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 –

‘I’m intending to keep my mouth shut and learn for a while, but I couldn’t let this pass without a personal thanks. Every word speaks directly to where I’m at right now. I very much appreciate the thoughtfulness, sensitivity and clarity of these words, and the helpful intent that obviously lies behind them.

Thank you very much. It confirms that I’m among people who truly know what they’re talking about’. (re infinity, 27.1.2004)

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.

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.

Uhhh ... I was speaking to you, about you. Your words in that particular message seemed to be rather nice, they hit a spot that seemed to imply that you understood my frustrations without directly saying it. I appreciated it.

When you said (in plural) that you are ‘among people who truly know what they’re talking about’ I misunderstood this to mean the actualists on the list because in the post you referred to I was describing my experience with the actualism method. Vineeto, re infinity, 26.1.2004. It seems nowadays that the words of the objectionists on this list hit the spot for you far more than those of the actualists.

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.

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?

Incidentally, after posting my impressions of Richard vs No 59, I chanced upon one of your own accounts of Richard in person. You described him (from memory) as always cheerful, courteous, helpful. I was struck by the disparity between your real-life impressions and my plain-text impressions (not to mention No 59’s and No 58’s).

I presume you are talking about this correspondence –

Personally I was very intrigued when Richard told me about his psychiatric assessment of de-realisation, de-personalisation, alexithymia and anhedonia because I had never in my life met anyone who I experienced as salubrious and cheerful, as friendly and considerate, as intelligent and sensible as Richard, day after day. For me, meeting Richard was meeting the living proof that not only is it possible to become free from the human condition of malice and sorrow but also that an actual freedom is the only possible solution to the sad and sullen sanity of the human condition. Vineeto, List AF, No 45a, 27.5.2003

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:

I see the ‘harmlessness’ of Actualism as being – in the long run – a disability, although far better than anything a ‘normal’ life offers. Respondent to No 33, Happy and Harmless, 12.2.2004

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 –

No 58: Richard ... why the obsession with proving you are the only one to be in a state of ‘actual freedom’ as you put it? It seems rather childish. Re: Question 15.10.2003

No 59: I have a question for Richard. I find your claims that you were the first to attain an actual freedom from the human condition a little hard to take. (No Subject), 18.10.2003

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.

*

When I first started reading the Actual Freedom web site, I thought the core ideas sounded really interesting. Then when I started to look into the correspondence, I saw that Richard seems to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the minutiae, quibbling and quarrelling over trivialities, and seeming to be more interested in defending himself than helping the other. It almost deterred me from the start. I thought, how the hell can this guy have the goods he claims to have when all he does is bicker like the million and one pedantic geezers that hang out in newsgroups and mailing lists. It didn’t fit my impression of what a person who is actually free, beyond enlightenment, living a life of such quality that is unparalleled in human history, ought to be.

Of course, the ‘core idea’ can sound ‘really interesting’ in theory. People only begin to quibble and quarrel when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of actually doing the work of looking at their own beliefs and preconceptions, their feelings and passions. A little clear-eyed look at the website will reveal that the journals and articles are forthright, down-to-earth and to the point, whereas the majority of correspondence consists of answers to correspondents who raised objections to what was said. In short it is the correspondents themselves who set the agenda by the content and intent of their criticism.

I wonder why you feel Richard is ‘defending himself’ – aren’t his correspondents attacking him, often ad hominem? Do you think it is ‘not exactly consistent with someone who is ‘actually free from the human condition’’ to take the time and make the effort to put the facts straight and explain his experience in detail, over and over again? Do you think Richard should instead be a ‘lie-down-and-let-people- trample-all-over-him-pacifist? Do you think Richard should recant his discovery as Galileo was forced to do simply because the majority of correspondents think and feel he should not be challenging the status quo?

Is your idea that Richard should be ‘helping people’ by agreeing with them or pampering to everyone’s individual worldview and personal beliefs or that he should not respond to their concerns and attacks? By ‘helping people’ do you mean refraining from ‘discussing the minutiae, quibbling and quarrelling over trivialities’ that many people find important enough to raise as an issue?

*

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.

May I ask: does the kind of bickering I’ve witnessed here happen a lot in ‘real life’ too, or is it a text-only thing?

Ha! Never. I never talk to people about their personal beliefs let alone about the possibility of becoming free from all emotions and passions that constitute the human condition unless they invite me to do so, and even then the conversation soon turns to less threatening topics. If the ‘text-only’ comments on this mailing list were face-to-face group encounters then we actualists may well have been taken out and shot in front of the grateful mob who would have no doubt been glad to see justice done, such is human nature. T’is not for nothing that we choose to discuss these matters with our fellow human beings via the internet.

