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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 11
RESPONDENT: I’d like to propose the following: All questions are asking for an answer within a given context. Every question we can think of uses out of it’s context a language/meaning and has a logical base. Could we agree that asking an impossible question is without meaning/language and logic? For if the question could be asked it is not an ‘impossible’ question! But if the question ‘is’ impossible we cannot think of a language/meaning or logic to reflect it upon, so we cannot ask it. Hence: If it is impossible it is true that it is possible AND if it is possible it is true that it is impossible. At the risk of contradicting myself: I see truth in determining the above.RICHARD: You are applying logic to what is essentially a metaphysical theme; it is not a logical question to be solved, but a spiritual paradox to be meditated upon. It is like the Koan that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to supposedly abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment. An ‘Impossible Question’ is this: Who am ‘I’? The reason that it is called an impossible question is that one will never get a ‘thought-out’ answer ... which is what the proponents of logic’s supposed ability to detect truth are in need of. ‘I’, who wishes to know who ‘I’ am, can never know ‘myself’. This is because the would-be ‘knower’ is the very subject that it is desired to know. Hence the appellation: ‘The Impossible Question’. So why does one ask it? Simply stated, if it is asked in such a way as to not get a thought-out answer – a way called keeping the question open – something happens. Logical thought – not thought itself – blows its fuses and ‘I’ cease to exist as an ego, for ‘I’ as ego am nothing but a cognitive entity. Then one is living the answer in an apotheosised field of consciousness and has the power of attaining to direct metaphysical knowledge without evident rational thought and inference. In other words, one now intuitively knows who ‘I’ am. ‘I’ am the Self ... the second ‘I’ of Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana) fame. With Koans, one can always get an answer, of course.
Which is probably why Zen Masters are two bob a dozen.
RICHARD: Q: ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ A: ‘The same as the sound of the other hand’. Which is probably why Zen Masters are two bob a dozen. RESPONDENT: Ha, ha, ha. That’s funny. Another solution is to just clap with one hand. The fingers clapping the thumb-base. What I wanted to make clear has been abundantly stated and pointed out by you in your reply. To meditate on an impossible question is not a logical thing to do. Therefore meditation as such and enlightenment if it exists as a process cannot be methodical in nature. The ‘who am I question’ has me stuck quite often lately. And it isn’t easy to bear. Does this ring a bell? RICHARD: Yes it does. Here is a suggestion: Try asking ‘what am I’ instead. RESPONDENT: Now to my problem: I see a group of people entangled in some sort of enlightenment-rhetoric. The language of K is being used, maybe quite earnestly, to counter-act the movement of the opposite mind. And what happens?? It becomes a closed door through which no understanding can enter. I don’t particularly need anyone to look at me, or themselves for that matter. I can always deepen my meditation or understanding. It is not necessary to do that with others. But: I had hoped that K. would have made some connection somewhere. A connection to someone. I had hoped for a process or development of understanding the difficult question at hand. I had hoped to share some of my findings. Now, could I be wrong? (Of course I can be wrong). Still, not many of the discussions I have read and had the past week seem to be oriented on questions like: What can we learn from the way K. lived before enlightenment? Is it possible to investigate or use meditation in different ways? Is reading about enlightenment and remembering experiences with K or K’s writings helpful, or not? Just some subjects that I am investigating for myself. I am so glad to read this. Have you followed my agony lately? I had hoped that you (Richard) would have something more to say about K2 as I jokingly call him myself. (K2 is the highest mountain in the Himalayas). RICHARD: I actually like it that you inadvertently call him K2, thinking that it refers to the highest mountain ... but K2 is not ... and he is not, either ... which is about all you will get out of me regarding what I have to say about Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti at this stage.
I might say this much, however: It is extremely pleasant to be sitting here at this computer terminal, luxuriating in the joy of being alive and being able to discuss matters of great momentousness for not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet. 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. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. I will leave you with this slightly cryptic comment: However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next.
RESPONDENT: I have never known Konrad to be a liar. Nor in anyway oblivious to change nor unable to see and fully accept being wrong. I say this after 10 years of acquaintance and friendship. In fact all his tips about meditation that he has given me have been confirmable and realisable. And in many occasions he has helped me (letting his process work) out of nasty entanglements. Now, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but from your reactions to several people on the list I feel you have an inquisitive nature. I want to say I’m glad you are giving that headstrong fellow a chance. If I-me sees correctly something marvellous has happened for you and Konrad. Would like to know or hear more. Always interesting and moving to read your reply’s. Though no movement as a result. Meditation only. How are your talks with Konrad coming along? RICHARD: You say that you have had ten years of acquaintance and friendship with Konrad ... and have never known him to be a liar. You also say; ‘Nor in anyway oblivious to change nor unable to see and fully accept being wrong’. This is good, because I was very much struck by the honesty that shone through his posts to the Mailing-List, and in particular his experience of seventeen years ago that started the ‘process’ that is with him to this very day. He had written: ‘And then it happened. I had the attack I formerly had at the moment of falling asleep. But now I was wide awake! A tremendous pressure wave penetrated from below my spine into my skull. It was exactly at the moment whereby I understood. It was absolutely nothing! However, this insight had as its side effect this pressure wave, going through my body. And it hurt! It hurt terribly! However, it had solved my problem. After this the ‘process’ that had started never stopped. The first couple of years it remained very painful’. What caught my attention, apart from the valuable on-going ‘process’, was the understanding: ‘It was absolutely nothing!’ This, and only this, is of the utmost importance ... this is the actuality of the nature of ‘I’. ‘I’ am nothing in that ‘I’ do not exist ... period. Why I am corresponding with him is that he is a fellow human being who has an opportunity to rid himself of this pernicious and enduring entity because of this very ‘process’ that he is under-going. ‘I’ can not get rid of ‘I’ unaided ... and the ‘process’ is that aid. I would like to be able to convey to him to not see the ‘process’ as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. Consequently, his theories and philosophies – although intriguing – carry little weight as his ‘I’ is still in there doing the theorising and philosophising. Hence his attraction to logic. Thus, the other correspondents to the Mailing List rather chopped him to bits in regards to the contents of his posts. Most people, however, failed to recognise the significance of either his direct experience of the actuality of the nature of ‘I’ or the value of his on-going ‘process’. In fact, they derided him for likening his experience of the ‘process’ to that which Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti also underwent. In doing so, they missed the point entirely. Konrad and I are communicating well and he has accessed my Web-Page of about 50,000 words so as to understand the better what I am writing about so briefly in my E-Mails. I will include the URL below my signature in case you are interested enough to want to access further details of my life, my experience, my understanding and my on-going condition of an actual freedom from the Human Condition. Konrad is saying he is free also of the Human Condition, but I remain unconvinced.
RESPONDENT: Just wanted to indicate that quitting the mailing list doesn’t mean I have lost my interest our contact. I am also very much enjoying the conversations between you and Konrad. I liked the few conversations we had. I am leaving the list and am putting in my private E-Mail address if you want to stay in touch. I share the address with my girlfriend. I’m writing you because I have a few questions. Since I am not sure about either of you I am asking these questions too both you and Konrad. RICHARD: I like your honesty. Please, whatever you do with me, throw faith, belief, trust and hope right out of the window ... along with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair Besides, I am a certified madman! RESPONDENT: I have tried ‘What am I’ and several other meditations. From your mails etc. I read you don’t need to meditate. If I don’t meditate my life gets clogged with intentions. The only ways to relieve myself are to sleep or to relax. Relaxation is a direct result from meditating. Another result is creative thought. RICHARD: Be it far from me to advise you to stop meditating ... Konrad is trying this at this moment with some
interesting results Pure intent is derived from the pure consciousness experience (PCE) experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience ensures pure intent continuing to operate. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation – not meditation – rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. It is a matter of coming to one’s senses – both literally and figuratively – and one does this by understanding that only this moment is actual. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer. RESPONDENT: Now to my questions: As you have described your freedom stems from first the process and then something which is beyond that. Doesn’t this mean that I should try to attain or grow into the process first? For you seem to have needed it. RICHARD: The process is triggered by developing apperception wherever and whenever possible. Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to there, along the way to there you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity. RESPONDENT: Insight in your condition is only reaching me in the form of conclusions, actually. And I do not see how you are pointing to it. You are pointing something out, but the ‘HOW’ is, to me at least, unrecognisable. Can you elaborate on this ‘HOW’. (Or maybe on why it happened?). RICHARD: It is all to do with humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to peace-on-earth ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. For me it all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. This entailed finding the source of ‘myself’ ... and I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression that this self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. RESPONDENT: What where you trying to solve when these two major shifts happened to you? I would be much obliged if you would share your findings with me. RICHARD: I was wanting to know what ‘my’ part in all this mess was. Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the wisdom of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which – as I wrote above – is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting both myself and humankind free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so lovely to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life – who would have it any other way? I am this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being.
RESPONDENT: In my enthusiasm about the last interaction between you and Konrad I may have offended you or Konrad in your feeling of privacy. I was so interested that I wanted everybody to read it (that’s why I sent it to the mailing list a few minutes ago). I thought it would be alright, but I’m doubting myself now, because after all it is a private discussion. If I have behaved badly I hope you’ll tell me so. RICHARD: Please feel free to send anything at all that I write to whomsoever you wish. I never write anything that is not for public consumption.
RESPONDENT: To my delight I have received an answer from you. Not to worry about guru-ship, I will just try to ‘read’ you. Interesting to read your account of the ‘dirty’ war. But aren’t all wars dirty? I think even signs of stupidity. I notice that my writing is becoming extensive and I feel a need to apologise, though I don’t quit understand why. Ah, it is the image that you wouldn’t be interested in my private motivations and thoughts. Never mind, will see what you write about, next time. May I share some personal facts? I don’t remember telling you of my perception that I was the product of my parental background. It hurt, because I saw it strictly as a matter of cause and effect. Then I wanted to be truly free, but wasn’t. I was 15 years old and I thought I had to find someone wise who’d help me. That and the sex drive literally kept me alive! I was badly deprived. I thought that the only proof of such a wise man would be: the ability to change, whatever the circumstances or idea’s. I have seen some strange people and Konrad is one of them. He is the only man I’ve known and interacted with in real life that has shown continuing promise. Since my definition is very strict I’ll never know for sure (ha-ha). Konrad is the one who has shown me ways to under-‘stand’ truth. Meditating is one of those ways. I have tried very hard to pin him down too his pivot, but alas. The fact of the matter is that he nor you can tell me how to be ‘absolutely’ free and creative. But I am delighted by what you write! Your apperception of ‘your’ infinity and your description of (eh ...) the blessed feeling of just being here, takes me into the relaxation I have come to feel more and more often lately. It is, among other insights you typed down, a concept that stands to reason without presenting the ever so diminishing finality of concluding. If you see what I mean. I had been experimenting, without realising it, with the fascination of the moment. In fact in some way it has been with me for many years now. But the intensity grows. The clogging intentions I was talking about are hardly problems at all, since meditation effectively helps bear without restraint the tensions and fears they give rise to. The real matter for me is just being. I have distilled the question ‘what am I’ too: What Image? Meaning to look for the controlling thought, the ‘I’ in the moment. The reason for this is that my life has taken a turn of 180 degrees. I have understood the fact that I am asocial in my life’s intent and a rational becoming instead of an emotionalist person. Pop music (my trade) has little space for people like me. So I decided to become a computer programmer for the intensity of it’s abstractions and growth possibilities and because it is a growing market with an understanding of and appreciation for: the rational. ‘I’ will feel much better there! But this morning I woke up feeling nothing but the interesting idea of helping people without pre-conceived value exchange. It stems from some interactions in which thankful friends were saying I should become a therapist. But I only showed them ability in explaining insights of others and myself thus giving a new view too their actual problems or life. The relief and stimulation they were feeling felt gratifying to me. It is throwing me on balance. Funny, don’t I think? It seems to be a way of making a difference, maybe even being wanted, but not NEEDED anymore! It has freedom. It takes a very conscious (nearly) apperceptive approach to really reach into other people, even if ‘the door is open’. So it is also a challenge, because there is always the ‘wanting to be someone special – ‘I’’ on the lure. So again I get to the same problem for myself. What of ‘me’ when I want to not pre-conceive someone in the interaction the other human being or me is seeking out to have? I know Konrad never asks people to give money if he helps them. They just ask if they can sometimes and only give if they have something to offer. But it is easy for him, because he can rid himself of every ‘I’ every moment of his existence.
RESPONDENT: You seem to have lost all interest. Why? Maybe my last mail was too personal? RICHARD: No, nothing is too personal for me ... to find out about one’s very existence is an extremely personal thing. One must plunge deep into the depths of one’s being and unearth all the dross that lies there. Mostly people are too polite to enquire into another ... although that is usually because of the perceived fear that such an inquiry may trigger the demons off in them. Why have I not written? I had nothing further to say at that point in time ... your last E-Mail was self-explanatory and required no obvious answer that I could see. I had sent you a long letter with much information in it about how I experience life which, in the main, people find needs some considerable time to digest and understand somewhat more fully. Mostly people do not grasp what I am getting at for some months, for I am talking about a condition that lies beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: I once had a PCE in which I realised people really weren’t connected to me, but now for ME not to be connected to me ... ..(ha-ha, life is funny)! Sometimes my body feels bad, there seems to be a problem inside my anti-sickness system (what is that system of strange agents counterattack called?) it creates some small lumps on some muscles. I feel a fear of dying because of it, but the doctor tells me not to worry. This brings me to a point that may interest you. When I study, using meditation as an integration tool, abstract thinking increases the intensity of awareness to such an extent that oftentimes it feels like I can willingly concentrate harder a bit like pressing the fingers of my hand into the fist harder. Normally I can’t. Since your apperception of the ‘H-condition’ came, as I understand, in a circumstance of great intensity I happen to think that for a human being to see the ‘I’ there must be an intense NEED for it. An all-consuming need. But of course ... . ‘the boots and all’, I see. For the attention to be undivided and for the actual insight intensity is needed. The two of you are funny. Intent = growing consciousness. You don’t seem much different to me. Though you stand for different approaches. I very much enjoy and appreciate your views. RICHARD: It is this ‘me’ that disappears, then what I am – not as an identity – is this flesh and blood body only being apperceptively aware ... the eyes seeing of their own accord instead of an ‘I’ inside the head looking out through the eyes as if from within a room looking out the windows to the world outside. That is all there is operating after the demise of the identity in toto. Then there is no ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds; no ‘me’ to connect with any ‘me’ on the ‘inside’ or any other ‘me’s on the ‘outside’. Then one is here in this fairy tale-like actual world. Here is life as-it-is. Here one is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this actual world. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, has come to its full flowering in a human being. One is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. Ingenuousness is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence.
