|
Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No.18
VINEETO: Hello, RESPONDENT: I’ve been following the mailing list for a while, but haven’t taken the plunge until now. So here are some of my thoughts about what you have written. I think what you are describing is the witness capacity or witness position. Yes, old meditators would probably be fairly successful at moving into the witness position. In spiritual practice the rule of thumb is that you are not anything that you can observe. So, the trick is if you can see something, a feeling, a thought, etc. as it ‘arises,’ the fact that you are capable of witnessing it means that you are larger than it, not defined by or ultimately identified as the thing (feeling is the best example) that is being witnessed. The problem, as you seem to surmise, is that there continues to be an implied ‘you’ doing this witnessing. The feeling or thought has become an object of consciousness, but the sense persists that there is someone one, some Who doing the witnessing. Of course, this fuels the search for the ‘real’ you. As you mentioned, the ‘watching self’ is very, very passive. It just popped into my mind that this is like a possum, a mammal that avoids danger by playing dead. The witnessing self is free of and thus not identified with the thoughts or feelings that are arising as long as it maintains its position of emotional neutrality. If the emotional neutrality possum stance is overwhelmed either by the strength of the thoughts or feelings being witnessed, or the lack of vigilance by the witnessing self, boom, the self is right back in the throes of being all those feelings and ensuing thoughts about the feelings that were driving it bonkers to begin with. What is referred to in spiritual literature as ‘stable witness’ will ensure a pretty good state of emotional balance, but only pretty good, because a self/Self is still present, and where there is a self there are the primitive, instinctual emotions. It’s a question of when, not if, those emotions will be activated. So, I think that playing possum, i.e. dissociating from feelings and thoughts, can only give one a relative (although nothing to sneeze at) freedom from the sway of emotions, because there is still present a separate self sense, no matter how elevated. In the more modern theories of spiritual process, it is no longer demanded that the state of emotional balance be perfect. However, they all claim the ability to witness the feeling, even while experiencing the feeling. VINEETO: I enjoyed your expertise in this summary on witnessing. A well-described précis of something that I spent years practicing and, upon discovering actualism, many months to comprehend, take apart and see through the whole charade. I particularly liked when you said –
One of the best things that could happen was that spiritual teaching has moved to the West and into the age of information technology – one can now apply detailed scrutiny and comparison and ascertain the facts as to why this Ancient Wisdom has not worked anywhere, at any time. Isn’t it amazing that the whole spiritual empire stands and falls on this one premise –
It sounds logical at first, but once I understood that the brain has the innate ability to observe itself, the whole imagination of a separate self, the watcher, watching my thoughts, feelings and actions lost its foothold and was revealed as the fairytale it is – a passionate make-belief to prove our immortality, the ‘Witness’ that supposedly survives the physical body. No factual evidence can ever be established about a watcher that continues after death. It is the fatal flaw in spirituality, the bodiless spirit itself. It is not actual, per definition. In a Pure Consciousness Experience it is blatantly sparklingly obvious that ‘I’ don’t exist and that there is nothing inside this flesh and blood body to survive physical death. What a relief! * RESPONDENT: In the spiritual process (even if you have not achieved perfect control of the thoughts and feelings) once you’ve gotten the clue that you are not the things you are witnessing, you start looking for the witness itself or, I should say, the Witness Itself. If you are rigorous in your investigation, you will finally come to the conclusion that there is no Witness to be found. Then you are left with witnessing. The question is, will it be Witnessing or is there simply a flesh and blood body present with the capacity to be aware of its own awareness? VINEETO: This is where Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual belief. As an actualist I am not concerned about witnessing at all but about removing any belief, emotion and feeling that prevents me from being happy and harmless in this very moment. I don’t witness the Witness in order to remove him/her, I use awareness to scrutinize my accumulated beliefs, investigate the underlying causes of my emotions each time they occur. When this investigation is undertaken with sufficient intent and depth, a realization will occur such that action inevitably follows changing my behaviour towards becoming more harmless and happy. ‘I’ am my emotions and instinctual passions and the witness/Witness is merely a by-product of these emotions and passions. Coming from spiritual practice I had to unlearn passive watching and undo the ‘dissociating from feelings and thoughts’ in order to apply sensible thought to question and eliminate beliefs and to experience and investigate emotions and feelings. Once you abandon the idea of a Witness, there is only one self, ‘me’, my identity, whatever hide-and-seek games we have been taught to play with it. It makes it all so very simple, practical and effective. It’s a pleasure to have you on the list.
VINEETO: I enjoyed reading your letter. It is such a surprise when, for once, there are no objections, no denial and no beating around the bush. You have obviously done enough practical spiritual research for yourself to know that it doesn’t deliver the goods and are ready to change shop. I can assure you, for whatever it’s worth to you, that actualism has delivered the goods for me, even though I am not yet actually free. But my life has already changed beyond recognition and the Vineeto who has started the process three years ago has long since disappeared along with all ‘her’ ‘normal’ or ‘spiritual’ reality. RESPONDENT: Yes, I agree with you 100%. What I copied and pasted below from your post is, I think, an excellent summation of what the witness actually is, a by-product of the instinctual passions.
VINEETO: The above conclusion is the outcome of a wondrous and magical journey into the psychic world and out the other end – experiencing and rigorously questioning the power of emotion-backed thoughts, subtle vibes, alluring bliss, altered states of consciousness, loyalty and devotion – in short, all of the Ancient Wisdom in me, in action. RESPONDENT: Before I fortuitously came across the Actual Freedom website, I had gotten to the point of realizing there was no witness to witness, and as such no self with an existence outside of my material body/mind. Reading and conversing with Richard opened the door to my understanding that the feeling of ‘being’ that I had once interpreted as evidence of a being free of physicality was, in actuality, the activity of the instinctual passions – the instinct for survival magnified into an instinct of survival for a non-corporeal self. VINEETO: It’s cute that once one dares to inquire 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what everyone else is proposing as the solution, it all starts making sense. As you said,
Peter wrote to another list in a witty play of words –
Strangely enough, the simple, actual, sensible approach of actualism can only appeal to those who have tried all the other nonsensical but highly ‘self’-gratifying approaches to finding freedom, peace and happiness and found them badly wanting. Without an utter discontent with the real world and the spiritual world no self-respecting (great term, Alan!) seeker would appear to be ready and willing to give up hope, faith, trust and the option of divinity. RESPONDENT: For me, the spiritual process carried the seeds of its own demise because it is based on an inherent, though incredibly subtle, duality – spirit and matter. Now that I’m not searching for ‘reality’ or my real self in other realms, I am investigating very intensely this ‘rudimentary self’ that is part and parcel of the instinctual programming. For whatever reason, I was unable to settle for an even subtly split experience, no matter what the payoff in bliss and promised immortality. VINEETO: Today I don’t consider this duality subtle anymore – it is, in fact, very crude and blatantly obvious. In my spiritual years I had to practice much denial and acceptance in order to fit all the fervent beliefs and nonsensical explanations into my poor confused brain and it was a great relief when the bubble of beliefs finally burst. I practiced denial for years, despite evidence and common sense, attempting to transcend my ‘bad’ emotions, my personal thoughts, my association with my physical body and tried to ignore all the real suffering, both my own and that of others around me. In return, I needed a lot of reassurance through feel-good energy, feeling superior by belonging to the Chosen Ones and the daily practice of meditation in the nursery of an isolated Ashram. It is hard work to keep nonsensical belief alive, complete with moral control and the demands of one’s social identity. Although it requires a lot of effort and persistence at the start to investigate and eliminate one’s beliefs, feelings and emotions, living in Actual Freedom doesn’t need any effort at all because the actual world is already always here. One simply needs to remove everything that prevents the actual from becoming apparent. It’s a superb bargain to exchange one’s beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions for the sensate actuality and magical perfection of the actual world. Maybe you have already found the two diagrams relating to this subject – RESPONDENT: I enjoy the conversations that I have read on this list. I’ve especially enjoyed your writings on gender issues on the website. One of my big gripes with spiritualities is the prevailing belief that existence is divided into masculine and feminine, or any other duality for that matter – and then there is all the ensuing gobbledygook, which I was taken in by as much as anyone, I suppose. VINEETO: I am curious as to what you have found out so far concerning gender
issues. For me, actualism started with the investigations into the supposed differences of gender because they were the most
obvious issues that prevented our living together in peace and harmony. At the start of our relationship, Peter and I had plenty
of vigorous discussions about the subject of male and female and we wouldn’t rest until we were both satisfied with the facts
that we discovered underneath our beliefs, conditionings and ensuing feelings. Soon I was to find out that ‘gender’ was only
the prelude to my questioning all that I had held true and right and good – love, intuition, beauty, music, sexual taboos
and conditioning, compassion, gratitude, faith, trust, honesty, loyalty, authority, spiritual beliefs, etc. It’s good that I
have written about most of this adventure in the It’s a marvellous journey and it delivers instant incremental success. My relationship with Peter is based on parity, equity, harmony and actual intimacy and there is no bickering or resentment, complaint or withdrawal, compromise or manipulation. In short, the power battles, so obvious and prevalent in all human interactions, has disappeared without a trace. Of course, I am a female and Peter is a male body, and what a delicious difference that is! But I know exactly what he means when we talk, and so does he, because we both have the same human sense organs and the same human intelligence. After we removed the programming of the male and female social identity and the instinctual conflicts of the male and female reproductive program, we are simply two human beings, immensely enjoying each other’s company. What you call the ‘gobbledy gook’ that everyone is ‘taken in by’ is, in fact, the foundation of all spiritual belief – the battle of good against evil, God against the Devil, the Higher against the Lower – and this battle is represented in hundreds of imagined, deeply felt and variously symbolized dualities. Within the Human Condition, nobody has a chance to escape that ‘gobbledy gook’, it comes with the mother’s milk. For instance, I had believed that my mind was divided into male and female, with an ‘inner and outer’ male and an ‘inner and outer’ female as well! Every childhood fairy tale has a bad guy and a hero (who marries the princess) and, as we grow up, this atavistic battle of ‘good’ against ‘evil’ is instilled into each person as a life-long struggle against their inner evil. It is the basic premise of human logic that everything must have its opposite and the best one can do – up until now – was to hope to ‘transcend’ the opposites. Duality is the very foundation of the ‘self’. In order to backtrack out of the myriad notions of duality I deliberately stopped the spiritual practice of selectively watching and prejudicially labelling my thoughts and feelings. The so-called choiceless awareness is not choiceless at all. Instead, I put my whole emphasis on consciously experiencing and actively investigating the emotions that were underlying each upcoming feeling or belief in order to identify ‘me’, this singular alien entity inside this flesh-and-blood body. Given that this entity is lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning, my investigation needed stubborn bloody-mindedness and sincere intent so that I would not end up fooling myself. RESPONDENT: Also, I appreciate the simplicity and commonsense of this approach. The spiritual universe is sooooooo convoluted. VINEETO: Yes, in the actual world there is no duality whatsoever because when the ‘self’ disappears, the feeling of separation and any notions of duality also disappear. So now, instead of enhancing the ‘Good’ and fighting the ‘Evil’, I trace down both good and bad feelings and instinctual passions and aim for immolating the very ‘self’ that maintains the feeling of separation and the notion of duality in the first place. I am reminded of poor Cinderella who had the job to sort out peas into large ones and small ones – now I am simply throwing out the whole lot, all of me. That’s what makes actualism so simple – for the ones who are daring enough. RESPONDENT: Looking forward to more conversations. VINEETO: Yes, let’s. It’s been great fun talking to you.
