VINEETO: Welcome to the Actual Freedom Mailing list.

RESPONDENT: Well I’ve spent enough time reading the site to know that my letter will be blocked by Richard’s ego as No. 4’s was or replied to ‘predictably’ with Richard’s usual over excited egotistical arrogance, feigned harmlessness, cut and paste laziness and of course those impressive ‘big words’ that make him look like an inconsiderate idiot. Then one of his parrots will come to their guru’s defence using his cloned vocabulary and corrupted aggro attitude. Yet after all this ridiculous ‘get out’ my question is; why do none of you have the intelligence to work out why the list only gets 2 letters a day! Why does it not dawn on your thick skulls how alienating your exaggerated attitudes are and why on earth is Richard trotting out a May [Mailing List B] post? To keep something already dead, alive and wanking???

VINEETO: I am one of Richard’s parrots, called Vineeto. He feeds me weekly with bits of actualism, and I have grown very tall and tame from that, and in return I am willing to proselytize about His method and message on His Actual Freedom list. This time, as you have already so well predicted, you are to be the receiver of my ‘cloned defence’ of the guru. It is so much fun writing about actual freedom that it far exceeds everything I have ever done in my life, including 17 years of worship and meditation with the Indian self-proclaimed God-man Rajneesh and heaps of New Dark Age therapies that teach you how to be more surrendered and more loving with your inner man and inner woman, with the suffering souls of humanity and in tune the Higher Self of Existence. Now at least I am having the fun of doing something so unpopular that there are only 2 mails a day because nobody is actually interested in changing, in becoming happy and harmless themselves – let alone willing to make any effort in this direction. Are they so busy in needing to being loved or are they trying to lovingly save the rest of the planet, including endangered species of tigers, elephants, sharks and blue-dotted beetles?

I am happy that you started writing because I had opportunity to read your writings on the Mailing List B and enjoyed them very much. At last, I thought, a woman who is standing on her own two feet and interested in finding out about herself and about the actual world. Why you chose to empty a drawer of dirty socks on this list is a bit of a mystery to me – Richard must have stepped on a sore toe or a whole sore foot of yours. Isn’t it strange how easy it is to accuse someone of not being harmless because one is feeling hurt, and to fire off a whole volcano of hurt feelings to everybody on the list who are actually doing something about their own malice? It has always amazed me how sincerely hypocritical spiritual seekers can be without even blinking an eyelid. In America they call it ‘venting’ nowadays and consider it to be of great therapeutic value. Not that I don’t know this attitude from my own spiritual years, but I can claim that I have seen the uselessness and stupidity of it and have turned around, stopped blaming the whole world and started to actually investigate my own root-causes for emotional eruptions. What I found was very fascinating indeed. It has brought the inner volcano to a halt, and for the first time in my life I am reliably free of emotions.

And as for parroting – here is what you posted to the other list:

[Respondent on List B]: ‘To believe means ‘fervently to wish to be true’. A belief is conviction of the truth or reality of a thing, based on insufficient grounds to afford indisputable knowledge. A belief is an assumption, a notion, an idea, an emotion-backed thought that requires faith.

Beliefs are misconceptions that require active scrutiny and intelligent investigation by anyone who sincerely wants to become free of the human condition. Many beliefs masquerade as ‘truths’. Most people value belief over fact and the human condition over freedom.

It is extremely important for me at the moment to look into what constitutes a belief and what constitutes a fact. I have discovered that simply because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact. Most people have absolutely no idea of the difference between a belief and a fact. A fact is a fact, as in tangible, corporeal, material, definitive, present, obvious, evident, current, substantial, physical and palpable. A fact is demonstratively evident to all that it is actual and or that it works. We used to believe the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat, but both turned out to be mere beliefs. When one is not interpreting through belief systems it becomes obvious what is really happening rather than the ‘I’s theories, a truth is known by actual experience or observation.

When one really begins to investigate beliefs, one discovers that the ‘me’ who ‘I’ think ‘I’ am, is nothing more than a ‘program’, laid over instincts of fear, aggression, and the desires that one is born with. So to question beliefs is to question one’s very ‘self’ – ‘my’ social identity and sense of ‘self’. Only by challenging the very act of believing itself, can one actively dismantle and eliminate all of the beliefs that ‘I’ hold so dearly. To replace beliefs with facts is to eliminate one’s ‘self’ and to penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’. The Universe is quite simply what is, perfect, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment. It requires no belief, faith, hope or trust to be here now.

So that’s my take on beliefs at the moment,’ ( for comparison)

VINEETO: I was pleased that you liked Peter’s writing. What’s wrong with parroting if the content goes along with one’s daily experience, and someone has already put it in words better than oneself can put them together? I, for one, don’t mind if you parrot my words in any place whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: Tacky tactics man. You might have stumbled upon something Richard but at the rate your going someone else with enough intelligence and love for his fellow human beings to learn how to communicate is going to get the actualism message across because you’re failing miserably.

VINEETO: ‘Stumbled’ is the wrong word, if you read the website more carefully. It takes more than guts and perseverance to even ‘parrot’ and ‘clone’ Richard, it has nothing at all to do with lucky ‘stumbling’. As you can see from the put-downs in your own response, with actual freedom one is up against the whole of humanity because no one is willing to investigate their own feelings and beliefs, not to mention their animal instincts. If you talk to people about getting rid of the myth of love and the instinct of nurture from their dreamt image about themselves, they are ready to kill you. You are then the devil writ large, the Antichrist, the demon – or just a parrot of the un-holy spirit.

But if you think you, i.e. ‘someone else with enough intelligence and love for his fellow human beings’, can take the findings of actualism, which you obviously approve of, and spread them fast and proficiently with intelligence and benevolence, go ahead. I think that if you won’t take the first hurdle first and become happy and harmless yourself, you’ll be not only ‘failing miserably’ but ‘wanking’ as well. And as for love, deriving as it does from the animal instinct of nurture – it does nothing but stifle one’s intelligence.

Looking forward to a lively discussion.

15.6.2000

VINEETO: You wrote at great length to Richard about your various searches in life and I always find it fascinating to read or hear what people have done with their lives, what they discovered, what has worked for them and how they got to where they are today. It is such a captivating business being here on earth as a human being.

