My ‘soul’, this passionate imaginary ‘me’, needs continuous emotional affirmation from others or needs to feel connected to others in order to stay alive – for ‘I’ am non-actual, ‘I’ do not exist other than by feeling and imagination.

One of the things that I have been questioning is the notion of the importance throughout life of what is referred to as ‘attachment’. Again, it is psychological terminology, to be sure. But it is more or less assumed that attachment to others, first one’s mother or caretakers in the beginning of life, and then later other adults and one’s peers, is important throughout life and that healthy attachments are the hallmark of mental health. One can get attached to so many things as a substitute gratification – one can get attached to one’s job, a religion, a hero, substances, sex, etc, etc. What drives this attachment or ‘need to feel connected to others in order to stay alive’? We are dealing with something fundamental and basic to the experience of being a human being living in this world with other human beings. We are dealing here with the primitive instincts, are we not? The experience of attachment is ubiquitous, but perhaps it needs to be carefully defined. When I use the term I mean this sense of being connected to another. It involves dependency, looking to another to meet certain emotional needs, for affirmation, for praise and reward, for companionship, etc. Attachment may involve the deep experience of romantic ‘love’ but not necessarily. I think it is more or less assumed that when one is emotionally ‘healthy’ one’s attachments to others are carefully modulated and controlled, but nevertheless one is attached so it is only ‘natural’ that one experiences grief and sadness if one’s partner is sick or depressed or, in the extreme, dies. Hardly anyone would question the validity of these ‘normal’ feelings and reactions to extreme events but I do. I have found that, in addition to questioning the feel-good experience of ‘love’ and affection, I have been looking into this sense of being attached, connected to someone else. And there is a sense of identification: that this is ‘my’ partner, or ‘my’ girlfriend or boyfriend, or that I share ‘my’ life with someone.

Personally, the word attachment came to my attention through the spiritual teachings where I learned I should not be attached. Attachment as such was a bad thing, the concept was to become unattached to one’s body, one’s emotions, one’s relationships, one’s desires, one’s actions, until only the completely unattached higher self, the real ‘ME’ would remain.

In actualism, I deliberately went in the other direction – a full commitment to being ‘attached’ and then exploring the ramifications of it. I found that I am not merely attached to my emotions but ‘I’ am my emotions, I am not merely attached to objects of my desire but ‘I’ am my desire. Wanting to get rid of my attachments I had to get rid of ‘me’. And in the course of discovering what ‘me’ consists of I found ‘me’ in each and every state of love and hate, in every attachment and repulsion, in every dependency and need for independence, in each fear and every instance of pride. That’s what makes investigating one’s attachments really thrilling.

I found it was vitally important to fully commit myself to my relationship – 110% – in order to overcome my spiritual conditioning of being non-attached or aloof so I could then explore all of the emotions I had been avoiding experiencing. To commit oneself totally to something is utterly delicious and is the only way to get at the roots of whatever I have been avoiding by being half-hearted, aloof or detached.

Not only was it great adventure and liberation to root out my dependencies with Peter, for instance, but the reward came almost instantly, making way for a sparkling intimacy, obvious parity and uninterrupted harmony. Love and affection pale into insignificance compared to the delight of enjoying the direct intimate company of another actual human being each moment again.

Recently my partner came down with an inexplicable and rather puzzling disturbance of her hearing and balance and is now going for tests and diagnosis. There is the unpleasant possibility that it may involve a tumour or some sort or other. I found that this development rather threw me for a loop, I began to feel vaguely anxious, rehearsing the possibility that I might lose her or that she would become progressively more and more impaired, etc. All this made me investigate into my attachment to my mate and just what is involved emotionally for me. It made me think of other losses in my life, it kind of dredged some other things up. People get sick, they have ill health, they grow old and die – all these things we have experienced or are going to experience. There should be no dread of these things happening, as happen they surely will one way or another.

Neither should there be a kind of grim resignation and acceptance of life’s bumps and grinds. It gets, I think, to the crux of the matter: one need not be attached to others. One need not suffer pain of any kind due to another’s infirmities. One need not be depressed and sad because one’s partner is depressed and sad. One can be free from all these emotional reactions. But then, that is not ‘normal’, is it?

No, Gary, that’s not ‘normal’ at all. That’s far, far better than ‘normal’. And yet becoming free of one’s emotions is considered callous, unfeeling, dead, zombie-like, uncaring and – in its extreme – insane.

People sometimes get resentful when I don’t support their sadness by sympathizing or when I am not affectionately expressing my love and friendship. And yet I noticed that, as a fact, I care more about them than their so-called friends who I have seen expressing great sympathy and love for them and then putting them down in the next sentence or exploiting them at the next opportunity.

I paid great attention whenever I suffered with another’s sadness or fear or was shaken by their anger or desire. This exploration has inevitably led me to be aware of my own sadness, loneliness, fear and anger that I had conveniently delegated into feeling compassion or sympathy for the other, or repulsion or fear of the other. The more I dug into my own psychic world of affections, emotions and then instinctual passions, the more I understood everyone’s psychic world and in understanding it I could examine my investment in being part of this world – and then step out of it. Actualism is the ultimate escapism in that you leave all of suffering and malicious humanity behind – which is ‘you’ – and come here into the actual world to play.

But, as you say ‘that’s not normal’ at all – that’s unbelievable, unimaginable and utterly delightful.

Good to talk to you.

When I interact with a non-actualist, which is pretty much everyone, and they get angry at me, the first thing I do is stop adding fuel to the fire. Very often this is as simple as making it clear to the other person that I have no intention of upsetting them. I find this works on most occasions but sometimes the only solution is to bow out of the situation as gracefully as possible. Of course actualism is not about adopting a new set of social mores so how you handle each of the interactions you have with other people will be dependant upon your own success in eliminating the impediments you have to being as happy and harmless as possible. The more successful you are in this endeavour the more you will find that you are spontaneously happy and effortlessly harmless, in which case you will inevitably find that more and more of your interactions with other people will be harmonious.

Once the adversarial situation is ended and I am on my own I then explore whether there was anything in my behaviour that was in any way harmful or sorrowful, in other words, did I have expectations of the other person or did I feel disappointed by their behaviour, was I demanding or angry, smug or sad, arrogant or blaming, hypocritical or critical, and so on. If the other person’s behaviour evoked an emotional response in me then I explore the reasons why so as to be able to prevent having such a reaction the next time round.

The fact that one might live with someone in an intimate relationship does not change this basic intent to be harmless, in fact it requires even more attentiveness so as to be able to recognize the other as a person in their own right with their own aspirations and ideals, feelings and thoughts, behaviour and idiosyncrasies in order that one doesn’t fall into the habitual trap of wanting to change them.

