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Richard’s Correspondence On The Actual Freedom Mailing List with Correspondent No. 44
RESPONDENT: Richard, in this email to Respondent No. 50 RICHARD: For what it is worth I can assure you that I am no different now than before ... indeed I wrote that e-mail at the same time I wrote the one to you and posted them one after the other. Maybe what you feel depends upon what mood you are in when you read my e-mails?
RESPONDENT: Richard, is useless to try to discuss for ever and ever on the same subject. RICHARD: Am I to take it then that you are not going to tell me just what it is about Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s words that you find beautiful and thus worthy of commendation? RESPONDENT: You are conditioned by your own freedom from the human condition. RICHARD: If to be free from the human condition is to be conditioned by that very freedom from the human condition then we may as well all pack up our pencils and paper and go home. There are times when I am so pleased not to be a logician ... and this is one of them. RESPONDENT: So whatever I tell you you will defend your points of view and me mine ones. RICHARD: What I write about life here in this actual world is a description coming immediately from the direct experience of this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space ... there is this which is happening and the words form themselves in accord to the very thing being referred to as it is occurring – they are coming directly out of actuality – and not from some nebulous ‘points of view’ such as you would have be the case. Just so that there is no misunderstanding: nothing I write about life here in this actual world are viewpoints or views either ... or stances, perspectives, standpoints, positions, world-views, mind-sets, states-of-mind, frames-of-mind, opinions, ideas, beliefs, concepts, conjectures, speculations, assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, surmises, inferences, judgements, intellectualisations, imaginations, posits, images, analyses, or any other of the 101 ways of dismissing a direct report of what it is to be actually free from the human condition you may come up with. RESPONDENT: Let’s forget the subject altogether and put it under a new prospective. RICHARD: If you are proposing to forget the subject of your (supposed) immortality – whilst putting it under a new prospective – then by all means go ahead ... it is your subject, when all is said and done, to do what you will with. RESPONDENT: I was wondering the other time, is such a thing like the human condition, as you are using to call it? RICHARD: This is how I have described it on The Actual Freedom Trust web site: the term ‘human condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. I am at a bit of a loss as why you would wonder if there is such a thing when it is so self-evident. RESPONDENT: It might be that what you call the human condition does not exist at all. RICHARD: If I may point out? That term existed long before I was born so there is no need to say it is what I call it. RESPONDENT: May be is just social condition. RICHARD: Just for starters: in order to say this you have to deny the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are the root cause of all the ills of humankind. The genetically inherited passions – such as fear and aggression (the savage side) and nurture and desire (the tender side) – give rise to malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion: these negative and positive feelings are intrinsically connected and constitute what is known as the human condition. RESPONDENT: I give some examples: we are leaned from our society to give some money to the beggar some money and they told us since children that this is a good thing. If they were told us when we see a beggar to give him a kick, that is what we should do. Is this human condition or social condition? RICHARD: Given that you said ‘learned from society’ and ‘they told us’ and ‘they were told us’ then either giving money to or kicking a beggar is human conditioning, an inculcation of societal values ... which is part and parcel of the socialising process. RESPONDENT: In India for example the sannyasins, the hermits are treated nicely. Here in Europe nobody gives a shit about them, they see them like failed people, losers, etc. Is this a human condition, or a social one? RICHARD: Again it is conditioning, socialisation ... in an extreme sense it could be called brainwashing. RESPONDENT: Everything is created by thought. RICHARD: Not everything, no. RESPONDENT: So is better to speak about thought condition. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler. RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler. RESPONDENT: Right. RICHARD: I am pleased that you agree that the feelings create the feeler. RESPONDENT: By saying that thought is creating the thinker you are including everything. RICHARD: No, you are the one that is including everything by saying that ... not me. RESPONDENT: Everything like the observing and the observer, the judging and the judger, the feelings and the feeler, everything is another way to describe the thought and the thinker. RICHARD: So when you said ‘right’ (further above) you did not mean it to be taken literally, eh? RESPONDENT: So by eliminating the thinker who is one illusion created by thought, does not mean that you are eliminating thought altogether. The same seems reasonable to say that by eliminating the feeler does not mean that you are eliminating the feelings. RICHARD: We have had this discussion before:
And:
* RESPONDENT: There are not good and bad feelings. RICHARD: The words ‘good feelings’ – which refer to the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) – and the words ‘bad feelings’ – which refer to the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – are but a way of describing the effect of those feelings both on oneself and others. Sometimes they are called the positive and negative feelings. RESPONDENT: Feelings are feelings. RICHARD: And a rose is a rose ... tautology can be so trite. RESPONDENT: The separation in good and bad are created by the feeler the ego. RICHARD: What separation? Just because love and hate, for example, are polar opposites does not mean they not complimentary poles ... indeed, one of the appellations used to describe the integration of the divine/ diabolical divide upon transcendence, wherein the opposites unite without ceasing to be themselves, is the phrase ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ (coincidence of opposites). Thus while it can be argued that the ego creates an artificial split (dichotomy) it is also so that in the soul they are united. RESPONDENT: If the feeler is not there there are not bad and good feelings. RICHARD: As where there is no feeler there are no feelings the question of good and bad (or positive and negative) is moot. * RESPONDENT: Feelings are absolutely important. RICHARD: Speaking from the on-going experiencing, for over a decade now, of living life sans the feelings you say are ‘absolutely important’ I can unequivocally testify that operating and functioning in the everyday world of people, things and events freed of the entire affective faculty (and thus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) is a breeze. You see, there is a distinct difference between theorising about actuality and actuality itself. RESPONDENT: They had formed in the human brain before the language. RICHARD: The affective feelings exist prior to cognition (and thus language) ... yes. RESPONDENT: The are controlled by the frontal lobes and also by the brain stem. RICHARD: I am pleased to see you have finally acknowledged the brain-stem ... all sentient beings have a brain-stem (no matter how rudimentary), whereas not all sentient beings have a brain (let alone a neo-cortex), and all sentient beings have affective feelings (no matter how rudimentary they may be). RESPONDENT: One alteration in the frontal lobs or in brain stem, the so called primitive brain, can alter the feelings, but this does not mean than is anything bad with feelings. RICHARD: I fail to see the point you are making here. * RESPONDENT: I think you have feelings. What made you put your so called discovery on the web? RICHARD: You have asked a similar question before:
RESPONDENT: Why you want as you say to help your human fellows? RICHARD: Because of fellowship regard ... like species recognises like species throughout the animal kingdom. RESPONDENT: What motivated you for that? RICHARD: Have you never heard of what is sometimes called ‘Theory Of Mind’ RESPONDENT: Is not a feeling one affection? RICHARD: If by this you mean do I have a feeling of affection for my fellow human beings then it may be useful for me to explain that, not only do I have no feeling of affection at all, I do not experience any affective feelings whatsoever. This is because I do not have any anywhere in this body at all ... this body lost that faculty entirely when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself) became extinct. Literally I feel nothing at all. RESPONDENT: If no then you want to be in the encyclopaedias, which is another feeling. RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to say it again for emphasis: literally I feel nothing at all. * RESPONDENT: To my opinion you were never enlightened, you were fooling your self, with a state of self hypnosis. Other ways why you moved from there? RICHARD: Because I experientially found it wanting (which is a polite way of saying it sucks big-time). RESPONDENT: After that you put all the teachers in the same packet. RICHARD: If by this you mean all the seers, sages, masters, gurus, and so on, who have attained spiritual enlightenment ... then: yes. RESPONDENT: There are teachers and teachers, doctors and doctors, scientists and scientists, why to put everybody in the same packet? RICHARD: But I do not put everyone in the same packet ... that is what you are making out. RESPONDENT: The are hoaxes, frauds and genius in every area in life. RICHARD: Indeed ... when I speak of seers, sages, masters, gurus, and so on, I am referring to the enlightened ones. * RESPONDENT: You said in your email that you are using the word love in the same way JK uses it. How you know it? RICHARD: Experientially ... it is the self-same experience (like recognises like). RESPONDENT: JK never defined love. RICHARD: Hmm ... what is this then? Viz.:
He is unambiguously saying that love is ‘a total feeling’ and a ‘complete purity of feeling’ ... if that is not defining it then I would like to know what is. RESPONDENT: Was defining not love. RICHARD: What about this then? Viz.:
RESPONDENT: He was saying that you can’t define love. RICHARD: Not only did he define it he also delineated where it comes from (sorrow). Viz.:
He is most explicit that if you escape from passion (he specifically says the root meaning of sorrow is passion) you lose that quality ... and that out of that quality comes compassion (and only then you will begin to understand what it means to love). And once that happens this happens:
Which is why he can say this:
You may recall this exchange:
Does it all start to make sense now? RESPONDENT: How you know then what was he meaning? RICHARD: Again, it is an experiential matter ... I only provide quotes (such as above) for people who have not experienced it for themselves. RESPONDENT: Did you passed through this experience of love, and then you are saying that it does not exist? RICHARD: No, I was that – to be enlightened is to be love – and when ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) ‘self’-immolated for the benefit of this body and that body and every body the love that it was also ceased to exist. RESPONDENT: If does not exist how possibly you had any experience of love? RICHARD: Just because it has no existence here in this actual world it does not mean it has no existence in the real-world (the world of the human psyche). RESPONDENT: How can you experience something that does not exist? RICHARD: Is this a before or an after question? RESPONDENT: If you never experienced though how can you tell that you are using it the same way he did? RICHARD: As it is you who is saying I never experienced it I will leave that for you to mull over. RESPONDENT: You see the absurdity here? RICHARD: No ... and that is because there is none (other than the one you invented). RESPONDENT: For him was very real, for you does not exist and you still say you both are using the word with the same meaning. RICHARD: For me it was very real ... more real than anything else, in fact, to the point that there was nothing but love: love was everything and everything was love; love was all and all was love; love was it and it was love – and it was love’s compassion which poured forth endlessly, unstoppable, for all suffering sentient beings. RESPONDENT: Is this a conundrum, or something else? RICHARD: Neither ... that is what you are making of it all. * RESPONDENT: If you find something real, something that is truth, then don’t be afraid, nobody can take it from you. Is yours. It is not necessary to try to put down other people for your to be the one who is right. RICHARD: First, I have not found something ‘real’ I have found what is actual; second, this which is actual is not ‘truth’ it is fact; third, there is no fear here in this actual world so you can cease projecting your ‘don’t be afraid’ feelings onto me; fourth, as it is the universe itself which is actual to say ‘nobody can take it from you’ is simply silliness operating; fifth, this actual world is not mine it was here long before I was born and will be here long after I die; sixth, I do not ‘try to put down other people’ I report my experience and set the record straight wherever necessary ... and, lastly, this which is actual is neither ‘right’ nor wrong it simply is so. RESPONDENT: JK for example never put down other people for over-imposing his teachings. When they were asking him about Aristotle or Gandhi for example he was saying live other people let’s see together for our self. They may be right (the other people) but what good for you if a have a steak to eat and you don’t have a piece of bread? RICHARD: What Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti did is his business ... as he was not free from the human condition there is no correspondence betwixt his modus operandi and mine. * RESPONDENT: Thought has a tremendous effect on our nervous system. RICHARD: Thought has no deleterious effect whatsoever on this nervous system ... thoughts are sparkling, coruscating. RESPONDENT: So I am asking you exist such a thing like human condition or monkey condition (because they have found that some species of monkeys have a sense of self)? RICHARD: yes, there is such a thing as the human condition ... but not here in this actual world. There is evidence that the chimpanzee has self-consciousness – not the monkey – and as chimpanzees have been observed to have fear, aggression, territoriality, civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, nurture, grief, group ostracism, bonding, desire, and so on, they do indeed have their own condition. When thought – and thus intelligence – arises in them they will have the means to deal with it. RESPONDENT: Or is just a matter of social conditioning? RICHARD: All human conditioning – which is part of the socialising process – is a well-meant endeavour to somewhat ameliorate the effects of the human condition. RESPONDENT: A splitting of thought creating the thinker, the me, the ego, so to give continuity to itself? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: And that what you are doing, you are living in continuity 24 hours/day 365 days/year without feelings, is not boring? RICHARD: Everything is totally new here in this actual world – thus always novel – and novelty can never be boring.
RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler. RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler. RESPONDENT: So it seems logical to me that the feelings, must exist prior of the feeler, because the creator must exist prior to its creation, right? RICHARD: I would not put it that way – ‘the creator’ and ‘its creation’ – as it conjures up an impression of a cause separate from its effect whereas, if you were to intimately examine this, feeling it out for yourself, you will find that you are your feelings (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). In hindsight it probably would have been better if I had never baldly said that the feelings *create* the feeler in the e-mail you refer to (further above) as I usually say the feelings *form* themselves into the feeler (as a feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’) as that better describes the process. For example:
I put it in that expressive way because it is not possible to separate out the feeler from the feelings it is ... just as it is impossible to separate the whirlpool or the eddy – the vortex – from the swirling stuff which is the cause of it (a whirlpool or an eddy – a vortex – of water or air, for example, is the very swirling water or air as the one is not distinct from the other) ... hence ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: So the feelings are innative to the human being, that means they are actual. Instead the feeler is a real entity, but not actual. RICHARD: Again I would not put it that way ... just because the genetic-inheritance of the instinctual passions is actual – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), being a nucleic acid in which the sugar component is deoxyribose, is a chemical substance – does not necessarily mean that a feeling engendered by that genetic software programme, such as the feeling of fear for example, is actual – any more than the fearer it automatically forms itself into by its very occurrence is actual – especially as you go on to say that the feeler is a real entity but not actual (which implies that the fearer is not the fear – as in ‘I’ am *not* ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are *not* ‘me’ – which, at the very least, smacks of denial if not detachment/disassociation or even full-blown disidentification from one’s roots). Now, I could go on from this to say that the feeling is a movement, a motion, and not a thing, as there is no such happening as a stationary (static) feeling and that it is this very movement or motion of the feeling in action when it occurs which automatically forms the feeler (such as in the whirlpool of water/air analogy above) but, again, it would be far more fruitful if you were to intimately examine all this, by feeling it out for yourself rather than just thinking about it, and if you were to actually do so – literally feel it for yourself – you will surely find out, just as ‘I’ did all those years ago, that you are your feelings (as in ‘I’ *am* ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (as in ‘my’ feelings *are* ‘me’). The actualism method is an experiential method ... not an intellectual method (an analytical method, a psychological method, a philosophical method) or any other self-preserving method of inaction. RESPONDENT: So we have reality and actuality. Reality comes from the Latin word ‘res’, which means thing. A thing is manmade. RICHARD: Not necessarily ... the word ‘thing’ is a generic word and can refer to any object/
entity whether geological/ biological or manufactured/fabricated ... whatever has a discrete, independent existence (whether it be
material or immaterial as in concrete or abstract/ physical or metaphysical) and is not a relation or a function, and so on, is a
thing It is a very wide-ranging word. RESPONDENT: And man can not do anything without thought and feelings. Right? RICHARD: No, I have been doing everything for over a decade now sans feelings ... and, just like anybody else, do many things without thought (scratching an itch, for instance, or walking). A case could probably be made that the majority of things one does are done on auto-pilot. RESPONDENT: A tree is not man made, so is a tree a thing or a no-thing? RICHARD: A tree is a thing ... all objects/entities are things. RESPONDENT: To make a thing we use ingredients from nature, like wood, iron, etc., but we put them together with factual thought. So a table, a chair, a car are things. Trees, mountains, animals, are not. Right? RICHARD: No, trees, mountains, animals are things ... just as pieces of wood, lumps of iron, and so on, are. * RESPONDENT: In the moment the thinker as you say arises out of the feeler, then also the thinker as a by-product of a real but not actual entity, must have also the same characteristics. So feeler and thinker exist both in the reality field, but not in the actuality field. RICHARD: Yes, and the reality field, to use your terminology, is primarily an affective field ... where the affective faculty (and thus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) are non-existent there is only actuality. RESPONDENT: Now in Greek language actuality means something that take place now. I can see the same is valid also for the English language, because I suppose it must come from act, acting and somebody can act only now in the present moment. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: I can not act yesterday or tomorrow. RICHARD: Indeed not ... only this moment is actual (the past was actual while it was happening and the future will be actual when it happens but neither of them are actual now). RESPONDENT: So when we speak about actual freedom, must implies one freedom that must take place now, not tomorrow, not through time. RICHARD: But everything which happens takes place now ... there is nothing unusual about the break-through into an actual freedom from the human condition having to take place ‘now, not tomorrow, not through time’. RESPONDENT: Because if must take place through time, then in this time thought operates and we are felling to the reality realm. And then is not any more actuality. RICHARD: It has nothing to do with thought operating through time – anymore than it has anything to do with feeling operating through time for that matter – because it is only when the reality realm, to use your terminology, ceases to exist that actuality becomes apparent ... and that only happens when ‘I’/‘me’ cease to exist. This actual world – actuality – is here already (always has been and always will be) and all that has been going wrong, as it were, is that ‘I’ have been pasting ‘my’ affective inner world over the top of actuality as a veneer ... what ‘I’ call the outer world is nothing other than ‘my’ affective reality. Put succinctly: that outer world exists only in the human psyche. * RESPONDENT: In reality exist dualism, because reality is under thought’s government. RICHARD: No, ‘reality’ is primarily an affective reality, and as the affections have polar opposites (the love/hate dichotomy for instance), any dualism which exists only exists because ‘reality’ is affective at root ... feeling-fed thought merely aids and abets by putting it all into word-pictures. RESPONDENT: In actuality where everything is facts duality can not exist, because a fact has not opposite. Right? RICHARD: Correct. A fact is neither right nor wrong ... a fact is so. RESPONDENT: In actuality the bad is not opposite of the good, because what is, is. RICHARD: There is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ here in this actual world ... actuality is a sensate world, not an affective world. RESPONDENT: That means if the one exist and is a fact the other does not exist. RICHARD: If you are speaking of something like, for example, ‘it is raining’ then the opposite – ‘it is not raining’ – obviously does not exist. RESPONDENT: The opposites exist in thought. RICHARD: Only in feeling-fed thought (the affections imbue and colour the thought with its polar opposites). RESPONDENT: In actuality if is dark, is dark, where is place for light. Dark is the absolute fact and the same is valid for light. When there is light, where is the dark, light is the absolute fact. RICHARD: Yes, this is the equivalent to the ‘it is raining’/‘it is not raining’ example I provided (above) ... but that everyday type of phenomenon is not what is under scrutiny here ... we are talking of the real-world (the world of the human psyche) which is a feeling-reality. RESPONDENT: So one immediate, sudden mutation must take place now to jump from reality to actuality. Is logical. I can see it around me. A child for example who crawls out of the blue walks. He can not crawls and walk in the same moment. RICHARD: Again it is that reality ceases to exist, when identity becomes extinct, and actuality becomes apparent ... whereas in your example, even though the crawling has ceased and the walking is what is happening, the child which crawled is the child which walks (as in the child still exists). * RESPONDENT: Now using a method, what does this implies. A method is a system one imitation one methodology. Like in science, produces repeatable phenomena. Do this under these circumstances and you will have this effect. Science is reality man made. RICHARD: If by this you mean that science is observing how things operate in the physical world – as in ‘this event’ always precedes ‘that event’ (cause and effect) – and co-opting this causality for human use then ... yes. RESPONDENT: Is good for reality, (the method) to learn how to play piano for example, but someone will always be in the piano realm, he will improve, but always in the piano area. Even if he plays piano for he rest of his life, might become famous, but always in the piano area. RICHARD: As in the amateur (a tyro piano player) becoming the expert (an acclaimed concert pianist) it is obviously always in the piano area. RESPONDENT: A method takes time, little by little, but in the meanwhile we are the same no? RICHARD: If you are now referring to the actualism method then obviously, at root, nothing changes until the ultimate event ... yet as what happens along the way is way beyond normal human expectations of what is humanly possible it is not to be sneezed at. RESPONDENT: I unhappy and I try to be happy ... RICHARD: I interject here only to point out that you are not talking about the actualism method in those eight words but some other method. RESPONDENT: ... (is not possible anyway, because is a movement of unhappiness and whatever movement unhappiness makes, must axiomatically be unhappiness. From one orange I will take orange juice not lemon juice) but in the meantime I continue to be unhappy. I go to bed unhappy and I wake unhappy. That’s why seems to me that one out of time, I mean in the now, mutation must take place. To try to be happy is to not see and involve with my unhappiness. How the hell I can deal with something if I don’t face it, but I am concentrate to its opposite, that does not exist? RICHARD: You may find a review of this exchange helpful:
RESPONDENT: If I end unhappiness by understanding it, is then happiness replacing its ex place or something new that I had never tasted? RICHARD: Has a re-read of the above exchange answered your query? If so, the following might now make sense:
Put simply: one is not on one’s own in this, the adventure of a lifetime, as the entire universe is with one who would go all the way. RESPONDENT: Because if happiness takes the place of unhappiness there is as if I made a hole in the water. I am again in my imagination, because I new the concept of happiness even when I was unhappy. So it will not be something new. It will be like I want something, I buy it and after few days I am no more interested in it and I am looking for something else. RICHARD: Hmm ... what is it about the word ‘happiness’ you do not comprehend? How can one ever become ‘no more interested’ in being happy after a few days? * RESPONDENT: After all if understanding and comprehension take place for the danger of the ego, why I need a technique to eliminated? RICHARD: As this is Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s method, and not mine, you are better off asking him (reading his books) and not me. RESPONDENT: The danger of it is not enough? RICHARD: Apparently not. RESPONDENT: When they told me that the snake can kill me, did it took me 6 years to understand that? RICHARD: Presumably not. RESPONDENT: Or if my hands are dirty, must take me 6 years to go to wash them? RICHARD: Obviously not. * RESPONDENT: Let’s go back to the feeler and thinker. I can see that the moment the one is spreading from the other, both are the same entity (real entity but illusory). By eliminate the one you eliminate the other too. Or rather the elimination of the one is the elimination of the other because who is the one that will eliminate them? RICHARD: Ahh ... the word ‘altruism’, in the phrase ‘altruistic ‘self’-immolation’, means that a more powerful instinct than the selfism instinct is what ensures success (blind nature ensures that survival of the species takes precedence over survival of the individual by making the for-the-good-of-the-whole instinct the dominant survival instinct). RESPONDENT: Is not the ego itself that wants to eliminate itself? RICHARD: As the ego arises out of the soul (the thinker arises out of the feeler), albeit aided and abetted by feeling-fed thought, any notion of the ego wanting to eliminate itself is but a scape-goat intuition sourced in the soul. RESPONDENT: Is this possible? RICHARD: Oh, yes ... that is the way to become enlightened (with the ego out of the way the soul gets free reign). RESPONDENT: Is like I have a knife in each of my hands and I am fighting and say lets see who will win, me, or me? Is subtle and funny no? RICHARD: This may be an apt moment to remind you that there is more to the identity than just ego ... much, much more (the ego is but the tip of the iceberg). RESPONDENT: You like or you see that there are two entities the I and the me. I cant see it. RICHARD: If I may suggest? Try feeling it instead of trying to (intellectually) see it. RESPONDENT: I think the I splits itself in higher and lower, which is absurd but real, and might this higher is what you call soul. RICHARD: No ... ‘me’ as soul (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) is most definitely not the ego splitting in two. * RESPONDENT: If somebody is fighting the feelings is not strengthen them, making them more strong? RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it this way: as the ego (the thinker) arises out of the soul (the feeler) it can never win ... in enlightenment it surrenders and merges back into the soul. RESPONDENT: Action is reaction. And is the fighter, the by-product of feelings the feeler, that is fighting his own feelings different from the feelings? RICHARD: Indeed not ... ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ (and ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself). RESPONDENT: If this is understood not intellectually, then is not the fighter the thing that he is fighting. If he understands that he stops fighting, and by stop fighting where is the problem? RICHARD: The problem lies in the now not-fighting fighter, obviously (a non-fighting identity is still an identity nevertheless). RESPONDENT: This is already the end of the fighter, (the feeler) and by the disappearance of the feeler, we have the disappearing of the feelings too. RICHARD: No, it is that the fighter-feeler is taking a rest while the non-fighting feeler is running the show (and drawing fuel from the resting fighter-feeler of course). In religio-spiritual parlance god (‘good’) draws energy from evil (‘bad’) and vice-versa – just as love feeds off hate and hate feeds off love – which is why the battle betwixt ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, which has raged down through the centuries with neither one winning, can never be resolved. They are locked in an inseparable embrace. RESPONDENT: Why must use a method which might work, by bringing one insight when we will be 90 years old? Or never? RICHARD: You are overlooking the truly remarkable virtual freedom – which is way beyond normal human expectations – that can ensue as a result of applying the actualism method ... plus the PCE’s along the way. A win-win situation, in other words. RESPONDENT: To me is a matter of immediate understanding with the whole being instantly. RICHARD: Do you realise that it took you the entire e-mail just to arrive right back at the conclusion you have held all along?
