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General Correspondence Page Number Three
Respondent No. 1 RESPONDENT: I found your actualism web page ... WOW!!!! Where on earth did you get all those WORDS from? I’d LOVE to see you go head to head with the ‘Town Crier’!!! RICHARD: Thank you for your expressive E-Mail: Strangely enough I left school (an ordinary State School) at fifteen years of age ... and I could not stand having to learn English and do grammar and related subjects! I have read a lot since then as I have always had a thirst for knowledge; I wanted to know what it was that was going on in that insane world that I was born into ... and I picked up a liking for words and an appreciation of language as a means of communication over the years that followed. Today I no longer live in the mad world that existed all about when I was born ... the ‘real world’ it is called. ‘Life is a grim business in the real world’ as they say ... ‘It’s dog eat dog’ and ‘You’ve got to be tough to survive out there’ ... and so on. I decided that I did not want to live in their world any longer so I set out to find another one; one that I had glimpsed on occasion in what is known as ‘Peak Experiences’. I call this ‘other world’ the actual world and my advice, to anyone who wants to listen, is to step out of the ‘real world’ into this actual world ... a magical world that pre-exists ‘reality’ ... and leave your ‘self’ behind ... where it belongs. ‘I’, the ‘self’, am as mad as that insane world ... ‘I’, as a ‘self’, am maddened and crazed by all the conflicting morals and values and ethics and virtues and so on that abound in the Land of Lament. It is a sad and wretched business, living there, with only scant moments of reprieve; only moments of happiness followed by discontent; only moments of gladness, followed by sadness; only moments of hope, followed by despair. Who on earth would want to live there? I certainly did not and do not. Nowadays I live here in this actual world where utter peace and tranquillity prevail. This is why I set up this Web Page: To communicate this discovery of mine to all and sundry. I have eliminated the malice and sorrow within me and I am living in a condition that is simply perfect. I am both happy and harmless. War is over ... if you want it. I have no desire to go ‘head to head’ with any one ... least of all the ‘Town Crier’. He is doing his thing and I enjoy his command of the English language without having to agree with everything he says.
RESPONDENT: Richard, you wrote: ‘Thank you for your expressive E-Mail’ Golly, you don’t need to be sarcastic. I know I’m loquacious to the point of verbosity, but it’s an addiction. I have to live with it. You wrote: ‘I have no desire to go ‘head to head’ with any one ... least of all The ‘Town Crier’. He is doing his thing and I enjoy his command of the English language without having to agree with everything he says’. Who said anything about agreeing or disagreeing about what he says? Just have an argument for the HELL of it!!!! We could put the two of you in a ring together and just let you go for it hammer and tongs, see who can talk whom to death!! MAKE it a battle to the death, just like a cockfight! And ... Imagine ... if we could get Sky Channel and the TAB interested, it could be bigger than Tyson vs Holyfield! RICHARD: Sorry, but I am not interested in having ‘an argument for the hell of it’. I have no desire to argue with anyone about anything. I simply present the facts of a situation ... the fact always speaks for itself and I do not have to prove a point. If the other person refuses to see it for themselves, that is their downfall, not mine. It is them who have to continue to live an unhappy and hateful life ... not me. Perhaps you may feel inclined to re-visit my Web Pages and you will see what I mean ... but please do not get hung up on all the words. They are there for a reason. At the risk of being pedantic: The word ‘expressive’ means meaningful, demonstrative, eloquent or revealing ... rather than loquacious or verbose. Whoops!
RESPONDENT: Richard. You disappoint me. In your first communication to me you exhibited a worrying propensity to sarcasm; i.e. ‘Thank you for your expressive E-Mail’, and in your second you display not only the aforementioned sarcasm but also a regrettable tendency to jump to conclusions, to wit ‘‘expressive’ means meaningful, demonstrative, eloquent or revealing ... rather than loquacious or verbose. Whoops!’ The target of your embarrassing faux-pas, ‘I know I’m loquacious to the point of verbosity, but it’s an addiction. I have to live with it’, was not meant to refer to expressiveness or lack of same. It was my apparently ineffective attempt at self-mockery, comparing the length of my initial message to the length of your considerable discourses. Back to writers’ school for me, eh? Tsk tsk. Sarcasm and second guessing. Admittedly I have not had time to study your Web Pages in the detail they undoubtedly warrant, but from what I have absorbed so far, these qualities you exhibit do not stack up well with your writings. Not another false prophet ... RICHARD: Firstly, I am not ‘another false prophet’ for there is not the least trace of religiosity or spirituality in me ... I am an atheist through and through. Secondly, it was you who was advocating that I get into a ring and go ‘head to head’ with the ‘Town Crier’. But when I enter into the ring with you ... you cry ‘Foul’. Thirdly, these qualities I exhibit do stack up well with my writings. I enclose a sample for your perusal and, I presume, a further ‘tsk tsk’. ‘Ultimate release comes when one has located the actual me – the third I – and extirpated the other two. The first ‘I’ is who one thinks one is and the second ‘I’ is who one feels one is. The first is an illusion and the second a delusion. The first ‘I’ is the ego and the second ‘I’ is the soul. The third I is what one actually is – what, not ‘who’ – and what I am is the utter stillness of this body’s consciousness experiencing itself as the universe actually is. I, as body-consciousness, am not an entity. I am no-one in particular; I am simply here. I am nowhere in particular either for not only am I anonymous, a geographical location gives no sense of belonging. I have no ‘home’, I am a citizen of the universe, literally. Although I am happy to be living in this country, I have no patriotic pride; no nationalism whatsoever pollutes the unimpeachable benignity that is my essential nature. It is impossible for me to begin to bicker, let alone start a quarrel, an argument, a fight or a war. None of this is to be construed as ‘turning the other cheek’, however, for I do not suffer fools gladly. Anyone who enters into a discussion with me meets their match ... I acknowledge nobody as being superior to me. It is the most estimable condition to be in’. You should be able to have a field day with that ‘superior’ bit.