RICHARD: Mostly people do not grasp what I am getting at for some months, for I am talking about a condition that lies beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: It really worries me that you are introducing a subtle form of authority here. If you are an authority on something that lies beyond enlightenment I have to believe you at your word. You told me what you think of that and I agree, mostly. RICHARD: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power. (The power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I ask no one to ‘believe me at my word’ ... that would be silly, for the most that the other could attain would be to live out that belief and not the actuality. It just would not work. I am merely pointing out to anyone who is interested in life, the universe and what it is to be a human being that an actual freedom exists of its own accord and that I arrived here via an altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment. My experience was that it lay beyond enlightenment, given that for enlightenment to happen one’s ego died ... and for an actual freedom to occur one’s soul had to expire in a like manner. It is a description of how I did it ... another may find a more direct route that by-passes enlightenment altogether. I would rather that someone does, as I went through some considerable mental trauma and experiential angst to ‘arrive’ ... which I would not wish upon anyone at all. RESPONDENT: If enlightenment can be discarded altogether than actuality is the main thing. But that implies that I should try to grasp beyond something I haven’t even experienced! So again I need a guru to tell me where to go? RICHARD: Not at all ... I am a fellow human being that is reporting to anyone who is at all interested that something far better than any altered state of consciousness exists here in this actual world ... here on earth. Spiritual enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. Nowadays I know, experientially, why enlightenment does not deliver the goods ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is. As everyone I have spoken with at depth about this in the last eighteen years has eventually remembered at least one pure consciousness experience (PCE), that is virtually identical to an actual freedom, then I find that it is universal to the human experience. When remembered, the PCE tells one ‘where to go’ ... not some super-guru! We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. RESPONDENT: Since I meditate and sometimes experience actually what my reality is, be it for a brief moment, I am inclined to disregard those experiences altogether, for they are not beyond any enlightenment. RICHARD: No, indeed not, for meditation can produce only versions of reality – not actuality – and as everyday reality is a grim and glum business, one strives to attain to a loving and compassionate Greater Reality in order to ameliorate one’s situation. It is all due to the intuitive faculties – powered by passionate thought – that activates those psychic adumbrations so beloved of the metaphysical fraternity. The mind can be a fertile breeding-ground for hallucinations, for emotional and passionate thought begets the esoteric world, the suprasensory domain of apparitions and shadows. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is indeed a productive spawning-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. One can easily become bewitched by the bizarre beings that populate the Supernatural Realms; one becomes beguiled and enchanted by intuition’s covenant with clairvoyant states of extrasensory perception. The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via prescient means can only ever be visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. And it all has to do with the persistence of identity. So, instead of meditation, what about apperception? The Oxford dictionary defines apperception as being ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. It is where ‘I’, the identity, cease to function as a perceiver and perception happens of itself. This PCE is a remarkably obvious peak experience wherein everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’ have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent. Apperception is a pure awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a bare awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ are extirpated. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity forever seeking union. With apperception, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: 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. Any identity whatsoever is a delusion. Without ‘me’, the immediate is the ultimate and the absolute is the relative ... here on earth and now in time. RESPONDENT: I hope you see the mistake if you are making one, because claiming authority is ‘not harmless’. I am only shortly beginning to understand that more fully. RICHARD: This is because those otherwise intelligent ‘Self-Realised Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either The Truth or The Absolute. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. It is possible to live in this modern era, freed from out-dated philosophy and psychiatry, challenging every spiritual and metaphysical tenet and surpassing any of the altered states of consciousness. 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: One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. RESPONDENT: Seems nice, but alas, my head keeps spinning. Will contact you on this when head makes full stop. RICHARD: Ask yourself this, each moment again: How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now ... and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if you miss it this time around, hey presto ... you have another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.
RESPONDENT: Your response has not resolved my feeling of uneasiness with your authority. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: Though your arguments sound plausible there is no relaxation within me on this point. RICHARD: Again: Why? RESPONDENT: I also recognize the difference between expertise and authority. RICHARD: If you do, then why do you still have difficulty with my writing? RESPONDENT: And I fully understand the difference between realisation as a process of change (actuality) and concluding as a process of reality. RICHARD: Actual freedom is not a process of change ... it is the end of the search. Nothing more needs to be done or discovered ... it is a joy and a delight to be alive, living here at this moment in time and this place in space. I have arrived ... this is complete. RESPONDENT: My point is that no-one can be an authority on the inner. RICHARD: Why not? RESPONDENT: To state that you are makes ‘actual’ interaction impossible. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: I thus miss openness in you. RICHARD: I am not open to any religiosity or spirituality whatsoever. I lived the metaphysical Reality for eleven years and found it wanting. I went beyond enlightenment into an actual freedom that satisfies every single thing that humankind has been yearning for over millennia. Why would I remain open to something that just does not deliver the goods? Why would I be open to something I have lived and seen through and found to be false? Are you still open to Sinterklaas being real, for example? RESPONDENT: For example: You do not acknowledge meditation. RICHARD: No indeed I do not. Why would I? Nor do I countenance prayer. Nor self-flagellation. Nor fasting. Nor chanting a mantra. Nor ... many, many things. RESPONDENT: As I was saying before: ‘sometimes I realise my actual reality’. RICHARD: If you did, in fact, experience the actuality of this moment in time and this place in space, you would not be objecting to what I write. So, obviously your ‘actual reality’ is not the same thing that I talk about. As ‘reality’ is a belief system, it can never, ever be actual. Editorial note: there is no such thing as ‘actual reality’ in the sensate world]. RESPONDENT: Don’t you see, at such a moment every intent has gone. That’s because an attachment is dissolved. That is the functioning of meditation in actual perception. RICHARD: But there are thousands of attachments to dissolve ... who is busy being attached? Dissolve ‘him’ and you are done with having to meditate and dissolve an attachment again and again in what you call ‘actual perception’ . Normal perception is an illusion and metaphysical perception is a delusion. Neither is actual. Just by putting the word ‘actual’ in front of your normal metaphysical terminology does not, all of a sudden, change it into what I am talking about. I wrote about ‘apperception’, not ‘actual perception’ . When I wrote about apperception, I made it clear that the perceiver disappears ... not some thing that ‘he’ is attached to. RESPONDENT: Anyone is able to check that, though as long as it hasn’t happened one shouldn’t take my word for it. I can only speak from my own experience. RICHARD: Yet when I speak from my experience you have feelings of ‘uneasiness’ with my expertise in this area. Why? RESPONDENT: Through having this experience I haven’t become an authority, because it cannot be checked directly by the mind! RICHARD: The only proof worth anything is the living of it ... an experiential answer is far superior to an intellectual answer any day. However, my writing has been ‘checked directly’ by numerous people using their mind with no problems at all. One such person has written about his experience of understanding me ... if you are at all interested you may like to read what he has to say. You will find it on ‘The Actual Freedom Web Page’ under ‘Peter’s Journal’. RESPONDENT: Oh, the mind is so clever. RICHARD: The mind is the most marvellous tool possible ... it can get you out of the mess that is the Human Condition with remarkable alacrity. It is the metaphysical people who poo-poo the mind so much ... they want you to ‘get into your heart’. RESPONDENT: I wouldn’t wish to be an authority on any part of inner existence. RICHARD: Then you are destined to remain forever trapped within the Human Condition. RESPONDENT: In this respect your lasting question about experiencing now is consistent with that. RICHARD: Not so. By asking that lasting question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ one can actually be here now as this body only ... bereft of any pernicious and persistent ‘I’. Then one no longer needs to ask that question ... one has arrived. It is all over and it is an obvious joy and delight to be alive. One is happy and harmless because with the demise of ‘I’ one is freed from sorrow and malice for the remainder of one’s life. RESPONDENT: If only you would acknowledge your pattern of authority ... ‘sigh’. RICHARD: I freely acknowledge – and delight in – my expertise on all matters pertaining to actual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. This expertise is drawn out of my personal experience on a day-to-day basis, for the last eighteen years ... twenty four hours a day. If you wish to maintain that this makes me an ‘authority’ as in the spiritual meaning of the word – guru – then you are entirely missing the point of all I have written. I have no power – or powers – at all, for I have not surrendered to any one or any thing whatsoever. There is no trace of humility in me at all. Power is what the ‘authority’ of a guru and/or master and/or sage and/or avatar and/or messiah and/or saint is all about. They have surrendered to an ‘Higher Authority’ and everyone else has to slot into the inevitable hierarchy which ensues. And so the battles rage. The hunger for power – or the subservience to it – is the curse of humanity.
