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 The Belief of Life after Death and Immortality Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: When my mother who is currently experiencing difficulty caring for my father, (who has Alzheimer’s disease), asked me; ‘do you think I will be reunited with my mother in death?’ I hesitated as to whether I should tell her my true opinion. After we honestly explored together the possibilities of returning to a state similar to that experienced prior to conception ... everything seemed OK for we are all in this business of living and dying together ... ‘together’ seems to be the operative word ... investigating together ... both living and dying. Not for the faint of heart and weak of knee, but truly amazing. Not unlike marvelling at the universe, (Peter and Vineeto), of stars and people and everything. There can be no time or room left for useless worry, or sympathy, or illusive love and common pathos, (compassion). VINEETO: It is a fact that when one dies one dies, irreversibly, irretrievably and irrevocably. Any other opinion of death is only a belief. To find out about death as a fact I needed to investigate my belief in anything meta-physical and explore the emotional reasons for wanting to believe in something other than what can be sensately experienced. This investigation is verily ‘not for the faint of heart and weak of knee’ , for one may encounter fear and dread the likes of which are ‘truly amazing’ . Those fears are the very reason that all the ancient humbug beliefs in numerous silly fantasy-heavens have survived for thousands of years despite the scientific advancements and technological developments. But to proceed beyond the limits of one’s survival fears is an adventure I wouldn’t want to miss for anything. It gives me the freedom to live here on this earth, each moment fully alive, delighting in being this flesh and blood body, and no hold barred. VINEETO to James: Personally, it took two months and a lot of discussions with Peter until I finally understood experientially, what the term ‘spiritual’ stands for. For me, ‘spiritual’ had implied the ‘godly’ way of life, following the highest aspirations of mankind, a dedication to be good, to be part of the group of people who also aspire to the same goal. The day I finally understood the literal meaning of the word ‘spirit-ual’, a whole new world opened up. Suddenly the spiritual world was not the only alternate world to the ‘real’ world, not even the best world. Suddenly I understood that I – like everyone else – was producing this world in my head and heart – with my very spirit, so to speak – and this world consisted of spiritual morals, ethics, ideas, beliefs, emotions, loyalties, pride and the belief in the immortality of the soul. A major distinguishing factor between the spiritual approach to life and the path to an actual freedom is that spirituality teaches one to enhance the ‘good’ affective feelings. One is to indulge one’s intuition, trust, belief, faith, hope, guesswork and is encouraged to sense (as in feel out) a situation. Whereas, on the path to Actual Freedom, one explores actuality by applying thought, common sense, contemplation, practicality and intelligence and undertakes an investigation into verifiable facts of the situation. RESPONDENT: I used the term ‘pure consciousness experience’ deliberately to see how it felt to try it on – sort of like trying on a pair of blue jeans to see if they fit. It doesn’t, and they don’t. Unlike you, I don’t understand all the implications of consciousness and it’s relation to timelessness, if there is one. VINEETO: There is no relation between consciousness and timelessness because mortal human beings thinking and feeling themselves to be timeless is nothing but fervent imagination based on ancient fairytales. In their awareness and resulting fear of death ancient humans have conjured up the belief that there is some other place to go after death, that there is something that will live on after this body dies – and 99.99% of humans haven’t dared to question this soothing belief ever since. Once I dared to investigate my belief in some spurious after-life, in an eternal life and in some ever-present Energy – God by another name – and dared to face the fear of death, consciousness became a very simple thing to understand. In a normal person, consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Consciousness is the state of being aware of one’s actions, sensations, feelings and thoughts. This marvellous ability of the human brain to be conscious is so miraculous in itself that any invented explanation of a Higher Timeless Consciousness having created this human consciousness pales in insignificance. Given that each human being is born with an instinctual ‘self’ overlaid since birth with a further layer of social identity, this consciousness is a ‘self’-consciousness. Thus a consciousness of ‘who’ I think and ‘who’ I feel I am is constantly predominant and the bare consciousness of the flesh-and-blood-body only gets a peek in during a body-only pure consciousness experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. A naïve observation and contemplation about the workings of this amazing physical universe, or simply being immersed in the sensual pleasure of being alive, can bring on such pure consciousness experience. Whereas when one wants to relate one’s own consciousness with this imaginary timelessness, the only way to proceed is to totally become immersed in one’s feelings, dis-identify and disconnect from the body and all things physical, disassociate oneself from everything that is down-to-earth, actual, common sense and happening in this moment, and imagine oneself to be ‘somewhere else’. To shed the belief in a Higher Power and a life after death was certainly daring – for there could be an angry god standing at my grave, couldn’t He? When I finally admitted that a timeless consciousness – the feeling of immortality – was a mere product of my fervent belief, I was then able to take my life into my own hands and proceed to change the programming in my brain. Acknowledging the fact that Timelessness and God have never existed is the only way to become free of malice and sorrow. ALAN: I always wondered a bit why Richard, in particular, railed so much against the gurus and spiritual masters. I even accused Richard of having a ‘bee in his bonnet’, which he readily admitted. Sure, I knew these people were to blame for leading people up the garden path and I have examined for myself the delusion of enlightenment. But, responsible for all the wars, tortures, rapes, domestic violence and suicides – I was not so sure. Then today, reading Richard’s reply to No. 12, I suddenly ‘got it’ – a fact is so obvious when you see it. Of course the gurus and maters are responsible for all the wars, tortures, rapes, domestic violence and suicides, because they have not eliminated the Human Condition in themselves and they continue to perpetuate the misery, sorrow and malice, while telling all and sundry they are the embodiment of peace on earth. I may well have a ‘bee in my bonnet’ myself in future! Because of the above realisation (and my current discussion with Richard about the PCE & ASC), I was able to look at my remaining tenuous belief in some form of life after death, ‘Oneness’, ‘Universal Consciousness’ or, whatever you like to call it. Close examination has caused this belief to vanish, leaving me even more free to enjoy this moment. As a fact, there is no ‘life after death’ – what a relief!!!!! Thank you Richard and No. 12. VINEETO: Wheeeeeeee, Alan, that is truly an occasion to get the bottle of Champagne out of your fridge and have a big toast on yourself! What a day of remarkable significance when you stop being immortal – or potentially immortal – and become alive in this moment. I can take the analogy that I wrote to you the other day a bit further – everybody walks on their hands and suffer blisters and headache, and then we wonder why we feel so mad and weird walking upright. To come to one’s senses and walk upright, one first has to fall on to one’s nose, or bum, and most people object to that position... Leaving immortality behind is a big step towards walking upright, at least in my experience. Welcome to the ‘bee in the bonnet’-club. * VINEETO: (...) Well, slowly, slowly, after a hundred failures I start to grasp that there is no point in going back into Mr. Kant’s cave... [Vineeto]: ‘But it was not all over yet. The sense of love and warmth that had resided in the heart moved further down into the belly, what Japanese call the Hara. I found it to be the seat of ‘being’, of bliss. It was a less fiery passion, more of a calm prevailing blissful state of eternal ‘being here’, as opposed to the actual being ‘here’. I don’t remember much of it except for the seductive invitation to stay there, ‘you have found your destiny, this is what they all talk about, you have arrived’. <snip> ‘Big deal! Seeing the Power and Glory in action and its impact on me I turn away. This is not the perfection I am searching for, this is not the purity that I know from peak-experiences. As I watch the sky dawn in its wonderful changing colours with life awakening all around, leaves rustling in the wind, cicadas chirping, magpies whistling, fear returns and I welcome it as a sign that I am on the road to freedom again. The delusion of Power and Glory is seen for what it is – and disappears while I lie on the couch contemplating life and death and the universe.’ (Vineeto, Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness). (Note from the editor: It was in fact Plato’s story from The Republic) ALAN: ... as this concurs with my own experience, which is in the current correspondence with Richard. I think all one can do to ‘warn’ another is to say watch out for this feeling of Love, which is definitely located in the belly, the seat of being. As we have both demonstrated it is possible to turn away from this blissful state, whether using ‘native intelligence’, ‘pure intent’ or whatever name. VINEETO: Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. And recently, when somebody asked me about Akashic Records, I experienced that bliss-state for about an hour, the state Mrs. Roberts seems to describe in her book. I finally got a grip on it – I could experience it and describe from the ‘outside’ what was happening. This blissful state seems unemotional, no love or compassion is felt in the heart, everything is a cool ‘oneness’. One feels all-pervading, ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is divine’. The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling’ intimate with the TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’ prior to this experience). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is virtual, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up. This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world as a flesh and blood body, with the senses. Boy, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket. But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual. It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of dis-association that people suffer from who are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line – until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, i.e. mentally deranged, forever cut off from common sense. VINEETO to Alan: I want to chat a bit about the subject that Peter has raised in his last post to you – the ‘good’ and – ‘tender’ instinctual passions. It was a good reminder for me when he said that it took Richard only a few months to eliminate anger, yet eleven years to eliminate the ‘good’ – pacifism, love, compassion, beauty and bliss. So, as part of my investigation I watched a movie today which could be called a classic regarding this very issue. It is called ‘Good morning, Miss Dove’, a film made in 1955, full of the straightforward morals and ethics of post-war America. Miss Dove turns down a marriage proposal in order to become a teacher of her little town and teaches generation after generation not only geography but in particular how to behave like perfect moral citizens. Every word and gesture of hers is oozing the ‘good’ and the ‘right’, teaching the distinction between the respectable and the disreputable. In her subtle and ‘humble’ way she has got the whole town under her thumb, not only because almost everybody has been her former pupil and thus imbibed the very same ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but also because she is flawlessly incorruptible. As such, she can even tell the priest how to pray with her on her death-bed. The interesting part for me was that the concept of a morally flawless life could still touch me. Humans