|
Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 16
Hi, You wrote about fear and sorrow to Gary – On a personal note I am looking at making additional investments in the stock market and there is fear associated with this because I know there is a risk of losing as I have lost a lot before. I know that if I do lose again there will be sorrow and grief. Hence, my fear of losing may lead to sorrow and grief if I actually do lose. Gary – Nothing is absolutely without risk. I myself do not invest in any stocks or what-have-you, preferring the relative security of bank deposits. If you lose, there doesn’t necessarily have to be any sorrow or grief about it, does there? This is true. There doesn’t have to be any sorrow or grief about it but based on my past experience there could be sorrow or grief about it. That is why I am looking at the fear associated with the possible loss in order to rid myself of possible suffering that may occur. Did you ever pause to question what might be the practical cause for your anticipated loss and subsequent sorrow or grief in the above-mentioned situation? Did you ever wonder what might be the driving passion behind an expectation to win in a gambling situation where reportedly about 75% of the players lose, subsequently suffering disappointment, sorrow and grief? You seem to be asking for fearlessness in a situation where the odds are heavily stacked against you. I am only asking because when I investigated my expectations and desires that I knew by past experience would inevitably lead to disappointment and sorrow, I was then able to chuck both my expectation and disappointment, both my desire and sorrow out the window. And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared. Given that my aim was to become free of malice and sorrow, it became obvious to me that I also had to become free from the dreams, hopes, desires and greed that were the cause of my sorrow. Basically, my understanding is that when one gets through the superficial understanding of emotions then one sees that fear is underlying all of these things. This could be wrong and this is why I am putting this out here to see if I am wrong. It looks to me like when one has uncovered these instincts that fear is what is all pervading and not sorrow. Please feel free to take all this with a grain of salt as I am just trying to look at my mind in operation. My experience is that when ‘one gets through the superficial understanding of emotions’ then I started instigating an in-depth understanding of my emotions in order to eventually to be rid of them. I certainly had to question and examine the full range of my emotions, the desirable ones as well as the undesirable ones. So in order to ascertain the facts about fear and sorrow you will need to abandon any of your own preconceived notions about emotions and instinctual passions and experientially investigate the nature and the cause of each emotion as it arises within you. Fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful and by questioning what it is that I want to desperately attain or avoid. If I am fearful of being sad then I find out how I can eliminate that specific sadness. If I am fearful of being lonely then I investigate the need to have someone to belong to. If I am afraid of death then I question why I want to be immortal despite the fact that every thing that is born must also die. In practicing actualism, it has always been my pure intent that urged me to move beyond my initial fears and get on with the business of actively and practically becoming free from malice and sorrow.
You wrote about fear and sorrow to Gary – On a personal note I am looking at making additional investments in the stock market and there is fear associated with this because I know there is a risk of losing as I have lost a lot before. I know that if I do lose again there will be sorrow and grief. Hence, my fear of losing may lead to sorrow and grief if I actually do lose. Gary – Nothing is absolutely without risk. I myself do not invest in any stocks or what-have-you, preferring the relative security of bank deposits. If you lose, there doesn’t necessarily have to be any sorrow or grief about it, does there? This is true. There doesn’t have to be any sorrow or grief about it but based on my past experience there could be sorrow or grief about it. That is why I am looking at the fear associated with the possible loss in order to rid myself of possible suffering that may occur. Did you ever pause to question what might be the practical cause for your anticipated loss and subsequent sorrow or grief in the above-mentioned situation? Did you ever wonder what might be the driving passion behind an expectation to win in a gambling situation where reportedly about 75% of the players lose, subsequently suffering disappointment, sorrow and grief? You seem to be asking for fearlessness in a situation where the odds are heavily stacked against you. I wouldn’t say the odds are heavily stacked against me. In the current scenario I would say the odds are at least 50/50 or better but I have no way of knowing for sure. The point is that there is substantial risk. It looks like confronting fear itself is the way to overcome fear and not to avoid situations that cause fear. It is, of course, entirely your choice and your business how you are assessing the odds – I was simply reporting the general figures of stock market gambling which are evaluated at 75% or more losers compared to 25% or less winners. As for ‘confronting fear’ – people have tried for centuries to tackle their fear of physical danger by confronting it and many of the early pioneers discovered remote and dangerous areas of the planet only because they confronted their fears and left home despite their fears. Nowadays, in the absence of sufficient real physical dangers and explorations, highly dangerous adventure sports are promoted for people to satisfy their need of boosting their adrenalin and their ego – activities such as car and motorbike racing, Everest climbing for tourists, wild water rafting, cave diving, meeting man-eating sharks in plain dive suits, parachute and bungee jumping, etc., etc. There are also those who seek the same rush from other less physically dangerous activities such as playing video games, gambling or watching other people performing dangerous or violent activities. What I am saying is that the idea of confronting one’s fears is nothing new, it is part and parcel of the human condition and has not resulted in any change towards more benevolence and happiness in human behaviour. People who confront their fear are in no way less malicious or less sorrowful despite the sometimes-enormous effort and time they invest trying to get rid of their fear. In your specific case you seem to want to tackle fear with more risk-taking, i.e. with greater desire, whereas in my experience it is the desire to ‘hit a homerun’ as you say further down, that generates the fear of loss in the first place. The way I tackled fear was firstly to be sensible in practical situations thereby reducing the risk of actual danger or loss, which served to stop fuelling the fires of passion. Then I set about enquiring into the reasons that lay behind my various fears. My aim in actualism has never been to be free from fear only, but to become free from my malicious and sorrowful feelings and behaviour – and this enterprise initially generated a lot of fear. As I questioned my dearly held beliefs, my spiritual loyalty, my friendships, my role as a worker, as a woman, as a part of a social group – in short my entire social conditioning – the fear sometimes seemed completely overwhelming. This fear I overcame by simply doing what I had decided to do despite my fears. This is not confronting the feeling of fear itself but simply setting oneself a goal in life and getting on with doing it. This way I did something useful with the fear