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Vineeto’s Correspondence on Mailing List D Correspondent No 1
VINEETO: Hi No 1, RESPONDENT No 5 to Richard: How can I be sure? You explain in a way that everyone can understand? RESPONDENT: No 5, Richard uses an Oxford Dictionary for a pillow at night while he sleeps, and his PCE absorbs all the words and meanings which he altruistically uses to razzle-dazzle us into understanding his present state of mind (whatever that is). In other words, don't worry about not understanding Richard, for he delights in being the only one of his kind in the world, of all time, and if you understood him, then he could not be the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands. VINEETO: No 1, this is such a silly comment that I was tempted to send in a reply. I have been reading on the list since months, but never wrote. Personally, I can understand what Richard writes, and the longer I read the easier it is for me to understand his explanations about animal instincts, the human condition and a way to peace-on-earth. I am applying the method that he has described on the list many times, over a period of two years, with great success. Therefore your argument of him being ‘the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands’ is simply a silly excuse – for if you actually understand what Richard talks about, peace-on-earth in this lifetime, then that understanding calls for unilateral action, for changing oneself. And who would want to give up their comfortable concepts and theories and start actually investigating themselves and changing their behaviour in order to become actually free of malice and sorrow? It is so much easier to find fault with the one who is talking about peace-on-earth than to get off one’s bum and investigate one’s own emotions, isn’t it?
RESPONDENT No 5 to Richard: How can I be sure? You explain in a way that everyone can understand? RESPONDENT: No 5, Richard uses an Oxford Dictionary for a pillow at night while he sleeps, and his PCE absorbs all the words and meanings which he altruistically uses to razzle-dazzle us into understanding his present state of mind (whatever that is). In other words, don’t worry about not understanding Richard, for he delights in being the only one of his kind in the world, of all time, and if you understood him, then he could not be the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands. VINEETO: No 1, this is such a silly comment that I was tempted to send in a reply. I have been reading on the list since months, but never wrote. RESPONDENT: Teehee. Of course, it was silly. I meant it to be silly. See how silliness has value, for it challenged you to respond, rather that just passively stand in the limelight. VINEETO: ‘Standing passively in the limelight’ is a contradiction in terms – there is no limelight where I am standing. And to claim your silliness as valuable purely on a basis that it evoked a response is even more silliness, if not blatant hypocrisy. * VINEETO: Personally, I can understand what Richard writes, and the longer I read the easier it is for me to understand his explanations about animal instincts, the human condition and a way to peace-on-earth. I am applying the method that he has described on the list many times since two years, with great success. RESPONDENT: What successes are you achieving using a method based upon Richard’s explanations? I have never really seen a ‘method’ in Richard’s madness, although, there may be one. All I’ve even seen in Richards writings is ‘back slapping’ for being a free, happy, harmless, flesh and blood body living in a veritable garden of paradise where there is no love, no compassion, and an absolute belief that there is no such happening as God or other dimension besides the human body which he is. VINEETO: There is a very effective method indeed. But only those who are appalled by their own malice and tired of their own sorrow are interested in finding out about it and are moved to apply it to their own lives. I was simply tired of emotions all together, because when I was driven by emotions and instinctual passions I could not avoid wanting to hurt others or feeling that others were hurting me – so I took up the offer of getting rid of the instinctually driven entity altogether. * VINEETO: Therefore your argument of him being ‘the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands’ is simply a silly excuse – for if you actually understand what Richard talks about, peace-on-earth in this lifetime, then that understanding calls for unilateral action, for changing oneself. And who would want to give up their comfortable concepts and theories and start actually investigating themselves and changing their behaviour in order to become actually free of malice and sorrow? It is so much easier to find fault with the one who is talking about peace-on-earth than to get off one’s bum and investigate one’s own emotions, isn’t it? RESPONDENT: Yes. Have you investigated this emotional defence of Richard? PS This is not a put down of anybody, but I was wondering if you ordered ‘something’ for a fee from Richard’s website? I know that a couple of years ago he was selling something, but I don’t remember exactly what it was. VINEETO: What makes you think it is an emotional defence of Richard? I simply pointed out that you are silly, which you have confirmed yourself. It is you who is blurring the issue by suggesting that my response was emotional. With your reply you are proving the very point I was making –
RESPONDENT: Teehee. Of course, it was silly. I meant it to be silly. See how silliness has value, for it challenged you to respond, rather that just passively stand in the limelight. VINEETO: ‘Standing passively in the limelight’ is a contradiction in terms – there is no limelight where I am standing. And to claim your silliness as valuable purely on a basis that it evoked a response is even more silliness, if not blatant hypocrisy. RESPONDENT: I see a lot of ‘Richard this’ and ‘Richard that’ in your writing. It appears to me that you are in his limelight. VINEETO: According to the grapevine I have backed the wrong horse – or at least that is the outspoken opinion on this list. Fortunately I have other means to ascertain that something works in my life or not. I have simply tried out the suggested method of Richard’s to see if it worked. It works. Once applied, the success of the method becomes my own experience in terms of actual, tangible changes in my life, and the reliance on an external authority ends. Whereas an authority who teaches the Unknown and the Unfathomable will always stay an authority because you will always have to trust, believe and have faith and hope that their Truth is really the Truth. Looking at the rest of your post, it appears that it is you who are quite busy with ‘‘Richard this’ and ‘Richard that’’, always wondering if what he says makes sense or not. Once you try it out if it works or not, you can be done with it once and for all, either way. * RESPONDENT: What successes are you achieving using a method based upon Richard’s explanations? I have never really seen a ‘method’ in Richard’s madness, although, there may be one. <snip> VINEETO: There is a very effective method indeed. But only those who are appalled by their own malice and tired of their own sorrow are interested in finding out about it and are moved to apply it to their own lives. RESPONDENT: There are many techniques to discovering who you are and why you are that way, but observation is the discovering factor, not belief in methods. VINEETO: You have written to another poster on the list –
I think this is a good description of what the spiritual method of observing is about. The very fact that Krishnamurti and other Eastern masters have talked about the right way of observing for years makes it obvious that observing is indeed a method that is designed to produce only one result – to ‘become the observed’. I practiced observation and meditation for years when I was on the spiritual path. But after 17 years I was not content with the results of this method, neither was I satisfied with surrendering to 100% confusion or not knowing. Yes, when I surrendered 100% to my good feelings and tender passions, the real-world struggle disappeared and eventually I managed to enter the imaginary world where everything felt bliss and light. But something was always missing. Going into my own inner world was not good enough – it didn’t bring about actual change in my daily life and in my interactions with all people. So I dared to take up the offer and I tried something new – removing the problem itself instead of transcending and moving away from the problem. * VINEETO: It is so much easier to find fault with the one who is talking about peace-on-earth than to get off one’s bum and investigate one’s own emotions, isn’t it? RESPONDENT: Absolutely, I agreed with that, before. Emotions are easy to observe, all one has to is watch what one is doing, thinking, acting without any sort of ‘method.’ It is you who is following methods, not me. It is you who is learning from Richard, not me. Where there is a method there is a goal, an end. Where there is an end, there is limitation, and this is where I part with Richard. VINEETO: Oh yes, I do have a very definite goal in my investigations and that is the ending of ‘me’, the entity that is driven by emotions and therefore will always be the antithesis to freedom. I have applied mere observation of my thoughts and emotions for years and years and have come to see the severe limitations of that approach – none of the many religious and spiritual approaches on offer have brought peace to those who applied the teachings. The world is as much a battlefield as 3500 years ago. As I said above, it is clear that the traditional spiritual path – whatever method is followed, be it meditation, observation, right thinking, yoga, practicing awareness or whatever – does have a goal – self-realization, enlightenment, becoming the observed or God-intoxicated or ‘discovering who you are’. RESPONDENT: He [Richard] has eliminated the possibility of love, compassion, and true freedom – not just freedom ‘from’ something. The implications of true freedom are unknown. What Krishnamurti pointed out is that the human mind is limited and with that mind you cannot know the unknown. It appears that you have accepted the limitation of the human mind and the limited bodily functions to be all that there is the possibility of being and labelled it ‘actualism,’ just another form of belief. I don’t understand why people continue to accept a belief especially after they say they have discovered the falsity of believing. VINEETO: Not so. If the unknown is beyond the limitations of the body and beyond limitations of the mind it must be a feeling-only imaginary state. This is evidenced by the thousands of different gods and religions throughout history and the thousands of God-men and awakened teachers on the planet at the moment, all of who have differing versions of ‘the unknown’. The unknown is not only amorphous but polymorphous. Love and compassions are passionate feelings and upon close inspection I found them to be sugar-coated, i.e. transcended, lust for power over others. But it took a lot of guts and a deep plunge into my psyche to question what I had considered to be the pinnacle of human virtue. However, when I acknowledged the fact that any belief, spiritual or otherwise, could only be believed and affectively experienced by ‘me’, the limited entity inside this body, this very acknowledgement opened the door to another dimension, the limitless pure magnificence of the actual world. Don’t you remember one of your pure consciousness experiences where there is no ‘self’ extant – where, for a short period of time, there are neither emotions operating nor any identity present? In such pure consciousness experiences I have discovered the world beyond belief, the purity and perfection that is normally obscured by of our ‘self’. Once I popped through into the actual world I knew without doubt that ‘this is it’, it has always been here, I simply could not see it. A PCE is an experience beyond any doubt, it is an experience unpolluted by human nature, unrestricted by instinctual passions and ‘self’-centred, or ‘Self’-fixated, thoughts. In a PCE one doesn’t rely on belief at all but the very absence of belief makes it possible to experience something one has never experienced before. RESPONDENT: According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia: ‘Actualism is the philosophical position that everything there is – everything that can be said to exist in any sense – is actual. Put another way, actualism denies that there is any kind of being beyond actuality; to be is to be actual. Actualism therefore stands in stark contrast to what may be possible.’ Richard’s brand of actualism is limited to what his actual blood and bones body can experience and ultimately limited to what is actual in time, thereby eliminating the possibility of a timeless state (which may actually be reality). VINEETO: Here you contradict your above claim – actualism is what an ‘actual blood and bones body can experience’ and therefore it cannot be a belief. However, you obviously don’t want to ‘eliminate the possibility of a timeless state (which may be actually be reality’). Hence you believe that a timeless state may be possible. * RESPONDENT: There is a good possibility that Richard does not know all that is actual. VINEETO: Of course not. Nobody can know everything that happens on this planet and in the infinitude of the universe. From my own experience in a PCE one doesn’t ‘know all that is’, one simply looks around in amazement that the actual world has been happening all along, while ‘I’ as a separate identity was always cut off from it or while ‘I’ as a separate identity vainly attempted to become a non-separate Identity, and dissolve into a not-knowing timeless Truth. RESPONDENT: For example, I do know without a doubt that the spirit that was my father effected a certain physical happening and then appeared to me to tell that he did it. This was actual occurrence which Richard dismissed as ‘my’ delusion. It seems to me that true actualism would include within its realm all that is possible to be actual. But no! If Richard doesn’t know it, then it isn’t possible. VINEETO: Personal affective experiences are the only evidence that the spiritual world exists, whereas a fact is something that is sensately and repeatedly demonstrable to all human beings. RESPONDENT: To believe that all that exists is what is sensed, known, and experienced by the human body seems to be the height of egotism, rather than the death of the ego. There are so many possibilities in this universe that the little bitty human mind can’t even begin to comprehend, but here is one of the possible scenarios: Richard reached the limit of all that he had experienced, read, remembered, sought out, tried, tested, and faced, but the final step of stepping into the unknown was more fear than he could handle, and he reverted into the philosophy of actualism – all that could be experienced in time. He has accepted the limits of actualism. VINEETO: Actual Freedom is not about the death of the ego but the extinction of the passionate survival instincts that flood my brain with chemicals causing ‘me’ to fervently believe, imagine and to feverishly defend the very entity that ‘I’ think and feel ‘I’ am. Everyone is born with this instinctual survival program but it is new to human history that one can remove this now redundant program. Personally I find human imagination about Gods, other-worlds, other-lives, spirits, demons and devils, very limited – nothing much has changed for thousands of years. Any discoveries made by humans have always exceeded human imagination. The ancient idea of a flat earth was puerile compared with the discovery that this planet is an immense globe, with an orbiting moon, and orbits the sun together with other planets, is part of a galaxy of millions of suns which is but one of squillions of other galaxies ... ad infinitum. Human beings stand in wonder and amazement at the actuality of this physical universe and yet ancient myths and fears would have us desperately seek to be ‘somewhere else’ other than here and now, where I as this physically body exist. I stopped believing, imagining and feeling how things are or should be, and can now experience the actual world as it is – and its vast magnificence and sparkling excellence is beyond my wildest dreams. ‘I’ as a psychological and psychic entity will always be limited by imagination and passions whereas the actual physical universe is infinite and eternal.
VINEETO to No 2: Yet most people are not able to differentiate between an emotion-backed belief in Authority and drawing on the obvious expertise of a fellow human being who has discovered something far superior to Enlightenment. RESPONDENT: Your reliance upon your own authority by applying a method to living an ‘enlightened’ life is predicated upon the authority of Richard’s discovery which you do emotionally defend as the ‘obvious expertise of a fellow human being.’ What is obvious to me is that Richard claims authority and then tries to ‘razzle-dazzle’ everybody into believing there is no more than what is known or can be known, and that is why Richard hoards so much knowledge about all the world and the events thereof. That way he can be ‘the undisputed ruler and sole owner of all that he knows and understands.’ Ah, another ‘ism’ ... actualism.
VINEETO: I see you are backing up your opinion of actualism with a quote from the authority of Krishnamurti. But doing that is not an ‘ism’ because Krishnamurti is only confirming what you already have decided to hold true ... or is it the other way round? The quote you offer says the important thing is firstly to discover and realize that ‘you’ don’t know, and then ‘you’ die to that discovery – i.e. the thinker dies, so ‘you’ as feeler can flow with the unknown or be at one with the unknown. The problem with the thinker dying is that all sensible thinking and common sense goes with him or her and yet another impassioned soul is let loose on the world. This ‘self’-perpetuating belief system is aimed at keeping ‘Me’, the feeler, in existence but it also perpetuates the ancient mythical belief in Gods, spirits and other-worlds. Spiritual teachings always point to the ‘unknown’, the ‘unlimited possibility’ or the ultimate authority of God by whatever name and by that very ‘knowledge’ of the unknown the master stays in power and remains the authority on what he ‘knows’. Actualism is a very simple method and utterly down-to-earth, because its application involves neither energy nor god nor devotion nor faith in any unknown mystery. Contrary to spiritual practice where I had to solely rely on the words of the master, I can now rely on my own ‘self’-less experiences to know where I am heading and appraise my success by the diminishing of the instinctual drives and the disappearance of my social identity. It is so simply that hardly anyone can understand its simplicity. I am applying many methods in my life that I have learned from other people – how to boil eggs, for instance, or how to speak and write English. In fact, nothing that I apply in life is my own invention because babies, when they are born, don’t know anything except how to suck milk. But the moment I apply a practical, down-to-earth method and find out that it works for me then the experiences of its success make me my own authority. The one who taught me how to drive a car is not an authority anymore because he taught me all I needed to know about driving a car – the same is the case with Richard and the method of actualism. Actualism is something you do for yourself, by yourself, in order to become happy and harmless, and I do it for the benefit of my fellow human beings because I cease to inflict ‘my’ malice and sorrow upon them. With ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body.
