|
Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 26
RESPONDENT: If one sees the seriously lacking nature of ‘humanity’ then it must at least be questioned.RICHARD: In order to call it ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ then one must already be seeing it ... unless it is a platitude. Therefore, if one is already seeing it one is already questioning it – and as ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ and a journey into your own psyche is a journey into humanity’s psyche – how far have you proceeded in your questioning? RESPONDENT: I am currently discovering some of the deep parts of my emotional weakness and entanglement. Not just pretending that what someone says doesn’t hurt but finding out why it does. There is freedom that comes from that, to act towards resolving other issues, but first things first. RICHARD: So your questioning of ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ so far amounts to finding out why you feel offended ... is that it? RESPONDENT: Not what it amounts to, what it amounts to is freedom to look at these things. RICHARD: Yes ... but what are ‘these things’ that you called ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? And how far have you proceeded in your questioning? * RICHARD: And when there is freedom from that you can act towards resolving ... what other issues? RESPONDENT: For example the problem of someone giving you a hard time. RICHARD: There is no need to be concerned about someone giving me a hard time ... their best efforts are but futile fulminations which leave me totally untouched. We were talking about you and your ‘freedom to act towards resolving other issues’. Speaking generally, people will continue give you a hard time way off into the foreseeable future ... the question is: what are you doing about this in reference to yourself? Is this a stumbling block to further investigation? I endeavoured to address the other question that arose out of you saying ‘there is freedom that comes from that, to act towards resolving other issues, but first things first’ (the first thing being you getting hurt) and what you came back with was what other people do to you. Therefore, could it be that – for you – being hurt by someone is the epitome of ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? Because, if not, then is this issue not a trifle trivial? There are wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicide going on all about you as you read these words ... and what I get from you is that you are concerned about is finding out why your feelings are being hurt. Is this issue central to the ‘other issues?’ (I am attempting to find out just what it is that you experience as the ‘seriously lacking nature of humanity’, you see). * RICHARD: Just what is this ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ that you spoke of? RESPONDENT: It has to do with the way I see people treating each other. RICHARD: Okay ... how do you see people treating each other? And how do people treat you? And how do you treat people? RESPONDENT: Too bad if the questioning is dropped in favour of the known comforts. RICHARD: If one’s questioning has led to seeing through the belief in the truth of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy ... can one ‘drop the questioning’ and start believing in them again for some known comfort? Is this not silly? Once started, a sincere journey is a one-way trip ... you will never be the same again. RESPONDENT: At times I have wondered if it really is, because sometimes I just couldn’t care less. But then it starts again. RICHARD: Okay, you are saying that your investigation into the human psyche – which is your psyche – is spasmodic at best. RESPONDENT: No, I wouldn’t call it spasmodic but there are certainly breaks in the investigation. RICHARD: These ‘breaks in the investigation’ where you ‘couldn’t care less’ about your plight – and your plight is the plight of humanity – stem from what? Why is your investigation not top priority in your life? Do you, in fact, really see ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? If you did ... would there be ‘breaks in your investigation’? Would it not be a twenty four hour a day investigation? Why do you not care about the plight of humanity ... which is your plight? * RICHARD: Living in a western democracy in the ’nineties one is so well-provided for that there is hardly the incentive to find out about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is, eh? Yet ... you would not want to care? Is this why you started this thread by stating: ‘I do not see that the words of another can point out the utter necessity for the ending of malice and sorrow’. After all, you do say ‘then it starts again’. What makes it start again? Idle curiosity? Boredom? RESPONDENT: I would say because the status quo is not satisfactory. RICHARD: Okay ... in what way is it not satisfactory? What is lacking? Is this the ‘seriously lacking nature of humanity’ that you speak of? You are not satisfied with what is on offer? RESPONDENT: It stops because I feel satisfied. RICHARD: Ahh ... would you say that you are a person who is easily satisfied? What does the word ‘excellence’ convey to you? * RICHARD: You did write – in a recent post to another – that you agree that truth destroys ‘what is’ ... particularly, you said, ‘if the what is, is the false’. Now that reads as if you have had personal experience of this happening ... have you? RESPONDENT: One doesn’t need any high and mighty PCE to see this. RICHARD: Oh dear ... what is this ‘high and mighty’ business? You ask for a description. Vis.: [Respondent]: ‘The basic question is can the ego be seen as a whole with all its qualities and seeing the truth of all that it ends’ ... and Richard simply responds. Vis.:
RESPONDENT: Even a self centred egocentric person can have his mouth closed shut by the statement of a simple truth. RICHARD: Then why the contumely? Why react to another person’s response to your question in such a way? Have you learnt nothing from your investigation into the ‘seriously lacking nature of humanity’? Not that I am offended or hurt by your remarks – that is not the point – but you do say that you are hurt by the way others treat you ... do you see that you easily do likewise? Maybe they hurt you because you hurt them? Is this ‘Tit for Tat’ the essence of the ‘seriously lacking nature of humanity’? * RICHARD: Because you did add this codicil: ‘That’s where it ends though, that which seeks to befriend truth can never be truth, so the lie (self-importance) lives on’. Is this your experience? Or is this all but platitudes based upon your reading? Does ‘self-importance’ play a big part in your life? Have you seen ‘The Truth’? Did it destroy falseness? Yes? No? If ‘yes’, then you must be living truly, now. RESPONDENT: Let me see here, you saying if I see the truth that I have automated responses in relation to ‘self importance’ then the seeing of that ends self importance and that it is final. RICHARD: No ... that is just fiddling with the details of ‘you’. What is meant by the statement that the truth destroys the false – however it is phrased – is that there is another dimension other than everyday reality that, once accessed, wipes ‘you’ out completely. It is ‘you’ that is false ... not just ‘your’ ego or ‘your’ habits and so on. RESPONDENT: This [seeing the truth that I have automated responses] seems to imply seeing the habit itself in its elemental glory. No, I have not done this. In your above quote I was questioning a statement about truth that seemed to affirm self importance. RICHARD: Hmm ... the statement that you were questioning said: ‘It is not a matter of acquiring more and more. It is a matter of seeing more and more truth and destroying what is. Lies are separate from truth. Truth restores unity if it is related to correctly, which is to find a willing subjectivity to it. We must become friends with truth’. I took it that you were saying that ‘I’ – who would become friends with truth – is what is false. This is why I ask you about your personal experiences ... not how well you have read various books on the subject. Do you now mean that the truth can wipe out ‘self-importance’ whilst leaving ‘you’ intact? Do you recall an earlier paragraph in a previous E-Mail where I wrote:
Do you see this as being what you are saying? * RICHARD: If ‘no’ then you cannot know that ‘truth destroys that which is false’ now can you? It thus amounts to being nothing but a belief. RESPONDENT: No, Richard. Obviously I have not entirely destroyed my residual falseness. RICHARD: But an ‘I’ destroying ‘my’ falseness was not the question ... only the truth can destroy the false. Is that not what you wrote? You said that you agree that truth destroys ‘what is’ ... particularly, you said, ‘if the what is, is the false’. The false is ‘you’ in ‘your’ entirety. As I said in a previous E-Mail:
RESPONDENT: Under some conditions it fades of its own accord under others it comes from nowhere and has already acted. RICHARD: So falseness is not destroyed in the flesh and blood body called ‘No. 15’. Hence my question: How do you know that the truth destroys the false? Have you had personal experience or is this something you have read? RESPONDENT: I say the truth thing because it makes sense to me. RICHARD: But the sense that it makes to you – going by your above description – is not the sense that the speaker of those words was conveying. RESPONDENT: It is simple to see what results certain action will incur and then avoid it. RICHARD: Indeed ... being raised in a western democracy one has been bottle-fed on ‘as ye sow shall ye reap’ ... or something similar. That is: cause begets effect. This is all a far cry from the truth destroying the false, is it not? Can we get to the crux of this discussion? Which is: What personal experiences have you had that have shown you the solution to all the ills of humankind? * RICHARD: What is essential is to remember one of your pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). A PCE is when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself ... it is a pure awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception is when the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is not and an unmediated awareness occurs. The pure consciousness experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmoderated by any ‘self’ whatsoever. One is able to see that ‘I’ and ‘me’ have been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential character of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is in abeyance. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity. Apperception is something that brings the facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand what that PCE memory is used for, why not just deal with attachment? RICHARD: What attachment? RESPONDENT: For example, attachment to the authority of words. RICHARD: Hmm ... having read through what you have written to me I do see that this could seem to be a problem for you. However, it does not appear to me to be that an attachment to the ‘authority of words’ is your immediate problem ... the problem seems to be not understanding what the ‘authoritative words’ convey. RESPONDENT: Is not the actual current state (of suffering), or the knowledge that it will, beyond a reasonable doubt, return that which demands questioning. RICHARD: If you are not aware of the abject misery of suffering – not only in oneself but all of humankind – then you are not old enough to be able to be reading these words. Can you not think for yourself? Do you not have feelings? Are you so inured to violence that 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 do not affect you at all? RESPONDENT: Yes, of course, I could be hanging on your every word because you’ve got this freedom thingy that I want. RICHARD: You say ‘could be’? If only you would be ... because it is you and your freedom I am interested in. I have arrived at my destiny and am already always here ... so I have nothing to prove and nothing to achieve. I am retired and on a pension and instead of pottering around the garden I am currently pottering around the Internet. Our paths have crossed on this Mailing List and who knows how long this window of opportunity will be open? The perfection of the infinitude of this infinite and eternal universe is already always here – now – and you are missing out on it. You are but a missed heart-beat or two away from death’s oblivion each moment again ... if you do not become free in this life-time you never will. RESPONDENT: It seems that the activity of defending the sensitivity of self importance can render these feelings moot. RICHARD: You say ‘it seems’ ... does it or does it not? If one sees this – as a fact – then this seeing of the fact initiates action. Of course this may very well open the flood-gates and untold suffering may pour in ... or not. Are you willing to take the risk? After all, world-wide there are 27 wars occurring as you read this. Someone is being murdered somewhere right now. Torture is happening at this moment ... just ask ‘Amnesty International’. Someone, somewhere is being beaten up in a domestic violence situation as you read this. Somewhere some child is being brutalised in yet another incidence of the endemic child abuse. All over the world sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide is going on in uncountable numbers ... and the solution to all this lies in your hands. * RICHARD: While extreme suffering – misery – comes and goes, suffering is constant. To be a human is to suffer. Any temporary easing of miserable suffering colours the current moment with the knowledge of misery’s inevitable return ... thus one is never free from suffering even when feeling good. Do you see this? RESPONDENT: Yes, I hadn’t realised that I was affirming the inevitable return of suffering. RICHARD: No, no, no ... not ‘the inevitable return of suffering’ ... the inevitable return of miserable suffering. To be human is to suffer. That is, ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ ... even when ‘I’ am feeling good. Have you become so accustomed to suffering that you are de-sensitised? * RICHARD: Why settle for second-best? Demand excellence for yourself ... for your life and for all human beings! Of course, one needs to be well aware of – and very clear about – one’s goal as it is only the reward that will entice you to abandon your present situation anyway. This is because there is a beauty in suffering ... the bitter-sweet beauty of pathos is seductive. RESPONDENT: Yes, bitter sweet, I had chance to taste it just the other day. This one had forever written all over it and rational thinking was hard pressed RICHARD: Now, as you say that ‘rational thinking was hard pressed’ you indicate that the piquant beauty of pathos may be stronger than sensibility ... is that it? With ‘forever written all over it’ you may be indicating that it could be seductive in that it promises eternity whilst all that sensibility offers is the remainder of your life and then death’s oblivion ... is this it? RESPONDENT: It offers a depth and passion that simple sensibility lacks. RICHARD: Aye ... what is it that lies hidden in the depths of that passion? RESPONDENT: I must say here that the nature of existence does change with the attention to the ways ‘ego’. RICHARD: What is the nature of this change? RESPONDENT: Certain trapping are removed and a feeling of ease and grace ensues. RICHARD: A feeling of ease, yes ... but ‘grace’? Do you mean that the unmerited divine assistance given to a human being for their regeneration or sanctification comes upon you? Because grace is a virtue coming from a god resulting in a state of sanctification. Do you feel that you receive the spontaneous gift of the divine favour in the salvation of sinners ... that divine influence operating in humans for their regeneration? Is this why you agreed that truth destroys ‘what is’ when writing to another? Because that read as if you have had personal experience of this happening and now you are verifying this with reference to ‘grace’ ... yet you also say ‘sometimes I just couldn’t care less’? And you did add this codicil: ‘That’s where it ends though, that which seeks to befriend truth can never be truth, so the lie (self-importance) lives on’. Just how powerful is this ‘grace’? RESPONDENT: No, I was not using grace in that sense, I was trying to add the quality of purpose to the ease, that is, it is not just going to sleep. RICHARD: Okay ... ‘grace’ as in ‘graceful’ I can comprehend. I was wanting to know of your personal – your innermost – experience. After all, you had given the impression that you had seen that the truth destroys the false ... and here you used the word ‘grace’ in conjunction with saying that ‘certain trappings of the ego were removed’. Basically, you mean that you stopped being grotty for a while? * RICHARD: To put it bluntly: ‘you’ in ‘your’ totality, who are but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. RESPONDENT: You saying that ego does not end without the drama of death. RICHARD: Yes ... it is ‘your’ moment of glory. It is ‘your’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘your’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life. RESPONDENT: What judges that [a waste of a life]? RICHARD: Your abject misery, that is what ... as compared with your state of ‘grace’. Why are you objecting to being happy and harmless? RESPONDENT: Are you harmless Richard? RICHARD: Indeed I am ... where there is no identity extant there is no malicious ‘I’ or sorrowful ‘me’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is innocent (free from sin and sinning) and thus automatically harmless ... which means one does not have to be a pacifist (which is but an imitation of the actual). It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to act or not act in response to something or someone, as the circumstances require. Thus, when there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul there is no need for pre-conceived truths or beliefs ... then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: If I were to be silly enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate my course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh – which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel – and you would be getting nothing but the platitudes and pap that you get from others. RESPONDENT: Your responses seem to be more confronting than harmless. RICHARD: Oh? What did you expect when you first wrote to me? Platitudes? That is ... re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’? RESPONDENT: My poor ego has taken a beating especially from this post. RICHARD: I am unable to offer any support or any solace to any ego or any soul ... I do not have that ability or capacity. RESPONDENT: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be confronting me either, I welcome that. RICHARD: I may be reminding you of this sentence as – or if – we continue to correspond. I am prone to copying and pasting so as to remind another of their intent. RESPONDENT: The ego dies from moment to moment but this seems to be a breaking from a deep response or reflex memory. RICHARD: Does it really die ‘from moment to moment’ ... or does it appear that way? A ‘deep response’ from what? A ‘reflex memory’ of what? How is this ‘breaking’ experienced? RESPONDENT: Yes I would say there are gaps in the focus of oneself. RICHARD: Are you really saying that ‘gaps in the focus of oneself’ is the ego dying ‘from moment to moment’? If the ego truly dies ... can it come back to life again? Death is the end, finish ... otherwise it is not death. RESPONDENT: This is identified as a gap in the me. RICHARD: By ‘me’ are you referring to ego ... or something deeper? RESPONDENT: Yes, that’s it, its a perceptual gap, ego is not continuous as it likes to think but it hasn’t really died either. RICHARD: Yes indeed ... although ‘I’ as ego is taken to be enduring – having continuity over time – ‘I’ as ego am not consistent. ‘I’ as ego exist only at this moment in time, and when a new moment comes into existence, a new ‘I’ as ego does too. Usually, people are not aware of this fact. However, ‘me’ as soul – the core of ‘being’ being affective – is continuous. Hence the insistence that ‘being’ is what is enduring – and mistakenly believed to be immortal – thus the drive for ‘Pure Being’. RESPONDENT: What of the unconscious arising of various ego responses, do I crush them as they arise or learn in attentiveness? RICHARD: Neither. Ask yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: I think I just don’t get the question. That is, it doesn’t make sense to me. The how has got me stumped. RICHARD: Affectively, of course ... that is how you are experiencing this moment. Look, let us not unnecessarily complicate things here. The ‘how’ simply means ‘what feeling am I experiencing right now with’ ... which is: ‘Am I bored?’, ‘Am I resentful?’, ‘Am I at ease?’, ‘Am I glad?’, ‘Am I sad?’ and so on. You see, peace-on-earth is here right now – the perfection of the infinitude of this universe is happening at this moment – and you are missing out on it because you are feeling what it is like to be here instead of actually being here. Hence: ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ means ‘What feeling is preventing the on-going experiencing of peace-on-earth?’ RESPONDENT: Yep, it hasn’t got a name. A sort of pain, oh in my stomach, oops it’s wind pains again. Just joking. I do though, have some continuous discomfort in that region. RICHARD: What about this name: resentment (as in: ‘I didn’t ask to be born’)?
