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Selected Correspondence Vineeto Affective Feelings – Emotions and Passions RESPONDENT: Actualists appear to have some feelings … VINEETO: The only actualist who has no feelings whatsoever is Richard who is actually free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: …or how could you use words like delight, benign, beneficent, happy, etc. VINEETO: None of those words necessarily describes a feeling – delight is a sensate experience, benignity a kindness of disposition, beneficence the outcome of such disposition and being happy can either be a felicitous feeling or a descriptive word that expresses the joyous, blithesome, carefree, untroubled experience of being alive. An actualist who has got to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow experiences felicitous/ innocuous feelings almost constantly such that feeling happy becomes the norm, so much so that he/she is invariably spontaneously considerate of others which means that he/she is almost always harmless to others. RESPONDENT: I can see having no passions (violent emotions) but there seems to be something of the emotional capacity (or feeling capacity) left. I have been practicing the af method intensively the last few months and I am certainly much less emotional, … VINEETO: The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, friendliness, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. RESPONDENT: …but it seems that even in what seemed to be PCE (or mini ones) some sort of a well-being sense – which in scientific categories of emotion is still considered an emotion or feeling. VINEETO: ‘Some sort of wellbeing sense’ need not be an affective feeling, in the same way as being healthy is not necessarily an affective feeling. Having said that, unless I am having a pure consciousness experience, ‘I’ am an emotional being which means that inevitably ‘I’ have feelings – however as an actualist my on-going attentiveness combined with my ever-present intent to be as happy and harmless as is humanly possible means that I always have the choice that these feelings be felicitous feelings rather than the good or bad moods, vibes, emotions and passions ‘I’ have been socially and genetically programmed to feel. RESPONDENT: Perhaps, this is more a problem with British versus American English. VINEETO: Here is the British versus the American definition of the word ‘emotion’ and they seem to be remarkably similar –
RESPONDENT: Or more to the point, a problem with the strict dictionary use of a term versus a psychological (or evolutionary use of) use of the term emotion to refer to all feelings as being ‘emotional’. VINEETO: A straightforward definition – and one that is quite congruent with the description
in the dictionaries is that emotions, passions, calentures are all affective feelings, all of which are generated by the affective faculty of the
brain, as opposed to sensate feelings or sensations ( Of course, the best way to gain a thorough experiential understanding of feelings, emotions and
passions is to observe them in action in situ, when and as they occur – theoretical speculation and intellectual knowledge are no substitute for
practical hands on experience. * VINEETO: The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging activating one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, friendliness, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. RESPONDENT: Ok, this help a lot. I’m ‘getting it’. For one I see there is ATTACHMENT in the ‘tender passions’ and there is none in the FELICITOUS FEELINGS. Attachment leads to or even is suffering. This is great fun. VINEETO: No. The idea that one is merely ‘attached’ to one’s emotions is an
invention of Eastern spiritualism and a particularly persistent and popular one at that. This theory is integral to the notion that the way to
become ‘free’ is to become detached from one’s unwanted feelings (as well as from the corporeal body and the physical world). Becoming
detached from one’s unwanted or undesirable feelings inevitably leads to This is not what actualism is about – it is impossible to be attentive to the operation of feelings emotions and passions that one is busily being detached from or feeling dissociated from. Actualism clearly recognizes that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’, which is ‘me’ at the core of my ‘being’ and one’s own attentiveness will reveal that this is so. Whenever I am feeling annoyed, it is ‘me’ that is feeling annoyed – ‘I’ am the feeling of annoyance and the feeling of annoyance is ‘me’ in operation as it were. Whenever I am feeling sad, it is ‘me’ that is feeling sad – ‘I’ am the feeling of sadness and the feeling of sadness is ‘me’ in operation as it were … and so on. If one is detached in any way from any of the feelings that are ‘me’ then it is impossible to
understand, let alone actively investigate, how ‘I’ am operating at this moment.
VINEETO: As well as Richard’s experiential report there is also the option of inquiring into why you are now doubting the sincerity of the information supplied to you to the point of suggesting that Richard might still have an ‘ego/soul/affect’ and is possibly ‘simply unconscious of same’. (Being verballed by Richard, 29.1.2004) RESPONDENT: I don’t doubt the ‘sincerity’ of the information supplied to me, but I sometimes do, and no doubt will continue to, question the ‘factuality’ of it. There is a big difference, as I’m sure you’ll agree. VINEETO: Nowadays I am able to take everyone’s words at face value, which is possible only because ‘me’, the doubting, fearing, defensive, aggressive, suspicious identity hardly ever interferes with reading or hearing the actual words that are conveyed. Whether or not the person is sincere or genuine will either become clear in the course of the conversation or by the person’s actions, and if the person is sarcastic or cynical it does not affect me as they only shoot themselves in the foot. I also keep my wits about me when taking someone’s words at face value in that I take into consideration all the information available to me in order to determine what background or motivations a person may have in saying what they are saying – in short, a naiveté based on adult sensibility and sensitivity. In this way I validate or invalidate the ‘factuality’ of what is being said by assessing the sensibility/silliness of the statements, by cross-references from outside sources and, particularly in the case of actualism, by comparing it to my own ongoing experience of what works and what doesn’t work. RESPONDENT: (In the meantime, in daily life, I am practising actualism exactly as prescribed). VINEETO: When I started practicing actualism I was in for many a surprise because I uncovered many aspects of ‘me’ that were hidden before. No 47 gave an excellent description of the process the other day –
RESPONDENT: If you have a close look at the posting you referred to above, you’ll notice that I was indeed questioning my own reactions, as well as questioning the phenomena that occasioned that reaction (i.e. Richard’s behaviour as it appeared to me). VINEETO: Questioning my reactions for me means inquiring into why am I getting annoyed or why am I feeling sad. I found it useless blaming someone else or something else for making me annoyed or sad because when I came to understand that I am the only person I can change, I focussed my full attention on ‘me’ not ‘her’ or ‘him’ or ‘they’ or ‘it’. This is how I use the method of actualism (as prescribed) with excellent outcome – In order to investigate a feeling when it is occurring, the first thing I have to do is to stop trying to make it go away or stop trying to hang on to it as we have been socially or spiritually conditioned to do. As long as I object to having the (bad) feeling or desperately want to cling to the (good) feeling, I cannot examine what exactly is going on. The first thing to become aware of and understand was my automatic reaction of suppression or expression in order to be able to experience the feeling fully that I am then able to label and examine. I began to notice that when I stopped fighting having the feeling or stopped feeding the feeling, its intensity was immediately reduced significantly and then I was be able to take a closer look of what has caused this particular feeling to appear in the first place. When feelings are really intense such that they have taken me over, any investigation at such a time is useless. I had to get back to at least feeling good, if not happy, again in order to be able to sensibly delve deeper into the reasons that got me upset or enraptured in the first place. Then I could go about examining the feeling that I had just experienced – when did the feeling first start, what was the event or situation that caused the affective reaction, why did I feel insulted, self-righteous, misunderstood, rejected, sad, angry, worried, pissed off, etc., which of my cherished beliefs, truth, views, values, etc. is being questioned, in what way is this linked to my identity, is there a fear underneath the initial feeling, what is this fear about, and so on ...? In this way I am conducting an empirical systematic inquiry into my own affective experience and I am in fact examining my own psyche in action – I don’t make the feeling go away, on the contrary, I allow it to come entirely to the surface so that I can feel the feeling so that I can conduct an extensive experiential examination into all its aspects. Once I overcame the initial moral and ethical objection to having undesirable and unpleasant feelings in the first place, a keen interest and fascination developed that came from being able to be aware of my own feelings and emotions while they were happening as well as being able to understand why they operate, how they operate and what is their root cause. I was becoming keenly interested in each detail and every opportunity that might give me a clue to the way I tick – and everyday life is rich with such opportunities. The investigation into one’s feelings has to be experiential if it is to bring any tangible results – thinking about feelings and emotions removed from down-to-earth personal experience will only keep one at a surface level and will prevent one from penetrating into the very nature of one’s psyche. So the first thing for me to learn was to stop fighting my feelings and to stop feeding my feelings and allow myself to experience my feelings … all the while making sure that I kept my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets, in order that I wouldn’t do or say something I’d have to regret or feel remorseful about later on. As long as I continue to have silent accusations, grudges, irritation, suspicions, defensiveness, anger, fear, etc. against someone, I always know that there is an unresolved belief, a hidden truth, a firm conviction, a dearly-held principle, a personal moral or value at stake that the other – usually inadvertently – has uncovered or questioned or opposed. In order to get back to being happy and, more importantly harmless, I then need to take this belief apart, as I call it. That means I look where and when I acquired it, why I believe it to be so, why I react emotionally when it is opposed and by doing so inevitably I discover the aspect of my identity associated with this belief – in other words, it is ‘my’ belief and to give it up will mean I have to give up some part of ‘me’. Only my intent to be happy and harmless will cause ‘me’ to give up something ‘I’ hold so dear. This is the very reason why actualism is a do-it-yourself method because nobody can expose your own beliefs and truths but you. * VINEETO: As well as Richard’s experiential report there is also the option of inquiring into why you are now doubting the sincerity of the information supplied to you to the point of suggesting that Richard might still have an ‘ego/soul/affect’ and is possibly ‘simply unconscious of same’. (Being verballed by Richard, 29.1.2004) Whereas you had said in a post to me only 2 days previous to this –
