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Selected Correspondence Vineeto Harmless VINEETO: The reason I said that there is a remarkable difference between *feeling* harmless and actually being harmless is because it is easy to assess one’s happiness by checking if I am feeling happy whereas many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions *before* these translate into vibes and/or actions. It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions. Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself to be harmless. RESPONDENT: Can you say more about this? I usually feel harmless but have been thinking lately that I somehow still do harm simply by not paying attention and applying parity and consideration to others with whom I come into contact. How did you do this more and more? And how did you notice that you’re still harming someone even if you don’t have feelings of anger or aggression or the like? And how do you know it’s you harming them? Can you give a few examples? I’m finding it possible to consider this matter more now that I’m happier as its given me breathing room to be less self-centred, but it’s a pretty new subject to me. What keeps your mind on being considerate? Is it just a close scrutiny on the feelings and passions that arise? Are you more perceptive of others because the feelings and passions that are now arising are diminished so you’re naturally more attentive to other things as well, like what’s going on with other people? VINEETO: Sure. When I met Peter I was full of good intentions to make our living together work, i.e. to be as happy and peaceful as possible, but I had continuous clashes of opinion with him, frustrations of foiled expectation, hurt feelings and revenge of hurtful remarks. I realized that in order to be able live with Peter in peace and harmony I had to sort out a lot – my beliefs, my ‘truths’, my loyalties, my gender ideas, my problems with authority and all other sorts of feelings. I remember well the first evening when I looked at Peter and saw him as just another human being – not as a partner, a mate, a member of the other gender, a lover, a sexual object, a valuable addition to my circle of friends, and not as someone who would approve or disapprove of me – simple another fellow human being. Suddenly the separation I felt was gone and there was a delicious intimacy, as ‘I’ was no longer attempting to force him to fit into ‘my’ world. I was astounded and shocked by this experience, being outside of my so familiar ‘self’-centred and ‘self-oriented skin, because I realized that never before, not once in our 3-months acquaintance, had I been able, or even interested, to see him as a person in his own right. I was shocked at how all of my perception and consequently all of my interactions were driven by what *I* wanted, what *I* expected and what *I* believed him to be and how much I was therefore constantly at odds with how he actually was. From then on I paid as much attention as possible to become aware of situations when my feelings, beliefs, expectations and general attitude were standing in the way of recognizing another person, first Peter and later anyone I came in contact with, as equal fellow human beings, as persons in their own right, who live their own life, follow their own goals and aspirations, have their own preferences and tastes, and also, have their own set of morals, ethics and beliefs. The reason I am telling this story is because this experience was the beginning of a slow and wide-ranging realization that as long as I live in ‘my’ world – made up of ‘my’ worldview, ‘my’ beliefs, opinions, feelings and survival passions – I cannot help but struggle to fit everyone into ‘my’ world, as actors on the stage of ‘my’ play, so to speak, as family and aliens, as friends and enemies, as ‘good people and ‘bad’ people. And not only am ‘I’ busy trying to do this, everyone else – all six billion of us – are equally struggling to fit everyone into ‘their’ world. It then comes as no surprise that being actually harmless is out of the question –
until ‘I’ more and more leave centre-stage, stop resenting being here, stop being stressed, take myself less seriously, take
notice of other people the way they are and start enjoying life.
VINEETO: Besides, have you noticed that there is a remarkable difference between *feeling* harmless and actually being harmless? RESPONDENT: Yes. But how else would one ‘know’ that one is being ‘actually harmless’ if not by feeling (or sensing/ perceiving/ experiencing) one’s current state? My use of the taboo word ‘feeling’ in the sentence above was in the sense of self-awareness of one’s state. Or is it that you have a deeper objection to one’s own assessment of one’s states and what you really mean is: ‘there is a remarkable difference between what you experience/ sense/feel/ are-aware-of as happiness and harmlessness and actually being happy and harmless? VINEETO: First, let me emphasize (because I made this mistake myself) that neither the word ‘feeling’ nor the act of feeling something is ‘taboo’ when you practice actualism – on the contrary, the method of actualism is, as Richard says, ‘a very tricky way of both getting men fully into their feelings for the first time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings one by one instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once’. In other words, on cannot become aware of and examine one’s feelings when one considers them to be ‘taboo’. The reason I said that there is a remarkable difference between *feeling* harmless and actually being harmless is because it is easy to assess one’s happiness by checking if I am feeling happy whereas many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions *before* these translate into vibes and/or actions. It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions. Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of
parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself
to be harmless.
