RESPONDENT: Ultimately, of course I must continue to prove to myself the viability of actualism.

VINEETO: Why? Do you continue to prove to yourself the viability of your car engine starting when you turn the ignition key? Once you know it works then that’s a fact, isn’t it?

RESPONDENT: Hmm … true. To be more specific I know it works in making me more happy and harmless (far more than anything ever has), but I’ve yet to have the success you and Peter have, so in that sense alone I’m still proving it. Does that make more sense?

VINEETO: The success I had with the actualism method is directly related to overcoming/ abandoning the persistent feelings of doubt that plagued me at the start of the process. To be scared of the new adventure of pursuing an actual freedom is one thing but to nourish doubts about its value and validity after I had established the fact that actualism works and that the actual world as experienced in a PCE is the genuine article proved to be the glue that kept me in stagnation and fear. In my experience, feelings of doubt go hand in hand with the desire to keep the door open leading back to a ‘normal’ life and when I finally abandoned my habit of doubting actualism I also knew that I could never be ‘normal’ or ‘spiritual’ ever again.

*

VINEETO: Yep, you put your finger on the nub of the issue – this ‘identity of the ‘reasonable/ open minded’ actualist’ certainly had a vested interest in considering ‘reasonably/ sensibly certain as being quite enough’, as you wrote to No 89 last year.

RESPONDENT: The ‘reasonable actualist’ even went further and ascribed to the value of doubt.

VINEETO: You apparently still do – otherwise why the need to ‘prove to myself the viability of actualism’?

RESPONDENT: There is still some doubt about attaining a virtual freedom, and I can see that this doubt is really just holding me back as there is indeed ‘no other game worth playing in town’.

VINEETO: Now that you no longer ascribe to the value of doubt, can you see that doubt is nothing but the flipside of faith and trust? Certainty arises from knowing something for a fact and mustering the courage (that it sometime takes) to act on it despite arising feelings of doubt and fear.

Here is what I wrote about doubt a few years ago –

[Vineeto]: Doubts about the path, the actualism method and if I was going in the right direction were often insidiously persistent. I had to tackle my doubts by meticulously investigating the facts, weighing the actual situation against my, often overwhelming, feelings and inquire into the root of my occurring emotions and feelings. Eventually I recognized doubt as a cover for fear itself, the fear to move closer and closer to extinction. The trick to encounter fear is to look for the thrilling part in the experience, which might be tiny at the start, the little YES in the cloud of angst, and then one can surf the wave of thrill beyond one’s boundaries of what is considered familiar and safe.

What helped me a lot through all the weird and sometimes daunting experiences on the path was the pioneering spirit and the ambition to write down and report what I found out on this utterly new, first-time-in-history, adventure. Being a reporter as well as experiencing what happened increased my attentiveness and prevented me from both indulging in emotions for indulgence sake and from ‘keeping my distance’. I wanted to be able to describe the process as precisely and detailed as possible, and that very ambition has carried me through many strange adventures until the identity of the reporter itself became redundant. Writing down and reporting any of your experiences at this stage can be helpful for yourself and for others on this pioneering adventure. Vineeto, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 18, 21.7.2000

Remember, non carborandum.

VINEETO to No 86: For Richard it is patently obvious that there is no ‘Being’ surviving physical death because Richard’s ‘Being’ is extinguished … before physical death. As he lives this experience of being a flesh-and-blood-body-sans-identity day and night he knows without a doubt that there is no resemblance of any ‘Being’ whatsoever found in his physical body. Whereas for you it seems impossible to even consider this as a possibility – and therefore you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished and consequently that his condition is something entirely new to human history. (…)

Your circulatory correspondence on this topic seems to demonstrate that you cannot ‘move on’ until you genuinely consider, and take on board, the fact that *all* of one’s ‘being’ is indeed extinguished at physical death. Only then is it possible to ‘move on’ to contemplating the possibility that one’s ‘being’ can self-immolate *before* physical death. Vineeto, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 86, 6.8.2005

RESPONDENT: If you look at the wording of what Richard is saying through each of these sequential points, ‘In order for that which had previously been considered as unattainable before death <snip>’ Who previously considered it unattainable?

VINEETO: Before I discovered actualism I had been on the spiritual path for almost 20 years and was exposed, often on a daily basis to a wide gamut of Eastern spiritual teachings. The teachings always emphasized that although enlightenment was highly desirable achievement, it was never to be the end of all suffering, which would only happen ‘when one quits the body’. Nowhere, ever, did I come across a statement that peace on earth is possible *as this flesh-and blood body in this lifetime*.

When I listened to or read the teachings of the gurus and masters, they all lavishly quoted other earlier sources and spiritual traditions in order to exemplify and enhance what they themselves were teaching and at no time, ever, did I hear anyone reporting of, or leaning on, a teaching, let alone a method, which promised a peace that was total, untainted, undisturbed by ‘karma’ or by the restrictions of being ‘in the body’ as opposed to the promised ‘peace that passeth understanding’ when one’s Being became a liberated-from-the-body spirit after physical death.

RESPONDENT: It is no fact to say that everyone considered it unattainable.

VINEETO: In order to be able to question the fact ‘that everyone considered it unattainable’ you will need to provide at least one example of someone, anyone, who genuinely considered a total freedom from malice and sorrow attainable before death.

Do you not find it telling that the many people who have come to this list claiming that what other teachers or other teachings are saying to be the same as what is on offer on the Actual freedom website have all failed to provide any evidence whatsoever of such teachers and such teachings – not a single one? To imagine something is one thing, to prove it to be a fact is quite another.

RESPONDENT: Richard is not everyone, …

VINEETO: Exactly. Richard being ‘not everyone’ wasn’t deterred by the fact that both Western and Eastern religious teaching considered total freedom from malice and sorrow unattainable before death – against all odds he pursued it nevertheless, and finally succeeded.

RESPONDENT: … he does not know the mind of anyone except himself. All he can say factually is that he previously considered it unattainable. So given that he previously considered it unattainable, how does this relate to No 86’s question: – ‘How does that reveal that nobody had been there before?’ The short answer (which I am providing) is, it does not.

