enjoy sex for the sensate and sensuous delight it is – and what a pleasure to have a willing playmate for scrumptious hours of sensual fun. It took a few months of committed investigation into my sexual morals and ethics and their accompanying feelings of guilt and fear, and now I can enjoy the actual physical happening of sex rather than the fantasies of always-unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Because I dared to eliminate my conditioning, my sexual instinct withered away and I can now abandon myself completely to the sensual experience of two bodies having fun. The resulting intimacy in our sexual play is each time again utterly astounding and lusciously delicious. An on top of all this enjoyment of each moment of being alive there is the utter confidence that I am moving every day closer to the moment of ‘my’ final extinction. When you said ‘get a life!’ – what sort of a life did you have in mind for me? VINEETO: You wrote to Peter about relationships – GARY: So, let me pose the question: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? Are relationships important? Why? Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? Wherein does it consist? I hear many people around me talk about the importance, indeed, the primacy of having relationships in one’s life. The longer I practice actualism, the less and less important ‘relationships’ seem to be to me. This sometimes causes the reflection that I am indeed an outcast and I sometimes experience anxiety to realize that I am no longer part of any particular group, nor do I want to be. However, the anxiety is only occasional, and at other times there is this enormous sense of freedom and ease, a freedom that can only come when one is free from the obligations of being a member of a particular group, a family, a profession, a community, etc, etc. There is a tremendous comfort for me in just being alone, just sitting in my chair, for instance, doing nothing in particular. But again, this statement of mine – about being ‘alone’ communicates the essence of the matter – for there is still this sense of being communicated in these terms. Richard has stated that in an Actual Freedom, even this feeling of being alone, this sense of isolation disappears. <snip> On the subject of my ‘relationship’ with my partner, the matter gets a bit stickier. Since my need to affiliate with other human beings in groups has greatly lessened, to the point of almost being totally absent, I have wondered at times if I transferred these feelings on to my partner and whether I am clinging to her to get these self-same needs met. I do enjoy our being together, and I look forward to our weekends and holidays together, even our simple presence together in the evening when the day is done is very enjoyable. To be honest: I do find myself clinging to her at times with feelings of ‘love’ and affection. Yet I can say that for every moment in which there is this feeling of love and affection, there are counterpoised moments when the invidious passions are in evidence: resentment, peevishness, annoyance. In short, malice. It increases my feeling that you cannot have the positive, loving emotions without having the whole instinctual package. At least, that’s the way I think of it at this point. In other words, the entire package needs to be deleted. So, I guess where this leaves me is to say that I think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner. It is here that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire occur most clearly and cleanly, compared to my other everyday ‘relationships’. To sum this all up: it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling. If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? These are just a couple of the questions that occur. VINEETO: You say that you ‘think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner’ and this coincides with my own experience. When I still had an affective relationship with Peter, I could observe, identify and whittle away all the subtle emotions and feelings that never the less occurred long after we both had recognized that love was not the answer to a peaceful living together. The cozy-good feelings of ‘being connected’, the feeling of belonging, feeling safe and protected from the alien world and not being alone were to persist much longer than the easy to recognize failure of the dream of romantic love. Also I discovered I could quite easily and quickly recognize and nip in the bud the negative emotions of relating such as anger and complaints when they occurred but it took a keen and persistent awareness not to repeat falling into the trap of the sweet rose-coloured moods of connectedness. As a fact, I have been on my own all my life, however, the marked difference used to be that sometimes I felt lonely, insecure or even abandoned by my parents, friends or partners and sometimes, but more rarely, I felt excited, adventurous and thrilled by the feeling of freedom of not being bound by any relationship. These days I would rather say that ‘I am being on my own’ because I am no longer suffering the feelings and emotions that the word ‘alone’ usually conveys. In terms of living together with Peter, I am on my own in that I take care of myself – my job, my finances, my clothes and my health – and I spend my time doing what I like to do. Then I have the added bonus of doing things with Peter together that we both enjoy, i.e. cooking food, playing in the garden, going for a walk, having a chat, watching TV and enjoying delicious sumptuous sex. I can simply be me, what I am, without feelings or vibes, hopes or fears and without any image or a social identity to be maintained. In my understanding that does not really fit into the category of having a relationship because a relationship is usually based on emotional components such as expectation, obligation, hope, love, worry, duty, loyalty, fear of loss, resentment or feeling responsible for the other’s feelings. In other words, in a relationship one social and instinctual identity attempts to relate to the other’s social and instinctual identity and both parties are mutually dependent on the other for maintaining their identity, negotiating their individuality and battling their loneliness because a human being only has an identity in relation to other people. A personality is only better than or lesser than, more needy or less needy, stronger or weaker in relation to – i.e. relative to – other personalities. You are hundred percent spot on when you say that ‘the entire package’, both the good and the bad emotions in a relationship, ‘needs to be deleted’. Last week I met a friend whom I had not seen for seven years and this meeting gave me an opportunity to observe in what way my relating to people has changed since I took up actualism. It was a very enjoyable meeting and a pleasant surprise, contrary to some meetings with other former friends, as we were able to find lots of things in common to talk about despite the fact that I have abandoned my spiritual beliefs and loyalties. It was all made easier by her own discontentment with the outcome of her own spiritual search and her interest in what solutions I have found. What had changed for me since I had seen her last was that I experienced none of the emotional aspirations that are usually inevitable ingredients to a friendship. In fact, I was aware that I easily responded each moment to what was happening – be it her curiosity or bewilderment, a silent appreciation of our surroundings, a chat about food or living in Australia, her future plans or who she met yesterday. I told her as much about how I live now as she asked to know but felt no need to demand her attention or interest. I was simply me, I did not have an image, beliefs or precious feelings to promote or to defend and I did not feel any emotional bonds, fears and obligations interfering with meeting a fellow human being. GARY: It hardly seems necessary to go into the specifics to a greater extent or to re-invent the wheel. But suffice it to say that the essence of the method is to thoroughly examine and investigate everything that gets in the way of being happy and harmless. This includes every affective experience, emotion, feeling, and belief. Just to give an example: in the morning I was on the way to work and my partner, in saying ‘goodbye’ to me, stated ‘I love you’ and lightly caressed my hand. In response to this lightly spoken endearment, I experienced a feeling of sadness mingled with regret. The feeling hit me between the eyes, so to speak, and I was interested to look into that feeling and see what I could find out about it, as it would reveal much about ‘me’. One of the things that I came up with was the realization that love in any form is always accompanied by sorrow and sadness, as for instance when love is lost. I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’. One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘co-worker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt. VINEETO: The longer I observe how I am in relation to other people, the more I find that whenever another person evokes an affective reaction in me then there is some kind of invisible thread or emotional hook also present on my side. I remember a visit from a close relative and how at first I felt guilty for not returning the love, affection and excitement that was offered to me. It was as if a web of invisible, yet sticky vibes was cast out to catch me into feeling loyal to and connected with her. These bonding strings might well be presented as a generous offer of love or friendship, yet – often unbeknownst to the person himself or herself – this offer always contains a request for returned feelings, a demand for support and an obligation for further loyalty. In other words, love is never unconditional, it is always given with conditions and it is only received subject to conditions. In the situation with my relative I was able after a while to understand the nature and source of my guilt by observation and investigation and then, by being free of my feelings of guilt I was able to give her my full attention and care. While we spent time together we were able to talk as fellow human beings, swap stories about how each experiences life and what each had found out so far about the business of being a human being. As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, I found that the sorrow that you described as being associated with love is due to the inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same. (Then I am also jealously guarding that he is not happy without me!) Soon after I met Peter I found it vital to investigate this dream because it caused me to be miserable whenever we were apart and made my life difficult whenever we were together. When I looked into the love-dream that I had cherished all my life, I was faced with a rather shocking choice – either keep my dream and my identity as a woman and a lover and remain struggling, frustrated and unhappy, or drop all my high-flying ideas and