Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’

with Respondent No. 15

Some Of The Topics Covered

fact – via negativa – authority – Krishnamurti’s teaching – Ancient Wisdom – thought – consciousness – awareness – words

February 28 1998:

RESPONDENT No. 20: The view you express about all we have of the world being mental sensations can lead in several directions. Buddhism seems to be fixed to the ‘conceptualist’ path, by which I mean that they assume that this negates existence of the world. The long tradition in the West which is called Empiricism, also starts at this same point, but does not assume this. Based on what is available to us, it makes far more sense to look at things as existent, then things as not existent.

RESPONDENT: Buddhism starts from awareness of undivided, unchanging Absolute. Empiricism starts from the premise that the objects of the world have a self-existing objective reality. If the empirical method actually started from the factual observation that all we have ever had of the ‘world’ is sensations within mind, it could go nowhere. Thought must take a leap of faith to impute the objective world. This necessary first step of the empirical method violates the empirical method.

RICHARD: This word ‘impute’ is almost ubiquitous on this Mailing List. When used by ‘I’ as an intellectual refuge to avoid facing matter-of-fact actuality, its efficacy in obfuscation and dissimulation is unrivalled and unique. But is its usage contagious or what?

Empiricism does not ‘start from a premise’ at all; it starts from an obvious facticity. There is no need for thought to ‘take a leap of faith to impute an objective world’. No imputing at all is required to determine objective reality’s self-evident factuality. There is a simple experiment that will demonstrate the actuality of the objective world in a way that a thousand words would not:

1. Place a large spring-clip upon your nose.
2. Place a large piece of sticking plaster over your mouth.
3. Wait five minutes.

Now, as you rip the plaster from your mouth and gulp in that oh-so-sweet and actual air, I ask you: Do you still believe in Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s revered wisdom?

• Exit: spirituality and religiosity.
• Enter: facts and actuality.

Seeing the fact will set you free to live in actuality.

March 02 1998:

RESPONDENT: [Quote from Krishnamurti]. ‘Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence’ Here, Krishnamurti is expounding the ‘via negativa’, the age-old path of negating every concept and its opposite in order to arrive at that which has no opposite. It is interesting that Krishnamurti, who taught that there are no paths, should expound this path. I would criticise Krishnamurti in not be bold enough in following the path of via negativa. He implies that total negation reveals something positive, such as love, compassion and intelligence. But the positive itself can be negated, leaving that which is beyond both positive and negative. That original essence does not attach to any concept, including the concepts of positive, love, compassion, and intelligence.

RICHARD: I was rather struck by the bold stand that you take here concerning the ‘via negativa’ path taken in order to come upon ‘Deus Absconditus’ ... and, of course there is the ‘via affirmativa’ way to ‘Deus Revelatus’. As mystical experience permits complementary and apparently contradictory methods of expression (‘fullness’ as well as ‘emptiness’) it can be seen that both are needed because the ‘Truth’ of the ‘Reality’ made manifest contains its own opposite. Thus even the apparent negations of the apophatic way perform a double function. Whilst being a state void of every determination, nevertheless the presence of ‘that which is sacred, holy’ becomes apparent, albeit invisible in itself.

Therefore, the ‘emptiness’ is full ... and the ‘fullness’ is empty. Yet both paths arrive at the same ‘Truth’ and the same ‘Reality’ ... characterised by love, compassion and intelligence. Most debates are about the path, the way, and no one seems to look at and question the source of the ensuing enlightened state of being. Is it too sacred for the earnest seeker to question? For this was my personal experience. Consequently I started by examining the chief characteristics, beginning with compassion before looking into love and then at this intelligence itself.

RESPONDENT: These are pretty concepts and expounding these concepts would surely be useful in attracting students and followers.

