Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Flogged Misconceptions

RICHARD: Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was talking about the metaphysical world whereas I write about the actual world.

RESPONDENT: J. Krishnamurti talked about the actual world, otherwise, I would not have been interested in reading him at all.

RICHARD: If I may point out? Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was talking about the real world ... but with rose-coloured glasses on. He saw the real world through the eyes of beauty and love, and thus never noticed the actual world that under-pins the reality that an identity pastes over the top of it.

RESPONDENT: He talked a whole lot more ‘actuality’ than you do with your ‘fairy tale world’. The descriptions you give of a world without the self ‘rings’ truth with me.

RICHARD: He also saw the real world through the eyes of compassion and truth ... and again missed the actual. The actual is pristine, pure, unadulterated, unimpeachable, undefiled, virginal, unsullied, innocent, guileless ... in a word: Perfect. In the press of everyday business, normal people do not notice this ... to keep with the analogy of glasses it is as if everybody has grey-coloured glasses on. Somebody becomes enlightened and puts rose-coloured glasses on over the top of the grey-coloured one’s.

I have taken off the grey-coloured glasses ... and no longer need the rose-coloured glasses of beauty, truth, love and compassion to make reality palatable. Normal reality and mystical Reality have both vanished along with the last trace of identity.

The words and phrases that I use, like ‘magical’ and ‘fairy-tale-like’ and ‘arcadian’ and ‘ambrosial’ are but descriptive phrases intended to convey a flavour. I am not, most definitely not, ‘off with the fairies’. That is too childish to contemplate.

RESPONDENT: That is why I say I see similarities in what you both are pointing to. In fact, reading all what you talk about, it is more metaphysical than anything I ever read Krishnamurti to say.

RICHARD: Okay ... but then again, I do not lie on a bed, with two women looking after ‘the body’ whilst ‘They’ work on me in some unknown dimension ... like he did. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti not metaphysical? You’ve got to be kidding!

RESPONDENT: It seems that you want to think you are saying something original, and you are not really. You talk about an ego and a soul that both must die in order for one to be free. I take it to mean that this soul you talk about is the idea that Masters and Messiahs have about ‘something else’, i.e., ‘enlightenment’, occurring between the enlightenment and the freedom, that also must die.

RICHARD: I am not too sure what you are getting at here with ‘i.e., enlightenment’ . I will plunge on regardless, and you tell me if I have misunderstood what your point is.

Various masters have spoken about a ‘something else’. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti said that there was ‘Something beyond Love’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain spoke of an ‘Unknowable’ and talked of going beyond enlightenment (and as his Teachings never changed he obviously did not do this) Mr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff spoke briefly about a ‘Greater Beyond’ that lay past enlightenment ... and so on. Hints, allusions, suggestions ... but nothing substantial, nothing demonstrable, nothing lived. Buddhists posit the ultimate reality to be after physical death ... and have made a virtue out the fact that Mr. Gotama the Sakyan was too pusillanimous to take the ‘final step’ (what they call the ‘Bodhisattva Principle’). For Hindus it is also after the death of the body ... Mahasamadhi. (...)

RESPONDENT: All you are saying is that all of the Masters and Messiahs and the Sages, etc. have had all kinds of metaphysical solutions for thousands of years and nothing has been solved here on Earth. This is exactly the same thing that Krishnamurti was saying.

RICHARD: He may have said it but he did not live it. To be enlightened is to transcend duality. ‘Transcend’ means to rise above, which implies that what you have transcended still exists, only it is beneath you now. This is borne out by the ‘Enlightened Beings’, who generally state that they have eliminated the ego and transcended duality ... I have yet to come across any enlightened master who consistently states that they have eliminated duality ... if there is any at all who say that. In an actual freedom, both sorrow and malice are eliminated – not transcended – along with the ego and the soul. Evil does not exist in the world, it exists only in the human psyche ... eliminate the psyche in its entirety and you have eliminated both Good and Evil (because ‘Good’ is a psychic phenomenon created to combat ‘Evil’). As the enlightened beings have only transcended duality, they have to cling to ‘The Good’ in order to resist ‘The Bad’. Hence also their pacifism, but that is another story.

