Subject: What happened to Peter?

ALEXANDER: Why doesn’t he write anymore? Where did he move to? […]

But still, what happened to Peter?

CLAUDIU: I emailed Vineeto to ask about Peter so I could give a full answer. She wrote this reply to you:

VINEETO: The last incident Richard reported about Peter was on 17 October 2011 –

• [Richard]: ‘(…) This morning whilst interacting with Peter it [the quickening] was happening for about an hour and a half, between 10:45 and 12:15 PM, to quite a marked degree … to such a marked degree, in fact, that at its peak Vineeto happened to experience it, at 11:28 AM, as she was getting into her parked car in a town about 35 kilometres away. She described it as a ‘sweetness’ (and thus took note of the time)’. (Monday the 17th October, 2011 8:31 PM).

However, even though Richard and Peter had many interactions in order to speed up Peter’s relinquishing of the guardian it never came to pass. Peter eventually put a halt to any further attempts when he moved away to a different part of the continent where he had family and friends. He was very touched when I informed him of Richard’s death and said that ;“Richard was and will continue to be a big influence on my life.”

Peter had been very influential for actualism not only by his extensive correspondence before becoming free, thereby detailing a way in which a still-in-control-virtual-freedom can be achieved and lived, but especially by “the direct route being opened by Peter and Richard on Dec 29, 2009, via a personified pure intent becoming immanently accessible” (Richard, List D, Rick, 28 May 2013). The detailed description of this event can be found here – Long Awaited Announcement) with special information in the mouse-hover tool-tips.

I utilized this direct route, opened up by Peter and Richard, and became newly free three days later.

It’s your call now, Alexander, to do the same.

Cheers Vineeto

February 21 2025

James: I do understand this completely that I am this flesh and blood body and not a precious identity.

Vineeto to James: You need to understand experientially and affectively ‘who’ you are in order that this passionate energy can propel you forward with sincere intent towards your goal to leave the ‘self’ behind and live as “this flesh and blood body”.

Presently you are not “this flesh and blood body” but you are the identity using your flesh and blood body as a host. Hypnotising yourself that you are already “this flesh and blood body” does not achieve anything but fooling yourself. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, James2, 19 February 2025a)

ALEXANDER: Hi Vineeto!

I assume you mean dissociating. But why assume when I can ask.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

There is a difference between hypnotising and dissociating. Hypnotising is a mental effort to convince yourself of something you are not – though it can involve pushing emotions under the carpet and Kuba has just explained very well what can happen with hypnotising oneself of something you are not.

Whilst dis-associate (disconnect, separate, detach) and dissociate have similar synonyms, Richard used the word dissociation in its psychiatric meaning (splitting off a component of mental activity to act as an independent part of mental life). In other words, dissociation is repressing emotions and harder to undo than dis-associating which is the result of suppressing emotions – in other words a matter of degree.

ALEXANDER: When I’m feeling good and then up it to feeling great then to excellent, I find that the senses become more pronounced and pleasurable. I feel pressure in my head and it’s like I’m on the verge of remembering a dream that was too good to be true. But I don’t want to waste my time dissociating or fooling myself.

VINEETO: The best way to not “waste my time dissociating” is to pay diligent affective attention to how you experience this moment of being alive and take note of every diminishment of feeling good. Then, once you get back to feeling good, you look at the trigger of what caused the diminishment so to avoid a repeat. It’s described in detail in Richard’s article This Moment of Being Alive.

Feeling being ’Vineeto’ used to ask herself some questions –

‘VINEETO’: In those situations when I couldn’t think my way out of my mental block, a condition which I later discovered to be cognitive dissonance, I used to ask myself what it was that was preventing me from understanding. Rather than accusing Richard of being bone-headed, stubborn, silly or wrong, I instead chose to question why I was so bone-headed that I could not understand what he had discovered and what emotional investment ‘I’ had in maintaining ‘my’ status quo by not understanding what he presented as his ongoing delectable experience of the actual world.

These were some of the questions I used to ask myself –

• What feelings prevent me from seeing this one particular fact?
• What fears do I have that prevent me from coming to a new understanding?
• What consequence will this understanding possibly have for ‘me’ and ‘my’ worldview if what Richard is saying is right?
• What consequence will it have for ‘my’ lifestyle, my friendships, my working situation if what Richard is saying is right?

To ask these questions was to sharpen my attentiveness as to how I felt, what I felt and why I felt it when I contemplated the issues that caused a mental block and this attentiveness also showed me how to move past those affective feelings that prevented a clearer understanding of those issues. In other words, attentiveness counteracts the instinctive ‘self’-centredness that is more or less happening all the time unless I become aware of it. Attentiveness combined with contemplation does wonders when one wants to penetrate ‘my’ automatically ongoing affective reactive-ness to emotionally charged topics.

