RESPONDENT: ...‘your care, which with pure love is compassion by the way’ ...

VINEETO: Compassion is a passion which binds the one who ‘needs’ compassion. The deal was that Osho gave his Compassion and I gave my devotion, which brought me to a point where I was even ready to die for him. At the height of the war against the fundamental Christians in Oregon, when rumours went around on the Ranch that the National Guards were on alarm and could attack any day, we were ready to lie down on the streets, have the tanks roll over us and be killed for love and protection for the Master. Can’t you see the power in it? Pure love is only an ideal, it is not pure at all. It is always a bargain.

Care, consideration and benevolence are not a relationship, they are not even a state of ‘being’. They are simply intrinsic to the human body, once the alien entity has been extinguished. They have no strings attached. I simply ‘wish you well’ in describing what I found out. What you do with it is completely your business.

I could easily see in what way I could replace a feeling compassion for the suffering all of human kind (which has no tangible effect whatsoever except on me who is feeling it) with an active and tangible change in the way I treat people in my immediate surrounding.

I always have difficulty with this one.

You are not the first. Here is an example of what someone wrote many years ago with a remarkably similar agenda to your own –

You might have stumbled upon something richard but at the rate your going someone else with enough intelligent and love for his fellow human beings to learn how to communicate is going to get the actualism message across because your failing miserably. An Observation, Listbot, Mon 12.9.1999

It is simply not possible to preserve the good emotions and discard, or distance oneself from, the bad emotions – this has been tried for 5000 years of recorded history and peace on earth is nowhere in sight. If you want to be free from the human condition then the instinctual passions will have to go as a whole package, nurture included.

Why does actualism/actualists see the good feelings as ineffective motivators of practical actual caring, i.e. compassion as having [quote] "no tangible effect whatsoever except on me who is feeling it [unquote] but eagerly acknowledges the bad feelings as motivating all the murder and mayhem in the world?

In a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience it is readily observable that both the loving and desirable feelings as well as the hostile and invidious feelings are but two sides of the same coin and arise both out of the instinctual animal survival package. Not only are the good feelings ‘ineffective to eliminate suffering and violence, they actually contribute to it. Emotional caring only cares for those one feels connected with and will always exclude those who don’t fall into that category. Furthermore, actualism doesn’t state that ‘all the murder and mayhem’ is only motivated by the bad feelings but that it is caused by the whole of the instinctual survival package every human is endowed with at birth.

The best practical actually caring thing anyone can do is to become aware of their own instinctually driven feelings and passions in order to stop imposing them on their fellow human beings.

For me, I have set my goal to become free from having a psyche – the instinctual ‘being’ arising from the instinctual passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire – and as a part of this process I found I was compelled to investigate and eliminate all of my beliefs, be they related to my gender, nationality, culture, religion, spirituality, metaphysics, materialistic values, societal morals, dietary mythology, health myths or sexual taboos. The very action of daring to examine and expose all of one’s beliefs significantly weakens one’s identity such that one comes to directly experience the raw instinctual passions that lay hidden beneath this outer layer of cultural conditioning that constitutes one’s social identity and thus one is able to get a clearer understanding of what it is that generates one’s ‘being’ or psyche. The next step is to leave instinctually-driven Humanity behind.

To clarify – the ability to wonder is not necessarily one of the ‘seductive’ good emotions because it can also be the felicitous fascinated perception of the fairytale-like marvel of the actual world. Having said that, I can also understand that it does take a good deal of attentiveness in order to separate wonder from emotions such as awe, love and beauty –

wonder (v.) – Be filled with wonder, great surprise, or astonishment (at, over). Be surprised to find (that, to do) 2. Desire or be curious to know, (how, whether, why, etc.). Now also introducing a tentative inquiry or polite request (if, whether, etc.). 3. Regard with (admiring) wonder; marvel at. 4. Cause to wonder, astonish. Oxford Dictionary

Richard: If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie and so on) then with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). Richard, A Précis of Actual Freedom

And why would you want to point out any flaws in your companion? When I made the commitment to look at everything that is in the road of my having a happy and harmonious companionship with Peter I only needed to look at my ‘flaws’, my grumpiness, my neediness, my demands, my moods, my resentments, my complaints, etc. and then I set about changing myself in order to become as flawless as one can be whilst still being a ‘being’.

When one is in love there is no assessment of ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ – one judges with one’s feelings and the other is either good, beautiful, lovable, adorable and pure or bad, unappealing, repulsive or ‘evil’. In love one is in the grip of intense passion and as such what you ‘definitely call wonder’ seems more likely to be feelings such as love, beauty, awe and adulation. I am reminded of the story of how Richard was able to see the other face of Love –

Richard: Well, love is usually considered sacrosanct ... yet just as sorrow is essential for its antidotal compassion to flourish love is the antitoxin for malice: without malice, love has no raison d’être. I started to empirically encounter this, whilst sailing my yacht around tropical islands off the north-east coast of Australia with a choice companion, towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation. Strangely enough it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – in 1987 which triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness.

It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation – my initial enquiry had begun in India in 1984, whilst single and celibate, upon becoming suss about the Buddhist ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion) and ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) – hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be addressed squarely. Eventually what happened was that at anchor one velvety night with an ebbing tide chuckling its way past the hull what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face:

It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine – and upon such exposure ‘She’ (aka Love Agapé) disappeared forever ... nevertheless it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition. There is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 41, 10.2.2003

When I met Peter I soon fell in love with him and then I began to inquire into the pros and cons of this intense feeling. For me the major set-back to the feeling of love that I encountered was pining – I soon came to be aware that the feeling of pining I experienced deep in my belly whenever Peter wasn’t around was deleterious because it meant that I could not be happy whenever I was on my own. I also realized that pining meant I wasn’t able to be fully here in this place in this moment of time enjoying whatever I was doing because I was busy dreaming about either some past time when I was with him or anticipating some future time with him. Being a practical person I decided not to let this pining spoil my life, even if I had to let go of something I thought as being precious to me – and I’ve told the story in my journal.

Another aspect of love that soon became clear to me was that being in love was inextricably intertwined with me perceiving another person as being an extension of ‘my’ world – he was ‘my man’ and consequently I wanted to mould him according to ‘my’ image, fitting into ‘my world’. Of course this was aggravated by the fact that in past relationships the other, being in love with me, felt exactly the same way – he wanted me to fit into his ‘extended world’. I remembered how this mutual desire for the other to fit one’s inevitable image of ‘the loved one’ had resulted in ongoing disappointment, disagreement and endless power struggles and I was determined to finally put a stop to this whole scenario by stopping playing my part in the game.

