Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

Editorial note: Because Richard’s previous companion (Devika/Irene) went through a period of speaking pejoratively about both him and actualism after her abrupt about-face, he went to some considerable endeavour and expense to get at least some of that verbal derogation into print both for the benefit of others and the sake of posterity.

Irene never conversed with Richard directly, in what follows below, only about him.

*

October 06 1998

IRENE to Vineeto: Vineeto, if you want to send this E-Mail to Richard or the mailing list, I don’t mind.

RICHARD: Welcome to the Actual Freedom Mailing List, Irene, even if by default. Just as Peter and Vineeto took you at your word and sent me a copy of your E-Mail to them, so too am I taking up your offer to post my response here. I do this for a number of reasons ... the main one being that I am vitally interested in discussing life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are, with my fellow human beings. Secondly, as you lived with me for eleven years – when you were going under the name ‘Devika’ – you are in the rather unique position of being able to add valuable information to any discussion about actual freedom in a way that no one else can. For you personally witnessed what I went through in order to throw off the shackles of the altered state of consciousness that I was living in when Richard and Devika first met in 1986. As you now espouse a philosophy that I would describe as ‘Matrilineal Love Agapé‚’ (as gleaned from my few face-to-face discussions with you several weeks ago), no one is going to be able to accuse you of being biased in favour of actual freedom because of your personal relationship with me.

IRENE to Vineeto: You [have] already made-up [your] mind about me. Namely: that I must be wrong because I have walked away from Richard’s (and my!) method, like all the other people who ‘fled over the horizon’. Yet I did not flee, but I saw through Richard’s solution to mankind, as I now see it as deviating from our original goal: not for some of us but for all of us.

RICHARD: I would be very interested as to how you can say that actual freedom is only for ‘some of us’ and not for anybody and everyone. Actual freedom works in the market place ... there is no meditating in silence or living in a monastery shut away from the world. There are no celibacy or obedience requirements. There are no dietary demands or daily regimes of exercise. No one is excluded by age or racial or gender origins. There are no prescribed books to study or courses to follow or therapies to undergo. There are no fees to pay or any clique to join ... there are no rules at all. I have no plan whatsoever ... there is no authority here in charge of a hierarchical organisation. (The Actual Freedom Trust is simply a statutory legal body that four nominal directors operate under for sensible commercial reasons). We are all exploring life together.

This is my position: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it.

I, for one, am not taking the back seat.

IRENE to Vineeto: I must commend you on your sincere devotion to Richard’s method! Like your zeal in defending Richard (as the originator of your newly adopted practical life philosophy) and yourself, plus attacking anybody who still questions it or has pointed out the flaws in it.

RICHARD: May I ask: what flaws are you referring too? And, if I may point out, your phraseology regarding Vineeto ‘attacking anybody who questions it’ is nothing more than a point of view. It could equally be said in reverse. Viz.: Vineeto is ‘questioning anyone who attacks it’. Speaking personally, as I have been writing on the Internet for over a year now, I have honed my talents as a wordsmith with particular verve and vivacity as virtually everyone who wrote objected to being happy and harmless. In my first week of having my Web-Page up and running someone wrote in ‘questioning’ what I had to say. The writer quickly turned it into a debate and ‘questioned’ me as to my statement ‘I have no desire to argue’. So I wrote back: ‘I said that I have no desire to argue ... and I still have no desire to do so. But you seem bent upon having an argument, so I am obliging you. We can stop it at any time you wish and have a meaningful and fruitful discussion ... if you want it. I have no desire to argue for my experience has shown me that argumentation and disputation lead nowhere constructive ... as this current spate of correspondence betwixt you and me is amply demonstrating. But ‘having no desire to do so’ does not mean that I will not. It just means that I would prefer not to. The English language is quite clear and specific, when one gets into the subtleties of it’.

IRENE to Vineeto: Another classic [symptom of zeal] is renouncing all the old indiscriminately. I know it well from very personal experience, and I don’t expect you (yet) to be open to me being correct, as I wasn’t either when I was so busy proving that it worked so deliciously ... for 11 years.

RICHARD: May I suggest that you might have been a trifle hasty with your ‘renouncing all the old indiscriminately’ statement that you say you know ‘well from very personal experience’? As you may now recall, upon sensible reflection, Richard and Devika went into the details of human nature to the point of examining minutiae to such an extent that it beggars belief. Also, the ‘old’ has been tested out by billions of people over thousands of years ... and it just has not worked. But all that ‘Tried and True’ stuff notwithstanding – and howsoever obliquely that you put it – I am pleased to see that you do remember actualism working ‘so deliciously ... for 11 years’.

IRENE to Vineeto: I can tell you that the reason [being ‘teacherish’ and ‘like a missionary’] was that it was actually not satisfying enough for me to have all that pleasure and delight for the two of us at the cost of all other people we came in contact with who felt constantly attacked.

RICHARD: Hmm ... this is the second time that you use the word ‘attack’. Shall we examine the implications? To start the ball rolling on a discussion, I would propose that it is the beliefs, values, principles, ideals, traditions, customs, mores, ethics, morals and so on that are being ‘attacked’ ... and relentlessly so. It is only to the degree that the person identifies with these ever-failing coping-methods that they feel personally attacked. As I put it in the introduction to ‘Richard’s Journal’: ‘The Actual Freedom Trust has published this semi-autobiographical journal that calmly yet trenchantly explicates just what has been going wrong and what can be freely and happily done to correct all the ills of humankind. It will be seen that the writing is both heretical and iconoclastic ... a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words’.

I am no ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’ – or whatever inanity it is that the myth says – and there is no ‘turning the other cheek’ here. There have been 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone ... now that is where the phrase ‘constantly attacked’ actually means something.

IRENE to Vineeto: Perhaps you could ask yourselves: why do most people lose interest in spending time in our company?