My intent in every interaction is that I am, as much I can possibly be, without malice or sorrow and without expectation or hidden agendas whilst still being an identity. Whenever I find a malicious or sorrowful feeling in me, then I’ve got something to look at. Whether or not other people have malicious or sorrowful feelings is simply their business.

It’s all quite simple, really.

When I met Peter he said he was seeking a companionship with a woman in which he would look at everything that was in the road of intimacy and of being able to live together in utter peace and harmony. I found the offer intriguing in that I knew it would challenge me to do likewise.

Within a few months of agreeing to the proposition, we noticed that we had fallen in love and, as it became clear that the resultant tumultuous feelings were anything but peaceful and not conducive to harmony, each of us investigated our feelings of love. One thing that soon became very clear was that love inevitably entailed the insistence upon loyalty that arose out of one’s own feeling of bondage along with its opposite – fear of betrayal that arose out of the fear of feeling the heart-wrenching grief of loss.

I am reminded of a remark made by an old friend of mine after he read Peter’s Journal and ‘A Bit of Vineeto’. He said, ‘it would be good if my girlfriend would read the book, she could learn a lot from it’. Needless to say that he didn’t consider that the only person he really needed to change, and actually could change, was himself. He has since moved on through several other girlfriends, apparently unwilling to commit to any one.

When you read Peter’s chapter on Living Together you will notice that the magical key that made it possible for us to live together in peace and harmony was commitment. Peter was willing to commit himself to do whatever necessary to remove the obstacle to living in peace with a companion. This is how he described a seminal insight at the time –

Two other ingredients necessary for success are patience and consideration, and my lack of these was soon to become a major issue between us. In typical male fashion I leapt into the process, determined to make it work. I had found a ‘solution’ and I proceeded to attempt to ram it down Vineeto’s throat. I would take the discoveries about Actual Freedom I had made in talking with Richard and try to convince her of their ‘rightness’. She was still very much on the spiritual path, whereas I was beginning to have serious doubts. Of course, she sensibly dug her heels in – she saw it as her simply taking on yet another belief system. We often would come to loggerheads over this, and this was in stark contrast to the mutual discoveries we were making about love, sex and gender differences. Here I was again acting in stereotype – arrogant, authoritarian and wielding power. What this meant practically was that I was again doing ‘battle’, and with the very woman with whom I had vowed to end all this nonsense! Our pact had in fact been about living together and did not include her having to abandon her spiritual beliefs – that was her business, not mine.

One day, as I was driving to see her, it struck me like a thunderbolt. This is not just an intellectual theory – this is about changing my actions, changing my life. A theory is useless unless it is practical, workable, i.e. can be proven in practice that it works. If the battling was to stop, then it was me who had to stop it! This was not about changing this was about changing me! When I saw her that evening I told her I was not going to battle her anymore, wanting to get my way or wanting to change her. The realization that it was me who had to stop battling was so obvious, so complete and so devastating that it was impossible to continue on as I had before.

It was to prove a seminal point, a break from my past view of relating with women. It meant that instead of trying to bridge a separation, there was a beginning towards finding a genuine intimacy – to eliminate the cause of the separation. Instead of wanting to prove ‘my’ point or defend ‘my’ position the emphasis shifted to discovering what was common ground, what was mutually agreed. Instead of conflict the emphasis shifted to peaceful resolution. This realization proved to be the beginning of being able to sincerely and openly investigate all that inhibited our living together in peace and harmony – a 180-degree shift from the normal relating. Not a ‘surrender to the other’ as in losing a battle, not a withdrawal, not a sit it out on the sidelines, but a genuine seeing and understanding of the very futility of the battle itself. It was the beginning of getting down and getting dirty to look unabashedly at all the emotions, feelings and instinctual passions that arise between men and women. To talk about and thoroughly investigate love, jealousy, dependency, sex, authority, power, gender roles, etc. without any conflict or battle. Peter’s Journal, Living Together

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One thing that soon became very clear was that love inevitably entailed the insistence upon loyalty that arose out of one’s own feeling of bondage along with its opposite – fear of betrayal that arose out of the fear of feeling the heart-wrenching grief of loss.

Yes, ‘in the real-world’ love and loneliness are but the opposite sides of the same coin. Loneliness and the accompanying sorrow exist because ‘I’ as an identity feel deep down that I am separate, forever cut off from the actual world – ‘I’ can never experience actual intimacy, neither with people nor with the world as it is. Actual intimacy only happens when ‘I’ am in abeyance, temporarily or permanently.

This is how I described my first experience of an actual intimacy –

… After a minute or two that appeared to contain an eternity of complex understanding, Peter said to me, ‘Hello, how are you? Good that you are here!’ ‘Here’ obviously meant that there existed a place outside my belief-systems! I turned round, out of my shock and bewilderment, into the actual world, and saw that I was simply sitting on the couch with Peter. Here was someone sitting next to me, another human being, not particularly a man, lover or boyfriend. Just a human being, smiling and pleased to meet me, eager to explore with me the next event in life. He is interested. And I am interested. Who is this person? What will happen next? What will he say next? What will we do next? It is exciting, alive, right here and a great pleasure!

The pure and immediate adventure of experiencing this moment of being alive was so utterly superior to everything I had come across in the name of meditation, bliss or ‘satori’ that it spoke for itself. Being in the actual world, everything is simply obvious, needs no explanation or theory, and contains no emotional memories of any past struggle or fear. There is nothing that blurs or edits the experience of the world around me, which is both wondrous and delightful. Freedom is living each moment as it happens, without any objection. A Bit of Vineeto

Experiencing an actual intimacy is not dependant on the other person – it happens when ‘I’ step aside. The intent to enable such an intimacy spurred me on to question and investigate ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ desires, ‘my’ selfishness, ‘my’ demands, ‘my’ pride, ‘my’ notions about freedom. The ensuing diminishing of ‘my’ ‘self’-centred view then enabled me to more and more perceive other people as fellow human beings, and I was less and less compelled, as my instinctual passions had programmed me to do, to perceive and treat them as bit-players in ‘my’ world whereby I am only happy when they comply and unhappy when they don’t.

I was quite happy to be alone many times in my life and I certainly had many, many days when I was unhappy when I was not alone as in being in a relationship. One thing that became obvious to me early on in my investigations into the human condition was that it was essential that I be happy alone – or that I alone needed to be happy – if I at all wanted to be happy whilst living with a companion. Or to put it another way, if I was not happy with my own company, how could I expect another to be happy with my company?

