Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Flogged Misconceptions

IRENE to Peter: Life without feelings is indeed barren and sterile.

RICHARD: I am living such a rich, full, sparkling, vital and magical life for the twenty four hours of every day ... and all without the affective faculty. Where do you get your information from about the barrenness and sterility of life without feeling?

IRENE to Peter: Freeing myself from aggression and fear didn’t come about by covering them over (...) my aggression and fear that I had not wanted to look at yet, would come out in my attitude and sharp remarks from time to time (...) I am so pleased with what I’ve done (...) I couldn’t have envisaged this particular outcome ever.

RICHARD: You see, here you do some kind of sleight-of-hand ... you condemn me for not having these basic feelings whilst proclaiming to be free of them yourself. Perhaps the clue lies in your not mentioning the other basic feelings – nurture and desire – in the above sentence. Just get rid of the ‘bad’ feelings and hang onto the ‘good’ ones, eh?

IRENE to Peter: There is life after the basic feelings of aggression and fear, they don’t have to dominate forever!

RICHARD: Here is confusion with the word ‘dominate’ ... have you freed yourself from aggression and fear or not? If you have ... why condemn me for doing so? If you have not ... why do you give the impression that you have?

IRENE to Peter: By ‘authentic’ I do not mean the natural instincts we are all born with. They become only active in a physical or deeply emotional threat to your well-being.

RICHARD: Aye ... and thus all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day. So, are you now saying that you are not free from these basic – these natural – instincts after all? What does ‘there is life after the basic feelings of fear and aggression’ mean then?

RESPONDENT: So are you saying the universe is like Borg but without Borg’s central operator?

RICHARD: No, I am unable to anthropomorphise.

*

RESPONDENT: By the way, when you replied to my (silly) Borg question with ‘no, I am unable to anthropomorphise’ I then realised you most probably don’t watch Star Trek, because neither do they.

RICHARD: I have not watched Star Trek but I have been made aware of the various personalities by some peoples likening me to this ‘Borg’ character. I have noticed that people, who do not read what I have to say with both eyes open, gain the impression that I am suggesting that people are to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire psyche itself is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the affective faculty is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings ... as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) where, with the self in abeyance, the feelings play no part at all. However, in a PCE the feelings – passion and calenture – can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings.

It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. 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).

RESPONDENT: If self-immolation is successful do you become like Spock?

RICHARD: No. I have not watched Star Trek but I have been made aware of the various personalities by some peoples likening me to this ‘Spock’ character. I have noticed that people, who do not read what I have to say with both eyes open, gain the impression that I am suggesting that people are to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire psyche itself is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the affective faculty is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings ... as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) where, with the self in abeyance, the feelings play no part at all. However, in a PCE the feelings – passion and calenture – can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings.

It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. 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).

Then everything I write about is self-evident.

RESPONDENT: Richard, I should like to ask the simple question ‘In which way one person that lost his being and ego, is different than a robot?

RICHARD: Just because a person actually free of the human condition has no identity whatsoever (neither ego-self nor soul-self/spirit-self) parasitically residing inside the flesh and blood body – and therefore no affective feelings – this absence of identity and its precious feelings does not thus make that person a machine, an automaton, an android (a robot somewhat resembling a human being in appearance designed to function in place of a living organism and carrying out a variety of tasks mechanically in accord with a pre-programmed circuitry).

I do not read/watch science fiction but as I get these type of questions from time to time I have gradually been made aware of various ‘Star Trek’ characters, for instance, and it is pertinent to point out that the stuff of science fiction (creations of imagination) is entirely different to actuality ... a writer replete with identity/ feelings trying to visualise life sans identity/ feelings can, apparently, only conceive of a robotic-like creature speaking in a flat, monotone voice, and devoid of a sense of humour.

I am yet to hear of a robot that experiences life like this, for example:

• [Richard]: ‘I live in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world where, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, everything and everyobody has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything ‘alive’ and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everybody. We do not live in an inert universe’.

In fact a robot, being a machine, does not experience anything at all.

RESPONDENT: Richard, when I read your posts I keep having the impression that you could be a CIA artificial intelligence entity attempting to play the spiritual messiah role.

