VINEETO: Hi Gary,

GARY: You wrote to me concerning the topic of love. My reply has been delayed by my PC failure and the resultant need for repairs and upgrading. I am happy to report that my system is now working like a Swiss clock.

VINEETO: Good to hear from you again. Computer and cars both download money and lately my teeth have been demanding attention as well, so the my computer will have to stand back and wait a bit for its next upgrades.

GARY: I don’t know what to say to my partner now when she tells me ‘I love you’. My most recent response is a kind of uncomfortable silence. I then sometimes respond with such endearments as ‘I care for you’, ‘I want to be with you’ (which is true). I do not feel what is called ‘love’, which, as you point out, is an emotion-laden and hormonally-saturated substitute for actual intimacy. Love is certainly not all it is cracked up to be. It seems lately too that all around me I perceive the enormous investment that human beings have made in the ideal of Love. It is written into all our most cherished ballads, stories, movies, songs. It is there as the ultimate pinnacle to which human beings can attain, either in its secular setting in male-female and (not to alienate gay/lesbian friends) male-male and female-female relationships, in short, in terms of coupling sexually and emotionally with another human being. Love, the antidote for sorrow, has such a powerful hold on humanity.

VINEETO: The other night we watched a program on animal emotions. Although they had the issue upside down, trying to prove how ‘human’ animals are rather than how animal humans are, it was interesting to learn that female mammals seem to release a hormone called oxytocin when they give birth. The release of this chemical is believed to be responsible for parenting behaviour, like feeding, protecting and taking care of newborns, whereas another chemical, dopamine is considered to stimulate the pleasure centre both in mammals and in humans. In my twenties and thirties I had often wondered how much of ‘love’ was merely a chemical reaction of varying hormones and how much was so-called true love – now the more I learn about the function of hormones, the more I understand that love is nothing but a feeling produced by hormones that are triggered by our instinctual reactions.

It is one thing to not let oneself be ‘overtaken’ by a feeling of love because one has rationally understood its reasons and implications, and quite another to deliberately and consciously allow the feeling to happen in order to fully understand and explore it experientially. I needed to observe myself many times when being overtaken and overwhelmed by affection and love to detect ‘me’ who was producing and maintaining this sweet feeling of being connected.

I wrote in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’ about the later stages of investigating the offshoots of love –

[Vineeto]: Even after dismissing love as a concept or an option of relating, I still had to be watchful of my ‘love-attacks’, as I called them. They would come through the backdoor, seduce me with a rose-colored mood and appear so nice and cosy – such a temptation to surrender back into loving Peter instead of meeting him directly. However, I had understood and experienced often enough that any feeling for the other, howsoever sweet and soothing, would only make him a projected imaginary figure on my own screen of emotions, which can so easily change at the slightest whim. It had nothing to do with the actual person or situation. Being vigilant and persistently nibbling away at my habit of falling back into love proved to be a long process. After all, love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues!

Later, love changed into the subtler version of feeling ‘connected’ to Peter, of having, through him, some kind of identity in my life. I caught myself wanting to use him as an outline for my own existence, as an anchor to define me as ‘person-in-relation’, a ‘self’. Examining it closer I discovered that this need for an anchor derives from the female instinctual need for protection. Only when I feel ‘connected’ to a person can I keep up the illusion that I can rely on this person for ‘bad times’.

However, whenever I managed not to fall into the trap of love – what a delight then to discover the actual person, thrilling, alive, meeting for the first time and not knowing what either of us is going to say or do next! Love was then replaced by this delicious state of crisp and exquisite awareness, where I am utterly by myself, there is no relationship between us whatsoever, and the next moment is unpredictable and without continuity to any past or future. Remembering again and again the joy of those wonder-filled moments always gave me the necessary intent and courage to keep removing any feelings that the ‘self’ kept producing. A Bit of Vineeto

GARY: To question it is one thing, and I am sure that most people do that to some extent. But to reject it totally is almost to proclaim oneself to be apart from humanity. Then again we get into the outcast thing again. But to get back to what is happening in my partnership relationship, I am aware at times of stirrings of insecurity, the feeling of needing reassurance, of seeking comfort, or desiring nurturance, etc., and I look at these things and see instead of ‘Love’ the claim and demand for what the very self is made of – affirmation and validation of its existence, in other words, that there is a ‘me’ present that needs these supplies and either coyly or quite brazenly goes about pulling or teasing these things from her.

VINEETO: For me it was not that I rejected love – it was that I came to understand experientially that feeling love is in the way of meeting the other as the human being he or she is. Love is always self-serving; it is to supply me with the nice feeling that I belong, that I am a loving person – that I am not alone, that if I give I shall receive. Intimacy is the very opposite – I am interested in the other and in what is happening this moment between us, not for my security or gratification, but for the sake of meeting a fellow human being as he/she is in this very moment.

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VINEETO: When feeling love I projected my feelings and my fantasy images on to the other and was thus not able to even notice the human being in front of me, let alone be intimate moment to moment. I found love one of the stickiest of my emotions – being in the category of ‘good’ – and in later stages I discovered subtler versions of love like admiration, gratitude, a rose-coloured mood, missing his company or seeking special attention. I guess you have read all about my explorations on the subject already in ‘my bit’ of Peter’s Journal. Overcoming the romantic dream and the initial shock of questioning the highest of human values was the biggest step – after that, it’s a lot of tidying up one’s habitual beliefs and conditioning about one’s gender identity and moral-ethical convictions. It took several months of thoroughly checking out all the ingredients of gender, love, authority and dependency before the first glimpses of actual intimacy sparked and opened a whole new world of relating to Peter and consequently to others.

GARY: My question at this point is this: if one has a paradigm of a relationship based on desire, nurturance, and need to couple (whether it be with a man or a woman), and one discovers that one can free oneself from this genetically encoded behaviour, what happens to the relationship? Is there any relationship? Is there something intrinsic about coupling with the human species that makes its imperative so strong? If one achieves an Actual Freedom, or even if one is living in a Virtual Freedom, would there be any need or desire for a couple relationship? In what would it consist? Do you follow my question?

VINEETO: Oh yes, I follow your question. When investigating love, that was always the question for me – what will be left? Why am I with Peter, if I don’t love him? Well, what I found out pretty early in the investigation was that there is a sparkling intimacy of two fellow human beings meeting without the veil of self-serving feelings separating them. Living with Peter is much more fun than living on my own, I enjoy his company immensely as he does mine – talking, watching TV together, cooking, shopping, serving cups of coffee, walking, silently writing on the computer until one starts a conversation again ...and then there is sex, a delightful pleasure not to be dismissed. Humans are a social species, we humans would enjoy each other’s company immensely if we wouldn’t have reason to fear it, i.e. if the instinctual passions didn’t get in the way. And man and woman have such perfect plumbing for mutual pleasure...

GARY: My partner and I have only just scratched the surface in questioning what our relationship is about, and I must admit to a feeling that it is economically advantageous to share living quarters with another person, as well as having the companionship and company. We are not passionately in love. I am not passionately anything at this point. It is rewarding to mutually explore life and together enjoy the wonder of this natural world. We are both like-minded to a certain extent. I sometimes feel that the only thing that holds us together is the very thing that I want to get rid of: namely, the animal instincts. So there is this push-pull conflict to a certain extent with this issue as there is with others. I well know from a very long period of being on my own with no mate that it is not only possible to live alone but to be quite happy doing so.

