RESPONDENT: Since I have begun practising the actual freedom method, I have noticed a sense of insignificance and meaninglessness attached to some of the things that I previously used to find meaningful and significant.

VINEETO: Personally, when I discovered actualism my interest shifted from being passionate about pursuing a spiritual freedom to uncovering the actual world hidden beneath ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ beliefs obscured by ‘my’ soul, and my attention radically shifted from being interested in spiritual matters to discovering whatever prevented me from sensately enjoying this moment of being here. To discover the actual world of the senses and the benign purity of actuality is an eminently fascinating, enthralling, sometimes scary affair, but it is never dull, boring and certainly never insignificant or meaningless.

RESPONDENT: For example: reading Rajneesh and Krishnamurti’s writings, attending a typical south Indian wedding and playing competitive sports. When I consider doing the things or when any of the above is being done, they seem insignificant compared to what I think I ought to do (read more about actualism and learn more about how to live happily and harmlessly).

VINEETO: Well, it’s the word ‘ought to’ that gives it away, isn’t it? When you replace your previous system of morals and ethics with a new value system then naturally the old one is felt to be ‘bad’, at least insignificant and meaningless while the newfound creed is considered to be more valuable, more important and more meaningful.

Actualism doesn’t work when you treat it as a new belief or as a system of new values – new morals and ethics cannot make you more actually happy, let alone more actually harmless, it can only make you believe that you are. In actualism you don’t change the veneer – you remove the root cause.

In his summary guide to actualism Peter described what he and I did at the start –

Peter: … the beginning if you like, would be the discovery of Actualism and deciding what to do with the discovery. History shows that most people will blindly rile against anything new, particularly something that is so radically new and iconoclastic as Actualism. Some will adopt a sit-on-the-fence position, waiting for others to take the leap and see what happens to them, and a few will boldly jump in. This third category of people will be those who have some particular motivating factor that causes them to push on, despite their fears and trepidations. Some of these possible reasons we have written about – a burning discontent with life as it is, suspicion and doubt about the traditional spiritual ‘freedom’ based on personal experience, a vivid memory of a pure consciousness experience or a particular life experience that gives them the drive to make the search for freedom, peace and happiness the primary goal in life.

The prima facie – Given the three basic options at the start, – objecting, waiting or jumping in – this map or summary outline only becomes relevant for those wanting to journey on the path to Actual Freedom. As we have already stated, the path has a definable mid stage of Virtual Freedom and it is useful to review what we know about the experiences of those who have so far reached this stage. A variety of incentives to begin on the path have become obvious: for Richard the horror of war and a significant PCE, for me the death of my son and the memory of a PCE, for Vineeto the lure of living with someone in genuine peace, harmony and equity, and for another a glimpse of actual intimacy in a PCE and a stubborn refusal to settle for second best. For those considering following the third alternative, a common thread is the need to establish a prima facie case that what is on offer makes sense, that it is intelligent, that it is based on facts, that it has integrity and that it means what it says.

Having acknowledged that there is a prima facie case for beginning on the path, one then needs to begin – to dare to push off from the familiar and safe and begin the process of the moment to moment investigation of one’s own psyche. The way to begin is simply to make becoming actually happy and harmless the primary aim in one’s life.

It is the acknowledging of aggression in oneself that is the key to wanting to change irrevocably. If one only wants happiness for oneself then that is insufficient motive or intent to get stuck into the business of irrevocably changing oneself. It needs an altruistic motive rather than the mere self-gratification of being happy and that motive is to be actually peaceful – to do no harm to one’s fellow human beings, as in not instinctually feeling aggression towards others, not instinctually feeling sorrow for others, not being blindly driven to nurture others and not being blindly driven to desire power over others.

The initial investigations will depend on one’s predilections, the particular issues that are most pressing or most obvious to tackle. What I did was accept the challenge of being able to live with another human being in total, peace, harmony and equity and use the success gained to give me the confidence to tackle other issues. At the same time, I was ready and eager to question the spiritual path for I was already suss about its sincerity and effectiveness in bringing peace on earth. For Vineeto, her challenging of the spiritual path only came when she had garnered sufficient confidence from tackling relationship, authority and gender issues. An Actualist’s Guide for the Wide and Wondrous Path

RESPONDENT: Was there a similar thought/experience when you first started practising the method? I highly value your input.

VINEETO: When I began to investigate the feelings that prevented me from being felicitous and began to question what I believed to be right and true, I successively lost interest in a whole lot of things I had been passionate and/or worried about before. In fact, when I had my first major pure consciousness experience, my whole world fell apart and has never been the same since. In this PCE it became startlingly obvious that the world we humans normally live in is but a grey or rose-coloured veneer pasted over the actual world. And mind you, this actual world is something you need to experience with your own eyes and your own ears – don’t stop short by merely believing the words of others thereby creating a hearsay world of belief instead of discovering the genuine article for yourself.

10.7.2006

RESPONDENT: Could you explain what the actualists mean when they write that,’ Matter gives rise to consciousness’ and what the spiritualists mean when they say that,’ Consciousness gives rise to matter’.

VINEETO: Spiritualists believe that God by whatever name (including some Divine Energy or disembodied Intelligence roaming the universe) has created the world and with it human beings.

Whereas when you have a pure self-less consciousness experience it is patently obvious that there is no God, no divine energy, no metaphysical realm and that the universe has always been here all along, arranging and rearranging itself in myriad forms from inanimate matter to the simplest carbon-feeding microbe below the earth to intelligent human beings. In a PCE one can experience that matter is not merely passive, that life in this infinite universe is so wondrous, so inherently benevolent and constantly evolving – bringing itself to fuller development – that at some stage the time was ripe for matter to become sentient (conscious) and then for sentient beings to develop intelligence.

10.7.2006

RESPONDENT: On your front, what was the driving force for you to practise the actual freedom method?

VINEETO: Discontentment with the results of my spiritual search and practice.

P.S. I almost forgot the most important part because nowadays I take it for granted – Peter suggested that by examining each our emotions, feelings and beliefs we could live together as man and woman in peace and harmony, something I had wanted to be able to do since my early twenties. Needless to say that it worked, and in a relatively short time too.

11.7.2006

RESPONDENT: Vineeto, Is there any store in India where Richard or Peter’s journal and the DVDs can be purchased, or is it only available online?

VINEETO: The journals are available both as paperbacks and as e-journals. You can order both versions on the Actual Freedom Trust website. All or the bookshops and publishers we tried refused to stock/ publish either Richard’s or Peter’s journal – they were considered too iconoclastic.

20.7.2006

RESPONDENT: How do objectively know that there is no life after death?

VINEETO: Experientially.

In a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience the ‘self’ goes temporarily in abeyance, leaving this actual flesh-and-blood body free to delight in being alive. In an actual freedom the ‘self’ has gone extinct – and cannot be revived even if one tried.

The belief in a life after death is based on the belief of a soul that survives physical death – whereas I know from many pure consciousness experiences that this soul, the ‘self’, ‘me’, is something that not only can go in abeyance while I am still alive but something that can be extirpated while this body is still alive. It became obvious to me that such an imaginary ‘thing’ that does not exist in actuality can not possibly survive physical death when it can even disappear before physical death.

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