RESPONDENT: Dear Vineeto, in the following quote of you, I emphasized some important keywords. After the quote you find a little comment.

[Vineeto]: The psychic web is an illusion in the sense that it is not actual as in tangible, audible, visible, etc. But it is very, very real for every human being, evidenced by the unmistakable grip that emotions and instinctual passions have on people and on humanity as a whole. Unless one becomes aware of the psychic web’s functioning in oneself this illusion is one’s everyday reality.

Yesterday I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and found it an excellent example of the psychic web in action. A band of 2000 musicians from all over the world was playing, all nationalities wearing an identical blue-red-beige uniform , everyone marching in exact formations while playing the various national hymns from all over the world. The audience’s spirit was soaring high, cheers and tears, overwhelmed by the feeling of ‘we are all one’, ‘we are the world’, feeling unity, glory, bliss and love. It is amazing how simple methods – heart-stirring music, uniforms and people marching in formations – can cast an effective spell on the collective human psyche.

However, the feeling of ‘unity’ immediately dispersed as soon as the athletes of all the countries started marching into the stadium wearing their national costumes, under individual flags. Then the psychic scene changed, the feeling was now of individual national pride. Each nation was now separate from the other and soon each athlete will be competing against the others for the glory of their particular country and for their own personal fame. The feeling of Unity is but a short-lived feeling ... the psychic vibe changes readily when the music changes. [endquote].

Let me gently disagree. I would disagree to ‘The feeling of Unity is but a short-lived feeling...’, according to your example of the ‘opening ceremony of the Olympic Games’. I would rather say, that there was not any ‘feeling of Unity’. And I would rather say, there was the feeling of a desperate hope ‘how can it be that we are not all one?’ as a result of a wanting to be all one.

What you and all the world was watching (and witnessing), was the extension of a method that dictatorial countries use to give sugar (beside bread) to their citizens. I would like you to bear in mind that these ‘simple methods’ have been used by the German-Nazis all around Hitler.

VINEETO: I wonder if you are watching the present news on television – or why would you have to draw an example from a leader who has been dead now since more than 50 years? Malice of human beings against other human beings is not confined to ‘the German-Nazis all around Hitler’ and it certainly did not die out with Hitler. Torture, murder, war and genocide is happening all over the world, every day, in Sierra Leone, in Rwanda, in Israel, in India, in Serbia, in Indonesia, in the Arab countries, in Zimbabwe, in South Africa, in South America.

It was exactly my point that the methods to influence and guide the mood of a large group of people are still as effective as ever and the instinctual passions that are instilled in all humans are the reason that those ‘simple methods ... cast an effective spell on the collective human psyche’. The example of the feeling of unity at the Olympic Games was an example of the collective psyche in action, in this case for good rather than evil. This type of ceremonies is analogous to religious and spiritual mass gatherings and meetings whereby a feeling of ‘we are all one’ is indulged in despite ample evidence of humanity’s behaviour to the contrary.

RESPONDENT: Conformism, helplessness, boredom, escape from truth and hard inner work going through pain, and the more or less deep routed hope and longing for being Loved and Cared for, is in its deeper realms of course a result of a spiritual movement, but in the realm of collective entertainment and the realm of (all) countries’ interest (which can not cause anything more than it is, and what it is, is nothing but egoistic and national pride, competition and personal fame) the phenomenon of ‘cheers and tears’ is nothing but a psychological result of itself.

VINEETO: The same passions that drive people to strive to become the greatest and most powerful in sport, politics or business, drive other people to become kings of the psychic world, forever above and beyond the suffering of ‘ordinary’ mortals who ‘only’ want to ‘entertain’ themselves. You call it ‘nothing but egotistic and national pride’ and yet you completely overlook the megalomaniacal arrogance and blatant superiority of the spiritual competitive pursuit of personal fame, power and immortality in calling oneself God as in ‘I am the Creator’ or ‘We are the World’ or ‘I am the Universal Consciousness’. Every spiritual seeker deems himself or herself better, superior, wiser, purer than and far above so-called normal people – it is all part and parcel of being a passionately-driven seeker. There is nothing superior to being spiritual, one is merely one step further removed from the actual physical world of sparkling vibrant purity.

RESPONDENT: There is nothing spiritual in the ‘Olympic Games’. As long as there is competition (which is the very reason that the ‘Olympic Games’ exist at all – and can only exist at all) there is nothing spiritual to be found. Competition is the result of the psychological and natural need to survive. But the spiritual need is ... to d i e, my friend.

VINEETO: Are you suggesting that there is no competition amongst spiritual people? Are you suggesting that a spiritual person has surpassed ‘the psychological and natural need to survive’? Are you saying that you do not see a hacking and pecking order amongst groups of spiritual seekers and amongst the gurus and god-men? I don’t know what spiritual school you have been attending but the spiritual longing has been and always is to seek immortality. One seeks the death of the ego in exchange for immortality for one’s soul – this is not death, this is an impassioned psychic delusion.

The closing ceremony of the Games has only confirmed what I observed at the beginning, that the Olympic community is as much spiritually driven as any other religious and spiritual movement in the world. Did you not notice the Greek Goddesses, the keepers of the flame, the sacred flags treated with reverence, the stirring Olympic hymn? This was not a psychological event – this was a psychic and deeply affective event. Everyone believes in Love, Beauty, Compassion, Redemption, the Good and an immortal spirit-world.

RESPONDENT: It seems to me, that it can be a dangerous thing, to make a rough, superficial, much money supported event like the ‘opening ceremony of the’ Olympic games into a spiritual come-together.

VINEETO: Well, they certainly made it into a spiritual event. In case you hadn’t noticed, spiritualism is currently mainstream fashionable run-of-the-mill around the world. Being ‘money supported’ doesn’t make a gathering immune against spirituality.

RESPONDENT: May be that I misunderstood your saying, so please forgive my disagreeing.

VINEETO: There is nothing to forgive for disagreeing. The very idea of a discussion is to compare notes and find out facts.

However, reading all that I have written with both eyes open, instead of choosing to select and mirror back some words that fit your preconceived worldview, might help a more complete understanding of what I am saying. In order to even get a glimpse of what an actual freedom from the Human Condition is about, I had to question and put aside all of my beliefs and preconceived ideas, all that I had held to be right and good and true. It is not an easy thing to listen afresh, but it is immensely thrilling and rewarding.

RESPONDENT: But I hope my words have been useful, peaceful and loving effects on you.

Thank you. Peace all beings.

VINEETO: I abandoned hope a long time ago together with faith, trust and belief. Hope and praying for peace is but a poor substitute for actually doing something for peace on earth – in me, the only person I can change.

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