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Vineeto’s Correspondence with Konrad Swart
VINEETO: Hi Konrad, You wrote in response to my statements – KONRAD: Given that you do not read very well, I stop this exchange. I conclude this from the fact that you do not show a single thing wherein you say that I am right. VINEETO: I have read every single line in your letter and checked up the facts and references of what you were saying. In your letter there was nothing mentioned that I found factually right. KONRAD: So, in effect, you are implicitly saying that I am a complete moron, not capable of understanding anything. VINEETO: This is a typical example of induction. I respond to the statements in your letter and you assume that I consider you to be a ‘complete moron’. This kind of assumption is usually known as an emotional response. KONRAD: Therefore, this is no honest dialogue. As you can see, I at least showed at several points where I admitted Richard to be right. I even said he is a genius, and meant it. I have made a genuine effort to understand him, even in his own terms. VINEETO: I don’t doubt that you made a genuine effort to understand Richard. Fact is, however, that you have not understood Richard, which is due to the fact that Richard’s experience of actual freedom is not a concept, as you believe it to be. Richard reports actual experience of life without identity, which is an entirely new experience to human history, whereas you are looking for yet another ideology to believe or dismiss. KONRAD: In every honest dialogue you do not limit yourself by stating your own ‘facts’ as opposed to the ‘beliefs’ of the other. VINEETO: A belief relies on one’s hope and trust and other people’s affirmation of this belief, whereas you can always check out facts for yourself, no matter who states them. The difference between fact and belief is enormous. KONRAD: You genuinely try to place yourself in the shoes of the other, and try to understand the other in the way he understands himself, and when you have made certain that the both of you agree on that there is no room for misunderstanding, only then you try to not only disprove the other, but also try to see why he says the things he says, and why he believes them. You do none of these things. VINEETO: I understand very well why you believe what you believe. That does, however, not make you beliefs into facts. KONRAD: It is an inhuman act to assume that everything somebody else says is wrong. VINEETO: I stated that what you said in your letter to be non-factual. If that is indeed ‘everything’ then maybe it is time to re-evaluate your beliefs and concepts and replace them with something more factual. I also don’t see what is inhuman about discussing facts. This kind of evaluation is usually known as an emotional response. KONRAD: It is the wrong attitude to approach a fellow human being as a fellow human being. VINEETO: I understand a discussion as an inquiry into what it is to be a human being. You seem to look for approval of your beliefs, not inquiry. KONRAD: It is a simple fact of life, that if somebody is totally wrong about everything, he is not able to cope with life. So there is always some base to be found where you must see that he is right. VINEETO: I never said that you are ‘not able to cope with life’ because our discussion was about your concept of ‘four forms of intelligence’ and your interpretation of actual freedom. I simply pointed out that your concept about intelligence is wrong as compared to the meaning of the word ‘intelligence’ and that your interpretation of actual freedom is imaginative and has nothing to do with the experience of actual freedom. KONRAD: To assume otherwise is to put yourself so far above the other, that the only way to describe it is as pure arrogance. And that, my friend, is the most intense emotion that is the base of every war. VINEETO: I did not assume anything – I pointed out verifiable facts. Instead of discussing the facts you are making an authority issue out of it. This is usually known as an emotional response. The way an automatic emotional response works is that people usually make no distinction between the trigger for their own feelings or emotions and the person who delivers the trigger – the person who made some comment, who did something or didn’t do something and, in this case, someone who is presenting facts that are different to your beliefs. To express your feelings to someone who is but the deliverer of the trigger of your feelings is to shoot the messenger. KONRAD: You have shown, just by your one-sidedness, that ‘actualism’ is none of the things it claims to be. It is just another source of conflict, (since you make no effort to see where I might be right). VINEETO: Facts are always single-pointed. A cup of coffee is not a horse and a computer is not a chair. Facts are very simple and straightforward. It is human emotion that tends to make a problem out of the simplicity of facts. Actualism is the method whereby I question and examine my beliefs and passionate convictions and replace them with facts. The conflict comes from refusing to accept facts as an actuality because one prefers to hang on to one’s dearly held beliefs. KONRAD: You leave no room whatsoever to have a dialogue with me. If the actualists would dominate a large area of the world, they would persecute those that ‘see the facts different’, just as any other ideology. VINEETO: It is not possible to ‘see the facts different’. What is seen to be different is viewpoints, opinions, concepts, theories, Weltanschauung, postulations, commonly agreed beliefs, assumptions, speculations, imagination, myths and revered wisdom. People tend to handle their viewpoints, opinions, concepts and beliefs so passionately as if their life depended on them. In the process of actualism I have learnt to take apart every one of my viewpoints, opinions, concepts and beliefs, worldly and otherworldly, and replace them with straightforward facts. The benefit is that I don’t have to defend them ... facts are self-evident, bright and obvious. KONRAD: Whenever you are prepared to have a real dialogue, resume contact. VINEETO: A real dialogue is not to find the common ground between two beliefs as in Carl Popper’s concept of ‘truthlikeness’ but to find out what is factually the case – tangible, repeatable, undeniable, obvious and self-evident. As long as you insist that actualism is ‘just as any other ideology’ you are bound to misinterpret whatever I say, just as you have misinterpreted what Richard said.