RESPONDENT: Actualism is a shock to the core and I keep wondering how I got here.

But the need to find out whether one can become ‘completely’ free from the human condition never left me.

VINEETO: I have heard many people say that they are not interested in the spiritual or have given up the spiritual search. I have been talking to people over the last two years and reflecting about my own change in order to understand the ‘spiritual’ part of the Human Condition –

When I met Peter and later Richard I was still firmly settled in being a devoted and loyal disciple of Rajneesh, although he had already been dead for 9 years. From the viewpoint of a Sannyasin, ‘spiritual’ had a particular flavour – for me, it meant aspiring to be ‘good’, to become more and more enlightened until one was completely enlightened and thus redeemed from earthly suffering. According to the teaching this was the best and only thing one could do with one’s life. My idea of redemption was a strange potpourri of remnant Christian, even Jewish, ideas of the original sin, collections of Rajneesh’s fairytales of Ancient Wisdom of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen, as well as some outstanding personal spiritual experiences. To put it in one sentence – the spiritual search for enlightenment was chasing a dream of permanently feeling free of the world as it is and people as they are.

Once I discovered actualism, and I knew what I was looking for, I found out that I also had had some pure consciousness experiences during my spiritual years that added to my image of what the highest goal for a spiritual seeker was supposed to be and I therefore assumed that this was part of being enlightened. Yet, whenever I tried to think logically or sensibly about what this enlightenment really was, I was stopped short by the many contradictions and inconsistencies I found, both in the theory and in the living of it.

So to keep it simple, ‘spiritual’ for me meant ‘being good’, having a goal and a meaning in life, and aspiring to be the best I can be.

Being introduced to actualism gave the whole idea of what is ‘spiritual’ a big shake. My, and the Sannyas tribe’s, view of spiritual was obviously an interpretation gleaned from the master and had nothing to do with what ‘spiritual’ means, both in dictionary terms and in practical terms. However, it took several months of reading Richard’s Journal and passionate discussions with Peter, until one evening it suddenly dawned on me that ‘spiritual’ – when seen with non-spiritual eyes – is a whole psychic world in itself. In that glimpse of a pure consciousness experience I could suddenly understand that the idea of ‘spiritual’ consists of ideas, concepts, beliefs, values and favourite images of perfection, in short all fervent opinions made up in my head and heart – and also that everybody has a different idea of what his or her spirituality includes – or does not include.

Peter said it well in his List B correspondence with an awakened teacher, who claimed to be non-spiritual yet reported experiences where by mere telepathic command, objects were jumping off the wall –

Peter: I have already stated my position about the spiritual world and many people miss the fact that spiritual means

‘pertaining to or consisting of spirit, immaterial’ as well as ‘of, pertaining to, or affecting the spirit or soul, esp. from a religious aspect.’ Oxford Dictionary

While you insist that your awakening, your experiences and your current state are non-spiritual, as in non-religious, it certainly is spirit-ual, as in being psychic in nature. Methinks you are splitting hairs, yet again. Peter, List B, No 8, 2.6.2000

When I first began to dig into the idea of what being spiritual means, I was being tormented for a few weeks as to which was the right path and which was the wrong path and what I was to be believe and follow and what was heresy. Finally I popped my head outside of the world of beliefs and spiritual concepts – the first crack in the door. The psychic world, this intricate net woven in our heads and hearts from both personal and atavistic feelings and beliefs is so dense that it seems to be the only world there is. Here is a bit what I wrote at the time –

[Vineeto]: When I tried to tell Peter about my experiences and insights his simple response gave me quite a shock. ‘But all this is just inside your mind, it is simply your own interpretation, it may appear to be real, but it is not actual.’ Yes, that was true. I could easily see that I was inside the ‘mind’, roaming about in the different chambers of my assembled beliefs-systems, trying to find the one that was ‘right’ and ‘true’ – while in fact, I was just having a little grander and unusually complex perception of this huge labyrinth of thoughts and feelings! I could see more of my ideas or concepts and other people’s ideas, but they were simply ideas. None of them had any relevance to the actuality of the physical world!

In seeing the fact, everything stood still and the whole construct of beliefs suddenly disappeared. Then, for the first time in all my years of the spiritual search, I experienced several hours outside of the ‘psychic world’. Being outside, I could see that this ‘world’ is a huge, all-encompassing construct, created and held in place by the dreams, beliefs, bonds, power-battles, emotions and different spiritual ideas of all of humanity. Everyone is part of it, weaving and reproducing bits of this ‘psychic carpet’. The more people believe in one particular version the more that version becomes ‘real’ or ‘true’. Intuitive or ‘psychic’ people are simply a little better acquainted with the rules and occurrences of this ‘other-world’. It is never actual though, because it relies on constant re-creation through imagination and belief. The moment people cease to believe in a particular religion, idea or value, that very concept eventually disappears from the earth. Actual, on the contrary, is what is already here without anybody applying a feeling, an interpretation, a belief or any other ‘psychic effort’. It is simply here, visual, tangible, audible and tastable.

That night I had stuck my head beyond the blanket of beliefs – including good and bad, right and wrong, love and evil. In the first moments, with the ‘psychic world’ disappearing, this new place was stark, black, scary, a big hole and a bottomless abyss. Suddenly the ground under my feet wavered as the very existence of beliefs ceased. For a while I was lost, frightened and bewildered. <snip>

The next morning the understanding of the night before was still vividly present. I clearly remember walking around a crowded out-door market, looking at all the different stalls with people offering their products together with their particular belief-systems, as they tried to convince the customers of the reality of their particular version of ‘truth’.

There were all kinds of proposals to find ‘truth’ or meaning, whether religious, spiritual or secular. Feral feathers and karmic wheels, goddesses and herbs, ways of natural living and an impressive array of spiritual bookstalls, offering a hundred different solutions to life. Colourful Turks were selling their local hot coffee and delicious cakes; a black boy was playing romantic songs on his guitar, selling them by the hour. He was successful – people bought his dreams, his love songs! A woman in purple dyed feral clothes was selling self-made dream-catchers, talismans and other symbols of her particular conviction.

There were traders of organic vegetables, Indian farmers and food-vans with a wide variety of exotic meals – all served with the conviction of their producer: healthy or hearty, plain or spicy, Italian, Thai or Indian, home-made or magically healing. Hippies from the hills sold their produce along with their dreamy, chaotic life-style; drumming ferals with uncombed tasseled hair presented their life as the most juicy and happy of all. Ecologists proclaimed that only purely native rainforest trees should be planted to save the environment. Everyone was utterly convinced of what they were offering, complete with their corresponding outfit, make-up, special ‘language’ and music. I was quite taken aback by the enormity of what I saw. Being outside of all those beliefs made me see what they consisted of – merely ideas, thoughts, constructs, dreams and hopes; nothing was factual about any of them. A Bit of Vineeto

Therefore, from my own experience and from the many, many conversations I had in the last years, it is clear that merely by living within the Human Condition one is inevitably spiritual.

For some people spiritual values are more religious values, or Eastern religious values, for other people it is saving animals and the planet, for others it is the belief in fairies and earth-spirits or other parallel universes. As I see it, all beliefs and values we are fighting about – or being touchy about – are spiritual beliefs and values, there is no other belief or value than a spiritual belief or value. Our very identity is spiritual, simply by the fact that it is non-actual as in not tangible, palpable, tactile, material or verifiable. All believing is happening in the head and the heart, not as a physical actuality.

And once I found out that I was trapped by my beliefs, ideas, concepts and convictions, that I was producing and continuously reproducing my-‘self’, I also knew that they were part of the bondage and could never be part of the solution. Therefore it was not a question of which belief is the right belief and which spirituality is the right spirituality, but it was a matter of getting out of all beliefs solely because they are non-factual.

No 8, I don’t know if my tale makes sense to you because for me it took me months of reading and talking to come to an outsider’s understanding of what ‘spiritual’ really means. It is as if you have to see the planet from outer space in order to ascertain that it is not as flat as one believes it to be from down here. Similarly, it needed a lot of questioning and moving away from my own viewpoint and that of my peers and teachers, to come to a different and comprehensive understanding of what the spiritual psychic world really looks like.

16.6.2000

VINEETO: Ah, Buddhism, the most heady of the religions, maybe also the most removed from everyday life ... and you wonder if they know about pure consciousness experience?

RESPONDENT: Dear scholars :)

I have asked a group the question what is the Dzogchen definition of mind? And the following was returned to me. I can’t seem to make any sense of it. Especially how a human being comprehends a nature of mind (sems-nyid), which exists beyond time and conditioning. Is this Dzogchen mind the same as the pure conscious experience of Actual Freedom? Anyone’s help would be greatly appreciated.

VINEETO: For an intelligent, practical, down-to-earth human being to try to comprehend ‘a nature of mind (sems-nyid), which exists beyond time and conditioning’ is a contradiction in itself, because such a mind exists only in passionate imagination or in wishful thinking, particularly in the desire to be immortal. The ‘ground of being’ that the Buddhist glossary in your quote talks about is merely another name for God, one’s immortal soul, one’s innermost being, etc. As a mortal flesh-and-blood human being, I die when I die and my intelligence or mind dies with the rest of my body. The mind, the functioning of the brain in action, is firmly locked in this moment of time – it is only ‘I’, the psychological and psychic entity, who exists out of time and, being fearful of death, believes the fairy tales of an existence ‘beyond time’.

Therefore ‘Dzogchen mind’ can never be the same as a pure consciousness experience. A PCE is a sensate-only experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. For a more detailed definition you can have a look in the library. It is the ‘self’, this alien entity inside the flesh-and-blood body, who desperately wants to believe in a life after death, an existence ‘beyond time’ and an imaginary freedom outside of the ‘limitations’ of the material world.

You quoted –

[quote]: from ‘Buddhahood Without Meditation’

glossary: sem-nyid: the true nature of mind itself, as contrasted with the contents of mind as thoughts, perceptions, emotions and so forth ‘In order to be introduced directly to the interdependence of causes and conditions coming together, consider this: The causal factor is the ground of being as basic space, subtly lucid and endowed with the capacity for anything whatever to arise. The conditioning factor is a consciousness that conceives of an ‘I’. From the coming together of these two, all apparent phenomena manifest, like illusions...’

‘The nature of mind itself, referred to as ‘buddha nature’, is a uniform pervasiveness unsullied by flaws.’

‘Ah, son of good family, the defining characteristic of ordinary mind (sem) is the nonrecognition of intrinsic awareness of the ground of being, with discursive thoughts subject to origination and cessation as the dynamic energy of this nonrecognition. The defining characteristic of intrinsic awareness (rig-pa) is the ground of being becoming evident, with the supreme true nature occurring atemporally and pristinely as its dynamic energy.’ ‘TheGolden Letters’

‘Here the word mind (sems) refers not to one’s ordinary thought process, which exists in time and is conditioned by antecedent causes, but to the nature of mind (sems-nyid), which exists beyond time and conditioning. In the Dzogchen Semde texts this nature of mind is usually called the Bodhicitta (byang-chub kyI sems). The meaning of Bodhicitta in this context, referring to the Primordial State of the individual, is therefore quite different from that found in the texts belonging to the Sutra system.’

‘The Priomordial State is given many names in the early Dzogchen literature:

byang-chub kyI sems – the Enlightened Mind or Bodhcitta sems-nyid – the nature of mind rdzogs-pa chen-po – the Great Perfection gzhI – the Base ye gzhI – the Primordial Base gdod-ma’I gzhI – the Primordial Base spyI gzhI – the Universal Base kun-gzhI – the basis of everything gzhI ji-bzhin-pa – the Base just as it is kun tu bzang-po – the Ultimate Good (Samantabhadra) kun-byed rgyal-po – the King who creates everything spyI mes chen-p – the great universal Ancestor ye phyi-mo – the Primordial Grandmother bdag-nyid chen-po – the Total State rang shes rig gI rgyal-po – the King who is self-knowing Awareness’.