by turning the feeling of fear into the thrill of discovery. I also did a similar thing with desire – I used it as the desire to succeed in my newfound life’s aim. Nurture was similarly utilized in wanting to be part of the ending to human suffering, and aggression was channelled into a quiet stubbornness and determination to succeed. To only seek to become fearless is in itself a selfish aim and only serves to enhance and embellish the ‘self’, the lost, lonely and cunning entity inside this body. Those who pursue fearlessness without also investigating their aggression, nurture and desire often succeed in attaining a self-enhancing and self-aggrandizing altered state of consciousness, known in the East as Satori, or if the state becomes permanent, spiritual enlightenment. * I am only asking because when I investigated my expectations and desires that I knew by past experience would inevitably lead to disappointment and sorrow, I was then able to chuck both my expectation and disappointment, both my desire and sorrow out the window. And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared. Given that my aim was to become free of malice and sorrow, it became obvious to me that I also had to become free from the dreams, hopes, desires and greed that were the cause of my sorrow. It doesn’t seem practical to stop doing it as that is what I do for a living. There is greed involved to a certain extent in wanting to hit a homerun. I could become more conservative at it which would involve less or no greed. What I am trying to get at is there is still fear underneath the greed. The answer doesn’t seem to be to stop what I do for a living in order to avoid the fear and subsequent sorrow. I see what you are saying in that greed is causing the fear. This may be what I am trying to get at. I did not propose that you stop what you do for a living but suggested that you investigate what other emotions besides fear you have when you are doing it and to look at the role that the greed to ‘hit a homerun’ has in the fear to not ‘hit a homerun’ . That brings up the question of: Can I do it without being greedy? I am a risk taker in a lot of ways so maybe I am addicted to the fear. The root problem still seems to be fear itself and not superficial greed or other desires, etc. I do find it interesting that you call any other passion but fear ‘superficial’ as part of your theory that fear is the predominant passion. How can you scientifically examine your emotions, feelings and passions if you already dismiss everything other than fear as being superficial? Is it not time to question everything, including this unproven presumption along with your emotional investment in it? You can easily find out for yourself that gambling without being greedy or fearful is possible when you replace ‘money’ with ‘bubblegum’ – gambling for bubblegum would certainly be without the emotional input of greed and there would be no fear to lose either – but then gambling may lose all attraction. The question for me was what part of ‘me’ would have to disappear or die in order not to feel the greed and desire for something I desperately wanted. In my case one of the greatest desires I had to inquire into was the longing for the unconditional love of my spiritual teacher. In order for this desire to disappear, Vineeto the loyal disciple had to disappear. On another occasion it was the desire for the unconditional love of a lover, which caused me a lot of pining, anxiety and fear. In order to get rid of the anxiety that accompanied my desire I had to inquire into the romantic dream that lay behind my longing for love. The outcome of this inquiry was that the dreamer Vineeto disappeared together with ‘her’ anxieties about not achieving the dream. At the time this felt like an amputation of a vital and integral part of the woman I felt myself to be, but it sure did the trick. Both my desire and my fear around this subject disappeared miraculously. The romantic dreamer had irreplaceably disappeared. Given that you say ‘maybe I am addicted to the fear’ then that would also mean that the No. 16 you are today would have to disappear in order for ‘his’ fear to cease. * Fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful and by questioning what it is that I want to desperately attain or avoid. If I am fearful of being sad then I find out how I can eliminate that specific sadness. If I am fearful of being lonely then I investigate the need to have someone to belong to. If I am afraid of death then I question why I want to be immortal despite the fact that every thing that is born must also die. In practicing actualism, it has always been my pure intent that urged me to move beyond my initial fears and get on with the business of actively and practically becoming free from malice and sorrow. There is something here that I am not sure about. You said that ‘fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful.’ This doesn’t make sense to me because there are certain causes of fear that one can’t remove such as death so that is why I am thinking that fear itself needs to be removed instead of the causes of fear. I don’t have much fear of death itself as I have already experienced that but there is still fear. In other words, I still have it wired up that the way to remove fear is to face it instead of removing the causes of it or avoiding the causes of it. You can, of course, hold any theory or belief you like. But as long as it is not proven as a fact by demonstration that it works to free you from fear it will remain a mere proposition. In the process of questioning my beliefs I aimed to replace my beliefs with facts by finding out what is sensately experience-able, what is sensible and what repeatedly works. Everything else was doomed to the dust bin. As for the ‘causes of fear that one can’t remove’ – in a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience it is readily apparent that there is no fear in the actual world because fear, as well as all the other instinctual passions, disappear along with ‘me’, the emotional entity. It is not the physical body that is fearful of death, as you might have experienced in your own near-death experience you described to Gary. The cause for the fear of death is not death but ‘me’. It is ‘me’, the entity inside this body that maintains and feeds the fear of survival because the feelings of fear, anger, greed and nurture serve to keep this entity in existence. ‘I’ have no other substance than the feelings and emotions and imaginations ‘I’ generate. ‘I’ am a fake. ‘I’ am a make-believe. ‘I’ am not actual. That’s why ‘I’ make such a fuss in the first place. By applying the method of actualism I have investigated every facet of this entity in me, every blink of an emotion, every whiff of a feeling, every superficial emotion and deep passion until I now know all ‘my’ tricks and loopholes, all ‘my’ games and sentiments, all ‘my’ workings and mechanisms – the whole programming of the social identity and the underlying instinctual passions. When I become aware and agree to fully and experientially understand a particular aspect of this programming then this aspect, this part of ‘me’, inevitably disappears. Once you pick out and experientially examine one of your emotions closely, for instance the emotional involvement in stock market gambling – without applying your preconceived theory that only serves to stifle further investigation – then you can identify and eliminate one little part of your identity and experience the diminishing of fear for yourself. My experience is that when you have nothing left to lose, because you have explored all the dead alleys of wrong solutions, then you really have the incentive and the courage to break with the past and change in a practical way. Then the change is irrevocable. And eventually the fear of death gives way to thrill as you realize that the death of ‘me’ is already happening.
