Richard's Personal Web Page

I am septuagenarian widower, of ‘Fair Albion’

parentage (both matrilineal and patrilineal), the genitor

of four offspring from my first marriage—all long-time adults scattered far and wide and living their own lives—and procreant by sequential generational descent of nigh-on a score of grandchildren, plus, by the latest count, upwards of a dozen great-grandchildren, and I am nowadays retired with a veteran’s pension as my sole income, living aboard a self-built houseboat on the Richmond River—an extensive riverine-complex inclusive of various tributaries meandering through the sempervirent

rain-forested Northern Rivers district on the eastern seaboard of the continent known as Terra Australis Incognita since antiquity (named thataway on maps from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century) and currently the terra firma hosting an affluent industrialised and technologised nation—where my days can be lived-out in a paradisaical sub-tropical wonderland.

My buoyant abode, with its priceless ability to remain atop the highest spring-tides and/or floodwaters—along with its absolute riparian waterfront vistas no millionaire’s high-priced river-frontage property can even come close to excelling—is somewhat removed from mainstream utilities dependence insofar as there is no permanent internet connection (no telephone cable), thus necessitating a wireless connection, with banked batteries set-up to provide electric power generated from rooftop photovoltaic cells (with essential back-up gensets) as well as bottled liquid petroleum gas to fuel a four-burner stovetop and the hot-water system for shower, vanity basin, kitchen sink, and so on, and so forth, through a range of items such as low-power notebook computers, miniscule-power smart phones, plus a modest twelve-volt ʟᴄᴅ television and video-player screen along with minimal-power ʟᴇᴅ lighting, for instance.

Having been born and raised on a dairy farm in the south-west of this country I have an affinity for the remote lifestyle (my progenitors

were pioneer settlers carving a farm by hand out of virgin forest

and sowing grasslands for animal husbandry). In this context I had a normal birth and upbringing (a bucolic lifestyle)

; I was educated in a normal state-run rural school (where being dux of the class came easy); I took on a typical occupation at age fifteen (full-time farming) becoming a high-school dropout in the process

; I volunteered for a six-year stint in the military at seventeen

(in a water-transport unit)

; I served my time in an overseas war at nineteen (on an army landing ship)

; I entered into a commonplace marriage upon my return (a knobstick wedding)

; I had a regular family, just as most peoples do

, and, although I had about forty-to-fifty different jobs during my post-military itinerant-lifestyle working life—such as First Mate on an Arnhem Land landing craft

, for instance, and as barman-cum-deckhand on a Coral Coast tourist ship, for example—my main occupation, having obtained a tertiary education with certified accreditation in the fine arts in my late-twenties

, was as a part-time art teacher and a practicing artist (mainly in ceramics)

As both a boy and as a youth I personally used hand-held cross-cut saws and axes to help cut down and/or ring-bark

the trees to make pasture land; I was involved in the fencing and ploughing and sowing and harvesting; I hunted game in the forest and helped raise domesticated animals; I tended the gardens and orchards and crops; I assisted in building sheds (barns) and outhouses from forest timber and learned improvisation from the ingenuity required in ‘making do’ with minimal commercial supplies. There was no plumbing, sewage, telephone, or electricity umbilicals (in effect, living the ‘off-grid’ lifestyle

some forty years before the term was coined)—I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lantern—thus no freezer, no electric kitchen gadgets, no record players, no videos, no television, no computer, and etcetera.

Without giving its pre-antediluvial legacy

aspect any second thoughts whatsoever I would regularly just help myself—in that atavistically bequeathed free-range lifestyle manner—to whatever foodstuff was available from the primordial forests, the woodlands, the pasturable lands, the fishable streams, rivers and oceanic-waters in and around the remote pioneer-farming district. And the term ‘remote pioneer-farming district’ is used advisedly because, although there had been some timber-cutters in that particular area in the 1890s—(its regrowth remnants nowadays promoted as “Harewood Forest”

for touristic reasons)—and the early 1900s, the district did not attract a lot of settlers until a soldier-settlement scheme was established in the 1920s whereby the state-government encouraged demobilised military personnel from ‘The Great War’, as it was known then, to take-up land-holdings in the area. And yet, even so, the following decade’s ‘Great Depression’ held back a lot of potential development which might have otherwise taken place, and the main employers of hired hands then were timber-mills.