VINEETO: The thing with actual intimacy is that you can only discover its purity when you question what has been the glue of the relationship up to now. You might have glimpses of it in your PCEs when relating to people without a ‘self’ was imminently easy, delightful, direct, simple and innocent. I remember you described looking at stones as they became ‘amazingly interesting and wonderful’. This same naive non-affective fascination you can have with human beings except there is the added bonus that human beings are alive, can communicate, share interests, report experiences, have insights ...

GARY: But I still feel that if my mate came to me and told me she has decided I must go, that I would feel sad and perhaps somewhat broken up inside. So I have not freed myself from the attachment to the relationship and I am not sure, to be quite honest, that I want to. Is what I am saying making any sense?

VINEETO: Yes, I understand what you mean. However, I pricked my ears at the word ‘attachment’ because it has such a familiar spiritual ring to it. Actualism is not about becoming unattached as in stifling or rejecting feelings as something wrong. It took a lot to understand that ‘I’ am my feelings until I finally ‘self’-immolate, there is no way around it. The way I can facilitate this ‘self’-immolation is to find all the hooks that tie me to humanity, not stifle my feelings and emotions for intellectual reasons but investigate in order to take ‘me’, the feeler out of the situation.

In the case of my attachment to Peter that ‘unhooking process’ meant that I explored the related morals, dreams, investments, desires, fears, my social identity and my sexual drive that were all part of my attachment to him. Once I saw the dream, for instance, I had a choice – do I want to keep my sweet ‘female’ love-dream or do I want the real thing, actual intimacy? It wasn’t really a choice at all; it was so obvious for me when the love-dream was seen as a dream. Of course, one can see one dream and replace it with another – but with honesty and insistence the hidden dream-maker will be found out along with the dreams and passions.

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VINEETO: I found that my dream of ‘human love’ and my search for ‘divine love’ had the same source – my feelings of separation due to me being an alien entity inside this body and my feelings of desperation for ‘having to be here’. When human love failed I went off to the East to look for the master’s love, which was seen and felt as God’s love in a man’s body. My relationship with my partner turned into a triangle, for the love for my master was always priority. One could compare one’s love for the master to unrequited love because the ideal of one’s feelings is never tested in day-to-day life and can therefore easily be maintained in its idealistic glory.

GARY: Yes, I think that when many reach a certain age, usually in their 30s and 40s and they find that their intimate relationships have been shipwrecked, the religious or spiritual quest becomes all the more attractive as a way of reaffirming their identity. I think it was this way for me. The love of the Master (in my case the Christian Jesus) replaced the missing love of the wife who was long gone, the father’s love, the family, etc. It seemed so stimulating to think that I was loved by Jesus and even known by him personally, that I had a direct line to the love of God, to put it plainly. It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing, I can see that now, but I could not see it then. But yes, there is the underlying feeling of separation that fuels this search for Love. Now, I must say, I do not feel that way. I know there is a wonderful actual world there, and even if I am not intensely experiencing it at the moment, ‘I’ am getting in the way and only need let go of the controls and get out of the way to have the actual world rise to my sight.

VINEETO: It is fascinating to read your ‘It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing’ – such a simple statement about a simple fact. Everyone else I am corresponding with at present is frantically defending Love, Beauty, Supreme Intelligence, Compassion, the Unknown, universal Consciousness and whatever other names they have invented for their God. To acknowledge the fact that god is a mere figment of passionate imagination is more than most will bear.

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VINEETO: To ‘reject the notion’ that there is a God is the beginning of questioning your belief. However, when you persist questioning and explore further, common sense will facilitate seeing that a physical universe that is eternal and infinite has no outside to it. So where is God then? Where would the ‘creator and ruler of the world’ sit? He would have to sit outside of his creation, don’t you think? As there exists no such place for his chair above or outside of an infinite universe, the only place where God can exist is in human passionate imagination. And human passionate imagination ceases to exist the moment I ask myself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and bring my awareness to whatever feeling or imagination is happening. Bingo. Poof.

GARY: Yes, it seems to be working that way. Rejecting God and all the other spiritual and religious stuff that I have been fed and fed myself has indeed been the real start for me of this whole thing. Had I known before I really approached Actual Freedom that I would give up my spiritual and religious beliefs, I doubt seriously that I would have persisted in the venture. But the time was right and the ‘handwriting was on the wall’ so to speak.

VINEETO: Yes, same here. Had I known that when I said yes to Peter’s proposition to investigate everything that stood in the way of our peaceful living together, that it would involve questioning and dismissing the authority of my former master, end my belonging to the spiritual tribe, that I would lose interest in my friends, quit my job and become a happy and harmless ‘outcast’ – I would not have agreed to the proposition. So it all went well.

GARY: I have rejected all of that now and I am better off for it. The house of cards did not collapse, as I feared. Nothing really happened at all. There were no thunderbolts and divine punishments to be endured. I am better off without believing in God because now I can think for myself and, what’s more, these fears that were the basis for my fervent belief can be examined ‘out in the open’ without the pacifier of prayer and religious ritual.

Now I can really see the seduction of the belief in an afterlife, the belief in a Heavenly Father or Mother or Whatever. It is all an enormous illusion. How blind I have been! I remember thinking something similar when I adopted the belief in a Metaphysical Realm. Now, it is completely in the opposite direction.

VINEETO: The more of my metaphysical beliefs I questioned, the more I was amazed and embarrassed how gullible I had been. There was hardly any New Dark Age (NDA) superstition that I did not credit as being somehow true. So that ‘house of cards’ has definitely ‘collapsed’. Now I want to know the facts and when I hear some reporter or scientist voice an opinion or theory, I am suss about his or her philosophical bent and underlying affective investment – just because something is being printed or reported doesn’t make it a fact. But slowly I am learning the art of extracting facts from opinions, distinguishing feelings from factual information, making sense of the world in a completely opposite way to before.

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VINEETO: But you are right – you are in deep trouble when you irrevocably stop believing in God, when the belief resolves in the light of facts. A part of your social identity flies out the window and because of this, some instinctual fear is activated and causes yet another storm in the teacup. For me, the end of God was at the same time the end of hope, trust, faith and postponement, the end of debilitating waiting and cowardly pondering, the end of humbling myself in the face of an almighty invisible power, the end of a stupefying fear of God’s judgement of my right and wrong deeds. The end of my belief in God also freed me of the belief in and loyalty for His representatives, my former master and all the moral authorities that I had followed and/or rebelled against. The end of my belief in God and an afterlife marked the beginning of standing on my own two feet with dignity and relying on my intelligence and common sense to find out what is silly and sensible. Ah, what serendipity.

GARY: It is the much touted ‘Fear of God’ that makes a person a righteous, religious soul. I have no fear of God now, and hence, I think there is that ‘indifference to hierarchy’ mentioned in the actualism writings. With the core fear of death and fear of God faced directly, I am getting over my fears of the authority of others as well as questioning my own authority. The whole warp and weave of the structure of the ‘self’ is coming unravelled, and I am finding that the atavistic fears are subsiding, to be replaced with a deep sense of freedom and peace. Perhaps I will face renewed onslaughts of the atavistic fears, as the psyche is still intact but withering away, or so I think. A question in my mind at this point is whether I have the guts and intestinal fortitude to stick it out to the end of ‘me’, in other words putting the same effort into ending ‘me’ that I have invested in maintaining this social identity, or whether I will settle for a second rate life.