Yes, I know that at first ‘it’s also hard not to reciprocate the other’s feelings’ but I found it was only hard as long as I myself had not made a sincere inquiry into the nature of my feelings of love and traced them to their core. Once I recognized that my feelings of love were arising from the instinctual passions of nurture and desire, I saw that love is in fact purely ‘self’-serving in that it serves my identity of being a lover and of being loved. I began to see how I squeezed the other into an image of my dreams – in fact I never got to meet the actual person as long as I was intoxicated by my feelings of love.

Actual intimacy, the direct experience of the other, only happens when love is out of the way because then and only then I am capable of seeing the other as a fellow human being and only then will I perceive what of my feelings and actions are harmful or beneficial to the other.

When you truly care you will dare to offer her actual care and consideration and an actual intimacy instead of the usual feeling substitutes in the form of love and affection.

It is love itself that is the trap – love inevitably has ‘unwritten conditions, demands and expectations’ – invisible and unspoken strings that tie you to the one you love and it is these strings that result in feelings of entrapment or imprisonment. I experienced them as an instinctual bond similar to an umbilical cord that connected the core of my ‘being’ to the other’s ‘being’ and even with the best of intentions I could not help but being directly connected to the other’s various feelings and moods, vibes and impulses and directly pass on my own feelings and moods, vibes and impulses to the other. When I became aware of the extent of the reciprocal strings of love, it was clear that I could not remain in love and be harmless at the same time.

So... I wonder what has happened to Vineeto and Peter, did meditation not work for them?

Mediation did not work for me because by practicing meditation for many years I became more and more insular, more and more aloof, more and more detached and thus more and more dissociated from what was actually going on.

Meditation did not work for me because I never could quite loose track of what I really wanted from life, which is living in peace here on earth, in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are and not, as I found I was as a spiritualist, being aloof, empty-minded, removed and dissociated from being here.

The sensate-only experiencing of actuality in a PCE was the final proof that meditation did not, and never could, deliver the goods.

I remember a long time ago listening to a Bhagwan-tape, he mentioned two path’s to attain fulfilment, the one being Meditation the other a LOVERS-relationship. I guess that is Peter’s and Vineeto’s and likely Richards path though they will probably deny it that’s fine and it is not important anyway. My own alternative for Love is friendship, not too exclusive though.

Your guess is so way off track that I wonder if you have read anything at all in these years you have been on this mailing list, let alone dared to take it in. This is what Peter has written in his journal about the process he underwent when he investigated his feelings of love for me (that was in 1997) –

Peter: Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why, increasingly, were there misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties between us? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our matter-of-fact contract and investigations, we had fallen in love! We were both exhibiting the classic symptoms, emotions and feelings associated with being in love. I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. I realized that I had been jealous, possessive, pushy, demanding and obsessive with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when the impossible demands of love are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to disappointment, resentment, withdrawal, spite and eventually hate. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that, unless something changed, this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure. This was, after all, my last chance to succeed and I was watching it wilt away before my very eyes. And, not only that, I was actively causing it to happen…! I was simply repeating the mistakes of the past as though nothing had been learnt. I was faced with the facts of the situation and could clearly see that it was the result of my feeling of being ‘in love’ with Vineeto. I realized my contract with Vineeto had put me ‘on the hook’ and there was no way to avoid the facts.

Armed with the conviction of the blindingly obvious, I confronted Vineeto with the news. I told her I was simply going to stop battling her and acting the way I had been. I remember her response as somewhat bewildered and unbelieving, but I knew that, at least, I had to stop the torment of raging feelings in me. What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention for peace and harmony made me able to completely drop this destructive behaviour. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. The realizing and facing of the facts, coupled with a clear intent, left ‘me’ with no choice. It wasn’t that ‘I’ made a decision – there was actually no decision to make. Action happened by itself, exactly as it would in swerving to avoid hitting another car while driving.

A calmness and surety replaced the swirl of feelings; no longer was I thinking about Vineeto when we were apart, and when I was with her I was no longer suspicious, doubtful, impatient or moody. I began increasingly to accept her as-she-was. I was no longer driven to change her. This then brought a corresponding ease in myself for I was then able just to be me and more able to focus on how I was experiencing this moment of being alive? It was the beginning of realizing that the only person I can change is me and I was then able to start working on exactly that.

One thing that did arise was the fear that, given I no longer found myself emotionally-driven to the same extent, I could risk losing her, but at least I would not be acting in a way that was destructive to my happiness or hers. But what to do? The pact said peace and harmony, come what may … and if taking a risk, and feeling some fear, was the price to pay, so be it. In the end I had to assume that Vineeto was with me because she wanted to be with me, and I was with her because I wanted to be, as simple as that. This was a free association and companionship with no other conditions, bonds or deals other than our agreement to look at anything in the way of peace and harmony.

A week later, we both realized the full extent of the dramatic change that had occurred. A certain excitement seemed to be missing, a passion and a bond in our lives. It was quite tangible, and a sense of loss overwhelmed us. It was apparent I had fallen in love about three weeks after we met and had been in love for about six weeks until I had called a halt to the battle. I hadn’t recognized at the time that this behaviour of mine was really love in operation; I only saw it in the end as an emotional turmoil that was destroying my enjoyment of being with Vineeto. So, what we had seen was love in operation – a practical demonstration in our lives, not just a theoretical concept.

As we sat down to talk about what had happened we both had tears in our eyes. I knew that, for me, whatever had changed was irreversible. I could not go back, nor did I want to, nor could I pretend to. As for Vineeto, she wasn’t any longer with a man who responded in the normal way, a man no longer in ‘love’. This was definitely not the usual male response I had in the past when I would repress or deny my feelings. Indeed, it was only because I had experienced them so strongly and understood the effect of them so well, that it was no longer possible to tolerate their destructive powers any longer, to allow the feelings of love to ruin our peace and harmony. Peter’s Journal, Love

I have given a similarly detailed report about tackling love and leaving it behind in order to allow actual intimacy become apparent (that was also in 1997) –

[Vineeto]: My traditional response to the feeling of being trapped had been that the man should give me his love and reassurance. But the way to the intimacy that I had already experienced and wanted to have with Peter all the time, was that I had to question, examine and eliminate the notorious bunch of feelings called love. Peter’s description of our adventure into freedom and intimacy is certainly not just a male point of view. Did he love me enough or not, or did I love him enough or not, was not the question – I discovered that love was not the solution but the problem itself!