of all ages have strived for the best, have tried to be ‘good’ and have partly succeeded to keep the ‘bad’ under control. But ... First of all, the whole system only works because everybody believes in God and in a life after death, where one will be either punished or rewarded for one’s deeds. Otherwise, what is the point of being good – it never really pays off in this lifetime. Secondly, a flawless life according to the morals and ethics of normal society is such a dull and humourless affair because it is based on repressing and sublimating one’s every instinctual drive including sex. Miss Dove in the film did show this very well, as the town’s straight-laced spinster. Thirdly, and what was also very obvious in the film, is that the sublimated and repressed instinctual drives are being transformed and used for power over others, which in itself is the very antithesis to freedom. Miss Dove was not only the saint of the town, loved and respected by everybody, she was also the queen, with every one of her former pupils eager to please her. Of course, with absolute power one can easily play humble – the art of subtle covert rule. It’s been a good exercise to examine and analyze the stronghold of the ‘good’, to see the emotional attraction and the hidden traps. I find it harder to recognize than being angry or fearful because the ‘belief in the good’ only becomes apparent as a slight tug on the heartstring, a sweet feeling, an attraction for the ‘good’ hero in a story or a disappointment when the corrupt wins. But leaving Humanity behind means leaving the ‘bad’ and the ‘good’ behind and every catch needs to be investigated. A fascinating business. VINEETO to Alan: It’s a fascinating business ‘to be or not to be’ and how to move from one to the other. When we watched the report on Timothy Leary that Peter wrote about, I could relate very well to the flavour of those times, the idealism, the peace movement and the ‘tune in, turn on and drop out’ scene. My ‘drop out’ was not into drugs, but into religion. I went to India to find God. My God was called Rajneesh and he claimed to have all the answers. I learned to be more sophisticated with my labelling, he was ‘an Enlightened Master’, the best, of course, something which every master claims to be. And if we did what he told us, surrendered and meditated earnestly, we would get to experience heaven on earth, i.e. become enlightened and thus reserve a place for our soul in Nirvana-land after death. Doesn’t this sound very similar to the good old Christian religion of Big Daddy in the sky who knows it all and promises you heaven after death if you are good? With the only difference being that my ‘God’ was still alive and the Christian God-man had died 2000 years ago. Therefore the transition out of normal society into a spiritual community wasn’t such a big jump as I had thought at the time. Emotionally and instinctually I was still feeling safe with the higher authority of the ‘Good’ and secure with the reassuring feeling of belonging to a religious tribe. With that understanding in mind, the report of the ‘great drop out’ of Timothy Leary, the ‘high priest of the his times’ could be seen for what it is, a ‘shifting of furniture on the deck of the Titanic’, staying safely within the parameters of the ‘self’ and of an imagined life after death for that very ‘self’. Yet I find it very serendipitous that crazy people, including myself, have experimented with all kinds of possible options of what it is to be a human being. It gives me an opportunity to study what I as well as everyone else have discovered, to investigate the uselessness of the traditionally offered solutions and to stop repeating the mistakes of the past. RESPONDENT: By the ‘stuff’ I mean, ‘There is no God, There is no life after death. This very moment is the only moment you have to live and it is possible to live being happy here and now in this very world ... blah blah blah’ VINEETO: Rajneesh was actually a very tricky guy. One day he would talk about God and the other day deny that there was such a thing as God. He had whole discourse series on Jesus, where God appeared in every other sentence. Then he talked about Zen, and suddenly all was prevailing emptiness and utter serenity. So in the process of checking out my beliefs and replacing them with facts I had to take a closer look, not just rely on what I ‘felt’ Rajneesh had said or meant. By really digging into the contents of his teachings and words I was able to dismiss him as the ultimate authority he had been for me. What I found was that his essential teaching was about the Divine, Existence, Buddha Nature, Oneness with the Whole. So, where is the difference? God or the Divine, God or Buddha Nature – it still ensures immortality. The spiritual ‘Universe’ is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’, and after death one will be united with the Whole, forever in bliss. Just the words on his tombstone ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet...’ are enough to reveal his belief in an afterlife as the ‘real life’ and the actual world as an illusion. RESPONDENT: It is an individual’s responsibility to do the work and individual’s fault if one does not remain alert to look into oneself. It can happen anywhere. I could do the same on this list and be greedy for ‘Actual Freedom’ without working for it. In addition, my interest at present is: to see what love does to me. VINEETO: Sure, it is the individual’s responsibility to look into themselves. But you can only effectively look into yourself without the guidelines of those gurus, teachers, Enlightened Beings, ‘Mr. Wise Guys’ and Masters who tell you to look into yourself according to their particular ‘Truth’ or belief-system. As long as you are lead astray on a path of fairy-tale and fantasy, glory and immortality, good feelings and bliss, how can you clearly and honestly look into your ‘self’? You will only be moving deck-chairs on the Titanic again, rearranging feelings – good ones to the right and bad ones to the left – and then end up with a polished, but same old identity of No. 5. To investigate thoroughly and sincerely into your ‘self’ you will need to investigate into those who have programmed you – parents and peers, teachers and Masters, and you will have to question all of their passed-down values. For Actual Freedom you will have to investigate into your spiritual identity as much as into your moral or ethical identity – the whole lot. There is no other way to clean up the Human Condition in oneself other than to first question those whose authority one holds in high esteem. Otherwise you will simply remain a believer. This is not a small thing we are doing. RESPONDENT: Let’s say I’ve seen this is true, as indeed I have, with a few definition differences here and there not of much importance ... VINEETO: It is not merely ‘definition differences’ we are talking about. It is worlds apart. This is something nobody has ever dared to question before. Or have you found any kind of Guru or teacher who dared to question Love and Compassion, who dared to put his grand wonderful identity as ‘One-with-the-Whole’ at stake? Not a single one! All the Enlightened Ones keep their BEING in tact. They know WHO they are. So this conversation is not about definition differences. It is about a completely new understanding and approach to the human feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. It is about eradicating them, not merely transforming them. Actual Freedom is based on the acknowledgment that those feelings and passions are only software, not hardware – they can be deleted. But to eradicate my beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions means that everything that I know I am ceases to exist, and everything anybody ever claimed to know or to be ceases to be of any reference. This includes my beliefs in an immortal soul, a life after death or before birth, a god-like energy of the universe and a belief in the meaning of life. I am not surprised that hardly anybody has dared to take up the inquiry. It is a ruthless operation. But also it is the very best I have ever done in my lifetime. And it works. That may be scary because one really watches oneself dying, having less and less substance and identity to fall back on for one’s definition and reference. RESPONDENT: But I wonder where a figure like Jesus does or doesn’t fit in. What is the message? How about the bible? Is there nothing true about it? Are there only fairytales in it? I mean is there nothing practical to get from. Or was it at that moment the best that one could get. I hope you know what I mean. VINEETO: It has been considered the best, because one would feel better hanging out with enlightened people, god’s messengers or just with their ‘holy’ words. Religion, mysticism and spirituality are nothing but an escape from the ‘oh so terrible’ life on planet earth. One can escape from the hardships of life by contemplating divine love, by imagining a protective and loving god, by believing in a reward after death. But why not become happy and harmless – then you won’t need any synthetic consolation of god’s love or life after death. Again, there is a third alternative – getting rid of the problem instead of trying – and failing – to solve it by spiritual or moral means. When, for the first time, I not only contemplated but also really understood that an actual physical infinite universe has no physical place for god who, by definition, resides outside of the universe, it blew my whole belief of a higher force to pieces. It then became all too obvious how many other beliefs were feeding from this one imaginary and passionate assumption that there is something ‘higher’ than human beings that is running the show. Bang, here I was, suddenly realizing that I was all by myself, alone and lonely, frightened and unprotected, but free of that imagined authority that had controlled my life. For an hour I experienced in a pure consciousness experience the delicious perfection of this purely physical, utterly un-spiritual universe. I delighted in my autonomous intelligence, the freedom to sort out my life all by myself and for myself and experienced the awareness of this marvellous, magnificent physical universe. I have written about it a year ago: [Vineeto]: Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realization In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery. This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear. When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master. Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. (A Bit of Vineeto, #finally). Now I am responsible for my life and for my life only – without a belief in any bodiless existence before birth or after death. I am neither beholden to any higher authority, nor to any man-made unliveable morals or ethics. And I am free from guilt and the fear of god’s wrath – a fear that became quite apparent when I struggled to ditch the belief in god, heaven and hell. RICHARD: 3. As there is no such ‘Being’ in actuality it is patently obvious that physical death is the end, finish. Kaput. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 90, 6 August 2005). RESPONDENT to Richard: Er. Nope. Why is it ‘patently obvious’. It’s not at all patently obvious to me. It’s not patently obvious that nothing which in some way I am does not continue after death. It is not patently obvious to me that, without mind, body and spirit I am still, somehow, That. VINEETO: Can you see that exactly this point is the crux of the matter? RESPONDENT: No. VINEETO: Can you understand that your idea that ‘nothing which in some way I am does not continue after death’ is a spiritual belief, a belief in a spirit-being which will be able to continue after physical death – when *what you are* ceases to be alive, when the lungs stop breathing in air, when the blood ceases to circulate, when the brain ceases to function and when consciousness ceases and when decay and decomposition inevitably begins? If you can understand that, then the next step is to grasp the fact that a spirit-being has no existence in actuality. * VINEETO: For Richard it is patently obvious that there is no ‘Being’ surviving physical death because Richard’s ‘Being’ is extinguished … before physical death. As he lives this experience of being a flesh-and-blood-body-sans-identity day and night he knows without a doubt that there is no resemblance of any ‘Being’ whatsoever found in his physical body. RESPONDENT: I understand that. VINEETO: If you understand that then why do you go on to say, further below, that ‘I doubt that Richard’s being is indeed extinguished’? * VINEETO: Whereas for you it seems impossible to even consider this as a possibility – RESPONDENT: Not at all. I am quite willing to consider that as a possibility. VINEETO: This is what you said only 11 days ago – [Respondent]: ‘Perhaps I find the idea of extinction terrifying. I can’t see how accepting that death is the end of absolutely on every level everything that I am, doesn’t equal fear and despair’. (Thursday 4.8.2005 12:33 PM AEST). Are you now saying that this is no longer valid? RESPONDENT: But, again, let me make sure I’ve got that possibility straight – Richard’s flesh, blood, brain and spirit being died. VINEETO: Richard’s ‘flesh, blood, brain’ did not die – obviously. What did die in 1992, as in ceased to be, was his spirit being. It’s all very simple really – spiritual belief has it that the death of the ego is sufficient to become ‘who you really are’, which is ‘me’ at the core of my being. Whereas actual freedom involves the death of both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul in order that I become what I am – this flesh and blood body only. RESPONDENT: That being is dead already. From the death of that state it is obvious to Richard that there’s nothing left but matter. I can dig that. How to extinguish that identity remains mysterious to me, as do a couple of other matters. VINEETO: The ‘how to’ only makes sense to contemplate when you have come to the conclusion, for yourself, that you *want to* extinguish ‘that identity’, whereas you presently still maintain that ‘perhaps I find the idea of extinction terrifying’. * VINEETO: … and therefore you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished RESPONDENT: I doubt that Richard’s being is indeed extinguished VINEETO: Now here is a question for you – if you doubt that Richard’s being is extinguished, i.e. doubt that Richard is actually free from the human condition, then why did you ask him – [Respondent]: ‘How do you KNOW that a tribesman of Papua New Guinea twelve thousand years ago didn’t become actually free?’ (Re: Go on … 12.7.2005 6.48PM AEST). RESPONDENT: ... because blindly accepting someone’s pronouncements on the nature of things, no matter how appealing (and Richard’s pronouncements are indeed very appealing), is obviously a stupid thing to do. I want to explore as many nooks and crannies, especially sort of fundamental ones, before I toss my eggs in. That makes sense to me. If you can identify exactly why this investigation is more likely to conceal than reveal what Richard is saying, I’m all ears. VINEETO: When I came across actualism I was fed up with the normal, the therapeutical, the philosophical and the spiritual solutions that society had to offer to the big questions in life and I was ready for something new. That meant that I was ready and willing to question my own ideas, convictions, truths, opinions and beliefs because I already knew that they were counterproductive to making me happy and harmless. To merely question other people, in this case Richard, without simultaneously questioning your own so-called ‘knowledge’ will not bring about any change in your life, if that is what you are looking for. * VINEETO: […you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished] and consequently that his condition is something entirely new to human history. RESPONDENT: Yes, now again we get to this ‘consequently’ bit. Here it makes no sense whatsoever. As I keep on asking, how does having no identity make it clear that nobody has ever had no identity before? Richard seems to base his knowledge on an enlightened picking up or not picking up of psychic footprints. (…) VINEETO: Of course, the ‘consequently’ makes no sense to you … you haven’t resolved the first issue which is to investigate if your belief in a life after death, in whatever form, is fact or fiction. Once you resolve this issue to your own satisfaction, you will be in a much better position to understand for yourself what Richard means when he says his being is extinguished. * RESPONDENT to Richard: But anyway, moving on. VINEETO: Your ‘but anyway, moving on’ is a throw-away line apparently said in order to avoid sorting this issue. RESPONDENT: You might be right. My reaction is; ‘hardly!’ I would very much like to ‘sort the issue’. VINEETO: If you do, then why not start at the beginning and stay at the beginning before moving on – can you see that the belief in a life after death is a spirit-ual belief because it is based on the assumption that something non-physical (a spirit) will survive physical death? The issue of a belief in a life after death is fundamental to actualism – if you believe in a life after death or if you want to remain ‘open’ to a life after death then spiritualism is for you, if you think a belief in life after death is non-sensical then you will have a firm footing from which to understand what actualism is about – if you are interested in peace on earth that is. * VINEETO: Your circulatory correspondence on this topic … RESPONDENT: It seems to me that my correspondence is circulatory because I’m not getting a straight answer to my questions. I am quite willing to accept that it is my crooked reasoning that is warping what is too straight for me to see. But I need to see my crooked reasoning. VINEETO: Your reasoning is ‘crooked’ because on one hand you want to maintain a belief in life after death while on the other hand you want to understand how one’s being – the very being that supposedly survives physical death – can be extinguished whilst still being alive. RESPONDENT: Accusing me of tergiversating, asking pointless ‘yes-but-why’ style questions, circulating around the matter at hand and so forth is all well and good. You might be right. But I need to see exactly what point I’m missing and how I can accept it as plain and obvious and how that might lead to the answers to all the other questions I have. VINEETO: There is no accusation – you are entirely free to arrange your thoughts the way you want to about the issues that concern you. You were merely made aware of the fact that you are tergiversating and circulating around the issues under discussion. Straight thinking as opposed to circulatory thinking means to begin at the start and only ‘move on’ when the first point is understood and resolved. To reiterate for emphasis – the issue at hand is the belief in life after death. I know from experience that at first it takes guts and determination to even consider that physical death is the end but I discovered, the more I looked into the matter, that I, along with everyone else had been sold a dummy and it was a great relief when I finally stopped worrying about a life after death. The way I sorted out the issue of my beliefs in life after death was experientially, not intellectually, i.e. I investigated the *feelings* I had around the issue which allowed me to replace my beliefs with straightforward facts. Descriptions of this process can be found on this page. A New and Non-Spiritual Down-to-Earth Freedom means exactly what it says, new, non-spiritual and down-to-earth. VINEETO: It’s all very simple really – spiritual belief has it that the death of the ego is sufficient to become ‘who you really are’, which is ‘me’ at the core of my being. Whereas actual freedom involves the death of both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul in order that I become what I am – this flesh and blood body only. RESPONDENT: That being is dead already. From the death of that state it is obvious to Richard that there’s nothing left but matter. I can dig that. How to extinguish that identity remains mysterious to me, as do a couple of other matters. VINEETO: The ‘how to’ only makes sense to contemplate when you have come to the conclusion, for yourself, that you *want to* extinguish ‘that identity’, whereas you presently still maintain that ‘perhaps I find the idea of extinction terrifying’. RESPONDENT: I want to extinguish my identity completely. I don’t find that terrifying. What I find terrifying (actually I’m not even sure that I do find it that terrifying – rather it seems to logically follow that it does induce fear – or at least apocalyptically huge pointlessness) is not my identity being destroyed now (leaving a benevolent, scintillating, infinite, eternal, ever-present, serendipity-inducing, actively-alive actuality, which is beyond imagination, beyond reality and beyond emotion), but everything which in some way I am one day being completely and utterly destroyed, along with a benevolent, scintillating, infinite, eternal, ever-present, serendipity-inducing, actively-alive actuality, which is beyond imagination, beyond reality and beyond emotion. Or anything like it. VINEETO: Do you realize that this identity which you want to completely extinguish is the very same identity that you believe somehow survives your physical death? Can you now see why investigating one’s belief in, or abandoning one’s agnostic stance of remaining open to, a life after death is instrumental to understanding what this business of extinguishing one’s identity entails? * VINEETO: … and therefore you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished. RESPONDENT: No. I doubt Richard’s Being is extinguished because it is sensible to doubt the kind of pronouncements being made by Richard. Totally accepting something like this as true which I haven’t investigated beforehand is obviously insane. VINEETO: In my personal experience merely doubting has no value at all. What I did when I came across actualism was to make a sensible judgement of Richard’s report by firstly taking it at face value and then establishing a prima facie case as to its sensibility from all the information I could gather. From there I took up the challenge to *experientially* verify for myself the facts of the situation. However, this required that I stopped relying on belief – and its stable-mate agnosticism – and instead investigated each belief, conviction, opinion and truth that I had taken on in my life in order to replace them with solid facts and experiential evidence. * VINEETO: (...) […you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished] and consequently that his condition is something entirely new to human history. RESPONDENT: Yes, now again we get to this ‘consequently’ bit. Here it makes no sense whatsoever. As I keep on asking, how does having no identity make it clear that nobody has ever had no identity before? Richard seems to base his knowledge on an enlightened picking up or not picking up of psychic footprints. (…) VINEETO: Of course, the ‘consequently’ makes no sense to you … you haven’t resolved the first issue which is to investigate if your belief in a life after death, in whatever form, is fact or fiction. Once you resolve this issue to your own satisfaction, you will be in a much better position to understand for yourself what Richard means when he says his being is extinguished. RESPONDENT: What do I have to resolve? Do I have to accept that death is the end of absolutely everything that in some way I am? This would amount to a belief to me. Just as it would amount to a belief to accept that the opposite is true. I accept neither 100 per cent until it is definitively revealed to me one way or another. It seems more likely that something in some way that I am continues. Does this have to change to a ‘more likely that something in some way that I am does not continue’? What do I need to do to ‘resolve’ this. Please inform. VINEETO: You don’t have to do anything. But if you want to stop vacillating between belief and doubt about an actual freedom being entirely new to human experience, then a useful starting point is your belief, or more to the point your agnostic stance, about life after death. And a belief, any belief, is only satisfactorily resolved one way or the other when you find out for yourself the solid and conclusive fact of the matter. * VINEETO: (...) The issue of a belief in a life after death is fundamental to actualism – if you believe in a life after death or if you want to remain ‘open’ to a life after death then spiritualism is for you, if you think a belief in life after death is non-sensical then you will have a firm footing from which to understand what actualism is about – if you are interested in peace on earth that is. RESPONDENT: So I have to intellectually accept this life after death thing before a PCE will come? Somehow my willingness to accept that when my brain-spirit-body dies something which in some way I am will remain is blocking a PCE? How? Moreover, … VINEETO: Before you add more questions onto this line of thought, it would make sense to first make sure that your premise is indeed based on what I actually said. Nowhere did I say that you have to ‘intellectually accept’ that there is no life after death. Nowhere did I say that this intellectual acceptance is a preliminary for a pure consciousness experience. To