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A Dialogue With Konrad (Part Two)
KONRAD: I assert the following: If the process of decision, called by you ‘will’, is the same as the bodily process of intelligence, it cannot cause actions in a direct way, as you imply. (With acting I mean: make the body move, behave purposefully.) This process therefore must result in an action, a movement of the body indirectly. How? By resulting in a thought that is allowed by the body to make it move. Therefore I put it to you, that you are mistaken in your description of how action, purposeful behaviour arises in you. It is NOT by a direct connection between ‘will’ and body, but it is by an INDIRECT connection between ‘will’ and body, through an intermediary, namely a certain thought that controls the body. Your ‘will’ produces a conclusion, and this conclusion is then allowed to control your body. I assert, that this conclusion is a form of ‘I’. RICHARD: What we are engaged in here is a spirited examination of that dratted entity inside this body known generally as a self by any other name ... for Richard: the ego and soul, and for you: ‘the I and SELF’. You are the counsel for the defence – you argue the case for the continued existence of self – and Richard is the prosecuting attorney – he argues the case for the self’s execution! Look out, folks ... here comes another long dialogue! Okay, here goes ... as I have already explained (about the stomach and so on, which holds good for all activity) there is no need for an intermediary. That is just ‘I’ trying like all get-out to justify its miserable existence. ‘I’ need to feel that ‘I’ am an important part in the works ... after all, blind nature charged ‘me’ with the job of looking after the body. Thus it is natural to think and feel that this body cannot operate and function without ‘me’. ‘I’ am in danger of becoming superannuated ... and without a redundancy package! KONRAD: I am even capable to describe in your particular case, what the thought might be that controls your body. It are the conclusions you have drawn. And what are these conclusions? Very simple, it is your Actualism. So the ‘I’-ness of your I is the actualism you talk about with others. For this vision of Actualism is the source of the actions of your body. Do not think, that I am attacking Actualism. For it has many fascinating insights to offer. RICHARD: No, I do not consider for a moment that you are attacking actualism. Actualism is not a ‘vision’ of mine, however, it is simply an accurate description of the actual world of sensual delight. I chose the name rather simply from the Oxford Dictionary. It said: ‘actualism: the theory that matter is not merely passive’. That was all ... and I did not investigate any further for I did not want to know who formulated this theory. It was that description – and not the author’s theory – that appealed. For, living as I do in the fairy-tale-like actual world with its quality of magical perfection and purity, everything and everyone takes on a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath my feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive. A rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are. This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. We do not live in an inert universe. Years later, someone told me they had heard about a philosophy of Actualism. The ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica ’ CD reports: ‘for Giovanni Gentile, propounder of a philosophy of Actualism in Italy, the pure activity of self-consciousness is the sole reality’. I could not disagree more ... and I spell actualism with a lower-case ‘a’. He also had a philosophy called ‘Actual Idealism ’. There is a Web Page on the Internet titled ‘Actualism’ which I found via a search engine. But it is religious and spiritual ... which I find strange as actual means of the senses. I am yet to find the origin of the Oxford Dictionary’s definition. KONRAD: How is it, that I am able to see these facts? How can I be so sure? How do I know, that I am not deluding myself, and that there is not something I have missed? Let me begin with saying, that I am well aware of the fact that as long as there is even a trace of ‘I’-ness left, there is inevitable some blindness. But there is more. Remember, that we talked about the phenomenon of ‘Mudras’. I have written to you, that these things happened maybe thousands of times with me. How? Well, exactly at the moment whereby all thoughts are stopped by the ‘process’ inside of me, the thought that is ‘connected’ to my body, the ‘I’ of that moment is also stopped. This invariably causes a ‘pull’ in the muscles. For the ‘I’, the thought connected to the muscles, mostly performing the action of meditation, is at that moment disconnected from the body. This disconnecting it causes this ‘pull’, because the electrical energy that was in the ‘I’-thought is discharged completely in the muscles. Exactly after this moment, no trace of an ‘I’ is left inside of me. All thought is gone. But then there is no agent of action left either. However there IS witnessing of this fact. Witnessing, that happens not by an ‘I’, but by the intelligence of the body. In this witnessing, there is only the ‘process’. Everything else is gone. However, this witnessing is therefore not put into words. For this is only possible when an ‘I’ is formed. RICHARD: The Indian Mystics, who have been doing this thing for thousands of years, all stress that ‘Mudras’ and ‘Kriyas’ are part of the process leading to spiritual enlightenment and are not to be taken as proof of having arrived. In the Indian tradition, where they are more familiar with the effects of Spiritual Energies, they use the word ‘mudra’ to describe the gestures or poses that your body can spontaneously assume when the Spirit-Current starts flowing through it. They also use the word ‘kriya’ to describe the spontaneous rhythms or movements and sounds that pulse through your body as the Spirit-Current moves you. Such spontaneous kriyas vary from person to person, and though there are similarities that are easily recognised, there is no single kriya that is the particular determining one that indicates to oneself or others that one’s process is the genuine experience. They all ultimately amount to nothing ... they are but physical, emotional, mental and psychic adumbrations that indicate merely that a ‘process’ is going on. It is important to not get hung up on these manifestations and to go with what is happening to the very end. And their description is only about a process happening in order to become enlightened ... actual freedom lies beyond enlightenment. (I do no meditation ... and never have). KONRAD: If all thought stops, the true nature of the ‘I’-ness of the I is revealed, but the action of speaking is then impossible, for there is no ‘I’ that can speak. For ALL action is then impossible, including speaking (and typing). If it is so, that your ‘actual’ condition makes it possible for you to end EVERY trace of ‘person’ inside of your body, then the phenomenon I have explained above must be familiar to you, too. Your body must through this PCE be capable to stop every thought inside of your mind, causing the mudra phenomenon described above. After that there is a big ‘void’ inside of you, wherein NO action is possible. If this is unfamiliar to you, and your body is not capable of ending all thoughts inside of your body, then I might be right that nothing less than the ‘process’ is needed to end the problem of the Human Condition completely. In that case it is unfortunate that the process in you ended after 30 months. However, if your body can stop every thought inside of you by the PCE, your PCE is equivalent to my ‘process’. However it may be, the description you have put forward of a ‘will’ that replaces the acting ‘I’ is wrong. That is a fact. RICHARD: For the vast majority of my time there is no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action and effortlessly does its thing. All the while, there is this apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur ... it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here. Consequently, I am always blithe and carefree, even if I am doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake. As I have been living in this invaluable condition for five years now, endeavouring to convey to others the priceless character of an actual freedom from animosity and anguish – as distinct from having merely transcended and smothered them over with a honeyed coating of Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – then I am inordinately pleased whenever someone can grasp what this means for peace on earth. It is one thing to bask in Rapturous Bliss, Ineffable Ecstasy and Exalted Euphoria while perpetuating the status-quo and quite another to delightedly enjoy the ripples of pleasure that this body is patently capable of manifesting whilst actualising benignity and blitheness. These organic waves of sensational pleasure are usually constrained by the demands of the ego and soul for emotional and passionate feelings ... which are the synthetic compensations for the supposed indignity of having to be here at all as this despised body. When the psychological ego and psychic soul willingly abdicate their sovereignty and take their leave, the senses can act in
the optimum manner ... just as when a normal person becomes blind, for instance, all the other senses are heightened. The result is a phenomenal
increase in the pleasurable and luxurious sensitivity of being a corporeal body in this very physical world. The resultant benevolence produces
easy good-will, kindness and altruism, for one is living in a friendly You see, what I am is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. Physical space is infinite and actual time is eternal ... thus the infinitude of this physical universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go to. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. I am always here and it is already now. I rest my case for now!
