VINEETO: Hi,

Welcome to the Actual Freedom Mailing List.

RESPONDENT: I’ve stumbled across actual freedom in my web meanderings (can’t remember the actual path, might have been via some UG gleanings) and it hit a major chord. It was clear that this was the refinement of a very similar process I’ve been following for the last several years. I’d been drawn to Buddhism for its seeming sparseness/simplicity, but always got bogged down at the mandatory requirement that compassion be a major component of the path. Seemed like the cart before the horse. (I do think Gautama got most of it right, but somehow 1400 years of revisionist history has muddied the picture a tad.)

The key element I did come away with was the importance of self-observation. Clearly, it was I who was having all these feelings and reactions, not the one who provided some external stimulus. For some time, the self-observation process has been very valuable, and there has been that fascinating natural process of the simple observation somehow causing a diminishment in the visceral response. I can’t explain this analytically (nor am particularly disposed to), other than it seems to be a case for the brain-as-programmable-entity model, which seems clear to me. (I do have to mention that I am an engineer by trade, so I appreciate the mechanistic universe.) However, lately I have felt stuck at the next step to take – enter AF. Elegantly simple principles and techniques, now all I have to do is the WORK.

VINEETO: Gautama Buddha’s self-observation has nought to do with the ‘self’-awareness that an actualist practices by asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ There is plenty of reference on the website relating to how you can determine that an actual freedom from the human condition is 180 opposite to the spiritual freedom – 180-degrees Opposite in The Actual Freedom Trust Library is just one of them.

Actualism is certainly not a ‘refinement’ of spiritual practice, on the contrary, actualism is a method for demolishing all of one’s spiritual concepts, images and beliefs, in short, one’s spiritual identity, questioning one’s good and bad feelings and bringing about the ‘self’-immolation of one’s very being. And there will be no phoenix rising from the ashes. So if you are looking for a ‘refinement of a very similar process I’ve been following for the last several years’ then actualism is the wrong place to come to, because actualism means a complete break with all concepts one has ever believed and all previous teachings one has ever followed or practiced.

However, if you are searching for something that can free you from the impediments and shackles of the human condition in toto, for something that will make you a happy and harmless human being, then I can confirm by my ongoing experience that the method of actualism works, utterly and irrevocably. With the sincere intent to eradicate malice and sorrow from my life I have succeeded in eradicating all of my beliefs and in examining all of my feelings to the extent that I am no longer run by swaying moods and driving passions.

But before you go ahead and apply what you consider ‘elegantly simple principles and techniques’, I suggest you take some time and diligence to read what is on offer. It is not just a modern-day clever spiritual advertisement to say that actual freedom is non-spiritual – actual freedom is non-spiritual in the literal meaning of the word. And because this discovery is something entirely new to human history – it does not aim to transcend the ego while aggrandizing the soul but is designed to eradicate one’s very being – it is worthwhile to very carefully study what is being described.

It is part of our human automatic ‘self’-defence-system to fear and avoid change, to look for the familiar and safe in new situations, to keep the values and practices that one has grown up with and lived with for so long. A radical change can only be the result of a thorough disillusionment with the status quo, a dissatisfaction with every solution and technique one has tried so far. Therefore, should you still be interested, I suggest that you study the actualism writing by deliberately focussing on what is different between actualism and spiritualism rather than looking for what seems similar.

RESPONDENT: There’s all these interesting areas of exploration...

... After 27+ years in a relationship, it’s dawning on me that what humans have called love bears a more than passing resemblance to neurosis. That chemical and psychological binding may have been useful in order to perpetuate the species (or its micro-cousin, the family), but I’m dimly becoming aware that I ain’t holding the puppet strings.

VINEETO: Yet you are ‘holding the puppet strings’ in that you are the only one who can change yourself. For me, the main dissatisfaction with the Eastern mysticism was that after 17 years of diligent practice I still could not live with a man in peace and harmony – and nor could any of my spiritual friends. In actualism, I recognized the ‘puppet strings’ for what they were and I set about to rid myself of instinctual malice and sorrow.

Now living with Peter is a delight every minute of the day, every day of the week.

RESPONDENT: ... One of my pet theories of late is that the real drug of abuse in the world is adrenaline. Clearly there are many junkies who get their fix seeing an action movie, or picking a fight in a bar, or arguing in a newsgroup. It’s the only explanation for the lust for football (either variety.) Adrenaline must be the lizard brain fuel.

VINEETO: The ‘explanation for the lust for football’, ‘action movie, or picking a fight in a bar, or arguing in a newsgroup’ is that every human being is, by default, endowed with the animal survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Adrenaline is not the cause of those passionate feelings, but merely one of the chemical substances that serves to translate the instinctual program into automatic thoughtless bodily reactions that then give substance to the thoughts and feelings that are ‘me’ – the parasitical psychological and psychic entity that dwells within the flesh and blood body.

RESPONDENT: ... How does AF deal with real-world stresses? For instance, a recent post posed soe questions dealing with the situation of raising a child.

These scenarios (and the evil boss, and the noisy neighbour, ad infinitum) are the real laboratory, and painful as they may seem, are likely where the path lies. I’ve raised a child through adulthood (or a simulation thereof), and still have no clue how to do it right. The cold, elemental truth is that the genetic program is to procreate, and bring that being to reproductive viability. Several thousand years of human civilization (using the term veeeeery loosely) have added some window dressing to that process to make us feel good about it, but the basic fact is still there (sorry Norman Rockwell). OK, now what?

VINEETO: Actualism is addressing the root of the problem, ‘me’, the lost, lonely and very cunning alien entity inside this flesh and blood body. I found that when I successively investigated what constituted my identity, the real-world stresses began to diminished and have now completely disappeared. There are still practical problems to solve and they are solved in the most easy and sensible way. The stress was created by ‘my’ survival fear, ‘my’ aggression, ‘my’ attachments, ‘my’ desires, ‘my’ loyalties, ‘my’ dreams and hopes – and not by being here in the physical world as Eastern spiritual teachings would have us believe. Once I examined each of these feelings and passions and traced them back to the bit of identity that produced and maintained them, I then had the choice to forsake that particular bit of my identity that produced and maintained the good and bad stress-creating feelings.

RESPONDENT: Step 2 of AF ...