RICHARD: Yet I repeatedly say that there is no religiosity, no spirituality, no mysticality and no metaphysicality in me whatsoever ... that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through. I also say (repeatedly) that I set my sights further than merely being (yet again) another of the long list of failed Messiahs and Masters, Gurus and God-Men, Saints and Sages, Avatars and Saviours and that I am not likely to fall back into that position now that I am free from the human condition. I speak plainly, up-front, out-in-the-open, unambiguously and frankly ... I say what I mean and I mean what I say. How on earth anyone can get ‘playing the spiritual messiah role’ out of all my critiques on the ‘Tried and Failed’ beats me. So, as I do not know why you gain that impression ... it looks as if you will have to answer your own question.

RESPONDENT: What a way to lead humanity – with a machine.

RICHARD: What inspires you to assume I am ‘leading humanity’ ... I propose unilateral action. And what inspires you to liken me to a machine ... when machines cannot consciously reflect, plan and implement considered activity.

RESPONDENT: Maybe I am just exposing my ‘we are all too much of the herd mentality’ concern.

RICHARD: Going by your ‘messiah role’ and ‘lead humanity’ comments above you may very well be correct.

RESPONDENT: As well as my concerns about the possibility of a big brother watching us. What do you say?

RICHARD: If you mean ‘a big brother’ as in Mr. George Orwell’s paranoid fantasy I am totally unconcerned. If one complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols one is left free to live one’s life as wisely or as foolishly as one wishes. If you mean ‘a big brother’ as in an older sibling in a family hierarchy ... such a person only has as much psychological and psychic power over you as you give them leave to have such an effect. Apart from physical power, no-one can force their power on another without the other’s acquiescence and compliance. It is a truly and remarkably free world we live in!

RESPONDENT: Your answer could be improved with a bit of humour – become a little more human, like?

RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... but why just ‘a little’ more human, though? Would you like me to include a dash of anger, perhaps? A sprinkling of hate? Toss in a trifling of sadness? A measure of grief? Add a garnish of love? Wrap it in compassion and !Bingo! ... a lot more human.

RESPONDENT: Less robotic ...

RICHARD: Speaking personally, what I find ‘robotic’ is all the oh-so-predictable wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that have eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed Messiah or Master, Guru or God-Man, Saint or Sage, Avatar or Saviour. Also, all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered religious or spiritual teaching renders its mute testimony to ‘robotic’ behaviour ... for anyone with the eyes to see.

RESPONDENT: ... less staccato.

RICHARD: And less fortissimo as well? More pianissimo maybe?

RESPONDENT: While you reset the humour dial, the ‘claims’ dial could also do with a little going over.

RICHARD: Are you of that school of thought that says ‘you can’t change human nature’?

RESPONDENT: I really liked this one Richard: [quote]: ‘Hmm ... if I were so foolish as to arrange live dialogues would I have to brush my hair another way, wear a collar and tie, sit up straight and look right into the camera, enunciate each syllable without slurring and not pick my nose/scratch my ear/whatever?’ [endquote]. …/clear your throat/scratch your balls/etc/etc. That’s good Richard! I thought you had lost your sense of humour together with your feelings?

RICHARD: Life in this actual world is not the same as science fiction (such as ‘Star Trek’ for example) as the authors/script writers are imagining what it would be like to be an identity sans feelings ... and not a flesh and blood body sans identity in toto (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’).

This is because imagination is such a poor substitute for the actual.

RESPONDENT: Aren’t you being just a tinny little malicious here?

RICHARD: No, I am being droll.

ALAN: It still astonishes me how people can so easily turn their backs on Actual Freedom, as epitomized in Peter’s mail to No 3 – most are simply not interested in discovering how magnificent life can be. I was discussing this with my wife last night and it got back to the familiar sticking point – giving up emotions and becoming a ‘zombie’, as she puts it. Is this an objection you have come across? So far, as what starts one on the exploration, I think you are correct that some disillusionment et. is necessary, but then all who live within the Human Condition suffer disappointment, longing and desperation. Speaking personally, it was my memory of a PCE which started me on the search for ‘answers’ – I wanted to again experience that purity and perfection. It was a decision which took years to make. How did you get started on the spiritual path?

