Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.
Selected Correspondence Vineeto Benevolence Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: Vineeto, I would like to know something more about the happiness, benevolence and magnificence of the actual world. I can understand that it would be harmless because without ‘I’ there would be no malice. But wherefrom the happiness comes? Is it just the absence of sorrow? VINEETO: I had some lengthy correspondence on Mailing-List C about benevolence. Once you see the actual physical universe without the grey glasses of malice and sorrow and without the rose-coloured glasses of love and compassion, the magnificence becomes apparent. Take a sunset. Someone in love will see the beauty of the particular scene and be full of gratitude, love and awe. Someone who just split up with his girlfriend will see the sorrow, the transitory nature of all things, the ending of a day, a life, a period. Someone about to go to war will see the power and beauty of his God, pray for protection and feel supported in his passionate mission by the display of the glorious colours. An actualist might see this immense fireball of helium in the sky, giving warmth and light and life to its orbiting planet called earth, all seen through the layer of atmosphere, giving it the wonderful display of ever-changing colours, different each day. To lay any feelings or imagination or even a creator-God over this magnificent event is to miss the actual experience of it. To experience the world around me without the distorting filter of self-centred emotions, feelings and instincts enables me to perceive and appreciate this infinite magnificence, this purity and perfection and this magical actuality of each moment in paradise. RESPONDENT: Or is there anything positive about it? VINEETO: ‘Positive’ is too small a word, for it is only invented to counteract the original objection to being here. The Human Condition in each of us inevitably results in not wanting to be here but to be somewhere else, in imaginary heights or in a hope for a better future or life after death. When senses and awareness are freed from the shackles of emotions, feelings, beliefs and instincts one is – as Richard says – ‘the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’, nothing less. Then, one is as benevolent as the rest of the universe. I understand where your question may come from. The absence of sorrow, when one is empty of tears, can be experienced as a starkness, grey, empty and dull reality. Because this seems unbearable, one then cranks up some positive thoughts and feelings to ‘believe’ that life is not so terrible after all. This so-called happiness has nothing to do with the gay and abundant experience when there are no feelings and emotions. The wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom is to investigate and remove whatever feeling, emotion, belief or instinct surfaces until slowly, slowly the actual world becomes apparent – and its magnificent and benevolent nature. And you are then the bit of the universe that says ‘WOW, isn’t the physical universe extraordinary and amazing, wonder-full and perfect!’ RESPONDENT: Lastly, I’d like to learn more about what is meant by ‘not suppressing or expressing’ strong emotions. Normally, the example given is anger. We commonly make a division between the feeling of anger and taking it out on someone – so that seems an obvious example. But what about emotions like empathy or compassion or feeling beauty? Take playing the guitar for example. The feeling of beautiful music while playing is the very same as it’s expression. I don’t feel the beauty without actually playing the musical instrument. So it’s difficult to divorce feeling and expression in a context like that – so that it seems like not expressing in that context is none other than repression – which would mean NOT to allow oneself to pickup the guitar or be ‘tempted’ by beauty. Or do you mean by ‘expressing emotion’ – ‘to take it out on somebody or something’? Also, with empathy – are we to hold ourselves back from expressing empathy because we don’t yet know the dividing line between ‘feeling empathy’ and ‘being benevolent’? That to me, seems to verge on repression. I suppose I’d like to see a little more carefully detailed explanation of what exactly is meant by ‘not suppressing or expressing’ emotion – since it seems to me that some emotions only arise when expressed – or are in danger of being repressed if not expressed in some way. I look forward to hearing of your explorations and how they might help along the way. Happiness and Harmlessness to all VINEETO: Personally, I found that by continuously running the question of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ with sincere intent I was unable to repress any emotion for long – by focussing my awareness on what went on inside my head and heart, all my beliefs and feelings came to the surface, one after the other. However, I first had to inquire into my spiritual, moral