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.

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.

Although it is common belief, particularly on this list, that it is thoughts and conditioning which are the cause of the problems in the world, there is overwhelming anecdotal, empirical and personal observational evidence that it is the genetically-encoded instinctual passions that produce feelings, i.e. emotions-backed thoughts, of fear and aggression in each and every human being.

I agree that the instincts produce feelings (emotion-backed thoughts). Is the thought added to the feeling when we translate the feeling or does the thought associated with the feeling exist in the old brain also?

The amygdala comes with a genetically-implanted, instinctual self, ready and primed to develop. This primitive self we share with our closest genetic ‘cousins’, the primates, and a self has been well documented in both chimpanzees and apes. This primitive self is part and parcel of the survival instincts – they are an integral inseparable package. The survival instinct is first and foremost for the survival of the species, hence the willingness of the adult to sacrifice his or her own life for the offspring. A close second comes self-survival, the survival of one’s self – a physical-only act of fear and aggression, flight or fight, in non-cognitive animals – which is translated into psychic and psychological fear and aggression in humans.

With the unique ability of human beings to think and reflect upon their own mortality, this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary ‘self’ is transformed into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and from this core of ‘being’ the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. This process is aided and abetted by those human beings who were already on this planet when one was born ... which is conditioning and programming. It is part and parcel of the socializing process.

According to studies from Joseph LeDoux and others, the sensory input to the brain is split at the thalamus into two streams – one to the Amygdala (the instinctual brain) and one to the neo-cortex (the thinking brain). The input stream to the Amygdala is quicker – 12 milliseconds as opposed to 25 milliseconds to the neo-cortex. Less information goes to the Amygdala – it operates as a quick scan to check for danger. Indeed LeDoux regards the Amygdala as the alarm system, although its function is perhaps better described as being concerned with bodily safety – hence a quick scan. This has been described as the ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ and results not only in a direct automatic bodily response, but the Amygdala has a direct connection to the neo-cortex – causing us to emotionally experience the danger – i.e. we feel the fear a split-second later than the bodily reaction.

These scientific findings also substantiate the fact that no matter what degree of thought-control is exercised by the neo-cortex in terms of morals, ethics, good intentions, etc., when ‘push comes to shove’ we revert to type – and reverting to type means animal-instinctual. This is clearly verified by the being ‘overcome’ by rage, fear or sadness and being unable to stop it.

What Richard has discovered is a way that one can weaken the ‘signalling’ from the amygdala to the frontal cortex to such an extent that eventually the ‘signalling’ ceases altogether. With the cessation of this ‘signalling’, the chemical flows from the amygdala, comes the extinction of the instinctual ‘self’ – one’s very ‘being’ and its associated instinctual passions. ( Reference)

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Therefore, this ‘common thought-sphere’ that U.G. Krishnamurti speaks of is, in fact, a collective feeling-sphere.

If this is true that might explain our subconscious reactions in that the instincts are reacting to this collective feeling-sphere.

What is your personal observation and experience of your ‘subconscious reactions’ ‘reacting to this collective feeling-sphere’?

I was referring to the old brain (‘me’) reacting to someone or something as a threat which is not a threat at all.

Yes, that is one of the most obvious situations, when by our automatic thoughtless instinctual reaction we perceive someone as an ‘enemy’ or a threat, when a later considered investigation of the facts reveals that the perceived threat is altogether non-substantiated. This is the effect of the instinctual ‘self’-survival program that translates into psychic and psychological fear and aggression.

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However, my most recent personal observational evidence is that thought does control the instincts.

Indeed. The only way up to now has been thinking and acting in accordance with a strict moral and ethical code in order to control one’s instinctual passions. These morals and ethics are socially and spiritually conditioned thoughts, underpinned by peer instilled feelings of guilt, fear and shame – ‘this is good’, ‘this is bad’, ‘this is right’, ‘this is wrong’, ‘you are bad’, ‘you are wrong’, ‘you will go to hell’. This straight-jacketed restraint and training is so strong that one can control one’s instincts to a certain degree, until push comes to shove and control is temporarily lost – a flare of anger, a sexual flash at the ‘wrong’ moment, an overwhelming fear, a feeling of desperation ... everybody knows those moments when control is lost or overcome or even in some cases readily abandoned.

This could be related to the ‘switch’ that you previously mentioned.

In order to find the ‘switch’ to permanently rid oneself of a particular emotional reaction one needs to first become aware of it in order to explore the origin of this reaction. That origin is very often related to one’s social identity like national pride, gender identity, religious, spiritual or philosophical viewpoints, belonging to a family, a professional self-image, etc, etc. Finding the source of one’s emotional behaviour, i.e. finding the part of identity that is related to this particular emotional behaviour, is not merely a thought activity, one will have to conduct an experiential dig into the psyche, a ‘feeling it out’ while being aware of one’s feelings at the same time. A control via thought will repress (stop) the instinctual reaction for the time being and thus avoid its investigation and prevent one from eliminating the cause of the reaction.

