GARY: I think perhaps Vineeto might be referring to a common misunderstanding among the devotees and followers of J. Krishnamurti, among whom I used to count myself.

Thought and thinking is given a tremendous amount of attention among the Krishnamurtiites but feelings and passions correspondingly little. Krishnamurtiites speak a lot about bringing thought to an end, little realizing that human beings are for the most part deeply emotional and instinctual beings. Gary, No 33, 28.8.2001

RESPONDENT: If Vineeto is reading this correspondence, and if she can clarify this point, that will be good – somehow I think this seems to be the statement of my problem.

VINEETO: Yes, I am reading with interest every post that is coming in. I can understand your confusion when I remember how I used to respond to overwhelming feelings – usually a lot of frantic thoughts arose as I tried to get rid of the unpleasant feelings. You describe it well in your letter to Gary –

[Respondent]: I haven’t felt anger for a while; sad – yes; I see only fireworks going on in my head which results in a lot of unpleasantness; there seems to be a lot of thoughts with a quality of unpleasantness non-stop; the body seems to be involved but a lot seems to be happening in the head and all my focus seems to be there... however I will try and attend to them; [endquote].

The thoughts ‘with a quality of unpleasantness’ are in fact feelings or emotion-backed thoughts. When an unpleasant emotional reaction occurs, for instance a reaction to something someone said to you, then the automatic response is to try and ‘make the unpleasant feeling go away’, and this effort is often accompanied by frantic thinking. This thought-response is secondary to the affective feeling response which happens first. This fact can be observed by becoming aware of one’s own responses as they happen and they are best observed in reactions such as anger or fear where the automatic response is clearly felt as a strong bodily response in the heart, or in a sexual reaction where the automatic response is felt in the groin, or in grief or sorrow where the reaction is felt in the heart or gut.

In order to become aware of a feeling when it is occurring, the first thing one has to do is to stop trying to make it go away as we have been socially or spiritually conditioned to do. As long as you object to having the feeling you cannot observe it. This means one needs to become aware of and understand one’s automatic reaction of suppression – and/or dis-association – in order to be able to experience the feeling fully so that you can then feel what the feeling feels like and give it a name.

As a general rule of thumb it is impossible to examine a feeling while you are having it because, as you will have noticed, invidious and euphoric feelings, emotions and passions prevent clear thinking from happening – so the next thing to do is to get back to feeling good by recognizing that it is silly to waste this moment of being alive by being angry, irritated, fearful, sad, etc. When you are back to feeling good you can then begin to examine what made you angry, anxious, gloomy, etc. in the first place – when did the feeling first start, what was the event or situation that caused my affective reaction, why did I feel insulted, sad, angry, worried, etc., which of my cherished beliefs was being questioned, what part of my identity was being attacked, was there a fear underneath the initial feeling, what was this fear about ...?

In this way you are conducting a scientific inquiry into your own affective experience, you are in fact examining your own psyche in action – but at first you have to allow the feeling to come to the surface so that you can conduct an extensive examination into all its aspects. Once you get over the initial moral and ethical objection to having unpleasant or undesirable feelings in the first place, you will notice a keen interest and fascination developing that comes from being able to be aware of your own feelings and emotions while they are happening and from being able to investigate them as soon as you are back to feeling good.

This investigation into your feelings has to be experiential if it is to bring any tangible results – thinking about feelings and emotions abstracted from practical down-to-earth personal experience will not enable you to penetrate into the very nature of your psyche. So the first thing is to stop one’s usual habits of fighting, denying or expressing one’s feelings, blaming people and events for causing one’s feelings or dissociating from one’s feelings. By doing so you allow yourself to experience feelings all the while making sure that you keep your mouth shut and your hands in your pocket, otherwise you might do or say something you regret later on.

Thus far there have only been two alternatives to coping with the feelings and emotions that arise from one’s instinctual passions. The first is suppression and the fact that we still need police and armies, laws and judges, moral codes and ethical values, attests to the failure of suppressing emotions. The other alternative is expressing your feelings and emotions, something which is fashionable in some spiritual and therapy philosophies. Expressed sorrow is not only socially acceptable, it is an encouraged activity in that it is imagined to bring ‘closure’ and resolution and it’s generally believed that if you haven’t got something to complain and bitch about then something must be wrong. Humans generally delight in expressing sadness, in being sad, feeling the bitter sweetness of sorrow, watching sad love stories, listening to sad music, etc. On the other hand expressed malice can easily lead to physical violence so humans have created socially acceptable outlets for malice such as sport, gossip, games, films, competitive business, and so on. Rather than having a problem with being malicious and sorrowful most people find meaning, delight and entertainment from feeling the feelings of malice and sorrow, which is one of the major reasons that actualism will be unpopular for a long time yet.

Actualism is not about expressing or suppressing one’s feelings but about experientially examining them in order to get back to being happy and harmless as soon as possible.

1.9.2001

RESPONDENT: Vineeto, a quick question: You said:

[Vineeto]: Feelings are affective reactions to our surroundings and, as such, are emotion-backed thoughts. [endquote].

What is ‘affective’? Is feeling a ‘thought’ (emotionally backed)? Can you elaborate little further?

VINEETO: Affective according to Oxford Dictionary is ‘Of or pertaining to the affections; emotional’ and Peter explained it further in the library – The three ways a person can experience the world are: cerebral (thoughts); 2: sensate (senses); 3. affective (feelings).

Feeling – 1 The action of FEEL 2 Physical sensibility other than sight, hearing, taste, or smell; the sense of touch. b (A) physical sensation; a perception due to this. 3 The condition of being emotionally affected or committed; an emotion (of fear, hope, etc.). b In pl. Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies. 4 Consciousness; an emotional appreciation or sense (of a condition etc.). 5 A belief not based solely on reason; an attitude, a sentiment. 6 Capacity or readiness to feel (esp. sympathy or empathy); sensibility. 7 Knowledge of something through experience of its effects. 8 The quality felt to belong to a thing; the general emotional effect produced (esp. by a work of art) on a spectator or hearer. Oxford Dictionary

As can be seen from the dictionary definition, the word feeling is generally used for two very different meanings – most generally it is used to describe an affective feeling (def. 3-8), which includes both a pleasant and an unpleasant emotion, whilst its less common use (def. 1,2) is to describe a physical sensation, the sense of touch that detects hardness, softness, temperature, wind on the skin, weight, etc.

Given the unique human ability to think and reflect affective feelings are very often expressed as thoughts and when one begins to become aware of the human condition in oneself, one notices that most of one’s thoughts are emotions-backed, i.e. most thoughts have an emotion as their basis instead of common sense or intelligent reasoning. The common wisdom in the East makes no distinction between thoughts and feelings and hence the practice of ‘right’ thinking can be literally translated into ‘right’ feeling – feelings such as feeling aloof, feeling morally superior, feeling pity for others, feeling dissociated from the world, feeling God-intoxicated, feeling Divine Love or feeling Divine. To encourage these feelings to run amok in the name of ‘right’ thinking leads only to full-blown narcissism and delusion. Contrary to popular Eastern-religion-inspired belief, thinking is not the problem, au contraire, when freed of emotion, passion and calenture it can lead to the emergence of a benign intelligence and common sense. Gary has already written about this to you from his experience with Krishnamurtiism.

