RESPONDENT: Richard (and list subscribers): 1. In Richard’s rebuttal to my quote of him as evidentiary of his having actual feelings, he has unwittingly provided us with further evidence of his powers of self-delusion. As in some other correspondence I recall seeing on the AF Trust website, he rationalises his language as ‘humour’.

RICHARD: If I may point out? I do not ‘rationalise’ (justify with plausible but specious reasons) my language as humour ... as it is indeed humour.

I am having so much fun here at the keyboard.

RESPONDENT: This will be recognized by everyone as the old ‘I was only joking’ or ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ defence teenagers and some adults use when they’ve said something hurtful or embarrassing and have been discovered.

RICHARD: Maybe you would be better served if you were to speak for yourself ... just because you have (erroneously) recognised it as a ‘defence’ does not mean that ‘everyone’ does.

I was uncomplicated in my reply: I found it comical at the time that a god would tell me that ‘mind cannot see itself’, when it is a fact that it can (and I even provided the dictionary definition of apperception which expressed that very fact), and I still find it comical.

It is comical because a god is (supposedly) omniscient.

RESPONDENT: However, regardless of the words Richard uses to cover or explain his language, no reading-into is required to find real feeling in operation.

RICHARD: If you are so convinced that you are not reading anything into my words then it seems that nothing I can say is going to alter that conviction ... I have already explained that it is nothing more than humour operating and you have already dismissed my explanation as a rationalisation.

At this point I am reminded of what you said in an earlier post about how ‘fine and entertaining disputes’ usually develop in discussions of this nature ... has it ever occurred to you that it could very well be your modus operandi which is fuelling such disputes?

I only ask because you seem so sure that you know me better than I do.

RESPONDENT: What really makes me laugh is seeing these people without malice getting hyper-defensive in the face of some pretty damn funny provocation.

RICHARD: Whilst I would not categorise a run-of-the-mill defence in the face of run-of-the-mill attacks [as being hyper-defensive] it is pleasing to notice that you both recognise and acknowledge ‘provocation’ – ‘a challenge to fight’ (Oxford Dictionary) – when you see it ... maybe you could throw some light upon why many and various religionists, spiritualists, mystics, and metaphysicalists have a propensity towards such challenges (rather than discussion)?

RESPONDENT: I guess they have (...) unresolved malice.

RICHARD: Which is why the ‘Tried and True’ is the tried and failed, eh?

RESPONDENT: If you were at peace you wouldn’t even bother to respond to those challenging religionists, spiritualists, mystics, and metaphysicalists.

RICHARD: Oh, it is no ‘bother’ at all ... I like my fellow human being, no matter what mischief they get up to, and prefer only the best for them.

RESPONDENT: Why do you add to the noise?

RICHARD: Presuming that you are asking why I discuss the challenges (there is no ‘noise’ here in this actual world), which those challenging-to-a-fight religionists, spiritualists, mystics, and metaphysicalists present from time-to-time, I would have considered the answer to be quite self-evident ... to wit: this is a discussion list.

RESPONDENT: What are you defending against?

RICHARD: The run-of-the-mill attacks, of course.

RESPONDENT: How can a No. 53 even touch you without your participation?

RICHARD: A challenging-to-a-fight religionist, spiritualist, mystic, or metaphysicalist never, ever, touches me ... all their commentitious allegations are generated by their own transference-whimsy (‘whimsy: a fanciful or fantastic (esp. artistic) creation’ Oxford Dictionary) and are not aimed at me but a fanciful/ fantasy ‘me’, who has no existence outside of their skull, but which phantasm they are (intuitively) convinced resides in this flesh and blood body.

It is this simple: actualism is an entirely new paradigm – unlike religiosity, spirituality, mysticality, and metaphysicality, there is no ‘being’ whatsoever upon an actual freedom from the human condition – and, like any new paradigm, it requires thinking outside of the box (to use a popular colloquialism).

RESPONDENT: I don’t know for certain why Richard is so spooked by feeling, but I have already shared my theories.

RICHARD: As it is you who is convinced that I am ‘spooked’ by the affective feelings – this being another example of you thinking that you know me better than I do – I will leave that to you to mull over.

RESPONDENT: However, I do know that his confusion yields a hazardous approach for persons examining their own feelings.

RICHARD: As the ‘confusion’ you see in me exists only in your own mind – along with the other incidences of you thinking that you know me better than I do – then that is where the ‘hazardous approach’ also resides.

RESPONDENT: By, at the same time, dismissing feeling ...