VINEETO: Just a short note tonight to answer your question – Does anyone know when the Actual Freedom website will be up and running again? The website should be up and running since at least three days. I have failed
twice to reach the site since last week, but only for a short period of time. However, for technical reasons we had to
change ‘/index.htm’ into ‘/default.htm’ on the homepage and on the three sub webs of ‘Third Alternative’,
‘Library’ and ‘Actualism’ – that may be the reason why you had difficulty accessing the site. This is address for the Further I want to let you know that I have finished the project of putting together a
‘Précis of the method of Actualism’ with relevant links of an explanation the terms and selected correspondence. This
RESPONDENT: Was caught up in a time warp here. Family visiting, my office taken over by teenagers, not much time to think, let alone write! Then I did my deleting trick on your email, thinking I was only erasing some of the stuff at the bottom. Oh, well. I’ll just wing it. VINEETO: Good to hear from you. I take it that you know that you can retrieve all the mail from the Actual Freedom mailing list archives at listbot. RESPONDENT: Re: gender issues. I am a human first, secondarily a woman. I enjoy being female and have no problem with the idea that there are some real bio/chemical distinctions between males and females, but I differ strongly with the idea that there is a masculine and feminine side to existence, a cosmic tantric dance of masculine & feminine forces that is the key to the meaning of existence. From a scientific point of view, sexual reproduction of any type is a pretty recent development in the history of the cosmos as we know it, and the presence of humans in the sexual scheme of things is the briefest of all. So, to think that the universe is founded on a masculine/feminine principle is, well, very primitive, to say the least. VINEETO: A good point, I never looked at it that way. In my investigation into my social identity I was not so much concerned about the alleged masculine/ feminine principle of the universe but I was much more interested in the differences of conditioning, beliefs, behavioural and emotional patterns and the continuous power battle between man and women, no matter how subtle or covert. New age therapy blurred the distinctions of the roles a bit on the surface but underneath one’s ‘flirtation’ with the so-called inner male or female is hidden an instinctual desperate battle for power which has up to now prevented couples from peacefully living together in equity, parity and intimacy. I had to dig into my identity of what I felt and instinctually knew I was as a woman, and investigate and eradicate each single idea, notion, belief and feeling of ‘woman-ness’ in order to experience the actual intimacy with a member from ‘the other camp’ that we now enjoy. After an initial rocky time, Peter and I were able to put a permanent halt to the battle of the sexes and had immense fun in comparing notes, having ‘a spy in the other camp’, so to speak, and digging deeper and deeper into the so-called mystery of gender and the supposed mystique of sex. RESPONDENT: Last night I was out with the visiting relatives in a country setting. The sky was brilliant with stars, much clearer than what I can see at home with city lights, etc. I wondered what I would make of the stars if I hadn’t learned that they were similar to our sun, burning masses of unbelievably hot gases, that warmed the solar systems around them, etc. What if I had no knowledge about those heavenly bodies, what would I make of them? Probably something akin to what ‘ancient wisdom’ came up with. Similarly with the masculine/ feminine principle. Not knowing better, it would be easy to think that there was some heavenly design related to being male or female, that certain activities related to gender were prescribed and others proscribed. Where real knowledge and technology are absent for whatever reason, superstition, imagination, and intuition will prevail. Man will use his brainpower to increase his chances not only to survive but to better himself and will fantasize as readily as reason to get a handle on the situation he finds himself in. And, obviously, he will choose fantasy and intuition over cold, hard facts if fantasy affords a better possibility for him than fact, e.g. the immortality offered by spirituality. VINEETO: As a second stage, underneath the obvious socially and religiously / spiritually learnt differences between the sexes, I discovered the workings of male and female instincts. It was utterly fascinating to observe the sexual instincts in me in action, after the sexual taboos, the moral limitations and feelings of love and authority had been stripped away. It was daunting and bewildering at first, perceiving myself as nothing but a female animal wanting to become pregnant, to be filled with the male’s sperm to fulfill my instinctual destiny – the fact that I had been sterilized fifteen years earlier did not change that urge at all. Exploring these instinctual passions to their full extent, and comparing notes with Peter, I finally understood the dilemma of male-female instinctual behaviour that spoils every relationship. While males, besides fatherly care, are instinctually driven to spread their semen as far and prolific as possible for the benefit of the species, females are programmed to search for and then hold on to one reliable protector to care for them and their offspring. It is one thing to have read about those instinctual differences, amongst other theoretical, psychological and spiritual deliberations, it is quite something else to experientially explore one’s instinctual sexual core – there is nothing