RICHARD: Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying that love, compassion and intelligence are the ‘pretty concepts’ that are surely useful in attracting students and followers? Because, if so, then do you see through the blarney that has been handed down through the centuries about love and compassion and intelligence being the cure-all for all the ills of humankind? Or are you saying that the concept is the problem but not the reality that the concept points to? Because you do go on to say:

• [Respondent]: But attaching to such pretty concepts falls short of the timeless wisdom of the old masters who followed no concept, revealing the infinite uncreate.

May I ask? Who are these old masters you are referring to? Surely not Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, Mr. Shankara, Mr. Krishna and their ilk? They were all avid exponents of the efficacy of the ‘tried and true’ in ridding a suffering humanity of its burden of anguish and animosity.

Finally: What does the ‘infinite uncreate’ mean to you?

March 03 1998:

RESPONDENT: The path of negation is only useful in the context of one who has been taking the opposite path. If one has been building up a world of conceptual objects, then a path of negation is useful in reversing that. The end of such a path is the returning to that which has no opposite and is devoid of all specific characteristics. The attribution of positive, specific characteristics onto the Absolute is, again, the building up a world of conceptual objects and bringing the Absolute into the conceptual world. You seem to do this in your next paragraph.

RICHARD: Can there indeed be ‘that which has no opposite and is devoid of all characteristics’? The only singulative is this physical universe itself. Being infinite and eternal, it is obvious that there can be nothing else than this ... thus it has no opposite. As this universe is chock-full of attributes – its infinitude is perfectly pure and benevolently magnanimous – then you can not be referring to that.

*

RICHARD: Both paths [‘via negativa’ and ‘via affirmativa’] arrive at the same ‘Truth’ and the same ‘Reality’ ... characterised by love, compassion and intelligence. Most debates are about the path, the way, and no one seems to look at and question the source of the ensuing enlightened state of being. Is it too sacred for the earnest seeker to question? For this was my personal experience. Consequently I started by examining the chief characteristics, beginning with compassion before looking into love and then at this intelligence itself.

RESPONDENT: If eternal reality is pure awareness without dependence upon any specific conceptual content, then your concepts of love, compassion, intelligence, and sacred are not to the point. Such concepts serve to distance one from that which is originally free of concepts.

RICHARD: Is this pure awareness – which you designate as ‘eternal reality’ – actually featureless, actually without characteristics, actually without attributes? Or is it the concepts of those features, characteristics and attributes that are the sticking point? I guess what I am getting at is this: Is this ‘eternal reality’ just nothing at all?

*

RICHARD: Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying that love, compassion and intelligence are the ‘pretty concepts’ that are surely useful in attracting students and followers? Because, if so, then do you see through the blarney that has been handed down through the centuries about love and compassion and intelligence being the cure-all for all the ills of humankind? Or are you saying that the concept is the problem but not the reality that the concept points to?

RESPONDENT: The arising of the concept is the problem. How can any concept correctly point to that which is free of all concepts?

RICHARD: What I was rather wanting to get at was not the ‘concepts’ of love, compassion and intelligence but the reality of love, compassion and intelligence. Does ‘that which is free of all concepts’ have, as its reality, love, compassion and intelligence? And may I include ‘sacredness’ as well now, as you wrote about it above. Is this ‘eternal reality’ (‘that which has no opposites’) sacred ... as a reality?

*

RICHARD: Finally: What is the ‘infinite uncreate’ to you?

RESPONDENT: It is merely a concept, but has negation as its intention. The concept of ‘infinite’ is only useful as a negation for one viewing from the finite. The concept of ‘uncreate’ is only useful as a negation for one viewing from creation. Absolute Reality is not actually the ‘infinite uncreate’ any more than it is the ‘finite create’. Absolute Reality is that unmoving awareness which is before the arising of this or any other conceptual pair of opposites. It further follows that Absolute Reality is not in fact Absolute Reality or even Unmoving Awareness, both of which again are merely the arising of concepts. These concepts can be useful in negation, if their opposites are found as contents of consciousness. But these concepts do not, in fact, accurately point to that which is prior to all conceptual pairs. A concept cannot be used as an accurate pointer to that which is free of concepts. A concept is only useful for the purpose of negation, if its opposite pre-exists as a content of awareness.