RESPONDENT: There is no authority to truth, reality, actuality ... one must give up all teachers, be completely on one’s own.

RICHARD: There is indeed an authority to truth ... it is usually called God. Some people disingenuously call it: ‘that which is sacred, holy’. There is indeed an authority to reality ... it is called: ‘Might is Right’ ... and it comes from the point of a gun.

But, there is no authority in actuality ... there are no forces, no energies or no powers here. This is the realm of utter equality ... there is no hierarchy here.

RESPONDENT: Now to the Basic instinctual passions. It is about to arise/arises, basically first see through all the moral/social reactionary reactions, SEE, FEEL the basic instinct in its raw form, and attentiveness results in the that scenario I described couple of paras above. It’s nothing to be feeling ashamed or proud or humble, its the human nature basic instinct in operation, just see it as it is ...

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: ... the ‘what is’ ...

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: What I meant by ‘what is’ is ‘human nature as it is’ in moment to moment. Would you now say yes to this or is there something I have not understood/ misunderstood?

RICHARD: I replied in the negative because that term has considerable currency as an accepted English translation of the Buddhist ‘yathabhuta’ ... and the following quote, being quite explicit, will demonstrate why I responded that way:

• [Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti]: ‘So meditation is a mind seeing actually ‘what is’ ...’. (page 93, ‘Talks and Dialogues’; Saanen 1968).

Put succinctly: as a meditative mind is a mind in an altered state of consciousness (ASC) such a mind would *not* be seeing any basic instinctual passion as it is ... such a mind, having given way to the affections, is the very passions themselves (as a state of being).

RESPONDENT: My previous teachings to me are about the actual. For example, a key ingredient of my previous teachings is about having a direct experience of the actual which I feel is necessary to having a PCE.

VINEETO: I am stunned that you can call Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teaching being ‘about the actual’. If you had followed a bit of Richard’s extensive correspondence with many, many people on this very same teacher’s mailing list, you would at least have noted that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s concern is the transcendental and nothing but the transcendental. Vis:

‘If you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness ... ... therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being ... ... the discovery of truth, or God demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth – and I say such a thing does exist, I have realised it – to recognise that, to realise that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages’. (The Book Of Life: Daily Meditations With J. Krishnamurti’, December Chapter. Published by Harper, San Francisco. Copyright ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation of America).

In order to be able to say that Mr. Krishnamurti’s teachings to you are ‘about the actual’ you have to either ignore 90% of Krishnamurti’s teachings or twist the meaning of the word ‘actual’ into meaning spiritual and transcendental. ‘The key ingredient of [your] previous teachings is about having a direct experience’ of the divine, not the actual. Vis:

‘I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated’. (‘Krishnamurti: The Years Of Awakening’ Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York, 1991).

I have no problem with whatever name you might give to your goal and your experiences but denial and transcendence are sure methods of avoiding a Pure Consciousness Experience. For comparison I copied a description of a direct experiencing of the actual.

Richard: Hence my oft-repeated refrain: ‘I am the material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’ or ‘I am the experience of the infinitude of this universe as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware’. The infinite character of physical space, coupled with the eternal character of time, produces a here and now infinitude that can be understood experientially by one who is apperceptive. To grasp the character of infinitude with certainty, the reasoning mind must forsake its favoured process of intellectual understanding through logical and/or intuitive imagination and enter into the realm of a pure consciousness experience (apperception). In a PCE – which is where there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ extant – the essential characteristics of infinitude are transparently obvious, lucidly self-evident, clearly apparent and open to view.