VINEETO: Hi Konrad, KONRAD: Vineeto, Just one more thing. You say that David Deutsch is a fantasists. What gives you the right to judge him so harshly? He at least has made a momentous discovery. He has generalized the discovery of Alan Turing of the Universal Computer to quantum computers. That is an achievement that gives him the right to be taken seriously by anyone. VINEETO: Someone who writes a book titled ‘The Fabric of Reality, The Science of Parallel Universes – And Its Implications’ is clearly a fantasist because this universe is not only infinite, it is also the only universe there is. His idea ‘for building computers that draw on their counterparts in parallel universes’ is science-fiction, no matter how seriously you personally want to take his words. KONRAD: The same applies to Popper, for Popper has solved the induction problem of Science. VINEETO: The Oxford dictionary explains induction as –
What may be true for mathematics – ‘proving the truth by showing that if it is true of any one case in a series then it is true of the next case’ – this does not apply to daily life. The trouble with philosophers is that they want to replace the experience of actuality with a concept of ‘what is always true’ – and thus they always miss the point of experiencing life as it is happening right here right now. For Popper there are no facts, only ‘truthlikeness’. That’s why you have to question the facts I presented, translating them into ‘my truth’ that contradict ‘your truth’. Popperism wants to find a bit of truth in everyone’s worldview regardless of what is factual. I prefer to go by what is factual. KONRAD: I am a ‘neotene’ individual. I grow. Richard is ‘perfect’, so he does not grow any more. Stones are also ‘perfect’. But they are also ‘perfectly dead’. Because I grow and continue to grow is why I first was not in agreement with Popper. This was because I did not understand him when I wrote those things you quote I have written. It is stupid to reproach me for not understanding him. I make mistakes. I grow. That is what makes me human. Apes are no ‘neotenes’. This means that they are born virtually adult. The same applies to deer, crocodiles etc. VINEETO: Your concept of perfection is that one cannot make any mistakes. However, the perfection of this universe is due to the fact that it is peerless, there is no comparison to some other universe that is more perfect or less perfect – unless one believes in a fantasist like David Deutsch, of course. What makes the world around us appear non-perfect are human emotions and passions, ego and soul. It is the entity inside this flesh and blood body that distorts one’s perception of a perfect universe and prevents one to experience the utter purity and perfection of the universe. In a pure consciousness experience, when you are temporarily without identity, you can also recognize and delight in the perfection that is already always here. To compare a human being who is free from emotions and instinctual passions with a stone or a crocodile is utter nonsense and can only be shed home to an instinctual need to defend your emotional ‘humanness’. But emotional ‘humanness’ is what is responsible for all the wars and murders and rapes and domestic violence goes on for ever and a day. KONRAD: And another thing. If emotions are indeed of an animal origin, how come then that Muslims become angry if you attack their religion? Are those people born with their ‘animal’ Muslim nature? Are people born with an ‘animal’ Christian nature? Are people born with an ‘animal’ Communist nature? Are people born with an ‘animal’ Fascist nature? These are all sources of emotions. Does this mean that Muslim is an animal ideology? I have never met a rabbit, a lion or a mouse that is a Muslim, or that has any other ideology. VINEETO: Do you really believe that human beings are born innocent? Have you never watched children fight it out amongst each other? Have you ever observed how instinctual passions in humans resemble instinctual passions in animals? In your statement, you are confusing the source of emotions – our instinctual survival passions – with the trigger for emotions – one’s beliefs, concepts, morals, ethics and the general cultural upbringing. The rudimentary animal instinctual ‘self’ we are born with is overlaid with a ‘social’ identity, instilled since birth by our peers. This identity consists of the morals and ethics that have been drilled into us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour and punished for ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour. We are thus taught to emphasize and highly value the ‘good’ instinctual passions and repress and control the ‘savage’ passions. Therefore it is the instinctual passions that cause us to act with aggression, for instance, whereas it is the passionate beliefs that are the trigger to bring this aggression to the fore. Without an instinctual passion of anger you would not have a passionate belief, only a working theory that one easily puts aside once the fact is established one way or the other. KONRAD: In other words, there is a connection between emotions and thought. A connection, that is completely disregarded by Richard. Only a human being can become angry because he hears something that contradicts that what he has accepted as accurate descriptions of actual facts, i.e., truths. So beliefs can become sources of anger. In fact, beliefs are the source if every emotion in Man. VINEETO: Of course there is ‘a connection between emotion and thought’. Eastern mysticism insists that thought occurs before emotions, even for very small children, while Joseph LeDoux has empirically proven that emotion happens before thought. He even measured the time difference – 13 milliseconds. KONRAD: This argument alone is enough to dismiss the whole vision of Richard as pure rubbish. VINEETO: It is your invention that the connection between thought and emotion ‘is completely disregarded by Richard’. The theory that thoughts are the cause of emotions has been around since time immemorial, yet is has been proven non-factual. Richard’s discovery is something entirely new – in order to be free from malice and sorrow it is not enough to become aware of one’s ego, one has to eliminate one’s soul as well. I understand it is a tall order for most people to even consider to question that five thousand years of ancient wisdom have been wrong. KONRAD: And any follower of