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 Trust and Faith Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: No, I came to the list ready to have my preconceptions changed, however, nothing that Richard said on the topic of his uniqueness was convincing. VINEETO: Nobody can change your ‘preconceptions’ but you, and suspicion and an attitude of ‘doubt is a duty when dealing [with] ‘men of historical destiny’ ain’t gonna help. To hold to a duty to doubt is to have a preconception where I come from but if you come to understand that it would be sensible to abandon this self-imposed obligation then at least you would have changed some of your ‘preconceptions’. If you sincerely want to change your ‘preconceptions’, you would be far better off, i.e. more prone to succeed, to set aside your duty to doubt sufficiently in order to see whether there is a prima facie case that can be established as to the sensibility and coherency of actualism. From there you could proceed to set about to *experientially* find out whether there indeed exists an actual world. RESPONDENT: Again, I do not hold absolute doubt on this issue. I hold reasonable doubt – I believe it’s unlikely that Richard is the sole discoverer of an actual freedom from the human condition. It’s not an absolute preconception for this reason – my mind could be changed on this issue IF there was a way to verify Richard the First’s claim of uniqueness. VINEETO: As I said in my last post, nobody can change your mind for you – that is solely your responsibility. In order to understand what an actual freedom entails nothing short of doubting your ‘self’ will do, doubting your own belief that ‘it’s unlikely that Richard is the sole discoverer’. What you consider ‘reasonable doubt’ is more likely ‘information’ that ‘contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’, in other words, cognitive dissonance in action. Here is the relevant quote from my last post (full text see below) – Richard: The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. (Richard, Abditorium, Cognitive Dissonance). In order to tackle one’s own cognitive dissonance – the feelings and beliefs that prevent one from taking on board new information that is contrary to the previous information that one has assimilated – one needs a clear incentive to want to move past one’s ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’. In my case this incentive was the dawning of a recognition that my ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’ had made me neither happy nor harmless nor enabled me to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. RESPONDENT: You and I know that there is NO way to verify that Richard was the sole discoverer. VINEETO: You can leave me out of ‘you and I know’ because I do know, experientially. Once I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) I knew that everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong and that nobody teaches, or has ever taught, how to live a PCE 24/7. RESPONDENT: You are asking me to accept this as an article of faith. From what you have said so far, it sounds to me that I will not benefit from Actualism until I take this article of faith onboard completely. VINEETO: You must be joking. In the time you have been on this list it has been said numerous times that actualism is not a matter of faith. Just look up the selected correspondence for the words ‘faith’, ‘trust’, ‘belief’, ‘hope’ and ‘doubt’ in The Actual Freedom Trust Library. You seem to think that the opposite of doubt is faith whereas doubt and faith are merely two sides of the same coin. Rather than remaining trapped within the flip-flop of doubt and faith I relied on naiveté, common sense, sensibility, intelligence and the confidence gained from knowing the facts of the matter. RESPONDENT: Richard is not everyone, … VINEETO: Exactly. Richard being ‘not everyone’ wasn’t deterred by the fact that both Western and Eastern religious teaching considered total freedom from malice and sorrow unattainable before death – against all odds he pursued it nevertheless, and finally succeeded. RESPONDENT: … he does not know the mind of anyone except himself. All he can say factually is that he previously considered it unattainable. So given that he previously considered it unattainable, how does this relate to No. 86’s question: – ‘How does that reveal that nobody had been there before?’ The short answer (which I am providing) is, it does not. VINEETO: To say that only Richard previously considered peace on earth unattainable suggests that your knowledge of Eastern religious teachings is not very comprehensive. Again, you only need to provide one example of somebody reporting being free from the human condition in toto in order to refute Richard’s statement. Let me put it this way – why can we assume with confidence that Thomas Alva Edison was indeed the first to invent the light bulb – and not some New Guinea Highlander tribesman 10,000 years before him? Isn’t it because there is neither any written nor any physical evidence of anyone using electrical light bulbs before Thomas Alva Edison invented them? Why can we assume with confidence that Yuri Gagarin was indeed the first man in space and not some Egyptian pharaoh 5000 years before him? Isn’t it because there is neither any written report of how our blue planet looks like from outer space before Yuri Gagarin came back from his trip and reported what he saw nor is there any physical evidence whatsoever of the necessary technology required for such a spaceflight ever having been available before on any continent in any culture? As for Richard – did you ever wonder whether anyone could become free from the human condition in toto, let alone some imaginary person thousands of years ago, before you came to this mailing list? Or more to the point, have you ever considered the possibility that one can actually change human nature before you read it on the Actual Freedom Trust website? RESPONDENT: For me, as a practicing actualist, … VINEETO: When I came across actualism and had to sort out for myself if Richard was indeed the first to be totally free from the human condition, I did not waste my time with theoretical or logical argumentation – I figured that after 20 fruitless years on the spiritual path I did not have the luxury to waste even more time. Instead I asked myself some pragmatic down-to-earth questions – Had I ever come across, or read of anyone who described life the way Richard does – down-to-earth, unconditionally happy and harmless for 24h a day 365 a year? Do I want to experience life the way he describes his experience of life here on earth, even if it means giving up the search for enlightenment? Is actualism indeed about fact and actuality, i.e. is it objective, as opposed to a belief system, which is always only subjective? How can I find out beyond doubt that actualism is indeed objective (after all, I’ve been duped before)? At this point it was clear that I needed experiential proof because no other proof would be able to silence my doubt permanently. My relentless questioning of my then beliefs and convictions eventually resulted in a rip of the fabric