RESPONDENT: Thank you for your words, Vineeto.

I will read them again later and perhaps respond as appropriate. On a first scan I have the impression I have upset you. And it seems it is because I have claimed Actual (fuckin’) Freedom for myself; thus seemingly surpassing your (self-avowed) state of Virtual (actual) Freedom.

VINEETO: Well, your first scan and your impression are non-factual. You have not upset me.

I, for one, have given up scanning, guessing, intuiting and forming an impression from first glimpses a long time ago because it makes communicating about facts and actuality impossible. A conversation based on feelings and imagination can only lead to more feelings and more imagination. Whereas living in Virtual Freedom and pursuing the path to an Actual Freedom is firmly built on factual information, sensible thought and reflective contemplation in order to investigate and eliminate beliefs, feelings and emotions so as to become free from the animal instinctual passions.

As it is your life, you are perfectly free to claim whatever name you want to for your self. Nevertheless, your perspective and your approach to life become perfectly obvious by what you write. For instance, you introduce yourself on your website saying –

[Respondent]: My way is meditation, the Tantra of intimacy, and computer-aided design and communication.

In my life I have explored the nature of my spirituality in many ways. I am very happy to share with you what I have learnt about the connection between intimacy and spirituality. [endquote].

You further reveal yourself as a loyal believer of traditional Eastern religions by quoting Mr. Ryokan, Mr. Mohan Rajneesh and Mr. Sogyal Rinpoche. You also write –

[Respondent]: Maybe if I could paint, I would paint myself as a bridge straddling a river that divides two vast lands. One land is my inner vision, imagination, thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes ... and the other land is the external world, where I encounter ‘others’ and real physical objects that do not bend to my will. I can explore deeply inside myself, and widely outside myself, but in the end it is the extent to which I can bring these two worlds together that measures my healthiness. And it seems to be some sort of ‘creative apperception’ that is the key. I think OSHO was a master at it. His discourses really are an expression of his idiosyncratic ‘colouring of the external world with the warm hues of (his) imagination’. <snip> He called it enlightenment. [endquote].

You haven’t upset me at all. It was merely for clarity of communication and to avoid further confusion that I pointed out that your worldview has nothing to do with the non-spiritual Actual Freedom from the Human Condition of malice and sorrow that we are discussing on this list. It is, in fact, 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

RESPONDENT: I see there are not a lot of people in this new actualism cult, so I do not wish for you to run away. Actualism needs you, and me; and I would like us each to remain a member of actualism; the reason being that I like religions because they give the members a chance to hang-out together and discuss things so that they get to understand each other. As someone once said ‘Isn’t it interesting to live in a world where we actually have to interact with each other in order to understand where the other is coming from’.

VINEETO: From this spiritual perspective of yours you are bound to interpret actualism as a ‘cult’, a ‘religion’, a ‘hang-out’ of ‘members’ ‘to get to understand each other’. Actualism is none of these things. It will take more than brief scanning and first impressions to understand this fact. It takes sincere interest and authentic effort, a discontentment with one’s present situation, guts and intent to find out that actualism is atheistic through and through, that everyone can only do it for themselves and that the only authority is one’s own pure consciousness experience. This mailing list is a ‘forum for discussion about an end to malice and sorrow forever and an actual freedom for all peoples’ who are genuinely and sincerely interested in peace-on-earth. Vis:

Richard: ‘This is a forum for discussion about an end to malice and sorrow forever and an actual freedom for all peoples. It is most beneficial that you have joined for the sincerity of your participation will increase the opportunity for an on-going investigation, for both yourself and anyone else who is genuinely concerned about becoming free of the Human Condition, and thus effecting peace-on-earth in this life-time. Those who are discussing these matters have before them a vital opportunity to partake in the precipitation of humankind’s long-awaited emergence from animosity and anguish into benignity and benevolence. We fellow human beings writing here today are actively engaged in ensuring that the current ‘Savage Ages’ will eventually become a thing of the dreadful past ... so that they will pass into the waste-bin of history like the ‘Dark Ages’ have. It is not a little thing we are doing.’ Welcome message for The Actual Freedom mailing list

Quite a collection of wrong impressions so far, given that you endorse –

[Respondent]: Isn’t it interesting to live in a world where we actually have to interact with each other in order to understand where the other is coming from. [endquote].

It is interesting – and most puzzling – that your version of interacting is to stubbornly refuse to even begin to try to start to understand anything at all about Actual Freedom.

RESPONDENT: That is more or less what I said to you from the beginning of our virtual friendship, if one could call it that for a moment, on that other list when you arrived and announced actualism and I replied more or less... ‘HEY what you say is fresh and new and great. I like it. Can we be friends...?’ And you said, more or less ... ‘no, we cannot be friends until I, Vineeto, teach you, No. 12, what actualism is all about because I know and you don’t’ ...

This ‘virtual friendship’ is your invention altogether. I came to the Sannyas list to share my discovery of Actual Freedom and to report that the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ works to make me happy and harmless. For the record and to refresh your memory, I will paste a representative example of the discussion between you and me that actually took place –

RESPONDENT: So I waited patiently a bit while you got over your newfound guru trip. And I still don’t quite see the end of it ... but I am learning to accept people as they are, (on another list) so soon I will be able to accept that you are just doing what Vineeto chooses to do right now, and ...

VINEETO: So anything I say to expand and correct your first – misinterpreted – impression of Actual Freedom is seen as ‘guru trip’? I fail to see how you can ever learn about something so iconoclastic and radically new as Actual Freedom as long as you have such an emotional reaction that causes you to disregard the facts that I am presenting.

As for ‘learning to accept people as they are’ – let me give you a reply to a similar comment from someone who you acknowledge being actually free (‘actually free as your friend Richard is’) –

RESPONDENT: hmmm ... what I mean to say is ... it seems you are upset because I said I am actually free; and you are only virtually free ...