RICHARD: So as to avoid speculating, I can only go by what some people say that I have asked this question to. Generally they say that they do not wish to be happy and harmless ... that they would rather stay being ‘me’. As I point out that being ‘me’ is the sole cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ... they usually stay away in droves.

IRENE to Vineeto: Perhaps you could ask yourselves: why do I feel the need to proselytise if I don’t care what other people do with it?.

RICHARD: I find it curious that you would choose to use the word ‘proselytise’ ... is that the way you experience someone talking about the actuality of an individual peace-on-earth? And an individual peace of such simplicity that anyone could live it ... and, furthermore, inasmuch that people do live it there is the distinct possibility of a global peace-on-earth. Anyway, are you suggesting that a person should just keep quiet about the discoveries of an actual freedom? To not pass on what amounts to ground-breaking information to one’s fellow human beings? That it is okay for oneself to be happy and harmless, having eliminated sorrow and malice, but one had better keep it for oneself? Would that not be both selfish and socially reprehensible ... and another 160,000,000 die next century?

As for not being concerned about what another does with these discoveries ... personal experience has demonstrated that if I do ‘care’ I get accused of interfering in another’s life and am told to ‘leave them alone’. Conversely, when I do ‘leave them alone’ ... I get accused of ‘not caring’. Consequently, I tell my story and the other does with that information whatever they wish. Provided they comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols, they are free to live their lives as foolishly or as wisely as they so choose. It is them who reaps the rewards or pays the consequences for any action or inaction they may or may not do.

IRENE to Vineeto: Perhaps you could ask yourselves: Do I actually enjoy another person’s company as I had believed? Do I actually live peace if I find myself getting a kick out of the one-up-man ship I find myself engaged in since stepping onto this ‘wide and wondrous path of peace and harmony’. This was exactly the reason why I saw through Richard’s ‘peaceful’ living; it was (and is) expressed in glee for winning yet another argument, especially the one-up-man-ship he is so proud of having eliminated.

RICHARD: It was this paragraph that prompted me to write this response to your E-Mail to Vineeto and Peter ... I just found it irresistible. Firstly:

I am not ‘proud of having eliminated’ any one-up-man-ship at all, for I have not needed to do so ... my life is so infinitely superior to anyone else’s that I have met or read about. Thus I am very pleased at my expertise and prowess in being able to win an argument, with anyone who defends the status-quo, because when I win, they win ... it is the ‘Tried and True’ that gets defeated. When I enter into a discussion with someone I am well aware that it may very well turn into a debate ... for these are contentious issues that I speak of. Society’s ‘Holy Cows’ are under sustained scrutiny ... what you so rightly call ‘being attacked’.

As for ‘getting a kick’ ... what I experience is far more gratifying than such a petty return. I am inordinately pleased when the grip that the human nature has on a person falls away ... the delight far exceeds merely ‘getting a kick’.

IRENE to Vineeto: I often said (before I left) that this [actual freedom] is not something to copy but it can be the opportunity to really make up your own mind by relying on your own senses, not only in what you hear, read, see, think and have learnt by rote, but all the other senses that you so conveniently have come to despise, in emulation of Richard: intuition, sense of where the other person actually comes from (not just your preconceived and concreted interpretation of what you believe the other must be at).

RICHARD: I must acknowledge that I read this through three times before I could make out a full sense of what you were saying ... so please correct me if I have it wrong. Because you do seem to be saying that actualism is an opportunity to find out for oneself ... except that by so doing one stands accused of emulating Richard. What is one to do? Is it not an amazing thing that not only are we humans able to be here experiencing this business of being alive ... on top of that we can think about and reflect upon what is entailed? In addition to this ability, we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next. The belief in the power of intuition is one such example. Exhaustive studies have been done – by those people who care to do these things – that demonstrate again and again that the very best scores for intuition were a 53.4% success rate ... which is barely over guess-work. The vast bulk of the intuitive peoples tested scored 50/50 ... which is the odds for guessing.

What are these ‘all the other senses’ that you referred too?

IRENE to Vineeto: It does not mean though, that I could ever go back to seeing all people who are not following Richard’s way as basically malicious and sorrowful. They are not, at least not all the people I have contact with, on the contrary!

RICHARD: As you have introduced me to more than a few of the people you have contact with, I know from first-hand experience that they are not free of the human condition. They still have intact the instincts that blind nature endows on all sentient beings at conception ... fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Consequently, they have malice and sorrow nestled firmly in their bosom ... even when you choose to not see it as you so clearly indicate above.

Be that as it may – and even that I am wrong and that the people that you meet do not have malice and sorrow at all – then why do you object so strongly when I report that I have none? Why do you stoutly maintain that I am just repressing them ... and that your contacts do not have to as they are rid of them?

IRENE to Vineeto: A basically malicious person is intensely interested in self-gain, appearance and power, usually at any cost to save his/her own skin and only appreciating of another person if it results in strengthening his/her personal image of being the very best since sliced bread.

RICHARD: Aye ... to strengthen an image of oneself is simply silly. However, to actually be the very best thing since sliced bread is another ball-game entirely. For it means that an actual freedom from the human condition is now being lived by a flesh and blood body ... no more ‘Teachings’ propagated by ‘Teachers’ who are patently incapable of living their own impracticable instructions.

IRENE to Vineeto: A person who despises love has a reason to repress love, either because of the absence of love in his/her life or because of deep disappointment in love-affairs, which says nothing about love itself but everything about the experiencer, who could be just incapable of loving or is angry with it as it proved to be different from lust, owning, possessing, using the other and expecting the other to be available.

RICHARD: This is the second time you use the word ‘despises’ ... here it is love that you are saying is being despised and further above it was intuition and some unnamed ‘other senses’. As ‘despise’ means detest or hate or condemn – and they are all feelings – then I rather fail to see how you have come to this conclusion. For the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – actualism – is all about being as free of emotions, passions and calenture as is humanly possible. I cannot consider for a moment that anyone could make out a case for an actualist bothering to replace love with despisal, detestation and hatred. That would be silly ... and what a pathetic way to live one’s life anyway!

