Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

RICHARD: In other words: do not ever do or achieve anything outstanding that would lead to bettering oneself ... especially totally. Or if you do – and you report to your fellow human beings about it – be well aware that some malcontent somewhere will pop up and tell you that you are ... [ insert whatever sour-grapes here] ... in order to make themselves feel better. It is called ‘The Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

RESPONDENT: It is called turning the ideas of another around to suit yourself:):) Of course you’re free to do that if it entertains you.

RICHARD: May I ask? Turning what ideas around to suit me? And whose ideas at that? I am quite capable of thinking for myself ... and I fail to see the relevance of this statement to what is being discussed. Can we lift the level of discussion? After all, you did write: ‘places which are supposed to be serving the interest of human understanding and self-knowledge’ ... and I am writing to this Mailing List for that very reason. The question I ask is this: How can ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ be best served if anyone who dares to speak of their personal experience gets slammed for their ‘authoritative behaviour’? Given that this is an edict implanted by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, I can only assume that this is not a place where ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ can be best served ... because you seem hell-bent on muzzling the people who question the edict-maker’s edict.

RESPONDENT: When someone says to me in essence: ‘I know and you don’t ... I’m speaking from clarity and you aren’t ... so what I say is right and what you say is wrong ...’, yes, he/she may expect serious challenge from me if he/she is discussing with me.

RICHARD: Indeed ... after eighteen years experience of talking with recalcitrant egoists I expect – and am quite capable of meeting – any serious challenge. When are you going to start? So far, all your objections have been marked by their lack of intellectual rigour.

RESPONDENT: I am quite ruthless with that kind of authority – not the person, but the attitude. It is unproductive of intelligent exploration and attempts to reduce another to the role of devotee.

RICHARD: Yet I am an atheist ... a devotee can only exist in relationship with a person who is deluded enough to imagine they are divine. I am not enlightened ... I have gone beyond enlightenment into the actuality that lies beyond the indescribable ‘Truth’. Beyond the delusion that ‘I AM LOVE’, for example. I never need to use ‘god-words’ like ‘sacred’, ‘holy’, ‘ineffable’ and so on. I am a fellow human being sans identity ... and I share my experience, understanding and knowledge with my fellow human beings for them to do with what they will. I will not pretend to be equal ... I have too much regard for the other’s integrity to pull that stunt.

RESPONDENT: I don’t think that ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ can exist in that type of haughty, exclusive environment.

RICHARD: It is unfortunate that you see another’s success as automatically making them haughty ... this actual freedom is so superior to any other way of living that I do not have to stoop so low as to be haughty or arrogant or vain or whatever in order to prop it up. It is an estimable condition to be living in.

RESPONDENT: You may associate that with Krishnamurti if you prefer to.

RICHARD: Thank you ... I will. I do prefer to because it is obvious, to those with the eyes to see, the sneaky cleverness of any form of humility.

RESPONDENT: I’m not interested in Krishnamurti.

RICHARD: May I suggest? Do become interested – very interested – because his is a well-documented life. Most of the myths surrounding god-realised beings can be seen to be just that – myths – with such things as audio tapes and video-tapes and the world-wide comparison of cultural influences which are not available when examining Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, Mr. Mahavira, Mr. Rinzai, Mr. Shankara and so on and so on.

RESPONDENT: It is No. 4 who is speaking. Deal with Me.

RICHARD: Aye ... I am dealing with No. 4. But first I am separating him out from his immersion in the mysticism as espoused and epitomised by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Your posts on the dangers of authority are indicative of this immersion.

RESPONDENT: Bettering oneself? Don’t you think that is the essence of illusion: thinking one has achieved something great and that others, for that reason, should follow one?

RICHARD: Hmm ... it is a standard convention that when referring to an identity one uses little quotes – like ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘one’ or ‘you’ or ‘oneself’ or ‘myself’ for example – and the word < oneself > is but a means of referring to the body empty of identity so as to avoid confusion. Of course, some dilettante comes along every now and then and tries to score some cheap points by trying to make out that they are wise. Although this can be done only by ignoring the fact that I wrote ‘bettering oneself ... especially totally’. Another way to dismiss what may be valid findings is to say ‘you think that you are ...’ or ‘you believe that you are ...’ or ‘you feel that you are ...’ and so on. A third way is to accuse the person – who actually gets off their backside and does something about their human condition – of desiring followers when they report to others of their experience ... that he/she is setting himself/ herself up to be a guru or whatever.

RESPONDENT: Don’t play the language game with me.

RICHARD: If I may point out? I am not ‘playing a language game’ at all ... it was you who was. It is simple: for the first 33 years of my life I lived what is described as a normal life. Then I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. I lived perfection personified for that four hours ... then reverted to being normal. This experience changed the entire course of my life and I indeed set out to better myself ... and totally. The ‘I’ that I was then knew that perfection already always existed here ... now. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ must self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – and ‘I’ did.

RESPONDENT: Bettering oneself, as I see it is comparing oneself to some standard and trying to reach that standard.

RICHARD: Precisely. The standard for the ‘me’ that was, was the perfection of the PCE. To reach that standard required ‘me’ to better ‘myself’ until ‘I’ reached the point of whatever purity is humanly possible wherein ‘I’ could safely self-immolate. To venture into the purity of the actual ill-prepared – too much and too fast and too soon – would ‘blow the fuses’ and lead to madness.

RESPONDENT: It would be more productive to under-stand what one is, not try to better it.

RICHARD: One must start where one is at. In the PCE I saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity. I saw how ‘I’ was treating ‘my’ wife, ‘my’ children, ‘my’ friends, ‘my’ acquaintances, ‘my’ colleagues and – most of all – ‘myself’. When the PCE finished and ‘I’ was again dominating this body, ‘I’ set out to better ‘myself’. It is of no avail to sit in a deck-chair on the patio waiting for the grace of god to descend. One must start where on is at. A grumpy person has no chance of becoming free.

RESPONDENT: You can only become better at modifying the past. But to comprehend the past is to change it completely.

RICHARD: To comprehend how one has felt, thought and behaved in the past is to effect whatever modification – partial change – one is humanly capable of ... now. To change completely – radically, totally, utterly – is the ending of ‘oneself’ ... extirpation, annihilation, extinction. Such self-immolation requires the maximum degree of preliminary self-improvement possible in order for the elimination of ‘self’ to happen safely

RESPONDENT: Incidentally, there are just too many syndromes floating around these days.

RICHARD: I used a colloquialism [‘The Tall Poppy Syndrome’]... and it did not travel well, apparently. It is a well-known expression in Australian – where knocking someone ‘down to size’ who has ‘got too big for their boots’ has developed into a National Pastime – and is not actually a psychological syndrome at all. It is a joke. However, the phrase has been around for many, many years according to the Oxford Dictionary: ‘Tall poppy: A tall or striking thing or person; especially a privileged or distinguished person. Now chiefly Australian’.

RESPONDENT: Yes. Australia is probably nice, with many ‘Tall poppies’. That is not what you meant. You used that term in conjunction with a statement about malcontents who want to make them-selves feel better by tearing someone else down. Stop lying.

RICHARD: Golly ... where is the lie? I was merely explaining a colloquialism that is apparently only understood by residents of Australia. My original comment still stands ... you, for example, are demanding that I be equal to you because, you say, having a dialogue with someone who I say has ‘bettered themselves ... especially totally’, is ‘unproductive of intelligent exploration’. What you want with another amounts to the blind leading the blind. Speaking personally, I was always only to happy to converse with someone who had expertise ... I unabashedly picked their brains until I obtained all the wisdom I could gain. I did not insist that they come down to my level ... I wanted to know, I wanted to understand.

RESPONDENT: What one feels uncomfortable with, becomes some-body else’s ‘syndrome’.

RICHARD: Okay ... just what is Richard ‘uncomfortable’ with? I freely acknowledge my authority – my expertise sits very comfortably with me – and puerile snippiness from others does not faze me at all.

RESPONDENT: You may need to ask yourself what you are uncomfortable with.

