RESPONDENT: According to Richard all seem to have failed because there is no peace still on Earth. But I don’t understand what makes Richard so confident that his method will work. The statement ‘I am under no illusion that global peace and tranquility will eventuate before I am on my death-bed; I do not suffer from the delusion that I can effect a sweeping change to the lot of all human beings; ‘looks like another messiah-iatric chore. And then who is to decide what the universe should be like? The entire thinking is based on the argument that in spite so many Enlightened persons in last thousands of years, there is something wrong with the humankind.

VINEETO: It may look strange from your – spiritual – way of looking (which I can remember quite clearly from myself 18 months ago). When in a peak-experience, when experiencing this moment without the filter of the ‘self’ and of the Human Condition, one is experiencing the world-as-is in its perfection, magnificence, purity and delight. The actuality of what-is then is utterly obvious because there is no identity interpreting, distorting and editing what you see, hear, touch and smell. Most people have had such a PCE in their lives although it is not easy to recall as there are no emotions happening that could be remembered. You can find one of the many description of a pure consciousness experience in Richard’s or Peter’s writings by running the search function through; there also has been a good discussion about the difference of PCE and ASC between Richard and Alan just lately on the list – you can look it up in the archives of this mailing list. Such descriptions are very helpful to induce or remember a PCE for oneself. From that experience you will see for yourself that the actual world is already here, has always been. It is only our psychological and psychic entity that stands in the road of experiencing the purity and perfection of the actual world. Then, everything is blindingly obvious.

RESPONDENT: I don’t understand how can anything be wrong in this universe. According to Richard (in fact, according to many Enlightened ones, but Richard never accepts it), the world is so perfect that nothing can be wrong here. Then where is the question of bringing peace to earth. I must mention here that I am not against Richard or pro Eastern thinkers. This argument is just to understand the so called new thinking.

VINEETO: There is nothing wrong with the universe. But there is something fatally wrong with humanity, with every human being, in fact. We are born with the core instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, overlaid by our social and religious conditioning and then have built our own so-called identity on top of it. We call it the Human Condition. This condition is responsible for all the wars, murders, rapes etc. on this planet, it is the source of sorrow and malice in each of us.

And it is deleteable.

The Eastern thinking talks about stopping thought, removing ‘the little man in the head’, the ‘thinker’ – but the identity only shifts to ‘the little man in the heart’, the ‘feeler’. Emotions and instincts (the soul and the ‘core of our being’) remain untouched and are operating in every meditator, in every enlightened one, better than ever. As Richard says, the ‘I’, the ego dies, but the ‘me’, the soul, becomes even more rampant.

The ‘new thinking’ is not ‘so called’, it is that both, ‘I’ and ‘me’, ego and soul, ‘self’ and ‘Self’, have to die in order to experience the world-as-is, radiant, perfect, alive, pure and benevolent. This is peace-on-earth. It can only be achieved by each individual becoming free of their respective psychological and psychic entities.

RESPONDENT: Now in this state, when I use actualism method, I look for any feelings which drive me out of the ‘reasonably happy’ state and I come back to my ‘reasonably happy’ state in a reasonably short time on most occasions. I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition.

RESPONDENT No 38: Again, if ‘reasonable’ is adequate, so be it. Apparently, it’s not, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering with this discourse, right?

RESPONDENT: Right. But what is doubtful is the level of my intent (for example compared to yours) in going all the way. The reason for this is perhaps because I don’t have a direct experience of what is on offer. So my take on this discussion is that you should have a PCE before you try out actualist method because otherwise you will not have full and pure intent and therefore can not succeed or at most can reach only ‘reasonably happy’ state.

VINEETO: When I first came across actualism, and its implicit challenge to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless, it was the harmless part that grabbed my attention – i.e. I could see that to be ‘reasonably happy’ was relatively easy but to become actually harmless was the real challenge that actualism offered to me.

Because of the way human beings are socially and instinctually programmed, the time-honoured pursuits of happiness – be it via the accumulation of material possessions or the acquisition of spiritual brownie-points – is inadvertently and inevitably a ‘self’-centred enterprise. When ‘I’ pursue ‘my’ happiness in either of these worlds I am necessarily putting ‘me’ and ‘my’ insatiable wants and needs first. This means that ‘my’ happiness is always conditional upon ‘my’ position in the real-world pecking order, or if one is so inclined, ‘my’ position in the spiritual world pecking order. Either way, happiness such as this is dependant upon doing battle with one’s fellow human beings in some way or other.

There is a way out of this apparent dilemma and this is the third alternative to the traditional choices – being ‘reasonably happy’ in the real world or being blissfully dissociated in an imaginary spiritual world. The solution is to change the focus of your attention and effort and aim to become happy by becoming unconditionally harmless towards each and every fellow human being that you come in contact with. Such an aim will automatically make you consider the benefit of your fellow human beings as being equal and equitable to your own – which in turn will lead you to seek outcomes that are of mutual benefit to both parties as distinct from the pursuit of ‘self’-centred profits and ‘self-indulgent feelings.

Similarly, in interactions with your fellow human beings the aim to be harmless will ensure that you rate other people’s happiness as much as your own, simply because if you harbour acrimonious feelings towards another, neither they nor you can be happy in such a situation. The more you actively pursue harmlessness and investigate the social and instinctual mechanisms that cause you to have aggressive, resentful, insulting, blaming, sorrowful and anxious feelings, the less ‘self’-centred, more considerate and more benevolent you are towards all of your fellow human beings.

Of course, you will very quickly experience, if you are scrupulously sincere in your pursuit, that one invariably feels happy whenever one notices that one is spontaneously harmless. Such a happiness only needs enough intent to make the first commitment – to become unconditionally harmless and do whatever is necessarily to attain and maintain such harmlessness. Then the more harmless you are towards your fellow human beings, the more happy you become and this results in even more harmlessness and even more happiness – i.e. success breeds more success.

The recent discovery of actualism now makes it clear that the best contribution one can make to peace-on-earth is to free oneself and others from the burden of one’s animal instinctual passions – and the obvious place to start such a process is to focus on the elimination of invidious passions that cause harm to one’s fellow human beings.

VINEETO: What would you say is your intention in wanting to find out what makes ‘you’ tick?

I am asking because recently you wrote to a co-respondent that – ‘Long before I came across actualism I had a burning desire to find a better way to be sane, or to go mad in the attempt’ (RE: No 60, No 37 & other actualists, 10.9.2004). About a month later you wrote to another co-respondent that you ‘never bought into the happy and harmless thing’. (Practical Question, 29.10.2004). Do you have in mind ‘a better way to be sane’ that doesn’t include being both happy and harmless?

Just curious because I discovered that one does not go without the other.

RESPONDENT: My idea of a ‘better way to be sane’ certainly does include being happy (delighted, carefree) and harmless (effortlessly benevolent).

In the past I had shied away from the ‘happy and harmless’ thing; the very words had an unpleasant ‘ring’ about them because, as I once explained in conversation with No 33, they carried connotations of weakness and incapacity. They made me think of de-clawed cats, toothless lions, castrated monks, lobotomised mental patients, etc.

VINEETO: I think I can relate to what you are saying. People often mistake becoming happy and harmless for being meek (in religious terms) or being a pacifist (in secular terms). Many a time I have seen discussions on this mailing list where correspondents demanded of Richard that he should not defend himself, so much so that when he takes the time to correct their false allegations he is often accused of nitpicking, arrogance and one-upmanship.

I know pacifism well – I was imprinted with an ideology of pacifism whilst growing up, particularly by my father who had experienced first hand the horrors of the Second World War. When I became an actualist I had to take a close look at the ideals of pacifism in order to see that they have nothing at all to do with the practice of actualism.

