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 Here and Now Actualism Homepage Here RESPONDENT: I have some long-standing tax and credit problems, which I find make it difficult to free myself from identity issues. I owe tens of thousands in taxes and creditors and they want their money. I would appreciate any advice you have regarding dealing with pragmatics like debts and finances incurred before my interest in actualism. When I ask myself ‘the question’ regarding these matters, I feel angry and afraid that I will have a good part of my money taken from me and also have to do disagreeable jobs in order to rectify the situation. VINEETO: When I became a practicing actualist, I found it vital to sort out the practicalities of living because I can’t be happy as long as I have debilitating financial worries and I can’t be harmless if I withhold other people’s money or property. As for ‘I will have a good part of my money taken’ – when you owe money to other people it is not really yours, is it? Spiritualists attempt to spend as much time as possible in their imaginary feel-good world in order to escape having to solve the pragmatic problems of their life. An actualist wants to be here in this physical world as totally as possible and that focus precipitates and involves sorting out one’s day-to-day life in the most sensible and straightforward manner. As for ‘disagreeable jobs’ – it is a fact for most people that they have to work for money for food, shelter and clothes. When you ask how you are experiencing this moment of being alive and find yourself objecting to the fact of having to do a certain job, then you know that there is something to look at. It was only by slowly whittling away at my objections to the facts of life – the facts of the world-as-it-is and people-as-they-are – that I have incrementally succeeded in becoming happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: Have your memories undergone a change? VINEETO: Yes, most of my emotional memories have faded or disappeared completely once the emotional issues that sustained these memories – and that these memories in turn sustained –were dealt with at their core. RESPONDENT: Since actualism, is the attention to the experience of the moment, ‘here’, you won’t be ‘roaming’ mentally, emotionally much; how is your emotional memory now? Are you always ‘here’? VINEETO: Yes, I am always here in that daydreaming has stopped completely, neither do I imagine scenarios in the future nor waste this moment by indulging in past memories. I remember when I realized the fact I am always here I was shocked – I desperately tried to ‘leave this moment’ and go somewhere else and I even stuck my head under the blanket trying to imagine myself somewhere else but it proved impossible. With imagination having lost its seductive and convincing power I found I am here, no matter what the situation, and consequently I decided that I might as well do whatever it takes to enjoy being here, in this, the non-imaginary world-as-it-is with all the other non-imaginary people-as-they-are. RESPONDENT: What’s the first thought when you wake up?! VINEETO: Something like: ah, it’s time to get up. Mmhmm, what’s the weather like? I wonder what will happen today… RESPONDENT: Do you have to rmbr to practice attention first thing upon waking? VINEETO: Not any more. The on-switch for attention stays on permanently nowadays and should an emotion interfere with my being happy and harmless, investigative questions automatically kick in. In the meantime when nothing is ‘going on’, as it were, and I am feeling excellent, attentiveness automatically ensures an on-going awareness of all of the sensate pleasures that simply being alive has to offer. RESPONDENT: I wonder though, if attempting to re-create these peak experiences isn’t a little bit like a kid who had an ice cream cone, and when it is gone, wants another one, and imagines she might have one all the time. How could one not want this? But the wanting itself seems to me to be a statement of the problem. VINEETO: When I started my spiritual journey, my driving force was to get out of this miserable world I was living in. The promise was that I would be able to live in the land of bliss, once I am able to get rid of the ego – die as an ego. But then at the same time the rule was not to want anything, to surrender my will, and I ended up being dependent on the Master to tell me what to do and what to aim for. Also I ended up going round in circles because to get what I want I had to give up wanting to get it... After meeting Richard and Peter it took me a few month and a mind-shattering peak-experience to understand that Actual Freedom is in fact something completely and diametrically opposite to the spiritual path. It is not even an expansion of the spiritual. It is slowly, slowly seeing through the immense web our psychic world is made of, understanding and seeing (getting) that ALL of the psychic world is nothing but an enormous collective passionate belief-system. And that there is an actual world beyond imaginary belief – the peak experience. Living in a peak-experience everything is perfect, everything is obvious, already happening without me having to control or direct it, in fact it can only happen if ‘I’ am not there. This memory I take back when I become ‘normal’ again, this then works as the thread, the sincere intent to move further into scary enquiries. So I know what I want and I need exactly this will and intent to overcome the fears and doubts which appear when I start cleaning myself up. ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is the only question I need to check out what is happening now. Nothing else counts. Half an hour ago or tomorrow don’t count. And if I am not happy now, then there is something to do, to find out, to clean up. Which doubt, which objection, which emotion is preventing me from being happy now. It look so simple one thinks there must be a catch. But this is all there is to it. This method is so devastatingly effective and that is the scary bit – it works! And once you see that it works, you become more daring and question yet another threshold of a dearly held belief or ‘Truth’. You will discover that however dear and proven those ‘Truths’ seem, that they are never based on facts. VINEETO to Alan: I followed up a few thoughts the other day, which might be useful to you or others. I started my investigation about the feeling of impatience. Impatience has always been one of the driving forces in my life and kept me going, counteracting the innate inertia to get me back on the track of what I wanted to achieve. But the more I am actually here and enjoying life, the more the feeling of impatience becomes a nuisance and is, in fact, preventing me from enjoying what is happening here in this moment. Of course, for most of the process on the path to an actual freedom I need a lot of impatience, a burning discontent and dissatisfaction with life as it is and with the second rate compromise of living that both real-world and spiritual-world solutions have on offer. But with the incremental dismantling of all the emotions that constitute my self I come to understand the role that impatience is playing now – preventing ‘me’ from disappearing. The main fuel for this feeling of impatience comes from the notion that there is something better ‘out there’, in the future – that magic ingredient that will then make life as perfect as the ending of children’s fairytale – and then they lived happily ever after. And yet it is this very feeling of impatience, that particular bit of my ‘self’, that prevents me from the sensate-only experiencing the perfection of this moment. Impatience is the ‘self’ telling the ‘self’ to go away in order for life to be perfect thereafter. What a furphy! Who am I trying to fool? This is what cunningness in action looks like. It is fascinating to see the self splitting itself into two yet again in order to pretend that there is change happening without really having to change anything. Seeing through the charade, I experience the thrill that accompanies the shift from a furphy to an actual experience, from ‘feeling impatient’ to actively dismantling the ‘self’, from stepping out of the ‘real’ world to arriving here. I understand that the only way to approach self-immolation is by welcoming the death of ‘me’ with free will, open arms and a full YES. It is a magic formula, that turning around 180 degrees again, a yes to immolation rather than a no to life as it is. When death is welcome with the same thrilling anticipation as a sexual playmate then I know I am on the right track. So impatience gets replaced by an understanding of redundancy – the more I experientially understand about the human condition the more ‘I’ become redundant because life in the actual world is utterly safe and already perfect. ‘I’ am not needed to stay alive. The more I understand the chemical, psychological and psychic programming of the brain, the more I can see that this programming is outdated, faulty and redundant in every single aspect – ‘I’ am not needed at all. Virtual Freedom is the ongoing increasing experience of ‘my’ redundancy, kind of getting used