RESPONDENT: To live with fear is to know a bone chilling, grinding, pervasive dread that is present from moment to moment. Fear is the actual fearing ‘of’ something, and the vast field of fear is the composite of every ‘thing’ of which one is afraid, and that vast field itself is the ‘me’ and all of humanity, and that is insanity. ‘I’ am afraid of that which I do not know, and I am scared of that which I remember, and I am scared of that which I imagine. But, when you are actually surrounded by threatening clouds, and a storm is brewing, and there is no shelter, no escape, no cover from the devastation; then you may know fear, and you can talk about it without your opinions and unfounded knowledge. The fact that it was insanity, i.e., being totally lost to fear, pain, and sorrow. In seeing that flat grey vastness of insanity there arose a realization, a total understanding, that all pain is in memory. ‘I’ am nothing but memory; and as someone else pointed out, the physical organism itself remains intact by the process of memory at a cellular level. VINEETO: I know well the fear that you are talking about, the dread and the insanity of it. I remember watching a film on WW II last year, when I became completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the collective sorrow, guilt, depression and dread that made up the ‘dark part’ of the ‘human soul’. I seemed to be standing at the edge of an immense abyss of hell, which emanated all of the nauseating terror and dread of humanity, the horror that humans do to humans, the pain, the dread of millions of people, stretching endlessly into a grey dead infinity with no hope and no way out, ever. The gravity of it was unbearable. My eyes were searching for something physical to anchor on. I stood at the window, repeating to myself, ‘this is a fence, this is grass, this is a flower.’ The bright redness of the bougainvillea outside in the garden penetrated a little into this powerful whirlpool of dread that seemed to be threatening to swallow me for eternity. Then above the abyss of dread there appeared an escape route, seductively blinking a space of light, promising bliss, love and glory as the solution to this overwhelming hopelessness and experience of ‘evil’. I could have snapped into an altered state of consciousness then and there. But I resisted, fully aware that I did not want to replace one kind of insanity with overwhelming feelings by another insanity with the opposite set of overwhelming feelings. So I fixed my eyes on the red flowers, until slowly, slowly the dread lost some of its density and power and turned into the familiar feeling of fear. But it was far from being over! I started to look for more physicality, for sensate and tangible actuality, longing for the taste of coffee in my mouth, listening to sounds in my ears and feeling the wind on my skin. Nothing but sensuousness would get me out of this vortex of instinctual madness. I activated all my willpower to manoeuvre myself back into the physical world of the senses, where there is neither dread nor enlightenment. This experience fuelled my intent even more to permanently step out of both the real world of evil feelings and the spiritual world of divine feelings into the actual world of purity and peace. It is possible – and it is evidenced by the pure consciousness experience where I am this flesh and blood body only without ‘self’ and therefore without emotional turmoil or memory.
VINEETO: With ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: I was only pointing out to you that you make general inclusive statements about other people’s beliefs when you yourself are caught in the belief that something ‘will come’. VINEETO: May I remind you of the law of cause and effect. When you take a stone up to a 35 storey building and drop it out the window, it ‘will come’ to fall on the ground in x number of seconds. In the same law of cause and effect ‘with ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body’. Some events are easily predictable through a combination of circumstances and the ending of malice and sorrow with ‘my’ demise is one of these predictable events. A pure consciousness experience, which everybody has had in their lives, gives evidence to the fact that ‘I’ am all that is standing in the way of perfection to become apparent. From these ‘self’-less experiences one can gain knowledge about the ‘self’ while one experiences the actual world temporarily free of one’s ‘self’. In the process of actualism one has many PCEs and is therefore able to check up on the diminishing of one’s ‘self’ and the practical success of the method in reducing one’s instinctual passions. When you fix your car you have means to check that it is fixed – you don’t have to believe that it is fixed.
VINEETO: With ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: I was only pointing out to you that you make general inclusive statements about other people’s beliefs when you yourself are caught in the belief that something ‘will come’. VINEETO: May I remind you of the law of cause and effect. When you take a stone up to a 35 storey building and drop it out the window, it ‘will come’ to fall on the ground in x number of seconds. In the same law of cause and effect ‘with ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body’. RESPONDENT: IF the demise of you is an effect, it naturally follows that the same event will be the cause of something further – this is the law of ‘cause and effect’ – a never ending chain of events. An eventual effect of pleasure is pain. As Richard so eloquently points out, everything has an opposite, which is merely a cause and effect and then an effect and a cause and on and on in a circle. That is not an ending of the ‘self,’ but a continuation. There will be no ‘self-immolation’ as a result of ‘cause and effect.’ VINEETO: The scientific understanding of causal relations is that there is a cause and then an effect. Vis:
Cause and affect is never a continuous chain of events. For example, if one falls off a fence, gravity causes one to fall, the ultimate effect being to hit the ground – the end of the effect of gravity, i.e. no never ending chain of events of falling and hitting as in bouncing up and down forever. Of course, if you go by the religious understanding of cause and effect, you will always end up with the never ending cycle of karma, the wheel of births and deaths ad nauseam. The Jaina religion is only one of the many Eastern religions and spiritual convictions that believe in reincarnation, life after death and the law of karma. Vis:
For a loyal believer in ancient fantasy it is, of course, inconceivable that there can ever be a final and permanent ending to one’s malice and sorrow as the result of one’s demise. Further, our discussion was about the ending of malice and sorrow as a result of ‘my’ demise, which you have called a belief. When I pointed out that the ending of malice and sorrow is the effect caused by ‘my’ demise, you suddenly call ‘my’ demise an effect and introduce a religious interpretation (belief) of cause and effect. This continually shifting ground and never drawing conclusions results in never-ending discussions that never have any effect – a perfect example how to remain trapped the wheel of karma. * VINEETO: Some events are easily predictable through a combination of circumstances and the ending of malice and sorrow with ‘my’ demise is one of these predictable events. A pure consciousness experience, which everybody has had in their lives, gives evidence to the fact that ‘I’ am all that is standing in the way of perfection to become apparent. From these ‘self’-less experiences one can gain knowledge about the ‘self’ while one experiences the actual world temporarily free of one’s ‘self’. In the process of actualism one has many PCEs and is therefore able to check up on the diminishing of one’s ‘self’ and the practical success of the method in reducing one’s instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: BTY, why is it that ‘actualists’ claim to have eliminated all the instinctual passions (or are working on reducing them) whilst they ardently continue to engage in the most instinctual passion of all – sex? How is it that this one got so conveniently overlooked? Instead of calling the trust ‘Actual Freedom’, you guys should consider renaming it ‘Actually Blind.’ VINEETO: Ah, how did you find out that actualists are having such un-spiritual unholy fun? The instinctual sex-drive is part and parcel of the survival instincts and can be eliminated. It only took about one year to get rid of my blind and relentless sex-drive. I first investigated the morals and ethics, the atavistic taboos and fears, the escapist fantasies and the crippling rules of sexual behaviour to free the sexual play from its smothering conditioning. Having removed the outer layer of social restrictions it was very easy to experience and explore the hormonal surges of the instinctual reproductive instinct and bring it to the light of awareness. At first, it was quite bewildering and disconcerting when the sex-drive, an integral part of my identity faded away to disappear entirely. What is left now is innocent sensual play whenever the opportunity arises, a physical-only sensational delight that leaves any wild fantasy for dead. Gone are the days when I was plagued by worry, fear, guilt, shame, expectation, complaint, dissatisfaction or the undignifying need for sex. I never think of sex during the day or the night, I never fantasize and I never miss it, I no longer look at men as desirable sexual objects or would-be predators – I simply see fellow human beings regardless of gender. Sex is like going out to have a gourmet meal at the best restaurant in town, and once it’s over, there are other delights to tend to. There is indeed an alternative to ‘messy sex’ but it is not the repression of practicing celibacy. * VINEETO: When you fix your car you have means to check that it is fixed – you don’t have to believe that it is fixed. RESPONDENT: With the quality of car mechanics around here, a car is never fixed. The same is true with the quality of the ‘guru’ you are relying on to fix your life. As I said before, you sound like a broken record, parroting Richard. Can’t you see that you are again letting yourself be brainwashed? When are you going to learn to think for yourself? VINEETO: Of course I am a broken record, I have only one single point to make – everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and, if you change direction, it works magic in your life. I am certainly brainwashed, washed from my conditioning, cleaned of my social identity and right into a clear-eyed exploration of my instinctual passions. It’s a great life, and, for the first time in my life, I do think for myself and I no longer follow those who espouse Bronze Age superstition like the never ending Law of Cause and Effect or unliveable anti-pleasure morals such as practicing celibacy. I have escaped the insidious web of such crippling beliefs. However, what is your investment in corresponding with a broken record? Is it, just maybe, the option that there could be an ending to the horrendous fear and dread you described so well the other day? ... the possibility of a permanent ending to fear, aggression, nurture and desire, resulting in peace-on-earth, in this lifetime?
VINEETO: With ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: I was only pointing out to you that you make general inclusive statements about other people’s beliefs when you yourself are caught in the belief that something ‘will come’. VINEETO: May I remind you of the law of cause and effect. When you take a stone up to a 35 storey building and drop it out the window, it ‘will come’ to fall on the ground in x number of seconds. In the same law of cause and effect ‘with ‘my’ demise will come the ending of malice and sorrow in this flesh and blood body’. RESPONDENT: IF the demise of you is an effect, it naturally follows that the same event will be the cause of something further – this is the law of ‘cause and effect’ – a never ending chain of events. An eventual effect of pleasure is pain. As Richard so eloquently points out, everything has an opposite, which is merely a cause and effect and then an effect and a cause and on and on in a circle. That is not an ending of the ‘self,’ but a continuation. There will be no ‘self-immolation’ as a result of ‘cause and effect.’ VINEETO: The scientific understanding of causal relations is that there is a cause and then an effect. Vis:
Cause and affect is never a continuous chain of events. For example, if one falls off a fence, gravity causes one to fall, the ultimate effect being to hit the ground – the end of the effect of gravity, i.e. no never ending chain of events of falling and hitting as in bouncing up and down forever. RESPONDENT: Of course, the act of ‘getting up’ is the result of ‘falling down’, and that is still an effect of gravity, in my book, and I’m not looking into an encyclopaedia book to back up my observation. VINEETO: A stone is not ‘getting up’ as a result of ‘falling down’ from a 35-storey building – as was the original example. What kind of ‘book’ are you using to define cause and effect? As your description of cause and effect cannot be found in ‘an encyclopaedia book’ I can only deduct that your book must be one that you have written yourself. RESPONDENT: However, I think that we were discussing the psychological aspects of the ‘self’ which is the result of ‘cause and effect.’ If there is no genuine inquiry with another, then all we have is a ‘cause and effect’ of letter writing. There is not much going on in the way of communication when one participant ‘knows’ and the other doesn’t. What kind of communication can we have when you insist on your own book version of cause and effect? I wonder what you mean by ‘communication when one participant ‘knows’’, when you said in the last post ‘I was only pointing out to you’ and then ‘no reply is necessary’. My interest in communication is to find out about and compare notes on facts, not about who ‘knows’. ‘Knowing’ is a subjective feeling-based experience and as such extremely changeable and unreliable. When you say ‘There is not much going on in the way of communication when one participant ‘knows’ and the other doesn’t’ – this is a very good description of the usual relationship between a Guru and a disciple or follower. This spiritual tradition of non-communication and blind subservience to authority is the reason why no one dares to question the teachers let alone the teachings. You and I have a chance to have a conversation based on facts, not an obsequious kow-towing to some all-Knowing authority. * VINEETO: Of course, if you go by the religious understanding of cause and effect, you will always end up with the never ending cycle of karma, the wheel of births and deaths ad nauseam. The Jaina religion is only one of the many Eastern religions and spiritual convictions that believe in reincarnation, life after death and the law of karma. Vis:
For a loyal believer in ancient fantasy it is, of course, inconceivable that there can ever be a final and permanent ending to one’s malice and sorrow as the result of one’s demise. RESPONDENT: I know nothing about any kind of Eastern religion and very little about any kind of belief, except for very little that I’ve read or heard about, so why are you bringing that [Jainism] into the conversation? VINEETO: I introduced it as an example of the idea of a never-ending cause and effect that you proposed, which is not the factual explanation of cause and effect. A never-ending cause and effect can only be a religious concept. So you pull me up and say I am factually wrong. When I correct your interpretation of cause and effect and point out you are using an interpretation based on religious belief and not a factual one, then you claim ignorance and pull me up for correcting your inaccuracy. No wonder we can’t communicate. * VINEETO: Further, our discussion was about the ending of malice and sorrow as a result of ‘my’ demise, which you have called a belief. When I pointed out that the ending of malice and sorrow is the effect caused by ‘my’ demise, you suddenly call ‘my’ demise an effect and introduce a religious interpretation (belief) of cause and effect. This continually shifting ground and never drawing conclusions results in never-ending discussions that never have any effect – a perfect example how to remain trapped the wheel of karma. RESPONDENT: When someone states that something will happen that hasn’t yet happened, I do call that a ‘belief’:
I don’t know exactly what the ‘wheel of karma’ is, but I supposed it has something to do with time, and your will come is definitely within the realm of time – a future event that you anticipate, which is, at the present time, ‘not actual.’ That, to me, is being trapped in the karma or time. VINEETO: First you say you don’t know exactly what the ‘wheel of karma’ is and then you tell me that I am being ‘trapped in the karma’. Of course, ‘my’ demise is not actual yet – I have never said that. Let me give you a simplified down-to-earth example – Joe Blow has a terrible toothache due to a rotten tooth. He takes a painkiller. Effect – temporary pain relief. Or, Joe Blow can go to the dentist and have his rotten tooth removed. Effect – he is permanently free of that pain. Just to make it clear – the instinctual ‘self’ is the very root cause of the instinctual passions that give rise to malice and sorrow. Eliminate the instinctual ‘self’ – eliminate malice and sorrow. Of course, the first step in this process is to recognize the symptoms of malice and sorrow in one’s own psyche – something that spiritually trained people find almost impossible for they have been heavily conditioned to ignore the pain of malice and sorrow via meditation. * RESPONDENT: I don’t know what you mean by a ‘pure consciousness experience’, for it could mean a lot of things, but any of them would be within the realm of an ‘experience.’ Any event remembered and recounted is done so by a big whopping self, for the ego or self is nothing more and consist of nothing more than words or images, i.e., memory. VINEETO: You say you ‘don’t know what I mean by a pure consciousness experience’ and yet you conclude that it is remembered ‘by a big whopping self’. If you already know, why do you start by saying ‘I don’t know’? It was you who said ‘There is not much going on in the way of communication when one participant ‘knows’ and the other doesn’t.’ In a pure consciousness experience there is no psychological or psychic ‘self’ present and therefore no emotional memory operating, but there is most certainly a cognitive-only memory operating. * RESPONDENT: BTW, why is it that ‘actualists’ claim to have eliminated all the instinctual passions (or are working on reducing them) whilst they ardently continue to engage in the most instinctual passion of all – sex? How is it that this one got so conveniently overlooked? Instead of calling the trust ‘Actual Freedom’, you guys should consider renaming it ‘Actually Blind.’ VINEETO: Ah, how did you find out that we are having such un-spiritual unholy fun? RESPONDENT: I visited the web site of Actual Freedom where I read some parts of the journals in which I discovered that Peter enjoys a juicy bloody piece of flesh, guiltlessly; that Alan indulges a lot in alcohol, guiltlessly; that you had a predilection to fall in love with everybody you slept with, and that Richard actually is better at porno writing than that other stuff he writes. I don’t see anything spectacular about that, and I suppose that you are all harmless (with the exception to animals), as you say. VINEETO: You must have visited the web site rather hastily because all your produced information is inaccurate.
