Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

RICHARD: Unless it is a sociopathic stranger prowling the streets taking any victim at random, the physical harm one receives is invoked by the way one feels about one’s assailant ... whether one’s feelings are acted upon in behaviour or not.

And controlling one’s attitude towards them does nothing to stop the other picking up on one’s vibes (to use a 60’s term). If one has the slightest trace of malice or sorrow toward the other, the prevailing wisdom is to be loving or compassionate ... yet it does not work in practice. This is because there is a psychic connection between humans who have feelings.

Modifying one’s negative feelings toward the other by coating them with positive feelings may fool some people for some of the time. Usually, however, one is only fooling oneself, because the positive is born out of the negative. Without the negative feelings there are no positive feelings. No feelings at all means one is happy and harmless and the other leaves one alone ... which does away with the need for that dubious remedy of pacifism (non-violence).

Until one is interested enough with the workings of one’s psyche to dig deep into one’s feelings – into the core of one’s being – and uncover the root of all malice and sorrow, one has no choice but to apply the ‘Tried and True’ remedies again and again ... and fail and fail, again and again.

The pertinent question to ask oneself is: ‘Why do I have the need to relate to anyone at all?’

August 02 1998:

RESPONDENT: I have a question for anyone kind enough to answer. How do I relate to someone who has physically harmed me? Who wishes to harm me again?

RICHARD: Unless it is a sociopathic stranger prowling the streets taking any victim at random, the physical harm one receives is invoked by the way one feels about one’s assailant ... whether one’s feelings are acted upon in behaviour or not. And controlling one’s attitude towards them does nothing to stop the other picking up on one’s vibes (to use a 60’s term). If one has the slightest trace of malice or sorrow toward the other, the prevailing wisdom is to be loving or compassionate ... yet it does not work in practice. This is because there is a psychic connection between humans who have feelings. Modifying one’s negative feelings toward the other by coating them with positive feelings may fool some people for some of the time. Usually, however, one is only fooling oneself, because the positive is born out of the negative. Without the negative feelings there are no positive feelings. No feelings at all means one is happy and harmless and the other leaves one alone ... which does away with the need for that dubious remedy of pacifism (non-violence). Until one is interested enough with the workings of one’s psyche to dig deep into one’s feelings – into the core of one’s being – and uncover the root of all malice and sorrow, one has no choice but to apply the ‘Tried and True’ remedies again and again ... and fail and fail, again and again. The pertinent question to ask oneself is: ‘Why do I have the need to relate to anyone at all?’

RESPONDENT: Thanks for responding, so many answers to my little question, I am overwhelmed. I relate to others because I am human. Why ask why?

RICHARD: Because some one has caused you physical harm and wishes to do so again ... that is why.

August 04 1998:

RESPONDENT: Do you see God?

RICHARD: I see neither God nor Devil. All gods and demons exist only in passionate human imagination and have no existence whatsoever in the actual world.

I do see sorrow and malice, however, in the people who live in the real world – the litigious land of lament – for it shows in their attitudes and actions.

August 06 1998:

RICHARD: The pertinent question to ask oneself is: ‘Why do I have the need to relate to anyone at all?’

RESPONDENT: Thanks for responding, so many answers to my little question, I am overwhelmed. I relate to others because I am human. Why ask why ?

RESPONDENT No. 12: Or is it rather that ‘you’ exist only in relationship and clear seeing of that relationship is right action? Are you relating so as to cause resentment or to invite attack? Are you attacked at random so that you need only step aside? What is actually happening?

RESPONDENT: These are good questions. But the recipient of violence does not cause the violence .

RICHARD: If, as you say, the recipient of violence does not cause the violence ... then why say that these are ‘good questions’? If you do not understand ... say so. And it is indeed all about ‘blaming the victim’ (to use the current jargon) ... you have been physically harmed already and have been offered physical harm again!

What more has to happen before you will inquire into yourself?

