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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On the Altered State of Consciousness aka Enlightenment
RESPONDENT: Richard, you claim you were once enlightened. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: You also claim that in that altered state of consciousness that you call enlightenment you imagined you could save the world. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: Richard; my hearing is you were in psychosis. RICHARD: Yes ... ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is a psychotic state of mind; a dissociated state of consciousness, replete with delusions of grandeur that are tempered only by it being a solipsistic state. A person who believes they are enlightened when they are not do not have this temperance ... hence out-of-control megalomania is both possible and probable. RESPONDENT: That is ok; many people move in and out of psychosis; but some recognise and acknowledge it. RICHARD: If only the ‘Enlightened Beings’ would ‘recognise and acknowledge it’, eh? RESPONDENT: Now you claim to be out of the state that you call enlightenment ... RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: ... and that was characterised by a belief that you could save the world, a state I would call psychosis ... RICHARD: Yes ... we are in agreement on this point. RICHARD: It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for one to conceive that without a wayward ‘I’ there is no need for either a compliant ‘me’ or any values whatsoever ... or an ‘Ultimate Authority’. This is what freedom from the Human Condition is. RESPONDENT: Are you saying that you have been touched by sacredness? RICHARD: Not only ‘touched by sacredness’ but being ‘The Sacred’ for twenty four hours of the day as an on-going reality. Nearly eighteen years ago I underwent a monumental transformation into an Altered State Of Consciousness which can only be described as Spiritual Enlightenment. I became Enlightened as the result of an earnest and intense process which commenced in the January of that year. At approximately six o’clock on the morning of Sunday, the sixth of September 1981, my ‘ego’ disappeared entirely in an edifying moment of awakening to the ‘Absolute Reality’. In 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) wherein I saw that everything was already perfect as-it-is and that ‘I’, the psychological entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an emotional-mental fabrication ... a sense of social identity with its conscience. I also saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called being ‘normal’. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed on the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981 when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my ‘Divine Awakening’ on that September morning. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion. The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before; I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very ‘being’. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was ‘IT!’ was such a simple thing ... all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain ... in the top of the brain-stem. I likened it to turning over a long-playing record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again. It was over. I had arrived. I had become Awakened to the Greater Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no separation between me and The Absolute. RESPONDENT: So what is the significance of sound in this state? RICHARD: When the ego dies, all noise ceases forever. Sound resonates in a vast Silence. Yet beyond The Silence lies an utter stillness ... only extinction of identity in its entirety makes this infinitude apparent. RESPONDENT: Do you actually see this energy with the eyes? RICHARD: When the ego dies, separation dissolves into Oneness ... I am Everything and Everything is this Energy. I am this Energy and this Energy is Me. The eyes seeing is Me looking at Me. I am The Absolute. But beyond Me – beyond The Absolute – lies the actual ... and the actual is already always here now. In actuality there is no ‘Me’ and/or ‘The Absolute’. When the soul dies the need for oneness – unitary perception – dissolves ... as does any ‘Otherness’. Then I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Now I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, Divine Compassion and Love Agapé. The purity of the actual world owes its excellence to the fact that there is no sorrow and malice here ... hence no need for succour. The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Well, thanks for the response, I think I may not have communicated well. The fact that you have split my ‘one’ response into two parts and then responding to the two parts does not seem to get anywhere. All I wanted to ask is how does one know one is ‘enlightened’? And I didn’t mean oblivion is doing nothing about the plight of one’s fellow human beings. RICHARD: One most definitely knows when one is enlightened. The chief characteristics of Enlightenment are: the presence of ‘The Absolute’, union with the ‘Divine’, ‘Universal Compassion’, ‘Love Agapé’, ‘Rapturous Bliss’, ‘Ineffable Ecstasy’, ‘Exalted Euphoria’, ‘The Truth’, ‘Timelessness’, ‘Spacelessness’, ‘Immortality’, ‘Aloneness’, ‘Oneness’, ‘Pacifism’, ‘Surrender’, ‘Trust’, ‘Beauty’, and ‘Goodness’. An enlightened person is driven by a ‘Divine Sense Of Mission’ to bring ‘The Truth’, ‘Universal Love’ and ‘Divine Compassion’ to the world in order to ‘set humankind free’. This is by no means an exhaustive list ... one will be ‘Unborn and Undying’ or ‘Never-born and Never-dying’ and so on. Probably the most significant characteristic – which should set the alarm bells ringing for any intelligent person who has the misfortune of becoming enlightened – is an over-arching delusion of grandeur in which one fondly feels that one can ‘save the world’. One will gather many disciples ... people want somebody else to do it all for them. Nobody, but nobody, can set you free but yourself. RESPONDENT: And does your freedom entail the total and complete erasure of the human consciousness that moves the common herd or just only the moral conditioning – the sense of right and wrong, good and evil? RICHARD: Yes, the total and complete erasure of the ‘human’ consciousness ... not just conditioning. The moral conditioning – the sense of right and wrong and what you called the knowledge of good and evil – are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. By and large this enterprise has proved to be relatively effective ... only a minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner. And although well-meant, it is but an ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, because people are irked by the restraints imposed upon what they indulgently imagine is the freedom of the natural state. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. For the deletion of the software package is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. That is, ‘being’ itself expires. The reward for so doing is immeasurable, however. The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ needs to be talked about and exposed for what it is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again. There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with enlightenment is that whilst the identity as ego dissolves, the identity as soul remains intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity ... ‘I am That’ or ‘I am God’ or ‘I am The Supreme’ or ‘I am The Absolute’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ and so on. This is the delusion, the mirage, the deception ... and it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an august state. This second identity – the second ‘I’ of Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana) fame – is a difficult one to shake, maybe more difficult than the first; for who is brave enough to voluntarily give up fame and fortune, reverence and worship, status and security? One has to be scrupulously honest with oneself to go all the way and no longer be a someone, a somebody of importance. One faces extinction; ‘I’ will cease to be, there will be no ‘being’ whatsoever, no ‘presence’ at all. It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for one to conceive that without a wayward ‘I’ there is no need for either a compliant ‘me’ or any values whatsoever ... or an ‘Ultimate Authority’. This is what freedom from the Human Condition is. * RESPONDENT: So, tell me, how have you arrived, how does that Greater Reality fit into the basic reality of life that I have outlined? RICHARD: I would have thought that you would at least have read the basic thrust of what a person has written ... I am not in a ‘Greater Reality’ . I was for eleven years ... and I found it wanting. Eastern ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is commonly considered to be the Summum Bonum of human experience. It is not. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning by going beyond enlightenment – which turned out to be an Altered State Of Consciousness – into the actuality of being here on earth and now in time as this flesh and blood body. For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because this freedom is located here in this very world, this actual world of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond spiritual enlightenment’s ‘Greater Reality’ . Beyond the ‘Greater Reality’ lies the actual ... and the actual is already always here now. In actuality there is no ‘Greater Reality’. When the soul dies the need for transcendental realms disappears. Then I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Now I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, Divine Compassion and Love Agapé. The purity of the actual world owes its excellence to the fact that there is no sorrow and malice here ... hence no need for succour. The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. It is remarkably easy to live in actuality. RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): If you still wish to become enlightened, you will need to sublimate your passions –
surrender your wilful self – and move into accord with some metaphysical Absolute, like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti did in 1922 under a pepper tree,
as detailed by Ms. Mary Lutyens. Abject subjugation of the will should produce the essential servitude – great cunning is required – and the
rest is up to the ‘Grace of God’. RESPONDENT: In a previous post I remarked that Krishnamurti spoke differently before his speech disbanding ‘The Order of the Star’. That speech was in 1929. Whatever happened in 1922 under a pepper tree sounds like many so-called enlightenment experiences. RICHARD: It does not only ‘sound like’ one ... it was one. And it is not a ‘so-called’ enlightenment ... it was enlightenment. One only has to do some comparative reading of other people’s Self-Realisation to recognise the obvious similarities. Tell me, please, because I am so curious: If he did not become enlightened then – as you say he did not – then when did he ... in your opinion? RESPONDENT: He concluded his speech in 1929, saying: ‘So these are some of the reasons why, after careful consideration for two years, I have made this decision. It is not from a momentary impulse. I have not been persuaded to it by anyone. I am not persuaded in such things. For two years I have been thinking about this, slowly, carefully, patiently, and I have now decided to disband the Order, as I happen to be its Head. You can form other organisations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free’. Whatever happened in 1922 could not have been too enlightening if he spent a few years prior to 1929 ‘thinking about this, slowly, carefully, patiently’. RICHARD: Oh, I was not aware that enlightened people were not allowed to think ‘slowly, carefully and patiently’.
Do you really consider that they make lightening-like decisions on the spot? RICHARD (to Respondent No. 10): The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those
inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the ‘Unknown’, stopped short of the final goal – the ‘Unknowable’. RESPONDENT: There can no blame outside one’s own. You have failed to understand the message if you continue to wait for ‘it’ to work for you. RICHARD: I was working on the – obviously wrong – assumption that you might have noticed at least some of my writings. Apparently my assumption is just that ... an assumption. So, to fill you in I will provide a very brief personal history to explain: I entered into an on-going Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the sixteenth of September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. I spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not deliver the global Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Spiritual Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the thirtieth of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. Nowadays I know, intimately, why an Altered State Of Consciousness does not deliver the goods, for it is but a delusion ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position, driven by a ‘Divine Sense Of Mission’ to bring ‘Truth and Love’ to the world ... and what a relief that is. I am a fellow human being, albeit neither ‘normal’ nor ‘divine’, living in a condition of perfection and purity offering my discoveries to whomsoever is vitally interested in peace-on-earth. Thus you will see why I am not ‘waiting’; you will see that I do understand ‘the message’ because I lived it – and I found it wanting – and you will see why I lay ‘blame’. Because it is possible to be actually free of the Human Condition, as this body, in this life-time, here on earth. If those ‘Great Sages’ had had the intestinal fortitude to face their own extinction, there would already be global peace. Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, for example, was around two and a half thousand years ago ... if he had had the gumption to take the ‘final step’ then maybe nobody would have been killed in wars this century. Maybe the atom bomb would not have been dropped. After all, two and a half thousand years is long enough for a genuine peace to spread from person to person. That is why I wrote (above):
RICHARD: It is simply a case that enlightenment has been the province of the East for so long that it has become an integral part of the culture, but only recently has it gained some credence in the West. Previously, in the West, the most one could aspire to – with society’s support – was to become an illuminated saint ... a situation somewhat similar to the Hare Krishna devotees ... but enlightened? No way! However, there are more and more Westerners discovering enlightenment these days ... and a lot of material is being generated, both in the printed word and on audio and video tape. KONRAD: But I do not deny what I do understand and what I know I understand, just because others say it is impossible. Still, I offer what I have to offer. I am prepared to stand corrected by anybody who does this, no matter who this is. For every honest person can contribute to any other honest person. RICHARD: I like your approach, for the entire subject of enlightenment needs to be brought out into the open and
discussed freely and without reservation. Here in the West we have a vital opportunity to put our rational minds to work and iron out all those