Eventually my burning desire and my persistence not to settle for anything less than indisputable facts won over my fears of questioning what I believed to be absolutely right and true and, to make a long story short, one day something had to give – ‘my’ worldview collapsed in one fell swoop and I had my first pure consciousness experience which lasted for a night and the better half of the next day. I was with Peter at the time and experienced for the first time what it is to be with a fellow human being without having ‘self’-oriented expectations, fears and preconceptions. In fact I only noticed that those ‘self’-centred expectations, fears and preconceptions towards others were a constant feature of ‘me’ when they temporarily ceased. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 60c, 26.1.2004)

ALEXANDER: Bottom line, the better I feel the more sensuous my experience becomes. Is that the way forward? I feel like it’s so simple and then again like I’m juggling twenty things at once:)

VINEETO: That sound good. “Juggling twenty things at once” means that you can increase your affective attentiveness, so much so that it becomes an automatic approach to life or a wordless attitude to living. Then you can catch yourself each time when feeling good/ feeling excellent diminishes and won’t have to be “juggling twenty things at once” –

Richard: ‘... once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – *one is once more feeling good* ... but *with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand* ... with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive ...’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

It is also beneficial to watch out for and renounce resentment. “Hope is an impoverished proxy for the actual, the resentment remains. Only by firmly renouncing resentment, by abandoning one’s commitment to proving that life on earth is a ‘vale of tears’, can one’s commitment be staunch only to the ultimate goal. (…) Renouncing resentment obviates the need to apply the commonly accepted antidote: gratitude. (…) When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Virtue and Sin, Hope and Despair, Gratitude and Resentment, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity.” (Library, Topics, Hope)

ALEXANDER: Glad to see you posting here. I talked to you once or twice on the old message board, I think yahoo, maybe back in the olden days.

VINEETO: You are welcome. You remember which number you had in the correspondence?

ALEXANDER: Would be cool to hear from Peter as well.

VINEETO: As Claudiu (after conferring with me) told you before . Peter has retired from writing ca. 15 years ago.

Cheers Vineeto

February 22 2025

ALEXANDER: I have read and reread this response several times. It’s wild how the simplicity of it all is so slippery to a feeling being.
I always try to bring it back to the beginning when it seems I’m over complicating it.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

“To bring it back to the beginning when it seems I’m over complicating it” is an excellent idea.

ALEXANDER: And the beginning is the end, ha. HAIETMOBA.

Given that you used the acronyms – here is a more detailed explanation for “How am I experiencing this moment of being alive” –

Richard: ‘(...) It is a question, not a phrase to be memorised and repeated slogan-like (or as if chanting a mantra for instance), and it soon becomes a non-verbal attitude to life ... a wordless approach each moment again whereupon one cannot be anything else but [affectively] aware of one’s every instinctual impulse/affective feeling, and thus self-centred thought, as it is happening.

[...] ‘The words ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ simply refer the make-up of the awareness-cum-attentiveness being applied ... as distinct from, say, the buddhistic ‘mindfulness’ (which is another ball-game entirely).
In other words the focus is upon how identity in toto is standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent just here right now. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).

As for “the beginning is the end” you are almost correct. However –

Richard: Note: asking how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method; consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

So you see, it is so simple that it is a real sudorific enterprise to make it complicated.

ALEXANDER: I don’t remember my ID on the old message board but I can tell you this, I started off curious and quickly became combative and argumentative. But here’s the hilarious part, I thought it was you and Richard and Peter who were combative and argumentative when really you all were just being accurate and precise. If ever I need to feel foolish I have that to reflect on. (…) Thanks Vineeto

VINEETO: You are welcome, Alexander. I am pleased to hear you have changed your previous attitude of being “combative and argumentative” to now being interested in experimenting how to become more happy and harmless and how to increase enjoying and appreciating being alive. It’s pleasing to see how, one by one, human beings start to disentangle themselves from the ancient belief that you can’t change human nature.

And instead of feeling “foolish” you can congratulate yourself that you were intelligent enough to do something about your own resentment, malice and sorrow.

Cheers Vineeto

June 11 2025

ALEXANDER: What is meant by “ascendant beer”?

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

As a short summary – in an excellence experience (EE) or intimacy experience (IE) the sophisticated doer (controller) is abeyant and the naïve beer is ascendant. The more you dare to be naïve the more the naïve beer (with pure intent) can come forward.

Even though it is best to understand it experientially, when you feel like a child again but with adult sensibilities, I have collected a few of Richard’s quotes for you to theoretically understand more of what the “ascendant beer” refers to –

Richard: To explain further: when out-from-control – out from being under control of the ‘controller’; that self-centred/ self-centric ‘doer’ (i.e., the ‘doer’ of deeds; the ‘actor’ of acts; the ‘speaker’ of words; the ‘thinker’ of thoughts; the ‘feeler’ of feelings) – the primary impetus of agency is the benevolence and benignity of pure intent being dynamically operative via the full concurrence of the ‘beer’ of those deeds, acts, words, thoughts, feelings (i.e., being the experiencing of same, as a state-of-being, as opposed to doing them).

And the words “primary impetus of agency” (‘impetus’ as in, “being dynamically operative”, that is) are used advisedly as, with the ‘doer’ abeyant and the ‘beer’ ascendant, the modus operandi of this mutual agency is indeterminable due to an incapacity to distinguish between the one and the other.