RESPONDENT: Richard, one sentence attracted my attention in your email. [Richard]: ‘I never discovered anything ... the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul discovered both the actualism method and the wide and wondrous path’. [endquote]. So it follows logically that in the moment that ‘I’ and the ‘me’ discovered the actualism method and the wide and wondrous path, this method and the path, being the discovery of ‘I’ and ‘me’, is nothing more than the ‘I’ and ‘me’. So the result of the method necessarily must include the discoverers. RICHARD: As the result of the method is an actual freedom from the human condition due to the altruistic ‘self’-immolation of identity in toto (both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) how you can say that ‘the result of the method necessarily must include the discoverers’ has got me stumped. RESPONDENT: In the moment was a movement of ‘I’ and ‘ me’, then this egocentric movement is the ‘I’ and me with another mask. RICHARD: What ‘movement’ are you talking about ... and why do you only say egocentric when the ego is but the tip of the iceberg? RESPONDENT: The ‘I’ and ‘me’, whatever they do they cannot get rid of themselves. RICHARD: We have been down this path before (and only a couple of days ago at that):
RESPONDENT: Wherever they arrive is another projection of themselves. RICHARD: As the identity in toto (both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) becomes extinct there is no ‘wherever’ to arrive at. RESPONDENT: Is as they want to be prime ministers, only now they wanted to get rid of themselves. RICHARD: I am unable to make sense of this in its present form ... perhaps you could re-word it? RESPONDENT: Only through comprehension they can get rid of themselves not through their will. Conclusion: actual freedom method, is a camouflaged mode of ‘I’ and ‘me’. RICHARD: In what way is your ‘comprehension’ method not a ‘a camouflaged mode of ‘I’ and ‘me’’ then?
RESPONDENT No. 51: If you are no ‘being’ what are you? RICHARD: What I am is this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being ... as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. And this is truly wonderful. RESPONDENT: Pure identification then with the universe. For eleven years, you were identified with the absolute. Now you say ‘I am ...’, you made a shift to the universe, only the subject of identification changed. RICHARD: Did you not read the question I was responding to? Perhaps if I were to put it this way then: for eleven years, night and day, it was the ‘being’ within the body who identified with ‘The Absolute’ ... whereas what I am, as this flesh and blood body only (sans ‘being’ itself), is this universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being. As the universe also experiences itself as a cat, a dog, and so on, and so on, what you are saying, in effect, is that every body is identifying themselves with the universe ... which is patently silly (if only because no body needs to identify with what they actually are). It is this simple: the very stuff of this body (and all bodies) is the very same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe in that it comes out of the ground in the form of the carrots and lettuce and milk and cheese, and whatever else is consumed, in conjunction with the air breathed and the water drunk and the sunlight absorbed. I am nothing other than that ... that is what I am, literally.