KONRAD: Am I arguing the case for the defence? Didn’t I write: ‘Exactly after this moment, no trace of an ‘I’ is left inside of me. All thought is gone. But then there is no agent of action left either. However there IS witnessing of this fact. Witnessing, that happens not by an ‘I’, but by the intelligence of the body. In this witnessing, there is only the ‘process’. Everything else is gone. However, this witnessing is therefore not put into words. For this is only possible when an ‘I’ is formed ... If all thought stops, the true nature of the ‘I’-ness of the I is revealed, but the action of speaking is then impossible, for there is no ‘I’ that can speak. For ALL action is then impossible, including speaking (and typing) ... It seems, that you ignore this completely. Therefore you are putting something over me. I do not argue for the continued existence of self, as the above clearly demonstrates. I point out clearly, that every trace of ‘I’-ness CAN be stopped. And even be stopped whenever the at that time present ‘I’ allows it. RICHARD: You say here that you do not argue for the continued existence of self ... but you do say that it is not possible to live without an ‘I’ continuously. As I had clearly written ‘that dratted entity inside this body known generally as a self by any other name’, I find that by you saying there is no self in you but there is an ‘I’ (which sometimes is and sometimes is not) to be splitting hairs ... if not plain disingenuous. Also, the state you describe above (‘all action is then impossible, including speaking and typing’) is well known in India and is called ‘Going into a Samadhi’. In the West it is known as a form of catatonia, which I experienced in 1981. If one cannot operate and function in this world of people, things and events ... then what of it? I will stay with the ever useful apperception of the pure consciousness experience any day. I have nothing more to say at this moment other than what we have already written so far ... for I would be repeating myself ad infinitum. So I will re-post the following, as I consider it the most important piece of information I can give you:
To which you replied: ‘that may well be. But you are missing the point’. I get the point all right: you stick with your mudras and kriyas and samadhis (which you say ‘these things happened maybe thousands of times with me’) and I will stick with my ‘delusion’. I happen to like my ‘delusion’ ... and all the more so now, if that is possible, because you finished your E-Mail with:
I only ever wanted to be happy and harmless ... not catatonic ‘maybe thousands of times’. As the counsel for the defence – apart from shooting himself in the foot – has bought no new evidence, the prosecuting attorney still rests his case!
KONRAD: I do not have much to say. It is a pity that it ends like this. I am not surprised, for I expected this much. Still, I repeat, you do not understand. Apparently our discussion is over. It is a pity. Of course, you do not believe me, but if you realise that the wanter is the wanted, and that without an ‘I’ thought no action is possible, the ‘process’ will start in you too. And then you will discover, that Buddha, J. Krishnamurti and me are in a completely different ball game. I wonder. Will you ever realise this? So many people die without ever seeing this. Clearly you do not lack the courage. You have only drawn the wrong conclusions, and stick to them. Let me know, when you begin to see that there might be something in what I say, for I have liked it very much to exchange E-Mails with you. But as long as you think you know my position concerning the East I think further conversation is useless. RICHARD: My word, you surely know how to be dramatic. So, let us look again at what is going on. KONRAD: You wrote: ‘Your concern about how to get me out of my delusion, out of my happiness, and back into being an ‘I’ again ... only this time knowing its ‘I’-ness’. But you ARE now an ‘I’. The I consisting of the conclusion, that you are your body. The reason why you do not see this, I have explained too. So it is not ‘out of your happiness, and back in being an ‘I’ again’, but out of the illusion of not being an ‘I’, while being an ‘I’’, into ‘an ‘I’, but now knowing it, and the ability to go out of it, whenever you wish. It gives you the freedom, to replace one ‘I’ by another, but now consciously. A freedom you now do not have. In this it increases the effectiveness of action, for the purpose of ANY action undertaken is now perfectly clear. RICHARD: Is it actually that impossible to grasp that it is entirely possible to live without any psychological or psychic identity whatsoever? What you have described is a very convoluted way of living life. KONRAD: When all thought stops this is NOT a state of catatonia. Far, far from it. It is a state wherein there is only awareness of that what is the case. So it is exactly the opposite of what you assert it is; it is a state wherein you are completely in the world, because there is only awareness of everything that is the case. The difference with the catatonic state and the state of ending all thought, is that the catatonia is experienced as an attack that is done to you, wherein there is total loss of control, while the thoughtless state is experienced as a state of complete silence, that is invited by you, where there is only clearness, experienced as total control. Not only are you in this state intensely aware of everything that is going on, but it is also a state, wherein the true nature of any ‘I’-ness is revealed. This is, because every form of ‘I’-ness has to be silenced first before going into this state. It is a state, you do not have any experience with. I can see this, because you are unable to see for yourself, that my assertion ‘the wanting is the wanted’ is correct. Only in passing to this state of complete silence this can be seen. And to come into this state of complete silence, the ‘process’ is needed. RICHARD: I did not say that it was catatonia per se, I said that ‘Going into Samadhi’ was known in the West as ‘a form of catatonia’ ... and there are many different forms. However, your own words described it as a state wherein you say ‘all action is then impossible, including speaking and typing’ ... which is clearly a catatonic state. And I maintain that if one cannot operate and function in this world of people, things and events ... then what of it? I will stay with the ever useful apperception of the pure consciousness experience any day. I have experienced this what you describe ... and I have gone beyond it. KONRAD: You said: ‘But you do say that it is not possible to live without an ‘I’ continuously’ ... and I have said nothing of the sort. RICHARD: I beg to differ. You clearly stated: ‘it is not ‘out of your happiness, and back in being an ‘I’ again’, but out of the illusion of not being an ‘I’, while being an ‘I’’, into ‘an ‘I’, but now knowing it, and the ability to go out of it, whenever you wish. It gives you the freedom, to replace one ‘I’ by another, but now consciously’. I know that what you wrote here is very confused and difficult to read, but if you persevere with re-reading it you will see that what you are saying is that it is not possible to live without an ‘I’ continuously. They are your own words. KONRAD: You are continuously citing all this stuff from India, of which I know nothing. But what you describe, does not ring a bell with me. My background is Zen and science. Not Hindu. RICHARD: It is unfortunate that it does not ring a bell with you, for they are describing your condition accurately. So what if your background is Zen and science ... other cultures have valuable experience with which to contribute to human knowledge, too. I was not too dismissive, all those years ago, to seek an explanation for my ‘symptoms’ from any source. So I read and I saw what they were saying. I travelled to India and I understood ... and I actualised that understanding. The same with Zen: wherever Zen could clarify something for me ... I actualised that clarification. Science? Yes, but