VINEETO: Step 1 towards an actual freedom from the human condition is not, as you might think, self-observation, but a commitment to make becoming happy and harmless the most important thing in your life. Practicing self-observation without this intent only leads to the creation of ‘a watcher’ – a new dissociated identity that then feels superior to ‘normal’ people.

RESPONDENT: ... is to destroy all our cultural and social conditioning. That sounds imminently reasonable to me, but does that mean we must strap ploughs on to the children and send them to the fields? Or just not have them at all? Hmmmmmm ... Is No. 38 too attached to parentheses? These must be the subroutines of flat text, which I kinda like.

Well, there you are. Let’s give this a whirl and see where it goes.

VINEETO: No. I did not ‘destroy’ my cultural and social conditioning because that would leave ‘the destroyer’ intact. I examine and investigate how ‘I’ tick both as a social-spiritual identity and as an instinctual identity. The full awareness and complete understanding of each bit of programming then makes it possible to cease to automatically repeat the program and in doing so ‘I’ willingly agree to this part of ‘me’ disappearing. This persistent process of ‘self’-investigation and subsequent incremental ‘self’-elimination makes the business of being alive on this planet a thrilling, delightful and magical adventure for the first time in one’s life.

It’s well worth giving it a whirl, in fact, it’s the only game to play in town.

9.1.2002

VINEETO: Welcome to the Actual Freedom Mailing List.

RESPONDENT: <snip – a lot of heady stuff>

Thanks for the welcome, and the comments on my bio. There’s a lot here to digest, and a lot of other material to start digging through.

VINEETO: I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘heady stuff’ but I take it that you are busy mulling things over for a while.

You are very welcome to ask any questions and give any comments that pop into your head as I remember quite well the confusing and often bewildering time I had when I first came across actualism. Often I would go home from an afternoon’s talk with Richard with my head spinning with half-insights, lots of questions and often a reluctance to think further before I had understood and digested one particular issue.

I also remember the puzzlement and perplexity as my concepts, convictions, pet theories, dearly held beliefs and spiritual loyalties began to wobble and crumble one after the other in the light of my ongoing investigation. Then it was eminently reassuring, a great help and a delight to talk things through while applying sensible thought. To talk about a particular issue in this way supported my straightforward thinking ability, which had become very, very rusty after almost two decades the no-mind feeling-only practice of Eastern mysticism.

In the beginning of my explorations into the human condition I even had to exclude some topics from immediate questioning, as some of them were too unsettling to investigate at first. My spiritual belief in Eastern mysticism particularly was an issue that was taboo to questioning for quite sometime. Later, as my initial discoveries about my gender conditioning, sexual repressions and relating to others began to bear fruit and brought tangible release from my emotional shackles and insecurities, I then became ready to question ‘the big topic’, my loyalty to my former spiritual master, my belonging to his community and my fear of losing both my friends and spiritual identity. Needless to say, I lost both my spiritual identity and my spiritual friends and have since enjoyed the freedom and confidence of relying on tangible facts and common sense rather than on beliefs and passions.

16.1.2002

RESPONDENT: [...] There’s a lot here to digest, and a lot of other material to start digging through.

VINEETO: I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘heady stuff’ but I take it that you are busy mulling things over for a while.

RESPONDENT: Yup. I expect to be doing that for about the rest of my life.

VINEETO: My experience is, it does eventually come to an end.

*

VINEETO: I remember quite well the confusing and often bewildering time I had when I first came across actualism. Often I would go home from an afternoon’s talk with Richard with my head spinning with half-insights, lots of questions and often a reluctance to think further before I had understood and digested one particular issue.

RESPONDENT: I’ve already found that out. Though the AF position is fundamentally simple, there’s a lot of slippery bits that really need some focused attention.

VINEETO: Yes, and you are already right in the middle of investigating as to what are the ‘slippery bits’ in your discussions about faith and belief. Actuality – what you call ‘the AF position’ – is indeed very, very simple. So simple that I still can’t believe how easy life has become now.

It is not actuality that is ‘slippery’ but our social and instinctual programming that basically runs on attack and defence for ‘self’-survival with nurture and desire to propagate the species thrown into the equation. Once you can see that every human being is endowed with the same basic ‘slippery’ programming, then it is much easier not to take it personally, i.e. you understand that it is not ‘your’ fault – then the fun of finding out really begins.

RESPONDENT: This appeals to me...

VINEETO: The first thing that appealed to me when I came across actualism was that it made imminent sense – as opposed to spiritualism or its materialistic counterpart – existentialistic nihilism, which both made no sense at all the more I attempted to understand them. I began to understand why following the religious/ spiritual/ social mores and ethics had never resulted in happiness or living in peace with other human beings. When I followed spiritualism it was always impossible to apply the teachings in ‘the marketplace’, as in work and relationships, where the business of being alive was really happening. And as for sex – one was advised to transcend it by identifying with one’s ‘higher’ purer ‘self’ and the idea of a ‘self’-imposed celibacy was certainly no fun at all.

Actualism made sense to me in that I began to understand that, instead of removing my ‘self’ to a higher plane and dissociating from the world of people, things and events, I rolled up my sleeves and started to remove what spoiled the game of being alive.

RESPONDENT: I’ve always valued the amazing power of the brain.

VINEETO: Yes, the human brain is not only able to become aware and observe the world around us but it can also observe and investigate itself as well as change its own programming. No other animal can do this ... nor can any computer. And the most amazing power is that the brain can become aware of itself being aware as opposed to the normal situation of a ‘me’ being aware.

RESPONDENT: Beats sitting on your butt for hours, not-thinking.

VINEETO: Funny, you should say that. Nowadays, thinking seems to simply switch off when there is nothing to think about. Lying on the couch and letting my eyes cast over the various colours, shades and forms outside the window, listening to the bird-sounds on Richard’s screensaver while sipping a fresh hot cup of coffee is one of my favourite pass-times on a weekend. (Editor’s note: The screensaver is no longer available due to its incompatibility with Windows 8)

RESPONDENT: Thanks for the words.

VINEETO: You are very welcome. Although there are more than 2 million words on the Actual Freedom website, it is always a pleasure particularly when writing to someone who is interested in actualism.