VINEETO: You do go on about me seemingly being upset ... but repeating an opinion does not make it a fact. It is simply a false impression. Virtual Freedom is vastly superior to anything that I have known from my spiritual days because one becomes actually happy and harmless 99% of the time and able to live with another person in utter peace and harmony 24 hrs. a day.

As for saying that you are ‘actually free’ – I know, and you know from meeting Richard face to face, that one who is actually free from the Human Condition has no need of ‘learning to accept people as they are’ – the entity that needs to learn to accept people has ceased to exist. To call your spiritual way of life ‘Actual Freedom’ only makes you look like a fool who is redecorating himself.

You even go on to explain your idea of what AFF means in practice –

RESPONDENT: So that you won’t get too discouraged I am going to explain the rules of the game to you, since you clearly don’t get it yet. The rules are simple and can be explained by an example:

When you are ‘Virtually Free’ and I come along and say I am ‘Actually Free’ your response is easy. Just say you are ‘Undeniably Free’ and setup a website and mailing list to discuss it. Simple really. See ... there was no need to get upset with me, once you know the rules, ... was there...? Love and lekker feelings.

VINEETO: So, by claiming to be ‘actually fucking free’ you advise me to join your game – i.e. instead of changing myself I should change the name of the game I’m playing, in other words, change my image and identity ... This sounds very familiar spiritual advice to me, particularly as you wish me ‘love and lekker feelings’, which are rather essential ingredients of spiritual teachings. Traditional spirituality advises dropping one’s little troublesome identity and identifying with the Higher Self instead. Or, as someone from a spiritual list recently put it very clearly –

[Co-Respondent]: The ego (that part of us that identifies with the limited self and not the all pervading Self) will do anything to be in control, and will stop at nothing to stay there. Trying to control it and paying too much attention to it could be a dangerous undertaking that will in the end only strengthen it. It may be likened to adding more fuel to an already steady fire. Instead, why not just dis-identify with the ego and instead identify with the Supreme Reality. Then the ego will disappear (and die) all by itself. List B, No 00

You see, an actualist is one who has understood that peace on earth can only be actualized by total extinction of the self, both ego and soul, and who then goes for it boots and all. For an actualist, such spiritual advice is silly, a mere waste of time and of no use at all. In my spiritual years I had strived to change my identity from lower ‘self’ to higher ‘Self’ and have therefore first-hand experience that this method fails miserably, for peace-on-earth is traded for an other-worldly peace. As I learnt about Actual Freedom, I decided to change actually, radically, irrevocably and permanently. And my every day experience proves that it works. Life was meant to be easy, delightful, scrumptious, sparkling, peaceful and immense fun.

RESPONDENT: See ... there was no need to get upset with me, once you know the rules, ... was there...?

VINEETO: Rather than being so concerned that I get upset with you ... you could lift your game and respond to the words I write – after reading them with both eyes – so that we can have a sensible discussion about how to become free from the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. This t’is-t’isn’t game seems rather silly to me.

30.7.2000

RESPONDENT: Could you explain how an actualist can also belong to another religion or two Ma Vineeto?

And don’t you listen to all those followers who are whispering behind your back that the priestess refuses to let go of her sannyas name because she is in fact a reincarnation of Gopi.

VINEETO: And two hours later you write –

RESPONDENT: ... friendship is important on this planet! <snip> I got tired of all the rape and murder and war and opposition on this planet ... <snip> Relating is so simple. As simple as freedom actually.

VINEETO: And six hours later you say you had enough –

RESPONDENT: So; as I am not enjoying the list; as I am clearly in your eyes a spiritualist because I am in your eyes; and I am tired of being on the defensive about that; and tired of falling into inappropriate ways to make you see what you are doing; tired of me falling into the trap of wanting you to see anything; then for my own pleasure I am leaving again. Perhaps I will return. Bye.

VINEETO: I decided to answer your questions anyway for two reasons – firstly, you have asked a valid question – why do I still have a name given to me by a dead Indian guru called Mohan Rajneesh? Secondly, your announcement of departure might merely be another stage of your rapidly changing emotions that you have evidently chosen to publicly release on this list, like the last stage of Dynamic Meditation or therapeutic Venting before starting another cycle.

The story about my name is very simple. When I first became a disciple of Rajneesh in 1980, I was told to keep my Christian name together with the typical Hindu prefix – it was the practice at the time because there were so many new disciples initiated every evening that new Indian names were only given on special request. Two years later, when I visited the Ranch in Oregon, USA, many Americans and English-speaking nationalities had trouble pronouncing my German name – so I went along with the fashion and asked for an Indian name – Vineeto. Living in Australia, the difficulty for people pronouncing my Christian name has not changed and I decided to keep the Indian name for practical reasons, even after extricating myself from the devotional relationship with Mr. Rajneesh and his religion. A name is but a name, and it makes no difference if it originates in the Christian tradition or in the Hindu tradition. There is no dictionary for actualist’s names yet – maybe for your grand children, No. 12.

The second point I wanted to comment on is about being right and being wrong. You wrote –

[Respondent]:

• Yes you are free. I estimate 73% free. Which is at least double the national average and 70% more than your disciples and 10% less than me.
• The position I take has not changed an iota. I take the position that Your disciples are more interested in being right than being free; and that the cult they are subsequently developing is as irrelevant to Actual Freedom as any other religious doctrine.
• You simply select facts and logical connections between those facts to support and verify to yourself that your viewpoint is correct. This situation is no different than when you were enlightened, my friend. No different at all. You need to be right. Perhaps you could examine this need further.
• The talk of email aliases has led me from a suspicion to an obvious fact. It is Obvious to me now that in fact No 8, you do not exist. ‘No 8’ is quite obviously an alias for the man we know as Richard, who is quite obviously amusing himself by playing devil’s advocate with himself. This is obvious to me, and I will prove it by selecting 10 lines from No 8’s correspondence, and 10 lines from Richard’s and throwing in 10 lines from Mr Ed, the Talking Horse for good measure, and drawing it all together with logic and an underlying derision and superciliousness and sense of superiority and Prove that I am Right and You are wrong, which, as we see is the point of this Game.

