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Vineeto’s Correspondence with Konrad Swart
KONRAD: Peter and Vineeto In this mail you can see what kind of’ trap’ actualism is. It contains a full confrontation between me and Richard, and it shows clearly how the both of us differ. Especially why I say that enlightenment is something beyond apperception, and not the converse has been made clear in this mail. [snipped for brevity]. * VINEETO: I could find only one trap when reading your 2-mile-epistle to Richard and all the other people that you try to convince is your own reasoning – whenever I read mail from you I am reminded of a joke: Mummy, mummy, I don’t want to go round in circles anymore! Be quiet, kid, otherwise I will nail your other foot to the floor too. The way you use thinking is exactly this, tying one leg to a false premise and then going around in circles. I have not found anything new or radical or even fresh in your writing, because you seem to be too proud – or too scared? – to experiment with anything you have not logically produced and concluded yourself. Fair enough, it is your choice, but then don’t think you have got a great wisdom to spread. A confused man calling someone else a liar is not very convincing. From my experience it takes a certain innocence and courage to put aside one’s pride and try something new. Also I was really tired of ‘who’ I was and what I had been doing before I came across Richard’s method. Therefore I could put my pride aside and admit that I had not reached my goal in life. My intent to be the best I can be urged me to experiment, instead of arguing endlessly and thus wasting my life with ‘going round in circles’. I cannot find any argumentation in your 2-mile-letter that would invalidate the exquisite way I am experiencing my days and the improvement that happened in my life after eliminating malice and sorrow in me. What’s the point of reasoning and arguing with someone else’s conviction, who does not seem to be happy and harmless himself, when my life is a proof that I can actually rid myself of emotions, beliefs and instincts?! If you don’t want to know about it and continue the way you have always thought and acted, that is your own business. But to keep up a silly ‘tis-tisn’t’ conversation trying to prove that you are right is simply pride and competition and thus part of the Human Condition, which you claim one cannot get rid of. It is one thing to stay unhappy yourself, it is another to try and drag other people into it by re-teaching the old. I don’t see what ‘good sense’ you have to offer, Konrad. You could try Richard’s method and if it doesn’t work, dismiss it once and for all and get on with your life. Unless you even begin to try it you stay stuck with forever arguing something you can never understand by simply ‘thinking hard’ about it. It is a waste of life. By the way, you have quoted me saying: ‘Richard is an absolute expert in the matter’ and deducted from this that I am a blind follower. You don’t even seem to know the difference between expertise and belief in authority. I can understand that you, trying to be an authority in your own right, only can see other people being supposedly inflicted with the same disease (believing in authority and not thinking for themselves). I have never had a conversation with someone who quoted and relied on so many authorities for his conviction as you do. Still, you go to a doctor in the hospital to get yourself fixed up and don’t consider yourself a blind follower of this doctor. He is simply an expert to you. And then you claim you have found the explanation for what emotions are in human life, jumping proudly and condescendingly up and down in your living room, happy as Larry but not telling anyone what it is. This is the behaviour of a five-year-old. You are not even aware what emotions you exude writing this, how can you claim you found the answer to what emotions are as the very first in human history if you can’t identify them in yourself? Don’t bother to prove me wrong, Konrad, by quoting old and failed philosophies and gurus. I am very happy and content with the way I live. But I am interested if you set your goal a bit higher and come up with experiences that are not based on the premises of failed authorities, philosopher and gurus of the past. I’ll be interested when you are willing to take the ‘nail’ out of your foot that makes you go round in circles and walk the first steps, freely, on your own, with your own common sense, into the unknown. Konrad, it is such a magnificent, sparkling, thrilling adventure, it is well worth to overcome the first lump of fear and consider it at least possible. Just try it.
VINEETO: Excellent to get the difference right between expert and authority. KONRAD: An expert is somebody who is knowledgeable in a certain field, or has know/how in a certain field. For example: you can have an expert in medicine. VINEETO: We seem to agree on what the definition is for an expert : someone who has an expertise in a certain field per experience and/or knowledge of facts. It gets more complex when we talk about authority : To make someone an authority and relate to someone as an authority is an emotional behaviour. The other is not an expert – the conveyor of facts or experience, which then has to be examined thoroughly whether or not to apply to one’s life what he/she says. An authority figure is someone who you admire, taking his every word for granted truth and consider him or her superior in knowledge and character to yourself. Or it is someone who you consider superior and therefore have to fight against to defend your own position on the ladder. Rajneesh used to be such an authority figure to me. Richard is an authority figure to you – you might not have noticed, because you are so busy trying to prove him wrong. But he evokes an emotional reaction in you, which is the sure proof for your treating him as an authority. For me, Richard is simply an expert in the Human Condition and how to become free of it. I will explain the phenomenon of authority with another example: Remember, when you were 17 years old and you went to school or university and there was a teacher who taught history. At 17 most pupils regard their teachers as authority figures. This teacher then told a story about Friedrich der Grosse, an appalling story about babies been taken away from their mothers for an experiment. Considering that this teacher had been strongly influenced by his own history – Hitler did unbelievably cruel ‘experiments’ with human victims – it is possible that this teacher had not been very correct with his facts. After all, Friedrich der Grosse was a Prussian, a German emperor, representative of the hated Germans. So the facts of his story might have been emotionally loaded, exaggerated and distorted. But as a 17-year-old, believing the teacher’s emotions as well as his ‘facts’, you would not question his sources. You don’t even question or bother verifying them today. This blind belief is the outcome of an authority-based relationship. Once someone is considered an authority for whatever reason, nothing he says is seen as pure facts, questionable or verifiable, but that person is seen as someone who has a personal emotional relationship to oneself. Thus you either admire the authority figures, defend them and use them to prove your own convictions right – like Ayn Rand, or your teacher then – or you fight and compete with other authority figures to get to the top yourself – like you do with Richard. You can’t understand that, for me, Richard is not an authority figure. You yourself can only see him as an authority figure. Gratitude, admiration, revenge, resentment and competition are all faculties belonging to an authority complex, all of which are clearly noticeable in your writings. KONRAD: An AUTHORITY is somebody who is considered to be very special in the eyes of persons around him because of certain personal characteristics, ie. characteristics that make him act with total confidence in the social domain in the sense that the uncertainties that others have he does not seem to have. These personal characteristics go by many names, for example, ‘enlightenment’ ‘charisma’, but also this ‘apperception’ Richard talks about. An authority always bases his ‘proofs’ on an essentially ‘hedonistic’ base. Since a hedonistic proof of every position can be given, including that of drugs that are clearly detrimental to health, it is a false proof. Therefore hedonistic argumentation are the hallmark of an authority, and should be distrusted. In fact, if the only argumentation for the defence of a certain position is hedonistic, this alone constitutes a ground for rejection. Not that feeling good is wrong, but there HAVE to be other defences for a certain vision. As you can see in my mail I have NONE in actualism that could stand its ground without hedonism. If there was even ONE such ground, I would take it seriously. VINEETO: Goodness Konrad, your fantasy has had a ride with you. Where do you get the idea that Richard takes a hedonistic base as a proof for actualism? See, that is what I mean by the joke with the foot nailed to the ground. First you take a premise that is wrong, and then you go round and round in circles, proving your own false premise as false. Unless you question your premises, you will never be able to see beyond your thus limited horizon. KONRAD: I do not say that you have to renounce everything Richard says, only that you think about the Hedonistic perspective. I have conclusively demonstrated how Richard rebaptises the word Hedonism, and therefore thinks to have shown that his vision is not hedonistic. But every philosopher, looking at how he defends his vision will disagree, because his uses of the term hedonism shows clearly that he goes against its meaning. There is an Arabic saying, that says about the Hedonistic perspective: ‘If you are good to stones, they will be good for you.’ In other words, from the hedonistic epistemology EVERYTHING can be vindicated. But this does not mean, that it is good. To give, again, the simple example of drugs. Drugs will make you feel good. This connection is even causal, because drugs are chemicals, and therefore belong to the causal domain. If hedonism is the criterion, this makes that this feeling good ‘proves’ that drugs ARE good for you. VINEETO: You must be really, really afraid of ‘feeling good’ that you bring up the argument of drugs in, every time Richard or I use the word ‘happy’. And what drugs are you talking about? That Hedonism should be a criterion for ‘defending the vision’, as you call it, that is only your idea about actualism. Again you use your own falsely assumed premise to refute something you have invented yourself. The phrase I used (as well as Peter and Richard) is to be happy and harmless . This means, you have to be harmless to be happy and happy to be harmless, one does not go without the other. You simply keep talking about drugs because you don’t want to consider becoming harmless yourself – it would require some clean-up work, you know. KONRAD: The potential of growth is implicitly denied by every position whereby it is assumed that an end point is possible, and can be reached. This applies to Osho Rajneesh’s vision, to that of J. Krishnamurti, and it clearly applies also to actualism. Since all of the good of humanity arises from our potentiality, actualism, by just this position is a form of evil in the same manner as drugs are a form of evil. Drugs destroy the biological base of the functioning of the brains, no matter how much it makes you feel good. In the same manner, actuality destroys the psychological base of growth. No matter how much it makes you feel good, this alone makes it a form of evil. VINEETO: I wonder really, how you passed your exam in logic. Just in this single paragraph there are three illogical statements.