16.1.2002

VINEETO: I also remember thinking about the meeting with U.G. Krishnamurti afterwards and he did not appear to me as a man who enjoyed life, i.e. someone who had the desirable state of mind, or no-mind or not-no-mind, that I would want to live myself. Personally, he did not strike me as someone whose life was worth emulating – and he says so himself. His casual remarks about his daily life in the meeting gave the impression of someone waiting for his fate to run its course until he physically dies. I sat ‘in the presence’ of several spiritual masters in my 17 years of spiritual search and had felt bliss, inner peace and love but with U.G. Krishnamurti I only felt bewilderment. I was more disorientated and confused by the meeting and had certainly not found the answer I was looking for – what is the best possible way one can experience life? <snip>

I have found the quote where he fully described the experience of this ‘calamity’ that happened to him – <snipped>

I agree with him that nobody can liberate anybody but I have experienced glimpses of freedom from the Human Condition in pure consciousness experiences and it is certainly not a ‘godforsaken place’ nor is it ‘physical torture’ . Therefore wherever he has reached is not the actual world. My personal theory is that he somehow got stuck on the way shortly before discovering that there is a cornucopia of delights to be experienced when one is fully free from one’s identity and one’s ‘being’. In actualism I have found a method that facilitates my becoming more and more free from the human condition, which is so successful that I am sometimes thrilled to bits as well as steeped in the sensuous delight of being alive.

RESPONDENT: What appealed to me about UG’s position was his adamant statement that essentially we are animal beings, running the genetic programs that are intended only to ensure the survival and perpetuation of the species.

Anything beyond that is fabrication, window dressing. While that struck me as fundamentally true, it did seem rather nihilistic from a practical POV: OK, now that I’ve begat my progeny, what should I do... roll over and die?

VINEETO: Yes, he made that statement many times and he was just as adamant about that one cannot do anything about one’s genetic program. Vis –

Q: It is frightening to think of living without a centre, a self, a reference point...

U.G.: The reference point, the ‘I’, cannot be eliminated through any volition on your part. In the final analysis, it is your genetically predetermined program, your ‘script’. Mind is a Myth

*

U.G.: But the experiencing structure is genetic in its origin and in its expression. Everything is genetically controlled. If we really want to change individuals, the only way we can do it is not by changing the environment, not through changing the cultural input, but by trying to understand what really is the part that genes play in us. Maybe through some kind of genetic engineering we can create perfect human beings. Thought is Your Enemy

Further, U.G Krishnamurti clearly remained stuck in his cultural Indian heritage in that he upheld the typical Eastern notion that thought is the primary problem within the human condition and that feelings are merely by-products of thoughts. Vis –

Thought is a self-protective mechanism. So anything that is born out of thought is destructive – whether it is religious thought or scientific thought or political thought – all of them are destructive. But we are not ready to accept that it is thought that is our enemy. Thought is Your Enemy

Feeling is also thought. We want to feel that feelings are more important than thoughts, but there is no way you can experience a feeling without translating that within the framework of the knowledge that you have. Thought is Your Enemy

By maintaining this conviction he paints himself into a corner making it then impossible to investigate the deeper feelings and genetic instinctual passions, which automatically arise before thought even has a chance to operate. LeDoux and others have done extensive empirical research that shows that the sensory input stream to the amygdala – which produces the feeling response – takes only 12 milliseconds as opposed to the 25 millisecond that it takes to reach the neo-cortex – which then produces the thought response.

In order to know that one can indeed change human nature it is essential to become aware of and examine one’s emotions and instinctual passions as they arise prior to thoughts. U.G. Krishnamurti apparently never conducted such an investigation because he has left much of his social/spiritual conditioning unexamined. Even if someone is entrapped within some form of altered state of consciousness it is still possible to continue investigating one’s psyche in action, which is precisely what Richard did in his 11 years of Enlightenment. The major obstacles to keep going is a tendency to rest on one’s laurels and think one has arrived, which is why it is doubtful that any of those who have succumbed to a permanent altered state of consciousness will have the necessary impetus to become actually free.

RESPONDENT: Enter AF, presenting an opportunity to undo most or all of the programs, including the hard-wired ones. What bothers me a bit is that ‘live happy and harmless’ could be construed to be just another program, albeit a more desirable one. Timothy Leary said ‘As long as we create our own reality, we might as well make it a good one’.

VINEETO: And Timothy Leary, like so many of his generation, chose a drug-induced greater reality. He believed his ‘soul’ was located in his brain and he even arranged after his death for his head to be cut off and frozen in order that his ‘soul-brain’ could be revived at some future date. His ‘own reality’ certainly included some kind of an afterlife.

Actuality is not your own reality, on the contrary, actuality only becomes apparent when your own reality disappears. Therefore you ‘undo most or all of the programs, including the hard-wired ones’ and don’t create another program otherwise it’s not an undoing.

RESPONDENT: So my question is, how do AF adherents know they have turned off the programs, and not simply replace them with a more pleasing variety? This question is posed from curiosity, not criticism, as either response is a not bad way to live.

VINEETO: In a pure consciousness experience (PCE) you know by direct experience that the believer, feeler and passionate ‘self’ is absent and does not interfere with your direct sensate awareness of what is happening. A PCE gives you a glimpse of the actuality that is always here and that only becomes apparent when ‘I’ the believer and ‘me’, the ‘feeler’ are temporarily in abeyance.

The writings of actualists can provide you with sufficient information for you to establish a prima facie case that what is on offer is genuine and makes sense. If this is the case, you can then begin your own investigation into your psyche with the sincere intent to eliminate malice and sorrow in your life. In this way you keep your wits about you, you can crank up your naiveté while avoiding being gullible and you can confidently abandon all belief and simply go with what works.

Of course, if you are looking for a shortcut and consider turning actualism into your latest belief to file it with the rest of the passionate fairy-tales of human imagination, then you would be missing the point entirely. Actualism is not a belief or the imagination that one feels happy and harmless, but it is a proven method that, when applied with diligence, determination and pure intent, makes one tangibly and noticeably happy and harmless. The method of actualism is designed to discover, investigate and eventually eliminate the believer and that includes the believer in any system that one may have concocted out of the actualist writings.

As for the empathy issue that you mentioned in your letter to Gary –

[Respondent to Gary]: The empathy issue is one of the nubs, for myself. I have an internal resistance to AF because it feels like I would be failing my fellow human beings. [endquote].