RESPONDENT: Have you encountered a situation where people want to test your ‘harmlessness’ by poking, trying to be mean etc. VINEETO: Whenever people ‘test my harmlessness’ they often do so in order that they can then judge my behaviour according to their idea of harmlessness – being meek (in religious terms) or being a pacifist (in secular terms). Many a time I have seen discussions on this mailing list where correspondents demanded of Richard that he should not defend himself, so much so that when he takes the time to address their allegations he is often accused of being defensive, nitpicking or arrogant. The idea of having to be meek became obsolete when I eliminated my spiritual/religious
beliefs and by doing so I was able to see clearly that there are none so sanctimonious as the meek and mild. As far as pacifism
was concerned I had to take a close look at the unliveable ideals of pacifism in general – law and order is ultimately only
maintained at the point of a gun, be it locally or globally and to not see this and understand it is to have one’s head in the
sand (or in the clouds). (See also When I made it my goal to become harmless, in the early days I sometimes felt toothless, castrated and helpless, particularly in situations where I felt I was being ‘wronged’ or I was being treated ‘unjustly’. But once these feeling subsided and I looked at the situation as it really was, I could see how silly it would have been to waste my time passionately fighting other people or riling against the beliefs, morals or ethics of other people in order for ‘me’ to be right or for ‘me’ to feel justly treated. The simple act of becoming aware of having antagonistic and/or indignant feelings inevitably caused me to look at my own ideas and ideals of what I thought and felt was ‘right’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’– after all the only person I need to change, and can change, is me. And this process of discovery is still in action as I am still finding sly remnants of the ‘good’ variety of humanistic ethics extant which sometimes cause distress or indignation – clear indications of how ‘I’ tick. RESPONDENT: [people want to test your ‘harmlessness’ by poking, trying to be mean etc.] in real lives? VINEETO: As a generalization, I rarely talk about the fact that I have made being happy and harmless the most important thing in my life, so the issue of others deliberately testing me out does not arise – life is rich in opportunities that test one out without provoking situations. The real life that is this mailing list is an exception of course, but then again, if one dares to stick one’s head up above the parapet, there will invariably be those who delight in throwing brickbats – such is human nature. You might also have observed that pointing out a fact that pulls the rug from under someone’s precious belief often raises their hackles and as such is considered to be an act of aggression in the believer’s eyes. Whilst I would not choose to take someone’s beliefs apart in ‘real life’, as you call it, this mailing list is up front about being a non-spiritual mailing list and has been specifically set up ‘to assist in elucidating just what is entailed in becoming free of the human condition’. (From the welcome message to the Actual Freedom mailing list) As such this list is the very place to openly question and actively investigate all of the spiritual/philosophical beliefs, worldviews and psittacisms that pass for wisdoms and truths within the human condition so as to be able to make a clear-eyed investigation and assessment of the facts of the matter. When I first came across actualism I went through a phase of enthusiasm where I wanted to share with my then-friends from my spiritual years that I had found the solution to my life-long quest for peace and happiness, a quest which I assumed was the same for them. At first, I naively thought people would be as pleased as I was to hear about an alternative to the well-worn religious/spiritual path – but no, none of my former friends who I talked to was in the least interested in questioning their precious beliefs, let alone entertain the idea of abandoning the safety of the spiritual path, and setting off in a completely new direction. At first I was flabbergasted by their disinterest in actualism, but with increasing attentiveness I began to understand my own doubts and fears and saw it as an ingrained part of the human condition that one wants to avoid changing one’s own life but invariably either wishes or even demands that other’s should change. In short – I learnt to keep my mouth shut about abandoning beliefs, about becoming
happy and harmless and about ‘self’-immolation and consequently the people I meet nowadays rarely feel threatened by what I do
or say and therefore rarely treat me differently to everyone else. Mostly they are far too concerned with their own lives to even
want to know what I am doing, let alone ‘test’ my harmlessness.
VINEETO: As for the question as to whether imagination still operates when the
affective faculty is either voluntarily expunged or temporarily in abeyance, I have found that neurological science has
very little interest or expertise in this question. The only productive reports you will find describing such a condition is in
the reports of Richard and other actualists on this list … bearing in mind that psychiatrists have diagnosed Richard as having a
chronic and incurable psychotic mental disorder, namely Depersonalisation (no identity), Derealisation (reality has disappeared),
Alexithymia (absence of affective feelings) and Anhedonia (unable to affectively feel pleasure/pain RESPONDENT: Same here. I’ve read a bit about alexithymia, and I see that lack of awareness of feelings often correlates with impoverished imagination. But this doesn’t seem to say much about Richard’s state or the PCE. Actually, the diagnosis of alexithymia sounds a little suss to me. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I thought alexithymia is not the absence of emotion but the inability to recognise it as emotion. I note that the psychiatrist who interviewed Richard confirmed that he also showed no physical symptoms of emotion – which, as I understand it, is not usually the case with alexithymia. VINEETO: Yes, the psychiatrists had to choose the nearest term in order to describe Richard’s condition of having no affective faculty whatsoever – an indication that a freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human history, so much so that there are no psychiatric terms that accurately describe its ‘symptoms’. From any psychiatrist’s and psychologist’s viewpoint the human condition is considered both normal and sane and from this viewpoint a freedom from the human condition can only be regarded as a severe psychotic disorder. This may explain why there is so much avid objection to the experiential reports of how a freedom from the human condition is experienced, both as an actual freedom and a virtual freedom. I see from your latest posts that you unequivocally agree with the psychiatrist’s real-world viewpoint and that you have chosen this as the reason why you don’t want to practice actualism –
* (...) RESPONDENT: I never get that impression from Richard, which is not surprising considering it is more than a decade since he experienced himself as having a ‘soul’, and more than two decades since he experienced himself as having a social identity. VINEETO: Not only does Richard not experience himself as not ‘having a ‘soul’’, he also does not affectively experience other people’s identity or ‘soul’, and the only way one can experience someone’s identity is via affection aka intuition, which is an instinctive-based gut reaction. Because I understood that an actual freedom has to be a freedom from ‘me’ as an identity I wanted to learn from, and understand, how a ‘self’-less person experiences the actual world of people, things and events. I was not interested in complaining that he did not understand ‘my’ feelings or had no sympathy for my ‘self’-created problems. Haven’t you noticed that sympathy only feeds and prolongs sorrow? VINEETO: I presume you are talking about this correspondence –
The difference you see is not between ‘real-life impressions’ and ‘plain-text impressions’, the difference is in our different approach to the possibility of an actual freedom from malice and sorrow. I was keen to learn as much as possible from Richard about how to become free myself whereas you seem to object to the information that is presented while trying to negotiate a compromise that would keep your identity intact. Vis:
It never even occurred to me to accuse Richard of being an idiot, not knowing what he is talking about, of being arrogant, ignorant, full of shit, bone-headed or doing ‘obfuscation for devious and/or malicious purposes’ (One last shot at this, 4.2.2004) – for me it was clear from the start that ‘I’ am the problem and that it is my job and my job only to do something about it. As for ‘not to mention No 59’s and No 58’s [impressions]’ – both No 58 and No 59 wrote to Richard not because they were interested in an actual freedom from the human condition but because they objected to Richard’s claim that he had found something entirely new to human history and their ‘impressions’ are guided by this intention. Vis –
I found that to justify my own impressions and feelings on the basis that other people
feel the same as I do only served to thwart any possibility of conducting a clear-eyed investigation of my own passions in action.