In four different mails you are stressing the topics of feeling belittled, blaming others, belittling Actual Freedom, and the issue of Richard and ‘[his] disciples’ being right and you being wrong.

The trouble for people with facts is that facts are always ‘right’. One can choose to ignore facts, deny facts, blame others for facts being what they are, get angry about facts and feel sorry for oneself that facts are what they are – to no avail. A fact stays a fact no matter what affective response one chooses to have about it.

The other trouble that most people have with Richard and with Actual Freedom is that life without the ‘self’ (ego and soul) is utterly superior to life fettered by the social and instinctual identity that we humans are inevitably, programmed with, through no fault of ours. For me, once I perceived in a direct experience of the actual world what life in Actual Freedom will be like, once I had smelled the honey-pot, so to speak, I was trapped, hooked, caught and seduced. I wanted more of this exquisite quality of experience and I wanted it all the time – and I still do. However, years of trying to find the solution in spiritual therapy have taught me that mere emoting, throwing a tantrum, sulking or blaming others is not going to give me the life experience that I want – I know now that it is simple silly to run with my head against a wall or pretend that I have already got it. These methods had sometimes worked in my past relationships when, by blustering or emoting, I could fool my partner into feeling inferior, guilty or angry, but I simply failed to permanently fool myself.

So I got off my bum and started the investigation into the facts of the Human Condition.

So here I am today, living a life that, by measure of my past 40 years, is already utterly superior to anything I have experienced before – and I am not even actually free yet. But I know that the method of cleaning myself up, bit by bit, works, incrementally, irreversibly and infallibly.

Facts are superior to beliefs and the extinction of the ‘self’ is superior to remaining a puny ‘self’ or flesh-and-blood-body ‘self’ or Actually Fucking Free ‘self’, who can only perceive the world by feelings, beliefs and imagination – that’s simply the way it is. No right or wrong about it at all. The only sure and permanent way to actual superiority is to become ‘self’-less, extinct.

17.5.2001

VINEETO: Yet I know so many people who delight in complaining about life in general and their own situation in particular and are very addicted to the cycle of suffering and need for sympathy to be followed by suffering more for more sympathy.

‘RESPONDENT: Delight’ is a favoured actualist word, usually reserved for an expression of approval on your part. is it in this case, or not? if so, why did you choose suchly?

VINEETO:

Delight – ‘1 To give great pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment to. 2 to cause considerable pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment’ Wordsmyth, Educational Dictionary

As such, my sentence reads –

Yet I know so many people who receive ‘great pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment to’ complain about life in general and their own situation in particular and are very addicted to the cycle of suffering and need for sympathy to be followed by suffering more for more sympathy.

RESPONDENT: If not, why do you choose to disapprove, if not blame, these folk, whilst claiming to be (at least in potential) not interested in blaming others but simply interested in changing yourself.

VINEETO: You might not have noted the difference, but I am not blaming people for behaving the way they do. I simply state the facts as I observe them, both from a life-time of my own previous personal interactions, from observing the interactions of others and from what I see on television. It is completely up to everyone what they do with their lives. There is a great deal of difference between blaming others and a simple assessment of what is silly and what is sensible, and I certainly find it silly to complain about things that are possible to change and pointless to rile about things that aren’t possible to change. Of course, everyone has the choice to feel insulted or annoyed about facts, but that would simply be silly, wouldn’t it?

*

VINEETO: As such, actualism is only for those who, by their own volition, have enough of their own suffering and of their own malice and can see the silliness of this sorry-go-round both in themselves and in others. Only then do I stop trying to help, blame or change others instead of changing myself and only then do I stop imposing my malice and suffering on others instead of putting a permanent stop to that which causes me to be malicious and sorrowful.

RESPONDENT: Are you still interested in blaming others Vineeto. Me for example?

VINEETO: No, I never was.

RESPONDENT: Are you still interested in changing others Vineeto. Me for example?

VINEETO: No, I never was.

RESPONDENT: Vineeto do I need to change in anyway? I say I do not; I am not asking you for supportive affirmation; I am seeking your honesty in reporting your own state of mind. Vineeto, do I No 12, need to change?

VINEETO: Changing or not changing is completely your own business. I was only ever interested in changing myself.

RESPONDENT: Do you blame me for anything?

VINEETO: Assessing your feelings and actions is completely your own business. I was only ever interested in assessing, investigating and changing my own feelings and actions in order to become free from malice and sorrow.

25.5.2001

RESPONDENT: Vineeto, I enjoyed reading your writing today; your account of your own experience. It seems to me quite free of judgments about ‘the other’ and free of demand that ‘the other’ change to support you; as your communications in the past tended to seem to me to be dominated by. It is refreshing. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate my judgment of you.

As you briefly mentioned at our last meeting in Byron when I again brought up the topic of how degrading your intent in communication with me was perceived since the beginning of our connection – on the sannyas list many moons ago – you stated ‘that was then; this is now’... yes... I love those simple truths; you too?

VINEETO: I do find it interesting the way you are now giving a revamped précis of our meeting in Byron – maybe due to your present re-evaluation of your assessment about me. At the time you reported the event quite differently –

[Respondent]: ‘... recently in a cafe in Byron Bay when Vineeto came to me and I invited her to sit down and I was half way thru a sentence when she interrupted I immediately spontaneously told her to fuck-Off. And she did. She activated her Free Actuality and fucked off to the next table. I told her to fuck off because I am a human being with self with a history with value ...’. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 12, 21.12.2000

Given the way our short conversation ended, I perceived no indication whatsoever that you ‘love those simple truths’ – unless, of course, ‘fuck off’ and ‘I love those simple truths; you too?’ are for you interchangeable expressions for the same viewpoint.