RICHARD: May I ask why you capitalise ‘Absolute Reality’ ? My experience has shown that capitalisation – in the context of these kind of subjects – always indicates divinity of some nature ... it always refers to something metaphysically sacred ... some original primal source of everything material ... yet it is non-material itself.

Without it, its proponents state, we human beings and the universe we live in, could not be.

March 22 1998:

RESPONDENT: I didn’t say or mean to imply that Krishnamurti didn’t ‘live the teachings’.

RICHARD: Are you saying that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti did, in fact ‘live the teachings’, then?

RESPONDENT: Nor does it seem to me that any validity is lost in the realisation that he wasn’t something mystical or a vehicle for some ‘otherness’.

RICHARD: Are you saying that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was not, in fact, mystical and a vehicle for some ‘otherness’?

RESPONDENT: To the contrary, it seems highly probable to me that he WAS living the teachings. Human frailties, faults, and all. That’s precisely the point.

RICHARD: Are you saying that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was, in fact, living the ‘Teachings’ but that the ‘Teachings’ allow one to have faults and human frailties ... like irritation, anger and so on?

RESPONDENT: That Krishnamurti, with his sometimes self-interested typical human qualities and with his brilliant and wonderfully subtle insights into human nature WAS living the teachings (so to speak).

RICHARD: Are you saying that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was living the ‘Teachings’ ... but, then again, was not living the ‘Teachings’?

RESPONDENT: If one actually watches the videotapes of his talks or listens, he was obviously a thinking human, struggling at times with the language, changing his mind, making and then correcting his own mistakes, often saying ‘I’ and then suddenly changing, ‘uh, I mean the speaker’, etc. I don’t see anything ‘otherly’ about it at all. At times he was clearly irritated with the audience. In some of the Brockwood tapes he is obviously angry and scolding, etc. In the last talks at Saanen he was warm, amusing, sometimes subtly witty and ironic, and clearly thinking his was though what he wanted to say.

RICHARD: Are you saying that this is a clear example of the way to live the ‘Teachings?

RESPONDENT: None of this takes away from the uniqueness of his approach, the originality, or the power of his vision. Krishnamurti was obviously a brilliant and very unusual person, with deep insights into human nature and the ‘what is’ of human existence. He was also a brilliant speaker who was faltering at times, but usually deftly making his points in an extremely powerful way. It is not my intention to criticise, only to suggest that there is no evidence that he was anything other than a brilliantly insightful intelligent human being, with very human qualities, a wonderful speaker, who felt that he had a mission to communicate his insights to others.

RICHARD: Are you saying that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was human and not divine?

RESPONDENT: Some thought, some self-interest, some memory, some recording, etc. are necessary for living in the modern world. Mr. Krishnamurti was clear on that. His message went far beyond all that. If ‘living the teachings’ is viewed as some idyllic oceanic blissful way of being, then perhaps it is time to re-examine the ‘what is’ of what he really said. Not in one quote, but the essence that emerges from looking at the whole of his work.

RICHARD: The essence that emerges is the same essence that all the Saints and Sages have been saying for millennia: ‘I am everything and everything is Me’. How many quotes would satisfy? I have about 40,000 of his transcribed words on my hard disk.

• [quote]: ‘We don’t seem to realise deeply that we are the world, not only at the obvious level, but also at the core of our being. I wonder if one realises, not as an idea, not as something of romantic appeal, but as an actual fact, that one is the world – inwardly – one is the world’. [end quote].

• [quote]: ‘And when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner’. (‘Freedom From The Known’, ©1969 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd).