him to be stupid beyond belief, because, no matter how much Richard talks about ‘facts’ and ‘actuality’ the actual facts that you can make a Muslim angry by not doing anything to him, but attacking his religion, are completely overlooked within actualism. So it is possible, to ignore actual facts within actualism. But then the claim that you ‘see the world as it is’, is obviously false. It is then clear that a selection is made. And a selection implies a selection mechanism, i.e., an ideology. VINEETO: You forget, being yourself a follower of J. Krishnamurti, that one can use someone’s expertise without being a believer or a follower. If I want to learn how to fix cars I go to a car mechanic so he can teach me. Richard taught me the tool of actualism and this very tool helped me to eliminate my beliefs along with the rest of my social identity. It is also the tool to become attentive to my instinctual passions in action and this very attentiveness is diminishing ‘me’. The method is very simply – you ask yourself each moment again ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? This question is bound to bring attention to all the emotions and beliefs that prevent you from being happy and harmless right now and thus increases both ‘self’-awareness and sensuous attentiveness. Doing this, one increasingly gets one’s head out of the clouds and one’s heart out of trouble and comes here to enjoy this moment, the only moment I can actually experience. When I apply this choiceless attentiveness, I don’t have to ignore anything – it is just that I progressively see the people, things and events with the ‘my’ eyes, the eyes of my passionate miserable ‘self’, and more and more as they actually are. Then the always existing perfection becomes apparent. KONRAD: In other words, actualism is just as much an ideology as any other vision brought forward by any other Guru. VINEETO: Yes, I know, that has been your stance from the very beginning of your conversation with Richard. It only shows that as far as understanding Richard is concerned, you have not been a ‘neotene individual’, you have not ‘grown’. It also explains why you consider Richard ‘a genius’ despite the fact that you disagree with him on every point. Vis –
KONRAD: Fortunately for the rest of the world, Richard’s vision is so extremely in contradiction with those actual facts, that no independently thinking individual will take him seriously. Only ‘muddled minds’ who meet him in some ‘distress’ period of themselves might fall for him. But this was also the case with followers of Coresh and the likes. These were also too stupid to gather a large following, although Coresh was more close to common sense than Richard’s vision is. VINEETO: On the contrary, only an ‘independently thinking individual’ can even begin to be interested in what Richard has discovered, whereas your wisdom is securely rooted in the tradition of J. Krishnamurti, Karl Popper, David Deutsch, Gerald Edelman and others ‘geniuses’. KONRAD: A real thorough treatment of the rôle of emotions should not just dismiss them, but should take the actual fact into account that different people having different beliefs have different emotional responses to the same events. (Which proves clearly that emotions as such are not innate.) A simple look at the animal world gives an indication of the ‘why’ of emotions. An animal that is angry, defends himself. An animal incapable of becoming angry is just slaughtered. Therefore it is a mechanism that adds to its capacity to survive. What is needed is an analysis that shows how, exactly, ideologies lead to emotions, and in what way emotions contributes to the survival of Man. Only when this is clear, you are ready to investigate the negative parts of emotions, and can see in what cases they cause problems also. Only then you can see, whether by throwing away emotions you might also throw away useful capacities of emotions. VINEETO: Given that you have convinced yourself that you cannot survive without your emotions, any further discussion is indeed superfluous. Actualism is for those people who are sincerely interested in ridding themselves of the debilitating emotions of malice and sorrow that epitomize the human condition. KONRAD: The only person who has made such an analysis of anger of this generality, taking both the advantages and the disadvantages into account, and who has found ‘rock bottom’ is J. Krishnamurti. He stated, that every emotion arises from thought. This is consistent with the finding that people have different emotional reactions to the same events. To be precise, those thoughts you have accepted as ‘true’. Meaning, that they are, when verbalized, accurate descriptions of whole classes of actualities and facts. Anything you accept as an adequate description of actual facts, i.e., truths, becomes, by the very act of accepting a source of emotions. When somebody doubts these truths, they generate anger, or dismissals, as in your case. And as such they cause the ‘human condition’. That is the message of J. Krishnamurti. VINEETO: Far from being the only one who ‘who has found ‘rock bottom’’ J. Krishnamurti was also not the only one whose personal actions in life proved his teachings of peace and bliss wrong. Not only did he betray his best friend Rajagopal by having a long-standing affair with his wife but he also sued the same man over endless lawsuits for documents he did not want to be published. In case you want to verify this information, here is the text of the final settlement of the lawsuits (written in legalese language) –
Therefore, whatever his ‘analysis of anger’ was, he did not apply it to himself and if he did, it did not work. It is also one of the great spiritual tricks to blur the difference between a fact and what one believes to be true. Belief relies on hearsay, trust and hope and is usually passionate defended, ‘a source of emotions’, as you say. A fact is simple ‘what is the case’, it stands for itself. This monitor I am looking at has a screen made of glass – this is a fact, verifiable by the manufacturer or other experts. You may believe otherwise but that does not change the fact. Therefore stating a fact needs neither believing nor trusting nor hoping nor any other ‘source of emotion’ – it is simply factual. KONRAD: A message Richard apparently is not capable of understanding. VINEETO: You have conveniently overlooked that Richard has been enlightened for
