in light of the recent thread "A Comparison of Apperceptiveness Article & Bhante G's Chapter" where claudiu demonstrates the differences between bhante's and richard's writings, i thought of posting something peter wrote about physical sensations that go along with emotions - because this brings up some parallel with goenka's "equanimity towards all physical sensations" practice. what peter says is that "instinctual reactions" trigger hormones (which are experienced as physical sensations) in the body which are almost instantaneously "felt" as the instinctual passions. when the thinker (social identity) becomes involved, one experiences a full blown emotional experience.



the bold text is particularly interesting. here, physical sensations (hormonal reactions) are positioned before, not after, feelings - which would explain why goenka's method could lead to AF.

*

and not only that. it also raises the question of whether AF people only remain blind to "instinctual reactions" - i.e., have they cut the chain right where these reactions are "felt" (which feelings form themselves into "being")? while even a shadowy feeling being can give off vibes, what of a body with instinctual reactions? this does conflict with richard's report of him not experiencing any bodily symptoms associated with fear (for instance).

...

may not have relevance to one's practice, but food for thought anyway.

Good question with far-reaching implications. IMO, there's much more to psychic self-interest than just the felt sense of it. Indeed, the absence of that 'felt sense' (of anything) enables a far greater-than-normal ruthlessness, grandiosity and blindness to oneself as a self-interested filter of experience and agent of self-interested action. (In all innocence too).

[Edit: but who cares anyway? It has become very clear to me in recent years, both from experience and from observing others, that people aren't really that interested in figuring out what's true. It's more about getting something, avoiding something, using reason to bolster a decision that's already being made for some other reason and to some other end. Seemingly no one is immune to this. Just the way it goes, I guess].

if interpretation of bodily sensation would be the only problem, then people who are paralyzed from the neck down should be AF.

hiya,

notwithstanding richard's private matters, i'm not sure what you are getting at. given that i've known you from years ago via your email interactions on the yahoo list, i'd be interested in having a private conversation (in chat? skype?) with you specifically regarding the part "very clear to me ... from experience ... about getting something, avoiding something". obviously, in the end, we want to permanently avoid suffering to permanently get peace. some level of self-interest will always be involved even if there be no instinctual reactions (topic of this thread)--for example, you work to earn to pay your bills, not your neighbours'.

Private conversations have a habit of becoming public sooner or later anyway, so it might be better to do it here to avoid the 'Chinese whispers' effect.

To clarify what I was getting at: Your question centered on precisely what happens in so-called "actual freedom from the human condition" (hereafter AF): specifically, whether AF precludes affective reactions in toto or whether it merely precludes the subjective experience of instinctual-passionate influences at some fairly basic level while still leaving them functionally operating. I believe you are right to question these things; it is by no means a certainty that Richard has got it right, and/or that he tells it like it is.

My comment was a more general elaboration on that theme. It's reasonable to question not only whether AF is blindness to affect (which it may or may not be), but also whether it constitutes a blindness to self-centered instinctual-passionate-driven behaviour in toto, regardless of whether affect is subjectively experienced. It's reasonable to ask whether, for example, the will to power and primacy still operates at the heart of a person's motivation in life, despite them having no subjective experience of any associated affective pushes and pulls. It's definitely an open question in my opinion.

Even more fundamentally: it's reasonable to ask whether there's anything more here than an idiosyncratic psychotic condition and set of supporting world views.

If people are interested in AF for its supposed altruistic value -- rather than "just give me something, anything, to get me out of my own suffering forever" -- these things shouldn't be taken as given. The claim that AF is the answer to all the ills of humankind, the best thing you can do not only for yourself but for your fellow human being, should definitely not be taken for granted based on a person's possibly self-serving and possibly highly deluded testimony. But it often is.

And I think we both know the reason why. That's what the rest of my comment was about. People want release from suffering, and they want it so badly that they'll willingly overlook a great deal, no matter how starkly obviously bizarre it might be to an outsider, when it undermines the result they're seeking.

