Actual Freedom ~ Commonly Raised Objections

RESPONDENT No. 90: What I don’t comprehend is how entering the great beyond informs you of whether anyone, alive or dead, having left a record or not, has ever been actually free from the human condition.

RICHARD: Because no-one has been able to enter into the ‘Great Beyond’ before – into ‘That’ which was previously considered to be only attainable at physical death when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’ (which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ in Hinduism or ‘Parinirvana’ in Buddhism and so on) – as physical death is the end, finish ... kaput. Which is why I said it is my [quote] ‘while still alive’ [endquote] words which are the key to grasping my ‘thus’ in the quote you provided as being an answer in particular which you would have me clarify.

RESPONDENT No. 90: This seems to me to be this; Me: How does entering the great beyond equal knowing that nobody had been there before. Richard; Entering into the great beyond equals knowing that nobody had been there before because nobody had been there before.

RESPONDENT: I am interested in the answer to the gist of what I think No. 90 is asking.

RICHARD: Sure ... here is the answer to the gist – ‘the substance, essence, or main part of a matter’ (Oxford Dictionary) – of what my co-respondent is asking when put sequentially:

1. In order for that which had previously been considered as unattainable before death (a dimension, by whatever name, where there is no suffering) to become apparent, whilst the flesh and blood body is still alive, ‘Being’ itself ceases.
2. That ‘Being’ is what was previously considered to be that which ‘quits the body’, at the physical death of an Enlightened Being/Awakened One, and which attains to that dimension, by whatever name, where there is no suffering.
3. As there is no such ‘Being’ in actuality it is patently obvious that physical death is the end, finish. Kaput.
4. Thus no Enlightened Being/Awakened One has ever ‘quit the body’ at physical death and attained to that dimension, by whatever name, where there is no suffering – indeed there is no after-life – as all what has ever happened is that they were interred/were cremated just like anybody else.
5. Ergo, an actual freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human experience/human history.

RESPONDENT: If you are willing, I would like (with your help) to try to fill in the gap between what I think No. 90 is asking and the answer(s) you are providing. If you were able to enter the ‘Great Beyond’ without dying, then it is clearly within the realm of human experience to enter the ‘Great Beyond’ while still alive. Is the gist of your previous answer(s) to categorically state that no one has ever entered the ‘Great Beyond’ without dying previous to 1992?

RICHARD: The substance, the essence, or the main part, of my previous answers (now re-inserted above) is that physical death is the end, finish, kaput – there is no after-life in actuality – and, as the terms ‘Mahasamadhi’ and ‘Parinirvana’ and so on explicitly refer to a bodiless state of being in a timeless and spaceless and formless dimension only attainable at physical death when an Enlightened Being/Awakened One ‘quits the body’, it is patently obvious they have never attained to that dimension ... indeed all what has ever happened is that they were interred/were cremated just like anybody else.

RESPONDENT: Although you did not state such specifically, it seems to me that it is the gist of what you have been stating, and it also seems to fit with the issue others on the mailing list are having with your reply. I will continue to assume for now that it is the gist of what you are stating.

The problem I have with such a categorical (in the sense of ‘being without exception or qualification; absolute’) statement is that you do not have factual knowledge of all people prior to 1992.

RICHARD: I do not have to have factual knowledge of all people prior to 1992 to know that the (estimated) 0.00001 of them who become spiritually enlightened/mystically awakened have never attained to a bodiless state of being in a timeless and spaceless and formless dimension after they physically died ... because physical death is the end, finish.

Kaput.

RESPONDENT: Also, recorded human history tends to be a subjective record rather than a factual one, and it is by no means a complete record at that.

RICHARD: I do not have to have recourse to recorded human history to know that no Enlightened Being/ Awakened One has ever ‘quit the body’ at physical death.

RESPONDENT: Based on the incomplete set of facts available, it remains entirely possible that before 1992 people entered the ‘Great Beyond’ prior to their physical death by employing the same or a similar method to your own previous identity’s.

RICHARD: What you are doing is shifting away from the above discussion and introducing a variation on what is known as an agnostic argument (that nothing can ever be known with 100% certainty) such as what Mr. Karl Popper made popular and stems, as I understand it, from the occasion wherein, prior to the exploration of Australia’s west coast, all (European) swans were white ... meaning that, somewhere, somewhen, in an infinite and eternal universe a purple swan may very well exist.

Or not, of course, which is why, by and large, Mr. Karl Popper’s logic has been discarded as merely abstract and/or irrelevant and/or useless by many thoughtful human beings.

RESPONDENT: To my knowledge, it is impossible to prove, and therefore an opinion (not fact) to state categorically whether or not this is the case. I agree, it is a reasonable opinion to hold ...

