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Richard’s Correspondence On Mailing List ‘C’ with Respondent No. 9
RICHARD: My experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’. RESPONDENT: Please allow me to be frank. My impression from reading your post is that you don’t really know anything about enlightenment. You obviously know quite a lot about ‘disassociative identity disorder’, however you have erroneously equated this with the state of enlightenment. RICHARD: It is but one of the ways of describing it ... I was answering a question about whether enlightenment was pathological and I couched my reply in similar terminology. I did mention that it can be otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ ... which is nothing but a spurious vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. The theological dilemma goes something like this:
Of course theodicy is a word most often used to describe the various and far-fetched monotheistic philosophical-style resolutions (non-experiential) ... but the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’, goes something like this:
Which all amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... if nothing else, the very name (‘Self-Realisation’) is a dead give-away to all but the most humbly conceited and pious egoist. * RESPONDENT: Nothing could be further from the truth. Enlightenment has nothing to do with disassociation ... RICHARD: If I may interject? What does the phrase ‘you are not the body’ indicate if not a total disassociation from the world of people, things and events? RESPONDENT: ... and it has everything to do with intimacy, merging, acceptance and oneness. These are the exact opposites of disassociation. Enlightenment involves unconditionally accepting and loving everything – this is the exact opposite of running away from/disassociating from everything. RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment is when the separative self realises and/or remembers its true identity (‘God’ and/or ‘Goddess’) and the physical world is seen for the illusion it really is. The whole point of ‘intimacy, merging, acceptance and oneness’ is to facilitate this remembrance/ realisation ... and ‘God’ and/or ‘Goddess’ is Timeless and Spaceless and Formless. That which is Timeless and Spaceless and Formless is totally removed from time and space and form ... in a word: dissociation. * RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment is a dissociative state of being complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has become a fully expanded ego (the all-expansive ‘Self’). RESPONDENT: I don’t know which enlightened beings you have been hanging out with, but the ones I’ve been hanging out with display the exact opposite qualities to the ones you describe. I have never heard any of them demanding recognition or adulation and certainly never total obedience. RICHARD: Then the ones you have been ‘hanging out with’ are not enlightened. RESPONDENT: As far as surrender goes the surrender that ‘gurus’ speak about is surrender to the Truth. RICHARD: Aye, and an ‘Enlightened Being’ is a person who has realised that they are ‘The Truth’ ... and only ‘The Truth’ exists. RESPONDENT: Surrender to Who You Really Are. RICHARD: And yet ‘Who You Really Are’ is none other than ... ‘The Truth’. RESPONDENT: Never surrender to the will of the ‘guru’. RICHARD: If the ‘guru’ has a will then they are not enlightened. RESPONDENT: If there are gurus that have the qualities that you describe then they don’t know anything about enlightenment either!!! RICHARD: If they do not have those qualities they are not enlightened. * RICHARD: Thus, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). RESPONDENT: You really have no idea, do you? RICHARD: May I ask? In what way does this sentence contribute to a meaningful discussion? * RICHARD: Mysticism in general is a psychotic sickness. RESPONDENT: The consensus reality that 99.99% of people inhabit is far closer to being a psychotic sickness than the mysticism that you denigrate. RICHARD: The everyday grim and glum reality that 99.99% of people live in is once removed from actuality ... to practice detachment successfully one is twice-removed from actuality. From illusion into delusion, in other words. * RICHARD: The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism that became culturally institutionalised, into being a legitimate and venerated social metaphysics, over thousands and thousands of years. RESPONDENT: Running/ disassociating from ‘what is’ by way of fear is what 99.99% of society does and it ‘is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism that became culturally institutionalised, into being a legitimate and venerated social metaphysics, over thousands and thousands of years’. RICHARD: Yet the term ‘what is’ as you are using it does not refer to this what is actual – time and space and form – but to the metaphysical ‘what is’ ... which is the whole point of what I am saying (above). Turning my words back onto me via a slick dialectic trick does nothing to further a mutual dialogue. This body and that body and every body is what is – what is just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time – which means that the mountains and the streams; the trees and the flowers; the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum are what is. Only this that is actual is what is ... the metaphysical ‘what is’ is a fantasy. RESPONDENT: Merging with, accepting and loving all things such that there is no more fear is part of what is known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ and nothing is more Peaceful and more threatening to cultural institutions. RICHARD: Shall I put it this way? All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have convincingly demonstrated, over 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history, the abject failure of the efficacy of ‘merging with, accepting and loving all things’ when it comes to eradicating suffering off the face of the earth. Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on.
RICHARD: My experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’. RESPONDENT: Please allow me to be frank. My impression from reading your post is that you don’t really know anything about enlightenment. You obviously know quite a lot about ‘disassociative identity disorder’, however you have erroneously equated this with the state of enlightenment. RICHARD: It is but one of the ways of describing it ... I was answering a question about whether enlightenment was pathological and I couched my reply in similar terminology. I did mention that it can be otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ ... which is nothing but a spurious vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. The theological dilemma goes something like this:
RESPONDENT: Yes this is a theological dilemma. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the Truth. RICHARD: So as to save time quibbling about mere names, shall I provide a list of words referring to ‘The Truth’ aka God and/or Goddess? Viz.:
RESPONDENT: Its just a bunch of words formed into ideas and beliefs, by people who don’t know much about Truth. RICHARD: If you say that this is so then it is so ... for you. However, I will keep my own counsel on the matter. RESPONDENT: If you remove point 2. ‘Evil Exists’ the dilemma disappears. RICHARD: Hmm ... re-define the name of the problem and the problem disappears, eh? What then is the cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like? RESPONDENT: Evil is just a subjective judgement of events based upon ones cultural upbringing. RICHARD: Indeed ... yet it is undeniable that 6.0 billion peoples nurse malice RESPONDENT: There is no good and bad(evil). What is good in my society may be bad in your society. Classic example: In India it is ‘bad’ for a man to hold hands with a woman in public – they will be stoned. But it is okay for men to walk along holding hands – it shows that they are great friends, and is something to be proud of. In Australia it is okay for a man and woman to hold hands in public but (until recently) not okay for two men to hold hands in public. RICHARD: Aye ... it is entirely sensible to comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols of whatever culture one lives in. RESPONDENT: A more extreme example: A mass murderer is considered ‘bad’, yet an effective soldier is considered a hero and given medals for his killing efforts – even if the war was started by his side. Which society’s moral structures would you use as a yardstick with which to cleanse the earth of this ‘ubiquitous presence of evil’? Your society’s? Or somebody else’s? Whichever way you look at it ‘evil’ is an illusion created by mankind – it’s just a label placed on certain events. There is no Universal yardstick by which we can measure an event to see whether it is evil – there’s no rulebook/manual. RICHARD: Indeed, there is no absolute ‘right and wrong’ or ‘good and bad’ ... these are simply human conventions for ease of communal co-existence. RESPONDENT: Unless of course you want to use those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ ... or maybe you’d like to make up your own rulebook? It would be better than those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ and would itself, one day become an ‘ancient and revered scripture’ would it not? RICHARD: I have neither ‘rule-book’ nor any need for a ‘rule-book’ whatsoever.
Shall I put it this way? Now that you have neatly solved the existential dilemma which has bothered theologians for centuries ...
where are you at? As there is no global peace-on-earth, do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and
explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty
five days of each year? Which means: has malice Then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. * RESPONDENT: Enlightenment has nothing to do with disassociation ... RICHARD: If I may interject? What does the phrase ‘you are not the body’ indicate if not a total disassociation from the world of people, things and events? RESPONDENT: You are nothing and you are everything. Both at the same time. RICHARD: Speaking personally, I am this flesh and blood body – which is ‘something’ not ‘nothing’ – and there are 6.0 billion flesh and blood human bodies currently walking and talking; eating and drinking; urinating and defecating; waking and sleeping ... and this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’ as this particular configuration of matter at this particular moment is clearly not them as being their particular configuration of matter at this particular moment. Then there is the mountains and the streams, the trees and the flowers, the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum ... and this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’ as this particular configuration of matter at this particular moment is obviously not them as being their particular configuration of matter at this particular moment. So, it is patently evident that I am not ‘nothing’ and nor am I ‘everything’ ... let alone ‘both at the same time’ at this particular moment as this particular configuration of matter. Would you care to try again? RESPONDENT: There is no separation from anything. RICHARD: True. As I am the air breathed, the water drunk, the food eaten and the sunlight absorbed there is no actual separation whatsoever betwixt this body and that body and anything else. Just because each flesh and blood body being consciously aware is being aware as a private domain, as it were, (as opposed to the public domain) and that this body is discrete (physically distinct) to that body, it does not imply separation ... unless there is an ‘I’ as ego and/or a ‘me’ as soul in residence inside the body asserting property rights. A hill or mountain is the same stuff as the very earth it seemingly sits upon, for example. Everything and everyone is the very self-same stuff that this planet earth – and this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe – already always is ... hence no separation whatsoever. I did not come from outside this universe – there being no outside to infinity – nor was I put here by some metaphysical god and/or goddess for some inscrutable reason. RESPONDENT: You are the Source of it all, whether it appears as illusion or not. Who You Really Are/Universal Consciousness is making all the decisions and as such you can not be separate from any of them. That which you choose to call ‘evil’ – it is You/Universal Consciousness that does those ‘terrible’ things. RICHARD: And, as ‘Universal Consciousness’ is ‘The Truth’ aka God and/or Goddess (or any of those other words towards the top of this page), this is because the diabolical underpins the divine ... the polar opposites are complementary poles, as the mystics often point out. RESPONDENT: It is you/the ego called Richard that chooses to disassociate yourself from those actions. RICHARD: There is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul extant in this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’. RESPONDENT: An enlightened being sees that they are all of those actions and that none of them have the slightest