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Selected Correspondence Vineeto Pure Consciousness Experience VINEETO: Hi Richard,
RICHARD: I cannot help but prick up my hears where you say ‘strangely enough no form’. I am presuming that physical objects were still extant as you say that you were seeing without fear and the psychic world ... and thus by ‘no form’ you do not mean the metaphysical ‘formlessness’. Do you mean that there was no form to an ‘I’ as in an on-going identity ... like you write about in your next paragraph? Are the ‘stubbies’ the days gone by since birth – all events and occurrences – and the ‘plastic that would keep them together’ is this ‘me’ that is the ‘form’ that was missing in this experience? VINEETO: With the stubbies I meant in this incident my actual senses including the brain, fully functioning, better than with the ‘plastic’ of emotional interpretation around them, but they had no definition or identifiable form, hence the description ‘strangely enough no form’. It is more the idea of there having to be a form that was missing. I seemed to consist of the pieces of information that the senses gave me, the seeing, hearing, thinking, but there was no continuity, no person as such, no identity. RICHARD: Your use of the word ‘definition’ brings me back to your ‘strangely enough no form’ description above and I relate ‘definition’ with ‘outline’ ... as I wrote in Article 9 of ‘Richard’s Journal’. VINEETO: Yes, Richard, I agree with your term ‘outline’, it is a very good description of this fictitious entity. It seems to come on so silently, that if I don’t turn my attention to it I hardly notice that it has slipped in yet again, pretending to be someone, while only the experience of the particular bit of the universe is happening. Right now it takes a lot of remembering and awareness to discern it, or better, to focus on the actual experiencing of coffee, food, sound, or whatever I am doing. RICHARD: It would appear that the experiential study of fear is germane to any examination of the ‘plastic between the stubbies’ so as to ensure a life beyond ‘being’ . VINEETO: Yes, I agree, although often it does not appear as fear, rather a
certain hesitancy to fully enjoy the moment, to lash into the sparkles and to become yet more alive – a safe place of ‘this is
already enough happiness and pleasure, let’s not rock the boat!’ But since I have nothing else important to do, I might as
well rock the boat and become entirely mad!
RESPONDENT: Could you describe what you refer to a PCE experience some more. VINEETO: I see that you have asked Richard about the same subject – a very good idea. After all he is the expert, living it 24 hours a day, every day. Peter and I have both described our outstanding peak-experiences in Peter’s Journal, I will give you the exact spots, if you want to read for yourself:
Those descriptions are to help you either induce or remember a peak-experience and
distinguish it from any other emotional, blissful or spiritual experience where, upon examination, you will always find that
wonderful warm buzzing loving feeling present. In a pur consciousness experience there is no ‘feeling’ entity present,
that’s what makes it different to the usual ‘highs’. In a PCE you experience a clarity, a delight, heightened senses, and
everything around you is just as it is, obvious, magically perfect, always been here. For me, whenever it happened, I thought,
‘where have I been?’ It, the actual world, is so very obvious, it needs no explanation. Answering the questions below I
describe my every day life, where sometimes a ‘bleed-through’ of fear happens. In a peak-experience those emotions are
completely absent.
RESPONDENT: Actually, I often then find myself in love, in peace with the world as it is. It is not unlike the love for a woman because I have the need, the desire to be here, to enjoy it right now; the way it is. There is a certain feeling of intensity, sensual perceptiveness. There is also the sense of being undisturbed by hostile people or events. It makes me very comfortable and happy. I think it is what you refer to as a PCE. VINEETO: Richard writes about a PCE –
My In a PCE I am not in love with the world. In a PCE ‘I’ am temporarily in abeyance, thus freeing this body for a short period from the impact that my instinctual passions together with my beliefs have on sensory and reflective perception. There is no ‘me’, an instinctive feeling entity, assessing the situation and dividing the world into friendly and hostile people or events. Rather, I can look at the Human Condition in toto and I understand how it is operating in its totality, as myself and therefore in everybody, because I can see it from not being afflicted by it for a certain period of time. A pure consciousness experience is vital for an actualist in order to experience the actual world in one’s own right so as to not have to rely on merely believing what any of us says or writes. A PCE is the touchstone by which I ascertain my direction towards my goal – to live a PCE 24hrs a day, everyday. However, for me the path to actual freedom so far has always been about ‘the meantime’ – what do I do when I don’t have a PCE? In the meantime is where life is happening and this moment is the only moment I can experience being alive. To waste this moment of being alive by being grumpy, miffed, miserable, vindictive, dreamy, ‘out-of-it’ or fearful is simply wasting this moment. If I want to become actually free from the Human Condition then in the meantime I have a job to do. Actualism is certainly not an effortless path. In the meantime I examine what prevents me from being happy and harmless right here,
right now, whatever the circumstances. In the meantime I dig into my belief systems, my social conditioning, my automatic
instinctual program whenever it interferes with feeling excellent. In the meantime I am using all the insights I could gain from
my pure consciousness experiences in order to tackle the Human Condition in me. In the meantime I am virtually happy and virtually
harmless 99% of my time. In the meantime I am now having the time of my life.