Pacifists ideologically oppose war between nations, believing that aggression can be stopped by reasoned negotiations (despite the fact that the only thing that ultimately puts an end to rampant violence is the application of even more force). In doing so they acquiesce to those who use aggression in order to have power over others (despite the fact that this does nothing but give a green light to the use of aggression). To understand this one needs to look no further than the pacifists who acquiesced to the rise of Nazism prior to the Second World War to see that rather than stop the outbreak of war, they created an atmosphere that emboldened the aggressors to start invading their neighbouring countries.

The other myth about pacifists is that they are peaceful people – despite the fact that they are very quick to apportion blame on others for being aggressive, and often vehemently so. I was involved in some angry student anti-war demonstrations and have seen the inherent hypocrisy of pacifism in action first hand.

As a pacifist I conveniently overlooked not only my own aggravation and annoyance, the conflicts and disputes that invariably occur in my everyday life and in my personal relationships but I also turned a blind eye to the fact that I, without a second thought, am completely reliant upon the army of the country I am living in and the local armed police to keep me safe. Nowadays I clearly see the hypocrisy inherent in the ideology of pacifism. This hypocrisy is also evident in the eagerness of pacifists to lay the blame for the lack of peace on earth on others. For a long time I also firmly believed that it is only ‘the bad guys’ – such as corrupt politicians and greedy capitalists – who are responsible for all the wars, genocides and democides on the planet.

Indeed pointing the finger at others is a trick one learns in childhood as a way of avoiding culpability and this is reinforced as one grows up and adopts certain ideologies and is adversarial towards others, forms allegiances to certain political doctrines and fervidly opposes others, embraces certain morals, values and ethics and avidly rejects others … and so on. In fact, the business of growing up inevitably involves being compelled to take a position, to have an opinion and to take a stance in the adversarial blame-game that typifies the human condition simply in order that one becomes a substantive social identity.

When I came to understand and acknowledge the underlying causes and the practical workings of the human condition it came as somewhat at a shock to then discover that ‘I’ (together with some 6.4 billion other ‘I’s on the planet) am the sole reason that there is no peace on earth and furthermore, that I am, at core, as mad and as bad as everyone else whom I had accused of causing the wars and murders and violence in the world.

As for your comment about ‘toothless lions, castrated monks, lobotomised mental patients, etc.’ – I too sometimes felt toothless, castrated and helpless, particularly in situations where I felt I was being ‘wronged’ or I was being treated ‘unjustly’. But once the feeling subsided and I looked at the situation as it really was, I could see how silly it would have been to waste my time passionately fighting in order for ‘me’ to be right or for ‘me’ to feel justly treated when instead I could walk away and be at peace.

As you might guess, becoming aware of having had these antagonistic and/or indignant feelings then caused me to look at my own ideas and ideals of what I thought and felt was ‘right’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’. And this process of discovery is still in action as I am still finding sly remnants of the ‘good’ variety of humanistic ethics extant which sometimes cause distress or indignation – clear indications of how ‘I’ tick.

RESPONDENT: The error in my thinking is clear: I was imagining a stripped-down identity, an identity incapable of harming or being harmed – which is all wrong.

VINEETO: Ah, when I first encountered actualism I found it very intriguing that one can, with attentiveness and the intent to be happy and harmless, unilaterally do something about feeling insulted or feeling attacked to the point where these feelings will very rarely occur at all. Although I am still an identity, it is indeed possible to whittle away at one’s identity to the point that I am almost always ‘incapable of harming’ others as well as being emotionally harmed by others.

RESPONDENT: Actualism is not about divesting oneself of the capacity to harm and be harmed while remaining an incapacitated, stripped-down identity. It’s about eliminating identity altogether, and thereby becoming carefree and benevolent (or ‘happy and harmless’).

VINEETO: In my experience the means to the end are not different from the end, which means that living this moment as happily and as harmlessly as humanly possible the identity necessarily diminishes thereby losing it substantiality which in turn brings me closer to ‘my’ inevitable ending. This is how Richard describes it –

Richard: In the end, only altruistic ‘self’-immolation, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body, will release the flesh and blood body from its parasitical resident and, as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, the end of ‘me’ is the end of ‘my’ feelings (aka the instinctual passions and all their cultivated derivations).

Of course, one does not psychologically and psychically self-immolate just because it seems like a good idea at the time. It requires a rather curious decision to be made – a decision the likes of which has never been made before nor will ever be made again – as it is a once-in-a-lifetime determination and takes some considerable preparation.

So, in the meantime, what one can do is choose to be as happy and harmless as is humanly possible each moment again – the means to the end are not different from the end – and with this pure intent, as one goes about one’s normal everyday life, each moment again provides an opportunity to find out what is preventing one from living in the already always existing peace-on-earth (as evidenced in the PCE). Richard, List B, No 39a, 19.10.2002

RESPONDENT: And though I’m moderately optimistic as to the possibilities of an actual global peace considering the stunning possibilities to focus our energy creatively rather than destructive, to become mutual supportive rather then taking advantage of each other and to cooperate rather then to compete. This also may very well be the last opportunity for humanity to dance not that I vote for a script like that. But the message is clear, only I can choose to move into the direction of a virtual freedom – live like a Zombie or become actual free.

VINEETO: I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm but ‘an actual global peace’ is not something that is likely to happen in the next two or three generations. Although everyone can become free from the human condition, thus far only very few people are interested in exploring that possibility. Peace on earth is not a communal enterprise, not even a group event. History is littered with the failed attempts of countless groups to impose their particular social, political or religious-spiritual agenda on others or with groups who stand aloof from others by piously declaring that they are the Chosen Ones or that they are the sole Guardians of the Truth.

The expression ‘peace on earth’ points to the fact that peace can be experienced for you here on earth, in this lifetime, as opposed to the spiritual pursuit of an imaginary peace in heaven, epitomized by the inscription on Christian tombstones – R.I.P., rest in peace.

VINEETO: You wrote a post to me quoting Kofi Annan, the current Secretary General of the U.N. –

RESPONDENT: World Peace

VINEETO: I take it from your comment that you see the fact that Mr. Annan made this comment as being ‘progress’ towards world peace. What he is doing is nothing more than condemning a particular group of countries for taking military action to oust a ruthless dictator who for twenty years took unilateral democidal action against his own people. By Mr. Annan’s logic, multilateral actions should aid in bringing about world peace yet it was the multilateral action of a group of countries – mainly Germany, Italy and Japan – who instigated the carnage that was World War Two and it was only ended by the multilateral actions of another group of countries.

Whether the good guys or the bad guys – and who are the good guys and who are the bad guys is entirely dependant on the morals and ethics of the beholder – take unilateral action, or whether they join with others to take multilateral action, the end result is the same – no peace on earth. It would seem that the progress that you are referring to is that the current Secretary General of the U.N. is expressing a moral and ethical stance that accords with your own.

In actualism I take unilateral action of a totally different kind, Vis –

[Vineeto to Gary]: When I took up actualism I quickly understood the principle of unilateral action in that I can only change myself, but it takes much longer to comprehend the full implications of ‘being on my own’ in this business we call living. The process of investigating my own malice and sorrow means that I also incrementally sever my emotional ties with the malicious and suffering ‘selves’ that constitute humanity. Not only is no one else responsible for my happiness, or for my feelings of anger, but also I am unable to change anyone else’s lot in life by either supporting their anger or being empathetic with their sorrow. The most caring and practical thing I can do for my fellow human beings is to show by living example that it is possible to be both happy and harmless. Vineeto, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, Gary, 6.4.2002

I got tired of waiting, and fighting, for someone else to change the world according to my morals and my ideals – I decided to bring about actual peace by changing myself.

*

RESPONDENT: World Peace Secr. Annan – ‘Unilateral actions challenge world peace’. Some progress seems to have been made after all. What a game huh.

VINEETO: I take it from your comment that you see the fact that Mr. Annan made this comment as being ‘progress’ towards world peace. What he is doing is nothing more than condemning a particular group of countries for taking military action to oust a ruthless dictator who for twenty years took unilateral democidal action against his own people. By Mr. Annan’s logic, multilateral actions should aid in bringing about world peace yet it was the multilateral action of a group of countries – mainly Germany, Italy and Japan – who instigated the carnage that was World War Two and it was only ended by the multilateral actions of another group of countries.

RESPONDENT: As to: [I take it from your comment that you see the fact that Mr. Annan made this comment as being ‘progress’ towards world peace.] If Mr. Annan would have used the expression ‘unilateral actions’ in combination with the expression ‘challenge world peace’ and these expressions would have been used with their meanings as they have on the AF-site, he could have figured as an actualist merely stating a fact. I’m pretty sure though that he meant to sound a serious warning, hence my quoting of him was meant as a tongue in cheek ponderer, but face value taken I well can understand you took it differently.

Thus I’m not sure whether Mr. Annan is condemning a ‘particular group of countries (the so called coalition of the willing) for taking military action.

VINEETO: I since read the speech of Kofi Annan 23^rd Sept. to the UN General Assembly and although he never used the phrase you quoted in that speech he did say of the recent so-called unilateral military action that deposed Saddam Hussein –

[Kofi Annan]: ‘My concern is that <…> it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without justification. <...> But it is not enough to denounce unilateralism …’ [endquote].

This seems to be a clear condemnation to me, especially as it was said by a diplomat. But to get back to the topic of world peace Annan also said in his speech –

[Kofi Annan]: ‘Article 51 of the Charter prescribes that all states if attacked retain the inherent right of self-defence. But until now it has been understood that when states go beyond that and decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, they need the unique legitimacy provided by the UN.’ [endquote].

Whilst he uses the term ‘the unique legitimacy’ one has to understand that the UN doesn’t function democratically. The UN has neither legislative nor executive power over any of its member nations and matters of ‘international peace and security’ are the exclusive province of the Security Council. This Security Council consists of five permanent non-elected members – mainly the victorious nations of World War II. Hence Richard’s description of –

Richard: ‘the current warlords, as they manoeuvre and manipulate for world domination, …’ Richard to Respondent, 5.3.2003

And further any one of the five nations that make up the Security Council has the right to veto any resolution that the council passes. Hence at any one time any one single nation of the big five has it in its power to prevent the others from passing a resolution that the others deem appropriate. Or to put it into the currently fashionable jargon – any one of the big five can take unilateral action to foil multilateral action and thus prevent ‘legitimacy’.

Those who set up the UN and drafted its Charter never meant the UN to be a democratic institution, particularly in matters of security where the big five rule the roost. Any one of them can foil a democratic vote and every nation in the world retains the inherent right to act in self-defence. Those who set up the UN after WW2 were war-weary realists who understood from experience that ultimately what passes for peace on earth between disparate nations, ethnic and religious groups and ideological factions can only be maintained by the threat of force and if threat fails, by the use of force.

RESPONDENT: For me the crux of the matter is that this sentence [‘Unilateral actions challenge world peace’] hints at the fact that this ‘peace-operation’ was taken in disagreement with UN.

VINEETO: Given that this was not a General Assembly matter but a Security Council matter, the military ousting of Saddam Hussein was only opposed by two countries of the five Council members as I recall – France and Russia.

It is good to be wary of the ‘facts’ presented by either side involved in a moral or ideological dispute since those on both sides in any argument are equally prone to latch at straws in order to justify their beliefs or uphold their convictions.

RESPONDENT: As I see it what happened is if for instance one would compare it with a game of football. While this game is in progress suddenly one of the players decides it is no longer football that the teams will be playing but from now on in stead it will be rugby.

So… then the cheer leaders of this particular one player jump in to support him and as the arena where the game is happening now is occupied the game football is over. Now he most determinedly starts his advertisement and campaign to find support to play a different game and he gets some people ‘enthusiastic’ to play, however the majority of other players have second thoughts as to the changing of the game – would it be more fun to play rugby and of course would they benefit from it financially? So… they are not sure and all they ask is some time to consider, take counsel with their sponsors and so on. But no time is allowed, the ones in favour move out and start on a different location and the game has changed. Former players now become spectators and a few of the oldies go playing and promoting the new game as the best. That is as I see the current situation now as having become the result as a consequence of what happened, when Mr. Hans Blix was bluntly ignored in his request for more inspections in Iraq. Now what happens next? Rugby after all seems to become quickly less fun and most importantly appears not so profitable as was expected Perhaps this is a bit overly naïve way of putting it and perhaps I give not full credit to the seriousness of the matter but then again that is my opinion so far.

VINEETO: Okay. If you want to run a fair play analogy, the question still remains – fair or unfair, according to whom? Many of those who live in the U.S. see it as only fair that they have the right to defend themselves after the financial, military and executive centre of the country were attacked, and not only defend themselves but actively seek out those responsible for the attack in order to stop them from doing it again. Many people around the world seem to think it was fair that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to hunt for the perpetrators of the attacks on the U.S. whilst others thought it unfair. Similarly many people think that it was fair that the U.S. and its coalition members invaded Iraq in order to depose Saddam Hussein and install a democratic system of government whilst others think it unfair. And whilst it is apparent that you think that the manner in which Saddam Hussein was deposed was unfair, a recent poll in Iraq revealed a majority in favour of his regime ending and in favour of the way it ended – military intervention by foreign troops.

The only point you seem to be making and have done for some time on this list is that you personally don’t approve of what some country did. Why do you think that this is relevant information to post to a mailing list, which has as its central proposition that the only way human beings can ever bring an end to malice and sorrow is by doing it themselves? Continuing to blame others as being malevolent is but to continue to completely miss the whole point of what is on offer in actualism.

*

VINEETO: What he is doing is nothing more than condemning a particular group of countries for taking military action to oust a ruthless dictator who for twenty years took unilateral democidal action against his own people. By Mr. Annan’s logic, multilateral actions should aid in bringing about world peace yet it was the multilateral action of a group of countries – mainly Germany, Italy and Japan – who instigated the carnage that was World War Two and it was only ended by the multilateral actions of another group of countries.

RESPONDENT: As to: [a ruthless dictator who for twenty years took unilateral democidal action against his own people.] I’m now well aware that the decision to remove Mr. Saddam Hussein from power was not taken lightly and far from an easy one.

VINEETO: George Bush Snr. certainly stopped short of deposing Saddam Hussein when the U.S. and its allies cleared his troops out of Kuwait, the official line being a lack of a mandate to go further than freeing Kuwait. It seems that a combination of Hussein’s continued snubbing of the terms of the ceasefire agreement from that war over a decade or more and the fact that the U.S. itself was attacked meant that the circumstances were rife for the decision to be made to militarily depose him and his regime.

RESPONDENT: Yet I’m sure that also business’ interests fairly have been intertwining with altruistic motives in coming upon the taken decision

VINEETO: Before you take on the popular anti-war, anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization stance, have you inquired into your own feelings of fear and desire that could well have interfered with a clear perception? What the press and the ubiquitous political propaganda sell as facts is more often than not opinion, distortion and fiction – one needs to consider that everyone who is making the effort and taking the expense of publishing their opinion has a vested interest of their own.

RESPONDENT: … (to liberate the poor oppressed inhabitants of Iraq who were suffering from a harsh regime that could be compared with i.e. a Hitlerian regime; was after all AH not applying democidal action against his own people when taken in account that some of the people he took action against where German and hence those were strictly speaking his own people.) Yet, I don’t think it makes much sense to compare this present situation with WWII though of course one will find similarities when looking for them.