I simply got tired of endlessly running with the herd, which is why I started to engage brain and began to think for myself.
VINEETO: What would you say is your intention in wanting to find out what makes ‘you’ tick? I am asking because recently you wrote to a co-respondent that – ‘Long before I came across actualism I had a burning desire to find a better way to be sane, or to go mad in the attempt’ (RE: No 60, No 37 & other actualists, 10.9.2004). About a month later you wrote to another co-respondent that you ‘never bought into the happy and harmless thing’. (Practical Question, 29.10.2004). Do you have in mind ‘a better way to be sane’ that doesn’t include being both happy and harmless? Just curious because I discovered that one does not go without the other. RESPONDENT: My idea of a ‘better way to be sane’ certainly does include being happy (delighted, carefree) and harmless (effortlessly benevolent). In the past I had shied away from the ‘happy and harmless’ thing; the very words had an unpleasant ‘ring’ about them because, as I once explained in conversation with No 33, they carried connotations of weakness and incapacity. They made me think of de-clawed cats, toothless lions, castrated monks, lobotomised mental patients, etc. VINEETO: I think I can relate to what you are saying. People often mistake
becoming happy and harmless for being meek (in religious terms) or being a pacifist (in secular terms). Many a time I have seen
discussions on this mailing list where correspondents demanded of Richard that he should not defend himself, so much so that when
he takes the time to correct their false allegations I know pacifism well – I was imprinted with an ideology of pacifism whilst growing up, particularly by my father who had experienced first hand the horrors of the Second World War. When I became an actualist I had to take a close look at the ideals of pacifism in order to see that they have nothing at all to do with the practice of actualism. Pacifists ideologically oppose war between nations, believing that aggression can be stopped by reasoned negotiations (despite the fact that the only thing that ultimately puts an end to rampant violence is the application of even more force). In doing so they acquiesce to those who use aggression in order to have power over others (despite the fact that this does nothing but give a green light to the use of aggression). To understand this one needs to look no further than the pacifists who acquiesced to the rise of Nazism prior to the Second World War to see that rather than stop the outbreak of war, they created an atmosphere that emboldened the aggressors to start invading their neighbouring countries. The other myth about pacifists is that they are peaceful people – despite the fact that they are very quick to apportion blame on others for being aggressive, and often vehemently so. I was involved in some angry student anti-war demonstrations and have seen the inherent hypocrisy of pacifism in action first hand. As a pacifist I conveniently overlooked not only my own aggravation and annoyance, the conflicts and disputes that invariably occur in my everyday life and in my personal relationships but I also turned a blind eye to the fact that I, without a second thought, am completely reliant upon the army of the country I am living in and the local armed police to keep me safe. Nowadays I clearly see the hypocrisy inherent in the ideology of pacifism. This hypocrisy is also evident in the eagerness of pacifists to lay the blame for the lack of peace on earth on others. For a long time I also firmly believed that it is only ‘the bad guys’ – such as corrupt politicians and greedy capitalists – who are responsible for all the wars, genocides and democides on the planet. Indeed pointing the finger at others is a trick one learns in childhood as a way of avoiding culpability and this is reinforced as one grows up and adopts certain ideologies and is adversarial towards others, forms allegiances to certain political doctrines and fervidly opposes others, embraces certain morals, values and ethics and avidly rejects others … and so on. In fact, the business of growing up inevitably involves being compelled to take a position, to have an opinion and to take a stance in the adversarial blame-game that typifies the human condition simply in order that one becomes a substantive social identity. When I came to understand and acknowledge the underlying causes and the practical workings of the human condition it came as somewhat at a shock to then discover that ‘I’ (together with some 6.4 billion other ‘I’s on the planet) am the sole reason that there is no peace on earth and furthermore, that I am, at core, as mad and as bad as everyone else whom I had accused of causing the wars and murders and violence in the world. As for your comment about ‘toothless lions, castrated monks, lobotomised mental patients, etc.’ – I too sometimes felt toothless, castrated and helpless, particularly in situations where I felt I was being ‘wronged’ or I was being treated ‘unjustly’. But once the feeling subsided and I looked at the situation as it really was, I could see how silly it would have been to waste my time passionately fighting in order for ‘me’ to be right or for ‘me’ to feel justly treated when instead I could walk away and be at peace. As you might guess, becoming aware of having had these antagonistic and/or indignant feelings then caused me to look at my own ideas and ideals of what I thought and felt was ‘right’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’. And this process of discovery is still in action as I am still finding sly remnants of the ‘good’ variety of humanistic ethics extant which sometimes cause distress or indignation – clear indications of how ‘I’ tick. RESPONDENT: The error in my thinking is clear: I was imagining a stripped-down identity, an identity incapable of harming or being harmed – which is all wrong. VINEETO: Ah, when I first encountered actualism I found it very intriguing that one can, with attentiveness and the intent to be happy and harmless, unilaterally do something about feeling insulted or feeling attacked to the point where these feelings will very rarely occur at all. Although I am still an identity, it is indeed possible to whittle away at one’s identity to the point that I am almost always ‘incapable of harming’ others as well as being emotionally harmed by others. RESPONDENT: Actualism is not about divesting oneself of the capacity to harm and be harmed while remaining an incapacitated, stripped-down identity. It’s about eliminating identity altogether, and thereby becoming carefree and benevolent (or ‘happy and harmless’). VINEETO: In my experience the means to the end are not different from the end, which means that living this moment as happily and as harmlessly as humanly possible the identity necessarily diminishes thereby losing it substantiality which in turn brings me closer to ‘my’ inevitable ending. This is how Richard describes it –
