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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 4
RESPONDENT to Peter: So Peter, I write this mail only to share my thoughts and am not looking for your or anybody’s answers. Nice sharing thoughts anyway. VINEETO: It’s good that I am not anybody, so I can reply to your sharing of thought with my ‘sharing of thoughts’. I simply find your ‘sharing’ another perfect opportunity to say something more about the ‘spiritualism versus actualism’-issue, given it seems almost impossible for someone coming from the spiritual path to acknowledge the possibility that there is something else than the imagined, intuited and feeling-based world of the spirit-ual. I find it always a challenge to try and poke a hole into that almost airtight thought-system that thousands of years of collective shared beliefs, fears and passions have created. From my own experience I know well how insidious believing is, pervading every nook and corner of one’s life. But ... one can actively create the situation where it becomes possible to stick one’s head out of the imagined beliefs and feelings, discard all that one has ever heard or learnt and ... puff, the magic dragon ... oops, I mean, the purity and perfection of the actual physical world become apparent. RESPONDENT: I was thinking about ‘spiritualism versus actualism’. I think the reason why I still can’t differentiate between these two is perhaps a lack of a PCE. To me both Satori and PCE look same. I have no experience of either. I practiced Vipassana irregularly and found that it made difference in my ordinary life. It did help to make me reasonably happy. I don’t care about what is the exact philosophy behind it. I don’t think that the spiritual practices are useless. Were I not spiritually inclined I might not be interested in the Actual Freedom web pages. VINEETO: The sole reason for drawing up the diagram of ‘Actual Freedom lies
180 degrees in the opposite direction of spiritual beliefs’ was exactly because, as you write, the beginning of the
spiritual path and the path to actual freedom look alike and seem to go in similar directions. The When I met Peter, and a little later Richard, and heard them say that Actual Freedom was something completely different and new, I first took it to be just another spiritual approach. I could only perceive the world with spiritual or ‘normal religious’ eyes. But the more I understood where the path to an actual freedom was heading to I became utterly bewildered for quite some time. In the first few months I was desperately trying to match and marry actual freedom with my spiritual practice, ie. I wanted to stay in the sannyas belief and the community of friends as well as experiment with this thrilling new adventure. Upon an honest and extensive stock take it was impossible to say that the spiritual path had lead me any closer to realizing my initial goals of freedom, peace and happiness. I had experienced moments of bliss and peace in meditations but I had also experienced their fickleness and the necessity to have a perfectly quiet and safe surrounding. Consequently, as soon as the ‘right’ conditions changed my period of bliss changed into frustration, abandoned until the next opportunity, and this conflict resulted in an ever-increasing resignation – that’s how life’s gonna be, unless I become enlightened. The goal of enlightenment was very clearly born out of the hope of escaping from this terrible seesaw – brief and conditional experiences of peace on one side and the long and tedious struggle of ‘living in the marketplace’ on the other side. I was trying to be as ‘removed’ from my bad emotions as possible, yet ever fearful that someone would upset my safe little set-up. I knew that my life was nowhere near perfect, and the more I meditated and retreated from the world the more difficult it became to live in that very same world of people, things and events. And as for harmless ... I had ample opportunity to watch my thoughts and deeds, words and schemes to know that I was far from being without malice. This sincere acknowledgement of the sad compromise of the ambitious plans of my youth made me interested in Peter’s proposal – to commit to living together in utter peace and harmony and to look at every issue that would come up. It also gave me enough interest and intent to inquire into Richard’s personal story and the possibilities of an actual freedom from feelings, beliefs and compromises and the burdening obligations and restrictions of believing in a spurious afterlife. And, best of all, in actual freedom I found the only ‘teaching’ and method that I had ever come across which fully included sex as a perfect and innocent sensuous pleasure between man and woman, without any ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ or hints of a later necessary transcendence. Here I finally glimpsed the opportunity to combine my desire for happiness with my search for purity and perfection that had set me on the spiritual path 17 years before. What I want to describe here is that the first few months of investigation into actual freedom were not easy-going; on the contrary, they sometimes caused quite a mental anguish. I thought and I tried and I contemplated and I meditated – but I could less and less reconcile the past with the new method and understanding about actualism. The more I learned about actual freedom, the less it fitted into my spiritual approach to life. Consequently this increased my fear of leaving the familiar lifestyle, the Sannyas fold and the security of the New Dark Age beliefs shared by many others, and it fuelled the immense fear of questioning God’s authority and protection. I experienced the terror of ‘his’ wrath threatening to punish me for eternity with either hell or eternal bad karma should I stop believing in an ultimate moral authority. On the other hand I refused to give up the increasing happiness, aliveness and the growing understanding about what it is to be a human being that I had achieved in such a comparatively short period of time. Furthermore, I was having a bloody good time with Peter, investigating what he or I believed and searching for the facts of the situation. It often started as a meeting of logger-heads with opposing beliefs and emotions and ended in a delightful intimacy that resulted from having found yet another fact to replace our confrontational beliefs. RESPONDENT: Were I not spiritually inclined I might not be interested in actual freedom web pages. I think spiritualism also promises the same thing (being happy and harmless) as actualism. Whether it delivers or not – I don’t know. But neither do I know if actualism does. VINEETO: For me, it was my search for freedom, peace and happiness that made me enter the spiritual world in the first place and not the other way round, in that the spiritual teachings led me to be interested in achieving freedom. When this search for freedom, peace and happiness was not fulfilled with my shallow success of 17 years of meditation I then became interested in actualism. I think you are crediting the wrong account here. RESPONDENT: I am interested just out of curiosity – maybe it delivers and I can make sense out of it intellectually. What appealed to me most about actualism is that I don’t have to believe in it (the same thing I liked about Vipassana). But now it looks like that till I have a PCE, I have no choice but to believe in it – which puts me off. VINEETO: Ah, curiosity? Are you sure that after eight months on the freedom list, reading and writing and thinking about what we report about our experiences you are still only indulging your curiosity? You are on record saying to Peter in a previous mail: RESPONDENT: The problem was that I was already feeling happy most of the time. This happiness was generated by ‘winning’ over most bad feelings, by simple spiritual techniques like Vipassana and deep breathing. Indeed, compared to most people around me, I was much happier. But I was finding myself stuck with this and somehow I had a feeling that there was nothing positive about it. It was just an absence of ‘bad’ feelings. VINEETO: And: RESPONDENT: I have read your journal and enjoyed it a lot. That was how I was introduced to actual freedom site. That time I was looking for someone who had broken away from Osho’s organized religion called sannyas. VINEETO: What I understand from these words is that you are not content with the results of Vipassana and you were not happy within an organized religion like Sannyas. You were looking for something better and you seem to be still looking. But when it gets to the bit where you might have to leave the familiar tried and not fully succeeded (ie. failed), then fear reduces that initial discontentment and interest in a new adventure to hesitation, compromise and resignation: RESPONDENT: If I look back at last 6 months, since when I become interested in actualism, it looks like that it has generated more unhappiness than happiness. I was living a cool life with ordinary happiness. May be a bit dull but still happy most of the time. But when I read about actualism, I understood that I was living only on beliefs and not on facts. This disturbed me. Of course it presented another challenge and promised that something beyond this ordinary happiness exists – but now I realise that this is another belief I got into. VINEETO: I told you my story of the first few months of actual freedom to make it clear that without the intense search to solve my paradoxical situation of having two beliefs – the spiritual conviction and the then-belief of actualism – I would not been able to prepare the ground for, and thus facilitate, my first major peak experience. As I see it from hindsight, my pure consciousness experience only occurred because of my intense questioning and investigation into the nature of my spiritual beliefs. The word ‘PCE’ contains the word ‘pure’, a purity from one’s beliefs and feelings for this particular time, a purity from the very substance of ‘self’. It is well documented that a PCE often occurs after a particular shocking or dis-orienting experience, and I had actively caused that situation in myself by questioning beliefs and daring to look at facts squarely in the eye! I was at a point where I was willing to question ALL my beliefs, whatever the outcome, because I had understood that this was the only way out of my dilemma, hanging between two opposing choices as to what to do with my life. I had no way to figure out the ‘right’ thing to do, because there was no authority that could point out the direction for me. There was no moral, ethical or ultimate spiritual value that I considered ‘true’ enough to rely on for a decision. I figured that ‘truth’, as I called it then, could not be something that one has to support by believing it or trusting it. It has to be something so obvious, so evident and reproducible that it can stand for itself. The intensity of wanting to find that which could withstand all questioning, made me ready for the eye-opening break-through, tearing open and dissolving the curtain of my passionate beliefs that had blinkered my perception, obscured my clarity and prevented me from seeing the actual. The PCE did not appear out of the blue by the grace of ‘Existence’ to be leisurely
compared to my ancient spiritual beliefs – it was born out of my intent to find a way out of the need to believe and to find a
solution to my failure to be happy and free. There was already a rip in the curtain, so to speak, of my nicely settled,
second-rate existence, and that rip widened dangerously with every questioned emotion, belief or ‘truth’. It got so big that
it became un-patchable and then, despite my fears, I thought: ‘Well, let it rip, I can’t hold it together anymore’ ...
You’ll find the continuation of the story in ‘Let it rip’, you already have an obvious hole in your spiritual curtain. Look ... RESPONDENT: The real problem is that now, if I want to go back to my ordinary happiness – it doesn’t look possible. The ‘fact versus belief’ thought haunts me in the backdrop. But I and only I have to take care of this problem – this is another thing I learnt from actualism. VINEETO: What you call your ‘real problem’ is actual serendipity. It’s great news. And, from my experience I can only say, ‘don’t take care of it, make it bigger.’ It can be the window to seeing the actual for the first time in your life. The actual lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the shallow happiness of the spiritual. As you can see on the diagram of ‘180 degrees’, there is a gap between the pinky-dinky spiritual path and the path to actual freedom that one needs to jump across if one wants to get on to the bus to freedom. And, as you can see from my story, that ‘jumping the gap’ is the thrill of a lifetime. Then actualism won’t remain a belief in what we are reporting, but will become a sensate, sensual and magnificent experience of the perfection that abounds all around us, every moment again. The trick is not to settle for second best. It’s been great pleasure to talk to you. I like that you brought up the issue.
RESPONDENT to Peter: So Peter, I write this mail only to share my thoughts and am not looking for your or anybody’s answers. Nice sharing thoughts anyway. VINEETO: It’s good that I am not anybody, so I can reply to your sharing of thought with my sharing of thoughts. RESPONDENT: I think the meaning of my above sentence was taken in wrong sense. I explained it in my reply to Richard. But somehow, my reply didn’t come back to me from the list. Anyway. Not worth bothering. Your reply to Richard got through all right. And I do think it is worth bothering. You said to him:
VINEETO: Your reaction reminds me of my childhood. When I had been really angry with my parents and felt quite helpless as to their seemingly unjust behaviour towards me I used to think: ‘When I am dead, you will be sorry!’ But even as an angry ten-year old I had enough wits about me to figure out that they may be sorry – even that I couldn’t be so sure of – but I will be the one who will be dead and then won’t be able to enjoy their grief. Here we call that ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’. On this list everybody is here for his or her own benefit and discovery. There is one sentence in Richard’s autobiography where he describes the seminal question that finally brought an end to his spiritual delusion of enlightenment: ‘How am I in relation to other people?’ –
The question has been an immensely useful tool for me, and I have used it along the path to actual freedom as a continuous investigation into my ‘self’. ‘How am I in relation to other people?’ has put me right on the spot with my emotions, feelings, beliefs and instinctual reactions, and as life with Peter became delightfully easy, how I was with other people became more important for my self-examination. When I became fearful, angry or annoyed by someone, there was always a welcome opportunity to look at the issue at hand. Otherwise, how could I know what my issues were? Living in a sheltered nursery or blaming others for their behaviour was not going to redeem me from my ‘self’. You said to Peter: RESPONDENT: ‘But I and only I have to take care of this problem – this is another thing I learnt from actualism. So Peter, I write this mail only to share my thoughts and am not looking for your or anybody’s answers’. VINEETO: With this you indicate that you don’t want anybody’s input in the question of ‘How am I in relation to other people?’ How on earth do you want to get rid of your ‘self’ and ‘Self’ if not by feedback and reports from people who already have gone a considerable way on the path to actual freedom? Of course, if you prefer to stick with the Tried and True, there is no need for fresh input at all, the program of the Human Condition, complete with instincts, moral and religious conditioning is already fully installed in each of us. And then you say to Richard: RESPONDENT: ‘When I said ‘(I) am not looking for anybody’s answer’, it doesn’t mean that I am stifling or discouraging anybody to answer. It is just that I would not depend upon anybody else to give answers to my problems. I will try to sort it out myself.’ VINEETO: How do you want to sort out for yourself what the difference is between actualism and spiritualism? Actualism is brand-new, and unless you have had a pure consciousness experience, you won’t even have tasted what it is about. ‘Sort it out myself’ is but spiritual balderdash and it works well in the spiritual world where you only have to depend on your own intuitive feelings and mindless imaginations to arrive in a self-fabricated world of delusion and sublimated instincts. But if you are at all interested in discovering the actual world and discovering how beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions are hindering you from experiencing this actual world, you will need all the input and feedback you can get. The tribal and religious conditioning in itself is so thick, so ancient and so insidious that it takes great courage, sincere intent, clear determination and lots and lots of reports from the actual world to dig oneself out of the mess one finds oneself in – as the Human Condition. Now to your letter: RESPONDENT: This topic of actualism versus spiritualism is becoming more and more important for me. I remember, in the very beginning you warned me that unless I understand this difference, it will be useless to proceed. At that time I brushed aside your advice, thinking that it was not important as long as I experiment with the method. Now, I realise that it is important to settle this issue before any other thing. To be honest, I consider, actualism as another spiritual path which
Of course, there are certain differences that it doesn’t believe in re-incarnation and maintain that the death of the body is the final end. But then there are always differences of approaches among different paths. Being brought up in a liberal Hindu culture, I deeply believe that all paths are right and all lead to the same goal. I think it is important to be honest, so that I can start from where I am. VINEETO: Yes, I think ‘it is important to be honest’ and to ‘start from where you are’ and then move on. It looks like all you have done up to now is substituting a few words from actualism into your spiritual language, and you have listed them very honestly and clearly:
And a ‘liberal Hindu culture’ is the perfect fertile climate to simply integrate another ‘Guru’s teaching’ into the ‘vegetable soup’ of Hindu Pantheism. If you are happy with the ‘liberal Hindu culture’, and you want to spend your life ‘deeply believing that all paths are right and lead to the same goal’, then there is no reason why you should question your concept of spiritualizing everything and everybody. There is a Christian saying that ‘all paths lead to Rome’ and if you want to go to Rome, then that is great advice. All spiritual beliefs may lead to ‘Truth’, but there is only one way to experience the actual world – through the physical senses without an obstructing self, Self or Being. If you want to experience the actuality of life, the delight of the unfiltered senses and the perfection of the actual world, then simply substituting a few terms is nothing other than cheating yourself. I suggest you read what No 8 wrote on ‘beliefs and facts’; the difference between belief and fact is worth an extensive study for a ‘deep believer’.