not only science ... I have read physics, cosmology, sociology, biology, palaeontology, philosophy, theology, anthropology, archaeology, politics and so on and so on. Of course I only have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all these diverse topics, I do not pretend to have made an in-depth analysis ... just sufficient to meet my requirements. I favour the empirical approach to such a subjective matter as ontology ... all my findings are personally verified experientially. My avowed aim was clear: to find that which is actual. I maintained from the very beginning of my exploration into the human psyche that it was just not possible that this fantastic universe, in all its marvellous diversity and intricate form, could be forever hopelessly ‘wrong’. I could not believe that human beings were fated to be everlastingly miserable, with only scant reprieve from the endless grind. I asked why it should be set in stone that we humans could have only moments of happiness, only temporary periods of harmony. It seemed such an absurdly preposterous premise that ‘you can’t change human nature’ ... in the face of many such contumacious admonitions I set out to solve the ‘Mystery of Life’. KONRAD: Where you said: ‘But you do say that it is not possible to live without an ‘I’ continuously’ I agree that it can be understood that way. What I said is, that without an ‘I’ no action, no purposeful behaviour is possible. Because action is only required when there is a difference between the state the world is in and the state the world is wished to be in. Therefore, again, there must be something that is wanted. And that what is wanted is also the wanting. To be even more precise: The ‘I’-ness of the I is the experience of a thought being allowed to control the body. This is why the actions we undertake are the most clear expression of who we are. Action continues, until the difference between that what is wanted and the state the world is in is nullified. The ‘process’ makes it possible, to become completely aware of the ‘I’-ness, even when there is action. RICHARD: But – and this is a big but – I do not want for anything. I am totally fulfilled and utterly satisfied. I have no desire whatsoever. You may talk about wishing and wanting and acting and nullifying until the cows come home ... but it does not alter the fact that you are speaking about your experience of life and not mine. I never wish and I never want. I never desire at all ... I have no ambition whatsoever. KONRAD: Your mind is closed for the possibility that you might be wrong. However, I wanted to be as clear as possible about the ‘I’-ness of the I, because you might consider to begin meditating again. If you investigate what I have put forward, you might discover what J. Krishnamurti, Buddha, Rinzai and I myself have discovered. You are so close, that it would really be a pity if I do not at least attempt to reach you. RICHARD: I have never meditated ... I have never needed to, and I do not need to now, nor will I ever in the future. Look, I know what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and Mr. Gotama the Sakyan – and others – have discovered. I lived in enlightenment for eleven years. So I know very well what I am talking about ... and it is not a case that my ‘mind is closed’ because I have lived there and have now gone beyond it ... for five years now. It no longer interests me what they – and yourself – have found because I found it to be lacking ... and it is lacking badly. They are all talking about the metaphysical world whereas I speak of the actual world. To become enlightened is to find a solution to the ills of humankind in a metaphysical dimension, and like all solutions found there, it does not work here on earth in this physical dimension. The Masters and Messiahs, the Saints and the Sages, the Avatars and the Saviours have had thousands of years to demonstrate the efficacy of their ‘Message’, their ‘Teachings’. There is still as much suffering now as there was then. The ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘Tried and Failed’. Unless this fact is thoroughly grasped, you will read anything I write in the same context as spiritual enlightenment and it will be seen as me not understanding you. But I do. It is not enlightenment that I am speaking of ... it is all about going beyond enlightenment into the actuality of being here on this very physical planet that is meandering about in a very actual universe. Not only must the ego dissolve (like theirs did) but the soul must die as well (which theirs did not). Then one is here in this actual world – not the real world that five point eight billion people are living in – but the actual world that is accessible only when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (what you call ‘I and SELF’) become extinct. KONRAD: And, Richard, this is also why I consider your solution of being the body as a dead end. I understand that it gives you happiness. However, your philosophy leads to the conclusion that everything is perfect as it is. But with such an attitude you do not try to explore as much as you can. You do not look upon the world as a domain of vast opportunities of finding all kinds of ways to become happy. You are content with what you have achieved. But this is exactly the reason why I say it is a trap. For such a conviction makes you stop reaching out to the world. Or, to put it into the words I have used before, the ape has returned in you, stopping all growth. RICHARD: But I am reaching out to the world. I have a web page with 50,000 words on it for the whole world to read. I am actively writing to mailing lists. I have published a book of over 100,000 words. I speak daily, face-to-face, with living people here in my own house. For me, the world is a playground, a magical paradise wherein ultimate fulfilment is pouring its blessings endlessly upon all and sundry ... if only they would allow it. Happiness is already here ... as it always has been and always will be. It is not a conclusion that I have come to, it is an on-going experience that I am living. It never goes away, it is always here. KONRAD: Most of the time I am not happy. I am not unhappy either, for suffering and conflict can be stopped immediately by ‘the process’ in me, whenever it occurs. So the promise I put before people are far less outrageous as those of you. You offer people a way to complete happiness, you say. But as I look at what it is exactly what you offer, it is a limited kind of happiness, if only because in it there is a denial of the possibility of reaching higher levels of happiness. You assert, namely, that there is such a thing as perfection. (Everything is perfect) A concept, which I consider to be THE thing I am against. RICHARD: Why is it a ‘limited kind of happiness ’? This ambience has no boundaries whatsoever ... it is limitless. It is entirely possible, throughout the vast majority of one’s time, for there to be no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action and effortlessly does its thing. All the while there is an apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur in the brain – other than when necessary – for it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here now. Consequently, one is always blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake and here on this verdant earth now. When the psychological ego and psychic soul willingly relinquish their sovereignty and take their leave, the senses can act in the optimum. Just as when a normal person becomes blind and all their other senses are heightened, so too does the abdication result in a phenomenal increase in the pleasurable and luxurious sensitivity of being a corporeal body in this very physical world. The resultant benevolence produces easy good-will, kindness and altruism, for one is living in a friendly world ... made all the more amiable because of the innate munificence and magnanimity of the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of the universe as is evidenced only at this moment in time. This is an