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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 4
VINEETO: Welcome to the Actual Freedom mailing list. I am glad you are interested in joining the discussion about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. After all, that’s what we are all most busy with, in one way or the other, isn’t it? RESPONDENT: I seem to agree to some extent with No 5, but not to the extent of being mad with Vineeto. I also do not find anything radical in Richard’s teachings. I already am aware of most of this stuff thanks mainly to Osho and other eastern philosophies. 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? I know from my own experience that it took quite some time, a lot of hearing and reading and a lot of daring for me to question Osho’s and the Eastern teaching in order to really understand that Richard’s discovery is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of EVERYTHING that is being taught in the name of enlightenment. Wearing spiritual glasses at the time when I met Peter – and having an investment to keep them – made it at first impossible for me to actually hear what Peter or Richard had to say. Fear, pride and spiritual arrogance were the main reasons not to question the teachings that I had been wearing like a second skin. Only when I began to admit that not everything was wonderful in my life and my efforts according to Osho’s teachings had not been very successful, was I able to investigate a bit deeper into Richard’s story and I could start thinking about the possibility that something may be wrong with the spiritual teachings and not only with the thousands of disciples who all did not ‘get it’. RESPONDENT: I was able to discard the concept of God long back in my early twenties, because of Osho’s teachings but then I was able not to replace it with Osho (as Vineeto did), again because of Osho’s teachings. So I am really surprised how Vineeto – being so close to Osho – missed the whole point. I think that is where Osho seemed to have failed. VINEETO: As long as I was a sannyasin, and specially as long as Osho was alive I did not think I had God in my bonnet. Osho was simple the wise man I followed, he was the guide for my life, his words were Truth and his directions were Right. Whatever he said about life, meditation, relationship and the Universe was law for me, and I tried to live my life accordingly. I don’t see anything strange in this, taken that I had burnt my bridges to ‘being normal’ when I took sannyas, and taken that this was called ‘commitment’ – a necessary requirement for enlightenment or spiritual success. Instead of god, priests, teachers or philosophers he was now the authority in my life, followed without caution or restraint. 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. RESPONDENT: According to Richard all seem to have failed because there is no peace still on Earth. But I don’t understand what makes Richard so confident that his method will work. The statement ‘I am under no illusion that global peace and tranquility will eventuate before I am on my death-bed; I do not suffer from the delusion that I can effect a sweeping change to the lot of all human beings; ‘looks like another messiah-iatric chore. And then who is to decide what the universe should be like? The entire thinking is based on the argument that in spite so many Enlightened persons in last thousands of years, there is something wrong with the humankind. VINEETO: It may look strange from your – spiritual – way of looking (which I can remember quite clearly from myself 18 months ago). When in a peak-experience, when experiencing this moment without the filter of the ‘self’ and of the Human Condition, one is experiencing the world-as-is in its perfection, magnificence, purity and delight. The actuality of what-is then is utterly obvious because there is no identity interpreting, distorting and editing what you see, hear, touch and smell. Most people have had such a PCE in their lives although it is not easy to recall as there are no emotions happening that could be remembered. You can find one of the many description of a pure consciousness experience in Richard’s or Peter’s writings by running the search function through; there also has been a good discussion about the difference of PCE and ASC between Richard and Alan just lately on the list – you can look it up in the archives of this mailing list. Such descriptions are very helpful to induce or remember a PCE for oneself. From that experience you will see for yourself that the actual world is already here, has always been. It is only our psychological and psychic entity that stands in the road of experiencing the purity and perfection of the actual world. Then, everything is blindingly obvious. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand how can anything be wrong in this universe. According to Richard (in fact, according to many Enlightened ones, but Richard never accepts it), the world is so perfect that nothing can be wrong here. Then where is the question of bringing peace to earth. I must mention here that I am not against Richard or pro Eastern thinkers. This argument is just to understand the so called new thinking. VINEETO: There is nothing wrong with the universe. But there is something fatally wrong with humanity, with every human being, in fact. We are born with the core instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, overlaid by our social and religious conditioning and then have built our own so-called identity on top of it. We call it the Human Condition. This condition is responsible for all the wars, murders, rapes etc. on this planet, it is the source of sorrow and malice in each of us. And it is deleteable. The Eastern thinking talks about stopping thought, removing ‘the little man in the head’, the ‘thinker’ – but the identity only shifts to ‘the little man in the heart’, the ‘feeler’. Emotions and instincts (the soul and the ‘core of our being’) remain untouched and are operating in every meditator, in every enlightened one, better than ever. As Richard says, the ‘I’, the ego dies, but the ‘me’, the soul, becomes even more rampant. The ‘new thinking’ is not ‘so called’, it is that both, ‘I’ and ‘me’, ego and soul, ‘self’ and ‘Self’, have to die in order to experience the world-as-is, radiant, perfect, alive, pure and benevolent. This is peace-on-earth. It can only be achieved by each individual becoming free of their respective psychological and psychic entities. RESPONDENT: And because of Osho’s teachings (and may be J. Krishnamurti’s) I could avoid falling into Sannyas itself, because I could see the fallacy of an organized religion or cult. VINEETO: So, it looks like you are still free to choose what to do with your life, no loyalties hindering investigation. A valid asset. RESPONDENT: I must mention however that I have no doubt about the honesty and integrity of Osho, J. Krishnamurti, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi... and finally of Richard, Peter or Vineeto of their claim to be enlightened (or beyond enlightenment). VINEETO: I found honesty and integrity invaluable tools to investigate into my psyche. Because fooling others is easy, fooling myself just silly. But it is neither Osho’s nor my honesty that is important, but yours. RESPONDENT: I am a satisfied and happy person even without the enlightenment or delight (which you promise), but I keep on thinking about so called spiritual questions of Who am I etc. But these questions never made me unhappy or eager or feeling missing something. In fact these are part of me – happy and satisfied even if I don’t know the answers of these questions. One reason could be that perhaps I am not too serious about them... but so what? VINEETO: I don’t really understand – when you are completely happy and satisfied, why ask yourself the question: ‘Who am I’? I learned that the better question was ‘What am I’, and it was the answer to that question that ended my life-long search for the meaning of life which I had never been able to abandon. It helps me getting rid of the ‘who’ inside and just being ‘what’, this flesh and blood body, sensate, aware, alive and completely happy and harmless. ‘Not too serious’, but sincere and going for it 100% are absolutely necessary and vital for reaching my goal.