refined or intelligent about our core passions. Blind nature does not care a bit about anybody’s well-being, natural forces are merely concerned about the survival of the species, and this happens by the traditional recipe which has worked for other mammals for millions of years. Possessiveness, jealousy and rape are all part and parcel of this instinctual animal drive for reproduction. Love is merely a human invention to cover the embarrassment of being animal at one’s very core. RESPONDENT: Now, to move from the broader picture to the more personal picture: I was about 40 years old before it ever occurred to me that sex could simply be for sex. I don’t want to give the impression that I was dysfunctional, everything worked fine, but there was always a more primary purpose for sex than just enjoyment. As a young Catholic girl, you were told to hold out on sex for marriage. As a member of the 60’s generation, there was lots of sex, but the payoff was love, sex for love. As a married person, sex was to improve the relationship. As a person involved in spiritual discovery, sex was a tool towards enlightenment. Every cultural/spiritual influence of my life has said sex is for something else, besides yummy, delicious enjoyment. Just like life itself is the journey to heaven, or bliss, or freedom from the wheel of birth and death, etc. VINEETO: I was raised a Catholic and I know the implications. Sex was always dimmed by the dark shadow of guilt, sometimes enhancing the thrill but always keeping me within the boundaries of society’s values. In my twenties I explored emotions via primal therapy but sex was strictly excluded from the explorations. The early years in Poona in Rajneesh’s ashram were a wide field of sexual experiments for me, but as you say, I always wanted more than sexual pleasure – attention, affection, love, recognition, being part of a group, etc., etc. Only when I came across Actual Freedom, I came to understand that one has to remove one’s identity completely in order to enjoy sex for the pure sensuousness of it – ‘I’ will always feel abused and neglected when ‘I’ am not recognized with affection, love and gratitude. Sex as a ‘tool towards enlightenment’ was a theory and/or practice so full of contradictions, hypocrisy and loopholes that in the end I could not make any sense of it anymore. As I said to No 8, investigating and enjoying sex as integral part of a journey towards purity and perfection was for me one of the first attractions of Actual Freedom. RESPONDENT: I think the root of all of this is culture, and the root of all culture is religion, and the root of all religion is primitive man looking at the night sky and not knowing what the hell stars were, and noticing male bodies and female bodies and their mutual sexual attraction and not knowing what the hell that was about. And making up whatever fantasy felt best, in lieu of any real knowledge about what they were involved in. VINEETO: Yes, culture with its moral and ethical rules is certainly the end-result of the human endeavour to cope with the instinctual programming that we are born with. The strange thing is that when it comes to beliefs about life, people prefer the oldest and the most ancient to the latest theory or finding, in complete denial of any common sense. Nobody would choose the oldest computer or the oldest car as being the best, but they happily choose the most ancient beliefs for the ultimate meaning of life on the planet. This pattern is all part and parcel of Human Nature and it includes the hoary belief that ‘you can’t change Human Nature’. However, the core of ‘ what the hell that was about ’ is more than culture and fantasy – they are the basic animal instincts, the very root cause of all the wars and murders, rapes and suicides. And, as Alan’s article shows, very slowly some brave humans are starting to investigate this animal heritage – in others, of course, not in themselves. RESPONDENT: Re: PCEs, excellence experience, etc. I wrote to Richard, a while before the site went down, about an experience I felt was a PCE. After reading all the information that has been going back and forth the past week, I am sure that it was. I won’t go into great detail, but for an hour the whole affective feeling layer of me was peeled away and I experienced directly with no feeling sense mediating, mitigating, or interfering in any way. Everything was remarkably vivid, like if you had a very dirty window and then cleaned it. Answering the question, was this the ultimate, is this how I want to experience my life from now on? Yes, without doubt. VINEETO: What serendipity! A PCE, and the memory of a PCE, is an invaluable guide for an actualist, it is the ultimate authority to ascertain and confirm one’s aim in life. My first PCEs often came as a shock, firstly as to the remarkable difference to my normal experiencing of life, and secondly to the obvious implications that they had for ‘me’, my identity. The PCE makes it startlingly and devastating clear that all that is preventing me from experiencing perfection is ‘me’, who I think, feel and instinctually know myself to be. If I want to experience perfection 24 hrs a day, ‘I’ will have to disappear completely. RESPONDENT: However, since that time I’ve had several experiences of overwhelming negativity. Twice I woke up out of a dead sleep, and with none of my usual distracting devices activated, I was just swallowed up by it. The experiences seem to combine fear, anger, dread, depression, just about every negativity one could experience – all at once. I find I’m just in it and feeling it and can’t even find my way to the bottom of it, or a resolution to it. The process that you and Peter describe seems a lot more cheery than this. Of