RESPONDENT: (Thinking aloud, welcoming feedback/criticism) At this point, virtually everything about AF makes sense to me intellectually. (The exceptions are minor). All remaining reservations have a common thread: the fear of inhumanity & madness, the fear of losing capacity for fellow-feeling, compassion, intuition, empathy, etc. (Same old shit that everyone on this list must be facing – or dithering about – in their own way). VINEETO: When you think straight about the ‘fear of losing capacity for fellow-feeling’ – and this is what it takes for me to eventually overcome a deep-seated fear – then you will find that there is obviously a difference between fellow-*feeling* aka compassion and recognizing fellow-ship as in actually caring for and considering one’s fellow human beings who I actually meet. Take a situation where you arrive as the first at a road-accident – you would stop, secure the road, assess immediate danger such as fire, inform police and ambulance, assist the people involved in the accident with first aid and do whatever is necessary to alleviate your fellow man’s or woman’s situation. In an actual situation the course of action is usually obvious and often feelings of compassion don’t arise until afterwards, as they would interfere with doing what needs to be done. 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, 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. Take driving – I’m sure you know the difference between being followed by an angry, impatient or even reckless driver and a reasonable sensible driver who drives according the given conditions and considers his/her fellow drivers. Take work – I’m sure you enjoy work much more when your colleagues are pleasant, polite, forthcoming, cooperative, considerate or even happy rather than grumpy, don’t want to be here, sullen, competitive, petty, bossy, bored and so on. Take living together – it was always my dream to live in perfect peace and harmony with a man but prior to actualism I never managed to do so. Now not only do I get the benefit myself from having sorted out my emotional problems, my partner equally benefits from living with a happy woman who is actively committed to an equitable harmonious partnership. In short, fact is that people actually tangibly benefit from me being happy and harmless whilst in my pre-actualism years they may have *felt* temporarily comforted by my expressed sympathy and compassion but given that one cannot change the human condition for somebody else, feelings were all I had to offer. This insight was the very reason why I left my job as a social worker and went off to the East searching for the solution to the riddle of life. Additionally, paying ongoing attention to my own feelings and passions had the result that I became far less ‘self’-centred, ‘self’-oriented and busy being involved in my own problems and was therefore far more able to actually notice other people around me as my fellow people living out their own lives as opposed to seeing them as players on the stage of ‘my’ life and automatically classifying them as competitors or possible benefactors, as a business opportunity, as a possible love-interest, as a friend or an enemy, as a co-spiritualist or as aliens, and so on. The process of actualism is not one big heroic jump into oblivion, not at the start
anyway, but about *practically* doing something about all the little things in daily life that prevent me from being
harmless and considerate.
RESPONDENT: I have just finished reading about ¾ of the UGK page with all his books for free. Now, there are some clearly crack-pot things about this man.
And the list could go on, but I think that’s enough. Now, all that being said, his statement that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible. VINEETO: Apparently those crack-pot things haven’t deterred you from accepting U.G. Krishnamurti’s authority and from thinking that his statement ‘that the very search for happiness causes unhappiness seems very sensible’. I say this because when I began to question my spiritual beliefs I discovered that I had accepted the authority of certain people because they were well-known and famous within the spiritual tradition despite the fact that I knew from observation that their lives weren’t worth emulating. RESPONDENT: UGK says nothing has permanence (and this seems true to me also). Would this not make striving (also causing suffering) for happiness impossible and futile? So, I’m having a problem with the ‘happy’ part of being ‘happy and harmless’ VINEETO: The only ‘problem’ you have is that you accepted the widespread belief that one needs permanence in order to be happy. This belief has driven millions upon millions of people to further disidentify from their mortal flesh-and-blood bodies and to further dissociate themselves from the physical ever-changing universe and to search for That-Which-Is-Unchanging – the unchanging, unmoving centre within. Searching for permanence ‘within’ is a culturally induced aberration that is an utterly selfish obsession and it only serves to increase one’s isolation from the actual world of people, things and events. The very act of retreating inside is an act of retreat from the world of the senses. If one, however, dares to come to one’s senses both figuratively and literally, one finds that what is in fact permanent is this perpetually occurring moment – it is never ever not this moment, nor can it never ever not be this moment. This is the only moment that one can sensately experience – this is the only moment in which the actual experience of being alive can happen. RESPONDENT: And while the harmless part seems valid, UGK points out that no one is ever harmless. We kill for our food (even if only a plant) and we of course will defend ourselves for our survival. VINEETO: Again, you appear to have accepted the authority on the meaning of harmless from a man you describe as ‘a very irascible/angry old man’ – only