Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’

with Respondent No. 4

Some Of The Topics Covered

death – God – ‘Intelligence’ – compassion – aggression – authority – Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ (Love – God – I-Am-God) – ‘Energy’ – ‘Life’ – body/brain – immortality – anthropomorphism – mysticism – atheism – Altered States Of Consciousness – belief – Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti – ‘nature’ – affective – mental – disorder – authority – actual freedom – Love Agapé – intimacy

October 29 1998:

RICHARD: At physical death this body dies ... this is no illusion.

RESPONDENT No. 12: If ‘I’ am not, there is death or impermanence in each moment.

RICHARD: We were not talking about ‘each moment’ where there is a body living and breathing at all. Shall we stick with the subject ... which is physical death? When I die – when this body called Richard being apperceptively aware physically dies – this apperceptive awareness dies right along with it ... for they are the one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: Not really. Call it apperceptive awareness, meditation, energy, intelligence – whatever we like.

RICHARD: You may call it ‘whatever we like’ if you wish to continue to be vague ... but I prefer to be specific. I call it apperceptive awareness because it only occurs when there is no sense of identity whatsoever ... then the mind – this physical brain in action – can perceive itself. Not ‘I’ perceiving ‘me’ being aware, but awareness happening of its own accord ... unimpeded and uncensored by the affective faculties. Thus it is very clearly not ‘meditation’; it is not ‘energy’ ... and it is most certainly not ‘intelligence’ in the sense you use the word because they all are but products of the affective faculties.

RESPONDENT: It is the foundation of all manifestation. Manifestation is the activity of that energy AS the physical universe.

RICHARD: And as this energy is affective it is – in other words – god by any name.

RESPONDENT: Therefore, loss of physical form is not death. It is only the destructuring of manifested energy.

RICHARD: Indeed ... when ‘I am That’ – when one is god by any name – one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. Then at physical death one just loses this physical form and lives forever in some mystical transcendental realm.

RESPONDENT: Take any form and observe its ‘death’ over time. There is only the destructuring of the form into its more subtle aspects of energy: atoms, etc., and beyond.

RICHARD: Physical matter re-arranges itself, yes. Shall we keep to the subject? Which is what happens to a particular awareness at physical death? When I die – when this body called Richard being apperceptively aware physically dies – this apperceptive awareness dies right along with it ... for they are the one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: The eventual destructuring of Richard’s form is nothing but the ‘de-congealment’ of intelligence.

RICHARD: Aye ... I am aware that for you the word ‘intelligence’ is god by whatever name. In other words, you wish to realise your immortality ... at the expense of peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: Awareness is neither created nor destroyed, and neither are its manifestations.

RICHARD: What you call awareness is ‘Unborn and Undying’ and is, of course, neither created nor destroyed, I agree. However, the awareness that is this flesh and blood body called Richard started right along with this body over half a century ago and – barring war, accidents and disease – will cease somewhere around 2030 because they are one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti may have been right: There could be nothing but intelligence. Now, it could be mysticism that is saying this.

RICHARD: It is mysticism ... clearly and unequivocally.

RESPONDENT: Just as mysticism may also be saying that the death of the body is the same as the death of apperceptive aware-ness.

RICHARD: Not so ... there is no trace of mysticism in me whatsoever. I am a thorough-going atheist through and through.

RESPONDENT: Both could be the projections of ego using knowledge. That is the value of Krishnamurti’s statement ‘find out’. That way there is no authority, no propaganda, no acceptance of the words of another as fact.

RICHARD: Oh yes ... let us not learn from one another, eh? We will just muddle along making each other’s mistakes all over again ... and again. However, you do take another’s words as fact as you will see two sentences below.

RESPONDENT: Finally, there is no need then, to try to debunk the words of Krishnamurti or anybody else in order to promote what, because of the egotism implied by one’s need to debunk, becomes evidence of what is actually one’s beliefs projected as truth.

RICHARD: There is no egotism implied in my debunking of the altered state of consciousness known a ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... I am simply passing on to my fellow human beings my experience of life. What they do with this information is their business. There is no need in me to do this debunking because I have no problems whatsoever. Why I do it is because other people tell me that they are suffering so I explain how I ended suffering in myself. One of the triggers that started me on this voyage into my psyche was the realisation that human beings are driven to kill their fellow human beings ... and I was one of them. Now I am not ... and I share that what triggered me because it may trigger them.

RESPONDENT: When compassion is actual and is ‘speaking’ through the body, it prods people to discover for themselves.

RICHARD: This sentence puts to lie what you wrote above. You have not seen the fact of compassion for yourself. Compassion is affective and you want yourself and others to be ruled by their feelings and not their native intelligence. Only you dress up this feeling called compassion – like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – by rashly calling it intelligence! This ‘intelligence’ is causing people to kill their fellow human beings.

RESPONDENT: It does not seek to establish any point of view in another.

RICHARD: You will find out that it does ... just two sentences below.

RESPONDENT: Nor does it seek to change another’s point of view.

RICHARD: You will find out that it does ... just one sentence below.

RESPONDENT: It points out to another the value of observing for himself the nature of ‘himself’.

RICHARD: It is the word ‘value’ that belies your two statements above.

RESPONDENT: And when that action is undertaken with utmost and utter seriousness.

RICHARD: You acknowledge here – by the use of ‘utmost and utter seriousness’ – just how strongly compassion seeks to ‘establish a point of view in another’ and to ‘change another’s point of view’ .

RESPONDENT: Then the human brain has a chance to perceive the totality of its primordial involvement with illusion, and may be free of it .

RICHARD: Aye ... it is a powerful energy, this compassion, eh? That is because it is affective.

RESPONDENT: In addition to what No. 29 has said, and without defending Krishnamurti.

RICHARD: Quoth he ... defending Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti like all get-out.

RESPONDENT: I do recall Krishnamurti saying more than once that the actual ‘teaching’ is an action, the action of a mind which is observing itself. A body of words has to be called something, so they are called, in this case, ‘teachings’. There were then, two uses of the word teaching.

RICHARD: Hmm ... if you say so. I would rather go by his own words. When asked about calling his words ‘Teachings’, Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti described how it came about in a discussion among friends: Vis.:

• ‘We thought of using the word ‘work’ – ironworks, big building works, hydro-electric works, you understand? So I thought ‘work’ is very, very common. So we thought we might use the word teaching. But it is not important – the word – right? It depends upon you, whether you live the teachings, or not’. (‘Unconditionally Free’, Part One; ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation America).

So, what does he mean when he says that what is important is ‘whether you live the teachings, or not’?

Living the ‘Teachings’, he says, means that one loves life ... and to do this one enables god to manifest itself in one’s very body via a spiritual connection. Only, he says, he prefers to use the word ‘life’ instead of ‘god’. So when he says ‘love life (god) and put this love before everything else’ he is being very precise ... he is saying: ‘love god and put this love before everything else’ To wit:

• ‘I have never said there is no god, I have said there is only god as it is manifest within you. But I will not use the word ‘god’ ... I prefer to call it ‘life’. When you love life and put this love before everything else and measure everything with this love and don’t judge it with your fear, then this stagnation you call moral will vanish’. (page 262, ‘The Years Of Awakening’; ©1975 Mary Lutyens; John Murray Publishers Ltd).

Okay so far? The essence of the ‘Teachings’ is that you are to love god ... do you see this? Now, where is this god? Shall we find out – in his words – who he is? Vis.:

• ‘I am all things because I am life’. (page 262, ‘The Years Of Awakening’; ©1975 Mary Lutyens ; John Murray Publishers Ltd).