I have written about this quite extraordinary state of affairs before (albeit expressed as “unable to distinguish between ‘me’ doing it and it happening to ‘me’” due to those words of mine being read/ heard by a ‘doer’ and not a ‘beer’).

Viz.:

• [Richard]: “... one has to want it like one has never wanted anything else before ... so much so that all the instinctual passionate energy of desire, normally frittered away on petty desires, is fuelling and impelling/ propelling one into this thing and this thing only (‘impelling’ as in a pulling from the front and ‘propelling’ as in being pushed from behind). There is a ‘must’ to it (one must do it/ it must happen) and a ‘will’ to it (one will do it/ it will happen) and one is both driven and drawn until there is an inevitability that sets in.

Now it is unstoppable and all the above ceases of its own accord ... one is unable to distinguish between ‘me’ doing it and it happening to ‘me’.

One has escaped one’s fate and achieved one’s destiny”. [emphases added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Rick, 4 January 2006).

(Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 15 August 2016).

*

Richard: Lastly, because the terms ‘doer’ and ‘beer’ are utilised in religio-spiritual/ mystico-metaphysical literature to refer to ‘ego’ and ‘soul’, respectively, it is apposite to point out here that those terms are *not* being used thataway when referring to the doer being abeyant, and the beer ascendant, in either a near-PCE – else IE’s and EE’s would instead be ASC’s (i.e., egoless) and thus not near-PCE’s – or when in an out-from-control virtual freedom. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #out-from-control)

*

Richard: The gradations of ‘her’ [Grace’s] scale were, basically, good, very good, great, excellent, and perfect – whereby, in regards to intimacy,

‘good’ related to togetherness (which pertains to being and acting in concert with another);

‘very good’ related to closeness (where personal boundaries expand to include the other);

‘great’ related to sweetness (delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other);

‘excellent’ related to richness (a near-absence of agency; with the [sophisticated] doer abeyant, and the [naïve] beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian);

and ‘perfect’ related to magicality (neither beer nor doer extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails, a.k.a. an excellence experience) – all of which correlate to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 January 2016).

(…)

Richard: In other words, just as it is possible for someone whose manner of living/ way of life is yet to have feeling good (i.e., a general feeling of well-being) established as a bottom-line of on-going experiencing, come-what-may, to have either an EE or IE (wherein the doer is abeyant and the beer ascendant), be they spontaneous or induced, from time-to-time – just as they can have a PCE itself (where identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty is abeyant) – so too can a person yet to be able to describe their modus vivendi as either “feeling as happy and harmless (as free of sorrow and malice) as is humanly possible” or “feeling excellent/ perfect for 99% of the time” such as to be designated “a pragmatic, methodological virtual freedom” (a.k.a. “a still-in-control/ same-way-of-being virtual freedom”).

Indeed, anyone at all can have an IE or an EE – or even a PCE – at any time in their life (albeit totally ignorant of any such nomenclature and what they actually signify).

What sets the ongoing near-PCE known as “a dynamic, destinal virtual freedom” apart from ever other way of life/ manner of living is, as is expressed in that paragraph, by being in full allowance of the benignity and benevolence inherent to pure intent being dynamically operative – whereby the actualism method segues into the actualism process – such as to be pulling one evermore unto one’s destiny.

And here is why the actualism process is imperative:

• [Richard]: “(...) the out-from-control/ different-way-of-being term, in actualism lingo, specifically refers to the actualism process superseding the actualism method – meaning the controlling doer is abeyant (hence: ‘out-from-control’) and a naïve beer is ascendant (hence: ‘different-way-of-being’) – whereby the benignity and benevolence of pure intent increasingly renders the otherwise essential societal moeurs (a.k.a. ‘mores’) redundant, whilst simultaneously precluding anomie ...”. (Richard, List D, Andrew, 28 February 2016).

(Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 January 2016).

*

RICHARD: The vital distinction is the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to infinitude – which has nothing to do with any affective felicity and innocuity – being dynamically operative due to the cheerful and thus willing concurrence of the beer.

For instance (from 2005):

• [Richard]: “The actualism method is not about undermining the passions ... on the contrary, it is about directing all of that affective energy into being the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (that is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself) in order to effect a deliberate imitation of the actual, as evidenced in a PCE, so as to feel as happy and as harmless (as free of malice and sorrow) as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’.
Such imitative felicity/ innocuity, in conjunction with sensuosity, readily evokes amazement, marvel, and delight – a state of wide-eyed wonder best expressed by the word naiveté (the nearest a ‘self’ can come to innocence whilst being a ‘self’) – and which allows the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to the infinitude, which this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is, to operate more and more freely. This intrinsic benignity and benevolence, which has nothing to do with the imitative affective happiness and harmlessness, will do the rest.
All that was required *was ‘my’ cheerful, and thus willing, concurrence*. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60f, 29 September 2005).

(Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 15 August 2016).

There is plenty more information on the website, for instance Richard’s selected correspondence, Richard’s and Vineeto’s out-from-control reports, and also several pages on the Topica Mailing List, especially (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #out-from-control), (Richard, List D Martin), (List D No. 6) and (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 January 2016 forward).

Let me know if that makes it more clear to you.