RESPONDENT: There is no ‘whereas’, Vineeto. I meant that, and I still do. I am trying to be more careful in differentiating and separating my personal impressions from what is actual/ factual, in growing awareness that my own reactions are not necessarily reliable. VINEETO: Firstly, I have just read in your post to Peter that you had sent this as a private post. I apologize that I have inadvertently published it. I did not realize that it was a private post until just now as I very rarely receive private posts from list members and my MS-Outlook program does not display the difference in the preview pane. As for ‘whereas’ – personally, if I felt that someone was unconscious of ‘his ego/soul/affect’, and for a period of 11-12 years at that, I wouldn’t simultaneous think he was someone who truly knows what he is talking about. To me that would be contradictory. RESPONDENT: I’ve understood lately that I tend to take in gulps of reality, form a few impressions, and then start addressing those impressions – as if they were reality – without realising I’ve done so until afterwards. It’s something I’m trying to watch more closely. Richard has been rubbing ‘me’ up the wrong way lately, as I mentioned in the posting you referred to above. VINEETO: When I experienced someone as ‘rubbing ‘me’ up the wrong way’, whenever I am discussing an issue with them, I always knew that I had something to look at in terms of finding the underlying emotional investment I had with regard to the issue that caused me to feel this way. If this was the case I usually stopped my discussion with whoever it was, got back to feeling happy and amicable, nutted out ‘my’ issue that was bugging ‘me’ for myself and then was again able to objectively listen to what the other had to actually say. In the early days of my relationship with Peter for instance I felt emotionally threatened whenever the topic of my being a disciple of Rajneesh came up, so much so that Peter and I agreed ‘not to talk about the war’, for a period which lasted about six weeks. In that time I had explored other areas of my conditioning and had found it so beneficial and successful that I was then ready and able to tackle the ‘big one’. I am only saying this because this information might possibly assist you in your own practice of actualism. Inevitably every sincere discussion on this list will uncover many beliefs, viewpoints and truths one holds, will question ethics and values one might have, will disperse images one might have of oneself or trigger feelings one doesn’t like or didn’t know one had. The reason is because what is being discussed is the human psyche, how it is programmed to operate and what is the result of that programming, and therefore ‘I’ will feel inevitably exposed because ‘I’ am the human psyche. For this very reason I always stress that it is important to establish one’s intent first – which essentially is ‘my’ agreement to ‘my’ demise – before attempting to start with the nitty-gritty of dismantling one’s identity, otherwise one ends up going round in circles and blaming others for one’s own feelings of frustration and despair. The trick is to remember that the human condition applies to everyone and that nobody is to blame for it. And, as Richard emphasises again and again, it is important to be one’s own best friend in the enterprise of taking the identity apart –
RESPONDENT: (And not just me, evidently). VINEETO: Oh, the human condition – as the name suggests – is common to all. It’s a majority – an estimated 6 billion people. RESPONDENT: Actualism has a ready-made explanation for why that might be the case – everything Richard writes is a potentially fatal poison to the identities that lurk inside us all. I know that Richard does not pander to identities, and so be it – I was writing about ‘my’ reaction to ‘my’ perception of him, and part of that reaction was the idea that ‘he’ is alive and well, albeit unconscious of himself. (Notice that I said: it makes me wonder ... And please notice that it isn’t the same as saying: I’m convinced that Richard is ... this or that.) VINEETO: I wonder in what way publishing what you wondering about but are not convinced about
can add to a sensible discussion about the topics at hand. As you would know by experience, expressing your feelings to others only adds fuel to
the fire and to other people’s fire – investigating your own feelings by yourself in your own time is quite a different matter. I always found
that I first had to sort out my feelings for myself before I could read with both eyes open, ask sensible questions of Richard or have a fruitful
discussion that was helpful to me in furthering my inquiry into the human condition.
RESPONDENT: Firstly, may I thank you for an excellent site, which I have found extremely useful, especially the information on PCEs and the method set forth – HAIETMOBA. However, there has been something bothering me about your position which I haven’t been able to put my finger on until now. There seems to be a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists. There’s never smoke without fire. VINEETO: For you to propose that a small group of practicing actualists are somehow conducting a war against spiritualists when all that is on offer here is a third alternative to being normal or being spiritual does seem to be somewhat missing the point. RESPONDENT: This is a time when I wish there was a delete button on the message board. It was a silly post of mine, and I regret it. VINEETO: I appreciate that you can see the silliness of your perception that ‘there seems to be a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists’. However, an emotional issue is not resolved by regretting having expressed it. The question I always asked myself in such situations is why am I bothered and upset or what is it that I am bothered and upset about by what others are doing or are not doing? I say this because I know from experience that unless you find the source of your being bothered, which is most probably an affective reaction to something actualists say, the cycle of feeling upset, expressing it and then regretting it is likely to continue. * RESPONDENT: In this actual Actual world, in its wondrous, and infinite subtlety, there is no need whatsoever to destroy/eradicate anything at all, including, may I add, the Evil Spiritualism. Everything, and I do mean everything, is seen to be perfect just as it is, including the Human Condition you so desperately want to be free of. VINEETO: Well, if everything is as ‘perfect just as it is, including the Human Condition’, then why are you subscribed to a mailing list that offers a way of becoming free of the human condition? Why do you even bother to write to this list complaining that there is ‘a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists’? For me, the human condition is not perfect at all, for me there is something utterly wrong with the way human beings have been arguing and fighting, killing and torturing, suffering and agonizing for millennia – that’s why I took up the offer to radically (at root) change the only person I can change. And the first thing I had to change was my being a loyal spiritual believer. RESPONDENT: Of course I don’t see things as being perfect as they are or I wouldn’t have subscribed to the list. VINEETO: You were very explicit when you said ‘everything, and I do mean everything, is seen to be perfect just as it is’ – and yet now you say ‘of course’ when you state that you ‘don’t see things as being perfect as they are’. I can relate to both your statements because in my spiritual years I was led to believe that the world is perfect as it is – ‘me’ included – but this belief was hard to sustain in the hurly burly of the market place. I have since come to appreciate that living according to one’s beliefs and being in the grip of one’s feelings is a fickle business – one is happy one day and sad the next, annoyed one minute and dissociated the next. What this see-sawing taught me was that whilst beliefs and feelings rule the roost sensible thoughts and considered actions rarely have a chance to surface. RESPONDENT: I realise the only place to look at is my own reaction/ interpretation of things/events – the world. VINEETO: If when you say ‘the only place to look at is my own reaction/interpretation of things/events’ means that you are examining your affective/ emotional/ instinctive responses then I can agree with you. I found that to effectively explore emotions to the point of (virtually) eliminating them I had to experience them fully. Only by neither repressing, nor expressing, nor in any way rationally twisting the emotional experience could I meticulously observe, become fully aware of and sensibly contemplate on what is happening in my head, heart and guts and thus investigate the root cause of that particular emotion. Knowing that every emotion is part of the Human Condition relieved me from blaming myself or being resentful for having an emotion in the first place. In order to eliminate the particular emotion such that it would not return again and again, it was essential to explore it deeply at its core and to understand experientially how each emotion originated in my social identity and/or in my very sense of ‘being’. Once having seen the emotion in operation and understood its ramifications to their full extent there was no way I could feel the same way about a particular issue or situation – by having understood this specific piece of my identity it had been extinguished. Needless to say, this method has not the slightest thing to do with plain rationalization or spiritual dis-identification – proven by the very fact that it works, that it gets rid of the emotion permanently while increasingly allowing the sensual sensuousness and the pure delight of being alive. I know well the occasional reluctance to explore, yet the frustration of obviously going round in silly circles has always given me courage to stop wasting my time, to face the fear and reluctance and do whatever was necessary to return to being happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: I don’t agree with all that is said on the site, I stand by my right to question things, but I do agree that the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness/ unhappiness, VINEETO: Whereas my barometer as to whether I am on the right track to becoming actually free is my level of harmlessness, both in external actions and in internal feelings and thoughts – happiness then happens mostly on its own accord. RESPONDENT: [the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness /unhappiness] and ultimately the PCE experience. VINEETO: To me the memory of PCEs is the touchstone for the work that ‘I’ need to do and the guiding light on the wide and wondrous path. As long as I am an instinctual identity, a PCE happens serendipitously, once in a while and is not, as the word ‘barometer’ seems to suggest, an indicator and a reward for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour. My first RESPONDENT: That way, the fear that is the reliance on external authorities, becomes redundant. VINEETO: I am curious about your expression ‘the fear that is the reliance on external authorities’. I discovered that it is vital to make a distinction between my adverse and/or loyal feelings towards authorities and a reliance on the expertise of my fellow human beings, be it my computer repair man, software experts, my accountant, the doctors I visit, my optometrist, the car mechanic … or Richard who is an expert in how become free from the human condition. Nowadays I have no fears associated with relying on the expertise of others because I have investigated, understood and dissolved my emotional issues around authority. RESPONDENT: This site has taught me (whether that was the intention or not) that underneath all the confusion and problems, we are essentially safe and that there is really nothing to be scared of apart from our own interpretations. VINEETO: The main thing that makes life on this lush and magical planet unsafe is the genetically encoded instinctual programming that relentlessly drives human beings to feel aggrieved and to feel sad and the resultant ‘confusion and problems’ are certainly not the result of ‘interpretations’ – be they mine or anybody else’s. What was in my own hands, however, was the possibility to become virtually free of my own grievances and my own grieving. For instance when I succeeded in abandoning my spiritual beliefs I subsequently lost most of my fears regarding moral and ethical rewards and punishment, and the more I diminished my social and instinctual identity (not my ‘interpretations’ but the beliefs and feelings that made up my identity), the more I am now able to act and behave sensibly and intelligibly and as such safely. In other words – only ‘I’ feel fear, fear is not an actuality. RESPONDENT: I wish you all the best VINEETO: Thank you. The best that ever happened to me was that I came across Richard and decided
to learn how to become free from the human condition. Now life is almost always a breeze and a delight.