I am only asking because when I investigated my expectations and desires that I knew by past experience would inevitably lead to disappointment and sorrow, I was then able to chuck both my expectation and disappointment, both my desire and sorrow out the window. And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared. Given that my aim was to become free of malice and sorrow, it became obvious to me that I also had to become free from the dreams, hopes, desires and greed that were the cause of my sorrow. It doesn’t seem practical to stop doing it as that is what I do for a living. There is greed involved to a certain extent in wanting to hit a homerun. I could become more conservative at it which would involve less or no greed. What I am trying to get at is there is still fear underneath the greed. The answer doesn’t seem to be to stop what I do for a living in order to avoid the fear and subsequent sorrow. I see what you are saying in that greed is causing the fear. This may be what I am trying to get at. I did not propose that you stop what you do for a living but suggested that you investigate what other emotions besides fear you have when you are doing it and to look at the role that the greed to ‘hit a homerun’ has in the fear to not ‘hit a homerun’ . That brings up the question of: Can I do it without being greedy? I am a risk taker in a lot of ways so maybe I am addicted to the fear. The root problem still seems to be fear itself and not superficial greed or other desires, etc. Vineeto – I do find it interesting that you call any other passion but fear ‘superficial’ as part of your theory that fear is the predominant passion. How can you scientifically examine your emotions, feelings and passions if you already dismiss everything other than fear as being superficial? Is it not time to question everything, including this unproven presumption along with your emotional investment in it? <snip> The question for me was what part of ‘me’ would have to disappear or die in order not to feel the greed and desire for something I desperately wanted. In my case one of the greatest desires I had to inquire into was the longing for the unconditional love of my spiritual teacher. In order for this desire to disappear, Vineeto the loyal disciple had to disappear. On another occasion it was the desire for the unconditional love of a lover, which caused me a lot of pining, anxiety and fear. In order to get rid of the anxiety that accompanied my desire I had to inquire into the romantic dream that lay behind my longing for love. The outcome of this inquiry was that the dreamer Vineeto disappeared together with ‘her’ anxieties about not achieving the dream. At the time this felt like an amputation of a vital and integral part of the woman I felt myself to be, but it sure did the trick. Both my desire and my fear around this subject disappeared miraculously. The romantic dreamer had irreplaceably disappeared. Given that you say ‘maybe I am addicted to the fear’ then that would also mean that the No 16 you are today would have to disappear in order for ‘his’ fear to cease. I may have worded that wrong. I was referring to superficial emotions and not any other passion. Here is a quote of the first sentence under the heading ‘fear’ from your own website that corroborates my ‘theory’ that fear is the most potent and obvious emotion:
Richard also once said something similar to me about fear being at the bottom of it. I sent him a question about it but haven’t gotten a reply. PS: I got an answer from Richard after I sent the reply. Here is his answer to my ‘theory’:
So now that you have proven to yourself that ‘the root problem still seems to be fear itself and not superficial greed or other desires’ – because Richard said that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’ – what are you going to do about it? Given that you also say ‘maybe I am addicted to the fear’ then that still would mean that the ‘No 16’ you are today would have to disappear in order for ‘his’ fear to cease, particularly because fear is the most basic emotion and, as such, can stand in the way of investigating all the other instinctual passions. How are you going to go about eliminating the ‘No 16’ you passionately feel and think yourself to be? Being practical I never accepted fear as the be-all and end-all to human existence but set about doing something about my fear. I set myself a goal that could break the extreme self-centredness that is the very fuel for that feeling of fear. At root, fear may be the most basic of all passions, but one has nevertheless to work at peeling away all the outer layers in order to reveal the root and then be able to eliminate it. Once I stuck my head above the parapet of fearful self-centredness by setting myself the aim to become happy and harmless, I then became capable of, and interested in, investigating how morals, ethics and spiritual belief all have their roots in fear. During this examination I quickly discovered how all the other instinctual passions contribute to malice and sorrow and how they can operate quite distinctly from the initially predominant feeling of fear. However, given that you have not replied to any of the other topics I raised as to how to deal with fear, let alone responded to the subject of how to get rid of malice and sorrow, I take it that you answered your query to your satisfaction.
Being practical I never accepted fear as the be-all and end-all to human existence but set about doing something about my fear. I set myself a goal that could break the extreme self-centredness that is the very fuel for is of that feeling of fear. At root, fear may be the most basic of all passions, but one has to nevertheless work at peeling away all the outer layers in order to reveal the root and then be able to eliminate it. Once I stuck my head above the parapet of fearful self-centredness by setting myself the aim to become happy and harmless, I then became capable of, and interested in, investigating how morals, ethics and spiritual belief all have their roots in fear. During this examination I quickly discovered how all the other instinctual passions contribute to malice and sorrow and how they can operate quite distinctly from the initially predominant feeling of fear. However, given that you have not replied to any of the other topics I raised as to how to deal with fear, let alone responded to the subject of how to get rid of malice and sorrow, I take it that you answered your query to your satisfaction. Why are you insisting that I reply to other topics you ‘raised as to how to deal with fear’ ... Contrary to your perception, nobody is insisting that you should be doing anything – it is all in your own hand what you do with your life. I simply noted that you have not replied to any of the points I raised and have therefore drawn the conclusion that ‘you answered your query to your satisfaction’. ...when you didn’t even understand the basic fundamental fact that fear is at the root by such comments as ‘part of your theory that fear is the predominant passion’ and also calling it my ‘unproven presumption’ as stated in the quote below:
To recapitulate, this thread started with your query if ‘sorrow comes from fear’. Vis:
You were clearly asking a question. ‘Maybe I have it wrong but it looks to me like ...’ This statement clearly indicates that you have a theory, an opinion, an assumption, and you were asking for comments from your correspondents. You further made this clear when you said –
Again, ‘this could be wrong’ quite obviously states that you are not talking about a fact established by your own experience and verified by the experience of others. A fact is something that I know for a fact, ‘in fact rather than theory, the fact of the matter is; something known to have happened’ (Oxford Dictionary) . For you, the statement that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ is, by your own admission, thus far a presumption, ‘taking something for granted; a belief based on reasonable evidence’ (Oxford Dictionary). In order to turn your theory or presumption into a fact you will need to establish that the feeling of sorrow always comes from the feeling of fear as a repeated experience, without conditions or doubts, not only for you but also for everyone else. In order to compare notes, I reported my own experience that not all sorrow stems from fear but that sorrow can have various causes at different times, such as greed, desire, loss, separation, loneliness, fear, aggression turned inwards, unrequited love, disappointment, etc. Those feelings represent the full range of the instinctual passions, not just fear. Gary and Peter reported similar findings from their own experience. However, you chose to resolve your query differently –
You ‘moved on’ and decided to seek Richard’s views on another mailing list. However, when you asked him, you changed the nature of the question. It was not ‘does sorrow come from fear’ but now sorrow completely disappeared from the query –
If you had asked Richard ‘does sorrow come from fear’ then there would have been a different response. For example as in this correspondence –
When Richard answered that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ you have somehow concluded that your theory of ‘sorrow comes from fear’ was now a fact for you and everyone else. But your theory is still a theory built upon Richard’s answer that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’. One cannot turn a theory or presumption into a fact solely by relying on the statements of others – for to do so is to remain a believer. The words of an expert can only provide you with a prima facie case at best, at best an enticement to begin your own investigation in order to find out the facts for yourself. The way you used Richard’s knowledge was to turn your theory into a truth – a truth based on faith and belief in someone you take to be an authority. Contrary to spiritual belief, however, truth can never set you free, it only leaves you beholden to believing in a higher authority – it is facts and one’s own experiential understanding that set one free from the habit of believing. Spiritualism uses belief and feeling to turn the theories of others into a one’s own personal truth. Actualism uses hands-on experiential investigation to separate beliefs from facts. * And now you aren’t even admitting that you were wrong about it and you are still insisting that I listen to you. Firstly, as I explained, it was only a theory for you, which has now turned into a truth. Secondly, I never insisted that you listen to me – it is completely up to you what you do with my words. Thirdly, we have already established three months ago that my credibility account with you is zero –
* At root, fear may be the most basic of all passions, but one has nevertheless to work at peeling away all the outer layers in order to reveal the root and then be able to eliminate it. I have been peeling away the outer layers for a long time. How are you saying the root is to be eliminated once it has been revealed? That is what I am trying to get at. I fully go along with Richard’s experience, as it accords with my own pure consciousness experiences – ‘only elimination will do the trick’, elimination of ‘me’. The ‘outer layers’ consist of feelings like greed, sorrow, grief, loneliness, jealousy, loyalty, love, compassion, belonging, worry, discontentment, resentment, annoyance, anger, retribution, cynicism and pride. As you investigate each of those feelings when it arises, those feelings will incrementally disappear along with the bit of ‘you’ who feels and feeds those feelings. In my case, when my love and loyalty for my spiritual teacher disappeared, Vineeto the spiritualist also disappeared, when my pining for another’s love disappeared, Vineeto the romantic dreamer disappeared as well. With every aspect of the human condition that I fully and experientially understood, a bit more of ‘me’ disappeared. This is how you can tell that your method of ‘peeling away the outer layers’ works. Once you have ‘revealed’ the root of a particular feeling in its totality, i.e. once you brought into the bright light of awareness, then that complete exposure and experiential understanding is at the same time the elimination of that feeling. If a feeling has not disappeared, then it has not been totally understood in all its aspects, and you then have another opportunity to look at it and examine it. Given that ‘I’ am all I think and feel myself to be, then the day I understand all of my emotions and instinctual passions in their totality, ‘I’ will disappear forever, never to return. It’s an incredibly exhilarating adventure.