VINEETO: To say that only Richard previously considered peace on earth unattainable suggests that your knowledge of Eastern religious teachings is not very comprehensive. Again, you only need to provide one example of somebody reporting being free from the human condition in toto in order to refute Richard’s statement.

Let me put it this way – why can we assume with confidence that Thomas Alva Edison was indeed the first to invent the light bulb – and not some New Guinea Highlander tribesman 10,000 years before him? Isn’t it because there is neither any written nor any physical evidence of anyone using electrical light bulbs before Thomas Alva Edison invented them?

Why can we assume with confidence that Yuri Gagarin was indeed the first man in space and not some Egyptian pharaoh 5000 years before him? Isn’t it because there is neither any written report of how our blue planet looks like from outer space before Yuri Gagarin came back from his trip and reported what he saw nor is there any physical evidence whatsoever of the necessary technology required for such a spaceflight ever having been available before on any continent in any culture?

As for Richard – did you ever wonder whether anyone could become free from the human condition in toto, let alone some imaginary person thousands of years ago, before you came to this mailing list? Or more to the point, have you ever considered the possibility that one can actually change human nature before you read it on the Actual Freedom Trust website?

RESPONDENT: For me, as a practicing actualist, …

VINEETO: When I came across actualism and had to sort out for myself if Richard was indeed the first to be totally free from the human condition, I did not waste my time with theoretical or logical argumentation – I figured that after 20 fruitless years on the spiritual path I did not have the luxury to waste even more time. Instead I asked myself some pragmatic down-to-earth questions –

• Had I ever come across, or read of anyone who described life the way Richard does – down-to-earth, unconditionally happy and harmless for 24h a day 365 a year?

• Do I want to experience life the way he describes his experience of life here on earth, even if it means giving up the search for enlightenment?

• Is actualism indeed about fact and actuality, i.e. is it objective, as opposed to a belief system, which is always only subjective?

• How can I find out beyond doubt that actualism is indeed objective (after all, I’ve been duped before)?

At this point it was clear that I needed experiential proof because no other proof would be able to silence my doubt permanently.

My relentless questioning of my then beliefs and convictions eventually resulted in a rip of the fabric of my beliefs and the PCE that ensued tore apart, for a substantial period of time, the all-encompassing web of ‘my’ beliefs and revealed the pure and pristine actuality that has always been here … and then there was no doubt whatsoever that the actuality I experienced was not of ‘my’ making but was always here, experienceable whenever ‘I’ was absent. In other words, the world I experienced in a PCE was indeed actual, factual and objective.

When this PCE occurred I was so stunned, so utterly flabbergasted by the novelty and freshness of the experience, that I never ever again had any doubts that an actual freedom is indeed entirely new to human experience and has nothing at all to do with spiritual enlightenment.

When all is said and done you can proffer intellectual/ philosophical arguments pro or against until the cows come home – in the end, as a practicing actualist, it is only experiential evidence that will give you certainty and confidence to proceed.

RESPONDENT: [For me, as a practicing actualist,] I have to wonder if Richard is wrong about this, what else is he wrong about?

VINEETO: I remember in the early days of actualism I had many feelings of doubt, not so much that Richard was wrong but doubts if I myself would be able to become free from my social conditioning, let alone from the human condition. After endlessly circling around the same issue for days with feelings ranging from doubt to fear to depression back to doubt to fear to depression I finally had enough of it and saw that indulging in and being hobbled by those feelings didn’t lead me anywhere.

As a practicing actualist I eventually understood that doubt is a feeling, *my* feeling, and that as long as I allow myself to be ruled by my feelings, clear thinking hasn’t got a chance to get in edgeways and when thinking is muddied by feelings any sensible evaluation is impossible.

RESPONDENT: The end result is that it discourages faith in any cosmology whilst on the path to an actual freedom.

VINEETO: Just as well. Faith can only ever be a hindrance on the path to an actual freedom.

RICHARD: ... hundreds of people have been poking away at what is on offer, especially since coming onto the internet, trying to find the flaws they are convinced must be there – which is one of the reasons why all correspondence is archived – and this only goes to show how badly people have been sucked in for millennia by the many and varied snake-oil salespersons.

I am not at all surprised that people be suspicious. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No. 56, 31 Oct 2003

RESPONDENT to Richard: Richard, this is well said. It’s why I am unsatisfied with your claims of being historically unique in being actually free from the human condition. That said, I’m finding your site useful and insightful. I’m grateful for the content and the attractive interface as well. Kind Regards

VINEETO: Do I understand you right that when you say ‘it’s why I am unsatisfied’, you mean the reason you are unsatisfied is because you have been badly ‘sucked in’ ‘by the many and varied snake-oil salespersons’? If so, then you have arrived at the right place because actualism is an opportunity and a method to root out any and all beliefs that you have inadvertently taken on in the course of your life. But don’t expect anyone else to do it for you, only you can – by direct experience – determine the veracity of what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website and only you can determine whether actualism is indeed brand new in human history. And if you did find out that actualism had nothing to do with any of the archaic spiritual traditions, the question of Richard’s discovery being unique would be satisfied.

Going by my personal experience I am still surprised how people are so persistently suspicious because that is not how my own mind works.

When I met Richard I was not particularly concerned that, or if, he was the first one to discover something that goes beyond enlightenment but I was more interested about the fact that he discovered something which I could confirm for myself as to whether or not it was utterly new and far better than spiritual enlightenment. I had previously been on the spiritual path for most of my adult life, looking for the meaning of life and the solution to the woes of humankind and here was someone who said he not only knows why spiritualism has failed to manifest peace on earth but also why. And not only that but the alternative he was offering was practicable, down-to-earth and worked instantly.

Of course, in order to be able to take his words at face value it was necessary that I had a good look at what caused me to be doubtful and suspicious of the discovery of an alternative to spiritualism in the first place. I discovered with surprise how loyal I felt towards my previous spiritual group and master and that it was exactly this loyalty that caused me to be cautious towards anything new. I knew I could go on being suspicious forever and a day but I came to see that holding on to such an attitude was preventing me from finding out for myself how I can be happy and live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony.

As an actualist I discovered that in order to get to the roots of my feelings of suspicion I had to have a close look at my general attitude towards authority, something that had plagued me in most of my relationships during my life. I discovered that the only way to stand on my own two feet was to tackle and dissolve the emotionally charged issue of authority. I had to look at all of my feelings towards people who I ascribed authority to, particularly those who claimed a special knowledge of what was right and wrong, true and untrue, good and bad – in short a moral, ethical and spiritual authority. I realized their power over me was derived from and maintained by my belief that there is an ultimate authority in those matters, a Supreme Ruler of moral codes, a Weigher of Souls, a Divine Intelligence, a Higher Power of some sort who instated and enforced those values. It didn’t make any difference that I had abandoned the belief in a personal God because the belief in an all-encompassing divinity kept me obedient, dependant and fearful.

The final realisation that finished my problems with authority forever is recorded in Peter’s Journal –

[Vineeto]: One evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery.

This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear.

When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master.

Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. A Bit of Vineeto

In the final analysis it is only you who can dare to put aside your world-weary suspicions in order to sufficiently to be able to practically and experientially determine whether what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website is indeed as it says it is – new, non-spiritual and down-to-earth.

As you said to Richard in your latest post – ‘it’s a shame that such doubts can detract from what’s on offer’ – it is a shame indeed to let your feelings of doubt and suspicion prevent you from putting into practice what is on offer.

VINEETO: But don’t expect anyone else to do it for you, only you can – by direct experience – determine the veracity of what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website and only you can determine whether actualism is indeed brand new in human history.

RESPONDENT: Very true. Have no problem with that – just Richard’s claims of uniqueness.

VINEETO: If you had no problem with actualism being brand new in human history you would not object to Richard being the pioneer of this brand new discovery.

*

RESPONDENT: I haven’t accepted that actualism is brand new in human history, in fact I doubt it very much. However I do like the fact that there is a method which can be used to verify actualism itself. After my discussion with Richard I especially doubt that I can verify that actualism is new to human history and I fail to see how I could ever verify that Richard was the first – he tells me he hasn’t spoken to everyone in the world living and dead so how can he know? I don’t object to Richard being the pioneer – I just doubt it. Given that the search for freedom throughout human history has been long and intense by people of all intelligence and disposition I think there’s large room for doubt. Indeed, doubt is a duty when dealing ‘men of historical destiny’. The sheer number of seekers suggests strongly that many, many avenues have been explored.

VINEETO: The word ‘doubt’ appears five times in this paragraph, an indication that doubt is an important feature to your way of approaching things. It corresponds with the excerpt you posted from Robert Linssen in which he recommends the ‘dynamism of absolute doubt’ as a method of dissociation and transcendence –

[quote]: ‘If this ‘me’ is not afraid of losing itself, of no longer having anywhere to lay its head, in short, when, pushed by the magnificent dynamism of absolute doubt, it is not afraid of disassociating itself from everything; of rejecting its old associations, and rejecting the new snares laid by the objects of the world in order to bind it to them; of destroying the new entity which is being re­built on the ruins of the crumbling entity, when this ‘me’ transformed into an incandescent torch, mercilessly burns all that is itself then one day, becoming supremely conscious and no longer finding anything with which to associate, that which remains of it leaps all together into the eternal flame which consumes all, except the Eternal, and being dead as an entity, it is nothing but life.’ (page 172, ‘Living Zen’; Robert Linssen; ©1958 George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Grove Press).

RESPONDENT: So you’ve read a quote I posted and concluded that I subscribe to the idea of ‘dynamism of absolute doubt’. Wrong. I don’t. Do you even understand why I posted the quote? It certainly wasn’t to say that I totally agree with it! Operating with absolute doubt as a generalised rule is absurd. You wouldn’t trust the sun to rise tomorrow if you did. In previous posts I have had positive things to say about actualism, which is not the behaviour of someone who doubts everything. Nice to see that an actualist can still harbour imaginary constructs.

VINEETO: Oh? So you posted a quote in support of your arguments and now you proceed to tell me that I have made a wrong assumption, that I am ‘attacking a straw man’, that I ‘harbour imaginary constructs’ because you now reveal that you don’t stand behind the words you posted. Am I to take it then that the quotes have no substance as evidence, that they are made of straw? Should I in future ignore anything you post to the list because you don’t necessarily subscribe to the quotes and don’t necessarily agree with what you post? Are you merely arguing for the sake of arguing?

*

RESPONDENT: Your mantra is ‘tried and failed’ but you cannot know that for sure.

VINEETO: For you it may be a mantra, but to me it is blatantly obvious that spiritualism is tried and failed. Countless millions of people have trod the spiritual path over the 5000 years of recorded human history and none of the revered spiritual methods have succeeded in bringing peace-on-earth … because all of them are solely concerned with achieving a personal peace after death.

RESPONDENT: 5000 years is infinitesimal compared to the preceding millions of years in evolution that led to the human mind.

VINEETO: Are you proposing that because it took millions of years for the human mind to evolve, it will have to take millions of more years for the human mind to become free from malice and sorrow? If so, then it is no wonder you react in suspicion when Richard reports that he has succeeded in bringing the evolution of the human mind to its next stage by freeing himself from the genetically inherited instinctual passions – complete with a method to replicate his pioneering discovery.

Contrary to popular belief, evolutionary development is not a gradual imperceptible process but has always been the result of changes bought about by singular abrupt mutations. Today circumstances have changed for human beings in that humans are no longer reliant on their instinctual programming in order to survive because human intelligence unobstructed by instinctual passions can do the job much more efficiently and far more beneficently. The adaptation that needs to happen for human beings now – and is already happening for practicing actualists – is to accept the challenge of being happy and harmless – to put an end to the instinctual battle to survive and to rid ourselves of malice and sorrow.

But in order to want to change one needs to admit that the methods of the past have indeed failed – they did not go far enough.

*

RESPONDENT: I’ll grant that the freedom described by Richard is rare but it’s not unique to him.

VINEETO: So far you have failed to provide any evidence that you have understood the nature of ‘the freedom described by Richard’ because you came to this list pre-armed with the assumption that actualism is but another version of spiritualism and that Richard’s claim to be the first man actually free from the human condition is preposterous.

RESPONDENT: No, I came to the list ready to have my preconceptions changed, however, nothing that Richard said on the topic of his uniqueness was convincing.

