|
Vineeto’s Correspondence on Mailing List C Correspondent No. 13
RESPONDENT: There is one point that I don’t get. How is it that the sweet feeling in your chest that sometimes you say arises in you when you are with your husband always vanishes when you realize that it is right there in your chest. In my particular case this sweet feeling continues when the body relaxes into whatever activity it has chosen to do even when I am aware of it. This sweet feeling seems to go away later and then it comes back on its own terms. It feels like we don’t have much choice at all to make it come or go. It may not be clear what I am saying because it is not 100% clear how to express emotions in words. Please make it clear in simple terms without using the word ‘love’ because the very word is confusing to me and has a tremendous baggage of the past. Thanks! It is great that you have a happy life and feel passion for other people to be happy. VINEETO: Thank you for your reply and question. I will try to explain as well as I can – I am still very new at this explaining and describing business, but it is good fun. I understand that you probably refer to ‘love’ when you say ‘sweet feeling’. Yes, that sweet feeling, whenever it occurred, vanished when I realised that it was there ‘in my chest’.
RESPONDENT: This sweet feeling seems to go away later and then it comes back on its own terms. It feels like we don’t have much choice at all to make it come or go. VINEETO: Those feelings are constantly changing and they are part of the ‘self’. In my peak-experience, and in moments of actual intimacy with Peter, I understood that there is ‘life beyond beliefs, emotions and feelings’. You might remember for yourself one of those periods, when the world is seen crisp, clear, perfect, magical, without emotions or feelings and experienced as utterly safe. The signals of our senses are usually filtered by the ‘self’, the psychological and psychic entity within each of us, resulting in ‘normal’, edited sensate experience. When this filter is temporarily absent, as in the peak experience or some drug-induced states, the sensate experience can be direct and unfiltered. Then the sensate-only experience is extra-ordinary. One has a heightened sensory perception free of any sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’. These peak-experiences free from the ‘self’, and the resulting understanding that the self mainly consists of emotions and beliefs – any emotions and any beliefs – gave me the courage and the intent to investigate into each of my beliefs and emotions when they occurred. The resulting actual intimacy with Peter and also with everybody I meet is far superior to the sweet, yet unreliable and dreamlike feeling quality I had with people before. The intimacy now is a constant experience of actually meeting the person without any moods or expectations, offence or hope, dependency or separation. This is how I have described the quality of intimacy:
I hope I have made this point a little bit clearer to you. I was simply tired of all the qualities that affection in a relationship had in its tail: dependency, jealousy, need, expectations, bargain, sorrow, pining and unreliability. I was surprised and delighted to have found another, much more satisfying way to relate intimately to another human being.
RESPONDENT to Peter: Honestly, I feel there is just too much effort to have sex. I mean to make the whole atmosphere right, to seduce the woman, to put her in a good mood, to prepare. To see the same old, same old stages of the whole game. By the time it is right and everything seems ready I feel already tired of it and I would rather not do it (which of course drives the partner crazy). VINEETO: I like your sincerity in asking. Sex is not an everyday subject to be talked about in public, is it? I thought I will give you some input from the female side of the so-called ‘mystique of sex’. Before I met Peter, I always thought of myself as not quite adequate in the imagined standard of ‘good in bed’. I felt, something was always wrong with me, and I was aware of repression lurking somewhere – I didn’t feel free in sex. I found out later that most of my peers where afflicted with the same ignorance, guilt and morals about sex. Then, on top of the difficulty I already had with my ‘normal’ Christian sexual conditioning there was the confusion about the spiritual idea of having to transcend sex in order to reach enlightenment. Part of my contract with Peter was to look into everything that was in the road between us, and that included sex. I welcomed the opportunity to explore my conditioning with someone who was not afraid to find out all about sex. So we delved into the core of the matter. Peter wrote about it in his journal in the Sex chapter:
I found that there is much more to sex than having sex. It was fascinating to observe how the sexual drive works. The sex-drive that is programmed into us is not concerned about our pleasure. It is merely there to reproduce the human species and, as such, it operates differently in men and in women. As a woman I found that I am instinctually driven to try and tie down the male, to keep him as a protector and provider for potential off-spring. Even when there is no plan of having children, that drive still functions and plays its role. It is expressed in wanting attention, love, assurance, promises, security, status, maybe financial reliance and many more conditions, that have nothing to do with enjoying sex. The sex drive in operation actually inhibits the free enjoyment of sex. It was important for me to recognize and dismantle the functioning of this