RESPONDENT: Facing the reality of my own demise has been one of my favourite obsessions in the past.

VINEETO: I am somewhat confused as to what you mean by ‘facing the reality of my own demise … in the past’ – are you referring to the demise of the ego that leaves the soul intact, as taught in each and every branch of Eastern mysticism, or are you referring to facing physical death?

RESPONDENT: I was referring to the death of the body, and by implication my identity, the traditional existential angst. I have never quite ‘got’ the soul. It always seemed a fabrication purely to assuage the visceral fear of one’s physical death. If you’re good, your soul gets to go to heaven, and in the meantime, here’s the tithing basket. The whole soul/ afterlife/ eternal energy scenario just never added up, when I applied common sense. So, the interesting characteristic of AF is this dismantling of the identity, the very thing that has the dread. Having abandoned any notion of an afterlife, it seems the only game in town.

VINEETO: The ‘soul’ is not dissolved by dismissing ‘any notion of an afterlife’ nor by maintaining an agnostic view about a life after death. The soul – ‘who’ I feel ‘I’ am deep down inside – is apparent in every belief, every mood, every emotion and every affective reaction that one experiences. To find one’s soul in action is the essential task for an actualist because the very action of recognizing my soul in action is paramount to dismantling it. The soul is the deepest core of my being, the seat of the instinctual passions, the very substance of ‘me’ – that which you once called ‘the actual being’. Vis:

[Respondent]: For me, the identity became almost a separate entity, one palpably distinct from the actual being. Thus, it ceases to be personal... I am not the identity, it is simply but a parasite that can be dealt with. No 38 to No 48, 26.1.2003

This perception that ‘who I really am’ is a non-personal ‘actual being’ who is ‘palpably distinct from’ my personal identity is pure Zen. The ‘self’ plays hide and seek by dividing itself into two apparently separate identities – a personal identity, or ego, and a non-personal actual being, or soul – with the aim of humbling the first identity in order to glorify the second identity. Actualism is not to be confused with Zen because both the method and the aim are radically different – diametrically so in fact. The aim of actualism is the extinction of both identities, as becomes stunningly apparent in a pure consciousness experience where both parts of ‘me’ – the personal ‘I’ and the non-personal ‘being’ – are temporarily absent.

RESPONDENT: I used the term ‘actual being’, referring to the flesh-and-blood, and you linked it with the term ‘soul’. So maybe I’m using the wrong terminology? What is the official AF term for the body that sensately goes about its daily business? Whatever you want to call it, that’s what I was referring to, not the soul.

VINEETO: You are attempting to redefine your philosophy by using actualism ‘terminology’ and completely overlook that what you are doing is neither the method nor the practice to become actually free from the human condition. You explain it clearly in your next sentence –

RESPONDENT: I don’t know where the identity/ego ends and the soul begins, and I’m not sure it matters much, as it’s all learned behaviours and I lump them in the same category. And there is certainly no humbling or glorification going on, just a recognition of the existence of this identity/ego/soul.

VINEETO: Your understanding of the human condition is that ‘it’s all learned behaviours and I lump them in the same category’. This is the traditional spiritual stance that if one only succeeds in ridding oneself of one’s socialisation, the learned behaviours from one’s childhood, then one is free to be one’s natural being.

This ancient spiritual teaching is not improved by translating it into actualism ‘terminology’ – in fact nothing can improve this one-eyed thought-inhibiting intuition-enhancing philosophy of iron-age Eastern mysticism. If you want to become actually free from malice and sorrow then any and all previously acquired philosophies, teachings and techniques need to be thrown out – rooted out from deep within the soul you think you ‘never quite ‘got’’.

The day you clearly remember or clearly experience a pure consciousness experience will be the day you understand what your soul really is by the very remarkable difference of ‘your’ absence.

The process you seem to be describing as ‘they arose, I recognized them, then got back to being H&H’ has a striking resemblance to the method of Vipassana. This Buddhist ‘watching practice’ is based on the understanding that ‘who’ you really are is your ‘consciousness’, i.e. a disembodied, desensitized ‘watcher’, dissociated from unwanted emotions and thoughts.

In Vipassana, ‘watched’ anger eventually passes away, not because you understand its underlying reason and origin but because you become the watcher and distance yourself from your anger and merely watch it run its course. In the same way you can distance yourself from any feeling or emotion without ever having to investigate the substance of your ‘self’ – it’s instinctual core. To really face the fact that anger is ‘you’ in action, and that ‘you’ are the only cause and reason of anger arising, is the first and essential step to doing something practical about bringing an end to this emotion instead of merely witnessing it and waiting for it to pass away.

