As for old fears and insecurities, there were plenty of them. Some of them were so old they dated back centuries and more – the archaic fear of being burnt as a witch, for instance, for daring to question the existence of god, heaven and afterlife and the archaic fear of expelled from society or of being executed for daring to lift the taboos of sexuality and begin to enjoy it for its own sake.

Whoa! this sounds almost like reincarnation. I assume you are referring to genetics, passing the memory on from one gene-ration (never noticed before how this word broke down- love words!) to another.

I was not referring to genetics, the hardware, so to speak but to the collective software of the human condition, something that in spiritual circles is known as the Akashic Records or etheric knowledge. When a child is conditioned, parents, teachers and peers not only pass on their personal knowledge, their morals, ethics, beliefs and experiences but also impart, on a non-verbal emotional-instinctual level, the taboos, fears and rules of survival that they themselves have imbibed, going back to the beginning of humankind. Additionally, in an altered state of consciousness one can consciously access those records of various cultures and explore the ancientness of human ‘wisdom’ and experience and its instinctually-based fibre.

Am I misinterpreting what you are saying? I came to this from one of your links...

RICHARD: Okay ... let us pursue this to see where it takes us. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen hundreds of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. Richard, List AF, Alan, 208.1999

Going by Richard’s explanation could the fears and insecurities not then be carried forward in the genes?

Yes, the propensity for the basic human fears and insecurities is carried forward in the genes just as the propensity for the basic human aggression, nurture and desire and that’s exactly why human beings find it so unbelievable that human nature can, or should, ever be changed. But this propensity can be mitigated to the point where one is virtually free from these passions and this propensity can even be permanently eradicated.

From recent gene-studies I understand that it is not only the genes, which determine what we are and ‘who’ we are but the way genes are activated. The ‘Human Epigenome Project’ is just at the beginning of mapping out this fascinating story. ‘Genes are silent unless activated. To have them is not necessarily to be under their influence’ says Jill Neilmark in her article about this topic. (http://edge.org/q2007/q07_14.html)

I admit that I am an absolute layman on the topic of genes but what I understand is that whilst instinctual passions are genetically inherited in animals, the ‘self’ that they form themselves into in human animals, including all feelings and emotions, can be deleted using the human brain’s ability for intelligence and apperceptive awareness. Richard has done just that and I am determined to prove that this process is repeatable. What is deleted in this case is software, not hardware. Here is how Peter described the process from a scientific viewpoint –

Peter: ‘Changing only you is eminently achievable – and scientifically verified as possible. It is possible to re-program one’s own brain from all the social programming and it is possible to evince a mutational adaptation to eliminate the instinctual passions. A bit I wrote recently explains this very point –

‘The modern scientific empirical discoveries of neuro-biology and genetics, with regard to the human brain and how it functions, have revealed two very fascinating aspects –

1. That the brain is programmable in the same way a computer is programmable. The program is formed by physical connections or pathways between neurons, and this program is mostly formed after birth. These pathways (synapse) are also capable of being changed at any time. The old connection simply ‘dies’ for lack of use and a new one is formed.

2. That the human brain is also pre-programmed, via a genetic code, with a set of base or instinctual operating functions, located in the primitive brain system which causes automatic thoughtless passionate reactions, primarily those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, to be transmitted via chemical messages to various parts of the body including the neo-cortex. Physiological alterations that could eliminate this crude programming, as a biological adaptation to changed circumstances, are well documented within the animal species.

• The first discovery accords with the practical experience of being able to radically change one’s social identity – the program instilled since birth that consists of the morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that make up our social identity. It stands to reason that a psychological identity that is malleable to radical change is also susceptible to total elimination.

• The second discovery accords with the practical possibility of eliminating one’s very ‘being’ – the emotive source of the instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. This blind and senseless survival program is now well and truly redundant for many human beings and can now be safely deleted, for the human species has not only survived … it is now beginning to flourish.’ Introduction to Actual Freedom, Actual Freedom 1’  Peter, List AF, 13, 2310.1999

I am a little confused ... I came something you wrote about emotions, this morning, which seems to contradict what you wrote earlier. Putting it into context it is like this...

You do know, do you, that actualism is not about not having emotions, let alone outlawing them? Vineeto, General Correspondence, No 11, 27.12.2006

But then this from: http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/vineeto/selected-correspondence/corr-180.htm...

Feelings are indeed where the Human Condition lives on, unchanged, in all its wretched misery and sorrow.

Yes, it’s 180 degrees in the opposite direction to where we humans have searched for solutions. In the course of my exploration into what my ‘self’ and the Human Condition consist of I was amazed how many times I found ‘180 degrees opposite’ the appropriate expression.

Just a few such opposites as an example: emotions – no emotions... Vineeto, List AF, Gary, 19.8.2000

?

Ok, to put all of this in context –

• ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ – instinctual passions and the resultant emotions and feelings are the very substance of ‘me’. In other words, instinctual passions in humans form themselves into an identity, a ‘self’ and only when the ‘self’ disappears, emotions and passions also disappear. You can experience this in a pure consciousness experience where the ‘self’ is temporarily absent with the consequence that all emotions and passions are also absent.

• It is not possible to simply reject emotions, to outlaw them, as some fiction writers suggest. History shows that to try and be a stripped-down ‘self’ has resulted in a split between one’s cognitive and one’s affective faculties (with the later pushed into the unconscious) and the continuous effort of suppressing and repressing one’s existent emotions is both useless in the long run and harmful to both oneself and others. In extreme cases such suppression can result in alexithymia and/or a psychopathic condition.

• Instead of rejecting, suppressing and repressing one’s emotions the actualism method invites you to become aware of your emotions (including the presently unconscious ones) as and when they are happening, particularly when they are interfering with you being happy and harmless. Bringing your feelings and their embedded beliefs and patterns into the light of awareness then enables you to make a conscious choice.

• Richard: ‘What the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about is a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel well, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. 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, Articles, A Précis of Actual Freedom

• The consequence of choosing the felicitous feelings is that, whilst both good and bad feelings nourish and maintain the ‘self’ (you might have noticed in yourself and others how for instance suffering and/or virtue puff up the ‘self’), the felicitous feelings leave ‘me’ unemployed. When everything is all right and a delight to behold, there is nothing for ‘me’ to do or fuss about and ‘I’ incrementally wither away to the point where I am able to live virtually free from malice and sorrow.

