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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 21
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 23): As ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ – and if both one and the other are vitally interested – then something rather magical can happen if the conversation is earnestly candid. ‘Humanity’ disappears out of the one or the other or both, and then there is freedom from the Human Condition. The one or the other or both then has an sincere and candid conversation with another vitally interested person and then another similarly fascinated person ... and then they too have an sincere and candid conversation with yet another who is vitally interested ... and so on and so on. It is freedom from the Human Condition that would spread. In other words: peace-on-earth for the individual would spread person by person. Global peace can only happen when each and every person has their individual peace-on-earth. Of course, the excellence of individual autonomy means that it does not matter much whether there is global peace or not ... it would be but an added bonus.RESPONDENT No. 23: Such conversation – similar to that which is going on in this forum – is engendered by fear. We are that fear. Do you know how to end that fear? RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: How would you do that? RICHARD: It is not a question of how would I end that fear ... it is a question of how did I end that fear. Basically, it involves all that I have written about since I came onto this List ... 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, fear, terror, horror, dread or existential angst. 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. All sentient beings are born with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear and aggression and nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s – rather clumsy – software package designed to give one a start in life. Contrary to popular belief, they are not hardware, but like all software, they can be deleted ... instincts are not set in concrete. These instincts form a rudimentary self – an emotional entity – situated in the reptilian brain at the top of the brain-stem, in all animals. The human animal, with the unique ability to know its impending demise – and the capacity to think and reflect – has taken this rudimentary self and blown it up all out of proportion into an identity ... no animal has an ‘I’ as an ego in the head, or a ‘me’ as a soul in the heart. All discussion about fear eventually turns around death. This is a fact that needs be faced squarely. To not be is inconceivable; it is impossible to imagine not being because all one has ever known is being. There are no terms of reference to compare against – which is the normal way of thinking – and with no comparison there is no possibility of thought dealing with the fact of death. If pursued diligently, thought gives up the attempt and stops ... it cannot proceed further. The affective rushes in to fill the gap left by the absence of thought and fear turns to dread ... contemplation of extinction invariably turns fear to dread. The instinct to survive takes over and dread flips to its opposite: awe. As it says in some revered scriptures: ‘Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. Most religious and spiritual tracts refer to awe and dread when contemplating the majesty and mystery of some transcendental being lying beyond time and space. Temporal transience is replaced by a firm conviction in a timeless and spaceless divinity that antedates birth and postdates death. Driven by the instinct for survival at any cost – blind nature is rather clumsy – one attempts to transcend the duality of Life and Death and achieve immortality. If successful, ‘I’ disappear and mysteriously reappear as ‘Me’, the eternal soul. One is then apparently without fear because one is ‘Deathless’ ... one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. One disseminates one’s findings to all and sundry, finding a multitude of gullible penitents willing to suspend reason and rationality for a chance at avoiding extinction. Such strange goings-on are the way that the denizens of the real world deal with the existential dilemma of facing the facticity of death’s oblivion. It is called being in a state of denial ... and results in avoidance and escapism. One’s native intelligence is nowhere to be found operating in all this. What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be ... just like before birth. Where is the problem? The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in time and this place in space. Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least.
RICHARD: ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least. RESPONDENT: Do you experience emotions, for example anger at injustice? If not, why not? RICHARD: No, I experience no emotions. Literally, I have no feelings – emotions and passions – whatsoever ... and have not had for five years. And ‘anger at injustice’ invariably leads to revenge ... it is an emotional inevitability no matter how well one can control oneself. No judge on earth is truly impartial. Even the Christian/ Judaic God is a vengeful god! RESPONDENT: Are you not subject to the pain of loss? Wouldn’t this cause some fear? RICHARD: Again, no. I am completely and utterly autonomous ... I do not need anyone to satisfy some lack in me. Thus I free the other from ‘my’ graceless demands. I experience no fear whatsoever ... which does away with the need for trust, faith, hope and belief. This is my on-going experience twenty four hours a day, year after year. RESPONDENT: I do not understand exactly what you are saying. Actuality is not always ambrosial. RICHARD: You are talking about reality – an affective experience of the world of people, things and events – whereas I am using the word ‘actuality’ to refer to the sensate world only. It is this sensual experience that is ambrosial. By actual, I do not mean the real-world of normal human experience. Actuality is only seen by people in glimpses ... it is as if everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses. When ‘I’ vanish in ‘my’ entirety – both the ego and the soul – this ‘normal’ everyday reality disappears and the underlying actuality becomes apparent. It was here all along. To experience the metaphysical Reality – usually with capitalisation – is to go further into the illusion of normal everyday reality, created by ‘I’, and to create a supernatural ‘True Reality’ ... which one could call an abnormal reality. Thus normal everyday reality is an illusion and the abnormal metaphysical Reality is a delusion born out of the illusion ... a chimera, as it were. This is why only .000001 of the population ever become enlightened ... it is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination permanently. Speaking personally, I was so deluded, that for eleven years I lived in humanity’s greatest fantasy, before the dissolution of ‘me’ as soul finally brought salubrity through release from the human condition itself. My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. ‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that ‘I’ had during a peak experience in 1980. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself. Once set in motion, it is no longer a matter of choice: it is an irresistible pull. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life – it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants. Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this
enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of
reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to
endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom of the
real-world’ that ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling
allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual
innocence, and activate it with a naive This entailed finding the source of ‘myself’ ... and I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression and nurture and desire that this self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. So, I can freely say that I, as I am today, did nothing to become free of the Human Condition. It was ‘I’ that did all the work. Consequently I find myself here, in the world as-it-is, as this flesh and blood body. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life – who would have it any other way? Thus I find myself to be this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. This is totally different to eastern spiritual enlightenment ... this is actual.
RESPONDENT: If there is one Will and all follow it, that will be unity for man. RICHARD: It is apposite that you use ‘if’ ... at the latest count there have been over twelve hundred gods throughout human history. And all gods were immortal. RESPONDENT: As long as any man seeks to do his own will over the higher will there will always be conflict. RICHARD: It is not will that is the problem ... it is ‘I’ arrogating control over will that is the spanner in the works. Will is a necessary function of this flesh and blood body ... an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. The ‘I’, as ego – or even the soul as spirit – is not to be confused with will. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function ... not an identity. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the identity is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of the ego and soul – which are born out of instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire – can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will, is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence ... and has naught to do with any disembodied ‘Intelligence behind the Universe’ It is a joy to be me going about my business with freed-will in this wonderful physical world. It is only people who, believing themselves to be an identity, that wreak havoc in this otherwise marvellous playground that humans all live on. RESPONDENT: When will good rule the world? I wouldn’t expect it soon. I know the reply by the intellects will be ‘who knows what the good is?’, but that response really comes from not wanting to know. RICHARD: I know what ‘good’ is ... and it has been trying to rule the world for aeons. As all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’, the battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward identity that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of so-called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. RESPONDENT: To know what is right means we must be subject to it, and it is this bone we choke on. RICHARD: To seek freedom via puerile servitude to some fictitious deity is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial. Eliminate the subject and all power battles are over and done with. There is no hierarchy here in this actual world.