ideals, grow up and take responsibility for my own life. This also meant that I had to put my becoming free from the human condition as number one on my laundry list – above my relationship. That very choice made me not only autonomous for the first time in my life, it also released Peter from the burden of ‘my’ unfulfillable expectations and emotional needs. Nobody else is responsible for my becoming free and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming free. VINEETO: The second event that shed some light on how I relate to other people happened when I met a former acquaintance from my spiritual era. In the course of our conversation she asked what I have been doing with my life and, knowing she was a fervent spiritual believer, I first attempted to warn her by saying that because I have become a heretic and a traitor I am very cautious nowadays about telling my story so as to not disturb other people’s dearly held beliefs. Nevertheless she insisted, so I told a bit of my story of how I got involved with actualism. As I began to describe my first major PCE, the woman quickly said she knew what I am talking about – this was enlightenment. When I tried to explain the difference between a spiritual experience and a pure consciousness experience I was soon at a loss for words because whatever words I used to describe the quality of a PCE, she insisted that this was exactly how she experienced the world in her outstanding moments of being at one with the Whole, filled with Emptiness and experiencing the Consciousness that connects everything. As I was familiar with this spiritual ‘take over’ from other conversations, her claiming my descriptions of the actual world as being the same as her spiritual experience came as no surprise to me. What somehow surprised me, however, was that I was completely unruffled by this closing of the door to the possibility of something new as I had sometimes been in the past. In fact I enjoyed our discussion immensely. Not only did I know it was not my choice of words that caused her ‘misunderstanding’ but I was also certain about the fact that, despite all her assertions that our differences were only a matter of semantics, we were talking about two diametrically opposite worlds. I was talking about the experience of being what I am, this flesh-and-blood body devoid of ‘me’ as experienced in a PCE, while she was talking about who she felt herself to truly be – a passionate Being, feeling blissful Unity and Oneness. As you have experienced yourself in a PCE, once one knows the actual world by direct experience, the lovey-dovey bliss of spiritual Unity with an imaginary Source holds no attraction at all. This conversation also confirmed that unless someone is sufficiently discontent with their life as it is, their interpretation of what is on offer in actualism will always be inhibited by the framework of their familiar spiritual teachings. * VINEETO: Lastly I recently made an observation that relates to the last part of your letter – GARY: As I am not Actually Free, I can only imagine such a result. However, most definite steps have been taken in terms of demolishing the social identity, a large part of which consists of membership in certain self-protective groupings of one sort or another, and identifying with others based on certain compatible attributes. VINEETO: One of the most important aspects of ‘membership in certain self-protective groupings’ is the social insistence and instinctual craving to belong to a particular group, tribe or nation. The other day I watched a made-for-TV documentary about the siege of Stalingrad by the Germans in WW II, when the Germans almost conquered the city and then got knocked back and enclosed in a surprising counterattack. Both Russian and German survivors of the siege were interviewed and they gave first-hand accounts of tremendous hardship and destitution, of fighting in freezing conditions with meagre supplies, of human beings desperately fighting other human beings in the bombed out rubble of the city. What was new to me from the previous times when I had watched similar reports was that this time I was neither taking sides for ‘my countrymen’ against the enemy nor did I form moral judgements for the poor Russians fighting against the bad Nazis. I was also neither upset nor sad about the enormous suffering inflicted by senseless fighting. I simply listened to this report of the human condition in action and followed with interest the sense that some of the men, fellow human beings, had made of the experiences they went through. I was neither dissociated from the violence as I had tried to be in my spiritual days nor did I associate with the suffering of the people stuck in the desolation and cruelty of war as I had done so many times before. I could watch the report and know for a fact that it is possible to stop being a member of a squabbling and fighting humanity – I can escape my programmed fate, for moments at first and soon forever. Nice to chat again, Gary. VINEETO: Hi Gary, Some observations on the topic ‘how am I in relation to other people’ – GARY: to Richard: One of the most striking things to happen to me since I started practising Actualism is the diminishment of emotional connections to other human beings. I cannot say that there are absolutely no connections to others, as it is obvious to me in my relationship with my partner that a sense of connectedness comes up from time to time in various ways. And no doubt this happens with other people as well. However, I have noticed for a long period that when people want to be ‘friends’ with me, for instance, and make certain friendly overtures, these are generally not at all reciprocated on my part. In other words, the offer to ‘make a friend’ or ‘be a friend’ or such similar things as happen in the social world usually fall completely flat on my part. I have sometimes gotten the impression, gleaned from body language and other cues, that this irritates people. Overtures of this type just do not seem to ‘take’ with me. It is difficult to describe but I am sure that the other practiced Actualists on this list know what I am talking about. Another obvious sign of the diminishment of emotional connections is in the ‘need’ to affiliate. I seem to have no need to affiliate with others, in the sense that that word is commonly used. This is not to say that I am rude or inconsiderate towards others, but as I feel little need or drive to ‘socialize’, pair off with, or otherwise ‘bond’ with others, there is little in an active social sense that is going on with me. Which brings me to a point: in my investigations of what it means to be a human being, I have been struck with how much of human socializing is based on commiseration – sharing a common plight and grievance, and additionally sharing feelings and emotions: whether it be returning to work on Monday, the state of the economy, the price of gasoline, how unfairly the work place is treating you, etc., etc. Human beings seems to revel in their complaints and gripes, and a sense of resentment is the cement that seems to bind people together in many social situations. Indeed, it is the raison d’etre for political groups and political causes of various types. VINEETO: You are right; ‘the ‘need’ to affiliate’ is a sticky business. I remember clearly when I saw Peter for the first time not as an affiliate of any kind but as a separate-from-me fellow human being. In an instant of clear perception, all ‘my’ sticky psychic tentacles that automatically reach out both to objects and to people around me had fallen away. From this particular insight I gained an understanding about what usually happens in interaction with others. I began to see, and unravel, the connections that ‘I’ spun with others, the deals ‘I’ struck, the bargains ‘I’ committed to and the mutual obligations ‘I’ engaged in during my daily interactions with people, particularly those I considered ‘my friends’. I am reminded of another insight about ‘connectedness’ from my early days of actualism. As I walked into town one day, I noticed a tree at a street corner and with surprise I also noticed that in that moment I did not feel connected with that tree in any way. I was surprised because, by the very absence of connectedness, I became aware of ‘my’ psychic tentacles and how they normally engulfed everything as belonging to ‘my’ milieu – not only this particular tree but most things in my close environment. ‘I’ considered everything as being related to me, either giving reassurance or posing a threat – I either liked it or disliked it, it was part of ‘my’ territory, or it was part of, as No. 45 lately called it, ‘my universe’. This meant that whenever anything in ‘my’ territory changed alarm bells rang – I became confused, if not upset, disturbed, hurt, annoyed, resentful, angry or sad. Throughout the process of actualism I have become aware of, and incrementally dissolved, my ‘connections’ to things in my close environment and I investigated my affiliations and friendships with people. As you pointed out, most sharing between people consists of commiseration, but as I continued with the actualism practice I had less and less to complain about my own life, which meant I had less and less common misery with people. The wonderful outcome of this ‘unconnectedness’ is that I am more and more able to meet and treat people as fellow human beings – that means I recognize and treat them as what they are instead of relating to them as bit players in ‘my’ game, subjects of ‘my’ moral judgements and demands, projections of ‘my’ fears and desires. GARY: However, not to get too far afield and to return again to the theme of emotional ‘connection’, I have sometimes in past months been aghast at my lack of emotional, social connection to others. There has been the fright that I am suffering from a serious mental disorder. In that one’s emotional connections with others are a prime indicator of one’s mental health, that may certainly be the case, although I carry no official diagnosis (not having come into contact with mental health professionals in any capacity that relates to me personally). There has been something at times like anxiety and shock to recognize that I am no longer moved by a need to affiliate and identify with others. This fear reminds me of the fears I first encountered in Actualism – atavistic fears relating to being an ‘outcast’, ie. falling off the plate of humanity, so to speak. However, the fears have taken on a somewhat different spin, at times feeling myself to be the object of derision or discrimination. Whatever it is, and although there may be a slightly paranoid flavour at times, I am unable to return to what once was a habitual mode of operation socially – to seek out ‘relationships’ with others, whether they be friendships, kinship with family members, or groups to identify with. VINEETO: What you describe as being ‘aghast at my lack of emotional, social connection to others’ I would describe in my experience as the natural reaction, sometimes fearful, sometimes