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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Alan
VINEETO: Hi Alan, I think that I didn’t say everything about FreeCell last time. I guess because of our conversation it popped into my head several times when I played and gave me a few ideas. FreeCell is like sorting the brain out. There is a set of chaos to be solved into a certain order. A few rules apply. The rest is up to your, your intelligence, your state of being awake and sharp, your particular way to solve that puzzle. Well, sometimes there are 7 wrong alleys and one option to go. And then, when you sorted them properly, you have hardly time to enjoy the order, woosh, they disappear. My brain was similarly chaotic when I started. Two black 3’s and 3 Aces at the top, everything upside down and not properly working. Ideas jumbling up practical solutions, emotions interfering, beliefs completely hindering the view to find my way to a sorted stack of cards. Contemplating how to solve the card-puzzle and how to sort the mess in my brain is using the same electric communication wires in the brain, or am I lost in my metaphor? I think, engaging one’s brain in practical activities – they may look senseless – cannot be wrong. (Well, lets talk about the obsession another time...). Anyway, I often found myself sitting clicking away the card game, while in the back of my mind the question was running ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ or ‘What is this tension about that I felt in the last hour?’ So in the foreground I had something to do (mouse clicking), while the brain was busy sorting out another puzzle. Double fun. And that brings me to the second subject I wanted to tell you about. Yesterday I was reading Richard’s post to No 4 and something suddenly clicked. Richard wrote:
I understood for the first time peace-on-earth in a 100% down-to-earth sense. Peace-on-earth opposed to an imagined peace-after-death, peace in heaven. And then I understood the un-ease I always had with that expression. Somewhere I still had a Christian ‘flavour’ to the word, a picture of paradise before Adam ate the apple, with lions and sheep lying in the grass together. It had sounded a bit mystical to me. But peace-on-earth-in-my-lifetime, for me and everyone I am in contact with is very much down-to-earth, possible right now. Yes, thank you, I’ll have that, no objections or doubts anymore. Another little brain-shift. Another thing fully understood. The word becomes an experience. And I tell you what – the brain suddenly felt like being shifted about 2 degrees to the left, and then another 2 degrees from front to top, what a relief it was, like clicked into place. I guess – another metaphor maybe – that we have to walk every single degree of those 180 degrees, some come in lumps, some in slow motion and some happen so silently that I can only be astounded in hindsight. Well, Alan, it’s snack-time. Talk to you ‘ron.
VINEETO: Yeah, I agree with No 6, your English humour is delightful. You really deserve being the chief disciple. Nevertheless, I am very glad you don’t live in town, I would have to start working to keep you bribed with lunches! ALAN: It has been an interesting time in the last few weeks, including a virus, ‘stuckness’, ..., and a serious drinking binge which took 3 days to recover from. VINEETO: Do you think this virus can be transferred by e-mail? Does it always come with a binge? Or is it maybe similar to the ‘virus’ here in Australia which I call fear? Tell me about this thing. ALAN: There has also been some ‘weird stuff’, probably caused by talking with Vineeto about drama queens and prima donnas – maybe mine did not want to be outdone. I have been ... VINEETO: Have I pushed a start-button for all yer ghosts in the cupboard? You are welcome to compete to your heart’s (or head’s) content, it’s good that it’s all great fun as well, not only drama. ALAN: I have also been having extremely vivid dreams. Last night it was ‘me’ dying and a grand occasion it was – stark terror, spasms of the whole body, which arched off the bed until only the head and heels were touching. All in all a great drama which I am still unsure whether it was a dream or actually happened – but as ‘I’ am still here, I guess it was just a dream. Probably caused by reading what Richard had written to No. 7:
VINEETO: I think it would be a great idea to write down a longer description of those outstanding events on the path to freedom. After all, there will be others coming after us, who might appreciate a bit of script-writing. I am definitely interested. It can be published as the ghost-buster-collection of chief-disciples – I am serious here. ALAN: Vineeto, I am interested to hear more of what you call ‘no feeling’ in your mail to No 4. Is this the same as ‘stuckness’ or something different? VINEETO: With ‘no feeling’ I mean a kind of neutral-dull, non-responsive outlook on life. It may start with having ‘no feeling’ but then I quickly get bored with it not being quite alive and annoyed about wasting my time. It is usually fear in its first stage when I try to push it away. Digging deeper I usually find feeling, emotion, fear and holding on to dear ‘self’. It is very different to ‘no feelings and emotions’ where there is simply the delight to be alive. Does that make sense to you?
VINEETO: I take ‘the bugger’. It is a good description for someone who is continuously rocking the boat, as well. When you read our correspondence with the Sannyas list, you can see how people object to the ‘rocking of their boat’. But I am rocking all the boats, including my own. And that is the selfish reason why I write, to rock my boat until it tips over and facilitates my extinction... ALAN: Yes, I invariably discover something else about myself when I write. I have also found it very useful for getting out of ‘stuckness’. The Sannyas list looks a good place to discover whether there is anything remaining in one, which can still be ‘insulted’ or ‘hurt’, as you have been finding out. VINEETO: When writing, I discover sometimes an impatience with myself to describe actual freedom as exactly as possible and then – in that impatience – I lose the experience of it, which consequently makes it impossible to describe it... So, back to the start, Vineeto, be at ease, come back here into your senses and don’t get entangled in their spiritual world. Once in a while I get really lost in confusion in this labyrinth of psychic fantasies – until, bingo, I have had enough and here I am back in the world of colours and tastes, sounds and this lovely soft breeze on my skin. It reminds me of the story of the philosopher’s cave (I think it was Kant) – everyone is huddled in a cave, living in imagination and considering the outside world as very, very dangerous. One person has gone outside the cave and reports that it is delightfully safe out here. Kant then suggests that this one person should go back into the cave to convince others that it is safe to leave. I sometimes think that I have to ‘feel’ where the other is coming from, in order to communicate – and whooshsh, I am back in the muddle of emotions, beliefs and collective fantasies. Well, slowly, slowly, after a hundred failures I start to grasp that there is no point in going back into Mr. Kant’s cave...
