GARY: I have, since I was young, been concerned with personal protection. I used to be unable to sleep unless I had a loaded gun nearby. During my ‘nerve wracking’ periods of facing fear, I seem to be very concerned with keeping myself fully armed. When I am really fearful, I stockpile ammunition and it gives me a feeling of safety and protection, albeit a false sense of safety. I realize that in a shooting war there is no place of safety, that bombs and planes can wipe you out in a second.

VINEETO: Unlike Jane Roberts, who imagined herself to be a conduit for an ancient mythical Jewish wise-guy called Seth, I know that mere thoughts do not attract violence, but one’s actions can certainly attract violence or malice. In the course of becoming happy and harmless, my main concern was that I, for my part, do not inflict suffering on other people through my carelessness or malice. In order to become free of malice I had to examine my behaviour as well as my feelings and to find the roots of how and why I think, feel and act maliciously towards others. The first and most important thing for me was to stop acting on any impulse of violence towards others (and myself) and then, in due course, trace the cause of these impulses.

I found anger and fear inextricably interlinked – there is anger resulting out of fear and then there is fear produced by repressing anger. To be able to investigate and eliminate one’s underlying beliefs, morals and ethics it is vital to experience, examine and understand one’s ‘self’ in action as those different emotions.

Facing fear was and still is an ongoing issue, but it has become a breeze compared to the early months. The more I understood the workings of ‘me’, my ‘self’ in action, the more my intent grew to self-immolate in order to be free from fear, the core survival instinct in every human being. Many of our fears are closely related to the social identity of beliefs, morals and ethics and with investigating and removing this layer most of my social fears have disappeared. Tackling fear sometimes meant sitting out the storm of a fear-attack with stubborn determination before I could explore the triggers and causes, and sometimes, after extensive examination, a simple tasty cup of coffee could redirect my attention from a silly repetition of fearful thoughts. In the end it is the altruistic, unselfish willingness to sacrifice what ‘I’ hold most dear, that wins over the fear born out of psychic and psychological self-preservation and keeps one going on the path to a permanent freedom from fear.

I copied a piece of writing from Richard on ending fear –

Respondent No 23: Such conversation – similar to that which is going on in this forum – is engendered by fear. We are that fear. Do you know how to end that fear?

Richard: Yes.

Co-Respondent: How would you do that?

Richard: It is not a question of how would I end that fear ... it is a question of how did I end that fear. Basically, it involves all that I have written about since I came on to this List ... it is the extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety that results in a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, fear, terror, horror, dread or existential angst. There is no fear in a flower, a tree, an ashtray, an armchair, a rock ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact.

All sentient beings are born pre-primed with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear and aggression and nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s – rather clumsy – software package designed to give one a start in life. Contrary to popular belief, they are not hardware, but like all software, they can be deleted ... instincts are not set in concrete. These instincts form a rudimentary self – an emotional entity – situated in the reptilian brain at the top of the brain-stem, in all animals. The human animal, with the unique ability to know its impending demise – and the capacity to think and reflect – has taken this rudimentary self and blown it up all out of proportion into an identity ... no animal has an ‘I’ as an ego in the head, or a ‘me’ as a soul in the heart.

All discussion about fear eventually turns around death. This is a fact that needs be faced squarely. To not be is inconceivable; it is impossible to imagine not being because all one has ever known is being. There are no terms of reference to compare against – which is the normal way of thinking – and with no comparison there is no possibility of thought dealing with the fact of death. If pursued diligently, thought gives up the attempt and stops ... it cannot proceed further.

The affective rushes in to fill the gap left by the absence of thought and fear turns to dread ... contemplation of extinction invariably turns fear to dread. The instinct to survive takes over and dread flips to its opposite: awe. As it says in some revered scriptures: ‘Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. Most religious and spiritual tracts refer to awe and dread when contemplating the majesty and mystery of some transcendental being lying beyond time and space. Temporal transience is replaced by a firm conviction in a timeless and spaceless divinity that antedates birth and postdates death. Driven by the instinct for survival at any cost – blind nature is rather clumsy – one attempts to transcend the duality of Life and Death and achieve immortality.

If successful, ‘I’ disappear and mysteriously reappear as ‘Me’, the eternal soul. One is then apparently without fear because one is ‘Deathless’ ... one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. One disseminates one’s findings to all and sundry, finding a multitude of gullible penitents willing to suspend reason and rationality for a chance at avoiding extinction. Such strange goings-on are the way that the denizens of the real world deal with the existential dilemma of facing the facticity of death’s oblivion. It is called being in a state of denial ... and results in avoidance and escapism. One’s native intelligence is nowhere to be found operating in all this.

What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be ... just like before birth. Where is the problem?

The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity.

‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in time and this place in space.

Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least. Richard, List B, No 21, 10.3.1998

*

GARY: There is also underlying this a fear, now that I am abandoning ship, casting myself overboard, so to speak. I feel like a ship adrift without a rudder, without the controls of faith, hope, belief. There is also the conditioned fear or dread of some kind of divine punishment, as I am turning away from religion and spiritual teaching.

VINEETO: It is indeed an interesting trip! This fear of abandoning ship, which I remember from my own process, is the very proof that something had actually changed and I was not simply replacing one belief with another. I didn’t understand the nature of the fear at the time, yet whenever I stopped to reconsider the sensibility of my choice for Actual Freedom I knew I was better off ‘without the rudder’ of the traditional ‘Tried and Failed’.

The dread of ‘divine punishment’ was very real to me for some time – ‘what if everyone is right after all and I end up in (Eastern) hell?’ Each time one steps away from humanity’s beliefs to stand on one’s own two feet, there is this mad feeling of ‘oh dear, what have I done?’ And yet, when discovering the actual underneath the belief, the actual is so self-evidently obvious that I always thought ‘how come I haven’t seen this before, how come nobody tells you about it, how come nobody else sees this?’

The psychic world of divine and evil, with its atavistic feelings and psychic power structures, is not to be dismissed lightly. It is not a small thing we are doing, stepping out of ancient psychic history and leaving behind at least 3,500 years of recorded superstition and belief, hope for heaven and fear of hell. I encountered fears of being burnt as a witch, expelled from the tribe or starved to death – which in not so recent history were not just psychic imagined fears. These fears all seem to be woven as an ancient memory in our brain cells and are automatically triggered the moment one dares to steps out of the tribal, religious or social group one has belonged to.