actual freedom from animosity and anguish – as distinct from becoming enlightened and thus having merely transcended and smothered them over with a honeyed coating of Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I am inordinately pleased whenever someone can grasp the priceless character of what this means for peace on earth. It is one thing to bask in Ineffable Bliss, Ecstasy and Euphoria while perpetuating the status-quo ... and quite another to delightedly enjoy the ripples of pleasure that this body is patently capable of manifesting whilst actualising benignity and blitheness. These organic waves of sensational pleasure are usually constrained by the demands of the ego and soul for emotional and passionate feelings ... which are the synthetic compensations for the supposed indignity of ‘me’ having to be here at all in this despised body. KONRAD: My position is, that Man is never finished. But this is not a problem. On the contrary, it is what makes him Man. For it gives him the promise that whatever the intensity of his happiness, there is always the possibility of greater happiness. Only death ends this process. But this is no problem, for the East has learnt him not to suffer from him acknowledging this fact. RICHARD: To live on a promise is but to live in hope ... and hope is a paltry substitute for the actuality of the perfection of being here.
KONRAD: I have read your ‘a brief personal history’ again. Suddenly, reading it, a realisation dawned upon me. It is a conclusion, that is rather shocking to me. I began to wonder the following: suppose everything you say about your condition is true. Suppose you have found a way to end ‘I’ and Self in you in the way you describe. What, then, does this mean? It means, that you have, indeed, as you say, hit upon a condition that is totally different from enlightenment. You write about this: ‘The chief characteristics of Enlightenment – Union with the Divine, Universal Compassion, Love Agapé, Ineffable Bliss, The Truth, Timelessness, Spacelessness, Immortality, Aloneness, Oneness, Pacifism, Surrender, Trust, Beauty, and Goodness – being redundant in this totally new condition, are no longer extant. Herein lies the unmistakable distinction between this condition, which I call actual freedom and the Enlightened State: I am no longer driven by a Divine Sense Of Mission to bring The Truth, Universal Love and Divine Compassion to the world. I am free to speak with whomsoever is genuinely interested in solving the ‘Mystery of Life’ and becoming totally free of the Human Condition’. In other words, in this condition everything concerning the Human Condition has become unimportant. Including gathering knowledge and skills. Exactly those actions that enable us, humans, as only living beings to determine the intensity and level of our life by ourselves. RICHARD: I do so consider that you could be well advised to stay with this realisation (‘suppose you have found a way to end ‘I’ and Self in you in the way you describe’) instead of immediately jumping to these obviously erroneous conclusions. To wit: ‘in other words, in this condition everything concerning the Human Condition has become unimportant. Including gathering knowledge and skills. Exactly those actions that enable us, humans, as only living beings to determine the intensity and level of our life by ourselves’. In November 1996 I purchased a computer for the very first time. The only electronic ability and skill I had then was how to operate an ATM at the bank. I have taught myself how to operate the computer ... I designed and created my own web page and service it myself. I have never taken any computer lessons, nor had any instruction book other than the ‘Help Menu’ in all Microsoft programs. I would say that this fact alone makes your argument null and void. KONRAD: You also write: ‘In spite of the fact that every single human being has had at least one peak experience – and usually more – in their lifetime, they somehow can not differentiate between that experience of apperception (wherein ‘I’, the thought and felt ‘being’, temporarily quits the scene and the actual world becomes apparent) and their pre-conceived notions that everyday reality is an illusion disguising some metaphysical Greater Reality’. In other words, according to you a sense of understanding of the world can be experienced directly, without an intermediary. Especially without the intermediary of thought. Now if I add to this, that I have been unable to convince you of anything, and that I have found a total unwillingness to learn from me, despite the fact that at some points my insight went clearly further than yours, I am beginning to get a picture of your condition. And it does not look good. RICHARD: Whilst I appreciate your theory about the ape (below), I am immediately struck by at least one pertinent fact: no ape can string words together like I do. KONRAD: Probably there are more people who have this condition. I think now, that U.G. is one of them. The difference between you and he is only that he is a ‘mean ape’, while you are a ‘friendly ape’. It also makes sense to his claim, that what has happened with him is something that is in his genes. I just wanted to let you know this, so that you know where I stand with respect to your position. Maybe this is all speculation. But in the past I have shown the uncanny ability to be right in these kinds of matters. So you and I are definitely not on the same wavelength. On the contrary. You and I are literally worlds apart. I hope I am wrong. RICHARD: No one, to my knowledge, has ever experienced life like I do ... with the possible exception of Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti. But he does not know what happened to him and has no solutions to offer. He is simply a curiosity to those who go to see him. He states that he is a ‘never to be repeated sport of nature’. Whereas I know where I came from and where I am at and how I got here.
KONRAD: I have given your assertion, that you do not meditate some thought. I have experimented with non-meditation, this afternoon. Guess what. The ‘process’ became so low in intensity, that I did barely feel it any more. The body now reacted completely spontaneous, making goal-directed movements, going to the computer shop to pick up my repaired computer. Also when there were sounds in my environment, the head moved to the source to look at it. And if there were no sounds, the head moved all by itself. The actions could well be described as being executed completely by the circumstances as such, and not being induced by a form of ‘person’. While this was happening, sensations much akin to the experience of beauty were also continuously present. It was, as if the process had transformed itself into these sensations. RICHARD: I am pleased to see that you are prepared to experiment with something new. KONRAD: Is THIS what you mean by actions that do not emerge from either an ‘I’ or a Self? If that is so, then I am familiar with what you are talking about, and we could finally begin with a more significant exchange. RICHARD: It does seem that we might be able to move into a new phase in our correspondence. Where you write: ‘while this was happening, sensations much akin to the experience of beauty were also continuously present. It was, as if the process had transformed itself into these sensations’, I am glad to note that you experienced them as sensations – that is, a sensate experience – and not as an affective experience. Beauty – like love – being affective, can so easily take one down that slippery-slope of illusion into experiencing that oceanic feeling of oneness (‘I am everything and everything is me’) that gives rise to the ‘I am God’ delusion so common in the East. There is still an identity operating for them, you see. It is such a shame that spiritual people are so down on pleasure – which is what sensate experience is – when it is so delicious and luscious. This body is simply brimming with sense organs ... it is so luxurious to be alive. I look forward to hearing more reports.