and ethical values that had taught me to consider some emotions as ‘good’ and worth expressing and some emotions as ‘bad’ and requiring repression. Only by examining and becoming free of the social-spiritual straightjacket of automatically classifying feelings as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ was I able to clearly experience and scientifically investigate each emotion as it arose. As I had set my aim to become free from malice and sorrow, the first obvious thing to do was to stop expressing my malice and to stop imposing my sorrow on others. As for expressing the ‘good’ emotions like love, compassion, empathy, hope and trust – in a sincere inquiry you will soon find out that when expressing ‘good’ emotions one is as much driven by one’s instinctual passions as when expressing ‘bad’ emotions. We have been taught that the alternative to expressing emotions is to repress them – however, there is now a third alternative. Whenever an emotion occurred, I usually stopped in my tracks, took notice, labelled the emotion, found out when the emotion started, what triggered it and whether any beliefs, moral and ethical values were the cause of triggering the feeling. In the first year of actualism I spent a lot of time on the couch thinking and contemplating about one or another belief or emotion, I talked with Peter about the issue, wrote about my discoveries and attempted to more and more understand the human condition in action. Often I found ‘good’ emotions like desire, hope, trust, attachment, loyalty, compassion and love also triggered off the ‘bad’ emotions and this discovery of the inter-connectedness and interdependence of good and bad then spurred me on to continue questioning the ‘good’ and ‘right’ values I had unquestioningly swallowed. As for the ‘the dividing line between ‘feeling empathy’ and ‘being benevolent’’ – empathy makes you suffer with the other person, which can clearly be experienced as an emotion. You then either wallow with the other in their suffering or you have an emotional investment in attempting to alleviate the other’s emotional suffering in order to relieve your own co-suffering, i.e. com-passion. Then you subsequently become eager to impose your solution to their problem. The benevolence that an actualist experiences it not a feeling at all but happens on its own accord when one’s ‘self’-centredness ceases to dominate one’s every thought and feeling. Benevolence arises out of the experience and understanding that we are all fellow human beings doing this business of being alive on this perfect lush and verdant planet earth. * RESPONDENT: You ask me why I want others to be ‘sensitive’ to me? I ask you why should you or I be ‘sensitive’ to others? My answer to this is that it’s not that I’m requiring or demanding that others be ‘sensitive’ to my needs – rather that I do realize that generally people are well meaning and benevolent, so that I don’t see any reason why sharing information about how I am feeling should be seen as a ‘demand’ placed upon them. It’s merely information that they are free to do with whatever they want. Giving information about how I feel, or have felt in a purely informative way only allows them to understand me – which allows their natural benevolence to be better directed. VINEETO: It is a myth that human beings have ‘natural benevolence’ – every human being is born with mother nature’s rather clumsy soft-ware package of the animal instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire and this programming is responsible for the human condition that is epitomized by malice and sorrow. What looks like beneficial behaviour to you is the social conditioning in which humans are taught to emphasize and highly value their ‘good’ instinctual passions and repress and control their ‘savage’ passions. However, we still have to rely on lawyers and laws, courts and jails, police, armies and guns to ultimately enforce law and order – a pathetic substitute for an actual peace and harmony between human beings. Why would you feel the need to ‘better direct’ people’s supposed ‘natural benevolence’? Why do you feel a fear of being emotionally hurt by others if everyone has a ‘natural benevolence’? It’s a spiritual fairy-tale that priests and gurus want us to believe that human nature is essentially benevolent, that babies are born innocent and that they have only been misguided and corrupted by their upbringing. One only needs to take a closer look at 5,000 years of recorded history to see that this duplicitous belief is neither factual nor makes any sense. RESPONDENT: I do not mean to imply that humans are ONLY ‘naturally benevolent.’ No doubt you are correct in your assertion that complete innocence is a fairy tale. Your comments are aimed at a target that I don’t intend to defend. I agree that we are endowed with the ‘instinctual passions’ of ‘fear, aggression, nurture and desire’. But, I also see altruism and benevolence – though normally mixed (if not eclipsed sometimes) by the instinctual passions you refer to. All I mean is that people are generally well meaning. Maybe it’s best not to combine the word ‘natural’ and ‘benevolence’. Probably ‘good-intentioned’ is a better rendering – or ‘well-meaning.’ VINEETO: It is certainly ‘best not to combine the word ‘natural’ and ‘benevolence’’ because it is the instinctual passions that are natural and consequently come to the surface with often horrendous results when the social rules fail to curb the excesses. Children before about age two are ‘natural’ and so are animals – children at this age don’t yet have a social conscience and, as such, are run entirely by their instinctual passions. What you said, however, is that you wanted to appeal to and direct people’s ‘natural benevolence’ so that they’d be ‘sensitive’ towards you and won’t emotionally hurt you. But apart from the fact that ‘natural benevolence’ is a myth, an actualist aims to become unconditionally happy and harmless, i.e. happy and harmless with people as they are. In order to become unconditionally harmless, I had to stop trying to direct people to live up to ‘my’ preferences and sensitive spots and instead I investigated ‘my’ instinctive need to be in control and change people according to ‘my’ self-centred ideas and feelings. The result is that now I am not only harmless but also happy regardless of what people say to me, or about me, because I removed the cause of my feeling hurt – and the cause is not in others, but in me. * RESPONDENT: In my experience, only by becoming Happy first – can I also become Harmless. This is not to neglect Harmlessness, rather to notice that if I try to be to vigilant – ‘taking responsibility’ for how my emotions cause ripples in other people, then I become a ‘tiger in a cage’ – i.e., unhappy. Granted, both happiness are harmlessness depend on each other, but happiness seems to be the horse carrying the harmlessness cart – and not the other way around. I don’t have motivation to be harmless, if I’m not happy. At least – that’s my experience. VINEETO: If by ‘becoming Happy first’ one could ‘also become Harmless’, the whole world would be happy and harmless by now. The pursuit of happiness is as old as humankind but it still has not produced anything remotely resembling harmlessness, let alone harmony. Actualism breaks with the instinctual compulsion of human beings to put their own happiness first and put harmlessness second – as a socially conditioned afterthought, so to speak. As long as I put my happiness above being harmless, my outlook towards others is inevitably ‘self’-centred, which means that I cannot consider others as equitable fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: I do not mean to imply that happiness and harmlessness are exclusive of each other. I also am not asserting that one can become happy without being concerned with harmlessness. I recognize the two are dependents and intertwined together. I am just as concerned with harmlessness as happiness – my experience just tells me that if I become overly concerned with harmlessness and begin to castigate myself for it, then I don’t have a chance at being either happy or harmless. VINEETO: The challenge in actualism is to resist the temptation to compromise your aim and your sincere intent when you are not perfect at the first attempt, but instead investigate the ‘little man in the head’ who is doing the castigating. Given that the inner critic is your social identity, ‘he’ is nothing other than the conglomerate of all the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, principles and psittacisms that ‘he’ has been programmed with since birth. Your social identity also determines how you automatically relate to other people and how you expect and demand other people to perceive you. In order to eliminate one’s social identity one needs to replace the moral and ethical arbitrary judgments of good and bad and right and wrong with an open-eyed evaluation and intelligent judgment based on what is sensible and what is silly. One also needs to replace the beliefs and psittacisms one has been instilled with in childhood, or has later chosen as one’s own, with observable and verifiable facts. By choosing to become happy and harmless I set my goal far higher than the societal values of ‘right’ and ‘good’ and, as such, the nagging ‘little woman in the head’ eventually ran out of objections of me being happy and harmless. It is the intent to be harmless that is the crucial difference between a spiritualist and an actualist because everyone wants to be happy but very few are ready to commit themselves to the truly benevolent aim of becoming harmless. RESPONDENT: If that is the case, much of what is said about actualism isn’t actual, because it seems to come from beyond the physical senses. The mission statement of altruism, happiness and freedom from malice, sorrow etc, to me, goes outside the parameters of the here/now actual. VINEETO: May I ask, did you have or do you remember having had a