VINEETO: So from Richard’s statement that his experiences with sleep and dreams are possibly idiosyncratic (which is still to be determined when a second person becomes actually free) you automatically assumed that the quality of how Richard experiences life 24hrs a day is just that – merely idiosyncratic to the specific body of Richard and has nothing to do with the fact that his ‘self’ in toto has become extinct? RESPONDENT No 107: OK, is it possible, just as Richard admitted that he did not know if his experiences in sleep and dreams were typical of AF and did not assert that his personal experiences in sleep and dreams are the rule in AF, that other of Richard’s experiences in AF are personal and not ‘the rule’? VINEETO: A PCE, which everybody whom Richard has spoken to at length has been able to remember having had in their lives, easily confirms that the actual world as described by Richard exists as a fact and is neither ‘personal’ nor idiosyncratic. RESPONDENT: (…) Going by the topica list responses, some talk about PCE – I am not sure if the experience is same as you actualists talk about – because even those who agree had a PCE don’t subscribe to the mind boggling conclusion actualists are able to suss from such an experience – of the direct experience of infinity, godlessness, and so on; and a lot of the people don’t remember having; so why is this mailing list community sample so different from ‘everybody Richard has spoken to’? VINEETO: I said ‘everybody whom Richard has spoken to *at length*’. As for what you call ‘mind boggling conclusion’ – my first PCEs were mind-boggling in that I saw the world for the first time in my life not from the usual ‘self’-centred perspective a ‘self’ is bound to always see it – something which in itself is quite mind-boggling indeed. As I had more frequent PCEs and became more used to the new territory, so to speak, I was able to look around and use the clarity of a ‘self’-less experience to get answers on some burning questions I had. Maybe the most mind-boggling conclusion that I drew from one of my first pure consciousness experiences is that everybody, I mean everybody, including me, had got it 180 degrees wrong – we have all been suckered into believing in and following the wrong solutions, big time. Once I came to grips with this insight everything Richard had to report fell into place much more easily. * RESPONDENT No 107: If you wish I can stop asking you questions and sharing my understandings or you can ignore them. VINEETO: Nowhere did I say that you should stop asking questions. What I am saying is that it makes no sense to me to answer your questions when all you do with it is invalidating my understandings regarding my experiences as mere beliefs. Vis –
Can you raise the bar a bit? RESPONDENT: Do you believe that Richard is actually free from human condition? VINEETO: In a pure consciousness experience where my own ‘self’ is temporarily absent it is blatantly obvious that Richard’s ‘self’ is also absent and that the report he gives about his experiences of the actual world is consistent with my own experiences of the actual world. As I had more PCEs over a period of time I was able to confirm that Richard was always already in the actual world whenever I happen to step into it which is consistent with his report that he always lives in the actual world. No belief required at all.
RESPONDENT: I was practising Vipassana with the intent to be as happy and harmless as possible while facing the numerous feelings of both hardship and bliss that were revealed by the scrutiny of attentiveness, in order to eliminate those feelings and end up more happy and harmless... and what followed was a period of genuinely feeling really good, and then of naiveté and felicitous sensuousness, and then that resulted in a PCE! RESPONDENT No 60: Sounds like actualism with your eyes closed! RESPONDENT: Yeah that’s what I thought too, and it worked. VINEETO: Given that you have asked for my input This is not to say that a PCE cannot occur doing the original Vipassana or anything else for that matter – I had a PCE whilst helping in a ‘Fisher-Hoffmann’ emotional release process, during a ‘Who-Am-I’ group, during an Avatar technique session and even during a discourse of Rajneesh, all of which I only recognized as PCEs in hindsight. A PCE, being a glitch in the generally operating control-program of ‘me’, can happen any time in life under the most ordinary or extra-ordinary of circumstances. However, if I want to not only have PCEs occur on a regular basis but also use them as a tool for becoming free from the human condition then it makes sense to stick with the process of actualism so as to avoid slipping into altered states of consciousness or getting hooked on the experience only whilst ignoring the process of becoming increasingly free from malice and sorrow. * RESPONDENT No 60: (Or does it have ... ‘spiritual’ ... side-effects in your experience perhaps?) RESPONDENT: It has in the past, yes. I should point out though that my attitude towards it was different then. I considered the dissociated ‘I’ a stepping-stone toward a PCE. I didn’t recognise the basic, subtle resentful attitude that is in operation often, and so I rarely did anything about it, choosing instead to tranquilise the things it gave rise to… basically, controlling the instincts instead of eliminating them. On that course, I didn’t notice any spiritual side effects. I haven’t really sat much since because I just haven’t felt like it. My life’s been markedly better than before since I started with actualism in November last year. Sitting does make me feeling good, and I’m thinking of doing it from time to time as a way of giving myself a kick-start and activating delight… but I want to talk to Richard and the gang about it too. VINEETO: I am not surprised that you ‘haven’t really sat much since’ as I had the same experience. Why waste my time sitting in the corner with my eyes closed when I can instead be out and about enjoying being alive doing everyday things! Besides, I found that the trouble with wanting to integrate some old (spiritual) practices into the practice of actualism was that this would generally blur the distinction between the spiritual goal of dissociation and transcendence to a higher ‘Self’ on one side and the actualist’s goal of ‘self-immolation or ‘self’-diminishment as in a virtual freedom on the other. And going by my own experience, particularly in the beginning of practicing actualism I needed all the help for clarity that I could give myself. Two things I particularly remember that helped me ‘kick-start and activating
delight’ in the beginning – one was to deliberately change my habit of only being focussed on my plans and worries of the
day the moment I awoke, and instead pay attention to my surroundings, the delights of the ever-changing weather and the many
little sensate delights whenever they happened. The other was to regularly take time out, look around me, enjoy the weather,
notice my fellow human beings, the delightful interactions that do occur and then, especially after an eventful day, put up my
feet and contemplate about the specific events of the day, about the human condition in me and the feelings that occurred, why
they occurred, and how I could prevent me from getting upset the next time round. Inevitably having worked out some emotional
problem that had surfaced in the day would automatically re-activate delight and make me aware of how good life really is when all