mystical and other metaphysical aspects of freedom from ‘I’ that permeates Eastern Enlightenment so badly. RESPONDENT: I am interested now in what you are saying. I will attempt again to ‘read’ if you are saying that you change often into other forms – sometimes humorously or grotesquely? This must be lots of fun! Is this a description of creation? RICHARD: No, I am not saying that, but it is simple to put your understanding of what I wrote to rights. By putting ‘I’ into smart quotes I was following the convention that one is referring to that ‘self’ inside the body that is causing all the ills of humankind. It is this ‘I’ that can transform itself – often with ‘grotesque or humorous effect’ – into a ‘Me’. This ‘Me’ is usually capitalised to indicate divinity and the resultant ‘Enlightened State’ is either ‘grotesque’ (when one considers all the religious wars with the hideous hatred and bloodshed ... what is happening in Israel, for example) or ‘humorous’ (when one considers the degree of megalomania involved in proclaiming oneself to be God ... Mr. Franklin Jones, for example). RESPONDENT: I have experienced some of the sensual delights, but I thought they were just hallucinations. Is this of which you speak? RICHARD: Sensual delights are most definitely not hallucinations ... they are very, very, earthy. What are hallucinations are the chief characteristics of Enlightenment – ‘Union with the Divine’, ‘Universal Compassion’, ‘Love Agapé’, ‘Ineffable Bliss’, ‘The Truth’, ‘Timelessness’, ‘Spacelessness’, ‘Immortality’, ‘Aloneness’, ‘Oneness’, Goodness’ ... to name but a few. RESPONDENT: Is this anything like ‘shamanism’ which seems to be making quite a come back in the alternative life styles community? I even heard Dr. Andrew Weil speak about this yesterday. RICHARD: In that shamanism is concerned with altered states of consciousness – and spiritual enlightenment is a particular altered state of consciousness – yes, transmogrification is like that ... a massive delusion. Mr. Carlos Castaneda popularised shamanistic rituals some time ago ... I can not recall, at this moment, what he called it ... was it ‘non-ordinary reality’? Ms. Isabel Allende was another; she wrote in the style of magic realism, which incorporated fantastic and mythical elements into realistic fiction. It is all psychic in nature, however, and has nothing to do with actuality. A lot of it comes out of psychotropic substances, which unless handled appropriately, can take one into the mystical and miraculous dimensions of one’s super-charged imagination ... coupled with access to the ‘collective unconscious’ which Mr. Carl Jung spoke of (the bizarre and haunting and fantastic world of myths and legends that is contained in the human psyche). RESPONDENT: I am still curious. Are these sensual experiences ‘hallucinations’ or the creation of a transmogrified ‘I’? RICHARD: As I have already partly answered above: this sensual experience is actual. By actual, I do not mean the real-world of normal human experience. Actuality is only seen by people in glimpses ... it is as if everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses. When ‘I’ vanish in ‘my’ entirety – both the ego and the soul – the normal everyday reality disappears and the underlying actuality becomes apparent. It was here all along. To experience the metaphysical Reality – usually with capitalisation – is to go further into the illusion of normal everyday reality, created by ‘I’, and further create a supernatural ‘True Reality’ ... which one could call an abnormal reality. Thus normal everyday reality is an illusion and the abnormal metaphysical Reality is a delusion born out of the illusion ... a chimera, as it were. This is why only about .000001 of the population ever become enlightened ... it is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination permanently. Speaking personally, I was so deluded, that for eleven years I lived in humanity’s greatest fantasy, before the dissolution of ‘me’ as soul finally brought salubrity through release from the human condition itself. RESPONDENT: Do you think that this is the ‘transformation’ of which Krishnamurti spoke. RICHARD: If you are referring to what I am living, most definitely not ... although he spoke out against Gurus and Gods, he himself was indeed enlightened. He worshipped [quote]: ‘that which is sacred, holy’. [end quote]. RESPONDENT: Is this the ‘freedom’ of which he spoke? RICHARD: No. He did somehow know, however, that there was something else. One of Ms. Mary Lutyen’s biographies relates how he had an intimation (at age eighty nine if I remember correctly) that he would live for a few – or was it five – more years because ‘something new’ would come into the ‘teachings’. He died without anything changing, however. Other enlightened persons have spoken about ‘going beyond enlightenment’ ... but their teachings remained the same. Mostly, the ultimate state is put after physical death: the Buddhist ‘Parinirvana’ (Complete Nirvana) and the Hindu ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Great Samadhi) being two that spring to mind. It means the end of ‘being’, you see. In other words: extinction. RESPONDENT: Is this transmogrification what freedom means? RICHARD: No, the freedom of enlightenment is not an actual freedom ... it is a solution found within the human condition, for there is still an identity; be it as a self or a being or a presence. Once again, speaking personally, I am none of these ... I am this body being apperceptively aware. An actual freedom means freedom from the human condition. This what I experience is the same as is experienced in a PCE (pure consciousness experience) which generally happens spontaneously in what is called a peak experience. This has been my condition since October 1992, twenty four hours a day. This is the perfection and the purity of the infinitude of this physical universe personified. I am the universe – this material universe – experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. This on-going experience is ambrosial, to say the least. RESPONDENT: Or is ‘heavenly’, to say the most. RICHARD: Why ‘heavenly’? It is possible to be actually free of the Human Condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body. This on-going experience of perfection personified is earthly ... there is no need of anything metaphysical whatsoever here. RESPONDENT: It seems that you want to think you are saying something original, and you are not really. You talk about an ego and a soul that both must die in order for one to be free. I take it to mean that this soul you talk about is the idea that Masters and Messiahs have about ‘something else’, i.e., ‘enlightenment’, occurring between the enlightenment and the freedom, that also must die. RICHARD: I am not too sure what you are getting at here with ‘i.e., enlightenment’ . I will plunge on regardless, and you tell me if I have misunderstood what your point is. Various masters have spoken about a ‘something else’. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti said that there was ‘Something beyond Love’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain spoke of an ‘Unknowable’ and talked of going beyond enlightenment (and as his Teachings never changed he obviously did not do this) Mr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff spoke briefly about a ‘Greater Beyond’ that lay past enlightenment ... and so on. Hints, allusions, suggestions ... but nothing substantial, nothing demonstrable, nothing lived. Buddhists posit the ultimate reality to be after physical death ... and have made a virtue out the fact that Mr. Gotama the Sakyan was too pusillanimous to take the ‘final step’ (what they call the ‘Bodhisattva Principle’). For Hindus it is also after the death of the body ... Mahasamadhi. * RESPONDENT: All you are saying is that all of the Masters and Messiahs and the Sages, etc. have had all kinds of metaphysical solutions for thousands of years and nothing has been solved here on Earth. This is exactly the same thing that Krishnamurti was saying. RICHARD: He may have said it but he did not live it. To be enlightened is to transcend duality. ‘Transcend’ means
to rise above, which implies that what you have transcended still exists, only it is beneath you now. This is borne out by the ‘Enlightened
Beings’, who generally state that they have eliminated the ego and transcended duality ... I have yet to come across any enlightened master who
consistently states that they have eliminated duality ... if there is any at all who say that. In an actual freedom, both sorrow and malice are
eliminated – not transcended – along with the ego and the soul. Evil does not exist in the world, it exists only in the human psyche ...
eliminate the psyche in its entirety and you have eliminated both Good and Evil (because ‘Good’ is a psychic phenomenon created to combat ‘Evil’).
