Mailing List 'B' Respondent No. 21

Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’

with Respondent No. 21

Some Of The Topics Covered

ego and soul – right and wrong – freedom from the Human Condition – guilt – ‘divine realm’ – survival instinct – adventure – unilateral action – malice – innocence – sorrow – silly and sensible – principles – calenture – new freedom – global peace – actual freedom – love and compassion – Saviours – religions – not caring

October 30 1998:

RICHARD: 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 sorrow and malice 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?

RESPONDENT: Has your state of awareness ended all of the suffering in the world?

RICHARD: Yes, there is no suffering here in this, the actual world. Suffering still exists in the real-world of course ... all self-inflicted.

RESPONDENT: If not, why assume mine would?

RICHARD: But I am not assuming ... there is no suffering here. I am not special ... this is for anyone and everyone. This perfection already always exists.

RESPONDENT: I will repeat what you are saying: that I am the 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 ... and I am not attending to the problem within me. You are assuming a bit much here don’t you think?

RICHARD: Okay ... let us find out if I am assuming, eh? Are you free of the Human Condition (by which I mean something vastly superior to the ‘state of grace’ )? If not ... then I am not assuming anything at all. For it is then a fact that you are perpetuating all of the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide with your procrastination about becoming self-less.

RESPONDENT: Also since when does asking you (evidently the ‘great one’ you appear to think) about your personal moral values means I am on a crusade to eliminate drinkers, etc.

RICHARD: I do not think that I am ‘the ‘great one’ I appear to think’ at all. I constantly say that I am a fellow human being who is free from the Human Condition. I criticise the ‘great ones’ like all get-out ... why do you think I would want to become one of them? Is this an example of your imagination at work?

RESPONDENT: This is a little presumptive of you don’t you think? In my personal life I give those problems very little attention.

RICHARD: Whereas I do not have to pay them any attention at all.

RESPONDENT: I am discussing such things with you.

RICHARD: It seems more like a monologue to me ... and a repetitious one at that.

RESPONDENT: For a man with no anger or angst you seem to jump to a lot of conclusions and get somewhat hyped.

RICHARD: You have to be grasping at straws to see me as being ‘hyped’ in anything that I write. I am having so much fun here at this keyboard.

RESPONDENT: What do you propose I see to get rid of all of the wars and rapes in the world?

RICHARD: Your own malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: I had no idea I had that kind of power?

RICHARD: Well you do ... peace-on-earth is in your hands.

RESPONDENT: We have a totally different view of the problem and the cause. Those activities are all used to escape the facing of the realities in our nature that are actually responsible for the horrors you speak of. You do not think so. They are used to anaesthetise the beast so he can keep on going in his wrong state and live to be unjust another day.

RICHARD: Good ... you do acknowledge that there is a ‘beast’. This ‘beast’is ‘you’.

RESPONDENT: You seem to think the ego can be eliminated without facing truth ... some kind of short cut.

RICHARD: Not so ... to put it bluntly: ‘you’ who are but an illusion, must die an illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it.

RESPONDENT: Just eliminate the identity completely that holds the error, and all will be well.

RICHARD: Aye ... that is it in a nutshell.

RESPONDENT: I don’t think so. All we need to do is to eliminate or find change for the nature that has the qualities that cause all problems, and we are free from problems. What is left is what should be there.

RICHARD: Oh, if only you had not put ‘or find change for the nature that has the qualities that’ in there ... for we would be in agreement. It would read: ‘All we need to do is to eliminate the cause of all problems, and we are free from problems. What is left is what should be there’.

RESPONDENT: Manure is the source of the good earth to grow on, with the application of the sun and it’s resultant break down. If we find something that makes if possible to give up what needs giving up, we are changed., not through effort, but through the refusal to accept substitutes, and the persistence to hang on until the real thing comes along for us.

RICHARD: Not so ... freedom is not something that either grows in ‘me’ or is a clip-on that one can attach to ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: Being aware in the moment is good. Being lost in the moment is not.

RICHARD: Oh, ‘I’ got lost ages ago ... now there is only this moment. I am happening as this moment is happening.

RESPONDENT: To surrender to what we are by just living in the ‘now’ is not going to really eliminate the wrong self.

RICHARD: Indeed no ... for who is the ‘I’ that is surrendering, eh? Freedom is when ‘I’ as ego and the ‘me’ as soul dies completely.

RESPONDENT: It is to just become totally subject and submerged into it, with an attending high that comes from not knowing we are lost. This ‘high’ will then tell us what to believe, in order to justify and fortify itself with whatever elaboration is needed to convince us we have ‘arrived’. The smarter we are, the more elaborate it must be to fool us, but it will fool us because we are less than it is.

RICHARD: Aye ... ‘I’ must die. It is the only solution.

RESPONDENT: Me thinks there is something wrong with your attempt to eliminate all suffering in the world.

RICHARD: It is not just an ‘attempt’ ... it is a success. There is no suffering here in the actual world. It is already always perfect here.

RESPONDENT: It is a part of your high to think you can.

RICHARD: But I am not ‘high’ at all ... that is your fantasy.

RESPONDENT: The fact that you have escaped from suffering does not mean that others have or will.

RICHARD: Indeed ... the universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Most human beings, being contumelious as they are, will probably continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious as a self-righteous soul who is convinced that they know the way to live ... as revealed in their revered scriptures or in their cherished secular philosophy.

It is all in your hands.

RESPONDENT: Let’s face the reality of the situation. The world will not give up the selfishness and hatred that keeps it alive an moving for you or anyone else.

RICHARD: The ‘world’ will not ... but will ‘you’ give up your sorrow and malice? Which means then the end of ‘you’, of course. Why wait for ‘the world’ ? All you get by waiting is more waiting.

RESPONDENT: There will be ‘wars and rumours of wars’ until the end of the world.

RICHARD: More than likely ... judging by the non-existent pace that you are proceeding at in your quest to put an end to war in yourself.

RESPONDENT: If you could eliminate all war, rape, killing, and suffering, do you really think man would be in a state of paradise?

RICHARD: Yes ... and woman too.

RESPONDENT: No ... he would be as nutty as ever, most likely more nutty, with no war, no suffering, no rape, etc.

RICHARD: Basically you are saying: ‘Why bother trying? I will just stay the way I am’.

RESPONDENT: He would just be living in a stupendous funny farm without suffering, and the psychological cruelty would be immeasurable.

RICHARD: You have a strange picture of freedom.

RESPONDENT: You think my view is short sighted. I think yours is. I guess that is what this discussion is about. Which of us has the greater blind side and what is the actual truth?

RICHARD: The actual truth is what is evidenced in one’s day-to-day living. That is, each moment again one is totally happy and harmless ... and for the remainder of one’s life.

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: What I considered silly was your insistence on referring to heinous crimes as a way to deal with the issue of lessor crimes.

RICHARD: I was referring to 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 in order to get your mind out of the gutter ... for all your self-righteous preening showed where you were at.

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: I was referring to the ‘sins’ I was referring to. In that context your statement does not make much sense.

RICHARD: Well does it make sense now ... as you get toward the end of all these one-line answers that did not beat around mulberry bushes or sizzle steaks?

RESPONDENT: I am not sure what the ‘tried and true’ is.

RICHARD: Methinks that you do ... it is the platitudes that you come out with.

RESPONDENT: Go ahead and try them.

RICHARD: I did for eleven years ... and found them wanting

RESPONDENT: OK. Tell me how I can eliminate all malice and sorrow.

RICHARD: Do you see – with both eyes – the utter necessity for that course of action?

If you do ... you will never be the same again.

November 08 1998:

RICHARD: 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.

RESPONDENT: You were criticising the seemingly mild areas of morality I was asking about in comparison to the more serious ones that exist in the world. Now, speaking in a generality, you advise that we look upon our feelings, thoughts and actions simply being ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. I was looking back on an action of rape performed yesterday, would I consider it to be ‘silly’??

RICHARD: Well, I consider it silly, of course ... but then again I wanted to be free form the Human Condition with all of my being. Therefore, I did not come up with silly intellectual objections. So, tell me: do you consider rape sensible then?

RESPONDENT: Wouldn’t you say that there are some things you might be able to call ‘silly’ and other things that you would not because they do not fit in that category no matter how much you try to fit them in.

RICHARD: Well, I would not, of course ... but then again I saw the utter necessity of becoming free of malice and sorrow. So, tell me: what things would you want to exclude from this category? Wars? Rapes? Murders? Tortures? Domestic violence? Child abuse? Sadness? Loneliness Grief? Depression? Suicide? Am I to gather that, according to you, these things are not silly? So tell me: do you consider wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide to be sensible then?

RESPONDENT: If I were to kill someone in a fit of anger, should I say to myself ‘darn! ... what a silly thing I just did’? ‘Should I clean up now or later?’

RICHARD: Well, only if you wish to remain a sorrowful and malicious psychological and psychic identity living a parasitical existence inside this flesh and blood body ... busily perpetuating 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. So, tell me: do you consider murder sensible then?

RESPONDENT: I do agree with you that self condemnation is another way of playing god with ourselves.

RICHARD: Who are you agreeing with? I never said anything like that ... all gods are figments of a fertile imagination – an imagination fuelled by dread and awe – and it is therefore a meaningless statement. Is this an example of you being sensible?

RESPONDENT: And self-condemnation will not accomplish anything, but your statement is a little on the enabling side, don’t you think?

RICHARD: No, not at all ... it is particularly effective if your number one priority is to dig into the depths of your psyche and root out everything that is standing in the way of peace-on-earth, as this body, in this life-time. May I ask you a question? Do you consider yourself to be a rational and mature adult?

RICHARD: 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?

RESPONDENT: Of course, this depends on what you are finding freedom from, doesn’t it?

RICHARD: We have been talking of nothing else but being free from the Human Condition, of course. We have been examining the implications of holding on to malice and sorrow and seeing the part they play in keeping ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul in existence. This aspect of this thread started with No. 23 coming out with his usual bombast and blather about how if someone knew about transformation he would listen to them with the whole of his being. (By whom he means Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, of course, who is safely dead and will never be able to take him at his word). I called his bluff and he has been huffing and puffing ever since. The exchange is as follows. Vis.:

• [Respondent No. 23]: ‘So, the criterion is the ending of sorrow. If you know what transformation implies, then I want to listen to you with my whole being and to ask you everything about it’.
• [Richard]: ‘The criterion is not only the ending of sorrow but the ending of malice as well ... the two are inextricably linked. But again you say ‘I want to listen’ rather than ‘I will listen’ ... or even better: ‘I am listening’. For I do know what transformation implies ... it means that ‘I’ go on in a different guise as sorrow and malice transform into compassion and love’.

RICHARD: 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.

RESPONDENT: If one is free from the standard whereby innocence would be defined or understood, the freedom would just be ignorance, wouldn’t it?

RICHARD: No, no, no ... to be free from sin and guilt one has free from the ‘sinner’ who has a pernicious existence within this body. That is, ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul is a ‘walk-in’ (if I may use some current jargon) and is corrupting the thoughts and actions of this flesh and blood body. Then there is no need for a standard ‘whereby innocence would be defined’ because one would be innocence personified.

RESPONDENT: Freedom from guilt does not necessarily mean compliance with or union with the principles of innocence.

RICHARD: Once again, I am not talking about principles ... I am talking about freedom from the state of being wherein principles are a necessity to stop one from carrying out actions that are either personally insalubrious or socially reprehensible. I am not talking about ‘compliance with principles’ ... I am talking about being free of the instinctual urges, impulses and drives that necessitate ‘compliance with principles’. I am talking about a truly remarkable freedom.

RICHARD: 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.

RESPONDENT: It was man’s version of the ‘Divine Realm’ that caused the problems; not the divine realm.

RICHARD: There is no ‘Divine Realm’ other than ‘man’s version’ (except woman’s version). All divinity is a product of feverish human imagination. There is a very good word for this globally occurring apparition: calenture.