instinctual drive in order not to be run by it. The other challenge was the moral conditioning. All religions regard sex as either outright bad or at least as a ‘lower energy’ that needs to be refined and transcended. Then the body with its senses is not the primary focus of attention, but one is run by thoughts, concepts, feelings and resulting confusion, which all inhibit the enjoyment of sex. It took a few months of committed investigation into those morals and ethics and their fears and guilt, before I could enjoy the actual physical happening of sex rather than the dreams of never quite fulfilled hopes and expectations. The resulting intimacy in sex is every time again astounding. I admit that it takes courage to question one’s beliefs, face one’s fears and examine the general agreed opinion of how to behave in bed, but the outcome is well worth the investigation. I can highly recommend daring to eliminate one’s conditioning and sexual instinct and abandon oneself completely into the sensual experience of two bodies having fun. From my experience, I know there is no short-cut – I have tried a few before. They all left the strange taste of hypocrisy and I eventually grew bored of lifeless pretensions. Now, without any idea of what is going to happen next, sex is fresh each time, no memory of the day before whatsoever. It is indeed pure delight.
13.12.1998 RESPONDENT No 10: Hello everyone, I just wondering if there is anyone on this list who is attracted to Peter and Vineeto? What is it you admire about their writing? RESPONDENT No 13: I have valued conversation with people who are not afraid to say what they think and to discuss everything openly without any inhibitions and dogmas or clinging to a party-line. Usually people hide behind something (I am very sorry to say that but many people hide behind Osho quotes even here on this list) and are not willing to risk being ridiculed. I have made it a point to say things when I feel like it and to accept what other people have to say. So this is why I like talking to these guys openly hoping to learn something new.
RESPONDENT: You know, the two things I have recently understood:
[Vineeto]:
One more thing, there is one issue that I don’t quite get... Sometimes, out of a sudden, I experience ‘time of my life’. All is deliciously beautiful moment by moment and there are no problems whatsoever. But then there is this sweet feeling of ‘completeness’ and not needing anything else at all. Sometimes it just goes on and on for a while. It won’t stop while I look at it... What is your experience about it? VINEETO: I am not so sure what you mean by ‘time of my life’. Maybe you can describe to me your last ‘time of your life’. Peter and I have described our peak-experiences, when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Life is then experienced as easy, obvious, safe, abundant and magical. Richard describes apperception as ...
Another option of ‘time of my life’ is an Altered State of Consciousness. The ASC is characterised by a feeling of Oneness ... human love becomes Divine Love – what I call Love Agapé – wherein love ceases being a feeling and becomes a state of being ... ‘Pure Being’. This feeling of Union with The Divine – Unitary Awareness – is an Oceanic experience that assures immortality ... and is thus selfishness to its very core. Peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for residing in this Deathless State. I have given The difference between a pure consciousness experience and ASC is that there is no ‘feeling’ or emotion in a peak-experience. There is simply this obvious, sparkling, intimate experience of the perfection and purity all around. Such peak-experiences became the reference points for me to clean myself up, to reach this purity 24 hrs a day. In the peak-experience you know that the only problem is ‘you’ and you set out to eliminate ‘your’-self, bit by bit. RESPONDENT: Also, many of Poonjaji’s messengers (Gangaji, Arjuna Argh, etc) lead people to realizing that ‘you are That’ – the emptiness that is the same in everyone, the essence of existence from which everything flows. The essence is the same in everybody, hence love, etc. I think it might give you strength to cut through all guilt and past conditioning but it could backfire if we become identified with the concept of emptiness and being it (create concept of emptiness moment by moment and then identify myself with it). Anyways, sending you Love, even though I can’t call it my love, and I also know that sending it is impossible. VINEETO: The spiritual goal is Love, dissolving the feeling of separation with the feeling of being now ‘One-with-the-Divine’. ‘You are THAT’ describes it very well, pointing to ‘somewhere else’ other than the physical body, here on this planet, at this point in time. The only danger on the path to actual freedom is that you can run aground on the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’, as Richard puts it out of his own experience. Actual Freedom means coming out of the ‘real’ world of beliefs, emotions, – including love – imagination and instinctual passions into the actual, factual, material, corporeal world of the physical senses. Usually one cannot be fully in one’s senses, because there is this little man in the head and the little man in the heart, that make up ‘you’, the thinker, the feeler. Only when we get rid of this identity by investigating and eliminating every emotion and every belief it is possible to be the eyes seeing, the ears hearing, and the skin sensing the touch. Only then our senses won’t be not filtered or censored. Then, simply being alive is pure delight.