RESPONDENT: Thanks for your e-mail. It is so nice to know that somebody else completely unknown to you is so much interested to your questions and search. VINEETO: I am very interested. It is not so long ago that I had started on this fascinating and outrageous journey to freedom, and it has been such an adventure and such a joy that I am very happy to talk with someone who also wants to give it a go. * 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. RESPONDENT: I will give you one example. Osho said ‘Don’t let your doubt die. You should doubt every concept, every belief till it becomes your own experience’ So I doubted Osho himself, to the extent that sometimes I even thought that this man is just an intelligent orator who is making fool of so many people. That is why I didn’t become a sannyasin. And that is why I was free to read other Gurus and Scripture and am open to any new way of life. VINEETO: Yes, Rajneesh said, ‘don’t let doubt die’ and he said ‘you have to learn to trust me completely’. I never heard him encourage us to doubt him as the master as the ultimate authority. ‘Doubting every concept’ was to doubt your old conditioning and believe in your ‘Buddha Nature’, your soul, your inner light, the Truth, which shall be revealed... Since Rajneesh himself lived and worked within the system of Eastern Teaching, he had never himself doubted the existence of a soul, or the Divinity of Existence, or Divine Grace (God will be coming towards you if you only try hard enough). That’s why he could speak of it so convincingly. Your doubting Rajneesh and considering him ‘just an intelligent orator’ is what Rajneesh himself would have called ‘not surrendered’, ‘stuck in the mind’ or ‘Westerners don’t know the wonderful and blessed master-disciple relationship of the East’. I have heard several discourses on that topic. You say, you didn’t become a Sannyasin, and you read other Gurus. Have you found with Rajneesh or other Gurus what you were looking for? And what in particular were you looking for? What are you looking for when you read about Actual Freedom? What is the intention behind your search? I am asking these specific question, because they have helped me to distinguish between the teachings and promises on one side and the results, both personal and global, on the other side. Upon close investigation I had to admit that promises and results did not reconcile. Neither did I become enlightened nor did enlightenment result in a solution to the world’s problems. I had the choice to forever blame myself and keep hoping – or to try something new and radical. The new and radical was to questions the soul, the feelings, the emotions (including love) and to learn that instincts are deleteable. The new and radical is to look at facts instead of trusting any master, to only rely on what can be evidenced by the physical senses. In short, to throw everything meta-physical out the window. Actual Freedom definitely is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of all spiritual beliefs. RESPONDENT: I have read some account of yours and Peter’s on your web-site. But I could not relate to most of it. VINEETO: Are you saying that ‘I am making sense of most of what you all say’ – but you ‘could not relate to most’ of our web-site? I am at a loss to make sense out of this. Could you explain which parts you are making sense of and which parts you could not relate to? RESPONDENT: The reason that you felt so much relief and freedom after you could break away from your earlier beliefs both at the time of meeting Osho and Richard, was perhaps you had very strong beliefs both the times. So the contrast made it so surprising (180 degrees opposite). But I don’t find such a contrast, because I don’t have such strong beliefs. I am always in doubt whether my beliefs are true. And I owe this attitude to Osho and my eastern background and that is why I feel gratitude towards them. VINEETO: Are you saying you feel gratitude to Rajneesh because he taught you to doubt? Or did you have the tendency to doubt already before you met Rajneesh? And is doubt enough for you to be happy? I was a strong believer, already as a Christian girl. I believed in authority and replaced one authority with another. The change for me was radical – and obvious. But as long as you have beliefs, you will have doubts. The very presence of doubt points to a belief. Peter wrote a definition of ‘doubt’ and of ‘intent’ in his glossary. Only facts can make you confident and certain, they are evidenced by the physical senses, they are actual. Actual Freedom is to replace beliefs by the actual experience of the physical senses and common sense. Most part of my investigation has been to find where I believed – once I could see a belief as a belief, it was already dissolving. But most beliefs are disguised as truths, so-called facts, gut-feelings, intuition and trust. One has to remove that blanket first to discover underneath that it is just a belief. RESPONDENT: I am sorry for not being able to reply in full because of lack of time. I enjoyed talking to you. Thanks. VINEETO: I enjoy talking to you too.
