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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 38
VINEETO: Hi, RESPONDENT: Yes, I see. I’m amazed sometimes at the subtle complexities ... there are many layers to this onion. It’s a funny process this, at once abhorrent to stare into the muck, and yet exhilarating to root out and dissect the little beasties. VINEETO: Yep, you described it well. Discovering ‘the little beasties’ becomes easier with two factors. One factor is obviously discovering and dismissing one’s pride at being different and better than others. The second factor is the clear understanding that what you are investigating is the human condition, i.e. the aspects of your identity are not your personal flaws or shortcomings but the default setting for every human being born on the planet. Then the ‘abhorrent … stare into the muck’ becomes the scientific enterprise of studying the human condition in action. RESPONDENT: It is interesting that I’ve become less and less horrified when looking wide-eyed at those yucky internal bits (this was going on before I ran across you guys). The realization that those are the manifestations of the ‘I’ is helpful, though somewhat difficult to accept fundamentally (so far) as I have a strong ‘personal responsibility’ streak. Which I am very tired of maintaining. I do like your reference to it being a scientific enterprise ... pleases my engineer brain. VINEETO: I found Gary’s description of the instinctual passions very explanatory as far as ‘personal responsibility’ for one’s instinctual programming is concerned.
I am not responsible for being instilled with instinctual passions because this is the way every human brain is programmed by blind nature. The best ‘responsibility’ one can take, i.e. the way one can best respond to the situation one finds oneself in, is to incrementally become aware of one’s instinctual passions – firstly in order to be able to keep one’s hands in one’s pocket by not expressing one’s feelings and secondly to instigate the immolation of the instinctual ‘self’ by bringing ‘me’ out of hiding, as it were. * RESPONDENT: This bit from Gary registered: I had a good chuckle, esp. ‘‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’’. I’ve been there quite a few times, the words pop out, then I’m something like the deer in the headlights, trying to make sense of what I just said. I’ve been considering love a no-no too, so perhaps taking his tack would be an interesting approach. (Was it, Gary?) VINEETO: This is a good example of how an ‘ethical safe-guard’ can prevent you from becoming aware of and acknowledging a feeling. By considering the feeling of love a no-no, you might ignore, deny or avoid the feeling of love whenever it occurs and thus you are hampered in investigating it further. For a successful investigation you need an honest and all-inclusive stocktaking. RESPONDENT: In some ways, it’s harder to be aware of and dig into the ‘good’ feelings. The painful ones pop right into your face and make it obvious of the need to explore, but it’s easy to get swept along by love etc. and not notice that these need just as much attention. 24 hour determination, huh? VINEETO: The more you discover and examine your ‘personal responsibility streak’, the more your attentiveness to your thoughts and feelings becomes an all-inclusive scientific adventure rather than a reaction arising from bad conscience. Given that the ‘painful [feelings] pop right into your face’, they are the ones that you investigate and learn to understand first. In my determination to become harmless, anger and resentment were the most obvious feelings to explore. In the course of examining anger I then came to encounter the so-called good feelings, because love, hope and desire were the breeding ground for demands and expectations, which inevitably lead to disappointments and resentments, which then inexorably bread sorrow and anger. Therefore whenever you investigate what ‘pop[s] right into your face’ you will over the passage of time encounter all of your feelings and all of your beliefs. * RESPONDENT: It actually makes my head spin a bit ... definitely some ‘opportunities’ to explore. VINEETO: This is a good sign, if I may say so, because when your head begins to ‘spin a bit’ then the familiar identity begins to crack … and through this crack you could snatch a glance of the actual world – magnificent, sparkling, pure and perfect. RESPONDENT: There are momentary glimpses, as you say, as glancing through a crack. Is this what it was like when we were children? I remember being completely unbound from time and space, totally absorbed in what was happening in front of me right then and there. VINEETO: Children are not born innocent as we have been made to believe by Eastern religions – they are little instinctually-driven beings that are in the process of being trained to curb their passions in a socially accepted way, the process known as instilling a social conscience. Young children follow their feelings more freely than adults because their socialisation process of shoulds and shouldn’ts is not yet complete and they might feel ‘unbound from time and space’ because their feelings are not yet burdened by the responsibilities of adulthood or the fear of death. Sometimes, however, children do glance into the actual world by accident – as do adults on occasion – and experience a pure consciousness experience. 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.
RESPONDENT: One thing I enjoy about this list is the pace. I enjoy spending a few days mulling over the posts, then formulating (or not) a response. Way back when, in my college days, the art of discourse was highly valued and a great pastime. I don’t find much of that any more, as most dialog seems to degenerate into reactive anger immediately (myself not excepted). VINEETO: I have found that my pace of writing on this mailing list has slowed down mainly because information about how to become free from the human condition can now be found on the ever increasing website. My motivation for writing has changed as well. In the beginning I had a lot of enthusiasm to share with my fellow seekers my discovery of actualism. But the longer I engaged in conversation with people about becoming actually free from the human condition I discovered that everyone has to make their own choice as to what they want to do with their lives. Those who are discontent enough with the way human beings treat each other will be ready to enter the process of changing themselves. So my initial enthusiasm has changed into understanding that ‘I’ am redundant, yet again. But I do enjoy a good conversation about the adventure of being alive and about the successes and pitfalls on the path to becoming free from the beliefs and feelings that arise out of our instinctual programming. RESPONDENT: It seems to be heightened lately too (post Sept 11), as any difference in opinion is analogous to treason in many eyes. Hints of Orwell. However, it is a brightly burning example of the nature of the human condition. VINEETO: Yes, when push comes to shove, everyone reverts to type. That means, in times of crisis the instinctual survival passions come to the fore – providing an excellent opportunity to observe these passions in action in others as well as observe one’s own passions and reactions. * VINEETO: The spiritual concept of blaming thought for all the evils of mankind – and the
solution of trying to stop thought – does not work because ‘the cacophony of voices in [the] head’ is caused by the feelings and
instinctual passions that occur prior to thought (more information in the PS: Richard’s selected correspondence on both RESPONDENT: Thanks for the links. I’ve read a lot of the LeDoux stuff and found it fascinating. VINEETO: I never know when giving links if I am not pointing to something that you are already
familiar with, so I do appreciate your feedback. The Actual Freedom Trust website is so multifarious that it might take a while to become familiar
with it in order to find the information you are looking for. The * RESPONDENT: I think perhaps I’ve been talking about formed thoughts, whereas you are referring to an underlying non-verbal emotional babble. Presumably the formed thoughts occur some time after the ‘noise’. I’ll have to poke around at that. Most fascinating business, this. VINEETO: According to LeDoux’s experimentations the sensory input travels from the thalamus to the neo-cortex in 24 milliseconds, whereas it takes to only 12 milliseconds to reach the amygdala. Therefore the thoughtful instinctual-emotional response occurs about 12 milliseconds after the thoughtless instinctual-emotional response – that is 0.012 seconds – a very, very short time. For investigative purposes it is useful to consider that most of our thoughts, particularly those concerning interactions with other people, are emotion-based, i.e. they are triggered and fed by one or more emotions. Take the example of responsibility that you mentioned in your second post. Acting ‘responsible’ might look like an action following considered thought but when you dig a little deeper you will find that responsibility is in fact a deep-seated feeling, based on and built around your identity of ‘being a responsible person’. Once you begin to question these emotion-based thoughts, or beliefs, you’ll stir up even more emotions because ‘you’, the identity based on beliefs, feelings and passions, is shaken up. But without daring to ‘rock the boat’ there is no way of finding out about how ‘you’ tick.