What do you think?

VINEETO: What do I think? Honestly, when your computer crashed and you didn’t write for a while I thought – oops, there goes another one. Which means that really I have no idea, Gary, about your ‘guts and intestinal fortitude to stick it out to the end’, but I think you will find out in due course if you are ever able to settle for second best again after tasting ‘self’-lessness for several short periods.

Two things were essential for me when the storms of fear seemed to blow me over – one was that there was nothing I wanted to go back to in my previous life and the other was the clear memory of some of my outstanding PCEs. The necessary altruism developed on the way, maybe the passion that had previously been experienced as aggression, love and sorrow becomes simply focussed on one thing only – to do my share for peace on earth.

29.9.2000

VINEETO: I had a bit of a think about what I wanted to reply to you because I have already said or written everything about love that I have discovered and I did not want to copy and paste from my previous writings as you might have found it already yourself on the website.

GARY: I found myself recently ‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’. It was during one of those ‘nice and cosy’ periods, like you describe (below). It really felt like it just slipped out and that I didn’t really mean it. It also seemed like it is just a reflexive habit, you know, when one is in such moods to give utterance to such endearments. And there really is no difference between saying ‘I love you’ and saying ‘I care for you’ or ‘I want to be with you’. All these sentiments pretty much add up to the same thing. When I first read this post, I was having trouble grasping just what you meant by ‘consciously allow the feeling to happen in order to fully understand and explore it experientially’. I think I have been kind of regarding Love as a no-no and quashing the feelings when they come up rather than simply allowing them and exploring them when they do. I think I’ll give that a try. <snip>

I still get caught up in malicious mind-games with my partner, berating her verbally, for instance. And she can dish it out as well as take it too. Just so that I don’t paint too rosy a picture of how things actually are, she recently told me that she thinks I am cruel because of the things I say. I don’t like to see ‘myself’ that way but it is true. I still have a mean streak that comes out in our relationship. So, I’ve got a lot of work to do, for sure.

VINEETO: Contemplation and insights are valuable tools in understanding more about the Human Condition, but until and unless I actualized and applied my insights to daily life, they faded into ‘great’ impotent thoughts. Whenever I got myself in a knot by contemplating too long on one issue, for instance did I want to keep love or throw it out, I had to tackle it from a different angle. What did I want practically? What is my aim and what is prevents me from that aim? The answer of ‘I want to be free’ was not enough – it had to be an actual practical freedom from something, i.e. fighting with others, and freedom to be intimate with others.

I knew from my pure consciousness experience that I wanted intimacy – the innocent ever-fresh fascination that I experienced first in those moments with Peter, not knowing what he is going to say or do next and being unconditionally curious and attentive. This goal of actual intimacy was my guiding line, this is the quality in which I want to relate to people. Therefore I was eager and willing to find out how I can live this actual intimacy that I experienced in my PCE.

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VINEETO: I pricked my ears at the word ‘attachment’ because it has such a familiar spiritual ring to it. Actualism is not about becoming unattached as in stifling or rejecting feelings as something wrong. It took a lot to understand that ‘I’ am my feelings until I finally ‘self’-immolate, there is no way around it.

The way I can facilitate this ‘self’-immolation is to find all the hooks that tie me to humanity, not stifle my feelings and emotions for intellectual reason but investigate in order to take ‘me’, the feeler out of the situation.

GARY: I guess I don’t really understand the finer points of the difference between suppressing something, say, a feeling or emotion, and exploring it experientially. I thought I did, but I am revising that opinion now. I have run across references in the actualism writings about ‘avoiding’ certain feelings and affective states and this almost sounds like a kind of suppression. But anyway, here’s what I have come up with so far: in suppression, one already is having the feeling and emotion, but one consciously applies the brakes, pushing that feeling down because it is believed that it is not appropriate or acceptable.

The feeling doesn’t go away because one stifles it, of course. What you are saying, on the other hand, is not to suppress it, but to experience it, neither suppressing nor expressing it, but walk around it from all angles looking at it and examining it for what it is.

VINEETO: Maybe you refer to the use of ‘avoiding’ in writings like these in The Actual Freedom Trust Library –

Peter: The pure intent of Actual Freedom comes from the peak experience or PCE wherein one has a glimpse of the purity and perfection of the physical universe untainted by any ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-produced meta-physical imaginations. With pure intent as one’s guideline one will not settle for the ‘ego’-less Altered State of Consciousness that leads to the delusion of Divinity known as Enlightenment. One will settle for nothing less than living the ‘self’-less Pure Consciousness Experience of actual purity and perfection, 24 hrs. a day, every day.

Richard: Pure intent is derived from the purity of the PCE (which is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’) and everything is experienced to be perfect as-it-is at this moment and place ... here and now. Diligent attention paid to the pure consciousness experience gives rise to pure intent and with pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation about being here doing this business called being alive rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself.

It is the quality of pure intent is what pulls one forward with impunity ... pure intent transforms into action one’s determination to live a life full of gladness, peace and harmony with oneself, with a person of the other gender, and with all peoples. Pure intent produces total dedication – it is experienced as an irresistible enticement – and it makes it impossible not to do what is required (or to sweep an issue under the carpet and to let sleeping dogs lie) and to continue to conform to the long-failed dictates of the status-quo. Pure intent is not to be confused with being a ‘do-gooder’, or being full of ‘righteousness’, or being ‘moralistic’ or being ‘principled’. Pure intent is the quality that encompasses what morals and ethics aspire to but never reach. Pure intent is a manifest life-force; a genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe. Freed by pure intent from the very necessary social constraints – designed to control a wayward ego and a compliant soul – one can have generosity of character without striving. Pure intent guides one in each and every situation and circumstance – it is an essential prerequisite to ensure a guaranteed passage through the psychic maze – until the primacy of ‘me’ as a psychological or psychic entity withers away.

With pure intent one will not rest until one has gone all the way.  The Actual Freedom Trust Library, Intent

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Peter: The diligent and intentional pursuit of the perfection evidenced in a PCE, while assiduously avoiding the pitfalls of Glory or Dread, will inevitably result in an actual freedom from the Human Condition – perfection in humans is possible. The Actual Freedom Trust Library, Perfection

The idea is to avoid, i.e. not get caught in the seductive and delusionary states of bliss, love glory of spiritual enlightenment because it is a long and unnecessary journey to dig oneself out of it, if ever. Nevertheless, one needs to experientially investigate these altered states of consciousness if one is at all to know the overwhelming effect and seduction of unconditional Love- and Bliss-attacks. One has to come close to the edge of the mindless pit of delusion, so to speak, in order to know what to avoid and why. Avoidance of enlightenment is only possible for me because I have sufficiently experienced and observed the rushes of the chemicals that carry Love, Bliss, Power, Oneness, Being and Knowing. I now know that Enlightenment will be a dead end road, dead as dodo. Now I know what I avoid because I have experienced the passions, not because I have suppressed them or denied them.

The same process of investigation applies for other affective feelings. Unless you feel sorrow you cannot investigate it. Once you have sufficiently dug around in one particular feeling and know all there is to know, you don’t go down the same sad and dull alley again and again, just out of habit or fashion. The cunning entity of the ‘self’ will want to hang on to emotions and feelings even if they have been fully understood, because feeling and emotions is the very substance of the ‘self’. But with sufficient experience one has the choice to deliberately avoid the pitfalls, or, as Richard says, ‘nip the feeling in the bud’. But first, the feelings have to come ‘off the shelf’, be dusted off, be stripped of their moral and ethical taboos and rules and be thoroughly and experientially explored.