RICHARD: If I may interject (before you go on to throw in a red-herring)? For something like twenty five years, back when I was a normal person, I would say that nothing can ever be known with 100% certainty and it is an apparently satisfying position to be in – maybe it makes one feel intellectually comfortable – until one day I realised just what I was doing to myself. I was cleverly shuffling all the ‘hard questions’ about consciousness under the rug and going around deftly cutting other people down to size (which is all so easy to do simply by saying ‘well that is your opinion/ belief/ truth/ idea/ philosophy/ whatever’). But I had nothing to offer in its place – other than a ‘it is impossible to prove’ agnosticism – and I puzzled as to why this was so. Finally, I ceased procrastinating and equivocating. I wanted to know. I wanted to find out – for myself – about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are.

I now know.

RESPONDENT: ... with the possible exception of the case of Bernadette Roberts, although that’s another topic entirely.

But getting back to the topic at hand, would you agree that it is not a statement of fact for anyone to state categorically that no people prior to 1992 entered the ‘Great Beyond’ prior to their physical death by employing the same or a similar method to your own previous identity’s?

RICHARD: Not for [quote] ‘anyone’ [endquote] to state categorically ... no. Vis.:

• [Respondent No. 90] ‘Lots of people have existed who left no trace of their existence. Lots of them. As they were all humans like you (to the extent that you are a human) and me, I assume they were all capable of being actually free of the human condition, like you and me.
• [Richard] ‘Whether they were capable or not is beside the point ... the point is that, *as experientially determined by the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago* (and verified for as far as is possible to ascertain by regular research), no flesh and blood body either living or dead prior to 1992 has ever been actually free of the human condition’. [emphasis added].

RESPONDENT: Do you agree that it is possible (while remaining purely theoretical on the basis that it’s impossible to verify) that people prior to 1992 had entered the ‘Great Beyond’ prior to their physical death by employing the same or a similar method to your own previous identity’s?

RICHARD: As a suggestion only: if you wish to have a purely theoretical discussion why not address your abstract question (and your reasoning immediately below) to a theorist?

RESPONDENT: My reasoning is given that (1) your previous identity was able to come up with the method simply by devising it (2) the set of recorded human history, while large, is partly subjective, partly erroneous (due to translation) and definitely incomplete (3) the set of all human history not recorded factually is likely to be far more vast in depth if not breadth than the set of human history recorded factually (4) the number of practitioners of actualism is still quite small despite global communications, it is not inconceivable to me that someone, somewhere devised the same or a similar method which could allow them to enter the ‘Great Beyond’ prior to their physical death, but which did not enter into recorded human history. Would you agree?

RICHARD: You do realise, do you not, that where you say that it is [quote] ‘impossible to verify’ [endquote] you are making a categorical (in the sense of ‘being without exception or qualification; absolute’) statement?

Do you also realise that the problem with [quote] ‘remaining purely theoretical’ [endquote] is that, other than usually getting hoist by one’s own petard, all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and so on continue on unabated?

Just curious.

*

RESPONDENT (to Vineeto): If you look at the wording of what Richard is saying through each of these sequential points, [quote] ‘In order for that which had previously been considered as unattainable before death <snip>‘ [endquote]. Who previously considered it unattainable?

RICHARD: The enlightened beings/awakened ones who (supposedly) ‘quit the body’ at physical death, of course. Here (from the top of this page)

• [Richard]: ‘In 1985 I had the first of many experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment (as described in ‘A Brief Personal History’ on my part of The Actual Freedom Trust web site) and it had the character of the ‘Great Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being ‘That’ which is attained to at physical death *when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’* ... which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism)’. [emphasis added].

RESPONDENT: It is no fact to say that everyone considered it unattainable.

RICHARD: I am none too sure I said that [quote] ‘everyone’ [endquote] considered it unattainable ... I am, quite obviously, speaking of the experience of being enlightened/awakened and what that experience informs is that the solution to all the ills of humankind (aka the human condition) lies in a timeless and spaceless and formless realm (a non-material dimension by whatever name).

RESPONDENT: Richard is not everyone, he does not know the mind of anyone except himself.

RICHARD: I am not saying I am everyone – that is what the enlightened/awakened identity parasitically inhabiting this body all those years ago experienced – nor am I saying I know the mind of anyone else.

RESPONDENT: All he can say factually is that he previously considered it unattainable.

RICHARD: Not at all ... it is the enlightened/awakened experience which informs that it (the end of suffering) is not of this world. For just one (modern-day) example:

• [Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti]: ‘I have found the answer to all this [violence], not in the world but away from it’. (page 94, ‘Krishnamurti – His Life And Death’; Mary Lutyens; Avon Books: New York 1991).

RESPONDENT: So given that he previously considered it unattainable, how does this relate to No. 90’s question:- [quote] ‘How does that reveal that nobody had been there before?’ [endquote].

RICHARD: Given that it is really the enlightened/awakened experience which informs that the end of suffering is unattainable before physical death it relates inasmuch that no enlightened being/ awakened one has, in fact, ended suffering before physical death ... indeed the enlightened/awakened state itself is, in its entirety, nothing other than an affective state of being (which, by the way, is something my co-respondent has allowed on more than one occasion).

RESPONDENT: The short answer (which I am providing) is, it does not.

RICHARD: It is this simple: it is not possible to be actually free from the human condition whilst there be an enlightened/awakened identity still in residence (still parasitically inhabiting the body).

RESPONDENT: For me, as a practicing actualist, I have to wonder if Richard is wrong about this, what else is he wrong about?

RICHARD: Ha ... and does the obverse (if Richard is not wrong about this then what else is he not wrong about) also apply?

RESPONDENT: The end result is that it discourages faith in any cosmology whilst on the path to an actual freedom.

RICHARD: As cosmology is about the structure of the universe – as distinct from cosmogony which is about the (supposed) origins of the universe – the fact that peace-on-earth is not on the enlightened beings’/ awakened ones’ agenda hardly falls under that category.

Perhaps a word like ‘mythology’ (for example) might be a more suitable classification?

RESPONDENT to Richard: Thank you for your response. After reading No 59’s commentary and starting to pay attention to your exchanges with No 86 [No. 90(R)], I had grown concerned that might be making a categorical statement on a topic which, as far as I understand, can only be theoretical. My concern is not so great having read your response to my previous email, eg from your unwillingness to be drawn into a theoretical discussion, and your statement of an entirely different gist to the one I was interpreting from your diary. But in the quote below, you have stated that it was an experiential determination, which I am interested in exploring if you are willing.

RICHARD: ‘Whether they were capable or not is beside the point ... the point is that, as experientially determined by the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago (and verified for as far as is possible to ascertain by regular research), no flesh and blood body either living or dead prior to 1992 has ever been actually free of the human condition’. [emphasis added]. Richard to Respondent, 8.8.2005 (see excerpt directly above)

PETER: I thought to make a comment on what seems to be a reoccurring theme on this mailing list – the fourth word on the first page of the Actual Freedom website. Given that the first two words are ‘Actual Freedom’ followed by ‘A new and non-spiritual, down-to earth freedom’ the word that many people seem to object to is the word ‘new’.

When I first came across Richard I quite naturally associated what he was saying with what I had known before – after all the human condition has an inherent duality, either the meaning of life is to be found in material pursuits or the meaning of life is to be found in spiritual pursuits. After a few months of listening and reading however, I eventually twigged to the fact that what Richard was talking about was diametrically opposite to what all of the spiritual teachers were teaching and the world that Richard was living in was diametrically opposite to the imaginary world that all of the revered Enlightened Beings felt themselves to be living in.

Previously to meeting Richard I had spent 17 years on the spiritual path and was no novice to the spiritual world. My experience wasn’t merely intellectual – my experience was lived experience – I had after all turned my back on the real world and had fully immersed myself in the spiritual world, even to the point of wearing the robes and living in spiritual communes. The experience of meeting and talking with Richard was 180 degrees opposite to the meetings and discussions I had with any of the spiritual teachers or revered masters I had met in my spiritual years – no psychic power plays, no pompous air of superiority and/or feigned humility, on the contrary, a genuine willingness and an ability to provide clear and consistent answers to any questions I raised and above all, an utter down-to-earthness that was refreshing to say the least.

So to sum up, at this stage I had the intellectual understanding that actualism was utterly non-spiritual – one only needs to read what Richard writes and take the words at face value to establish this as a prima face case – but I also had first hand experience that there was not a skerrick of spiritualism in Richard himself and I suspect that the video conversations will enable others to make their own judgement as to the latter point. The point I am making is that even before I recalled having had a pure consciousness experience I had satisfied myself that an actual freedom from the human condition was indeed non-spiritual, which in turn meant that it was brand new – there being no evidence whatsoever of it ever having being a lived experience in any of spiritual teachings, any of the ancient folklores or any of the secular consciousness studies.

One of the most telling experiences that actualism – the method by which Richard became actually free from the human condition – is brand new to human experience were the psychic ‘warning signs’ I had when deciding to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless. I have written about it before but it was as though I was entering a dark tunnel that had a big warning sign saying ‘DO NOT ENTER HERE’ written over it. I knew that entering this path would be the end of ‘me’ and I also knew this was a path that only Richard had trodden before – although by a somewhat circuitous route. This experience is diametrically opposite to the entry to the spiritual path with its welcoming sign, its feel good seductive lure, the welcoming arms of others, the feeling of belonging and of being specially chosen, not to mention the promise of the fame and the glory of Self-aggrandizement awaiting at the other end.