eleven years. He knew Eastern mysticism by his own experience and studied particularly J. Krishnamurti in detail as you can verify
by reading KONRAD: Richard’s analysis is one-sided, and, dead wrong. Although the capacity to generate emotions is innate, as is our ability to learn, the particular emotions we do have are not innate. They stem from the verbal descriptions of the facts as we know them, and thus have generalized into universals, and succinctly accepted, i.e., our truths. This means, that the actual problem of ‘the human condition’ is: ‘how can we have acceptance of whole classes of actual facts = truths on the one hand, and not the psychological problems that go with them that are caused by the very act of accepting whole classes of facts? VINEETO: Your interpretation of ‘Richard’s analysis’ is pure fantasy. For a start, you insist despite extensive explanations from Richard that actual freedom is an ideology whereas it is a living experience. Despite the fact that you prefer to believe that ‘the particular emotions we do have are not innate’ it has been empirically proven by scientific experiments that the human brain is genetically programmed with instinctual passions and not, as ancient wisdom wants us believe, that they are induced by socialisation. Due to your belief in the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, who was steeped in Eastern mystical tradition, you are defending an outdated model of human emotions. KONRAD: Maybe it is possible to eliminate all emotions. VINEETO: It is already history. It has already been done. KONRAD: Maybe it is possible by just ‘sticking to the concrete’ as Richard does. But if the price for this is that we can have no longer knowledge to base our life on, his solution is completely equivalent to a lobotomy of both the reptilian brain and the frontal lobes, so that we become creatures as primitive as frogs, reptiles and fish. That was the reason why I made those remarks about why it is so important to have scientists on your team. Any solution that eliminates them ‘just because they have emotions’ is throwing away the child with the bathwater. VINEETO: Living without ‘self’ is not ‘sticking to the concrete’. Your dichotomised worldview of either ‘concrete’ or ‘abstract’ is leading you astray. There is a third alternative. By being attentive to one’s beliefs and emotions one can become aware of what is actual. And contrary to your belief, an investigation into my psyche is an entirely scientific enterprise because practicing actualism I am becoming attentive to my beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions – I investigate my psyche in action. KONRAD: When we choose Richard’s solution, we have exchanged ‘the human condition’ then with an ‘animal condition’ of the most primitive kind. Irrespective whether this is possible, this is my actual and factual objection against his vision. That there is a problem with emotions is clear. But his solution is for me totally unacceptable. And that is aside from whether ‘the process’ is the answer. Independent of this, I, and anybody else who is able to think clearly about emotions, and knows the above actual facts about emotions, knows that ‘actualism’, whether possible or not, is not the answer. In other words, we do not even have an agreement about the problem, let alone the solution. VINEETO: Nobody expects you to ‘choose Richard’s solution’. Only those who are entirely dissatisfied with the solutions of the real world and of the spiritual world are prepared to try out something radically new to human history, whereas you seem to be happy both with worldly concepts (Karl Popper) and other-worldly concepts (J. Krishnamurti). KONRAD: If walking is a problem for you, because of bad legs then cutting off the leg eliminates walking, but solves nothing, because you now have no means of moving around, instead of a bad one. It just worsens the problem. In the same manner, if emotions are a problem because they do not always lead to a functioning that contributes to our lives, and they are intimately connected to our survival, then eliminating them causes our thinking to be eliminated, and this just worsens ‘the human condition’. It solves nothing. VINEETO: You example is flawed. The social-instinctual entity is non-physical and can therefore be eliminated, as Richard has proven. Not only it is possible to live without one’s ‘self’, it is also the culmination of human achievement. From my pure consciousness experiences I know that it is possible to have peace on earth in this lifetime. To deny this possibility because the ancient sages say so is utter cynicism. KONRAD: Good luck in your striving for some kind of primitive animal state. This is my final e-mail, and my final warning to you. You are on a suicide track, replacing your humanity with some kind of animal-like pre-human condition. This destroys the ‘self’ all right. But it makes you a being that is below humanity, not beyond it. VINEETO: I do understand that you have to put down what you don’t dare to take up. But it is exactly this ‘primitive animal state’, the instinctual survival passions, which I am aiming to eliminate in my pursuit of actual freedom. In becoming free from the human condition I won’t be a ‘being’ at all, but a flesh-and-blood body free from fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Your warning comes too late – I am already set on a road of no return. If that makes me ‘below humanity’ in your eyes, then your view is distorted by your emotions and beliefs. KONRAD: If you resume a correspondence with me, I expect you begin with an apology. If not, your e-mail will be dismissed, and eliminated unread. (My emotions are intact!) So if you do not begin with an apology, save the trouble to e-mail me. VINEETO: I gave you a long list of hard facts why I think that your theory of ‘four forms of intelligence’ is a misuse of the word intelligence and I gave you valid reasons for each statement – to which you have not replied in content. You only told me off for being right. Why should I apologize for not agreeing with your philosophical-spiritual worldview? I for one decided to question everything, not just my beliefs but my entire psyche. I do, however, understand that to get rid of one’s identity in toto is not everyone’s cup of tea. You have decided to keep your emotions and it is entirely up to you to live your life as wisely or as foolishly as you wish.