‘Since this nature of mind, or sems-nyid, transcends the thought process (that is to say, Samsara) from the very beginning, being itself outside the temporal process and the causal sequence, it is said to be primordially pure (ka-dag). But simultaneously it is mnd, or sems.

Mind has the power or capacity to bring all thoughts and phenomena into manifestation in consciousness through its latent energy. Forms continuously arise as manifestations of mind (sems kyI snang-ba), and this is called spontaneous self-perfection (lhun-grub). Here there is no contradiction with the doctrine of Anatman (bdag-med).’ [endquote].

Reading the last paragraph makes it obvious, that the definition of ‘mind’ in Buddhist understanding is an imaginary energy, another name for God or the ‘ground of being’, established with the phantasmagorical power ‘to bring all thoughts and phenomena into manifestation in consciousness through its latent energy’. Whereas ‘mind’ in the world of people, things and events where we humans live, simply means the human brain in operation, and it has an astounding capacity both for sensible thought and for silly passionate imagination.

However, I don’t intend to comment any further, because I am not a scholar. What I know about and what I can comment about is why and how I have extracted myself from the world of ideas, concepts and fervent belief and how to live in the actual world of sensual delight and sensible thought.

When I read the text I was reminded of my university days when the communist and socialist students were expounding their very scholarly theories of how society should be run. I studied the first chapter of Marx’s bible, the Manifesto, and then gave up. Looking for other ways to assess the validity of the proposed theories, I checked out how the communist students were in their relationships, how much success they had in their political activities, how their relationship was to the working class that they allegedly represented. All this gave me a pretty clear picture that what they were proselytizing did not work, neither in their own lives nor in other people’s lives. Further, the more I learned about the putting into practice of communist belief in various countries, the more I was convinced that the theory did not work.

The same measure of investigation I applied to feminism, humanistic therapy, marriage and Christian belief. Strangely enough, with Eastern mysticism, particularly Sannyas, I was completely blind as far as the practicality of the teachings was concerned – in my own life, the life of the teacher and in the lives of the people of India, where Eastern mysticism had been on-going for thousands of years.

What I am saying is that I decided that I did not have to learn or understand all the theories in order to assess their validity, I did not have to trot my way through the seemingly endless possible theories, philosophies and concepts that human beings can invent – and Eastern philosophy and mysticism is particularly designed to be mind-bending and thought-twisting.

Now, it does not make any sense to me why people are often quite practical in terms of their livelihood, safety, comfort and pleasure, yet when it comes to religious values and spiritual belief, all those practical and sensible assessments are blatantly abandoned. Why? Why don’t we demand from our beliefs what we want from our cars – that they should work?

Which leads to the question – what is it that should work in life? What is it that one wants to achieve? To what goal should the theory lead?

You said in your letter to Richard –

RESPONDENT to Richard: Actualism is a shock to the core and I keep wondering how I got here.

VINEETO: From my own experience, being clear about the nature of one’s intent, one’s direction in life, is an essential ingredient before one can even begin to explore and investigate beyond what one feels and believes to be safe and familiar. The tangible benefits of questioning my beliefs and convictions, conditioning and emotions only became apparent when I saw that actualism was indeed improving my life in the direction of what I had always wanted to achieve – actively and practically doing something for peace on earth. Living with Peter in utter peace and harmony was the first substantial success and that ease and intimacy is now possible with everyone I spend time with. Yet I know, from the understanding of many pure consciousness experiences, that ultimate peace is only possible when ‘I’ have become extinct.

I admit, tearing my old worldview apart wasn’t easy at the start but the application of actualism is a magical formula for incrementally increasing delight.

It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.

17.6.2000

RESPONDENT: Thank you for your comprehensive reply on the Dzogchen mind.

You advised ‘being clear about the nature of one’s intent, one’s direction in life, is an essential ingredient’. Okay I get the message, enough posting from me for a while, back to the archives.

VINEETO: I have enjoyed your vivacious writing on the list and for me, writing down my thoughts and communicating with others is often a great help to get things clearer in my head compared to contemplating by myself. The very purpose and possible benefit of this mailing list is about exchanging thoughts, asking questions, getting information and sharing experiential understanding.

What I wrote to you was merely a suggestion how to move past the ‘shock to the core’ that you say actualism is for you. If you use any of my suggestions and how you use them is completely up to you – there are no fixed rules on the wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom. There definitely are some useful reports of what has worked for Peter, me and others on the list, but you will always be the final arbiter and ultimate authority in discovering and ascertaining what works for you.

*

I liked your exercise on the ‘Dzogchen mind’, answering your own questions, applying your own intelligence and understanding to the puzzle of scholarly Buddhist wisdom.

When I came across actualism, the first thing I had to do was dust off my brain and shift it back into thinking gear – discovering how to think, contemplate and inquire in a way that there is some result. I found it useful in my contemplations to always remember to keep coming back to the question or issue, and not – as our usually untrained brains tend to do – get lost in the different alleys and branches of speculation, imagination or irrelevant side issues. I became aware that whenever the subject was too close to the bone, whenever a dearly held belief was questioned, I was usually very quick in changing the subject and steering away from the ‘dangerous’ area. I remember that surprised to discover how roundabout and aversely my way of thinking often had been.

Mind and thinking has such a bad press in the spiritual world where one is taught that the gateway to ‘inner peace’ is to ‘follow your feelings, trust you intuition and leave your mind at the door’. When I started on the path to Actual Freedom it was a pleasure and delight to re-instate, lubricate and develop my common sense and intelligence in order to make sense of all the beliefs that I had adopted, the instinctual passions that I was driven by and begin to understand the actual world.

It was fascinating to observe and experience my brain clicking into clear function – at first only once in a while with what one would call a ‘striking thought’ and then I noticed that I could actually make sense of a down-to-earth conversation about Actual Freedom I had with either Richard or Peter. Eventually I was able to think straightforward thoughts, unclouded by fear or imagination and come to startlingly obvious conclusions. The outcome of such application of common sense was often very staggering, new, fresh and shockingly different to what I had believed, ‘felt’ or ‘intuited’.

Down-to-earth practical common sense, of course, has nothing to do with rational theorizing, useless philosophizing, cerebral masturbation or conceptual imagination.

