Chrono's Journal

Journals
181

Chrono: Hi Vineeto,

Vineeto: What you really mean by “being a ‘man’” is what you consider the role of a man, the social identity aspects that you swallowed hook, line and sinker (like everyone else). And it is well worth looking at these expectations/ obligations enshrined in the human condition what put so much pressure on you.

Chrono: Yes I have seen these expectations/ obligations featured in many aspects of my life. In relation to male friends (primarily), it could be that I must maintain some outward appearance of confidence, being nonplussed, being “skilled”, being of high status, etc. With my partner, it feels like that I must be a place of safety and comfort for her (backed by the feeling of responsibility and seriousness) and that if I don’t then I have failed or am a failure. At work, it feels like I must always be excelling and must always know the answer. It could all come under some guise of being an ‘authority’. If I had to go a little further, I could say that all of that is about projecting power.

Hi Chrono,

Well said. Having recognized this you can now decline “projecting power” and experiment with allowing the naiveté which you talked about in your last message (quoted further below) – (link).

Vineeto: While you are doing that you can also pop your head around the corner, so to speak, and recognize that in actuality you are already a man, a male human being, and in actuality this is already perfect. So when ‘I’, the identity, comes back in with all ‘my’ demands how ‘I’ should be, there is a salubrious actual perspective which allows you to look at those ‘problems’ in more naïve way and makes it all much less serious.

Chrono: When I think on this, I can understand it intellectually. But in society it doesn’t seem enough. I think it’s about showing ‘my’ usefulness to society. Otherwise I could be discarded. Which means being ostracized, lonely, punished in some way. Everything that I am being perhaps in this entire journal is being kept in place by this fear of retribution from society and humanity. Perhaps another dare.

The dare is to become autonomous, less and less dependant on other people’s opinions and demands. It happens when you gradually find out that there is something better than having the fickle approval and praise from your contemporaries. There is an actual world right here, right now, and right under your nose. You may enjoy this story from Richard (wonder-land-tale).

Vineeto: Indeed … you may even discover that behind the idea of a “being a man” needing “‘sexual prowess’” is hidden a yearning for intimacy. After all, a near-actual intimacy is something so new, it has to be lived to be discovered.

Chrono: Yes, this hidden yearning is what I’m currently trying to locate. Which perhaps may only come about if I abandon the sexual drive as well. I am wondering if that drive has any role to play at all in any of this. I sometimes struggle to see how it could not arise at all unless one is already actually free.

Not so fast. You cannot abandon the sexual drive – it is an instinctual passion. It will only completely disappear when the whole identity becomes extinct. Any attempt to abandon the sexual drive will necessarily lead to suppression and repression. This is the old way which both Western and Eastern religions promoted for thousands of years, and if you only know a little bit of history you already know where it leads to.

What you can do is sincerely examine each of the various aspects of your acquired identity as a man, and if it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome.

Here is a short excerpt from feeling being ‘Peter’ regarding male identity –

‘Peter’: What we found in our investigations has been quite shocking – a blow to that insidious feeling of pride that inevitably causes human beings to refuse to admit that their behaviour is just plain stupid and that ultimately prevents any possibility of radical, effective change. How could I have been so stupid? But the facts spoke for themselves. How could I have believed that simply because ‘everybody behaves that way’, I should also behave that way? How could I believe that everybody else was ‘getting it wrong’, and not me? Was I going to endlessly try and change every woman I was with or somehow try and find the ‘right one’ amongst the billions? How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together)

This correspondence may be useful as well –

Gary: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to.
In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed.
‘Peter’: (…) Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now.
What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element.
And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on. (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity).

As you might see, loyalty plays a big part in keeping the social identity in place.

Chrono: This scan of course is composed of anxiety/ fear and exemplifies the societal conscience. I’m always on alert of what they are thinking of me and if ‘I’ am playing ‘my’ role properly. Seeing this, I then also allowed myself on the same day to meet them right where they are and I am always delighted at how easy interactions are. People enjoy associating with me when I am enjoying my own association. When this happens, there’s a background feeling of ‘this can’t be’ or ‘something will go wrong’. But I find that even when people may become upset, my remaining in this delighting has a rather conciliatory effect. This time the background feeling is that ‘I will be physically harmed and so I must take a step back again’. It’s a rather strange conditioning but feels very real. (link)

Vineeto: This naïve approach is well worth keeping in mind. It helps you to overcome the initial apprehension of “holding back”, feeling foolish or ignorant or whatever, because you already know it has a beneficial outcome for all concerned.
Did you notice that when you have overcome the fear of being psychologically harmed you stepped up the danger to being “physically harmed”, just to keep yourself in line?