RESPONDENT: Is it so surprising that man has not understood or found the divine realm?

RICHARD: Not really ... it is very difficult to find – and live out in one’s daily life – an hallucination. This is why only .000001 of the population have become enlightened.

RESPONDENT: True humility is not an imitation, of course.

RICHARD: There is no such thing as ‘true humility’ ... just sticking ‘true’ in front of a word does not make it actual. All humility is nothing but the ego being very, very clever.

RESPONDENT: There is such a thing as the genuine thing.

RICHARD: It does not exist. It has never existed and never will exist. It is but a product of a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity called ego.

RESPONDENT: How many have found what you claim to have found?

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

RESPONDENT: If not many, why would you assume that many would find the true way in traditional religion?

RICHARD: Hmm ... look, if you think it is important for me to understand this sentence then perhaps you could re-write it in a way that makes sense? Because as it reads you seem to be implying that traditional religion is valid ... by your use of the word ‘true’. All traditional religion is superstition.

RESPONDENT: Have you found a way to freedom that is compatible with the selfish man and does not require humility??

RICHARD: Yea verily ... and not just ‘the selfish man’. The selfish woman, too. All 5.8 billion peoples on this fair earth are selfish ... blind nature made them so.

RESPONDENT: What kind of freedom would that be?

RICHARD: It 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.

RESPONDENT: It would seem to be more of a ‘high’ than true freedom .

RICHARD: It is not a ‘high’ ... and it is not a ‘true’ freedom. Just sticking the word ‘true’ in front of a belief does not make it actual.

RICHARD: 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.

None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously but wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the Human Condition ... this is the very human nature that is so often said as an excuse: ‘This is just human nature and human nature cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’.

RESPONDENT: It is much more than the ‘instinct for survival’. It is the nature of what seeks to survive.

RICHARD: The ‘nature of what seeks to survive’ is indeed the survival instinct. What on earth are you talking about?

RESPONDENT: We seek not only to survive but to be more than we are.

RICHARD: It is the ‘seeking to survive’ that prevents one from being what you call ‘more than we are’. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul sacrifices itself psychologically and psychically ... then the freedom that is already always here becomes apparent.

RESPONDENT: And we seek to avoid knowing that we are not.

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I did seek ... and I did find. This has been – and still is – the adventure of a lifetime. To seek and to find; to explore and uncover; to investigate and discover ... these actions are the very stuff of life!

It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being.

I am having so much fun ... those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ and wish to be twenty-one again leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I realised that there was nobody stopping me but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore. As soon as I realised nobody had to give me permission but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover and to find the ‘Secret to life’. (Or the ‘Meaning of life’ or the ‘Riddle of existence’, or the ‘Purpose of the universe’ or whatever one’s quest may be called.)

To dare to be me, to be what-I-am as an actuality, rather than the who ‘I’ was, or the who ‘I’ am, or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history ... or one’s personal history, at least.

RESPONDENT: We seek freedom from what is ‘bringing us down’ and that is freedom from the truth.

RICHARD: Please correct me if I am reading this wrong ... but are you saying that freedom from the truth is what is bringing you down?

RESPONDENT: If you find freedom in truth, that is another thing.

RICHARD: This sounds suspiciously like rhetoric to me ... are you using the word ‘truth’ to means that which is actual? Or are you using it to mean a god by whatever name?

RESPONDENT: The only other option is to find freedom in the lie.

RICHARD: Ah ... so it is rhetoric after all.

November 16 1998:

RESPONDENT: OK Richard, the last post was getting too long, so let’s bring it down to the bottom line of what you are saying. You say that malice and sorrow are behind man’s problems, including war and all of the hostilities and suffering in the world, and you are claiming that we can drop those qualities and live in a paradise.

RICHARD: No, it is not a case of ‘we’ dropping what you call ‘these qualities’ at all. For a start, I am not talking about ‘we’ doing anything at all ... I am talking about you. I am talking about your unilateral action irregardless of what anyone else does or does not do. This actual freedom does not require the cooperation of a single person ... let alone 5.8 billion people. This is for you. This is your peace-on-earth. Of course, it is entirely possible that a chain-letter effect may ripple through the denizens of the ‘Land Of Lament’ ... but what they do is their business. As long as they comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocol, they are free to live their lives as wisely or as foolishly as they choose. You do not have to concern yourself about any other person’s modus operandi at all. The best way you can help another is by being free of the Human Condition yourself ... otherwise any help is but the blind leading the blind.

Secondly ‘you’ do not drop what you call ‘these qualities’ known as sorrow and malice because they are not clip-on accessories that ‘you’ have ... ‘you’ are these very ‘qualities’ . Sorrow and malice are your very nature ... this nature is intrinsic to the human condition. For sorrow and malice to vanish, ‘you’ – which is everything you feel yourself to be – will become extinct.

RESPONDENT: What is malice and why do we have it?

RICHARD: Malice is a catch-all word I have chosen to cover the full range of emotions and passions like those in this, by no means exhaustive, list that I plucked at random out of the thesaurus: abhorrence, acerbity, acrimony, aggression, anger, animosity, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bad blood, bad temper, bellicosity, belligerence, bile, bitchiness, bitterness, cantankerousness, cattiness, crabbiness, crossness, defamation, despisal, detestation, disgust, dislike, dissatisfaction, enmity, envy, evil, execration, grievance, grudge, grudgingness, hard feelings, harm, hate, hatred, hostility, ill feeling, ill will, ill-nature, ill-temper, ill-will, inimicalness, irascibility, irritability, loathing, malevolence, malignance, malignity, militancy, moodiness, murder, opposition, peevishness, petulance, pique, querulousness, rancour, repulsion, repugnance, resentment, slaying, snideness, spite, spitefulness, spleen, spoiling, stifling, sullenness, testiness, touchiness, umbrage, unfriendliness, unkindness, vengefulness, venom, vindictiveness, warlikeness, wrath and so on and so on.