KONRAD: I have thought about your use of the word ‘fact’. The meaning of this word is not as clear cut as you think. To understand the meaning of the word ‘fact’ you must be aware of the distinction between two uses of the word. As you know, my position is that Man has two worlds to conquer, if he wants to achieve happiness. The outer world and the inner world. Existence and consciousness. The word ‘fact’ has therefore two meanings, one applying to the outer world, and one applying to the inner world. The outer world cannot be known directly, but only indirectly by the instrument of thought, of thinking. The understanding of the outer world is based on something, that is called a paradigm. The world of Aristotle is composed of totally different facts than that of Newton. And the world of Einstein differs considerably with that of both Aristotle and Newton. Where Aristotle sees only one fact, Newton sees several. And where Newton sees several facts, Einstein sees only one. The awareness of a difference of an understanding how Aristotle and Newton understands the world made Kant proclaim, that it is unmistakably so that all knowledge of the world BEGINS by the senses. But this does NOT imply that all knowledge ARISES OUT OF the senses. In understanding the world around you there is also an assumption made of how the most basic structure of the world looks like. The world is then understood in terms of this most basic structure. Kant thought that this most basic structure is innate. He called it therefore Categorical Imperatives. He assumed, that chronological time, Euclidean space and Aristotelian logic are such categorical imperatives, in terms of which we understand the world. But in the centuries following him it became more and more clear, that these structures were not innate, but assumptions. Assumptions that could be modified. And if these assumptions are modified, they cause a change in the understanding, and therefore the observation of facts. These most basic assumptions are called Paradigms. Most people are not aware of having such assumptions and the role they play in simple observation. They think that these assumptions are parts of the actual facts they see. But every physicist, and many mathematicians are aware of the role played by these paradigms in understanding the outside world. Especially physicist understand, that EVERY understanding of facts involves not just observation, but also the acceptance of the mind of assumptions about the world, that are not originated from the senses, but that have their origin in fantasies. Fantasies, that subsequently are not contradicted by the world. Every physicist is therefore aware that some new sensual data can cause confusion, that can only be eliminated by making a better assumption, that are not in contradiction with these new sensual data and also not by the old ones. In other words, such confusion is not eliminated by the senses, but by thought in the form of a better paradigm. All this can be summarised by the statement, that the outside world cannot be known directly by the senses, but only indirectly. The sensual data have to be ordered first by a paradigm, before they can make sense to our consciousness. This paradigm is not originated by the senses, but finds its origin, ultimately, in our fantasy, and our creativity. It is therefore a product of our inner, and not of the outside world. Knowledge about the world is called exoteric knowledge. Knowledge about our consciousness, and its functioning is called esoteric knowledge. Exoteric knowledge is always indirect. It therefore always runs the risk of somebody having better fantasies to build his understanding on than yours. But esoteric knowledge is direct, because it consists of the entities that build up our consciousness. It consists of seeing what is taking place inside of you, acknowledging it, or avoiding it. Esoteric knowledge is the kind of knowledge that J. Krishnamurti puts forward. Esoteric knowledge is a product of observing our consciousness by introspection. In short, of meditation. If Buddha says, that the ‘I’ is an illusion, then this statement is a form of esoteric knowledge. It forms a challenge to meditators, to see whether he is right. To give another example of esoteric knowledge: J. Krishnamurti says that when we are angry we are not persons who have anger as an attribute. No, if we are angry we ARE our anger. Our complete personalities, our persons, consist COMPLETELY of anger. This means, that we cannot free ourselves from our anger AND remaining in existence as persons. He asserts that if you can see this, this understanding causes the anger to stop completely. And to give yet another example of esoteric knowledge. I assert, that the I always consists of a certain thought, that can only be distinguished from other thoughts present in us because it is allowed to control our body. Such a thought is allowed to control our body by a process of decision. I express this fact by: ‘that what is willing is that what is willed’. These kinds of esoteric insights are very difficult to obtain. However, these insights all imply something very important, that is totally in contradiction with everything you put forward. There is no ‘I’ to transcend, and there is also no Self to transcend. The highest form of esoteric knowledge does not consist of a transcendence, of a going beyond, but of an understanding. To understand the contents of ‘I’ or Self at the moment it functions, THAT is the challenge of enlightenment. In this understanding it becomes automatically clear, that the whole concept of transcendence, of going beyond, is complete nonsense. Therefore I consider these attempts to understand a better approach than yours. Understanding is the way, not transcendence. RICHARD: For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language ... for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required (to a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this monitor screen is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs. Now, to a person who believes ardently in their god, then for them their god is real ... not actual, mind you, but real. Usually they tell me that their god is more real than we humans are ... that is how real their fervency makes of their belief (it is the same as the child with the Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy example I gave above). So too, is it with regards to this wretched and pernicious ‘self’. The ‘self’, whilst not being actual, is real ... sometimes very, very real. The belief in a real ‘thinker’ (‘I’ as ego) and a real ‘feeler’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being – ‘me’ as soul – which is ‘being’ itself) is not just another passing thought. It is emotion-backed feverish imagination at work (calenture). ‘I’ passionately believe in ‘my’ existence ... and will defend ‘myself’ to the death (of ‘my’ body) if it is deemed necessary. All of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – come to the fore when psychologically and psychically threatened, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, confounding ‘my’ survival and the body’s survival. However, ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ ... and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality. That is how real ‘I’ am ... which is why both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul must die a real death (but not physically into the grave) to find out the actuality. So much for the validity of esoteric ‘facts’. Exoteric facts do not start from a premise at all; they start from an obvious facticity. The outside world can be known directly by the senses. The sensual data do not have to be ordered first by a paradigm, before they can make sense to our consciousness ... unless there is an ‘I’ inside the head (then there is indeed this paradigm, which you say, ‘is not originated by the senses, but finds its origin, ultimately, in our fantasy, and our creativity’). With an ‘I’ intact it is therefore indeed a product of our inner, and not of the outside world. However, there is no need for thought to always create a paradigm to fantasise an objective world. No fantasising at all is required to determine objective reality’s self-evident factuality when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all. There is a simple experiment that will demonstrate the actuality of objective reality in a way that a thousand words would not:
Now, as you rip the plaster from your mouth and gulp in that oh-so-sweet and actual air, I ask you: Do you still believe in Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s revered ‘wisdom’; Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s hallowed ‘sagacity’; Mr. Einstein’s mystical ‘genius’ ... or any other of these identity-bound ‘Great Thinkers’?