As the enlightened beings have only transcended duality, they have to cling to ‘The Good’ in order to resist ‘The Bad’. Hence also their
pacifism, but that is another story. RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. RESPONDENT: Although teachers pointing to the truth have been around, not many are interested in hearing what they say. This lack of interest is not the fault of teachers. We have no interest in exposing our misconceptions to the light of truth and escape in any way possible. RICHARD: No way do I buy this ... millions of well-meaning followers have diligently put their Teachings into practice, prostrating and belittling themselves like all get-out in a hopeful attempt to live the unliveable. Yet no-one, it seems, dares to question the Teachings themselves; instead the humiliated penitents obligingly blame themselves for failing to achieve release from the human condition. The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the ‘Unknown’, stopped short of the final goal – the ‘Unknowable’. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, they have led humankind astray. Preaching submission or supplication they keep a benighted humanity in appalling tribulation and distress. The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the self in its entirety is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. The Divine Beings have been peddling their snake oil for centuries to no avail. Their time has come to either put up or shut up ... how much longer than these thousands of years do peoples need to further test the efficaciousness of their failed Divine Message? * RICHARD: I entered into an ongoing Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the sixth of September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. I spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Spiritual Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the thirtieth of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. RESPONDENT: The notion of an ‘I’ that enters Altered States, becomes enlightened, glimpses or can land in actuality seems like an expression of the same old egocentric framework based on the misconception of some real self that can do those things. RICHARD: It is simply a matter of convenience to use the first person pronoun: I, my, me ... or even more impersonally ... one. Otherwise the above paragraph would wind up looking like this: ‘This flesh and blood body entered into an ongoing Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the sixth of September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. This flesh and blood body spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly this flesh and blood body sought to go beyond Spiritual Enlightenment into a condition this flesh and blood body had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the thirtieth of October 1992, this flesh and blood body succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. RESPONDENT: It sounds like there have been a few glimpses beyond the framework of a ‘me’, but those experiences were quickly added to the structure of misconceptions that now obscure life. RICHARD: It may sound like that to you, I realise, given the way that you experience your own life ... but not everyone thinks like you do. I, for one, do not. When I glimpse something, I go for it – boots and all – and actualise the glimpse so that I am living it in my daily life. I do not make the mistake of imagining that all this appalling animosity and anguish that grips every single human being on this planet is the result of the mind merely imputing an apparently real but seeming self ... and fondly considering that anger, for example, can be overlooked as a ‘misconception’ , or part of a ‘structure that can be quickly added to’ . Wake up and smell the coffee. RESPONDENT: Glimpsing from a structure is different than dropping the structure. RICHARD: The immediate question that springs to mind is who is dropping the structure? And please ... do not tell me that it is the mind merely imputing a ‘me’ ... we have flogged that subject to death. It is male bovine faecal matter and you know it is. RESPONDENT: No position to view from. No one to enter or leave. No one to land anywhere. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Yet it is time to go make breakfast. RICHARD: Ah, yes ... the ancient Japanese art of the Tanka (sort of). Not being a poet myself, I will build upon an associate’s lampooning, for how else can I respond in kind? Sitting quietly * RICHARD (to Respondent No. 19): I entered into an on-going Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the 6th of
September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands
of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. I spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not
deliver the global Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Spiritual
Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the 30th of October 1992, I
succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. RESPONDENT: How about this: I thought I was enlightened on 6/9/81. Still seeking for peace, I chased after various transcendental experiences for the next 11 years. On 30/10/92 I finally landed in what I call actuality (not to be confused with reality). RICHARD: Or even better ... how about this: The imputed ‘I’ had a misconception that there was such an ascribed state as enlightenment and apparently seemed to attain to it on 6/9/81. Seemingly under the assumption of a seeking for a separate peace that does not exist, the same old ego-centric framework presumed after various transcendental falsely attributed experiences for the next 11 apparently real years. On 30/10/92, the habitual thought construction finally landed in what the structure labels an actual unreality which, if the body/mind is observed carefully, cannot be found. It is not to be glimpsed with a confused reality which believes like a seems and ... . RESPONDENT: Glimpsing from a structure is different than dropping the structure. RICHARD: The immediate question that springs to mind is who is dropping the structure? And please ... do not tell me that it is the mind merely imputing a ‘me’ ... we have flogged that subject to death. It is male bovine faecal matter and you know it is. RESPONDENT: Just as there is no ‘who’ to glimpse or land in altered states or be enlightened, there is no ‘who’ to drop anything. The structure is all the habitual thought constructions that tend to view life as if there indeed is some real ‘who’ that can drop, land, glimpse or be enlightened. RICHARD: Yes ... and, of course, there is no enlightenment because for enlightenment to exist there has to be un-enlightenment. As un-enlightenment is imputed by a ‘me’ that is a thought construction, therefore one falsely attributes such a state as enlightenment where there really isn’t one. I get the drift, now. RESPONDENT: No position to view from. No one to enter or leave. No one to land anywhere. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Yet it is time to go make breakfast. RICHARD: Ah, yes ... the ancient Japanese art of the Tanka (sort of). Not being a poet myself, I will build upon an associate’s lampooning, for how else can I respond in kind? Sitting quietly (Prevaricating) Doing nothing (Procrastinating) Spring comes (Middle age arrives) And the grass grows of itself (The mid-life crisis unfolds) The delicate sound of lawn-mowers (The suburban dawning) Hanging on in quiet desperation ... . RESPONDENT: Nice. RICHARD: Nice? Nice?? Nice??? No, it’s not nice ... it’s everyday reality for millions of people. RESPONDENT: When you recognise that as your true nature – that is awakening. Then you see others as the same – because that ONE-NESS is all there is. You then see unity in creation – and you have true love for all. RICHARD: As love is an affective feeling (arising out of the ‘tender’ instinctual passions) any ‘true love’
(and any ‘true compassion’ for that matter) is sourced in the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that forms of survival necessity in the womb. To
become free of the human condition one must dig deep into one’s affective feelings, deep down past the superficial emotions into the depths of
one’s being and see that malice Because if one does not, one may find oneself as malice and sorrow sublimating oneself into Love and Compassion – one will cease having one’s feelings happen to oneself as ego and instead become those sublimated feelings as soul in an on-going transcendent State Of Being – one will be Love Agapé and Divine Compassion as a ‘Supreme Being’. In other words: an infinitely expanded identity that is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’ and ‘Formless’. To become free of the human condition requires the elimination of the instinctual passions ... not merely a transcendence of malice and sorrow. It does mean the end of ‘me’, however, as an identity in ‘my’ totality (‘being’ itself) and not just ‘I’ as
