VINEETO to Alan: And what a delight it was when for the first time, after several struggling months of investigating our beliefs and emotions, we were able to see each other for the first time in actual intimacy, one human being meeting another human being. In intimacy I am not a woman nor is Peter a man. Just seeing, what a wondrous combination of thoughts and senses the other one is, ever curious what sense he/she is making of life, what is going on in his/her head, the delight of exploring how we live and think and function and tick, an area that has been a mystery to me unto now. Now I am having a spy in the other camp, Peter tells me how men normally feel or react in a situation, how he had felt, thought or reacted in the past – such good fun!

Of course you are in a totally different situation, but still – until everything is sorted out – you are living together with a woman. Peter and I had a contract with each other to investigate the Human Condition together, but nevertheless, I think you can aspire to live with her in peace and harmony as far as you are concerned. Peter was such a good indication for me to see bits of the Human Condition when they were coming up, for instance, when I was getting irritated, when I wanted attention, wanted to live life through him or had authority issues. That has always been the checkpoint in any ‘feeling’ good for me: do I simply see Peter as a human being or do I hang any kind of relationship, security or any other emotion unto the fact that we enjoy living together?

The other can be a very precise tool to find the hiding bits in the ‘cupboard of the self’, I tell you! And why not, even when you both are preparing to separate, you are simply two human beings living in the same house, taking care of the same business... But I warn you: it might open a Pandora box of yet unexperienced emotions or feelings to tackle. But it is such a great challenge and a thrilling adventure to examine one’s emotions and feelings and eliminate them forever, one by one, the very thing the ‘self’ is made of. And every obstacle worked through leaves such a wonderful freedom and delight!

So I wish you good fun, whatever you are up to next.

*

ALAN: Also, what is it that actually happens to cause a PCE?

VINEETO: As for your question how to make a peak-experience happen I can say I started to approach it the other way around. Given that peak-experience is our ‘normal’ state when no emotion or belief is in the road I am going for whatever obstacle I find at the time whenever I don’t experience this moment of being alive as perfect as I remember my peak moments. And as you know I have been finding lots of interesting ghosts in my cupboard, often unexpected forms of pride, fear, impatience, competition, love, loneliness, boredom and yet again another fear.

And whenever I am taking the bull by its horns and dig around in that specific emotion, understand and eliminate it, what’s left is the perfect moment of the world as it is, delightful, safe and imminently fascinating – there it is, the searched for PE or PCE! So my approach is kind of indirect, being busy with the obstacles rather with the outcome. Of course the intent, the goal is to eliminate that obstacle and each time round it becomes more easy and more of an adventure and a scientific enquiry rather than a ‘have-to-do-thing’. And this way I am getting more and more confident, stopped believing in my own emotions and know that absolute everything will get examined with the microscope. By now the cupboard which was packed full of ghosts is getting pretty empty...

This weekend I have been ‘busy’ on and off with being sick. Listless and a bit weaker I would have preferred not to have a cold. But then, as the weekend slowly went by being as delicious as ever, the walk on the beach as delightful I turned my attention to the famous sentence: How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? Now I this body is obviously very busy getting better, and isn’t it fascinating how it feels when inside the army is fighting in different places against the invading viruses ... and isn’t the pouring rain making a wonderful sound on the roof?! So then the complaint turned into an observing fascination without any emotion or wanting it different, just experiencing the facts and events of me, this body and my surrounding. Back here again!

So I wish you all the success and fascination with possibly upcoming ‘ghosts from the cupboard’ called the Human Condition.

*

VINEETO to Alan: Similarly, when I walked out of the office today after seven hours of figures and telephone calls, accounting, sorting and filing, there was nothing to shake off from the day. There was nothing from the day that would stick as being of ‘vital’ importance or that created emotional disturbance. I walked out into the moist, warm night-air, fully alive and delighting in the drive home, the moonlight peeking through the cloudy night-sky. Absolutely delightful. Hanging in time, each moment fresh and crisp...

And ‘hanging in space’, living nowhere in particular becomes obvious to me when I look at our little cozy flat. It could be anywhere, anywhere in this town, anywhere in a country where it is sensible and comfortable to live in, anywhere on the planet, up or down-under. The planet itself is nowhere in particular in this universe anyway! If it were not this particular flat, it would be a similar comfortable one, non-descript without ‘home-y’ attributes. Lots of people have walked through this flat in the last weeks when it was up for sale, examining it and commenting about it in one way or the other. There was no sense of intrusion or disturbance of privacy, no pride or sense of ‘my’ flat, which I can remember having had in a similar situation 2 years ago. Our flat is, after all, just a nice place with a balcony where we put our favourite toys and couches. If it had been sold to someone else, we would have easily and with pleasure looked for another place to put our things. What a freedom.

So the ‘plastic between the stubbies’ – to refer to an earlier used allegory – is disintegrating and freeing the senses including the intelligence of the brain for even more intense pleasure in experiencing this moment of being alive.