quickly jump to conclusions based upon one’s familiar way of thinking is a common trait of the human condition – that’s why paying attention to this moment of being alive, particularly to one’s feelings and thoughts, is so crucial when one is embarking upon finding out about something new, particularly when it is entirely new to human experience. RESPONDENT: [Moreover,] how do I get rid of that willingness. I can see that my brain-body-psyche/spirit will die for good when the time comes. I can see that. Isn’t that good enough? I’m willing to accept that something that is not brain-body-psyche/spirit something benevolent, scintillating, infinite, eternal, ever-present, serendipity-inducing, actively-alive actuality, which is beyond imagination, beyond reality and beyond emotion, which in SOME way I am WILL survive. But I’m not that attached to the idea. It’s only a willingness after all. If, when the head snaps back and the brain dies and actual freedom floods over me and I find out for sure it’s not true, I’ll give it up, no problem. Even though it does seem it might auger fear and despair. So what do I have to do? Give up the willingness. No problem. It’s just a thought anyway. VINEETO: What I did in order to rid myself of belief was to meticulously discover the facts about the things I had taken on board as the truth. Seeing the fact will make any belief redundant … and any doubt as well. This link might be useful to determine what constitutes a fact as opposed to a belief, an acceptance, an idea, a doubt, faith, trust, imagination, intuition and so on. * VINEETO: Your circulatory correspondence on this topic … RESPONDENT: It seems to me that my correspondence is circulatory because I’m not getting a straight answer to my questions. I am quite willing to accept that it is my crooked reasoning that is warping what is too straight for me to see. But I need to see my crooked reasoning. VINEETO: Your reasoning is ‘crooked’ because on one hand you want to maintain a belief in life after death … RESPONDENT: No I don’t. I don’t want to completely reject it. But it’s not a big deal. VINEETO: This is what you said (additionally) on this subject at the top to this letter – [Respondent]: Firstly it [the idea that ‘nothing which in some way I am does not continue after death’] may not be a belief. The electric aliveness that doesn’t seem to be completely me, and yet is here, is not a belief, and it doesn’t seem to be just meat. Richard may have extinguished his psyche-spirit, but I don’t see why that strange-yet-actual life isn’t something different to the vagaries of spirit, that it wasn’t always here, and that it won’t always, in some way, be here. Secondly, I don’t believe in anything that I don’t know as experience. At least I do my best not to. But not believing in something does not mean that it doesn’t exist. I don’t believe in becoming a famous musician, but it might still happen. [endquote] This is what dancing around the subject before finally turning one’s back to it looks like in print – [Respondent]: I don’t want to completely reject it It may not be a belief I don’t know by experience Not believing in something does not mean that it doesn’t exist It’s not a big deal [endquote] It obviously is ‘not a big deal’ to you, otherwise you would get straight to the task of finding out the facts about life after death. To remain an agnostic about the big questions in life is to chicken out on experientially discovering the answers to the difficult questions of life but it also means that you will never get a satisfying, definitive, conclusive, i.e. experiential, answer about what it is to be a human being. * VINEETO: Straight thinking as opposed to circulatory thinking means to begin at the start and only ‘move on’ when the first point is understood and resolved. To reiterate for emphasis – the issue at hand is the belief in life after death. RESPONDENT: Right-o. It’s taken me this long to find out that this is the starting point. And that’s only because you told me. Why other questions I have asked have not been the starting point may become clear later. VINEETO: The reason why I suggested that this is the starting point for you is because you are having difficulty in understanding how one’s being – the very being that supposedly survives physical death – can be extinguished whilst still being alive and furthermore, why this extinction of one’s being is entirely new to human history. In an attempt to make this even clearer, and more pertinent to you, I will point out that you have already said in this post – [Respondent]: ‘I want to extinguish my identity completely’. [endquote] If you are sincere in saying this, and I don’t doubt that you are, the question then becomes a matter of when … if you believe ‘you’ as an identity can survive physical death then you obviously cannot extinguish your identity whilst alive. If you, however, totally abandon your belief that ‘you’ as an identity will survive physical death then your intent to become free of your identity in this lifetime becomes very palpable indeed. * VINEETO: I know from experience that at first it takes guts and determination to even consider that physical death is the end … RESPONDENT: I am quite willing to consider that. VINEETO: O.k. Are you also willing to find out with 100% certainty that physical death is the end? * VINEETO: … but I discovered, the more I looked into the matter, that I, along with everyone else had been sold a dummy and it was a great relief when I finally stopped worrying about a life after death. The way I sorted out the issue of my beliefs in life after death was experientially, not intellectually, i.e. I investigated the *feelings* I had around the issue which allowed me to replace my beliefs with straightforward facts. RESPONDENT: I’m certainly not worrying about it. I hardly give it a second’s thought. And if I do it seems stupid to think about something I have absolutely no idea about. And if there are any good ideas about it, they surely can’t apply when the idea-machine is dead. VINEETO: Yet in order to find out with 100% certainty whether physical death is the end or not the end of ‘you’, you will have to give it much more than ‘a second’s thought’ – much, much more. RESPONDENT: How do objectively know that there is no life after death? VINEETO: Experientially. In a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience the ‘self’ goes temporarily in abeyance, leaving this actual flesh-and-blood body free to delight in being alive. In an actual freedom the ‘self’ has gone extinct – and cannot be revived even if one tried. The belief in a life after death is based on the belief of a soul that survives physical death – whereas I know from many pure consciousness experiences that this soul, the ‘self’, ‘me’, is something that not only can go in abeyance while I am still alive but something that can be extirpated while this body is still alive. It became obvious to me that such an imaginary ‘thing’ that does not exist in actuality can not possibly survive physical death when it can even disappear before physical death. VINEETO: In hindsight, it was only because I had sufficient discontent, disappointment and doubt about the spiritualism process I had practiced for almost 2 decades that I was keenly interested in finding out if there was something fundamentally new in what Richard was saying … even if that did mean abandoning all I believed to be true and right. I can highly recommend ‘wiping the slate clean’ of what others have told you to be ‘the truth’ and discovering the facts of the matter for yourself. RESPONDENT: This is true for me too. Though improvement was made in my practice of spirituality – I ALWAYS sensed that it would never deliver totally until after death. Eventually, I decided that I’m not waiting for after death because I figured there may be no after life. VINEETO: When I encountered actualism, I tried at first to maintain the agnostic stance that there may or may not be an afterlife and I thought it did not really concern my life right now because I would find out in due time (at death). However, as I became more and more attentive to how I experienced this moment of being alive, I had to put many of my beliefs under scrutiny and I began to realize that my non-committal agnostic stance towards the possibility of life after death was preventing me from fully being here. One day I dared to contemplate about the issue of a possible life after death right through to its obvious conclusion and the lingering agnostic option disappeared to be replaced by a confidence that when I die then that will be final – and the issue disappeared forever. I realized that holding onto the option of ‘me’ being a spiritual ‘being’ had locked me out of experiencing the sheer and wonderful actuality of this physical body being alive right now in this pure and perfect physical universe. In short, it is impossible to be vitally interested in being here whilst holding on to any spiritual or agnostic beliefs. This is what is meant by actualism being ‘non-spiritual’. RESPONDENT: I remember Vineeto saying she is ‘100% certain’ that there is no God or afterlife. I remember thinking then (and still basically thinking the same thing) that 1) it is impossible to ‘100%’ prove a negative. Of course I don’t believe in Gnomes or trolls (internet trolls are a fact of course and as an actualist I don’t consciously engage in any kind of believing), but that does not ‘100% prove’ that they do not exist. It is of course very improbable that Trolls or a God exists. Don’t get me wrong, I find the notion of believing in God, and afterlife, or any spiritual belief to be unobjective, nonfactual, and a silly waste of one’s precious time. I understand that the notion of anything apart from this physical universe is unconceivable in a PCE, but that still does not seem to warrant Vineeto’s ‘100% certainty’ argument (which seems strangely fundamentalistic in the manner of fundamentalist Christianity to me). VINEETO: I see that you have addressed your question to Richard but as you have mentioned me, I’ll respond as well. In one of my early discussions with Richard I asked him: ‘How do you know for sure that there is no life after death?’ His answer was simple and straightforward. He said something along the lines of ‘there is nothing (no entity) inside this body that could survive physical death, because there is only this flesh-and-blood body’. In an instant I could see that what he said made sense. As a then-spiritualist I had left the option open that ‘something’ could survive physical death but that ‘something’ that I imagined would survive was clearly some aspect of the entity inside and separate from the physical body – someone or something I called soul, Presence, spirit, ‘Being’, or whatever. I never had any doubt that my physical body is mortal and yet all spiritual teaching has it that ‘you are not the body’ because the body is only a temporary abode, they maintain that ‘who you really are is a consciousness separate from the body’, a consciousness that is part of, or ‘at one with’, the ‘Universal Consciousness’ and which can unite with the universal Consciousness either before or after death. Consequently when Richard told me that there was no entity inside his body, I knew that this was the end of my hope for ‘life’ after death. If one can get rid of one’s entity in toto before death, it sure ain’t something that survives death. RESPONDENT: I likewise have no ‘hope’ in an afterlife. VINEETO: Given that the topic of the thread is about 100% certainty, to abandon hope in an afterlife is equally not enough to deliver 100% certainty. When I met Richard, even though I was a spiritualist at the time, I had a somewhat agnostic stance in regards to a life after death – I thought that it did not matter much either way. Yet only when I experienced in a PCE that ‘I’ as ‘being’ do not exist in actuality – and therefore without this ‘being’ nothing at all would survive the death of this body as an actuality – did I know with 100% certainty that any investment in a life after death is definitely a waste of time and energy. To my surprise it turned out to be an enormous relief to finally and irrevocably abandon any notion of a ‘bank account in heaven’ as I put it at the time, i.e. accumulating kudos for karma, God, the value of my soul, an imaginary accrual of good behaviour and right beliefs for an invisible judge. I discovered that the deepest seated beliefs were the ones I had taken on board as a child – the Christian heaven and hell, and although I was not aware at the time, they were only transformed into more ephemeral religious /spiritual/ mystical/ philosophical beliefs of Eastern persuasion. Only by unreservedly abandoning all belief in non-material realms