VINEETO: Hi Konrad, KONRAD: Now look here, Vineeto. VINEETO: There is no need to shout. You always have my full attention when I answer your posts. KONRAD: I have seen earlier, that you actualists are always talking about dictionaries, and from dictionary definitions. VINEETO: I have learnt to use dictionary definitions of words because people, particularly those with background in Eastern mysticism, tend to bend words to mean something entirely different to the common use of the word. Mr. Rajneesh’s for instance would bend words to suit his own duplicitous purposes to confuse people’s minds by his own admission in order to bring them into their feelings. In this way Rajneeshees had their own secret language that was only understood by them just as other religious groups have created a jargon that is only understood within their group. When I questioned my spiritual beliefs and left the spiritual world of duplicity and secretive exclusiveness behind, I have found it very useful for precise communication and clarity to use the words in their exact meaning, and the dictionary is a good device to determine the common use of the word. KONRAD: Dictionary definitions are limited to language. Of course, but it is language that human beings use in order to communicate with each other. KONRAD: Mathematics is superior to any language, because it is both more accurate and precise. It is the successor of language in this matter. In fact, the difference between somebody well – trained in mathematics and somebody who isn’t is much larger than the difference between an ordinary man, with no knowledge of mathematics and a mouse. VINEETO: If you consider yourself to be superior because you studied mathematics, then that is your business. I found that I can use my intelligence and common sense to determine what is sensible and what is silly and the mathematics I learnt in school are good enough for what I need in life. Despite your training in mathematics you are still using words to convey your thoughts. For instance you still say ‘can I have an apple’ when you buy a piece of fruit and not ‘xy³ - ¼ ./. 0 x 3,14’. Therefore to consider mathematics as a ‘successor of language’ is utter nonsense. As for your comparing me with ‘a mouse’ – I find it amusing that this recent thread of communication started with your request to correct our introduction on the website (Konrad Swart is a professor of logic at the university in The Hague, Netherland) –
According to you it is obviously possible to give someone else a social status below ‘an absolute nobody’. So much for the spiritual virtue of humility. KONRAD: I talk from this deeper insight from mathematics. So none of this ‘dictionary stuff’ is able to reach me. VINEETO: That ‘none of this ‘dictionary stuff’ is able to reach’ you explains why you are not able to respond to the facts I am presenting. For instance I fail to understand how ‘this deeper insight from mathematics’ would help you understand better what Richard is experiencing, because Richard is certainly not talking in mathematical formulas. Vis –
So far you have not responded to anything in content where I pointed out that your concept about actualism and Richard’s discovery is wrong. You merely retreat to the ivory tower of ‘this deeper insight from mathematics’. KONRAD: The only thing you demonstrate is your complete lack of development of the higher faculty of reason. VINEETO: You seem to request that I translate our conversation into a mathematical formula, because it is supposedly a ‘higher faculty of reason’, an assessment of mathematics that is entirely your invention. Vis –
Nowhere is mentioned that mathematics is equivalent to reason or a ‘higher faculty’ thereof. * KONRAD: Vineeto, Just one more thing. You say that David Deutsch is a fantasists. What gives you the right to judge him so harshly? He at least has made a momentous discovery. He has generalized the discovery of Alan Turing of the Universal Computer to quantum computers. That is an achievement that gives him the right to be taken seriously by anyone. VINEETO: Someone who writes a book titled ‘The Fabric of Reality, The Science of Parallel Universes – And Its Implications’ is clearly a fantasist because this universe is not only infinite, it is also the only universe there is. His idea ‘for building computers that draw on their counterparts in parallel universes’ is science-fiction, no matter how seriously you personally want to take his words. KONRAD: Study mathematics, and then physics. Then try to understand what the problems actually and factually are. And then come back. Then you see, that maybe David Deutsch idea of ‘parallel universes’ is wrong, or right after all. But up till now you have not shown to be qualified to even understand why the very idea of ‘parallel universes’ makes sense to him. VINEETO: I need to study neither mathematics nor physics to recognize that David Deutsch is a fantasist. He may be a mathematical fantasist but he still creates a fantasy world with parallel universes, he imagines computers in those parallel universes and imagines communication between those ‘counterparts in parallel universes’ . To translate this fantasy into mathematical formula does not make it factual, only more obscure and absurd. KONRAD: He is not stupid, you know. He is a genius. If this is your idea of a genius, you better take Richard out of your genius basket. Vis:
KONRAD: You, on the other hand, demonstrate to understand only language. VINEETO: I not only understand language, I use it to communicate about the sense I made of life. One doesn’t need to study mathematics and physics to make sense of life. But it certainly helps to question one’s beliefs and emotions in order to understand how the ‘self’ ticks and how the human condition works. KONRAD: You make me think about a mouse and an elephant, walking over a bridge, you being the mouse then saying: ‘what do we make a lot of noise, don’t we?’ VINEETO: You seem to think communication is about making ‘a lot of noise’. I was, in fact having a discussion about what you presented as your new understanding of Richard when we started this conversation. Vis –
* KONRAD: The same applies to Popper, for Popper has solved the induction problem of Science. VINEETO: The Oxford dictionary explains induction as –