to end up believing his assertion that no-one can ever be harmless. It is an unavoidable fact of life that life feeds of life and many so-called wise men of the East have used this fact to deduct that the on-going saga of human beings’ aggression towards their fellow human beings is also ineluctable. The way to become genuinely harmless towards one’s fellow man is to successively free oneself from malice and sorrow – something anybody can do if they are so inclined. As for ‘we of course will defend ourselves for our survival’ – human beings, like all sentient beings, are born with the instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire but due to the intelligence of human beings that has transformed food scarcity into abundance, basic shelter into places of comfort, the ardours of hunting and gathering into leisurely shopping and so on, the instinctual survival passions have not only become redundant but are in fact now an impediment to the survival of the species. Richard continues to demonstrate and explain that human beings can not only survive easily and more effectively without the instinctual passions operating but be benign and carefree into the bargain. Additionally, when the separating ‘self’ arising from the instinctual passion ceases to exist, one is the ongoing experience of the impeccable integrity and excellence of the actuality of this physical universe. RESPONDENT: UGK also states that any ‘freedom’ is an illusion because something is always conditioning us – this seems obvious also. These are some questions I have. Thanks VINEETO: U.G. Krishnamurti’s statement that ‘any ‘freedom’ is an illusion’ is a statement based on his own illusionary freedom and merely goes to show that he has yet to find a non-illusionary actual freedom – a freedom from one’s social conditioning as well as one’s genetically-encoded instinctual passions. For further inquiry you may find the
VINEETO to Gary: I can very well relate to what you describe as ‘a deep and
abiding terror of extinction’. The trick that often helps me turn this terror into excitement is to remember that ‘I’
have a voluntary mission which is far more dignifying that ‘my’ survival – ‘I’ am to bring about peace-on-earth by
vacating the throne, permanently. And although sometimes I feel as though I am only inching my way closer to ‘my’ destiny, I
do recognize that I am making progress. I only need to look back at how I used to experience life a few years back to know this is
a fact. RESPONDENT: Facing the reality of my own demise has been one of my favourite obsessions in the past. VINEETO: I am somewhat confused as to what you mean by ‘facing the reality of my own demise … in the past’ – are you referring to the demise of the ego that leaves the soul intact, as taught in each and every branch of Eastern mysticism, or are you referring to facing physical death? Or are you talking about the recent past since taking up actualism – your contemplations about your own demise of your identity in toto, both ego and soul, something that is entirely new to human history? RESPONDENT: I’ve always known that in that conundrum lies a very important bit of knowledge, but I usually got stuck in an existential quagmire. VINEETO: The most important bit of knowledge that I have gleaned from contemplating the demise of my ‘self’ has been, and still is, the purity of my intent as an actualist. Contemplating death or ‘self’-immolation is not something that in itself brings me closer to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow but it certainly gives me a gauge measure to check if I am becoming comfortably numb, settling for second best or hiding in fear. I found that the best strategy is to check out my intent and then get on with the business of being happy and harmless instead of, for instance, being frightened at the thought of ‘my’ demise. It’s useful to remember that every feeling I indulge in, for whatever ‘noble’ reason, is only going to feed my identity instead of diminishing it. I have spent many years exploring therapy groups and spiritual feeling states and it was quite a challenge to slowly wake up to the fact that feeling is not identical to actuality – in fact, feeling has nothing to do with actuality. In the past I might have felt harmless but was nevertheless quite harmful in that my ‘self’-centredness inevitably caused ripples in other peoples lives. I found that while I might have felt that I valued peace, I still instinctively acted in attack and defence mode. While I might have felt that I was willing to sacrifice my ego for a higher cause, I was actually cultivating humbleness as a means of soul-istic ‘self’-aggrandizement, and so forth. Through the rigorous and persistent process of actualism, I slowly learnt to extend my attention beyond what I thought and felt, i.e. my ideals and passions, so as to become aware of the tangible effects that my thoughts, feelings and actions had on the people around me. I discovered more and more that feeling myself to be harmless and actually being harmless were two completely different things. This process of distinguishing between feeling and actuality is the key to actually becoming happy and harmless compared to merely feeling happy and harmless. I’m saying this because contemplating my demise has been one of my favourite topics since discovering actualism and only lately have I discovered that, while such contemplations can serve to fuel my intent, they don’t bring me closer to the actuality of being free, simply because I am contemplating about a time that is not now. Which reminds me that Richard always maintained that one cannot think one’s way to freedom nor feel one’s way to freedom – something that I have persistently tried to do. It’s great that there aren’t any rights and wrongs in actualism – given the sincere intent to be free of malice and sorrow, all explorations are useful explorations. RESPONDENT: Today, while showering, the subject popped into my head for the first time in some while, and I was keenly aware that it was the identity that was clinging to that fear, and that this flesh-and-blood shall simply fade away, no fuss, no muss. VINEETO: When you observe this experience a bit longer you will discover that ‘you’ as an identity are identical to that fear, they are in fact one and the same. ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’. And when fear leaves the stage for a moment, the identity is nowhere to be found and vice versa. Then there is peace.