pure consciousness experience? If yes, then you would know from experience that actualism is indeed about the actual. If no, then why do you presume to know what ‘goes outside the parameters of the here/now actual’? If you are really ‘here to explore and get clear rather than find fault and criticise’ then the best way to genuinely explore is to acknowledge that you don’t know what the ‘parameters’ of the actual are because you have never experienced the absence of ‘me’ for yourself or have not yet succeeded in remembering having experienced the absence of ‘me’ for yourself. For instance, if you look up what Richard writes about altruism you will find that he says he is not altruistic. Altruism is something the identity needs to activate in order to enable an actual freedom from the human condition. If you look up the subject of happiness you will also find that Richard says that he has not felt happy for years. And your statement that being free from the feelings of malice and sorrow is supposedly ‘outside the parameters of the here/now actual’ indicates that your idea of ‘the here/now actual’ is something entirely different than the actual ‘here/now actual’. (...) RESPONDENT: Where does it say that the universe is peaceful and perfect? VINEETO: When there is no identity to experience the universe as malicious and sorrowful then this body can sensately experience the inherent quality of the universe, which is perfection (peerlessness), benevolence (no malice) and purity (no identity/spirituality). RESPONDENT: Is there a mission statement for the universe to only experience being happy and harmless here on earth? VINEETO: You may have to re-read the passage from where you got the impression that there are ‘mission statements’ and that ‘the universe to only experience being happy and harmless here on earth’. Personally I had to read Richard’s Journal over and over, sometimes properly understanding a single sentence took me a day of contemplation, simply because for my spiritually conditioned mind the grasp of the simple facts of actuality needed some untwisting/undoing and casting aside of my own beliefs, opinions, assumptions, presumptions and expectations. RESPONDENT: emotions, (like love and compassion), will only ever get in the way of what is actually best for both of you unless you use this serendipitous opportunity to explore the cause of your concerns etc. VINEETO: As you point out, to say that ‘emotions, (like love and compassion), will only ever get in the way...’ is not enough to free oneself from their clutch. Usually one attempts to suppress one’s feelings by calling them inappropriate. As we know from Richard’s experience of 11 years of enlightenment, love and compassion, the ‘good emotions’, have a strong grip on the ‘Self’ and need extensive investigation into what it is that ties one to this big club called Humanity. So, any opportunity is a ‘serendipitous opportunity to explore the cause’ of the underlying feeling, emotion and instinctual passion of one’s concern. What’s left is genuine benevolence and actual concern for one’s fellow human being. (...) * RESPONDENT: you can only do your best in this moment of being alive, now. No need for self recriminations. VINEETO: Yes, that’s right. One has to be careful, though, because there is a vast difference between the actualism practice and the spiritual teaching of ‘you are all right as you are right now, no need for change’ à la Paul Lowe and company. The question is what is this ‘your best’? By what standard is ‘your best’ measured? How do I determine what is my best? In spiritual years my best was measured according to the dream of ‘good’ and ‘bliss’, the morals and ethics of Eastern religion, and my failures were excused by the obvious ongoing failures of most human beings to achieve the goal of enlightenment. ‘That’s life’ or ‘Existence wants you to be like that’ are two of the common excuses for not being the best, for being sad, worried and malicious. As an actualist I have a different aim and a different evaluation of what is the best I can be. Having experienced the actual world in its purity, perfection, magic and benevolence in PCEs, my best is always oriented on this experience and my effort to change is always directed to eliminating the ‘self’ that is preventing me from experiencing this perfection 24 hours a day, every day. Then instead of ‘self recriminations’ I examine my errors in order to stop repeating them, investigate what caused them in the first place and aim to be as happy and harmless as I can be. RESPONDENT: I tend to look upon harmlessness as an inevitable side-effect of ‘self’-free happiness. VINEETO: It is, in fact the other way round – the intent to be harmless and to live in peace with one’s fellow human beings is the only way to crack the intrinsic instinctual selfishness of the human condition. RESPONDENT: In the absence of ‘me’, there is an intrinsic benevolence here. It can’t be simulated by moral strictures; the only thing that is going to