As for a ‘deep disappointment in love-affairs’ having nothing to with the fault of love itself but ‘everything to do with the experiencer’ ... do you not find it strange that every human being has had this said about them? Is love that sacred that one is never to question its efficacy in being capable of delivering on its implicit promise? Is every human being who has ever lived or is now living – ten billion people – all been ‘incapable of loving’? If so, that makes love unreachable ... it is akin to what Mr. Leo Tolstoy so aptly described as that moral perfection that is not able to be achieved ... but one is to strive for it, anyway. It is like a light one holds out to one’s front on the end of a long stick ... the more one moves toward it, the more it moves ahead of one. But ... you are exhorted to follow that elusive light, anyway. Whereas the actual intimacy of being here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is to be the perfection of the purity of infinitude personified ... here on earth now and in this life-time.

In regards to love being ‘different from lust, owning, possessing and using the other’ ... may I refer you to an observation Devika made – on audio tape – when she was deeply in love? Who knows, it may jog your memory,

• [Quote]: ‘Love is actually a great spoiler of intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing ... it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into one’s life. Because when there is actual intimacy there is a pleasure that is more substantial, more of the earth, of me – of my body – and all of my body is intimate. It is that orgastic sensation. And the disappointment ... none of that operates in actual intimacy’. [endquote]. – A full version of the transcription of that taped conversation can be accessed on my Web Page under the title: ‘Actual Intimacy is Vastly Superior to Love’. It can also be found on page 236 of ‘Richard’s Journal’ © 1997 The Actual Freedom Trust.

Lastly, in reference to your comment about ‘expecting the other to be available’ ... with actual intimacy, one is always available as it is impossible to be closed off. Speaking personally, you are welcome any time.

IRENE to Vineeto: When Richard used to come out with a statement that would go totally against my own sense of right, true, correct, I would always do a scientific experiment: I would ask myself to go and find out who of us was ultimately right. To be unbiased (which is the true meaning of scientific) I would allow, for a while, the possibility that I had been wrong so that I could be indeed open to Richard’s statement being right. Often I was convinced by his common sense and logical approach and decided to change my old mind, or I discovered, by giving him the benefit of the doubt, that his opinion was a result of repressed feelings. For a long while I favoured his outlook over my own, but more and more I had to admit that it was not me who was wrong but Richard.

RICHARD: I would question that it is scientifically unbiased to allow something only ‘for a while’ ... as this sounds to me as a conditional – if not grudging – preparedness to examine one’s own borrowed truths. Also, I am surprised to find you being ‘convinced’ only by my approach ... what about seeing a fact for yourself? Then you do not have to ‘decide to change your mind’ because seeing a fact sets you free ... you then stand on your own two feet. Then you are autonomous ... whereas a changed mind can always be changed back again at will. All that you describe above is a far cry from investigating and uncovering ... exploring and discovering ... seeking and finding out for oneself. Actuality is that which is self-evident, obvious, factual ... opinion does not come into an actual freedom and never has done. Indeed, as you say that you would ‘favour his outlook over my own’, then it becomes obvious that you never saw the fact for yourself. Giving some one the benefit of the doubt is but a ploy to keep one’s pre-set feeling subtly in place underneath it all. It is a prime example of the domination that intuition has over actuality.

And just what ‘repressed feelings’ would they be that you refer to, anyway?

IRENE to Vineeto: Feelings of affection, warmth, so essential for humour, playing music with pleasure and delightful human interactions is to me as valuable as sexual pleasure and orgasms.

RICHARD: As I am a person devoid of either latent or active enmity, I require no antidotal affection whatsoever to create the illusion of intimacy in my human interactions. Consequently, all my associations with others are always delightful and not dependent upon mood swings. As I have a vast capacity for humour, without a trace of a feeling whatsoever, then your opinion that feelings of affection are ‘so essential for humour’ is revealed to be just that ... an opinion. As I have not developed the talent for playing musical instruments I cannot personally report on feelings being essential for playing music with pleasure ... but as music is designed to tug on the heart-strings I would easily agree with your observation. Your remark to Vineeto [quote] ‘as valuable as sexual pleasure and orgasms’ [endquote] indicates a paucity of understanding how Vineeto experiences her life ... as is detailed in ‘Peter’s Journal’ under ‘A bit of Vineeto’ and is clear to anyone who wishes to read for themselves. Your remark reads like being one of those snide digs that women unfortunately indulge in with their peers in order to keep each other sexually repressed ... all the while blaming only men for woman’s frustration. – The chapter ‘A bit of Vineeto’ can be accessed on the Actualism Web page. It can also be found on page 171 of ‘Peter’s Journal’ © 1998 The Actual Freedom Trust.

IRENE to Vineeto: Why do you see feelings in such a negative way only? To me it sounds like nothing more than another ‘religiously’ followed tenet, like all other masters see sex as something to transcend or get rid of.

RICHARD: And again a reference to sex ... and coupled with ‘all other masters’ . Who is a ‘master’ here? Certainly not me ... I set my sights further than being a mere master, all those years ago when I was determined to be free of the human condition, and I am not likely to fall back into that position now that I have succeeded. Human beings need something else than re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’ if there is to be global peace-on-earth.

As for feelings being only negative ... they have brought wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides ... I fail to see what there is positive in that lot. Feelings – emotions and passions and calentures – cripple the body’s native intelligence ... therefore emotions impair clear and clean functioning in the world of people, things and events. Perhaps you could detail which feelings are not negative, then.

And do not even bother putting love onto your list, as so many people have been killed because of love that it is staggering to contemplate how harmful a feeling it is.

