Claudiu: The motivation to post is not very high. The main thing that is clear: it is actually relatively easy to temporarily go into those excellence experiences. Then, experiencing and appreciating how superior this is to being more ‘normal’, I ask myself what would it take to just be like this all the time? And the answer is immediate: I would have to give myself up. This isn’t a thought-out answer or conclusion, but what comes unbidden as the clear answer. So there’s a direct connection between those words and what it means, hence the import of it, just glibly saying “ok I’ll give myself up then!” doesn’t work.
Hi Claudiu,
I concur with and appreciate James’ comment on this –
James: This does make sense. Of course it is a feeling. What else could it be? (link)
And what prevents you from acting along the lines of the “glibly” throw-away response “ok I’ll give myself up then!” is that it’s not just a feeling, it’s ‘your’ very existence, your instinctual-emotional make-up which is at stake, the very whirlpool of instinctual passions swirling like in a whirlpool – and ‘I’ cannot give myself up in my totality.
[Richard]: ‘Primarily the identity within is the affections (the affective feelings) – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – as *the instinctual passions form themselves into* a ‘presence’, a ‘spirit’, a ‘being’ … ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself. MRI scans, and all the rest, cannot detect a phantom being, the ghost in the machine. (…) Put expressively the affective feelings swirl around forming a whirlpool or an eddy (which vortex is the ‘presence’, the ‘spirit’, the ‘being’): mostly peoples experience ‘self’ as being a centre, around which the affective feelings form a barrier, which centre could be graphically likened to a dot in a circle (the circle being the affective feelings) which is what gives rise to the admonitions to break down the walls, the barriers, with which the centre protects itself.
Those people who are self-realised have realised that there is no ‘dot’ in the centre of the circle … hence the word ‘void’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 25a, 10 Jun 2003).
Richard: I put it in that expressive way because it is not possible to separate out the feeler from the feelings it is … just as it is impossible to separate the whirlpool or the eddy – the vortex – from the swirling stuff which is the cause of it (a whirlpool or an eddy – a vortex – of water or air, for example, is the very swirling water or air as the one is not distinct from the other) … hence ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. (Richard, AF List, No. 44e, 9 Oct 2003).
In other words, it is not just a feeling, it is ‘me’ being all my feelings (‘me’ the identity), which are the crux of the matter … hence your follow-up insightful, very perspicacious suspicion/ discovery.
Claudiu: I also am beginning to suspect that the only ‘reason’ I don’t give myself up, is actually not a reason at all, but a feeling! In other words, there’s not some carefully constructed cognitive artifice which lays out all the well-founded reasons to continue being ‘me’. Rather, it’s a feeling, a feeling that I must survive, must continue, which, immediately underneath that feeling, is primordial fear.
Yes. This is what Geoffrey was getting at, which you so well described in the report I quoted to Kuba yesterday –
Claudiu: Only once this is grasped then can the decision be made to take the leap and continue anyway (otherwise you’re just imagining yourself to be on a cliff but you’re really on a flat ground, and you don’t see the edge to jump off of but only think you do). So you have to actually get to the edge of the cliff (seeing the enormity of the extinction) and only then you can decide to jump. [Emphasis in original]. (30 May 2025)
What you are now “beginning to suspect” means that you are getting close “to the edge of the cliff (seeing the enormity of the extinction)”, not as an imagination but as a feeling reality.
Claudiu: So the answer then won’t be any thought-out thing (since the problem is not a thought-out thing in the first place), but a, hmm, perhaps me as the feeling really seeing deep down it is nothing other than a feeling? It must not be just that though since then it would already have happened.
Exactly. There is no thought-out answer. The question is, will you be able to dare to get closer to the edge of the cliff, to look at this “primordial fear”, acknowledge it, this instinctual “feeling that I must survive”? Will you dare to feel it out, without pushing it away, without reasoning it away, and explore the very core of what constitutes ‘you’, your ‘being’?
As you said in your report – “then can the decision be made to take the leap and continue anyway”.
Claudiu: And so life goes on. (link)
I am reminded of one of Richard’s favourite phrases “to dare to care is to care to dare”.
Seeing the necessity to dare to care comes from observing how in everyday life both one’s words and actions affect those around, and also becoming more and more aware how one’s affective feelings (both expressed and unexpressed) are constantly and inadvertently transmitted and received; realising that one can never be totally harmless, let alone 100% benign and benevolent as a feeling being.
Richard: However, I will take this opportunity to stress just how vital this matter of affective vibes is, in regards to successful actualism practice, as it is central to the ‘feeling harmless’ aspect of such practice (as in the phrase ‘happy and harmless’ that is) inasmuch the whole point is the minimisation – and the ultimate cessation via extirpation of ‘being’ itself – of any malicious feelings and, thus, their resultant transmission as affective vibes throughout the human psyche.
I have, of course, written of this before … for instance:• [Co-Respondent]: What was the most harmful action you did to other human beings when being a ‘Richard’? What was the most harmful action you did to other human beings when being a Self? I’m referring to an actual harm and not to a potential for harmful action (be it psychological or physical).
• [Richard]: The most harmful action in both cases (both being ‘human’ and being ‘divine’) operated twenty-four hours of the day: involuntarily radiating affective vibes and transmitting psychic currents … and the divine vibes and currents, being so powerful, are the most insalubrious and reprehensible. (Richard, AF List, No. 25b, 24 Jun 2003).(…)
And speaking of ‘reception’: all feeling-beings are operating and functioning in a virtual sea of affective vibes (not to mention the far-deeper, longer-ranging and more-powerful ‘psychic currents’/ ‘psychic energies’), swirling around and coming at them from all directions, influencing them affectively/ psychically, pushing and pulling them into involuntarily making all manner of decisions which they might otherwise not make (and later regret).
Claudiu recently referred to theses vibes as [quote] ‘completely permeating the space around us’ [endquote], in a post to this forum, and how [quote] ‘each person was like a little dot in that vibespace, somehow picking it up & affecting it’ [endquote]. (Richard, List D, No. 15, 28 Oct 2013)
What a thrilling suspicion/ discovery!
Cheers Vineeto