• The final step comes when ‘I’ expire and with ‘me’ all instinctual passions, emotions and feelings disappear forever.

In contrast to such altered states of consciousness, a pure consciousness experience is a non-affective ‘self’-less pure sensate experience where all of ‘me’, both ego and soul, both my social identity and my instinctual being are temporarily in abeyance. In a PCE there is no identity present to feel like a God living in an ethereal other-worldly realm. God, although everyone on the planet believes in him (or her) in some way or other, is nothing but a passionate imagination that only exists in people’s heads and hearts. In a pure consciousness experience one is one’s sense organs brimming with delight, wallowing in the enormous abundance of sensual experience that is perpetually here while one is at the same time fully aware of being an aware sensate and reflective human being.

This bare awareness of being aware, apperception, is the fundamental key to a pure consciousness experience – both coincide with each other.

With an investigative awareness running – how am I experiencing this moment of being alive? – one is able to examines one’s affective feelings, emotions and instinctual passions as they occur. The longer one practices such investigative awareness, the less one’s feelings, emotions and passions interfere with one’s sensuous attentiveness of being alive at this very moment – an awareness that simply registers sensate experiencing.

This sensate awareness is not something one can practice or cultivate in isolation from removing the affective feelings that interfere with the simple delight of being alive. Given sufficient practice of the actualism method, an ongoing idle sensate attentiveness to being alive can momentarily turn into an awareness of being aware, which is apperception, and a pure consciousness experience takes place.

And then you are hooked.

To No. 101: ‘When you practice the actualism method, it’s important to remember to examine the feeling in question only after you managed to get back to feeling good’

Have you ever watched a child getting upset when their favourite toy is taken away by another child for instance and then the mother or teacher steps in and diverts their attention by pointing to a bird flying by or a showing them a fragrant colourful flower or inviting them to join a different game that’s going on. Young children are usually able to very quickly forget their previous upset and accept the nudge to being happy again whereas adults often insist on the seriousness/ importance of their own particular problem and/or feeling and choose to continue to feel bad.

When you set your aim to become happy and harmless you enter into an agreement with yourself, so to speak, to not let anything stand in the way of getting back to feeling good – in other words you make a conscious decision to make feeling good about being here, right now, your default feeling state. This intent in turn helps to re-kindle one’s own long-lost naiveté which then helps you to return to feeling good for no other reason than that you are alive and conscious in this spectacular abundant universe. As an adult you have the added bonus of being able to take note of the triggers that had caused you to stop feeling good in order to avoid this particular pitfall the next time round.

No, it doesn’t.

The problem you describe would only occur for someone who wants to jump to a total freedom from feelings without wanting to walk the walk via a virtual freedom from the human condition – i.e. without wanting to do what is obviously necessary in order that ‘I’ can become free of malice and sorrow – to become as happy and as harmless as humanly possible.

A virtual free person is not entirely free of feelings – which is impossible while still being a ‘being’ – but has diminished both malice and sorrow (the bad feelings) and their pacifiers (the good feelings) in order to fully experience the felicitous feelings and enjoy the sensate pleasure of being alive.

The urgency to clean myself up from both the bad and the good feelings arose not only from having activated my naiveté but also from having developed a concern and consideration for my fellow human beings whom I wished to free from the effects of my malice and my sorrow – it had nothing at all to do with having ‘a sense of ‘divine’ destiny’ nor of being ‘‘chosen’ to fulfil a mission’ (and nor did it with Richard if you care to carefully read his Journal).

Incidentally the actualism method does not ‘devalue’ feelings per se but the combination of an on-going attentiveness and pure intent enables you to make a choice between the different feelings that occur. Once you have understood, in your own right, that malice and sorrow create havoc both in yourself and in others and that love and compassion do exactly the same then the choice for the felicitous feelings becomes obvious and easy.

Make sense?

How long was it for you to dispense with the haietmoba for a ‘wordless’ approach? And do you think a haietm or even ‘how am I feeling?’ could work as well?

The moment I fully committed myself to the aim of actualism – the extinction of my ‘self’ in toto, ego and soul – the method became an ongoing wordless approach.

So, do you still employ the haietmoba?

Of course, a wordless attentiveness is most times operating … once you make the effort to switch it on it is nigh on impossible to switch it off again, and it would be silly too. Nowadays being attentive to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive is a delight and not the effort it used to be in the beginning.

*

Sometimes (like No 60) I find the whole haietmoba tiring. No 37 claims to be using a wordless approach but he has not giving us any details so I don’t know what exactly he is doing. I am determined to dig, but sometimes I wonder if my shovel is just to heavy for me to wield. I just can’t comprehend how you and Peter became virtually free in a scant 2 years doing this.

Yep, it’s all about the strength of one’s intent and commitment to the task at hand. Once I comprehended what was at stake it was all systems go. To merely try the actualism method for a year or two in order to see if anything happened was never an option for me.

Which probably describes why No 23, then No 60 and now me are not reaping the full benefits that the af method can provide. I’m still holding back, not wanting to commit to another possible ‘rabbit chase’. Compared to the zeal and hours of time I spent meditating, praying, contemplatively reading scripture, and chanting, my ‘practice’ of af method has been pathetic. Nonetheless, merely removing spirituality from my life and half-assedly paying attention to my emotions has been helpful already.

I found that it was useful to remind myself that what I was doing was going in the opposite direction to everyone else and because of this I found it is far more productive to pat oneself on the back for what one has already achieved in terms of becoming happy and harmless.

Change happens one step at a time. There was much involved in extracting myself from the resinaceous world of spiritual beliefs – abandoning my spiritual tribe, many of my friends and acquaintances, quitting my job, losing my customary social entertainment. Such was the change that it took some time to fully digest and integrate and for the consequences to fall away.

Then one morning I woke up and realized I was neither hurting about my loss nor could I remember what I was supposedly missing, and that was the moment when I realized I was ready for the next challenge whatever it might be.

Once you take the first step in the right direction on the path out of the human condition, each of the following steps one needs to take becomes apparent along the way.