VINEETO: I am not responsible for being instilled with instinctual passions because this is the way every human brain is programmed by blind nature. The best ‘responsibility’ one can take, i.e. the way one can best respond to the situation one finds oneself in, is to incrementally become aware of one’s instinctual passions – firstly in order to be able to keep one’s hands in one’s pocket by not expressing one’s feelings and secondly to instigate the immolation of the instinctual ‘self’ by bringing ‘me’ out of hiding, as it were. RESPONDENT: This responsibility thing is a big item with me, being the first-born male child of an Irish catholic family. Apparently, traditionally that child is expected to become a priest. And, my given name means Christ-bearer. I’ve been carrying that little bastard around on my shoulders all my life. So these statements by you and Gary are quite revolutionary. Imagine abdicating my responsibilities! VINEETO: I was a first-born child and raised Catholic, so I can relate to your story – except that I wasn’t expected to become a nun. But when you look at your imbibed ‘responsibility’ to bear Christ, who according to legend becomes as heavy as the whole world in the course of Christ-bearer’s journey, then there is not a grain of sense to being thus responsible. Imagine abdicating those responsibilities – your life would become easy, a joy and a play! The trouble is that ‘I’ won’t abdicate ‘my’ important role without creating a fuss – or to put it more succinctly, fighting tooth and nail – because it gives ‘me’ purpose, meaning and significance. If I abdicate ‘my’ role as a responsible member of society ‘I’ am useless, redundant and superfluous. That’s why sincere intent is so vital because with sincere intent ‘I’ cannot but acknowledge that all ‘I’ have accomplished so far has failed to make me happy and failed to make me harmless and that only ‘my’ abdication will deliver the goods. RESPONDENT: I’ve been spending some time with those feelings lately, looking at them from this new POV, and they’re starting to crack. It’s becoming clear that in fact, I have no responsibility to anyone on this planet (with the exception of progeny, I think?), and they have none to me. Simply, we may choose to spend some time together, or not. This will take some time to seep in completely (or probably seep out is more accurate) as there’s still lots of little voices screaming ‘what about the starving children in Africa?’ VINEETO: In order to tackle ‘those feelings’ of responsibility, in fact any feelings, actualism needs to carry more weight than only being a point of view. For me it was important that I checked out for myself if Richard’s statements about the human condition were factual because facts remain facts even when they are uncomfortable for ‘me’ at times. A fact cannot be argued with, it needs neither ‘my’ approval nor ‘my’ refusal, it is obvious in itself. I wanted to know for sure what was a belief, a point of view or a fact because only for a fact would ‘I’ give up ‘my’ precious opinion and ‘my’ dearly-held beliefs. As for ‘the starving children in Africa’ – this hoary argument was used by my parents to make me empty my dinner plate and it did no factual good to any of the ‘the starving children in Africa’, it only served to produce guilt if I didn’t do as I was told. There are many, many things that are not fair in this human society but I have come to understand that the only responsible thing I can do is to eliminate my own malice and sorrow – which is more than most people are interested, let alone willing, to do. A world without malice and sorrow would have no starving children. A world without malice and sorrow would have no wars, no corruption, no slavery, no senseless greed and, as such, the present resources would be more than enough to feed everyone. What I am doing is initiating peace in the only person I can change – myself. * RESPONDENT: There are momentary glimpses, as you say, as glancing through a crack. Is this what it was like when we were children? I remember being completely unbound from time and space, totally absorbed in what was happening in front of me right then and there. VINEETO: Children are not born innocent as we have been made to believe by Eastern religions – they are little instinctually-driven beings that are in the process of being trained to curb their passions in a socially accepted way, the process known as instilling a social conscience. Young children follow their feelings more freely than adults because their socialisation process of shoulds and shouldn’ts is not yet complete and they might feel ‘unbound from time and space’ because their feelings are not yet burdened by the responsibilities of adulthood or the fear of death. Sometimes, however, children do glance into the actual world by accident – as do adults on occasion – and experience a pure consciousness experience. RESPONDENT: Clearly children are not wonderful innocent little beings. Far from it. However, as you say, at times they are directly connected to the actual. I remember having an experience occasionally before going to sleep where (and this is where words fail) I seemed to ‘expand’ to fill the universe, or maybe the gap between my skin and everything else disappeared. It was a calm clear place that would happen fairly frequently, but decreased in frequency over the years until my early teens or so, when I was awash in other more pressing matters. VINEETO: In a pure consciousness experience the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – temporarily disappears, because this separation is created by ‘me’, a psychological and psychic non-physical entity trapped inside the body. In actuality, there is no separation whatsoever between this physical body and anything or anyone else. Everything and everyone is the very self-same stuff that this physical world is and that this physical body is. Because there is no separation in the actual world, a pure consciousness experience is exemplified by utter purity and stillness in absence of the continuous noise that emanates from the emotions and passions of the alien ‘self’. This experience is, however, not to be confused with the spiritual experience of Oneness, epitomized in the phrase: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. The feeling of Oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the ‘self’ is nevertheless present. An altered state of consciousness often occurs as a result of intense feelings of loneliness, alienation and despair, a ‘dark night of the soul’ and then, as one seemingly makes a last instinctual grasp for survival, one is filled with grand thoughts and sublime feelings. RESPONDENT: To this day, I’ve missed that experience, assuming it was a childhood thing, never to recur, but maybe not... VINEETO: If you keep poking into your beliefs and feelings with honesty and sincere intent you are bound to find the crack in the door, the glitch in the ‘synaptic self’, as LeDoux calls it in his latest book, a glitch that eventuates a slipping out from control into a ‘self’-less experience. My first PCE occurred some months after beginning to practice actualism and it was this experience that finally confirmed Richard’s description of a state beyond Enlightenment to be factual. I then knew that this is what I wanted for the rest of my life. PS: Richard also had
VINEETO: I have found that my pace of writing on this mailing list has slowed down mainly because information about how to become free from the human condition can now be found on the ever increasing website. My motivation for writing has changed as well. In the beginning I had a lot of enthusiasm to share with my fellow seekers my discovery of actualism. But the longer I engaged in conversation with people about becoming actually free from the human condition I discovered that everyone has to make their own choice as to what they want to do with their lives. Those who are discontent enough with the way human beings treat each other will be ready to enter the process of changing themselves. So my initial enthusiasm has changed into understanding that ‘I’ am redundant, yet again. But I do enjoy a good conversation about the adventure of being alive and about the successes and pitfalls on the path to becoming free from the beliefs and feelings that arise out of our instinctual programming. RESPONDENT: I’m finding more and more often that I’ll type up a note with some miscellaneous query, only to discard it when I realize that that information is already to be found on the site. Or, I actually know the answer already. There’s always a tendency to over-intellectualize, which I suppose is not atypical of newbies. Sometimes, I ask questions within the framework of what has gone before, but there’s no escaping the simple approach stated repeatedly via the site and this list. There comes a point where one has to stop talking, and start doing. Thanks again to you (and all) for the feedback. VINEETO: I did not mean to discourage you from writing, far from it. In my own process of actualism, I found talking to people and writing to various mailing list a substantial part of the actualism practice. The many conversations I had aided me in questioning my familiar thought-patterns, beliefs and particularly my feelings – they were an essential part of the ‘doing’ of becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow. I also benefited a lot from reading Richard’s web-correspondences as they kick-started my then rusty and spiritually trained brain into using my intelligence instead of the habitual feelings and intuition. When I made the effort to put into words my own understanding, it further sharpened my attentiveness to the finer details of ‘self’-observation and ‘self’-investigation … and it is a lot of fun, too. A good conversation is in fact something immensely enjoyable and satisfying because just as our senses enjoy sensate stimuli, so does the brain enjoy thinking. And the less one’s thinking is polluted and hampered by one’s feelings and beliefs, the more enjoyable it is.
RESPONDENT: I don’t normally forward news items, but this was kind of interesting. Besides, if No 23 can do it.... From Mark Morford, SFGate.com ....
VINEETO: Mark Morford has certainly written an enthusiastic speech and his call to ‘turn but inward’ and search the ‘peace from within’ reminded me of my own experience two years after I finished university. I had checked out various aspects and/or paths of living in the ‘normal’ world, such as liberal and left-wind politics, marriage, feminism, therapy and a career as a social worker with drug addicts, and had them all found wanting. The newly-starting fashion for Eastern Mysticism seemed just the right solution, and so I decided to ‘turn inward’, change myself and search for ‘peace within’. I had been brought up in post-war Germany with its explicit education about the devastating results of Nazism and patriotism and for years I had great trouble understanding how the previous generation could have done – or have silently tolerated – such horrendous acts of terrorism. Yet in 1985, when the terror acts of Rajneesh’s administration crew in Oregon came to light, I painfully realized the fact that I, as a Rajneeshee, had been doing the same thing as the generation of Germans before me. I had blindly pledged my loyalty to a charismatic leader who promised peace and glory, only to generate a communal passionate righteousness that resulted in crimes against innocent citizens. See http://www.empnet.com/imageworks/Raj1.htm and following pages After that I could easily understand how the ‘Third Reich’ had come about – I had, in fact, discovered the blind loyal follower and the passionate believer in me. However, such is the power of belief and hope that it took me many more years, and many more eye-opening events, to finally admit that I was on every account as mad and as bad as everyone else. This acknowledgement was the prerequisite for stopping blaming others and beginning to sincerely ‘looking within’ – and what I found ‘within’ was anger and aggression, fear and imagination, hope and sorrow. When you look within sincerely, bereft of spiritual hope and imagination, there is no peace ‘within’ – there is a social-instinctual ‘self’ within. A lost, lonely frightened and very cunning parasitical entity, to use Richard’s description. This social-instinctual ‘self’ is the very reason that the already always existing peace on earth cannot prevail. SF Gate columnist Mark Morford certainly uses catchy words when he urges everyone else to ‘really get down and dirty with the self’ – but he himself has not even rolled up his sleeves, let alone started to look at ‘the hatred and terrorism we have inside us’. How could he be looking within when he continues to point the finger at ‘our increasingly paranoid and secretive and invasive government’ – not only to blame but wanting to ‘infuriate’ this government and thus start the hatred all over again. His call to ‘perhaps follow’ the teachings of ‘the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders’ is nothing new for the West – Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have been preached and practiced for many years in the West and its long tradition of failure in the East is blatantly obvious for those who are ready to investigate it. Mark Morford wants to change the world by telling everyone else to change – his way. To really get down and dirty one would question one’s own beliefs, not the doings of one’s government. One would investigate one’s identity as an American, a Christian, a believer in Eastern Mysticism, a liberal, a democrat, a man, a woman, a father, a son, a patriot, a rebel, a cynic, a journalist. One would examine one’s own feelings of righteousness, anger, hostility, blame, sorrow, guilt, compassion, pride and loyalty and discover the source of those feelings – the alien passionate social-instinctual identity inside this flesh-and-blood body. Mark Morford is doing nought but preaching the traditional spiritual path of finding peace within – a path that involves turning even further away from the actual world. Actualism on the other hand is non-spiritual to its bootstraps, unapologetically atheistic at core. Actualism is totally down-to-earth in that it acknowledges that the much sought-after peace on earth is to be found in the sensate-only experience of the already always existing peace on earth – that which every human being has briefly experienced in a pure consciousness experience. It’s a great challenge and it is utterly rewarding. PS: Mark Morford’s full article can be found on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/26/notes062602.DTL
RESPONDENT: I don’t normally forward news items, but this was kind of interesting. Besides, if No 23 can do it....
