ALAN: The quote from Peter was helpful, though I seem to have stopped questioning who, or what, is doing the doing – for the moment, at least. I understand, and agree, intellectually with what you said, Peter. You state that ‘in hindsight it was apperceptive awareness’. Is this now a ‘knowing’, or just an intellectual understanding? And what did you think at the time?

VINEETO: I can’t answer for what Peter thought at the time, but I want to make a remark to your question of ‘is this now a ‘knowing’, or just an intellectual understanding?’ What do you mean by ‘knowing’? It sounds suspiciously close to ‘I know the Truth’ kind of knowing, where an emotional experience is interpreted as knowing the unwavering truth.

But maybe I do understand what you mean. The process of Actual Freedom is such new territory, and for each of us it is the first time that we are doing it, that we often have to tell the story in hindsight. And, as such, it is just a story, maybe evidenced by people doing it after us or with us, made more accurate with each reported experience. But there won’t be any ‘knowing’ because there won’t be any ‘absolute truth’. There will only be a certain amount of making sense during and after the event, collecting story by story and experience after experience. This is, after all, the first time that we are approaching Actual Freedom via Virtual Freedom and not via Enlightenment.

The only fixed parameters are the goal of actual freedom, evidenced by Richard, and experienced by us in numerous peak-experiences, and the method, which each of us experiences to be working very successfully on the way. How the brain is physically rewiring itself is quite a mystery, but Richard’s description of ‘apperception’ in the library fits very well into my experience of the process.

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.

*

ALAN: The quote from Peter was helpful, though I seem to have stopped questioning who, or what, is doing the doing – for the moment, at least. I understand, and agree, intellectually with what you said, Peter. You state that ‘in hindsight it was apperceptive awareness’. Is this now a ‘knowing’, or just an intellectual understanding? And what did you think at the time?

VINEETO: I can’t answer for what Peter thought at the time, but I want to make a remark to your question of ‘is this now a ‘knowing’, or just an intellectual understanding?’ What do you mean by ‘knowing’? It sounds suspiciously close to ‘I know the Truth’ kind of knowing, where an emotional experience is interpreted as knowing the unwavering truth.

But maybe I do know what you mean. The process of Actual Freedom is such new territory and for each of us it is the first time that we are doing it, that we often have to tell the story in hindsight. And, as such, it is just a story, maybe evidenced by people doing it after us or with us, made more accurate with each reported experience. But there won’t be any ‘knowing’ because there won’t be any ‘absolute truth’. There will only be a certain amount of making sense during and after the event, collecting story by story and experience after experience. This is, after all, the first time that we are approaching Actual Freedom via Virtual Freedom and not via Enlightenment.

ALAN: No, I did not mean ‘I know the truth’ by ‘knowing’. I meant a ‘getting it’ – an experiential (as opposed to intellectual) understanding that this is correct, obviously so, factually evident, blindingly obvious. I think this is the same as Peter was talking about with ‘serendipitous discoveries’ – one does not seek the discovery. There is just a sudden ‘click’, an ‘of course, how interesting and obvious’.

VINEETO: There was a time when I would miss not having those blindingly obvious ‘getting its’ and stunning insights, which were so diametrically opposite to everything else I had believed at the time – and I would measure the ‘truth’ of the insight according to the degree of surprise, newness and stunning-ness of my first startling insights. Then I noticed that the more my life got easier, less emotional and more perfect each day, that and similarly the peak experiences themselves became something almost ordinary, utterly simple, adding a tinge more clarity and intensity to the experience of the tangible actual-ness of every day life. The extreme experiences were disappearing out of my life, and at first that left me with an uncertainty as to not knowing if I had gone back to being normal.

But then I only had to compare my life with how I had been before, with the problems I observe in other people around me or with what is presented on TV, to know that I have actually and clearly improved my quality of life to such a degree that I forget what ‘normal’ looks or feels like. In interaction with others I forget that they could get offended, insulted, or be self-condemning for little mistakes, and only by their behaviour I deduct that an emotion must be surfacing in them – then a faint memory comes back to how it has been for myself not so long ago.

Now, as I see it, putting a retrospective story together of what the brain was doing with all this wiring, programming and reprogramming, is not a matter of sudden insight like the spiritual insights, where one taps into the collective ‘Knowledge’ (read imagination). Further, making sense in hindsight is not a matter of replacing a belief one has cherished before and acknowledging an obvious fact for the first time – for instance, seeing that this universe is infinite and that there is physically no ‘outside’ for a god to sit, pulling the strings. Putting together a story in hindsight of how the human brain functions is collecting the data that are available about scientific research – which is not much as far as actual facts are concerned – and comparing them to one’s own experience of how the process has been. It leaves room for speculation and for more accurate adjustments when more data are collected, both by us actualists and by practical scientists. It is a continuous collection of and an investigation into facts rather than a blindingly obvious insight replacing a former belief. Those insights are more an insight into the falseness of a belief or ‘truth’, a disappearance of a dearly held conviction, be they religious, spiritual or pseudo-scientific. Like your report when you said that you ‘got it’ that there is no life after death, 100% sure.

Does that make sense to you?