Chrono: Thanks I actually did not notice that haha. Now that I am looking back at it, that seems to happen any time I get ‘close’. Some sort of fear of retribution, but proceed anyway.

That’s how it the instinctual passions work – any time you get ‘close’, i.e. more intimate to another fellow human being, there is an apprehension of what might happen, that you might lose yourself. And yet when you pay attention, there is no actual danger, not even real danger. So you can increase the daring just a little bit, and then a little bit more, and be more confident in discovering and enjoying being naïve. It is such fun.

Chrono: As an aside, I have been wondering why it is said that actual freedom has no conditions to happen and that the actualism method is something that you do in the meanwhile. Yet at other times, I gain the impression that there technically are conditions for it to happen.

There are no condition from the actual world, as the PCE confirms when it happens. It is ‘I’ and ‘me’ who create the boundaries and set the rules under which conditions ‘I’ will agree to ‘my’ demise, and ‘I’ will place plenty of (genetically endowed) passionate and cunning objections to obstruct such voluntary agreement. Hence pure intent is paramount.

Chrono: The following is from Henry’s Journal but I did not want to divert it into a different topic:

Vineeto: (…) And once you fully take on board that “I am my feelings and my feelings are me” you have the choice of being a different feeling because it is simply silly, when you have the choice, to be something other than happy and harmless.
You might also discover that there is a certain amount of investment in keeping the suffering going (because of some good feeling you cherish, for instance) – elsewhere referred to the addiction of being a ‘being’ (link), and that is a further topic for contemplation. All this is to indicate that it’s not always straightforward to “activate delight”. Nothing can be swept under the carpet in the long run. (link)

Chrono: Yes it was only after I saw that I had to return to feeling good first that any sort of beneficial changes were noticed and maintained.

This is a valuable experience and a good to keep in.

Chrono: Though overall there is still the addiction to being ‘me’. I have been re-reading the linked correspondence on addiction and some parts stood out to me (also appreciated James’ questions and pondering):

Richard: I was not referring to whatever suffering may be caused by losing in gambling … but to the suffering which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating (no matter what particular addiction it is). Therefore I presume that the ‘action’ you refer to is what provides the high … and if so then I further presume that when this action-induced high evaporates then suffering ensues.
If this is the case then it is this suffering which is well worth investigating for its addictive properties. (List B, James3, 24 Oct 2002)

Richard: Is not the reason why ‘I’ do not know if the unknown path delivers the goods – or why ‘I’ do not know what the unknown path is – none other than because ‘I’ will not abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods? (List B, James3, 5 Nov 2002)

James: Ok, it might be possible by seeing that I am doing it for this body and everybody but I am really doing it for ‘I’/ ‘me’ at least in the beginning.
Richard: When ‘I’ see that ‘I’ am as mad and as bad and as sad as anyone else instinctually driven it is actually impossible to say that ‘I’ am doing it for ‘me’ alone … the repercussions of such an event are vast beyond belief. (List B, James3, 28 Oct 2002a)

James: I hear what you are saying but I am not tuned in to the altruistic instinct.
Richard: As it is instinctive it arises as the need arises … just as its concomitant courage does. (List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)

Chrono: If I compared to my experience with suffering (deep feelings of complete desolation) as described above in experiences of limerence (where I feel anything very deeply), in the midst of the most intense suffering is where I also felt the most “alive”. Within it, there’s a simultaneous desire to end the suffering (because it is intense anguish) but also addicted to being it. This suffering also had a ‘good’ side where I felt fulfilled, but only if certain conditions were met. I’d go in circles no matter how much I noted it did not make sense. Deep down I felt this suffering as my soul itself and sometimes a ‘dream’ would present itself as being the only way out. This was the dream of ‘love’. Which dream is gone now. But I would naturally go back to this place of intense suffering if no attentiveness or anything was applied. I can see that as ‘my’ path.

You have identified the nub of the old paradigm which applies both to the spiritual as well as the materialistic aspect – your ‘being’ searching for the fulfilment that only an actual freedom can provide. Instead, for millennia people have been settling for second best – either spiritual enlightenment or material fulfilment, as in addictions to ‘highs’, ranging from drugs, success, group-highs, winning competitions, admiration or similar ‘self’-enhancing activities.

It is an excellent realisation to have identified this as “‘my’ path”, in contrast to the wide and wondrous path. It is a dead-end road unless you want to settle for second best.

This “limerence” only reifies the ‘self’ and the ‘self’s’ yearning for grandeur in the dream of the ‘good’ side – ‘self’-aggrandisement. The sooner you recognize, and consequently decline, the nature of the “dream” the sooner the attraction to the “most intense suffering” will also abate. Perhaps a thorough investigation of what is left of “the dream of ‘love’” might be useful – (FAQ Why is love (Love) no Solution?)