RESPONDENT: I do not question insight in actuality and have checked if your pointers do any good to my life. They do, just like meditation does! RICHARD: If you say so ... but I sincerely doubt it. After all, you wrote to me recently: ‘If you are an authority on something that lies beyond enlightenment I have to believe you at your word ... that implies that I should try to grasp beyond something I haven’t even experienced!’ The obvious question I must ask is how my ‘pointers’ have done good in your life if you do not know what I am talking about? What insight are you referring to if you have not experienced actuality? RESPONDENT: Change doesn’t have to come from the ‘changeling’. Process is more fundamental and thought is it’s encapsulator. RICHARD: Process is fundamental to change, yes ... but when the change happens the process is over. It has done its job and one has arrived. The end of ‘me’ is the end of the process. One is then free from the Human Condition and life is an on-going delight and joy. RESPONDENT: If your actual freedom is not process it is structure. (I’m not saying structure is ‘I’.) RICHARD: How can you even begin to know whether it is a process or a structure – or something else – when you have never experienced it? (It was you who said that you have not experienced actual freedom). RESPONDENT: You are leaving all of us with little options. Either there is ‘Full Actuality’ or there is foolishness (reality). RICHARD: What ‘little options’ would you like to have? To remain trapped in sorrow and harbouring malice in
your bosom ... and have to apply their antidotes of compassion and love? To not be happy and harmless ... and have to constantly control yourself
from falling into animosity and anguish? To continue to experience fear and aggression ... and have to apply the correctives of trust and pacifism It is not only foolish ... it is downright dangerous. Do you realise that something like 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone? And this is with people applying the ‘Tried and True’ methods – like meditation – that you espouse as the cure-all for humanity’s ills. RESPONDENT: I am not the one maintaining your authority. You are, by surpassing meditation and enlightenment and telling people they should do so too. RICHARD: Are you suggesting I should just keep quiet about my discoveries? Not pass on what amounts to ground-breaking information to my fellow human beings? That it is okay for me to be happy and harmless, having eliminated sorrow and malice, but I had better keep it for myself? Would that not be both selfish and socially reprehensible ... and another 160,000,000 die next century? Are you for real in your objections? RESPONDENT: This introduces schism in my investigations. RICHARD: Good ... something might happen to jolt you out of your complacency. RESPONDENT: Not in my belief system. RICHARD: Why have a belief system in the first place? Etymologically, ‘believe’ means: ‘fervently hope to be true’. RESPONDENT: Nor in me. RICHARD: If you say so ... but I would question that deeply if I were you. RESPONDENT: Not even in my self. RICHARD: Then you must indeed be complacent. RESPONDENT: No, in my trying, be it not yet ‘complete’. RICHARD: So, whilst not yet complete, you are nevertheless an expert on where Richard is going wrong. RESPONDENT: Don’t you remember? You had your own jumpstarts. RICHARD: Yea verily, I remember it well ... I was eager and willing to explore and discover; to seek and to find; to learn and to find out. I did not presuppose to know more than I had actually experienced. RESPONDENT: By not acknowledging that others might find different ways to actuality you create schism. RICHARD: In my second-most recent post to you I wrote:
I consider that this passage indicates that I am indeed willing to ‘acknowledge that others might find different ways to actuality’ ... don’t you? Or is it that you do not read what I write? RESPONDENT: Maybe even superiority feelings. This is how arrogance stems from authority. RICHARD: As actual freedom easily surpasses any altered state of consciousness, I do not have to feel superior ... for I am superior. Thus there is no need for anything so pathetic as arrogance ... or its petty antidote modesty. Also, to forestall your next objection, as I do not suffer from pride, I do not have any need for humility. Thus the marked absence of hubris in any way, shape or form makes actual freedom is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: I think I see you are not investigating anymore. RICHARD: I know that I am not. As there is nothing left to investigate ... why would I? I have arrived; the mystery is solved; the process is complete. Here is peace and harmony; here is purity and perfection. Since you know more about where I am going wrong than I do, what would you suggest I investigate? RESPONDENT: Though your pointers are correct the surrounding tissue of authority produces follower ship. RICHARD: What is your solution then, to this dilemma of yours? Should I stop writing? Burn all my books and sit in silence? Watch my fellow human beings suffer needlessly and do nothing about it? Or perhaps you could examine dependency. RESPONDENT: What the hell is this structure that your authority stems from Richard? RICHARD: My expertise stems from success. RESPONDENT: Please investigate. RICHARD: I have already investigated ... I have already found out why belief, hope, trust, faith and certitude are an abomination and a blight on humankind, for example. Owing allegiance to no one, I am free to enjoy myself thoroughly as I explain the vastness of actual freedom to whomsoever is genuinely interested. Thus far I have written over 350,000 words on the subject ... and still going strong. Perhaps you could investigate why you are following the ‘Tried and True’ path that creates perdition on earth instead of peace-on-earth? The current world situation is a direct result of following the ‘Wisdom of the Ages’. Methinks you are defending the indefensible.
RICHARD: As Konrad put your name in the CC of his latest E-Mail to me, I wish to advise that a response has been
uploaded to the following URL: www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard under the title: ‘A Request from Konrad Swart
Number Eleven’. RESPONDENT: Don’t bother me with your serenity. I have lost my appetite for it since you suddenly stopped answering my mail. You don’t have the will to make things clearer in our discussions. There is simply No-Body there. This actualises itself onto my mails but it does no more than that. I have seen the functioning of that Actualism in my own No-Body-ness. And have gone on living. RICHARD: If I may point out ... it was you who stopped corresponding. I sent my reply to your last E-Mail to me five months ago. I never received any reply from you, so I assumed that you had lost interest and so I did not send you anything more. Please find enclosed a copy of that response. Also, I did not realise that I had not written enough to make things clear. Please find enclosed some dialogues between Konrad and myself ... maybe these will throw some light onto the matter for you.