RICHARD: Just what is this ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ that you spoke of? RESPONDENT: It has to do with the way I see people treating each other. RICHARD: Okay ... how do you see people treating each other? And how do people treat you? And how do you treat people? RESPONDENT: Words that arise to me are EGO stroking. So OK when EGO does not perceive a threat. RICHARD: Are you so sure that it is ego-stroking and not feeling-stroking? After all, you do say that ‘it is a fact that your [Richard’s] confronting manner can be harmful to another emotionally’, so maybe it is only okay when the feelings are not threatened. Also, maybe it is not so much ego-stroking as belief-stroking as beliefs – mostly subtly disguised as truths – are not just thoughts, they are emotionally-backed thoughts ... often passionately-backed. * RICHARD: Speaking generally, people will continue give you a hard time way off into the foreseeable future ... the question is: what are you doing about this in reference to yourself? Is this a stumbling block to further investigation? Could it be that – for you – being hurt by someone is the epitome of ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? Is this issue central? (I am attempting to find out just what it is that you experience as the ‘seriously lacking nature of humanity’, you see). RESPONDENT: Yes, it has to do with the delicate nature of self identity. All reactions with others seems to revolve around that. RICHARD: I am presuming that you mean by ‘delicate nature’ a ‘precariously fragile composition’ and not ‘a tender, dainty and charming quality’? A self and/or identity is rotten to the core. RESPONDENT: Defensiveness, aggression, mood swings, even what one chooses to do next, appear in relation to how one sees oneself. RICHARD: By ‘in relation to how one sees oneself’ I would presume you would mean how one feels about oneself? RESPONDENT: So to me the ‘seriously lacking nature’ has to do with the demands of self identity. RICHARD: A demand gains its forcefulness from feeling, does it not? A passionate demand has more power than an emotional demand ... and a demand sans feelings is no longer a forceful request but a preference. RESPONDENT: So much of the source of trouble is in that. In my opinion that is what requires attention. RICHARD: Okay ... shall we start by examining just what this ‘self identity’ is made up of? Would you care to offer some of the aspects that you have discovered in your investigation into the seriously lacking nature of humanity? * RICHARD: These ‘breaks in the investigation’ where you ‘couldn’t care less’ about your plight – and your plight is the plight of humanity – stem from what? Why is your investigation not top priority in your life? Do you, in fact, really see ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? If you did ... would there be ‘breaks in your investigation’? Would it not be a twenty four hour a day investigation? Why do you not care about the plight of humanity ... which is your plight? RESPONDENT: I guess it is when one does not sense anything wrong investigation ceases. RICHARD: Do you mean by ‘not sense anything wrong’ not ‘feeling anything wrong’? Sensing, after all, literally means looking with the eyes, hearing with the ears, smelling with the nose, tasting with the tongue and feeling with the skin. I am aware that – just like the word ‘feeling’ – the word ‘sensing’ has to serve two purposes ... it also means ‘feeling out’ as in ‘intuiting’ and so on. These activities are affective, of course, not sensate. Do you see that feelings – emotions and passions – are being used as the arbiters of right and wrong? RESPONDENT: Now there could be various levels of this. I could think myself into believing there is nothing wrong in which case I might even feel there is nothing wrong. The statement: ‘Everything is as it should be’, is a famous one for inducing sleep. RICHARD: Hmm ... so thought – normally perspicacious – can be lulled into a false sense of security by believing that all is well when it is patently not. Then, as you say, one feels there is nothing wrong. Again feelings are the arbiter of right and wrong ... and believing is emotion-backed thought and not thought per se. RESPONDENT: For me personally I fail to see the need for this investigation when I feel good. RICHARD: Aye ... I have been pushing the line in these discussions that a person has become so de-sensitised to suffering that they do not realise that they are suffering even when ‘feeling good’. To be human is to suffer ... twenty four hours a day. This suffering is called ‘The Human Condition’ ... and everyone tells me that you cannot change human nature. RESPONDENT: Perhaps it is a welcome break from the turmoil of investigation. Many times I have felt completely lost while inquiring, which was not pleasant. RICHARD: I have remarked that it requires nerves of steel to delve into the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. However, awareness as 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 that is endemic to the human condition provides the necessary impetus when one’s intent weakens. As for being ‘lost’, this is why the remembrance of one of your PCE’s is imperative ... it provides a clear goal to guide one through the thickets and quagmires of the conditioning that has been overlaid on top of the human condition. RESPONDENT: It [my investigation] stops because I feel satisfied. RICHARD: Ahh ... would you say that you are a person who is easily satisfied? What does the word ‘excellence’ convey to you? RESPONDENT: Those time when I feel satisfied everything is in its correct place and I feel an abundance of well being. RICHARD: Do you see that feelings are your arbiter of excellence? This is why remembering one of your PCE’s is important ... those peak experiences are a personal experience of what excellence actually is. The perfection of this moment – as experienced in a PCE – has nothing to do with feelings. * RICHARD: You did write – in a recent post to another – that you agree that truth destroys ‘what is’ ... particularly, you said, ‘if the what is, is the false’. Now that reads as if you have had personal experience of this happening ... have you? Did it destroy falseness? RESPONDENT: Let me see here, you are saying if I see the truth that I have automated responses in relation to ‘self importance’ then the seeing of that ends self importance and that it is final. RICHARD: No ... that is just fiddling with the details of ‘you’. What is meant by the statement that the truth destroys the false – however it is phrased – is that there is another dimension other than everyday reality that, once accessed, wipes ‘you’ out completely. It is ‘you’ that is false ... not just ‘your’ ego or ‘your’ habits and so on. RESPONDENT: I see false stuff, yes, but a false ‘me’ that is not just made up by thought I do not see. RICHARD: A false ‘me’ – and a true ‘me’ for that matter – that are not only ‘made up by thought’ can only be seen in a PCE. RESPONDENT: Perhaps if I look at what is behind the making up of the false thoughts in the first place. RICHARD: Aye ... ask yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? This way your looking is an ‘as-it-is-happening’ looking