I have experienced the fear of betrayal and the fear of loss whilst in a relationship whereas the grief of loss was predominant at the ending of the relationship. However, a little digging reveals that fear is the predominant instinctual passion – that all feelings of malice and sorrow have their roots in fear.

So far you described two options in the ‘‘relationship’ package’ – bondage and rebellion . Why not give the third alternative a go?

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When exposed to the bright light of awareness it becomes obvious that to continue to feed such feelings is clearly nonsensical – it is inimical not only to one’s own happiness but it also makes impossible for one to not harbour antagonistic feelings towards one’s companion.

The third alternative to the ‘good’ person – ‘bad’ guy role-play is to aim for actual intimacy. To be with a companion and to withdraw one’s feelings of love without replacing them with something better is but to invite resentment and frustration from one’s companion.

To me, it goes without question that someone who is willing to commit to living with me in peace and harmony – and do the work needed to be able of doing so – is the very best partner to be with … it doesn’t come any better than that. I have experimented with a lot with different types of relationships in my life – love affairs, marriage, triangles, commune living, a long-term so-called open relationship with affairs on the side, being single and having one night stands and periods of celibacy – but I have never ever been able to find the ongoing joy and delight that comes with the intimacy of living with one other person of the opposite gender in utter peace and harmony.

What I was trying to convey was that I knew by experience that the various normal solutions for relationships, as well as the spiritual solutions – being celibate or detached from your feelings – were an abysmal failure and because I had previously experienced these failures I was prepared to do something radically new.

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Oh, you may well find out should some of the ‘different partners’ accidentally come to know about each other.

In what way is monogamy a matter of sexual salubrity to you? I understood you preferred having sex with different partners – are you saying that you prefer something which is insalubrious as in disagreeable, unhealthy, unfavourable?

Not just ‘probably-felt freedom’ – the freedom you describe is merely a freedom to follow one’s feelings and instinctual passions.

What is it then that you would want to advocate?

For five years now I live with my companion in utter peace and harmony night and day without bicker or quarrel, crisis or boredom without disagreement or compromise, nagging or sulking, role-play or restriction. Because I dared to examine and abandon my female conditioning I am now able to live in peace and harmony, ease and equity with another human being 24 hrs a day. Because I investigated and abandoned the ever-promising but never-delivering dream of love, an actual intimacy and a genuine benevolence are happening of their own accord. Peter is my best mate, a companion with whom I share the delights of everyday living, such as shopping, cooking, watching TV, having a cup of freshly brewed coffee, walking on the beach, playing in the garden, going down-town, comparing notes, working or playing on our computers, chatting about whatever seems worth sharing or simply being quiet while each goes about their business.

With the instinctual sex drive all but gone I can now enjoy sex for the sensate and sensuous delight it is – and what a pleasure to have a willing playmate for scrumptious hours of sensual fun. It took a few months of committed investigation into my sexual morals and ethics and their accompanying feelings of guilt and fear, and now I can enjoy the actual physical happening of sex rather than the fantasies of always-unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Because I dared to eliminate my conditioning, my sexual instinct withered away and I can now abandon myself completely to the sensual experience of two bodies having fun. The resulting intimacy in our sexual play is each time again utterly astounding and lusciously delicious.

An on top of all this enjoyment of each moment of being alive there is the utter confidence that I am moving every day closer to the moment of ‘my’ final extinction.

When you said ‘get a life!’ – what sort of a life did you have in mind for me?

It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise when I recently found an emotional ‘hook’ in my living together with Peter. I was contemplating about what exactly is standing in the way of ‘self’-immolation and found a bit of an affective identity in action – the ‘me’ who cherished the cozy corner I had in living together peacefully and delightfully. ‘I’ as an identity feel noticed and understood with Peter, he knows the happy ‘me’, the quizzing ‘me’, the puzzled ‘me’, the impatient ‘me’, he knows about ‘my’ aims and fears, ‘my’ quirks and wonderings. And this cozy relationship will certainly cease to be when I become free because then ‘I’ who is doing the relating will cease to be.

From my own explorations I know that a relationship with a partner has many layers that are worth examining. One of the first issues to be sorted out for me was my female identity – my belonging to the women’s camp as opposed to the men’s club. Part of this female identity was the continuous battle as to who is right and who is wrong – men or women. What I discovered was an unbridgeable gulf between the masculine and feminine version of interpreting the world and that the only way to ensure peace and harmony was to eliminate the gulf, whereas common wisdom has it that the gulf is a given and that one should bridge the gulf with the feeling of love or move closer to the other camp by becoming more feminine or more masculine. Needless to say eliminating the gulf meant eliminating my precious identity as a woman and all that entailed.

Once I had sorted out this aspect of my identity, the next obstacle to actualizing peace were my spiritual beliefs and my feelings of loyalty towards the guru and his followers. It soon became obvious to me that as long as I was busy defending my spiritual beliefs, I was again involved in yet another battle as to whose beliefs are right and whose beliefs are wrong. Only by questioning my own beliefs could I begin to find out the facts and thus establish a fact-based common ground for communication. In the same vein, I had to investigate my faith in my much-valued female intuition, for to continue to rely on it prevented me from distinguishing between the fact of the matter and my feelings about the matter.

Another issue that quickly emerged was my sexual social conditioning and its instinctual counterpart – the deeply entrenched instinctual patterns that have to do solely with the survival of the human species, the dissemination of the genes of the most successful fighters in the battle for survival. As I became more familiar with the process of investigating my beliefs and feelings, I noticed that each issue was successfully resolved only when I was able to trace my feelings and emotions back to their instinctual core – the primeval survival program that gives rise to all feelings, emotions, moods and vibes in the human animal. This instinctual programming was forged ‘when our ancestors hunkered in deep caves for protection’, but the roots of this programming stretch way back to when the first faunal creatures began to populate the earth. It is therefore essential to dig deep in one’s investigations into one’s own psyche in order to feel, experience and understand the instinctual core of one’s feelings and emotions in order to become free of their insidious grip.

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From my own explorations I know that a relationship with a partner has many layers that are worth examining.

If you mean ‘someone who understands’ me emotionally, I fully agree with you as my former relationships and friendships have certainly been formed on that basis. Nowadays, I am the only person who needs to understand me emotionally, seeking understanding not for the purpose of commiseration or confirmation but in order to get to the bottom of ‘me’.

However, it is nevertheless very refreshing and delightful to talk to ‘someone who understands’ common sense and with whom I can share the sense that I made of the world of people, things and events.

