VINEETO: Hi Roy,

Welcome to the forum, I do enjoy your introduction.

ROY: Ps: needless to say that these realizations were only possible because at some point I stumbled upon this website actualfreedom.com.au and the writings of a man named Richard but more importantly the writings of a woman named Vineeto which connected with me in a way like nothing I’ve read before. I wish I could be physically near her so I could hug her and thank her. 

VINEETO: Thank you for your appreciation for ‘Vineeto’s’ writings. When I became actually free I was consequently quite suss of the words feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had written, and not sure if they were not misleading, so I am pleased you found them useful. Keep in mind though that they were written by a feeling being and thus could contain inaccurate information as well as helpful hints.

ROY: But at first I read the website only to dismiss it completely – it happened multiple times. Somehow – as meaningful these writings were – I felt the need to reject them. But later, experiences would always lead me to realize things that had been written on the website in clear and simple words all along.

ROY: Now I’ve spent many hours reading the pages yet it seems it is never ending and that I’ve only scratched the surface – seems like I’ve only read 1%. I think it is taking me longer because I’m not always ready to understand what is being said. I keep reading the same pages but I focus on different aspects of it every time. Now I’m a bit worried that once I read new things on the website I’ll disagree with them but of course that may happen and it’s fine.

VINEETO: It does serve you well to read Richard’s words more than once, there is so much to discover that is new to human consciousness. ‘Vineeto’ used to say that after the first few weeks of listening to Richard, reading his words, especially regarding the effects any and all attempts to fit this totally new paradigm into ‘her’ existing mindset were having, ‘she’ explained to Richard the process as being ... (1.) as if ‘her’ brain was being turned upside-down ... and how (2.) ‘she’ was having to relearn how to think all over again. So yes, it often took ‘her’ a few repeated readings of his words before it clicked and often ‘she’ would find new insights and unexpected gems. That is one of the reasons why you will find many repetitions on the website.

ROY: I can and must make up my own mind about things and think for myself – thankfully, gone is the time that I wasn’t aware that was the case.

Let me know if you would like some clarification on anything written on the AFT website, I am probably the only person, who has read everything Richard has ever written.

Cheers Vineeto

PS: I just re-read the first part of your introduction and it occurred to me that you might be interested in this correspondence (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Mark) who had similar intelligent questions as you reported.

December 3 2024

ROY: … some days ago I had to climb to a roof with my father and I started shaking and my heart started racing. My father noticed this and asked since when was I afraid of heights because he knows that when I was a child I loved climbing trees and being in high places had never been an issue. Indeed I asked myself the same question! Somehow I became an adult with fear of heights. The next day we once again had to climb to the roof but this time I was prepared – I remembered a report from feeling being Vineeto and I was determined to simply observe what my mind would do this time and for my surprise it simply … didn’t do anything. The trembling and the heart racing didn’t even start and it was as if I was taking a walk in the park. This was yet another experience where it was obvious that my mind was sabotaging me to keep me from moving forward – to force me to be in a place of sameness.

VINEETO: Hi Roy,

A great story what attentiveness can do. Being aware in advance of any potential feelings prevented them from occurring.

Kuba already pointed out that ‘mind’ is not only comprised of thought but the primary reaction comes from the instinctual passions (and the feeling being/identity formed thereof). Thoughts only kick in when the brain is already flooded with feeling-induced hormones for the ‘quick and dirty’ instinctual response (12 milli seconds for feelings, 24 milli seconds for thoughts).

‘Peter’ and ‘Vineeto’ produced several illustrative diagrams (Library, Brainschemes) to explain this effect, which Joseph LeDoux had confirmed with his laboratory experiments. You can also look at it from the evolutionary standpoint that a baby is born with feelings while their thought processes develop much later.

The ‘mind’ has not only been much maligned in the spiritual arena, it has also been imbued with divine powers according to the belief that consciousness creates matter – in other words ‘mind’ is a multi-faceted word.

While the mind the one hand “can be a fertile breeding-ground for hallucinations, for emotional and passionate thought” (Richard, List B, No. 11, 25 April 1998), it is on the other hand “the most marvellous tool possible ... it can get you out of the mess that is the Human Condition with remarkable alacrity” (Richard, List B, No. 11, 28 April 1998). It depends on your own discerning intelligence.

Here is how the one dictionary describes it –

‘mind: 1. The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination. 2. The collective conscious and unconscious processes in a sentient organism that direct and influence mental and physical behaviour. 3. The principle of intelligence; the spirit of consciousness regarded as an aspect of reality. 4. The faculty of thinking, reasoning, and applying knowledge’. (The American Heritage® Dictionary).