merely surprised, at seeing how radically I have changed as I am extracting myself more and more from my social and instinctual connection with humanity. During the recent years of living in virtual freedom I could verify again and again that I am not only capable of physically surviving without those ‘emotional, social connections’ but I am far, far better off than I was ever before – I am virtually free from any mood swings, I am feeling excellent almost all the time and I genuinely enjoy the company of anybody with whom I interact, whatever the occasion. Now that I don’t have a ‘social connection’ with a few specifically chosen friends it becomes apparent that my daily life is full of social interactions – I have pleasant and friendly interactions with my various clients, agreeable chats when I answer the phone, a little gossip with the checkout person in the supermarket, with the waitress in the coffee shop, with a neighbour, and so on. These are all social interactions that I used to dismiss as unwanted time-consuming distractions as opposed to the ‘real’ interactions with my chosen friends. And then there are interactions on the Actual Freedom Mailing list – talking about my favourite topic with other practicing actualists and people interested in, or objecting to, becoming happy and harmless. GARY: As I write these words, I am thinking that these fears are basic atavistic fears related to the demolishment of one’s identity, as well as fears that indicate the presence of the identity in the first place. These fears have largely settled down at the present time. I would welcome any comments either you or other participants have about the topic currently under discussion. VINEETO: I think you have summed it up very neatly. It is ‘me’, the identity, who needs emotional so-called meaningful interactions with people in order for ‘me’ to exist. Without the constant confirmation from others of my identity ‘I’ feel rather weak, insecure and become increasingly feeble. The other night I had a very clear perception that ‘who I am’ is almost entirely made up of my affective instinctual connection with other people – both with those whom I meet face-to-face and with humanity at large. In that particular moment of understanding ‘my’ affective extensions that reach out to the world around me were once again temporarily disengaged and I was here, as what I am, this physical flesh and blood body, not obligated to anybody and free to leave the herd. It didn’t last – but it confirmed the direction. GARY: One of the most striking things to happen to me since I started practising Actualism is the diminishment of emotional connections to other human beings. VINEETO: You are right; ‘the ‘need’ to affiliate’ is a sticky business. I remember clearly when I saw Peter for the first time not as an affiliate of any kind but as a separate-from-me fellow human being. In an instant of clear perception, all ‘my’ sticky psychic tentacles that automatically reach out both to objects and to people around me had fallen away. From this particular insight I gained an understanding about what usually happens in interaction with others. I began to see, and unravel, the connections that ‘I’ spun with others, the deals ‘I’ struck, the bargains ‘I’ committed to and the mutual obligations ‘I’ engaged in during my daily interactions with people, particularly those I considered ‘my friends’. GARY: A great deal of what happens in day-to-day life consists of instinctual behaviour, which stems from the more primitive areas of the brain. The longer I have been at Actualism, the more pervasive the primitive survival program of the human species, located in the mid-brain regions, appears to be. This holds true I think for all kinds of emotional connections with others, whether they be mutual obligations, hierarchical types of interactions with others such as dominant and subservient behaviour, ingratiating, cow-towing, gossiping, worshipping, etc. – the list goes on and on ... all these types of social behaviour have their root in ‘my’ need to survive as an instinctual entity, find a suitable mate to disseminate my seed, fight off rivals, etc. Perhaps I am too reductionist in seeing the hand of the instincts in all these myriad forms of behaviour and feelings. I have questioned whether I was getting tunnel vision in that respect. However, be that as it may, in Actualism one applies attentiveness as a discipline to one’s own inner world – the world of the feelings, passions, and calentures – and by extension, with the Human Condition as it exists in each and every human being currently alive. And the conventional wisdom, endlessly repeated ad nauseam, is that human beings ‘need’ one another – that ‘no man is an island’ – and other such sentiments. VINEETO: You are certainly right when you say you are ‘seeing the hand of the instincts in all these myriad forms of behaviour and feelings’. The first layer of my feelings and behaviour towards other people was mainly due to social role-play, defined and governed by the social identity ‘I’ thought and felt ‘I’ was. As a social identity, I was a member of a spiritual belief system and mostly intermingled with other believers, I was a sister to women friends, I was flirting with men I felt attracted to and suspicious towards every other man. The more I unravelled my social identity – the spiritual part being the most tenacious to take apart and leave behind – the more the underlying instinctual feelings that were the source of my emotions and attitudes towards other people became apparent. GARY: To begin to unravel the ‘sticky business’ of one’s affiliation and social needs is to undertake a hazardous enterprise – hazardous chiefly because it spells the beginning of the end of ‘me’, as I am largely a social creature – raised from my inception to have a place in a social hierarchy, be a member of a particular racial, ethnic, and tribal identity, have ‘my’ loves and hates, ‘my’ attractions and repulsions, all of which serve to fix me in a particular niche in society, make me useful to that society as well as expendable . VINEETO: Yes, and the good part is that when you make yourself ‘expendable’ to society you then become able to enjoy the freedom from the straightjacket of the social patterns as well as the reciprocal expectations and demands that go along with belonging to a certain group in particular, and to society at large. It used to be essential to ‘me’ to be useful to society because this usefulness provided ‘me’ with meaning, with a moral right to be here, the right to take up space so to speak. As I investigated whatever I felt was preventing me from being happy and harmless, I quickly came to question and explore my need to derive meaning from belonging to a group and being useful to society. Again and again I found this need to be sourced in the need to justify ‘my’ existence, ‘my’ very survival. Nowadays the idea of needing to earn my ‘right to be here’ is patently silly because, as this physical body, I am already here. It is exquisitely enjoyable to be ‘expendable’ to society because the meaning of life is not to be found in attaining a particular place or status in society’s ranks but is to be found in ‘self’-less experiencing and delighting in the purity and splendour of the actual world. GARY: While we are on the subject, I would like to touch on the whole business of being an outcast. I used to feel the greatest anxiety about being labelled or branded an outcast. It is something that I once strenuously resisted and actively feared. I felt that without my emotional entanglements and without the affection and approval of others, I would quickly go right off the rails and be annihilated. Now, at the present time, it is abundantly clear to me that I am, by any definition of the word, an outcast. But I no longer feel the level of dread and angst that I used to. I suppose another meaning to the word ‘expendable’ is ‘not needed’. No longer do I as this flesh-and-blood body need ‘me’, but I am freed from the senseless and endless crazy-making of the Human Condition. To me, a major part of this crazy-making is the futile attempt to make other people responsible for my own happiness. The longer I have practiced Actualism, the more clearly I have seen the deeply imbedded nature of this tendency to hold others responsible for my moods, feelings, and actions. Naturally, the reason for this is that the affective feelings in and of themselves are essentially ‘self’-centred in this way. VINEETO: I found that this tendency to make others responsible for my happiness or my misery has a flipside – I also used to feel responsible for the happiness, and guilty for the misery, of the people close to me. Nowadays I don’t consider myself to be an outcast of society at all, rather a lucky escapee. Apart from a few rare occasions I no longer buy into the affective web of people’s weelings and dealings, which allows me the pleasure to interact with fellow human beings instead of phantoms of ‘my’ own making. * GARY: However, in my own ‘self’-investigations perhaps most revealing of all, once I began to unravel my emotional connections with others, was the seemingly bottomless malice and contempt that I discovered buried under layers of appropriate social conduct. This instinctual malice presented itself irregardless of whom I was with and I could well appreciate, given the depth and force of this instinct, the so-called ‘crimes of passion’ that occur when people go ballistic, run amok, and kill or maim their lovers or close, intimate associates, not to speak their own children. The thing about Actualism that differs radically from other approaches, spiritual included, is that one gets a first-hand, up front, down and dirty taste of the inveterate malice at the heart of my existence as an instinctual entity, as well as really doing something about it in a hands-on way. VINEETO: It strikes me that there must be a ‘seemingly bottomless’ wellspring of altruism that has caused you to doing something hands-on in order to free your fellow human beings from the consequences of your feelings of malice and contempt. Personally, since I started actualism I only remember a few instances of intense malice and aggression surfacing but I discovered ample feelings of resentment at being here accompanied by feelings of contempt, annoyance, irritation and indignation towards others. GARY: I have not usually thought about it this way – a bottomless well of altruism. Given the experience of malice is usually quite self-centred and extremely aversive, it is easy I suppose to overlook one’s deeper reasons. VINEETO: When I said ‘bottomless wellspring of altruism’ I used altruism in the sense of benevolence in action, the action of becoming happy and harmless in order to free one’s fellow human beings from one’s own malice and sorrow. The final altruistic act in the literal, more accurate, sense of the word will happen when ‘I’ irrevocably disappear, never ever to return. Peter: The path to Actual Freedom is not at all attractive for there is