VINEETO: One of the comparisons that can be drawn between the former situation in Iraq and Adolf Hitler’s Germany is that the surrounding countries knew in both cases of the extent of atrocities that were going on, yet great resistance to do something about it was mounted by pacifist movements both in 1940 and in 2001. It is one thing to march for the ideals of peace and freedom, it is quite another to take pragmatic action about ending one’s own antagonism and facilitating one’s own freedom. It might well be worth following up the links on Richard’s writings about pacifism.

RESPONDENT: The present situation in the Middle East as is, is far more complex and the efficiency potential and impact of even ‘ordinary’ conventional weapons is far and far greater then at the time of WWII. Nevertheless no use to cry over spilt milk and if at least I want to have some understanding of what is happening in my backyard so to speak any resentment as to what has happened I had to do away with and look afresh to this new situation. And this situation is still as far as I’m concerned far from clear. To name a few things; the alleged BL /Alquida connection with SH, the assumed existence of WMD (be they nuclear or chemical based.) and of course the Israel/Palestinian case. The factors Korea, Iran, not be underestimated the situation in Africa to name a few aspects.

VINEETO: As a youth I demonstrated against the oppressed, I marched against capitalism and for socialism and I instinctively took a stand for a supposedly oppressed minority, against the rich and for the poor. To back up my passionate opinion I relied solely on the propaganda given by the rally leaders, a propaganda that had nothing to do with a clear-eyed seeing of the facts but was purely intended to add fuel to the fires of righteous anger and rebellion against ‘the establishment’.

It wasn’t long until I realized that those infused with righteous anger and inspired to rebellion weren’t necessarily better people in their personal lives than those they riled against and I then turned to spiritualism to find a global solution in creating the New Man via spiritual liberation. After living and working in various spiritual communes for more than a decade I discovered that the same class and power battles were fought out within the ranks of the disciples as are fought out in the real world of politics.

Eventually I had to acknowledge that the drive for power and superiority – and the consequential feelings of anger and resentment if one is not powerful and superior – is something that is inherent to each individual, i.e. it is universal within the human condition regardless of the arena in which it is played out. This understanding was a major component for giving actualism a go.

In short, when you understand your own inherent drive for power and superiority – and the consequential feelings of anger and resentment if you are not powerful and superior – as part and parcel of the survival instincts, you have a much better chance to understand why there can never be a political solution to bringing an end to the malice and sorrow of the human condition.

*

VINEETO: Whether the good guys or the bad guys – and who are the good guys and who are the bad guys is entirely dependant on the morals and ethics of the beholder – take unilateral action, or whether they join with others to take multilateral action, the end result is the same – no peace on earth. It would seem that the progress that you are referring to is that the current Secretary General of the U.N. is expressing a moral and ethical stance that accords with your own.

RESPONDENT: As to: [Whether the good guys or the bad guys – and who are the good guys and who are the bad guys is entirely dependant on the morals and ethics of the beholder – take unilateral action, or whether they join with others to take multilateral action, the end result is the same – no peace on earth.] There’s no arguing about that as to that result when considering the word Peace as used in the AF-process.

VINEETO: What passes as peace between countries can always only be a shifting of alliances and this so-called peace does not put a stop to domestic violence, murder, rape, child abuse or the ongoing often acrimonious disputes between people of all ages, gender, race or class with each other. Even within countries that are not overtly at war with others, peace is nowhere to be found.

RESPONDENT: I remember a discussion where you stated that ‘democracy’ still is the best system we have come up with so far, thus I must take it that you consider a decision democratically taken is being more sensible then a non democratically taken one.

Considering that UN was designated to be functioning as democratic body I am a bit puzzled as to how you come to say: [By Mr. Annan’s logic, multilateral actions should aid in bringing about world peace] {snip} Vineeto:

[Vineeto]: I got tired of waiting, and fighting, for someone else to change the world according to my morals and my ideals – I decided to bring about actual peace by changing myself. [endquote].

VINEETO: As I explained above, the UN is not a democratic institution but a conglomeration of representatives of states who can neither pass laws nor implement any of their resolutions. Further, the content of their resolutions is governed – or rather stifled – by the veto power of the Security Council, which is composed of non-elected permanent members. If you wait for the UN to bring peace to the world you will be waiting in vain.

RESPONDENT: As it is now I (as the remains of an identity) am my opinion. And frankly speaking I do not see how I can dismantle this identity without having a fair understanding, of where I am positioned as a fleshbloodbody while exploring the Stygian depths of the human psyche for what I understand that to be entailing.

VINEETO: In order to understand the bigger picture as to how nations interact with each other I had to first learn to stop taking sides. And in order to stop taking sides I had to take a clear-eyed look at the programming that is the very substance of my own social identity – where I was raised, how I was raised, what values and opinions I have acquired in the course of my life, who I liked and disliked, who I identified with or felt separate from and so on. Because I aspired to dismantle my social identity, I needed to find out why I had a passionate reaction to the events I watched on the news in order to stop my habitual reaction of taking sides as to who is right and who is wrong, who is bad and who is good.

Our satellite TV program provides a history channel where I can watch detailed historical reports about many countries and many times in history. I began to learn about, and observe, the swings and roundabouts of nations over time, the shifting of alliances and the sustaining of grievances that go back over centuries, the incessant fight for military, economic and moral superiority by whatever means is available to them. Just as the instinctual survival passions operate in me as an individual, they also operate within groups of people, be they religious, cultural, tribal or national.

RESPONDENT: To clarify: Each time I have a PCE it becomes obvious how perfectly I as a human being fit in this whole story of humanity. Even more so how it makes more and more sense what part(s) my fellow travellers play in that.

VINEETO: ‘I’ as an identity fit exactly ‘in this whole story of humanity’ because ‘I’ am humanity and humanity is ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: Now the memory of that perfection is a source of nurture to my naivety and also a reason to be moderately optimistic as to the unfolding of a future where the number of people being Happy and Harmless (99%) is not limited to a just a rare few lucky ones. Nevertheless I am also aware that should I indulge in making an uhm… educated guess as to that number and the period of time that may be involved with that this easily could lead to a sort of scepticism that I rather not have intoxicated myself with.

VINEETO: You are right – there is no point in intoxicating yourself with scepticism. Yet while successfully practicing actualists can give confidence and surety about the fact that it is indeed possible to become virtually free from the human condition, an actual freedom is, by definition, a freedom from the need to belong to a group, any group, particularly that fabled lot of ‘fellow travellers’ who persist in imagining that other people are somehow going somewhere together with them.

By the way, becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow is not a matter of luck – it is instigated by a deliberate decision, the outcome of sincere intent to become blithe and benign and the reward for persistent endeavour.

RESPONDENT: PS: The site you referred to http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ I have scanned and came up the ring of tears well what to say…I consider it as a rather abundant supplement to the horror that has been referred to as malice and sorrow on the AF-site indeed one picture tell more then... so… There is no need for me to become too discriminative in describing the fact that human beings kill each other. Using an extended vocabulary to make distinction i.e. between terrorism, democide, genocide, aso. may be useful when it comes down for scholars when making statistics or lawyers to make a case for crimes against humanity, I for one only need these two labels malice and sorrow and that covers all of it.

VINEETO: If, as you said above, you ‘want to have some understanding of what is happening in my backyard so to speak’, i.e. ‘the present situation in the Middle East as is’, you will have to make the effort to discriminate the nuances of how and why human beings and nations interact with each other the way they do. In order to do this, however, you first need to have an experiential understanding of the nuances of how and why ‘you’ tick, which is what the actualism practice is about.