But if you do, in fact, ‘love those simple truths’ of ‘that was then; this is now’ then that is an excellent starting point for investigating ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ It is this moment only that I can experience being alive and I personally don’t want to waste this moment with emotions that spoil my enjoyment of this moment. If anger, irritation or sadness do arise, then I make it my business to I investigate those emotions.

By investigation I mean, of course, examining the underlying reasons – my spiritual beliefs, my social identity and my instinctual passions – as to why I am being annoyed, upset, sad, moody, grumpy, excited, fearful, apprehensive, resentful, guilty, angry, etc., and not wasting this moment by incessantly ‘examining’ the feelings of countless others whom I choose to I blame for my own feelings of irritation or my own feelings of unhappiness.

It became increasingly fun to explore what underpins my feelings because it put me in charge of how I feel. With disappearing beliefs, a rapidly decreasing social identity and weakening instinctual passions I am almost always feeling excellent nowadays.

This is how Richard describes investigative attentiveness –

Richard: The activity of attentiveness reminds one of why one is doing this: in actualism, one puts one’s attention on being here ... now. When feelings cause one’s awareness to wander from actualism’s focus, it is attentiveness that reminds one that one’s mind is being manipulated ... and why one is doing this happening called being alive. It is attentiveness that brings one back to the object of actualism: apperception. Apperceptiveness is a very actual goal and those who seek to actualise the pure consciousness experience (PCE) may be activating attentiveness for a period of months or even years. The human habit of getting stuck in feelings dates back to the dawn of human history – thus the habit will hang on in the most tenacious manner – and the only way through it all is to be equally persistent and diligent in the activation of constant attentiveness. Awareness occurs without the delay of an internal feeling-dialogue ... repeated activation of attentiveness in actualism establishes this function as a cognitive habit which then carries on automatically for the rest of one’s ‘human’ life.

A sincere actualist is attentive to feelings all the time, day in, day out, whether active or resting; whether in association or on one’s own; whether there is thinking as well as perceiving or not. When attentiveness is actual, one will notice when one becomes stuck in one’s feeling patterns; it is that very noticing which allows one to back out of the feeling process and free oneself from it. Sensuousness returns one’s attention to its proper focus: if one is actualising a virtual freedom at that moment, then one’s focus will be the actual object of actualism. If one is not in virtual freedom, one’s focus will be just a straight-forward application of matter-of-fact attention itself, just a simple noticing of whatever comes up without getting possessively involved: ‘Ah, this feeling ... what is it ... where is it ... where did it come from ... what is it made up of ... what is it connected to ...?’. Virtual freedom re-establishes itself easily by the attentiveness that it has not been current. As soon as one is aware that one has not been attentive then one is experiencing sensuousness in virtual freedom ... and thence: Apperceptiveness. Richard, Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness

Further you said in your second letter to me –

*

VINEETO: You might not have noted the difference, but I am not blaming people for behaving the way they do. I simply state the facts as I observe them both from a life-time of my own previous personal interactions, from observing the interactions of others and from what I see on television. It is completely up to everyone what they do with their lives. There is a great deal of difference between blaming others and a simple assessment of what is silly and what is sensible.

RESPONDENT: Indeed, I may or may not have noticed. Your mind is becoming sharp and I like that. It is a good thing that you are not blaming others.

VINEETO: For an actualist, it is vital to start noticing the difference between blaming others for his or her own unhappiness and factually observing the human condition, as it is manifest in everyone, in order to disentangle oneself from the deeply ingrained habit of automatic emotional reactions towards anybody and anything. This automatic emotional reaction is part and parcel of the ‘self’-centred instinctual survival program all humans are endowed with and this genetically-encoded program causes everyone to categorize every event, person and interaction into the category of either ‘self-enhancing’ or ‘self-threatening’. This then results in the habitual reaction of praising or blaming others for having caused these ‘self’-enhancing or ‘self’-threatening feelings and away it goes into either ingratiating and pleasing or blaming and defending – the very stuff that causes and perpetuates all of the domestic, neighbourhood, inter-group and international battles.

By becoming aware of this automatic instinctual response in oneself, however, one can come to an honest assessment of the Human Condition in action in oneself and in others, which can then give the necessary oomph to get off one’s bum and do something about this Human Condition in oneself – the only person one can change and the only person one needs to change.

RESPONDENT: I wrote to you seeking to further investigate between us the elimination of belief, so as to enable the direct perception of the actual – and in this particular case the belief under scrutiny for possible subsequent elimination is the incredibly devious, odious, and ‘transparent’ worm of a belief in one, that one’s choosing of the belief that his or her mind is definitive when it comes to identifying when the other is ‘feeling insulted or annoyed about facts’ – corresponds to the facts – namely the existence of such state of emotionality in the being of the other.

Would you agree that that is the topic under discussion? Or could be? Or was? I detect from your email, that you perhaps are no longer one who needs much assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief from the ‘unexamined fortresses within your mind’. Is that so?

VINEETO: Actualism is not therapy where you give me ‘assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief’ that I have or you imagine I have. In actualism, I assess my own emotional situation, and mine only, by asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and then proceed to explore the beliefs, feelings, emotions and instinctual passions that keep me from enjoying this moment in its purity and perfection. If I feel insulted by someone else, I take the opportunity to investigate what deeper reason there is for me to feel insulted by someone else, no matter who they are. I do this for two reasons – firstly so as not to waste this moment of potential happiness by being lost in imagination or by wallowing in feelings and, even more importantly, so I will not get angry with or be malicious towards any of my fellow human beings.

It is always ‘me’, the identity, the alien entity, inside this actual flesh-and-blood body that takes umbrage, feels offended, grows resentful, becomes angry, seeks revenge, etc., and by understanding and becoming fully aware of this identity in action it gradually weakens and eventually dissolves. Nowadays, whatever anyone says I am not insulted because, after four years of intensive self-investigation, there is scarcely any identity remaining to take offence.

