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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 66
VINEETO: Hi, RESPONDENT: Hello, Richard and Peter and Vineeto, It seems it would be helpful if one or all of you guys wrote a book (not just a journal) about how to practice Actualism. VINEETO: Peter’s Journal (208 pages) is available as a free download from the website RESPONDENT: The site is great, VINEETO: Thanks for your feedback. RESPONDENT: but having Carpel tunnel makes it hard to get through. There is also the issue of running out of ink when printing. The Journals are a bit pricey too. ‘Hopeing’ for a book (around $20-25 tops) in the near future. VINEETO: Do you really expect that the four directors of the Actual Freedom Trust should not only pay for the upkeep and running costs of the website out of their own pockets (which they do), answer all the objections from correspondents all over the world (which three of them do), but also send out the two journals the printing of which they funded from their own money for below cost to whoever asks?
RESPONDENT: ... but having Carpel tunnel makes it hard to get through. There is also the issue of running out of ink when printing. The Journals are a bit pricey too. ‘Hopeing’ for a book (around $20-25 tops) in the near future. VINEETO: Do you really expect that the four directors of the Actual Freedom Trust should not only pay for the upkeep and running costs of the website out of their own pockets (which they do), answer all the objections from correspondents all over the world (which three of them do), but also send out the two journals the printing of which they funded from their own money for below cost to whoever asks? RESPONDENT: Apparently I misunderstood the cost of the Journals – I thought they were $40 and that did sound expensive. I’m reading Peter’s now. I think I may order Richards very soon. I’m in the dark about how expensive your operation is. Thanks for replying, VINEETO: Upon reflection my response was somewhat abrupt. It has always been the intention of the members of the Actual Freedom Trust to make Richards’s discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition freely available to our fellow human beings via the Internet but as you would appreciate we do charge for printed books. RESPONDENT: my first message did not get a reply. shalom VINEETO: I see that Richard has answered your first message. You will find that some of us are rather slow in replying. As for me, sometimes I am quite busy with other affairs and sometimes I simply have to wait for my inclination to write to return. As for delays in responding, Richard is spending less time at the keyboard lately due to other commitments and both Peter and I are often involved with work commitments, other interests and the pleasures of living together. * VINEETO: I will take the opportunity to respond to another issue you have raised – RESPONDENT: I was thinking about the silly/sensible construct and I thought it was something similar I discovered – i.e. the healthy/unhealthy construct. I have for some time rejected morality as a primitive way to say what is healthy or not. It not silly also unhealthy and sensible healthy? I was wondering if Peter, Richard or Vineeto could consider the pros and cons of using sensible or healthy? Is what I’m thinking a sensible additional way to think or another diversion? VINEETO: I looked up the Oxford Thesaurus in order to determine if the words sensible and healthy are interchangeable and this is what I found –
While the definition #2 is somewhat interchangeable with being sensible, it seems that in the definitions 1 and 3 healthy means physical soundness while sensible describes more accurately the general quality of applying practicality, common sense and intelligence –
But then it is, of course, up to you what words you use in order to determine if a certain feeling or attitude or decision or action is appropriate or inappropriate in your aim of becoming more harmless and more happy.
VINEETO: You said something in your post to No 67 that I would like to clarify – RESPONDENT: The short gist of the method is to ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ which is the HAIETMOBA you have been seeing. You ask yourself this question only to remind yourself to be aware of your sensate experience. So, you ‘feel’ or experience your body awareness. VINEETO: When you ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ it is not ‘only to remind yourself to be aware of your sensate experience’ because that would mean to yet again dissociate from any feelings and emotions you are experiencing at the time. It’s a misunderstanding that can easily occur and I had to sort it out myself when I began to practice actualism. Actualism is not about not-feeling – because this is impossible whilst one is still a social/instinctual ‘self’ – actualism is about experientially examining one’s current emotions and feelings in order to feel as happy and harmless as is humanly possible in this, the only moment you can experience being alive. In order to become aware of a feeling when it is occurring, the first thing one has to do is to stop trying to make it go away as we have been socially or spiritually conditioned to do. As long as you object to having the feeling you cannot observe it. This means one needs to become aware of and understand one’s automatic reaction of suppression – and/or dis-association – in order to be able to experience the feeling fully so that you can then feel what the feeling feels like and give it a name. As a general rule of thumb it is impossible to examine a feeling while you are having it because, as you will have noticed, invidious and euphoric feelings, emotions and passions prevent clear thinking from happening – so the next thing to do is to get back to feeling good by recognizing that it is silly to waste this moment of being alive by being angry, irritated, fearful, sad, etc. When you are back to feeling good you can then begin to examine what made you angry, anxious, gloomy, etc. in the first place – when did the feeling first start, what was the event or situation that caused my affective reaction, why did I feel insulted, sad, angry, worried, etc., which of my cherished beliefs was being questioned, what part of my identity was being attacked, was there a fear underneath the initial feeling, what was this fear about ...? In this way you are conducting a scientific inquiry into your own affective experience, you are in fact examining your own psyche in action – but at first you have to allow the feeling to come to the surface so that you can conduct an extensive examination into all its aspects. Once you get over the initial moral and ethical objection to having unpleasant or undesirable feelings in the first place, you will notice a keen interest and fascination developing that comes from being able to be aware of your own feelings and emotions while they are happening and from being able to investigate them as soon as you are back to feeling good. This investigation into your feelings has to be experiential if it is to bring any tangible results – thinking about feelings and emotions abstracted from practical down-to-earth personal experience will not enable you to penetrate into the very nature of your psyche. So the first thing is to stop one’s usual habits of fighting, denying or expressing one’s feelings, blaming people and events for causing one’s feelings or dissociating from one’s feelings. By doing so you allow yourself to experience feelings all the while making sure that you keep your mouth shut and your hands in your pocket, otherwise you might do or say something you regret later on. Of course, the more I diminish both my ‘good’, i.e. desirable, and my ‘bad’, i.e. undesirable, feelings and simultaneously disempower the social/instinctual ‘self’, the more I am free to delight in the sensate luscious experience of being alive.
RESPONDENT: Apparently I misunderstood the cost of the Journals – I thought they were $40 and that did sound expensive. I’m reading Peter’s now. I think I may order Richards very soon. I’m in the dark about how expensive your operation is. Thanks for replying, VINEETO: Upon reflection my response was somewhat abrupt. It has always been the intention of the members of the Actual Freedom Trust to make Richards’s discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition freely available to our fellow human beings via the Internet but as you would appreciate we do charge for printed books. RESPONDENT: I thought your response was a little ‘gruff’, but I’ve noticed that you three are all very to the point, w/o compromise. I accept this and find it refreshing so far. Of course my first response did not come across well, it was ignorant. You offer freely, and I now see the journal is more expensive for me because it’s coming from Australia and I’m in America. VINEETO: The journals are comparatively dearer than books printed by big publishing companies because they are self-published in small numbers. Actualism is very much in its pioneering stage and none of the publishers we approached has been at all interested in publishing such iconoclastic and heretical material. I looked up the present exchange rate and AU$42.00 (Richard’s journal incl. postage and packaging) is U$30.75. In my first response I gave you the wrong figure for postage and packaging. * RESPONDENT: my first message did not get a reply. shalom VINEETO: I see that Richard has answered your first message. You will find that some of us are rather slow in replying. As for me, sometimes I am quite busy with other affairs and sometimes I simply have to wait for my inclination to write to return. As for delays in responding, Richard is spending less time at the keyboard lately due to other commitments and both Peter and I are often involved with work commitments, other interests and the pleasures of living together. RESPONDENT: Oh yes, your human. :) VINEETO: I am most certainly more fully alive than I ever was because I have given up my ‘spiritual bank account’, i.e. the things I used to do to purify my imaginary soul. That leaves me free to enjoy the sensate down-to-earth pleasures of being alive. When we started this mailing list in May 1998 I was keen to write about the new adventure of actualism and my discoveries on the journey into my psyche, which is the human psyche, and for a few years much of my free time was spent writing and setting up the website. Nowadays writing on this list is something that I fit in with the many other pleasures and obligations of life … and doing nothing really well is one of my favourite occupations. To be virtually free of malice and sorrow is the very best one can be whilst remaining an instinctive human being. * VINEETO: I will take the opportunity to respond to another issue you have raised – RESPONDENT: I was thinking about the silly/sensible construct and I thought it was something similar I discovered – i.e. the healthy/unhealthy construct. I have for some time rejected morality as a primitive way to say what is healthy or not. It not silly also unhealthy and sensible healthy? I was wondering if Peter, Richard or Vineeto could consider the pros and cons of using sensible or healthy? Is what I’m thinking a sensible additional way to think or another diversion? VINEETO: I looked up the Oxford Thesaurus in order to determine if the words sensible and healthy are interchangeable and this is what I found – <definition snipped> While the definition #2 is somewhat interchangeable with being sensible, it seems that in the definitions 1 and 3 healthy means physical soundness while sensible describes more accurately the general quality of applying practicality, common sense and intelligence –
RESPONDENT: I work in the mental health field and it has coloured my take on the meaning of healthy. Your response was helpful and has opened my eyes to the meaning of sensible. VINEETO: Becoming free from the instinctual survival passions goes far, far beyond being
mentally healthy. To be a mentally healthy, i.e. sane, member of society one needs to have a coherent and socially acceptable social identity and
be able to keep one’s instinctual passions under control within socially acceptable limits. And yet sane people kill other sane people in wars
and homicides, sane people are sometimes so desperate that they commit suicide and sane people cannot live with other sane people in peace and
harmony. On the topic of being mentally healthy vs. being sensible you may also find * VINEETO: But then it is, of course, up to you what words you use in order to determine if a certain feeling or attitude or decision or action is appropriate or inappropriate in your aim of becoming more harmless and more happy. RESPONDENT: Oh, in actualism my own thinking is respected and I don’t have to just use all of Richard’s terms? VINEETO: Doing your own thinking is an unavoidable necessity because you will have to do the
whole process on your own, by yourself and for yourself. Other vital ingredients are a memory of a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience
(PCE) and pure intent – because the memory of the PCE will act as your guiding light as well as your touchstone or benchmark. Discussions with
fellow actualists can also facilitate your own investigations so as to determine the facts about certain topics in order that you can discover the
full extent of the beliefs, morals and ethics and dimwitticisms RESPONDENT: I think a lot of people think they must use Richard’s verbal constructs exclusively. I’m VERY glad to hear this is not the case. VINEETO: In order to understand other people’s reactions to the writings of actualists it is useful to keep in mind that because actualism is about becoming actually free of the human condition in toto, it questions everybody’s dearest beliefs. Whilst people might at first be attracted by the vivid descriptions of life in an actual freedom or even by the pleasure and ease of a virtual freedom, many soon discover that they don’t want to pay the prize and then they begin to snipe, object, argue for arguing sake or begin bargaining to keep at least some of their pet beliefs. What you sometimes find in the discussions on this list are situations where clear thinking is muddled and prevented by emotions, feelings and beliefs (emotion-backed thoughts) even to a point where cognitive dissonance or denial make any further understanding of actualism impossible. RESPONDENT: Though I understand why he keeps his words consistent and I am learning to speak the founding actualist’s language. VINEETO: When I discovered actualism I found that I had been conditioned not only by the content of my particular spiritual teaching but also by the specifically loose and often deliberately vague use of language within the group of followers. I have since discovered that spiritualists like to keep the language they use vague, ambiguous, unclear and imprecise. They do not like to ascribe clear meanings to words – they prefer instead to intuit their own personal meanings to words, ascribing affective meanings to words that often are at odds with the actual meaning of the word itself. Many uphold this inability or refusal to communicate accurately as a virtue, claiming the word is not the thing, maintaining that words are merely concepts, alluring to ‘things that can’t be described’, and so on. When I became an actualist I learnt to be specific in what I wanted to convey because accuracy in expression aided my accuracy in thinking and in order to be accurate I often use the English dictionary, more especially so given that English is not my first language. There is no such thing as ‘the founding actualist’s language’ – it’s a furphy invented by objectors. Apart from a few catchy phrases such a ‘happy and harmless’ there are very few words that are used different to dictionary definitions –
Additionally Richard coined the term
VINEETO: You said something in your post to No 67 that I would like to clarify – RESPONDENT: The short gist of the method is to ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ which is the HAIETMOBA you have been seeing. You ask yourself this question only to remind yourself to be aware of your sensate experience. So, you ‘feel’ or experience your body awareness. VINEETO: When you ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ it is not ‘only to remind yourself to be aware of your sensate experience’ because that would mean to yet again dissociate from any feelings and emotions you are experiencing at the time. It’s a misunderstanding that can easily occur and I had to sort it out myself when I began to practice actualism. Actualism is not about not-feeling – because this is impossible whilst one is still a social/instinctual ‘self’ – actualism is about experientially examining one’s current emotions and feelings in order to feel as happy and harmless as is humanly possible in this, the only moment you can experience being alive. RESPONDENT: Thank you Vineeto so much for pointing this out. I had a notion that my involvement with Buddhism and the fourth way was colouring my attempt at practicing the HAIETMOBA and you just proved it. This is one reason I responded to No 67, to clarify things for myself also. I’m printing out your response to take a closer look at it. This was the most helpful response I’ve read so far. Thanks! VINEETO: You are very welcome. I like your approach of testing out and deepening your understanding by explaining to another what you have understood – writing to others has instigated me to think more deeply about many an issue, led me to want to find out the facts of the matter which in turn has deepened my own understanding of how I tick and of the world as-it-is and people as-they are. You will find that all of this information is available on the website, but it is often good to be able to discuss these matters with another person who is interested in or has hands-on experience of the actualism method, which is why this mailing list exists. As you seem to be discovering, the method of actualism requires, particularly at the start, a keen attentiveness to one’s old and set ways of thinking and dealing with one’s feelings. I can say from my own experience that I was surprised how many old habits from my spiritual years I discovered, even after I had seen through the fundamental principles of spiritual belief, and how often I caught myself sweeping unwanted feelings under the carpet, rationalizing them away or distancing myself from them. The key to recognizing such habitual behaviour is easy – you will notice that you are simply repeating that which has neither bought you happiness nor made you harmless in the past, let alone any of your peers. Once you start to become aware of how much of your thinking is borrowed from others and how much of your feeling is instinctive, a life-changing choice starts to become evident – either you continue a life led with more of the same or you dare to embark on a course of radical change. What actualism points to is the radical proposition of devoting one’s life to becoming harmless and happy – an altruistic aim that is diametrically opposite to the selfism inherent in all spiritual pursuits. Once you are clear on the direction of your journey and committed with the sincere intent to become harmless and happy, you will find that the method itself is both patently simple and devastatingly effective. Nice to chat.
