(List D refers to Richard’s List D and his Respondent Numbers)

From Basic Freedom to Full Actual Freedom

Part One: The Social Identity

Vineeto

RICHARD: [...] below is an excerpt from an earlier email of Vineeto (December 03, 2010), where she describes how her intent formed itself just before I left for India on Mar 25, 2010, and what she set about doing after I returned six months later (on Sep 03, 2010).

• [Vineeto]: ‘(...) in my long-standing interactions with Richard as an identity I often felt and sometimes expressed the intent to be the first woman to become free – to be that female pioneer who not only proves that an actual freedom is repeatable but who will provide the obviously necessary balance in gender for an actual freedom to gaily spread in the world at large (hence ‘destiny’ above). Very soon after becoming newly actually free a modus operandi emerged as a way to speed up the progress of the transitional period/ to move a completion of this transitional period for the pioneers forward, which can be described as exploring closer and closer intimacy in the interactions between Richard and the newly actually free people (something you may not have fully understood at the time).

To explain, Richard has described that being actually free results in experiencing an actual intimacy because the separation caused by the identity no longer exists here. This enables a direct, unmediated experiencing of people, things and events.

In contrast, the intimacy between actually free people – what we chose to call ‘exquisite intimacy’ – is different; it is interactive, closer and more direct and something entirely new to human consciousness. We played a game of ‘how close can we get’ which led for me, amongst other profound experiences, to the revelation of ‘Closeness Itself’, where I aligned myself with Richard as he actually is and to what he actually does. To spell it out – Richard’s goal is my goal – dedicating my life to peace on earth, whatever it takes. Out of this dedication the intent emerged, which on the 10th of March (shortly before Richard left for India) I formulated as ‘I want to *be* you, Richard’.

As I repeated those words to myself, with the sincere intent to start a process of becoming Richard as he actually is while looking into his eyes, I began experiencing falling into infinitude.

During the experience I became aware that I had passed a point of no return and kept going nevertheless, fully aware that I was irrevocably giving up any trace of a private life, a personal life, and that my life from thereon was dedicated to becoming, being and doing whatever it takes to bring about a virtual/an actual freedom for everyone. Hence, as soon as Richard returned from India, I set about to work to close the gap between my basic actual freedom and his way of experiencing himself (as described in the second half of his journal) as the discoverer and genitor of an actual freedom achieved via going beyond full blown spiritual enlightenment (as in being the Ground of Being) into what was previously considered only possible after physical death (as in Parinirvana/ Mahasamadhi). Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘There is an utter purity in the perfection of this universe that one and all live in which wells up ever-fresh from an immense stillness which is the genesis of all that is apparent’.
• [Richard]: ‘This stillness of infinitude is that something which is precious. It is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. This stillness happens as me. This stillness is my essential disposition, for it is the principle character, the intrinsic basis of everything. It is this universe at its genesis’. (Richard’s Journal, Chapter Twenty-Five).

(Friday, December 03, 2010 6:17 PM).

(Richard, List D, Claudiu2, 28 May 2013).

I am aware that this dedicatory event “to becoming, being and doing whatever it takes to bring about a virtual/an actual freedom for everyone” has greatly influenced and sped up my own process of becoming fully free, and thus my reports of the events as they occurred may apply differently to other people after they become free from the instinctual passions and the feeling being thereof.

Putting this report together from the various descriptions I have written about my own process of becoming fully free plus Richard’s reporting on it I realize that my own story barely applies to anyone basically free, especially the short time in which it happened, and as such everyone will have to find their own pace and sequence in which they investigate their own remnants of social identity. However, the very clear understanding of the nature of this process I gain from writing about it now is that unless one is permanently free from this “wraithlike presence”, the social identity, there cannot be any lasting progress into experiencing the genderless, ageless, shapeless and limitless attributes of the boundless universe.

*

Geoffrey expressed the reason for this really well for which I obtained permission to publish –

21.6.2024
Geoffrey: Dear Vineeto,
I indeed suspect that the years you spent dealing with the social identity before becoming actually free were one of the reasons why you progressed so fast towards full actual freedom. Not to diminish your merit (the strength of your commitment), nor your mettle, nor Richard’s influence, etc. 

It might be that the problems seen within this generation of actually free people I belong to (the apparent inability to move beyond the guardian phase, and the resultant inappropriate display of what actual freedom is), have to do with the ‘ease’ of the direct route itself, the fact that one may just “go for it” as soon as one wants to (...), without any significant period spent working towards or living in virtual freedom. It’s a positive, for sure, that it is this ‘easy’, as there is no reason that people may not start becoming actually free in droves right now… and it’s kind of puzzling that they don’t. Yet, knowing that going for actual freedom asap will leave one with quite the guardian to deal with after, has often skewed my advice to aspiring actualists towards working on progressing on the wide and wondrous path (which requires some working on the social identity and consequently virtual freedom), rather than straight ‘going for it’ (...). 