As a hint in case you are interested in less ‘bickering’ conversations – whenever I was in any way emotionally effected by what my correspondents wrote it has always helped me to look at my own feelings in the issue and then sleep over my response before I sent it so as to have some time to have a clear-eyed look at what was being said.

I have used the AF method of running the question in the past and found it to be a good method as I have had extensive experience with similar methods in the past. The problem I have with a method of this type is it tends to become mechanical.

As you say that you had extensive experience with methods similar to the AF method in the past, this indicates that you have not yet understood the difference between actualism and other – spiritual – methods of observing one’s feelings. The method of watching and observing one’s thoughts and feelings, common to many spiritual teachings, is derived from the Buddhist teachings of Vipassana and consists of becoming aware of your unwanted or undesirable feelings in order to dis-identify from them and successively become detached from all earthly phenomena so as to bolster and make Real one’s true and immortal ‘self’.

The Buddhist pundit Majjhima Nikaya describes the method of watching and discernment very well –

Feelings
‘There is the case where a monk, when feeling a painful feeling, discerns that he is feeling a painful feeling. When feeling a pleasant feeling, he discerns that he is feeling a pleasant feeling. When feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, he discerns that he is feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. When feeling a painful feeling of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a painful feeling of the flesh. When feeling a painful feeling not of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a painful feeling not of the flesh. When feeling a pleasant feeling of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a pleasant feeling of the flesh. When feeling a pleasant feeling not of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a pleasant feeling not of the flesh. When feeling a neither- painful-nor-pleasant feeling of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling of the flesh. When feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling not of the flesh, he discerns that he is feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling not of the flesh. In this way he remains focused internally on feelings in & of themselves, or externally on feelings in & of themselves, or both internally & externally on feelings in & of themselves. Or he remains focused on the phenomenon of origination with regard to feelings, on the phenomenon of passing away with regard to feelings, or on the phenomenon of origination & passing away with regard to feelings. Or his mindfulness that ‘There are feelings’ is maintained to the extent of knowledge & remembrance. And he remains independent, unsustained by (not clinging to) anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on feelings in & of themselves. (emphasis added) Majjhima Nikaya 10; Satipatthana Sutta; Frames of Reference

Of course, such a method becomes sensately dulling and mind-numbing mechanical, as it is designed to completely dissociate from one’s unwanted feelings and one’s earthy sensual experiences. Vipassana and other practices of spiritual awareness are based on the premise that I don’t want to be here in the physical world and that I want to get out of here as soon as possible, and the method offered is to dis-identify from one’s thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations and become a disembodied Self existing as Consciousness only.

The actualism method is designed to do exactly the opposite. Actualism is about being here in this physical sensual paradise where we flesh and blood humans actually live. By asking myself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ I become aware of what is preventing me from fully sensuously enjoying being here – ‘me’, the alien entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body, consisting of all of my beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions. In order to become free from those feelings and passions ‘I’ will have to die in ‘my’ totality. In actualism I don’t disidentify from my beliefs, feelings and passions but I sincerely acknowledge that ‘I’ am the problem and then proceed to facilitate ‘my’ demise.

I have used the actualism method for four years to assiduously examine the source of my emotional upsets, the depth of my beliefs, the cunning of my alien entity inside, the reasons for my resistance to question further, the details of my social concerns, the insidiousness of my spiritual values, the contents of my affective relationships with people. There is nothing mechanical whatsoever to the in-depth exploration of one’s psyche, it is utterly thrilling to find out how ‘I’ tick and how to successively become free from ‘my’ automatic instinctual reactions.

If you are finding the method you have been using dulling and mechanical, you have not yet discovered the genuine article.

The problem I have with being an actualist is that is taking on another identity. You say you have lost your other identities but now you are identified with and as an actualist which is another identity.

There is no need to worry about your identity as an actualist. As you said you ‘have had extensive experience with similar methods in the past’ , it is obvious that you have not practiced actualism yet because actualism is 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual and religious methods taught in the past. Actualism is brand new to human history and any similarity to any spiritual method is purely imaginary.

Further, the actualism method is designed to take all of one’s identity apart, without replacing any of it with any new beliefs, credos, values, wisdoms, etc. and – practiced diligently and sincerely – actualism works to minimize the possessive personal concept of ‘I’ or ‘me’ to such a degree that ‘I’ become almost non-existent. If one merely replaces one identity with another, one has not understood the method at all.

I am as much identified with being an actualist – ‘one who practices actualism’ – as I am identified with using a car, a kitchen knife or this computer. I don’t need to emotionally identify with something that works, I simply use it because it works.

It is indeed possible to live without any psychological or psychic identity whatsoever and pure consciousness experiences verify that fact each time again. Living without identity is the very aim of actualism.

This question has been asked many times and it could well be that reading the responses to similar objections may shed some light on what is often made out to be a profound conundrum.