U.G. Krishnamurti gave an excellent example that even the feeling of ‘true’ empathy does nothing to alleviate another’s pain and discomfort and he explains how this feeling prevented him from responding in a sensible manner to a situation –

[quote]: This actually happened to me when I was staying in a coffee plantation: a mother started beating a child, a little child, you know. She was mad, hopping mad, and she hit the child so hard, the child almost turned blue. And somebody asked me ‘Why did you not interfere and stop her?’ I was standing there – I was so puzzled, you see. ‘Who should I take pity on, the mother or the child?’ – that was my answer – ‘Who is responsible?’ Both were in a ridiculous situation: the mother could not control her anger, and the child was so helpless and innocent. This went on – it was moving from one to the other – and then I found all those things (marks) on my back. So I was also part of that. (I am not saying this just to claim something.) That is possible because consciousness cannot be divided. Anything that is happening there is affecting you – this is affection, you understand? There is no question of your sitting in judgement on anybody; the situation happens to be that, so you are affected by that. You are affected by everything that is happening there. The Mystique of Enlightenment

If one believes, as U.G. Krishnamurti does, that ‘consciousness cannot be divided’, then this means one believes there is no way out of the collective mess that is humanity.

I found that the best I can do for my fellow human beings is to relieve them from my malice and my sorrow – this way, not only do I stop bludgeoning and burdening everyone I come in contact with but I actually reduce the amount of malice and sorrow in the world in the only person I can change – myself.

As for ‘failing my fellow human beings’ – yes, I have become a traitor to the ‘real’ world as well as to the spiritual world, giving up finding solutions and admitting to failure. But it is important to note that an actualist fails humanity and not his or her fellow human beings. Given that an instinct-driven humanity is, always has been and always will be, a failed institution, it makes eminent sense to bail out, as it were. The only way out of the madness of the ‘real’ world is to get out and that means that I stubbornly and persistently decline to play the game of passionate survival that everyone else is playing. I am abandoning humanity and humanity’s problems and, as such leaving my ‘self’ behind.

20.1.2002

RESPONDENT No 37: Or even if I am upset with someone – to be clear with them that I am getting upset – not that I have to ‘take it out on them’, but it seems better to communicate or express feeling rather than suppressing it.

VINEETO: Speaking personally, I soon discovered that my wanting to express to someone that they were making me upset was simply a way of blaming the other for my feeling upset – a convenient way of avoiding investigating my own feelings and discovering why other people’s acts or words upset me. In other words, I came to realize that if I didn’t stop the cycle of blaming others then I would never experience peace on earth.

RESPONDENT: Yes! When I really peel back the layers of all my interactions, I find that there’s many subtle cases where I’ve projected my reactions on to others. All instances must be suspect and investigated. All. The ole’ grey matter is very comfortable with the patterns and is insidious in manifesting them.

VINEETO: Yes, that’s it. ‘All instances must be suspect and investigated. All.’ Richard describes ‘me’ as ‘a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity’, which I can entirely corroborate by my experience of investigating ‘me’ in its multitudinous forms and expressions. ‘I’ am as tricky as all get out. The very survival mechanism humans are endowed with is wired for ‘self’-defence and for that very reason every any questioning of the status quo is automatically considered an attack. That’s why the only one who can free yourself is you, because only you can have the intent, awareness and insight as to how to get past your own ‘self’-defence in order to be able to undo your own social/spiritual conditioning and become aware of your own instinctual passions.

By the way, it is not the ‘grey matter’ itself that ‘is very comfortable with the patterns and is insidious in manifesting them’ but the way the ‘grey matter’ is wired or programmed. In actualism one is de-programming the brain, removing all of one’s social conditioning and instinctual passions to leave a free, clear thinking, sensible, benevolent and intelligent brain.

*

RESPONDENT No 37: So – just how does this ‘third alternative’ deal with ‘low levels’ of emotion. Where do I draw the line between what is advantageous for me to express and what is not? Just what is meant by ‘not expressing’ emotion anyway?

VINEETO: You don’t have to draw a line – not expressing one’s emotions means not expressing. The longer you practice the method of actualism the better you become in not expressing or suppressing the emotion when it comes up. I found that even slight expressions of my emotions, say irritation or displeasure, would cause uncontrollable ripples and repercussions in my interactions with people and, because my aim is to be harmless, I don’t want to create ripples.

RESPONDENT: So the diligent practitioner may become more facile in not expressing or suppressing the emotion when it comes up.’ My question is: Do you have the same amount/ type/ quality of feelings, and your reactions and expressions are less, or are you actually feeling less, so to speak?

VINEETO: First, it is crucial to remember that the aim of actualism is not to live without feelings because that is impossible while still being a ‘self’. To do so you would only end up suppressing or dissociating from your feelings and identifying as a ‘non-feeling self’. The method of actualism is aimed to minimise the influence of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and to activate the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, appreciation, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on.

For me, as a result of applying this method, the ‘amount/type/ quality of feelings’ has changed from ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to felicitous/ innocuous feelings and, all in all, there are far fewer emotions interfering with my being happy and harmless than when I started the process four years ago. The first layer of emotions that one invariably encounters is due to one’s social-spiritual conditioning, that is all of one’s beliefs, one’s morals and ethics which one has imbibed in the course of one’s life. A belief is an emotion-backed thought, which means that many emotional reactions are caused by the continual need to maintain and defend one’s dear-held beliefs and precious social identity. Consequently with each belief investigated and eliminated my life has become easier and also far less emotional.

For example, following my extensive investigating into my emotional problems with authority, an insight revealed the root cause – my belief in a disembodied Higher Authority. Once I realized, without doubt, that the existence of a God by whatever name was nothing but a commonly held belief and not a fact, the whole range of emotional charges around authority – any authority – disappeared completely, never to return.

I described the process of this realization in Peter’s Journal –

[Vineeto]: One of the first major issues in my relationship to Peter was both my dependence on male authority and the subsequent fight against it – a constant struggle in itself! In my life I had focussed on several, mostly male authority figures – naturally starting with my father. I had loved them or followed them or fought them – often at the same time. This was the main reason not only for the frustrations and ensuing failure of all my relationships in the past, but also for my difficulties in working relations or friendships. Being either subservient to or fighting against authority would constantly spoil my being at ease with people.

