In another method (one of the few others which correctly identifies emotions and not thoughts as the central cause of suffering) they have a interesting insight. It is the experience of the method’s founder that all or nearly all of the main suffering emotions (AGFLAP – anger, grief, fear, lust, anger, pride) have behind them a ‘want’. Specifically, the want for approval, control, and security/ survival/ safety (there is another want, which I think is an extension of this third want, the want to be separate, but I’m not as clear about this one). I often can see one of these wants behind my emotions as well. Perhaps someone on the board might find this helpful or not. I am curious how this jells with others experience. Interestingly, in this method the non-suffering feelings are CAP – courageousness, acceptance, and peace. The ultimate goal is imperturbability. Apparently, this man achieved this by paying constant attention to his feelings and releasing them all (the basic method can be summed up as 1) become aware of the feeling, 2)feel the feeling, 3)identify the feeling, 4)relax into the feeling, 5)until the feeling releases). I found it interesting where he wrote that after living in bliss for some time continually, he saw that was still ‘imperfect’ and he dissolved that to a even deeper (and more restful) peace.

Ah, No. 66, yet again attracted to the age-old spiritual methods, even though disguised in a new frock?

I’m not going to deny that their sometimes is a ‘attraction’ towards emotional releasing /clearing/ integrating methods. I find some of them interesting and I am open to learning whatever I can from other people and their discoveries.

Personally, I had to spend quite some time investigating and reflecting in order to fully understand the radicality of an actual freedom from the human condition as opposed to the imagined spiritual freedom I had pursued before. Once I did understand however, that an actual freedom is down-to-earth, factual and pertains to this actual tangible world and is indeed a freedom for this flesh-and-blood body while a spiritual freedom is achieved by and for the imaginary spirit ‘being’ occupying this flesh-and-blood body, it was blindingly obvious that nothing short of totally freeing this flesh-and-blood body from the imaginary spirit ‘being’ would do. I knew then once and for all that there is simply no point in fiddling with the imaginary spirit ‘being’ in order for the imaginary spirit ‘being’ to have a feeling of freedom whilst the actual flesh-and-blood body remains in the same clasp of the imaginary spirit ‘being’ as ever.

As such the methods I had learnt before and the techniques offered within the human condition no longer held any attraction as I clearly recognized them as moving deckchairs on the Titanic, so to speak, while leaving the core problem, ‘me’, untouched.

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When I typed ‘AGFLAP’ into Google and the it came up with the label for the method you described – the ‘Sedona Method’ – I had to laugh. Sedona is the spiritual Mecca of New Mexico and amongst other things is/has been the residence for a large group of Rajneesh’s ‘Inner Circle’ from where they have been holding court teaching their ‘privileged’ version of going in and letting go, a technique which was in many aspects identical to the above described method.

Rajneesh was a ‘master’ of promoting a wide selection of methods so that is not too surprising.

If you are suggesting that Rajneesh promoted a wide selection of both spiritual and non-spiritual methods then it may clarify the issue to contemplate if he would have promoted the actualism method without alteration.

Fact is that Rajneesh took whatever method he came across, such as emotional release therapy and human growth movements and turned them into tools for dissociation (such as ‘I am not my feelings, I am not my body’) as the sole method towards enlightenment. I remember my admiration for this mastery of adaptation at the time when I participated in those emotional release and awareness groups and as I listened to him talking about Western therapy as a tool for becoming enlightened.

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But one does not need to know all this to find out that the ‘Sedona Method’ is spiritual through and through – just look at this explanation of ‘How It Works’ from their site –

‘We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. It’s even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t usually say, ‘I feel angry,’ or, ‘I feel sad.’ We say, ‘I am angry,’ or, ‘I am sad.’ *Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling*. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true… we are always in control and just don’t know it. (...) As you master the process of releasing, you will discover that even your deepest feelings are just on the surface. *At the core you are empty, silent, and at peace* – not in the pain and darkness that most of us would assume.’ How It Works A Sample Releasing Process, http://www-sedonamethod.com/ [emphasis added]

I do remember reading that sometime and of course it did remind me of how ‘The Release Technique’ is different from actualism.

Not just different – 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

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Whereas in actualism I acknowledge that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ and only when ‘I’ am gone in my totality can the always already existing peace of the actual world become apparent.

Yes, I do understand that.

If you understand that then why the attraction to ‘the Release Technique’ which states that ‘we are misidentifying that we are the feeling’?

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This is how the ‘Sedona Method’ is advertised –

‘The Sedona Method will show you how to *master* your emotions, thereby mastering how you think and act.’ How The Sedona Method® Can Help Me, http://www-sedonamethod.com/ [emphasis added]

I see the key word ‘master’ here. However, from literature I have read, it seems to suggest that ‘Lester Levinson’ was continually at peace, which does sound more than mere ‘mastery’. It should be kept in mind that the presentation of the Sedona method for everyday folk/business people and the ‘end goal’ of what Lester pointed too are somewhat different.

Do you realize how much information you have to ignore/ put aside/ interpret in order to still consider ‘the Release Technique’ a non-spiritual method? As for ‘the ‘end goal’ of what Lester pointed too are somewhat different’, this is how you introduced the method –

The ultimate goal is imperturbability. Apparently, this man achieved this by paying constant attention to his feelings and releasing them all … Wants, Wed 7/06/2006 8:46 AM

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Whereas in actualism I incrementally abandon both the good *and* the bad feelings in order that I can be what I am – a flesh-and-blood body only.

Yes.