You have malice because you are a human being. Blind nature endowed you – like all sentient beings – with fear and aggression and nurture and desire as survival instincts. These instincts are affective ... that is they are passionate feelings and emotions.

RESPONDENT: Has it not been projected onto us by our predecessors to begin with?

RICHARD: No. There is a simple way to check the credibility of this theory: If what you say were to be correct, then who projected malice and sorrow into the first sentient being to emerge on this planet?

RESPONDENT: How was it transported from them to us, or do you think we were merely born with malice and sorrow?

RICHARD: All sentient beings are born with fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... which give rise to malice and sorrow. All the predecessors reinforced and refined them into the multitudinous emotions and passions we have to this present day.

RESPONDENT: Let’s give some random examples to clarify the problem. You are insulted and called names by other children in school. One of your parents is abusive to you, insulting you and saying you are always going to be a failure. Your mother establishes her nature in you in a mutual support group devoted to hating your father. You are beaten and perhaps even sexually molested. You are cheated out of money. You are lied to and betrayed by people who were supposed to be your friends or family. All of these things are likely to elicit a hostile and angry response. In this reaction, the nature of the violator is transmitted into the victim and projected forth into the future, creating a situation destined for misery, cruelty and suffering. Once this judgmental and negative nature is established, it does not resolve itself so easily. If projects forth onto the people we come into close contact with and spreads endlessly through the generations, coming down through the family to the children. It even actively seeks out people of a corresponding nature to maintain itself and continue to grow in judgment and hostility.

RICHARD: What you are describing is the reinforcing and perpetuation of all those emotions and passions that arise out of the basic instinctual passions. A baby are not the ‘Tabula Rasa’ (or the ‘Little Buddha’) that more than a few people would like to believe.

RESPONDENT: Now you appear to be saying that this nature, so deeply established, can be dumped easily, without much self discovery apparently, and we will be instantly in a paradise.

RICHARD: Aye ... one does not have to endlessly analyse one’s childhood for ever and a day. One does not have to do endless therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again. One does not have to do any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any dietary regimes, any praying, any surrendering, any trusting, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities.

RESPONDENT: This approach is appealing in that it bypasses all of the looking and suffering involved in self discovery.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... the only good thing about suffering is when it ends ... permanently. However, please do not overlook my oft-repeated counsel that this route one travels is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee ... it requires nerves of steel to delve deep into one’s psyche. For one is entering into taboo territory ... which is why an actual freedom has never been found before. One is entering into the stygian depths of the Human Condition.

RESPONDENT: Doesn’t the person have to have been through the mill of life before they would be at a point where they could do this? Would it not require the necessary suffering to prepare the ground of our being for such a change?

RICHARD: Not at all, by the time one is old enough to read and understand these words ... one has already suffered enough. Any more suffering is simply silly. What is essential for success is to be able to remember a pure consciousness experience (PCE). Then you personally know – by direct experience – what your goal is. It is of no avail to just believe me ... all you would end up doing is living out a dream.

RESPONDENT: The beast has his own food. He will have to give up his food before starvation ensues?

RICHARD: What one does is starve ‘the beast’ of its fuel ... you are feeding ‘the beast’ and thus keeping it alive.

RESPONDENT: You claim the beast is an illusion. He is real.

RICHARD: An illusion it is ... but a very real illusion, for all that. This is why I draw a sharp distinction between the word ‘real’ and the word ‘actual’ (and between ‘true’ and ‘fact’) even though the dictionary gives the same meanings.

RESPONDENT: He will not die at our will.

RICHARD: With sufficient dedication and purpose – with the diligence and application and patience and perseverance born out of the PCE – ‘the beast’ has no chance whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: He may change forms and appearances, but like the serpent of old, he will merely take another form, perhaps posing as all sweetness and light this time.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... and no ‘perhaps’ about it either. I warn everybody who steps onto the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom of the only danger that lies on the way. You may become enlightened.

I kid you not.

RESPONDENT: I agree that the suffering in the world is caused by malice and the resulting sorrow.

RICHARD: Good ... do you see it as clearly as you see the nose on your face? It needs to be that obvious in order to begin. Also, sorrow is not the result of malice ... it is because ‘you’ are – by ‘your’ very nature – forever cut-off from the magnificence of being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. That is, ‘you’ cannot know the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe. This is called, in the jargon, separation. Because of this separation, ‘you’ desire union ... oneness, wholeness and so on. In a word: love.

RESPONDENT: The question is how we will overcome it?

RICHARD: It is not a matter of over-coming it at all ... only elimination will do the trick. Any notion of overcoming is but ‘the beast’ being tricky by getting in on the act and saying: ‘Okay, ‘I’ will do this ... how do ‘I’ overcome malice and sorrow?’ Do you see this? This is because ‘I’ am malice and sorrow ... they are not accessories that ‘I’ have.

RESPONDENT: Here is the bottom line. How do you propose that this beast will be eliminated?

RICHARD: By asking yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

RICHARD: Well, I consider it silly, of course ... but then again I wanted to be free from the Human Condition with all of my being. Therefore, I did not come up with silly intellectual objections. So, tell me: do you consider rape sensible then?

RESPONDENT: You are the one that decided to establish the categories as ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’, not me.

RESPONDENT: I consider the categories to be right or wrong, good or evil.

RICHARD: So, for you, is rape wrong, evil ... and sensible?

RESPONDENT: If you consider rape silly, how would you consider an assault on yourself?

RICHARD: Just as silly. Because she or he that is assaulting me is going to wind up in gaol. By the way, men get raped too, you know ... especially when they find themselves in gaol for doing something silly.

RESPONDENT: Does it become more serious at that point?

RICHARD: Nothing is serious ... my life is continuous enjoyment and appreciation. I am sincere, though, with all my fun.

RESPONDENT: It is you who sees these things as ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’... not me.

RICHARD: Aye ... and you felt such an approach to be enabling, remember? So I give you a demonstration of it’s effectiveness ... and you will not answer. I will ask you again: do you consider the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide to be sensible?

RESPONDENT: I think you are silly.