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I think there are times when we still need this ‘flight or fight’ response from the amygdala even in this modern world. For example: I was walking along a trail across some abandoned property. While looking down I noticed scratch marks in the ground along the trail. As I looked up there was a large vicious looking dog coming at me full speed in attack mode. My instant reaction was ‘flight’ and I turned and began running but I had no chance as the dog was already on me. At the last instant, having no other choice but to ‘fight’, I turned and faced the dog as I began growling ferociously. The dog stopped in its tracks with a surprised and frightened look and then turned and ran away. I then grabbed a large ragweed and started swinging it back and forth and strutting around while yelling at the dog to come back and fight.

My aim in pursuing Actual Freedom is to eliminate ‘me’, the genetically-encoded instinctual passions together with the social identity developed after birth. The physical startle reaction that we have in moments of actual danger stays intact even after the ‘self’ is eliminated, as confirmed by Richard’s experiences. That means, when a car is fast approaching, there is an automatic physical reaction of jumping back but no fear, resentment, aggression, shock, etc. In Actual Freedom the non-affective part of the brain, the neo-cortex, is freed to find the quickest and best solution for the situation after the immediate danger is averted – and often there is nothing needed after one has jumped out of the road or, in your case, chased the dog away.

Your story is a brilliant example to observe both the immediate physical reaction that saved you from being hurt and the following emotional response. Do you remember any passions in the situation of fleeing or facing the dog, or did you experience emotions only after the immediate dangerous situation was over?

From my own experience and from reports from others I found that when physical danger is imminent, emotions and passions would only get in the road of efficiently saving one’s life or health. The emotions, which kick in afterwards, are then stored in the emotional memory, situated in the amygdala, and then cause us to fearfully avoid or aggressively confront such situations in the future. However, this emotional memory prevents me from responding appropriately to the actual situation in this moment – for instance, it might be a completely different and non-aggressive dog this time.

What we are talking about is eliminating the instinctual passions, the psychological and psychic responses of fear and aggression. The instinctive non-passionate bodily response to danger remains fully intact.

The actual world is utterly safe because ‘my’ own fear for ‘my’ psychological and psychic survival is what makes my life insecure, stressful and complicated. As your story has evidenced, in an actual threatening situation one is acting upon facts, not feelings, and can therefore usually find a safe and sensible solution.

All of these boiled down to an examination of me being ‘responsible’ for others (which is, of course, nonsense) and underlying that, the fear of being on my own and of being different. As Richard has often said, it takes nerves of steel to break free from the safety of the herd and I was often accused of being obsessed, having a ‘one track mind’ and ‘twisting her words’. Another favourite was being ‘clever-clever’. As more emotional ties were severed and these taunts began to more and more miss their mark, so their frequency diminished – with nothing to hook into, there is little point in ‘casting’, as mentioned above.

Yes, the other ‘bummer’ for me was moving away from the herd, being on my own, moving away from the group of Sannyasin I knew and the women’s circle. It is another instinct, and it was accompanied with lots of fear – hence the nerves of steel.

The longer I am writing on the sannyas list, the more I understand the meaning of ‘twist’. I am looking at the world in a different way than they are (180 degrees, in fact) and they see it as me twisting reality, while I know that the Human Condition is twisting everyone’s perception. I have ‘untwisted’ myself.

‘Clever-clever’ is one of the typical male-female issues, I know it well from my past relationships. And women are often right in their accusation, when men go off into their cerebral world of logic and theoretical conclusions. But then, when the ‘hooks don’t catch’, you know that you experience the world neither cerebrally (more male territory) nor emotionally (more female territory), but sensually. And that’s where the male-female battle ends. Utterly fascinating!

It is interesting you think there is an instinct to ‘go with the herd’? There is an excellent series on TV here, at the moment, examining the life of animals and their relationships. The last episode dealt with emotions and there is no doubt that many species feel guilt/shame. This would tend to confirm that being part of the ‘herd’ is an instinct. It is certainly a very strong conditioning, if not an instinct.

‘Herding’ does go deeper than conditioning. Humans in the past have always huddled together in groups, fighting off wild animals, hunting and reproducing. You couldn’t survive on your own – that makes herding a function of the instinct of fear. I like watching animal programs particularly for what they reveal about instincts. There is much more studies done on animals, whereas studies on humans are considered ‘unethical’.

I’ve been thinking about instinct. I think the instinctual package is a very efficacious mechanism. It basically motivates living beings to do what is necessary to stay alive long enough to reproduce, and to keep offspring alive long enough so that they can reproduce. I heard a humorous statement once that humans are the only animals who are always sexually receptive. All other animals have an oestrus or heat cycle, because if they were always receptive, they would fuck themselves to death. The inference was that humans have the brain power to choose to carry out the other tasks necessary to keep the species going, like finding food and eating, for instance. I guess the question is do humans have the brain power, the intelligence to make the choice to survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry? Would humans without the instinctual passions be merely wooden automatons?

During a PCE one experiences the world without the ‘filter of feeling’ and instinctual passions. Based on this ‘self’-less experience you can easily understand that instinctual passions are not necessary to keep the human species alive – intelligence and common sense can do this job now much, much better. The human species has reproduced to a stage that there are now six billion people living in the world, all engaged in a grim and bloody battle for survival, with every single human programmed to being driven to instinctually feel aggression towards others, to instinctually feel sorrow for others, blindly driven to nurture others and blindly driven to desire others.