As I was born some twenty-odd years later, in the late 1940s, there were still large amounts of forested land—virgin territory where, peradventure, no human had trod before as the hunter-gatherers from neighbouring districts held fast to a legend about it being off-limits, a taboo area, for them (a widely-acknowledged legend, at the time, strenuously denied by their modern-day descendents making ‘native-title’ claims)—such that the intervening area between the northernmost boundary of the property, where I spent the first sixteen-seventeen years of my life

, and the nearest settlement, some fifty or so kilometres nor-northwest as the crow flies, was uninhabited forestland still yet to have even the most rudimentary of roadways established through it.

I would either shoot or trap game for the table—although trapping was preferable wherever possible as the cost of each bullet for the somewhat antiquated rifle I used

was the same as the price of a full loaf of commercially-baked bread in the nearest township twenty kilometres away to the south—and freshly-killed kangaroo meat, rabbit, wild duck and pigeon (for instance) were oft-times a feature at meal-times.

An abundance of fresh-water crayfish

frequented the waterways, and (although the regular way of catching them was to dangle a piece of meat on a string into the water), upon having noticed one night how they came out from their underwater burrows to feed after dark, the easiest way to capture them was to go out into the forest to wherever there were shallow streams, and, by shining a light into the water, simply reach in and pick them up by hand—just behind the head to avoid their claws—on a choice-selection basis. As a general rule, it would take about an hour or so to help myself to a four-gallon bucketful (square ‘buckets’ formed out of empty kerosene cans, with their tops cut out, and a looped handle of eight-gauge fencing wire threaded through some long-ago perished rubber hose added).

Another foodstuff to just help myself to were berries when in season—blackberries in particular were plentiful—as were mushrooms, both of the field and forest variety (with some of the latter reaching the size of dinner-plates), which could be collected by the bucketful. And emu eggs, although not plentiful all year round, were an occasional comestible to gather, as were wild bee honey-combs as well. An oddity item to help myself to by the armfuls, in season, was a rather special wild-flower which grew in swampy areas and known locally as ‘Boronia’; once a year a buyer for a city-based perfume supplier would travel throughout the area purchasing prodigious amounts, for distillation, from whomever would go out and pick them for free.

The nearby southern ocean was a bountiful source for a range of seafood and my preferred way of helping myself was to go into the sea with a spear in hand (fashioned from a straight piece of sapling, about the length and thickness of a modern broom-handle, with a sharpened length of eight-gauge fencing wire attached for a spear-head, and an inch-wide section of circular rubber, cut from a discarded inner-tube, fastened at the other end for propellent force when held at full-stretch by the hand grasping the shaft) in order to be able to pick and choose particular fish. And, apart from all the fish, there were also crabs, crayfish (known as salt-water lobsters in America), octopus, and quite a variety of shellfish to help myself to.

A regular rural childhood, in other words, inasmuch there was no ‘wounded child’

nor any ‘dysfunctional family’

background beyond the norm.

The pioneering lifestyle gave me a vast experience with animals (starting from before earliest memory even)—with domesticated creatures such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks and chickens plus the wild species which include kangaroos, emus, dingoes, foxes, rabbits, eagles, crows, magpies, pigeons and quail—quite a few of which I slaughtered and butchered (i.e., killed, skinned, gutted and dressed) with my own hands. Stalking game for the table made me keenly aware of feral behaviour and raising livestock for a living necessitated an eye for the detail of each creature’s daily practice. I observed animal action and demeanour, ascertaining how a creature is likely to perceive the world in relation to itself and others, and knew from a very early age how human beings are fundamentally no different, in regards to instinctive behaviour, despite their nonpareil

ability to be both aware of being sentient and reflective of thus being uniquely self-conscious creatures.