VINEETO: Mark Morford has certainly written an enthusiastic speech and his call to ‘turn but inward’ and search the ‘peace from within’ reminded me of my own experience two years after I finished university. I had checked out various aspects and/or paths of living in the ‘normal’ world, such as liberal and left-wind politics, marriage, feminism, therapy and a career as a social worker with drug addicts, and had them all found wanting. The newly-starting fashion for Eastern Mysticism seemed just the right solution, and so I decided to ‘turn inward’, change myself and search for ‘peace within’. I had been brought up in post-war Germany with its explicit education about the devastating results of Nazism and patriotism and for years I had great trouble understanding how the previous generation could have done – or have silently tolerated – such horrendous acts of terrorism. Yet in 1985, when the terror acts of Rajneesh’s administration crew in Oregon came to light, I painfully realized the fact that I, as a Rajneeshee, had been doing the same thing as the generation of Germans before me. I had blindly pledged my loyalty to a charismatic leader who promised peace and glory, only to generate a communal passionate righteousness that resulted in crimes against innocent citizens. See http://www.empnet.com/imageworks/Raj1.htm and following pages After that I could easily understand how the ‘Third Reich’ had come about – I had, in fact,
discovered the blind loyal follower and the passionate believer in me. RESPONDENT: How this comes about is clear, esp. if you have been reading about recent events in this country. I’m sure that Bin Laden et al didn’t intend to precipitate the sort of knee-jerk patriotism evidenced of late, but it certainly has crippled us in many ways. The flap about the pledge of allegiance is particularly interesting. In case you’re not familiar with the story, in 1954 the words ‘one nation under god’ were inserted into the previously secular motto. A judge recently ruled that this violated the constitutional separation of church and state (which it does), hence precipitating a hue and cry from ‘real’ Americans. Of course, to these folks, god is the Christian god, never mind all the other world’s deities. So, we have apparently rampant suspension of any form of critical thinking, and toeing the party line. Sound familiar? VINEETO: The point I was trying to make is that I unearthed the follower, the fanatic and the passionate believer in me. These aspects of my identity not only applied to my belonging to a spiritual or religious group but also to my belonging to a national group – in other words, my continuing to maintain and hold on to such beliefs only served to perpetuate my malice and sorrow. As an actualist I am not interested in others changing their beliefs but solely in ending malice and sorrow in me. * VINEETO: However, such is the power of belief and hope that it took me many more years, and many more eye-opening events, to finally admit that I was on every account as mad and as bad as everyone else. This acknowledgement was the prerequisite for stopping blaming others and beginning to sincerely ‘looking within’ – and what I found ‘within’ was anger and aggression, fear and imagination, hope and sorrow. When you look within sincerely, bereft of spiritual hope and imagination, there is no peace ‘within’ – there is a social-instinctual ‘self’ within. A lost, lonely frightened and very cunning parasitical entity, to use Richard’s description. This social-instinctual ‘self’ is the very reason that the already always existing peace on earth cannot prevail. RESPONDENT: Agreed. I’ve had some painful recent experiences that reflect once again how devious that ‘self’ is. At least I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t beat myself up for my ‘bad’ behaviour any more ... just have a look at it, recognize/ explore it, move along. At some level, I am no longer vested in its continued existence. VINEETO: You are spot on in that beating oneself up is of no use – actualism for me is a scientific trial and error investigation into how ‘I’ tick, a process with an end-point aim of completely stopping ‘me’ ticking. The significant difference between my former spiritual practice and the practice of actualism is the understanding that both my good and bad behaviour need scrutinizing because both the good and the bad emotions that underpin human behaviour are an indivisible part of the same root problem – the animal instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire genetically encoded in each and every human animal. * VINEETO: SF Gate columnist Mark Morford certainly uses catchy words when he urges everyone else to ‘really get down and dirty with the self’ – but he himself has not even rolled up his sleeves, let alone started to look at ‘the hatred and terrorism we have inside us’. How could he be looking within when he continues to point the finger at ‘our increasingly paranoid and secretive and invasive government’ – not only to blame but wanting to ‘infuriate’ this government and thus start the hatred all over again. RESPONDENT: Because, like most of us, he’s merely dimly aware of the actual processes in play, and that the answers will only come from within. And that will take some hard and painful work. Until this all becomes self-obvious, we just follow our noses. VINEETO: Whenever someone says the answers come from within, what they are eluding to is listening to, or connecting with, their soul, the voice of God, the Higher Self, the wisdom of their innermost being. These answers from within, however, are nothing other than one’s own, utterly ‘self’-centred, instinctual passions – manifesting as self-love, righteousness, hypocrisy, narcissism, omniscience, virtuous anger, universal sorrow or whatever. In the process of actualism, however, the answers come from ‘without’ – questioning one’s (inner) beliefs juxtaposed to sensate experience and empirical (outer) facts and investigating one’s (inner) feelings juxtaposed to a sensuous awareness of the actual (outer) world and a sensible judgement as to what is silly and what is sensible. This process is 180 degrees opposite to the traditional spiritual approach of going within and hiding from the world as-it-is and people as-they-are. * VINEETO: His call to ‘perhaps follow’ the teachings of ‘the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders’ is nothing new for the West – Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have been preached and practiced for many years in the West and its long tradition of failure in the East is blatantly obvious for those who are ready to investigate it. Mark Morford wants to change the world by telling everyone else to change – his way. RESPONDENT: The quote actually reads ‘to perhaps follow what the Dalai Lama and other great spiritual leaders have said recently’. VINEETO: I rather fail to see the difference between ‘the teachings’ and ‘what … have said recently’ – spiritual teachers are bound to be espousing their teachings when the say something in public. RESPONDENT: I am interpreting the word ‘follow’ as:
rather than...
Clearly two very different meanings. VINEETO: OK. The questions for me would be what does one find when one ‘watch[es] or observe[s] closely’ or is ‘attentive to’ what the Dalai Lama said recently. What is the outcome of ‘grasp[ing] the meaning or logic of’ the Dalai Lama’s teaching, not to mention all of the other spiritual teachers? Such probing investigations are bound to bring to light the down-here-on-earth results for millions upon millions of people who have faithfully and mindlessly ‘accept[ed] the guidance, command, or leadership’ of those revered spiritual teachers. After all, it is the results that determine the value or uselessness of spiritual teachings and according to my observations the results have been disastrous. RESPONDENT: I’m not privy to the inner workings of Mr Morford’s mind, but do read his material on a regular basis, and he appears to kowtow to no one. VINEETO: When I began to look into ‘the hatred and terrorism [I had] inside’ – to quote the words that come from Mr. Morford’s mind – I discovered that, as a result of investigating my own fear, anger and frustration, my perception of others changed accordingly. I began to perceive people, as well as organizations such as the government, not as ‘paranoid and secretive and invasive’ but rather as my fellow human beings, similarly inflicted with the same human condition as me. By blaming the government Mark Morford clearly shows that he does not practice what he preaches, he does not walk the talk. * RESPONDENT: So, are you suggesting that the Dalai Lama couldn’t have something useful to say, even though it may be flawed or incomplete? I suppose you are, as he’s ‘180 degrees wrong’, hence completely wrong. VINEETO: In my life I have for a long period ‘accept[ed] the guidance’ of spiritual authorities and later, with the actualism tool, ‘observe[d] closely’ the spiritual teachings of many revered authorities. They say that the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is that nobody is free from malice and sorrow as a result of such teachings. In various pure consciousness experiences it has become indubitable to me that the solution to mayhem and misery cannot be found by indulging in spiritual escapism – ‘the feeling that there is really nowhere to turn but inward’ . In a PCE the ‘inner world’ – one’s soul, one’s true self, the deepest core of one’s being – is clearly seen as the problem, whereas when one is devoid of ‘self’, one knows by moment to moment experience that the actual world is already perfect, pure and peaceful. ‘180 degrees wrong’ is not a moral or ethical judgement but literally points to the fact that everyone is, and has been since ancient times, searching 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Actualism offers an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism – both of which are not only ‘flawed or incomplete’ but have abysmally failed to deliver the oft-promised-but-never-delivered peace on earth in this lifetime. * VINEETO: To really get down and dirty one would question one’s own beliefs, not the doings of one’s government. One would investigate one’s identity as an American, a Christian, a believer in Eastern Mysticism, a liberal, a democrat, a man, a woman, a father, a son, a patriot, a rebel, a cynic, a journalist. One would examine one’s own feelings of righteousness, anger, hostility, blame, sorrow, guilt, compassion, pride and loyalty and discover the source of those feelings – the alien passionate social-instinctual identity inside this flesh-and-blood body. RESPONDENT: Isn’t that what he’s saying? – ‘real work where you re-evaluate and question and peel away preconceptions and false patriotism and blind faith’. VINEETO: I don’t see that his article ‘generate[s] peace from within, the hard way’. I read several of his other articles and I found all of them angry, cynical and bitter, mostly blaming others or ‘the government’ for everything that is wrong in America. RESPONDENT: Anyways, no need to respond to this as it would probably be repetitious. I merely sent the original clip as it is so rare to read anything that remotely addresses the fundamental human condition in any sort of accurate manner. VINEETO: I can relate to your search for ‘anything that remotely addresses the fundamental human condition in any sort of accurate manner’ because for five years now I have been looking in all nooks and corners of the earth via reading and television reports for people that would suggest sensible solutions to the emotional mess we humans live in. What I discovered is that the world is full of pundits who rile against the wrongs of materialism, is replete with shrews who ridicule spiritual belief and is rife with cynics who rant against both materialism and spiritualism but all they offer is a re-hash of the old tried and failed solutions. Actualism on the other hand offers a never-tried-before alternative to both materialism and spiritualism. The longer I practice actualism, the more obvious it is how simple the solution really is, and so I am rather surprised that everyone else keeps on searching in the wrong directions. This may have been somewhat repetitious, but I know from experience that turning round to practice a solution 180 degrees opposite to everyone else is a tough challenge for anyone to tackle. But once I experienced the ‘self’-less actual world for myself in a PCE, it became glaringly obvious that I had been on the wrong track all my life.