The answer again lay 180 degrees in the opposite direction to what I had come to know up to now. I had expected or assumed someone was to love my ‘grotty self’, when even I could not stand those parts of me! A person who ‘loves me’ is supposed to accept all those ‘quirks of my personality’, which no intelligent human being would be able to put up with without blind nature’s intoxication known as ‘being in love’. And for years I had tried the same with the men I had ‘loved’, without success or happiness, let alone lasting intimacy. Intimacy can only happen when there is no emotion, no feeling or projection in the way between us. So, one of the first things that we discovered to be in the way of actual intimacy were the feelings of love – that sweet syrup that was usually poured over the spiky, malicious, miserable ‘self’, which I was most of the time! A Bit of Vineeto

And here is just one example of what Richard has said about the path of a ‘LOVERS-relationship’ –

Richard: It is well-known that the war between the sexes is a power-battle. It is kept alive by the woman’s identification with Love as being the Ultimate and by the man’s identification with Authority as being the Ultimate. Both the power of Love and Authority vie for supremacy ... Love has its intrinsic Authority and Authority has its intrinsic Love. Both provide the illusion of security so desperately sought for by billions of people throughout the ages. Whenever we trip over an issue of man-woman differences and find ourselves falling back into our gender identities we notice, while looking at each other over a gulf of separation, a marked lack of equity and mutual intimacy between us. Then again, in our long periods of mutual intimacy, we experience that neither Authority nor Love plays any role. Can we contemplate a life together where intimacy and equity are paramount? Wherein the power of Love and Authority become irrelevant? Any Authority precludes equity ... and therefore intimacy. Any Love precludes intimacy ... and therefore equity.

It all stems from separation. There is a separation of male and female from each other by gender identification as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – two distinct social identities – leading to a localised discontent and resentment, causing the battle between the sexes. Then there is the separative ‘I’ or ‘me’ – a psychological and psychic identity – forever alienated from one’s body and from the world of people things and events, leading to a generalised discontent and resentment, causing wars between tribal groups. Richard’s Journal, Article 2, The Mystique of Sex was a Challenge to be Met

Here is another –

Richard: Please, do not confuse what I am talking of, which is an actual intimacy, with True intimacy. True intimacy lies in the delusory nature of Love Agapé, with its Divine Bliss. One can become lost in the Eternal Mystery, the Great Unknown. Beguiled and bewitched by the promise of Glory and Glamour and Glitz, one has every reason to be afraid ... one will have fallen under a Divine spell, intoxicated by The Sublime. Actual intimacy is innocence personified; a self-less experience characterised by blitheness and gaiety because of the marked lack of separation. There is no distance, psychologically speaking, between me and these birds, these flowers, these trees ... and between me and you. Actual intimacy has nothing to do with love ... love is a bridge between two separate social identities, creating the illusion of intimacy. And Love – Love Agapé or Divine Love – gives one a feeling of Oneness, a feeling of Unity ... an intuitive sense of ‘Being’. Then we are back to ‘being’ again, this time ‘Being’ with a capital to denote Divinity. ‘Being’, in whatever form, is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. Richard’s Journal, Article 8, Community Spirit Seems to be Dead on the Ground, (People hope that love will cure the desperate loneliness caused by separation.)

It would aid the accuracy of your guesses if you made the effort to become a little bit more informed. Actualists are always upfront in what they are on about if you care to read what we have to say, which only begs the question as to why you waste your time writing to this mailing list when you have already ‘reached a plateau of relative happy and harmlessness’ by practicing meditation and state that ‘there’s no other way for me than meditation’.

If your husband or companion asks you ‘Do you still love [or care for] me darling?’

Love has no place in the intimacy we share.

Do you reply ‘What I said 3 years ago is as valid today as what I say today’?

It was perfect three years ago and it is perfect today.

Seeing that you are not yet ‘done on this list’ and have not yet moved on to ‘more fruitful avenues’ but stayed to post more allegations about actualists, I thought I would make a comment on your last post to No 58 –

Yeah, I’m a contrary guy at times. Thankfully, reading this list and investigating more fruitful avenues is not a binary either/or opposition for me. Besides, I wanted to issue a ‘big up’ to my mate No 58.

I noticed that the ‘big up’ to your ‘mate’ consisted of little other than adversarial statements about other members of this mailing list. When I became aware of the implications of exclusive friendship and loyalty I realized that as long as I nourished those ideals I would not be able to be harmless and I would not be able to live with people in peace and harmony. Exclusive friendship and loyalty are anathema to peace and harmlessness because those feelings always demand that one takes sides and supports one’s friends, family, tribe or nation in their animosity, regardless of the facts of the situation.

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.

Back in the years when I valued love, when my partner said to me ‘I love you’ without conveying the feeling of love, I felt cheated and superficially dismissed. As part of my yearning for the highly valued ‘lolly-pop’ of love I developed very sensitive antennas to determine if what I received from a partner was the true feeling. Therefore I wonder if your buying peace by merely saying ‘I love you’ is of any practical use, even as a temporary measure.

Because I had always been unsatisfied with the troubles, dependency and driven-ness of love, when I came across actualism I was ready to investigate love in order to sort it out. Rather than unconditionally demanding the other’s love and conditionally offering mine, I began to examine and ferret out my endless and insatiable need for someone else’s gooey feeling in order to prop up my self-esteem and appease my feelings of emptiness and loneliness.

To do so I explored my feelings of love and my need for love, as they were happening, in order to discover what was the driving force behind those feelings. In order to get to the root of love it was important not to push away or repress my feelings of love and it was equally important not to express, enhance or feed them in any way. So when you ask ‘I wonder if I’ve crossed a line’ then the answer is determined not by a ‘new moral code of actualism’ but by the practical value of exploring your own feelings and beliefs in order that you become more happy and harmless.

When I examined my feelings of love and compassion – the antidotal feelings to malice and sorrow – I discovered something that is far superior to love and compassion. Once I began to observe what it was that made me enjoy the time with Peter, when I did not feel love, I discovered that I enjoyed and valued the mutual undivided attention and the sincerity in talking to each other. 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 good or bad 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.

That experience encouraged me to investigate love, whenever it popped up, no matter what my dreams or fears were that accompanied the investigation. This moment of pure intimacy had been so delicious, so pure, so direct – it surely beats love by many country miles. This is how I have described the quality of intimacy –

[Vineeto]: ‘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.

Love was then replaced by this delicious state of crisp and exquisite awareness, where I am utterly by myself, there is no relationship between us whatsoever, and the next moment is unpredictable and without continuity to any past or future. Remembering again and again the joy of those wonder-filled moments always gave me the necessary intent and courage to keep removing any feelings that the ‘self’ kept producing.’ A Bit of Vineeto

This full attention and bare awareness is the genuine article – it is what love always promises but never delivers. So, instead of feeding ‘the whole neurotic beast’ by offering empty words you have the alternative of giving your partner your undivided attention and awareness, and regard and meet her as the fellow human being she is.

It’s a great challenge … and it is utterly rewarding.