The pragmatic approach is to be ruthlessly honest with yourself, utterly sincere, and thus allow your hidden-since-puberty naiveté to come to the fore.

Cheers Vineeto

June 15 2025

ALEXANDER: Thanks for all the quotes Vineeto. Yes this clarified it a lot. I must have come across it before but just didn’t remember it. Having that terminology and way of seeing what I’m doing is helpful.

Is it correct to say there is no psychological component to the beer? It’s just feeling at its core?

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

You are welcome.

It is not correct. When Richard says the ‘doer’ is descendant whilst ‘beer’ is ascendant, it means the sophisticated controller, the one who philosophises, plans, maps, directs and interferes into what is happening of its own accord, is substantially diminished and thus the naïve ‘beer’ is able to allow dynamically life living itself (or let the universe live one) with pure intent pulling one forward to one’s destiny, i.e. an actual freedom and the demise of ‘me’.

As being out-from-control in a different-way-of-being is still within the human condition, the instinctual passions and the psychological/ psychic/ imaginative identity formed thereof is still operating. It only ceases with ‘my’ extinction.

The best way to understand this is to be naïve, even better, be an excellence experience, and from this different way of being contemplate how you are experiencing yourself when your own ‘doer’/ controller is temporarily in the background.

Cheers Vineeto

July 9 2025

VINEETO to Claudiu:

As to your parenthesised words in the last paragraph, Richard did not even consider Christ having been fully enlightened. I could only find one written source for this, based on Christ’s supposed last words, even though I was familiar with Richard’s evaluation long before Richard wrote the extensive examen on “The Rise Of Buddhism” –

Richard: … it is not even remotely fanciable as Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, the fully enlightened/ fully awakened “sammāsambuddha”, was a “fuller light” [sic] than Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene, whose famous last words – “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”; (KJV; ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’) – speak for themselves … Source: An Examen of ‘The Rise of Buddhism’ from “The Church Quarterly Review” (1882). (4^th paragraph).

Considering Christ’s last words I fully agree with Richard’s assessment. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Claudiu6, 24 June 2025)

ALEXANDER: As for Richard’s quote I think he was wrong. To an ancient Torah reading Jew they would have recognized these words to be from the psalms reportedly written by King David who is ultimately saved and redeemed as is Jesus. The Gospels are actually very clever mythology.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

I find it interesting that you come to the conclusion (“think”) regarding Richard’s quote that “he was wrong”, explaining your thought with “from the psalms reportedly written by King David who is ultimately saved and redeemed as is Jesus”.

According to Jewish and Christian mythology nobody, by threat of persecution and death, was permitted to declare themselves as being equal to their highest authority (‘Jehova’ in 16 recorded names in Judaism, ‘Allah’ in the Quran or ‘God’ in Christianity). Whereas, the way fully enlightened beings have referred to themselves as ‘There is only the Absolute’, ‘I am God’, ‘That Thou Art’, ‘There is only That’, ‘I am It!’, ‘I am everything and everything is Me’.

Richard: Suffice is it to say that, as a generalisation, in western mysticism oneness with god, or union with god, means a relationship with god (‘I and God’) whereas in eastern mysticism oneness with god, or union with god, means there is nothing other than god (‘I am God’). [Emphases added]. (Richard, List B, No. 12p, 6 November 2002).

Hence the term “ultimately saved and redeemed” in the “Gospels”, which you yourself consider merely “clever mythology” is not equivalent to the recorded self-reports of Eastern spiritual enlightenment, including Richard’s own report (Description Of Becoming Enlightened).

However, before we get into theological disputes about the validity of various creeds and religious experiences it is beneficial to keep in mind that they are all illusional/ delusional with “hideous” consequences.

Richard: Prior to the recent influx of eastern philosophy, if one realised that ‘I am God’, one would have been institutionalised ... and, to some degree, rightly so. One has stepped out of an illusion, only to wind up living in a delusion. However, the trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity and/or Judaism is that they do not realise that by turning to the Eastern spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the west have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the western mind that is desperately looking for answers. The Christian and/or Judaic conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the esoteric doctrines of the east.

It is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the East down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking divine immortality ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Implicate order’, for example, is simply another term for ‘God’ (aka ‘The Truth’). At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. I have been to India to see for myself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living ... and it is hideous.

If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 33b, 30 November 1999).

Personally, I simply looked at the scripturally reported quote of someone who, shortly before his death, deeply felt that (his) God seems to have abandoned him, and thus reveals that the experience of ‘I am God’ was demonstratively not his ongoing experience (if ever) as it would have been for a fully enlightened being. As such “ultimately saved and redeemed” (saved and redeemed by whom?) is not the same as full spiritual enlightenment.

Cheers Vineeto

July 9 2025

ALEXANDER: I agree with all that you say. I was sloppy in my response. I didn’t mean Jesus was enlightened. But Richard seemed to be saying that those words on the cross implied abandonment and failure. If you know the story of King David it’s the opposite. Those words imply that redemption is nigh.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

Thank you for the reply, I have learnt something new. So those words “imply that redemption is nigh”, fascinating.