It is an utterly intriguing hobby to examine the Human Condition inside one’s own skull!

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VINEETO: It is fascinating to read your ‘It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing’ – such a simple statement about a simple fact. Everyone else I am corresponding with at present is frantically defending Love, Beauty, Supreme Intelligence, Compassion, the Unknown, universal Consciousness and whatever other names they have invented for their God. To acknowledge the fact that god is a mere figment of passionate imagination is more than most will bear.

GARY: No, I am not into defending these ideals and I will not. It was hard for me, looking back at it in retrospect, to admit of my former hero’s (Krishnamurti’s) debauches with his friend’s wife. At the time, I did not see the relevance of inquiring into what he did or didn’t do. But I am looking at that differently now. I think the critical thing is to be harmless. What an enormous hypocrisy to say things out of one side of your mouth while practising something differently in your personal life. I will not be disingenuous.

VINEETO: Before I met Peter and later Richard, I had not consciously questioned how and if the spiritual teachings were lived by the gurus themselves. It is one of their useful tricks, that the master is always exempt from his own teaching. He has already ‘got it’ and you, the disciple, have to practice humility, austerity, discipline, meditation, listening, etc. etc.

A whole new world opened up when I started questioning what was the practical outcome of the spiritual teachings in the master’s life, for his disciples and for the people who had lived the teachings of his lineage – in my case the Indian people. Had anything improved because of the teachings? Had my own life improved? Had my relationships to others become more loving, peaceful, happy? When enlightened, would I be living like the master? Did I like his lifestyle? How was he with women? How did he use power? Was it possible for everyone of his supposed 10,000 disciples to live like he did, all at the same time? Who would serve whom? Who would earn a living? Who would clean, cook and build the houses?

I started to put all the master’s seductive and soothing words to the test of common sense and was astounded that nothing added up. Not only was his teaching full of deliberate contradictions, but also it completely disregarded common sense. When I started to search for facts, there were more gaps than coherence. The teachings and the cult was only held together by the love, devotion and desire for enlightenment of his disciples. The further I investigated, the more I found dis-ingenuity combined with corruption, lies, extreme egotism, power games of the highest order, denial, greed, blaming the disciples and malicious competition with other gurus. Once I questioned and removed the overriding moral rule that you should never ever think for yourself and determine what is fact and what is belief, a whole Pandora box of rotten revelations followed.

As an aside – the latest guru gossip has it that John de Ruiter, the new kid on the block, was told by Truth to invite two female disciples into his household and it was Truth that told him to lie to his wife about the nature of his relationship to them. The Truth told him to lie, cute eh? Nothing stays hidden in the bright daylight of the internet.

10.10.2000

VINEETO: It’s been a while since I wrote to you last. I was quite busy with my own process of investigating where I am connected with Humanity and I was yet again trying to understand the workings of the psychic web called Humanity. Investigation into an issue is like a scientific research whereby I collect enough relevant data both in my emotional reactions and in observations of the facts and workings of a situation – and then the brain does the evaluation on its own accord. I experienced the stepping out of the psychic web of Humanity as a bewildering loss of interest in other people’s emotional or spiritual issues because my emotional/ spiritual faculty has almost stopped functioning. The other strange experience was that thoughts have stopped running automatically and only switch on when needed, like for working, shopping, driving or writing. I find it hilarious that what I desperately wanted to achieve in 17 years of the spiritual approach of no-thought, now happens as a result of investigating emotions, instinctual passions and the psychic web of humanity’s passions. And, at least for now, it is a very strange experience indeed.

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VINEETO: Contemplation and insights are valuable tools in understanding more about the Human Condition, but until and unless I actualized and applied my insights to daily life, they faded into ‘great’ impotent thoughts. Whenever I got myself in a knot by contemplating too long on one issue, for instance did I want to keep love or throw it out, I had to tackle it from a different angle. What did I want practically? What is my aim and what is prevents me from that aim? The answer of ‘I want to be free’ was not enough – it had to be an actual practical freedom from something, i.e. fighting with others, and freedom to be intimate with others.

GARY: That makes a good deal of sense. I found myself ‘spinning my wheels’ a while ago, oh, about 2 weeks ago. I was experiencing sorrow and malice again and felt stuck. Peter’s post to me on sex seemed to provide the impetus to get me moving again. This issue was not per se about sex, it was about doing rather than thinking. What do I want practically? is a good question to put to oneself when one sees the instincts rearing their ugly head again.

VINEETO: For me, the essential difference between the spiritual approach and Actual Freedom was that I could actually do something to change my behaviour and eliminate malice and sorrow. In all of the spiritual Eastern approach the idea is to adjust one’s thinking and feeling about one’s own problems and the problems of the world and hope that as a reward of right thinking and right feeling the circumstances will magically change by Grace of a Higher Force – evoking God’s mercy, so to speak. In actualism I regain the reigns and my autonomy by the simple recognition that there is no Higher Force to rule my life and that any change I want to happen I have to instigate myself. My happiness and harmlessness is entirely up to me.

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VINEETO: I knew from my pure consciousness experience that I wanted intimacy – the innocent ever-fresh fascination that I experienced first in those moments with Peter, not knowing what he is going to say or do next and being unconditionally curious and attentive. This goal of actual intimacy was my guiding line, this is the quality in which I want to relate to people. Therefore I was eager and willing to find out how I can live this actual intimacy that I experienced in my PCE.

GARY: Actual intimacy is the quality in which I want to relate to people in my life. Everyone. Not just a select few. Usually when using the word ‘intimacy’ people refer to the special sense of coziness or closeness they reserve for their relation to their spouse or sexual and romantic partner. But I am seeing that one can be ‘intimate’ with everyone one relates to. And this is the quality that I have experienced in PCEs that I have had – there is that magical quality of naiveté and curiosity with others that makes relating to others – people on the street, casual strangers, etc. – so free and easy. As I investigated into the primitive animal instinct of fear, I don’t think I ever realized how frightened I have been of other people all my life. In all my contacts with others – personally and professionally – there has always been a strong undercurrent of fear, experienced as wariness, suspicion, distrust, aloofness, etc. I have always kept my guard up in situations.

Now I can bring full attentiveness to investigating this sense of needing to keep my guard up, with the accompanying social identity that needs to be protected, and the underlying primitive instinct of fear that causes these reactions. I can experiment with letting my guard down deliberately and joyfully in situations that used to trigger alarm and defensiveness. This is an exciting adventure and it is a considerable satisfaction to find that Actual Intimacy is possible with everyone, not just one’s sexual or romantic partner.

VINEETO: Yes, an actual intimacy is possible with everyone and this very fact is the proof you are experiencing intimacy and not a secure, secluded arrangement between two people.

In the process of investigating fear I noticed two different types of fear, just as you have described them – fears related to various issues of my social identity and plain instinctual fear without any cause or reason. The fears related to my social identity were diminished and incrementally disappeared by dismantling the various facets of my social identity, i.e. nationality, race, gender, belonging to a family, a peer-group and friends as well as my professional and my spiritual image. Some fears needed a practical down-to-earth approach as in checking that my physical and financial survival was sensibly taken care of, but mostly the fears were psychological and psychic fears.

Most of my early correspondence with Alan was about investigating such fears.

When the social identity is significantly demolished, the instinctual fear will rear its ugly head. But as one becomes acquainted with such storms of plain fear for no other reason than being an instinctually driven animal, it also becomes more and more obvious that the only way to get rid of instinctual fear is to eliminate the ‘self’, the very seat of this instinctual fear. Sometimes the sheer bewilderment of doing something completely so ‘unnatural’ – instigating one’s own psychological and psychic death – turns into the excitement of being in an utterly new and unknown enterprise, an enterprise that addresses all the problems of human life, at their very core. It is simply the best game to play in town.

*

VINEETO: As I wanted peace and harmony above all, stopping my power games whenever I caught myself became my priority. Of course, repressing my power games would only result in resentment – I had to take apart the feeling and issue at hand, experienced and investigated every nook and corner and dug for the underlying causes.

GARY: I recently opened up to my partner about some of the fears and doubts that I was experiencing. I cannot say that I was looking for anything like sympathy or nurturance from her. I wanted to let her know some of the things that are changing for me now and some of the inevitable realignments that are being made as the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. There was not much said by her on her part other than for her to say that she likes it when I talk to her in that way. I realized again how often I keep my guard up and keep my feelings and issues private. The issue of ‘Love’ in our relationship is really not a big issue anymore. I don’t worry about it as I did. I have gone on to other things now.

I identify a lot with your writings, Vineeto, about struggles with authority. The whole issue of mentorship that I brought up in a post with Peter triggered off for me investigation into this issue of authority. I have been reading what the website says about authority. For me, the issue of authority has been a big one, a stumbling block to freedom that has to be thoroughly investigated. I was trained and raised to be obedient and not to think for myself. At a certain age, I rebelled totally against this authoritarianism in my upbringing and suffered dire consequences as a young person as a result. For me, there has always been a resentment of the authority of others, which leads me to experience fear and the desire to attack or dig my heels in and stubbornly resist their authority. Usually it is the latter quality, which is evident, but ‘I’ will attack if I feel cornered.

VINEETO: I had always thought that my issue with authority resolved when I finally realized that there was no God and in a way God’s authority was the final piece of the puzzle for me. Thinking about authority, however, I now understand that any issue of authority is inextricably intertwined with the desire to pass on the job of living my life to others who then became the authority figures. It was my hope for shortcuts, help of the powerful ones, the father’s money, the boyfriend’s promise of sympathy and security, the girlfriend’s support, the Masters Grace, God’s miracles, etc., that have fuelled and maintained my reliance upon, and fighting against, authority. Now I can learn from whomever I find worth emulating or learning from, whilst remaining perfectly autonomous. First I had to acknowledge that I am utterly on my own – nobody, but nobody can do anything for me, can change me, can give me happiness, redeem me from fear or fulfil my desires. It is all up to me.

*

VINEETO: The idea is to avoid, i.e. not get caught in the seductive and delusionary states of bliss, love glory of spiritual enlightenment because it is a long and unnecessary journey to dig oneself out of it, if ever. Nevertheless, one needs to experientially investigate these altered states of consciousness if one is at all to know the overwhelming effect and seduction of unconditional Love- and Bliss-attacks. One has to come close to the edge of the mindless pit of delusion, so to speak, in order to know what to avoid and why. Avoidance of enlightenment is only possible for me because I have sufficiently experienced and observed the rushes of the chemicals that carry Love, Bliss, Power, Oneness, Being and Knowing. I now know that Enlightenment will be a dead end road, dead as dodo. Now I know what I avoid because I have experienced the passions, not because I have suppressed them or denied them. <snip>

GARY: I was using the word ‘avoid’ in the sense of this ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ that you and Richard are talking about, not so much in the sense of avoiding the Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment. I can see now that ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ is nowhere near the same as suppressing a feeling. For instance, one can nip the feeling of anger in the bud by recognizing a situation as one in which anger has been habitually experienced or expressed. Given that one has experientially investigated into anger and aggression and understood how anger, in any and all forms, blocks the path to freedom, one has a definite choice as to what to do and experience in a given situation. This is not at all the same thing that spiritual seekers do as in ‘turning the other cheek’ when angry or offended, which is really just a supercilious and hypocritical suppression of one’s feeling state.

When I first encountered Richard’s writings on [Mailing List B], it was an eye-opening experience. Here was a man talking about war, rape, child abuse, suicide, murder and proposing a practical solution, not just mouthing the usual mystical and spiritual fluff. It got my attention but I could not comprehend at first what he was talking about. The interest lay dormant in my mind for a good long while. I could see and experience in myself firsthand the violence of the list, and participated myself in various ‘wars’ on the list. One could see the web of alliances, feel the quickness of anger when one’s cherished opinions and beliefs were assailed by others.

VINEETO: I find it particularly interesting what twigged your attention in Richard’s writing about actualism and also, how you perceive the Krishnamurti mailing list in hindsight, i.e. from the distance of not being a member.

GARY: I could not at the time, however, connect the violence of the list with its avowed purpose – I could not understand how a mailing list set up under the auspices of studying Krishnamurti’s teachings could be so violent and chaotic. I think I understand it better and I have refused to be a part of it.

VINEETO: I don’t quite understand what you mean by ‘connect the violence of the list with its avowed purpose’. I have not discovered their avowed purpose yet. Violence is part and parcel of the Human Condition and the shock for me was to acknowledge and understand that my spiritual pursuit and conditioning did nothing to ease, let alone eliminate, the malice in me – and the way other spiritual seekers relate to each other only confirms the fact that peace is not on any spiritual agenda whatsoever.

*

VINEETO: Before I met Peter and later Richard, I had not consciously questioned how and if the spiritual teachings were lived by the gurus themselves. It is one of their useful tricks, that the master is always exempt from his own teaching. He has already ‘got it’ and you, the disciple, have to practice humility, austerity, discipline, meditation, listening, etc. etc.

A whole new world opened up when I started questioning what was the practical outcome of the spiritual teachings in the master’s life, for his disciples and for the people who had lived the teachings of his lineage – in my case the Indian people. Had anything improved because of the teachings? Had my own life improved? Had my relationships to others become more loving, peaceful, happy? When enlightened, would I be living like the master? Did I like his lifestyle? How was he with women? How did he use power? Was it possible for everyone of his supposed 10,000 disciples to live like he did, all at the same time? Who would serve whom? Who would earn a living? Who would clean, cook and build the houses?

I started to put all the master’s seductive and soothing words to the test of common sense and was astounded that nothing added up. Not only was his teaching full of deliberate contradictions, but also it completely disregarded common sense. When I started to search for facts, there were more gaps than coherence. The teachings and the cult was only held together by the love, devotion and desire for enlightenment of his disciples. The further I investigated, the more I found dis-ingenuity combined with corruption, lies, extreme egotism, power games of the highest order, denial, greed, blaming the disciples and malicious competition with other gurus. Once I questioned and removed the overriding moral rule that you should never ever think for yourself and determine what is fact and what is belief, a whole Pandora box of rotten revelations followed.

GARY: As long as one is defending one’s sense of being, one will forever remain vulnerable to becoming either a guru or disciple. There is also the lure of becoming a secular leader or potentate. Cults, whether religious or secular, appeal to people who are seeking immortality. I am reminded again of Richard’s comment that the door to an Actual Freedom has ‘Extinction’ written over it.

VINEETO: One is not only defending ‘one’s sense of being’ – as spiritual teachers like to phrase it to emphasize that one only has to wake up to the illusionary nature of the psychological ‘self’ and be done with it. In actualism we explore and investigate our very core, ‘being’ itself, in order to facilitate the complete immolation of the ‘self’.

This ‘sense of being’ and its accompanying search for power and glory is not to be underestimated as it is supported by the strongest of passions, our desire to survive as a psychic and psychological entity. On the road to Actual Freedom, when the ‘self’ becomes thinner and thinner, the intense fear of death will at some point inevitably trigger a release of euphoriant chemicals in the brain as part of our physical survival program, and that chemical release can easily result in a blissful ‘unitary’ Altered State of Consciousness as the ‘self’ makes an instinctual grab for survival. It is essential that one becomes familiar with such overwhelming grand feelings while one’s intent is firmly set to the goal of an actual freedom beyond the delusion of Grandeur and spiritual so-called freedom. Indeed, ‘the door to an Actual Freedom has ‘Extinction’ written over it.’ And what a thrill!

2.3.2001

VINEETO: I have been enjoying your posts immensely. You are describing eloquently and in detail your process and success of dismantling the Human Condition in you. Many of your discoveries ring a bell, sometimes reminding me of my own findings on the wide and wondrous path. The last part of your latest post to Peter has intrigued me to write to you and relate some of my experiences as to how am I in relation to other people.

GARY: Death has lost most of its terrifying aspect to me. I would not say that there is absolutely no fear of death, but if there is, it is scarcely conscious. One can, I think, relate one’s own fear of dying to the fear of losing ‘loved ones’, people who one is close to. For instance, at times I realize I am quite attached to my partner and I would be utterly bereft were she to die and leave me ‘alone’. Then I realize that I am emotionally dependent on her, through the ties of love or sympathy, and that I don’t want her to die and that I could not bear to see her get ill or suffer. This then seems like an important realization for I am looking at what I am in relation to the people around me, and looking at what they mean to me. It is a rather sobering sort of reflection. There is that connection, I don’t know what to call it, ‘bond’ I suppose is a good word, that one forms to people throughout life – one’s parents, one’s children, one’s husband or wife. I think for me I fear their demise more than I fear my own. Picturing my own demise has little effect on me but sometimes I am filled with fear for the demise of these ‘loved ones’.

In this connection, I am reminded of the important question that Richard posed in his Journal to himself of ‘What am I in relation to the people around me’ and how he kept this question burning in his consciousness for a long time. That question has repeatedly occurred to me over the course of looking at these emotional dependencies, these emotional ties of love or sympathy, even ties of antipathy or hatred, to family or ‘loved ones’. Could you perhaps explore with me what it has been like for you to examine your ties to people in your life through running this question? Do you find yourself forming ties to others? How can I use this question ‘What am I in relation...’ to further important understandings of ‘me’ so that ‘me’ can be ended? I think at this point I am going to end. I really would like to pursue this issue of one’s relationship with other people in one’s life. It may be interesting the kinds of fears that crop up as one begins the process of dismantling one’s identity. The fear, indeed the dread, of leaving everything and everyone, all the comfortable and familiar things that inhabit one’s ‘normal’ world is an interesting subject in its’ own right.

VINEETO: For me, the question about losing a ‘loved one’ by death or change of circumstances was an important issue in the beginning of my relationship with Peter. I had known jealousy and fear of abandonment in the wild ups and downs of my previous relationships and knew that I did not want to repeat the same dramas any more. Further, a close friend of mine had lost her partner after many years of a relationship that I had always considered the best possible within the Human Condition and she pined for him for years, convinced such luck is granted only once in a lifetime. Given my intent to find a way of living with a man in peace and harmony without being stricken by my emotional dependency, I pricked up my ears when, at our first meeting, Peter proposed something new for our relationship – intimacy instead of love and the commitment to work out all the arising obstacles between us.

In the course of our living together we have indeed worked out all the differences that arose due to gender conditioning and cultural upbringing and then dug into the instinctual differences between man and woman, particularly love and sex, i.e. nurture and desire. Our living together soon became so peaceful, delightful and harmonious that I certainly had no reason or trigger to worry about being abandoned or feeling jealous.

For a start, it gave me great confidence that I practically and financially stood on my own two feet. Whenever fear arose of losing Peter or when I noticed that I started depending on his company for my happiness, I looked into those emotions to understand what exactly it was that I was afraid of. I could easily detect that my cherished tender instincts, my feelings of love, belonging and affection were the very cause of my fear and dependency. I found that I had to question every single one of my ideals and dreams about relationship, as well as my imaginations and hopes, expectations and principles to be able to become free of fear and to begin to become autonomous.

The fairy-tales that I had loved as a child and the heroic legends that I had read as a youth – all talked about love as the primary fulfilment in life and the ultimate goal ... after the princess found prince charming ‘they lived happily ever after’. All the poetry that is written about love conveys the same picture, the bittersweet longing and a fulfilment that gives content and meaning to life. In reality I found that love meant that I wanted the other to determine, colour and fulfill my life and to guarantee my happiness – an obvious relegation of my responsibility for my own life and happiness. As an aside, even Rajneesh in his so-called divine love affair with his Sannyasins blamed them for not doing enough to fulfill his personal megalomaniacal dreams of a Rajneesh-centric world.

Love also promised that I would belong to someone, that I would be protected from loneliness and meaninglessness, and the expectation that someone would be there for ‘me’ when I was sad and grumpy, fearful and ailing. There is nothing altruistic about love at all – it is always defined by the needs of the ‘self’. The very presence of the range of emotions called love creates a ‘self’-centred image of the other that has nothing to do with the flesh-and-blood person that stands in front of me. By definition, all ‘I’ am capable of is being ‘self’-ish and that prevents me from experiencing the other directly and intimately. Being driven by love I found that all I was doing was projecting ‘my’ dreams, ideals, desires, expectations and hopes on to the other and thus I only interacted with my own film-hero or nasty villain image instead of relating to the fellow human being in front of me.

It is interesting that my first Pure Consciousness Experience started with the most stunning discovery that there was an actual flesh-and-blood human being behind ‘my’ projected ideas and it was utter surprise and delight to meet him so intimately for the first time.

There’s a curious thing about emotions and instinctual passions – if you want to be genuinely free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions you will have to question the positive or ‘good’ emotions first. If you want to become free of feeling insulted and blamed by others you will have to abandon seeking the praise of others, if you want to become free of the fear of losing a cherished item or job you will have to investigate the desire, affection and attachment for that item or job, and if you want to become free of the fear of the loss of ‘loved ones’ you will have to inquire into your of desire to belong and your feelings of dependency and love.

*

So, Gary, I have chipped away a bit of rust in my thinking and writing gear and oiled my mental pathways, relearning English grammar as I write and remembering descriptive words with the help of the thesaurus. My brain these days is often in neutral when I don’t use it for particular tasks – something that I still find surprising when I become aware of it. I do find it curious that after four years of actively demolishing my ‘self’ using the method of actualism all I now have to do is to remember not to yield to the temptation of interfering with the perfection that is already happening.

23.3.2001

VINEETO: I apologize for the confusion when I sent off Peter’s post from my computer without changing the name of my computer. Now that both our computers are up and running, each of us can send our own posts again under our own name.