VINEETO: I have combined two of your posts, as they seemed to be related in their topic. In your post ‘Ramblings and Queries’ you have raised some questions – RESPONDENT: The question: is the AF model overly simplistic? VINEETO: An actual freedom from the human condition is indeed very simple – it only seems complicated to those who find such a total freedom too radical and would prefer instead to hang on to some of the seemingly ‘nice’ parts of the human condition, such as love, compassion, beauty, gratitude, loyalty, bliss or cool detachment or who want to just stay the way they are. But for those who have come to a point of being utterly fed up with living within the parameters of the human condition, actualism holds the key to a normally unknown world – the actual world as experienced in a PCE. RESPONDENT: A while back there was the thread on humour. I puzzled then and since. Richard, as the only person living in actual freedom, expressed a fondness for darker humour. How does a sense of humour fit into a fully apperceptive universe? It seems to me that a sense of humour is a program itself, with the brain responding to a certain external stimulus, resulting in a predictable response. That sounds like a program to me. Maybe I’m missing the point... if one of the stated goals is to eliminate all the programs, how does one rationalize this apparent humour program? And if humour is a running program, then actualist are not eliminating the programs, and merely selecting the programs they prefer. VINEETO: Yes, here you are ‘missing the point’. The stated goal for me is to become free from malice and sorrow, not to ‘eliminate all the programs’. Although the ‘self’ consists of a social programming and an instinctual survival program, the process of becoming free from my ‘self’ does not equal (¹) questioning all programs per se. Actualism, the process of becoming free from my ‘self’, it is the practice of observing and investigating ‘me’ in action, and the way to do this is to examine my beliefs, feelings and emotions when and as they occur. In this process humour only enters as an issue of investigation if it contains malice or sorrow. As is evident in a PCE, the sense of the humour intrinsic to many of life’s situations and events is not eradicated but is magically bereft of any trace of malevolence, pathos or pity. An actual freedom is squeaky clean but far from humourless. RESPONDENT: I suspect this is the case, and it’s fine, because the implication is that the human is merely a collection of programs, then we make our choices and attempt to make the best ones. VINEETO: There is only one program I am concerned about and that is the human condition consisting of the social-spiritual programming and the animal-instinctual survival program of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. RESPONDENT: I could venture even further out on a limb and suggest that a PCE is in fact a program itself, but that sounds like a topic for another day). VINEETO: The PCE is marked by the absence of ‘me’, the social-instinctual program, in other words, the absence of my ‘self’, the psychological and psychic identity that has taken residence within this flesh-and-blood body. The temporary absence of ‘me’ provides the opportunity to see the workings of my social-instinctual program from the outside, so to speak. When ‘I’ am not present, the actual world, which is already always here, becomes apparent. You can compare the human condition with wearing gloomy or rosy filters in front of you eyes and actualism as a method to successively remove those filters. According to your supposition a PCE – when those filters are temporarily totally removed and one sees clearly – would be a new ‘seeing program’ as if one only exchanges filters. However, in a PCE you know without doubt that the ‘filter’ is completely removed – in a PCE there is no ‘me’ to be found anywhere. At this point it might be appropriate to mention that the actualist writings can only give you information so as to establish a working hypothesis for yourself. This hypothesis can only be confirmed experientially. Only when you have – or remember having had – a pure consciousness experience, will you know for sure by your own experience that a PCE is not another program or ‘filter’ but that it is an experience of pure sensual perception and clear thinking, completely unrestricted by any psychologic or psychic program whatsoever. As Richard phrased it in his recent post to No 34 –
In a PCE you experience, without doubt, for yourself, that there is indeed an actual world already here, all the time, and that this actuality exists regardless of whether human beings object to it or rile against it, what they feel about it, how they imagine it to be otherwise or how they want to change it to suit their whims. * VINEETO to No 37: In your post ‘Re Human Condition’ from 23.7.2002 you commented on my reply to No 38 – You may have noticed that recently Richard quite accurately compared the human condition to heroin addiction –
As with alcohol or drug addiction one needs to recognize the disease in its full extent in order to
want to be free of it so that the cure can be effective. RESPONDENT: Richard professes that he enjoys tobacco, which contains an addictive substance. Where is the line that delimits ‘good’ addictions from ‘bad’ addictions? VINEETO: The topic of ‘addictions’ is a diversion from the issue at hand, which is how to become free from the human condition of malice and sorrow. The reason I found the comparison between addiction and the human condition so apt was that, in the process of examining the human condition in me, I detected very similar reactions to those that I had observed in drug addicts when I was a social worker. Particularly when I investigated the issue of my spiritual loyalty, my thoughts tended to shift from this uncomfortable subject as a way of avoiding the issue, I invented diversions and furphies not to stick to the issue at hand, I experienced hot and cold flushes, I caught myself wanting to start a fight, I suddenly became tired if confronted with the issue, etc. … you might get the picture. The whole cunning ‘me’ swung into action so as to desperately defend ‘my’ precious beliefs and feelings in exactly the same way an addict feels that he is fighting for survival when the drugs are withdrawn. Only sincere intent and stubborn determination to get to the bottom of this addiction-like dependency on being a believing and feeling ‘being’ causes me to continue whittling away at my ‘self’ until the very end of this pernicious addiction that is the human condition. Regarding this topic of how to investigate the human condition I would also like to comment on a remark that you made to No 23 the other day –
To ‘question everything’ aimlessly will only lead to a nihilistic outlook on life on earth and an acceptance that real virtue lies in ‘not-knowing’. My questioning everything was only fruitful because I had set myself an aim in life – I had made a definitive choice. This choice – to live with a man in peace and harmony, whatever the cost – gave my questioning and subsequent investigations a direction and a focus. Because I had a practical, tangible aim, my practice of questioning everything had a purpose – to remove whatever obstacle was preventing my living in perfect peace with a fellow human being in each moment. This purpose compelled me to put the insights and realizations that came from my questioning into practice and committed me to apply them to my actions in daily life – thus my former theoretical activity of questioning was turned into a hands-on down-to-earth affair and I came to definitive and reliable answers based on facts and sensibility. My commitment of living with a man in peace and harmony very soon grew into an intent to be free from malice and sorrow entirely because I understood that peace and harmony cannot end at the front door if this peace is to be genuine. And thus I ended up in a far bigger adventure than I had originally anticipated. And now I am in a likely position to be the first woman to become free from the human condition. What a hoot. PS: On the question of the addictiveness of smoking you might want to read up on
RESPONDENT to No 23: When I get too much in the analytic side of the brain, I harken back to some words of Richard’s I read somewhere... something to the effect of ‘if you don’t know what feeling good/happy is, don’t bother trying this’. How about a search engine for the AF site? Or, does anyone know where Outlook hides the downloaded/offline version of sites? VINEETO: Here is what I know about it – I would recommend downloading the website, if you haven’t already done so. You can take advantage of the option of IE 5 or IE 6 to download and store substantial parts of the Actual Freedom Trust website on your computer for leisurely off-line reading. If you don’t already know this – when you are on line and on The Actual Freedom Trust homepage, you can click on ‘Favourites’ on your explorer, select ‘add to favourites’ and then tick ‘make available off line’ . Then click ‘customize’ in order to choose the settings for either 2 or 3 or 4 layers deep. Four layers deep should suffice to download the whole of the website. To update what you already downloaded, under ‘Tools’ click ‘synchronize’. The first time it will probably take 30 – 50 minutes to download the whole website given that it is quite big by now. If you don’t know where the computer has downloaded the website you can find it by clicking ‘Start’ at the bottom left, go to ‘Search’ ‘For Files or Folders’, type in ‘Actualfreedom’ and then you can drag or copy the folder to a place of your choice. Within the downloaded folder you should find sub-folders that contain the various sections of the website. You can now use the search facility of Windows Explorer to find any word or phrase within the website. To do this you open Windows Explorer and click on ‘Folders’ so you have two windows. You can either search the whole website or narrow down your search by choosing the relevant folder inside the Actual Freedom Trust website. To search, you click on the folder you want and then click the ‘Search’ button and enter the word or phrase you are looking for. If the ‘search’ button is not on your toolbar, you can customize the toolbar under ‘View’, ‘Toolbars’, ‘Customize…’. When the result of your search comes up, double click on the file to open it and search within the file under ‘Edit’, ‘Find’. I tried it and it works fine.
RESPONDENT: Hi (web) guru Vineeto... VINEETO: I would recommend downloading the website, if you haven’t already done so. You can take advantage of the option of IE 5 or IE 6 to download and store substantial parts of the Actual Freedom Trust website on your computer for leisurely off-line reading. If you don’t already know this – when you are on line and on The Actual Freedom Trust homepage, you can click on ‘Favourites’ on your explorer, select ‘add to favourites’ and then tick ‘make available off line’ . Then click ‘customize’ in order to choose the settings for either 2 or 3 or 4 layers deep. Four layers deep should suffice to download the whole of the website. To update what you already downloaded, under ‘Tools’ click ‘synchronize’. The first time it will probably take 30 – 50 minutes to download the whole website given that it is quite big by now. RESPONDENT: I did this a while back successfully, then suddenly one day it was no longer available for off-line viewing. I’m presently downloading it again, but for some reason (as last time) it takes more like 4-5 hours, and I have high speed connectivity. Also, IE won’t let me download more than 3 layers deep. (BTW this is IE 5.5). <snipped Vineeto’s text> I’ve tried all that in the past, and again today. It looks like IE stashes the files in one of the temporary internet files folders. Since I occasionally delete them to houseclean, I must have blown those away then too. They are not organized by folders in that directory, so I don’t know what you’re doing differently. Oh well, not that important. Thanks. VINEETO: Thank you for your feedback. I had not realized that the website had grown so enormous. Also I have not to downloaded the Actual Freedom Trust website since we amalgamated Richard’s and the Actualism website in 1999. When I said ‘I tried it and it works fine’ I was referring to the Window Explorer’s search facility. We have done some brainstorming and as a result I have ‘cut out’ a lean version of The Actual
Freedom Trust website. This version contains the whole of the Website including the selected correspondence according to topics but excludes the
correspondence archives to mailing lists and web correspondents. It is zipped and weighs only 17.7 MB (compared to 102 MB of the full version) and
is available on the website via Happy reading.