IRENE to Vineeto: [on three occasions where Vineeto was referring to Richard’s expertise]

1. ‘With this you make it clear that Richard is your authority.
2. ‘Perfect example of ‘hiding’ behind the master.
3. ‘If you deny being a disciple you’d better not advocate Richard’s method.

RICHARD: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power (the power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject.

Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on).

I freely acknowledge – and delight in – my expertise on all matters pertaining to actual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. This expertise is drawn out of my personal experience on a day-to-day basis, for the last eighteen years ... twenty four hours a day. If you wish to maintain that this makes me an ‘authority’ as in the spiritual meaning of the word ‘master’ then you are entirely missing the point of all I have said, written and demonstrated. Because those otherwise intelligent ‘Enlightened Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either ‘The Truth’ or ‘The Absolute’. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. Power is what the ‘authority’ of a guru/master/sage/avatar/messiah/saint is all about. As they have surrendered to an ‘Higher Authority’, everyone else has to slot into the inevitable hierarchy which ensues. And so the battles rage. The hunger for power – or the subservience to it – is the curse of humanity. Curiously enough, the ‘energy’ that this power manifests as – whilst going under many and varied a nomenclature – is what I call Love Agapé. In actualism it is readily experienced and understood that Love Agapé – which is born out of sorrow – is but a paltry substitute for the over-arching benevolence of the actual world. Similarly, Divine Compassion is seen and known to be a pathetic surrogate for the actual intimacy of direct experiencing ... Love Agapé and Divine Compassion are deep feelings which the psychological or psychic identity within creates in order to sustain itself and perpetuate its self-centred existence. Love is born out of loneliness ... or in the case of the Enlightened Ones, out of Aloneness ... and is touted as being the cure-all for humankind’s failings because it imitates the intimacy of the actual via a feeling of Oneness. The feeling of Oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the self survives triumphant, only to wreak its havoc in the real world once again. Life can be a grim and glum business in the real world, for separation ceases only when the psychological and psychic entity inside the body – the ego and the soul – is extirpated. In actual freedom there is a universal magnanimity which is so vastly superior to petty forgiveness or pardon that any comparison is worthless.

Actual intimacy – being here now – does not come from love and compassion, for the affective states of being stem from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love and compassion produces is but a meagre imitation of the direct experience of the actual. In the actual world, ‘I’ as ego, the personality, and ‘me’ as soul, the ‘being’ – both subjectively experienced as one’s identity – have ceased to exist; whereas love and compassion accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other similarly afflicted persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials ... to verify ‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without the separative identity ... and therefore free from the need for love and compassion with their ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. There is an actual intimacy between me and everyone and everything ... actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other as-they-are. I am having a superb time ... and it is a well-earned superb time, too. Nothing has come without application – apart from serendipitous discoveries because of pure intent – and I am reaping the rewards which are plentiful and deliciously satisfying. Actual intimacy frees one up to a world of factual splendour, based firmly upon sensate and sensual delight. The candid and unabashed sensorial enjoyment of being this body in the world around is such a luscious and immediate experience, that the tantalising but ever-elusive promise of the mystique of love and compassion has faded into the oblivion it deserves. I have no power – or powers – at all, for I have not surrendered to any one or any thing whatsoever. There is no trace of humiliation in me at all.

IRENE to Vineeto: I have also wondered honestly why I am doing this, [writing this E-Mail] apart from politely responding to the mail you’ve sent me. I have come to see that it is more difficult for me than I thought to lose interest in people whom I not only inspired in trying Richard’s method, but whom I have fond memories of as well. This also pertains to Richard. Anyway I am going to give you my opinions whether you like them or not, most likely not, but we never know what it can open and sparkle up, don’t we?

RICHARD: I would concur with your observation that this can indeed ‘open up and sparkle’ ... this is what this Mailing List is here for.

I look forward to your considered response.

October 11 1998

IRENE to Vineeto: I don’t subscribe any more to Richard’s goal of getting rid of ‘me’, my identity, my emotions. This is what I meant when I said that I had seen through Richard’s method and his view that this is what freedom means.

RICHARD: First off, if you no longer subscribe to your previously-held goal of ridding yourself of the ‘I’, that you saw standing in the way of peace-on-earth in one of the many outstanding peak experiences that you had years before you met me, then that is your own choice. Please, you give the impression that it was ‘Richard’s goal’ that you were subscribed to. Secondly, it was not ‘Richard’s view’ that this absence of ‘I’ was what freedom means at all ... you held this view long before you met me. It was the fact that I was living your goal and view that made you attracted to me in the first place ... for you told me that you could not – or would not – do it on your own. Thus was the basis for us living together as man and woman established from the beginning ... and that was your own choice too. Eleven years later you decided that you no longer wished to either pursue that goal or hold that view any more and you ceased living with me ... and that is your own choice as well. Honesty with oneself is important, otherwise there is a duck-shoving of amenability onto another for one’s own decisions at the time.

As for your use of ‘I had seen through Richard’s method’ ... you have to be referring to the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ ... as that is the only method I advance. In what way, may I ask, have you ‘seen through it’? In what way is it either personally unhealthy or socially reprehensible ... for how else can it be deemed faulty?

IRENE to Vineeto: To me freedom means to be free from the human conditioning (i.e. the belief in the man-made mistakes in their interpretations of being human and of nature in general). That what I had called ‘virtual freedom.

RICHARD: Except that virtual freedom is derived from what Richard lived from March to September in 1981 and was epitomised by being as happy and harmless as was humanly possible ... for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day. This was achieved by my asking myself the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ ... for I had experienced the universe’s perfection – personified in a four-hour peak experience – and just knew that it was possible to achieve peace-on-earth in this life-time as this body. To live a virtual freedom one knowingly and deliberately imitates the actual inasmuch as is possible given that one is still human. It is the pure intent to ingenuously live the actual that imbues virtual freedom with its feeling of perfection and subsequent delight and joy. To be without this connection betwixt naiveté‚ and the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe, then any freedom loses its dynamism, its lustre, its brilliance, its vivacity ... its very here and now aliveness.