ALEXANDER: Of course those words were probably never spoken. The only thing we can say about the historical Jesus is that he was an itinerant preacher who was crucified by the Romans. (Maybe) That’s where the consensus begins and ends. But yeah, I don’t see anything in the Jesus story that implies Jesus was enlightened. As the mythology around him developed he became God incarnate from birth. But a God separate and distinct from his creation that he judges, rewards and punishes.

VINEETO: I was never really interested in how much of the Jesus story was historical and as far as I know there is no agreement amongst scholars and historians. It’s a touchy subject for many believers as well.

ALEXANDER: The God that haunted my childhood.

VINEETO: Have you been able to leave this God which “haunted [your] childhood” behind now?

ALEXANDER: So yeah Richard is correct that Jesus was not depicted as enlightened. I honed in on what I perceived as an implication that this was the end of the story. At the resurrection he was believed to have been elevated to equality with God. But none of that was the point Richard was making. So strike my words from the record.

VINEETO: The only reason this aspect of Jesus having been enlightened or not is because Rajneesh told his (Western) followers that he was, most likely to attract followers from the Christian flock. So when Richard made a statement which made eminently sense, I was pleased this matter was settled as far as I am concerned.

Cheers Vineeto

July 10 2025

ALEXANDER: My interest in the historical Jesus stemmed from the fact that I was heavily indoctrinated and psychologically abused by this religion and needed to deconstruct the whole thing in a very long and painful process.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

Does it help you knowing, or acknowledging, that almost every child is indoctrinated and perhaps also “psychologically abused” by the dominant religion of their tribe/ nation/ country, simply because it is part and parcel of everyone without exception being born with instinctual passions and the consequential prevalent morals, ethics and beliefs, principles, truth and tenets which attempt to curb those instinctual passions.

When you find a way to look at the resentment you hold, and recognize that doing this is hurting yourself – perhaps you can then let go of this burden.

James: ... That doesn’t work for me. I am frozen.

Richard: Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’ (child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions):

• Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?

This way intelligence need not be compromised ... intelligence will no longer be crippled. (Richard, List B, James2, 18 August 2001).

ALEXANDER: Have I left that God behind? Yes and no. Intellectually yes. But I can clearly see emotional imprints of this fear-based belief system living on inside me. Feeling unworthy for instance. But thankfully I found the Actual Freedom website and have been doing the deeper work of investigating these feelings and freeing myself of them.

VINEETO: It seems that as long as you carry resentment and blame for what happened to you then you need God to have someone to be angry with and be afraid of. Acknowledging that you are your feelings and your feeling are you, you will be able to channel the affective energy towards the felicitous and innocuous feelings. Then, with your permission and with diligent and fascinated attention – with the very intent to enjoy and appreciate being alive – those feelings and beliefs can start to unravel.

I wish you success in being a friend to yourself and, with the sincere intent to feel good, solve the puzzles which stand in the way of feeling good.

Cheers Vineeto

July 11 2025

ALEXANDER: Yes. Resentment is something I look at a lot because I have a lot of it. I don’t feel it towards religious people anymore for the reasons you laid out, namely that we are all in the grip of instinctual passions.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

So now that you know how to drop resentment for one issue, by the same means it is easy to drop any other resentment each time you become aware of one. It is immensely liberating to take charge of your life in that you don’t blame other people and outside events to how you feel.

ALEXANDER: I even think Christianity keeps some people in line to a degree. And I have fond memories of church as well. The communal feelings I shared with people doing their best to live a ‘good’ life.

VINEETO: It is the widespread "truth" that good can conquer evil if one only tries hard enough. This has been tried (and failed) for centuries, millennia in fact, and yet the prevalence of misery and mayhem is still the same. The reason is that good and evil are two sides of the same coin and both arise out of the instinctual animal passions – fear and aggression, nurture and desire.

ALEXANDER: One thing I’m not sure I understand from the above quote where Richard asks "Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?" Is he recommending emotional acceptance? What does that look like? To be happy and harmless come what may?

VINEETO: Only yesterday I wrote to Chrono about this question –

Chrono: Or also to put another way, how can I emotionally accept the suffering of humanity (I am assuming this is what is meant in the ‘how can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?’)?

Vineeto: Emotionally accepting means to give up resenting that it’s happening or blaming others for it happening when/ if you can acknowledge that everyone (of no fault of their own) is inflicted with the same instinctual passions as you are. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono, 10 Jul 2025)

You see, you are already on the right track with giving up resentment in one area. Now apply the same tool the moment you become affectively aware that you blame someone/ something else for feeling bad and see how silly that is to spoil your only moment of being alive by feeling bad. Some people even blame the weather for feeling bad!

While it is silly to tolerate war, rape, murder, child abuse and domestic violence, for instance – it would be an insult to your own intelligence – it makes no sense to emotionally suffer that such events are happening due to the human condition. It would only add more suffering and anger with no beneficial outcome. Whereas when you are able to emotionally accept the intellectually unacceptable and succeed in feeling good, or even enjoy and appreciate being alive, you add enjoyment and appreciation for yourself and others (which is far more felicitous and beneficial than resentment).