KONRAD: I also talk about enlightenment as a stage of development, whereby consciousness becomes conscious of itself, but I do NOT consider this an end-point. It is just a stage of development, no more, no less. VINEETO: Yes, enlightenment is a stage of development, not a very desirable one either. One develops hallucinations about being ‘one with the universe’, about being timeless and spaceless, about being another saviour of mankind, where so many others in the same business have already failed. Enlightenment is a development of imagination and emotion, from personal, selfish feeling to Grand, Universal Feeling (called GUF). Up to now it has been the inevitable outcome of the death of the ego, because nobody before Richard has dared to question feeling and imagination. One has to go one step further and completely eliminate any sense of self – or ‘being’ as you call it. With no self and no being there is no development. What should be developed? This body with its senses and brain simply lives and delights in each moment of being alive. There is no separation, because separation is a faculty of self and fear. Hedonism is a very poor description of that aliveness. But one has to use the words that are available... KONRAD: I do not see any argument from you in your mail, that I cannot trace to the words of Richard. I have the strong impression that you have (almost?) no ability to think for yourself. VINEETO: The words I use have not the trade-mark ‘Richard’ on them. The English language doesn’t belong to anybody. We both use words to describe the actual world, the world without emotions, belief and imaginations, that’s true. But because you can see Richard only as an authority, this is probably the only way you can interpret my writing.
VINEETO: I apologize that I let that post sit so long without finishing it and sending it off. Peter and I got really engaged in the Sannyas Mailing List with challenging and interesting discussions, creating havoc amongst the followers and lovers of Rajneesh, but also had very fruitful discussions up to now. If you are interested, or have the time to read it all, I have put most of the discussion on our Also I hear you are busy with the Mailing List B, explaining to people what Richard really means, so maybe I am wasting my time to explain to you, what Richard or I mean. I figure, if you can explain it to someone else, you know what we are talking about. Or are you just teasing? Now to your last mail:
KONRAD: Hedonism as an ethical principle is: ‘Pleasure as the guiding principle with which the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and/or better and worse’. In both the first quote and the second quote Richard demonstrates that he does not understand Hedonism as an ethical principle. So, you don’t like us to use the word ‘Hedonism’, not even to set it against freedom. And you say Richard is evil – or not harmless – because he re-defines words, like ‘hedonism’ and ‘apperception’. KONRAD: What do you mean by harmless? I do not consider it harmless to redefine the word ‘perception’ to be meaning ‘apperception’, to redefine the word ‘precepts’ to be meaning concepts, and to equate concepts with fantasies. For this leads to alienation with others, who either do not use these terms, or use these terms differently. When somebody does this kind of redefinitions, he is therefore NOT harmless. For by this act of redefinitions he will make you think that the things everybody knows from his own experience to be proof of being special, just by accepting this redefinitions. And that is what this ‘apperception’ has in common with LSD. It also destroys the functioning of the brains. Especially why I say that enlightenment is something beyond apperception, and not the converse has been made clear in this mail. Still, I have gone beyond apperception, so that apperception itself is apperceived, and I say that beyond it there is pure potentiality, and therefore the possibility of continuous growth during the rest of your life. VINEETO: I don’t know how you do it that you don’t get confused yourself with all these contradictory statements! As for the re-defining of words, maybe I have to tell you a fairy-story to explain. Lets say, someone has discovered a new world, where nobody has ever been before. You can call it ‘Jupiter’. How should the discoverer describe what he sees there? Everything is experienced different to earth. He cannot invent new words, nobody would understand him. He has to use earth-language to describe his experience in this new world. But all earth-words have already a meaning. What to do? The description can only describe approximately what the discoverer is experiencing, to give enough incentive for people to go out and discover this world for themselves. Richard is such a discoverer of a New World. Nobody has ever discovered it before. Now you come along and attack Richard, that he is using the wrong words, you argue that they already mean something in your world of thought. But that attacking of words is nothing but a Don Quichote fight, proclaiming that the Windmill is an enemy and then fighting against it. You are missing the point entirely. This is exactly what I mean with ‘authority complex’, the world you so vehemently reject for yourself. Instead of objecting, you could try and understand the facts that Richard describes instead of arguing which words he should use. You don’t know the facts that he is talking about, the experience that he describes, so how can you say he is using the wrong words. You would be more successful if you tried and remembered one of your peak-experiences. From the memory of your peak-experience, where the world is seen as a perfect and magical paradise without malice and sorrow, you could understand from your own experience what Richard is talking about – that there is an actual, physical world without emotions, judgments, good and evil, beliefs and concepts. It has always been here, just humans are and were so busy with their personal problems and psychic imaginations, that they hardly ever experience it. Only when you experience this actual world yourself, can you decide for yourself, if you want to discover more about it or not. Everything else is simply a waste of time. KONRAD: I have the strong impression that you have (almost?) no ability to think for yourself. And in the next post:
I don’t know which of your evaluations is valid at the time you read this mail. But I agree that intelligence and courage are the only qualities one needs to discover freedom, to get rid of every bit of ‘I’, ‘self’, ‘being’ and whatever names you like to call that ‘what you think and feel you are’. Nothing else is needed. Everybody with sufficient intent can tackle their shackles that prevent us from being free. KONRAD: If being free from suffering is paid by the price of not being able to think abstractly any more, it cannot be applied on any grand scale. For our lives depend on that faculty. VINEETO: In freedom there is no thinker as an ‘I’, so there is no question about being capable or not of ‘abstract thought’. Thought happens or is used when it is needed, abstract or concrete or practical or humorous. And a lot of time you don’t need thought at all. To enjoy a cup of coffee, you need taste-buds, for sex you need other senses, you use your ears to enjoy the rain falling softly on the ground, soaking up the soil, you let your eyes roam on a magnificent tree outside your window, there is no thought needed at all. One is simply doing what’s happening, thought, no-thought, senses, wake, sleep, communication and contemplation. Once I get rid of the ‘I’, which is the thought-structure and feeling-concept we perceive ourselves to be, there is not question of right and wrong, you just use the obvious tool to respond to each situation. I noticed that you like the word ‘ man’s potential ’. KONRAD: Since all of the good of humanity arises from our potentiality...Isn’t that what actualism is all about? One huge attack on everything that is potential in Man, so that he changes completely in something actual, with no potential whatsoever left? VINEETO: If you consider it your potential to rid yourself of malice and sorrow and thus stop being a contributor to the violence and sorrow in the world, that would be a great potential. But once all of the ‘self’ is cleaned up, the potential of that ‘self’ is accomplished, it has to die. What is left is the actual, the physical body with senses and brain, born out of egg and sperm, which dies when it dies, full stop. After the final elimination of the ‘self’, there is no more potential to keep that very ‘self’ alive. Of course, your ‘self’ would see such a proposal as scary, to say the least. Out of that fear you call Richard’s method and actualism evil. It is just an expression of fear. In the actual world there is no evil and no good either. They are both figment of our imagination. * KONRAD: I also talk about enlightenment as a stage of development, whereby consciousness becomes conscious of itself, but I do NOT consider this an end-point. It is just a stage of development, no more, no less. VINEETO: Yes, enlightenment is a stage of development, not a very desirable one either. One develops hallucinations about being ‘one with the universe’, about being timeless and spaceless, about being another saviour of mankind, where so many others in the same business have already failed. Enlightenment is a development of imagination and emotion, from personal, selfish feeling to Grand Universal Feeling (called GUF). Up to now it has been the inevitable outcome of the death of the ego, because nobody before Richard has dared to question feeling and imagination, our very soul. KONRAD: You are quoting Richard here. How do you know he is right? VINEETO: I know from my own experience. The bliss and compassion of enlightenment – I was swanning in it for several days and luckily got out again – are but fleeting emotions compared to the actual-ness, the magnificence and perfection of the actual world.