*

RESPONDENT: Vineeto you might consider this as a preliminary response to your latest posting to me [re: World Peace vs. Peace-on-earth]. Suffice for now to mention that, I’m quite happy with the way and the tone in which you have made your response.

VINEETO: I am pleased to have been of assistance in further resolving your query. You are by no means alone in riling against the world as-it-is and people as-they-are and hoping that others will change. The political/national struggles I observe on TV are not very different in nature to the struggles I read about in the local newspaper – it is the human condition in action. Through the practice of actualism I have eventually come to understand the silliness of habitually taking sides in these struggles – particularly more so when I realized that I formed my opinions and beliefs by accepting the ideological views and biased information disseminated by those who ‘I’ agreed with whilst simultaneously turning a blind eye to any facts that didn’t fit. So much for clear thinking.

Richard devoted a whole chapter in his journal to describe that ‘it is impossible to combat the wisdom of the real world’ because ‘for a person to acknowledge a fact would require that they betray their belief’ (article 21) … and that apparently is what very few people are willing to do.

RESPONDENT: Being so busy telling other people how they must do it and all.

VINEETO: I am simply sharing my discoveries and my success with the method of the third alternative. Given that six billion people are involved in a cruel and often terrifying game of survival, that has been ongoing for thousands of years, I consider it a great leap forward in the evolution of mankind that Richard has discovered how to live permanently in the actual world. There cannot be enough words written and talked and shared about this radical alternative at this stage, it being so new and 180 degrees opposite to all the Ancient Wisdom that everyone else, including what Mr. Wolf, Mr. Veeresh, Mr. Rajneesh and Ms. Margo Anand are espousing.

Whenever I think of the possible benefits that everyone can have who takes up the challenge of questioning the Stone Age Wisdoms of good and evil spirits and gods and devils, I am awestruck by the immensity of the inherent change that comes with an actual freedom – imagine, peace on earth ... Do you remember John Lennon singing in the sixties ...

♪ ‘Imagine there’s no countries ... it isn’t hard to do, ♫

Nothing to kill or die for ... and no religion too,

Imagine all the people ... living life in peace ...

♫ You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one ...’ ♪

Or this one –

♪ ‘I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year♫

I hope it’s a good one without any fear.

War is over, if you want it

♫ War is over, now.’ ♪

War is over, now, at least for me. I have found how to be happy and harmless 99% of the time and I am delighted and enthusiastic to tell everyone about it who wants to hear it. And what a wonderful hobby it is, talking about peace on earth, here, now, in this lifetime...

Just think of it – a world without war, torture, rape, maiming, murdering, fighting, killing, domestic violence, child abuse, atom bombs, corruption, hypocrisy, competition, fear or greed. A peaceful world, with tribes freely mixing and mingling, people trading whatever and wherever they want to, enough to eat for everyone, plenty of comfort, leisure and pleasure. Technologically it is all possible as of today – the only thing preventing such an utopian reality is the heritage of the animal instinctual passions, ‘who’ we think and feel ourselves to be. And because I have tried out and applied the method on myself and some other people have done the same, we know that it works, individual by individual, for whoever is ready to change themselves radically and irrevocably in order to become happy and harmless.

But I am curious as to why you object to me telling other people of my discoveries? What is it that you don’t like about it?

*

VINEETO: You might not have noted the difference, but I am not blaming people for behaving the way they do. I simply state the facts as I observe them both from a life-time of my own previous personal interactions, from observing the interactions of others and from what I see on television. It is completely up to everyone what they do with their lives. There is a great deal of difference between blaming others and a simple assessment of what is silly and what is sensible.

RESPONDENT: Indeed, I may or may not have noticed. Your mind is becoming sharp and I like that. It is a good thing that you are not blaming others.

VINEETO: For an actualist, it is vital to start noticing the difference between blaming others for his or her own unhappiness and factually observing the human condition, as it is manifest in everyone, in order to disentangle oneself from the deeply ingrained habit of automatic emotional reactions towards anybody and anything. This automatic emotional reaction is part and parcel of the ‘self’-centred instinctual survival program all humans are endowed with and this genetically-encoded program causes everyone to categorize every event, person and interaction into the category of either ‘self-enhancing’ or ‘self-threatening’. This then results in the habitual reaction of praising or blaming others for having caused these ‘self’-enhancing or ‘self’-threatening feelings and away it goes into either ingratiating and pleasing or blaming and defending – the very stuff that causes and perpetuates all of the domestic, neighbourhood, inter-group and international battles.

By becoming aware of this automatic instinctual response in oneself, however, one can come to an honest assessment of the Human Condition in action in oneself and in others, which can then give the necessary oomph to get off one’s bum and do something about this Human Condition in oneself – the only person one can change and the only person one needs to change.

RESPONDENT: The other day the front-page newspaper of the newspaper had a story of 5-year-old girl shot in the head by a terrorist. I asked myself, how I am experiencing this moment of being alive? Mostly what came up was the thought of how can anyone do something like that, but I was aware of a significant lack of emotive valence. I would appreciate comments from Richard, Peter, Vineeto or anyone who has been involved with actualism for awhile as to what’s it like when they read or experience adversity.

VINEETO: Actualism is the method to pay attention to your own feelings of sorrow and ‘adversity’ and bring them to the light of awareness so as to render them impotent. Actualism is the method to eliminate the identity, ‘me’, who harbours those feelings and instinctual passions. I don’t distance myself from my feelings but I recognize and experience that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. In order to examine my emotions I have to experience them in detail and pay obsessive attention to whatever prevents me from being happy and harmless. (for more information see The Actual Freedom Trust Library, Affective Feelings and related correspondence).

RESPONDENT: I asked because I usually would have gone on a rant for a while and was aware of not doing that. I didn’t make anything of it but it was a different reaction. Sometimes I’ve become aware of not getting caught up in a lot of insipid conversation, and inane subject matter, that I did even a month ago when I first started reading the site. When Richard writes of not having any emotions anymore, I was just curious if any of you had a reaction when you see or read of a five year old girl getting her brains blown out.

VINEETO: Since I became a practicing actualist my previous helpless and angry reaction towards violence, murder, rape, war and genocide has changed in that my reaction is now a determined and purposeful resolve to do something practical about the malice and sorrow in the world. Actualism doesn’t mean that you become dis-passionate about the world-as-it-is and people-as-they-are. What I did was actively and consciously turn my helpless and angry reaction into passionate, yet sensible obsession – I proceed to extinguish violence and suffering in myself.

Whenever I see acts of war and terrorism on TV, I am appalled at how human beings treat their fellow human beings but I am no longer helplessly suffering with the victims nor am I angry at the aggressors. I have discovered the sufferer in me and I have found the aggressor in me – the human condition is common to all. By committing myself to a method that inevitably leads to ‘self’-immolation, I know that I am doing everything possible to bring an end to malice and sorrow – in me, the only person I am able to change.

RESPONDENT: Like the other day I was sitting in a restaurant with a co-worker and a rat ran by. She jumped and was visibly distressed. I didn’t actually see the rat so I didn’t respond. I was just wondering if something like that phases you or Peter anymore. If there is no ‘I’ inside, what is your reaction? I’m not going copy it (as if I could) but just wondered if there is no identity anymore how do you react to things like death, violence, vermin etc?

VINEETO: Firstly, there is a great difference between murder, war and terrorism and a rat in a restaurant. The first is the appalling situation of the human condition and the second is simply a nuisance, admittedly an unhygienic nuisance.

Secondly, until (psychic) death does us part, there is still an ‘I’ inside this body.