VINEETO: Nobody can change your ‘preconceptions’ but you, and suspicion and an attitude of ‘doubt is a duty when dealing [with] ‘men of historical destiny’ ain’t gonna help. To hold to a duty to doubt is to have a preconception where I come from but if you come to understand that it would be sensible to abandon this self-imposed obligation then at least you would have changed some of your ‘preconceptions’.

If you sincerely want to change your ‘preconceptions’, you would be far better off, i.e. more prone to succeed, to set aside your duty to doubt sufficiently in order to see whether there is a prima facie case that can be established as to the sensibility and coherency of actualism. From there you could proceed to set about to *experientially* find out whether there indeed exists an actual world.

RESPONDENT: Indeed, his defensive stance added to my suspicion.

VINEETO: Have you ever heard of the word ‘automorphism’?

RESPONDENT: What does he get out of being the ‘one and only’?

VINEETO: Not living in denial.

If you read Richard’s personal history you will recognize that after becoming actually free he had a pretty tough time in having to acknowledge that he was indeed the first and only to have broken through the barrier of ‘the Unknowable’. Not only was being the first difficult, realizing that he was indeed the first was also difficult. Answering the objections of incredulous and cynical fellow human beings is a piece of cake in comparison.

*

VINEETO: If you keep insisting on maintaining your attitude of dutifully applying ‘absolute doubt’ you won’t even come near to beginning to comprehend what an actual freedom from the human condition is all about.

RESPONDENT: That would be true if I was dutifully applying absolute doubt.

VINEETO: You did say ‘doubt is a duty when dealing [with] ‘men of historical destiny’’ – are you now not standing by this statement as well?

I have no trouble at all with you abandoning your preconceptions as your doing so can only help you in understanding the sincerity of what is being offered here. However, if you write something to me I will take what you write at face value and make comment on your statement based on my experience as an actualist. If you then change your stance in the next post, it seems silly to me for you to then proceed to claim that I am somehow misinterpreting or making false assumptions about what you originally said. I remember in the early days of writing, I found it essential to sit down and think about what I wrote before I wrote so as to make it clear what I really wanted to say and make clear what I really meant. Nowadays I tend not to need to do so because I know by experience what I am saying and as a consequence can stand by what I say.

Even a non-absolute doubt will prevent you from comprehending what an actual freedom from the human condition is all about. After all, doubt is a feeling and feelings are the motor, the oil and the fuel of the human condition.

RESPONDENT: Also, can you tell me why reasonable doubt, in a reasonably open mind, should preclude a growing experiential understanding of actualism?

VINEETO: In the years of exploring my psyche, both in my pre-actualist years of spiritual-based therapy and in the beginning of my interest in actualism I experienced in me, and even more so observed in others, what is termed cognitive dissonance – a powerful characteristic of ‘me’, the lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity inside this body, primed to surface in order to defend ‘my’ beliefs and ‘my’ existence at all cost. This is what Richard has written about it –

Richard: The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory ... such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures. However it is more than merely a foolish head-in-the-sand psychological aberration, because the new, the fresh, the novel is oft-times met with determined resistance, disagreement, opposition and hostility.

It takes great determination, constant attentiveness and a sincere, naive intent to become happy and harmless in order to be able to break through this archaic means of ‘self’-survival. To deliberately add feelings of doubt and suspicion to the already existing ‘self’-preserving defence mechanism would be foolish, to say the least, because it will only exacerbate any chances of your becoming free from human condition.

One only has a chance to discover something so exquisitely new to human experience as the possibility of permanently becoming free from the instinctual survival passions when one suspends both belief and disbelief, rekindles one’s naiveté and expands one’s felicitous/ innocuous feelings along with sensuousness whilst minimizing both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings. A grumpy or suspicious person has no chance of ever discovering the magic of this actual paradise.

Why not give the opposite approach to doubt and suspicion a go such as being naively open-minded, taking someone’s words at face value and rekindling amazement and wonder. What have you got to lose?

*

VINEETO: What you really are saying is that you think actualism is not brand new because you compare it to the Tried and Failed spiritual methods of Byron Katie and Zen teachers, therefore to you Richard’s discovery is not unique. It is interesting that thus far only those who are well and truly disenchanted with all religious and spiritual teachings – and that includes Buddhism and Zen – have been able to discover the transparently palpable difference between practicing dissociation and the elimination of both one’s social identity and one’s instinctual ‘being’ that allows the actual world to become apparent.

RESPONDENT: You don’t absolutely know what’s tried and failed. You only know what’s tried and failed for you. At this point I expect you to object and point out that the ‘tried and failed’ schools of thought have not brought peace on earth. True enough but considering that in the very large scale of evolutionary time, human consciousness is a very, very recent innovation, then I am not surprised. It will take time for humans to learn the immense complexities of their own minds, especially considering that the vast majority of people have very rudimentary education. I very much doubt that you have insider knowledge on how evolution should proceed and at what rate either.

VINEETO: First you state categorically that ‘it will take time for human beings to learn the immense complexities of their own minds’ and then conclude that ‘I very much doubt that you have insider knowledge on how evolution should proceed and at what rate either’. From this it is clear that you don’t doubt at all – you categorically declare that it will take time (for spiritualism to work) and for it to bring peace on earth. So much for your principle of ‘absolute doubt’ and your practice of questioning ‘all sources, especially myself’, as you asserted at the bottom of your letter. A spiritualist’s duty to doubt is to doubt everything except one’s own cherished beliefs.

If you want to wait for evolution to bring peace on earth maybe in another 5000 years or another 5 million years, then that is your business – you and I will both be long dead by then. By the way, thus far it has taken me seven years to experientially understand the complexities of the human mind, and I understand it very well indeed – such is the amazing capacity of human intelligence when combined with the effectiveness of the actualism method. (...)

*

VINEETO: In the final analysis it is only you who can dare to put aside your world-weary suspicions in order to sufficiently to be able to practically and experientially determine whether what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website is indeed as it says it is – new, non-spiritual and down-to-earth.

RESPONDENT: My suspicions aren’t world weary …

VINEETO: The ‘magnificent dynamism of absolute doubt’ suggested by Robert Linssen is world-weary because an absolute doubt about ‘everything’ includes ‘the objects of the world’. Vis –

[quote]: ‘If this ‘me’ is not afraid of losing itself, of no longer having anywhere to lay its head, in short, when, pushed by the magnificent dynamism of absolute doubt, it is not afraid of disassociating itself from everything; of rejecting its old associations, and rejecting the new snares laid by the objects of the world in order to bind it to them;’ (p. 172, ‘Living Zen’; Robert Linssen; ©1958 George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Grove Press). [emphasis added]

RESPONDENT: [My suspicions aren’t world weary] and they are not stopping me from using the resources on the Actualism website.

VINEETO: That’s where you are mistaken. You cannot possibly use ‘the resources on the Actualism website’ whilst you insist on seeing them as just another spiritual teaching.

The practice of actualism, i.e. ‘using of resources’, can free you not only from your ego, your social conditioning, but simultaneously from your soul, your being, ‘the Eternal’. You might want to reconsider if you are really ready to lose your soul.

*

RESPONDENT: Thanks for your concern but I am putting things into practice. For me, questioning is part of the process and not just questioning myself.

VINEETO: Personally I found that questioning anyone but myself is a total waste of time. In fact I found it detrimental to my own happiness and harmlessness to question other people – it is none of my business. I found it entirely sufficient to focus on questioning my own beliefs, my own resentments, my suspicions and superstitions whenever they stood in the way of my being happy and harmless. The outcome is a virtual freedom from the human condition and there is only one thing better that this – an actual, permanent freedom from the lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning alien entity inside this flesh-and-blood body.

RESPONDENT: So you don’t question your doctor when they prescribe medicine to you?

VINEETO: No, I don’t feel compelled to question my doctor, he is the expert in his field and knows far more about medicine than I do, so I tend to take on board what he says. I only know my symptoms, he might know the cause, and more importantly, he may well know the remedy. I then observe what his prescribed medicine does to me and if it helps I keep taking it. If it has side effects I weigh the pros and cons and maybe have another consultation or get another opinion. If the medicine does not work within a reasonable time, I abandon it.

RESPONDENT: If someone claims to be an authority then I question them to learn.

VINEETO: Richard claims to be an authority with regards to an actual freedom from the human condition and yet you clearly haven’t questioned him to learn about actual freedom, you have thus far done nothing else but question his authority. In other words, you are not doing what you say you do. If someone is as obviously an expert in his field as Richard is about the human condition and how to become free from it, then I try and gain as much information as possible in order that I can also become free from the human condition. It’s all very simple, really.

RESPONDENT: My questioning is for my own benefit and I question all sources, especially myself.

VINEETO: It appears that you have had a change of motive in your questioning because previously you said that the reason for questioning Richard was for the benefit of others, ‘to inspire some doubt in other minds’ as you put it –

[Respondent]: ‘My message wasn’t really for you anyway. Hopefully it will inspire some doubt in other minds regarding your grandiose claims of being the only person in history to have become actually free.’ Actualism: Re-branded Zen 5.11.2003

Methinks your claim that ‘I question … especially myself’ is still a long way from being put into practice.

As for ‘questioning’ for your ‘own benefit’ – I still can’t see how questioning others is for your ‘own benefit’ – extracting information yes, but I found that objecting and questioning others only fed my malice and sorrow, so I gave it up.

Also, when I question myself I do so with the sole intent to become happy and harmless, for no other purpose. I don’t question myself without rhyme or reason because I found that this leads me nowhere fast. When I am not happy now I question when I stopped being happy and inquire into what prevents me from being happy now. Then I investigate the causes for having stopped being happy. Very often I found that it had to do with not having been harmless, so becoming happy and becoming harmless are really one and the same thing.

Once I made my goal in life to be unconditionally happy and harmless, everything else fell into place – I had an anchor point, a touchstone, a measure by which I needed to change. And then I changed, step by step.

RESPONDENT: No, I came to the list ready to have my preconceptions changed, however, nothing that Richard said on the topic of his uniqueness was convincing.

VINEETO: Nobody can change your ‘preconceptions’ but you, and suspicion and an attitude of ‘doubt is a duty when dealing [with] ‘men of historical destiny’ ain’t gonna help. To hold to a duty to doubt is to have a preconception where I come from but if you come to understand that it would be sensible to abandon this self-imposed obligation then at least you would have changed some of your ‘preconceptions’.

If you sincerely want to change your ‘preconceptions’, you would be far better off, i.e. more prone to succeed, to set aside your duty to doubt sufficiently in order to see whether there is a prima facie case that can be established as to the sensibility and coherency of actualism. From there you could proceed to set about to *experientially* find out whether there indeed exists an actual world.

RESPONDENT: Again, I do not hold absolute doubt on this issue. I hold reasonable doubt – I believe it’s unlikely that Richard is the sole discoverer of an actual freedom from the human condition. It’s not an absolute preconception for this reason – my mind could be changed on this issue IF there was a way to verify Richard the First’s claim of uniqueness.

VINEETO: As I said in my last post, nobody can change your mind for you – that is solely your responsibility. In order to understand what an actual freedom entails nothing short of doubting your ‘self’ will do, doubting your own belief that ‘it’s unlikely that Richard is the sole discoverer’. What you consider ‘reasonable doubt’ is more likely ‘information’ that ‘contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’, in other words, cognitive dissonance in action. Here is the relevant quote from my last post (full text see below) –

Richard: The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result.

In order to tackle one’s own cognitive dissonance – the feelings and beliefs that prevent one from taking on board new information that is contrary to the previous information that one has assimilated – one needs a clear incentive to want to move past one’s ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’. In my case this incentive was the dawning of a recognition that my ‘existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings’ had made me neither happy nor harmless nor enabled me to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony.

RESPONDENT: You and I know that there is NO way to verify that Richard was the sole discoverer.

VINEETO: You can leave me out of ‘you and I know’ because I do know, experientially. Once I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) I knew that everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong and that nobody teaches, or has ever taught, how to live a PCE 24/7.

RESPONDENT: You are asking me to accept this as an article of faith. From what you have said so far, it sounds to me that I will not benefit from Actualism until I take this article of faith onboard completely.

VINEETO: You must be joking. In the time you have been on this list it has been said numerous times that actualism is not a matter of faith. Just look up the selected correspondence for the words ‘faith’, ‘trust’, ‘belief’, ‘hope’ and ‘doubt’ in The Actual Freedom Trust Library.

You seem to think that the opposite of doubt is faith whereas doubt and faith are merely two sides of the same coin. Rather than remaining trapped within the flip-flop of doubt and faith I relied on naiveté, common sense, sensibility, intelligence and the confidence gained from knowing the facts of the matter.

*

RESPONDENT: Yes, unreasonable doubt tends to cloud things.

VINEETO: Cognitive dissonance is something quite different to ‘unreasonable doubt’ and by its very nature it is not easily recognized when it occurs. It is important to consider and recognize that cognitive dissonance is a significant defence mechanism to understanding anything new and even more so when the something new is as radical as actualism. Cognitive dissonance is an automatic defensive reaction that takes place before one even becomes aware of what information has been ‘distorted’, ‘reinterpreted’ or ‘warped’. One needs determination and sincere intent to want to forego one’s own feelings of apprehension – to want to go into the lion’s den, so to speak – in order to be able to investigate the information that one’s cognitive dissonance has ‘warped’ and which, upon seeing clearly, may cause ‘mental-emotional distress’.

Quite a few people on this mailing list have reported that recognizing the scope and the wide-ranging ramifications entailed in an actual, non-spiritual freedom were ‘a big thing’, not easy to take, difficult to understand at first, caused them to have head-aches, were a blow to their pride, shattered their existing beliefs, questioned their present life-style, and so on.

Actualism is no little thing to take on.

RESPONDENT: Are you suggesting that because doubt is a feeling that all doubts are wrong to have?

VINEETO: It all depends upon what you want from life.

If you are content with second best, i.e. reasonable, conditional, fickle happiness, then doubt comes with the territory.

If you want to become unconditionally happy and harmless, then every single feeling needs to be investigated as it occurs because feelings are ‘me’ and as long as ‘I’ am strutting the stage the illimitable perfection that is this physical universe will remain forever obscured.

VINEETO: It is always a pleasure to read your posts. I find it fascinating to follow your adventure in discovering the actual underneath, beyond or behind the various layers of ‘self’ – what an amazing journey, always a surprise around the corner, wouldn’t you say? I remember you writing only two weeks ago that ‘I am being careful not to dive right in trying to take on examination of fear and aggression. I am slowing down somewhat in my approach ...’

I wonder what you call ‘not to dive right in’, or ‘slowing down’ ...to me it looks like you’re already right in the ‘pool’!

*

VINEETO: I know this kind of doubt that you describe very well and often had to wade through my own doubts of ‘am I doing the right thing’ when I entered into the totally new adventure of Actual Freedom, thus eventually leaving all of Humanity’s ineffective Wisdom behind. The other challenging factor of Actual Freedom is that, when one talks to others about the palpable success of this enterprise, it always triggers the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ in others and one can’t avoid runni

GARY: One of the things that has become clear to me recently since going into these doubts that I was having is the extent to which belief has been the problem. Somewhere in Richard’s correspondence (I could not find exactly where this morning) he talks about doubt as indicating the presence of belief, and that hit me hard.

VINEETO: I couldn’t resist looking up ‘doubt’ in Richard’s Selected Correspondence –

Richard: Having the ‘courage of your convictions’ has nothing to do with believing, trusting, hoping or having faith that it be possible. I, for one, never believed, trusted, hoped or had faith that it was possible, for such an action of believing, trusting, hoping and having faith perpetuates the believer, the truster, the hoper and the faithful. On the contrary, I could no longer believe that it was not possible – which is a different action entirely to believing, trusting, hoping and having faith that it is possible – thus dispensing with the believer, the truster, the hoper and the faithful. Do you see this?

For example: Doubt is believing it not to be possible ... doubt is actually an action of believing, which supports the believer. Faith is believing that it is possible ... which also supports the believer ... and thus, either way, the believer pushes freedom away into an ever elusive future.

All this stemmed from my peak experience in which I experienced the purity and the perfection of life itself – here and now – and thus saw that what others had perceived as being our reward after physical death already existed ... at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus I ceased believing that life on earth was a grim business with only scant moments of reprieve ... yet I did not start believing in perfection. To repeat: I stopped believing, period. All sorrow and malice stems from the activity of believing ... which arises from the believer. ‘I’, as a psychological and psychic entity , can only believe – or disbelieve – in possibilities and impossibilities. In the peak experience ‘I’ temporarily abdicated the throne and I knew, by direct experience, that freedom was already actual. It was ‘I’ that was the problem, not the absence of perfection. When ‘I’ ceased to be, perfection became, as always, apparent. By believing perfection to be possible ‘I’ perpetuate ‘myself’. ‘I’, by ‘my’ very presence, inhibit that splendid perfection becoming apparent. Richard, Selected Correspondence, Doubt

And this one –

Richard: Trust is but the antidote to doubt ... without doubt, where is the need for trust? And, as doubt arises out of insecurity, then your trust is based on – and fuelled by – uncertainty and lack of confidence in your ability to discern and appraise.

Co-Respondent: No, you have offered a mistaken assumption. Trust can only be based on one’s confidence in one’s ability to discern and appraise. Being doubtful of one’s ability to discern and appraise is already a lack of trust.

Richard: Unlike you, I start from a dictionary definition ... it makes life so much easier. Trust is the ‘faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination’ ...and faith is ‘belief, especially without evidence or proof’. Richard, List B, No 14e, 16.7.1999

GARY: You also said in another place in the archive about belief being the problem. It appears that I was trying to replace the old beliefs with some new ones, turning actualism into a belief system, and turning the people on this list into gurus and heroes to replace the old ones. This process is so subtle as to take one quite unawares. One’s need to believe is so seductive. This ‘I’, this lonely, frightened ‘me’ wants to turn others into protective parent figures to be believed and venerated. I think I am seeing this more clearly now.

VINEETO: Your insight into the nature of doubt triggered a process of understanding in me and I was reminded of a recent period of self-doubt where doubting myself seemed to be inexhaustible. I had left behind my doubts about the validity of Actual Freedom because actualism is clearly and undeniably working in my life, but there was always a remnant of this nagging feeling that I was too dumb or cowardly to go all the way, that I was missing some vital clue, that I was doing something wrong or not enough. No discussion about the subject could stop reproducing this doubting, again and again, in regular intervals. The other night, reading your post, something clicked – this kind of doubt is nothing but a by-product of ‘self’-belief, believing in my ‘self’. I then understood that ‘me’ doubting myself is the cover-up and, as such, a furphy, keeping the belief in ‘me’ alive, and along with the belief, ‘me’, the believer. I went to bed, not able to sensibly think about it any further, but my whole system was agitated, processing the consequences of this ‘click’ somewhat in the background while I could do nothing but lie awake and be aware of the ongoing ‘clunks’ and ‘hums’ in my brain.

Isn’t it magical how the domino effect of serendipitous events occur to support our efforts to become free of the Human Condition, once one launches oneself on the road to freedom with sincere intent? As Richard says it –

Richard: Once embarked upon the ‘wide and wondrous path’, you are not on your own: the perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe is with you all the way’ ... Richard, Selected Correspondence, Doubt

Today I had a bit of a think about this phenomenon, which I could not understand for a long time – this expression always seemed to have a mystical or spiritual connotation to it. But now I can see that it is really very simple – as everything I am and everything that surrounds me is the actual world, there is every chance that when I sincerely set myself to the task of removing whatever prevents me from experiencing the actual, the actual will rush in from anywhere, so to speak, wherever a thinning out or a ‘hole’ in the coat of beliefs and emotions is created. With sincere intent, every event will be seen serendipitous opportunity to discover more about ‘me’, the believer, the feeler, the thinker, the passionate being inside this flesh-and-blood-body.

*

VINEETO to No 49: As for being ‘suspicious’ that you are ‘faking or misunderstanding the PCE’ – the most obvious and certainly stunning quality of a PCE is the sudden recognition that the world is already perfect – when ‘I’ am out of the way. From the way you described both pure consciousness experiences and altered states of consciousness you seem to know them both well and also can tell them well apart. Personally I was never much plagued by suspicion but I remember doubt being a considerable obstacle in my early days when I had cycles of fear turning into doubt turning into stagnation turning into more fear and more doubt and more stagnation. Eventually by observation, I learnt to recognize my diffuse feelings of doubt as a component of the feeling of fear and learnt that it is easier and more practical to stay with the feeling of fear and waiting for it to run its course, as it inevitably does, rather than letting fear deteriorate into debilitating feelings of doubt.

Doubt can also arise when one is questioning one’s beliefs because doubt is simply the flip side of trust. I learnt to replace specific doubts I had about certain beliefs with the certainty of the facts of the matter and to contrast unspecific doubts with the confidence of the practical successes of utilizing the actualism method.

Now at last to your first question – ‘Is Actual Freedom a quirk of nature located in Richard.’

As we are the pioneers of a brand-new discovery to human history right now, there are no others who are actually free and thus it could be assumed that actual freedom is merely a ‘quirk of nature’. However, from the standpoint of a PCE where the perfection and benefaction of the universe becomes so stunningly apparent, such a view is plainly cynical because how in a perfect and pure universe can a permanent actual freedom be available to one only person and out of reach for everyone else? Or, to put it in other words, the perception that human beings should forever be doomed to live in misery, suffering and violence without the prospect of a cure is but to view life on earth as a sick joke. For that very reason I have never subscribed to the view that Richard’s actual freedom is just a quirk of nature. He is simply the first.

An actual freedom from the human condition is neither esoteric nor unrepeatable. Speaking personally, the reason why Richard is still the only one to be actually free is that I simply do not have the courage yet to become permanently free from the human condition – there is always this last bit of ‘me’ hanging onto ‘my’ precious existence. ‘I’ am tethering on the edge, toying with my thoughts of, and my longing for, ‘my’ extinction but I am putting off the final, irrevocable, jump. Lately I have experienced the beckoning of sweet oblivion whereupon ‘I’ will finally resolve the conundrum that ‘I’ can never be perfect by disappearing forever – but so far I’ve been too scared to take the plunge. Yet I know by my experience of the utter perfection of this actual physical universe that it is only a matter of time until one of the practicing actualists will dare to take the final plunge and prove to all the doubters and cynics that Actual Freedom is possible for everyone on this fair planet.

Until then second place is still up for grabs.

RESPONDENT: Yes, the situation with my mother has brought me face to face with my instincts. The question that arises now is ‘am I 100% committed to eliminating them?’ The answer is I am not 100% committed to eliminating them because I have doubt as to the possibility of doing it. Can I become 100% committed? What would it take?

I have survived the ‘attack of the instincts’ and am now feeling pretty good. I am not stopping the inquiry. I am now inquiring into can I become 100% committed to eliminating the instincts now that I have become intimate with them?

VINEETO: I like your approach. First you make an experiential enquiry into the nature of your ‘adversary’, the core of the Human Condition, and then you move on to the next question – ‘do I really want to take up the adventure of eliminating this ‘adversary’?’

In fact, there are two questions that you have raised:

• I doubt if it is possible?
• ‘Am I committed’, or better ‘do I want to pursue Actual Freedom?’

Personally, I can answer the first question in the affirmative – for me Actual Freedom works, every day, incrementally and increasingly and irreversibly. And that is probably what scares most people. One really changes oneself, not just one’s ideas about oneself. Doubt is, in fact, part of the protection scheme of one’s ‘self’ in order to stay unscathed, unchanged and unquestioned.

In order for you to find out if it works you will have to give it a go. (...)

*

RESPONDENT: I am not accepting that I cannot change but I don’t know if I can change. This leaves the possibility open. I have awareness but pure intent and courage seem clouded by doubt.

VINEETO: Doubt is an interesting phenomenon. The other day I talked to a woman who confided in me that she was continuously tortured by doubt if she was doing the right thing. When I asked who it was she ultimately needed to please, she said, ‘my mother’. I was rather surprised – the woman has grown-up children herself and her mother has been dead for many, many years. When she asked what was my solution to doubt, I simply said that I follow my own – very high – standards and that doubts have disappeared out of my life.