Even if we limit this discussion to stuff that's already entirely on the public record (which I myself cannot, but you must), it should be pretty clear to any reasonable minded person that AF leads to some questionable psychological results. To take just a handful of examples:

- Look at the bizarre magical thinking, ideas of reference, delusions of grandeur that have shown up in Richard's writings since late 2009 (and obviously featured in his thinking long before that). Richard believes that when he first became AF he was so vulnerable and defenseless that his then-wife Irene/Devika put up a protective psychic force field around him, a force field so powerful that nobody could get to him. But when Devika later turned against him and repudiated AF, the protective force field no longer served to protect Richard from others; rather, it served to protect them from him! Devika --- (sorry, by then she had become transmogrified into 'Irene') --- had become a psychic obstacle to peace-on-earth, a veil or a buffer that prevented people from seeing Richard as he actually is. But upon her death in late 2009, world rejoice! the veil is lifted, and behold, people can now see Richard in all his magical-prodigious splendour. And as a consequence, we're on the cusp of a global change the likes of which the world has never seen before.

(Heard that one before? No, you can't have. This is all new to human history, remember).

Such magical thinking, ideas of reference and delusions of grandeur are classic features of psychosis. It's by no means certain that he has been diagnosed that way by two psychiatrists because they fail to understand "an actual freedom from the human condition"; there's every possibility that he is incurably psychotic, and lacks insight into it. (And as is pretty common in such cases, that lack of insight is reinforced by a shitload of deluded ideation casting that person as having a unique role in a situation of global significance that no one understands, except him and a handful of enablers).

- Richard believes that when he became AF, the Absolute ('Love Agape', 'Divine Compassion') died. That's why, according to his bizarrely self-centred world view, there aren't any genuinely enlightened masters any more. (There are only pale imitations of the "just add water and stir" variety, as he calls them). So there you have it: what happens in Richard's life, in Richard's mind, determines what happens, what can happen, to other people for all eternity. Ideas of reference, delusions of grandeur, Richard as a magical figure playing a pivotal role in world history, Richard as the primary determinant of other people's psychic potential, even people who haven't been born yet. That's quite a mythological role he's playing there, isn't it?

- Magical prodigies. Perhaps we could ask Claudiu if he managed to take a photograph of the 'actual' 'caloric energy', the fine golden energy emanating from Richard that Justine experiences on the other side of the world when Richard is having his magical prodigies. I doubt it though. I was on-site in December '09 and February '10, and the only thing I saw that remotely resembled a golden glow in Richard was a slight jaundice. (In February he looked tired and ill compared with when I'd seen him in December). And it wasn't because I wasn't in a so-called PCE. I was.

- I have it on good authority that while in India Richard experienced a certain mall as a "toy town" with people as robots, and children as toy dolls. (Quite common among trippers and psychotics). I'm told he was staring transfixed by the sight of two porters who were glowing with golden energy. Too much coffee that morning, apparently. Add hallucinations to the list of classic psychotic symptoms.

- And socially: If you'd known five years ago -- or however long ago it was that you were first introduced to AF -- that the relationship between Peter and Vineeto, which was portrayed as a demonstration of and a template for a new kind of human relationship -- would turn out to be a relationship with Richard instead, would that have mattered? Maybe, maybe not.

- And who in their right mind could believe that Justine, who weeps at the sight of Richard's portrait and experiences his magical (supposedly "actual", "caloric") energetic emanations on the other side of the globe, exemplifies a post-psychic, post-spiritual condition that is entirely new to human history? Come on now.

- And that Justine's daughter became AF within a few hours of touching down at Coolangatta airport, but you people who have faithfully read his every word and practiced his methods for years (including people like Tarin and Trent, the latter of whom does a passing good imitation of orthodox AF advocacy despite not being endorsed by Richard) are not only nowhere near, they're 180 degrees opposite.