• [quote]: ‘You cannot see and listen to the outside without wandering on to the inside. Really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensively alive and there is only life and the watcher is as dead as the leaf. There is no dividing line between the tree, the birds and that man sitting in the shade and the earth that is so abundant’. (‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’; by J Krishnamurti; ISBN 0-06064795-7; published by KFI 1984).

• [quote] ‘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 ... Don’t speculate who I am, you will never know it ... Do you think the truth has anything to do with what you think I were? You don’t care for the truth. You are only interested in that what contains 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? I am everything, since I am life’. (page 262‘The Years Of Awakening’; © Mary Lutyens 1975; John Murray Publishers Ltd).

• [quote] ‘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).

I consider this to be startlingly clear. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says: ‘I am life. Love life. Life is truth. Love truth. Truth is God. Love God. I am God’.

July 16 1998:

RICHARD (to Respondent No. 20): Apperception is a self-less awareness that is on-going throughout the entire waking hours. Thought may or may not operate as required by the circumstances ... apperception goes on regardless. Apperception is the perennial pure consciousness experience of being alive; being awake – not asleep in bed – and being here now at this moment in time and this place in space.

RESPONDENT: Hello Richard, forgive me if this is known to everyone and an old subject here, but what exactly is thought?

RICHARD: Basically thought is covert symbolic responses to intrinsic (arising from within) or extrinsic (arising from the environment) stimuli. Thought, or thinking, is considered to mediate between inner activity and external stimuli. Depending on the relative intensity of intrinsic and extrinsic influences, thinking can be expressive (imaginative and full of fantasy) or rational (directed and disciplined). Other terms for the two aspects of thinking are, respectively, autistic (subjective, emotional) and realistic (objective, directed). Both types of thinking are involved in ‘normal’ adjustment.

Realistic thought includes convergent thought processes, which require the ability to assemble and organise information and direct it toward a particular goal; judgment, the discrimination between objects, items of information, or concepts; problem solving, a more complex form of realistic thinking; and creative thinking, the search for entirely new solutions to problems.

Autistic thought that is characterised by a high level of intrinsic influence and a low level of extrinsic influence includes free association, the giving of unconstrained verbal response to stimuli, found helpful in bringing repressed or forgotten experiences to consciousness; fantasy, characterised by imagery in which a person loses contact with the environment, and ranging from vague reveries to vivid images; marginal states of consciousness, such as those experienced just before falling asleep or those induced by drugs; dreaming and pathological thinking, which may be the result of antisocial behaviour disorders, neuroses or psychoses. The latter is characterised by major distortions in thinking and the lack of a realistic relation to the external environment.

RESPONDENT: What is the neuro-physiological process supporting awareness in the absence of thought?

RICHARD: There are scientific tests done which measure alpha, beta and theta waves – from memory – which show electrical activity in various stages of thought and no-thought, awake and asleep, aware and unaware. I do not have any material to hand so as to go into any detail, but these matter are now being widely discussed ... there has been a surge in interest in consciousness studies in the last ten to fifteen years. There has been a lot of research done in recent years with the advent of CAT scans NMR scans and PET scans which produce reasonably reliable data. The technology – and knowledge gained – is getting better every year.

You may like to access some of these URL’s if you are at all interested:

1. Journal Of Consciousness Studies: www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/home.html
2. Psyche: Consciousness Studies: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/
3. Association For The Scientific Study Of Consciousness: www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/
4. Australasian Philosophy Home Page: www.arts.su.edu.au/Arts/departs/philos/APS/APS.home.html

RESPONDENT: What is ‘consciousness’ without thought?

RICHARD: Apperception. Which is the mind’s ability to perceive itself. Thus I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am condemned to live everlastingly in the land of sorrow and malice, forever lamenting ‘my’ fate. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, beauty there is in the real world.

RESPONDENT: What exactly is ‘self-less’ awareness, which apparently can exist without thought?

RICHARD: A total and utter absence – through extinction – of any ‘I’ or ‘me’ (a psychological or psychic entity) having a parasitical residence within this body results in a self-less awareness. Not ‘I’ being aware ... awareness happening of its own accord.