What may be true for mathematics – ‘proving the truth by showing that if it is true of any one case in a series then it is true of the next case’ – this does not apply to daily life. The trouble with philosophers is that they want to replace the experience of actuality with a concept of ‘what is always true’ – and thus they always miss the point of experiencing life as it is happening right here right now. For Popper there are no facts, only ‘truthlikeness’. That’s why you have to question the facts I presented, translating them into ‘my truth’ that contradict ‘your truth’. Popperism wants to find a bit of truth in everyone’s worldview regardless of what is factual. I prefer to go by what is factual.> KONRAD: As long as you do not understand the abstract world wherein David Deutsch, or Richard Feynman, or Alan Turing, or any other of those geniuses live, (demonstrating this by quoting the Oxford dictionary) I have neither need nor desire to study ‘the abstract world’ given that the results of thinking in abstract concepts or mathematical formulas remove one only further from what is actual, factual, tangible, sensuous and sensible. In order to experience the actual world one needs in fact to remove all of one’s concepts, beliefs, ideals, fantasies, imaginations and truths that only serve to distort a clear perception of what is actual. KONRAD: I do not take you seriously. So far you have taken me ‘seriously’ enough to not only answer my posts but to reply in an emotional fashion. Given that you have compared me to a mouse two times in this letter, you have, by your own definition, admitted to ‘the most intense emotion’. Vis –
No wonder that under these circumstances you choose to only take those ‘geniuses’ seriously who ‘live’ in ‘the abstract world’. Men in ivory towers are known to keep to their own kind. KONRAD: First answer the following question. Is it correct to state, that a differential equation with a time derivative, is an embodiment of the principle of causality? Can we say, therefore, that Newton’s genius consist of making the principle of causality precise? Or is his discovery more limited? If you can determine whether this statement is true or false, you just have made the first step in the abstract world. Only then you qualify only a little bit to be taken seriously. VINEETO: I pass, Konrad. Our conversation started with you saying that –
To which I replied –
Now, in order to discuss your understanding of actualism in general and ‘Richard’s position’ in particular you want me to determine if Newton’s ‘principle of causality’ is true or false? The way you stated your conditions you have made it very clear that you do not want to discuss what you ‘think about Richard’s position and that of mine’ because ‘Richard’s position’ has nothing to do with any ‘differential equation with a time derivative’. ‘Richard’s position’ is the discovery of the purity and perfection of the actual world that becomes apparent when one’s ‘self’ is temporarily absent or permanently extinct. ‘Richard’s position’ is that the complete extinction of ‘self’, both ego and soul, is indeed possible despite the millennia-old belief that it is only possible after death. ‘Richard’s position’ lies 180 degrees opposite to all spiritual belief and ancient wisdom. I for one decided to explore ‘Richard’s position’ practically by applying the method of actualism – and I have done so with great success. Actualism is, in fact, the best thing since sliced bread so to speak. But I do understand that it is not everyone’s cup of tea to be a pioneer in something so radical and entirely new to human history.
KONRAD: I do not know, whether you are aware of it, but we are not communicating. VINEETO: I don’t know about you, but I am communicating with you – I read what you write and I respond to what you are saying. When I look through the recent posts, you were also communicating with me – at least you said so. Vis –
Maybe you stopped communicating when you realized that your idea of ‘a lot of emotion’ in me was merely wishful thinking? KONRAD: You know, for any real communication to be at all possible, there has to be mutual emotional credit. But if emotions are wrong, then, of course, emotional credit is a meaningless term. And if there is no emotional credit, there is no ‘taking each other seriously’. VINEETO: Another word for ‘emotional credit’ is trust. Trust is the ‘faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination’ Oxford Dictionary. I have long ago thrown trust, hope, love and faith out the window together with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair. I prefer to take what people say at face value, and instead of relying ‘on the truth of a statement ... without examination’ I rather check out the facts for myself. To have a sincere discussion about what it is to be human being one needs neither trust nor distrust but a sincere interest in what is actually the case, what makes sense and was is factual. To enter into a discussion with the burden of an emotional expectation, as in demanding trust, faith or ‘mutual emotional credit’ is to handcuff and mouth-gag the other to only say what one wants to hear, to not hurt one’s precious feelings and to not question one’s precious beliefs. This type of conversation, although very common, only serves to cement what one already feels and believes, to confirm what one already holds to be the Truth and, as such, is the opposite to gaining a clear insight into the human condition. KONRAD: In other words, you can try to point out that I am wrong until you are ‘blue in the face’. VINEETO: You forget that it does not matter to me if you agree with the facts I pointed out or not. It is your life you are living and you are reaping the rewards and paying the consequences for what you choose to do. KONRAD: But if you fail to first make me respect you, I will not listen. VINEETO: For me the discussion we have had was not about gaining your respect. Facts do not turn into fiction because you choose to ignore them. KONRAD: This makes your e-mails to be an ‘exercise in futility’. VINEETO: I have enjoyed my conversation with you immensely. It is always good fun to find out what sense, or nonsense, other people make of the business of being alive on this wonderful and cornucopian planet. KONRAD: I have no respect whatsoever for you. That is the emotional content of me comparing you with a mouse. You fail to see, that this implies that I do not take the trouble to read your e-mails. VINEETO: I am surprised that you are nevertheless still answering my posts. But given that you insist on sticking to your unsubstantiated emotional impression, this is indeed the end of a sensible conversation. Besides, it has never been your strong point to read what actualists have to say. Even
though you considered Richard to be a genius (‘What I really think of Richard is that he is a genius.’