While such questions may well appear to be ‘logical’, at closer inspection it is obvious that such logic can only exist when kept separate from the reality of the myriad of daily activities, momentary affective reactions and mundane choices involved in everyday normal life. ‘I’ make hundreds of ‘executive’ decisions per day. And yet in those instances questions such as ‘how can an illusion have any executive power whatsoever?’ do not arise for ‘I’ am busy doing whatever ‘I’ choose to do.

My experience is that if one starts down the path of refuting what is obvious – that I can decide to take charge of my life such that I actually make life-changing decisions – I would in effect be ‘shutting up shop’ by begrudgingly accepting my fate. In other words, a little investigation revealed to me that fatalism in whatever form was nothing other than me categorically negating the possibility of ever changing my life for the better. This simply made no sense to me at all because it was clear to me that I had in fact made many choices in my life that resulted in change … and very often for the better.

To approach the issue of fatalism from a different angle –

At present I am reading a book by a primate biologist entitled ‘The Dark Side of Man’ (by Michael P. Ghiglieri, Helix Books 1999), a well-written account on the instinctual passions of both great apes and humans. The book reminded me that, as I look at ‘me’ at the instinctual level and leave aside the superficial variations that make up one’s social conditioning, the core urges and compulsions that make up the human condition are very simple and obvious.

For great apes, with whom we share 98% of genetic DNA, the core programming for males is to impregnate a female by display of or use of strength, power and/or cunning, and for females, if she has a choice, it is to find a male that is best capable of protecting her young, the strongest, most powerful and/or most cunning. By and large this blind instinctual imperative to reproduce is the same for humans. You could say that instinctually the sole meaning of life is to procreate – to fulfill one’s instinctual obligation to ensure the survival of the species by passing on my genes.

Further, great apes have a rudimentary sense of self, i.e. they are self-conscious, which manifests as an individual self-survival instinct. Humans have developed a more complex self-consciousness, a feeling of self, so much so that this ‘self’ is felt to be ‘me’, a substantive entity in its own right. Thus it is that human beings are not only compelled to ensure the survival of the species via procreation but the individual survival instinct is now manifest as a ‘self’-survival instinct. Consequently human beings indulge in all sorts of imaginary scenarios of ‘self’-survival – imaginary spirit worlds, a fantasy afterlife, the search for immortality for the soul, and so on, imagining these pursuits to be the true meaning of life.

Many people pursue both these meanings of life hand in hand – physical procreation to ensure the survival of the species by passing on my genes and the imaginary survival of ‘me’ as a ‘self’. While they are busy bringing up their young they are also busy purifying their soul and bettering their status for an afterlife.

As such, one is driven by one’s instinctual programming and subsequently pursues the instinctually imprinted ‘meanings of life’ and such an immersion renders one incapable of paying attention to the instinctual programming itself.

The interesting part of the adventure of life begins when I begin to apply attentiveness and become apperceptively aware of how ‘I’ function, socially and instinctually, because then I can make sensible choices based on both my intent (my goal) and the depth of my insight into the human condition itself. In other words when I clearly see the pattern of the outer layer of ‘my’ social programming, I can stop this pattern and replace it with sensible choices. When I am able to clearly understand the pattern of the innermost layer of ‘my’ instinctual programming, which is buried deep in the basement of my psyche, I have the opportunity to stop the pattern and make sensible choices.

This continuous action of becoming aware of and successively stopping the automatic patterns eventually weakens both the social identity and the instinctual ‘me’ to the point where stepping out of one’s ‘self’ into the actual world won’t be a giant leap that appears impossible, but a small step that is simply the next sensible thing to do.

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 was the perfect and only sensible solution.

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.

The reason why you seem to fail to understand how I deal with fear is because actualism has a unique approach to dealing with the instinctual passions, in this case the instinctual passion of fear. Your interest and approach seems to be to come to an intellectual understanding of the instinctual passions, in particular fear, in order that ‘you’ can do what ‘you’ want to do without being bothered by the instinctual passions, whereas the aim in actualism is to eliminate one’s social and instinctual identity – and because one’s identity is the source and fuel for sustaining the instinctual passions they will then collapse of their own accord.

The experiential knowledge that I have gained both from numerous pure consciousness experiences and from applying the actualism method over several years is that the instinctual passions only become less powerful if the identity is weakened, i.e. attempting to remove the instinctual passions while not paying attention to the very identity that sustains them will only result in frustration, denial or dissociation.

In other words, actualism works by slowly whittling away at the root cause of the instinctual passions, not by tinkering with the effect.

For that reason I don’t need to know the exact details of the mechanics of the survival instincts, details which even biologist don’t agree upon. I only need to pay attention to my passionate identity in action and by bringing it out into the open my identity inevitably weakens and as a consequence the instinctual passions are progressively dis-empowered.

What you see as my ‘lack of integrity’ may simply be the result of this basic refusal to acknowledge that one’s social- instinctual identity is the root cause of the instinctual passions, and not merely an unwanted by-product of one’s identity. The only way to test whether what I am saying is correct is to find out for yourself by a process of self-observation, but given you have made plain that ‘I don’t want to be a died in the wool Actualist who practices Actualism’, you are apparently left with no other course that to question my integrity.

Integrity to me as an actualist means that I set myself the goal of becoming free from malice and sorrow and then I do whatever is needed to reach this goal. Since I began to apply the method of actualism I have come a fair way towards freedom from malice and sorrow.

If I may rephrase Richard here – Is it at all becoming obvious that this ‘lack of integrity and your attitude towards me’ you speak of has no existence outside of your mind?

So, the answer to your question ‘what’s left when all beliefs and ideas including the spiritual is abandoned?’ in my experience was that what is left is the feeler. Consequently I then began to investigate the feelings that do not necessarily have beliefs attached to them but that nevertheless stand in the way of me being unconditionally happy and harmless – the necessary prerequisite to becoming free from one’s ‘self’ altogether.

How to link the identity to my feelings? That’s easy – the pure consciousness experience makes it undeniably clear that ‘I’, the social and instinctual identity, am a feeling identity … therefore any affective feeling is always an articulation of one’s identity in action. Even if one does not have a clear memory of having had a PCE, the simple act of being attentive experientially reveals that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.

When I began to pay exclusive attention to this moment of being alive I soon became aware that my social and instinctual identity thrives on gloomy and antagonistic feelings as well as loving and compassionate feelings whereas feeling happy and delighted deprives the identity of its nourishment. Hence Richard’s method to minimize both the good and the bad feelings while activating and enhancing the felicitous feelings made imminent sense.

This method is not to be confused with the spiritual method of not identifying or not associating with one’s feelings and thoughts – as in the Buddhist practice of detachment – as this practice only serves to create a new pseudo identity, an identity who actively dis-identifies from unwanted aspects of one’s old identity. In actualism I readily acknowledge that ‘I’ in toto am the problem and then proceed to facilitate ‘my’ demise.

As for ‘how did you investigate those feelings’, i.e. those feelings that don’t necessarily have beliefs attached to them – I found that there was no need to make a distinction between feelings with beliefs and feelings without beliefs. Given that my aim is to eliminate ‘me’, the identity, in toto, any feeling that prevents me from being happy and harmless is acknowledged, felt and labelled as it arises, neither expressed nor suppressed but attentively observed, in order that I can then either nip it in the bud or, if need be, explore and understand it fully so as to then be able to abandon it.

Feelings connected with beliefs inevitably surfaced whenever the particular belief was challenged. The only way to completely disempower the feelings is to abandon the belief – no belief, no need to feel defensive, feel aggrieved, feel the need to attack and so on. Even when I thought I had eliminated my major beliefs, such as my religious and spiritual beliefs, I would nevertheless discover yet more beliefs that I had inadvertently taken on board and these beliefs made themselves apparent by the fact that I got upset or sad or irritated about what someone said or did.

Undertaking an exploration of one’s own feelings when and as they are occurring – becoming fascinated with the business of being alive – is the means to developing apperceptive awareness, a prerequisite to becoming free of the human condition itself.

The identity is comprised of (not necessarily distinct) these parts: ego aka thinker, feeler aka soul, social identity, instinctual self, correct?

When I began to write on mailing lists about my experience with actualism, I first used the terms mainly used in spiritual circles to describe the identity – ego and soul, or thinker and feeler. However, as I explored more and more of my psyche and became more familiar about the nitty gritty of ‘me’ in operation, I found that the terms ‘social identity’ and ‘instinctual identity’ describe more accurately the two layers of my identity, the social identity being the layer of conditioning acquired after birth in order to curb the instinctual identity and its genetically encoded instinctual passions. This is just a preference that I have as I personally find the terms to be more descriptive and concise in conveying what I mean to others – contrary to what some believe there are no rules governing terminology around here.

Also the attributes or even the material by which the identity is made of is – feelings and emotions, instinctual passions, and thoughts (seldom free of emotions when an attribute of identity). Is this correct?

To the list of what the identity consists of I would add beliefs (feeling-fed thoughts about who rules the ethereal world and ‘my’ place in the hierarchy of the spiritual world), concepts (feeling-fed thoughts about ‘my’ place in the hierarchy of the materialistic world), moral and ethical values (feeling-fed thoughts about what is good and bad, right and wrong), vibes, myths and psittacisms.

