Anyone writing here on the list has at the very least retained their instinct to eat and drink. Just as the child instinctually suckles the breast. At this point you will need to explain the distinction. You can reason that to eat is not a debilitating instinct, but with an intact ‘I’, it certainly can result in debilitation. So then, it’s not the instinct that is debilitating, but the action that proceeds from it. Your I-lessness may provide the freeing you experience, but not by ‘elimination’ of instincts, it appears.

In some respects, to extinguish the in-born, genetically programmed survival responses of the organism to danger seems insane and incredible.

Richard, lets say hypothetically a stranger had a gun aimed at your face, what sort of thoughts might occur in your mind?

Both Peter and Richard have said they could still defend themselves quite easily if attacked on the street. Where does that ‘force’ or ‘power’ required come from since it’s not ‘aggression’? I guess I’m searching for some distinction between the feeling of aggression and forcefulness. Also between passionate excitement and enthusiasm and actual being fully engaged.

 If someone breaks into your house at night, if someone kidnaps your wife, if a sudden economical change takes your pension from you ... I hope none of these actually ever happens to you, but if they did how would you feel? How would you re-act?

Related to this (the link between ‘the inner’ and ‘the outer’), is it possible for someone who is actually free, happy and harmless, to freely, happily and harmlessly punch someone in the face? I mean I’m talking ‘in context’ here – not just through malice, but to protect someone, or something like that.

I don’t think that [being totally without any feelings] is anything to ascribe to. Just one last question (or two), Richard: If you see your mother hit by a Mac truck and her flesh and blood body smashed all over the pavement, you feel nothing? If your six year old daughter is brutally raped and murdered, you feel nothing? If you catch you wife making out on the couch with your best friend, you feel nothing? If your house burns down and you lose all of your possessions, you feel nothing? The world up around you is burning up, you feel nothing?

I think without some amount of (positive) anxiety, excellence may not be achieved. So, it is possible that what nature has programmed in us – the surge of adrenalin on occasions – has a purpose even in the modern times where we are not faced with fight-or-flight situations that you mention. Makes sense, at least a little?

Fright is the intelligent response to danger. Fright is what keeps one alive in very dangerous places. It is resistance to fright that paralyses one with fear through conceptual separation. Fear is seen here as the result of thought projecting a future occurrence through an image. Fear is only experienced by a divided consciousness.

I would like to ask you something about the universe and our world and our instinctual passions. Humans have survived and are beginning to flourish. In our world. But what about other planets, if there are other civilizations. If people would leave in a utopia without instinctual passions, in peace, and an alien powerful instinct-driven race would attack our planet, we won’t have any military to defend ourselves as a first defence. So how would we survive then? Maybe that is the reason humanity won’t give up its instincts because such an attack is a possibility, and there’s no way to survive it without being constantly not in peace as a race, for the fire to be on, for the heat to be up, as we simply won’t have any weapons. I understand that what I’m saying is the survival projection of survival of the species and the fear to examine passions. But isn’t there any validity to this question, as the big scheme picture might not be just the humanity, animals and this planets, but other planets and other raging species?