The presence of social identity, with regards to infinitude, acts like a centre. Whatever whittling away at it has taken place, this essential feature remains. The centre creates bounded-ness. The world then appears to be a snow globe, the sky as its dome, and the limit of one’s perception at the horizon its limit. This pocket world moves along with one at its centre.

In my present experience the glass that separates this snow-globe-world from infinitude has been thinned so much, its fragility is so obvious, that its persistence under the continuous assault of the all-powerful wave of pure intent that stems from infinitude’s stillness is puzzling, and unsustainable. 

I feel like a kid trying to maintain some sandcastle’s seawall against the rising tide. The entire universe is an infinite wave, and my little castle suspended in space is like a bubble about to pop. 

I can’t imagine what it must be like to face that immense energy without such a wall to hide behind, to have it within one’s body, to be somehow transparent to its workings. Your descriptions of such overwhelming energy making you almost immobile should somehow scare me, and yet they seem to make it all the more obvious to me that there is nothing to do but proceed. 

With all my appreciation, (21 June 2024).

To sum it up – 

Geoffrey: “The presence of social identity, with regards to infinitude, acts like a centre. Whatever whittling away at it has taken place, this essential feature remains. The centre creates bounded-ness. The world then appears to be a snow globe, the sky as its dome, and the limit of one’s perception at the horizon its limit. *This pocket world moves along with one at its centre*”. (21 June 2024). [emphasis added].

As such, this “presence of social identity”, which “acts like a centre” is what ‘you’ are, and dictates ‘how an actual freedom *should* be acted out’. As such ‘you’ will not only interpret any experiences of expansion and clarity according to the values of your remnant social identity but also might be fooled into thinking ‘you’ have disappeared when ‘you’ have not. Ergo, the social identity needs to be fully understood in all its facets and abandon itself, at first one by one aspect until it can be perceived as one whole. Only then “this pocket world” is ready to disappear/ willingly and contentedly abdicate. 

In other words, only after the content of the social identity was largely exposed and dissolved, could “this pocket world” be seen as a whole. As such it was clear that the end of the social identity was in sight and Geoffrey had already revealed what the remaining objection was –

22.6.2024
Vineeto: Richard being the first only had his own experience to go by when he started writing about an actual freedom, until others became vitally interested, and then some succeeded in becoming free and one in becoming fully free. These events all added enormous information to the data pool but also may give the impression, and the expectation, that everyone can succeed as easily as Richard and Vineeto. Hence all the complaints that the method doesn’t work and isn’t as easy as depicted, and so on. This is cutting edge of human evolution in consciousness, something never seen or experienced before !!! And it needs true pioneers.

In a similar ways is the expectation that it would be easy to deal with the social identity because Vineeto did it in 9 days [after Richard’s return from India] (I looked it up yesterday and my “about 6 weeks” in previous report was way wrong, which I corrected now).

Yes, Peter and I had looked into lots of our respective social identity and dealt with most of it, and Richard investigated ‘mountains’ of seeming conflicts, mainly regarding man-woman relationship with Devika, before his breakthrough in 1992, as he reiterated to many visitors, and when the ‘mountains’ had disappeared he couldn’t even remember what the problem had been. (…)

Telling you all this I just realize that my own story barely applies to anyone basically free, especially the short time in which it happened, and as such everyone will have to find their own pace. (…) As such any expectation of how quickly and in which detail and sequence the investigation into the guardian/ social identity/ peasant mentality should happen would only be a hindrance to self-honesty and clarity.

Needless to say that pure intent is the biggest and most powerful fuelling factor in the whole process and you seem to have it in spades :))

Geoffrey: (...) I feel like a kid trying to maintain some sandcastle’s seawall against the rising tide. The entire universe is an infinite wave, and my little castle suspended in space is like a bubble about to pop.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to face that immense energy without such a wall to hide behind, to have it within one’s body, to be somehow transparent to its workings. Your descriptions of such overwhelming energy making you almost immobile should somehow scare me, and yet they seem to make it all the more obvious to me that there is nothing to do but proceed. (...)

Vineeto: Ah, there it is – the expectation/ projection of what is to come and you, the guardian, and your “seawall” are right at hand to ‘protect’ Geoffrey from your own expectation.

Look how I described it at the time – 

“Suddenly there was only one me, the actual me, fresh and innocent, a bit like a kid alone in this wonderful playground of the actual world.” (Vineeto to Alan, April 29, 2018).

As such your, the guardian’s projection is, if you allowed yourself to abdicate, poor Geoffrey would sizzle in outer space or that you would be immobile from then on, and this is not quite what is likely to happen, lol. 

But you are in good company with your expectation.