Yes, given that the ‘self’, the alien entity inside this flesh-and-blood body, is the very source and reason for feeling lost, lonely and frightened, the natural reaction is to seek emotional closeness, love and nurture. When I investigated my need for emotional closeness I inevitably uncovered my lost, lonely and frightened ‘self’ and have proceeded to whittle away at it ever since.

I have enjoyed you latest posts to the list and I particularly liked your precise list of questions regarding the infinity of the universe. It was the urgent quest to know that served to bring me definitive answers about the universe and what it is to be a human being and, going by your posts in the last two days, you certainly have discovered some definite answers.

I am reminded of the time when my questioning was particularly pressing. I had been with Peter for a couple of months and in that time it became obvious that if I wanted to live with him in peace and harmony, I had to change, not only superficially but radically. I experienced that we could easily agree on facts – for instance the sensuous facts that sex is fun or which restaurant in town had the best coffee and lunch. We also had no problems agreeing on obvious empirical facts that could easily be verified. But as soon as it came to beliefs, opinions and feelings we often arrived at a loggerhead situation.

In particular I discovered that my beliefs in Eastern religion were increasingly impossible to reconcile with facts that emerged from reading Richard’s accounts of his discoveries, from mutual discussions I was having with Peter and from my own inquiries, yet my belonging to the Sannyas community made this investigation rather scary. For a few weeks we avoided talking ‘about the war’ but soon that was not good enough for me – living in harmony with Peter was at the very top of my laundry list and I was unwilling to settle for the normal relationship, where what passed for harmony was only sustained by constantly monitoring a ceasefire and constantly avoiding each other’s no-fly zones. For that very reason I needed to find out the facts and I had to dig deeper into the ideas, beliefs and truth that I had taken on board and that I felt so touchy and defensive about. To merely change one belief for another was not an option.

The need to find out as a certainty became so pressing that I began to ask more and more specific and sometimes very disturbing questions, so much so that one day I was distracted while driving and had a minor car accident. The following evening a crack in my beliefs became readily apparent, which resulted in my first major PCE. The rest is history described in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’.

I enjoy the conversations that I have read on this list. I’ve especially enjoyed your writings on gender issues on the website. One of my big gripes with spiritualities is the prevailing belief that existence is divided into masculine and feminine, or any other duality for that matter – and then there is all the ensuing gobbledygook, which I was taken in by as much as anyone, I suppose.

I am curious as to what you have found out so far concerning gender issues. For me, actualism started with the investigations into the supposed differences of gender because they were the most obvious issues that prevented our living together in peace and harmony. At the start of our relationship, Peter and I had plenty of vigorous discussions about the subject of male and female and we wouldn’t rest until we were both satisfied with the facts that we discovered underneath our beliefs, conditionings and ensuing feelings. Soon I was to find out that ‘gender’ was only the prelude to my questioning all that I had held true and right and good – love, intuition, beauty, music, sexual taboos and conditioning, compassion, gratitude, faith, trust, honesty, loyalty, authority, spiritual beliefs, etc. It’s good that I have written about most of this adventure in the last chapter of Peter’s Journal because by now almost everything is wiped from my memory. This enterprise leaves no emotional scars whatsoever.

It’s a marvellous journey and it delivers instant incremental success. My relationship with Peter is based on parity, equity, harmony and actual intimacy and there is no bickering or resentment, complaint or withdrawal, compromise or manipulation. In short, the power battles, so obvious and prevalent in all human interactions, has disappeared without a trace.

Of course, I am a female and Peter is a male body, and what a delicious difference that is! But I know exactly what he means when we talk, and so does he, because we both have the same human sense organs and the same human intelligence. After we removed the programming of the male and female social identity and the instinctual conflicts of the male and female reproductive program, we are simply two human beings, immensely enjoying each other’s company.

I also have a question regarding the fact that your experiment concerns only you and your companion living together in utter peace and harmony. There would be room here for self-delusion should your companion choose to compromise, to go along to get along.

The experiment of our relationship could only work because the peace and equity I wanted to achieve did not only concern us ‘living together in utter peace and harmony’ but it also meant that I had to find peace for myself and eliminate the warrior in me. The most practical, intimate test of success, and the most fun when it works, is living with a person of the other gender, another fellow human being, 24 hrs a day, every day.

It was one of my deep regrets and a continuing failure in my life that I could not live with a man in peace and harmony – the man and I had always something to fight about. Searching for enlightenment did not change or improve that situation – my solution was to make the guru my lover number one – as is requested in the master-disciple relationship – and thus I was able to revert to the imaginary love affair whenever the real relationship was in trouble. Given that no one I knew had perfect harmony with their lovers, I just thought that that’s the way it is and compromise and resignation is the name of the game of life on earth.

When I met Peter and he said he wanted to live with a woman in peace and harmony, equity and intimacy, I was very intrigued and seized the opportunity. We committed ourselves that we would both look at everything that would surface as an obstacle for intimacy between us and this contract implied that each of us had to do it for ourselves. In the course of my search for such everyday and permanent peace I had to question and eliminate a lot of my dearly held beliefs, but at that time I considered my beliefs as part of the ego that I had set out to leave behind when I started on the spiritual path. Later I was to find out that my deep-seated beliefs, ‘knowings’ and feelings were not just part of the ego but originated much deeper, they were my very soul.

In order to get to the root of the gender-battle I investigated female conditioning, authority problems, sexual taboos, love and intuition, spiritual beliefs, sacred truths and faithful loyalty. This time I was determined not to let any fear, any dearly held belief, any feeling or emotion stop me from realizing my life-long dream to put into everyday practice what love and poetry always promised but never delivered. This time, with a man who was ready to sincerely discuss and explore every issue, I was willing to dive deep into my psyche and explore the core of what living in peace without compromise is all about.

The trick was to consider every upcoming issue – and there were many – as part of the Human Condition, the set of conditionings, beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions that form the habitual and neuro-biological program by which human beings have always operated. This way we could keep the interaction between us free of blame, compromise and resentment, and did not mess in each other’s lives. Then every issue we talked about was an issue of the Human Condition and each could investigate as far as each wanted to. But we were both determined to not stop at second best.

With such pure intent and daring determination from both of us soon brought tangible success and it only made me bolder to explore further. The evident success was that I had glimpses of experiencing an actual intimacy that I had never ever experienced before. At first for brief moments, then for longer and longer periods, the self-centred veil of fears, hopes, expectations and love broke and, freed from it, I could meet the other as a flesh and blood fellow human being. It is as if one sees the other person for the first time, without the shell of personality, identity or self – actual, fresh, a direct intimate experiencing of the other without separation.