The question is not so much if ‘humans have the brain power ... to survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry’, but if you could ‘survive and thrive without being driven by chemistry’. Human beings in general are, at this point in time, not interested to rid themselves of their emotions and instinctual passions. Then your question becomes more precise and answerable for you.

I suspect that your PCE has already given you the answer and your next one will give you the opportunity to experience and check out how well you, as a flesh and blood body only, do without being run by feelings, emotions and passions. A simple observation of your reactions to sex, danger, food, other people, etc. will reveal much about how delightful it is to be freed of the remorseful animal instinctual drives.

I had two ways to find an answer – firstly, here is a human being, Richard, who lives a life without feelings and instinctual passions and – if you read the descriptions in his journal of how he experiences life – his way of living is to me far more desirable, and achievable, than any life described as bliss, love, inner peace and transcendence – the solution offered by spiritual teachers.

Secondly, I began to get an experiential answer by dismantling my social identity – as a woman, as a Sannyasin, as a member of a tribe. Every bit of my identity I encountered in this process was my feeling identity and by investigating it ‘I’ became thinner as a feeling identity. My experience of a life where less feelings were triggered by my social identity was far more enjoyable, direct, alive, thriving, happy, thrilling and, above all, harmless. Further, each PCE gave me more confirmation that life without feelings and instinctual passions is not only possible but is indeed the very pinnacle of human experience – that what I always wanted but never knew was possible.

So one part of finding out about life without instinctual passions is by examining the reports of others that are collected on our website, examining our statements for facticity, sensibility and appeal.

The second practical part is to apply the method for yourself which will enable you to check out if decreased automatic emotional reactions and increased common sense and intelligence are making it easier or more difficult to be alive here on earth in this moment in time. The trick is to bear in mind that the process to actual freedom is a process of dismantling one’s very ‘self’, a ‘self’ that consists of ‘self’-defensive and ‘self’-maintaining mechanisms and, as such, is as cunning as all get-out.

My addiction is something that I now regard as being almost totally instinct driven.

I still intend to attend AA but I feel I have parted ways with many of the things, which I used to give head-nodding approval to, mainly the ‘spiritual’ part of the program. I also do not seem to have as much of a desire for affiliation, the need to ‘rub elbows’ with people, as I used to have. All of this amounts to either a kind of self-imposed exile or an ostracization from something that I used to consider as essential to continued life and happiness as food and air. I am not sure any more. When I do attend meetings, I enjoy hearing people talk about how their lives have changed for the better with continued sobriety, as has mine. And I also like to hear what people are finding out about living in this world in peace and harmony with others and themselves, but I chafe when they start talking about so-called spiritual things, what Richard has dubbed ‘passionate fantasies and imaginative hallucinations’. The founders of AA, like many human beings, held all kinds of fanciful ideas about things spiritual, attending séances, revivals, etc, etc. I can certainly relate to that kind of delusion. At one time, I was firmly convinced that I could communicate with dead spirits myself!

Yes, our decent upbringing and instilled conditioning is only skin-deep when it comes to keeping the lid on the instinctual passions that we are all born with.

When I first started to come face to face with the deeper instinctual passions in me that were lurking underneath my initial emotional reactions, I realised why no one has dared to fully acknowledge this instinctual animal heritage both in themselves and in every human being. The power and rawness of my bare instincts was so overwhelming at first, that had I not known that it is actually possible to eliminate these instincts, I would not have dared to let them come to the surface in their full repellence. Only because I know that I can, and want to, get rid of ‘me’, the root of these survival instincts, has it been possible to face this atavistic evil force. With the knowledge that there is life beyond instincts I was able to sit out the turbulent storms of fear without scurrying for safety, acknowledge my instinctual lust to kill without denying it and experience the dread and sorrow of humankind without wallowing in it or grasping for the ‘redemption’ of enlightenment. It is all very real when it happens, but once the storm abates, which it inevitably does, there is not a trace of it left in the delightful clarity that follows.

OK, here is last night’s instalment. I went back to work in the office I was in 5 years ago. My office no longer existed and although many of the people were the same none of them recognised me and I wandered around feeling very lost and scared and lonely. This dream followed on from my further enquiries yesterday into the ‘waiting’ I previously mentioned. Behind the ‘waiting’ I discovered the fear of leaving the herd, which we have also been discussing. So, the broom is out for another rooting about in the dark corners.

I sometimes suspect that my fear of leaving the herd is actually the fear of having left the herd! Whatever tool or means, it’s good to find the reason underneath ‘not feeling good’.

Leaving the herd has been an ongoing theme for me. It started with leaving the woman’s camp, leaving the Sannyas fold, the work place and closest friends there, leaving the group of seekers, friends and well-known ways of relating (Mark described the last one really well). Now, when writing to the Sannyas list, whiffs of fear sweep through, sometimes for minutes, sometimes longer – it becomes so very clear that I am not only leaving one particular religious group, I am leaving the whole of the psychic world behind. By ‘psychic world,’ I mean the ability to ‘feel’ where the other is at, to intuit his or her position, to understand them psychically and psychologically. It is like speaking a different language – the language of emotions vs. the language of common sense and facts. Very often there is no communication possible. But, as I told you before, whenever I go back into the psychic world of feelings and emotions, I only get confused, and then I can’t communicate clearly at all. It is an old rut, a habit that I am determined to eradicate along with its accompanying fear.