RESPONDENT: I see you are giving me an opportunity to study your discussion with Konrad. Thank you for that. As actualism itself cannot or may not contain any – thing, I probably have nothing to talk about with you. RICHARD: I am somewhat nonplussed that you can write that actualism cannot or may not contain ‘any – thing’ ... why the use of the word ‘thing’ ? The word ‘thing’ refers to material objects ... physical, concrete and tangible things. It is the spirituality which meditation brings that states that you are not the body and that the primal substance is formless ... that is not ‘any – thing’. I must ask: Do you know what actualism actually is? It is all about being here now – as this flesh and blood body – here on earth as an ultimate experience. To be able to be the personified perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe ... in this life-time and as this body. I ask this because you made a similar comment in your last E-Mail. Vis.:
Do you see the words ‘no – body’? Whereas I state firmly and clearly that I am this flesh and blood body ... and nothing else. No ‘I’ or ‘Self’ ... no spiritual entity whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Therefore let me share something personal. Lately I have, sometimes, come to realization of the interaction between I and Self within consciousness. I have experienced the completion of: that which holds the energy WITH that which defines the connections within the context. RICHARD: Yes, you see, both ‘I’ and ‘Self’ are non-material ... they are psychological and psychic entities and, as such, are not actual. They are not ‘any-thing’. This is why I wonder if you understand what is going on between Konrad and myself. RESPONDENT: The result is a spontaneous growth of energy and extreme silence. This kind of completeness is the only kind of life that I know of which holds as well as frees the troubled mind. It is actual completeness. I think that this is the point Konrad is making. RICHARD: Well, it is not ‘actual completeness’ in Konrad ... as the dialogues I sent to you will show clearly ... if you take the time to read them. He acknowledges that he feels insulted and can then become infuriated. He then has to control himself with emotion-backed principles so as to not act in a socially reprehensible manner. If this kind of behaviour is what you call ‘actual completeness’ then so be it. RESPONDENT: This is ALSO a possibility within our conscious efforts to free ourselves from the Human Condition. RICHARD: Aye ... millions of people have gone down that well-trodden path. It is the ‘Wisdom of the Ages’ ... the ‘Tried and True’. Now this ‘Ancient Wisdom’ is actually the ‘Tried and Failed’, for where is the Peace On Earth that is promised? RESPONDENT: It would be nice if you could understand the way your Explicit-Actualism and his Implicit-Principileism differ. Maybe then your talks could finally have some constructive form. RICHARD: I understand only too well the way they differ ... it is Konrad who is confusing the issue. In some E-Mails he tells me that he has realised the same things as me ... and in the next E-Mail tells me that I do not understand ... then in the next he tells me I have yet to realise it ... then in the next he tells me that it is all wrong and that he has changed his mind. He keeps on re-arranging and re-defining ad infinitum. I recommend that you read the dialogues with Konrad on my Web page (www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard)
under ‘A Request from Konrad Swart’
RESPONDENT: Don’t bother me with your serenity. I have lost my appetite for it since you suddenly stopped answering my mail. RICHARD: If I may point out ... it was you who stopped corresponding. I sent my reply to your last E-Mail to me five months ago. I never received any reply from you, so I assumed that you had lost interest and so I did not send you anything more. Please find enclosed a copy of that response. RESPONDENT: I have read your answer to that last mail. I didn’t receive it, I’m sure of it. This mail you have sent me reads like a page out of a book about the misfortunes of misguided people like ‘me’. First of all I do not defend any-body. Nor do I defend any-thing. RICHARD: I never said that you did ... I asked you why you said that there is ‘No – Body’ there in reference to me. I am this body. RESPONDENT: And I didn’t say ‘tried and true’, those are your words. RICHARD: I never said that you did ... they are indeed my words. RESPONDENT: Whatever Konrad may seem to you, he does not stand and has never stood for the tried and true in cultural context. If anything, he stands for change and understanding. At least for the 10 years that I have known him now. RICHARD: Then perhaps you can tell me something new that he has discovered ... because he will not tell me himself. All he has come out with are rather garbled re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’. RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, you are beginning to sound just like any other guru. Telling me what I cannot have seen (actuality in progress). RICHARD: Not so ... you told me that you ‘did not know of an actual freedom’ because you ‘had not experienced it’ and therefore I was ‘setting myself up to be a guru’ ... but you then said that ‘progress was essential in actuality’. I said that ‘if you had not experienced it then you could not know it’ ... I can only go by what you tell me. RESPONDENT: And should not do (try the true). RICHARD: I never told you that you should not do anything ... I said that what you were doing was the ‘Tried And True’ and that the ‘Tried and True’ was the ‘Tried and Failed’. If you want to repeat the mistakes of the past then that is your business. RESPONDENT: And what I am (complacent). RICHARD: Well, you are ... when it comes to promoting the living of the ‘Tried and True’ solution as if it were something new. RESPONDENT: And what I am lacking (understanding). RICHARD: I never told you that ... you wrote and told me that you did not understand. RESPONDENT: But at least you acknowledge that you do not investigate any more. From your point of view to investigate what could be unknown is like breaking a perfect circle. RICHARD: Wrong ... for me there is nothing that ‘could be unknown’ at all. I know the unknown each moment again. That is why I have no need to investigate ... it is possible to reach perfection, you know. RESPONDENT: When one IS perfect-ness one shouldn’t disturb it, it’s such a relief. Empty-ness is perfect. Why disturb empty-ness? RICHARD: I have no idea who you are talking about here ... certainly not me. I have never, ever spoken of ‘empty-ness’ . As for ‘perfect-ness’, perfection cannot be disturbed anyway, because it is perfect. If it could be disturbed ... it is not perfection. RESPONDENT: From the rest of your writing I can only detect that actual completeness in the process of consciousness is not something you have ever experienced consciously. It can be compared to beauty, it can also be called integration in full awareness. I have reached an haven in heaven (thanks to you) and have decided to go back to earth to find out if heaven can also be found in the Beauty of Music or the Completeness of Logic or even in the Acceptance of Arrogance. There are some things wonderful beyond actuality. But it sure as Hell isn’t the ‘tried and true’. RICHARD: For a start, an ‘actual completeness’ in a ‘process of consciousness’ is a contradiction in terms. A process is never complete ... if it was it would no longer be a process. Secondly, I have experienced beauty; I have experienced integration; I have experienced full awareness and I lived in heaven – and on earth into the bargain – for eleven years. Thirdly, ‘Beauty of Music’ and ‘Completeness of Logic’ and ‘Acceptance of Arrogance’ is nothing but fancy words. Fourthly, anything beyond actuality can only be fantasy. And lastly, it is guaranteed to be some re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’ dressed up to look different. RESPONDENT: I am also not interested in standing frozen in awe of ‘me or my actuality’. RICHARD: Who asked you to stand anywhere doing anything remotely like ‘standing in awe’, eh? Not me. RESPONDENT: That would constitute a conclusion about the Actual Process. Which even in you ‘is’ a process (realizing that you are here-now). RICHARD: Not so ... an apperceptive awareness of being here now is not a ‘realisation’ ... it is a direct experience of actuality. RESPONDENT: Process is fundamental in any-thing. And thought is it’s encapsulator. RICHARD: Process is only fundamental to a ‘being’ who exists over time ... there is no process here. And if ‘thought is its encapsulator’ , as you say, then that indicates the supremacy of the ego. RESPONDENT: At least the discussions between you and Konrad have shown the difference to me on a subject that I didn’t even know I could be confused about. And that is the difference between silence and beauty. One is perfect the other is perfectly complete. For this I thank both Konrad and you. RICHARD: Please, do not thank me ... because this is a classic example of a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’.