Actualism is not a method of passively monitoring, watching or observing one’s feelings – actualism is a method of actively investigating the origin of those feelings and thus rocking the very core of one’s identity.

Actually, my experience to date is kind of opposite of that. The ‘watcher’ is a useful component of the actual No 38, whereas the ‘dissociated’ entity is the identity, that which has the emotions and learned responses. I am being careful with that word ‘dissociated’ as it could imply suppression, sweeping it under the carpet. The whole point of this work is to keep it in clear view so that it can be taken apart, piece by piece, and that can’t be done if it’s hidden away.

This is the nub of the misinterpretation I was trying to explain. The ‘watcher’ is not ‘a useful component of the actual No 38’ – there is no way to experience the actual No 38 except in a pure consciousness experience. In a PCE the whole identity – both the ‘watcher’ and the ‘watched’ – temporarily go into abeyance.

The ‘watcher’ and ‘the ‘dissociated’ entity’ are part of the same identity – the ‘self’ split into two for the purpose of ‘self’-improvement.

*

Granted.

Are you saying you grant that –

‘the ‘watcher’ is not ‘a useful component of the actual No 38’’

and that

‘there is no way to experience the actual No 38 except in a pure consciousness experience’

and that

‘The ‘watcher’ and ‘the ‘dissociated’ entity’ are part of the same identity – the ‘self’ split into two for the purpose of ‘self’-improvement’?

The consequence of this agreement becomes apparent in your next paragraph.

But until my identity is eliminated (if that ever happens), I need to use some tools from my present perceptive context. That includes such artificial mechanisms as a ‘watcher’ or ‘monitor’, or forcing myself to remember to HAIETMOBA. By their nature, they are contrived, and certainly not for the long term. One day I would hope to abandon them when the need for them has passed, much as a child removes the training wheels from the bike, and experiences riding fully unencumbered.

If I understand you correctly you say that

• ‘until your identity is eliminated’ you need to use ‘such artificial mechanisms as a ‘watcher’ or ‘monitor’.

Above you ‘granted’ my statement that

• the watcher and ‘the ‘dissociated’ entity’ are part of the same identity.

Putting the two together you are then saying that

• ‘until your identity is eliminated’ you need to use ‘such artificial mechanisms as’ ‘the ‘dissociated’ entity’.

Whatever bicycle it is you are riding, this tautological circling will certainly keep your identity safely in place … for as long as you choose.

*

I remember well the trouble I had in wrapping my mind around the fact that all my good intentions in being a good person were but my ‘self’ playing ‘self’-sustaining tricks. The diagram ‘180 degrees opposite’ in the The Actual Freedom Trust Library is intended to clarify the difference between the traditional approach and actual freedom. Understanding the exclusive nature of the two approaches is paramount to comprehending the difference between actual freedom and spiritual freedom and how one needs to make a clear break from any form of spiritual ‘self’-improvement in order for actualism to work.

To really let this understanding sink in may serendipitously and fundamentally rock your world and, as a result, may bring about a ‘self’-less, ‘watcher’-less, pure consciousness experience.

It’s difficult for me to clearly convey this stuff into words and I would appreciate the feedback on the above. I take pains to be aware of any self-delusional tacks, but I think we are talking about the same thing here. I’ll wander through your provided links as a check.

My feedback is that you and I are talking about two different methods, each designed to give two quite different outcomes. The practice of ‘watching’ is designed to create a split personality where one part of your personality – the good No 38 – watches the other part of your personality – the bad No 38 – in an effort to dissociate yourself from the unwanted parts of your identity. The identity of the watcher is based on the understanding that ‘who’ you really are is your ‘consciousness’ and this ‘consciousness’ or ‘actual being’, to use your words, then dispassionately watches the unwanted emotions and ‘learned responses’ of the ‘other’ identity. Both identities are one and the same, two sides of one coin.

Actualism is the method specifically designed to bring both identities to an irrevocable end.

Peter has written a great deal about the identity of the watcher and the practice of ‘choiceless awareness’, if you like to ‘wander’ through a bit more information.

VINEETO to Respondent No 17: It seems to me that Peter and I are the only Earthlings here on the list, saying what a wonderful planet this can be without the shackles of the Human Condition.

It would be all very amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that people continuously fight and kill each other. I take it that your passionate writing is in response to the book review of ‘Zen at War’ that Peter mentioned to No 13, because in subject heading you wrote: No 13 re Zen.