VINEETO: Now meeting someone who needs help at a road accident is a rather rare situation in
order to practice actual caring – help as action rather than feeling sympathy – whereas when I started to pay attention to my daily routine of
interactions with people, and became more sensitive how my words and actions where affecting not just myself but even more so my fellow human
beings, … RESPONDENT: Mmm ... Now I wonder why Richard doesn’t pay more attention to this before he pumps out his aggressive replies, and why you so defensively and dishonestly, pretend that he does? VINEETO: Whereas I wonder why someone who claims not to experience a ‘mean and miserable
me/I/self’ I have known Richard personally for more than eight years now and never ever have I experienced him to
be aggressive, not even irritated or impatient with people, neither in face-to-face interactions nor in his writings. Maybe it’s time for a
spoonful or two of your own medicine * VINEETO: I could easily see in what way I could replace a feeling compassion for the suffering all of human kind (which has no tangible effect whatsoever except on me who is feeling it) with an active and tangible change in the way I treat people in my immediate surrounding. RESPONDENT: I always have difficulty with this one. VINEETO: You are not the first. Here is an example of what someone wrote many years ago with a remarkably similar agenda to your own –
It is simply not possible to preserve the good emotions and discard, or distance oneself from, the bad emotions – this has been tried for 5000 years of recorded history and peace on earth is nowhere in sight. If you want to be free from the human condition then the instinctual passions will have to go as a whole package, nurture included. RESPONDENT: Why does actualism/actualists see the good feelings as ineffective motivators of practical actual caring, i.e. compassion as having [quote] no tangible effect whatsoever except on me who is feeling it [unquote] but eagerly acknowledges the bad feelings as motivating all the murder and mayhem in the world? VINEETO: In a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience it is readily observable that both the loving and desirable feelings as well as the hostile and invidious feelings are but two sides of the same coin and that both arise out of the instinctual animal survival package. Not only are the good feelings ineffective to eliminate suffering and violence, they actually contribute to it. Emotional caring only cares for those one feels connected with and will always exclude those who don’t fall into that category. Furthermore, actualism doesn’t state that ‘all the murder and mayhem’ is only motivated by the bad feelings but that it is caused by the whole of the instinctual survival package every human is endowed with at birth. The best practical actually caring thing anyone can do is to become aware of their own instinctually
driven feelings and passions in order to stop imposing them on their fellow human beings.
RESPONDENT: When an emotion has been fully investigated and there is nothing new to be learned from it, what can be done about it? I don’t think I really understand the difference between nipping it in the bud and repressing it. Many emotions recur automatically unless I take action to either dismiss them or redirect my attention elsewhere. I am not comfortable with this because it seems akin to repression, but I don’t know any other way to dispense with the feelings. Any tips would be appreciated. VINEETO: In my experience with the actualism method, I didn’t nip many emotions in the bud until I was certain that the whole issue that brought on the emotion had been examined and clearly understood. By neither repressing nor expressing an emotion I have opportunity to ask some investigative questions, either in the situation, if I am not too upset, or some time afterwards when the worst of the storm has passed. My questions go something like this – what brought on the emotional reaction, what is the underlying cause, what is the reoccurring theme, what is the belief behind it, what is it I particularly hold dear that caused my getting upset, what part of my identity feels insulted, threatened, annoyed, etc., what action do I possibly need to take in order to prevent a reoccurring of my upset, and finally, what part of ‘me’ do I need to let go of in order to permanently become free from this particular emotional reaction? Some emotional reactions I could easily dismiss as being plain silly such as complaints about the
weather, about obstacles in the traffic, about people being late, and so on. These situations merely needed a change of attitude, some
attentiveness to stop the old habit and then the emotion would not occur again by my sheer determination not to let such trivia bug me. For those
issues that needed no further inquiry, nipping any upcoming emotional reaction in the bud Other issues took more inquisitiveness, attentiveness, guts and intent to look at the uncomfortable dark side of ‘me’ in order to get to the bottom of reoccurring emotional reactions. For instance, when I first met Peter I had a lot of male-female issues that caused me to get upset which could only be resolved by me finding out the facts of the matter and then letting go of my various idea, opinions, beliefs and feelings around being a woman, i.e. my social identity of being a woman. Another area that needed extensive exploration had to do with my feelings of love and loyalty for my former spiritual teacher. I began to inch my way into slowly questioning the sensibility of being loyal in the face of blatant contradictions between his teachings and his behaviour and his promises and the actual outcome of practicing his teachings, but for a while each time someone else said something against him I flared up, so much so that for the first 3 months Peter and I agreed to not talk about ‘the war’. It was clear for me that this could only be a temporary measure and I steadily proceeded with finding out the facts of the matter despite my reoccurring feelings of fear, doubt, suspicion, defensiveness, treachery and abandonment that this course of action could sometimes create. Those feelings only permanently disappeared when I managed to irrevocably let go of my identity of being a follower, a member of the clan, a worshipper and lover of a Godman, a New-Age goody-two-shoes and a spiritual seeker and believer. From those two examples you can see that the actualism method is not a superficial tool to make bad feeling go away – it is, when used correctly, a powerful instrument for radical, i.e. eradicating, change. It’s my identity I willingly let go of when I apply attentiveness and understanding and as a consequence the feelings that were produced and maintained by the respective parts of my identity also disappear. As an analogy, you could say that the good and bad feelings are only the tip of the iceberg, the
tangible aspect of one’s identity. As such, when I pay increasing attention as to how I experience this moment of being alive, increasing parts
of the iceberg, ‘me’, come to the surface – and this is a necessary process if one is to bring one’s ‘self’ to the light for
progressive dissolution.
RESPONDENT: Have you ever felt aggression, hatred, condescension or any other negative feelings at all when you read correspondences of No 16, No 65, No 58, No 60, No 23, No 71 or anybody else? None of the above mails triggered any negative feelings at all? VINEETO: As I am not free from the human condition I do have feelings from time to time, although ‘aggression, hatred, condescension’ are not amongst them. That said, I do find some posts from correspondents rather silly when they waste their time concentrating on red herrings or fighting against imaginary windmills instead of talking about the issues at hand, namely how to become free from the human condition. On many occasions I understand the reasons for this behaviour as I too had to struggle in the early days with similar resistance to looking at my own feelings and beliefs rather than blaming others for my feelings and instinctively defending my beliefs. RESPONDENT: If not, do you have a ‘feeling’ when you read/reply? What is the ‘feeling’? VINEETO: No, not when I reply. Even when I occasionally have one or the other feeling when reading a post, I never write, let alone click ‘send’, when I am in any way emotional. Very early on in actualism I understood that the way to deal with one’s emotions is to neither suppress nor express them and since then I have always made it a point to keep my hands in my pocket, so to speak, until I have investigated/abandoned any emotional issues that may have arisen. RESPONDENT: Is it that of caring, friendliness? VINEETO: The reason I reply to correspondence on this mailing list and share my experience with
the actualism practice, which often involves correcting misunderstandings and misrepresentations, is that of fellow-ship regard which is different
to the feeling of ‘caring, friendliness’ in that it is actual rather than affective.