Richard: Also, intrinsic to the nature of love is its – always unfulfilled – promise of eternity. Our life here on earth has a time-span, so what use is a spurious Eternal Bliss in some conjectured After-Life? Love has produced wars, murders, rapes and violence since time immemorial … it staggers me that it still retains its credibility. To kill for ‘Love of Country’ or ‘Love of God’ is surely proof enough for any discerning person. Then there are those ‘Crimes of Passion’ that are brought about by love’s constant companions: possessiveness, jealousy and envy. If these examples are too extreme then what about the heartache, the longing, the pining and the yearning that all peoples report as accompanying love’s bliss? This leads to the search for ‘True Love’ which, supposedly, does not induce these unpleasant characteristics so common to everybody’s experience of love. ‘True Love’ is simply a fiction … it is impossible to manifest it here on earth, hence the notion of an After-Life to encompass it. To repeat: Love never delivers on its implied promise. It never has done nor ever will. Its days are numbered, as more and more people are beginning to notice that love itself – not the human being – is failing to live up to its reputation again and again. (FAQ 47a)

Chrono: But I do have this desire within to also end the suffering, which I equate with:

James: ‘I’ am telling myself that ‘I’ don’t really want to do it because that will be the end of ‘me’.
Richard: Ahh … now to the nub of the issue: have you ever desired oblivion? (List B, James3, 5 Nov 2002a)

My natural instinct then was to end it while being it, but I would go in circles. Maybe I wasn’t doing this:

James: ‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now. ‘I’ can’t see how to get past that.
Richard: As there has been a, perhaps predictable, retreat back into suffering (predictable as foreshadowed in ‘‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry’ and ‘‘I’ want to back out’ for example), then one starts with where one is presently at (where one is not yet at will emerge of its own accord as one proceeds): as you say ‘‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now’ then for ‘me’ that is where ‘I’ am currently at.
Therefore, do ‘I’ feel the feeling of being stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) or not? If yes, then through staying with the feeling, by being the feeling (instead of trying to see how to get past that), one will find out, experientially, what it is really like to not have a path and/or not have a plan … other than the one of ‘looking for a way out’ so that one can stick with the known that is. (List B, James3, 21 Nov 2002a)

My suggestion is that as long as the ‘good’ side of your suffering is still active as a promise and therefore desire, you will continue to go round in circles. ‘Vineeto’ knows from personal experience that the (at first often hidden) ‘good’ feelings such as desire, love and compassion kept the bad feelings in place.

Here Richards reports from his own experience of dismantling enlightenment –

Richard: In my tenth year … I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out.
The Altered State of Consciousness – in particular, spiritual enlightenment – needs to be talked about and exposed for what it is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again. There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with the enlightenment is that whilst the ego dissolves, the identity as a soul remains intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity – ‘I am That’, ‘I am God’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am The Absolute’ and so on. This is the delusion, the mirage, the deception … and it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an august state. [Emphasis added] (Richard, List B, No. 31, 7 Mar 2000)

Chrono: Also I am curious why Richard suggests in this correspondence not to return to feeling good first but to proceed with the contemplation despite James saying he experiences fear and the suchlike. In what context is this happening? (link)

The conversation was less of a contemplation but rather an affective exploration into the nature of fear and the addiction of suffering and being ‘me’ and it revealed the feeling James had regarding the ending of ‘me’. Viz.:

James: My current thinking is that no path will deliver the goods. Any path I take is more of ‘me’ trying to escape from ‘me’.
Richard: Ahh … but what about the path of no return? So far you have only ever travelled on the path that carries a return ticket. Viz.: [James]: ‘However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering’. [endquote]. Given that the price of the return ticket is yet more suffering – a life-time of suffering in fact – why is it that the price of a one-way ticket is considered too high a price to pay? What price the end of suffering, eh?
James: Because the end of suffering is the end of ‘me’.
Richard: Is this not another way of saying that, because of ‘my’ fear of death, ‘my’ current plan is to not yet set foot upon the path of no return?

When an intense feeling such as the fear of extinction is encountered for the first time, it sometimes requires an affective exploration to identify what it is really about before one can see the silliness of this existential fear and be able to return to feeling good for further contemplation. Besides, this example of the affective exploration into stuckness, fear and the addiction of being ‘me’ could result in the courage to proceed for James or other readers via garnering sufficient pure intent.

Similarly, your own affective experiences of “limerence” revealed that you are “addicted to being it”, that there was “a ‘good’ side where I felt fulfilled …” and “the dream of ‘love’”.