Interestingly, I could only get rid of authority by tracing its cause to the very root: What do I want or need authority for in my life? Why do I create authority? What do I get out of it? What was the ultimate authority behind each representative of power? Which version of good and bad, right and wrong was I to follow? Could I consider living without an external or internal authority in my life? And what would be the consequences?

I explored and discovered in myself the underlying belief that there was Someone or Something, who had created the guidelines of good and bad, right and wrong. And what I found was that those different authority figures represented nothing other than the particular values of moral – or later spiritual – improvement that I took to be right and necessary. These were the values and inhibitions to be followed on the ‘right’ path to a meaningful life. Simply rebelling against these authority figures did not invalidate the power of their opinions over me – I had tried that since childhood. Again and again I found myself dependent on their approval, their love and their support, but I had never questioned the very values themselves. I had only followed or fought those who represented these values. Usually, when I succeeded freeing myself of one authority figure, I soon found that I had only replaced them with a supposedly better one – but it never solved the problem. Slowly I started to understand that in order to be free from authority I had to eliminate the need for, and support of, those very beliefs and values underlying the authority.

Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery.

This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear.

When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master.

Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. A Bit of Vineeto

22.1.2002

RESPONDENT: What appealed to me about UG’s position was his adamant statement that essentially we are animal beings, running the genetic programs that are intended only to ensure the survival and perpetuation of the species.

Anything beyond that is fabrication, window dressing. While that struck me as fundamentally true, it did seem rather nihilistic from a practical POV: OK, now that I’ve begat my progeny, what should I do... roll over and die?

VINEETO: Yes, he made that statement many times and he was just as adamant about that one cannot do anything about one’s genetic program. Vis – <snip> Further, U.G Krishnamurti clearly remained stuck in his cultural Indian heritage in that he upheld the typical Eastern notion that thought is the primary problem within the human condition and that feelings are merely by-products of thoughts. Vis –

[quote]: Thought is a self-protective mechanism. So anything that is born out of thought is destructive – whether it is religious thought or scientific thought or political thought – all of them are destructive. But we are not ready to accept that it is thought that is our enemy. Thought is Your Enemy

[quote]: Feeling is also thought. We want to feel that feelings are more important than thoughts, but there is no way you can experience a feeling without translating that within the framework of the knowledge that you have. Thought is Your Enemy

RESPONDENT: This sounds somewhat 180 degree-ish.

VINEETO: If you meant that the latest scientific findings that feelings operate before thought are ‘180 degree-ish’ then you are spot on. The belief that feelings are but thoughts and that thought is the enemy is based on ancient wisdom, or ancient ignorance and superstition as it should be called. This belief has led millions upon millions of sincere seekers down the wrong alley and explains the fact that the end result of this search has been either a mindless passionate state of dissociation or a mindless nihilistic state of resignation.

*

VINEETO: By maintaining this conviction he paints himself into a corner making it then impossible to investigate the deeper feelings and genetic instinctual passions, which automatically arise before thought even has a chance to operate. LeDoux and others have done extensive empirical research that shows that the sensory input stream to the amygdala – which produces the feeling response – takes only 12 milliseconds as opposed to the 25 millisecond that it takes to reach the neo-cortex – which then produces the thought response.

RESPONDENT: If you could invent something that stretches that 12 msec out to 50, and put it in pill form ... I wonder if serotonin uptake inhibitors have an effect on this value. It’s on my to-do list to rummage through this LeDoux’s material.

VINEETO: I don’t think that a pill will ever be able to replace self-awareness and pure intent. But through self-awareness it is certainly possible to stretch ‘12 msec out to 50’ or more, and for Richard there seem to be no chemicals triggered by the amygdala at all. There is a growing body of evidence that the brain is programmed by a series of connections between nodes called synapses and that these connections are capable of change. If this is the case then deleting this programming can be explained in the following terms –

When you follow an emotion back to its origin as it arises and pin it down to an event, a memory, a belief, a fear, a part of your identity and finally the instinctual passion – then you can see it in the bright light of awareness and the emotion will lose its urgency and conviction and is seen for what it is – a bit of the software programming in the brain that can be deleted. The next time, when the same emotion arises, it will be less convincing, the synapse in the brain will slowly weaken and each time you investigate a particular feeling or belief, it will become weaker until the relevant synapse that may well form that program will eventually be broken.

As for ‘rummage through this LeDoux material’ – you can find a brief layman summary and the address for the LeDoux website on the instinct page in The Actual Freedom Trust Library.

RESPONDENT: It’s starting to dawn on me how radical a proposition AF is making. I’ve been generally trying to view everything that happens in the context of AF, and how it would all change if these principles were commonplace. We would be without wars.

VINEETO: Yes, the world would be without wars, genocides, murders, suicides, domestic violence, rapes, robberies, police, jails, and locks on our doors. Hunger and poverty would disappear from the news reports as would protests, demonstrations, corruption, pollution, overpopulation and desolation in the face of natural disasters. Ingenuity and technology would make this earth a lush, safe and sustainable paradise for everybody.

There would be no hackers on the Internet, no need for security and anti-virus software and probably most of the sex-sites would also disappear for lack of customers. Richard describes more of this utopia in his journal –

Richard: It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true. Richard’s Journal, Article 20

RESPONDENT: We would also be without most competitive sports, ...

VINEETO: Yes, I can certainly think of more fun-things to do than training for the Olympics.

RESPONDENT: ... most of the great art works, ...

VINEETO: Why shouldn’t we have works of art in a world free from instinctual passions? People certainly would have more time at their hand to play when they are not driven by fear, aggression and greed, and one’s favourite pastime could very well be an artistic one. If you take away the social and affective values of beauty and fashion, then playing with the materials of the earth can be very sensuous and pleasing indeed.

RESPONDENT: ... maybe most of the buildings.

VINEETO: Why should buildings disappear? I certainly prefer to live in a modern comfortable building compared to a cave or straw hut. When the affective faculty disappears, people will be free to build what is sensible, comfortable, practical and sensuously pleasing. But there would certainly be no need for police stations, law courts, jails, army bases, martial art dojos and the like, nor would there be need for churches, cathedrals, temples, monasteries, ashrams or the like.