For me, the crucial test of common sense always is – how can I put my understanding into practice, how can I actualize my realization, how can I act on the ‘striking thought’. In my spiritual days, striking thoughts would come and go and I did nothing but revel in the feeling of ‘knowing’. Those insights, even when they were sensible realizations, disappeared without a trace after a few hours or days and didn’t have any impact on solving my problems. Nowadays, because I am vitally interested in being here, I enjoy the stunning clarity that the human brain is capable of and I also put my understanding into action – and what excellence, what a thrill!

So, No. 8, keep us posted, if you like. After all, this is a list of bold pioneers, investigating the Human Condition and questioning the mother of all beliefs that you can’t change human nature! Well, you can, why not!

20.7.2000

RESPONDENT: That’s one of the hard ones (for me), Peter. Throwing love away. That and two other aspects of human existence. The imagination of course, a concern I expressed in my first post to the List and the closing of the book on all other possibilities except actualism.

Open mindedness, standing in an opening of possibilities is also very dear to me. I love the space of it, as I love the vastness of Australia. To accept nothing other than the material facts of actualism is very difficult for this human mind. We are so much our love of stories and dramas and new possibilities.

VINEETO: You really seem to be digging into many different areas of the Human Condition. I am reminded of the first few months after I came across actualism and was attracted by the enjoyment of life-on-earth and the common sense approach that I could immediately perceive in Richard’s discovery, which stood in stark contrast to all that I had encountered on the spiritual path. In spiritualism one feels rather guilty for enjoying oneself and for occasionally applying common sense – they were considered a no-no for spiritual growth!

However, the more I learnt, read and understood about actualism and Actual Freedom, the more I realized how much of my beliefs, feelings and emotions felt as though they were ‘under attack’ by the very understanding that relying on facts made more sense than relying on faith, hope, trust, intuition, feeling and belief. After a few months of painful doubts, fierce defence of my former life-style including my spiritual beliefs, and intense questioning of what I wanted to do with my life, my ‘necktop computer’ crashed, resulting in a significant pure consciousness experience. After this experience, I realized there was no way I could simultaneously insist on keeping my beliefs and familiar feelings and at the same time investigate my identity with sincerity and common sense. I realized everything had to be ‘put on the table’ – not all at once of course, for that is impossible, but as issues to be investigated the moment they arose in my daily life. I was hooked, more than I realized at first, by three things that made actualism that very attractive to me –

• Peter’s offer to live in peace and harmony and to have a total commitment of each of us to look deeply into ourselves, come what may, to eliminate all that formed a gulf between us – all that prevented intimacy.
• Finally, after years of trying political, therapy-based and spiritual solutions for freedom, peace and happiness, here I had found a path to purity and perfection that includes sex, fun, sensuousness and down-to-earth intelligence.
• Actual Freedom made sense, and the more I investigated it the more it made sense. All the belief systems I had followed in my life were full of contradictions and denial and were always based on the dichotomy of spirit vs. matter, meditation vs. sensuousness, renunciation now vs. reward later.

What I’m trying to convey is that the first weeks of hitting upon something that is 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual beliefs, to all that one thinks and feels oneself to be, can at times be compared to an earthquake – it is bound to be confusing, frightening and ... ... thrilling. The curious thing about Actual Freedom is that it is utterly safe because actuality is what remains after all the false layers are peeled away.

Whenever I dared to investigate a particular belief and emotion to its very core, this piece of my familiar identity fell apart and underlying the identity I discovered actuality – that what is actual, palpable, tangible, sensate, direct and corporeal. At first there seems to be a yawning abyss of fear and nothingness at the start of the investigation, but with enough courage and bloody-mindedness, one eventually discovers the utter safety of the actual world – that which becomes increasingly apparent when the psychic and psychological construct is being dismantled.

Once one fully commits to being hooked to the bait of common sense, the process of dismantling one’s ideas, beliefs, feelings and emotions becomes fun instead of a fight against one’s own intelligence.

*

RESPONDENT: Yes, I really must get around to ordering Richards journal, because as you say without careful preparatory reading I will continue going 180º in the opposite which is a waste of a wonderful life. <snip>

I know I came across it in the archives, but could you send me the address and costs for Richard’s journal again, thanks.

VINEETO: In paperback form, ‘Richard’s Journal’ is: AUS $29.95 and ‘Peter’s Journal’ is: AU$ 25.00. Postage for Australia is AU$ 3.00.

Both Journals are also available as an electronic zipped version – Richard’s Journal is: AU$ 29.95 and Peter’s Journal is available free. (Editor’s Note: This promotional offer is no longer available).

Enclose a bank cheque or a money order, in Australian dollars, made out to ‘The Actual Freedom Trust’ and post this order form to: The Actual Freedom Trust, P.O. Box 1404, Byron Bay 2481 [now changed], Australia

26.7.2000

VINEETO: You really seem to be digging into many different areas of the Human Condition. I am reminded of the first few months after I came across actualism and was attracted by the enjoyment of life-on-earth and the common sense approach that I could immediately perceive in Richard’s discovery, which stood in stark contrast to all that I had encountered on the spiritual path. In spiritualism one feels rather guilty for enjoying oneself and for occasionally applying common sense – they were considered a no-no for spiritual growth!

RESPONDENT: *LOL* Then I was never a spiritualist. Not for one moment have I felt guilty about either, but I was often berated on mailing lists for enjoying myself too much and for asking common sense questions about their lofty sutras.

VINEETO: Oh, but guilt and poor common sense are not the only attributes of a spiritualist. Spirituality is not merely confined to Eastern religious beliefs like Hare Krishna, Zen, Buddhism, Rajneeshism or Krishnamurti-teachings. Spiritualism means believing in something that is not actual as in patently palpable, observably tangible, manifestly obvious, always apparent, clearly evident, repeatedly demonstrable, tactile, corporeal, physical and material.

spiritualism – 1 Philos. The doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or that spirit is the only reality; any philosophical or religious doctrine stressing the importance of spiritual as opp. to material things. b Spiritual nature or quality. 2 The belief that the spirits of the dead can communicate with the living, esp. through a medium; the practice of this belief. 3 Belief in the existence and influence of supernatural beings. Oxford Dictionary

Believing in Santa Claus, God’s mysterious ways, Mother Nature, the Intelligence of the Universe, the wisdom of disembodied entities, the Mother Goddess, the psychic influence of planetary constellations, the existence of parallel universes and such like is to be a spiritualist as much as somebody praying to a divine force or living according to the alleged laws of dharma and karma. According to the Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus ‘spiritual’ is the antonym to ‘sensual’ – the opposite of sensately perceptible.