I’ve been down the detachment path too, but found it didn’t cut the mustard at all either. Seemed like the baby with the bath water.

On our website we used an adapted illustration from P. Livingston to demonstrate this radical procedure.

Every time I go spelunking in the site, something interesting pops up. You mention love as being one of the hardest to let go of, and this is a real tough spot for me too. I’ve been in a very long-term relationship, which has been strained of late. This whole notion of love is a difficult one, but there’s some interesting dialog you had with Gary at the above link. Before I stumbled on to the AF site, I had determined in my own way that what passes for love seems mostly indistinguishable from mutually interlocking neuroses. OK, that’s fine, but I asked myself if there wasn’t a possibility for man and woman to live together in peace? Well, that’s certainly been answered here, but can I live in peace with this particular woman of many years relationship? That shall come out in the wash, but in the meantime I have no choice but to do this work myself, with strong emphasis on eliminating malice. It has been too easy over the years to build up a nice collection of barbs that I can shoot at her during my own moments of misery.

When I observed my own feelings of love, as well as love stories and soap operas on television, it became obvious that love is the one and only solution that people generate in order to smooth over and cover up all the nasty daily incidents in a relationship. When the going gets tough you can be certain that man and woman profess how much they love each other. The other thing is that love inevitably comes with a whole range of feelings that make life together either a living hell or a second-rate compromise – possessiveness, jealousy, disrespect, ruthlessness, blame and demands for attention, comfort and support.

To become aware of and investigate the feelings of love can be a first step towards genuine intimacy. The secret of living in peace with another person is not love, as is universally believed, but investigating – and eliminating – everything in you that is responsible for causing disharmony, resentment, retreat, detachment, disagreement and misery. You can do this investigation together with the other person – if she is interested – but it works just as well to do it on your own. What had impressed me when I first met Peter was that he was willing to give the experiment of our peaceful living together a hundred percent commitment and that he was, just a I was, determined not to blame or change the other.

This bit from Gary registered:

[Gary]: I found myself recently ‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’. It was during one of those ‘nice and cosy’ periods, like you describe (below). It really felt like it just slipped out and that I didn’t really mean it. It also seemed like it is just a reflexive habit, you know, when one is in such moods to give utterance to such endearments. And there really is no difference between saying ‘I love you’ and saying ‘I care for you’ or ‘I want to be with you’. All these sentiments pretty much add up to the same thing. When I first read this post, I was having trouble grasping just what you meant by ‘consciously allow the feeling to happen in order to fully understand and explore it experientially’. I think I have been kind of regarding Love as a no-no and quashing the feelings when they come up rather than simply allowing them and exploring them when they do. I think I’ll give that a try. Gary to Vineeto, 21.9.2000

I had a good chuckle, esp. ‘‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’’. I’ve been there quite a few times, the words pop out, then I’m something like the deer in the headlights, trying to make sense of what I just said. I’ve been considering love a no-no too, so perhaps taking his tack would be an interesting approach. (Was it, Gary?)

This is a good example of how an ‘ethical safe-guard’ can prevent you from becoming aware of and acknowledging a feeling. By considering the feeling of love a no-no, you might ignore, deny or avoid the feeling of love whenever it occurs and thus you are hampered in investigating it further. For a successful investigation you need an honest and all-inclusive stocktaking.

While all this is well and good as a practical bit, I know I run a real risk of the relationship ending. I’m willing to take that as it’s become clear that there are no alternatives. This raises a whole flurry of feelings, around responsibility, shared history, relationship with the progeny, who gets the dog, bla bla bla.

Here is a bit from Peter’s Journal that might be relevant in your situation –

Peter: The other vital ingredients to guarantee success were intent and peak experiences. We both had intent. I was willing to give it everything I could, and Vineeto likewise. The point was that I was doing it for me, I wanted to make it work and I would do everything I could to make it work. I regarded this as my last, and therefore only, chance to prove that it was possible for me to live with a woman in perfect peace and harmony – nothing less would do. Then, even if it did fail, I wouldn’t be left with that feeling that I had held back; that I could have done more, that the ‘shackles’ had won out again. Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

So, while poking around in the above vein, I ran across this bit from Richard on Alan’s site:

Richard: Speaking personally, ‘I’ lost everything. ‘My’ wife, ‘my’ children, ‘my’ business, ‘my’ house, ‘my’ car ... the lot. But, most importantly, I lost ‘me’ ... and they were ‘his’ wife, children, business, house, car and so on, anyway ... not mine. I inherited all ‘his’ stuff when ‘he’ disappeared, and I took five years to taper-off all of ‘his’ legacy. Nowadays, being me as-I-am, I have an entirely new life that is infinitely better ... vastly superior. That lifestyle was ‘his’ choice, not mine, and suited ‘his’ temperament only. Richard’s Journal, Article 36

The good catholic boy in me reacted to this. I have been such a responsible being all my life that this POV is incomprehensible. This is abdication of ALL GOOD CHRISTIAN/HUMAN PRINCIPLES. Yet at the same time I see the utter plain truth of this.

Personally, everything I owned, did or said and every person I was in contact with had great emotional significance to me as an identity and therefore every change in my familiar circumstances brought about an emotional disturbance. With the method of actualism, I gradually examined and substantially weakened most aspects of my identity and consequently some of my circumstances changed according to what was practical, sensible and beneficent. I gave up my old job, I lost contact with all my former friends and co-seekers, I moved house several times and gave away some of my possessions that had become redundant to me. Yet I still drive a car, live in a house, tend a garden, do a job, but there are no emotional strings attached to that car, that house, that garden or that job.

It actually makes my head spin a bit ... definitely some ‘opportunities’ to explore.

This is a good sign, if I may say so, because when your head begins to ‘spin a bit’ then the familiar identity begins to crack … and through this crack you could snatch a glance of the actual world – magnificent, sparkling, pure and perfect.

The longer I observe how I am in relation to other people, the more I find that whenever another person evokes an affective reaction in me then there is some kind of invisible thread or emotional hook also present on my side. I remember a visit from a close relative and how at first I felt guilty for not returning the love, affection and excitement that was offered to me. It was as if a web of invisible, yet sticky vibes was cast out to catch me into feeling loyal to and connected with her. These bonding strings might well be presented as a generous offer of love or friendship, yet – often unbeknownst to the person himself or herself – this offer always contains a request for returned feelings, a demand for support and an obligation for further loyalty. In other words, love is never unconditional, it is always given with conditions and it is only received subject to conditions.

In the situation with my relative I was able after a while to understand the nature and source of my guilt by observation and investigation and then, by being free of my feelings of guilt I was able to give her my full attention and care. While we spent time together we were able to talk as fellow human beings, swap stories about how each experiences life and what each had found out so far about the business of being a human being.

