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Richard’s Correspondence On The Actual Freedom Mailing List With Correspondent No. 4
RESPONDENT: I seem to agree to some extent with No. 5, but not to the extent of being mad with Vineeto. I also do not find anything radical in Richard’s teachings. I already am aware of most of this stuff thanks mainly to Osho and other eastern philosophies . RICHARD: I am well aware that many people initially get the impression that I am saying the same thing as do those people who are living in an altered state of consciousness known as spiritual enlightenment ... as detailed in Eastern spiritual philosophy. However, an actual freedom from the Human Condition is not an altered state of consciousness (ASC) wherein the identity transmogrifies ... it is an on-going pure consciousness experience (PCE) wherein the identity is annihilated in its totality. In an ASC the identity shifts its focus, when ‘I’ as ego undergoes an ‘ego-death’, and ‘me’ as soul realises its ‘True Self’ as epitomised in the phrase: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. The next step is the realisation that ‘Me’ and ‘God’ (not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues) are one and the same thing and, as such, one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. Thus, being now ‘Spaceless and Timeless’ one has achieved ‘Divine Immortality’ and one can confidently say – as Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain did – that one is ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet’. Eastern mystical philosophy stipulates that the temporal world – the entire material universe – is but an illusion, and only God is real ... God as ‘Pure Being’ (The Brahman, The Buddha, The Tao, The Void, The Whatever) and not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Whereas in the PCE the identity disappears when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul is expunged, eliminated, extirpated ... as extinct as the dodo but with no skeletal remains. Then one is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ... what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: 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 identity, 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 world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence. With the clarity and purity of apperception, one is aware that this physical universe is actual – not an illusion – and its space is infinite and its time is eternal (this boundless expanse and an unlimited time is known as ‘infinitude’). Thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go to. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. Thus one is always here and it is already now ... what one is as this body is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. I am mortal. RESPONDENT: I was able to discard the concept of God long back in my early twenties, because of Osho’s teachings but then I was able not to replace it with Osho (as Vineeto did) again because of Osho’s teachings. RICHARD: Then I would hazard a guess that you missed the main thrust of his ‘Teachings’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain said: ‘The only difference between me and you is that I have realised that I am God and you have not’. Editorial note: the exact quote is ‘... my godhood is not in danger, because I don’t care what you think about me. That is not the point at all. It is not that you have made me into a god. This is my declaration; it is not your recognition. If nobody believes in me, then too I am a god. (...) Just by being you are God. (..) When I say God, I mean you ARE God, just by being. It is not a specialisation. Then what is the difference between me and you? The only difference is that I recognise my godhood and you don’t recognise yours’. (‘The First Principle’; Chapter 8; The Profound and the Trivial). RESPONDENT: So I am really surprised how Vineeto being so close to Osho, missed the whole point. RICHARD: Methinks you will find that Vineeto has not missed the point at all ... she has opened both her eyes and has listened with both her ears. I can post many, many quotes of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain where he clearly declares his Divine State ... and urges his sannyasins to do likewise. RESPONDENT: I think that is where Osho seemed to have failed. Many of his close associates seem to get him so wrong. Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’. There may be many methods how to achieve it. RICHARD: Aye ... except that their ‘here and now’ is a metaphysical (timeless and spaceless) ‘here and now’ (and Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain oft-times used the word ‘herenow’ to distinguish it from the temporal location) and it is anywhere but here as this place in infinite space and anywhere but now as this moment in eternal time. And his method for attaining happiness is to end separation by creating the illusion of intimacy through attaining union or oneness as ‘Pure Love’ – what I call Love Agapé‚ – and not through ending the separative self per se. RESPONDENT: According to Richard all seem to have failed because there is no peace still on Earth. RICHARD: Yea verily ... where is their much-touted Peace On Earth? Is not thousands upon thousands of years of trying their experiment enough? How much longer will you give the ‘Tried and True’ yet another chance? RESPONDENT: But I don’t understand what makes Richard so confident that his method will work. The statement ‘I am under no illusion that global peace and tranquillity will eventuate before I am on my death-bed; I do not suffer from the delusion that I can effect a sweeping change to the lot of all human beings’ looks like another messianic chore. On a re-thought, I take back this allegation. This may be genuine humility. RICHARD: All humility is nothing but the ego being very, very clever ... it is but a product of a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity called ego. One of the chief attributes of a freedom from a ‘self’ or a ‘Self’ and from believing in a ‘God’ and a ‘Greater Reality’, is a completeness ... an absence of the need to control a wayward ‘I’ with moralistic injunctions. Personally I have no humility whatsoever and, of course, neither am I proud. In order to be free of the Human Condition one needs to see the place pride and humility plays in one’s life. ‘I’ am proud of ‘my’ major achievement – which is maintaining ‘myself’ as an identity – and ‘I’ will do anything but relinquish ‘my’ grip on this flesh-and-blood body ... including humbling ‘myself’ before some God in order to ameliorate the pernicious effects of pride. However, humility is merely the antidote to pride ... and they feed off each other, continuously. For example, one cannot but feel proud of one’s accomplishment of self-abasing humility ... it is in the nature of the entity to do so. A humbled self is still a self, nonetheless, leaving one proud of one’s performance. When one realises how silly all this is; when one sees that pride and humility are standing in the way of freedom from all self-centred activity, something astounding occurs. The opposites vanish. I am simply here where I have always been ... and pride, with its companion in arms, humility, has disappeared along with all the other feelings. I am free to be here now in the world as-it-is. Unadorned and unencumbered, I can stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to no-one. RESPONDENT: And then who is to decide what the universe should be like? The entire thinking is based on the argument that in spite so many Enlightened persons in last thousands of years, there is something wrong with the humankind. RICHARD: There is obviously ‘something wrong with humankind’ ... very, very wrong. 