RESPONDENT: I’m being a bit extreme here perhaps, but most of the progress of human civilization (term is used loosely, ok?) has been driven by that amygdalic reaction. This is a big change.

VINEETO: No, ‘the progress of human civilization’ has been engineered by human inventiveness, ingenuity, intelligence and the inbuilt drive for betterment but has been continuously hampered by fear, righteousness, religious superstition, greed and corruption. It is, in fact, astounding what excellence in technology, safety, leisure and pleasure has been achieved despite ‘that amygdalic reaction’.

*

RESPONDENT: So my question is, how do AF adherents know they have turned off the programs, and not simply replace them with a more pleasing variety? This question is posed from curiosity, not criticism, as either response is a not bad way to live.

VINEETO: In a pure consciousness experience (PCE) you know by direct experience that the believer, feeler and passionate ‘self’ is absent and does not interfere with your direct sensate awareness of what is happening. A PCE gives you a glimpse of the actuality that is always here and that only becomes apparent when ‘I’ the believer and ‘me’, the ‘feeler’ are temporarily in abeyance. The writings of actualists can provide you with sufficient information for you to establish a prima facie case that what is on offer is genuine and makes sense. If this is the case, you can then begin your own investigation into your psyche with the sincere intent to eliminate malice and sorrow in your life. In this way you keep your wits about you, you can crank up your naiveté while avoiding being gullible, you can confidently abandon all belief and simply go with what works.

RESPONDENT: And I intend to do so. I was just posing a question that realistically, no one could answer in any convincing fashion. I do have a tendency to play the devil’s advocate a bit. One of my more annoying habits.

VINEETO: It’s a very good habit to put to use when you question what you have been made to believe since day one. But I also found it useful when asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to check whether my scepticism was not cynicism in disguise. You may well have twigged already that naiveté is an essential prerequisite in understanding what actualism is about.

*

VINEETO: As for the empathy issue that you mentioned in your letter to Gary –

[Respondent to Gary]: The empathy issue is one of the nubs, for myself. I have an internal resistance to AF because it feels like I would be failing my fellow human beings. [[endquote].

U.G. Krishnamurti gave an excellent example that even the feeling of ‘true’ empathy does nothing to alleviate another’s pain and discomfort and explains how this feeling prevented him from responding in a sensible manner to a situation – <snip> If one believes, as U.G. Krishnamurti does, that ‘consciousness cannot be divided’, then this means one believes there is no way out of the collective mess that is humanity.

I found that the best I can do for my fellow human beings is to relieve them from my malice and my sorrow – this way, not only do I stop bludgeoning and burdening everyone I come in contact with but I actually reduce the amount of malice and sorrow in the world in the only person I can change – myself.

As for ‘failing my fellow human beings’ – yes, I have become a traitor to the ‘real’ world as well as to the spiritual world, giving up finding solutions and admitting to failure. But it is important to note that an actualist fails humanity and not his or her fellow human beings. Given that an instinct-driven humanity is, always has been and always will be, a failed institution, it makes eminent sense to bail out, as it were. The only way out of the madness of the ‘real’ world is to get out and that means that I stubbornly and persistently decline to play the game of passionate survival that everyone else is playing. I am abandoning humanity and humanity’s problems and, as such leaving my ‘self’ behind.

RESPONDENT: OK, that sounds great at the macro level, I couldn’t agree more. When it comes to individuals’ problems, things get more complicated. No 37 is hammering at this stuff on a parallel thread, but here I am ...

VINEETO: No, I am not talking ‘at the macro level’ – I am talking about my own personal experience. In my day-to-day interaction with people the best I can do for them is to be happy and harmless, in every instance of my interactions.

RESPONDENT: Let’s take a couple of examples. We’re presuming a fully actualized individual here, who has the whole feeling-amygdala thing well in hand.

VINEETO: Just to be clear about the terms – when you talk about ‘the whole feeling-amygdala thing well in hand’ I presume you mean what we refer to as a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow. Right now, only Richard is a ‘fully actualized individual’, living a pure consciousness experience 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are interested in what Richard has to say about living safely without instinctual passions then his selected correspondence on the topic ‘body’ might be a good start.

RESPONDENT: 1. The individual is physically attacked. Does she monitor her feelings and responses and get beaten, or does she fight back, tooth and nail? I’d like to think that this training process would give us some facility in using the amygdala when appropriate.

VINEETO: About two years ago a situation occurred that I would have usually perceived as dangerous. I got into my car to drive away in the morning, when the neighbour next door, a rather hot-tempered and muscular young bloke, approached me and started yelling at me through the open car window. I had parked in front of his unused garage and he made it very clear both in words and body language that he was very upset about it.

Despite the fact that my fear sensors went on alarm, I was able to sensibly check out the situation and I could see that I was physically relatively safe – the only thing he could do was punch my face through the open window and he did not seem to have the intent at this moment. I listened to what he had to say and when he got to repeat it for the third time I quietly said I would remember his wish in future, closed the window and drove off. It took a while until the chemicals triggered by the amygdala subsided but I was pleased that I had not reacted angrily or defensively. Two days later I met the guy again, greeted him in a friendly way with no emotional charge whatsoever and was surprised when he began to apologize for his strong reaction. He said he had not known I was a neighbour and offered that I could park my car in front of his garage from now on.

This situation showed me that it is indeed possible to respond to an attack without instinctual aggression and malice but also without fearful submission. Therefore I can say that in the case of an occurring physical attack I would fend for myself as much as needed – or retreat if that is possible – but that I would not react with malice. This flesh and blood body is perfectly capable of fending for itself and can do so much more sensibly and effectively without the interference of instinctual paralysing fear or vengeful aggression.

RESPONDENT: 2. You are moments away from leaving your spouse after a long, deep relationship. The spouse announces that she has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Do you stay to help her (familial, genetic and social programming), or do you leave as planned in order to be happy?

VINEETO: Generally speaking, as a practicing actualist I am happy and harmless regardless of what situation I am living in.

Being virtually free from the human condition, I am no longer bound by morals and ethics – there is no such thing as actual-freedom-morals or ethics – nor am I driven by instinctual passions and, as such, whatever I do is without malice and sorrow. Morals and ethics only exist because of the need to keep the lid on the selfish instinctual passions and when these passions no longer rule the roost I am able to make a sensible decision about what is appropriate and best for everyone in the situation, me included.