There never was a ‘nature versus nurture’ riddle for me to solve in this respect; the human animal was demonstrably born with blind nature’s inherent survival passions

just like the other animals were. On many an occasion I have seen cows ‘spooked’ and then stampede, in what must be described as hysteria, and bulls displaying what can only be labelled aggression; I have discerned birds putting into practice what can only be characterised as nurture; I have watched many animals exhibiting what must be specified as fear; I have witnessed carnal behaviour which can only be classified as desire; I have noticed dogs acting in a way which can only be called pining; I have oft-times observed a cat toying with a mouse in a manner which can only be dubbed cruel (and even watched a blackbird similarly capture-release-recapture a large insect, for upwards of ten minutes or so, as its life-and-death struggles became weaker and weaker), and, these days, I can tune into documentaries on this very topic.

Only recently a television series was aired again about observations made of chimpanzees over many, many years in their native habitat and I was able to identify fear, aggression, territoriality, civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, nurture, grief, group ostracism, bonding, desire, and so on, being displayed in living colour. I have also read accounts, such as in a National Geographic article of chimpanzees in the wild, in which Ms. Jane Goodall uses words such as ‘war and kidnapping, killing and cannibalism’ and ‘affectionate and supportive bonds’ and ‘pleasure, sadness, curiosity, alarm, rage’ and ‘chimpanzees are creatures of extremes: aggressive one moment, peaceful the next’ when describing what she observed over twenty-plus years

These matters were of interest to me because, as a child, a youth and a young man, I was particularly sensitive

in comparison with my then peers—I would feel everything keenly, acutely—and was easily hurt (pathematically)

by others and had difficulty hurting anyone (somatically)

, or, for that matter, being the cause of harm to any body or any thing. I always preferred the company of females to males anytime—the casual cruelty of boys torturously

pulling wings off flies out of boredom, sickening grade-schooler me to the stomach

, was as perplexing as their agnorance

, my protestations notwithstanding—and all the killing I did as a farmer’s son was quick and efficient to ensure it was as painless as is possible (as life indubitably feeds off life there was no objection to killing per se). The rough and tumble of typical manly pursuits, especially competitive sports of the pugilistic kind, held no interest for me at all and I often felt like a fish out of water, during my six years in the military, despite being rigorously trained and retrained, by the nation’s experts in the field, until it became ‘second nature’ to kill, maim, or wound an antagonist, with any of seven lethal weapons, before they did likewise.

What was of specific interest, of course, was why peoples were the way they are. For instance, on the arrival of a grandmother from the city, for a once-yearly visit during the festive season, her white-haired features would be soft and pink—she exuded a palpable warmth and affection—as she swept me up in a welcome embrace, yet, on the next day (due to some infraction all toddlers are prone to) this loving face was as if it had never been manifest. Contorted in conspicuous severity and antagonism—she radiated a palpable coldness and abhorrence—as she berated me, in no uncertain terms, those white-haired features were harsh and purpled. Those steely eyes and spittled lips, both frightening and bewildering, made mockery of nature’s nurturance.

Another example: upon being enthusiastically introduced to a new game called cricket—with the aim being to prevent three sticks from getting knocked over—I eagerly took up position as instructed, with bat ready in anticipation of what seemed to be an eminently sensible sport, as my enthusiastic introducer bowled his first ball at me. Now, a cricket ball impacting bodily at great force is very painful indeed, yet, as I assumed it to be a miscalculation and tossed it back, the next ball impacted even more severely. The third instance, and the look of tangible epicaricacy

(a.k.a. glee) on the bowler’s features, disabused me of any notion of accident and left me with the desolate realisation that my fellow human, in this case a sibling six years my senior, was out to hurt me—deliberately—and with malice aforethought.

Stung to the quick and smarting from being lured (yet again) into acting-out the naïve foil

for his iniquitous callidity

, it was manifestly evident then, even as a pre-schooler, how something had somehow gone drastically awry somewhen as all the peoples currently alive were self-evidently not on this verdant and azure planet—which terraqueous globe begat the human race and whereat humankind flourishes—to enjoy being here, appreciative of the vital opportunity being alive offered of living happily and harmlessly with one another, but, rather, were in a state of pervicacious

ignoration

about living together congenially

and convivially

whilst

willingly proffering corrigendum

for each other’s advancement, on occasions of inadvertence or incompetency, in a cheerily assistive

manner.