RESPONDENT: To know what is right means we must be subject to it, and it is this bone we choke on. RICHARD: To seek freedom via puerile servitude to some fictitious deity is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial. Eliminate the subject and all power battles are over and done with. There is no hierarchy here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: I think you are making a serious error here to eliminate the subject of a higher power than yourself. While it is true that if you can eliminate it, you can get rid of inner conflict, you will never get rid of suffering or the horrors of the world this way. RICHARD: Actually, I did not eliminate the higher power myself ... when ‘I’ and ‘me’ became extinct, the higher power vanished. From this I can draw the only obvious conclusion. To wit: the higher power was but a psychic projection of ‘my’ own self. The horrors and the suffering of the denizens of the real world continues unabated. It is only in this actual world that there is a total absence of animosity and anguish ... and it is already here for the living of it. RESPONDENT: There is a hierarchy here in this world and it can be observed within to be so. It is of the utmost importance to see our relationship with this power. RICHARD: I can agree that there is indeed ‘a hierarchy’ in the real world ... when ‘I’ was in charge of this body ‘I’ observed and it was so. The hierarchy existed ‘within’ also, just as you report. ‘I’ saw ‘my’ relationship with this power ... and self-immolated, psychologically and psychically. Exit ‘me’ in any way, shape or form and exit power in any way, shape and form. ‘I’ was the source of that power. RESPONDENT: If you have convinced yourself that it does not exist, than it is you who will write your own script, but will it really mean anything in the long run? RICHARD: Yes, in the long run – maybe in five thousand years – there will be global peace-on-earth. Also, I do not write my own script ... the situation to hand does that quite nicely. In the jargon it is called being the experience of the doing of what is happening. RESPONDENT: Just as you will tell me to awaken to the fact that it does not exist, I will urge you to awaken to the fact that it does exist, and hope you will begin to take your place in relationship to it. RICHARD: Yeah, I know ... it is great fun, this Mailing List, is it not? I thoroughly enjoy pontificating about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. RESPONDENT: The intoxication that results from finding freedom from the higher power is not permanent or based on truth, but is in fact illusory ... another ‘high’, unless you are in fact subject to it without really knowing it. RICHARD: Twenty four hours a day since 1992 seems like being pretty permanent to me. And no, it is not based on truth but upon facts and actuality. If it is indeed ‘another high’ then it is better than any obtained by drugs ... and I will keep on being ‘high’, thank you very much. Nothing, but nothing, will entice me back into the grim and glum real world that I was born into. And I do know it – the higher power – very, very well. When ‘me’ as soul inhabited this body, ‘I’ was in a state of union – oneness – with it for eleven years. RESPONDENT: Do you live a moral life? If so, why? RICHARD: Being free from malice and sorrow, I am automatically happy and harmless. Thus I have no need for morals whatsoever. Morals are designed to control the wayward self. RESPONDENT: Would you lie, cheat and steal? RICHARD: If the situation calls for it, yes indeed. Whilst some semblance of social order prevails, such actions as stealing are not necessary. The government bureaucracy however, being adversarial by nature, occasionally calls for some creative massaging of the truth regarding my life-style. RESPONDENT: Which morals are your own and which are seen to exist already? RICHARD: Whilst not having any morals of my own, living in this particular country and benefiting from human ingenuity and inventiveness as I do, I am more than happy to comply with the legal laws and follow the established social protocols ... except for those that are too trifling to conform to and that I cannot be bothered observing anyway. For example: I do not vote ... even though voting is compulsory in this country. The unelected public servants actually run the country, so I could not care less which political party struts the stage. Mostly, their policies are knee-jerk reactions to public opinion polls anyway ... so when some earnest scribe knocks on my door to ask my opinion I invite them in for a cup of coffee. I then hold forth with my views on everything and anything until they stagger out the door with a glazed look on their face. It does not change anything at all, though.
RESPONDENT: There is a place in the bible where the world is described as a globe. If I find it, I will post it. Maybe someone knows it. I believe it is in Isaiah if I remember correctly. It is definitely in there (...) Here it is, written between 745 and 680 B. C. Isaiah 40:22: ‘It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in’. RICHARD: Hmm ... a circle is hardly a globe, now is it? While the Bible nowhere states categorically that the earth is flat, numerous Old Testament verses clearly show that the ancient Hebrews were flat-earthers. The Genesis creation story says the earth is covered by a vault (firmament) and that the celestial bodies move inside the vault. This makes no sense unless one assumes that the earth is essentially flat. Isaiah wrote that ‘God sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth, whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers’. In the book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite says God ‘walks to and fro on the vault of heaven’. That the earth was considered essentially flat is clear from Daniel, who said, ‘I saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth; the tree grew and became strong, reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth’s farthest bounds’. This statement makes no sense for spherical earth. The New Testament also implies a flat earth. For instance, Matthew wrote that ‘The devil took him (Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene) to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory’. From a sufficiently high mountain, one could see all the kingdoms of the world ... if the earth were flat. Finally, Revelation refers to ‘the four corners of the earth’, and corners are not generally associated with spheres. From the foregoing, It’s not surprising that flat-earthism has been associated with Christianity since the beginning. Many of the Fathers of the Church were flat-earthers, and they developed a system with which to oppose the Greek astronomy then becoming popular. As late as 548 A.D. the Egyptian monk Mr. Cosmas Indicopleustes was vigorously defending the flat earth in his book Christian Topography. But he was fighting a losing battle, and the Ptolemaic system, based on a spherical earth, rapidly took over. By the 12th century the flat-earth concept was essentially a dead letter in the West. ‘The Bible’ repeatedly says in plain Hebrew that the earth is immovable. Thus, while churchmen found it easy to ignore its flat implications and adopt the spherical system of Mr. Claudius Ptolemy, they were rudely shaken by Mr. Nicolaus Copernicus and Mr. Galileo Galilei. The Catholic Church’s reaction to Mr. Galileo Galilei is well known. It’s less well known that most of the reformers – Mr. Martin Luther, Mr. John Calvin, Mr. John Wesley – also rejected the Copernican system on Scriptural grounds. A few Protestant Bible-Scientists have been fighting a rearguard action against heliocentricity ever since. Do you really want to get into a discussion about the veracity of ‘God’s Word’?