of my beliefs and the PCE that ensued tore apart, for a substantial period of time, the all-encompassing web of ‘my’ beliefs and revealed the pure and pristine actuality that has always been here … and then there was no doubt whatsoever that the actuality I experienced was not of ‘my’ making but was always here, experienceable whenever ‘I’ was absent. In other words, the world I experienced in a PCE was indeed actual, factual and objective. When this PCE occurred I was so stunned, so utterly flabbergasted by the novelty and freshness of the experience, that I never ever again had any doubts that an actual freedom is indeed entirely new to human experience and has nothing at all to do with spiritual enlightenment. When all is said and done you can proffer intellectual/ philosophical arguments pro or against until the cows come home – in the end, as a practicing actualist, it is only experiential evidence that will give you certainty and confidence to proceed. RESPONDENT: [For me, as a practicing actualist,] I have to wonder if Richard is wrong about this, what else is he wrong about? VINEETO: I remember in the early days of actualism I had many feelings of doubt, not so much that Richard was wrong but doubts if I myself would be able to become free from my social conditioning, let alone from the human condition. After endlessly circling around the same issue for days with feelings ranging from doubt to fear to depression back to doubt to fear to depression I finally had enough of it and saw that indulging in and being hobbled by those feelings didn’t lead me anywhere. As a practicing actualist I eventually understood that doubt is a feeling, *my* feeling, and that as long as I allow myself to be ruled by my feelings, clear thinking hasn’t got a chance to get in edgeways and when thinking is muddied by feelings any sensible evaluation is impossible. RESPONDENT: The end result is that it discourages faith in any cosmology whilst on the path to an actual freedom. VINEETO: Just as well. Faith can only ever be a hindrance on the path to an actual freedom. VINEETO: Inevitably every sincere discussion on this list will uncover many beliefs, viewpoints and truths one holds, will question ethics and values one might have, will disperse images one might have of oneself or trigger feelings one doesn’t like or didn’t know one had. The reason is because what is being discussed is the human psyche, how it is programmed to operate and what is the result of that programming, and therefore ‘I’ will feel inevitably exposed because ‘I’ am the human psyche. For this very reason I always stress that it is important to establish one’s intent first – which essentially is ‘my’ agreement to ‘my’ demise – before attempting to start with the nitty-gritty of dismantling one’s identity, otherwise one ends up going round in circles and blaming others for one’s own feelings of frustration and despair. RESPONDENT: Well ... I’m not at all sure that I’ve agreed to ‘my’ demise. I can’t agree to that until I have satisfied myself that Richard is what he thinks he is, and what you and Peter think he is. As I’ve mentioned, I find his diagnosis of the human condition very lucid, penetrating and convincing. But I need to be more satisfied that he has the solution he thinks he does before I can commit to such a radical thing. Experiencing a certain lack of trust and fellowship makes it all the more difficult, but that is not Richard’s fault. He is what he is, and I’ll make of it what I make of it. Undecided so far. VINEETO: You say you ‘find his diagnosis of the human condition very lucid, penetrating and convincing’ – but you don’t find his solution to the human condition ‘lucid, penetrating and convincing’. Have you ever wondered if this is so because you don’t want to agree ‘to ‘my’ demise’ and you therefore prefer to question Richard’s solution rather than conduct your own hands-on investigation of the instinctual passions that are the very cause of the human condition? Personally, when I met Richard I had exhaustively explored the traditional ways on offer to deal with or dissociate from the human condition both in the normal world and in the spiritual world and I knew that despite sincere efforts and the efforts of billions of my fellow human beings before me none of the traditional eons-old methods had worked to free human beings from malice and sorrow. I had satisfied myself that the solutions on offer were at best half-baked and misguided, plus I was utterly fed up being ‘me’ – in short, I was ready to do whatever it takes to become free from ‘me’. Richard’s experience that both ego and soul are the culprit made imminent sense to me and his cheerful and considerate manner made it clear that he lived what he said. Once I had worked this out for myself I knew that all of ‘my’ objections were part of the problem and not part of the solution. As for missing ‘a certain lack of trust and fellowship’ – you are bound to be disappointed when you expect trust, empathy, emotional understanding, condolences and belonging on a non-spiritual mailing list but if you want practical help how to minimize your antagonistic, sorrowful and anxious feelings and how to maximize the felicitous feelings, there is a smorgasbord of hints on the Actual Freedom Trust website, all of which is freely and frankly offered by a few of your fellow human beings. Fellowship with fellow human beings is yours for the choosing. VINEETO: When I think back I also realize how fearful I had been before I began to practice actualism – a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was not harmless in my relating to other people, which inevitably increased my fear that they would hurt me in some way. When I realized that there was no point in waiting for everyone else to become harmless I began to become astutely aware of how often I had wished to hurt others, be it by words, gestures, or actions. And the outcome of being unremittingly aware of my own antagonism is that I now can be considerate of others while not being fearful of what I imagine people think and feel about me. RESPONDENT: Vineeto, here in Mexico people are #1 at seeing words as having double meaning … this is mainly how humour is expressed here, it is even seen as a desirable quality, and there are contests where people try to convey the best hidden meaning in words which imply something else. I have seen that taking words at face value gives others the impression of me being innocent but in an ignorant way … and thus they sometimes try to take advantage of me; however, at the same time, most feel they can trust me. The thing is, I have seen how Actualists always take words for exactly what they mean, should I continue strictly attending to the words of others without ‘imagining’ or trying to find out what the hidden double meaning is? What others are really thinking? I am still distrustful of the words of some but because of several past and present experiences. VINEETO: I remember that in the early years of writing about actualism I tried to figure out ‘the hidden double meaning’, the emotional agenda, the context of feelings and beliefs in which the post was written and I got hopelessly