My adult questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being, living in the world as it is with people as they are, had its genesis in a war-torn country in 1966 at age nineteen where a religious man killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green soldier’s uniform with a high-powered rifle in my hands, at ‘red-alert’ action-stations on board a military landing ship, representing the anthropo-materialist

way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in a saffron-orange monk’s robes dowsed in petrol with a fire-lighter in hand, sitting cross-legged at a traffic intersection in the neighbouring county, representing the religio-spiritualist

way to peace.

I was aghast at what we were both doing and sought to find a third alternative to being either secular or spiritual.

This was to be the turning point of my life because, up until then, I was a typical western youth; raised to believe in a socio-cultural ‘God, Queen and Country’ ethos. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind—society’s treatment of its subject citizens—was driven home to me, there and then, in a way which left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw with a starkly-staring clarity how no one knew what was going on and—most importantly—how no one was ‘in charge’ of the world (unlike childhood schools where the headmaster or headmistress in charge is the ultimate preventative of playground fights going out-of-control lethal). There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race insofar as all gods and goddesses were but a figment of febrile imagination.

Out of a despairing desperation, which, by-and-large, is collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood how I was as ‘guilty’ as anyone else. For in me—as is in everyone—was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’; it was the case how some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer and malice (a.k.a. evil) ran rampant. I saw again how deeply-seated passions—instinctual passions such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire—ruled the world, and, already knowing these were the rough-and-ready survival passions one was born with, thus kick-started my search for freedom from the Human Condition

. My attitude, all those years ago, was this:

I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly.

The photograph on the right was taken the day after the fanatical monk physically self-immolated in protest to the war being engaged in. What the newly-shaved head indicates (definitely not a common practice for a nineteen-year-old youth of the post-WWII generation) is the very aghastness at what we were both doing.
The faded photograph on the left (taken just six months prior at age eighteen) shows what an obviously prized head of hair it was, too, with its late fifties/early sixties-style ducktail and dangling forelock coiffure.
(mouse-hover on the image to enlarge; click on the image to hold).

In late 1979, after flying with my wife and four young children to the west coast of this continent for a family reunion—arranged at the materteral

behest

of my genitor’s unmarried

elder sister as a celebration of her impending retirement as headmistress of an all-girls’ college—I had the first of what would turn out to be multiple experiences of pristine purity during this ten-day vacation. Upon disembarking from the aeroplane, whilst walking across the hot tarmac to the terminal, a noticeable shift happened in the nape of the neck (the base of the brain/ the top of the brainstem) and everything was all-of-a-sudden perfect; an immaculate perfection of such a pristine purity as to be inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable were it not experiential (i.e., directly experienceable).

Moreover, in actuality everything already had been, and always would be, perfect

The memory of these pristine purity experiences would have gradually faded away, back into faraway realms, as befitting a vacationer’s idyll, were it not for a memorable immaculate perfection experience—indelibly imprinted into my memory on this next occasion—a scant six months later which lasted for four exquisite hours

. I was struck with the comprehension of how this radically

different way of experiencing life was what I had been looking for (even though I did not know, prior to this experiencing of pristine purity, it had been what I was looking for) when travelling the country, going from job-to-job, searching for the ideal place, the ideal occupation, the ideal colleagues and all the rest which constitutes such chimerical pursuits.

More to the point, in actuality the meaning to life already had been, and always would be, apparent.

It was manifestly clear how nothing was ever ultimately awry—in a universal sense—whilst this paradisaical

purity was apparent; everything was clean and pure; flawless and faultless; spotless and blameless; impeccable and unimpeachable. Speaking in the context of the only esoteric language I knew then (due to my cultural background) I would explain, to anyone prepared to listen, how everyone had it wrong because nobody has to physically die to get to heaven; how eternity was just here right now because, as it was already always existent, it cannot cease at physical birth and recommence at physical death after a seventy-plus year interregnum.

In other words, time itself has no duration in actuality; it already has been, and always will be, this moment.