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone, for starters. And then there are all the other wars throughout history ... and all the rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand how can anything be wrong in this universe. According to Richard (in fact, according to many Enlightened ones, but Richard never accepts it), the world is so perfect that nothing can be wrong here. RICHARD: Try telling that to someone who has just been raped; try telling that to someone who is in a trench on the front-line; try telling that to someone being tortured; try telling that to the person on the receiving end of domestic violence; try telling that to the recipient of child abuse; try telling that to someone sliding down the slippery-slope of sadness to loneliness to grief to depression and then suicide. And as for religiosity or spirituality or mysticality not being wrong just try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Hindu soldier; try saying that to the Sikh father whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by pious Christians; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Shinto soldiers; try saying that to a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion! Life in the real-world is a grim and glum business. Only this actual world is already perfect. RESPONDENT: Then where is the question of bringing peace to earth. RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. This is why I am so insistent in what I write. After my experience in a war-zone I wished to do something constructive with my life; I wished to rid myself, personally, of the ‘human nature’ which all people say can not be changed. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extinction – extirpation, annihilation, expunction – ensures that the already always existing peace-on-earth will become apparent. This is because this actual world is already perfect. RESPONDENT: I must mention here that I am not against Richard or pro Eastern thinkers. RICHARD: Good, because my words can facilitate the self-same removal of identity in anyone else dedicated to a genuine peace on earth. To become happy and harmless one must extirpate both malice and sorrow, which stem from the identity – which is ‘being’ itself – that has a parasitical life inside the flesh and blood body. It is beliefs, and the act of believing itself, that sustains and feeds this monstrous psychological and psychic entity within that seeks the metaphysical solution. And those people who somehow accomplish the attainment of ‘Divine Immortality’ then go around propagating a specious belief system that can only perpetuate all the abominable suffering that humankind has had to endure up until now. There is no perfection in the real-world reality ... the world that is inhabited by 6.0 billion peoples. Whereas this actual world is already perfect. RESPONDENT: This argument is just to understand the so called new thinking. RICHARD: I look forward to your considered response.
RESPONDENT: I do not find anything radical in Richard’s teachings. I already am aware of most of this stuff thanks mainly to Osho and other eastern philosophies. RICHARD: I am well aware that many people initially get the impression that I am saying the same thing as do those people who are living in an altered state of consciousness known as spiritual enlightenment ... as detailed in Eastern spiritual philosophy. However, an actual freedom from the Human Condition is not an altered state of consciousness (ASC) wherein the identity transmogrifies ... it is an on-going pure consciousness experience (PCE) wherein the identity is annihilated in its totality. In an ASC the identity shifts its focus, when ‘I’ as ego undergoes an ‘ego-death’, and ‘me’ as soul realises its ‘True Self’ as epitomised in the phrase: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. The next step is the realisation that ‘Me’ and ‘God’ (not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues) are one and the same thing and, as such, one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. Thus, being now ‘Spaceless and Timeless’ one has achieved ‘Divine Immortality’ and one can confidently say – as Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain did – that one is ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet’ . Eastern mystical philosophy stipulates that the temporal world – the entire material universe – is but an illusion, and only God is real ... God as ‘Pure Being’ (The Brahman, The Buddha, The Tao, The Void, The Whatever) and not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Whereas in the PCE the identity disappears when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul is expunged, eliminated, extirpated ... as extinct as the dodo but with no skeletal remains. Then one is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ... what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: 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. With the clarity and purity of apperception, one is aware that this physical universe is actual – not an illusion – and its space is infinite and its time is eternal ... and this boundless expanse and an unlimited time is known as ‘infinitude’. RESPONDENT: I would still insist that this is not the first time I am hearing this. I have read about getting into the minute (I know this is not the right word, but my vocabulary is poor, the Sanskrit word is Sukshma) ego on the spiritual path. RICHARD: Would you be referring to ‘Sukshma Sarira’? Sometimes known as ‘Sukshama Sharira’? RESPONDENT: No I was referring to Sukshma Ahamkara. RICHARD: Oh? May I ask? Just what has ‘ahamkara’ (be it subtle or not) got to do with what you initially stated (top) and what I responded with (second from top)? I was clearly talking of an actual freedom (as in a PCE) from the real-world when ‘me’ as soul becomes extinct – which is ‘being’ itself expires – and not what happens when ‘I’ as ego transmogrifies. Whereas enlightenment (as in an ASC), which is liberation (Moksha) from the bonds of samsara (anava, karma and maya), consists of the soul (atman or purusha) extricating itself from its mistaken assumption of personality or individuality (aham). This assumption is because of its focus (‘ahamkara’ translates as ‘I-Maker’ in English) on material nature (samsara or prakriti) and when there is the recognition of its total difference from it – and non-involvement in it – such enlightenment (Moksha) is the freedom from the fettering power of these reincarnational bonds. These bonds do not cease to exist but no longer have the power to fetter or bind the soul (atman), until its final release at physical death (Mahasamadhi) whereupon atman is Paramatman (or the Brahman). And in case that paragraph is difficult to follow, I am talking of the soul (atman) being annihilated ... and you are talking about ‘getting into the minute (sukshma) ego on the spiritual path’ . RESPONDENT: The scriptures have warned against falling into illusion of being one with God and against the danger of acting as a Guru. RICHARD: These scriptures that you are referring to ... are they Jain Scriptures by any chance? RESPONDENT: No, I have not read Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Okay ... then are you referring to Buddhist scriptures? RESPONDENT: I have indeed read earlier of the need of completely annihilate the ‘I’ and not falling into the delusion of being one with God. RICHARD: If it is the Jain Scriptures then this is simply a matter of the terms of reference being used ... becoming a ‘Siddha’, for example and residing in a state of perpetual bliss in ‘Siddha-Shila’. RESPONDENT: As I said I don’t know much about Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Now, I can keep up this guessing game – until the moon turns blue if you wish – as I am already free of the Human Condition. However, would it not be easier for you – and quicker – if you just name your scriptures? Then we can have a practical discussion. RESPONDENT: Also what you tell about ‘this seeing is me ...’ is somewhere in Osho’s teaching itself. Now I may not be able to quote the exact book and page number etc. because I never did the study to be able to convince somebody or to argue. My studies of the spiritual text have been only to learn for myself. If you want to believe me, this is my understanding of the spiritual text I have studied. RICHARD: No, I do not wish to believe you, given that all the scriptural texts that I have ever seen do not talk about what I experience and write of ... and I have been scouring books for eighteen years. It is to no avail to say to me that you already know all this that I write about from your understanding of the scriptures ... and then become rather vague about what you do know. Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that nothing other than this physical universe is it; nowhere does it say that only this lifetime is it; nowhere does it say that death is the end, finish, oblivion. They speak of a timeless and spaceless void; a formless and deathless emptiness; an unknowable and immutable presence; an immortal and ceaseless being and so on. They say that the physical universe is an illusion, a dream and not ultimately real. They talk of reincarnating through multiple lifetimes until ‘Liberation’ frees one from ‘Karma’ and one never needs being born again. They say that physical life is inherently sorrowful and the best thing to do is to scarper ... into a metaphysical realm of the ‘unborn’. For example:
I must ask: where in all this does it relate to what I speak of? RESPONDENT: Let me correct myself a bit. When I said it is not new to me, what I mean is that is not surprising to me. I thought vaguely (yes vaguely, as I have not experienced it) about this possibility also. My understanding is not based on one particular teacher or book. It is a complex of various things which I have been hearing/reading for so many years and adding my own interpretation to it. RICHARD: Okay, could you detail these various things that you have been ‘hearing/reading for so many years’ ? Because I have not come across it in eighteen years of hearing/reading multitudinous various things. RESPONDENT: I will just give an example. The snake and the rope metaphor is well known in Hindu philosophy. It says that a rope lying on a way may look like a snake to somebody. It is explained that the illusion of snake is ‘maya’ which arises because of ‘aham’ (‘I’). When there is no aham, there is no illusion (maya) and therefore rope is rope (the brahma). Aren’t you saying the same thing? Just replace brahma by actual world and maya by real world. RICHARD: No. This actual world is material – as in tangible, corporeal, physical, substantial, palpable, tactile and sensate – and is evident when ‘I’ as ego (aham) and ‘me’ as soul (atman) become extinct. There is nothing other than this infinite and eternal actual phenomenal universe. Whereas ‘the brahma’ is the supreme existence or absolute, the noumenal font of all things – the eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, spiritual source of the universe of finiteness and change – and is realised when aham remembers that its true nature (atman) is brahma. And according to the Advaita (Non-dualist) school of Vedanta, brahma is categorically different from anything phenomenal, and human perceptions of differentiation are illusively projected on this physical reality. The Bhedabheda (Dualist-Non-dualist) school maintains that brahma is non-different from the world, which is its product, but different in that phenomenality imposes certain adventitious conditions (upadhis) on brahma. The Vishistadvaita (Non-duality of the Qualified) school maintains that a relation between brahma and the world of soul and matter exists that is comparable to the relation between soul and body and that phenomenality is a glorious manifestation of brahma (as a personal god, Brahma, is both transcendent and immanent). The Dvaita (Dualist) school refuses to accept the identity of brahma and world, maintaining the ontological separateness of the supreme, which it also identifies with a personal god. I must ask again: where in all this does it relate to what I speak of? RESPONDENT: I understand the same thing by the famous Zen story of ‘mountains were mountains again’. RICHARD: Yet Zen is grounded in the experience of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, who based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering ... all physical existence is ‘dukkha’, he said. Living amid the impermanence of everything and being themselves impermanent, human beings search for the way of deliverance, for that which shines beyond the transitoriness of human existence; he asserted there was no essential or ultimate reality in things. He said: ‘There is an unborn, an unoriginated, an unmade, an uncompounded; were there not, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the made, and the compounded’. Thus, for Zen Buddhists, the ‘mountains which were mountains again’ are now known to be an illusion ... whilst before they were not. Whereas for me this material world is actual. RESPONDENT: Yes, the ancient scriptures are mostly written in poetic form and are open to interpretation. RICHARD: You will find, upon closer examination, that they are uncommonly faithful – and not open to poetic interpretation – about several fundamental and core beliefs. To wit: They mostly say that something other than this physical universe is it; they mostly say that this lifetime is not it; they mostly say that death is not the end, finish, oblivion. They mostly speak of a timeless and spaceless void; they mostly speak of a formless and deathless emptiness; they mostly speak of an unknowable and immutable presence; they mostly speak of an immortal and ceaseless being and so on. They mostly say that the physical universe is an illusion, a dream and not ultimately real. They mostly talk of reincarnating through multiple lifetimes until spiritual freedom releases one from temporal bondage and one never needs being born again. They mostly say that physical life is inherently sorrowful and the best thing to do is to scarper ... into a metaphysical realm of the ‘unborn’. RESPONDENT: But I guess that the same thing will happen to your words (even though they are so elaborate), once you are not there to explain them. You might have already seen it after corresponding with so many people having different interpretation of your words. Fortunately because of Internet, we can raise doubts to you and you can clarify till you are around. RICHARD: On the contrary, I have been very clear and remarkably consistent about actual freedom and I do not see how anyone can interpret it differently. Viz.:
Thus the search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and these sense organs – and thus the external world – disappears. To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart) – to have sensations happen to them, I am the sensations. The entire affective faculty vanishes ... blind nature’s software package of instinctual passions is deleted. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not happening to an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To live life as these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and magic. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away – nor has it ever been away – it was just that ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ was standing in the way of the meaning of life being apparent. Life is not a vale of tears.