was I able to unreservedly say yes to being here in this physical universe. * VINEETO: Why did I take Richard’s report that there is no alien entity inside his body at face value? It was obvious to me that he genuinely experiences what he reports. There is no contradiction in his body language, no obfuscation in his words, no evasion of delicate topics, and not a skerrick of resentment, anger, sadness or condescendence. Within a few meetings I could determine that what Richard said made a lot of sense, whatever topic he talked about, which cannot be said about any of the enlightened people I had met, and I had met quite a few in my time. The spiritual gurus rely on their magnetic energy of Love and Compassion, their authoritative Wisdom, their Ancient metaphysical knowledge while Richard had none of these affective properties. Instead of the affective power play I knew so well from the spiritual gurus, Richard encouraged me to utilize my own common sense and native intelligence in order to assess his reports. The other thing that gave credence to his reports was that Richard said he had been enlightened himself and managed to get out of it, in other words he could give a personal-experience-insight into the whole realm of spiritual enlightenment. As such I could easily see that he knew far more about the ins and outs of enlightenment than any master or wannabe I had ever met or read for that matter. As for my belief in God, it fell apart in bit and pieces and I have written about it on various occasions – [Vineeto]: Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery. This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. (A Bit of Vineeto, #Finally) The insight that hit me like a thunderbolt catapulted me into a PCE and with the ‘self’ (and ‘my’ passions and beliefs) temporarily absent it became suddenly obvious that the belief in a God, by whatever name, is part of the passionate defensive armour of ‘me’. In a PCE neither agnosticism, Popperism or any other philosophical abstract thinking have any relevance because the facts of what it is to be a human being become immediately clear, sensately and sensibly. With no passionate entity present it is patently clear that God has no existence in actuality – that he/she/it is nothing other than a universally-sustained and collectively-endorsed belief that billions of lost, lonely and frightened ‘beings’ have a vested interest in keeping in existence. In a pure consciousness experience a lot of things of what it is to be a human being become stunningly clear whenever I focussed my attention on these topics. Just as when a background noise suddenly stops and its very absence makes you aware of how much the noise had infiltrated your experience, when the ‘self’ and its incessant ‘noise’ is absent, it becomes obvious how ‘I’ constantly live in a fear-filled world of ‘my’ own making and as a consequence ‘I’ am wont to seek succour and solace in beliefs – no matter how inane they may be. A PCE is not a matter of degree – it is a fundamentally different experience of the world – one directly experiences the actuality of the world as-it-is and of people as-they-are. Not only does the grim reality that ‘I’ normally experience disappear, but so too does the imagined panacea to grim reality – the belief in a Greater Reality (God by any other name). A PCE gives you an outsider’s view for the very first time, temporarily free from the very entity who shapes and distorts this body’s experience of the world. You could compare it to previously knowing only the village you live in and its surrounding hills and suddenly being in a position from where you see the planet from outer space. Contrary to No. 81’s firm belief and persistent repetition, my 100% certainty about a god-less universe and a non-existent afterlife has nothing to do with dogmatism but rather it is the result of deliberately and consistently cracking the firmament of my beliefs and prizing apart the stronghold of the ‘self’-centred worldview that is the inescapable result of the human condition. This process has allowed me to have many direct experiences that God has no existence whatsoever outside of human imagination. And once you know a fact as a fact, that’s the end of having an opinion or a belief or a degree of uncertainty about it. I always liked a story told about Galileo’s, which, although unconfirmed, helps to make the distinction between fact and belief so very obvious. The story goes, when Galileo was forced to recant his radical discovery that the earth moves around the sun and as such is neither stationary nor at the centre of the universe, he whispered, ‘eppur si muove’ (‘and yet it moves’). His later books spirited out of Italy to the Netherlands confirm that despite overwhelming opposition Galileo was 100% certain of what he had seen and understood – repeatable empirical observation contradicted ubiquitous ancient belief. It is interesting to note that it took until 1992 before the Church formally acknowledged its error in condemning Galileo – that it took so long speaks volumes for the recalcitrant nature of spiritual/religious belief. My certainty of the fact that matter is all there is and that there is no consciousness outside of matter is the result of sensible contemplations and discussions, cemented and verified by many ‘self’-less experiences. This combination has allowed me to whittle away at my former conditioning and persistently question my intuition, to recognize that what most people believe and preach is not based in fact and by doing so to understand beyond doubt, that the magic of this universe lies in the fact that matter, in this case the human brain, is capable of not only reflecting but also of reflecting on itself. It is the inherent quality of matter itself that makes it capable of such wondrous magic, just as it is inherent to the stuff that is this planet that it continues to manifest itself as the gynormous variety of terrestrial and aquatic fauna and flora visible on its surface crust. Life is so incredibly miraculous in operation, whichever direction you look, and when you take your ‘self’ out of the centre, i.e. when ‘you’ are no longer the most important person in ‘your’ universe, then the vibrancy of the non-passivity of matter itself becomes vividly apparent and tangibly obvious. As if by magic, all conceptualizing of a duality of dull/ dead matter one side and a Transcendental Consciousness on the other side fall in a heap and I am no longer separate from all that is happening. I am matter and as matter I am eminently capable of not only being apperceptively aware but also of reflecting upon the fact that consciousness is an inherent quality of matter at a certain stage of its evolution. * RESPONDENT: I don’t remember you saying exactly ‘I’m 100% certain there is no God.’ (as you may have guessed this does go into the Karl Popper view that 100% certainty is impossible for certain topics/questions). I remember you saying something to the affect of ‘As for myself, I am certain there is no God or afterlife.’ Now to me that is not exactly the same statement as Vineeto’s. It seems to me that you did not entirely dismiss the Popperian view that some things cannot be known with 100% certainty. To me what you were saying is that you are sensibly certain (not 100%/godlike/ absolutic certain) that there is no God or afterlife. Speaking of the God and afterlife debate, I can easily see the ridiculousness of the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Being. As for an ‘afterlife’ I suppose their could be some small probability for a physical/ energetic ‘survival’ of some aspect of human consciousness. It would not be ‘spiritual’, but rather a different manifestation of this physical universe. Now, since I don’t engage in believing, I am not proposing that I believe this (not only do I not, I never will again), just saying I don’t see the possibility or even need for an actualist to say with ‘100%’ certainty that such a course of events is impossible. Of course, if my identity ever self-immolates, perhaps I would see things differently. Yet, I presently think I’d reject this ‘100% certain’ notion even after I had attained an actual freedom (or a virtual freedom for that matter). I’d simply say: ‘As for myself, I am sensibly certain that there is no God or afterlife, and that is that.’ VINEETO: As for ‘the Popperian view that some things cannot be known with 100% certainty’ – Karl Popper’s proposition was that, logically, nothing can ever be known exhaustively by the ordinary way of knowing, which in itself is absolute claim that according to his philosophy can never be known exhaustively. Apart from this logical impasse, his theories have, by and large, been refuted and discarded by more than a few people years ago and for a down-to-earth non-philosopher it is obvious that some things can definitely be known for sure – for instance the fact that everyone will die one day. To distinguish fiction from fact I found the simple scientific principle useful, which demands that legitimate theories must be falsifiable. You might be familiar with the old debating trick where one side is asked to disprove the existence of something that doesn’t exist: ‘Prove to me there isn’t a green-eyed monster under this table. It is an invisible, odourless monster, and you can’t tangibly sense it – it has no mass. But it’s THERE! Now prove to me it isn’t there!’ To pose non-falsifiable hypotheses is the hallmark of a pseudo science. The claim of the existence of God or an afterlife is equally pseudo science because it is a non-falsifiable hypothesis. Have you noticed that it is impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist? By God’s very nature He/ She/ It is beyond and above sensual perception. And life after death cannot be proven wrong because dead people don’t talk … and yet their ‘souls’ are reported to make people’s hair stand on end. RESPONDENT: Addendum: I want it to be perfectly clear that I do not consider the workings of Vineeto’s mind to be similar to a ‘Christian fundamentalist.’ Rather, one particular statement of hers (i.e. being 100% certain of no God/no after life) seems to me to be similar to some from of dogmaticism – and Christian dogmaticism is one that I’m deeply familiar with personally. Aside from Richard’s writing, Peter and Vineeto’s explication of becoming free from the human condition, is second to none (that is to me of course). I know all too well how list members can twist statements to fit there all too apparent agenda. Ultimately, one’s exploration of actualism involves rigorous self-honesty, integrity, and finding out for oneself. There is no excommunication in actualism for honest disagreement on our way to freedom. Perhaps, in freedom, all major disagreements will dissolve. VINEETO: Yes, they do dissolve because, contrary to the affective/psychic world, which is intuitive and therefore an affective experience that is unique to everyone, the actual world is the same for everyone – it is actual and can be sensately and sensibly experienced as an actuality by everyone once the ‘self’ steps out of the way. * VINEETO: A remark on your recent post to No. 81, because it’s on the same topic – RESPONDENT to No. 81: To believe in god, afterlife, or any sort of dualistic spiritual energy is a belief and therefore silly in my book. Nonetheless, I don’t claim 100% certainty on those issues because I remain skeptical that anyone can know whether or not there is a spiritual realm with 100% certainty. Quite frankly, I see no need for an actualist to be 100% certain. I’d take reasonably/sensibly certain as being quite enough. Which is what I am at this point. VINEETO: You may reconsider when you think about how many things in life you already take with 100% certainty to be factual. The very process of actualism involves the incremental diminishing of the habit of believing what others tell you to be truth (or Truth) so as to enable to flourish uninhibitedly one’s innate curiosity and naiveté to discover for oneself the facts of the matter. RESPONDENT: My first thought, after reading some of the material, was that I had come to terms with my current spiritual beliefs ... fundamentally that I had none. Was I ever wrong ... first, after reading I think Peter’s journal, and Peter coming to the conclusion that after death there was nothing ... this was a shocker ... and continues to be one (and I thought I had come to terms with death). This one hit me hard ... because in all my ‘spiritual’ wanderings ... I thought I had accepted the finality of death ... finally. But I discovered that even my initial interest in Western and Eastern mysticism was fuelled by my hope ... that something followed ... that I would be able to continue in some way ... some fashion. But