RICHARD: If I may interject? I am not merely ‘dismissing’ the affective feelings ... the entire affective faculty is extinct.

RESPONDENT: ... and maintaining a pretence of qualitativeness ...

RICHARD: If I may interject again? I do not maintain a pretence of the ‘qualitativeness’ which you describe (above) ... I specifically wrote ‘the qualitative nature of consciousness’ (using the word ‘qualitative’ as defined in the Oxford Dictionary which I posted in an earlier e-mail). Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘The Oxford Dictionary describes ‘qualitative’ as meaning ‘relating to or concerned with quality or qualities’.

It really pays to read what I write with both eyes open rather than jumping to the conclusion that I am talking about the same thing as you ... I had even said, that not only could I not find the word in either the dictionaries or the encyclopaedia I have access to, I was not sure what you meant by the word.

I could not have been more clear than that.

RESPONDENT: ... in the so-called sensate-only, Richard is deeply confused and deeply confusing.

RICHARD: Not so ... it is your assumption that I am referring to the same thing as the ‘qualitativeness’ you experience, when I talk of the qualitative nature of consciousness remaining intact upon the extirpation of the affective faculty, that persuades you to see that I am ‘deeply confused and deeply confusing’ (which is why I have interjected twice in your sentence).

An erroneous premise (‘by dismissing feeling and maintaining a pretence of qualitativeness’ ) invariably leads to a false conclusion (‘Richard is deeply confused and deeply confusing’ ) ... do you now see the flaw in thinking that you know me better than what I do?

RESPONDENT: Feeling cannot be dismissed, only penetrated.

RICHARD: Again you are talking about dismissal (which is perhaps what causes you to see reductionism in my words) whereas I have made it clear, again and again, that the entire affective faculty is non-existent.

RESPONDENT: And Richard has given us not a short-cut, but a quagmire, substituting denial of feeling for the penetration of its highest aspects, which, with others, subsist as none other than consciousness itself.

RICHARD: I will say it again: I am not into a ‘denial of feeling’ ... how can I be in denial of something that just does not exist?

With that said we now come to the nub of the issue: the penetration of the highest aspects of feeling, which you say that with other aspects subsist as none other than consciousness itself, is apparently what is important for you ... and not the extirpation of the entire affective faculty (via altruistic ‘self’-immolation) so that pure consciousness can become apparent. ‘Tis no wonder that you are at odds with what I write ... it could very well be the case that your agenda is to preserve the highest aspects of feeling (after all that is where spiritual enlightenment lies) at all costs.

Which may include the cost of presenting a sincere appraisal of my writings.

RESPONDENT: So after the change took place in your brain, you are experiencing another world. Or if you like the world in a different way. Not necessarily everybody else is experiencing it this way. So the difference between before the change and now, is due to your brain. If was possible to reverse the process then you should be like before. That means that your brain is creating your world.

RICHARD: This is the information I have suppled to you:

• [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)’.

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘Did you ever thought that you might altered your brain?
• [Richard]: ‘No ... all the activity occurred in the brain-stem’.

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘You admitted that something happened in your brain ...
• [Richard]: ‘No, I acknowledged that something happened in the brainstem’.

Yet what is your response to these three clear and unambiguous replies? Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘So after the change took place in your brain ...’.

You even asked if I could explain what happened scientifically so I referred you to two areas of the brain-stem I had gleaned some information about from an ad hoc reading of scientific texts:

• [Respondent]: ‘... but could you explain scientifically what?
• [Richard]: ‘As far as I have been able to ascertain from an ad hoc reading of scientific texts it was most probably in the Reticular Activating System (RAS), in general, and quite possibly in the Substantia Nigra, in particular (arguably the seat of consciousness) that the identity in toto expired’.

Why you choose to ignore what I have to report I cannot know, of course, yet it may very well be that the reason why lies at the end of your paragraph (above) where, after three assumptions, a preliminary judgement, and a speculation, your final conclusion is to be found:

• [Respondent]: ‘... your brain is creating your world’.

As this is the theme you have been running all through these e-mail exchanges it may help to put it this way: when the identity expired, in toto, ‘his’ world (the reality ‘he’ pasted as a veneer over this actual world) also ceased to exist ... there is no ‘your world’ in actuality.

There is only this actual world – the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum – and any other ‘world’ is an illusion or a delusion ... a mirage, as it were.

And palaeontology, for example, evidences that this actual world was here long before humans came onto the scene to claim it for their own.