For me, a vital drive has been the – instinctually driven – searching for the ultimate achievement...

Can you expand on ‘instinctually driven’. Do you mean that having experienced what is possible, there ain’t no other high – where do the ‘instincts’ come in?

With pleasure. I have spent wonderful hours on the balcony the other night, watching the sky and listening to the different sounds of the night while contemplating about all the different instincts that I have encountered and learnt to understand on the path to freedom. So this is what I have come up with:

Fear – We all know it at nauseam; it includes trickery, cunningness, numbness, confusion, escape, denial, excuses, guilt and beliefs in all kinds of good (helpful) and bad (harming) spirits. And, of course, there are panic, terror and good old dread and the escape into enlightenment. But fear is also the doorway to courage, thrill and excitement to reach closer and closer to one’s destiny.

Aggression – Besides physical attack, aggression has many more subtle nuances: blaming, resentment, verbal abuse, nagging, boredom, being the victim, arrogance, clever-clever, competition, self-destruction and depression. I made use of this instinct for becoming free as a bloody-mindedness, persistence, not to ‘let the buggers get me down’, smugness and refusal to run with the crowd.

Nurture – It took me a while to wade through the ‘good’ feelings and emotions down to the basic instinct of nurture instilled to preserve the species. All the romantic movies thrive on nurture to tug at one’s heart strings, both with the heroic man and the loving but helpless woman. The willingness to kill and die for love for country, justice and religion is continuously adding to the 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone. Further you find this instincts thriving on all kinds of NDA beliefs and action by attempting to ‘save endangered species’, ‘care for Mother Nature’. When leaving the fold of humanity, I found that I am moving away from this instinct of nurture – the collective belief in the ‘good’.

It is useful for freedom as the pure intent to have peace-on-earth not only for me but for humanity as well and to sacrifice my ‘self’ for that goal.

Desire – With desire we collect things and strive for power and improvement for ‘survival’ – ceaselessly and endlessly on the go. In the spiritual world this desire is turned into the search for enlightenment, the ticket to immortality and power in the ‘other-world’.

Now I come to the point that I was making: ‘For me, a vital drive has been the – instinctually driven – searching for the ultimate achievement...’ I experienced it as the instinct of desire that has driven me to search for freedom, to clean myself up, to be the best ‘I’ can be.

Richard said in his correspondence:

Nothing worth anything is gained without extending oneself way beyond the norm. One has to want freedom like one has never wanted anything before. I say: rev up desire until one feels that one must surely implode ... and rev it up some more. Unless freedom is one’s number one priority in life – amounting to an obsession – one will always live a second-rate life. Richard, List B, No 19b, 24.7.1998

It has been, up until now, a passionate enterprise and the passions (instincts) have served their purpose very well. Nevertheless, once it became blindingly obvious that ‘I’ had reached the end of what is possible, this instinct to be the best I can be was left with no goal to go for. As I see it, all the instincts could be used as a perfect vehicle to reach to this point of 99% and now they have to be left behind in order that I can become actually free. Living in Virtual Freedom is a perfect way to enjoy the ordinary, easy, delightful and perfect day-to-day life, without the swings of highs and lows.

In the last days we have been busy with comprehending the role of the primitive brain in the process of virtual freedom and actual freedom. The schematic model helped me very much to not only visualise what is going on but to understand the physical ramifications of altering the selfish programming of the neo-cortex and the instinctual wiring of the primitive brain. It seems clear that only after dismantling the social identity can the functioning of the instincts become apparent and more and more obvious. This awareness seems to stop the chemicals of the amygdala (primitive brain) flooding the rest of the brain – I can keep common sense, check out for actual danger and then get on with the business of being alive. The link from the amygdala to the modern, thinking brain may be weakened. Or, as you say, 

‘I experienced fear not as an emotion but, as stark fear simply as an experience – without being frightening, somehow.’

I know that the less I support this rush of hormones and chemicals with any ‘self’-identification, the more I ‘whittle’ away on the connecting link between the old and the new brain. Then the hormones will be like a barking dog – they eventually stop.

At a later stage, by the sheer appliance of common sense, the feelings of fear were exhausted, and the reasons for being fearful became more and more ridiculous. That was when ‘fear, the bare instinct’ came to the surface, giving me the opportunity to explore this raw instinctual passion that I am born with, exactly like every other human being on this planet. Tackling this bare instinct in me meant at the same time tackling the issue of leaving ‘humanity’ – ‘being a traitor’, as you put it. During this time I was checking out again whether there really is no solution to the Human Condition within the Human Condition. Sometimes I did consider myself going seriously mad and sometimes I was aghast by the amount of destructive madness that I observed in the way human beings treat each other. Eventually I gathered enough evidence to be completely convinced that there was no other solution but to step outside of Humanity altogether, to abandon my ‘humanity’, my instincts, my ‘self’.

Tackling the survival instinct, mainly surfacing as fear, it became blindingly and nauseatingly obvious – both literately and figuratively – that I was generating this instinct by believing in its ‘reality’ and ‘seriousness’. Also, I became aware that in this way I was jeopardizing my physical well-being and happiness. There was ‘me’ experiencing fear and playing out a drama, all the while there was no actual danger to my body, unless ‘I’ produced it. Seeing this, the belief in fear itself is weakened and was left behind – fear is no longer the guide for the ‘right’ direction. Mental anguish sometimes grinds away in the background like my computer during the virus-check, doing what it has to do, but the end of ‘me’ is clearly in sight.