rather than an intellectual analysis during a ‘time-out’ period. Any examination that is not an on-the-job – a hands-on investigation – is academic posturing ... abstract thinking. To spend time ‘doing philosophy’ gets one nowhere. * RICHARD: I took it that you were saying that ‘I’ – who would become friends with truth – is what is false. This is why I ask you about your personal experiences ... not how well you have read various books on the subject. Do you now mean that the truth can wipe out ‘self-importance’ whilst leaving ‘you’ intact? RESPONDENT: Truth can remove the individual beliefs in relation to ‘self importance’ while not removing the whole ‘self importance’? Yes this is possible although perhaps not fundamental question. RICHARD: Why is it not a fundamental question? If one is weeding the garden one digs out the weed roots and all ... else it will grow back again. As fast as bits and pieces of ‘self-importance’ are trimmed off, other bits and pieces grow back again. This process, if pursued for sufficient years, leads to cynicism ... a common symptom amongst long-time spiritual seekers. RESPONDENT: What has invented ‘self importance’? RICHARD: I have mentioned ‘blind nature’ on more than a few occasions ... but maybe you wish to find out for yourself? RESPONDENT: Obviously I have not entirely destroyed my residual falseness. RICHARD: But an ‘I’ destroying ‘my’ falseness was not the question ... only the truth can destroy the false. Is that not what you wrote? You said that you agree that truth destroys ‘what is’ ... particularly, you said, ‘if the what is, is the false’. The false is ‘you’ in ‘your’ entirety. RESPONDENT: Yes but this must be more than just your statement which I could make into an affirmation. I (this whole being) must see the truth of the ‘me’ and I see that a particular standpoint is necessary to see that, that is what removing the immediate falsehoods is about as I see it. RICHARD: Aye ... and the only ‘particular standpoint’ that will do this is a PCE. But you contumeliously dismiss this priceless experience as ‘high and mighty’. * RICHARD: How do you know that the truth destroys the false? Have you had personal experience or is this something you have read? RESPONDENT: Truth cannot destroy the falseness that cannot be seen. So the issue is one of truth removing blindness so as to see more truth. RICHARD: The question was: ‘How do you know that the truth destroys the false? Have you had personal experience or is this something you have read?’ RESPONDENT: It is simple to see what results certain action will incur and then avoid it. RICHARD: Indeed ... being raised in a western democracy one has been bottle-fed on ‘as ye sow shall ye reap’ ... or something similar. That is: cause begets effect. This is all a far cry from the truth destroying the false, is it not? Can we get to the crux of this discussion? Which is: What personal experiences have you had that have shown you the solution to all the ills of humankind? RESPONDENT: I have seen that when falsehood is seen there is an immediate freedom from it. RICHARD: Could you take the time to provide a description of this experience? Perhaps if I were to provide an example another person wrote? Vis.:
RESPONDENT: Much of the ills of mankind is from propagated falsehoods of which I have been a recipient. RICHARD: Why would there be ‘propagated false beliefs’ in the first place? That is, why would this conditioning come about? RESPONDENT: So yes I think that a simple observation about the nature of seeing the false is applicable to resolving the ills of humankind. RICHARD: What is ‘the false’? Is it ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety ... or just ‘my’ hurts, ‘my’ ego, ‘my’ self-importance and so on? RESPONDENT: This of course requires the commitment to see it. RICHARD: Aye ... this commitment is of no use if it is confused with a resolve or a vow (a resolve or a vow can be broken). Commitment comes through curiosity. Only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person on the way to becoming committed to their search for freedom for the first time in their life. Then curiosity becomes fascination ... and then the fun begins. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to what others around one would classify as ‘obsession’. A 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is thus actively discouraged by one’s peers. Eventually one realises that one is on one’s own in this, the adventure of a life-time ... then one takes the penultimate step ... one abandons ‘humanity’. * RICHARD: What is essential is to remember one of your pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). A PCE is when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself ... it is a pure awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception is when the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is not and an unmediated awareness occurs. The pure consciousness experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmoderated by any ‘self’ whatsoever. One is able to see that ‘I’ and ‘me’ have been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential character of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is in abeyance. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity. Apperception is something that brings the facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand what that PCE memory is used for, why not just deal with attachment? RICHARD: What attachment? RESPONDENT: For example, attachment to the authority of words. RICHARD: Hmm ... having read through what you have written to me I do see that this could seem to be a problem for you. However, it does not appear to me to be that an attachment to the ‘authority of words’ is your immediate problem ... the problem seems to be not understanding what the ‘authoritative words’ convey. RESPONDENT: Please explain. (An added thought, I used to get in trouble as a lad, for asking questions, apparently I didn’t get it as fast as I should have.) RICHARD: I refer to the following exchange. Vis.:
* RICHARD: If you are not aware of the abject misery of suffering – not only in oneself but all of humankind – then you are not old enough to be able to be reading these words. Can you not think for yourself? Do you not have feelings? Are you so inured to violence that 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 do not affect you at all? RESPONDENT: Yes, of course, I could be hanging on your every word because you’ve got this freedom thingy that I want. RICHARD: You say ‘could be’? If only you would be ... because it is you and your freedom I am interested in. RESPONDENT: The point was that I wasn’t going to give up to an authority and quit questioning. RICHARD: If I may point out? You have already ‘given up to an authority’ ... and are misunderstanding those ‘authoritative words’ into the bargain. May I ask? Why this hang-up about authority? If I wish to learn to play the piano, I go to an expert piano-player ... I do not invent piano-playing all over again from the beginning. Is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing these matters of great momentousness ... and momentous not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet? It is not an amazing thing that we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input? One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. (However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next). Speaking personally, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today. There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power. (The power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I freely acknowledge – and delight in – my expertise on all matters pertaining to actual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. This expertise is drawn out of my personal experience on a day-to-day basis, for the last eighteen years ... twenty four hours a day. If one wishes to maintain that this makes me an ‘authority’ as in the spiritual meaning of the word ‘master’ then one is entirely missing the point of all I have said, written and demonstrated. Because those otherwise intelligent ‘Enlightened Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either ‘The Truth’ or ‘The Absolute’. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. Power is what the ‘authority’ of a guru/master/sage/avatar/messiah/saint is all about. As they have surrendered to an ‘Higher Authority’, everyone else has to slot into the inevitable hierarchy which ensues. And so the battles rage. The hunger for power – or the subservience to it – is the curse of humanity. * RICHARD: I have arrived at my destiny and am already always here ... so I have nothing to prove and nothing to achieve. I am retired and on a pension and instead of pottering around the garden I am currently pottering around the Internet. RESPONDENT: So how is your garden going. RICHARD: Splendidly ... there are some sensible people left in the world after all. * RICHARD: Our paths have crossed on this Mailing List and who knows how long this window of opportunity will be open? The perfection of the infinitude of this infinite and eternal universe is already always here – now – and you are missing out on it. You are but a missed heart-beat or two away from death’s oblivion each moment again ... if you do not become free in this life-time you never will. RESPONDENT: Okay, so the question is what is keeping one from that and what usually arises is a justification for the way one is, a pretty good excuse is needed for feeling lousy. But really the question should be, why do I feel lousy until I don’t feel that way any more and if the solution has addressed the fundamental issue then that sense of lousiness will never return. RICHARD: Again you refer to addressing ‘the fundamental issue’ ... I say it is ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety. So far you have indicated that it is ‘my’ hurts and ‘my’ self-importance and ‘my’ ego. Would you care to re-examine your situation? * RICHARD: If you are not aware of the abject misery of suffering – not only in oneself but all of humankind – then you are not old enough to be able to be reading these words. Can you not think for yourself? Do you not have feelings? Are you so inured to violence that 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 do not affect you at all RESPONDENT: It seems that the activity of defending the sensitivity of self importance can render these feelings moot. RICHARD: You say ‘it seems’ ... does it or does it not? If one sees this – as a fact – then this seeing of the fact initiates action. Of course this may very well open the flood-gates and untold suffering may pour in ... or not. Are you willing to take the risk? After all, world-wide there are 27 wars occurring as you read this. Someone is being murdered somewhere right now. Torture is happening at this moment ... just ask ‘Amnesty International’. Someone, somewhere is being beaten up in a domestic violence situation as you read this. Somewhere some child is being brutalised in yet another incidence of the endemic child abuse. All over the world sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide is going on in uncountable numbers ... and the solution to all this lies in your hands. RESPONDENT: The point here is that my self centred issues is not entirely different from everybody else’s. RICHARD: Indeed ... a journey into your own psyche is a journey into humanity’s psyche, for ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Understanding oneself helps to explain why people treat you the way they do. RICHARD: Indeed. However, you said that ‘it seems’ that the activity of defending the sensitivity of self-importance can render being affected by the way human beings are moot ... does it or does it not? If one sees this – as a fact – then this seeing of the fact initiates action. Of course this may very well open the flood-gates and untold suffering may pour in ... or not. Are you willing to take the risk? After all, world-wide there are 27 wars occurring as you read this. Someone is being murdered somewhere right now. Torture is happening at this moment ... just ask ‘Amnesty International’. Someone, somewhere is being beaten up in a domestic violence situation as you read this. Somewhere some child is being brutalised in yet another incidence of the endemic child abuse. All over the world sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide is going on in uncountable numbers ... and the solution to all this lies in your hands. * RICHARD: While extreme suffering – misery – comes and goes, suffering is constant. To be a human is to suffer. Any temporary easing of miserable suffering colours the current moment with the knowledge of misery’s inevitable return ... thus one is never free from suffering even when feeling good’. Do you see this? RESPONDENT: Yes, I hadn’t realised that I was affirming the inevitable return of suffering. RICHARD: No, no, no ... not ‘the inevitable return of suffering’ ... the inevitable return of miserable suffering. To be human is to suffer. That is, ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ ... even when ‘I’ am feeling good. Have you become so accustomed to suffering that you are de-sensitised? RESPONDENT: Yes of course. All the ways of avoidance ensure that. Obviously avoidance denies the basic fact. RICHARD: Why is this? Is it because it is too painful? * RICHARD: Why settle for second-best? Demand excellence for yourself ... for your life and for all human beings! Of course, one needs to be well aware of – and very clear about – one’s goal as it is only the reward that will entice you to abandon your present situation anyway. This is because there is a beauty in suffering ... the bitter-sweet beauty of pathos is seductive. RESPONDENT: Yes, bitter sweet, I had chance to taste it just the other day. This one had forever written all over it and rational thinking was hard pressed RICHARD: Now, as you say that ‘rational thinking was hard pressed’ you indicate that the piquant beauty of pathos may be stronger than sensibility ... is that it? With ‘forever written all over it’ you may be indicating that it could be seductive in that it promises eternity whilst all that sensibility offers is the remainder of your life and then death’s oblivion ... is this it? RESPONDENT: It offers a depth and passion that simple sensibility lacks. RICHARD: Aye ... what is it that lies hidden in the depths of that passion? RESPONDENT: That