RESPONDENT: When in a recent email I was trying to explain that the brain is co-creator of the world, and I was using the example of looking at a tree, you seemed you did no wanted to understand.

RICHARD: If you were to re-read that exchange (at the above URL for example) you will see that I do understood what you were trying to explain ... just because I do not agree with what you say does not mean that I do not understand what you are saying.

I even provided practical reasons why what you were saying was invalid – which you have chosen to ignore also – and they show that I understand.

RESPONDENT: Richard, I was wondering the other day, who gives you the right apart of your self to say that you was enlightened?

RICHARD: The Absolute (or God/Goddess, Truth, Being, and so on).

RESPONDENT: There are as many enlightened types as many teachers are.

RICHARD: Aye, the last time I looked up the subject there were 1200 gods/goddesses ... and that does not include the Hindu pantheon (said to comprise 33,000 by some accounts).

RESPONDENT: So first prove to me that you was enlightened ...

RICHARD: What kind of proof would you like (as in what manner of proof would satisfy you)?

RESPONDENT: ... and then we can speak about actuality, because if enlightened was in your imagination, so can be actual freedom as well.

RICHARD: This body has no imagination ... the imaginative/intuitive faculty vanished when the affections ceased to exist (and thus their epiphenomenal psychic facility). I literally cannot imagine, visualise, envisage, envision, picture, intuit, see in the mind’s eye, feel-out, dream up, fall into a reverie, or in any other way, shape or manner imaginatively conceptualise anything whatsoever.

I could not form a mental picture of something if my life depended upon it ... whereas in earlier years ‘I’ could get a picture in ‘my’ mind’s eye of ‘my’ absent father, mother, wife, children and so on ... or the painting ‘I’ was going to paint, or the coffee-table ‘I’ was going to build, or the route ‘I’ was going to take by car or whatever.

If I were to close my eyes now, and try to visualise, all what happens is the same velvety-smooth darkness – as looking into the infinite and eternal and perpetual universe at night – which has been the case for all these years now. I simply cannot have images ... when I recall childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, being middle-aged or yesterday it is as if it were a documentary on television but with the picture turned off (words only) or like reading a book of somebody’s life.

There is only the direct experiencing of actuality.

RESPONDENT: Richard, is ‘I’ more cunning than what is left of you – the sensing, body, mind, etc. (can I say ‘non-I’). How does the ‘non-I’ deduce the truth about the ‘I’ being not there? Do you as a person simply just ‘feel’ like, just ‘know somehow’, that I is ‘gone’ (which may do it, I don’t know)?

RICHARD: It is the ‘I’ only that is cunning, not ‘more cunning than what is left’ when it is gone ... what is left has no need to be cunning. You see, the ‘I’ knows that it is a fiction and that it should not be here ... and it lives in mortal fear of being found out and exposed for the fraud that it is. Hence its cunning nature.

As to how the ‘‘non-I’ deduces the truth about the ‘I’ not being here’ ... I would say it is your concept of ‘non-I’ that is making it difficult to understand, for how can an absence deduce anything? It is far better to discard that spiritual term ( ‘non-I’ ) and stick to the facts. Where there is no ‘I’ whatsoever, the apperceptive mind is eminently capable of discerning for itself that there is no identity (be it either an ‘I’ or a ‘non-I’ ) lurking about in the inner recesses of this body.

RESPONDENT: If the individual alone can claim they have no identity, and uses whatever ‘pretzel logic’ to refute any evidence to the contrary even though in their writings it is evident that they have particular tastes, preferences, & judgements and assess situations all unique to a ‘person’ with an identity!!

RICHARD: Indeed I have ‘particular tastes, preferences, & judgements and assess situations’ ... how does that demonstrate that there is an identity inhabiting this body? You may be interested to read the following:

• [Respondent]: ‘Surely there are patterns associated with your reflectivity. You tend to reflect on things in a certain way, and I have a different tendency. Does not that tendency define your identity? Or do you have no such tendency?
• [Richard]: ‘I certainly have that tendency ... and I revel in it. These are attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on. They are not the ‘thing-in-itself’.
• [Respondent]: ‘It seems to me that your identity is still maintained. You are a body sensing and reflecting, and a mind being aware of itself, even when there is no thinking. That awareness, the experience of sensing particular people, things and events, and the reflection on all that – does not all of it define you as a distinct entity to me, where there is also awareness happening of its own accord, and where there is a different set of sense experiences and reflections?
• [Richard]: ‘This flesh and blood body called Richard is a distinct physical organism to the flesh and blood body called No. 12. Each flesh and blood body is its own consciousness (there is no universal consciousness) hence each flesh and blood body is its own awareness, its own sensing, its own reflecting and its own ‘making sense’ of its own experience. None of this needs an identity in order for it to happen ... nor need it produce one. It is the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions situated in what is popularly known as the ‘Lizard brain’ – that is the genesis of ‘being’ ... and this identity as a rudimentary animal ‘self’, in human beings, produces ‘me’ as ‘soul’ and ‘I’ as ‘ego’.
• [Respondent]: ‘Are we not discrete identities Richard?
• [Richard]: ‘We are discrete physical flesh and blood bodies. The feeling of identity has its origins in the common ancestry of the animal instincts and takes on the appearance of being separate because of being manifest in individual flesh and blood bodies ... hence to desire to regain ‘oneness’ with all sentient beings. ‘I’ am alone and lonely and long for the ‘connection’ that is evidenced in a relationship. When ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ become extinct there is no need – and no capacity – for a relationship. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was hopelessly wrong in his oft-repeated ‘Teaching’: ‘Life is a movement in relationship’. Only a psychological and/or psychic entity needs the connection of relationship in order to create a synthetic intimacy – usually via the bridge of love and compassion – and manifest the delusion that separation has ended. And if human relationship does not produce the desired result, then ‘I’ will project a god or a goddess – a ‘super-friend’ not dissimilar to the imaginary playmates of childhood – to love and be loved by.
• [Respondent]: ‘Your awareness remains associated with your body whilst mine remains associated with mine. As the circumstances change around you surely there is something that remains the same, that defines you as you, and as separate to me. It is that claim of yours to have no identity I was wanting to chip away at, and am wanting to again.
• [Richard]: ‘It is the flesh and blood body that remains the same (with due allowance for the aging process) and defines Richard as Richard and you as you. The flesh and blood body’s characteristics (attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on) tend to stay the same ... but characteristics do not necessarily have to define an identity as being a ‘thing-in-itself’.

RESPONDENT: For me, actual freedom is breathe the here and now, and let it extend.

RICHARD: Okay ... and I chose the internet to share my discovery of peace-on-earth with my fellow human beings ... to ‘let it extend’ all over the globe.

RESPONDENT: Holding it, commenting it, expecting it, rejecting it, making choices and priorities, is not at all actual freedom, not true? But maybe I am just playing mind games and I have not at all understood what is Actually Being Here and Now!

RICHARD: I have been intimately and actively involved – meaning a hands-on approach – in the whole consciousness-study activity for twenty years now. In that time I have interacted with many, many people likewise engaged ... and it is a fascinating exploration. And there have been several times where someone, who has but half-listened to what I have to say, has gone off half-cocked into an enhanced or enlarged or extended state of consciousness in which, believing themselves to be thus awakened or illumined or enlightened or whatever, they then seek confirmation and/or recognition and/or accreditation from me. Sometimes the delusion is so grandiose that the person feels that they have gone beyond or have surpassed in some way and then turn it all around and proceed to tell me (or start teaching me) where I have gone agley. Invariably they call on the ‘Tried and True’ to bolster their insistence that I take notice of their atavistic wisdom ... until my consistent pointing out of facts either brings them back to their senses or they depart for some gullible pastures.

This is all par for the course as long as there are people who will not listen with both ears.

Being actually free from the human condition means that I am under no obligation whatsoever to become some sort of latter-day atheistic-saviour of humankind wherein I cannot live a normal lifestyle ... and this is what some peoples will not listen to. I fully enjoy my current lifestyle, as it is, totally, completely, utterly. I fully enjoy my own company; I fully enjoy the company of a choice companion; I fully enjoy the company of select associates; I fully enjoy all current associations ... my social calendar is thus fully booked out by simply living. To be fully able to freely live a normal lifestyle in a seaside village is why I set out to become free of the human condition all those years ago. And this is what an actual freedom from the human condition is ... it is right here in the market place.

The way to freely live a normal life is now available for all 6.0 billion people.

KONRAD: There are people on this list who claim that they can become aware of their ‘I’ at the moment it is active, without such a process being present. Richard is such a person ... ... who apparently has gone through some kind of transformation, that has made certain things clear to him. But contrary to me, there is not a constant ‘process’ going on within him, that is a left-over from it, and that renews this insight. This makes that if I try to communicate with him, I see from his reaction that there are differences in his understanding of the conditions of becoming aware of the ‘I’-thought and what I myself become aware of. It looks like he is talking from an experience of the past, and conclusions that were once drawn that form his present ‘I’, and not from an actually unfolding awareness of ‘I’ at this very moment. These differences make me conclude that Richard ... does not really know what it means to become aware of the ‘I’-thought at the moment it functions, although apparently he was once aware of it.