In a PCE I can see the world as it is, people as they are, my emotions and beliefs and my ‘self’ for what it is – a passionate illusion – and thus I can easily discriminate facts from ‘truths’, beliefs, convictions, instincts and fears. I will only know what I have investigated so far, there is no magical all-knowing or all-understanding, no god-like wisdom. But because during a PCE the brain has no ‘sand’ ie emotions, beliefs and instincts in the system, it can function smoothly and I can see the facts for what they are. Old synapses have been severed, so the neurons can engage in free-flowing brainstorming. Mark described this kind of brainstorming really well in his last two letters.

VINEETO: Therefore I do not need to ‘ever accomplish the hard-wiring’ as you suggest – what I do in the continuous process of increasing attentiveness is to become aware of and remove the redundant software programming. Then the hard-wiring, human intelligence, can function undisturbed and undistorted and the senses perceive unfiltered delight.

RESPONDENT: Regarding your last sentence above... the implication is that the underlying human intelligence (including the unique personality components) by its very nature is ‘happy and harmless’, sensately revelling in the universe. Is that a general case or could there be instances of specific human intelligences that do not have that nature, but revel in e.g. causing misery to others? Animals appear to thoroughly enjoy life, unless they’ve been damaged psychologically. Is being happy our birthright, which we typically squander?

VINEETO: Human intelligence is indeed an ‘underlying’ function of the human brain, underlying in that intelligence is subordinate to, and hence crippled by, the instinctual survival passions emanating from the now-redundant primitive or archaic brain. This is the ‘general case’ in that survival instincts are genetically encoded in each and every human brain. The experience of the actualism practice is that intelligence, when freed from the instinctual passions, is by its nature benevolent, sensible and intelligent.

I don’t know which kind of animals you have in mind, but animals on farms or in the wild do not enjoy life – they are driven by the survival instinct of ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’. In the wild animals are constantly on the alert, vigilant for predators and scanning for attack on prey. Animals that are provided with shelter, food and security become domesticated such that the survival instincts are not as pre-eminent but when push comes to shove the wild animal instantly re-surfaces – exactly as it does in the domesticated human animal when push comes to shove.

Animals are not aware that they are cruel, in panic, pining or bored but some are nevertheless are run by feelings and all of them are driven by instinctive imperatives. The idea that animals are innocent or happy is a myth.

Spiritual teachings have always maintained that one only needs to dissociate from one’s social conditioning in order to be ‘who you really are’ – the feeling ‘self’ which is none other than the animal instinctual passions. In contrast, actualism recognizes that the root cause of human malice and sorrow lays in the animal instinctual survival passions and not, as ancient wisdom has it, in conditioned thought and cultural socialization. A freedom from the human condition can only be achieved via ‘self’-immolation, which is both, the death of one’s ego (the social identity) and the extinction of one’s ‘being’ (the instinctual identity).

As for ‘is being happy our birthright’ – it does not make sense to call happiness our ‘birthright’ because there is no court where you could claim your ‘right’. I would rather describe it that the animal survival passions, universally manifest in humans as malice and sorrow, are our biological heritage – ‘me’ being as old as the first human – but a path to freedom from this software programming is now laid out. You can jump right on with both feet and complete the next step in human evolution.

*

RESPONDENT: I could suggest that the developed intelligence has a cultural bias, and hence is affected by conditioning, but that’s starting to get a bit nitpicky and probably not worthy of pursuit.

VINEETO: Why should exploring the link between intelligence and social conditioning be ‘nitpicky’ on a list dedicated to exploring the human condition? On the contrary, it’s absolutely ‘worthy of pursuit’ to investigate how one can free one’s intelligence from one’s inevitably acquired ‘cultural bias’, which is not part of intelligence per se. As such any of my cultural bias, which prevents me from harmoniously living with my fellow human beings, needs to be eliminated.

To give you an example – when I was a young student I believed that certain German traits were common to all humans on the planet until I came to India and discovered that Indians lived by a whole different set of traits, often quite opposite to those I had learned. My ‘self’-oriented horizon widened even more when, living in an international community, I had opportunity to study all sorts of national cultural traits. I also discovered that whilst I could easily let go of some of my acquired traits, other traits were deeply rooted in who I thought and felt I was.

To separate intelligence from its cultural bias is fairly easy in practice – whenever you are not happy and harmless, then it is either your social identity or your instinctual identity that is interfering with the free operation of your intelligence.

RESPONDENT: The point I was making was that our intelligence is a developed faculty and is biased by our upbringing. The boy who is raised by wolves exhibits intelligence, but it has a wolf-ish flavour. If the wolf boy were to practice actualism and succeeded in deleting the wolf-cultural bias and the instinctual programming, the remaining intelligence would still have been shaped by his upbringing. It would not remotely be the same as yours, or mine.

VINEETO: I wonder what’s the point of your point, i.e. what’s the relevance of this hypothetical example. My experience with the various aspects of my social identity, such as spiritual beliefs, belonging to a nation, a group, a family, a gender or a work-related social club, was that particular aspects of my social identity, when investigated and understood, disappeared without a trace – often I had trouble remembering what it was that I had hung unto so desperately or what had been so important and defining ‘me’ just a little while ago. Each aspect of one’s identity, when understood in its totality, vanishes without leaving as much as a scar or even a memory.