(Note from the editor: It was in fact Plato’s story from The Republic) ALAN: ... as this concurs with my own experience, which is in the current correspondence with Richard. I think all one can do to ‘warn’ another is to say watch out for this feeling of Love, which is definitely located in the belly, the seat of being. As we have both demonstrated it is possible to turn away from this blissful state, whether using ‘native intelligence’, ‘pure intent’ or whatever name. VINEETO: Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette
Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment
she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. And recently, when The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling’ intimate with the TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’ prior to this experience). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is virtual, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up. This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world as a flesh and blood body, with the senses. Boy, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket. But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual. It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of dis-association that people suffer from who are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line – until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, i.e. mentally deranged, forever cut off from common sense. * VINEETO: One never knows how many actors are still waiting behind stage until they had their appearance. It is fascinating, when I think about it. The moment I discovered the ‘drama queen’, it lost its conviction. The moment I discovered ‘me’, the Truth-producing enlightened faculty, it became impossible to believe that produced ‘truth’. And the day I discovered the ‘believer’, the mechanism of believing I could not believe anymore – the mechanism was switched off and disappeared. I had to investigate the facts. One piece after the other fell off ‘me’, while at the same time taking the veil off the physical senses. The colours became more vivid, the sounds multi-layered, the skin awake to sense the air in temperature and consistency, the little hair on the forearm being touched by the soft breeze. ALAN: So what is left now of ‘Vineeto’? VINEETO: Good question, my search-light looking for ‘me’ is constantly switched on. As I described above, one objection has been that I thought I hadn’t quite properly understood these spiritual realms. But what a relief when I finally popped my head out of the delusion, back into here, leaving such collective imagination behind. Enough is left of ‘Vineeto’ to stage another insane mini-drama in the head. But, in the meantime, I am having a bloody good time. * VINEETO: Yes, imagination is one thing, and it stopped once I became aware of the very act of imagining. But besides imagination there is an event or realisation and it often has an affective colour to it. That event is ‘real’, not actual and yet it seems to be necessary to finish a certain part of the ‘real’ belief or emotion or instinct that is presently under investigation. Then the whole thing disappears – the ‘real’ belief as well as the ‘real’ event both go up in smoke. ALAN: Would you care to give an example of this. When I talk of a ‘realisation’ I mean a ‘getting it’, as I explained in a recent posting. As you know, my most recent realisation was that there was no life after death, but I can recall no ‘affective colour’, nor any sense of a ‘real event’. I was simply considering the ‘role’ that the gods and gurus play, went on to examine my remaining belief in some sort of life after death and suddenly ‘got’ the facticity of it. VINEETO: Richard said it to No 7 the other day:
When reporting about your recent realization you said, ‘As a fact, there is no ‘life after death’ – what a relief!!!!!’ I guess, your 5 exclamation marks indicate just a little an affective colour – what do you think? I experienced relief as the freedom from an affective burden, making it obvious that I had ‘really’ understood and not just done some cerebral gymnastics. * VINEETO: Yes, the other ‘bummer’ for me was moving away from the herd, being on my own, moving away from the group of sannyasin I knew and the women’s circle. It is another instinct, and it was accompanied with lots of fear – hence the nerves of steel. ALAN: It is interesting you think there is an instinct to ‘go with the herd’? There is an excellent series on TV here, at the moment, examining the life of animals and their relationships. The last episode dealt with emotions and there is no doubt that many species feel guilt/shame. This would tend to confirm that being part of the ‘herd’ is an instinct. It is certainly a very strong conditioning, if not an instinct. VINEETO: ‘Herding’ does go deeper than conditioning. Humans in the past have always huddled together in groups, fighting off wild animals, hunting and reproducing. You couldn’t survive on your own – that makes herding a function of the instinct of fear. I like watching animal programs particularly for what they reveal about instincts. There is much more studies done on animals, whereas studies on humans are considered ‘unethical’. Good talking with you, too.
