Vineeto ~ Selected Writings

It was a great step towards an actual freedom and a permanent happiness when I learned for the first time that I could not only explore my emotions to their very core, but actually get rid of them and live without them. But it definitely meant giving up the means of power over men. Since I had already agreed to discard battling as the solution, it was obvious that I had to give up the fight first. If I want peace I can’t wait for the other to start to lay down his arms. This does not work. I have to give up battling because the battle itself is the problem. The solution is not to try and change somebody else, but to look into the very cause of my own unhappiness. Once this condition was understood and agreed upon, we could both cease battling, sit down and talk about any situation that caused disagreement.

Now I would not only ask myself, ‘how do I feel?’ but also question the very necessity of having this feeling. Understanding that emotion itself was a major component of my (female) identity, and of my ‘self’, allowed me to explore what lies behind any upcoming emotion – what thought, what belief, what investment, what instinct. By examining the validity of the underlying cause I was then able to eliminate the subsequent emotions, one by one, including the greatest and holiest of them all: Love itself.

The very first belief I had to get out of the way, before I could even start questioning love, was the Christian virtue of unselfishness. The idea of having to be ‘unselfish’ in order to be considered ‘good’ was causing a lot of confusion in my life. Who was to receive the benefit of my unselfishness? What was the limit? What actually was considered selfish or self-centred? And why was being unselfish so highly valued?

Examining my experiences with, and behaviour towards, other people I found that I have always pursued my own goals in life, as I could see everyone else was doing. Whatever my good intentions and considerations for others, there was always an aspect of personal interest involved. Ultimately I had followed the moral of being unselfish and helping other people in order to be accepted and loved, to reach heaven or become enlightened. The other part of the deal was that I in turn expected to be helped should I be in need of support.

Recognising the fact that every interaction has ultimately self-interest at its core made it easier for me to throw out this hypocritical idea of having to be unselfish.

Now I just find the most sensible way of being happy and harmless which, of course, includes considering everyone who is part of the particular situation. For me, this also involves cleaning myself up so I can be free of misery and malice – not contributing to the chaos people usually create for each other. Everybody seems to live everybody else’s life, perpetuating the cycle of misery by consolation, sympathy, empathy and compassion – thus helping people to stay helpless. I can supply practical help if someone asks me to, but I am not responsible for anybody else’s happiness and neither is anybody else responsible for my happiness. It makes life much less complicated if I stop trying to find the solution for ‘S.E.P.’, ‘Someone Else’s Problem’ and focus my intent and effort on becoming happy and harmless.

This contract between Peter and me had only one condition. It consisted of each of us being prepared to look at every issue that would be in the way between us, so that we would be able to establish a direct intimacy with its resultant peace and harmony between us. It had been almost a life-long yearning, especially intense for the last two years before I met Peter, to find the ‘right’ man for the ‘perfect’ relationship. I had been studying other relationships, what made them click or fail, and I had already come to the conclusion that it would only work if both partners were willing to look at themselves. Also, after long years of experience living in a partnership with its inevitable power battles, manipulations, frustrations and heartache, I decided that, no matter what, I did not want these battles anymore. Either I could like the man and live with him as he was – or not. But I would not continue my past pattern of blaming the other and trying to change him. This was my dowry for the new adventure.

So we both agreed to look deeply into ourselves, come what may, to remove all that formed a gulf between us – all that prevented intimacy. Together with Peter I have explored what it is to be a human being and what exactly makes me tick as a woman – this program of beliefs and instincts with its resulting feelings and emotions. Along the path to freedom I have evaluated and discarded all of the so-called female attributes and values, which women so proudly claim as their main territory – emotions, feelings, love and intuition. I had been fighting a continuous battle within me and against others as to which is right and which is wrong – the male version of demanding, desiring, rationalizing and displaying emotions or the female version. I have found that both versions are silly, useless and redundant.

People might say that I have simply surrendered to the male camp, that I am the man’s clone or carbon copy, repressing my emotions to please the man and have superficial peace. In my experience repression has always failed because it is utterly unreliable. It delivers neither freedom, happiness nor peace, it only causes withdrawal, moodiness, suffering, manipulation, anger, resentment and frustration.