ALEXANDER: I think you are right about my resentment needing a target to blame. And maybe God is just a way of personifying a universe that I don’t emotionally accept. I once heard someone say “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him”. The instinctual self really is like a frightened animal.

VINEETO: When you become affectively aware of this fear again, instead of blaming it on a fictitious entity, stop rejecting/ fighting the fear and thus stop fuelling the affective energy. See if you can loosen the control a bit, allowing the fear to just be there and you will notice how it diminishes simply by not objecting to it. From there is only a hop and a jump to feeling ok/ feeling good, and then you can explore more closely what it is made of. It’s the automatic habit of rejection which makes it appear so big.

Richard: Usually the frightening aspect dominates and obscures the thrilling aspect: shifting one’s attention to the thrilling aspect (I often said jokingly that it is down at the bottom left-hand side) will increase the thrill and decrease the fright as the energy of fear shifts its focus and changes into a higher gear ... and, as courage is sourced in the thrilling part of fear, the daring to proceed will intensify of its own accord.

But stay with the thrill, by being the thrill, else the fright takes over, daring dissipates, and back out of the corner you come. (Richard, List B, James3, 7 November 2002).

ALEXANDER: For the most part I don’t think about my negative experiences with religion but I get emotionally triggered when people bring it up. But I’m not combative with people the way I once was. The people who indoctrinated me were themselves indoctrinated.

It seems even though you generally don’t like resenting religion, hearing about still triggers a negative habitual reaction. It takes diligent attentiveness with the sincere intent to become free from that habitual reaction (in order to be more happy and harmless), to recognize it happening and then replace it instead with delighting in being alive in this only moment you can actually experience.

ALEXANDER: This is off topic but I can’t find a post you made that I read recently where you were quoting Richard about infinitude. I always found the idea that you could experience infinitude perplexing but the quote you used made it much clearer. He was saying how everywhere is anywhere and anywhere is everywhere. And how stillness is the essential character of the universe. If you could share that again I would appreciate it.

VINEETO: Perhaps this is the correspondence you are looking for – in any case it gives a detailed explanation regarding infinitude –

Henry: As I watched closely the void evaporated leaving me simply where I was, in the dim midnight light of my house. I could see that my posturing was just a way of ‘building myself up’ to avoid the void, but here there was no need to leave – everything is already here.

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

This is an excellent report of what exquisite awareness-cum-attentiveness can do – the “void” that at first felt “threatening” transformed into “everything is already here”. This feeling of the “void” can happen in many nuances and situations – a ‘lull’, boredom, not knowing what is going to happen next, feeling foolish when an old pattern is seen as no longer applicable. This is the door to naiveté and can, as in your report, lead to the full realisation that nothing needs to change because “everything is already here”.

Perhaps you even experienced that you are already here, in this eternal moment of now, the only moment you can actually experience.

This excerpt of a correspondence might give you even more (experiential) insight about “everything is already here” –

CLAUDIU: [...]. Another related thing I’m not sure of is from the transcript of one of the audio taped dialogues.

On a phone now so no link handy. But Richard was saying how the nature of infinitude is that it is always here and now. Thus to be here now is to be everywhere at once. I’m not sure what to make of this ‘everywhere’. China for example is pretty far away so how can I be in China if I am here? It makes sense that on the way to china I would also be here. But not that everywhere at once includes china right now. This train of thought already seems silly as I’m typing it out but I’m left without an answer. Ah well! Something to reflect on next PCE. [...].

RICHARD: G’day Claudiu, You are, presumably, referring to this:

• [Richard]: ‘The actual experience of the infinitude of space and time is to be ‘everywhere all at once’, because all time and all space are right here ... and right now. There is nowhere else but here and no time but now. Anywhere is everywhere and everywhere is anywhere’. (Richard, Audio-Taped Dialogues, Infinitude is the Boundlessness).

It is better explained in ‘Richard’s Journal’. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘The purity of life emerges from the perfection that wells up constantly due to a vast stillness which is utterly immense in its scope and magnitude. This stillness of infinitude is that something which is precious. It is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. This stillness happens as me. This stillness is my essential disposition, for it is the principle character, the intrinsic basis of everything. It is this universe at its genesis. It is not, as it might commonly be supposed, at the centre of everything ... there is no centre here. This stillness, which is everywhere all at once, is the be all and end all of life itself. I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being’. (pp. 179-180, ‘Richard’s Journal’, 2nd Edition: Article 25, ‘Peace-On-Earth Is Not The Be All And End All Of Life’; for context see: (Richard, Selected Writing, Actual Freedom).

Thus if you think of it, initially, as the vast stillness which is ‘everywhere all at once’ (as in, there is no centre to physical infinitude) then, when following a train of thought about the audio-taped dialogue regarding the actual experiencing of that vast stillness – where matter-as-energy is the source of everything apparent (i.e., matter-as-mass) – as being a flesh-and-blood body’s essential disposition it will make more sense. (Richard, List D, Claudiu2, 28 May 2013).

(Actualism, Actualvineeto, Henry2, 1 Jul 2025)

ALEXANDER: And I was wondering if infinitude was something you experienced as soon as you became actually free or if it happened when you became fully free?