RESPONDENT: What is consciousness for that matter?

RICHARD: Being alive and awake, basically, as opposed to being dead or asleep. A neuro-biological process of being aware of being here on this planet now.

RESPONDENT: Without precisely defining the terms thought, consciousness, awareness, etc ... such statements as above are incomprehensible. Oh yes, like fine poetry, you can read into it your own favourite meaning. But what exactly does Richard mean to say?

RICHARD: One can become happy and harmless by ridding oneself of malice and sorrow. To do so one has to plunge into the source of one’s ‘being’, which is generated by the instinctual passions generated from within the brain-stem ... in the Substantia Nigra (although there is scientific dispute about this as there is about almost all matters scientific). The elimination of ‘being’ itself engenders an astonishing freedom the likes of which have never been before in human history.

RESPONDENT: So, you have a lump of tissue in your head, you claim as one of its attributes something you call ‘pure’ consciousness (as opposed to what?).

RICHARD: Unmediated consciousness as opposed to mediated consciousness.

RESPONDENT: What about it makes it ‘pure’?

RICHARD: An utter absence of any alien ontological entities whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: This consciousness can apparently perceive (whatever that means), and even do so without something called thought (whatever that means).

RICHARD: Yeah, ain’t life grand!

RESPONDENT: What is the neuro-physiological or neuro-psychological state in which the brain is ‘conscious’ without thought?

RICHARD: A marvellous state ... though I call it a condition so as to not confuse it with altered states of consciousness.

RESPONDENT: What facts about the brain and mental states of the brain render this plausible?

RICHARD: What type of facts are you looking for? A problem-free life kind of fact ... or PET scan, NMR scan and CAT scan type of facts? I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists who have ascertained that I fulfil the criteria for determining depersonalisation, derealisation, alexithymia and anhedonia. One of the psychiatrists – who has been observing me since 1994 – has proposed that this brain is secreting abnormal amounts of Dopamine in the post-synaptic receptors ... such as what happens when someone takes Ecstasy, Cocaine, Heroin or Amphetamines. A psychologist who has followed the course of my condition for about four years has often been desirous of me undergoing scan-type tests ... but I decline to be a guinea-pig for people who are not going to do anything about their own malice and sorrow regardless of the outcome of the tests. It is more than a matter of idle curiosity or academic scholarship. It is all about peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body.

There is also plenty of personal accounts of PCE’s to examine.

July 16 1998:

RICHARD (to Respondent No. 20): To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity.

RESPONDENT: Hello again, Richard, Nobody seems to want to talk about reality on this list, but maybe you will. OK ... take the nose. Your olfactory mucosa contains nerve endings that bind molecules in the air (odorants), which cause depolarisation of sensory neurones, producing electrical impulses that release neuro-transmitters onto inter-neurones, which project axons to other neurones in the brain which receive these electrical impulses. At the brain level, electrically excitable cells are stimulated by these inputs, which can, by various complex mechanisms, read the encoding of different odours so that the brain cells respond differentially to different odorant molecules. So far, there is no consciousness involved. There are reflexes linked to odour that can lead to behaviour without any consciousness. Pure non-conscious neurophysiology. At some level, in human beings, the electrical signals from the olfactory receptors interact with or become part of a mental process called consciousness, and we recognise the familiar perfume of Magnolia trees on a summer evening. Forget that it is a Magnolia tree or even that it is familiar, we are still consciously aware of the odour (it may or may not be pure biology that makes it pleasant as opposed to a stink). If you are aware of the odour, what does that mean? If there is no awareness, then you are like a plant, turning your leaves to the sun ... a purely non-conscious physiological process. You claim ‘awareness’. You called it ‘bare’ awareness. ‘To be the senses as a bare awareness’ you said. What does that mean?

