This is fascinating, I am so glad to see Geoffrey’s recent correspondence. I often wondered why him and Srinath didn’t write more on the forum but this is clearer now.
I have only just started going through the page but there are a few things I wanted to highlight already :
Geoffrey wrote :
It might be that the problems seen within this generation of actually free people I belong to (the apparent inability to move beyond the guardian phase, and the resultant inappropriate display of what actual freedom is), have to do with the ‘ease’ of the direct route itself, the fact that one may just “ go for it*”* as soon as one wants to (…), without any significant period spent working towards or living in virtual freedom. It’s a positive, for sure, that it is this ‘easy’, as there is no reason that people may not start becoming actually free in droves right now… and it’s kind of puzzling that they don’t
Vinneto wrote :
To sum it up –
Geoffrey: “The presence of social identity, with regards to infinitude, acts like a centre. Whatever whittling away at it has taken place, this essential feature remains. The centre creates bounded-ness. The world then appears to be a snow globe, the sky as its dome, and the limit of one’s perception at the horizon its limit. This pocket world moves along with one at its centre.” (21 June 2024). [emphasis added].
As such, this “presence of social identity”, which “acts like a centre” is what ‘you’ are, and dictates ‘how an actual freedom should be acted out’. As such ‘you’ will not only interpret any experiences of expansion and clarity according to the values of your remnant social identity but also might be fooled into thinking ‘you’ have disappeared when ‘you’ have not. Ergo, the social identity needs to be fully understood in all its facets and abandon itself, at first one by one aspect until it can be perceived as one whole. Only then “this pocket world” is ready to disappear/ willingly and contentedly abdicate.
So just to be clear, self-immolation is the eradication of the feeling being only (in both it’s soul and ego expressions) it is not the ending of identity in toto however. A “wraithlike presence” persists, still an ‘I’ of some remnant description (although no longer fuelled by the instinctual passions).
Which segues into what Geoffrey wrote about self immolation being so easy that he is somewhat puzzled that people aren’t doing it in drones. Is the ease related to the fact that one doesn’t immediately eradicate the identity in toto? One doesn’t need to resolve every aspect of the societal conditioning, instead one eliminates the feeling being as it is so obviously rotten to the very core.
But I know that I have often viewed self immolation as not only the ending of the feeling being but the ending of ‘me’ in any form whatsoever (including any societal restraints). As if there would be an immediate and total shift into the “genderless, ageless, shapeless and limitless attributes of the boundless universe.”
It does seem extremely doable considering that all of the societal conditioning will remain, so any worries about ‘exiting humanity’ too early and becoming some kind of lunatic can be left behind.
I can see that this utterly rotten core that is ‘me’ as a feeling being really has no excuse for existing at all, it could disappear now and there would only be benefit. Because all the societal conditioning was only developed to keep this rotten core in check and it is exactly this rotten core that is responsible for all the sorrow and all the malice.
The societal conditioning seems a little more tricky to see through in this sense, because it has a purpose, to keep the feeling being in check.
This persistence of the guardian after self immolation means that really there is no excuse not to do it right away.
I appreciate these kinds of conversations need to be had carefully as not to muddy the waters, I think now is a good and safe time to have them, with @Vineeto’s involvement on the forum. I would advise for others to remain cautious of what I wrote however.