If you now wish to put a different slant on what you lived in the latter half of your time with me, then that is your business ... but maybe you could give it a different name so as to not confuse people. Just as a suggestion, perhaps you could use some other term ... like ‘relative freedom’ or something?

IRENE to Vineeto: The human condition is best described as the basic givens that accompany being human. That what we consist of, all the aspects that make up being human, all the magical characteristics like legs to walk, hands to manipulate, heart to keep the blood flowing through each and every atom of our body, eyes that are not only for seeing, but also to express ourselves to others by baring the state of our innermost being, be that in a state of joy, love or anger. Other aspects are our brains, that are not only the seat of thoughts, but also feelings, memory, emotions and our reactions to our interpretations – our opinions – of all our experiences in being human. Yet another aspect belonging to this organism is the sexual experience and the sensual capacity we have. The human condition is the basic capacity for being human and although parts can be deficient in some people (blind people) this is what we all share in common and what we make use of during our whole life.

RICHARD: The 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.

Peace-on-earth is possible only when there is freedom from the Human Condition. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of the ‘self’. The elimination of the ‘self’ is simultaneously the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude that the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending.

I can heartily recommend committing both psychological and psychic suicide.

IRENE to Vineeto: The human conditioning is the curbing and controlling of this natural given [the human condition] ... the human conditioning can be studied and understood, so that it does not affect us any more in living our natural potential (...) once we have understood it empirically then we loose our emotional reaction to it and although the conditioning is still active in the world, it doesn’t disturb us any more in a personal way. Then we are free from the conditioning.

RICHARD: This freedom – may I call it a ‘relative freedom’ for now – from the conditioning that humankind at large imposes upon all new recruits to the human race is quite remarkable in itself, is it not? To have sorted through all the social mores and psittacisms – those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning – and all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams is no mean feat. To have become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what one finds oneself to be – a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion – is an adventure in itself. My word, what a challenge that is!

When one realises that a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological entity overlaying a psychic ‘being’ ... one can start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is. What a delight and joy that was for you at the time, eh?

IRENE to Vineeto: I am ... out to demolish ... [the] belief in the old spiritual man-made ‘ideal’ of getting rid of your self ... that Richard has augmented with getting rid of literally everything that you can possibly call human: the feelings, emotions, instincts, sense of humaneness towards other people around you, in short all that was a natural given to start off with. To be so anti-nature is called preposterous. Only a person who is deeply troubled by emotions will turn against them in anger and try to rid themselves of the whole plethora of emotional experiences (...) I don’t see Richard as free, but rather removed from being human.

RICHARD: Aye ... in fact I am so far removed from being human that I am out of sight. Indeed it is unnatural what I did and – given that it is natural to kill one’s fellow human being – I am well-pleased to be so preposterous (the word ‘preposterous’ literally means being 180 degrees in the opposite direction). However, a person ‘deeply troubled by emotions’ who will ‘turn against them in anger’ in an effort to rid themselves of the ‘whole plethora of emotional experiences’ will fail spectacularly. Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all ... then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom. It took me about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for I located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here ... now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind ... that basic resentment goes. Then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak.

Anger is thus put into a bind ... and the third alternative hoves into view.

IRENE to Vineeto: I cannot subscribe to Richard’s statement that right and wrong are of no concern. They are of importance in the capacity to distinguish and make our choices. We do share a plot of earth together and therefore we must come to some sort of basic agreement in order to be able to live in peace and harmony and not kill each other. For this to be possible, all involved must be able to count on some basic rules: this is what we consider right and this is wrong. It’s not only impossible to live with other human beings without knowing the difference, but it is putting your head in the sand if you deny it altogether as being of concern.

RICHARD: Goodness me ... ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not merely a matter of ‘no concern’ to me. I am vitally concerned about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and seek to see them banished forever from the face of this otherwise fair earth of ours. I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. To say that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are of importance because we will then be able to ‘live in peace and harmony and not kill each other’ rather belies the evidence of history, does it not? I would say that failing to learn the lessons of history is what qualifies for the phrase ‘putting your head in the sand’ ... rather than what I have done to simplify the issue.

It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s actions being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations ... which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway.

Then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life.

IRENE to Vineeto: Compassion is not what is understood by Richard – [he calls it] the hopeless game of compassion – at least I don’t have that view at all. To me compassion is the full understanding through experiencing all the accompanying emotions of a particularly testing aspect of life, that this is what it is to be grieving, or to be angry or to intensely hate or to be desolate, lonely, utterly discouraged in all of life etc. and to accept it as belonging to the all-round human experience in order to become wise. Not that only the so-called negative feelings will grant wisdom; the positive ones can be even more important in that respect! The richness, the depth of each human feeling reveals the understanding of what it is to be a human being in such an empirical, intimate way that it is later instantly recognised in a fellow human being who is going through the same emotional, human experience and who can then be met by compassion, that very kind understanding that you will have enjoyed with another, not only when life was being particularly difficult or sad, but also when you wanted to share your utmost joy or love. It is indeed such comfort to talk to someone who doesn’t lecture you, but who is right with you in your deepest pain or your exquisite happiness and doesn’t condemn you or suggests all kind of predictable therapies. The reward is first of all in the understanding of being human and secondly it is a privilege to be of genuine help with a person who feels alone, confused and abandoned in their circumstances. Or to be invited by someone who wants to share their most precious feelings with you.