Such moments of direct intimacy made the exploration of the so-called gender issues easier and easier, and after several months of investigation they amounted to nothing other than social conditioning and instinctual programming. Open discussion replaced overt and covert power battle, facts replaced beliefs, direct intimacy replaced fickle feelings of love and jealousy and sensuous sexual play replaced the mystique and taboos of sexual rituals. I found that by eliminating the social identity of culturally instilled role-playing, conditioning, belief, intuition and morality in me, the gender difference almost completely disappeared. What remained, the female instinctual programming, could then be explored and investigated the same way and it has now completely lost its grip over me.

This is only a short description to indicate that my investigation left no ‘room here for self-delusion should [I] choose to compromise, to go along to get along’. The adventure to free myself from gender conditioning and instinctual behaviour was a journey that resulted in complete psychological and psychic independence together with the most astounding and delicious intimacy between two human beings. This exquisite and unique combination is the scrumptious by-product and daily down-to-earth proof of the success of my search for an actual freedom from the instinctual bondage of the human condition.

Of course it is quite possible that you have indeed proven that two human beings can choose to live in utter peace and harmony, and if two can accomplish this then it would be possible for ‘all’ to do likewise.

As I see it, I can only tell my story and state that it is indeed possible to free oneself from gender-issues and disentangle from the insidious power battle that usually spoils every relationship between men and women. Anyone can do it, there are no secrets involved, one only needs a sincere passion for freedom and a stubborn persistence not to stop at second best. On the way one loses not only one’s ego but also one’s feeling soul – but the price attained is actual intimacy. The desire to become free has to be put into action by each person themselves. And who would want to have it any other way!

Hello Vineeto, Thank you for responding to my questioning of Peter’s original statement regarding living together with you in utter peace and harmony. It is clarifying to hear of your experience in the relationship as well as your personal experiments with going beyond the conditioned responses and cultural programming and the results you have observed.

Do you think that there is a peace of being that is available in the immediacy of the present moment or do you believe that this kind of experimentation and investigation is mandatory to ‘arrive’ at the ideal?

I don’t have to ‘believe that this kind of ... investigation is mandatory’. I go by my daily experience. Living together 24hrs a day, every day, without a bicker or disagreement is a delicious sensate and scrumptious by-product of having eliminated beliefs, psittacisms and dimwitticisms, as well as having questioned, explored, investigated and thus eliminated feelings, moods, intuition, love, compassion, beauty and the rest of the emotions. By investigating the animal instincts, the underlying program that is producing and maintaining the ‘self’, being, soul, emotions and feelings, there is now hardly anything left to disturb the peace, a peace that is not an ‘ideal’ but a tangible, palpable experience moment to moment. By probing, examining, scrutinizing, bringing into the open and thus dismantling not only my ego, but my very soul, there is a peace prevailing that is not ‘of being’ but due to diminishing this being to a state where it so little substance that it cannot be maintained much longer.

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As for ‘humans want to take a journey ... through relationship ...’ – it has been the longing for a successful, peaceful, intimate, sensual and tangible relationship that motivated me to search for a peace that is applicable in the world of people, things and events and not only in the fantasy of my mind. What is a peace or a silence worth if it is only possible when alone or with like-minded people? Spiritual search offers pseudo-solutions by missing the main event, calling life – living and working with people, scientifically exploring human nature, having sensate fun – a ‘journey’ to pass through while proposing that the real event is finding an ‘inner’ transcended peace, a ‘conscious’ death, dis-identifying from life and an improvement of the soul for a better start in the next life.

Stillness is there the moment one turns the machine off but this machine is not the thinking mind as the Eastern religious teachings try to make us believe, but the machine is the feelings and emotions arising from the animal instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Once one turns off this instinctual programming, extinguishes one’s very being, self-immolates ... there is stillness all around for it is the nature of the infinitude of the physical universe.

When I met Peter, and he proposed a living together without love but with a direct intimacy, I thought, ‘what a strange concept’. And then I agreed because I was intrigued. All my relationships based on love had failed, maybe this new ‘concept’ was a solution. It took two months until I dared to question my beliefs and emotions around love. What made it easier was that I could see that love between man and woman had not resulted in a peaceful and harmonious living between any of the couples that I knew. Removing love from the way I related to Peter made it possible for the first time to experience an actual intimacy. Intimacy is seeing the other simply as another human being, without hopes, expectations, interpretation, conditioning, affective appreciation or depreciation. Intimacy is seeing and experiencing the other as he/she actually is.

To extend my scrutiny into the nature of ‘love’ to my master-disciple relationship, investigating and questioning ‘Divine Love’, ‘Love Agapé’ and ‘Compassion’ was much more difficult. But then I slowly understood, and later experienced it in an Altered State of Consciousness myself, that the principle of relating to other people is the same in human love and in ‘Divine Love’: a ‘self’, this time the grand ‘Self’, is relating to the other person, the lower ‘self’ who needs love, compassion and help. Both ‘self’ as much as ‘Self’ use the other to confirm themselves in their particular identity. The Awakened One still has an identity in operation: ‘Me’, the glorious ‘Self’ is re-creating itself with each interaction.

Love is an affection that is addressed towards someone (human love) or All (Divine Love). It needs people ‘needing’ and ‘wanting’ love for love to be maintained. Therefore it is not actual.

A simple experiment will reveal the fact of what I am writing. In a moment of ‘love for all’ stop giving it to someone, or, when alone, stop addressing it to others in your imagination. The feeling of Love won’t be able to stay. It can only be felt when continuously directed towards someone other than oneself.

When love and divine love disappear in the light of bare awareness, actual intimacy is possible for the first time. When the loving, compassionate ‘Self’ dies – or is temporarily absent – the actual world becomes apparent. The moment when the one who you ‘think’ and ‘feel’ you are becomes extinct, you are intimate with everyone you meet and everything you experience.

See, in this moment I am intimate to you, a fellow human being, writing to you about my experiences and understanding on this particular issue. Sharing with you what I found out about beliefs, about love and divine love. I have experienced the difference between love and intimacy, and intimacy in its directness and purity far exceeds any love. Love can only be a synthetic substitute for the intimacy that we all long for. Without a ‘self’ I am intimate with everything around me and everyone I talk to. We are both fellow human beings, both fascinated to find out about this business of being a human being – after all, we are all here for the first time. When no affections are clouding the conversation, a real and fruitful discussion is possible.