*

I also wonder about the fact that you and Peter were virtually free around 1999 and seemed close to actual freedom. Yet 5 years later and no dice.

My explanation is – and there is really no precedent to this direct route of becoming actually free via avoiding enlightenment – that it was relatively easy to get rid of my negative feelings such as anger, resentment and sadness, the freedom from which resulted in a virtual freedom, while the good emotions such as compassion, sympathy, empathy, loyalty and belonging to humanity at large are far tougher nuts to crack and as such take far longer to identify, understand and become free of.

So, do you think it’s best to ‘go after’ both the positive and negative emotions or mostly focus on the unpleasant ones at first?

Whichever one is preventing me from being harmless and happy right now. Having said that, I found that putting being harmless first meant that I initially became aware of feelings such as irritation, anger, resentment, frustration, blame and so on.

*

Have the last 5 years been a stalemate? No changes?

A stalemate? Not at all, although sometimes, when I grow impatient, it may feel that way.

Do you still grow impatient? Or is that the past?

Yes, I do. I am bound to as becoming actually free is the overarching passion to which all other instinctual passions have become deferential. Yet each time when I experienced a bout of impatience I have come to realize that it never serves to speed up the process, on the contrary, impatience, if left unchecked, can fester into doubt and throw me off the wide and wondrous path. So I have learnt to recognize the symptoms of impatience earlier and quicker in order that I can nip them in the bud more easily before the feeling takes over entirely.

What remains is the determination see it through and the confidence that an actual freedom is bound to happen simply because ‘I’ do no longer have a choice in the matter.

I found that to effectively explore emotions to the point of eliminating them I had to experience them fully. Only by neither repressing, nor expressing, nor in any way rationally twisting the emotional experience could I meticulously observe, become fully aware of and sensibly contemplate on what is happening in my head, heart and guts and thus investigate the root cause of that particular emotion. Knowing that every emotion is part of the Human Condition relieved me from blaming myself or being resentful for having an emotion in the first place. In order to eliminate the particular emotion such that it would not return again and again, it was essential to explore it deeply at its core and to understand experientially how each emotion originated in my social identity and/or in my very sense of ‘being’. Once having seen the emotion in operation and understood its ramifications to their full extent there was no way I could feel the same way about a particular issue or situation – by having understood this specific piece of my identity it had been extinguished.

Needless to say, this method has not the slightest thing to do with plain rationalization or spiritual dis-identification – proven by the very fact that it works, that it gets rid of the emotion permanently while increasingly allowing the sensual sensuousness and the pure delight of being alive.

I know well the ‘occasional reluctance to explore’, yet the frustration of obviously going round in silly circles has always given me courage to stop wasting my time, to face the fear and ‘reluctance’ and do whatever was necessary to return to being happy and harmless.

This brings up a dilemma in my mind. One of influence and existence. Sometimes I seem happy just to have removed an emotion’s substantial influence without trying to get to the core of it. I find it difficult going into emotions when I’m working so I guess that is why I only attempt to draw on what I have discovered about them to stay out of the spell of any arising emotions. I’m sure there is more to it than that though. For example I think self-doubt needs more investigating as I find sometimes that considering another’s point of view, the basis of some confusion.

Fair enough, you only go as far as you want as fast as you want. As long as you ‘seem happy’ then that seems to work. I simply suggested a way to explore further in case the option to ‘stay out of the spell of any arising emotion’ is not enough for you.

Actually it is not really good enough and I keep persisting even after many failed attempts to get at the root of an emotion. Being free to use bare awareness and not be caught by the emotions is I feel an important step and one which I seem to be gradually, getting the knack of.

Yes, ‘to use bare awareness and not be caught by the emotions’ is absolutely essential for becoming actually free from the Human Condition. Emotions, feelings and beliefs (passionate convictions) are how one sees one’s instinctual passions in operation. They form the layer of our social conditioning which needs to be explored and removed – both for a happy and harmless life in Virtual Freedom and for an experiential understanding of the raw instinctual passions at our very core. And you probably have experienced the instant gratifications when a belief disappears, an emotion doesn’t turn up anymore, a snide remark from someone else falls flat and as being alive becomes gradually a play and a pleasure.

Although, the suggested method of trying to recall a PCE to get out of stuckness only helped in that it brought the obstacle into focus.

This is great success, don’t you think? To have ‘brought the obstacle into focus’ and to know what the obstacle is about which keeps you in ‘stuckness’ is an excellent starting position for investigation. Now this obstacle can be identified, labelled and experientially explored, using apperceptiveness to detect its reasons, connections, source and implications. This has nothing to do with the Buddhist method (Vipassana) of labelling a feeling and then dis-identifying from it. 180 degrees opposite again. An actualist labels the feeling to get the bugger by the throat, to explore it as a scientist, to check out its silliness or sensibility, to determine how it is part of the Human Condition and then, when all is said and done, to permanently step out of having that emotion. This final stepping out often results in a pure consciousness experience.

Last night I was contemplating about Alan’s description of his ‘reflective contemplations’, ‘practising the actual’ and arriving here in the actual world and how this records with my experience. Further Alan says:

‘Reflective contemplation’ is the way to not only get out of stuckness but also to discover what is preventing one experiencing this moment. I realised that this is what had occasioned all of my PCE’s – this is what leads to wonder at the joy of it all. Alan to Vineeto, 29.4.2000

Recalling step by step my own process into a PCE last night I found that contemplation serves to focus on the direction – being happy, dismantling the self, comprehending enough of the real world in order to see the self in operation and to step out of it. Contemplation always helps to focus on and remove obstacles and then, with no feeling or belief interfering I can build up the sensuous awareness of this moment of being alive. The wind on the skin, the sounds around, the wiggling of my toe, visual delights, tastes and smells ... Increasing sensuousness tips over into gay abandon, the self as both the controller and the feeler are abandoned and bingo ... I am experiencing what I had previously only reflectively contemplated about – this moment of being alive as a flesh and blood body only.

The gay abandon can, of course, also happen without the reflective part, as a nature experience, in sex or any time when sensual pleasure is sensuous enough to tip over into the self-less experience of being alive as a flesh and blood body only.