the petty worries of the day are neatly left behind. * VINEETO: The reason I said that there is a remarkable difference between *feeling* harmless and actually being harmless is because it is easy to assess one’s happiness by checking if I am feeling happy whereas many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions *before* these translate into vibes and/or actions. It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions. Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself to be harmless. RESPONDENT: Can you say more about this? I usually feel harmless but have been thinking lately that I somehow still do harm simply by not paying attention and applying parity and consideration to others with whom I come into contact. How did you do this more and more? And how did you notice that you’re still harming someone even if you don’t have feelings of anger or aggression or the like? And how do you know it’s you harming them? Can you give a few examples? I’m finding it possible to consider this matter more now that I’m happier as its given me breathing room to be less self-centred, but it’s a pretty new subject to me. What keeps your mind on being considerate? Is it just a close scrutiny on the feelings and passions that arise? Are you more perceptive of others because the feelings and passions that are now arising are diminished so you’re naturally more attentive to other things as well, like what’s going on with other people? VINEETO: Sure. When I met Peter I was full of good intentions to make our living together work, i.e. to be as happy and peaceful as possible, but I had continuous clashes of opinion with him, frustrations of foiled expectation, hurt feelings and revenge of hurtful remarks. I realized that in order to be able live with Peter in peace and harmony I had to sort out a lot – my beliefs, my ‘truths’, my loyalties, my gender ideas, my problems with authority and all other sorts of feelings. I remember well the first evening when I looked at Peter and saw him as just another human being – not as a partner, a mate, a member of the other gender, a lover, a sexual object, a valuable addition to my circle of friends, and not as someone who would approve or disapprove of me – simple another fellow human being. Suddenly the separation I felt was gone and there was a delicious intimacy, as ‘I’ was no longer attempting to force him to fit into ‘my’ world. I was astounded and shocked by this experience, being outside of my so familiar ‘self’-centred and ‘self-oriented skin, because I realized that never before, not once in our 3-months acquaintance, had I been able, or even interested, to see him as a person in his own right. I was shocked at how all of my perception and consequently all of my interactions were driven by what *I* wanted, what *I* expected and what *I* believed him to be and how much I was therefore constantly at odds with how he actually was. From then on I paid as much attention as possible to become aware of situations when my feelings, beliefs, expectations and general attitude were standing in the way of recognizing another person, first Peter and later anyone I came in contact with, as equal fellow human beings, as persons in their own right, who live their own life, follow their own goals and aspirations, have their own preferences and tastes, and also, have their own set of morals, ethics and beliefs. The reason I am telling this story is because this experience was the beginning of a slow and wide-ranging realization that as long as I live in ‘my’ world – made up of ‘my’ worldview, ‘my’ beliefs, opinions, feelings and survival passions – I cannot help but struggle to fit everyone into ‘my’ world, as actors on the stage of ‘my’ play, so to speak, as family and aliens, as friends and enemies, as ‘good people and ‘bad’ people. And not only am ‘I’ busy trying to do this, everyone else – all six billion of us – are equally struggling to fit everyone into ‘their’ world. It then comes as no surprise that being actually harmless is out of the question –
until ‘I’ more and more leave centre-stage, stop resenting being here, stop being stressed, take myself less seriously, take
notice of other people the way they are and start enjoying life.
RESPONDENT No 32: Yes, I taste this freedom from time to time as I gradually let go of the various social protective masks and aspects of my identity. I begin to get a taste of the powerful instinctual passions, especially fear (habitual response to ‘losing’ something) and anger (habitual response for not ‘getting’ something) and the self-centred perspective they automatically create even when operating as a background noise. VINEETO: What I found was that the ‘background noise’ is actually the
engine of ‘me’ running all the time ready to flare up at any given opportunity. Although the opportunities to ‘flare’
become more and more rare, given that I am no longer bait for most of the usual follies and passions, the engine noise will only
stop when ‘I’ am finally extinct. RESPONDENT: Wow, Vineeto. Just by reading this and other recent posts by you have I been able to realize some important things, and had questions answered. I say, how much of this ‘engine noise’ do you still experience these days? VINEETO: When I try to compare the current ‘engine noise’ to the level I experienced before I started practicing actualism I can only vaguely remember what went on in my head and heart back then as the process of dissolving one’s ‘self’ leaves no scars. What I do remember though is that I had an uninterrupted stream of mostly worrying thoughts and feelings, which dominated my day-to-day life and that I felt a desperate need for feel-good ‘holidays’ in order to recover from my constant worries and sorrows. When I began practicing actualism I naturally became more and more aware of the feelings that were driving those worrying thoughts and after I experienced the stillness of the absence of ‘me’ in a PCE it became all the more urgent to do something about the non-stop ‘noise’ of ‘me’. Nowadays I feel excellent almost all the time, i.e. the ‘noise’ of ‘me’ is no longer interfering with me being happy. However, the presence of my ‘self’ is noticeable enough for me to know that the virtual freedom I enjoy is not the end of the path. The stillness that is always here and that becomes apparent when ‘I’ temporarily disappear in a PCE is bait enough to entice me to go all the way. RESPONDENT: And to what extent do PCE’s pervade your life? VINEETO: As guiding lights the memories of PCEs pervade every moment of my life but PCE nowadays do not happen very often. At the beginning of practicing the actualism method I had many stunning insights into the human condition and quite a few of them stunned me into pure consciousness experiences. In the years of practicing attentiveness I have developed a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the human condition and of actuality and as a consequence those PCE-triggering insights have become less frequent. Once in a while a PCE sneaks up on me when I am the least expecting it but what I am more concerned about is the quality of my life between PCEs for this is when the real work happens. When all is said and done a PCE is not within my control, certainly not ‘my’
control, but how I experience my daily life is something I can do something about on a moment-to-moment basis, and that is what
the method of actualism is all about. To put it differently – the job that ‘I’ need to do can only be done by ‘me’, in
the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. And the moment I uncover the last bond and untie the last knot that connects me to
humanity, ‘my’ demise will happen on its own accord.