Do you also understand that by ‘paying constant attention to his feelings and releasing them all’ Lester Levinson focuses towards the core of his ‘being’ which is ‘empty, silent, and at peace’, something which is markedly different to an actual freedom from the empty, silent, and peaceful ‘being’ itself?

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The testimony of a happy customer finally confirms that the ‘Sedona Method’ is nothing but the plain old dissociation technique –

‘I am more able to say yes to my feelings, especially negative ones. Before, I used to feel very guilty when I observed negative ones coming up. *I was those feelings. Now I am the watcher – they are not me*. I have been feeling much happier with myself without having to be perfect.’ Sedona Method® Testimonials, http://www-sedonamethod.com/ [emphasis added]

Indeed, though they try to ‘minimize’ the spiritual aspect of the method, it is still there. Since, at its basic level it is a method of ‘releasing’ emotions, a more secular person may take it just as that: an emotional release method.

Did you know that the word ‘gullible’ is not found in any of the common dictionaries?

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Seeing that you recommend this method as being possibly ‘helpful’ for ‘someone on the board’, …

No, that is not what I meant. I was only referring to the insight about the ‘three wants’ (Which you have oddly failed to address at all. This is all the more strange considering I even labelled ‘wants’ as the subject header.

The reason I did not address ‘the three wants’ themselves is because in order to understand the nature of an insight one needs to look at where it is coming from and what it is aiming for, which I did.

Is it any wonder at all to you why someone-anyone-could come across with the impression that you, Peter, and Richard sometimes answer questions in a way that appears underhanded/ cunning/ manipulative?).

Addendum: To halt any misunderstanding. I’m not making an accusation here. Just a question. Also, please disregard Richard’s and Peter’s name being put in there. I will just stick to the present post (not willing to go through old posts).

To stick to the present post – what you call ‘underhanded/ cunning/ manipulative’ is me filling in the information that you had (cunningly?) left out – the label and origin of the method, the message behind it from its founder, its final aim and a report of someone practicing the method (‘I am a watcher’) and then I pointed out how the Sedona method radically differs from the actualism method. How else can you assess the effects and results of a method/an insight unless you look at it in its entirety?

I thought the insight about most of our emotions coming from the want/ desire for approval, control, or security/ safety, to be possibly helpful to someone’s self-understanding.

Ha, I can agree insofar that to understand how one’s ‘want/ desire’ for ‘imperturbability’ can easily lead to accepting a dissociation-technique as being non-spiritual is vitally important in order to avoid the Rock of Enlightenment.

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… I wonder what it is that motivates you to recommend a dissociation technique on this actual freedom board …

LOL! What!? I specifically did not even mention the name of this method (and gave no links either)

Look, just removing the street sign ‘Honolulu’ is not going to change that the road is actually going to Honolulu and not mentioning the name of this method is equally not going to change where this method is heading to – denial, detachment, dissociation and ultimately delusion. In other words, when you are ‘open to learning whatever I can from other people and their discoveries’, as you say above, while blithely ignoring the context of their discoveries – where they are coming from and where they are heading to and why – then you will only end up more confused than before.

[I specifically did not even mention the name of this method (and gave no links either)] just so this flaming cowpie of an accusation would not be drummed up. I almost just wrote about the ‘wants’, but I thought everyone would understand what I was writing better if I can the ‘context’ of the method.

I did not accuse you of anything, I was merely calling a spade by its proper name with the intention to inform you of the whole picture and possibly warn you and/or others of the trap of dissociation that is the basis of so many fashionable new-age techniques.

As for how ‘most of our emotions coming from the want/ desire for approval, control, or security/ safety’ – you might be curious as to which ‘want’ was responsible for interpreting my post as a ‘flaming cowpie of an accusation’.

To put in a practical plug for the actualism method, once I discover/recognize what causes my upset about what somebody said or did, be it want/desire or fear, irritability or an urge to defend a pet belief or self-image, I can simply drop those feelings because I see the silliness of something, anything, spoiling this moment of being alive – as opposed to, as Mr. Levinson makes us believe, because ‘at the core you are empty, silent and at peace’.

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… – and why you yourself search for ‘imperturbability’ and ‘a even deeper (and more restful) peace’ at the core of your ‘being’ instead of endeavouring to live in the actual world of the senses is a mystery to me.

As well it should, since nowhere, and I do mean ‘nowhere’ do I mention that I’m searching for any of the above.

So you saying ‘the ultimate goal is imperturbability’ did not reflect your own goal? Why then did you mention as a matter of interest (‘interestingly’), in detail, how another man achieved this ultimate goal?

What is a mystery to me, is how on earth you could jump from reading me describe a method (and singling out one aspect of it that seemed insightful) to imagining that I’m a practitioner of it.

I imagined nothing, I said –

‘why you yourself search for ‘imperturbability’ and ‘a even deeper (and more restful) peace’ at the core of your ‘being’’.

If your goal is not ‘imperturbability’ and ‘a even deeper (and more restful) peace’ why mention as a matter of interest (‘interestingly’), in detail, how another man achieved this ultimate goal?

The problem with ‘singling out one aspect of it that seemed insightful’ is that you have to deny and ignore the context of this insight, in this case that ‘at the core you are empty, silent and at peace’. As such, the insight of Mr. Levinson ‘that all or nearly all of the main suffering emotions (AGFLAP – anger, grief, fear, lust, anger, pride) have behind them a ‘want’’ is nothing but a rehash of the four Noble Truths, the essence of Buddhism –

1. Life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering;

2. suffering is a result of one’s desires for pleasure, power, and continued existence;

3. in order to stop disappointment and suffering one must stop desiring; and

4. the way to stop desiring and thus suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path – right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration.