There is no material by which the identity is made of, in that there is no ego in the head, or a little man pulling the levers and controlling the body, nor is there a soul located in the heart or a real me deep down inside as an actuality. However both aspects of one’s identity, whilst not being actual and having no material existence, are experienced as being very real – feelings are very real to the person having them. Beliefs are very real to the person who holds them dear, morals and ethics can dominate a person’s thoughts, actions and feelings, instinctual passions are very often overwhelming in their strength, and so on. In fact, the identity and his or her associated attributes are so real, so dominating and so overwhelming that they cause human beings to be nearly always in wary mode, defence mode, or attack mode – exactly as other animals are.

Is there a hierarchical structure to these various parts of the identity? Is it that one is operational at a given time not others – or – they all orchestrate with each other one feeding on the other like the legs of the millipede?

I found that because my social identity was mainly a training to curb my instinctual passions, particularly the so-called bad passions, I first had to whittle away at this layer of my identity in order to allow the deeper and stronger passions to emerge such that I could take a good look at how and why they operated. But this is not necessarily a smooth operation – sometimes just a crack in the outer layer reveals a bit of what is underneath, sometimes a big crack opens up and one gets a quite often shocking glimpse at what can be described as ‘the raw animal inside’ and sometimes one breaks right through the lot and a pure consciousness experience results when all of a sudden the whole centre and the protective circumference of my identity disappears … as if by magic.

The baby is born with these raw instinctual passions, basic software to protect itself from some of the dangers and situations – also with things like ‘theory of mind’ (which is later programmed or tuned more) – this is the instinctual self.

As I understand it the ‘theory of mind’ develops at about age 2-3, therefore I would say all humans are born pre-primed to think and feel themselves to be a separate ‘self’.

And with time – are these same instinctual passions fine-tuned to give rise to various feelings and beliefs and emotional behaviour patterns by societal conditioning?

The instinctual passions are never fine-tuned – in my experience they were only overlaid with social conditioning. I was only able to conduct a clear-eyed investigation of the instinctual passions in their full force once I was ready, able and willing to incrementally lift the lid of my beliefs, morals, ethics, values, ideals and principles that are the very constituents of my social identity.

When do I know I have come face to face with a raw instinctual passion – not just a conditioning of social identity – is this when the ‘social identity’ is deleted to a great extent – so as to see the underlying ‘instinctual passion’ devoid of the thinking distortions that usually accompanies it?

This is how Peter described it in the ‘The Actualist’s Guide’ –

Once sufficient of this dismantling of one’s social identity has been done, it is then possible to begin to experience the instinctual passions deeply without acting on them – once the ‘lid is off’ then I can have a good look around inside – neither repressing nor expressing – and begin to experience ‘me’ at the very core of my being. The only way it is possible to undergo a significant change in life is by experiencing something deeply and understanding the experience fully. I don’t know about a map at this stage – it’s more like throwing away the water wings and snorkel, strapping on a scuba tank, plunging into one’s own psyche and rummaging around the bottom, looking under all the rocks in order to see what the bottom really looks like. Peter, An Actualist’s Guide

Or is it (I think I read it in Peter’s journal) when I get to this point where I don’t see any reason for the fear or the strong emotion – it is just there – then I know it is an instinctual passion? If this is the case, I have come across situations where I have a strong emotion and I see that there is no reason for it to be there, at least I don’t believe that it is apt at that time.

The way I determined that I had come across an underlying instinctual passion was by the sheer intensity of the passion that welled up like a giant octopus, sometimes for no apparent reason. In such instance it was not that I had become upset about a belief that was attacked or that an aspect of my social identity that had been exposed – I knew I was experiencing something deeper and far more substantial than feelings – it was naked fear, pure rage, bottomless dread, sheer lust to kill, or the mindless intoxication of nurture.

Also I thought about another ‘Spiritual Freedom’ vs ‘Actual Freedom’ item when I was reading one of the pages (if this is not already tabled): In the former, one is a saviour of humankind (at least (s)he feels/thinks so) and in the latter ‘one is an expert in human condition’ (unless in the future, the babies are born free – in which case they will be without such expertise except vicariously).

Yepp, I have felt, and in that moment experientially understood, the overwhelming feeling of ‘knowing it all’ and the urging need to spread this wisdom revealed to ‘Me’ in a full-blown ASC that lasted several hours. As for ‘one is an expert in human condition’, I can only talk from the perspective of Virtual Freedom but I would say I am only partially an expert in the human condition in as far as I have explored my own psyche, which to a certain extent is the human psyche, and I am certainly an expert in how I became virtually free from the human condition.