RICHARD: Hmm ... you have well described the trap of compassion – as I call it – for the giver and the receiver thus remain firmly locked into the piquant and seductive snare of the beauty of pathos. Literally the word ‘compassion’ means pathos in common ... and actually starts out as nothing more impelling than a coping-mechanism designed to alleviate – not eliminate – the existential pain and distress of being human. For to be human is to be suffering and to be suffering is to be in sorrow. Indeed, all sentient beings suffer – not only the human animal – and one can travel deeply into the depths of ‘being’ itself ... and come upon Universal Sorrow. The piquancy of one’s personal sorrow pales into insignificance when confronted with the pungency of all the sorrow of anyone who has ever lived or who is living now or who is yet to be born ... for one is indulging oneself in self-justifying grief. There the beauty of this universal pathos reveals what lies eternally silent at the heart of the mystique ... a god or a goddess that is The Truth.

There is an excellent description of what is possible to realise when one travels deeper and deeper into Universal Sorrow in a book called: ‘The Wholeness Of Life’ (Published by The Krishnamurti Foundation). In Dialogue VII May 20 1976 – Monday Afternoon, the conversations between Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mr David Bohm and Mr. David Shainburg are particularly illuminating in this respect. Viz.:

• ‘Aren’t you aware of a much deeper sorrow than the sorrow of thought, of self-pity, the sorrow of the image? ... Deep sorrow. Yes, that is the deep sorrow of mankind. For centuries upon centuries it has been like that – you know, like a vast reservoir of sorrow ... You know, sir, there is universal sorrow ... Then there is compassion. Is that the result of the ending of sorrow, universal sorrow? ... is there compassion which is not related to thought? Or is that compassion born of sorrow? Born in the sense that when sorrow ends there is compassion? ... When the organism dies [the organism] is finished ... if I don’t end the image, the stream of image-making goes on ... it is there, it manifests in people ... it is universal ... it is the effect of all the brains and it manifests itself in people as they are born ... there is something beyond compassion ... To penetrate into this, the mind must be completely silent ... Now in that silence there is the sense of something beyond all time, all death ... nothing ... not a thing ... and therefore empty and therefore tremendous energy. This energy is ... There is something beyond compassion which is sacred, holy ... What is the relationship between that which is sacred, holy, and reality? ... Relationship comes through insight, intelligence and compassion ... You have an insight into the image ... into the movement of thought ... which is self-pity ... which creates sorrow. Now isn’t that insight intelligence? ... Which is not the intelligence of a clever man ... now work with that intelligence ... that insight is universal intelligence, global or cosmic intelligence ... now move further into it ... an insight into sorrow ... out of that insight compassion ... an insight into compassion ... and there is something sacred ... and that may be the origin of everything ... everything ... all matter, all nature’.

And thus is a new religion born – and another sect to wage their vicious wars – which is why I call the alluring beauty of pathos ‘The Trap Of Compassion’.

There is, however, a third alternative to being human or divine.

IRENE to Vineeto: I am ... out to demolish ... [the] belief in the old spiritual man-made ‘ideal’ of getting rid of your self.

RICHARD: If engaging in the thrilling activity of getting rid of your ‘self’ being nothing but a belief in an ‘old spiritual man-made ideal’ I would have to ask what is ‘man-made’ about a pure consciousness experience? Everybody that I have spoken to at length has experienced moments of perfection and purity in what is known as ‘PCE’. In such a peak experience everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already always perfect ... that humans are all living in purity ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing. With seeing that everything is already perfect – it always has been and always will be – it is seen that ‘I’, the self, have been standing in the way of this perfection being apparent. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. In a PCE there is apperception operating. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ are extirpated.

Then 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.

In these moments, good and bad, love and hate, fear and trust, generosity and parsimony ... all these and more, are simply irrelevant. Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons, all the battles that have raged throughout the ages are but a nightmare of passionate ‘human’ fantasy. There is a marked absence of hierarchy; no Religious figure can match the matter-of-fact equality that pervades everything. A quality of kindly understanding prevails, dispensing forever with the need for Authority and Love and Truth and Power. And ... of course man and woman live together in peace and harmony.

I must ask again: What is ‘man-made’ about a PCE? Why does ridding oneself of the ‘self’ have to be a ‘belief in the old spiritual ‘ideal’ of getting rid of your self’ and not something spontaneously seen and understood without any prior spiritual knowledge whatsoever? Speaking personally, I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough into freedom via the death of ‘myself’ in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I studied all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such spontaneous experiences and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong. I found out where I had been going wrong for eleven years ... self-aggrandisement is so seductive.

It has been – and still is – a great trip.

November 28 1998

IRENE to Peter: Richard says that he is no longer a human being.

RICHARD: To be correct, I have never said that I am ‘no longer a human being’ ... what I have written is:

• [Richard]: ‘Up until now, there has only been two ways to live: being ‘human’ or being ‘divine’. Now there is a third alternative ... I have ceased being ‘human’ (as in that oft-repeated excuse ‘I am not perfect I am only human’) and I am most definitely not ‘divine’. I am a fellow human being, writing about my experiencing of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, for them to do what they will with’.

IRENE to Peter: Believing Richard’s words to be true and repeating them as teaching does not make Richard factually free from malice and sorrow.

RICHARD: I couldn’t agree more ... I am factually free of sorrow and malice irrespective of whether person (A) believes my words to be true. Also, conversely, I am factually free of sorrow and malice irrespective of whether person (B) believes my words to be false. My freedom from the human condition has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people believe or disbelieve. However, their own freedom from the human condition – which is what is of crucial importance here – is dependent upon their remembering at least one of their PCE’s accurately ... and herein I can play a part in affirming and confirming their personal experience of the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. What I have to say is this:

• [Richard]: ‘I do not want any one to merely believe me. I stress to people how vital it is that they see for themselves. If they were so foolish as to believe me then the most they would end up in is living in a dream state and thus miss out on the actual. I do not wish this fate upon anyone ... I like my fellow human beings’. Of course, if they believe my words to be false they close the door on their own freedom from the human condition and have to invent a synthetic freedom ... be it a freedom from human conditioning or whatever substitute for the actual they manage to spin out of dreams and visions.