The other experiential evidence I had of the fact that actualism is diametrically opposite to spiritualism is that not only were there psychic warning signs about doing something so radical as devoting my life to becoming happy and harmless but that there were also actual and psychic (as in emotionally-transmitted) warnings from those who had a vested interest in spiritualism telling me not to go down this path under any circumstances. Not only did I have a few direct warnings from teachers and practitioners of spiritualism but I also had a few psychic visitations whilst sleeping warning me off my intended course of action. The other issue that I had to contend with at the time was the very real issue that spiritualists have a long and gory history of dealing with and disposing of heretics in most gruesome ways, in other words the psychic vibes I perceived had the backing of very real acts of retribution should I dare to openly turn my back on spiritualism and be so bold as to blithely head off in the opposite direction.

All of the events I am recalling happened fairly early on and my recollection of a substantial pure consciousness experience that I had some 10 years earlier combined with PCEs I had subsequent to taking up actualism meant that the psychic warning experiences soon became weaker and weaker – my experience is that once you set off on the actualism path with gusto, the fears that you first encounter are rapidly overcome by the thrill and excitement of the many discoveries that soon unfold.

One event that happened about 3 or 4 years ago again confronted me with the fact that nobody but Richard – ‘Richard’ the identity, not Richard the flesh and blood body sans identity – had ever become actually free of the human condition. I awoke one morning amazed to find myself in the fairy-tale like perfection that this actual world is and it being so early I headed off for a stroll down to the beach. In the early dawning light I sat down on a grassy bank overlooking the ocean and all of a sudden realized that if ‘I’ were to die it would literally be like disappearing over the horizon, never ever to be seen or heard of again – in short, ‘I’ would go into oblivion and not only that but no one would miss ‘me’. I then became aware that there were tentacles holding ‘me’ back from doing so and that these tentacles were the many psychic tentacles that bound ‘me’ to Humanity at large. This experience once again confirmed for me that actualism is brand new to human experience because such an oblivion is not only the end of ‘me’ as a ‘being’ but it also means the end of the eons-old world-wide fantasy of ‘me’ as a spiritual ‘Being’.

Well that’s about it. I just thought to pass on my experience that it is possible for an identity to experientially know that an actual freedom from the human condition is brand new to human experience. Any identity who explores the human psyche deeply enough can experience not only the psychic barriers and warning signs that have no doubt prevented others from treading this path before but ‘he’ or ‘she’ can also verify for themselves that, despite the fact that everybody has had glimpses of the perfection and purity of the actual world, there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone prior to Richard has managed to become actually free from the human condition in toto.

Experiential information about the human psyche can only be had by observing the human psyche in action, in oneself, as one’s ‘self’ – which is precisely what the actualism method involves.

The trick to being able to make such observations is to dare to go beyond the psychic warnings that attempt to deter you from doing so – after all, it stands to reason that you can’t study something that you are scared to look at.

RESPONDENT: ... you say you have no identity, yet you insist on having the identity of the 1st, last & only free person ...

RICHARD: I have never even said that I am [quote] ‘the 1st, last & only’ [endquote] free person ... let alone insisted upon it as an identity.

RESPONDENT: Are you not the first? Are there others? You may come clean here and now.

RICHARD: You have omitted the central query [Are you not the last?] ...

RESPONDENT: You are avoiding the questions. You are being evasive.

RICHARD: Golly ... I have come clean (to use your phrasing) from the very first moment of going public on-line in 1997 – it is plastered all over The Actual Freedom Trust web site that an actual freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human experience/ human history – and even only a few days ago reiterated same right up-front and out in the open. Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I’m new to this site and to ‘Actual Freedom’ (...).
• [Richard]: ‘It is not at all surprising that an actual freedom from the human condition be new to you as it is entirely new to human experience/ human history’.

As I have never said that I am [quote] ‘the 1st, last & only’ [endquote] free person – let alone insisted upon it as an identity – your selective questions about that egocentric phraseology of yours, which you have repeatedly used on this mailing list, are not only redundant but are besides the point as well.

RESPONDENT: Of course; you are so clever with your word games & word play.

RICHARD: The only word games/ word play to be found in the above exchange come from your keyboard ... to wit: your maladroit play on the word identity and your selective questions game.

RESPONDENT No. 53: ... you say you have no identity, yet you insist on having the identity of the 1st, last & only free person ...

RICHARD: I have never even said that I am [quote] ‘the 1st, last & only’ [endquote] free person ... let alone insisted upon it as an identity.

RESPONDENT No. 53: Are you not the first? Are there others? You may come clean here and now.

RESPONDENT: I’m guessing here, but I think what No. 53 is trying to ask is ‘are you the first and only flesh and blood human body to be without any identity whatsoever?’

RICHARD: Yet what my co-respondent asserted is that I [quote] ‘insist on having the identity of the 1st, last & only free person’ [endquote].

This may be an apt place for some background information: in the middle of October 2003 several people, most of whom were also writing to a Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti forum, began writing to this mailing list with a similar theme – with a sceptical and/or cynical focus upon what the very first words on the homepage of The Actual Freedom Trust web site (immediately below the logo) convey – and yet even now, two and a half years later and after having written more than eleven hundred e-mails, one of them has still not been able to move on from those few strategically placed words.