VINEETO: ‘Giving up emotions and becoming a zombie’ – this is almost a standard expression, as if a zombie has no emotions. When I compare my life now with two years ago, then I had been living a zombie-life all my life, with a few exceptions. I had been dull and predictable, a biological mechanism programmed with different roles, beliefs emotions and instinctual passions, just like everyone else around me. Being programmed with emotions is like being out at sea – any moment the weather can change into a raging storm, rain or sunshine, for no apparent reason. ‘Zombie’ means being full of emotions, but keeping them so utterly repressed and distorted that one is 90% shut down.

The comparison of ‘no emotion’ and ‘zombie’ also reminds me of the latest science fiction films, where the robots and computers are very human-like in that they have been programmed with rudimentary emotions. Kryton in ‘Red Dwarf’ is a cute example, Hal in ‘2010’ another. The scientist working with the supercomputer Hal in ‘2010’ (a follow-up film of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001) said to his team: ‘Whether carbon- or silicon-based life forms, both species need to be treated with the same respect.’ What a hoot. In the same anthropo-centric manner that we would like computers to have human-like qualities we are searching in animals for ‘human-like’ behaviour – while completely overlooking the fact that we are observing our own animal-heritage, our core instincts and rudimentary self.

While now, having eliminated the fog of emotions which were cluttering every perception, restricting and distorting intelligence and apperception, life is easy, comfortable, peaceful, happy and imminently delightful. I am more alive than ever, the senses sharper and enjoying whatever is happening, the brain functioning perfectly to sort the sensible from the silly – and sometimes I am silly just for the fun of it.

So, the expression ‘zombie’ for ‘no emotion’ is a misnomer. For the ‘self’, our lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity, it is a reality that ‘I’ am my emotions and without them ‘I’ will only be a robot. For me, maybe particularly with a conditioning and instinctual programming as a woman, emotions were all and everything I thought and felt myself to be. To question emotions is to question one’s very ‘self’. It needs lots of courage, sincere intent and, if possible, the remembrance of a peak experience, to dare to look for something beyond this safe and familiar world of up-and-down emotions.

Meeting Richard was another help for me, for he was not at all the man one could call a ‘zombie’ – yet he is without emotions. Here is a man as normal and ordinary as Mr. Smith but at the same time radiantly alive, friendly, peaceful, gay, humorous, carefree, considerate and perfect as only legendary heroes would have been described – and this day after day, whenever I met him, without any flaw. Here I could compare the facts with my fears, the day to day actuality with my dark and confused fantasies.

But the main reason for taking up the third alternative was because I dared to acknowledge that ‘being normal’ had no attraction for me nor had all the spiritual practice borne any solutions for a happy life. The highly prized emotions had only caused trouble, fight, jealousy, disappointment, hope and desperation in my life.

ALAN: – giving up emotions and becoming a zombie, as she puts it. Is this an objection you have come across?

VINEETO: I have come across that objection many, many times. Women hold emotions, particularly their own, in high esteem; it is the familiar territory of the power she yields and the most important part of a female identity besides being a mother. Men may have developed other identities, many manage to avoid feeling their emotions like all get out, which, of course, does not help to become free of them.

To me, it was obvious from day one, that if I wanted to live in peace and harmony with Peter, then an exploration and a questioning of all my emotions was inevitable. In the end, this exploration proved to be the dissolution of the male and female camp and resulted in a delicious actual and ongoing intimacy between us, something which, apart from a few glimpses, I had never experienced before.

The other aspect of emotions lies in a broader context, and I am encountering this lately as it is becoming more obvious. Feelings, emotions and instinctual passions are the only connection between ‘me’ and ‘Humanity’. Empathy, sorrow and compassion make us feel connected to the greater ‘community’ of humankind, thus perpetuating sorrow without any solution. Severing the ties to this suffering ‘Humanity’ and standing on my own two feet without even the option of ‘feeling’ the other if I wanted to, is a bold step, and has been a process that took me a few months.

The turning point was the experience that, one evening before sex, I had a flash of wanting to kill Peter. I perceived him as being a deadly threat to ‘my’ identity, and my instinctual reaction resulted in the wish to kill him. The surfacing of this raw instinct in me, directed against my best and most intimate playmate, was a severe shock – it became blindingly obvious and self-evident that ‘I’ am rotten to the very core. To guarantee peace-on-earth, ‘I’ will have to become extinct.