RICHARD: The term ‘bare awareness’ is used by those who study such things as this to refer to raw sensory data that is unmediated. Mr. Bertrand Russell coined the phrase ‘sensedatum’ but it never really took off.

RESPONDENT: At what point do those electrical impulses travelling up your olfactory nerves turn into ‘bare awareness’?

RICHARD: Scientists are unsure ... it depends upon which school one ascribes to. Some tests have shown electrical activity at the source of interchange itself. For example, with the eye, at the back of the eyeball itself. It is further enhanced upon reaching the brain.

RESPONDENT: What precisely does awareness mean in this sense? Are you conscious ?

RICHARD: This body is conscious – as distinct from unconscious – yes.

RESPONDENT: Do you recognise the odour as being a particular odour? Do you sense it as coming from near or far?

RICHARD: There is the ability to distinguish one odour from another and near from far if that is necessary. Mostly it does not matter as curiosity does not feature largely in my life.

RESPONDENT: If you are conscious and you do recognise the odour (not name, just recognise), then what is the mental process going on? Whose mental process is it? Is the mental process going on a quality of your brain?

RICHARD: There is no ‘who’ to have a mental process ... the body is eminently capable of conducting all requisite sensory operations of its own accord. The mental process going on is indeed a ‘quality of the brain’ ... and it does it a whole lot better without an ‘I’ in there interfering with all its petty needs, shoulds, wants and demands. The mental process is integral to the body ... it is an intrinsic operation just like the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the kidneys secreting and so on.

RESPONDENT: Does the odour cause behaviour? Does your awareness of the odour cause intentional behaviour (eg., like going to find out the source of that wonderful perfume)? If so, whose intentionality is it?

RICHARD: It looks as though you are asking if there are agreeable or disagreeable odours ... or likes and dislikes. Yes, this body has certain substances that it experiences as pleasant and unpleasant. Like the taste-buds, for example, which are grouped in a certain configuration which makes some foods ‘delicious’ and others not so pleasant to the point of downright repellent. In normal people, ‘I’ step in and say that ‘I’ like this and ‘I’ hate that ... but it is only the arrangement of the taste-buds themselves. There are four basic receptors – sweet, sour, bitter and salt – which give gustatory quality to the food eaten and are clearly an hereditary trait as taste-blindness is quite widespread. It all has nothing to do with an ‘I’ at all.

RESPONDENT: What do you call the mental process underlying this perception?

RICHARD: Apperception. I take the Oxford Dictionary definition as a starting point: ‘The mind’s perception of itself’. Not an ‘I’ in there perceiving itself operating, but the mind perceiving itself. Unmediated consciousness, in other words.

RESPONDENT: What does it mean to ‘be’ these sensations? Do you ‘be’ a toothache?

RICHARD: Yes, it is a way of describing to those who wish to move from normal everyday reality to the actuality that underlies all apparent phenomenon. Sensations are inherent, and instead of ‘I’ having the sensations, one is the experience of these sensations. Awareness, in other words.

RESPONDENT: If I say I have a toothache, my use of the word ‘have’ is just folk jargon.

RICHARD: If you say so, but I sincerely doubt it. Intellectually you may see the nonsense of there being someone inside the body to ‘have’ these sensations, but such a seeing does nothing to actually dislodge this remarkably persistent identity. That is because it is not just a cognitive entity (psychological) but it basically has an affective (psychic) ontology ... born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth.

RESPONDENT: Of course, the ‘pain’, the perception of pain, is in the brain. There is no actual pain in the tooth, only the inflammatory physiological processes that lead to the neural process that generates electrical impulses in my brain, which manifest in a mental process that we, in English, label as pain. So, leaving trivial semantics aside, what do you mean when you say ‘to be’ these sensations.

RICHARD: When one is asleep – in deep sleep anyway – one is virtually unconscious and there is no awareness of sensation ... which is why there is relief from the pain of an illness by sleeping. So, literally, what one is, is waking consciousness; that is, being conscious of the world of people, things and events. When one is the experience of being conscious – bereft of any identity whatsoever – then this is apperceptive awareness.