RICHARD: As you do not know me personally, you can only have come to that conclusion by what you read. As I have spoken repeatedly about having eliminated malice and sorrow totally – thus making me completely happy and harmless – then I can only gather the impression that you think that peace-on-earth is silly. This does fit in with your comment a couple of posts ago. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘There will be ‘wars and rumours of wars’ until the end of the world.
• [Richard]: ‘More than likely ... judging by the non-existent pace that you are proceeding at in your quest to put an end to war in yourself.
• [Respondent]: ‘If you could eliminate all war, rape, killing, and suffering, do you really think man would be in a state of paradise?
• [Richard]: ‘Yes ... and woman too.
• [Respondent]: ‘No ... he would be as nutty as ever, most likely more nutty, with no war, no suffering, no rape, etc.
• [Richard]: ‘Basically you are saying: ‘Why bother trying? I will just stay the way I am’.
• [Respondent]: ‘He would just be living in a stupendous funny farm without suffering, and the psychological cruelty would be immeasurable.
• [Richard]: ‘You have a strange picture of freedom.

RESPONDENT: If I were to kill someone in a fit of anger, should I say to myself ‘darn! ... what a silly thing I just did’? ‘Should I clean up now or later?’

RESPONDENT: There were wars that needed to be fought.

RICHARD: Actually, the question was ‘do you consider murder sensible’ ? Do you?

RESPONDENT: I consider some wars to be extremely sensible.

RICHARD: Goodness me ... you not only think that peace-on-earth is silly but you are now telling me that some wars are sensible!

RESPONDENT: Have you ever noticed that is such a thing as a tyrant or dictator?

RICHARD: Yes ... when I was but a boy in short pants at state school such people were called ‘bully-boys’. The girls had their own variety called ‘catty-bitches’.

RESPONDENT: Do you consider the country fighting in self defence to be equal in causality to the perpetrator that started the whole thing?

RICHARD: As a country is nothing but a grouping of peoples complete with the entire software package of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then they are as covertly ‘guilty’ as the bully-boys and catty-bitches are overtly ‘guilty’.

RESPONDENT: It is silly to categorise all wars as the same, not sensible.

RICHARD: All wars are silly.

RESPONDENT: That stand exudes a self righteous ‘above it all’ stand.

RICHARD: Not so ... when one is ‘right’ or ‘good’ one is inevitably self-righteous. It is much better to be a sensible person.

RESPONDENT: You may be able to reason with the one defending but you will never get anywhere with the tyrannical aggressor.

RICHARD: As no country – which is each and every citizen – has rid itself of sorrow and malice then such speculation can only be that ... speculation. I would rather speak from my personal experience. Dealing sensibly with another is infinitely more effective than any self-righteous anger any day.

RESPONDENT: I do agree with you that self condemnation is another way of playing god with ourselves.

RESPONDENT: That is strange. I see you playing god like all the rest of mankind.

RICHARD: This is just not possible. There are no gods outside of your feverish imagination (apart from other believer’s equally delirious fantasy) so how on earth could I be ‘playing god’? I do not live in your world ... only people of your ilk go around ‘playing god’. I simply cannot ... it is impossible.

RESPONDENT: It is revealed in the way you put your words together.

RICHARD: Oh? Really? What words? Do you mean words like: ‘I am a thorough-going atheist through and through’?

RESPONDENT: You are just trying to nullify your competition ... leaving yourself in charge.

RICHARD: I am certainly autonomous ... if that is what you see as me being in charge. I look to no one else ... nor do I have to follow absolute dictates handed down by long-dead deities. Peoples who are now but mouldering bones – or less – are ruling your life.

RESPONDENT: And self-condemnation will not accomplish anything, but your statement is a little on the enabling side, don’t you think?

RESPONDENT: I just keep looking at myself without coming to any final conclusions.

RICHARD: Do you mean to say that you do not know whether you are mature or not? May I ask? How old are you?

RESPONDENT: I will let you know when I see it.

RICHARD: Is that likely to be long, do you think? More than a couple of posts away, I mean?

RESPONDENT: I do think I am more rational than you are, but I don’t know if that is saying much.

RICHARD: So, a person who thinks that peace-on-earth is silly and that some wars are sensible considers himself to be more rational than Richard, eh? No wonder the human world remains in the mess it is in.

RESPONDENT: It is very sensible to refrain from doing what should not be done, regardless of the inclination. Then the question of ‘why’ can be looked at.

RICHARD: Yes ... do you see now how effective ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ are? Because with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ being absolute dictates from high ... you are not to question. You must obey. And how on earth can some one who lived 2,000 years ago know how to deal with modern-day life?

RESPONDENT: If one is free from the standard whereby innocence would be defined or understood, the freedom would just be ignorance, wouldn’t it?

RESPONDENT: It is not the ‘me’ that is creating these thoughts.

RICHARD: Methinks that you will find that it is ... if you dig deep enough into your psyche.

RESPONDENT: They are coming in from the pipeline to hell, and you cannot eliminate the connection, nor the pipeline.

RICHARD: There is no ‘hell’ outside of your fevered imagination ... derived from those passionate instincts. This is all a nightmare in the human psyche ... there is no ‘hell’ here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: The evil just takes a more subtle shape to fool you unless you are sorry for the attitude that brings it in.

RICHARD: There is no ‘evil’ outside of your fevered imagination ... derived from those passionate instincts This is all a nightmare in the human psyche ... there is no ‘evil’ here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: Freedom from guilt does not necessarily mean compliance with or union with the principles of innocence.

RICHARD: Once again, I am not talking about principles ... I am talking about freedom from the state of being wherein principles are a necessity to stop one from carrying out actions that are either personally insalubrious or socially reprehensible. I am not talking about ‘compliance with principles’ ... I am talking about being free of the instinctual urges, impulses and drives that necessitate ‘compliance with principles’. I am talking about a truly remarkable freedom.

RESPONDENT: I am talking about principles.

RICHARD: I know you are ... but a principle of innocence is not innocence itself, now, is it? Actually living innocently is infinitely better than living according to the ‘principles of innocence’ .