RESPONDENT: To assume can be to egotistically presume superiority. VINEETO: The other day I had a pure consciousness experience where I understood once again that the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is indeed the particular flavour of human beings on planet Earth. I experienced a broadened awareness that gave me an overview of planet Earth floating in space, observing all that is going on and seeing its common flavour of humanity, whatever the place, race, gender or age. Human beings, by their very nature are inflicted with the genetically-encoded instincts that produce malice and sorrow. They pervade every thought and action, are the fuel for every emotion and passion and make ‘life a bitch and then you die’. The social identity and the instinctual ‘self’ are intrinsic to and a result of the evolution that took place on this fair planet, the third rock from the Sun, in the Milkyway galaxy, in the infinite universe. Yet now the evolution has reached a point where humans can free themselves from the now unnecessary ‘appendix’ of the social identity and the animal survival instincts. What serendipity! In this PCE I could also see that even though a staggering six billion people think, believe, feel and act within these parameters of the Human Condition, the actual world is nevertheless infinite, eternal, perfect, silent and magical. The actual world is always and everywhere present underneath the doom and gloom of our ‘self’-centred perception and can be discovered any moment. In such a PCE I can see that it does not matter that right now there is only Richard who lives in the actual world 24 hours a day, every day. This blithesome, magnificent and benevolent actual world exists always and everywhere around us, it is always here, always now and immediately experienced when I leave all of humanity behind. Out of this and similar experiences, I don’t need ‘to assume’ – I know the Human Condition in its totality, in myself and therefore in everybody, because I can see it from not being afflicted by it for a certain period of time. Such experience is the opposite of ‘egotistical’ because a PCE is only possible when the whole ‘self’ is absent – in spiritual terms, both ego and soul. And yes, such an experience, even for a short period of time is vastly superior to any experience within the Human Condition. That’s why I want to live it every day, 24 hours a day. I don’t need to ‘presume superiority’, I simply write from the memory of the superior state evident in a pure consciousness experience and from the ongoing experience of Virtual Freedom. * RESPONDENT: I must point out that I am not ‘just’ writing, but like you, I am writing from experience. VINEETO: Because Actual Freedom is so new and radically non-spiritual, it often
happens that it is difficult to distinguish between Actual Freedom and the teachings of ‘wisdom’ that have been around for
centuries. Having had several experiences of PCEs and of Altered States of Consciousness I can say that I am an expert on the
pitfalls and seductions of the spiritual world. If you are interested you can read about If by ‘I am writing from experience’, you mean life-experience, it can only be an emotional experience from within the Human Condition and, as such, is worth sharing to enhance the inquiry. If you mean you are writing from an experience of a PCE, I can only go by what you write and your words and descriptions don’t convey the experience of a self-less state. In our exchange before last you used expressions like:
To me these expressions are indicative of a spiritual experience, and are not
describing a pure consciousness experience. In a PCE one is this flesh-and-blood body only with the clear awareness of what is
actual. Everybody who can remember a PCE can recognize when someone describes the purity of the actual world. In a PCE the
‘real’ world does not exist because the ‘real’ world consists of ideas, beliefs, emotions and passions produced in the
head and in the heart. In a PCE there is no ‘emotional ... remembrance’ because emotions are the very substance of the
self.
RESPONDENT: Re: PCEs, excellence experience, etc. I wrote to Richard, a while before the site went down, about an experience I felt was a PCE. After reading all the information that has been going back and forth the past week, I am sure that it was. I won’t go into great detail, but for an hour the whole affective feeling layer of me was peeled away and I experienced directly with no feeling sense mediating, mitigating, or interfering in any way. Everything was remarkably vivid, like if you had a very dirty window and then cleaned it. Answering the question, was this the ultimate, is this how I want to experience my life from now on? Yes, without doubt. VINEETO: What serendipity! A PCE, and the memory of a PCE, is an invaluable
guide for an actualist, it is the ultimate authority to ascertain and confirm one’s aim in life. My first PCEs often came as a
shock, firstly as to the remarkable difference to my normal experiencing of life, and secondly to the obvious implications that
they had for ‘me’, my identity. The PCE makes it startlingly and devastating clear that all that is preventing me from
experiencing perfection is ‘me’, who I think, feel and instinctually know myself to be. If I want to experience perfection 24
hrs a day, ‘I’ will have to disappear completely.
RESPONDENT:
VINEETO: There is another topic-page on I myself didn’t have a PCE until four month of intense investigations into actual freedom, but I had enough understanding that the old solutions didn’t work and I had the intent to investigate something new. However, to become actually free it is very helpful, and eventually vital, to remember
a PCE in order for you to have clear experiences of the freedom that you are aiming for. But don’t let the worry of not
remembering one right now spoil your enjoyment of the moment or diminish the intent of your investigation into your emotions and
beliefs. Sooner or later, if you are sincerely, honestly and persistently inquiring, a PCE will sneak up on you, possibly after
you have seen through a particularly ‘dense’ belief. When it happens, it is good to look out for the ‘good’ emotions of
gratefulness, bliss, love and beauty so they do not to take over, thus inviting the ‘self’ back in and destroying the purity
of the peak experience.