ALAN: At the same time as experiencing the above, I have been contemplating what Richard wrote on getting out of the ‘zombie state’, which is well worth repeating and has been of immense benefit:

VINEETO: Yes, it is such a wonderful piece of writing, I stick it right back in again. I read it numerous times and it always has its effect.

Richard: ‘To get out of ‘stuckness’ one gets off one’s backside and does whatever one knows best to activate delight. Delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the pure consciousness experience, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive now. Then one is no longer intuitively making sense of life ... the delicious wonder of it all drives any such instinctive meaning away. Such luscious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté – the nourishing of which is essential if fascination in it all is to occur – and the charm of life itself easily engages dedication to peace-on-earth. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and one is the experiencing of what is happening.

But refrain from possessing it and making it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, Alan

ALAN: And sure enough, earlier today, while doing something in the kitchen ‘here’ I am again, the shivers of delight up the spine, much more intense than previously, a ‘crinkling’ sensation all over the head. I realise my body is trembling all over, though there is no fear, only delight and wonder at the simplicity of it all. It is as though a second pair of eyelids have opened – 360 degree awareness as Richard calls it – and I am, indeed, the experiencing of what is happening. Everything is brighter, clearer, louder and I am free to delight in the absolute fun and joy of simply being alive.

VINEETO: What an immense serendipity to have stumbled across Actual Freedom and then to have had the curiosity, discontent and courage to investigate it – it beats every single adventure I ever had in my life so far. And then to be able to communicate about it to someone on the other side of the world, you, who is enjoying winter and snow, maybe – life is truly magical.

ALAN: So, that is where I am up to for now – more interesting times ahead, no doubt. What have you been up to? Ain’t life fun.

VINEETO: Yes, indeed fun and delight and – I think we need to invent some more words, I am always short for synonyms of delight...

So good to talk to you, Alan.

*

ALAN: And yet it is not a joke, for this is what I have been struggling with the last few days – ‘who is it who is knowing?’ – ‘who is it who is puzzling?’

VINEETO: I have always found the question ‘who’ would confuse me, distract me, re-create psychic dramas and keep imagination and feeling alive. While asking ‘what am I’ always brings me to my senses because ‘what’ I am can only be experienced by the senses. The actual world can only be experienced by the senses. Neither belief nor imagination nor feeling can answer ‘what I am’, but they can easily make up a lot of ‘who’s’.

I have found that by living in virtual freedom I have shifted my whole focus and emphasis from solving emotional problems and debunking beliefs to sensually and sensately enjoying ‘wee-things’ (as Billy Connolly said), the everyday things that life consists of – breakfast, rain, typing, coffee, walking, shopping, talking, sex, shower, watching TV and going to bed at night-time. And maybe half an hour of the day was spent pondering about ‘fear, death and deep matters’ of ‘me’. And thus the perspective changes, the focus changes from the imaginary to the actual, from the dramatic to the ordinary, from serious introspection to delightful hedonism – gay abandon, as Peter calls it. So it has been literally a turning away from giving importance to the ‘metaphysical’ to focussing on the actuality of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. And what a delight that is, each moment again, just to be alive, breathing and listening, tasting and seeing, smelling and touching. And then you get to do things on top of it – sheer delight.

VINEETO to Alan: I am reminded of a science-program we watched on TV. It showed how the brain’s long term memory operates: strings of neurons grow towards each other when stimulated often enough and finally merge in a synapse, a firm and lasting connection. As I see it, the stimulating input consists of various components:

• physical learning of bodily functions, such as sight, balance, hearing, temperature, recognition etc, like a child up to two years learns, largely by trial and error
• emotional experiences, understanding and conditioning in our learning to be a fit member of society
• intellectual learning, training of memory, learning data, etc.
• contemplation, concentration, sensuousness, attentiveness and self-awareness.

All of these inputs are physically represented in neurons and their related synapse in the brain. Given that scientists are only at the very beginning of exploring the brain this might still be an inaccurate description. However, I conclude from this, that in the process of freeing oneself from the conditioning, from the feelings, beliefs and emotions, and finally eliminating the core instinctual passions there has to be physical equivalent happening in the brain. Perhaps millions of existing synapse are being disconnected, new neuron connections are growing, and the whole structure of the brain is reconstructing itself in a completely different way. I speculate that headaches, dizziness, nausea, tiredness, etc. are all expressions and temporary symptoms of this physical re-wiring.

Altogether, it is good fun speculating and trying to make sense – and some of it might be scientifically proven in later years – but the real proof of the pudding is the taste of the pudding – life is eminently delightful, despite and even because of the weird processes that are going on in the brain. To live each moment at the cutting edge of being alive, the important thing becomes not ‘what’ I experience but ‘that’ I am living fully aware, being the senses, 100% alive and enjoying each moment again. It can be a spectacular romp, a sleepy afternoon on a cozy rainy day or a busy working day, meeting all kind of demands. The quality has been improving ever since I started this process 2^1/2 years ago.