However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”.

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi Vineeto,

So this is how I am experiencing this, and in fact this is precisely what happened yesterday. That ‘I’ have set up a base camp somewhere on the periphery of normalcy, periodically ‘I’ will take a daring outing away from the base camp and “up the mountain” let’s say. And what I found yesterday is that there is a tether that connects ‘me’ back to base camp, that deep down ‘I’ know ‘I’ am only going to go so far, scout out the territory from what ‘I’ can see and then return to what appears as the warmth of the known.

I experienced this yesterday as the variations of the fear of extinction, or perhaps of abandoning humanity, something like leaving behind all that is known and familiar and setting off into exile, into an unknown land. But the thing is I have experienced these feelings before, it’s not like any of this was new to me, which means I have travelled this 2 way journey before.

So then since yesterday I thought that it is this “tether back to base camp” which needs to be examined, because it will never allow me to set off on the genuine one way journey to ‘my’ extinction. So this is what pricked my ears when you wrote :

Richard summarised the experience of that “tether back to base camp” in his journal (article 9) :

It requires great fortitude and finesse to fly in the face of the social commandment: to remain a member of society at all costs. There is a pull of loyalties; old allegiances to relatives, friends, colleagues and acquaintances will tug at the heart, pulling one back, urging one to remain where one is. Loyalty, however, is a two-edged sword for it can cut two ways; there is the new allegiance to the purity of the peak experience, pulling one forward relentlessly, for herein lies release … and genuine peace-on-earth. The pull in two directions can be excruciating. On the one side is the sense of belonging, the warmth of relationship and the being acknowledged by the peoples one has always known. There is the loss of all that, with its ensuing grief – and guilt – at leaving them all behind. On the other side there is the knowledge that one will have reached one’s destiny, that one will have that perennial cheerful contentment with life as-it-is subtly buzzing inside one, and that the actuality of peace-on-earth and prosperity for all humankind is now possible. All this one knows, with a crystal-clear certainty, from the perfection of one’s PCE.

Actually this feeling I experienced yesterday it reminded me of experiences in the past where a relationship would break down, and there would be this deeply sorrowful feeling, that this person with whom I have been so close for all those years would now disappear never to be met again - this is the flavour of that ‘tether’.

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The additional aspect of this is something like this :

That as ‘humanity’ ‘we’ are all huddled around that fire and suffering, and within that intrinsic suffering ‘we’ have made various bonds which would soothe (but never eliminate) the suffering - that is the bond of ‘humanity’, the relationships of the various identities to each other. And from within that bond, it is experienced as a selfish act, to proceed towards this new land and to leave all those ‘others’ still huddling together in the land of lament.

I understand intellectually that this is the exact mistake made by buddha, that ‘he’ would not proceed towards extinction until all ‘others’ were saved and as a result ‘humanity’ has persisted and suffering has persisted.

But it is this unilateral and extreme action which is required which ‘I’ cannot quite accept, that this is the only way out, the way to end the ‘land of lament’ is for the next and then next identity to become extinct.

But it is that final and irreversible abandoning of ‘others’ that ‘I’ am not willing to contemplate. It still seems selfish to ‘me’, how could ‘I’ leave ‘them’ ‘back there’ suffering.

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The other thing I notice, and it’s been like this with any particular drama or objection or whatever that ‘I’ had. That once ‘I’ saw unequivocally that this ‘thing’ (whatever ‘it’ was) was not doing anybody any favours and in fact that it was actively preventing happiness and harmlessness for all, then the thing would be abandoned, end of.

So I am confident it is no different with abandoning ‘humanity’ and proceeding towards ‘my’ extinction. But experientially ‘I’ cannot see yet that this is the best course of action to take, for everybody concerned.

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Kuba: Hi Vineeto,

Vineeto: When an intense feeling such as the fear of extinction is encountered for the first time, it sometimes requires an affective exploration to identify what it is really about before one can see the silliness of this existential fear and be able to return to feeling good for further contemplation. Besides, this example of the affective exploration into stuckness, fear and the addiction of being ‘me’ could result in the courage to proceed for James or other readers via garnering sufficient pure intent.
Similarly, your own affective experiences of “limerence” revealed that you are “addicted to being it”, that there was “a ‘good’ side where I felt fulfilled …” and “the dream of ‘love’”.
However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”. (Vineeto to Chrono, 18 Oct 2025)

Kuba: So this is how I am experiencing this, and in fact this is precisely what happened yesterday. That ‘I’ have set up a base camp somewhere on the periphery of normalcy, periodically ‘I’ will take a daring outing away from the base camp and “up the mountain” let’s say. And what I found yesterday is that there is a tether that connects ‘me’ back to base camp, that deep down ‘I’ know ‘I’ am only going to go so far, scout out the territory from what ‘I’ can see and then return to what appears as the warmth of the known.