RESPONDENT: I don’t agree with all that is said on the site, I stand by my right to question things, but I do agree that the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness/ unhappiness, VINEETO: Whereas my barometer as to whether I am on the right track to becoming actually free is my level of harmlessness, both in external actions and in internal feelings and thoughts – happiness then happens mostly on its own accord. RESPONDENT: [the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness /unhappiness] and ultimately the PCE experience. VINEETO: To me the memory of PCEs is the touchstone for the work that ‘I’ need to do and the guiding light on the wide and wondrous path. As long as I am an instinctual identity, a PCE happens serendipitously, once in a while and is not, as the word ‘barometer’ seems to suggest, an indicator and a reward for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour. My first
RESPONDENT: I’ve been reading up on Actual Freedom site since a few months and I’m glad I came across this wonderful practice. I used to meditate in the ‘Ramana Maharishi’ method for about 1.5 years. Later ‘knowledge’ showed the light and I became a materialist/Atheist. I found the AF practice extremely simple and testable. I’ve been successful and happy with my ‘results’ at inducing a PCE mostly when I’m ‘outside’ (i.e. walking on the streets, in the garden, etc.). VINEETO: Given that you say you ‘became a materialist/Atheist’ – have you been able to understand in what way an actual freedom from the human condition is the *third* alternative to both materialism and spiritualism? RESPONDENT: My typical experience of PCE is as follows:
Title: Is something wrong with my ‘PCE’? VINEETO: What is wrong with your PCE is that it is an altered state of consciousness but not a pure consciousness experience. Let me explain it according to your own description –
RESPONDENT: However, when I try to have a PCE in the middle of ‘intellectually demanding’ actions, things start going wrong and thus this post. VINEETO: Maybe those ‘‘intellectually demanding’ actions’ are really emotionally demanding actions? People often mistake their feelings to be thoughts, not recognizing the affective quality of most of their thoughts. RESPONDENT: IMO, ‘Intellectualism’ needs modelling a future action + an object within one’s mind and estimating how the ‘model’ behaves for any given decision [snipped link to AI]. I see ‘Intellectuality’ as being in direct conflict with ‘living this moment as a flesh and blood body’. In such a scenario, like when being at work, I only see lips moving and sounds emanating from people. ‘Words’ don’t make ‘meanings’ for the ‘I’ isn’t even around to care. Is this an inherent ‘side effect’ of practicing AF? Or am I doing something wrong? It would be great to hear experienced people’s thoughts on this. VINEETO: It appears that when you became a materialist/Atheist you nevertheless kept the spiritual idea that thoughts and consequently the content of words are impure and that therefore only a thoughtless body and meaningless sounds can be pure. Rather than it being ‘an inherent ‘side-effect’’ of practicing actualism this unliveable ethic of spiritualists and materialists alike is pure fantasy and can never work in everyday life. In actualism, I recognize that it is the instinctual passions and the identity arising from these passions that is the problem, not thoughts or words or ‘intellectualism’ per se. When you recognize this fact in theory – as in seeing that it makes sense – then you can begin to put this understanding in practice. This requires that I pay an ongoing attention to how I experience this moment – what do I think, what do I feel and how do I sensately experience this moment of being alive. This attentiveness alerts me to any of the non-felicitous feelings as and when they arise which allows me to feel the feeling (instead of the usual automatic reaction of repressing or expressing the feeling), in order to be able to label it, inquire as to what triggered it, examine what belief, moral or ethic may be responsible for having triggered it off, and so on. Eventually this attentiveness will result in unravelling all of one’s beliefs, ideas, ideals, philosophies, worldviews and social conditioning and enables one to become acutely aware of the instinctual passions as and when they arise. Being aware of one’s feelings and instinctual passions will in turn enable you to
differentiate between your affective and your non-affective thoughts, the later of which quite commonly occur in PCEs as well as
in virtual freedom.
RESPONDENT to No 106: (…) It is not important to label the experiences as PCE or not. (…) VINEETO: I disagree. If you want to become actually free from the human condition then it is vital to accurately ‘label the experiences as PCE or not’ because a pure consciousness experience is my touch stone and my guiding light, so to speak, so as to know what I want, which direction I am heading and what I need to do to achieve my goal. A PCE is the one and only experience that makes me aware of and allows me to experience the actual world that lies hidden beneath the elaborate, confusing and ever-changing chimera created by the identity inside this body and a PCE is the one and only experience that can clearly guide me towards an actual freedom from the human condition. Besides, unless one is able to accurately label a PCE as such and an altered state of
consciousness as a non-PCE one will remain dependant on the words and experiences of others and can never be free from this
dependency and the resulting resentment of such external authority.
VINEETO to Konrad: What got my main attention out of all the writings that went back and forth is the one you have sent to Richard the other day:
I have until now only this much description of what you call ‘your process’ and I
am fascinated by it because it reminds me strongly of the first peak experiences I had after I met Peter and Richard. For the
description of it I will attach what I have written in But the shock from the contrast was immense, it left me shaking for days. I, for myself, can definitely say that it was fear that coloured the interpretation and memory of this experience. What helped me since then to go back and be familiar in this pure, pristine, actual state was being able to communicate with Peter in this actuality, and the delight of meeting another human being so intimately as never before. It helped me to notice that even without beliefs I can still rely on my senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, thinking, talking, reflecting. With growing confidence I now can enjoy the heightened intensity of the senses, be safe in being with other human beings without the protective shell of ideas, beliefs, emotions and instincts. And it is now my experience that it is absolutely possible and imminently desirable to live in that state 24 hrs. a day. I am not lacking anything I would need to survive, my brain functions more sensibly and better than ever to supply whatever I need to take care of myself. I am writing this, I notice, to seduce you to experiment with what you call ‘your
process’ into that direction, using all the senses and meeting another ‘human being’ as a delightful addition to being on
your own, because I found it the best way to be alive since sliced bread. By communication this process for me has become
practicably applicable, testable and magically down-to-earth. Becoming grounded into my senses as the media to experience the
world rather than relying on my imagination and fear has helped me immensely to dwell in this ‘state’ for longer and longer
periods, interacting with people with an ease I thought I could never have. And you say it yourself that there was ‘An
absolute certainty based on absolutely nothing ... NO doubt.’ I call it obvious and evident.
