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Richard’s Correspondence On Mailing List ‘A’ with Respondent No. 3
| 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | RICHARD: No longer plagued by petty arguments, pathetic one-upmanship. RESPONDENT: Including, of course, the pathetic one-upmanship of ‘I have discovered truths no one else knows’. What I would like to understand is why all the self-proclaimed enlightened (I use that term loosely to include you Richard, though you don’t use it yourself) folk on this list are so all-fired certain that they are the only ones on the surface of the earth who have ever experienced what they experience? And why are y’all so arrogant that you can say things like ‘nowhere in the revered and sacred scripts, anywhere in history’ – as if you personally had studied each one? It is actually your attitude of smug disdain that most convincingly argues against your having achieved anything resembling equanimity, never mind true understanding of reality. RICHARD: To clarify the situation:
If no-one was bold enough to say that the accepted ‘truth’ is a mistake, then the sun would still be revolving around the earth. In the face of public opinion, one needs to be intrepid to question the collective wisdom and find out for oneself the fact of the matter. One of the best ways of doing this is to see that something held to be true is not working. Instead of vainly trying to make it work through intellectual dishonesty, one takes stock and applies lateral thinking. One needs to be audacious to proceed where no-one has gone before ... and trail-blazers are often castigated for their effrontery. Fancy being ridiculed or ostracised for ascertaining the actuality of something ... for establishing a fact. To be forced to recant, by popular demand, is an outstanding act of dogmatic elitism born out of ignoring the facts. With this being the lot of the path-finder, no wonder humanity is in the mess that it is in, for who would run the gauntlet? But I am supremely blasé about the opinion of others, for their ‘truths’ do not work ... they do not live in peace and tranquillity. They do not experience the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive; a purity welling-up in all directions from the vast, immeasurable stillness of the infinitude of this universe. They remain ignorant of the excellence of the absence of ‘being’. In short, their ‘truths’, their philosophies on life, do not work. The criterion of a fact is that it works, it produces results. Because I live here, where the immediate is the ultimate, there is no sorrow or malice. All my thoughts are benign, for maleficence does not exist where time has no duration. By living the fact that ‘I’ am not actual, evil has ceased to be. With no evil in existence, I do not have to believe in and muster all my energies in order to be good. ‘Good’ is a psychic force created to combat the psychic force known as ‘Evil’. Similarly, in monotheistic cultures, a ‘God’ is invented to engage in an endless battle with a ‘Devil’. In polytheistic cultures Gods are opposed to Demons. Then there is ‘Heavens’, ‘Hells’, ‘Sin’, ‘Karma’, ‘Resurrection’, ‘Reincarnation’ ... the list goes on. Where is intelligence in all this? Are humans worthy of the title ‘Mature Adults’? This is worse than puerile ... this is primitive in the extreme. It all leads to such appalling brutality and unbearable suffering that it is a wonder that such nonsense can still be soberly entertained as even approximating truth. It is not only bizarre; this is insanity. All this is so patently obvious that I am amazed at the reactions I meet when I talk about such matters to others. It all does not work. These ‘truths’ have been rigorously applied by diligent peoples for thousands of years, to no avail. How long must humans keep on trying something that just simply does not work ... and never will? Why take umbrage at something entirely new, something that has never been before, something that delivers what it proposes? Are humans so perverse as to turn their backs, again and again, on the fact that the ‘tried and true’ methods do not work? So much for the supposed ‘innate curiosity’ and the inherent ‘spirit of exploration and discovery’ that is said to be the hall-mark of being human. Humans rather spend billions on searching for life in outer space, for example, instead of examining their own mores. Does humanity hope to find an alien race near some distant star who have the secret to life? And if they did find such creatures, who on earth would listen? Who would apply their wisdom? Would they be accused of ‘smug disdain’? Would they not also be called ‘arrogant’? Obviously, what would happen, is that a phalanx of sociologists, anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, theologians and philosophers would swing into action to ‘study their culture’. Such is the unyielding fate of a benighted humanity.