nothing in it for ‘me’ – no phoenix arises from the ashes to claim the glory, no acclaim of adoring disciples, no wonderful overwhelming feelings, no fame, no recognition, no power – neither overt nor covert. Extinction is extinction. It is for this very reason that one needs a goodly dose of altruism. (Actual Freedom Library, Altruism). GARY: One that really got my attention recently was an increased sensitivity to my partner’s moods and behaviour and how ‘my’ mood affect her. There was a recent frank discussion of this without the usual mumbled apologies and misgivings that was quite satisfying. ‘My’ feelings always make waves with those around me. VINEETO: What I found amazing is that the more I examined my feelings so that they could no longer make ‘waves with those around me’, the less I was affected by the waves of other people’s moods. Whilst feeling connections work both ways, it is entirely in my hands to sever those emotional ties – for the sake of my happiness and for the sake of the happiness of those with whom I come in contact with … or as Richard puts it, ‘for the sake of this body and that body and every body’. Not only do I now not feel responsible for other people’s moods – because I know that ‘I’ had nothing to do with other’s moods – I am also increasingly unaware of subtle vibes and emotional moods unless people tell me about them or are overtly emotional. A recent event springs to mind that illustrates this change quite well. At a social occasion I met a man who I knew and we began chatting. After a while I found it odd that he stood physically close to me and moved even closer in the course of our conversation. I noticed this because I couldn’t wave my arms while talking. I didn’t think more of the event until Peter and I returned home that evening and I was telling him of my odd observation. Only then did it occur to me that maybe the man was ‘coming onto me’ as he was known as a ‘philanderer’. I had not felt any vibes or detected any emotional messages at all and the meaning of his ‘body-language’ had passed me by completely. That I had no desire whatsoever for sexual hunting, or for being hunted, made me insensitive to his feelings such that I was able to have a pleasant chat with him about life and being alive. * VINEETO: I am reminded of another insight about ‘connectedness’ from my early days of actualism. As I walked into town one day, I noticed a tree at a street corner and with surprise I also noticed that in that moment I did not feel connected with that tree in any way. I was surprised because, by the very absence of connectedness, I became aware of ‘my’ psychic tentacles and how they normally engulfed everything as belonging to ‘my’ milieu – not only this particular tree but most things in my close environment. ‘I’ considered everything as being related to me, either giving reassurance or posing a threat – I either liked it or disliked it, it was part of ‘my’ territory, or it was part of, as No. 45 lately called it, ‘my universe’. This meant that whenever anything in ‘my’ territory changed alarm bells rang – I became confused, if not upset, disturbed, hurt, annoyed, resentful, angry or sad. GARY: In the moment of pure sensuousness, when a fascinated attentiveness basks in the wonder of being here in this moment in time, there is no latching onto the feelings of relatedness or belonging. Attentiveness is a clear slate of sensory datum and pure, immediate perception, devoid of affective feeling, as well as the incipient attractions and repulsions to or against others as are operative in one’s ordinary sense of social being. In attentiveness, I am as apt to be without a feeling of connectedness in dealing with my fellow human beings as I am in not feeling connected to the tree, as were you. Attentiveness however also notices the psychic tentacles with the same fascination that it notices the exquisite patterns of light and shadow falling across the bark of the tree, and I nevertheless ‘keep hands in pockets’ when examining and noticing these feelings of connectedness without giving into the feelings or being impelled to action by them. VINEETO: Yes, it is absolutely astounding that this one methods works to progressively dismantle all my problems. Whenever I notice an affective reaction to whatever someone says or does – I inquire why that is so – I discover a certain expectation or fear – I inquire why that is so – I notice the nature of my ‘psychic tentacles’ that automatically weave their web – I inquire what is the underlying purpose in having that particular bond – and bingo, brought to the light of awareness, my ‘psychic tentacles’ can no longer hold their grip. * VINEETO: Throughout the process of actualism I have become aware of, and incrementally dissolved, my ‘connections’ to things in my close environment and I investigated my affiliations and friendships with people. As you pointed out, most sharing between people consists of commiseration, but as I continued with the actualism practice I had less and less to complain about my own life, which meant I had less and less common misery with people. The wonderful outcome of this ‘unconnectedness’ is that I am more and more able to meet and treat people as fellow human beings – that means I recognize and treat them as what they are instead of relating to them as bit players in ‘my’ game, subjects of ‘my’ moral judgements and demands, projections of ‘my’ fears and desires. GARY: I certainly agree with the part where you say that you have less and less to complain about with your own life. I hardly feel it is a service to my fellow human to gripe about commonplace goings-on, although it is an all-too-human characteristic. I am less inclined to gripe or complain since I investigated into the basis of such commonly held complaints as the Monday morning blues, upsets about the weather, complaints about one’s political leaders, as well as many other commonplace ills too numerous to mention. VINEETO: With attentiveness operating almost seamlessly, I am able to clearly see any complaints and worries I have about the world as-it-is and people as-they-are for they are expressions of either malice or sorrow. Attentiveness also enabled me to be sensible enough to sort out the practical circumstances of my life such that I stopped doing many of the silly, stressful and time-consuming things I used to do solely in order to be ‘someone’ in the world and to be recognized as such. Once I made these practical changes the only task then left was to wear out and finally stop the habit of complaining that every human being engages in. GARY: One of the things I used to do was compulsively take care of or try to control the people around me. Many years ago, I once underwent a period of unemployment, which literally put me into a panic because I had nobody to ‘help’. With the increasing ease that has been ushered in by the dismantlement of my personal, social, and professional roles and identities, I am less and less invested in trying to ‘help’ and change others, less inclined to feel morally superior to others, and more and more satisfied with being where I am and living my life freed from the interference of busy-bodies and missionaries. VINEETO: I know the ‘social worker syndrome’ well from my own years as a social worker. After I recognized that I had no solutions to offer for the problems of others I went off to the East to change the world by following the dream of Rajneesh’s ‘New Man’. His vision had to literally fall to pieces before I could even consider questioning, let alone abandoning, the spiritual world-saving better-than-thou power trip I was on. What serendipity that I finally found the real McCoy way of changing myself – a down-to-earth process which everyone can do for themselves and by themselves. * VINEETO: Some complaints however, such as the knee-jerk rages against authority and authority figures or feeling sad and sorry for a blighted humanity run very deep and as such take a bit more digging into in order to fully understand and undo. Such complaints are rooted deeply in the core feeling of ‘we are all in the same boat’ which gives rise to the nonsensical belief that ‘we can only become free together all at once’. It is obvious that there are no practical lifestyle changes that I can make to diminish these complaints other than cutting the cord each time these feelings arise and, each time again, step out from humanity, the sad and sorry cesspool of malice and sorrow. GARY: While I don’t often have rages against authority, I often regard myself as a moral authority to be reckoned with and am liable to fly into rages when others defy my imagined authority. This pattern, once blatant and destructive of personal and professional relationships, is progressively drying up. But it still takes quite a bit of ferreting out what underlies these difficulties and I do not mean to imply that I am free from these insidious passions. There has been progress but not perfection, as ‘I’ am still in evidence. VINEETO: Yes, having expertise in certain areas is one thing but an emotional claim to authority certainly spells trouble. To fight for one’s place in the pecking order of rank and honour is not only an issue of ‘my’ social identity but the fight has its roots in the instinctual need to define and defend ‘my’ territory. My intent to abandon this pecking-order fight taught me to rely on facts instead of my opinions, which in turn diminished the urge to defend my knowledge and/or authority. * GARY: A welcome change is that since practising Actualism I have a much keener appreciation of the marvel and wonder of human beings – that most intelligent creature in the world, that fabulously sensitive and finely attuned pinnacle of evolutionary creation. Even the dullest human being is a marvellous creature to behold. And a lot of this sense of wonder and appreciation is directly due to the falling away and demolishment of the deeply conditioned judgements of others owing to their social class, status, background, or perceived worth or valuelessness. VINEETO: By getting rid of my own complaints, boredom, annoyance and irritation I succeeded in enjoying my own company and I increasingly became aware that I like my fellow human beings. With this liking comes hand-in-glove an appreciation of my fellow human beings and an admiration of the astounding human ingenuity and caring in many fields of science, engineering, health and safety. One thing that played a major part in my increasingly liking people-as-they-are was the acknowledgement of my own malice and sorrow, that I recognized it as being due to the human condition and that I understood that everybody, through no fault of their own, is born into the same human condition. I then put this intellectual understanding into daily practice whenever I interacted directly with people, read or heard of other people or read or heard of other people’s views of other people. Nevertheless, I am often left bewildered at the fact that most people prefer to remain in the situation they find themselves in. But