entangled in the psychic web of other people’s malice and sorrow and was consequently unable to give a clear response. I found I first had to untangle myself from the emotional web in order to be able to think straight and write clearly about my experience of freeing myself from my spiritual beliefs and emotional burdens. Taking people’s word’s at face value has nothing to do with trust or mistrust, but is a matter of a simple and straight-forward way to communicate. A ‘hidden double meaning’ is almost always an emotionally charged meaning and trying to second-guess what this is in any situation does nothing to enhance sensible communication. Nowadays I always assume that if people find it important that I take notice of any ‘hidden’ meaning then they will tell me – it is not my responsibility to discern what another is trying to convey through unmentioned hints and allusions. As for being ‘distrustful of the words of some’ – the good news for me was that by examining and understanding my own social and instinctual identity I had less and less reason to fear that people would emotionally hurt me with insinuations or outright sarcasm – identity-slashing intimations from others now rarely reach a target. [...] * VINEETO: And who knows, your ‘refusal to get angry and blame them’ might one day inspire someone to consider the possibility to be more happy by being less angry. RESPONDENT: Yes, I can indeed confirm that people see me as having an unusually positive attitude … similar to how I use to be before the depression hit me. I never sincerely thought I would regain my naiveté. VINEETO: To balance what I said in my last post a warning may be appropriate at this point. Some people might see ‘an unusually positive attitude’ as an invitation for their pranks, frustration and aggression – so it is useful to keep your wits about you. Actualism is not to be confused with pacifism otherwise the bullyboys and bully girls would get to rule the roost. And, as you may have discovered, naiveté has nothing to do with either gullibility or trust – only when you take both the rose coloured glasses and the grey coloured glasses off can you begin to facilitate the felicitous/ innocuous feelings necessary to get to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: I will give you one example. Osho said ‘Don’t let your doubt die. You should doubt every concept, every belief till it becomes your own experience’ So I doubted Osho himself, to the extent that sometimes I even thought that this man is just an intelligent orator who is making fool of so many people. That is why I didn’t become a sannyasin. And that is why I was free to read other Gurus and Scripture and am open to any new way of life. VINEETO: Yes, Rajneesh said, ‘don’t let doubt die’ and he said ‘you have to learn to trust me completely’. I never heard him encourage us to doubt him as the master as the ultimate authority. ‘Doubting every concept’ was to doubt your old conditioning and believe in your ‘Buddha Nature’, your soul, your inner light, the Truth, which shall be revealed... Since Rajneesh himself lived and worked within the system of Eastern Teaching, he had never himself doubted the existence of a soul, or the Divinity of Existence, or Divine Grace (God will be coming towards you if you only try hard enough). That’s why he could speak of it so convincingly. Your doubting Rajneesh and considering him ‘just an intelligent orator’ is what Rajneesh himself would have called ‘not surrendered’, ‘stuck in the mind’ or ‘Westerners don’t know the wonderful and blessed master-disciple relationship of the East’. I have heard several discourses on that topic. You say, you didn’t become a Sannyasin, and you read other Gurus. Have you found with Rajneesh or other Gurus what you were looking for? And what in particular were you looking for? What are you looking for when you read about Actual Freedom? What is the intention behind your search? I am asking these specific question, because they have helped me to distinguish between the teachings and promises on one side and the results, both personal and global, on the other side. Upon close investigation I had to admit that promises and results did not reconcile. Neither did I become enlightened nor did enlightenment result in a solution to the world’s problems. I had the choice to forever blame myself and keep hoping – or to try something new and radical. The new and radical was to questions the soul, the feelings, the emotions (including love) and to learn that instincts are deleteable. The new and radical is to look at facts instead of trusting any master, to only rely on what can be evidenced by the physical senses. In short, to throw everything meta-physical out the window. Actual Freedom definitely is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of all spiritual beliefs. RESPONDENT: I have read some account of yours and Peter’s on your web-site. But I could not relate to most of it. VINEETO: Are you saying that ‘I am making sense of most of what you all say’ – but you ‘could not relate to most’ of our web-site? I am at a loss to make sense out of this. Could you explain which parts you are making sense of and which parts you could not relate to? RESPONDENT: The reason that you felt so much relief and freedom after you could break away from your earlier beliefs both at the time of meeting Osho and Richard, was perhaps you had very strong beliefs both the times. So the contrast made it so surprising (180 degrees opposite). But I don’t find such a contrast, because I don’t have such strong beliefs. I am always in doubt whether my beliefs are true. And I owe this attitude to Osho and my eastern background and that is why I feel gratitude towards them. VINEETO: Are you saying you feel gratitude to Rajneesh because he taught you to doubt? Or did you have the tendency to doubt already before you met Rajneesh? And is doubt enough for you to be happy? I was a strong believer, already as a Christian girl. I believed in authority and replaced one authority with another. The change for me was radical – and obvious. But as long as you have beliefs, you will have doubts. The very presence of doubt points to a belief. Peter wrote a definition of ‘doubt’ and of ‘intent’ in his glossary. Only facts can make you confident and certain, they are evidenced by the physical senses, they are actual. Actual Freedom is to replace beliefs by the actual experience of the physical senses and common sense. Most part of my investigation has been to find where I believed – once I could see a belief as a belief, it was already dissolving. But most beliefs are disguised as truths, so-called facts, gut-feelings, intuition and trust. One has to remove that blanket first to discover underneath that it is just a belief. * RESPONDENT: This topic of actualism versus spiritualism is becoming more and more important for me. I remember, in the very beginning you warned me that unless I understand this difference, it will be useless to proceed. At that time I brushed aside your advice, thinking that it was not important as long as I experiment with the method. Now, I realise that it is important to settle this issue before