RESPONDENT: I must admit that I have not seen anybody denying any life after death so clearly (except Charvaka philosophy, which is infamous for being materialistic, and I have not read it in detail.) RICHARD: Aye, I am not a materialist, I am an actualist – which is the experiential understanding that nothing
physical is merely passive – and is evidenced with the personal experience of the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human
being (as opposed to a cerebral or affective perception). The Carvarka or Lokayata philosophy as propounded by Mr. Brhaspati has some similarities
to the Epicurean philosophy of the West. The Carvakas sought to establish their materialism on an epistemological basis and in their ethics they
upheld a hedonistic theory RESPONDENT: Now, this is only my intellectual comprehension and not my experience. In fact I don’t remember of any peak experience kind or PCE, which you say everybody has once in a while. So, to me it does not matter, if what you are saying is ‘new’ or not. If you have experienced it and can help me experience it, I am ready to learn because I already see, intellectually, the need for it. RICHARD: Good ... but we need to be clear what it is that you want to experience. Nothing that I am on about will you find in the scriptures. Nothing. Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: ‘If the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so good, why has it not worked? How long must we try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising?’ There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Love and its Compassion; Beauty and its Truth have had thousands of years to demonstrate their efficacy ... where is the evidence that they should be persevered with? Where is the Peace On Earth that they promised? Why is it that only 0.0000001 of the population becomes enlightened? Why? Why?? Why??? Clear the work-bench and start fresh. Learn from those that have gone before and move on. RESPONDENT: If you say ‘we need to be clear what it is that you want to experience’. then this is a problem. I really do not know what I am up to. What I can see is that perhaps (again doubt) there is something beyond where I am at present. I see scriptures and enlightened persons saying something about this ‘beyond’ and I doubt/believe (interestingly doubt and believe mean the same thing here) that they may be true. When I read you saying something, I again get a doubt, that may be you are right. Now for me both what you say ‘living in a magical, fairy tale-like world of perfection’ and what scriptures say about ‘Sat Chit Ananda’ are vague and alien. And perhaps that’s why I see not much difference between the two. I am just wondering, however, is it a pre-condition to know what you are going to get. I am an adventurist and enjoy jumping into the unknown. What I understand from both you and the scriptures is that ‘I’ is the problem and it has to die/self-immolate. RICHARD: Yes, the sense of identity (‘I’ and ‘me’ or ‘self’ and ‘Self’ or ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ or ‘aham’ and ‘atman’ and so on) is the spanner in the works. I fail to see how anybody could even contemplate ridding this body of its alien entity without a clear and distinct knowledge of the ultimate goal. This is why I stress the importance of remembering one of your PCE’s (that all people have had at least once in their lives) and avoiding the cultural interpretations of the experience based upon the narcissistic tendency for the instinctual survival of ‘self’ in some (metaphysical) shape or form. Hence my exposé of the altered state of consciousness known as enlightenment. RESPONDENT: I was able to discard the concept of God long back in my early twenties, because of Osho’s teachings but then I was able not to replace it with Osho (as Vineeto did) again because of Osho’s teachings. RICHARD: Then I would hazard a guess that you missed the main thrust of his ‘Teachings’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain said: ‘The only difference between me and you is that I have realised that I am God and you have not’. Editorial note: the exact quote is ‘... my godhood is not in danger, because I don’t care what you think about me. That is not the point at all. It is not that you have made me into a god. This is my declaration; it is not your recognition. If nobody believes in me, then too I am a god. (...) Just by being you are God. (..) When I say God, I mean you ARE God, just by being. It is not a specialisation. Then what is the difference between me and you? The only difference is that I recognise my godhood and you don’t recognise yours’. (‘The First Principle’; Chapter 8; The Profound and the Trivial). RESPONDENT: Again I will not be able to quote in inverted commas, but Osho in his very early lectures warned his disciples against replacing him or any Guru with God. RICHARD: Are you suggesting that he had it correct in the beginning but that he became corrupted as the years rolled by until what he said in the end was the direct opposite to what he said at the beginning? Because he urged his disciples to realise that they are god on numerous occasions. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: Again my interpretations here. I guess Osho saw with experience that so called ‘gnana marga’ is not comprehensible by most people and the ‘bhakti marga’ (the path of devotion) suits most individuals. But I am not a spokesperson of Osho and would not like to explain on behalf of him. RICHARD: But ‘bhakti marga’ is the way or path of divine devotion in any school ... the very word ‘bhakti’ (from the Sanskrit ‘to revere’ or ‘to allot’) means in practice to ‘Surrender to God, Gods or Guru’. Bhakti extends from the simplest expression of devotion to the ego-decimating principle of prapatti, which is total surrender and unconditional submission to God (often coupled with the attitude of personal helplessness, self-effacement and resignation). ‘Bhakti yoga (‘Union through devotion’) for example, is the practice of devotional disciplines, worship, prayer, chanting and singing with the aim of awakening love in the heart and opening oneself to God’s grace. How on earth can you say that Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain ‘warned his disciples against replacing him or any Guru with God’ when he instructed them to surrender to him – Bhagwan The Master Of Masters – in total trust and love? RESPONDENT: If you want me to explain all the sayings of Osho, it will be difficult for me because these things are said to different people in different circumstances. RICHARD: Yet his central message remained true for all people for all time. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: I am no authority on what his central message was. RICHARD: No, but he is. When asked for his message in short he replied: ‘Parinirvana’. Now, contrary to
popular belief, Buddhists are not actively pursuing peace-on-earth per se. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the Buddhist’s Ultimate