VINEETO: I noticed that PCEs are different to the stunning delightful surprises in the beginning, which were full of tumbling realization, psychedelic-like experiences of my surroundings. They lately seem to be rarer and just minute-long flashes, just long enough to recognize the sparkle and the absence of ‘me’, before ‘I’ appear back on the scene. I put it down to the fear of the ‘real’ thing that might just ‘accidentally happen’ while ‘I’ am temporarily in abeyance, and also to the fact that my continuous persistent obsession with the final event is keeping fear close at hand and thus prevents the ‘extra sparkle’. Since you brought up the question I thought about it and figured that this fear is actually part of me keeping death at bay, as much I may be convinced that I don’t – lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning through and through.

But I remember lots of very ordinary moments of living together, Peter doing his thing – being an architect or watching cricket or whatever else he finds pleasure in – I do my thing – playing with pictures or on the website – and us sharing lots of delightful pleasures of cooking, eating, a walk into town, a talk on the couch or a rompacious romp. These times seem so normal and ordinary that only in hindsight I recognize their innocence and particular taste of well-being. And then there are these moments, often hours of being excellent, but not quite experiencing a PCE, obsessed with the conundrum in my head of what is in the road of me disappearing. And while I am searching for and finding more and more blinding evidence that there is really, really no solution whatsoever within the boundaries of the ‘self’, there is this deliciously sweet and thrilling ‘taste or smell’ of the approaching inevitability, what Richard calls one’s destiny and I call ‘the proof of the pudding’. And, admittedly, that’s what I am more fascinated with than inducing a PCE.

In my exploration of what I can identify as ‘me’ I was wondering what made me feel guilty, impatient, frustrated and annoyed at not yet been able to prove that actual freedom is possible as the non-spiritual, down-to-earth route that Richard mapped out after his events. What I found, surprise, surprise, was that I was hanging on to a feeling of integrity of ‘me’, which was causing these feelings to erupt. When I examined what that word ‘integrity’ really means I discovered that this highly valued humanitarian value had been a great support for my investigation of feelings, emotions, beliefs and instincts. It came in the same basket as sincerity, honesty towards myself and the stubborn resistance to settle for second best. But nevertheless, integrity is nothing but a nice man-made value, developed presumable in the Middle Ages, with the legends of heroic knights and fair maiden, to keep the raw instincts at bay. And what’s integrity worth as it is only covering the underneath lurking instincts, old and rotten like ancient dinosaur bones. And I noticed that it is particularly the ‘good’ bits of the self that I still defend.

*

ALAN: Could it be that the ‘continuous persistent obsession with the final event’ is what is keeping it from happening? This has been my experience of the last few days. I have (largely) given up the attempt to get ‘there’ and by concentrating more and more intently on what is happening and activating ‘delight’, the ease and palpable perfection, which Peter speaks of, has become more and more evident.

VINEETO: On further observation re ‘how PCEs and PCE-like times changed for me’, I can say that what I used to call a PCE in the beginning of my exploration into actual freedom is now only labelled ‘PCE-like’. This has to do with the fact that I am well aware of the thin, condom-like layer of the ‘self’ separating me from the universe and thus preventing the 100% direct experience of the magical actual perfection. Life is nevertheless pretty magical, much more than ever before are the days filled with delicate deepened sensuous experiences, an easy well-being, a delightful doing what I am doing; but the ‘self’ is hardly ever completely absent. It seems that my observation has become sharper with there being less difference between ‘normal’ and ‘magical’.

IRENE: You wrote [Vineeto]: I do appreciate and made good use of your scrutiny. In my answer to you I have not yet expressed that. Because if you are out to demolish Vineeto, so am I and we are on the same ball-game. [endquote].

First of all, in order to understand one another I see that I have not made it clear to you yet that I don’t subscribe any more to Richard’s goal of getting rid of ‘me’, my identity, my emotions. This is what I meant when I said that I had seen through Richard’s method and his view that this is what freedom means.

To me freedom means: to be free from the human conditioning (i.e. the belief in the man-made mistakes in their interpretations of being human and of nature in general). That what I had called ‘virtual freedom’.

(...)

Only a person who is deeply troubled by emotions will turn against them in anger and try to rid themselves of the whole plethora of emotional experiences. To me they are the palette that I use to paint my every moment onto the canvas of my immediate environment, except that this is 3-dimensional and it depicts more my atmosphere than colours or figures. Another thing you need to know about me is that I don’t see Richard as free, but rather removed from being human.

VINEETO: I have come out of a maze of strange days, full of both bouts of fear, doubt and desperation interspersed with long stretches of a wondrous soft and sensuous peace and contentment. The journey towards no-control has been a rocky one, thrilling indeed because it is so untrodden. Having experience the contents of various emotional attacks I have decided, for a change, to look at them from another angle – trying to understand what is happening. What we found was a repetitive circle of fear – frustration – doubt – and again fear, and the only way out of this circle is the intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent.