RICHARD: While the Bible nowhere states categorically that the earth is flat, numerous Old Testament verses clearly show that the ancient Hebrews were flat-earthers. The Genesis creation story says the earth is covered by a vault (firmament) and that the celestial bodies move inside the vault. This makes no sense unless one assumes that the earth is essentially flat. RESPONDENT: That is not clear to me at all. I have no idea what it means. RICHARD: Well, it is as clear as crystal for those who want to see a fact. For most people, though, seeing a fact means betraying their belief ... thus they are rendered incapable of seeing it. The fact is that the earth is not ‘covered by a vault (firmament)’ ... it floats in infinite space (which they say is the ‘firmament’ itself). Perhaps it is somewhat clearer if you look at the quote you posted: ‘the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in’. Now, the imagery presented is of a physical tent ... which sits on flat ground. * RICHARD: Isaiah wrote that ‘God sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth, whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers’. In the book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite says God ‘walks to and fro on the vault of heaven’. That the earth was considered essentially flat is clear from Daniel, who said, ‘I saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth; the tree grew and became strong, reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth’s farthest bounds’. This statement makes no sense for spherical earth. RESPONDENT: Another unclear example. RICHARD: Only unclear for those who believe otherwise and cannot afford to see a fact. Okay ... no matter how tall a tree grew here in Australia you could not see it unless the earth was flat. It is that simple ... why the difficulty, eh? RESPONDENT: Figurative speaking cannot be taken as science. RICHARD: But the ‘Holy Bible’ is literally true ... it is ‘God’s Word’ when all is said and done. Thus it is not ‘figuratively speaking’ at all. And also, you decry following science later in this post ... let me copy and paste it here for you: [Respondent]: ‘They most likely believed whatever their ‘scientists’ told them as we do now’. So why support it now? * RICHARD: The New Testament also implies a flat earth. For instance, Matthew wrote that ‘The devil took him (Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene) to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory’. From a sufficiently high mountain, one could see all the kingdoms of the world ... if the earth were flat. Finally, Revelation refers to ‘the four corners of the earth’, and corners are not generally associated with spheres. RESPONDENT: That is way out there for an example of ‘flat earth’ thinking. It was not stated as a material fact but was just another attempt to describe something figuratively. It does not mean anything in regards to the earth. RICHARD: Okay, then let us run with this ‘figuratively speaking’ notion for a while. This means that Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene is not literally ‘God’s Son’ but just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there was no ‘Virgin Birth’ ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there was never a crucifixion ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there never was a resurrection ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there never was any ‘Original Sin’ ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there is no need for redemption ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there is no need for a Redeemer ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. This means there never was a Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene on earth at all ... just another attempt to describe something figuratively. In fact, there never was a Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene at all. End of story. You must have a real job sorting out what is ‘material fact’ and what is ‘figurative speaking’ whenever you read ‘God’s Word’. * RICHARD: From the foregoing, it’s not surprising that flat-earthism has been associated with Christianity since the beginning. Many of the Fathers of the Church were flat-earthers, and they developed a system with which to oppose the Greek astronomy then becoming popular. As late as 548 A.D., the Egyptian monk Mr. Cosmas Indicopleustes was vigorously defending the flat earth in his book Christian Topography. But he was fighting a losing battle, and the Ptolemaic system, based on a spherical earth, rapidly took over. By the 12th century the flat-earth concept was essentially a dead letter in the West. ‘The Bible’ repeatedly says in plain Hebrew that the earth is immovable. Thus, while churchmen found it easy to ignore its flat implications and adopt the spherical system of Mr. Claudius Ptolemy, they were rudely shaken by Mr. Nicolaus Copernicus and Mr. Galileo Galilei. The Catholic Church’s reaction to Mr. Galileo Galilei is well known. It’s less well known that most of the reformers – Mr. Martin Luther, Mr. John Calvin, Mr. John Wesley – also rejected the Copernican system on Scriptural grounds. A few Protestant Bible-Scientists have been fighting a rearguard action against heliocentricity ever since. RESPONDENT: What you have given has nothing to do with the bible. RICHARD: It has indeed ... what do you think I was quoting from? Grimm’s Fairy Tales? RESPONDENT: I am not defending the veracity or inerrancy of the bible. RICHARD: If you say so ... I sincerely doubt that though. Otherwise, why were you so quick to jump in with a quote from Isaiah ... which you originally thought said globular but later found it to say circular. When someone starts quoting an ‘authority’ to prove their point they leave themselves wide open for correction ... you cannot wriggle out now with a weak ‘I am not defending the veracity or inerrancy of the bible’ statement. I did ask you in the last post: ‘Do you really want to get into a discussion about the veracity of ‘God’s Word’? I asked that for it is such a futile effort as ‘The Bible’ is full of blatant discrepancies and downright untruths. RESPONDENT: The fact is that it says practically nothing at all on the subject of whether the earth was round or flat. RICHARD: Yes, I know ... I clearly stated that (above) in my post to you. Let me copy and paste what I wrote for you:
Also you found it important to quote Isaiah to me to show that the ‘The Bible’ did say so. Let me copy and paste what you wrote for you:
RESPONDENT: You are creating something out of your own conjecture that is not there. RICHARD: Not so ... I have not conjectured anything at all that was not there already. It was all
those pesky Christians that believed for centuries that the earth was flat ... that was what this thread was originally about,
remember? No. 23 said that he did not ‘buy Richard’s pitch about the world being globular with his fancy satellite imagery and
all’ ... to which I replied: ‘Of course you would not. It is well-known that Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene was a flat-earth god ...
even though his ‘Father Who Art In Heaven’ was omniscient and all that. Space exploration has poked a rather large hole in the
veracity of ‘God’s Word’. RESPONDENT: What ‘Christians’ have said or believed is irrelevant to the subject. RICHARD: Oh, really ... thus spake No. 21! What the Christians believed and said is central to this subject ... centuries and centuries of superstitious ignorance ruled the West. It took years of matter-of-fact science to release humans from the Christian yoke. (Although it may have all been in vain ... Western civilisation, which has struggled to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance, is in danger of slipping back into the supernatural ... as the Eastern mystical thought that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people is becoming more and more widespread.) RESPONDENT: They most likely believed whatever their ‘scientists’ told them as we do now. RICHARD: Not so ... they believed ‘God’s Word’ ... literally. So, do you really want to get into a discussion about the veracity of ‘God’s Word’?
RICHARD: You must have a real job sorting out what is ‘material fact’ and what is ‘figurative speaking’ whenever you read ‘God’s Word’. RESPONDENT: It is easy. You are just too caught up with your own thoughts to see much outside of them ... so feel free to believe what you want to. You will anyway. RICHARD: Oh, I see that you too, resort to this undergraduate ploy when the going gets rigorous. Another poster has been getting away this ploy in many posts ... when pressed to justify his belief about something he counters with the presumption that the other person’s question – be it factual or not – is nothing but their belief. This is so similar to that clever under-graduate sophistry so prevalent in Universities when students start ‘thinking for themselves’ that I am astounded that someone would contemplate using it on this List. (Where the participants are purportedly conducting an honest and genuine discussion about an investigation into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in this world as it is with people as they are). To wit:
RESPONDENT: I did not know that there was a myth about the flat earth thing. RICHARD: Is it not great to learn something new? Especially when it is about the book that you depend upon for knowing the truth about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. RESPONDENT: You assume a lot. I have not been much of a bible reader at all until the last few years. RICHARD: Oh, I only know what you post in to this List ... I do not know you personally. Your posts do rather convey that you will not do anything that is not biblically directed ... and you tell others – like in your posts to me a little while back – that they should do like-wise. Silly me did sort of assume that you depended upon ‘God’s Word’ as specified in ‘The Bible’. So I gather that you do not, then? You can think for yourself, now? RESPONDENT: Richard gave some strange backup for that idea. RICHARD: Why was the back-up ‘strange’ for you? They were quotes from ‘The Bible’ ... I would have considered you to be familiar with them already. RESPONDENT: It was your interpretations of their meaning that was weird. RICHARD: Okay, so you say that my interpretations are weird ... let us accept that for now. But I only do so because I take it that you know what interpretations are not weird, then? As you know better than me, perhaps you could help me out in interpreting something that is bothering me. You see, I have seen the error of my ways – you have convinced me – and I wish to become a disciple of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene. However, I am having difficulty in hating my mother and father and wife and children and brothers and sisters and myself. What should I do?