RESPONDENT: However the real issue is if you were saying that sex is unholy and non-spiritual, or if you were implying that I think sex is unholy and non-spiritual. Such an implication would have to made by a ‘self,’ would it not? Where is that ‘malice free’ and ‘facts only’ blood and bones body in that insinuation? VINEETO: No spiritual and religious teachings extols the free enjoyment of sex as fun in its own right and delighting in sensual pleasures is always considered a hindrance to one’s spiritual progress. You certainly don’t seem interested in the free sensual enjoyment of sex, uninhibited by societal shame and guilt and freed of the shackles of the brutish sexual instinctive drive. Why else would you call sex ‘messy ’. Why else would you call Richard’s writings ‘porno’? * VINEETO: The instinctual sex-drive is part and parcel of the survival instincts and can be eliminated. It only took about one year to get rid of my blind and relentless sex-drive. I first investigated the morals and ethics, the atavistic taboos and fears, the escapist fantasies and the crippling rules of sexual behaviour to free the sexual play from its smothering conditioning. Having removed the outer layer of social restrictions it was very easy to experience and explore the hormonal surges of the instinctual reproductive instinct and bring it to the light of awareness. At first, it was quite bewildering and disconcerting when the sex-drive, an integral part of my identity faded away to disappear entirely. What is left now is innocent sensual play whenever the opportunity arises, a physical-only sensational delight that leaves any wild fantasy for dead. Gone are the days when I was plagued by worry, fear, guilt, shame, expectation, complaint, dissatisfaction or the undignifying need for sex. I never think of sex during the day or the night, I never fantasize and I never miss it, I no longer look at men as desirable sexual objects or would-be predators – I simply see fellow human beings regardless of gender. Sex is like going out to have a gourmet meal at the best restaurant in town, and once it’s over, there are other delights to tend to. There is indeed an alternative to ‘messy sex’ but it is not the repression of practicing celibacy. RESPONDENT: The point I was making was that it is convenient to pick and choose which instincts will stay and which ones will go. VINEETO: Yes, it is convenient to choose which instincts will stay and which ones will go or which ones to suppress and deny and which ones to glorify and identify with, as is the case in all religious/ spiritual teachings. But I am not choosing because I know as a fact that one cannot separate instinctual passions – there is only one single instinctual survival program which is made up of various passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Either one has to put up with all of them, or eliminate all of them – which can only happen with the immolation of the instinctual self. RESPONDENT: I’m glad that you worked through your hang-ups about sex. I really don’t care to get into a conversation about sex, for the fact that sexual desire is the basest of all of the animalistic instincts is irrefutable; without it there are 6 billion plus souls who wouldn’t be here on Earth today. VINEETO: It is no small thing to work ‘through your hang-ups about sex’ because not even the enlightened ones have attempted to do so, let alone succeeded in eliminating their sexual passionate drive. All available information about the life of enlightened ones clearly indicates that the sexual drive does not disappear when one becomes enlightened; indeed sex has proved to be their Achilles heel. And the failure of celibacy is evidenced by the long sad history of catholic priests and nuns and Buddhist monks and nuns. To merely stop having sex does nothing to eliminate the sexual drive, even if one is successful in abstaining from sexual activity. Mahatma Gandhi, a celibate for decades, still had night-time dreams about sexy young women at 90 years of age. * VINEETO: Of course I am a broken record, I have only one single point to make – everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and, if you change direction, it works magic in your life. RESPONDENT: So we should all turn around and go in the opposite direction? I don’t think you’re going to get out of the ‘wheel of karma’ by just going in the opposite direction. If you travel far enough East, you’ll eventually end up in the West. VINEETO: Oh, no, nobody ‘should’ turn around. It is entirely up to you if you are happy or not with what you have achieved so far with the methods you learnt and applied and the wisdom you follow. By the way, when the notion of a wheel of Karma was invented, humans thought the world was flat, so if you travelled far enough East you would end up falling off – for the Ancient Ones’ world was very, very small ... and very, very scary. * VINEETO: I am certainly brainwashed, washed from my conditioning, cleaned of my social identity and right into a clear-eyed exploration of my instinctual passions. It’s a great life, and, for the first time in my life, I do think for myself and I no longer follow those who espouse Bronze Age superstition like the never ending Law of Cause and Effect or unliveable anti-pleasure morals such as practicing celibacy. I have escaped the insidious web of such crippling beliefs. However, what is your investment in corresponding with a broken record? RESPONDENT: I’m taking an uncharted journey into unknown territory. In other words, I have no idea where I’m going, actually. An ‘idea’ is the handmaiden of a self, and a marked journey is following an idea. ‘Actual’ can refer only to where one is at this exact moment, not to where one is ‘going to be.’ VINEETO: Your uncharted journey into unknown territory is pretty well defined –
Methinks you know quite a lot about where you are going and where you are not going. Only by being free of all moral, ethical, philosophical or spiritual conditioning and by being free of being blindly driven by instinctual passions can there be an ever-fresh unchartered experience of this moment of being alive. RESPONDENT: I do, too, think that we need to investigate our reactions to everything, not letting a single thought go by without discovering where/why it came into being, thus getting to the bottom of our conditioning, images, and identities and releasing them from the dark instinctual behaviour formed through habit. VINEETO: I found that feelings – feelings are emotion-backed thoughts – and instinctual passions are the real issue if one wants to become free from one’s ‘self’ – both ego and soul. Merely watching thoughts has done nothing to reduce my emotional-instinctual programming – and I have practiced it intently for 17 years. * VINEETO: Is it, just maybe, the option that there could be an ending to the horrendous fear and dread you described so well the other day? ... the possibility of a permanent ending to fear, aggression, nurture and desire, resulting in peace-on-earth, in this lifetime? RESPONDENT: Are you now expanding the belief of actualism to include the realm of ‘possibility?’ If that is the case, I guess you could say that I’m an ‘actualist,’ if I were into labels, that is. However, I would like to retain the nurturing instinct if you don’t mind, for I have three grandchildren that I nurture a whole bunch. The fear and dread that I talked about the other day was a fear that I lived with. It resolved itself with much hard work, and now if there is any fear present anywhere in my psyche, I invite and welcome to it makes itself apparent. I have no fear of fear. VINEETO: No, you are a spiritualist for spiritualism is the practice of deciding which passions to identify with and which passions to suppress. An actualist, first of all, gaily abandons all hope for a spurious life after death in order to get his or her teeth stuck into the task of achieving a life free of malice and sorrow, so as to be able to experience peace in this lifetime here on this bountiful, magnificent and perfect planet earth.