However, there are many, many aspects of the human condition, cultural nuances, tribal rites, personal obsessions, weird passions, senseless beliefs and elaborate philosophies that I don’t know and neither have I the slightest interest in gaining such expertise. In any case, everyone has to do the job to take himself or herself apart if they choose to become free from the particular bent of their own social identity in order to firstly become virtually free of malice and sorrow. For this, one doesn’t need to be an expert in the human condition – ‘you’ only need to be an expert in what it is that is stopping you from being happy and harmless, no more and no less.

As an example of this, Richard had little intellectual knowledge about the instinctual passions before he became free of them – it was only Peter’s curiosity that prodded him to find out more and to write about them in more detail. Actualism is after all an experiential business, not an intellectual one.

The idea that in some distant future babies will be born free from the instinctual programming … can only be speculation at this stage.

Recently Peter and I were talking about this very quality of virtual freedom – after sufficient explorations into the human condition I am now able to ‘nip these reactions in the bud’ shortly after they appear and many events that usually would have triggered an angry or sad response in the past now fail to do so.

At my stage of the process the job now is to remember to stop the once essential but now redundant habit of rummaging around in my psyche in order to regurgitate issues that I have already explored, resolved and understood so as to get on with being happy and harmless as soon and as uninterruptedly as possible. Strangely enough that leaves ‘me’ increasingly with nothing to do, which in itself sometimes stirs the uncomfortable feeling of being redundant – a sure sign that my efforts of actively diminishing ‘me’ have had tangible effect.

I don’t quite relate to your metaphor. What I described was my acquired habit of searching for trouble-spots in my psyche that I could investigate when there is really nothing going on.

In the process of practicing actualism over the past years I have uncovered and explored many parts of my identity with the aim of eliminating my social identity and experientially understanding the instinctual passions as much as humanly possible. The part of my identity that for obvious reasons has remained as the tail end of my enterprise in ‘self’-immolation is ‘Vineeto the researcher’ or Vineeto the ‘‘self’-investigator’. Lately I began to realize with occasional trepidation that even this part of my identity will eventually have to come to an end if ‘I’, in my totality, am to come to an end – i.e. one day the search is definitely going to be over.

However, given that for actualism to work ‘I’, the identity, willingly and consciously agree to take myself apart, I would not advise anyone to attempt a shortcut and start to question the ‘‘self’-investigator’ at an earlier stage of the process. That would be mere self-deceit, akin to the Advaita slogan that ‘if only I stop my desire to be free then I am ok as I am’ and bingo, ‘Thou Art That’!

I noticed that in your correspondence with Gary you changed your expression of ‘letting down the guard too far’ for ‘monitoring’. I like the expression of monitoring because it describes well the process of being attentive to everything that is happening in one’s head and one’s heart with the sole aim of becoming happy and harmless. Once this aim was clear, my persistent and sincere monitoring has resulted in increasingly detecting my automatic ‘self’-sustaining reactions, such as my ‘self’-perpetuating indulgence in feelings or my ‘self’-preserving denial of unwanted feelings.

As for ‘too much ‘analysis is paralysis’’ I’d like to take the opportunity to discriminate between ‘self’-investigation and ‘self’-analysis as it is used in psychoanalysis. Psychological ‘self’-analysis prescribes a process of ‘self’-validation via dreams and memories in order to strengthen one’s identity so as to better cope within the human condition. Psychology, psychoanalysis and new-age therapy have no intention of diminishing the ‘self’, let alone eliminating the identity altogether.

In actualism, ‘self’-investigation is a process that not only has the opposite intent but it also goes far deeper – it is not rearranging bits of one’s identity but it is a tangible weakening of the ‘self’ via eliminating beliefs and moral and ethical values. Each time when I hit a major issue and proceeded to examine it, I came to a point where I understood the issue so clearly that I had no choice but to take action and drop that part of my identity in question if I was at all sincere. There were several loud ‘clunks’ that I distinctly remember, some of which I have described in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’, and very often the letting go of the investigated part of identity resulted in a pure consciousness experience where the actual world became stunningly apparent.

Part of my psyche is excessive worry. This of course is focused on future events, with their unknown outcomes. Intellectually I’ve known it’s a total waste of time, but it recurs. I’ve found that when asking ‘How am I…’, time sort of disappears (??), or shrinks. It’s hard to describe exactly, but the future definitely isn’t even a consideration. Interesting.

Yes, intellectual reasoning by itself does not eliminate emotional worries, they will always bleed through or pop up like a balloon that you try keeping under water. I had to find the ‘worrier’, the part of my identity that was afraid of being alive, and question why I kept feeding and pampering her, so as to be able to put a dent into my automatic worrying.

You can use the question of ‘How am I…’ to bring your attention to this moment. However, if the worry is continuously taking your attention away from this moment then you can also pay close attention to identify the part of your identity that is doing the worrying. ‘Self’-immolation is all about luring the identity out of hiding and convincing him/her to exit the stage for the benefit of this body, that body and every body.