Attentiveness (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness), especially affective attentiveness, (which you employed on the roof the other day) can help you sort out feelings from facts and emotions from cognitive thoughts and will allow you to slowly find out how your mind ticks.

ROY: I sensed some urgency because I truly believe we collectively need to understand that we need to take this leap and become free of the human condition because otherwise this big brain of ours will continue taking us in this path of war against each other and against earth itself until we become extinct.

VINEETO: While you are correct in understanding that it is vitally important to “become free of the human condition”, this is an action which can only be done individually, unilaterally, because the only person you can, and need to, change is yourself. Nobody likes to be changed, that would only cause resentment and conflict, hence everyone has to do this for themselves if and when they are ready.

Many people have fallen for various doomsday predictions (Sundry, Facts and Groupthink, Doomsday Clock) that the human race will become extinct (and there have been plenty in the past centuries as well) but so far the instincts for the survival of the species have prevented any final catastrophe.

There is no point in allowing an understandable but automatic fear-response to prevent you from doing all you can yourself to become free from the human condition at your own pace.

It’s a grand adventure, and while all the wars and suicides and murders and domestic violence plus the awareness of your personal malice and sorrow provide the backpressure, the magnificence of the actual infinite universe will pull you from ahead.

Cheers Vineeto

December 3 2024

ROY: Today I became frustrated because it seems I’m not going anywhere near being free of this constant thinking about myself.[…]

I read the website and I learn nothing. It’s all there. It is basic. But I read it and nothing sticks. Am I blocking it because I can’t accept it? I can’t accept the fact that I’m living an illusion?

VINEETO; It is very difficult to accept as a concept that you are “living an illusion” until you have experienced that alternative, i.e. an experience of the actual world called pure consciousness experience.

Richard: What I usually say is that there is sufficient information available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site to establish a prima-facie case worthy of further investigation – rather than capricious dismissal as having all been said before – and thus (intellectually) find out what actualism is on about ... and then see what happens.

In other words: what one can do is make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and only when they are seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written.

Then it is the PCE that is one’s lodestone or guiding light ... not me or my words. My words then offer confirmation ... and affirmation in that a fellow human being has safely walked this wide and wondrous path. (Richard, Abditorium, Prima Facie Case).

Cheers Vineeto

January 18 2025

ROY: Hi everyone that reads this. I hope things are going well with you. I just wanted to add a quick update to this journal. I’ve been feeling good for most of the time lately.

I realized that most people in this forum had past experiences with spirituality and found out it was not the answer, but maybe it was a necessary step for them in the journey. I always dismissed in my life everything that was about spiritual experiences, but this time I ended up doing some very basic meditation for the first time in my life. Just sitting and seeing what happens, and it seems the problem is the lack of attention. After a month I finally internalized what I think people mean by “you are not your thoughts”. I’m not my thoughts in the sense that I don’t seem to consciously create them. They appear out of the blue and there’s nothing I have to do about it. And by internalizing this now I know I don’t need to engage with them. They show up and… here they are… and then I can pay attention to them and let them go. This not only gives me a lot of peace and relief but my bad moods now also start and end a lot quicker. Because these negative feelings seem to always be a consequence of these thoughts, which I now am able to dismiss. I can’t prevent them from showing up, but I don’t have to entertain them. So I still feel anger, fear, etc. but I return to a state of feeling good and in peace more quickly.

VINEETO: Hi Roy,

Welcome back.

Because you decided to try out spirituality and now believe that “because these negative feelings seem to always be a consequence of these thoughts” – let me acquaint you with some fact which perhaps spirituality (which has a history of 3000-5000 years) has not yet taken on board –

• [Richard]: This seat-of-the-emotions ‘soul-self’ or ‘spirit-self’ – an instinctual ‘self’ born of an amorphous affective ‘presence’ in utero, an inchoate intuitive ‘being’ in vivo, which the genetically endowed instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) instinctively form themselves into just as, analogously, a vortex or eddy forming itself vortically as whirling air or swirling water does – is not to be confused with the ego-self (an affective-cum-cognitive entity).

The ego-self arises out of the ‘soul-self’ or ‘spirit-self’, somewhere around age two, as the doer of all affective-psychic eventful experience (a.k.a. the ‘thinker’), as opposed to the beer of all affective-psychic experiencing (a.k.a. the ‘feeler’), and is, typically, experienceable as situate in the head, rather than in the heart region from whence it arose, immediately behind the forehead at a midpoint just above the eyes.