RESPONDENT to No 10: In that state of pure consciousness, there is truly no one there to have sex. Of course, there is no possible way to stay in that pure consciousness state and physically exist. <snip> I think I had one (maybe two/three) pure consciousness experience, and I even communicated it to the list if you will remember. I was in a ‘session’ with a friend who is a licensed therapist, into all kinds of alternative healing, K reader, and Buddha practitioner, and as I was talking to him, me, myself, and I psychologically and physically disappeared – diffused. There was a voice talking, but it was not me, for I was not there, and the words were not my words, but obviously they came from a physical source of which I was not aware. Then, as [...] began to gather light and turn into particles, I came back – into time. VINEETO: I find it really cute that before Richard introduced the term ‘pure consciousness experience’ (PCE) to describe a non-affective experience where one is this flesh-and-blood-body only with the ‘self’, both ego and soul, being temporarily absent – the expression did not exist before. But his reports must have left a lasting impression because now on this list the PCE has magically been transformed into a body-less spiritual experience, such as an ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ (No 8), and now you call it a state where one cannot ‘stay in that pure consciousness state and physically exist’. To merely call an affective spiritual experience a pure consciousness experience does not change the fact that what is being talked about on this list are affective spiritual/ psychic experiences. Such is the cunning of the alien entity inside the human flesh-and-blood-body with its unconscious ‘self’-defensive and ‘self’-sustaining capacity...
VINEETO: Bon jour to you too, No 1, RESPONDENT to No 10: In that state of pure consciousness, there is truly no one there to have sex. Of course, there is no possible way to stay in that pure consciousness state and physically exist. <snip> I think I had one (maybe two/three) pure consciousness experience, and I even communicated it to the list if you will remember. I was in a ‘session’ with a friend who is a licensed therapist, into all kinds of alternative healing, K reader, and Buddha practitioner, and as I was talking to him, me, myself, and I psychologically and physically disappeared – diffused. There was a voice talking, but it was not me, for I was not there, and the words were not my words, but obviously they came from a physical source of which I was not aware. Then, as Jeff began to gather light and turn into particles, I came back – into time. VINEETO: I find it really cute that before Richard introduced the term ‘pure consciousness experience’ (PCE) to describe a non-affective experience where one is this flesh-and-blood-body only with the ‘self’, both ego and soul, being temporarily absent – the expression did not exist before. But his reports must have left a lasting impression because now on this list the PCE has magically been transformed into a body-less spiritual experience, such as an ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ (No 8), and now you call it a state where one cannot ‘stay in that pure consciousness state and physically exist’. To merely call an affective spiritual experience a pure consciousness experience does not change the fact that what is being talked about on this list are affective spiritual/psychic experiences. Such is the cunning of the alien entity inside the human flesh-and-blood-body with its unconscious ‘self’-defensive and ‘self’-sustaining capacity... RESPONDENT: Why do I get the feeling that Richard has been reincarnated as ‘Vineeto’ (just an aside). VINEETO: ...because you are using ‘the feeling’ to decide about facts. Normally that is known as intuition and has a 50% success rate. Your statement belongs to the other 50%. RESPONDENT: I used the term ‘pure consciousness experience’ deliberately to see how it felt to try it on – sort of like trying on a pair of blue jeans to see if they fit. It doesn’t, and they don’t. Unlike you, I don’t understand all the implications of consciousness and it’s relation to timelessness, if there is one. VINEETO: There is no relation between consciousness and timelessness because mortal human beings thinking and feeling themselves to be timeless is nothing but fervent imagination based on ancient fairytales. In their awareness and resulting fear of death ancient humans have conjured up the belief that there is some other place to go after death, that there is something that will live on after this body dies – and 99.99% of humans haven’t dared to question this soothing belief ever since. Once I dared to investigate my belief in some spurious after-life, in an eternal life and in some ever-present Energy – God by another name – and dared to face the fear of death, consciousness became a very simple thing to understand. In a normal person, consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Consciousness is the state of being aware of one’s actions, sensations, feelings and thoughts. This marvellous ability of the human brain to be conscious is so miraculous in itself that any invented explanation of a Higher Timeless Consciousness having created this human consciousness pales in insignificance. Given that each human being is born with an instinctual ‘self’ overlaid since birth with a further layer of social identity, this consciousness is a ‘self’-consciousness. Thus a consciousness of ‘who’ I think and ‘who’ I feel I am is constantly predominant and the bare consciousness of the flesh-and-blood-body only gets a peek in during a body-only pure consciousness experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. A naïve observation and contemplation about the workings of this amazing physical universe, or simply being immersed in the sensual pleasure of being alive, can bring on such pure consciousness experience. Whereas when one wants to relate one’s own consciousness with this imaginary timelessness, the only way to proceed is to totally become immersed in one’s feelings, dis-identify and disconnect from the body and all things physical, disassociate oneself from everything that is down-to-earth, actual, common sense and happening in this moment, and imagine oneself to be ‘somewhere else’. To shed the belief in a Higher Power and a life after death was certainly daring – for there could be an angry god standing at my grave, couldn’t He? When I finally admitted that a timeless consciousness – the feeling of immortality – was a mere product of my fervent belief, I was then able to take my life into my own hands and proceed to change the programming in my brain. Acknowledging the fact that Timelessness and God have never existed is the only way to become free of malice and sorrow.
RESPONDENT No 9: Or do you bring a heart to the pain? RESPONDENT: Yes, I think I do. It is so heavy. Can we take the heart out of the pain? VINEETO: There is a way to take the heart out of the pain. One can pay exclusive attention to this moment of being alive, and examine all the feelings and underlying instinctual passions, both savage and tender, that produce this pain. The nature of instinctual passions is such that one either has to keep the lot or eliminate the lot – they come in one software package, they are one operating system and a very crude one at that. But you said you were not interested in eliminating your instinctual passions, as you wanted to keep the good bit of the heart-felt feelings to nurture your grandchild. Do you ever consider that one can raise a child with much more care, benevolence and consideration when you are not bound by heart-felt feelings of love and hate, defence and attack, compassion and sorrow, pain and worry, fear and dread? All the wars that have ever been fought have been fought for blind heart-felt love of kin, country and god.