RESPONDENT: Vineeto: ‘Now it seems important to identify the more
subtle feelings, moods and affections that indicate ‘me’ coming to the foreground. And they are more the ‘good’ feelings and the
‘no-feelings’ – as I called them once – that I need to be aware of.’ It seems that I rarely get strong obvious feelings such as anger, most of my time is spent with subtle lacklustre feelings. The actualism method seems to be much harder to get working during such times. By ‘harder’ I mean I’m left feeling happy and harmless far less often. With the obvious feelings, it seems like it is so easy: this person did this/that and I reacted like this... But with these subtle dull feelings, the cause is often a thought or sequence of thoughts, which I think are harder to trace-back in memory, especially when in the grip of these feelings. The ‘no-feelings’ that Vineeto talks about in that quote seem to be the predominant ones for me. Do you think it is practically harder to identify, ‘lock-on’ and be attentive to the neutral feelings? By the way, as I write this I noticed – as you did previously – a hilarious subtle background feeling/ attitude of ‘tell me how to get this to work because it doesn’t work for me at all ever and never can or will’. Silly ‘me’. I bet the days of that attitude are numbered. VINEETO: The phrase I would use now, in hindsight, for those ‘no-feelings’ of lack-lustre and listlessness is resentment of being here. Within the human condition there is a basic resentment of not wanting to be here, wanting to be somewhere else, waiting for something else to happen than what is happening now, as a basic attitude to life, which is then reinforced by the various religious and spiritual conditioning that life on earth is essentially suffering and that the real life will only happen for the spirit after you die. This resentment to being here, as this body, in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are, was what was responsible for my dull feelings, no-feelings, my listlessness, my boredom, my waiting for something else to happen, in short, it had permeated almost all experience of life in that it had cast a dulling shade over everything I experienced. The way to deal with resentment in the actualism method is the same way you deal with all other feelings that interfere with you being happy and harmless – when paying attention to how you experience this moment of being alive, you notice it, then label it which helps you realise that it would be silly to carry on with it when you can instead enjoy being alive. With a steady increase in attentiveness the shift of resenting being here to appreciating being here becomes progressively easier until you finally kick the insidious habit of resentment altogether and delight in being alive for the simple reason that you are alive. RESPONDENT: Also, the way I used to think about feelings was that there is a neutral no-feeling state, and good or bad feelings are positively added (as chemicals in the brain) on to that base-line. This may be why I’m inclined to use negative words like ‘lack-lustre’ or ‘mal-content’. Could you explain more why my old model was wrong (if that explained it clearly enough)? VINEETO: As ‘I’ am a feeling ‘being’ I cannot experience life devoid of feelings (unless in a PCE) – any ‘no-feelings’ are still feelings of dullness, lacklustre-ness, listlessness, resentment or boredom or are the result of one repressing one’s feelings and as such are not neutral at all. From the three kinds of feelings – good feelings, bad feelings and felicitous feelings – the felicitous feelings are in fact the neutral feelings in that they render ‘me’ useless as my experience of life is already enchanting and delightful while both the good and the bad feelings give ‘me’ credence and sustenance and thus increase the dominance of ‘me’ as a feeler. As Richard recommends –
* RESPONDENT: I’m getting more and more in touch with my feelings – probably for the first time in my life. My first post here was about how for long periods I could not detect any feelings. The dull listlessness and resentment of being here – still being the predominant ones for me – are increasingly noticed as feelings. VINEETO: Dull listlessness and resentfulness are indeed feelings and not very pleasant ones at that – indeed they can literally ruin your day. RESPONDENT: A problem I’m still having is remembering the triggers of these feelings. They are practically my default state. It’s not as simple as a ‘he said that’ ‘she did that’. It seems to be thoughts or patterns of thoughts that sustain the resentment. Surely remembering exact thoughts from hours ago is harder than remembering ‘external’ events? VINEETO: If, as you say, feeling dull listlessness and resentment is practically your default state, regardless of whatever current events or current circumstances or personal interactions, then I can only suggest that you may need to take a good look as to why this is so. In other words, rather than focussing on details at this stage, maybe a general overall assessment or stocktaking as to whether or not you want to be free of these feelings and whether or not you are willing to pay the price that this change will involve may well be in order. I am reminded of what you wrote to Richard recently –
With a default attitude towards life and the universe such as this it comes to no surprise that the feelings of dullness, resentment and listlessness are the predominant ones for you and having such an attitude demonstrates well why it is necessary to investigate all of one’s beliefs, attitudes, worldviews and philosophical outlooks towards life if one wants to become happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: I imagine the answer is to remember when I last felt good and trace forward. I continue to find this very difficult. Remembering the last time I felt good in effect means remembering when the actualism method last worked for me. The loss of felicity at that time was usually very hard to detect, being a slow change brought on by certain thoughts. Also, the non-felicitous feelings triggered the last time are different from those that I would currently feel, it has never been the one same bad feeling from the last time I felt good. Is this to be expected until attentiveness is more regular in one’s life? VINEETO: Whenever I could not remember which particular incident, event or circumstance had triggered my last outbreak of feeling bad I would look around inside, as it were, and find the belief/ attitude/ worldview/ outlook that fed and maintained my current feeling-state. Equipped with this information I then did whatever was needed to feel good again in order to be able to have a closer look at, become more aware of and, if necessary, understand comprehensively the underlying feeling pattern – the belief system – that had caused me to feel miserable in the first place. * VINEETO to No 101: ‘When you practice the actualism method, it’s important to remember to examine the feeling in question only after you managed to get back to feeling good’ RESPONDENT: Remembering the triggers and examining the feeling are hard to do while in the grip of the listlessness or resentment. I know of no other way to get back to feeling good though. VINEETO: Have you ever watched a child getting upset when their favourite toy is taken away by another child for instance and then the mother or teacher steps in and diverts their attention by pointing to a bird flying by or a showing them a fragrant colourful flower or inviting them to join a different game that’s going on. Young children are usually able to very quickly forget their previous upset and accept the nudge to being happy again whereas adults often insist on the seriousness/ importance of their own particular problem and/or feeling and choose to continue to feel bad. When you set your aim to become happy and harmless you enter into an agreement with yourself, so to
speak, to not let anything stand in the way of getting back to feeling good – in other words you make a conscious decision to make feeling good
about being here, right now, your default feeling state. This intent in turn helps to re-kindle one’s own long-lost naiveté which then helps
you to return to feeling good for no other reason than that you are alive and conscious in this spectacular abundant universe. As an adult you
have the added bonus of being able to take note of the triggers that had caused you to stop feeling good in order to avoid this particular pitfall
the next time round.
RESPONDENT: When I was first starting to practise actualism, I was doing something that sounded a lot like what No 00’s describing. basically, figuring out how the instincts work. I was taking my emotional state as a black box and watching very carefully which inputs resulted in what outputs, and further, how some of those outputs had a tendency to make me want certain inputs. I was surprised at some of the results... it turned out that what I wanted was pretty different from what I thought I wanted. the desires for being, power, and sex, and continuity of being (different from just the desire for being, somehow... like a restless drone in the background) lent their influence in so many ways, and apparently, almost always continuously. I stopped doing it because even though it was fun and there were a couple big break-throughs, eventually I just hit a lot of dead ends. It took more energy than I had to keep doing it, so I lost interest and decided to just pay more attention to sensate experiencing and enjoying myself. VINEETO: I like your description of the black box of undeterminable feelings. It
demonstrates well that when you ‘have’ feelings, as an outsider, so to speak, they remain strange and mysterious. Once I acknowledged that I
am my feelings and my feelings are me, then I found myself right in the midst of the ‘black box’ and my feelings became more accessible, more
observable, less mysterious and volatile.