bring it about is the demise of ‘me’; VINEETO: Yes, in a PCE, in the absence of ‘me’ one experiences the benevolence that is intrinsic to the actual world. However, when the PCE fades, then the real job begins for an actualist which is to actualize one’s insights gained in a PCE and do the nitty-gritty business of uncovering, understanding and putting a stop to the multitudinous cunning ploys that ‘I’ invariably produce spoiling the already existing perfection. GARY: However, in my own ‘self’-investigations perhaps most revealing of all, once I began to unravel my emotional connections with others, was the seemingly bottomless malice and contempt that I discovered buried under layers of appropriate social conduct. This instinctual malice presented itself irregardless of whom I was with and I could well appreciate, given the depth and force of this instinct, the so-called ‘crimes of passion’ that occur when people go ballistic, run amok, and kill or maim their lovers or close, intimate associates, not to speak their own children. The thing about Actualism that differs radically from other approaches, spiritual included, is that one gets a first-hand, up front, down and dirty taste of the inveterate malice at the heart of my existence as an instinctual entity, as well as really doing something about it in a hands-on way. VINEETO: It strikes me that there must be a ‘seemingly bottomless’ wellspring of altruism that has caused you to doing something hands-on in order to free your fellow human beings from the consequences of your feelings of malice and contempt. Personally, since I started actualism I only remember a few instances of intense malice and aggression surfacing but I discovered ample feelings of resentment at being here accompanied by feelings of contempt, annoyance, irritation and indignation towards others. GARY: I have not usually thought about it this way – a bottomless well of altruism. Given the experience of malice is usually quite self-centred and extremely aversive, it is easy I suppose to overlook one’s deeper reasons. VINEETO: When I said ‘bottomless wellspring of altruism’ I used altruism in the sense of benevolence in action, the action of becoming happy and harmless in order to free one’s fellow human beings from one’s own malice and sorrow. The final altruistic act in the literal, more accurate, sense of the word will happen when ‘I’ irrevocably disappear, never ever to return. Peter: The path to Actual Freedom is not at all attractive for there is nothing in it for ‘me’ – no phoenix arises from the ashes to claim the glory, no acclaim of adoring disciples, no wonderful overwhelming feelings, no fame, no recognition, no power – neither overt nor covert. Extinction is extinction. It is for this very reason that one needs a goodly dose of altruism. (Actual Freedom Library, Altruism). GARY: One that really got my attention recently was an increased sensitivity to my partner’s moods and behaviour and how ‘my’ mood affect her. There was a recent frank discussion of this without the usual mumbled apologies and misgivings that was quite satisfying. ‘My’ feelings always make waves with those around me. VINEETO: What I found amazing is that the more I examined my feelings so that they could no longer make ‘waves with those around me’, the less I was affected by the waves of other people’s moods. Whilst feeling connections work both ways, it is entirely in my hands to sever those emotional ties – for the sake of my happiness and for the sake of the happiness of those with whom I come in contact with … or as Richard puts it, ‘for the sake of this body and that body and every body’. Not only do I now not feel responsible for other people’s moods – because I know that ‘I’ had nothing to do with other’s moods – I am also increasingly unaware of subtle vibes and emotional moods unless people tell me about them or are overtly emotional. A recent event springs to mind that illustrates this change quite well. At a social occasion I met a man who I knew and we began chatting. After a while I found it odd that he stood physically close to me and moved even closer in the course of our conversation. I noticed this because I couldn’t wave my arms while talking. I didn’t think more of the event until Peter and I returned home that evening and I was telling him of my odd observation. Only then did it occur to me that maybe the man was ‘coming onto me’ as he was known as a ‘philanderer’. I had not felt any vibes or detected any emotional messages at all and the meaning of his ‘body-language’ had passed me by completely. That I had no desire whatsoever for sexual hunting, or for being hunted, made me insensitive to his feelings such that I was able to have a pleasant chat with him about life and being alive. VINEETO: Benevolence is the quality of the physical universe, it is neither love nor compassion, neither ‘feeling’ nor ‘being’. When everything of ‘me’ is eliminated, the actual world becomes apparent. Benevolence is intrinsic to the actual