Whereas actualism acknowledges the fact that all feelings and emotions are the result of the instinctual animal survival passions which form themselves into a feeling ‘being’ and recognizes the fact that unless this ‘being’ voluntarily dies, emotions and feelings will continue to arise.

My goal is still a virtual freedom. That all being said, is it possible that ‘I’m’ wasting time thinking about things like the Sedona method. Absolutely. The journey continues …

Does this possibility become more distinct and obvious when you put the Sedona Method in its rightful context?

Personally, in order to become free from the lure of spiritual beliefs I had to learn how to recognize and thus avoid the traps of spiritualism in its myriad forms and deceptive disguises … and believe you me, spiritualists are everywhere, even under the bed! … that is, until you drag them out and pop them like helium balloons.

I always considered that I am not actually free when I can be annoyed, irritated, saddened or scared by someone else without there being a physical threat. To become free of these emotional reactions I took up meditation and when meditation proved ineffective and dissociative, I became attracted to investigate into the cause of my social and instinctual programming in order to become free of being affected by other people’s words and actions. Not being affected by other’s sadness makes me unconditionally happy and not being affected by other’s aggression makes me unreservedly harmless.

It’s a great life.

How is not being affected by other’s sadness or aggression different from what you call meditative dissociation?

The three ways a person can experience the world are 1: cerebral (thoughts); 2: sensate (senses); 3: affective (feelings).

In meditative dissociation one moves away from sensate and cerebral experiencing and aims to experience only the good part of the affective feelings. In Eastern religions and philosophy, this practice of suppression and non-attachment has been raised to a high art whereby one can, through assiduous practice, create a whole new, utterly dissociated, identity based solely on feeling Good-ness and God-ness. This process of becoming non-attached to feelings that are not desirable and identifying with the feelings that are considered desirable and are highly valued by our peers can lead to an Altered State of Consciousness whereby a mortal human being imagines and feels himself or herself to be above it all, as in Divine and Immortal.

In this sleight of hand, or more correctly spiritual sleight of mind, ‘me’ and my feelings get off scot-free and nothing actually happens except the whole sorry saga of eastern religion gets another pundit, another propagator, another sage revered for his puerile wisdom and parroted platitudes such as ‘it my is attachment to human suffering that is the problem’.

Not being affected by other’s sadness or aggression in the pursuit of ‘self’-immolation is 180 degrees opposite to such meditative dissociation –

The aim of running the question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is to become aware of exactly how I am experiencing the world of people things and events and to investigate what is preventing me from being happy and harmless in this moment. It is therefore important to discriminate between the pure sensate sensual experiences, as in sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and the ‘self’-centred cerebral thought and affective feeling experiences that are sourced in the instinctual animal survival passions. Feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts – thoughts arising in response to the flooding of chemicals that originate from the animal instinctual brain, the amygdala. As the amygdala quick-scans the incoming sensorial input, it is programmed to automatically respond with an instinctual reaction – essentially those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. It is important to recognize that these reactions, while felt in the body as sensations, and interpreted by the brain as feelings, are actually instinctual animal passions in action – they are the very substance of ‘who’ we feel ourselves to be, deep down at a bodily level, in both heart and gut.

The further I experientially investigated why I was affected by another’s sadness or psychic aggression, the more I discovered ‘me’, the feeler in action and how I was entangled in the psychic web of humanity’s collectively experienced feelings and instinctual passions. In order to not be ‘affected by other’s sadness or aggression’ I am exploring, becoming aware and then stepping out of experiencing the world affectively, as a feeling ‘me’, and more and more I am able to experience the world sensately.

I remove the obstacles that prevent me from being here in this place and now in this moment whereas the meditator aims to go there ‘where I belong’ and be ‘what I have always been’, my immortal spirit, and then one desperately tries to feel present in the material world.

Maybe what you call meditation is some kind of avoidance.

Yes, meditation is definitely ‘some kind of avoidance’ – it is going somewhere else and avoiding to deal with the prime cause of our malice, sorrow and feeling of separation, the psychological and instinctual ‘self’. Meditation is like taking drugs, covering malice and sorrow with a golden layer of inner peace, love, beauty, compassion and the feeling of immortality and thus avoiding the extraction of the rotten tooth. If you watch the news you will notice that the Eastern countries that have practiced meditation for centuries have as many territorial civil and religious wars as Western or African countries. Meditation does nothing for an actual peace on earth in this lifetime, it only transports people into an imaginary Peter Pan Never-never-land of dissociative self-centredness.

In the spiritual process (even if you have not achieved perfect control of the thoughts and feelings) once you’ve gotten the clue that you are not the things you are witnessing, you start looking for the witness itself or, I should say, the Witness Itself. If you are rigorous in your investigation, you will finally come to the conclusion that there is no Witness to be found. Then you are left with witnessing. The question is will it be Witnessing or is there simply a flesh and blood body present with the capacity to be aware of its own awareness?

This is where Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual belief. As an actualist I am not concerned about witnessing at all but about removing any belief, emotion and feeling that prevents me from being happy and harmless in this very moment. I don’t witness the Witness in order to remove him/her, I use awareness to scrutinize my accumulated beliefs, investigate the underlying causes of my emotions each time they occur. When this investigation is undertaken with sufficient intent and depth, a realization will occur such that action inevitably follows changing my behaviour towards becoming more harmless and happy. ‘I’ am my emotions and instinctual passions and the witness/Witness is merely a by-product of these emotions and passions.