Now, we know already that he uses the word ‘life’ to mean ‘god’, right? So what he is clearly saying is: ‘I am everything, since I am god’. Shall I drive this point home? Vis.:

• ‘Don’t speculate who I am, you will never know it [through speculation] ... Do you think the truth has anything to do with what you think I were? You don’t care for the truth ... Drink the water when it is pure: I tell you, I have this pure water. I have this balsam, which purifies, which will heal wonderfully, and you ask me: Who are you?’. (page 262, ‘The Years Of Awakening’; ©1975 Mary Lutyens ; John Murray Publishers Ltd).

Shall we go on? Vis.:

• ‘Truth, the real God – the real God, not the God that man has made, does not want a mind that has been destroyed, petty, shallow, narrow, limited. It needs a healthy mind to appreciate it; it needs a rich mind – rich, not with knowledge but with innocence – a mind upon which there has never been a scratch of experience, a mind that is free from time. The gods that you have invented for your own comforts accept torture; they accept a mind that is being made dull. But the real thing does not want it; it wants a total, complete human being whose heart is full, rich, clear, capable of intense feeling, capable of seeing the beauty of a tree, the smile of a child, and the agony of a woman who has never had a full meal’. (May 1; ‘The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with J. Krishnamurti’; Published by HarperSanFrancisco. ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation of America).

From all this one can easily see that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘I am life ... life is god ... I am god made manifest’ ... because he did say ‘I am everything, since I am life (god)’. To drive the point home he says: ‘Truth, the real God – the real God, not the God that man has made’. Therefore, ‘life’, ‘god’ and ‘truth’ are one and the same thing. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘I am god made manifest ... god is truth ... I am truth’.

Now, because he urges his listeners to ‘drink the pure water which I have’ – and it is a water that ‘purifies and heals wonderfully’ – then some considerable light is thrown on his oft-repeated statement about not being a teacher. Because he says: ‘The real thing (‘life’, ‘god’ and ‘truth’) wants a total, complete human being whose heart is full, rich, clear, capable of intense feeling, capable of seeing the beauty’. Love, for him, is an ‘intense feeling’ – which is clearly affective – in the ‘full, rich, clear heart’. By being in his presence and experiencing his love (god’s love) then whatever ails you will be cured ... especially if you know how to ‘listen’.

So, what does he mean by ‘listening’? Two years before his death, when asked to reflect upon the importance of his own life, he replied:

• ‘Does it matter if the world says of Krishnamurti, ‘What a wonderful person he is ...’. Who cares? (...) The vase contains water; you have to drink the water, not worship the vase. Humanity worships the vase, forgets the water’. (‘Unconditionally Free’, Part One; ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation America).

He said:

• ‘The speaker doesn’t have anything he could teach you ... The speaker is only a mirror where you can see yourself. Then, when you recognise yourself clearly, you can put aside the mirror’. (‘Krishnamurti – His Life and Death; ©1991 Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York).

Now do you know what ‘listen’ means to him? It does not mean listen with your ears ... it means ‘drink me’ (just like in the Christian’s Holy scriptures). Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘Listen to me (drink me in) ... just for two minutes, drink me and recognise yourself as being me: I am life. Love life. Life is truth. Love truth. Truth is God. Love God. I am God made manifest’. And if ‘god’ and ‘life’ and ‘truth’ and ‘love’ all being synonymous for him is not enough evidence for you, he goes on to elaborate on this theme and includes ‘reality’ and ‘bliss’ and ‘beauty’ into what constitutes ‘god’:

• ‘That state of mind which is no longer capable of striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon this thing called truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love’. (‘Freedom From The Known’; ©1969 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd).

It is all so familiar ... Gurus and God-men have been saying and doing and being and urging this religious or spiritual or mystical or metaphysical solution for millennia. All the Masters and Messiahs; all the Saints and the Sages; all the Saviours and the Avatars have failed to bring about their much-touted Peace On Earth. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was simply the latest in a long line of failures. And he wanted this for his listeners:

• ‘I am not talking for my benefit. Although I have talked for fifty-two years I am not interested in talking. But I am interested to find out if you can also discover the same thing so that your own life will be totally different, transformed, so that you have no problems, no complexities, no strife or longing. That is the reason the speaker is talking, not for his own gratification, not for his own enjoyment, not for his own fulfilment’.

And to forestall any of those ‘immature’ versus ‘mature’ Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti excuses, he stayed with the same message all his public life, changing only the way he said it:

• ‘You asked a question: Has there been a fundamental change in K from the 1930’s, 1940’s? I say, no. There has been considerable change in expression’. (‘Krishnamurti – A Biography’; ©1986 Pupul Jayakar. Published by Harper & Row, San Francisco).

You may say that you are not defending Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti ... but you are defending the indefensible.

Why?

November 20 1998:

RICHARD: At physical death this body dies ... this is no illusion.

RESPONDENT No. 12: If ‘I’ am not, there is death or impermanence in each moment.

RICHARD: We were not talking about ‘each moment’ where there is a body living and breathing at all. Shall we stick with the subject ... which is physical death? When I die – when this body called Richard being apperceptively aware physically dies – this apperceptive awareness dies right along with it ... for they are the one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: Not really. Call it apperceptive awareness, meditation, energy, intelligence – whatever we like.

RICHARD: You may call it ‘whatever we like’ if you wish to continue to be vague ... but I prefer to be specific. I call it apperceptive awareness because it only occurs when there is no sense of identity whatsoever ... then the mind – this physical brain in action – can perceive itself. Not ‘I’ perceiving ‘me’ being aware, but awareness happening of its own accord ... unimpeded and uncensored by the affective faculties. Thus it is very clearly not ‘meditation’ ; it is not ‘energy’ ... and it is most certainly not ‘intelligence’ in the sense you use the word because they all are but products of the affective faculties.

RESPONDENT: Now if the mind – that is the physical brain in action, as you say – is perceiving itself, that brain, as well as its perceptions IS intelligence.

RICHARD: The human brain – unhindered by the presence of an identity – operating as required by the circumstances is a freed intelligence. All humans are intelligent to some degree, however. Intelligence is the faculty for understanding ... intellect, brain-power, mental capacity and aptitude, reason, comprehension, acumen, wit, cleverness, brightness, brilliance, sharpness, quickness of mind, alertness, discernment, perception, perspicacity, sagacity and nous.

RESPONDENT: Intelligence is not some concept of some vague void or vacuum ‘somewhere’.

RICHARD: Indeed not ... it is the operation of a particular physical brain in the particular physical skull. It was born when the particular body was born and will die when the particular body dies. If there were no human beings alive on this earth there would be no intelligence.

RESPONDENT: It is the actual down-to-earth energy of life.

RICHARD: It is certainly actual and it is certainly down-to-earth, yes ... but ‘energy of life’ is too general a term for intelligence. The word ‘life’ refers to all carbon-based life-forms – from single-celled amoebas to multi-celled animals – that are born, live for a period, and die. And all these creatures are energetic ... but only the human brain has the capacity to be intelligent. And even then this intelligence is crippled by an identity.

RESPONDENT: When the brain is not using its energy in self-centred abstraction, the brain is of that intelligent energy just as all other life is.

RICHARD: No, the brain is not ‘of that intelligent energy’ at all ... the unhindered human brain in action is intelligence being able to operate freely. Intelligence does not exist outside of the human skull ... you are straying into positing that intelligence is present in all life-forms from single-celled amoebas to multi-celled animals. Only the human animal can think and reflect upon its situation.