For some reason the wide and wondrous path to freedom seemed to have turned into a thorny thicket, in itself a clear indication that I got off the road. As I have written to you earlier I had decided to leave Virtual Freedom behind and go for the genuine article – extinction. Since no one has completed the direct route to Actual Freedom before, this is now truly unchartered sea. Understanding the need to give up the way I had controlled my life I am now like a ship without tiller, seemingly tossed by the moods of the ocean. It appears that fear is the last one of those insidious instincts, the root core of each being human, the instinctual fear of survival. But in its nature it is only real, not actual. This core fear is standing in the way of me experiencing the actual world, it is standing in the road to freedom. A yet un-met challenge!

Having come that far in my contemplations I likened the whole path to freedom as a big balloon-popping party. Imagine a room full of balloons floating near the ceiling, in different colours, with different names of instincts, emotions, beliefs and conditioning written on them. The aim of the game is to pop every single balloon one by one by questioning, investigating and identifying the nature of the various beliefs, emotions and instincts. Once the last balloon is popped I am free. I imagine it to be light green, big, evasive, with fear written all over it. I need to keep it firmly in place, not getting distracted by doubt or other flight manoeuvres, and then – pop! That imagination changes the whole adventure from its heroic and dramatic frame into the thrilling and delightful journey it actually is. It also pulls the plug of making a big fuss about it. Mind you, I still consider it the best game to play, despite the other options you talked about in your letter.

I have been contemplating why there is this ‘strange’ wanting to report to you various – what I consider – interesting steps on the journey. The explanation I came up with is that I consider you as my forerunner in a baton relay race, where I took over what you had started years ago. After all, you have lived with Richard in peace and harmony for eleven years and dug deep into the male-female conditioning. If it had not been for you and Richard I would not be where I am today, and I admire your courage and efforts. Now Peter and I are mapping out the direct path to actual freedom as we stumble along, for whoever wants to take it up. Besides all the fear and thrill it is still a delight, after all, this is a perfect and sparkling physical universe and all the drama is only in one’s head and one’s heart.

I hope you can appreciate or at least understand why I seem to butt in on what you now consider more appropriate. I simply can’t overlook the job you have done for all of us.

*

IRENE: Do you indeed consider it fulfilling to live a hedonistic life only – I have nothing against enjoying all delicious aspects of life to the full – but if the emphasis is on sensual and sexual delights alone,

VINEETO: No, it is not fulfilling enough to live a hedonistic life without the intent to become completely free. At some point of the perfect life of virtual freedom it becomes unfulfilling because one knows it is only half way. That was when I turned my back on Virtual Freedom and decided it was time to go all the way. With having experienced what was possible it was simply inconceivable not to want it all, 24 hours a day, every day.

IRENE: ...there is a huge part of human enjoyment that is deemed invaluable and therefore to be rid of, exterminated, extirpated etc. In other words these aspects of human life, decreed by Richard as worthless (have nothing to do with it), perverse (malicious) and needlessly painful (sorrow) are all wrong. He blames the actual human organism, that what is naturally manifested by the universe (and specifically by the earth), an absolutely magical phenomenon that can not only have sensual and sexual experiences (like all animals and even plants to a certain degree of intensity) but comes also with an exquisite capacity for thinking, feeling, sensing, and communicating all these capacities. To Richard this natural humanness is the cause of all problems in the world, and especially the feelings and instincts, as you well know. He is therefore anti-nature: preposterous.

VINEETO: Richard does not blame the human organism, but the Human Condition. The human organism is the body complete with senses and brain and the innate intelligence to be ‘sensible’. The Human Condition, the collection of beliefs and underlaying instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, is exactly what spoils the unimpeded use of our innate intelligence. I admit, nobody before Richard has ever considered the possibility to separate the two, but they are definitely two different things. I can vouch for that with my own ongoing experience.

RESPONDENT: Yet this complete attention to what is actually so [Can we lend it the name love for a moment if that isn’t too disturbing, just to please me? Thank you, you may have the word back in just a minute, to dispose of as you wish.] can occur at any time and under any circumstances. Including the jump from a balcony, sitting in the sunlight, or sexual embrace. And anyone can love, none ‘better’ than any other. One doesn’t need words or ‘understanding’ for it! I think it is what we are meant to do. ‘The universe being aware of itself’ without condition. I think that is right on target. And I want to call it love. Perhaps out of sheer perversity I don’t want to squander the word love on what we normally use it for! Perhaps because it hurt me so much. Or perhaps I have some sense it is better used this way. I don’t know, but I have nothing to prove, it’s just how I see it. It may be that one loves continually in Richard’s actualized state, it sounds as if it might be so. It is the only thing that really matters. There is either complete attention, which I call love for just one more minute, thank you, or there is not, which is the state of being in the ego, or unconscious, or dead. And when we are love we are free, ‘actually free’ is a fine way to put it, if you wish, and we love like the sunlight, and the rain, and the wind, and the earth – because we are one.