Reading of the extensive and systematic involvement of Zen masters and monks in war-crimes has shocked me – and I guess it has shocked you as well. Here there is another description of what humans do to humans, always calling the other one the inferior race, an animal, inhuman, heathens, fiends and dangerous enemies to justify the ferocity and cruelty that is displayed in wars, collective acts of instinctual aggression. 160 million people were killed in wars this century alone, and those 160 million include the 350,000 Chinese of Nanking, the 6 million Jews of WW II, the 800,000 German and 1.1 million Russian soldiers in Stalingrad, the 800,000 Tutus in Rwanda, the 100,000 Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, the hundreds of thousands dead on both sides of the 40 years of Cold War and all the others that died for country, religion and ideology.

RESPONDENT: At another passage Mrs. Charlotte Joko Beck (Everyday Zen, Harper &Row, New York) advocates the opinion that emotional thoughts have to melt away, all these imagination, hopes. Every near relationship bring sufferings as our expectations are not fulfilled. We should make clear about these disappointments etc. and no longer cling to emotions. I don’t know whether I agree to it. But I think it sounds familiar to you.

VINEETO: It might sound similar. But what Zen implies and what is not mentioned in your quote is that the human emotions should ‘melt away’ for the higher goal of dissolving into the Divine or Higher Self. One should turn away from earth life and its disappointments and discover one’s ‘True Self’ (the Inner, the Soul, the True Nature) which then becomes one with everything. A giving up of human suffering for bliss in the ‘spirit’.

If you look closer it is only slightly different from the Christian faith, don’t you think so? Another translation, a less personified God (no man with a long white beard), but nevertheless a turning away from life on earth with its self-centred feelings and emotions.

The new thing, that I found in Richard’s discovery, is a questioning of everything that is not actual – not experience-able through the physical senses. This includes everything – good and bad – that human beings believe and ‘feel’ about being on earth. The important words are ‘believe’ and ‘feel’. Everything that we human beings have made up in our minds, in head or heart, is part of the particular identity of each of us. For instance: I have been a German, a woman, a secretary, a restaurant-owner, a Sannyasin, a drug-counsellor, a girlfriend, a lover, an Australian resident – all those emotional identities were the ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. Those roles and identities made me different to and separate from everyone around me who had different feelings, different beliefs, different emotional experiences or emotional memories. Further I discovered that I was driven by instincts – our animal heritage from the days of sheer survival – that all humans are equipped with from birth. They all form what we call ‘self’.

In the end, when I look around, it is exactly those different, passionate defended roles, beliefs and emotions that are causing both religious and territorial / tribal wars in the world. No religion or philosophy has ever, or will ever, succeed in bringing a lasting solution to wars, rapes, murder, suicide, depression, fear etc. Although using different methods, both Eastern and Western religions tell us to ‘go somewhere else’ in our imagination, into some inner space or some hoped for heaven after death.

The new approach is to get rid of this entity inside the physical body, which is more or less the same for every human being, and have paradise here on earth, while we are alive. I cleaned myself of the alien entity inside that feels, worries, is hurt, is hopeful, is loved or unloved, feels connected or an outsider, is angry, is anxious, excited or bored. An identity that continuously wants to make sense of questions like ‘why are we here?’ and ‘what happens after death’?

Recognising beliefs and emotions as just that, as ideas and feelings and not an actual part of my physical body and thus non-essential to living as a sensate and reflective body, I slowly slowly discarded every single one of them as redundant. It is a continuous psychic operation, shaking the very ground I thought I was standing on, but it is like removing a cancer that has made life hard, fearful, miserable or ‘otherworldly’.

This process is like taking the skin-tight suit off to feel the air on the skin for the first time, smell a flower for the first time without an interpretation of good or bad, to hear the rain falling on the leaves for the first time in this moment in time. Just the senses, and the delight of being aware of it. Any meaning, any goal, any moral or ethical judgement would stand in the way of this direct sensate intimacy. Simply being a human being, enjoying every moment of life, without malice, without sorrow – without an identity that would feel and act on those emotions.

The end-result is that one lives on this earth, in this moment, utterly carefree, able to apply intelligence wherever needed, fully enjoying the sensual delights and pleasures, and is much more innocent than a new-born child.

Not only hopes disappeared but also the ‘hoper’, not only feeling insulted disappeared but also the ‘feeler’ along with an ‘insulter’. The whole factory of emotions and imaginations (believing) has gone up in smoke. A wonderful liberation. A final arrival. I had searched all my life, but always in the wrong direction, away from life, away from earth, away from the physical. In a big loop I now come back to my senses, literally and figuratively.

I have intended in this summary to hit the core of the matter, but one never knows. However, after all my psychic and psychological problems are solved, the practical organization of a comfortable survival and life-style are no big challenge at all, which means that life is fun. I am as happy as can be, and harmless on top of it.