RESPONDENT: I love principles.

RICHARD: Okay ... but loving something does not indicate that this something is salubrious. Some people love ... um ... heroin, for example.

RESPONDENT: Being free from these urges required understanding.

RICHARD: Aye ... simply obeying absolute dictates from high without question does not leave much room for understanding, does it? Whoops ... I just noticed you said ‘required’ and not ‘requires’ as I had assumed. Okay ... can you explain what urges you are free from? These ones that ‘required understanding’ , I mean?

RESPONDENT: It is not just a blind state of mind.

RICHARD: What is not ‘just a blind state of mind’ ? I am having difficulty in following your train of thought.

RESPONDENT: It was man’s version of the ‘Divine Realm’ that caused the problems; not the divine realm.

RESPONDENT: What is the definition of the word? I only know clementine.

RICHARD: Calenture is an incredibly useful word as it describes the delirious passion needed to manifest the delusion that:

1. There is a God ... and:
2. I am that God.

Calenture is a name formerly given to various fevers occurring in tropics, among sailors, which sometimes led the affected person to imagine the sea to be a green field, and to throw himself into it. Vis.: ‘calenture; n.: [1593; ka-len-chur]: a form of furious delirium accompanied by fever; calenturally; adv.: to see as in the delirium of one affected with calenture: [poetic]: ‘Hath fed on pageants floating through the air. Or calentures in depths of limpid flood’. (Wordsworth). [etymology: from Spanish: calentura, calenture: heat, fever; from calentar: to heat; from Latin: calent, calens, calere: to be warm]. Synonyms: delirium, passion, ardour, fervour, fire, zeal, rapture, ecstasy’.

RESPONDENT: Is it so surprising that man has not understood or found the divine realm?

RICHARD: Not really ... it is very difficult to find – and live out in one’s daily life – an hallucination. This is why only .000001 of the population have become enlightened.

RESPONDENT: True humility is not an imitation, of course.

RICHARD: There is no such thing as ‘true humility’ ... just sticking ‘true’ in front of a word does not make it actual. All humility is nothing but the ego being very, very clever.

RESPONDENT: Just because you have not found it does not mean it does not exist.

RICHARD: This is silly ... it is like saying that just because we have not found the little green men on Mars it does not mean that they do not exist. Next you will be coming out with that hoary one of demanding that I prove that your god does not exist. I see what you mean, now, when you say that you do not know whether you are a rational and mature adult yet.

RESPONDENT: Humility is a relationship with something greater.

RICHARD: I take it that you are referring to a relationship which involves self-deprecating capitulation and servile submission to some imagined deity?

(Humble: having or showing a low estimate of one’s own importance; of an action or thought offered with or affected by such an estimate; lacking assertion, deferential, obsequious).

RESPONDENT: There is such a thing as the genuine thing.

RICHARD: It does not exist. It has never existed and never will exist. It is but a product of a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity called ego.

RESPONDENT: How many have found what you claim to have found?

RESPONDENT: If not many, why would you assume that many would find the true way in traditional religion?

RESPONDENT: I will explain it. You claim that not many have found it through religion.

RICHARD: I have claimed that ‘not many’ have found the massive delusion called ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. There have been .000001 of the population according to a recent estimate. But no one has found innocence ... the ‘state of grace’ is a pseudo-innocence and not an actual innocence. I said that there is no one else, as far as I have been able to ascertain, to have discovered this actual innocence.

RESPONDENT: Neither have many found it your way.

RICHARD: Nobody has found it my way. This is but a scant six years old ... and I only went public last year.

RESPONDENT: So what does that really mean?

RICHARD: Well far be it from me to read your mind, but you do seem to be trying to make out a case – for what I have discovered – to be as difficult to attain to as the pseudo-innocence of traditional religion. As traditional religion has been public for at least the five thousand years of recorded history – and I have been public for just over one year – then I consider that you are drawing a very long bow in order to make a very weak and ineffectual point. I could be wrong, however, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to follow the workings of your mind.

RESPONDENT: There is much valid in almost all of the great religions.

RICHARD: Like what, for example? And please do not include love in your list as love has killed so many people that it is staggering to realise what a dangerous feeling it is.

RESPONDENT: That does not mean they are understood or taken seriously by many.

RICHARD: Not so ... there have been millions – if not billions – of very serious and devout people throughout the thousands of years. You are not the only pious egoist, you know.

RESPONDENT: You give vague allusions to a state of ‘actuality’.

RICHARD: I am not vague at all ... I write very clear descriptions.

RESPONDENT: You beat around the bush with many claims.

RICHARD: I am very explicit with statements of fact.

RESPONDENT: Bragging about how happy you are with yourself ... hoping to cause others to envy and want what you have.

RICHARD: Well now ... global peace-on-earth would be jolly nice, would it not? It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true.

RESPONDENT: And come running hungrily to you for the secret they might think you must hold behind it.

RICHARD: Behind what? I present no image ... what you read is what you get.

RESPONDENT: Have you attracted any smaller egos seeking to be more than they are with your magnanimous help?

RICHARD: There are some sensible people in the world ... if that is what you mean.

RESPONDENT: But really ... compared to the amount of good information offered in the great religions, you have not said much at all. You just think you have.

RICHARD: I do not ‘just think’ that I have ... I know that I have. And sensible information, too.

RESPONDENT: ‘Give up all that you are’ is about it. Fine. Now let’s see everyone do it. ‘Die to yourself folks. Have a great day’. You should include a recipe for egg nog along with your advice. At least we might get something out of it.

RICHARD: Well I am in contact with some one who has a great recipe for venison medallions ... if that is any consolation.

RESPONDENT: Have you found a way to freedom that is compatible with the selfish man and does not require humility??

RICHARD: Yea verily ... and not just the selfish man. The selfish woman, too. All 5.8 billion peoples on this fair earth are selfish ... blind nature made them so.

RESPONDENT: We seek freedom from what is ‘bringing us down’ and that is freedom from the truth.

RICHARD: Please correct me if I am reading this wrong ... but are you saying that freedom from the truth is what is bringing you down?