VINEETO: Complete attention is only possible if there is no personal investment in you whatsoever, in that moment. This complete attention is not something ‘I’ do, this attention is what is left when there is nothing else that distracts that attention or apperception. Then you simply delight in the very is-ness of things, people and events, without directing, feeling, fearing, inventing, controlling, planning or hoping. So in my experience, it is freedom from the ‘self’, freedom from ‘me’, the feeler and believer, that has to come first and then you don’t need any love. Without malice and sorrow one is simply benevolent, magnanimous, intimate with everyone and swimming in delight. You probably remember this from your PCEs.

RESPONDENT: This would seem to mean that pure intent is based on fact. For me this would be the fact of the release that occurs when a major hurdle is realized. The point that dullness masks emotion and emotion masks belief has also been of assistance. I have a bit of trouble summoning up delight (as Richard suggests), as it seems imaginary, as opposed to the release that comes with facing issues. That is still under consideration though.

VINEETO: Pure intent is derived from the purity of a peak-experience. If the intent is based only on the release from the tensions of hurdles one will be contented with temporary and second rate solutions.

RESPONDENT: Yes, I have considered this. It is always a hurdle getting out of struggling and the agitated state of objection to an emotion. So when that state of struggling ends it does feel like a reward of sorts. My solution is a permanent ‘no objection at all’. That at the present is not a one off and requires continual effort of inquiry.

VINEETO: When an emotion is happening, for instance anger, it is harmful in two ways. Firstly I am not happy because I am angry and second I am angry at someone else and may cause harm to that person, be it by snide remarks, withdrawal or any other action. Of course I don’t want to be angry. If the aim is to be happy and harmless then I no longer tolerate anger in my life. One does everything possible to eliminate it and not merely watches its rising and falling in the mind or heart.

But the only way to successfully get rid of anger is to examine the root cause of me getting angry in that particular situation, find the expectation, the frustration, the ‘self’ in operation. Once I found the root cause and ‘got it’ – as Alan says – it is immensely rewarding, a great relief and a joy to have dismantled yet another obstacle to being free.

And with every success there was more eagerness to find the next hurdle. The obsession for freedom takes a life of its own, wearing down the original objections. And then it is like Mark was writing on the list a few days ago:

[Mark]; ‘After reading Richard’s and then Peter’s writings I could see similarities in what they were saying to the experience that I was having and started to apply ‘how am I...’ as diligently as possible to my life. The result of this exploration has been more freedom and autonomy than I have experienced before in my whole life with some wondrous times of virtual freedom lasting sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days.’ Hello, 7.2.1999

And:

[Mark]: ‘My journey so far with this ‘way’ has yielded more freedom and unconditional happiness than any thing I have experienced before and I have reached the point of no return – normal or spiritual are no longer options.’ Hello, 7.2.1999

Your ‘permanent solution’ of ‘no objection at all’ sounds a pretty dry experience to me. Freedom from the churning emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts, which is freedom from ‘me’, results in a delicious, sensuous continuous enjoyment moment after moment, fresh each time, rich and magnificent, crisp and perfect. An ongoing delight to be alive.

*

VINEETO to No 3: Virtual Freedom is an essential prerequisite for Actual Freedom. Actual Freedom does not happen over night. It is the result of whittling away all the layers of emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts that one comes across in daily life until there is hardly any disturbance happening and hardly anything left of what used to be the ‘self’. Virtual Freedom can be described as perfect days, day-in, day-out, and heightened senses delivering ongoing pleasure and delight – be it a cup of coffee, the saxophone playing next door, the whistle of a chain-saw, the twitter of the birds, the soft breeze of the fan in may back. Virtual freedom is when the ‘feeling’ of time has disappeared, when the days have no names and the hours have no numbers – I am simply here living in this perfect moment each moment again. It does not matter if I go to work or stay at home, if it is day or night, rainy or hot, if I am meeting people, on my own or with Peter at home, I simply have a perfect time.

If you are saying you ‘know already’, then that is just marvellous.

*

RESPONDENT: Although, the suggested method of trying to recall a PCE to get out of stuckness only helped in that it brought the obstacle into focus.

VINEETO: This is great success, don’t you think? To have ‘brought the obstacle into focus’ and to know what the obstacle is about which keeps you in ‘stuckness’ is an excellent starting position for investigation. Now this obstacle can be identified, labelled and experientially explored, using apperceptiveness to detect its reasons, connections, source and implications. This has nothing to do with the Buddhist method (Vipassana) of labelling a feeling and then dis-identifying from it. 180 degrees opposite again. An actualist labels the feeling to get the bugger by the throat, to explore it as a scientist, to check out its silliness or sensibility, to determine how it is part of the Human Condition and then, when all is said and done, to permanently step out of having that emotion. This final stepping out often results in a pure consciousness experience.