Seeing the fact will set you free to live in actuality without any ‘I’ or ‘me’ whatsoever. Then I am me as I actually am – this flesh and blood body just brimming with sense organs. When ‘what’ one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation ... this is what does the direct perceiving which is called apperception: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence. No wonder ‘I’ have to create fantasies and paradigms and whatever.
KONRAD: Richard, have you ever heard of pantheism? In this vision existence itself is God. This is an actual God . RICHARD: Yes, of course I have ‘heard of pantheism’ ... but pantheists believe that God is more than this physical universe as tangible to the sense organs ... so they too are believing in something metaphysical. Some people have tried to categorise me as a Pantheist, but why add the notion of an intangible god to what is patently tangible? Why call the universe God and not what it is: the universe? Why add a metaphysical dimension to the world of the senses? Because they do not see their god with their physical eyes alone, they have to use their intuitive faculties coupled with their imaginative faculties for their god to be manifest to them. Thus their god is not actual ... it is a visualised god. Pantheism is the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being. (Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica). Whereas I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: And what about the worshipping of holy statues? These are also actual Gods in the eyes of the believers. RICHARD: I know about idolatry ... but once again the statues are not the be all and end all of their God. They believe their God to be more than their statue. Statues of gods are not intended to imitate ideal human forms but to express the supernatural. The beauty of religious iconography and symbolism contributes to their force as sacred instruments: their ornamentation facilitates the process of inviting the divine power into them. A divine figure is a ‘likeness’, a temporary expression of some aspect of a god’s nature. Iconographic handbooks attach great importance to the ideology behind images and reveal, the qualities of their God. Every iconographic detail has its own symbolic value, helping devotees to direct their energy to a deeper understanding of the various aspects of the divine and to proceed from external to internal worship. For many devotees, a consecrated image becomes a container of concentrated divine energy; it is an instrument for ennobling the worshipper who realises God’s presence in it. (Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica). Whereas I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: And about facts. What, then, is the fact you observe. Is it that stones, when released, fall to the ground, or that stones, when released, remain at their position and it is the floor you are standing on that is moving upward, since it presses against your feet? You must choose one, for both cannot be factual. But if you choose one or the other, then the choice you make is your fact, which does not have to be the same as the choice made by somebody else. So I AM able to tell you that something is your fact. That nobody you encountered previously was not able to do this only betrays, that you have not talked with too intelligent people. RICHARD: I have not ‘talked with too intelligent people’, you say? What is intelligent about calling a floor rushing up to meet any stray stone that happens to be released, or vice versa, a fact? You are not able to tell me that something is ‘my fact’ by dragging in the speculations of Mr. Albert Einstein and asking me to make a choice between one interpretation and another ... and call them both facts. This is not sincere discussion, this is cavilling ... but okay ... let us go into it: I hold my hand out at arm’s length, grasping a stone. I open my hand. The stone and the ground meet with a satisfying !thump! and the two things stay together. That is the fact. Now, I could not care less whether the stone has rushed to meet the ground or the ground has rushed to meet the stone, for that is hypothesising ... and to believe one theory over another and call it a fact is foolish. I will leave that to academics to quibble over, to their heart’s content, for it is the same as the theologians pondering over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For I live in peace and harmony. I live in the purity of the perfection of this moment in time and this place in space. They do not ... and 100,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone because of this. I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: How do you know that it is a monitor screen? Do your senses tell this, or does your mind tells this? Do you think, that somebody living in the previous century could say that the monitor screen you are looking at is a monitor screen? Do you think, that a Chinese person living in the previous century can recognise the things you type as words? Or do you imply, that your actualism can change people in omniscient beings? RICHARD: This is simply nit-picking. The person living in the previous century never saw a monitor screen because they did not exist then. Look, even if such a person did see this monitor screen, they would see an object ... something would be obvious to their eyes and finger-tips. I was not talking about recognition ... I see many things I do not recognise ... but I see an object ... and the object is actual. I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: You wrote: ‘The ‘self’, whilst not being actual, is real ... sometimes very, very real. The belief in a real ‘thinker’ and ‘feeler’ is not just another passing thought. It is emotion-backed imagination at work. ‘I’ passionately believe in ‘my’ existence ... and will defend ‘myself’ to the death if it is deemed necessary ...<SNIP> ... ‘I’ am ready to die for a cause ... and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a Noble Ideal. That is how real ‘I’ am. So much for the validity of esoteric ‘facts’.’ Why are you telling me this? Is this supposed to be an argument going against what I have put forward? Apparently it does, for else this sentence does not make sense! Richard, you are not talking to me. Have you forgotten what I have mailed you about I and Self? You ignore everything I write to you. RICHARD: I am telling you this because you told me that the esoteric are facts. Viz.: ‘exoteric knowledge is always indirect. It therefore always runs the risk of somebody having better fantasies to build his understanding on than yours. But esoteric knowledge is direct, because it consists of the entities that build up our consciousness. It consists of seeing what is taking place inside of you, acknowledging it, or avoiding it. Esoteric knowledge is the kind of knowledge that J. Krishnamurti puts forward. Esoteric knowledge is a product of observing our consciousness by introspection. In short, of meditation’. So, explain why a Hindu will see a blue-skinned Mr. Krishna as a ‘fact’ in their inner world (as an ‘actuality’) ... whilst a Christian will see a white-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene on a cross as a ‘fact’ in their inner world (as an ‘actuality’)? Because as the Hindu will not see Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene and the Christian will not see Mr. Krishna ... they are obviously not facts but culturally induced visions. Facts and actuality are what anyone can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. I am talking about the sensate world of people, things and events ... not the fantasy-rich inner world of hallucination and delusion. I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: I have performed this experiment now, and paid attention to what happened inside by using ‘the process’. The following happened. Since this action requires a decision to perform it, the ‘I’ consisted of this experiment, as was observed by ‘the process’. This ‘I’-ness of that moment was seen constantly. Since this ‘I’ also consisted of a realisation, that this 2 minute period is too brief to cause troubles, there was no trace of unrest or fear. There was, however, observation of an emerging pain of suffocation. And then, when the plaster was removed and the spring – clip removed, there was not even the gulping you describe. No, there was even a waiting of about 2 seconds, and then the breathing resumed in the usual rhythm, only a little deeper to compensate for the loss of oxygen that had taken place. Apparently ‘the process’ makes my reaction different from that of others. However it may be, no change in my understanding has occurred. I can see, however, that if somebody is not aware of his ‘I’, this can cause a disturbance. For