VINEETO: Hi, You recently wrote to No 33 about what you described as ‘a mini-PCE’, saying that it was ‘accompanied by a real sensation of unfettered happiness’. The expression, and my own experiences of ‘unfettered happiness’ triggered some trains of thought. RESPONDENT: I’ve been mulling over the first part of your post, the reference to a PCE as seeing from ‘a bird’s eye view’. It was oddly coincidental as it arrived the same day as I had awoken to what I think was a mini-PCE. I had spent a good part of the day before actively recollecting PCE experiences of my earlier years so I must have greased the skids a bit (side note – this is why the vets hammer on remembering a previous PCE so strongly). It was similar to experiences I had had when younger, and there was a definite perception of being ‘outside’ or ‘not myself’, a ‘bird’s eye view’. It was also accompanied by a real sensation of unfettered happiness, something which I realize has been all too lacking of late. Alas, it was not long-lived but residuals did linger through the day. I think that my ‘outside’ interpretation is a natural first conclusion, when historically the ‘identity’ is considered the ‘real’, hence anything else is foreign, but if I have the nerve to suggest that the ‘identity’ is actually on the ‘outside’ (so to speak) of my actual self, then a PCE exposes the real nature of ‘identity’ as interloper. Same shoes, different feet. I think it’s time to cut back on the intellectualization and spend some more time on the experiential half of the process... VINEETO: I found that I am experiencing ‘unfettered happiness’ only when I am both free from fear and free from guilt, the two dominant emotions remaining after I had investigated, and greatly reduced, anger, sorrow, love and hope. I found that both fear and guilt are inextricably linked with the core of my identity, with being a ‘being’. At core ‘I’ am guilty being a ‘being’ and ‘I’ know it. ‘I’ am feeling guilty that ‘I’ am being here, and I am aware of it most of the time. Richard’s latest conversation with No 37 threw some more light on the issue of the deep-seated feeling of guilt that remains even when the social-religious conscience consisting of the morals and ethics of society has been dismantled –
VINEETO: I always wondered what produces the sincere intent to be happpy and harmless because it greatly puzzled me that some people seem to have more of it than others. I discovered that my own sincere intent to become free from the human condition consists of two main ingredients – one is the memory of a pure consciousness experience and the other is the awareness and acknowledgement of my inherent guilt for being a ‘being’ and the subsequent determination to do whatever is needed to become guilt-less – innocent. Most people I met and talked to in my life were more interested in getting rid of fear which is, next to guilt, the other major side-effect of being a ‘being’. However, I found the pursuit of fearlessness an extremely ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-centred affair, given that feeling fearless only benefits and enhances one’s ‘self’ and is not concerned with bringing an end to human malice and sorrow. In contrast, the pursuit of innocence – the determination to eliminate the root cause of guilt – is intrinsically altruistic in that I recognize that being a ‘being’ inevitably contributes to the misery and mayhem of human beings. And it is this altruistic, ‘self’-less, component of one’s intent that will ensure the success of becoming free from ‘self’. So you see, your description of ‘unfettered happiness’ triggered an understanding as to why my spiritual pursuit of happiness through fearlessness was bound to lead only to dissociation and self-aggrandizement. However, when I stopped sticking my head in the sand, when I started to take a clear-eyed look at what’s going on in the world and finally dared to acknowledge and become aware of my guilt inherent to being a ‘being’ did I begin to fuel the sincere intent that is so essential for the process of becoming free from the human condition.
VINEETO: I found that I am experiencing ‘unfettered happiness’ only when I am both free from fear and free from guilt, the two dominant emotions remaining after I had investigated, and greatly reduced, anger, sorrow, love and hope. I found that both fear and guilt are inextricably linked with the core of my identity, with being a ‘being’. At core ‘I’ am guilty being a ‘being’ and ‘I’ know it. ‘I’ am feeling guilty that ‘I’ am being here, and I am aware of it most of the time. I always wondered what produces sincere intent to be happy and harmless because it greatly puzzled me that some people seem to have more of it than others. I discovered that my own sincere intent to become free from the human condition consists of two main ingredients – one is the memory of a pure consciousness experience and the other is the awareness and acknowledgement of my inherent guilt for being a ‘being’ and the subsequent determination to do whatever is needed to become guilt-less – innocent. <snip> So you see, your description of ‘unfettered happiness’ triggered an understanding as to why my spiritual pursuit of happiness through fearlessness was bound to lead only to dissociation and self-aggrandizement. However, when I stopped sticking my head in the sand, when I started to take a clear-eyed look at what’s going on in the world and finally dared to acknowledge and become aware of my guilt inherent to being a ‘being’ did I begin to fuel the sincere intent that is so essential for the process of becoming free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: Do you consider guilt (‘major side-effect of being a ‘being’’) to be a significant component of your particular identity, or humans in general? Apparently, each of us has many layers, sharing some characteristics, but differing in others. The outer layers hold such emotions as anger, which would seem to be fairly easy to eliminate, if what I read on the AF site is true. The middle layers hold the more subtle emotions, which in your case would include guilt, and require more determined ferreting out. At the core are the instinctual based emotions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire, and presumably are only eliminated in an actual freedom. While the general categories would seem consistent for all beings, I suspect that our own particular onions would have somewhat differently flavoured layers. VINEETO: The guilt I was talking about is guilt as Richard defined it in his post to No 37 that I had quoted –
This guilt ‘by virtue of ‘my’ very presence’ is not a ‘somewhat differently flavoured’ layer of my ‘own particular onion’ – this guilt of ‘being a being’ is intrinsic to every human being. The only way I became aware of this basic layer of guilt of being a ‘self’ was by repeated exposure to the perfection, purity and innocence as experienced in a ‘self’-less PCE. The more I experience purity and perfection, when this flesh and blood body is free from any identity whatsoever, the more I know, as soon as ‘I’ return, that ‘I’ am a fraud, an intruder, an alien entity, a fake – I undeniably know that ‘I’ am not the genuine article. This ever-increasing awareness that all ‘I’ do is obstruct the purity and perfection of the actual universe from becoming apparent is what is speeding ‘my’ demise. To put it another way, acknowledging and being aware that ‘I’ am but a ‘fake’ undermines ‘my’ very foundation. As you can see, the term guilty ‘by virtue of ‘my’ very presence’ is used in its meaning as the opposite to innocent – an innocence that is only apparent when the ‘self’ has left the stage. Generally in society the term guilt is used to describe the socially instilled feeling of guilt – in religious circles this is known as having a ‘bad conscience’. For an actualist, this feeling of guilt inevitably arises when you begin to question the social principles of right and wrong and the spiritual values of good and bad. To dare to question the social principles and spiritual values is deemed ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ by any social standards and, in fact, one transgresses what is considered taboo or off-limits in any society. In the first years of practicing actualism I had outbreaks of guilt and fear whenever I was about to leave a chunk of my social identity behind – be it my spiritual identity, my identity as member of the ‘sisterhood’, my identity of being a Christian, a German, a family-member or whenever I questioned my sexual taboos. ‘Ferreting out’ these ‘middle layers’, as you call them, does indeed require great persistence, but it is both an enormous relief as well as an immense delight to be incrementally rid of the numbing straight-jackets of one’s social identity with its accompanying feelings of guilt and fears of ostracization. What I found essential, whenever the feeling of guilt arose, was to inquire into the nature of the feeling. Had I come across a spiritual or social moral or ethic, had I broken the law of the land or was I feeling guilty for not living up to my own standards, i.e. was I being harmful to others, either intentionally or intentionally? The outcome of this investigation then determines if I need to change my action because I aspire to live up to my own standards, or can I dismiss the feeling of guilt because this guilt originates from the unliveable morals and ethics I no longer call my own. * VINEETO: Most people I met and talked to in my life were more interested in getting rid of fear which is, next to guilt, the other major side-effect of being a ‘being’. However, I found the pursuit of fearlessness an extremely ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-centred affair, given that feeling fearless only benefits and enhances one’s ‘self’ and is not concerned with bringing an end to human malice and sorrow. In contrast, the pursuit of innocence – the determination to eliminate the root cause of guilt – is intrinsically altruistic in that I recognize that being a ‘being’ inevitably contributes to the misery and mayhem of human beings. And it is this altruistic, ‘self’-less, component of one’s intent that will ensure the success of becoming free from ‘self’. RESPONDENT: Your discourse on eliminating fear is interesting. It’s a subtle trap to define the absence of one particular emotion in terms of the existence of its polar opposite. VINEETO: If you are saying that the spiritual path is a subtle trap in that the absence of the emotion of fear is defined or replaced by the emotion of fearlessness, I entirely agree with you. The great attraction of the revered spiritual altered state of consciousness is to become fearless. In this deluded state of aggrandizement, one not only rises above the normal human values and rules but also ‘conquers’ the fear of death by imagining oneself to be immortal and at one with the divine force. Peter Weir once made a movie called ‘Fearless’ which I thought illustrated the delusion of fearlessness very well. The hero has a near-death experience when the plane he is travelling in crashes. As a result, he becomes fearless and is driven to help other people, in particular survivors of the crash. Yet he is also driven to continuously challenge and prove his own fearlessness by taking higher and higher risks. Fearlessness is not the absence of fear but is a feeling of victory over fear – one conquers fear by becoming a more powerful ‘self’ – according to one’s religion one either becomes God or have the Almighty on their side against fear and mortality. In contrast, in a PCE there is simply no fear because ‘I’, the sole source of the feeling of fear, is absent. RESPONDENT: I’ve pondered in the past whether unhappiness is the absence of happiness, or the existence of something called ‘unhappiness’. I know better now, but it’s another case of the human’s determination to create in the presence of a void. Since the whole AF premise is eliminative, the brain/mind abhors the (perceived) vacuum and attempts to fill it with new creations. VINEETO: According to my experience, my happiness is epitomized by the absence of unhappiness, of both malice and sorrow with its endless variations. This happiness is then unconditional, i.e. it does not depend on particular events, things or people but is quite simply the state I am experiencing when ‘I’ and ‘my’ neurosis and feelings don’t spoil what is happening in this moment. You could also say, happiness is what remains when all reasons for unhappiness have been removed – the ‘eliminative’ process of actualism. I know what you mean by an abhorrence of the ‘(perceived) vacuum’ – that’s exactly where ‘I’ want to come back on stage and sometimes quite dramatically. That’s when the combination of courage, intent, stubbornness and determination come in handy and, for me, the knowledge that I left my old ways forever.