RICHARD: Why on earth would I need to do that? It is you who said that Richard was uncomfortable ... not me. You are trying to give me a problem that I do not have.

RESPONDENT: I’m not interested.

RICHARD: Yet you were interested enough in the beginning to tell me that I was ‘uncomfortable’ ... why the disinterest now? Are you not capable of following through something that you yourself started?

RESPONDENT: Well, if you freely acknowledge your authority and ‘expertise’, naturally nothing will faze you because you feel superior to everything else.

RICHARD: As I pointed out (above) one of the ways of dismissing the validity of someone’s statement is to say ‘you think that you are ...’ or ‘you believe that you are ...’ or ‘you feel that you are ...’ and so on. However, you told me ‘Don’t play the language game with me’ when I said so. I guess you will just continue with this undergraduate ploy as it ensures that you do not have to deal with the issue the other is raising. However, I will put it into plain English: I do not feel superior ... I am superior.

RESPONDENT: But realise that the only authority you have is the authority others give you through their belief that you have it. That is unfortunate for both they and you.

RICHARD: Not so ... I am an authority on freedom irrespective of whether person (A) believes my words to be true or whether person (B) believes my words to be false. My freedom from the human condition – and the expertise this ensures – has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people believe or disbelieve. However, their own freedom from the human condition – which is what is of crucial importance here – is dependent upon their remembering at least one of their PCE’s accurately ... and herein I can play a part in affirming and confirming their personal experience of the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. How on earth can this be ‘unfortunate for both they and me’? It means peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: Let’s try to avoid that in the future. It’s just too transparent and tawdry.

RICHARD: Fair enough ... no more obscure colloquialisms it shall be, then. That being the case, what shall we call the well-known fact about a human being’s resistance to something new? You see, another colloquialism comes to mind ... the ‘discredit the bearer syndrome’ (or should that be the – slightly inapt – ‘shoot the messenger syndrome’?).

RESPONDENT: What messenger and what message?

RICHARD: Richard and his report of the actual freedom that lies beyond enlightenment.

RESPONDENT: All I have seen so far is bitching and complaining about the ever present image in your head of ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’.

RICHARD: Then may I suggest you look at what is being written with both eyes? If this were a Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana) Mailing List I would be using his quotes to demonstrate what is wrong with the altered state of consciousness known as spiritual enlightenment. I am clearly describing – not merely pointing to – the apperceptive awareness that lies beyond the ‘choiceless awareness’ of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Only you do not wish to read those parts of my posts.

RESPONDENT: When there is a message, it will be eagerly replied to.

RICHARD: If only that were so. For example, further on in this post (below) you dismiss some of what I have to say with three half-sentences: [Respondent]: ‘I know all that. I have heard it all before. Now I’m hearing it from you’. What I live and describe very clearly has never been said before ... the Buddhists, for example, place it after physical death – Parinirvana – and the Hindus do likewise – Mahasamadhi – and no-one has ever considered that such an ultimate condition is possible whilst this flesh and blood body is alive and breathing.

*

RICHARD: If all human beings took Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘non-authoritarian’ advice about rejecting authority – yet all the while he gave firm instructions about ‘interpreting’ that needs must leave the power-backed ‘Teachings’ to be considered inviolate – and did not share their discoveries, we would all still be living in a cave, dressed in animal skins, and gnawing on a raw brontosaurus bone.

RESPONDENT: You seem to want others to debunk Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teachings for YOUR teachings.

RICHARD: Not everyone is so vain as to humbly call their words to one’s fellow human beings ‘Teachings’ ... having no pride or humility whatsoever I do not presume to call my writing ‘Teachings’.

RESPONDENT: No. You just call yourself an ‘authority’ who’s expertise ‘sits nicely with him’. And you question Krishnamurti’s vanity? LOL.

RICHARD: Yes indeed I do ... false modesty plays no part in my life. If I know something ... I say so. I am straight-forward ... up-front and honest.

RESPONDENT: Now let’s be honest. The man did not say HE was an authority.

RICHARD: Indeed he did not ... he dissimulated.

RESPONDENT: He referred to his works as teachings.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... thus the ‘teachings’ are the authority. This way he takes no responsibility for what he says ... it comes from that ‘supreme intelligence’ that is ‘neither yours nor mine’. He is ‘merely a pointer’. This has all been done before ... are you familiar with the phrase: ‘I am but a finger pointing to the moon ... look at what I am pointing to and not the finger’?

This duck-shoving of amenability is not for me ... I stand behind what I say.

RESPONDENT: But he also said that the real teaching is one’s own self-observation. Naturally you accidentally missed that point.

RICHARD: I did not miss the point ... I lived what he was pointing to for eleven years. One’s ‘own self-observation’ needs must lead you to ‘that which is sacred, holy’ or else you are not ‘living the teachings’.

RESPONDENT: I see sour grape juice dripping from your lips.

RICHARD: What you see and what is actually happening are two distinctly different things ... I am having so much fun here at the keyboard. I have arrived at my destiny and am already always here ... so I have nothing to prove and nothing to achieve. However, you might like to confer with No. 29 ... he saw ‘saliva running down’ my cheeks as I ‘faced another morsel to be torn to shreds’.

RESPONDENT: There’s no need to reply to that except to say, go get a rag and wipe that juice off before it stains your tee-shirt.

RICHARD: I must give you marks for persistence, that is for sure!

RESPONDENT: If you have arrived at your ‘destiny’ you should know that you have arrived at the height of your self-invented illusion.

RICHARD: May I ask? Are you of that school of thought that says that the journey is the thing ... that one never arrives?

RESPONDENT: Destiny? What is that?

RICHARD: Destination, of course. Which is here ... now. Where one is living at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space one is experiencing the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this very actual universe. One is this universe’s experience of itself as a sensate and reflective human being. This is one’s destiny.

RESPONDENT: Somebody in charge has created a state of being especially for you?

RICHARD: Contrary to popular belief, there is no one in charge of the universe. It is perfectly capable of looking after itself. There is no disembodied ‘intelligence’ that is creating anything. This universe is already here ... and it is always now.

RESPONDENT: I am familiar with the term ‘already always here’. Da Free John, the ‘enlightened one’ from California used it often. It was probably his destiny too.

RICHARD: He is a prime example of someone deluded enough to not only believe that there is god but to fondly imagine that he is it. He thus denies any ultimate reality to this material universe. Consequently his ‘here’ or his ‘now’ is a spiritual or mystical ‘here and now’ ... a dimension that is beyond time and space. Mr Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain used the term ‘herenow’ ... which is also a metaphysical dimension that has nothing to do with the actuality of this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space.

RESPONDENT: However, I suggest that you consider that whatever is called HIS teachings is bullshit. The ‘teachings’ are one’s own perception of ones entrapment in the ignorance of knowledge.

RICHARD: If I may point out? You are interpreting Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Not that I mind, of course ... interpret away to your heart’s content. It is just that you make such a big fuss when others do this.

RESPONDENT: ‘The teachings are one’s own ...’. Now if I said that don’t you think it’s possible I might have said it from the observation of what is happening?

RICHARD: Aye ... that is why I said it was an interpretation. The essence of the ‘Teachings’ is that he is god and to listen to him is to drink the water that purifies ... and pretty well anything else is an interpretation.

RESPONDENT: If Krishnamurti or some-one else says ‘look and see if the observer is the observed’, and you look and see it occurring, then his words are meaningless to you because you are actually looking.

RICHARD: The phrase ‘the observer is the observed’ is his way of saying: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’.

RESPONDENT: The teaching is YOU, not his words.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... he wants you to realise that ‘YOU are IT’ and not just the words. You can always ask No. 14, for example ... he knows all about this.

RESPONDENT: That is not an interpretation, is it, that is, when it is occurring?

RICHARD: Entirely correct ... if you have realised that ‘YOU are IT’.

RESPONDENT: Try to see past the surface of things.

RICHARD: I do not have to try ... I actually do see. And for the twenty four hours of the day.

RESPONDENT: If you pointed that out to me or someone else, I would not consider you my teacher, just as I don’t consider Krishnamurti my teacher. Pointing is not teaching. Let’s not try distort another’s words in our eagerness to debunk them.