After a week of computer mechanics my favourite toy is again humming nicely with most of its settings and programs working as before. I spent hours resetting my toolbars, fiddling with icons, not unlike playing with a doll’s house, clicking on all the miniature pixelated customisable images that a toolbar has to offer. Creativity, particularly painting, was a great fashion in the spiritual commune and I always felt slightly inadequate that I could develop neither the talent nor the interest for it. Now that my only purpose in life is to become unconditionally free, playing with pictures, websites and icons is not a creative activity but one of the pleasurable activities of life. Quel plaisier.

*

GARY: Thank you for your thoughtfully written post addressing freedom from love. I have been regarding your post ruminatively for awhile now, and would like to respond to a few of the points that jumped out at me in particular. You wrote:

VINEETO: For me, the question about losing a ‘loved one’ by death or change of circumstances was an important issue in the beginning of my relationship with Peter. I had known jealousy and fear of abandonment in the wild ups and downs of my previous relationships and knew that I did not want to repeat the same dramas any more.

GARY: I certainly relate to not wanting to repeat the same patterns over again in my present relationship with my partner. I went through a distinct period, after I finally gave up alcohol and drugs, 15 years ago, of remaining solitary – in other words, not getting involved significantly with anyone, and this period went on for a few years. I had a great fear of becoming ‘too dependent’ on another person which naturally led to the fear of abandonment you mentioned. When I did get involved again, I went through some of the familiar patterns again with the difference that they did not seem to be as wildly emotional for me. I went through the familiar stage of forming a ‘love’ relationship, offering tender assurances to the other person, and eventually proclaiming to the other that ‘I love you’. It seems almost universal that these stages take place in human intimate relationships. I was greatly reluctant to offer the assurance of ‘love’ and I would often question my partner as to what she meant when she assured me that she loved me.

VINEETO: I have found that men seem more ‘reluctant’, as you say, to talk about love and relationship, but they are nevertheless as dependant, loyal, protective, worried, resentful and full of unspoken expectations towards their partners and children as women are. For me, being conditioned as a woman, relationship was an important ingredient for ‘my’ meaning in life and therefore it was always a great struggle to either deny or counteract my resultant dependency on the other by affirming and demonstrating my ‘independence’ – ‘taking space’, having my own opinions, having exclusive ‘girls nights’, living in a separate flat, etc., etc. And yet, despite all those ‘independent’ actions, deep down I knew damn well that I was unfulfilled, lost, lonely and frightened and always dreaming of the perfect relationship with a man.

When Peter and I met, he had grasped enough from Richard’s radical discovery to not want to fall in love again. And yet, as he has described it in his Journal,, falling in love happened despite all good intentions, inevitably unfolding all the typical emotions between man and woman within the Human Condition. To get a handle on the overwhelming impact of my tender emotions, I had to feel, experience, acknowledge, label and investigate each and every single emotion of the bundle called love in order to understand what love consists of. There was sexual attraction, fear of loneliness, my personal dreams and fantasies, my emotional dependency, my expectations of the other, the male and female conditioning, constant mistrust, fear, jealousy, worry and feelings of inadequacy that I tried to overcome by anticipating, attempting to interpret and empathizing with the other’s moods and feelings.

As I successively became aware of and understood one feeling after the other, I first had glimpses and then increasingly longer periods where neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere in the delightful magic of a direct unimpeded peaceful interaction with another human being. It became more and more obvious that love is nothing but a shield of ‘my’ projected feelings that act to keep me at a safe distance and therefore love only stands in the way of intimate interaction with others.

GARY: It was not until I became involved with actualism that I began to understand what it means to question myself rigorously about the feelings, emotions, and passions that come into play in my relationships with others. With the intent to become free from the disabling patterns and feelings that accompany ordinary human relationships, I could turn my attention to understanding what this business of relating is all about and understand why my previous unions with other human beings had failed miserably. In actualism, something entirely new is on offer: freedom from the entire emotional/instinctual package with which human beings are genetically endowed.

This is so radically different from other approaches to dealing with relationships that it scarcely needs mentioning. But perhaps it needs repeating because unless or until the instinctual passions are eliminated in toto one is always at danger of repeating the same patterns that led to misery in the first place. Not only do I see this happening in my present relationship with my partner, but I also experience the thrill of being free from those self-same patterns and the realization that it need not be so.

VINEETO: The more I have taken responsibility and stopped both blaming the other and expecting them to fix my problems, the more my relating to people has become simple and easy. At first relating seemed an impenetrable web of reasoning, feeling, empathizing, guilt, demand and fear, but when I started to pull a few fundamental strings and investigate a few basic premises, the mystery and complexity of emotional relating soon began to unravel and disappear.

I remember a particular afternoon about four years ago, when I took a close hard look at my pining, which inevitably occurs when love and affection are involved. That day I took a walk in the fields, determined to put a stop to the debilitating gut-sinking feeling of missing the other and I listed all the ingredients that made up this emotional dependency. I remember it as a seminal turning point as to how I wanted to live my life – according to my dreams and everyone else’s ideas of an ideal relationship or being in accord with what is actually happening here in this moment with the actual human being I have opted for as a companion. It was clear to me that in order to experience the other ‘in flesh’, in actuality, none of my dreams was of any use – on the contrary, they were the very smokescreen preventing a direct meeting – and it was obvious that I could only gain by abandoning my cherished dreams.

The other thing I understood on that afternoon was that nobody could live my life for me and nobody, however close, could fulfil my dreams of happiness and freedom for me. A freedom that one can receive from others always carries the fear that the other can possibly take his or her gift away at any time – by its very definition this is non-freedom. This includes, of course, the spiritual freedom offered by the Gurus and Godmen and the deceptive feeling of freedom created by feeling grateful to a mythical God or Existence. This understanding about freedom proved to be the foundation to allow me to break my dependency from Peter and later from Rajneesh, because the real thing – an actual freedom – as opposed to the dreamt-up feeling-only freedom, lies in my hands and in my hands only.

*

VINEETO: For a start, it gave me great confidence that I practically and financially stood on my own two feet. Whenever fear arose of losing Peter or when I noticed that I started depending on his company for my happiness, I looked into those emotions to understand what exactly it was that I was afraid of. I could easily detect that my cherished tender instincts, my feelings of love, belonging and affection were the very cause of my fear and dependency. I found that I had to question every single one of my ideals and dreams about relationship, as well as my imaginations and hopes, expectations and principles to be able to become free of fear and to begin to become autonomous.

GARY: This is an important point because you are pointing to an integral link between the tender passions and the so-called savage passions. In actualism, it is understood that the genetically endowed tender instincts are needed to offset, ameliorate or protect from the savage instincts. One cannot have one side of the instinctual equation without having the other side. The feeling of love is always accompanied by fear, dependency, possessiveness, jealousy, etc, at least in my experience. If one idealizes the feeling of love, as many do, one will be unable to see that the feeling of love not only is spawned by fear and aggression but causes these experiences in turn. It seems to work both ways. The entity or identity is insecure and fearful and seeks to attach itself to another as a means of survival. The entity needs this constant source of love and affirmation in order to survive, and without it, withers and fades away. Most people I have talked to about love idealize the feeling of love, and are unwilling to see that the feeling of love automatically evokes its opposite.