VINEETO: Hi No 1, In order to find the ‘switch’ to permanently rid oneself of a particular emotional reaction one needs to first become aware of it in order to explore the origin of this reaction. That origin is very often related to one’s social identity like national pride, gender identity, religious, spiritual or philosophical viewpoints, belonging to a family, a professional self-image, etc, etc. Finding the source of one’s emotional behaviour, i.e. finding the part of identity that is related to this particular emotional behaviour, is not merely a thought activity, one will have to conduct an experiential dig into the psyche, a ‘feeling it out’ while being aware of one’s feelings at the same time. A control via thought will repress (stop) the instinctual reaction for the time being and thus avoid its investigation and prevent one from eliminating the cause of the reaction. RESPONDENT No 2: I was talking about an incident in which I was feeling the feeling of sorrow. The feeling became very intense and then there was a sudden flash of insight and the feeling of sorrow immediately vanished. This could be likened to a switch but I don’t know if this is what you were talking about. RESPONDENT: It amazes me how people want to know; be right about something so badly, they’ll invent all sorts of theories, beliefs, and methods. That need of permanence, as well as the beliefs themselves, is invented from the ego/self in order to guarantee its own survival. Thus, we have an entity of which is neither the ‘self’ nor the ‘soul’ nor the ‘instincts’ doing something, i.e. ‘finding’, ‘conducting,’, ‘eliminating,’, etc. VINEETO: Well, I can say that I am amazed how few people do want to know when it comes to discovering what makes us humans tick in general and themselves in particular. I am amazed what outrageous dreams and superstitions I had been following in the past and how fiercely everyone seems to defend wisdom that originated in the mists of time when people were still living in caves or huts and were hunters and gatherers. It was those ancient ones who looked into the sky – thinking the earth was flat – and believed that the stars were gods and lived in ignorance and uncertainty of the forces of nature. And they believed that life was indeed a grim business of survival and that they needed to make sacrifices to appease that Force of Nature, by whatever name, in order not to evoke its wrath. Technologically the world has moved on, although many bemoan the progress in health, safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure, conveniently ignoring the fact that life even a hundred years ago was a tough existence. We now know there never was a golden age, just as we now know there is no innocence in a newborn child. But despite all the scientific and technological advances the search for Truth is still based on the ‘deep feeling’ of those ancient convictions that you can ‘never know’ ... It’s funny that all human beings continue to look for the solution in the past, whereas history clearly shows the failures of all past religious/philosophical solutions. Despite the sincere effort of millions of spiritual seekers and religious devotees, human beings are still driven by instinctual passions and the human condition is still epitomized by malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: There is no one thing we can do to bring on another dimension of living. It is just as you say, No. 2, it happens, and there is not even a flash. You are here and then you’re not. That is the unknown and the unexplainable. The key, however, does seem to lie in right living, listening, and non-attachment to any thing. Life comes unwarranted. VINEETO: ‘It amazes me how people want to know; be right about something so badly, they’ll invent all sorts of theories, beliefs, and methods. That need of [keeping things unknown], as well as the beliefs themselves, is invented from the ego/self in order to guarantee its own survival.’ Did you ever think about, i.e. become aware of, how you determine what is true for you and what you call another’s belief? The only criteria I used to have for the Truth was if it ‘felt’ right, if it stirred my heart, if it made my soul sing, etc. Yet these same feelings are the very reason why people are ready to kill and die for the Truth, for what they feel is right and for what they passionately believe to be the only real Truth. Now I rely on facts, provable, demonstrable, verifiable and workable facts. Facts exist without my support, actuality exists without me believing in it or you not believing in it – it doesn’t need any defence at all. A tree is a tree and no belief will change that, a fact is a fact and no belief will change that either. And the actuality that I experience when the ‘self’ is completely absent is so vibrant, so delicious, so pure, so magnificent that every glorious feeling about Truth, the Unknown, the Unknowable, etc. has faded into oblivion. As it is my life and there is no God to reward or punish me before or after death, I can do with it what I like. And I chose to go for the best – an actual peace on earth in this lifetime.
RESPONDENT: It amazes me how people want to know; be right about something so badly, they’ll invent all sorts of theories, beliefs, and methods. That need of permanence, as well as the beliefs themselves, is invented from the ego/self in order to guarantee its own survival. Thus, we have an entity of which is neither the ‘self’ nor the ‘soul’ nor the ‘instincts’ doing something, i.e., ‘finding,’ ‘conducting,’ ‘eliminating,’ etc. There is no one thing we can do to bring on another dimension of living. It is just as you say, No 2, it happens, and there is not even a flash. You are here and then you’re not. That is the unknown and the unexplainable. The key, however, does seem to lie in right living, listening, and non-attachment to any thing. Life comes unwarranted. VINEETO: ‘It amazes me how people want to know; be right about something so badly, they’ll invent all sorts of theories, beliefs, and methods. That need of [keeping things unknown], as well as the beliefs themselves, is invented from the ego/self in order to guarantee its own survival.’ Did you ever think about, i.e. become aware of, how you determine what is true for you and what you call another’s belief? The only criteria I used to have for the Truth was if it ‘felt’ right, if it stirred my heart, if it made my soul sing, etc. Yet these same feelings are the very reason why people are ready to kill and die for the Truth, for what they feel is right and for what they passionately believe to be the only real Truth. Now I rely on facts, provable, demonstrable, verifiable and workable facts. Facts exist without my support, actuality exists without me believing in it or you not believing in it – it doesn’t need any defence at all. A tree is a tree and no belief will change that, a fact is a fact and no belief will change that either. And the actuality that I experience when the ‘self’ is completely absent is so vibrant, so delicious, so pure, so magnificent that every glorious feeling about Truth, the Unknown, the Unknowable, etc. has faded into oblivion. As it is my life and there is no God to reward or punish me before or after death, I can do with it what I like. And I chose to go for the best – an actual peace on earth in this lifetime. RESPONDENT: Why do you keep insisting that everyone has a belief in God (except you actualists)? Me thinks you protesteth too much. The ‘unknown’ is creation – the leading edge of the universe. You’re either on the cutting edge or you’re dead. VINEETO: You say that I insist that you believe in God and then respond that ‘the ‘unknown’ is creation’. This does beg the question what is the unknown and what is it creating. I can only conclude, since you put universe in the same sentence that ‘the ‘unknown’ is creation’ is nothing other than your God by another name. Further, the physical universe has no ‘leading edge’ – it is infinite and eternal. With a belief in God, even if he/she/it is called the ‘unknown’ or ‘the leading edge of the universe’ you are at a dead end street because no such thing exists, other than in the minds and hearts of human beings. Being on the cutting edge of the unknown is the traditional spiritual path and it used to be the place to be, if one didn’t want to be a normal mortal human being bumbling along in grim reality. But that outmoded stage in the search for freedom is now passé, archaic, defunct, superseded, finished – ancient history that will linger a while longer but gradually wilt in the coming centuries. What is now available is a third alternative that has nothing to do with ‘the unknown’ at all.
VINEETO: As it is my life and there is no God to reward or punish me before or after death, I can do with it what I like. And I chose to go for the best – an actual peace on earth in this lifetime. RESPONDENT: Why do you keep insisting that everyone has a belief in God (except you actualists)? Me thinks you protesteth too much. The ‘unknown’ is creation – the leading edge of the universe. You’re either on the cutting edge or you’re dead. VINEETO: You say that I insist that you believe in God and then respond that ‘the ‘unknown’ is creation’. This does beg the question what is the unknown and what is it creating. I can only conclude, since you put universe in the same sentence that ‘the ‘unknown’ is creation’ is nothing other than your God by another name. Further, the physical universe has no ‘leading edge’ – it is infinite and eternal. RESPONDENT: I do think that scientist have determined that the universe is in a constant state of expansion – not that has anything to do with what I’m saying. VINEETO: Scientists are also only human and as such instilled with the Human Condition. They too have the human hope and fervent belief in something that is beyond the physical reality of matter and space. Without such belief they might have been able to ask simple commonsense questions like ‘How can the universe expand? What does it expand into if not into more universe?’ With the desire to find Meaning, Reason or God somewhere ‘out there’, the mystical cosmologists overlook the very obvious – that this universe has always been here and has always been infinite, as big as it ever gets. You, however, are talking about the metaphysical universe – a spirit-world that has no boundaries as it is imaginary – whereas to acknowledge an infinite and eternal physical universe with no boundaries and no other-worlds is to abandon hope in a life after death, a fact which scares the bejikeys out of all spiritual believers. RESPONDENT: The ‘leading edge’ of the universe is that which is original – having never occurred before. How does one discover that which is original, the leading edge? ‘One’ cannot discover it at all. VINEETO: ‘The ‘‘leading edge’ of the universe’ is an imaginary, forever unknown, mystical space that has nothing to do with the physical universe at all. In order to ‘discover’ that mystical ‘leading edge’ one then applies the spiritual teachings of searching for one’s ‘original face’, ‘before your mother and father were born’ and before society could instil evil thoughts into supposed innocent children. But as children are not born innocent but are genetically-encoded with a set of instinctual passions, this pursuit of one’s ‘original face’ will only uncover the ‘original’ instinctual passions underneath the societal conditioning. RESPONDENT: All that ‘one’ can do is to be quiet, still, with no thought about ‘what is;’ then, ‘one’ is that originality that is occurring at that moment. VINEETO: I disagree. As it is proven fact that the instinctual passions are the root of the ‘self’, a pursuit of ‘no-thought’ is not sufficient to get rid of ‘me’. It is, at the most, doing half-the-job – eliminating a personal ego while freeing an impassioned thoughtless soul to wander around preaching God and God-realization, ensnaring yet more hapless victims in ancient fear-ridden beliefs. I do find it amazing that you who know the power of rage and the depth of sorrow and despair so well still espouse that one only needs to stop thought in order to ‘discover that which is original’. Or are implying that anger and sorrow are an integral ingredient of ‘that which is original’ as in ‘be quiet, still, with no thought about ‘what is’’ and practice dissociation such that one is Life itself? RESPONDENT: In your ‘veritable garden of paradise’ there is one who is experiencing, and in the unknown there is not an ‘experiencer’ who is separate from the garden itself. Where there is an ‘experiencer’, there is a lag, a tail. VINEETO: Just as it is the capacity and the function of the eyes to see, so it is the capacity and function of the brain to think and also to be aware of sensate experiencing and of thinking itself. When the ‘I’, the ego, and ‘me’, the soul, step down from the throne, the brain is merely being aware of sensate experience, thinking and being conscious. As you are only talking about removing thought and not the instinctual passions, what you call the ‘experiencer ’ is only the thinker, and not the feeler. Therefore, what you call ‘the unknown’ is a no-thought, feeling-only experience whereby the feeling entity has not disappeared, but become aggrandized and expanded into feeling overwhelming universality. Why not do the whole job and question and eliminate feelings and instinctual passions as well as your conditioned ‘self’-centred social and spiritual thoughts?