*

VINEETO: Given that you talk about ‘unexamined fortresses within [my] mind’’, I noticed when reading your posts to No. 22 about examining the minds of actualists, there is a great deal of imagination and belief used to conjure a picture of what may be going on in the mind of another. Just a few examples (bold by me) –

[Respondent]:

Personally, I have found it far more effective and certainly more factual to investigate my own ‘state of mind’ in order to become happy and harmless instead of remaining trapped in the never-ending cycle of wildly imagining what others may be thinking, feeling, or believing about me. After this imagining, the natural reaction is to then either confront others in a belligerent and futile attempt to try and change the thoughts, feelings and beliefs you imagine they are having, or remain quiet and become sullenly resentful, getting ‘my’ own back later in more subtly devious ways. Whatever the outcome, a ‘score’ is kept, and next time the emotional memory of past imaginations is added to the current bout of metaphysical clairvoyance and the cycle starts over yet again. Imagining what another is thinking, feeling or believing and then attempting to change their thinking, feeling or belief is not only a complicated equation with 90% unknown factors, it is also an arduous Sisyphean task. There are potentially 6 billion people to change and relying on intuition, guestimation and imagination will bring you no closer to gathering an understanding of others’ thoughts, feelings or beliefs. Imagination is simply non-actual.

In therapeutic terms, imagining another’s emotions and attempting to change him or her according to one’s, usually passionate, imagination is called projecting – an utterly useless enterprise.

To be an actualist is to literally become a student of the human condition. Not as a gullible inexperienced child lapping up the knowledge of others but as a mature-age student in that one can study what it is to be a human being – one’s social programming and one’s biological programming – with the very necessary benefit of considerable life experience. This study of the human condition is general and archetypal as well as specific and personal – becoming aware of how it operates in oneself and as one’s ‘self’. Despite tribal lores that produce slight variations in morals, ethics, values and religious-spiritual beliefs, the human condition is typical to all. The knowledge so gained from this study enables one to know, intellectually and experientially, how human beings are both socially and instinctually programmed to operate – as in how they are programmed to think, feel and believe. By being equipped with this knowledge, an actualist is thus more able to extricate himself or herself from the instinctual psychic game of friends and enemies, allies and foes that prevents peace and harmony between human beings on the planet.

RESPONDENT: I wrote to you seeking to further investigate between us the elimination of belief, so as to enable the direct perception of the actual – and in this particular case the belief under scrutiny for possible subsequent elimination is the incredibly devious, odious, and ‘transparent’ worm of a belief in one, that one’s choosing of the belief that his or her mind is definitive when it comes to identifying when the other is ‘feeling insulted or annoyed about facts’ – corresponds to the facts – namely the existence of such state of emotionality in the being of the other.

Would you agree that that is the topic under discussion? Or could be? Or was? I detect from your email, that you perhaps are no longer one who needs much assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief from the ‘unexamined fortresses within you mind’. Is that so?

VINEETO: If you want to eliminate ‘the belief that his or her mind is definitive when it comes to identifying when the other is ‘feeling insulted or annoyed about facts’’ then that is entirely your business.

For me the ‘topic under discussion’ has always been my own process of becoming free from the Human Condition, investigating and eliminating my own beliefs and feelings whenever they became apparent in interactions with people, things and events. In my experience, it is impossible to eliminate someone else’s belief or change someone else’s feelings, and what a good thing that is! This way it is blindingly obvious that everyone is responsible for their own beliefs and feelings only and it gives everyone the freedom to do something about it in themselves ... or not.

For instance, investigating and eradicating my spiritual beliefs, my emotional bonds to the guru and the spiritual community I had belonged to, was a task that took the better part of nine months to complete. The other night a television report about a different fanatical spiritual community in the US made me shockingly aware of the kind of danger I had put myself in when following Rajneesh to the Ranch in Oregon.

The television program reported and closely examined events at Waco County, Texas, US in 1993, where a spiritual community of about 100 people was fighting a serious and deadly battle with the FBI. The community had gathered around a leader who believed himself to have a direct connection to God and the members were devoted to doing God’s will as perceived by their master, whatever that would turn out to be. The community had come under suspicion for owning illegal weapons and upon federal investigation refused them entry and in an ensuing gun battle four federal agents were killed. The government’s reaction was swift and effective – the FBI arrived, heavily armed, with army tanks and the latest warring equipment for a siege. After the peace-negotiations failed and the larger part of the community refused to leave because God via their master had told them to wait, the FBI smashed holes into the buildings with their tanks and poured concentrated teargas into the rooms for several hours. In the course of events the buildings caught fire and almost everybody in the building died in the flames. A later court investigation returned a verdict of suicide.

Once one decides to leave all the decisions to God and his messenger in order to secure one’s place in heaven after death, there is no free will left to act sensibly. In cases like these, the blind passion of devotional surrender overrules even the basic survival instincts.

The report shocked me for several reasons, the main reason being that only eight years prior to this incident I had been in a very similar situation in the Rajneesh community on the Ranch in Oregon. Both Rajneesh and his secretary Sheela made every effort in their public announcements to rile the Christians, the attorney general of Oregon, the American President and the people of Oregon in particular. In the years of 1984/85, Rajneesh had a heavily armed security force surrounding him both in his house and whenever he showed himself in public. A department of 200 or more people was frantically busy collecting legal evidence for the defence of various lawsuits that had been brought against both Rajneesh and the city of Rajneeshpuram.

And he is not the only one who puts his followers carelessly in precarious situations – the ‘Self’-centred narcissism, disguised as ‘I am the only Truth there is’, is common to all Godmen, gurus and saints all over the Eastern and Western world.

It is so good to be free from spiritual belief – eradicated, eliminated, wiped out, never ever to return again. There is no God and there are no God-men, only calenturous souls infatuated by the image of their own grand ‘Self’, desperately seeking followers who are willing to surrender and become eager foot soldiers to their imaginary delusion. This is the kind of belief I am talking about when using the expression ‘elimination of belief’ – it is my own beliefs that are under scrutiny, not someone else’s beliefs.