VINEETO: Yes, the fact that in actualism we not only investigate the savage but also the tender passions is the very reason that makes it so highly unpopular. At first, Actual Freedom seems to be a very daring, even megalomaniacal, thing to take on – to break away from the wisdom of thousands of years. Only those who are honest enough to admit that love has failed as a solution to the underlying instinctual fear and aggression and yet have maintained sufficient naiveté to not settle for a second-rate relationship will be willing to discover the facts and actuality behind the feelings and dreams.

GARY: Another thing that I have been ruminating about in connection with the topic of love is the long period of dependency of the human infant and child. The mammals, in particular out of the animal kingdom, nurture and protect the offspring for a long, long time. With the human, this long period of physical, and then leading to psychological and psychic incubation seems to be required in order to thoroughly inculcate the growing child with a social and cultural identity. One can easily spend a lifetime being conditioned by society and conditioning oneself, and others in turn. In actualism, one begins to dismantle this social identity, and one of the first things to emerge is fear, anxiety, and dread, because one is questioning the very things that one spent so long a period cementing in place. To begin to question these ideals, expectations, hopes, etc. sets the whole process on its head. One was conditioned in the first place with the reward being the affection, admiration, affirmation, and ‘love’ of parents, teachers, peers, neighbours, etc. Psychically and psychologically, ‘love’ is needed by the alien entity that inhabits this flesh-and-blood body because the entity was nurtured and grew in an atmosphere of ‘love’, acceptance, and affection. It seems, then, that to question deeply the meaning and basis of ‘love’ is to question the entire structure and foundation of the ‘self’. The resultant turmoil is enough to send even the most determined investigators scurrying for cover. Yet, as you point out, to be free from the feeling of love is also to be free from fear, because the emotions go together in an essential way.

VINEETO: Yes, here you have pinpointed the very reason that keeps all the Enlightened Ones trapped in their delusionary state of divine Love – to question love itself is to demolish ‘the entire structure and foundation of the ‘self’’. Richard wasn’t content with the patently evident non-perfection of Unconditional Love and this discontent with imperfection led him to investigate the tender passions, which eventually landed him on the other side of enlightenment and outside of Humanity as a whole with no ‘self’ left to ever run amok again. So our social conditioning is only the top-layer of the Human Condition, covering over and forever attempting to reign in the instinctual passions, and even the most considerate upbringing cannot save one from being an instinctually driven ‘self’.

*

VINEETO: The fairy-tales that I had loved as a child and the heroic legends that I had read as a youth – all talked about love as the primary fulfilment in life and the ultimate goal ...

GARY: This is so true. I have found in my discussions with people that love, both in its romantic/sexual expression, and in its transcendent garb as Eternal Love, is the great fixation of many, probably all peoples. I had been seduced back in the 70s and 80s, when these ideas were in popular currency, to feel that the cause of my unhappiness in life was an unhappy childhood with not enough so-called ‘unconditional love’ from my parents. I built up an identity of a person who was a victim – someone who never had enough and thus my obsession became to find and get this nebulous and rare ‘unconditional love’ substance that I so desperately craved. I now feel that this kind of love is a chimera – that love is always conditional and intimately tied into and ultimately leading to the savage instinctual part of the human equation. If one craves the supposedly unconditional variant of love, one is much more likely to be duped by the promise of an Eternal Love, a Love that is beyond space and time. It seems to be the foundation of every sort of spiritual and religious belief that there is a source of Super-Human Caring, a kind of benevolent or punitive Great Parent in the Sky that either makes our life a hell or a heaven by turns.

These, of course, are nothing but fairy-tales for adults.

VINEETO: Blaming others for one’s feelings and misgivings seems to be one of the primary self-protective features of the Human Condition. Whoever one listens to, be it the younger generation, the oldies, the rich, the spiritual people, the rednecks, the rebels or the well adapted, everyone blames someone else and something else for their misery and failure. When all search for scapegoats fails, it is invariably God’s will that one has to surrender to. Being a victim is a universal feeling that keeps everyone trapped in being miserable and malicious. Only when I had enough of feeling powerless because I was always making others responsible for my own misery did I take the decision to actively change myself in order to become happy and harmless.

*

VINEETO: There’s a curious thing about emotions and instinctual passions – if you want to be genuinely free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions you will have to question the positive or ‘good’ emotions first. If you want to become free of feeling insulted and blamed by others you will have to abandon seeking the praise of others, if you want to become free of the fear of losing a cherished item or job you will have to investigate the desire, affection and attachment for that item or job, and if you want to become free of the fear of the loss of ‘loved ones’ you will have to inquire into your of desire to belong and your feelings of dependency and love.

GARY: So it appears that initially the intent to be free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions is what fuels the investigation into the instinctual passions. But one finds out relatively quickly, going back to a seminal point that Richard talks about, that one cannot be a ‘stripped down self’. I did not really understand this at first but as I continue using the method of actualism I see with increasing clarity that this is true. One cannot eliminate the negative, invidious passions without the positive, ‘loving’ emotions, and this is a major point at which one may well balk. What I have found to be true of myself, at the current stage, is that I may fondly imagine that I am free from being shackled to the influence of others, I may imagine that I am free from the attachment to the job or the praise of the supervisor, but I am not. And each one of these startling glimpses into the way ‘I’ operate leads to a greater freedom from ‘my’ habitual clinging and holding of people, places, and things. Merely wanting to be free from these things is, of course, not enough. One has to be able to experience the ‘me’ in action, see ‘me’ in all my cunningness, duplicity, and dishonesty. One needs to be neither in love with love, or embittered and disillusioned by love’s failures. One needs to see oneself for who one is, and when I use the word ‘one’ I am referring to the alien entity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body. When one really sees oneself for who one is, one is free to be what one is.

VINEETO: The closer I looked into the so-called positive feelings that I had cherished for so long, the more I discovered that love had no tangible benefits, only fleeting emotions and un-kept promises. Inevitably attachment would lead to resentment, fear and jealousy, the desire for unconditional love would lead to unconditional, as in unquestioning, dependency and the desire to appear unconditionally loving would lead to self-contempt, hypocrisy and an emotional and physical withdrawal from the so-called bad world.

So ‘disillusionment’, as in acknowledging that love has failed to bring an actual peace and harmony between human beings, is a necessary starting point as one dismantles imagination and discovers the facts.

When you say ‘one needs to see oneself for who one is’ I was reminded of this quote from Richard about seeing facts, and it has helped me a few times to overcome fear and do what was obviously the next step –

Richard: Is not ‘understanding’ something the same thing as ‘analysing’ something? To understand something is to intellectually grasp a concept successfully. This may be the activity of ‘I’ thinking as clearly as ‘I’ can possibly think, yet it is not the same clarity as the clear seeing obtained in an insight ... and an insight is seeing the fact.

When one sees the fact there is action ... and this action is the actualising of the insight so that one’s personality is changed, irrevocably. This change is the beginning of the ending of the ‘self’ one was born with. ‘I’ can not stand exposure to the bright light of awareness for too long without crumpling like a leaky balloon. ‘I’ survive only by being able to lurk around in the shadows of inattention and obfuscation.

‘I’ was born with the instinct to survive, and ‘I’ will do anything to stay in existence, for it is in ‘my’ nature to do so. Intellectually grasping a concept and calling it an insight is part ‘my’ game plan. The seeing of this fact is a direct experience of the actuality of the Human Condition. ... this is actual wisdom. And out of that wisdom there is the essential intensity for the actualisation.

This actualisation is the ending of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety. Richard, List B, No 12, 16.2.1998

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