Coming from spiritual practice I had to unlearn passive watching and undo the ‘dissociating from feelings and thoughts’ in order to apply sensible thought to question and eliminate beliefs and to experience and investigate emotions and feelings. Once you abandon the idea of a Witness, there is only one self, ‘me’, my identity, whatever hide-and-seek games we have been taught to play with it. It makes it all so very simple, practical and effective.

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Today I don’t consider this duality subtle anymore – it is, in fact, very crude and blatantly obvious. In my spiritual years I had to practice much denial and acceptance in order to fit all the fervent beliefs and nonsensical explanations into my poor confused brain and it was a great relief when the bubble of beliefs finally burst. I practiced denial for years, despite evidence and common sense, attempting to transcend my ‘bad’ emotions, my personal thoughts, my association with my physical body and tried to ignore all the real suffering, both my own and that of others around me. In return, I needed a lot of reassurance through feel-good energy, feeling superior by belonging to the Chosen Ones and the daily practice of meditation in the nursery of an isolated Ashram.

It is hard work to keep nonsensical belief alive, complete with moral control and the demands of one’s social identity. Although it requires a lot of effort and persistence at the start to investigate and eliminate one’s beliefs, feelings and emotions, living in Actual Freedom doesn’t need any effort at all because the actual world is already always here. One simply needs to remove everything that prevents the actual from becoming apparent.

It’s a superb bargain to exchange one’s beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions for the sensate actuality and magical perfection of the actual world.

Maybe you have already found the two diagrams relating to this subject – ‘180 opposite’ and ‘Who am I vs. What am I’?

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What you call the ‘gobbledy gook’ that everyone is ‘taken in by’ is, in fact, the foundation of all spiritual belief – the battle of good against evil, God against the Devil, the Higher against the Lower – and this battle is represented in hundreds of imagined, deeply felt and variously symbolized dualities. Within the Human Condition, nobody has a chance to escape that ‘gobbledy gook’, it comes with the mother’s milk. For instance, I had believed that my mind was divided into male and female, with an ‘inner and outer’ male and an ‘inner and outer’ female as well! Every childhood fairy tale has a bad guy and a hero (who marries the princess) and, as we grow up, this atavistic battle of ‘good’ against ‘evil’ is instilled into each person as a life-long struggle against their inner evil. It is the basic premise of human logic that everything must have its opposite and the best one can do – up until now – was to hope to ‘transcend’ the opposites. Duality is the very foundation of the ‘self’.

In order to backtrack out of the myriad notions of duality I deliberately stopped the spiritual practice of selectively watching and prejudicially labelling my thoughts and feelings. The so-called choiceless awareness is not choiceless at all. Instead, I put my whole emphasis on consciously experiencing and actively investigating the emotions that were underlying each upcoming feeling or belief in order to identify ‘me’, this singular alien entity inside this flesh-and-blood body. Given that this entity is lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning, my investigation needed stubborn bloody-mindedness and pure intent so that I would not end up fooling myself.

Yes, in the actual world there is no duality whatsoever because when the ‘self’ disappears, the feeling of separation and any notions of duality also disappear. So now, instead of enhancing the ‘Good’ and fighting the ‘Evil’, I trace down both good and bad feelings and instinctual passions and aim for immolating the very ‘self’ that maintains the feeling of separation and the notion of duality in the first place. I am reminded of poor Cinderella who had the job to sort out peas into large ones and small ones – now I am simply throwing out the whole lot, all of me. That’s what makes actualism so simple – for the ones who are daring enough.

You are welcome to try – but from the experience of numerous PCEs, I know that an actual freedom from the Human Condition is not possible unless one examines all of one’s beliefs, feeling and emotions. Therefore, I am intolerant towards all religious and spiritual teachings of enlightenment, including ‘that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end’, to quote Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti.

It is a simple fact that all spiritual beliefs are a delusionary product of feverish imagination and the instinctual fear of death. But to verify this fact for yourself you will have to step beyond your reliance on your previous teacher’s authority and enter the fascinating iconoclastic territory of investigating facts.

‘Abandoning humanity’ in Actual Freedom terms stands for gaily taking the pen-ultimate step before self-immolation. After one has removed one’s social identity of being a son or daughter, a man or woman, an American or Englishman, a seeker, a writer, a doctor, etc. and has become an utter non-identity, one is then able to investigate the collective psyche, the result of the instinctual passions that all human beings have in common. Applying attentiveness and awareness to the instinctual passions as they arise enables one to stop acting as per the instinctual software in the brain and thus one can slowly, slowly reduce the automated reactive and emotional impact that instincts have on our feelings, thoughts and behaviour. In doing so one not only becomes happy and harmless but also stops being part of the biggest fold of all, humanity itself. One is no longer a member of the species that ‘nourishes malice and sorrow in their bosom’ to quote Richard’s expression.

Whereas ‘a disconnected feeling’ is clearly an affective feeling, arising out of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. To have a ‘disconnected feeling’ has nothing at all to do with ‘abandoning humanity’; it is, on the contrary, common to all human beings and arises out of the Human Condition in each of us.

You see, in order to communicate about the possible advantage that Actual Freedom could have for your life, it is essential to not mix up the terms that we use with emotional or spiritual terms. For instance, ‘not-knowing’ is used by Buddhists and other Eastern religions as an expression for the highest achievable wisdom when one enters the ‘Unknowable’, synonymous for the ‘Truth’. Aspiring to or succeeding in achieving the ‘Truth’ and reaching a state of ‘not-knowing’ is well accepted in the ‘book of rules for humanity’. When achieving a state of ‘not-knowing’ one simply exchanges the illusion of the ‘self’ for the grand delusion of a higher ‘Self’.