VINEETO: Why, despite your transformation, are emotions still so important that you have to establish ‘mutual emotional credit’ first, before your ‘intelligence of the neocortex’ can begin to operate? Do you no longer practice ‘domination of emotions’? KONRAD: I hope this is no rhetorical question. If it isn’t I shall answer it. I begin to understand that people do not have emotions, but they are their emotions. Emotions are an expression of the social intelligence. VINEETO: There is a vital difference between ‘who’ I am and ‘what’ I am. ‘Who’ I am – my ‘self’, my identity, my ‘being’ – is determined both by the genetic instinctual programming and the social identity, or nature and nurture, as some may call it. ‘Who’ I am is both the instinctual passions and its resulting emotions and beliefs, whereas ‘what’ I am is this flesh and blood body. KONRAD: J. Krishnamurti made the assertion, that emotions arise out of thought. I didn’t believe it, but after a very extensive conflict with somebody on the Klavarskribo organ e-mail list, and meditating intensely on it, I saw that this was the essence of ‘the human condition’. Next to this, this is consistent with the Objectivist’ statement, that emotions are a manifestation in consciousness of automatic thought processes. Let me quote the Objectivists on this to show what emotions really are. Emotions as a Product of Ideas (Leonard Peikoff.) <snip> In other words, emotions stem from our thoughts! Exactly the thesis of J. Krishnamurti. This means, that to be truly to be without emotions, you must be without thoughts. Clearly, no actualist is without thoughts, if only because they all use language. VINEETO: You know, Konrad, when I experienced the world without the distorting veil of my emotional-instinctual ‘self’ in a pure consciousness experience, I saw everything as if for the first time. Everything was sparkling, pure, perfect, crystal clear and magical. With my ‘self’ temporarily absent I could see the world as it is and people as they are. I could also see that it is only ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual ‘self’, that stands in the way of experiencing this magical fairy-tale-like perfection 24 hours a day. From this first and many following PCEs I know that it is very well possible, despite your belief and that of thousands of others, to live without ‘self’ – without soul, without identity, without emotions and without the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. From the pure consciousness experience I also know that everyone else has got it wrong – every theory, every belief, every concept, everything we feel and think ourselves to be is not what we are. J. Krishnamurti, the objectivists, Carl Popper, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Agnostics, Mohan Rajneesh, and all the other teachers, believers and followers ... they all got it 180 degrees wrong. Fact is, when ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual entity inside this flesh and blood body, disappears then, and only then, there is peace on earth. The fashionable myth ‘that emotions arise out of thought’ is wrong and has always been wrong. Within the human condition most thoughts are emotion-backed, emotion-infused – they are contaminated with feelings tainted by instinctual survival passions and they are almost always self-centred. Examine and investigate your emotions and passions and you will find that your thoughts will become less frantic and more peaceful, less frequent and more capable of astounding clarity. The actualism method aims at eliminating the ‘self’, not eliminating the emotions.
This is done by examining and thus diminishing good and bad feelings and increasing the felicitous/ innocuous feelings. If you do
this with sincere intent and stubborn determination, it will eventually result in the collapse of the ‘self’ because the
‘self’ can only thrive on good and bad emotions – it does not get nourishment when I am happy and harmless.
VINEETO: Further you wrote about your ‘awakening experience’ in the epiphany (http://members.tripod.com/~Metta_Z/Epiphany.html): METTA: ... transforming into an wave of complete and absolute euphoria, an indescribable contentment that extended far beyond the bounds of human expression. Suddenly, I recognized that the world is absolutely complete and perfect, exactly as it is. The present moment was whole and integrated. Any sense of fundamental separateness was gone. ‘I’ was still there, but any anxiety I had ever felt was completely eliminated. All I knew/felt/experienced was the complete and absolute perfection of the present moment. Within this timeless, euphoric space, I suddenly realized and knew with unmistakable clarity that the universe, exactly as it is within the present moment, is absolutely complete and perfect. This was a moment of overwhelming revelation, of pure and absolute joy. The perfection and wholeness of the universe seemed so obvious, so simple, so complete, so absolute. Like a bliss-filled fool, I alternately laughed and cried, spontaneously and irresistibly, at the exquisite perfection of All That Is. Even as I eventually awakened my partner, and began to shower and prepare for our client’s meeting, this astonishing energy continued to move through me, in wave after wave of sweet and unspeakable joy. VINEETO: What you describe here sounds like a powerful Peak Experience. It can be brought on by various circumstances including certain drugs and lasts for periods from a few minutes to days. ‘I’, my identity, get a taste of the actual world in its utter purity and ‘as-it-is-ness’, in its clarity and perfection, and I experience everything including me-as-my-body being made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe. In a pure consciousness experience I don’t have the feeling of ‘Oneness’ but know for the first time that there is no actual separation between you as a physical body and the rest of the universe. In a peak experience I experience the world as it is, in its marvellous actuality, factuality, while ‘me’, the ‘self’ is temporarily in abeyance, not interfering. Then it is possible to see the world as-it-is, without the psychic and psychological web of human emotions, beliefs, instincts and fear. The peak experience is a glimpse into what it is to be a human being without the ‘I’ being present and spoiling it all. But then you go on describing – as I see it – an emotional and affective interpretation of the perfection you experience, reverting to the ‘normal’ frame of good emotions, bliss, euphoria, gratefulness and the belief in Oneness and Wholeness: METTA: I became keenly aware of the river of energy
flowing through each of us – an energy arising from within and intuitively guided by this exquisite perfection. I realized that
everything appearing before us is simply a manifestation and expression of this energy, and that this energy is always moving
through each of us, guiding us throughout our lives. Suddenly, I realized the fundamental simplicity of our existence and our
purpose:
And I understood that this realisation will dawn upon each of us, naturally and inevitably, as we begin to release our resistance to the flow of this energy moving within our lives. With this realisation, I began to understand, more clearly than ever before, the value of paying attention to:
VINEETO: And here, I think you went off the originally pure experience. From
experiencing the world in its purity, actuality and perfection ‘you’ jumped in and gave it a name and a philosophy, creating
and repeating yet another belief ABOUT perfection. It is a grand scheme, it is viewing the ‘normal’ human belief structure
from a grander, wider perspective, but still fully within the psychic web and within the limited and distorted interpretation and
imagination of the ‘I’. You say it yourself, there is an identity still operating, enjoying the bliss and the euphoria of the
realisations.