to not interfering with perfection. The way I see it now is that death is simply an extension of this continuing discovery of ‘me’, the spoiler, being redundant, turning 98% redundancy to 99% and 99% to 100% ... ... pop. The only way I can reach this 100% redundancy is by being here all the time, doing what is happening without emotionally interfering – and if there is an emotion, then investigating it, nutting it out, sitting it out, thinking it through, understanding its follies and furphies. In the end, every emotion is understood as nothing but an objection to and fear of being here – and an objection to being redundant as an entity. I am reminded of Richard’s writing: James: I’m not clear as to how one eliminates the instincts after one has become intimate with them and then has a 100% commitment. Does this happen on its own or is there something that I need to do? Richard: It happens on its own in that, as ‘I’ am the instinctual passions and the instinctual passions are ‘me’, there is no way that ‘I’ can end ‘me’. What ‘I’ do is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button – which is to acquiesce – which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. The acquiescing is that one thus dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself now ... it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body. Peace-on-earth is the inevitable result of such devotion because it is already here ... it is always here now. ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ was merely standing in the way of the always already existing perfect purity from becoming apparent by sitting back and moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all (as epitomised in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’). How can one be forever sticking one’s toe in and testing out the waters and yet expect to be able to look at oneself in the mirror each morning with dignity. The act of initiating this ‘process’ – acquiescence – is to embrace death. (Richard, List B, James, 16 November 1999). To begin to experience embracing death is exquisitely delicious like an orgasm. A death sought after, because of frustration with being here, can only lead to an Altered State of Consciousness because a strong negative feeling can only produce a strong good feeling as a chemical balancing act. A similar balancing act happened when my frustration with real life had lead me to fall in love with a spiritual master twenty years ago – I was desperate to escape the ‘real’ world, eager to seek a feel-good recipe to get out of ‘real’ life. Self-immolation is different in quality, a more and more dispassionate, yet utterly sensate and thrilling experience. In the process of experientially understanding my tender and savage instinctual passions in operation they lose their grip, fire and reality ... and finally their credibility, until I simply observe a process of chemicals rising and subsiding. What a marvel is the human brain! ALAN: Nor is there any sense of ‘the feeling is that one cannot survive this appalling emptiness without going mad’, as Richard described it. VINEETO: Well, the issue of ‘going mad’ has been on my mind a lot for the last few months. I find it very reassuring that psychologists have classified Richard as mad in real-world terms, which is only logical as he has stepped out of the ‘sane’ world of wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide. However, it is quite a challenge to get used to leaving humanity behind and going mad – ‘mad’ according to my previous standards and to society’s standards. Sometimes there is an almost audible ‘clack’ in the brain, when an old synapse snaps, when I fail to understand how other people think and feel. More and more I fail to understand people’s emotional reactions, their psychological reasoning or the psychic vibes that I occasionally pick up, when people report that they are feeling insulted, misunderstood, threatened or when they are desperately defending some non-sensical belief. It is sometimes very strange and bewildering indeed. ALAN: I would hazard a guess that the three of us would now be classified as ‘insane’ by any ‘self respecting’ psychiatrist. Cute phrase that, isn’t it? When I first started to explore this actual world of the senses, there was a definite sense of ‘you must be mad’. As I scoured the texts, and then the Internet, seeking others’ descriptions of what I had experienced, ‘madness’ was a definite ploy ‘I’ employed in the attempt to keep ‘me’ sane. Fortunately I came across the website of someone who had been certified as insane and the rest, as they say, is history! VINEETO: As far as I can still make sense out of what is happening, my ‘going mad’ is a feeling response to going 180 degrees in the opposite direction of everyone else and of my own old beliefs and emotions and my natural instincts. Further, there is the continuing disbelief that ‘how come it is so simple?’ and ‘how come, if it is that simple, nobody is doing it?’ – or almost nobody. Actual Freedom is like the magic elegant equation of mathematicians – one single solution for the whole bloody mess of the problems of the Human Condition, all of them are going to be wiped out in one stroke, forever! In the last days I have been busy coming to terms with the fact that I am locked into ‘here’ and there is no escape possible. Since my last PCE, which I described to you in my post, I have experienced the limitations of thinking whenever I tried to use thought in order to grasp or comprehend the vastness and magic of the actual world, the immensity of this moment, the aliveness of being here. For a few days it was rather shocking, I felt disoriented, as if grasping for an outline that no longer existed. Thinking now is more episodic, stimulated when needed for practical situations or sorting out a particular issue. The outcome is that I am here in this moment with no way out – no imagination, no feeling (t’would be silly, I tried...) and no intellectualizing. There was a feeling, though – a disorientation, a feeling of being trapped, a feeling of it all being too much. I was reminded of Michael Ende’s ‘Unending Story’ – the boy has a wish granted and he wants to be not fat anymore. In the first stage he enjoys being thin and beautiful, but to complete the satisfaction he then has to forget that he ever was otherwise, that he had been ridiculed and suffered before for his appearance. In a similar manner, with each item of identity that is eliminated, I am going through a transition period until the old synapse in the brain atrophies and emotional memories of former events disappear. Then the unfamiliarity, the oddness, the feeling of ‘going mad’ simply evaporates. As I know well from other issues, like believing in God, I now consider everyone else silly who believes in a bodiless entity, a divine spirit, a God or suchlike. It is all a matter of perspective, you see. Such fun! RESPONDENT to No. 20: I discovered by chance yesterday the Actual Freedom Mailing List and tonight I read your dialogue with the actualism-pope. Let me tell you I am very much interested by your questioning and points of view and I feel very close to your interests and positions. And, not knowing who is your Australian correspondent, let me tell you also I feel sorry for the ending of the dialogue with the last arguments given, which are if needed a sufficient prove the ego may not be totally erased... smile... VINEETO: You say that ‘I discovered by chance yesterday the Actual Freedom Mailing List’ – and yet , according to the Listbot Archives, you sent your first post to this list on September 23, 1999 and the second on November 30, 2000. You also use the phrase ‘not knowing who is your Australian correspondent’ (One can’t have it both ways, 14.6.2001) and yet you have read at least parts of our website because you have asked for a link that did not work. Viz: [Respondent]: Please can you just tell me the reason why it is just impossible for me to reach: https://www.actualfreedom.com.au/path/180-degrees.htm Thanks a lot, 180-Degrees, 23.9.1999). In your second post on November 30, 2000 you wrote to No. 20, saying how you appreciated the way she put down Richard. Richard, the supposedly unknown ‘Australian correspondent’, then replied to you with 1058 words and 22 paragraphs. Therefore you do know well who is No. 20’s Australian correspondent and you have had a clear opinion – complete with a smug ‘smile ...’ – about him all along. Viz: [Respondent]: Well, No. 20, just a few words to tell you I appreciated your recent words on Richard’s special way of dealing with No. 12. Like you, I think the embarrassed way Richard deals with No. 12 is not at all helpful for both of them! ... smile... (Snipping, 30.11.2000). You then concluded your letter with the statement – [Respondent]: But maybe I am just playing mind games and I have not at all understood what is Actually Being Here and Now! Snipping, 30.11.2000 According to your letter today you have now obviously made up your mind what ‘Actually Being Here and Now!’ means for you – RESPONDENT: Maybe you read that book ‘cutting through spiritual materialism’? Chogyam Trungpa shows that self-immolation is experienced by the... self, of course! and that’s its the most glorious day for the self to attend its own so-called erasure. According to the actualism-pope, the self ‘belongs to the land of lament’, but in those spiritual days the self can as well ‘belong to the land of pure contentment’. Another example: according to a recent quote by Alan, an Englishman who seems to be one of the actualism-bishops, he says how happy he feels helping others on the way to actual freedom... have you ever heard Nisargadatha saying such a thing?... and afterwards Richard writes you without laughing ‘needless to say there are no emotions or passions or subjectivity here’! Theme closed. Yes, No. 00, I am sure you’ll agree sadly with me that so many people in those areas just play with concepts of themselves, a way of manipulating oneself and inducing probably certain states of mind which can be RELATIVELY interesting... but differ from what is REALLY interesting: the possibility of enlightenment like Aurobindo, Nisargadatha or Ramana yesterday (or U.G. Krishnamurti today). The chance of meeting genuine enlightened beings give in fact some insights on the nature of consciousness, and on the difference between self-consciousness and its way out: un-self-consciousness. VINEETO: So far, in some 5000 years of written history, none of the revered spiritual teachings have succeeded in bringing anything remotely resembling peace on earth. Thousands upon thousands of teachers have expounded the Truth and millions upon millions of disciples have diligently applied the teachings of the Truth and still there is fighting and squabbling, murdering and raping, torturing and suiciding. Once one stops one’s cherished beliefs standing in the way of the facts, it becomes blindingly obvious that the Revered Teachings of the Enlightened Ones do stuff all for peace on earth, in fact they add even more passion to the religious and spiritual fervour that flames conflict and animosity, despair and denial, hostilities and persecution – as is made evident by the spiritual correspondents on this list. But if you are still convinced that enlightenment will deliver the goods – whatever that means for you – then surely it is good to abandon the ‘real’ world and get on with the business of pursuing the subject of spiritual enlightenment rather than waste your time and spleen on this list. Get out of the real world and get right into the middle of the spiritual world and make your own observations and have your own experiences. This is exactly what I did and the view from the inside is not at all pretty. For instance, none of the Enlightened Ones has ever been reported as living with a woman in peace and harmony, equity and parity – it is not even on their agenda. The girlfriend of Mohan Rajneesh was so depressed in the end that she committed suicide whereas he is known to have indulged in blow jobs from a number of female disciples, Franklin Jones aka Da Free John is notoriously famous for his sexual orgies that included under-aged young girls, Jiddu Krishnamurti is reported to have had a longstanding secret affair with his best friend’s wife, a globe trotting guru from the town where I live has just separated from his wife and two children because of too many domestics, married man John deRuiter is said to have invited two additional wives into his home because the Truth told him so ... The list of dysfunctional human relations in the master-disciple-world goes on and on, if one is at all ready to see with both eyes open what a rotten and corrupt profession the guru business really is. This mailing list is set up for those who are genuinely interested in investigating exactly the nature of those passions that the Revered Masters of the East have not had the guts to look at in themselves – the blind instinctual passions of fear and aggression as well as nurture and desire. As a woman I found it particularly revealing and revolting that none of the oh so wise gurus had tackled even the first step of peace in action – to live with one other person in utter peace and harmony. And as for their expounded wisdom – neither meditation nor therapy has offered any useful advice for a satisfying peaceful relationship and nobody can say that I haven’t tried hard enough. But after seventeen years I finally threw in the towel and admitted failure and started to question the revered teachings themselves. Actualism has offered me the tool to achieve this life-long goal of living with a man in peace and harmony and I know from my own experience that it works, 100%. There is not a single bickering, no trace of resentment or even a compromise in my relationship with Peter. There is no dependency, no jealousy, no disappointments, no scoring points, no neediness and no fear of loneliness – living together is simply great fun, day after delicious day. Sex is an ever-fresh innocent sensual play whenever the opportunity arises, a physical-only sensational delight that leaves any wild fantasy for dead. Gone are the days when I was plagued by worry, fear, guilt, shame, expectation, complaint, dissatisfaction or the undignifying need for sex. I never think of sex during the day or the night, I never fantasize and I never miss it, I no longer look at men as desirable sexual objects or would-be predators – I simply see fellow human beings regardless of gender. Why, if you are so convinced that spiritual enlightenment works for you, have you hung out for almost two years on a mailing list that is set up to facilitate investigating one’s spiritual beliefs along with one’s emotions and feelings – both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’? Are you a rebel without a cause just lurking about in the comfort of cyberspace with the other spiritualists, ever ready to leap out and cheer on the next God, Goddess or Wannabe who comes to strut their truth, as in – [Respondent]: Let me tell you I am very much interested by your questioning and points of view and I feel very close to your interests and positions. <snip> You enjoy the cream of conscious existence. It just gets better when we open our hearts more and more. <snip> Maybe we meet one day on one side or the other of Pyrenees. (One can’t have it both ways, 14.6.2001). ... and tell us actualists where we have got it wrong? [Respondent]: According to the actualism-pope, the self ‘belongs to the land of lament’, but in those spiritual days the self can as well ‘belong to the land of pure contentment’. Another example: according to a recent quote by Alan, an Englishman who seems to be one of the actualism-bishops, he says how happy he feels helping others on the way to actual freedom... (One can’t have it both ways, 14.6.2001). There are hundreds, if not thousands of lists that are dedicated to the spiritual teachings of one, or other, or all of the spiritual teachers and enlightened beings with plenty of room to discuss siddhis and karma, afterlife and dharma, Buddha and Bodhidharma. Your choice of words (‘the actualism-bishops, the actualism-pope’) clearly shows that your myopic spiritual outlook on life keeps preventing you from seeing people as anything other than a spiritual agent in a spiritual hierarchy. Why do you choose to come to the only mailing list that dares to question spiritual beliefs and then start deriding those who are prepared to sincerely and actively do something about their own malice and sorrow? RESPONDENT: Incidentally, it seems to be the greatest desire of our kind to get rid of this unwelcome doubling and return to the pure living, being animal. VINEETO: If you desire to ‘being animal’, considering it ‘the pure living’ then that is entirely your own business. This list, however, is set up for those who want to move beyond the Tried and Failed wisdom of old and are ready to discuss how to eliminate the animal instinctual passions in themselves together with the ‘self’ that generates them. * RESPONDENT: I am still trying to understand what is ‘actually being here and now’ for you ... VINEETO: On this list you have the opportunity to investigate hands-on and practically, and not merely theoretically, something utterly down-to-earth and entirely new to the history of consciousness, should you be ready to suspend both belief and disbelief and look into the facts. I know that the phrase ‘entirely new’ is something that every Guru proud of his profession uses but a glimpse of an experience of the world outside of belief – the actual world in its marvellous scintillating purity and perfection – will immediately belie the spiritual rehash that runs under the name of ‘entirely new’. It’s the ‘down-to-earthness that is 180 degrees opposed to the spiritual world, the matter-of-factness, the sensate delightful actuality of experiencing this world, here in this place and now in this moment. There is no other here and no other now – the metaphysical Here and Now is in fact ‘there’ in a world of no-time, no-space and no-form. The metaphysical Here and Now is merely a product of fervent fantasy, albeit a fairytale of global proportions. RESPONDENT: This is a stupid question according to Actualists, however, what is happiness? When I think of it from an evolution perspective, I get happy when I’m on the track to ensuring my survival, and my genes’ survival. Simply getting back to a state of happiness doesn’t make much sense from this perspective. If I have no reason to be happy (not on track), then I’m neutral or starting to feel bad. I know that if I did absolutely nothing and had no survival skills, then I’d feel very crappy, since death would be close. Life triggers the state of happiness when I’m on track. Actualism seems to say to drop off the evolutionary ladder and somehow get back to being happy (before you start experiencing PCEs). I have the belief that happiness is a state and that trying to trigger it without a reason over an extended period gets extremely tiring since it is not homeostasis. VINEETO: Happiness is a feeling, therefore to theorize, philosophize or speculate about happiness doesn’t help to understand what happiness is, nor will it help you to feel happy – you will only arrive at various beliefs about happiness, but no genuine understanding that could help you to be happy. If you get stuck with the word happiness, try experimenting with feeling good. Feeling good, as the word indicates, is a feeling and the only way to understand what ‘feeling good’ means is by feeling it. The way to do this is by deliberately getting in touch with your feelings and observe them in operation and the best way to do this is by asking yourself each moment again ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ If you feel good, then fine, if not then you determine which feeling you now have that is preventing you from feeling good. You may find sadness, grumpiness, resentment, numbness, listlessness, boredom, cynicism, hate, despair, anger, love, greed, dependency, loneliness, fear, hopelessness, wariness or some other feeling and then you set about to investigate what most recently caused you to feel this way in order to get back to feeling good as soon as possible. In other words, you investigate your ‘bad’ feelings as well as your ‘good’ feelings with the sincere intent to be as harmless and as happy as possible. And yes, you will find that it is initially hard work to feel good or feel happy for extended periods of time as you will find a myriad of excuses and so-called justified reasons for being annoyed, feeling sad, being bored and so on. This is why understanding that this moment is the only moment you can experience being alive is vitally important because then you will be less inclined to waste this moment by frittering it away by not feeling good about being here. You are here anyway, and it is now, and it can only ever be now, so why not make it your business to enjoy being here? Actualism Homepage Now RESPONDENT: 1:07 am. I can’t believe I stayed up that late again. Good night to those from the same time zone. VINEETO: Living in this moment in time does strange things to one’s sense of time, doesn’t it? There was a whole bunch of ideas, routines and habits about time, fixed sleeping and waking hours, separated working and leisure-fun time, that I incrementally abandoned as each moment became the important one, the only moment to experience being alive. There is still time, of course, daytime and night-time, segmented into hours and minutes, but because I enjoy being here now, my full attention is freed to living this very moment and then this moment is the only thing that counts. Now, and another now and another now ... The psychological and psychic entity usually categorizes time into ‘feeling’, ‘I’ can literally only exist out of time, never now. Therefore ‘I’ was busy nurturing sad or happy memories of the past and busy imagining fearful or hopeful anticipation of the future. ‘I’ divided time into ‘good times’ and ‘hard times’, meaningful times and boring times. Investigating and eliminating the good and bad emotions and feelings has at the same time removed feelings of past and future time and allows me to be here, fully enjoying this moment of being alive. Who would want to chase the feeling of, and belief in, immortality when one can have such delicious moments now? VINEETO to Alan: Now I can see the sparkling morning, the dewdrops glittering thousand fold on the thin tea-tree leaves, moving and shining like river stones, the birds chirping their birds-sounds and the air moist and warming for another glorious spring day. Everything is perfect when I stop insisting of keeping my ‘self’. Suddenly it is all easy and I am back on the wide and wondrous path – and the pain in the neck is just a signpost for the right direction. Ah, fantastic. Since I finished this letter I had another discussion with Richard about being here now, in this moment in time, with having a past or a future, and I experienced again the eerie wonderful and odd thing of being here now without a ‘self-induced’ story that keeps the moments together like pearls on a string. From this point of view, from simply being here each moment again there is no question whatsoever that Actual Freedom is what I want, 24 hrs a day. And, being back in having a bit of a past and a bit of a future, I am still determined to make it happen, no other reason needed. The continuing oddness of not really knowing where I left the ‘meaning of life’ that had tied my life together so nicely before, can only be a good sign. Ahoy. JAMES: Actually, I have found that everything is always ok at this moment right now and running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is a great tool for keeping me in this moment. That’s all for now. Thanks for being there and thanks to all of you for making this list and this website available and for your willingness to help. VINEETO: The question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is not only ‘a great tool for keeping me in this moment’ but it is also the precise method to remove every single obstacle that prevents one from experiencing this moment as perfect. You see, with this method you can do much more than calming yourself or be ‘in this moment’ – you can become actually and permanently free of all the worries and fears, depression and resentment, sorrow and malice, free from the Human Condition altogether. With this method you can examine and investigate what keeps you from being happy and harmless in this very moment and remove the disturbing element, ‘me’, ‘ego’ and ‘soul’, irrevocably and forever. Of course, this enterprise is not for the ‘faint of heart and weak of knees’ as Richard usually puts it, but it is the best that I have ever done in my life. What adventure, what delight. RESPONDENT: As the ‘wide and wondrous path’ is about minimizing the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions and activating the felicitous feelings – I’d like to hear a bit more about those felicitous feelings. Are we still in the realm of the ‘affective’ with felicitous feelings? We are using the word ‘feelings’ after all. VINEETO: Yes, the method of actualism is to become aware of and minimize the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions in order to be happy and harmless. One cannot be emotionless as long as one is a ‘self’ and to try and be emotionless means you would only end up repressing your feelings. Felicitous/ innocuous feelings are affective feelings but only by feeling good, happy, cheerful and so on is it possible to enjoy and appreciate being here now for as much as is possible. Minimizing the good and bad emotions frees you up to feel happy and harmless and at the same time frees you to develop a delicious sensuousness of the world around you – when you are less busy with feeling sad or grumpy you become more aware of the visual delights, the multi-layered sounds, the delicate smells, the moisture and temperature in the air, the marvellous variety of tastes and so on. And once you succeed in feeling happy most of the time you then raise the bar to feeling excellent most of the time. RESPONDENT: I suppose I understand ‘felicitous’ as being similar to what is meant by ‘delight’. I think sensate delight is fairly clear, but it’s difficult to see many times when an experience is verging on emotional, rather than just delightful. VINEETO: I wouldn’t worry too much about anything when you are feeling happy and delighted – it’s the habit of worrying that serves to end your experience of happiness and prepares the stage for sadness, grumpiness, annoyance and irritation to enter again. RESPONDENT: Would it be correct to say that anything emotional would somehow involve a feeling of sorrow? VINEETO: No, there are also the feelings of aggression and malice that do not necessarily involve a feeling of sorrow. RESPONDENT: While being ‘felicitous’ does not involve sorrow directly? VINEETO: I am only felicitous when there is no sorrow present at all, neither directly nor indirectly. Also, even more importantly, I am only felicitous when there is no malice present at all. * VINEETO: It was only when I became aware of, and fully admitted, that I was capable of the same malice and sorrow I saw in ‘the evening news’ that I subsequently realized that I was inflicted with exactly the same human condition as the warmongers, the murderers, the thieves, the corrupt and the greedy. It was this awareness and this realization that motivated ‘me’ to get off my bum and do something radical and practical about the human condition in me. As long I considered the wars and rapes and murders as other people’s misery and violence, I would always find reasons to think that the human condition was not so bad after all. Only being utterly fed up with the situation I found myself in gave me the necessary impetus to change. RESPONDENT: The ‘evening news’ shows one normally only the despicable and miserable aspects of being human. Yet, the ‘evening news’ approach to the ‘human condition’ is a distortion. Yes, the root of the ‘evening news’ lies within each human being – ‘devil inside,’ if you will. But, it’s not all the devil inside. Yes, ‘I’ am capable of performing atrocities – and for that reason am motivated to dismantle my ‘self.’ But, when one is relatively stressfree – there is legitimate delight and wonder available. Now, I’m not speculating – I’m reporting from my own experience and what I can gather from others. VINEETO: Of course, once I had determined that I wanted to become free from the human condition in toto, the next step was to set as my minimum standard ‘feeling good’ … and set about examining whatever was in the way of feeling good. Then I raised the bar to ‘feeling excellent’ and again investigated whatever was in the way of feeling excellent. Viz – Richard: By asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ the reward is immediate; by finding out what triggered off the loss of feeling good, one commences another period of enjoying this moment of being alive. It is all about being here now at this moment in time and this place in space ... and if you are not feeling good you have no chance whatsoever of being here now in this actual world. (A grumpy person locks themselves out of the perfect purity of this moment and place). Of course, once you get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom-line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy’. And after that: ‘feeling perfect’. These are all feelings, this is not perfection personified yet ... but then again, feeling perfect for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day is way beyond ‘normal’ human expectations anyway. (Richard’s Journal, p. 257). You seem to be putting the cart before the horse, which is to seek out the possible happy aspects of the human condition in order to achieve ‘feeling good’ whilst continuing to deny, repress or dissociate from any bad feelings and their consequences. It’s your life but such an approach to living life has a zero record of success in bringing an end to human malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: In a self-conscious state there is no time, we become aware that the constant stream of change happens here and now in the present moment. According to the General Theory of Relativity, change happens in 4-dimensional space-time, where time represents the fourth dimension. When the roundness of space-time is increased, the speed of change gets slower and stops at the centre of black holes. Einstein’s understanding of time indicates that with clocks we do not measure time, we only measure duration, speed and the numerical order of irreversible changes of reality that happen here and now in gravitational field. Experiencing change indirectly through the mind creates time. Mind experiences change 1 as past, change 2 as present and change 3 as future. Having direct experience we become aware that all change happens in the present moment, here and now. The whole past has happened in this present moment and so will the whole future. By watching the mind we become aware that scientific experience is also indirect. Our experience is through the rational part of our mind, which has a limited understanding of the universe. A significant example can be seen in our understanding of universal space. In the beginning, universal space was considered to be infinite, Euclid space. After the discovery of Riemman spherical geometry, universal space was also considered to be finite. Therefore, the question arises: Is universal space finite or infinite? By becoming aware that our understanding of universal space depends on which geometry we use to describe it, we can also suppose that universal space is neither finite nor infinite, but something else. Three-dimensional logic allows us this speculation. By presenting universal space as infinite Euclid space, it’s possible that the distance between two material objects in the universe is infinite. The term ‘infinite distance’ only functions in mathematics, in cosmology we do not know exactly what it means, because an infinite distance plus 100 miles is still an infinite distance. In the universe, we can only observe finite distances, so we can conclude that the universe is finite. To say that it is infinite makes no sense. Do you the above logical? VINEETO: I notice that you have directly quoted from an article entitled ‘Direct Experience of the Universe’, originally published as ‘Science of Consciousness for Planetary Civilisation’, by Dr. Amrit Sorli of Osho Miasto, Italy, (http://unesco-cairo.org/_disc1/00000006.htm). Dr. Sorli is, by his address, apparently a follower of the dead Indian guru Mr. Rajneesh, and has also published other articles such as ‘Non-dualistic Psychology’, ‘Watching the Mind as an Individual Research Method’, ‘Inner Science’, ‘Dark Energy Associated with Life?’ and ‘Watching the Mind as an Individual Healing Method’, all of which give an insight into his spiritual approach to science. (http://www.musarium.com/commentpages/cmts_matteroflife.html). One of his articles entitled ‘Prana Has a Measurable Weight’, published on a website called ‘Living on Light’, particularly caught my attention. In this article Dr. Sorli reports that he measured 70grams of Californian worms both when live and 15 minutes after their death and reported an overall weight loss of 93.6 micrograms postulating that this was evidence of Prana energy leaving the living organisms upon death. He has presented his findings to James Randi claiming the one million dollar prize offered to those who can provide scientific proof of the existence of supernatural forces or paranormal events. James Randi commented that ‘essentially, this is the same claim that has been made many times in the past by spiritualists who have attempted to weigh souls. It appears that to determine the average weight of a worm’s soul, Dr. Sorli only needs to divide 90 micrograms by the number of worms he murdered…’ James Randi goes on to explain why several of Dr. Sorli’s ‘scientific’ conclusions are in fact very unscientific. (http://www.randi.org/jr/011802.html, second half down the page). Now that Dr. Sorli’s credentials and inclinations are established I will take a look at what he has to say about the nature of physical universe. RESPONDENT: [Dr. Sorli]: ‘In a self-conscious state there is no time’ <snip> ‘Having direct experience we become aware that all change happens in the present moment, here and now. The whole past has happened in this present moment and so will the whole future.’ VINEETO: Dr. Sorli seems to suggest that time is completely dependent upon human consciousness, and that time can be altered by human consciousness. However it is a sensately observable fact that time passes – be it measured by the progress of sun’s passage across the sky, the daily cycle of night and day, sunrise and sunset, the monthly cycle of the moon’s orbit of the earth and the growth and decline life-cycle of individual human beings. This inexorable passing of time happens regardless of whether a human being is conscious and awake or is unconscious and asleep – or whether he or she has gone ‘somewhere else’ (as in meditating) or if she or he is sensately aware of actually being here in this the only moment of time that can be sensually experienced. I find it quite amazing that Dr. Sorli proposes that time is a creation of human consciousness – [Dr. Sorli]: ‘experiencing change indirectly through the mind creates time’ and that [Dr. Sorli]: ‘Mind experiences change 1 as past, change 2 as present and change 3 as future. Having direct experience we become aware that all change happens in the present moment, here and now. The whole past has happened in this present moment and so will the whole future.’ [endquote]. Is this your experience? Does your mind experience past changes or does your mind hold a memory of a change that happened in the past? Does your mind experience a future change or do you anticipate, or imagine, a change that may, or may not, happen in the future. Is it your own experience that the whole past has happened in this present moment and that the whole future will happen in this present moment or, as you sit and watch the hands of the clock moving, do you notice that the time when you got out of bed this morning is not happening now and the time when you will go to bed tonight is not happening now? RESPONDENT: [Dr. Sorli]: ‘By watching the mind we become aware that scientific experience is also indirect. Our experience is through the rational part of our mind, which has a limited understanding of the universe. ’ VINEETO: Maybe this is a good opportunity to introduce the definition of awareness from The Actual Freedom Trust Library – awareness – being cognizant or conscious (of); informed. Oxford Dictionary Peter: In common usage awareness refers to ‘I’ or ‘me’ being aware. The psychological and psychic entity within the body usurps the body’s senses, giving an apparent validity to its existence, and experienced as though ‘I’ see through the eyes, ‘I’ hear with the ears, ‘I’ smell with the nose, ‘I’ touch, ‘I’ think and ‘I’ am aware. ‘I’ experience myself as an alien in the world for ‘I’ am seemingly trapped within the body, feel isolated and disassociated from the world, and often yearn for freedom or release. Thus ‘normal’ awareness is typified by feelings of separation and alienation, fear and suspicion, resentment and aggression. With increasing life experience, disillusionment and disappointment, ‘I’ become cynical, resigned or accepting of ‘my’ lot in life, as any remaining naiveté is replaced with cunning self-interest. This cunning selfishness is most prevalent in the spiritual practice of developing a higher form of ‘awareness’. This practice creates a disassociated higher entity, commonly known as ‘the watcher’, who then watches what ‘I’ feel, what ‘I’ think, what ‘I’ am aware of. This illusionary awareness of one’s ‘self’, if practiced assiduously can, on rare occasions, lead to a full-blown delusion or ASC whereby this watcher or Higher Self can imagine or ‘realize’ itself to be Divine and Immortal. Even if this Ultimate State is not reached, the practice and pretence of developing a new identity – the higher Self as opposed to the normal self – leads one further away from the possibility of developing a genuine awareness, bare of any ‘self’ whatsoever. Thus far there have only been two alternatives – the common condition where there is an ‘I’ who is trapped inside the mortal flesh and blood body and who is fearfully aware of an outside world, or the spiritual delusion whereby there is an ‘I’ who, as ‘awareness’ only, is confirmed by repetitious imagination as completely separate from both the flesh and blood body and the outside world, and who is thus ‘freed’ to dwell in an inner imaginary, eternal, spirit-ual world . There is now available a third alternative for those who seek a genuine freedom from the Human Condition in its totality – the elimination of both the self and Self. When one’s awareness is freed of the emotional and instinctual bondage created by the psychological and psychic entity, a bare awareness of the actual world-as-it-is becomes extravagantly obvious. This awareness is readily apparent in the pure consciousness experience, or PCE, when ‘I’ temporarily abdicate the role of being ‘the one who is aware’. The physical senses, freed of the limitations and restrictions of a fear-based interpreter, are heightened in the extreme. The brain, similarly freed of restrictions, is able to operate with immense clarity and ‘self’-awareness is replaced by apperception – the brain’s ability to be aware of itself. (Actual Freedom Library, Awareness). The way Dr. Sorli looks at the world is with spiritual awareness, typified by his statement ‘our experience is through the rational part of our mind, which has a limited understanding of the universe.’ If one so readily dismisses rationality, one also forfeits any chance of common sense operating, which then leaves the mind completely free to imagine all sorts of scenarios and invent all sorts of theories. For someone who has cultivated a spiritual awareness, an entity who is completely separate from both the flesh-and-blood-body and the outside world, is thus given licence to dwell in an inner imaginary, eternal, spirit-ual world and by doing so is given licence to imagine a host of nonsensical scenarios and theories about the nature of the physical universe. RESPONDENT: [Dr. Sorli]: ‘By presenting universal space as infinite Euclid space, it’s possible that the distance between two material objects in the universe is infinite.’ VINEETO: How can ‘the distance between two material objects in the universe’ be infinite when, in the infinite space of the universe, there will always be objects that are further apart than those two objects. You ask if I find this to be logical and yet the author makes it clear that he believes that scientific experience is indirect, and that his understanding of the universe is limited by the rational part of his mind. RESPONDENT: [Dr. Sorli]: ‘The term ‘infinite distance’ only functions in mathematics, in cosmology we do not know exactly what it means, because an infinite distance plus 100 miles is still an infinite distance. In the universe, we can only observe finite distances, so we can conclude that the universe is finite. To say that it is infinite makes no sense.’ VINEETO: Dr. Sorli simply states that because infinity does not fit in the finite mathematical equations that cosmologists use to justify their theories the universe must be finite and because human beings have no tools to measure infinity the universe must therefore be finite. It is apparent that whilst the author declares that ‘our experience is through the rational part of our mind, which has a limited understanding of the universe’ he himself insists upon limiting the size of the universe to a finite dimension in order that the universe accords with the demands of mathematical computations, the whims of cosmology and the limitations of the current measuring instruments. Does this not strike you as a limited awareness of the physical universe, based on a completely anthropocentric view of the universe – in other words, an utterly ‘self’-centred view of the universe? * RESPONDENT: I should like to add a few words to my prior email. In Greek language we have two words. Symban for universe and cosmos for the planets, earth etc. So I can think that right now the most distant star from earth must have a finite distance. Even if the universe expands the distance of this star will tend to infinity but will remain always finite. I can see that the space is infinite in the sense that this star living and moving in this space might reach a distance bigger than any given number in light’s years and will continue forever to his distance to be bigger and bigger indefinitely (until the star collapse). If you mean that by infinity (space) o.k., I agree with you. VINEETO: The sensate experience of the infinitude of the universe only happens when ‘I’ step out of the way and thus remove the boundaries and limitations of ‘self’-induced narrow-mindedness. When this happens, all ideas, beliefs and theories that propose a creation event, an expansion or contraction and a doomsday ending of the physical universe are seen as what they are – beliefs and theories. Being here now as this flesh and blood body only – without any identity whatsoever – enables the infinitude of the universe to be apparent and this infinitude is wondrous, unparalleled, without an edge, without a centre, having no outside to it, having had no beginning nor will it have an ending. As long as your contemplations are based on the currently-fashionable scientific theories of an expanding universe – with a Big Bang beginning, replete with all sorts of unseen, unseeable and unmeasurable phenomena and a Diabolical End – then you will remain locked into a ‘self’-centred view and you cut yourself off from experiencing directly and sensately the splendour and magnificence of the peerless and perfect physical universe. RESPONDENT: Many of his close associates seem to got him so wrong. Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’. There may be many methods how to achieve it. VINEETO: I don’t think us disciples got him wrong there. Commitment and surrender were not only a big issue during ranch-time, but ‘totality’, as it was called later, was the main ingredient on the path to enlightenment. The story of digging only one hole and not 50 different ones to produce a well the stressing the point to not listen to other masters as to not get confused. ‘Being happy here and now’ only sounds like the same as living this moment here, now. The spiritual ‘here and now’ does not jell with the teaching of reincarnation, enlightenment being the ending of the wheel of birth and death and the teaching of meditation – closing your eyes and go somewhere else inside – to one day maybe become enlightened. Yes, when after all this effort you become enlightened, then you can laugh and say you were always ‘here and now’. But that is a different ‘here’ and ‘now’ than the here and now of normal mortals who were considered asleep and had to do dynamic meditation and other exercises to ‘wake up’. The other obvious difference between the spiritual ‘here and now’ and the actual ‘here and now’ is how Osho and eastern philosophers regard the body and everything physical. The spiritual concept is that the world is ‘maya’, an illusion. Once you ‘get it’, you can be happy in the spiritual realm of ‘here and now’. But you have to identify as the ‘watcher’, not as the body, you have to be detached from the body and from your senses in order to rise to your ‘true nature’. That ‘true nature’ is your consciousness, so they say, best to be achieved through meditation, which