With increasing awareness one is becoming able to distinguish one’s feelings, label them as feelings – even when they express themselves as thoughts – and examine them. When one becomes aware of the affective component of thoughts one is beginning to free one’s thoughts from their emotional-instinctual limitations and ‘one’s native intelligence can emerge into full view of its own accord. Intelligence will no longer be crippled’. Richard, List B, No. 19h, 19.8.2001

Richard is currently having some interesting correspondence on List B regarding emotions and intelligence (August 18, 2001 onwards).

26.9.2001

RESPONDENT: Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?) seems to immolate the self ... does it make sense to anybody?

VINEETO: No. Contrary to popular opinion, controlled thinking does not alter anything in your feelings and emotions, it only pushes one’s ‘self’-centred feelings and thoughts further under the carpet, so to speak, and thus it becomes more difficult to observe and investigate the ‘self’ in action. The ‘self’ can be likened to the little controlling man in the head and the little passionately driven man in the heart, and can only be tackled successfully by bringing them out into the open, into the bright light of awareness, for observation, examination and investigation so as to discover exactly how ‘I’ and ‘me’ operate and prevent the possibility of anything remotely resembling clear thinking from happening.

RESPONDENT: ‘Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?)’ is comparable to re - arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, whereas by applying the method of actualism one does exactly the opposite – I acknowledge that all my feelings, emotions and emotion-backed thoughts (i.e. beliefs) are ‘me’, the ‘self’, the alien entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body. Thus I am un-doing the spiritual training of dis-identifying from unwanted feelings and emotions as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the self, I am not the bad emotions’, etc. By acknowledging that every feeling is ‘me’ in action I am then able to identify, label and observe each feeling, investigate its cause, its trigger and its source and once an affective feeling is understood experientially in its totality, it will disappear. In this way you nibble away at the ‘self’ bit by bit, affective feeling by affective feeling, self-centred thought by self-centred thought until ‘I’ and ‘me’ become so thin and transparent as to hardly interfere with the pure delight of being here.

29.9.2001

RESPONDENT: Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?) seems to immolate the self ... does it make sense to anybody?

VINEETO: No. Contrary to popular opinion, controlled thinking does not alter anything in your feelings and emotions, it only pushes one’s ‘self’-centred feelings and thoughts further under the carpet, so to speak, and thus it becomes more difficult to observe and investigate the ‘self’ in action. The ‘self’ can be likened to the little controlling man in the head and the little passionately driven man in the heart, and can only be tackled successfully by bringing them out into the open, into the bright light of awareness, for observation, examination and investigation so as to discover exactly how ‘I’ and ‘me’ operate and prevent the possibility of anything remotely resembling clear thinking from happening.

‘Banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?)’ is comparable to re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, whereas by applying the method of actualism one does exactly the opposite – I acknowledge that all my feelings, emotions and emotion-backed thoughts (i.e. beliefs) are ‘me’, the ‘self’, the alien entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body. Thus I am un-doing the spiritual training of dis-identifying from unwanted feelings and emotions as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the self, I am not the bad emotions’, etc. By acknowledging that every feeling is ‘me’ in action I am then able to identify, label and observe each feeling, investigate its cause, its trigger and its source and once an affective feeling is understood experientially in its totality, it will disappear. In this way you nibble away at the ‘self’ bit by bit, affective feeling by affective feeling, self-centred thought by self-centred thought until ‘I’ and ‘me’ become so thin and transparent as to hardly interfere with the pure delight of being here.

RESPONDENT: Thanks Vineeto... I realized that my ‘banishing’ the ‘I, me’ was no good soon after I sent the mail ... and what you wrote (below) seems to explain it well...

VINEETO: Good. Can you remember what it was that made you realize that ‘banishing the ‘I, me’ was no good’? What was it that made you realize that ‘banishing the personal pronoun (I, me) from one’s internal language (thinking?)’ did not ‘seem to immolate the self’? I am asking because in this realisation you might find a vital clue to understanding that the method of actualism is 180 degrees opposite to traditional spiritual methods.

RESPONDENT: Okay ... is there any short-cut here? Instead of going through each one of them and labelling (– greedy me)?

VINEETO: In my experience with using spiritual methodology for 17 years and using the method of actualism for the past four years, I can verify that actualism is the short-cut. My life has already become unrecognisably better than it was four years ago – I am living in perfect peace and harmony with a man and I am happy and harmless 99% of the time.

And why would I not choose to be happy and harmless? Why would I not do whatever it takes to experience this freedom from malice and sorrow, twenty-four hours a day? By always making a deliberate choice to be both happy and harmless in this moment, I am instantly improving my life. And the action of examining, investigating and understanding whatever prevents me from being happy and harmless in this moment incrementally deletes the social and instinctual programming of malice and sorrow in me, until, one day, as a consequence of this stubborn effort, the whole entity will collapse like a house of cards.

This kind of inquisitive investigation is exactly the opposite to the traditional method of Vipassana, whereby one is simply advised ‘going through ... and labelling’ and then dismissing one’s unwanted feelings in order to get on with the business of being somewhere else but here.

Maybe there is a misunderstanding as for how to apply the method of actualism. In the library there is a section with related correspondence on ‘How to become free from the Human Condition’ where the method is explained from all possible angles.

It is not enough to simply label an affective feeling when it occurs for at this very point the fun of your investigation begins. Whenever I noticed a feeling of greed, as in your example, I explored and uncovered while experiencing the feeling what exactly I was feeling – what was I missing, why did I feel I needed this object or person, what were my moral and ethical judgements about feeling greedy, what lay behind my impatience and urge, what would have happened if I didn’t get what I felt I needed, what other feelings were connected with feeling greedy, for instance loneliness, anger, competition, resentment, inadequacy, survival fear, lethargy, wanting something for free, etc.?

In short, I conducted an extensive exploration so as to map the territory of that feeling as exactly as possible and I used each opportunity of an occurring feeling in order to find out as much as possible about ‘who’ I am and what passions I am driven by. Once you get the hang off it, it’s great fun.

RESPONDENT: Okay ... is there any short-cut here? Instead of going through each one of them and labelling (– greedy me)? Something like J. Krishnamurti stuff (sorry!) by realizing that the whole thing of ‘ME’ has come about because of a misunderstanding that ‘observer’ is different from the ‘observed’?

VINEETO: No need to apologize, questions are the very stuff of investigation and discovery.

Jiddu Krishnamurti never realized ‘the whole thing of ‘ME’ – like all other Eastern teachers he only taught that thought is responsible for human suffering and he made no mention of the instinctual passions being the root cause of all the mayhem and misery of humankind.

As for his method of realizing the ‘misunderstanding that ‘observer’ is different from the ‘observed’, as you put it – according to his own words none of his non-disciples and non-followers has ‘got it’. If you think his method was a short-cut, it lead no-where because it did not work. He stated at the end of his life –

[quote]: ‘You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence, operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get in touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so that’s that’. J. Krishnamurti, quoted from ‘The Open Door’; Mary Lutyens. p. 148-149, London: John Murray 1998

The longer I practiced the method of actualism – a wordless investigation as to how am I experiencing this moment of being alive and an examination of whatever it is that is keeping me from being happy and harmless in this very moment – the more I came to understand that actualism is actively changing one’s programming in the brain by examining and successively eradicating the roots of malice and sorrow deep in my own psyche.

Actualism aims at eliminating the very cause of one’s unhappiness, fear, greed and aggression. It is essential to experientially understand the grip that your moral and ethical values, your spiritual conditioning and, last but not least, your instinctual passions have on ‘who’ you experience yourself to be – your thinking, your feeling, your behaviour and your actions. ‘I’ and ‘me’ pervade every cell of this body, ‘I’ and ‘me’ control the functioning of its chemical-hormonal balance or imbalance, ‘I’ and ‘me’ are running the full show.