August 08 1998:

RESPONDENT: These are good questions. But the recipient of violence does not cause the violence.

RICHARD: If, as you say, the recipient of violence does not cause the violence ... then why say that these are ‘good questions’ ? If you do not understand ... say so. And it is indeed all about ‘blaming the victim’ (to use the current jargon) ... you have been physically harmed already and have been offered physical harm again! What more has to happen before you will inquire into yourself?

RESPONDENT: I do inquire of myself, and I shall always continue to do so.

RICHARD: I beg to differ ... above you asked ‘why ask why’ ? I hardly call that inquiring. Then you said ‘the recipient of violence does not cause the violence’ ... which, being a psittacism, does not constitute inquiring at all. You thus shut the door on investigation and compliment those on this List whose kind of advice falls under the category of being ‘more loving’

RESPONDENT: By the way I am not under any more or less threat than the average person at present, I am examining a past event .

RICHARD: Then why mislead by saying (above): ‘who wishes to harm me again’ ? That reads as a current event.

RESPONDENT: Would you tell the victims of Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan to inquire into themselves?

RICHARD: Yes ... if they asked me. Identifying with by relating and belonging to a group – and espousing group ideals – invites attack from the bully-boys of another group who deem themselves superior. Why identify? Why relate? Why belong?

The pertinent question to ask oneself now is: ‘Why do I have the need to identify by relating to anyone or belonging to any group at all’?

This is inquiring.

August 10 1998:

RESPONDENT: These are good questions. But the recipient of violence does not cause the violence.

RICHARD: If, as you say, the recipient of violence does not cause the violence ... then why say that these are ‘good questions’ ? If you do not understand ... say so. And it is indeed all about ‘blaming the victim’ (to use the current jargon) ... you have been physically harmed already and have been offered physical harm again! What more has to happen before you will inquire into yourself?

RESPONDENT: I do inquire of myself, and I shall always continue to do so.

RICHARD: I beg to differ ... above you asked ‘why ask why’ ? I hardly call that inquiring. Then you said ‘the recipient of violence does not cause the violence’ ... which, being a psittacism, does not constitute inquiring at all. You thus shut the door on investigation and compliment those on this List whose kind of advice falls under the category of being ‘more loving’.

RESPONDENT: By the way I am not under any more or less threat than the average person at present, I am examining a past event .

RICHARD: Then why mislead by saying (above): ‘who wishes to harm me again’ ? That reads as a current event.

RESPONDENT: I am sorry that I misled you. I put the question like that because that is the question I was asking of myself.

RICHARD: Okay ... if it had been current, there could have be an urgency about your enquiry that is sometimes conducive to seeing with a clarity born out of imminent danger. On the other hand, fear oft-times clouds genuine clarity with its demand for instant action born out of the survival instincts ... and the urge for mayhem generally ensues. Then all that holds one back is the moralistic injunctions about the sanctity of life, which morals are the wisdom of the ages, and confusion reigns supreme.

RESPONDENT: I was inquiring about a situation that has arisen a few times in my life and however I have dealt with it, it has been disturbing, depressing and generally unsatisfactory.

RICHARD: If it strikes home deeply that the application of the ‘Tried and True’ methods have led to a result that is ‘disturbing, depressing and generally unsatisfactory’ then you may very well be ripe for a genuine enquiry into what it is to be a human being living in this world as it is with people as they are.

It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent obtained from the purity and perfection of a pure consciousness experience (PCE), to the patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole.

Can you remember any of your PCE’s?

*

RESPONDENT: Would you tell the victims of Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan to inquire into themselves?

RICHARD: Yes ... if they asked me. Identifying with by relating and belonging to a group – and espousing group ideals – invites attack from the bully-boys of another group who deem themselves superior. Why identify? Why relate? Why belong? The pertinent question to ask oneself now is: ‘Why do I have the need to identify by relating to anyone or belonging to any group at all’? This is inquiring.