RESPONDENT: There is no ‘personality’ acting which can direct the body to do all sorts of irrelevant and energy wasting action. The body is not continually and ‘artificially animated’ as is usually the case.

RICHARD: Yes ... when the brain is apperceptively aware. 5.8 billion human beings have intelligence ... but they have a ‘personality’ .

RESPONDENT: Meditation then, is ordinary living when that living is not entrapped in paralysing and debilitating self-centredness

RICHARD: As any ‘paralysing and debilitating self-centredness’ is caused by the presence of an identity, then when this identity self-immolates ordinary living is revealed to be always perfect. Nothing extra needs to be done as one is already doing what is happening ... no meditation is required at all.

RESPONDENT: It [call it whatever you like] is the foundation of all manifestation. Manifestation is the activity of that energy AS the physical universe.

RICHARD: And as this energy is affective it is – in other words – god by any name.

RESPONDENT: If it is happening why should it be labelled ‘affective’?

RICHARD: Because you said that it was the ‘foundation of all manifestation’. You even went on to say that this ‘energy’ manifests ‘as the physical universe’ . You are positing an ‘it’ (which you say we can call whatever we like) that is ‘that energy’ which is fundamentally non-physical and yet powerful enough to produce such an enormous universe ... an energy that is commonly called ‘god’. Now, as this universe already is anyway, then any ‘energy’ posited to be a cause – of this universe that is always here now – is clearly an ignorant human invention based upon the dualistic need to explain anything and everything in terms of cause and effect. And what human energy is powerful enough to give birth to this imaginary god? Passionate human energy, of course. Hence the use of ‘affective’ ... it being the catch-all word for feelings like emotions, passions, calentures and so on. ‘Calenture’ is an incredibly useful word to describe this delirium that such a god exists.

RESPONDENT: There may be those who imagine all this because there certainly have been enough books around for people to assimilate the idea of no-self and to project that idea as actuality, but barring that, this energy is not ‘god’ or any other projection of thought or feeling. That is why it is not affective.

RICHARD: If it is not an affective or cerebral (a feeling and thought) projection then that only leaves the sensate faculty ... unless you want to substantiate the psychic faculty?

RESPONDENT: Energy is energy.

RICHARD: This is as useful a statement as that supposed profundity ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’.

RESPONDENT: Intelligence is just another word for energy unencumbered by self-centredness.

RICHARD: The energy of the particular human brain in action comes from the food the particular human body eats. This brain in this body called Richard is unencumbered by self-centredness and he sees that this universe was already here before this body was born and will still be here after this body dies. The intelligence of this brain – the food-energy intelligence – most certainly is not the ‘foundation of all manifestation’ . This food-energy intelligence is a manifestation of this physical universe ... not the other way around.

RESPONDENT: Therefore, loss of physical form is not death. It is only the destructuring of manifested energy.

RICHARD: Indeed ... when ‘I am That’ – when one is god by any name – one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. Then at physical death one just loses this physical form and lives forever in some mystical transcendental realm.

RESPONDENT: Now you are projecting from your own belief, aren’t you?

RICHARD: No, not at all. It is the eastern mystical belief ... I was merely fleshing out your sentence. I know that the physical death of this particular body called Richard is the end of this particular intelligence. The give-away was in the use of the phrase ‘loss of physical form’ that you used to describe physical death. The mystics belief that they ‘quit the body’ at physical death ... they cast it off ‘like a suit of old clothes’.

RESPONDENT: For me to say that the destructuring of the form is not ‘death’ is not to say that there is some self or ego which lives some place else after that destructuring has occurred. It is only to say that energy as life and form remains always as energy, whether the form exists or not.

RICHARD: Here you are saying that ‘energy’ exists whether there is ‘form or not’ ... independent of the body. When form as a human being is ... intelligence is. When form as a human being is not ... intelligence is not.

RESPONDENT: There is no need to posit either the idea of ‘death’ or the idea of some entity which outlasts the body.

RICHARD: I am not positing an idea of death ... death is a fact. However, the mystics posit an entity which outlasts the body so much so that they say it is eternal.

RESPONDENT: Take any form and observe its ‘death’ over time. There is only the destructuring of the form into its more subtle aspects of energy: atoms, etc., and beyond.

RICHARD: Physical matter re-arranges itself, yes. Shall we keep to the subject? Which is what happens to a particular awareness at physical death? When I die – when this body called Richard being apperceptively aware physically dies – this apperceptive awareness dies right along with it ... for they are the one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: The eventual destructuring of Richard’s form is nothing but the ‘de-congealment’ of intelligence.

RICHARD: Aye ... I am aware that for you the word ‘intelligence’ is god by whatever name. In other words, you wish to realise your immortality ... at the expense of peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: That is sheer nonsense and guessing.

RICHARD: I know it is nonsense ... yet billions of humans believe it to be so. As for me guessing ... I go by what you write. You are talking of an ‘intelligence’ that is an ‘energy’ that does not require ‘form’ ... thus all that you have written is but a variation on eastern mysticism. And western mysticism, for all that.

RESPONDENT: If you had asked me I would have said that the word intelligence to me means nothing more than the energy of nature, the ability of the various form systems to operate harmoniously and to maintain their structure until they disintegrate.

RICHARD: I did not have to ask you ... you volunteered enough information of your own accord to show that you are indulging in anthropomorphism.

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ is the body only. When the body destructures or ‘dies’, that’s it. But the intelligence of nature still exists AS nature. What does immortality have to do with that?

RICHARD: It is simple. Nature is not intelligent ... intelligence is only the human brain in action. When this particular body dies this particular intelligence dies right along with it. You say that intelligence does not die with the body as it can exist without form and – as you are this particular intelligence – you are thus saying that you are really immortal.

RESPONDENT: Awareness is neither created nor destroyed, and neither are its manifestations.

RICHARD: What you call awareness is ‘Unborn and Undying’ and is, of course, neither created nor destroyed, I agree. However, the awareness that is this flesh and blood body called Richard started right along with this body over half a century ago and – barring war, accidents and disease – will cease somewhere around 2030 because they are one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: I won’t argue that, but I will say that when Richard’s body ceases around 2030, the energy of that body will persist as the energy of nature.

RICHARD: Not so ... this body will cease being animated. The constituent particles of the inanimate body will re-combine with other particles of matter into other forms – some of which will be carbon-based life-forms and therefore animate – but only if that life-form is another human being will there be intelligence.

RESPONDENT: Richard’s body never ‘had’ any awareness to begin with, but what awareness was present was the awareness of nature manifested as and through the material form.

RICHARD: If by the phrase ‘awareness of nature’ you mean the awareness of any carbon-based life-form then you are straying from the subject of intelligent awareness. A canary is aware, for example, but as it cannot think and reflect – understand – it is not intelligent.

RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti may have been right: There could be nothing but intelligence. Now, it could be mysticism that is saying this.

RICHARD: It is mysticism ... clearly and unequivocally.

RESPONDENT: I guess you know that your assertions of unequivocality are not quite sufficient unless you are hinting that you want me to accept your statement as truth without questioning it.

RICHARD: Certainly not ... please do question. I would not want anyone to but believe me ... they have to see it for themselves.

RESPONDENT: You’ll have to do better than that if we are to discuss intelligently.

RICHARD: I am having no trouble discussing intelligently. And I am quite capable of substantiating my statement that it is clearly and unequivocally mysticism ... as you may see if you can but extract your mind from the influence of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s mysticism .