VINEETO: We have been cut off due to technical problem of our local server for two weeks, but now everything is switched on again. KONRAD: Hedonism as an ethical principle is: ‘Pleasure as the guiding principle with which the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and/or better and worse’. In both the first quote and the second quote Richard demonstrates that he does not understand Hedonism as an ethical principle. VINEETO: So, you don’t like us to use the word ‘Hedonism’, not even to set it against freedom. And you say Richard is evil – or not harmless – because he re-defines words, like ‘hedonism’ and ‘apperception’. KONRAD: The above statement has nothing to do with me liking or disliking him to use this word. I just pointed out, that if you do not use the word in the meaning it usually has, then you are not in a position to state that your vision is not hedonistic. VINEETO: Richard wrote to the Krishnamurti mailing list:
As you probably know, Anhedonia means the inability to experience pleasure. How does that gel with your understanding that Richard’s ‘vision’ is hedonistic. I can only see it as a useless excuse not to become happy and harmless, to persist in staying the way one is. The second point is that it is not a vision. Richard is living it, Peter is living it, I am living it. To be happy and harmless and to abandon and eliminate all beliefs, emotions and instincts is much, much more than Hedonism –
KONRAD: I can, for example, use the word ‘water’ for liquid H2O, and you can use the word ‘water’ to stand for petrol. If I then assert that water can be used to extinguish fire, while you disagree, because ‘water’ will even make the fire burn more, then this does NOT constitute a refutation of my statement, but a refutation of a statement I did not make, while pretending that you refuted it. VINEETO: Your example of using petrol for water exceeds silliness, it is idiotic. It was you who tried to hang the word Hedonism on what Richard or Peter said, but they both stated that Actual Freedom is far better than Hedonism. Let me paste it again, so you can read it more careful this time (for your understanding I will highlight the important parts):
KONRAD: Firstly, I do not doubt the sincerity of Richard’s findings. And I even do not deny the facts as he sees them any more. Not even one of them! (How’s that for giving Richard the benefit of the doubt?) What I DO deny, however, is Richard’s evaluations of these facts. He considers them to be the result of a very special condition he is in (which I also even admit) which he considers to be an improvement. Now, whether Richard is in a better world or not, this LAST thing can be investigated up to a point, even through the e-mail medium. Recently, I must admit, because of my deep involvement with Richard, I began to study emotions. For Richard has made me aware of the fact, that emotions as such are a terra incognito, at least to me. An area where almost everybody is ignorant about, but not as ignorant as you think, it turned out. Now what I discovered is that there is something in the brain, called an ‘amygdala’. It is situated exactly at the position Richard said he observed a change in him. Namely at the base of the spinal chord, where he felt ‘something turn over’. This amygdala has one important function. It causes the emotions present in the limbic system to be represented in consciousness. If it stops functioning, this causes all the emotions to be present, even to function, but they are no longer observed in consciousness. Why not? Because the limbic system is not able to reflect on itself. Only the cortex has this ability. When this amygdala does no longer function, this is considered a dysfunction. It is called alexithymia, ie., an inability of the cortex to observe emotions, and therefore also an inability to express them. Therefore the meaning of this word is equivalent to: ‘an inability to express emotions’. However, at this point I can still consider these psychiatrists to be mistaken. Richard is a very interesting phenomenon. For he shows clearly, that the emotions can be functioning completely independent from the cortex. To realize this is also a vindication of everything he says about himself. So this proves, that there are at least two centres from which action can emerge, possibly even three. Namely the cortex, the limbic system, and the nervous system itself. So I discovered, that Richard was right about that ‘animal part’ of emotions. Emotions are indeed innate, as he asserted. I was wrong on this account. What I designated with the term ‘emotion’ was not the same as emotion, but emotion together with its control. I had here a confusion Richard did not have. So I talked from the position of some kind of synthesis of emotion and ratio. But now I have a clear distinction between those two concepts. VINEETO: How did you find out for yourself that emotions are indeed innate? Did you have the experience of your own innate emotions. Did you have the experience when those innate emotions where temporarily not functioning as in a peak-experience? Did you understand the instincts that these emotions are based on by your own experience? Have you experienced how, through persistent investigation into the nature of those instincts, they become conscious and eventually cease to operate, for instance the instinctual sex-drive or the instinct to nurture? Or have you simply collected information from psychoanalysts who vary immensely in their findings because everyone applies a different theory to what he observes in other people! The way to explore emotion is to experience it without repressing and without expressing. Applying apperception, the particular emotion is then seen for what it is, understood in its complexity. It then reveals its underlying belief and finally the underlying instinct. It is a thrilling adventure to dig into one’s emotions, to ‘round them up’ one by one and experience them losing their impact on one’s life. This is what is really worth writing about. Everything else is only second hand knowledge, and specially on the subject of emotions very loaded with subjective concepts and hidden agendas. You can only believe someone’s knowledge but in actual freedom you can verify what we are saying with your own experience. KONRAD: However, this same investigation has made me see clearly, that Richard has not discovered something better, but a malfunction he mistakes for a trans-human state he considers himself an improvement. That it is a malfunction is something I have tried to test as best as I could over the e-mail medium. What convinced me of its being a malfunction is because he was unable to correct the sentence: ‘160.000.000 people killed in this century alone’. The figure is one zero short. VINEETO: Is that your only argument that Richard has a malfunction? If you want to rely your precious theory on this proof only, you better do some careful investigation about those figures! KONRAD: This made me realize, that his behaviour is much like the behaviour of people, who have a cut corpus callosum. If the right hemisphere acts in a certain manner, the left hemisphere observes this, and ‘cooks up’ an explanation for this. This is called ‘elimination of cognitive dissonance’. In the same manner, if the limbic system of Richard acts in a certain manner, even as a response to his cortex, his cortex also gives an explanation after the fact. Since he has studied very extensively before this very unfortunate malfunction occurred in him, he has a very big arsenal of possible explanations after the facts. But this does not alter the fact, that he operates from a mental disorder. As he himself states very clearly, he has all the symptoms of a madman, including that one of considering everybody else to be mad, except himself. His ability to admit this would normally constitute proof for its converse to be the case. But NOT with his type of malfunction. For he cannot be troubled by an error, because nothing can trouble him. And this is, because his particular malfunction is exactly in the area of emotion. In other words, since attacks of others DO disturb him, but he is UNABLE to EXPERIENCE these disturbances, he can admit such things, and STILL there can be something wrong with him. VINEETO: What makes you say that attacks of others DO disturb Richard? If people repress emotions to the extent even of being catatonic, there are usually ways to detect the existence of emotions and what kind of emotions they are. There is an obvious physical dysfunction and/or a practical malfunction apparent in the lives of people who repress emotions, even if it is to the extent of them not experiencing them, that will give a clear indication of those emotions happening. I am surprised you can detect this apparent malfunction in Richard through e-mail. I have not discovered any malfunction, neither physical nor in his practical life, and I have met him many, many times in person over long periods. So I do need a bit more proof from you about your theory. KONRAD: Let me say this last thing differently. Usually, if somebody is a ‘madman’, as Richard says, such a person cannot even consider the possibility that he is mad. For admitting this causes emotional unrest. But since Richard has an inability to experience his emotions, he can admit to such a thing, without it resulting in emotional unrest. Of course, it DOES that. Only, because his amygdala does not function properly, he is not able to experience this unrest. This makes him free to utter such statements, while other people with psychic defects cannot do this. VINEETO: Here again you just state that ‘of course, it DOES that’. Where do you get your certainty from? You cannot conceive that someone can live without emotions because you don’t have the experience for yourself that it is possible to eliminate emotions. Once you have eliminated even a single emotion by examining it and digging into it, you might begin to consider it possible for someone else to have done the same. Or do you find it easier to prove that Richard has emotions just so you don’t have to investigate your own? Then, good luck, it won’t be easy. * VINEETO: You would be more successful if you tried and remembered one of your peak-experiences. From the memory of your peak-experience, where the world is seen as a perfect and magical paradise without malice and sorrow, you could understand from your own experience what Richard is talking about – that there is an actual, physical world without emotions, judgments, good and evil, beliefs and concepts. It has always been here, just humans are and were so busy with their personal problems and psychic imaginations, that they hardly ever experience it. Only when you experience this actual world yourself, can you decide for yourself, if you want to discover more about it or not. Everything else is simply a waste of time. KONRAD: Not necessarily. If Richard’s condition is a malfunction, I can, through meditation, understand how he experiences the world by just considering how the world would look like without emotions, and then try to understand whether everything I observe about Richard makes the sense he says it makes. VINEETO: No. Just considering, as you call it, won’t do. This considering is an act of imagination and has nothing to do with actual facts. Imagination is vast and without boundaries as you can see in everyone’s psychic and religious imaginative experiences. Experiencing the actual world free of emotions is not the same as merely imagining a world without emotions. It is the ‘self’ or ‘being’ that is doing the imagining and that very ‘self’ or ‘being’ is in the road to experience the world as perfect and obvious as it only can be when the ‘self’ or ‘being’ is – temporarily or permanently – absent. KONRAD: Since I have recently discovered something about emotions nobody else has thought of, I could design an experiment that would enable me to see, whether Richard has a malfunction or has indeed discovered something better. If it is better, so I saw, he would be able to correct a particular mistake. For I discovered, that emotions are necessary to be able to do this. After all, if you cannot experience emotions, you can also not experience the emotion that results from the awareness of being wrong. So I tested Richard. I asked him to correct that mistake of 160.000.000 people killed in war in this century alone, that was one zero short. He was not able to do this. Therefore I concluded that it was a malfunction. VINEETO: Again, your conclusion proves nothing, it is not worthy of a professor of logic. It seems to be built on your hope to prove him wrong. Hope is an emotion...