is in its purest form sitting motionless with closed eyes for hours on end. Then the identity shifts to ‘being the watcher’, to being Consciousness – and one day, one realizes that one is ‘One with All’, ‘That’, ‘Universal Love’, etc. The delusion is complete. One loses one’s ego on the way, but the soul, the feeling part of the instinctual being stays not only fully intact, but is aggrandized to the extent that one considers oneself to be God or the Universe itself. Compared to this illusory scenario, the actual ‘here and now’ is to be here in this moment of time, which is the only moment one can experience anyway. To be actually here is to be in this place which is no-where in particular in the infinitude of the physical universe. Coming from no-where and having no-where to go we find ourselves here in this moment in time in this place in space. To be here is to be the universe experiencing itself as a human being. Being here now is to ‘be doing what is happening’ with no sense of ‘I’ or feelings of ‘me’. To be fully here, now without a fearful ‘self ‘or a ‘Grand Self’ is to be innocent, perfect and pure, fully engaged in this only moment of being alive. * VINEETO: Could you explain a bit more in detail of the ‘stuff’ that you are aware of and that seems to you to be the same as Osho’s and Eastern Teaching? RESPONDENT: By the ‘stuff’ I mean, ‘There is no God, There is no life after death. This very moment is the only moment you have to live and it is possible to live being happy here and now in this very world ... blah blah blah’ VINEETO: Rajneesh was actually a very tricky guy. One day he would talk about God and the other day deny that there was such a thing as God. He had whole discourse series on Jesus, where God appeared in every other sentence. Then he talked about Zen, and suddenly all was prevailing emptiness and utter serenity. So in the process of checking out my beliefs and replacing them with facts I had to take a closer look, not just rely on what I ‘felt’ Rajneesh had said or meant. By really digging into the contents of his teachings and words I was able to dismiss him as the ultimate authority he had been for me. What I found was that his essential teaching was about the Divine, Existence, Buddha Nature, Oneness with the Whole. So, where is the difference? God or the Divine, God or Buddha Nature – it still ensures immortality. The spiritual ‘Universe’ is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’, and after death one will be united with the Whole, forever in bliss. Just the words on his tombstone ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet...’ are enough to reveal his belief in an afterlife as the ‘real life’ and the actual world as an illusion. RESPONDENT: As I am reading yours and Richards website, I am making sense of most of what you all say and I am getting myself ready to give it a try. But I am not reconciled with the claim that all this is completely new! VINEETO: What is it then that you want to give it a try? Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to everything spiritual. Whatever you would try, it would not be Actual Freedom. So first, let’s discuss where you think Freedom is similar to Rajneesh and Eastern Teaching. RESPONDENT: I tried to see if it is because of my beliefs that I am not ready to accept that nothing can be new to the revered ancient eastern wisdom. But I clearly remember that all this has to come to my mind earlier also and I have thought earlier that this could be true. VINEETO: Could you be more specific what you mean by ‘all this’ that has come to your mind earlier? Did you have doubts about the Eastern Teaching before? Did you think about eliminating emotions and feelings before? Or did you think before that the Human Condition is based on instincts which are not even touched by enlightenment? RESPONDENT: Because I am exposed mostly only to eastern wisdom, I conclude that it should be because of that. However I don’t want to waste too much time and efforts to argue over whether it is new or not. Even if it is not new, it appeals to me and I would like to give it a try. VINEETO: When I took Sannyas I had been raised and conditioned as a catholic middle-class German. In order to understand Rajneesh I had to at least question those conditionings. But then I was ready to question the old, because life wasn’t all that wonderful, burdened as I was with those primary conditionings. I attempted to leave ‘normal’ behind and became ‘spiritual’. On the path to 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 outcome I was hoping for. This second de-conditioning went much, much deeper than the first, it eliminated ‘all of me’, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body and its senses, free to delight in this perfect infinite universe as a sensate human being. Nothing more, nothing less. To investigate my beliefs it took a lot of time to question, ask, discuss, read, turn them round and round, and look at them again from a different angle. It is not at all a waste of time. To be able to see a belief ‘from the outside’ in its complexity and functioning it needs time and investigation. This is exactly how you give it a try. VINEETO: However, if you are inspired by ‘people describing their PCEs’ and you would like to live a ‘self’-less PCE 24 hours a day, everyday, then you will need to change. You will need to make being harmless and happy priority number one in your life – the very top of your laundry list. Being ‘reasonably happy’ can generally be achieved either by repressing one’s unwanted feelings, obeying the social-religious morals and ethics, or by detaching from one’s unwanted feelings, following the spiritual practice of dissociation. If you are interested in experiencing the dazzling splendour and peerless pristine excellence of the actual world then you would have to investigate why you would settle for feeling ‘reasonably happy’ – reasonably as in ‘moderately, modestly, cheaply, within one’s means, tolerably, passably, acceptable, average’. Oxford Thesaurus RESPONDENT: You are absolutely right. I did some introspection and found that I have achieved this ‘reasonable happiness’ by detaching myself from my unwanted feelings. I have done this by philosophizing actualism mixed with my earlier spiritual understandings. I realize now that when I say I am reasonably happy I am talking of a general state of not getting effected by feelings. I achieved this because of my philosophy that nothing really matters in this real world because in any case it is all illusion and also there is no afterlife. VINEETO: Isn’t it amazing how much one sincere introspection can reveal. You described the spiritual practice of detachment very precisely – ‘detaching myself from my unwanted feelings’. This practice is not actualism, because actualism is about feeling one’s feelings, becoming aware of one’s feelings and exploring the origin of one’s feelings with the aim of minimizing both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings ‘so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time’ – as Richard says below in a correspondence he had with you – Richard: Perhaps this is an excellent opportunity to clarify this whole issue about feelings. Often people who read about actual freedom gain the impression that I am asking people to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire affective faculty is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the psyche itself is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings. It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others (‘repressed’ not ‘suppressed’). In a PCE the feelings play no part at all – the self is in abeyance – but can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an ASC ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings. What actualism – the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – is on about is a ‘virtual freedom’ (which is not to be confused with cyber-space’s ‘virtual reality’) wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 4, 19 February 1999). RESPONDENT: However when I try to bring my attention to this moment – I find that I am trying to avoid being here and now. The reason looks to be that I do not really enjoy being here. Instead I enjoy more comforting myself in the thought that I am somewhat better off than most other people as I don’t get affected easily by feelings. VINEETO: Yes, the avoidance of being here and now is the very purpose of practicing detachment and aloofness – spiritual people do not want to be here which is why they practice going ‘inside’. And it is an honest admission to say that you clearly recognize the cultivation of feelings of superiority over others that are an essential ingredient of all religious faith and spiritual practice. It is a great step towards regarding other people as what they are, fellow human beings. * VINEETO: In order to lift the bar to feeling excellent you would have to ask yourself the question – why do I not feel perfect, which feelings interfere with my feeling perfect and reduce my experience of life to merely feeling ‘reasonable happy’, which, as you said yourself, isn’t ‘anything spectacular’? RESPONDENT: I