I could go on and on... but there wouldn't be much point, would there? Anybody who's willing to see this stuff has already seen it. For that vast majority, what matters more is a favourable result for themselves, and if contemplation of these things isn't conducive to that result, they'll turn a blind eye. And hang anybody out to dry in the process.

So be it.

As for me, I'm between a rock and a hard place on this subject: if I engage with anyone at all on the subject of AF, it requires me to drag in a whole lot of stuff that I don't really want to talk about in order to fully justify my views. The alternative is silence. Neither is a great option. The latter is the smarter choice, but sometimes clearly I'm not that smart.

I guess I'd better make an early new year's resolution. There's nothing in this for me, and probably nothing in it for anyone else either, for reasons above.

I'll now ask one of the mods to unsubscribe me, because I've done my dash here. Neither AF nor Theravada Buddhism are ultimately the best fit for my aims and preferences. But it's certainly been interesting learning about what the rest of you are up to, and I wish everyone here the best of luck, on whatever path.

Cheers,
Jack.

Why unsubscribe? If you don't want to discuss Richard/AF, just don't.


You raise a lot of good points about the end of suffering as an aim, and I for one would love to read a practice log from you and see how you address these points there.

So basically don't quit the board, please.

<Snip awesomeness!>



Hey

Don't quit. How about sharing what's your "aims and preferences" in detail? Share your current practice. Discuss that. There are some people who are in between that rock and hard place, who can see what else is out there that one can try out for oneself. Else a world-weariness (not in you) can result; It would be nice if you can hang around and share stuff you doing.

Cheers

Seconding Rotten Tomato. I'd be very interested to hear what you're up to.

Thanks for the encouragement folks, but I don't think I have much to offer that's useful to others at this point... certainly not in the way of a coherent presentation of generally applicable ideas or practices. Most of what I do in the way of practice is, compared with most people here, fluid and experimental and lacking discipline. But there is a reason for that. It's not indiscipline so much as a mistrust of the usual outcomes; a sense that they're not quite what's needed; not quite what's being sought.

What I'm interested in is something that most teachings, as far as I know, don't seem to match. It's something closer to home, like something I've always known that's still always present, but seemingly covered over (to varying extents) by obscuring ideas, feelings, dreams and what-not. And the aim of practice isn't even as simple as dispelling those veils of dream and obscurity altogether. If that happens, it happens ... but it's not an aim. I'm more interested at this stage in a kind of a totally inclusive clarity in which everything, even the stuff that's currently perceived as obscure or troublesome, is just another expression of something that is absolutely not a problem when seen clearly. (Well, I guess clear seeing is the disappearance of obscurity in a sense... but read on).

For me, freedom from suffering and attainment of happiness is not about detachment, dissociation, ease, peace or eradication of self per se; it's more about a knowing immersion in an incredible mystery. For me, it's all about this lifetime, this world (which includes all the stuff that is labeled psychic, transpersonal or spiritual). Shinzen Young talks about "escaping into life", and I find that a pretty apt expression... regardless of whether he means the same thing by it as I do.

I'm more interested in dispelling problematic aspects of one's relationship to certain phenomena than in trying to dispel certain phenomena, or trying to dispel myself! This often does result in things being dropped or falling away, but it happens as a side-effect of seeing more clearly, rather than through force applied in ignorance toward an ignorantly conceived aim.

That's pretty much where I'm coming from. That's the kind of development that makes most sense to me at the this stage. And in terms of practice, what seems to work best for me is: look for something in current experience, in ALL experience, that already does have the properties of what you think you're looking for. Equanimity is already present (prior to various reactions); clarity is already present (prior to movements of obscure thought and feeling); goodness is already present (prior to ill will and what-not); openness is already present (prior to contraction around ideas and beliefs); generosity is already present (prior to feeling insufficient and guarded); and once that "prior to" thing is recognised, it allows the more superficial stuff to be more transparent and less harmful.

Cheers,
Jack.

could you elaborate why this (changing one's partner) may be an issue for "people [who] are interested in AF for its supposed altruistic value"?