Many times I find that an emotion withers away before I get a good look at it. It’s almost as if it is avoiding a detailed look. Up to now I’ve been unable to find a reason for this and guess that all that is required is more attempts and that it will eventually become clear.

Emotions are a slippery lot. They form the basis for our identity, which is as cunning as all get out. Yet the actualism method can be applied to discover every trick – whatever the feeling or emotion that keeps me from being happy here, now, needs to be examined and understood and then, presto, I go back to being happy again.

I find that emotions can wither for different reasons. Either I understand that it is silly to be emotional and make a deliberate choice to move on and ‘smell the coffee’ instead. Or the emotion has been investigated in detail and is just a leftover bad habit to be thrown out and then I can go back to enjoying the moment. If I have avoided an emotion it will for sure come back in a similar situation and thus give me another opportunity to notice it, feel it, face it, label it, explore it, understand it and step out of it.

Sometimes I experience a quick deep understanding which is gone in a flash and I don’t even remember what I understood. What I do notice is that certain reactions don’t occur any more.

These moments of a ‘quick deep understanding which is gone in a flash’ might well be the flash of a pure consciousness experience and are as such worth extending or recalling. The fact that ‘certain reactions don’t occur any more’ points to that possibility. What do you think?

Hi,

Just a P.S. from me that might be useful.

Cheers ... ... Peter.

So I can, in a way, relate to your story that you are selling out and leaving your past life in terms of house, dog, partner and friend of many years, and losing all of the identity that goes with it! I found that in order to get permanently free of a particular emotion connected with a situation, I had to dig into that issue until I had explored it to exhaustion. I have to both feel and experience the issue on hand with its ensuing emotions and examine its ramifications for my life, understand in what way the needs and fears express and then identify them as silly, unnecessary and redundant – and take care of the practical side. I suspect from my own experience that in the package of ‘house, dog, wife’ you will find most of your remaining identity. I wish you all the thrill of the discovery and the delight of success.

I went through several crises, and the necessary self examination afterwards, before I was able to see my attachments to my wife.

It’s been very good to hear from you. You verily took the cue and ran with it – all the way through the tunnel and out the other glorious sparkling ordinary side of ‘just’ being with another human being! I like your courage to tackle your attachment to your wife and your years of living with her!

Also, what is it that actually happens to cause a PCE?

As for your question how to make a peak-experience happen I can say that I started to approach it the other way around. Given that peak-experience is our actual state when no emotion or belief is in the road, I am going for whatever obstacle I find at the time whenever I don’t experience this moment of being alive as perfect as I remember those moments of the peak experience. As you may know, I have been finding lots of interesting ghosts in my cupboard, often unexpected, expressions of pride, fear, impatience, annoyance, competition, love, loneliness, boredom and yet again another fear.

Whenever I am taking the bull by its horns and dig around in that specific emotion, explore, understand and eliminate it, what’s left is the perfect experience of the world as it is, delightful, safe and imminently fascinating – there it is, the searched-for peak-experience or PCE! So my approach is kind of indirect, being busy with the obstacles rather with the outcome. Of course, my intent and my goal is to eliminate those obstacles and each time round it becomes more easy and more of an adventure and a scientific enquiry rather than a ‘having-to-do-thing’. This way I am becoming more and more confident, I stop believing in my own emotions and I know that absolute everything will be examined under the microscope. By now, the ‘cupboard’, which was packed full of ‘ghosts’ is getting pretty clean...

This weekend I have been ‘busy’ on and off with being sick. Being listless to do things and feeling a bit weaker than usual I would have preferred not to have a cold. But then, as the weekend slowly went by being as delicious as ever, the walk on the beach as delightful as ever, I turned my attention to the famous sentence: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ I, this body, is obviously very busy getting better, and isn’t it fascinating how it feels when inside the ‘protection army’ is fighting in different places against the invading viruses? ... and isn’t the pouring rain making a wonderful sound on the roof?! So my complaint turned into an observing fascination without any emotion or wish for anything to be different, just experiencing the facts and events of me, this body and my surrounding. Back here again!

I see the path to freedom as a double approach. One is to have as many peak-experiences as possible to get all the information about the actual world I can get. The other is to remove the shackles and lead-weights, whenever they occur, made up of various beliefs and their ensuing emotional reactions until underneath I find the bare instincts.

So when in a peak-experience, or at least in a clear, unemotional state I would deliberately go towards the issue that had troubled me last and search for the underlying belief that still had a grip on me. In the PCE I could much easier examine it in its complete structure, understand it and compare emotions and beliefs with the facts of the present situation. To generally call it ‘me’ or ‘fear’ usually was not enough to do the trick. I look at it like a detailed scientific investigation into the Human Condition, wanting to find out not only how I am operating, but how all human beings function, more or less similarly, with their ‘me’ intact. Pride was the first thing to be thrown out, feeling offended the next. Seeing it operating in everybody makes it easier to put the particular issue on the table and not consider it some private disability that only I was struck with.

And with each issue examined and thus eliminated, the lead weights became lighter, the access to being here easier and longer lasting.

A word about stuckness: the emotion that usually kept me from looking at the issue was mainly fear, sometimes disguised as confusion, mental laziness or simply avoidance. But after a few days, or a few hours, I would simply see the silliness of avoiding the issue and thus wasting my time by not being ‘here’ and then start off the examination. It often would go like this: OK, damn, what is it this time? What has happened just before I turned numb, or grumpy or zombie? Ah, that person said something. No, can’t be it, I’m over with this. Oh, well, maybe still a little trace? Wow, big fear now. What belief made me react? Where is the hook? And then, like a dog, I would pick up the scent and follow the trail until I had the bugger by the throat. The first resistance was the most difficult to overcome – once I had started to investigate, thrill would keep me going, and curiosity, of course.

Sometimes I would find a childhood issue, like in my early mail with Konrad, some attachment to a cozy feeling or simply the instinctual fear of stepping outside of all of humanity’s concepts and beliefs. The wish to get out of the emotion (fear or whatever) into ‘here’ before I had checked it out thoroughly and understood it in its complexity was often a hindrance and would only prolong the process. One can’t go in two directions at the same time. Once I reached the bottom of the ‘pit’ and saw what the particular issue consisted of, being here was the natural by-product.