VINEETO: Your insight intrigued me. RESPONDENT: I saw myself made of beliefs, feelings, emotions etc. So anything which is not this ‘I’ has to be new for if it is not new it would still be part of ‘me’. Whether I will get into the actual world or not by your method, but whenever ‘I’ cease to exist, whatever unfolds, has to be completely new, completely fresh with no shadow of the old. VINEETO: It reminds me of my first major peak-experience when I suddenly popped out of the immense cloudy construct of beliefs and discovered that the actual world was already here. The world was utterly new, I looked at Peter with fresh eyes and experienced our talking in a new way. If you are interested you can read about it in Peter’s Journal, ‘bit of Vineeto’. I would be very curious to hear more about your insight on that day – and for you it might be a valuable reference point to remember as well. RESPONDENT: Now coming to the method. I tried asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. Most of the time I get the answer ‘happy’, or when I stress upon ‘this moment’, I get blank with no answer, because in this moment there is no feeling. The feeling is only in the moment just passed by. But still ‘I’ do not have that experience all the time. Because ‘I’ is the heap of all the passed moments! VINEETO: I found that the interesting thing started when I got the answer ‘not happy’ or ‘no feeling’. I knew then I had something to look at. Upon closer look I always found a lurking feeling or fear disguised as ‘no feeling’ – the cunning entity inventing whatever trick to keep me from exposing it. It takes a lot of persistence, bloody-mindedness and ruthless honesty with oneself to dismantle one trick after the other. Sometimes I would sit days with that ‘no-feeling’ of numbness until I gathered courage and determination to examine it deeper. This process may take months until you are free of one particular emotion. But with the pure consciousness experience in mind you always have a comparison that keeps you going. Richard describes it at length in his correspondence:
VINEETO: How are you doing, very busy? We’ve got lots and lots of heavy tropical rain here, interspersed with warm and windy weather, the perfect combination for plants to shoot out of the ground and for us to not be too hot on our walk into town for the ‘obligatory’ tasty cup of coffee. 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 imagine Actual Freedom to be similar to Rajneesh’s and other Eastern Teaching. RESPONDENT: I answered this question partly in my mail to Richard. What I have understood from both Richard and Eastern wisdom is that ‘I’ is the main problem and it should be completely annihilated so that the ‘new’ takes over. You say that in the actual world there will be no ‘I’ in any form and the actual physical universe is the only thing which is left. I understand a similar thing from my earlier readings. May not be in exactly in these terms but when Upanishads say ‘neti neti’ (not this, not this) or when Tao talks of emptiness or void, I never get a feeling that they are talking of something of bigger ‘I’ of a God/Truth/Love Agapé etc. May be my study is not complete. What is important for me is that I can understand that ‘I’ has to die. What comes next...I don’t know. I am not searching for any God/Love Agapé etc. as a bigger or universal ‘I’. To me God or Love is just a poetic way of saying ‘the actual physical world’. If you are averse to this word because it has become too dirty and carries too many meanings, I have no attachment to the word either. VINEETO: It is not the ‘words’ of ‘love’ and ‘god’ that I am ‘averse’ to, it is the fact that any belief in something other than the actual and physical prevents one from experiencing the purity of the actual world.
You say ‘that I can understand that ‘I’ has to die. What comes next ... I don’t know ’ – if you don’t know what this ‘I’ all consists of, you will be safely staying on the spiritual path, maybe become enlightened – and then have an even longer way to come back from the psychic labyrinth of delusion into this physical world of the senses. When you have a closer examination of the Upanishads, Tao or Zen, you will find that they all see life on earth as fleeting, their relationship to their physical senses is that of dis-identification and dis-association, and they perceive nature through the filters of feeling beauty and awe, feeling being the essence of the ‘soul’. Those belief-systems are 180 degrees in the opposite direction of an actual freedom. RESPONDENT: I have read some account of yours and Peter’s on your web-site. But I could not relate to most of it. VINEETO: Are you saying that ‘I am making sense of most of what you all say’ – but you ‘could not relate to most’ of our web-site? I am at a loss to make sense out of this. Could you explain which parts you are making sense of and which parts you could not relate to? RESPONDENT: What I am making sense-ability to reach intelligent conclusions is to what you describe about actuality e.g. ‘I’ is made of beliefs, feelings and instincts and ‘I’ has to die so that the actual world becomes apparent and there is nothing beyond this physical universe and one has to live in each moment to realise the beauty of this world. What I could not relate (to respond especially favourably) to is your journey to Osho and coming back in 180 degrees back because I have not gone that way. VINEETO: Thank you for the clarification. * VINEETO: Are you saying you feel gratitude to Rajneesh because he taught you to doubt? Or did you have the tendency to doubt already before you met Rajneesh? RESPONDENT: I feel gratitude towards Osho, not just because he instigated doubt in me, but also for the way I think now about life, universe, God, myself. Not that I just follow what he says about these things, but his words helped me a lot to make my own mind about these issues. I don’t agree with many of the things he said. I could not understand his life style. But still what I learnt (learning is not following) from him is enough for me to feel gratitude towards him. However now after having some e-mail discussions with Richard, I am reviewing the feeling of gratitude per se. VINEETO: Gratitude and loyalty were the two strongest ties I had to Sannyas. I had to literally take apart my beliefs in love, loyalty and gratitude before I could even begin to question what other authority issues I had had with Rajneesh. Only after dismantling all those feelings and eliminating them in me, was I able to investigate the content of what he was saying – which then became increasingly obvious as being 180 degrees opposite to Actual Freedom. Whenever morals or feelings are operating within us, we cannot examine the issue with common sense. The only way common sense works is as bare awareness – bare from feelings such as gratitude, loyalty, love, aversion, etc. * VINEETO: And is doubt enough for you? RESPONDENT: No. Or should I say I don’t know. But doubt has kept me going, not allowing me to settle to any belief and has saved me from surrendering myself to anybody. Seeing yours and Peter’s account of your spiritual journey, I think it has been a pretty useful asset. VINEETO: Doubt as feeling doubt has no value at all; it is just the equivalent to believing. Belief means – I don’t know, doubt means – I don’t know. Doubt as well as belief is an expression of not-knowing and not wanting to know or to investigate the facts for yourself. But scrutiny and scrupulous investigation into so-called facts, truths and dearly-held beliefs is certainly a useful asset. With facts, doubt is then replaced by certainty, and as each doubt is replaced by certainty, one can move on with confidence to the next discovery. RESPONDENT: I saw myself made of beliefs, feelings, emotions etc. So anything which is not this ‘I’ has to be new for if it is not new it would still be part of ‘me’. Whether I will get into actual world or not by your method, but whenever ‘I’ cease to exist, whatever unfolds, has to be completely new, completely fresh with no shadow of the old. VINEETO: It reminds me of my first big peak-experience when I suddenly popped out of the immense cloudy construct of beliefs and discovered that the actual world was already here. The world was utterly new, I looked at Peter with fresh eyes and experienced our talking in a new way. <...> RESPONDENT: I don’t think my insight was anything near peak experience. I did not experience ‘no I’ and I had no feeling of bliss, happiness, being perfect or being one with all which I read in others’ description of peak experience. In fact I would just call it a striking thought. I have had a few more striking thoughts in last few days. One is when I was reading Richard’s reply to somebody when he said something like ‘past is dead and the future simply doesn’t exist, every moment is happening afresh, now for the very first time’. I could see the truth of this fact like a flash. But again I have no evidence to call it a peak experience. I am understanding this purely with my brain’s thinking faculty. VINEETO: Do you refer to the following correspondence? –
It was fascinating for me to experience my brain clicking into clear function – first only once in a while with what you call ‘striking thought’ and then I noticed that I could actually make sense of a conversation I had with Richard or Peter. Eventually I was able to think straight forward thoughts, unclouded by fear or imagination and come to ‘striking’ conclusions. The outcome of such application of common sense was often very startling, new, fresh, shockingly different to what I had believed, ‘felt’ or ‘intuited’. Now, I often can’t grasp how people don’t see what to me are simple and obvious facts. * VINEETO: I found that the interesting thing started when I got the answer ‘not happy’ or ‘no feeling’. I knew then I had something to look at. Upon closer look I always found a lurking feeling or fear disguised as ‘no feeling’ – the cunning entity inventing whatever trick to keep me from exposing it. It takes a lot of persistence, bloody-mindedness and ruthless honesty with oneself to dismantle one trick after the other. Sometimes I would sit for days with that ‘no-feeling’ of numbness until I gathered courage and determination to examine it deeper. This process may take months until you are free of one particular emotion. But with the peak-experience in mind you always have a comparison that keeps you going. RESPONDENT: I agree with you that this no-feeling is a kind of neutral-dull, non-responsive. I will give some more time to examine it. Vineeto, I would like to know something more about the happiness, benevolence and magnificence of the actual world. I can understand that it would be harmless because without ‘I’ there would be no malice. But wherefrom the happiness comes? Is it just the absence of sorrow? VINEETO: I had some lengthy correspondence on Once you see the actual physical universe without the grey glasses of malice and sorrow and without the rose-coloured glasses of love and compassion, the magnificence becomes apparent. Take a sunset. Someone in love will see the beauty of the particular scene and be full of gratitude, love and awe. Someone who just split up with his girlfriend will see the sorrow, the transitory nature of all things, the ending of a day, a life, a period. Someone about to go to war will see the power and beauty of his God, pray for protection and feel supported in his passionate mission by the display of the glorious colours. An actualist might see this immense fireball of helium in the sky, giving warmth and light and life to its orbiting planet called earth, all seen through the layer of atmosphere, giving it the wonderful display of ever-changing colours, different each day. To lay any feelings or imagination or even a creator-God over this magnificent event is to miss the actual experience of it. To experience the world around me without the distorting filter of self-centred emotions, feelings and instincts enables me to perceive and appreciate this infinite magnificence, this purity and perfection and this magical actuality of each moment in paradise. RESPONDENT: Or is there anything positive about it? VINEETO: ‘Positive’ is too small a word, for it is only invented to counteract the original objection to being here. The Human Condition in each of us inevitably results in not wanting to be here but to be somewhere else, in imaginary heights or in a hope for a better future or life after death. When senses and awareness are freed from the shackles of emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts one is – as Richard says – ‘the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’, nothing less. Then, one is as benevolent as the rest of the universe. I understand where your question may come from. The absence of sorrow, when one is empty of tears, can be experienced as a starkness, grey, empty and dull reality. Because this seems unbearable, one then cranks up some positive thoughts and feelings to ‘believe’ that life is not so terrible after all. This so-called happiness has nothing to do with the gay and abundant experience when there are no feelings and emotions. The wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom is to investigate and remove whatever feeling, emotion, belief or instinct surfaces until slowly, slowly the actual world becomes apparent – and its magnificent and benevolent nature. And you are then the bit of the universe that says ‘WOW, isn’t the physical universe extraordinary and amazing, wonder-full and perfect!’ It has been a great pleasure writing to you.