It all becomes clear in the doing.

As for your example of a man having grown up amongst wild animals – when a person is actually free then he or she is completely free from his or her instinctual passions as well as from his or her social identity – no matter what the content of his or her previous identity had been. Therefore the intelligence in a person free from the human condition is unencumbered by their former identity. You could safely assume that just as my previous German social conditioning does not bias my intelligence today, his belonging to the wolf-tribe wouldn’t bias his intelligence. In that sense his intelligence would indeed be similar to yours or mine – intelligence being solely a function of the brain, an organ of the flesh and blood body – provided all three were free from the human condition.

Something Peter wrote in his Journal goes along with this assumption –

Peter: A statement that particularly struck me about Cro-Magnon was that they were fully modern in anatomy, behaviour and language ability and could have been taught to fly a jet plane. I baulked at this but there is evidence, even in my lifetime, of so-called primitive people who, given a modern education or training, are indeed capable of flying a jet plane. Yet despite this capacity for intelligent thinking, nothing much has basically changed in human behaviour in the last 40,000 years. War, rape, torture, suicide, persecution, domestic violence, and despair are still endemic. Peter’s Journal, Evolution

As for a person’s sensuous preferences, choices, particular behaviour or personal quirks, when free from the human condition, one can only speculate and such speculations are of no relevance to actualism.

If you want to experientially discover in what ways your intelligence would benefit from actualism, you will need to abandon philosophizing about what would happen if a ‘wolf boy were to practice actualism and succeeded in deleting the wolf-cultural bias and the instinctual programming’ and begin to actively inquire into your own cultural bias, i.e. into you own dearest beliefs. You will then discover that intelligence improves in direct correlation to the diminishing of beliefs.

RESPONDENT: I saw myself made of beliefs, feelings, emotions etc. So anything which is not this ‘I’ has to be new for if it is not new it would still be part of ‘me’. Whether I will get into actual world or not by your method, but whenever ‘I’ cease to exist, whatever unfolds, has to be completely new, completely fresh with no shadow of the old.

VINEETO: It reminds me of my first big peak-experience when I suddenly popped out of the immense cloudy construct of beliefs and discovered that the actual world was already here. The world was utterly new, I looked at Peter with fresh eyes and experienced our talking in a new way. 

With a switched on brain, TV can become a useful tool to study the Human Condition, not only in me, but in its workings in everybody. Oprah Winfrey is a goldmine of information, and her all-round spirituality, that includes everyone’s superstitions, is quite revealing. You are making your own observations – but for me, I always used them back on me, to check my fears, my superstitions, my hypocrisy. And it helps immensely to remember that they are the Human Condition, in all of us, and not a personal quirk. I don’t find TV to be an idiot box at all. One doesn’t need to switch one’s brain off when watching... quite the contrary, it can be a fascinating source of valuable information for exploring the Human Condition.

The insights that happen when one starts investigating into the Human Condition are another matter, and they usually don’t come spontaneously. They are the result of sincere and persistent inquiry into the facts of a particular situation until those facts become blindingly obvious. Take the belief in God or Existence or whatever other name He goes by. Every single fact points to that God does not exist in actuality as verifiable by the senses, and that ‘He’ is but a mere collectively produced projection of a fearful humanity. Take away the fear and it becomes so obvious – you would not even call it an insight, it is simply an acknowledgment of the case. But in order to see it so clearly, it takes a persistent digging into one’s beliefs – and fears – to dare to undertake an investigation that people regard as blasphemous and iconoclastic. The main tricks are not to let anything stop you from finding out the facts, and never to settle for second best.

So, it’s perfectly appropriate to enjoy the expertise of our brain and ‘get my head out of the metaphysical and psychological and pay attention to the actual for a while ... mmmm ... coffee!’ I’m going to have croissants with ham and cheese and a fresh-ground, freshly brewed cup of Caddie’s coffee!

KONRAD: You know what? I stop here reading you. Probably the rest you write is just one huge attack on what I represent, and probably there is nothing good you can find in me, now that your mind is set. So I do not want to waste any more energy on you. Not again such a stupid exchange of misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. The basic problem with our communication is that you have drawn far-reaching conclusions from some honest mistakes. How could I know whether you were a man or a woman, when your e-mails begin with ‘Peter’? And then again, how could I know that Vineeto is a woman’s name? I just thought it to be some name Osho Rajneesh has cooked up.

VINEETO: I took some time to let your letter sink in and to mull about the response. I usually like to let some clarity emerge before I answer, especially when the letter is as emotional as yours has been.

I did not mean to attack you when I said: ‘Logic is the male weapon to tackle life, but it has utterly failed.’ It is simply my experience. For instance, I have seen you discuss with Richard for pages and pages as to whether there is anything worthwhile in his approach to freedom. Now, if someone offers me a key to a prison door, like he does, I don’t think up reasons why it should not work, compare it to other keys with a different colour or form – I try it in the lock. Only then I can decide with the confidence of the experience, that the key opened the lock or not. His key to the prison door of the Human Condition is the simple question, asked with intent and honesty over and over again: ‘How do I experience this moment of being alive?’ and then examine the upcoming emotions, feelings, beliefs and passions.

Now, this is what I call using common sense instead of logic: logic in this case is used to defend an old pattern and not look at its mis-functioning, common sense is trying something new. And in my life I have mainly come across men who were very good in finding excuses with abstract logic not to try something new, neither to examine nor feel their emotions, let alone get rid of them. It could be scary but it may well be successful. I have seen logic being used to wander from the subject, to build castles in the clouds, to create theories that don’t hold any water when it comes to actual situations of daily life.

Women, on the other hand, generally use emotional outbreaks to distract and divert from an issue or subject that scares them. They are conditioned to swim in emotionality rather than sort things out, i.e. eliminate the cause, with a strait-forward intelligence. Accordingly, I had used sulking, guilt, stubbornness, being paranoid or angry to not give up my dearly held familiar beliefs and behaviours – often unconscious – even if those beliefs had failed for years. In order to live in peace and harmony, instead of using my well-practiced defence mechanisms, I had to put exactly those female ‘weapons’ under scrutiny and cast them aside.

Only without the clouding of rationalizing, emotions and instincts can COMMON SENSE – our innate intelligence – start functioning to solve our practical problems. It has been this very common sense that brought us all the comfort, technology and communication that we are enjoying today.

In the first place I am not attacking you, I am questioning your theories. I for myself know there is a vast difference between the two, because I can easily function and live without theories or beliefs. But it seems that you don’t see a difference between your teaching and your person or ‘self’.

Your response has exactly proven the point I was making about feeling insulted. Having cleaned myself up of emotions I never feel insulted, annoyed, attacked or even bored by anyone’s statement. Therefore I can examine the given argument for its contents and check out the facts. This is where I found Richard’s method invaluable. I can look at the issue rather than the personal feelings. If the issue evokes an emotion in me, then that has to be checked out first. Usually I would take some time and examine why this particular point brushed me up the wrong way. Given that every emotional response is a defence mechanism of the ‘self’ – which I consider harmful and redundant – it was then obvious that these very emotions were the substance of the ‘self’ and had to be eliminated.

My main question to you has been and still is: Does the concept that you are teaching change the person in his behaviour to other fellow human beings, or does it avoid exactly this frightening, but so vital issue. Neither logic nor the controlling of emotions has ever succeeded in eliminating malice and sorrow, wars and ‘domestics’, suicide and murder from the world. I understand that this is exactly what you are trying to do with your concept. I just doubt that it works, and further, you have actually proven in your response to me that it doesn’t work. Your concept of logic and tautology does not appear to change your behaviour to fellow human beings, ‘when push comes to shove’ (as the Australians say).

KONRAD: I have the strong impression that you have (almost?) no ability to think for yourself.

VINEETO: And in the next post you write:

[Konrad]: Look, Vineeto, you are obviously a very intelligent individual, who I observe to be courageous as well. For it takes real courage to try out such an extreme vision as that of Richard. .. You are intelligent and courageous enough to think for yourself. [endquote].

I don’t know which of your evaluations is valid at the time you read this mail. But I agree the intelligence and courage are the only qualities one needs to discover freedom, to get rid of every bit of ‘I’, ‘self’, ‘being’ and whatever names you like to call that ‘what you think and feel you are’. Nothing else is needed. Everybody with sufficient intent can tackle their shackles that prevent us from being free.

KONRAD: Yes, that pure intent part is also something I consider to be rubbish.

VINEETO: Why ‘also’. I for my part find it definitely essential and imperative for becoming free. Without intent there is no way to question the very carpet one has built one’s world on. I don’t know how you can get on with your ‘process’, which must be quite scary at times, without the intent to become the best one can be?

KONRAD: However, to put your mind at ease with that contradiction. Sometimes I do not express myself too clearly.

VINEETO: Do you mean I have to take everything you say with the option of being not clear. I wonder how we can have a decent conversation unless each expresses himself or herself as clearly as he/she can?

KONRAD: You have an ability to think for yourself. Only, there is also an UNWILLINGNESS. For there is too much at stake for you. This is what I tried to say.

VINEETO: I can assure you that I indeed can think for myself, more than ever in my life. Because there is no emotion for or against an authority figure clouding my thinking I can judge for myself what is silly and sensible. As for unwillingness, I don’t know how you assume that. Unwillingness is based on emotion, usually fear, sometimes resentment against an authority figure. Since I have removed the very capacity in me to regard anybody as an authority figure (not an expert, we have been through that discussion), the only unwillingness I sometimes experience in me is based on fear. With sincere intent that fear is overcome and I can move again in the direction of actual freedom.

KONRAD: If being free from suffering is paid by the price of not being able to think abstractly any more, it cannot be applied on any grand scale. For our lives depend on that faculty.

VINEETO: I don’t know how you assume that I cannot think abstractly.

I apply the result of my thinking to sensible action. The trouble with you is that you don’t seem to think ‘concrete’, as in practical, using common sense and applying the practical intelligence we are also equipped with. You seem to try and figure everything out by meditation or imagination, but Actual Freedom can only be experienced, not imagined. That’s where we don’t agree.

VINEETO: As for your description of how you now understand actualism in general and ‘Richard’s position’ in particular, I will make the facts about actualism clear ‘step by step’.

KONRAD: I have never ceased to think about Richard’s position and that of mine. How they differ, and what the corresponding points are. Step by step I learned what was the matter. By reading some of the pages, I see that I then made the error of thinking that what Richard had found was some kind of ideology. Maybe you find it a good thing to hear that I know better now, for my view on the total capacity of Man has increased enormously over the years.

VINEETO: My first question is, how do you ascertain that those ‘four forms of intelligence’ and your ‘view on total capacity of Man’ is more than a theory and not yet another of your many varying ideological concepts? There are hundreds of concepts about ‘Man’ floating around in spiritual and scientific circles and they all have more to do with imagination than with tangible verifiable facts. The exact functioning of the human brain is still in its early stages of mapping and any concept so far can only be guestimation and speculation, unless it is based solely on the empirical facts known to date.

Given that you are proposing ‘four forms of intelligence’, here is the dictionary definition of intelligence –

1 The faculty of understanding; intellect. 2 Quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity. 3 The action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something). 4 An intelligent or rational being, esp. a spiritual one; a spirit. Oxford Dictionary

KONRAD: 1: You have the intelligence of the body, represented by the lymph glands. It is a form of intelligence that is spread out all over the body. Its main purpose is to keep the body into existence, and coherent, i.e., to defend it against microbes and viruses. I call this ‘existence-intelligence’.

VINEETO: ‘Existence-intelligence’ is a spiritual description for what is commonly known as the immune system. Vis:

Lymph nodes expose micro-organisms and other substances circulating in the lymph to infection-fighting phagocytic cells and lymphocytes. Great numbers of lymph nodes are distributed along the lymphatic vessels. Lymph channels leading to the nodes conduct lymph slowly into and out of the node. As the lymph is filtered through the node, it is exposed to many phagocytic cells – cells that can engulf micro-organisms or other foreign materials. Foreign materials in the lymph are particularly exposed to lymphocytes, which attack the invaders directly or synthesize antibodies against them. Another function of the node is to add lymphocytes and antibodies to the lymph as it passes through, ensuring that the capacity for immune response pervades the entire lymphatic system. Encyclopaedia Britannica

To claim that these micro-organisms have the faculty of ‘understanding, intellect’ or ‘comprehension’ is to make the word intelligence mean something it clearly does not.

KONRAD: It is a form of intelligence that does not only exist in our body, but is present in existence itself. It is based on the 92 elements.

VINEETO: If this functioning were intelligent, then every grain of sand, blade of grass, every worm, every mouse and every pig needs to be called intelligent. Your assigning intelligence to ‘existence itself’, however, is a well-known belief in spiritual circles where the word intelligence – or ‘Intelligence’ – is synonymous for God. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti considered himself the living embodiment of that ‘supreme intelligence’ (otherwise known as ‘that which is sacred, holy’ ). Surely you are not trying to tell me that our corporal immune system is the work of God?

KONRAD: 2: You have the intelligence of the brain stem and nervous system. I call this ‘biological intelligence’, which takes too long to explain here.

VINEETO: The function of the nervous system is to respond to stimuli in an electrochemical process, a process that works independently of intelligence. There are many examples of humans who have had brain damage such that intelligence – ‘quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity’ – does not operate and yet the nervous system remains functioning. The brain-stem, which connects the brain to the spinal cord, plays a special role in controlling reflexes, conducting impulses to the viscera (internal organs), regulating the internal environment of the body, and maintaining an ideal state of activity within the nervous system itself. To call an electrochemical response ‘intelligence’ as in ‘quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity’ is to yet again assign divine qualities of ‘Intelligence’ to something that has nothing to do with sagacity.

KONRAD: 3: You have the intelligence of the limbic system. I call it ‘social intelligence’. It is a form of intelligence composed mainly of emotions. It subsumes all of our symbolic thinking, all of the social processes, all of science, in short everything that can be called ‘information’.

VINEETO: The limbic system including the amygdala is known to be concerned with basic emotions and with autonomic and olfactory functions. To call a system for basic human emotions ‘social intelligence’ is to make mockery of the word intelligence. A clear-eyed observation of the human condition reveals that none of the human behaviour resulting from emotions is intelligent, i.e. ‘the action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something)’. Particularly when people have acted emotional they later confess that they don’t know what they were doing and they don’t understand what came over them.

Mr. LeDoux has done some fascinating empirical research into the pivotal role that the amygdala plays as the alarm system for the sensory input that comes to the brain. He called it the ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ which is responsible for our fundamental experience of instinctually-based fear, for instance when encountering real or imaginary danger. He has empirically proven that sensory input is transported to the primitive emotional brain far quicker (12msec as opposed to 25msec) than to the cognitive awareness seated in the neo-cortex. As such, an emotional-instinctual response is faster and cruder, i.e. quicker and dirtier, than any possible cognitive intelligent response to a given situation. (http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/) If the emotions that arise from this quick and dirty instinctual passionate response were intelligent, then we wouldn’t live in a world ravaged by wars, rapes, murders, terrorism, famines, overpopulation, corruption and poverty.

KONRAD: 4: And, as a last form, there is the intelligence of the cortex. I call it ‘inner intelligence’. In the normal condition it is a ‘slave’ of the social intelligence. However, it can become a vessel of a construction from the Social Intelligence that can have ‘magnanimous proportions’. This happens when the ‘social intelligence’ creates one huge system of symbols within the cortex that then, as a system, takes over.

VINEETO: Scientists have established that the neo-cortex permits the higher functions of imitation, speaking, writing, planning and conceptualization. Since this is the only form of intelligence, there is no need to call it ‘inner intelligence’ – there is no such thing as a dichotomy between an inner and outer intelligence in the human brain. To propose that the ‘Social Intelligence’ – along with whatever spiritual self-inflating beliefs that have been taken on board as ‘truths’ – takes over the ‘inner intelligence’ is just another description of the spiritual process of self-aggrandizement.

However, intelligence can only operate freely when it is not ‘subsumed’ by instinctual passions and its resulting emotions. As Mr. LeDoux has pointed out in his book ‘The Emotional Brain’, there is a distinct asymmetry in the way sensory information is passed on by the thalamus into two streams – one to the amygdala and one to the neo-cortex. Therefore the limbic brain has a far greater influence upon the neo-cortical brain than vice versa – which is precisely why the instinctual passion for narcissism has had such a stranglehold on the human search for freedom and happiness.

So in order to free one’s intelligence from the influence of the amygdala and the instinctual passions, one begins to pay attention to and becomes increasingly aware of one’s constantly running social and instinctual programming, seated in the reptilian and limbic part of the brain. One becomes thus able to observe and dismantle one’s own psyche in operation. The method of actualism is designed to de-program the brain so that both one’s intelligence and one’s sensate experiencing can operate freely without the interference of the animal-instinctual parts of the brain. Then, and only then, the actual world becomes apparent in its purity, magic and magnificence.

KONRAD: This is the Self Richard has talked about.

VINEETO: The fact is that the ‘self’ Richard refers to is the entity inside this flesh-and-blood body that is programmed both genetically with the instinctual passions and socially by one’s cultural upbringing. When the ‘self’ identifies as its Higher Self or ‘Supreme Intelligence’ as in Enlightenment, it is commonly described as the capital S ‘Self’. To call the institutionalized delusion of grandeur aka enlightenment ‘Social Intelligence’ is to yet again make mockery of the word intelligence.

KONRAD: When this system has become completely consistent, and has reached a certain complexity, it begins to have the property of ‘self-duplication’, and ‘it’ then wants to spread over as many individuals as it can, creating, in the process a new social order. This is the process whereby all social orders come into existence. This is the most advanced form the social intelligence can assume. It then becomes an intense source of emotions, up to sacrificing every individual that is infested by it, just by its desire to spread. It is the main source of all wars, and much violence. Whenever such a Self has been formed, the limbic system has reached complete command over the body, the actions, and the thinking mechanism. Indeed, it has reduced the thinking part of us into a ‘mechanism’. This is what Richard has correctly identified as the meaning of the word ‘enlightenment’.

VINEETO: What you describe here has nothing to do with what Richard experienced in his enlightenment years and what is commonly described as enlightenment. Enlightenment is neither ‘the most advanced form of social intelligence’ nor the ‘main source of all wars’. But enlightenment is certainly emotions writ very large and sensible thinking writ off altogether, which in itself proves that enlightenment is neither socially nor intelligently ‘advanced’. Enlightenment, Self-realization, a state of Higher Intelligence or whatever is not the ‘main source of all wars’ – the main source of all wars are the animal instinctual passions of fear and aggression as well as nurture and desire that are deeply rooted in every single human being and can erupt whenever the normal structure of social morals and ethics fail to curb them. Your latest theories of ‘four forms of intelligence’ yet again blatantly deny this fact.

KONRAD: Now the point is this: Richard has thus observed, correctly, that Man is mainly a social being, whether the ‘I’ only controls the body, or there is some higher form of ‘I’, that has taken over the lower ‘I’. Both the ‘I’ and the ‘Self’ are social in essence. The social intelligence, the intelligence of the emotions, is thus (rampantly) dominant in Man. He has also observed, correctly, that this type of intelligence, no matter how far developed, is unable to cope with aggression, war, and, in general is even the very source of them all, including the misery he calls ‘the human condition’.

VINEETO: Can you see now why it is inappropriate to call ‘the intelligence of the emotions’ intelligence? As you state yourself, ‘this type of intelligence’ is not only unable to ‘cope with aggression, war’ but is the very reason for it, whereas intelligence means understanding, comprehending and acting with sagacity.

KONRAD: He makes the error, though, to equate the social intelligence with the biological intelligence. An understandable mistake, though, because the source of this form of intelligence is identified correctly by him as being situated in the limbic system. And since this is misidentified by our culture as some animal part, he has taken this over.

VINEETO: Since Richard never uses the expressions ‘social intelligence’ and ‘biological intelligence’ your statement is nonsensical. However, what Richard makes clear is that to experience an ongoing actual freedom from malice and sorrow it is not enough to slip out of one’s social identity (one’s cultural-spiritual set of morals and ethics) but that one needs to eliminate one’s very ‘being’ –

Richard: All sentient beings are born with instinctual passions like fear and aggression and nurture and desire genetically bestowed by blind nature which give rise to a rudimentary animal ‘self’ – which is ‘being’ itself – that human beings with their ability to think and reflect upon their mortality have transformed into a ‘me’ as soul (a ‘feeler’ in the heart) and an ‘I’ as ego (a ‘thinker’ in the head). Richard’s Journal, A Précis of Actual Freedom

KONRAD: Nevertheless, it makes him think that the aggression that is inherent in the social intelligence, and, indeed, in every ideology, in every form of truth, is both social and biological. He does not make a clear distinction between biological intelligence and social intelligence. He thinks they are one and the same. In this his diagnosis is incomplete. Nevertheless, he has seen much more than I have given him credit for.

VINEETO: Before you draw logical conclusions you first have to check your initial premise for veracity. Your premise about Richard is entirely your own fantasy and your understanding is seriously hampered as you attempt to fit Richard’s ongoing actual experience into your theoretical concept of ‘four forms of intelligence’, three of which have nothing to do with intelligence at all. Also your whole argument is predicated on denying the fact that human beings are animal and, like all animals, have a genetically encoded survival program.

KONRAD: Now his solution, as is mine, is a transformation. What he asserts, and apparently has achieved in himself, is letting the biological intelligence be the dominant forms of intelligence, overruling the social intelligence. He lets to let it operate in such a way, that the social intelligence is, so to speak, ‘switched off’. Or at least changed in such a way, that ‘personhood’, the ‘I’-ness is no longer dominant. Indeed, even the ‘Self’ is subdued by his solution. So his solution is to let the ‘intelligence of the brain-stem and the nervous system’ take over completely. I suspect that this makes him live completely into the ‘here and now’. Time loses meaning for him, and even space has no meaning for him. Even concepts in general lose their grip on him, and only remain in their actual form. The only thing left of the concepts of space and time, for example, are ‘here’ and ‘now’, with the full realization, that ‘here’ is ‘everywhere ‘the body’ is, and ‘now’ is ‘everywhen’ the body is. This makes that the only thing that exists for the ‘intelligence of the brain stem’ is ‘facts, actuality and actions’. It means, that the ‘existence of existence’ is fully experienced, without the intervention of the ‘I’ and ‘Self’, or through any form of symbolic interpretation as is the case with almost, no, virtually everybody else. So the word ‘actualism’ is well – chosen indeed. Maybe a better word would be ‘factualism’.

VINEETO: Richard does not talk about transformation, but about ‘self’-immolation, which is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spiritual gobbledegook. If you would read a bit more carefully how Richard described what happened to him first in 19981 when he became enlightened and then in 1992 when his psyche disintegrated and he became actually free, you would see that what happened was something entirely different to ‘the intelligence of the brain-stem and the nervous system take over’. Here is the description in his own words –

Richard: I am these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Richard’s Journal, Appendix One

It seems that not many people are able to understand the state of an actual freedom from the human condition unless they themselves have had a glimpse of it in a pure consciousness experience. The pure consciousness experience is where ‘I’, the social identity and ‘me’ the instinctual passions are temporarily in abeyance and it is not to be confused with what you describe further below as ‘‘consciousness’ has taken over completely’ because that only means that the identity now identifies as ‘Consciousness’, ‘Higher Self’, Higher Intelligence or whatever other name ‘I’ chose to call myself.

A pure consciousness experience (PCE) is a short glimpse of consciousness being completely devoid of any social and instinctual programming. ‘I am these sense organs in operation’, as Richard describes it. In a PCE, it becomes glaringly obvious that usually one’s ‘self’, the social and instinctual programming – that which you erroneously call social and biological intelligence – is interfering with the clean sensate and apperceptive experience of this actual world. Unless one develops a keen sense of ‘self’-observation and attentiveness to one’s own automatic programming, this social-instinctual automatic ‘self’-centredness is almost impossible to penetrate and one’s perception is thus limited to the views, beliefs and ‘symbolic’ concepts rooted in this programming.

KONRAD: Now the difference between him and me is huge.

VINEETO: Indeed. You say below that ‘‘I’ and ‘Self’ are very much alive’ whereas Richard has freed himself from the entire psychic and psychological entity, something unprecedented in human history.

KONRAD: For my solution to ‘the human condition’ is completely different. My nervous system also went through some form of transformation. It has in common with his transformation, that the ‘social intelligence’, the ‘intelligence of the emotional part of us’ is also no longer dominant. Only with me it is not taken over by the intelligence of the brain stem, but it is taken over by the intelligence of the neocortex. This does not mean an ‘undercutting’ of emotions, as is the case with Richard, but a ‘domination of emotions’ by that part of the brain, that is fully programmable, and that is the seat of consciousness itself. If I would describe it, I would say that in me ‘consciousness itself became conscious’. And, since consciousness is a process, it manifests itself to the other intelligences, especially the social intelligence, into the form of a ‘process’.