Yes, being here is the simplest thing to do – once I am here; but cleaning oneself up entirely so as to not to be pulled back by anything is also the most courageous thing to do. When an emotion gets you into its grip it is quite a bit of work to find out all its implications, and rarely someone dares to do it. Like, when you thoroughly investigated sorrow...

I wrote in my ‘bit’ of the journal:

‘I liken the journey as travelling on this path of freedom and eventually hitting an obstacle on the way made up of a belief, a fear or any other emotion. If I avoid the challenge of examining this obstacle, I end up in the thick of the jungle where there are many more ‘real’ and imaginary dangers to be tackled. Only by getting back to the original obstacle and clearing it out of the way am I able to once again delight in strolling freely on this wonderful path of freedom – chiselling away my ‘self’ while at the same time thoroughly enjoying myself.’ A Bit of Vineeto

I have found the easiest way out to be focusing on intent, recalling a PCE and concentrating on ‘what is my purpose’ ...

I had to think about what I actually do when ‘focussing on intent’ and ‘concentrating on what is my purpose’ . Yes, it is always best to activate delight and a PCE, but then, as important, to untie the hooks – emotional, instinctual and ‘eventual’ – that keep or kept holding me back, hooked into the normal state of dullness, worry or fear. I am a well-trained detective now, having searched so many alley-ways of this very cunning ‘self’, unlocked so many emotions, beliefs and instinctual passions, all with that innocent looking question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. Being lazy I shortened it inside my head as ‘What is happening?’, ‘what emotion is keeping me from being completely at ease and fully in my senses?’ The obsession has grown to such an extent that even when I have an occasional afternoon nap – a very pleasant activity, by the way – the investigation is running in the back of my head while I linger in that wonderful delicious state between sleep and waking consciousness. Not always do I remember the content of my investigations, but then I just start again...

In my experience it was not a matter of ‘contemplating’ following a guru, it had been my very life. Nothing else had mattered for years. The whole meaning of life was concentrated on that one master, and on that one teaching. In that state of love and devotion there is not much rational contemplation or application of common sense possible! But after all those years on the spiritual path I had come to a point where I wondered what this search for enlightenment had given me – sitting in the corner with my eyes closed, being more and more afraid of and isolated from ‘normal’ people, and none of the glorious glimpses had improved my day-to-day life. I was still run by my feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. Further, I longed for a peaceful and harmonious relationship with a man, and none of the Eastern Wisdom had brought that goal an inch closer. That’s where Peter’s offer proved to be my ‘crack in the door’ – and then I began to investigate into something new and radically different.

I am telling you this because thinking about people’s reactions to Actual Freedom still leaves me puzzled as to what makes one actually start investigating into something new and radical. I think that a certain disillusionment, disappointment, longing and desperation is essential for considering further enquiries into the iconoclastic realms of the non-spiritual, as well as a stubborn refusal to settle for second best. After all, the spiritual viewpoint is all we know, and all we have ever learned as a solution to tackle life’s ‘problems’.

The reason I write is to ultimately to find out about myself. If I get upset about something, annoyed, repulsed or angry, it means there is something in me that is not squeaky clean. And my game is called ‘actual freedom’ and that means being free of anything that prevents me from experiencing the actual world as-it-is. And as long as there is any feeling or emotion triggered in me, I will never experience how this actual world really is! Therapists have found a part of this understanding – they call it ‘projection’. Projection means, I see something in someone else that I have in myself. The say, ‘forget about the other.’ Why does it annoy me? Oh, because I reject it in me. Aha, I am dishonest, that’s why I am annoyed that the other is maybe dishonest (or a Hitler, or authority-fixed, or proselytizing, etc.)? So then, what I do is search in me for the reason for feeling dishonest. In what terms am I dishonest with myself? Am I believing something that I have already experienced to be otherwise? So then, why do I want to hold on to this belief, which I have already experienced as false? Fear? Yes, of course, fear! All my fear is fear of death. Fear that denies the fact of death. One day ‘I’ will have to die. Full stop.

And have also recently realized that the only place in the world where there is cruelty – fear – and sadness is within myself. But I have a lot of both, especially the sadness. They are what got me looking.

Is there something else to be done besides pay attention to them? How is this identity dismantled?

‘Paying attention’ is something that I have heard the Enlightened Ones use a lot. The idea is to step outside of that particular emotion and ‘rise above’ it where the problem does not exist. Unfortunately it only works for a very short time. As soon as one comes back into ‘the world’, ‘the marketplace’ and the body, those problems are all waiting. Peter describes it at length in his journal in ‘Spiritual Search’ and ‘God’.

What I found fascinating with Richard’s method is that you can actually eliminate the problem and it will never return. Asking myself the question of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, I can quickly find out what is not perfect. Tracking the particular emotion, mood or feeling back to its source I usually found the underlying conditioning, belief and fear. When I questioned the belief and checked against the facts of the situation, the belief cannot hold water. Some actions or emotions I could simply stop applying because they were obviously silly. Others I had to investigate deeper and tackle the fear involved when dismantling a dear held value, a chunk of identity or a ‘holy cow’.

Another very powerful question was: ‘who am I in relation to other people?’ It brought the point home to me that everything I think myself to be is in someway or other related to other people. Once I found the cause for a particular behaviour and the underlying fear, I could then easily decide what is ‘silly’ and what is ‘sensible’. It becomes a fascinating journey into the intricate web of one’s psyche, untangling oneself from one string after the other, may they be personal or collective held beliefs.

I am alone, have no companion with intentions similar to mine.

Whenever I needed to sort something out and got stuck with it, it was and is indeed very helpful to talk to a like-minded person. But as well as talking to Peter I used writing as a tool for clarification, either writing down my story or posting a letter to the mailing list. Just to have to put it into words for someone else to understand and to be ruthlessly honest with myself in my investigations were already the first acts of clarifying my inner mess. Slowly my scientific scrutiny has improved as I became more daring, ie the brain started functioning more and more with clarity and purity and less distorted and clouded by ‘self’-produced emotions and beliefs, as it had been trained to.

After I had decided that I actually wanted to clean myself up from being malicious and sorrowful, my intent made me use every situation as indicator to ‘get the bugger by the throat’. Sorting myself out at work – I work in a sannyas-company, my former spiritual peer-group – was as much part as of it as checking out the gender differences in the relationship.

Cleaning oneself up results in seeing the world and other people with different eyes, less driven by the miserable interpretation of one’s sorrow and fear and more receptive to seeing it as the delightful place it is. And who knows, someone might be attracted by the results you are achieving in your daily life...

The obvious question is a ‘how’ question, and my experience has been that all ‘how’ questions come from the sense of self itself and are based in the usual motivation of the sense of self, that being of course, fear, and are nothing more than an announcement of the presence of the sense of self.

I think you are stepping on your own tail with this roundabout thinking, and then wonder that you stumble. You cannot exhaust the ‘sense of self’ by thinking, but you have to actively eliminate it bit by bit. It is not fear that searches for the way out, but the memory of the PCE, where no fear exists. The intent is to have that PCE-like state for 24 hours a day. With success you become more bold and keep investigating in yet another belief which cause you suffering...

2. Are you asserting the belief in a state of fearlessness that can be achieved through fearful means?

You take your PCE – the experience of no ‘self’ and no fear – and try and imitate it as closely as possible in your daily life, by the simple and effective question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. You can start by not complaining about the weather, by actually tasting the coffee you are drinking, by feeling the legs and feet walking on the corridors or by stopping another ingrained habit of complaining ... whatever you like to start with. This is about getting down from the thinking-it-out-chair and getting dirty, ie. you experiment with your life and find out if it works for you. I can only say it worked for me. There is no short-cut, no thinking, thinking, thinking, and then pop! This method is about cleaning yourself up practically, diligently and persistently by removing one cause of unhappiness and malice after the other.

Unless you have established for yourself a life in peace and harmony, with the basic needs taken care of, a life of Virtual Freedom, full of delight and joy, there is no basis to face the ‘big instinctual fears’. At least, this is my experience. If I tried to face death before I am firmly settled in ‘Virtual Freedom’ there is great danger to end in dread, madness or the delusion of enlightenment. Not recommended...

The obvious question is a ‘how’ question, and my experience has been that all ‘how’ questions come from the sense of self itself and are based in the usual motivation of the sense of self, that being of course, fear, and are nothing more than an announcement of the presence of the sense of self.

See, the ‘how’ question-explanation is just used by the ‘self’ to avoid the looking. You prove to yourself that it is a hopeless exercise and then you are back in ‘safe’ desperation and searching. It reminds me of Richard’s expression: ‘the psychological and psychic entity is a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity.’ The frightened produces the very cunning; you have to find out your tricks. If you ask, ‘where am I maintaining a belief instead of investigating facts’ and ‘why’, there might be an honest answer. And the knack is to start with the ‘good’ beliefs, the positive ones, the ones we want to keep because they seem so right, so nice, so sweet, so cozy, so honourable. It is belief itself that is the problem, not merely a matter of which belief is right or wrong.

We screw up the world and ourselves with our ‘me’s’ and now we are going to fix everything within us with our ‘me’s’?

See, another trick, you prove to yourself again that it cannot work. And then you say, ‘clarity does not arise’! Somebody has to clean yourself up, and nobody else is going to do it. I take it that you are ‘most earnestly looking here’. I think you just fell for your own trick again.

What is doing the active elimination?

Well it will have to be you, whoever you find inside of you who wants to do the job. Most probably he is called No 2. There is no God and no Divine Grace who will honour your efforts by waving the magic wand. And as I said, it is the ‘good’ beliefs, which will show you your ‘soul’, your ‘self’. You could consider questioning the belief in ‘real love’? Or being a protector? Or an idea that you have how someone else should be or behave...

One would seem to be left with watching it intently. As I do now.

Watching intently is not enough. One needs to investigate into each and every belief and why one wants to keep it, when this perfectly functioning world does not need any belief for growing trees, raining, thundering or turning carrots and potatoes into blood and bones. Why do we human think we cannot live without making everything into a picture or our own making? Imagination in its very nature is madly unlimited – and the very obstacle, for the world is already perfect – except for human beings, that is.

‘What is my objection to being happy and harmless?’ was one of the most effective questions that I would continually ask myself.

Perhaps freedom will occur. The intention is certainly present.

Freedom does not simply occur. You go about on the journey into yourself with a torch and a scalpel. It is an amazing and thrilling enterprise, I can tell you that. And each time you have operated successfully, there is a joy, a dance, an outbreak of freedom and perfection which makes it all worthwhile. In my experience it is so much more exciting and gratifying than just watching intently. And for a change – it works.

... and there is this part is me that wants to go for it and that doer force was a few days ago squeezing my head trying to force it to happen, quite dangerous. So what is he trying to sell to ‘me’, why is the question ‘How am I...’ not enough.

When you say, ‘that doer force’ that was ‘squeezing my head’ , it sounds like it it somebody other than you forcing you to do something you don’t really want to do? I have found it a general practice in spiritual circles – and have done it myself quite a lot too – to refer to emotions or ‘forces’ as if I had no input and no control over ‘it’. To my delight I found out that I have! All the control and all the responsibility is mine! When I don’t like something, like pushing myself into misery, I can see it and stop it, because there is nobody else that is creating the misery but me.

Of course, to be able to sort out between the ‘forces’ inside my head – or heart – I have to be clear with my intent, where I am heading and what I want to achieve. With a peak-experience as landmark I can judge the different on goings – with me they were usually emotions – and sift the chaff from the wheat. I understand from your mail that you seem to make Richard responsible for your forcing yourself ‘dangerously’. But nobody is responsible but you, you choose what you do, that is the wonderful thing in actual freedom. There is no authority and nobody gets the credits when you reap the rewards. It is all in your hands. Nobody can stop you either.

Could you share your ‘how am I experiencing this moment...’ It seem more relevant than digging up memories. So ‘how am I ...’, Hmm having difficulty coming up with suitable descriptive words. I am not feeling great though... pain in the head front and back, stomach discomfort and through this there is a mild sense of clarity. There is also the sense of ‘me’ trying to hang on and keep control.