RICHARD: By all means let us not distort – the word ‘distort’ really reads ‘interpret’ but I will go along with the disingenuousness for now – instead shall we let Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti speak for himself ... just nine days before his death? What I see him clearly saying – and not just pointing – is ‘perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings’. Now, leaving explicit instructions that people should live the inviolate ‘Teachings’ sounds to me to be about as authoritative as one can get ... and even then one will not manifest that ‘supreme intelligence’. Viz.:

• [Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti]: ‘You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence, operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get in touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so that’s that’. [endquote].

RESPONDENT: And now you want to say that YOU have done it, right?

RICHARD: Yes. I lived as that ‘supreme intelligence’ (only I called it ‘The Absolute’) for eleven years. Then – seeing the delusion – I went beyond the state of being called enlightenment into a condition I choose to call actual freedom. I call it ‘actual’ because it is physical and not metaphysical ... ‘being’ itself is extinguished.

RESPONDENT: There are also hundreds of others who all say they’ve ‘done it’ also. Are you sure YOU aren’t interpreting him in your mind according to what you think he meant – as you are accusing me of?

RICHARD: I am sure ... I lived enlightenment for eleven years and had plenty of time to examine it from the inside. I also studied what many, many others had written and listened to audio tapes and watched video tapes. I lived the actual freedom that lies beyond spiritual enlightenment for five years before going public. I could not be more sure.

RESPONDENT: Has it occurred to you that what you see in his quote may reflect what you believe, just as others may see in it what they believe?

RICHARD: Oh yes ... it occurred to me for eleven years that we had all got it wrong. Now I know.

RESPONDENT: Are the words really self-explanatory?

RICHARD: Yes ... the word ‘coffee-cup’, for example, refers to that small container that coffee is drunk out of. The word ‘here’ literally means ‘this physical place in space’ – unless one is a mystic – and the word ‘now’ literally means ‘this moment in time’ ... unless one is spiritual. The word ‘intelligence’ literally means ‘the human brain thinking and reflecting’ ... unless one is enlightened.

RESPONDENT: Distortion is often what you make of what another says based on your own needs and beliefs.

RICHARD: I do not have any needs ... let alone beliefs.

RESPONDENT: Let’s try again. But even better, why not leave Krishnamurti aside and discuss whatever issues you want to discuss, if you have any?

RICHARD: I have plenty ... the question is: do you want to discuss them? So far, you have attempted to muzzle me via this post on authority ... or tell me that I only ‘think’ or ‘believe’ or ‘feel’ that I have succeeded in solving the ‘mystery of life’.

RESPONDENT: Good luck with gnawing your brontosaurus bones.

RICHARD: You may jest, yet even your jests are in error. I am not a Luddite – I do not live in the past – and I have always been happy to hear or read of somebody else’s discoveries in their exploration into the ‘mystery of life’. I do not have a hang-up – or a borrowed opinion – about authority ... if someone could share with me their experience I took note of it. I would not be where I am today if it were not for the progress made by all those enterprising individuals who went before me and left a written record of their essays into human experience for others to read. I value expertise.

RESPONDENT: You know, all you keep doing is making claims about what you are, where you are, your authority and expertise, your experiences with others, and on and on.

RICHARD: Do you see? You tell me to stop ‘debunking’ Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and get on with discussing what I have to offer ... yet when I do you tell me to stop doing it.

RESPONDENT: What is the value of this?

RICHARD: The value of it is an individual peace-on-earth for No. 4. When there are six billion outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth there will be global peace-on-earth. Thus all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will be at an end. Now that is value, eh?

Yet there is more ... you will have solved the ‘mystery of life’ and be living the actual. You will be the universe’s experience of itself as a sensate and reflective human being. You will be living the infinitude of the universe’s infinite space and eternal time – here and now – instead of waiting for some specious immortality after physical death.

You will be living – as I do – in the fairy-tale-like actual world with its quality of magical perfection and purity. Everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive. A rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are. This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone.

We do not live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality.

RESPONDENT: Let’s get past your supposed accomplishments and criteria. Who cares? If you have something to share, get on with it.

RICHARD: I am and I have been and I will continue to do so. It is the current mind-set that stands in the way of seeing the words ... cognitive dissonance, it is called.

RESPONDENT: I’m discussing authority solely from the point of view of force: The attempt to nullify another’s ideas based on one’s belief that one is speaking from some state of mind or being which one feels gives one the right to determine for another the ‘state’ of his psychology, and/or one’s belief that one has the right to define another based on the spoken or unspoken premise: ‘Because I said so’. One has the right to attempt the force of authority. I am saying that if there is to be actual dialog, it is a good idea to question, even challenge, the idea of such authority just as one questions and challenges most other ideologies.

RICHARD: Yet you will not question, let alone challenge, the power – which is the forceful authority – of compassion, for example.

RESPONDENT: What is there to challenge? That compassion is ‘forceful authority’ is your definition, not mine. I am not proceeding based on what YOU think.

RICHARD: Aye ... and ‘the observer is the observed’ is Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s definition and not yours. That fact does not stop you proceeding there, now does it?

RESPONDENT: So there is no need for me to question compassion based on your definition of it.

RICHARD: Obviously not ... after all, you have got Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s definition to experience, eh?

RESPONDENT: I know what it is to me. Now, if you want to define what it means to you, that is fine. We can discuss that.