course, everyone does things differently. I’m not freaked out by this, but I don’t know that I am making any ‘progress’ with it. By this I mean getting to the bottom of the whirlwind of feeling and saying, Ah, that’s what that is. Would appreciate comments. VINEETO: The beginning period of my exploring and applying actualism was not so cheery – on the contrary, there were bewildering, anxious, fearful, very confusing and sometimes dreadful episodes, particularly in the time when I was struggling to get disentangled from the spiritual world. You can find a description of our experiences of the first year in ‘Peter’s Journal’ and in ‘Vineeto’s Bit’ on the Actualism web site. On the path to Actual Freedom I needed to backtrack, unlearn the ‘watcher’ and abolish my spiritual identity in order to be able to start dismantling what had been left behind, unexamined and untouched, when the spiritual process of distancing and dissociation began. The approach to feelings, emotions and instinctual passions in Actual Freedom is distinctively different to therapy or spiritual practice insofar that I not only experience the feeling and label it, but I also explore the very cause that makes me feel this way. What triggered it?, did someone say something to me?, what particular fear is triggered?, what is the connection to what I believe to be right or true or good?, what is the underlying moral or ethical connotation?, what guilt, shame or taboo have I transgressed?, what would actually happen, if I explore further?, which part of my identity is threatened?, how do ‘I’ function?, what are ‘my’ tricks? ... there were a hundred-and-one questions to be explored before I would get to the bottom of ‘me’ and see my identity in operation. It is always a great opportunity when ‘fear, anger, dread, depression’ are coming to the surface by themselves. This is not just ‘negativity’ to be suffered through, this is the very stuff that underlies the ‘good’ feelings and that forms the basis of the Human Condition. This is the identity in action – and only an identity in action can be investigated. Progress for me happened when I had found the core belief or instinct of a particular feeling – ‘ah, that’s the underlying belief, oh dear, but that’s who ‘I’ am, oh dear...’ Some ‘eradications’ of feelings and beliefs felt like major heart operations until I grew used to remembering that they are nothing but feelings, experienced like a life-threatening procedure, felt as very real but never actual. The ‘operations’ did not leave any scars, neither emotional nor physical. Doubts about the path, the actualism method and if I was going in the right direction were often insidiously persistent. I had to tackle my doubts by meticulously investigating the facts, weighing the actual situation against my, often overwhelming, feelings and inquire into the root of my occurring emotions and feelings. Eventually I recognized doubt as a cover for fear itself, the fear to move closer and closer to extinction. The trick to encounter fear is to look for the thrilling part in the experience, which might be tiny at the start, the little YES in the cloud of angst, and then one can surf the wave of thrill beyond one’s boundaries of what is considered familiar and safe. What helped me a lot through all the weird and sometimes daunting experiences on the path was the pioneering spirit and the ambition to write down and report what I found out on this utterly new, first-time-in-history, adventure. Being a reporter as well as experiencing what happened increased my attentiveness and prevented me from both indulging in emotions for indulgence sake and from ‘keeping my distance’. I wanted to be able to describe the process as precisely and detailed as possible, and that very ambition has carried me through many strange adventures until the identity of the reporter itself became redundant. Writing down and reporting any of your experiences at this stage can be helpful for yourself and for others on this pioneering adventure. RESPONDENT: Would like to say that although there may not be a lot of people posting to this list, those who do are writing things that I find to be uncommonly intelligent. I really appreciated the ‘map’. Printed it out and my husband is reading it. VINEETO: Richard said in his correspondence –
As a forerunner of the dissolution of the ‘Savage Ages’ in oneself, one is bound to be a bold and intelligent pioneer and our shared experiences will make it easier for each ‘generation’ of actualists to come. We’re all mapping out a particular aspect of the journey. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. PS: I checked the web site prior to sending this post – it is up and running. Maybe the teenagers have put you on parental control...
VINEETO: Good to hear that you were able to connect to the site. RESPONDENT: A quick hello. Thank you for your response. I have read it through once, and it was very helpful. A more careful reading and response to come. I managed to get back on to the Actual Freedom website yesterday. So all is well! VINEETO: Just a thought (in case you don’t know this already) – you might be interested to take advantage of the option of IE 5 to download and store substantial parts of the Actual Freedom Trust website on your computer. The button is in ‘Favourites’ and when you are on line and on the homepage, you can click a button ‘add to favourite’ and then ‘make available off line’. Then you can customize the settings for 2 or 3 layers deep and ‘synchronize’ the downloaded site for additions and changes whenever you want. The first time it will most probably take 50 – 90 min. to download or more, it is a very big site by now. Just a little technical gig ... Looking forward to hearing from you.