I have tried to convey in the last mail how I am using the question to discover whatever emotions were going on at the time, using the example of authority. I’ll post it again, this time broken into the different steps, in case you did not recognize the method. This is not just digging old memories, as you say, but a detailed description of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

To get rid, permanently, of a certain emotion, I had to

1. investigate the underlying reasons –
2. why do I have this fear,
3. what is the belief that supports it? In this case I found that wanting approval – or pretending to reject it – was, for me, based on the belief in authority. I believed that I was not authority enough to judge my actions or in-actions, or judge certain behaviour as silly or sensible.
   As a woman I had this issue especially with men and this had spoiled all my relationships with men.
4. It took quite a bit of digging into the causes of why I believed everybody else more competent to judge what is right and wrong for me.
5. One thing is, authority is a strong part of everyone’s upbringing.
6. But underneath that conditioning I found an immense fear to stand on my own feet, alone, by myself – the survival instinct of
   a. belonging to a group,
   b. or a strong person.
7. I was continuously looking for an authority to
   a. protect me,
   b. guide me,
   c. love me,
   d. to be part of a group around those authority figures.
8. The struggle looks silly to me now, but at the time it produced immense fear-attacks, days of wanting to hide, to run away, a nightmare to decide between Richard/Peter as the supposed authority figures or Rajneesh and his disciples as the guiding principle.
9. To dissolve the nightmare I decided to not stop until I had found the root cause.
10. And the root cause was, strangely enough, a belief in God. I had thought I had dismissed God years ago, when I went to Poona and left Christianity behind.
    But then the Christian God was just replaced by Rajneesh.
11. Questioning and understanding my fear as the belief in and the fear of a judging and punishing God made it all very clear.
12. Finally I could step out of the circle of
    a. creating and consequently
    b. fighting human authorities (God’s representatives) and
13. simply decide for myself, with my own intelligence and common sense, what I wanted to do with my life, in each particular moment, in each situation.

I have done this process of tracing with every single irritation, emotion and belief that I found lurking inside ‘my soul’ and in this way have reduced ‘my soul’ to a very small percentage of its original size. With it my troubles, worries, fears and irritations have also been reduced to a very small percentage of their original appearance. It works, immediately – and that, for many, is the scary bit. One actually diminishes and eliminates one’s soul and one’s identity.

But unless one investigates one’s emotions, one’s beliefs and at last one’s instincts at the root of a physical unpleasantness, tension or sensation, there is no way to get to the bottom of the matter. It will stay a sorry-go-round of ‘noticing’ and disappearing, reappearing and ‘noticing’ again ad nauseam. Richard has described the method very well in an earlier correspondence with you:

Richard: Affectively, of course ... that is how you are experiencing this moment. Look, let us not unnecessarily complicate things here. The ‘how’ simply means ‘what feeling am I experiencing right now with’ ... which is: ‘Am I bored?’, ‘Am I resentful?’, ‘Am I at ease?’, ‘Am I glad?’, ‘Am I sad?’ and so on. You see, peace-on-earth is here right now – the perfection of the infinitude of this universe is happening at this moment – and you are missing out on it because you are feeling what it is like to be here instead of actually being here. Hence: ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ means ‘What feeling is preventing the on-going experiencing of peace-on-earth?’ It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now ... and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if you miss it this time around, hey presto ... you have another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.

As one knows, from the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) that everybody has at some stage in their life, that it is possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end that good feeling? Ah ... yes: ‘He said that and ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most. (‘Feeling good’ is an unambiguous term ... if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all.)

Thus, by asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ the reward is immediate; by finding out what triggered off the loss of feeling good, one commences another period of enjoying this moment of being alive. It is all about being here at this moment in time and this place in space ... and if you are not feeling good you have no chance whatsoever of being here in this actual world. (A grumpy person locks themselves out of the perfect purity of this moment and place). Of course, once you get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy’. And after that: ‘feeling perfect’. These are all feelings, this is not perfection personified yet ... but then again, feeling perfect for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day is way beyond normal human expectations anyway. Also, it is a very tricky way of both getting men fully into their feelings for the first time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings one by one instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once. One starts to feel ‘alive’ for the first time in one’s life.

Being ‘alive’ is to be paying attention – exclusive attention – to this moment in time and this place in space. This attention becomes fascination ... and fascination leads to reflective contemplation. Then – and only then – apperception can occur.

... but it requires the 100% cooperation of the other. I cannot be more interested in another’s freedom than they are. Having had nigh on eighteen years experience of talking to recalcitrant egos I have no intention of inspiring, enthusing or exhilarating anyone. I am more than happy to participate in another’s enquiry until they ‘get it’ and begin their voyage of discovery into their psyche – which is the human psyche – but it is their energy that is needed to vitalise their search. Richard, List B, No 26, 18.11.1998

This 100%, boots and all-approach is my experience too. Until I had decided to give it a go, because I had to acknowledge that nothing else had worked in my life to my satisfaction, there was only miserable pondering, cerebral torture and emotional distress. Once I decided to dare to give it a try, things became easier, I became focused, clear and determined. It has been so ever since. Nothing can stop me becoming completely free in one of these moments. It is a great adventure!

An added note: this question ‘how am I...’ causes me to examine the contents of consciousness moment to moment. I am not aware of a method or needing one because when it occurs it is an immediate and actual freedom.

With the question ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ I examine the contents of what is in the road of bare awareness, all the contents of the Human Condition, which are mainly emotions and underlying emotion-backed thoughts, meaning passionate ‘beliefs’.

When you are feeling good, it’s great. When you are not feeling good, that is when one needs to look at the reasons, why one is not feeling good in this moment. When you are feeling good most of the time, you raise the bar – you aim to feeling excellent.

Did you ever try to trace down such an obstacle to bare awareness? What did you find?

As Alan said so aptly: ‘I tell you, the sound of one hand clapping is a piece of cake compared to this.’ Alan to No 3, 9.1.1999

Yes, I experience this as the sense of everything fitting in its place, like a wonderful sense of order and balance. At times when there is a sense of stuckness or forcing I realize there is ‘I’ attempting to ‘do’ and the question running in my mind has taken a break.