RICHARD: You are way, way off the mark ... there is no ‘I’ in any way, shape or form inside this body. This is an egocentric viewpoint (‘egocentric’ as in the way the word ‘ethnocentric’ is used) and shows that your appraisal of others is coloured by your own experience. Having an ‘I’-thought’ is your experience, not mine. Apart from that, you are unwittingly dead right where you say: ‘Richard does not really know what it means to become aware of the ‘I’-thought at the moment it functions, although apparently he was once aware of it’ .

It is so long ago that I cannot remember it at all ... except that it brought untold problems in living life freely.

RESPONDENT: (...) Is *I* as the soul is indeed genetically encoded in the DNA (as a set of survival instructions which generate the being referred to in a previous post *survival program* (General direction poc maandag 6 December 2004 6:28)?

RICHARD: As I could not find the post you refer to, either on or around that Monday, I will point out instead that the instinctual survival programme generally referred to on The Actual Freedom Trust web site and The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List is the instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – genetically endowed by blind nature at conception.

RESPONDENT: If – that is so it will not be possible to alter this particular set (while being a subset of the main set of genetic instructions) in any other way then on a molecular level, hence by genetic engineering. That seems to be a rather logical approach.

So ... my conclusion at this stage is: Richard You still do have a soul and merely the illusion that you had about having one, has been altered into the illusion that you don’t have it anymore; BTW not something to spit on.

RICHARD: I see ... and is it also your (rather logical) conclusion, at this stage, that the instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – are still in situ in this flesh and blood body and that it too is an illusion (albeit not an illusion to spit on) they are no longer extant?

If so, I will draw the following to your attention for your consideration:

• [Richard]: ‘... I have had people assert that my report/description/explanation about how the entire affective faculty – all the feelings, emotions, passions, calentures – vanished completely, in 1992, cannot possibly be true for the self-same reason [it is not to be found in biochemical/neurobiological text-books]. Furthermore, I have had people say that my report/description/explanation about how identity in toto – both ‘I’ as ego *and* ‘me’ as soul – simultaneously vanished, in 1992, also cannot possibly be true for a similar reason (it is not to be found in spiritual/mystical text-books).
To use a popular expression ... some peoples have difficulty in thinking outside of the box.

Curiously enough I posted that e-mail only the day before you posted this one I am responding to now.

*

RESPONDENT: If – that is so it will not be possible to alter this particular set (while being a subset of the main set of genetic instructions) in any other way then on a molecular level, hence by genetic engineering. That seems to be a rather logical approach. So ... my conclusion at this stage is: Richard You still do have a soul and merely the illusion that you had about having one, has been altered into the illusion that you don’t have it anymore; BTW not something to spit on.

RICHARD: I see ... and is it also your (rather logical) conclusion, at this stage, that the instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – are still in situ in this flesh and blood body and that it too is an illusion (albeit not an illusion to spit on) they are no longer extant?

RESPONDENT: Succinctly putting it no, it is not my conclusion.

RICHARD: In which case your (rather logical) conclusion, at this stage, that ‘me’ as soul – ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – is still in situ in this flesh and blood body, and that it is an illusion (albeit not an illusion to spit on) that it is not, has no sensible basis whatsoever.

Put simply: the extirpation of identity in toto is the elimination of the instinctual passions – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – as, being one and the same thing, the extinction of the one is the extinction of the other.

RESPONDENT: Even more so this [‘the instinctual passions ... extant?’] being my conclusion is an assumption of yours.

RICHARD: If I may point out? It is a question, not an assumption and, I might add, a question which follows sensibly from your (rather logical) conclusion, at this stage, that a soul is still in situ in this flesh and blood body, and that it is an illusion, albeit not an illusion to spit on, that it is not.

RESPONDENT: (...) though the instinctual passions are not active however the instruction code still is extant. Thus in an extreme situation they may become active again.

RICHARD: And just how is that any different, substantially, from (rather logically) concluding that the instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – are still in situ in this flesh and blood body and that it too is an illusion (albeit not an illusion to spit on) they are no longer extant?