Psychological and physical death seem so closely connected at times that one can get very easily mixed up. The amygdala certainly makes no distinction betwixt the two and pumps its chemicals through brain and organs – adrenaline, serotonin, testosterone, endorphin and whatever else it has in store. But once I knew that ‘I’ was creating those physical symptoms with my mental support, I could also stop creating them – or I go for the endorphin. Common sense helped me to understand that the two (the physical and psychological death) have, in fact, nothing to do with each other. Physical death is not happening and psychological/psychic death has been agreed upon for some time now. The fear that I am physically threatened is just an automatic reaction of the instinctual ‘self’ when close to extinction.

See, Irene, this is how I deal with what you call might ‘intuition’. I turn it on myself. ‘I’ am the only person I am interested in because it is this ‘I’ that stands in the way of my happiness. It is ‘I’ who has to be eliminated. Full stop.

And that fear of death creates all the tricks, throwing up issues, ‘truths’ and beliefs, emotions and disharmony. It can be traced down to that basic fear. Always!

So I have decided to be free of that fear. I have decided for the unnatural solution, 180 degrees away from the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. All of them are based on the fear of death. And those instincts are the fundamental corner stone, the very reason for all of humanity’s values, be they ethical, moralistic, religious or spiritual values. In their very nature those instincts are destructive. The instincts only ‘care’ for the survival of the species, the strongest, the most aggressive, the crudest.

I have experienced a lot of time without this destructive ‘I’, the self. I know that there is something vastly better than this petty life of fears and deceit that I have lived during most of my life. There is no destiny in this picture of petty morals. There is no freedom.

The only freedom there is lies outside of instincts. And for that freedom ‘I’ have to die. Full stop!

Love is part of our instinctual programming of nurture, of ensuring the survival of the species and of the need to belong to a group in order to survive. Given that the feeling of love is instinctually based, naturally there is power, territorial fights, hierarchy and fear of losing this much-wanted love.

Watching animal programs I could learn a lot about instinctual behaviour because animals have the same rudimentary survival instincts as human, without the overlaying morals and ethics of humans. For this reason their instincts are very easy to observe. Just today I watched a program on ants where the commentator raised the question, ‘how come ants have an altruistic behaviour, sacrificing themselves for the tribe, there must be an altruistic gene somewhere?’ It might look altruistic but it is simply the instinctual program to ensure the survival of the species, whatsoever the cost.

To come back to the subject – investigating my need and high regard for love I found out that, factually, it is much safer and more sensible to rely on my intelligence for my physical survival, instead of relying on the supposed security of love-based relationships with others. Sitting out the fear that came with questioning such a basic instinctual programming I could eventually free myself of its insidious grip and all the ensuing problems that relationships based on love, sympathy, compassion, need, belonging and fear inevitably bring about. Now I can meet and enjoy people as they are, engage in pleasant communication if it happens and have no regrets when they don’t happen.

So, from my experience, I can say that digging into the past will never wipe out the causes of fear. Only when I met Richard was I able to understand the reason for it. It is a common belief that human beings are born innocent, ‘tabula rasa’, a clean slate, without any malice and sorrow, and that all evil – fear, anger, sadness – is only created by bad treatment in our childhood years – or maybe by ‘repressed memories’ of bad past lives. The very premise of that belief is wrong.

Human beings are born with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. These instincts are blind Nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to give one a start in life and to ensure the survival of the species. So despite our good intentions and moral codes, we are relentlessly driven to act instinctually in each and every situation in our lives and this is the base cause of all our angst, suffering and confusion. We, as human beings, also have a highly developed sense of self, overlaid with a social identity, consisting of the beliefs that had been instilled in us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’, or punished for ‘bad’, behaviour. This identity includes the morals, values and ethics that ensure that we are a fit member of the particular society into which we are born. We then take on these beliefs and develop them as our ‘own’ identity. This innate sense of self, reinforced by our social identity, is the very ‘guardian at the gate’, sabotaging any well-meaning, but inevitably futile, attempts at fundamentally and radically changing the Human Condition of malice and sorrow within us.

When I put away my pride and dared to question this emotional, therapy-enhanced, yet utterly useless and harmful identity, I had to acknowledge the reason why the concept of therapy had never worked. One never gets to permanently experience the ‘innocence’ of a baby after digging into one’s memories of birth- or childhood-traumas – because the baby has never been innocent and without fear in the first place! Geneticists are now finding neurological evidence of those innate instincts, yet nobody except Richard has devised a method to get rid of those insidious buggers.

Richard: As I understand it, in the on-going study of genetics the germ cells (the spermatozoa and the ova) have been classified as being of a somewhat different nature to body cells. This has led to speculation that each and every body is nothing but a carrier for the genetic lineage ... that the species, therefore, is more important than you and me or any other body. Now, whilst that theory is just a typically ‘humble’ way of interpreting the data, it did strike me, some years ago, that this genetic memory could very well be the origin of the immortal ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ (as contrasted to ‘I’ as ego who will undergo physical death). Hence it occurred to me that the source of ‘who ‘I’ really am’ could very well be nothing more mysterious than blind nature’s survival software.