By applying the method of actualism one begins to insert increasing amounts of attentiveness, ‘self’-awareness and intelligence into the automatic instinctual and moral-ethical-spiritual programming and this process then evinces an actual and irrevocable change in one’s everyday life – one becomes ever more happy and harmless, no matter what the circumstances.

RESPONDENT: Knowing that at the end all has to go, is there a method different from the step by step approach, or this is the only way?

VINEETO: I found that first I had to get acquainted with ‘all’ that ‘has to go’ . The way I did that was that I investigated every affective feeling and emotion as they occurred. Thus I became acquainted with ‘me’ in action. First, I examined my morals and ethics as to whether they were silly or sensible and they stopped having a grip on me. When I was getting acquainted with my spiritual conditioning it became obvious how silly it was and it eventually became impossible to hold on to it. Similarly, as I was able to come face to face with my raw instinctual passions they are now wearing thin and becoming increasingly rare.

Personally, I only know the ‘step by step approach’ and I like its incremental and certain success in improving my life way beyond my wildest dreams. I can appreciate its success particularly after 17 years of applying the spiritual method of mindless doing nothing, which brought no improvement in becoming either happy or harmless.

You can get it if you really want it ...

13.11.2001

VINEETO: It appears you had quite some thought about actualism and actual freedom. Personally I found it well worth the effort of deeply and comprehensively understanding something so radically new to human experience.

RESPONDENT: Dear actualists:

I have tried to summarise what I have so far understood from the Actualfreedom website and through interaction with you.

• beliefs take one away from the actual experience.
• emotions tend to colour the thoughts by creating beliefs.
• beliefs don’t mean a thing when it comes to actuality; so do the emotions.
• the emotions are accepted to be part of human nature; but one can be rid of the emotions, if one wants to remain with the actual.
• so the beliefs and emotions go: what remains is an intelligent human enjoying life.

Please correct/comment if appropriate...

VINEETO: I will keep to the same style and add a few points to your summary –

• Each and every human being is born with a programming of instinctual animal survival passions, roughly classified as fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

• Each and every human being is then endowed with a particular cultural-social conditioning which includes spiritual and secular beliefs and a strict code of moral and ethical rules.

• Both these layers of programming constitute one’s ‘self’, a psychological and psychic parasitical entity that takes up residence within each and every human body. It is this ‘self’, both as ego and as soul, that actively prevents the flesh and blood body from having any direct experience of the actual world, the peace and purity and the magic and magnificence that is already always here.

• A direct experience of the actual is only possible when both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul completely disappear, either temporarily in a pure consciousness experience or permanent through the altruistic act of the voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice of all identity – a ‘self’-immolation – such that all which remains is the flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware.

• In order to initiate this ‘self’-immolation and be able to enjoy a ‘self’-less sensate and sensuous life I have actively questioned everything that constitutes my ‘self’. The first step was to examine the outer layer of my social programming, my moral and ethical code of rules and beliefs as well as my social and spiritual convictions. As I discovered that all of these beliefs, ideals and principles are invariably emotion-backed, I therefore became very interested in, and paid specific attention to, my emotional investments in maintaining and defending these rules, beliefs and convictions. Once I experientially understood the extent of the programming I had been subjected to I could then break free from the automatic repetition of this social conditioning.

• Once the shackles of my spiritual beliefs and my set of morals and ethics were loosened, the deeper layers of the bare instinctual passions have come more and more to the surface. This made it possible to become aware of, i.e. to observe, examine and understand, the instinctive substance of ‘me’, this passionate alien entity that inhabits this flesh and blood body, and as such it has become more and more impotent.

• As the power of my social conditioning and the instinctual survival passions diminished, sensible thought, intelligent observation and un-emotive reflection have begun to operate freely and I have come literally and figuratively to my senses. I am now free to be more and more sensately aware of the magical abundance of life all around and living has become a sensual and sensate delight.

• ‘Beliefs and emotions go’, as you say, only when ‘I’ and ‘me’ go and then this flesh and blood body is freed from the intruder of the social-instinctual entity, both ego and soul.

• In the meantime, I explore everything that prevents me from living a happy and harmless life. It is the practice of the simple method of actualism that ultimately gives the confidence that your theoretical and intellectual understanding is right and that it is indeed possible to change human nature. It is this practical application that makes the act of believing redundant and the need to follow an authority superfluous. Plus, you get to reap the benefits of this actual change – you become incrementally happy and harmless.

  

2.2.2002

RESPONDENT: I have been thoroughly enjoying and what more, benefiting by all the recent discussions in the list. Thanks to No 38 and No 37. And as always, to Richard, Vineeto, Gary and Peter.

I wanted to add my observation. There is a clear dichotomy as to what is actual and what is not in the actualist’s writings (Richard, Vineeto, Peter). And they have no use for what is not actual, which is only there to be exposed. And what is actual is arrived through PCE, not logical reasoning, though the latter is an aid. Is this correct? I noted this particularly in the dialogue between No 37 and Richard where No 37 tries to bring out the good aspects of imagination, whereas Richard has no use for it, as he is with the actual, which is more delightful and malice-sorrow free. More than logically seeing why ‘not actual’ is not so good (though seeing logically can be useful), it seems to be important to see that the ‘actual’ is beyond comparison with the other.

VINEETO: Yes, and the only way to understand what is actual beyond doubt is to remember one of your pure consciousness experiences, which everybody has had at some time in their lives. It could even be a memory of childhood when one experiences the world, very often nature, as magical, sparkling, vibrant, abundant and pristine.

I remember when I was about 8 years old and strolling through the meadow behind my parent’s house. It was summertime and the grass was about chest-height for an eight-year-old, the summer flowers were in full bloom and the grass itself was blooming. I lay down and completely disappeared in the high grass and all I could see were the tips of the swaying grass and the clouds drifting by in the sky. Everything was perfect, there were no worries in the world and I was engulfed by the magic of the meadow and the sky.

Later on I tried to have this same experience again, by simply lying down in the grass and I thought that I couldn’t have the same experience because the grass wasn’t the right height. No matter what time of the year I tried, I didn’t manage to repeat the same innocent, carefree and delightful experience that I had on that particular day. Only when I learnt about actual freedom and understood the difference between a pure consciousness experience, normal every-day experience and a spiritual experience, did I understand that on this particular day I had a glimpse of the perfection and purity of the actual world.

There are a few simple guidelines to recognize a PCE when you remember one. In a pure consciousness experience, your senses are heightened and you experience peace and wellbeing that comes from the absence of ‘me’, worrying about ‘my’ survival. There might also be a sense of déja-vu as you realize that ‘I have always been here as this flesh-and-blood body’ and everything in this actual world has always been perfect, is perfect now and always will be perfect. The critical difference to any spiritual experience of altered states is that in a PCE there is a complete absence of any feelings of awe, gratitude, beauty, love or grandeur. For reference you can check out various descriptions of pure consciousness experiences where several people have described their PCEs.

Once you have experienced the absence of your ‘self’ in a pure consciousness experience you know beyond doubt that ‘the ‘actual’ is beyond comparison with the other’.

14.2.2002

RESPONDENT: What follows is a ramble. Would be delighted if you respond, of course. Emotion backed thoughts. Feelings. Emotions. Instincts. Instinctual passions. Thoughts. Beliefs. Thinker and Feeler and Social Identity and Instinctual Self. Apperception. Are all these things demonstrably distinct?