What you do with your beliefs and your imagination about my supposed beliefs is entirely your business.

3.6.2001

RESPONDENT: I wrote to you seeking to further investigate between us the elimination of belief, so as to enable the direct perception of the actual – <snip> Would you agree that that is the topic under discussion? Or could be? Or was? I detect from your email, that you perhaps are no longer one who needs much assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief from the ‘unexamined fortresses within your mind’. Is that so?

VINEETO: Actualism is not therapy where you give me ‘assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief’ that I have or you imagine I have. In actualism, I assess my own emotional situation, and mine only, by asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and then proceed to explore the beliefs, feelings, emotions and instinctual passions that keep me from enjoying this moment in its purity and perfection. If I feel insulted by someone else, I take the opportunity to investigate what deeper reason there is for me to feel insulted by someone else, no matter who they are. I do this for two reasons – firstly so as not to waste this moment of potential happiness by being lost in imagination or by wallowing in feelings and, even more importantly, so I will not get angry with or be malicious towards any of my fellow human beings.

It is always ‘me’, the identity, the alien entity, inside this actual flesh-and-blood body that takes umbrage, feels offended, grows resentful, becomes angry, seeks revenge, etc., and by understanding and becoming fully aware of this identity in action it gradually weakens and eventually dissolves. Nowadays, whatever anyone says I am not insulted because, after four years of intensive self-investigation, there is scarcely any identity remaining to take offence.

RESPONDENT: That is fine. I am not seeking any therapy. And it would be really, really nice if you begin to understand that.

VINEETO: I have pointed out quite distinctly that actualism is not therapy where you give me ‘assistance in eliminating that particular class of belief’ and I have never ever imagined that you are ‘seeking any therapy’. Although you have offered your friend’s Tantra therapy workshop to me a few month ago, you have nevertheless made it very clear on several occasions that you yourself are not seeking any kind of method to change the way you are. Vis:

[Respondent]:

• There is also no ego and no self, as definable entities, in evidence anywhere. Freedom to be myself – free of the desire or need to move on to deeper levels of freedom – from the virtual to the actual, for example – is the freedom I craved for when I sought out all sorts of gods and god-men and god-women. And it is so very good to be free being me.
• Just so you know... I am already living in a state of ACTUAL FUCKIN’ FREEDOM...
• I love my state of ACTUAL freedom as you love yours.
• I see no possibility of profitably discussing with you how you, Vineeto, could be actually free as your friend Richard is.
• I find it beneficial to express myself as I am. That is actual freedom. [endquote].

It might have escaped your notice – unless you deliberately ignore it – that this mailing list is set up particularly to facilitate discussions about investigating the human condition in oneself in order to change oneself radically and irrevocably and to ultimately become free from the instinctual passions. Vis:

Richard: As I consider there is enough interest to warrant it, I have set up this Home Page for anyone sufficiently motivated to explore into just what constitutes the Human Condition ... what other peoples have done about ameliorating the current situation ... and what I have done with my own life and the discoveries I have made. Consequently I propose to operate with a public Mailing List and a lively and in-depth series of dialogues can be promoted. Welcome Message for The Actual Freedom Mailing List

Despite the fact you claim to being interested in studying the human condition by saying –

[Vineeto]: To be an actualist is to literally become a student of the human condition.

[Respondent]: Then I am an actualist according to this criteria. [endquote].

– you also make it more than clear that you are not at all interested in investigating or changing yourself. A student of the human condition is someone who first and foremost is interested in exploring his own beliefs, feelings and emotions. Asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is clearly devised as a method for examining your own feelings, beliefs and instinctual passions as they arise – for yourself and by yourself. Actualism is not about questioning, examining, investigating or imagining about other people’s feelings or beliefs.

This questioning of the other’s feelings and beliefs is very fashionable in psychotherapy and spiritual therapy and is useless in bringing about permanent change as is obvious by the thousands of middle-aged spiritual seekers who still readily pay their fee to the group leader whenever an emotional crisis crosses their path. Nobody, but nobody, can bring about any change in your feelings or your beliefs and unless you yourself are willing to conduct an on-going investigation into your own psyche there will be no actual change in your feelings or your beliefs.

You, however, have made it quite clear how you choose to understand and apply the phrase ‘exploring into just what constitutes the Human Condition’ and this understanding is very common amongst followers of Western therapy and Eastern spiritualism –

[Respondent]:

• Most people like to say what they say and not have their words returned to them. They do not want to be examined. They want to present an appearance, an image, a front, and the ‘actual reality’ behind that front is not up for discussion. <snip> I find it so precious when I meet people who are willing to enter into the process of examining ‘what is really going on inside’. It is a case of pulling at the tail sticking out until something undeniable is evident. In my example with my elderly neighbour, if I and her shared a willingness to explore reality, I would have fed back to her my impression that she was hiding something of herself behind her compassion for the sleeping babies and children. Perhaps we would have got to an acknowledgement that her ‘actual reality’ was ‘These Kids with their noisy skateboards drive me crazy! I hate them! The noise startles me, upsets me and I want them to go away from me!’ Alternatively we may have got to an acknowledgement from me that I tend to read deeper meanings into simple conversations! Either way, we would have put attention on some feelings. We would have explored actual reality.
• My wife and I were, and are, constantly examining ourselves and each other. But we don’t do it in a dry, serious way, sitting in a chair thinking about things. It is more like we act out our psychodramas with each other and then we ‘pull each other’s tails’.
• My agenda ... was to chip away at you to see what is underneath the surface. [endquote].