RESPONDENT: Just as mysticism may also be saying that the death of the body is the same as the death of apperceptive aware-ness.

RICHARD: Not so ... there is no trace of mysticism in me whatsoever. I am a thorough-going atheist through and through.

RESPONDENT: So ... you are an atheist. That means you have a belief because atheism is a belief.

RICHARD: Not so ... an atheist is distinguished by not having a belief in the existence of a god. You would have desperate to be trying to make out a case for me then believing that a god does not exist ... that is playing with words to make them mean something they are not.

RESPONDENT: In that case there is no fundamental difference between you as a believer in atheism, and a Christian who believes in god.

RICHARD: Please, do not get too carried away with your misunderstanding of what an atheist is ... there is a vast difference between me and a Christian.

RESPONDENT: Belief is belief.

RICHARD: This is as useful a statement as that supposed profundity ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’.

RESPONDENT: And to act from belief is to engage in speculation, to speak and think from centre of knowledge. That is just ordinary self-deception.

RICHARD: But as you are building a case based upon a false premise ... there is no point in responding to this.

RESPONDENT: Both [observations about death] could be the projections of ego using knowledge. That is the value of Krishnamurti’s statement ‘find out’. That way there is no authority, no propaganda, no acceptance of the words of another as fact.

RICHARD: Oh yes ... let us not learn from one another, eh? We will just muddle along making each other’s mistakes all over again ... and again. However, you do take another’s words as fact as you will see two [now fourteen] sentences below.

RESPONDENT: What can you learn from another which can be useful in comprehending the state of your own mind?

RICHARD: You too would complain about the length of my posts if I were to list what I have learnt from others that has been useful in comprehending the state of my own mind. I would not be where I am today if it were not for many, many other people’s input.

RESPONDENT: You may use the words of another like you use a mirror – in order to observe the mind – but, in that case, the learning is your action of observation of yourself, not the memorisation and acting out of the words of the other. I think that is the point.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... for example, I learnt from Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. But I did not learn what he wanted me to learn ... I was already enlightened when I first read some of his words and was seeking to understand what was suss about enlightenment.

RESPONDENT: Finally, there is no need then, to try to debunk the words of Krishnamurti or anybody else in order to promote what, because of the egotism implied by one’s need to debunk, becomes evidence of what is actually one’s beliefs projected as truth.

RICHARD: There is no egotism implied in my debunking of the altered state of consciousness known a ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... I am simply passing on to my fellow human beings my experience of life. What they do with this information is their business. There is no need in me to do this debunking because I have no problems whatsoever. Why I do it is because other people tell me that they are suffering so I explain how I ended suffering in myself. One of the triggers that started me on this voyage into my psyche was the realisation that human beings are driven to kill their fellow human beings ... and I was one of them. Now I am not ... and I share that what triggered me because it may trigger them.

RESPONDENT: ‘Altered state of consciousness’ is YOUR label for the encounters of others.

RICHARD: It is not my label at all ... it is the generally accepted convention in the English-speaking countries.

RESPONDENT: It is rather arrogant to assume that your own perspective of life is some basis for defining the encounters of others.

RICHARD: Yet if I accept the others’ definitions of their encounters as being fact then I am a fool. A devout Hindu sees a blue-skinned Mr. Krishna playing on a flute and a devout Christian sees a pale-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene hanging on a cross ... and they both define their own account by saying that this is the ‘True God’. Why is it arrogant of me to know that my perspective is an accurate basis for labelling them as what they both clearly are ... deluded?

RESPONDENT: If you really are what you say you are, your words should stand on their own without the need for comparing what you say to what others have said.

RICHARD: This does not make sense ... I do not live in a vacuum. Other peoples have made certain statements and I see that they are inaccurate to the point of being silly. How on earth can I do that if I am not to compare?

RESPONDENT: As I feel you have enough integrity to concede, you are probably not the only human being who may see things clearly.

RICHARD: No one else, as far as I have been able to ascertain in eighteen years of scouring the books and travelling overseas, is able to see things clearly. The only person who comes close is Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti whom I found out about last year when I first came onto the Internet. But he does not know what happened to him and has no solutions to offer. He is simply a curiosity to those who go to see him. He states that he is a ‘never to be repeated sport of nature’. Whereas I know where I came from and where I am at and how I got here.

RESPONDENT: So you won’t mind if I don’t simply take your word for things and accept that your opinions of Krishnamurti and others as fact, especially since you have defined yourself as a believer.

RICHARD: Not so ... you defined me as a believer. I have no capacity to believe ... that faculty disappeared with the extinction of identity.

RESPONDENT: That fact alone casts serious doubts about your assertions of clarity.

RICHARD: May I suggest? It gives pause to question the condition of your own clarity.

RESPONDENT: Of course you can just say: ‘Well don’t believe it ... I don’t care’.

RICHARD: This phrase does not sound like me at all ... I do not want any one to merely believe me. I stress to people how important 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.

RESPONDENT: I am not judging you, however.

RICHARD: Judge away to your heart’s content ... I do not subscribe to that Alternate/New Age morality borrowed from the Christians: ‘Thou shalt not judge’.

RESPONDENT: I am just pointing out to you that your opinions of what others have said is not absolute, nor are they truth.

RICHARD: Yet what I say is factual ... I can substantiate all my statements. Whenever I do offer an opinion I always say that it is but an opinion ... or a guess or a speculation or an hypothesis and so on.

RESPONDENT: They are your opinions and you are certainly entitled to them.

RICHARD: This is but a platitude.

RESPONDENT: When compassion is actual and is ‘speaking’ through the body, it prods people to discover for themselves.

RICHARD: This sentence puts to lie what you wrote above. You have not seen the fact of compassion for yourself. Compassion is affective and you want yourself and others to be ruled by their feelings and not their native intelligence. Only you dress up this feeling called compassion – like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – by rashly calling it intelligence! This ‘intelligence’ is causing people to kill their fellow human beings.

RESPONDENT: You sound like you’ve read a lot of U.G. Krishnamurti, the famous debunker of J. Krishnamurti. Perhaps not.

RICHARD: From what I have read his condition is the same as what I experience in that he has no psyche at all. But there the similarity ends. I first heard of him when I bought a computer and gained access to the Internet in February 1997. I located the Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti web page via another article and read all the information with rapidly diminishing interest. Something fundamental happened to him that I can relate to – the total annihilation of any psychological entity whatsoever – but he clearly states that he himself does not know what it was that happened, unfortunately. He makes it clear that he has nothing to offer to advance humankind’s knowledge about itself, which makes his a hapless condition. He makes no bones about considering himself as being a ‘sport of nature’, which is not about to be repeated, so therefore he concludes that no good will be obtained by talking with him.

Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti does not regard his state as a new way of living for any other person. He has no basic survival or reproductive objectives for himself or others. He says that as all desires have disappeared in him, any psychological and spiritual wants are without any foundation. He states that there is no message he can give or help he can offer. He says has no disciples, no teachings, and no practices. His ‘message’ is that he has no message for humankind. He cannot save humans from their basic dilemma or from their self-deception. Yet, being typically paradoxical, he says: ‘If I cannot help you, no one can’.

Of course, I am in accord with his oft-repeated statements about Spiritual Enlightenment being a waste of time, but it is one thing to speak out against something – whilst offering nothing in its place – and another thing entirely to propose a viable, liveable and delightful alternative to what one is knocking down. I did not read him saying anything about how deliciously enjoyable it is to be finally free of the Human Condition; what a pleasure it is to be alive at this moment in time; how life is an adventure in itself by the simple fact of being here; what a felicitous experience it is to be the universe’s experience of itself as a human being; to be able to fully appreciate the infinitude of this physical universe by being alive ... and so on. In short, what I read sounded existentialist and nihilistic and negative.