VINEETO: Given that Richard has answered your questions in detail, let me just add my understanding of how apperception works. As you continuously ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ you are adding attention and awareness to whatever it is you are thinking and feeling this very moment. You become more and more aware not only of what you feel and think but also how your thoughts and feelings originate from and are maintained by your identity, both your social identity and your instinctual ‘being’.

The more you become aware of your feelings as they are occurring and your underlying identity, the weaker your identity becomes, which in turn frees your awareness for sensuous perception that was previously stifled. At some point there is so much awareness freed of its normal ‘self’-centredness that you are able to be both aware of everything that is happening and of this awareness in operation as well – and to be aware of being aware is apperception and apperception is what happens in a pure consciousness experience.

A PCE occurs when, for whatever reason, a ‘self’-less awareness is operating and awareness that is freed of the burden of ‘me’ becomes aware of itself. This is sometimes actuated either through a physically dangerous event like an accident, through a sudden shock, through drug use or an unusual relaxing experience like a nature experience. The actualism method – continuous and extensive attention, observation and questioning of ‘who’ you feel and think you are – is designed to increase awareness and facilitate apperception not only as a one-off event but as a more and more inevitable outcome of increased attentiveness.

RESPONDENT: The body of observations and conclusions presented in the website is ‘actualism’ to me. To the actualists this is ‘actuality’ and for somebody who is trying to understand, is it not a theory till (s)he verifies it for (him/her)self? And won’t it take time to verify it?

In that duration, is it not a theory for them? Apparently there seems to be some difficulty for those who are not ‘actualists’ to see the ‘actuality’, and it takes time and practice, even if there is willingness. Also there is this confusion that springs from oneself in these matters. Surely you will agree that all this doesn’t seem to be obvious without carefully going through, discussion, reflecting etc. to a lot of people. So it could take a long time before the premises are seen for their factual status, and the method verified for its effectiveness, and till then ‘actualism’ is a theory one is willing to explore...?

VINEETO: The moment you are willing to explore, i.e. to apply the method of actualism to become happy and harmless, you immediately change from a theorist with an intellectual understanding into a pragmatist who is then road-testing the method on his own psyche in action. And then you can verify for yourself that the method is indeed successful to make you more happy and more harmless. What usually ‘takes time’ is for people to begin to practice the method – and most never do – but once you begin to become aware of what you feel and think and systematically question the tried and failed, i.e. your beliefs and ‘truths’, then it becomes a lot easier to grasp ‘the actuality’.

9.8.2002

RESPONDENT: 1. In dismantling the ‘feeler’, I found that ‘Feeling is not a fact’ to be useful; i.e. when the feeling is rampant, to realize that ‘what one feels to be true’ requires the ‘feeling’ to be true – i.e. when I question – ‘will what is felt be true if the feeling were not there to support it?’

VINEETO: Yes, a feeling is not a fact, but feelings are experienced to be very real, and that sometimes includes heart palpitations, sweaty palms, a change in the tone of your voice, a dry throat, a tightening in the stomach, etc. – in short, you can be palpably aware of a feeling when it is happening.

In spiritualism one is taught to become aware of one’s thoughts and feelings in order to dissociate from one’s unwanted feelings or thoughts and associate only with the desirable feelings and thoughts. The point in actualism, however, is to become aware of your feelings and thoughts in order to investigate their source. When this aim is clear, then the acknowledgment that ‘feeling is not a fact’ gives you the key to label and investigate your feeling, trace it back to what triggered it, what maintains it and what was the underlying reason that caused it to arise in the first place – you examine the beliefs, morals and ethics connected to your feeling until you arrive at the part of your identity that is creating and maintaining the particular feeling in question.

If ‘what is felt be true’, be it a belief, moral, ethic, or psittacism, is not examined and replaced by fact and common sense and if the particular feeling itself is not investigated and traced to its source, the same-same feeling will arise again and again in similar situations because the identity of the ‘feeler’ itself has not been dismantled and thus remains unchanged.

RESPONDENT: I found this working for me rather than going through the whole structure of what caused this feeling etc. as it seems to become circular in my case.

VINEETO: When feelings seem ‘to become circular’ I found it helpful to find out the reason why particular feelings were so ‘sticky’, why it was important for me to feel this way, why I was afraid to question the particular part of my identity that was related to these feelings.

For instance, at the time when I was busy with my feelings of ‘intuition’, I was at first very irritable whenever the subject came up in a discussion with Peter. Rather than being interested in questioning the veracity and sensibility of my intuition, I was busy defending my belief that intuition was an essential part of my survival and wellbeing. It took a couple of weeks until I grew weary of my irrational behaviour and then I started to look into why I was so desperately defending something that was obviously a passionate belief. I began to understand that my very resistance to search for verifiable facts gave evidence to the passionate nature of my belief in intuition. Once I had understood this much about the matter, I gave myself a kick in the bum and began to inquire into the issue with renewed intent.

RESPONDENT: 2. The thoughts and feelings seem the substances of the inner world; the ‘thinker’ and ‘feeler’ seem to be inferred and an underlying property of the thoughts and feelings (not of all thoughts and feelings).

3. The thinker manifests himself as thoughts; and the feeler as ‘emotion backed thoughts’ and feelings.

VINEETO: Yes, with one exception and that is that the human brain is capable of ‘self’-less thought, as can briefly be experienced in a pure consciousness experience. In a PCE, the clear thinking process that epitomizes apperceptive thinking has no ‘underlying property’ of either an ‘I’ nor a ‘me’, neither ‘the thinker’ nor ‘the feeler’. Richard says about apperceptive thought –

Richard: Apperceptive awareness – as distinct from perceptive awareness – is drawn from meaning (1) which indicates the brain being aware of itself being conscious ... instead of ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious. That is, awareness happening of its own accord without a ‘thinker’. Mostly peoples are of the borrowed opinion – a belief – that thought itself must stop for an unmediated awareness to occur. This is because they blame only thought for creating the ‘thinker’ – which is ‘I’ as ego – as per standard Eastern Spiritual Philosophy. Of course, when there is no identity in there messing up the works, there are many periods throughout the day wherein thought does not operate at all ... but there is apperception whether there is thinking or not. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No. 12

Have you ever contemplated about the wondrous activity of your heart beating, your eyes seeing? Have you ever reflected upon the magic of the millions of chemical processes that contribute to you being alive this moment? Have you ever observed and thought about the amazing abundance of life forms that have taken billions of years to develop on this planet and have culminated in human beings, who are not only capable of thinking and contemplating but are also able to be aware of the very act of being conscious? This fascination with the wonder of it all can develop into amazement, which, combined with reflection and contemplation, can produce apperceptive awareness, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. In such a moment of apperceptive awareness you can experience for yourself that ‘I’, the thinker, together with ‘me’, the feeler, cease to be and thinking takes place of its own accord.

22.8.2002

RESPONDENT: In dismantling the ‘feeler’, I found that ‘Feeling is not a fact’ to be useful; i.e. when the feeling is rampant, to realize that ‘what one feels to be true’ requires the ‘feeling’ to be true – i.e. when I question – ‘will what is felt be true if the feeling were not there to support it?’ I found this working for me rather than going through the whole structure of what caused this feeling etc. as it seems to become circular in my case.

VINEETO: When feelings seem ‘to become circular’ I found it helpful to find out the reason why particular feelings were so ‘sticky’, why it was important for me to feel this way, why I was afraid to question the particular part of my identity that was related to these feelings.