RESPONDENT: ... and I thought its already clear that you’ve said ‘yes’ about that.

RICHARD: What is already abundantly clear is that I have said ‘yes’ about being the first and, as far as is ascertainable since 1992, the only one so far to be actually free from the human condition (as in being a flesh and blood human body without any identity whatsoever).

More to the point, however, is that it matters not one jot who discovered an actual freedom from the human condition – somebody has to be the first to discover something new in any area of human endeavour as a matter of course (such as discovering the cure for cancer for instance) – and why some peoples would want to turn that prosaic fact into being an egocentric issue is anybody’s guess.

RESPONDENT: How he thinks ‘first and only’ also implies ‘last’ though, I have no idea.

RICHARD: Perhaps by conveniently leaving-off the ‘so far’ (as in ‘the only one so far’) it might be possible that thoughts about singularity could begin to take root and grow ... the phrase ‘the only one’ might start to sound like ‘the one and only’ (as in ‘the only one of its kind’ or, more likely, as in ‘a never-to-be-repeated freak of nature’) if given the appropriate motivation.

Speaking of which ... the following will give you some idea as to how such thoughts may very well have been planted:

• [Respondent No. 53]: ‘... [the actualism method can be considered] perhaps even a sport of nature that worked but once for one person.

• [Richard]: ‘As the term ‘a sport of nature’ is synonymous with ‘a freak of nature’ the following is worth quoting (as you would be on a hiding to nowhere to pursue that theme with this flesh and blood body):

U.G.: (...) I maintain that whatever has happened to me happened despite everything I did. But you are interested in finding out how and why that particular thing I am talking about has happened to me and not to everybody. You want to establish a cause and effect relationship and make it possible for everybody to stumble into this kind of thing. That is something which cannot be produced or reproduced on an assembly line. It is a freak of nature.
Q: But we would be interested in knowing what the freak of nature was in U.G.
U.G.: Even wanting to understand that has no meaning to you. You just leave it there. There are so many freakish things there in nature. If you try to copy them, you are lost. You are in the same situation as before. Even nature has no use for this body (pointing to his body). It has discarded it because it cannot reproduce something like this either physically or otherwise.
Q: So you have been discarded by nature?
U.G.: Yes, discarded by nature. How can you turn this into a model? That is what we have done to all those discarded people whom we should have discarded for good. [from Chapter 11: ‘A Freak of Nature’, in the book ‘Thought Is Your Enemy’, published in 1991 by Sowmya Publishers].

• [Respondent No. 53]: ‘And this little excerpt illustrates that I am on a hiding to nowhere because he uses the same term ‘freak of nature’?

• [Richard]: ‘No ... it is because of this:

• [Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti]: ‘... whatever has happened to me happened *despite everything I did*’. [emphasis added].

And this:

• [Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti]: ‘That [a cause and effect relationship] is something which *cannot be produced* ...’. [emphasis added].

And this:

• [Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti]: ‘... it [nature] *cannot reproduce* something like this [that happened to me] either physically or otherwise’. [emphasis added].

Whereas what happened for this flesh and blood body happened *because of everything the identity did* and, as a cause and effect relationship *can and has been produced*, there is every reason why more identities *can indeed reproduce this* that happened for this flesh and blood body.

RESPONDENT: This email is to no one in particular, however I do want to write to the readers here a truism I have found in life. That being that Richard is not the first nor the last ...

RICHARD: As I have never said that I am [quote] ‘the last’ [endquote] that is as good an example as any how an out-and-out lie from a closet spiritualist can take on not only an aura of being truthful but can even become a truth if mindlessly repeated often enough.

RESPONDENT: ... [Richard is not the first] to understand actualism ...

RICHARD: As actualism – the direct experience that matter is not merely passive – is experiential and not philosophical your truism is looking decidedly shakier the more you go on.

RESPONDENT: ... [Richard is not the first to understand actualism], that being the knowledge that one has only this moment ...

RICHARD: Whereas, where there is the direct experience that matter is not merely passive, time has no duration ... this moment is eternal.

RESPONDENT: ... [Richard is not the first to understand actualism, that being the knowledge that one has only this moment] and that at death, the ceasing of brain function and heart pumping that indeed the individual who’s brain and heart I just referred to ceases to function that indeed that being will cease to be.

RICHARD: Presuming that by [quote] ‘that being’ [endquote] you are referring to the identity within the body ceasing to be, at bodily death, then that understanding, that knowledge, is a feature of materialism ... whereas, where there is the direct experience that matter is not merely passive, that being has already ceased to be (as in experiential and not philosophical) whilst the flesh and blood body is still alive.

RESPONDENT: It is as it always has been and always will be, our individual experiences of the eternal have no impact on the eternal. We are here but for a moment ...