RESPONDENT: Richard, you wrote: 1. ‘I have no desire to go ‘head to head’ with any one’. 2. ‘Sorry, but I am not interested in having ‘an argument for the hell of it’. I have no desire to argue with anyone about anything’. 3. ‘It is impossible for me to begin to bicker’. 4. ‘But when I enter into the ring with you ...’ Hmm ... a trifle inconsistent, non? What the hell are you doing in the ring bickering with ME? That’s like Tyson vs. a mosquito, a shameful waste of time and talent. I want to see how you go in an even contest, as long as I can be the promoter. I mean, the way you pump those words out ... it’s amazing! You also wrote: ‘Thirdly, these qualities I exhibit do stack up well with my writings’. You are referring to sarcasm and jumping to conclusions, aren’t you? How does that stack up with ‘the unimpeachable benignity that is my essential nature’? You also wrote: ‘Firstly, I am not ‘another false prophet’ for there is not the least trace of religiosity or spirituality in me ... I am an atheist through and through’. This was a figure of speech you dill! It was just a nice way of saying ‘snake oil salesman’.(Not that I’m being critical, someone’s got to shift the stuff.) You’re very strong on volume and quantity, but I think you could benefit from some nuance training before you take the ‘Town Crier’ on. (Perhaps it’s my fault again, perhaps I should make myself clearer.) You also wrote: ‘Anyone who enters into a discussion with me meets their match ... I acknowledge nobody as being superior to me. It is the most estimable condition to be in ... You should be able to have a field day with that ‘superior’ bit’. Yeah, can’t help meself, gotta do it. For an atheist, you sound helluva lot like the Catholic Church when they carry on about papal infallibility ... you know the way it goes ... ‘The Pope is infallible. We know this to be true because the Pope told us so, and he’s never wrong’. I’m sorry, but this is totally unacceptable. If you thrash the ‘Town Crier’ and the punters find out you were the bloody JUDGE, I’ll have a riot on my hands!!! Probably have to refund all bets! So come on Rich, when d’you reckon you’d like to take him on? Just say the word, and I’ll start negotiations with him. I could act as agent for both of you as long as you both don’t mind ... By golly, this verbosity’s quite contagious, eh? RICHARD: I am pleased to hear that ‘this verbosity is quite contagious’ as any improvement on one’s command of the English language is commendable. However, as to the content of your ‘verbosity’ ... unfortunately you are starting to repeat yourself. I have no intention of ‘taking the ‘Town Crier’ on’, as you keep on insisting, so we can drop that subject. Secondly, there is nothing inconsistent in my stance, as you suggest, for I said: ‘I have no desire to argue ...’ and I still have no desire to do so. But you seem bent upon having an argument, so I am obliging you. We can stop it at any time you wish and have a meaningful and fruitful discussion ... if you want it. I have no desire to argue for my experience has shown me that argumentation and disputation lead nowhere constructive ... as this current spate of correspondence betwixt you and me is amply demonstrating. But ‘having no desire to do so’ does not mean that I will not. It just means that I would prefer not to. The English language is quite clear and specific, when one gets into the subtleties of it. As to why you would compare me with some Catholic Pope: I have no idea why this notion should
occur to you as there is nothing remotely religious in my writing. I did not claim ‘infallibility’, Please, before you go rushing to your key-board to dash off yet another hasty epistle, take the time to read what is on offer. It is the Popes and Bishops, the Saints and the Sages, the Saviours and the Messiahs and the Gurus and the Masters who have been ‘shifting snake oil’, not me. Perhaps this is what has led to your apparent cynicism about anything that remotely suggests that we can easily be kindly and friendly to our fellow human beings ... but maybe you are not cynical. I am not wishing to be once again accused of ‘second guessing’ you, or your state of being. So, instead of ‘snake oil’, I present an alternative to these ‘Tried and True’ ways of combating all the aggression and destruction that has been the sorry lot of humankind up until now. The ‘Tried and True’ has had thousands of years to demonstrate its efficacy at fixing things up and has amply demonstrated itself to be the ‘Tried and Failed’. It is high time that something new came into existence ... and it has. I call it actual freedom.
Respondent No. 2 RESPONDENT: Richard, I’d love to have you along to see Hector; it seems a kindred spirit from my reading of your writing. Not just another psitticist. I think this guy will be of interest to you! (Editorial note: A pamphlet is currently being circulated around the village advertising the WHOLE LIFE INTENSIVE at the Miracle Sessions Centre. The course is mastered by Ted ‘Hector’ Poppe, Master Teacher from the Endeavour Academy, Wisconsin, USA. The course is focused upon ‘The removal of the blockages to the continual experience of Unconditional Love.) RICHARD: Thank you for sending me the pamphlet advertising the arrival of Ted ‘Hector’ Poppe in Byron Bay. I have read the articles with interest and would indeed be interested to meet him – and yourself, for that matter. Could something be arranged? Do you have something in mind? I am open to suggestions, as I am free to come and go as I please, pretty well at any time that is mutually suitable. Please advise me as to what is convenient for you. I presume you have accessed the Web-site and am familiar with what is on offer. It is a forum for public consideration of all matters pertaining to the Human Condition and the amelioration thereof ... in which we all have a vested interest. A number of people have indicated their desire to get a discussion going about these very subjects as are mentioned in your pamphlet.
RESPONDENT: Richard, just drop down at 7.00 tonight or at 9:30 tomorrow, he is teaching both times; feel free to talk to him or ask around for me. The format is music to begin for up to an hour, depending on the energy. I think it’s the easiest way for you because I’m sure you are aware of all the stuff that people get into in ‘comparative’ meetings of ‘masters’. Hey, it’s just nice to sit down and join! So come along anonymously if you wish; and choose whether you want to spend time with Hector or me. Like your teachings we are well aware that they are confronting to perceptual consciousness whose sole unspoken intent is to deny unconditionality. RICHARD: It is a pity that a personal meeting with Hector can not be arranged – I have no difficulty with ‘all the stuff that people get into in comparative meetings of masters’ for the simple reason that I am not a ‘Master’ and neither do I claim any sort of ‘Divinity’ or ‘Divine Revelation’. I am, simply, a fellow human being who happens to be living in an actual condition of peace, perfection and purity ... freed from both sorrow and malice. I am offering my discoveries to whomsoever is interested. What I am interested in is yourself ... and your thoughts and understandings of what it is to be a human being here on earth. We have not touched upon what you think and feel, in our correspondence thus far, and I would welcome anything you could find time to communicate. Upon reading the pamphlet you sent to me I see that it says: ‘... anyone who is really serious about the removal of blockages to the continual experience of Unconditional Love ...’. Perhaps this is a subject to discuss? Or something else? I am open to any suggestions as there is a lot to explore and discover and the results in doing so are of immense importance to both the individual and humanity at large.