RESPONDENT: I am saying that it is truth that is bringing us down in our feelings.

RICHARD: Are you saying that this ‘truth’ that you follow is making you unhappy?

RESPONDENT: If you find freedom in truth, that is another thing.

RICHARD: This sounds suspiciously like rhetoric to me ... are you using the word ‘truth’ to mean that which is actual? Or are you using it to mean a god by whatever name?

RESPONDENT: The actual truth of what we are and what we are doing.

RICHARD: Ah ... are you talking about an actual freedom? Being free from sorrow and malice? Being free from the Human Condition? Being happy and harmless? Living an on-going peace-on-earth? Or have you just stuck the word ‘actual’ in front of the word ‘truth’ in order to make it look as if you know what you are talking about?

RESPONDENT: The only other option is to find freedom in the lie.

RICHARD: Ah ... so it is rhetoric after all.

RESPONDENT: Oh no. That is not rhetoric at all. We live a lie and it conflicts with truth. If you think that is rhetoric, it is because we don’t see the same world.

RICHARD: I can agree that a lie conflicts with the truth ... but you had said that there is ‘freedom in the lie’. It is this statement that is only rhetoric because it is nonsense. It does not mean anything ... it is a silly statement. How can living in a state that is in conflict with another state be freedom?

How long did you say it will be before you know whether you are mature or not?

November 22 1998:

RESPONDENT: You claim the beast is an illusion. He is real.

RESPONDENT: He will not die at our will .

RICHARD: With sufficient dedication and purpose – with the diligence and application and patience and perseverance born out of the PCE – ‘the beast’ has no chance whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: He may change forms and appearances, but like the serpent of old, he will merely take another form, perhaps posing as all sweetness and light this time.

RESPONDENT: Out of the ectoplasm of the beast come many forms, including those of apparent beauty and sweetness. They are there for the purpose of seduction and enslavement. This is difficult for people to see.

RICHARD: Yes ... I have been endeavouring to point out to people for some time now that bloodshed and hatred inevitably follows in the wake of the latest charismatic Saviour and Avatar, Messiah and Master, Guru and God-Man who brings Love Agapé and Divine Compassion to a benighted humanity. Quite possibly as many – if not more – people have been killed in religious wars as in territorial wars or ideological wars. Love is such an obviously dangerous passion to have that it amazes me that it is revered so. The seductive nature of the beauty of love and the sweetness of compassion is but a thin veneer over a murky morass ... The Divine needs The Diabolical to underpin its entire structure.

It is all built upon the shifting sands of the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that all humans are born with ... which is blind nature’s way of perpetuating the species. Energised by the ‘will to survive’ that grew out of the survival instinct, the fear and aggression and nurture and desire are transformed through socialisation into awe and dread – among other things – which are part and parcel of the identity. With awe comes veneration, reverence, homage, worship, respect and deference. With dread comes dismay, consternation, trepidation, terror, horror, repugnance and a dire sense of foreboding. One’s sense of identity is largely made up of feelings – emotions and passions – and the vast majority of the feelings that one supports are not created by oneself; they were assimilated with the mother’s milk and added to thereupon up to the present day. They are atavistic feelings, put into the child with reward and punishment – love and hate – and added to as an adult with the post mortem carrot and stick – awe and dread. They are all designed to strike fear into the heart of the would-be individual, eliciting submission, obedience, acquiescence and conformity out of the contumacious and perverse self. The graceless outcome of this bizarre creation of a divinity was the aberrant transmogrification of the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire into a demoniacal monster that made necessary the antithetical god for its very control.

Stupefied and stultified by centuries of conditioning, it is no wonder that the modern person still seeks recourse from the ‘wisdom of old’. In spite of the huge leaps in understanding gained by scientific discoveries on the nature of the brain, the genetic structure, the hormonal activity and many, many other fields of expertise ... still the ‘tried and true’ practices are invariably put into place when it comes to controlling human nature. The identity, ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul, can best be described as a psychological and psychic parasite living inside the body. In a valiant and understandable attempt to solve the plight of humankind, ‘I’ cease identifying as the ego and identify as the soul ... a shift in consciousness which manifests Love Agapé and Divine Compassion. Unfortunately for its success, Love Agapé is born out of malice and is dependent upon hatred to sustain itself ... and therefore can not provide the ultimate solution: freedom from animosity. So too with Divine Compassion – which has its roots in sorrow – and is unable to provide freedom from anguish. Love and compassion actually perpetuate malice and sorrow, for these are their essential progenitors. Nevertheless, there is an apparently endless supply of willing souls prepared to apply the time-honoured methods of remedying the human situation. ‘I’ obligingly surrender in order to receive ‘my’ rightful dividend.

RESPONDENT: I agree that the suffering in the world is caused by malice and the resulting sorrow.

RESPONDENT: If by malice you mean anger, resentment and hostility, I believe it is the root of sorrow and misery.

RICHARD: Sorrow is not the result of malice ... it is because ‘you’ are – by ‘your’ very nature – forever cut-off from the magnificence of being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. That is, ‘you’ cannot know the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe. This is called, in the jargon, separation. Because of this separation, ‘you’ desire union ... oneness, wholeness and so on. In a word: love.

RESPONDENT: It is through these emotions that we take on a foreign entity, becoming like our persecutors.

RICHARD: Not so ... ‘you’ are already like your persecutors. All human beings are born with the self-same instinctual passions ... no one is exempt.

RESPONDENT: This the main mode of transmission whereby we become corrupted by the beast in other men.

RICHARD: Not so ... ‘you’ are already corrupted. All human beings are born with the self-same instinctual passions ... no one is exempt.

RESPONDENT: This is the hole in the boat whereby the leakage takes place, and the ectoplasm of the beast enters.

RICHARD: Not so ... all sentient beings are born with the self-same instinctual passions ... no one is exempt.

RESPONDENT: The question is how we will overcome it?