RICHARD: Good. Now I defined what it means to me at great length in a post to you some weeks ago ... which you never responded to. Can we re-visit that post? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘When compassion is actual and is ‘speaking’ through the body, it prods people to discover for themselves.
• [Richard]: ‘This sentence puts to lie what you wrote above. You have not seen the fact of compassion for yourself. Compassion is affective and you want yourself and others to be ruled by their feelings and not their native intelligence. Only you dress up this feeling called compassion – like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – by rashly calling it intelligence! This ‘intelligence’ is causing people to kill their fellow human beings.
• [Respondent]: ‘How do you know what I have seen?
• [Richard]: ‘I only know what you write ... and you praise compassion to the skies and beyond. Obviously you have not questioned it ... it is this simple.
• [Respondent]: ‘Now tell me: how can compassion be ‘affective’?
• [Richard]: ‘Goodness me ... by the very word, for starters. ‘Passio’ is the Greek for the Latin word ‘Pathos’ meaning sorrow. Thus the word ‘compassion’ means ‘sorrow in common’ or ‘sorrow shared’ or ‘mutual sorrow’ ... it is as affective as all get-out.
• [Respondent]: ‘Compassion is impersonal, not mine or yours.
• [Richard]: ‘It is inherent to the Human Condition, if that is what you mean by ‘impersonal’. But as each and every person’s psyche is the human psyche then compassion is indeed personal. Now ‘Divine Compassion’ is when ‘human compassion’ transforms itself along with the transformation of the ‘I’ as ego into ‘Me’ as Self (by whatever name). It is still sorrow in common ... merely glorified and sanctified. It is still affective.
• [Respondent]: ‘If you are truly compassionate, you know that it is not a matter of choice.
• [Richard]: ‘Indeed not ... the Enlightened Ones are driven to bring ‘The Truth’ to humankind. They have surrendered their will to some fictitious ‘Higher Power’ that lies unmanifest behind the throne.
• [Respondent]: ‘It is the movement of life itself, that movement of life which maintains itself, which maintains order.
• [Richard]: ‘When you say ‘the movement of life’ you have to be referring to carbon-based life-forms as there is no other form of life. What ‘moves’ these life-forms is the animating energy derived from the calorific content of food. This has nothing to do with an ‘impersonal compassion’. Compassion exists only in the psyche and is an affective energy.
• [Respondent]: ‘Therefore, when the human body is cleared of selfishness, the compassion of nature operates through that body as it operates in all bodies and material systems.
• [Richard]: ‘There is no such thing as ‘the compassion of nature’ ... that is a sentimental human invention as is epitomised by the phrase ‘Mother Nature’. Nature is blind ... it does not care two-hoots about you and me. It is only concerned with the survival of the species ... and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned. Nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’.
• [Respondent]: ‘As you know, all species are genetically programmed to ‘share’ themselves in the interest of their survival.
• [Richard]: ‘Aye ... there was an article in a newspaper some months ago announcing the preliminary discovery of a place in the brain which – when stimulated by electrodes – produced an oceanic feeling of oneness. The scientists concerned have speculated that it is the instinctually-programmed socialising faculty ... it promotes communalism. The popular press has dubbed this place in the brain as the ‘God Spot’. I watch with interest for further developments.
• [Respondent]: ‘There aggressiveness is a factor of that compassion.
• [Richard]: ‘Aggression is a survival instinct that blind nature endows upon all sentient beings.
• [Respondent]: ‘That is compassion at the physiological, programmed level.
• [Richard]: ‘Not so ... compassion arises out of sorrow. Sorrow is because ‘you’ are – by ‘your’ very nature – forever cut-off from the magnificence of being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. That is, ‘you’ cannot know the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe. This is called, in the jargon, separation. Because of this separation, ‘you’ desire union ... oneness, wholeness and so on. In a word: Love Agapé. How to come upon this divine love?
Now the trap of compassion is that the giver and the receiver remain firmly locked into the poignant and seductive snare of the beauty of pathos. Compassion actually starts out as nothing more impelling than a coping-mechanism designed to alleviate – not eliminate – the existential pain and distress of being human. For to be human is to be suffering and to be suffering is to be in sorrow. Indeed, all sentient beings suffer – not only the human animal – and one can travel deeply into the depths of ‘being’ itself ... and come upon Universal Sorrow. The piquancy of one’s personal sorrow pales into insignificance when confronted with the pungency of all the sorrow of anyone who has ever lived or who is living now or who is yet to be born ... for one is indulging oneself in self-justifying grief. There the beauty of this universal pathos reveals what lies eternally silent at the heart of the mystique ... a god or a goddess that is The Truth. There is an excellent description of what is possible to realise when one travels deeper and deeper into Universal Sorrow in the conversations between Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mr David Bohm and Mr. David Shainburg ... they are particularly illuminating in this respect. Viz.:
• [quote]: ‘Aren’t you aware of a much deeper sorrow than the sorrow of thought, of self-pity, the sorrow of the image? ... Deep sorrow. Yes, that is the deep sorrow of mankind. For centuries upon centuries it has been like that – you know, like a vast reservoir of sorrow ... You know, sir, there is universal sorrow ... Then there is compassion. Is that the result of the ending of sorrow, universal sorrow? ... is there compassion which is not related to thought? Or is that compassion born of sorrow? Born in the sense that when sorrow ends there is compassion? ... If I don’t end the image, the stream of image-making goes on ... it is there, it manifests in people ... it is universal ... it is the effect of all the brains and it manifests itself in people as they are born ... there is something beyond compassion ... To penetrate into this, the mind must be completely silent ... Now in that silence there is the sense of something beyond all time, all death ... nothing ... not a thing ... and therefore empty and therefore tremendous energy. This energy is ... There is something beyond compassion which is sacred, holy ... What is the relationship between that which is sacred, holy, and reality? ... Relationship comes through insight, intelligence and compassion ... You have an insight into the image ... into the movement of thought ... which is self-pity ... which creates sorrow. Now isn’t that insight intelligence? ... Which is not the intelligence of a clever man ... now work with that intelligence ... that insight is universal intelligence, global or cosmic intelligence ... now move further into it ... an insight into sorrow ... out of that insight compassion ... an insight into compassion ... and there is something sacred ... and that may be the origin of everything ... everything ... all matter, all nature’. [endquote].
(‘The Wholeness Of Life’ published by The Krishnamurti Foundation. Dialogue VII (May 20 1976 – Monday Afternoon).
And thus a new religion may be born – and another sect to wage their vicious wars – which is why I call the alluring beauty of pathos ‘The Trap Of Compassion’.
There is, however, a third alternative to being human or divine.

• [Respondent]: ‘When the human mind is free of selfishness that compassion operates through that mind at the human level.
• [Richard]: ‘Compassion does not exist outside of the psyche.

• [Respondent]: ‘It is just natural, not affective, to care when there is nothing which feels it is separate from everything else.
• [Richard]: ‘Aye ... it is natural. It is also natural to kill one’s fellow human being. I did something very unnatural ... I eliminated the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus I am free from the Human Condition. With no natural instincts dominating this body, this particular brain’s intelligence operates freely. When my fellow human being is in distress I can easily be of assistance – in whatever capacity I am skilful at – and as this care is free of sorrow on my part it is uncaused.
• [Respondent]: ‘It [compassion] does not seek to establish any point of view in another.
• [Richard]: ‘You will find out that it does ... just two sentences below.
• [Respondent]: ‘Nor does it [compassion] seek to change another’s point of view.
• [Richard]: ‘You will find out that it does ... just one sentence below.
• [Respondent]: ‘It points out to another the value of observing for himself the nature of ‘himself’.
• [Richard]: ‘It is the word ‘value’ that belies your two statements above.
• [Respondent]: ‘You should have been a lawyer, my man. They too rely on trivia in the absence of real insight.
• [Richard]: ‘Pardon me for breathing ... I have only your words to go by. If you consider that your words are trivial then sharpen up your writing skills.
• [Respondent]: ‘You may remove the word value if that causes you trouble.
• [Richard]: ‘No ... it does not cause me any trouble whatsoever. On the contrary, it shows the importance and estimation that you place on what the power of compassion can do.
• [Respondent]: ‘And consider that the action of pointing out is the important thing to see.
• [Richard]: ‘Do you see that you use the word ‘important’? Thus you esteem what compassion shows you highly.
• [Respondent]: ‘If I say that is valuable, I am saying it in the sense that eating food is valuable to the body. Nothing more, nothing less.
• [Richard]: ‘Not so ... anybody can eat food. But only a favoured few have seen the value of what compassion ‘points out’ and have gone on the become the ‘Compassionate Ones’. They propose to have the solution to all the ills of humankind ... this is a far cry from the ‘nothing more, nothing less’ value of eating food.
• [Respondent]: ‘And when that action is undertaken with utmost and utter seriousness.
• [Richard]: ‘You acknowledge here – by the use of ‘utmost and utter seriousness’ – just how strongly compassion seeks to ‘establish a point of view in another’ and to ‘change another’s point of view’.
• [Respondent]: ‘You just aren’t paying attention today.
• [Richard]: ‘I am indeed paying attention ... so much so that you say I should be a lawyer.
• [Respondent]: ‘‘Utmost and utter seriousness’ does not refer to the one who is pointing out.
• [Richard]: ‘I beg to differ ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti made such a big thing about being serious.
• [Respondent]: ‘It refers to the human being who has discovered the nature of the mind, and which discovery – shock that it is – has begun the process of real observation. When the mind has seen the danger of its state of total confusion, it becomes serious about that state. It begins to observe its thoughts more closely.
• [Richard]: ‘Aye ... and ignores the affective. Such is the pre-occupation with blaming thought. But, then again, as it was compassion – which is affective – that did the pointing out ... it would hardly point the finger at its own basis now would it?
• [Respondent]: ‘Then the human brain has a chance to perceive the totality of its primordial involvement with illusion, and may be free of it.
• [Richard]: ‘Aye ... it is a powerful energy, this compassion, eh? That is because it is affective.
• [Respondent]: ‘Must everything be ‘affective’?
• [Richard]: ‘No, not everything. What is affective is Love, Compassion, Bliss, Euphoria, Ecstasy, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Oneness, Unity, Wholeness and ... and any of those kind of baubles.

Coincidentally Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ praise the power of compassion to the skies and beyond ... even to the point of calling it ‘intelligence’. His ‘Teachings’ also praise love and beauty and truth and other revered mystical values – which he clearly identifies as being synonymous with god – and does No. 4 question them? In fact, where does No. 4 get the backing for his posts about forceful authority from anyway?

RESPONDENT: Why should I challenge what Krishnamurti says?