Richard: ‘Then the condition I went on to experience had the character of the ‘Great Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being ‘That’ which is attained to at physical death when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’ … which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism) and so on.
*It seemed so extreme that the physical body must surely die for the attainment of it.*
To put it into a physical analogy, it was as if I were to gather up my meagre belongings, eradicate all marks of my stay on the island, and paddle away over the horizon, all the while not knowing whence I go … and vanish without a trace, never to be seen again. As no one on the mainland knew where I was, no one would know where I had gone. In fact, I would become as extinct as the dodo and with no skeletal remains. *The autological self by whatever name would cease to ‘be’, there would be no ‘spirit’, no ‘presence’, no ‘being’ at all*. This was more than death of the ego, which is a major event by any definition; this was total annihilation. No ego, no soul – no self, no Self – no more Heavenly Rapture, Love Agapé, Divine Bliss and so on. Only oblivion. It was not at all attractive, not at all alluring, not at all desirable … yet I knew I was going to do it, sooner or later, because it was the ultimate condition and herein lay the secret to the ‘Mystery of Life’. [emphases added]. (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History).

(22 June 2024) 

26.6.2024

Vineeto: In a similar ways is the expectation that it would be easy to deal with the social identity because Vineeto did it in 9 days [after Richard’s return from India]. (…) Telling you all this I just realize that my own story barely applies to anyone basically free, especially the short time in which it happened, and as such everyone will have to find their own pace. (…) As such any expectation of how quickly and in which detail and sequence the investigation into the guardian/ social identity/ peasant mentality should happen would only be a hindrance to self-honesty and clarity. 

Geoffrey: How much I have fallen victim to such expectations, over the past years, is mind-boggling. Expectations that is should be easy, that it should be fast, that it should happen in the described way and sequence. What you’re saying here should have been obvious…

But even if it had been spelled in bold on the front page in a giant font… I’d have fallen. Such is the guardian eh: its apparent compliance to its ultimate demise, its deviously maintaining itself through apparently working on it… and with the best intentions in mind! (26 June 2024) 

However, there are similarities in the general pattern of tackling that social identity/guardian to which Geoffrey’s and my reports may provide some guidance on the path to becoming fully free. 

Here is a warning from Richard which applies similarly when engaging in the task of dismantling ‘you’, the social identity, after having become free from ‘you’, the affective-psychic identity formed from the instinctual passions –

Richard: Wherever there be no underestimating the extent to which a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning feeling-being will go in order to remain affectively-psychically in existence – millions upon millions of years of blind nature’s successful perpetuation of the species via its rough-and-ready instinctual survival passions blindly dictates no other course of action can ever instinctually come about – is where there be far less likelihood of ascribing to nescience that which quite properly has its roots in the visceral wiliness of the wild which has so successfully proliferated the species thus far. (Richard, List D, Alan, 29 February 2016, Footnote [1]).

In other words, even when you are basically free, “there be no underestimating the extent to which a [...] very, very cunning” feeling-being social identity “will go in order to remain [...] in existence” as a dictating and controlling entity.

*

Here are two aspects of the social identity that might be worth looking at, using the actualism method coupled with pure intent – 

‘Authority’ 

Richard: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power (the power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject.

Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). [emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 11, 25 April 1998).

The most relevant word is ‘power’ which is what causes conflict. In a common-sense situation everyone recognizes that using and accepting expertise is not the problem. However, once the remnant social identity is focused on the interaction as a power battle, they either start fighting the perceived power-imbalance or want to gain by it.

It will be beneficial to recognize as soon as possible that in actuality you “have no power – or powers – whatsoever” and that you don’t need it either. Power in the real world is drawn from the psychic power (of having surrendered to an ultimate authority), which psychic aspect you no longer feel. What you have at your disposal (being free from the instinctual passions) is common sense, fellow-ship regard, benevolence (looking for a win-win outcome) and as much unencumbered intelligence as is necessary in the situation – and not to forget, an ability to see life from a different angle/think outside the box.

The remnant social identity will try to seduce you to employ back-ward tools, which don’t work, specially without the power of the accompanying instinctual passions and psychic vibes (and thus those tools/mechanisms only interfere with your intelligence working at its best). Hence, your most successful course of action will be to recognize whenever you are involved in a power-play, either by ‘you’, the guardian, against yourself, or against another, is to decline as soon as possible – to recognize and decline the continuation of ‘you’, the guardian, looking for a power-based solution along the old ways.

Remember that ‘you’, the guardian, have a general backward outlook who you regard automatically, as in habitually, as a (non-expertise-related) authority, when, in fact, they don’t have any more authority than you are willing to give them. And ‘your’ choice to give certain people an unearned aura of authority has a lot to do with expected social rewards and punishment. You can then decide in each situation if this is worth your voluntary submission. The more you simplify/ reduce your need/ attraction for the perceived social rewards and thus anticipated ‘punishment’ of withheld ‘reward’, the less you will find getting drawn into power conflicts with supposed (guardian-created) authority figures.

Which in turn will give you increasing confidence in any social situation to be more naïve and ingenuous, and making good use of your intelligence, especially when you find out that it is indeed at least equal if not superior to a feeling-being’s passion-stifled intelligence.

* 

‘Man/ Woman Identity’

This gender identity comprises all conditioning you have been brought up with, internalized and reinforced until your time of becoming free by the instinctual passions. Keeping firmly in mind that as ‘you’, the guardian, are not able to give you any useful advice or suggestions, the way to proceed is to pay fascinated attention to every aspect, which makes you uneasy whenever your gender identity as ‘man’/ ‘woman’ stands out and you have time to look at that situation more closely. The fascinated attention will give you more specific details about this issue and also make it clear how silly they are.

Vineeto: One of the first issues to be sorted out for me was my female identity – my belonging to the women’s camp as opposed to the men’s club. Part of this female identity was the continuous battle as to who is right and who is wrong – men or women. What I discovered was an unbridgeable gulf between the masculine and feminine version of interpreting the world and that the only way to ensure peace and harmony was to eliminate the gulf, whereas common wisdom has it that the gulf is a given and that one should bridge the gulf with the feeling of love or move closer to the other camp by becoming more feminine or more masculine. Needless to say eliminating the gulf meant eliminating my precious identity as a woman and all that entailed. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Gary-g, 12.2.2003).

Vineeto: I figured that this gender conditioning was the main reason that man and woman cannot live together in peace and harmony. In the process of this investigation I have explored what exactly makes me tick as a woman – the program of beliefs and instincts with its resulting feelings and emotions. Along the path to freedom I have gradually evaluated and discarded all of the so-called female attributes and values, which women so proudly claim as their main territory – expressing emotions and feelings, feminine insight and intuition, love, nurture and nourishment. I found that my desperately holding on to these attributes and values caused me to fight a continuous battle within myself, and against others, as to which is right and which is wrong – the male version of demanding, desiring, rationalising and displaying reason or the female version of demanding, desiring, emotionalising and displaying emotions. I have found that both versions – both the male and the female – are silly, useless and redundant.

My main focus was to question and examine my own ‘views and attitudes’ as a female in order to arrive at sound, verifiable facts and refreshing non-affective common sense. It was only by relying on down-to-earth facts and common sense that I began to be able to communicate with Peter without emotionally reacting to what he was saying, neither trying to please him nor trying to fight him. (…)

[Vineeto]: One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – the romantic dream that most women have about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’

I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, 44 years old and as silly as a teenager!

After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. In the end, I had to admit that, whatever it was, it had not the slightest thing to do with anything that Peter could do for me.

I wanted to be perfect and I had to do it myself. I still had to clean myself up. Just having found a probable good mate had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t the best I could be; that I wasn’t free. I decided there and then to face the challenge, to abandon the love-dream and go for the actual experience – meeting another human being as intimately as possible instead of looking up to him and waiting for him to be the ‘hero of my dreams’.

That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself. I had recovered my autonomy – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness.(A Bit of Vineeto)

With this realization I had unmasked the female dream in me and, by my determination to not let it stand in the way of my living with another person in peace and harmony, I rendered the dream impotent.

After this event there was a tangible crack in my perception of ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. And once I allowed the first big rift in my female identity, anything was possible. It was a great encouragement to explore further. If I had been on the wrong path with my Cinderella dream, then I could be down the wrong alley in anything that I thought and felt to be right! To examine the remaining aspects of my female identity was not always easy, sometimes even downright scary, but the adventure called me onwards – the adventure to discover actual people in an actual world outside of, and completely independent from, my affective dream world. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 17, 30.11.2002).

Peter: There seems to be a lack of understanding among women of the suffering and sorrow that men experience. This is understandable, as the instinctual male role is one of provider and protector. As such he displays courage, bravado and strength to impress the female. In her selection of a mate this is what she demands, albeit sub-consciously, in many cases. This instinctual behaviour has resulted in the typical male displays of toughness, competitiveness and aggression, essential for the hunter and protector in the past and still played out in sport, business, politics and unfortunately in war. It is simply the male role – as it is the role of the female to procreate, mother and nurture and be protected.

This leads directly to the assumption that all violence is the fault of the male and women are but innocent victims. And yet it is the men who are still expected to die for family or country.

The other common belief is that men are not emotional or feeling ‘beings’. I had thought I had experienced the full gamut of human emotions and wrote a lot about them in my journal, smugly thinking I had not repressed anything. But recently when I stuck my head into fear to see if I was maybe avoiding something I found more. Beyond fear I discovered stark terror, angst and a dread the like of which I have never experienced before or want to experience again. I had previously, at the death of my son, experienced a form of dread that I would describe as personal, but this dread was as though I was experiencing the dread of humanity – every tortured soul, every rape, every horror, every fear. It literally tore my heart out as I realised what lay at the very core of my ‘being’ and every other being – I had tapped the very source of human psychic fear – the psychic opposite of the Divine Love and Bliss of Enlightenment. (Actualism, Peter, Actual Freedom List, Irene, 24.10.1998).