I have always had a bent for the practical explanation ... and solution.

The devastation is enormous and the only way ‘out’ is ‘self’-sacrifice.

Richard: Yet it is the instinct for survival that got you and me and every other body here in the first place. We peoples living today are the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes ... we are the product of the ‘success story’ of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Is one really going to abandon that which produced one ... that which (apparently) keeps one alive?

That was chicken-feed compared with this one.

The subject of the instinctual software package is indeed a fascinating one and the sufficient understanding is crucial and instrumental in cutting the cord both from ‘humanity’ and ‘me’. In the last days I started to understand about the nature of the instinctual programming that is ‘me’ which I would classify as ‘having glimpsed the end of the tunnel called the Human Condition’.

Peter had described to No 5 very accurately the process of examining one’s feeling, sliding deeper and deeper into emotion, then into instinctual passion until, with persistence, one is able to ‘dispassionately observe’ the very functioning of the particular core instinct in action. This method had always served me when I explored feelings and their underlying beliefs, emotions and their underlying ‘truth’, including the above mentioned ‘loyalty back when you and I first met’. Yet up until now I had only felt and experienced a particular emotion, sometimes it in all its devastation like the universal sorrow I described in my last letter, suffered it through, so to speak. I had not yet dared to stay with a surging instinctual passion all the way without objection, looking it straight in the eye to recognize and experience the naked ‘me’ in action in a dispassionate way.

While reading through your latest correspondence I found two paragraphs that enticed me to try out where you described to No. 31 what to do with fear:

Richard: Whilst the word ‘fear’ is not the feeling itself, the feeling is very, very real whilst it is happening (like ‘I’ am). Speaking personally, what ‘I’ would do, all those years ago, was to ‘sit with it’ as it were (being with it), whilst it was happening. By ‘being with it’ – without moving in any direction whatsoever – ‘I’ would come to experience ‘being it’ (‘I’ was fear and fear was ‘me’). Thus ‘I’ came to experience ‘myself’ in all ‘my’ nakedness. All ‘I’ was, was that fear ... and fear is but one of the instinctual passions that blind nature bestows on all sentient beings at birth (at conception). Instincts are genetically encoded in the genes ... ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire.

Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future.

In other words: ‘I am fear and fear is ‘me’ (and aggression and nurture and desire).

Respondent: The statement pertains to the process of listening itself. In listening to that actuality of experience, sometimes there is ‘fear’. The ‘word’ is not the thing implies that the ‘word’ represents a distraction from listening. As you listen, words get thrown out in the brain. There is a constant translation of that experience in terms that we know and speak. And then we remain attached to those words, we hold on to those words for fear of losing them because then we will not be able to talk in the future. But that is not the living essence of listening. We are not concerned just with semantics of the ‘word is not the thing’.

Richard: Honestly ... I cannot make sense of this that you write here. May I suggest, instead, that the next time fear happens that you ‘be with it’ without moving in any direction whatsoever until it becomes apparent that ‘you are fear and fear is you’? It is so much easier than all this intellectualising ... and far more rewarding.

Because it will be the end of ‘you’. Richard, List B, No 31a, 3.10.1998

Of course, the last sentence got my full attention.

I took the emotion at the time – fierce frustration about not ‘getting the point’ – and lay on the couch for experimenting and contemplating. The outcome was fascinating, to say the least. Digging myself to the very core of the feeling I discovered frustration as just being a cunning distraction from the underlying fear and, even deeper, found the mother of all instincts: ‘I don’t want to die’, which includes ‘I as species have to perpetuate. So here I found again what you said, Richard, that ‘I’ am ‘the many’ and ‘the many’ is ‘me’.

Ignoring all the flashing stop-signs I reached to the stunningly clear perception of what ‘I’ consist of – a software survival program, causing emotion-producing chemicals and kept alive through the notion that this is me, all of me. The process of seeing the program of ‘me’, the ‘self’, in action was like lifting it from its nourishing soil, airing it, so to speak, and thus depriving it from its very life-source – even if only for a short time. That alien entity ‘me’ that I had been taking examining since so long was finally seen and experienced as something other than this physical body. These moments of apperception, of the bare awareness of ‘who I am’ now rock the boat and create all kinds of mental and physical nuisance like headache and angst, only to confirm that this experience was not just a dream.

Since then I had another fascinating experiential insight into the nature of ‘desire’. In the early morning hours of a sleepless night I watched a procession of thoughts turn into a mental nightmare of need, growing into greed, amounting to wanting to devour anything or anybody that would come into my reach. For a short time this instinct took over all of my thinking like a mental rape, and I felt no different to a hungry lion or a python ready to strike. Curiously I was reminded of the compulsive eating disorder of bulimia and I could understand what might happen to people who suffer from it. I experienced the instinct of desire gone completely out of control – and if one would take action there would later be shame guilt and despair for having ‘lost it’ with ensuing remorse and self-punishment in an endless cycle of self-destruction.

What an exciting and fascinating set-up, being my own lab, my own guinea-pig and my own scientist all in one – and getting describable, repeatable and comparable results. Factual. Actual. And great fun.

Me not into discussions. You not human to share from yourself as you are beyond humanity, becoming a dictionary parrot instead. Me not want to bla bla with parrots.

What has been considered human up to now is this: Every human is born with a set of instincts (fear, aggression, nurture and desire) meant to ensure the survival of the species. Further we are imbibed with a social identity from early age consisting of the particular morals and ethics of the tribe or culture we are born into. We further develop an individual identity within the tribe consisting mainly of the particular beliefs or customs that appeal to us for whatever reason. This collection of hard-wiring and programming we fondly call ‘me’, and we then proceed into the world to make our way as best we can. No wonder everyone feels lost, lonely and frightened and develops a very cunning nature. Thus our personal view of the world is so dense, so thick, so instinctually perceived as to be real, that it is taken to be ‘set in concrete’ as it were.

Someone who has freed him, or herself, from this entire set of beliefs, emotions and instincts must look ‘unhuman’ to everyone else who is still trapped in the Human Condition. I think I have shared more about myself than many others here, but not in the emotional way you are used to, or expected me to.

Good that you ask about the self. It has always been an elusive issue and everybody has their own particular version of understanding it.

It seems to me that most of your ideas were based on your own projections/expectations rather than on the ideas set forth by Osho – My understanding of his words was more along the lines of understanding that the search was for ‘where is this ‘self’?’ And given enough introspection trying to find where this ‘self’ was – one comes to the conclusion that there is no self – (have you been able to localise this self through your indoctrination into Peter/Richard’s way of looking at life? If so, where does it end and the ‘other’ begin?

Yes, I have been able to localize this self many times, both in experiencing times without the ‘self’ in operation and from observing the details of its components operating in me. First I will give you the dictionary definition and then tell you about my discoveries.

self – Any of various conflicting personalities conceived of as coexisting within a single person. A person’s or thing’s individuality or essence at a particular time or in a particular aspect or relation; a person’s nature, character, physical constitution or appearance, considered as different at different times. A person loved as oneself. Personal identity, ego; a person as the object of introspection or reflexive action. Oxford Dictionary

As I see it, human beings have a rudimentary sense of self (as do other primates with larger brains) which is expanded by our ability to think, reflect and communicate with others. The combination of both results in an individual self, our ‘social identity’, underpinned by our instinctually driven animal-self, the innate instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. The self is very real, especially when interacting with other people and it usually becomes apparent through our emotional reactions to people and situations. It consists both of ‘who we think we are’, usually called ‘ego’ and ‘who we feel we are’, usually called ‘soul’. ( See AF Glossary)

Once I understood that the ‘self’ includes beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions, it was much easier to get a handle on it. Still, in the beginning it has been very scary to investigate emotions and beliefs, and the ground under my feet seemed to disappear many times. To explain to you how I came to understand ‘self’ in its complexity I will post you the description of my first peak-experience in our journal, where I left the realm of the ‘self’ for several hours and experienced the world without its distorting layer of emotions, beliefs and instinctual passions.

‘Given that the base feelings are malice and sorrow (sadness, resentment, hate, depression, melancholy, loneliness, etc.’ AF Glossary

I am glad that you are starting to discuss malice and sorrow, because understanding this point is essential for understanding what it is to be a human being. Isn’t it great that we have the opportunity to discuss these matters with someone on the other side of the planet!

I don’t know how you regard human beings as to their primary equipment at birth. I know from myself and from watching others – TV reports are a very good source of information – that every human being comes with a software package called the Human Condition. This software is made up of nature’s survival instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. It is a fact that we are born with 2 legs and 2 arms and also, that we are born with the basic animal instincts. Early humans would not have survived without those primary instincts. Only now, with such giants development in technology and economy, there is no need to hunt and kill one another for food and survival, but human are still, like in ancient times, operating according to this instinctual software. Now the time has come that we can consider those survival-mechanism as not only redundant but understand and eliminate the very cause of malice and sorrow in each of us.

When you watch small kids you will notice their behaviour sometimes being quite angry, without a particular reason. One kid takes another’s toy, and there is screaming and hitting until an adult sorts out the situation. I have observed these primary emotions within myself, being possessed by rage, jealousy, greed, desperation or paralysed with fear. You are right, Christians call it ‘original sin’, Eastern religions call it ‘Karma’. But scientist have found and have experienced it in myself that everyone equally has this software-package and as software it is also delete-able.

In the beginning it was hard to admit all my ‘bad’ emotions, but, being honest, there was no chance to deny them, and after years of meditation and therapy I knew myself too well. I had dealt with it by blaming my ‘bad’ emotions as ‘somebody else’s fault’ who had supposedly triggered them or ‘some bad incident’ that had annoyed me.

Admitting that the problem was within me was already part of the solution. There is actually a way to investigate and eliminate beliefs, emotions and instincts, one by one. I find this method instantaneously rewarding and much more reliable than hoping for a mysterious redemption by something like ‘divine grace’.

What a freedom to be able to be un-insult-able, un-offend-able, without resentment and completely harmless. What a joy to know that I can rely upon myself 100%, that I won’t harm anybody, that I won’t kill anybody for whatever emotions or beliefs, whatever the situation may be. On the way, one loses one’s ‘self’, but then it is only going one step further than I had set out anyway when I ventured to lose my ego.