As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, I found that the sorrow that you described as being associated with love is due to the inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same. (Then I am also jealously guarding that he is not happy without me!)

Soon after I met Peter I found it vital to investigate this dream because it caused me to be miserable whenever we were apart and made my life difficult whenever we were together. When I looked into the love-dream that I had cherished all my life, I was faced with a rather shocking choice – either keep my dream and my identity as a woman and a lover and remain struggling, frustrated and unhappy, or drop all my high-flying ideas and ideals, grow up and take responsibility for my own life. This also meant that I had to put my becoming free from the human condition as number one on my laundry list – above my relationship. That very choice made me not only autonomous for the first time in my life, it also released Peter from the burden of ‘my’ unfulfillable expectations and emotional needs. Nobody else is responsible for my becoming free and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming free.

Of course, my love cannot reach you. I see, that my arguments cannot reach you. And what I write to you now, which is the plain truth, cannot reach you either. For you even deny that truth can have any validity. You are completely beyond reach, as far as I know. My love cannot touch you. My reason cannot touch you. And even, in spite of your belief in ‘actual facts’, even the facts I put into my e-mails (for example, that Richard does not know ‘the process’) and that I am not a person who belongs to the ideologies of the Eastern mystic, do not reach you. I am simply confronted with denials with anything that goes against the ‘facts’ as you choose to see them, i.e., your beliefs.

Still, as a fellow human being, It is impossible for me not to love you. And that is why I keep trying, trying, trying, knowing very well that every attempt I undertake will be completely futile. My whole exchange with you is, ‘an exercise in futility’. Still, my love makes me continue, in spite of the fact that I know better.

Love is always the last resort for a spiritualist when the communication has broken down. What good is love going to do? I have long ago found out that love is not the answer to the human condition but part of the problem. Love is only the cover-up for the rotten core that lies underneath – the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that all humans are bestowed with by default. The method of actualism aims at removing the cause not at providing a gooey band-aid. It is possible to change human nature – you can remove the whole programming and without malice and sorrow love and compassion are also unemployed. Without the bad emotions, the good emotions are of no value whatsoever. And only when you have cleaned your eyes of good and bad emotion can you experience the world as it is and yourself as a marvellously functioning sensate, intelligent and apperceptive human being.

There is much, much more to discover that what J. Krishnamurti and all the Eastern and Western teachers, gurus, philosophers and shamans keep on regurgitating – there is a purity and a perfection to discover that is beyond all human imagination.

All it takes is sincerity, a discontentment with the current non-solutions and a naïve sense of adventure to not settle for second best.

I wish you good-bye, Konrad. I don’t think it makes sense to continue the conversation, because you insist that emotions are vital and you believe in love, whereas I have discovered the actual wondrous world that lies beyond love and it beats Love and Compassion by more than a country mile.

I don’t know what to say to my partner now when she tells me ‘I love you’. My most recent response is a kind of uncomfortable silence. I then sometimes respond with such endearments as ‘I care for you’, ‘I want to be with you’ (which is true). I do not feel what is called ‘love’, which, as you point out, is an emotion-laden and hormonally-saturated substitute for actual intimacy. Love is certainly not all it is cracked up to be. It seems lately too that all around me I perceive the enormous investment that human beings have made in the ideal of Love. It is written into all our most cherished ballads, stories, movies, songs. It is there as the ultimate pinnacle to which human beings can attain, either in its secular setting in male-female and (not to alienate gay/lesbian friends) male-male and female-female relationships, in short, in terms of coupling sexually and emotionally with another human being. Love, the antidote for sorrow, has such a powerful hold on humanity.

The other night we watched a program on animal emotions. Although they had the issue upside down, trying to prove how ‘human’ animals are rather than how animal humans are, it was interesting to learn that female mammals seem to release a hormone called oxytocin when they give birth. The release of this chemical is believed to be responsible for parenting behaviour, like feeding, protecting and taking care of newborns, whereas another chemical, dopamine is considered to stimulate the pleasure centre both in mammals and in humans. In my twenties and thirties I had often wondered how much of ‘love’ was merely a chemical reaction of varying hormones and how much was so-called true love – now the more I learn about the function of hormones, the more I understand that love is nothing but a feeling produced by hormones that are triggered by our instinctual reactions.

It is one thing to not let oneself be ‘overtaken’ by a feeling of love because one has rationally understood its reasons and implications, and quite another to deliberately and consciously allow the feeling to happen in order to fully understand and explore it experientially. I needed to observe myself many times when being overtaken and overwhelmed by affection and love to detect ‘me’ who was producing and maintaining this sweet feeling of being connected.

I wrote in Peter’s journal about the later stages of investigating the offshoots of love –

[Vineeto]: Even after dismissing love as a concept or an option of relating, I still had to be watchful of my ‘love-attacks’, as I called them. They would come through the backdoor, seduce me with a rose-colored mood and appear so nice and cosy – such a temptation to surrender back into loving Peter instead of meeting him directly. However, I had understood and experienced often enough that any feeling for the other, howsoever sweet and soothing, would only make him a projected imaginary figure on my own screen of emotions, which can so easily change at the slightest whim. It had nothing to do with the actual person or situation. Being vigilant and persistently nibbling away at my habit of falling back into love proved to be a long process. After all, love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues!

Later, love changed into the subtler version of feeling ‘connected’ to Peter, of having, through him, some kind of identity in my life. I caught myself wanting to use him as an outline for my own existence, as an anchor to define me as ‘person-in-relation’, a ‘self’. Examining it closer I discovered that this need for an anchor derives from the female instinctual need for protection. Only when I feel ‘connected’ to a person can I keep up the illusion that I can rely on this person for ‘bad times’.

However, whenever I managed not to fall into the trap of love – what a delight then to discover the actual person, thrilling, alive, meeting for the first time and not knowing what either of us is going to say or do next! Love was then replaced by this delicious state of crisp and exquisite awareness, where I am utterly by myself, there is no relationship between us whatsoever, and the next moment is unpredictable and without continuity to any past or future. Remembering again and again the joy of those wonder-filled moments always gave me the necessary intent and courage to keep removing any feelings that the ‘self’ kept producing. A Bit of Vineeto

To question it is one thing, and I am sure that most people do that to some extent. But to reject it totally is almost to proclaim oneself to be apart from humanity. Then again we get into the outcast thing again. But to get back to what is happening in my partnership relationship, I am aware at times of stirrings of insecurity, the feeling of needing reassurance, of seeking comfort, or desiring nurturance, etc., and I look at these things and see instead of ‘Love’ the claim and demand for what the very self is made of – affirmation and validation of its existence, in other words, that there is a ‘me’ present that needs these supplies and either coyly or quite brazenly goes about pulling or teasing these things from her.