IRENE to Peter: It [being factually free from malice and sorrow] is what he himself believes.

RICHARD: And you believe that I am not ... this ’tis/’tisnt persiflage gets us nowhere fast.

IRENE to Peter: Richard is certainly not ‘a normal human being’ but this doesn’t mean that he is free from malice and sorrow.

RICHARD: A somewhat vague statement ... it contributes nothing to an investigation into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being.

IRENE to Peter: [Not being free of sorrow and malice] shows clearly up in his acrimonious correspondence with others.

RICHARD: You have to be grasping at straws if you can see acrimony in any of my words ... I am having so much fun here at the keyboard. I use an exclamation mark, for example, for what it is designed for: it is for surprise – or emphasis – and does not indicate a bitter, caustic, harsh, acidic, virulent, spiteful, vitriolic or venomous attitude at all. If you are referring to a phrase like ‘This is silly’ or ‘This is stupid’ and so on it is because what the other is writing is patently silly or stupid or whatever. This is called being honest ... up-front, frank, open and straight-forward, down-to-earth and matter-of-fact. I do not suffer fools gladly ... if someone is so foolish as to think that by entering into a discussion with me with an adversarial attitude – and thus turning it into a debate and then an argument – to defend the status-quo so that their ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul can stay intact ... they will find themselves being progressively driven into a corner of their own making. I am relentless where it comes to dismantling the Human Condition. 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone.

I write trenchantly, saliently ... this is me being authentic.

IRENE to Peter: An intellectual interpretation may appear to be perfectly sound.

RICHARD: I do not know how many people have trotted out the line that what I say is an ‘interpretation’ ... and here you say it is an ‘intellectual’ interpretation at that. May I ask? Would an emotional interpretation be better? An intuitive interpretation, perchance? Also, why is pointing out facts an interpretation? If I say ‘look ... here is a computer monitor’ am I making an interpretation? No ... Richard is only making an interpretation when he points out a fact that pulls the rug from under one’s elaborate belief system slyly dressed up as truth.

IRENE to Peter: But any defensive or condescending attitude shows the repressed emotions nevertheless.

RICHARD: Why is it that my reporting to you that my direct experience of myself is different to what you intuit it to be is me being defensive? And if you experience my words to be ‘condescending’ ... then I can only suggest that you cease being so stubbornly inferior.

IRENE to Peter: I have a more realistic approach than following Richard’s solution, which is yet again following the old tried and failed authority trip.

RICHARD: May I ask? Why this hang-up about authority? If I wish to learn to play the piano, I go to an expert piano-player ... I do not invent piano-playing all over again from the beginning. Is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing these matters of great momentousness ... and momentous not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet? It is not an amazing thing that we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input? One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. Speaking personally, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I freely acknowledge – and delight in – my expertise on all matters pertaining to actual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. This expertise is drawn out of my personal experience on a day-to-day basis, for the last eighteen years ... twenty four hours a day. If you wish to maintain that this makes me an ‘authority’ as in the spiritual meaning of the word ‘master’ then you are entirely missing the point of all I have said, written and demonstrated. Because those otherwise intelligent ‘Enlightened Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either ‘The Truth’ or ‘The Absolute’. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. Power is what the ‘authority’ of a guru / master / sage / avatar / messiah / saint is all about. As they have surrendered to an ‘Higher Authority’, everyone else has to slot into the inevitable hierarchy which ensues. And so the battles rage.

The hunger for power – or the subservience to it – is the curse of humanity.

IRENE to Peter: [Richard is] somebody who professes to be – yet again – the best, the wisest, the most advanced, more innocent and harmless than anybody ever before him.

RICHARD: May I offer a word of advice here? Do not ever do or achieve anything outstanding that would lead to you or humankind bettering itself ... some malcontent somewhere will pop up and tell you that you are ... [insert whatever sour-grapes here] ... in order to make themselves feel better. It is called ‘The Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

IRENE to Peter: Richard needs [the chief disciple] for support.

RICHARD: And just how are you going to go about substantiating this wild allegation? I stand on my own two feet, beholden to no one. I do not suffer from an inferiority complex ... I find this actual freedom to be eminently superior to anything anyone else has ever lived before. Anyway, chief disciples are notorious for waxing and waning in their regard for their master ... it would be a foolish person who depends upon the fickleness of another’s mood swings for support.

IRENE to Peter: Every man desires a woman (or ‘chick for free’) who is willing to deny her feelings and intuitions, the very culprits for malice and sorrow ... as far as Richard is concerned, that is.

RICHARD: What is with this ‘chick for free’ statement of yours ... are you upholding a woman’s traditional right to sell herself? Is that not degrading to women? Does this not reduce a woman to a commodity? A sex-object? A piece of meat? Do you wish to single-handedly put woman back into the dark ages after all that has been achieved through the whole woman’s liberation movement?

Also, you cast archetypal aspersions upon the integrity of women who have dared to run the gamut of their peer’s calumny and obloquy. Your remark reads like being one of those snide digs that women unfortunately indulge in with their contemporaries in order to keep each other sexually repressed ... all the while blaming only men for a woman’s frustration.

IRENE to Peter: Richard sees that feelings and intuitions are the main-cause for all misery and suffering in the world, and believes that women must be helped to get rid of these unfortunate and malicious tendencies ... and become like him.

RICHARD: Why this one-eyed view? Why do you turn these discussions into a woman versus man issue? What is your agenda? I talk equally to man and woman ... men have intuition too (popularly known as ‘gut-feelings’ or ‘hunches’). When tested exhaustively, male intuition was demonstrated to be as unreliable as female intuition ... 50/50 on average (which is the same as guessing). The male clairvoyants – now there is proof that intuition is not the exclusive domain of the female of the species – could not better a 53.4% accuracy. Also ... men have feelings too. It is just that they express them differently to women ... a man knows what another man is feeling. We have discussed these issues before – you and I – and you came to recognise the ‘code’ that men use to convey feelings to each other. It is surprising to see so much recidivism in such a short time.