And –
KONRAD: I just read the first few sentences. And if I see no attempt to establish emotional credit, I just discard the rest. VINEETO: Following your line of argument I am surprised that you had such an extensive correspondence with Richard who never made a secret out the fact that his entire emotional faculty has expired in September 1992. Reading your correspondence with him I gained the expression that the very fact of this outstanding ongoing experience had fascinated you immensely. Your statement also does not make any sense in regards to your assertion that you are now dominating your emotions –
VINEETO: Why, despite your transformation, are emotions still so important that you have to establish ‘mutual emotional credit’ first, before your ‘intelligence of the neocortex’ can begin to operate? Do you no longer practice ‘domination of emotions’? You are also asserting that you can manipulate other people’s emotions easily. Vis –
Has this manipulation failed that you now demand to first establish ‘emotional credit’? KONRAD: So much for ‘elimination of emotions’ and therefore ‘not taking emotions into account’ to establish ‘world peace’. VINEETO: I would rather say – so much for the practice of ‘domination of emotions’. It does not seem to work very well to establish ‘emotional credit’, let alone ‘world peace’. The attempt to base human relations on trust, faith and hope, i.e. ‘mutual emotional credit’, has had a trial run to ‘establish world peace’ over at least 5000 years of recorded history. You only need to watch the evening news to know the success it has had – nil. I decided that enough is enough after years of seeking peace via trust, faith, love and hope and I turned around 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Without expectations for trust, faith, love and hope the fear of distrust, disbelief, doubt and disappointment has also disappeared and therefore the hurdles to live with people in peace have greatly diminished. It is so much easier to have a peaceful interaction with my fellow human beings when ‘me’, the ‘self’-centred entity inside this body, is not continuously demanding attention, trust, respect, love and sympathy. In a pure consciousness experience, where the emotional-instinctual ‘self’ is temporarily absent, the purity and perfection of this actual world can be readily experienced. In such a non-affective, non-spiritual experience it becomes glaringly obvious that it is ‘me’, and only ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual ‘self’, who is standing in the way of peace on earth. To remember such an experience of the always existing purity and perfection of the universe is to become obsessed with living this experience 24 hours a day. That’s what actualism is all about. KONRAD: And now that I think of it, just this point is enough to make actualism fail. VINEETO: Actualism has always failed in your eyes because you have never ever considered questioning the tried and failed solutions of Western philosophy and Eastern spiritualism. Your theoretical-only assessment has neither weight nor credibility because it is merely an opinion of a disparaging spiritualist. If you would care to read the Actual Freedom website, you would find hundreds of unsubstantiated objections to actualism similar to yours and they were all diligently and sincerely answered with verifiable facts. To really evaluate if actualism failed you would have to present practical empirical evidence, you would have to honestly test out the method for yourself. KONRAD: No wonder, that Richard has stopped communicating. It begins to dawn upon him that he is the father of a ‘dead born baby’. VINEETO: Contrary to you Richard has proven his metal by answering thousands of objections – he did not bale out with petty excuses like ‘you need ‘to establish emotional credit’, otherwise I won’t read your mail’. But there is a limit to how many different objections people can invent and answering the same old objections year after year makes no sense. That actualism is not a ‘dead born baby’, as you might hope, is demonstrated by the fact that Richard is still free from the human condition and that he experiences the purity and perfection of this marvellous infinite universe day after day. It is also proven by the fact that already a handful of people have taken up practicing the method of actualism and are reporting incremental and tangible success – their life is happier than before, their interactions with people are harmless and harmonious and they reportedly are taking themselves far less serious than ever before. However, given the fact that actualism is such a radical proposition, 180 degree opposite to all the tried and failed emotional-spiritual solutions of humankind, it is early days indeed. On that note, Konrad I wish you a very good night.