As for your 5 points –
But these are only a few point of the 180 degree difference between the actual world of the senses and the spiritual world of beliefs and passionate imaginations. Why not, for a change, look for the differences rather than the believed similarities, otherwise you will never get out of the sticky Pantheistic viewpoint ‘that all paths are right and all lead to the same goal.’ * RESPONDENT: Were I not spiritually inclined I might not be interested in actual freedom web pages. I think spiritualism also promises the same thing (being happy and harmless) as actualism. Whether it delivers or not – I don’t know. But neither do I know if actualism does. VINEETO: For me, it was my search for freedom, peace and happiness that made me enter the spiritual world in the first place and not the other way round, in that the spiritual teachings led me to be interested in achieving freedom. When this search for freedom, peace and happiness was not fulfilled with my shallow success of 17 years of meditation I then became interested in actualism. I think you are crediting the wrong account here. RESPONDENT: I think there is some confusion in my usage of the term spiritualism. In my mother tongue, the corresponding word is called ‘adhyatma’ which literally means coming to yourself. ‘Atma’ in adhyatma doesn’t mean soul or spirit, it means ‘I’. So for me when I am searching for who/what am I, it is adhyatma. And it is this search which brought me to actual freedom. Don’t you think actualism is also focussed on realising the true I and eliminating ‘I’. I understand that in actualism, the true I is realised as this physical body and nothing else. VINEETO: Here is another example of using the trick of a superficial substitution. You say ‘who/what am I, it is adhyatma’. ‘Who’ points to ‘I’, the being, the passionately imagined identity, while ‘what’ is simply this flesh-and-blood-body without any identity whatsoever. Adhyatma is ‘coming to yourself’ or your ‘self’, who your believe yourself to be, feel yourself to be, want to be, hope to become and, lo and behold, you discover your Higher or True Self – God by any other name. Actualism goes in the opposite direction. An actualist chisels away at the being, dismantles the being, takes it apart, exposes it for the mirage it is, investigates the emotions and instinctual passions that force one to desperately want to be somebody, a higher self, ‘me at the core of my being’, an advanced being, anything. Actual freedom is freedom from being any identity whatsoever. What remains is ‘what’ one is, this flesh-and-blood body only, not ‘who’. It is all very simple. Whenever I have been hurt by something or someone, this was my ‘self’ being hurt. This ‘self’ is what we actualists investigate, dismantle, lay bare and eliminate. It includes investigating ALL emotions, including love, compassion and bliss. When you uncover and eliminate the underlying instincts, there won’t be anybody left feeling hurt or even peeved. * VINEETO: Ah, curiosity? Are you sure that after eight months on the freedom list, reading and writing and thinking about what we report about our experiences you are still only indulging your curiosity? RESPONDENT: You are absolutely right Vineeto. I was indeed not completely satisfied with Vipassana and of course I was and am looking for something better. Most new age masters tell that this ‘looking for better’ itself is the problem. I tend to agree with them. VINEETO: Well, if you agree with them, then why are you still looking for anything better? Are the masters right, do they have the solution for you? Do you believe them, do their methods work? How long do you want to keep a foot in each camp? RESPONDENT: Yes there is a tendency to compromise and resignation. But is it because of fear of leaving the familiar, tried and failed? I don’t think so. I am not practicing Vipassana for quite some time now. But it could be the fear of loosing my ordinary happiness or the second best, as you call it. VINEETO: Good questions. Let me know what you find out.
VINEETO: Thank you for your reply. Spiritualism vs. actualism is a great topic to nut out and absolutely vital for the path to an actual freedom. It takes great courage and persistence to disentangle oneself from the net of spiritual beliefs, which pervade each and every issue of life, from love and relationship to the way we look at the physical universe, people and events. This psychic net of beliefs and emotions is such a thick cobweb laid over our sensate-only perception that, once removed, even for a short period, you think you looking at a completely different world. But let’s stick to one point at a time – RESPONDENT: Anyway I am still on this topic ‘Spiritualism vs actualism’. You mentioned that I don’t differentiate between Ego and Soul. This is very true. With my experience, I really can’t differentiate the two. When I look at myself I see only one identity. What I understand from both spiritualism and actualism is that this identity has to die. VINEETO: You say, you understand that both, ego and soul, have to die. Great. Now, what is this soul? The easiest way to understand ‘soul’ for me was to see it as the sum of my emotions, feelings, beliefs and passions. Love is ‘me’, affection is ‘me’, sadness is ‘me’, anger is ‘me’, being annoyed is ‘me’, being grateful is ‘me’, being hopeful is ‘me’, being frustrated is ‘me’, being impatient is ‘me’, being fearful is ‘me’ – you can add anything you like to this list. All ‘I’ am is my feelings, all ‘I’ am is my beliefs and all ‘I’ am is my instincts. ‘I’ consist of nothing else. Although ‘I’ am not actual, as in palpable, tangible, tactile, corporeal, physical, material, ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am my feelings and the actions that result from having these feelings are real. To imagine otherwise is but a cunning trick and an act of blatant denial. ‘I’ am not merely an illusion that can be ‘realised’ away as in the spiritual teachings. As such, the death of ‘me’ will also be a real event. ‘I’ in ‘my’ totality, who is but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to ‘my’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This fact of what ‘I’ consist of has to be discovered, acknowledged, investigated and experienced, over and over again. Only then is one willing to ‘get down and get dirty’, willing to experience and examine one’s feelings – not merely ‘observe’ them – and investigate into the hidden beliefs and instinctual passions that cause those feelings. By neither repressing nor expressing but by meticulously exploring each feeling I was then able to determine the underlying cause – be it a hurt pride, a bit of my social identity, a fear linked to my survival mechanism, a cherished belief disguised as ‘truth’ – there was always an issue beneath the initial emotion. And each of these feelings and emotions is ‘me’, my identity, my ‘self’, my ‘soul’. ‘I’ consist of nothing else but a great collection of passionate imaginations.