VINEETO: My experience with becoming gradually free from aspects of my identity is that as those aspects fall away I gradually forget that they ever existed. As such I not only not miss those aspects that I left behind but I often wonder what all the fuss is/was about. RESPONDENT: That’s a touchstone in seeing whether or not a particular feeling, belief or habitual response is deleted/ eliminated or merely transcended/ repressed/ denied/ avoided/ covered up. When at this stage is doesn’t even require a ‘nipping in the bud’ as ‘the problem’ is simply gone, the ‘nipping in the bud’ is a form of attrition ... eventually the beast and its accompanying beauty die out. VINEETO: For me, nipping in the bud comes mainly into play when I have already understood the
core of the problem and need to entirely erase a persistent visceral habit. For instance when I applied myself to investigating the issue of love,
I fairly quickly understood the dream that lays behind the pining feeling of love and awareness revealed the manipulating possessiveness of the
feeling of love. However, it took me much longer to detect these feelings the moment they arose and to disempower the emotional feel-good hooks
and tentacles before they had a chance to really take hold. Such feelings seem to have a life of their own until ongoing attentiveness and a
sustained period of ‘nipping in the bud RESPONDENT: But prior to ‘nipping it in the bud’, I’ve acted in such a way as to inflame the passion and/or stretch the limits of a particular belief, see if it stands the actuality check, then I’ve moved on to curiously look at ‘me’ acting... ‘handcuffed’ (my version of the hands in the pocket), sort of when a Beauty is on the mesmerizing mode or a dragon is showing off its powers to Buggs Bunny while he says ‘hmm ... that’s really interesting doc, where have you learned that?’ VINEETO: I know well the seductive temptation to dramatize ‘me’ under the guise of ‘self’-exploration (and most Western therapy groups thrive on this tool of ‘self’-enhancement) – that’s why the sincere intent to become free from the human condition in toto is essential. After I decided to give actualism a go I recognized that this would involve abandoning all that I had tried in the past – I would describe this turn-around as ‘cutting the crap and getting out of misery as fast as possible’. My experience is that one does not need to exaggerate feelings as attentiveness itself reveals not only the invidious nature of affective feelings but it also reveals the full range of affective feelings whether it be from feeling slightly annoyed to being overcome by blind rage, from feeling a mild ennui to plummeting into gut-wrenching despair, from feeling a little worried to sinking into a full-blown paranoia, from feeling a little detached to plunging into a dissociative state, and so on. No need for exaggeration as every human being has the capacity to feel the feel the full gamut of affective feelings. For me to keep my hands in my pocket while neither repressing, nor expressing nor acting upon my feelings but allowing myself to feel the feeling in order that I could be attentive to the nature of the particular feeling whilst it is happening was extremely sensible advice. This allows me to put the feeling in a bind – it is like holding the feeling under a microscope rather than letting it go unobserved or letting it run rampant as is normally the case. * VINEETO: On the way to an actual freedom the apparent ‘price’ I pay is in fact a gradual unburdening of unnecessary emotional baggage and silly worries – i.e. nothing at all valuable is lost on the way while a valuable and delicious freedom is gained. It’s a win-win situation. RESPONDENT: Yes, I taste this freedom from time to time as I gradually let go of the various social protective masks and aspects of my identity. I begin to get a taste of the powerful instinctual passions, especially fear (habitual response to ‘losing’ something) and anger (habitual response for not ‘getting’ something) and the self-centred perspective they automatically create even when operating as a background noise. VINEETO: What I found was that the ‘background noise’ is actually the engine of ‘me’ running all the time ready to flare up at any given opportunity. Although the opportunities to ‘flare’ become more and more rare, given that I am no longer bait for most of the usual follies and passions, the engine noise will only stop when ‘I’ am finally extinct. RESPONDENT: Sometimes, as a result of my (silly) actions, I get to a point where I can’t properly sleep at night, fear, worries and anxiety dominate my life. They are very, very real and make me loath/berate myself and others even when dealing with petty issues, these passions have a tendency for overreaction, exaggeration, imagination, preoccupation with future events, generating worst-case scenarios. And when combining with social, ethical and moralistic principles, it’s really a tangled and guilty mess. VINEETO: Once I got tired of berating myself for feeling worried and being emotional I decided
to focus on eliminating the ‘silly’ actions that produced stress in my life. As an example, I found that having less material goods and less
financial security meant that I needed to work less which then gave me less to be stressed about, more time for myself and thus more time to sort
myself out. I also found that the more I considered the effect my words and actions would have on others, the less fearful I had to be of people
in general to the point where the fear subsided and I found that I actually like other people as fellow human beings. (See also: RESPONDENT: When I think about the issues involved with common sense and pay attention to this moment, it becomes clear that these are only fear-induced thoughts and fantasies disconnected from the very moment I live in and even from the short-term and mid-term probable future. VINEETO: Something Richard said recently made me prick up my ears. I was telling him about something that worried me during the previous week and he said ‘it doesn’t make sense, it must be a feeling’. RESPONDENT: It’s really the feelings that keep one from seeing the splendor and grandeur of this moment and even from reading with both eyes open what’s on offer at this particular stall on the marketplace. I remember my first impression when accessing the AF site, that it was some kind of sect comprising a few almost enlightened people living an alternative lifestyle on a ranch somewhere in Australia with the aim of showing the world the way to live, and that was enough in keeping me at bay for a while, crazy at this may seem. VINEETO: Imagination
RESPONDENT No 1: What successes are you achieving using a method based upon Richard’s explanations? I have never really seen a ‘method’ in Richard’s madness, although, there may be one. All I’ve even seen in Richards writings is ‘back slapping’ for being a free, happy, harmless, flesh and blood body living in a veritable garden of paradise where there is no love, no compassion, and an absolute belief that there is no such happening as God or other dimension besides the human body which he is. VINEETO: There is a very effective method indeed. But only those who are appalled by their own malice and tired of their own sorrow are interested in finding out about it and are moved to apply it to their own lives. I was simply tired of emotions all together, because when I was driven by emotions and instinctual passions I could not avoid wanting to hurt others or feeling that others were hurting me – so I took up the offer of getting rid of the instinctually driven entity altogether. RESPONDENT: I am sorry since you started using the word ‘silly’ for another woman I use it for you with freedom without any fear of hurting you (since I know you have no emotions and won’t be at all hurt). VINEETO: I did not say I have no emotions – I said
It is something entirely new in human history that the possibility exists that one does not merely settle for transcending the ego – as age-old practice has been throughout many countries and religions – but that one can examine and eliminate the very root cause of human malice and sorrow, the animal instinctual passions themselves. Once I had established satisfactory evidence that one can indeed get of one’s emotions and passions entirely, I took up the offer and went full steam ahead. RESPONDENT: Yes, silly it is that you think you are free of your limbic system without any clear real medical limbectomy. You are lying to yourself. VINEETO: As I have never said that I don’t have any emotions at all, your argument is missing the point. You are right insofar that one cannot simply decide that from tomorrow onwards I won’t have any emotions anymore. However, by investigating feelings and emotions and the underlying instinctual passions – instead of merely watching one’s thoughts – it is very well possible to diminish the ‘self’ to the point of almost non-existent and it is the ‘self’ that is producing and maintaining feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. When I consider what has already disappeared out of my life in terms of the malice and sorrow that I felt and inflicted on others, and when I look at the obvious change that happened by meticulously taking apart my identity bit by bit – then a complete extinction of my ‘self’ is not at all far-fetched. If I can achieve to live happily and harmlessly without being run by my emotions and driven by my instinctual passions (without having a ‘amygdala-ectomy’), then it is possible for everybody who wants to. RESPONDENT: It’s like telling myself I don’t hear voices and don’t see colours since I have altruistically ‘decided’ not to see them anymore! For god’s sake can’t you see the insanity of such a claim?? One cannot stop hearing voices unless s/he cuts his ears off, are you van Gogh? VINEETO: Of course you cannot altruistically ‘decide’ not to have emotions and then they will just disappear by magic – I have never said this. But one can extent one’s awareness and consideration for others to the extent that it becomes one’s sole aim in life to be actually peaceful – to do no harm to one’s fellow human beings, as in not instinctually feeling aggression towards others, not instinctually feeling sorrow for others, not being blindly driven to nurture others and not being blindly driven to desire power over others. But first one needs to change one’s focus from self-realization and self-aggrandizement to becoming ‘self’-less, which is not good news for those who are on the spiritual path. RESPONDENT: You say you cut your emotions to be free of their suffer (I was tired of them) ... I am sorry how could you do that without having the emotion of ‘wanting to be free of emotions?’ So you see? Emotions are not that bad, they tell you how to stop your suffering. VINEETO: Indeed. Back when I was run by emotions and driven by instinctual passions I was still
searching for peace and happiness and I had not found it after many years on the spiritual path. In fact, I found that I was moving further away
from the world and that I was becoming more fearful and more isolated from people who were not part of my particular spiritual ‘club’. I was
further away from being able to live with a man in peace and harmony and sexual enjoyment was becoming even more hampered by spiritual
conditionings. The only solution then was to go even deeper into my inner world via meditation and only relate to those with the same
belief-system, but this retreating and withdrawing did not match with what I had expected from life. When I came across Richard, my burning desire
to be free was still intact – it had not been worn out by my spiritual years. I was simply ready to try a solution that seemed eminently
sensible, far more fun and down-to-earth. Its results now exceed my wildest dreams.