Reality is called ‘Parinirvana’ (Complete Nirvana) or the freedom of spirit brought about by release from the body. In the Buddhist analysis of
the human situation, delusions of egocentricity It is pertinent to acknowledge that Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain specifically dictated the words to be carved in marble on his Samadhi: ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet’. RESPONDENT: So I am really surprised how Vineeto being so close to Osho, missed the whole point. RICHARD: Methinks you will find that Vineeto has not missed the point at all ... she has opened both her eyes and has listened with both her ears. I can post many, many quotes of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain where he clearly declares his Divine State ... and urges his sannyasins to do likewise. RESPONDENT: OK, I agree, Vineeto did not miss the point, but perhaps she got it according to her conditioning and I got it according to mine. RICHARD: May I ask? Just what are you agreeing with? If Vineeto ‘got it according to her conditioning’ then she missed the point. Maybe it is you who has missed the point? RESPONDENT: I agreed to the point that may be Vineeto did not miss the point. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... you conditioned your ‘agreement’ with the codicil that she perhaps ‘got it according to her conditioning’. She did not ... she got the point that Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain said: ‘The only difference between me and you is that I have realised that I am God and you have not’. Editorial note: the exact quote is ‘... my godhood is not in danger, because I don’t care what you think about me. That is not the point at all. It is not that you have made me into a god. This is my declaration; it is not your recognition. If nobody believes in me, then too I am a god. (...) Just by being you are God. (..) When I say God, I mean you ARE God, just by being. It is not a specialisation. Then what is the difference between me and you? The only difference is that I recognise my godhood and you don’t recognise yours’. (‘The First Principle’; Chapter 8; The Profound and the Trivial). RESPONDENT: May be I also did not miss the point. RICHARD: Not so ... the point you got was:
RESPONDENT: May be there are two points. RICHARD: No, there is only one point. Vis. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain said:
Editorial note: the exact quote is ‘... my godhood is not in danger, because I don’t care what you think about me. That is not the point at all. It is not that you have made me into a god. This is my declaration; it is not your recognition. If nobody believes in me, then too I am a god. (...) Just by being you are God. (..) When I say God, I mean you ARE God, just by being. It is not a specialisation. Then what is the difference between me and you? The only difference is that I recognise my godhood and you don’t recognise yours’. (‘The First Principle’; Chapter 8; The Profound and the Trivial). RESPONDENT: May be we both missed the point because may be there was no point. RICHARD: Oh, there is a point all right. Like all ‘Awakened Teachers’ of mystical persuasion he is saying the same-same esoteric thing, fundamentally. Which is: narcissism rules supreme. RESPONDENT: It is all vague to discuss because we can’t agree upon what was the point. RICHARD: I am having no trouble ascertaining the point at all ... which is that you are hopelessly wrong in your understanding of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain’s self-proclaimed divinity. RESPONDENT: I think that is where Osho seemed to have failed. Many of his close associates seem to got him so wrong. Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’. There may be many methods how to achieve it. RICHARD: Aye ... except that their ‘here and now’ is a metaphysical (timeless and spaceless) ‘here and now’ (and Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain oft-times used the word ‘herenow’ to distinguish it from the spatial/ temporal location) and it is anywhere but here as this place in infinite space and anywhen but now as this moment in eternal time. And his method for attaining happiness is to end separation by creating the illusion of intimacy through attaining union or oneness as ‘Pure Love’ – what I call Love Agapé – and not through ending the separative self per se. RESPONDENT: Fortunately, what I already understood from ‘here and now’ is exactly what you are telling now. That is, here in this ‘actual’ space and now as this ‘actual’ moment. Well, the word ‘actual’ might have come to my mind after reading you. RICHARD: If, as I have already mentioned, you are referring to the Jain Scriptures, then you will be hard-pushed to
explain how ‘alokakasha’ RESPONDENT: I was not referring to Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Okay, then in whatever scriptures you were referring to when you said ‘Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’’ , they all mean a metaphysical ‘here and now’ ... usually accessed by entering into a trance state somewhat akin to catatonia (clumsily translated as ‘meditation’ in English) wherein both time and space cease to be. RESPONDENT: It is just plain common sense. For me whenever somebody says here and now it has to be here and now in this world otherwise it is already there and then. RICHARD: Aye, the word ‘here’ literally means ‘this physical place in space’ – unless one is a mystic – and the word ‘now’ literally means ‘this moment in time’ ... unless one is spiritual. (Incidentally, the word ‘intelligence’ literally means ‘the human brain thinking and reflecting’ ... unless one is enlightened). * RICHARD: May I ask? What is your goal? RESPONDENT: This is a difficult question to answer. I ask this to myself many times and I do not still know the honest answer. Perhaps I will define my goal to be happy and peaceful without the fear of loosing that happiness and peace. It is not that I am not interested in peace on earth. But I see no way I can make that happen and not even sure if that is possible. That’s why I prefer to keep that out of my goal. RICHARD: May I suggest that you re-read this paragraph of yours and you will see that although your goal is ‘to be