VINEETO: Yeah, I agree with No 6, your English humour is delightful. ALAN: It is actually Scottish humour – I can do quite a good Billy Connolly impersonation. Did you see his series on Australia? I am intending to pay a visit to Australia, once we sell this place, so perhaps you had better start saving! VINEETO: I will come back to your offer of impersonation when you come to Australia. Billy Connolly is one of my favourites. I saw his series on Scotland and on Australia. He’s got great humour. ALAN: It has been an interesting time in the last few weeks, including a virus, ‘stuckness’, ..., and a serious drinking binge which took 3 days to recover from. VINEETO: Do you think this virus can be transferred by e-mail? Does it always come with a binge? Or is it maybe similar to the ‘virus’ here in Australia which I call fear? Tell me about this thing. ALAN: The virus was unconnected with the binge, though the binge may well not have been unconnected with fear. VINEETO: Great un-connections! * VINEETO: I think it would be a great idea to write down a longer description of those outstanding events on the path to freedom. <...> ALAN: OK, here is last night’s instalment. I went back to work in the office I was in 5 years ago. My office no longer existed and although many of the people were the same none of them recognised me and I wandered around feeling very lost and scared and lonely. This dream followed on from my further enquiries yesterday into the ‘waiting’ I previously mentioned. Behind the ‘waiting’ I discovered the fear of leaving the herd, which we have also been discussing. So, the broom is out for another rooting about in the dark corners. VINEETO: I sometimes suspect that my fear of leaving the herd is actually the fear of having left the herd! Whatever tool or means, it’s good to find the reason underneath ‘not feeling good’. Leaving the herd has been an ongoing theme for me. It started with leaving the woman’s camp, leaving the Sannyas fold, the work place and closest friends there, leaving the group of seekers, friends and well-known ways of relating. Now, when writing to the Sannyas list, whiffs of fear sweep through, sometimes for minutes, sometimes longer – it becomes so very clear that I am not only leaving one particular religious group, I am leaving the whole of the psychic world behind. By ‘psychic world,’ I mean the ability to ‘feel’ where the other is at, to intuit his or her position, to understand them psychically and psychologically. It is like speaking a different language – the language of emotions vs. the language of common sense and facts. Very often there is no communication possible. But, as I told you before, whenever I go back into the psychic world of feelings and emotions, I only get confused, and then I can’t communicate clearly at all. It is an old rut, a habit that I am determined to eradicate along with its accompanying fear. * ALAN: Vineeto, I am interested to hear more of what you call ‘no feeling’ in your mail to No 4. Is this the same as ‘stuckness’ or something different? VINEETO: With ‘no feeling’ I mean a kind of neutral-dull, non-responsive outlook on life. It may start with having ‘no feeling’ but then I quickly get bored with it not being quite alive and annoyed about wasting my time. It is usually fear in its first stage when I try to push it away. Digging deeper I usually find feeling, emotion, fear and holding on to dear ‘self’. It is very different to ‘no feelings and emotions’ where there is simply the delight to be alive. Does that make sense to you? ALAN: Yes indeed. I think it is the same as what I call ‘stuckness’. VINEETO: Oh, good, we agree on the terms. I had wanted to make a point that ‘no-feeling’ is included in indications for fear. I noticed that particularly the male gender of our two-legged, thinking, upright-walking species is often well trained and obliged to not notice or display feelings and emotions – part of the survival instinct in their role as protector and provider. But I know this no-feeling-numbness myself very well too. Perhaps I have found it rather unusual (as the more outwardly emotional female) and was therefore more suspicious of fear lurking underneath. ALAN: Happy dreaming VINEETO: I am intending to be happily awake and soundly and dreamlessly asleep. The less dreams
the better. Good to chat with you.
VINEETO: Just lost the whole letter to you when my computer crashed for no reason. I wonder how different the second post is going to be. ALAN: I find, as I write, I have to examine myself and sometimes, just occasionally, as the words tumble out, I get so involved in what I am writing that the writing starts to do itself, in the same way as Richard found with his art, which he wrote of recently. Suddenly there is no ‘me’ doing the writing and I am this moment living me – wheeee!! VINEETO: This is just the best. Like now, when the letters tumble on the keyboard competing as to which is going to be the first appearing on the screen – until it crashes...? * VINEETO: Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. ALAN: Even more interesting is that I have just started reading her book titled ‘The Experience Of No-Self’. I will give you a report when I have finished it. VINEETO: Looking forward to your report. Richard looked through briefly and said that he couldn’t find a clear description of ‘ego-death’, i.e. enlightenment, in her book. So she might have been stuck at ‘illuminations’ or ‘awakenings’ and then roams about in the chambers of her imagination, searching for ‘Christ’. Quite out there. * VINEETO: And recently, ALAN: When I experienced this there was a huge feeling of Love and Compassion, so it is interesting you say it was an ‘unemotional state, no love or compassion is felt in the heart’. I recognize the ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is divine’, though. VINEETO: Yes, I remember this ‘huge feeling of Love and Compassion’, it filled my whole chest and heart with this warmth that wanted to be spread to all of Humanity. When I dismantled it as the feeling component in the heart of the ‘Truth-Production-Machine’ in the head, it disappeared with a loud thump and I crashed on my bum for a day. Later something similar reappeared in the belly or Hara, a cool pervading bliss, a bit like stoned, all pervading and ‘I feel so wonderfully one with it all’, like touching the heights of human atavistic imagination. I remember Rajneesh talking about a hot and a later cool stage of enlightenment, so I cannot vouch for