Your agenda on this mailing list is clearly opposite to the very purpose of this mailing list because your stated agenda is to ‘explore’ what you imagine to be other people’s feelings and thoughts rather than your own feelings about what others say. Not only are you running your own agenda, you also make it quite clear that others should not make any comments on your agenda –

RESPONDENT: Please Vineeto, desist from your investigation of the entity known as No. 12. Such desistance will be in accord with your avowed intent and practice. Thank you. At such time as you are able to desist we will be able to investigate together into the actual freedom supposedly being discussed here.

I chose to express my beliefs and imaginings and gripes about you, and begin to share again something about me on this list. What you do with it all is your business.

VINEETO: Despite your assertion that you are not interested in therapy you continue to ‘explore’ your imagination about my feelings and give your flippant comments to what I write. Vis:

• [Vineeto]: If anger, irritation or sadness do arise, then I make it my business to I investigate those emotions.
  [Respondent]: Great. Good. Continue investigating yourself. Now what were the above paragraphs about again? How does your conjecture about my judgments of you assist in your own examination of your own enjoyment of this moment of being alive?
• [Vineeto]: By investigation I mean, of course, examining the underlying reasons – my spiritual beliefs, my social identity and my instinctual passions <snip>
  [Respondent]: Great. Good. Continue investigating yourself.
• [Vineeto]: With disappearing beliefs, a rapidly decreasing social identity and weakening instinctual passions I am almost always feeling excellent nowadays.
  [Respondent]: That is a good thing.
• [Vineeto]: For an actualist, it is vital to start noticing the difference between blaming others for his or her own unhappiness and factually observing the human condition <snip>
  [Respondent]: Great. Continue. You are doing a good thing. [endquote].

Personally I see no use for silly schoolyard cheerleader comments that seem to be your therapy put into practice. But then again, as you just said to No 13, your writing is

[Respondent]: about how great I am, and how fucked up everybody else is. [endquote].

As you do not seem to be willing to lift your game and enter into a sincere and genuine discussion about investigating the human condition in yourself, I chose to do something else with my time and decline from further feeding your therapeutical thaumaturgy. I gave up spiritual therapy years ago when I discovered what a wank it is.

29.6.2001

VINEETO: Eleven posts in one day titled ‘Re: Seriousness’ ... I do wonder ... have you by any chance, possibly, maybe, got stuck in the second stage of Dynamic Meditation?

I found something you might enjoy when you get tired of Dynamic Mediations ...

30.6.2001

RESPONDENT: So you are getting closer to what I like. But I have seen this one before, and the women are not sexy at all.

VINEETO: That’s ok. They are merely a tease to try and change your point of view ... for a moment.

2.7.2001

VINEETO to No. 8: Life is not a sick joke. Cheers Vineeto

RESPONDENT: No, you are Vineeto. I never said ‘life was a sick joke’. You see it’s facing this sort of fabricated crap that has kept your list I want to reiterate with seriousness what No 8 has expressed here Vineeto (and Peter and Richard).

In essence No. 8 has encapsulated all that I have been attempting to convey to you via the 250,000 odd words I have written to you since you first entered my awareness. You are in the business of the constant fabricating of what ‘the other’ is saying. You fabricate crap and then present it as if the voice of the other person, in your own emails. It is really, really sicko. No. 8 did not say ‘life is a sick joke’. You, Vineeto, put those words into No. 8’s mouth so that you could argue against those words. It is sick what you do, Vineeto; really, really sick. All my satire and vindictive sounding rhetoric – and even some of the content – and the fuck off’s – all arise from that simple fact presented so succinctly by No. 8 above. You fabricate crap and pretend the crap arises in the ‘other’.

VINEETO: All I said was ‘life is not a sick joke’ – and you jump up and down as if I had accused you of murder. I did not even write it to you and I never said that No 8 said that ‘life is a sick joke’ See full text of my mail for reference.

Strange indeed. Isn’t this interpretation a bit ego-centric for someone who is ‘actually fucking free’?

I simply presented the fact that by my own experience life is not a sick joke. Life is delightful, sensuous, thrilling, full of meaning and significance, and this is so since I discovered – and applied – actualism. What I told No. 8 is that before I found the third alternative I had periods where I deeply felt that life was a sick joke – particularly after broken love-affairs, after Rajneesh died, after several close friends died and after certain realisations of undeniable facts of life and death.

But I have always refused to surrender to cynicism, sarcasm, satire and depression. Although my life sometimes felt like a sick joke – I kept the door open. I simply refused to accept that being driven by the see-saw of my feelings should be the final state of affairs. I also refused to accept the peace-less way of relating to be the best one can achieve in one’s life-time. I kept looking for a way out.

When I serendipitously discovered Actual Freedom and a method to achieve it, I accepted the challenge to do something about what caused me to feel that life is a sick joke. I acknowledged that I was run by my instinctual passions and by self-centred myopia like everybody else – and I rolled up my sleeves and started to change myself and dismantle ‘me’.

That’s why today I can say with utmost confidence that despite all the mayhem and misery in the world – life is not a sick joke.

There is a way out.

4.7.2001

VINEETO: You wrote to Richard –

RESPONDENT: 1.  because I have learnt so much already by carrying out the investigation.  Without your input into my life I would perhaps have taken a little longer to change my (unconscious) belief that the infinite-eternal-mind uses the brain (my brain; your brain his brain her brain) as some sort of transmittal device for the mind ... ie the mind is primary and the brain secondary; to my now consciously chosen and held position that the brain is primary, and the mind is a function of that actuality.

VINEETO: Pray tell, which kind of mind makes your brain to write such mindless stuff?

5.7.2001

PETER to No. 12: Before long people will be reading Actual auras, conducting Actual groups, doing Actual Tantra and Actual meditation and practicing Actual no-methods. It’s good you got in on the ground floor of what will soon be a very crowded market.

RESPONDENT: I am waiting for the Actual Lifestyle Cable-Channel to begin transmitting from Downtown Byron, No 8.

VINEETO: You are coming closer to the Truth now –

We have already started with our own programs in BBC Lifestyle Channel with ‘Real Rooms’ and Charlie being Charlie in ‘Charlie’s Garden Army’. Haven’t you seen these programs yet? They are being broadcasted on a daily basis.