For me it was not that I rejected love – it was that I came to understand experientially that feeling love is in the way of meeting the other as the human being he or she is. Love is always self-serving; it is to supply me with the nice feeling that I belong, that I am a loving person – that I am not alone, that if I give I shall receive. Intimacy is the very opposite – I am interested in the other and in what is happening this moment between us, not for my security or gratification, but for the sake of meeting a fellow human being as he/she is in this very moment.

*

When feeling love I projected my feelings and my fantasy images on to the other and was thus not able to even notice the human being in front of me, let alone be intimate moment to moment. I found love one of the stickiest of my emotions – being in the category of ‘good’ – and in later stages I discovered subtler versions of love like admiration, gratitude, a rose-coloured mood, missing his company or seeking special attention. I guess you have read all about my explorations on the subject already in ‘my bit’ of Peter’s Journal. Overcoming the romantic dream and the initial shock of questioning the highest of human values was the biggest step – after that, it’s a lot of tidying up one’s habitual beliefs and conditioning about one’s gender identity and moral-ethical convictions. It took several months of thoroughly checking out all the ingredients of gender, love, authority and dependency before the first glimpses of actual intimacy sparked and opened a whole new world of relating to Peter and consequently to others.

My question at this point is this: if one has a paradigm of a relationship based on desire, nurturance, and need to couple (whether it be with a man or a woman), and one discovers that one can free oneself from this genetically encoded behaviour, what happens to the relationship? Is there any relationship? Is there something intrinsic about coupling with the human species that makes its imperative so strong? If one achieves an Actual Freedom, or even if one is living in a Virtual Freedom, would there be any need or desire for a couple relationship? In what would it consist? Do you follow my question?

Oh yes, I follow your question. When investigating love, that was always the question for me – what will be left? Why am I with Peter, if I don’t love him? Well, what I found out pretty early in the investigation was that there is a sparkling intimacy of two fellow human beings meeting without the veil of self-serving feelings separating them. Living with Peter is much more fun than living on my own, I enjoy his company immensely as he does mine – talking, watching TV together, cooking, shopping, serving cups of coffee, walking, silently writing on the computer until one starts a conversation again ...and then there is sex, a delightful pleasure not to be dismissed. Humans are a social species, we humans would enjoy each other’s company immensely if we wouldn’t have reason to fear it, i.e. if the instinctual passions didn’t get in the way. And man and woman have such perfect plumbing for mutual pleasure...

My partner and I have only just scratched the surface in questioning what our relationship is about, and I must admit to a feeling that it is economically advantageous to share living quarters with another person, as well as having the companionship and company. We are not passionately in love. I am not passionately anything at this point. It is rewarding to mutually explore life and together enjoy the wonder of this natural world. We are both like-minded to a certain extent. I sometimes feel that the only thing that holds us together is the very thing that I want to get rid of: namely, the animal instincts. So there is this push-pull conflict to a certain extent with this issue as there is with others. I well know from a very long period of being on my own with no mate that it is not only possible to live alone but to be quite happy doing so.

The thing with actual intimacy is that you can only discover its purity when you question what has been the glue of the relationship up to now. You might have glimpses of it in your PCEs when relating to people without a ‘self’ was imminently easy, delightful, direct, simple and innocent. I remember you described looking at stones as they became ‘amazingly interesting and wonderful’. This same naive non-affective fascination you can have with human beings except there is the added bonus that human beings are alive, can communicate, share interests, report experiences, have insights ...

But I still feel that if my mate came to me and told me she has decided I must go, that I would feel sad and perhaps somewhat broken up inside. So I have not freed myself from the attachment to the relationship and I am not sure, to be quite honest, that I want to. Is what I am saying making any sense?

Yes, I understand what you mean. However, I pricked my ears at the word ‘attachment’ because it has such a familiar spiritual ring to it. Actualism is not about becoming unattached as in stifling or rejecting feelings as something wrong. It took a lot to understand that ‘I’ am my feelings until I finally ‘self’-immolate, there is no way around it. The way I can facilitate this ‘self’-immolation is to find all the hooks that tie me to humanity, not stifle my feelings and emotions for intellectual reason but investigate in order to take ‘me’, the feeler out of the situation.

In the case of my attachment to Peter that ‘unhooking process’ meant that I explored the related morals, dreams, investments, desires, fears, my social identity and my sexual drive that were all part of my attachment to him. Once I saw the dream, for instance, I had a choice – do I want to keep my sweet ‘female’ love-dream or do I want the real thing, actual intimacy? It wasn’t really a choice at all; it was so obvious for me when the love-dream was seen as a dream. Of course, one can see one dream and replace it with another – but with honesty and insistence the hidden dream-maker will be found out along with the dreams and passions.

*

I found that my dream of ‘human love’ and my search for ‘divine love’ had the same source – my feelings of separation due to me being an alien entity inside this body and my feelings of desperation for ‘having to be here’. When human love failed I went off to the East to look for the master’s love, which was seen and felt as God’s love in a man’s body. My relationship with my partner turned into a triangle, for the love for my master was always priority. One could compare one’s love for the master to unrequited love because the ideal of one’s feelings is never tested in day-to-day life and can therefore easily be maintained in its idealistic glory.

Yes, I think that when many reach a certain age, usually in their 30s and 40s and they find that their intimate relationships have been shipwrecked, the religious or spiritual quest becomes all the more attractive as a way of reaffirming their identity. I think it was this way for me. The love of the Master (in my case the Christian Jesus) replaced the missing love of the wife who was long gone, the father’s love, the family, etc. It seemed so stimulating to think that I was loved by Jesus and even known by him personally, that I had a direct line to the love of God, to put it plainly. It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing, I can see that now, but I could not see it then. But yes, there is the underlying feeling of separation that fuels this search for Love. Now, I must say, I do not feel that way. I know there is a wonderful actual world there, and even if I am not intensely experiencing it at the moment, ‘I’ am getting in the way and only need let go of the controls and get out of the way to have the actual world rise to my sight.

It is fascinating to read your ‘it was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing’ – such a simple statement about a simple fact. Everyone else I am corresponding with at present is frantically defending Love, Beauty, Supreme Intelligence, Compassion, the Unknown, universal Consciousness and whatever other names they have invented for their God. To acknowledge the fact that god is a mere figment of passionate imagination is more than most will bear.

Thank you for your thoughtfully written post addressing freedom from love. I have been regarding your post ruminatively for awhile now, and would like to respond to a few of the points that jumped out at me in particular. You wrote:

For me, the question about losing a ‘loved one’ by death or change of circumstances was an important issue in the beginning of my relationship with Peter. I had known jealousy and fear of abandonment in the wild ups and downs of my previous relationships and knew that I did not want to repeat the same dramas any more.