RESPONDENT: Most normal people do have an awareness of their own body ... this is a natural consequence of our natural physiology (proprioception and such). But ... this is getting to be to much.

RICHARD: Internal bodily impulses stream from all parts of the body to the brain in something to the order of 160,000 nerve pulses per second. Added to all the sensory data, there is a lot going on in being alive. One can examine all this stuff under a microscope until the cows come home ... yet still the ‘I’ persists. ‘My’ source lies in the brain-stem.

RESPONDENT: OK ... so you got rid of your little inner dialoguing ‘I’. What does that mean?

RICHARD: Peace and harmony due to the absence of animosity and anguish; happiness and harmlessness due to the absence of malice and sorrow; benevolence and benignity due to the absence of fear and aggression; blitheness and gaiety due to the absence of love and compassion ... and so on. It means quite a lot ... in a phrase: peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: What does it mean, then, to be aware without the ‘I’? Are you aware of your body?

RICHARD: No, I am this flesh and blood body ... there is no ‘me’ to have an awareness of ‘my’ body. There is no ownership because the owner is dead ... extinct.

RESPONDENT: Are you aware of your physical separation from the chair you’re sitting on?

RICHARD: This body has a physical distinction from this chair just as this body is distinct from that body ... but there is no psychological distance betwixt an ‘I’ inside this body and the chair – or the ‘I’ inside that body – to cause separation. Here is a direct experience of the actuality of people, things and events.

RESPONDENT: You speak of ‘the most astonishing sense of freedom and release’. That sounds like consciousness. You clearly perceive the ‘sense of freedom’. This is certainly awareness. It is not just generic awareness, it is your awareness.

RICHARD: Actually it is the vast and utterly immeasurable awareness of this very material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. It is the most amazing and wondrous experience possible. I tend to use words like ‘ambrosial’ and ‘magical’ to convey the flavour of it. It is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and fantasies ... it is impossible to conceive, believe or imagine.

RESPONDENT: Furthermore, it is your awareness of your own sensations (emotions?).

RICHARD: There are no emotions – or passions – extant in this body anywhere. Sensations are purely physical and are intrinsically delightful in all there pleasurable sensuality. This is awareness in itself ... not ‘my’ awareness.

RESPONDENT: There you go ... self awareness. Pure neuro-biology. There’s nothing bad about it. Its natural.

RICHARD: If you are talking of what is deemed ‘normal’ ... then, yes it is natural. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are very natural. After all, blind nature bestowed these instincts upon us when we were born. Killing someone is natural ... therein lies the rub. What I have done is very, very unnatural. I have eliminated the instincts ... I pressed the ‘delete’ button, as it were, for instincts are a software package, not hardware.

However, everyone tells me that you can’t change human nature ... so I must be lying.

RESPONDENT: Self awareness need not imply inner deception. One can be self aware without mistakenly misperceiving one’s self in a dualistic mode. So what does it mean, really, to get rid of the ‘me’?

RICHARD: To not have to be vigilant all the time. One is what is called virtuous without effort as one is automatically harmless ... there is no need for morals whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: Is it really possible?

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: Is it compatible with mental health and social behaviour?

RICHARD: Yes. Salubrity and sociability have not yet existed in human beings ... only a pale and pathetic imitation of the actual.

RESPONDENT: Or is it an illusion?

RICHARD: No way. If it were an illusion, then it would not be working so impeccably for the twenty four hours of every day for the last five years ... it is impossible to live an illusion that consistently. If it is, then go for it ... it is an illusion well worth having!

Can you begin to imagine what it is like to live in a world without fear, for example? It is the extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety that results in a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, angst, fear, terror, horror or dread. There is no fear in a flower, a tree, an ashtray, an armchair, a rock ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact.

It is an eminently sensible way to live.


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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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