But if you prefer to call your reverence for Seth’s Ancient Wisdom non-spiritual, that’s entirely your privilege. It’s just that unless you stop believing in the wisdom of bodiless spirits you can never discover the actual world. This is simply the way it is.

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VINEETO: However, the more I learnt, read and understood about actualism and Actual Freedom, the more I realised how much of my beliefs, feelings and emotions felt as though they were ‘under attack’ by the very understanding that relying on facts made more sense than relying on faith, hope, trust, intuition, feeling and belief.

RESPONDENT: To me there is more of an element of uncertainty rather than attack. I am not yet convinced that it is sensible or necessary to exterminate the imagination. I mean just what are facts? It seems to me, that if man depends solely on the senses, the mind would never have imagined the possibility of electricity or flying which are now facts. Many of our finest inventors contemplate graphically before making their inventions actual facts. Were it not for their imaginations we would not be communicating via an Internet. What am I missing that perhaps Richard or yourself can explain.

VINEETO: If imagination works for you, if it makes you utterly happy and harmless then why investigate further? To me, imagination is in the same category as belief, it prevents me from experiencing the actual world in its magic and magnificence because there is always ‘me’, the believer, the imaginer, the feeler, that spoils the purity and perfection that is already here.

As for imagination being necessary for sensible inventions – this is one of the clichés voiced by those who want to defend their passionate world of fantasy. You said yourself, ‘inventors contemplate graphically ...’ – well, contemplation is not imagination. Flying machines were invented by studying the flight patterns of birds – if you watch the reports on early attempts of humans to fly you can see an amazing similarity between those machines and birds. Even today’s aeroplanes are built and refined according to the aerodynamic principles originating from details studied in many different species of birds. No-one got to fly by imagination – it required an enormous amount of trial and error, often fatal, by many, many people over centuries of time.

The discovery of electricity has also nothing to do with imagination but with the meticulous observation and study of physics and experimentation by failure and success. Thomas A. Edison did not imagine a light bulb and then build it according to his imagination. He researched and experimented for years and years to invent something practical, tangible and repeatable, a light-globe that works every time you screw it in and switch it on.

The same goes for the invention of the world wide web.

The development of the World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN, an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. They created a protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which standardized communication between servers and clients. Their text-based Web browser was made available for general release in January 1992. Encyclopaedia Britannica

The process of developing the WWW began when Tim Berners-Lee wrote a computer program to network the various computers in the company he worked for in order to access the different softwares on all the computers in the company. His invention was a practical response to the obvious needs of his job and had nothing to do with imagining a world wide web which serendipitously developed later from the original program. The result that we are enjoying today was beyond anybody’s imagination, including that of Tim Berners-Lee.

The scientific process of discovering, understanding and applying the laws of nature is not that (one) of passionate imagination, but an inquisitive study of the empirical laws of physics, fuelled by curiosity and the desire for comfort, progress and development, using the method of trial and error, logical conclusions and practical sensibility. It is called intelligence and the application of common sense.

Poets, painters and saints use passionate imagination, they describe reality or Reality, not actuality. They create a world of their own, full of the feelings of sorrow and hope, love and depression, beauty and prayer. I don’t need imagination to go ‘somewhere else’, away from the tangible, sensately experience-able actual world, because I have an utter YES to being here in the world of people, things and events.

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VINEETO: After a few months of painful doubts, fierce defence of my former life-style including my spiritual beliefs, and intense questioning of what I wanted to do with my life, my ‘necktop computer’ crashed, resulting in a significant pure consciousness experience.

RESPONDENT: Crashed eh :) Then I may miss out on that fun experience, because though I have doubts they are not painful (at least not yet) and though I may be defending beliefs it is not fiercely. I was born of extremely down to earth parents, a mother with a menza IQ and a father who was a professional sportsman, neither belonged to a religious denomination. I grew to value the mental freedom they showered on me, hence my inability to become a devotee of a spiritual group.

VINEETO: Maybe then your life is already perfect as it is?

In my experience, questioning my dearly held beliefs and the familiar arrangement of feelings and emotions was extremely scary at times, particularly in the beginning of applying actualism. I needed not only guts, determination and discontentment with my life as it was, but also the growing certainty based on ample experience that none of the normal-world and spiritual-world solutions had worked. Nothing had delivered the results that I was looking for – living in utter peace, harmony and intimacy with a man and achieving peace of mind while living in the world as it is with people as they are. Facilitating and moving towards one’s own extinction is not for the faint of heart or week of knee – you need a good solid reason, sincere intent and an altruistic motivation for doing so.

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VINEETO: After this experience, I realised there was no way I could simultaneously insist on keeping my beliefs and familiar feelings and at the same time investigate my identity with sincerity and common sense. I realised everything had to be ‘put on the table’ – not all at once of course, for that is impossible, but as issues to be investigated the moment they arose in my daily life.

RESPONDENT: When I put my beliefs and feelings on the table I find them to be nebulous, flexible wriggly things, so seeing and stilling the life of them is a tricky thing. I wonder whether there are core beliefs with satellite beliefs running around them, elusively jumping from one core to another like electrons and causing a biologically electric charge in the process. Yeah okay enough of that already :). But what is a belief to an actualist? Is a belief independent or connected to all the others. By neutralising one, are all others are affected too? Is a similar activity operating in cellular and atomic substance? Can one ever really be free of beliefs while in the midst of a shared mass reality built on beliefs?

VINEETO: Here is a bit from the library –

belief – that which is believed, an accepted opinion. Conviction of the truth or reality of a thing, based on insufficient grounds to afford positive knowledge. Confidence, faith, trust. A Religious tenet or tenets. Oxford Dictionary

Peter: To believe means ‘fervently wish to be true’. The action of believing is to emotionally imagine, or fervently wish, something to be real that is not actual – actual, as in tangible, corporeal, material, definitive, present, obvious, evident, current, substantial, physical and palpable. A belief is an assumption, a notion, a proposition, an idea that requires faith, trust or hope to sustain in the face of doubt, uncertainty and lack of factual evidence. Whereas a fact is a fact, demonstratively evident to all that it is actual and/or that it works.

Many beliefs are masqueraded as ‘truths’ or are merely accepted as facts in lieu of any serious scrutiny, or are protected by the blatant and stubborn refusal to question the facticity of that which is ‘dearly held’ to be true. Simply because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact. At some stage in history everybody believed the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat, but both notions, believed and accepted as ‘true’ at the time, have turned out to be mere beliefs.

Indeed, what is esteemed as ‘Ancient Wisdom’ is a literal plethora of beliefs, ‘truths’, superstitions, myths, opinions, assumptions, theories and misconceptions that require active scrutiny and intelligent investigation by anyone who sincerely wants to become free of the Human Condition. After all, the very charter of the Human Condition is firmly based on, and rooted in, this same ‘Ancient Wisdom’.

It does take immense courage to stand on one’s own two feet, to stop believing what others tell you are facts, ‘truths’ or the ‘Truth’ and start investigating for yourself – to ascertain and distinguish between fact and belief.

A belief is an emotion-backed thought – made to appear real or true only by ‘my’ emotional support for the belief, by ‘my’ passionate feelings, intuition and imagination. As such, ‘I’ fervently wish many beliefs to be true, none more so than the belief in a metaphysical world with its implied promise of an after-life for ‘me’.

It is no wonder that all sorts of meta-physical beliefs permeate every corner of human thinking and wisdom, and that these beliefs are so passionately defended. People actually kill each other and sacrifice their lives for their beliefs. People kill and die for their God and their Country. We are instinctually programmed to sacrifice ourselves for what we perceive to be the ‘good’ of the particular tribe we are in. One tribe’s God becomes another tribe’s Devil and, as such, horrendous religious wars, conflicts, persecutions, repressions and tortures are fought over the spreading or defending of particular beliefs.

Who ‘I’ think I am as a social being is nothing more than the opinions, values and beliefs of others – my parents and those of my parent’s generation, which in turn came from their parents, and so on and so-on, back into the dim dark ages of the cave-men and cave-women. These very beliefs are what ‘I’ am made of – they form the very substance of ‘my’ social identity. The reluctance, fear and stubborn refusal to question and investigate beliefs can be sheeted home to this crucial fact – to question one’s beliefs is to question one’s very ‘self’. To replace a belief with a fact is to eliminate a piece of one’s ‘self’.

The very act of believing supports and sustains ‘my’ very existence for ‘I’ have no existence in actuality. ‘I’ am an impostor, an alien, a usurper and an illusion. However, the effects of this psychological and psychic entity are very real in that it results in feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair, not to mention anger, resentment and hate. Only by challenging the very act of believing itself, can one actively dismantle and eliminate all of the beliefs that ‘I’ hold so dearly. It needs a full-blooded commitment to eliminate belief and acknowledge fact in order to free oneself from malice and sorrow.

The physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment – it requires no belief, faith, hope or trust that this is the case. Human beings have just been programmed into believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition. Further the advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible – the Mother of all beliefs!

If one is to become actually free of the Human Condition, in its entirety, then it is imperative to find out for oneself the facts, rather than merely perpetuate believing, to sort out what is silly and what is sensible rather than merely accept what others say is right or wrong, good or bad. Then, and only then, can one discover and sensately experience the fact of the delight, ease, magic and perfection of the actual world.

Actual Freedom is not a belief, it is a fact. The Actual Freedom Trust Library

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VINEETO: I was hooked, more than I realised at first, by three things that made actualism that very attractive to me –

• Peter’s offer to live in peace and harmony and to have a total commitment of each of us to look deeply into ourselves, come what may, to eliminate all that formed a gulf between us – all that prevented intimacy.

• Finally, after years of trying political, therapy-based and spiritual solutions for freedom, peace and happiness, here I had found a path to purity and perfection that includes sex, fun, sensuousness and down-to-earth intelligence.

• Actual Freedom made sense, and the more I investigated it the more it made sense. All the belief systems I had followed in my life were full of contradictions and denial and were always based on the dichotomy of spirit vs. matter, meditation vs. sensuousness, renunciation now vs. reward later.

RESPONDENT: I have yet to explore all of my beliefs. It will be interesting to see whether mine are based on the same dichotomies. At the moment I am fascinated in the survival instinct of all things, perhaps it reveals itself even in beliefs. Understanding and recognizing that survival drive is very important to me at the moment and I am not sure why. It just is.

VINEETO: You only need to explore all of your beliefs if you consider it desirable and necessary, if your life with beliefs does not deliver the goods. Unless there is a crack in the door, an uncomfortable doubt about your beliefs, convictions and truths, why should you rock the boat and unsettle your present arrangements for coping with life?

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VINEETO: What I’m trying to convey is that the first weeks of hitting upon something that is 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual beliefs, to all that one thinks and feels oneself to be, can at times be compared to an earthquake –

RESPONDENT: Hehe ... or an electric cattle prod. Yes, I have moved past that ‘shock to the core’ you so kindly shared suggestions for.

VINEETO: – it is bound to be confusing, frightening and ... thrilling.

The curious thing about Actual Freedom is that it is utterly safe because actuality is what remains after all the false layers are peeled away.

Whenever I dared to investigate a particular belief and emotion to its very core, this piece of my familiar identity fell apart and underlying the identity I discovered actuality – that what is actual, palpable, tangible, sensate, direct and corporeal. At first there seems to be a yawning abyss of fear and nothingness at the start of the investigation, but with enough courage and bloody-mindedness, one eventually discovers the utter safety of the actual world – that which becomes increasingly apparent when the psychic and psychological construct is being dismantled.