RESPONDENT: Richard, just back from sessions; if you see this before 8:30 am I’m having a bit of fun with Hector on the radio at that time. Sure you can talk personally with Hector; give him a ring after about 12.30 tomorrow! As for me I am happy to discuss the ‘Meaning of Life’ anytime after this very intense week. Or Love Agape, Unconditionality or Pea Soup! RESPONDENT: Richard, Tuesday morning and a day off at last; Hector and company is en route to USA. So ... things about me you would like to know ... I live in Grace like you. I am totally grateful for that state. I know nothing of how I ‘got’ it but through the application of a fundamental, unequivocal willingness for a state alternate to the world my mind presented me. And now I see that all of that world too was intrinsically, meticulously perfect in its formation for the purpose of my own awakening. Not just the highs ... if anything, the apparent lows. My ‘state’ if there is a need to ‘discuss’ such a thing is the result of just one single real thought of willingness. A whole thought; a thought without opposite brought about by the total compilation of impressions and reactions to the world I had created up to that point. Funny too, that now even that little point of willingness stands in my mind as a totally fraudulent edifice, for that too was a thought in duality; a thought of ‘this’ and ‘that’. The Truth? The Truth is that there is nothing going on here. The truth is not a sunny lunch in downtown Byron, a leisurely amble through the bounty of the supermarket or the starkness of the child who dies from a flying brick. The Truth is that this place is not real. Love RICHARD: I did what you suggested and listened to your radio programme where you spoke with Hector from 8.30 AM to 9.00 AM. I also rang the telephone number you gave me after 12.30 PM, as you advised, and a woman said that Hector was out to lunch and to ring back at 2.00 PM. When I did so, a man answered and said that Hector was conducting a ‘session’ which began at 2.00 PM ... and to call back at 4.00 PM. A trifle mystified at this confusion I decided to access the Internet Web Pages of ‘A Course in Miracles’, which Hector had mentioned several times in his radio interview with you, as I wished to know just what he was on about and where he was coming from. What I read made me realise that it would be rather pointless to speak with him personally. Also some friends of mine attended one of his ‘sessions’ and reported back to me as to their content. What puzzles me is why you would say in your letter to me [quote]: ‘I’d love to have you along to see Hector; it seems a kindred spirit from my reading of your writing. Not just another psitticist. I think this guy will be of interest to you!’. [end quote]. Where, I must ask, are we ‘kindred spirits’? Hector endorses and praises ‘Eternal Life’, ‘Jesus’, ‘God’, and ‘Unconditional Love’ ... in short: the typical Spiritual Path as opposed to the typical Religious Path. His ‘sessions’ involve invoking ‘Energy’ and much ‘Shaking’ and ‘Bliss Experiences’ and ‘Cathartic Release’. The Web Page – ‘A Course in Miracles’ – describes in great length how [quote]: ‘A Course in Miracles was ‘scribed’ by Dr. Helen Schucman through a process of inner dictation she identified as coming from ‘Jesus’. A clinical and research psychologist and tenured Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, she was assisted by Dr. William Thetford, her department head, who was also a tenured Professor of Medical Psychology at the Medical Centre where they both worked. A Course in Miracles was first published in 1975’. [end quote]. Today, this would be described as ‘Channelling’, some ‘Disincarnate Entity’ speaking through some specially selected person to bring a ‘Message To Mankind’. Where, in all this, am I a ‘kindred spirit’? When I look through the articles that I wrote, I see very clearly and succinctly, [quote]: ‘It is possible to live in this post spiritual era, freed from Religion and New-Age, challenging every philosophy and psychology, surpassing all Enlightened Masters. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one and no-thing’. [end quote]. Please note the ‘... beholden to no-one and no-thing’ ... which means a big NO to Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene and Mr. God – or any other Supernatural or Metaphysical Being whatsoever. And ‘post spiritual’ means an equally big NO to anything that smacks of a Spiritual Path, by any name. In the radio interview, Hector endorsed Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana), who is unequivocally spiritual. What I have discovered ‘... surpasses all Enlightened Masters’ and leaves one ‘a fully free and autonomous individual’. How can I make myself more clear? I also wrote [quote]: ‘To seek freedom via puerile servitude to some fictitious deity is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial’. [end quote]. This is not an ambiguous statement, it can not be misconstrued. Also [quote: The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those Divinely inspired Beings who were unwilling to relinquish the Self ... and an egoless Self is still an entity, nevertheless. In spite of the Glamour and the Glory, closer examination reveals that these ‘Great’ persons had – and have – feet of clay. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of Majesty and Mystery, They have led humankind astray. Preaching Love and Surrender They demanded – and demand – obedience and supplication, thus keeping a benighted humanity in appalling tribulation and distress. The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the Self is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. [end quote]. This is clearly at odds with Hector’s Teachings. And again [quote]: ‘In actual freedom, Good and Bad, Love and Hate, Fear and Trust, Generosity and Parsimony ... all these and more, are simply irrelevant. Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons, all the battles that have raged throughout the ages are but a nightmare of passionate human fantasy. There is a marked absence of hierarchy; no Religious Figure can match the matter-of-fact equality that pervades everything. A quality of kindly understanding prevails, dispensing forever with the need for Authority and Love’. I would like to emphasise ‘... dispensing forever with the need for Authority and Love’. because Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene is not, by any stretch of the imagination, advocating anything else but obedience to Authority and surrender to Love. These are matters of great import which I would sincerely enjoy discussing with yourself so as to arrive at a mutual understanding. I have personal experience of all this as I became Enlightened on Sunday, the 6th. of September 1981, and spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work – why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the 30th. of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in what I choose to call actual freedom. Nowadays I know, intimately, why the Love and the Authority of Divinity does not deliver the goods ... and, of course, I now know what does. Today, for the first time in human history there is a genuine chance for the peace so long yearned