I also received reports from with a practicing actualist in a private conversation, who found naiveté a vital and indispensable tool for getting to the bottom of his own social and sexual identity being a ‘man’ by being scrupulously honest with himself. He applied as much naiveté as he could muster each time he noticed feeling uncomfortable, in order to continue enjoying and appreciating being alive, especially in challenging situations (‘not enjoying’ was a flashing red light to do something). After several weeks, he woke up one morning being physically nauseous, it signalling that he had "absolute enough" of this "rotten" social identity as ‘man’ and reported that it was the end of the old ‘man-identity’.

So far there is really no substitute for the actualism method as described by Richard, and it works excellently for the nitty-gritty of any social identity issue after self-immolation as well as before.

The next task at hand for me, when Richard returned from India for me was to become free from what I had termed ‘the Guardian’, i.e. “conscience-cum-guardian (as portrayed by Peter who first drew attention to its indistinct wraithlike presence, in January 2010, and as confirmed by Vineeto shortly after.)” (Richard, Formation and Persistence of Social Identity).

Of course this first requires one to observe and acknowledge that the social identity is still operative after becoming free from the instinctual passions and the identity formed thereof. Viz:

VINEETO to Alan: (...); I can fully relate to No. 15’s statement that –

• [Respondent No. 15]: “I had the impression when I first became newly free that apperception was occurring all the time”. (see Richard, List D, No. 15, 15 February 2012).

This was exactly my experience just after becoming actually free (and not merely an impression), and it was so startling and so exactly as Richard had described it that I was just amazed, and revelled in this 360 degree awareness. The experience of apperception also included that everything (regarding knowledge and memory of experience) is at your fingertips but only activated when needed. There was an incredible clarity of mind, wonder and amazement, just as I described it in the first reports of the direct-route-mail-out.

However, as Richard reported on ‘List D’ quoted below, as I interacted more and more with people and everyday affairs, I started to become aware of certain behaviour patterns continuing and a diminution of the startling clarity of the first few days after becoming free. In other words, the guardian, “the shadowy remnants of the social identity”, established itself and influenced how I was behaving and experiencing myself.

• [Richard]: For example, due to this wealth of hands-on experiencing, there is now sufficient data to have established a trait common to the first wave of pioneers ... to wit: the persistence of a (pseudo) identity – the shadowy remnants of the social identity (which, being a societal construct and not instinctual in nature, lingers on as a ‘guardian’ until the transitional process is complete) – which can arrogate bodily control and dictate how an actual freedom *should* be acted out. (Richard, List D, No. 40, 20 May 2013).

This is not only understandable, given the radical change that an actual freedom from the instinctual passions is, but possibly also necessary to ensure a non-disruptive transition from feeling being to being fully actually free.

However, by the time Richard returned from India, I was ready and eager to put the ‘guardian’ to rest, and move towards a full actual freedom, and Richard and I had many intensive conversations to bring this about sooner rather than later. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, Alan, April 29, 2018).

Mind you, *do not* take my report as a template, which one is obliged to follow – this is exactly what a ‘Guardian’ would do – dictate how the basically free person has to operate, in other words laying the rules for ‘an actually free social identity’. 

Because I was the first of the pioneers who had become free after the Direct Route was opened by Peter and Richard, I had no template to follow, I simply followed pure intent, common sense and Richard’s guidance to purity.

Everyone has their own set of inculcated social identity values which may or may not have been recognized and investigated before becoming basically free and as such one has to discover for oneself what remains to be done.

*

Here is the conversation I had with Geoffrey on this matter –

GEOFFREY: What about allowing the experience of infinitude before the total abdication of the guardian?

Is it impossible (the guardian, being an ‘identity’, taints the experience), or just not conducive to progress, or something else?

I thought this increasing experience of infinitude would be at least an element of this abdication of the guardian. « See, I can take it, I don’t need you ». Or maybe that the ‘light’ of this experience would ‘burn’ the guardian so to speak.

VINEETO: I am well aware that the data pool of experience is very small – in fact, I am the only person so far who proceeded from a basic actual freedom via the direct route to a full actual freedom (Richard became actually free via enlightenment and his own process was similar but slightly different). Nevertheless, it is the only process that has worked so far, so you can assess what I have to report according to your own intelligence.

The guardian is called the guardian because it guards your thoughts, words and behaviour according to the beliefs and values inculcated by the society you live in. This guardian is shadowy as it is not backed up by instinctual passions and a feeling being, but it still has the qualities of a more or less coherent identity, *dictating* how an actual freedom *should* be acted out, including how the progress to a full actual freedom should be acted out (thus ensuring the genuine full freedom will not happen). For a full actual freedom to happen you need to leave humanity well and truly behind.

As such, according to my experience, as well as from some interactions with basically free people, the guardian does not simply “burn” out – I found that it needs to agree to abdicate just as the feeling being needed to agree to its demise.

With all that in mind, of course you allow the experience of infinitude as much as you can bear but the *purity* of the perfection of this infinitude can only be permanently experienced, when the guardian is no longer extant. Until then you can have a taste of it for short periods, comparable to the PCE for a feeling being. (...)

I found that the best way to make the guardian less substantial was to find remnant beliefs and replace them with facts, and to examine if and how any of my attitudes were influenced by/based on societal morals and ethics. (ActualVineeto, Geoffrey, 21 December 2018).