ego surrendering and/or dissolving. RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions. 1) Do you see enlightenment as pathological? RICHARD: Yes, my experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that it is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’, complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the all-expansive ‘Self’). Generally speaking, all dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional stress and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. 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’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into an unreal ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Mysticism in general is a psychotic sickness; a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind and is otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ (a vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil). 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: 2) Do you see enlightenment as necessary step to get to where you are at? RICHARD: No ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps for I had to run the full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain. No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat. * RESPONDENT: So I think you are saying that enlightenment is not a necessary step to where you are now? RICHARD: It is totally unnecessary ... plus detrimental to both individual and communal salubrity. RESPONDENT: Is enlightenment a more useful or evolved place to be than pre-enlightenment? RICHARD: No, to be enlightened is to be anti-life ... peace-on-earth is scornfully discarded so as to secure a vainglorious after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. In other words: selfish immortality. * RESPONDENT No. 8: Have you ever been in the company of a truly enlightened being? RICHARD: Yes – night and day for eleven years – thus I have intimate knowledge ... and enlightenment sucks. RESPONDENT: Richard, whose company was that? RICHARD: The most optimum company possible for a ‘hands on’ exploration and investigation into the inner workings of ‘Tried and True’ solution ... the grandiose ‘Me’ that was inhabiting this body from 1981 to 1992. There was nowhere to hide. RICHARD: 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: Richard, sounds like your Enlightenment was very pleasurable. Why have you criticised it elsewhere? RICHARD: Because it is an absolute self-centredness (usually capitalised as ‘Self’) replete with all that inheres in a vainglorious expansion of self into being ‘All That Is’ (as in ‘I Am That’). The mystics who (accurately) report that the polar opposites become complimentary poles are well aware that the diabolical underpins the divine ... some call all the misery and mayhem ‘Lila’ (‘God’s Sport’ or ‘The Divine Play’). All of which points to why peace on earth is not on their agenda. * RESPONDENT No. 8: Have you ever been in the company of a truly enlightened being? RICHARD: Yes – night and day for eleven years – thus I have intimate knowledge ... and enlightenment sucks. RESPONDENT No. 6: Richard, whose company was that? RICHARD: The most optimum company possible for a ‘hands on’ exploration and investigation into the inner workings of ‘Tried and True’ solution ... the grandiose ‘Me’ that was inhabiting this body from 1981 to 1992. There was nowhere to hide. RESPONDENT: Richard, what did you think, feel and say during that time of ‘enlightenment’? Please help me see that it is exactly the same ‘enlightenment’ that you have said others are talking about. RICHARD: In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that perfection already always existed in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are and that ‘I’ and/or ‘me’, the psychological and/or psychic entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society ... ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was an emotional-mental fabrication ... a sense of identity with its conscience. I also saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called being normal. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic. That proved to be my undoing – as far as actual freedom is concerned – as ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love which led to an emanation of Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order. The Absolute had been revealed to me in the Love and Compassion – it was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of Love and Truth to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind! Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed in the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981 when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my Divine Awakening. The ‘process’ was both prosaic and extraordinary: on the one hand I began undoing all the social conditioning that I had been subject to since birth and on the other hand I generated love for all and sundry. I examined all the social traditions and customs etc., one by one, and released myself from their iron grip. I diminished hate and anger and sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and oneness ... which is the best that a normal human could do by virtue of the socialisation process. I moved in and out of sacred states of Heavenly Bliss and Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and immersed myself in the entire ‘process’ with dedication and resolution. I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and humility in all my interactions with other people and pondered the significance and ramifications of the Divine Order. I totally believed in and had supreme faith in The Absolute and its ability to bring about the Peace On Earth so long promised. That I was to play the central role in this Divine Plan no longer came as a surprise to me, as I began to realise that I had long yearned to be part of the Salvation Process. I understood that I had to die and be reborn and, consequently, went into a catatonic state that resulted in my being carted off to hospital and kept under intensive care for four hours until I came out of it. I was never to be the same again, as Divinity had been working on me whilst I was catatonic (known as ‘Samadhi’ in Hinduism) and from that date forward I was permanently in a state of human bliss and love ... I could do no wrong. About six weeks prior to the sixth September 1981 I had a revelation that I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again, and that I was to prepare myself for it. I mustered all of my faith and resolution, renewed all of my trust and allegiance, and awaited the day. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion. The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before, I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very being. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was !IT! was such a simple thing: all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain – in the top of the brain-stem – which I likened it to turning over a L.P. record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again. It was over ... I had arrived. Love had surrounded me and accepted me completely. I was immersed in Love; I was completely one with Love – Unconditional Love, Love Agapé – for I was home at last. Unexpectedly, I had all knowledge – all that I had ever heard or known had been swept away – and I knew all knowledge: I knew that death did not exist ... I knew that I had existed since the moment of creation; I knew that I shall always exist. I knew that all consciousness is in the act of becoming; I knew that there is no sin or evil; I knew what free will meant – that we choose everything – and I knew that choosing the Absolute had been the only choice to make. I had become Awakened to the Greater Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no separation between me and The Absolute. I had a Divine Sense of Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred Duty. As Mr. John DeRuiter has said: ‘I am not my own – I belong to Truth. Whatever Truth does or says is what I do and say and that’s now what I’m here for’. Bewitched and beguiled by the Glamour and Glory and Glitz of the seductive state of ‘Being’, that ensues when one surrenders to the ultimate ‘Power and Authority’ known as ‘The Truth’, I spoke of love as being ‘the way; the means and the end’. ‘There was no such thing as death’, I would say, ‘for I know the secret of ‘Being’. I had realised the ‘Absolute’ and I lived only for ‘The Truth’: ‘The Truth must be spoken’, I would say, ‘though ‘The Truth’ be ineffable it must be told’ ... and so on and so on. I spent the first three years swanning along in a state of ‘Oneness’ with everyone and everything. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion all rolled up into one ... and my reward for being the latest Saviour Of Humankind was to be able to live in an on-going ecstatic state of rapturous, ineffable and sacred bliss. All told, for eleven years I lived in the Altered State Of Consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ – night and day for eleven years means I have intimate knowledge – thus I had plenty of time to examine all its nooks and crannies ... and I found much that was murky and dirty lurking around in the outer darkness. Whereas ‘Me’, at the centre of ‘Being’, was dazzling. 