RESPONDENT: Based on some figurative descriptions that had nothing to do with it. RICHARD: It is you who has decided they are ‘figurative’. ‘The Bible’ is purportedly God’s Word ... to be taken literally. RESPONDENT: Who said every word was to be taken literally? It seems that person was you. RICHARD: Well now ... this is an eye-opener for me. So ‘The Bible’ is not God’s Word, eh? Well, well, well. Who wrote it all then? And why should anyone live according to what is any old person’s word ... anyone who felt like writing something? And that of course means that no one has to take the slightest bit of notice of this wisdom you posted recently:
* RICHARD: And the quotes had plenty to do with it ... they are the one’s that have been quoted for many, many years by people trying to demonstrate to zealous bibliolaters that God’s Word was not worth the parchment that it was initially scribed upon. I did not spend countless hours scouring ‘The Bible’ for those quotes ... there are other people over the last couple of hundred years who have taken it upon themselves to do that and I merely checked the chapter and verse numbers of a few to make sure that it was not an elaborate hoax. I have far better things to do with my time than pore over all the pages of all the revered scriptures of all the world’s many different religions. RESPONDENT: You are reading what a bunch of extreme intellectual deadheads with no common sense of any kind had to say about it. RICHARD: Oh, I do not know about that ... try this for size:
Even you must acknowledge that it is not too bad an effort for ‘an extreme intellectual deadhead with no common sense of any kind’, eh? RESPONDENT: It just seems like some silly kind of warped thinking. RICHARD: I am sure Mr. Galileo Galilei thought ‘The Truth’ to be some ‘silly kind of warped thinking’, when he had to face the Inquisition in Rome because of what ‘The Bible’ had to say compared to what he saw through his telescope. He had to spend the last eight years of his life under house arrest for pointing out a fact. RESPONDENT: As I stated before, what men did with the bible in regards to misusing it, has nothing at all to do with the issue. RICHARD: And not only men ... women too. But by now you just might be beginning to understand why people have been ‘misusing’ it ... it is too contradictory and shot full of blatant untruths to be used properly. RESPONDENT: Men almost always do the wrong thing with any philosophy. RICHARD: Oh really? ... are you saying that women do not? Anyway, what is the right thing ... according to you? RESPONDENT: You are doing the same. RICHARD: Am I? How do you know that? Is this another one of your infallible ‘interpretations’? You see, the way that I operate is like this: when I start to read a philosophy – or listen to someone expound one – I quickly ascertain whether the ultimate point of it is whether one can find ‘The Truth’. If this is the case, I drop it in the waste-bin where it belongs. Eighteen years ago I discovered – and have had it affirmed again and again in the following years – that ‘The Truth’ is but a philosophical nom de guerre for god. And there have been over 1200 gods down through the millenniums ... and that is not counting the Hindu collection. Apart from those gods resurrected by the ‘New Age’ people, where are most of them now? Is it not fascinating to realise that when the last person stops believing in a particular god – no matter how popular and therefore powerful at the time – that this god then disappears and thus stops meddling in human affairs? And have you noticed that all these gods were immortal?
RICHARD: I am sure Mr. Galilei Galileo thought ‘The Truth’ to be some ‘silly kind of warped thinking’, when he had to face the Inquisition in Rome because of what ‘The Bible’ had to say compared to what he saw through his telescope. He had to spend the last eight years of his life under house arrest for pointing out a fact. RESPONDENT: Men are not prone to having much wisdom. RICHARD: Neither are women ... it works out about 50/50, actually. RESPONDENT: They will accuse the bible of calling the earth flat. RICHARD: Not ‘accuse’ ... it is a fact that the writers of ‘The Bible’ thought that the earth was flat. They lived before modern technology – like telescopes and satellite photographs and so on – so they had no way of knowing otherwise. My point about Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene being a ‘Flat-Earth God’ – which means that he was born in an era wherein the earth was thought to be flat – was that if indeed he was omniscient he would have been able to correct humankind’s mistake ... and he did not. In case you over-looked the point that I was making, I will copy and paste it:
RESPONDENT: Why pick the earth being flat? He did not present any scientific information about anything. RICHARD: Yea verily ... that is my whole point. And why not? Because he was a Flat-Earth God, that is why ... and did not know otherwise RESPONDENT: You would say why didn’t He do this or whatever you want to. He could have given us information about antibiotics, automotive technology, or anything else in the universe. RICHARD: Not so ... antibiotics and automotive technology were not invented then. Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene – if such a person ever lived at all – was a human being like pretty well any other Eastern Mystic centuries ago. And what they knew about antibiotics and automotive technology was the same ... zilch. RESPONDENT: All He did was give out words and miracles. RICHARD: The words were re-hashes of scriptural injunctions plus some folk-lore homilies. The miracles – for those that believe such things – were puny things like turning water into wine at a family wedding (anyone outside the family has to buy wine) and giving a crowd one meal (never mind the starving millions) and curing a few local people’s blindness (not every blind person in the world) ... and so on and so on. Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene never eradicated sorrow and malice from a single person ... which is the real issue confronting human beings. Hundreds of millions of people have been killed in wars ... and your hero walks across a lake to help his pals out on a fishing boat. Big deal, eh? RESPONDENT: He did not choose to do it and I don’t care. RICHARD: If you indeed don’t care then why are you so busy writing to me all hot and bothered about it? I was happily having a dialogue with No. 23. RESPONDENT: When He returns, ask Him about it. RICHARD: Yeah, sure ... but I will not hold my breath while I am waiting. His idea of a generation is vastly different to everybody else’s. And while I think of it: Batman and Robin are calling around on the weekend for a barbecue in my back garden ... is there anything you would like me to ask them? RESPONDENT: I just think it was not His topic. Wouldn’t that be enough? Why doesn’t go anywhere. RICHARD: What you think is neither here nor there ... it is just speculation. I am only interested in facts. RESPONDENT: When it is actually their head that is flat, and their brain like a flat tire. RICHARD: Perhaps a modern example may help to clarify the issue. Mr. Sathyanarayana Raju (aka Sai Baba) is a currently living example of being considered a god-on-earth by tens of thousands of people. If he had lived two thousand years ago he too would be a ‘Flat Earth God’ ... but because of technological advances in knowledge he could be categorised as a ‘Round Earth God’. It is all to do with the knowledge of this physical world and the material universe extant in the era one is born in and has nothing to do with primitive notions of ‘omniscience’ at all. Nobody but nobody is omniscient ... it is this simple. Mr. Sathyanarayana Raju – this modern-day counter-part to Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene – required the head of one of his ashrams in the USA to submit daily reports of all that went on. This man – a devout follower – sincerely wondered why this was necessary ... seeing that Mr. Sathyanarayana Raju was omniscient and would already know every detail of what occurred in the ashram. So he wrote a letter humbly asking clarification ... Mr. Sathyanarayana Raju replied that he was checking on the disciple’s ability to record the events accurately. Mr. Mervin Irani (aka Meher Baba) – another god-on-earth for many people – was asked by a puzzled devotee one day as to why he was reading a newspaper. Another – more wily disciple – went and listened to the overseas weather report and came back to the feet of the master and asked him whether it was raining in New York. If only there had been tape recorders in Galilee a couple of thousand years ago, eh? RESPONDENT: The bible is not a about the shape of the earth. It is more about man’s stupid nature. RICHARD: Yes indeed ... seeing that it was written by men it epitomises men’s stupidity explicitly. And if it were written by women it would exemplify women’s stupidity equally definitively. Yet there is still a chance that some people may live up to the title ‘Mature Adults’ ... some day. RESPONDENT: If you saw a man heal the sick and crippled, give eyesight to the blind and raise the dead, would you say to him, ‘why don’t you give us some scientific information you phoney’. RICHARD: No, I would ask such a person to please eradicate the malice and sorrow in every human bosom ... then there would be global peace-on-earth. Then people could sort out the scientific stuff at their leisure. RESPONDENT: He did not tell us the earth was round. I could care less. RICHARD: Could you care ... or couldn’t you care?