I certainly relate to not wanting to repeat the same patterns over again in my present relationship with my partner. I went through a distinct period, after I finally gave up alcohol and drugs, 15 years ago, of remaining solitary – in other words, not getting involved significantly with anyone, and this period went on for a few years. I had a great fear of becoming ‘too dependent’ on another person which naturally led to the fear of abandonment you mentioned. When I did get involved again, I went through some of the familiar patterns again with the difference that they did not seem to be as wildly emotional for me. I went through the familiar stage of forming a ‘love’ relationship, offering tender assurances to the other person, and eventually proclaiming to the other that ‘I love you’. It seems almost universal that these stages take place in human intimate relationships. I was greatly reluctant to offer the assurance of ‘love’ and I would often question my partner as to what she meant when she assured me that she loved me.

I have found that men seem more ‘reluctant’, as you say, to talk about love and relationship, but they are nevertheless as dependant, loyal, protective, worried, resentful and full of unspoken expectations towards their partners and children as women are. For me, being conditioned as a woman, relationship was an important ingredient for ‘my’ meaning in life and therefore it was always a great struggle to either deny or counteract my resultant dependency on the other by affirming and demonstrating my ‘independence’ – ‘taking space’, having my own opinions, having exclusive ‘girls nights’, living in a separate flat, etc., etc. And yet, despite all those ‘independent’ actions, deep down I knew damn well that I was unfulfilled, lost, lonely and frightened and always dreaming of the perfect relationship with a man.

When Peter and I met, he had grasped enough from Richard’s radical discovery to not want to fall in love again. And yet, as he has described it in his Journal, falling in love happened despite all good intentions, inevitably unfolding all the typical emotions between man and woman within the Human Condition. To get a handle on the overwhelming impact of my tender emotions, I had to feel, experience, acknowledge, label and investigate each and every single emotion of the bundle called love in order to understand what love consists of. There was sexual attraction, fear of loneliness, my personal dreams and fantasies, my emotional dependency, my expectations of the other, the male and female conditioning, constant mistrust, fear, jealousy, worry and feelings of inadequacy that I tried to overcome by anticipating, attempting to interpret and empathizing with the other’s moods and feelings.

As I successively became aware of and understood one feeling after the other, I first had glimpses and then increasingly longer periods where neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere in the delightful magic of a direct unimpeded peaceful interaction with another human being. It became more and more obvious that love is nothing but a shield of ‘my’ projected feelings that act to keep me at a safe distance and therefore love only stands in the way of intimate interaction with others.

It was not until I became involved with actualism that I began to understand what it means to question myself rigorously about the feelings, emotions, and passions that come into play in my relationships with others. With the intent to become free from the disabling patterns and feelings that accompany ordinary human relationships, I could turn my attention to understanding what this business of relating is all about and understand why my previous unions with other human beings had failed miserably. In actualism, something entirely new is on offer: freedom from the entire emotional/instinctual package with which human beings are genetically endowed.

This is so radically different from other approaches to dealing with relationships that it scarcely needs mentioning. But perhaps it needs repeating because unless or until the instinctual passions are eliminated in toto one is always at danger of repeating the same patterns that led to misery in the first place. Not only do I see this happening in my present relationship with my partner, but I also experience the thrill of being free from those self-same patterns and the realization that it need not be so.

The more I have taken responsibility and stopped both blaming the other and expecting them to fix my problems, the more my relating to people has become simple and easy. At first relating seemed an impenetrable web of reasoning, feeling, empathizing, guilt, demand and fear, but when I started to pull a few fundamental strings and investigate a few basic premises, the mystery and complexity of emotional relating soon began to unravel and disappear.

I remember a particular afternoon about four years ago, when I took a close hard look at my pining, which inevitably occurs when love and affection are involved. That day I took a walk in the fields, determined to put a stop to the debilitating gut-sinking feeling of missing the other and I listed all the ingredients that made up this emotional dependency. I remember it as a seminal turning point as to how I wanted to live my life – according to my dreams and everyone else’s ideas of an ideal relationship or being in accord with what is actually happening here in this moment with the actual human being I have opted for as a companion. It was clear to me that in order to experience the other ‘in flesh’, in actuality, none of my dreams was of any use – on the contrary, they were the very smokescreen preventing a direct meeting – and it was obvious that I could only gain by abandoning my cherished dreams.

The other thing I understood on that afternoon was that nobody could live my life for me and nobody, however close, could fulfil my dreams of happiness and freedom for me. A freedom that one can receive from others always carries the fear that the other can possibly take his or her gift away at any time – by its very definition this is non-freedom. This includes, of course, the spiritual freedom offered by the Gurus and Godmen and the deceptive feeling of freedom created by feeling grateful to a mythical God or Existence. This understanding about freedom proved to be the foundation to allow me to break my dependency from Peter and later from Rajneesh, because the real thing – an actual freedom – as opposed to the dreamt-up feeling-only freedom, lies in my hands and in my hands only.

*

For a start, it gave me great confidence that I practically and financially stood on my own two feet. Whenever fear arose of losing Peter or when I noticed that I started depending on his company for my happiness, I looked into those emotions to understand what exactly it was that I was afraid of. I could easily detect that my cherished tender instincts, my feelings of love, belonging and affection were the very cause of my fear and dependency. I found that I had to question every single one of my ideals and dreams about relationship, as well as my imaginations and hopes, expectations and principles to be able to become free of fear and to begin to become autonomous.

This is an important point because you are pointing to an integral link between the tender passions and the so-called savage passions. In actualism, it is understood that the genetically endowed tender instincts are needed to offset, ameliorate or protect from the savage instincts. One cannot have one side of the instinctual equation without having the other side. The feeling of love is always accompanied by fear, dependency, possessiveness, jealousy, etc, at least in my experience. If one idealizes the feeling of love, as many do, one will be unable to see that the feeling of love not only is spawned by fear and aggression but causes these experiences in turn. It seems to work both ways. The entity or identity is insecure and fearful and seeks to attach itself to another as a means of survival. The entity needs this constant source of love and affirmation in order to survive, and without it, withers and fades away. Most people I have talked to about love idealize the feeling of love, and are unwilling to see that the feeling of love automatically evokes its opposite.

Yes, the fact that in actualism we not only investigate the savage but also the tender passions is the very reason that makes it so highly unpopular. At first, Actual Freedom seems to be a very daring, even megalomaniacal, thing to take on – to break away from the wisdom of thousands of years. Only those who are honest enough to admit that love has failed as a solution to the underlying instinctual fear and aggression and yet have maintained sufficient naiveté to not settle for a second-rate relationship will be willing to discover the facts and actuality behind the feelings and dreams.