Furthermore, the ego-self is not the social identity-cum-cultural conscience and/or inwit as, by and large, not until approximately seven years of age does a child know the basic difference between what each particular society and culture regards as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’, and the parents’ attitude reflects this (as is evidenced in a parent taking the child to task with an oft-repeated “you ought to know better by now”).

Thus the socio-cultural identity is overlaid, via socialisation and culturalisation, over both the ego-self and the soul-self – as an incorporeal cultural conscience or social guardian … [emphasis added] (Richard, the Formation and Persistence of Social Identity).

Just to be clear, this is not only something Richard says but it has been verified by scientific experiments by Joseph LeDoux, that sensory input comes first, thoughtless emotional response comes second (12 milliseconds after the sensory input) and thoughtful instinctual-emotional response comes third (24 milliseconds after sensory input). (Library, Topics, Brainschemes).

As such negative thoughts are obviously a consequence of negative feelings/instinctual passions.

ROY: One thing however is that during the day, I feel a lot better but it doesn’t feel like a PCE, because I’m “aware that I’m aware”, if that makes sense? I’m not absorbed in the moment – I consciously choose to be engaged with the moment. In PCEs everything happens automatically without me intervening. At the end of a PCE, it feels like I didn’t choose anything consciously — things happened without consciously thinking? I wonder if with time, it will become “natural” to be present in the moment without putting any conscious effort into it.
As usual I write this and don’t edit or sit on it too much so I can be a bit more honest with myself…

VINEETO: So that you don’t confuse a PCE with other choiceless or thoughtless happenings, and thus miss out on the genuine experience of perfection – here is one description of a PCE –

Richard: A peak experience (PCE) is when everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’, the self, have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. In a PCE there is apperception operating. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ are extirpated.

Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 15 February 1998).

And here is another sent in today by a forum-member –

JesusCarlos: I remember a wonderful moment in particular during that PCE. My gaze was fixed on the horizon, far away, and beyond the horizon, towards what was no longer visible. A thought associated with infinity arose: what I really am has the capacity to see very far, further than what is considered normal. This is its true capacity. To be able to see beyond the present, towards the enormous and infinite of this vast universe. And with that gaze, to look again at the immediate: there was perfection.

Cheers Vineeto

January 21 2025

ROY: I went over this again … because I began to question if what I had were PCEs. I think they were.

What I have, I can only describe how it feels like, when I remember it, after it ends. And it’s like if it was a “dream” in the sense that everything was perfect and happened automatically without me intervening at all (no choices, no doubts, no emotions…) and in the sense that I had no notion of time passing. Colors and taste can be described as perfect, I can see that. But I can’t say that when I hear “becoming the sensations” I’m reminded of how it felt like. In a way, in these episodes I don’t realize how different I am: it’s simply that everything works out great and I’m not messing it up and I’m not thinking about it.

VINEETO: Hi Roy,

Thank you for the feedback. It is vital to know if one’s PCEs were the genuine article because they are your only reliable experiential lodestone, your reference guide for what you are aiming for. Other actualists’ words can give you confirmation but only you yourself can verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written.

PCEs can be of a different quality and length and each one gives more information about aspects of the actual world. Personally, ‘Vineeto’ looked for the magical element in ‘her’ PCEs, which for ‘her’ were the best indicators if it was an excellence experience (link) or a PCE. And when ‘she’ experienced in a PCE that this is how ‘she’ wanted to live ‘her’ life forever, that was the final arbiter.

From the above experiences, you already have gleaned useful information, which you can apply to how to best enjoy and appreciate each moment and that is wonderful (such as “it’s simply that everything works out great and I’m not messing it up” and “no choices, no doubts, no emotions”) … and more will follow.

Regarding “becoming the sensations”, here is an early description from Richard about a PCE where he experienced being the senses only during his enlightened period –

Richard: ‘I remember the first time I experienced being the senses only during a peak experience. There was no identity as ‘I’ thinking or ‘me’ feeling ... simply this body ambling across a grassy field in the early-morning light. A million dew-drenched spider-webs danced a sparkling delight over the verdant vista and a question that had been running for some weeks became experientially answered: without the senses I would not know that I exist. And further to this: I was the senses and the senses were me. With this comes an awareness of being conscious ... apperception’ [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freeedom List, Alan, pce).

This PCE happened when ‘Richard’ was still in the long process of sorting out his altered state of consciousness (1981-1992) when the above-described experience gave ‘him’ some more clues about the actual world –

Richard: Without any identity (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan, pce).

I am only mentioning this so you can understand that the realisation that “being the senses only” is not necessarily an early information one receives from a PCE, and especially as in normal perception-mode sensate experience is overlaid by feelings, emotions and passions and often feeling-fed thoughts.

Cheers Vineeto