Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Flogged Misconceptions

RESPONDENT: You use the word ‘feelings’ but isn’t it more accurate to say ‘thinking’ as anger, sadness, etc.

RICHARD: No, anger and sadness are emotions/passions (aka affective feelings).

RESPONDENT: i.e. ‘feelings’ are actually thoughts i.e. ‘no one likes me’ ‘I am alone’ etc.

RICHARD: The thought ‘no one likes me’ is not the (affective) feeling of being collectively disliked; the thought ‘I am alone’ is not the (affective) feeling of aloneness.

RESPONDENT: There are sensations behind thought i.e. tightness, heaviness, sinking feeling, I give you that but the problem to be examined is the thought which creates the tightness (unhappy) feeling.

RICHARD: Have you never been frightened by a sudden and unexpected loud noise (for example) before you could think? Are you not aware that the freeze-fight-flee instinctual reaction is also observable in other animals than the human animal? Have you not read about the laboratory tests demonstrating that feelings come before thoughts in the perceptive process? Has it not occurred to you that a baby is born with (affective) feelings ... which is well before thinking begins? Moreover, as all animals are born with instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, are you suggesting they can think?

RESPONDENT: Of course animals can think, they have a brain don’t they? They have a memory don’t they? If they have a brain then they have memory and if they have memory then they will have thoughts. One follows the other as a thought is just a memory inside the brain.

RICHARD: Just for starters ... if, as you say, animals can think – that they can conceive in, or exercise the mind with, or form, or have in the mind, an hypothesis, a theory, a supposition, a plan, a design, a notion, an idea, or can conceive of mentally as in meditate on, turn over in the mind, ponder, contemplate, deliberate or reflect on and come to the understanding in a positive active way and form connected objectives or otherwise have the capacity to cogitate and conjecture and choose mentally (as in form a clear mental impression of something actual) – then how is it that when a famine or drought occurs they languish and/or die just as plants do?

RESPONDENT: Anyway you say that feelings come before thought and we should examine feelings – easy said than done – what is a feeling then?

RICHARD: An emotion and/or a passion ... none of which exist in actuality (hence no moods, or auras, or souls/ spirits do either).

RESPONDENT: To me a feeling is a physical vibration or ripple inside the body.

RICHARD: There are no (affective) vibrations or ripples inside this flesh and blood body ... it is all so clean, clear, and pure, here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: What is your definition of an ‘affective feeling’?

RICHARD: An affective feeling is any one of the affections – the emotions and/or the passions – none of which are actual (hence no identity is either).

RESPONDENT: Some say emotion is a feeling e.g. hot sensation in head combined with a thought e.g. – ‘I look stupid’ but there are two things that make up emotion – thought and sensation in body.

RICHARD: Again, have you never been frightened by a sudden and unexpected loud noise (for example) before you could think?

Furthermore, are you not aware that the freeze-fight-flee instinctual reaction is also observable in other animals than the human animal?

Moreover, have you not read about the laboratory tests demonstrating that feelings come before thoughts in the perceptive process?

Even more to the point, has it not occurred to you that a baby is born with (affective) feelings ... which is well before thinking begins?

RESPONDENT: Now if we break this down it shows the thought ‘I look stupid’ comes first or at least the same time as hot sensation, it goes hand in hand, it cant be one without the other.

RICHARD: Are you so sure, upon breaking it down, that the thought of looking stupid (of being as if a fool for instance) always comes before, or simultaneous to, the feeling of stupidity (of feeling foolish for example) ... that there is no occasion whatsoever where the feeling induces the thought?

RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler.

RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler.

RESPONDENT: So it seems logical to me that the feelings, must exist prior of the feeler, because the creator must exist prior to its creation, right?

RICHARD: I would not put it that way – ‘the creator’ and ‘its creation’ – as it conjures up an impression of a cause separate from its effect whereas, if you were to intimately examine this, feeling it out for yourself, you will find that you are your feelings (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (‘my’ feelings are ‘me’).