RESPONDENT: Peter just sent a
I think I have understood the first lie, more or less. VINEETO: When you say:
You have just defined ‘God’ as ‘a situation when ‘I’ do not exist’ and thus put it all nicely back into the spiritual belief system. If the spiritual ‘God’ is a non-identity, how come Rajneesh, Krishnamurti and all the other enlightened gurus had such glamour, glory and glitz about them, how come they needed heaps of devoted disciples and couldn’t live as a fellow human being among other fellow human beings? Is this not the most obvious proof of having an identity, now even bigger, brighter, shinier and ‘wiser’ than everybody else? No more ego, but the soul in full swing. When ‘I’, the complete identity, both the one ‘I think I am’ and the one ‘I feel I am’ have disappeared, there is no sense of identity whatsoever, nobody that can identify oneself as God or Existence or ‘All That Is’. Then there is only a body with limbs and senses, blood-circulation and a brain that is aware of being alive. There is no identity holding it all together, no identity experiencing each moment, nothing that has a past and a future, no sense of ‘being’ and nothing that has any emotional memory whatsoever.
RESPONDENT: Now I have to realise the second one, which I understand intellectually, but not experientially. I am not interested in branding my understanding as either actualism or spiritualism. If this is what actualism says and maintains that this is different from spiritualism – fair enough. As an expert on actualism, if you confirm that my understanding conforms to what actualism says, then the next question is whether spiritualism also says the same thing! I am not an expert on spiritualism. In fact I know very little of it compared to you. But what I am quite sure of is my understanding. VINEETO: An intellectual ‘understanding’ that ‘I’ am a ‘big lie’ won’t do anything. It will just be putting another intellectual belief on top of an existing belief, a new dress over the old corpse. The diagram is trying to make clear, that all we know, all we are, is this grey mass of ‘who I am’. This ‘who’ has to be dismantled, piece by piece, gradually and meticulously – and there are no short-cuts such as meditative mantras of ‘I am but an illusion’, ‘I am only a belief’. Because this ‘who I am’ is not only a mental construct that can be dismissed with an intellectual understanding, this ‘who I am’ is an emotional and instinctual package, supported by the chemical surges of our survival instincts, by ancient beliefs of our ancestors, a firm social structure of beliefs, morals, ethics and psittacisms, and on top of it a dearly held, carefully constructed, individual personality. There is a lot at stake when one decides for the path to freedom. Logic is not going to make you free. Logic is a plain mental activity that avoids any real change. Actualism is about digging into one’s beliefs, tearing them apart, facing the upcoming fears and leaving one’s social identity behind. One has to fully experience each of the upcoming feelings in order to get to the bottom of it all. Then, out of this in-depth investigation, I am compelled to change my behaviour, and I am leaving my ‘self’ behind, piece by piece. RESPONDENT: ‘I am not an expert on spiritualism. In fact I know very little of it compared to you.’ VINEETO: First I had to understand my own spiritualism, my own complex belief-structure that existed in my brain. First, I had to acknowledge that, yes, I am full of unquestioned beliefs, assumptions, vague feelings and intuitions. You see, nobody thinks he believes. Everybody is convinced that they ‘know’, that they ‘see the truth’. A passionate conviction, a belief fed into us with mother’s milk is never seen as a belief – it is conceived as being the very truth. Why would people kill for what they consider a mere belief, an idea – no, it is the bloody truth for them, and they are ready to defend it with their lives and kill for it. So, first of all, one needs to acknowledge that there is belief. And believing is being spirit-ual, non-factual, substantiating ideas with one’s spirit. Every idea, every assumption, every opinion is spirit-ual, produced in the head – or in the heart. Once I understood that the word ‘spirit’ describes the passionate yet imaginary entity inside of me, I could also understand that Spirit-ualism – Eastern Religion – is merely aiming to enhance that entity into glorious grandeur. Actualism is to get rid of one’s ‘spirit’ in total in order to experience the actual world that is already here. It’s a great journey discovering facts, facts verifiable by the senses, repeatable,
explainable, describable, non-emotional, non-affective, simple and actual – facts. As Peter has already mentioned in his letter
to Alan, in the library you will find a good detailed description of The path to actual freedom is paved by facts and the sensuous experiencing of the physical universe. RESPONDENT: My logical thinking is that if I understood (intellectually) this thing before reading about actualism – it must be because of spiritualism, because that is what I was exposed to till that time. There could be one more reason, however. As Richard suggested, I looked into my Hindu belief of ‘all paths lead to the same goal’. It could be because of this belief, when I read about actualism, subconsciously, I kept on correcting my previous understandings and made myself to believe that, that is what I understood so far also. I am looking into it but some of the events/understandings I can clearly recollect happening much before. VINEETO: There is a much more simple explanation. Since actualism lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spiritual beliefs, you probably have not yet discovered what ‘actual’ is – facts existing independent from one’s ideas, feelings, interpretations and hopes. It is a great moment when one for the first time discovers a bit of the actual world. I can highly recommend concentrating on investigation of facts. One of the keywords is ‘independent’ from my own interpretation, feeling about it, imagining about it, philosophising about it. Just the simple fact of a coffee-cup being a coffee-cup, a tree being a tree – not some life-producing oxygen-machine or item of beauty – simply a tree, trunk and branches, birds and insects, smells and leaves rustling in the wind. It’s good to start with something so simple as an everyday object and investigate how many ideas and feelings we are weaving around those objects. It’s good fun and it will give you some experience about plain facts. It’s great talking to you. Let me know what you are finding out.