RESPONDENT: By circular I meant that the links I follow in tracing the root of the feeling become circular – I am afraid because I can’t perform well and I can’t perform well because I’m afraid; what would you do in such a case? Maybe from what you are saying, I should ask ‘why is it important for me to perform well’... because I want to be better than others... or I want the applause... why? Because it feels good... and then…? Some insights into this kinds of investigation will be very valuable. (I request others who are running the investigation to share their results too – I would do it eventually).

VINEETO: When I apply the method of actualism I do so because I want to become happy and harmless – that is my first and only priority. Then the investigation into how I am experiencing this moment of being alive has a clear direction – what worry, feeling, desire, belief, etc. preventing me from being happy and harmless and if so, why do I hold on to it?

Actualists have written a great deal about how to apply the actualism method and have shared their experiences as to how to make investigations into beliefs and feelings. You will find it under the links to selected correspondences on the library page of ‘How to Become Free from the Human Condition?’ and also under ‘Affective Feelings – Emotions, Passions and Calentures’.

RESPONDENT: Lately, I am getting a hang of the method and usually I find that there is some emotional memory/event in the past etc. hidden behind such feelings and once exposed (which is not at all obvious in the beginning – or should I say it is obvious but I would not see…???) the hold is either totally gone or weakened... but lot of work still remains. But as is pointed out in various actualism materials, it is very enjoyable as one gets freer and freer incrementally.

VINEETO: Yes, the test is always if the hold that feelings have on you in a particular situation is weakened or if the feelings return exactly the same way at the next similar occasion. If they do, you simply root around a bit more and probe a little deeper each time.

In psycho-therapy there is often great emphasis placed on remembering past harms and hurts, yet there is never a resolution of the associated feelings of sorrow and malice. Psychotherapy encourages you to remember childhood events in order to ‘heal’ the ‘wounded child’ but this only serves to enhance the social identity that is in part made of those memories. Whereas in actualism it is only necessary to go back to the event that triggered your current feeling in order to build up an experiential understanding of how your social and instinctual identity is programmed to work. Eventually past memories are not needed at all in order to recognize one’s identity in action – with sufficient practice you become aware of ‘me’ in action on the spot and nip it in the bud before feelings go rampant.

RESPONDENT: I should also mention that so much material is present in the website and these days I am reading non-meditatively with eyes open and it is delightful :) – and I find that it is becoming more and more clear what is being said, why I resist it so much etc.

VINEETO: I am delighted you understood the pun.

RESPONDENT: Couple of other things:

1. How am I experiencing this moment of being alive – I realize the importance of this question (which effectively focuses one’s attention to the present) and probably carefully designed by Richard to deliver the goods – namely to start the inquiry into the feelings as they are happening. I was wondering about the usefulness of ‘of being alive’ part – isn’t it implicit?

VINEETO: In the beginning I found ‘of being alive’ particularly useful given that spiritual practice focuses so much on how not to be here on this planet – typified by such sayings as ‘going inside’ or ‘finding an inner peace’ – and is only concerned with increasing your moral bank balance for life after death.

However, once I had understood the gist of the actualism method of investigating what is going on each moment again, the question became a wordless attentiveness to being alive now. Physical sensations, thoughtful reflections and affective feelings are equally noticed. The increased awareness of being alive makes the sensual experiencing more delightful, contemplations more effective and enjoyable and it allows me to detect affective feelings as they begin to arise before they fester into raging emotions.

RESPONDENT: I should say that sounds incomplete if you clip the tail, but it makes it shorter and therefore a little easier to apply in this phase of verbal questioning – particularly when feelings are rampant.

VINEETO: Whenever feelings were ‘rampant’ I was busy investigating the feelings rather than repeating the initial question because I already knew how I was experiencing this moment of being alive – I was being either angry or sad or frightened or euphoric. Then I would ask myself questions that lead to an in-depth exploration of the feeling in question – what triggered it, when did it first occur, why am I so emotional about the particular situation, what part of my identity does this relate to, etc. I would poke around, question and reflect until I had a sufficient experiential understanding of the issue at hand. Most often this process needed to be repeated time and again as I reacted in a similar way to a particular issue and I only concluded the investigation when there was the satisfying insight that allowed me to drop and dissolve the issue once and for all.

RESPONDENT: 2. Do you see any use in setting up a chat room for actualism discussions?

VINEETO: Personally I enjoy and prefer the current medium of the mailing list, where everyone receives everything that is been talked about and can then comment or not in his or her own time, pace and manner. With the mailing list as it is, writing about actualism does not interfere with living my life as I find appropriate.

8.11.2003

VINEETO to No 47: When I disentangled myself from the spiritual practice of dissociation I began to allow myself once again to become sensitive to my own undesired feelings as well as to the perversities and horrors of the human condition. In short I allowed myself to feel the full range of my emotions in order to examine them and trace them back to ‘me’, the affective identity inside this flesh-and-blood body. When a reaction to a certain situation kept creeping up again and again, avoiding giving it ‘credence’ was not enough. I had to feel the feeling, label it, sort it out, understand it in the context of my social identity and figure out which part of ‘me’ was responsible for my emotional reaction in order to become free from it. Then I could go back to feeling excellent again and, as a result of this rooting around, was less prone to be disturbed by a similar situation. Vineeto to No 47, 4.11.2003

RESPONDENT: Thanks for the very lucid and succinct description of the actualism method; I would like to just add my observations to what you said (I have divided your description into three parts):

I think a) is extremely important. If not done diligently, it leads to denial of the feeling and also distortion of steps b) and c). If I don’t fully feel and acknowledge the feeling/ emotional reaction, it means that I have not fully come to terms with the whole of the feeling; I still have some vested interests in continuing to feel that way and I would trick myself to lie in the surface if I don’t take a good look at the whole of the feeling. It seems to be so difficult to stay with the feeling.

VINEETO: It’s usually difficult to acknowledge and feel a feeling when the particular feeling is either socially unacceptable or personally undesired, i.e. when to feel this way does not concur with one’s morals and ethics and/or one’s image of oneself. You described it well in your recent letter to No 4 when you said –

[Respondent]: … funnily the ‘self-image’ I had of myself, say 18 months ago when I came to the list, was totally wrong as it was a product of so many denials and only after digging deep I could see all the stuff I was denying. 7.11.2003

That’s why the questioning of one’s spiritual beliefs and one’s moral and ethical values is crucial for successfully investigating one’s feelings – I had to dare to go past the ‘guardians at the gate’ and take apart my social identity.

Peter: This identity consists of the morals and ethics that have been drilled into us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour and punished for ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour. We are thus taught to emphasize and highly value the ‘good’ instinctual passions and to repress and control the ‘savage’ passions. Our social identity is in fact made up of the morals, ethics and values that are programmed into us by our parents, teachers and others to ensure that we will become a fit, useful and loyal member of the particular society into which we were born. Introduction, Normal Solutions

One thing that I found useful in this process of dismantling my social identity was when I became aware of a feeling that interrupted my feeling good and I had given it a name, I then identified this feeling with a specific aspect of my social identity. In my case when I felt annoyed with something that Peter said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do I would acknowledge that I was annoyed and then recognize that it was ‘Vineeto the woman’ and ‘Vineeto the lover’ who was annoyed and this made it clear that if I wanted to stop reacting in that way then ‘Vineeto the woman’ and ‘Vineeto the lover’ would have to go.

RESPONDENT: In fact some of the spiritual practices seem to point to this step (observe the feeling, don’t run away, escape as is done normally) – but I think either deliberately or inadvertently end up inducing dissociation. And since it is painful to stay with some feelings, dissociation seems to come naturally.