I somehow, after reading other more enlightened material, thought I had come to terms with death being a kind of finish ... after all ... in these circles one needs to come to terms with this somehow. VINEETO: The materialist’s motto is ‘life is a bitch and then you die’ while spiritual and religious people’s motto is ‘life’s a bitch but if you are a good enough person on earth you will be rewarded in heaven after death’. I always felt cheated by the Christian proposition that I should suffer life on earth for seventy-odd years for some spurious afterlife reward solely based on hearsay, make-believe and nonsensical fairy-tales. When I learnt that in Eastern mysticism you could experience paradise on earth by becoming enlightened, I gladly dropped my Christian belief in an after-death-reward in exchange for the promise of a here-on-earth reward. However, the longer I pursued enlightenment the more unlikely it became that this could ever be the solution to all of my problems, let alone all the ills of humankind. Even the Enlightened Ones admitted that one’s real and true liberation will only be obtained in Parinirvana, i.e. after death. And the inner peace that I was supposed to gain from practicing meditation invariably waned when I opened my eyes and re-joined ‘the world’. None of the results of my persistent spiritual practice was good enough – I wanted a better deal for my efforts. When I met Richard it soon became clear that he had discovered the unblemished valid-for-all solution to all the problems of humankind and he had a road-tested method whereby I could come to experience peace here-on-earth, in this moment, and 24 hours a day. I was inexorably drawn to investigate further – it was too good to refuse. And I found that he is right – there is not a single flaw in actuality. There cannot be. This actual universe is perfect, pure and it is already always here – and I can experience it when ‘I’, in my totality, step out of the way. RESPONDENT: But, after reading Peter, I was shocked that this had the effect that it did. One question that comes up: How does Richard or Vineeto or Peter know that death is the end. How do they actually know for sure? VINEETO: How do I know for sure? First I acknowledged that a belief in an afterlife is only a belief – and as long as I have to believe in something in order for it to exist, it does not exist in its own right, it cannot be actual. I wanted more than a belief that depended on my passion in order for it to be true – I wanted to be absolutely sure. This intent to be absolutely sure led me to deliberately suspend believing wherever I discovered a belief and take a good long look at the facts of the matter. This intentional practice of questioning and investigating in due course caused sufficient disruption to my belief system and to my identity such that one day my beliefs imploded and my identity temporarily collapsed with the result that I had a pure consciousness experience. In a PCE, when the ‘self’ is temporarily in abeyance, it becomes stunningly and undeniably apparent that the whole notion of God, any god, and consequently the existence of an afterlife is ‘self’-created and ‘self’-sustained. It is ‘me’, the instinctual-spiritual parasite-like entity inhabiting this physical body who craves for a body-less immortality. In a PCE when ‘I’ am in abeyance it is blatantly obvious that ‘I’ am nothing more than an impassioned being, a spirit-like phantasma. A PCE is the proof that there is nobody inside this physical body who survives its death for ‘I’ am but an illusion desperately searching for a meaning in ancient fairy tales in order to justify ‘my’ pathetic existence and assuage my instinctually fuelled fear of death. RESPONDENT: I’ve concluded that I have buried some of my beliefs about death: I still hope that something continues ... and hopefully me ... through ascension or reincarnation or what ever ... that, even if the odds are against it ... that I will be one of the lucky ones ... one of the chosen few. This topic caused me to reflect on what other spiritual beliefs I still have ... (and again ... I thought they were all gone). One that comes to mind is ... that there is some kind of God and that eventually I will be rescued. That maybe with enough application, insight ... that I would somehow be chosen. So to entertain the idea ... that there is no big brother out there or in here to help me ... is somewhat shocking as well ... this is not something that is comfortable to deal with. I thought I had done away with this belief ... but it is still hanging around ... subtle but still present. Anyway ... that’s it for now. VINEETO: Yes, I remember, questioning my spiritual beliefs was shocking at first, then thrilling and then incredibly liberating. One day I realized that for God to rule over an infinite and eternal universe he would have to be outside of it, which is a physical impossibility, and with this realization my whole supernatural ‘universe’ came crashing down. When my belief in a controlling, punishing and rewarding God disappeared and the notion of God’s power to grant ‘me’ an my afterlife, also disappeared, all my worries about my bank account in heaven and all my hopes for a better life somewhere-else vanished. With no ‘Scottie’ to ‘beam me up’ out of here I was free to abandon the waiting game for heaven and focus my attention from wanting to be ‘there’ to being interested in being here, from waiting for ‘then’ to being fascinated with what is happening now. The other thing that happened when I realized that there is neither a God and a Divine Power nor an afterlife, was that the absolute values of right and wrong, good and bad that are part and parcel of all religious and spiritual belief were all questionable and subject to scrutiny. This meant I was then free to make my own choice of what is silly and what is sensible instead of following the supposed rules of some all-powerful supernatural Force. There is an enormous freedom to be gained by questioning one’s spiritual beliefs. RESPONDENT: Our identity is like a sixth sense although questionable could be a tool that’s only purpose is to have us believe in God. Why should we have it? Maybe it was put there. There’s a 50 percent chance of one drawing the conclusion that God exists, there’s no evidence of it, all there we have is identity. VINEETO: To propose that ‘my’ only purpose is to believe in God begs the question as to what sort of God it is that would cause me to suffer and to inflict my suffering on others solely in order that ‘I’ should believe in Him, Her or It. Or to put it another way, if this God, whom I have to believe in, is omnipotent and all-loving then why does He, She or It not put an end to human suffering on earth? Before you speculate any further as to the purpose of the identity and if ‘it was put there’, it may be useful to gather some factual information, namely that the identity arises from the genetically encoded instinctual survival passions. RESPONDENT: When we get rid of that, the chance of believing in God becomes 0 I’m told. But the benefits are supposed to be inhumanly enormous. After we lose the identity we get to experience no fear or other inhibiting emotions. VINEETO: One does not ‘lose’ one’s identity – what ‘I’ have to do to bring about the death of ‘me’ is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. One of the first things to do to set this ‘process’ in motion is to actively and deliberately investigate one’s own belief that there is a God. Simply to believe what is written on the Actual Freedom Trust website is to merely swap one belief for another. The challenge in actualism is to dare to find out for yourself whether or not God exists and to find out what are the tangible benefits – both to yourself and to your fellow humans beings – of ridding yourself of your malicious and sorrowful feelings. RESPONDENT: So I guess, you wouldn’t feel anything if you were standing on a train track and a train moving at 250 mi/ hr. was 3 seconds away from your occupied space, there can be two outcomes, living or dying. VINEETO: A person without a psychological and psychic identity ‘standing on the train track’ would not have any affective feelings interfering with his common sense and intelligence, which means it is highly unlikely that he or she would be standing on the train track with a train coming towards him ‘at 250 mi/hr.’ in the first place. RESPONDENT: If the man with no identity were on that track and he manages to get off in time, he would not have experienced the rush, … VINEETO: Correct. RESPONDENT: … instead it would be seen as a sensible act. VINEETO: As I said, sensibility starts way before in that unimpeded intelligence ensures that one avoids dangerous situations such as standing on a train track. RESPONDENT: But what if he were not so lucky? Would he beg to relive that instance? VINEETO: When hit by a train, any man would be dead – regardless of whether he was actually free, enlightened, awakened, realized, a loyal believer of any religion, an agnostic or an atheist. In any case, there would be no ‘being’ in existence afterwards to ‘beg to relive that instance’ – despite commonly held beliefs, physical death is the end for every body and every ‘being’, just as John Cleese described his dead parrot in ‘Faulty Towers’: ‘dead, extinct, finito, kaput, stuffed, no more, finished, obliterated’. There is no second chance – this is the one and only life each of us are living and it is solely up to each of us as to how we want to live it. RESPONDENT: If you get a chance I would like your opinion on this unusual audio programme by my good friend Fintan Dunne. http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1647 VINEETO: Your ‘good friend Fintan Dunne’ has a nice sonorous voice but the content of his dissertation is deeply steeped in mysticism and metaphysics. Here are a few things I wrote down from what I heard – [quote]: ‘We are the God collectively …’ ‘Sleep is a mini-death’ (and we will wake up after physical death just like after sleep) ‘The personal identity is preserved (after death)’ ‘The natural projector that produces the holographic image that we experience as the world around us …’ ‘We are part of the supermind …’ [endquote]. His belief in life after death is based on his belief in something that is non-physical, non-tangible, ephemeral and non-actual (like God, super mind, an immortal non-physical personal identity). In a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience you come to understand that anything supernatural and metaphysical is solely born of the feverish imagination of human beings only, based on our fear of death and our desire for immortality in some form or other – it has no existence outside of the human mind. To use Fintan’s words – in a PCE ‘the natural projector that produces the holographic image that we experience as the world around us’ temporarily stops functioning and stops producing those affective images of the world around us, stops interpreting, imagining and repressing. Then these eyes can directly experience the world around me, these ears can hear the unmitigated sounds around me, this nose experiences the smells in the air without interference from ‘my’ objections or desires, the skin directly enjoys the sensation of warmth or cold, wind or touch and so on. The ‘projector’ is turned off and with it any ‘holographic image’, psychic perception or affective interpretation … in a PCE ‘I’ don’t interfere at all with the direct experiencing of the actual world. It is a wonder-ful, amazing, delightful and utterly fearless way of experiencing the world we live in. VINEETO to List C: I was reminded of a particular outstanding experience during the Anti-Fisher-Hoffman-Process in Pune. It was the second time that I did the group, the first time that I was a staff-member. The AFH, as we called it, is a 10-12 day process of looking at childhood issues and overcoming fear, resentment, anger, attachment by using intense bio-dynamic methods. By the third day, with lots of ‘work’ and little sleep, everybody hit their limit. I dragged myself forward, fantasizing about the time when I could sleep again as long as I wanted, if I only made it through the next ‘hellish’ days. Suddenly it dawned on me that what I was doing was waiting. I was wasting my time for ‘redemption’. And I realised that there was no difference from ‘waiting for heaven’ or for enlightenment, or for the right man, or... With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. This peak-experience lasted for several hours, and while everyone else was tired to the bone I bounced in refreshed aliveness. Later on the event got filed into the category of ‘group-highs’ and the memory of it soon faded away. But for those few hours I had lived in the actual world, here, now, without God, heaven, authority, love, hope and postponement. I had actually experienced that this moment is the only moment we have got, the only moment we can experience being alive, to be either miserable or happy, complaining or fully alive. And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on forever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, re-appearing in endless re-incarnations, sorting out one’s so-called karma. Enlightenment offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever – even after physical death ‘I’ would continue ... and this very dream lead to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or otherwise in Nirvana after death... This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are an essential part of Eastern teaching. RESPONDENT: So finally, with Peter’s or Richard’s saying it in a way you could understand, you woke up to witness your conditioned mind ... the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts. VINEETO: No, not witness – eliminate, remove, extinguish. There is a big difference. Witnessing creates a new entity, the ‘watcher’. One is to identify with and become the ‘watcher’ and dismiss or transcend the rest as imaginary. Body-mind, emotion, thought and senses, as well as the physical world, are considered an illusion, while Consciousness is proclaimed to be one’s true nature. Elimination happens through understanding the root cause of each particular problem, the human instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. By seeing when I was acting out of my instincts, ‘human nature’, I could also see that I have a choice. But in order to have that choice I have to questions all emotions, good and bad, and all beliefs (‘real’ and Divine), in fact, the very act of believing itself. RESPONDENT: Wonderful, but now I see that you are again unconsciously believing. Believing there is no god, no love, no soul, no other lives, etc, etc, etc. VINEETO: Not so. I don’t believe, either consciously or unconsciously. I only take my information about life from what I can see, hear, smell, touch and taste, the very physical substance. Everything that goes on in the head and the heart is belief and imagination – it is the very stuff the ‘self’ is made of. Once you stop believing in the soul you experientially understand that it does not exist outside of your belief. To believe that there is life after death needs the act of believing. It is not a proven fact. And it doesn’t make it more of a fact that millions of people have the same belief. Once you stop feeding that belief you will suddenly see the fact that this body dies when it dies and that there is nothing else left, no soul to live on for eternity. Once god, love, soul, other lives etc. are not supported, i.e. passionately believed in, by our psychic entity, they disappear. They have as much substance as a ghost – none whatsoever. * VINEETO: Osho may have said not to replace the beliefs of your secular conditioning and beliefs, but he certainly replaced them with his version of spiritual conditioning and beliefs. RESPONDENT: As I said before, I don’t get that you hear me ... so since I am not addicted to endlessly arguing, as apparently you both are ... I’ll make this short. Pray tell, what spiritual conditioning and beliefs did Osho replace in us? VINEETO: So now we are investigating what is a belief and what is a fact, are we? Remember, belief per dictionary means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, while fact means ‘what has really happened or is the case’ . You say that nothing that Osho tried to instil in us was based on belief, do you? Do you say that everything he talked about were mere facts, evidenced by our senses? That one did not need to believe or trust what was said, one could simply see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it? I try to avoid battling with quotes, Osho said billions of words and everyone makes their own interpretation of it. But since you seem to claim that there was no spiritual conditioning or any beliefs involved, I found some of his words that point to his belief in God, divinity, soul, immortality, the mysterious ‘inner space’ and the Universe as animated by divine intelligence [Mohan Rajneesh]: God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Beloved, Vol. 1, Ch 1). [Mohan Rajneesh]: And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception. Every soul chooses its own time of conception – when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment, and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Hidden Mysteries, Ch 5). [Mohan Rajneesh]: A man of sensitivity remains wherever he is – and God seeks him. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3, Ch 9). [Mohan Rajneesh]: Your unmoving centre becomes such a dance. And one who knows his centre, also knows his eternity, his immortality. Buddhas don’t die, neither are they born. They simply appear and disappear into the same ocean just like waves. You have to go deeper and deeper every day, you have to bring more and more of the Buddha to the circumference of your life. It happens, certainly – I say it with absolute authority because it has happened to me. [Emphases added]. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Ch 2). As I said to No. 10: [Vineeto]: With Actual Freedom a second de-conditioning took place, a spiritual de-conditioning. And again, I was ready for it, because after all those years of sincere effort my search did not show the results I had been aiming for. This second de-conditioning was much more radical and went far deeper than the first, it is going to eliminate all of me, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body with its senses, free to delight in this pure, perfect and infinite universe as a sensate flesh-and-blood human being. Nothing more, nothing less. (Vineeto, List C, No. 10, 13.1.1999). Actual Freedom and the simple and effective method to achieving it is available for everybody who wishes to go for the best – presupposing that you are discontent with your life as it is now. * RESPONDENT: But by rightly hearing Osho, one would see his whole effort is to destroy all beliefs. VINEETO: He might have thought so himself, and yet it was a belief and not a fact that ‘he is not the body’, that ‘he only visited this planet’, that ‘his soul is immortal and dissolves into the Whole’, that ‘real life starts after death’ – that’s what’s the meaning of ‘Maha-Parinirvana’, the true and great Nirvana after death. You can find many, many words for what he taught to be the truth – still, it is just ancient Eastern beliefs. It needs trusting and believing, it needs surrender to the master’s wisdom in order to keep up this imaginary world. The moment you stop feeding the belief, for instance in an afterlife or immortality, it will gradually disappear and be revealed the mirage it is. * VINEETO: Maybe you need to tell me then, what the difference is for you between love from the heart and being in love? The only love I have known has been feelings in the heart. Is there another kind? RESPONDENT: There is much I could say here. However, since I don’t feel you will hear my answer, perhaps I’ll let your questions stand by themselves. Koans for you. VINEETO: So, you are saving your ‘pearls of wisdom’ because you assume that I don’t appreciate them? I am willing to learn anything that is new, but I am not interested in re-hashed old wisdom which is an obvious failure. If you can present me with something that is sound-proof and water-tight, meaning that it works such that it makes people happy and harmless, free from the ‘natural’ instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, I am more than ready to listen. I have had all kinds of psychic experiences of ‘being the heart’, ‘knowing’, feeling compassionate for everyone and everything, at one with the Divine and the imaginary bliss of being one with the universe – they are all very nice for the experiencer, but none of them is a solution to both personal and global peace-on-earth. And none of those experiences are actual – they all happen in the head – affective imagination to the point of madness. The other day I wrote to Alan about such an experience of this religious insanity: [Vineeto to Alan]: ‘This blissful state seems unemotional, no love or compassion is felt in the heart, everything is a cool ‘oneness’. One feels all-pervading, ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is Divine’. The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling intimate’ with the TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe that scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is virtual, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up. This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world as a flesh and blood body, with the physical senses. Boy, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket. But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual. It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of dis-association that people suffer from who are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line – until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, i.e. mentally deranged, forever cut off from common sense. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Alan, 6.2.1999). It is such a relief that I am free of these eerie, seductive and imaginary experiences, which had completely removed me from the physical senses and any common sense. It is considered the pinnacle of religious achievement and yet the opposite of, and anathema to, living as a human being in this actual world. The objection to being here on the planet has created this insane paradise of spirit-ual imagining where one is not this flesh and blood body, but a spirit and feeling, waiting for the final redemption at the death of the body. Now there is a third alternative – one can eliminate beliefs, emotions and instincts and be happy and harmless instead of feeling compassionate and swanning in an imaginary bliss. One can live in this actual, physical, magnificent universe without God but a magic that surpasses every possible imagination. I am aware that this third alternative can only appeal to someone with a down-to-earth common sense and a burning discontent about the ‘tried and failed’, someone with guts and passion for the best. If it appeals to you or not, is completely up to you. VINEETO: With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. RESPONDENT: very Osho-like VINEETO: It may look like that at first glance, but Osho talks about ‘leaving the body’, not dying. He said he would dissolve into his people, when he dies, so there must be something he believed would remain of him after his bones were burnt. His ‘now’ always had the implication that there is also a life-after-death. Once I fully accepted the fact that life after death is a mere belief, dearly ‘wished for’ by the psychological and psychic entity within, the very impact brought now, this very moment, much closer. RESPONDENT: What do you think Osho said about living here and now? Is it really that different from what you are saying? Don’t tell me he promised God or Heaven, because I know for a fact that he didn’t. VINEETO: What do you mean ‘I know for a fact that he didn’t’. Yes, he didn’t promise the Christian or Jewish God or Heaven, but he kept talking about the divinity of Existence, dissolving into Godliness. The concept changed from God as a person to God as a quality. If I meditated enough I would reach that Godliness or discover it in me. * VINEETO: And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on for ever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, in endless re-incarnations of sorting out one’s karma. It offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever, even after physical death, ‘I’ would continue... and it leads to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or in Nirvana after death... RESPONDENT: I don’t know where you as a sannyasin got all these ideas from, because all what you are saying here are just your interpretation of what enlightened masters of all ages intended. VINEETO: How did you interpret all the stories about life after death, about dissolving into the divine energy of Existence, about re-incarnation and karma? Wasn’t re-incarnation one of the very reasons to become enlightened in this life-time, to stop the wheel of endless births and deaths? It definitely was it for me. * VINEETO: This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are part of Eastern teaching. RESPONDENT: ‘Eastern Teaching’... this again illustrates your tendency to generalize. There are many different so called Eastern teachings. And certainly Osho isn’t part of it. You’re on a sannyas-list and ‘Eastern Teaching’, or what you present of it, is irrelevant here. VINEETO: Ok, if you want to – I can give you two quotes to ponder about: [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet ...’ (His tombstone). [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God.’ (The Beloved/2, Chapter 10). I have come to see Osho’s teaching as a modern version of Eastern Teaching. He talked on Buddha, Krishna, the Zen-Masters, Zarathustra, the Sufi-Masters, Lao-Tzu, Ramakrishna, on all the important representatives of Eastern and Western religions. But in order to question the Master after a devotional relationship of almost two-thirds of my adult life, I first had to question several ingrained concepts in me. I found the belief in authority was a big issue and a strong need, to always have somebody to guide me, love me and to belong to. Surrender to his authority was an easy option. There was also the belief in God or Existence, the ultimate and invisible authority, some (non-physical) energy outside of me and outside of the physical universe. This energy represented the ultimate power and Wisdom. Dismantling the need and belief in authority allowed me to stand on my own feet for the first time in my life. What a freedom not have to react to people, men in particular, out of superiority or inferiority, but to be able to communicate with everybody as fellow human beings! Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this meant that from then on, I could not blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any issue. Now there was no more excuse, no more hiding place. These emotions were my reactions and my behaviour, which I had to face and change in order to be free. And then there was love. The need to be loved and the hope to become Divine Love one day. Love for the Master made it impossible to question anything he said; I was following him not only for bliss, but for love. And yet, so many things didn’t add up. I had needed to explore the nature of the bonds with the Master and face the fears which came along with dismantling my relationship with Him – he who claimed to represent the ‘Absolute Truth’ in the spiritual world. Once I had seen through the belief in the ultimate authority of God or Existence, I could then more easily set out to investigate the facts of enlightenment. You see, all those beliefs I had to tackle first in me, before Peter and I could begin to talk openly about Osho without me being offended. If you are ready to look for proof that Osho was in fact talking about godliness, divinity, merging with the Universe, etc. you can send the search function through one of the discourses on the Osho-website, read without Sannyas-eyes and find out the answer for yourself. * VINEETO: The eternal, undying soul spoils the game of living now as the only moment of being alive. RESPONDENT: Perhaps, but if it does, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the soul doesn’t exist. Concepts may spoil the only moment of being alive (and not even this is true, because it’s great fun to joke with concepts and joking is perhaps the very best way of being in the moment), but the fact that some people’s ideas about the soul makes them unhappy doesn’t necessarily imply that the soul doesn’t exist. It’s just that some people do not understand, that’s all. VINEETO: Strange way to argue, I must say. Are you saying, the soul exists, and some people don’t understand it? You don’t say how you know that the soul exists. Yes, many, many people teach, believe and fervently hope that the soul exists. That does not make it a fact. No scientist has ever seen it or weighed it – and they have gone a great length to prove the existence of a physical thing they could call soul or spirit. And if it is not perceivable by the physical senses, it must be a concept, an imagination. What is your concept about the soul? The soul is the part of the ‘self’ that everybody wants to keep and nurture, and that nobody has dared to question in its totality. Our identity is made up of ego and soul, the one who ‘we think we are’ and the one who ‘we feel we are’. In Eastern teaching the aim is to get rid of the ego, and one is then rewarded with ‘universal love’, the feeling of being ‘one with everything’ and eternal bliss. One’s identity simply shifts from the ego to the soul, from the head to the heart via sublimation of the bad emotions and enhancing of the good emotions. The core of the problem, emotions and instinctual passions are not given an ounce of consideration. * VINEETO: That’s where Richard shocked my out of my socks: He proposed that there is no life after death. You die when you die, full stop, basta, finito, extinct. RESPONDENT: This is not a fact at all. It’s a good method to become more concerned about living now but it is not a fact. It’s as you say, a proposition. VINEETO: Could you explain, why this is not a fact to you? Have you talked to any dead people who have physically returned to earth and reported evidence of life after death? Have you seen photographs of spirits when they returned to earth? Spiritists over centuries have tried to provide factual evidence of what they ‘see’ ie. imagine, but none has been able to come up with satisfying material. Life after death has never been actually proven, and I see no point in taking your belief as a fact. It remains a belief. To believe is to ‘fervently wish to be true’. And there is no doubt that humans fervently and desperately wish for an after-life, an immortality of some kind. * VINEETO: When I asked Richard why he is so confidently positive about this statement, he replied: ‘Because there is nobody and nothing in me that lives on, I am only this flesh and blood body, there is no soul, no entity inside this body that could live on.’ ... RESPONDENT: He is not the only one who said that man has no soul; again this is no proof that the soul is only imagination. If people pretend they have a soul when they haven’t then, of course, they imagine, but who knows, perhaps there are some people with a soul. It’s not that I hope there are some, mind you, it’s just impossible to state as a fact that a soul does not ever exist in a human being. The only fact here is that a lot of conceptualization exists in the world. VINEETO: I actually don’t know what you mean by ‘soul’ which some people have and some don’t. I understand ‘soul’ as the sum of heart and feelings, human aspirations, the ‘thing’ that lives on after the death of the ego and after physical death. Since there is no physical evidence of a soul in the human body, that proves that it is a concept and imagination – a very powerful imagination as such. It is believed by all of Humanity, in some form or other. Most religions have a heaven to go to after death and others believe in their ancestors watching over them. In the past have experienced glorious heartful moments and days which were filled with warmth and love-for-all. But living in the actual world now most of the time, without the ups and downs of those soulful feelings, life is fresh each moment, thrilling, wondrous, a dance and a delight. Richard stated that there is nothing in him, neither ego nor soul, which would live on after his physical death. He had become enlightened (got rid of his ego) in 1981. But something was never quite right. So, in years of investigation he worked himself out of the immense delusion and imagination of the concept and feeling of being the ‘soul’ by questioning everything that was not experienced by the physical senses. It is not just a statement or a concept that there is no soul. It is his very ongoing experience. To make up your own mind you might want to read about Richard’s experience on his web-site: (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History). * VINEETO: But if one single man can live outside of imagination, can live without love and emotion, then emotions and soul are not facts but collective products of our fertile imagination and instinctual programming. RESPONDENT: This is reasoning as good as any. VINEETO: I found it so convincing that I had to question my own dearly held convictions. * VINEETO: Then, the concepts of ‘divine energy’, ‘eternal soul’, ‘Existence looking after us’, etc, are seen as only built and refined over the centuries to keep the fear of death at bay, to console us about the terrifying fact of approaching death. RESPONDENT: Of course, but it doesn’t prove that ‘divine energy’ or ‘eternal soul’ are concepts to all people. Generalizing again here. VINEETO: You seem to say they are facts and not concepts for you. How? What makes them facts for you? VINEETO: The advantage of the actual world is, you can reach it from anywhere, it is always here. Everybody can see a coffee cup as a coffee cup , a tree as a tree and hear a cricket as a cricket. No spiritual achievement is needed for that – on the contrary, it leads you further away from the actual experience of the physical senses. But to keep God in existence you need many beliefs – the belief that God is all-present, all-knowing, all-pervading, the belief that God loves you, that God created the universe, that God will take care of you and take care of your soul after death. Question those beliefs and you will watch God disappear in front of your very eyes. God, by whatever name, actually does not exist. You don’t have to go anywhere ‘first’, you can experience it any time. You can start today by relentlessly questioning everything that is not evidenced by the physical senses, and what is left after all beliefs are dismantled is the actual, the factual. It needs courage and a bloody-mindedness and a good deal of common sense – but it is possible, one can start immediately. * VINEETO: No, there is no purpose other than living the perfection of the actual world and being aware of it. It is the psychological and psychic entity that yearns for a purpose to justify its existence. And when you look around you will find thousands of imagined purposes in people’s lives. RESPONDENT: My father used to say,’ there is nothing after this life’. Well, I proved him wrong because he tried to communicate with me after death. You will probably say that I was projecting, but no, there was another person present at the time when this happened. I still do not believe that this world, this life is all there is. Then what are we here for? to enjoy life and then what??? VINEETO: To enjoy life and then die. As all living things do. Be born, live and die. And what are we here for? To enjoy every moment of being here as the universe experiencing itself in its magnificence, exuberance, abundance, perfection and purity. And in order to be able to live as this sensate and reflective human being we investigate into the Human Condition which we have been programmed with and which prevents us from living in peace and harmony in this wonderful actual world. Isn’t that enough, isn’t that more than enough? Why waste the time we have on this verdant planet by worrying about people who died, to fear and worship imaginary gods and ‘great beings’, dreams and fantasies. Why not stop hoping that someone else can fix us up and why not instead start making yourself happy and harmless now ? Essentially everybody spends his/her life worrying about what happens afterwards and in that way wastes this moment of being alive, living what is happening now. RESPONDENT: I still cannot accept the fact that all there is is this world ... the physical. That there isn’t a force out there that directs all that is existing. I do not care what you call this force but it is an intelligent force...call it a computer if you will, but it IS there since I feel it. It may be a part of me but it is still larger than me. VINEETO: Well, it is up to you. I have decided to investigate facts rather than believe what I have been taught, and it made me happy and harmless. I had to leave a lot of dreams, hopes, fears and the feeling of belonging behind but the result is beyond my wildest dreams. It was not easy to face my fears, to give up the imaginary protection of some imaginary greater force, but after investigating into the facts I could not keep on believing this dream of a greater protective and demanding force any longer. I saw that the belief was produced by my fears and the fears of all of humanity, the fear to be alone, the fear of death. I decided to face and eliminate my fears rather than being dependant on this imaginary protective force. Peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, on this planet is possible now. But it is up to you, it is you who chooses what you want to do in your life. It has been great fun again to talk to you.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence | Library – Topics Index
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