Another thing that I have been ruminating about in connection with the topic of love is the long period of dependency of the human infant and child. The mammals, in particular out of the animal kingdom, nurture and protect the offspring for a long, long time. With the human, this long period of physical, and then leading to psychological and psychic incubation seems to be required in order to thoroughly inculcate the growing child with a social and cultural identity. One can easily spend a lifetime being conditioned by society and conditioning oneself, and others in turn. In actualism, one begins to dismantle this social identity, and one of the first things to emerge is fear, anxiety, and dread, because one is questioning the very things that one spent so long a period cementing in place. To begin to question these ideals, expectations, hopes, etc. sets the whole process on its head. One was conditioned in the first place with the reward being the affection, admiration, affirmation, and ‘love’ of parents, teachers, peers, neighbours, etc. Psychically and psychologically, ‘love’ is needed by the alien entity that inhabits this flesh-and-blood body because the entity was nurtured and grew in an atmosphere of ‘love’, acceptance, and affection. It seems, then, that to question deeply the meaning and basis of ‘love’ is to question the entire structure and foundation of the ‘self’. The resultant turmoil is enough to send even the most determined investigators scurrying for cover. Yet, as you point out, to be free from the feeling of love is also to be free from fear, because the emotions go together in an essential way.

Yes, here you have pinpointed the very reason that keeps all the Enlightened Ones trapped in their delusionary state of divine Love – to question love itself is to demolish ‘the entire structure and foundation of the ‘self’’. Richard wasn’t content with the patently evident non-perfection of Unconditional Love and this discontent with imperfection led him to investigate the tender passions, which eventually landed him on the other side of enlightenment and outside of Humanity as a whole with no ‘self’ left to ever run amok again. So our social conditioning is only the top-layer of the Human Condition, covering over and forever attempting to reign in the instinctual passions, and even the most considerate upbringing cannot save one from being an instinctually driven ‘self’.

*

The fairy-tales that I had loved as a child and the heroic legends that I had read as a youth – all talked about love as the primary fulfilment in life and the ultimate goal ...

This is so true. I have found in my discussions with people that love, both in its romantic/sexual expression, and in its transcendent garb as Eternal Love, is the great fixation of many, probably all peoples. I had been seduced back in the 70s and 80s, when these ideas were in popular currency, to feel that the cause of my unhappiness in life was an unhappy childhood with not enough so-called ‘unconditional love’ from my parents. I built up an identity of a person who was a victim – someone who never had enough and thus my obsession became to find and get this nebulous and rare ‘unconditional love’ substance that I so desperately craved. I now feel that this kind of love is a chimera – that love is always conditional and intimately tied into and ultimately leading to the savage instinctual part of the human equation. If one craves the supposedly unconditional variant of love, one is much more likely to be duped by the promise of an Eternal Love, a Love that is beyond space and time. It seems to be the foundation of every sort of spiritual and religious belief that there is a source of Super-Human Caring, a kind of benevolent or punitive Great Parent in the Sky that either makes our life a hell or a heaven by turns.

Blaming others for one’s feelings and misgivings seems to be one of the primary self-protective features of the Human Condition. Whoever one listens to, be it the younger generation, the oldies, the rich, the spiritual people, the rednecks, the rebels or the well adapted, everyone blames someone else and something else for their misery and failure. When all search for scapegoats fails, it is invariably God’s will that one has to surrender to. Being a victim is a universal feeling that keeps everyone trapped in being miserable and malicious. Only when I had enough of feeling powerless because I was always making others responsible for my own misery did I take the decision to actively change myself in order to become happy and harmless.

*

There’s a curious thing about emotions and instinctual passions – if you want to be genuinely free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions you will have to question the positive or ‘good’ emotions first. If you want to become free of feeling insulted and blamed by others you will have to abandon seeking the praise of others, if you want to become free of the fear of losing a cherished item or job you will have to investigate the desire, affection and attachment for that item or job, and if you want to become free of the fear of the loss of ‘loved ones’ you will have to inquire into your of desire to belong and your feelings of dependency and love.

So it appears that initially the intent to be free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions is what fuels the investigation into the instinctual passions. But one finds out relatively quickly, going back to a seminal point that Richard talks about, that one cannot be a ‘stripped down self’. I did not really understand this at first but as I continue using the method of actualism I see with increasing clarity that this is true. One cannot eliminate the negative, invidious passions without the positive, ‘loving’ emotions, and this is a major point at which one may well balk. What I have found to be true of myself, at the current stage, is that I may fondly imagine that I am free from being shackled to the influence of others, I may imagine that I am free from the attachment to the job or the praise of the supervisor, but I am not. And each one of these startling glimpses into the way ‘I’ operate leads to a greater freedom from ‘my’ habitual clinging and holding of people, places, and things. Merely wanting to be free from these things is, of course, not enough. One has to be able to experience the ‘me’ in action, see ‘me’ in all my cunningness, duplicity, and dishonesty. One needs to be neither in love with love, or embittered and disillusioned by love’s failures. One needs to see oneself for who one is, and when I use the word ‘one’ I am referring to the alien entity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body. When one really sees oneself for who one is, one is free to be what one is.

The closer I looked into the so-called positive feelings that I had cherished for so long, the more I discovered that love had no tangible benefits, only fleeting emotions and un-kept promises. Inevitably attachment would lead to resentment, fear and jealousy, the desire for unconditional love would lead to unconditional, as in unquestioning, dependency and the desire to appear unconditionally loving would lead to self-contempt, hypocrisy and an emotional and physical withdrawal from the so-called bad world.

So ‘disillusionment’, as in acknowledging that love has failed to bring an actual peace and harmony between human beings, is a necessary starting point as one dismantles imagination and discovers the facts.

Dismantling the need and belief in authority allowed me to stand on my own feet for the first time in my life. What a freedom not have to react to people, men in particular, out of superiority or inferiority, but to be able to communicate with everybody as fellow human beings! Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this meant that from then on, I could not blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any issue. Now there was no more excuse, no more hiding place. These emotions were my reactions and my behaviour, which I had to face and change in order to be free.

And then there was love. The need to be loved and the hope to become Divine Love one day. Love for the Master made it impossible to question anything he said; I was following him not only for bliss, but for love. And yet, so many things didn’t add up. I had needed to explore the nature of the bonds with the Master and face the fears which came along with dismantling my relationship with Him – he who claimed to represent the ‘Absolute Truth’ in the spiritual world. Once I had seen through the belief in the ultimate authority of God or Existence, I could then more easily set out to investigate the facts of enlightenment.

You see, all those beliefs I had to tackle first in me, before Peter and I could begin to talk openly about Osho without me being offended.

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