Hi Kuba,

Good, you have come to appreciate the limitations of taking special excursions from the “base camp” – what I had called “your steeple chasing modus operandi” in an earlier message –

Vineeto: What happened to that experience “that everything is already in its rightful place now” and all the other experiences you reported which inform you of the same perfect actuality. It seems that in your steeple-chasing modus operandi for extra-ordinary experiences you omitted to establish a golden clew to pure intent, which could inform and aid you when you are affectively feeling, and justifying, indignation about other people’s wrongs and thus forgetting about your commitment to being happy and harmless, if it was ever there in the first place. (Kuba10, 3 Oct 2025a)

Perhaps you could consider as your next practical step upgrading to camp 2, the “Advanced Base Camp” in Everest-climbing lingo. Their final summit push is from Camp 4, being in the “death zone” where bottled oxygen is essential (Uphill Mountaineering). :wink:

For actualists the next step from ‘base camp’ is the “pragmatic, methodological, still-in-control/ same-way-of-being virtual freedom” –

Peter: This process, if undertaken with a sincere intent, will inevitably lead to a state of a pragmatic virtual freedom. One then goes to bed in the evening knowing that one has had a virtually perfect day, and knowing that tomorrow, without doubt, will also be a virtually perfect day. Unless one is willing to contemplate being happy and harmless, free of malice and sorrow, 99% of the time – then forget the whole business. One is then merely aiming for some ‘pie in the sky’, some miracle event to ‘make it all better’. (…) A pragmatic virtual freedom is available for everyone and anyone who has the sincere intent to be happy and harmless. (Library, Virtual Freedom).

Kuba: I experienced this yesterday as the variations of the fear of extinction, or perhaps of abandoning humanity, something like leaving behind all that is known and familiar and setting off into exile, into an unknown land. But the thing is I have experienced these feelings before, it’s not like any of this was new to me, which means I have travelled this 2 way journey before.
So then since yesterday I thought that it is this “tether back to base camp” which needs to be examined, because it will never allow me to set off on the genuine one way journey to ‘my’ extinction. So this is what pricked my ears when you wrote :

Vineeto: However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”.

Sometimes one needs to go round in circles a few times to realize what is happening, and perhaps this time your realisation is sufficiently firm for taking action and do something practical and down-to-earth about it.

Upgrading your present situation to pragmatic virtual freedom will give you a new confidence that being increasingly felicitous and innocuous (happy and harmless) is possible to live every day, in every situation – provided you sincerely and honestly leave no stone untouched. It means trying it out in real life what you often may have only rationally or conceptually understood but not yet applied in everyday living.

To add another plug for Virtual Freedom, which ‘Peter’ and ‘Vineeto’ lived and documented until the epoch-changing events in 2009/2010, here is how Richard summed it up –

Richard: What Peter has been doing, in conjunction with Vineeto, is what he characterised as beating down all the long, dry grass (and every single bit of persistent regrowth) leading up to and obscuring the gate in the fence separating it from the greener pastures on the other side.
As such they have both done a sterling service for their fellow human beings – having written prolifically about it all whilst they were doing it (rather than after the fact from memory) – in ensuring an in-control virtual freedom is now possible for any normal person/normal couple simply by applying the actualism method – as distinct from the actualism process – in their everyday life (both at work and at leisure).
In other words, they have both shown and documented the way how a virtual freedom which does not require being out-from-control – let alone something peculiar happening in the nape of the neck – can spread exponentially around the globe without disrupting civilisation (as a bloody revolution would, for example, in a futile attempt to change society).
I will refer you to a previous exchange of ours. Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘The only way societies will radically alter is by radical change on an individual level as it is individuals collectively who make society what it is.
And this is where actualism is pivotal as it must be borne in mind that the way children are raised is in accord with the prevailing wisdom of the time (currently in the form of values/ principles and morals/ ethics per favour the trickle-down effect of spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment).
Thus it is the flow-on effect of the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition – as in practically anyone now being able to be as happy and as harmless (virtually free of both malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) as is humanly possible – which is the most probable and realistic prospect, in the foreseeable future, for all of humankind … and which is why I stress the importance of a virtual freedom.
Although that is, of course, according to the current situation; the moment another becomes actually free from the human condition (especially if it be a female) that scenario may very well undergo a profound reappraisal. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 12, 27 Nov 2009).
[…] They both have my highest regard for establishing not just a wide path for their fellow human beings to travel, if they so choose, but a wide and wondrous one with all the otherwise rank undergrowth on either side gentrified as well. (Richard, List D, No. 12, 12 Dec 2009).