RESPONDENT: Recently I noticed the discussions on importance of labelling the feelings as one finds them inside oneself in response to the actualism question. I often face problem in this because I think I am not able to find the right word to label the feeling. Sometimes the feeling is too complicated to be labelled as a single word/phrase. I was wondering if it would be helpful if you publish a list of labels which you used to label your feeling during the course of your discovery. Then this list can be continuously enhanced by other actualist as they find more labels. VINEETO: I suggest the page
RESPONDENT: Recently I noticed the discussions on importance of labelling the feelings as one finds them inside oneself in response to the actualism question. I often face problem in this because I think I am not able to find the right word to label the feeling. Sometimes the feeling is too complicated to be labelled as a single word/phrase. I was wondering if it would be helpful if you publish a list of labels, which you used to label your feeling during the course of your discovery. Then this list can be continuously enhanced by other actualist as they find more labels. VINEETO: I suggest the page RESPONDENT: The link you provided is a good start though I was looking for a list of more subtle feelings. I guess I will have to prepare my own list as No 35 has suggested. VINEETO: There is another list that Richard provides about the components of
malice RESPONDENT: For me, while it is easy (comparatively) to label and handle obvious feelings like anger, malice, compassion, hope, I find it more difficult to label not-so-apparent feelings. These feelings create a neither-happy-nor-sad kind of state. I remember you talked of dullness in one of your mails. But I find that this dullness or boredom is not the same every time it happens and it happens very frequently. VINEETO: Yes, I can remember times of a ‘neither-happy-nor-sad kind of
state’ and I recall talking to Alan about dullness and stuckness I found dullness and boredom one of the most common reactions to being alive when things weren’t going ‘my’ way – and they rarely ever did or that life wasn’t exciting, which it rarely was. In the process of actualism I recognized, however, that my habitual resentment towards the various facts of life, for instance having to work for a living, bad weather, getting sick, etc, clearly prevented me from becoming happy and harmless. I discovered I could either indulge in ‘my’ resentment or pull myself up by my boot strings and break this insidious habit. As No 3 pointed out, it was indeed a matter of priority – and I chose sensuous attentiveness over ‘self’-indulgent apathy, happiness over resentment. The other kind of dullness or stuckness I would describe as an ostrich-behaviour – the result of my fear to investigate the particular belief or behaviour pattern that was under scrutiny at the time. Eventually such periods of procrastination grew shorter as I more and more stubbornly refused to spoil this unique present moment of being alive by not investigating the issue at hand. And indeed each issue investigated, each belief discarded resulted in lifting an emotional weight off my shoulders and as a direct consequence, life has become easy and enjoyable. You could also say that ‘I’, the complainer, the controller, the moaner and groaner has all but left the stage.
VINEETO: I’d like to add a comment to your conversation with No 38 on the thread of how to become happy. You wrote – RESPONDENT: Now in this state, when I use actualism method, I look for any feelings which drive me out of the ‘reasonably happy’ state and I come back to my ‘reasonably happy’ state in a reasonably short time on most occasions. I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition. RESPONDENT No 38: Again, if ‘reasonable’ is adequate, so be it. Apparently, it’s not, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering with this discourse, right? RESPONDENT: Right. But what is doubtful is the level of my intent (for example compared to yours) in going all the way. The reason for this is perhaps because I don’t have a direct experience of what is on offer. So my take on this discussion is that you should have a PCE before you try out actualist method because otherwise you will not have full and pure intent and therefore can not succeed or at most can reach only ‘reasonably happy’ state. VINEETO: When I first came across actualism, and its implicit challenge to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless, it was the harmless part that grabbed my attention – i.e. I could see that to be ‘reasonably happy’ was relatively easy but to become actually harmless was the real challenge that actualism offered to me. Because of the way human beings are socially and instinctually programmed, the time-honoured pursuits of happiness – be it via the accumulation of material possessions or the acquisition of spiritual brownie-points – is inadvertently and inevitably a ‘self’-centred enterprise. When ‘I’ pursue ‘my’ happiness in either of these worlds I am necessarily putting ‘me’ and ‘my’ insatiable wants and needs first. This means that ‘my’ happiness is always conditional upon ‘my’ position in the real-world pecking order, or if one is so inclined, ‘my’ position in the spiritual world pecking order. Either way, happiness such as this is dependant upon doing battle with one’s fellow human beings in some way or other. There is a way out of this apparent dilemma and this is the third alternative to the traditional choices – being ‘reasonably happy’ in the real world or being blissfully dissociated in an imaginary spiritual world. The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings. Similarly, in interactions with your fellow human beings the aim to be harmless will ensure that you rate other people’s happiness as much as your own, simply because if you harbour acrimonious feelings towards another, neither they nor you can be happy in such a situation. The more you actively pursue harmlessness and investigate the social and instinctual mechanisms that cause you to have aggressive, resentful, insulting, blaming, sorrowful and anxious feelings, the less ‘self’-centred, more considerate and more benevolent you are towards all of your fellow human beings. Of course, you will very quickly experience, if you are scrupulously sincere in your pursuit, that one invariably feels happy whenever one notices that one is spontaneously harmless. Such a happiness only needs enough intent to make the first commitment – to become unconditionally harmless and do whatever is necessarily to attain and maintain such harmlessness. Then the more harmless you are towards your fellow human beings, the more happy you become and this results in even more harmlessness and even more happiness – i.e. success breeds more success. The recent discovery of actualism now makes it clear that the best contribution one can make to peace-on-earth is to free oneself and others from the burden of one’s animal instinctual passions – and the obvious place to start such a process is to focus on the elimination of invidious passions that cause harm to one’s fellow human beings.
RESPONDENT: I would like to state my practical problem. I am reasonably happy most of the time. I think I am also reasonably innocent and content, most of the time, though I am not sure what it means to be ‘pure’. You would notice the word ‘reasonably’. This is because it is compared to my peers. I don’t have any recollection of any PCE as described by many on this list. Now in this state, when I use actualism method, I look for any feelings which drive me out of the ‘reasonably happy’ state and I come back to my ‘reasonably happy’ state in a reasonably short time on most occasions. I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition. I am not able to figure out how to take a leap from here into PCE. VINEETO: When I first came across actualism, and its implicit challenge to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless, it was the harmless part that grabbed my attention – i.e. I could see that to be ‘reasonably happy’ was relatively easy but to become actually harmless was the real challenge that actualism offered to me. RESPONDENT: I would consider myself ‘reasonably harmless’ as well as most of the time I do not carry acrimonious feelings towards my fellow human beings. For me the major attraction towards actual freedom is the description of the actual world and the simplicity of it and the fact that both real and spiritual worlds are not actual. VINEETO: Because of the way human beings are socially and instinctually programmed, the time-honoured pursuits of happiness – be it via the accumulation of material possessions or the acquisition of spiritual brownie-points – is inadvertently and inevitably a ‘self’-centred enterprise. When ‘I’ pursue ‘my’ happiness in either of these worlds I am necessarily putting ‘me’ and ‘my’ insatiable wants and needs first. This means that ‘my’ happiness is always conditional upon ‘my’ position in the real-world pecking order, or if one is so inclined, ‘my’ position in the spiritual world pecking order. Either way, happiness such as this is dependant upon doing battle with one’s fellow human beings in some way or other. There is a way out of this apparent dilemma and this is the third alternative to the traditional choices – being ‘reasonably happy’ in the real world or being blissfully dissociated in an imaginary spiritual world. The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings. RESPONDENT: While I am in real world, where else can I pursue my happiness? My understanding of the actualism method is that you target to become happy (and of course also harmless) each moment again in this very real world. This is achieved by removing your beliefs one and one and consequently dismantling your ‘self’ and your ‘Self’ in a gradual manner. VINEETO: It appears that you have not fully understood my suggestion to change the focus of your attention from settling for being ‘reasonably happy’ to focussing on becoming actually and unconditionally harmless. Let me return to your initial query –