A lot of people over the years were suspicious of the much touted "equity", "parity" and "autonomy" of the "fellow human beings" in Richard's inner circle, suspecting that it might have been more of a traditional guru-disciple relationship in new clothing. It was strongly emphasised all through the years that these relationships (well, we don't call them relationships actually) were entirely different -- 180 degrees opposite in fact -- from the good old-fashioned devotional relationships of yore.

If later developments had been known in advance, these claims of an entirely new basis for associations between people might have seemed just a little flimsy. It is, after all, an ancient and oft-instantiated archetype, no? Man with the Knowledge, Prestige and Magic Power gets the women; others, well....

If Peter had known in advance that this would happen, I don't know if he'd have been any less enthusiastically committed to AF. As far as I know he might be entirely happy with the situation as it is.

But, going back a few years, this almost certainly would have made me less likely to see Richard and crew as engaged in something entirely new to human history. Dunno about you. Each to his own.

Anyway, that's enough from me about this. Sorry to have hijacked your thread. No more.

Cheers,
Jack.

to your question, whether vineeto now being with richard is reflective
of the sexual archetypes based on instincts (an interesting question
for sure), i don't know -- it would depend on whether that lifestyle
change was made freely based on circumstances, or based on post-AF
unconscious instinctual reactions (topic of this thread) if there be
any. at this point, i'd say that the best way to judge AF in that
context is to simply wait for more people to become AF and observe
their actions collectively. i wonder if neuroimaging can tell if a
person is capable of instinctual reations so as to evoke the
aforementioned archetype (for example).

i'm also curious if from your own longer PCE experiences whether you
were able to spot these inclinations.



i've seen you parting several times, so i'm sure there will be
more. :-P

Sound reasoning, if there is such a thing as AF. To my mind, it's by no means certain that the term AF means anything other than either (a) being Richard, or (b) being so utterly devoted to him and his teachings as to be virtually indistinguishable from him. (A new twist on having no identity whatsoever) ;-).

I'm actually pretty doubtful that there's any common objective change that could be observed in all the people who have claimed AF... or even any two of them, frankly. I suspect there's been a huge mindfuck going on, and that there is no common underlying physico-chemical basis for this so-called "actual freedom".



It'd be interesting to see what's going on under the hood. For me it would no longer be of personal interest because, regardless of what's going on in the brain of an AF person, I've seen enough of how it operates to not want to emulate it. Still, for those who are interested in doing so, it would be interesting to know what's really going on.



No, I wasn't. Nothing of the sort. One of the reasons I've been so perplexed and upset by my involvement with actualism over the years is that some of my best experiences, which seemed wholly innocent and excellent, now seem -- in my mind if not in reality -- corrupted by association with the whole AF trip. I'm trying to "take them back", as it were. Part of that involves no longer talking about them in AF terms. Another part involves subjecting them to honest scrutiny, and being receptive to feedback from other people, without the assumption that subjective innocence equals optimum mode of interaction for them as well as for me. (The arrogance of it!)



Ha :-) The other 979 goodbyes were only rehearsals :-)

Cheers,
Jack.

Everything I've been trying to say about AF can be summed up quite simply. My suggestion is: Don't believe anything; don't assume that what you read is true or accurate; don't even assume that there is such a thing as AF. Consider the possibility that Richard is mentally unsound (and not just insane/'unsane' in the way that he openly admits to being). And treat the affirming / confirming testimonies of others in the AF scene with due skepticism, in full knowledge that even highly intelligent people can and do believe all kinds of implausible things as a result of their own inner need being met by a persuasive other.

And if after bearing all those possibilities in mind you're still satisfied that what you're striving for and practising has genuine merit for yourself and others, regardless of whether any of the above is true, then go for it, test it out in real life, and test its effect on your own well-being and that of others.