world. RESPONDENT: Benevolence is a quality of the physical universe’, you say. According to my dictionary ‘universe’ means ‘the totality of all the things that exist; creation; the cosmos’. So we can assume that anything physically limited in space such as a rock, a door, a car, the moon, the sun is not benevolent. But, according to you, as soon as we take it all together, as the physical universe, suddenly there’s benevolence. How can that be? This is a mystery isn’t it? Can this magical and sudden appearance be explained or understood by your common-sense? VINEETO: There is no malice and sorrow in the physical universe. There is no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad, sadness, grief, compassion, love, or any other feeling in the physical universe. These are feelings that are in human beings only (and in a rudimentary form in some animals). Feelings and instincts are both the product and the very substance of the psychological and psychic entity within the human body. So when you rid yourself from this alien entity within the human body, when there is no malice and sorrow in this human body, the perfection and benevolence become apparent. It is the Human Condition that prevents human beings from being as pure and perfect as the physical universe and thus from experiencing the purity, perfection and benevolence of this infinite magnificence of the actual world. RESPONDENT: Also, you, sensing this benevolence, after eliminating all emotions, feelings and instincts, are living in a paradise and you would want others to experience the same. But it isn’t love or compassion, you say, oh beware me no, but benevolence. VINEETO: No, it is neither love nor compassion, for love and compassion are passions (com-passion), they stem from the feeling of separation and loneliness. Without bad feelings there is no need for good feelings to compensate – no malice, no love – no sorrow, no compassion. Compassion is sharing sorrow with other human beings, it keeps everyone trapped in the idea that this earth is a terrible place to live. Richard: Actual benevolence is the ingenuous condition of a body innocent of any ‘being’. I wish well upon my fellow humans ... but I am not driven to bring The Truth to humankind with all its eventual appalling atrocities as has happened since time immemorial. I am free from both personal sorrow and Universal Sorrow and am able to be considerate without the emotional and passionate involvement that comes automatically with being an entity. (Richard’s Journal, Article Twelve). And it is simply common sense. Why should I not want everybody to share the same paradise? Why not have peace on earth, for everybody? We are fellow human beings. Anybody, who wants to, can do the same thing that I did and live in the same benevolent paradise that I live in. Doesn’t that make sense? RESPONDENT: Isn’t this inventing of new terms a playing with words only to separate yourself from other similar sounding statements made by, say, sannyasins? To emphasise that they are 180 degrees wrong and you are right? VINEETO: Well, it you who insists that both should be the same thing. I am not inventing new terms for the same thing, I am using words to describe a different thing. When airplanes were invented, they weren’t called ‘cars’. Two different words for two different things. Love and compassion are feelings within the Human Condition, they are a well-meaning but futile attempt by the psychic entity to mimic the actual intimacy and benevolence which become apparent when ‘I’ disappear. Why shouldn’t it be possible that there is something new under the sun, something that actually works? It is my very experience, every day. * VINEETO: I must warn you right in the beginning, that this is a really long piece of writing. I did not want to be sloppy and explain the subject shorter – the benevolence of the physical universe without the superimposed human invention of a creator or ‘divine energy’. I guess, there is always the delete button... RESPONDENT: So we can assume that anything physically limited in space such as a rock, a door, a car, the moon, the sun is not benevolent. But, according to you, as soon as we take it all together, as the physical universe, suddenly there’s benevolence. How can that be? This is a mystery isn’t it? Can this magical and sudden appearance be explained or understood by your common-sense? VINEETO: There is no malice and sorrow in the physical universe. There is no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad, sadness, grief, compassion, love, or any other feeling in the physical universe. These are feelings that are in human beings only (and in a rudimentary form in some animals). Feelings and instincts are both the product and the very substance of the psychological and psychic entity within the human body. So when you rid yourself from this alien entity within the human body, when there is no malice and sorrow in this human body, the perfection and benevolence become apparent. It is the Human