VINEETO: From ‘Vineeto’s’ PCEs I knew that the universe is infinite in space and eternal in time. However, to experience this in its full extent I had to lose a few more boundaries in consciousness in order to experience the full extent of this infinite and eternal universe. I have written about it in “From Basic Freedom to Full Actual Freedom”.

Cheers Vineeto

July 13 2025

VINEETO: So now that you know how to drop resentment for one issue, by the same means it is easy to drop any other resentment each time you become aware of one. It is immensely liberating to take charge of your life in that you don’t blame other people and outside events to how you feel.

ALEXANDER: Yes. And it’s getting easier to nip it in the bud. Hearing Richard talk about that in one of the videos was really nice.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

Yes, Richard summed it up really succinctly and expertly. It is quite easy to nip the minor resentments in the bud.

Nevertheless, some of them may be persistent – and you know which ones they are because they keep reoccurring – and then you will do some further investigation about the issue – it could be a belief or a principle or an ideal or even a truth taken for a fact.

Richard: The phrase ‘nipping them in the bud’ is not to be confused with either suppression/ repression or ignoring/ avoiding ... it is to be consciously and deliberatively – with knowledge aforethought – declining oh-so-sensibly to futilely go down that well-trodden path to nowhere fruitful yet again. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive, Tool-tip)

Also, it is good to not confuse ‘nipping in the bud’ with suppressing the feeling.

Richard: It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. (Richard, List B, No. 19e, 26 December 2000)

*

VINEETO: The reason is that good and evil are two sides of the same coin and both arise out of the instinctual animal passions – fear and aggression, nurture and desire.

ALEXANDER: I’m seeing more clearly all the time that there are no solutions to be found in the human condition. People enjoy fighting and justifying it with self righteousness. Self righteousness gives you a high, and a confidence that being aggressive is a good thing. I can’t count the times I’ve felt bad and had to apologize because I acted out of that sense of rightness.

VINEETO: I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had a few topics ‘she’ repeatedly became self-righteous about. ‘This is not fair’ was the most persistent, not only when it was in regards to ‘herself’ but even more so when it happened to others.

Therefore I know that such emotional reactions cannot be simply ‘nipped in the bud’, it takes a closer look, and sometimes a quite comprehensive look at what makes you ‘tick’ in regards to self-righteousness.

Here Richard talks about his personal experience with righteousness –

Richard: Speaking personally, the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago instantaneously rid ‘himself’ of the bulk of those school-age hurts and slights – whilst sitting out in the sunshine one fine morning, putting pencil to paper in order to finally record those dastardly events for posterity, as per a long-held and cherished ambition to do so at length – via seeing-in-a-flash that, as it was simply not possible to ever physically be a child again (and thus juvenilely susceptible to not only those bully-boys and feisty-femmes but any enabling teachers and principals as well), there was absolutely no need whatsoever to continue nursing them as a carryover grudge. It soon became increasingly apparent, thereafter, how those childhood hurts had been vital to the maintenance of the righteous indignation which fuelled ‘his’ plaints of injustice (a.k.a. ‘unfairness’) and, thus, ‘his’ mission to bring justice (a.k.a. ‘fairness’) to the world.

Also, with the dissolution of those childhood hurts the (deeply felt) need for any aggressive tit-for-tat modus vivendi also vanishes – leaving one free to treat all others as fellow human beings rather than as adversaries to gain dominion over. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression, 21 January 2016).

The next quote is also quite revealing in that as long as you believe in the truth of what is considered right and what is wrong, you will potentially react with righteous anger when coming across injustice, unfairness, or ‘this is just wrong’ and the likes – and there is plenty of it in the world as it is with people as they are. Also, emotionally accepting what is intellectually unacceptable helps a lot with restoring feeling good.

It is important that pure intent needs to be firmly in place before any whittling away of the otherwise essential societal/ cultural conditioning be undertaken.

Richard: As a matter of related interest ... one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/ justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends ... justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on).

I have touched upon this elsewhere:

• [Richard]: ‘There is no ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ as a ‘sub-stratum of the universe’ ... they are but human inventions and do not exist in actuality. The same applies to fairness/ unfairness, justice/ injustice and any other human concepts that, whilst being useful for human-to-human interaction, are futility in action when applied to the universe. Male logic is as useless as female intuition when it comes to being free: the everyday reality of the ‘real-world’ is a veneer ‘I’ paste over the top of the pristine actual world by ‘my’ very being ... and ‘being’ is the savage/ tender instinctual passions (giving rise to feelings of malice/ love and sorrow/ compassion etc., with the resultant concepts of bad/ good and evil/ god and so on) which cripples intelligence by invariably producing dualistic concepts.
‘Tis all a fantasy ... feelings rule in the human world’. (Richard, List B, No. 33c, 3 August 2000).

(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 66, 27 April 2005a).

*

VINEETO: Now apply the same tool [for giving up resentment] the moment you become affectively aware that you blame someone/ something else for feeling bad and see how silly that is to spoil your only moment of being alive by feeling bad. Some people even blame the weather for feeling bad!