Geoffrey could appreciate the information – 

December 26, 2018

GEOFFREY: Thank you very much for your detailed answer!

VINEETO: Is it possible that your guardian could be somewhat influencing the interpretation of your overwhelming experience of infinitude ?

GEOFFREY: It is not only possible, but indeed certain. That is what happened. I saw it happening. The experience was just finished that the guardian had already started a process of interpretation, maybe of ‘appropriation’ of the experience. And it went on and on. Changing the memory of the experience so that it fits with its beliefs (here: scientific and philosophical beliefs about the universe, consciousness, etc.).

It appears that I needed to hear you say this though, to accept it fully. The consequences are huge.

[Vineeto]: … including how the progress to a full actual freedom should be acted out (thus ensuring the genuine full freedom will not happen).

This makes perfect sense. And I’m quite stunned that I hadn’t grasped how important this is before.

I now see the necessity of the total abdication of the guardian. And the parallels to the situation prior to self-immolation.

I’m very grateful, your answer has given me quite the realisation.

VINEETO: Hi Geoffrey,

I am glad you can see it for yourself. The consequences are indeed huge.

For feeling beings it easily happens that when they read The Actual Freedom Trust website they inadvertently replace certain key words with words familiar to them and more fitting to their own preconceived convictions – I have seen this many times in Richard’s and my own correspondences with others. (...)

However, when the instinctual passions and the feeling being formed thereof are extinct it is, of course, much easier to diligently re-examine any false notions one may have picked up about what is actual.

I wish you fun to play the detective with yourself and detect those preconceived notions from all areas of life (‘scientific’, philosophical, political, social, medical, etc), and while doing it, you may also discover some of the various and ubiquitous scams that have been played on a gullible public.

After all, everything that has been written about any topic – absolutely everything – has been written by feeling beings. Richard wrote many times that whichever area he looked into facts were few and far between.

I had sometimes confusing and disorienting periods during this time of becoming fully free as I discovered the implications and ramifications of this infinite, eternal and perdurable universe from my original self-centric perspective, and Richard had to remind me that the human condition is weird and as such coming out of it will also be experienced as weird at times. It’s par for the course. (ActualVineeto, Geoffrey, 26 December 2018).

Five days later I wrote the following to Srinath) –

VINEETO: It is well observed – the social identity (even sans instinctual passions) not only wants to still run the show, it does. The longer you observe yourself in action the more you will see how it not only creates a ‘buffer’ for the direct experience of the actual world but endeavours to fit you back into humanity at large and your social group(s) in particular despite the ‘handicap’ of having no instinctual passions. As you can see it is back-ward oriented as it was formed while you were a feeling being to keep any excess of one’s instinctual passions in check.

Personally, when I negotiated my way towards freedom from the (overall well-meaning but now inadequate) ‘guardian’ (i.e. the social identity), the main question was – will I be able to be safe and harmless without the guardian watching over me?  So I checked myself out in interactions, in various social situations with the intent to determine if I would be safe, and harmless, without the rules and regulations (morals and ethics), preconceived notions and automated behaviour patterns and eventually determined that I will be. Now that there are no instinctual passions, and no wayward feeling being, the role of the guardian is indeed obsolete. Once the guardian was fully satisfied as to this fact, it happily abdicated (as I have described in the paragraph you quoted below).

SRINATH: From what I understood of your own process, full freedom required the abdication of ‘the guardian’ before you could fully allow infinitude and become fully free.

VINEETO: Yes.

SRINATH: I would like to ask you some questions about that process.

On the AFT you wrote:

[Vineeto]: “... By the time Richard returned from India, I was ready and eager to put the ‘guardian’ to rest, and move towards a full actual freedom, and Richard and I had many intensive conversations to bring this about sooner rather than later.”

“... About 6 weeks 9 days after Richard’s return a day came when, sitting at the dining table of his houseboat, I briefly experienced myself as two – the (shadow) identity of the guardian and the actual Vineeto. I experienced the relief of the guardian to be finally able to confidently lay down the burden of guarding over the newly-free Vineeto and then it faded with a sense of having a job well-done to the end and gladly being finally redundant. Suddenly there was only one me, the actual me, fresh and innocent, a bit like a kid alone in this wonderful playground of the actual world. I was still not fully free then, and many more things had to happen, but a decisive event had occurred to bring me closer to a full actual freedom.” (Actualism, ActualVineeto, Alan, April 29, 2018).

Q1 Would you say that this abdication was roughly analogous to self-immolation (you had no self to immolate then, so I know it could not have been the exact same process)?

VINEETO: No, I never thought of it that way. The intent to become actually free had occasionally activated the full force of the ‘self’-survival instincts and the extent of cunning an identity is capable of. The process of having the guardian agree to the sagacity of its abdication was quite a rational reasoning process.

