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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Affective Feelings(Emotions, Passions, Calentures)
RESPONDENT: Now I have some questions for you. ‘Why you want to be happy and harmless? RICHARD: As I do not want to be happy and harmless I cannot answer your question ... I have been here, in the perfection of this actual world, all along simply having a ball. In other words: it was the identity within who desired happiness and harmlessness ... and ‘he’ desired it like ‘he’ had never desired anything before. RESPONDENT: Is this not a desire? RICHARD: It was for the identity within ... ‘twas the mother of all desires, in fact. RESPONDENT: But you said you have not desires. RICHARD: I have indeed said that ... and I will say it again: I have no desires whatsoever. RESPONDENT: ‘You say you had a nice day and tomorrow you will have another one. RICHARD: What I have actually said is that I have had a perfect day – and that tomorrow will be another perfect day – and copy-pasting the words ‘nice day’ into the search engine and sending it through all the words I have ever written brought up only one hit. Vis.:
RESPONDENT: How do you know it was a nice day if you had no feelings? RICHARD: The direct experience of perfection informs of a perfect day: in the (above) context the ‘nice day’ is being sensately experienced ... and not affectively. RESPONDENT: ‘If you don’t have I or being then who knows it? RICHARD: Not ‘who’ knows it ... what knows it: this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware knows it. * RESPONDENT: There exist people that suffer from anhedonia. Is a fact. Does the brain of these people are different from yours as you operate now? RICHARD: First of all, anhedonia is usually defined as the inability to affectively feel pleasure (from the Greek ‘an-’
[‘without’] plus the Greek ‘hedone’ [‘pleasure’] which is akin to Greek ‘hedys’ [‘sweet’] from the Latin ‘suavis’) and what
is usually overlooked is the inability to affectively feel pain ... as in the pleasure/pain principle so often mentioned in mystical texts It has nothing to do with physical pleasure/pain. Second, usually anhedonia is a central feature of a psychotic disorder ... for example:
Third, from the descriptions I have heard and read it is a psychiatric condition for them ... and not a liberating condition. You may find what Ms. Kristina Luna has to report at the following URL illuminating in this regard: http://juns.nursing.arizona.edu/articles/Fall%202002/luna_anhedonia.htm Here is the abstract, summary, and conclusion, of that article:
As [quote] ‘the aetiology of anhedonia is still unknown’ [endquote] and anhedonia is [quote] ‘little understood by many in the psychiatric field’ [endquote] I cannot answer your query as to how the brain of those people operates differently from the brain in this skull other than to say that it appears to be a psychological condition and not a physiological condition (given that therapy can reverse the process somewhat). RESPONDENT: I mean what is the difference of these patients and you? RICHARD: In a nutshell: they are not free from the human condition ... they are more deeply entangled than the norm, in fact. RESPONDENT: You said that you felt a brain change. RICHARD: More specifically: I said that there was a physical sensation in the brain-stem (at the base of the brain/nape of the neck). RESPONDENT: Did you ever thought that you might altered your brain? RICHARD: No ... all the activity occurred in the brain-stem. RESPONDENT: Please don’t take anything personal, we are discussing. RICHARD: As there is no personality in situ to ‘take anything personal’ that can never happen ... and I have no problem at all about being quizzed anyway as anybody stating that they have the solution to all the ills of humankind can expect to be examined rigorously. And, given all the snake-oil salespeople throughout human history, rightfully so. RESPONDENT: When asking myself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ what should I observe? Thought – there is approximately one thought rising every second – 80,000 seconds in a day equals 80,000 thoughts a day. Therefore every time I ask ‘how am I experiencing this moment’ answer should 99% of time be ‘I am thinking something’. RICHARD: Although ‘approximately one thought rising every second’ may sound like a lot when multiplied by 80,000 it pales into insignificance compared with sensation ... I recall reading an article many years ago that somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 sensations happen every second. But I will leave it to you to do the maths. RESPONDENT: Feelings – There are countless sensations going on though out the body at any one time, some are more intense than others. RICHARD: Do you find it illuminating that, although you acknowledged the preponderance of sensation, your ‘approximately one thought rising every second’ observation took precedence over your ‘countless sensations at any one time’ observation when coming to your ‘99% of time’ conclusion about thinking? RESPONDENT: Emotion – what is emotion? RICHARD: Basically it is an instinctual survival package (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) genetically endowed at conception ... there are many cultivated derivations, of course, refined over the years by socialisation. RESPONDENT: Isn’t it just a intense thought? RICHARD: No ... infants feel long before they think. RICHARD: To blur the distinction between the thinker and the feeler is to lose the plot altogether as the feeler only comes into full being when the thinker is not ... the advice ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ is well-nigh ubiquitous among spiritualists and their ilk. RESPONDENT: ‘Get out of your head and into your heart’ obviously can mean different things to different people. But most would agree its a reference to how consciousness is being structured. Many people perceive the world as if that which is looking is centred in or behind the head area. The energy that looks is being channelled that way. As thought quiets down, there is a sinking from the head area into the heart centre so that looking seems to be channelled from there. The division of thinker from thought is absent. There may be a sense of union or non-separation where the lover and the beloved are one. RICHARD: Which is indicative of the feeler having come into full being ... as in no longer ‘me’ feeling the feeling, but the being of the very feeling itself (hence ‘being’ as in no longer ‘becoming’). RESPONDENT: As identifications below the level of conscious thought are exposed and fall away, there is a sense of attention sinking into the centre of the body or the mid-section so that observation stems from there. RICHARD: Yes, the advice ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ is but a generic term as, for just one example, the Japanese use of the word ‘hara’ or ‘hari’ (which translates as ‘belly’) serves to locate the centre of attention, the core of ‘being’ itself, more precisely as being four finger-widths below the navel ... the everyday English equivalent would be the common expression ‘gut-feeling’ (when referring to an intuitive hunch). Another way of saying it is that there are the more superficial feelings (emotional) and that there are the deeper feelings
(passionate) and that the emotions are what one has and that the passions are who one is. RESPONDENT: Ok, I think I understand what you are saying: The instinctual passions are genetically inherited and have a perception of self which becomes the feeling of self. RICHARD: No, the genetically-inherited instinctual passions do not have a perception of self ... what they do is usurp the sensate perception of self and create the feeling of ‘self’. RESPONDENT: Ok then, there is a sensate perception of self (consciousness?) which is usurped (seized/used) by the instinctual passions to create the feeling of ‘self’ and it is this feeling of self which is illusion. RICHARD: Yes, another way of putting it is to say that the sensate perception of body (and other) – which perception is generally called consciousness of self and other – is appropriated (taken over, commandeered, expropriated, annexed, arrogated) by the affective faculty ... wherein the illusory feeling of ‘self’ (and ‘other’) is created. The structural mechanics which this process uses is evidenced in the laboratory studies, by people such as Mr. Joseph LeDoux, whereupon it has been empirically demonstrated that the sensory signal gets to the affective faculty twice as fast as it gets to the cognitive faculty (in 12-14 milliseconds as contrasted to 24-26 milliseconds). Furthermore, the affective faculty imbues the cognitive faculty with its affective response, via a broadband shortcut, before the initial signal arrives there ... thus colouring the cognitive response affectively. ‘Tis no wonder that the affective feelings – the emotions and passions and calentures – reign supreme. * RESPONDENT: It is the feeling of self (‘me’/soul/core) which is illusory which gives rise to the ‘I’/ego or thinker. In other words, the instinctual passions are genetically inherited and they give rise to the illusion of the ‘me’ and the ‘I’. RICHARD: Exactly, and what is vital to comprehend is that the feeler is primary and the thinker is secondary ... and that the thinker is but the tip of the iceberg. RESPONDENT: Yes, I can verify that the feeler is primary from my own experience. It seems as if the feeler is controlling the thinker. That is not generally accepted on this list but I do see and experience it that way. RICHARD: Good ... I am pleased that this is obvious as it makes investigation so much easier and distraction into flights of fancy much less likely. * RICHARD: I kid you not ... the feeler automatically creates its own feeling reality, usurping sensate actuality as already explained, which reality is so all-pervasive that it is only in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that this actual world becomes apparent. RESPONDENT: Yes, this is understandable. RICHARD: There is an opportunity, each moment again, to experience pure consciousness – if one misses it this time around there is always another opportunity – and asking oneself how one is experiencing this moment of being alive expedites the possibility by eliciting exquisite attention to this moment. After all ... this moment of being alive is the only time one is alive. * RESPONDENT: Are you saying then that in order to eliminate the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ that the instinctual passions themselves have to be eliminated ... RICHARD: No ... and the reason why not is this simple: who would be doing the eliminating of the instinctual passions? As ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ it is an impossibility because the result of trying to do so would be a stripped-down rudimentary animal ‘self’ (seemingly) divested of feelings ... somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly known as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ and so on – and has repressed the others. RESPONDENT: ... and in order to do that the layers of the ‘I’ and ‘me’ have to be peeled back in order to uncover the raw instinctual passions? RICHARD: In the end, only altruistic ‘self’-immolation, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body, will release the flesh and blood body from its parasitical resident and, as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, the end of ‘me’ is the end of ‘my’ feelings (aka the instinctual passions and all their cultivated derivations). RESPONDENT: Isn’t it the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ investigating itself which brings one to the point of self-immolation and isn’t it the ‘I’/‘me’ that makes the decision to self-immolate? RICHARD: Yes ... only ‘I’ can do it as it is all in ‘my’ hands and nobody else’s hands (nor is it in the hands of any god or goddess either, of course, despite some popular postulations to the contrary). RESPONDENT: You said above that the ‘I’/‘me’ cannot eliminate the instinctual passions but then you next said that the body is released from them by self- immolation. I am just trying to get a clear picture of it. RICHARD: Okay ... I was just making the point that, although it is hypothetically correct that the elimination of the instinctual passions would be the elimination of ‘I’/‘me’, it does not work that way in practice (for reasons such as already explained further above). Not only is it dangerous it is an impossibility ... only altruistic ‘self’-immolation will do the trick. Which is why I advise minimising both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings and maximising the felicitous feelings – as far as humanly possible – as a salubrious modus operandi in the meanwhile rather than trying to eliminate them. Not only does this approach have the immediate benefit of feeling happy and harmless as one goes about one’s normal everyday life but it has the ultimate benefit of assisting in the rewiring of the brain’s habitual circuitry before the once-in-a-lifetime event happens which wipes out the identity in toto. To be more specific: what the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about is a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). To be even more specific: delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the pure consciousness experience, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive now. Then one is no longer intuitively making sense of life ... the delicious wonder of it all drives any such instinctive meaning away. Such luscious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté – the nourishing of which is essential if fascination in it all is to occur – and the charm of life itself easily engages dedication to peace-on-earth. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and one is the experiencing of what is happening. But refrain from possessing it and making it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. RESPONDENT: Richard, I’m considering seriously what you say about emotions (...) I’m observing very primitive emotions I was not so aware, a corporal sentiment, very holding, of imminence of death, of being attacked, of being led alone in a strange world, fears and shaking feelings of a very particular nature, a kind of more infantine emotions of insecurity, of weakness, of abandon and so. I can’t define them too much exactly for the moment, I’ll keep on observing. What I observe is that they are very corporal, very immediate, rapid and total, the whole body is shaken as in its roots, in the inside of bones, veins, articulations, skull, and so, they are not superficial emotions, more or less vaporous or soft. Also I observe that from these emotions, a curious sensation arises in all the body and brain, it’s a sensation that expands, extends a kind of calm, warm, well-being, lightening, comfort. I begin to appreciate that this holding, primitive, immediate, emotions, fears of do not survive, search of protection, of reassurance, can easily, gently reconvert themselves in a crescent state of well-being in the body, in some way similar to an arising drunkenness. With this general well-being also is an inherent impression of knowledge, of wisdom, of a consciousness expanded, powerful, clear, calmed. All the whole sensation of expansion, and the expansion of my consciousness, with a sense of being very myself, my real and own me, finding finally myself, strongly in me, led alone with me, holding myself, the me of myself that I feel denied. I’ve experience a bit enough before, momentarily a crescendo of the impression of being in touch with my very me, in rest with me, accepting, glorifying me, momentarily an alteration of my perceptivity, an impression of a brain expanding, being transparent, clarifying, calming, understanding, a certain exaltation of affectivity, of expressiveness, as when one is drunk, play, or is in the intimacy. I’ve in part desired this expansion and security, this glorifying, this encounter, and in part abandoned this expansion passed a little time. First this expansion usually consumes itself in a court time, secondly, I’ve noticed an obvious effort in the ground of the expansion to maintain it, to construct it. This effort seemed to me subtly exhausting, obscure and doubtful. As I was alert about the possible obscurity of these expansions, I’ve never searched to repeat them voluntarily or systematically, I could have done it, because I’ve noticed some tricks and resources to induce them, mainly associated with meditation practices. Also I’ve avoided this kind of affective expansion, where I felt obligated and pushed to hug everyone in the world as an intimate. Passed this moments of affectation, I’ve always felt shame, equally as a drunk feels shame of his uncontrolled acts the night before. Even this affective expansion was a goal for me, because I supposed that I had to be loving and wonderful, and this expansion itself felt in some way well, in opposition with the normal constriction of my affects and expression, immediately, passed the euphoria, I suddenly felt shame, a feeling of retraction. And also, paradoxically this retraction creates a conflict in me, because I was continuing to suppose I had to be indiscriminately loving, expressive. Passed some time, I’ve definitively avoided this search and urge of demonstrating affects, as even repulsive. In these affective expansions, also was this touch with what I realised as my very intimate me. This I liked maybe the most, because I felt me, recovering me, entering in me, as otherwise I felt always not being my real me, being constricted. This impression of being in touch with me, was rooted, established by a simultaneous general sensation in and all around the body, of a sort of light weight, that seems extraordinarily saturated, secure, autonomous and absolute, this absoluteness enhancing also an impression of absolutising my understanding. Something similar I’ve experienced in orgasm, but in this case the experiences were of two type, of affirming, or of annihilation, with feelings of disaster, going out, very distantly. Curiously, because surely of my self-castigation, the annihilation experiences tend to keep on hardly, and ... Now, as I re-elaborate my understanding of these experiences, listening to your own elaboration about altered states of consciousness, and considering the presence of emotions, I begin to recognize more clearly, that in these experiences is the ground of primary emotions that operates. These primary fears and needs give us a definitive and powerful sense of being ourselves, I’m attacked, I’m in need. Unconsciously, unnoticed, depending in some junctures, mainly choking or overpowering, these emotions gently transform in an opposite apparent calm and expansion, with a sense of me completely sure and complete. For this expansion the world, the people on it, must be left aside, ignored, declined, killed. This creates an opportunity for the construction of an inner calm, a calm in nowhere, killing the world I attain to affirm me, in a glorification. Although I was so attached to this incipient glorified me, I’m realising it is purely an image reproduced and exalted, that I catch and reaffirm as if I were reaffirming me actually. I thought I can’t reaffirm me actually, in an actual body and in an actual world, so I aspire to reaffirm me innerly, far behind letting the world. I see more clearly, in your terms, this expansion experiences as a dissociation. And what impress me the most is the extremely corporal nature of this process, because there are these primitive and extra-rooted in the body emotions, that are sliding from the world. This immediate and suffocating emotiveness gifts an immediate and irrevocable feeling of self-ness, that can be glorified, or at less dignified. Yes, I’m completely alone and well in a perfect bubble, I am well, all the rest must be denied, don’t interest me anymore … . All this is a game of emotions, that we can’t deal better in their chocking and urging nature. I observe also in me that the norm about my emotions is to pretend they are not here, but these emotions condition me completely, instant by instant. They affect the way I relation myself, the way I perceive, the way I think. They are there all time, scraping, bothering, making interpretations of all that it’s given. Even if I’m habituated, constructed for eluding this mordent sentiments, or for time to time discharging them, they continue to be a swarm, a constant incommodity and conditioning. I realise this emotional ground more clearly. I’m pushed to observe it, how it really feels, and eventually to see if there is a different operation of these emotions. I’m very curious and expectant to observe this movement of emotions in my own observation, or awareness as you use. What will happens? Can maybe emotions calm without a distancing from the world? The temptation, the known road is always to search apparent, momentary calm, refuge, in the distance. Can I get affirmation in the real, tangible world? Or better, can I feel no insecure in the real world, so that, the unnecessary weight of a strong me will be seen as illusory? In confidence I really don’t have to be, to protect and reinforce me, in confidence the less I am, the more can the joyous world be. RICHARD: You talk about the primitive emotions – which are indeed ‘not superficial emotions’ – and it is pertinent to realise that all sentient beings are born with certain basic passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) which are blind nature’s way of ensuring survival at a very elemental level ... they are sometimes known as the survival passions. These survival passions are not the creation of thought, although thought can trigger them off, nor are they the creation of the senses, although sense impressions can set them going, as they are innate or pre-existing passions. You also talked of touching upon your very intimate ‘me’ ... and I appreciate that you were able to see that a consciousness expanded and glorified – in what you describe as ‘a certain exaltation of affectivity’ – requires and/or results in a disassociation from the world of people, things and events. You ask: ‘Can maybe emotions calm without a distancing from the world?’ I always found that coming to one’s senses – both literally and metaphorically – and being just here in physical space right now in physical time as this flesh and blood body does the trick. I can put it this way: what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body. This identity (‘I’/‘me’) is forever cut-off from the actual ... from the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: Richard, would you mind commenting on your usage of the word ‘pathetic?’ In some contexts, it’s quite clear that you are using the word ‘pathetic’ as synonymous with ‘puny’, ‘tiny’, or even almost scornful. You remarked to me once how fantasy movies remind you of how ‘pathetic’ life is in the ‘real’ world. You also have described ‘real world’ interest in art and music as ‘pathetic’. I read you as saying they are ‘pathetic’ in the sense of ‘marked by sorrow’, or by ‘pathos’. Also there seems to be a comparison with life in the ‘real’ world compared to life in the actual world. Do you see that it could be difficult for one in the ‘real’ world to see their life as ‘pathetic’ from within? Or their interest in music or art? I take it you aren’t trying to ‘scorn’ life in the ‘real’ world, rather point out that it’s ohhh soo much better in the actual world. RICHARD: Yes, life in the actual world is much, much better indeed ... and there is no way that I am being ‘almost scornful’ as the ability for derision/disdain/contempt is non-existent here in this actual world. As a rough estimate I would say that probably nine times out of ten I use the word ‘pathetic’ in the Oxford Dictionary meaning of ‘pertaining to the emotions’ (and passions) with its etymological ‘liable to suffer’ connotation ... for example:
What I am conveying by this usage looks like this when spelled out in full:
In keeping with my rough estimate, probably one time out of ten I use the word ‘pathetic’ in the Oxford Dictionary meaning of ‘miserably inadequate, feeble, useless (colloq.)’ ... for example:
What I am conveying by this usage could have been expressed this way:
As in regards to fantasy movies you must be referring to this exchange:
What I am conveying by this usage looks like this when spelled out in full:
As in regards to art and music you must be referring to this exchange:
What I am conveying by this usage looks like this when spelled out in full:
As for seeing that it could be difficult for one in the ‘real’ world to see their life as pathetic from within: from what I recall the entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago could see – albeit dimly – that ‘his’ existence was indeed pathetic (as in emotional and passional and liable to suffer) and that, therefore, it was indeed pathetic (as in either miserably inadequate, feeble or useless) ... and my conversations with various peoples these days show that mostly they too can see it (even if also somewhat dimly to start off with) although there are those who decline to acknowledge it for whatever reason. As for it being difficult for one in the ‘real’ world to see that their interest in music or art is pathetic: the people that I converse with in regards to this matter usually acknowledge fairly readily that most music tugs on the heart-strings, or in some way stirs the emotions and passions, so that one is liable to suffer – even if only a ‘sweet sorrow’ or a ‘gentle melancholy’ – or be liable to suffer from being filled with patriotism and pride, if it be martial music, and so on ... and that art in general (which includes not only the fine arts but the performing arts as well) can act upon them in similar ways. There is such a thing as aesthetic appreciation, of course, yet even there I recall that the entity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago could see that there was an affective component which coloured ‘his’ otherwise pure appreciation (as in unadulterated sensate delight) such that it persuaded ‘him’ to seek the actual and no longer be liable to suffer. As for your comment regarding comparison: whenever I discuss these matters with my fellow human beings there is indeed always a comparison with life in the ‘real’ world as contrasted to life in the actual world ... it is what I came onto the internet for. Just as a matter of interest ... here is the etymological root of the word:
RESPONDENT: Feels good, eh? :-) RICHARD: As I have no way of feeling whatever it is you are feeling you will have to feel it through to its hollow end all on your own. RESPONDENT: That is interesting. The absence of feeling is a kind of disorder because feeling is a natural and valuable feedback loop. RICHARD: The affective feelings are most certainly natural – as is the hot-blooded killing of one’s fellow human being – so much so that I make no secret of the fact that what I am reporting is indeed unnatural. For just one example:
Speaking from the on-going experiencing, for just on a decade now, of living life sans the ‘feedback loop’ you prize so highly I can unequivocally testify that operating and functioning in the everyday world of people, things and events freed of any and all instinctual passions and their cultivated derivations is inconceivably easy and efficacious ... and unimaginably superior to the primitive way human beings have had to operate and function as and by for millennia. But if you continue to see it as ‘a kind of disorder’ you will not be on your own ... there are others who also see it that way. RESPONDENT: When some people are confronted with horror, with overwhelming psychological trauma, they unconsciously cope by disconnecting. The intellect becomes isolated from the heart centre in some way. It may be that something happens to the brain. RICHARD: The psychiatric name for this which you describe is alexithymia. Vis.:
RESPONDENT: Have you seen the movie ‘The Deer Hunter’? There is a character who after being tortured as a prisoner is finally freed. But he no longer cares or feels anymore. He keeps playing Russian roulette for money until he loses the game. No doubt in excruciating conditions that can happen. RICHARD: I did see the movie, many years ago, but being a fictional work there is not much that I can recall of it ... other than it being a laboured and designed-to-shock capitalisation on a particular war’s notoriety, that is. RESPONDENT: I am not an expert in the area but one can see in oneself that an absence of feeling is almost always associated with avoidance or denial mechanisms. What we need is not to be unconscious of feelings but to be more aware of what we feel even when there is an aversion to what we see. RICHARD: There is something far, far better than what you are proposing ... psychologising has its place in the real-world but in the final analysis all psychologies are predicated upon being something like what might be described as ‘a well-adjusted ego balancing the conflicting demands of society and self’ and, as such, depend upon stabilising strategies, coping mechanisms, management techniques and the like (and it has been said, however truthfully, that the psychiatric profession has one of the highest suicides rates of all professions). In short: there are no solutions to be found in the real-world ... the only solution is dissolution. RESPONDENT: It is not possible to transcend what we deny or avoid. RICHARD: As transcendence involves sublimation that is a questionable point ... but, be that at is may, an actual freedom from the human condition is far, far better than the transcendence of it anyway. The pristine purity of this actual world is impeccable ... nothing ‘dirty’ can get in. RESPONDENT No. 42: Perhaps this exchange, too, will collapse in semantics. To my sense the words ‘observer’, ‘thinker’, ‘feeler’ (an ugly sound) describe the self. The presence of self prevents true observation, distorts right thinking, confuses true feeling. I don’t make as much of a distinction between thinking and feeling as you do, and I don’t think k and Bohm did. RICHARD: As far as I have been able to ascertain Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti did not use the term ‘the feeler’ (not that I have all his words in electronic form so as to conduct a thorough search) although he frequently used the terms ‘the thinker’, ‘the observer’, ‘the watcher’, ‘the experiencer’ and ‘the meditator’ ... and even if it turns out that he did I am most definitely not using ‘the feeler’ as being interchangeable with ‘the thinker’ as he does with ‘the observer’, ‘the watcher’, ‘the experiencer’ and ‘the meditator’. To blur the distinction between the thinker and the