I have written about these things not because I think Richard is some sort of monster. I definitely don't, although I do think he's flaky and ruthless in some ways. I've written about these things because my personal view is that AF has acquired a legitimacy in this forum that it does not deserve (mainly due to the well-deserved good reputation of some of its early adopters). And many people are staking so much on it based on very little reliable data, possibly to their serious detriment.

That's all.

(Anyway, I guess we're all adults here, so caveat emptor... for my words as much as for anyone else's).

Cheers,
Jack.

hmm, your doubt is valid. richard still considers himself a
heterosexual in that he prefers a female sexual partner. if the
desire/lust instinct is gone, why prefer a female partner over a male
one? why does an actual freedom from the instinctual passions not make
one asexual/aromantic?

just the other day i was talking to a dear old (american) friend of
mine. he recently came out of an open relationship in which his
girlfriend had always been more successsful/ active in finding sexual
partners than he was. eventually she ended up dumping him after
courting a particularly charismatic man who is more popular in their
social circle. and i thought polyamory, open relationships were
supposed to be better!

that, along with vineeto now being with richard--plus your remark to
Tom about that place looking like a harem--now makes me suspect even
more that the passions are completely gone in AF (or a similar
state). maybe they are still in effect, but just not made
conscious. AF could be the ultimate aphrodisiac of a magical alpha
prodigy--no wonder some of us actualists started imitating richard's
style. ;-)

it is a game of power & status everywhere. sigh.

perhaps fairness/equity can never be realized. i recently had a brief
PCE (i think) where there was only an awareness as a body doing
various things; i was in the kitchen moving things around - there was
an awareness of hands moving, but no center (no feeling of being an
identity). it was very brief (2/3 seconds maybe) to make anything else
out of it, but i still remain convinced that--despite the potential
prevelance of unconscious instinctual reactions--these selfless
experiences are probably more healthier in the long run than clinging
to real-world hopes/dreams. so i'll continue to pursue it but on my
own terms. it is very freeing to not follow/ immitate the
"charismatic" people anymore.

good luck to you, jack.

John, I would be happy to see you continue participating here. You do a good job of articulating an approach to practice which is not limited to the extremes of prag dharma theravada on the one hand or actualism on the other. Your call for a kind of clarity that sees through the arising obscurations without needing to dispell them actually speaks very clearly to my own experience and explorations as well as I would bet many others who lurk and post here. My sense is that in the history of dharma this orientation is nothing new; I perceive traces of it in the more radical variants of Dzogchen, Mahamudra and other Central Asian silk road era teachings as well as Chan/Zen. Undoubtedly it is the most tricky approach to articulate, even though in a moment of clarity it is the easiest to practice (since it's already primordially accomplished). Stick around

Thanks Jake. Yeah, it's my favourite subject, and it's a good reason to stick around. I think you're probably right: this orientation can't be so uncommon, and there must have been schools or communities of practice that evolved around it. (I don't know much about this, but I'm keen to learn more. A more disciplined way of exploring certainly wouldn't go amiss, and neither would a community with similar values and goals).

I might start a thread on this in the new year; see what happens, see if others are interested.

Cheers,
Jack.

as just a friendly warning - be careful with the newfound beliefs. my previous response was written in a disturbed mood--there is much more to it than what i've revealed here--but i've now seen through how subtle these acts of power/status can be in myself, and others (dominance/subservience can be so covert as to permeate virtually all of our interactions) ... so it is time i took the responsibility for progress in my own hands.

out of here, once and for all.

it is amazing how much humans can influence one another.

I hereby unconditionally withdraw everything I've ever written about "an actual freedom from the
human condition" and everyone associated with it.

John / Jack.

This sounds like something I tried to 'practice' for years, but unlike you, I never felt it got me anywhere. It wasn't until I started practicing in a manner inspired by MCTB and the many meditators here that I felt that something gave. But while I am genuinely grateful for the results of that practice, I too somehow feel that they are "not quite what's needed; not quite what's being sought."

So if you could drop by sometimes and expand on your practice I would be much appreciative.