However, I’m not jumping or screaming when I see a rat and I never have. I find cockroaches far more eeky. But whenever I do have an emotional reaction to a situation, which is far more rare than it used to be before I started actualism, then I notice, label and trace the emotion to find out exactly where it is coming from. It might be social conditioning, as No 38 suggested, or it has its source in the deeper layer of the animal survival instincts. Whatever it is, every such situation is a wonderful opportunity to see my ‘self’ in action and learn more about it in order to free myself from its grip.

VINEETO to Gary: Last week I sent a letter to a German correspondent commenting on two newspaper articles that he had sent me analysing the latest events in the US. As I thought the topic might be of interest to you or others, I am posting the English translation on the list. For you, here is the link for the German version.

*

[Vineeto]: You sent me an article from Peter Lock, ‘Researcher for Peace and Conflict’, on the topic of ‘A Replaceable Figure’, ‘Politics Must Do More Than Hunt For Single Perpetrators’, which I found to be idealistic-ideological rather than pragmatic-practical. The author presents a number of well-known fashionable beliefs and ideas that have little to do with facts or common sense. For instance, he says –

[Web-Respondent No 3]: The causes of terrorism disappear from sight because investigating them would destroy the seeming clarity of one’s political and most probably also military reactions. Even more, one doesn’t ask what the social conditions had been that supported efficient terrorism on a multinational scale ... [endquote].

I consider people who indiscriminately, and at any cost including their own life, set out to harm and deliberately destroy another group of people as a dangerous assembly, even more so in the latest case as they seem to have not only a strong following but also the avowed aim and the means to wage a war of terror. The behaviour and action of such a group, wielding such weapons as hijacked aircrafts laden with jet fuel, cannot be excused by anything, whatever may be the political situation in their country, the tenets of their religion, the ideals of their particular social/political philosophy or whatever injustices they claim to have suffered or how righteous they consider their cause.

In other words, if someone decides to hate me and attack me, I don’t have to understand the particular justification for his or her aggression in order to stop him or her. When someone threatens me I will call the police, whatever the aggressor’s reason or justification for his or her attack may be. It may be pertinent to note that throughout history the only thing that ultimately stops violence is more violence – which is why we have armed police and armies to maintain law and order. The system may not be fair on some but whilst human beings continue to nurse malice and sorrow in their bosoms, what passes for peace will be ultimately maintained at the point of a gun.

Peter Lock continues –

[Web-Respondent No 3]: Further down I will examine the possible topics of the failed dialogue that is now being continued with brutal force. These are in direct connection with the global and economic development, which are apparently the operating basis for terrorism. First one has to understand that the present form of economic globalisation is bypassing the interests of the majority of the world population. Sure indications are the unrelenting polarisation of private income, the structural inability to overcome the hunger in the world and finally the erosion of statehood and the growing importance of violence to regulate economic operations that often escalate into warring activities. [endquote].

I don’t know what kind of economic development the author has in mind, but in contrast to popular opinion, my impression from the countless television reports that I have seen is that globalisation and world trade are enormously beneficial to economic improvement, particularly in developing countries. Economic globalisation often creates work and income in poor areas, brings information and technology into remote regions, supports productivity and innovation, improves communication and trade and gives a lot of people the possibility to earn more money and lead a more comfortable, healthy, pleasurable and safe life than their parents could have ever dreamt of.

In the developing countries, health and education can only improve with increased economic living conditions, and the tackling of the problem of overpopulation – one of the major reasons for hunger and poverty – is only possible through improved education, medical advancement and economic growth. Don’t expect any support from the religions in reducing overpopulation, as pure self-interest drives all religions to increase their numbers by all means. Religions are unison against any kind of birth control – one of the few points of agreement between the various religious beliefs.

However, apart from the ever-growing overpopulation in vast parts of the world, ‘the structural inability to overcome the hunger in the world’ is due to the fact that human beings are continuously and instinctually fighting each other for territorial, religious and tribal-political reasons. This grim battle for survival has gone on unabated for thousands of years – the only difference being it is now fought with much more sophisticated weapons and even more convoluted and pious moral arguments. And yet despite this continual vitriol and maiming and blaming of others it is amazing that at least one third of the world’s population lives in considerable wealth, relative security and enjoys the highly advanced technology that we are using today. It is pertinent to observe that all of the advances in civilizing the human species have come from the practical application of intelligence whilst all of the suffering of the human species has come from a senseless clinging to archaic beliefs, unliveable morals and ethics and a lauding of our instinctual animal passions.

Right now the same people that a little while ago were morally outraged about violations of human rights in Afghanistan are now morally outraged that the Americans are bombing the strongholds of the Taliban, the very regime they originally saw as suppressing the Afghani people. A little reading of history tells us that the Afghani people have been at almost constant war with each other and against their neighbours for centuries. Warfare, with its inevitable suffering and impoverishment is inherent to Afghan history in this barren mountain-desert region. As far as this country is concerned, the unvanquished ‘hunger in the world’ has nothing at all to do with a so-called ‘economic globalisation’ – for decades this country has never known anything but tribal wars and war and conflict causes more suffering and hunger than any other cause. According to a Red Cross estimate some one billion people were effected by warfare in the last half of the twentieth century alone.

As far as ‘the growing importance of violence to regulate economic operations’ is concerned, I don’t see that violence per se has increased but that information and media coverage about violence has improved. Peter Lock does not say relative to which time ‘violence to regulate economic operations’ has increased. Is he comparing today to the times of the brutish Viking invasions, the time when the Romans violently expanded into northern territories, when the Huns overran Europe, the time of the Hundred Year’s War or the time before World War Two? Since which time does the author think the violence between human beings has increased, which is what he seems to be implying? Human history is but a history of territorial warfare, violent conquest and asset raiding. Regulating of economic operations were almost always done at the point of a spear or sword whereas so much is done nowadays by negotiation and exchange of tokens. T’is often no less hard-nosed and ruthless but at least it is less physically violent.

It is fairly easy, one could say even hypocritical, to live in the comfort of a rich democratic, capitalistic nation and attack capitalism, world trade and ‘economic globalisation’ and make them responsible for all the evil of humankind. If, however, one puts aside one’s personal anti-capitalist beliefs and takes a closer look, then the facts of the situation are quite obvious. Money itself is not the problem. In a wealthy country most people’s life expectancy, comfort, health and physical security are usually superior to those in poorer countries. And yet even in wealthy countries the emotions of corruption, greed, righteousness, aggression, fear and competition – that most people consider synonymous with and can’t separate from money and wealth – invariably turn one’s own life and that of others into a living hell. To deny others the benefit of economic and social development via economic globalisation – the opportunity and ability to trade information and goods with others worldwide – due to this emotional misconception is a truly myopic and self-centred opinion.

In short Peter Lock, like countless others of his ilk, has got it 180 degrees wrong in his attempts to lay the blame for violence and suffering at someone else’s door.

Wouldn’t it be much easier, far more realistic and pertinent, to abandon the moral confusion and ethical pros and cons of assorting blame and apportioning guilt and conduct ‘research for peace’ on oneself instead of endlessly pointing fingers at others? Any sincere ‘researcher for peace and conflict’ worthy of his or her name could begin to investigate how it is possible to live with their fellow human beings in complete peace and harmony, be it at home or at work, no matter where they live or who they live with. A ‘researcher for conflict’ could begin to learn about and meticulously investigate the causes of conflict in himself or herself because the causes for conflict are exactly the same in all human beings – our inherent instinctual passions, our animal heritage.

Unless this instinctual animal heritage is acknowledged, recognized, investigated and finally eliminated, what passes for peace on earth between human beings can only ever be maintained at the point of a gun – with police, army and a strong justice system. It is not, as is commonly believed, the social, political or economic environment that makes people aggressive but it is our inherent animal-instinctual aggressive nature that can, when push comes to shove, explode at any time. Everyone knows such out-of-control impulsive moments from one’s own experience. Therefore it is completely useless to blame society – not to mention being practically impossible to change society – because the very people who would form the ‘new’ society would still be inevitably driven by their instinctually passions.