9.7.2001

RESPONDENT: I am waiting for the Actual Lifestyle Cable-Channel to begin transmitting from Downtown Byron, No 8.

VINEETO: You are coming closer to the Truth now. We have already started with our own programs in BBC Lifestyle Channel with ‘Real Rooms’ and Charlie being Charlie in ‘Charlie’s Garden Army’. Haven’t you seen these programs yet?

RESPONDENT: Not yet. Will there be pictures of actual titties? obsessed No 12.

VINEETO: So you did change your point of view after all.

Now instead of being ‘obsessed’ about cyber-girls made out of pixels, why not making living with a real woman in peace and harmony your aim in life?

Just a thought.

15.7.2001

RESPONDENT: I am waiting for the Actual Lifestyle Cable-Channel to begin transmitting from Downtown Byron, No 8.

VINEETO: You are coming closer to the Truth now. We have already started with our own programs in BBC Lifestyle Channel with Real Rooms and Charlie being Charlie in Charlie’s Garden Army. Haven’t you seen these programs yet?

RESPONDENT: Not yet. Will there be pictures of actual titties? obsessed No 12.

VINEETO: So you did change your point of view after all. Now instead of being obsessed about cyber-girls made out of pixels, why not make living with a real woman in peace and harmony your aim in life? Just a thought.

RESPONDENT: Let us remove your evaluative judgmental language and then we find you telling me that a choice is called for here? And ‘who is demanding’ the choosing? And what are you experiencing in this moment of being asked to reflect on your demanding nature? Just a reply.

VINEETO: I was neither ‘evaluating’ nor ‘judgmental’ nor ‘demanding’ a choice but I put a question to you (‘Just a thought’). As I said to Gary, living with a man in peace and harmony was on top of my laundry list when I met Peter and that is the very reason that we have succeeded. But that was simply my own intent in life.

How you move from my ‘just a thought’ to your ‘a choice being called for’ to ‘demanding the choosing’ to ‘demanding nature’ is a mystery to me. I cannot reflect on my ‘demanding nature’ because there is no ‘demanding nature’ here to reflect upon.

But as you ask me what I am ‘experiencing this moment of being asked’ – I do find it rather amusing how you keep developing scenarios by transmogrifying straightforward comments into something that they are not and then milking your own drama for all its worth.

17.7.2001

VINEETO to Gary: When I met Richard and he presented his stunning discovery of actual freedom, Peter and I were the first to be seriously interested in practicing the method of actualism. Of course, there was no concern for me at all about entering a cult, there were simply the three of us, sometimes joined by one or two others, talking about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. But when I was questioning my spiritual belief of being a Sannyasin there was great concern that I did not replace one belief with another – I wanted something tangible, stable, permanent, something that I would never ever have to question again, something that did not depend on me believing in it to be true.

Needless to say that my first major pure consciousness experience confirmed experientially that actuality is not a belief but the purity and perfection of the physical universe itself.

I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that this actual world is so invisible most of the time to most of the people while being right under our very noses.

RESPONDENT: Are you beginning to wrap your mind around the fact that actual people inhabit this world? Each of us is unique and to generalise is to miss. When you see a sunset, do you analyse and compartmentalise it? Do you in your mind wonder why the sunset is a spiritual phenomenon? Do you think about all the sunsets you have seen and divide them into three groups in your mind, and fit that particular sunset into your classification scheme? Do you deride the sunset if it refuses to be categorised? No. You perceive it as it is. A unique event, perhaps in some way representative of the phenomenon ‘sunset’ but what is right under your nose is an Actual Sunset.

In the same way Vineeto you can bring into your excellent understanding and obvious acquaintance with ‘this actual world’, actual people. Me for example. Or No 23. Or No 16. Or Richard and all the rehearsing and grammar checking and cut and pasting in the world is not going to help you to directly perceive an actual human. Do you perceive one... now?

VINEETO: Ah, No 12, you forgot – this is a cult-mailing list and in this actualism cult we have a particular cult-jargon. In the language of this cult-jargon ‘actual’ does not mean the same thing as ‘real’, and the expression ‘this actual world’ is a description of the world that it visible and palpable only when one’s self is temporarily or permanently in abeyance. Peter has written a glossary specifically for the purpose of understanding this cult jargon and in this instance the word ‘actual’ is used to describe something that is most definitely not part of every-day experience.

One of the purposes of this mailing list to entice people to explore for themselves the possibility that there lies a pure and perfect world beneath the real world of every-day human affective experience – a reality, which is grim and grey, full of fighting and misery, anger and complaining and quibbling about right and wrong and good and bad.

If I would just call the cult-buster No 12 ‘actual’ or even actually free, I would be hypocritical and it would not change your reality one iota. In the physical world of people, things and events one has to apply actual effort to initiate actual change – choosing to change the name of one’s misery and anguish does not make it go away.

However, if you like what the word ‘actual’ stands for and if you want to experience something of the sparkling actuality of this marvellous physical universe, you only have to dig into your beliefs and emotions and your instinctual passions that stand in the way of experiencing the actual world – which is invisible to most people most of the time while being right under our very noses.

7.9.2001

RESPONDENT to Peter: I can see you still are into mind stuff like self-examination and PCEs rather that the actuality behind them so there is not much more I can do about that.

VINEETO: What’s the actuality behind a PCE? Can you elaborate?

9.9.2001

RESPONDENT to Peter: I can see you still are into mind stuff like self-examination and PCEs rather that the actuality behind them so there is not much more I can do about that.

VINEETO: What’s the actuality behind a PCE? Can you elaborate?

RESPONDENT: Bio-chemical state.

VINEETO: O.k. then, what is the ‘bio-chemical state’ of a pure consciousness experience?

Or, in other words, how does your ‘bio-chemical state’ change when your normal-day experience changes into a pure consciousness experience?

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