RICHARD: Yet my question was essentially about challenging the power – the forceful authority – of compassion. Was it not a coincidence after all that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ praise the power of compassion to the skies and beyond ... even to the point of calling it ‘intelligence’? Try separating the one from the other and you may see what I am getting at.

RESPONDENT: Now since you want to waste my time discussing Krishnamurti, we might as well go into it earnestly and not based on your delight in infusing your own meaning into his words. First, you keep saying that compassion is ‘forceful authority’, but you don’t explain what you mean by it.

RICHARD: Yet I did at great length in a very long post to you some weeks ago (re-posted above) ... which you never responded to.

RESPONDENT: Then, based on your unexplained definition, you want to impose that definition on Krishnamurti and judge what he said according to your own arbitrary words. That is just too cheap. You get to criticise without offering something different.

RICHARD: There is nothing arbitrary about my investigation into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world-as-it-is with people as-they-are. I have devoted myself night and day to both an experiential and scholarly study of the issue for eighteen years. I offer much that is different ... you do not appear to see those parts of my posts.

RESPONDENT: Did Krishnamurti ‘praise compassion to the skies’, or is that what you are imposing on his views about compassion?

RICHARD: Indeed he did ... and I deliberately wrote ‘to the skies and beyond’. He praises compassion so highly that he calls it ‘intelligence’! I could include literally hundreds of quotes of his here on the value of compassion. May I submit but a few? Viz.:

• [quote] ‘Meditation is the awakening of that intelligence that is born out of compassion’. [end quote].

He makes it quite clear that this intelligence is not the intelligence of thought:

• [quote] ‘Compassion is intelligence – which is not the outcome of thought’. [end quote].

He drives this point home consistently and adds love to the equation:

• [quote] ‘Love, which goes with compassion, has its own intelligence – which is not the intelligence of the scientific brain’. [end quote].

And he describes how to access this intelligence that is love and compassion:

• [quote] ‘Only a brain that is silent has a great sense of love, compassion, which is intelligence’. [endquote].

And as we know from his many statements – particularly the statement just nine days prior to his death – it is a ‘supreme intelligence’ that will not manifest as a body for ‘many hundred years’. Therefore it is a metaphysical compassion for him ... and is this not praising it to the skies ... and beyond?

RESPONDENT: I hear something entirely different in his words. Since you are interpreting, in this instance so shall I. I hear him saying that when there is actual observation of the entire movement of thought, thought, as a centre of selfishness, ends. Now if that is so, what could be there BUT compassion?

RICHARD: Aye ... when thought stops the affective faculty rushes in to fill the gap. It is but being ruled by one’s feelings ... albeit ‘good’ feelings.

RESPONDENT: And if that is a ‘force’ then it is the force of life itself, as I see compassion flowing in every area of nature, keeping all things alive and functioning.

RICHARD: May I ask? In what way do you ‘hear something entirely different in his words’? You are saying the same thing ... only you call it ‘the force of life’. That is, the ‘compassion that is intelligence’ is creation itself.

RESPONDENT: And who told you that what I say is rooted in what he says? How do you know I am not perceiving for myself? You don’t, do you? Not really.

RICHARD: As I do not know you personally – and not being a mind-reader – I can only go on what you write. Your entire discussion on the danger of authority is so staggeringly similar to Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s that one cannot help but be amazed that you have not been influenced by his ‘Teachings’. As for not perceiving for yourself ... this is evidenced by the fact that you still do not question, let alone challenge, the power – which is the forceful authority – of compassion, for example. You also praise love and beauty and truth and other revered mystical values – which Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti clearly identifies as being synonymous with god – and is this not where you get the backing for your posts about forceful authority from?

RESPONDENT: You are truly a master of projection. Now YOU define beauty, love and truth as ‘mystical values’, and say that Krishnamurti identifies them as being synonymous with god.

RICHARD: Correction ... I am not projecting at all. May I quote again? Viz.:

• [quote]: ‘If you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness (...) therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being (...) the discovery of truth, or God demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth – and I say such a thing does exist, I have realised it – to recognise that, to realise that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages’. [endquote].

See where he says that ‘God’ and ‘truth’ are one and the same thing ... and that it does exist because he has realised that? And there is more if ‘god’ and ‘truth’ being synonymous for him is not enough evidence, for he goes on to elaborate on this theme and includes ‘reality’ and ‘life’ and ‘love’ and ‘bliss’ and ‘beauty’ into what constitutes ‘god’. Viz.:

• [quote]: ‘That state of mind which is no longer capable of striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon this thing called truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love’. [endquote].

RESPONDENT: You do not see that YOU have created the idea of ‘mystical values’ and are imposing that on the words of another.

RICHARD: I have done nothing of the sort. It is well-known that these are mystical values both in Eastern mysticism and Western mysticism ... can we lift the level of discussion a trifle?

RESPONDENT: You are good at that, very good at it: Defining another through your own ideas, then accusing them of being what you have defined them as.

RICHARD: You are attempting to defend the indefensible here by resorting to an undergraduate debating trick. It is well-known that ‘truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love’ are revered mystical values.

RESPONDENT: As far as I am concerned, you are entitled to assess me in any way you wish. If you see Krishnamurti in what I say, that is your affair. I’m not here to justify anything to you. I’m here to hold an intelligent discussion which keeps getting thwarted by your obsession with Krishnamurti and your attempt to denounce him through me.

RICHARD: Not so ... I am denouncing the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti just happens to be the exponent of this state most people on this Mailing List are familiar with. If this was a Mr. Barry Long Mailing List I would be using his quotes to demonstrate my points.

RESPONDENT: What is it that you want, Richard?

RICHARD: Individual peace-on-earth for No. 4. Then – when there is six billion individual outbreaks of peace-on-earth – there will be global peace-on-earth. This means that all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will come to an end.

RESPONDENT: You want no such thing. That is just a cover.

RICHARD: If you say so, then it is so ... for you, that is. Tell me: why do you object so much to peace-on-earth? Is it that you would willingly sacrifice an earthly peace for a spurious divine immortality?

RESPONDENT: What you want is to debunk ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’ in the minds of people and to supplant him with YOU. That is all you have discussed so far, so I have no reason to think you are serious about anything else but that.

RICHARD: You just do not get it, do you? I am exposing the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti just happens to be the spokesperson of this state most people on this Mailing List are familiar with. If this was a Mr. Franklin Jones Mailing List I would be using his quotes to demonstrate my points.

RESPONDENT: And as far as peace is concerned, you certainly haven’t demonstrated peace in your communication with me.

RICHARD: Indeed I have. Where there is no identity extant there is no malicious ‘I’ or sorrowful ‘me’ to disturb the peace that is already always here ... now. One is peaceful only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is innocent (free from sin and sinning) and thus automatically peaceful ... which means one does not have to be a pacifist (which is but an imitation of the actual). It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to act or not act in response to something or someone, as the circumstances require. Thus, when there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul there is no need for pre-conceived truths or beliefs ... then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: If I were to be silly enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate my course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh – which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel – and you would be getting nothing from me but the cloying platitudes and pap that you get from others.

RESPONDENT: Stop playing these power games, Richard.

RICHARD: It is the beliefs, truths, values, principles, ideals, traditions, customs, mores, ethics, morals and so on being questioned that turns this discussion into ‘power games’ ... and relentlessly so. It is only to the degree that the person identifies with these ever-failing coping-methods that they feel personally having a ‘power game’ played upon them. I calmly yet trenchantly explicate just what has been going wrong and what can be freely and happily done to correct all the ills of humankind. What I say and write is both heretical and iconoclastic ... a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. I am no ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’ – or whatever inanity it is that the myth says – and there is no ‘turning the other cheek’ here. There have been 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone ... now that is where the phrase ‘power games’ actually means something.

RESPONDENT: What you want is to be the next guru. Surprise.

RICHARD: Yet I repeatedly state that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through ... and that there is not the slightest trace of religiosity, spirituality, mysticism or metaphysicality in me whatsoever. How on earth could I possibly be a guru? Are you for real?