VINEETO to No. 7: I don’t see how this – Dell-Carnegie-style – method could work in long term. It suggests attempting mind control over emotions, it does absolutely nothing to get rid of the emotions themselves. It does not get to the root cause of the emotional reaction – the Human Condition, inherent in the psychological and psychic entity within the body. RESPONDENT: From my experience, certain emotions like anger can be dealt with by plain common sense. Just by understanding (and I am talking of only intellectual understanding), that anger is not going to improve or help the situation and on the other hand, it is going to harm yours and others’ mental and physical peace, the anger vanishes. I have tried and tested it and it works. It is not repression so it doesn’t come back even in long run. Not that the anger does not arise, but as soon as it arises, you can see it vanishing in the light of your understanding. VINEETO: Thank you for your response. Great that you find some time to correspond in your evidently chock-a-block full schedule. What you are describing sounds like more than just intellectual understanding and more than the method
of ‘positive thinking’ that [ If that is so, then you have found the first ‘key’ to eliminating anger – seeing the actual situation, sensibly considering everyone involved and understanding that your particular feelings will do nothing to help the situation, on the contrary, they are harmful. You can apply the same understanding to any other emotion arising, be it love, gratitude, resentment, doubt, anguish, sadness, etc. None of our so-called precious feelings are useful for dealing with practical, every-day situations. Care, consideration, attention, intelligence and common sense can do the job much better. The trick is to question the ‘good’ feelings as well as the ‘bad’ feelings, and a great part of the social identity will disappear, issue by issue. The second ‘key’ is to examine the underlying reason why anger (and any other feeling and emotion) arises in the first place. What is ‘my’ perception of the world, which of ‘my’ expectations are not met, what is it that ‘I’ am imposing on the world-as-it-is and the people-as-they-are that ‘I’ feel angry about? Persistent questioning of the root cause of my getting angry as well as applying common sense had immediate and drastic results – more and more the ‘self’ was seen for what it was in the light of this awareness; it was seen as an alien intruder that continuously spoiled the joy and ease of being ‘here’. RESPONDENT: Of course it is nothing in comparison to the situation where ‘I’ or ‘me’ doesn’t exist and there is no place for anger to arise. But till you reach there it is quite helpful to be happy and peaceful most of the time. And now I understand that being happy and peaceful most of the time helps to enter into actual freedom (refer Richard’s mail to me on this). VINEETO: Wonderfully described. In order for ‘I’ to ‘not exist’ I have to take apart, one by one, the different ways that ‘I’ express and define myself – be it anger, love, sorrow, belonging to a group, country or gender. And with each discovery and elimination of one particular cause one becomes more happy and more peaceful. It is a wide and wondrous path and while actual freedom does not happen overnight, it is, as Richard says, a win-win situation all the way. Even if one does not become actually free, virtual freedom is far, far better than normal expectations of living. In virtual freedom there is only a very faint sense of ‘being’ hanging around, the remainder of the once so dominant identity, and as such I am having a perfect day, every day. RESPONDENT: It is a good fun sharing experiences. VINEETO: I am enjoying your mails very much.