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 23): It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for one to conceive that without a wayward ‘I’ there is no need for either a compliant ‘me’ or any values whatsoever ... or an ‘Ultimate Authority’. This is what freedom from the Human Condition is. RESPONDENT: Regardless of what you consider to be no need for values, do you live your life as one with values or do you not? RICHARD: It is not a case of me considering there to be no need for values ... here there is actually no need for values. There is no wayward ‘self’ left that has to be controlled by what is only a socially implanted conscience anyway. As I am free of the Human Condition – which is epitomised by malice and sorrow – there is neither ‘Good’ nor ‘Evil’ extant ... therefore no necessity for a ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’. It is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: Do you drink, smoke, hunt for women, lie, cheat, or steal? Do you overeat, over-sex, or over intellectualise? RICHARD: I must acknowledge that I sat and stared nonplussed at this sentence for some time. As I see
no mention of all the genuinely terrible things that afflict human beings – like wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic
violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide – I find it difficult to take this question sincerely.
Basically, you seem to have paraded your prejudices RESPONDENT: If you do none of these things, there is no reason for you to have any conflict over your values. RICHARD: I am very pleased that you are not in any substantial position to stand judgement on the human race ... there are far, far worse things than smoking, drinking, womanising, lying, cheating, stealing, overeating and intellectualising, you know. Would it not be more important to attend to the sorrow and malice nestled firmly in your and every other human breast? What about the 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone? Do you think that they would thank you for going on a one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals? RESPONDENT: Because you would already be in compliance with the higher values you say do not exist, if I understand you. RICHARD: I guess it would be clear by now that you do not understand me ... for if that lot (above) is an example of your god’s ‘higher values’ then no wonder the human world remains in the mess it is in. RESPONDENT: You have stated you have no anger, which is good if it is true. RICHARD: Not just no anger ... no sadness as well (not to mention all the other malicious and sorrowful feelings, passions, impulses and urges). And it is not ‘good’ ... it is salubrious. It means peace-on-earth, as this body, in this life-time. This is an actual freedom I am living and writing about ... not some self-righteous preening. RESPONDENT: Again, do you live in ways that would be considered to fall into the immoral category as they are commonly known? RICHARD: What do you mean by ‘considered to fall into the immoral category as they are commonly known’ ... are you not the person who has absolute values handed down from high? Because the ‘commonly known’ values vary from culture to culture ... are you asking if I have any relative values, then? That is, are you asking if I observe the social protocol of whatever culture is currently dominant? Are you asking me if I comply with the legal laws of whatever country I am living in at the time? Seeing that each particular country lubricates its social interactions with its own cultural proprieties – and enforces its legal laws at the point of a gun – if I wish to have a trouble-free social life I would be a fool if I did not. One of the benefits of being free of the human condition is that no restrictions are irksome ... which means no incipient rebellion to have to deal with. This is a truly remarkable freedom.
RESPONDENT: Do you drink, smoke, hunt for women, lie, cheat, or steal? Do you overeat, over-sex, or over intellectualise? RICHARD: I must acknowledge that I sat and stared nonplussed at this sentence for some time. As I see
no mention of all the genuinely terrible things that afflict human beings – like wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic
violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide – I find it difficult to take this question sincerely.