for. I am no longer an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is! I am simply a fellow human being offering my discoveries to whomsoever is interested. I thoroughly delight in conversing with anyone about what you called ‘The meaning of life’. Here is a part copy of what I wrote on the Web Page ... maybe it will inspire something to discuss in any future correspondence: ‘The Master is incapable of setting anyone free ... for they are not yet free themselves. Like any of their peers or predecessors, they are in the grip of the psychic Power and Authority that lies behind the Enlightened State. In their very own words they have surrendered ... to what or whom? To this psychic Power and Authority that lies unmanifest behind the throne. They are possessed by this Power and Authority and are driven by ‘That’ to carry out a Divine Mission: They must teach The Truth and Save Humankind ... according to the Ancient Protocol. ‘An actually free person sees all this for the anachronism that it is ... it all belongs to the best that those within the Human Condition can aspire to. To be actually free is to be completely free from the Human Condition in all its entirety. Free from The Good as well as from The Bad; from Love as well as Hate; from Beauty as well as Ugly; from The Truth as well The False; from God as well as Evil ... from any thing Diabolical or Divine at all. To be actually free is to be free, at last, to be ordinary. To be this body. To be mortal. To be without the need for any inhibiting surrender to that Highest Authority with its Absolute Power. ‘Being here is vastly different from ‘being’ or ‘Being’. Being here is to be alive, fully alive, as an actually free human, without any ‘being’ at all. Here, this moment lives me – me as this body – rather than an ‘I’ living in the present ... let alone the past or the future. There is no ‘one’ inside this body, no psychological entity of any description. This body is an empty shell, psychically speaking, owing allegiance to no one or no One, living or dead. No entity exists in this body; there is no ‘one’ left to die. The only me is this very body ... I am body consciousness. I am happy to be mortal; if it were not for death, I could not be free to be here, eating this delicious lunch and enjoying this moment of being alive. At this moment the immediate is the ultimate, in all its exquisite purity. Purity far exceeds Beauty, despite all its Glamour and Glory and Glitz. ‘The third alternative – actual freedom – is not an Ineffable State. Unlike Enlightenment, it can be easily and adequately described in unambiguous terms. All is plain to view, nothing is hidden. Nothing is Unknown. There is no Mystery any longer. The secret to life is solved. ‘I experience the universe as being here in all its benignity. The world of people, things and events is no longer at a distance. Without the defences of the entity I can stand proud, as I do not need to maintain myself as ‘someone’ in particular with relation to others. An unusual anonymity has freed me from the normal responsibility and onerous task of sustaining ‘myself’. A marked absence of severity has replaced the need for moral guidance and spiritual discipline, for I am already always harmless. I have never been harmed, psychologically, nor have I ever known sorrow. The social identity, ‘I’ as ego and soul, can best be described as a psychological parasite living inside the body. In a valiant and understandable attempt to solve the plight of humankind, ‘I’ cease identifying as the ego and identify as the soul ... a shift in consciousness which manifests Compassion. Unfortunately for its success, Compassion has its roots in sorrow and therefore can not provide the ultimate solution: freedom from sorrow. Compassion actually perpetuates sorrow, for sorrow is the essential progenitor of Compassion. ‘It is so easy to live, here. All this that is happening is self-evidently well organising itself. Insecurity and security have given way to a vast safety unparalleled in the annals of history. Nor do I feel enveloped by any sense of Metaphysical Energy in the form of Love or Compassion; which is a form of consolation – Divine Consolation. From the vantage point of being here, these are seen as unnecessary ... for sorrow itself is unnecessary. For Love and Compassion to be effective a lonely victim is required in order to receive them and feel healed. When one ceases being a victim, one no longer is interested in being consoled. One only wants to be free, actually free. However, once ensnared in the psychic tentacles of Divine Healing it is deemed sacrilegious to break free. To spiritual people we seem to be heretics. Nevertheless, to establish a genuine peace-on-earth one must, perforce, be iconoclastic. Those ‘tried and true’ methods have been tried and tried, again and again ... and have failed and failed, again and again. It is high time for something new. ‘Although obnoxious people may still appear, from time to time, and attempt to wreak their havoc, my response to them is not hostile and reactionary. One of the amazing attributes of actual freedom is its far-reaching benevolence; an attribute which allows my response to be appropriate to the circumstances and sometimes unpredictable ... even to me. To be benevolent – which literally means well-wishing – is to be free to act in a way that is of benefit to one and all. Benevolence acts freely, I am not driven by Universal Sorrow as are the Compassionate Ones. When what is known as That Which Is Sacred – which has no existence outside of human imagination – is no longer able to meddle in the affairs of humankind, humans can finally have a realistic chance of peace-on-earth. Peace is certainly possible for the individual right now. It has been here all along, freely available for anyone to discover. Daring to investigate, explore and uncover, I had to be willing to venture where no one had travelled before. I had to be intrepid to abandon all the accrued ‘wisdom of the ages’ ... a ‘wisdom’ that has proved itself to be patently absurd. ‘In actual freedom this universe is experienced as it actually is: it is perfection. Upon reflection, how can it be not perfect? There is no outside to perfection – and hence no centre, either. The purity of this perfection provides for the ultimate satisfaction; the satisfaction that love seems to promise but can never deliver.’ I can only hope that we can find some area in common to speak about, as I find Hector to be propagating a mixture of Christianity and Hinduism. This is not a hasty conclusion I have come to, nor a judgmental approach based on an ill-considered and brief appraisal of his Teaching. I had a man here in my house yesterday who is an avid follower of ‘The Course Of Miracles’ attempting to convert me to his belief. He stayed for four hours and I had ample opportunity to find out just what it all entails. It is firmly based upon the ‘scribed’ words of Dr. Helen Schucman coming from an entity identified as ‘Jesus’. I am not hung up about any of these Religious Figures as I have researched the subject well over the years. For example:
I have many more articles like this at hand and am only too happy to pursue this line of enquiry. I look forward to your response.