I asked around for any videos of him and I was able to watch three of them. I stopped watching half-way through the third one as I had had enough. He acknowledges that there are still emotions ... but that it is the body that is having them ... fear was one that I heard him talk about on the video. The writings about him talk of him getting angry at people who come to see him ... he tells them to go away in no uncertain terms. I can not relate to this at all as I experience no feelings – emotions and passions – whatsoever. Also, on one video, he says that he looks at a clock and wonders what it is; someone asks him what the time is and he answers ‘A quarter past three’ – or whatever – and then falls back into wondering what it is that he is looking at. I know perfectly well what a clock is. Apparently he has to knock his head against a wall to know that he is here; he slams kitchen doors shut for the same reason; he goes to a doctor who examines him and says that he is indeed alive ... whereas I know that I am alive and well and thoroughly enjoying myself ... and will continue to do so for the term of my natural life. It is a strange situation he is in and he seems to be very much alone in it. In a way it is all a bit of a dismal story.

RESPONDENT: How do you know what I have seen?

RICHARD: I only know what you write ... and you praise compassion to the skies and beyond. Obviously you have not questioned it ... it is this simple.

RESPONDENT: Now tell me: how can compassion be ‘affective’?

RICHARD: Goodness me ... by the very word, for starters. ‘Passio’ is the Greek for the Latin word ‘Pathos’ meaning sorrow. Thus the word ‘compassion’ means ‘sorrow in common’ or ‘sorrow shared’ or ‘mutual sorrow’ ... it is as affective as all get-out.

RESPONDENT: Compassion is impersonal, not mine or yours.

RICHARD: It is inherent to the Human Condition, if that is what you mean by ‘impersonal’. But as each and every person’s psyche is the human psyche then compassion is indeed personal. Now ‘Divine Compassion’ is when ‘human compassion’ transforms itself along with the transformation of the ‘I’ as ego into ‘Me’ as Self (by whatever name). It is still sorrow in common ... merely glorified and sanctified. It is still affective.

RESPONDENT: Nor is it an outcome of some ‘spiritual achievement’ or some other delusion of thought/feeling.

RICHARD: May I suggest that you re-examine this statement for veracity?

RESPONDENT: If you are truly compassionate, you know that it is not a matter of choice.

RICHARD: Indeed not ... the Enlightened Ones are driven to bring ‘The Truth’ to humankind. They have surrendered their will to some fictitious ‘Higher Power’ that lies unmanifest behind the throne.

RESPONDENT: It is the movement of life itself, that movement of life which maintains itself, which maintains order.

RICHARD: When you say ‘the movement of life’ you have to be referring to carbon-based life-forms as there is no other form of life. What ‘moves’ these life-forms is the animating energy derived from the calorific content of food. This has nothing to do with an ‘impersonal compassion’. Compassion exists only in the psyche and is an affective energy.

RESPONDENT: Therefore, when the human body is cleared of selfishness, the compassion of nature operates through that body as it operates in all bodies and material systems.

RICHARD: There is no such thing as ‘the compassion of nature’ ... that is a sentimental human invention as is epitomised by the phrase ‘Mother Nature’. Nature is blind ... it does not care two-hoots about you and me. It is only concerned with the survival of the species ... and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned. Nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’.

RESPONDENT: As you know, all species are genetically programmed to ‘share’ themselves in the interest of their survival.

RICHARD: Aye ... there was an article in a newspaper some months ago announcing the preliminary discovery of a place in the brain which – when stimulated by electrodes – produced an oceanic feeling of oneness. The scientists concerned have speculated that it is the instinctually-programmed socialising faculty ... it promotes communalism. The popular press has dubbed this place in the brain as the ‘God Spot’. I watch with interest for further developments.

RESPONDENT: There aggressiveness is a factor of that compassion.

RICHARD: Aggression is a survival instinct that blind nature endows upon all sentient beings.

RESPONDENT: That is compassion at the physiological, programmed level.

RICHARD: Not so ... compassion arises out of sorrow. Sorrow is because ‘you’ are – by ‘your’ very nature – forever cut-off from the magnificence of being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. That is, ‘you’ cannot know the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe. This is called, in the jargon, separation. Because of this separation, ‘you’ desire union ... oneness, wholeness and so on. In a word: Love Agapé. How to come upon this divine love?

Now the trap of compassion is that the giver and the receiver remain firmly locked into the poignant and seductive snare of the beauty of pathos. Compassion 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 the conversations between Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mr David Bohm and Mr. David Shainburg ... they are particularly illuminating in this respect. Vis.:

• ‘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? ... 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’. (‘The Wholeness Of Life’ published by The Krishnamurti Foundation. Dialogue VII (May 20 1976 – Monday Afternoon).

And thus a new religion may be 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.

RESPONDENT: When the human mind is free of selfishness that compassion operates through that mind at the human level.

RICHARD: Compassion does not exist outside of the psyche.

RESPONDENT: It is just natural, not affective, to care when there is nothing which feels it is separate from everything else.

RICHARD: Aye ... it is natural. It is also natural to kill one’s fellow human being. I did something very unnatural ... I eliminated the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus I am free from the Human Condition. With no natural instincts dominating this body, this particular brain’s intelligence operates freely. When my fellow human being is in distress I can easily be of assistance – in whatever capacity I am skilful at – and as this care is free of sorrow on my part it is uncaused.

RESPONDENT: It [compassion] does not seek to establish any point of view in another.

RICHARD: You will find out that it does ... just two sentences below.

RESPONDENT: Nor does it [compassion] seek to change another’s point of view.

RICHARD: You will find out that it does ... just one sentence below.

RESPONDENT: It points out to another the value of observing for himself the nature of ‘himself’.

RICHARD: It is the word ‘value’ that belies your two statements above.

RESPONDENT: You should have been a lawyer, my man. They too rely on trivia in the absence of real insight.

RICHARD: Pardon me for breathing ... I have only your words to go by. If you consider that your words are trivial then sharpen up your writing skills.

RESPONDENT: You may remove the word value if that causes you trouble.

RICHARD: No ... it does not cause me any trouble whatsoever. On the contrary, it shows the importance and estimation that you place on what the power of compassion can do.

RESPONDENT: And consider that the action of pointing out is the important thing to see.

RICHARD: Do you see that you use the word ‘important’ ? Thus you esteem what compassion shows you highly.

RESPONDENT: If I say that is valuable, I am saying it in the sense that eating food is valuable to the body. Nothing more, nothing less.

RICHARD: Not so ... anybody can eat food. But only a favoured few have seen the value of what compassion ‘points out’ and have gone on the become the ‘Compassionate Ones’. They propose to have the solution to all the ills of humankind ... this is a far cry from the ‘nothing more, nothing less’ value of eating food.

RESPONDENT: And when that action is undertaken with utmost and utter seriousness.

RICHARD: You acknowledge here – by the use of ‘utmost and utter seriousness’ – just how strongly compassion seeks to ‘establish a point of view in another’ and to ‘change another’s point of view’ .

RESPONDENT: You just aren’t paying attention today.

RICHARD: I am indeed paying attention ... so much so that you say I should be a lawyer.

RESPONDENT: ‘Utmost and utter seriousness’ does not refer to the one who is pointing out.