Applying Richard’s method is forcing me to examine and eliminate the very issues and beliefs that are triggering those emotions. It reveals to me that emotions are the crucial part of the ‘self’ – the very cause of my being unhappy and malicious. It enabled me to question the beliefs that both defined and confined me as a woman. Chiselling away my psychological and psychic entity has made emotions and feelings redundant and has left me increasingly free to enjoy every person I meet, every situation that happens and everything that this abundant universe offers. In my ‘role-play’ I am neither a ‘woman’ nor a ‘man’, but simply a human being ...a female, of course!

Up to now I had not found a reliable compass to decide the course, but now the very idea of believing anybody else became questionable. I decided that I wanted more of this actual freedom. Now, for a change, I would start relying on facts and actual experiences instead of someone else’s vision or dream.

Once I had made that decision things became easier. I started to look at every ‘truth’ as possibly just another belief. I feared the reaction or consequences this would cause, but was determined that this should not stop my investigation. There were lots of fears – but the direction was clear now. If the answer lay 180 degrees in the opposite direction I had passed the 90 degree midway point. I had reached the point of no return, where I was willing to question everything that I had simply believed up until now. It became all ‘downhill’ from that point onwards.

So slowly and hesitantly I started to investigate my own religious beliefs. Surprisingly, after taking away the love and loyalty I had felt for Rajneesh I did not find much left of his great myth and wisdom. When I listened to his discourses without the infatuation of love I discovered the underlying power structure. I saw him weaving his net in the ‘psychic world’ – he had called himself the Master of Masters – and I saw the whole construct from the outside. I had wanted to belong to the best master and best group of all, hoping to change the face of the earth along with my life. I had wanted to be loved and to be free of misery, and for that I had been willing to pay with devotion, loyalty and undoubting trust – anything but be on my own in the world. In throwing this last authority overboard, I am now on my own – free of the need to rely on or believe in anything.

This schematic diagram depicts the dynamic between

‘who I think and feel I am’, ‘me’ as a selfish, self-centred, lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity inside this body, afflicted with the Human Condition of malice and sorrow, thereafter called ‘the grey arrows’

and

‘what I am, this flesh and blood body only, living in the actual world, the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’, thereafter called ‘the green arrows’.

The green arrows: During Pure Consciousness Experiences one is taking short excursions into the actual world, for minutes or hours, experiencing life as a kind of holiday stripped of the restricting, burdening, agonizing selfish and self-centred worldview of everyday life. In the beginning those PCEs open one’s eyes to a world never experienced before, never considered possible. On the path to freedom those PCEs are vital, absolutely necessary to determine the direction, to kindle one’s naiveté, to fuel one’s connection to pure intent. The actual world is seen for what it is, and everything is self-evidently clear and obvious, and one recognizes that ‘what I am’ has always been here, I just never got a word in edgeways.

Nevertheless, once the PCE is over and the ‘self’ takes control again, there is only a faint memory left. The world of ‘grey arrows’ and the world of ‘green arrows’ never meet. Given that during a PCE one is without beliefs, feelings and emotions, there is consequently no emotional memory to draw from when one comes back to the ‘real’ world, and the experience can vanish without a trace unless one is very aware. Likewise, back in the world of beliefs, feelings and emotions, the faint memory of the purity and perfection can only be vaguely remembered but not relived or imagined. That’s where naiveté and pure intent are absolutely essential if one wants to experience an actual freedom state for 24 hours a day.

One other important point – spiritually inclined people, and that is almost everyone who is on a search for freedom, peace and happiness, usually confuse the ‘green arrows’ with some sort of spiritual higher ‘self’, Satori, god-experience, beauty, love, bliss or enlightenment. The ‘green arrows’ have clearly nothing to do with any emotion- or feeling-based experience, any Altered State of Consciousness or anything happening in the head or in the heart. ‘Green arrows’ is the sensate-only, sensuous and pure experience of the actual physical universe in its pure, magical, delightful and sparkling perfection.

The grey arrows: Due to the intrinsic quality genetically built into the physical fabric of the universe to be the best it can be, every human being has the potential to evoke naiveté and intent – the innate drive to look for a way out of the grim everyday experience of life. Given that Richard has discovered that one can totally eliminate one’s identity, conditioning and instinctual passions, and has also devised a practical and effective method to do so, it is now possible to use the experience of a PCE to reach to a permanent actual freedom from the Human Condition.