RESPONDENT No. 93: Can you identify what went wrong, and are you still trying? Did you get to a stage where you could live with gay abandon (so to speak) without harming yourself or being dangerous to others? RESPONDENT: Nothing really went wrong, it just didn’t go right. The goal of being happy and harmless just seems contrived (not that there’s anything wrong with it). I’m more interested in pulling the curtain from all illusions, good bad or ugly. The reductionist approach works... eviscerate everything that isn’t true, and what remains is by definition truth. Clues to this come from many sources. At this point I think I am no longer particularly harmful to myself or others ... VINEETO: I wonder what would happen if you abandoned what you call ‘not
being particularly harmful’ RESPONDENT: ... but I am hardly gaily abandoned. The notion of which is of course another of the untruths. Or, I have my head way up my ass. VINEETO: If this (telling yourself that ‘the notion of which is of course another of the untruths’) is the ‘reductionist approach’ you are speaking of then such an approach can indeed easily result in the alternative option you provided. ‘The notion of which is of course another of the untruths’ reminds me how a cunning solipsist once described his path of self-deception as the method to his success –
RESPONDENT: Now in this state, when I use actualism method, I look for any feelings which drive me out of the ‘reasonably happy’ state and I come back to my ‘reasonably happy’ state in a reasonably short time on most occasions. I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition. RESPONDENT No 38: Again, if ‘reasonable’ is adequate, so be it. Apparently, it’s not, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering with this discourse, right? RESPONDENT: Right. But what is doubtful is the level of my intent (for example compared to yours) in going all the way. The reason for this is perhaps because I don’t have a direct experience of what is on offer. So my take on this discussion is that you should have a PCE before you try out actualist method because otherwise you will not have full and pure intent and therefore can not succeed or at most can reach only ‘reasonably happy’ state. VINEETO: When I first came across actualism, and its implicit challenge to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless, it was the harmless part that grabbed my attention – i.e. I could see that to be ‘reasonably happy’ was relatively easy but to become actually harmless was the real challenge that actualism offered to me. Because of the way human beings are socially and instinctually programmed, the time-honoured pursuits of happiness – be it via the accumulation of material possessions or the acquisition of spiritual brownie-points – is inadvertently and inevitably a ‘self’-centred enterprise. When ‘I’ pursue ‘my’ happiness in either of these worlds I am necessarily putting ‘me’ and ‘my’ insatiable wants and needs first. This means that ‘my’ happiness is always conditional upon ‘my’ position in the real-world pecking order, or if one is so inclined, ‘my’ position in the spiritual world pecking order. Either way, happiness such as this is dependant upon doing battle with one’s fellow human beings in some way or other. There is a way out of this apparent dilemma and this is the third alternative to the traditional choices – being ‘reasonably happy’ in the real world or being blissfully dissociated in an imaginary spiritual world. The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings. Similarly, in interactions with your fellow human beings the aim to be harmless will ensure that you rate other people’s happiness as much as your own, simply because if you harbour acrimonious feelings towards another, neither they nor you can be happy in such a situation. The more you actively pursue harmlessness and investigate the social and instinctual mechanisms that cause you to have aggressive, resentful, insulting, blaming, sorrowful and anxious feelings, the less ‘self’-centred, more considerate and more benevolent you are towards all of your fellow human beings. Of course, you will very quickly experience, if you are scrupulously sincere in your pursuit, that one invariably feels happy whenever one notices that one is spontaneously harmless. Such a happiness only needs enough intent to make the first commitment – to become unconditionally harmless and do whatever is necessarily to attain and maintain such harmlessness. Then the more harmless you are towards your fellow human beings, the more happy you become and this results in even more harmlessness and even more happiness – i.e. success breeds more success. The recent discovery of actualism now makes it clear that the best contribution one can
make to peace-on-earth is to free oneself and others from the burden of one’s animal instinctual passions – and the obvious
place to start such a process is to focus on the elimination of invidious passions that cause harm to one’s fellow human beings.
VINEETO to No 4: The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings. Similarly, in interactions with your fellow human beings the aim to be harmless will ensure that you rate other people’s happiness as much as your own, simply because if you harbour acrimonious feelings towards another, neither they nor you can be happy in such a situation. The more you actively pursue harmlessness and investigate the social and instinctual mechanisms that cause you to have aggressive, resentful, insulting, blaming, sorrowful and anxious feelings, the less ‘self’-centred, more considerate and more benevolent you are towards all of your fellow human beings. Of course, you will very quickly experience, if you are scrupulously sincere in your pursuit, that one invariably feels happy whenever one notices that one is spontaneously harmless. Such a happiness only needs enough intent to make the first commitment – to become unconditionally harmless and do whatever is necessarily to attain and maintain such harmlessness. Then the more harmless you are towards your fellow human beings, the more happy you become and this results in even more harmlessness and even more happiness – i.e. success breeds more success. RESPONDENT: This brings up something for me that I read from Richard a while back concerning what I would call ‘vibes’. I forget the exact text, but the gist was that the emotional states we have running inside us affect the local atmosphere, and even contained internal disturbance affects those around us in a negative way. Did I understand this correctly? And did I use the right word, is it really affect, or is it effect? This is not an idle question and I’ll wait for a response before I go on with where this leads me. VINEETO: Is this the relevant text you are talking about? And yes, you did understand correctly –
You can find some more links to As for ‘is it really affect, or is it effect’ – I don’t think it makes any difference as one of the synonyms for ‘affect’ in the Oxford Thesaurus is to ‘have an effect on’ and the effect in case of emotional vibes would undoubtedly be an affective effect. The way I approached the task of becoming harmless was that I first sought to stop any of my harmless actions or verbal expressions of harm towards other people. When I got to the stage when I could rely on my attentiveness such that I could detect my aggressive mood before I verbally expressed it to those around me, I then raised the bar to detecting any aggressive moods or vibes as soon as they arose. It became readily apparent that a bottled up aggression or resentment towards others only served to make me unhappy and did not count as being really harmless because any such feelings are detectible by others and have an influence on others. This meant that I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated. RESPONDENT: And then, to No 4: I wonder if the reason that you experience relative happiness in your life is that you grew up in a relatively undisturbed way – something that I did not. I grew up with a distinct distaste for the human condition as it is because of my experience with it. I’ve often wondered that if my experience had been kinder would I have sought liberation. And I would reissue No 38’ question to you. Why are you interested in Actual Freedom when you are relatively happy? I’m quite interested in your response, because for the human condition as a whole to change it will require people who believe themselves to be ‘relatively happy’ to even so want to engage the demolition of the ‘self’. VINEETO: I don’t want to pre-empt No 4’s reply but as far as your conclusion is concerned I would like to point out that pioneers in any field have always needed a good dose of panache, stubborn determination, whole-hearted intent and a dash of daring. For those who follow in their footsteps the task becomes easier and the peer review less fierce until the day comes when becoming free from the human condition is the fashionable smart thing to do because it simply makes sense. Be that as it may, I am always on my own in this enterprise of becoming free from
malice and sorrow and I am having the time of my life.