happy and peaceful’ RESPONDENT: I still don’t understand the meaning of individual peace on earth. Does that mean that I will not be able to see the agony of the fellow human beings ? RICHARD: 6.0 billion human beings are living a life marred by agony ... and infected by animosity, too, do not forget. Yet all agony and animosity are feelings and are not, therefore, actual. They may be real – very real at times – but they are not actual. The direct results of having these feelings – these emotions and passions and calentures – are acted out in this actual world in the form of wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, child abuse, suicides and so on ... but all these actions are unnecessary. They all stem from feelings and feelings – emotions and passions and calentures – are self-induced (‘I’ am passion and passion is ‘me’) and, as such, can be eliminated. Then there is peace-on-earth ... why would anyone wish to prolong suffering? You will be able to see the effects of your fellow human beings’ agony and animosity ... but you will not be able to feel it, for it exists only in the psyche. There is no malice and sorrow here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: But I don’t understand what makes Richard so confident that his method will work. The statement ‘I am under no illusion that global peace and tranquillity will eventuate before I am on my death-bed; I do not suffer from the delusion that I can effect a sweeping change to the lot of all human beings’ looks like another messianic chore. On a re-thought, I take back this allegation. This may be genuine humility. RICHARD: All humility is nothing but the ego being very, very clever ... it is but a product of a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity called ego. One of the chief attributes of a freedom from a ‘self’ or a ‘Self’ and from believing in a ‘God’ and a ‘Greater Reality’, is a completeness ... an absence of the need to control a wayward ‘I’ with moralistic injunctions. Personally I have no humility whatsoever and, of course, neither am I proud. When one sees that pride and humility are standing in the way of freedom from all self-centred activity, something astounding occurs. The opposites vanish. I am simply here where I have always been ... and pride, with its companion in arms, humility, has disappeared along with all the other feelings. RESPONDENT: To me humility is a virtue and proud is not. RICHARD: Humility is merely the antidote to pride ... you cannot have one without the other. Where is the need to be humble unless you are first proud? Therefore, being humble is merely pride standing on its head ... and one is proud of being virtuous. RESPONDENT: I understand what you say. Humility is definitely a form of pride. But till I can give up both pride and humility, I will rather stick with humility. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: But I have absolutely no problem if you are proud of your achievement. RICHARD: Yet I have already written (above) that I have neither pride nor humility. Besides, I can freely say that I, as I am today, did nothing to become free of the Human Condition. It was ‘I’ that did all the work ... ‘I’ self-immolated. And I am very pleased that ‘I’ did that. I am not proud because I did nothing to earn commendation ... it was ‘I’ that made this possible. RESPONDENT: Sorry for confusing myself. I thought, you told that you are proud of your achievements, but I was wrong. RICHARD: I made such a fool of myself for eleven years that I could not have any pride even if I wanted too! RESPONDENT: Each individual is different. RICHARD: In what way different? Everyone has the same blue-print ... human beings are all born with the same basic
instincts like fear and aggression and nurture and desire and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples
throughout the world thus have the same emotions and passions. There is no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and
forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion
or passion may be, they all have a global incidence. The same applies to cerebral activity like imagination, conceptualisation, hypothesising,
believing and so forth. Once again, ubiquitous in its occurrence. As for psychic phenomena like prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination RESPONDENT: Yes, the anger itself may be same, but when it gets manifested in an individual it takes different forms for example violence, repression, sorrow etc. So what makes anger to take different forms? I think it is the individual (which is nothing but a complex of feeling, beliefs, instincts etc.). RICHARD: Are you saying that anger takes on 6.0 billion different forms? There are slight variations according to cultural conditioning and one’s personal upbringing, but the disparity is minuscule ... the manifestation of anger has a remarkable correspondence globally. This is beneficial news ... it will help you to cease taking it all so personally. It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No. 4. RESPONDENT: I guess, if at all I would be able to have experience like yours, I would be filled with gratitude, not towards anybody but just plain gratitude. But then, I can not predict the future. May be my thinking would change. RICHARD: Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. RESPONDENT: Most of what you say remain just words till ‘I’ is still there. In my world, I would prefer gratitude to resentment because it has worked for me so far. RICHARD: How? RESPONDENT: I am still not able to dedicate myself to peace on earth. But if you say annihilate ‘I’ and there will be peace on earth, I am ready for it. But in that case for me peace on earth would just be a by-product. RICHARD: I would be very interested as to why you would want to annihilate ‘I’ ... yet not dedicate yourself to peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I think I answered this question earlier in this mail. However I want to understand this dedication. Why would anybody dedicate himself to anything? I think it would be mostly because of feelings, emotions, attachment, greed, etc., towards that thing. If I understand you correctly you don’t have those in actual world. So why in actual world one dedicates himself to peace on earth ? RICHARD: I was talking of you living there in the ‘real-world’, not me, here in this actual world ... I am already always living peace-on-earth. I was talking, out of experience, just what it took for this individual peace-on-earth to become apparent. The ‘I’ that inhabited this body dedicated ‘himself’ to ensuring that this would occur ... and ‘he’ self-immolated, psychologically and psychically. It was the adventure of a life-time for ‘him’ ... ‘he’ went out in a blaze of glory. It is so lovely to dedicate yourself to something so worthwhile ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! RESPONDENT: I must acknowledge here, that this is the first time I am having any direct communication with somebody who claims to have Enlightened (well, beyond enlightened). This is a good feeling. I am grateful to you (I know you don’t like it, but that is how I am, at least at present). RICHARD: Okay ... but do watch out for gratitude because the warm fuzzy feeling can lead to love. Interestingly, Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain told his disciples to be grateful to existence ... and to existence for sending a master. RESPONDENT: Yes, I understand that warm fuzzy feeling because I experience it. But why should I leave it till I get something better? RICHARD: Because it is dangerous ... 