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:

• [Richard]: ‘With the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and the sense organs – and thus the external world – disappears. To be living as the senses is to live a clean and clear and pure awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart) – to have sensations happen to them, one is the sensations. The entire affective faculty vanishes ... blind nature’s software package of instinctual passions is deleted.
Then there is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not happening to an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. *To live life as these sensations, as distinct from having them*, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and magic. One is living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. It never goes away – nor has it ever been away – it was just that ‘I’/‘me’ was standing in the way of the meaning of life being apparent. Now the universe is experiencing itself in all its magnificence as an apperceptive human being. [emphasis added]. (www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/default.htm).

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: I have no belief in my feelings.

RICHARD: If you say so ... if I were you I would re-examine this statement, however.

RESPONDENT: These are ‘actual’. There are feelings of ‘sadness’; ‘pleasure’, the labels, but these are actually emotions, not feelings.

RICHARD: The word ‘feelings’ covers the whole gamut of the affective faculties: emotions, passions and calenture (and the word ‘calenture’ is deliberately used because it means a feverish, burning and zealous ardour that results in delirium and hallucinations).

RESPONDENT: By feelings I – mean something ‘deeper’ than thought, than emotion ... something connected to something more real ... like insight.

RICHARD: ‘More real’ ? Are there gradations of reality? It must be a hassle trying to determine what is more or less real ... I am glad that I stick to facts and actuality. A fact is obvious ... never ‘more or less’ a fact. Actuality is self-evident ... there is no need to ascertain if some thing is more or less actual.

And an insight is seeing the fact ... direct seeing. It is not a feeling ... be it ‘deep’ or otherwise. You are interchanging ‘insight’ (awareness, discernment, understanding, penetration, acumen, perspicacity, discrimination) with ‘intuition’ (sixth sense, divination, presentiment, clairvoyance, second sight, extrasensory perception, instinct). And intuition has a poor track record for veracity. The best that intuition has ever done when tested exactly is a 53.4% accuracy ... which is only marginally above guess-work anyway (and that was the best result ... the rest are 50/50).

RESPONDENT: By ‘no belief in them’, I mean that they do not offer security, do not offer something from which I derive comfort, are not something lasting.

RICHARD: Then why defend them so? The only thing that offers ‘security’ is ceasing to exist as an ego ‘I’ and a soul ‘me’; the only thing that offers ‘comfort’ is the utter safety of being here now; the only thing that is lasting is the infinitude of this physical universe ... and by ‘infinitude’ I am referring to being where this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space intersect. In the jargon it is called: ‘being here now’ ... only I mean it as this flesh and blood body and not as some ‘Immortal Self’.

RESPONDENT: They are what they are, from moment to moment.

RICHARD: Just what does that mean: ‘they are what they are’ ? It sounds like a platitude to me. Anyway, feelings are downright destructive: 160,000,000 million people killed in wars this century alone, according to the most recent estimate I have heard.

RESPONDENT: They are never the same.

RICHARD: Oh, yes they are ... they are tediously repetitious.

RESPONDENT: Sometimes they are. Those are the emotions.

RICHARD: Not only the emotions ... also the passions and calenture. And from the way you are leaning toward having faith in intuition ... so to is the psychic. It is all the same-same stuff that human beings have fallen prey to for millennia ... with disastrous results.

RESPONDENT: They are always new.

RICHARD: Oh, no they are not ... they are the same old same old.

RESPONDENT: These are the insights. They just come to one ‘out of the blue’. This is what I mean by ‘true feelings’, the sixth sense. You are a firm adherent to the five senses; haven’t you come in contact with the sixth one yet?

RICHARD: Yes ... many years ago. You are not talking to a beginner here ... I have already been down that path. The ‘sixth sense’ is where one enters into the psychic world of prescience and clairvoyance and all that stuff. Also notoriously unreliable ... and down-right dangerous into the bargain.

RESPONDENT: Don’t you ever just ‘know things’ without any reason or rhyme? Do you listen to this sixth sense?