Still having difficulty accepting giving up <name deleted>. I understand only too well what she is going through (the Human Condition, as Richard calls it) and it is painful to experience. The attacks and comments, in an attempt to get ‘me’ back, made out of fear and loneliness. ‘I’ still hope she will join me and ‘I’ am using this as an excuse for not putting the house and business up for sale. Also the knowledge that this action will cause her yet more grief. On the other hand, delaying the sale only prolongs her hope that ‘I’ will return and everything will be ‘normal’ again.

I have read about half of your website and I am fascinated by your stories. Isn’t it a roller-coaster, up and down, up and down and all of it can be a delight – or not, when the Human Condition takes over...

I got particularly interested each time you referred to your wife and was wondering about some feelings that you possibly had, or still have. Surely my interest has to do that I am enjoying a mate-ship with Peter that is beyond anything I could ever dream up, or that I have ever come across in people around me. After all, it was the wish to be living in peace and harmony together with a man that made me investigate into the dreams and beliefs of love and successively all my other beliefs. And now his company, someone to talk to, someone to nut out the upcoming different emotions was and still is an immeasurable help.

And what a delight it was when for the first time, after several struggling months of investigating our beliefs and emotions, we were able to see each other for the first time in actual intimacy, one human being meeting another human being. In intimacy I am not a woman nor is Peter a man. Just seeing, what a wondrous combination of thoughts and senses the other one is, ever curious what sense he/she is making of life, what is going on in his/her head, the delight of exploring how we live and think and function and tick, an area that has been a mystery to me unto now. Now I am having a spy in the other camp, Peter tells me how men normally feel or react in a situation, how he had felt, thought or reacted in the past – such good fun!

Of course you are in a totally different situation, but still – until everything is sorted out – you live with a woman. Peter and I had a contract with each other to investigate the Human Condition together, but nevertheless, I think you can aspire to live with her in peace and harmony as far as you are concerned. Peter was such a good indication for me to see bits of the Human Condition when they were coming up, for instance, when I was getting irritated, when I wanted attention, wanted to live life through him or had authority issues. That has always been the checkpoint in any ‘feeling’ good for me: do I simply see Peter as a human being or do I hang any kind of relationship, security or any other emotion unto the fact that we enjoy living together?

The other can be a very precise tool to find the hiding bits in the ‘cupboard of the self’, I tell you! And why not, even when you both are preparing to separate, you are simply two human beings living in the same house, taking care of the same business... But I warn you: it might open a Pandora box of yet unexperienced emotions or feelings to tackle. But it is such a great challenge and a thrilling adventure to examine one’s emotions and feelings and eliminate them forever, one by one, the very thing the ‘self’ is made of. And every obstacle worked through leaves such a wonderful freedom and delight!

Going mad all by yourself is a giant task and I am full of admiration for your courage. I had, and have Peter, to go mad with together, so it did not seem so weird all the time. A bit like walking on your feet while everyone else is walking on their hands, getting blisters and headaches and finding it perfectly normal. It is weird. I think, from what I read, you are doing very well in your post office in good old England without even a dog to talk common sense with. Quite thrilling too, isn’t it?

It certainly is thrilling and it would be good to share the experience with another. However, I have you, Richard and Peter to discuss these matters with and the knowledge that others have and are experiencing similar things gives me sufficient courage to continue. And after all, at the end of the day, everyone has to do this by themselves, for themselves – that’s what so great about it, no guru or ‘master’ for me, thank you very much! One advantage – I suspect I have had less difficulty severing the ‘relationship’ with my wife than you had with Peter?

Yes, everyone has to do it for themselves. I have met several people who read Peter’s book and say they are intrigued or fascinated – but they don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend to do it with, so what to do? I can understand the hesitation to take up such a task, but then it is everybody’s life. How can they make it dependant on a boyfriend or girlfriend! Would be more to the point to say: ‘It scares the shit out of me.’

I can’t say much about advantage or not, because the situation is different. My experience severing the relationship to my last boyfriend, which had not worked for years, was very different to being with Peter and taking my ‘self’ out of the living together. It took me a lot of determination and utter honesty, examining myself where I had hooks and ties still connected to him. My back-pressure was the thought: ‘What if he dies, what if he walks out on me tomorrow, will I be still happy and free?’ I did not want to wait until that happened to find out. So I ran that question again and again and found one bit of attachment after the other...

One time I remember clearly, the experience was like cutting a thick cord that appeared to run from the bottom of my spine to his, like a telephone cord of sharing delight. Afterwards it felt like my very bone marrow was being drained out of me, most of my strength, determination and will to ‘fight for freedom’. A very strange experience, almost physically curling back into my self and became autonomous, not relying on him. Any need for emotional support vanished with that event.

Also I was eager to challenge the spiritual belief that you can only become free ‘in your cave’, meditating on your own. One should transcend sex, transcend relationship and be completely alone, physically. That’s what they say... Well, I have proved them wrong. It is possible to become free living with a partner – it needs a lot of awareness and honesty. But that is what is needed anyway.

– giving up emotions and becoming a zombie, as she puts it. Is this an objection you have come across?

I have come across that objection many, many times. Women hold emotions, particularly their own, in high esteem; it is the familiar territory of the power she yields and the most important part of a female identity besides being a mother. Men may have developed other identities, many manage to avoid feeling their emotions like all get out, which, of course, does not help to become free of them.

To me, it was obvious from day one, that if I wanted to live in peace and harmony with Peter, then an exploration and a questioning of all my emotions was inevitable. In the end, this exploration proved to be the dissolution of the male and female camp and resulted in a delicious actual and ongoing intimacy between us, something which, apart from a few glimpses, I had never experienced before.

The other aspect of emotions lies in a broader context, and I am encountering this lately as it is becoming more obvious. Feelings, emotions and instinctual passions are the only connection between ‘me’ and ‘Humanity’. Empathy, sorrow and compassion make us feel connected to the greater ‘community’ of humankind, thus perpetuating sorrow without any solution. Severing the ties to this suffering ‘Humanity’ and standing on my own two feet without even the option of ‘feeling’ the other if I wanted to, is a bold step, and has been a process that took me a few months.

The turning point was the experience that, one evening before sex, I had a flash of wanting to kill Peter. I perceived him as being a deadly threat to ‘my’ identity, and my instinctual reaction resulted in the wish to kill him. The surfacing of this raw instinct in me, directed against my best and most intimate playmate, was a severe shock – it became blindingly obvious and self-evident that ‘I’ am rotten to the very core. To guarantee peace-on-earth, ‘I’ will have to become extinct.