RICHARD: I beg to differ ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti made such a big thing about being serious.

RESPONDENT: It refers to the human being who has discovered the nature of the mind, and which discovery – shock that it is – has begun the process of real observation. When the mind has seen the danger of its state of total confusion, it becomes serious about that state. It begins to observe its thoughts more closely.

RICHARD: Aye ... and ignores the affective. Such is the pre-occupation with blaming thought. But, then again, as it was compassion – which is affective – that did the pointing out ... it would hardly point the finger at its own basis now would it?

RESPONDENT: Then the human brain has a chance to perceive the totality of its primordial involvement with illusion, and may be free of it .

RICHARD: Aye ... it is a powerful energy, this compassion, eh? That is because it is affective.

RESPONDENT: Must everything be ‘affective’?

RICHARD: No, not everything. What is affective is Love, Compassion, Bliss, Euphoria, Ecstasy, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Oneness, Unity, Wholeness and ... and any of those kind of baubles.

RESPONDENT: We should take care not to become attached to our pet words, or we shall fail to continue to learn.

RICHARD: One can arrive at a condition where learning ceases and living begins ... other than learning technological skills, of course.

RESPONDENT: In addition to what No. 29 has said, and without defending Krishnamurti.

RICHARD: Quoth he ... defending Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti like all get-out.

RESPONDENT: Why, if you can debunk the man without any basis save your own opinion, can’t I demonstrate to you the error of your thoughts without being seen as defending Krishnamurti?

RICHARD: If you were merely demonstrating the ‘error of my thoughts’ then why did you just not get on with the job and simply do so? Methinks thou doest protesteth too much.

RESPONDENT: Or is it that you insist on being right even in the face of information which casts doubts on your theories?

RICHARD: What information? All that you have presented to me is but variations on mysticism. This is not information ... it is passionate fantasy.

RESPONDENT: I can understand, if that is the case, why you would be more concerned with labelling me than with clarifying your position.

RICHARD: I have been doing nothing else but clarifying my position ever since I came onto this Mailing List. As for labelling ... I label away to my heart’s content for I do not subscribe to that Alternative/ New Age morality borrowed from Christianity: ‘Thou shalt not label’.

RESPONDENT: It is easier, isn’t it? Fear naturally tries to distract itself.

RICHARD: Perhaps you might like to re-consider this statement? Perchance you wrote it somewhat hastily?

*

RESPONDENT: I do recall Krishnamurti saying more than once that the actual ‘teaching’ is an action, the action of a mind which is observing itself. A body of words has to be called something, so they are called, in this case, ‘teachings’. There were then, two uses of the word teaching.

RICHARD: Hmm ... if you say so. I would rather go by his own words. When asked about calling his words ‘Teachings’, Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti described how it came about in a discussion among friends: Vis.: ‘We thought of using the word ‘work’ – ironworks, big building works, hydro-electric works, you understand? So I thought ‘work’ is very, very common. So we thought we might use the word teaching. But it is not important – the word – right? It depends upon you, whether you live the teachings, or not’. (‘Unconditionally Free’, Part One; ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation America). So, what does he mean when he says that what is important is ‘whether you live the teachings, or not’? Living the ‘Teachings’, he says, means that one loves life ... and to do this one enables god to manifest itself in one’s very body via a spiritual connection. Only, he says, he prefers to use the word ‘life’ instead of ‘god’. So when he says ‘love life (god) and put this love before everything else’ he is being very precise ... he is saying: ‘love god and put this love before everything else’ To wit:  ‘I have never said there is no god, I have said there is only god as it is manifest within you. But I will not use the word ‘god’ ... I prefer to call it ‘life’. When you love life and put this love before everything else and measure everything with this love and don’t judge it with your fear, then this stagnation you call moral will vanish’. (page 262, ‘The Years Of Awakening’; ©1975 Mary Lutyens ; John Murray Publishers Ltd).

RESPONDENT: Thank you for that quote. Why do you have a problem with Krishnamurti’s choosing words as symbols for the wordless?

RICHARD: I have no problem with it at all ... but then again, it is because I understand ‘the wordless’ that he was talking of. They are no mere ‘symbols’ ... they literally mean what they say.

RESPONDENT: Does it matter what he calls it?

RICHARD: Of course it does ... if it did not matter he could very well have said something like:

• ‘I have never said there is no chewing-gum, I have said there is only chewing-gum as it is manifest within you. But I will not use the word ‘chewing-gum’ ... I prefer to call it ‘Scotch Mist’ When you hate Scotch Mist and put this hate before everything else and measure everything with this hate and don’t judge it with your trust, then this animation you call wheelbarrows will vanish’.

RESPONDENT: You also use words to try to convey what you perceive. Shall I become picky with you and try to tie you up in all sorts of intellectual rubbish because you use words to try to convey something?

RICHARD: Yes ... please go ahead. I can substantiate any statement I make.

RESPONDENT: And why do you feel you can interpret Krishnamurti or anybody else and that your interpretation supersedes what that person himself meant?

RICHARD: Firstly, because it is not an interpretation but an observation of fact ... and secondly because I was enlightened for eleven years and have been beyond enlightenment for this last six years in a condition I call actual freedom.

RESPONDENT: That is patently arrogant behaviour unbefitting one who understands clearly the necessity of communicating through words in order to reach humanity, as you say you want to do.

RICHARD: Why is pointing out facts arrogant? If I say ‘look ... here is a computer monitor’ am I being arrogant? No ... Richard is only arrogant when he points out a fact that pulls the rug from under one’s elaborate belief system slyly dressed up as truth.

RESPONDENT: Anyway, what has Krishnamurti to do with you? Just say what you want to say and let your words stand on their own. It’s just too easy to build yourself up by tearing somebody else down.

RICHARD: When I first came onto this Mailing List I did just say what I wanted to say ... my words did stand on their own. I wrote twenty eight posts describing my experiences before I mentioned his name or referred to him at all. Then I wrote this: Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘Isn’t life great! Somebody [Konrad Swart] comes onto this list and tells their story. Simply and directly: ‘This is what happened to me ... and this is what I thought ... and this is what is going on now’. And what a fascinating inside view it is, into the workings-out of the existential dilemma that all humans find themselves in, into the bargain. It is far more interesting and alive and happening than the theoretical pursuit of whether thought imputes this or that or whatever. Or whether an ‘I’ that does not exist can know whether it does not exist ... or not ... or whether an ‘I’ who knows it exists can know that it does not exist ... or not ... or whatever. Konrad has an actual experience – that has lasted for seventeen years – and he will not even be given the benefit of the doubt? So what happens? The cynics come out of the woodwork and slam someone for being open enough to talk about what he himself took to be madness. Well, well, well! Wouldn’t Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti be real chuffed to know what is happening under the auspices of the teachings he brought into the world ... where is the spirit of exploring together, sharing together and finding out together what it is to be a human being in this world as-it-is? [Quote] ‘We are friends, sitting under a tree together, talking over this matter of ...’ [Endquote]. He [Konrad] is not saying that he is enlightened ... he is saying that he is ‘living with enlightenment’ ... that a process began seventeen years ago that is still occurring ... that there still is an ‘I’ ... and he is willing to talk about it. What more could one ask for, eh? But, to save people’s bandwidth limits being breached, Konrad and I are corresponding privately. I am finding his experience fascinating, and his views on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being extremely intriguing’.