First let me say that your current description of your daily life – ‘I am reasonably happy most of the time. I think I am also reasonably innocent and content, most of the time’ – strikes me as qualitatively different to the description you have reported in your last post to me –
From the way you describe how you are currently experiencing life you seem to be somewhat more happy, less bored, less dull than you were last year. Therefore when you now say that ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life’ you seem to have not taken into account how you previously experienced normal life. Taking your words at face value, you seem to be belittling whatever success you may have had, seem stuck at being reasonably happy and reasonably harmless and are now saying ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ as though the actualism method itself is somehow lacking. However, if you want to further investigate why ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ it might be appropriate to look at the post that you have written on the same day to No 3, in which you describe how and when you apply the method of actualism –
This is clearly not the actualism method as Richard has explained it to you –
And again a month later –
Has it not occurred to you that the reason you had such limited success with actualism – ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ – is that you are not using the actualism method as it has been described to you? Cultivating the attentiveness required for the actualism method to be successful is not akin to some sort of meditation that you do ‘while going to sleep or when [you] have nothing else to do’. If you want to change your life from feeling ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling good to feeling happy to feeling perfect, then attentiveness needs to be applied each moment again, regardless of what it is you are doing at this moment and regardless of where you are at this moment. To use the example you related to No 3, when ‘preparing for a presentation’ you focus your attentiveness on how you are experiencing this moment of being alive whilst doing the research and activities for the presentation and in doing so you become aware of what causes you to have sad, anxious or irritated feelings during this activity. When cooking dinner, you ask yourself how you are experiencing this moment cooking dinner, when driving a car you pay exclusive attention as to how you are experiencing this moment while diving along the road, and so on. And if you forget to be attentive as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive at some time during your daily activities then not to worry, for the very action of becoming aware that you forgot to be attentive brings you right back to being attentive again. If you cultivate the habit of paying more and more exclusive attention to this moment, each moment again, you will begin to be able to recognize and experience feelings such as sorrow or resentment the very moment they arise before they have a chance to fester into long periods of grumpiness, boredom, Grübelsucht or misery. Should such sorrowful or resentful feelings persist then it is obvious that you need to examine their cause, investigate the underlying persistent belief and initiate the necessary changes. And this brings me to the last sentence of your initial query – ‘I am not able to figure out how to take a leap from here into PCE’. Actualism does not require great leaps of imagination – what is needed is simple step-by-step application. The more you pay exclusive attention to this moment of being alive, the more you will be able to incrementally minimise the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and the more you will be able to activate the felicitous feelings and cultivate sensuousness. Then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness – which is a pure, i.e. non-affective, ‘self’-less experience of this moment of being alive. This is not something you have to figure out for yourself as Richard has already figured it out. As for ‘to take a leap’ – you need to make the bold decision to ‘take a leap’ from merely settling for being ‘reasonably happy’ – with ‘reasonably harmless’ thrown in as an afterthought – to making the necessary effort required to pay exclusive attention to how you are experiencing each moment of being alive. Making this effort will not only enable you to become more happy and more considerate of others but this exclusive attentiveness will also enable you to become more and more aware of your sensate experiencing – and this awareness is the necessary ingredient to be able to delight in the sheer sensuousness of being alive on this verdant planet. To expect to leap from being ‘reasonably happy’ to a PCE is to remain stuck in wishful thinking but ‘tis only a small step from sensual delighting in being here in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are to having a PCE.
RESPONDENT: I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition. VINEETO: From the way you describe how you are currently experiencing life you seem to be somewhat more happy, less bored, less dull than you were last year. Therefore when you now say that ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life’ you seem to have not taken into account how you previously experienced normal life. Taking your words at face value, you seem to be belittling whatever success you may have had, seem stuck at being reasonably happy and reasonably harmless and are now saying ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ as though the actualism method itself is somehow lacking. RESPONDENT: I did not mean that ‘the actualism method itself is somehow lacking’. I am not even saying that it has not worked for me at all. What I am trying to check with others using the method is if the degree of change for me is too slow compared to others, which could be very well because I am not using the method correctly as you wrote below. Or is it that I am belittling whatever success I have had so far. In other words, even though I am equally happy and harmless as other people using the method, I somehow don’t realise the contrast. I am still not sure and perhaps it would help if I can talk in detail to somebody else who is in the early stage of practising the method. VINEETO: The success you have with the actualism method is directly related to the strength of your intent. Therefore whether or not your progress is ‘too slow’ cannot be measured according to the successes of other people practicing the actualism method but can only be measured according to the degree of happiness and harmlessness you want for yourself, relative to how much effort you are willing to apply to the task. * VINEETO: However, if you want to further investigate why ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ it might be appropriate to look at the post that you have written on the same day to No 3, in which you describe how and when you apply the method of actualism –
This is clearly not the actualism method as Richard has explained it to you – Has it not occurred to you that the reason you had such limited success with actualism – ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ – is that you are not using the actualism method as it has been described to you? RESPONDENT: May be, you are right. I have two problems. One, when you say ‘by finding out what triggered off the loss of feeling good, one commences another period of enjoying this moment of being alive’. I do not exactly know what do you mean precisely by ‘enjoying this moment of being alive’. Is ‘being reasonable happy’ to enjoy the life? Let me clarify that I do not mean material comfort and worldly success by ‘reasonable happiness’. I am reasonably happy when I am content and peaceful. In other words I have no serious complain with life, I have no need to change anything and I do not carry any acrimonious feeling towards others. Do you call being in this state to be ‘enjoying the life’? If yes, then I am enjoying the life most of the time. However why I call this state as only ‘reasonably happy’ is because I find that this is a negative definition. This is basically an absence of bad (and good) and acrimonious feelings. To give you an example – when I compare this state to the state when I fell in love for the first time – some twenty years ago, I find this state to be a bit dull. Now, I am not saying that I am looking for the same feeling of ‘falling in love for the first time’, because I know now that it is a false and foolish state to be in and consequences of that are disastrous. I am just giving you an example of the intensity of the experience. On the other hand when I read people describing their PCEs, I find those to be very intense experiences. VINEETO: I wonder why you are wondering about the degree of success you are having using the actualism method when you say –