any other thing. To be honest, I consider, actualism as another spiritual path which terms God/Existence/Nature/That as ‘actual physical world’, and doesn’t use capital letters to denote it. In my opinion some other paths also point towards the same ‘actual physical world’ by different names. terms Satori as peak consciousness experience, has its Guru in form of Richard, whose words are taken as final and indisputable. claims that it is the only true path (like most other paths also claim) maintains that ‘I’ is the main problem in realizing its goal. In my opinion many other paths also maintain that. Of course, there are certain differences that it doesn’t believe in re-incarnation and maintain that the death of the body is the final end. But then there are always differences of approaches among different paths. Being brought up in a liberal Hindu culture, I deeply believe that all paths are right and all lead to the same goal. I think it is important to be honest, so that I can start from where I am. VINEETO: Yes, I think ‘it is important to be honest’ and to ‘start from where you are’ and then move on. It looks like all you have done up to now is substituting a few words from actualism into your spiritual language, and you have listed them very honestly and clearly: Anything that is actual / physical you call God by whatever name A pure consciousness experience you call a Satori Richard you call a guru Facts you call the Truth, and every path leads to the Truth The whole of one’s identity – ego and soul – you call ‘ego’. And a ‘liberal Hindu culture’ is the perfect fertile climate to simply integrate another ‘Guru’s teaching’ into the ‘vegetable soup’ of Hindu Pantheism. If you are happy with the ‘liberal Hindu culture’, and you want to spend your life ‘deeply believing that all paths are right and lead to the same goal’, then there is no reason why you should question your concept of spiritualizing everything and everybody. There is a Christian saying that ‘all paths lead to Rome’ and if you want to go to Rome, then that is great advice. All spiritual beliefs may lead to ‘Truth’, but there is only one way to experience the actual world – through the physical senses without an obstructing self, Self or Being. If you want to experience the actuality of life, the delight of the unfiltered senses and the perfection of the actual world, then simply substituting a few terms is nothing other than cheating yourself. I suggest you read what No. 8 wrote on ‘beliefs and facts’; the difference between belief and fact is worth an extensive study for a ‘deep believer’. [Respondent No. 8]: ‘To believe means ‘fervently to wish to be true’. A belief is conviction of the truth or reality of a thing, based on insufficient grounds to afford indisputable knowledge. A belief is an assumption, a notion, an idea, an emotion-backed thought that requires faith. Beliefs are misconceptions that require active scrutiny and intelligent investigation by anyone who sincerely wants to become free of the human condition. Many beliefs masquerade as ‘truths’. Most people value belief over fact and the human condition over freedom. It is extremely important for me at the moment to look into what constitutes a belief and what constitutes a fact. I have discovered that simply because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact. Most people have absolutely no idea of the difference between a belief and a fact. A fact is a fact, as in tangible, corporeal, material, definitive, present, obvious, evident, current, substantial, physical and palpable. A fact is demonstratively evident to all that it is actual and or that it works. We used to believe the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat, but both turned out to be mere beliefs. When one is not interpreting through belief systems it becomes obvious what is really happening rather than the ‘I’s theories, a truth is known by actual experience or observation. When one really begins to investigate beliefs, one discovers that the ‘me’ who ‘I’ think ‘I’ am, is nothing more than a ‘program’, laid over instincts of fear, aggression, and the desires that one is born with. So to question beliefs is to question one’s very ‘self’ – ‘my’ social identity and sense of ‘self’. Only by challenging the very act of believing itself, can one actively dismantle and eliminate all of the beliefs that ‘I’ hold so dearly. To replace beliefs with facts is to eliminate one’s ‘self’ and to penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’. The Universe is quite simply what is, perfect, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment. It requires no belief, faith, hope or trust to be here now. So that’s my take on beliefs at the moment.’ [endquote]. As for your 5 points – Actualism is about facts, verifiable by the physical senses, not beliefs. There is a topic about Pure Consciousness Experience in the Library topics, you might find a mighty difference if you want to look for them. Richard is an expert as in expertise; if you want to make him a guru and then worship or rebel against that image, it is utterly your choice. Facts are 180 degrees in the opposite direction to truth, trust, faith and hope. True is what everybody believes to be true whereas a fact is a fact. Your opinion is non-factual and based on a ‘mistranslation’. Enlightenment eliminates ego and lets feelings go rampant. The ‘core of being’ of Mr. Buddha and the like is perfectly intact and feeds off the instinctual passions. I recommend to look up the terms ‘I’ and ‘identity’ in the Glossary of our website. But these are only a few point of the 180 degree difference between the actual world of the senses and the spiritual world of beliefs and passionate imaginations. Why not, for a change, look for the differences rather than the believed similarities, otherwise you will never get out of the sticky Pantheistic viewpoint ‘that all paths are right and all lead to the same goal.’ VINEETO: Personally, it took two months and a lot of discussions with Peter until I finally understood experientially, what the term ‘spiritual’ stands for. For me, ‘spiritual’ had implied the ‘godly’ way of life, following the highest aspirations of mankind, a dedication to be good, to be part of the group of people who also aspire to the same goal. The day I finally understood the literal meaning of the word ‘spirit-ual’, a whole new world opened up. Suddenly the spiritual world was not the only alternate world to the ‘real’ world, not even the best world. Suddenly I understood that I – like everyone else – was producing this world in my head and heart – with my very spirit, so to speak – and this world consisted of spiritual morals, ethics, ideas, beliefs, emotions, loyalties, pride and the belief in the immortality of the soul. A major distinguishing factor between the spiritual approach to life and the path to an actual freedom is that spirituality teaches one to enhance the ‘good’ affective feelings. One is to indulge one’s intuition, trust, belief, faith, hope, guesswork and is encouraged to sense (as in feel out) a situation. Whereas, on the path to Actual Freedom, one explores actuality by applying thought, common