Some observations on the topic ‘how am I in relation to other people’ –

To Richard: One of the most striking things to happen to me since I started practising Actualism is the diminishment of emotional connections to other human beings. I cannot say that there are absolutely no connections to others, as it is obvious to me in my relationship with my partner that a sense of connectedness comes up from time to time in various ways. And no doubt this happens with other people as well. However, I have noticed for a long period that when people want to be ‘friends’ with me, for instance, and make certain friendly overtures, these are generally not at all reciprocated on my part. In other words, the offer to ‘make a friend’ or ‘be a friend’ or such similar things as happen in the social world usually fall completely flat on my part. I have sometimes gotten the impression, gleaned from body language and other cues, that this irritates people. Overtures of this type just do not seem to ‘take’ with me. It is difficult to describe but I am sure that the other practiced Actualists on this list know what I am talking about.

You are right; ‘the ‘need’ to affiliate’ is a sticky business. I remember clearly when I saw Peter for the first time not as an affiliate of any kind but as a separate-from-me fellow human being. In an instant of clear perception, all ‘my’ sticky psychic tentacles that automatically reach out both to objects and to people around me had fallen away. From this particular insight I gained an understanding about what usually happens in interaction with others. I began to see, and unravel, the connections that ‘I’ spun with others, the deals ‘I’ struck, the bargains ‘I’ committed to and the mutual obligations ‘I’ engaged in during my daily interactions with people, particularly those I considered ‘my friends’.

I am reminded of another insight about ‘connectedness’ from my early days of actualism. As I walked into town one day, I noticed a tree at a street corner and with surprise I also noticed that in that moment I did not feel connected with that tree in any way. I was surprised because, by the very absence of connectedness, I became aware of ‘my’ psychic tentacles and how they normally engulfed everything as belonging to ‘my’ milieu – not only this particular tree but most things in my close environment. ‘I’ considered everything as being related to me, either giving reassurance or posing a threat – I either liked it or disliked it, it was part of ‘my’ territory, or it was part of, as No 45 lately called it, ‘my universe’. This meant that whenever anything in ‘my’ territory changed alarm bells rang – I became confused, if not upset, disturbed, hurt, annoyed, resentful, angry or sad.

Throughout the process of actualism I have become aware of, and incrementally dissolved, my ‘connections’ to things in my close environment and I investigated my affiliations and friendships with people. As you pointed out, most sharing between people consists of commiseration, but as the actualism process continued I had less and less to complain about my own life, which meant I had less and less common misery with people. The wonderful outcome of this ‘unconnectedness’ is that I am more and more able to meet and treat people as fellow human beings – that means I recognize and treat them as what they are instead of relating to them as bit players in ‘my’ game, subjects of ‘my’ moral judgements and demands, projections of ‘my’ fears and desires.

What you describe as being ‘aghast at my lack of emotional, social connection to others’ I would describe in my experience as the natural reaction, sometimes fearful, sometimes merely surprised, at seeing how radically I have changed as I am extracting myself more and more from my social and instinctual connection with humanity. During the recent years of living in virtual freedom I could verify again and again that I am not only capable of physically surviving without those ‘emotional, social connections’ but I am far, far better off than I was ever before – I am virtually free from any mood swings, I am feeling excellent almost all the time and I genuinely enjoy the company of anybody with whom I interact, whatever the occasion.

Now that I don’t have a ‘social connection’ with a few specifically chosen friends it becomes apparent that my daily life is full of social interactions – I have pleasant and friendly interactions with my various clients, agreeable chats when I answer the phone, a little gossip with the checkout person in the supermarket, with the waitress in the coffee shop, with a neighbour, and so on. These are all social interactions that I used to dismiss as unwanted time-consuming distractions as opposed to the ‘real’ interactions with my chosen friends.

And then there are interactions on the Actual Freedom Mailing list – talking about my favourite topic with other practicing actualists and people interested in, or objecting to, becoming happy and harmless.

I think you have summed it up very neatly. It is ‘me’, the identity, who needs emotional so-called meaningful interactions with people in order for ‘me’ to exist. Without the constant confirmation from others of my identity ‘I’ feel rather weak, insecure and become increasingly feeble. The other night I had a very clear perception that ‘who I am’ is almost entirely made up of my affective instinctual connection with other people – both with those whom I meet face-to-face and with humanity at large. In that particular moment of understanding ‘my’ affective extensions that reach out to the world around me were once again temporarily disengaged and I was here, as what I am, this physical flesh and blood body, not obligated to anybody and free to leave the herd.

It didn’t last – but it confirmed the direction.