It is events which change, not time; just as objects exist and move in an infinite and thus static space, events take place and change in an eternal and thus stationary time. ’Twas no wonder various peoples had reported how ‘time stood still’ in exigent situations and circumstances; it never did move, in actuality, nor ever would. Furthermore, as matter per se (be it either mass or energy) is of a perdurable nature—neither created nor destroyed—the universe is a veritable ‘perpetuum mobilis’; absolute in its infinitude.

Some of the many and various people I have discussed these matters with at length have recalled somewhat similar experiences—most common in childhood—and which are referred to by more than a few as a ‘peak experience’ (i.e., a ‘nature experience’, a ‘jamais vu experience’, or even an ‘aesthetic experience’). As to be somewhat similar is not the same as or identical with this pristine purity I have coined the term pure consciousness experience (PCE) to distinguish the qualitative distinction betwixt the pristine purity experience and the more generic peak experiences.

To explain: in the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience’ (PCE) the word ‘experience’ refers to a sentient creature participating personally in events or activities; the word ‘consciousness’ refers to the condition of a flesh and blood body being conscious (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing a state or condition), as in being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensitive a.k.a. sensible, not insensitive aka insensible (comatose); the word ‘pure’ in this context, being synonymic with ‘unadulterated’, ‘uncontaminated’, ‘unpolluted’, and so on, refers to being completely selfless, as in, sans any identity whatsoever (just as ‘penniless’ means sans any money whichsoever).

Thus when reading about pure consciousness experiencing what is being conveyed is the condition of a flesh and blood body being conscious sans identity in toto

—both ego-self (the thinker) and the soul-self (the feeler)—participating personally in events or activities; which means any and all perception is unmediated perception (bare perception) or an apperceptive awareness. The term ‘apperceptive awareness’ is but another way of referring to this direct, or simple, perception (aka naïve perception) and being thus direct it is non-separative (not separated from the physical world).

The opening-up of the non-affective

memory-banks enabled me to recall having had experiences of pristine purity on many an occasion, while growing up, where there would be a ‘slippage’ of the brain, somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear too soon, and the magical world where time had no workaday meaning would emerge in all its sparkling wonder, where I could wander for extensive periods in gay abandon with whatever was happening.

They were the pre-school years: soon such experiences would occur of a weekend (at school I became known as ‘the dreamer’ and had many a rude awakening to everyday reality by various teachers) so much so I would later on call them ‘Saturday Morning’ experiences where, contrary to having to be dragged out of bed during the week, I would be up and about at first light, traipsing through the fields and the forests with the early morning rays of sunshine dancing their magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; where kookaburras are echoing their laughing-like calls to one another and magpies are warbling their liquid sounds; where an abundance of aromas and scents are drifting fragrantly all about; where every pore of the skin is being caressed by the friendly ambience of the balmy air; where benevolence and benignity streams endlessly bathing all in its impeccable integrity

In 1981, as the new year dawned, I took the first step on what I would later choose to call the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition. I was a married man, then, with a wife and four children to support and their grandmother had offered to have all of her grandchildren stay with her in the city for a three-week holiday (which left my then wife and myself together, on our own, for the first time since the birth of the first child)

. I grasped the opportunity with both hands to, not only regain the honeymoon intimacy of 1966, but to enable the actual intimacy experienced six months prior during the four-hour perfection experience which had indubitably evidenced that peace-on-earth was already always here. What I set about doing, consciously and with knowledge aforethought, was to deliberately imitate the actual—as so mirifically

manifested in those experiences of pristine purity—each moment again.

I did everything I could to be as happy and harmless (as free of sorrow and malice) for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by first putting everything on a does-not-really-matter-in-the-long-run basis. That is, I would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but, if it did not turn out like that, it did not really matter for it was only a preference. I chose to no longer give other people—or the weather even—the power to have me annoyed, irritated, irked, or even peeved

, if this was possible.