RESPONDENT: As far as my relationship, I have been attracted (mutual attraction) to a very sensuous and wise single woman who is, by the way, also very emotional and honest with me in conveying her both positive and negative emotions. (She is very much in love with me). She is very expressive, a rare combination of an artist-extrovert and a retrospective scientist. This has been an interesting experience for me for several reasons: First, I am still married (although I told my wife about my attraction to that woman). Secondly, that woman, with whom I spend hours on the phone almost every day lives in North Carolina while I live in New Jersey. Thirdly, I discovered that as much as I want to make the situation simple by separating with my wife, with whom I have not been intimate for 9 months, I still feel somehow painfully attached to due to probably the common cultural background and the memory of all the years of undergraduate and graduate school together and of the general life's ups and downs that we have endured in the past. The emotion arising as I am trying to resolve the issue and quit my marriage could be described as some irrational fear of ‘messing it all up’. I am writing about it here in hope of clarification it for myself by the virtue of just putting it on paper, or to be more accurate, on the list, and thus sharing my experience. It is needless to say that I have been very busy recently on the emotional front of my life. VINEETO: A serendipitous wide-ranging field for investigation into the Human Condition indeed. I wrote in my last post –
The more I understood the impact and the ripples that each of my feelings, emotions and instinctual passions and its ensuing action was having on me and people around me, the more my intent grew to investigate those feelings and emotions and change my behaviour in order not to cause any more of those ripples. The intent for peace, to become completely harmless, made me look not only in the direction of the obviously uncomfortable emotions like guilt, anger and fear, but also at the cherished ones like hope, love and euphoria. The more I dug into each of the feelings that I experienced at the time, the more I understood the self-centred nature of each of them. When I am drowned in emotions I cannot sensibly consider other people and the impact my behaviour has on other people around me. So, in order to become happy – free of guilt and remorse, apologies and resentment
– I also had to change myself to become harmless and stop causing ripples in people’s lives. One does not work without the
other.
RESPONDENT: In my experience, only by becoming Happy first – can I also become Harmless. This is not to neglect Harmlessness, rather to notice that if I try to be to vigilant – ‘taking responsibility’ for how my emotions cause ripples in other people, then I become a ‘tiger in a cage’ – i.e., unhappy. Granted, both happiness are harmlessness depend on each other, but happiness seems to be the horse carrying the harmlessness cart – and not the other way around. I don’t have motivation to be harmless, if I’m not happy. At least – that’s my experience. VINEETO: If by ‘becoming Happy first’ one could ‘also become Harmless’, the whole world would be happy and harmless by now. The pursuit of happiness is as old as humankind but it still has not produced anything remotely resembling harmlessness, let alone harmony. Actualism breaks with the instinctual compulsion of human beings to put their own
happiness first and put harmlessness second – as a socially conditioned afterthought, so to speak. As long as I put my happiness
above being harmless, my outlook towards others is inevitably ‘self’-centred, which means that I cannot consider others as
equitable fellow human beings. * RESPONDENT: I do not mean to imply that humans are ONLY ‘naturally benevolent.’ No doubt you are correct in your assertion that complete innocence is a fairy tale. Your comments are aimed at a target that I don’t intend to defend. I agree that we are endowed with the ‘instinctual passions’ of ‘fear, aggression, nurture and desire’. But, I also see altruism and benevolence – though normally mixed (if not eclipsed sometimes) by the instinctual passions you refer to. All I mean is that people are generally well meaning. Maybe it’s best not to combine the word ‘natural’ and ‘benevolence’. Probably ‘good-intentioned’ is a better rendering – or ‘well-meaning.’ VINEETO: It is certainly ‘best not to combine the word ‘natural’ and ‘benevolence’’ because it is the instinctual passions that are natural and consequently come to the surface with often horrendous results when the social rules fail to curb the excesses. Children before about age two are ‘natural’ and so are animals – children at this age don’t yet have a social conscience and, as such, are run entirely by their instinctual passions. What you said, however, is that you wanted to appeal to and direct people’s ‘natural
benevolence’ so that they’d be ‘sensitive’ towards you and won’t emotionally hurt you. But apart from the
fact that ‘natural benevolence’ is a myth, an actualist aims to become unconditionally happy and harmless, i.e. happy
and harmless with people as they are. In order to become unconditionally harmless, I had to stop trying to direct people to live
up to ‘my’ preferences and sensitive spots and instead I investigated ‘my’ instinctive need to be in control and change
people according to ‘my’ self-centred ideas and feelings. The result is that now I am not only harmless but also happy
regardless of what people say to me, or about me, because I removed the cause of my feeling hurt – and the cause is not in
others, but in me.
RESPONDENT: And about your last question, my answer is just be happy right now with my full intention. VINEETO: Happy and harmless belong together, you cannot be happy without being harmless. And you cannot be harmless without looking deep into your psyche to discover and investigate all the beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions that cause suffering and harm to others and to yourself. Actual freedom is not about matching words with what you already believe, actual freedom is to actually do something so you become free of the Human Condition. And once you made up your mind, there is plenty of information on both Richards and our
website how to go about it. Just have a look at the library, under * RESPONDENT: Here I have a question. As I said I am now experiencing being happy and harmless as feelings. This is my ‘good’ feelings. And I don’t understand the difference between this ‘good’ feelings and feeling good which is used at asking ‘how are you experiencing this moment of being alive’ Is this the difference between virtual freedom and actual freedom? I want to hear around these points from anyone. VINEETO: The ‘difference between the good feelings and feeling good’ is the difference between hanging on to love and devotion as one’s highest goal (good feelings) and questioning everything that is an hindrance to being actually happy and harmless (feeling good), as in factually, in thought, feeling and deed, with everybody around you, even your wife and your children, your boss and your girlfriend. Feeling good is the first step to feeling happy, then being happy, as in gradually becoming free of malice and sorrow. To understand the difference is only difficult when you make a philosophy out of it, it is not difficult when you investigate into your being sad and angry. Being happy and harmless is not a feeling. Being harmless is being without any feelings of annoyance, anger, impatience, competitiveness, ambition, being insulted, wanting to hurt or get back at someone, craving for attention, etc. When all those emotions and feelings and their underlying instinctual passions have been investigated and understood, and are consequently eliminated, then you are harmless. Feeling harmless sounds very nice, but it is just a cheap cop-out without having to do something about one’s Human Condition. The same applies to ‘feeling happy’. You can feel happy for a particular reason,
something worked out fine, some feared event did not happen, someone said he or she loved you, etc. But to be happy you
have to get rid of everything that makes you unhappy, sad, lonely, terrified, angry, compassionate, guilty, restless, bored,
tired, resistant, resentful, etc., in short, your very ‘self’. To be happy you have to ‘self’-immolate, because all you
are made of are your emotions, feelings, beliefs and instinctual passions.