In hindsight it probably would have been better if I had never baldly said that the feelings *create* the feeler in the e-mail you refer to (further above) as I usually say the feelings *form* themselves into the feeler (as a feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’) as that better describes the process. For example:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘And from what stuff are we made of (our identities) anyhow that it cannot be determined by any magnetic scanning?
• [Richard]: ‘Primarily the identity within is the affections (the affective feelings) – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – as *the instinctual passions form themselves into* a ‘presence’, a ‘spirit’, a ‘being’ ... ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself. MRI scans, and all the rest, cannot detect a phantom being, the ghost in the machine. (...) Put expressively the affective feelings swirl around forming a whirlpool or an eddy (which vortex is the ‘presence’, the ‘spirit’, the ‘being’): mostly peoples experience ‘self’ as being a centre, around which the affective feelings form a barrier, which centre could be graphically likened to a dot in a circle (the circle being the affective feelings) which is what gives rise to the admonitions to break down the walls, the barriers, with which the centre protects itself.
Those people who are self-realised have realised that there is no ‘dot’ in the centre of the circle ... hence the word ‘void’. [emphasis added].

I put it in that expressive way because it is not possible to separate out the feeler from the feelings it is ... just as it is impossible to separate the whirlpool or the eddy – the vortex – from the swirling stuff which is the cause of it (a whirlpool or an eddy – a vortex – of water or air, for example, is the very swirling water or air as the one is not distinct from the other) ... hence ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: So the feelings are innative to the human being, that means they are actual. Instead the feeler is a real entity, but not actual.

RICHARD: Again I would not put it that way ... just because the genetic-inheritance of the instinctual passions is actual – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), being a nucleic acid in which the sugar component is deoxyribose, is a chemical substance – does not necessarily mean that a feeling engendered by that genetic software programme, such as the feeling of fear for example, is actual – any more than the fearer it automatically forms itself into by its very occurrence is actual – especially as you go on to say that the feeler is a real entity but not actual (which implies that the fearer is not the fear – as in ‘I’ am *not* ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are *not* ‘me’ – which, at the very least, smacks of denial if not detachment/ disassociation or even full-blown disidentification from one’s roots).

Now, I could go on from this to say that the feeling is a movement, a motion, and not a thing, as there is no such happening as a stationary (static) feeling and that it is this very movement or motion of the feeling in action when it occurs which automatically forms the feeler (such as in the whirlpool of water/air analogy above) but, again, it would be far more fruitful if you were to intimately examine all this, by feeling it out for yourself rather than just thinking about it, and if you were to actually do so – literally feel it for yourself – you will surely find out, just as ‘I’ did all those years ago, that you are your feelings (as in ‘I’ *am* ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (as in ‘my’ feelings *are* ‘me’).

The actualism method is an experiential method ... not an intellectual method (an analytical method, a psychological method, a philosophical method) or any other self-preserving method of inaction.

RESPONDENT: So we have reality and actuality. Reality comes from the Latin word ‘res’, which means thing. A thing is manmade.

RICHARD: Not necessarily ... the word ‘thing’ is a generic word and can refer to any object/ entity whether geological/ biological or manufactured/ fabricated ... whatever has a discrete, independent existence (whether it be material or immaterial as in concrete or abstract/ physical or metaphysical) and is not a relation or a function, and so on, is a thing.

It is a very wide-ranging word.

RESPONDENT: And man can not do anything without thought and feelings. Right?

RICHARD: No, I have been doing everything for over a decade now sans feelings ... and, just like anybody else, do many things without thought (scratching an itch, for instance, or walking).

A case could probably be made that the majority of things one does are done on auto-pilot.

RESPONDENT: A tree is not man made, so is a tree a thing or a no-thing?

RICHARD: A tree is a thing ... all objects/ entities are things.

RESPONDENT: To make a thing we use ingredients from nature, like wood, iron, etc., but we put them together with factual thought. So a table, a chair, a car are things. Trees, mountains, animals, are not. Right?

RICHARD: No, trees, mountains, animals are things ... just as pieces of wood, lumps of iron, and so on, are.

RICHARD: Mr. Bhanthe Henepola Gunaratana finishes with: ‘Mindfully watching the continuous change of your own feelings can make you abstain from emotional reactions and make you see the truth of your own feelings. Mindfulness of feelings will not cause you to think obsessive thoughts or abusive thoughts or harmful thoughts. By unmindful thinking you abuse your mind. The abused mind always generates abusive feelings, which always is painful’ . Do you think that it is the mind that generates feelings – be they pleasant or unpleasant – as he says?