If you are happy being ‘reasonably happy’ and if, when you are feeling ‘reasonably happy’, you feel you ‘have no need to change anything’, then actualism is clearly not your cup of tea. However, if you are inspired by ‘people describing their PCEs’ and you would like to live a ‘self’-less PCE 24 hours a day, everyday, then you will need to change. You will need to make being harmless and happy priority number one in your life – the very top of your laundry list. Being ‘reasonably happy’ can generally be achieved either by repressing one’s unwanted feelings, obeying the social-religious morals and ethics, or by detaching from one’s unwanted feelings, following the spiritual practice of dissociation. If you are interested in experiencing the dazzling splendour and peerless pristine excellence of the actual world then you would have to investigate why you would settle for feeling ‘reasonably happy’ – reasonably as in ‘moderately, modestly, cheaply, within one’s means, tolerably, passably, acceptable, average’. Oxford Thesaurus In order to lift the bar to feeling excellent you would have to ask yourself the question – why do I not feel perfect, which feelings interfere with my feeling perfect and reduce my experience of life to merely feeling ‘reasonable happy’, which, as you said yourself, isn’t ‘anything spectacular’? RESPONDENT: The other problem is how do I graduate from feeling good (which is what perhaps I am, most of the time) to feeling ‘happy’ and then to feeling ‘perfect’. What is the difference between feeling ‘good’ and feeling happy? My take on this is that feeling happy would have something positive. It will have some of the element of PCE – may be in lesser intensity. This brings me to another question on sensual delight. Do you experience the sensual delight even when you are not in a PCE? If yes, then perhaps this is the part I am missing and perhaps this is the ‘positive’ part of the happiness. Am I right? VINEETO: Before I go into the nitty-gritty of degrees of being harmless and happy, the unresolved question is whether being harmless and happy is priority numero uno in your life. If it is, then settling for second best will be out of the question for you. If it is, then you will automatically lift your game from being ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling happy to feeling perfect to sensual delighting in being here and you will know for yourself what feeling perfect means without needing to compare it with anyone else’s feeling perfect. Perfect means the best and needs no comparison. * VINEETO: Cultivating the attentiveness required for the actualism method to be successful is not akin to some sort of meditation that you do ‘while going to sleep or when [you] have nothing else to do’. If you want to change your life from feeling ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling good to feeling happy to feeling perfect, then attentiveness needs to be applied each moment again, regardless of what it is you are doing at this moment and regardless of where you are at this moment. To use the example you related to No 3, when ‘preparing for a presentation’ you focus your attentiveness on how you are experiencing this moment of being alive whilst doing the research and activities for the presentation and in doing so you become aware of what causes you to have sad, anxious or irritated feelings during this activity. When cooking dinner, you ask yourself to how you are experiencing this moment cooking dinner, when driving a car you pay exclusive attention as to how you are experiencing this moment while diving along the road, and so on. RESPONDENT: I am somehow unable to follow this approach. When I am preparing a presentation or writing a mail or reading a book, I cannot focus my attentiveness to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive, because these tasks require exclusive attention for themselves. Yes, while cooking dinner or while driving I can focus my attention on how I am experiencing this moment, because these jobs do not require exclusive attention. I think there are two different things we are talking about. I would like to understand how you can have exclusive attention to two attentiveness oriented tasks at the same time. VINEETO: Actualism, being non-spiritual, non-philosophical and down-to-earth, is like any other pursuit in life. For example, if your aim is to win the Olympic gold medal in the 5000m marathon, then you will spend your days training and exercising until you are confident of reaching your goal – you will stream-line your whole life, putting all other desires aside, to make sure you reach your goal and you won’t let off until you have perfected your skills. But if you only want to do a little bit of jogging to see if you like it or not, then you won’t need to practice, you won’t need to change your life, you won’t need to perfect your running style. As for ‘how you can have exclusive attention to two attentiveness oriented tasks at the same time’ – if your attention is exclusively focused on the task at hand, then you can become attentive to the fact that you are absorbed in the doing of the task. Very often when the doing of the task is totally enjoyable you have no time for feeling sad, dull, resentful, irritated or apprehensive and then you become aware that you are feeling perfect accomplishing your task. If, however you become attentive to the fact that your attention is not exclusively focused on the task, then you can become attentive as to why not. If you become aware of feeling annoyed or frustrated whilst doing the task then it is obvious that you are not feeling happy and then you can become attentive as to why this is so. Of course, attentiveness is acquired like any other skill in life – you begin with the easy and graduate to the more difficult. First you begin being attentive as to how you experience this moment of being alive when brushing your teeth, getting dressed, having breakfast, waiting for the bus, driving a car, standing in the elevator, cooking a meal, watching television, and so on. When your attentiveness increases through practice, you advance to the more involved and more emotionally charged occupations of your day. Again, it all depends on your intent – no interest, no effort, no result. * VINEETO: And if you forget to be attentive as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive at some time during your daily activities then not to worry, for the very action of becoming aware that you forgot to be attentive brings you right back to being attentive again. If you cultivate the habit of paying more and more exclusive attention to this moment, each moment again, you will begin to be able to recognize and experience feelings such as sorrow or resentment the very moment they arise before they have a chance to fester into long periods of grumpiness, boredom, Grübelsucht or misery. Should such sorrowful or resentful feelings persist then it is obvious that you need to examine their cause, investigate the underlying persistent belief and initiate the necessary changes. <snip> To expect to leap from being ‘reasonably happy’ to a PCE is to remain stuck in wishful thinking but ‘tis only a small step from sensual delighting in being here in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are to having a PCE. RESPONDENT: Okay. What you are saying is that PCE is just a small step from feeling happy or feeling perfect. Right? VINEETO: No. What I said ‘‘tis only a small step from sensual delighting in being here in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are to having a PCE’. Unless being harmless and happy is the first and foremost priority in your life and you are keenly interested in how you are experiencing this moment of being alive, a PCE can at best be an accidental glitch, a freak experience, a one-off lucky dip. However, if you are sufficiently discontent with life as you experience it right now, to want to change fundamentally and irrevocably then this quote from Richard explains in detail how to conjure sensual delighting –
VINEETO: The success you have with the actualism method is directly related to the strength of your intent. Therefore whether or not your progress is ‘too slow’ cannot be measured according to the successes of other people practicing the actualism method but can only be measured according to the degree of happiness and harmlessness you want for yourself, relative to how much effort you are willing to apply to the task. RESPONDENT: Yes, Now I realize that the ‘success’ has to be measured only against my own standards and experience and not against anybody else’s experience. In other words I have to ask myself ‘Am I more happy now than I used to be some time ago?’ VINEETO: What about ‘Am I more harmless …’? * VINEETO: I wonder why you are wondering about the degree of success you are having using the actualism method when you say –