Peter Lock, Researcher for Peace and Conflict. An Exchangeable Figure. Politics Must Do More Than Hunt For Single Perpetrators. Frankfurter Rundschau 13.9.2001

*

[Vineeto]: The article from Dieter Lutz on September 22, 2001 in the Frankfurter Rundschau under the title ‘The Terrorist Attacks Are Also A Warning, Maybe The Last’ reads like yet another description of doomsday. Under the influence of his own emotional impression about the attacks on the World Trade Centre the author offers everything he always hated about the present situation in the world. He lays blame to western society, global warming, the exploitation of natural resources and the battle of the rich and powerful against the poor and weak. He conjures up major catastrophes, chemical warfare, the dying of the forests, the ozone hole and war over drinking water. The article reads like a description of Judgement Day as he mobilizes whatever fear and guilt he can. One could think from his tirade that he was happy that his personal enemies, the Rich and Powerful Ones, had received a severe blow from the terrorists.

In an atmosphere of promoting and maintaining the divisiveness of class warfare and ethical polarisation, theoretical political alienations and moral indignation conflict is only increased and further inflamed, not diminished or dissolved. The author is amplifying the worry and fear of his readers for his own political and emotional satisfaction in a rather irresponsible way when he says –

[Web-Respondent No 3]: Is the only thing left to do in the face of political dilettantism, Gordian complexity and dramatic time pressure the cutting of the convolution, the sword of Alexander the Great? Does this mean war? And dictatorship? [endquote].

Which he then answers with Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker’s advice that –

[Web-Respondent No 3]: ‘World peace demands from us an extraordinary moral effort.’ [endquote].

And in his final conclusion Mr. Lutz explains how his world peace should look like –

[Web-Respondent No 3]: If security policy should not be exhausted in disaster management and disaster care regarding the vulnerability of highly developed societies, in fact of the whole international community, then one needs to finally begin, eleven years after the East-West-conflict, to build a world order based on the power of law and law enforcement, which produces a global home policy and earns its name of ‘just peace’. [endquote].

Who, may I ask, will be the leader or leaders of this ‘world order’, who decides which ‘law’ of the ‘world order’ is being enforced, what are the rules of their ‘global home policy’ and who determines what is a ‘just peace’ and for whom it is just? Who are the powerful ones in this new ‘world order’? And what happens to the critics of this ‘world order’, people who criticize the new order – the next generation of Dieter Lutzes? I do find it amazing that those who have the greatest objections about the way societies are run today are exactly the ones who then propose their own global solution that is more unpractical and dictatorial than the one they see to be so disastrous.

*

[Vineeto]: I am glad that I don’t have the task to finding a political solution to ending violence and suffering because there is no solution to be had within the Human Condition. There is no general political solution, no permanent solution and particularly no world-order solution that will work to bring a genuine peace between human beings as long as people are driven by their instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Right now, however, there are only pragmatic law and order answers to be had to present situations and pragmatic solutions are best arrived at by putting aside beliefs and passions as much as possible.

My own solution to finding peace on this paradisiacal earth has been to become aware of my own social and religious conditioning and beliefs, my own ethical and moral values, and my own underlying emotions and instinctual passions. By becoming aware of all this programming that society and blind nature had inevitably thrust upon me I was able to incrementally bring them to light and thus render them impotent. The peace and tranquillity that is achieved in this way is independent from the society I live in, independent of any religious belief whatsoever, independent from the emotions of other people and therefore indestructible. Also, it is much easier, and indeed it is only possible, to change oneself to be a peaceful person rather than changing 6 billion people so as to fit them into a mythical new ‘world order’ of ‘just peace’.

The simple solution of getting rid of malice and sorrow is now available, applicable by anybody who is interested in being happy and harmless, right here on this very earth and right now in this very lifetime.

Artikel 2: Dieter Lutz. The Terrorist Attacks Are Also A Warning – Maybe The Last. Are We Standing On The Eve Of Destruction And Annihilation? / Dieter Lutz About Mistakes and Failures of the Rich and Powerful States. Frankfurter Rundschau 22.9.2001

*

VINEETO: Yes, I am concerned about wars. The more personal worries disappear out of my life, the more I can see what human beings are doing to each other, every day, in every country, in every household. And everyone is inflicted by the disease called Human Condition, malice and sorrow. To be free from it is to stop being cruel to other people. War is people being cruel to other people, on a big and horrendous scale; it can be eliminated as the Human Condition is eliminated in more and more people. Maybe it takes a few generations, but without instinctual passions and ‘self’ in operation there is no possibility for any war to be fought. That motivates one not just seeing cruelty in oneself but to actually stop being cruel, each time one’s cruelty wants to ‘occur’.

RESPONDENT: [Vineeto]: ‘The retribution from the ‘good’ guys that took place at the end of World War II was as cruel, uncontrolled and devastatingly disastrous as the actions of the ‘bad’ guys before.’ Vineeto, Selected Correspondence, Feelings

Evidence please.

VINEETO:

Peter: Another TV program I watched reported on the fire bombing of Dresden and other German cities during the war. Vast areas of these cities were turned into raging firestorms of such intensity that people were sucked off their feet into the inferno, and babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms. This was a deliberate policy of revenge for the German bombing of English cities. Civilians were deliberately targeted. The Americans similarly incinerated Tokyo, causing more deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Of some 50 million killed in the Second World War, 30 million were women and children.

When the Americans saw the German concentration camps after the Second World War, they put hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in open fields – in winter – and surrounded them with barbed wire.

They then fed them below minimum survival rations and slowly starved or froze thousands of them to death over the winter. To increase the torture they backed open truckloads of food up to the perimeter fence and left them there to rot. They were the ‘good guys’ and the other side had to be punished for their wrongs!

What we call justice is, after all, nothing more than revenge and retribution. An eye for an eye! Such is the appalling extent of malice and sorrow in this world. Peter’s Journal, Peace

I have watched various TV programs since the one that Peter described that have confirmed his report in the journal. Unfortunately the atrocities of Germans before and during WW II were by no means a unique incident in history and nor have people stopped committing similar atrocities to others since Hitler’s death.

Are you really of the opinion that in the Second World War only one nation has committed atrocities while the other nations in the war were all humane and gentile and reasonable? Maybe you are familiar with what goes on in the world today? Because if you are, you might for instance recognize an eerie similarity of what is happening between the Jews and the Palestinians today and what happened between the Germans and the Jews sixty years ago. The human condition is common to all and nationalistic aggressive and retributive behaviour is not confined to some particular tribes, nations or races – like all instinctual passions, the territorial instincts lie dormant in every human being and can surface whenever the circumstances are fertile.

It is all so easy to find a culprit, a scapegoat and the one and only responsible person to blame for the ills and evils of humanity and then one does not have to look any further for the causes of all the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and genocides.

I am vitally interested in irrevocably ending in me the instinctual and social programming that is cause of all the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and genocides. I set out to find, and eradicate, the cause, ‘me’ – the alien entity inside this flesh and blood body, my feelings, emotions and instinctual passions, my very ‘being’. Despite everyone’s firm belief that you can’t change human nature it is now possible to investigate and subsequently eliminate one’s social conditioning and examine and observe one’s instinctual passions to such a degree that they no longer have any power and eventually atrophy.

However, this investigation is not undertaken by joining a popular mass-movement or a fashionable spiritual belief system – it is a journey that everyone does for himself, by himself. Once you decide to do it, it’s a grand adventure, unrivalled by anything I have done so far in my life.

Now, that happens very rarely any more. This is the peace I have found and that’s how I have become a non-contributor to the violence and war in the world.