But we have lots of very ordinary moments of living together, Peter doing his thing – being an architect or watching cricket or whatever else he takes pleasure in – and I do my thing – playing with pictures or on the website – and then we share lots of delightful pleasures of cooking, eating, a walk into town, a talk on the couch or a rompacious romp. These times seem so normal and ordinary that only in hindsight I recognize their innocence and particular taste of well-being. And then there are these moments, often hours of being excellent, but not quite experiencing a PCE, obsessed with the conundrum in my head of what is in the road of me disappearing. And while I am searching for and finding more and more blinding evidence that there is really, really no solution whatsoever within the boundaries of the ‘self’, there is this deliciously sweet and thrilling ‘taste or smell’ of the approaching inevitability, what Richard calls one’s destiny and I call ‘the proof of the pudding’. And, admittedly, that’s what I am more fascinated with than inducing a PCE.

I can tell you the story of today, when I suddenly realised that when Peter will be free I am going to be left behind, on my own, abandoned, without protection. Although the fear itself wasn’t overwhelming I was still quite upset and for that very reason had access to the whole ‘library’ of emotional memories of similar situations in my life. The last ones I remember were when Rajneesh died and I was left without the physical guidance of the master. There were other occasions several times throughout my relationship with my ex-boyfriend whenever he went off with another woman or once when he fell seriously in love with a friend of mine. At that time I had tried to set anything and everything in motion to get him back so as not to have to experience the grief and the dread of being on my own.

The memory of those events added to the upset about my fear of a possible ‘abandonment’ and hit with quite a strength. I sat there during our lunch, while Peter peacefully read his newspaper, and contemplated on the impact of a woman’s instinct, on female conditioning and the dreams that were going out the door. I felt the passion of the belief of each woman that she needs to have someone to hold on to. And I could recognise it as the core of my female ‘self’ and appreciated that it was being challenged, examined and then withered away. What a freedom to have no relationship whatsoever to Peter because the Peter I fell in love with and who I used to relate to does not exist anymore. The realisation was stark at first and made me wobbly – I was uneasy towards him for a while because the way of relating was now new and unexperienced.

If men and women will ever want to live in peace and harmony, the very root-cause must be addressed: a law can only be fair if both genders define that law, not only men. But men would not voluntarily choose to share all responsibilities and rights with women, because they are too proud of and too used to their supremacy, plus they would – quite understandably! – feel afraid that they might become redundant altogether, once women were given the chance to have equal say in the decision-making processes that are necessary for the organisation of all men, women and children into a peaceful and fair living together.

If I had waited until that law you talk about was produced before I could live in peace and harmony I would still be living in conflict and despair. With our living together Peter and I have proven that every single person can decide for themselves if they want to live in peace and harmony or not. Any pre-condition before oneself is willing to change is just another excuse not to roll up one’s sleeves and start to clean up the Human Condition from within one’s own self.

Looking back I can see that at some point early in my relationship with Peter I made the decision not to let emotions come in the road between us and prevent a peaceful living together. Peace was the priority and for that I was ready to sacrifice everything – I was even ready to change, radically, completely, drastically.

I am really enjoying Richard’s Journal. The thoughts it raises are so factual and enjoyable to realise. I always had problems thinking that actual intimacy is greater than love. Yet the other day I realised that the times I have felt closest, and actually intimate, with my girlfriend have been those times where, instead of sweeping some issue under the carpet, we talk about our reactions and thoughts and generally the human condition. The other day this happened and I realised, ‘pow’, this is actual intimacy. It IS superior to love, it is just me and her talking about everything and anything. And the thing is that when we explore our reactions to an issue, there is a greater intimacy actually observable between us. If I didn’t have a word like ‘actual intimacy’ to describe I would call it ‘love’ as this is my only previous term of reference. :-)

Yes, I know what you mean. I had made no differentiation between love and the few short moments of intimacy that I had experienced, before I met Peter and Richard. So it was all one pot, one pan. Once I focused my attention on what it was that made me enjoy the time with Peter, if I did not feel love, I discovered that I enjoyed and valued our mutual undivided attention and our sincerity of investigating into ourselves. And one evening, click, suddenly I ‘saw Peter for the first time’ – meaning, I saw him as a human being, a man sitting across from me, and I had no feelings towards him whatsoever. And exactly that fact made the being together utterly intimate, there was nothing in the road between us, two actual human beings meeting each other – no expectation, no hope, no fear, no investment, no pulling of invisible strings. It was pure magic.

From that evening on, I became determined to eliminate love, whenever it popped up again, no matter what the dreams or fears were that accompanied the investigation. This moment of pure intimacy had been so delicious, so pure, so direct – it sure beats love by many country miles.

So the first thing which needs to be investigated is one’s intent. What is it that you are aiming for? Is it freedom from playing with your moustache and freedom from sleeping on your back? Or is there something else, something more important in your life that you want to be free from? For me, my main aim was to live with a man in perfect peace and harmony, twenty four hours a day. For that goal I successively was ready to give up religion, friends and peers, the ‘sisterhood’, job, my identity and everything I thought and felt myself to be. Living together in peace and harmony had been a longing all my life, and the failures of my former relationships had made it clear that conventional solutions including the spiritual search did not bring the desired result. While Peter and I were each dismantling our identities whenever they would hinder our peaceful living together, it became more and more obvious that there was more involved that just a happy two-some. My whole identity was at stake, my whole life was under investigation. If, for instance, I wanted to be free of being a nagging woman at home, then I had to get rid of ‘her’ completely, not just during the time I spent with Peter. So my original intent of a peaceful living together very soon extended to an actual freedom from being my ‘self’ with everyone, irrevocably.

My wife and I were, and are, constantly examining ourselves and each other. But we don’t do it in a dry, serious way, sitting in a chair thinking about things. It is more like we act out our psychodramas with each other and then we ‘pull each other’s tails’. We find what is obvious, what is sticking out clearly to us about the behaviour of the other and we go deeply into that with each other. We agree to be willing to reveal all thoughts and feelings with each other. We actually do that to an extent I have never seen in anyone else.

In my initial contract with Peter, which was that we would look at everything in the road between us, it was also implied that each of us had to do it for ourselves. It was one of the first things that I, and Peter as well, had to work out. I had to cut the ties of making my happiness and search for freedom dependant on him. It was also the first dent into the usually unspoken of ‘love-contract’ that causes most relationship troubles. Peter has described it very well in the ‘Living together’-chapter of his journal. It became clear that my issues are my issues, if I wanted to talk about them, fine, if not, that was solely my business. The same with Peter. If I got upset about a particular behaviour of his, then this was my issue, not his. Why should he change to make me happy? It then would not only be interfering with his life but also make myself dependant on him, I would not be free.