Two things always helped me to overcome those fear-attacks – one was the obvious fact that feelings are not actual. Nobody is actually persecuting me or physically threatening me. The other thing is the understanding that I am deliberately and actively dismantling my very ‘self’, all of ‘who I think and feel I am’ and of course that will rock the boat, it wouldn’t be an actual change if it didn’t! Then, the journey becomes really thrilling ...

*

VINEETO: This kind of doubt is nothing but a by-product of ‘self’-belief, believing in my ‘self’. I then understood that ‘me’ doubting myself is the cover-up and, as such, a furphy, keeping the belief in ‘me’ alive, and along with the belief, ‘me’, the believer.’

GARY: Yes, again, this is what I am relating to. There is the fear of death, of letting go, of ‘me’ dying, pulling the plug, so to speak. ‘I’ don’t want to die. I also noted, during a period of disturbance a few days ago at work, that I read a portion of Richards’ writing on the subject of what an Actual Freedom is. And I was curiously and powerfully affected when I read a statement of his to the effect that ‘I have no identity whatsoever’. I found myself repeating this sentence over and over to myself. The words had quite a calming effect on me at that point in time. The words, seemingly, blew the wind right out of my sails. And more than just the words, the full implication of what he was saying ... to have no identity whatsoever ... settled into me quite strongly. It must be marvellous not to have an identity, and, I hesitate to say this because I don’t know if this is the correct thing to say, but this is one of the things I desire the most: to be free from any sense of identity whatsoever. But, you see, Gary is scared to death of losing this precious identity and Gary is fighting like hell to stay in the driver seat, white-knuckling the steering wheel, trying to keep the wheels on the road.

VINEETO: It is fascinating when you write about the effect of considering having no identity. Eliminating emotions to become free of the insidious grip of my instinctual passions was number one on my laundry list, and consequently it became glaringly obvious that ‘I’ had willingly agreed to ‘my’ death-warrant – self-immolation. So whenever the fear became almost unbearable, and due to the survival instincts it inevitable does so from time to time, I reminded myself that ‘this is what I want’, ‘this is the price I am willing to pay in order to become free’. It does take ‘the wind out of my sails’ quite effectively. And then you get to discover the thrilling aspect of fear and ‘the boat sails hard on the wind, with the wind’ instead of ‘me’ fighting against the storm of my emotions.

Eventually you become an expert on how to tackle fear this way, and the key is your sincere intent to live without any identity whatsoever – not only free of the ‘sense of identity’, but free from identity itself, actually free.

GARY: So, I think in this brief post, I have conveyed what I wanted to say of the fears and doubts that I am encountering. It is refreshing to hear you talk of your own doubts, and there is no doubt (no pun intended) a similarity to be seen. Having this list and these readings is very important to me right now and is occupying a significant portion of my time.

VINEETO: Oh, there is plenty of correspondence on fear if you are interested. Most of my early correspondence with Alan is about fear, about ways to investigate fear and to recognize the drama queen in action yet again.

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.

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.

*

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.

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: I consider this stage of virtual freedom to be a time when I get used to the experience that ‘I’ am indeed non-essential and redundant, needed neither for corporeal survival nor for the capability of sensuous reflective enjoyment. Things are so much easier when no feelings or ‘self’-centred thoughts disturb the experience of the exquisiteness of this moment and the delight of simply being here, whatever happens or doesn’t happen. As you say, it then does not diminish the delight if I am alone in the house, the only difference being that I don’t share my thoughts whenever one worth sharing comes to mind. Since Peter works from home, it happens very rarely that I am alone in the house – I am the one who is leaving more often – and the first few times I checked if I wanted to do something I normally don’t do, but then I couldn’t think of anything. It confirmed that I am indeed simply myself, all the time.

GARY: It is an incredibly simple and straightforward matter to enjoy being here, to revel in the present moment. However, one’s habitual and instinctual ‘self’ does not take this all lying down easily. I have found the instincts to be very deeply entrenched and resistant to change. Lately I have been having a good deal of trouble, which I am trying presently to sort out. I’m not sure really what it is all about, but the ‘nerves of steel’ part is definitely needed. I feel like I am going through an emotional roller-coaster – all my emotions are right on the surface. There is also a depressed state of mind at work, which makes enjoying the present moment to be very difficult. I know that it is probably silly to think this – but I despair of ever freeing myself from the stranglehold of the Human Condition, which causes me to become discouraged and despondent. I can see easily where one might turn back at this point, but I do not want to. It has indeed seemed a lot lately that ‘I’ am on a very perilous course. There have been alarm warnings going off, telling me there is danger up ahead, that if I keep on the path that I am on right now, I will surely be ruined. What does one do in a situation like this? Have you had these fears yourself?

VINEETO: The feelings you describe remind me of Peter’s description of ‘past the half-way point’ or ‘the point of no return’. At this point one becomes increasingly aware that so much change has irrevocably and irreparably happened that going back has become virtually impossible. This realization, of course, rings all the alarm bells for ‘me’ and ‘I’ throw up every possible worry and fear ‘I’ can think of.

What I discovered about these fears connected to the feeling of ‘no return’ was that the fact of ‘no return’ was already established – my identity had become progressively diminished during the process of actualism and I had irrevocably changed to the point where I couldn’t imagine ever going back to either a normal or a spiritual life-style. In other words, only by becoming aware of having gone too far did hell break loose in my feeling department.

When I became aware of the feeling of ‘no return’ I eventually discovered that I was also relieved. After all, I had begun the journey of actualism with the intent to go all the way and the recognition that something had irrevocably changed increased my confidence that I would not, and could not, chicken out half way through. I always had the intent that actualism would be a journey of no return and now it had become more factual – i.e. my fears were in fact a sign of success.

I remember one time when I seriously doubted that I could ever become free. I had been miserable and fearful for a couple of days and could not work out how to proceed. I asked Richard for advice. I said things such as ‘I think I am too much of a coward, I don’t have enough guts, I cannot possibly ever succeed in becoming free, I am too much ruled by fear’. He listened and then said something like ‘what else are you going to do for the rest of your life?’ The question made me aware that nothing else would ever be good enough because not only had I tasted the purity of the actual world but I was also enjoying the thrill and satisfaction of doing something that is worth committing one’s life to. I knew then that I could never turn back again and occasional bouts of fear, although sometimes extremely uncomfortable, are an inevitable part of the journey to freedom.

*

VINEETO: I too was hung up with the abandonment theme for many years and, following the fashion, made an early childhood experience responsible for all that later felt wrong in life, until I simply grew tired of continuously complaining that nobody loved me. At some point I had worn the abandonment theme to death and its ending was marked by a short PCE wherein I suddenly realized that I am already here and if nobody liked me, so what. But as I had yet to become aware of and thereby understand the mechanism of the social-instinctual programming in me, this experience remained but a pleasant yet exceptional memory and I fell back into creating bonds – and problems – with people in order not to feel so lost, lonely and to give my life meaning and purpose.

GARY: Interesting you should say ‘I fell back into creating bonds – and problems – with people...’ For quite some time, I have been deliberately not forming bonds, not seeking support or comfort from the herd in order not to feel so lost and lonely. This is one of the things that seems so dangerous, yet it is precisely the kind of action which leads to an expansive, penetrating sense of freedom, and a simple delight in being here. Perhaps the danger is only imaginary: ‘I’ imagine all kinds of dreadful, baleful results from my going it alone. I know that one of my fears has been a complete mental collapse with complete madness as the result. I wonder if that is a common fear that people have as they get involved in actualism. Perhaps it is stronger in me based on some early childhood experiences with madness and insanity. Again, the childhood memories that, in part, make up ‘me’ hit the alarm warning button when I get too far away from people and ‘creating bonds’.

VINEETO: The incident of the short PCE I was talking about happened years before I came across actualism. Socializing with others was then a strong need lest I would feel lost, lonely and very frightened. But I can relate very well to your fear of ‘mental collapse with complete madness’. Some fifteen years ago, a close friend of mine went through a 3-months period of schizoid madness which scared the hell out of me, but I think, apart from everyone’s individual experiences in that field, the fear of madness is part and parcel of dismantling one’s social identity. After all, you are dismantling all the rules and regulations that have been put in place in order to curb the madness of the instinctual animal passions.

I remember a period when I read all the personal accounts of Richard regarding his period of mental anguish after becoming free and asked a lot of probing questions in order to satisfy myself that leaving my ‘self’ behind was indeed safe in regards to my mental health. I have collected all the relevant quotes under ‘Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative’.

As a result of this probing I took another look at what is generally regarded as sane and insane and it was sometimes quite shocking to realize that there is only a quantitative difference between the two – ‘insane’ people are often those who are less able to control their instinctual passions or who have developed particularly peculiar and socially-unacceptable ways of dealing with them. I began to establish my own definition of what I regard as salubrious and sensible for my life, i.e. what I consider as mental health, and that is nothing short of being completely free of the madness of the instinctual survival passions. (...)

*

VINEETO: As for your comment about ‘instincts seem to have come to the fore again’ – I am having an interesting encounter with fear these days. About two week ago I awoke about 3 a.m. on a Saturday night and saw a man standing outside out bedroom on the balcony. There had been a noisy party next door so I wore earplugs while sleeping and I hadn’t heard him coming. His appearance sent me into shock. I got up, hid behind the curtain and, while pulling out my earplugs, I started screaming at him to make him go away. I reacted completely instinctually and without any forethought due to the shock and the fact that I had just awoken from deep sleep. He seemed drunk and after the encounter eventually walked away mumbling something about ‘looking for Julie’.

Afterwards I was shocked about my thoughtless instinctual aggressive reaction, defending my territory so to speak, whereas, with benefit of hindsight, the intruder was quite harmless. The incident had opened the door to my core instinctual fear and since then I sometimes lay awake in bed with intense fear, listening to the sounds in the garden, cats or birds rustling through the bushes, apparent footstep on the gravel, wind in the palm leaves. The other night I remembered what I have discovered before – that one automatically searches for an outer cause for one’s fears because ‘the alternative ... is too unthinkable’. As a result I stopped listening to the noises outside and realized that the fear of strangers in the night pointed to a fear that has no external cause – the instinctual passions of fear itself.

These experiences are all par for the course of the thrilling adventure to leave one’s ‘self’ behind and I am convinced that I have to experientially know the debilitating nature of all my instinctual passions in order to muster the courage to irrevocably step out of the human condition.

It’s been very good to talk again.

GARY: You had asked how I am doing. I am very well.

I am returning to the list after a lengthy hiatus during which time I mainly lurked, reading the posts occasionally, and sometimes in depth. I had rather lost my interest in writing to the list, but had not lost my interest in Actualism.

VINEETO: I can relate to this, as I am now in a phase where I seem to have lost interest in writing to the list unless there is some sensible conversation to be had about practical experiences. But no matter if I write or not, I never cease to be vitally interested in this moment of being alive and in what prevents me from being actually free. There is a commitment that happened deep down inside a few months after I came across actualism, after I experienced what being free from ‘me’ is like. It is a commitment that is irreversible, unlike the new-year’s resolutions that are abandoned days after they were made. I think I have told the story before but it signifies for me the day I realized that I was hooked for life.

At one time I was particularly troubled by doubts and fears so much so that after a couple of miserable days I decided to talk to Richard about it. I said to him that the way I feel now I don’t think I am able to go through with becoming free, I am too much of a coward, I don’t have the strength and saying it I felt as despondent and scared as one can be. Richard listened attentively as he always does and then said, okay, if that is so, what are you going to do with the rest of your life, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and so on? I didn’t have to think long, it was pretty obvious that although I was in the grip of my feelings at the time that they wouldn’t last forever and then I would not be able to resist pursuing the freedom I knew to be the genuine article. There simply was, and still is, nothing else I want to do with my life.

The other day someone asked if Peter and Vineeto ever take a holiday from actualism to which I could only say ‘holiday to where’. I am pleased to be here, I enjoy being here, I am vitally interested in being alive, I am aware of what I do, think, feel and sensately experience – why on earth should I want to take leave from that? It took me much effort to get this awareness going to the point were it happens by itself and now it is impossible to switch it off. The alternative could only be to deliberately do something to dull down, to get lost in imagination, to wallow in feelings, to be half-conscious or drugged and to pretend not to be here. The capacity to be aware of being aware is exactly what makes the human species unique amongst sentient beings and to work towards ridding this awareness of selfism – in any form – is a great adventure.

GARY: Instead, I have continued to apply myself to demolition work. I use that short-hand phrase to signify using the method to dismantle the social identity and expose the underlying instinctual passions. Then I have been able to get at the buggers. However, I have had long periods during which nothing much seemed to be happening. Getting a ‘taste of the instincts’ has sometimes seemed like a prolonged forced feeding at the pig trough of the Human Condition. But then, nobody is forcing me, are they? I realize in retrospect what has been lacking has been sustained, unremitting attentiveness on my part and sometimes simply the pure intent to proceed further.

VINEETO: There is something else that helps me and that is to remember to be friends with myself and rather than being down on myself for being irritated or fearful to instead give myself a pat on the back for noticing that I was. This way it’s much easier to pull myself up by my bootstraps and to get back to being happy again in no time. It’s a persistent habit to break, this telling myself off for not being perfectly happy for 24hrs a day, but I do notice it much quicker these days than I used to. Then it is not so much a matter of weening myself off the ‘trough of the Human Condition’, as you call it, but more a slipping out of ‘my’ skin and sensately – and sensuously – enjoying being here.

I also had to realize that after I’ve been through certain intense feelings and passions there is nothing further to be learned from staying in the feeling. I used to be suspicious of Richard’s expression of ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’, ostensibly for the reason that it could be confused with repressing the feeling. But now I realized that I was also avoiding the technique itself because ‘I’ wanted to hang onto being ‘the explorer’ of deep passions whenever they occurred and I can see now that there is neither meaning nor value in ceaselessly examining an instinctual passion over and over and over again. In other words I have come to understand that no valuable insight is to be gained from deeply and repeatedly feeling fear – the most prominent of the passions for me – and this understanding has greatly helped to simply notice and label the feeling, in this case my fear of oblivion, and then get on with enjoying this moment of being alive, which is after all the point of actualism.

GARY: I can tell you this: that I have during this period of time always used the Actualism method and have not found it necessary nor desirable to take side-detours or short cuts. I have never found it necessary to find add-ons to supplement my use of the Actualism question. Unremitting attentiveness and cranking up my pure intent have been the keys to pulling through what have seemed like unbearable onslaughts of deep dread and fear.

VINEETO: It’s so simple, isn’t it and yet almost everyone feels the urge to concoct their personal addenda in order to avoid its ‘self’-diminishing effects.

GARY: But along with complacency and a relative backing-off from the deeper sources of resistance at times, there has been for a long time steady progress too. I think of a graphic presentation of in which there are peaks and valleys, and regressive movement, but on the average a steady overall increase in happiness and harmlessness.

VINEETO: Yep, and with the increase of being happy and considerate towards others comes a waning of ‘me’ because ‘I’ need an arena of problems and passions in order to thrive.

RESPONDENT: However, since that time I’ve had several experiences of overwhelming negativity. Twice I woke up out of a dead sleep, and with none of my usual distracting devices activated, I was just swallowed up by it. The experiences seem to combine fear, anger, dread, depression, just about every negativity one could experience – all at once. I find I’m just in it and feeling it and can’t even find my way to the bottom of it, or a resolution to it. The process that you and Peter describe seems a lot more cheery than this. Of course, everyone does things differently. I’m not freaked out by this, but I don’t know that I am making any ‘progress’ with it. By this I mean getting to the bottom of the whirlwind of feeling and saying, Ah, that’s what that is.

VINEETO: The beginning period of my exploring and applying actualism was not so cheery – on the contrary, there were bewildering, anxious, fearful, very confusing and sometimes dreadful episodes, particularly in the time when I was struggling to get disentangled from the spiritual world. You can find a description of our experiences of the first year in ‘Peter’s Journal’ and in ‘Vineeto’s Bit’ on the Actualism web site. On the path to Actual Freedom I needed to backtrack, unlearn the ‘watcher’ and abolish my spiritual identity in order to be able to start dismantling what had been left behind, unexamined and untouched, when the spiritual process of distancing and dissociation began.

The approach to feelings, emotions and instinctual passions in Actual Freedom is distinctively different to therapy or spiritual practice insofar that I not only experience the feeling and label it, but I also explore the very cause that makes me feel this way. What triggered it?, did someone say something to me?, what particular fear is triggered?, what is the connection to what I believe to be right or true or good?, what is the underlying moral or ethical connotation?, what guilt, shame or taboo have I transgressed?, what would actually happen, if I explore further?, which part of my identity is threatened?, how do ‘I’ function?, what are ‘my’ tricks? ... there were a hundred-and-one questions to be explored before I would get to the bottom of ‘me’ and see my identity in operation.

It is always a great opportunity when ‘fear, anger, dread, depression’ are coming to the surface by themselves. This is not just ‘negativity’ to be suffered through, this is the very stuff that underlies the ‘good’ feelings and that forms the basis of the Human Condition. This is the identity in action – and only an identity in action can be investigated. Progress for me happened when I had found the core belief or instinct of a particular feeling – ‘ah, that’s the underlying belief, oh dear, but that’s who ‘I’ am, oh dear...’ Some ‘eradications’ of feelings and beliefs felt like major heart operations until I grew used to remembering that they are nothing but feelings, experienced like a life-threatening procedure, felt as very real but never actual. The ‘operations’ did not leave any scars, neither emotional nor physical.

Doubts about the path, the actualism method and if I was going in the right direction were often insidiously persistent. I had to tackle my doubts by meticulously investigating the facts, weighing the actual situation against my, often overwhelming, feelings and inquire into the root of my occurring emotions and feelings. Eventually I recognized doubt as a cover for fear itself, the fear to move closer and closer to extinction. The trick to encounter fear is to look for the thrilling part in the experience, which might be tiny at the start, the little YES in the cloud of angst, and then one can surf the wave of thrill beyond one’s boundaries of what is considered familiar and safe.

What helped me a lot through all the weird and sometimes daunting experiences on the path was the pioneering spirit and the ambition to write down and report what I found out on this utterly new, first-time-in-history, adventure. Being a reporter as well as experiencing what happened increased my attentiveness and prevented me from both indulging in emotions for indulgence sake and from ‘keeping my distance’. I wanted to be able to describe the process as precisely and detailed as possible, and that very ambition has carried me through many strange adventures until the identity of the reporter itself became redundant. Writing down and reporting any of your experiences at this stage can be helpful for yourself and for others on this pioneering adventure.

RESPONDENT: As a side note, according to Richard’s understanding of the egoless state of being, there is no imagination possible in an egoless state because one is totally busy living the life as it is happening moment by moment. As a consequence, there might be no concern about the future. If there is a total dis-concern for the future and one is living – as the body – in the world inhabited by other people, will not the physical safety be in danger? Or is the very idea of ‘danger’ emotionally driven and even when a dangerous situation occurs, the body will be busy living it and hence there will be no hard feelings against the situation.

VINEETO: There are a few distinctions that are vital for an actualist – (...)

2. Richard lives in Actual Freedom, which is being here without any identity whatsoever. With the death of his identity the faculty of imagination disappeared along with his instinctual passions. Therefore, whatever Richard writes is not a mere ‘understanding of the ego-less state’ but an accurate description of what he is living 24hrs a day, every day. Imagination for him is simply not possible because imagination cannot exist outside the feeling entity inside this flesh and blood body – it dies with the entity. And because there is no imagination interfering, he is ‘living the life as it is happening moment by moment’.

My ‘concern about the future’ goes as far as covering the basic necessities for my physical survival – a place to live, spending money, clothes, food and obeying the law of the land. For work I found it sensible to keep a car, so I take care that it is registered, insured and running well. Neither a fearful nor hopeful imagination about the future nor feelings, beliefs, morals, values and instinctual passions interfere with this simple and solely practical ‘concern about the future’ and life is easy and carefree.

As far as ‘the world inhabited by other people’ is concerned – there are some practical safety measures to be considered. When appropriate, I will keep my mouth shut and not talk about Actual Freedom, because people seem to get really upset when their dearly held beliefs are questioned. The Internet for instance, is a much safer place to have a conversation about Actual Freedom. But most of what is considered ‘danger’ is, in fact, merely emotionally perceive and disappears with the thorough investigation of one’s emotions, feelings and instinctual passions – the actual world is an imminently safe place to be.

A side-note – once you actively start investigating those hopes and fears whilst experiencing them, you will find out for yourself that they are very real but not actual. Thinking about one’s fears without thoroughly investigating what they are based on will, on the other hand, merely confirm the mother of all beliefs – that ‘you can’t change the human nature’.

Once I started to investigate a fear that arose from changing myself, the next time I found I could not take the fear as serious as before, for I knew that by exploring the fear it would eventually reveal its illusionary nature. With each fear removed, my brain was functioning better and clearer than before and was less restricted by chemically driven irrational hopes and fears. But it takes daring and initiative to start exploring one’s ‘ghosts in the cupboard’, as Alan and I used to call them. Freedom from the Human Condition does not happen by itself and it does not happen overnight. It needs persistent and bloody-minded sincere intent and thorough investigation – and then the rewards are beyond your wildest dreams.

I keep saying to Peter that if people only knew what they were missing ... all my dreams have come true, one by one.

RESPONDENT: Another side note: in the ego-less state there might be no planning and ‘control’ executed by the ‘I’ but it might nevertheless happen because of the brain’s instinct (??) of the body-preservation? Or is the instinct of the prolongation of the life also gone in the ego-less state and one is not concerned when death approaches?

VINEETO: I don’t know and I don’t really care. ‘Body-preservation’ without the instincts is none of ‘my’ business because ‘I’ won’t be here anymore...

Once the ‘self’ is as weakened as it is now, I am simply doing what is happening. ‘I’ am not needed to keep this body alive, on the contrary, ‘I’ had been continuously interfering with my physical well-being by worrying and fighting, dieting and indulging, being stressed or depressed, fearful or driven. My health and well being are now better than ever, I have stopped worrying about vitamins or minerals, starch or protein, vegetarianism or health-dieting, natural or homeopathic medicine long ago. Also I take it that the medical technology in this country is so advanced as to give me a good chance of staying healthy as long as possible ... and when my time is over I can surely say that I had had a perfect life, every day, 24 hrs a day, for years and years and years.

With the ‘self’ the fear of death also dies. Once ‘I’ am gone there won’t be anybody left to be afraid of death. Of course I can still jump out of the way of an approaching car or an attacking dog. Intelligence and apperceptive awareness together with the physical startle-response are enough to keep this body alive as long as is possible. It is the psychological and psychic fear of death that casts shadows of fear and doubt into our lives and prevents us from experiencing the safety, magnificence and abundant perfection of the actual physical universe.

So, don’t let your doubts and fears take over and stop you from investigating your psyche – there is much magic to be discovered.

PS: I found a little quote from Richard that might give you further encouragement ...

Co-Respondent: The strong survive and the weak die. That is the law of the jungle.

Richard: Not so ... it is the fittest that survive: ‘survival of the fittest’ does not necessarily mean (as it is popularly misunderstood) that ‘the strong’ (most muscular) always survive. It means ‘the most fitted to the ever-changing environment’ (those who adapt) get to pass on their genes. If the most muscular are too dumb to twig to this very pertinent fact they will slowly disappear of the face of the planet over the countless millions of years that it is going to take via the trial and error process of blind nature. One can speed up this tedious natural process in one’s own lifetime and become free ... now. Richard, List B, No. 21, 29.5.2000

IRENE: (...) You asked me to tell you my honest story about the discoveries I am making, so this is what I am doing, Vineeto. I hope that you now understand me better and that you can see that I am not at all out to demolish you, Vineeto, but your belief in the old spiritual man-made ‘ideal’ of getting rid of your self and that Richard has augmented with getting rid of literally everything that you can possibly call human: the feelings, emotions, instincts, sense of humaneness towards other people around you, in short all that was a natural given to start off with. To be so anti-nature is called preposterous.

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!

*

IRENE: What I am actually most interested in you is what you described in your very first paragraph:

[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. Now after collecting enough data about the nature of the various contents of those emotional attacks I have taken stock and for a change looked at them from another angle – trying to understand them. What we found was a repetitive circle of fear – frustration – doubt – fear and the only way out is intent, intent to not stop at second best, whatever happens.’ [endquote].

I know doubt, fear and frustration in myself, but could you describe to me, Vineeto, what your doubt is precisely to do with? What are the 2 alternatives that make up the dilemma and cause the doubt? What exactly has happened to make you doubt? And the same with fear?

VINEETO: Doubt as opposed to scrutiny is a very destructive emotion. This is what I have come to in my latest investigation. Understanding that to reach my potential, I as an identity have to die, I have faced immense fear, naturally. After all, dying is truly an unnatural process, going against every single one of our animal instincts. I checked out every surfacing doubt for its content and finally came to understand that the act of doubting itself was a psychological trick to avoid the imminent fear of death – the very, very cunning bit of ‘me’. Doubt simply turned out to be the coating around fear, to protect me from its impact. This faculty of doubt has disappeared simply by my understanding its very function. Now there is no personal doubt left, only the instinctual fear of the impending discovery that the whole powerful experience of enlightenment is but a delusion, ie that there is no life after death.

Fear in the face of impending death is what potatoes are for a potato-soup, its very ingredients. There is no potato soup without potatoes, there is no death without fear. The only way to deal with that fear which I found after many days of going around in circle like a headless hamster is a suggestion from Richard:

Richard: ‘... a fact is actual. One cannot argue about a fact as one can about a belief or a truth ... one can only deny a fact and pretend that it is not there. Then the question to ask is: ‘Why depression?’ Because when I see the fact of something ... the fact sets me free of choice. ... When I see clearly ... then I can proceed ... for then there is action. Seeing the fact – which is seeing without choice – then there is action ... and this action is not of ‘my’ doing.’ Richard, List B, No 23a, 12.10.1998

Accepting the fact of death made me stop and welcome it. I see this as the only way to proceed. Only psychological death can free me from the psychological fear of a personal death (ego), and psychic death can free me from the instinctual fear of an absolute death (obliteration). The Enlightened Ones clearly avoid the second death. Having come that far in my understanding I just have to act accordingly...

VINEETO: Yes, the obstacles seemed formidable, especially when I started looking. Taking the obstacles one by one without bothering about the one to come has helped me immensely to keep my feet on the ground and my mind off discouragement. Each moment, now, there is only one obstacle, the one that is bothering me in this moment. Like: ‘Why did this particular remark or behaviour upset me?’ ‘Why am I stressed out when I could do it also relaxedly?’ And after every obstacle removed comes the joy of yet more freedom, deeper understanding, greater confidence and more happiness ...

And then, when everything is pulled into the open, examined in the bright light of my awareness, it cannot uphold its existence – fear turns into thrill, the thrill of impending destiny, my extinction. And I know I am back on the track to freedom. Yippee!

RESPONDENT: How do you see it? It looks like at the bottom of it all is fear and that is ‘me’. If I see that fear is ‘who I am’ then what else is there to do but understand it experientially?

To get rid of fear completely it is not enough to just ‘see that fear is ‘who I am’’ and then become fearless as in rising above fear. There is no such thing as a shortcut of a blinding flash of light as the spiritual myths and fables have us believe. There is no fairy wand or Grace of Existence or a helping hand of God that interferes with human destiny and freedom. Becoming free from the instinctual passions is all in your own hands and it is a process of chipping away at one’s self-centredness and fearfulness and passionate survival automatism, bit by bit, experience by experience, in an ongoing attentiveness of how am I experiencing this moment of being alive.

Again, what I say is something you might possibly take at face value and then begin to discover for yourself as you diligently nibble away at your social conditioning such that you can begin to observe your instinctual passions in action in yourself.

It is a fascinating journey once one takes the plunge.

RESPONDENT: I guess this pretty much answers my question. I have been observing my instinctual passions in action for quite some time and I see that fear is at the bottom of all of it. So what there is to do is keep observing the instincts in action and chipping away by understanding it experientially. I was asking if there was anything else to be done other than that but apparently not.

VINEETO: When you say that apparently there is nothing other to be done than observe one’s instinctual passions you have apparently not read all of my post. Vis:

[Vineeto]: As long as I was ruled by the moral and ethical straightjacket of my social-spiritual conditioning, I would sweep any upcoming emotions and passions under the carpet or cover them up with loving feelings. Fear was usually the only acceptable feeling to experience within the strict moral code of social and spiritual rules as aggression is taught as being unacceptable and usually punished if overtly expressed. Eliminating my social identity allowed the various animal passions to come to the surface and enables me to experience and examine them. Thus I experientially come to know, time and again, that it is ‘me’, the very core of my ‘being’, that keeps these passions alive. 28.7.2001

You might deem it unnecessary to examine all your beliefs and social-spiritual values but it is impossible to clearly observe one’s instinctual passions with an unbiased and unrestricted awareness unless one has first done the work of becoming aware of and eliminating one’s beliefs and one’s moral and ethical values.

Yesterday I met an old friend who asked me what I do with fear. He said often he wakes up in the morning and feels fearful for no apparent reason. He could well relate to when I told him that in my spiritual days I had an underlying fearfulness of not doing the ‘right’ thing and of being punished or struck by the wrath of Existence in some way or other for my ‘wrong doing’. He said there was a kind of mantra going round in his head searching for the next ‘right’ thing to do.

We talked about morals and ethics as being ingrained into human beings since earliest childhood. When I left home I was busy replacing my parent’s set of morals and ethics with another, then another and finally with the Sannyas Eastern spiritual set of morals and ethics. As my friend was a Sannyasin, he duly protested and said that Rajneesh did not teach any rules of right and wrong. I suggested that when one has an emotional investment in keeping the image of one’s master pure, one is likely not to notice that the ‘Truth’ is but another set of moral and ethical values. Even the ultimate ‘Good’ and the ultimate ‘Right’ are nothing but human-made values fuelled by ancient superstition and blind devotion to a Higher Being somewhere in the universe. Rajneeshism has its own set of morals, rights and wrongs, goods and bads, rules and social codes, as does Krishnamurtiism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc.

I said that had I questioned not only my own ideas as to what is right and wrong but also the very source of all moral and ethical codes – the belief in a God or Higher Power who enforces good and bad, rights and wrongs by a system of divine reward and punishment. Being good and right brings the reward of good karma, good fortune, respectability and a permanent berth in Parinirvana or Heaven and being bad and wrong brings punishment of bad karma, bad luck and condemnation to suffer endless rebirths or to plunge into the abyss of Hell. When I began to replace these fear-ridden spiritual beliefs with facts most of my fears began to permanently disappear.

Real-world fears are mostly based on religious or spiritual fairytales but it is also necessary to question all of the beliefs that would have us believe that life on earth is a fearful and miserable existence. One needs to question psittacisms such as ‘one needs to fight for one’s rights’, ‘it’s a tough world’, ‘life’s a bitch’, any of the multitudinous doomsday scenarios that are currently in fashion, the insidiousness of rumour and innuendo, the fear-propagating role of protest movements and the continual beat-up of the media in promulgating fear, angst and mass hysteria. To believe all that one is fed by one’s fellow human beings is to give substance and fuel to one’s fears. To make the effort to find out for oneself the facts of each situation is to cut away at the roots of these socially instilled fears ... and this is the very work that an actualist initially has to do in order to become free of the human condition.

The other kind of fear, however, is the raw animal survival fear that only comes to the surface when one’s beliefs and one’s moral and ethical codes have been substantially eliminated, and this kind of fear is indeed something one can only be aware of, and recognize, as the genetically-encoded survival program in action. This very attentiveness is the ending of fear’s ferocious grip. Or, as Richard puts it –

Richard: Attentiveness is seeing how any feeling makes ‘me’ tick – and how ‘I’ react to it – with the perspicacity of seeing how it affects others as well. In attentiveness, there is an unbiased observing of the constant showing-up of the ‘reality’ within and is examining the feelings arising one after the other ... and such attentiveness is the ending of its grip. Please note that last point: in attentiveness, there is an observance of the ‘reality’ within, and such attention is the end of its embrace ... finish. Here lies apperception. Richard’s Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness

RESPONDENT: Basically, my understanding is that when one gets through the superficial understanding of emotions then one sees that fear is underlying all of these things. This could be wrong and this is why I am putting this out here to see if I am wrong. It looks to me like when one has uncovered these instincts that fear is what is all pervading and not sorrow. Please feel free to take all this with a grain of salt as I am just trying to look at my mind in operation.

VINEETO: My experience is that when ‘one gets through the superficial understanding of emotions’ then I started instigating an in-depth understanding of my emotions in order to eventually to be rid of them. I certainly had to question and examine the full range of my emotions, the desirable ones as well as the undesirable ones. So in order to ascertain the facts about fear and sorrow you will need to abandon any of your own preconceived notions about emotions and instinctual passions and experientially investigate the nature and the cause of each emotion as it arises within you.

Fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful and by questioning what it is that I want to desperately attain or avoid. If I am fearful of being sad then I find out how I can eliminate that specific sadness. If I am fearful of being lonely then I investigate the need to have someone to belong to. If I am afraid of death then I question why I want to be immortal despite the fact that every thing that is born must also die.

In practicing actualism, it has always been my sincere intent that urged me to move beyond my initial fears and get on with the business of actively and practically becoming free from malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: That brings up the question of: Can I do it without being greedy? I am a risk taker in a lot of ways so maybe I am addicted to the fear. The root problem still seems to be fear itself and not superficial greed or other desires, etc.

VINEETO: I do find it interesting that you call any other passion but fear ‘superficial’ as part of your theory that fear is the predominant passion. How can you scientifically examine your emotions, feelings and passions if you already dismiss everything other than fear as being superficial? Is it not time to question everything, including this unproven presumption along with your emotional investment in it?

You can easily find out for yourself that gambling without being greedy or fearful is possible when you replace ‘money’ with ‘bubblegum’ – gambling for bubblegum would certainly be without the emotional input of greed and there would be no fear to lose either – but then gambling may lose all attraction.

The question for me was what part of ‘me’ would have to disappear or die in order not to feel the greed and desire for something I desperately wanted. In my case one of the greatest desires I had to inquire into was the longing for the unconditional love of my spiritual teacher. In order for this desire to disappear, Vineeto the loyal disciple had to disappear. On another occasion it was the desire for the unconditional love of a lover, which caused me a lot of pining, anxiety and fear. In order to get rid of the anxiety that accompanied my desire I had to inquire into the romantic dream that lay behind my longing for love. The outcome of this inquiry was that the dreamer Vineeto disappeared together with ‘her’ anxieties about not achieving the dream. At the time this felt like an amputation of a vital and integral part of the woman I felt myself to be, but it sure did the trick. Both my desire and my fear around this subject disappeared miraculously. The romantic dreamer had irreplaceably disappeared.

Given that you say ‘maybe I am addicted to the fear’ then that would also mean that the No 16 you are today would have to disappear in order for ‘his’ fear to cease.

*

VINEETO: Fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful and by questioning what it is that I want to desperately attain or avoid. If I am fearful of being sad then I find out how I can eliminate that specific sadness. If I am fearful of being lonely then I investigate the need to have someone to belong to. If I am afraid of death then I question why I want to be immortal despite the fact that every thing that is born must also die.

In practicing actualism, it has always been my sincere intent that urged me to move beyond my initial fears and get on with the business of actively and practically becoming free from malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: There is something here that I am not sure about. You said that ‘fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful.’ This doesn’t make sense to me because there are certain causes of fear that one can’t remove such as death so that is why I am thinking that fear itself needs to be removed instead of the causes of fear. I don’t have much fear of death itself as I have already experienced that but there is still fear. In other words, I still have it wired up that the way to remove fear is to face it instead of removing the causes of it or avoiding the causes of it.

VINEETO: You can, of course, hold any theory or belief you like. But as long as it is not proven as a fact by demonstration that it works to free you from fear it will remain a mere proposition. In the process of questioning my beliefs I aimed to replace my beliefs with facts by finding out what is sensately experience-able, what is sensible and what repeatedly works. Everything else was doomed to the dust bin.

As for the ‘causes of fear that one can’t remove’ – in a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience it is readily apparent that there is no fear in the actual world because fear, as well as all the other instinctual passions, disappear along with ‘me’, the emotional entity. It is not the physical body that is fearful of death, as you might have experienced in your own near-death experience you described to Gary. The cause for the fear of death is not death but ‘me’. It is ‘me’, the entity inside this body that maintains and feeds the fear of survival because the feelings of fear, anger, greed and nurture serve to keep this entity in existence. ‘I’ have no other substance than the feelings and emotions and imaginations ‘I’ generate. ‘I’ am a fake. ‘I’ am a make-believe. ‘I’ am not actual. That’s why ‘I’ make such a fuss in the first place.

By applying the method of actualism I have investigated every facet of this entity in me, every blink of an emotion, every whiff of a feeling, every superficial emotion and deep passion until I now know all ‘my’ tricks and loopholes, all ‘my’ games and sentiments, all ‘my’ workings and mechanisms – the whole programming of the social identity and the underlying instinctual passions. When I become aware and agree to fully and experientially understand a particular aspect of this programming then this aspect, this part of ‘me’, inevitably disappears.

Once you pick out and experientially examine one of your emotions closely, for instance the emotional involvement in stock market gambling – without applying your preconceived theory that only serves to stifle further investigation – then you can identify and eliminate one little part of your identity and experience the diminishing of fear for yourself.

My experience is that when you have nothing left to lose, because you have explored all the dead alleys of wrong solutions, then you really have the incentive and the courage to break with the past and change in a practical way. Then the change is irrevocable. And eventually the fear of death gives way to thrill as you realize that the death of ‘me’ is already happening. (...)

*

RESPONDENT: I wouldn’t say the odds are heavily stacked against me. In the current scenario I would say the odds are at least 50/50 or better but I have no way of knowing for sure. The point is that there is substantial risk. It looks like confronting fear itself is the way to overcome fear and not to avoid situations that cause fear.

VINEETO: It is, of course, entirely your choice and your business how you are assessing the odds – I was simply reporting the general figures of stock market gambling which are evaluated at 75% or more losers compared to 25% or less winners.

As for ‘confronting fear’ – people have tried for centuries to tackle their fear of physical danger by confronting it and many of the early pioneers discovered remote and dangerous areas of the planet only because they confronted their fears and left home despite their fears. Nowadays, in the absence of sufficient real physical dangers and explorations, highly dangerous adventure sports are promoted for people to satisfy their need of boosting their adrenalin and their ego – activities such as car and motorbike racing, Everest climbing for tourists, wild water rafting, cave diving, meeting man-eating sharks in plain dive suits, parachute and bungee jumping, etc., etc. There are also those who seek the same rush from other less physically dangerous activities such as playing video games, gambling or watching other people performing dangerous or violent activities.

What I am saying is that the idea of confronting one’s fears is nothing new, it is part and parcel of the human condition and has not resulted in any change towards more benevolence and happiness in human behaviour. People who confront their fear are in no way less malicious or less sorrowful despite the sometimes-enormous effort and time they invest trying to get rid of their fear. In your specific case you seem to want to tackle fear with more risk-taking, i.e. with greater desire, whereas in my experience it is the desire to ‘hit a homerun’  as you say further down, that generates the fear of loss in the first place.

The way I tackled fear was firstly to be sensible in practical situations thereby reducing the risk of actual danger or loss, which served to stop fuelling the fires of passion. Then I set about enquiring into the reasons that lay behind my various fears. My aim in actualism has never been to be free from fear only, but to become free from my malicious and sorrowful feelings and behaviour – and this enterprise initially generated a lot of fear. As I questioned my dearly held beliefs, my spiritual loyalty, my friendships, my role as a worker, as a woman, as a part of a social group – in short my entire social conditioning – the fear sometimes seemed completely overwhelming.

This fear I overcame by simply doing what I had decided to do despite my fears. This is not confronting the feeling of fear itself but simply setting oneself a goal in life and getting on with doing it. This way I did something useful with the fear by turning the feeling of fear into the thrill of discovery. I also did a similar thing with desire – I used it as the desire to succeed in my newfound life’s aim. Nurture was similarly utilized in wanting to be part of the ending to human suffering, and aggression was channelled into a quiet stubbornness and determination to succeed.

To only seek to become fearless is in itself a selfish aim and only serves to enhance and embellish the ‘self’, the lost, lonely and cunning entity inside this body. Those who pursue fearlessness without also investigating their aggression, nurture and desire often succeed in attaining a self-enhancing and self-aggrandizing altered state of consciousness, known in the East as Satori, or if the state becomes permanent, spiritual enlightenment.

*

VINEETO to No 16: Given that the topic of our discussion has been your theory that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ and the fact that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ I might add something that is essential to understand fear. Fear in human beings is the direct result of ‘me’ wanting to survive – ‘I’, the passionate alien entity inside this flesh and blood body, will do anything in order to stay in existence. Thus the only way fear can be diminished is to diminish the ‘self’ – the weaker the ‘self’ becomes, the less fear there is. There is simply no other way to permanently decrease and eventually eliminate fear because ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’.

The magic ingredient for diminishing the ‘self’ is altruism. Obviously, when my intent is focussed on a goal greater than ‘me’, ‘self’-interest and ‘self’-centredness then play a minor role in the game – that’s why actualists refer to ‘pure intent’. Contrary to the traditional idea of battling and transcending fear via ‘self’-enhancement, the fact is that only an altruistic pursuit can reliably reduce and eventually eradicate fear because only altruism can break the instinctual ‘self’-centredness that is the very root of fear.

The traditional honourable goals have been to battle malice and sorrow in other people through political, religious or therapeutical pursuits – thus everyone meddles in everyone else’s life and is busy trying to solve everyone else’s problems. For an actualist the altruistic pursuit translates into actively eradicating malice and sorrow from his or her life in order not to burden anyone with his or her sorrow and not to hurt anyone with his or her malice. Fear then disappears on its own accord because the more faint the ‘self’ becomes, as the ‘self’-serving emotions are progressively investigated and eliminated, the less there is for ‘me’ to control, deny or defend.

And as the shackles of malice and sorrow and its accompanying fear disappear, a whole magical and sensuous actual universe becomes readily apparent.