VINEETO to Alan: Yesterday I was reading Richard’s post to No 4 and something suddenly clicked. Richard wrote:

Richard:

4. There are three worlds altogether but only one is actual; there is nothing other than this actual, physical universe (the normal ‘reality’ as experienced by 6.0 billion human beings is an illusion and the abnormal ‘Reality’ as experienced by 0.0000001 of the population is a delusion born out of the illusion because of the self-aggrandising tendency of the narcissism born of the survival instincts).

5. Peace-on-earth can become apparent to anyone at all regardless of gender, age or race because the perfection of the infinitude of this temporal universe is already always here ... now. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 4

I understood for the first time peace-on-earth in a 100% down-to-earth sense. Peace-on-earth opposed to an imagined peace-after-death, peace in heaven. And then I understood the un-ease I always had with that expression. Somewhere I still had a Christian ‘flavour’ to the word, a picture of paradise before Adam ate the apple, with lions and sheep lying in the grass together. It had sounded a bit mystical to me.

But peace-on-earth-in-my-lifetime, for me and everyone I am in contact with is very much down-to-earth, possible right now. Yes, thank you, I’ll have that, no objections or doubts anymore.

Another little brain-shift. Another thing fully understood. The word becomes an experience. And I tell you what – the brain suddenly felt like being shifted about 2 degrees to the left, and then another 2 degrees from front to top, what a relief it was, like clicked into place.

I guess – another metaphor maybe – that we have to walk every single degree of those 180 degrees, some come in lumps, some in slow motion and some happen so silently that I can only be astounded in hindsight.

It seems to me that Peter and I are the only Earthlings here on the list, saying what a wonderful planet this can be without the shackles of the Human Condition.

It would be all very amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that people continuously fight and kill each other. I take it that your passionate writing is in response to the book review of ‘Zen at War’ (http://www.darkzen.com/) that Peter mentioned to No 13, because in subject heading you wrote: No 13 re Zen.

Reading of the extensive and systematic involvement of Zen masters and monks in war-crimes has shocked me – and I guess it has shocked you as well. Here there is another description of what humans do to humans, always calling the other one the inferior race, an animal, inhuman, heathens, fiends and dangerous enemies to justify the ferocity and cruelty that is displayed in wars, collective acts of instinctual aggression. 160 million people were killed in wars this century alone, and those 160 million include the 350,000 Chinese of Nanking, the 6 million Jews of WW II, the 800,000 German and 1.1 million Russian soldiers in Stalingrad, the 800,000 Tutus in Rwanda, the 100,000 Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, the hundreds of thousands dead on both sides of the 40 years of Cold War and all the others that died for country, religion and ideology.

Watching on TV the ongoing fighting and suffering in shocking pictures and learning about the enormous numbers of victims, I cannot turn away any more from the facts as I could years ago, I cannot invent a ‘karmic reason’ for all the suffering, or pretend it is only the fault of the leaders – it is all too obvious that these ongoing atrocities are due to the survival instincts of fear and aggression, which resides in each of us. Just feeling guilty or sorry for the people is a hopeless, useless and gutless avoidance, a ‘head in the sand’ attitude.

The moment I dared to acknowledge these bare shocking facts, I had only one solution and that was to find the source of fear and aggression in me and to eradicate it in me utterly and completely. This is the only way I can make sure that I will never participate in violence, no matter what the circumstances, and that I, for one, can be a non-contributor to the pervading violence on the planet. I investigated and eliminated in myself the very source that drives human beings to be so horrendously cruel, devotionally obedient and desperately aggressive – the very survival instinct that prevents people from acknowledging and treating each other as fellow human beings.

As I have said to No 1 before:

[Vineeto]: I found the ‘Hitler’ in me after I realised that I would have killed for defending my master and my devotion for him with the same passion that Germans had when they marched to conquer and ‘save the world’. Hitler simply played on the instincts of Germans in a way that they followed him and that they were ready to die for him, for their country, for their Christian belief, for their Arian race – exactly as Osho played on my – and everybody’s – instincts so that I was ready to kill and die for ‘Him’ on the Ranch.

There is no point blaming somebody else for my misery or suffering, I am made of the same stuff as any other human being, I am equipped with the same software of instincts, conditioning and sense of ‘self’. And I can do something about it. After I recognised and acknowledged the ‘Hitler’ in me as well as the ‘follower’ in me, it left such an impact that I was determined to eradicate these aspects of the Human Condition in me.

And I succeeded. There is not a trace of nationalistic or religious conditioning left today. And I can see this conditioning and the underlying instinctual passions operating in everybody – the Human Condition – with different labels, for different reasons, but nevertheless as power and aggression, fear and willing obedience. When it comes down to the animalistic instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, there is no difference between a German and a Jew, an Indian and a Muslim, a Serb and a Rajneeshee, a Japanese or a South African. Everybody, without fail, is inflicted with this disease – the Human Condition.’ Vineeto, List C, No 1, 26.1.1999

I remember you writing that you visited the City of Peace, Hiroshima. You wrote:

RESPONDENT: When I walked around the Atomic Dome, I felt so much energy of peace. After the total disaster, which was the culmination of Man’s tendency of fear and fighting, Hiroshima has resurrected again. <...> I think we are now under the World War 3^rd. Love and peace vs. fear and aggression. We vs. we and they.

VINEETO: It is the ongoing suffering and fighting that gave me the intent to eradicate the ‘self’ which is responsible for fear and aggression. The only way to change the world is to change ourselves, individually, to become happy and harmless, freed from instinctual passions, beliefs, feelings and emotions. Nothing to fight for, nothing to suffer about, I can have peace-on-earth for myself and, as such, contribute to world-peace in the only way possible.

But for that, one has to ‘self’-immolate. And nobody else can do it for you.

*

VINEETO: It would be all very amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that people continuously fight and kill each other.

RESPONDENT: Yes, yes, Vineeto, yes!!!!!

VINEETO: I take it that your passionate writing is in response the book review of ‘Zen at War’ (http://www.darkzen.com/) that Peter mentioned to No 13, because in subject heading you wrote: No 13 re Zen.

RESPONDENT: I have heard about the book, and I wanna read it. I am very curious. Coz now I am learning about the Japan’s history of the W.W. II. What a shit!!! Fuck the Japanese emperor, fuck the Japanese military, fuck the Japanese politician! And fuck the Zen monks!

VINEETO: I take it that you found the address on the web: http://www.teleport.com/~zennist/zenholy.htm

It would be very easy, and not factual, when one simply believes that it was the fault of the emperor, the military, the politicians and the monks. It was the whole country that loved and supported the emperor, the emperor was supported by the people, the monks were trained according to a thousand year old tradition. To blame a particular individual is to miss the point entirely. War and cruelty has happened in every country, it happened in every century, in every religion. The history of humanity is a continuous history of war, of horrendous wars, of tremendous killing, cruelty and suffering. Most of the technological development happened to be able to attack and defend better and to be able to kill more efficiently.

To acknowledge these facts on a global scale makes one aware of the instinctual root of all the wars. Every single human being is equipped with the basic instincts for survival – aggression, fear, nurture and desire. This includes the need to be a member of a group and the will to sacrifice for kin, country and belief. The various ethics and morals keep the lid on those drives for a while, but when it comes to war, those lids are off – the bare instincts take over and our animal nature becomes horrifically obvious.

The more I became aware of those very instincts in me, the more I became determined to eliminate them in me. This is the only way peace-on-earth is possible, for me, and for everyone who wants to do it for himself or herself.

You seem to get rather annoyed when we use the words ‘happy’ and ‘harmless’. I could also call it ‘not miserable’ and ‘not vindictive’. But you can always press ‘delete’ in case you enjoy your life as it is and yourself as you are.