VINEETO: What a pleasant surprise. RESPONDENT: My husband recently returned from a weeklong retreat given by an American, who is an Eastern type spiritual teacher. One of the main premises of this man’s teaching is that he ‘transmits’ Being-force that then ‘templates’ on those who receive the transmission and catalyzes the recipient’s own realization of Being. My husband said that after a week in that environment of transmission by the head teacher and other teachers that he felt an amplified ‘spaciousness’ that was conducive in bringing a lot of stuff up for him. We have talked quite extensively about the discoveries I am making re: actual freedom. At breakfast the other morning he asked me how my ‘transmission’ is different from the teacher’s he spent the week with. I said that I don’t transmit anything. He was pretty critical of that, asking how I could deny transmission, that even a tree transmits a kind of ‘presence’. I said, why can’t I just see the tree for what it is, a material entity. I can say it’s a big tree, a healthy tree, a sick tree, whatever, but why do I have to feel it has some underlying presence? I told him I certainly understood what he meant by experiencing the effects of so-called transmission. I’ve experienced all kinds of spiritual phenomena, but the way I look at it now, it was all a dissociative strategy to shield myself from my own very real mortality. I was, in fact, looking for some eternal me that would defy death, and that desire enabled me to experience all kinds of ‘real’ experiences to validate my need to be immortal in some fashion or another. So, he asked me what I thought the phenomenon of experiencing ‘transmission’ really was. I said, I honestly don’t know for sure, possibly a form of hypnosis, group hypnosis, self-hypnosis. I wasn’t sure. Anyone have any ideas of the how we humans actually produce the astoundingly real when you have them spiritual phenomena? VINEETO: The idea of the psychic world had captivated me for years and the mystical-psychic playground was a big attraction on the spiritual path at the time. Consequently, when I took up actualism, I was immensely curious to really find out as much as there is to know about psychic phenomena, psychic powers and the ‘rules’ of the psychic world. I was fascinated to learn that Richard not only said he lived without feelings and emotions but also admitted to not having any psychic powers like telepathy, ‘energy’, psychic influence or mystical secret knowledge. One area of my investigation was how I was influenced by, and connected with, other people’s vibes and feelings. I remember one incident with the woman I had lived and worked with for several years. One day in the office she received a phone call and, being the secretary, I took it, recognized her partner’s voice and transferred it to her into the next room, saying nothing but hello to the man. I didn’t hear the conversation as my door was closed, and just kept working on the daily accounts. From the moment of the call I had fierce pain in my stomach and thoughts of intense fear racing through my head that had nothing to do with my personal situation. After two hours it finally clicked – I went over to ask her if she had a fight with her partner on the phone. She said they did. My pain disappeared immediately. After this incident I investigated what made me so receptive to her vibes and feelings and I came to understand that my feelings of love for her were enough for me to be psychically connected to her fears and pain. I see the psychic world as an invisible spider’s web that connects people together via their fervent beliefs, feelings and passions. The key to understanding and breaking out of the psychic web was questioning love and, in the spiritual world, my love for and the authority of those ‘who know’, the revered and adored masters. I began to understand that the feeling of love based on the instinctual passions of nurture and desire is just as much part of ‘my’ identity as the opposite passions of fear and aggression. Slowly, I started to see the psychic power battle that goes on between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, higher powers and lower powers, master and disciple, between teachers and between disciples of various ranks. Just as normal reality is a dog-eat-dog world, spiritual reality is a God-eat-God world and the fight is fuelled by the same merciless survival instincts. Seeing that the psychic web is about transmitting or exchanging vibes, feelings and emotions in order to gain power and influence over others, I was then only interested how to disentangle myself from this insidious web that tied me to authorities, groups and friends, engulfing me in invisible power struggles and everyone else’s beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions. When I experienced my first full-blown Altered State of Consciousness replete with feeling Love for all, with Truth continuously streaming into my head and the bliss of unlimited psychic power and knowledge, I came to understand even more how this whole psychic world works. In such a state one can tap into the pond of all of humanity’s so-called wisdom – the collection of ancient religions, beliefs, superstitions, atavistic feelings and passions. That ‘pond’ provides the ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ for spiritual teachers – the very reason why their teachings seem to be so true and familiar. Having risen to the top of the psychic ladder, God-men can choose to swan along in the ‘good’ feelings and push the ‘evil’ passions to the bottom – or blame their disciples for causing their anxiety and divine anger. The transmission of Energy – a feature of all master-disciple relationships – can only work because the disciples are looking for a short-cut to happiness and love by receiving seemingly ‘free gifts’ from the master and thus get trapped into the addictive bargain of giving love and gratitude in return for dependency on his or her authority. In actuality there is no such thing as psychic transmission of energy because to become free of the Human Condition is to become free of the psychic web itself. Such perfect freedom. RESPONDENT: A quick update on what I’ve been doing – Now that a lot of the beliefs haven fallen to the wayside, it seems as though the work of really investigating the instinctual passions has just begun. VINEETO: Welcome to the most exciting journey there is.