RICHARD: To clarify the situation: (1) I am not enlightened. (2) I do not want to be enlightened. (3) I never will become enlightened. (4) Enlightenment is worthless. RESPONDENT: You can make a statement like number 4 only after you’ve tasted the wine. Before, it’s a silly assumption, prejudice, sour grapes, or laziness. RICHARD: But I have ‘tasted the wine’. You must have missed one of my posts. For your benefit I will re-post the last paragraph:
RESPONDENT: Oh ye of star trek fame – tell me what hav’st thou seen? RICHARD: I have been writing of nothing else but what I have seen. I suggest you check the back copies as it would take up too much space to re-post them all here. * RICHARD: They do not experience the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive; a purity welling-up in all directions from the vast, immeasurable stillness of the infinitude of this universe. RESPONDENT: A blast of hot air. Wow. Tell me, how does this inflated rhetoric apply when you brush your teeth in the a.m. and p.m.? RICHARD: It is a pleasure and a delight to ‘brush my teeth’, or do anything else, for that matter, in ‘the a.m. and p.m’. The experience of the ‘perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ endows everything one does with an infinite perfection ... even sitting doing nothing at all is a marvellous felicity. * RICHARD: Because I live here, where the immediate is the ultimate, there is no sorrow or malice. All my thoughts are benign, for maleficence does not exist where time has no duration. By living the fact that ‘I’ am not actual, evil has ceased to be. RESPONDENT: And yet the ‘I’ still subjects us to so much drivel. RICHARD: It is indeed unfortunate that you find all this to be ‘so much drivel’. You are missing out on the possibility of the most delicious actualisation of a perfect freedom. Perhaps some input from my companion of eleven years would be more compatible to your tastes, as my words seem to raise your ire:
RICHARD: For example: This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not immortal. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. I am free to be me; me as I actually am. I am free to be practical, straight-forward and down-to-earth. I am free of any guile, any hypocrisy, any duplicity, any cupidity ... any corruption at all. Innocence prevails only where time has no duration ... and this moment has no measure, it is ever-new. I have no need for such a paltry surrogate as Immortality ... Immortality fades into the oblivion it deserves when compared to the magnitude of experiencing the infinity of the universe as a human being living here, each moment again, fresh and new and pristine. I am free to live in this magical wonderland that is the actual world. RESPONDENT: Richard, this tells me nothing at all. I get these kinds of paragraphs from my freshmen composition students all day long. They are full of high rhetoric, but contain very little actual information. I am sure that you are familiar with the old saying ‘Show, don’t tell’. Show me. Don’t noun me to death. RICHARD: You could not possibly ‘get these kinds of paragraphs from my freshmen composition students all day long’. Read my posts again and look at the content this time. No freshman could even begin to comprehend the substance of what I say even as a concept ... let alone as an experiential actuality. Just taking one example out of what you quoted back at me – ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ – would send your students into an intellectual paroxysm. But, then again, as you say that you ‘get these kinds of paragraphs from my freshmen composition students all day long’ then obviously you would already be living what that sentence demonstrates. If this is so, why do you profess to not understand it when you say:‘Richard, this tells me nothing at all’? RESPONDENT: Trust me, I have read every one of your posts. Each one reminded me of those horridly self-conscious ‘inspirational’ sayings that one can buy, in poster form, in new age shops. RICHARD: There must be a different type of new age shop where you live; I have been in many, many shops of that name and read countless posters and ‘inspirational sayings’ ... and I have never seen anything that approaches what I am talking about. If only they did. RESPONDENT: Yes. Yes. Yes. All this is very sweet. Very noble. But it means nothing. This is all one giant cliché, well expressed, of course, I grant you that, but still cliché. I’ve read this many, many times, in many different versions, but the upshot is always the same: the author has nothing to say, and says it in as many words as possible. RICHARD: I can only reiterate what I have written above. I very much doubt that you have read the sentence ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ ever before ... let alone ‘many, many times, in many different versions’. In case you think that I am being selective, I could take the time to go back through my writing and come up with many examples of originality ... but I am not going to even attempt to live your life for you. RESPONDENT: What the hell does ‘perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ mean? This phrase means nothing to me. Show me what you do, how you do it. Demonstrate infinite perfection to me. RICHARD: I am doing nothing else but showing it to you and demonstrating it to you ... but all you see,
unfortunately, is what you call clichés I could be in error here, as all I have to go on is what your writing conveys, but just maybe you have been reading too many Zen books as the Zen Masters demand of their students: ‘Show Me!’ and: ‘Demonstrate!’ Even if you are a Zen Master ... I am not your student. RESPONDENT: My counsel on those occasions is the same one I give you now: Tell me something I can use. Make me laugh, show me 10 ways to keep Ficus trees alive, write a poem, eat cheesecake, send a curry recipe. Don’t fluff me to death. RICHARD: You ask me to tell you something you can use. Perhaps this will be of some help:
In other words: I am not here to do it for you. It is your life that you are living. Perfection is ever-available for those who dare to live it. I am simply saying, in as many ways as are befitting, one thing only: It is possible.