RESPONDENT: As I have been reading your posts one thing keeps really bothering me. You said that as you pay attention to it, the ‘sweet feeling’ in your body which one could call ‘love’ always disappears... This is really bothering me. And then I have found this (about what you guys or Richard wrote in your journal, Q&A No 2):
Well, I call ‘feeling good’ = love! To me, ‘Not feeling good’ is the absence of the delicate, sweet feeling of gooooooddness in your body. Otherwise what is feeling good???? ‘Love’ is naturally when the organism is running perfectly smooth. I guess it is just a matter of definition. It is funny, but some people might argue for love while you might say love is not important, etc – just feeling good every moment is what matters ... while perhaps everybody is talking about the same feeling in the body. VINEETO: You are really digging into it now. Great journey, isn’t it? Feeling good = being at ease, the absence of churning emotions, the peace of mind, when the little man in the head and the feelings in the heart are not in control of your body and brain. Love, on the contrary, is a feeling that there is a presence, a positive emotion to counteract the otherwise prevalent feeling of separation. The self, this psychological and psychic entity inside of us, creates by its very nature a feeling of separation, because having an identity, a self, one has to feel to be someone different and separate to everything and everyone around. This positive emotion will disappear when you become aware of it and trace it to its roots – the sorrow of feeling separate and the fear of being alone. But when you are simply feeling good or being good, because there is no issue going on in your head and heart you are free to enjoy the delicious sensation of being alive. RESPONDENT: Osho says: meditation and love go hand in hand. Is it not the same as what you guys have been saying? Meditation defined as aliveness, watchfulness, investigation, paying attention to one’s feelings. VINEETO: When you are trying to fit what we say into what Osho said you will miss the point entirely. In the last days I have talked to two old girlfriends, both enthusiastically and devotedly on the spiritual path, and I have tried to tell them about my findings and experiences. It was bewildering to see how they both said it was all the same like the spiritual. It leaves me at a loss what words to use. But, I will try again – Actual freedom is Meditation is based on the watcher. You watch your thoughts and feelings in order to rise above them, to dis-identify from them, which in the end amounts to going somewhere else, where you are not the body, not the mind, not the emotion. You are to identify with the watcher and thus move away from the source of your troubles, your body and brain inflicted with the emotions and instincts of the Human Condition. If you persist and identify with the watcher strongly enough, you become the watcher and simply ‘watch’ your body doing its number. Nothing is changed in the Human Condition except ‘you’ become someone other than this flesh and blood body. Then you become the ‘soul’ (the heart), and maybe you even become so deluded as to flip into an altered state of consciousness, aka enlightenment. Actual Freedom is firmly based on this flesh and blood body with its physical senses as the only actuality there is. Everything that not perceivable by the physical senses is feeling and imagination, deeply ingrained in our genetic heritage and our socially absorbed psyche, but nevertheless imagination and as such non-actual. The aim of the path to actual freedom is to come out of the psychic and psychological structure of the ‘real’ world, the instinctual passions, emotions and beliefs, and step into the actual, sensate and sensual world of the physical universe, where everything is already here, perfect, magical and pure. In order to come out of the real world one needs to investigate into the ‘hooks’ that keep pulling one back into misery, malice and fear – and investigate and eliminate them whenever they appear. That is done by running the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ Then everything that is preventing you from feeling good will be examined and traced to its root. Usually, when examining an emotion, the first thing I found was a certain concept. By questioning the validity of it and the effects that this idea had in my life, I often recognised that it fitted a general, collective belief-system. Questioning the collective belief proved a bit more scary. But it is only fear that prevented me from acknowledging the belief as belief and the facts as facts. Acknowledging the facts brought me back to here, back to my senses. For instance, survival fear would blink red lights when I decided to quit working with my former peer-group. Examining the facts revealed that I could easily