RESPONDENT: It seems to me that by relating to a group I am relating less, not more, because a group excludes those who ‘don’t belong’.

RICHARD: Everybody I speak with – every one of them – tells the same story: ‘I just do not fit in; I do not belong; I am not like them; they exclude me; they all belong but I don’t’ ... and so on and so on. Is it not significant that everyone experiences life like this? (And I have talked with literally thousands of people over the last eighteen years about this). Loneliness is pandemic. In fact it has a global incidence and spares no one.

RESPONDENT: If I do not relate to others then I can relate only to myself, a group of one, then none. A lonely life.

RICHARD: Perhaps if I include something written by someone whom I have had an association with for some time may throw some light onto this subject. Vis.:

• ‘Each social identity thrives on attention; it needs to be needed; it needs to belong, it needs to be accepted, it needs to be lovable ... and it loves to be able to fight for its maintenance. If these needs are not being met, one feels desolate, lonely and forlorn; one risks falling into a melancholy, into a depression. What inevitably follows is the unvarying advice to ‘come back to reality’ and to turn to the group for support. This imperative to belong is bred into the human being from birth onwards. Yet curiously enough, when two or more persons have spent sufficient time together, niggles, arguments and fights all prove to be inescapable. Too many needs to be met and too little attention to go around leaves all concerned disappointed and in despair.
‘The only hope, it seems, is to try one’s luck with either someone else or with some Metaphysical Group ... only to be disappointed once more. One is advised by others to lower one’s expectations about any happiness on earth, as it is seen to be foolish and unrealistic to count on perfection in ‘this imperfect world’. Although the same warnings, the same words of advice and the same hopes and despairs have been running their course, to no avail ever, for all of human history, this orthodox understanding of human life is still religiously adhered to and is never to be questioned. Despite all their passionate attempts to make the conventional way work, people are still living dismally unhappy lives; lives in which very little time is spent in undisturbed peace and harmony with oneself or another ... let alone month after month and year after year. Is it possible that everybody has been hoodwinked into believing that this was ordained to be the fate of humankind forever?
‘Like everybody else I too was hoodwinked for many years. I remained swindled until, together with Richard, I started to question the ‘human’ archetype with its relentless beliefs and needs, hopes and despairs. Nothing sanctioned by ‘humanity’ ever seemed to lead to the sweet destiny that I had seen in a PCE and known as being possible for all of humankind. And now, after an extensive odyssey, I know without a shadow of a doubt that personal peace-on-earth is my birthright, as it were, and is always available to be achieved. Nevermore do I feel a need to belong, because I do not feel alone and lonely by myself. As I do not have a precarious social identity to protect, a battle of wills with another is no longer an attractive option; no ego-victory is sweet enough to want to relinquish one’s personal peace for. I experience anger, for example, to be a thoroughly rotten emotion; an emotion which has no redeeming features whatsoever and which, in my view, only perpetuates me as a social identity, thus assuring continued potential for aggression. Nor do I need to be needed, loved, or appreciated’.

The last sentence is particularly relevant to your question: ‘Nor do I need to be needed, loved, or appreciated’.

RESPONDENT: Can I instead relate to the largest possible group, to all?

RICHARD: A sheer impossibility ... 5.8 billion people are far to many to meet personally. Therefore, such relating would be only imaginary ... and amounts to becoming lost by being submerged in the crowd, anyway.

RESPONDENT: Relate with the maximum possible effort, with all my heart? Is this another way to lose the psychological self?

RICHARD: What makes one want to relate with ‘all my heart’ ? Is not that where the psychological self lives? Is this not ‘me’ at the core of one’s ‘being’? Would this action not affirm, endorse and perpetuate the very psychological self one is proposing to lose? One may be a loving self now ... but one is still a self, nevertheless.

The pertinent question to ask is this: What is the nature of loneliness?

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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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