RESPONDENT: For me to ‘renounce’ Krishnamurti and accept you?

RICHARD: Goodness me ... I do not want any one to merely accept me. I stress to people how important it is that they see for themselves. If they were so foolish as to believe me then the most they would end up in is living in a dream state and thus miss out on the actual. I do not wish this fate upon anyone ... I like my fellow human beings.

RESPONDENT: Right. LOL. That is certainly obvious in all your interchanges I have seen so far. Try again.

RICHARD: I am unable to offer any support or any solace to any ego or any soul ... I do not have that ability or capacity.

RESPONDENT: All you have done so far is to bitch about ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’.

RICHARD: Not so ... when I first came onto this Mailing List I did not bitch about Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti at all. I wrote twenty eight posts describing my experiences before I mentioned his name or referred to him at all. Then I wrote this: Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘Isn’t life great! Somebody [Konrad Swart] comes onto this list and tells their story. Simply and directly: ‘This is what happened to me ... and this is what I thought ... and this is what is going on now’. And what a fascinating inside view it is, into the workings-out of the existential dilemma that all humans find themselves in, into the bargain. It is far more interesting and alive and happening than the theoretical pursuit of whether thought imputes this or that or whatever. Or whether an ‘I’ that does not exist can know whether it does not exist ... or not ... or whether an ‘I’ who knows it exists can know that it does not exist ... or not ... or whatever. Konrad has an actual experience – that has lasted for seventeen years – and he will not even be given the benefit of the doubt? So what happens? The cynics come out of the woodwork and slam someone for being open enough to talk about what he himself took to be madness. Well, well, well! Wouldn’t Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti be real chuffed to know what is happening under the auspices of the teachings he brought into the world ... where is the spirit of exploring together, sharing together and finding out together what it is to be a human being in this world as-it-is? [Quote] ‘We are friends, sitting under a tree together, talking over this matter of ...’ [endquote]. He [Konrad] is not saying that he is enlightened ... he is saying that he is ‘living with enlightenment’ ... that a process began seventeen years ago that is still occurring ... that there still is an ‘I’ ... and he is willing to talk about it. What more could one ask for, eh? But, to save people’s bandwidth limits being breached, Konrad and I are corresponding privately. I am finding his experience fascinating, and his views on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being extremely intriguing’. (Richard, List B, No. 31, 20 February 1998).

I wrote seventy nine posts before the following exchange took place. Viz.:

• [Respondent No. 12]: ‘I agree with your comments as to the desire to join with something greater as generally fear-based. At the same time, it seems that there may be an interest and passionate longing for wholeness that does not arise out of fear or ambition but comes from the depths – in Krishnamurti’s terms, from intelligence.
• [Richard]: ‘Yes, indeed there is an interest ... a vital interest, in fact, and all because of that passionate longing for wholeness which you locate – accurately – as coming from the depths. And because it is a passionate longing, then the ‘depths’ indicated must be the depths of feeling, and not of deep thought. You then propose that it is coming from intelligence – and not just from what passes for intelligence in ordinary everyday reality – but the intelligence as delineated and described by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. So, now comes the potentially touchy bit ... but as I have clearly stated my position before I will remain, as ever, candid. Whenever Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is brought into a discussion, it must be born in mind as to where he was coming from. He was an enlightened man living in a state of wholeness ... a state of oneness and unity. Which means there was no longer a separation betwixt him and what he variously called ‘the other’, ‘the absolute’, ‘the supreme’, ‘that which is eternal, timeless and nameless’, ‘that which is sacred, holy’ and so on’. (Richard, List B, No. 12, 5 May 1998).

Other posters quickly jumped in quoting words, phrases and whole paragraphs spoken or written by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. What was I to do? Agree with them? Pretend that they did not quote them? Or use them to substantiate my point? Since you seem to know what I should have done ... then you tell me what the suitable course of action should be, eh?

RESPONDENT: Actually, Richard, I haven’t read many of your posts.

RICHARD: Well, this information does not surprise me ... you have raised the same objections that many, many posters over this past year have raised. There is not much new in this post that I have not already written to other objectors.

RESPONDENT: I read a few in the beginning and thought you were quite bright. But I had a feeling that perhaps you were coming on as more of a guru than discussing equally in a dialog.

RICHARD: Apart from the ‘coming on as a guru’ bit you felt it correctly ... I am not discussing equally at all.

RESPONDENT: When you began to define Krishnamurti’s ‘enlightenment’ in your own terms, I began to sense some superiority and competition, so I lost interest.

RICHARD: Not just ‘some superiority’ ... an actual freedom is vastly superior to spiritual enlightenment. It is physical, for starters, and not metaphysical. It is here on earth ... in this life-time as this flesh and blood body.

RESPONDENT: In my view, if one has actually undergone transformation, there won’t be a lot of talking about it.

RICHARD: Why not? Do you not like your fellow human beings? Would you let them keep on suffering? Are not 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone enough for you? Are you so selfish that you would keep the solution that would end all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide for yourself?

RESPONDENT: Doing that seems to me, to be an attempt to establish some sort of criteria, which implies that others are here to be taught by you rather than to dialog with you. That is my feeling.

RICHARD: If I wish to learn to play the piano I go to an expert piano player ... I expect to learn how to play from his/her expertise. If the piano player says to me: ‘I am not going to teach you because you will have to find out for yourself’ – and then proceeds to teach me anyway in an under-hand way – then I will go to another expert piano player who does not play such tricks upon me.

RESPONDENT: To me discussing consists of probing into our consciousness to discover what it is that we are, how ‘the mind’ functions, learning, through encounter, to observe what is happening AS our lives. For another to discuss his own ‘arrival’, for lack of a better word, seems to me to prevent the immediateness of serious inquiry into what is happening now, and to cause others to focus on oneself.

RICHARD: Then why do you listen to Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti? He has most definitely arrived ... and he lets you know this, too.

RESPONDENT: There is the air of authority which wants to define the nature of ‘truth’ for others rather than engaging others in exploration so that all may discover together the realities of life.

RICHARD: Yet Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti clearly delineates the nature of ‘truth’ ... and tells when you go wrong in your exploration! He is an authority despite his best efforts to pretend that he is not ... this is just a ploy of his to flatter you into thinking you are equally exploring together. Look well at his taped conversations and see how he leads the other towards where he wants them to go. If you consider yourself to be having an equal conversation with him you are but fooling yourself.

RESPONDENT: I might be interested, as entertainment or out of curiosity, about your or Konrad’s experiences with yourself, but that would have nothing to do, at least not for me, with the active merging of minds, consciousnesses, in the immediate communion of a group of people with each other through real questioning of the issues of life. When we can drop our accomplishments and face each other as equals who want to explore together, then, perhaps, I might be interested.

RICHARD: I cannot pretend to be other than what I am just to oblige you. If you wish for an equal conversation then stop being so stubbornly inferior.

RESPONDENT: If you have any valid insights, then get on with discussing them.

RICHARD: I have much to say ... and I have said it and still do say it. You, however, arbitrarily dismissed some of it in one and a half sentences when writing to another. Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘The word emotion is anathema to those who have accepted the belief that (...) emotion is a hold over from our animal background. And that it prevents observation’. Now, there are those who hold the ‘Tabular Rasa’ philosophy – only at the expense of ignoring biology and denying that the human animal is an animal – and maintain that all the ills of humankind are the result of conditioning. Yet they cannot successfully answer the conundrum they thus create: who conditioned the first sentient beings to emerge on this planet? (There was even one woman who told me recently that girl-babies are born without aggression ... and that men put aggression into them). Yet I ask people to not only look at emotions ... I stress the entire affective faculty. That is: emotion, passion and calenture. What does No. 4 have to say about passion? Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘To be ‘righteous’ is to life rightly, from truth, from awareness. I will bring passion to everything I do because I cannot allow society to inhibit the flow of energy as love which is what I AM’. Now, the word ‘calenture’ is an incredibly useful word as it describes the delirious passion needed to manifest the delusion that:

There is a God ... and:
I am that God.