sense, contemplation, practicality, intelligence and undertakes an investigation into verifiable facts of the situation. * JAMES: I really don’t want an authority. If I have any questions hopefully I will be able to ask someone without them acting like an authority like they know what I said or meant and add to what I actually said and like they are an authority on what a previous teaching said or meant. VINEETO: I have been contemplating about the issue of authority a bit in the last few days. Apart from the discoveries I mentioned in my last post about authority I have found one basic theme that is common to all issues on authority. Whenever I have made someone an authority in my life and either sucked up to, loved or envied, it was for the simple reason that the person had something that I desired at the time. These qualities were mainly status, luck, money, fame, knowledge, power, enlightenment or freedom. Always combined with that desire was the belief that the other person could either give or withhold the desired quality, a belief that established my emotional dependency on the other. I always loathed being emotionally dependant on such an authority – which gave rise to either fight, rebellion and resentment or faith, trust, cow-towing and surrender. Yet I instinctually kept creating and maintaining such relationships while at the same time struggling to become free of them. It was only when I learnt about Actual Freedom and began investigating the underlying beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions that form my identity, did I start to understand the reason for my need of authority and was able to incrementally free myself of this very need for emotional dependency. In order to break free I had to overcome the fear of standing on my own feet, the need to belong to anyone or any group as well as my innate laziness. I had to learn to rely on facts rather than beliefs, and to use my capacity to think and investigate for myself rather than feel, trust and intuit my way in the world. It is an absolute fascinating adventure once one starts to debunk the big authorities, particularly the Gurus and God-men, and starts finding out for oneself. A whole new, factual and actual, world starts opening up. Knowing the facts for oneself gives a confidence that makes emotional authority issues utterly redundant. The second benefit of investigating the emotional part of authority was that I could finally fulfill my life-long yearning to live with a man in perfect peace and harmony, equity and intimacy. Before that, my instinctual reactions to seek and then reject authority had always spoiled the relationships with men and reduced the living together to shallow compromises, temporary ceasefires to the ongoing battle and the subsequent frustration. The third benefit was that I did not have to reject another’s expertise in a particular field for the mere fear of being dependant. I can now value expertise for what it is – a great support to discovering what I want to understand or accomplish. Richard was, and is, a perfect source of expertise because he has discovered Actual Freedom by using the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ He has debunked the grand delusion of enlightenment – having been there and done that – and he continues to unveil, in his correspondence, all the so-called mysteries of the spiritual and pseudo-scientific world. Without an authority-problem we can simply stand on each other’s shoulders, learn from past mistakes and failures, apply current cutting-edge knowledge and put into practice what someone else has already discovered and investigated. After all, actualism is an empirical science, a practical brain-engineering process and not a religion or a belief-system. (see Selected Correspondence, Authority). * VINEETO: When you wrote to Richard on Mailing List B, you related an experience of the actual – [James to Richard]: I experienced the actual today and it is so clear that it is always right here right now because it is what actually is. The closest description I can give is that it was a direct experience of everything as it was happening. Everything was perfect as it is and I was where I should be. There was perfect clarity. (James to Richard, List B, 30.10.1999). The remembrance of this ‘self’-less perfection is the starting point to the dismantling of the ‘self’, first the outer layers of one’s social identity and then the core of one’s being, the instinctual passions. From the reference point of a PCE one is able to distinguish the actual from normal or spiritual, facts from beliefs and sensuous experience from affective feelings. One starts from an experience of the actual and daringly questions every truth, belief, faith, hope, trust and feeling. The clarity of a PCE is vital to distinguish facts from ‘truths’, and the PCE reveals feelings of fear and pride as unnecessary stumbling blocks and exposes the ‘self’ in action that is spoiling the already always-existing perfection. What adventure, what delight, what serendipity. I am happy and willing to further explore, discuss and investigate the basis of disagreements and ‘so much misunderstanding’ in order to achieve the clarity so evident in a pure consciousness experience. That is, after all, the very purpose of this mailing list. If you are interested, that is. RESPONDENT: Yes... when ‘I’ write, or talk, ‘I’ use ideas, ‘truths’, if you like, they are not the experience. The sensate-only experience is personal and as such is difficult to remember and share. Its truth, if you like, is only within a context ... ‘my’ context of 46 years of experiences. VINEETO: The sensate-only experience is not ‘personal’ at all because there is no ‘self’ in operation to claim it as personal. It is, however, ‘difficult to remember’ because of the non-emotional context of the experience. The sensate-only ‘self’-less experience, a pure consciousness experience, has nothing to do with any ‘truth’. When I write, I write about my day-to-day experiences of the actual world and about investigations into beliefs, feelings and passionate convictions. I never write about a truth or a belief that I have because I don’t have any. Truth consists, exactly as you say, of the personal ‘context of 46 years of experiences’ as well as ‘ideas, truths’ that have been passed down for centuries. ‘Truths’ are what everyone believes to be their personal truths – they are nothing but spiritually upgraded feelings and, as such, are neither factual nor direct experiences of the actual. Truth is nothing other than a fervently believed, and passionately defended, mixture of hope, faith and trust – fertile fodder for one’s ‘soul’ that everyone is so contumaciously proud of. Truth is the paint and polish for the car with a stuffed engine, a nice-looking, nice-feeling cover-up for the malice and sorrow inside. KONRAD: I do not know, whether you are aware of it, but we are not communicating. VINEETO: I don’t know about you, but I am communicating with you – I read what you write and I respond to what you are saying. When I look through the recent posts, you were also communicating with me – at least you said so. Viz – [Vineeto]: Good to talk to you again. Cheers Vineeto [Konrad]: Thanks for communicating with me. There is a lot of emotion in you. Maybe emotions are not so bad after all? (Konrad to Vineeto, 10.3.2002). Maybe you stopped communicating when you realized that your idea of ‘a lot of emotion’ in me was merely wishful thinking? KONRAD: You know, for any real communication to be at all possible, there has to be mutual emotional credit. But if emotions are wrong, then, of course, emotional credit is a meaningless term. And if there is no emotional credit, there is no ‘taking each other seriously’. VINEETO: Another word for ‘emotional credit’ is trust. Trust is the ‘faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination’ Oxford Dictionary. I have long ago thrown trust, hope, love and faith out the window together with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair. I prefer to take what people say at face value, and instead of relying ‘on the truth of a statement ... without examination’ I rather check out the facts for myself. To have a sincere discussion about what it is to be human being one needs neither trust nor distrust but a sincere interest in what is actually the case, what makes sense and was is factual. To enter into a discussion with the burden of an emotional expectation, as in demanding trust, faith or ‘mutual emotional credit’ is to handcuff and mouth-gag the other to only say what one wants to hear, to not hurt one’s precious feelings and to not question one’s precious beliefs. This type of conversation, although very common, only serves to cement what one already feels and believes, to confirm what one already holds to be the Truth and, as such, is the opposite to gaining a clear insight into the human condition. KONRAD: In other words, you can try to point out that I am wrong until you are ‘blue in the face’. VINEETO: You forget that it does not matter to me if you agree with the facts I pointed out or not. It is your life you are living and you are reaping the rewards and paying the consequences for what you choose to do. KONRAD: But if you fail to first make me respect you, I will not listen. VINEETO: For me the discussion we have had was not about gaining your respect. Facts do not turn into fiction because you choose to ignore them. KONRAD: This makes your e-mails to be an ‘exercise in futility’. VINEETO: I have enjoyed my conversation with you immensely. It is always good fun to find out what sense, or nonsense, other people make of the business of being alive on this wonderful and cornucopian planet. KONRAD: I have no respect whatsoever for you. That is the emotional content of me comparing you with a mouse. You fail to see, that this implies that I do not take the trouble to read your e-mails. VINEETO: I am surprised that you are nevertheless still answering my posts. But given that you insist on sticking to your unsubstantiated emotional impression, this is indeed the end of a sensible conversation. Besides, it has never been your strong point to read what actualists have to say. Even though you considered Richard to be a genius (‘What I really think of Richard is that he is a genius.’ Konrad to Vineeto 10.3.2002) you have all the same shown little interest to listen to his story. Viz – Richard: ‘I must ask, at this point: Do you ever read what I write and send to you?’ Konrad: ‘To be honest, sometimes I am sloppy about this’. (Richard, List B, No. 17b (Konrad), 28 September 1999). And – [Konrad]: And now that I ask, is Richard still alive? I see no trace of him any more on the Internet. [Vineeto]: If you are interested, here is the address for his latest correspondence. [Konrad]: Not really. But thanks anyways. (Konrad to Vineeto 10.3.2002). KONRAD: I just read the first few sentences. And if I see no attempt to establish emotional credit, I just discard the rest. VINEETO: Following your line of argument I am surprised that you had such an extensive correspondence with Richard who never made a secret out the fact that his entire emotional faculty has expired in September 1992. Reading your correspondence with him I gained the expression that the very fact of this outstanding ongoing experience had fascinated you immensely. Your statement also does not make any sense in regards to your assertion that you are now dominating your emotions – [Konrad]: My nervous system also went through some form of transformation. It has in common with his transformation, that the ‘social intelligence’, the ‘intelligence of the emotional part of us’ is also no longer dominant ... but it is taken over by the intelligence of the neocortex. This does not mean an ‘undercutting’ of emotions, as is the case with Richard, but a ‘domination of emotions’ by that part of the brain, that is fully programmable, and that is the seat of consciousness itself. (Konrad to Vineeto 24.2.2002). VINEETO: Why, despite your transformation, are emotions still so important that you have to establish ‘mutual emotional credit’ first, before your ‘intelligence of the neocortex’ can begin to operate? Do you no longer practice ‘domination of emotions’? You are also asserting that you can manipulate other people’s emotions easily. Viz.: [Konrad]: Since in me the neocortex is dominant, I am able to trigger an emotion in anybody who has an understanding he bases his life on. It is easy. (Konrad to Vineeto 10.3.2002). Has this manipulation failed that you now demand to first establish ‘emotional credit’? KONRAD: So much for ‘elimination of emotions’ and therefore ‘not taking emotions into account’ to establish ‘world peace’. VINEETO: I would rather say – so much for the practice of ‘domination of emotions’. It does not seem to work very well to establish ‘emotional credit’, let alone ‘world peace’. The attempt to base human relations on trust, faith and hope, i.e. ‘mutual emotional credit’, has had a trial run to ‘establish world peace’ over at least 5000 years of recorded history. You only need to watch the evening news to know the success it has had – nil. I decided that enough is enough after years of seeking peace via trust, faith, love and hope and I turned around 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Without expectations for trust, faith, love and hope the fear of distrust, disbelief, doubt and disappointment has also disappeared and therefore the hurdles to live with people in peace have greatly diminished. It is so much easier to have a peaceful interaction with my fellow human beings when ‘me’, the ‘self’-centred entity inside this body, is not continuously demanding attention, trust, respect, love and sympathy. In a pure consciousness experience, where the emotional-instinctual ‘self’ is temporarily absent, the purity and perfection of this actual world can be readily experienced. In such a non-affective, non-spiritual experience it becomes glaringly obvious that it is ‘me’, and only ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual ‘self’, who is standing in the way of peace on earth. To remember such an experience of the always existing purity and perfection of the universe is to become obsessed with living this experience 24 hours a day. That’s what actualism is all