RESPONDENT: There seems to be something very wrong in my approach to our conversation. Let me explain drawing an analogy: Consider a sensate mirror. If the mirror would be able to experience the object it is reflecting it most probably would lose it’s ability to reflect. For to feel it would mean to touch it and thus using part of it’s reflective plain to do so. This would obscure the reflective capacity of the mirror. Now consider a second sensate mirror moving into life. This mirror would leave no reflection when reflecting the first. Though it might leave a few stripes on the plain for any mirroring over a distance would make the reflective mirror look smaller. Outside of the stripes the mirror would still show the surrounding world. Since light has to travel a certain time over distance, and thus loses intensity, the intensity of the perfect reflection would be smaller when the mirrors are further apart and stronger if the mirrors are closer to each other. In fact if the distance between both the mirrors would be extremely small nothing at all could enter their consciousness any more. There would be only sensing of reflective sensing and this would be the fullest recognition of both being and understanding possible for the two mirrors. Only ‘the body’ of the plains would be left to sense. Now if some reflective object would enter and stand between them, part of their reflective capacity would be obscured. Thus the mirrors would have to act to put an end to the sensation of not being able to perfectly reflect. The sensation of perfect reflection would be restored as swiftly as possible. But how? They couldn’t do it if they were made out of glass, now could they? But what if the mirrors didn’t realise they where not made of glass? What if they where actually flexible plains reflecting on each other? Then any ripple by an object on one reflective plain could be creatively wiped away to not obscure perfect reflection. They would momentarily need a process of interaction but could always just move closer and closer to each other until the ripple on the one plain would interact with the other plain and both ripples thus would change until they would coincide exactly with each other. From this point on all would be normal again and the sensation of perfect reflection would again be dominant in their lives with only one body remaining. Be it a rippling one. Actually this rippling state would be preferable because movement can withstand intervention much better than hardness. It would leave room for reflection onto the outside world. But bliss would be basic. This state can be experienced and I have and can. It is called actuality by you. RICHARD: It is not called ‘actuality by me’ at all ... this physical world of people, things and events is actuality. What you wrote above is just your attempt to make out that you know what I am talking about. And you do not, for you are talking of the inner world of the psyche ... which is where the identity lives (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul). RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, you are beginning to sound just like any other guru. Telling me what I cannot have seen (actuality in progress). RICHARD: Not so ... you told me that you ‘did not know of an actual freedom’ because you ‘had not experienced it’ and therefore I was ‘setting myself up to be a guru’ ... but that ‘progress was essential in actuality’. I said that if you had not experienced it then you could not know it ... I can only go by what you tell me. RESPONDENT: Of course I didn’t. RICHARD: Oh, yes you did ... let me copy and paste for your edification. Vis.:
So ... do you see it there? You did say: ‘I should try to grasp beyond something I haven’t even experienced!’ did you not? * RESPONDENT: You yourself should know that freedom means: to be free to ... as in feeling an ability where first there wasn’t one. Freedom only has meaning if you have the need to do something. You totally missed my point. Actuality is outside of freedom. RICHARD: Where you say ‘actuality is outside of freedom’ you reveal that this physical existence is not ‘it’ for you. You equate freedom with something metaphysical ... hence your use of ‘No – Body’. As I have said, it is but a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’. RESPONDENT: From the rest of your writing I can only detect that actual completeness in the process of consciousness is not something you have ever experienced consciously. It can be compared to beauty, it can also be called integration in full awareness. I have reached an haven in heaven (thanks to you) and have decided to go back to earth to find out if heaven can also be found in the Beauty of Music or the Completeness of Logic or even in the Acceptance of Arrogance. There are some things wonderful beyond actuality. But it sure as Hell isn’t the ‘tried and true’. RICHARD: For a start, an ‘actual completeness’ in a ‘process of consciousness’ is a contradiction in terms. A process is never complete ... if it was it would no longer be a process. Secondly, I have experienced beauty; I have experienced integration; I have experienced full awareness and I lived in heaven – and on earth into the bargain – for eleven years. Thirdly, ‘Beauty of Music’ and ‘Completeness of Logic’ and ‘Acceptance of Arrogance’ is nothing but fancy words. Fourthly, anything beyond actuality can only be fantasy. And lastly, it is guaranteed to be some re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’ dressed up to look different. RESPONDENT: This shows that you have not experienced completeness in any content-form. For consciousness is the process on which completeness is being built. Therefore it’s no contradiction. RICHARD: It is indeed a contradiction ... and you say so yourself: ‘consciousness is the process on which completeness is being built’ . Note well the word ‘being’ (as in not yet finished) ... which means no completeness. RESPONDENT: It’s just the way human sensation is organised. I know many people who have experienced beauty, but only very few people can make a distinction between the object that seems to generate the beauty and the actual completeness which defines the true origin of the particular happenstance of beauty manifestations in the body. RICHARD: The true origin of beauty is the affective response. Beauty is a feeling – as in an emotional or passionate feeling – and not a sensate feeling ... as in a physical sensation. Any ‘completeness’ feeling of beauty can only happen when the ‘I’ as ego dies ... which is what I lived for eleven years. When ‘me’ as soul (‘Me’ at the core of ‘Being’) also dies ... beauty dies with it. It was all affective ... and then you are living in the actual world of the senses. This – and only this – is actuality. * RESPONDENT: I am also not interested in standing frozen in awe of ‘me or my actuality’. RICHARD: Who asked you to stand anywhere doing anything remotely like ‘standing in awe’, eh? Not me. RESPONDENT: That would constitute a conclusion about the Actual Process. Which even in you ‘is’ a process (realising that you are here-now). RICHARD: Not so ... an apperceptive awareness of being here now is not a ‘realisation’ ... it is a direct experience of actuality. RESPONDENT: Process is fundamental in any-thing. And thought is it’s encapsulator. RICHARD: Process is only fundamental to a ‘being’ who exists over time ... there is no process here. And if thought is its encapsulator, as you say, then that indicates the supremacy of the ego. RESPONDENT: Look at your body, it is aging. Even actuality as you experience it is build upon a process. You need that process going on to be able to experience the here-now. RICHARD: Yesterday, although it was actual while it was happening, is not actual now. Tomorrow, although it will be actual when it happens, is not actual now. This body is only actual now. I am this body ... therefore I am only actual now. Thus, no process, because a process is a movement over time. It is ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul that create the illusion of change and becoming. I am always here and it is already now ... no process at all. This is an actual completeness ... not that complex metaphysics you detailed. * RESPONDENT: Let me share something personal. Lately I have, sometimes, come to realisation of the interaction between I and Self within consciousness. I have experienced the completion of: that which holds the energy WITH that which defines the connections within the context. The result is a spontaneous growth of energy and extreme silence. This kind of completeness is the only kind of life that I know of which holds as well as frees the troubled mind. It is actual completeness. I think that this is the point Konrad is making. RICHARD: Well, it is not actual completeness in Konrad ... as the dialogues I sent to you will show clearly ... if you take the time to read them. He acknowledges that he feels insulted and can then become infuriated. He then has to control himself with emotion-backed principles so as to not act in a socially reprehensible manner. If this kind of behaviour is what you call ‘actual completeness’ then so be it. You see, both ‘I’ and ‘Self’ are non-material ... they are psychological and psychic entities and, as such, are not actual. They are not ‘any-thing’. This is why I wonder if you understand what is going on between Konrad and myself. RESPONDENT: It would be nice if you could understand the way your Explicit-actualism and his Implicit-Principileism differ. Maybe then your talks could finally have some constructive form. RICHARD: I understand only too well the way they differ ... it is Konrad who is confusing the issue. In some E-Mails he tells me that he has realised the same things as me ... and in the next E-Mail tells me that I do not understand ... then in the next he tells me I have yet to realise it ... then in the next he tells me that it is all wrong and that he has changed his mind. I recommend that you read the ‘Dialogues With Konrad’ and see for yourself just how contradictory and confused he is. He keeps on re-arranging and re-defining ad infinitum. RESPONDENT: Whatever Konrad may seem to you, he does not stand and has never stood for the tried and true in cultural context. If anything, he stands for change and understanding. At least for the 10 years that I have known him now. RICHARD: Then perhaps you can tell me something new that he has discovered ... because he will not tell me himself. All he has come out with are rather garbled re-hashes of the ‘Tried and True’. RESPONDENT: Maybe you wouldn’t appreciate the value of the information? RICHARD: Here you are behaving just like Konrad ... he just will not produce the evidence. I have to ask him again and again to copy and paste the facts to back up his words and he will not. You are doing the same here ... and you try to be really smart by saying that I would not ‘appreciate’ their ‘value’ in order to get out of sending this information that you say is not a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’. You are both full of bombast and blather. Have you read the dialogues with Konrad? If so you would be familiar with this amazingly similar excuse to yours above. Vis.:
* RESPONDENT: There are some things wonderful beyond actuality! RICHARD: The only thing ‘beyond actuality’ is fantasy. This physical universe – being infinite in space and eternal in time – is all there is ... and it is what is wonderful. You see, you give yourself away with that statement ... this is what the Sages and Gurus have been saying for centuries. They say that there is something beyond time and space ... and that when you die you cast off your body like a suit of old clothes and go into the ‘Greater Beyond’. And here is you saying that there is something beyond actuality ... something beyond this physical universe. This is why I have been saying that you are coming out with a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’. Do you see it now?