a dominant ‘I’ that is present elsewhere, and that consists of another plan, can become worried of the suffocation arising out of this experiment. Such an ‘I’ would probably gulp the air in, in a relief of the end of the experiment. So the reaction you describe is typical for somebody, in who ‘the process’ is not present, and is therefore not totally one with this experiment. If that is you, your description is a clear indication that you are not acquainted with ‘the process’. So the hypothesis I had in my previous mails, that in you the process of enlightenment is present, but in a modified form, is now refuted. And exit, your enlightenment. Since my reaction is not what you describe it is, this experiment proves that there is a difference between your facts and actuality, and mine. RICHARD: It does nothing of the sort. So you can hold your breath for two minutes ... what about three minutes ... four minutes ... five minutes? What about one hour? This type of cleverness does you no justice at all ... it is an attempt to outwit your innate intelligence with stupidity ... and you know it. Whereas I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: Richard, in our correspondence you have not shown any indication of being prepared to go into the things I put forward. Since I have done this with the things you put forward, our exchange is not an exchange at all. I have been prepared to listen to you, to investigate your claims, and even to perform your experiment. I have given you ample benefit of the doubt, but every time I looked more closely, and I arrived at a conclusion that was in contradiction to what you assert, and put this before you, you went silent, said that you would come back to it, which you did not, or began to repeat what you have put forward before. Only when I became very extreme, as in the case of the ape switch, you put a protest forward that was a sensible refutation. However, not once have I seen any indication of you becoming aware of a point I make clear to you. I experience you as somebody who talks to me, but not with me. RICHARD: But, all your ‘insights’ are extreme ... not only the ‘ape switch’ one. The reason why I did not respond was because they were too trite to even dignify with an acknowledgment ... let alone a response. I have responded to your above ‘insights’ only because you insisted. They are not insights at all. I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: Your reaction is typical for a Jehovah’s witness, and the like. The only thing that makes you different, is that your particular position is very unique. It contains valuable insights, but your position makes you still living within time. This makes, that you are not able to see the functioning of your ‘I’ at the moment it functions. You can see the functioning of the body in the present, but you cannot see the functioning of the conclusion that you are your body functioning in the present. Your greatest confusion consists of not being able to make this distinction. This makes your apperception, to use this term, not a true apperception. It is an illusion of an apperception. Your vision is a product of the mind, probably created when in these months a process of creation was present in you. However, you have fallen back. The enlightenment in you is gone, and what remains is a fixation on the particular paradigm that has been born then, and a continuous explaining of experiences you had. This makes you a prophet, as there were so many in the past. RICHARD: The enlightenment in me has most definitely gone ... that is my whole point. Which means: I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: I have tried to make many things clear to you, but your mind is too closed. You have to change your attitude towards me and my attempts to make you more aware, for this one sided discussion is in my eyes a waste of time. Especially because you are endlessly repeating yourself, as is typical for a prophet, and not of a true human being trying to share what he has to offer with others, and to receive what others have to offer. Especially in this last department you are closed. You want to share what you have with others, but you do not allow others to share what they have with you. As said above, this type of behaviour is very Jehovah like. RICHARD: I have been ‘endlessly repeating myself’ because when I send something to you – and you say you understand – then the next post from you shows that you have not. So I send it again ... and again ... until you do actually understand. For example: the business about the ‘kriyas’ and the ‘mudras’ which the Indians know from thousands of years of experience as being indicative of a ‘process’ going on that will eventually deliver one into enlightenment. Then the ‘process’ stops. They know it and I know it ... but you know better. That is okay ... it is your life and you are free to do with it what you will. You are free to live as wisely or as foolishly as you desire. But please, do not presume that you make me impressed by your ‘insights’. And my mind is most definitely closed to all things religious, spiritual, mystical, esoteric or metaphysical ... because I lived in that world for eleven years and found it to be false. Why should I be open to what I have discovered to be false? Why are you still not open to the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, for example? I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: If you want to exchange with me in the future, I suggest that you begin by really exchanging, and looking more closely to the vast amount of clarification I have put forward, and react to them. Not only in the obvious sense, that they differ from what you put forward, and therefore what is wrong with it according to you, but also trying to see how I came to them in the first place, and therefore to really try to understand them. I deserve more than just the blind reaction: ‘It is not what I say, therefore it is nonsense, and therefore I do not want to waste time on it, and immediately start explaining what I have to say about these matters, ignoring what he has said in the process’. RICHARD: If you tell me something new ... something I have never heard or read about or experienced before ... then I will listen and learn from you. Nothing you have said so far has been new to me. I have read Mr. Albert Einstein – to give just one example – and find his theories ridiculous to the extreme. His famous equation remains to this day undemonstrated and unused. They are all theories, hypotheses, speculations. The ‘big bang’ is a mathematical big bang, not an actual one. Time, being eternal, did not start out of nothing ... mathematics once again. Space is infinite, it has no edges ... the expanding universe is a theory. There are no ‘black holes’ in actuality for there are only mathematical black holes ... and singularities, be they naked or otherwise, only exist in cosmologist’s vivid imagination. Even their mathematics are failing ... as I understand it, for they are having to use increasingly frantic coefficients to prop up their equations anyway. Whereas I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. KONRAD: If you are not prepared, or even able to do this, it is better that we end this one sided ‘exchange’. RICHARD: This is the second time that you have dramatically threatened to end these E-Mails ... so let us indeed stop. I am more than happy to call it quits because all this stuff you go on about, like that above, shows me that you need to get your act together before you can presume to teach anyone anything ... any subject pertaining to wisdom, that is. One last example. You have written to another person that Richard’s discovery about ‘What am I’ instead of ‘Who am I’ is the greatest thing. But you then immediately process it through your mental system of logical analysis, claim that you understand it – that you have ‘got it’ – and that Richard has not. Is this not silly to the extreme? How could Richard discover something ... and not be living it. And in your most recent E-Mail you posted to the Mailing List you have reverted back to being ‘one with the observed’ anyway ... so you have not ‘got it’:
Whereas I am happy and harmless for I have eliminated both ‘SELF and I’ ... there is no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’ here. I would like to leave you with the only insight you have conveyed to me that made me prick up my ears and take notice ... your description of the onset of this ‘process’ that first prompted me to write to you, remember. Vis:
This particular experience (‘it was absolutely nothing!’) is the only insight that counts. Because actualising this insight means the elimination of both ‘SELF and I ... and the ‘I’-ness of ‘I’. Then you will be happy and harmless.