VINEETO: Your concept that Richard has ‘undercut’ his emotions is entirely your interpretation of Richard’s description of actual freedom –

Richard: Because it is possible for ‘me’ to become extinct, thereby releasing the body from the ‘being’ within, I can walk freely in the world as-it-is ... this actual world. I, as this body only, can live in that perfect purity twenty-four-hours-a-day. Richard’s Journal, Article Fifteen, Selected Writings, The Human Condition

Whereas your description that ‘consciousness itself became conscious’ and ‘‘consciousness’ has taken over completely’ is a common and garden description for the Eastern mystical altered state of consciousness aka enlightenment. Given your statement that ‘‘I’ and ‘Self’ are very much alive’, your entity is indeed very much alive and kicking, now identifying as ‘me’ being ‘consciousness’, which is exactly what Richard described having lived between 1981 and 1992. A diagram on The Actual Freedom website quite accurately illustrates this process of blowing the ‘self’ into huge proportions via the process of spiritual transformation. You may notice in the illustration that in the state of enlightenment Evil (the bad emotions) is still present only sublimated beneath the Good (the good emotions) – and plenty of genuine reports from enlightened people have confirmed this to be factual. Your description that the undesirable emotions are ‘‘overruled’ and thus dominated’ is quite accurate – they are definitely not eliminated.

KONRAD: It is a wonder, that we corresponded as long as we did, considering the huge difference that exists between us, and the total lack of understanding of what was happening that was present in the both of us.

VINEETO: Since your description of your process mirrors the descriptions of enlightenment, I don’t think Richard did ever misunderstand you – after all, he has lived enlightenment for eleven years.

KONRAD: When we communicated with one another, consciousness was not yet completely dominant. This made me have a conflict with Richard. My lower ‘I’ and ‘Self’, then still present, and also still present now, were still resisting against this fourth form of Intelligence. They demanded an ‘explanation’ of the ‘fourth intelligence’ they could be at ease with. But, since these intelligences are of a lower form, they are unable to understand this fourth form of Intelligence. Only because certain events occurred, ‘they’ became aware of this very fact, ceasing ‘them’ to protest.

VINEETO: Reading your description of ‘the process’ I suspect that even what you call ‘inner intelligence’ has not much to do with intelligence as in ‘the action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something)’ , but rather describes some intervention from some imaginary higher intelligence that ‘is present in existence itself’.

In actualism there is no such thing as a battle between a so-called higher and a so-called lower intelligence. When I investigated the facts about the human condition, it became blatantly obvious that human beings are genetically programmed with instinctual passions, which are overlaid by spiritual beliefs and moral-ethical values. Additionally humans have the capacity to think and reflect and the combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation is capable of producing apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception happens when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord ... and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings.

When something is thoroughly understood, free of ‘I’ the thinker and ‘me’ the feeler, then any emotional battle for domination or submission ends and all emotional objections disappear in the bright light of awareness. Whenever I ‘get’ something, i.e. when I understand something experientially and in its totality, there is no resistance from my emotions (your ‘intelligence’ # 3), let alone from my nervous system (your ‘intelligence’ # 2) or my immune system (your ‘intelligence’ # 1). A fact recognized as a fact is simply that. What takes courage, though, is to search for a complete understanding of one’s psyche in action because each process of understanding is another little death of a part of my identity.

RESPONDENT: I personally think that Humour is a good sign of Intelligence. If a person can laugh at himself and make fun of his mistakes and shortcomings (who doesn’t have any?) then he makes his world somehow lighter and free. Osho himself used to make fun of himself (and I learned this too). There were jokes where Osho dies and goes to heaven and sits on God’s throne, or a joke where Osho scares Saint Peter in heaven. He used to say that he was going to hell because there were more juicy and alive people there. Heaven is boring, full of saints and serious people.

VINEETO: Yes, I also think that it is a sign of intelligence when one can see the ridiculousness of what one is doing. But most jokes point at others and are at the expense of the shortcomings of others. It is called fun but is almost always badly disguised plain malice. The impression of ‘lighter and free’ comes from a temporary distraction from the misery all around, but jokes do nothing to actually free you from misery. After a short time it hits back with full force.

It is a wondrous and delightful freedom to be an autonomous, happy and harmless human being. It beats every single joke in the world. Jokes – if they are really good jokes – can only be the cherry on the cream on the cake.

Actual is what is left when all beliefs and emotional interpretations are taken away. Then a tree is a tree and a human being is a flesh and blood body with physical senses and awareness.

VINEETO: Well, I also found out that it does not need a psychic intuition or empathy to come to that conclusion. I could have reached there by straight forward common sense.

VINEETO: The garbage man was only a figure of speech. There is nobody needed, nobody to be relied on and nobody to blame if you fail. You can actually fix yourself up. Just as the body repairs itself, so can the brain be re-wired. As it becomes re-wired – free of the primitive brain and its instinctual fear and aggression – by applying generous doses of bare awareness, common sense and practicality, a vast and actual freedom becomes increasingly apparent. The brain is the tool: I apply liberal doses of common sense to the affected areas and watch the beliefs fade away. Facts replace beliefs. It is so simple – and it works.