VINEETO: All spiritual practices I have come across and have been taught suggest to ‘observe the feeling’, or rather ‘observe the thought’ that supposedly is the cause of one’s feelings and then disengage, distance and dissociate oneself from the thoughts in order to retreat back inside and get back to feeling ‘who you really are’.

As for ‘deliberately or inadvertently’, as a generalization, ‘normal’ people inadvertently dissociate from being here, spiritualists do it deliberately as part of the teachings. After all, people embark on the spiritual path in order to disengage or dissociate from the world because they are discontent with or appalled by the world as it is and people as they are.

RESPONDENT: And the watching/observing of the feelings can go on endlessly as it is not coupled with b) and c) – in fact the practices actively discourage b) and funnily even c) – as the aim does not seem to be ‘happy and harmless’ but only ‘observing/ watching/ attention’ etc. – so the continued suffering is not questioned and considered okay as long as one ‘watches/ observes/ attends to’ and is seen to be the best one can do!

VINEETO: Yes, in spiritual practice the ‘watching/observing of the feelings can go on endlessly’ until one succeeds to completely detach oneself from one’s imperfect ‘self’ such that the illusion of a new identity is created, an aggrandized impersonal ‘Self’, a disembodied watcher or observer. The purpose of all spiritual methods is to distance oneself from one’s bad feelings, believed to arise from conditioned thoughts, whereas good feelings such as love and compassion are greatly encouraged.

‘The continued suffering is not questioned’ because suffering is regarded as the very mud from which the lotus of Enlightenment will arise – without suffering there would be no need for dissociation. The feeling of suffering is aggrandized into a feeling of universal sorrow or divine compassion.

RESPONDENT: When b) is done without a) (not exactly, but somewhat in ‘cognitive therapy’ and some psychoanalytic methods dealing with the cognitive distortions – or as in watching the ‘thought’ as opposed to the feeling) I think the root cause is not seen and a lot of effort is spent in trying to sort out and it gets very complicated and does not produce a fundamental solution (results in better coping-up). Also not having acknowledged the feeling, the feeling is at work when doing b) – so there are lots of distortions and confusions that can arise. Moreover, the situation can get complex because of further triggers in feelings and the crucial information is lost because of not doing the a). Since the issue with this step is complexity, trying to keep it simple (or trying to find that which ‘ticks’ is very useful.

VINEETO: The very reason why psychoanalysis and other self-investigative methods of dealing with one’s feelings do not work is because the necessity that human beings remain ‘feeling beings’ is never ever questioned. That’s why ‘you can’t change human nature’ can be seen as the mother of all beliefs – this fundamental belief prevents any sincere exploration and keeps any method of self-investigation superficial at best and delusionary at worst.

To change human nature is a risky business – you actually need to change.

RESPONDENT: c) brings back the focus on enjoying the moment and the purpose of the investigation is to find and remove the obstacle that took away from feeling good/ excellent/ perfect. The real test for correctness of the above steps is simply that it becomes once again possible to get back to feeling good/ excellent/perfect. At least the current problem has been understood and eradicated.

VINEETO: Yes and when the problem reoccurs I examine it again, I shine the bright light of awareness onto it, maybe explore it on a deeper level and come to understand how ‘I’ tick more deeply and comprehensively.

In every investigation a crunch point eventually comes when ‘I’ realize that the only way I am going to raise the bar of actually becoming more harmless and consequently feeling more happy is to let go of, or drop, a significant part of my social identity – in my case I was no longer a German, no longer a spiritualist, no longer a socialist, no longer a member of the sisterhood, and so on.

Change does mean change and change does have consequences. For an actualist the over-arching intent to become more happy and more harmless outweighs any consequences that the stripping away of one’s social identity may have.

RESPONDENT: I also see that the progress is directly proportional to the intent to become happy and harmless as soon as possible. It seems to be very important to remember why one is doing this while one is doing this. And the progress was nil as long as I wasn’t able to see the way all this work is totally opposite to the methods I had come across.

VINEETO: Ah, you put your finger onto the nub of the issue and exposed the very reason why a clip-on of actualism to any of the spiritual methods will always fail to bring results. It’s like using a motor vehicle but keep heading into the wrong direction – one will invariably arrive at the wrong destination.

In other words, the 180 degree turnaround is essential – from one’s head in the clouds to being fully here on earth, from practicing dissociation to paying exclusive attention to how I experience this moment of being alive, from wanting to become ‘who’ I really am, an immortal soul, to wanting to become what I am – this flesh-and-blood mortal body.

RESPONDENT: On a different note, I was wondering why people see the contents of the website to be similar to existing material like Zen/ Buddhism/ Eastern stuff... because I was doing the same for quite some time. Firstly, that everybody has got it wrong is something very big – and such an extreme position is unusual and considered insane. So the emotional response to that is – who does he (Richard) think himself as [as Richard himself has suggested this as the possibility of objection]; but after reading the material and seeing a lot of sense in it – the feeling becomes this is all great, but he is wrong in thinking that this is different. All the differences in the web-site are seen to be linguistic differences. As it is a common belief in the eastern spirituality that all paths/religions are the same stuff in different guise. So actualism/actualfreedom is also the same just bottled differently.

VINEETO: An excellent observation, if I might say so. I remember when Peter first got hold of a loose-leaf copy of Richard’s Journal and I noticed that he didn’t just skim through it but sometimes he would spend hours trying to work out exactly what Richard was saying in one particular group of 3 or 4 sentences. It’s a good way of reading and trying to understand something new – it is useful to really concentrate on getting to the bottom of it and fully understanding one particular issue that is a key for you and then the whole of what is on offer can start to make sense.

RESPONDENT: [At some point I told myself that I was going to take the risk of being called a fool in admitting that everybody got it wrong – that helped to be rid of the fear (is this fear of stepping out of ‘humanity’?) and proceed with the investigation.]

VINEETO: Yes, I can relate to that from my own experience – my pride and my loyalty to the spiritual group I belonged to were tough obstacles to overcome. Pride stands in the road of admitting that one is wrong because the last thing a proud person wants to feel is to feel foolish. When I understood that it was not me who had got it wrong but that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong, it became clear to me that it would be foolish to keep looking in the wrong direction just because I didn’t want to feel a fool in having done exactly what everyone else was doing.

Loyalty was a similar issue – when I realized that what was keeping me being a spiritualist was a feeling of loyalty to my dead master and my then spiritual friends I was confronted by feeling to be a traitor whenever I thought about leaving. This continued on for months until I finally found that I had decided that being happy and harmless and living with a man in utter peace and harmony was more important to me than being a loyal spiritualist and the feelings of being a traitor disappeared as if by magic. Now, that my former friends consider me to be both a fool and a traitor, I can delight in the freedom of having no spiritual beliefs and of not belonging to any group whatsoever.

I think you are more talking about the fear of stepping out of society and it certainly requires bold determination to dare to step out of one’s social bondages and leave the various groups that form and maintain one’s social identity behind in order to become an anonymous and carefree human being. The process is incremental, the changes are palpable and the rewards of becoming more harmless is a continual raising the bar of feeling more happy. The final stepping out of humanity happens with the ending of ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: And since one is used to the vagueness and ambiguity and the indescribables and the unknowables – never defining unambiguously – no wonder actualism looks the same as anything else – but this apparent similarity does not stand the scrutiny.