RESPONDENT: Yes, it seems that egoistic feelings stem from what he calls an abused mind.

RICHARD: You say ‘it seems’ ... do feelings, in fact, originate in the mind?

(Bearing in mind that he means, by the term ‘mind’ , thought and thinking ... and not the physical brain).

It has been demonstrated that the basic passions originate in the brain-stem (popularly called the ‘reptilian brain’) of all sentient beings ... even those without a cerebral cortex. As thinking and thought exist only in the human cerebral cortex, how can he say that ‘emotional reactions’ (which all animals have) are generated by the mind? Does he know what he is talking about?

Is his wisdom, in fact, nothing but psittacisms?

Did Mr. Gotama the Sakyan (if there ever was such a flesh and blood person anyway) know about the ‘reptilian brain’ being the seat of passion?

Is this why Buddhism has been ineffective in bringing about Peace On Earth despite two and a half thousand years in which to do so?

There is as much suffering now as back then.

RESPONDENT: The more mind is identified, not aware, not free to observe, the greater the suffering. The mind that is boundless, not entangled with transient thoughts, feelings and sensations is ecstatic.

RICHARD: Yeah ... and therein lies the enticement of those deeper feelings: ‘ecstatic’, eh? Ecstasy is affective.

Self-aggrandisement once again.

RESPONDENT: Many feelings are felt only when the thinker is thinking on it, but when the thinker stops and there’s silence those feelings also stop, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are only the two sides of the same coin.

RICHARD: The surface emotions, the agitated feelings, stop but not the deepest, most quiet feeling of being ‘me’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself).

RESPONDENT: Yes, the surface ‘conscious’ thinker stops and then the surface emotions also stop, but whereas the thinker and his worries are still boiling in the deepest of conscious the deepest emotions and wishes would not stop. In this way, the thinker and the feeler can be the same yet.

RICHARD: If so, then this is not yet ‘silence’ ... ‘silence’ is when the thinker is not. That is, ‘silence’ is pure feeling (usually called ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’).

RESPONDENT: I mean when there’s a bit of silence because conscious thinking stops for a while. Then, the associated feeling (fear when thinking on whatever) also fades away seeming that it was a thinking dependent process. It seems that there’s not fear if there’s not re-cognition (thought, conscious or unconscious). Fear seems to be a physical response to factual events, triggered when a threat is re-cognised. Fear wakes up the body in a nanosecond and provokes a movement of fleeing or attack; it promotes survival, it seems natural and good for survival, a momentary physical response to factual event, like sleep or be thirsty. When child, a small dog is a factual threat and there’s fear, but when we are grown up and 195 tall the small dog is not a factual threat and there’s not fear. Fear rises or not as a physical bodily response to threats. But when there’s a thinker operating and the response of fear is triggered by interpretations and hopes from this thinker, fear becomes an insane response. You point out that, when there’s not thinker (‘I’ as ego or first I), remains the feeler (‘me’ as soul or second ‘I’) as source of fear and it must fade away, but I can not understand this.

RICHARD: It all depends upon one’s aspirations ... does one aspire to only be free of thought-induced fear (what you call the ‘insane response’ ) or does one also aspire to be free of ‘natural’ fear (what is mostly called the ‘sane response’)?

Can there be peace-on-earth whilst one is still subject to the sane response (‘natural’ fear) from time-to-time?

*

RESPONDENT: When mind is in this situation observing a sunrise, without the thinker operating, there’s only the sense of beauty without the sense of a feeler feeling it.

RICHARD: Rather, without the sense of a personal feeler feeling it: impersonal feeling. That is, pure feeling or pure being (sans the personal identity) is impersonal identity or impersonal ‘being’.

RESPONDENT: It seems that the sense of observer and feeler does not exist then, only exists apperceptive awareness as what is observed (the sunrise) and the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it.