Should you actually decide to do take the path to a pragmatic virtual freedom you might find out, experientially and over time, that your present assessment of “experientially ‘I’ cannot see yet that this is the best course of action to take, for everybody concerned” (link) is incorrect. Besides, if Richard and myself had made the assessment you made we wouldn’t have this conversation right now.

Kuba: Richard summarised the experience of that “tether back to base camp” in his journal (article 9) :

Richard: It requires great fortitude and finesse to fly in the face of the social commandment: to remain a member of society at all costs. There is a pull of loyalties; old allegiances to relatives, friends, colleagues and acquaintances will tug at the heart, pulling one back, urging one to remain where one is. Loyalty, however, is a two-edged sword for it can cut two ways; there is the new allegiance to the purity of the peak experience, pulling one forward relentlessly, for herein lies release … and genuine peace-on-earth. The pull in two directions can be excruciating. On the one side is the sense of belonging, the warmth of relationship and the being acknowledged by the peoples one has always known. There is the loss of all that, with its ensuing grief – and guilt – at leaving them all behind. On the other side there is the knowledge that one will have reached one’s destiny, that one will have that perennial cheerful contentment with life as-it-is subtly buzzing inside one, and that the actuality of peace-on-earth and prosperity for all humankind is now possible. All this one knows, with a crystal-clear certainty, from the perfection of one’s PCE. (Richard’s Journal, Article Nine)

Kuba: Actually this feeling I experienced yesterday it reminded me of experiences in the past where a relationship would break down, and there would be this deeply sorrowful feeling, that this person with whom I have been so close for all those years would now disappear never to be met again – this is the flavour of that ‘tether’. (link)

When you look closely and sincerely, “that ‘tether’” is not just one ‘tether’, it is a whole bundle of tethers, and you cannot cut this bundle in one swoop (else you would have done that by now). This is where the pragmatic virtual freedom comes into play, you examine each tether (whenever it interferes with your being happy and harmless every moment of the day), perhaps multiple times until it dissolves for good, by finding it to be another facet of being ‘self’-centric, ‘me’-enhancing. (Please note, being less ‘self’-centric is not putting the other before oneself but having a preference to imitate actuality rather than ‘me’ being the centre of all thoughts and actions.) In this way ‘I’ become thinner and thinner, more felicitous and more gentle, magnanimous, benevolent, kind, tender and naive until ‘self’-centricity disappears altogether.

You might find a whole range of aspects of life where you automatically still follow the old paradigm of principles and concepts which now need re-examining, aspects of your social identity and of dreams of sudden redemption. Remember, actual freedom is new, down-to-earth, non-spiritual and actual. If any your many insights have not changed your day-to-day behaviour, towards yourself and others, they still need to be actualised. And there is not even the excuse that ‘self’-immolation is too much of a tall order because this is not required for living a pragmatic still-in-control virtual freedom.

Richard: Human beings eat corporeal food, drink physical water and breathe molecular air, in order to be here, to be alive at all. Humans are here only because of sexual intercourse: the joining of the spermatozoa and the ova … there is no other way of becoming a human being and living in this world. All this living is necessary in order to discuss these very matters. One has to just try putting a spring clip upon one’s nose and a large piece of sticking plaster over one’s mouth for a few minutes to discover what actuality is. As one rips the plaster from one’s mouth and gulps in that sweet and actual air, one knows that one is certainly here on earth, living this life. And this earth, this life, is already perfect … if only one will start living it instead of waiting in vain – and sorrow – for some Supernatural miracle to occur. (Richard’s Journal, Article Nine)

And –

Richard: What I have is a complete confidence in is the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this universe which, to my never-ending delight, brings about serendipity.
What one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ … a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. [Emphasis added]. (Richard’s Journal, Article Nine)

Cheers Vineeto

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Kuba: Richard summarised the experience of that “tether back to base camp” in his journal (article 9) :

Richard: It requires great fortitude and finesse to fly in the face of the social commandment: to remain a member of society at all costs. There is a pull of loyalties; old allegiances to relatives, friends, colleagues and acquaintances will tug at the heart, pulling one back, urging one to remain where one is. Loyalty, however, is a two-edged sword for it can cut two ways; there is the new allegiance to the purity of the peak experience, pulling one forward relentlessly, for herein lies release … and genuine peace-on-earth. The pull in two directions can be excruciating. On the one side is the sense of belonging, the warmth of relationship and the being acknowledged by the peoples one has always known. There is the loss of all that, with its ensuing grief – and guilt – at leaving them all behind. On the other side there is the knowledge that one will have reached one’s destiny, that one will have that perennial cheerful contentment with life as-it-is subtly buzzing inside one, and that the actuality of peace-on-earth and prosperity for all humankind is now possible. All this one knows, with a crystal-clear certainty, from the perfection of one’s PCE. (Richard’s Journal, Article Nine)