I see from our conversation that you seem to take Richard’s writing and his method as just another spiritual writing about how to get free from the ego. But his discovery has nothing, nothing at all to do with any of the familiar spiritual approaches whatsoever. His finding is not about getting rid of the ego, watching, and maybe becoming enlightened.

Richard was enlightened for 11 years and in an almost inhuman effort managed to work himself out of the massive delusion that enlightenment is. It is very hard when one lives inside the belief-structure, to see that the whole thing is only a belief-structure and not the ‘Truth’. For me, when I understood it for the first time with all its implications, it was like leaving planet earth in a spaceship and seeing it as a globe hanging in space for the very first time. A completely different perspective indeed.

I want to tell you about a movie we watched lately, called ‘Fearless’ by Peter Weir. I found it interesting for various reasons. First, it shows a near-death experience of the hero shortly before a plane crash. He encounters an altered state of consciousness, being fearless and driven to help people, mainly the survivors of the crashed plane. For me it is a good description of the delusion that enlightenment is and it stands out oddly because he is an American and lives in today’s Western society. One can see the ‘loony-ness’ of his state.

The only person not being impressed by his heroic efforts to save people is his wife – down to earth, common sense, practical – she can see that he is in severe danger displaying his fearlessness in silly ways. (He believes, he has already died and one can die only once). She then is able to convince the woman he is currently saving and they both try to get through to him.

He ends up seeing the point and in a dramatic second near-death experience he seems to come back to his senses. At least, that is how I would like to interpret his exclamation: I am ALIVE! It could very well mean something completely different! And this is how, unfortunately, the film ends. I guess that both the playwright and the director have no idea what happens when one comes to his senses! Peter sent him ‘Peter’s Journal’ to show that there is an option for life after delusion.

Now, I think, not many people understand that film like this. But that is definitely what I am planning for! Promptly I had a few sleepless nights after this movie, contemplating death. The days were sparkling and gay, but the nights brought up the fears. The pictures in my mind is that of a death-cell, being sentenced to death, waiting for the day of execution.

Yes, I do understand what you are talking about. After all we are just a handful of pioneers compared to the whole world of believers. I had these doubts again and again, they usually took the form of doubting my effort, ‘am I really on the right track’?, ‘am I doing all that is needed’? or ‘what if I end up enlightened?’ Peter and I found a circle of emotions going round and round: fear – frustration – doubt – fear and the only way out was to muster our intent and investigate the facts of the situation. I take it that when you are ‘here’ there is no doubt that you are following a delusion?

As for being a blind follower of Richard – Konrad’s favourite objection – yes, I did and do examine Richard very closely as a mentor and teacher to find out as much as possible about living in freedom for 24 h a day. And compared to Rajneesh and other authority figures which I had tried to emulate in my life, Richard is the most candid, the most approachable and ‘ordinary’ teacher I ever had. On the other hand I again and again notice with delight that there is no authority issue neither from my side nor from his, our discussions are lively, equal and open, and never before have I been able to ask so many questions, investigate all my objections and pursue my own trail of thoughts without restriction. By now, the ‘madness of 180 degrees’ has reached such a degree that there is no way back, so I might as well ignore upcoming doubts and pursue what I have experienced so often as an actual experience of delight.

Wheeeeeeee, Alan, that is truly an occasion to get the bottle of Champagne out of your fridge and have a big toast on yourself! What a day of remarkable significance when you stop being immortal – or potentially immortal – and become alive in this moment.

I can take the analogy that I wrote to you the other day a bit further – everybody walks on their hands and suffer blisters and headache, and then we wonder why we feel so mad and weird walking upright. To come to one’s senses and walk upright, one first has to fall on to one’s nose, or bum, and most people object to that position... Leaving immortality behind is a big step towards walking upright, at least in my experience. Welcome to the ‘bee in the bonnet’-club.

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No doubt at all. When ‘here’, I am absolutely sure I am following a delusion – only joking. When I am ‘here’ I could not care less whether I am following a delusion, an illusion, or raving lunatics. I know where I am – here – and whatever anyone else does is wholly a matter for them.

Well, that is our advantage compared with all the hundreds of religions and philosophies, isn’t it. When ‘here’, we experience, this is it, this is the obvious, actual, undoubted factuality, the bottom-line. That’s why I could finally give up the highly valued and cherished belief in Osho and Zen-mystics – I had a day of belief-less actuality and the experience was faaaar superior.

In the first few months with Peter, I sometimes tried to land a sarcastic or snide remark on him. He simply didn’t ‘get it’. He just said, ‘I lost you here, what do you mean’, and it was a sincere question. I then could only feel embarrassed and investigate my outbreak of malice.

‘But it was not all over yet. The sense of love and warmth that had resided in the heart moved further down into the belly, what Japanese call the Hara. I found it to be the seat of ‘being’, of bliss. It was a less fiery passion, more of a calm prevailing blissful state of eternal ‘being here’, as opposed to the actual being ‘here’. I don’t remember much of it except for the seductive invitation to stay there, ‘you have found your destiny, this is what they all talk about, you have arrived’. <snip> ‘Big deal! Seeing the Power and Glory in action and its impact on me I turn away. This is not the perfection I am searching for, this is not the purity that I know from peak-experiences. As I watch the sky dawn in its wonderful changing colours with life awakening all around, leaves rustling in the wind, cicadas chirping, magpies whistling, fear returns and I welcome it as a sign that I am on the road to freedom again. The delusion of Power and Glory is seen for what it is – and disappears while I lie on the couch contemplating life and death and the universe.’

Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. And recently, when somebody asked me about Akashic Records, I experienced that bliss-state for about an hour, the state Mrs. Roberts seems to describe in her book. I finally got a grip on it – I could experience it and describe from the ‘outside’ what was happening. This blissful state seems unemotional, no love or compassion is felt in the heart, everything is a cool ‘oneness’. One feels all-pervading, ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is divine’.

The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling’ intimate with the TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’ prior to this experience). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is virtual, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up. This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world as a flesh and blood body, with the senses. Boy, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket.

But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual.

It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of disassociation that people suffer from that are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, forever cut off from common sense.

As long as I was a sannyasin and specially as long as Osho was alive I did not think I had God in my bonnet. Osho was simple the man I followed, he was the guide of my life, his words were truth and his directions were right. Whatever he said about life, meditation, relationship and the universe was law for me and I tried to live my life accordingly. I don’t see anything strange in this, taken that I had burnt my bridges to ‘being normal’ when I took sannyas, and taken that this was called ‘commitment’ – a necessary requirement for enlightenment or success. Instead of god, priests, teachers or philosophers he was now the authority in my life, followed without caution or restraint.

I don’t think we got him wrong there. Commitment was not only during ranch-time a big issue, totality, as it was called later, was the main ingredient for the path to enlightenment. The story of digging only one hole, not 50, to produce a well, the stressing not to see other master as to not get confused are only two examples of his teaching.

‘Being happy here and now’ is only part of the teaching. It does not jell with the teaching of reincarnation, of enlightenment being the ending of the wheel of birth and death and the teaching of meditation to one day, after a lot of effort, become enlightened. Yes, when after all this effort you become enlightened, then you can laugh and say you were always here and now. But normal mortals were considered asleep and had to do dynamic and other exercises to wake up.

The other obvious difference between the spiritual ‘here and now’ and the actual ‘here and now’ is how Osho and eastern philosophy regards the body and everything physical. The spiritual concept is that the world is ‘may’, an illusion. Once you get it, you can be happy ‘here and now’. But you have to understand that you are the ‘watcher’, not the body, you have to be detached from the body and your senses to rise to your ‘true nature’. That ‘true nature’ is your consciousness, so they say, best to be achieved through meditation, which is in its purest form sitting motionless with closed eyes for hours on end. Then the identity is shifted to the ‘watcher’, Consciousness and one day one realizes that one is One with All, That, Universal Love etc. The delusion is complete. Yes, one loses one’s ego on the way, but the soul, the feeling part of the Human Condition stays not only fully intact, but is aggrandized to the extent that one considers oneself to be God or the Universe itself.

Compared to this illusory scenario, the actual ‘here and now’ is to be here in this moment of time, which is the only moment one can experience anyway. To be actually here is to be in this place which is no-where in particular in the infinitude of the physical universe. Coming from no-where and having no-where to go we find ourselves here in this moment in time in this place in space. To be here is to be the universe experiencing itself as a human being. Being here now is to ‘be doing what is happening’ with no sense of ‘I’ or feelings of ‘me’. To be fully here, now without a fearful ‘self ‘or a ‘Grand Self’ is to be innocent, perfect and pure, fully engaged in this only moment of being alive.

I have no idea how big the effort would be and I have no intention to check it out. But I know that it takes a stubborn intent to keep going in the face of all the instinctual fear that has surfaced. Other people climb Mount Everest or journey to the North Pole to get their excitement and sense of achievement – I just do it on the couch.

Love and Enlightenment are lures that are certainly not to be taken lightly. That’s why Peter and I are putting so much emphasis on Virtual Freedom. In the face of ultimate extinction the survival instinct makes one grab the only option to survive – Enlightenment, the delusion of immortality. But I know now by extensive experience how enlightenment looks and feels like and I am 100% sure that it is a second rate alternative to Actual Freedom.

I have been increasingly fascinated during my research into fear. In my letters to Alan particularly I have reported the various findings and insights – all nicely collected under the library topic of ‘Fear’, which you have probably already discovered. In the first year of my exploration fear had usually a reason, a content, an issue to look at and explore. It was like a hump one had to get over to reach the underlying base-topic – a particular belief, giving up friends, leaving the familiarity of both the spiritual world and the real world. In my experience the ecstatic experience in the wake of fear disappearing was the emotional relief of tension, but nevertheless an emotion to be scrutinized. In order to get to the rock-bottom of fear, the instinctual survival fear itself, I had to investigate not only the ‘bad’, unpleasant emotions, but the ‘good’, nice feelings as well. Moreover, feeling ecstatic and blissed out was never far from the delusion of an altered state of consciousness, and I did not want to get sucked into that delusion like all the other ill-famed gurus. But with growing awareness, I could increasingly recognize fear as just fear – as you described it – and then get on with life. Fear is, after all, not the main event in life – it is not even actual. But this instinctual state is definitely the engine and driving force within the Human Condition. Now, having examined it in all its facets and variation, it loses its fascinating (and paralysing) attraction it used to have. The success of life in Virtual Freedom was simply too good to continuously be spoiled by just another wave of fear!

Yes, I agree. Love is used as the antidote to fear. With sufficient love one feels no fear. I experienced it as fear being transformed from the tension in the stomach into warmth and then heat rising into the heart area until it filled out the whole chest, giving me this new identity – the ‘one who feels love continuously’. But although it was a very seductive experience, I could not forget the intimacy I had during the peak-experiences. Intimacy was impossible in this state of Love. My relating then was tinted by this ‘filled to the top’-being that needed to pour its ‘wisdom’ and love into someone, embracing all of humanity in a mad state of pitying compassion. Fortunately my common sense and intent for freedom helped me to overcome this delusion.