RICHARD: No ... I no longer have it. Intuition (and the imaginative faculty that it is born of) disappeared completely in 1992 when the soul ‘me’ vanished entirely from this body. Thus I know as a fact that it is all born of the affective faculties, as I have had no feelings at all since then. (...)

RESPONDENT: So by feelings, Richard, I mean something more than the feelings that cause wars and hunger and great disparities, emotions.

RICHARD: Not so ... these are the very feelings that ‘cause wars and hunger and great disparities’ . Maybe a case may be made that they are not emotions ... but they are certainly passions and calenture. Added to the psychic dimension, they are a volatile mixture.

RESPONDENT: It takes a lot of patience; a lot of love and care; and an absence of judgement to live through the feelings. I don’t mean living ‘through’ feelings, but without attachment to the feelings.

RICHARD: Who is the person that is ‘without attachment to the feelings’ ?

RESPONDENT: And who would be the one to dispense with them?

RICHARD: You are not Jewish, by any chance, are you ... answering a question with a counter-question? Yet I find it easy to answer, nevertheless: The ego ‘I’ can self-immolate psychologically. The soul ‘me’ can self-immolate psychically. Psychological and psychic self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ and ‘me’ can make in order to reveal perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ and ‘me’ are no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ and ‘me’ stand in the way of that purity being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits perfection being evident. ‘I’ and ‘me’ prevent the very meaning to life, which ‘I’ and ‘me’ are searching for, from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ and ‘me’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ and ‘me’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Apperceptive awareness makes self-immolation possible.

Then the search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘I’ and ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – or ‘me’ as a feeler – a little person inside one’s heart – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘I’ or ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away ... nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ and ‘me’ were standing in the way of meaning.

So, again: ‘Who is the person that is ‘without attachment to the feelings’?

RICHARD: Okay ... as what I have to report/ describe/ explain about this moment having no duration cannot be even remotely compared with Mr. Aurelius Augustinus’ conceptual [quote] ‘present’ [endquote], which flies rapidly from future to past similarly conceptualised portions of time, then that is the end of that mode of perception being what a flesh and blood body only (sans the entire affective faculty/ identity in toto) directly experiences. All that remains to be settled now, before moving on to other topics, is the matter of what Mr. Plato has Mr. Socrates say in ‘Apology’.

RESPONDENT: Richard, are you a robot?

RICHARD: I have been asked similar questions before ... for instance:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘In which way one person that lost his being and ego, is different than a robot?’

I do not read/watch science fiction but as I get these type of questions from time to time, from peoples who either conveniently overlook or are oblivious to what is known as ‘theory of mind’, I have gradually been made aware of various ‘Star Trek’ characters, for instance, and it is pertinent to point out that the stuff of science fiction (creations of imagination) is entirely different to actuality ... a writer replete with identity/feelings trying to visualise life sans identity/feelings can, it would seem, only conceive of a robotic/automated android-like organism speaking in a flat, monotone voice and devoid of both a sense of humour and any caring/consideration for other sentient creatures (aka fellowship regard).

RESPONDENT: Don’t be so predictable!

RICHARD: There is no way you could have predicted that, upon doing a little research (and presuming that by autobiography you meant Mr. Aurelius Augustinus’ book ‘The Confessions’ plus further presuming that the passage you spoke of was to be found in ‘Book XI’), I would nowhere find anything relating to what ‘this moment has no duration’ refers to ... unless, of course, you only ever wanted to have me going off on a wild-goose chase from the very beginning.

In other words, taking you to be sincere I went on-line, located a copy of ‘The Confessions’, downloaded it, started reading but soon stopped (due to its range), went back on-line, located a web page which provided a chapter-by-chapter commentary, ascertained where the ‘meditation on time’ was to be found (Book XI), came back to the down-loaded copy, read the entire chapter ... only to draw a blank.

And when you then explained why you thought what I have to say could be compared to what Mr. Aurelius Augustinus had to say I still took you to be sincere.

RESPONDENT: I hereby beg you to consider I never even compared what you said to anything anybody else ever wrote or reportedly said.

RICHARD: You have to be kidding, right?

RESPONDENT: Let’s move on.

RICHARD: All that remains to be settled now, before moving on to other topics, is the matter of what Mr. Plato has Mr. Socrates say in ‘Apology’.

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