RESPONDENT: There seems to be something very wrong in my approach to our conversation. <SNIP> But bliss would be basic. This state can be experienced and I have and can. It is called actuality by you. RICHARD: It is not called actuality by me at all ... this physical world of people, things and events is actuality. What you wrote above is just your attempt to make out that you know what I am talking about. And you do not, for you are talking of the inner world of the psyche ... which is where the identity lives. (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul). RESPONDENT: If you look closely at the argument of the sensate reflecting mirrors you will see that I do not talk of identity, but of an opposite. RICHARD: You do indicate an identity, however. You say ‘the sensation of perfect reflection would again be dominant in their lives with only one body remaining’ which is another way of saying ‘oneness’ ... which is still an identity identifying with the outer. For you do go on to say ‘It would leave room for reflection onto the outside world’ ... and in actuality there is no ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. It is the identity – the ‘self’ – which creates the illusion of an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ world. Faced with this dichotomy, the ‘self’ merges with everything ... which is indicated by you where you say ‘this rippling state would be preferable because movement can withstand intervention much better than hardness’. This is what is known in the jargon as ‘going with the flow’ ... which is a direct take from Taoism (‘wu wei’). And the clincher is you saying ‘but bliss would be basic’ ... bliss is indicative of the altered state of consciousness known as enlightenment. There is no bliss in actuality because bliss is an affective state of being ... and ‘being’ is identity. RESPONDENT: There is nothing in this world other than the actual in which our body is one of the structures and so is the mind. RICHARD: Why do you separate the body and the mind? Is it not because the mind is this abstract realm wherein ‘you’ as identity reside? And ‘you’ as identity – a non-material psychological entity – desire oneness with the outer. This is what you are saying – using different words – where you write ‘they would momentarily need a process of interaction but could always just move closer and closer to each other until the ripple on the one plain would interact with the other plain and both ripples thus would change until they would coincide exactly with each other’ . Do you see it? * RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, you are beginning to sound just like any other guru. Telling me what I cannot have seen (actuality in progress). RICHARD: Not so ... you told me that you ‘did not know of an actual freedom’ because you ‘had not experienced it’ and therefore I was ‘setting myself up to be a guru’ ... but that ‘progress was essential in actuality’. I said that if you had not experienced it then you could not know it ... I can only go by what you tell me. RESPONDENT: Of course I didn’t. RICHARD: Oh, yes you did ... let me copy and paste for your edification. Vis.:
So ... do you see it there? You say: ‘I should try to grasp beyond something I haven’t even experienced!’ did you not? RESPONDENT: Here you produce a nice turnaround of facts. The discussion was about the ‘need to see beyond enlightenment’ which you proposed. Which I could not do from the point of view that even you had some enlightenment-process before actuality became clear to you. I found out that no understanding of ‘enlightenment’ as in ‘tried and true’ is needed for the experience of actuality. RICHARD: Yet you do not seem to understand what I mean by my use of the word ‘actuality’ ... for I do not mean the every-day ‘reality’ as experienced by 5.8 billion human beings. The enlightened sages correctly state that this everyday reality is an illusion ... caused by the presence of a ‘self’ as in ‘I’ as ego. When the ‘I’ as ego dies, they say, a greater reality manifests and everyday reality disappears ... the illusion is dispelled. Now this ‘greater reality’ is a realm beyond time and space ... it is prior to existence itself and endlessly creates and sustains existence. This, they say, is ‘Consciousness’ or ‘The Ground Of Being’ or ‘The Tao’ or ‘Buddha-Nature’ or ‘God’ or some such other name. It is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’, they say, ‘Unborn’ and ‘Undying’ ... and they realise that this is who they really are. They say that ‘I am The Absolute’ or ‘I am God’ or ‘I am The Truth’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ and so on. This is still an identity ... and an identity living as a greater reality that exists somehow other than the physical universe. This identity is ‘me’ as soul ... a deeper identity at the core of ‘being’. When this identity – ‘me’ as soul – dies as did the ‘I’ as ego ... then an actual world becomes apparent. It is the physical actuality that is only here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space ... and nowhere or nowhen else. The 5.8 billion people cannot see actuality – and neither can the enlightened beings – because their very presence as a ‘being’ prevents this direct experience of actuality. Hence me saying that it lies beyond enlightenment ... because it is. * RESPONDENT: Originally it did produce schism. Now it doesn’t any more. For there is not any-thing to be found in ‘your’ phrase ‘beyond enlightenment’. For actually there can be no beyond. Please don’t misuse this point again. RICHARD: There is indeed something beyond enlightenment and I am not ‘misusing’ this point at all ... I am reporting to you from my experience that there is an actuality lying right under your nose, as it were, only for it to become apparent ‘you’ as ‘self’ – both your ‘I’ as ego and your ‘me’ as soul – must cease to exist. As you have not reported to me of any such a happening, then you do not know what you are talking about. And the fact that you say that ‘for actually there can be no beyond’ and yet in your previous two posts you say ‘there are some things wonderful beyond actuality ... but it sure as Hell isn’t the ‘tried and true’ and ‘there are some things wonderful beyond actuality!’ conveys that you are confused into the bargain. RESPONDENT: There are some things wonderful beyond actuality! RICHARD: The only thing ‘beyond actuality’ is fantasy. This physical universe – being infinite in space and eternal in time – is all there is ... and it is what is wonderful. You see, you give yourself away with that statement ... this is what the Sages and Gurus have been saying for centuries. They say that there is something beyond time and space ... and that when you die you cast off your body like a suit of old clothes and go into the ‘Greater Beyond’. And here is you saying that there is something ‘beyond actuality’ ... something beyond this physical universe. This is why I have been saying that you are coming out with a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’. Do you see it now? RESPONDENT: The television was beyond this actual world. Flying in aeroplanes was beyond this actual world. Internet mail was beyond this actual world. Abstract thinking made them possible. From your point of view you just use it when you find it. (Like Robinson used Friday at first). RICHARD: Not so ... I understand and appreciate the big part abstract thinking and higher mathematics play in making all this technological progress possible. Where on earth did you get this notion from that I deny abstract thinking? Konrad has formed this picture of me too, despite what I say to him ... obviously you have not bothered to read the dialogues that I sent to you or you would have known this by now. I learnt algebra and trigonometry at school ... I am not stupid, you