VINEETO: Yes, and this vagueness and ambiguity comes as no surprise given that spiritual freedom is only a feeling of freedom and not an actuality. Actuality can be described with precise words because it is tangible, apparent, lucid and obvious and as such two people can describe something with very definitive words and know that they are both talking about the same actuality. By contrast one can only be vague and ambiguous when describing an imagined and illusionary feeling state because no two people feel exactly the same about something intangible, spirit-like, ephemeral, ethereal and otherworldly. Once you begin to examine the descriptions of spiritual experiences, you discover that each guru and each disciple lives in their own private affective dream world, their own universe.

RESPONDENT: I found Peter’s foresight very accurate: ../actualism/path2.htm:

Peter: I have noticed a tendency for many people to merely want to clip on a bit of Actualism to their Spiritualism, and no doubt this tendency will grow in the coming years. Already many western spiritual teachers have watered down Eastern philosophy and religion to try and make it more ordinary and less supercilious and, as Actual Freedom increasingly gains a foothold, those very same Spiritualists will deliberately distort it and try and absorb it into their teachings.

This is the very reason that we have set up The Actual Freedom Trust, simply in order that there will be at least one original untainted source of Actualism and Actual Freedom which people can use as a touchstone in a world renowned for duplicity and self-deception. Thus it is possible, as with any new discovery, to see two streams operating. Peter, A Practical Guide for Actualists

This is all great fun!

VINEETO: Yes, it’s great fun to be a pioneer in such a wonderful human endeavour. Although it’s early days for actualism I notice that apart from objectors and ‘clip-on-ers’ more and more adventurers dare to abandon their pride and their loyal connection with their peers and embark on an exploration how to become happy and harmless.

25.11.2003

RESPONDENT: Richard/Peter/Vineeto:

The identity is comprised of (not necessarily distinct) these parts: ego aka thinker, feeler aka soul, social identity, instinctual self, correct?

VINEETO: When I began to write on mailing lists about my experience with actualism, I first used the terms mainly used in spiritual circles to describe the identity – ego and soul, or thinker and feeler. However, as I explored more and more of my psyche and became more familiar about the nitty gritty of ‘me’ in operation, I found that the terms ‘social identity’ and ‘instinctual identity’ describe more accurately the two layers of my identity, the social identity being the layer of conditioning acquired after birth in order to curb the instinctual identity and its genetically encoded instinctual passions. This is just a preference that I have as I personally find the terms to be more descriptive and concise in conveying what I mean to others – contrary to what some believe there are no rules governing terminology around here.

RESPONDENT: Also the attributes or even the material by which the identity is made of is – feelings and emotions, instinctual passions, and thoughts (seldom free of emotions when an attribute of identity). Is this correct?

VINEETO: To the list of what the identity consists of I would add beliefs (feeling-fed thoughts about who rules the ethereal world and ‘my’ place in the hierarchy of the spiritual world), concepts (feeling-fed thoughts about ‘my’ place in the hierarchy of the materialistic world), moral and ethical values (feeling-fed thoughts about what is good and bad, right and wrong), vibes, myths and psittacisms.

There is no material by which the identity is made of, in that there is no ego in the head, or a little man pulling the levers and controlling the body, nor is there a soul located in the heart or a real me deep down inside as an actuality. However both aspects of one’s identity, whilst not being actual and having no material existence, are experienced as being very real – feelings are very real to the person having them. Beliefs are very real to the person who holds them dear, morals and ethics can dominate a person’s thoughts, actions and feelings, instinctual passions are very often overwhelming in their strength, and so on. In fact, the identity and his or her associated attributes are so real, so dominating and so overwhelming that they cause human beings to be nearly always in wary mode, defence mode, or attack mode – exactly as other animals are.

RESPONDENT: Is there a hierarchical structure to these various parts of the identity? Is it that one is operational at a given time not others – or – they all orchestrate with each other one feeding on the other like the legs of the millipede?

VINEETO: I found that because my social identity was mainly a training to curb my instinctual passions, particularly the so-called bad passions, I first had to whittle away at this layer of my identity in order to allow the deeper and stronger passions to emerge such that I could take a good look at how and why they operated. But this is not necessarily a smooth operation – sometimes just a crack in the outer layer reveals a bit of what is underneath, sometimes a big crack opens up and one gets a quite often shocking glimpse at what can be described as ‘the raw animal inside’ and sometimes one breaks right through the lot and a pure consciousness experience results when all of a sudden the whole centre and the protective circumference of my identity disappears … as if by magic.

RESPONDENT: The baby is born with these raw instinctual passions, basic software to protect itself from some of the dangers and situations – also with things like ‘theory of mind’ (which is later programmed or tuned more) – this is the instinctual self.

As I understand it the ‘theory of mind’ develops at about age 2-3, therefore I would say all humans are born pre-primed to think and feel themselves to be a separate ‘self’.

RESPONDENT: And with time – are these same instinctual passions fine-tuned to give rise to various feelings and beliefs and emotional behaviour patterns by societal conditioning?

VINEETO: The instinctual passions are never fine-tuned – in my experience they were only overlaid with social conditioning. I was only able to conduct a clear-eyed investigation of the instinctual passions in their full force once I was ready, able and willing to incrementally lift the lid of my beliefs, morals, ethics, values, ideals and principles that are the very constituents of my social identity.

RESPONDENT: When do I know I have come face to face with a raw instinctual passion – not just a conditioning of social identity – is this when the ‘social identity’ is deleted to a great extent – so as to see the underlying ‘instinctual passion’ devoid of the thinking distortions that usually accompanies it?

VINEETO: This is how Peter described it in the ‘The Actualist’s Guide’ –

Peter: Once sufficient of this dismantling of one’s social identity has been done, it is then possible to begin to experience the instinctual passions deeply without acting on them – once the ‘lid is off’ then I can have a good look around inside – neither repressing nor expressing – and begin to experience ‘me’ at the very core of my being. The only way it is possible to undergo a significant change in life is by experiencing something deeply and understanding the experience fully. I don’t know about a map at this stage – it’s more like throwing away the water wings and snorkel, strapping on a scuba tank, plunging into one’s own psyche and rummaging around the bottom, looking under all the rocks in order to see what the bottom really looks like. Peter, An Actualist’s Guide

RESPONDENT: Or is it (I think I read it in Peter’s journal) when I get to this point where I don’t see any reason for the fear or the strong emotion – it is just there – then I know it is an instinctual passion? If this is the case, I have come across situations where I have a strong emotion and I see that there is no reason for it to be there, at least I don’t believe that it is apt at that time.

VINEETO: The way I determined that I had come across an underlying instinctual passion was by the sheer intensity of the passion that welled up like a giant octopus, sometimes for no apparent reason. In such instance it was not that I had become upset about a belief that was attacked or that an aspect of my social identity that had been exposed – I knew I was experiencing something deeper and far more substantial than feelings – it was naked fear, pure rage, bottomless dread, sheer lust to kill, or the mindless intoxication of nurture.

RESPONDENT: Also I thought about another ‘Spiritual Freedom’ vs ‘Actual Freedom’ item when I was reading one of the pages (if this is not already tabled): In the former, one is a saviour of humankind (at least (s)he feels/thinks so) and in the latter ‘one is an expert in human condition’ (unless in the future, the babies are born free – in which case they will be without such expertise except vicariously).

VINEETO: Yepp, I have felt, and in that moment experientially understood, the overwhelming feeling of ‘knowing it all’ and the urging need to spread this wisdom revealed to ‘Me’ in a full-blown ASC that lasted several hours. As for ‘one is an expert in human condition’, I can only talk from the perspective of Virtual Freedom but I would say I am only partially an expert in the human condition in as far as I have explored my own psyche, which to a certain extent is the human psyche, and I am certainly an expert in how I became virtually free from the human condition.