then again, most people I know choose to spend their lives as they do – my aim is to live in peace and harmony with people-as-they-are, without exception. GARY: Do you find that you always ‘liked’ people, even in your spiritual days? Or has this changed for you since practising Actualism? I find that I often don’t like people. The basic fear of people is something that I am still inquiring into. It still has a strong grip on me. VINEETO: I had to think about this a bit. ‘Liking’ people meant something completely different in my pre-actualist days. In those days I liked people if I felt that they were members of ‘my’ club, i.e. that we were ‘like-feeling’ beings. I needed people to define and reinforce ‘me’ as a social identity, or as a fellow social outsider, and ‘I’ was dependant on their approval and emotional support, or disapproval and emotional rejection. Maybe my liking people could be described in that my ‘basic fear of people’ was often overruled by my basic need of people. Generally I could have been described as more of a social type, more afraid of loneliness than of being with people – after all, I chose to live in a spiritual commune for years and my days were filled with communal activity. Nowadays I am neither afraid of being alone nor afraid of meeting people. I am more often ‘what I am’ rather than ‘who I am’ – I as this flesh-and-blood body neither need to be defended nor validated – I am here because I am here. GARY: I am not a social person, and I am not ordinarily very sociable. As a child growing up, I was downright under-socialized. The matter of individual disposition has not always been exactly clear to me, but I feel there is a component to this that is my identity in action and a part that is my individual disposition. So, teasing out those factors is something that I think will take me a bit more time. VINEETO: I was wondering if your ‘basic fear of people’ could have something to do with the need to ‘compulsively take care of or try to control the people around me’ that you mentioned above? I am asking because I often found that there were some particular fears I could not tackle directly by abandoning a habit or by stopping doing some silly action but that I had to explore and dismantle the components that maintained or were related to that particular fear. As for ‘teasing out’ one’s individual disposition – I found that as both my own and society’s demands of ‘who I should be’ disappeared with the dismantling of my social identity, what remained was my individual disposition as to how I want to spend my time. My only guideline is that I want to be happy and harmless … or, if life is not fun then there is something to look at. GARY: Having ‘no social identity to maintain’ is really a most delightful situation to be in. I was thinking one morning recently, when I was sitting quietly before leaving for work, that all the battles have already been fought, all the strivings have been stroven for ... it really was a sublime sense of being ‘retired’ from all of that, and in no immediate need of changing anything about myself or my life. It was a wonderful sense of completion and coming full-circle to the place where I find myself, with nothing that I would want to improve or anything that I would like to change. VINEETO: Well said. It is superb to have these periods of feeling retired from the struggles of my humanity and being able to revel in the delights of being alive – the opposite to what I practiced for so many years, sitting crossed-legged with my eyes closed trying to be ‘here’ as ‘me’. * VINEETO: What you describe as being ‘aghast at my lack of emotional, social connection to others’ I would describe in my experience as the natural reaction, sometimes fearful, sometimes merely surprised, at seeing how radically I have changed as I am extracting myself more and more from my social and instinctual connection with humanity. During the recent years of living in virtual freedom I could verify again and again that I am not only capable of physically surviving without those ‘emotional, social connections’ but I am far, far better off than I was ever before – I am virtually free from any mood swings, I am feeling excellent almost all the time and I genuinely enjoy the company of anybody with whom I interact, whatever the occasion. GARY: I cannot honestly say that I truly enjoy the company of interacting with people, often feeling disinclined to interact socially. You may notice that I said feeling disinclined, which should be enough of a tip-off that I am dealing with ‘me’ again here. VINEETO: ‘Feeling disinclined’ may simply be a preference of your individual disposition and not necessarily an expression of your identity in action. In other words, apart from the wants and needs of ‘me’, the social-instinctual identity, there are also individual inclinations, temperament and foibles of this me, the flesh-and-blood body, which determine how I prefer to spend my time. GARY: I know what it is like from PCEs that I have had that social interaction is free, easy, a delight, and involves no effort at all, nor anything but delight in simply being in another person’s company. But ordinarily I do not take much pleasure in interacting socially with others. Your own pleasure is, however, quite clear. By temperament and disposition, I am usually quite happy to be a loner and a hermit. However, these solitary tendencies do not serve one well in the marketplace where there is a premium on acquired social ‘skills’. VINEETO: Just to clarify – when I said that ‘I genuinely enjoy the company of anybody with whom I interact’ I did not mean to indicate that my day is filled with social interactions. I have far less interactions than I used to have in my days of needing to belong to social groups. I take pleasure in being at home where I enjoy my own company as well as Peter’s. The terms ‘loner’ or ‘hermit’ usually carry an implication of social values that I no longer subscribe to – values that apply ‘in the marketplace where there is a premium on acquired social ‘skills’’, as you say. I may be a ‘hermit’ in other people’s eyes because I don’t frequent the pub or go to social gatherings but I am not ‘hermit’ who retreats from the world despising the company of others. With no social identity to maintain and no social ladder to climb I am now free to set my own pace as to how I like to spend my time – except for the time that I sell for a living, in which case the pace is set by those who employ me. * VINEETO: Now that I don’t have a ‘social connection’ with a few specifically chosen friends it becomes apparent that my daily life is full of social interactions – I have pleasant and friendly interactions with my various clients, agreeable chats when I answer the phone, a little gossip with the checkout person in the supermarket, with the waitress in the coffee shop, with a neighbour, and so on. These are all social interactions that I used to dismiss as unwanted time-consuming distractions as opposed to the ‘real’ interactions with my chosen friends. GARY: I have been taking a renewed pleasure in these simple interactions with others since I have been thinking alot about my ‘connections’ or lack of connections (I might better say) with others. I had a damn good laugh with the man in the store when I stopped for coffee on the way to work this morning. The unrestrained mirth was a tonic to my system. VINEETO: Yes, when ‘I’ am out of the equation, then ‘the man in the store’, or the taxi driver, or a waiter, or an employer is a fellow human being, not a suspicious stranger, a business opportunity or a non-believer as they were for ‘me’. Then being with others, whatever the occasion, is usually good fun, particularly so if the other is not stricken by feelings of malice or sorrow at the time. * VINEETO: And then there are interactions on the Actual Freedom Mailing list – talking about my favourite topic with other practicing actualists and people interested in, or objecting to, becoming happy and harmless. GARY: Your writings are always as clear as a bell. I have appreciated our acquaintanceship during the time I have participated in this list. Your commitment to the list and to Actualism has not gone unnoticed. I think it is commendable the consistency with which you and Peter have written to the various and sundry people who have frequented the list, both as regulars and ‘drop ins’. VINEETO: Thanks for the feedback. I also enjoy your refreshing and sensible posts on the list. Additionally, it is a delight to see the simple method of actualism so successfully working for someone on the other side of the planet who has been able to glean the essence of the actualism method via the written word only. As you once said of the actualism business, one ingredient is essential – the recognition that … [Gary]: It is of the most urgent necessity. Unequivocally. (Gary to Peter, 6.8.2000). * VINEETO: The other night I had a very clear perception that ‘who I am’ is almost entirely made up of my affective instinctual connection with other people – both with those whom I meet face-to-face and with humanity at large. In that particular moment of understanding ‘my’ affective extensions that reach out to the world around me were once again temporarily disengaged and I was here, as what I am, this physical flesh and blood body, not obligated to anybody and free to leave the herd. It didn’t last – but it confirmed the direction. GARY: Since being involved in Actualism, I have found going back and visiting old friends and family members has led to very clear perceptions of the depth of change that has taken place. What were once troubled and painful relationships filled with bittersweet memories from the past have taken on a new ease and a surprising conviviality. With the drastic ‘self’-reduction plan I entered into since becoming involved in Actualism, affective extensions have largely dried up, replaced by a common sense, down-to-earth approach. This is not to say that there is no on-going investigation into ‘my’ relationships with others, but as I continue to do so, I notice an increasing confidence with being, as you say... ‘here, as what I am...’