RESPONDENT No 2: I understand wanting to eliminate the instinctual passions in order to eliminate malice and sorrow but unfortunately there is still danger in the world and situations still arise for which we need the immediate ‘flight or fight’ response from the amygdala. RESPONDENT: I think that we are diverting the issue of fear, malice, sorrow, etc. when we try to eliminate their presence by eliminating the ‘amygdala,’ or any other part of the brain that has evolved along with the rest of the parts. VINEETO: In what way would you say that ‘we are diverting the issue of fear, malice, sorrow’ by trying to eliminate its root cause, i.e. the instinctual passions – the psychological and psychic consequences of being genetically instilled with crude animal automatic survival reactions? How is working towards eliminating ‘fear, malice, sorrow’ diverting the issue of ‘fear, malice, sorrow’? If one is sufficiently concerned about one’s own fear, malice and sorrow, etc. and, even more importantly, about the affect one’s passions have on others, then surely one would be vitally interested in a method that can lead to the elimination of these debilitating passions? Actualism is not about eliminating the amygdala as a quick scan physical safety program, but the automatic psychological and psychic reaction triggered by the program in the amygdala. The spiritual pursuit only aims at dissociating from the bad emotions, ‘the issue of fear, malice, sorrow’ whilst emphasizing the good emotions, Love, Compassion, Beauty. The result and practical outcome of pursuing the ancient repressive approaches to instinctual passions can be observed all over the world, as murder, rape, religious and territorial wars, corruption and poverty are still as rampant as 5000 years ago. RESPONDENT: Why does mankind, we, continue to look to others, i.e. LeDoux, Richard, or anybody who expounds theories as to what is there and why it is there? Why do we say that there is no ‘authority’ and then turn to others to quote them, look for answers, or substantiate our desire to find the answers? VINEETO: Authority according to Mr. Oxford means –
Quite obviously neither Joseph LeDoux nor Richard have the ‘power to enforce obedience’, but they both are in the category of ‘experts in a subject’ field and can therefore ‘influence action, opinion, belief’, provided the person who learns about their scientific research is willing to experiment with such findings. Verifying scientific research for oneself is called utilizing the expertise of others as in definition (8) and is the opposite of ‘following an authority’, which is epitomized by affectively following, fervently believing, devotedly relying upon and unquestioningly and faithfully trusting one’s beloved authority. However, it is part and parcel of the Human Condition that everyone judges people according to their power – in what way they can assist me achieving what I desire – and, as such, charismatic powerful leaders are revered as an authority and abetted to wield their power. As I explored my issues about authority, I came to understand that authority has been inextricably intertwined with my desire to pass on the job of living my life to others who then became the admired or feared authority figures. It was my hope for shortcuts, for help of the powerful ones that had fuelled and maintained my debilitating reliance upon, or mindless rebellion against, authority. I desired my father’s money, my boyfriend’s promise of love and security, my girlfriend’s sympathy and support, my Master’s psychic Power, Compassion and Grace, God’s miracles and protection, Mother Nature’s Intelligence, the Supreme Power of the Eternal Unknown, etc. First I had to acknowledge that I was utterly on my own – nobody, but nobody could do anything for me, change me, give me happiness, redeem me from my fear, malice and sorrow or fulfil my desires. It is all up to me. Now I can learn from whomever I find worthy of emulating or learning from, whilst remaining perfectly autonomous. RESPONDENT: Why do we say that there is no ‘authority’ and then turn to others to quote them, look for answers, or substantiate our desire to find the answers? VINEETO: Using another’s expertise and knowledge of facts has nothing to do with the emotional issue of relying on authority – you couldn’t write a letter on the computer without relying on the ‘authority’ of millions of other people over generations who have contributed to the research, the inventions and the superb technology we take for granted. A sensible way of looking for practical answers will always include what my contemporaries or other people before me have discovered, otherwise we would all still be sitting in caves gnawing on sable tiger bones. The obsession to denigrate and to dismiss someone you disagree with as being ‘an authority’ such that you stubbornly deny and mindlessly refuse to use his or her expertise is plainly silly. Merely following one authority’s advice to not follow any other authority is still following an authority and only prevents one from questioning one’s own emotional-instinctual need to be dependent and need to belong. Resolving the issue of authority does not lie in choosing and following one authority and rejecting and fighting against all other authorities. The moment I acknowledged that I am on my own and that I have to instigate the desired changes in my life myself, I could use anyone’s expertise without losing one iota of my autonomy, dignity and freedom. RESPONDENT: Why don’t we just look at fear; see fear; follow fear; and find out where it comes from? Can anybody do that? VINEETO: Even with the research of Joseph LeDoux and Richard one will still have to ‘look at fear’ and ‘find out where it comes from’ for oneself. It is something anyone can do – provided they are sufficiently motivated and willing to eliminate their emotional dependency on higher authorities, by whatever name. Both LeDoux’s research and Richard’s discoveries have been of immense help to me in disentangling myself from ancient beliefs and superstitions and have, for the first time, thrown light on the physical observable facts of instinctual passions. Ancient superstition has it that bad emotions are caused by bad spirits, and ancient belief teaches us to disidentify and dissociate from bad emotions and smother them with Love and Compassion. Neither peace-on-earth nor the elimination of suffering and malice has ever been on the agenda of any of the religious/spiritual teachings. I have looked at fear, I have explored fear and I have found out where fear comes from. But when I tell you what I have found out, I am merely dismissed or disparaged as an authority or a follower of an authority. Funny, if someone tells you how to make really good chocolate chip cookies, you don’t call them an authority and insist on inventing the recipe all over again, or do you? Why then the immense effort to keep the Human Condition as an ancient metaphysical mystery and thus prevent a practical approach to eliminating malice and sorrow in the world? Well, c’est la vie. People like their emotions, they like to invent doomsday prophesies in order to perpetuate their fears, they like to aggressively defend their rights and beliefs, they like to demean and blame others in order to feel powerful and they like to wallow in the bitter-sweetness of sorrow – it is all part and parcel of the ‘self’-defence mechanism of ‘me’ wanting desperately to stay in existence.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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