I wrote seventy nine posts before the following exchange took place. Vis.:

• [Respondent No. 12]: ‘I agree with your comments as to the desire to join with something greater as generally fear-based. At the same time, it seems that there may be an interest and passionate longing for wholeness that does not arise out of fear or ambition but comes from the depths – in Krishnamurti’s terms, from intelligence.
• [Richard]: ‘Yes, indeed there is an interest ... a vital interest, in fact, and all because of that passionate longing for wholeness which you locate – accurately – as coming from the depths. And because it is a passionate longing, then the ‘depths’ indicated must be the depths of feeling, and not of deep thought. You then propose that it is coming from intelligence – and not just from what passes for intelligence in ordinary everyday reality – but the intelligence as delineated and described by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. So, now comes the potentially touchy bit ... but as I have clearly stated my position before I will remain, as ever, candid. Whenever Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is brought into a discussion, it must be born in mind as to where he was coming from. He was an enlightened man living in a state of wholeness ... a state of oneness and unity. Which means there was no longer a separation betwixt him and what he variously called ‘the other’, ‘the absolute’, ‘the supreme’, ‘that which is eternal, timeless and nameless’, ‘that which is sacred, holy’ and so on’.

Other posters quickly jumped in quoting words, phrases and whole paragraphs spoken or written by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. What was I to do? Agree with them? Pretend that they did not quote them? Or use them to substantiate my point? Since you seem to know what I should have done ... then you tell me what the suitable course of action should be, eh?

*

RICHARD: Okay so far? The essence of the ‘Teachings’ is that you are to love god ... do you see this? Now, where is this god? Shall we find out – in his words – who he is? Vis.: [quote] ‘I am everything, since I am life’. [end quote]. Now, we know already that he uses the word ‘life’ to mean ‘god’, right? So what he is clearly saying is: ‘I am everything, since I am god’. Shall I drive this point home? Vis.: ‘Don’t speculate who I am, you will never know it [through speculation] ... Do you think the truth has anything to do with what you think I were? You don’t care for the truth ... Drink the water when it is pure: I tell you, I have this pure water. I have this balsam, which purifies, which will heal wonderfully, and you ask me: Who are you?’. (page 262, ‘The Years Of Awakening’; ©1975 Mary Lutyens ; John Murray Publishers Ltd). Shall we go on? Vis.: ‘Truth, the real God – the real God, not the God that man has made, does not want a mind that has been destroyed, petty, shallow, narrow, limited. It needs a healthy mind to appreciate it; it needs a rich mind – rich, not with knowledge but with innocence – a mind upon which there has never been a scratch of experience, a mind that is free from time. The gods that you have invented for your own comforts accept torture; they accept a mind that is being made dull. But the real thing does not want it; it wants a total, complete human being whose heart is full, rich, clear, capable of intense feeling, capable of seeing the beauty of a tree, the smile of a child, and the agony of a woman who has never had a full meal’. (May 1; ‘The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with J. Krishnamurti’; Published by HarperSanFrancisco. ©1999 Krishnamurti Foundation of America). From all this one can easily see that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘I am life ... life is god ... I am god made manifest’ ... because he did say ‘I am everything, since I am life (god)’. To drive the point home he says: ‘Truth, the real God – the real God, not the God that man has made’. Therefore, ‘life’, ‘god’ and ‘truth’ are one and the same thing. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘I am god made manifest ... god is truth ... I am truth’.

RESPONDENT: So what? When there is no ego present, the energy of life, the intelligence of nature DOES operate through the brain.

RICHARD: Only if one is a mystic living a delusion.

RESPONDENT: When a person who lives in that energy says ‘I am truth’, or ‘I am intelligence’, or ‘I am god’, you know he is using words to convey the state of selflessness from which he is speaking. You know he does not actually believe in the intellectual idea of god, love, truth and intelligence.

RICHARD: Of course he does not have to ‘believe in the intellectual idea’ ... he has realised it so much so that he has become that. He is a living hallucination.

RESPONDENT: But he has to communicate with others. All I hear Krishnamurti actually saying is that the human mind, that is, the seeker who comes to him, must discover for himself, that energy which is not of thought but which is the foundation of life itself, and when that discovery is factual, the personality of that person is burnt up in the action of insight.

RICHARD: If I may point out? You are interpreting Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Not that I mind, of course ... interpret away to your heart’s content. It is just that you make such a big fuss when others do this.

RESPONDENT: The body is then the vehicle of the energy, the intelligence of nature.

RICHARD: Somewhat like a New Age channeller ... only better, of course.

RESPONDENT: What, pray tell, is wrong with that?

RICHARD: There is nothing wrong with it ... it is simply silly.

RESPONDENT: If he was what he said he was.

RICHARD: Oh, he was, all right ... be there no doubt about that.

RESPONDENT: He has every right to refer to his perception as intelligence, god, truth, or whatever else he chooses to call it.

RICHARD: Indeed ... and he is well-known for choosing his words carefully. He often referred to the etymology of a word to see if it was apt.

RESPONDENT: After all, he did say that ‘the word is not the thing’.

RICHARD: Indeed ... he said that the word ‘water’ was not the thing-in-itself. One had to drink the water and become it oneself.

*

RICHARD: Now, because he urges his listeners to ‘drink the pure water which I have’ – and it is a water that ‘purifies and heals wonderfully’ – then some considerable light is thrown on his oft-repeated statement about not being a teacher. Because he says: ‘The real thing (‘life’, ‘god’ and ‘truth’) wants a total, complete human being whose heart is full, rich, clear, capable of intense feeling, capable of seeing the beauty’. Love, for him, is an ‘intense feeling’ – which is clearly affective – in the ‘full, rich, clear heart’ . By being in his presence and experiencing his love (god’s love) then whatever ails you will be cured ... especially if you know how to ‘listen’. So, what does he mean by ‘listening’? Two years before his death, when asked to reflect upon the importance of his own life, he replied:  ‘Does it matter if the world says of Krishnamurti, ‘What a wonderful person he is ...’. Who cares? (...) The vase contains water; you have to drink the water, not worship the vase. Humanity worships the vase, forgets the water’. (‘Unconditionally Free’, Part One; ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation America). He said:  ‘The speaker doesn’t have anything he could teach you ... The speaker is only a mirror where you can see yourself. Then, when you recognise yourself clearly, you can put aside the mirror’. (‘Krishnamurti – His Life and Death; ©1991 Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York).

RESPONDENT: Do you have a problem with those statements? I think they are quite amazing actually.

RICHARD: I have no problem with them whatsoever. They are very clear and specific ... they leave no room for misunderstanding. Though I would guess that there might be some who do not examine them closely enough either for fear of being merely ‘picking over trivia’ ... or because they are bedazzled by ‘amazement’.

It is only a guess, though.

RESPONDENT: Again, I am cautious not to immediately accept those of your statements which begin with ‘he meant’.

RICHARD: I looked back through these quotes and what I wrote and for the life of me I could not see any statement of mine beginning with ‘he meant’. Just to be sure I typed < he meant > into the search function of the computer and all it stopped at was your words saying ‘he meant’.

RESPONDENT: The man clearly said that he had nothing to teach, that the teaching, in other words, is the person’s own willingness to look at himself. The water to be drunk is not Krishnamurti, but the persons own daring to know himself. What Krishnamurti had was HIS, not other’s.

RICHARD: If I may point out? You are interpreting Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Not that I mind, of course ... interpret away to your heart’s content. It is just that you make such a big fuss when others do this.

RESPONDENT: If he offered people the opportunity to examine themselves in an environment free of judgement and fear, then he did more than most others I have encountered in my life so far.