Condition that prevents human beings from being as pure and perfect as the physical universe and thus from experiencing the purity, perfection and benevolence of this infinite magnificence of the actual world. RESPONDENT: Vineeto, I know this by now. You didn’t answer the question. It is this: you, as an actualist advocate the use of common sense. You say that benevolence is the attribute of the physical universe. Since the universe is infinite, we can assume that anything limited in space, say a chair, is not benevolent. VINEETO: The point of this conversation is that I talk about my experience. Without the feeling of fear or power there is only benevolence around me and in me. To convey a ‘proof’ of that experience to someone who is convinced that the world consists of good and bad, sorrow and compassion, aggression and love is almost doomed to fail. To understand, one needs to contemplate the very possibility of it being possible. Richard put it this way: Thinking and feeling – through logical imagination and irrational intuition – are the two tools that everyone has been taught to use to conduct the affairs of their everyday life: they are not at all appropriate for uncovering the perfection that they are searching for. There is an unimaginable purity that is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart. One needs to be naïve to think that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile. To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope, how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. (Richard’s Journal, Article Seventeen). That is where the peak-experience comes in. You might remember a moment or a brief period when you felt neither fear nor love, neither sorrow nor compassion, but a startling at-easeness and clarity, as if seeing this magnificent world for the first time with open eyes. In such a moment of purity, when the ‘self’ and its editing and distorting emotions are temporary absent, one can experience this very obvious benignity and benevolence of the actual world. Now to your question: RESPONDENT: ... you, as an actualist advocate the use of common sense. You say that benevolence is the attribute of the physical universe. Since the universe is infinite, we can assume that anything limited in space, say a chair, is not benevolent. VINEETO: Common sense is not logical imagination, but using the brain’s innate intelligence without ‘self’-ish or ‘Self’-ish interference. Common sense is general sagacity involving all senses to assess the entire situation and act accordingly and sensibly, considering everyone involved in the situation. Common sense is the capacity of the brain to make sense without being disabled by the Human Condition. A chair, as any other separate object could be considered benign rather than benevolent in that it does not say to you ‘I wish you well’. But a chair is made by human beings, it is not tricky or malevolent and has intention to hurt – unless you rock too hard ... woops! What makes it benevolent is that it is part of the universe and brings delight. Your statement ‘that anything limited in space, say a chair, is not benevolent’ assumes that limited automatically implies it being non-benevolent. But benevolence has nothing to do with being physically limited or unlimited. Benevolence is the intrinsic (built-in) quality of everything in the physical universe. Maybe you can see it from the other side – in the physical universe there is neither good nor evil; both good and evil are values of the Human Condition – the basic instincts of aggression, fear, nurture and desire, overlaid by our ‘identity’. Remove that construct and what you are left with is neither good nor evil, but a benign and benevolent physical actuality. But as we are all inflicted with the Human Condition, we perceive the world only in terms of human emotions, interpreting everything according to the way we have been programmed and taught, according to morals and ethics, fear, love and hate. Take rain as an example – somebody might find it beautiful, another feels sorrowful, another angry when a rainy day is disturbing his plans. Everyone has an emotional interpretation, a self-centred reaction. Rain is just rain, in itself benign and benevolent. It is benign in that it intends no harm, and it is benevolent in its quality of bringing nourishment and delight, the delight you experience when you yourself are benign. RESPONDENT: So why is it that when all physical objects are taken together as a physical universe, suddenly benevolence appears. This is beyond my common sense. Moreover, benevolence isn’t physical, is it. VINEETO: To understand that benevolence is physical you first have to understand the term ‘actual’. Actual means ‘not merely passive’. It describes the experience that nothing in this physical universe is dead, things are continuously evolving and changing. A seed grows into a carrot, when I eat them they turn into my skin, flesh, bones and brain. A timber table has its own life from seed to