Kuba: The additional aspect of this is something like this :
That as ‘humanity’ ‘we’ are all huddled around that fire and suffering, and within that intrinsic suffering ‘we’ have made various bonds which would soothe (but never eliminate) the suffering – that is the bond of ‘humanity’, the relationships of the various identities to each other. And from within that bond, it is experienced as a selfish act, to proceed towards this new land and to leave all those ‘others’ still huddling together in the land of lament.
I understand intellectually that this is the exact mistake made by buddha, that ‘he’ would not proceed towards extinction until all ‘others’ were saved and as a result ‘humanity’ has persisted and suffering has persisted.

Hi Kuba,

What you overlooked in your analysis of ‘humanity’ –

Abandoning ‘humanity’ means ‘you’ abandon ‘your’ own humanity, which is ‘you’, the identity, who you have previously recognized as being rotten to the core. It means abandoning ‘your’ social identity, which ties you to everyone else’s appraisal, everyone’s praise and criticism, ‘your’ loyalty to kin, country and class, ‘your’ identity as a man, son, husband, employer, member of class, race, club, religio-spiritual and political identity and all the other groups you feel loyalty, connection and/or obligation to. For instance –

Kuba: I can’t believe I’ve never seen this, that the very action of asserting myself is rotten.
Vineeto: It was obviously the perfect time to see it, now that you are ready to put it into action.
Kuba: It makes sense now, there is a seriousness and a forcefulness to it, it has aggression at its root.
Vineeto: Indeed and a ‘man’ has to be aggressive or so you are taught. You discovered the way to channel the affective energy of aggression into affective felicitous and innocuous action. (2 Oct 2025)

Do you now prefer to retain your aggression, your desire (for the sake of the ‘highs’), your fear and nurture, your territoriality, your sense of belonging and, above all, your social identity? You experience, as a member of ‘humanity’, it being selfish to abandon humanity but you don’t even consider looking at it with pure intent, where the purity and perfection of the actual world is plain to see and yours for the taking – for the benefit of your body, that body and everybody.

This is what fear does to you – it defends mischief and misery and clouds your mind.

Kuba: But it is this unilateral and extreme action which is required which ‘I’ cannot quite accept, that this is the only way out, the way to end the ‘land of lament’ is for the next and then next identity to become extinct.

Are you looking for a new “way out” which leaves the identity intact?

Kuba: But it is that final and irreversible abandoning of ‘others’ that ‘I’ am not willing to contemplate. It still seems selfish to ‘me’, how could ‘I’ leave ‘them’ ‘back there’ suffering. (link)

What you are really saying is that you rather remain an identity, rotten to the core, than demonstrating by action that it is possible to live totally free from malice and sorrow, blithe and benign for 24hr a day, every day for the rest of your life, for everyone’s encouragement and confirmation that this is possible.

What you are also suggesting is to do nothing about all the wars and murders and child abuse, the lies and hypocrisy and treachery arising from the human condition (which is humanity in action) because it is supposedly “selfish to ‘me’”. “Back there” they are suffering already and there is nothing ‘you’ can do about it because you are, as ‘you’ are, still contributing to their suffering.

This is what fear does to you, the fear to do something unchartered, unmapped, unprecedented for ‘you’. You forget what you then “deeply and passionately care about” back in March –

Kuba: In short what ‘I’ deeply and passionately care about is to be innocence personified. To live that which the PCE demonstrated and in doing so to offer (and demonstrate) a solid alternative to the “hypocrisy, the lack of equity, the ignorant irresponsibility and the harm that was being done by all”. This innocence is what I (and I am sure others on this forum) detect from you and if I had not experienced it first hand I would probably have believed it to be impossible. (8 Mar 2025)

It’s ok, it is a natural reaction when you try to break through before you are ready – though it means that your arguments don’t make sense. It’s too early to even contemplate it, you could go to the “advanced base camp” first, then “camp 3”. (Uphill Mountaineering) Plenty of time to worry later. :wink: There is still an in-control virtual freedom available even if you never want to take the ultimate step.