feeler is to lose the plot altogether as the feeler only comes into full being when the thinker is not ... the advice ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ is well-nigh ubiquitous among spiritualists and their ilk. RESPONDENT: As you find it ‘well-nigh ubiquitous’ amongst spiritualists, and you consider K to be a ‘spiritualist’, you may simply be reading this presumption into K. RICHARD: And what ‘presumption’ would that be? That he blurred the distinction between the thinker and the feeler? That he be a spiritualist or of that ilk? That he advised being the feelings (living from the heart) rather than being the thinking (living in the head)? First of all, that colloquialism (‘get out of your head and into your heart’) is something I have both heard and read time and again – and rarely, if ever, coming from materialists – which is what leads me to say ‘well-nigh ubiquitous among spiritualists and their ilk’ as, of course, I have not done a door-to-door survey of 6.0 billion people. As for blurring the distinction betwixt the thinker and the feeler: if it is so that he did not use the term ‘the feeler’ then that speaks for itself; if he did use it, yet did not differentiate it from ‘the thinker’ (as he did not with those other terms), then that also speaks for itself. As for being a spiritualist or of that ilk: he certainly was not a materialist; he spoke often of the ‘otherness’ (which he described as meaning ‘other than matter’); he spoke often of what it was to be truly religious; he declared that he had realised God or truth; he affirmed that what he was speaking of is enlightenment. As for living from the heart, rather than being in the head, the following quote may throw some light upon the matter:
Here are some more, although less explicit, in a similar vein:
RESPONDENT: Is there any textual support in any of K’s writings for saying that ‘the feeler only comes into full being when the thinker is not’? RICHARD: The words ‘the feeler only comes into full being when the thinker is not’ are my words, not his, about my discovery, not his, as a large part of the discussion, where you obtained the above exchange from, is about where my experiencing differs from his. RESPONDENT: K distinguished feeling and thinking ... RICHARD: Yes ... if by this you mean that he made it clear, for example, that thinking about ‘love’ was not the feeling of love. RESPONDENT: ... yet for K, the ‘thinker’ is not fundamentally different from the ‘feeler’, the ‘experiencer’, the ‘observer’. RICHARD: Yes, this is essentially what I am saying (further above). RESPONDENT: All these are different ways of speaking about the separate self. (I think this is what Respondent No. 42 is getting at). RICHARD: Indeed so, whereas I am making the point that there are two aspects to identity: the thinking self (‘I’ as ego or ego-self) and the feeling self (‘me’ as soul or soul-self) and ‘me’ as soul, which is ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, is ‘being’ itself ... and to be impersonalised ‘being’ itself (no longer ‘becoming’ or being an ego-self) is to be the enlightenment that is touted as being the peace which ego-bound peoples sorely need. Yet enlightened beings are still subject to anger and anguish, for example, as well as love and compassion. Hence my question a couple of e-mails back: if the thinking self can get such rigorous scrutiny as the mailing list gives it ... why not the feeling self? Is the feeling self sacrosanct? RICHARD: Where the feeler interferes with feeling big-time is upon transcendence ... which is where the negative feelings have been sublimated to such a degree that the positive feelings appear squeaky-clean (aka have no opposite). ‘Tis only an appearance, though. RESPONDENT: I have no idea of what you’re saying here. RICHARD: Have you never found it cute that, upon transcendence, the positive feelings have assumed the status of existing as a state of being without equal (wherein the negative feelings have been swept under the carpet)? RESPONDENT: As above, ‘love’, when it describes a state of being, is not a feeling. RICHARD: When the thinker is not, and love is, there is only that feeling – that affective state of ‘being’ wherein there is no longer ‘me’ feeling love – as in being the very feeling itself (hence ‘being’). In the popular jargon it goes something like this: ‘love is all there is’ or ‘all there is, is love’. Or, more specifically:
RESPONDENT: It is not an ‘affective’ state. Feelings and thought describe material processes. The realm of non-matter may be spoken of as beauty, peace, truth, harmony, love, but here those words must be read not as labels, but perhaps as evocations. RICHARD: Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is quite clear as to just what the ‘labels’ he uses refer to ... for example:
Apart from unambiguously saying that love is ‘a total feeling’ and ‘complete purity of feeling’ he specifically addresses the issue you make between ‘material processes’ and ‘the realm of non-matter’ – only he uses the words ‘carnal’ and ‘spiritual’ and the words ‘the profane’ and ‘the sacred’ instead – by talking specifically of the battle thus created by doing what you do here. And what is the word most apt for the love which is ‘a total feeling’ and ‘complete purity of feeling’? Vis.:
And where does passion come from? Vis.:
He is most explicit that if you escape from passion (he specifically says the root meaning of sorrow is passion) you lose that quality ... and that out of that quality comes compassion (and only then you will begin to understand what it means to love). If passion is not affective I would be most interested to hear what is. * RESPONDENT: The word ‘oceanic’ is descriptive and seeks to stimulate the imagination. RICHARD: The word ‘oceanic RESPONDENT: Now it becomes clearer why I rejected the word ‘oceanic feeling’. Because you define it as an ‘affective feeling’, which to me means a material state. RICHARD: Ahh ... you may recall a quote from a previous e-mail:
What if I were to say that one can imagine, or construct through feeling, as feeling, ‘otherness’; that is to say, other than matter – but it is still matter as imagination ... a creation made from the heart? Here is another quote already posted:
And here is a quote in a similar vein:
Then there is this quote:
And this one:
Or this one:
In short: out of the passion of sorrow comes compassion; passion also creates beauty; the feeling of beauty is the feeling of
love; love is God/love is not different from truth. RESPONDENT: I should like to tell you, that the moment you are speaking about consciousness, PCE, etc., and that you perceive the infinity of the universe through apperceptive awareness (...). RICHARD: (...) When I am speaking about consciousness I am referring to the condition of a flesh and blood body being conscious (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun meaning a state or condition) as in being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible (comatose), and when I am talking about pure consciousness I am referring to the condition of a flesh and blood body being conscious sans identity in toto – both ego-self (the thinker) and the feeling-self (the feeler) – which means that perception is bare perception (unmediated perception) ... the term ‘apperceptive awareness’ is but another way of referring to this simple perception (aka naïve perception) and being thus direct it is non-separative (not separated from the physical). RESPONDENT: The feeler, can be eliminated, but why the feelings? RICHARD: Contrary to your (intellectual) assertion there cannot be feelings sans the feeler – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – and the elimination of the one is the elimination of the other. RESPONDENT: Is as you want to eliminate the senses too. RICHARD: This is just a waste of a sentence. RESPONDENT: You told me that you can not perceive through your senses because you are the senses. RICHARD: Yes, what I am (what, not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, these nostrils smelling, this tongue tasting, this skin touching ... whereas who ‘I’ was looked out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listened through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, and so on. In short: what I am is this flesh and blood body only being apperceptively aware. RESPONDENT: Agreed. But you still have sensorial awareness. RICHARD: Even though you may say ‘agreed’ it is evident you do not comprehend what you are agreeing with ... I do not ‘have’ sensorial awareness I am that. For example:
I do realise that there is an enormous amount of words on The Actual Freedom Trust web site ... but I would have considered that someone who professes to be interested in what I have to report – even if only to refute what I have to say – would, at the very least, have read the home page on my portion of the web site. It, more or less, says it all. RESPONDENT: Why the same can not be applied to the feelings? RICHARD: I have no interest whatsoever in being enlightened again (even if I could which I cannot) as I experientially found it to be wanting. RESPONDENT: There is not feeler, but you are the feelings. RICHARD: When the feelings become a state of being – as in the altered state of consciousness (ASC) popularly known as spiritual enlightenment – one no longer has feelings one is the feelings ... ‘being’ instead of ‘becoming’ (to put in a way you might be more familiar with). In other words one is nothing but the feeler ... the feeler is the state of being. This is because ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself (quite often capitalised as ‘Being’ upon self-realisation) ... any god or goddess is affective by its very nature. RESPONDENT: As you have sensorial awareness, why not to have feelings awareness without the feeler? RICHARD: Simply because who ‘I’ am, at root, is ‘my’ feelings – ‘me’ and ‘my’ feelings are one and
the same thing – and the elimination of the one is simultaneously the elimination of the other. RESPONDENT: Richard, would you say that psychic communication happens purely through bodily cues? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Say if you were around when two ‘beings’ communicated something, the only thing you would notice is the bodily communication (facial expressions, voice inflexions, choice of language, bodily movements) that gets interpreted by the recipient (using the ancient psychic genetic database that the ‘being’ has access to?) and [arguably] as intended by the originator (or somewhat closer?)? RICHARD: I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here in this actual world (if that is what you mean) ... there are no psyches, and thus psychic webs, in actuality. Which is not to say they have no reality for either the purveyor or the recipient ... on the contrary it is quite real, so very real in practice, as to have more significance/consequence than ‘facial expressions, voice inflexions, choice of language, bodily movements’ and so on. For just one instance of this I can recall, many years ago when this flesh and blood body was possessed by a ‘being’, another person smiling in a jovial manner, with a relaxed posture, delivering a psychic coup de grâce ... which decisive finishing stroke put an abrupt end to any further discussion about the non-viability of a particular course of action they were adamantly proposing must be carried out. It was this, and many other such instances, which showed ‘me’ that, for as long as ‘I’ continued to exist, ‘I’ was vulnerable to the dictates of a more powerful purveyor (unless ‘I’ were to become the more powerful of course) ... and ‘I’ could remember many such episodes going all the way back into child-hood. The psychic ‘blow’, so to speak, came in through the solar-plexus (a complex of radiating nerves situated behind the stomach), about four-finger widths below the navel where one’s very ‘being’ is felt to be located, as an energetic current and inexorably travelled swiftly up the spinal-column whereupon, reaching the nape of the neck/base of the brain, it branched out to either side via the limbic system and (presumably) activated the amygdalae – two almond-shaped organs in from and just behind-below the ears – thus pumping fright/freeze/flight/fight chemicals throughout the brain and crippling rational thought. Which is why I say that the psychic currents are the most effective power plays. Vis.:
They have no existence outside of the psyche – which includes the imaginative/ intuitive faculty of course – and whilst the psyche is in situ the psychic currents reign supreme ... albeit behind the scenes, as it were, and most often overlooked/ unnoticed. Hence my observation regarding them being the most effective power plays. RESPONDENT: That is, everybody has this intuitive/ imaginative faculty with its ancient/ genetic memories acting as a vast database of imagination; and the physical attributes are translated into psychic messages by the ‘beings’; and importantly, since there is nothing other than physical except in imagination, such a communication has to be transmitted through the physical medium; and usually the body is the means ... is this correct? RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it this way: the colloquialism ‘vibes’ does not refer to body-language but to the affective feelings and gained currency in the ‘sixties (as in ‘I can feel your pain’ or ‘I can feel your anger’ and so on) – even the military are well aware of this as I had it impressed upon me, prior to going to war in my youth, that fear is contagious and can spread like wildfire if unchecked – and another example is being in the presence of an enlightened being (known as ‘Darshan’ in the Indian tradition) so as to be bathed in the overwhelming love and compassion such a being radiates. Behind the feelings lie the psychic energies which emanate from ‘being’ itself: it is not just the emotional/passional ‘vibes’ which constitute the ethereal network but the psychic currents – a network of intuitive/ affective energies that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ (aka ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’) – which stem from ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) irregardless of conscious intent. There are some peoples, of course, who cultivate these psychic currents such that they do become conscious intent (as in psychic powers). RESPONDENT: Can you say anything about the nature of the ancient/ atavistic/ genetic memory? RICHARD: Put succinctly: it is affective only and thus has no existence in this actual world. The following link may be