VINEETO: Why, despite your transformation, are emotions still so important that you have to establish ‘mutual emotional credit’ first, before your ‘intelligence of the neocortex’ can begin to operate? Do you no longer practice ‘domination of emotions’? KONRAD: I hope this is no rhetorical question. If it isn’t I shall answer it. I begin to understand that people do not have emotions, but they are their emotions. Emotions are an expression of the social intelligence. VINEETO: There is a vital difference between ‘who’ I am and ‘what’ I am. ‘Who’ I am – my ‘self’, my identity, my ‘being’ – is determined both by the genetic instinctual programming and the social identity, or nature and nurture, as some may call it. ‘Who’ I am is both the instinctual passions and its resulting emotions and beliefs, whereas ‘what’ I am is this flesh and blood body. KONRAD: J. Krishnamurti made the assertion, that emotions arise out of thought. I didn’t believe it, but after a very extensive conflict with somebody on the Klavarskribo organ e-mail list, and meditating intensely on it, I saw that this was the essence of ‘the human condition’. Next to this, this is consistent with the Objectivist’ statement, that emotions are a manifestation in consciousness of automatic thought processes. Let me quote the Objectivists on this to show what emotions really are. Emotions as a Product of Ideas (Leonard Peikoff.) <snip> In other words, emotions stem from our thoughts! Exactly the thesis of J. Krishnamurti. This means, that to be truly to be without emotions, you must be without thoughts. Clearly, no actualist is without thoughts, if only because they all use language. VINEETO: You know, Konrad, when I experienced the world without the distorting veil of my emotional-instinctual ‘self’ in a pure consciousness experience, I saw everything as if for the first time. Everything was sparkling, pure, perfect, crystal clear and magical. With my ‘self’ temporarily absent I could see the world as it is and people as they are. I could also see that it is only ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual ‘self’, that stands in the way of experiencing this magical fairy-tale-like perfection 24 hours a day. From this first and many following PCEs I know that it is very well possible, despite your belief and that of thousands of others, to live without ‘self’ – without soul, without identity, without emotions and without the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. From the pure consciousness experience I also know that everyone else has got it wrong – every theory, every belief, every concept, everything we feel and think ourselves to be is not what we are. J. Krishnamurti, the objectivists, Carl Popper, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Agnostics, Mohan Rajneesh, and all the other teachers, believers and followers ... they all got it 180 degrees wrong. Fact is, when ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual entity inside this flesh and blood body, disappears then, and only then, there is peace on earth. The fashionable myth ‘that emotions arise out of thought’ is wrong and has always been wrong. Within the human condition most thoughts are emotion-backed, emotion-infused – they are contaminated with feelings tainted by instinctual survival passions and they are almost always self-centred. Examine and investigate your emotions and passions and you will find that your thoughts will become less frantic and more peaceful, less frequent and more capable of astounding clarity. The actualism method aims at eliminating the ‘self’, not eliminating the emotions. This is done by examining and thus diminishing good and bad feelings and increasing the felicitous/ innocuous feelings. If you do this with sincere intent and stubborn determination, it will eventually result in the collapse of the ‘self’ because the ‘self’ can only thrive on good and bad emotions – it does not get nourishment when I am happy and harmless. You say that now instead of wanting to establish ‘emotional credit’ you feel love for me – KONRAD: Of course, my love cannot reach you. I see, that my arguments cannot reach you. And what I write to you now, which is the plain truth, cannot reach you either. For you even deny that truth can have any validity. You are completely beyond reach, as far as I know. My love cannot touch you. My reason cannot touch you. And even, in spite of your belief in ‘actual facts’, even the facts I put into my e-mails (for example, that Richard does not know ‘the process’) and that I am not a person who belongs to the ideologies of the Eastern mystic, do not reach you. I am simply confronted with denials with anything that goes against the ‘facts’ as you choose to see them, i.e., your beliefs. Still, as a fellow human being, It is impossible for me not to love you. And that is why I keep trying, trying, trying, knowing very well that every attempt I undertake will be completely futile. My whole exchange with you is, ‘an exercise in futility’. Still, my love makes me continue, in spite of the fact that I know better. VINEETO: Love is always the last resort for a spiritualist when the communication has broken down. What good is love going to do? I have long ago found out that love is not the answer to the human condition but part of the problem. Love is only the cover-up for the rotten core that lies underneath – the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that all humans are bestowed with by default. The method of actualism aims at removing the cause not at providing a gooey band-aid. It is possible to change human nature – you can remove the whole programming and without malice and sorrow love and compassion are also unemployed. Without the bad emotions, the good emotions are of no value whatsoever. And only when you have cleaned your eyes of good and bad emotion can you experience the world as it is and yourself as a marvellously functioning sensate, intelligent and apperceptive human being. There is much, much more to discover that what J. Krishnamurti and all the Eastern and Western teachers, gurus, philosophers and shamans keep on regurgitating – there is a purity and a perfection to discover that is beyond all human imagination. All it takes is sincerity, a discontentment with the current non-solutions and a naïve sense of adventure to not settle for second best. I wish you good-bye, Konrad. I don’t think it makes sense to continue the conversation, because you insist that emotions are vital and you believe in love, whereas I have discovered the actual wondrous world that lies beyond love and it beats Love and Compassion by more than a country mile.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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