VINEETO: At the same time that I was watching this I was distinctly aware of my thinking and my journeying in this magical ‘inner’ world. At one stage I even experienced what it is to be mad. I understood the temptation of staying forever in an easy, illusory world of psychedelic wonders, where the mad person is the magician in his own world enjoying the power and safety of his dream. But anybody who dares to question this dream has to be considered a deadly enemy. However, I was always aware that I had the choice to stay in this imaginary world or not. When I tried to tell Peter about my experiences and insights his simple response gave me quite a shock. ‘But all this is just inside your mind, it is simply your own interpretation, it may appear to be real, but it is not actual.’ Yes, that was true. I could easily see that I was inside the ‘mind’, roaming about in the different chambers of my assembled beliefs-systems, trying to find the one that was ‘right’ and ‘true’ – while in fact, I was just having a little grander and unusually complex perception of this huge labyrinth of thoughts and feelings! I could see more of my ideas or concepts and other people’s ideas, but they were simply ideas and feelings. None of them had any relevance to the actuality of the physical world! In seeing the fact, everything stood still and the whole construct of beliefs suddenly disappeared. Then, for the first time in all my years of the spiritual search, I experienced several hours outside of the ‘psychic world’. Being outside, I could see that this ‘world’ is a huge, all-encompassing construct, created and held in place by the dreams, beliefs, bonds, power-battles, emotions and different spiritual ideas of all of humanity. Everyone is part of it, weaving and reproducing bits of this ‘psychic carpet’. RESPONDENT: In regards to your description of your psychic nightmare I agree with Peter here. All the madness is inside the mind. Human beings are all walking around in a cloud of mental noise and madness. VINEETO: You seem to have conveniently overlooked that I was describing a pure consciousness experience, after I stepped out of the ‘psychic nightmare’:
A pure consciousness experience is when fear, generated by the instinctual programmed self, stops and is not replaced by any other feeling, be they bliss, gratitude, being present, Grace, Oneness, Truth, Love, Compassion, ‘Surrender’, Beauty or Wholeness. Simply because the self is temporarily absent, because all feelings have ceased, one is able to experience the magnificence, magic and abundance of the actuality of it all. One then is the universe experiencing itself as a flesh-and-blood sensate and reflective human being. There is no sense of ‘being’ whatsoever. There is only this actual world and the overlaying real world and spiritual world of feelings, imaginations and instinctual passions can clearly been seen for what it is – a passionate illusion. From the self-less perspective of a PCE, the self can be seen, labelled, explored and
discriminated as the overlaying chemical-induced self-centred structure that encapsulates each human being in a shell of survival
fear and the ensuing instinctual passions and emotions. In these moments one can thoroughly understand what one’s psychic
structure consists of – an intricate web of conditioning, feelings, beliefs and fervent passions complete with vivid
imagination.
VINEETO: Hi everybody, (...) I was reminded of a particular outstanding experience during the Anti-Fisher-Hoffman-Process in Pune. It was my second time I did the group, the first time that I was a staff-member. The AFH, as we called it, is a 10-12 day process of looking at childhood issues and overcoming fear, resentment, anger, attachment with intense bio-dynamic methods. By the third day, with lots of ‘work’ and little sleep, everybody hit their limit. I dragged myself forward, fantasizing about the time when I could sleep again as long as I wanted, if I only made it through the next ‘hellish’ days. Suddenly it dawned on me that what I was doing was waiting. I was wasting my time for ‘redemption’. And I realised that there was no difference to ‘waiting for heaven’ or for enlightenment, or for the right man, or... With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no
heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant
one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. This peak-experience lasted for several hours, and while everyone else
was tired to the bone I bounced in refreshed aliveness. Later on the event got filed into the category of ‘group-highs’ and
the memory of it soon faded away. But for those few hours I had lived in the actual world, here, now, without God, heaven,
authority, love, hope and postponement. I had experienced that this moment is the only moment we have got, the only moment we can
experience being alive, to be either miserable or happy, complaining or fully alive.
RESPONDENT: I see that you have done a lot of internal searching on the insanity of falling-in-love, or being-in-love. I totally concur about going beyond this madness. But despite your objections about love, delight and joy of being alive is heart, is love, my dear. Pure love. I have perceived your care, which with pure love is compassion by the way, in most of your posts. VINEETO: You say you have had many awakenings. Did it ever occur to you that there is more awakening possible – maybe even awakening from the spiritual, compassionate dream? ... when the bubble of beliefs bursts and you experience the actual world for the first time with clean eyes, unrestricted by emotions, beliefs or instincts... I have described that bubble bursting:
VINEETO: It is good to be precise with words. A clear understanding can lead you to a realisation, which can lead to a peak-experience. Then you can experience for yourself the actuality of what we are talking about – the purity, the obviousness, the fairy-tale like magic of the ‘self’ being temporarily absent. RESPONDENT: Ahhh, now you lose me. Clearly you are saying that there is more for me to experience. Clearly you believe I do not experience the actuality of what you are talking about. Perhaps this is the case. Truthfully, when you talk about the ‘self’ being temporarily absent, I do not know what you are talking about. Can you explain more how one knows when one’s self is absent??? VINEETO: From my own experience of the first major peak-experience I know that without the comparison of such an experience it is difficult to locate and isolate the ‘self’. Only after I experienced that the ‘self’ consists of my emotions as well as my beliefs could I get a grip on this amorphous psychic entity that is ‘me’. I come here into this moment and leave my ‘self’ behind. When you have a peak-experience and the ‘self’ is absent this fact is very obvious to you. There is no sense of separation to anything and anybody whatsoever. There is no feeling or emotion and you know that this is not your imagination, it is simply so. I have written to No 13 about Pure Consciousness Experiences (PCE) – and you may want to read a few descriptions in Peter’s Journal. It takes a bit of reading to get the gist of it, a PCE is so very different from our everyday experience of life as a ‘self’. These are the links:
If you can’t remember a peak-experience, another way to approach the subject is to
determine how the ‘self’ is present – what feeling do ‘I’ have now?, what’s my objection to being here?, what
longing to connect with someone?, what slight feeling of numbness or boredom?, what irritation about someone’s words or
behaviour? Driving a car was always a good test for me, so many ways to get irritated, and so unnecessarily. The ‘self’, when
investigated, can be very cunning in disguising itself as the imagination of having arrived – because then one stops dismantling
it. ‘I’ have every investment not to be found out, not to die. And yet, ‘I’ am the only thing in the way of experiencing
this blithe and perfect moment of being alive.
RESPONDENT: (...) One more thing, there is one issue that I don’t quite get... Sometimes, out of a sudden, I experience ‘time of my life’. All is deliciously beautiful moment by moment and there are no problems whatsoever. But then there is this sweet feeling of ‘completeness’ and not needing anything else at all. Sometimes it just goes on and on for a while. It won’t stop while I look at it... What is your experience about it? VINEETO: I am not so sure what you mean by ‘time of my life’. Maybe you can describe to me your last ‘time of your life’. Peter and I have described our peak-experiences, when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Life is then experienced as easy, obvious, safe, abundant and magical. Richard describes apperception as ...
Another option of ‘time of my life’ is an Altered State of Consciousness. The ASC is characterised by a feeling of Oneness ... human love becomes Divine Love – what I call Love Agapé – wherein love ceases being a feeling and becomes a state of being ... ‘Pure Being’. This feeling of Union with The Divine – Unitary Awareness – is an Oceanic experience that assures immortality ... and is thus selfishness to its very core. Peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for residing in this Deathless State. I have given The difference between a pure consciousness experience and ASC is that there is no
‘feeling’ or emotion in a peak-experience. There is simply this obvious, sparkling, intimate experience of the perfection and
purity all around. Such peak-experiences became the reference points for me to clean myself up, to reach this purity 24 hrs a day.
In the peak-experience you know that the only problem is ‘you’ and you set out to eliminate ‘your’-self, bit by bit.
RESPONDENT: and what IS the Soul anyway ... that is something that I do not understand as of yet because I am not there yet. VINEETO: (...) RESPONDENT: Until I experience that place where you’ve been I cannot tell. VINEETO: I had described this peak-experience so one can root around in one’s memory to find maybe a similar experience, where one was neither in the heart nor full of worries (‘in the head’), an experience where the ‘self’ is completely absent. Many people actually experience this state many times in their lives although most people forget about it – for there is no emotional ‘I’ present to record the moment on its affective ‘tape-recorder’. So you have to look for this memory, it does not just pop up, you have to root around to recall a situation where you experienced life and the world around you as crisp, clear, perfect and peaceful, without a feeling of beauty or love and without any separate sense of ‘self’. The advantage of the actual world is, you can reach it from anywhere, it is always here. Everybody can see a coffee cup as a coffee cup, a tree as a tree and hear a cricket as a cricket. No spiritual achievement is needed for that – on the contrary, it leads you further away from the actual experience of the physical senses. But to keep God in existence you need many beliefs – the belief that God is all-present, all-knowing, all-pervading, the belief that God loves you, that God created the universe, that God will take care of you and take care of your soul after death. Question those beliefs and you will watch God disappear in front of your very eyes. God, by whatever name, actually does not exist. You don’t have to go anywhere ‘first’, you can experience it any time. You can
start today by relentlessly questioning everything that is not evidenced by the physical senses, and what is left after all
beliefs are dismantled is the actual, the factual. It needs courage and a bloody-mindedness and a good deal of common sense –
but it is possible, one can start immediately.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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