passion is but a ghost now, so there is no point talking about depths. RICHARD: This is why I stress the importance of a hands-on investigation. Asking oneself this question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ ensures an on-the-job examination ... rather than an intellectual analysis after the event. Which in this case even intellectual analysis cannot happen because not only have you frittered that valuable moment away ... you cannot even remember it. RESPONDENT: I must say here that the nature of existence does change with the attention to the ways ‘ego’. RICHARD: What is the nature of this change? RESPONDENT: Certain trapping are removed and a feeling of ease and grace ensues. RICHARD: A feeling of ease, yes ... but ‘grace’? Do you mean that the unmerited divine assistance given to a human being for their regeneration or sanctification comes upon you? Because grace is a virtue coming from a god resulting in a state of sanctification. Do you feel that you receive the spontaneous gift of the divine favour in the salvation of sinners ... that divine influence operating in humans for their regeneration? Is this why you agreed that truth destroys ‘what is’ when writing to another? Because that read as if you have had personal experience of this happening and now you are verifying this with reference to ‘grace’ ... yet you also say ‘sometimes I just couldn’t care less’? And you did add this codicil: ‘That’s where it ends though, that which seeks to befriend truth can never be truth, so the lie (self-importance) lives on’. Just how powerful is this ‘grace’? RESPONDENT: No, I was not using grace in that sense, I was trying to add the quality of purpose to the ease, that is, it is not just going to sleep. RICHARD: Okay ... ‘grace’ as in ‘graceful’ I can comprehend. I was wanting to know of your personal – your innermost – experience. After all, you had given the impression that you had seen that the truth destroys the false ... and here you used the word ‘grace’ in conjunction with saying that ‘certain trappings of the ego were removed’. Basically, you mean that you stopped being grotty for a while? RESPONDENT: Sorry I don’t get why you trying to amount it to not being grotty when there is obviously more to it. RICHARD: It may be obvious to you, but I am not a mind-reader. Shall I be specific, then? What ‘quality of purpose’ were you ‘trying to add to the ease’ by your use of the word ‘grace’? RESPONDENT: Are you harmless Richard? RICHARD: Indeed I am ... where there is no identity extant there is no malicious ‘I’ or sorrowful ‘me’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is innocent (free from sin and sinning) and thus automatically harmless ... which means one does not have to be a pacifist (which is but an imitation of the actual). It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to act or not act in response to something or someone, as the circumstances require. Thus, when there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul there is no need for pre-conceived truths or beliefs ... then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: If I were to be silly enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate my course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh – which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel – and you would be getting nothing but the platitudes and pap that you get from others. RESPONDENT: Your responses seem to be more confronting than harmless. RICHARD: Oh? What did you expect when you first wrote to me? Platitudes? That is ... re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’? RESPONDENT: My poor ego has taken a beating especially from this post. RICHARD: I am unable to offer any support or any solace to any ego or any soul ... I do not have that ability or capacity. RESPONDENT: No, I don’t want any. I was just giving you my responses in the light of your proclaimed harmlessness. You are saying that no intent to harm a person. RICHARD: No ... I am not talking of having to suppress the intent to harm – being a pacifist RESPONDENT: But it is a fact that your confronting manner can be harmful to another emotionally. So I think harmless in that sense is insupportable. I am not disputing that some habits must be confronted which is unpleasant. RICHARD: If you see that a ‘confronting manner can be harmful to another emotionally’ and is a factor to take into consideration in one’s dealings with others ... then why can you not see that feelings are the root cause of all the ills of humankind? Other people’s precious feelings do not rule me. Respect for another’s feelings ultimately means respect for physical force, for if one upsets another’s feelings sufficiently, they will become violent. Thus, through violence, people’s precious feelings rule the world ... and look at the mess it is in. Shall we examine the implications? For starters, I propose that it is the beliefs, truths, values, principles, ideals, traditions, customs, mores, ethics, morals and so on that are being ‘confronted’ ... and relentlessly so. It is only to the degree that the person identifies with these ever-failing coping-methods that they feel personally attacked. I calmly yet trenchantly explicate just what has been going wrong and what can be freely and happily done to correct all the ills of humankind. What I say and write is both heretical and iconoclastic ... a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. I am no ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’ – or whatever inanity it is that the myth says – and there is no ‘turning the other cheek’ here. There have been 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone ... now that is where the phrase ‘confronting manner’ actually means something. RESPONDENT: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be confronting me either, I welcome that. RICHARD: I may be reminding you of this sentence as – or if – we continue to correspond. I am prone to copying and pasting so as to remind another of their intent. RESPONDENT: What of the unconscious arising of various ego responses, do I crush them as they arise or learn in attentiveness? RICHARD: Neither. Ask yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: I think I just don’t get the question. That is, it doesn’t make sense to me. The how has got me stumped. RICHARD: Affectively, of course ... that is how you are experiencing this moment. Look, let us not unnecessarily complicate things here. The ‘how’ simply means ‘what feeling am I experiencing right now with’ ... which is: ‘Am I bored?’, ‘Am I resentful?’, ‘Am I at ease?’, ‘Am I glad?’, ‘Am I sad?’ and so on. You see, peace-on-earth is here right now – the perfection of the infinitude of this universe is happening at this moment – and you are missing out on it because you are feeling what it is like to be here instead of actually being here. Hence: ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ means ‘What feeling is preventing the on-going experiencing of peace-on-earth?’ RESPONDENT: Yep, it hasn’t got a name. A sort of pain, oh in my stomach, oops it’s wind pains again. Just joking. I do though, have some continuous discomfort in that region. RICHARD: What about this name: resentment? (As in: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’). RESPONDENT: Are you saying that the bloating and digestion problem has to do with my resentment about being born. Nope, can’t see any truth in that. RICHARD: You may recall the following exchange? Vis.:
RICHARD: Shall we start again? Vis.: RESPONDENT: What of the unconscious arising of various ego responses, do I crush them as they arise or learn in attentiveness? RICHARD: Neither. Ask yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: Sorry, I don’t seem to be interested in asking this question. RICHARD: Why do you not want to know how you are experiencing yourself? Is it painful? Is it trite? Or is it scary? RESPONDENT: Perhaps this ego has nothing to gain. RICHARD: But it has plenty to gain ... it has a job to do and it is being denied its opportunity. RESPONDENT: Please explain. RICHARD: Altruism. When ‘I’ willingly self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for oneself and all humankind ... for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘your’ moment of glory. It is ‘your’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘your’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life. RESPONDENT: Or I perhaps I don’t see the sense in it. Perhaps you could explain. RICHARD: An unexamined life is second-rate living. RESPONDENT: I think I just don’t get the question. That is, it doesn’t make sense to me. The how has got me stumped. RICHARD: Affectively ... that is how you are experiencing this moment. The ‘how’ simply means ‘what feeling am I experiencing right now’ ... which is: ‘Am I bored?’, ‘Am I resentful?’, ‘Am I at ease?’, ‘Am I glad?’, ‘Am I sad?’ and so on. You see, peace-on-earth is here right now – the perfection of the infinitude of this universe is happening at this moment – and you are missing out on it because you are feeling what it is like to be here instead of actually being here. Hence: ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ means ‘What feeling is preventing the on-going experiencing of peace-on-earth?’ What about this feeling: resentment (as in: ‘I didn’t ask to be born’)?
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 4): I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and have been officially classified as
suffering from a pronounced and severe mental disorder. My symptoms are: 1. Depersonalisation. 2. Derealisation. 3. Alexithymia. 4. Anhedonia RESPONDENT No. 19: Richard, I’m going to let my light out from under the bushel and tell you what I see: You are still ‘crazy’, and I still have affection and/or compassion for you. RICHARD: As I am a person devoid of either latent or active enmity, I require no restorative affection whatsoever to create the illusion of intimacy in my human interactions. And as I am also a person devoid of either latent or active sorrow, I require no antidotal compassion whatsoever to create the illusion of caring. Thus, in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s affection and/or compassion ... or mood swings. If this is being crazy – if this is a severe mental disorder – then it sure beats the sanity of the real world ... which is a sanity that produces wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. RESPONDENT No. 19: Maybe No. 4 will come around to loving you, also. RICHARD: Hmm ... my posts are written in appreciative response to a fellow human being who is spending the most
precious gifts they have – their time and sincerity – to communicate with me about the sense they have made, so far, of life, the universe and
what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. To put it another way: I always value another human being
simply for daring to be here on this fair earth – and therefore actively doing this living business – irregardless of where they are coming
from. Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: So this would also imply that one trying to make sense of a madman might also be mad. RICHARD: Such a person is maybe not quite mad yet ... but somewhat inclined towards madness? Yes. RESPONDENT: This bring ups the issue of verifying sanity. RICHARD: Yes, Mr. Sigmund Freud defined sanity as ‘ordinary human unhappiness’ (or some such statement). The standard psychiatric definition of normal every-day sanity usually reads some thing like: ‘A well-adjusted personality coping adequately with the conflicting demands of self and society’. RESPONDENT: How do you verify this Richard, are you independently claiming sanity? RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... I left sanity behind years and years ago. My condition is well-described by the four symptoms.
I mean it when I say: ‘I have the most classic indication of insanity. That is: everyone else is mad but me’. The sanity of the real world – which is a sanity that produces wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide – is a sickness, a blight upon this fair earth. Thus, whichever way it is defined, I am not sane ... I have oft-times been told that only a fool – a simpleton – can be happy and harmless in the world of people, things and events. The doorway to an actual freedom has the words ‘Warning: do not open ... insanity lies ahead’ written on it. I opened the door and walked through. Once on the other side – where thousands upon thousands of atavistic voices were insistently whispering ‘fool – fool – fool’ – I turned to ascertain the way back to normal. The door had vanished – and the wall it was set in – and I just knew that I would never, ever be able to find my way back to the real-world ... it had been nothing but an illusion all along. I walked tall and free as the perfection of this material universe personified ... I can never not be here ... now. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable and malicious in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic actual universe. To defend the belief that this life is forever fatally flawed – defend to the point of idiocy – is actually a cowardly attempt to stay hidden inside ‘humanity’. To skulk behind a sick social contract is a desperate ploy to remain ‘human’. If one takes one’s intellectual ability back from the decrees of the cultured sophisticates – to which one has surrendered – one has taken a courageous step. One has cast oneself out of the biggest group there is ... humanity. If one stays within the group, for its perceived safety and security, one is selling out to the system because of a pusillanimous character. Thus one secretly despises oneself, with disastrous consequences ... one has to be numbed to such a degree that defies credibility in order for nothing but psittacisms to come from their mouths. Humankind is so stultified – stupefied by the centuries of socialisation overlaying the instincts – that only madness can be allowed ... and it masquerades as an ailing ‘normal’. The precarious status-quo is defined as being sanity ... and anything outside this description is classified as insanity. Such a blatant ignoring of the facts begs the question as to just who is salubrious. Without fear and aggression, one has dignity for the first time. * Continued on the Actual Freedom Mailing List (No. 3)
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.
Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