This is a direct experiencing of the actual. Richard, List B, No 13

And just a little bit further in the correspondence files I found a perfect example to demonstrate actuality:

Richard: Empiricism does not ‘start from a premise’ at all; it starts from an obvious facticity. There is no need for thought to ‘take a leap of faith to impute an objective world’. No imputing at all is required to determine objective reality’s self-evident factuality. There is a simple experiment that will demonstrate the actuality of objective reality in a way that a thousand words would not:

1. Place a large spring-clip upon your nose.
2. Place a large piece of sticking plaster over your mouth.
3. Wait two minutes.

Now, as you rip the plaster from your mouth and gulp in that oh-so-sweet and actual air, I ask you: Do you still believe in Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s revered wisdom?

Exit: spirituality and religiosity.

Enter: facts and actuality.

Seeing the fact will set you free to live in actuality. Richard, List B, No 15

RESPONDENT: My previous teachings to me are about the actual. For example, a key ingredient of my previous teachings is about having a direct experience of the actual which I feel is necessary to having a PCE.

VINEETO: If Krishnamurti’s method and other methods of ‘self-discovery’ or ‘self-knowledge’ were able to produce a PCE, it would have happened by now, don’t you think?

I acknowledge that to grasp even a glimpse of the actual world is very difficult because normal reality is all we know and spiritual reality is all we imagine. For that very reason it is so vital to remember or to experience a pure consciousness experience. However, changing a few words, applying your previous spiritual methods and denying even being spiritual at all is a sure recipe of cutting yourself off from ever experiencing anything outside of the Human Condition.

RESPONDENT: Direct experience of the actual would be being with this monitor without having other thoughts about the past, etc. I’m not into any new age teachings. I clearly see the difference between sensual feelings and affective feelings.

VINEETO: As you might have gleaned from Richard’s description, your ‘direct experience of the actual’ and Richard’s direct experience of the actual are two different pairs of shoes. The choice is always yours.

*

VINEETO: In order to be able to say that Mr. Krishnamurti’s teachings to you are ‘about the actual’ you have to either ignore 90% of Krishnamurti’s teachings or twist the meaning of the word ‘actual’ into meaning spiritual and transcendental. ‘The key ingredient of [your] previous teachings is about having a direct experience’ of the divine, not the actual. Vis:

I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated. (‘Krishnamurti: The Years Of Awakening’ Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York, 1991).

RESPONDENT: I was talking about the teachings themselves such as being aware of what I am actually doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment and you have added a quote from his early years and what he may or may not have meant by truth at that period of his life.

VINEETO: I find it interesting that you should object to the relevance of the above quote from J. Krishnamurti by saying that it was ‘from his early years’. This is one of the several stock standard responses that were used by several faithful followers of Krishnamurti when Richard introduced quotes on the Listening-L mailing list to prove a point he was making. Only in September last year Richard had a lengthy discussion with one correspondent about that very same argument ... ‘from his early years’ . You were also writing on the list at the same time but maybe you missed the exchange. I have copied the relevant correspondence at the end of this letter.

I had posted this particular quote because I know from my thorough investigation into my years of spiritual dependency that you cannot separate the teachings from the teacher and just pick out a some advice that seem worth applying in your life and ignore the rest. The above quote shows clearly, as do many others from his later years, that J. Krishnamurti was a through and through spiritual person – ‘God-intoxicated’ – and his declared purpose was to teach people how to achieve this experience for themselves. Vis.:

‘Those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end ... ... will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose’. J. Krishnamurti, 1929

Therefore, following his method can, at the most, lead you to what he achieved – becoming yet another spiritual teacher immersed in ‘that which is eternal’ – and not knowing anything about a ‘direct experience with the actual’.

RESPONDENT: I have been spiritual in my life but I am not spiritual now. Truth to me is what I am actually doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment. I’m sorry if I have wasted your time. I will continue to look and see if I have any spirituality.