RESPONDENT: This is, right now, though, a question of communication. I am asking you to communicate your experiences to me, via a clear, unambiguous language. That’s all. Tell me, without using all those high-sounding nouns, how you tie your shoes. RESPONDENT 2: My attempt: I was told that one must learn to still there mind. Usually this involves sitting comfortably twice a day, stare at a flame (or spot), repeat a mantra, etc. ... Meditation. This is required so that one experiences the different states of mind we are capable of. Without a successful stopping of thoughts, there can be no further communication. Have you done this? After accomplishing this, then there are multitudes of ‘pathways’ that one experiences that those who haven’t stilled their thoughts can not know, for instance: In our waking state we can think to the past of future and extrapolate meaning. In our waking state we can think about our dreams and extrapolate myth. In our waking state we can think about our dreamless sleep and extrapolate ‘clear light’, ‘samadhi’. Richard fell into this state of ‘samadhi’, that often happens to sincere searchers of truth. RESPONDENT: What Richard fell into, it doesn’t travel well in prose. I sit Zazen twice a day, for 30 – 45 minutes. It does not involve visualisation or candles or mantras. I just sit, watch my breath, and let thoughts arise and fall as they may. It is not my desire to stop all thoughts from arising. Without thoughts, one might as well be a lump on a log. What is required is that one pays attention to the way thoughts come and go and to just let that happen, without grasping after them. RESPONDENT 2: Yes, I do this too. Just let thoughts and feelings come and go, like the clouds. This too is a form of ‘samadhi’. That is why a meditation designed by ‘you’, to stop your thought process is to your advantage. What we believe life is about, is what it is about for us. Believing is seeing. This is conditioned existence. Thoughts are that conditioning. To find out your original face, trace the thoughts to their ‘arising’. All thoughts come from the one mind. So that is what we find if we discipline our laziness, and excuse making. If one truly seeks their own mind they will find it. Usually they will find a teacher (benefactor). Many are only seeking ego reinforcement. They usually sound dogmatic, or partial. The state of mind that Richard is referring to, has a complete loss of a personal self. It has worn itself out. When this last echo of ‘me’ disappears, awareness has nothing to do but be itself. Cloudless, unimpeded, no value, no feeling, just awareness. RICHARD: No comment.