RESPONDENT: Hi Vineeto... back from my vacation in the US Pacific NW (avoiding ‘certain’ parts of Oregon), enjoying myself too thoroughly. Now back to work... VINEETO: Good to hear that you had an enjoyable holiday. Funny that you should say you were ‘avoiding ‘certain’ parts of Oregon’ – these ‘certain’ parts of Oregon are the only landscape of the US I have ever seen in person apart from the bus ride to and from Portland airport. But thanks largely to the amazing amount of information available on satellite television I now know lots more about the countryside as well as the history and politics of the US than at the time when I was visiting ‘certain parts of Oregon’. * VINEETO: This guilt ‘by virtue of ‘my’ very presence’ is not a ‘somewhat differently flavoured’ layer of my ‘own particular onion’ – this guilt of ‘being a being’ is intrinsic to every human being. The only way I became aware of this basic layer of guilt of being a ‘self’ was by repeated exposure to the perfection, purity and innocence as experienced in a ‘self’-less PCE. The more I experience purity and perfection, when this flesh and blood body is free from any identity whatsoever, the more I know, as soon as ‘I’ return, that ‘I’ am a fraud, an intruder, an alien entity, a fake – I undeniably know that ‘I’ am not the genuine article. This ever-increasing awareness that all ‘I’ do is obstruct the purity and perfection of the actual universe from becoming apparent is what is speeding ‘my’ demise. To put it another way, acknowledging and being aware that ‘I’ am but a ‘fake’ undermines ‘my’ very foundation. As you can see, the term guilty ‘by virtue of ‘my’ very presence’ is used in its meaning as the opposite to innocent – an innocence that is only apparent when the ‘self’ has left the stage. RESPONDENT: Though I understand your meaning, I could argue that this is a fairly abstract, or perhaps overly dramatic use of the word guilt (responsibility for a reprehensible act). VINEETO: I don’t insist on using the word ‘guilt’ for my experience and understanding of the intrinsic birthmark of being a ‘being’ but I can’t find any other adequate word for the absence of innocence, which I so clearly experienced in my pure consciousness experiences. For me the awareness that ‘I’ as being can never be pure or innocent is neither abstract nor overly dramatic. For me it was the impetus nudge, constantly increasing over the years of practicing actualism, to do everything I need to do to become free from the blemish of the human condition. If I can put it another way – if I find myself being angry about something, or at somebody, then it is clear that I am being angry. This anger is the very same feeling of anger that causes aggressive and violent behaviour – it is exactly the same kind of feeling, just different in degree. Thus if I am feeling angry, no matter how mild in degree, then I am hardly being pure or innocent. Another way of saying this is that if I am feeling angry, infuriated, peeved, disgruntled, resentful, annoyed or piqued about something, or at someone, then ‘I’ am guilty, as in neither pure nor innocent. Personally, I find nothing at all abstract about this – to me it is utterly down-to-earth and sensible. RESPONDENT: But I shalln’t as I have resolved not to argue definitions any more, esp. when accompanied by clear example. VINEETO: I like your resolution ‘not to argue definitions esp. when accompanied by clear example’, as continually questioning the appropriateness of descriptive words often only serves to divert from the issue at hand – the need to fundamentally and irrevocably change one’s behaviour and actions, not tinker with one’s lexicology or make revisions to one’s philosophy. My favourite metaphor for this resultless enterprise of mental gymnastics is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic – others have called it fiddling while Rome is burning. Nevertheless, I prefer to be as accurate as possible in my descriptions of the discoveries about the human condition and my experiences in the process of actualism and I welcome any feedback. I know only too well the tendency of religious and spiritual groups to create their own unique meaning of words in order to distance themselves from others. When I left the Sannyas world I began to relearn the English language, this time with dictionary in hand, and was quite often astounded how far Rajneesh and his followers had redefined words into meaning something other than what they were meant to mean. * VINEETO: Generally in society the term guilt is used to describe the socially instilled feeling of guilt – in religious circles this is known as having a ‘bad conscience’. For an actualist, this feeling of guilt inevitably arises when you begin to question the social principles of right and wrong and the spiritual values of good and bad. To dare to question the social principles and spiritual values is deemed ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ by any social standards and, in fact, one transgresses what is considered taboo or off-limits in any society. <snip> What I found essential, whenever the feeling of guilt arose, was to inquire into the nature of the feeling. Had I come across a spiritual or social moral or ethic, had I broken the law of the land or was I feeling guilty for not living up to my own standards, i.e. was I being harmful to others, either intentionally or intentionally? The outcome of this investigation then determines if I need to change my action because I aspire to live up to my own standards, or can I dismiss the feeling of guilt because this guilt originates from the unliveable morals and ethics I no longer call my own. RESPONDENT: This is the definition I was using in my question. I agree that feelings of guilt of this type are strong indicators of areas needing attention, as are shame, embarrassment, etc. I was simply organizing them (engineer brain again) into a layer that is more subtle than the strong stuff, like anger and love. My onion implied an even more subtle layer, wherein resides something akin to your first definition of guilt. Enough of the onions now, let’s make soup. VINEETO: Yes, I agree, the feelings of guilt instilled as an integral part of one’s social identity are an ingredient of the outer layer to be peeled away and these guilty feelings can also slightly vary from person to person due to their particular social conditioning. Personally I can say that being born a ‘German’ unavoidably left me feeling guilty for the atrocities committed by other Germans before I was even born. This underlying feeling of guilt drove me to question both my national identity and my Christian belief and join the search for Eastern spiritualism in my twenties. But only after I left behind the feelings arising out of my national and my religious/spiritual identity did I discover the deeper layers of guilt ‘by virtue of ‘my’ very presence’ – and this will only disappear when ‘I’ cease to be. In the beginning stage of putting actualism into practice I often felt guilty for daring to question the tightly knitted web of society’s morals and ethics – the rules of the game defining what I – and everyone else – must believe as being good and right, socially acceptable and personally desirable. How dare I make my own rules and standards – even if they are far superior, as in based on an assessment of silly and sensible, not right and wrong, and founded upon fact and commonsense, not belief and passion? When I began to investigate why I felt this guilt, I found it to be a significant key to unlocking the psychological and psychic power and authority that others held over me. I found that my feelings of guilt were closely connected with the fear of punishment by an ultimate authority if I dared to question society’s revered morals and ethics. I became aware that I was afraid if I did not obey the rules that some invisible, non-physical, yet all-powerful force would punish me terribly – a fear that was over and above the fear of human ostracization and/or punishment. This rather atavistic fear was the fear of God – the ultimate moral and ethical authority. At the time I remember I was surprised to discover this deeper layer of fear as I had thrown out my belief in the Christian God a long time ago and my belief in Rajneesh’s Godliness some six months earlier. To use your metaphor – the onion of my social identity became much thinner after I finally realized that an ultimate moral and ethical authority – a God by any name or form – only exists in the insidious passionate imagination of human hearts and minds and is nowhere to be found in an actual physical universe. In other words, being autonomous doesn’t come easy but it beats belonging and kow-towing hands down, any day of the week. * RESPONDENT: I’ve pondered in the past whether unhappiness is the absence of happiness, or the existence of something called ‘unhappiness’. I know better now, but it’s another case of the human’s determination to create in the presence of a void. Since the whole AF premise is eliminative, the brain/mind abhors the (perceived) vacuum and attempts to fill it with new creations. VINEETO: I know what you mean by an abhorrence of the ‘(perceived) vacuum’ – that’s exactly where ‘I’ want to come back on stage and sometimes quite dramatically. That’s when the combination of courage, intent, stubbornness and determination come in handy and, for me, the knowledge that I left my old ways forever. RESPONDENT: The identity certainly keeps trying to recreate itself, fill in the cracks in the armour. It’s a most insidious amoeba-like entity. VINEETO: Yes, ‘amoeba-like’ is a good description and the only medicine is to become increasingly aware of its functioning. ‘I’ am rather insidious in my ways of cunningly reconstructing my ‘self’ but ‘I’ can also agree to take myself apart for the sake of genuine peace on earth. There is nothing mystical about the process of taking myself apart – it is the magical capacity of the human brain to become aware of its own functioning and its subsequent capability to rewire itself in order to advance to the next stage of evolution. RESPONDENT: Sheer intent is essential. VINEETO: Just out of curiosity – I wonder if you would mind describing what is fuelling your intent to become free from the human condition? Was there a particular motivation that twigged your curiosity about actualism and/or a passion that keeps you going? RESPONDENT: I’ve had the distinct impression lately of my identity as this great hair coat, something that has an almost palpable ‘external-ness’, hence can potentially be shed. VINEETO: I can relate to that impression. I remember that the more I discovered parts of my social identity, the thinner this ‘hair coat’ grew as more and more chunks of who I thought and felt I was fell off. However, as the outer layer grew more thin and transparent, it also revealed more and more the ‘me’ who I ‘really’ am – the underlying bare instinctual passions, – and this opened up a whole new field for attentive observation and exploration. Nice to chat with you. * PS. I’ve only lately realized that the description that I sent in about 2 weeks ago for searching the
website on one’s own computer only applies to Windows ME. I apologize for any resulting confusion. We have now written a two-part description of
how to search the downloaded website, one for Windows 95/98 and one for Windows ME/XP. You can access it And following your suggestion, there is also a link on The Actual Freedom Trust homepage entitled ‘How to search the Actual Freedom Website’ linking to an explanation as to how to search when on line.
RESPONDENT: Hi Vineeto... back from my vacation in the US Pacific NW (avoiding ‘certain’ parts of Oregon), enjoying myself too thoroughly. Now back to work... VINEETO: Good to hear that you had an enjoyable holiday. Funny that you should say you were ‘avoiding ‘certain’ parts of Oregon’ – these ‘certain’ parts of Oregon are the only landscape of the US I have ever seen in person apart from the bus ride to and from Portland airport. <snip> RESPONDENT: It’s too bad you didn’t experience more of the region... it is truly beautiful geography. Amazing that you were insulated from the majesty of nature en route to such an ‘important’ place. The forests/mountains/water make a far grander ‘church’ than any guru’s ashram. I found I was quite drawn to the environment of the NW, and shortly after I returned I was approached about an interesting job opportunity in the area. Clearly divine forces at work, huh? ;-) So, a move may be in the offing. VINEETO: Oh, on my journeys to the Oregon Ranch – four altogether – I was entirely focussed on seeing Rajneesh and our new commune. In my years of spiritual search I was geared to finding the ‘inner beauty’ that was represented by Rajneesh and ‘his people’, nothing ‘outer’ mattered much to me. My disregard for the magnificence around me is yet another proof of how much spiritual belief and religious devotion were clouding, distorting and restricting my perception and making me oblivious to the splendour of the actual physical universe. Many spiritualists claim to see and experience this magnificence and splendour but what they feel is beauty, which means they also see and experience ugliness. As such, they can only sustain the feeling of beauty by denying or turning away from their feeling of ugliness. This is also evident in the religion of animism that underpins much of Environmental belief – whilst they see beauty and goodness in Mother Nature they also see ugliness and evil in materialism and technological progress. * VINEETO: When I left the Sannyas world I began to relearn the English language, this time with dictionary in hand, and was quite often astounded how far Rajneesh and his followers had redefined words into meaning something other than what they were meant to mean. RESPONDENT: I know I wrestled with terminology for quite some time (as clearly have other newbies). I suppose it’s an outcome of attempting to fit what’s on offer into a pre-existing perceptual model. That’s not unusual when making a significant shift... that’s why learning to play music (e.g.) is difficult, not easy. VINEETO: It is not an easy task to take off one’s ‘spiritual glasses’ yet this is necessary to at least grasp that an actual freedom is not ‘of the spirit’ but is for this flesh-and-blood body. I am presently revisiting mailing list archives from 1998 and 1999 and I found some telling examples how – quite naturally – people tried ‘to fit what’s on offer into a pre-existing perceptual model’. This is the reason that actualists keep repeating that ‘an actual freedom lies 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual belief’. The natural-instinctual way the human brain works is to attempt to assimilate new information into previous experiences. Thus far human experience has been based on the ancient duality of materialism vs. spiritualism and given that spiritual belief is pure fantasy anyway it is natural, easy and very tempting to expand one’s fantasy to accommodate a new promise for happiness. What I instantly liked – even before I understood the finer details of the human condition – was that actualism is about actually changing myself rather than changing my beliefs and ideals. This offered an end to the eternal dichotomy between spiritual ideals and life in the marketplace – a conflict that all spiritual people have such trouble with. As a practical person I was delighted to find that there was a down-to-earth solution after all – come out of the clouds, onto this magnificent planet and successively sort out my problems that made me escape into fantasy-land in the first place. RESPONDENT: I don’t consider that some of my queries in the past have been answered ‘satisfactorily’, as the questions and answers were formulated in two different languages as it were, but I do have confidence that they will be eventually, if I continue to apply myself diligently. For instance, I am starting to see that the great and mysterious issue of man and woman living in harmony is actually achievable, but to describe that in words was and is difficult. Once again, it’s the process... learning music doesn’t make sense until you’ve learnt music. VINEETO: I am pleased to hear that you are unravelling the mystery of ‘man and woman living in harmony’. For me this was the area where I drew my confidence that actualism worked. The first thing was to stop fighting for ‘my’ rights and battling and blaming the other. One of the astounding discoveries for me was that for every conflict of interest there is in fact a win-win solution, and finding that solution replaced the instinctual battle for survival that only has winners and losers. It was important that situations were resolved as a win for everyone and not as compromises because compromising would only call for more compromises so as to not disturb the delicate power balance. The key, I found, was my commitment for peace and harmony being at the top of my laundry list – right after becoming free from the human condition. This does not mean that I give in or give up nor does it mean that I fight for my rights – it means that I always consider the situation of both parties, mine and the other’s and then put my effort into finding a solution that suits all. The other vital ingredient for a harmonious living together was to dig into my beliefs of male and female conditioning and find out the facts of the situation. The beliefs that form my gender identity needed to be unravelled and investigated and in the course of that investigation I incrementally stopped being a woman and discovered that I am a human being just like any other, be they man or woman. Some scientists have observed that parts of the brain are differently active in men and women, thereby claiming that gender differences are hard wired, but I am rather sceptical of their theories given that social gender conditioning begins the moment any newborn infant is declared to be either a boy or a girl. Furthermore, those scientists themselves are strongly biased in their interpretations of data by their own gender identity. The more you dig into and remove your social identity as a man and your instinctual identity as a male, the more you will find how similar the different genders of human beings really are. I found that, apart from the delicious difference of in-bits and out-bits, there is hardly any actual disparity between male and female human beings – our senses as well as our practical intelligence function in pretty much the same way. RESPONDENT: That said, we still must communicate with our fellow beings, and language is our most powerful tool. I like your bit about relearning the English language... I know I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about the words I’m using, re-reading, re-writing. It’s important and should be treated accordingly. Many (including myself) are too quick to use their mouths... they make great harm generators. VINEETO: When you say ‘too quick’ I am reminded of the ‘quick and dirty processing
pathway’ from the thalamus to the Amygdala that LeDoux and his team discovered * RESPONDENT: Sheer intent is essential. VINEETO: Just out of curiosity – I wonder if you would mind describing what is fuelling your intent to become free from the human condition? Was there a particular motivation that twigged your curiosity about actualism and/or a passion that keeps you going? RESPONDENT: Over the past decade or so, I’ve slowly become aware of my own programs, how I react in situations, etc. This was through a combination of basic self-observation and contemplation of some reading materials, aided occasionally by professional counselling. I had arrived at a point where I saw that so much of what I did, how I related to others was playing the same sad programs over and over again. This was a wonderful piece of knowledge, and I knew I didn’t want to continue doing the same old same old. I was stuck at that point however, feeling somewhat lost in the existential swamps, and also a bit lazy about actually doing real work... or maybe uninspired – all the spiritual paths I looked into smelled kind of funny, and the disciples didn’t appear to be any happier than myself. I was sort of intrigued by U.G. who appeared to be somewhat a-spiritual, and came across the AF link somewhere in the U.G.-net (my recollection may be inaccurate here though). The AF site presented a statement of the human condition that mapped nicely onto what I had learned myself, and provided a method to do something about it. The utter simplicity of the premise appealed to me also, as it has always seemed to me that most religions take some very simple concepts (be happy, harm no one), and add dogma and ceremony onto it so deeply that it is suffocated. Also, there was a refreshing absence of guru-ship on display. So here is an appealing model and method, all I have to is get on with it. That point was made clear to me in many of the writings – there was absolutely no alternative to getting off my butt and applying myself 24/7. None, period, full stop. This, coupled with a growing awareness that my time on the planet is not infinite, has motivated me to get serious. So, that alone kept me going initially, and now I am starting to reap some more ‘tangible’ benefits, which really aids the old inspiration. Nothing like results to motivate. How’s that? VINEETO: An excellent report. It reminds me of what Gary wrote in his introduction to the actual freedom list:
Today someone told me that he believes in astrology – the power of super-natural influences – because by doing so he doesn’t have to feel guilty for not being happy. He said that whenever he is particularly knocked about by strong emotions he would call his astrologer and ask for a ‘star’-appraisal. Of course, the astrologer always finds the right explanation in the stars and confirms that his feelings are just as they should be because ‘his Jupiter is being overshadowed by his Uranus’ and that things will soon change. So in order to assuage his social-spiritual conditioning of feeling guilty for being sad and grumpy he takes refuge in the ancient superstition of astrology and as such he passes the buck to Someone/ Something else. Who would dare to be so arrogant to overrule the Heavenly forces and be happy despite the mighty influence of planetary constellations? … As you said – ‘Sheer intent is essential’. * PS. Vineeto – We have now written a two-part description of how to search the downloaded website, one
for Windows 95/98 and one for Windows ME/XP. You can access it RESPONDENT: Great customer service. Your descriptions seem accurate, though you need to add 2000 (which I use)... it works like ME. VINEETO: Thanks. Done.