RESPONDENT: Richard, for someone so at peace with the world you have an awful lot of energy about certain words and symbols! I say that Hector is a kindred spirit from my reading of your writing because the experience he and I share as one is that all this talk of history, of the many names of the Christ, of channeling, of ‘Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene’ etc. are simply ideas in my mind to which I give all meaning that I decide upon. In the experience of singularity, which you must share as an ‘enlightened’ one, you would know this fundamental truism and therefore your writings do indeed express a kindred strand of truth. In my mind it’s a strange place we abide in that fosters minds that need authority before they can hear. We hear the Truth all of the time and yet we cannot hear it because we are in constant search for the ‘right’ authority. Naturally, it does not exist because it is designed not to exist. And yet it is almost a certitude that if I read from a book, the book will be judged. If I express my gratitude to the author of the book, the author will be judged. If I mention God, then God will be judged. Strange indeed, for no judgment is possible to a mind not trapped in its own past as an assertion of relative truths. I was mildly surprised to hear that without ever actually meeting him, you were ready to judge based on net scrabble and friend’s opinions. So I guess what happened this morning is of relevance after all. Hector got to the airport and decided that he wasn’t finished here. He is back, and when I shared your comments with him he said he’d welcome spending some time with you. You could give him a ring again tonight if you so desire. If not, then it would almost certainly appear that the energy you hold about ‘other’ belief systems is the energy that binds the Actual Freedom Trust to the limitations of its own parameters of limitation. Like it or not, you are a kindred spirit because you are one with me. We can argue about it, we can write voluminous and deeply meaningful tomes for the non existent minds on the other end of our modems, we can make ourselves appear so damn relevant that we almost believe it ourselves; but to quote Jesus, nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Looking forward to meeting you. Session begins at 9:30 am. RICHARD: I was out until late yesterday so I didn’t access my E-Mail until just before midnight and was therefore unable to ring Hector last night as you advised. Consequently, do not hold it against me that this lack of calling late last night somehow proves that ‘The Actual Freedom Trust is bound by the parameters of its own limitations’ ... whatever that implied accusation means. Of course I have ‘an awful lot of energy about certain words and symbols’. I have seen, first hand, the results of peoples believing in the self-same words and symbols. I personally served in a war-torn foreign country in 1966 and saw with my own eyes. There have been wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and corruption going on for aeons because of people’s beliefs. It is the act of believing in itself that is one of the major factors that keeps a benighted humanity in appalling distress and misery. Did you know that, this century alone, over 100,000,000 people have been killed through wars alone? Not to mention the desolation and grief engendered among the survivors? At the very moment that I am writing this, many people, somewhere on this fair earth of ours, are being killed or suffering badly because of ‘certain words and symbols’. This is actually happening; it is not an illusion, a dream, a play of the imagination or a fantasy. It is physically happening. You may very well say: ‘The Truth is that there is nothing going on here ... The Truth is that this place is not real’. But try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Christian soldier; try saying that to the Hindu mother whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by pious people fervently believing in ‘certain words and symbols’; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Shinto soldiers; try saying that a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion ... no ... not him ... not a good example ... he would say that its all a ‘play of Lela’, or some such thing! This is why The Actual Freedom Trust has been set up – which, by the way, is nothing more than an umbrella organisation, a legal entity required by law, for me to operate under. After my experience in a war-torn foreign country I wished to do something constructive with my life; I wished to rid myself, personally, of the ‘human nature’ which all people say can not be changed ... which I did successfully eliminate ... and facilitate the self-same removal in anyone else dedicated to a genuine peace on earth. To become happy and harmless one must extirpate both malice and sorrow, which stem from the entity within ... sense of identity and self that has a parasitical life inside the flesh and blood body. Beliefs, and the act of believing itself, sustains and feeds this monstrous psychic entity within that seeks ‘Eternal Life’ and ‘Unconditional Love’ in some imagined ‘After-Life’. And those people who somehow accomplish the attainment of ‘Eternal Life’ then go around propagating a specious belief system that can only perpetuate all the abominable suffering that humankind has had to endure up until now. And please, if you will, read at least some of what I send. When you say: ‘In the experience of singularity, which you must share as an ‘enlightened’ one, you would know this fundamental truism ...’, I can not but repeat what I have already written to you: [quote] ‘I have personal experience of all this as I became Enlightened on Sunday, the 6th. of September 1981, and spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work – why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the 30th. of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in what I choose to call actual freedom. Nowadays I know, intimately, why the Love and the Authority of Divinity does not deliver the goods ... and, of course, I now know what does. Today, for the first time in human history there is a genuine chance for the peace so long yearned for. I am no longer an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is! I am simply a fellow human being offering my discoveries to whomsoever is interested’. [End quote]. I repeat: I am not ‘enlightened’. Also, I am not in a state of ‘Grace’ ... I am a thorough-going atheist through and through. I was not ‘ready to judge based on net scrabble and friend’s opinions’. The Web-site I accessed is entitled: ACIM (Trademark), A Course In Miracles (Registered), by The Foundation For Inner Peace (Copyright 1995) (All rights reserved). The URL is: www.acim.org/home/fip/index.html If this, the Official Page of ACIM, is ‘net scrabble’ then what is one to do? Secondly, not only do I value my friends opinions highly, but I took the time to listen to yourself and Hector on the radio and also spent four hours with a believer of ACIM in my own home so as to personally ascertain the results of this belief system. Then, and only then, was I ready to judge ... and my appraisal stands vindicated by the timbre of your response.
RESPONDENT: Richard, I have a copy of the tape of a session that Hector devoted to you this morning. Would you like a copy? Perhaps you could pick it up at the end of tonight’s session or tomorrow’s. Strange ... it is as if you are replaying all the ideas I used to have. Thank You! RICHARD: Please feel free to send Hector’s tape to me ... or anything else you may find pertinent to our discussion. The postal address is: The Actual Freedom Trust, P.O. Box 1404, Byron Bay, 2481 [now changed]. If you like, I will pay the postage at this end. Thank you.
RESPONDENT: Richard, so am I right in assuming that you will not meet Hector? The state of autonomy is looking shakier by the minute. Love. RICHARD: Is it time to pause for a moment and consider what is occurring? Just what is it, exactly, that you endeavouring to demonstrate to me? I am starting to wonder if you have been:
What started as a request from you for information about actual freedom, to which I responded in a friendly and amicable manner; which led to you wishing me to meet Hector, to which I responded in a positive and agreeable manner; which led to you advising me to listen to the radio, to which I responded in a puzzled yet factual manner, has resulted in you displaying an array of ... of what? Jeering? Sneering? Ridiculing? Taunting? Contemptuous? Overbearing? Rude? ... or whatever behaviour we may wish to call it. Are you giving me a practical demonstration of your Love in practice? Are you showing me that this ‘continual experience of Unconditional Love’ that you have is, as I propose in my writings, fatally flawed when it comes to delivering peace on earth? Please, can you return to the civilised discussion that you started out with? This barrage of gibes that you have degenerated into has done nothing to facilitate a free flowing exchange of information. I only wish to get at the facts of a matter ... not to have to contend with epithets. If Hector has seen fit to devote a session to me and if you consider it important that I hear it, then I am happy to oblige by listening. Please feel free to send it to me. The postal address is: The Actual Freedom Trust, P.O. Box 1404, Byron Bay, 2481 [now changed]. I promise I will give it my full attention and correspond with you as to what I make of its contents. Nothing he has said on the radio, nothing that the official ACIM web-page has said, and certainly nothing you have demonstrated to me, has convinced me to alter my conclusion as I have already advised to you. I said then, and I repeat it now, that I see no point in personally meeting Hector. His Teaching is a mixture of Hinduism and Christianity, advocating ‘Eternal Life’ and ‘Unconditional Love’, among other things. This is diametrically opposite to what I state so clearly in my writing that I fail to see what would be achieved. Why do you want to see this happen? What is your part in all this? Why do you wish to see us together? What has happened to your earlier statement [quote]: ‘all the stuff that people get into in ‘comparative’ meetings of ‘masters’? [end quote]. I look forward to a continuing and civilised correspondence.