importance. RICHARD: Hence all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like are perpetuated by Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages forever and a day. RESPONDENT: They are the perpetrator and the victim, and both are merely holographic images in this play called manifested reality. RICHARD: Yep ... no wonder there is no global peace-on-earth, eh? RESPONDENT: You are the play, all of it. RICHARD: If I may make a suggestion? You may be better off speaking for yourself instead of second-guessing how I experience life and what I do or do not do. RESPONDENT: When we go to the theatre the action we see is actually taking place, but its not Real. The actors are not really angry at each other, its just a big pretence, an act. The same goes for this manifested reality, it’s actually happening but its not Real. RICHARD: Try telling that to someone who has just been raped; try telling that to someone who is in a trench on the front-line; try telling that to someone being tortured; try telling that to the person on the receiving end of domestic violence; try telling that to the recipient of child abuse; try telling that to someone sliding down the slippery-slope of sadness to loneliness to melancholy to depression and then suicide. More specifically, try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Hindu soldier; try saying that to the Hindu mother whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by zealous Christians; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Buddhist/Shinto soldiers; try saying that a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion. If your wife and/or daughter and/or mother and/or grandmother and/or sister was being brutally raped by an angry, resentful and bitter man, would you really stand by saying to her: ‘you are the play ... the actors are not really angry at each other ... its just a big pretence, an act’? RESPONDENT: The phrase ‘you are not the body’ is inaccurate. It should be rephrased ‘you are not only the body’. ‘The body’ is the tinniest, insignificant part of what you are. RICHARD: Hmm ... are you re-inventing the ancient wisdom? The ancient wisdom has it unambiguously that material reality is illusion through and through (the word ‘maya’ translates as ‘illusion’ or ‘only apparently real’). * RESPONDENT: Merging with, accepting and loving all things such that there is no more fear is part of what is known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ and nothing is more Peaceful and more threatening to cultural institutions. RICHARD: Shall I put it this way? All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have convincingly demonstrated, over 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history, the abject failure of the efficacy of ‘merging with, accepting and loving all things’ when it comes to eradicating suffering off the face of the earth. RESPONDENT: It seems that you’re whole attitude towards enlightenment is based upon your assumption that you know what is ‘evil’, and that enlightenment teachings aren’t effective in getting rid of this ‘evil’. RICHARD: My approach all those years ago was this: what is the root cause of human suffering; what is
the root cause of all the misery and mayhem; what is the root cause of all the animosity and anguish; what is the root cause of
all the malice The survival instincts, in other words. RESPONDENT: Okay, let me assume for a moment that there is such a thing as evil. Are you familiar with the saying ‘what you resist will persist’? It comes from the adage that ‘where you place your energy is what will grow’ which can be expressed using the terms of physics as ‘when you push something you transfer your energy to that which is pushed’ (the law of conservation of energy). When we place our energy on unconditional acceptance/love of all that is, that is what will grow. When we place our energy on evil and attempting to push it away then that is what will grow. RICHARD: The word ‘acceptance’ has a lot of currency these days and popular usage has given it somewhat the same meaning as ‘allow’ or ‘permit’ or ‘tolerate’. Those peoples who say that they ‘accept’ or ‘love’ ... um ... a brutal rapist, for just one example, never for one moment are approving and endorsing ... let alone unreservedly saying !YES! to the rapist. So much for everyday ‘acceptance’ and/or ‘love’ as a viable modus operandi. One has to be totally dissociated (full-blown enlightenment) before one can unreservedly say !YES! to the rapist ... because then it is but ‘Lila’ (‘God’s and/or Goddess’s Divine Play or Sport’). * RESPONDENT: ‘All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages’ – what, maybe a couple of hundred of them at most? Compared to billions of people focusing on evil? What chance did they have? Just because you can’t illuminate the night sky with a match doesn’t mean that the match doesn’t give off light. RICHARD: May I remind you of what you have already detailed (further above)? Viz.:
Your justifying/ excusing of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages precisely correlates to what I described in the previous post as the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’, which goes something like this:
Which all amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... but why take my word for it? Shall we ask Mr. Gotama the Sakyan? Viz.:
There are countless examples scattered throughout the trillions and trillions of words in the mystic literature of many, many cultures ... eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on.
RESPONDENT: Richard, okay, you go right ahead and save the world from evil. RICHARD: Yet I am not out to ‘save the world from evil’ at all ... I explained my position quite clearly and succinctly in my last post to you. Viz.:
I am no more interested in theology than I am in psychiatry. It is but one of the ways of describing the enlightenment state ... as was my answering a question about whether enlightenment was pathological where I couched my reply in similar terminology. Viz.:
So as to forestall any other assumptions, I am no more interested in religiosity, spirituality, mysticality, metaphysicality, biology, physics, cosmology, psychology, sociology, archaeology, palaeontology and so on, than I am in psychiatry and theology. I am neither a mystic nor an intellectual ... thus far in human history there has been but two choices: secular or spiritual (materialism or spiritualism). Now there is a third alternative. RESPONDENT: I honestly wish you every success. Though I must admit that I feel it will only bring you frustration and disappointment. RICHARD: Not so, as the affective faculty disappeared along with the psyche, I am incapable of feeling anything ... let alone frustration and disappointment. RESPONDENT: I think you’re wasting your time hanging out here though, none of us disassociated people are going to help you with your crusade. (You’re right, it is disassociation, but its a warm one not a cold one – its not blocking to keep everything out, it’s letting everything in, through and out, and not attaching to any of it). RICHARD: Good ... I am pleased to see that someone is