VINEETO: Personally, I was never attracted to J. Krishnamurti or his teachings as I considered them too dry and theoretical at the time of my spiritual involvement. Instead, I got sucked into the emotional indulgence and the escalating esoteric extravagance of Mr. Mohan Rajneesh. Yet the relationship that I had to him as my master differs not from the relationship that other followers have to their particular master – is it invariably epitomized by unquestioning adoration, deep felt loyalty, a love that excuses and defends the master’s every word or deed and the pride of being a disciple of such rare outstanding and powerful personality. Krishnamurti’s claim that he did not want to be a master nor want his followers to be devotees only created an apparent intellectual coolness but it never altered the fervent emotional ties that each of his followers had, and still has, with him. If you take the time and read through some of Richard’s correspondence with mailing list B you will quickly understand what I mean.

Before I could learn, explore or even consider that there was any new approach to life I had to question this highly emotional relationship to the one teacher that I had considered to be the only authority and fountain of wisdom. My worldview was coloured and measured against the authority of his words and teachings. If others stated similar views and ‘wisdoms’, I considered them right, if not, they were wrong. My judgements had nothing to do with my personal investigation of facts at all; it was solely a ‘feeling right’ decision according to my preconceived convictions solely derived from the master’s viewpoint – and the fact that he had been dead for 10 years did not change my emotional dependency on his authority at all.

An honest and in-depth investigation of the facts of the situation was only possible after I ‘tore Rajneesh out of my heart’, became a traitor to his message and his ‘sangha’ and thus became independent of his imagined approval or condemnation. Only then was I able to listen to his discourses and judge with my newly freed intelligence instead of ‘my heart’ and to discover his mindless twaddle and ‘compassionate lies’, his manipulation and deceit, his outright distortions and underlying ancient rotten Indian belief-system. Now I could start the long and fascinating journey of unravelling the intricate web of the psychic world – the Eastern spiritual fears of endless karma, the hope for transcendence, the reverence for intuition, love, compassion, bliss and enlightenment. Once one starts to see the psychic world and how it functions, the word ‘spiritual’ is revealed in its fuller and more comprehensive meaning.

You felt moved to defend your teacher the moment I quoted him in order to prove that he is concerned only with the spiritual and the divine and not with the actual. This reaction indicates where to look when you want to ‘see if [you] have any spirituality’. So in order to ‘continue to look and see if [you] have any spirituality’, you will first and foremost have to consider and investigate your affective relationship to your ‘previous’ teacher and teachings. Otherwise any factual discussion about what Krishnamurti said or meant will be distorted by the emotions that are instigating automatic instinctual (or, as LeDoux calls them, ‘quick and dirty’) reactions rather than considered intelligent responses.

RESPONDENT: Wisdom is openness to ‘what is’ which is ever-changing.

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I started being open to the ever-changing ‘what is’ in January 1981; earnest enquiry led to ‘what is’ blossoming and by September 1981 ‘what is’ flowered into the full bloom of its wisdom; earnest enquiry into the fully blooming wisdom of ‘what is’ flourished throughout the ‘eighties; earnest enquiry into the flourishing wisdom of ‘what is’ led to ‘what is’ beginning to wilt early in the ‘nineties ... and ‘what is’ died towards the end of October 1992.

Thus ‘what is’ is dead, extinct ... and its wisdom is no more.

RESPONDENT: When we do not earnestly enquire, there is no interest in truth.

RICHARD: Speaking personally, earnest enquiry into ‘what is’ in January 1981 rapidly led to an interest in ‘truth’ ; earnest enquiry and an interest in ‘truth’ led to ‘what is’ blossoming and by September 1981 ‘what is’ flowered into the full bloom of ‘truth’ ; earnest enquiry and an intense interest in the fully blooming ‘what is’ of ‘truth’ flourished throughout the ‘eighties; earnest enquiry into the flourishing ‘what is’ of ‘truth’ led to ‘truth’ beginning to wilt early in the ‘nineties ... and the ‘truth’ died towards the end of October 1992.

Thus the ‘truth’ is dead, extinct ... and earnest enquiry is no more.

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