Did you not read what came after the section I re-posted from the e-mail I posted only a day before you posted your initial e-mail which started this thread? I will re-post it here for your perusal:

• [Richard]: ‘... just what is your agreement, that these arousals would not be experienced by a person actually free from the human condition, worth?
That is somewhat akin to those peoples already mentioned who tell me that, even though I may not experience feelings (emotions, passions, calentures), such feelings are still being produced ... just like some peoples also tell me that, even though I might not experience an ego/soul, an identity is still in situ anyway.
It could be called, perhaps, a Clayton’s Agreement (the agreement you have when you are not having an agreement), eh?

The only difference between that situation and the scenario you sketch out is a one of a degree and not a difference in kind ... essentially what you are proposing is that the instinctual passions are in abeyance, as it were, or latent, dormant, and so forth, and may just as readily as not become active again in an extreme situation.

RESPONDENT: ^Note that is it says *may become* not that they will become^.

RICHARD: So? Is this not all an elaborate justification, anyway, for maintaining your (rather logical) conclusion, at this stage, that ‘me’ as soul – ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – is still in situ in this flesh and blood body, and that it is an illusion (albeit not an illusion to spit on) that it is not?

O what mental contortions they do go through when first they practice to remain in situ.

RESPONDENT: I have every reason to believe that you experience life just as you report. And the loss of the ‘entity’ within is crucial to the maintenance of this condition.

RICHARD: The condition which this flesh and blood body enjoys requires no maintaining whatsoever ... the extinction of identity in toto/the entire affective faculty ensures irrevocable permanence.

RESPONDENT: One could say that the self/SELF disappeared or became so ‘unconscious’ as to be effectively gone.

RICHARD: Whereas this flesh and blood body could not say that.

RESPONDENT: ‘You’ do still seem to maintain qualities that I might describe as ‘self’.

RICHARD: As what this flesh and blood body might seem to be maintaining, and what is actually happening, are two entirely different things it may very well pay to focus on the latter.

RESPONDENT: It is as if the final remnant of self is identified with a subtle archetype of a ‘saviour’.

RICHARD: You may find the following informative:

• [Richard]: ‘I set my sights further than being a mere saviour of humankind, all those years ago when I was determined to be free of the human condition, and I am not likely to fall back into that position now that I have succeeded’.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘I have no ambitions whatsoever to be anything other than what I am now; I thoroughly enjoy my current lifestyle, as it is, totally, completely, utterly. I fully enjoy my own company; I fully enjoy the company of a choice companion; I fully enjoy the company of select associates ... this is the lifestyle I have chosen; this is the lifestyle I wish to live; this is the lifestyle I am living.
I enjoy normal things: I live in a normal suburban duplex; I eat at normal restaurants; I meet normal people at cafés; I chat about normal things; I have normal pastimes ... to be able to freely live this normal lifestyle in a seaside village is why I set out to become free of the human condition all those years ago. I never intended – and I do not intend – to become some sort of latter-day atheistic-saviour of humankind wherein I cannot live a normal lifestyle.
Which is why Peter suggested the relative anonymity of the internet to make my discovery public’.

RESPONDENT: Claims that your method can essentially save mankind from itself (peace on earth) do have a grandiose quality.

RICHARD: Hmm ... just what way then, other than a sincere and dedicated current-time attentiveness, of enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into being apparent would not have such a quality (according to you)?

RESPONDENT: My take on it is that people that have become free from the entity within are not any help to others, excepting that their actions do not create the same kind of dynamic (karma) that the rest of us do.

RICHARD: As those people whom you are referring to are not free of identity in toto then it is not at all surprising they are no help to others in enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth to be apparent.

RESPONDENT: Their passing through is without the ripples in the fabric of life that cause distress and upset.

RICHARD: Au contraire ... anybody not free of identity in toto is bound to cause distress and upset.

RESPONDENT: The only dynamic may be that some people recognize the salubrity of the condition which you find yourself and want it for themselves.

RICHARD: Not if they too equate ‘dynamic’ with that religio-spiritual/mystico-metaphysical concept of ‘karma’.

RESPONDENT: The irony of course is that if they were to come into the same condition, there would be no ‘self-satisfaction’ in it.

RICHARD: You may find the following illustrative:

• [Richard]: ‘I can freely say that I, as I am today, did nothing to become free of the Human Condition. It was ‘I’ that did all the work ... ‘I’ self-immolated. And I am very pleased that ‘I’ did that. I am not proud because I did nothing to earn commendation ... it was ‘I’ that made this possible. Consequently I find myself here, in the world as-it-is, as this flesh and blood body. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity’.

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