I then realized that in order to follow my own standards of silly and sensible I first had to get rid of the emotional issue of authority, I had to investigate and abolish every belief in authority that had ruled my life until then, including the Almighty, All-knowing and punishing God. At the time, that was quite an amputation by itself! The other implication of following my own standards is that I am always ruthlessly honest, so when I find some feeling lurking beneath the seemingly smooth surface, I have to ‘get off my bum’, on to the couch to contemplate and root around until I have investigated the emotion in question.

My guiding light is the purity and perfection of the actual world experienced in a PCE and the way to live in the actual world permanently is to whittle away at the ‘self’ until it self-immolates. In the clarity of a pure consciousness experience I could see doubt for what it is – my ‘self’ scurrying for cover.

So again, intent and courage grow and multiply by taking action and gathering confidence from the ensuing success. One simply has to start somewhere – to merely think about possible victories and failures only feeds doubt. Courage only happens in the doing of the action, not before, and intent grows out of the determination not to settle for second best.

Of course, one can use the method also to do some minor adjustments to one’s social identity, clean out some bad habits, get rid of some particularly troubling problems and then stop further investigation. I know quite a few people who have done exactly that and who are now a little bit happier with their lives than before. The outcome is not Actual Freedom, but a little bit more sensibility, less gullibility and a little bit more freedom from one’s burdening social role-play.

It is purely a matter of what you want to do with your life.

Personally, I function differently. I can’t stop halfway down the road when I know what is possible. Whenever I have encountered fear, I also experience a stubborn bloody-mindedness that has initially surprised me. When I looked back on my life from where I drew the strength and courage to pursue I recognized that all my major turning points had to do with one desire – to be free. Freedom had different notions and definitions in the course of the years, but the desire to discover the best freedom possible always kept me going. Now that I know what I want and how to get there, any obstacle is turned into a challenge, a research and an adventure – the adventure of a lifetime.

VINEETO to Alan: Driving home last night after a full working day I wondered what was really the difference between me now and me some time ago. I felt as ‘normal’ as one can be; no outstanding events had happened in the day, there was just a quiet enjoyment of the different tasks I had to do. Was that all there was to life, a non-emotional, non-eventful pleasant day-by-day living, but without the sparkle and magic of a pure consciousness experience? Was I maybe missing the mark, was I a few degrees off course or overlooking something essential here? Doubt crept in – and the impatience I have known so well from the last weeks.

Coming home, Peter introduced me to the term ‘limbo’. There was a report about a film called ‘Limbo’ on TV and he had looked it up in the dictionary:

Limbo: 1 A region supposed in some beliefs to exist on the border of Hell as the abode of the just who died before Christ’s coming and of unbaptized infants. 2 An unfavourable place or condition, likened to limbo; esp. a condition of neglect or oblivion to which people or things are consigned when regarded as superseded, useless, or absurd; an intermediate or indeterminate condition; a state of inaction or inattention pending some future event. Comb.: limbo-lake the abode of spirits or tormented souls. Oxford Dictionary

Well, I definitely could relate to that description, I know the ‘place or condition of neglect or oblivion to which people or things are consigned when regarded as superseded, useless, or absurd’, and I also know well this ‘intermediate or indeterminate condition; a state of inaction or inattention pending some future event’. And some feelings of doubt, lost-ness or insecurity about the right direction are very normal when one is in limbo. Suddenly all made sense again – o.k., if I am in limbo, that must be par for the course. How could I ever think that anything could go wrong? It was a great relief to realize that nowhere can I go wrong or miss the mark – limbo is a place of no direction and no movement. My only responsibility now is to keep my foot off the brakes; all else is proceeding perfectly well.

I’ll see how long it will last!

IRENE: What I am actually most interested in you is what you described in your very first paragraph:

[Vineeto]: ‘I have come out of a maze of strange days, full of both bouts of fear, doubt and desperation interspersed with long stretches of a wondrous soft and sensuous peace and contentment. The journey towards no-control has been a rocky one, thrilling indeed because it is so untrodden. Now after collecting enough data about the nature of the various contents of those emotional attacks I have taken stock and for a change looked at them from another angle – trying to understand them. What we found was a repetitive circle of fear – frustration – doubt – fear and the only way out is intent, intent to not stop at second best, whatever happens.’ [endquote].

I know doubt, fear and frustration in myself, but could you describe to me, Vineeto, what your doubt is precisely to do with? What are the 2 alternatives that make up the dilemma and cause the doubt? What exactly has happened to make you doubt? And the same with fear?

VINEETO: Doubt as opposed to scrutiny is a very destructive emotion. This is what I have come to in my latest investigation. Understanding that to reach my potential, I as an identity have to die, I have faced immense fear, naturally. After all, dying is truly an unnatural process, going against every single one of our animal instincts. I checked out every surfacing doubt for its content and finally came to understand that the act of doubting itself was a psychological trick to avoid the imminent fear of death – the very, very cunning bit of ‘me’. Doubt simply turned out to be the coating around fear, to protect me from its impact. This faculty of doubt has disappeared simply by my understanding its very function. Now there is no personal doubt left, only the instinctual fear of the impending discovery that the whole powerful experience of enlightenment is but a delusion, ie that there is no life after death.

Fear in the face of impending death is what potatoes are for a potato-soup, its very ingredients. There is no potato soup without potatoes, there is no death without fear. The only way to deal with that fear which I found after many days of going around in circle like a headless hamster is a suggestion from Richard:

Richard: ‘... a fact is actual. One cannot argue about a fact as one can about a belief or a truth ... one can only deny a fact and pretend that it is not there. Then the question to ask is: ‘Why depression?’ Because when I see the fact of something ... the fact sets me free of choice. ... When I see clearly ... then I can proceed ... for then there is action. Seeing the fact – which is seeing without choice – then there is action ... and this action is not of ‘my’ doing.’ Richard, List B, No 23a, 12.10.1998

Accepting the fact of death made me stop and welcome it. I see this as the only way to proceed. Only psychological death can free me from the psychological fear of a personal death (ego), and psychic death can free me from the instinctual fear of an absolute death (obliteration). The Enlightened Ones clearly avoid the second death. Having come that far in my understanding I just have to act accordingly...