However, should a basically free person abandon the pure intent to become fully free and thus become complacent and entrenched within the shadow identity of their social guardian they would be thinking and acting similar to their former self, but without the fierceness of the instinctual passions – like a toothless tiger. Then the very idea to have this newly established identity abdicate can produce some strong resistance. It’s a matter of one’s mettle, I suppose.

Either way, the world would be a much more peaceful place if everyone became free from the instinctual passions and the feeling being formed thereof, even if they did not venture into a full, meaning-of-life, actual freedom (which is why it is called peace-on-earth freedom).

I remember having a sort of internal dialogue with ‘me’, the guardian, and thereby discovered its desire to lay down its burden, and eventually reached a satisfactory understanding that as this body I am indeed perfectly capable of looking after myself without the guardian.

Here is how I described my experiencing right after the moment of the abdication of the guardian on September 12, 2010 –

[Vineeto]: “I was as if left on what appeared like a launching pad, and like a new-born child I slowly started to orient myself in this utterly new world. Apperception informs me of the stillness that is the very basis of the universe and that I am this very stillness. Stillness is the constant background to whatever event happens during my waking hours and all events arise and subside into this very stillness. A clarity in thinking operates effortlessly and apperception works exactly as I experienced at the moment of becoming free – all information gathered in my life from observation, thinking, learning and sensate experiencing is available as and when required while when not required my mind simply returns to neutral – and stillness becomes again apparent. Out of this stillness arises wonder, amazement and appreciation, and I am continuously marvelling at the magical perfection of this peerless universe.” (Private correspondence November 2012).

(Actualism, ActualVineeto, Srinath, 1 January 2019).

“What happen for me on the 12^th of September was what we call ‘completion’ – an event whereby I experienced with immutable surety that any shadow identity, any remnants of old habits and previous mindsets of the identity disappeared forever, leaving me at first ‘like a child’ in this actual world, naively marvelling at the magic and amazing immediacy of this fairy-tale-like wonderland. I immediately became aware of being utterly autonomous, beholden to no-one. Stillness not only became significantly apparent as the basis to everything, I was apperceptively aware that I am this stillness – the stillness that is everywhere at once, out of which all events arise and subside into. In the ensuing days, as I became more accustomed to the enormity of being here naked as it where (without being able to revert to old habits or old ways of experiencing), the perfection of this universe became a constant experience.” (Private correspondence 29 November 2012).

As a general approach, and after extensive discussions with Geoffrey, the way forward after becoming basically free is to recognize and identify the nature of you, the guardian/social identity, as setting and policing the rules and parameters for your social behaviour as an actually free person. The best way to reduce this policing influence is to allow pure intent whenever there is a window of opportunity to do so. From this vantage point of pure intent pay close attention how you, the guardian/social identity, endeavours to recapture you away from pure intent, and begin to investigate the patterns of social rules and behaviour which entrap you in the defined area of your social identity (remember: “The presence of social identity, with regards to infinitude, acts like a centre.”).

I also suggest not to let the guardian berate one aspect of itself against another aspect. All that your guardian knows and is trained for is the requirements within the human condition – it knows not of pure intent. It is counterproductive to blame or denigrate the way it operates, just as it is counterproductive to be in conflict with yourself when you aim to become actually free. What you can do is follow pure intent instead *whenever* you become aware that you have a choice. The guardian, i.e. all aspects of your social identity including peasant mentality, need to be sufficiently satisfied that it is safe to lay down its burden of guarding you and disappear – any internal conflict is a distraction and getting in the way of that (shared) objective. In other words, your investigations into the guardian are a friendly affair to not follow any backwards-oriented suggestions but to sensible demonstrate that its concerns are no longer valid or necessary. 

As for the detailed investigations into your social identity, Richard delineates how this identity formed in ‘him’ –

• [Respondent]: ‘You claim that ‘this body called Richard hosts no identity whatsoever’. I would like to understand more deeply what it is that the body called Richard does not host. What do you mean by ‘identity’?

• [Richard]: ‘I was born in Australia, of an English/Scottish Hong Kong-born father and an English/English Australia-born mother. With this British background, I was enculturated into believing that I was, literally, an Australian citizen ... but with British blood. Now, blood is blood ... there is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. Thus the wars and the suicides – the blood shed and the tears shed – are precipitated because of the absurdity of identification ... is not all this acculturation ridiculous! However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was so programmed as to be unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use as a standard to determine which was which, as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but similarly conditioned into being an ‘ethnic’ human being.

Thus I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker.

As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was deeply mired in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ acculturated ethnicity ... ‘I’ was brainwashed into being a ‘man’ and not simply a flesh and blood male body. Under the enculturated layers lies a further identity ... the genetically-inherited animal ‘self’. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. By identification as ‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’ ... I discovered that a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body and that this ‘walk-in’ was ‘me’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 28 January 1999).