Basically, you seem to have paraded your prejudices RESPONDENT: I did not think you would be doing those obvious evils. RICHARD: I am not only talking of not doing these things, I am talking of not even having to suppress thinking these kind of thoughts at all ... ever. The reason why I am not impulsively thinking these thoughts is that in an actual freedom I have no furious urges, no instinctive anger, no impulsive rages, no inveterate hostilities, no evil disposition ... no malicious or sorrowful tendencies whatsoever. The blind animal instinctual passions, which some neuro-scientists have tentatively located toward the top of the brain-stem in what is popularly called the ‘reptilian brain’, have under-gone a radical mutation. I am free to be me as-I-am; benign and benevolent and beneficial in character. I am able to be a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic and unattainable moral strictures of ‘The Good’: being humane, being philanthropic, being altruistic, being magnanimous, being considerate and so on. All this is achieved in a manner ‘I’ could never foresee, for it comes effortlessly and spontaneously, doing away with the necessity for virtue completely. RESPONDENT: I chose some more subtle ones. RICHARD: If I may point out? They are not ‘more subtle’ at all ... they are an obvious and easy target for any well-meaning zealot who wishes to make people feel guilty in order to get them the feel remorse. Then – if successful – with remorse comes repentance which, if one sufficiently humiliates oneself under the guise of humility, your imaginatively haughty god will graciously forgive ... and the cunning penitent gets off scot-free with all their basic instinctual passions – epitomised by sorrow and malice – intact. Thus ‘I’ survive only to wreak ‘my’ havoc once again. RESPONDENT: You are dodging the question. You know what it is . RICHARD: I am not dodging the question, I am staying with the issue that started this thread:
* RICHARD: There are far, far worse things than smoking, drinking, womanising, lying, cheating, stealing, overeating and intellectualising, you know. Would it not be more important to attend to the sorrow and malice nestled firmly in your and every other human breast? What about the 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone? Do you think that they would thank you for going on a one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals? RESPONDENT: Actually those things do contribute to all of the misery you see in the world. They are a significant part of what keeps people from looking elsewhere for their answers. RICHARD: And the self-righteous repression of these very things appear to be keeping you from ‘looking elsewhere’ for your answers, too. Maybe it is because both you and they do not understand what the question is ... which is how to end sorrow and malice permanently. RESPONDENT: You say I do not understand you. You do understand me and you are definitely dodging the question. RICHARD: I say that you do not understand because you clearly do not understand ... and this sentence of yours affirms this observation. You do not apply yourself to what this thread is all about. To wit: ‘How do ‘I’ end sorrow and malice permanently’. With no sorrow and malice nestled uncomfortably within one’s bosom, one no longer has to be virtuous in order to gain some imaginary god’s good graces. It means an end to all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide ... and you concern yourself with drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals. The moral conditioning – the sense of right and wrong or the knowledge of good and evil – are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. By and large this enterprise has proved to be relatively effective ... only a minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner. And although well-meant, it is but an ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, because people are irked by the restraints imposed upon what they indulgently imagine is the freedom of the natural state. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. For the deletion of the software package is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. That is, ‘being’ itself expires. The reward for so doing is immeasurable, however. RESPONDENT: Again, do you live in ways that would be considered to fall into the immoral category as they are commonly known? RICHARD: What do you mean by ‘considered to fall into the immoral category as they are commonly known’ ... are you not the person who has absolute values handed down from high? Because the ‘commonly known’ values vary from culture to culture ... are you asking if I have any relative values, then? That is, are you asking if I observe the social protocol of whatever culture is currently dominant? Are you asking me if I comply with the legal laws of whatever country I am living in at the time? Seeing that each particular country lubricates its social interactions with its own cultural proprieties – and enforces its legal laws at the point of a gun – if I wish to have a trouble-free social life I would be a fool if I did not. One of the benefits of being free of the human condition is that no restrictions are irksome ... which means no incipient rebellion to have to deal with. RESPONDENT: You have avoided the question. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... you asked me if I ‘live in ways that would be considered to fall into the immoral category as they are commonly known’ and I gave a precise answer. I clearly stated how I conduct myself socially in whatever cultural environment I happen to be living at the time. May I suggest that you re-read what I wrote above? It is clear and unequivocal. RESPONDENT: A man in a state of enlightenment should understand the question. RICHARD: And a person who buys into a thread to air his erudition should at least have read what that person has written ... I am not in a state of enlightenment. I was for eleven years ... and I found it wanting. Eastern ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is commonly considered to be the Summum Bonum of human experience. It is not. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning by going beyond enlightenment – which turned out to be an Altered State Of Consciousness – into the actuality of being here on earth and now in time as this flesh and blood body. For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because this freedom is located here in this very world, this actual world of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond Spiritual Enlightenment. RESPONDENT: Do you do any of the things I mentioned earlier? RICHARD: As you have already asked me these questions earlier this year and I gave you a detailed account of my personal life then, I hardly see the point of doing so again. You asked me then what morals I had ... and specifically asked whether I [quote] ‘lie, cheat or steal’ [endquote] and I answered candidly. If you do not take any notice of a person’s answers then why bother asking in the first place? Is it because you think that by pointedly asking – and thus blatantly reminding the other of the unquestioned necessity of your adopted morals – that you fondly consider that you have made your point? Therefore, what the other has to say in response goes unheeded because they must be incorrect ... as it is thus tacitly assumed that ‘we all agree do we not on these ‘Tried and True’ scriptural admonishments as being right’? Yet the ‘Tried and True’ is the tried and failed ... there is as much suffering now as then. And if you really want to know about my personal life this time ... then look in the archives. RESPONDENT: Do you drink, smoke, overeat, escape into fantasy, or have elicit affairs? RICHARD: The word is ‘illicit’ not ‘elicit’ ... if you are going to castigate people whose sexual predilections are not in accord with your adopted scriptural injunctions then you could at least learn the terminology, do you not think? I have a question for you: If everybody stopped drinking, smoking, overeating, escaping into fantasy and having illicit affairs ... would there then be global peace-on-earth? * RICHARD: This is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: Only if it is the right kind of freedom. RICHARD: Goodness me ... I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s feelings, thoughts and actions as being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and to others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations – which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway – then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life. So, the question is: Is an actual freedom a silly freedom ... or a sensible freedom? It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an
actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is
untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word,
can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all.
The integrity None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ This ‘instinct for survival’ is an animal necessity to ensure the blind continuation of the species. It served the human animal well until the emergence of the cerebral cortex brain, situated over the top of the primitive animal brain ... the ‘reptilian brain’. This thinking, reflective brain – corrupted by affective feelings – gave rise to a brain pattern known as ‘the mind’. In here the ‘instinct for survival’ becomes the passion-driven ‘will to survive’. Thus the biologically necessary blind instinctual patterns spilled over into the psychological arena ... with disastrous results. For five thousand years or more, human beings have been struggling to overcome the emotion-laden ‘will to survive’ with moralistic injunctions – derived from any Divine Being’ s ‘Teachings’ – to no avail. The ‘Teachings’ were – and are – fatally flawed. Although well-meant, they were abysmally improper. They have led to many appalling absurdities such as institutionalised human sacrifices to numerous gods; exalted martyrdoms for futile ideals; honourable deaths through valour in wars; emotional sufferings whilst contemplating the torments of hells; inspired self-flagellations ... the list goes on and on. The culpability for these preposterous catastrophes must be laid squarely at the feet of those highly revered but sadly deluded Divine Beings. Their futile ‘Teachings’ are but inimical fulminations ... ignorant railings against the neuro-biology of the Human Condition. The time has come, with the world population as large and as cosmopolitan as it is, to discard the passionate and emotional ‘will to survive’ – with all its biologically-based inherited savagery – and move on to a new paradigm. This paradigm I call actualism, which works to disempower the instinctual passions one is encumbered with by blind nature at birth. One can come upon an actual freedom – the third alternative – which is the actuality that delivers the goods so long yearned for: peace-on-earth, as this body, in this life-time. And it delivers it now at this moment in eternal time and here at this place in infinite space, for it is already always here ... now. It is yours for the choosing.
RICHARD: A person who buys into a thread to air his erudition should at least have read what that person has written ... I am not in a state of enlightenment. I was for eleven years ... and I found it wanting. RESPONDENT: That is no easy task when the writer seems to be attempting to compete with Dostoevsky’s novel of ‘War and Peace’ with each e-mail message. You could shorten it by just answering the question and being more direct instead of going the long way around the mulberry bush. All of these profound discourses do not really get to the point. You are pushing the sizzle and not the steak. RICHARD: Okay, let us do it your way then ... I will be as brief as possible. Here is the point: not only the ‘I’ as ego but the ‘me’ as soul called No. 21 – ‘you’ at the core of ‘your’ being which is ‘being’ itself – are the root cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide that beset this fair earth we all live on being perpetuated forever and a day. Instead of attending to this with total attention, so that malice and sorrow are ended forever, you are going on a one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals. I know the meaning of that pithy aphorism ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ ... do you?