In my investigation into the Human Condition, I didn’t bother much about the differences between the various ‘I’s’ that were trying to take charge, I preferred to focus my attention on my feelings and emotions. I had understood that feelings and emotions are definitely part of the Human Condition, and being conditioned as a woman to express emotions made that even more obvious to me. From there I could proceed to examine the different feelings and emotions and un-cover the underlying beliefs.

Whenever I attempted to cerebrally sort out which ‘I’ was telling me what to do, or which is the real aware ‘I’ and which the watcher, or perhaps the actual I, there was only hopeless confusion. The spiritual training of creating a distant ‘I’ had made me a confusing ‘I’ behind the ‘I’ behind the ‘I’.

So identifying which feeling I am experiencing, be they sadness, distance, listlessness or boredom, is a much better landmark from where to unravel the Human Condition than finding which ‘I’ is attempting’ to do what.

Because I am exposed mostly only to eastern wisdom, I conclude that it should be because of that. However I don’t want to waste too much time and efforts to argue over whether it is new or not. Even if it is not new, it appeals to me and I would like to give it a try.

When I took Sannyas I had been raised and conditioned as a catholic middle-class German. In order to understand Rajneesh I had to at least question those conditionings. But then I was ready to question the old, because life wasn’t all that wonderful, burdened as I was with those primary conditionings. I attempted to leave ‘normal’ behind and became ‘spiritual’.

On the path to Actual Freedom a second de-conditioning took place, a spiritual de-conditioning. And again, I was ready for it, because after all those years of sincere effort my search did not show the outcome I was hoping for. This second de-conditioning went much, much deeper than the first, it eliminated ‘all of me’, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body and its senses, free to delight in this perfect infinite universe as a sensate human being. Nothing more, nothing less.

To investigate my beliefs it took a lot of time to question, ask, discuss, read, turn them round and round, and look at them again from a different angle. It is not at all a waste of time. To be able to see a belief ‘from the outside’ in its complexity and functioning it needs time and investigation. This is exactly how you give it a try.

Now coming to the method. I tried asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. Most of the time I get the answer ‘happy’, or when I stress upon ‘this moment’, I get blank with no answer, because in this moment there is no feeling. The feeling is only in the moment just passed by. But still ‘I’ do not have that experience all the time. Because ‘I’ is the heap of all the passed moments!

I found that the interesting thing started when I got the answer ‘not happy’ or ‘no feeling’. I knew then I had something to look at. Upon closer look I always found a lurking feeling or fear disguised as ‘no feeling’ – the cunning entity inventing whatever trick to keep me from exposing it. It takes a lot of persistence, bloody-mindedness and ruthless honesty with oneself to dismantle one trick after the other. Sometimes I would sit days with that ‘no-feeling’ of numbness until I gathered courage and determination to examine it deeper. This process may take months until you are free of one particular emotion. But with the pure consciousness experience in mind you always have a comparison that keeps you going.

Once I came to know what you and Peter were so excited about, Richard’s technique, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, I was mad with you. Because there is nothing new in the technique. I have been doing it more rigorously for a year and, in my opinion, a lot of people who are not in any spiritual search do it in their life too. In my case, it just happened to me that I started doing this technique after 6 months of dynamic and 6 months of Kundalini. It was a simple outcome of cleaning up performed by dynamic and Kundalini.

Maybe you could describe how you use this technique. I don’t understand how you can do it in the way Richard describes it and still be mad at me, or us. For me, using this ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ has helped me to get rid of all my emotions, feelings, beliefs and underlying instincts. I simply understood that it is not worth blaming anybody for my feelings, since they are my feelings, they arise in me. And I can see now that everybody is stricken with the same Human Condition that I have been so shackled with. As the easiest and most effective way I decided to clean myself up instead of blaming or trying to change other people. It was especially helpful and obviously effective in my relationship with Peter, but it is applicable in the same way for all my interactions with people, even with things like the weather and events.

Whenever anything would get me upset, I looked in myself for the cause. It was my anger, after all, or my upset, my fear, my worry, my sadness, that I wanted to get rid of. And it worked, miraculously so. After 12 months of intense investigation I am free of emotions, beliefs and most of my instinctual reactions, apart from an occasional little stirring, which gets investigated and cleaned out whenever it occurs.

What surprised me, however, was that you and Peter went in so much lengths to trash Osho in particular and eastern religions in general. And for what, a simple technique which perhaps everyone knows, at least, I believe, everyone on the sannyas list does.

Doing the ‘technique’ has helped me to get rid of my issues with ‘authority’ – wanting and needing someone, for instance Mr. Rajneesh, to tell me what is right and wrong – or rebelling against a supposed authority. I am free now and fully capable to judge silly and sensible for myself.

Questioning and eliminating the emotion and the belief in love and Love was another consequence of applying this method sincerely and diligently. This grand and to much praised emotion could no longer hold its credibility in the light of honest investigation and awareness, it is, after all, just the cover-up and band-aid for the instincts and ‘bad’ emotions that trouble everyone so much.

But in order to ‘trash’ a master of 17 years, one needs to be ready to look afresh, to question every dearly-held belief and dare to stand alone on one’s own feet, without a group or a master. Without the ‘support’ of my belief in authority and my need for love and the hope for Divine Love I was then able to really check out what Osho what proposing, offering and delivering. And I found it very wanting and intentionally confusing, to say the least.

As Richard said to you, when you start ‘seeing without sannyas eyes’ you will discover the full benefit and life-changing consequence of this question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ and you will find out that what you and supposedly everyone on the sannyas list does is something completely different.

It is not just noticing or ‘watching’ feelings and thus creating a new identity – the watcher. With the ‘watcher’ you transcend feelings, usually for the time being. They are not eliminated, they return. With a ‘watcher’ you can pretend this body installed with the Human Condition is not really ‘it’, but you are ‘Consciousness, eternal and pure’. You detach yourself from the body and its imminent emotions, feelings and thought and live as this new identity, the ‘watcher’ or ‘Consciousness’. If successfully applied one ends in the delusion or an Altered State of Consciousness aka enlightenment.

Richard’s method, on the other hand, is designed to question and eliminate every single emotion, belief and instinct in order to be completely free of ego and soul, ‘self’ and ‘Self’. Then one can live in this actual physical world and delight in its infinitude, magnificence, perfection and purity. Then one can be ‘the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being’ – not a small outcome.

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