Hi @Kuba,
The reason I answered in my last response (link) as I did was because of what you wrote regarding “that ‘I’ could try to take ‘myself’ into actuality.”
Kuba: And yet the ‘I’ that has to self-immolate could use this as a way of bailing out from total extinction? That ‘I’ could try to take ‘myself’ into actuality. It’s funny really ‘I’ have to truly die and yet once ‘I’ die I can see that I was this body all along, and even before ‘my’ total extinction ‘I’ can see/remember this.
Am ‘I’ able to give ‘myself’ up even though ‘I’ know that on the other side there is such security, it seems like it would not be a true sacrifice? Perhaps I still believe that it must be a drama, that it must be somehow ultimately costly.
I remember years ago my brother saying that the way you judge a ‘good person’ is how much they are willing to suffer to benefit others, it’s like I am smuggling this into my contemplations around self immolation.
But seeing it from this new angle there is no drawback at all, that would mean it is extremely easy.
When you start with “that ‘I’ could try to take ‘myself’ into actuality” it seems insurmountable because the instinct for self-preservation it too strong. You may have the best rational reasons and the best intentions but that is not enough. That’s where pure intent needs to guide you to consider something outside of ‘yourself’ in order to initiate the process for self-immolation. Viz.:
Richard: “There is an intrinsic trait common to all sentient beings: self-sacrifice. It manifests in humans in the way that ‘I’ will passionately defend ‘myself’ and ‘my group’ to the death if it is deemed necessary. All of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – come to the fore when psychologically and psychically threatened, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, confounding ‘my’ survival and the body’s survival. Nevertheless, ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ … and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality.
This is called altruism … albeit misplaced.”
Richard: “The word altruism can be used in two distinctly different ways—in a virtuous sense (as in being an unselfish and/or selfless ‘self’) or in a zoological and/or biological sense (as in being diametrically opposite to selfism)—and it is the latter which is of particular interest to a person wanting to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, as it takes a powerful instinctive impulse (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinctive impulse (selfism)—blind nature endows each and every human being with the selfish instinct for individual survival and the clannish instinct for group survival (be it the familial group, the tribal group, or the national group). By and large the instinct for survival of the group is the more powerful—as is epitomised in the honey-bee (when it stings to protect and/or defend the hive it dies)—and it is the utilisation of this once-in-a-lifetime gregarian action which is referred to in my oft-repeated ‘an altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice and/or ‘self’-immolation, in toto, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body.” (Altruism)
In other words, ‘you’ dare to care, ‘you’ care so much that ‘you’ are willing to give up willingly and irremunerably what ‘you’ consider ‘your’ most precious by making the most noble sacrifice that ‘you’ can make.
As you can see this has nothing at all to do with your brother’s belief that to be a ‘good person’ one has to be “willing to suffer to benefit others” – that would be the real-world virtue of unselfishness.
There is no suffering involved in self-immolation, it is the most wonderful experience when it happens, and by doing so you relieve yourself (your actual body) and your fellow humans from the burden of ‘your’ own ‘rottenness’, i.e., the burden of ‘your’ demands, dominance or subordination, jealousy, all psychic vibes and any potential future malice and sorrow.
Cheers Vineeto