of further assistance: RESPONDENT: There are not good and bad feelings. RICHARD: The words ‘good feelings’ – which refer to the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) – and the words ‘bad feelings’ – which refer to the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – are but a way of describing the effect of those feelings both on oneself and others. Sometimes they are called the positive and negative feelings. RESPONDENT: Feelings are feelings. RICHARD: And a rose is a rose ... tautology can be so trite. RESPONDENT: The separation in good and bad are created by the feeler the ego. RICHARD: What separation? Just because love and hate, for example, are polar opposites does not mean they not complimentary poles ... indeed, one of the appellations used to describe the integration of the divine/diabolical divide upon transcendence, wherein the opposites unite without ceasing to be themselves, is the phrase ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ (coincidence of opposites). Thus while it can be argued that the ego creates an artificial split (dichotomy) it is also so that in the soul they are united. RESPONDENT: If the feeler is not there there are not bad and good feelings. RICHARD: As where there is no feeler there are no feelings the question of good and bad (or positive and negative) is moot. * RESPONDENT: Feelings are absolutely important. RICHARD: Speaking from the on-going experiencing, for over a decade now, of living life sans the feelings you say are ‘absolutely important’ I can unequivocally testify that operating and functioning in the everyday world of people, things and events freed of the entire affective faculty (and thus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) is a breeze. You see, there is a distinct difference between theorising about actuality and actuality itself. RESPONDENT: They had formed in the human brain before the language. RICHARD: The affective feelings exist prior to cognition (and thus language) ... yes. RESPONDENT: The are controlled by the frontal lobes and also by the brain stem. RICHARD: I am pleased to see you have finally acknowledged the brain-stem ... all sentient beings have a brain-stem (no matter how rudimentary), whereas not all sentient beings have a brain (let alone a neo-cortex), and all sentient beings have affective feelings (no matter how rudimentary they may be). RESPONDENT: One alteration in the frontal lobs or in brain stem, the so called primitive brain, can alter the feelings, but this does not mean than is anything bad with feelings. RICHARD: I fail to see the point you are making here. * RESPONDENT: I think you have feelings. What made you put your so called discovery on the web? RICHARD: You have asked a similar question before:
RESPONDENT: Why you want as you say to help your human fellows? RICHARD: Because of fellowship regard ... like species recognises like species throughout the animal kingdom. RESPONDENT: What motivated you for that? RICHARD: Have you never heard of what is sometimes called ‘Theory Of Mind’ RESPONDENT: Is not a feeling one affection? RICHARD: If by this you mean do I have a feeling of affection for my fellow human beings then it may be useful for me to explain that, not only do I have no feeling of affection at all, I do not experience any affective feelings whatsoever. This is because I do not have any anywhere in this body at all ... this body lost that faculty entirely when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself) became extinct. Literally I feel nothing at all. RESPONDENT: If no then you want to be in the encyclopaedias, which is another feeling. RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to say it again for emphasis: literally I feel nothing at all. * RESPONDENT: Thought has a tremendous effect on our nervous system. RICHARD: Thought has no deleterious effect whatsoever on this nervous system ... thoughts are sparkling, coruscating. RESPONDENT: So I am asking you exist such a thing like human condition or monkey condition (because they have found that some species of monkeys have a sense of self)? RICHARD: Yes, there such a thing as the human condition ... but not here in this actual world. There is evidence that the chimpanzee has self-consciousness – not the monkey – and as chimpanzees have been observed to have fear, aggression, territoriality, civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, nurture, grief, group ostracism, bonding, desire, and so on, they do indeed have their own condition. When thought – and thus intelligence – arises in them they will have the means to deal with it. RESPONDENT: Or is just a matter of social conditioning? RICHARD: All human conditioning – which is part of the socialising process – is a well-meant endeavour to somewhat ameliorate the effects of the human condition. RESPONDENT: A splitting of thought creating the thinker, the me, the ego, so to give continuity to itself? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: And that what you are doing, you are living in continuity 24 hours/day 365 days/year without feelings, is not boring? RICHARD: Everything is totally new here in this actual world – thus always novel – and novelty can never be boring. RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler. RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler. RESPONDENT: So it seems logical to me that the feelings, must exist prior of the feeler, because the creator must exist prior to its creation, right? RICHARD: I would not put it that way – ‘the creator’ and ‘its creation’ – as it conjures up an impression of a cause separate from its effect whereas, if you were to intimately examine this, feeling it out for yourself, you will find that you are your feelings (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). In hindsight it probably would have been better if I had never baldly said that the feelings *create* the feeler in the e-mail you refer to (further above) as I usually say the feelings *form* themselves into the feeler (as a feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’) as that better describes the process. For example:
I put it in that expressive way because it is not possible to separate out the feeler from the feelings it is ... just as it is impossible to separate the whirlpool or the eddy – the vortex – from the swirling stuff which is the cause of it (a whirlpool or an eddy – a vortex – of water or air, for example, is the very swirling water or air as the one is not distinct from the other) ... hence ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: So the feelings are innative to the human being, that means they are actual. Instead the feeler is a real entity, but not actual. RICHARD: Again I would not put it that way ... just because the genetic-inheritance of the instinctual passions is actual – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), being a nucleic acid in which the sugar component is deoxyribose, is a chemical substance – does not necessarily mean that a feeling engendered by that genetic software programme, such as the feeling of fear for example, is actual – any more than the fearer it automatically forms itself into by its very occurrence is actual – especially as you go on to say that the feeler is a real entity but not actual (which implies that the fearer is not the fear – as in ‘I’ am *not* ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are *not* ‘me’ – which, at the very least, smacks of denial if not detachment/disassociation or even full-blown disidentification from one’s roots). Now, I could go on from this to say that the feeling is a movement, a motion, and not a thing, as there is no such happening as a stationary (static) feeling and that it is this very movement or motion of the feeling in action when it occurs which automatically forms the feeler (such as in the whirlpool of water/air analogy above) but, again, it would be far more fruitful if you were to intimately examine all this, by feeling it out for yourself rather than just thinking about it, and if you were to actually do so – literally feel it for yourself – you will surely find out, just as ‘I’ did all those years ago, that you are your feelings (as in ‘I’ *am* ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (as in ‘my’ feelings *are* ‘me’). The actualism method is an experiential method ... not an intellectual method (an analytical method, a psychological method, a philosophical method) or any other self-preserving method of inaction. RESPONDENT: So we have reality and actuality. Reality comes from the Latin word ‘res’, which means thing. A thing is manmade. RICHARD: Not necessarily ... the word ‘thing’ is a generic word and can refer to any object/ entity whether