RICHARD: Just taking one example out of what you quoted back at me – ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ – would send your students into an intellectual paroxysm. RESPONDENT: Well, it sent me into one as well. Time has no duration? Innocence prevails? Watchatalkin’boutman? RICHARD: Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here now. Thus it appears that it is as if nothing has occurred, for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end, is there a middle? There are things happening, but nothing has happened or will happen ... or so it seems. Only this moment exists. This moment has no term, it takes no time at all to occur ... which gives rise to the inaccurate notion that it is timeless. This is an institutionalised delusion, for it stems from the egocentric feeling that ‘I’ am Immortal, that ‘I’ am Eternal. Apperception – which is the mind’s perception of itself – reveals that this moment is hanging in eternal time ... just as this planet is hanging in infinite space. This moment and this place are in the realm of the infinitude of this actual physical universe. This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not Eternally Present. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. As one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being, any ‘I’ – always on the look-out for self-aggrandisement – grabs the universe’s eternity for itself. Also, what helps to create the feeling that the present is timeless is that human beings – as an identity – are normally out of this universe’s eternal time. Yet time is as intimate as this body being here now at this moment. It is so intimate that I – as a body only – am not separate from it. Whereas ‘I’, as a human ‘being’, have separated ‘myself’ from eternal time by being an entity. To be an ontological ‘being’ is to mistakenly take this body being here as containing an ‘I’, a psychological or psychic entity. To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally ... as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence. ‘I’ am an illusion; if ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ do exist, then ‘I’ am outside of eternal time. ‘I’ am forever complaining that there is ‘not enough hours in the day’, or ‘I am always running out of time’, or ‘I am always catching up with time’, or ‘I am always behind time’. With no ‘I’ whatsoever to keep one out of this moment in time, one is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously and wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the ‘Human Condition’ ... this is the ‘human nature’ that is said ‘cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. The ‘self’ is born out of the instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: If you want me to experience your experience, you need to paint that picture a bit clearer. It’s like saying, ‘the sunset is pretty’. You may have had an orgasmic experience watching the sunset, but for me to ‘get it’ as well, you need to employ the entire range of rhetorical devices: from assonance to zeugma. RICHARD: You say ‘you need to employ the entire range of rhetorical devices’ . Really? I hardly dare to use rhetoric on this list ... are you the same person who told me off on:
As for ‘assonance’ , I consider that: ‘the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ and: ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ is quite euphonic ... to the point of being mellifluent, do you not think? And when I examine my writing for ‘zeugma’ , I see that is very sylleptic indeed, thank you very much. RESPONDENT: On a more serious note: this is not a question of originality. I don’t question that you have had some sort of awakening, one that feels all fresh and new and different from whatever anyone else ever experienced. I have had those too. Everyone has. And then one moves on; otherwise, one gets stuck on some kind of plateau of self-congratulatory fervour. RICHARD: ‘I’ did not ‘move on’ ... ‘I’ ‘self’-immolated. And I am very pleased that ‘I’ did that. I am not ‘self-congratulatory’ because I did nothing to earn applause ... it was ‘I’ that made this possible ... and I salute ‘my’ audacity. * RICHARD: The perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ means: ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration. RESPONDENT: Yes, great-now, show me what that means in simple terms: when you tie your shoelaces. RICHARD: Hmm ... I do not wear shoes. But if I did; whenever I tie the laces I do it for the very first time. As I said in my previous post in response to your invitation to ‘eat cheesecake’ : eat your own ... only this time taste for the very first time. This moment of being alive has never happened before and will never happen again. It is unique. As it is always this moment already, everything is immediately peerless. Therefore it is never boring; it is ever-fresh; I am never boring ... I am ever-fresh. I have never been here before: everything is happening for the very first time ... I am happening for the very first time. This is what I mean by: ‘the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ and: ‘innocence prevails where time has no duration’. Because I am ever-new, I am automatically innocent. RESPONDENT: I am, however, looking to understand your experience. RICHARD: Has this post helped? It would be excellent if it has, because I enjoy a genuine and fruitful discussion.
RICHARD: Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here now. Thus it appears that it is as if nothing has occurred, for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end, is there a middle? There are things happening, but nothing has happened or will happen ... or so it seems. Only this moment exists. RESPONDENT: In this passage you write ‘as if’ – are you telling fairy tales? Things either happen or they don’t; they happen ‘as if’ only in fairy tales and other fictitious accounts. RICHARD: No, I am not ‘telling fairy tales’. The past did happen and the future will happen ... it is that they are not actual now. Only this moment is actually happening now. However, I was describing the impression that certain people gain when they experience this moment in time as being all there ever has been and will be ... in their own words: ‘the past is not real, the future is not real, only the present is real’. I wrote ‘as if’ because the impression – not the actuality – is that ‘only the present is real’, and because it is a strong impression, it has led people astray for centuries. Time is a fact and not the illusion that those certain people are so wont to say it is. The segment you snipped the above out of goes on to explain that: ‘only this moment exists [as an
actuality]. This moment has no term, it takes no time at all to occur ... which gives rise to the inaccurate notion that it is
timeless. This is an institutionalised delusion, for it stems from the egocentric feeling that ‘I’ am Immortal, that ‘I’
am Eternal. Apperception – which is the mind’s perception of itself – reveals that this moment is hanging in eternal time
... just as this planet is hanging in infinite space. This moment and this place are in the realm of the infinitude of this actual
physical universe. This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this
moment is; I am not Eternally Present. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me’. Does the ‘[as an actuality]’ insert clarify the point? For later in the post you say: ‘I thought past moments didn’t exist for you?’. Viz.:
Past moments do not exist – as an actuality – at this moment. Normally, people make the past ‘real’ (that is, a substitute for actual) by emotive thought drawing upon memory through reverie (nostalgia, sentimentality, longing, yearning, homesickness for the ‘good old days’ and so on). Certain people, wishing to escape this and, having an experience of this moment in time, then declare that the past and the future are not real ... as in never existed and never will exist (ironically, they usually then get down from their podium and say that that is all for now until ‘Evening Darshan’ at 6.00 P.M. ... which is an acknowledgment of time). Thus they mistakenly assume that they are ‘Timeless’ and go on to extrapolate that they are ‘Unborn’, Undying’, ‘Eternal’ and ‘Immortal’. RESPONDENT: I am in agreement with you that the present moment is important; without it, there’s no possibility to break the chain of dependent origination. The same holds true for the past, however. How else can change (the change, for example, you have been describing in yourself?) happen, unless conditions/causes in the past give rise to conditions/causes in the present to allow for such a change? RICHARD: The ‘change I have been describing in myself’ was a happening wherein the cause and effect occurred simultaneously, rather than consecutively ... as is the normal course of events. The way this is experienced is that one can not differentiate between ‘me’ doing ‘it’ and ‘it’ happening to ‘me’. It is an exquisite event, by any description. My favourite expression regarding ‘how’ to precipitate such an event is:
RESPONDENT: You are describing that which you are so critical of: a changeless, timeless, eternal, fixed point. The dance of causes and conditions happens elsewhere, and Prince Richard seems to have misplaced his dancing shoes. RICHARD: This moment is always here ... but it is a perennially moving moment, without duration, in eternal time. By being here as-I-am, (I as this body), I am moving with it ... I can never be anywhere else but here and it is always now. Yet I plan for a future and draw upon past experience in order to operate and function. It is not a ‘a changeless, timeless, eternal, fixed point’, for it is a moving, perennial, perpetual, arena that is nowhen in particular and anywhen all at once. The ‘dance of causes and conditions’ can only happen here, not elsewhere, for there is nowhere else but here for anything to happen at, and no moment but now for anything to occur in ... as an actuality. * RICHARD: With no ‘I’ whatsoever to keep one out of this moment in time, one is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. RESPONDENT: That is very nice. However, I rejected ideas like innocence, sin and guilt a long time ago. They are mental constructs. The old Zen fogies talk about carrying water, chopping wood, eating when you are hungry, and sleeping when you are tired. That’s your ‘innocence’ in action. RICHARD: You are, of course, entirely free to reject them as being ‘mental constructs’, as it is your life you are living and only you can live the consequences of whatever you do ... or do not do. * RICHARD: As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. RESPONDENT: Now here we have an interesting Christian notion creeping in: all human are already guilty at conception? I am sure that next you will drag in that slut Eve and put the blame on her. RICHARD: This comment shows that you have not ‘rejected ideas like innocence, sin and guilt a long time ago’ as this is a strong reaction. Incidentally, this old fogy merely depresses a lever to obtain instant hot or cold water, watches the automatic heater turn itself up and down, goes to a restaurant when hungry and sleeps on an orthopaedic bed with an electric blanket under a feather-down doona when sleepy. Ain’t technology grand! * RICHARD: Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the ‘Human Condition’ ... this is the ‘human nature’ that is said ‘cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. RESPONDENT: Fear and aggression aren’t intrinsic (if they were, you wouldn’t have been able to overcome them) – they are produced causally. Some of the causes predate an individual’s birth. RICHARD: I beg to differ. All creatures are born with the instinct for survival, which manifests itself
as fear and aggression ... which gives birth to a rudimentary self (which those people who study these things have reported
observing in the animals they studied) and this is known, in humans, as ‘The Human Condition’. Thus nobody is born innocent
– which means free from sin And, yes, it is possible to not only ‘overcome them’ but to eliminate them entirely. Then one is free to act appropriately according to the circumstances ... and not out of an instinctual reaction. Instincts are not set in stone, they are simply ‘blind nature’s’ way of ensuing survival. With our thinking, reflective brain we can improve on nature in this respect, as we have done in so many other ways. Any instinctual drive can be eradicated. Where you say ‘some of the causes predate an individual’s birth’, you are not hinting at those hoary myths of pre-determination or re-incarnation, surely? * RICHARD: Therefore it is never boring; it is ever-fresh; I am never boring ; I am ever-fresh. I have never been here before; everything is happening for the very first time ... I am happening for the very first time. This is what I mean by: ‘the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ and: ‘innocence prevails where time has no duration’. Because I am ever-new, I am automatically innocent. RESPONDENT: O.K. overlooking the contradiction of being ‘ever-new’ with the idea of time having no duration [when you introduce comparative notions like ‘ever new’ then you have also introduced a past time], how do you maintain a sense of continuity? How do you answer e-mail in a coherent sense, if you are happening for the first time right now, and right now, and right now? RICHARD: Is there still a need to over-look the ‘ever-new’ bit in light of my explanation above? And, of course I answer E-Mail coherently for I fully acknowledge time as being a fact. As this specific moment has never happened before, so too has this specific body called Richard never happened before ... everything is constantly changing. Thus I – like this moment – am ever-new, fresh, unique, peerless, original, unrivalled, matchless and novel. Thus I – this new I of this moment – can say, quite validly, ‘I am happening for the very first time’. The ‘I’ that appeared to exist over time was a mental/emotional construct ... or as I am inclined to say: A psychological entity that endures through psychological time. Whereas I have never been here before. ... and neither has this moment. It is all very priceless.
RICHARD: No, I am not ‘telling fairy tales’. The past did happen and the future will happen ... it is that they are not actual now. Only this moment is actually happening now. RESPONDENT: To whom is this moment happening ? RICHARD: To what, not ‘whom’. I am these sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the entity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: When someone says ‘the future doesn’t exist’, he is most likely making a semantic point, because the future is forever receding from us; it never catches up with us. RICHARD: When one is no longer interested in dismissing something as being semantics and actually sets to and starts to uncover just what is actually going on, one discovers that the future, when it inevitably comes, as it must, is always presenting itself as this moment. Far from ‘forever receding from us’, this moment in time is the previous moment’s future ... as an actuality. When you wrote this E-Mail to me, you anticipated my reply ... which then lay in your future. As you are now reading that reply, then what was previously only a future for you is happening now ... at this moment. Great fun this business of altering a mind-set to meet the fact, is it not? * RICHARD: The ‘change I have been describing in myself’ was a happening wherein the cause and effect occurred simultaneously, rather than consecutively ... as is the normal course of events. The way this is experienced is that one can not differentiate between ‘me’ doing ‘it’ and ‘it’ happening to ‘me’. It is an exquisite event, by any description. RESPONDENT: So you went from X to not-X (or vice versa) via quantum leap? RICHARD: I appreciate the phrase ‘quantum leap’ because it seems to explain an apparently mysterious phenomenon. However, it is a description of the enlightenment process wherein ‘I’ vanish from one place and miraculously re-appear in another. With a ‘quantum leap’ one’s normal ‘I’ – an illusion – is transmogrified into a grand and exalted ‘I’ – a delusion – which is identified as being the ‘Eternal Self’ existing ‘Beyond Time and Space’. Anything else than being here and now as this body only exists solely in an enthusiastic imagination; enthused by ‘me’, by any ‘being’ at all. Any intuition of ‘being’ is created and sustained by emotive thought ... it is the egocentric fear of not ‘being’ that gives rise to the notion of a ‘myself’. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the apparent demise of an enduring psychological entity. The ‘death’ of ‘me’ is a non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place. There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have ‘Eternal Life’. Something irrevocable happens inside the brain. In an ecstatic moment of being present, ‘I’ expire. ‘I’ am extirpated, rubbed out. ‘I’ cease to exist, permanently. ‘I’ become extinct. There is a sensation inside the brain that appears to be a physical ‘turning over’ of some kind ... something that can never, ever, turn back. Something irrevocable happens and everything is different, somehow, although everything stays the same. Something has changed, although nothing has happened. ‘My’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent presence. I have always been here, as this body; one only imagined that ‘I’/‘me’existed. It was all an emotional play in a fertile imagination. RESPONDENT: Richard, dear. I was being sarcastic and/or ironic in regard to your concept of ‘already guilty at conception’. It struck me as an unhelpful kind of concept for one like you. Please explain what you mean. RICHARD: I deliberately used the expressive phrase ‘‘guilty’ at conception’ (and elsewhere ‘Born
in Sin’) Hence: ‘‘guilty’ at birth’ (or ‘Born in Maya’) * RICHARD: The instinct for survival manifests itself as fear and aggression. RESPONDENT: Wrong. Fear and aggression is a human interpretation of value free behaviour. A lion does his lion thing – we call it aggression. RICHARD: Animal behaviour is not ‘value free’. When ‘a lion does its lion thing’ we do not just call it aggression ... it is aggression. Aggression: ‘the act of beginning a quarrel or war; behaviour intended to injure a person or an animal’ (Oxford Dictionary). I am sure that you will find that numerous studies have been done that clearly demonstrate that animals are subject to both fear and aggression. I have watched many, many television nature documentaries for this very purpose and have always made sure that I was not being misled by anthropomorphism. Incidentally, you wrote: ‘his’ in ‘a lion does his lion thing’. Lionesses are also aggressive. Sexism? Or merely a slip of the tongue? * RICHARD: It is possible to ... eliminate the instinctual drives entirely. Then one is free to act appropriately according to the circumstances and not out of an instinctual reaction. Instincts are not set in stone, they are simply ‘blind nature’s’ way of ensuing survival. RESPONDENT: Show me how you eliminate your hair from growing. Some behaviours and emotions are hormonally driven. How do you regulate hormones? Can you tell me how you make your fingernails grow? How your heart pumps? RICHARD: Where you write about hair and fingernails growing and the heart pumping you are dragging in a red-herring. I was talking of instinctual drives like fear and aggression, not genetic features such as chromosomes. It is scientific research that demonstrates a connection between hormones and emotional behaviour ... and it is scientific research which has located emotions as being in what is popularly called the ‘Lizard Brain’. With a mutation in there – the Substantia Nigra is the organ I favour as being the seat of consciousness – hormones have no emotions to evoke. I, being male, presumably have testosterone circulating throughout this body ... yet I do not experience malice and vindictiveness, fear and aggression, hatred and anger, callousness and indifference and so on. Those emotions – and all others – have ceased to exist. It is actually possible to be perfect ... in this life-time.
RETURN TO LIST ‘A’ CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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