RESPONDENT: Richard, in the words of Jesus, by your actions shall I know you. Lesson 2 of A Course In Miracles; ‘I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me’. In your own words: ‘Although obnoxious people may still appear from time to time and attempt to wreak their havoc, my response to them is not hostile and reactionary’. Love RICHARD: I received the tapes you sent to me and I listened to them as I promised as you obviously considered it to be important that I hear them. I had to give up on the second side of tape one as the audience noise was such that I could not hear Hector at all ... and they were not listening to him anyway, as they were too busy with their own maniacal laughter and sobbing ... catharsis, I guess. However, I was able to hear enough to ascertain that Hector simply does not comprehend what I had written ... he seems to be a person of limited understanding. His constant and consistent response all through the ‘session’ was that: [quote] ‘This world is not real’. [end quote]. As this tallies with what you have communicated to me in past E-Mails, and is supported by the channelled entity identified as ‘Jesus’, I do not wonder that he has no idea at all of what I am talking about. So be it. Quite frankly, I fail to see why we are corresponding ... I consider that it has been clearly established that we are not [quote] ‘Kindred spirits’. [end quote]. Perhaps you know. I can now see where you got your loving attitude from ... Hector goes for ridicule, scorn, contempt, derision, jeers, gibes, and so on in a much bigger way than you do. I am glad that you are starting to realise this ... as you said in your last E-Mail: [quote] ‘By your actions shall I know you’. [end quote].
RESPONDENT: Richard, it is a night off for me and I sit here with your letter to me and plenty of time to look at what it attempts to convey. And as you spent so much effort on it then perhaps I will spend a little time on a reply. I did indeed read your articles. Please do not take offence again if I say that the information they contain was sweet, with a lovely naiveté that I enjoyed. So Richard, when you requote them to me with special emphasis on certain apparently key phrases I assume that you have not assimilated one of the basic messages that Jesus gives us in the Course; that everything you look at, everything you perceive, even an apparently emphatic and seemingly unequivocal statement, will be, can only be, and always is perceived in the light of the perceiver’s past if one chooses that it be so. Goedel’s famous theorem shows the simple fallacy of language as a mode of communication and yet I get the impression that you need me to take a particular and subjectively accurate note of what you quote me. Hence my impression of naiveté. The human mind is not capable of accurate observation and I am no exception. Please allow me to utilize your own style of Q&A by quoting your letter; ‘in short the typical Spiritual Path as opposed to the typical Religious Path’ (Your capitalisations), ‘... and ‘post spiritual’ means an equally big NO to anything that smacks of a Spiritual Path by any name’. (Your capitalisations again) I must say I do not know or understand the difference between a religious path and a spiritual path or even a non-spiritual path because I do not understand or see the need to understand the concept of a path. As you repeatedly assert, you are in a state of autonomy and therefore I know that you too would have seen the folly of comparison of path to path when all paths lead nowhere, and are indeed artful facades for the denial of the reality of what you choose to term actuality. To extend this concept of autonomy to its logical finale, it follows that a state of being that you describe as ‘a fully free and autonomous individual (sic) living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one and no thing’. could not and would not even know of ‘paths’, for paths would be the provision in your mind of the cognizance of a need in other ‘individuals’ to transcend their present disadvantaged state. It is said of Ramana Maharshi that he was once asked what need he had of a philosophy, to which he answered; ‘None at all, until people began asking stupid questions’. It is for this reason that I feel the need to ask you whether you hear what I am saying because all of your writings reflect to me a mind enmeshed in the trap of reaction to reaction, or the attempt to ‘make right’ that which appears outside of itself. I am saying unequivocally that a need to judge a path apparently separate from your own demonstrates a resistance to an idea in your own mind. Further, having espoused your disdain for certain types of paths, you attempt to establish your own authority with names and dates to reflect the authenticity of your own ‘path’. Let’s get right down to it.
Allow me to share a lovely piece from Jesus regarding this very same trap. It refers to sickness and healing, but it could as well be referring to the perception of someone outside of yourself in need of what you believe you have to give them. The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world’s perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world’s standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body’s eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding. Illusions are always illusions of differences. How could it be otherwise? By definition, an illusion is an attempt to make something real that is regarded as of major importance, but is recognized as being untrue. The mind therefore seeks to make it true out of its intensity of desire to have it for itself. Illusions are travesties of creation; attempts to bring truth to lies. Finding truth unacceptable, the mind revolts against truth and gives itself an illusion of victory. Finding health a burden, it retreats into feverish dreams. And in these dreams the mind is separate, different from other minds, with different interests of its own, and able to gratify its needs at the expense of others. Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. It is the mind that interprets the eyes’ messages and gives them ‘meaning’. And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all. What is seen as ‘reality’ is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body’s eyes to find it. The body’s eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful. It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter. And it is here correction must be made. The mind classifies what the body’s eyes bring to it according to its preconceived values, judging where each sense datum fits best. What basis could be faultier than this? Unrecognized by itself, it has itself asked to be given what will fit into these categories. And having done so, it concludes that the categories must be true. On this the judgment of all differences rests, because it is on this that judgments of the world depend. Can this confused and senseless ‘reasoning’ be depended on for anything? There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout? And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them all as real, and so they are all real to him. When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. And so it is with healing. The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are. The body’s eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be ‘sicker’ than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place – for differences cannot exist within it – so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth. You state that Hector’s sessions involve much ‘shaking’ and ‘bliss experiences’ and ‘cathartic release’. Tell me, did your trusted friends actually have any of these ‘symptoms’, and therefore were they really able to judge what was really happening? If I am to assume that they did not, then am I right in assuming that your friends let you down in the communication of a secondhand subjective report on something that they classified and pigeonholed based on their own past references? Can you tell me what I experience in light? I think not. You can look at it, you can judge it, but you cannot experience it secondhand. The Web page that you accessed carried the usual canned description of A Course In Miracles and it appears that you are judging what Hector or I teach based on what the Course In Miracles home page has told you. I will repeat for your benefit. The experience is necessary. There is only judgment of the experience or the experience. Jesus puts it superbly when he points out the whole problem that you and I seem to be having in achieving a state of union in any form: ‘All terms are potentially controversial, and those who seek controversy will find it. Yet those who seek clarification will find it as well. They must, however, be willing to overlook controversy, recognizing that it is a defense against truth in the form of a delaying maneuver. Theological considerations as such are necessarily controversial, since they depend on belief and can therefore be accepted or rejected. A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary. It is this experience toward which the course is directed. Here alone consistency becomes possible because here alone uncertainty ends’. You see, Richard, we flounder around in terminologies based on past references from a long dead past. Why you would bother with that predictable etymology of Jesus I have no idea, except to reinforce your own defense against the experience. The problem all purveyors of relative truths eventually arrive at is the fact that people still disagree with them. To illustrate how words deny experience, it appears that in your apparently ‘autonomous’ world you see a need to write about a poor waitress whom you choose to judge as desultory. All terms are potentially controversial, and the ones that you decide are the most arguable, such as Jesus only show me that there is a need to defend your beliefs. Your description of a typical spiritual path as one that ‘endorses and praises eternal life, Jesus, God, unconditional love’ presents itself to me as a similar reaction and compartmentalization. Typical for you, perhaps, but my apparent search for happiness involved absolutely none of these factors and I was shown, rather than deduced, that my ‘typical spiritual path’ was in fact the active and fearful avoidance of the totality of unconditionality. My own futile efforts to compartmentalize and classify demonstrated to me my own desire to distance myself from those terms that you judge, and yet I must again remind you of your own description of yourself as ‘beholden to no-one and nothing’. ‘Today this would be described as ‘channeling’, some ‘Disincarnate Entity’ speaking through some specially selected person to bring a ‘message to mankind’’. I know what channeling is and I know that it is something that has occurred for many hundreds of years and I also know how many skeptical people attempt to disenfranchise the content by reference to the means of delivery. I can see this because I too would have once viewed it the same way until someone had the temerity to tell me to pick the book up and do the lessons. So far you have listened to the radio and criticized, sat on your computer and looked up the wrong web page and criticized, given me a definition of channeling and criticized it, listened to your friends and criticized their secondhand impressions, discussed the means of delivery and criticized, gave us your third party version of my own experience and criticized it, sent me letters and criticized me for criticizing ... and not once in all of your rampant etymological temple erections have you taken one look at what you are doing. Not once have you looked at why as ‘a fully free and autonomous individual (sic) living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one and no thing’. would even bother contacting me to arrange a meeting with Hector in the first place! What was it that you hoped to achieve? Did you think that you would talk him out of God? What possible need does as ‘a fully free and autonomous individual (sic) living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one and no thing’. have to find common ground!!?? Let’s get back to your claims. ‘It is possible to live in this post-spiritual era, freed from Religion and New-Age, challenging every philosophy and psychology, surpassing all Enlightened (your caps) Masters. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held mankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one and nothing’. Did I get it right? Fine. So let’s just look at it with a little light. Pray tell me, when did the spiritual era stop? What date? Did it stop with your second awakening? And if so is it really stopped or only stopped for you? If it only stopped for you, how do you handle the atrocities that you still see and suffer from? (your letter, your experience, not mine). Please tell me, if you say you live in total peace, how do you ... how are you even able to refer to time and space and the constituent acts of suffering it incorporates and say in the same breath that you are free? There can be only two possibilities and I daresay you will like neither:
Here’s the really strange thing about what I think you espouse. You don’t even seem to know what spiritual is! It seems to me that you believe there is some ether-like or astral state that we waft about in and be ‘spiritual’. You say that you have gone past all that and yet you find yourself back in the body. How on earth can you say that you have found happiness back on earth in a body, suffering not only from severe writer’s cramp, but also the daily sight of other bodies all around slowly but surely dying, and yet say that being in a body is the ultimate freedom? Richard, it’s wild! I also have the need to ask you why you see fit to pound away at the ‘Masters’ for their ‘misdeeds’. Sure, your attitude of anger is perceptually correct in that it maintains that you are a victim of someone (‘Masters’) outside of yourself, but aren’t we grown-ups here? Why not pick the man who invented the plastic bag and causes the choking of 200,000 cows in Asia every year? Why not the woman who invented barbed wire? Why not the politicians who promised that they could make us all happy, healthy, wealthy and wise? When I read it all I get is that you have a problem with a certain group of humans that you have singled out as aggressors. It does not compute that an autonomous being would have to pound anyone unless he still has a need to pound them, in which case he could not be autonomous. At best it can only mean that you have a problem.
Please ‘enlighten’ me, Richard. How do you know what Ramana Maharshi was? I agree with you. He was totally spiritual and he taught that the at no time does the body exist, exactly as does Jesus in A Course In Miracles. Now you are attempting to convince the world to part with their shekels. Your credential? That you have given us what all the ‘Masters’ have failed to deliver. That you have overcome the problem of a ‘benighted humanity in appalling tribulation and distress’ Based on this non-evidence, you have declared that your credentials are better than all the ‘Masters’. I’m sorry, Richard. Perhaps I am unintelligent as you say Hector is. But I can see no evidence whatsoever to support your claim that you have overcome ‘Good and Bad, Love and hate, Fear and Trust, Generosity and Parsimony’. Indeed, if you have dispensed forever ‘with the need for Authority and Love’, why would you see the need to quote outside authorities to convince me that Jesus never existed? Why would you even care? Do you see my point? I would really like an answer.