U.G. ADMINISTRATOR: Have you ever watched a child dying of starvation? Its weak cries and vacant eyes, as it lies awaiting death? Have you ever walked past derelicts lying on the sidewalks, the stench of their rotting bodies wafting through the air as pedestrians step over them? Have you ever been raped by a stranger with a knife at your throat? Or had your toenails torn out one by one by some mad religious fanatic? And all this without a thought of beauty, horror, fear, terror, judgment??? VINEETO: I am glad you are concerned about the suffering of other people. 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone is sufficient evidence that something is terribly wrong with human beings. If you have a closer look, most of those wars were and are religious wars, people killing each other for their particular religious conviction and noble ideals. I know about the suffering both from experience of universal sorrow and from daily TV reports. Just the other day I saw ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’, a musical on World War I. 600,000 soldiers died on the English side alone, and at the end of the war they had gained no ground. The suffering of these soldiers was gut-wrenching, as they were living in trenches for no apparent reason but the questionable honour to die for the queen and country, in their sleepless nights listening to the cries of the wounded mates out in the fields. The survivors would even spare their wives and mothers about the horror-tales of war they had experienced. But to have feelings of ‘beauty, horror, fear, terror’ about these facts doesn’t help anybody. ‘Horror, fear and terror’ is only an instinctual response that this might happen to me tomorrow. It won’t help me find and eliminate the cause of the violence and suffering. That you add ‘beauty’ to the list suggests the bittersweet feeling of compassion, which is just another word for ‘suffering together’ (common pathos). Compassion has been proclaimed the merciful solution to suffering but has only perpetuated it. Mother Theresa is considered a great example of compassion, but all she did was feed and raise orphans to become a saint and be rewarded in heaven – while the pope is creating an unlimited supply of poor children with his prohibition of birth-control. I can see her compassion only as an extremely selfish behaviour. Or would you prefer the compassion of the Dalai Lama – his very title means ‘the Lord who looks down with compassion on the world of sentient beings’. In his ‘holy’ country the peasants starve while they work their butts off to pay for the dead Lamas to be replicated in gold – that is compassion! In Thailand and Vietnam, Buddhist monks have set themselves on fire for a compassionate cause, thus merely adding to the terror that was already happening. No, ‘judgement’ is the only faculty I consider worth applying. Without the soothing veil of emotions I am experiencing the full impact of the horrendous amount of suffering that people create for each other every day. This very impact gives me the fuel and intent to stop being a contributor to both malice and sorrow, to become completely happy and harmless. And the only person I can change is myself. This means, not just applying the usual ethics from this or that religious conviction and be as good as one can repress oneself, or transcend oneself, but to extinguish the very entity inside that is the seat of our innate animalistic instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. To extinguish not only the ‘one I think I am’, the ego, but also the ‘one I feel I am’, the soul, the Self. It takes courage to step outside of all of humanity’s values and the ‘tried and failed’ solutions. Your particular solution suggests I should be feeling guilty for being happy, because other people are suffering. That would add yet another person to the already vast number of suffering people. Having spent 15 years on the spiritual path I have experienced the enormous impact those ‘solutions’ have on the continuation of suffering and confusion people are living in. The reason for the confusion is that none of the spiritual teachers and enlightened beings have ever dared to question the soul or ‘being’. They all are content with exchanging the little ego with the grand ‘feeling one with the Universe’, exuding compassion for thousands of years, while every one of them teaches a different version of their particular way to bliss, redemption, paradise or enlightenment. The outcome has been poverty, religious wars and the generally accepted notion that the solution to the world’s suffering could only be found in afterlife or by turning away into the imaginary world of bliss beyond ego. To see the poverty, discrimination, disease, sexual repression and degradation of women in India alone tells enough about the impact and effect Eastern religions have on people’s lives. That we are ‘feeling beings’ is held as the distinction between us and the rest of the animal world. This proud distinction unfortunately is founded on the instinctually produced feelings of malice and sorrow, for which we have invented antidotes of love and compassion. Our sorrow is based on a feeling of dread at its very core, and many people know only too well the spiral down from sorrow to despair to horror and finally dread. Suffering is accepted as an integral unchangeable part of the Human Condition and is even lauded as a noble trait. To suffer rightly or deeply is held in high esteem and often evokes a bitter-sweet feeling. Compassion or empathy is also held in high esteem. As humans we are subject to physical dangers, losses, ill-health, accidents, floods, fires, etc. which can cause pain. But to have and indulge in emotional suffering additional to the hardship is to compound the situation to such an extent that the feelings are usually far worse than dealing with the facts would be. Further, the feeling of sorrow usually leads to feelings of resentment, retribution, revenge or anger and this backlash is then maliciously directed at others who will then have to suffer, and they in turn feel ... and on, and on, and on, it has gone for centuries. What I am talking about is the complete opposite, not feeling compassionate but eliminating the cause of suffering completely, not by trying to apply ‘no-thought’, but by ridding myself of the Human Condition, the emotions, beliefs and instincts. At last I can be without sorrow and malice, without authority and fear, without beliefs and imagination. This is not only tackling ‘the nature of thought’, as you say, but the nature of the animalistic instincts that every human being is born with. Now it is proven that it is possible to completely demolish the whole animal heritage, to rid oneself not only of ego but also of soul and instincts and become a happy and harmless human being for the first time in history. Up until now everybody has tried in one way or another to wear the rose-coloured glasses of love, good
and compassion over the grey-coloured glasses of hate, fear and sorrow. It has not worked. Fear, hate and sorrow are as much evident in the world
and in everybody’s psyche as ever after three thousand years of spiritual practice. Why not, for a change, dare and remove both pairs of glasses
and experience the physical world as the magical, fairy-tale and safe place it actually is. It is possible to rid oneself of the human qualities
of ‘beauty, horror, fear, terror’, etc. and, without ego or soul, be completely innocent and harmless – one of 6 billion people on
the planet, but not contributing to suffering and violence.
RESPONDENT: I am a little confused ... I came something you wrote about emotions, this morning, which seems to contradict what you wrote earlier. Putting it into context it is like this...
But then this from: http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/vineeto/selected-correspondence/corr-180.htm...
? VINEETO: Ok, to put all of this in context –
RESPONDENT: I might still not be at ease regarding the everyday mundane repetitive tasks and once I start enjoying even those, I would think that I have changed for good. VINEETO: Part of being able to enjoy ‘everyday mundane repetitive tasks’ for me was to have a close look at what was really necessary. For instance I decided to reduce my overheads in order to be able to sell less of my time for money. Having adjusted the balance of my time as compared to ‘their’ time it was then much easier to enjoy the time I had to sell for money and the fact that when I do my work well this in itself is a satisfying activity helped in enjoying the process of it. The other thing with ‘everyday mundane repetitive tasks’ was that I had to look at some underlying resentments – as if someone else was making me do those task and not that I had in fact chosen the situation where those tasks were a necessary part of my life. For instance, what’s the point of objecting to having to wash the dishes when I clearly made the choice that I prefer to eat from clean dishes rather than have last night’s dinner still on them? Once I am aware, and am able to determine, that all I do is in fact my own choice, if possible my deliberate choice, then any resentment goes out the window. And without resentment any task can be a joy, a sensate pleasure or a mental challenge to do, if only I apply enough attentiveness to all that is involved in accomplishing it. RESPONDENT: I clearly see the sense behind your approach… but I still have the ‘resentment’. The feeling inside me refuses to go away… the silliness expresses itself as postponement and switching to more enjoyable tasks. Most of it is gone but still something is left. I have some task to do which is not all that bad but still I seem to prefer reading a book and reflecting about things rather than doing the task at hand. I am not sure how to get rid of this basic resentment. Any more tips on this aspect would be welcome. VINEETO: You are aware, are you, that you make a choice, each moment again, to hang onto the resentment in favour of taking on the challenge of enjoying the task at hand? Nobody said that becoming actually or virtually free from malice and sorrow (resentment being a facet of sorrow) was effortless and on the way personal sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve your goal. Your resentment is one of those sacrifices required. Courage!
KONRAD: And now comes the crux of my response to you. You wrote: ‘For me the relationships to different people have clearly shown me the flaws I still had to tackle, shown the occasions where consciousness is not pure but inflicted with greed, anger, superiority, jealousy, sorrow, pity and other such emotions’. [endquote]. I have big trouble with this statement. Consider, for example, greed. Greed is basically the desire to have more material things. If you succeed in eliminating greed, you also do not respond positive to those methods and factors in existence that can expand your means. This includes the capabilities of your fellow men. So you see? Greed is a two-sided emotion. If greed is accompanied by a clear insight in how means are brought into existence, it does not necessarily lead to violence. It can even lead to its opposite. VINEETO: Greed is part of the survival instinct that we inherited from our animal ancestors and as such is blind and destructive. No method of control has kept the lid on it. All the wars, rapes, robberies, billionaires, white-collar thieves and poverty still go on. To state that you only need to channel and control greed is a poor solution which has been tried and failed by many before you. KONRAD: Take anger. If you never feel anger, you cannot feel revolted by the fact that Nazi Germany has slaughtered 5 million Jews. So the elimination of this emotion can make you stop investigating the causes of this, and thus make it possible that it will happen again. Therefore the question is not how to eliminate anger, but to investigate when anger is at its place, and when not. VINEETO: Anger is in its very nature destructive. How can anger about Nazis in Germany eliminate suffering. The retribution from the ‘good’ guys that took place at the end of World War II was as cruel, uncontrolled and devastatingly disastrous as the actions of the ‘bad’ guys before. To investigate the causes of violence and eliminate them, I don’t need to be angry, I only need to apply understanding and intelligence. Anger will always be blind. KONRAD: Superiority? If you cannot judge a certain method to be superior, and therefore you applying this method as making you being somebody superior, you will never defend this method to others as really being superior. In this way you will never try to make things better. VINEETO: I have talked about superiority before. I judge a method as being superior if it works. That is simply applying my brain as to what is sensible and what is stupid. There is no need to feel superior because I can see the obvious, if a method works, has