You can find a lot more about the social identity in the article The Formation and Persistence of Social Identity. (Richard, Formation and Persistence of Social Identity). I will only list here the 10 ways the social identity can be classified –

[Richard]: This increated socio-cultural inwit a.k.a. conscience a.k.a. guardian – colligated under the rubric “social identity” for convenience – encompasses various bodiless personae as well. Viz.:

01. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a vocational identity (identifying as an ‘employee’/ ‘employer’, ‘worker’/ ‘pensioner’, ‘junior’/ ‘senior’, ‘peasant’/ ‘squire’ a.k.a. ‘villein’/ ‘lord’, and so on).

02. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a national identity (identifying as ‘English’, ‘American’, ‘Australian’, ‘Nigerian’, ‘Korean’, and so forth).

03. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a racial identity (identifying as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’, etcetera, or whatever ethnicity nomenclature is the latest fashion).

04. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a religio-spiritual identity (identifying as a ‘Hindu’, a ‘Muslim’, a ‘Christian’, a ‘Buddhist’ ad infinitum).

05. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of an ideological identity (identifying as a ‘Capitalist’, a ‘Communist’, a ‘Monarchist’, a ‘Fascist’ and the like).

06. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a political identity (identifying as a ‘Democrat’, a ‘Tory’, a ‘Republican’, a ‘Liberal’ and all the rest).

07. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a class or caste identity (identifying as an ‘aristocrat’/ ‘commoner’ (as in, ‘the gentry’/ ‘the peasantry’), ‘patrician’/ ‘plebeian’ (Latin), ‘noblesse’/ ‘roturier’ (French), ‘ariyan’/ ‘puthujjana’ (Pāli), ad nauseam throughout the ages.

08. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a familial identity (identifying as ‘son’/ ‘daughter’, ‘brother’/ ‘sister’, ‘father’/ ‘mother’, ‘uncle’/ ‘aunt’, and the whole raft of relatives).

09. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive of a sex identity (identifying as ‘boy’/ ‘girl’, ‘man’/ ‘woman’).

10. The term ‘social identity’ is also inclusive, nowadays, of a gender identity a.k.a. sexual orientation identity (identifying as ‘asexual’/ ‘bisexual’/ ‘homosexual’/ ‘transvestite’ a.k.a. ‘cross-dresser’/ ‘transsexual’ a.k.a. ‘transgender’/ ‘gender-queer’ a.k.a. ‘queer’ / and, colloquially, an ‘alphabet-soup’ of initials.

Richard: Notwithstanding its phantasmicality, and whether sexualised or not, this aeriform socio-cultural persona can be remarkably persistent – as the shadowy remnants of a lingering conscience-cum-guardian (as portrayed by Peter, who first drew attention to its indistinct wraithlike presence, in January 2010, and as confirmed by Vineeto shortly after) – when newly free from the human condition (and even with a basic actual freedom as the weeks, months, and years roll by) due to being an inculcated entity and therefore relatively unaffected (other than abruptly rendered a ‘toothless-tiger’ as it were) by the extinction of the instinctual passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof at the pivotal moment/ definitive event whereby becoming newly free from the human condition transpires.

As this incorporeal social identity, being a socio-culturally-instilled and parentally-inculcated entity, and not instinctually-based, is not rendered completely null and void consequential to the extinction of the instinctual passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof, a period of accommodation and adjustment and acclimatisation, all throughout the normal day-to-day life, with diligent attention paid to any and all attempts on the part of those shadowy remnants to coalesce and reassert control – and dictate how an actually free person *should* think, operate and behave – ensures the habituated patterns of a life-time eventually cease. (Richard, Formation and Persistence of Social Identity, 03).

Even though one has possibly given up control and lived in a Dynamic Virtual Freedom before becoming basically free, after a few days at the most, any of the as yet unexamined remnants of one’s social identity will automatically consolidate and form themselves into a guardian in order to seize control and dictate the way an actual freedom *should* be lived.

In order to further move towards a full actual freedom it is essential to become aware of and examine one’s various aspects of the consolidated social identity. This process will be most efficient when one adopts (again) a modus operandi of being out form under control in order to counteract the controlling force of this ‘aeriform socio-cultural persona’ so that pure intent can operate as much as possible, especially when a peace-on-earth freedom has occurred without prior having experienced a period of being out-from-control in a different way of being, or when a basic actual freedom happened in a similar vein to the “Kath-template” as described in this article. Viz:

[Richard]: All of Kath’s beliefs, truths, values, principles, prejudices, and etcetera, remained fully intact – whilst ‘she’ and ‘her’ feelings were abeyant for the duration – as in effect all what had happened was the garrulous social-identity ‘Kath’ had been [temporarily] rendered a ‘toothless tiger’ so to speak. (Richard, Formation and Persistence of Social Identity, Kath).

This “Kath-template” clearly delineates the bare minimum of what a basic actual freedom entails – free from the instinctual passions and the identity formed thereof.

Therefore whatever remains after becoming actually free – “beliefs, truths, values, principles, prejudices, and etcetera, remained fully intact” – are part and parcel of the newly conglomerated social identity/guardian and act to interfere with the expansive and benevolent experience of pure intent.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

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