Actual intimacy – being here – does not come from love, for love stems from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love produces is only a poor imitation of this direct experience of the actual. To be actually intimate is to be without separation ... and therefore free from the need for love with its ever un-filled promise of Peace-On-Earth.

As humans, we are born with the instinct to survive, consisting of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. It takes deep digging and courage, to dismantle fear for what it is – the instinct of the ‘self’ to survive. So, you see, out of my peak-experience my approach has been to eliminate this fear whenever it surfaced, thus digging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of ‘self’ and ‘being’, eventually eradicating the very reasons for fear. But every time fear is recognized, it loses its grip over me, becoming weaker and weaker, dissolving like a fog, leaving me unrestricted and free to experience life again as the crisp, clear, delicious and intimate adventure that it actually is.

Now I can give everyone I meet, and spend time with, my 100% undivided attention, being here with them for as long as the meeting lasts. There is neither an expectation nor an investment, neither a need to ‘give’ nor to ‘receive’, but simply the joy in meeting another human being. No love or Love can offer such freedom and delight.

I don’t know what you mean with ‘the other’. Once I am out of the self, there is no other, just this body and brain functioning perfectly and experiencing the world around me intimately, with all my physical senses, fully alive and marvelling at my surroundings. While I am writing to you, Peter is clicking away on his keyboard, the computer is humming quietly, the night still and magic with the full-moon high in the sky. My fingers find their way from the letter to making words, my body still tingling from sex.

Life is wonderfully easy without the burden of the self. It was never the body or the senses or the brain that were the trouble, it has always been the ‘self’, which corrupts both thoughts and senses. This self is responsible for all the misery around the planet, the murders, wars, rapes, poverty, greed and hypocrisy. By dismantling and extinguishing it bit by bit I am able to live here, now, in this actual physical sensually experience-able world. I don’t need to escape into a fantasy-place where the ‘self’ does not exist. I came to see the fairy-world of enlightenment as a big, big fairy-land and quite a few people have been deluded into it, although rarely anybody succeeds in staying there permanently (a Buddhist pundit quotes 0.0001% of seekers make it). But in the end enlightenment is an Altered State of Consciousness, but nevertheless a construct of passionate imagination.

I did experience this enlightened self from the inside – called Satori, I guess – and from the outside – seeing the grand belief and emotions of the delusion – and I know the difference of quality when there is no self at all operating. All Enlightened Ones still have an identity; it is called ‘I am God’ or ‘I am one with God’. It still is an identity, very grand, universal but still with the one at its centre who claims to be God. The Enlightened Ones loose their ego but keep their soul, the identity merely shifts from the head to the heart.

Later on that night I went into an exploration of what this enlightenment feels like from the inside. In all my years of spiritual search, I had been vitally interested as to exactly what enlightenment is. I had investigated descriptions from the different ‘holy’ men and spiritual Scriptures, but could never quite grasp this mysterious ‘state of being’. Now it was obvious. The intense pulsing of the heart, the love and compassion for each and everyone mixed with the grandeur of ‘Divine Love’ or ‘Universal Love’. It is a very seductive state with this cozy warm sensation filling the whole chest or heart area, continuously glowing and an utter at-ease-ness, because every aspect of personal concern, ego or self is non-existent. And there is no doubt, whatsoever. No doubt about any theory or philosophy running in my head as I try and make sense of this new state. In this cock-sure security I could write Scriptures, poems, treatises on each and every spiritual subject, make up an illusory world of heavens, hells and Divine Laws and ways to get there. As long as I keep the ‘Love’ flowing, there is no fear involved either. I am convinced I found the Truth – if only there wasn’t somewhere in the back this nagging concern that maybe I am cheating myself!

I recognize a satisfaction and pride of finally standing equal as a woman besides all those superior men I have aspired to emulate, copy, obey, surrender to, or at least understand. Now I know exactly where they are at. I was like Gangaji swanning into a hall of disciples, all-knowing, generous, compassionate, and full of the wisdom of all the ages.

Big deal! Seeing the Power and Glory in action and its impact on me I turn away. This is not the perfection I am searching for, this is not the purity that I know from peak-experiences. As I watch the sky dawn in its wonderful changing colours with life awakening all around, leaves rustling in the wind, cicadas chirping, magpies whistling, fear returns and I welcome it as a sign that I am on the road to freedom again. The delusion of Power and Glory is seen for what it is – and disappears while I lie on the couch contemplating life and death and the universe.

Still, one great realization after the other are floating in and out of my head, engulfing me with their convincing web. Suddenly I become aware of what is happening. I am a ‘Truth-Producing-Machine’! I am producing the ‘Truth of Freedom’ to maintain my ‘Self’.

What a bummer! Just call it the ‘Truth of Freedom’ and turn it into a spiritual belief-system! Very, very cunning indeed. Back into ‘old time religion’! This realization truly ripped the carpet from under my feet. While it crumbled I recognized the enormity of its implications. My certainty vanished while I desperately tried to maintain and understanding about freedom and death. What to do now? Where to go from here? The ground I was standing on as an identity shook considerably but didn’t disappear entirely. I was still trying to make sense of me and life.

And then I reach the door marked ‘insanity’ that Richard had been talking about. Fear reaches another crescendo and turned into stark terror. Frantically I try to at least keep up the reporting, the cognitive exploring entity. But I realize that if I want to go through that door, the ‘pioneer’, the ‘scientist’ and the ‘reporter’ will have to stay behind.

As I wake up after a few hours of sleep I am desolate. Frustrated and desperate that the ‘self’ is still in operation and control, that I am not able to reach my goal, I have to admit that I have failed. I had done everything I could think of, feel about and imagine – nothing has ultimately worked. All my efforts, all my so highly valued explorations and findings have not been able to set me free. No hope, no will, no passionate intent. I am lost, empty-handed in no-where-land.

I said to Peter: ‘Forget about everything that I was so cock-sure about the last days. I have no idea of anything.’

Peter: ‘So, you got out of your enlightenment-stuff then? Congratulations! Isn’t it amazing what goes on just in the head and the heart?!’ Vineeto, Explorations of Death and Altered States of Consciousness

Yes, I agree with you, it is an ongoing devastation for the ‘self’, for who we think and feel we are.

I don’t agree with you here. Once I got rid of my ideas, beliefs, emotions – in short all of my identity – there is no-one there to be an asshole or call anyone an asshole. This is not pretended humility. When there is no asshole in me, I also see no asshole outside of me.

As long as I swanned around like one of the enlightened ones I felt superior, and everyone else needed my compassion or wisdom. It took me a week to fully get out of that seductive delusion. It is part and parcel of becoming enlightened; it comes with that ‘energy’ filling one’s heart, one is being swamped with ‘wisdom’, the greatest imagination the Self can produce. One is hooked into the collective ‘wisdom’ of humanity and thus perpetuates the suffering and morals that have been our heritage from the very beginning. ‘Good’ is only the backside of ‘bad’.

The name of the game is to throw the whole coin of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ out the window. The name of the game is freedom from good and evil, right and wrong.

Once I got rid of ‘who I am’ and simply live ‘what I am’, this flesh and blood body, there is only silly and sensible, a practical, down-to-earth, delightful enjoyment of the perfection of this benevolent universe. This is when peace on earth is possible.

Yes, you observed it right – the flavours of Papaji and Gangaji are very different, they have got the heart in it.

The whole issue of actual freedom is the freedom from the instincts, passions, feelings and emotions. ‘Heart’-felt passions have been the source of both religious and tribal wars, of domestic violence, and of the misery and gulf between men and women. Any questioning of the love and devotion that the followers have for the enlightened ones and the religious leaders has led to emotional responses which you can now see happening on the sannyas mailing list.

Richard was indeed the first one to question the state of enlightenment because it did not match the way he experienced the world in the peak experience. In arduous years of investigation he discovered the massive delusion that enlightenment is and, by eliminating not only the ego but also the soul, all the heart-felt emotions, he managed to get himself out of this delusion. What was left after the complete elimination of ego, soul, identity and being was simply the physical human flesh-and-blood body, perfectly functioning in this magical fairy-tale like world. Without the Human Condition, without the overlaying fear, aggression, nurture and desire this world is experienced as-it-is, benevolent, friendly, easy and magically delightful.

As for your notion of us looking down on others – that is a curious matter. Of course, the actual world is superior to any state of enlightened delusion in that it is not merely a creation of human imagination but factual, obvious and perfect, as evidenced by the physical senses. If you have experienced it once in a peak experience – or remembered one you had, you would easily agree with me. Many people seem to have peak-experiences, if only for a short period of time. In my writing I am simply sharing the joy of having been able to clean myself up with Richard’s method and becoming virtually free. It is possible for everybody because I am nobody special. Everybody with enough intent and courage can indeed become happy and harmless.

I find it strange that most people seem to get stuck with their opinion, objecting to this freedom because of their personal feelings instead of investigating the contents and facts of what we are talking about. When Galileo first discovered the fact that the earth went around the sun, many people have objected, because this was contrary to the ancient beliefs. It took centuries until it became accepted as a fact. The same will be the case with actual freedom. For most people it is too radical a thought that emotions and even instincts might not be necessary for survival, but that they are, to the contrary, the very cause for all the misery happening on the planet.

I am simply telling my story in case someone becomes intrigued by the possibility of a third alternative to ‘normal’ and ‘spiritual’. I understand that many will want to stay in their particular belief system – I myself had rocky days to work myself out of the social and religious conditioning, before I could tackle the animal instincts every human is born with.

Perfection – The condition, state, or quality of being perfect or free from all defect; flawlessness, faultlessness.

The Oxford dictionary.

Your interpretation of perfect is derived from the spiritual interpretation that the world is illusory and has to be transcended. Of course, Eastern religion preaches that you have to transcend body and mind and disappear completely into the grand state of imagination and delusion. In its affective experience this is seen as very real, seductive and engulfing, but nevertheless a product of the ‘universal’ imaginative psyche, not based on facts. As I said before, intelligence is a very good tool to judge silly and sensible. You, however, seem to use the word ‘judging’ as in ‘rejecting’, not as in ‘discriminating’. Rejecting is ineffective, useless and silly, discriminating a necessary quality to make down-to-earth decisions about one’s life.

Soul is the ‘feeling’ faculty of human beings usually associated with the ‘heart’. Irrevocably linked to sorrow as in soul music, soulful, lost soul or soul-less (without pity). In spiritual terms, that part of the spirit (as distinct from the ego) which is believed to be immortal. Spiritual practices such as meditation involve a conscious attempt to move the personal identity from the egoistic self to the immortal soul, creating a delusion wherein one is ‘at one’ with the immortal spirit – thus finding God, Truth, That Which Is, Nirvana, Divine Love or whatever other name. Given that sorrow is at the very core of the soul, these few ‘souls’, who have found ‘liberation’, then practice compassion on those still left behind and suffering.

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