Last night I was contemplating about Alan’s description of his ‘reflective contemplations’, ‘practising the actual’ and arriving here in the actual world and how this records with my experience. Further Alan says:

[Alan to Vineeto]: ‘Reflective contemplation’ is the way to not only get out of stuckness but also to discover what is preventing one experiencing this moment. I realised that this is what had occasioned all of my PCEs – this is what leads to wonder at the joy of it all. Alan to Vineeto, 29.4.2000

Recalling step by step my own process into a PCE last night I found that contemplation serves to focus on the direction – being happy, dismantling the self, comprehending enough of the real world in order to see the self in operation and to step out of it. Contemplation always helps to focus on and remove obstacles and then, with no feeling or belief interfering I can build up the sensuous awareness of this moment of being alive. The wind on the skin, the sounds around, the wiggling of my toe, visual delights, tastes and smells ... Increasing sensuousness tips over into gay abandon, the self as both the controller and the feeler are abandoned and bingo ... I am experiencing what I had previously only reflectively contemplated about – this moment of being alive as a flesh and blood body only.

The gay abandon can, of course, also happen without the reflective part, as a nature experience, in sex or any time when sensual pleasure is sensuous enough to tip over into the self-less experience of being alive as a flesh and blood body only.

RESPONDENT: Could you describe what you refer to a PCE experience some more.

VINEETO: I see that you have asked Richard about the same subject – a very good idea. After all he is the expert, living it 24 hours a day, every day. (...)

Those descriptions are to help you either induce or remember a peak-experience and distinguish it from any other emotional, blissful or spiritual experience where, upon examination, you will always find a wonderful warm buzzing feeling present. In a peak-experience there is no ‘feeling’ entity present, that’s what makes it stand out. You experience a clarity, a delight, heightened senses and everything around you just as it is, obvious, magically perfect, always been here. For me, whenever it happened, I thought, ‘where have I been?’ It, the actual world is so very obvious, it needs no explanation. Answering the questions below I describe my every day life, where sometimes a ‘bleed-through’ of fear happens. In a peak-experience those emotions are completely absent.

RESPONDENT: Do you mean that since one’s sense of self is totally absent there is no possibility of any planning for the future in this state? (the planning entity gone)?

VINEETO: Good, you are taking up the investigation of what this ‘life without self’ means.

It is not that I don’t plan when I need to – for earning money, or going shopping – but the feeling of worrying is gone, planning is simply a practical and delightful activity of my brain. So most planning does not happen, it has become redundant when the fear about the future disappeared.

RESPONDENT: Also, do you feel like the body is doing something and there is no entity controlling, censoring your actions?

VINEETO: With the body it is curious – the difference for me becomes most obvious in sex. The pleasures of the senses lead me on to the next movement or holding still or shifting position or pace – and there is neither a controller nor an examiner in the head, supervising the event. In the beginning it was quite uncanny and I went back into control and then out from control many times, until I dared to just be the senses. When there is no sorrow or malice nor any sex-drive happening, there is no need for a controller – nothing can go wrong. Further, there is always awareness about what I am doing, so there is no danger that I could be hurting Peter or myself.

RESPONDENT: And so you don’t know what will you do in the next moment. In a sense, are you constantly surprised, bewildered by your daily activities which become fascinating due to the novelty of life (or is the entity who could possibly be fascinated also gone).

VINEETO: Very often I don’t know what I am going to do in the next moment. Some things need to be done in the day, like food, sleep, or work. Some other things I usually do in the day like writing, having sex or enjoying several cups of coffee. But there is no schedule other than a sensible time – like don’t go shopping at 10 o’clock at night. Sometimes I am surprised, hardly ever bewildered – the bewilderment then is due to a remnant fear – but usually it makes perfect sense what I am doing next – toilet, coffee, TV, writing, talking, walking, eating when hungry... The fascination comes from every moment being fresh, never been here before, not playing a repetitive ritual but a fresh living each moment.

I found that boredom is an emotion which has a lot to do with not wanting to be here in the first place. Once I had dismantled and eliminated the cause of boredom, life has been fresh and thrilling, sometimes a bit scary with all the re-wiring of the brain, but never boring again.

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VINEETO to No 7: Here is a bit more of Mr. Buddha’s teachings of how to get out of their physical senses and retreat into an imagined reality or fabricated peace and tranquillity. Of course, practicing Vipassana is like being drugged by an overdose of pain killers – when you don’t feel anything, see anything, hear anything, it is kind of peaceful – I would rather call it numb and dull! And then, removed from the world of physical senses there are no limitations to the full range of imagination – one imagines being peace, light, love, compassion – take anything from the ‘feeling-shop’ whatever you want, nothing is actual anyway.