It is no longer necessary to interpret one’s glimpses of the perfection and purity of the actual world as some kind of ‘god-given Grace’, thus degrading and distorting the experience of pure magnificence into a feeling-based self-centred interpretation of beauty, love or ‘the divine’. Out of those moments of a pure consciousness experience one can dare to acknowledge ‘what I am’, a living and apperceptive organism, lived by this splendid and perfect universe, without any sense of ‘being’ whatsoever – and take the first step in direction of an actual freedom.

In order to get closer to one’s avowed aim, the living of a PCE for 24 hours a day, one then has to get off one’s bum and dismantle the ‘grey arrows’ – who one thinks and feels one is. The change that needs to happen can only happen in the ‘grey arrows’. The only thing ‘I’ can do is actively diminish ‘me’ – examining and investigating my social and spiritual conditioning and my set of survival instincts – all my passionate beliefs and my affective imaginations. So when I get confused, or impatient, or fearful, or greedy for more PCEs or discouraged, or, or, or ... this is where I have to look, this is where I can change something. This is where ‘I’ can speed up ‘my’ demise. When I am emotional, slightly off-track or very disturbed, I am the ‘grey arrows’ – and I can only do something about the ‘grey arrows’. That means, ‘I who I think and feel I am’ is the thing that needs to be taken apart, the thing that needs my full attention, pure intent and concentration. The ‘grey arrows’ is the only thing I can do something about, because that is ‘me’, obstructing and preventing the perfection that is already here from becoming apparent. In that sense the ‘green arrows’ don’t really get bigger, ‘what I am’ only becomes more and more apparent.

There is no point in waiting for the ‘Grace of Existence’ to descend and deliver a PCE. When all is said and done, waiting for a PCE derives from a grim-world view where one doesn’t want to be here but wants to go somewhere else – into a PCE. There is nothing I can do about the ‘green arrows’ – ‘what I am’ is already perfect, it is already as it should be. But I can actively do something about the obstacles that prevent me from experiencing the actual world; I can remove, slowly and meticulously, the stuff that the identity consists of. I can investigate into each belief, each hope, faith and ‘truth’, examine experientially each feeling and emotion that is triggered by people or situations, until I finally uncover the bare animal instincts. By that time the ‘grey arrows’ have become rather thin and transparent so that the ‘green arrows’ of ‘what I am’ can be more and more clearly experienced.

During the first year on the path to Actual Freedom I could clearly distinguish when a PCE started and when it ended. It was like a chandelier had been switched on in a very dim room, and suddenly everything was stunningly clear and obvious, the emotional problems from minutes before suddenly disappeared and – if I wanted to – I could also determine which problem and belief to tackle next.

In Virtual Freedom the situation is a bit different. The size of the ‘grey arrows’ diminished and the ‘green arrows’ – ‘what I am’ – becomes more and more prevalent and apparent. The days are filled with delight, hardly any emotions interfere with my happiness and life itself becomes more and more obvious, there are neither problems to solve nor insights to achieve. I simply know that every belief is wrong just because it is a belief – it is only a question of ‘where’ or ‘how’ this belief is false. At this stage, the instincts can be clearly seen for what they are – chemical surges of the dying entity. When the ‘who I think and feel I am’ becomes so weak and transparent, a pure consciousness experience is not as outstanding and not as sought after as in the beginning.

But PCEs are not my main concern now. My main concern is the ending of ‘me’. My main concern is sitting it out and enjoying the final jerks of the dying identity as much as possible, with as little emotional worry or fear as possible. Life is fantastic as it is, I know my direction as clearly as I can see the moon in a cloudless sky. Now there is no question of going off-track, which had been one of my biggest worries, and now there is no question about the inevitability of success. All the ‘grey arrows’ only point in one direction and that is towards the ‘pop’.

And so everything is perfectly perfect, and utterly normal, deliciously excellent and thrillingly delightful – with sometimes the curious experience that I want to stop being here because it gets all too much – but that seems to have become impossible. So I go for a walk, jump up and down and then ‘give in’ to enjoying the thrill of it all.

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Vineeto’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.