RICHARD: Not so ... there have been thousands of enlightened people ... .000001 of the population according to a recent estimate.

RESPONDENT: Further, I would not ask what Krishnamurti meant by listening. But I know what listening is for me. That is what matters.

RICHARD: Funny ... I would ask the person making the suggestion just in case I was misinterpreting what he said. And if that person was dead, then I would look through all that was said by him on the subject so as to ascertain what was consistently proposed. There are literally millions upon millions of his words recorded for perusal.

*

RESPONDENT: He said basically: ‘observe yourself ... find out for yourself’. If one does that, one is free of Krishnamurti, isn’t one?

RICHARD: Not if you observe yourself the way he prescribed ... you are to ‘drink him’ for he is ‘love’ and ‘love’ is ‘god’. (Only he preferred to use the word ‘life’ instead of ‘god’). Now do you know what ‘listen’ means to him? It does not mean listen with your ears ... it means ‘drink me’ (just like in the Christian’s Holy scriptures). Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti basically said: ‘Listen to me (drink me in) ... just for two minutes, drink me and recognise yourself as being me: I am life. Love life. Life is truth. Love truth. Truth is God. Love God. I am God made manifest’. And if ‘god’ and ‘life’ and ‘truth’ and ‘love’ all being synonymous for him is not enough evidence for you, he goes on to elaborate on this theme and includes ‘reality’ and ‘bliss’ and ‘beauty’ into what constitutes ‘god’: ‘That state of mind which is no longer capable of striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon this thing called truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love’. (‘Freedom From The Known’; ©1969 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd). It is all so familiar ... Gurus and God-men have been saying and doing and being and urging this religious or spiritual or mystical or metaphysical solution for millennia. All the Masters and Messiahs; all the Saints and the Sages; all the Saviours and the Avatars have failed to bring about their much-touted Peace On Earth. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was simply the latest in a long line of failures. And he wanted this for his listeners: ‘I am not talking for my benefit. Although I have talked for fifty-two years I am not interested in talking. But I am interested to find out if you can also discover the same thing so that your own life will be totally different, transformed, so that you have no problems, no complexities, no strife or longing. That is the reason the speaker is talking, not for his own gratification, not for his own enjoyment, not for his own fulfilment’. [endquote]. And to forestall any of those ‘immature’ versus ‘mature’ Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti excuses, he stayed with the same message all his public life, changing only the way he said it: ‘You asked a question: Has there been a fundamental change in K from the 1930’s, 1940’s? I say, no. There has been considerable change in expression’. (‘Krishnamurti – A Biography’; ©1986 Pupul Jayakar. Published by Harper & Row, San Francisco).

RESPONDENT: Actually, I think you are quite disturbed and tend to project your fears onto your IMAGE of Mr. Krishnamurti as well as everybody else whose lives and perceptions you can’t discern.

RICHARD: I have no image about anyone or anything whatsoever. I cannot make images ... literally. The image-making faculty disappeared out of me when the identity in its totality became extinct. I could not form an image if my life depended upon it. As for being disturbed ... I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and have been officially classified as suffering from a pronounced and severe mental disorder. My symptoms are:

1. Depersonalisation.
2. Derealisation.
3. Alexithymia.
4. Anhedonia.

Also, I have the most classic indication of insanity. That is: everyone else is mad but me.

I just thought I might share that with you, as I consider that it may be important for you to know that you are currently engaged in a correspondence with a madman.

RESPONDENT: You want to lump everybody who refers to their freedom from self and have seen their nature as the intelligence and love of life, into one category: ‘NOT RICHARD’

RICHARD: Not precisely, no ... I lump everybody into the category: ‘not actually free’.

RESPONDENT: And you really think that by doing that, and by doing it arbitrarily I might add, that you have proven your opinions to be fact.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... I can substantiate any statement I make.

RESPONDENT: You have not said one thing so far that indicates to me any understanding of either life nor yourself.

RICHARD: Aye ... it is clear from what you write that you do not understand what I am saying. Maybe it is because you have a pre-conceived notion that spiritual enlightenment is the Summum Bonum of human experience?

RESPONDENT: What I see is a person who has read a great deal, is quite brilliant, and who has, perhaps, experienced some mind blowing phenomenon at some point in his life.

RICHARD: I can concur with this appraisal ... except that there is no ‘perhaps’ about it.

RESPONDENT: But your need to assail the contributions of others towards human growth, indicates to me a mind which is not at peace with itself and, like most who want to be ‘king of the mountain’, needs to first abolish what it feels to be a threat to its self-appointed dominance.

RICHARD: I have only ever wanted to know – utterly and completely – why human beings were driven to engage in all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse ... and fall into sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. And all this despite thousands of years of enlightened people dispensing their wisdom to all and sundry. I wanted to know why Love, Compassion, Bliss, Euphoria, Ecstasy, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Oneness, Unity, Wholeness and so on did not deliver peace-on-earth. I found out why by direct experience.

RESPONDENT: Perhaps I am coming on too strongly, but that is what I see.

RICHARD: Come on as strong as you like ... I am used to it after eighteen years of talking to recalcitrant egos and contumacious souls. I can give as good as I get when that is appropriate.

*

RICHARD: You may say that you are not defending Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti ... but you are defending the indefensible. Why?

RESPONDENT: You don’t care actually, one hoot that I may or may not be defending Krishnamurti. What you really care about is that I’m not accepting your own words as authority.

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.

RESPONDENT: Admit that, and maybe there will be the off-chance that you will begin to face the reality of your anger and confusion and snap out of it.

RICHARD: I have no anger – or confusion – to face. All that disappeared along with the identity.

RESPONDENT: I mean this beneficently of course.

RICHARD: I am sure you do ... mostly people are well-meaning.

December 05 1998:

RESPONDENT: I have been noticing this trend of authoritative behaviour for sometime now. I could be wrong of course, but it seemed to me that it was increasing over time. I decided to give my view on it. I’ve seen the trend of authority increase not only here but other places I go on the net, places which are supposed to be serving the interest of human understanding and self-knowledge.

RICHARD: In other words: do not ever do or achieve anything outstanding that would lead to bettering one self ... especially totally. Or if you do – and you report to your fellow human beings about it – be well aware that 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’.

If all human beings took Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘non-authoritarian’ advice about rejecting authority – yet all the while he gave firm instructions about ‘interpreting’ that needs must leave the power-backed ‘Teachings’ to be considered inviolate – and did not share their discoveries, we would all still be living in a cave, dressed in animal skins, and gnawing on a raw brontosaurus bone.

RESPONDENT: I’m discussing authority solely from the point of view of force: The attempt to nullify another’s ideas based on one’s belief that one is speaking from some state of mind or being which one feels gives one the right to determine for another the ‘state’ of his psychology, and/or one’s belief that one has the right to define another based on the spoken or unspoken premise: ‘Because I said so’. One has the right to attempt the force of authority. I am saying that if there is to be actual dialog, it is a good idea to question, even challenge, the idea of such authority just as one questions and challenges most other ideologies.

RICHARD: Yet you will not question, let alone challenge, the power – which is the forceful authority – of compassion, for example. Coincidentally Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ praise the power of compassion to the skies and beyond ... even to the point of calling it ‘intelligence’. His ‘Teachings’ also praise love and beauty and truth and other revered mystical values – which he clearly identifies as being synonymous with god – and does No. 4 question them? In fact, where does No. 4 get the backing for his posts about forceful authority from anyway?

Maybe – just maybe – you have been sucked in badly.


CORRESPONDENT No. 04: (Part Two)

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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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