VINEETO: Thank you for your response. Great that you find some time to correspond in your evidently chock-a-block full schedule. RESPONDENT: Yes I am also surprised that I am able to find time for reading posts from the list and also occasionally surf the web-site apart from going through Richard’s Journal. VINEETO: Good to hear from you. When you surf the web-sites again, have a look at Peter’s Journal, as we have given it a new ‘look’. I had good fun converting all the chapters into these ‘journal-like’ pages. The web-site has me completely in the grip, I am spending lots of fun-hours formatting, searching links, playing with new background and such like. Now to our discussion – RESPONDENT: From my experience, certain emotions like anger can be dealt with by plain common sense. Just by understanding (and I am talking of only intellectual understanding), that anger is not going to improve or help the situation and on the other hand, it is going to harm yours and others’ mental and physical peace, the anger vanishes. I have tried and tested it and it works. It is not repression so it doesn’t come back even in long run. Not that the anger does not arise, but as soon as it arises, you can see it vanishing in the light of your understanding. VINEETO: What you are describing sounds like more than just intellectual understanding and more than the method of ‘positive thinking’ that No 7 was proposing. You say you are using ‘common sense’ and ‘not repression’. And you say, anger about that issue does not come back? Not even in the long run? It does not hang around, maybe as being peeved or annoyed? Or an expectation for reward, a righteousness, a better-than-you-feeling? RESPONDENT: Yes, I also think that it is more than intellectual understanding. Till I find a more appropriate word for it, I would prefer to use ‘common sense’. It is not positive thinking and it is not in expectation of reward. But I guess this common sense is the result of good old Vipassana. The difference after getting introduced to actual freedom is that now I know that ‘I’ am not different from anger, whereas in Vipassana I am the witness watching the anger passing away. VINEETO: I don’t see how it can be ‘the result of good old Vipassana’, where you were ‘the witness watching the anger passing away’, if you say that at the same time you ‘know that [’you’ are] not different from anger’. Either you know that ‘you’ are the anger, that ‘you’ are the emotion, which is not what is taught in Vipassana – or you practice Vipassana and merely witness the anger passing away until it arises next time. But that does not eliminate the emotion, as ‘you’ remain intact, and at the most ‘you’ only transcends it. To really grasp the fact that ‘you’ are emotions and emotions are ‘you’ results in you being willing and eager to investigate into the deeper layers of ‘you’ to eliminate the very cause of anger arising in the first place. To really face the fact that ‘you’, and only ‘you’, are the cause and reason of anger arising – as well as all the other emotions – is the first and essential step to do something about this emotion rather than merely witness it. The acknowledgment of the fact that the Human Condition in you is preventing you from being happy and harmless creates the burning intent and necessary guts to investigate further into the very substance of who you think you are and who you feel you are. That’s when common sense starts to come to fruition. * VINEETO: If that is so, then you have found the first ‘key’ to eliminating anger – seeing the actual situation, sensibly considering everyone involved and understanding that your particular feelings will do nothing to help the situation, on the contrary, they are harmful. You can apply the same understanding to any other emotion arising, be it love, gratitude, resentment, doubt, anguish, sadness, etc. None of our so-called precious feelings are useful for dealing with practical, every-day situations. Care, consideration, attention, intelligence and common sense can do the job much better. The trick is to question the ‘good’ feelings as well as the ‘bad’ feelings and a great part of the social identity will disappear, issue by issue. RESPONDENT: Well, eliminating the ‘good’ feelings is being a little tricky for me. Whereas I could see through common sense that ‘bad’ feelings like anger are harmful, I could not see the same thing for love (for example), partly because of my latent faith in the revered wisdom. Now I am beginning to understand the cunningness of this entity ‘I’, which just changes its shape from anger to love. For me just this realization that it is false is enough to determine to eliminate it, though I am also beginning to understand that love may also be harmful and perhaps may result into a war when it is for one’s country or faith. Even if it is love (or Love) for all, it is still ‘I’ and so not different from anger at its very root.. VINEETO: In order to question ‘good’ feelings I had to experience that any so-called ‘good’ feeling, particularly love, is just the other side of the coin of human emotions, ie the Human Condition. Love is produced in order to cover up disgust, hate, anger, indifference, self-centeredness and loneliness. Without all the negative emotions, what would you need love for? And at the next layer of investigation I discovered that love consists of nothing but a very self-centred system consisting of control, image, identity, power, bargain and smugness, particularly when feeling Love for All. How much more powerful can you feel when you feel big enough to love all of humanity?! Stripped of its glittering costume of people’s beliefs and needs, love is nothing other than our instinct of nurture, in-built to ensure the survival of the species – and embellished with great ideals and values. But the ideal of love cannot belie the facts of the atrocities caused by malice and sorrow that happen amongst human beings, often in the name of that same love, devotion, faith and loyalty. * VINEETO: The second ‘key’ is to examine the underlying reason why anger (and any other feeling and emotion) arises in the first place. What is ‘my’ perception of the world, which of ‘my’ expectations are not met, what is it that ‘I’ am imposing on the world-as-it-is and the people-as-they-are that ‘I’ feel angry about? Persistent questioning of the root cause of my getting angry as well as applying common sense had immediate and drastic results – more and more the ‘self’ was seen for what it was in the light of this awareness; it was seen as an alien intruder that continuously spoiled the joy and ease of being ‘here’. RESPONDENT: Yes, this examining for the reason of ‘bad’ feelings was an automatic following step after having ‘watched’ it using Vipassana. But now I am surprised that I never raised questions about the ‘good’ feelings. VINEETO: Questioning ‘good’ feelings is the first step to investigate the highest values of Humanity and the very idea of the spiritual ‘Self’. No wonder that nobody has ever dared to question the ‘good’ feelings before because they are what has traditionally been