From my experience, it does not matter if ‘me’ as an identity – who I think and feel I am – has an alien character or a non-alien character – all of it is ‘me’, no matter into how many parts I preferred to split myself. In my days of therapy and spiritual practice I used to divide my ‘self’ into an ‘inner male’ and an ‘outer female’, the feeler and the watcher, the intuitive and the rational self, the lower ‘self’ and the higher ‘self’, the passionate old ‘me’ and the aware new ‘me’. Part of the job of backtracking out of the spiritual-psychological nonsense I had been conditioned with was to stop dividing me into various identities and recognize, acknowledge and affectively experience that ‘who I am’ is an instinctually driven, culturally tainted and spiritually conditioned identity.

This shocking and unflattering acknowledgement prepared the ground for an actual change.

Your recent correspondences with Richard and me set me off thinking about the first few months when I started exploring actualism, and what it was that preceded and initiated my first major PCE. With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that my way of taking ‘the elevator down to the next floor’ was to decide to close the back door on a lot of aspects of my former life. Meditation and being the ‘watcher’ did not work because it did not make me happy, let alone make me harmless. Being a follower of Rajneesh and belonging to the Sannyas community did not work because it did not peace or happiness. There was still no peace in the world, neither within the Sannyasin community nor in any other spiritual or religious belief-system.

So, although I did not quite know where I was going when I closed the back door, I nevertheless knew by experience where I would not find the solution – neither in the real world nor in the spiritual world. In closing the door on my past life, I abandoned my dreams and entered new territory with no option to turn back.

I am convinced that it was this common sense commitment to say ‘no’ to the well-tried, and always-failed, methods and my daring to say ‘never again’ to holding on to my past hopes, dreams and beliefs that inevitably catapulted me into a PCE – the experience of being right here, right now, bare of any belief, truth, hope or preconceived idea. This pure consciousness experience radically changed my understanding of actualism because for the first time I understood, in my own experience, what Richard was talking about and what he is living 24 hours a day … and it’s paradise on earth.

The new thing, that I found in Richard’s discovery, is a questioning of everything that is not actual – not experience-able through the physical senses. This includes everything – good and bad – that human beings believe and ‘feel’ about being on earth. The important words are ‘believe’ and ‘feel’. Everything that we human beings have made up in our minds, in head or heart, is part of the particular identity of each of us. For instance: I have been a German, a woman, a secretary, a restaurant-owner, a Sannyasin, a drug-counsellor, a girlfriend, a lover, an Australian resident – all those emotional identities were the ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. Those roles and identities made me different to and separate from everyone around me who had different feelings, different beliefs, different emotional experiences or emotional memories. Further I discovered that I was driven by instincts – our animal heritage from the days of sheer survival – that all humans are equipped with from birth. They all form what we call ‘self’.

In the end, when I look around, it is exactly those different, passionate defended roles, beliefs and emotions that are causing both religious and territorial / tribal wars in the world. No religion or philosophy has ever, or will ever, succeed in bringing a lasting solution to wars, rapes, murder, suicide, depression, fear etc. Although using different methods, both Eastern and Western religions tell us to ‘go somewhere else’ in our imagination, into some inner space or some hoped for heaven after death.

The new approach is to get rid of this entity inside the physical body, which is more or less the same for every human being, and have paradise here on earth, while we are alive. I cleaned myself of the alien entity inside that feels, worries, is hurt, is hopeful, is loved or unloved, feels connected or an outsider, is angry, is anxious, excited or bored. An identity that continuously wants to make sense of questions like ‘why are we here?’ and ‘what happens after death’?

Recognising beliefs and emotions as just that, as ideas and feelings and not an actual part of my physical body and thus non-essential to living as a sensate and reflective body, I slowly slowly discarded every single one of them as redundant. It is a continuous psychic operation, shaking the very ground I thought I was standing on, but it is like removing a cancer that has made life hard, fearful, miserable or ‘otherworldly’.

This process is like taking the skin-tight suit off to feel the air on the skin for the first time, smell a flower for the first time without an interpretation of good or bad, to hear the rain falling on the leaves for the first time in this moment in time. Just the senses, and the delight of being aware of it. Any meaning, any goal, any moral or ethical judgement would stand in the way of this direct sensate intimacy. Simply being a human being, enjoying every moment of life, without malice, without sorrow – without an identity that would feel and act on those emotions.

The end-result is that one lives on this earth, in this moment, utterly carefree, able to apply intelligence wherever needed, fully enjoying the sensual delights and pleasures, and is much more innocent than a new-born child.

Not only hopes disappeared but also the ‘hoper’, not only feeling insulted disappeared but also the ‘feeler’ along with an ‘insulter’. The whole factory of emotions and imaginations (believing) has gone up in smoke. A wonderful liberation. A final arrival. I had searched all my life, but always in the wrong direction, away from life, away from earth, away from the physical. In a big loop I now come back to my senses, literally and figuratively.

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