geological/ biological or manufactured/ fabricated ... whatever has a discrete, independent existence (whether it be material or immaterial as in
concrete or abstract/ physical or metaphysical) and is not a relation or a function, and so on, is a thing It is a very wide-ranging word. RESPONDENT: And man can not do anything without thought and feelings. Right? RICHARD: No, I have been doing everything for over a decade now sans feelings ... and, just like anybody else, do many things without thought (scratching an itch, for instance, or walking). A case could probably be made that the majority of things one does are done on auto-pilot. RESPONDENT: A tree is not man made, so is a tree a thing or a no-thing? RICHARD: A tree is a thing ... all objects/ entities are things. RESPONDENT: To make a thing we use ingredients from nature, like wood, iron, etc., but we put them together with factual thought. So a table, a chair, a car are things. Trees, mountains, animals, are not. Right? RICHARD: No, trees, mountains, animals are things ... just as pieces of wood, lumps of iron, and so on, are. * RESPONDENT: In the moment the thinker as you say arises out of the feeler, then also the thinker as a by-product of a real but not actual entity, must have also the same characteristics. So feeler and thinker exist both in the reality field, but not in the actuality field. RICHARD: Yes, and the reality field, to use your terminology, is primarily an affective field ... where the affective faculty (and thus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) are non-existent there is only actuality. RESPONDENT: Now in Greek language actuality means something that take place now. I can see the same is valid also for the English language, because I suppose it must come from act, acting and somebody can act only now in the present moment. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: I can not act yesterday or tomorrow. RICHARD: Indeed not ... only this moment is actual (the past was actual while it was happening and the future will be actual when it happens but neither of them are actual now). RESPONDENT: So when we speak about actual freedom, must implies one freedom that must take place now, not tomorrow, not through time. RICHARD: But everything which happens takes place now ... there is nothing unusual about the break-through into an actual freedom from the human condition having to take place ‘now, not tomorrow, not through time’. RESPONDENT: Because if must take place through time, then in this time thought operates and we are felling to the reality realm. And then is not any more actuality. RICHARD: It has nothing to do with thought operating through time – anymore than it has anything to do with feeling operating through time for that matter – because it is only when the reality realm, to use your terminology, ceases to exist that actuality becomes apparent ... and that only happens when ‘I’/‘me’ cease to exist. This actual world – actuality – is here already (always has been and always will be) and all that has been going wrong, as it were, is that ‘I’ have been pasting ‘my’ affective inner world over the top of actuality as a veneer ... what ‘I’ call the outer world is nothing other than ‘my’ affective reality. Put succinctly: that outer world exists only in the human psyche. * RESPONDENT: Let’s go back to the feeler and thinker. I can see that the moment the one is spreading from the other, both are the same entity (real entity but illusory). By eliminate the one you eliminate the other too. Or rather the elimination of the one is the elimination of the other because who is the one that will eliminate them? RICHARD: Ahh ... the word ‘altruism’, in the phrase ‘altruistic ‘self’-immolation’, means that a more powerful instinct than the selfism instinct is what ensures success (blind nature ensures that survival of the species takes precedence of survival of the individual by making the for-the-good-of-the-whole instinct the dominant survival instinct). RESPONDENT: Is not the ego itself that wants to eliminate itself? RICHARD: As the ego arises out of the soul (the thinker arises out of the feeler), albeit aided and abetted by feeling-fed thought, any notion of the ego wanting to eliminate itself is but a scape-goat intuition sourced in the soul. RESPONDENT: Is this possible? RICHARD: Oh, yes ... that is the way to become enlightened (with the ego out of the way the soul gets free reign). RESPONDENT: Is like I have a knife in each of my hands and I am fighting and say lets see who will win, me, or me? Is subtle and funny no? RICHARD: This may be an apt moment to remind you that there is more to the identity than just ego ... much, much more (the ego is but the tip of the iceberg). RESPONDENT: You like or you see that there are two entities the I and the me. I cant see it. RICHARD: If I may suggest? Try feeling it instead of trying to (intellectually) see it. RESPONDENT: I think the I splits itself in higher and lower, which is absurd but real, and might this higher is what you call soul. RICHARD: No ... ‘me’ as soul (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) is most definitely not the ego splitting in two. * RESPONDENT: If somebody is fighting the feelings is not strengthen them, making them more strong? RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it this way: as the ego (the thinker) arises out of the soul (the feeler) it can never win ... in enlightenment it surrenders and merges back into the soul. RESPONDENT: Action is reaction. And is the fighter, the by-product of feelings the feeler, that is fighting his own feelings different from the feelings? RICHARD: Indeed not ... ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ (and ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself). RESPONDENT: If this is understood not intellectually, then is not the fighter the thing that he is fighting. If he understands that he stops fighting, and by stop fighting where is the problem? RICHARD: The problem lies in the now not-fighting fighter, obviously (a non-fighting identity is still an identity nevertheless). RESPONDENT: This is already the end of the fighter, (the feeler) and by the disappearance of the feeler, we have the disappearing of the feelings too. RICHARD: No, it is that the fighter-feeler is taking a rest while the non-fighting feeler is running the show (and drawing fuel from the resting fighter-feeler of course). In religio-spiritual parlance god (‘good’) draws energy from evil (‘bad’) and vice-versa – just as love feeds off hate and hate feeds off love – which is why the battle betwixt ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, which has raged down through the centuries with neither one winning, can never be resolved. They are locked in an inseparable embrace. RESPONDENT: Why must use a method which might work, by bringing one insight when we will be 90 years old? Or never? RICHARD: You are overlooking the truly remarkable virtual freedom – which is way beyond normal human expectations – that can ensue as a result of applying the actualism method ... plus the PCE’s along the way. A win-win situation, in other words. RESPONDENT: To me is a matter of immediate understanding with the whole being instantly. RICHARD: Do you realise that it took you the entire e-mail just to arrive right back at the conclusion you have held
all along?
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.
Richard’s Text ©The
Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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