What is your fixation about the term spiritual that a simple tweaking up of your own dominant paradigm would not fix? I could do the usual thing and refer to the dictionary definition, a web page or pull in some long dead angry author to support me, but I would rather simply ask you this; Are you mind or are you body? If you are mind does it matter whether you call it spirit or mind? If you are body what happens when you stop breathing? These are questions I would expect a child might ask and yet they seem to be the most evaded by all the writings you publish. If you are the body, how can you be happy? If you are the mind, what is the body? Come on, Richard, please give me your answer!
Richard, I can tell from the bottom of my being that I feel no servitude, puerile or otherwise to Jesus, to God, or the any other ‘fictitious deity’. So the criticisms that you make of Hector’s teachings and my experience cannot possibly relate to me or Hector! Gratitude, Yes! Joy, Yes! Love, Yes! Servitude? How can one be happy and in servitude at the same time unless one has made a conditional choice? I must say that when one reads a statement like yours it reveals far more about the writer than the reader, for it demonstrates that the writer has at best a third party misunderstanding of the single most significant event in any human’s apparent history; conscious contact with unconditionality. It demonstrates that the writer is still stuck in form; that he has chosen a body as his home and is trapped in the consequence of that decision. Your assertion that you have to be in servitude to God to have a relationship with your Creator simply reveals once again your own fear of that selfsame experience of God. We have all had cosmic experiences – some of us have chosen to call them awakenings or enlightenment. But I can honestly say that when the ‘en-lighten-ment’ of my mind occurred I was very, very aware of just one thing; the light came from outside of the mind that I had constructed. It was not of me. Humility then became a reality through the realization of my own bullshit and waffle in relation to what I had previously thought enlightenment was all about. Gratitude? Yes! For the light and the knowledge that was freely given was most definitely not something that I could have deduced in a thousand more lifetimes of seeking. Servitude? To what? To God? One is not in servitude to a benefactor who gives unconditionally and freely with absolutely no need of return unless of course, one wants to be. You ask me how you can make yourself more clear and here is my answer. Show me that you have done what all the masters never achieved and I will offer you all the gratitude my own being can offer. Show me that your statement of mastery is borne out in the world that now offers you no resistance because it has no resistance to offer. Show me the benevolent world that has changed as a result of your Actuality and I will bow down and kiss your feet in utter joy. A mere statement is not proof. Show me please that you too do not have ‘feet of clay’. Please help me with this one;
(Your caps) Please tell me how someone’s unwillingness to relinquish the (I guess you mean small ‘s’) self can be the reason for all of humankind’s misery. Please tell me how my decision as a Divinely inspired Being has caused the continuation of all humankind’s misery. And please tell me how the statement that it is all my fault going to help the world that you still maintain is full of suffering and pain after your own actualization. I have a great deal of trouble understanding how if you, the teacher can’t stop the carnage, then how can you tell me that I can by relinquishing my ‘self’.
Can you tell me what glamour and glory there is in dedicating your life to the service of your fellow man? Satisfaction, yes. But tell me; is it glamour and glory that drives Mother Teresa? Surely in your terms of ‘Divinely inspired beings’ she would have to be at the top of, or close to the top of, your list; how can you support the attack on her that she lives for glamour and glory? Can you really say that Mother Teresa, ‘bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, has led humankind astray’? Your description of a ‘Divinely inspired being’ does relate to her, does it not? She is divinely inspired, is she not? So ‘preaching Love and Surrender she demanded – and demands – obedience and supplication’. Is this the same Mother Teresa we both know? Perhaps you may admit for a moment that your description of her does not fit too easily, but attempt to place it on some other ‘Divinely inspired beings’. Please, Richard, tell me who they are so we can look more clearly. Did Ramana Maharshi ‘demand ... obedience and supplication ...’? I would like to hear your answers, or see your answers on your own web page. You say it is a forum. RICHARD: Thank you for your E-Mail. As it is rather long and raises many points, it may take some time to respond in full. But before I do that: Are you genuinely interested in actual freedom? Or do you merely wish to denounce anything I say just to prove your own stance that: ‘This world is not real’? I would rather spend my time corresponding with those who wish for peace on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body, in this physical world. For me this world is very actual. As you have made your position very clear, then we are at diametrically opposite points of view. I wonder just why you wish to continue this futile discussion. I can only help those who wish to be helped in the way that only I can help.
RESPONDENT: Richard ... Yes! (Editorial note: As this signified nothing about answering the question about genuine interest or not, there was no reply sent.)
RESPONDENT: ???? (Editorial note: There was nothing substantial to reply to regarding answering the question about genuine interest or not.)
RESPONDENT: Richard, in the words of Jesus, by your actions shall I know you. I await your reply. RICHARD: Some time ago I wrote to you: Thank you for your E-Mail. As it is rather long and raises many points, it may take some time to respond in full. But before I do that: Are you genuinely interested in actual freedom? Or do you merely wish to denounce anything I say just to prove your own stance that: ‘This world is not real’? I would rather spend my time corresponding with those who wish for peace on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body, in this physical world. For me this world is very actual. As you have made your position very clear, then we are at diametrically opposite points of view. I wonder just why you wish to continue this futile discussion. I can only help those who wish to be helped in the way that only I can help. To which you replied:
As I could do nothing with such an ambiguous answer, I simply dropped the matter and went about my business of corresponding with people who are genuinely interested in an actual freedom, here on earth, as this body, in this life-time. Then you sent:
Which I treated as confirmation that my surmise was correct. You have now sent:
By which ‘actions’ I presume you mean my disinterest in playing mind-games with someone who can not answer a simple question. I will now ask the same questions as before, but will arrange them sequentially in the hope that you might understand that any further correspondence is determined by honesty and not disingenuousness: (1) Are you genuinely interested in actual freedom? (2) Or do you merely wish to denounce anything I say just to prove your own stance that: ‘This world is not real’? (Editorial note: There was no reply and the matter ended there. Thus the response in answer to the long E-Mail was never sent. Two years after the above exchange, the respondent quit the sect he was involved with and has written a novel drawn from his experience wherein the main character [quote]: ‘... gives up his former life, possessions, home and friends and travels to America to be with the Light Meister. He becomes a Light Meister himself. He returns to Australia and begins a local chapter of the cult. When he invites another ‘Light Meister’ from America things begin to go horribly wrong. Eventually he is forced out of the cult after nearly dying from psychic attack’ [endquote]. More information at the following URL: (www.harbourmedia.com.au/ian/pages/syno.htm).
RETURN TO GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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