RESPONDENT: You see, that is what I mean. Rather than going into what another has said, you immediately assume you know what they meant based on the definitions YOU have given to the terms they use.

RICHARD: When someone says ‘The flow of energy as love which is what I AM’ ... it needs no interpretation to know what they mean.

RESPONDENT: For example, If I say ‘I am passion and that in passion one sees the sacredness of life’, or that ‘the energy of love is what I AM’, you immediately infer from that that I am discussing some ‘god word’.

RICHARD: If you were not ... then you are sucked in badly.

RESPONDENT: It may not have occurred to you at all that I may be using words to describe something which is actually indescribable; that there may not be an image present; that there may be just the perception of life as it is, and that compared to the activity of projective thinking, that state of silence is unique.

RICHARD: To the mystic, god is always ‘indescribable’. You may try to fool me that you are on about something different ... but I have read more than a few of your posts. You may not call it ‘god’ – you refer to an ‘intelligence’ – but it amounts to precisely the same thing that the less coy mystics mean with the word ‘god’.

RESPONDENT: Words like sacred, love, truth, may be meaningless to me actually. But one must use words, mustn’t one? So you cannot apply etymological meaning to what is beyond words. Words spoken from stillness, at some point are just a linguistic form of art.

RICHARD: It is always fascinating to see people scramble for cover ... they might like fooling themselves, I guess.

RESPONDENT: You yourself give a particular meaning to the word ‘affective’.

RICHARD: No ... I use the dictionary meaning, actually. The only words I give a particular meaning to are ‘actual’ and ‘real’ (because people have made the word ‘real’ mean pretty well anything metaphysical at all) and the words ‘fact’ and ‘true’ (because people have made the word ‘true’ mean pretty well anything at all). When people stop using ‘real’ and ‘true’ to mean metaphysical things I will go back to using them.

RESPONDENT: That is your choice of explanation for what you may be trying to convey. Rather than trying to assess your psychological state based on your use of that word, I would ask more questions of you to see exactly what you were trying to say.

RICHARD: By the word ‘affective’ I am not ‘trying’ to say ... I am saying. The affective faculty is the entire range of feelings ... emotions, passions and calentures. This is stock-standard English usage.

RESPONDENT: But you, Richard, don’t do that. You immediately react to what is said based on the scheme of logic and ideology you have already accepted or invented, and which defines how you look at things. Words like passion and sacred to me are just indicators, verbal descriptions of the uncorrupted energy of life moving in ones veins and throughout nature. One is free to choose what words one wishes to use to describe what is indescribable.

RICHARD: Aye ... yet the words you choose are identical to those used by mystics for centuries. You are not fooling me with all this.

RESPONDENT: That is what you do, isn’t it?

RICHARD: No. When I say ‘coffee-cup’ I mean that small container used for drinking coffee out of.

RESPONDENT: How else could you speak?

RICHARD: I speak straight-forwardly ... when I say ‘coffee-cup’ I mean that small container used for drinking coffee out of.

RESPONDENT: Why would you speak?

RICHARD: So that No. 4 can have an individual peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: Words are worthless in the end, aren’t they?

RICHARD: Not at all ... words are our most valuable asset in thinking and communicating. Without words there will never be peace-on-earth.

*

RICHARD: And what does No. 4 have to say about his experience when he brings passion into his life so as to manifest the ‘energy of love which is what I AM’? The ‘god-words’ like ‘sacred’ are used. Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘A simple blade of grass looked at from thought may seem beautiful. But when that same blade of grass is looked at without thought, it is seen as awesome and sacred’. This is a prime example of the affective faculty – endowed by blind nature as instinctual passion – at work. One simply stops the only intelligence there is – human thought – and allows passion to rule, eh?

RESPONDENT: See? Now you take what I say and define it to mean that the energy – which I call passion – of life is blind nature and instinctual, and that ‘one simply stops the only intelligence there is – human thought – and allows passion to rule’. You see, you are viewing what I say through your own ideology.

RICHARD: I saw the blade of grass – and everything – as awesome and sacred for eleven years. You are not talking with a mere tyro here.

RESPONDENT: That is why it is fruitless talking with you. You will only see another through your own interpretation of what they are saying. And you don’t even stop to say: ‘what do you mean by that?’

RICHARD: But you have already made it abundantly clear what you mean ... I have read all of your posts going back many months. I have been subscribed since January this year.

*

RICHARD: Coincidentally, Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti recommends the same course of action ... as do all the Saints and Sages, Gurus and God-men, Messiahs and Masters, Avatars and Saviours down through the ages. This is the ‘Tried and True’ ... it has had thousands of years to demonstrate its efficacy for bringing about peace-on-earth and it has failed again and again. The time-honoured methods of living a life happily and harmoniously have failed miserably, yet peoples persist in travelling the hoary path, again and again, thinking it is they who are doing something wrong by not applying ‘The Teachings’ correctly. Nobody has the temerity to question the ‘wisdom’ of the ages.

RESPONDENT: I don’t need to question the wisdom of the ages. I question myself because whatever is of the ages is what I am. Why should I waste energy wading through endless ideas of antiquity and modernity trying to discover what is so? If all that had any value, we would have become an enlightened species long ago. I look at what is happening NOW. That is where the real energy is, the real possibility of comprehension – not the words of others.

RICHARD: Okay ... ignore the evidence of history if you wish. Remake the mistakes of the past ... at least you will be able to say that you failed all of your own accord.

*

RICHARD: I did [question the wisdom] ... and I do. How many times must a person trek, eagerly or tiredly, along a path that is well-worn with the countless feet that have trodden it previously, before they will become suspicious enough to relinquish their fascination with such spurious solutions? It is so much fun finding an alternative way of living ... and the rewards are immensely gratifying. Each day one’s life becomes better and better, as one becomes clearer and cleaner ... and more pure. One sets this all in motion by discovering ‘what I am’. One of the many ‘truths’ that one has accepted, with no suspicion, is that ‘we are all emotional beings’. Feelings – emotions and passions and calentures – are accepted, without question, as being the touch-stone of actuality. Thus ‘who I really am’ is an affective ‘being’ ... a psychological or psychic entity residing inside this body. This may be real, but it is not actual. ‘I’, as an affective ‘being’ am not a fact ... ‘I’ am a belief. A belief is an emotion-backed thought, generally supported by the ‘outside’ world. The people who were already here when one was born impressed upon one that ‘I’ am real ... implying that ‘I’ am actual. By actual I mean tangible, substantial. ‘I’ am not tangible: ‘I’ am a fiction, not a fact. By discovering what I actually am, I realise that who ‘I’ was, an affective-backed thought, was a usurper ... an alien entity having only psychological or psychic existence. ‘I’ am a ‘being’, and if by chance ‘I’ happen to ‘find myself’, then ‘I’ become a divine ‘Being’. The shift from being ‘human’ to being ‘divine’ is a move from the real-world normal reality to Divine-World abnormal Greater Reality. It is all a play in a super-charged imagination and has nothing to do with fact. It all stems from being ‘open’ and ‘humble’ and desiring to know ‘who’ one really is ... which is an invitation to ‘that which is sacred’ to enter and take over one’s ‘being’. The result is to be graced with being Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... and being charged with a sacred mission to spread the hallowed ‘Teachings’ throughout the world. This has all been done before, from the ancient to the modern, for ages unto ages, with disastrous results. Instead of bringing peace and harmony into the world, they have brought war and hate.

RESPONDENT: I know all that. I have heard it all before. Now I’m hearing it from you. Have you ever thought that perhaps what you are saying and doubting is not different from what others have said and doubted?

RICHARD: Then why are you trekking that same-same hoary path, eh?

RESPONDENT: Maybe in addition to trying to expose others to what you feel is detrimental in the ideas of others, you should also expose them to the detrimental nature of regarding your own ideas as alternatives. What is the use of debunking ideology? It may be eminently more worthwhile to leave ALL ideology, including your own interpretations and ‘antidotes’ alone and simply observe, look, see what is actually happening, whether ‘inside’ or outside’. And maybe the absence of ideology – even ‘affectation’ as ideology – will prove, in the end, to be the silence in which no delusion can prevail.