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: 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. RESPONDENT: What I’ve previously said concerns the self, yet I’m also interested in discussing about the Self. In various religions this is, paradoxically, with all their interest in God, a taboo topic. As I’ve already said in my previous emails, the experience I’ve had was not of my Self, but of another person’s Self, a female. The Self I’ve experienced is a very old archetype, resembling somehow a printing press, a matrix, it looked like a 1000 years old child, very powerful yet very vulnerable. Its being consists of light, thus enabling the Self to be present everywhere and anytime. It’s a wonderful, beautiful Being, impossible to comprehend by pure intellectual reasoning, let alone described by words. It has to be lived in order to be known. RICHARD: There was a period during my eleven years of being in the enlightened phase (in my sixth year) whereupon what I called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Eventually I was able to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and was able to see ‘Her’ other face: It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine RESPONDENT: The state in which you’re able to know your Self is a state in which you are blown up through space and time, becoming everything. You are thus able to understand the world objectively, as you know the substance out of which every single thing is made. My greatest surprise was to discover that the Whole of humanity is literally dead, and that the universe is alive and intelligent, humans retrieving themselves in an illusory, false refuge they call world. What followed after was Respondent taking that experience and using for its own purpose, which is what usually happens in the spiritual world of teachers and followers. You have to trust my word that what I’ve lived it’s nothing short than heaven. One reason for me in partaking to this discussing list is that I want to know if that was an illusory heaven. RICHARD: To put is succinctly: yes (as is all which you describe here). RESPONDENT: I invite all of you who have had a Self experience to try describing it. RICHARD: Sure ... there was only The Absolute (the Self by whatever name) and nothing else existed. RESPONDENT: I question if actual freedom from Human Condition is attainable without surpassing the last psychic Archetype, the Self, our Creator, out of which everything has begun? RICHARD: My experience is that an actual freedom is attainable by going beyond spiritual enlightenment ... however I do not advise going that route (via enlightenment) as it is too traumatic. Also it is just plain silly. RESPONDENT: And if that so, the enlightenment ratio being 1/1.000.000 what would it be the AF ratio of success? RICHARD: As it is exceedingly difficult to live in the massive delusion that spiritual enlightenment is I would easily estimate that the ratio would be much less for those that would go directly. Much, much less. RESPONDENT: Could it be that only the one who knows God may be called an atheist? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Another thing I want to mention is that the state described by Richard (I’m not yet sure if actual or virtual freedom :)) is very similar in its characteristics with the intermediate state between the normal condition of mankind and the Self state of affairs. RICHARD: Then I suggest that you re-read my descriptions ... I make it perfectly clear that an actual freedom is beyond
‘the Self state of affairs’ (and not before). For just one example: RESPONDENT: I can say that as I’ve pass through this before enlightenment took place. RICHARD: It is often the case that a PCE can devolve into the altered state of consciousness (ASC) known as spiritual enlightenment – such is the power of identity sweeping back in – and it is not uncommon to then self-centredly take the ASC as being superior to the PCE. The ASC is exceptionally self-centred (it is sometimes expressed as ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) ... just look at your own words (further above):
Need I say more? RESPONDENT: Did you see or listen to K as a ‘mirror’? RICHARD: No ... I had already been living the enlightened state, night and day, for about six months before I first heard of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. To explain: I have never followed anyone; I have never been part of any religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical group; I have never done any disciplines, practices or exercises at all; I have never done any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any praying, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities; nor did I endlessly analyse my childhood for ever and a day; nor did I do never-ending therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... and again and again. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning. I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough, into what I called an ‘Absolute Freedom’ via the death of the ‘ego’, in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I examined all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such experience and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong. I found out where it had been going wrong over an eleven year period ... self-aggrandisement is so seductive. RICHARD: There is a wealth of information in many books written by differing peoples from all walks of life who were in contact with Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti at various stages throughout the 60+ years that he travelled about speaking of the matters discussed on this list ... No. 33 is one of those people who had direct personal contact (in his case whilst being at the Rishi Valley school) and as such his report would not, at the very least, be dismissed out of hand by any thoughtful person as being merely an ‘interpretation’. RESPONDENT: No. 33’s interpretations were not ‘dismissed out of hand’, but were dismissed after viewing his many contradictory posting assessments. RICHARD: I have read No. 33’s posts for maybe four years now – and when the original archives were on-line I backtracked through to the beginning to find out what had already been published – and I took notice of the general thrust of what he put forward regarding Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and the ‘Teachings’ over the many years that he has been writing. I found that, by and large, he was reasonably consistent (given that it is touchy subject to question and that he received very little support and/or encouragement) and that it is to his credit that he still persists. It is such an obvious thing to do, to establish whether the speaker is living the ‘Teachings’ he promulgates, that I wonder why there is so much opposition to doing so. RESPONDENT: And I wonder why there is so much obsession with proving that K did not live what he preached. RICHARD: It is not an ‘obsession’ ... it is a simple, straightforward and obvious case of ascertaining whether the enlightened state is a worthwhile state to live in or not. RESPONDENT: I wonder what is the agenda in wanting to promulgate that concern. RICHARD: My agenda is quite clear and unambiguous: spiritual enlightenment has been proposed by many peoples throughout human history as being the solution to all the ills of humankind – not just by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – and as it does not release the enlightened person from anger or anguish in toto it is therefore not worthwhile pursuing. I found the following observation to be quite explicit:
There are many examples of saints and sages and seers displaying varying degrees of those emotions I usually group under the ‘catch-all’ words malice and sorrow. Most commonly they were subject to anger and anguish (often disguised/designated as being ‘Divine Anger’ and ‘Divine Sorrow’ by themselves and their devotees/followers/readers). RESPONDENT: It would seem to me that one have to ask the man point blank to know for sure what is was speaking from. RICHARD: Well, as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is dead that is not an option but you could try asking No. 10 ... here is what he had to say, on this very mailing list some time ago, on the subject of experiencing anguish:
RESPONDENT: Lively exchanges can certainly be misinterpreted. RICHARD: True ... but they can also be seen accurately too. RESPONDENT: Therefore, it is very possible that No. 33 cannot objectively tell the difference between ‘lively intensity’ and ‘anger’. RICHARD: Yet it is equally very possible that he can objectively tell the difference ... he certainly knew what the