RICHARD: Would it not be more important to attend to the sorrow and malice nestled firmly in your and every other human breast? What about the 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone? Do you think that they would thank you for going on a one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals? RESPONDENT No. 23: I think it is a matter of degree. No. 21 feels that indulgence in sex is bad enough while you think only rape merits attention. RICHARD: Whilst you may complacently think it is only a ‘matter of degree’ ... try telling
that to someone who has just been raped; try telling that to someone who is in a trench on the front-line; try telling that to
someone being tortured; try telling that to the person on the receiving end of domestic violence; try telling that to the
recipient of child abuse; try telling that to someone sliding down the slippery-slope of sadness to loneliness to grief to
depression and then suicide. May I ask? What planet do you live on? RESPONDENT: Must we deal with all of the problems of the world at once? Compared with being burnt in oil, domestic violence might seem like a picnic. Compared to being interned in a concentration camp and tortured to death, depression isn’t much of a problem. You can always overeat and feel better. Let’s not compare but instead just deal with the subject at hand which is indulgence in illicit sex, drinking too much, taking drugs, excess fantasising, greed, overeating, venting our hostilities on our victims, etc., etc. Are you trying to minimise those things by comparing them to the world’ s most heinous crimes? Why would you want to do that? What are you avoiding here? RICHARD: If I may point out? The ‘subject in hand’ is the total ending of sorrow and malice from within the human psyche ... in particular the one known as No. 21. This will solve all of the ‘problems of the world’ at one fell swoop. RESPONDENT No. 23: Some people wondered if the act of adultery was wrong and Jesus told them that even the thought of it was wrong. RICHARD: Once again the focus is on only this adultery business ... what about all the wars and rapes
and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide?
And the point I am making is not only not doing these things, I am talking of not even having to suppress thinking the kind of
thoughts that cause the doing of these things at all ... ever. RESPONDENT: What about a leader that declared war on another country because he was in a bad mood due to the fact that his wife was committing adultery with one of the enemy? You are taking a silly approach to the subject here. Adultery is adultery. It is not the most heinous of crimes, but it is not something we need more of either. RICHARD: If ‘you’ were to eliminate malice and sorrow permanently, not only would you no longer consider my approach silly, but you would be living an individual peace-on-earth ... and as this body in this life-time. RESPONDENT: It is not at all something I would expect from a man that has found true freedom. RICHARD: Oh? What did you expect? Platitudes? That is ... yet more re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’?
RESPONDENT: If there is no good or evil, right or wrong, why would you want to get rid of human sorrow?? That in itself is a value inferring that those things exist, are to be avoided, and should be eliminated. RICHARD: It is not a value ... it is simply sensible. Do you want to suffer? Do you really enjoy it all that much? Is this not silly? We are talking of peace-on-earth ... and peace-on-earth is freedom from the Human Condition. The Human Condition is a term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of so-called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of the ‘self’. The elimination of the ‘self’ is the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. I can heartily recommend committing both psychological and psychic suicide. RESPONDENT: You say I do not understand you. You do understand me and you are definitely dodging the question. RICHARD: I say that you do not understand because you clearly do not understand ... and this sentence of yours affirms this observation. You do not apply yourself to what this thread is all about. To wit: ‘How do ‘I’ end sorrow and malice permanently’. With no sorrow and malice nestled uncomfortably within one’s bosom, one no longer has to be virtuous in order to gain some imaginary god’s good graces. It means an end to all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide ... and you concern yourself with drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals. RESPONDENT: You are claiming many things here. I am asking questions about what you have claimed. I don’t place too much concern on those things at all. I was merely asking you if they are a part of your life, that is all. You are claiming to be without sorrow or malice. Is that state of being that is free from sorrow connected to the higher standard that outlines these things as faults (although some of them can be done in moderation of course)? RICHARD: What ‘higher standard’ are you referring too? I do not need standards at all ... whether they come from ‘high’ or ‘low’ or somewhere in between. RESPONDENT: You seem to be saying that you have found a good that knows no evil. You claim to be free of malice, etc. RICHARD: It would be handy if you read what I write ... I clearly and repeatedly say that I am free from both ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ and both ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ and both ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ and the best you can come up with is ‘you seem to be saying that you have found a good that knows no evil’. RESPONDENT: Do you do any of the things I mentioned earlier? RICHARD: As you have already asked me these questions earlier this year and I gave you a detailed account of my personal life then, I hardly see the point of doing so again. You asked me then what morals I had ... and specifically asked whether I [quote] ‘lie, cheat or steal’ [endquote] and I answered candidly. If you do not take any notice of a person’s answers then why bother asking in the first place? Is it because you think that by pointedly asking – and thus blatantly reminding the other of the unquestioned necessity of your adopted morals – that you fondly consider that you have made your point? Therefore, what the other has to say in response goes unheeded because they must be incorrect ... as it is thus tacitly assumed that ‘we all agree do we not on these ‘tried and true’ scriptural admonishments as being right’? Yet the ‘Tried and True’ is the tried and failed ... there is as much suffering now as then. RESPONDENT: I have no memory of your answers. RICHARD: Why not? Are you interested or not? Is this whole Mailing List like a social club for you? I take notice of what you write in answer to my questions ... are you reading this, for example? RESPONDENT: Did you beat around the bush then as much as you are doing now? RICHARD: As I said above ‘I answered candidly’ ... and in a few pithy paragraphs. I was precise and to the point. What is your next excuse? RESPONDENT: IF so, it is no wonder I cannot remember anything about it. RICHARD: You are going to have to do better than this if you wish me to take you as being sincere. RESPONDENT: I don’t see where I have made a point yet. RICHARD: Do you want to see? Or do you wish to continue living as you are? RESPONDENT: You just don’t want to answer the question. RICHARD: I am very happy to answer the question ... but what is the point if you do not take any notice of it? RESPONDENT: You claim to be free from malice. Why be free from malice?? RICHARD: I became free from malice because it is an unpleasant feeling to have coursing through the body, for starters. Secondly, because of what it made me do in my interaction with my fellow humans. Are you for real with this question? RESPONDENT: Where did that moral value come from? RICHARD: It is not a moral value ... it is just plain sensible to be free of malice. * RICHARD: And if you really want to know about my personal life this time ... then look in the archives. RESPONDENT: Too much work. RICHARD: Therefore you do not really want to know ... you just wanted to score some cheap points based upon your prejudices. RESPONDENT: OK ... you refuse to tell. RICHARD: No, I am not refusing to tell ... my answers are in the archives. RESPONDENT: For all I know you could be a child molester posing as a saint (beyond all that kind of stuff or course). RICHARD: I am not pandering to your prejudices, if that is what you mean. RESPONDENT: I will assume it is possible that you drink, smoke, lie, steal