RICHARD: That ‘silence’ itself is a delusion ... this is why I write. You see, you reveal here that you do not ‘know all that’ or that you have ‘heard it all before’ and that ‘now I’m hearing it from you’.

(Incidentally ‘affectation’ is a different word to ‘affective’).

RESPONDENT: Otherwise, I am not inclined to play this ‘debunking game’ with you.

RICHARD: Actually, I am not ‘debunking’ him per se ... I am whole-heartedly criticising the altered state of consciousness known as spiritual enlightenment. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti happens to be the person most people on this list are familiar with. If I was subscribed to the Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain list I would be using quotes of his. I have read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti (and many, many other similar people’s writings) with extreme care and remarkable sensitivity ... because I wanted to know, for myself, where he (and they) were coming from. The source of their ‘Teachings’ is of the utmost importance to ascertain, for it has vast ramifications for the course of human history. Consequently, I have read hundreds and hundreds of books ... maybe into the thousands. This is no rash – or rushed – thing that I did. I wanted to know. I fully appreciate what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti experienced, talked about and wrote of. It is an amazing thing that not only are we humans able to be here experiencing this business of being alive ... on top of that we can think about and reflect upon what is entailed. In addition to this ability, we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. I am saying that enlightenment is a mirage, a chimera, a delusion, a hallucination and so on. This is a very responsible ‘debunking’ indeed.

RESPONDENT: You have absolutely no means to know the state of mind of ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’ nor anyone else.

RICHARD: I have indeed ... I lived enlightenment for eleven years. Like recognises like.

RESPONDENT: You have defined ‘enlightenment’ according to some notion you have that people are caught up in ‘altered states of consciousness’, and are suggesting that because you have defined their experiences through your own definition, that they must, indeed, have fallen short of your own ‘enlightened’ definition of their experiences.

RICHARD: Not so ... enlightenment is an altered state of consciousness that is reasonably consistent in its characteristics around the world irregardless of race, age or gender. There are cultural variations, of course, but they are differences in degree and not kind. I can usually recognise where someone talks from their own on-going experience of enlightenment and not from book-learning. It is not my definition ... there is a generally accepted criteria.

RESPONDENT: And worse, you refuse to see this action as projection. It might even be wishful thinking. You have imposed your own beliefs onto what you have read by others and have convinced yourself that you know what was their state of mind. To me, that is self-deception at its worst.

RICHARD: My word, you do go on ... do you not have any confidence in your ability to discriminate between a genuinely enlightened person and a charlatan?

RESPONDENT: You simply cannot define the reality of others according to what you think you see and, from there, what you think they saw.

RICHARD: Are you trying to say that you are no judge of character? How on earth do you operate and function in the world? Of course you evaluate ... this is New Age nonsense.

RESPONDENT: You may be just as deluded as you think they are.

RICHARD: No ... but I was for eleven years.

RESPONDENT: Why even waste your energy that way?

RICHARD: It is not a waste of energy for me ... I am having so much fun here at the keyboard. Besides, there are some who eventually see what has been going on for millennia ... and that is a bonus on top of all the fun. I only do what I want to do ... sometimes days – or weeks – go by without writing at all.

RESPONDENT: Why discuss others period?

RICHARD: So that we can learn from each other’s successes and failures ... otherwise each person would have to reinvent the wheel all over again.

RESPONDENT: In the absence of their presence to explain themselves, what you are saying about them amounts to nothing more than ‘high gossip’ and, to some degree, ‘laundered scandal’.

RICHARD: When I watch a video tape of a man that consistently looks like and talks like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – and I hear words that fit the movement of the lips – I can reasonably ascertain that it is the flesh and blood Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti that was saying these words. When these words later on turn up in a printed book – identical to what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears – it is also reasonable to ascertain that it was him. As for others ... there are some who I have spoken to personally, face-to-face.

RESPONDENT: Don’t stand on the shoulders of others to reach yourself.

RICHARD: It is too late to give me that advice ... I already have stood on the shoulders of others. I became free of the human condition because of it.

RESPONDENT: Stand in the centre of yourself and just watch.

RICHARD: I did ... and I became enlightened. It took me eleven years to go beyond that. I offer my experience for those who may be interested in by-passing enlightenment and going straight to an actual freedom. There was considerable anguish and angst to travel the route I travelled.

*

RICHARD: Maybe – just maybe – you have been sucked in badly.

RESPONDENT: And maybe, just maybe, I have not. Have you thought that you may be sucked into a self-invented crusade of ‘let’s pay daddy Krishnamurti back for making me feel insecure’?

RICHARD: Why does working toward a fellow human being’s individual peace-on-earth – which would lead to global peace – have to be a ‘self-invented crusade of let’s pay daddy Krishnamurti back for making me feel insecure’? Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti never made me feel insecure ... enlightenment was something spontaneously seen and understood without any prior spiritual knowledge whatsoever for me. I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough into freedom via the death of ‘myself’ in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then solemnly declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I studied all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such spontaneous experiences and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong. I thus found out via personal experience where I had been going wrong for eleven years ... self-aggrandisement – as in ‘I AM love’ – is so seductive.

RESPONDENT: You see, I’m not on any mission to help the world do anything at all. If someone wants to talk to me, that is fine. Maybe there will be the development of seriousness during the conversation, and we shall discover together or alone, what is happening.

RICHARD: Of course ... while you are still seeking yourself you will be able to discover together with another who is likewise seeking. Once you have found what you are seeking you will no longer be able to do this.

RESPONDENT: Seeking peace on earth is wishful thinking.

RICHARD: Well, there you go then. I did not have that attitude. I did seek peace-on-earth ... and I did find peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: If the flower is truly blooming, those who are capable of noticing its beauty will come to it. You don’t have to try to reach them.

RICHARD: Goodness me ... this is so trite. I take full advantage of modern technology like this Internet. I get to communicate with people who would never, ever be able to ‘come to it’. No one on the other side of this globe has eyesight that good.

RESPONDENT: You say you were spontaneously enlightened and that you searched to see the meanings others had attributed to that state, ‘to see where they had gone wrong’. That sounds rather arrogant to me because you are taking for granted that you, Richard, are in fact, enlightened or clear; you don’t question this, and you move from there to the belief that you know what is right and that you are capable of disclosing who, through-out history was wrong, and why and how they were wrong. You will pardon me if I find that belief wanting.

RICHARD: You can only say all this by conveniently ignoring the fact that I wrote [quote]: ‘I thus found out via personal experience where I had been going wrong for eleven years’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti was wrong.

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: Buddha was wrong.

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: Everybody has been wrong but you.

RICHARD: No ... I too was wrong for eleven years.

RESPONDENT: Only you know truth.

RICHARD: No ... I knew truth for eleven years – like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and Mr. Gotama the Sakyan and so on – and now I am free from the self-aggrandisement that all that is.

RESPONDENT: My god, man, don’t you see what you are doing to yourself?

RICHARD: Indeed ... I am free of the human condition. I have gone beyond enlightenment into an actual freedom. I am autonomous; beholden to no one and no thing I stand on my own two feet ... instead of prostrating myself in abject humility and self-abnegation. This actual perfection is excellent and free. It is the freely available bonus of daring to be me as-I-am. Unadorned I am more free than a bird on the wing and cleaner than a sea-breeze on a sweltering summer’s day. To be me as-I-am is to be fresh, each moment again.

*

RICHARD: It has been – and still is – a great trip.

RESPONDENT: Yes. A great trip, but a ‘trip’ nevertheless.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... it is somewhat like having a twenty four hour a day drug trip – if that is what you are implying – except that there are no side-effects and it is not illegal. Owing nothing to no one I am free from corruption ... perversity has vanished forever. Unpolluted as I am by any alien entity, my thoughts and my deeds are automatically graceful. Goodwill, freed of social morality, comes effortlessly to me for all internal conflict is over. I am gentle and peaceful in character. Freeing myself of the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment was the last step into actuality. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space.

Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least.

CORRESPONDENT No. 04: (Part Three)

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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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