RICHARD: It is not a matter of overcoming it at all ... only elimination will do the trick. Any notion of overcoming is but ‘the beast’ being tricky by getting in on the act and saying: ‘Okay, ‘I’ will do this ... how do ‘I’ overcome malice and sorrow?’ Do you see this? This is because ‘I’ am malice and sorrow ... they are not accessories that ‘I’ have.

RESPONDENT: The malice becomes us as we identify with it.

RICHARD: Not so ... ‘you’ are that already as an identity. All human beings are born with the self-same instinctual passions ... no one is exempt.

RESPONDENT: It is a borrowed identity.

RICHARD: Not so ... it is an intrinsic identity. All human beings are born with the self-same instinctual passions ... no one is exempt.

RESPONDENT: Here is the bottom line. How do you propose that this beast will be eliminated?

RICHARD: By asking yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

RESPONDENT: By observing what is and seeing the negative objectively.

RICHARD: Not only the negative ... the positive is equally pernicious.

RESPONDENT: Acknowledging the nature of the problem.

RICHARD: Aye ... it is the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that all sentient beings are born with.

RESPONDENT: And giving up what needs given up as it is seen clearly as harmful and self destructive.

RICHARD: It is not a matter of ‘giving-up what needs to be given-up’ at all ... only elimination will do the trick. Any notion of ‘giving-up’ is but ‘the beast’ being tricky by getting in on the act and saying: ‘Okay, ‘I’ will do this ... how do ‘I’ overcome give-up what needs to be given-up’? Do you see this? This is because ‘I’ am malice and sorrow ... they are not accessories that ‘I’ have.

RESPONDENT: The beast lives in darkness. Only light dispels darkness.

RICHARD: Not so ... the ‘light’ is born out of the ‘darkness’. It is but ‘the beast’ in disguise. Only apperceptive awareness will do the trick.

RESPONDENT: The beast is seen in the light.

RICHARD: Not so ... ‘the beast’ is ‘the light’.

RESPONDENT: I do not believe we originate light any more than we originate the beast.

RICHARD: Methinks, as you dig deeper into your psyche – which is the human psyche – you will find that you do.

November 26 1998:

RESPONDENT: Why do you keep including old quotes from old messages in every post?

RICHARD: I include what is necessary to keep a continuity ... respondents seem to quickly forget the context and the thread meanders off into becoming a different thread entirely and the issue is never addressed to completion.

RESPONDENT: It makes your posts way too long and too cumbersome to read.

RICHARD: Are you saying that you are not interested in what is being written?

RESPONDENT: ARE you so in love with your own words that you have to keep repeating them over and over again?

RICHARD: As nearly half the ‘old quotes’ you cut off this post are yours I hardly see any validity in this observation. But even if my input is much more than yours it is because I am explaining what is a complex issue ... one that has baffled human beings for aeons. Do you really think it can be adequately covered by a few one-liners? And when I do keep it brief you complain that I do not describe actuality adequately ... a ‘few vague claims’, you say. Also, I write something and you come back in the next post with the same-same objection just rearranged. So I send it again ... and again ... and again. But, if you wish, I can easily stop writing altogether ... another poster some time ago tried to dictate to me what to write – I was told to stop repeating myself verbatim – as he was being jaded. I simply stopped bothering him with my stuff ... nobody, but nobody who is still nursing malice and sorrow in their breast is anywhere near capable of deciding what I should or should not write. So, I really do not mind either way ... there being 5.8 billion people on this planet I can easily find someone else to correspond with.

RESPONDENT: There is much valid in almost all of the great religions.

RICHARD: Like what, for example? And please do not include love in your list as love has killed so many people that it is staggering to realise what a dangerous feeling it is.

RESPONDENT: Love is not as feeling.

RICHARD: How about answering the question? Do you see what I mean about meandering from the issue? As for love not being a feeling ... there are basically three faculties of experiencing – cerebral, affective and sensate – and one could hardly call love a thought or a sense, then it only leaves the affective faculties. Unless you wish to say that it is a psychic experience? Now I do know that the Enlightened Ones say that love is not a feeling but a State Of Being ... but as ‘being’ is affective then it only serves to confuse the ignorant.

RESPONDENT: Show me where some bible passage says it is?

RICHARD: Oh no ... I am not about to wade through your particular Holy Scripture just at your bidding. You may not realise that I correspond with Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Jews and devotees of many other minor religions, sects and creeds. If I were to start doing what you demand I would have to go through The Upanishad, The Vedanta, The Bagavad Gita, Buddhist Sutras, The Book Of Mormon, The Koran and so on and so on. No way am I buying into that.

RESPONDENT: I will explain it. You claim that not many have found it through religion.

RESPONDENT: That does not mean they are understood or taken seriously by many.

RICHARD: Not so ... there have been millions – if not billions – of very serious and devout people throughout the thousands of years. You are not the only pious egoist, you know.

RESPONDENT: And you have not known them all, but you proclaim that none knew what they were doing.

RICHARD: Whoa up there! It was you who said ‘not taken seriously by many’ ... not me. I do not have such a lowly view of my fellow human beings. Mostly people are well-meaning and very sincere about their beliefs. They have just been misled by the Saviours and Sages, Avatars and Saints, Gurus and God-men ... that is all. There has been countless devout devotees through countless decades ... to no avail.

RESPONDENT: You would need and amazing crystal ball to know what those people were like.

RICHARD: I do not need to know them all ... I go by results. Where is the Peace On Earth that religion purports to deliver?

RESPONDENT: You give vague allusions to a state of ‘actuality’.

RICHARD: I am not vague at all ... I write very clear descriptions.

RESPONDENT: I saw no clear description of ‘actuality’.

RICHARD: Then you do not read what I write. My paragraphs are all about actuality, peace-on-earth, actual freedom, being here now and so on and so on. You objected to the length of my posts so I went into doing one-liners for you. Now you complain that I do not give ‘clear descriptions’ !

RICHARD: Well I am in contact with some one who has a great recipe for venison medallions ... if that is any consolation.

RESPONDENT: IN that case you may have said something that might be helpful.

RICHARD: And that just about sums up your I.Q. (Interest Quotient).