KONRAD: Like I said to Richard. Making that innocent mistake does not prove anything. But not being able to admit that you have made it, and to correct it, is a HUGE mistake. I challenge you to make him correct it. I predict that you will be as unsuccessful as I was, even though you are much closer to him than I am. VINEETO: Admitting or correcting mistakes has nothing to do with being close. For people with a ‘self’ that would be a consideration because they operate on pride and self-image. I have seen Richard correct or reconsider his statements when the facts were not according to what he said. But that is not what convinced me that his method works. I experimented with his method and it worked for me. That leaves him free to be what he likes to be, not an authority that I need to prove right or wrong. And it leaves me free to pursue what I find worth pursuing for myself: to be happy and harmless 24 hours a day, every day, to be free from malice and sorrow, to be free from ego and soul. * KONRAD: I have the strong impression that you have (almost?) no ability to think for yourself. VINEETO: And in the next post you write:
I don’t know which of your evaluations is valid at the time you read this mail. But I agree the intelligence and courage are the only qualities one needs to discover freedom, to get rid of every bit of ‘I’, ‘self’, ‘being’ and whatever names you like to call that ‘what you think and feel you are’. Nothing else is needed. Everybody with sufficient intent can tackle their shackles that prevent us from being free. KONRAD: Yes, that pure intent part is also something I consider to be rubbish. VINEETO: Why ‘also’. I for my part find it definitely essential and imperative for becoming free. Without intent there is no way to question the very carpet one has built one’s world on. I don’t know how you can get on with your ‘process’, which must be quite scary at times, without the intent to become the best one can be? KONRAD: However, to put your mind at ease with that contradiction. Sometimes I do not express myself too clearly. VINEETO: Do you mean I have to take everything you say with the option of being not clear. I wonder how we can have a decent conversation unless each expresses himself or herself as clearly as he/she can? KONRAD: You have an ability to think for yourself. Only, there is also an UNWILLINGNESS. For there is too much at stake for you. This is what I tried to say. VINEETO: I can assure you that I indeed can think for myself, more than ever in my life. Because there is no emotion for or against an authority figure clouding my thinking I can judge for myself what is silly and sensible. As for unwillingness, I don’t know how you assume that. Unwillingness is based on emotion, usually fear, sometimes resentment against an authority figure. Since I have removed the very capacity in me to regard anybody as an authority figure (not an expert, we have been through that discussion), the only unwillingness I sometimes experience in me is based on fear. With sincere intent that fear is overcome and I can move again in the direction of actual freedom. KONRAD: If being free from suffering is paid by the price of not being able to think abstractly any more, it cannot be applied on any grand scale. For our lives depend on that faculty. VINEETO: I don’t know how you assume that I cannot think abstractly. I apply the result of my thinking to sensible action. The trouble with you is that you don’t seem to think ‘concrete’, as in practical, using common sense and applying the practical intelligence we are also equipped with. You seem to try and figure everything out by meditation or imagination, but Actual Freedom can only be experienced, not imagined. That’s where we don’t agree. * VINEETO: In an actual freedom there is no thinker as an ‘I’, so there is no question about being capable or not of ‘abstract thought’. Thought happens or is used when it is needed, abstract or concrete or practical or humorous. And a lot of time you don’t need thought at all. To enjoy a cup of coffee, you need taste-buds, for sex you need other senses, you use your ears to enjoy the rain falling softly on the ground, soaking up the soil, you let your eyes roam on a magnificent tree outside your window, there is no thought needed at all. One is simply doing what’s happening, thought, no-thought, senses, wake, sleep, communication and contemplation. Once I get rid of the ‘I’, which is the thought-structure and feeling-concept we perceive ourselves to be, there is not question of right and wrong, you just use the obvious tool to respond to each situation. I noticed that you like the word ‘man’s potential’. KONRAD: As I have tried to make Richard aware of, and now you too, thought is needed to act purposefully. This is not a theory, but a fact. VINEETO: Not thought, but will. Thought follows what will has considered the next act to be accomplished. Will is needed to become free of the Human Condition, to work oneself out of the mess we are born into and conditioned with. Once I am free, I am then doing what is happening. Thought works out how to do it in the most sensible way. KONRAD: The above denies this fact completely. The reason why this fact is hidden for many people, is because what I call third order consciousness, conceptual consciousness, is fragmented. Therefore the action always occurs from a centre, that IS you. If you become aware of the acting thought in third order consciousness, it is always from another thought. This awareness always causes the action to stop, because now another centre of action is taking over. The centre doing this awareness. To be complete. First order consciousness is sensual awareness and reflective action. Second order consciousness is perceptual awareness and actions arising from emotions. Third order consciousness is conceptual awareness. It is without emotions, BUT divided. And then there is a fourth order consciousness. It is the consciousness of enlightenment. It is the state, whereby consciousness becomes conscious of itself in its totality. Therefore you can also call it un-fragmented, total awareness. From this fourth order consciousness it can be clearly observed, that an ‘I’ is a thought that controls the body. That action occurs in that way is the ‘reason d’être’ of thought. To deny this, is to the enlightened one proof for not understanding enlightenment. And therefore it is evidence for whatever somebody talks about when he says that he has gone beyond enlightenment, he is mistaken. VINEETO: Where do you have this statement from? And what is the difference between sensual awareness and perceptual awareness? And when consciousness is happening, who is deciding which order of consciousness it is coming from? You just state your own theory (or Ayn Rand’s?) and claim that you are right. On what grounds? You say the enlightened one’s don’t understand enlightenment. On what grounds do you claim you understand it? Your evidence is no evidence to me. I will give you another, much simpler and in my understanding much more correct description of consciousness:
KONRAD: Richard has even explicitly denied that this what I call fourth order consciousness is even possible. His reason for it is that such a consciousness implies an infinite regress. For if consciousness is able to observe itself in its totality, then this observation is part of it itself, and therefore also observed, and this too, and this too, ad inifinitum. Richard is right about the part, that fourth order consciousness involves an infinite regress. However, he is mistaken that it is proof for its impossibility. For what happens then, is that a feedback loop occurs, that manifests itself in a process. It is ‘the process’ that is constantly present in me. VINEETO: Are you saying you are infinitely regressing? Ad infinitum? For your own state of mind and sanity, I do hope your theory is wrong! KONRAD: To picture what happens. Take a video camera, and connect it to a television, and then point the video camera on the television screen in such a way, that the ratio of recording to presentation is 1:1. What then can be seen to happen on the screen are ‘process – like’ changes, that fluctuate periodically. And that is exactly what also happens in consciousness. On top of consciousness a process is superimposed, that is a manifestation of this infinite regress. Richard has never experienced anything like this. For he has not even described anything like it. Stronger, he denies even that such a thing can happen, because of the ‘infinite regress’ part. If he knew more about physics, he would be aware of the fact, that there exist many phenomena in nature that are also based on such infinite regress. VINEETO: I don’t know enough about your conversation with Richard to comment on your statements. However, I understand that the video-camera/television theory is an interpretation of what you experience as ‘your process’, not a statement of facts. A fact is by its very definition: ‘what has really happened or is the case; in fact rather than theory.’ (Macquarie dictionary). A fact can be repeated, and if an inner experience is factual will show in a change of behaviour, life-quality and at-ease-ness. That’s why I have asked you in the very first letter how you live your life, how you are with other people, how you deal with emotions. Anybody can produce any theory about happenings in the head, and that is what people do all the time. But actual (as opposed to imagination) is experienced by the physical senses. KONRAD: Since all of the good of humanity arises from our potentiality. Isn’t that what actualism is all about? One huge attack on everything that is potential in Man, so that he changes completely in something actual, with no potential whatsoever left? VINEETO: If you consider it your potential to rid yourself of malice and sorrow and thus stop being a contributor to the violence and sorrow in the world, that would be a great potential. But once all of the ‘self’ is cleaned up, the potential of that ‘self’ is accomplished, it has to die. What is left is the actual, the physical body with senses and brain, born out of egg and sperm, which dies when it dies, full stop. After the final elimination of the ‘self’, there is no more potential to keep that very ‘self’ alive. Of course, your ‘self’ would see such a proposal as scary, to say the least. Out of that fear you call Richard’s method and actualism evil. It is just an expression of fear. In the actual world there is no evil and no good either. They are both figments of our imagination. KONRAD: This denies the fact, that I have investigated Richard’s actualism very thoroughly. Especially in my last mail. I do not deny Richard’s actualism out of fear, but out of a thorough analysis. I have learnt a lot from my investigation about human nature. But, still, it is clearly the result of a malfunction of our brain you are running after. VINEETO: Yes, it is a malfunction, if you want to call it that way. Being free, I won’t be able to feel sorrow and malice, to act out of those emotions, to act out of instincts, to follow beliefs. According to what every single one of the 5.8 billion human beings on the planet believe, it is a malfunction, a madness. But if you investigate into the facts of the so-called ‘well-functions’ of those 5.8 billion people, I very happily run after Richard’s malfunction. Peace on earth, no more wars, peace and equity between man and woman, plus the experience of the vastness and magnificence of this splendid physical universe without the separation of the ‘self’, ‘Self’ (and ‘being’) – yes, for evolution it is needed that we do that next jump and develop brains that are not capable of running on instincts, emotions and beliefs. And someone has to have been the first madman – and madwoman. I am sure, the apes thought the Neanderthals were mad (they didn’t even have a tail) and the Neanderthal people thought the Cro Magnum people were mad – but history proved them wrong – at least there was a technological evolution. You can stay where you are and who you are, if you want to, Konrad, I choose to be a pioneer for the next evolutionary jump that is due in humanity – humans free of malice and sorrow. KONRAD: I agree, that it might make you feel at ease when you have this malfunction. But the price is just too big, if you can do this to you, that is. VINEETO: What price are you talking about? The precious human emotions that cause war and misery, the highly praised instincts that are responsible for overpopulation, murder, rape, territorial wars? The numerous beliefs give birth to religious wars, arrogance, superiority, ‘chosen’ peoples all over the planet, misery perpetuated for the sake of a few compassionate ones? To be free from the ‘self’ and ‘Self’ not only makes me at ease with everybody I meet, but also makes me a non-contributor to all the madness and insanity that is happening in the name of ‘proper function’. KONRAD: I also talk about enlightenment as a stage of development, whereby consciousness becomes conscious of itself, but I do NOT consider this an end-point. It is just a stage of development, no more, no less. VINEETO: Yes, enlightenment is a stage of development, not a very desirable one either. One develops hallucinations about being ‘one with the universe’, about being timeless and spaceless, about being another saviour of mankind, where so many others in the same business have already failed. Enlightenment is a development of imagination and emotion, from personal, selfish feeling to Grand, Universal Feeling (called GUF). KONRAD: This denies what I myself write about enlightenment. I also consider all of these things false. So you disagreement on these points is not with me. Therefore your response is not to my words, but to Richard’s description about what, according to him, all enlightened persons have in common, especially false one’s. In fact, Richard’s words only apply almost exclusively to false enlightened one’s, or malicious one’s like Osho Rajneesh who want to be Gurus, or to people like J. Krishnamurti, who has nothing else to offer than this enlightenment. I myself do not say these things. And, if you look closely to the Zen literature, like in those stories of Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, most of them in those stories do not say these things either. And the person who has given me that ‘push’ that started it in me also never has. VINEETO: So Rajneesh and Krishnamurti are false or malicious or have nothing to offer? Who is a ‘true’ Enlightened One then. What makes him/her true? What criteria do you apply? The Zen-people I had to ponder about at first, they are not so obvious with compassion. But if you have a closer look, they talk about beauty in their poems, which is an affective quality. And they talk about Oneness, Unity with the Whole, which is a delusion. Enlightenment is death of the ego plus the usual inevitable aggrandisement of the ‘Self’. It applies to every enlightened person because nobody has ever questioned the delusion and proceeded further to eliminate the ‘Self’ as well. They all got stuck with the GUF. * Up to now it has been the inevitable outcome of the death of the ego, because nobody before Richard has dared to question feeling and imagination, our very soul. KONRAD: This statement is not true either. Within Objectivism Ayn Rand has investigated emotions very thoroughly. And there are more and more persons within psychology nowadays who consider emotions a very interesting area to investigate. This description of the amygdala and its role is one of the things that came out of this investigation. And the imagination, and other levels of consciousness is investigated thoroughly by Rosenthal, Edelman and others. VINEETO: These people have not been enlightened. So your argumentation does not apply to what I said about the delusion of enlightenment. KONRAD: I did not know that there was so much investigation going on, from the 70’s on, myself. But science IS catching up. Some of the things Richard says, like his statement of the animal Self is validated. But his description of emotions, and its role within human nature, is flatly refuted. VINEETO: Which only proves that science has not caught up yet. * VINEETO: I know from my own experience. The bliss and compassion of enlightenment – I was swanning in it for several days and luckily got out again – are but faint emotions compared to the magnificence and perfection of the actual world. KONRAD: And then I ask again, are these feelings of ‘magnificence and perfection’ your only evidence? For if it is, then you might have fallen in the trap of Hedonism as an ethical principle, as I have described above. You have still not shown that you understand the term in the meaning I have put it forward, and what is the customary use of the term within philosophy. VINEETO: They are not feelings in the sense of emotions. Magnificence and perfection is experienced when there are no feelings and emotions. It is then simply obvious and self-evident. Rather than trying to theoretically dissect what I say you would be better off to experience a peak-experience for yourself. It is like if you have never seen, touched and tasted water, then how can you join a discussion about water with mere psittacisms? KONRAD: For even if your condition is something beyond enlightenment, YOU, at least, must show an ability to understand it in the way I use the meaning of the term. To take your own example of this explorer, that discovers a totally new world. Maybe you are right, that he must redefine all of his terms he used before. But he must still be able to use the old definitions. For if he is not able to do this, then this constitutes strong evidence that before the redefinitions he had not even understood the terms properly he redefines now. And that points more strongly to self deception than an improved awareness of a better world. VINEETO: I know from my own experience now of what it is that Richard talks about. Old or new definitions, I find him extremely well-versed and precise in his description. Still, you have to experience it for yourself. Someone can describe water to you in the best terms, using all possible examples, description and theories, if you have never tasted or held water in your hands or swam in it (or in something similar) how would you know what this person it talking about. You can only deduct, imagine, fantasise, theorise and guess. KONRAD: If you look at the term ‘hedonism’, as I use it, in my world so to speak, then all hedonistic evidence is false, for on the grounds of hedonistic evidence everything can be validated. Therefore it is no arbitrator between correct and false statements, even about facts. If you disagree with this, and you have given another meaning to hedonism, you must first understand why I am convinced, living in my world, why I consider hedonism to be false. And then you must explain, at least to yourself, why you redefine the term in such a way, that the original arguments lose their validity. VINEETO: As I have stated above, Richard and Peter only use hedonism as a landmark that is far exceeded by Actual Freedom. I have given you the dictionary meaning, so I don’t see where I redefined the word? KONRAD: Since not even one of your group has even shown to be able to understand my argument, your redefinitions have not even grounds to give them the benefit of the doubt. For that is the minimum requirement for them being acceptable. VINEETO: If after one year and 500,000 words of conversation you think your arguments have not been understood, I wonder why you continue? I would say your arguments have been understood but not accepted, that is a totally different matter. You yourself have changed your mind many times in Richard’s and our conversation. Above you also said that: Sometimes I do not express myself too clearly. As for being acceptable, that is not my concern. I have proof enough in my life that Actual Freedom works, not only for me but for Peter, Grace and Alan. Whoever wants to have the benefits of taking it up is free to do so. It does not require anything from my side. It is everybody’s free choice. KONRAD: I suggest you look more careful to my mail. For some of it is not even a response to MY arguments. A new vision can only get hold when you convince one individual after another. VINEETO: I am not even trying to convince you, I simply answer to your mail, Konrad. You have to convince yourself, if you want to explore Actual Freedom. It seems to still fascinate you. KONRAD: Not realizing this leads inevitably to frustration. VINEETO: Whose frustration? Yours? I cannot be frustrated because I don’t expect you to be convinced or not convinced. You are completely free to do with my mail what you want to do with it, understand, misunderstand, refuse or accept. After all, it is your life, isn’t it. And without expectation there is no frustration, I am simply enjoying typing these words into the computer, giggling to myself sometimes, pondering at other times. It is all good fun. And if you can’t get anything out of these words, they will be on our web-site, maybe somebody else can. So, you see, you are very welcome, Konrad. It has been a pleasure writing to you.