*

RESPONDENT: Joko Beck recommends to drop sticking to your ‘self’, your hope, fear, being furious, jealousy by right going into these emotions and finally get through. At the same time you will realise the growth of freedom and joy.

VINEETO: I know quite a lot about Zen from the Sannyas years and from reading, and therefore understand the background from where Joko Beck is writing. Zen, like Buddhism – its origin, bases its whole teaching on diminishing the ‘bad’ emotions like anger, fear, jealousy, hurt, despair etc and enhancing the ‘good’ emotions like love, compassion and heartfelt joy. It is a shift from one end of emotions to the other, like a see-saw. The proposed method doesn’t offer a permanent solution, and temporary it only works if one applies a lot of uphill struggle, because it means continuously fighting and being on guard against the basic human instincts. Also, at the same time, one has to apply the Zen understanding that who you really are is your ‘consciousness’, distinct from the body and senses and from the bad emotions and thoughts, which then are merely ‘seen’ or ‘observed’ as something rather foreign to one’s ‘true self’. All Eastern religious thinking is firmly based on the belief that ‘we are not the body’, ‘the physical existence is only a passing phase’, ‘consciousness is pure, and the body and the senses, the ‘self’ and the emotions are impure’.

I don’t really know what Joko Beck means by ‘going into and finally get through’? Is it some kind of combination of religion with modern therapy, a marriage of Zen and Wilhelm Reich? She seems to take a bit of Eastern and a bit of Western culture and cooks up a recipe of her own. The trouble with therapy – and I had plenty of personal experience of it – is that one gets rid of the unwanted emotion momentarily but never permanently.

Do you experience that the method Joko Beck subscribes results in a permanent disappearance of fear, anger, jealousy, hope and frustration or sadness for you?

Anyway, to a question. Some years ago I did a course in a Buddhist Monastery, in Thailand (long story), they practised an older form of Zen. (Can’t remember the name, and probably couldn’t spell it).

Dzogchen? Not that I know anything about this form of Buddhism (Zen), just an unpronounceable name I came across.

One of the disciplines was to acknowledge the feelings we were having every moment, not to repress, or to express them, or let them go, but just acknowledge them. Do you think this is similar to HAIETMOBA? If not, how is it different? This would be really useful to me.

You’ll find a lot of answers to this in Richard’s selected correspondences on Vipassana and Satya N. Goenka which is the main method of both Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, as well as Frequent Question Nr. 33. There is also a number of correspondences on Zen and on Buddhism.

In essence, what you need to take into account is for what purpose and aim you were asked to ‘acknowledge the feelings [you] were having every moment’. There is no point of taking this method, or any other method for that matter, out of context because a method is only as good as its underlying aim and philosophy and Buddhism in whatever form (and that includes Zen) aims to bring the cycle of life and death to an end in order for the ‘ultimate freedom’ to occur – for the spirit to be free from having to be born again into the ‘prison’ of a flesh-and-blood body.

Whereas in actualism you become aware of the feelings that are happening each moment when they interfere with you being happy and harmless in order to be able to return to being felicitous again. In contrast to good feeling (such as love, beauty, rapture, bliss and compassion) and bad feelings (such as malice and sorrow) felicitous feelings don’t feed your ‘self’ but leave it unemployed, so to speak. When you persist in choosing being happy and harmless on each and every occasion where the ‘self’ attempts to assert itself with worry, aggression or grandeur, then the ‘self’ becomes eventually so thin and weak that ‘I’ can hardly maintain myself and sensuous awareness of being alive becomes the predominant experience of life. In other words, as the ‘self’ diminishes what you are, a flesh-and-blood body brimming with sense organs, unbridled intelligence and awareness of its processes, becomes more and more apparent.

Maybe an example would help... On my way out of Thailand, at the airport, there were a few plain clothes police parading about, these guys had a reputation of planting drugs while searching ones luggage. I found myself feeling paranoid, so I began acknowledging how I was feeling. This began with ‘feeling nervous’ ... ‘feeling fear’, and so it went on until the feeling came up... ‘I am having an adventure’, all the other feelings disappeared and I felt relaxed.

Yeah, it’s always a good idea to find the thrilling aspect of fear should fear grip you and it is definitely important to become aware of and acknowledge your feelings as they are happening. But Zen recommends the method you described in order for you to realize your true body-less ‘Self’ whereas in actualism you aim to leave all aspects of the ‘self’ and ‘Self’ behind in order to be what you are – this flesh-and-blood body – 180 degrees opposite.

And in my experience this is absolutely delicious.