If you are happy being ‘reasonably happy’ and if, when you are feeling ‘reasonably happy’, you feel you ‘have no need to change anything’, then actualism is clearly not your cup of tea. RESPONDENT: May be the correct thing to say would be that I have no pressing need to change anything. Right now for me actualism is a ‘nice to have’ requirement and not ‘must have’. VINEETO: As long as you regard actualism as a ‘nice to have requirement’ you will then have ‘no pressing need’ to question, let alone give up, your spiritual belief – a ‘must have’ if you want to reap the rewards of actualism. * VINEETO: However, if you are inspired by ‘people describing their PCEs’ and you would like to live a ‘self’-less PCE 24 hours a day, everyday, then you will need to change. You will need to make being harmless and happy priority number one in your life – the very top of your laundry list. Being ‘reasonably happy’ can generally be achieved either by repressing one’s unwanted feelings, obeying the social-religious morals and ethics, or by detaching from one’s unwanted feelings, following the spiritual practice of dissociation. If you are interested in experiencing the dazzling splendour and peerless pristine excellence of the actual world then you would have to investigate why you would settle for feeling ‘reasonably happy’ – reasonably as in ‘moderately, modestly, cheaply, within one’s means, tolerably, passably, acceptable, average’. Oxford Thesaurus RESPONDENT: You are absolutely right. I did some introspection and found that I have achieved this ‘reasonable happiness’ by detaching myself from my unwanted feelings. I have done this by philosophizing actualism mixed with my earlier spiritual understandings. I realize now that when I say I am reasonably happy I am talking of a general state of not getting effected by feelings. I achieved this because of my philosophy that nothing really matters in this real world because in any case it is all illusion and also there is no afterlife. VINEETO: Isn’t it amazing how much one sincere introspection can reveal. You described the spiritual practice of detachment very precisely – ‘detaching myself from my unwanted feelings’. This practice is not actualism, because actualism is about feeling one’s feelings, becoming aware of one’s feelings and exploring the origin of one’s feelings with the aim of minimizing both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings ‘so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time’ – as Richard says below in a correspondence he had with you –
RESPONDENT: However when I try to bring my attention to this moment – I find that I am trying to avoid being here and now. The reason looks to be that I do not really enjoy being here. Instead I enjoy more comforting myself in the thought that I am somewhat better off than most other people as I don’t get affected easily by feelings. VINEETO: Yes, the avoidance of being here and now is the very purpose of practicing detachment and aloofness – spiritual people do not want to be here which is why they practice going ‘inside’. And it is an honest admission to say that you clearly recognize the cultivation of feelings of superiority over others that are an essential ingredient of all religious faith and spiritual practice. It is a great step towards regarding other people as what they are, fellow human beings. * VINEETO: In order to lift the bar to feeling excellent you would have to ask yourself the question – why do I not feel perfect, which feelings interfere with my feeling perfect and reduce my experience of life to merely feeling ‘reasonable happy’, which, as you said yourself, isn’t ‘anything spectacular’? RESPONDENT: I find the right question to be – Why am I not enjoying this moment? or Why am I trying to avoid being here and now? So now my target will be not just being happy in a general sense but to enjoy this very moment. VINEETO: Has it ever occurred to you that to genuinely ‘enjoy this very moment’ you need to live in peace with your fellow human beings, i.e. that in order to genuinely ‘enjoy this very moment’, you need to be harmless towards all of your fellow human beings? * VINEETO: Before I go into the nitty-gritty of degrees of being harmless and happy, the unresolved question is whether being harmless and happy is priority numero uno in your life. If it is, then settling for second best will be out of the question for you. If it is, then you will automatically lift your game from being ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling happy to feeling perfect to sensual delighting in being here and you will know for yourself what feeling perfect means without needing to compare it with anyone else’s feeling perfect. Perfect means the best and needs no comparison. RESPONDENT: For my priority I would prefer the phrase ‘to enjoy this moment’ rather than ‘being happy and harmless’. However I have yet to realize if it is the priority number one in my life. VINEETO: I am pleased to see that you have raised the bar from being ‘reasonably happy’ to wanting ‘to enjoy this moment’. * VINEETO: Actualism, being non-spiritual, non-philosophical and down-to-earth, is like any other pursuit in life. For example, if your aim is to win the Olympic gold medal in the 5000m marathon, then you will spend your days training and exercising until you are confident of reaching your goal – you will stream-line your whole life, putting all other desires aside, to make sure you reach your goal and you won’t let off until you have perfected your skills. But if you only want to do a little bit of jogging to see if you like it or not, then you won’t need to practice, you won’t need to change your life, you won’t need to perfect your running style. RESPONDENT: As I have never made anything as my ‘aim in life’ even in my real world life, I don’t know how to motivate myself enough to make ‘enjoying this moment’ priority number 1 in my life. VINEETO: Mr. Buddha’s Four Noble Truths come to mind – [quote]:
Is it that you do not have an ‘aim in life’ because you have learnt to believe that to have a passionate ‘aim in life’ is a desire – a desire that the mythical Mr. Buddha supposedly said will inevitably bring disappointment and frustration? Such teachings do indeed inflict a severe lack of motivation to improve anything here on earth. The other aspect of this spiritual practice that you point to – ‘detaching myself from my unwanted feelings’ – not only means you are ‘not getting effected’ by unwanted feelings, it also locks you out from feeling motivated, feeling interested, feeling curious, feeling inquisitive, feeling enthusiastic, feeling excited and feeling determined. It therefore becomes apparent that you will have to abandon your current practice of ‘not getting effected by feelings’ in order ‘to motivate myself enough to make ‘enjoying this moment’ priority number 1 in my life’. * VINEETO: Of course, attentiveness is acquired like any other skill in life – you begin with the easy and graduate to the more difficult. First you begin being attentive as to how you experience this moment of being alive when brushing your teeth, getting dressed, having breakfast, waiting for the bus, driving a car, standing in the elevator, cooking a meal, watching television, and so on. When your attentiveness increases through practice, you advance to the more involved and more emotionally charged occupations of your day. Again, it all depends on your intent – no interest, no effort, no result. RESPONDENT: I realize that intent is lacking in me. Now I have to find out why is it so? VINEETO: No 47’s recent response to No 44 can give you some food for thought regarding this question. Vis –
* VINEETO: … if you are sufficiently discontent with life as you experience it right now, to want to change fundamentally and irrevocably then this quote from Richard explains in detail how to conjure sensual delighting –
RESPONDENT: I have read this piece from Richard earlier and tried following this but could not get out of ‘stuckness’. I have not even intellectually understood what does ‘delight’ mean or what is ‘naiveté’. May be I need to try more. VINEETO: I appreciate the honesty and sincerity of your introspection. A good bout of sincere introspection can be very revealing, a bit like taking stock as to what you have done in your life and what you want to do with the rest of your life. The mere fact that you are taking stock indicates that you have some doubts about your stock and that you would like your stock to be better. The way I discovered naiveté was to actively rid myself of cynicism, and the first step was to become aware of the fact that I had cynical thoughts and feelings – i.e. to experience how cynical I was and to recognize the maliciousness of cynicism. The next step was to stop feeling cynical because a cynic is someone who despises being here, is not someone who can delight in being here and is not someone who likes his or her fellow human beings – a cynic being ‘one who sarcastically doubts or despises human sincerity and merit’. Oxford Dictionary Delight is the joy of being here for no reason at all and naiveté is the innate quality of encountering life in wide-eyed wonder and amazement. If you want to re-awaken your dormant naiveté and rekindle your capacity for delight it is vital to recognize and abandon the cynicism and the resignation that is inherent in all Eastern religions – there is no other way.
VINEETO: Good to hear from you. How are you doing? RESPONDENT: You wrote to No 23, while explaining the meaning of the word Rajaneesh:
While the meaning of ‘Rajaneesh’ as ‘King of the night’ is more or less correct, the etymology you provided is wrong. Hindi is my mother tongue and I have studied Sanskrit also to a basic level. The word ‘Rajaneesh’ is combination of two words ‘Rajani’ and ‘Eesh’. In Hindi (or in Sanskrit) Rajani means night and Eesh means Owner (can also be interpreted as king). And so Rajaneesh literally means ‘The king of the night’. However figuratively the word Rajaneesh is used for ‘moon’ which is seen as the king of the night. VINEETO: I am pleased to have a contribution/correction on this issue by someone who is fluent in Hindi. It confirms that the literal meaning of Rajneesh is ‘king of the night’ while the figurative meaning is ‘moon’. Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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