RESPONDENT: The base of actualism is apperception. Read everybody please very carefully this JK speech (snip). Richard says can the mind be aware of itself. He took definitely this concept from JK and change the word, by calling it apperception to look more sophisticated and so he can always hide behind this word. JK was very familiar with this concept thought aware of itself, no you aware of thought but thought aware of its self. Please read carefully. Is nothing new for JK what Richard is saying. RICHARD: I have never said that apperception is ‘thought aware of itself, no you aware of thought but thought aware of its self’ ... that is what you make of it. Here is but one instance of how I describe what I mean by apperception:
RESPONDENT: Another example of what actual freedom calls apperception. [quote] ‘So from that one asks a question: can thought be aware of itself? This is a rather complex question, I hope – one hopes you don’t mind looking at the complexity of it. Can thought, the whole process of thinking, can that thinking be aware of itself, or there is a thinker who is aware of his thoughts? You understand the question? Is this becoming difficult for you? You are interested in all this? (J. Krishnamurti Ojai 1st Public Question & Answer Meeting 17th May 1983). RICHARD: Here is another example of how I describe apperception:
RESPONDENT: PCE = pure consciousness experience. Pure consciousness means that does not exist self right? RICHARD: Yes, neither ‘I’ (as ego) nor ‘me’ (as soul) are present where consciousness – the condition of being conscious – is a pure consciousness ... the word ‘pure’ in this context means the unadulterated condition of being conscious and the word ‘conscious’ means being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible (comatose). RESPONDENT: Now by adding the word experience, the question that arises is who has the experience? RICHARD: Why does that question arise? To be conscious is to be experiencing (perceiving) as perceiving (experiencing) is what the very word means at is most basic. For example:
RESPONDENT: [... who has the experience?] The body? RICHARD: The body is not ‘who’ has the experience... the body is *what* has the experience (of being unadulteratedly conscious) as the condition of being conscious is a bodily condition. RESPONDENT: The body works with the senses. RICHARD: That is one way of putting it but as sentience means being sensorial it would be more helpful for comprehension of what experiencing means to say that the body works as the senses: for instance, of all the senses – cutaneous, ocular, aural, olfactory, gustatory, and proprioceptive – the cutaneal sense, being by far the largest of all senses (the skin covers the entire body) is what defines/ delineates where the body stops and the rest of the world begins/where the rest of the world stops and the body begins ... the skin is the main demarcation line, so to speak, thus cutaneous experiencing is major experiencing by any definition. RESPONDENT: If we must attach to the body even the consciousness, then we can go very far. RICHARD: That just does not make sense: consciousness – the condition of a body being conscious – is indistinguishable from what a body is (when it is alive, awake, and sensible) ... to say that consciousness is something attached to the body is to imply that consciousness (the condition of being conscious) is a clip-on, a removable accessory, as it were. RESPONDENT: We may have any illusion and blame the body for that. RICHARD: Yea verily ... anything but put the ‘blame’ onto where it really lies (on the ‘being’ within the body), eh?
RESPONDENT: Richard, I was wondering the other day, who gives you the right apart of your self to say that you was enlightened? RICHARD: The Absolute (or God/Goddess, Truth, Being, and so on). RESPONDENT: There are as many enlightened types as many teachers are. RICHARD: Aye, the last time I looked up the subject there were 1200 gods/goddesses ... and that does not include the Hindu pantheon (said to comprise 33,000 by some accounts). RESPONDENT: So first prove to me that you was enlightened ... RICHARD: What kind of proof would you like (as in what manner of proof would satisfy you)? RESPONDENT: ... and then we can speak about actuality, because if enlightened was in your imagination, so can be actual freedom as well. RICHARD: This body has no imagination ... the imaginative/intuitive faculty vanished when the affections ceased to exist (and thus their epiphenomenal psychic facility). I literally cannot imagine, visualise, envisage, envision, picture, intuit, see in the mind’s eye, feel-out, dream up, fall into a reverie, or in any other way, shape or manner imaginatively conceptualise anything whatsoever. I could not form a mental picture of something if my life depended upon it ... whereas in earlier years ‘I’ could get a picture in ‘my’ mind’s eye of ‘my’ absent father, mother, wife, children and so on ... or the painting ‘I’ was going to paint, or the coffee-table ‘I’ was going to build, or the route ‘I’ was going to take by car or whatever. If I were to close my eyes now, and try to visualise, all what happens is the same velvety-smooth darkness – as looking into the infinite and eternal and perpetual universe at night – which has been the case for all these years now. I simply cannot have images ... when I recall childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, being middle-aged or yesterday it is as if it were a documentary on television but with the picture turned off (words only) or like reading a book of somebody’s life. There is only the direct experiencing of actuality.
CORRESPONDENT No. 44 (Part Seven) 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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