ALEXANDER: The weather. It seems the instinctual self just doesn’t want to be here at all.

VINEETO: Oh, but the instinctual self is programmed and bent on survival at all cost – it’s called the survival instinct.

ALEXANDER: I want to give ‘myself’ what ‘he’ wants. Oblivion.

VINEETO: Mmh, who is the one who wants “to give ‘myself’” and who is “‘he’” who wants “oblivion”? And who is “the instinctual self”, which “just doesn’t want to be here at all”?

Now that you sorted all your different impulses and wishes into separate boxes, are you any closer to solving the problem of feeling bad?

Here is a hint – all of this is ‘you’ – the swirling instinctual passions and accompanying emotions changing expression according to the triggers and circumstances, all arising from the same genetic programming.

You are your feelings, and that’s why nobody actually prevents you from feeling good or forces you to feel bad. It is in your hands, and being sincerely interested, paying diligent and eventually fascinated attention, to how you affectively experience this moment of being alive will give you more and more clues how you ‘tick’ and how you can choose feeling good now and channel the affective energy towards the happy and harmless feelings.

ALEXANDER: I’ve been having very brief PCE while trying to fall asleep. I’ve been thinking about the one last night all day. And trying to not try to let it happen again.

VINEETO: What happened last night? And why are you “trying to not try to let it happen again”?

ALEXANDER: And yes that’s the Richard quote I was looking for. Thank you for your time and insight. It is greatly appreciated.

VINEETO: You are very welcome.

Cheers Vineeto

July 14 2025

VINEETO: The next quote is also quite revealing in that as long as you believe in the truth of what is considered right and what is wrong, you will potentially react with righteous anger when coming across injustice, unfairness, or ‘this is just wrong’ and the likes – and there is plenty of it in the world as it is with people as they are.

ALEXANDER: So to find certain things intellectually unacceptable there has to be a judgement and categorizing of behaviors correct? As in “this is wrong” but that intellectual understanding need not trigger an emotional response with the knowledge that outrage and self righteousness are part of the problem?

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

Of course “there has to be a judgement and categorizing of behaviors” and of the accompanying feelings and passions, else why would you want to become free from malice and sorrow?

*

VINEETO: Oh, but the instinctual self is programmed and bent on survival at all cost – it’s called the survival instinct.

ALEXANDER: I should have said the instinctual self doesn’t want to be here with people as they are and things as they are. Hence all the resentment.

VINEETO: Do you mean to say that you resent “to be here with people as they are and things as they are”? If so, why defer to a general instinctual self and thus keep the problem at arm’s length?

Once you sincerely acknowledge that you resent being here “with people as they are and things as they are” you can decide to do something practical about this resentment, for instance as described in the following selection (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Resentment). You can also check out past correspondence from this forum on this topic (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Selected Correspondence, Resentment).

*

VINEETO: Mmh, who is the one who wants “to give ‘myself’” and who is “‘he’” who wants “oblivion”? And who is “the instinctual self”, which “just doesn’t want to be here at all”?

ALEXANDER: I think I see what you are saying. I mean to say it is the intelligent thing to do to drop the whole thing. To stop ‘being’. Stop being both the “good” and “bad” feelings. Because I know that “I” will always revert to feeling bad and causing pain for myself and others. Now that I think about it I suppose being happy and harmless while remaining a self requires that self to agree to being here.

VINEETO: So now you determined that “it is the intelligent thing to” “stop ‘being’”, and that “remaining a self requires that self to agree to being here”, what are you doing about it in a practical way?

ALEXANDER: But also to agree to let a PCE happen which is initiating the end of “me”. It gets a little fuzzy in my mind Vineeto. Is it a paradox or am I just missing something?

VINEETO: I suggest to read what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website more carefully, for instance the go-to page for the actualism method including the very informative and explanatory tool-tips. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive). You are certainly “missing something” about how a virtual freedom and an actual freedom can be achieved by those who sincerely want to.

The end of ‘me’ is not initiated by a PCE. To remember or experience a PCE gives you the necessary experientially information what a moment of perfection is. Then you can start putting the actualism method into practice as described.

*

VINEETO: Now that you sorted all your different impulses and wishes into separate boxes, are you any closer to solving the problem of feeling bad?

ALEXANDER: Well I don’t think I’ve actually sorted them all but I understand why that won’t work.

VINEETO: Ok.

*

VINEETO: What happened last night? And why are you “trying to not try to let it happen again”?

ALEXANDER: Yeah more weird unclear wording on my part. I mean I can see that pushing and using force is not the way. As for what happened, while laying in bed drifting off to sleep “I” disappeared briefly. For just a second or two. It has happened in the past as well while being on the edge of sleep. There is always a pulling back immediately and I wake up fully.

VINEETO: It sounds to me that what you call ‘you’ “disappeared briefly” was not a PCE but a brief falling asleep, particularly as you have no further description/ information to that experience. It can also be experienced as a moment of oblivion which often happens a second or so before going unconscious.

Here is some correspondence to a Frequent Question regarding how to induce a PCE. (Sundry, Frequent Questions, How to Induce a PCE)

Cheers Vineeto