RICHARD: I can easily agree that when the observer is the observed there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... except where there is ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) there is impersonal awareness ‘as what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... and not apperceptive awareness. Although I do not have the corner on the phrase ‘apperceptive awareness’, this impersonal awareness is best called ‘choiceless awareness’ here so as to avoid confusion of terms.

RESPONDENT: In this way, the thinker and the feeler seem to be the same again. Do you consider this observation correct?

RICHARD: If the observer is the observed (and there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ) then, yes, this observation is correct. However, apperceptive awareness, in the way I am using the term, is when ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) is not. It is bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses).

RESPONDENT: I see, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ feelings, I think I grasp what you are conveying here: when there’s not thinker remains yet a feeler (a being who can feel), and these feelings are impersonal (without an ego-thinker feeling it), and in this state there’s also impersonal (choiceless) awareness. Right until here, but you are going beyond and pointing that there’s an state where this impersonal feeler also fades away, and in this state there’s ‘apperceptive’ awareness, [‘bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses)’]. I cannot understand this because it seems to me that an ‘impersonal feeler’ is inherent to be alive, how can exist a being if there’s not an impersonal feeler?

RICHARD: It is the ontological ‘being’ which cannot exist if there is not an impersonal feeler ... not the flesh and blood body (a human being).

RESPONDENT: Without grasping the last, I can not understand what do you mean by ‘apperceptive awareness’ and why is it different of impersonal (choiceless awareness). Can you elaborate further on it?

RICHARD: Yes, ‘choiceless awareness’ is where the fragment (the ontological ‘being’) is the whole (an autological ‘being’ usually capitalised as ‘Being’) ... whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ is where the fragment – and therefore the whole – has ceased to be (‘being’ and/or ‘Being’ itself is not).

*

RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second.

RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings.

RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker.

RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’ . Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings. Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility).

RESPONDENT: By bodily sensations I don’t mean affective feelings, I mean bodily physical responses of discomfort to a threat (rubor, tachycardia, sweating ...). When the threat is to our self image then, this physical discomfort associated to a thinking process on self image, is named ‘shame’. The threat is an illusory thinking process but it is a threat, so that the bodily physical response also arises. The thinker seems to be again the problem, making an illusory self image and later a threat to this self image, triggering a natural physical response to the illusory threat, and naming all it as ‘shame’.

RICHARD: I will put it this way: the ‘natural responses’ (such as the heart pumping furiously; the palms sweaty; the face ruddy; knuckles gripped; body tensed and so on) never occur where the instinctual passions are not.

RESPONDENT No. 45: Many feelings are felt only when the thinker is thinking on it, but when the thinker stops and there’s silence those feelings also stop, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are only the two sides of the same coin. On the other hand, when observing a sunrise and the conscious thinking is stopped a feeling of beauty can also rise in silence, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are different. The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second.

RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings.

RESPONDENT: Are you saying here that thought triggers off the prior existing feelings that are being generated by the instinctual passions? In other words the feeling is already there before the thought?

RICHARD: Yes. The second case (the thoughtless ‘feeling of beauty’ described further above) is the demonstration of this being factual (as is the instant instinctive feeling of fear, for another example, in an imminently dangerous situation). It has been exhaustively tested and scientifically (repeatable on demand) demonstrated that feelings come before thought in the perception-reaction process.

And the child, from birth onwards at least, develops an emotional memory of danger and safety in the ‘reptilian brain’, even before thought, thoughts and thinking commences, as an environmentally-learned supplement to the instinctual passions genetically endowed. There is some research indicating that this ‘environmental-learning’ begins in the womb (through the baby’s more positive response to the mother’s voice-tone, after birth, as contrasted a more negative response to a stranger’s voice-tone).

I did not know of any research when I started to actively discover all this 20 or more years ago: I was the biological progenitor of four children and I was able to intimately participate in the child’s world thanks to the deliberate activation of naiveté (despite the recognised risk of becoming a fool, a simpleton). And, as I was a single parent for a number of years, it became increasingly and transparently obvious that the instinctual passions – the entire affective faculty in fact – was the root cause of all the ills of humankind. One has to actually dare to care, of course, before it is transparently obvious ... which is a very dangerous thing to do

For to dare to care is to care to dare.

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