[b] And what is the noble truth of the origination of stress? The craving that makes for further becoming – accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there – i.e., craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. And where does this craving, when arising, arise? And where, when dwelling, does it dwell? Whatever is endearing & alluring in terms of the world: that is where this craving, when arising, arises. That is where, when dwelling, it dwells. And what is endearing & alluring in terms of the world? The eye is endearing & alluring in terms of the world. That is where this craving, when arising, arises. That is where, when dwelling, it dwells. (DN 22; PTS: DN ii.290; http://world.std.com/~metta/canon/digha/dn22.html)

*

Can you see the intense effort that goes into changing one’s sensitivity, and into fiddling with the perception of the senses. Everything perceived in the physical world is considered stress and bad, and one has to work hard to dis-associate oneself from it. And yet, they want to call it ‘choiceless awareness’! Give me a break!

Now, back to Richard’s expression:

Richard: In that brief scintillating instant, that twinkling sensorium-moment of consciousness being conscious of being consciousness... Richard’s Journal, Appendix 5

You see a flower, you become conscious that you see the flower; you become conscious of its form, colours, smell, moving in the breeze and then you become conscious of the delight of your perception, of you being able to see, smell and know about it too. You are conscious of your being conscious. That’s it.

When the Human Condition is in operation, when ‘I’ interfere in the pure seeing of the flower, there is evaluation, feeling, choice, complaint, desire, hope, sadness, anger, etc. You can slowly, slowly become aware of all those emotions in operation, interfering and destroying the pure delight of living in this perfect universe. This ‘I’ is nothing but feelings, beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions, filtering everything that you see, hear, smell, touch, taste and think. When you dismantle the ‘I’ by examining everything that is not actual then you can be here, in this moment, in this place, eyes seeing, ears hearing and brain thinking. Everything else is but a passionate fantasy and imagination.

Consciousness of being conscious is apperception. There is a lot of writing on apperception.

VINEETO to No 15: When, for the first time, I not only contemplated but also really understood that an actual physical infinite universe has no physical place for god who, by definition, resides outside of the universe, it blew my whole belief of a higher force to pieces. It then became all too obvious how many other beliefs were feeding from this one imaginary and passionate assumption that there is something ‘higher’ than human beings that is running the show. Bang, here I was, suddenly realizing that I was all by myself, alone and lonely, frightened and unprotected, but free of that imagined authority that had controlled my life. For an hour I experienced in a pure consciousness experience the delicious perfection of this purely physical, utterly un-spiritual universe.

Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to all religious practice and belief.

VINEETO: For instance, there is Betelgeuse, the top left star in the constellation called Orion, recognizable by the three bright stars in his ‘belt’ – the diameter of this single star is bigger than the orbit of Jupiter around the sun!! Unimaginable vastness, and that is only one star of a huge nebular galaxy, of billions that are known – and billions that are not known (yet). The infinite variety of matter leaves me gasping for breath, the magnificence and perfection are fascinating, to say the least – and I am the bit of the universe that says: ‘Wow, how phantasmagorical, how magical!’

RESPONDENT: Makes ‘me’ seem very insignificant.

VINEETO: ‘Significant’ or insignificant are only words relative to our human values. Of course, the infinitude of the universe puts every ‘self’-centred vision into perspective and belies one’s imagination as to one’s self-importance. When the actual world becomes an everyday experience, there is neither significance nor insignificance, only facts and delight.

Yet, to become free from the Human Condition in order to experience the actual world has been the most significant thing in my life. Every bit that I cleaned up in myself was significant for it changed my life for the better and stopped creating ripples of malice and sorrow in other people’s lives. The only significant thing that ‘I’ can do is to get out of the road.

*

VINEETO to No 16: When I look back to see what it was that gave me the first glimpses of the actual world as opposed to my only-known world of thoughts and feelings, I can say that it was a repetitious reading of Richard’s journal, extensive discussions with Peter to find out what his words actually mean and the desire to find out exactly what it was different to the spiritual teaching that I knew. I was looking for the difference, not for any seeming similarity. I was not satisfied with the outcome of my spiritual search, I was looking for something that worked – and Richard obviously had discovered something that worked.

The next vital and essential break-through in understanding was my first major peak experience (PCE). What had started off one evening as ‘a roaming in the vast chambers of my mind’, psychic experiences and an expanded state of consciousness suddenly took a turn from ‘inner reality’ to actuality. It happened when Peter looked at me and said ‘hello, how are you doing?’ I popped out of my inner world of feelings and imagination and, questioning the very validity of all I felt and thought, entered the world beyond beliefs and feelings – the actual world. Here was another human being, a flesh-and-blood person without any particular identity and he wanted to talk to me. And here I was, also a flesh-and-blood person without a particular identity, sitting on an old couch and curious to talk to this man that I was meeting for the first time.