and have illicit sex, since you don’t consider them to be of much importance at all on the meter that registers your own ‘good’ and ‘evil’ standards, which you definitely seem to express clearly. RICHARD: And to think that all this speculating is because you did not take any notice of my candid answers some months ago. RESPONDENT: For you it has to be killing, rape and extreme suffering to qualify as good or bad things to be eliminated. RICHARD: No ... if sorrow and malice are eliminated then nothing terrible happens. It is not a matter of eliminating each ‘bad’ thing one by one at all. RESPONDENT: It would seem your perception is a little short sighted, because many comforts serve to keep alive, reinforce and support the qualities you claim to wish to eliminate. RICHARD: I do not claim to wish to eliminate any ‘qualities’ ... I have eliminated sorrow and malice. Therefore I am not driven to do any personally insalubrious or socially reprehensible act whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Also try to measure the misery caused by excess drinking, smoking, sexual immorality and the rest. RICHARD: I experience no misery whatsoever ... all suffering is gone forever. RESPONDENT: Do you need an elephant in front of your nose before you can see it? RICHARD: Not at all ... eighteen years ago I saw the ‘elephant’ for the first time – with both eyes – and then there was action. This action led to the ending of ‘me’ . RESPONDENT: Do you drink, smoke, overeat, escape into fantasy, or have elicit affairs? RICHARD: The word is ‘illicit’ not ‘elicit’ ... if you are going to castigate people whose sexual predilections are not in accord with your adopted scriptural injunctions then you could at least learn the terminology, do you not think? I have a question for you: If everybody stopped ... would there then be global peace-on-earth? RESPONDENT: If everyone did those things, the world would be moving in the right direction for sure, and there would be reason for optimism. RICHARD: I am not interested in optimism ... I am only interested in results. And the results of everybody stopping drinking, smoking, overeating, escaping into fantasy and having illicit affairs would not put an end to sorrow and malice ... and all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide RESPONDENT: That is not likely to happen though, is it? It is the hostile malicious and victimised man that uses those things to support his identity separate from truth. RICHARD: Well, here you are saying what I say ... do you see the word ‘malicious’ in there? They are your words, you know. RESPONDENT: If all of the women would stop supporting and nurturing the fat egos of their family members, in order to build their own, the world would be a lot better off also but that is not likely either. RICHARD: But women have malice and sorrow nestled in their bosom too ... blind nature is quite impartial when it comes to handing out the software package of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. RESPONDENT: You propose the achievement of some kind of freedom which bypasses looking at the truth of what is going on here. RICHARD: No, I propose an actual freedom based upon looking at the roots of what causes all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. RESPONDENT: I do not believe such a way exists or will work. RICHARD: I am not asking you to believe it ... believing does not deliver the goods. One needs to see it with both eyes ... or listen with both ears. Actually see. Actually listen. RESPONDENT: If you don’t see the harm and suffering caused by the things I mentioned, you must have bypassed a lot of truth to get where you are. RICHARD: And on and on you go ... you are stopping short of the truth in order to stay back there where you are. RESPONDENT: The misery caused by misuse of alcohol alone seems so obvious as not to need any mention. RICHARD: Aye ... and why is there this ‘misuse of alcohol’? Is it – at root – sorrow and/or malice, perchance? RESPONDENT: The false security maintained by those ego supports has caused more suffering than it seems you would care to look at. RICHARD: Aye ... and why is there the need for this ‘false security’ and those ‘ego supports’? Is it – at root – sorrow and/or malice, perchance? RESPONDENT: Thanks for the spelling correction. I will take note of it. RICHARD: It was not a spelling correction ... it was a word correction. ‘Elicit’ means ‘extract, draw out, educe’ ... whereas ‘illicit’ means ‘improper’ as in ‘not allowed’ ... it basically means ‘narrow-minded’. RESPONDENT: You spelled succor wrong in one of your recent messages, by the way. You spelled it ‘succour’. RICHARD: Oh, I do not wish to get into that ‘American English’ versus ‘Australian English’ debate ... I will let the academics argue that one out. Suffice is it to say that the ‘Oxford Dictionary’ spells it < succour > ... as does the spell-checker on my computer. Try again. RESPONDENT: What are you sexual predilections by the way? Are you free from that? RICHARD: Yes, I have no sexual drive – no urges or desires – whatsoever. My libido is null and void. (‘Libido’: from Latin ‘desire’, ‘lust’: psychic drive or energy associated with the sexual instinct). * RICHARD: This is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: Only if it is the right kind of freedom. RICHARD: Goodness me ... I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s feelings, thoughts and actions as being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and to others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations – which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway – then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life. So, the question is: Is an actual freedom a silly freedom ... or a sensible freedom? It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the psychological and psychic identity within the body struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. This alternate freedom has never before been discovered anywhere in the history of humankind ... the most one could aspire to in order to transcend the ‘human realm’ was the much-touted ‘Divine Realm’, which has always brought bloodshed and suffering in its wake. This is because an imitation innocence was produced by the transformed identity now being humble ... it never was and never will be the genuine article. However, the way is now clear for that most longed for global peace-on-earth to happen. Because it is possible in one human being, the possibility exists for it to be replicated in another ... and another ... and another ... and so on. And the crux of its success is innocence. RESPONDENT: What you seem to be describing here is what is referred to in Christian theology as a ‘state of grace’. RICHARD: Obviously you did not read it carefully. I was talking of eliminating the ‘sinner’ totally. Christian theology maintains that one will always remain a ‘sinner’ and their ‘state of grace’ is the result of abject humility in the un-seen face of an imaginary god in order to gain forgiveness. If one successfully completes this sleight of hand (or should I say ‘sleight of mind and heart’) then they feel ‘washed clean’. This is the imitation innocence that I wrote of above. Did you miss that bit? RESPONDENT: You are referring to a state untouched by evil, whereby you are acknowledging the existence of evil. RICHARD: No, I am not talking about a ‘state untouched by evil’ ... that state is called ‘The Good’. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti talked of such a state as a reservoir of goodness wherein one must be vigilant because evil is always trying to get into. Such vigilance is not for me ... I eliminated both ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. For the Christians – and Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – evil still exists. RESPONDENT: Of course once this state has been found, there is an end to all of that and no need for any laws because the laws will be ‘written in their hearts’. RICHARD: Not so ... the law ‘written in their hearts’ is merely a way to ward off evil ... it does not eliminate it. RESPONDENT: I see nothing new in there. RICHARD: Of course you cannot ... because you cannot see what I am getting at in regards malice and sorrow. You would rather continue your one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals. This way you do not have to do anything about your own sorrow and malice. Let alone ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, eh?
CORRESPONDENT No. 21 (Part Two) RETURN TO CORRESPONDENCE LIST ‘B’ INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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