RESPONDENT: Your Great Operation seems to be forging ahead valiantly Vineeto, bravo. What an amazing mental lightness it must be, to have cleared away the weighty old baggage we usually carry around. Most inspiring indeed.

VINEETO: Yes, my ‘great operation’ of instigating the ending of ‘me’ works, and it can be achieved by anybody who is interested and willing to step on to the path to Actual Freedom. But my report of success is of no value to someone else unless they have a burning discontentment with life as it is and the desire and determination to actually do everything possible to eliminate malice and sorrow in themselves. An actualist is relentlessly driven by his or her refusal to settle for second best.

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VINEETO: Once one fully commits to being hooked to the bait of common sense, the process of dismantling one’s ideas, beliefs, feelings and emotions becomes fun instead of a fight against one’s own intelligence.

RESPONDENT: Well, it’s too soon to say exactly just how common is this sense I am committed to, but I am certainly having fun not fighting against my own intelligence.

VINEETO: The common sense we talk of is indeed uncommon, for human intelligence is always fettered by feelings and emotions arising from our blind instinctual survival programming. As such it is something which needs to be discovered, cultivated, activated, liberated. No human being that is instinctually driven by blind animal passion is capable of common sense. Every soap opera movie and every evening news is witness to this very obvious fact.

28.7.2000

RESPONDENT to Richard: As I have explained (and I do not enjoy having to repeat myself ad nauseam, as is the trade mark of yourself, Peter and Vineeto – and may I take this opportunity to suggest expanding your writing skills to include alternate ways of saying the same thing for those of us still in the human condition who tend to skim past constant repetition thereby defeating its purpose.) where was I, Oh yes as I explained to Vineeto ‘even though I have written about my upbringing of having no religious denomination and standing in an opening of possibility’, there still seems to be this assumption on the part of you actualists, that in order to investigate these ideologies which influence our human conditioning (and in this case the Seth material), one must have taken it on as a belief cast in stone!

VINEETO: As you find my posts repetitive ‘ad nauseam’, I will abstain from answering all of your post so as not to cause you any further nauseating stomach problems. Obviously you already know my answers from earlier writings or found them in dictionaries and cannot enjoy further elaborations on the subject of how to become free from the Human Condition.

The path to Actual Freedom can be put in one single sentence, and Richard has said it before –

Personally, in order to understand what that means, to successfully apply the method and to counterbalance 40 years of repeated and indoctrinated conditioning and genetically inherited instinctual programming, I needed many and repeated facts, clarifications, explanations, elaborations and investigations – but you may be different.

Nevertheless, there are some points from your last letter that I want to clarify –

RESPONDENT: The first thing I learnt in psychological kindergarten was how the human mind jumps to conclusions because of its tendency to colour observations with its latest adopted mental belief patterns, hence we are here assisting each other, to recognize these patterns, and become free of their influence.

VINEETO: It is one of those ‘jumps to conclusions’ that you say –

[Respondent]: ‘hence we are here assisting each other, to recognize these patterns, and become free of their influence’. [endquote].

Nobody can assist you to become free, neither on this list nor anywhere else. Only I can free myself from ‘me’, only I can instigate the ending of ‘me’. All I do on this list is report my experiences and what I found as I disentangled myself from beliefs, feelings and emotions and as I am investigating instinctual passions. How you free yourself ‘of their influence’ is entirely your business.

But then, this is just a repetition of what I have already said in earlier writings to you.

RESPONDENT: Yes, the other thing I learnt, with Seth’s information, was just how sensitive the average human being is about their adopted mental belief patterns, because of the connection beliefs have to the emotions. Then I understood why, if I ignored this sensitivity, all unguarded communication, not only with others, but with myself and the world around me, would shut down. Not at all conducive to intelligent undivided intimacy I discovered, and a perfect tool for initiating paranoia and alienation if one was so inclined.

VINEETO: In actualism I have achieved the freedom of not taking offence by using the method to investigate the emotions underlying all my beliefs that are responsible for communication consisting of hypocrisy, spite and/or retreat. Therefore my communication with others is not constrained by ‘ my’ ‘sensitivity’ and I have no need to be alienated from others by fear of being hurt or the desire to hurt that is so very common in human interaction. What others do with my words is, however, entirely their business – after all, everyone has to take care of and clean up their own beliefs, feelings and emotions.

But then, this is just a repetition of what I have already said in earlier writings to you.

RESPONDENT: Perhaps imagination works for me precisely because I investigate it further.

Ah, and this is what I have yet to discover, that imagination is bound to the emotions and beliefs of a ‘me’. I would have thought the brain’s visual imagery would be emancipated upon realizing the illusory nature of the ‘me’ and its entourage.

VINEETO: Your thought that ‘the brain’s visual imagery would be emancipated upon realizing the illusory nature of the ‘me’ and its entourage’ is imagination. Realizing and bringing to an end the ‘illusory nature of the ‘me’’ eliminates imagination because ‘me’ can only exist in imagination.

But then, this is just a repetition of what I have already said in earlier writings to you.

RESPONDENT: I am beginning to wonder whether I am confusing the mental imagery of basic thinking with the fertile imagination, but then again... Oh it’s so confusing...

VINEETO: The ‘mental imagery of basic thinking’ is called contemplation, while the ‘self’, instinctually driven by fear, aggression, nurture and desire infers fanciful thought and scheming emotions into facts and actual events and as such prevents one from experiencing the actual world.

Keep wondering, No. 8. Being confused is the beginning and wondering and doubting are invaluable tools to bring about and widen the ‘crack in the door’ to an actual freedom from ancient atavistic belief and globally shared instinctual programming.

As I have written to you before, my ‘necktop’ computer crashed after a period of bewilderment and confusion and for a period of time I was able to stop believing my beliefs, to slip out of my ‘self’ and my real world view and find a world I had never seen before – a world of purity and wonder, magnificence and innocence, infinitude and direct intimacy, free of ‘my’ feelings of paranoia and alienation. There is so, so much more to experience, when emotion-backed thoughts and fanciful imagination stop.

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PS: I just read your latest post – I see you have made your final decision. Good luck with Seth.

30.6.2001