13.1.1999 KONRAD: Hi Vineeto, I just want to inform you, that I have gone through a major transformation recently. It has made my own ‘self’ completely visible. Since my previous mail was written from an Objectivist Self, without me being aware of it, your mail is directed to somebody ‘who’ is no longer existing. Therefore I will not read it, and will not respond to it. Just a few remarks. Richard’s observation about the ‘self’ being that what is in control in most Gurus has turned out to be correct. I have investigated personally Andrew Cohen, who was in Holland last month. I confronted him with his ‘self’, and he hurried away as fast as he could. And I have been ‘kicked out’ by a woman Guru, that is well-known here in Holland, Marie-Louise de la Rochère, despite the fact, that her ‘message’ was that she loved everybody. Obviously she did not! I am indebted to Richard for providing me with such concepts like ‘I’, ‘Self’, and the unique perspective this provides. And now, being free of it my-‘self’ (Pardon the expression) the urge to either prove or disprove others has also been gone completely. This is why I do not find your mail interesting, for it is still written from the position of a ‘self’ in your case. In this case the ‘self’ consisting of Richard’s statement that ‘you are identical with the body’ vision. Although Richard sees the delusion of the ‘self’, and has, in fact, made me aware of it, he himself nevertheless has not freed him-‘self’ from every form of self. His self is the vision, that ‘we are our body’. That it is a self can clearly be seen from the very extensive way he tries to convince others of him being right. That he does this can be seen from the lengths of his mails. Only the passion of a ‘self’ that sees in communication a way to become immortal can explain that, both in your case as in his case. Do not bother to disprove me. I would suggest you rather do the following. If you have the urge to do so, investigate this urge, and go to its roots. If you succeed, you will discover your own ‘self’, and thus become free from it. To help you with that, I will ignore every future mail from you. One last thing. Since you see Richard regularly, express my gratitude and indebt-ness to him. Show him this mail. If he has really freed him-‘self’ from his ‘self’, he will agree with the soundness of my decision not to respond to future mails from you. And, just for the record, in spite of the dissolution of the ‘self’ that has taken place, ‘the process’ is still active. It is even far more intense that it has ever been before.
VINEETO: Hi Konrad, KONRAD: I am Konrad Swart. I am making contact, because it came to my attention that I was described as a professor of Logic at the University of The Hague, Netherland. Somebody who wanted to know more about me, entered my name in the Google search engine, and it came up with the following information.
This is a double error. There is no University of The Hague. I am not a professor of logic at that university. Neither am I a professor of logic at any university. I have never been a professor of logic. I have been a teacher of mathematics and physics at a high school for a very brief time (3 months, to be exact), I have studied mathematics and physics for 10 years at the university of Leyden, but apart from that I have no occupation. I have given lessons in logic to private individuals, adults, who were intrigued by the way I approached logic, and who asked me to do so. Probably that is the source of the misunderstanding. My social status is very simple. I am an absolute nobody. Please correct that web-page. It is very flattering for me, but incorrect. VINEETO: Great to hear from you after all this time since we corresponded. How are you doing? How is your process proceeding? I had taken your sentence from your first letter to me that you and your girlfriend, ‘are both working at making a course in logic that does not need to have my presence’ and that you are ‘sometimes giving lectures’, added your information that you lived in The Hague and concluded that you were teaching logic in The Hague. I appreciate that you set the records straight and I have consequently taken out the describing statements at the top of each page that contain correspondence with you that we have on the actualism website. I apologize for the double error of representing you in incorrect terms. If you want to check for yourself, these are the relevant pages –
I wish you a nice day.
VINEETO: Hi Konrad, Good to hear from you. As for your description of how you now understand actualism in general and ‘Richard’s position’ in particular, I will make the facts about actualism clear ‘step by step’. KONRAD: I have never ceased to think about Richard’s position and that of mine. How they differ, and what the corresponding points are. Step by step I learned what was the matter. By reading some of the pages, I see that I then made the error of thinking that what Richard had found was some kind of ideology. Maybe you find it a good thing to hear that I know better now, for my view on the total capacity of Man has increased enormously over the years. I know now that there are no less than four forms of intelligences possible in us, one of which usually is dominant. VINEETO: My first question is, how do you ascertain that those ‘four forms of intelligence’ and your ‘view on total capacity of Man’ is more than a theory and not yet another of your many varying ideological concepts? There are hundreds of concepts about ‘Man’ floating around in spiritual and scientific circles and they all have more to do with imagination than with tangible verifiable facts. The exact functioning of the human brain is still in its early stages of mapping and any concept so far can only be guestimation and speculation, unless it is based solely on the empirical facts known to date. Given that you are proposing ‘four forms of intelligence’, here is the dictionary definition of intelligence –
KONRAD: 1: You have the intelligence of the body, represented by the lymph glands. It is a form of intelligence that is spread out all over the body. Its main purpose is to keep the body into existence, and coherent, i.e., to defend it against microbes and viruses. I call this ‘existence-intelligence’. VINEETO: ‘Existence-intelligence’ is a spiritual description for what is commonly known as the immune system. Vis:
To claim that these micro-organisms have the faculty of ‘understanding, intellect’ or ‘comprehension’ is to make the word intelligence mean something it clearly does not. KONRAD: It is a form of intelligence that does not only exist in our body, but is present in existence itself. It is based on the 92 elements. VINEETO: If this functioning were intelligent, then every grain of sand, blade of grass, every worm, every mouse and every pig needs to be called intelligent. Your assigning intelligence to ‘existence itself’, however, is a well-known belief in spiritual circles where the word intelligence – or ‘Intelligence’ – is synonymous for God. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti considered himself the living embodiment of that ‘supreme intelligence’ (otherwise known as ‘that which is sacred, holy’ ). Surely you are not trying to tell me that our corporal immune system is the work of God? KONRAD: 2: You have the intelligence of the brain stem and nervous system. I call this ‘biological intelligence’, which takes too long to explain here. VINEETO: The function of the nervous system is to respond to stimuli in an electrochemical process, a process that works independently of intelligence. There are many examples of humans who have had brain damage such that intelligence – ‘quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity’ – does not operate and yet the nervous system remains functioning. The brain-stem, which connects the brain to the spinal cord, plays a special role in controlling reflexes, conducting impulses to the viscera (internal organs), regulating the internal environment of the body, and maintaining an ideal state of activity within the nervous system itself. To call an electrochemical response ‘intelligence’ as in ‘quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity’ is to yet again assign divine qualities of ‘Intelligence’ to something that has nothing to do with sagacity. KONRAD: 3: You have the intelligence of the limbic system. I call it ‘social intelligence’. It is a form of intelligence composed mainly of emotions. It subsumes all of our symbolic thinking, all of the social processes, all of science, in short everything that can be called ‘information’. VINEETO: The limbic system including the amygdala is known to be concerned with basic emotions and with autonomic and olfactory functions. To call a system for basic human emotions ‘social intelligence’ is to make mockery of the word intelligence. A clear-eyed observation of the human condition reveals that none of the human behaviour resulting from emotions is intelligent, i.e. ‘the action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something)’. Particularly when people have acted emotional they later confess that they don’t know what they were doing and they don’t understand what came over them. Mr. LeDoux has done some fascinating empirical research into the pivotal role that the amygdala plays as the alarm system for the sensory input that comes to the brain. He called it the ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ which is