However, there are many, many aspects of the human condition, cultural nuances, tribal rites, personal obsessions, weird passions, senseless beliefs and elaborate philosophies that I don’t know and neither have I the slightest interest in gaining such expertise. In any case, everyone has to do the job to take himself or herself apart if they choose to become free from the particular bent of their own social identity in order to firstly become virtually free of malice and sorrow. For this, one doesn’t need to be an expert in the human condition – ‘you’ only need to be an expert in what it is that is stopping you from being happy and harmless, no more and no less.

As an example of this, Richard had little intellectual knowledge about the instinctual passions before he became free of them – it was only Peter’s curiosity that prodded him to find out more and to write about them in more detail. Actualism is after all an experiential business, not an intellectual one.

The idea that in some distant future babies will be born free from the instinctual programming … can only be speculation at this stage.

RESPONDENT: Thanks a million.

VINEETO: My pleasure,

17.2.2004

RESPONDENT: Whilst it can be argued that name calling and mindless accusation can bring out the worst in oneself for investigation, I find that the majority of mails seem to be of no use to me these days. To keep it open for discussion gives a chance for seeing a variety of personalities and viewpoints, but isn’t there a common denominator so that there is a useful discussion? After all this mailing list is setup to enable discussions for people who find the contents of the actualfreedom worthwhile to go deeper into... should we consider some kind of moderation of this list?

VINEETO: Just to pass on a practical hint that I found worked well for me – when the list became so convoluted recently with so many posts that are either irrelevant to the topic or downright abusive I used the ‘organize’ function in my Outlook email program to have those posts directly filed away into either a ‘silly’ folder or directly to ‘Deleted Items’. The outcome is that most of the posts that come in lately remain unread and my Inbox remains uncluttered. In other words, I moderate the list myself.

Continued on Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 75

Continued from Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 75

29.5.2005

RESPONDENT: I have a question to you/ Peter/ Richard/ Alan regarding the physical processes that accompany the ‘cutting the cord’ – realizing and terminating the feelings. I have seen Alan mention such things more than once (jangling of nerves?)... can you describe any such processes if any?

VINEETO: In the post you responded to I posted a quote that was descriptive of the physical sensations that can sometimes accompany radical change –

[Vineeto]: One time I remember clearly, the experience was like cutting a thick cord that appeared to run from the bottom of my spine to his, like a telephone cord of sharing delight. Afterwards *it felt like my very bone marrow was being drained out of me*, most of my strength, determination and will to ‘fight for freedom’. A very strange experience, I was *almost physically curling back into my self* and became autonomous, not relying on him. Any need for emotional support vanished with that event. Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, Alan, 12.1.1999 [emphases added]

However it is good to keep in mind that the impression of something physical happening is most likely due to psychosomatic processes, i.e. bodily responses to feelings and imagination.

RESPONDENT: When I resolve an emotional conflict in the nature of total riddance or near to that, I experience a physical sensation – as if a possessed spirit departs from the body; there are some sensations in teeth and heart and most of the upper body; and sometimes in the forehead; it is like I am freeing from the stranglehold of some invisible ghost... physically. I am not sure all this is some unnecessary imagination of mine... some feedback would help...

VINEETO: Given that ‘I’ am a passionate imaginary ‘being’ it follows that ending aspects of ‘me’ is often accompanied by passions and imaginations and sometimes physical reactions occur due to those passions and imaginations. However, given that both feelings and imagination are notoriously unreliable when it comes to determine fact, in the long run I did not give much weight to the strange things that happened in my psyche with occasional physical side-effects – what I was ultimately interested in was if the change that I had felt and imagined to have happened had really happened. This I ascertained by checking if my behaviour had changed, if I stayed calm and happy in situations that had ruffled my feathers before, if certain feelings resurfaced after I imagined to have ‘cut the cord’ or whether my normal habitual emotional reaction was indeed non-existent in similar situations from that moment onwards.

Incidentally, the more imagination disappeared out of my life, the less I was prone to feel weird happenings in my brain, my spine, my belly or my heart.

29.5.2005

RESPONDENT: What does one do when one feels bad? How much of study is required? Just the right amount to get back into feeling happy and harmless once again? If one has 100% intent can one just look at the feeling and get back to being happy and harmless instantaneously? Is the amount of work that is needed inversely proportional to the amount of pure intent to be happy and harmless? And is it inversely proportionally to one's grip on the method? When I look into the feeling - there is the cause of the feeling and there is the effect of the feeling and there is no clear boundary in between. At least in the beginning. The effect (the expression and evolution) of the feeling dominates the cause. One may feel irritated because his boss said something about him and might discharge that irritation on his child's undone homework thinking that it is the cause. I guess more attentiveness reveals the actual cause.

VINEETO: I see that No 37 has answered most of your questions in an excellent way. As for writing ‘about some difficulties they found in this part when they practised this method initially’ I can highly recommend Peter’s Journal because it is to date the most comprehensive and down-to-earth account by a practicing actualist about utilizing the actualism method so as to become virtually free of malice and sorrow.

I can also recommend Peter’s conversations both with Alan and Gary where Peter passes on information about the various stages that can happen on the path. Here Peter describes one of the more hilarious of such episodes –

Peter: It does seem that you have understood, and are experiencing, that actualism is about becoming autonomous. Understanding is the first step, experiencing it is the next. Autonomy is an inevitable essential part of the process, which is why I always chuckle when someone says I am a disciple of a Guru. Actual Freedom is squeaky clean.

Gary: I suppose given the propensity of humans to form groups based on hierarchical principles it is natural for people to think that the same thing occurs in Actual Freedom or with the Actual Freedom Trust. I remember imagining such things myself, for instance, that you, Richard, and Vineeto were plotting or planning to do such and such, or so and so, that you had some type of steering committee or planning meetings. In hindsight, that appears ridiculous of course. There was also the tendency on my part to view Actual Freedom as some sort of Heaven or cultic activity with Richard being the Sun, and Peter and Vineeto revolving around the Sun in some sort of Actual Freedom firmament. Given that hierarchy occurs in any group, it is not surprising that one would have such thoughts or even wonder where one fits into such imagined hierarchy oneself. Becoming autonomous is becoming free from all such outlandish hierarchical notions as well as any tendency to subvert oneself to the authority (as in power) of another.

Peter: I went through exactly the same thing with Richard. I remember at one stage saying – ‘Okay, I’m hooked. You can let me in on the secret now’. I figured that if he was a super intelligent being seeded from outer space and seeking recruits, I was ready for the spacecraft to land. It’s all a hoot when I look back but given the human condition and our predilection to blindly follow or senselessly rebel, it is all par for the course, grist for the mill or fuel for the imagination – or the spacecraft in this case.

It is an extraordinary thing to take the words of actualism at face value. I found I had to abandon all my cynicism, crank up my naiveté yet be wary of being gullible as I had been in the past. This is only something that you can do for no one can take you by the hand and lead you down the path. It’s your own journey to being free and autonomous, but then again, that’s obvious isn’t it. Peter, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, Gary, 5.12.2000

29.5.2005

RESPONDENT: There seems to be a tremendous sorrow in me... it keeps coming back... it is not ‘Universal Sorrow’ or ‘compassion’ or something... it seems to not have reason (resentment to be here maybe?)... I am trying my best... it seems to be going away... but it keeps coming back... any suggestions? any experiences? Re: any suggestions welcome, 20.5.2005 AEST