used to keep the lid on the ‘bad’ feelings and actions. We have learned to battle or transcend the ‘bad’ feelings and enhance the ‘good’ feelings – but to throw the whole lot out of the window is to fly in the face of all of Ancient Wisdom. Ancient Wisdom had 5000 years to produce a result and it has brought neither personal peace-on-earth nor global peace. It has only strengthened the belief that you can’t change Human Nature, that is impossible to get rid of emotions and instincts, that it is impossible to rid yourself of malice and sorrow. Well, I found out that you can – and what a delightful outcome it is! * VINEETO: In order for ‘I’ to ‘not exist’ I have to take apart, one by one, the different ways that ‘I’ express and define myself – be it anger, love, sorrow, belonging to a group, country or gender. And with each discovery and elimination of one particular cause one becomes more happy and more peaceful. It is a wide and wondrous path, and while actual freedom does not happen overnight, it is, as Richard says, a win-win situation all the way. Even if one does not become actually free, virtual freedom is far, far better than normal expectations of living. In virtual freedom there is only a very faint sense of ‘being’ hanging around, the remainder of the once so dominant identity, and as such I am having a perfect day, every day. RESPONDENT: Even before knowing about actual freedom, I was reasonably happy and peaceful as I could get rid of (I would not use word ‘eliminate’ here because that would not be honest) anger, envy, malice etc. to a large extent, but now I am discovering the roots of good feelings like love, gratitude, humility etc. VINEETO: After seventeen years on the spiritual path, including lots of therapy and new-age discussions, I had still experienced myself to be in utter confusion as to how to deal with emotions. Some emotions were to be kept, some to be transformed, but then most of them would reappear without invitation and did not disappear permanently by ‘watching’. Then again, I was not only to rise above the bad thoughts and emotions but also to dis-identify from ‘being the body’ all together, which ultimately proved to be neither possible nor an option. So it was a great revelation when I first discovered that to be alive and happy I don’t need to have emotions at all – in fact, the emotions were the very thing that prevented me from being fully alive and permanently happy. Sorting my emotions into good and bad always reminded me of poor Cinderella who had to sort out peas by their size, ending up totally exhausted and bewildered. What a relief and how much easier, to start to eliminate all the peas, i.e. emotions. Of course, that proposition rocked me at the very core, but I was desperate and daring enough to give it a go. And the more I stripped away the ‘good’ feelings like love, gratitude, humility, unselfish-ness, compassion and belonging, the more I discovered the genuine article underneath the emotions and beliefs – actual intimacy and delight. See, the quality of the actual world is delight. The very actual-ness of everything is pure delight. Actualism is ‘the experiential understanding that nothing physical is merely passive; the personal experience of the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being as opposed to a cerebral or affective perception.’ For instance, listening without the layer of emotions, morals, values, beliefs and instincts, to the hum of the fridge, the sound of cars passing by, the rumbling of the computer doing its thing, is delighting in being alive and this very hearing is one function of being alive. No love is needed to layer on top of the very happening of things, it only destroys the purity and perfection, it only binds it into a man-made system of conditions, belonging, control and fear. If you love one sound, you reject another. To love silence is to despise and be upset by noisy business. Love would utterly spoil the game of being happy, here, now, each moment again, for no other reason than being alive, fully and sensately experiencing the universe around me. Without the self being sorrowful and malicious, fearful and lonely, loving and belonging, compassionate and grateful – nothing else is needed to delight in each moment again. You might remember moments of comfortably stretching out on the couch, an ease and a well-being spreading through every cell, no feeling or emotion interfering in the peaceful moment, everything is perfect for that particular period, be it a second, ten minutes or longer. This is when you come closest to experiencing the actual world – the world as it is and people as they are. This is the most intimate one can be – as a ‘self’ – when, for a moment, there is no emotional demand on how the situation should be. That’s when you are closest to a peak-experience... And then... the next disturbance is such a good opportunity to investigate... RESPONDENT: Enjoyed writing to you. VINEETO: Yes, it is very enjoyable talking to you about these things.
VINEETO: Good to hear from you. RESPONDENT: I did visit the web-site recently and found the changes very useful. Putting it subject wise is quite helpful. I was about to suggest that you should have one topic on PCE and then I found that you have just did it already. Thanks for that. VINEETO: I appreciate to get some feedback that you like the new set-up. It was the aim of the whole exercise, to make the writings on Actual Freedom more easily accessible for whoever is interested in digging deeper into the matter. I am still having good fun with putting the topic-pages together – often the idea of what to do next jumps several weeks ahead of how fast I can actually do it. The next page will be about the venerable ‘Altered State of Consciousness aka Enlightenment’. * VINEETO: I don’t see how [anger passing away] can be ‘the result of good old Vipassana’, where you were ‘the witness watching the anger passing away’, if you say that at the same time you ‘know that [’you’ are] not different from anger’. Either you know that ‘you’ are the anger, that ‘you’ are the emotion, which is not what is taught in Vipassana – or you practice Vipassana and merely witness the anger passing away until it arises next time. But that does not eliminate the emotion, as ‘you’ remain intact, and at the most ‘you’ only transcend the emotion. To really grasp the fact that ‘you’ are emotions and emotions are ‘you’ results in you being willing and eager to investigate into the deeper layers of ‘you’ to eliminate the very cause of anger arising in the first place. To really face the fact that ‘you’, and only ‘you’, are the cause and reason of anger arising – as well as all the other emotions – is the first and essential step to do something about this emotion rather than merely witness it. The acknowledgment of the fact that the Human Condition in you is preventing you from being happy and harmless creates the burning intent and necessary guts to investigate further into the very substance of ‘who you think you are’ and ‘who you feel you are’. That’s when common sense starts to come to fruition. RESPONDENT: I am now seeing Vipassana in a different light. It is very helpful in putting me at ‘this’ moment ‘here’ and it also puts me back to this physical body. Vipassana is not limited to watching of breathing only. It can be extended to watching any sensation in the body. In the beginning, of course there is a watcher, but I was told that gradually watcher goes away and there is only watching happening. I have, though, no personal experience of the watcher going away. But I could do away with emotions like anger with the help of extended Vipassana where apart from watching you also understand anger. The term ‘watching’ is used to be non-judgmental. That means I did not try to fight with anger, In fact I did not even wished that it should go away, but that doesn’t stops me from investigating. And just by understanding it and understanding the reason behind it, it goes away. It becomes foolish to get angry. That’s why I said it gives rise to common sense. As I have said earlier I did not try this method for all the emotions. Perhaps I never thought of listing down all the emotions and worked on them one by one. VINEETO: Vipassana, according to its ‘home-place’, Theravada Buddhism, is practiced so that
What you call extended Vipassana is still Buddhism with its understanding that who you really are is your ‘consciousness’, ie the ‘watcher’ as distinct from body and senses and from the bad emotions and thoughts, which then are merely ‘seen’ or ‘observed’. Upon enlightenment, as you were told, the ‘watcher [is] going away’, but only because you then dissolve into being ‘one with everything’. Anger passes away, not because you ‘understand the reason behind’ it but because you become the watcher and remove yourself from your anger. In the same way you can remove yourself from any feeling or emotion without ever having to investigate into the substance of your very ‘self’. To really face the fact that ‘you’, and only ‘you’, are the cause and reason of anger arising – as well as all the other emotions – is the first and essential step to do something about this emotion instead of merely witnessing it. Further, Buddhism, and therefore Vipassana, is clearly based on the understanding that –
You see, their aim is to ‘get out of the body’ and ‘into consciousness’, because the ‘body is a collection of suffering’. Similarly, you ‘get out of anger’. But ‘you’ remain intact. That’s why anger arises again. Looking back I can see that at some point early in my relationship with Peter I made the decision not to let emotions come in the road between us and prevent a peaceful living together. Peace was the priority and for that I was ready to sacrifice everything – I was even ready to change, radically, completely, drastically. * VINEETO: You might remember moments of comfortably stretching out on the couch, an ease and a well-being spreading through every cell, no feeling or emotion interfering in the peaceful moment, everything is perfect for that particular period, be it a second, ten minutes or longer. This is when you come closest to experiencing the actual world – the world as it is and people as they are. This is the most intimate one can be – as a ‘self’ – when, for a moment, there is no emotional demand on how the situation should be. That’s when you are closest to a peak-experience... RESPONDENT: This is something which confuses me. I have many many such moments when there is no emotional demand on how the situation should be. I am fully satisfied with that moment. But even then I don’t remember any peak experience. I don’t remember any such moment where there is a 360 degree awareness of everything around me or that there is no distance between me and other objects and all such things which I have read described by others. These moments are happy, peaceful and relaxing but not overwhelmingly delightful. That’s why I call my stage an ordinary happiness, because it is nowhere near spiritual samadhi and now I found that it is quite different from the actualists’ peak experience as well. It can’t even be Virtual Freedom because Richard says there can be no Virtual Freedom without a peak experience. VINEETO: The answer may lay in your method. There is no way to experience a pure consciousness experience with Vipassana because you remove yourself even further from the actual world by being the ‘watcher’ and staying aloof. Vipassana is, after all, an evasion and does not tackle the root cause of the Human Condition, ‘you’. Watching leaves all of your belief-systems intact, all of your imagination, all of your ‘positive’ feelings and merely transports you into a synthetic reality of its own imaginary quality. This has nothing to do with experiencing the actual world as it is. I think it would be interesting to examine for yourself why you want to keep to the method of Vipassana, although ‘extended’ – and yet have a bit of Actual Freedom clipped on as well? By the very nature of Actual Freedom, which is utterly and iconoclastically non-spiritual, this is not possible. There is no bridge between Actual Freedom and spiritual practice. To become actually free you remove the very cause of your disturbance – ‘you’ – instead of removing yourself from the cause. It is, in fact, 180 degrees in the opposite direction to all spiritual approaches! Having meditated myself for years, I understand the hesitancy to question the whole package altogether.
But there is a faculty of the physical brain that is far superior to practicing spiritual ‘awareness’, and that is apperception. This
apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself, enables you to clean yourself up. Have a look in the glossary for a definition
and Richard’s RESPONDENT: Another thing I notice that sometimes my happiness depends upon my physical condition. In obvious cases I am not normally happy when I am having a headache. In other cases I am happy or not happy for no understandable emotional reasons. I have noticed that sometimes I have a sensation of hollowness inside my limbs and at that time I am not happy for no other outside reason. On the contrast, sometimes I have a sensation of full-ness (or being full) inside my body and those are the moments when I am happy without any reason. I am not sure if I can convey those sensations by words. The words hollowness and fullness just came to my mind to describe them but I am not sure if you also get the same meaning while reading them. Anyway I have the satisfaction of expressing my experiences. VINEETO: I do, in fact, have trouble to relate to your description. The word ‘hollowness’, however, reminds me of a feeling (an emotion) of hollowness in the belly which I discovered to be related to fear. That fear, of course, always causes unhappiness. But it is an emotion, which is followed by the release of hormones in the body and felt as a physical sensation. As to your question about how to induce a peak experience, I found this quote from Richard’s correspondence relevant, particularly when remembering your earlier correspondence with Richard about peace-on-earth –
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