RESPONDENT: Thanks for your response. Got me thinking about some things, but first, a question. You wrote: VINEETO: I see the psychic world as an invisible spider’s web that connects people together via their fervent beliefs, feelings and passions. RESPONDENT: Do you see this web as an actual structure, or an imaginary, albeit real structure? VINEETO: It is a psychic web and as such not actual as in tangible, audible, visible or tastable. But it is very, very real because every human being is a psychic entity and therefore connected through this psychic web. RESPONDENT: Re: The web and pond idea analogies. For most of my life, I considered myself to be very intuitive or psychic. I had a strong ability to ‘feel the shape’ of someone. I didn’t predict things for people, like she’s going to marry a tall, rich man, etc., but I could feel where people were coming from, what motivated them, and pretty well predict what their most obvious responses would be to a situation based on their feeling configuration. During my 20’s and 30’s I felt that this was quite a gift. VINEETO: I can relate to this from similar experiences, although I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘feel the shape’. The more I learnt about my emotions and reactions, gathered intimate knowledge about friends and observed other people’s behaviour, the more I ‘intuitively’ assessed others and even dabbled a bit in Tarot-reading. In fact, what people usually call intuition is an assessment of another’s feelings and behaviour based one’s own collected experience and observations. The rest tends to be 50-50 guesses, with the failed 50% ignored and the successful 50% given undue credence. However, I was always wary to use my intuition as a power over others. In the end I came to see that every power used is misuse of power. RESPONDENT: However, into my 40’s I started looking at this ‘gift’ and realized that my feeling into a person was a way to protect myself, to know ahead of time how a person would most likely act and react, so that there would be no unpleasant surprises. I found I had a strong need to ‘know ahead of time’ so that I wouldn’t find myself in situations where I would feel vulnerable and not know what to do to keep the situation under control, to keep myself intact, unharmed, safe. I pretty much stopped my deliberate reading of people when I began to see it not as a gift, or power, but as a strategy for protecting a very demanding and voracious self. VINEETO: The most I learnt about using and misusing power was in my longstanding relationship with my former boyfriend, as in a man-woman relationship there are usually no holds barred and our extensive power battles were rather overt than covert. By using every psychic weapon to win a battle I came to know about my female psychic weaponry, consisting of my instinctive intuition to create emotional confusion, to blackmail with guilt, to make unsubstantiated accusations and to use my seduction. Needless to say moments of intimacy were very rare. It was painful to see myself over and over again trapped in the same instinctual reactions of jealousy, fear, hate, comparison, resentment, etc. and, despite years of spiritual group-therapy and meditation, there was no sign of resolving my re-occurring instinctual reactions. When we finally, after 11 years, we both gave up trying and separated, I vowed to never ever have this kind of power battle again with a man. This determination to find a peaceful way of living with a man gave me the necessary backpressure to question love itself and to leave the old familiar spiritual environment. RESPONDENT: From what you’ve written, I think I got pretty adept at dipping into that web or pond as you also describe it. I think what I was, was very observant, out of fear and necessity, rather than ‘psychic’ or special. VINEETO: Yet that is exactly what ‘psychic’ is – the usually fearful feelings arising from the survival mechanism that some people manage to develop and hone as a skill more than others. This observing, however, is only partly physical – often the main part of ‘checking out’ happens on a feeling level, where one uses one’s instinctive psychic antenna to ‘feel out’ the vibes, the alleged approaching danger in order to be able to react at earliest convenience. However, my experience in several Altered States of Consciousness has taught me that there is a psychic perception and power that lies far beyond mere survival mechanisms – there can be an extended sensitivity of what people think and feel. When one leaves one’s personal worries – ego or personal ‘self’ – behind, the sensitivity for atavistic and collective feelings is greatly enhanced and is generally used to manipulate others towards ‘the good’. Hence the immense psychic power that Enlightened Masters have over their disciples, for becoming enlightened gets you to the top of the psychic power tree. RESPONDENT: I’m finding that so much of my interactions with people is based on maintaining a comfortable feeling state for myself. For instance, I can readily sense when my husband is upset with me, even if it is out of the blue, with no obvious situation to explain it. I feel very comfortable when he is angry or upset with me, and I immediately begin to manipulate the situation to make him feel better, so that I feel better. Does this me that is upset really care how he is feeling? I think what I primarily care about is how I feel, and what I really care about is how he feels makes me feel. In fact, that exact situation came up just yesterday, and I told him exactly what I was doing and why. It was almost like giving up a secret weapon. But, maybe I’m getting to where I’d rather deal with my discomfort straight on, than to keep playing games. VINEETO: Did you mean to say you ‘feel very comfortable when he is angry’ or ‘very uncomfortable’? I found giving up my secret weapons was the first step and good fun, too. Once I became aware what I was doing, each of my secret weapons became useless, because I couldn’t use it anymore without blushing for being so silly. Consequently I had to find an alternative to be comfortable with people as they are – and the challenge became to find out what is needed to not feel uncomfortable when someone is angry or sad. I eventually wanted to become emotionally un-affected by others, not just trying to ‘accept’ them, which is only putting a feeling of acceptance on top of the feeling of aversion. Well, I found that it was always my own anger, my own sorrow and my own fear that others stirred up in me. The good news is that as I dealt with my own anger, sorrow and fear I ended up not needing any psychic power over others or psychic defences – which makes life a great lot easier and enables me to have peace and harmony with the other person. RESPONDENT: It seems that so much of human interactions is only about this: being stimulated into one feeling state or another and then reacting to that. It’s my observation that I am not alone in this, but that this is primarily what a human lifetime is