find the right question to be – Why am I not enjoying this moment? or Why am I trying to avoid being here and now? So now my target will be not just being happy in a general sense but to enjoy this very moment. VINEETO: Has it ever occurred to you that to genuinely ‘enjoy this very moment’ you need to live in peace with your fellow human beings, i.e. that in order to genuinely ‘enjoy this very moment’, you need to be harmless towards all of your fellow human beings? RESPONDENT: Richard: ‘This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to ‘there’, along the way to ‘there’ you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive). What’s so significant about this? Of course from a human’s perspective, it will always be ‘here’. What universal significance am I missing? VINEETO: When you stop imagining being here and feeling being here then you are able to begin to pay exclusive attention to actually physically sensately being here. That I am actually here is a fact – regardless of what I feel about being here or what I fantasize about being here – and realising this fact sets me free of all the ‘self’-imposed sentiments about such a simple and obvious fact that I am already here. It is the end of wondering why am I here and it is the end of objecting to being here, too. * RESPONDENT: Richard: ‘This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to ‘there’, along the way to ‘there’ you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive). What’s so significant about this? Of course from a human’s perspective, it will always be ‘here’. What universal significance am I missing? VINEETO: When you stop imagining being here and feeling being here then you are able to begin to pay exclusive attention to actually physically sensately being here. That I am actually here is a fact – regardless of what I feel about being here or what I fantasize about being here – and realising this fact sets me free of all the ‘self’-imposed sentiments about such a simple and obvious fact that I am already here. RESPONDENT: It wasn’t my question though (it was No. 98’s) VINEETO: But it was your question – What’s so significant about understanding that this moment is your only moment of being alive? – not No. 98’s which I answered saying – [Vineeto]: When you stop imagining being here and feeling being here then you are able to begin to pay exclusive attention to actually physically sensately being here. And when you begin to pay exclusive attention to actually physically sensately being here then you become aware that it is a fact that you are actually physically here – regardless of what you feel about being here or what you fantasize about being here. To realize this fact and to live this realization is of life-changing significance and is remarkably different to the way most people spend their lives being busy feeling and imagining being here. RESPONDENT: Hello Vineeto, Thank you for responding to my questioning of Peter’s original statement regarding living together with you in utter peace and harmony. It is clarifying to hear of your experience in the relationship as well as your personal experiments with going beyond the conditioned responses and cultural programming and the results you have observed. Do you think that there is a peace of being that is available in the immediacy of the present moment or do you believe that this kind of experimentation and investigation is mandatory to ‘arrive’ at the ideal? VINEETO: I don’t have to ‘believe that this kind of ... investigation is mandatory’. I go by my daily experience. Living together 24hrs a day, every day, without a bicker or disagreement is a delicious sensate and scrumptious by-product of having eliminated beliefs, psittacisms and dimwitticisms, as well as having questioned, explored, investigated and thus eliminated feelings, moods, intuition, love, compassion, beauty and the rest of the emotions. By investigating the animal instincts, the underlying program that is producing and maintaining the ‘self’, being, soul, emotions and feelings, there is now hardly anything left to disturb the peace, a peace that is not an ‘ideal’ but a tangible, palpable experience moment to moment. By probing, examining, scrutinizing, bringing into the open and thus dismantling not only my ego, but my very soul, there is a peace prevailing that is not ‘of being’ but due to diminishing this being to a state where it so little substance that it cannot be maintained much longer. Apperception, the mind’s perception of itself, can function more and more freely and therefore ‘I’ as ‘being’ finds it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. The ‘immediacy of the present moment’ is experienced moment to moment as no emotion or emotion-backed thought takes me away from experiencing each moment as it happens and as there is no emotional memory of the past moments or any fearful anticipation of future moments, now is the only moment there is. When the shift happens from living in psychological and psychic time, where ‘I’ as self dwell, and I as flesh-and-blood body only arrive in actual time that is only this moment, the brain seems to spin in a confused limbo for some days. After all, one leaves a familiar world behind and enters the actual world of now, moments that have no psychological or psychic continuity anymore. It is a great experience indeed, actually being here in this moment in time, in this place in space. RESPONDENT: It seems like we humans want to take a journey ... through the mind, through relationship, through some form of practice, through imagination, through religion or science etc. etc. etc. Having spent over 30 years on a spiritual quest for truth, I have also experienced many of these journeys. During the past year or so, there has been a drastic change in my experience. My attention has been captured by the NOW and I am finding an opening that envelopes everything. It is very hard to describe, but words like Stillness, Silence, Presence, Surrender ... come close. VINEETO: When on the spiritual path, I have experienced this ‘NOW’ the teachers talk about, but it seemed ever fleeting and took great effort, therapy or meditation to catch a glimpse of NOW, as I had to continually resist being torn away by the ever-present undercurrent of feelings produced by the instinctual passions. Visiting U.G. Krishnamurti once I experienced that our usual experience of time is like a string of pearls with each moment firmly connected to all the ones before and all the anticipated ones coming. On reflection, his experience seems rather that of a broken string with lose pearls all over the place. Discovering the third alternative I have come to explore the nature of the string that holds those moments together in fervent passion and endless imagination, creating an illusionary string that prevents me from the sensate-only experience of this moment as it is happening. The string that binds the feeling experience of life’s moments together as if ‘set in concrete’ needs to be disintegrated – ego and soul need to be both extinguished – in order to experience the exquisiteness of moment by moment, un-stringed, unhinged, ever now, ever fresh. While this string, the instinctual identity, is still intact, the NOW that is experienced can only be of a feeling nature. The actual world can only become apparent with the extinction of being or, in a pure consciousness experience, with the temporary absence of the self. VINEETO: No, there is no purpose other than living the perfection of the actual world and being aware of it. It is the psychological and psychic entity that yearns for a purpose to justify its existence. And when you look around you will find thousands of imagined purposes in people’s lives. RESPONDENT: My father used to say,’ there is nothing after this life’. Well, I proved him wrong because he tried to communicate with me after death. You will probably say that I was projecting, but no, there was another person present at the time when this happened. I still do not believe that this world, this life is all there is. Then what are we here for? to enjoy life and then what??? VINEETO: To enjoy life and then die. As all living things do. Be born, live and die. And what are we here for? To enjoy every moment of being here as the universe experiencing itself in its magnificence, exuberance, abundance, perfection and purity. And in order to be able to live as this sensate and reflective human being we investigate into the Human Condition which we have been programmed with and which prevents us from living in peace and harmony in this wonderful actual world. Isn’t that enough, isn’t that more than enough? Why waste the time we have on this verdant planet by worrying about people who died, to fear and worship imaginary gods and ‘great beings’, dreams and fantasies. Why not stop hoping that someone else can fix us up and why not instead start making yourself happy and harmless now ? Essentially everybody spends his/her life worrying about what happens afterwards and in that way wastes this moment of being alive, living what is happening now.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence
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