I had never met the actual Peter; I had only related to him through the curtain of my expectations and classifications, through the filter of my social identity, through the grey or rose-coloured glasses of my ‘self’. What was initially a shocking surprise quickly turned into fascination and delight to have discovered something so simple and so pure – actual intimacy with another person and the perfection of the actual world. Here we were, two human beings, meeting for the first time, without past or future. No grand feelings, in fact, no feelings at all, but the pleasure of mutual undivided attention as to what the other is going to say next...

All my churning questions from the weeks before as to what was right and what was wrong had disappeared from my tortured head and heart; the experience of the moment was all that mattered. In the course of the evening and the following night, insight upon insight occurred as the edifice of my beliefs system tumbled – the actual world, the world beyond belief opened up. Unbeknown to me it had been here all the time, a world where everything was simply obvious, perfect, pure, delightful, actual, factual and ‘wysiwyg’ (what you see is what you get). No deeper meaning, no God, no soul, no philosophy – meaning and significance abounds when living this moment without the burden of the ‘self’. A complete description of this PCE here.

This pure consciousness experience became my reference point for what I wanted to achieve. It was also an essential reference point to understand what Richard was saying and writing. After all, this actual world is the very world he is living in all the time, and my PCE had just demonstrated how this world is usually tucked away behind the normal/ spiritual worldview.

RESPONDENT: I was practising Vipassana with the intent to be as happy and harmless as possible while facing the numerous feelings of both hardship and bliss that were revealed by the scrutiny of attentiveness, in order to eliminate those feelings and end up more happy and harmless... and what followed was a period of genuinely feeling really good, and then of naiveté and felicitous sensuousness, and then that resulted in a PCE!

RESPONDENT No 60: Sounds like actualism with your eyes closed!

RESPONDENT: Yeah that’s what I thought too, and it worked.

VINEETO: Given that you have asked for my input let me say that I found it exceedingly useful for clarity’s sake to exactly label what I was feeling and what I was doing. In this case, going by your description you were not doing Vipassana as taught by the authorities in the field but an adaptation that was more like No 60 said, ‘actualism with your eyes closed’ and it had a very different effect than the original Vipassana.

This is not to say that a PCE cannot occur doing the original Vipassana or anything else for that matter – I had a PCE whilst helping in a ‘Fisher-Hoffmann’ emotional release process, during a ‘Who-Am-I’ group, during an Avatar technique session and even during a discourse of Rajneesh, all of which I only recognized as PCEs in hindsight. A PCE, being a glitch in the generally operating control-program of ‘me’, can happen any time in life under the most ordinary or extra-ordinary of circumstances. However, if I want to not only have PCEs occur on a regular basis but also use them as a tool for becoming free from the human condition then it makes sense to stick with the process of actualism so as to avoid slipping into altered states of consciousness or getting hooked on the experience only whilst ignoring the process of becoming increasingly free from malice and sorrow.

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RESPONDENT No 60: (Or does it have ... ‘spiritual’ ... side-effects in your experience perhaps?)

RESPONDENT: It has in the past, yes. I should point out though that my attitude towards it was different then. I considered the dissociated ‘I’ a stepping-stone toward a PCE. I didn’t recognise the basic, subtle resentful attitude that is in operation often, and so I rarely did anything about it, choosing instead to tranquilise the things it gave rise to… basically, controlling the instincts instead of eliminating them.

On that course, I didn’t notice any spiritual side effects. I haven’t really sat much since because I just haven’t felt like it. My life’s been markedly better than before since I started with actualism in November last year. Sitting does make me feeling good, and I’m thinking of doing it from time to time as a way of giving myself a kick-start and activating delight… but I want to talk to Richard and the gang about it too.

VINEETO: I am not surprised that you ‘haven’t really sat much since’ as I had the same experience. Why waste my time sitting in the corner with my eyes closed when I can instead be out and about enjoying being alive doing everyday things!

Besides, I found that the trouble with wanting to integrate some old (spiritual) practices into the practice of actualism was that this would generally blur the distinction between the spiritual goal of dissociation and transcendence to a higher ‘Self’ on one side and the actualist’s goal of ‘self-immolation or ‘self’-diminishment as in a virtual freedom on the other. And going by my own experience, particularly in the beginning of practicing actualism I needed all the help for clarity that I could give myself.

Two things I particularly remember that helped me ‘kick-start and activating delight’ in the beginning – one was to deliberately change my habit of only being focussed on my plans and worries of the day the moment I awoke, and instead pay attention to my surroundings, the delights of the ever-changing weather and the many little sensate delights whenever they happened. The other was to regularly take time out, look around me, enjoy the weather, notice my fellow human beings, the delightful interactions that do occur and then, especially after an eventful day, put up my feet and contemplate about the specific events of the day, about the human condition in me and the feelings that occurred, why they occurred, and how I could prevent me from getting upset the next time round. Inevitably having worked out some emotional problem that had surfaced in the day would automatically re-activate delight and make me aware of how good life really is when all the petty worries of the day are neatly left behind.