survive without the income from that particular job. But the instinctual fear blurred my view and made it great detective work to come to a sensible evaluation. I had to see the instinct in its functioning in order to not be driven by it. RESPONDENT: Love defined as the fragrance = feeling good, whenever the organism is running smoothly, a sign that one is feeling good, indeed. Any comments? VINEETO: Love, as I said above, is a feeling and an emotion, born out of our instinct to nurture, and with awareness you can see it pouring out of you. It is directed towards someone or everyone and thus indirectly contributing to your sense of identity. Feeling good, as in absence of feeling bad, is purely being one’s senses and being aware of it all. Without a problem surfacing or an emotion churning one is able to experience life and the world sensately and completely at ease, whatever happens. I like your question. This spiritual world is such an insidious psychic castle in the clouds, all produced in our heads and hearts. And everybody believes something, everybody wants to keep the ‘good’ emotions like love and then clip a bit of freedom on to it. But that will only be a synthetic freedom, a feeling of freedom, not the genuine actual article. Peter said it well in his letter to No. 1:
RESPONDENT: What’s up? VINEETO: Just an hour ago we got back on line after a real long ‘Christmas holiday’. It was really interesting how in the first few days we both, Peter and I, had withdrawal symptoms, the main communication means and source of fun of the last weeks suddenly cut off. Then we settled happily into doing nothing, watching TV, going for walks into town, playing FreeCell. So the two weeks have been about the pleasure of doing nothing, and doing it really well. Doing nothing really well for me means not to get bored or ‘down’ or itchy or complaining or neurotic about finding something to do. It was a good test and it went well. We had a splendid time, together and alone, meeting a few people – and now we are back on line. I wonder how it will develop on the list, life is such a curious business, you never know what’s around the corner, each moment a delightful surprise, again and again and again. Looking forward to continue our conversation
VINEETO: I don’t know what has attracted you, No 17, or you, No 4, to become a disciple of Osho? I am intrigued to hear. RESPONDENT: Several things in my case (at least initially):
VINEETO: Good to have a talk again, I was wondering how you were doing. You seem to be having a lot of fun. I can relate to all the four points as being part of my own initial attraction. It was quite an effort to work myself out of ‘big daddy’ and I have used the ‘energy’ in the Ashram and sannyasins as the ‘rope’ to pull me out of my moods and fears. I had wanted to become enlightened and the more I learned about it the more I wanted it. But firstly after Rajneesh’s death and the resulting transformation of the Ashram into another religion-headquarter induced my first doubts about enlightenment being really such a good solution to life. Finally coming across Richard, the picture of enlightenment began really to wobble, and slowly, slowly I started to understand why so many things had not made sense. This is the sense I made out of it afterwards – all the great moments, all my blissful experiences and all the love-filled moments I had put into the one category – ‘that’s what enlightenment is going to be like, just much better and going on forever’, a bit similar as I imagined heaven to be as a kid. But those experiences had all been of a varying nature, some were esoteric, some were plain imagination (like past-life fantasies), some were group-induced highs and some were insights into my practical life that hit like a hammer. But in hindsight, a few of those were pure consciousness experiences, where there was no affection, love or feeling of beauty involved, but which were an experience of purity, clarity and non-separation. These were the experiences that had been the most appealing. Once I saw and understood the different quality between an emotional high, a blissful devotional séance, a powerful imagination and a pure consciousness experience (PCE), and once I had such a PCE again, it became clear what I wanted. It was obvious in that very moment. I also knew that every bit of my ‘self’, however wonderful it might have felt at times, still would be inhibiting the intimacy with the actual physical world and with human beings that I had experienced in these peak-experiences. So, that’s what I am doing right now, nibbling away and exploring, investigating and eliminating all the bits of my ‘self’ that pop up in the course of my days. How is it for you today? Have your goals changed from the initial spark? Have they become more clear? What do you want to get out of life when you look at it today?