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone ... not to mention all the other wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides. RESPONDENT: You defined the actual world as the one which can be sensed by the physical senses: [Richard]: ‘For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required (to a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this page is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs’. [unquote]. But at another place you say: [quote]: ‘When one lives in this actual freedom that I talk about, one is living in a magical, fairy tale-like world of perfection and purity the likes of which makes it impossible to believe it can exist here on earth’. [unquote]. How is it if the actual world is a magical, fairy tale-like for you and I can not verify it by my sense-organs. You can say that it is because my ‘I’ still exists and hinders the ‘actual’ view. But is not the same argument given for having different real worlds? RICHARD: No, it is not the same argument because the metaphysical ‘Greater Reality’ is not accessible by the senses ever. When ‘I’ as ego dies, the ‘Greater Reality’ is an ‘inner’ seeing only ... it exists in the psyche. Whereas this actual world is a sensate world. RESPONDENT: So the difference is that I will be able to sense the actual world once I am there! What I heard about ‘Greater Reality’ is that one can not express it in words. But I guess, as the actual world is sensed by the physical senses, one should be able to express the experience too. I think I am getting a glance of the difference. RICHARD: Oh yes, I describe it over and over again ... the English language has so many nuances of expression. But the point of what I was saying (in the quotes you posted of mine above) is that this ‘magical, fairy tale-like world of perfection and purity’ cannot be believed to exist ... unlike the ‘Greater Reality’ ... which can only be believed. RESPONDENT: After I wrote my comments on the earlier 3 parts of the e-mail yesterday and saved as draft, I was thinking about the newness issue of the actual world. Then this morning suddenly I got an insight (or is it an insight ?). I saw myself made of beliefs, feelings, emotions etc. So anything which is not this ‘I’ has to be new for if it is not new it would still be part of ‘me’. RICHARD: Excellent ... nothing of ‘you’ will remain. Nothing. RESPONDENT: Whether I will get into actual world or not by your method, but whenever ‘I’ cease to exist, whatever unfolds, has to be completely new, completely fresh with no shadow of the old. RICHARD: Yes, this moment is never-to-be-repeated ... thus it is ever-fresh and has to be visited again and again (unless one lives here all the time). One cannot re-visit it in memory ... as one can in the affective world’s reverie and nostalgia. Thus it is ever-perfect and impeccable in its purity. Nothing dirty can get in ... hence it needs no guarding. RESPONDENT: Then I tried to see myself in the responses I have written in earlier 3 parts without correcting them. I think it helps. RICHARD: Good ... maybe my responses do something to emphasise your insight? RESPONDENT: Now coming to the method. I tried asking ‘‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. Most of the time I get the answer ‘happy’, or when I stress upon ‘this moment’, I get blank with no answer, because at this moment there is no feeling. The feeling is only in the moment just passed by. But still ‘I’ do not have that experience all the time. Because ‘I’ is the heap of all the passed moments! RICHARD: I will endorse Vineeto’s response to this part. Viz.:
I cannot add anything more informative and useful than that at this moment.
RESPONDENT: Richard, sorry for jumping to this question before replying to our ongoing long correspondence. I want to know what does ‘happiness’ mean to you. To be honest, to me it still is a feeling. I ask this question in relation to your post to No. 3 in which you wrote: [Richard]: ‘A happy and harmless person has a much better chance of precipitating a PCE ... which is the essential pre-requisite for an actual freedom (otherwise this is all theory). It goes without saying, surely, that a grumpy person locks themselves out of being here ... now’. [endquote]. Which means that being ‘happy and harmless’ is a pre-requisite for actual freedom (at least it gives better chances). So it is very important to know what is this happiness which is required before one even attempts for actual freedom. RICHARD: There is nothing mysterious going on here, it is only a matter of how the English language is structured ... try reading it this way:
Nevertheless, there is more to it than that: the phrase ‘He is an angry person’ or ‘She is an hysterical person’ refers to someone who is more prone to be angry or hysterical – and more extreme in their anger and hysteria – than the average person. Likewise: ‘He is a bully’ or ‘She is a bitch’ refers to a person who displays an attitude and behaviour that automatically classifies them as being more extreme than the average person. So when I write ‘a happy and harmless person’ I am indicating someone who is more extreme in their happiness and harmlessness than the average ... similarly ‘a grumpy person’ indicates someone more extreme in feeling grumpy than the average person (and please do not ask me to define ‘average’ ... because have you ever realised that half the people that you know are necessarily below average!). Perhaps this is an excellent opportunity to clarify this whole issue about feelings. Often people who read about actual freedom gain the impression that I am asking people to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire affective faculty is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the psyche itself is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings. It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others (‘repressed’ not ‘suppressed’). In a PCE the feelings play no part at all – the self is in abeyance – but can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an ASC ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings. What actualism – the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – is on about is a ‘virtual freedom’ (which is not to be confused with cyber-space’s ‘virtual reality’) wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. I make this very clear in my writing:
(These paragraphs quoted can be accessed for free on my Web page under the title: ‘This Moment of Being Alive’). Also, you may find the following exchange from a few weeks ago on ‘The Actual Freedom Mailing List’ helpful:
RESPONDENT: For you, it [happiness] definitely is not [a feeling]. So what is it? Can it be sensed by physical senses? Do you see, smell, hear or touch happiness? RICHARD: I have not felt happy for years and years ... here lies perfection. Living here in this actual world there is
a seeing, smelling, touching, tasting and hearing of the purity of the infinitude of this material universe for the twenty four hours of the day.
It is a sensate experiencing – apperceptive awareness – and cannot be felt affectively. If one minimises the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings
(as explained above) and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and
so on – in conjunction with sensuousness, then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness. It is a win/win situation.
RESPONDENT: Richard, I have been thinking about virtual freedom in last days. I have some logical problem. You have clearly said that feeling happy and harmless most of the time is helpful for one to have actual freedom becoming apparent. RICHARD: Yes, it goes without saying, surely, that a grumpy person locks themselves out of being here ... now. RESPONDENT: But I have also read on the web-site that the essential ingredient for success (on this path of actualism) is a burning discontent with your life as it is. (May be these are Peter’s words and not yours). RICHARD: Indeed, if one is not dissatisfied with life in the real world and wanting to be free then one would not be reading these web-pages ... would they? That is, one would surely have to be discontented in order to have the desire to be free ... do you not agree? Freedom is something that one wants like one has never wanted anything before – this entire process of digging into one’s psyche (which is the human psyche) is the most mammoth challenge one could ever take on – and is not something that would appeal to the desultory dabbler. RESPONDENT: When I try to comprehend it I get this meaning: The burning discontent is necessary to attain virtual freedom, but after once one is in virtual freedom, the burning discontent is no more possible (and no more necessary). Do you agree? RICHARD: In my personal experience in 1981, once I was fully launched on the one-way trip to freedom, discontent was left far, far behind. I said YES to life, the universe and what it was to be a human being – I embraced death – and the core resentment (as epitomised in the phrase ‘I didn’t ask to be born’) was eliminated upon the realisation that perfection was already always here ... now. I became as happy and as harmless as was humanly possible for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes of the day ... this state is what the term ‘virtual freedom’ was drawn out of. At the time I considered that I had discovered the secret of living life successfully ... and boy oh boy, was I in for a surprise when it became apparent that there was more to come. Much, much more. ‘I’ did not know what it was to die ... in the peak experiences ‘I’ merely went into abeyance. RESPONDENT: Now the next question. If there is no discontent and one is happy most of the time in virtual freedom what keeps one still going towards actual freedom? RICHARD: Curiosity, fascination and what amounts to an obsession with finding out about oneself, about life, about the universe and about just what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. All this and more becomes obvious the further one proceeds ... one is inextricably drawn towards one’s destiny. It is intrinsically impelling, exciting, exhilarating, thrilling ... one is living life fully. And it keeps on becoming better and better ... one is constantly amazed at the magical quality of life itself. One experiences an ever-increasing excellence again and again ... and asks: ‘How can best get better?’ Yet it does ... and there is more ... and more ... and more. RESPONDENT: If your answer is the memory of peak experience, then I would say that even in virtual freedom one is discontent with the life as it is, maybe at more subtle level, and then this is no virtual freedom and hence the logical flaw. RICHARD: Yet ‘virtual’ means ‘almost as good as’ or ‘nearly the same as’ or ‘in effect comparable to’
and so on Nevertheless, I cannot recall any discontent whatsoever in 1981 ... yet I wished to go all the way. I would not settle for second-best – having experienced the best on numerous occasions – and there was also the pressing matter of all the suffering of my fellow human beings. All the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides had impinged themselves indelibly upon my consciousness and provided the necessary ‘back pressure’ to encourage me to proceed poste-haste. Also, logic has its uses in mathematical and mechanical areas of life – human’s creature comforts are dependent upon it – but I have yet to meet a logician who enjoys and appreciates virtually each moment again and essentially lives in peace and harmony with a person of the other gender, day after day after day, through the application of logic to the problem of the human condition. Sensible reason and naiveté coupled with commonsense – practical, down-to-earth, sensitive rationality – triumphs over logic any day. For example:
Now, this is simplistic logic, I know ... but it illustrates that even scientists have to use commonsense when it comes time to move from pure science to applied science. RESPONDENT: Secondly what about a person who has no memory of PCE. Is he/she in danger of getting trapped in virtual freedom itself as the ultimate? RICHARD: If one cannot remember a PCE then one is not in virtual freedom ... it simply cannot work that way. The PCE is vital ... otherwise one is left no alternative to believing the words and writings of actualism. And if one does so believe, then the best one can do is live in some dream-world fantasy conjured up out of imagination ... and fondly believe it to be the ultimate, yes. RESPONDENT: Then would you suggest that such a person should not try for virtual freedom before having a PCE? RICHARD: Indeed, I can only suggest ... what another does with my suggestions is, of course, entirely up to them. It is they who either reap the rewards or pay the consequences for any action or inaction that they may or may not do. I can but offer tips, hints, pointers, clues – inside information – and in my experience I discovered that in order to shift from the self-centred licentiousness to a self-less sensuousness one must have confidence in the ultimate beneficence of the universe. This confidence – this surety – is gained from the PCE wherein life is seen and experienced to be already perfect and innocent ... one is physically experiencing first-hand, albeit temporarily, this actual world – a spontaneously benevolent world – that the normal world (the real world or reality) is pasted over. RESPONDENT: Or is it that virtual freedom may help in having a PCE? RICHARD: When one remembers a PCE – or precipitates another – then one is well on the way to freedom ... this is what actualism is all about. Scattered along the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom are as many PCE’s as one may need ... repeated peak experiences may very well be brought about on maybe a daily basis with constant application of reflective and fascinated contemplation. In such pure contemplation, ‘I’ cease seeing and seeing takes place of its own accord. ‘I’ can never be here now in this actual world for ‘I’ am an interloper, an alien in psychic possession of the body. ‘I’ do not belong here. All this is impossible to imagine which is why it is essential to be confident that the actual world does exist. This confidence is born out of knowing, which is derived from the PCE, and is an essential ingredient to ensure success. One does not have to generate confidence oneself – as the religions require of one with regard to their blind faith – the purity of the actual world bestows this confidence upon one. The experience of purity is a benefaction. Out of this blessing comes pure intent, which will consistently guide one through daily life, gently ushering in an increasing ease and generosity of character. With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more self-less. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric. Eventually the moment comes wherein something definitive happens, physically, inside the brain and ‘I’ am nevermore. ‘Being’ ceases – it was only a psychic apparition anyway – and war is over, forever, in one human being.
CORRESPONDENT No. 4 (Part Two) RETURN TO THE ACTUAL FREEDOM MAILING LIST 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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