know. RESPONDENT: The only thing you are denying thinking space ARE abstractions. Which are inner structures of which the form and completeness are not clear to you. You, on this point do not know what you are talking about. RICHARD: Methinks you will find that I do ... in abstract thought – like mathematics – an ideal perfection can be found. The entire Western philosophical tradition is founded upon this premise ... Plato’s ‘Ideal Form’ that exists prior to physical reality, for example. This abstract perfection – philosophically called the ‘Truth’ – can be found in beauty ... as in an elegant equation (‘elegant’ being the logicians favoured word for beauty). RESPONDENT: In you all outer creation has died out. RICHARD: This is just silly ... I draw, I paint, I write and so on. And there is no ‘inner’ creation unless there is an identity ‘in’ there. When the identity dies ... the ‘inner’ disappears. RESPONDENT: Although your reactions to my words could be perceived as a creative effort to wipe out the obscuring structure in me from the point of view of your inner blankness. Yes, in this respect you’re still creative. RICHARD: The ‘obscuring structure’ in you is an identity that desperately creating images of reflecting mirrors so that it can stay in existence ... only now as a ‘rippling state’ instead of ‘hardness’. * RESPONDENT: From the rest of your writing I can only detect that actual completeness in the process of consciousness is not something you have ever experienced consciously. It can be compared to beauty, it can also be called integration in full awareness. I have reached an haven in heaven (thanks to you) and have decided to go back to earth to find out if heaven can also be found in the Beauty of Music or the Completeness of Logic or even in the Acceptance of Arrogance. There are some things wonderful beyond actuality. But it sure as Hell isn’t the ‘tried and true’. RICHARD: For a start, an ‘actual completeness’ in a ‘process of consciousness’ is a contradiction in terms. A process is never complete ... if it was it would no longer be a process. Secondly, I have experienced beauty; I have experienced integration; I have experienced full awareness and I lived in heaven – and on earth into the bargain – for eleven years. Thirdly, ‘Beauty of Music’ and ‘Completeness of Logic’ and ‘Acceptance of Arrogance’ is nothing but fancy words. Fourthly, anything beyond actuality can only be fantasy. And lastly, it is guaranteed to be some re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’ dressed up to look different. RESPONDENT: This shows that you have not experienced completeness in any content-form. For consciousness is the process on which completeness is being built. Therefore it’s no contradiction. RICHARD: It is indeed a contradiction ... and you say so yourself: ‘consciousness is the process on which completeness is being built’. Note well the word ‘being’ (as in not yet finished) ... which means no completeness. RESPONDENT: It’s just the way human sensation is organised. I know many people who have experienced beauty, but only very few people can make a distinction between the object that seems to generate the beauty and the actual completeness which defines the true origin of the particular happenstance of beauty manifestations in the body. RICHARD: The true origin of beauty is the affective response. Beauty is a feeling – as in an emotional or passionate feeling – and not a sensate feeling ... as in a physical sensation. Any ‘completeness’ feeling of beauty can only happen when the ‘I’ as ego dies ... which is what I lived for eleven years. When ‘me’ as soul (‘Me’ at the core of ‘being’) also dies ... beauty dies with it. It was all affective ... and then you are living in the actual world of the senses. This – and only this – is actuality. RESPONDENT: Here a more complete understanding of beauty was defined, but I decided to omit it. The pointer above stated may suffice. RICHARD: No, it does not suffice at all ... you do need to answer if you want me to respond. * RESPONDENT: I am not interested in standing frozen in awe of ‘me or my actuality’. That would constitute a conclusion about the Actual Process. Which even in you ‘is’ a process (realising that you are here-now). RICHARD: Not so ... an apperceptive awareness of being here now is not a ‘realisation’... it is a direct experience of actuality. RESPONDENT: Process is fundamental in any-thing. And thought is it’s encapsulator. RICHARD: Process is only fundamental to a ‘being’ who exists over time ... there is no process here. And if thought is its encapsulator, as you say, then that indicates the supremacy of the ego. RESPONDENT: Look at your body, it is aging. Even actuality as you experience it is build upon a process. You need that process going on to be able to experience the here-now. RICHARD: Yesterday, although it was actual while it was happening, is not actual now. Tomorrow, although it will be actual when it happens, is not actual now. This body is only actual now. I am this body ... therefore I am only actual now. Thus, no process, because a process is a movement over time. It is ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul that create the illusion of change and becoming. I am always here and it is already now ... no process at all. This is an actual completeness ... not that complex metaphysics you detailed. RESPONDENT: Such a nice sentence. So logical in fact that nothing more needs to be said about it in logical terms. But it is not true (in worldly terms). RICHARD: It is not true in ‘real-world’ terms, no ... yet it is in actual world terms. Only this moment is actual ... and this moment has no duration. RESPONDENT: When you wrote this down you were interacting with your computer. This interaction is a process. Now IS process. RICHARD: If you continue to say that ‘now is process’ then you will continue telling me that you are totally unaware of the world of people, things and events as-it-is ... which is actuality. Please, do not confuse actuality with reality. RESPONDENT: You are still missing it, Richard. The mirrors think they are made out of glass, but not so. They are made out of interactions. Your nerves, your glands, your heart muscle pumping on and on ... it is all interaction Sensate, reflecting in counter-action to action. RICHARD: There is only interaction where there is separation. A ‘self’ – an ‘I’ as ego and a ‘me’ as soul – creates this separation by its very presence ... its ‘being’. RESPONDENT: Actually speaking there is one thing different about you and me. That’s that you do not understand abstract thinking the way I do. RICHARD: Methinks you will find that I understand abstract thinking quite well indeed ... and it makes you feel that the inner world – the abstract world – is primary. This is self-aggrandisement. RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, this makes our interaction very difficult. RICHARD: I am having no difficulty whatsoever in reading what you write and writing back to you. RESPONDENT: Maybe if you read the mirror story like it would describe consciousness you will see what I mean. RICHARD: I have read your mirror story five times ... twice more since this E-Mail came in. I do see what you mean ... and it has nothing to do with what I am talking about in regards actuality. RESPONDENT: To me it is the best non-abstract description of the interaction you are having with your sensations. RICHARD: I do not interact with ‘my’ sensations ... I am these sensations. There is no ‘me’ there inside this body to have sensations. RESPONDENT: Of which I produce some, NOW. RICHARD: Okay ... then enjoy them, because there is no ‘one’ here to have them happening to.
RETURN TO CORRESPONDENCE LIST ‘B’ INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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