‘Benevolence is a quality of the physical universe’, you say. According to my dictionary ‘universe’ means ‘the totality of all the things that exist; creation; the cosmos’. So we can assume that anything physically limited in space such as a rock, a door, a car, the moon, the sun is not benevolent. But, according to you, as soon as we take it all together, as the physical universe, suddenly there’s benevolence. How can that be? This is a mystery isn’t it? Can this magical and sudden appearance be explained or understood by your common-sense?

There is no malice and sorrow in the physical universe. There is no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad, sadness, grief, compassion, love, or any other feeling in the physical universe. These are feelings that are in human beings only (and in a rudimentary form in some animals). Feelings and instincts are both the product and the very substance of the psychological and psychic entity within the human body. So when you rid yourself from this alien entity within the human body, when there is no malice and sorrow in this human body, the perfection and benevolence become apparent. It is the Human Condition that prevents human beings from being as pure and perfect as the physical universe and thus from experiencing the purity, perfection and benevolence of this infinite magnificence of the actual world.

Watching on TV the ongoing fighting and suffering in shocking pictures and learning about the enormous numbers of victims, I cannot turn away any more from the facts as I could years ago, I cannot invent a ‘karmic reason’ for all the suffering, or pretend it is only the fault of the leaders – it is all too obvious that these ongoing atrocities are due to the survival instincts of fear and aggression, which resides in each of us. Just feeling guilty or sorry for the people is a hopeless, useless and gutless avoidance, a ‘head in the sand’ attitude.

The moment I dared to acknowledge these bare shocking facts, I had only one solution and that was to find the source of fear and aggression in me and to eradicate it in me utterly and completely. This is the only way I can make sure that I will never participate in violence, no matter what the circumstances, and that I, for one, can be a non-contributor to the pervading violence on the planet. I investigated and eliminated in myself the very source that drives human beings to be so horrendously cruel, devotionally obedient and desperately aggressive – the very survival instinct that prevents people from acknowledging and treating each other as fellow human beings.

As I have said to No 1 before:

I found the ‘Hitler’ in me after I realised that I would have killed for defending my master and my devotion for him with the same passion that Germans had when they marched to conquer and ‘save the world’. Hitler simply played on the instincts of Germans in a way that they followed him and that they were ready to die for him, for their country, for their Christian belief, for their Arian race – exactly as Osho played on my – and everybody’s – instincts so that I was ready to kill and die for ‘Him’ on the Ranch.

There is no point blaming somebody else for my misery or suffering, I am made of the same stuff as any other human being, I am equipped with the same software of instincts, conditioning and sense of ‘self’. And I can do something about it. After I recognised and acknowledged the ‘Hitler’ in me as well as the ‘follower’ in me, it left such an impact that I was determined to eradicate these aspects of the Human Condition in me.

And I succeeded. There is not a trace of nationalistic or religious conditioning left today. And I can see this conditioning and the underlying instinctual passions operating in everybody – the Human Condition – with different labels, for different reasons, but nevertheless as power and aggression, fear and willing obedience. When it comes down to the animalistic instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, there is no difference between a German and a Jew, an Indian and a Muslim, a Serb and a Rajneeshee, a Japanese or a South African. Everybody, without fail, is inflicted with this disease – the Human Condition.’ Vineeto, List C, No 1

It would be all very amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that people continuously fight and kill each other.

Yes, yes, Vineeto, yes!!!!!

I take it that your passionate writing is in response the book review of ‘Zen at War’ that Peter mentioned to No 13, because in subject heading you wrote: No 13 re Zen.

I have heard about the book, and I wanna read it. I am very curious. Coz now I am learning about the Japan’s history of the W.W. II. What a shit!!! Fuck the Japanese emperor, fuck the Japanese military, fuck the Japanese politician! And fuck the Zen monks!

I take it that you found the address on the web: http://www.teleport.com/~zennist/zenholy.htm

I have heard about the book, and I wanna read it. I am very curious. Coz now I am learning about the Japan’s history of the W.W. II. What a shit!!! Fuck the Japanese emperor, fuck the Japanese military, fuck the Japanese politician! And fuck the Zen monks!

It would be very easy, and not factual, when one simply believes that it was the fault of the emperor, the military, the politicians and the monks. It was the whole country that loved and supported the emperor, the emperor was supported by the people, the monks were trained according to a thousand year old tradition. To blame a particular individual is to miss the point entirely. War and cruelty has happened in every country, it happened in every century, in every religion. The history of humanity is a continuous history of war, of horrendous wars, of tremendous killing, cruelty and suffering. Most of the technological development happened to be able to attack and defend better and to be able to kill more efficiently.

To acknowledge these facts on a global scale makes one aware of the instinctual root of all the wars. Every single human being is equipped with the basic instincts for survival – aggression, fear, nurture and desire. This includes the need to be a member of a group and the will to sacrifice for kin, country and belief. The various ethics and morals keep the lid on those drives for a while, but when it comes to war, those lids are off – the bare instincts take over and our animal nature becomes horrifically obvious.

The more I became aware of those very instincts in me, the more I became determined to eliminate them in me. This is the only way peace-on-earth is possible, for me, and for everyone who wants to do it for himself or herself.

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