responsible for our fundamental experience of instinctually-based fear, for instance when encountering real or imaginary danger. He has empirically proven that sensory input is transported to the primitive emotional brain far quicker (12msec as opposed to 25msec) than to the cognitive awareness seated in the neo-cortex. As such, an emotional-instinctual response is faster and cruder, i.e. quicker and dirtier, than any possible cognitive intelligent response to a given situation. (http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/) If the emotions that arise from this quick and dirty instinctual passionate response were intelligent, then we wouldn’t live in a world ravaged by wars, rapes, murders, terrorism, famines, overpopulation, corruption and poverty. KONRAD: 4: And, as a last form, there is the intelligence of the cortex. I call it ‘inner intelligence’. In the normal condition it is a ‘slave’ of the social intelligence. However, it can become a vessel of a construction from the Social Intelligence that can have ‘magnanimous proportions’. This happens when the ‘social intelligence’ creates one huge system of symbols within the cortex that then, as a system, takes over. VINEETO: Scientists have established that the neo-cortex permits the higher functions of imitation, speaking, writing, planning and conceptualization. Since this is the only form of intelligence, there is no need to call it ‘inner intelligence’ – there is no such thing as a dichotomy between an inner and outer intelligence in the human brain. To propose that the ‘Social Intelligence’ – along with whatever spiritual self-inflating beliefs that have been taken on board as ‘truths’ – takes over the ‘inner intelligence’ is just another description of the spiritual process of self-aggrandizement. However, intelligence can only operate freely when it is not ‘subsumed’ by instinctual passions and its resulting emotions. As Mr. LeDoux has pointed out in his book ‘The Emotional Brain’, there is a distinct asymmetry in the way sensory information is passed on by the thalamus into two streams – one to the amygdala and one to the neo-cortex. Therefore the limbic brain has a far greater influence upon the neo-cortical brain than vice versa – which is precisely why the instinctual passion for narcissism has had such a stranglehold on the human search for freedom and happiness. So in order to free one’s intelligence from the influence of the amygdala and the instinctual passions, one begins to pay attention to and becomes increasingly aware of one’s constantly running social and instinctual programming, seated in the reptilian and limbic part of the brain. One becomes thus able to observe and dismantle one’s own psyche in operation. The method of actualism is designed to de-program the brain so that both one’s intelligence and one’s sensate experiencing can operate freely without the interference of the animal-instinctual parts of the brain. Then, and only then, the actual world becomes apparent in its purity, magic and magnificence. KONRAD: This is the Self Richard has talked about. VINEETO: The fact is that the ‘self’ Richard refers to is the entity inside this flesh-and-blood body that is programmed both genetically with the instinctual passions and socially by one’s cultural upbringing. When the ‘self’ identifies as its Higher Self or ‘Supreme Intelligence’ as in Enlightenment, it is commonly described as the capital S ‘Self’. To call the institutionalized delusion of grandeur aka enlightenment ‘Social Intelligence’ is to yet again make mockery of the word intelligence. KONRAD: When this system has become completely consistent, and has reached a certain complexity, it begins to have the property of ‘self-duplication’, and ‘it’ then wants to spread over as many individuals as it can, creating, in the process a new social order. This is the process whereby all social orders come into existence. This is the most advanced form the social intelligence can assume. It then becomes an intense source of emotions, up to sacrificing every individual that is infested by it, just by its desire to spread. It is the main source of all wars, and much violence. Whenever such a Self has been formed, the limbic system has reached complete command over the body, the actions, and the thinking mechanism. Indeed, it has reduced the thinking part of us into a ‘mechanism’. This is what Richard has correctly identified as the meaning of the word ‘enlightenment’. VINEETO: What you describe here has nothing to do with what Richard experienced in his enlightenment years and what is commonly described as enlightenment. Enlightenment is neither ‘the most advanced form of social intelligence’ nor the ‘main source of all wars’. But enlightenment is certainly emotions writ very large and sensible thinking writ off altogether, which in itself proves that enlightenment is neither socially nor intelligently ‘advanced’. Enlightenment, Self-realization, a state of Higher Intelligence or whatever is not the ‘main source of all wars’ – the main source of all wars are the animal instinctual passions of fear and aggression as well as nurture and desire that are deeply rooted in every single human being and can erupt whenever the normal structure of social morals and ethics fail to curb them. Your latest theories of ‘four forms of intelligence’ yet again blatantly deny this fact. KONRAD: Now the point is this: Richard has thus observed, correctly, that Man is mainly a social being, whether the ‘I’ only controls the body, or there is some higher form of ‘I’, that has taken over the lower ‘I’. Both the ‘I’ and the ‘Self’ are social in essence. The social intelligence, the intelligence of the emotions, is thus (rampantly) dominant in Man. He has also observed, correctly, that this type of intelligence, no matter how far developed, is unable to cope with aggression, war, and, in general is even the very source of them all, including the misery he calls ‘the human condition’. VINEETO: Can you see now why it is inappropriate to call ‘the intelligence of the emotions’ intelligence? As you state yourself, ‘this type of intelligence’ is not only unable to ‘cope with aggression, war’ but is the very reason for it, whereas intelligence means understanding, comprehending and acting with sagacity. KONRAD: He makes the error, though, to equate the social intelligence with the biological intelligence. An understandable mistake, though, because the source of this form of intelligence is identified correctly by him as being situated in the limbic system. And since this is misidentified by our culture as some animal part, he has taken this over. VINEETO: Since Richard never uses the expressions ‘social intelligence’ and ‘biological intelligence’ your statement is nonsensical. However, what Richard makes clear is that to experience an ongoing actual freedom from malice and sorrow it is not enough to slip out of one’s social identity (one’s cultural-spiritual set of morals and ethics) but that one needs to eliminate one’s very ‘being’ –
KONRAD: Nevertheless, it makes him think that the aggression that is inherent in the social intelligence, and, indeed, in every ideology, in every form of truth, is both social and biological. He does not make a clear distinction between biological intelligence and social intelligence. He thinks they are one and the same. In this his diagnosis is incomplete. Nevertheless, he has seen much more than I have given him credit for. VINEETO: Before you draw logical conclusions you first have to check your initial premise for veracity. Your premise about Richard is entirely your own fantasy and your understanding is seriously hampered as you attempt to fit Richard’s ongoing actual experience into your theoretical concept of ‘four forms of intelligence’, three of which have nothing to do with intelligence at all. Also your whole argument is predicated on denying the fact that human beings are animal and, like all animals, have a genetically encoded survival program. KONRAD: Now his solution, as is mine, is a transformation. What he asserts, and apparently has achieved in himself, is letting the biological intelligence be the dominant forms of intelligence, overruling the social intelligence. He lets to let it operate in such a way, that the social intelligence is, so to speak, ‘switched off’. Or at least changed in such a way, that ‘personhood’, the ‘I’-ness is no longer dominant. Indeed, even the ‘Self’ is subdued by his solution. So his solution is to let the ‘intelligence of the brain-stem and the nervous system’ take over completely. I suspect that this makes him live completely into the ‘here and now’. Time loses meaning for him, and even space has no meaning for him. Even concepts in general lose their grip on him, and only remain in their actual form. The only thing left of the concepts of space and time, for example, are ‘here’ and ‘now’, with the full realization, that ‘here’ is ‘everywhere ‘the body’ is, and ‘now’ is ‘everywhen’ the body is. This makes that the only thing that exists for the ‘intelligence of the brain stem’ is ‘facts, actuality and actions’. It means, that the ‘existence of existence’ is fully experienced, without the intervention of the ‘I’ and ‘Self’, or through any form of symbolic interpretation as is the case with almost, no, virtually everybody else. So the word ‘actualism’ is well – chosen indeed. Maybe a better word would be ‘factualism’. VINEETO: Richard does not talk about transformation, but about ‘self’-immolation, which is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spiritual gobbledegook. If you would read a bit more carefully how Richard described what happened to him first in 19981 when he became enlightened and then in 1992 when his psyche disintegrated and he became actually free, you would see that what happened was something entirely different to ‘the intelligence of the brain-stem and the nervous system take over’. Here is the description in his own words –