about, acting, reacting, trying to maintain a good, comfortable feeling state. VINEETO: Yes, and I took advantage of this longing for ‘a good, comfortable feeling state’, peace and happiness, in that I pursued the most effective and successful way of achieving it and I found it in actualism. The cute thing is that as I was pursuing the best comfortable feeling state, I came to experience the best of all states, which is a state without feeling ‘self’, a pure consciousness experience – and then I understood that there is much, much more to life than what I had originally searched for. As it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a ‘self’, in actualism we minimise through investigation both the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and tender passions along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and savage passions – so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. The most important aspect, of course, is harmlessness, for this is how you cultivate altruism. RESPONDENT: What I noticed during the PCE of an hour’s duration from a month or so ago, was the incredible absence of this dominance by feeling. The filter of feeling was peeled back, and everything was experienced so utterly directly. I was listening to the morning birds and it was though I was really hearing them clearly for the first time, without any interpretive structure between my ears hearing and the sound of the birds. Clear and clean. No bliss or awe that comes with a spiritual breakthrough, just simple hearing. That experience has led to my seeing very acutely how it is that I am always experiencing, and how everyone else is too. It’s like, hmmm, that’s interesting? I’ve been thinking about instinct. I think the instinctual package is a very efficacious mechanism. It basically motivates living beings to do what is necessary to stay alive long enough to reproduce, and to keep offspring alive long enough so that they can reproduce. I heard a humorous statement once that humans are the only animals who are always sexually receptive. All other animals have an oestrus or heat cycle, because if they were always receptive, they would fuck themselves to death. The inference was that humans have the brain power to choose to carry out the other tasks necessary to keep the species going, like finding food and eating, for instance. I guess the question is do humans have the brain power, the intelligence to make the choice to survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry? Would humans without the instinctual passions be merely wooden automatons? VINEETO: During a PCE one experiences the world without the ‘filter of feeling’ and instinctual passions. Based on this ‘self’-less experience you can easily understand that instinctual passions are not necessary to keep the human species alive – intelligence and common sense can do this job now much, much better. The human species has reproduced to a stage that there are now six billion people living in the world, all engaged in a grim and bloody battle for survival, with every single human programmed to being driven to instinctually feel aggression towards others, to instinctually feel sorrow for others, blindly driven to nurture others and blindly driven to desire others. The question is not so much if ‘humans have the brain power ... to survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry’, but if you could ‘survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry’. Human beings in general are, at this point in time, not interested to rid themselves of their emotions and instinctual passions. Then your question becomes more precise and answerable for you. I suspect that your PCE has already given you the answer and your next one will give you the opportunity to experience and check out how well you, as a flesh and blood body only, do without being run by feelings, emotions and passions. A simple observation of your reactions to sex, danger, food, other people, etc. will reveal much about how delightful it is to be freed of the remorseful animal instinctual drives. I had two ways to find an answer – firstly, here is a human being, Richard, who lives a life without feelings and instinctual passions and – if you read the descriptions in his journal of how he experiences life – his way of living is to me far more desirable, and achievable, than any life described as bliss, love, inner peace and transcendence – the solution offered by spiritual teachers. Secondly, I began to get an experiential answer by dismantling my social identity – as a woman, as a Sannyasin, as a member of a tribe. Every bit of my identity I encountered in this process was my feeling identity and by investigating it ‘I’ became thinner as a feeling identity. My experience of a life where less feelings were triggered by my social identity was far more enjoyable, direct, alive, thriving, happy, thrilling and, above all, harmless. Further, each PCE gave me more confirmation that life without feelings and instinctual passions is not only possible but is indeed the very pinnacle of human experience – that what I always wanted but never knew was possible. So one part of finding out about life without instinctual passions is by examining the reports of others that are collected on our website, examining our statements for facticity, sensibility and appeal. The second practical part is to apply the method for yourself which will enable you to check out if decreased automatic emotional reactions and increased common sense and intelligence are making it easier or more difficult to be alive here on earth in this moment in time. The trick is to bear in mind that the process to actual freedom is a process of dismantling one’s very ‘self’, a ‘self’ that consists of ‘self’-defensive and ‘self’-maintaining mechanisms and, as such, is as cunning as all get-out. RESPONDENT: I have read with interest some of VINEETO: The last chapter of Richard’s journal describes well what happened at the end of his partnership with Irene. At some point in the process of Actual Freedom Irene decided, despite her numerous PCEs, that she wanted to keep her emotions, particularly love. Such a decision was not easy for her, particularly as they had spent so much time together investigating the Human Condition. Personally, I highly appreciated my correspondence with her, as I had to examine my intent and my sincerity with each of her objections and protestations, and this process only strengthened my determination to go all the way to ‘self’-immolation and not to stop when fear strikes or Love seductively calls. As for misunderstandings – so far, almost all of the correspondence that Richard, Peter and I are having on various mailing lists is about ‘miscommunication’, ‘misunderstanding’, objections, obfuscations, abuse, accusations, allegations and outright denial – and this is to be expected because one’s ‘self’ feels highly threatened by the common-sensical simplicity and factual evidence of an actual freedom from the ‘self’. Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