honest enough to fully acknowledge that the enlightened state is indeed a dissociative condition. And, of course it is ‘a warm one’ ... I never said it was ‘a cold one’. My experience, for eleven years in the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’, was an on-going ecstatic state of rapturous, ineffable and sacred bliss: Love Agapé and unconditional Divine Compassion poured forth for all suffering sentient beings twenty four hours of the day. It was a truly euphoric state of being. RESPONDENT: It’s those Christians and Muslims you should be recruiting (especially the fundamentalist ones) they’ll be only too eager to help you destroy/kill all the evil out there. RICHARD: I have no interest whatsoever to ‘destroy/kill’ anything ... there has been far too much already in human history. RESPONDENT: By the way, which evil is it that worries you the most, the evil that you perceive out there, or the evil that you perceive within? RICHARD: There is nothing ‘within’ this body other than heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and so on ... both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ was extirpated years ago. RESPONDENT: Have you heard the adage ‘what we like about other people is what we like about ourselves; and what we don’t like/can’t accept about other people is what we don’t like/can’t accept about ourselves’. RICHARD: I have heard that adage, yes. I like my fellow human being irregardless of whatever mischief they get up to. ‘Tis not their fault ... every sentient being is born genetically encoded with basic instinctual passions such as fear and aggression (the savage side) and nurture and desire (the tender side). RESPONDENT: You’re a very intelligent and learned person, and obviously very passionate about your cause. It may be interesting to find out what is driving that passion. RICHARD: There is no passion whatsoever extant in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Your crusade may be based on pure objective logic, or it may be based in a psychological reaction to an inner conflict (in which case it’s not very objective). Logic isn’t usually the source of great passion. RICHARD: It is quite simple: I like my fellow human being and wish only the best for them. RESPONDENT: Regardless of what is driving your passion for eradicating evil, one thing is clear, you aren’t going to find many supporters of your cause here. Which leads me to wonder why you’re spending so much time and effort here, when you could be out winning far easier converts to your cause. RICHARD: But I am not looking for ‘supporters’ or ‘converts’ anywhere ... I am unabashedly sharing my experience. We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic – we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition – and we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence – we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition – and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. I, for one, am not taking the back seat ... because it is indeed possible for any human being to be totally free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: Could it be that you’re even more passionate about winning intellectual arguments than ridding the world of evil? RICHARD: I do enjoy a dialogue and I do not mind engaging in apparently fruitless conversation for it is not my intent to forcibly remove the beliefs and opinions of others ... I am simply telling my story. I like a discussion because I am talking about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Sometimes the other will recognise something to be factually true and pick it up, whereupon we can have a genuine exchange. Other than a handful of people, I am yet to find someone with something original to say; they have all regurgitated either the wisdom of the ‘real world’ or the wisdom of the received teachings from some ‘Greater Reality’. I find it amazing that people are content to live on pap ... and then proceed to complain to me that life is, literally, a vale of tears. Strangely enough they will brush aside the facts I proffer with a stony face and a glazed look in their eyes ... and then continue with their undertaking to fill me with their borrowed beliefs, their scrounged ideas, their cadged ‘truths’. RESPONDENT: Could it be that you especially like winning against/beating up on supporters of enlightenment? RICHARD: Maybe – just maybe – it is that I am arraigning the trillions and trillions and trillions of words contained in the Sacred Scriptures of all cultures. If so, then how would agreeing with them succinctly explain the root cause of human suffering ... especially when there is so much misinformation – and disinformation – bandied about? I do like to discuss peace-on-earth even though I fully comprehend that it is impossible to combat the ‘wisdom’ of the ‘Greater Reality’ ... for their anti-life ‘wisdom’ is cynical, and cynicism decries actuality. For a person to acknowledge a fact would require that they betray their basic belief, their fundamental faith, their core certitude, their tragic trust: They would have to admit that life-on-earth is in itself inherently perfect ... and this would go against their pre-digested judgment so dearly held firmly to their bosom. RESPONDENT: Probably because you feel betrayed by them, or worse, inferior to them due to your own inability to become enlightened despite spending 11 years, night and day at it. RICHARD: No, my objective is to have fun talking about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are ... and I thoroughly enjoy describing how I experience life on this planet and to enquire into how it is for the person I am discussing with. You and I are, after all, both in this game of life together with 6.0 billion fellow human beings ... and it is fascinating to compare notes, as it were, on what sense has been made out of what it is to be here as living, breathing human beings. It is such fun being alive, eh? * RESPONDENT: Evil is just a subjective judgement of events based upon ones cultural upbringing. RICHARD: Indeed ... yet it is undeniable that 6.0 billion peoples nurse malice and sorrow in their bosom. RESPONDENT: There is no good and bad (evil). What is good in my society may be bad in your society. Classic example: In India it is ‘bad’ for a man to hold hands with a woman in public – they will be stoned. But it is okay for men to walk along holding hands – it shows that they are great friends, and is something to be proud of. In Australia it is okay for a man and woman to hold hands in public but (until recently) not okay for two men to hold hands in public. RICHARD: Aye ... it is entirely sensible to comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols of whatever culture one lives in. RESPONDENT: A more extreme example: A mass murderer is considered ‘bad’, yet an effective soldier is considered a hero and given medals for his killing efforts – even if the war was started by his side. Which society’s moral structures would you use as a yardstick with which to cleanse the earth of this ‘ubiquitous presence of evil’? Your society’s? Or somebody else’s? Whichever way you look at it ‘evil’ is an illusion created by mankind – it’s just a label placed on certain events. There is no Universal yardstick by which we can measure an event to see whether it is evil – there’s no rulebook/manual. RICHARD: Indeed, there is no absolute ‘right and wrong’ or ‘good and bad’ ... these are simply human conventions for ease of communal co-existence. RESPONDENT: Unless of course you want to use those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ ... or maybe you’d like to make up your own rulebook? It would be better than those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ and would itself, one day become an ‘ancient and revered scripture’ would it not? RICHARD: I have neither ‘rule-book’ nor any need for a ‘rule-book’ whatsoever. Shall I put it this way? Now that you have neatly solved the existential dilemma which has bothered theologians for centuries ... where are you at? As there is no global peace-on-earth, do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty five days of each year? Which means: has malice and sorrow completely vanished from your bosom ... for the remainder of your life here on earth? I only ask because with the total and permanent absence of malice and sorrow, their antidotal pacifiers (love and compassion), being no longer necessary, likewise disappear forever. Then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. RESPONDENT: You asked me: ‘do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty five days of each year?’ Pretty much, yes. Compared to how I used to be I’d say I’m 97% happy and harmless. RICHARD: Hmm ... yet I specifically detailed what individual peace-on-earth means: ‘has malice and sorrow completely vanished from your bosom for the remainder of your life here on earth?’ One cannot be happy and harmless whilst one nurses malice and sorrow to one’s bosom. RESPONDENT: And it really doesn’t matter how long it takes for the other 3% because 97% is simply wonderful. RICHARD: Sure ... it is your life you are living and only you get to reap the rewards or pay the consequences for any action or inaction you may or may not do. Provided one complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols one will be left alone to live one’s life as foolishly or as wisely as they choose. RESPONDENT: There is such a thing as enlightenment, but not all enlightenment philosophies work. Maybe a different teacher would suit you better. RICHARD: There is a sure-fire way to become enlightened ... if that is what one really wants. It is important to realise, deeply, that not only can ‘you’ not find Love Agapé ... Love Agapé does not come to ‘you’, either. The way it works is that when ‘you’ become ‘love’ then Love becomes You ... Love Agapé is You As You Really Are. Here is how to be Love Agapé:
It is quite easy, really. RESPONDENT: Seeing as how you’re spending so much time in this forum why don’t you check out John DeRuiter, his philosophy is easy, you don’t have to meditate for hours, or sit in funny positions or eat special food or do any rituals or learn any rules or read any sacred texts ... none of that ... just open and soften towards all things, and especially towards yourself. RICHARD: Why? I already always like everybody ... including this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’. RESPONDENT: Everything is okay. RICHARD: It is far, far better than merely ‘okay’ in this actual world ... here all is pristine and pure. There is no ‘good’ or bad’ in a tree, a flower, a rock, a brick or ... um ... a cup and saucer, for example. RESPONDENT: Even failure ... don’t disassociate from it ... let it in completely ... but don’t attach to it either. RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘failure’ is the pits. Only a recalcitrant ego or a contumelious soul would settle for second-best. * RESPONDENT: ‘All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages’ – what, maybe a couple of hundred of them at most? Compared to billions of people focusing on evil? What chance did they have? Just because you can’t illuminate the night sky with a match doesn’t mean that the match doesn’t give off light. RICHARD: May I remind you of what you have already detailed? [Respondent]: ‘An enlightened being sees that they are all of those actions and that none of them have the slightest importance. They are the perpetrator and the victim, and both are merely holographic images in this play called manifested reality. When we go to the theatre the action we see is actually taking place, but its not Real. The actors are not really angry at each other, its just a big pretence, an act. The same goes for this manifested reality, it’s actually happening but its not Real’ [endquote]. Your justifying/excusing of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages precisely correlates to what I described in the previous post as the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’ ...which amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... but why take my word for it? Shall we ask Mr. Gotama the Sakyan? [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Freed, dissociated, and released from ten things, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Which ten? Freed, dissociated, and released from form, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Freed, dissociated, and released from feeling ... Freed, dissociated, and released from perception ... Freed, dissociated, and released from fabrications ... Freed, dissociated, and released from consciousness ... Freed, dissociated, and released from birth ... Freed, dissociated, and released from aging ... Freed, dissociated, and released from death ... Freed, dissociated, and released from stress ... Freed, dissociated, and released from defilement, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness ... the Tathagata – freed, dissociated, and released from these ten things – dwells with unrestricted awareness. (AN 10.81; PTS: AN v.151; (Bahuna Sutta)). There are countless examples scattered throughout the trillions and trillions of words in the mystic literature of many, many cultures ... eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on. RESPONDENT: You wrote this with reference to evil in the world, but I suspect that it’s more specifically about you. Your anguish is obvious. RICHARD: I can assure you, for what that assurance is worth, that there is nary a trace of anguish in this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’. RESPONDENT: Before you accuse me of an ‘ad hominem’ fallacy (which I’m sure you know means attacking the person rather than the persons argument) let me say that the intention of this forum is to assist people towards enlightenment. Arguing intellectually with you is not going to get you any closer to enlightenment because you’re blocking everything like a revengeful child. Therefore I’m bypassing your surface defensive patterns and going to the deeper cause. RICHARD: I have no childhood hurts whatsoever ... all of ‘my’ memories disappeared along with ‘me’ when ‘I’ disappeared. When both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul disappeared I became apparent. I have been here