genuine invention of this story. The come-back is another thump, sitting out the dullness until the senses adjusted to the actual world after the ‘glitter’ of insanity. ALAN: So what is left now of ‘Vineeto’? VINEETO: Good question, my search-light looking for ‘me’ is constantly switched on. As I described above, one objection has been that I thought I hadn’t quite properly understood these spiritual realms. But what a relief when I finally popped my head out of the delusion, back into here, leaving such collective imagination behind. Enough is left of ‘Vineeto’ to stage another insane mini-drama in the head. But, in the meantime, I am having a bloody good time. ALAN: And this is the whole point, is it not. Having a bloody good time, right here, right now – not in some spurious future or awaiting ‘death’s glad release’ – the road to actual freedom is both wide and wondrous, as has been said before, and I am enjoying every second of it. VINEETO: Well, the question is running in my head several times a day, what is left, why the hell am I still here? The other day I found under what identity ‘Vineeto’ is hiding: ‘the little remainder’, cute hey. But however many percent ‘I’ think I have already tackled, as long as there is ‘Vineeto’, it is still only a cleaned up ‘self’. I experience it as a double approach – having a good time and yet not fooling myself that the job is complete. * VINEETO: When reporting about your recent realization you said, ‘As a fact, there is no ‘life after death’ – what a relief!!!!!’ I guess, your 5 exclamation marks indicate just a little an affective colour – what do you think? I experienced relief as the freedom from an affective burden, making it obvious that I had ‘really’ understood and not just done some cerebral gymnastics. ALAN: Absolutely. The ‘relief’ is the release into the actual, the realization that this is what actually is and is so simple, so obvious, that one cannot understand how one could possibly have thought otherwise. So, yes, I understand what you are saying. The ‘event’ has an affective colour to it, the actual realization is after the event, after the release – one has ‘let go’ of the belief or whatever. VINEETO: Well put. One of my favourite pictures is that the rungs of the (imaginary) ladder disappear as soon as they have been climbed. No emotional scars left after the release, after the ‘event’. That’s why it was so important for me to write things down while they are happening – they disappeared pretty quickly out of my memory, they don’t leave an emotional scar that would hold them in the memory. * VINEETO: ‘Herding’ does go deeper than conditioning. <...> ALAN: Yet many animals (the robin and the blackbird, for example) are solitary creatures and fight for their territory. And in writing and thinking about this I have just ‘seen’ that this is, of course part of the ‘herd instinct’. Were a robin or blackbird not to fight for its territory, then it would be ‘going against the herd’. What a lovely scenario – one robin says ‘No I don’t want to fight you, have my territory’ – the other stops in amazement and says ‘You have to fight me, we’re robins aren’t we?’. And so with ‘me’. I am ‘human’ and will do all I can to defend my ‘humanity’ and stay part of the herd. Bugger that, I am off on my own – the whole universe awaits! VINEETO: You know, robin, I also think that there is enough food, I don’t have any eggs to protect and I refuse to be a robin. It is a good life this way. ALAN: [Billy Connolly] is excellent at pointing out the absurdity in a situation. Maybe we could get him on the road to actual freedom, eh! I’ll write to him. VINEETO: Good on ya. I told you that in the first months, when the books were out, Peter and I were watching TV and whenever we found a sensible looking person in an interview or a presentation, we found out their address and sent off a book. There was no response but it was great fun at the time. * VINEETO: I sometimes suspect that my fear of leaving the herd is actually the fear of having left the herd! ALAN: You could well be right. Anyway it is too late to turn back. VINEETO: As I said, the rungs of the ladder disappear and one is left ‘hanging in the middle’ with hardly any choice other than going forward. I say ‘hardly any’ because I am well aware of the fact that – probably with great effort – one is able to revert to some kind of normality. By ‘psychic world,’ I mean the ability to ‘feel’ where the other is at, to intuit his or her position, to understand them psychically and psychologically. <...> ALAN: I understand this now. I think I have lost the ability to feel where the other is at, to empathize, and life is much better without it. I used to be quite good at it, especially in my ‘enlightened’ periods. Not only could I ‘feel’ the other’s emotions, I could ‘feel’ the whole of humanity’s pain and anguish – and the ‘Divine Love’ went pouring out – doing no-one any good whatsoever, of course. But, it made ‘me’ feel great! VINEETO: Nevertheless, a great story for the grand children, isn’t it. And good it’s over. You said it rightly ‘doing no-one any good whatsoever’, except ‘you’. Has been great fun again.
VINEETO: Good to hear from you. I am fascinated by your discoveries and adventures on the wide and wondrous path... ALAN: Reading this (Richard) and considering its meaning, I suddenly ‘got’ that beliefs and emotions ARE actually responsible for all the suffering on earth, excluding of course the effects of physical disasters, like earthquakes, avalanches, floods etc. But, everything else, every ounce of sorrow, every grain of malice, are all down to ‘me’. Seeing this for the fact that it is, was so staggering, of such enormity, as to be, almost literally, ‘mind blowing’ – or perhaps ‘self’ blowing would be a more apt expression. Following on from this realization, I considered that, if all I am is my feelings and beliefs, then ‘I’ must be responsible for all the sorrow and misery which exists. How many times have I seen Richard (and others – and I have even written it myself) write that it is ‘me’ who is responsible for all the wars and fights and rapes and child abuse and domestic violence and suicides. I understood this intellectually and agreed with it – as I have previously said there is a huge difference between understanding something and ‘getting’ it. And so the heart palpitations start, pain in the right temple and as I delve further, I see that, if ‘I’ am responsible for all of these things then ‘I’ actually am all that is standing in the way of peace on earth. The heart beating as though it is about to explode and a clammy skin are symptoms of the stark terror ‘I’ am starting to experience. Then the dread, not experienced for many months – ‘who am I?; nothing is real; am I making all this up?; I don’t want to die; this is all an illusion created by ‘me’ etc. etc. I wrote the above almost two weeks ago and since then have been in a real ‘zombie’ state. There has been an overwhelming sense of ‘what is the point of it all?’ and by that I mean what is the point in doing anything when I know it is all a fantasy of ‘my’ creation – what is the point of writing this, when I know it is only ‘my’ imagination. Perhaps the above realization was too much to take all at once, perhaps it was getting, for the first time, that as ‘I’ was all that was standing in the way of peace on earth, ‘I’ had to go before this peace on earth could actually be realised. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of ‘me’ – I’ll let you know what transpires. VINEETO: Yesterday we again saw Monty Python’s ‘The Search for the Holy Grail’, and one scene particularly struck me for its aptness – King Arthur and his knights encounter the monster with the thousand teeth in the cave and are pursued by it, back and forth, on the screen. The chase is played out in a simple cartoon. There seems to be no way out for the knights, they surely will be devoured any minute, when suddenly the animator, who was busy painting the monster, dies from a heart attack. The monster duly disappears and the knights find themselves, alive and well, in 20th century English countryside – here. I had a good laugh, because that’s what I find myself doing – sometimes there is this ‘monster’ of fear chasing me until I find the cartoonist (‘me’) and the show is over! The other thing that went through my mind was my story about me being a ‘Truth-Production-Machine’. I wrote about it at the time, having an enlightenment experience:
As I see it today, there was an experience of ‘getting it’, understanding the Power and Glory of the heartfelt, chest filling experience of Enlightenment and I then stepped out of that drama of the ‘Self’, I abandoned this particular belief / imagination / emotion. But in the frantic and desperate attempt to survive the ‘self’ jumped to the next possible identity: ‘I’ had seen through this immense illusion, ‘I’ have greatly understood, ‘I’ am the hero again. And with the ‘I’ claiming the honour of the realization for its identity, a Pandora box of new imaginations, fears and identities is given full reign. I am currently attempting to understand the process of approaching death, the combination of self-immolation and doing what is happening. I have always been puzzled by the apparent paradox of the fact that only ‘I’ can bring about my demise and the question how the last bit of ‘me’ is going to disappear. This is how I experience it now – Sometimes, in the course of a perfect day, ‘I’ have a more substantial experience of an emotion, usually felt as fear, tension in the head or/and in the stomach area. Over the period of the last weeks I have come to understand my own journey as less of a ‘psychic and psychological search and destroy mission’ and more of as a physical affair, where the brain is sorting out the necessary neuron-links to adjust to the dismantling of ‘me’. And the only thing that ‘I’ can do now to support my self-immolation process is to get out of the road, to not stand on the brakes. The process is happening and so, for freedom’s sake, Vineeto, get off the brakes! I do that by neither dramatizing the fear nor pushing it away, by seeing it more as a by-product of this strange thing I am doing. I don’t ‘support’ a panic-attack by embroidering it, and neither do I let myself be numb, bored or dull. Then, by quietly noticing what is happening, without attaching any identity to an ‘observer’, apperception happens – with some rumbling going on in the background – while I get on with the pleasures of being here, be they food, sex, a walk into town, playing with the web-site, interaction with other people, going to work or watching television. And by ‘my’ stepping out of the way I am doing what is happening, any rumbling or grinding in the background included. After all, it is simply silly to be fearful in face of death being so obviously inevitable.
VINEETO: After weeks of not saying much, this post of yours twigged me into replying. ALAN: Several nights ago, just as I was dropping of to sleep, it dawned on me that what was giving rise to my current ‘dilemma’ was a belief – the belief that ‘I’ believe ‘I’ actually exist. It brought me wide awake with a jerk and was very clear at the time, though less so now and has been ‘churning over’ constantly since. I know I am not my feelings, as they are virtually eliminated. I know I am not my beliefs, as they also have been virtually eliminated. Which leaves the ‘soul’ and as I have experienced that death is the end, what is left? – Who knows? (joke). VINEETO: Something made me prick my ears when you said: ‘I know I am not my feelings, as they are virtually eliminated. I know I am not my beliefs, as they also have been virtually eliminated.’ I had written something similar to you in an earlier post. Vis:
And yet, today I found it to be incomplete and ultimately incorrect. All ‘I’ am is my feelings, all ‘I’ am is my beliefs and all ‘I’ am is my instincts. ‘I’ consist of nothing else. And facing and acknowledging that obvious fact, ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ would never succeed to reach ‘my’ goal, ‘I’ would never make the 100% mark, ‘I’ would never attain the prized freedom. By the very nature of actual freedom that is an impossibility. ‘I’ would always be stuck at the 99% mark. ‘I’ cannot improve any further. ‘I’ can never claim the success. A feeling of failure struck me as ‘I’ realised ‘my’ limitations. ‘That is the end of the trying and achieving, the end of ‘my’ job and the end of ‘my’ mission.’ Acknowledging the obvious fact of not being able to succeed as ‘me’, I gave up – and ceased being in the road. Never mind the physical symptoms of the fear, they are just part of the drama. But there was a sense of redundancy and of relief that were both delicious and ambrosial. Here ‘I’ am, with nothing left to achieve, without a mission and a purpose. ALAN: And yet it is not a joke, for this is what I have been struggling with the last few days – ‘who is it who is knowing?’ – ‘who is it who is puzzling?’ VINEETO: I have always found the question ‘who’ would confuse me, distract me, re-create psychic dramas and keep imagination and feeling alive. While asking ‘what am I’ always brings me to my senses because ‘what’ I am can only be experienced by the senses. The actual world can only be experienced by the senses. Neither belief nor imagination nor feeling can answer ‘what I am’, but they can easily make up a lot of ‘who’s’. I have found that by living in virtual freedom I have shifted my whole focus and emphasis from solving emotional problems and debunking beliefs to sensually and sensately enjoying ‘wee-things’ (as Billy Connolly said), the everyday things that life consists of – breakfast, rain, typing, coffee, walking, shopping, talking, sex, shower, watching TV and going to bed at night-time. And maybe half an hour of the day was spent pondering about ‘fear, death and deep matters’ of ‘me’. And thus the perspective changes, the focus changes from the imaginary to the actual, from the dramatic to the ordinary, from serious introspection to delightful hedonism – gay abandon, as Peter calls it. So it has been literally a turning away from giving importance to the ‘metaphysical’ to focussing on the actuality of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. And what a delight that is, each moment again, just to be alive, breathing and listening, tasting and seeing, smelling and touching. And then you get to do things on top of it – sheer delight. ALAN: I particularly liked ‘when the programmed ‘you’ has a little glitch and crashes’. It is something that I have considered from time to time. Where do ‘I’ go in a PCE – and this is the best description I have yet seen and, I think, accurately describes what happens – ‘I’ run into an overload, or something ‘I’ cannot handle, and the ‘fuses blow’. Until they are replaced ‘I’ cannot function. So all that is necessary is to smash the fuse board! VINEETO: Again, here my experience is different. ‘I did not smash the fuse board.’ ‘I’ cannot kill ‘myself’. But ‘I’ wither away with each belief dismantled, each emotion investigated, each psychic phenomenon uncovered. Therefore, I simply checked out every single belief and doubt, feeling and instinct, and by finding out the particular facts about them, those emotions and beliefs became redundant, one by one. In the light of facts emotions and beliefs simply wither. It takes courage to face facts, to seek them, to acknowledge the full impact of them – but then the rest happens of its own accord. In the face of facts ‘I’ shrink and shrink, until ‘I’ face the last of beliefs (or instincts) ... and that’s it. For me, a vital drive has been the – instinctually driven – searching for the ultimate achievement, for someone else it might be a different issue. But the process has been the same for the whole journey – finding out the facts, acknowledging their consequences and then I could never believe that particular belief again nor feel that particular feeling again. Good to hear from you Alan, and great you got some people interested in your property. Tell me what you make of it.
VINEETO: All ‘I’ am is my feelings, all ‘I’ am is my beliefs and all ‘I’ am is my instincts. ‘I’ consist of nothing else. And facing and acknowledging that obvious fact, ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ would never succeed to reach ‘my’ goal, ‘I’ would never make the 100% mark, ‘I’ would never attain the prized freedom. By the very nature of actual freedom that is an impossibility. ‘I’ would always be stuck at the 99% mark. ‘I’ cannot improve any further. ‘I’ can never claim the success. A feeling of failure struck me as ‘I’ realised ‘my’ limitations. ‘That is the end of the trying and achieving, the end of ‘my’ job and the end of ‘my’ mission.’ Acknowledging the obvious fact of not being able to succeed as ‘me’, I gave up – and ceased being in the road. Never mind the physical symptoms of the fear, they are just part of the drama. But there was a sense of redundancy and of relief that were both delicious and ambrosial. Here ‘I’ am, with nothing left to achieve, without a mission and a purpose. ALAN: This is it, absolutely. And is what I meant, when I wrote ‘I suddenly realised (‘got’) that ‘I’ had to go in ‘my’ entirety to achieve actual freedom. Not almost all of ‘me’, not 99%, not just the beliefs, but every single smidgen of the personality which considered itself to be Alan. There would not be a trace remaining, not even a shadow of a shadow’ ‘I’ will never, ever get ‘here’ – and this is what I have been occupied with for the last few weeks. VINEETO: So the next question is, what is it then that hinders you from finally enjoying ‘retirement’ as long as it will last? I am finding this redundancy the best part so far, the thrill of the ‘imminent inevitability’ (Peter’s latest favourite phrase) of the final destiny. And the satisfaction of having completed the journey so far. And the ‘lost the plot-bit’ as well. They ran out of stock in town. * ALAN: And yet it is not a joke, for this is what I have been struggling with the last few days – ‘who is it who is knowing?’ – ‘who is it who is puzzling?’ VINEETO: I have always found the question ‘who’ would confuse me, distract me, re-create psychic dramas and keep imagination and feeling alive. While asking ‘what am I’ always brings me to my senses because ‘what’ I am can only be experienced by the senses. The actual world can only be experienced by the senses. Neither belief nor imagination nor feeling can answer ‘what I am’, but they can easily make up a lot of ‘who’s’. ALAN: I think what I was attempting to say was slightly different and connected with what you said above: ‘‘I’ knew that ‘I’ would never succeed to reach ‘my’ goal, ‘I’ would never make the 100% mark, ‘I’ would never attain the prized freedom.’ Who is it who is doing this ‘knowing’? What is left of ‘me’? VINEETO: The ‘knowing’ or appraising the situation is done by apperception, the brain. And ‘I’ have faced the facts as well, and ‘I’ shiver in my boots – occasionally. * VINEETO: Again, here my experience is different. ‘I did not smash the fuse board.’ ‘I’ cannot kill ‘myself’. ALAN: What I meant by ‘smash the fuse board’ was – let go of the controls – give up ‘trying’ to be ‘here’ – let go! And if ‘I’ cannot kill ‘myself’ who can? As Richard intimates, all one can do is press the ‘self’ destruction switch and ‘keep your hands in your pockets’, for it is a mighty thrilling ride! VINEETO: I have been quite suss about expressions of ‘letting go’ and the likes. They sound too identical to the spiritual teaching of letting go into the ‘Greater Reality’. It is ‘self’ letting go into ‘Self’, somebody quite substantially stays alive. I have experienced the process towards an actual freedom not as a ‘let go’, but as a thorough understanding that left no room for imagination and belief, trust and surrender. After all the understanding is done, the facts are so obvious, they simply make the believer redundant. The same goes for ‘killing’ and ‘self’ destruction. Maybe you find it nit-picking words but I have been trained through and through with all the spiritual rubbish and I want to make the difference as clear as possible. One doesn’t kill Santa Claus, but one day the evidence will be undeniable that he has never existed. * VINEETO: For me, a vital drive has been the – instinctually driven – searching for the ultimate achievement... ALAN: Can you expand on ‘instinctually driven’. Do you mean that having experienced what is possible, there ain’t no other high – where do the ‘instincts’ come in? VINEETO: With pleasure. I have spent wonderful hours on the balcony the other night, watching the sky and listening to the different sounds of the night while contemplating about all the different instincts that I have encountered and learnt to understand on the path to freedom. So this is what I have come up with: Fear – We all know it at nauseam; it includes trickery, cunningness, numbness, confusion, escape, denial, excuses, guilt and beliefs in all kinds of good (helpful) and bad (harming) spirits. And, of course, there are panic, terror and good old dread and the escape into enlightenment. But fear is also the doorway to courage, thrill and excitement to reach closer and closer to one’s destiny. Aggression – Besides physical attack, aggression has many more subtle nuances: blaming, resentment, verbal abuse, nagging, boredom, being the victim, arrogance, clever-clever, competition, self-destruction and depression. I made use of this instinct for becoming free as a bloody-mindedness, persistence, not to ‘let the buggers get me down’, smugness and refusal to run with the crowd. Nurture – It took me a while to wade through the ‘good’ feelings and emotions down to the basic instinct of nurture instilled to preserve the species. All the romantic movies thrive on nurture to tug at one’s heart strings, both with the heroic man and the loving but helpless woman. The willingness to kill and die for love for country, justice and religion is continuously adding to the 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone. Further you find this instincts thriving on all kinds of NDA beliefs and action by attempting to ‘save endangered species’, ‘care for Mother Nature’. When leaving the fold of humanity, I found that I am moving away from this instinct of nurture – the collective belief in the ‘good’. It is useful for freedom as the sincere intent to have peace-on-earth not only for me but for humanity as well and to sacrifice my ‘self’ for that goal. Desire – With desire we collect things and strive for power and improvement for ‘survival’ – ceaselessly and endlessly on the go. In the spiritual world this desire is turned into the search for enlightenment, the ticket to immortality and power in the ‘other-world’. Now I come to the point that I was making: ‘For me, a vital drive has been the – instinctually driven – searching for the ultimate achievement...’ I experienced it as the instinct of desire that has driven me to search for freedom, to clean myself up, to be the best ‘I’ can be. Richard said in his correspondence:
It has been, up until now, a passionate enterprise and the passions (instincts) have served their purpose very well. Nevertheless, once it became blindingly obvious that ‘I’ had reached the end of what is possible, this instinct to be the best I can be was left with no goal to go for. As I see it, all the instincts could be used as a perfect vehicle to reach to this point of 99% and now they have to be left behind in order that I can become actually free. Living in Virtual Freedom is a perfect way to enjoy the ordinary, easy, delightful and perfect day-to-day life, without the swings of highs and lows. And when I get lost in the ‘story’ I am trying to make of what is happening, I am relying on good old apperception and the sensate experience of being alive.
ALAN: Your mention of Rajneesh reminded me of Peter’s recent exchanges with No. 14. Fortunately, surrendering to a master never appealed to me, though I never met one in the flesh. I read a few books and even wrote to a few (with only one reply!). I much enjoyed Peter’s mail, even though he is giving away the secrets of the inner circle – I mean, how can we stay the ‘inner circle’, if we no longer have any secrets? So long as he does not tell everyone how to enjoy every second of every day or how to discover an absolute fun and delight in every action – from writing e-mails to cleaning up dog shit. Anyway, back to the subject. While I discovered some things of interest in the writings of these ‘masters’, there was always something which did not quite gel, or did not seem ‘right’. Now it is so, so, obvious – all one has to do is look at the facts, without beliefs getting in the way. VINEETO: Yes, the actual and the spiritual... It is only in the last few months that I have started to experientially understand the basic difference between ‘actual’ and ‘spiritual’. I now understand that EVERYTHING one usually experiences as real is filtered, edited, produced and coloured by the ‘spirit’, ie. by ideas, beliefs, emotions or passionate thoughts and is therefore spiritual. Usually there is not even a chance to experience the actual world directly because one is completely immersed in a spiritual world, created by instincts, emotions, feelings, beliefs and imagination. Thus a Christian is as ‘spirit’-ual as a New Age seeker, a Voodoo follower is as ‘spirit’-ual as a convinced believer in Atheism. In that context it makes no difference if one surrenders to a master or ‘only’ believes in a God, an afterlife, the Grace of Existence, Universal Love or a god of one’s own making – everyone is removed from the actual world. In recognizing and acknowledging this essential difference between the spiritual and the actual it becomes more and more irrelevant ‘what’ one believes or ‘what’ one feels, rather it is the very act of believing and feeling itself – no matter ‘what’ it is. The layers of belief seem more and more subtle until one finally reaches the core-belief, the belief that ‘I’ have to exist. So, I figured, I will be only 100% non-spiritual when this ‘self’ is completely demolished. This self is the ‘spirit’ and its world is the spiritual world, a world of spirits, imaginations, beliefs, ideals – anything but factual, anything but actual, anything but sensate, tangible, palpable, sensual and tactile. ALAN: So, I would say to No. 14 (and any others contemplating following a ‘guru’):