. VINEETO: Being here as what I am leaves me as this physical body and its senses, free to delight in this perfect infinite universe as a sensate human being. It is a glorious morning on this, the south-side, of the planet. The leaves are slightly moving in the breeze and glitter and shine in the early winter morning sun and fine silvery trails of spider web are dangling in mid air. Rainbow lorikeets perform precarious aerobics on the grevillea flowers to extract sweet nectar and the dew is still dazzling on the grass blades. It is marvellous to be alive. It’s a pleasure to chat with you, Gary. RESPONDENT to No. 23: I thought I might get corrected if I used the word ‘friendship’. I had missed that part of the site. Fellowbeingness, is it? I can appreciate that. It gets a bit prickly for me navigating through the word usage. I know I’m often bringing on unwanted responses by the words I use. (Unwanted in that I desire approval and flinch at correction – there’s me again.) It’s a little like when I speak French. I usually get my point across, but I know I often say things I didn’t mean because I make mistakes. But that’s a gross example it’s really more like this: I once took a graduate class in philosophy studying Wittgenstein. I came away with one understanding. Each of us has his or her own associations for every word in our vocabulary. Because of this, when I say ‘goose’ one person remembers a childhood pet, another a fearful attack while crossing a farmers field, another an exquisite dinner in a posh Chinese restaurant, and these associations are often unconscious. We know what animal we are talking about, but the references are entirely different, and since those references largely remain unconscious, our communication with each other gets clouded by our subtle and differing reactions to the words we are using. When it comes to cultural conditioning the words are also, of course, heavily loaded. So it makes sense if you want to bring something entirely new ‘180 degrees the opposite’ to people you would need to coin some new words and also be extremely explicit about the meanings of the old words. Still, I am walking on eggshells and crunching quite a few here. (Respondent to No. 23, 3.5.2003). VINEETO: It is understandable that when you join a new mailing list that you would want to use the ‘right’ words . A few participants have reported a similar desire. However, actualism is not about changing one’s terminology or writing style, actualism is about changing oneself – or to put it colloquially, actualism is not about being able to talk the talk, actualism is about walking the walk. Merely adapting the words used in the writings of actualism to mean something they were not meant to mean would be comparable to adjusting your set of rules to what you imagine the actualism set of rules might be – you would simply replace the word ‘friendship’ for ‘fellowbeingness’ – a word that No. 23 coined for his personal liking. What I did as an actualist was to investigate the connotations the word friendship had when I called someone a friend, my feelings of loyalty and trust, my expectations and disappointments, because I wanted to find out how ‘I’ tick as a social and instinctual identity. My examination of the nature and integrity of my relationship to other people subsequently changed the way I now relate to people. I do not see people as either friends or non-friends because the more I investigated my social conditioning and the underlying feelings of aggression, fear, nurture and desire, the more my need for alliances and belonging has disappeared. As a consequence, I mostly perceive people as what they are – fellow human beings who go about their business of being alive just as I do. I put the horse before the cart – sincerity meant that the change of words only came hand-in-glove with a change of understanding, a change of attitude and a change of behaviour. As for being ‘extremely explicit about the meaning of the old words’ – when you practice attentiveness to this moment of being alive with the aim of becoming unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless, then you will inevitably want to be very precise with the words that you use to describe your experience because a precise description is a necessary precursor to obtaining precise information from your observation. After all, you want to find out exactly how ‘you’ tick. Similarly, an actualist would want to take care with the use of words when communicating with others simply because it makes sense to do so. Contrary to Mr. Wittgenstein’s philosophy, it is possible to call a spade a spade and to know that it is ‘a tool for digging or cutting the ground, now usually consisting of a sharp-edged rectangular metal blade fitted on a long handle with a grip or crossbar at the upper end.’ Oxford Dictionary. If any confusion occurs in the meaning of a word then clarification can easily be given or a dictionary reached for. Should you, however, notice that your desire for approval gets in the way of an accurate exchange of information or an in-depth exploration of a subject, then that desire is something to be investigated. Should you notice that your own particular social conditioning causes you to misinterpret and affectively colour the words you read, then this particular emotional ‘reference’ is something to look at. My aim as an actualist is to become free from my affective interpretation of words, things, people and events, to divest them from the veneer of my personal, cultural and instinctual ‘references’ in order that the actual world becomes more and more apparent. Actualism is a do-it-yourself-for-yourself-by-yourself job – and this is not just a throwaway line. You are indeed on your own, there is no language-test to be passed, no club to be inaugurated into, no inner circle to be part of and no gold medal to be won. What can be won, however, is peace-on-earth for the flesh-and-body called No. 49 and the subsequent sensate experiencing of the splendour of living in this actual universe. And that is extraordinary. RESPONDENT: Also I have understood that politics is not really your concern as neither it is mine; however on some levels in this game I think each one of is affected by decisions that are made by the top so to speak. VINEETO: I follow with interest many reports and stories as to how human beings live their lives, how they relate with each other, how they solve problems and face challenges. I am continuously amazed at the ingenuity of human intelligence and human practicality and how well many functions of society are organized despite the sabotaging effects of the human condition. Western societies in particular have managed an astounding amount of administrative tasks like hospitals, police, courts, emergency services, traffic control, road and rail service, electricity and water, telephone and post, social security and education. I have also come to see that there is no ‘top so to speak’ because the decisions that affect my everyday life are primarily made by public administrators in response to public demand, be they the road authority, the electricity company, the local council, the police, telephone and postal administration, and so on. Other decisions are made by industry in response to public demand, be they agriculture and trade, manufacturing, service industry and so on. Medical progress is influenced by many factors, among them public demand for better health, research funding, the ingenuity of scientific researchers, economic and practical issues as well as moral and ethical restrictions. The same holds for almost every other aspect of social administration. Politicians are only one spoke in the wheel of the organizational network, they are but the front men and women for the underlying administrative system. Despite popular opinion, politicians are not in control of everything that happens in their particular country, region or town. Far from it in fact, as most practical decisions are made at the administrative and executive level and most political decisions are made according to an ever-swaying popular opinion. Recently it occurred to me that the emotional issue with authority – either worshipping and following a chosen authority figure or rebelling against adverse authority figures – is related to an instinctual reluctance to admit that nobody is in charge of running the world – neither an almighty God nor a Mother Nature, neither a collusion of corporations nor a conspiracy of politicians. Despite common belief and social inculcation, we are all fellow human beings doing this business of being alive for the very first time. * VINEETO: Did it [your version of the actualism method] enable you to trace your emotions as they occur and find out exactly which of your beliefs or aspect of your identity triggered them? RESPONDENT: Yes it is a most fascinating process. The other day I was walking together with a man and a woman and somehow the question [what is friendship?] popped up. I found myself ready to jump in with actualism yet I withheld my response. And then the woman said: friendship has a different meaning for everybody? It’s how you experience the feeling of friendship. VINEETO: I found that most people associate an emotional value with friendship and I certainly had strong emotional ties with the men and women I called my friends. Within a friendship there is usually a list of unspoken rules, demands and expectations that need to be observed if one is to maintain the friendship … and loyalty is generally at the very top of this list. * VINEETO: Did it [your version of the actualism method] work in that it increasingly enables you to live with your fellow human beings in peace and harmony? RESPONDENT: Yes indeed, harmony is the keyword; more and more I find myself at ease with fellow human beings. And also they seem to be rather at ease with me. VINEETO: As I investigated my instinctually-based attitude towards people I discovered that my ‘self’-centredness caused me to relate to people either with the hope that they will satisfy my needs and desires – be my friends – or with the fear that they might take advantage of me for their own needs and desires – be my enemies. Isn’t it wonderful to increasingly discover and remove the myopic veil of hope and fear and become able to relate to people as one’s fellow human beings! Last night I watched a report about a British submarine crew – their submarine was used as a strategic training target for Canadian ships in the Second World War. The men in the submarine were under immense and ongoing stress, being the assigned practice target for several warships and it was certainly one of the toughest situations one can be in. But while I appreciated their situation with direct understanding I also realized that I am not ‘one’ with them nor am I ‘alien’ to them – I am a fellow human being. That means that while I may closely appreciate the sailors’ physical and emotional situation it does not necessarily imply imagining and feeling their affective experiencing. In that moment of pristine awareness I did not belong to the feeling-based and psychically connected human race – I was what I am, this flesh and blood body in a flat in a little Australian town. * VINEETO: Did it [your version of the actualism method] work to dissolve the issue of belonging – to a nation, a religion, a social group, a spiritual group, a cultural group, etc.? RESPONDENT: The aspect of belonging to a group in the sense that I feel associated with any belief or ideal has ceased, yet I would be in denial that I can be put or could put myself in a certain category like ie. people who live on a simple pension, or an artist, yet this is merely a matter of choosing to have a certain lifestyle. I must admit that indeed fitting in the first category I had a long-standing guilt issue. VINEETO: It is indeed a fascinating issue to investigate the moral that insists everyone has to earn their