IRENE to Peter: I can’t help but being reminded of the old ‘bible-bashers’ who also have always blamed woman: evil, deceit and malice was perceived by men to be located in the woman, who would seduce the man into her corrupting games.

RICHARD: This is so trite that it hardly rates replying to ... yet it reveals your agenda. Just for the record ... I blame blind nature.

IRENE to Peter: I tried for over 11 years and it was unsatisfactory for me as a whole person to live according to some man’s ideal, denying or doubting or feeling bad for being essentially me.

RICHARD: When you tried for over eleven years to rid yourself of ‘being me’ – the ‘me’ that you saw standing in the way of peace-on-earth in one of the many outstanding peak experiences that you had years before you met me – that was your own ideal. Please, it was not ‘some man’s ideal’ that this absence of ‘being essentially me’ was what being a ‘whole person’ means at all ... you held this ideal long before you met me. Honesty with oneself is important, otherwise there is a duck-shoving of amenability onto another for one’s own decisions at the time. Also, this ‘some man’s ideal’ statement exemplifies just what your agenda is ... to blame men for most – if not all – of the ills of humankind.

IRENE to Peter: Life without feelings is indeed barren and sterile.

RICHARD: I am living such a rich, full, sparkling, vital and magical life for the twenty four hours of every day ... and all without the affective faculty. Where do you get your information from about the barrenness and sterility of life without feeling?

IRENE to Peter: Freeing myself from aggression and fear didn’t come about by covering them over (...) my aggression and fear that I had not wanted to look at yet, would come out in my attitude and sharp remarks from time to time (...) I am so pleased with what I’ve done (...) I couldn’t have envisaged this particular outcome ever.

RICHARD: You see, here you do some kind of sleight-of-hand ... you condemn me for not having these basic feelings whilst proclaiming to be free of them yourself. Perhaps the clue lies in your not mentioning the other basic feelings – nurture and desire – in the above sentence. Just get rid of the ‘bad’ feelings and hang onto the ‘good’ ones, eh?

IRENE to Peter: There is life after the basic feelings of aggression and fear, they don’t have to dominate forever!

RICHARD: Here is confusion with the word ‘dominate’ ... have you freed yourself from aggression and fear or not? If you have ... why condemn me for doing so? If you have not ... why do you give the impression that you have?

IRENE to Peter: By ‘authentic’ I do not mean the natural instincts we are all born with. They become only active in a physical or deeply emotional threat to your well-being.

RICHARD: Aye ... and thus all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day. So, are you now saying that you are not free from these basic – these natural – instincts after all? What does ‘there is life after the basic feelings of fear and aggression’ mean then?

IRENE to Peter: Wherever I am I am at peace (...) I now find myself living what my very first peak-experience showed me to be my destiny (...) I am a fully human being with all my feeling-faculties and instincts in tact.

RICHARD: Once again confusion ... all your ‘feeling-faculties and instincts intact’. Yet you are simultaneously ‘free from aggression and fear’ ... which are basic instincts. As they will become active in ‘a physical or deeply emotional threat to your well-being’ then what have you done towards achieving peace-on-earth?

Editorial note: They did indeed become active: only four days later Irene wrote the following to Vineeto: ‘No other person than you has been able to make me so livid and repulsed, for a long, long time, Vineeto.’

IRENE to Peter: As an authentic being I am not afraid of others, nor of myself, because I have nothing to hide or to cover up any more, or to be afraid or ashamed of (...) I certainly feel and have the capacity to feel intact.

RICHARD: Yet to not be ‘afraid’ or not to be ‘ashamed’ are feelings, are they not? Are you selective about what feelings to retain and what feelings to eliminate?

IRENE to Peter: Its quality of atmosphere is here now, but according to the vision there is an abundant quantity to follow ... and I am already so content with this abundance so far!!

RICHARD: This reference to a ‘vision’ – and with the ‘abundant quantity to follow’ – would it have something to do with the matrilineal Love Agapé that is epitomised in the ancient Sumerian Goddess worship?

IRENE to Peter: Feelings of affection, care and consideration for others bring the juice and the cream to the surface of life as a human being, they make us vivacious!

RICHARD: Hmm ... and if that is what lies on the ‘surface of life’ ... what lies underneath? Those pesky instincts that give rise to malice and sorrow perchance?

IRENE to Peter: Caring and consideration are feelings, affections that cannot exist when the whole faculty for feeling, for being human is wiped out, eliminated, exterminated.

RICHARD: Etymologically the word ‘care’ comes from the Old English ‘caru’ meaning ‘charge’ or ‘oversight’ (‘charge’ as in the Latin ‘carricare’ from ‘carrus’ meaning ‘wagon’ – thus ‘carry’ – and ‘oversight’ as in ‘overseeing’) and basically means ‘an object or matter of concern’ as in ‘a thing to be done or seen to’ or ‘protective overview’ or ‘guardianship’. The only way to make it a particular feeling is by linking it with the Gothic and Germanic word ‘kara’ meaning ‘grief’ or ‘lament’ (as derived from ‘karar’ meaning ‘bed of sickness’). In popular use it appears to mean worrying about the other. The word ‘consideration’ is from the Latin ‘considerare’ meaning ‘examine’ (perhaps from the Latin ‘sider’ or ‘sidus’ meaning ‘constellation’ or ‘star’) and basically means ‘the action or fact of examining and taking into account of anything as a reason or motive with regard for the circumstances of another’. In popular use, however, it generally means ‘don’t hurt my feelings’.

IRENE to Peter: Intimacy can only exist between 2 people who are equally honest and dare to own up to their feelings as well as their thoughts, ideas, ideals, dreams, intimations and so forth.

RICHARD: Whereas in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s honesty, daring ... or moods.

It is an estimable condition to be in!

*