Then, as it was patently obvious in those experiences of pristine purity how this very moment of being alive is the only moment of ever actually being alive, I began to treat each moment again as precious. After all, it is not as if we have an unlimited amount of moments and—unlike a bank account which can be replenished—our supply of such moments is our most valuable (albeit dwindling) asset. In practical terms this meant being aware of how each precious moment was being experienced; if feeling good (felicity and innocuity) was the prevailing experience then this attentiveness ensured enjoyment and appreciation, of the sheer fact of being alive, each moment again; if feeling bad (unhappy and harmful) was the prevailing experience then whatever had displaced feeling good became readily apparent, upon such attention, with so much at stake.

Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good was pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it was) take away the exquisite enjoyment and appreciation, of this only moment of actually being alive, was seen for what it was—usually some habitual reactive response

—I was once more felicitous and innocuous and, what is more, aptly armed with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for, on the next occasion, so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old.

By being relentlessly attentive to, each moment again, and scrupulously honest about, how that only moment of ever being alive was experienced (so that any deviation from such felicity and innocuity was attended to with the utmost dispatch) it rapidly became more simpler and much easier to live peacefully and harmoniously with my then-wife and then-children, in particular, and with anyone and everyone who came into my presence. And this way of living was such an admirable state of affairs

I was wont to exclaim to all and sundry, then, about how I had discovered the secret to life (for that is how far beyond normal human expectations the felicitous/ innocuous state, which I nowadays call being virtually free, truly is) and I recall being perplexed as to why, it being such a simple and easy thing to do, nobody had ever done it before.

Because the felicitous and innocuous feelings are in no way docile, lack-lustre feelings; in conjunction with sensuosity they make for an extremely potent combination as—with all of the affective energy channelled into being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible (and no longer being frittered away on sorrow and malice or their redressive hand-maidens love and compassion)—the full effect of ‘me’, the feeling entity at the core of ‘being’ itself, is dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone.

Such imitative felicity and innocuity, in concert with sincerity and sensuosity, readily evokes amazement

, marvelment

, and delightment

—a state of wide-eyed wonderment

best expressed by the word naiveté (the nearest an identity can come to innocence whilst being an entity)—and which allows the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to the infinitude, which this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is, to operate more and more freely. This magnipotent munificence, an intrinsic largesse which has nothing to do with the imitative affective happiness and harmlessness, will do the rest.

It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. My life became cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure to the bright light of awareness shining its attentiveness into every nook and cranny of the psyche. Eventually, I invited the actual by granting myself permission to having the controls be let go of and thus be giving way to this moment living me (rather than me trying to live in the moment). I became the experience of the doing of this business of being alive; the ‘beer’ and no longer the ‘doer’

. Finally, my days as a persona non grata were numbered. I could hardly maintain myself (as an affective-psychic entity). Soon my time as a feeling-being would come to an end. An inevitability set in—a thrilling momentum took over—and my psychological and psychical demise became imminent.

Since October 1992 (at the noontide of the thirtieth day were the truth be known)

I have been actually freed from the human condition—consistently and irrevocably so—and I use the word “actually” advisedly because this factual manumission

renders the physical dimension apparent, as-it-is in actuality, throughout the sentiency-field—the world of sensorial experience; the sensational world; the world of sensitive perception (a.k.a. the corporeal world; the empirical world; the material world)—the world where flesh-and-blood bodies only

have ubiety

. It is not an affective, cognitive or intuitive state of being and/or an altered state of consciousness; it is a physical condition which ensues when identity in toto/the entire affective faculty is expunged, extirpated, rendered extinct (as dead as the dodo but with no skeletal remains nor any ashes for some phoenix to rise renewed from).

(By the words “the-identity-in-toto” I mean both ego (aka self and/or the doer) and soul (aka spirit and/or the beer)—with the latter as in me-at-the-core-of-my-being (which is ‘being’ itself when present-to-itself)—and by the words “the-entire-affective-faculty” I mean all of the affections (the emotions, passions, and calentures), along with their visceral and/or intuitional ability, as well as its epiphenomenal imaginative and/or hallucinative psychic facility (along with all its illusory and/or delusory power). They have all vanished, utterly, leaving me both blithe and benign—gay and carefree—which leads to a most remarkable state of affairs: only this actual world, the sensational

world, exists and the real-world, the affective world, has no existence in actuality).