The second thing to consider is that, as an actualist, I investigate all my emotions that inevitably come up when relating to other people, the ‘bad’ emotions like greed, anger, withdrawal, fear and hate as well as the ‘good’ emotions like love, beauty, trust, hope and faith. When there is neither love nor hate, neither fear nor trust, neither despair nor hope clouding my perception then it is inevitable that no matter who I live with I will live with the person, or persons, in utter peace and harmony.

RESPONDENT: Maybe these are trite examples, but they are in the real world. Thanks.

VINEETO: Actualism is about living in the world as it is with people as they are. I am not intending to change other people – or the world – but I whittle away at removing what prevents me from being happy and harmless right here, right now.

26.1.2002

VINEETO: Something you wrote to Gary the other day twigged me to butt in –

RESPONDENT to Gary: Ain’t this the truth. I’m starting to realize that AF presents a very radical shift, despite its apparent simplicity. I was talking with my wife, who is an intelligent person, about some of the genetic and cultural programs running in our brains and was surprised at how resistant she was to exploring their nature. While she admitted that they existed, she didn’t believe they could be modified, and more importantly, believed they were valuable, if not a key component of her very self. To lose them would be to lose her ‘self’. That’s scary.

VINEETO: I have heard similar stories from other men when they were talking to their female companions about investigating emotions and being female, I thought I would contribute some insider information about gender conditioning.

One of the first things I began to explore when I came across actualism was my own gender conditioning, and I also learnt a lot about the conditioning of the male camp, which had always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Given that my aim was to live in peace and harmony with Peter, the first and obvious obstacles to a harmonious equity were those beliefs and feelings that were linked to my identity as a woman. I found that women, much more than men, are taught to value feelings as the being the final arbiter of assessing any given situation – and I discovered that I was no different. I used to rely much more on my intuition than on common sense and I gave far more credence to experiencing a situation emotionally rather than acknowledging the facts of the situation. Additionally, this conditioning was enhanced and confirmed by Eastern spiritual teaching, which admonishes all seekers to ‘trust your feelings’ and to ‘leave your mind at the door’ when meditating.

In my explorations I found that my social conditioning as a woman was deeply connected to the instinctual female role of a child-bearer and nest-maker. Women are encouraged to be more emotional while men are expected to be successful hunters and providers in the world for which one needs to use brawns and brains more than feelings and emotions. Consequently, expressing feelings and knowing how to put them to use was my most valuable asset for yielding power over others in order to get what I wanted, particularly in my relationships with men. But apart from being a power-tool, feelings were also the main ingredient of my identity as a woman – ‘I’ am first and foremost my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.

Only because I was deeply fed up with the havoc that my feelings created in my life and the life of others around me, was I able to see the sense in questioning all of my feelings – because examining my feelings is a tangible step to being able to be intimate with all of my fellow human beings regardless of their gender. It’s a lonely business being trapped on either side of the gender divide.

RESPONDENT: Of course, I had the opportunity to observe my own processes of the need to educate others, and annoyance at their inability to understand.

VINEETO: Well, I can remember that stage well from the time when I bowled over a few people with my enthusiasm. But my interactions with people have given me the plenty of opportunity to observe and explore ‘me’ in action, and that’s the main focus of my attention until ‘the fat lady sings’.

28.1.2002

RESPONDENT to Gary: I’m starting to realize that AF presents a very radical shift, despite its apparent simplicity. I was talking with my wife, who is an intelligent person, about some of the genetic and cultural programs running in our brains and was surprised at how resistant she was to exploring their nature. While she admitted that they existed, she didn’t believe they could be modified, and more importantly, believed they were valuable, if not a key component of her very self. To lose them would be to lose her ‘self’. That’s scary.

VINEETO: In my explorations I found that my social conditioning as a woman was deeply connected to the instinctual female role of a child-bearer and nest-maker. Women are encouraged to be more emotional while men are expected to be successful hunters and providers in the world for which one needs to use brawns and brains more than feelings and emotions. Consequently, expressing feelings and knowing how to put them to use was my most valuable asset for yielding power over others in order to get what I wanted, particularly in my relationships with men. But apart from being a power-tool, feelings were also the main ingredient of my identity as a woman – ‘I’ am first and foremost my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.

Only because I was deeply fed up with the havoc that my feelings created in my life and the life of others around me, was I able to see the sense in questioning all of my feelings – because examining my feelings is a tangible step to being able to be intimate with all of my fellow human beings regardless of their gender. It’s a lonely business being trapped on either side of the gender divide.

RESPONDENT: The constant state of tension brought by the animal hunger of the male for the female, and the female’s control of that situation, has long been a painful place for me.

VINEETO: I can tell you that ‘the female’s control of that situation’ is only perceived as such on the male’s end. For instance, the whole movement of women’s liberation was born of the idea that the men had control over the women’s lives. In other words, each side in the battle of the sexes sees the other side as being the controller, being more dominant, being more manipulative, being unable to understand the other, and so on. The idea that someone else is in control of my life is in itself part of the automatic instinctual battle for power between the sexes and the first step to become free of feeling controlled and being controlled was for me to admit that, and find out how, I was driven by my own instinctual passions and shackled by my own imbibed social identity of being a woman.

The more I discovered that the cards were distributed equally, i.e. equally restrictive for both genders, the more my defensiveness and my idea of being a victim dropped and I was then able to explore precisely what convictions and conventions, roles and rules I had taken on board about what it is supposed to mean to be a woman. The way I began to unravel the mystery of the eternal battle between the genders was easy – whenever I got upset about anything Peter or another man said to me or about me, I had something to look at. Whenever I found myself about to defend my convictions about what women are or what they should do or how they could be, I became aware that there was a piece of my identity as a woman in it as well. Whenever I dared to replace such a dearly held idea, passion or dream with facts a piece of my identity as a woman also went down the drain.

After a few initial fears and hesitations, and as those roles and rules were slowly uncovered and discarded, it became increasingly delightful to find out that the differences that I had imagined existed between genders were disappearing. A few months into our relationship and into my explorations about my conditioning I suddenly looked at Peter and saw him without perceiving him as a man and my lover and all that it entailed. It was such a shock at first because I had never been able to look at him without simultaneously overlaying an image of what I wanted or feared or dreamt of. Suddenly there was a human being sitting next to me – and I had never seen that human being before, because I had been so busy with what I felt and thought about him. It is a delicious magic when the curtain of instinctual ‘self’-centredness breaks, if only for a few moments at first, and gives way to experiencing an intimate meeting with another fellow human being.