VINEETO: Looks like you are still a few country miles away from understanding the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual. To understand the diametrical opposite requires a weariness of the empty promises and haloed wisdom of spiritual teachings, a non-antagonistic attitude from the reader, a suspense of his or her suspicion, cynicism, sarcasm, doubt and pride and a good dose of naiveté. But above all, in order to understand what actualism is on about, one needs the intent to do so – and this intent is none other than the intent to be harmless towards others in order that one can be happy. RESPONDENT: How harmless are you? Would you protect yourself if attacked? VINEETO: The way you phrased your question, it is not about harmlessness but
about the unliveable ideal of pacifism. Two weeks ago Peter replied to No 58’s question of ‘what is the actualist
definition of harmlessness?’
RESPONDENT to No. 23: I was wondering why SANNYASINS were getting so worked up and angry at my teasing Peter and Vineeto with some jokes and comments? They don’t seem to be bothered by it, at least I still haven’t heard any comment from them. When I teased Vineeto by calling her ‘egghead’ she responded very well. I appreciate her for it. It seems Peter and Vineeto are more ‘sporty’ then some sannyasins. I wonder if she and Peter have anything to say about the jokes? VINEETO: So you are asking about my response to your jokes? I am not responding to your jokes aimed at Peter and Vineeto (the ones with our names put in) because I find it plain silly. A joke is neither a question nor an objection, so why should I reply? As for ‘sporty’ – it was one of the first things I learned when meeting Richard, that one can become un-insult-able by investigating and removing the ‘me’ who takes offence. This possibility appealed very much to me from the very beginning. What an awful hindrance for communications it has always been for me when I would get insulted by what someone said, and then I could not continue being at ease with that person. And then I was the one who was suffering, feeling insulted, being resentful and withdrawing into loneliness. Actual freedom for me meant that I investigated and in this way eliminated the cause and the root of emotions in me, and after removing the cause they simply don’t occur any more. Whatever the other says, or does, is then his or her business only. What a freedom to be able to be un-insult-able, un-offend-able, completely harmless and
without resentment. What a joy to know that I can rely upon myself 100% that I won’t harm anybody, won’t kill anybody for
whatever passions or beliefs. I admit, one loses one’s ‘self ‘on the way – but it is well worth it. * RESPONDENT: (...) I am very happy to see that you have a sense of humour and unlike some sannyasins you don’t seem to get offended or angry at jokes. VINEETO: Yes, I also think that it is a sign of intelligence when one can see the ridiculousness of what one is doing. But most jokes point at others and are at the expense of the shortcomings of others. It is called fun but is almost always badly disguised plain malice. The impression of ‘lighter and free’ comes from a temporary distraction from the misery all around, but jokes do nothing to actually free you from misery. After a short time it hits back with full force. For me, being a seeker has always been about finding out about myself, first about the ego in Sannyas and now about the whole of the Human Condition, the ego and the soul. Searching, for me, is about establishing peace-on-earth in me, and for that, the ‘I who I think I am and the I who I feel I am’ has to die. Only when ‘I’ am completely demolished will I be reliably happy and harmless, all the time. Just making fun of one’s own and other’s shortcomings is nothing but a nice coating
over the ‘self’ that wants to stay as it is – and be liked by others on top of it. It has never really appealed to me. I
preferred to find a way to be free of being the nice girl, free of needing love, free of any dependency on other people’s
opinion about me. Then I am also free to say what is the case instead of being anxious about what others would have liked me to
say.
RESPONDENT: And as for the term harmless, I don’t care for the implications of powerlessness that I hear in this word. Reminds me of an image of an impotent over-the-hill codger. I prefer compassionate. VINEETO: I find that an interesting statement. Do you say that you prefer compassion because to be harmless is to be powerless? That was exactly my finding – for me, Compassion implied the use of power whereas being harmless implies no use of power at all. While I was in the state of an all-encompassing feeling of ‘love for all’ or Compassion, I felt superior to everyone and wanted to spread this superior state of Love and Truth. It is an incredible empowering feeling. But then I saw that I had only replaced the powerlessness of being a ‘not-knowing’ seeker with the power of ‘knowing the Truth’ and, as such, I was still trapped within the system of power, including superiority and inferiority, higher and lower, better and worse. I wrote about it at the time:
This psychic hierarchy of Power and Glory stood in the road of experiencing the innocence and purity of harmlessness and the actual intimacy with other human beings as fellow human beings. Only by eliminating the Grand Self, together with the personal self (ego), can I be truly be without harm, without sorrow, without malice. And without a ‘me’ to be emotionally hurt or insulted, I have no need of any power to defend ‘me’. I removed the very cause for the need to have power over others. It is utterly safe to be harmless in this perfect and benevolent physical universe.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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