When Richard answered that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ you have somehow concluded that your theory of ‘sorrow comes from fear’ was now a fact for you and everyone else. But your theory is still a theory built upon Richard’s answer that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’. One cannot turn a theory or presumption into a fact solely by relying on the statements of others – for to do so is to remain a believer. The words of an expert can only provide you with a prima facie case at best, at best an enticement to begin your own investigation in order to find out the facts for yourself. The way you used Richard’s knowledge was to turn your theory into a truth – a truth based on faith and belief in someone you take to be an authority. Contrary to spiritual belief, however, truth can never set you free, it only leaves you beholden to believing in a higher authority – it is facts and one’s own experiential understanding that set one free from the habit of believing. Spiritualism uses belief and feeling to turn the theories of others into a one’s own personal truth. Actualism uses hands-on experiential investigation to separate beliefs from facts. * At root, fear may be the most basic of all passions, but one has nevertheless to work at peeling away all the outer layers in order to reveal the root and then be able to eliminate it. I have been peeling away the outer layers for a long time. How are you saying the root is to be eliminated once it has been revealed? That is what I am trying to get at. I fully go along with Richard’s experience, as it accords with my own pure consciousness experiences – ‘only elimination will do the trick’, elimination of ‘me’. The ‘outer layers’ consist of feelings like greed, sorrow, grief, loneliness, jealousy, loyalty, love, compassion, belonging, worry, discontentment, resentment, annoyance, anger, retribution, cynicism and pride. As you investigate each of those feelings when it arises, those feelings will incrementally disappear along with the bit of ‘you’ who feels and feeds those feelings. In my case, when my love and loyalty for my spiritual teacher disappeared, Vineeto the spiritualist also disappeared, when my pining for another’s love disappeared, Vineeto the romantic dreamer disappeared as well. With every aspect of the human condition that I fully and experientially understood, a bit more of ‘me’ disappeared. This is how you can tell that your method of ‘peeling away the outer layers’ works. Once you have ‘revealed’ the root of a particular feeling in its totality, i.e. once you brought into the bright light of awareness, then that complete exposure and experiential understanding is at the same time the elimination of that feeling. If a feeling has not disappeared, then it has not been totally understood in all its aspects, and you then have another opportunity to look at it and examine it. Given that ‘I’ am all I think and feel myself to be, then the day I understand all of my emotions and instinctual passions in their totality, ‘I’ will disappear forever, never to return. It’s an incredibly exhilarating adventure. Ok, it sounds like what you are saying is that once the root is revealed and understood completely then it disappears. This does make sense to me. This answers my question clearly and completely. Thank you. Given that you still seem to hold to the conclusion that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ you now jump to a further conclusion that once ‘the root is revealed and understood completely’ then fear ‘disappears’ . You are therefore not concerned about eliminating what you call the ‘superficial emotions’ of malice and sorrow but that your sole aim in life is to become fearless. The aim of eliminating fear without aiming at eliminating one’s malice and sorrow is well-established in all the spiritual teachings – becoming fear-less by realizing ‘who you really are’, a process also known as Self-Realization. Thus one feels oneself to be all-powerful, i.e. fear-less, and is then no longer afraid of being malicious and sorrowful. The result of this transcendence can be observed in all the realized teachers who are known to pluck the heartstrings of sorrow in the name of feeling divine compassion and who unabashedly display their anger and displeasure from time to time, particularly when their disciples don’t ‘get it’ or fail to surrender. The method of actualism aims at becoming aware of one’s beliefs and emotions and finding out the facts for oneself – I don’t wait for ‘the root’ to be ‘revealed’ to me by some Divine Intelligence but I actively search for the causes of malice in me and eliminate them one by one and I actively search for the causes of sorrow in me and root them out. In the course of becoming increasingly happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are, the instinctual fear of actually being here in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are, incrementally disappears on its own accord. Maybe it will further clarify the difference between spiritualism and actualism by describing the process of examining a particular feeling – a process that, if thoroughly completed, can lead to the virtual elimination of that feeling together with that part of my identity who harboured and was nourished by this feeling. I will use sorrow as the example, given that the thread of our conversation initially started with the topic of exploring the causes of sorrow. Whenever I experienced sorrow, the examination began right at the moment when I first became aware that I was experiencing the feeling of sorrow. Due to our social upbringing, every human being is taught to cope or deal with these undesirable feelings in very specific ways, amongst them being repressing one’s feelings, expressing them, accepting them or indulging in them in socially-acceptable ways, seeking solace and protection from some mythical God, Divine Intelligence or Divine Teacher or denying and transcending undesirable feelings by becoming a Higher Self. Examples of this social programming are the spiritual belief that sorrow is good for me – therefore making feelings that are debilitating and devastating into something desirable, and the normal-world conviction that sorrow is part of human nature and you can’t change it – a fatalistic acceptance of all sorrowful feelings. We are taught a form of wishful thinking that by denying our feelings of sorrow they will somehow go away or at least not surface too often and men in particular are taught to believe that it is possible to think one’s way through sorrow and thereby rationalize it away. This socialization programming does have slight variations according to cultural conditioning, spiritual beliefs and gender, but all of this programming has a universal thread – it is solely designed to enable one to either cope with sorrow or, if that fails, to then dutifully follow the traditional religious/spiritual path of denial and transcendence. The common thread of this socialization programming is to think that because fear is the most basic human emotion that one has only the two traditional choices – either make the best of being fearful in the real-world or seek to become fearless by following the spiritual path. To continue to believe this to be true means that one cuts oneself off from becoming aware of the fact that it is malice and sorrow and not fear that are the most salient emotions that characterize the human condition. This is where the discovery of actualism breaks entirely new ground because it does not pussyfoot around with denying the instinctual passions – it directly addresses those passions that prevent human beings living together in peace and harmony on this planet – malice and sorrow. To theoretically think about and draw spurious conclusions about sorrow, i.e. ‘sorrow comes from fear’, only serves to bypass the first prerequisite of any investigation – the direct experience of the feeling itself – and one is therefore unable to become aware of what actually happens in the body and in the brain when one feels sorrow. Unless one personally observe right here, right now, the feeling while it is happening, it is not a scientific examination. The only way to find out what is fact and what is fiction, theory or speculation is to find out for oneself and conduct one’s own hands-on scientific investigation. So when you find that what you understand to be the root of a feeling does not result in the elimination of that feeling, then you might have to go back to the ‘outer layers’ and investigate the traditional beliefs, values and conclusions that you are unwittingly taking for granted. Unless you question everything – and find a definite unambiguous factual answer to each of your questions – there is no way of ever experientially understanding the root of an emotion, let alone an instinctual passion.
When Richard answered that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ you have somehow concluded that your theory of ‘sorrow comes from fear’ was now a fact for you and everyone else. But your theory is still a theory built upon Richard’s answer that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’. <snipped> * At root, fear may be the most basic of all passions, but one has nevertheless to work at peeling away all the outer layers in order to reveal the root and then be able to eliminate it. I have been peeling away the outer layers for a long time. How are you saying the root is to be eliminated once it has been revealed? That is what I am trying to get at. I fully go along with Richard’s experience, as it accords with my own pure consciousness experiences – ‘only elimination will do the trick’, elimination of ‘me’. <snipped> Once you have ‘revealed’ the root of a particular feeling in its totality, i.e. once you brought into the bright light of awareness, then that complete exposure and experiential understanding is at the same time the elimination of that feeling. If a feeling has not disappeared, then it has not been totally understood in all its aspects, and you then have another opportunity to look at it and examine it. Given that ‘I’ am all I think and feel myself to be, then the day I understand all of my emotions and instinctual passions in their totality, ‘I’ will disappear forever, never to return. It’s an incredibly exhilarating adventure. Ok, it sounds like what you are saying is that once the root is revealed and understood completely then it disappears. This does make sense to me. This answers my question clearly and completely. Thank you. Given that you still seem to hold to the conclusion that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ you now jump to a further conclusion that once ‘the root is revealed and understood completely’ then fear ‘disappears’. You are therefore not concerned about eliminating what you call the ‘superficial emotions’ of malice and sorrow but that your sole aim in life is to become fearless. The aim of eliminating fear without aiming at eliminating one’s malice and sorrow is well-established in all the spiritual teachings – becoming fear-less by realizing ‘who you really are’, a process also known as Self-Realization. <snipped> Maybe it will further clarify the difference between spiritualism and actualism by describing the process of examining a particular feeling – a process that, if thoroughly completed, can lead to the virtual elimination of that feeling together with that part of my identity who harboured and was nourished by this feeling. I will use sorrow as the example, given that the thread of our conversation initially started with the topic of exploring the causes of sorrow. Whenever I experienced sorrow, the examination began right at the moment when I first became aware that I was experiencing the feeling of sorrow. Due to our social upbringing, every human being is taught to cope or deal with these undesirable feelings in very specific ways, amongst them being repressing one’s feelings, expressing them, accepting them or indulging in them in socially-acceptable ways, seeking solace and protection from some mythical God, Divine Intelligence or Divine Teacher or denying and transcending undesirable feelings by becoming a Higher Self. <snipped> So when you find that what you understand to be the root of a feeling does not result in the elimination of that feeling, then you might have to go back to the ‘outer layers’ and investigate the traditional beliefs, values and conclusions that you are unwittingly taking for granted. Unless you question everything – and find a definite unambiguous factual answer to each of your questions – there is no way of ever experientially understanding the root of an emotion, let alone an instinctual passion. The only thing I concluded was that fear is the predominant instinct, which I had already said to Peter before I ever talked to Richard so it wasn’t based on what Richard said. Your conclusion, regardless of what it is based on, is non-factual. If you look at Richard’s quote, he said that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’, which is certainly not the same thing as ‘the predominant instinct’. The basic instinctual survival passions, common to all animal-life on this planet, are determined by the principle of ‘what can I eat and what can eat me’. However, historic and present day evidence makes it glaringly obvious that the predominant passions in the human animal are those of malice and sorrow. Though it is certainly easier to admit to experiencing fear than to admit to being as malicious and sorrowful as everyone else, a remedy can only be applied successfully if the patient firstly admits to being sick. As long as one’s every emotion is explained or excused as being the sole result of being fearful, one cannot address, examine and eliminate malice and sorrow in oneself. And unless you eliminate your instinctual malice and sorrow, you can never be actually free of fear, for they are part and parcel of a single package. You have completely overlooked that and put your spin on it to show that you are right and that I am spiritual. The rest of your reading of me is also so erroneous that I see no use in trying to continue the conversation. My letter was simply meant to give you some information so that ‘the root is revealed and understood completely’ – so that not only will it make sense to you as a proposition, but also that you might understand how to do it in practice. You may say that you are not spiritual but you give every indication of continuing to see the world with spiritual eyes. One indication for spiritual eyes is that you divide the world into terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and that you hold to the notion that it is important to be right. Ethical values as to what is right and what is wrong are implanted into us with mother’s milk, so to speak, and any additional spiritual training of adult years only adds to our relentless habit of evaluating people, things and events according to what we have learnt to be right or wrong. For instance, as a catholic Christian I was told that only obedient Catholics could go to Heaven – they were ‘right’ – and that all non-Catholics were heathens – they were ‘wrong’. That was an awful lot of people who were supposed to go to hell – even for the gullible mind of a six-year-old. Later, when I was a Rajneeshee, I was taught that all organized religions were ‘wrong’ and only Rajneesh had the right and true spirituality that would lead to liberation. Who and what was ‘right’ and who and what was ‘wrong’ had changed as my beliefs had changed, but the imperative to categorize things and people by ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is common to all spiritual-religious teachings. As I began to question all my beliefs and values in order to discover what is actual, I examined my loyalty to, and belief in, Rajneesh and eventually discovered what a sham Eastern mysticism was. It was, however, a much longer process to completely reveal and understand my numerous spiritual notions, beliefs and values – all that I considered ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Every time I became aware of robotically thinking that ‘this is right’ or ‘this is wrong’ I stopped to examine the underlying value that I had been taught – either in my spiritual career or in my childhood socialization. I learned to question every single one of my ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ and began to look for what were the facts, what worked and what made sense. Spirituality not only consists of a belief in God or a belief in an afterlife – spirituality pervades every inch of our thinking and feeling. It takes months of honest and meticulous self-investigation to find and root out all the connotation of one’s emotion-based beliefs and moral and ethical values that actively conspire to prevent a clean intelligence from emerging.
The only thing I concluded was that fear is the predominant instinct, which I had already said to Peter before I ever talked to Richard so it wasn’t based on what Richard said. Your conclusion, regardless of what it is based on, is non-factual. If you look at Richard’s quote, he said that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’, which is certainly not the same thing as ‘the predominant instinct’. The basic instinctual survival passions, common to all animal-life on this planet are determined by the principle of ‘what can I eat and what can eat me’ – aggression and fear. However, historic and present day evidence makes it glaringly obvious that the predominant passions in the human animal are those of malice and sorrow. Though it is certainly easier to admit to experiencing fear than to admit to being as malicious and sorrowful as everyone else, a remedy can only be applied successfully if the patient firstly admits to being sick. As long as one’s every emotion is explained or excused as being the sole result of being fearful, one cannot address, examine and eliminate malice and sorrow in oneself. And unless you eliminate your instinctual malice and sorrow, you can never be actually free of fear, for they are part and parcel of a single package. You have completely overlooked that and put your spin on it to show that you are right and that I am spiritual. The rest of your reading of me is also so erroneous that I see no use in trying to continue the conversation. My letter was simply meant to give you some information so that ‘the root is revealed and understood completely’ – so that not only will it make sense to you as a proposition, but also that you might understand how to do it in practice. You may say that you are not spiritual but you give every indication of continuing to see the world with spiritual eyes. One indication for spiritual eyes is that you divide the world into terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and that you hold to the notion that it is important to be right. Ethical values as to what is right and what is wrong are implanted into us with mother’s milk, so to speak, and any additional spiritual training of adult years only adds to our relentless habit of evaluating people, things and events according to what we have learnt to be right or wrong. <snipped> Spirituality not only consists of a belief in God or a belief in an afterlife – spirituality pervades every inch of our thinking and feeling. It takes months of honest and meticulous self-investigation to find and root out all the connotation of one’s emotion-based beliefs and moral and ethical values that actively conspire to prevent a clean intelligence from emerging. Very interesting. You have made all 6 billion people on earth wrong ... I said that ‘spirituality pervades every inch of our thinking and feeling’. I don’t quite understand how that translates for you into ‘you have made all 6 billion people on earth wrong’ ? It is a fact that all 6 billion people on earth are run by their animal instinctual survival passions, and it is a fact that every human being on the planet has been subjected to a social-spiritual conditioning of some form or other. I for one considered this situation to be wrong enough and decided to do something about it. ... and now you are telling me that I have spiritual eyes because I hold the notion that it is important to be right. As can be clearly seen in a pure consciousness experience, in the actual word right and wrong do not exist. The notion of right and wrong are a by-product of one’s social-spiritual conditioning. Also, you have taken only a portion of Richard’s quote to show that you are right:
The thread of the conversation started with your proposition to Gary that ‘sorrow comes from fear’. Gary, Peter and I gave our experiential reports that sorrow does not always stem from fear, which you commented with
You then went to another mailing list in order to have Richard’s confirmation for your theory whereby changing your question from ‘sorrow comes from fear’ to fear being ‘predominant or underlying the other instincts’ . Here is the whole quote which you conveniently left out:
When Richard answered that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ you have somehow concluded that your theory of ‘sorrow comes from fear’ was now a fact for you. But your theory is still a theory built upon Richard’s answer that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’. One cannot turn a theory or presumption into a fact solely by relying on the statements of others – for to do so is to remain a believer. The way you used Richard’s knowledge was to turn your theory into a truth – a truth based on faith and belief in someone you take to be an authority. At least Peter admits when he is wrong which gives him at least some credibility. You can now have the last say as I am not interested in any further discussion with you. As far as going back to the ‘outer layers’, yes I do that. I wish you would give up on analyzing me as you have no idea where I am at. Maybe you can find someone who is spiritual and is a beginner to teach and you can peddle your lies to them. I have reported from my own experience and from extensive observation of other people that the instinctual package not only consists of all the instinctual passions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire – but also that malicious and sorrowful feelings are far more predominant in people’s everyday life than the feeling of fear. Rape, murder, domestic violence, warfare and genocides are not a predominant expression of fear but are the direct result of malice. Depression, despair and suicide are not a predominant expression of fear but are the direct result of sorrow. I also reported to you that I found that unless one eliminates one’s instinctual malice and sorrow, one can never be actually free of fear, for they are part and parcel of a single package, but all of this you blithely dismissed with the derogatory comment that we ‘only want to teach and indoctrinate’ you. If you prefer to concentrate only on fear then that is entirely your business. It is your life you are living and you are the sole arbiter of whether you are happy and whether you are harmless. There is, however, only one method on offer on this list and that is a D.I.Y. way to irrevocably eliminate malice and sorrow from one’s life.