VINEETO: On the topic of being mentally healthy vs. being sensible you may also find RESPONDENT: Oh, that link was very interesting. I know mental health is somewhat of a failure from working in the system myself. Of course the psychotic residents I work with need a place to live where they can not hurt themselves or others, so Community Mental Health certainly has its purpose. No, I’ve never really been interested in just being a ‘average, sane person’ since adulthood. I’ve experienced some things and know some people that give evidence of there being better options than this. Actualism, of course would be better than most or all if it in fact delivers (not verified as of yet for myself). VINEETO: It has delivered an actual freedom from the human condition for Richard, a virtual freedom for me and for Peter and a handful or two of practicing actualists have reported a remarkable improvement in that they are more happy and are more at peace with their fellow human beings. These reports can help you to come to a prima facie conclusion as to whether actualism is worthy of further investigation or not. You can then decide, one way or the other, whether you want to take actualism on in practice in order that you can personally verify that it indeed delivers what it has delivered to others – freedom from malice and sorrow. * VINEETO: In order to understand other people’s reactions to the writings of actualists it is useful to keep in mind that because actualism is about becoming actually free of the human condition in toto, it questions everybody’s dearest beliefs. Whilst people might at first be attracted by the vivid descriptions of life in an actual freedom or even by the pleasure and ease of a virtual freedom, many soon discover that they don’t want to pay the prize and then they begin to snipe, object, argue for arguing sake or begin bargaining to keep at least some of their pet beliefs. What you sometimes find in the discussions on this list are situations where clear thinking is muddled and prevented by emotions, feelings and beliefs (emotion-backed thoughts) even to a point where cognitive dissonance or denial make any further understanding of actualism impossible. RESPONDENT: It’s interesting how some talk on this list. I’ve never seen the rudeness, nastiness, swearing, and overall just plain adolescent behaviour on a ‘spiritual’ or ‘personal growth’ list before. I’ve never seen someone who hates a list and its proponents stick around for years just be verbally abuse people. It’s weird and seems sick to me. It blows my mind that people claiming to be ‘open-minded’ have their head so far up their bum that they cant even understand what actualism is even conveying-let alone being capable of reasonably disagreeing with it. Have you ever considered making this a moderated bored where you could delete messages that do not fit into a prescribed ‘house rule.’ A forum that I find very helpful called emofree (about integrating emotions) does this. They have deleted some of my posts that they deemed ‘religious’ and I now understand why. Just a thought. VINEETO: When one’s dearest and nearest beliefs, worldviews and outlooks are being questioned, which is what inevitably happens when one inquires into actualism, instinctive emotional reactions are par for the course and some people are not backward in expressing such feelings on this mailing list. As Richard said recently to a correspondent –
There are, however, some people who have understood the fact that if one is sincere in wanting to become both happy and harmless then the only person one can change and indeed the only person who needs to change is oneself. Unless and until one fully takes on board this self-evident fact – and I do mean fully – one will forever remain locked into typical emotional cycles such as those of anger, blame, resentment and reprisal or guilt, resentment, appeasement and submissiveness. * VINEETO: What actualism points to is the radical proposition of devoting one’s life to becoming harmless and happy – an altruistic aim that is diametrically opposite to the selfism inherent in all spiritual pursuits. RESPONDENT: Well even if I never label myself an actualist (though it is not out of the question – still learning.) I can say that what I have read on this site has more than anything given me a vision of a peaceful life (with others firsts, and secondly myself) without a religion, god, or spiritual beliefs of any kind. VINEETO: Before you decide to ever or never label yourself an actualist it may be useful to know what actualism is not –
RESPONDENT: So, you all will be remembered for that alone. However, now that my skeptical side has complete full rein, I can see what others talk of their bs meter going off from things like –
VINEETO: You may find some answers to your query at
VINEETO: When one’s dearest and nearest beliefs, worldviews and outlooks are being questioned, which is what inevitably happens when one inquires into actualism, instinctive emotional reactions are par for the course and some people are not backward in expressing such feelings on this mailing list. As Richard said recently to No 49,
There are, however, some people who have understood the fact that if one is sincere in wanting to become both happy and harmless then the only person one can change and indeed the only person who needs to change is oneself. Unless and until one fully takes on board this self-evident fact – and I do mean fully – one will forever remain locked into typical emotional cycles such as those of anger, blame, resentment and reprisal or guilt, resentment, appeasement and submissiveness. RESPONDENT: This makes sense. However, I was living a near monastic life and was very religious as of April 1st. Still, being open minded and seeking only ‘truth’ (not sure of a better term) I can/will consider something oh so radical from my former ways. VINEETO: It was only when I met Richard, who had been enlightened and managed to free himself from the massive delusion of this altered state of consciousness, and sat down and listened to his insider-information report that I began to understand that the search for truth will always lead to either a feeling of union with an imaginary God or to an altered state of consciousness. I then began to grasp that truth, more precisely the ‘Truth’, and the facts of the matter of exactly what it is to be a human being are mutually exclusive and I realized that I had to change my search for freedom into a straightforward and pragmatic inquiry and this shift was a shift from feeling what is the truth to sensibly assessing what is factual and sensately discovering what is actual. * VINEETO: Before you decide to ever or never label yourself an actualist it may be useful to know what actualism is not – <snip>
RESPONDENT: This is missed by almost all the list members. VINEETO: It is missed only by those who are not yet sufficiently fed up with continuously re-running the Tried and Failed. RESPONDENT: I have just finished reading about ¾ of the UGK page with all his books for free. Now, there are some clearly crack-pot things about this man.
And the list could go on, but I think that’s enough. Now, all that being said, his statement that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible. VINEETO: Apparently those crack-pot things haven’t deterred you from accepting U.G. Krishnamurti’s authority and from thinking that his statement ‘that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible’. I say this because when I began to question my spiritual beliefs I discovered that I had accepted the authority of certain people because they were well-known and famous within the spiritual tradition despite the fact that I knew from observation that their lives weren’t worth emulating. RESPONDENT: UGK says nothing has permanence (and this seems true to me also). Would this not make striving (also causing suffering) for happiness impossible and futile? So, I’m having a problem with the ‘happy’ part of being ‘happy and harmless’ VINEETO: The only ‘problem’ you have is that you accepted the widespread belief that one needs permanence in order to be happy. This belief has driven millions upon millions of people to further disidentify from their mortal flesh-and-blood bodies and to further dissociate themselves from the physical ever-changing universe and to search for That-Which-Is-Unchanging – the unchanging, unmoving centre within. Searching for permanence ‘within’ is a culturally induced aberration that is an utterly selfish obsession and it only serves to increase one’s isolation from the actual world of people, things and events. The very act of retreating inside is an act of retreat from the world of the senses. If one, however, dares to come to one’s senses both figuratively and literally, one finds that what is in fact permanent is this perpetually occurring moment – it is never ever not this moment, nor can it never ever not be this moment. This is the only moment that one can sensately experience – this is the only moment in which the actual experience of being alive can happen. RESPONDENT: And while the harmless part seems valid, UGK points out that no one is ever harmless. We kill for our food (even if only a plant) and we of course will defend ourselves for our survival. VINEETO: Again, you appear to have accepted the authority on the meaning of harmless from a man you describe as ‘a very irascible/angry old man’ – only to end up believing his assertion that no-one can ever be harmless. It is an unavoidable fact of life that life feeds of life and many so-called wise men of the East have used this fact to deduct that the on-going saga of human beings’ aggression towards their fellow human beings is also ineluctable. The way to become genuinely harmless towards one’s fellow man is to successively free oneself from malice and sorrow – something anybody can do if they are so inclined. As for ‘we of course will defend ourselves for our survival’ – human beings, like all sentient beings, are born with the instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire but due to the intelligence of human beings that has transformed food scarcity into abundance, basic shelter into places of comfort, the ardours of hunting and gathering into leisurely shopping and so on, the instinctual survival passions have not only become redundant but are in fact now an impediment to the survival of the species. Richard continues to demonstrate and explain that human beings can not only survive easily and more effectively without the instinctual passions operating but be benign and carefree into the bargain. Additionally, when the separating ‘self’ arising from the instinctual passion ceases to exist, one is the ongoing experience of the impeccable integrity and excellence of the actuality of this physical universe. RESPONDENT: UGK also states that any ‘freedom’ is an illusion because something is always conditioning us – this seems obvious also. These are some questions I have. Thanks VINEETO: U.G. Krishnamurti’s statement that ‘any ‘freedom’ is an illusion’ is a statement based on his own illusionary freedom and merely goes to show that he has yet to find a non-illusionary actual freedom – a freedom from one’s social conditioning as well as one’s genetically-encoded instinctual passions. For further inquiry you may find the
RESPONDENT: I have just finished reading about ¾ of the UGK page with all his books for free. Now, there are some clearly crack-pot things about this man.
And the list could go on, but I think that’s enough. Now, all that being said, his statement that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible. VINEETO: Apparently those crack-pot things haven’t deterred you from accepting U.G. Krishnamurti’s authority and from thinking that his statement ‘that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible’. I say this because when I began to question my spiritual beliefs I discovered that I had accepted the authority of certain people because they were well-known and famous within the spiritual tradition despite the fact that I knew from observation that their lives weren’t worth emulating. RESPONDENT: What the? Why do you think I accept his authority. VINEETO: You appeared to have accepted U.G. Krishnamurti’s authority because you find his statement ‘that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness’ ‘very sensible’ on one hand whilst you regard him as ‘very irascible/angry’ on the other. By your own observation, surely it is apparent that he lacks any expertise about the nitty-gritty business of being happy and harmless let alone being even interested in doing something about his irascibility. RESPONDENT: I do not. That is an absurd statement. I read his books with these eyes and thought about them with this brain and certain things were perceived as logical and obvious. VINEETO: If you perceive that ‘the very search for happiness causes unhappiness’ is logical and obvious then it inevitably follows that you will regard the actualism method of eliminating malice and sorrow from one’s life to be an absurdity. It is pertinent to remember that actualism represents a complete break with the revered wisdom of the past – the wisdom that has it that it is impossible to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. * RESPONDENT: UGK says nothing has permanence (and this seems true to me also). Would this not make striving (also causing suffering) for happiness impossible and futile? So, I’m having a problem with the ‘happy’ part of being ‘happy and harmless’. VINEETO: The only ‘problem’ you have is that you accepted the widespread belief that one needs permanence in order to be happy. This belief has driven millions upon millions of people to further disidentify from their mortal flesh-and-blood bodies and to further dissociate themselves from the physical ever-changing universe and to search for That-Which-Is-Unchanging – the unchanging, unmoving centre within. Searching for permanence ‘within’ is a culturally induced aberration that is an utterly selfish obsession and it only serves to increase one’s isolation from the actual world of people, things and events. The very act of retreating inside is an act of retreat from the world of the senses. If one, however, dares to come to one’s senses both figuratively and literally, one finds that what is in fact permanent is this perpetually occurring moment – it is never ever not this moment, nor can it never ever not be this moment. This is the only moment that one can sensately experience – this is the only moment in which the actual experience of being alive can happen. RESPONDENT: This makes perfect sense to this brain. it just seems to this brain that the addiction/quest for happiness would seem to cause more suffering – I’m all for experiencing life right now as the senses. that works to some extent – no doubt. VINEETO: ‘Experiencing life right now as the senses’ only works until someone or some event triggers the next emotion to surface, causing one to either take offence or be offensive, to either repress one’s feelings or express one’s feelings. It is impossible to come to one’s senses literally and figuratively by trying to experience ‘life right now as the senses’ – one has to experientially investigate how one is experiencing this moment of being alive each moment again, not only sensately but affectively and cognitively as well. If one is sincere in this attentiveness one becomes aware that the predominant human experiencing is affective. Because ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’, when ‘I’ run the show, sensibility and sensuousness are impossible to find. The actualism method is a very good tool for both getting men fully into their feelings for the first
time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings one by one instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once. You will find
extensive descriptions and explanations of the actualism method in * RESPONDENT: And while the harmless part seems valid, UGK points out that no one is ever harmless. We kill for our food (even if only a plant) and we of course will defend ourselves for our survival. VINEETO: Again, you appear to have accepted the authority on the meaning of harmless from a man you describe as ‘a very irascible/ angry old man’ – only to end up believing his assertion that no-one can ever be harmless. It is an unavoidable fact of life that life feeds of life and many so-called wise men of the East have used this fact to deduct that the on-going saga of human beings’ aggression towards their fellow human beings is also ineluctable. RESPONDENT: I accept no ones authority anymore – which includes all the writers of this list. VINEETO: What I am saying is that I know by personal experience that it is very well possible to be completely and unconditionally harmless towards one’s fellow human beings. In other words, I have expertise in matters that are beyond the expertise of those who remain encumbered by spiritual belief and real-world cynicism. * The way to become genuinely harmless towards one’s fellow man is to successively free oneself from malice and sorrow – something anybody can do if they are so inclined. RESPONDENT: Perhaps – remains to be seen by this body. Though I must admit I have already become less sorrowful and malicious already, but I doubt the desire to be rid of these feelings forever. That seems fanatical and deluded; and therefore unworkable. VINEETO: When I met Richard and began more and more to understand what an actual freedom from the human condition involved and began to be able to crank up my felicitous feelings I also started to see the fanatism and recognized the delusion of the revered spiritual freedom of Eastern Mysticism. Getting in touch with one’s naiveté once again is vital if one is to ever aspire to become totally free of one’s instinctual feelings of malice and sorrow. * VINEETO: As for ‘we of course will defend ourselves for our survival’ – human beings, like all sentient beings, are born with the instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire but due to the intelligence of human beings that has transformed food scarcity into abundance, basic shelter into places of comfort, the ardours of hunting and gathering into leisurely shopping and so on, the instinctual survival passions have not only become redundant but are in fact now an impediment to the survival of the species. RESPONDENT: Is the survival passion of anger redundant when someone tried to mug this body, when someone tried to rape my girlfriend. this brain thinks not, this body got angry and did the ‘right’ thing and defended itself and its wife. Anger is even needed at work sometimes to be effective. Are you kidding this body? VINEETO: You might like to read The one who is ‘kidding this body’ is ‘you’. * VINEETO: Richard continues to demonstrate and explain that human beings can not only survive easily and more effectively without the instinctual passions operating but be benign and carefree into the bargain. Additionally, when the separating ‘self’ arising from the instinctual passion ceases to exist, one is the ongoing experience of the impeccable integrity and excellence of the actuality of this physical universe. RESPONDENT: If this means Peter would not defend you against an attacker then this brain says he is either uncaring or a coward. VINEETO: It is impossible for an impassioned identity to imagine how a ‘self’-less flesh-and-blood-body could and would respond appropriately to a precarious situation. What you can do, however, is read more about how Richard describes life without identity and how Peter and I describe being virtually free from malice and sorrow and then see if it appeals to you enough to do something about your own identity that is the outcome of the instinctual survival passions, which are the sole cause of all human malice and sorrow. * RESPONDENT: UGK also states that any ‘freedom’ is an illusion because something is always conditioning us – this seems obvious also. These are some questions I have. Thanks VINEETO: U.G. Krishnamurti’s statement that ‘any ‘freedom’ is an illusion’ is a statement based on his own illusionary freedom and merely goes to show that he has yet to find a non-illusionary actual freedom – a freedom from one’s social conditioning as well as one’s genetically-encoded instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: This brain doubts you know his freedom or lack thereof no matter how much you think you do. VINEETO: Ah well, then that is the end of this conversation. Why bother to ask questions if you already know the answers, ‘no matter’ what I say? * VINEETO: For further inquiry you may find the RESPONDENT: I’ve already read these and they don’t really answer my questions; neither did this email unfortunately. VINEETO: Why do you say ‘unfortunately’ – it is apparent that whatever you have taken on board from others prior to reading what is on offer here is far more appealing to you than the answers you will find on the Actual Freedom Trust website or that you will receive when you write to me. When all is said and done, it is you who reaps the rewards and pays the dues for the decisions you make in your life.
RESPONDENT: It is obvious to me that my communication on this list has deteriorated to the point where Richard and actualists view my messages as a negation of actualism. I will try to renew my communication to be that of a learner again. Therefore, I will be refraining from replying to certain folks such as No 53. I do have my doubts on a few issues, but I will renew my investigation into actualism to see where it leads. VINEETO: Personally I don’t view your messages ‘as a negation of actualism’, but rather an indication of your not-yet-understanding actualism, something which is quite understandable given that actualism is a very recent discovery. When I came across Richard’s writings and listened to what he had to say, at first I had great trouble understanding what he said because my mind was cluttered with beliefs, perceptions, worldviews, opinions, thought-patterns both spiritualist and materialist as well as the full range of disregarded self-centred feelings and instinctual passions churning about. Over time I could see some parts of actualism as being common sense and because of this I tentatively began to question some of my beliefs, but again and again I failed to ‘get the picture’, so to speak, because I could not comprehend what Richard meant when he described the ‘pristineness and perfection of the actual world, where nothing dirty can get in’. His descriptions were not part of my experience or of my memory of experiences I could remember at the time. However, I was determined to get to the bottom of what I could see as a very sensible and genuinely beneficial way of living life, firstly because I had serious doubts about the sensibility and beneficence of many of my spiritual beliefs and practices and secondly because I could see no point in simply abandoning spiritualism only to return to the materialism I had deliberately and for good reason left behind when I joined the club of the spiritual seekers. My determination grew into an obsession to find out what is undeniably factual and universally actual and one day my entire worldview cracked – resulting in a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted all evening and the major part of the following day. In this PCE I finally gained an experiential understanding of the actual world Richard talks about and that he experiences day-in, day-out – a world that only becomes apparent when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul leave the stage. In the beginning it is natural for you to misunderstand actualism, and that you, like everyone else at the start, attempt to fit what you read into familiar worldviews, philosophies and concepts. Nevertheless, if you genuinely want to find out what actualism is really about, then you can’t afford to be deterred by your misunderstandings nor to take offence when these misunderstandings are made evident to you – developing the ability to take a clear-eyed look at the facts of the matter is the only way an intellectual understanding and then an experiential understanding of actualism can eventually take place. It’s no little thing to embark on a journey that breaks with not only thousands of years of human conditioning but with the human condition itself, a condition that afflicts every single human on this planet – with one exception.
RESPONDENT: Actualists appear to have some feelings … VINEETO: The only actualist who has no feelings whatsoever is Richard who is actually free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: …or how could you use words like delight, benign, beneficent, happy, etc. VINEETO: None of those words necessarily describes a feeling – delight is a sensate experience, benignity a kindness of disposition, beneficence the outcome of such disposition and being happy can either be a felicitous feeling or a descriptive word that expresses the joyous, blithesome, carefree, untroubled experience of being alive. An actualist who has got to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow experiences felicitous/ innocuous feelings almost constantly such that feeling happy becomes the norm, so much so that he/she is invariably spontaneously considerate of others which means that he/she is almost always harmless to others. RESPONDENT: I can see having no passions (violent emotions) but there seems to be something of the emotional capacity (or feeling capacity) left. I have been practicing the af method intensively the last few months and I am certainly much less emotional, … VINEETO: The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, friendliness, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. RESPONDENT: …but it seems that even in what seemed to be PCE (or mini ones) some sort of a well-being sense – which in scientific categories of emotion is still considered an emotion or feeling. VINEETO: ‘Some sort of wellbeing sense’ need not be an affective feeling, in the same way as being healthy is not necessarily an affective feeling. Having said that, unless I am having a pure consciousness experience, ‘I’ am an emotional being which means that inevitably ‘I’ have feelings – however as an actualist my on-going attentiveness combined with my ever-present intent to be as happy and harmless as is humanly possible means that I always have the choice that these feelings be felicitous feelings rather than the good or bad moods, vibes, emotions and passions ‘I’ have been socially and genetically programmed to feel. RESPONDENT: Perhaps, this is more a problem with British versus American English. VINEETO: Here is the British versus the American definition of the word ‘emotion’ and they seem to be remarkably similar –
RESPONDENT: Or more to the point, a problem with the strict dictionary use of a term versus a psychological (or evolutionary use of) use of the term emotion to refer to all feelings as being ‘emotional’. VINEETO: A straightforward definition – and one that is quite congruent with the description
in the dictionaries is that emotions, passions, calentures are all affective feelings, all of which are generated by the affective faculty of the
brain, as opposed to sensate feelings or sensations ( Of course, the best way to gain a thorough experiential understanding of feelings, emotions and passions is to observe them in action in situ, when and as they occur – theoretical speculation and intellectual knowledge are no substitute for practical hands on experience.
RESPONDENT: [Actualists appear to have some feelings …]…or how could you use words like delight, benign, beneficent, happy, etc. VINEETO: None of those words necessarily describes a feeling – delight is a sensate experience, benignity a kindness of disposition, beneficence the outcome of such disposition and being happy can either be a felicitous feeling or a descriptive word that expresses the joyous, blithesome, carefree, untroubled experience of being alive. RESPONDENT: ok. I have seen about all of those listed as emotions or feelings in scientific studies of the emotions and yet I can see your distinctions. VINEETO: You have to bear in mind that scientists are as much inflicted with the human condition as everyone else, which means that the interpretations of scientific studies of the effective faculty are based on the presumptive reality of there being a feeling entity that resides ‘within’ the flesh and blood body – a passionate ‘me’ who sits at the controls, ever needing to be vigilant. What is on offer here is a report from someone who has lived free from the affective faculty for 12 years. – a breakthrough that is completely new to humankinds history. * VINEETO: An actualist who has got to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow experiences felicitous/ innocuous feelings almost constantly such that feeling happy and harmless becomes the norm, so much so that he/she is invariably spontaneously considerate of others which means that they are almost always harmless to others. RESPONDENT: So actualists in VIRTUAL freedom have FELICITOUS FEELINGS. I guess I would assume felicitous feelings are ‘good’ feelings but you say ‘not so’. I’m not rejecting your distinction, just having trouble seeing the difference (and yet I do see some difference). VINEETO: The The Actual Freedom Trust Library is designed to clarify and differentiate the various terms used on the Actual Freedom Trust website. Peter has written about affective feelings –
And this is how Peter describes being virtually free from malice and sorrow in the Introduction to Actual Freedom –
* VINEETO: The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging activating one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, friendliness, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. RESPONDENT: Ok, this help a lot. I’m ‘getting it’. For one I see there is ATTACHMENT in the ‘tender passions’ and there is none in the FELICITOUS FEELINGS. Attachment leads to or even is suffering. This is great fun. VINEETO: No. The idea that one is merely ‘attached’ to one’s emotions is an
invention of Eastern spiritualism and a particularly persistent and popular one at that. This theory is integral to the notion that the way to
become ‘free’ is to become detached from one’s unwanted feelings (as well as from the corporeal body and the physical world). Becoming
detached from one’s unwanted or undesirable feelings inevitably leads to This is not what actualism is about – it is impossible to be attentive to the operation of feelings emotions and passions that one is busily being detached from or feeling dissociated from. Actualism clearly recognizes that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’, which is ‘me’ at the core of my ‘being’ and one’s own attentiveness will reveal that this is so. Whenever I am feeling annoyed, it is ‘me’ that is feeling annoyed – ‘I’ am the feeling of annoyance and the feeling of annoyance is ‘me’ in operation as it were. Whenever I am feeling sad, it is ‘me’ that is feeling sad – ‘I’ am the feeling of sadness and the feeling of sadness is ‘me’ in operation as it were … and so on. If one is detached in any way from any of the feelings that are ‘me’ then it is impossible to understand, let alone actively investigate, how ‘I’ am operating at this moment. * RESPONDENT: …but it seems that even in what seemed to be PCE (or mini ones) some sort of a well-being sense – which in scientific categories of emotion is still considered an emotion or feeling. VINEETO: ‘Some sort of wellbeing sense’ need not be an affective feeling, in the same way as being healthy is not necessarily an affective feeling. Having said that, unless I am having a pure consciousness experience, ‘I’ am an emotional being which means that inevitably ‘I’ have feelings – however as an actualist my on-going attentiveness combined with my ever-present intent to be as happy and harmless as is humanly possible means that I always have the choice that these feelings be felicitous feelings rather than the good or bad moods, vibes, emotions and passions ‘I’ have been socially and genetically programmed to feel. RESPONDENT: Good point. Sounds like a state that would be great to be in (and I know that ‘state’ ‘to be’ and ‘attachment’ are all ‘off the mark’ but I’m doing my best with the English language. VINEETO: The biggest obstacle to understanding actualism is that sincere seekers who come to this site will have all been unavoidably conditioned, trained and indoctrinated with some form of spiritual/ philosophical concepts. These concepts form an integral part of their identity – they are the very parameters for each person’s understanding not only of ‘who’ they think and feel they are but of ‘the way things are’. This socially-conditioned viewpoint – a software programme based on the presumption that ‘you can’t change human nature’ means that anyone coming across the words of actualism will invariably read them at first as being yet another version of the familiar spiritual /philosophical concepts that form humankind’s revered wisdoms. I had the same difficulty when I first encountered actualism. In hindsight, it was only because I had sufficient discontent, disappointment and doubt about the spiritualism process I had practiced for almost 2 decades that I was keenly interested in finding out if there was something fundamentally new in what Richard was saying … even if that did mean abandoning all I believed to be true and right. I can highly recommend ‘wiping the slate clean’ of what others have told you to be ‘the truth’ and discovering the facts of the matter for yourself.
RESPONDENT: Would being in Virtual Freedom (until one other person achieves actual freedom, I will have to consider the possibility that it is an anomaly – i.e. it may not happen to another. This is no real concern for me because Virtual Freedom sounds 99% perfect and even what I have experienced since May 04 has empirically proven the value of apperception, investigation of one’s experience, PCE’s, happy/harmless, sensible/silly) destroy one’s enjoyment of the Arts, music, Shakespeare, literature, etc ...? It seems that the Arts, Humanities, literature, music, etc ... expands and enriches our time on this planet (and this is it as far as I can tell/know) and life. VINEETO: One’s emotional enjoyment – yes. In my experience, the decline in emotional enjoyment makes room for an unfettered sensual appreciation of all of the human endeavours that are not tainted by malevolence and sadness and their antidotes love and compassion. As for having to consider an actual freedom from the human condition to be an anomaly, that is certainly your prerogative but not a necessity. Everybody Richard has spoken to at length has remembered having had a pure consciousness experience – which is a temporary condition when the ‘self’ is entirely absent. So if a PCE is not an anomaly then is it reasonable to assume that a permanent state of ‘self’-lessness need not remain an anomaly confined to one person. You can bet your bottom dollar that now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, more people will dare to apply their common sense and initiate an actual freedom for themselves. The process is already in progress.
RESPONDENT: So actualists in VIRTUAL freedom have FELICITOUS FEELINGS. I guess I would assume felicitous feelings are ‘good’ feelings but you say ‘not so’. I’m not rejecting your distinction, just having trouble seeing the difference (and yet I do see some difference). VINEETO: The The Actual Freedom Trust Library is designed to clarify and differentiate the various terms used on the Actual Freedom Trust website. Peter has written about affective feelings –
RESPONDENT: This was hard to admit – but it seems sensible now. VINEETO: It is good to understand the theory of what ‘seems sensible’ because this will help you in your experiential observation of the good emotions and their consequences in action in yourself. * VINEETO: The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging activating one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, friendliness, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. RESPONDENT: Ok, this help a lot. I’m ‘getting it’. For one I see there is ATTACHMENT in the ‘tender passions’ and there is none in the FELICITOUS FEELINGS. Attachment leads to or even is suffering. This is great fun. VINEETO: No. The idea that one is merely ‘attached’ to one’s emotions is an invention of Eastern spiritualism and a particularly persistent and popular one at that. This theory is integral to the notion that the way to become ‘free’ is to become detached from one’s unwanted feelings (as well as from the corporeal body and the physical world). Becoming detached from one’s unwanted or undesirable feelings inevitably leads to dissociation – the prerequisite to delusionary states such as enlightenment. RESPONDENT: I knew I had not only the wrong word, but concept and I expected a correction. I’m just at a loss to verbally distinguish the ‘felicitous’ feelings from the ‘good’ feelings. VINEETO: As a suggestion, it might be best to try to distinguish them experientially first, then putting this distinction into words will be no problem. To name the main ones, ‘good’ feelings are all those arising from the tender passions of nurture and desire, such as love, gratitude, loyalty, belonging, compassion, empathy, longing, beauty, greed, hope, trust and faith. The easiest way to recognize that you are dealing with a ‘good’ emotion is when it is preventing you from being unconditionally happy and harmless. For example the feeling of love invariably includes possessiveness, jealousy, yearning and dependency; feeling loyalty to one person or a group prevents one from experiencing all people as one’s fellow human beings; feelings of compassion and empathy contain sorrow; hope invites disappointment, and so on. * VINEETO: This is not what actualism is about – it is impossible to be attentive to the operation of feelings emotions and passions that one is busily being detached from or feeling dissociated from. RESPONDENT: Agreed, but my past conditioning (spiritual) leads me in the wrong direction. VINEETO: This is where attentiveness comes in. Much of the work of an actualist is to de-condition oneself from the values, morals and ethics that one has taken on in life which causes one to unthinkingly categorize people, things and events as being good, right and true (and being evil, bad and wrong) and to take the time and make the effort to establish the facts in order to make a clear choice based on what is silly and what is sensible. * VINEETO: In hindsight, it was only because I had sufficient discontent, disappointment and doubt about the spiritualism process I had practiced for almost 2 decades that I was keenly interested in finding out if there was something fundamentally new in what Richard was saying … even if that did mean abandoning all I believed to be true and right. I can highly recommend ‘wiping the slate clean’ of what others have told you to be ‘the truth’ and discovering the facts of the matter for yourself. RESPONDENT: This is true for me too. Though improvement was made in my practice of spirituality – I ALWAYS sensed that it would never deliver totally until after death. Eventually, I decided that I’m not waiting for after death because I figured there may be no after life. VINEETO: When I encountered actualism, I tried at first to maintain the agnostic stance that there may or may not be an afterlife and I thought it did not really concern my life right now because I would find out in due time (at death). However, as I became more and more attentive to how I experienced this moment of being alive, I had to put many of my beliefs under scrutiny and I began to realize that my non-committal agnostic stance towards the possibility of life after death was preventing me from fully being here. One day I dared to contemplate about the issue of a possible life after death right through to its obvious conclusion and the lingering agnostic option disappeared to be replaced by a confidence that when I die then that will be final – and the issue disappeared forever. I realized that holding onto the option of ‘me’ being a spiritual ‘being’ had locked me out of experiencing the sheer and wonderful actuality of this physical body being alive right now in this pure and perfect physical universe. In short, it is impossible to be vitally interested in being here whilst holding on to any spiritual or agnostic beliefs. This is what is meant by actualism being ‘non-spiritual’.
VINEETO: The The Actual Freedom Trust Library is designed to clarify and differentiate the various terms used on the Actual Freedom Trust website. Peter has written about affective feelings –
RESPONDENT: I have read this, yet to see it again in this context does help me to ‘get it.’ they do come in pairs – they both go or both stay – it’s that simple VINEETO: It is ‘that simple’ in theory … however as I proceeded to put this insight into practice in my daily life I encountered a lot of obstacles such as cognitive dissonance, feelings of fear, indecision and confusion and repeatedly a stubborn holding on to my old and familiar ways. I discovered the truly tenacious and very cunning nature of ‘me’ that could only be overcome by determination, diligence and persistence. * RESPONDENT: This was hard to admit – but it seems sensible now. VINEETO: It is good to understand the theory of what ‘seems sensible’ because this will help you in your experiential observation of the good emotions and their consequences in action in yourself. RESPONDENT: This sensible exercise is really shedding lite on how I tick. I figured before that most emotions were sensible for they evolved to protect us – now I see that so far every emotion I have investigated has been UNNECESSARY at BEST. VINEETO: The very passions that were necessary in the early stages of human evolution to ensure the survival of the species have now not only become redundant but their continuance does nothing but endanger the survival and well-being of human beings. You only need to switch on the daily news in order to see, over and over, how emotions and passions drive people to bicker, quarrel, fight, rape, murder and wage war as well as scoff, lament, despair and commit suicide and prevent people from living in peace with their fellow human beings anywhere on this verdant planet. As for ‘this sensible exercise’ – what is sensible was not all that obvious when I began to practice actualism. Not only was I influenced by the opinions of my peers and the cultural values of society but even more was I driven by my ‘self’-centred survival instincts that by their very nature position ‘me’ at the centre of ‘my’ universe. Often what seemed to ‘me’ to be sensible at first glance turned out to be, (with the benefit of clear-eyed investigation, aided and abetted of course by reading the words someone who is actually free of the human condition) tainted by my ‘my’ moral, ethical and spiritual views, one-eyed, myopic and ultimately ‘self’-serving – in other words silly. In my experience, the only way that I was able to eventually succeed in cracking and changing this centrifugal perspective was to be attentive to the fact of whether or not I was really being harmless, i.e. if I considered other people’s wellbeing equal to my own. This ‘am I being harmless’ aspect of attentiveness expands one’s field of attentiveness from being ‘self’-centredly exclusive to overarchingly inclusive and this widening of attentiveness is the precursor to having an experiential understanding of what you actually are, as opposed to perpetuating the illusion of being a psychological and psychic ‘being’ parasitically residing in a physical body. * VINEETO: To name the main ones, ‘good’ feelings are all those arising from the tender passions of nurture and desire, such as love, gratitude, loyalty, belonging, compassion, empathy, longing, beauty, greed, hope, trust and faith. The easiest way to recognize that you are dealing with a ‘good’ emotion is when it is preventing you from being unconditionally happy and harmless. For example the feeling of love invariably includes possessiveness, jealousy, yearning and dependency; feeling loyalty to one person or a group prevents one from experiencing all people as one’s fellow human beings; feelings of compassion and empathy contain sorrow; hope invites disappointment, and so on. RESPONDENT: Hot digity damn! The above was an excellent verbal description of how the ‘good’ emotions prevent happy/harmlessness. Very ‘enlightening’. VINEETO: Yes, but don’t just take my word for it – it’s up to you to verify the above for yourself experientially. As you would know, there is a vast difference between believing something to be true (even if it does make sense) and knowing something to be a fact because one’s own investigations have confirmed that it is so. * VINEETO: This is not what actualism is about – it is impossible to be attentive to the operation of feelings emotions and passions that one is busily being detached from or feeling dissociated from. RESPONDENT: Agreed, but my past conditioning (spiritual) leads me in the wrong direction. VINEETO: This is where attentiveness comes in. Much of the work of an actualist is to de-condition oneself from the values, morals and ethics that one has taken on in life which causes one to unthinkingly categorize people, things and events as being good, right and true (and being evil, bad and wrong) and to take the time and make the effort to establish the facts in order to make a clear choice based on what is silly and what is sensible. RESPONDENT: OK. I easily now see the silliness of moral and ethics. VINEETO: Ahh, but the practical test comes whenever you discover that you are feeling sad or being annoyed because of a particular moral or an ethic that you cherish dearly – such moments test one’s intent. RESPONDENT: Now a ‘value’ to me is simply something that I find worthwhile. For example I find being happy and harmless valuable but they are not ethics or morals. I ‘value’ clear communication; i.e. I find it helpful, useful, etc ... This seems straightforward and helpful. Are you using the word value to mean ethics/morals or something different than how I am using it? VINEETO: I know what you mean but in the above context I meant value as one’s value-orientation – the direction given to a person’s attitudes and thinking by his or her beliefs or standards (Oxford Dictionary). Within the human condition, there are many things that people hold to be of value – many people value possessions, some value status, some value power over others, some value fame, some value moral forthrightness, some value ethical correctness and so on. In my life time I had found many of these values to be silly, others I had to thoroughly road test in order to experience their banality first-hand. When I became an actualist I simply rekindled the dormant value that above all I wanted to be able to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. * VINEETO: In hindsight, it was only because I had sufficient discontent, disappointment and doubt about the spiritualism process I had practiced for almost 2 decades that I was keenly interested in finding out if there was something fundamentally new in what Richard was saying … even if that did mean abandoning all I believed to be true and right. I can highly recommend ‘wiping the slate clean’ of what others have told you to be ‘the truth’ and discovering the facts of the matter for yourself. RESPONDENT: This is true for me too. Though improvement was made in my practice of spirituality – I ALWAYS sensed that it would never deliver totally until after death. Eventually, I decided that I’m not waiting for after death because I figured there may be no after life. VINEETO: When I encountered actualism, I tried at first to maintain the agnostic stance that there may or may not be an afterlife and I thought it did not really concern my life right now because I would find out in due time (at death). However, as I became more and more attentive to how I experienced this moment of being alive, I had to put many of my beliefs under scrutiny and I began to realize that my non-committal agnostic stance towards the possibility of life after death was preventing me from fully being here. RESPONDENT: Yes, I see your point. I now am an atheist rather than an agnostic, but I did not make that clear. VINEETO: Does this now also include the spiritual teachings of U.G. Krishnamurti? RESPONDENT: Yet, sometimes my mind does slip into an agnostic ‘mode’. That is very interesting – I will look into that. VINEETO: Yes, I can relate to that. Some issues I had to put aside for a while until I it became really obvious how this issue was preventing me from being carefree and considerate. In other words, it was only when I discovered that the issue was the burning issue in my daily life and that it stood in the way of my goal in life was I emboldened to tackle it such that it disappeared from my life. * VINEETO: One day I dared to contemplate about the issue of a possible life after death right through to its obvious conclusion and the lingering agnostic option disappeared to be replaced by a confidence that when I die then that will be final – and the issue disappeared forever. I realized that holding onto the option of ‘me’ being a spiritual ‘being’ had locked me out of experiencing the sheer and wonderful actuality of this physical body being alive right now in this pure and perfect physical universe. In short, it is impossible to be vitally interested in being here whilst holding on to any spiritual or agnostic beliefs. RESPONDENT: This is never brought up in the atheist/agnostic debate. VINEETO: Of course not, taking this into account would expose atheism and agnosticism as being silly. As a rough rule of thumb, atheists generally believe that grim reality is all there is, spiritualists believe in a Greater Reality of some sort and desperately try to be ‘there’ whereas agnostics, lacking the vitality to find out the facts of the matter for themselves, generally remain smug in their indifference. RESPONDENT: However, what you have written shows very explicitly that being an agnostic will hold one back from vf/af. VINEETO: It holds one back from even being interested in experiencing the only moment one can ever actually experience. * VINEETO: This is what is meant by actualism being ‘non-spiritual’. RESPONDENT: Got ya – totally non-spiritual to the flesh and blood bone. Right on. Mind you, the most favourite beliefs are hiding in the cupboard and lash out when you least expect them to.
RESPONDENT: Richard, at
at:
The quote from Vineeto here was not the one I was looking for but it will have to do for now. Basically, it seems your saying think: ‘there is sadness’ and Vineeto is saying ‘I am sad’ or ‘I am feeling sad.’ I know there is no ‘right or wrong’ here but these two ways of thinking seem different enough to leave open the possibility that one would be more useful or sensible than the other. Somewhere I could swear Vineeto says that saying: ‘There is sadness arising’ is a Buddhist disassociative technique. This seems very close to ‘there is human sadness’ or ‘there is sadness.’ I just want to make sure I’m not practicing Buddhism rather then actualism. It makes since to eliminate answering with ‘I’ in the sentence, but would that not also apply to the ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ question two? Looking forward to some clarification. VINEETO: Although you have addressed this question to Richard you followed up by saying –
So I’ll endeavour to answer your question. If you read Richard’s article in full you will find that it is impossible to confuse the method described with ‘a Buddhist disassociative technique’, as you suggest. The paragraph immediately above the one you quoted is explicit in itself –
And only three paragraphs down Richard again emphasizes the importance of acknowledging one’s feelings –
Isn’t it obvious that I am saying nothing different to what Richard is saying?
VINEETO: If you read Richard’s article in full you will find that it is impossible to confuse the method described with ‘a Buddhist disassociative technique’, as you suggest. The paragraph above the one you quoted is explicit in itself – <snipped for length> RESPONDENT: Actually, I have printed out Richard’s article and have read it ‘in full’ 3 times. I’m not saying the method is a Buddhist disassociative tech, rather I’m concerned that my mind might use the words ‘there is sadness arising’ to twist the purity of the awareness. VINEETO: I personally found it very useful to remember that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. This simple acknowledgement of fact dispensed with any tendency whatsoever to dissociate, be it head-in-clouds variety or head-in-sand variety. The other thing I always kept in mind was that what I was being attentive to was the human condition in action – that ‘I’ am not unique, that ‘I’ am humanity and humanity is ‘me’. I found that whenever I kept theses two facets in mind, I was able to make a clear-eyed study of the human condition in action as ‘me’. * VINEETO: Isn’t it obvious that I am saying nothing different to what Richard is saying? RESPONDENT: Yes, in substance it is obvious, but I’m being nit picky with words here – VERY nitpicky. And I notice that you did not directly attempt to answer my question about the most useful phrase to mentally say to oneself. And that was the only question I asked. VINEETO: I have already written about the way I investigate my emotions in the article you quoted. Vis –
Personally I found ‘the most useful phrase to mentally say to oneself’ is the one described as the actualism method – How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? – what you do with the answer you get is entirely up to you. This is after all a do-it-yourself, by-yourself business – the basic method is utterly simple and straightforward, so much so that it easily accommodates any personal preferences, inclinations and idiosyncrasies of the person who applies it with sincere intent to do whatever is required to be both happy and harmless in this moment. Could it be that your being ‘VERY nitpicky’ is but an attempt to make something that is utterly straightforward somewhat confusing, for whatever reason? RESPONDENT: If answering a minute question of detail is not worth your time, I understand, for I don’t respond to everything on this list either. My experience so far is that this method works, regardless of my provicility of ‘anal’ obsessiveness to perhaps meaningless details (though they don’t seem meaningless to me or I would not even ask them). VINEETO: It is not a matter if answering your question is ‘worth’ my time or not – I simply have nothing more useful to add to the above description. I can only explain what worked for me.
RESPONDENT: Actually, I have printed out Richard’s article and have read it ‘in full’ 3 times. I’m not saying the method is a Buddhist disassociative tech, rather I’m concerned that my mind might use the words ‘there is sadness arising’ to twist the purity of the awareness. VINEETO: I personally found it very useful to remember that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. This simple acknowledgement of fact dispensed with any tendency whatsoever to dissociate, be it head-in-clouds variety or head-in-sand variety. The other thing I always kept in mind was that what I was being attentive to was the human condition in action – that ‘I’ am not unique, that ‘I’ am humanity and humanity is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: ok, I guess I wonder if this will get me too ‘identified’ with the emotions-but I do see your point. VINEETO: How can you get ‘too ‘identified’ with the emotions’ – you *are* your emotions. In other words, ‘you’ and your emotions are one and the same – the recognition of this fact puts paid to any notions of identification or dis-identification, association or dissociation. * VINEETO: Personally I found ‘the most useful phrase to mentally say to oneself’ is the one described as the actualism method – How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? – what you do with the answer you get is entirely up to you. This is after all a do-it-yourself, by-yourself business – the basic method is utterly simple and straightforward, so much so that it easily accommodates any personal preferences, inclinations and idiosyncrasies of the person who applies it with sincere intent to do whatever is required to be both happy and harmless in this moment. RESPONDENT: Yes, I can see that. There is more flexibility in all this than some think. VINEETO: Ha, the only inflexibility of an actual freedom is that it is a *non*-spiritual down-to-earth freedom – yet people bend over backwards in order to remove the ‘non’ in a vain attempt to fit actualism into the quagmire of spiritual teachings and philosophical musings that have straight-jacketed human thinking and shrouded human experiencing since time immemorial.
VINEETO to No 71: I would have recommended sample article number three of Richard’s
Journal in this respect which is freely available on the website – RESPONDENT: Ha! Maybe it was a good idea to print out the articles! LOL. Anyways, Vineeto, when the site ‘comes back’ will it be different? Restructed? New material? Less material? VINEETO: Not at this stage although we have had some thoughts on the matter which may well eventuate when the whim takes us. RESPONDENT: And, I read somewhere that Richard had planned on moving and working on a book somewhere before 2007 and I was wondering if there are still plans for that. VINEETO: I am not aware that his plans have changed. RESPONDENT: That would be real cool – I’d enjoy having a book on this stuff. VINEETO: Whilst you may well enjoy reading a future book it is pertinent to point out that The Actual Freedom Trust has already published two books on this stuff and currently Richard’s Journal is in a Second Edition reprint. RESPONDENT: Also, how would I purchase Richard’s Journal now that the site is down? VINEETO: Print (Editorial note: the journals can now also be paid
RESPONDENT: Actually, I have printed out Richard’s article and have read it ‘in full’ 3 times. I’m not saying the method is a Buddhist disassociative tech, rather I’m concerned that my mind might use the words ‘there is sadness arising’ to twist the purity of the awareness. VINEETO: I personally found it very useful to remember that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. This simple acknowledgement of fact dispensed with any tendency whatsoever to dissociate, be it head-in-clouds variety or head-in-sand variety. The other thing I always kept in mind was that what I was being attentive to was the human condition in action – that ‘I’ am not unique, that ‘I’ am humanity and humanity is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Ok, I guess I wonder if this will get me too ‘identified’ with the emotions – but I do see your point. VINEETO: How can you get ‘too ‘identified’ with the emotions’ – you *are* your emotions. In other words, ‘you’ and your emotions are one and the same – the recognition of this fact puts paid to any notions of identification or dis-identification, association or dissociation. RESPONDENT: The fact that I still trip on this shows resistance to this insight. It seems, I wonder if I recognize that I am my feelings then I won’t be able to be free of them. Though I don’t really believe that – perhaps a ‘part’ of me does. VINEETO: Unless I am able to recognize, experience and observe on a daily basis that all ‘I’ am are indeed my feelings and my instinctual passions (as well as the beliefs, morals, ethics, values and opinions that serve as fodder for my feelings and passions) I will neither see the need to, nor will I have the capacity and intent, to rid myself of acrimony and anguish. This is not a matter of what one believes, in ‘part’ or otherwise … it is a matter of observing that it is a fact, repeatedly, unambiguously and irrefutably. This may be an apt moment to reiterate that actualism is not about getting rid of one’s feelings. To quote Richard on this matter –
RESPONDENT: Atheist’s have no beliefs concerning god. They do not disbelieve in good. That is absurd (an absurdity perpetuated by agnostics and theists) A useful way for an Atheist to respond to the question ‘Do you believe in God? would be: ‘I do not assent to that belief.’ Than: ‘so you disbelieve in god?’ ‘I do not assent to any state about God.’ ‘There is no empirical evidence that there is a god and I do not assent to theory’s without solid evidence. Of course, strictly speaking one could never 100% ‘disprove’ god. I would say that the probability of their being a god is very low, though. But the best we could do is have a probability of 99% or even 99.99%. However. A scientific thinking person will be quite content with a 80-85% of their not being a god. That’s a relatively gracious probability as within the next 20-30 years the prop of no god will be in the 90%. VINEETO: Your comment makes clear the difference between an atheist and an actualist. An actualist will not rest until he or she will know with 100% surety that God does not exist. I know – by direct experience – that God does not exists outside the hearts and minds of human beings because of the many pure consciousness experiences I have had of the purity and perfection of the actual world. I know that God is a product of passionate imagination because in a ‘self’-less experience, where affective imagination does not exist, God has no existence at all. This is so because a pure consciousness experience reveals that the sought-after paradise that people imagine to exist in a metaphysical reality waiting for them in a mythical afterlife, does in fact exist as an ongoing actuality on this abundant and verdant planet we flesh and blood humans live on. There lies an enormous freedom in the irreversible certainty that no metaphysical entity is ruling one’s life.
RESPONDENT to Peter: Instead of assuming that he [Barry Long] is being ‘tricky’ I thought what if to him ‘love’ really is not an emotion-perhaps he is misusing ‘love’ for actual benevolence, eh? I wonder the same about JK too. But BL is more clear on ‘all emotions must go’ so how could love be an emotion for him (I understand that likely IT IS, and he is not clear that Love for him is still emotional, but I don’t KNOW that for a fact). VINEETO: Your response to Peter reminded me of something I wrote after one of my altered states of consciousness experiences. It may be of assistance in sorting out the difference between the self-deceptive feeling of non-emotion in an altered state of consciousness and the purity and perfection one experiences when ‘I’ in toto am in abeyance –
RESPONDENT: How long was it for you to dispense with the haietmoba for a ‘wordless’ approach? And do you think a haietm or even ‘how am I feeling?’ could work as well? VINEETO: The moment I fully committed myself to the aim of actualism – the extinction of my ‘self’ in toto, ego and soul – the method became an ongoing wordless approach. RESPONDENT: Sometimes (like No 60) I find the whole haietmoba tiring. No 37 claims to be using a wordless approach but he has not given us any details so I don’t know what exactly he is doing. I am determined to dig, but sometimes I wonder if my shovel is just too heavy for me to wield. I just can’t comprehend how you and Peter became virtually free in a scant 2 years doing this. VINEETO: Yep, it’s all about the strength of one’s intent and commitment to the task at hand. Once I comprehended what was at stake it was all systems go. To merely try the actualism method on for size for a year or two in order to see if anything happened was never an option for me. RESPONDENT: I also wonder about the fact that you and Peter were virtually free around 1999 and seemed close to actual freedom. Yet 5 years later and no dice. VINEETO: My explanation is – and there is really no precedent to this direct route of becoming actually free via avoiding enlightenment – that it was relatively easy to get rid of my negative feelings such as anger, resentment and sadness, the freedom from which resulted in a virtual freedom, while the good emotions such as compassion, sympathy, empathy, loyalty and belonging to humanity at large are far tougher nuts to crack and as such take far longer to identify, understand and become free of. Plus, to take the final plunge into oblivion is, when all is said and done, is a very scary thing for ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Are you more VF now? VINEETO: Virtually free? Yes, definitely. RESPONDENT: Have the last 5 years been a stalemate? No changes? VINEETO: A stalemate? Not at all, although sometimes, when I grow impatient, it may feel that way. In hindsight, not only my understanding of the human condition has steadily increased but also the implementation and living of this understanding has increased … and along with it my appreciation and enjoyment of being alive. RESPONDENT: Do you still think, believe, know that one day you will be actually free, like Richard? VINEETO: Yes, I know I will, because I’ve burnt all the bridges and there is no turning back to be whoever I was. I’ve literally painted myself into a corner and the pressure to keep proceeding is on at all times. RESPONDENT: And what about the only other people that seemed to be near a virtual freedom? Where the heck is Alan, Mark, Gary? Dead, insane? VINEETO: You will have to ask them yourself. I only know of what they have written to the list. Whilst it is understandable to look for allies on the way, particularly when one takes on the task of questioning *all* of the so-called wisdom of humanity, actualism remains a do-it-yourself-by-yourself business and the desire for allies, friends, collaborators and such like is yet another of the ‘self’-perpetuating instinctual passion to be recognized, understood and disempowered. Personally, I have found the need to belong to some group, any group, one of the most persistent instinctual forces that time and again caused me to procrastinate from stepping out of humanity. I am reminded of something Richard said to me once when I asked him about the topic of belonging to humanity –
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