tree to timber to crafted furniture to aged wood and then it is deteriorating into soil. The continuous movement is a physical one – there is nothing meta-physical in it. It never stops, never ends. Benevolence is the intrinsic movement of the physical universe to be its best. A tree grows the best way it can, using whatever resources are available. Animals have an instinctual capacity to ensure the survival of the fittest, the strongest, the most adaptable. Vegetation and animals on this planet have evolved from the simplest to the most complex. Human beings with our incredibly refined ability to think and make sense of the world are the only intelligent species of the physical universe. This very computer is a visible outcome of the human brain, with colour-screen, background, sound, storage capacity and all its gimmicks. But this human brain is still restricted and distorted by our animal instincts in the primitive brain. The benevolence with its urge to be the best it can be has now evolved to a stage where it is possible to break free of the animal instincts, of the Human Condition. Fed by our intent to be the best we can be the brain can fix itself up, it can re-wire itself and eliminate the redundant instincts altogether. There is no divine, mystical or ethereal energy doing it, the urge to be its best is a physical quality of the universe. To put the idea of God into this obvious perfection and purity is to completely miss the point of the very magnificence happening around us all the time. Should you want to read a bit more on this issue, Peter’s chapter ‘Universe’ and ‘Evolution ’ explain these fact a bit deeper, and Richard has written about it at length in his journal and correspondence. * Richard: Actual benevolence is the ingenuous condition of a body innocent of any ‘being’. I wish well upon my fellow humans ... but I am not driven to bring The Truth to humankind with all its eventual appalling atrocities as has happened since time immemorial. (Richard’s Journal, Article Twelve). RESPONDENT: So actualism is not The Truth after all? VINEETO: No, actualism is not ‘The Truth’. The Truth is an invention as part of the Human Condition. There are, in fact, many variations of ‘The Truth’ – the multitude of religious wars are ample and passionate expression of those variations ... actualism is a tried and tested way of being here in the world as it actually is ... stripped of the veneer of reality that is super-imposed by the psychological and psychic entity within the body. And actualism is not a vision or belief, it is simply an accurate description of the actual world of sensual delight. (...) * VINEETO: Well, it is you who insists that it should be the same thing [benevolence and compassion]. I am not inventing new terms for the same thing, I am using words to describe a different thing. When airplanes were invented, they weren’t called ‘cars’. Two different words for two different things. RESPONDENT: Likewise it could be said that it is you who wants it to be different. If you insist on being different you may end up creating another movement thus adding to the division in the world and hence intensifying atrocities already there. VINEETO: ‘It being different’ and ‘me wanting it to be different’ are not the same thing. ‘It’ is different and that is a fact. Me objecting to that fact would simply be silly. To acknowledge the fact that compassion is a feeling of ‘me’ within the Human Condition and that benevolence is a quality experienced with ‘me’ absent is anathema to ‘me’. It is not something ‘I’ would want. Actualism is not a movement and never can be, only individual people can clean themselves up and discover the actual world for themselves. Everybody has to do it for him/herself. In actualism, power and compassion simply do not exist, and they are very ingredients needed for atrocities to happen. No passions, no wars. RESPONDENT: ...‘your care, which with pure love is compassion by the way’ ... VINEETO: Compassion is a passion which binds the one who ‘needs’ compassion. The deal was that Osho gave his Compassion and I gave my devotion, which brought me to a point where I was even ready to die for him. At the height of the war against the fundamental Christians in Oregon, when rumours went around on the Ranch that the National Guards were on alarm and could attack any day, we were ready to lie down on the streets, have the tanks roll over us and be killed for love and protection for the Master. Can’t you see the power in it? Pure love is only an ideal, it is not pure at all. It is always a bargain. Care, consideration and benevolence are not a relationship, they are not even a state of ‘being’. They are simply intrinsic to the human body, once the alien entity has been extinguished. They have no strings attached. I simply ‘wish you well’ in describing what I found out. What you do with it is completely your business.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence
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