KONRAD: I was NOT nit-picking ... frankly, I did some experiments because I hoped you to be right, and not to prove you wrong. RICHARD: Rubbish. You knew that you could hold your breath for two minutes but you say you went ahead and did the experiment anyway. This, then, is indeed to ‘prove me wrong’. If you did hope that I might be right, then you would have substituted five minutes, or ten minutes, for the arbitrary two minutes I designated. Has all those years of learning and teaching logic turned you into something of a simpleton? I do not live in isolation, you know. I meet with, and talk with, flesh and blood people here on a daily basis. I have given that spring clip/sticking plaster example to literally scores of people in the last eighteen years ... and without exception, each and every person has immediately grasped the point that I am making. Which is: this world of the senses is actual. You are the first person to ever actually physically do the experiment ... again I ask: Are you for real? KONRAD: To see an object, is, contrary to what you assert, to recognise it as being an object. Therefore this is the functioning of thought. The senses of Man are unable to see objects, only his mind is. (If you do not believe this, go to the library, ask for a book about the functioning of the eye and the visual cortex, and look up investigations about a subject, called ‘receptive fields’.) This alone proves, that you are unable, with your ‘apperception’ to see how thought functions in you. RICHARD: See how quick you are to jump in and ‘prove’ that I have got it wrong and that you have got it right? You are straying from the original topic with your logical analysis of how sensation becomes perception and how perception becomes thought and how thought becomes ‘I’ thinking. Next you will be dragging in Mr. Bertrand Russell’s ‘sensedatum’ to show that recognition operates right up to pure sensate experience. Or those studies done on people blind from birth who, having an operation to give them sight, are unable to make sense of the optical data until they touch the object seen so as to ascertain what it is. The issue is this: am ‘I’ necessary in any – repeat any – of these processes? You say yes (only you are calling it an ‘‘I’-ness’) ... and I say no. KONRAD: No action is possible without a thought controlling the body. It is the reason why there are thoughts in us to begin with. To deny this is to rob yourself of a very important contribution of evolution to Man. RICHARD: Who are you arguing with? Not me ... thought operates here in order for this body to operate and function in this world of people, things and events. I have been saying this all along. We have been through this conversation before ... I will re-print it here for your perusal:
Do we need to discuss it ad nauseam? KONRAD: I take you literally on your word. For you now have admitted openly, that you have put yourself above me. So I was right, when I said that you were talking to me, and not with me. Such an attitude can never lead to mutual understanding. In spite of the now established fact, that you are not willing to talk with me, I must nevertheless admit that I have learnt from you. Although I have not contributed to you, and are unable to because of your ‘obvious’ superiority over me, I must admit that you have definitely contributed to me. I leave it at this. I would appreciate it to resume contact as soon as you show signs that you are willing to talk with me, and not only to me. RICHARD: You start to sound like a sulky little boy in this last sentence ... I do wonder just what you have learned. I have been consistently saying that there is something vastly superior to the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment. It is infinitely superior ... how much more superior than that can one be! KONRAD: One thing more. You wrote: ‘It was absolutely nothing!’ This particular experience is the only insight that counts. Because actualising this insight means the elimination of both SELF and I ... and the ‘I’-ness of ‘I’. Now you are contradictory. For this process that started was, and still is, connected with the insight ‘It was absolutely nothing!’ Your history is different from mine. You apparently had this insight once, with the process connected to it. Then it stopped, but in the stopping an entire new naturalistic metaphysics was born. This last thing has caused your mind to be filled with this vision, and be closed to anything else. RICHARD: You are missing the point. It is the ‘it was absolutely nothing!’ that is the insight ... not this ‘process’ that you have become so enamoured of. The word ‘nothing’ means no ‘SELF and I ’ ... and no ‘I’-ness of ‘I’. KONRAD: With me it was different. The process started, went on and on and on, never stopping up to this very moment, and since then continuously new visions are born, with apparently no end in sight. But the nothingness that is connected to ‘the process’ is never lost sight of, and is as present as from the first moment this whole business started. I repeat: it never left me. Did you say this counts? I repeat again: it never, never left me, except at these two brief moments in the hospital. RICHARD: The Indians, who have been doing this thing for thousands of years, specifically warn of being attached to the ‘process’ and becoming engrossed in the powers engendered and the control over the body it endows. The ‘process’ is only an occurrence to deliver one through to freedom ... then the ‘process’ stops forever, having done its job. KONRAD: Now the contradiction is this: How is it possible that the very same thing that has drawn you to me, and that is the only thing that counts according to you, and is still as present as 17 years ago when it started, is also repelling you from me? RICHARD: Because you have become stuck in the ‘process’ ... you see it as the end point. I have said before and I will say it again and again: it is a means to the end, not the end in itself. KONRAD: This fact only should cause you to be alarmed by your own position. This fact only should make you investigate your own position thoroughly, for you clearly recognise something in me. Something you know to be important, but also something you clearly have lost. RICHARD: Oh yes, indeed I have ‘lost’ this ‘process’ that you hold so dear. That is why I am happy and harmless and you are not. KONRAD: Of course, your naturalistic vision has emerged from that source, and it denies the fact that you have lost something important. But the vision that denies this fact is a poor substitute for the real thing. RICHARD: It is your life you are living and you are free to live it as wisely or as foolishly as you wish. I can only suggest ... what you do with my suggestion is, of course, entirely up to you. It is you who either reaps the reward or pays the consequences for any action or inaction that you may or may not do. I cannot help you to do it your way. I can only help those who want to be helped in the only way that I can help.
PAGE ONE OF A CONTINUING DIALOGUE RETURN TO A REQUEST FROM KONRAD SWART 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.
Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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