It seems that not many people are able to understand the state of an actual freedom from the human condition unless they themselves have had a glimpse of it in a pure consciousness experience. The pure consciousness experience is where ‘I’, the social identity and ‘me’ the instinctual passions are temporarily in abeyance and it is not to be confused with what you describe further below as ‘‘consciousness’ has taken over completely’ because that only means that the identity now identifies as ‘Consciousness’, ‘Higher Self’, Higher Intelligence or whatever other name ‘I’ chose to call myself. A pure consciousness experience (PCE) is a short glimpse of consciousness being completely devoid of any social and instinctual programming. ‘I am these sense organs in operation’, as Richard describes it. In a PCE, it becomes glaringly obvious that usually one’s ‘self’, the social and instinctual programming – that which you erroneously call social and biological intelligence – is interfering with the clean sensate and apperceptive experience of this actual world. Unless one develops a keen sense of ‘self’-observation and attentiveness to one’s own automatic programming, this social-instinctual automatic ‘self’-centredness is almost impossible to penetrate and one’s perception is thus limited to the views, beliefs and ‘symbolic’ concepts rooted in this programming. KONRAD: Now the difference between him and me is huge. VINEETO: Indeed. You say below that ‘‘I’ and ‘Self’ are very much alive’ whereas Richard has freed himself from the entire psychic and psychological entity, something unprecedented in human history. KONRAD: For my solution to ‘the human condition’ is completely different. My nervous system also went through some form of transformation. It has in common with his transformation, that the ‘social intelligence’, the ‘intelligence of the emotional part of us’ is also no longer dominant. Only with me it is not taken over by the intelligence of the brain stem, but it is taken over by the intelligence of the neocortex. This does not mean an ‘undercutting’ of emotions, as is the case with Richard, but a ‘domination of emotions’ by that part of the brain, that is fully programmable, and that is the seat of consciousness itself. If I would describe it, I would say that in me ‘consciousness itself became conscious’. And, since consciousness is a process, it manifests itself to the other intelligences, especially the social intelligence, into the form of a ‘process’. So Richard has ‘misdiagnosed’ me completely, because he compares that what has happened to him to that what has happened to me. In him the ‘I’ and ‘Self’ have been ‘eliminated’ as dominant entities, and are ‘dead’. In me, both the ‘I’ and ‘Self’ are very much alive, but are no longer the ‘masters’ of the body. In short, he experiences that ‘existence itself’ has taken over. And I experience, that ‘consciousness’ has taken over completely. This results that in him the emotions are undercut, and thus eliminated, while in me they are ‘overruled’ and thus dominated. VINEETO: Your concept that Richard has ‘undercut’ his emotions is entirely your interpretation of Richard’s description of actual freedom –
Whereas your description that ‘consciousness itself became conscious’ and ‘‘consciousness’
has taken over completely’ is a common and garden description for the Eastern mystical altered state of consciousness aka enlightenment.
Given your statement that ‘‘I’ and ‘Self’ are very much alive’, your entity is indeed very much alive and kicking, now
identifying as ‘me’ being ‘consciousness’, which is exactly what Richard described having lived between 1981 and 1992. A KONRAD: It is a wonder, that we corresponded as long as we did, considering the huge difference that exists between us, and the total lack of understanding of what was happening that was present in the both of us. VINEETO: Since your description of your process mirrors the descriptions of enlightenment, I don’t think Richard did ever misunderstand you – after all, he has lived enlightenment for eleven years. KONRAD: When we communicated with one another, consciousness was not yet completely dominant. This made me have a conflict with Richard. My lower ‘I’ and ‘Self’, then still present, and also still present now, were still resisting against this fourth form of Intelligence. They demanded an ‘explanation’ of the ‘fourth intelligence’ they could be at ease with. But, since these intelligences are of a lower form, they are unable to understand this fourth form of Intelligence. Only because certain events occurred, ‘they’ became aware of this very fact, ceasing ‘them’ to protest. ‘The process’ is proceeding very well, since it is no longer hindered by the (very strong) other three intelligences. In fact, it has solved the conflict by them allowed to grow up to the point that they were far enough developed so that they could accept that they were dominated by ‘something’ beyond their comprehension. (I lost 25 kilos by training myself in NLP, and have trained in Tae-Bo and Power Yoga, I have extended my mathematical knowledge enormously, and also my insight into economy, and later in information theory, making the biological, and symbolic, social intelligence smart enough to understand that it cannot understand ‘the process’, but nevertheless must allow to be dominated by ‘it’. So to answer your question, ‘the process’ is now completely dominant, and is doing well, thank you very much. VINEETO: Reading your description of ‘the process’ I suspect that even what you call ‘inner intelligence’ has not much to do with intelligence as in ‘the action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something)’ , but rather describes some intervention from some imaginary higher intelligence that ‘is present in existence itself’. In actualism there is no such thing as a battle between a so-called higher and a so-called lower intelligence. When I investigated the facts about the human condition, it became blatantly obvious that human beings are genetically programmed with instinctual passions, which are overlaid by spiritual beliefs and moral-ethical values. Additionally humans have the capacity to think and reflect and the combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation is capable of producing apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception happens when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord ... and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. When something is thoroughly understood, free of ‘I’ the thinker and ‘me’ the feeler, then any
emotional battle for domination or submission ends and all emotional objections disappear in the bright light of awareness. Whenever I ‘get’
something, i.e. when I understand something experientially and in its totality, there is no resistance from my emotions (your ‘intelligence’
# 3 KONRAD: I still request, correct those headings. For, as I said, although it is flattening, it is only flattening for my ‘Self’. The fourth form of Intelligence considers social qualifications as completely irrelevant, and is completely content with ‘being absolutely nothing’.And how are you? And now that I ask, is Richard still alive? I see no trace of him any more on the Internet. (I did not search hard for him, though.) VINEETO: I am excellent. Following the method devised by Richard I have been able to dismantle my social conditioning and I got rid of all the problems that result from needing to maintain this social identity. I investigated and have become aware of my instinctual passions in operation and now they very rarely rear their ugly heads. Mind you, they are not ‘overruled’ or ‘dominated’ but the identity is starved to near-death in a process of increasing awareness. There is still one step to do, though, and that is to irrevocably leave my ‘self’ behind so that I can be permanently free from the human condition. Richard is very much alive and enjoys himself immensely. He has stopped responding to objections on
Mailing List B a while ago, but writes occasionally on the Actual Freedom mailing list. If you are interested, here is KONRAD: PS: I see, that my long letter contained a minor error. I concluded with stating that qualifying me as a logic professor was flattening. Of course, I meant flattering. Maybe a ‘Freudian slip’? The matter is under investigation. VINEETO: Just a hint. You say your emotions are ‘are ‘overruled’ and thus dominated’ – maybe that’s what is ‘flattening’? Joking aside, I found that however hard I tried to ‘overrule’ my emotions, they were always there, sitting in the dark corners of my ‘being’, waiting for the right opportunity to jump into the open. That’s why I took the opportunity to break with my spiritual past and change radically and fundamentally and use Richard’s method to completely eliminate the ‘self’, the originator and maintainer of emotions and passions. Good to talk to you again.
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