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Vineeto’s Correspondence to Mailing List C
RESPONDENT No 20: Thank you for such a wonderful refreshing wind of energy. Wow... Your words to me, were from the heart, something that seems to be missing a lot around here, with all this ego bashing... Thank you so much... VINEETO: As far as I am concerned, my words are not from the heart, they are simply without malice. Without malice and aggression one needs no love to cover it up. Love has been an attempt to soothe and restrict the instinctual passions of malice and fear in human beings and it has failed to stop the fighting both in relationships and on a global scale. To rid oneself of malice is nothing ‘special’, it is something that everybody can do with sufficient intent and courage. The intent stems from the peak-experience, when one experiences the world without the identity of ego and soul, as a perfect and magical place. And further, sincere intent is fuelled by being discontented and despairing about the ‘self’, the alien being that one is, and despairing about the way human beings behave with each other. Once I had recognized that aggression is an innate instinct within me and within everybody, once I had recognised that it is not just caused by other people – who are then blamed – or bought on by particular circumstances, I decided to eliminate this ‘self’ in me and this became the main focus of my investigation. As for the ‘ego bashing’ – I don’t see any point in it. I think it is simply a ‘spiritual’ disguise to be malicious to other people. Why else would one try and change other people instead of oneself? Seems such a waste of time...
RESPONDENT No 10: Hi dears, I’m pretty much disinterested in the Peter and Vineeto show...so If I figure out how, I’ll unsubscribe from this list for a while. See ya all later. [And 2 days later]: Hello everyone, I just wondering if there is anyone on this list who is attracted to Peter and Vineeto? What is it you admire about their writing?
RESPONDENT No 3: In no way I’m attracted to Peter and Vineeto. Actually what they are doing is quite violent. That, again, just proves how bogus the philosophy behind their words is. What I admire about their writing is this ever present mirror-like quality of each and every act, of each and every being, showing me again and again, that one can not hide the state of being behind some smart words. Stupidity always shows itself in mysterious ways. And I’m grateful for the reminder, nevertheless, enough is enough. Thank you for the opportunity to ask all the people from the list, who actually enjoys this one-way chat, to continue on their private e-mail address. Let’s create some breathing space here. However, if you guys all enjoy it, please let me know...
VINEETO: Hi everybody, I took a few days off writing to find out my own position in this ‘show’, what it does to me and where I stand. I found that I had tried to understand psychologically and psychically from where everyone was coming from, what the underlying motivation or story was for whatever comment, question, objection – because I considered it essential for communication. The results were tight shoulders and tense thoughts, no way to respond or see clearly. I had gone into the collective psychic world of fear, the instinctual fear which is the core of the Human Condition, that surfaces when a familiar and safe setting of one’s conviction is shaken up. Trying to understand what’s going on from ‘feeling’ it out, the feelings of so-called empathy and intuition had only stopped me from being here, from noticing the delight of the fan blowing at my back, the cars driving by, the taste of coffee in my mouth, the sound of the ocean and the play of my fingers on the keyboard... Well, I also found out that it does not need a psychic intuition or empathy to come to that conclusion. I could have reached there by straight forward common sense. Once I saw with apperception – the mind’s perception of itself – what I was doing, joining this ‘real’ world of feelings and concepts, this ‘real’ world disappeared with a ‘pop’. Now, being back here , I can communicate again about this so wondrous, fairy-tale-like, sensuous, obvious and corporeal actual world... Reading the different statements I was reminded of a particular outstanding experience during the Anti-Fisher-Hoffman-Process in Pune. It was the second time that I did the group, the first time that I was a staff-member. The AFH, as we called it, is a 10-12 day process of looking at childhood issues and overcoming fear, resentment, anger, attachment by using intense bio-dynamic methods. By the third day, with lots of ‘work’ and little sleep, everybody hit their limit. I dragged myself forward, fantasizing about the time when I could sleep again as long as I wanted, if I only made it through the next ‘hellish’ days. Suddenly it dawned on me that what I was doing was waiting. I was wasting my time for ‘redemption’. And I realised that there was no difference from ‘waiting for heaven’ or for enlightenment, or for the right man, or... With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. This peak-experience lasted for several hours, and while everyone else was tired to the bone I bounced in refreshed aliveness. Later on the event got filed into the category of ‘group-highs’ and the memory of it soon faded away. But for those few hours I had lived in the actual world, here, now, without God, heaven, authority, love, hope and postponement. I had actually experienced that this moment is the only moment we have got, the only moment we can experience being alive, to be either miserable or happy, complaining or fully alive. And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on forever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, re-appearing in endless re-incarnations, sorting out one’s so-called karma. Enlightenment offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever – even after physical death ‘I’ would continue ... and this very dream lead to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or otherwise in Nirvana after death... This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are an essential part of Eastern teaching. The dream of the eternal, undying soul spoils the game of living now as the only moment of being alive. That’s where Richard shocked my out of my socks: He proposed that there is no life after death. You die when you die, full stop, basta, finito, extinct. ‘Well, yes, maybe’, I thought, ‘nobody knows, and it could be that he might be right. But I will only know when I die ..’ (one can see the postponement at work!). I did not want to let the fact come close enough to admit that I have only a very limited life-span left – I don’t know how long it will be. When I asked Richard why he is so confidently positive about no life after death, he replied: ‘Because there is nobody and nothing in me that could live on, I am only this flesh and blood body, there is no soul, no entity inside this body which could live on.’ That statement really hit. Here was a man, without imagination, without emotions, living happily in everyday life, as ordinary as anybody, and he says there exists no entity in him which survives! For me, that meant, that everybody else, including me, imagines their soul, imagines an inner world, imagines life-after-death, imagines the Divine and keeps feelings alive by feeding them with imagination. But if one single man can live happily and harmlessly outside of imagination, if he can live without love and emotion, then our emotions and soul are not facts but products of our fertile collective imagination and instinctual programming. Then, the concepts of ‘divine energy’, ‘eternal soul’, ‘Existence looking after us’, etc, are suddenly understood as concepts, built and refined over the centuries to keep the fear of death at bay, to reconcile us with the awareness of the terrifying fact of approaching death. If a single man has rid himself of all beliefs, and of the very act of believing, those beliefs are exposed for what they are – non-factual. Recognizing this fact was a shock and it was not easy to look the fear of death in the face, but it brought me here. Not knowing if I am alive tomorrow, I can only live this moment – there is, as a fact, no afterlife. If I don’t like life now, I am the only one who can change it. To say, as I often heard quoted, that ‘everything is perfect as it is’ or, ‘one gets on with life and life will take care’ are just more disguises for the same postponement.
RESPONDENT No 28: Would you mind telling me where your name originated? VINEETO: I took Sannyas in January 1980 and received my Christian name with a prefix. When I came to the Ranch, it was fashion that most people had an Indian name, so I applied for a new name. And that’s what I got.
VINEETO to No 28: I have liked your questions to Peter. They were clear investigations into several points of what Peter has written. Therefore I am surprised that you don’t investigate further, but ‘suddenly’ state to No. 14: RESPONDENT No 28: I do detect a little more than happiness and harmlessness in the postings I have read though, and find the cheers at the closing to be sometimes a mite out of place. VINEETO: What is it specifically that is ‘little more than happiness and harmlessness’ ? I am intrigued to hear. * PS. I like your phrase of the ‘terrible twins’ – I think I will have business cards printed with that title. It’s cute.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer |
