Hi Andrew,
As you would know, actualism is experiential. When there is no identity, either in a PCE or when actual free, the universe is experienced as it factually is – infinite and eternal. It is ‘you’, the identity which creates and experiences the self-centric limitation and boundary to then fill this limited experience with imagination and beliefs/ concepts. As such your “by definition” statement is without substance – it is either philosophical or imaginary, or both.
Andrew: I pushed back at Vineeto about the statement “what I can eat, and what could eat me”. I understand the reference, but found it absurd. I know I can kill and eat chickens. Fish. Give me a sharp stick, and I can have a go at rabbits, sheep, all sorts of creatures. I can kill them and eat them.
Yesterday, as I thought about this, I felt completely “whole” when I said out loud “that sucks”.
By now, you made it clear that your whole message is an emotional reaction to what I wrote to you six days ago –
Vineeto: The instinctual passions are also called animal instinctual passions – because all animals are endowed with instinctual programming/ passions to ensure their survival and species proliferation – even jellyfish operate by the principle of attraction/ repulsion, the most primitive instinctual behaviour. Jellyfish are not free from the instinctive/ instinctual programming or behaviour, they are not felicitous either, let alone harmless. They operate under the same principle as all instinctive/ instinctual programmed creatures – what can I eat, what can eat me? (7 Apr 2026)
I understand from your ‘non-declaration’ that when you say “I pushed back at Vineeto about the statement” means that you do not question the fact of how instinctive/ instinctual passions operate but that you strongly express your displeasure/ resentment about the fact that it is so. You are riling against the way the universe, in this case sentient beings, operate and function.
Andrew: So, what is the point?
It’s the infinitude! The infinitude is what is fundamentally enjoyable. This particular express of the infinitude does suck. But, the infinitude itself, the fundamental and essential existence of existence, is essentially what Richard called “pure intent”. Something fundamentally beyond the fact that the “red in tooth and claw” “dog eat dog” “what can I eat and what can eat me” circle of “life” in this out folding of infinite possibilities, is enjoyable. It is able to be experienced perfectly. Even though this current universe requires me to eat other living things, the infinitude itself, is not “tied to” this way of existence. It is existence. It is infinite and eternal existence.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what infinitude means [infinitude: infinite extent, amount, duration, etc.; a boundless expanse; an unlimited time; (Oxford English Dictionary)] – there is also a fundamental misunderstanding of what pure intent means but that is a topic for another conversation. This short quote from Richard might explain infinitude (there is more in Richard’s selected correspondence on the topic) –
Respondent: (9) Can you tell me how far the space around us extends. Can that space end somewhere? If so what is beyond that?
Richard: Space is infinite, so it extends indefinitely. As it is infinite, it can not end somewhere. As it does not end, there is nothing beyond the universe. It is ‘I’ who, being a fiction, desires Immortality to perpetuate ‘my’ real existence for all of Eternity – thus secretly despising this body and this physical life – and it is ‘I’ who, being a central figure in ‘my’ scheme of things, proposes that there is an outside to this material universe. There is not. This universe has no edges … which means that there is no centre either. With no centre to existence we are nowhere in particular. Being here, as an actuality, is to be anywhere at all, for infinity is everywhere all at once. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List A, No. 23, #No.01)
As you say at the beginning of this message “this iteration of the universe sucks”, what you consider infinitude is ‘your’ imagined “iteration” of infinitude, experienced and expressed through the lens of your identity and resentment. The actual physical infinitude, boundless in expanse and time, does not have “iterations”, where suddenly different laws of physics operate, imagined perhaps of the nature that you wouldn’t find objectionable. As such your statement “the infinitude is what is fundamentally enjoyable” is altogether a product of your imagination, an ‘infinitude’ which has enjoyable “iterations” and those which “suck”.
Andrew: Now, so this post has some depth, rather than me (in typical fashion) fill in the gaps in my own head, assuming everyone else is in my head, let me spell it out;
I will die, this is the only life that I will ever have. This universe does suck, it suck a lot! But, the infinitude itself, is enjoyable.
DNA, Stars, the entire brutality of 4 kelvin being the temperature of the measurable universe, the absence of life in general, and the brutality of the life we know; it’s just one of an infinite potential ways the infinitude can exist.
We already know this. We can already imagine a far better way of existing. I could rattle of a handful of ways this universe could be better. I would have to limit myself to a handful.
What is the point? This brutal existence, with creatures eating each other, is just another of the infinite ways the universe can … universe.
To say “We already know this. We can already imagine a far better way of existing” in one breath is an oxymoron – just because you can imagine something does not mean it is factual. It does not mean you “know this” for a fact, else there was no need to imagine. You already have filled in “the gaps in my own head”, suggesting that the universe you experience is “just one of an infinite potential ways the infinitude can exist”. In other words, you find your idea of infinitude “enjoyable”, while you find the emotional/ passional reality which ‘you’, the identity, experiences, anything but enjoyable.
This quote might be informative –
Richard: The only ‘infinitude’ there is, for an identity, is a metaphysical infinitude (a timeless and spaceless and formless ‘being’ or ‘presence’).
Respondent: I would say that regardless of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs present, it is impossible to not be in the universe.
Richard: Ha … it is impossible for an identity (being but an illusion/ delusion) to ever be in actuality.
Respondent: But where else is there to be, for you are always here, even if you say I am something/ somewhere else.
Richard: An identity is never here – let alone ‘always here’ – as to be here is to be at this place in space (now at this moment in time). [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 54, 1 Nov 2003)
Andrew: We get the opportunity to free ourselves in this moment, from the very simple and apparent fact this example of the universe, sucks. (link)
Whenever you allow your emotions full reign, as in this post, intelligence doesn’t get much of a chance to operate. By starting with an imagined premise that there are “infinite potential ways” of ‘universe-iterations’ you just dive deeper into imagination and metaphysics.
There is indeed “the opportunity to free ourselves” for those who are interested – allow the current strong feelings of resentment subside by neither pushing them away (repressing) nor feeding them (expressing) until you get back to feeling good. Then intelligence will get a word in edgeways.
Here is what Richard has to say about dealing with resentment [resentment: an indignant sense of injury or insult received or perceived, a sense of grievance … (Oxford Dictionary)] – best read when feeling good –
Richard: Sure, there is a whole range of reasons for getting angry (which vary according to different situations and circumstances) … maybe the following will be of assistance in regards righteous anger (aka indignation):
• [Richard]: ‘One of the major issues the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago attended to very early in the piece was the indignation – ‘anger excited by a sense of wrong, or by injustice, wickedness, or misconduct; righteous anger’ (Oxford Dictionary) – which had dogged him from almost as early as ‘he’ could remember (‘he’ was often moved to indignancy because of injustice/ unfairness whilst still in grade school for instance) as righteousness, being oh-so-readily justifiable, is such an insidious feeling’. *(Richard, AF List, No. 79, 9 Feb 2005). *
• [Richard]: ‘… one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/ justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends … justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on).
I have touched upon this elsewhere: (Richard, AF List, No. 66, 27 Apr 2005).
• [Richard]: ‘There is no ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ as a ‘sub-stratum of the universe’ … they are but human inventions and do not exist in actuality. The same applies to fairness/ unfairness, justice/ injustice and any other human concepts that, whilst being useful for human-to-human interaction, are futility in action when applied to the universe. Male logic is as useless as female intuition when it comes to being free: the everyday reality of the ‘real-world’ is a veneer ‘I’ paste over the top of the pristine actual world by ‘my’ very being … and ‘being’ is the savage/ tender instinctual passions (giving rise to feelings of malice/ love and sorrow/ compassion etc., with the resultant concepts of bad/ good and evil/ god and so on) which cripples intelligence by invariably producing dualistic concepts. ‘Tis all a fantasy … feelings rule in the human world’. (Richard, List B, No. 33c, 3 Aug 2000).
Put simply: nature is neither fair nor just – a volcanic eruption (for just one instance) does not discriminate between who or what it obliterates/ destroys – and thus coupled with the basic resentment at having to be alive in the first place is the further grievance that life is inequitable/ iniquitous. (Richard, AF List, No. 76, 16 Jun 2005).
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Andrew: What I see is that I transferred me “fear of god” which I was born into, to a reverence of “the universe”.
I couldn’t validate and value my own life, because of this. Like the billions before me, and contemporary to me, revere some higher power.
The universe, is not a “higher power”. It’s down to earth. I just so happens that this iteration “sucks”. It is “down to earth” crap. (link)
The physical universe is indeed “down to earth”, and the down-to-earth fact is that it is “boundless in expanse and unlimited in time”. It has always been here and will always be here. It has no “iterations”. To you it “sucks” because this is what your instinctual/ passionate identity informs you of, which operates via the principle of “what can I eat, what can eat me” (in other words, attraction and repulsion), or, in higher animal species, the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.
Regarding consuming nutrients I recommend Richard’s correspondence on this topic – (Richard, List A, No. 16, #No.02)
The good news is that “the opportunity to free ourselves” exists, and one can diminish the influence of these passions, both ‘good’ and bad feelings, and its concomitant social identity, by being affectively attentive each moment again with the sincere commitment to feeling good come what may, and use one’s native intelligence to find and eliminate the triggers/ reasons for not feeling good (such as the resentment for being here that you have expressed). Without such firm aim one easily drowns in the continual see-saw of emotions and feelings. Here is what Chrono reported just today –
Chrono: Yes it makes everything easier if I’ve made committing to feeling good right now the number 1 priority. It makes sense now why I’d be more stuck in certain bad feelings in the past for a long time. It’s because that commitment had not been made. Now that it has, it’s just a matter of returning to that commitment if I notice I’m not feeling good and also figuring out why. (link)
Cheers Vineeto