all along ... it was just that there was that loudmouth inhabiting this body, for the first 33 years (‘I’ as ego) plus the next 11 years (‘me’ as soul), who dominated so totally that I could not get a word in edgeways. And, when ‘he’ ‘self’-immolated for the benefit of this body and every body, all of ‘his’ memories were also immolated ... the slate was wiped clean. There are three I’s altogether but only one is actual ... I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. I have been here for 53 years and have all my own memories; I have always been here like this: I have been having a wonderful, marvellous and amazing life for 53 years. RESPONDENT: If you’re really interested in Truth, which I’m sure you are (otherwise you wouldn’t be in this forum), then you will open yourself to what I’ve said ... really let it in ... time for some introspection ... is there any truth in what I’ve said? RICHARD: None whatsoever ... but do go on, please, for this is fascinating. RESPONDENT: Be honest with yourself ... let the defences down for a minute. RICHARD: May I ask? What ‘defences’? RESPONDENT: Are you reacting against your own perceived personal failure at ‘achieving’ enlightenment? RICHARD: No ... I am reporting my success at going beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: 11 years of effort ... only to fail ... the obvious defence against failure is to say that the enlightenment philosophy itself is all crap. RICHARD: No ... not the ‘enlightenment philosophy’ but the altered state of consciousness called ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ itself sucks. RESPONDENT: It must be – how could somebody as intelligent as you fail at it? RICHARD: Not so ... enlightenment itself failed. RESPONDENT: It couldn’t be your fault, could it! RICHARD: Again ... it is the dissociated state of being that fails to deliver the goods. RESPONDENT: It must be the whole philosophy that is faulty. RICHARD: Enlightenment is not a philosophy ... it is an experiential state of being (usually capitalised as ‘Being’). RESPONDENT: You obviously know the truth, though ... 11 years night and day ... you know the Truth. RICHARD: Aye ... and ‘The Truth’ sucks. RESPONDENT: And you can’t actually deny that philosophy doesn’t work for the enlightened ones – you know that they have peace. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... they have demonstratively shown to still be subject to anger and anguish from time to time. RESPONDENT: So instead you dismiss them as having a mental illness – ‘disassociative identity disorder’. RICHARD: Yet you just agreed (at the top of the page) that it is indeed dissociation. Here, let me copy and paste your response so that you do not have to search for yourself. Viz.:
May I ask? What is your agreement worth? RESPONDENT: And as further proof that the philosophy is flawed you point to all the evil in the world. RICHARD: Indeed ... may I remind you of what you have already detailed (further above)?
Your justifying/ excusing of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages is specifically why there is still no global peace-on-earth. Because peace-on-earth is just not on their agenda. RESPONDENT: But you wouldn’t really be concerning yourself with the evil if you had been able to maintain a permanent state of enlightenment would you? RICHARD: It was precisely because of eleven years of personally experiencing why the ‘Tried and True’ has failed for 3,000 to 5,000 years that I am able to be here today discussing this very matter. RESPONDENT: You don’t like to fail do you? RICHARD: But why settle for second best when perfection and purity are already always just here right now? RESPONDENT: Especially after you tried so hard ... too hard probably. RICHARD: What is required is a patience and a perseverance and an application and a diligence coupled with pure intent. RESPONDENT: P.S. This ain’t such a bad place to hang out is it? RICHARD: I am having so much fun here at the keyboard ... the internet is a marvellous medium.
RESPONDENT: Richard, you’re sounding more and more interesting all the time. I apologize for jumping to conclusions about your motivations and your state of being – its just that when you only see snippets of somebody’s actions its easy to confuse ‘enlightenment’ or post-enlightenment with lunacy. RICHARD: As the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people (regular society) in the West consider that anyone dabbling in things mystical are the ‘lunatic fringe’ (conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them), I am sure that they must find it quaint that one lunatic coming from an ‘enlightenment’ point of view would ‘confuse’ another lunatic’s ‘post-enlightenment’ with ‘lunacy’ (thereby implying that the ‘enlightenment’ point of view is not ‘lunacy’). Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: I’m even more keen than ever to hear the ‘complete picture’ of your philosophy/ experience/ teaching. If you can put an article together in the next few days I’ll publish it in the issue coming out this weekend. RICHARD: I was off-line for 8-10 days due to an all-of-a-sudden revamp of my entire system (I have had Windows 2000 Server installed to replace the ailing NT 4.0 Server set-up I had been using that runs my internal network and supports my Web Page and my Mail Server). There was much backing-up of data, re-formatting of hard-drives, installing a hub, replacing network cards and cables ... and then configuring and tweaking everything and so on. Consequently I have not written anything at all to anyone at all for a few weeks. RESPONDENT: I’m flat out busy right now so I can’t respond to your post as fully as I would like, suffice it to say that I don’t think we’re as far apart as it would first appear. RICHARD: Hmm ... 180 degrees in the opposite direction is as about as far apart as it gets. RESPONDENT: I’m not stuck on this whole ‘Illusion’ thing and in fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard John [de Ruiter] use the word ‘illusion’ or deny the existence of this reality (that’s just stuff I’ve picked up from Advaita teachers – who I’m not really into). RICHARD: Okay ... are you saying, then, that the eastern mystics have got it wrong? Generally speaking, most eastern religions deny objective reality ... the world of this body and that body and the mountains and the streams; the trees and the flowers; the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum. Hence ‘maya’ (which translates as ‘only apparently real’) is the manifestation of ‘samsara’ (which translates as ‘the running around’) which metempsychosis is the result of ‘karma’ (which translates as ‘act’ or ‘deed’). In Hinduism and Jainism, samsara describes the vocation of the soul which – once it has fallen from its original state of ‘Self-Consciousness’ – is born as a creature and continues through transmigration until ‘moksa’ (which translates as ‘release’). Buddhism regards all existence as being samsara – and therefore suffering (‘dukkha’) because it is but transitory existence born out of craving – and teaches that salvation is to be found in the place where the sun don’t shine. Viz.:
You would have to be on a hiding to nowhere to try to make out that mystics fully acknowledge objective reality (if they do at all): the apotheosised field of consciousness – an altered state of consciousness – is mysticism’s ultimate goal and gift to humankind. Mysticism is seen as the transcendence of the anguish of earthly existence (‘samsara’) into the realisation of the bliss of essence (‘nirvana’) ... which is divinity by whatever name and is, of course, bodiless. When the arhat’s (the realised one) experience of the cosmos resumes after attaining nirvana they experience that it is composed entirely of the results of old karma; with no new karma being added to the process all experience of the cosmos will eventually run out ... ‘will grow cold right here’. This means that even the limiting factors that such a one encounters in terms of sights and sounds and so on are actually the fruit of past karma in thought, word and deed ... committed not only in this, but also in many preceding lifetimes. The multitudinous scriptures consistently point to a total withdrawal from this sensate physical world. Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s advice, for an example, is for a total disassociation of self from the world of people, things and events. Mr. Gotama the Sakyan expressly states that the self is not to be found anywhere in phenomenal existence ... as he so clearly enunciates to compliant monks in the ‘Anatta-Lakkhana’ Sutta (The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic, SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66). Viz.:
Note well he says ‘there is nothing further for this world’: the trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity and/or Judaism and/or Islam is that they do not realise that by turning to the eastern spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the West have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the jaded Western mind which is desperately looking for answers that abstract logical speculation and analytic deduction just cannot provide. The Christian and/or Judaic and/or Islamic conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the esoteric doctrines of the East. It is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the East down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking divine immortality ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ (‘Thou Art That’), for example, is simply another way of saying ‘I am The Truth’ (aka ‘I am God’). At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. I have been to India to see for myself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living ... and it is hideous. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing ... but it is practically and demonstrably deleterious to both individual and communal well-being. That is why one only needs to look at where this devotional spiritual living has been practiced for thousands of years to see how badly it has failed to live up to its implied promise of peace and harmony and prosperity for all. Thus both the spiritual and the secular methods of producing peace on earth have each failed miserably ... it is high time for a third alternative to hove into view; something new that has never been lived before in human history. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when the results of doing so are plain to view in all cultures? RESPONDENT: Most of what you say sounds great but every now and then you say something which goes ‘clunk’ e.g.: ‘Hmm ... ‘failure’ is the pits. Only a recalcitrant ego or a contumelious soul would settle for second-best’ ... and ‘‘The Truth’ sucks’. I may be mistaken but its sounds as if there is sorrow and/or malice in those statements. RICHARD: I use modern-day vernacular like ‘the pits’ and ‘it sucks’ and so on because failure to live in the already always existing peace-on-earth means one keeps on nursing malice and sorrow to one’s bosom (which is the pits in any jargon); settling for an ersatz life-style when the best is already always available means one keeps on nursing malice and sorrow to one’s bosom (which is second-best in any description); realising ‘The Truth’ (being enlightened) instead of becoming free of the human condition means one keeps on nursing malice and sorrow to one’s bosom (so as to enable the antidotal love and compassion) ... which sucks in any lingo. Maybe I am misusing these modern-day colloquialisms? I was born in the ‘forties and raised in the ‘fifties and I have worked out that ‘geek’ corresponds to ‘egg-head’ and that ‘nerd’ corresponds to ‘bookworm’ and that ‘wuss’ corresponds to ‘sissy’ ... ‘the pits’ refers to ‘the hells’ (places or situations of futility, misery or degradation) whereas it used to be ‘the pit’ (‘Hell’). And ‘it sucks’ relates to various aspects of the word ‘suck’: sucker; sucked in; sucked dry; suck up to and so on ... anything false that produces disappointment, disillusion and disenchantment via obsequiousness. * RESPONDENT: Evil is just a subjective judgement of events based upon ones cultural upbringing. RICHARD: Indeed ... yet it is undeniable that 6.0 billion peoples nurse malice and sorrow in their bosom. RESPONDENT: There is no good and bad(evil). What is good in my society may be bad in your society. Classic example: In India it is ‘bad’ for a man to hold hands with a woman in public – they will be stoned. But it is okay for men to walk along holding hands – it shows that they are great friends, and is something to be proud of. In Australia it is okay for a man and woman to hold hands in public but (until recently) not okay for two men to hold hands in public. RICHARD: Aye ... it is entirely sensible to comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols of whatever culture one lives in. RESPONDENT: A more extreme example: A mass murderer is considered ‘bad’, yet an effective soldier is considered a hero and given medals for his killing efforts – even if the war was started by his side. Which society’s moral structures would you use as a yardstick with which to cleanse the earth of this ‘ubiquitous presence of evil’? Your society’s? Or somebody else’s? Whichever way you look at it ‘evil’ is an illusion created by mankind – it’s just a label placed on certain events. There is no Universal yardstick by which we can measure an event to see whether it is evil – there’s no rulebook/manual. RICHARD: Indeed, there is no absolute ‘right and wrong’ or ‘good and bad’ ... these are simply human conventions for ease of communal co-existence. RESPONDENT: Unless of course you want to use those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ ... or maybe you’d like to make up your own rulebook? It would be better than those ‘ancient and revered scriptures’ and would itself, one day become an ‘ancient and revered scripture’ would it not? RICHARD: I have neither ‘rule-book’ nor any need for a ‘rule-book’ whatsoever. Shall I put it this way? Now that you have neatly solved the existential dilemma which has bothered theologians for centuries ... where are you at? As there is no global peace-on-earth, do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty five days of each year? Which means: has malice and sorrow completely vanished from your bosom ... for the remainder of your life here on earth? I only ask because with the total and permanent absence of malice and sorrow, their antidotal pacifiers (love and compassion), being no longer necessary, likewise disappear forever. Then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. RESPONDENT: You asked me: ‘do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty five days of each year?’ Pretty much, yes. Compared to how I used to be I’d say I’m 97% happy and harmless. RICHARD: Hmm ... yet I specifically detailed what individual peace-on-earth means: ‘has malice and sorrow completely vanished from your bosom for the remainder of your life here on earth?’ One cannot be happy and harmless whilst one nurses malice and sorrow to one’s bosom. RESPONDENT: Yes I agree and I understood your definition and I’d have to say that compared to how I used to be I’d say I’m 97% free from malice and sorrow. RICHARD: Yet even the ‘Enlightened Ones’ still demonstrably show anguish and anger from time-to-time ... when push comes to shove the animal instinctual passions come rushing to the fore. What is the use of the summum bonum of human experience – spiritual freedom – let alone your ‘97% free from malice and sorrow’ if it does not result in peace on earth? RESPONDENT: Of course these things just get subtler and subtler and harder to detect. At first there are great boulders of malice and sorrow, then once they’re removed, there’s the rocks, then the gravel, then the sand, then that very fine powder and then the powder that has been dissolved in the water. I can’t remember experiencing anger in the last year, for example, though I sometimes still experience some ‘stress’/tightness. Maybe it only feels like 97% and maybe the remaining 3% is actually 97% of the journey ... oh well, c’est la vie. RICHARD: As I have already remarked: when push comes to shove the animal instinctual passions come rushing to the fore ... which is why all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like are perpetuated forever and a day. RESPONDENT: It’s very enjoyable conversing with you and I look forward to hearing more of your wisdom. If you would like to submit an article(s) to www.4DPortal.com please contact me so we can discuss further the subject matter and format. RICHARD: What ‘subject matter’ did you have in mind?
RESPONDENT: Richard, I loved your last post. Your knowledge of philosophy is impressive. Would you like to write some articles for www.4DPortal.com ? I’m planning to start introducing some formal philosophy/science of consciousness stuff to the site. What I want to do is find some common ground between the academics and the mystics. RICHARD: Oh, there is ‘common ground between the academics and the mystics’ alright ... it is just that the mystics do it and the academics study it. Also, an ‘academic’ is not necessarily a philosopher ... the ‘academics’ study philosophers as much as they do the ‘mystics’. This is because the ‘Truth’ of the philosophers is but a nom de guerre for ‘God’ ... when all is said and done. RESPONDENT: At the moment they seem to be off in different camps using completely different words to discuss the same things and not really paying any attention to what the other camp is doing/saying. For example, I didn’t know that all us enlightenment people where solipsists – my Webster’s defines solipsism as ‘the theory that nothing but the self exists and therefore that the self is the only object of real knowledge’. Do they mean the Universal Self or the personal self? RICHARD: Both. A solipsistic ‘personal self’ has the choice of withdrawing into neurotic self-isolation or expanding into psychotic self-aggrandisement ... usually the latter. Energised by the ‘will to survive’, that grew out of the bodily survival instinct, the self-aggrandising tendency – narcissism – born of the dominance and submission which instinctual aggression and fear brings (exemplified by the ‘Alpha Male’ prototype found in many animals) means that power and authority runs rampage when transformed into the ultimate ‘Power and Authority’ or ‘Cosmic Energy’ through sublimation and transcendence. RESPONDENT: I think it would be great if all us mystics could get an understanding of what the ‘great philosophers’ of the past have had to say about the metaphysical subjects that we’re discussing. I believe that both camps would benefit from a sharing of knowledge. Most mystics dismiss everything but Consciousness as illusion, but this illusion definitely has structure and rules/laws of operation and seeing as how Consciousness has chosen to immerse itself in the illusion it’s probably not a bad idea to figure out how the illusion works. It may NOT be necessary to know how it works, but its only really after we’ve figured it all out that we can say for certain whether it’s a waste of time or not ... from a position of ignorance we’re not really qualified to comment on whether its useful to know how it works are we? RICHARD: I am in full agreement ... this is why I write as I do. RESPONDENT: I’d also be interested to hear your own philosophy and how you suggest we go about ridding the world of evil. RICHARD: First and foremost: nothing I say is a ‘philosophy’ (or a metaphysics or a thesis and so on) as all that I write is a description which comes out of my direct and spontaneous experiencing at this moment in time ... my words are an ‘after the event’ report, as it were. For starters: one needs to fully acknowledge the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are the root cause of all the ills of humankind. The genetically inherited passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) give rise to malice and sorrow. Malice and sorrow are intrinsically connected and constitute what is known as ‘The Human Condition’. The term ‘Human Condition’ is a well-established philosophical 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 what is 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. The ending of malice and sorrow involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time as this body. Then the question is: is it possible to be free of the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body? Which means: How on earth can one live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst one nurses malice and sorrow in one’s bosom? RESPONDENT: Evil is a real concern for the vast majority of people on this planet and so it’s probably appropriate that we discuss and address this subject at www.4DPortal.com. RICHARD: Umm ... why not here where we are already discussing it? RESPONDENT: In fact there’s somebody that has recently joined the 4DPortal community that’s into a different sort of enlightenment and is passionate about creating a better world – you two may have a lot in common. Let me know if you’re interested in submitting some articles. RICHARD: What ‘subject matter’ did you have in mind ... the origin/structure of ego/self?
RETURN TO MAILING LIST ‘C’ 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.
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