RESPONDENT: I have spent a long time wading through my smorgasbord of feelings and can honestly say that that effort resulted in the dissipation of the vast majority of them. Your post has some interesting timing as just the other day my wife expressed a feeling of loss for the passion that infused the earlier days of our relationship. While that was a lot of fun, I wouldn’t for a second ask for it back, since it comes bundled with all those other miserable feelings. I woke up this morning thinking about what she had said, and felt an immense feeling of relief. This is not suppression ... the feelings are genuinely gone, for the most part. I see our relationship in a much clearer light, and I am no longer beholden to her.

This puts me/us in an interesting spot, which we’ve touched on a bit: when the biological/hormonal imperative is removed, what form does the male/female relationship take? I would hope there could grow some genuine intimacy, but I guess we’ll see how that evolves.

VINEETO: The process of actualism is to investigate the feelings that prevent you from being happy and harmless. In order to investigate those feelings it is vital that you not only think about them but that you experience those particular feelings as they occur – otherwise you won’t be able to experientially understand how ‘you’ tick and discover what underlies those feelings. In order to do that, I first had to backtrack from the conditioning that I picked up in my spiritual years of being detached and dis-identified as in ‘I am not my body, I am not my feelings’. An actualist does the opposite to spiritual transcendence – when I discover a feeling, I completely identify with it because ‘I’ am my feelings and each feeling is yet another aspect of ‘me’ in action – the very identity that I want to examine and explore, uncover and investigate.

As for ‘when the biological/hormonal imperative is removed’ – my experience was that while my hormonal imperative may have waned over the years that only meant that I searched for other ways to express my identity. In the East it is common practice that when a man’s sexual drive disappears with old age, he turns to spirituality, becomes a monk or a sannyasin and seeks immortality. In a similar vein, women in the West desperately search for a new meaningful identity when menopause sets in, depriving them of their identity as a sexually attractive person and a mother. The need to ‘be’ does not automatically disappear with old age, as some religions have us believe, but it often shifts the focus of one’s passion from achievements in this world to achievements in the other ethereal world. When I came across actualism I began to understand that actual freedom is not about replacing one ‘me’ with another ‘higher’ or purer ‘me’ but that it is indeed a method that aims for eliminating any ‘self’ whatsoever.

In order to totally remove ‘the biological/hormonal imperative’ I found it necessary to explore the full extent of my sexual conditioning that I had imbibed from both my Christian upbringing and my Eastern spiritual conditioning. After all, both my conditioning and my instinctual drive stood in the way of a free enjoyment of sex, the most sensual and sensuous interaction two human beings can share. This is what I wrote about my discoveries at the time –

[Vineeto]: When Peter and I started to throw out love it had a great impact on my sexual ‘identity’. It was an intense and scary time because right behind the nice, embellishing veil of love lingered all the monsters and demons of being an animal, a whore, a slut, not human and having sex with a ‘stranger’. Enjoying sex without ‘being in love’ is still considered one of the greatest sins of Christian morality. And Eastern spirituality regards any kind of sex as the biggest obstacle to enlightenment.

Not only had I to face my own personal conditioning about sex but I was also confronted with the fact of stepping out of the collective accepted behaviour and limits that every woman had been taught. Demons of atavistic fears would present me with their ferocious stories, as though I was still living in the Middle Ages, where women were burnt at the stake for leaving the fold or were expelled for not conforming. It took some effort to understand that both fears and beliefs around sex were simply inherited from other people, they don’t have any actual relevance for me. Digging deeper, stepping outside of the realm of sexual conditioning and beliefs I then discovered their underlying force – the sexual instincts.

This inheritance from our animal past is simply installed to blindly ensure the continuity of the species. It has nothing to do with my happiness and inhibits any sensible behaviour. Those blind instincts cause, among other troubles, possessiveness, jealousy, rape, murder and overpopulation. Identified and seen as what they were, these instincts eventually lost their significance and their grip over me. Now I can enjoy the sensibility and pleasure of sex without being driven, free of the need and dependency that used to be the inevitable consequence. I now don’t need to reinforce my female sexual identity or practise my manipulative power over men – hence the need for flirting has disappeared. Relating to men without the restriction of sexual flirtation is indeed a freedom to meet them in a new and fresh way. A Bit of Vineeto

As I see it, nothing ‘evolves’ unless you have the passion to find out why you are not intimate, why you are not happy and harmless 24 hrs a day. The intimacy that I experience in relating to others is not dependant on how intimate they are with me but is solely based on the fact that neither any conditioning nor any feeling interferes with me being intimately present, giving 100% attention to the other. Again, achieving intimacy is a unilateral action – I remove every obstacle that prevents me meeting the other as a fellow flesh-and-blood human being.

The intimacy that has emerged after exploring all the impediments – my female role-play, my sexual repression and conditioning, my dream of love and my spiritual beliefs – is far beyond my wildest dreams. Not only do I enjoy an ongoing peaceful and harmonious living together but also a sensuous sexual play that far exceeds anything I ever experienced when I was still driven by sexual passions.

Peter has described it in his journal –

Peter: The results of this investigation are indeed quite interesting. We have discovered a heightened sensual pleasure in sex. We have stripped away almost all of the emotions, fears, blockages, hesitancies, guilt, and any withholding that occurs around sex. Now it is simply a matter of when to comfortably fit it in to the day; we generally prefer the morning, as the resulting sensations can last for hours. It’s that ‘Wow’ or ‘Hmmm’ that we can get at the coffee shop later on that is so good. It is usually obvious when it is a good time to jump into bed, and not being driven takes all the ‘will we – won’t we’ nonsense away. It simply happens whenever it suits us both. Without the sex drive dominating we are able to enjoy the whole of the sexual act; it is not a blind mindless rush to orgasm. We enjoy the heightened physical pleasures of touch, smell, sight and sound, the senses building and building to become purely sexual. (...)

We often would lie in bed as this physical delight emerged more and more, and say that the path to freedom would be worth it just for the sex alone! Peter’s Journal, Sex

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