This way we could keep the interaction between us free of blame, compromise and resentment, and did not mess in each other’s lives. Then every issue we talked about was an issue of the Human Condition and each could investigate as far as he/she wanted to. But we were both determined to not stop at second best.

‘You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching, and love like it’s never going to hurt’.

Yes, I too remember when I was dancing ‘like nobody’s watching’, and probably nobody was watching anyway. It was simply good fun.

But ‘love like it’s never going to hurt’ implies that it is going to hurt and you know it, you just pretend it won’t – for a while. The backside of love is hurt, as you said in your statements above, it is a double-sided coin. Pretending or imagining that it is otherwise won’t change the fact.

Why is it that the idea and the feeling of love are so important, and yet everybody has been hurt through love?

I know why it was important for me – ‘love’ was, besides ‘truth’, the highest value that I believed in. But then, when I found out about being here, in the actual world, free of feelings and emotions, without love or hate, I can now be with a person and give my 100% attention, complete care and consideration, freely without bonds, expectation or bargain. I have experienced this alternative as vastly superior and more enjoyable than love, that I never wanted love back.

Intimacy between two human beings without feelings and dreams is more than I ever could have imagined. But this intimacy is only possible when one can give oneself 100% into the adventure, boots and all. Past hurts and disappointments sit too ingrained in the emotional memory, either repressed or open, and cause the usual holding back and demonstrative ‘independence’. Only by questioning the concept of love itself and then eliminating the love-related emotions was I able to give this experiment with Peter my 100% and break through to actual intimacy. This intimacy lies beyond all hurts and caution. It has no strings attached whatsoever.

Usually we simply project dreams, hopes, fears and concepts of male-female role-play on to the other person, thus using him/her unconsciously as a mere projection screen. Removing this screen by abandoning and eliminating those emotions, feelings and concepts, one can meet the other as the human being he/she is, in perfect intimacy.

So my next question is ‘How did you get stuck with a head-fucker like Peter?’ ;-)

Have you ever met a woman who can live in peace and harmony with a ‘head-fucker’? I never have. Every woman complains that ‘men don’t share their feelings’, ‘that they repress their emotions’ and ‘that they withdraw’.

Since I am living with Peter in perfect peace and harmony, he cannot be a head-fucker, he must be something else.
You can read in Peter’s journal, in the chapter ‘Living Together’, what really happened.

Peter was the first man who offered a commitment to look at and eliminate everything that prevented us from living together in peace and harmony, equity and intimacy. We entered a contract that we both would look at everything that would surface as an obstacle for intimacy between us, and it took only eight months to investigate all the issues between us – and since then there has not been a single bickering, an argument or the usual withdrawal, let alone a compromise. We are perfectly at ease with each other as well as on our own and sex is an exciting adventure each night again.

In short, living with Peter is beyond my wildest dreams, a delight every hour of the day. And as for ‘care’ – how much more can you care for human beings on the planet than to sacrifice your ‘self’ to extinguish malice and sorrow in yourself and give an example what can be possible for everyone.

One of the first things that Peter and I discovered preventing actual intimacy were the feelings of love – that sweet syrup that was usually poured over the spiky, malicious, miserable ‘self’, which one is most of the time! When Peter and I questioned love and threw it out, naturally the question came up in me – ‘without the feeling of love, why would I want to be with him?’

What would be left of me when I didn’t feel love? How could I relate both to Peter and other people, if not with emotion or intuition? What would I have to offer in friendships or conversations, if not sympathy and consolation? My whole edifice of ‘who’ I was, who I believed myself to be, began to fall in a heap as I questioned and demolished the attributes of love and emotion. Now naked of all those characteristics and beliefs, as well as their resultant emotions and behaviour which have kept man and woman apart for millennia, I am experiencing for the first time in my life an actual intimacy with a man. Now there are no dreams, no expectations, no emotions or any other restrictions that could cloud the thrill of meeting another human being. Now instead of random moments of ‘sweet love’ I am able to give Peter my full attention and bare awareness each time we communicate and so does he.

I just hang out with him because it is immense fun, all the time. It is as much fun sitting next to each other on our computers, watching TV, commenting on the weather, serving a cup of coffee, cooking dinner, going for a walk into town, having a chat while lying each on our couch or having a rompacious romp. As for jealousy – that disappeared along with the feeling of love. Each of us is free to do what we want to do and so each does what we enjoy most.

When I met Peter and he said he wanted to live with a woman in peace and harmony, I took the opportunity. I had to question and eliminate a lot of my dearly held beliefs in the course of the search for such daily and permanent peace, but I considered those beliefs as part of the ego that I had set out to leave behind when I started on the spiritual path.

My primary aim was peace. And being practical I realised that the challenge was to live in peace with one person. That was and is my contribution to peace in the world. If I could not live with one other person in peace and harmony, how could I realistically expect to be peace on the planet? Whatever was in the road between us I would investigate according to what was factual and what was a belief. Based on facts, we could always find a sensible agreement in whatever situation, something that has never been possible on the basis of believing something to be right or wrong, good or bad. Sticking stubbornly and passionately to my beliefs had only resulted in endless fights about opinions in my previous relationships.

This is how I came to question one belief after the other, and one of them was the belief in authority. Without the belief in authority I can confidently stand on my own two feet and can examine whatever somebody says according to the content and not to who says it – a man, a woman, a guru, a ‘newcomer’, a heathen. That confidence gives me peace with everyone, I don’t need to attack or defend authority, and I can simply examine facts.

To No 4: Why do you allow yourself to be in any way affected by this person’s poison, this person is quite obviously a mind dweller and mind dwellers love to mind fuck, it is their expertise. Just watch these experts disappear up their own arses if you just give them enough rope. Vineeto can always surrender to ‘that’, but that is really up to existence, she or he is just playing in a play they think they are running. To wake that play up would take a Master and unfortunately for them the Master is dead!

What you call ‘this person’s poison’, ‘mind dwellers’ and so on, is, for instance, the ability to live with a man in peace, harmony and equity for 24 hours a day, every day. It sounds very simple, yet, I have not met anyone or talked to anyone who was able to confirm that they did just that.

This possibility – to be able to live with a man in peace and harmony – was one of the things that attracted me to Actual Freedom, and already within 6 months time it worked. This success alone far exceeded what I had been able to achieve through meditation and therapy, and for me, it speaks for itself. Because to live with one person of the opposite sex in permanent peace, harmony and equity proves that it is possible for everyone – and therefore peace on earth is possible. For me, it is the fire test.

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