results in daily life or not. And if it is obvious then anybody can check it out. It does not need an extra authority applied to it to make it more True. Why believe an authority if I can find out for myself? I can tell from my life that Richard’s method works, there is no need for feeling superior. Whoever objects is simply silly, blinded by beliefs that have been repeated for centuries. KONRAD: Jealousy? This one is a little more complex. Jealousy consists of the fear of losing your spouse. But this is also a sign that shows how special she is in your life. This is, why many women are flattered by the fact that their spouse is jealous. The problem with jealousy is not so much the emotion, but how it is shown. If you try to limit your spouse in her actions (by trying to place her in a position whereby she is not able to meet other men) then she will experience this as suffocating. However, if you understand, that vinegar is not the way to attract flies, but honey is, you express this jealousy of yours differently. You do not try to limit her span of activities, but you express your feeling about how special she is more directly. VINEETO: Now, this statement on jealousy is really cunning. I suspect you are quite afraid to tackle that issue. That’s why you turn it round and say that the woman wants you to be jealous. You express your feeling about how special she is not because you mean it but because you want to bind her. You are not openly jealous, just more tricky. Jealousy is part of possessiveness that comes in the packet of instincts to continue the species. It has been the cause of many horrendous crimes and murders. Most impulsive crimes are crimes of jealousy. In my relationship with Peter there is neither possessiveness nor jealousy. We simply live together because we enjoy to. Each is free to do what he/she wants and that is the basis of our peace and harmony. When I felt jealousy I simply had to look for the cause of it, and that cause is fear, fear of being alone, insecure, unprotected, abandoned. Eliminating the fear has made jealousy completely redundant. And why should Peter prove through jealousy that I am special to him. I am, that’s why he lives with me. There is no need for any other proof. If one day he should decide to live alone, or with someone else, I will still be at ease because I have no fear to be on my own. KONRAD: Sorrow? Don’t you feel any sorrow about the victims of wars? So I cannot see any reason why this is a negative emotion. Only, if you are a sad person and you expect of others to help you end it, this places a burden on others. However, if you investigate the root causes of it yourself, it leads to clarity. VINEETO: The sorrow I felt for the victims of wars did nothing for the victims of wars. It neither stopped the wars nor did it console the victims. It simply added to the sorrow that is already plentiful and rampant in the world. Clarity comes when I find that compassion for others creates as much mess and interference in other people’s lives as it continues the cycle of superiority and inferiority. The famous Mother Theresa is an obvious example. You seem to be trying to exorcise the Devil with Beelzebub, as the saying goes. Compassion adds to sorrow and suffering, it does nothing to eliminate it. KONRAD: The point is not whether emotions are negative or not, but how you deal with them. You only have to be perfectly clear about their origin. This is what I have against the approach of Richard. By eliminating emotions as such you do not become better, but worse. The important factor is not whether you have emotions, but whether you deal with them from full understanding. So the only thing you have to be careful about is whether you control your emotions, or your emotions control you. If this last thing is the case, you can make improvements into the lives of others, and in that way you make improvements into your own life as well. At least you are a contributing factor. VINEETO: How do you know that by eliminating emotions I become worse. Since you don’t know how I live, that can only be an assumption. The point is that the old system of Good and Bad, of judging emotions and controlling the bad ones has failed for 3000 years. The prisons are full of people who fail to control them. Your neighbours are another good example. Even Gandhi, after repressing sexual feelings for eighty years admitted sexual dreams in his very old age, and he was no weak man. I have replaced the value system of Good and Bad with ‘silly and sensible’ and it works. Why don’t you give it a practical try? Another story to help you with the decision: Kant, the famous philosopher, was asked by a young girl if he wanted to marry her. It took him three years to weigh the Pro’s and Con’s of marriage and since they were equally balanced in his findings he went over to agree to the marriage. Her mother opened the door and told him that she got tired of waiting for his answer, married someone else and had two children. So, if you wait too long, life might be over and you find you wasted it on something that doesn’t
work. * KONRAD: You know what? I stop here reading you. Probably the rest you write is just one huge attack on what I represent, and probably there is nothing good you can find in me, now that your mind is set. So I do not want to waste any more energy on you. Not again such a stupid exchange of misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. The basic problem with our communication is that you have drawn far-reaching conclusions from some honest mistakes. How could I know whether you were a man or a woman, when your e-mails begin with ‘Peter’? And then again, how could I know that Vineeto is a woman’s name? I just thought it to be some name Osho Rajneesh has cooked up. VINEETO: I took some time to let your letter sink in and to mull about the response. I usually like to let some clarity emerge before I answer, especially when the letter is as emotional as yours has been. I did not mean to attack you when I said: ‘Logic is the male weapon to tackle life, but it has utterly failed.’ It is simply my experience. For instance, I have seen you discuss with Richard for pages and pages as to whether there is anything worthwhile in his approach to freedom. Now, if someone offers me a key to a prison door, like he does, I don’t think up reasons why it should not work, compare it to other keys with a different colour or form – I try it in the lock. Only then I can decide with the confidence of the experience, that the key opened the lock or not. His key to the prison door of the Human Condition is the simple question, asked with intent and honesty over and over again: ‘How do I experience this moment of being alive?’ and then examine the upcoming emotions, feelings, beliefs and passions. Now, this is what I call using common sense instead of logic: logic in this case is used to defend an old pattern and not look at its mis-functioning, common sense is trying something new. And in my life I have mainly come across men who were very good in finding excuses with abstract logic not to try something new, neither to examine nor feel their emotions, let alone get rid of them. It could be scary but it may well be successful. I have seen logic being used to wander from the subject, to build castles in the clouds, to create theories that don’t hold any water when it comes to actual situations of daily life. Women, on the other hand, generally use emotional outbreaks to distract and divert from an issue or subject that scares them. They are conditioned to swim in emotionality rather than sort things out, i.e. eliminate the cause, with a strait-forward intelligence. Accordingly, I had used sulking, guilt, stubbornness, being paranoid or angry to not give up my dearly held familiar beliefs and behaviours – often unconscious – even if those beliefs had failed for years. In order to live in peace and harmony, instead of using my well-practiced defence mechanisms, I had to put exactly those female ‘weapons’ under scrutiny and cast them aside. Only without the clouding of rationalizing, emotions and instincts can COMMON SENSE – our innate intelligence – start functioning to solve our practical problems. It has been this very common sense that brought us all the comfort, technology and communication that we are enjoying today. In the first place I am not attacking you, I am questioning your theories. I for myself know there is a vast difference between the two, because I can easily function and live without theories or beliefs. But it seems that you don’t see a difference between your teaching and your person or ‘self’. Your response has exactly proven the point I was making about feeling insulted. Having cleaned myself up of emotions I never feel insulted, annoyed, attacked or even bored by anyone’s statement. Therefore I can examine the given argument for its contents and check out the facts. This is where I found Richard’s method invaluable. I can look at the issue rather than the personal feelings. If the issue evokes an emotion in me, then that has to be checked out first. Usually I would take some time and examine why this particular point brushed me up the wrong way. Given that every emotional response is a defence mechanism of the ‘self’ – which I consider harmful and redundant – it was then obvious that these very emotions were the substance of the ‘self’ and had to be eliminated. My main question to you has been and still is: Does the concept that you are teaching change the person
in his behaviour to other fellow human beings, or does it avoid exactly this frightening, but so vital issue. Neither logic nor the controlling of
emotions has ever succeeded in eliminating malice and sorrow, wars and ‘domestics’, suicide and murder from the world. I understand that this
is exactly what you are trying to do with your concept. I just doubt that it works, and further, you have actually proven in your response to me
that it doesn’t work. Your concept of logic and tautology does not appear to change your behaviour to fellow human beings, ‘when push comes to
shove’ (as the Australians say). * KONRAD: How far does this lack of training go? Have you ever been on a high school or some equivalent? Do you, for example, know what the abc formula is in elementary algebra? Or are you ignorant about that one? Or does it even extend further? Are you able to solve simple puzzles like: ‘If the weight of something is one kilo more than half its weight, how much does it weigh?’ (2, of course) with the aid of simple algebra? For if you are not able to do this, you are not even able to really understand what I am talking about. You are then definitely completely and totally blind to the connection that exists between household appliances and the understanding of physics and logic. And then it is definitely the case that if you assert that all of these things are just the result of the application of common sense, you do not know what you are talking about, and are therefore hardly in the position to refute my statements. VINEETO: Well done, this time you hit the target: I was annoyed and I think that is what you wanted to achieve! First I tell my story and then I will have a look at your side of that game: In order to get to the root of my annoyance I had to look at the ghost that you had revived. It was connected to an experience that the little girl I was 35 and 40 years ago had when the boys said: ‘We do not want to play with you because you can’t climb trees as well or because you are wearing a skirt’ ... basically because I was not a boy! I am sure they believed their reasoning to be as serious and valid as you believe yours to be! Then, feeling excluded from the pleasures they seemed to have, I competed with boys on intellectual terms to be part of their club. I topped high school with best grades in the male subjects like maths and physics, but I still did not belong. I did not understand about male and female battling, about sex, or why humans are so quick to attack and hurt each other – so just being good in math did not work. Nor did later in life any of these subjects help me to be a better or happier human being. Mathematics still can’t explain how egg and sperm turn into the girl I was then or the woman I am now. Life consists of very much more than equations and puzzle-solving! Those algebraic puzzles were a favourite pastime in my teens, but since then I have moved on to more life-related questions like: How to become completely happy and harmless! If the above mentioned training is what you request from women to accept her as a partner in
communication about vital questions of human behaviour, without arrogantly snorting on her, then I pass and have no further interest in any
exchange. This is the typical male world, consisting of competition, arrogance, throwing about knowledge which is irrelevant to the subject talked
about. If you insist to stay in that world of equations then good luck!