RESPONDENT: On a spiritual path a sub-personality called ‘watcher’ is often created. But doesn’t one need to create a sub-personality called an ‘investigator’ to investigate all emotions, instincts and beliefs ? VINEETO: No, the ‘watcher’ is not a created sub-personality. The ‘watcher’ is a created identity to eventually replace the ‘normal’ identity so one can become the Divine, ‘the Whole’, ‘That’. You don’t need a sub-personality to investigate. You simply investigate. You apply ‘sensible’ and ‘silly’ instead of ‘feeling right’ or ‘feeling wrong’. It may happen in the course of investigating that you identify yourself as the investigator – as I have done for a while – but I used it, riding on the thrill of being the ‘discoverer’. But ruthlessly questioning every emotion and belief, this part of the affective identity was, in due course, also discovered and eliminated. But first things first. RESPONDENT: Also, I would like to know how you do it in practice. My mind is so creative that it is willing to create emotions, problems, feelings, etc. forever... especially when I start looking for them, trying to sort them out and make sense out of them. It is like a self psychoanalysis. Let’s say you feel a bit anxious. You recognize it and see that you don’t feel that you perform well at work. So, you are anxious because of that. Now, you analyse why you don’t perform well at work and there are several reasons: you don’t like it so much but you need the money and like the life stability it provides; you feel somewhat depressed because of the gloomy weather, you have got a nasty common cold and you feel that everything is gray and boring. VINEETO: Yes, it is like self-psychoanalysis but with the aim of eliminating the psyche, not, as traditional therapy does, ‘healing’ the psyche and shuffling the instinctual passions around a bit. I used to compare it with moving furniture on the sinking Titanic. In the process, all the emotions and beliefs of the Human Condition come in to scare you like ghosts. How dare you question your own ‘self’! But in persisting and taking one step at the time, you find that slowly, slowly you start making sense, first of one bad mood, then another and the success of a bit more freedom each time gives you the courage and strength to move on. Taking your example gloomy weather – weather is something so obviously outside of our control, and yet almost everyone I meet complains about the weather. What a delight, when it is blue sky with vivid colours, what a delight when it rains, wetting the ground, tinkering on the roof. If the weather annoys you, there is something to look at, maybe it is some emotion surfacing about something completely unrelated to the weather or some dearly-held conviction being tickled that makes you wobble. When you stick with one issue until you found its core-belief – it might take days – you will experience that it loses its grip, that you can see the implications and ramifications. A bit more freedom from being affected by the weather is gained ... a bit more happiness. RESPONDENT: What is the next step you do? Stay with your feelings no matter how long they last. The common cold will be gone, you will get an interesting project eventually at work and good sex at home? Do you turn on TV and enjoy a movie, read a book? Do you try to change your life (might no be good idea if in bad mood). VINEETO: Well, it is up to you. I usually stuck with one issue until I gained
more clarity. Some issues were too complex, I had to whittle away the surrounding emotions and beliefs first. But in the end I
knew that if I don’t tackle the subject now when its happening, it will be back in due time. So why not do it now? But it is
your life, your investigation, your pace. Peter and I have written in Some days you might wonder why you even dared to question the ‘Tried and True’, or one could call it the ‘Tried and Failed’, what turmoil of questions you let yourself into. On other days you may be dancing because you finally found the root-cause for your unease at work. It’s all a thrilling enterprise, the adventure of a lifetime. It is such a fascinating thing to un-wire one’s own brain and to challenge the belief that ‘Human Nature cannot be changed’. It is possible. It can be changed. RESPONDENT: Or is it that because your main project in life is self investigation, you don’t mind self investigation no matter how many black clouds are coming your way? You remember a PCE as a reference point which lets you endure? Or maybe is it like you recognize how precious this life is and enjoy the journey from nothing to nothing? VINEETO: You asked what kept