right to be here or to prove their worth to society in general or to certain people in particular. Apart from the fact that I am already here (so what’s the point of proving my right to be here?), contributing to peace on earth by changing myself radically is the most worthwhile thing I can do for myself and for my fellow human beings. * VINEETO: Did it [your version of the actualism method] work in that you are now standing on your own two feet and not relying on others for approval? RESPONDENT: Well approval is a stretch though I recognize the difference between appreciation for performance and also disapproval of it. I must say basically I prefer to be appreciated yet not non-critically I have a rather fair view as to about how my actual performance is (be it social, technical skills on whatever level). Also I always encourage people who evaluate the part I play, to be as specific as possible and I like to hear the ‘ratings’ so to speak. VINEETO: I found that if I wanted to be independent of, and unmoved by, other’s blame, I also had to disregard their praise. RESPONDENT: Now – on to ‘relationships’. I think I can ask this one pretty simply. If one is slowly whittling away at love, compassion, nurture, desire – then is there still room for rearing children and ‘sticking with’ your marriage partner come what may? Is the actuality of benevolence enough to keep people together as long as it’s a sensible thing to do? Or is there still some cultural factor that makes it ‘sensible’ to ‘care’ for spouse and child? In other words, where does the ‘continuity’ required to care for a child come from in actual (or virtual) freedom (where ‘continuity’ doesn’t exist)? It’s easy to think that caring for your child is only based on the nurturing instinct. Does the ability to raise a child necessarily disappear along with the nurturing instinct – or is the benevolence of virtual or actual freedom enough to maintain ‘parenthood’? Does the fact of raising a child necessarily indicate the continuing presence of ‘nurture’? VINEETO: It is a common fear that if one abolished one’s spiritual beliefs, morals and ethics one would become a dangerous sociopath and if one removed all of one’s emotions – good and bad – one would become a careless zombie. However, when you apply the method of actualism with the sincere intent to become free from malice and sorrow, then you successively remove what prevents you from being what you are – a flesh and blood body. And just as there is neither malice nor sorrow in a tree, in an ocean and in the air we breathe, there is also no malice and sorrow in a flesh and blood body when social-instinctual identity is deleted. I have never raised any children but I can confirm that, in the process of practicing actualism, care and consideration for other people, together with a general benevolence and common sense have incrementally emerged as my ‘self’-centredness, egoism and the affective-neurotic relationships that I used to have with people, animals or things have diminished. It is far easier to make sensible decisions when you are not run by social conditioning and driven by instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: Also, the question arises as how to respond to others exhibiting extreme emotions. My 3 year old son instinctually cries out for me to hold him tight or rock him and give him his blankee when he’s hurting and insecure. Which is more appropriate – giving him the comfort he so desperately wants/needs – or dismiss his request for empathy as unhealthy for him – or finding some way to comfort him without allowing him to indulge himself? I suppose another way of asking this is that I find myself ‘feeling empathy’ and then feeling the horror of not being ‘empathetic’ toward my child (the opposite) – Is there is a happy and harmless medium there somewhere – which I’m still trying to find? VINEETO: The intent of an actualist is to become free from malice and sorrow because the only person you can help and change is you. Apart from finding out how ‘you’ tick there are no rules in actualism as to how to behave or not to behave – every situation is yet another opportunity for you to discover how you are socially and instinctually programmed. The more I discovered about ‘me’, the more I was able to make sensible choices based on facts instead of beliefs and feelings. The more I investigated and became free from my own good and bad feelings and emotions, the less effect other people’s emotions had on me. Now I am able to respond with care and common sense to whatever situation arises. When you practice actualism it is also important to remember that this is not about stopping feeling, for that is impossible while still being a ‘self’. VINEETO: So it looks as though now you want to continue our discussion that ended so abruptly on the Actual Freedom mailing list about exactly the same issue – emotion-backed belief in the spiritual teachings of an Authority versus drawing on the obvious expertise of a fellow human being who was Enlightened, emerged from the delusion to discover something far superior to Enlightenment. JAMES: I guess the main point you are trying to make is the difference in belief in the spiritual teachings of an Authority and drawing on the expertise of a fellow human being who was Enlightened, emerged from the delusion to discover something far superior to Enlightenment. However, there are some major flaws in this statement: Someone who claims to be the only one who has ever lived to have achieved the state of actual freedom and is the only one who is right can hardly be considered just another fellow human being. You have assumed that I am a believer in the spiritual teachings of an Authority and that I am seeking Enlightenment. This is not true. VINEETO: I would be interested to learn about someone else who is permanently living in the state of actual freedom. As for being a fellow human being – so far I have only met people who are busy assessing others as friend or foe, follower or heretic. Only someone without identity can meet other people simply as fellow human beings, as is evidenced by the fact that you consider Richard as something other than a fellow human being. If you say that you are not a believer and not seeking enlightenment, then that must be true for you. However, I will make my own judgements based upon what you write. (...) * JAMES: Actually I do understand it and I have experienced it. The main problem I have with it is you have made it into an ‘ism’ which makes you the authority and essentially has shut almost everyone off from benefiting from it. VINEETO: The outstanding feature of actualism, which sets it apart from every spiritual/ religious/ mystical teaching, is that there is only one ultimate guide and authority and that is one’s own pure consciousness experience of the actual world. A PCE is the glimpse one gets into the purity of the actual world, and PCEs have given me the insights, realizations and knowledge about my ‘self’ and about the way to explore and eliminate my ‘self’. Reporting about my own process may look like a belief and an ‘ism’ to you, unless you can verify my statements with your own pure consciousness experiences. The moment somebody has expertise, new knowledge or makes a unique breakthrough in any field, there is a predictable emotional reaction – a propensity to follow or fight, appreciate or denigrate that is common to all human interaction and a major contributing factor to the ongoing battles and disputes. It is the emotional reaction to expertise that creates the problem, not the expertise itself. Without emotional reaction I can assess and ascertain the facts presented and draw on the expertise of a fellow human being without losing my dignity or surrendering my independence. Then it is always me who decides what is useful information for my aim – the total eradication of my malice and sorrow – and what may, or may not, be applicable for this process. Personally, I had to dig deep into my psyche in order to explore the root cause of the reoccurring problems that I had with authority figures in my life, which spoiled my relationship with every person I met, particularly with men. For me it was a stunning surprise to find that my belief in a higher Authority – God by any other name – was underpinning my emotional reliance and sticky dependency on authority, which inevitably resulted in feelings of gratitude and resentment. I had thought that my belief in the god of the religions had been left behind long ago for I had been involved in a spiritual search and not a formal religion, but I was surprised to find that the belief in a higher force had survived. This belief was that the Universe will take care of me but will also judge me one day if I don’t live according to the ‘universal laws’. Acknowledging, then questioning and ultimately eradicating this passionate imagination or ‘instinctual knowing’ left me with the shocking realization that I am entirely on my own, without guard or guide. It also gave me the freedom to decide for myself what is silly and what is sensible, to walk upright in the world and be beholden to no one. Since then, the feeling of needing a higher authority has ceased to be an issue in my life. From my experience, tackling one’s dependency on and resentment against authority is one of the major obstacles to be removed when one wants to relate to other people as fellow human beings. VINEETO: Hi Konrad, I have read your correspondence with Richard with interest. What I as a person with a practical approach to life notice from your conversation and conviction is that you never talk about how you are in your daily life. How are you with the woman you live with, how are you when you go shopping, how are you in relation to other people? For me the relationships to different people have clearly shown me the flaws I still had to tackle, shown the occasions where consciousness is not pure but inflicted with greed, anger, superiority, jealousy, sorrow, pity and other such emotions. Only since I have eliminated those emotions in me have I been able to be with whoever I meet in an easy, equal, benign manner, fully interested in the person in question in that moment, undistractedly or undisturbed by any flaws in my behaviour. And exactly this is for me the test of any concept of consciousness, ‘tautology’ or other: does it work in actual life, does it work in my relationship to other people. How else to test if the thought construct is not just a sweet elaborate fairy-tale, good enough for discussion, but not applicable with the person I live with?! What I am interested in is who is the man behind the thoughts, who is the person living his daily life and how do your concepts translate into action? Looking forward to your reply. KONRAD: When reading your letter there is one thing that struck me. Your whole orientation seems to be focused on a type of relation that is directed solely to your fellow men. In other words, you seem to be a very, even exclusively, social oriented person. In understanding my position you must first understand, that this is not the case with me. Of course, social matters are also a concern for me. But my scope is not restricted to that. My position is, that you can only be totally at ease with the world you live in if there are four areas you have to be aware of. These four areas are 1: existence. 2: life. 3: society. 4: consciousness. Each of these 4 areas have their own problems, and their own tools for solutions. VINEETO: First of all, I am not an exclusively social oriented person. I have said that relating to other people for me is the ultimate test if the particular concept of consciousness, of which I have had several in my life, works. All religious, moral, philosophical and spiritual concepts have failed that test. None has delivered peaceful living with other people in my life, let alone with a man for 24h a day. – By the way, my name is Vineeto and I am a woman! Only cleaning myself up totally of any feeling and emotions, the very stuff the self is made of, has enabled me to do that. And by eliminating the very cause – the self – that produced those fickle, unreliable and often explosive emotions and feelings I am now able to be completely at ease, both on my own and with anybody who comes into my life, be it the man I live with or someone I meet for only 10 minutes. * KONRAD: Now you talk a lot about the interactions you have with others. Your main concern is in that area. But have you ever asked you the following question: ‘If I do not have any skills, insights, understandings, productivity, can I be of interest to others?’ If you do not have any of those, you are just a burden to others. Not a contributor, no matter how friendly you are, without emotions, or free from them. VINEETO: My main concern is not the interaction with others. My main concern is to clean myself of the ‘self’ – the emotions, feelings and instincts that every human is born with and that have produced all the suffering on the planet up till now. My interactions with others have brought the problem to the surface again and again, so I could see the particular emotion, examine it, trace it to its root and eliminate it. That has been an immensely thrilling and rewarding exercise. Not only have I become harmless towards other people – a non-contributor, if you like – but I am for the first time in my life contented, happy, thrilled, delighted about each moment. Living in actuality requires no particular skills or productivity. It requires intent and determination, the courage to go all the way, to disappear entirely as a separate psychological and psychic entity . Then, and only then, am I not a burden to anybody on the planet but a catalyst for delight and more delight, for whoever comes my way. This is very well possible. The insights and understandings on the way to this actual freedom were of importance to me at the time and may be of help to someone else. But eventually everybody has to do the job himself, no-one can do it for somebody else and everybody will encounter different obstacles and related insights on the way. KONRAD: In general you can ask this question in the following way: ‘If I do not have any means, capability, insight, that can make anyone’s life more fulfilling, (including that of your own) is it then possible to have relationships that are not burden-some in some way to others?’ I assert, that such a thing is not possible. But if that is so, then developing yourself leads automatically to a position whereby you have no conflict with others. Simply, because you are such a useful individual to others. So the strange situation then occurs, that our interdependence can be used to speak out freely to others without this being a source of concern. But, on the other hand, if your focus is solely on the social domain, you do not see clearly that non-conflictuous relationships with others is an EFFECT, and not a CAUSE. In this case you manoeuvre yourself into a position whereby you become totally dependent on the judgement of others for your well-being. VINEETO: In my position, as you call it, I am not at all dependent on the judgement of others for my well-being. My well-being has nothing to do with others, it has only to do with my own state of well-being and perfection. I know without doubt that I have cleaned myself up, have made myself perfect, 99% of the time, and that eliminates the need for someone else’s approval. The relationship is ‘non-conflictuous’, as you say, when the behaviour of the other doesn’t cause any ripple in my well-being. If I don’t feel insulted, there is no emotional reaction required from my side and there will be no fight. The insult did not take place, even if it was meant to be an insult. If I don’t have any expectations from the other, there will be no contract, no disappointment, no sulking. In that way, freedom and peace are solely the responsibility of each person who wants to be free and peaceful, and therefore it is possible for everyone who has the necessary intent. RESPONDENT: She is just being No. 14. VINEETO: And No. 12 is just being No. 12. Vineeto is just being Vineeto. Three people out of 5.8 billion on this planet; fellow human beings. If one can’t regard and treat someone as a fellow human being then there is something in oneself to be looked at. Peace on earth is that simple. RESPONDENT: I agree and sometimes, from compassion, it can be pointed out that one is asleep, unconscious, being their mother, whatever. VINEETO: Richard: We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the Human Condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the Human Condition ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. (Richard’s Journal, Foreword). What do you think? * RESPONDENT: Idiots can’t recognize Osho, he is too high for them to realize who he is. VINEETO: Obviously I did not just project, when I said that you are feeling superior. You have divided the world in high and low, up and down, level 1, 2, 3, idiots and clever people. But your superiority is nothing but a psychic and psychological interpretation, supported by the emotions of the Human Condition. Since everybody is inflicted with the Human Condition, it is easy to understand. Due to our instincts and conditioning we create duality for psychic orientation, almost everyone does it – but it is not obligatory. One can delete this ‘natural’ imprint, one can become actually free of one’s instincts and beliefs. RESPONDENT: Probably this is how you misunderstand what masters are up to. You just don’t get it and to cover your hurt ego you pretend you know something. And to convince yourselves, you must desperately try to convert others. Once one has awakened, on any level, it is crystal clear to see down. VINEETO: Do you say you have been awakened and now you can see down on me? RESPONDENT: On a subconscious level, you probably continue to write to this list ... so someone will get thru to you sleepy heads. VINEETO: It seems a cheap cop-out to call what you don’t like ‘sleepy’ and ‘subconscious’. It is called name-calling and not valid as an argument to convince. Can’t you come up with something more substantial? RESPONDENT: Meditation is to be – of one mind. VINEETO: Who’s mind are you talking about, obviously not yours and Vineeto’s. We have not come to agree on one point yet. But, it is early days, we might get there. Just, as long as you talk from your imaginary top of the staircase to me on the imaginary bottom of the staircase, it will be a bit difficult to meet. I suggest, we dismiss the imagination and with it the staircase and talk to each other as fellow human beings, investigating the issue and the subject rather than declaring positions on the staircase. How about it? * RESPONDENT: ... and the second is ... I love you. VINEETO: When I met Peter, and he proposed a living together without love but with a direct intimacy, I thought, ‘what a strange concept’. And then I agreed because I was intrigued. All my relationships based on love had failed, maybe this new ‘concept’ was a solution. It took two months until I dared to question my beliefs and emotions around love. What made it easier was that I could see that love between man and woman had not resulted in a peaceful and harmonious living between any of the couples that I knew. Removing love from the way I related to Peter made it possible for the first time to experience an actual intimacy. Intimacy is seeing the other simply as another human being, without hopes, expectations, interpretation, conditioning, affective appreciation or depreciation. Intimacy is seeing and experiencing the other as he/she actually is. To extend my scrutiny into the nature of ‘love’ to my master-disciple relationship, investigating and questioning ‘Divine Love’, ‘Love Agapé’ and ‘Compassion’ was much more difficult. But then I slowly understood, and later experienced it in an Altered State of Consciousness myself, that the principle of relating to other people is the same in human love and in ‘Divine Love’: a ‘self’, this time the grand ‘Self’, is relating to the other person, the lower ‘self’ who needs love, compassion and help. Both ‘self’ as much as ‘Self’ use the other to confirm themselves in their particular identity. The Awakened One still has an identity in operation: ‘Me’, the glorious ‘Self’ is re-creating itself with each interaction. Love is an affection that is addressed towards someone (human love) or All (Divine Love). It needs people ‘needing’ and ‘wanting’ love for love to be maintained. Therefore it is not actual. A simple experiment will reveal the fact of what I am writing. In a moment of ‘love for all’ stop giving it to someone, or, when alone, stop addressing it to others in your imagination. The feeling of Love won’t be able to stay. It can only be felt when continuously directed towards someone other than oneself. When love and divine love disappear in the light of bare awareness, actual intimacy is possible for the first time. When the loving, compassionate ‘Self’ dies – or is temporarily absent – the actual world becomes apparent. The moment when the one who you ‘think’ and ‘feel’ you are becomes extinct, you are intimate with everyone you meet and everything you experience. See, in this moment I am intimate to you, a fellow human being, writing to you about my experiences and understanding on this particular issue. Sharing with you what I found out about beliefs, about love and divine love. I have experienced the difference between love and intimacy, and intimacy in its directness and purity far exceeds any love. Love can only be a synthetic substitute for the intimacy that we all long for. Without a ‘self’ I am intimate with everything around me and everyone I talk to. We are both fellow human beings, both fascinated to find out about this business of being a human being – after all, we are all here for the first time. When no affections are clouding the conversation, a real and fruitful discussion is possible.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence

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