about. VINEETO: What is usually completely overlooked is that there is not only an ‘ego’ controlling our thoughts, but also a ‘soul’ producing our emotions and that both are running on the fuel of our innate animal survival instincts. Both, ego and soul, have to be eliminated in order to experience an actual freedom from the Human Condition. Only without the intricate system of instincts, emotions and beliefs can the magnificent perfection of actuality be experienced, which is then it self-evident and obvious. Actual Freedom is neither a devastating truth nor a mystery to be lost in – but the continuous experience of this abundant life in this pure and infinite universe, experienced through the physical senses. RESPONDENT: No amount of talking or typing will ever awaken anybody unless there is trust and surrender, such as what can exist in a master/disciple relationship. I say these words to add clarity where there might otherwise be frustration from not being heard. VINEETO: Trust and surrender only lead to the confused lost-ness, that you describe your freedom to be, and to eternal dependency from the person one has chosen to be one’s master. You surrender your will to a higher authority. Not much of a freedom I would say! Freedom is to be free of authority, free of one’s ‘self’, free of any psychic, mental and emotional construct, free of churning emotions and the sorrow of compassion. Freedom is to be free to be the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. RESPONDENT: I feel you are projecting again here. I never mentioned eternal dependency. The trust and surrender I mention is dropping of ego, greatly facilitated by a master. Trust and surrender is to existence or god or a master. Anything can become dependency if you love being a victim. VINEETO: You might have never mentioned eternal dependency because you might not be aware of it. It is dependency to ‘trust’ someone else rather than rely on one’s own innate intelligence, and it is dependency to ‘surrender’ one’s will to some higher being or mythical force rather than activate one’s own sincere intent to be the best one can be. For millennia this ‘trust and surrender’ has stopped people thinking for themselves, relying on God or Existence or Masters and prophets for help. Once I have experienced the actual perfection of this physical universe for myself in a peak experience – where the ‘self’ is temporarily in abeyance – I can focus my efforts to reach this state 24 h a day. And using the simple method of eliminating the instincts that the ‘self’ consists of, I am free to pursue this actual freedom without ‘trust and surrender’, without master or divine grace. To ‘trust’ another or ‘surrender’ to someone or something else is by definition ‘not freedom’. * RESPONDENT: Seeing that most of the world is unconscious of their repressions which keep them stuck in their beliefs, you have formed a new belief that all of what the masses believe is wrong. I am not saying they are right. I am saying that if you re-awaken, see your current beliefs, AND NOT REPLACE THEM as Osho has said, you may find your heart and life as a mystery to be lived, not as a believing robot. VINEETO: Once I experienced the actual world I could see there is no need to pollute it with any kind of ‘human produce’ – call it heart, love, mystery, divine consciousness. From the clear experience of a Pure Consciousness Experience I could see that all my feelings and beliefs are part of the Human Condition, a product of the basic survival instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. I understand that you would want to label my experience of the actual world according to your belief-structure and put it into the drawer of ‘another belief’ because all we have known up to now is consists of beliefs. In fact, belief, trust, hope and faith are held as the highest human values. The moment you sincerely inquire into the activity of believing, you will find yourself nibbling away at the very substance of the ‘Self’. Very, very scary, but utterly thrilling and immensely rewarding. Did you ever consider how do you determine if what you believe is actually the case? Well, if it is actually the case, it must therefore exists without the support of your belief – so believing is an unnecessary activity. My honest investigation into my acts of believing and one year of diligently applying the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ has led me to experiencing the world in its magnificent, sensuous and delightful actuality – unclouded and unfiltered by any emotions, feelings, beliefs or instincts. Mr. Rajneesh may have said not to replace the beliefs of your primary conditioning and first-hand beliefs, but he has certainly replaced them with his version of spiritual conditioning and beliefs. * VINEETO: Osho may have said not to replace the beliefs of your secular conditioning and beliefs, but he certainly replaced them with his version of spiritual conditioning and beliefs. RESPONDENT: As I said before, I don’t get that you hear me ... so since I am not addicted to endlessly arguing, as apparently you both are ... I’ll make this short. Pray tell, what spiritual conditioning and beliefs did Osho replace in us? VINEETO: So now we are investigating what is a belief and what is a fact, are we? Remember, belief per dictionary means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, while fact means ‘what has really happened or is the case’ . You say that nothing that Osho tried to instil in us was based on belief, do you? Do you say that everything he talked about were mere facts, evidenced by our senses? That one did not need to believe or trust what was said, one could simply see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it? I try to avoid battling with quotes, Osho said billions of words and everyone makes their own interpretation of it. But since you seem to claim that there was no spiritual conditioning or any beliefs involved, I found some of his words that point to his belief in God, divinity, soul, immortality, the mysterious ‘inner space’ and the Universe as animated by divine intelligence [Mohan Rajneesh]: God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Beloved, Vol. 1, Ch 1). [Mohan Rajneesh]: And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception. Every soul chooses its own time of conception – when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment, and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Hidden Mysteries, Ch 5). [Mohan Rajneesh]: A man of sensitivity remains wherever he is – and God seeks him. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3, Ch 9). [Mohan Rajneesh]: Your unmoving centre becomes such a dance. And one who knows his centre, also knows his eternity, his immortality. Buddhas don’t die, neither are they born. They simply appear and disappear into the same ocean just like waves. You have to go deeper and deeper every day, you have to bring more and more of the Buddha to the circumference of your life. It happens, certainly – I say it with absolute authority because it has happened to me. [Emphases added]. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Ch 2). As I said to No. 10: [Vineeto]: With Actual Freedom a second de-conditioning took place, a spiritual de-conditioning. And again, I was ready for it, because after all those years of sincere effort my search did not show the results I had been aiming for. This second de-conditioning was much more radical and went far deeper than the first, it is going to eliminate all of me, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body with its senses, free to delight in this pure, perfect and infinite universe as a sensate flesh-and-blood human being. Nothing more, nothing less. (Vineeto, List C, No. 10, 13.1.1999). Actual Freedom and the simple and effective method to achieving it is available for everybody who wishes to go for the best – presupposing that you are discontent with your life as it is now. * RESPONDENT: But by rightly hearing Osho, one would see his whole effort is to destroy all beliefs. VINEETO: He might have thought so himself, and yet it was a belief and not a fact that ‘he is not the body’, that ‘he only visited this planet’, that ‘his soul is immortal and dissolves into the Whole’, that ‘real life starts after death’ – that’s what’s the meaning of ‘Maha-Parinirvana’, the true and great Nirvana after death. You can find many, many words for what he taught to be the truth – still, it is just ancient Eastern beliefs. It needs trusting and believing, it needs surrender to the master’s wisdom in order to keep up this imaginary world. The moment you stop feeding the belief, for instance in an afterlife or immortality, it will gradually disappear and be revealed the mirage it is. RESPONDENT: My insight into his messages is rather blunt. But I like it. I say all that he said boils down to two messages. One is ... everything that you believe is bullshit ... VINEETO: Could it be that, for your convenience, you call ‘belief’ what you have thrown out, and label as ‘truth’, what you want to keep? If the very act of believing is ‘bullshit’, why do you believe in trust, in God, in surrender? As you say on your web-site: [Respondent]: ‘All are lessons, on the way, god knows where, and nothing can be done, but trust in life’ [endquote]. – and to No. 14 and to No. 4 you said: [Respondent]: ‘unless there is trust and surrender, such as what can exist in a master/disciple relationship.’ [endquote]. It simply requires no trust to be here in the actual world as this flesh and blood body. In my ruthless and relentless investigations of what are my beliefs and what are facts, I found an amazing guideline: Everything that needs ‘my’ doing in any form, thinking, believing, feeling, intuiting, channelling etc. is not actual. Whatever is actual can be questioned and examined till the cows come home, it will stay actual and factual. You can doubt the existence of a tree, it will still be there as a growing plant with a trunk and branches and leaves. But if you question the soul, you’ll end up with nothing substantial. Applying this guideline to all my dearly held beliefs has been at times quite devastating – but now I can be certain and confident for the first time about the facts that I had uncovered under the layer of passionate beliefs. Anything that requires belief or feeling such as ‘trust’, ‘surrender’ or ‘hope’ is not actual – it is obvious and devastatingly simple. Trust is believing or hoping that something exists (ie that Existence cares for us, that the Master knows what he is doing or talking about, that God is looking after His children). Confidence, on the other hand, is knowing the facts as evidenced by the physical senses. RESPONDENT: They have a peculiar way of expressing experiences which I can share and recognize. What I wonder about, is what they call fact. And I must ask you, Peter, what is a fact, when that which is a fact to you is not a fact to me? VINEETO: From this different view of understanding the fact of death without an after-life, I can see facts as naked as they are, without the embellishing veil of love, compassion, hope, right and wrong, soul and inner world. I had taken all those feelings for facts before I met Richard, but after closer and honest investigation they could not stand the scrutiny of my discrimination. I had had strong experiences or ‘realisations’ about truth, love, hope etc. and that had made it all the easier to believe them as real – I don’t deny that those experiences are real. But they are not actual, which means, you cannot see, touch, hear, smell or taste them. They exist in the head and only in the head (or are felt in the heart) and they are a bit different for everybody. A Christian sees Jesus in a vision, a Sannyasins may hear Osho talk ‘truth’ in their minds. Facts are material facts, physical facts, sensual facts, scientifically proven facts (in opposition to a scientific theory like a black hole), what has really happened or is the case, as the Oxford dictionary says. The so-called facts of the ‘real world’ are mere beliefs. That millions of people believe them does not make them facts. And belief can have amazing results. I have had wonderful spiritual experiences and psychic understandings. But in comparison with the peak-experiences of the actual world it is evident and obvious that they are mere passionate imaginations. * RESPONDENT: Can you give me the references to the dictionary you are referring to? VINEETO: Yes, I can. I appreciate your scrutiny. The sentence that you are referring to was in a post to No. 12: ... belief per dictionary means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, while fact means ‘what has really happened or is the case’. The reference for the definition of fact is from the Macquarie dictionary: [quote]: what has really happened or is the case; truth; reality: in fact rather than theory, the fact of the matter is; something known to have happened; a truth known by actual experience or observation: scientists work with facts. The reference for belief is from the Oxford Concise Dictionary Of English Etymology published by ‘The Oxford University Press’ (c) 1996. I quote the part in question: [quote]: The etymology of the word ‘believe’ comes from the Old English ‘belefan’ (from ‘gelefan’) derived from the Gothic ‘galaubjan’ meaning ‘hold dear’ or ‘trust in’. (This is from ‘be + lief’ and the Old English word ‘lief’, ‘leof’, ‘liob’, ‘liub’ – from the Germanic ‘lieb’ and Gothic ‘liufs’ – means ‘to love’ or ‘beloved’ as in ‘dear’ meaning ‘desirous’). [endquote]. Hence ‘believe’ means ‘hold dear’ as in ‘love desirously’. Thus ‘believing’ means ‘dearly trusting or desiring to be true’. Thus the word ‘believe’ means ‘fervently wish to be true’. Does that answer your question? * RESPONDENT: Dearest Vineeto, from you clear space, can’t you see how many, innumerable ways there are to interpret these definitions? There are no facts here. VINEETO: No I can’t. Apart from the etymological description, ‘belief’ in my own experience vanished the moment I examined the ‘desire for it to be true’. It becomes either a fact or a fantasy. It is the passionate hope that is might be true which makes it a belief. I have enjoyed our discussion and I am looking forward to your reply.
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