Here is a reminder that ‘your’ morality what is ‘selfish’ is hopelessly skewed (being unselfish is not the same as ‘self’-lessness or non-‘self-centric) –

R: Most Religions and Spiritual Paths advocate putting the other before oneself … it is their way of preventing selfishness – which they assume to be identical with self-centredness. Yet it is self-centred to want to be a ‘good’ person and therefore gain one’s post-mortem reward in some after-life. Immortality for the self has to be classified as being the ultimate self-centredness. Self-centredness is translated as egotism … is there such a word as ‘soultism’? There should be!
Let us have a look at the practice of putting the other before oneself: Take us four sitting here – and presume we are all ‘good’ people – and I am not going to be ‘selfish’ at all. Therefore I am going to totally look after (Q) … I will put her before me in all circumstances. Now, (Q) is also a ‘good’ person and she is not going to be ‘selfish’ either … so she is going to put Q(1) before herself. However, you have also been brought up with this religious and humanitarian concept of putting the other before oneself … therefore you will put Q(2) before yourself … and Q(2) will be putting me before himself. We have come a full circle; do you see the nonsense that is going on? Because the end result of putting the other first is that eventually you get looked after anyway. If we all just stop this charade and start looking after ourselves then we will be a lot better off. It makes much more sense.
Q: Then nobody owes anybody anything …
R: There is no investment.
Q: … and nobody owes me anything, either.
Q(2): There is no relationship.
R: No relationship … right! It is a free association.
Q(2): The other way that happens is with love. It is like you are always relating … well one of the ways of relating is mainly through love. If you love another you put your love on them and they put their love on you.
R: And it intrinsic to the nature of love to put the other before yourself – it is part of love itself. However, if one digs deeply into love, one finds that love is so selfish that it is almost unbelievable that one could have been deceived by the apparent altruism displayed. It is utterly selfish; if you dig down under the layers of the ‘selflessness’ of love … it is so very selfish.
Q(2): Because there is this ‘I’ll love you if you’ll love me’ thing going on. It is a bargain. And if one stops the bargain you get the hatred … if the love is cut … or …
Q: Or just the absence of love.
Q(2): With the absence you get the cold … the cold treatment.
R: Dig another layer deeper and one finds that love supports the very sense of identity it purports to transcend. And with love, the self survives … to live another day. Everything that comes out of the self is designed to keep that self in existence … all the morality, all the humanitarian ideals … they all keep the self alive. The whole structure of society …
(…)
R: Years ago I had some religious people bail me up and attempt to convert me to their belief – it would often happen in those days – and they were saying that I should always help people; that that is what we are all here for is to help other people; to put the other person before oneself. I said to them: ‘Who are these people to be helped? Who are these ‘others’? What is going to happen to them?’ I would ask this because if one does do all this – only help others and never oneself – then one goes into an After-Life of some description. I said: ‘What about those people who are being helped? Where are they going to go to?’
Q: (Laughing) Oh! I like that question!
Q(1): Good question!
R: Well, if one wants to be a helper – a ‘good’ person – one needs a ready supply of victims, of helpless people. And where are those helpless people going to go to after they die? They are not going to go into some glorious After-Life because they have not been helping people … in fact, they have been sucking upon the helpers. So ‘do-gooders’ need a steady supply of victims in order to reach their After-Life of Rapturous Bliss.
And then I would say to them … because they would tell me I was being selfish … I would say to them: ‘But you want to go to your heaven when you die?’ And they would say: ‘Yes’. And I would say: ‘You are only helping other people in order for yourself to attain your After-Life of Heavenly Bliss. And is this not selfish?’ They would not like that one. The whole structure of morality hangs upon stuff like this … that is why there is something really going wrong within society. The whole morality is back-to-front. (Audiotaped Dialogues, Putting the Other before Oneself).

You can also watch the Out-from-Control video (link) where Richard very clearly says to ‘Vineeto’ “it is selfish to stay”. ‘Vineeto’ had tears in her eyes because the sweetness ‘she’ experienced was extraordinary –

Vineeto: I had known this sweetness from previous occasions – one such experience happened during the video-shoot of the ‘Out-from-Control’ DVD we present on the website. This sweetness always accompanied an experience of closeness, barely any separation to the other person (usually Richard), but also an experience that I was close to my destiny and an awareness that what I am doing/ longing for is not merely for my ‘peace of mind’, but that it is for everybody, for every single man, woman and child on the planet – for peace on earth.
This sweet longing has always propelled me forward to go all the way, to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and fears and now I had the privilege to experience this sweet intimacy day after day, morning to night.

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi Vineeto,

Haha I will just say for now that I greatly enjoy and appreciate you playing along with my metaphors, this one made me smile, and you do such a great job of it too! :grinning:

Thank you for the rest of the suggestions too, it looks like I have something to focus on in the meantime now, that is not a bad thing at all.

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