VINEETO: When you say ‘too quick’ I am reminded of the ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ from the thalamus to the Amygdala that LeDoux and his team discovered (see Library Topics – Instinctual Passions). The emotional-instinctual response by its very nature is ‘too quick’, while a deliberate sensible answer requires thinking and contemplation. RESPONDENT: I found this bit to be a fascinating bit of science when I first read about it, and consistent with my own discoveries. It just takes that split-second of deferring my responses to take the wind out of their sails. This helped enormously with the external aspects of my relationships with others. This is an example of the appeal (to me) of AF... its sound footing in the concrete/actual... no need for spirits/gods/planetary influences/etc. VINEETO: As you say, ‘the external aspects of my relationships with others’ were the first to take care of. For me that meant I became determined to stop expressing any of my angry, sad, resentful, irritated, etc. feelings to the people I interacted with. The more ‘split-seconds’ I learnt to put between experiencing those feeling and expressing a thoughtful response, the less I transmitted these feelings to others. Whilst the first aspect is to stop expressing such feelings to others, it is equally important not to repress them. It is only by not repressing my feelings of anger, sadness or resentment that I am able to experience them and then inquire into the nature of my beliefs and the bits of my identity that triggered those feelings in the first place. Whenever I became aware that I was feeling upset about a comment someone made, I took the opportunity to look for the reason why his or her comment had upset me. As an example – did his or her comment in a conversation question a dearly held belief or opinion of mine? In that case I questioned why it was so important for me to maintain my belief and I looked deeper into the particular belief or opinion that had been disturbed. Slowly, slowly, with effort and diligence, those – touchy – beliefs were replaced by sound facts and simple sensibility which, in turn, enabled a joie de vivre to supplant the former ambience of doom and gloom. * RESPONDENT: <snip a minor history> VINEETO: An excellent report. It reminds me of what Gary wrote in his introduction to the actual freedom list:
RESPONDENT: I read this piece and recognized a lot of similarity. One item I had omitted in my own report was captured by Gary in this statement:
About three months ago, I had to face this about myself. Despite all the good work I had done in self-observation, it all boiled down to the simple inescapable truth: I was unhappy and angry, and no amount of psychological analysis was going to make it go away. This is where the sheer intent to change that comes into play. VINEETO: It is always a pleasure to swap stories with a fellow human being and a joy to have a good conversation. And it is a particular delight to meet a fellow traveller who is similarly fed up with being ‘unhappy and angry’ and is determined to change that. In that respect your history is more than a ‘minor history’ as you said in snipping your report, because your life experience has culminated in the realisation that you were neither happy nor harmless and this resulted in the ‘sheer intent to change’ . It was similar for me in that I had to admit that all my spiritual efforts had not enabled me to live together peacefully with women, let alone with a man, and thus all my supposedly attained ‘inner peace’ was nothing but hot air and imagination. I’ve often contemplated on the topic of intent in the last years because intent is the sole key for having an interest in becoming actually free from the human condition in the first place and for maintaining the determination to keep going until I reach my goal. My intent was based on the acknowledgment and realisation that ‘all the good work in self-observation’ , as you call it, had not made me happy and harmless and this realisation motivated me to try something different to spiritualism and materialism. The intent to keep going has a simple equation – when the old bridges are burnt, and second-best is not an option, then the only direction is forward. No 3 said it well some time ago on the list –
* RESPONDENT: The elemental facts, and the way to do something about them are really incredibly simple. I think that many who get an inkling of this fundamental premise can’t deal with the fact that the nature of the universe really is that simple, so they must contrive layers of myth in order to give it more ‘meaning’. VINEETO: You are right in that ‘the nature of the universe really is that simple’ – when my identity in toto disappears the purity and perfection, inherent in the very nature of the universe, prevail. It only becomes complicated because our cunning identity is instinctually programmed solely for ‘self’-preservation and ‘self’-procreation. As for ‘layers of myth’ – every child born is taught myths and legends, fairy tales and fantasies, long before they have the ability or the life experience to find out for themselves the facts of the matter regarding life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. A current myth, for instance, is the ‘big bang’ theory that most physicists nowadays accept as ‘Truth’ and it is interesting to watch how they tie themselves in ever complicated knots in trying to reconcile this myth with the empirical laws of physics as they apply in the actual physical universe. It is fascinating to see the ever-widening gulf between belief and fact, so much so that physicists are now studying things that have no material existence outside of their own fertile imaginations and the virtual calculations of their computer programs. There simply was no ‘big bang’, the universe has always been here and it will always be here – eternal and infinite and peerless in its perfection.
VINEETO: I’m not very quick in responding, as I’ve been quite busy lately with work, which usually happens about two to three weeks after the end of a quarter when the financial statements for the tax office are due. Then I am flat out for a few weeks and afterwards have a nice long time to ‘recover’ with only a few regular workdays … until the next tax-time. Now to the topic of the infinite and eternal universe – A current myth, for instance, is the ‘big bang’ theory that most physicists nowadays accept as ‘Truth’ and it is interesting to watch how they tie themselves in ever complicated knots in trying to reconcile this myth with the empirical laws of physics as they apply in the actual physical universe. It is fascinating to see the ever-widening gulf between belief and fact, so much so that physicists are now studying things that have no material existence outside of their own fertile imaginations and the virtual calculations of their computer programs. There simply was no ‘big bang’, the universe has always been here and it will always be here – eternal and infinite, peerless in its perfection. RESPONDENT: This ties into an area that I’ve occasionally considered delving in to, but it’s of secondary importance to this process. But, we’re here, so let’s give it a whirl. Note that this discussion refers only to the physical universe; there is no intimation of spirituality/magic/gods/etc. Your implication is that these scientists have an investment in self-fulfilling prophecy/myth. While that is likely true in many cases, it is also presumptuous on any of our parts that we know the absolute extent and content of the physical universe. We really only know what information we’ve gathered to date and can be proven empirically to some degree of confidence. From these data points, we may extrapolate other theories, some of which are provable and some more elusive. It’s likely though that there are a vast number of other data points that are far beyond our ability to even conceive, based on what we know right now. As a crude example, a nineteenth century coal miner (let alone Cro-Magnon man) couldn’t possibly conceive of the internet (‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’, Arthur C. Clarke) VINEETO: I have always found it useful, based on my many years of experience with spiritual practices, to be particularly precise about words that can also mean something spiritual, i.e. non-material, and the word ‘magic’ in two of its three meanings listed in the Oxford Dictionary means something additional to or other than factuality –
Technology, however advanced, is by its very nature pragmatic and factual, i.e. it is based on cause and effect, it can be observed, experienced and reproduced by any number of people and it works. In short, it is neither trick nor supernatural and as such is easily distinguishable from magic as defined in definitions 1 & 2 above. Most people make no distinction between magic as in ‘inexplicable’ and ‘surprising results’ and magic as in ‘invocation’ of either ‘good’ or ‘evil spirits’ and this lack of intellectual vigour helps explain why non-Newtonian Western theoretical physicists are now eagerly shaking hands with Eastern mystics and vice versa. Here are some blatant examples –
And another quote –
These examples might appear to be Rajneesh’s personal interpretation of modern physics but unfortunately that is not the case. Scientists themselves are as much inflicted with religious/ spiritual beliefs as everyone else – they are after all instinctually and socially programmed human beings first and scientists second. Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, observed about scientists – ‘I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.’ Victor Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii, has pointed out the spiritual trend of theoretical physics in his book ‘The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology’ –
The belief that ‘human consciousness and the universe form an interconnected whole’ is otherwise known as anthropocentrism or simply ‘self’-centredness. Peter has done an extensive exposé of the collection of theories, speculation, imagination and
fantasies that run under the name of RESPONDENT: By extrapolation, there must be many, many things we don’t know at this point. I think that this likely serves to explain much of the ‘inexplicable’, UFOs, haunted houses, ..., all that we label as spirits, gods, devils. So, how do you say with such sureness, ‘There simply was no ‘big bang’’? Why is it inconceivable that the universe has an end and/or beginning? Bear in mind that the concepts of beginning/ending, and time in general get rather distorted at this physical scale... eternal and infinite may not mean the same thing to the universe as they do to us mere mortals. I do remember trying to get my brain around these subjects in my college physics courses... fascinating stuff but it can give one a headache! VINEETO: As an engineer you have some practical experience that the empirical laws of physics apply to all matter. For instance the law of gravity applies equally to a moon or a planet as well as to a stone or feather on earth. The same goes for the way chemicals react with each other – for instance Helium has the same chemical qualities on the sun as it has on earth. The physical universe, as vast as it is, has thus far proved to have remarkably consistent physical properties and qualities. As I understand it, the calculations that put men on the moon and sent a spacecraft to each of our solar system’s planets were all based on Newtonian laws of physics and not on Einstein-influenced theories about space and time. For most people it is readily conceivable ‘that the universe has an end and/or beginning’, which is made evident by the popular acceptance of the big bang theory. Humans prefer either to believe in a mystical God who created the universe or believe in some highly illogical and physically implausible event when this vast universe all started out of nothing.
The last sentence I found particularly telling. Just think about it in a straightforward manner – if there was to be a Big Bang and the universe came suddenly into existence from some kind of super-condensed unknown material, then one needs to assume all kinds of strange circumstances outside of the empirical laws of physics in order to arrive at the current state of countless suns and galaxies. One needs theories about super-phenomena, doughnut-shaped universes, warp-space, black holes, anti-matter and so on in order to somehow explain the sudden development from nothing to something. And yet many questions remain unanswered. For instance: what was there before the Big Bang? What was outside of the super-condensed universe? What is the universe expanding into? What is beyond the edge of the expanding universe? What happened before Planck time, the time before time began? None of those hypothetical questions needs to be answered if you acknowledge that only that which can be sensately observed and empirically measured exists as an actuality. Then theory and imagination, postulation and hypothesis collapse and one can realize that the physical universe has always been here, an endless and eternally changing magical array of gas and matter in infinite space. And the most magical of all – on one known planet, life developed to a stage of present day human intelligence and increasingly I can experience this perfect peerless universe in utter wonder and amazement. RESPONDENT: Again, this topic is really of academic interest only, and I’m not sure that it’s worth spending a lot of energy on. Personally, I am trying to focus a bit more on the experiential side of the coin lately, rather than the analytical. VINEETO: For me, contemplating about the infinite and eternal universe was fundamental to experientially understanding the very core of what actualism is about. The longer I thought about the very physicality of this body and everybody and everything in the universe the more I began to grasp the nature of the actual world, the understanding and experience of which is obscured by human ‘self’-centredness, anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. Contemplating that the universe has neither a middle nor an edge and neither a beginning nor an end brought on a pure consciousness experience on several occasions. Once I began to understand that the theories about a beginning as well as an edge to the universe are meta-physical theories driven by mystical beliefs, I began to grasp that the theoretical physicists are searching for God. The no-thing and no-time before the Big Bang implies that there is or was something other than this physical universe from which the universe emerged, something meta-physical, something imaginary. And with this realization it became impossible for me to believe in something outside of this physical universe and it suddenly became very obvious that the universe has never been created, it has never begun – it has always been here. * More information on eternity and infinity can be found in Richard’s correspondence on the topic of Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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