Vineeto, I have digressed from your mail, for which I make no apology at all – ain’t it great not to feel obliged to apologise for being alive! VINEETO: In my experience it was not a matter of ‘contemplating’ following a guru, it had been my very life. Nothing else had mattered for years. The whole meaning of life was concentrated on that one master, and on that one teaching. In that state of love and devotion there is not much rational contemplation or application of common sense possible! But after all those years on the spiritual path I had come to a point where I wondered what this search for enlightenment had given me – sitting in the corner with my eyes closed, being more and more afraid of and isolated from ‘normal’ people, and none of the glorious glimpses had improved my day-to-day life. I was still run by my feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. Further, I longed for a peaceful and harmonious relationship with a man, and none of the Eastern Wisdom had brought that goal an inch closer. That’s where Peter’s offer proved to be my ‘crack in the door’ – and then I began to investigate into something new and radically different. I am telling you this because thinking about people’s reactions to Actual Freedom still leaves me puzzled as to what makes one actually start investigating into something new and radical. I think that a certain disillusionment, disappointment, longing and desperation is essential for considering further enquiries into the iconoclastic realms of the non-spiritual, as well as a stubborn refusal to settle for second best. After all, the spiritual viewpoint is all we know, and all we have ever learned as a solution to tackle life’s ‘problems’. * VINEETO: As I said, the rungs of the ladder disappear and one is left ‘hanging in the middle’ with hardly any choice other than going forward. I say ‘hardly any’ because I am well aware of the fact that – probably with great effort – one is able to revert to some kind of normality. ALAN: It must be a huge effort to return to ‘normal’. I cannot imagine (not that I can imagine much anymore) taking on all these beliefs and emotions again, though it is undoubtedly possible to be seduced by the lure of love, or Love. VINEETO: I have no idea how big the effort would be and I have no intention to check it out. But I know that it takes a stubborn intent to keep going in the face of all the instinctual fear that has now surfaced. Other people climb Mount Everest or journey to the North Pole to get their excitement and sense of achievement – I just do it on the couch. Love and Enlightenment are lures that are certainly not to be taken lightly. That’s why Peter and me are putting so much emphasis on Virtual Freedom. In the face of ultimate extinction the survival instinct tempts one to grab for the only option for the ‘self’ to survive – Enlightenment, the delusion of immortality. But I know now by extensive experience how enlightenment looks and feels like and I am 100% sure that it is a second rate alternative to Actual Freedom. * ALAN: So, it has been great fun writing. I am still engrossed in the question of ‘who (or what) is writing’, more about this later. All the best (which you have, of course). VINEETO: Peter’s last letter to No 3 might help you understand a bit further. I quote it for your convenience:
So Alan, it’s good night from me. And all the best to you, too.
ALAN: I am still none too sure what ‘virtual freedom’ is – and it matters not one jot. It is all too easy, as I am prone to do, to get caught up in ‘intellectualising’ and setting ‘targets’. Peter continuously points out to us that what matters is enjoying and living this moment – a bit like the birds in ‘Island’ by Aldous Huxley, flying around, crying ‘Here and Now, Boys’. Activating one’s delight and joie de vivre at simply being here, in this moment, makes the ‘difference between ‘good’ feelings and feeling good’ and the ‘difference between virtual freedom and actual freedom’ meaningless questions – I am this moment living me – and it is so fantastic, so great – the doing of it, is what it is all about. While the enquiry and the finding are very necessary (and great fun) it is the doing which is the business. VINEETO: So, you say you don’t know what Virtual Freedom is? It looks like Peter and I are not writing clearly enough about it for you to know that you are living it? Just because I think that it does ‘matter one jot’, I’ll give you another attempt of a rave about this ‘mysterious’ state of virtual freedom. Virtual Freedom is when the largest percentage of your day is spent in perfect peace and harmony with everything and everyone around you. When you wake up in the morning and know that you are going to have a perfect day and when you go to bed at night time and you can say that you had had a perfect day. Virtual Freedom is when you are not bothered by petty worries, jealousies, competition, arrogance, grumpiness, sadness, boredom, and when you don’t get peeved, sad, bored, tired, annoyed, frustrated, impatient, uneasy, embarrassed, disgusted, angry, depressed or malicious. Virtual Freedom is when you very rarely come across an emotion in yourself, and when that happens you simply investigate into the root cause of the emotion and get on with enjoying life. Virtual Freedom is the firm basis one is falling back on when coming out of a pure consciousness experience, or when one is getting impatient, doubtful or fearful about freedom. Virtual Freedom is the proof of the pudding, it proves that cleaning up your grotty ‘self’ does actually work in everyday life with people as they are. Virtual Freedom is as close as ‘you’ can get to becoming actually free of the Human Condition. And Virtual Freedom is when you know with utter confidence that you are moving every day closer to the moment of ‘your’ final extinction. And you are right, ‘it is the doing which is the business’. Ship ahoy. Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The
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