When Richard answered that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ you have somehow concluded that your theory of ‘sorrow comes from fear’ was now a fact for you. But your theory is still a theory built upon Richard’s answer that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions’. One cannot turn a theory or presumption into a fact solely by relying on the statements of others – for to do so is to remain a believer. The way you used Richard’s knowledge was to turn your theory into a truth – a truth based on faith and belief in someone you take to be an authority. At least Peter admits when he is wrong which gives him at least some credibility. You can now have the last say as I am not interested in any further discussion with you. As far as going back to the ‘outer layers’, yes I do that. I wish you would give up on analyzing me as you have no idea where I am at. Maybe you can find someone who is spiritual and is a beginner to teach and you can peddle your lies to them. I have reported from my own experience and from extensive observation of other people that the instinctual package not only consists of all the instinctual passions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire – but also that malicious and sorrowful feelings are far more predominant in people’s everyday life than the feeling of fear. Rape, murder, domestic violence, warfare and genocides are not a predominant expression of fear but are the direct result of malice. Depression, despair and suicide are not a predominant expression of fear but are the direct result of sorrow. I also reported to you that I found that unless one eliminates one’s instinctual malice and sorrow, one can never be actually free of fear, for they are part and parcel of a single package, but all of this you blithely dismissed with the derogatory comment that we ‘only want to teach and indoctrinate’ you. If you prefer to concentrate only on fear then that is entirely your business. It is your life you are living and you are the sole arbiter of whether you are happy and whether you are harmless. There is, however, only one method on offer on this list and that is a D.I.Y. way to irrevocably eliminate malice and sorrow from one’s life. I do understand sorrow. Good. Because when you understand sorrow utterly and completely, it disappears. I am sorry that I have ever tried to have a discussion with you. It has been a total waste of time and I feel sorrow over that. Ah, but that is not an understanding of sorrow but passing the blame for your own sorrow on to someone else. I understand now why you said to Peter –
The ‘first base’ for comprehending and becoming free of sorrow is to understand that sorrow, just like any other feeling, has its source in one’s own instinctual programming – regardless of whoever or whatever is the trigger for one’s feeling. To make someone else responsible for one’s own feelings only serves to multiply and perpetuate sorrow and adds feelings of malice such as frustration, condemnation and accusation to the equation, which in its wake brings one even more sorrow. Given that the topic of our discussion has been your theory that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ and the fact that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ I might add something that is essential to understand fear. Fear in human beings is the direct result of ‘me’ wanting to survive – ‘I’, the passionate alien entity inside this flesh and blood body, will do anything in order to stay in existence. Thus the only way fear can be diminished is to diminish the ‘self’ – the weaker the ‘self’ becomes, the less fear there is. There is simply no other way to permanently decrease and eventually eliminate fear because ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’. The magic ingredient for diminishing the ‘self’ is altruism. Obviously, when my intent is focussed on a goal greater than ‘me’, ‘self’-interest and ‘self’-centredness then play a minor role in the game – that’s what actualists mean by ‘pure intent’. Contrary to the traditional idea of battling and transcending fear via ‘self’-enhancement, the fact is that only an altruistic pursuit can reliably reduce and eventually eradicate fear because only altruism can break the instinctual ‘self’-centredness that is the very root of fear. The traditional honourable goals have been to battle malice and sorrow in other people through political, religious or therapeutical pursuits – thus everyone meddles in everyone else’s life and is busy trying to solve everyone else’s problems. For an actualist the altruistic pursuit translates into actively eradicating malice and sorrow from his or her life in order not to burden anyone with his or her sorrow and not to hurt anyone with his or her malice. Fear then disappears on its own accord because the more faint the ‘self’ becomes, as the ‘self’-serving emotions are progressively investigated and eliminated, the less there is for ‘me’ to control, deny or defend. And as the shackles of malice and sorrow and its accompanying fear disappear, a whole magical and sensuous actual universe becomes readily apparent. Vineeto’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