Consequently, I am a fellow human being, nowadays living in an incomparable condition of pristine perfection and peerless purity, proffering my experience via these written words to whomsoever is interested.

Here is a basic proposition to consider: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic; we notice it is intrinsic to the human condition; we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence—we gather it is also inherent to the human condition—and we want to know why. We generally report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are essentially well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess we have landed in. Whether one believes in palingenesia and/or salvation, or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time in this particular bodily form and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out; whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it.

Despite all my fellow humans, when questioned at length on the topic, having recall of (at the least) a momentary experience of pristine purity—and usually more—somewhere in their lifetime it is strange to the point of weirdity, of bizarrerie bordering on grotesquerie, even, how so many persons will turn their backs on the immaculate perfection of being here at this place in infinite space at this moment in eternal time as this form of perdurable matter (mass and energy; i.e., this flesh and blood body only). Here in this actual world of the senses, which is where flesh and blood bodies already have ubiety anyway, is the peace-on-earth which everyone says they are desirous of if not actively searching for. All what is required is for them to come to their senses—both literally and metaphorically—and spend the rest of their lives without malice and sorrow. They will then be gay and carefree (blithe and benign) as a default condition for the remainder of their days.

It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of bringing about a mutation of consciousness. To have the requisite vital interest in applying oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to the patient dismantling of one’s acculturated socio-cultural identity and the cheerful extirpation of identity in toto, indicates a strength of purpose and courage of conviction unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing to do and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. With more and more outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth, in the due course of events, global peace would revolutionise humanity at large.

It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a resident of the world, not a citizen of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders, would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Jails, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past; terror would stalk its prey no more. People would live together in peace and harmony, pleasure and delight. Pollution and its cause—over-population—would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true.

But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in Terra Actualis

where equity and parity prevails amongst fellow human beings sans instinctual passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof. With an actual freedom from the human condition, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is, here on earth, in this lifetime. One intimately knows every body is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe, and this is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities which ail the peoples who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real-world, the world of the affections, fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one living in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and harmony (equity and parity), to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Human beings, being as they are, may very well continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious

as a self-righteous ego-self/ soul-self (spirit-self/ feeling being) who is convinced they know the way to live as revealed in either their ancient and revered scriptural tracts or their progressive and esteemed humanist disquisitions.

I live in peace and tranquillity, beholden to none. With no loyalty to bind me, I have nothing to defend. With nothing to defend I have no need to attack. I have no sense of mission to ‘change the world’. I am not driven by either humanistic or mystic forces to evangelise, to proselytise, to convert. If anyone is genuinely interested in finding out what the meaning of life is, I am only too happy for my words to facilitate their enquiry. Nevertheless, I can only be of assistance to those who wish to be aided in the only way I can be of help. I am free to be here in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Unadorned and unencumbered, I stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to nobody at all and nothing whatsoever. I am supremely content with life as-it-is—for perfection can be found where others find only imperfection—and I have no desire to change anything. To be here, intimately here at this moment in time, where this actual world is such a marvellous place to be alive, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the chronicles of antiquity.

There is an actual intimacy between this body and that body and every body and every thing; an actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of all other as-they-are or as-it-is. I am living a superb life; and it is a well-earned superb life, too. Nothing has come without application—apart from serendipitous discoveries because of pure intent—and I am reaping the rewards which are plentiful and deliciously satisfying. An actual intimacy frees one up to a world of factual splendour, based firmly upon sensate and sensual delight. The candid and unabashed sensorial enjoyment of being this body in the world about is such a luscious and immediate experience.

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. To be the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing freedom and ease. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful ease and serenity. Life is intrinsically significant; the meaning of life lies openly all around. Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe it in and out. What is more, 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. Only ‘being’ itself (the-identity-in-toto/its-entire-affective-faculty) was standing in the way of significance.

This is an actual freedom from the human condition. It is possible to be actually free, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh-and-blood body. And as this flesh-and-blood body only one is this infinite, eternal, and perdurable universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being; as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

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