appropriate questions to ask No. 10 were. RESPONDENT: You seem very intellectually, or ego driven. RICHARD: I can assure you, for whatever that assurance is worth, that there is no ‘ego’ driving what I write. All that I write comes out of my direct experiencing sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul ... plus I do not make the mistake of linking intellect with ego. Intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. RESPONDENT: As you know, I define intellect as that barrier to Enlightenment which initiates when subject separates itself from object. RICHARD: Yes, I am well aware that you have explained this to me before ... and I responded appropriately in my last post to you. The ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons – intelligence – is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals ... thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being. I am not a proponent of that ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ adage so prevalent in spirituality and mysticality
... it is not helpful to ‘leave your mind at the door; surrender your will; and trust your feelings’ if one wishes to live in a way that is
neither individually insalubrious nor communally reprehensible. RESPONDENT: I wonder why anyone would ‘want’ to feel they have exceeded the understanding of such a one as Buddha or Christ? RICHARD: Why would anyone want to merely ‘feel’ that have done anything correctly or incorrectly ... let alone exceeding Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s or Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene’ ‘understanding’ ? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... why feelings should be given the honour of being the final arbiter in any issue speaks volumes about the human condition and indicates why people are unable to directly address the issue under question, which is: why do human beings suffer? RESPONDENT: Actually feelings are totally accurate, when felt without the interpretation of your intellect. People suffer because they have egos and are reactive and are ignorant of their higher selves, that self that is telepathic and beyond the material plane incarnation. RICHARD: Just as in a previous post you proposed that ‘ideas’ were subject to ‘interpretation’ only in a person with ‘separated awareness’ you are now putting forward that ‘feelings are totally accurate when felt without the interpretation of the intellect’ ... are you not insinuating an infallibility for ‘Spiritual Enlightenment once again? Since the advent of audio-taped and video-taped discourses, has there been any ‘Enlightened Being’ who has been demonstrably infallible? RESPONDENT: I’ve met some towering folks myself in my time and none of those would dare assert their superiority. RICHARD: Yet is it not stunningly clear, to the discerning observer, that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have squandered their heyday? With this modern era’s rapid and comprehensive publication and communications network, none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice. Anyone who is at all astute will have perceived that they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity. RESPONDENT: Enlightened beings are beyond unenlightened judgement. RICHARD: If I may point out? This stock-standard ‘master’s reply’ simply does not work on me: I experientially detected the facticity of the hypocrisy in spiritual freedom all those years ago. ... and anyway, ‘unenlightened judgement’ also shows they have indeed fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment means freedom from ignorance. You become one with God’s creation. RICHARD: If I may remind you? I already am aware of this (as I am already aware of all of your other non-responsive-to-the-issue replies in this post) due to eleven years of experiential living of enlightenment. You are not addressing the issues at all ... what has this reply have to do with intelligently responding to ‘none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice ... they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity’ ? Does ‘you become one with God’s creation’ mean that ‘God’ falls short of ‘God’s own standards ... and thus fails to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity? Because, as there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, you seem to be indicating that the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is. * RICHARD: And for as long as you continue to see me in terms of ‘awakening’ or ‘realisation’ or ‘enlightenment’ or any other name for the ‘Tried and True’ you would be wasting your time ... there is no ‘being’ lurking around inside this flesh and blood body to put through the hoops. RESPONDENT: Okay, but there certainly seems to be someone in there. RICHARD: This ‘there certainly seems to be someone in there’ phrasing indicates that there may very well be
a psychological and/or psychic entity still inhabiting the body that is writing these words to me. Hence you presumably have no alternative but to
see in what I write ‘someone in there’ ... which process, if this is what is happening, is called egocentricity (viewing another through
one’s own feelings and/or standards) * RICHARD: For example: an awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ personally checked me out face-to-face some years ago ... and made me the subject of the nightly discourse, warning the faithful followers that Richard is an example of the dangers on the spiritual path. To wit: Richard is insane. RESPONDENT: I think we may have touched on something here. This is an unbearably cruel thing to do to anyone. Although the false self must be shattered, this in not the way to do it. RICHARD: Oh, it was not ‘an unbearably cruel thing’ at all ... I had a thoroughly pleasant time explaining my experience (just as I do here). It was, as always, great fun ... at least for me, anyway (I cannot answer for the awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ of course). RESPONDENT: In my opinion. I’m really sorry your had to go thru this experience, it seems you may be still angry about this? RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... I have these nonsensical character analyses gratuitously given to me on an almost daily basis. It is this simple: there is no way I can politely say ‘everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction’ without someone getting their nose out of joint. It is all par for the course. RESPONDENT: If I might ask, were you following this teacher at the time, were you part of a group? RICHARD: You may have missed my answer to your question about having a teacher or guru in a previous post wherein I explained how I came to be here where I am today. Just so that there is no further misunderstanding I will make my experience crystal clear:
RESPONDENT: And also if you don’t mind, who was this teacher? RICHARD: Why is it important to know who this awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ was? It could be anybody of mystical persuasion ... they are all saying the same-same esoteric thing, fundamentally. Please, it is the outcome of the conversation, which I was describing in my previous E-Mail, that is important ... rather than have this discussion devolving into an exercise in disparaging a particular person. I like my fellow human beings ... no matter what mischief they get up to. It is the phenomenon of ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ that I am talking about ... not the person per se. RESPONDENT: Or were you just checking yourself out? Like Kenny Rogers, ‘just checking in to see what condition your condition is in?’ RICHARD: No, I have no need to ‘check myself out’ ... I was simply discussing spiritual enlightenment and my experience 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 with a fellow human being. This awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ took my explanation of myself, and my description of going beyond enlightenment, to be an indication of insanity ... let me re-present the point I am making: [Richard]: ‘as the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people (regular society) 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 would ‘test’ another lunatic and declare him to be insane (thereby implying that the ‘tester’ is not). I find the entire situation hilarious. RESPONDENT: I post to other forums and just yesterday someone was talking about ‘normal’ people as being insane and I said that was too severe a summation. Deluded would be accurate. I believe in accuracy. RICHARD: Oh, normal people are sane alright (it is they who make the definition when it is all said and done). I have not been sane for years ... I was making the point that the Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) called spiritual enlightenment is an institutionalised insanity where I wrote: ‘conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them’. Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: Awakening is the beginning ... the goal of total enlightenment only happens (I believe) when we lose all desires. RICHARD: Okay ... but does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is? Is the ‘loss of all desires’ (including the desire for peace-on-earth) the factor that precludes amorality from happening in ‘total enlightenment’? RESPONDENT: Awakening is the BEGINNING. Enlightenment is the ultimate goal – the final state of being. In Enlightenment there can be no more desires, no more teaching, no desire for world peace – just nothing. Ultimate Enlightenment is realising that none of this is happening. It is all a dream. You and I do not exist. We are just a lower form of reality – like a dream. It doesn’t matter what happens in a dream – in the end the dream is over and none of it matters. Who cares if is was a nightmare? It was not real. Even though it seemed to be real at the time. You see there is a DILEMMA within awakening. I’ll talk about myself because I cannot talk for others – I do not know their experience. AWAKENING, for me, is knowing that this is a dream – My Dream, God’s Dream. He (or what I REALLY am) is the DOER. Just like in a dream the dreamer (asleep on the bed) is the real doer. There is only one dreamer (doer) but there may be many people in the dream. The dream people are not real. It is the same here. You do not exist even though you appear to. It is all a game – the game of maya – the play of God. God playing his own game with himself. Only he cannot play the game unless he becomes many – creation is God becoming many. God is SIMULTANEOUSLY separate from the creation and playing the game. BOTH are true. The Dreamer is really asleep on the bed but he is also engaged in the dream. Now morality and amorality takes on a new light. The question of morality only exists in duality – where there is more than one. But in REALITY there is ONLY ONE ... there is ONLY GOD, there is ONLY YOU. So, the question of morality disappears. There are no other being alive – they are just a dream. In an existence where there is ONLY ONE PERSON – no morality exists. Further, nothing happens – there is no time or space. Now ULTIMATE ENLIGHTENMENT is KNOWING this. So then, when you teach – WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO AWAKEN? There is ONLY YOU. It is all different forms of YOU. Once YOU are awake it is over ... no more teaching, no more desires, just nothingness or everythingness. RICHARD: Hmm ... this is solipsism RESPONDENT: Something just occurred to me. Maybe, just maybe, the ultimate enlightenment cannot happen until everyone awakens; maybe that is why the awakened ones try to awaken others. Because I have heard it said that it is an on-going journey ... maybe it ends when everyone becomes enlightened. Just a thought. RICHARD: Are you saying that peace-on-earth is not possible until every single man, woman and child becomes enlightened? RESPONDENT: Well now, I guess I have opened a can of worms ... anyone care to examine them? RICHARD: I am always happy to explore all issues relating to life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are ... but at this point I only want to keep asking the $64,000 question until I get an answer: Does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever
name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is? RESPONDENT: It seems, from my understanding, that ‘enlightenment’ has to do with freeing the awareness from being bound to the body ... RICHARD: Yes ... you are understanding enlightenment correctly (in enlightenment consciousness is seen as being the source of matter and had become entangled in its own creation). RESPONDENT: ... and that with the awakening of awareness, telepathy starts to develop ... RICHARD: Yes ... prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination
RESPONDENT: ... and the habitual self-referencing ends. RICHARD: Yes ... and when the personal self-referencing ends the impersonal Self-Referencing begins (‘I am God’ or ‘I am That’ and so on). RESPONDENT: Awareness is now free to experience itself ‘as’ reality, rather than separated from it. RICHARD: Yes ... there is an all-encompassing loving and compassionate total oneness (an utter ‘Aloneness’) being all that is, was, and ever will be (‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) in enlightenment. As an aid to understanding why my experience differs, it is important to comprehend that the entire psyche has ceased to exist ... the affective faculty (emotions, passions, calenture) and its epiphenomenal psychic facility (intuition, imagination, visualisation) was extirpated when the instinctual passions (complete with the primal animal self) ceased to exist. Which is why it is all so simple in this actual world. RESPONDENT: Please keep it simple, I am trying to fathom your posts. Of course your account of your adventures make fascinating reading and contemplation. Ramana Maharshi adopted a similar approach (forgive me). He proceeded to enquire ‘Who am I’ starting from the human body and further on. I am not clear about the second ‘I’ you mentioned. RICHARD: When one sees – as an actuality – that enlightenment itself is a delusion born out of the illusion of everyday reality, then something very curious happens. This second ‘I’ dies also. Then any identity whatsoever becomes extirpated, extinguished, eliminated, annihilated ... in other words: extinct. Speaking personally, there is no ‘being’ ... no ‘presence’ at all. There is simply this flesh and blood body bereft of any identity whatsoever. Now, there is peace-on-earth ... it exists in the actual world. There can never be peace in the real world. The reality of the real world is an illusion. The Reality of the Mystical World is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. RESPONDENT: Although teachers pointing to the truth have been around, not many are interested in hearing what they say. This lack of interest is not the fault of teachers. We have no interest in exposing our misconceptions to the light of truth and escape in any way possible. RICHARD: No way do I buy this ... philosophical wisdom, psychological knowledge and spiritual enlightenment have had their day and are proving themselves to be inadequate to meet the requirements of this modern era. For thousands of years – maybe tens of thousands of years – humankind has known of no alternative manner of living life on this verdant planet. The passing parade of philosophers and preachers, masters and sages – geniuses and thinkers of all description – have failed abysmally to deliver their oft-promised ‘Peace On Earth’. RESPONDENT: If they themselves are at Peace, they have failed not. The only success is what one accomplishes for themselves. RICHARD: So you advocate arrant selfishness? Is this why they gather disciples by the multitude ... who they know will
slaughter disciples of other Masters and Sages? RICHARD: To become spiritually free the ego-self (‘I’ as ego) must die/dissolve ... RESPONDENT: So many gurus say that ... yes? RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings say this ... yes (for this is the very point I am establishing as a basis for the remainder of my explanation). * RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions). RESPONDENT: Who would you recognise as enlightened? RICHARD: To give but three persons from the last 100 or so years as an example:
RESPONDENT: Is enlightenment a more useful or evolved place to be than pre-enlightenment? RICHARD: No, to be enlightened is to be anti-life ... peace-on-earth is scornfully discarded so as to secure a vainglorious after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. In other words: selfish immortality. RESPONDENT: Richard, is enlightenment a thing at all? RICHARD: It is certainly possible to be enlightened ... therefore it is ‘a thing’ inasmuch as an altered state of consciousness can and does happen, but it is not actual. RESPONDENT: Is it a biological condition, a belief? RICHARD: It is ‘a biological condition’ as enlightenment occurs in the psyche and the psyche is born of the
genetically inherited instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) ... which passions are indisputably biological.
Likewise is ‘a belief’ biological as the activity of believing per se – along with imagining, intuiting, visualising, conceptualising,
trusting, hoping, having faith and so forth – also occur in the psyche (all of which can give rise to epiphenomenon such as prescience,
clairvoyance, telepathy, divination RESPONDENT: Does it exist? RICHARD: It does ‘exist’ as a metaphysical ‘Reality’ in the psyche but it is not actual (actual as in the sensate 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). It is a delusion born out of the illusion of the ‘real-world’ reality – everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses – which is why only .000001 of the population have ever become enlightened. It is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination full-time. 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.
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Part Three) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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