KONRAD: (...) Recently, I must admit, because of my deep involvement with Richard, I began to study emotions. For Richard has made me aware of the fact, that emotions as such are a terra incognito, at least to me. An area where almost everybody is ignorant about, but not as ignorant as you think, it turned out. Now what I discovered is that there is something in the brain, called an ‘amygdala’. It is situated exactly at the position Richard said he observed a change in him. Namely at the base of the spinal chord, where he felt ‘something turn over’. This amygdala has one important function. It causes the emotions present in the limbic system to be represented in consciousness. If it stops functioning, this causes all the emotions to be present, even to function, but they are no longer observed in consciousness. Why not? Because the limbic system is not able to reflect on itself. Only the cortex has this ability. When this amygdala does no longer function, this is considered a dysfunction. It is called alexithymia, ie., an inability of the cortex to observe emotions, and therefore also an inability to express them. Therefore the meaning of this word is equivalent to: ‘an inability to express emotions’. However, at this point I can still consider these psychiatrists to be mistaken. Richard is a very interesting phenomenon. For he shows clearly, that the emotions can be functioning completely independent from the cortex. To realize this is also a vindication of everything he says about himself. So this proves, that there are at least two centres from which action can emerge, possibly even three. Namely the cortex, the limbic system, and the nervous system itself. So I discovered, that Richard was right about that ‘animal part’ of emotions. Emotions are indeed innate, as he asserted. I was wrong on this account. What I designated with the term ‘emotion’ was not the same as emotion, but emotion together with its control. I had here a confusion Richard did not have. So I talked from the position of some kind of synthesis of emotion and ratio. But now I have a clear distinction between those two concepts. VINEETO: How did you find out for yourself that emotions are indeed innate? Did you have the experience of your own innate emotions. Did you have the experience when those innate emotions where temporarily not functioning as in a peak-experience? Did you understand the instincts that these emotions are based on by your own experience? Have you experienced how, through persistent investigation into the nature of those instincts, they become conscious and eventually cease to operate, for instance the instinctual sex-drive or the instinct to nurture? Or have you simply collected information from psychoanalysts who vary immensely in their findings because everyone applies a different theory to what he observes in other people! The way to explore emotion is to experience it without repressing and without expressing. Applying apperception, the particular emotion is then seen for what it is, understood in its complexity. It then reveals its underlying belief and finally the underlying instinct. It is a thrilling adventure to dig into one’s emotions, to ‘round them up’ one by one and experience them losing their impact on one’s life. This is what is really worth writing about. Everything else is only second hand knowledge, and specially on the subject of emotions very loaded with subjective concepts and hidden agendas. You can only believe someone’s knowledge but in actual freedom you can verify what we are saying with your own experience. (...) KONRAD: This made me realize, that his behaviour is much like the behaviour of people, who have a cut corpus callosum. If the right hemisphere acts in a certain manner, the left hemisphere observes this, and ‘cooks up’ an explanation for this. This is called ‘elimination of cognitive dissonance’. In the same manner, if the limbic system of Richard acts in a certain manner, even as a response to his cortex, his cortex also gives an explanation after the fact. Since he has studied very extensively before this very unfortunate malfunction occurred in him, he has a very big arsenal of possible explanations after the facts. But this does not alter the fact, that he operates from a mental disorder. As he himself states very clearly, he has all the symptoms of a madman, including that one of considering everybody else to be mad, except himself. His ability to admit this would normally constitute proof for its converse to be the case. But NOT with his type of malfunction. For he cannot be troubled by an error, because nothing can trouble him. And this is, because his particular malfunction is exactly in the area of emotion. In other words, since attacks of others DO disturb him, but he is UNABLE to EXPERIENCE these disturbances, he can admit such things, and STILL there can be something wrong with him. VINEETO: What makes you say that attacks of others DO disturb Richard? If people repress emotions to the extent even of being catatonic, there are usually ways to detect the existence of emotions and what kind of emotions they are. There is an obvious physical dysfunction and/or a practical malfunction apparent in the lives of people who repress emotions, even if it is to the extent of them not experiencing them, that will give a clear indication of those emotions happening. I am surprised you can detect this apparent malfunction in Richard through e-mail. I have not discovered any malfunction, neither physical nor in his practical life, and I have met him many, many times in person over long periods. So I do need a bit more proof from you about your theory. KONRAD: Let me say this last thing differently. Usually, if somebody is a ‘madman’, as Richard says, such a person cannot even consider the possibility that he is mad. For admitting this causes emotional unrest. But since Richard has an inability to experience his emotions, he can admit to such a thing, without it resulting in emotional unrest. Of course, it DOES that. Only, because his amygdala does not function properly, he is not able to experience this unrest. This makes him free to utter such statements, while other people with psychic defects cannot do this. VINEETO: Here again you just state that ‘of course, it DOES that’. Where do you get
your certainty from? You cannot conceive that someone can live without emotions because you don’t have the experience for yourself that it is
possible to eliminate emotions. Once you have eliminated even a single emotion by examining it and digging into it, you might begin to consider it
possible for someone else to have done the same. Or do you find it easier to prove that Richard has emotions just so you don’t have to
investigate your own? Then, good luck, it won’t be easy.
VINEETO: To realise that we ‘have a mind rather than it having us’, as you so aptly say, I also realised that we need to get rid of ‘us’, not get rid of the ‘mind’. The moment ‘mind’ is cleaned from ‘me’, the beliefs, feelings, emotions and instinctual passions, mind can function perfectly and sensibly, not interfered by fear, aggression, nurture or desire. That, in short, is the difference between spirituality and actual freedom. Eradicating ‘I’ and ‘me’ from body and brain lets one function smoothly, sensately and sensibly as a flesh-and-blood-body only. RESPONDENT: ... you might actually understand that we’re probably saying the same thing. Is not your eradicating, dropping? or seeing the conditioned mind to go past it?, or as I said... put it in its right place? VINEETO: Why do you think we got banned from the Sannyas list? You seem to be the only one who still insists that you and I are talking about the same thing. And why do you want to think that it should be the same thing anyway? Would it be less disconcerting what discoveries Peter and I are reporting? Is it to confirm that you are already on the right path, just a few ‘semantic differences’? When I say, I eradicate an emotion I mean that I go to the root of that particular emotion. What I find, if I dig deep enough, is fear as part of the survival instinct, the ‘self’. To question that ‘self’, including its big brother, the ‘higher Self’, is to eventually chip away at the emotion-producing agent of this psychological and psychic entity inside of me. Once that particular emotion is investigated, traced to its root and then eradicated, it has no place at all, no right place and no wrong place – it does not exist – its passionate but imaginary nature has been exposed. When you say you are ‘dropping’ an emotion, that simply means letting the idea go in favour
of ‘going past it’ to the bigger idea of ‘becoming one’, of ‘evolving consciousness’, of enlightenment where you then become
one with everything. This identity of the big ‘Self’ has never been questioned before. Dropping is not the same thing as eradicating at all.
It is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spirituality. (see Actual freedom is about being here in this physical universe only, as this physical body only, perceiving as the physical senses only. There is neither god, nor soul, nor compassion, nor witnessing, nor feeling, nor intuition in actual freedom. There is only this abundant, magical, perfect, infinite and pure universe, experienced through the physical senses of this flesh-and-blood-body. Can you see the difference?
VINEETO: Reading of the extensive and systematic involvement of Zen masters and monks in war-crimes has shocked me – and I guess it has shocked you as well. Here there is another description of what humans do to humans, always calling the other one the inferior race, an animal, inhuman, heathens, fiends and dangerous enemies to justify the ferocity and cruelty that is displayed in wars, collective acts of instinctual aggression. 160 million people were killed in wars this century alone, and those 160 million include the 350,000 Chinese of Nanking, the 6 million Jews of WW II, the 800,000 German and 1.1 million Russian soldiers in Stalingrad, the 800,000 Tutus in Rwanda, the 100,000 Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, the hundreds of thousands dead on both sides of the 40 years of Cold War and all the others that died for country, religion and ideology. RESPONDENT: As for Rwanda, have you heard their music? My friends made a Rwanda music CD recorded there. It so beautifully and deeply touches my soul, which is of course the root cause of sorrow and malice of Human kind. hehehe. If any one are interested in the CD. Please mail to me VINEETO: Music plays an important part in the manipulation of emotions. It has been used to
control and manage people, to raise their passion, to bind them to their culture, to soothe them or hypnotize them. With music you can play
people’s feelings like a piano and many talented leaders have used music very skilfully for their power-grazed purposes.
RESPONDENT: Why don’t you try selling it to some other mind dwellers. (Christians could be a challenge). But why don’t you ‘FUCK OFF’ and die somewhere else! Or just shift to a psychology based list where I’m sure you can waffle on for a life time! No 23, the Osho lover VINEETO: At least you seem to know that I am talking about the death of the ‘self’, and you state that you are not interested. One of your ‘mind spaces’ has come back to life and is kicking again. This is exactly my point, that in just watching and ‘being the witness’ those primary emotions and instinctual passions don’t disappear, they are at the most transcended. You go from one corner of the ‘self’ into another corner of the ‘self’, now called ‘That’. You never leave the ‘self’ behind. You never step out of the Human Condition of sorrow and malice, nurture and desire. Watching and meditation is like rearranging the furniture on the Titanic, fiddling with minor issues while you would better leave the ship of the ‘self’ and of ‘being’ altogether. And, as you can see, those emotions can come back any time. RESPONDENT: I know this won’t effect you as you have removed yourself from your heart and other unimportant things! VINEETO: The other way round again: I have removed feelings and emotions from me, not removed myself from my ‘heart’. The Heart or Soul is only a passionate imagined entity, felt as real, but not actual. ‘Go into your Heart’ means focus on the good feelings and negate and sublimate the bad feelings. Once you experience the purity and perfection of being without any self whatsoever in a pure consciousness experience, you strive to get rid of the very act of believing and feeling itself, you aim to get rid of the see-saw of feelings, both good and bad. And it works. By focussing on the felicitous feelings instead of feeling ‘good’ and ‘bad’, one can investigate and eventually eliminate one’s beliefs and feelings and in the end extinguish the very source where emotions arise – our animal instincts. Only then can you experience the purity and magic of this actual world.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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