RICHARD: As that moment is, in actuality, eternal then there is all the time in the universe, so to speak, for it to be stunningly aware, as an apperceptive human being, of its own infinitude.

And this is truly wonderful.

RESPONDENT: ... [We are here but for a moment], and if one looks around oneself and witnesses the absurdity of what we as a society have become ...

RICHARD: There is no [quote] ‘become’ [endquote] about it ... given the human condition societies have always been the way they are.

RESPONDENT: ... then hopefully it will fall on one to make a change.

RICHARD: Quite frankly, you can be as hopeful as all get-out yet unless you get off your backside and actually start doing something about the situation you find yourself in no substantial change is ever likely to occur.

RESPONDENT: The absurdity I am speaking of here is that which leads one to believe that he/she is so important, or more so than anyone one else.

RICHARD: As you began by asserting that [quote] ‘Richard is not the first nor the last’ [endquote] then the impression conveyed is that, although you have couched that in general terms, if only Richard was to look around himself and witnesses the absurdity of what humans as a society have become then hopefully it will fall upon him to make a change inasmuch he will no longer believe that he is so important or more so than anyone one else.

Am I comprehending correctly?

RESPONDENT: We are but an experience, there really is no point but to enjoy oneself, it is that simple.

RICHARD: If I may ask? Have you never experienced a deep black depression, an overwhelmingly hateful rage, a paralysing baleful dread, an overpowering destructive aggression, an obsessively jealous love, a fatiguing compulsive compassion (and so on and so forth)?

RESPONDENT: No biggy man, kick back and relax, and don’t sweat it ...

RICHARD: So your solution (and please correct me if I am in error) to all the ills of humankind is that they are not at all important/impressive so take it easy, stop worrying, and enjoy being alternatively fearful and aggressive and nurturing and desirous (and all the multiple offshoots thereof)?

And the reason why I ask is because, only eleven days ago, you wrote that you are having troubles sustaining a vitalised interest, that you have isolated yourself from most people, that you are missing the zest for life, and that you are considering just ending it

RICHARD: No longer plagued by petty arguments, pathetic one-upmanship.

RESPONDENT: Including, of course, the pathetic one-upmanship of ‘I have discovered truths no one else knows’. What I would like to understand is why all the self-proclaimed enlightened (I use that term loosely to include you Richard, though you don’t use it yourself) folk on this list are so all-fired certain that they are the only ones on the surface of the earth who have ever experienced what they experience? And why are y’all so arrogant that you can say things like ‘nowhere in the revered and sacred scripts, anywhere in history’ – as if you personally had studied each one? It is actually your attitude of smug disdain that most convincingly argues against your having achieved anything resembling equanimity, never mind true understanding of reality.

RICHARD: To clarify the situation:

1. I am not enlightened.
2. I do not want to be enlightened.
3. I never will become enlightened.
4. Enlightenment is worthless.

If no-one was bold enough to say that the accepted ‘truth’ is a mistake, then the sun would still be revolving around the earth. In the face of public opinion, one needs to be intrepid to question the collective wisdom and find out for oneself the fact of the matter. One of the best ways of doing this is to see that something held to be true is not working. Instead of vainly trying to make it work through intellectual dishonesty, one takes stock and applies lateral thinking. One needs to be audacious to proceed where no-one has gone before ... and trail-blazers are often castigated for their effrontery. Fancy being ridiculed or ostracised for ascertaining the actuality of something ... for establishing a fact. To be forced to recant, by popular demand, is an outstanding act of dogmatic elitism born out of ignoring the facts. With this being the lot of the path-finder, no wonder humanity is in the mess that it is in, for who would run the gauntlet?

But I am supremely blasé about the opinion of others, for their ‘truths’ do not work ... they do not live in peace and tranquillity. They do not experience the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive; a purity welling-up in all directions from the vast, immeasurable stillness of the infinitude of this universe. They remain ignorant of the excellence of the absence of ‘being’. In short, their ‘truths’, their philosophies on life, do not work. The criterion of a fact is that it works, it produces results. Because I live here, where the immediate is the ultimate, there is no sorrow or malice. All my thoughts are benign, for maleficence does not exist where time has no duration. By living the fact that ‘I’ am not actual, evil has ceased to be.

With no evil in existence, I do not have to believe in and muster all my energies in order to be good. ‘Good’ is a psychic force created to combat the psychic force known as ‘Evil’. Similarly, in monotheistic cultures, a ‘God’ is invented to engage in an endless battle with a ‘Devil’. In polytheistic cultures Gods are opposed to Demons. Then there is ‘Heavens’, ‘Hells’, ‘Sin’, ‘Karma’, ‘Resurrection’, ‘Reincarnation’ ... the list goes on. Where is intelligence in all this? Are humans worthy of the title ‘Mature Adults’? This is worse than puerile ... this is primitive in the extreme. It all leads to such appalling brutality and unbearable suffering that it is a wonder that such nonsense can still be soberly entertained as even approximating truth. It is not only bizarre; this is insanity.

GARDOL: Here we have a man retired and on a pension, living comfortably in Byron Bay, and he cannot understand why someone else experiencing actual freedom might not be able to get the word out.

RICHARD: As such a person would have to be incapable of speech (as in dumb), incapable of sign language (as in quadriplegic), incapable of binary replies (as in yes/no gesturing), incapable of writing (as in illiterate), incapable of dictation (as in incommunicado), incapable of ghost writing (as in unintelligible) – in effect, incapable of any form of communication, whatsoever – that is a ludicrous accusation.

For what it is worth: for all Gardol’s huff-and-puff about logic he has, apparently, overlooked the same thing as that logic-driven respondent did ... to wit: in order for Peter to have suggested a website, for the wider promulgation of an actual freedom from the human condition, the word must have, ipso facto, already got out (been communicated meaningfully to him, at the very least, if not to others).

As it so happens, as is mentioned in ‘Peter’s Journal’ (which Gardol says, further on, he purchased and read), he become cognisant of the discovery through another informing him of it (who in turn heard about it from yet another) who also informed others at that time (most of whom, if not all, informed others) and then informed even more as time went on ... word-of-mouth is a very, very effective means of dissemination.

And as Gardol also says, further on, that he purchased and read ‘Richard’s Journal’ as well he most certainly would have known that Richard was not at all reticent about sharing his experience with his fellow human being ... the articles numbered 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 21, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35 all testify to this as they each contain the gist of the many and various discussions held, on that very topic, with many and various peoples.

Here is a useful word:

• ‘bull-artist: someone who speaks nonsense while trying to impress’. (Probert Encyclopaedia of Slang).
• ‘bull-artist: a person who habitually exaggerates, flatters, or talks nonsense’. (American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms).

Incidentally, the word bull, in this context, has nothing to do with either the male bovine animal, of popular usage, or its ordure. Vis.:

• ‘bull [Old French boul, boule, bole: fraud, deceit, trickery; modern Icelandic bull: nonsense; also Middle English bull bul: falsehood; to befool, mock, cheat]: trivial, insincere, or untruthful talk or writing; nonsense’. (Oxford Dictionary).

As a matter of related interest (and mainly because Gardol later on introduces the word spin as if the mere assertion that something is spin is a valid argument): a few years ago Mr. Harry Frankfurt (a professor emeritus at Princeton University) wrote, in a 67-page essay on the topic of bull, that it is impossible for a liar to lie unless they think they know the truth (meaning that a person who lies is thereby responding to the authority of truth) whereas the bull-artist cares nothing for either truth or falsity, inasmuch the only thing which concerns them is getting away with what they say (meaning that they do not reject the authority of truth, as a liar does by opposing themselves to it, but pay no attention to it at all), and that this makes them potentially more treacherous than any liar because a society where bull is rife is thus in danger of rejecting the possibility of ever knowing how things truly are (as it follows that any form of argument and/or analysis is only as legitimate, via being held to be true, as it is persuasive).

GARDOL: Well, maybe someone achieved actual freedom but due to hardships of environment or circumstances, they had to spend most of their time working on food shelter and clothing, and did not have the spare time to get their book written.

RICHARD: Ha ... so that is what a logical response looks like, eh?

GARDOL: Maybe someone spent five years writing a book, and then got buried in an earthquake, book and all.

RICHARD: What Gardol is doing there is (conveniently) overlooking the fact that there are other ways of communicating than only with a book.

GARDOL: Shift happens, as they say.

RICHARD: And thus does the logical response trail away into the vagary whence it came.

GARDOL: Later he goes right back into asserting that he KNOWS he is the first, as you will see in subsequent emails on this subject.

RICHARD: Hmm ... Richard is clearly reporting what he experientially knows and yet Gardol ... um ... spins it into him merely asserting that he does.

Speaking of spin ... this is how the exchange Gardol quoted above began:

• [Respondent No. 60]: ‘Another example of neo-solipsistic-like thinking in actualism: I know I am the first because I don’t know of any who might have been there before me. Absence of knowledge of a predecessor is ‘proof’ that there wasn’t one’. [endquote].

Now, that is what a real assertion looks like ... because actualism is neither neo-solipsistic-like nor has Richard ever said he knows he is the first because he does not know of any who might have been there before him (as in ‘absence of knowledge of a predecessor is ‘proof’ that there wasn’t one’).

‘Tis a mad, bad, and sad world whereupon Richard not only gets (falsely) accused of the very thing that particular respondent did but also wherein his wannnabe interlocutor (a cheap-trickster, a sneaky-snipper, a sly-deceiver, an ignorant-judger, a molehill-mountaineer, a fraudulent-justifier, a mud-slinger, a bull-artist and spin-doctor all rolled into one) also does that very same thing ... a double-spin, as it were, of such magnitude as to maybe occasion a shift in their brain in which they begin to see the respondents as more and more intelligent while Richard appears less and less so.

For here are Gardol’s own words (from the latter part of his diatribe):

• [Gardol]: ‘I spent so much time slogging through all the verbal quarrelling that I felt like I had gotten an addiction. I spent more and more time getting less and less reward. Then a shift occurred in my brain, in which I began to perceive the respondents on the list as more and more intelligent, while Richard appeared less and less so’. (groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom/messages/1231).

GARDOL: When a person KNOWS something, they don’t have to set a very high standard of proof.

RICHARD: Richard set a remarkably high standard ... he reports:

1. That he already knew, from a four-hour PCE prior to the commencement of the path which would eventually lead to an actual freedom from the human condition, that such a freedom was entirely new to human experience ... and;
2. That because of many experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment, before becoming actually free from the human condition, he also knew this condition was entirely new to human experience ... and;
3. That he additionally knew, from penetration deeper and deeper into the state of being known as spiritual enlightenment, that no one had ventured thus far before ... and;
4. That he conducted regular research (aka scouring the books), for 20+ years, to no avail ... and;
5. That he has advertised his discovery in books and on the world-wide web, for over a decade now (and latterly on high-definition video discs), yet nothing of that nature has been elicited ... nothing whatsoever.

GARDOL: Why would they? Talk to any garden variety Christian or religious zealot who says they have some proof that God exists. Usually for their ‘proof’ they will just point out some flaws or gaps in evolutionary theory. It does not really prove the existence of God to anyone but the person who already wants to believe it.

RICHARD: The following may be found edifying:

• [Respondent]: ‘You just cannot prove, Richard, that there is nothing beyond the blood and bones body which may exist in another dimension.
• [Richard]: ‘Hmm ... and as you cannot ‘prove’ that there is ‘another dimension’ then this is a ‘Mexican Stand-Off’, eh? Howsoever, I have responded to you before on this issue: [Respondent]: ‘As I’ve stated before, you have no proof that your brand of actuality is really all there is to life’. [Richard]: ‘I find variations of this line of debate on the Christian versus Rationalist discussion boards (where the Christians challenge the Rationalists to prove that their god does not exist). It is futile to take up a challenge wherein the challenger first proposes something (such as a god or a goddess or an other dimension) and then says: ‘prove me wrong’. *Needless to say, I do know for myself that there are no gods or goddesses or an after-life outside of passionate imagination*’. [emphasis added]. Richard, List B, Respondent 19, 27 May 01

Now contrast that highlighted sentence with the following highlighted response:

• [Respondent]: ‘What scientific proof do you have that you can transmit information without the use of five senses?
• [Gardol]: ‘I have no scientific proof. *I have proven it to myself, which is all I need*’. [emphasis added]. (groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom/messages/1239).

‘Nuff said?

GARDOL: Same with Richard. He don’t need no stinkin’ proof!

RICHARD: Given that Gardol imposes a different criterion upon Richard, than what he applies to himself, then here is a particularly useful word:

• ‘double-standard: (the application of) a standard, principle, etc., applied more strictly to some people or situations than others’. (Oxford Dictionary).

GARDOL: He already has his psychic footprints in the imaginary snow, as seen by his psychic eye, and he accepts this truth as discovered by the parasitic and cunning entity that inhabited his body all those years ago.

RICHARD: As Gardol’s worse-than-cheap trick, of slyly shifting the focus onto the text which followed the word ‘furthermore’ – which means ‘in addition, additionally; moreover, esp. used when introducing a fresh consideration in an argument’ according to the Oxford Dictionary – so as to make out that it is the main extraordinary evidence, has already been exposed for the indescribable deceit it is then the following can only help to emphasise how the penetration deeper and deeper into spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment only served to reinforce what was already experientially known:

• [Richard]: ‘This is really quite a simple matter to comprehend: prior to those experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment, whilst paddling a canoe around a group of uninhabited islands in the tropics off the north-eastern Australian seaboard for about three months in 1985, the end of suffering was universally considered to be only possible after physical death (peace on earth was just not possible); those experiences demonstrated just what was required to have that most salubrious condition come about (the extinction of identity in toto and not just ego dissolution); the experiential penetration deeper and deeper into the further reaches of ‘Being’ itself only served to reinforce what was already known from a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) six months prior to the commencement of the path that would eventually lead to an actual freedom from the human condition (that such a freedom was entirely new to human experience)’. Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No. 90, 02 Aug 05

GARDOL: How can people even ask for better proof than that?

RICHARD: As the people quoted in this diatribe are (demonstrably) not asking for proof – let alone that fictitious ‘better proof’ Gardol has, by now, fabulated them as asking for – but are (demonstrably) asking how does Richard know/how can Richard know then that conclusion, albeit couched as a (rhetorical) question, is a non-sequitur.

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