me going? Yes, the first and the following peak-experiences were very important. I understood from these experiences that it is ‘me’ who is in the road, all of ‘me’. And so I set out to dismantle ‘me’, made up of beliefs, emotions and instincts. I developed a fine nose for what is ‘me’ and what is simply the body and its senses, what is conditioning and what is the brain’s intelligence and apperception. And I mistrusted every ‘believing’, every ‘feeling’. I dusted my brain off, got it out of the cupboard where it had been put away as the ‘mind’ – in spiritual circles responsible for all evil – and I started to use my discriminating and inquiring capacity to discover the actual facts under the rubbish heap of ‘gut-feelings’, intuition, ‘truths’ or general accepted conviction. Sure, it raised a great deal of fear to strike off on my own from the group that I ‘believed’ and ‘felt’ I belonged to. But with every discovered fact my confidence grew, with every dismantled belief my dependency on others diminished, morals were replaced by ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ and I could use my own intelligence to make that choice. Investigation and an actual freedom are my main project in life. It is the only sensible thing to do with my life. I became vitally concerned with my own happiness and eliminating malice in me. The PCE as the reference point showed me how easy and perfect it is, so why not have it 24 hours a day, every day? And since it is only this moment that I can experience the delight of being alive, it would be a waste of time not to experience the perfection of this moment. I have only this moment – it is as precious as anything. Without an after-life to look forward to or worry about, I have maybe 30 more years and then that’s it. I didn’t want to waste those 30 years in misery, doubt, depression, jealousy, hate or even a bad mood. That’s what kept me going through all the dark clouds of fear, doubt or laziness. It is not a journey from nothing to nothing – it is a journey from misery to delight, from malice to harmlessness, from identity to not being separate, from ‘self’ to freedom.
RESPONDENT: Are you attracted to having sex with different men? When there is no love or feelings between you and your partner this could happen, I guess. Also, jealousy would not be the issue. VINEETO: Oh good, a down-to-earth question. Sex without love... One of the first things that Peter and I discovered preventing actual intimacy were the feelings of love – that sweet syrup that was usually poured over the spiky, malicious, miserable ‘self’, which one is most of the time! When Peter and I questioned love and threw it out, naturally the question came up in me – ‘without the feeling of love, why would I want to be with him?’ What would be left of me when I didn’t feel love? How could I relate both to Peter and other people, if not with emotion or intuition? What would I have to offer in friendships or conversations, if not sympathy and consolation? My whole edifice of ‘who’ I was, who I believed myself to be, began to fall in a heap as I questioned and demolished the attributes of love and emotion. Now naked of all those characteristics and beliefs, as well as their resultant emotions and behaviour which have kept man and woman apart for millennia, I am experiencing for the first time in my life an actual intimacy with a man. Now there are no dreams, no expectations, no emotions or any other restrictions that could cloud the thrill of meeting another human being. Now instead of random moments of ‘sweet love’ I am able to give Peter my full attention and bare awareness each time we communicate and so does he. I just hang out with him because it is immense fun, all the time. It is as much fun sitting next to each other on our computers, watching TV, commenting on the weather, serving a cup of coffee, cooking dinner, going for a walk into town, having a chat while lying each on our couch or having a rompacious romp. As for jealousy – that disappeared along with the feeling of love. Each of us is free to do what we want to do and so each does what we enjoy most. I have written about sex without love some 12 months ago:
With the sexual drive gone, I don’t have any need to flirt or hunt for other men. With the feeling of love gone, I enjoy each moment with Peter as fresh and intimate as if it was the first time. There are neither boredom nor fear, neither expectation nor disappointment, neither mysteries nor secrets, neither bickering nor interference. And what better play-mate could I find! It is ongoing delight.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer |
