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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 12
RESPONDENT: If ‘you’ are there assessing and evaluating, that is just thought evaluating its own content. RICHARD: There was no ‘me’; there was no assessing; there was no evaluating; there was no content to thought ... there was only love. For three years, by the calendar, there was only love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. Then love flew to India ... the rest is history. RESPONDENT: The confusion is that what is impersonal, i.e.- intelligence as direct perception and compassion, gets mistaken for something that I am or I was or I experienced. RICHARD: No ... there was no ‘I am or I was or I experienced’ at all. There was only love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. RESPONDENT No. 21: It would seem that if you had love, you would not give it up unless you found something wrong with it. RICHARD: Indeed ... this is a very perspicacious observation. RESPONDENT No. 21: What was it that was wrong with it? RICHARD: Just for starters ... it has its roots in hate (good exists only to combat evil). RESPONDENT: To have implies something known, experienced. RICHARD: There was no ‘to have’ at all. There was only love; there was nothing else but love; love was everything and everything was love; love was all and all was love; love was it and it was love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. RESPONDENT: People say they experience God or love or they want to have or know love. But what is known is of thought and memory, it is rooted in time, i.e.- the self. RICHARD: Hmm ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, using ‘thought and memory’, could readily recognise that which he variously called god, truth, that which is sacred, holy, the presence, the otherness and etcetera, each time again. For an example:
It does pay to read with both eyes open (rather than listen only to the ‘he who says he knows does not know’ style of rhetoric), eh? * RESPONDENT No. 21: ... so what do you think really happened? RICHARD: There was something beyond Love Agapé and its Divine Compassion (which was God, which was The Truth, which was the Ground Of Being) ... something beyond enlightenment which was of such a magnitude as to be unimaginable, inconceivable, incomprehensible and unbelievable. RESPONDENT No. 21: You are saying there was something beyond God which is to assume you experienced God, the infinite and found something more. RICHARD: There is that word ‘assume’ again. RESPONDENT No. 21: What could be beyond the infinite? RICHARD: The actual infinitude of eternal time, infinite space and perpetual matter, of course. RESPONDENT No. 21: The infinite is hard to get one up on. RICHARD: It is not hard ‘to get one up on’ a fantasy ‘infinite’ at all ... actuality is way beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and schemes. RESPONDENT: What is beyond description or imagination is the dimension in which you as experiencer are not there experiencing. RICHARD: Whilst there was only love – with its compassion pouring forth endlessly, unstoppable – it was also said that the ‘the dimension in which you as experiencer are not there experiencing’ (by whatever name that ‘dimension’ was called) was ‘beyond description or imagination’ .... then love flew to India and the rest is history. RESPONDENT: He who says he knows the non-dual, knows not. RICHARD: Well now ... that adage quickly falls apart upon closer examination RESPONDENT: To stop the division of self is to realize why the non-dual or truth can never be something known. RICHARD: Again ... the ‘non-dual or truth’ can indeed be known. However, such is the tenacity with which that pithy aphorism clings, to what is coyly called the beginner’s mind, that it becomes a known truth in its own right, as it were, and gets regurgitated almost thoughtlessly. So much for the depth of investigation, exploration and discovery, eh? RESPONDENT: What is known is by definition finite ... separate from the knower. RICHARD: And so all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and so go on forever and a day ... all because it is ‘by definition’ (as defined by the many and varied saints, sages and seers over the last 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history). Not to mention pre-history ... in the jargon it is called allowing the present to be run by the past.
RICHARD: As there are a lot of tangible (and you assert that ‘the tangible is the intangible’) wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on happening because this ‘one movement’ has within it ‘organisms that can invent virtual realities with imagined separate selves’ ... does it not render the very substance, of what the word ‘intelligence’ indicates, preposterous? Let alone what it says about that which the words ‘impersonal intelligence’ supposedly points to. RESPONDENT: I hear what you are saying. Why pray to a loving intelligent Father or God asking that ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ when an intelligent loving God would make it so without a lot of begging for it. RICHARD: Ahh ... but it is already being ‘done on earth as it is in Heaven’ (to use your analogy) is it not? RESPONDENT: The statement implies that what is in order can contain disorder. That is not so hard to fathom. RICHARD: Aye ... the enlightened ones really mean it when they say that the lotus has its roots in mud (aka ‘order’ has its roots in ‘disorder’). RESPONDENT: We can easily see how that occurs within an organism. The overall state may be healthy while in a localized area there is disease. The question is first, what is the nature of the disease ... RICHARD: The nature of ‘the disease’ is all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on ... which has to the same nature as the nature of the ‘intelligent Father or God’ , to use your analogy, else ‘the tangible’ is not ‘the intangible’ (contrary to what you assert). RESPONDENT: ... and secondly, what is it that brings about healing? RICHARD: Or, much better than mere ‘healing’ ... the eradication of the cause of the ‘disease’ . RESPONDENT: The two questions are directly connected are they not? RICHARD: Only for those who seek a band-aid solution ... the same as has been tried, and has failed, for 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. RESPONDENT: To see that the tangible is the intangible is to dissolve the false separation in time that is central to the localized disorder of self. RICHARD: So that it can become one with the ultimate ‘order’ (aka that which the ‘localised disorder’ arises from and dies to? Viz.:
What is ‘central to the localised disorder of self’ is contained in the question I have been asking all along: what is in the nature of ‘the ground or energetic source’ that occasions it to arise the way it currently is? It is not a frivolous question ... it is central to enabling peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Where there is separation in time there is fear and where there is fear there is conflict, violence, suffering. RICHARD: And all of that – all the ‘fear’ and all the ‘conflict, violence, suffering’ – arises from ‘the ground or energetic source’ ... what you are now calling ‘order’. You say so yourself:
As I have already remarked ... the enlightened ones really mean it when they say that the lotus has its roots in mud (aka good has its roots in evil). Why would you want to become one with that which produces all the ‘fear’ and all the ‘conflict, violence, suffering’ in the first place? Why?
RICHARD: As there are a lot of tangible (and you assert that ‘the tangible is the intangible’) wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on happening because this ‘one movement’ has within it ‘organisms that can invent virtual realities with imagined separate selves’ ... does it not render the very substance, of what the word ‘intelligence’ indicates, preposterous? Let alone what it says about that which the words ‘impersonal intelligence’ supposedly points to. RESPONDENT: I hear what you are saying. Why pray to a loving intelligent Father or God asking that ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ when an intelligent loving God would make it so without a lot of begging for it. RICHARD: Ahh ... but it is already being ‘done on earth as it is in Heaven’ (to use your analogy) is it not? RESPONDENT: The statement implies that what is in order can contain disorder. That is not so hard to fathom. RICHARD: Aye ... the enlightened ones really mean it when they say that the lotus has its roots in mud (aka ‘order’ has its roots in ‘disorder’). RESPONDENT: It is a fact that the lotus has its roots in mud but it doesn’t follow that order is rooted in disorder. Why do you consider fertile mud as disorder? RICHARD: In the analogy the ‘fertile mud’ is the gross ... out of which grows the sublime. In other words: a transcendence (rising above the base nature) which is the transformation or the transmutation of the base into the refined by any metaphor. For example: the phoenix arising out of the ashes. RESPONDENT: You are probably taking that statement out of context. RICHARD: Are you so sure? After all, the context is you saying that ‘disorder’ is within ‘order’
Let alone what it says about that which the words ‘impersonal intelligence’ supposedly points to. * RESPONDENT: We can easily see how that occurs within an organism. The overall state may be healthy while in a localized area there is disease. The question is first, what is the nature of the disease ... RICHARD: The nature of ‘the disease’ is all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on ... which has to the same nature as the nature of the ‘intelligent Father or God’, to use your analogy, else ‘the tangible’ is not ‘the intangible’ (contrary to what you assert). RESPONDENT: Wars and murders are but the symptoms of disease or disorder. RICHARD: A fair enough comment ... yet if the ‘symptoms of disease or disorder’ are within ‘order’, as you say, then the nature of the disease must lie in the very order which produces the ‘symptoms of disease or disorder’ in the first place. Which leads back to the obvious question I have been asking all along: What is in the nature of ‘order’ that occasions it to arise the way it currently is (as is epitomised by all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides)? RESPONDENT: To say the tangible is the intangible means that body and mind are one. RICHARD: When you say ‘mind’ I take it you are referring to what you otherwise call ‘the ground or energetic source’ ? Here is the context wherein I have been obtaining your ‘the tangible is the intangible’ assertion from all through this thread:
RESPONDENT: [To say the tangible is the intangible means that body and mind are one]. There is disorder in the perception and experience of self (the observer) as separate from the body. RICHARD: Seeing that for you ‘mind’ and ‘the ground or energetic source’ are but different words pointing to the same thing, then what you are saying here is that there is disorder in the perception and experience of ‘the ground or energetic source’ as separate from the body. Furthermore, as ‘the ground or energetic source’ is synonymic to god or truth then it means that there is disorder in the perception and experience of god or truth as separate from the body. Is this not but another way of saying one has not yet realised, or has forgotten, that you are god or truth ... which is none other than the traditional (the tried and failed) ‘Thou Art That’ solution? RESPONDENT: When that disorder stops, a different attention comes into being that is not of thought, not self-concerned. RICHARD: You must be referring to the attention of ‘the ground or energetic source’ (aka god or truth) ... as in ‘not my will but Thy Will, O Lord’? * RESPONDENT: ... and secondly, what is it that brings about healing? RICHARD: Or, much better than mere ‘healing’ ... the eradication of the cause of the ‘disease’. RESPONDENT: The two questions are directly connected are they not? RICHARD: Only for those who seek a band-aid solution ... the same as has been tried, and has failed, for 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. RESPONDENT: To realize the divisive nature of self as thought is to stop trying to impose a desired solution. RICHARD: As I never said ‘trying to impose ...’ (I was referring to the tried and failed traditional solution known as spiritual enlightenment) this is simply an irrelevant comment. RESPONDENT: If you are there trying to succeed, that is the confusion of ‘the me’, that is duality. RICHARD: As this is a conclusion drawn from an irrelevant premise I will make no further comment.
RICHARD: As there are a lot of tangible (and you assert that ‘the tangible is the intangible’) wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on happening because this ‘one movement’ has within it ‘organisms that can invent virtual realities with imagined separate selves’ ... does it not render the very substance, of what the word ‘intelligence’ indicates, preposterous? Let alone what it says about that which the words ‘impersonal intelligence’ supposedly points to. RESPONDENT: I hear what you are saying. Why pray to a loving intelligent Father or God asking that ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ when an intelligent loving God would make it so without a lot of begging for it. RICHARD: Ahh ... but it is already being ‘done on earth as it is in Heaven’ (to use your analogy) is it not? RESPONDENT: The statement implies that what is in order can contain disorder. That is not so hard to fathom. RICHARD: Aye ... the enlightened ones really mean it when they say that the lotus has its roots in mud (aka ‘order’ has its roots in ‘disorder’ ). RESPONDENT: It is a fact that the lotus has its roots in mud but it doesn’t follow that order is rooted in disorder. Why do you consider fertile mud as disorder? RICHARD: In the analogy the ‘fertile mud’ is the gross ... out of which grows the sublime. In other words: a transcendence (rising above the base nature) which is the transformation or the transmutation of the base into the refined by any metaphor. For example: the phoenix arising out of the ashes. RESPONDENT: I don’t see how that relates to the subject. RICHARD: Yet it is the very subject: I am saying that ‘Thy Will’ is already being ‘done on earth as it is in Heaven’ (to use your analogy) because ‘God’s Will’ (or ‘order’) has its roots in ‘fertile mud’ (or ‘disorder’). Which is why I said that the enlightened ones really mean it when they say that the lotus has its roots in mud (as in ‘order’ has its roots in ‘disorder’). If it were not for enlightened beings (by whatever description) there would be no gods or goddesses or truth or otherness or that which is sacred, holy ... and so on. Can you not even begin to countenance the notion that all gods and goddesses and/or grounds in being or energetic sources are a projection of the human psyche ... that they are the human condition writ large? RESPONDENT: You say that the infinite universe is experiencing itself as a flesh and blood body that is what we are. RICHARD: Yes, and the universe also experiences itself as cats and dogs and so on and so on ... but only the human animal has developed intelligence thus far (until space exploration shows otherwise). RESPONDENT: You might as well ask why does the infinite universe choose to experience itself as human suffering? RICHARD: I have already addressed this aspect earlier in this thread. Viz.:
Indeed, I have oft-times used the term ‘blind nature’: it is the survival of the species which is paramount – and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned – and not human salubrity per se. Only the human animal has the intelligence to actively observe, investigate, explore, uncover, discover and find freedom from the human condition ... no god or goddess and/or grounds in being or energetic sources can save the human race. Freedom from the human condition is a DIY (do it yourself) situation. * RESPONDENT: You are probably taking that statement out of context. RICHARD: Are you so sure? After all, the context is you saying that ‘disorder’ is within ‘order’ ... as if it makes sense to say that all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on can arise out of ‘order’. Does that not render the very substance, of what the word ‘intelligence’ indicates, preposterous? Let alone what it says about that which the words ‘impersonal intelligence’ supposedly points to. RESPONDENT: It makes what man imagines to be intelligence preposterous. RICHARD: How so? As it is human beings that are intelligent it is up to human beings to describe (not ‘imagine’) what intelligence is ... and intelligence is the faculty of understanding (as in intellect) which has the quickness or superiority of understanding (as in sagacity) and the capacity for the action or fact of understanding (as in knowledge and/or comprehension of something). No other animal can do this. RESPONDENT: We make it into something known ... an invention of thought. RICHARD: As intelligence is thought in action of course intelligence is ‘something known’ . Do you see how you have taken a human attribute and projected it onto a timeless, spaceless and formless ‘ground or energetic source’ ? Incidentally, the word ‘preposterous’ literally means back to front or inverted (the posterior to the fore). RESPONDENT: Belief in no God is the flip side of belief in God. RICHARD: Whereas not having a ‘belief in God’ in the first place obviates any need to have a ‘belief in no God’ . I have oft-times explained it this way: as a toddler I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy; as a child I disbelieved in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy; as an adult I know that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy have no existence outside of imagination. In a similar fashion as a toddler I believed in the Judaic/Christian God; as a child I disbelieved in the Judaic/Christian God ... and now, having been and gone beyond spiritual enlightenment I know that none of the 1200-odd gods and goddesses that the human race believes in have any existence outside of the human psyche. RESPONDENT: The image is not the actuality and the actuality is not limited to the field of the known. RICHARD: This may be a timely moment to remind you where I bought into this thread:
Your own words of wisdom to another in this exchange says it all (‘what can not be realized as fact in our daily life is either fantasy or belief’ ) ... which is why I keep on asking what is intelligent about ‘the ground or energetic source’ arising the way it currently is (as is epitomised by all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on). As I have said before ... it is your call, not mine. * RESPONDENT: We can easily see how that occurs within an organism. The overall state may be healthy while in a localized area there is disease. The question is first, what is the nature of the disease ... RICHARD: The nature of ‘the disease’ is all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on ... which has to the same nature as the nature of the ‘intelligent Father or God’, to use your analogy, else ‘the tangible’ is not ‘the intangible’ (contrary to what you assert). RESPONDENT: Wars and murders are but the symptoms of disease or disorder. RICHARD: A fair enough comment ... yet if the ‘symptoms of disease or disorder’ are within ‘order’, as you say, then the nature of the disease must lie in the very order which produces the ‘symptoms of disease or disorder’ in the first place. Which leads back to the obvious question I have been asking all along: What is in the nature of ‘order’ that occasions it to arise the way it currently is (as is epitomised by all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides)? RESPONDENT: What is not intelligent? RICHARD: An ‘order’ , or god, or truth that arises the way it currently is (as is epitomised by all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides) of course. RESPONDENT: What is not insightful? RICHARD: Any god or goddess, and/or ground in being or energetic source, that arises the way it currently is (as is epitomised by all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides) of course. RESPONDENT: We can see within ourselves what it means to be blind to what we do. RICHARD: You might be better off speaking for yourself as the identity that was parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body saw all that years ago ... and ‘self’-immolated, in toto, for the benefit of this body and that body and everybody. RESPONDENT: And we can see that a lack of feeling and sensitivity to what is occurring is part of that blindness. RICHARD: Whereas that identity saw that the totality of ‘feeling and sensitivity’ (the affective feeling and sensitivity) was who ‘he’ was ... ‘he’ was nothing else, at root, than the rudimentary animal self born out of the genetically-inherited instinctual animal passions. RESPONDENT: Where there is no sensitivity in the moral sense, genuine conscience if you will, there is no intelligence operating. RICHARD: There is no need for either a ‘moral sense’ or a ‘genuine conscience’ here in the purity of this pristine actual world ... here intelligence operates unimpeded by ‘me’ and ‘my’ pathetic morals and pitiful conscience. RESPONDENT: As K said, intelligence operating in man is really an integration of feeling and reason. RICHARD: Exactly ... and so all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides will go on forever and a day. In the jargon it is called being run by the past. * RESPONDENT: To say the tangible is the intangible means that body and mind are one. RICHARD: When you say ‘mind’ I take it you are referring to what you otherwise call ‘the ground or energetic source’ ? RESPONDENT: No when I say mind in this context, I mean brain activity, the individual psyche. RICHARD: Then you have (conveniently) shifted the context ... as if it be meaningful to do so and relevant to the issue and beneficial to a mutual discussion. Here is the context wherein I have been obtaining your ‘the tangible is the intangible’ assertion from all through this thread:
RESPONDENT: We must end the false split in ourselves if we are to apprehend the ground in being. RICHARD: I have no idea why you keep on telling me to do what has already been done: the ‘ground in being’ was apprehended in 1981 ... for eleven years the ‘false split’ was at an end. It did not and does not and never will bring about peace-on-earth. * RESPONDENT: ... and secondly, what is it that brings about healing? RICHARD: Or, much better than mere ‘healing’ ... the eradication of the cause of the ‘disease’. RESPONDENT: The two questions are directly connected are they not? RICHARD: Only for those who seek a band-aid solution ... the same as has been tried, and has failed, for 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. RESPONDENT: To realize the divisive nature of self as thought is to stop trying to impose a desired solution. RICHARD: As I never said ‘trying to impose ...’ (I was referring to the tried and failed traditional solution known as spiritual enlightenment) this is simply an irrelevant comment. RESPONDENT: As I don’t understand spiritual enlightenment as some kind of solution devised by the mind of man, this is simply an irrelevant comment. RICHARD: I was responding honestly to your query (‘the question is first, what is the nature of
the disease and secondly, what is it that brings about healing?’) and you picked-up on the word ‘tried’ Do you even want to ‘understand’ ... do events that happen in the world not give you pause to question the very basis (which is spiritual enlightenment itself) of all religion and religious thought, religious feeling and religious knowledge?
RICHARD: ... when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (born of the rudimentary animal self) became extinct all of its instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – simultaneously became extinct. In other words: ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: When there is a real physical threat to the organism, fear or aggression are natural responses. RICHARD: Yes, this is blind nature’s ‘software’ package ... genetically-inherited as a rough and ready start to life. RESPONDENT: This is only problematic when those responses are carried over into the psychological realm. RICHARD: I have no interest in living as animals do. RESPONDENT: Why not enjoy being an animal? RICHARD: Because I have the cognitive ability to observe, recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons. RESPONDENT: The mind (thought) fears the instincts because they can not be easily controlled. RICHARD: Yet, as fear is an instinct (an instinctual passion) itself, you are in effect saying that the instinctual passions are not easily controlled by the instinctual passions. It is all outside of the territory of thought. RESPONDENT: A desire to control or even eradicate strong aggressive and sexual instincts is motivated by fear. RICHARD: The ‘desire to control’ may very well be ... but the humane response to the human condition is to eliminate that which is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and so on. The motivation for this ‘self’-sacrifice is altruism RESPONDENT: This is common to many religious approaches for example. RICHARD: The ‘religious approaches’ , generally speaking, are motivated by both dread and awe (as are all spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical approaches). RESPONDENT: Effort of one part to control or eradicate other parts is the essence of psychological conflict. RICHARD: Indeed ... just as is the ‘effort of one part’ to seek union with, or the oneness of, or the holism as, all the ‘other parts’ (which is the religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical approach). But where all the parts realise they are one anyway, and ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body and that body and every body, an entirely different approach is called for. Simultaneous to the split being healed the whole goes out in a blaze of glory ... and the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent in all its pristine purity. * RICHARD: ... it is impossible for a brain sans identity in toto to be or ‘get angry’. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (born of the rudimentary animal self) became extinct all of its instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – simultaneously became extinct. In other words: ‘I’ am anger and anger is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: The absence of such a natural response to an actual physical threat indicates aberration because there is a disconnect. RICHARD: Not a ‘disconnect’, no ... it indicates the extinction of the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire): hence it is not an ‘aberration’ but rather a (long-awaited) mutation. RESPONDENT: That deprives the organism of the energy needed to meet a life-threatening challenge. RICHARD: My hands-on day-to-day experiencing, for many years now, shows your theory to be just that: a theory. There is all the energy of the universe, as it were, available as and when it is needed. RESPONDENT: Anger or fear in response to perceived danger to self-image is another matter. RICHARD: Surely you mean ‘ill-perceived’ danger? When there is no ‘self’ (thus no ‘self-image’ either) perception operates accurately, unimpeded by ‘me’ and ‘my’ pathetic desires and demands. RESPONDENT: Why do you consider instinctual passions unhealthy when they are an efficient energetic response to actual danger to the organism? RICHARD: Speaking personally, I served my time in a war zone in my late ‘teens and it was indelibly imprinted that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) have no redeeming features whatsoever when it comes to an intelligent interaction with one’s fellow human beings. * RESPONDENT: <snipped adversarial commentary> RICHARD: It is entirely permissible to snip without remarks ... if you received my response to your red-herrings as being ‘adversarial’ that is your business. Furthermore, I cannot comprehend what would motivate you to publicly reveal the workings of your mind by making an undemonstrated observation (snipping the alleged supporting evidence) such as you do above. It smacks of being a rather tawdry and theatrical gesture. RESPONDENT: But what is without division (genuine love) has no opposite. RICHARD: And therein lies the rub: as a generalisation there are at least four varieties of love – Love Storge (the instinctual maternal, paternal or familial love), Love Eros (the passionate sexual, amorous or romantic love), Love Philios (the affectionate friendship, societal or humanitarian love) and Love Agapé (the supernatural godly, divine or sacred love) – and they all have their dark side, their not-so-hidden under belly. Or, rather, not-so-hidden to those who dare to care ... and thus care to dare. RESPONDENT: No matter how you label and categorize, there is a dark side only when ‘the me’ enters the picture. RICHARD: No matter how sparingly you ‘label’ (as in ‘genuine love’) and how adroitly you ‘categorise’ (as in ‘what is without division’) there is a dark side anyway. When the observer (‘the me’) is the observed it has not left the picture at all ... it is the picture (it is in union, it is in oneness, it is holistic). In other words: Tat Tvam Asi (‘Thou Art That’).
RICHARD: ... when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (born of the rudimentary animal self) became extinct all of its instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – simultaneously became extinct. In other words: ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: When there is a real physical threat to the organism, fear or aggression are natural responses. RICHARD: Yes, this is blind nature’s ‘software’ package ... genetically-inherited as a rough and ready start to life. RESPONDENT: This is only problematic when those responses are carried over into the psychological realm. RICHARD: I have no interest in living as animals do. RESPONDENT: Why not enjoy being an animal? RICHARD: Because I have the cognitive ability to observe, recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons. RESPONDENT: To reject, deny, oppose or seek to eradicate is to be in conflict. RICHARD: Aye ... except that I am not speaking of one part splitting itself off the other part and attempting to ‘reject, deny, oppose or seek to eradicate’. In a pure consciousness experience (PCE) it is patently obvious that the entire identity – particularly ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – is standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent. Therefore the identity in toto willingly and cheerfully ‘self’-immolates for the benefit of this body and that body and everybody. Thus there is no ‘conflict’ whatsoever. RESPONDENT: If there is movement from the known to the known, that is not mutation. RICHARD: Similarly if there is a movement from the known to the unknown that is not mutation either ... it is the unknowable where an actual freedom is to be found. RESPONDENT: Moreover, there is no reason to believe that a mutation that occurs in the particular in one instance, can be taught or sought after or copied through imitation or emulation. RICHARD: There is no need to ‘believe’ whatsoever ... it is the PCE which unmistakably shows the way. * RESPONDENT: The mind (thought) fears the instincts because they can not be easily controlled. RICHARD: Yet, as fear is an instinct (an instinctual passion) itself, you are in effect saying that the instinctual passions are not easily controlled by the instinctual passions. It is all outside of the territory of thought. RESPONDENT: Ok but then why do you conclude effort to control is not imposition which is essentially violent? RICHARD: I have looked above and below and I cannot see where I said this ... could you point it out so that I can respond in full knowledge of what you are referring to? * RESPONDENT: A desire to control or even eradicate strong aggressive and sexual instincts is motivated by fear. RICHARD: The ‘desire to control’ may very well be ... but the humane response to the human condition is to eliminate that which is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and so on. The motivation for this ‘self’-sacrifice is altruism ... not fear. RESPONDENT: And asking what am I experiencing and looking at what arises with the intent of dissolving it, eradicates the self? RICHARD: It worked for the identity who was inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago – it is the only method that has worked so far – and until there is another demonstrably proved way ... this one is it. Incidentally ... the question is how am I experiencing this moment of being alive (not ‘what am I experiencing ...’ ). And usually how one is experiencing this moment is via a feeling ... and this is what becomes obvious and this is what vanishes upon exposure to the bright light of such potent awareness. Thus the ‘feeling being’ parasitically inhabiting the body becomes thinner and thinner, as it were, until it barely exists ... then, and only then, can a mutation such as described (altruistic total ‘self’-immolation) readily occur. It could happen more quickly, of course, but the sudden way is incredibly traumatic. * RESPONDENT: This is common to many religious approaches for example. RICHARD: The ‘religious approaches’, generally speaking, are motivated by both dread and awe (as are all spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical approaches). RESPONDENT: Effort of one part to control or eradicate other parts is the essence of psychological conflict. RICHARD: Indeed ... just as is the ‘effort of one part’ to seek union with, or the oneness of, or the holism as, all the ‘other parts’ (which is the religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical approach). But where all the parts realise they are one anyway, and ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body and that body and every body, an entirely different approach is called for. Simultaneous to the split being healed the whole goes out in a blaze of glory ... and the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent in all its pristine purity. RESPONDENT: Can you explain more of what you mean by self-immolation and why that very effort does not perpetuate division? RICHARD: It is the PCE which makes it inevitable that one will never again settle for second best when the best is freely available just here right now for the living of it: one is left with no choice but to want it like one has never wanted anything else before ... so much so that all the instinctual passionate energy of desire, normally frittered away on petty desires, is fuelling and impelling/propelling one into this already always existing peace-on-earth (‘impelling’ as in a pulling from the pristine front and ‘propelling’ as in being pushed from behind by all the mayhem and misery). There is a ‘must’ to it (one must do it/it must happen) and a ‘will’ to it (one will do it/it will happen) and one is both driven and drawn until there is an inevitability that sets in. Now it is unstoppable and all the above ceases of its own accord ... one is unable to distinguish between ‘me’ doing it and it happening to ‘me’. It is the ride of a lifetime ... one has escaped one’s fate and achieved one’s destiny. * RICHARD: ... it is impossible for a brain sans identity in toto to be or get angry. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (born of the rudimentary animal self) became extinct all of its instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – simultaneously became extinct. In other words: ‘I’ am anger and anger is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: The absence of such a natural response to an actual physical threat indicates aberration because there is a disconnect. RICHARD: Not a ‘disconnect’ , no ... it indicates the extinction of the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire): hence it is not an ‘aberration’ but rather a (long-awaited) mutation. RESPONDENT: That deprives the organism of the energy needed to meet a life-threatening challenge. RICHARD: My hands-on day-to-day experiencing, for many years now, shows your theory to be just that: a theory. There is all the energy of the universe, as it were, available as and when it is needed. RESPONDENT: Anger or fear in response to perceived danger to self-image is another matter. RICHARD: Surely you mean ‘ill-perceived’ danger? When there is no ‘self’ (thus no ‘self-image’ either) perception operates accurately, unimpeded by ‘me’ and ‘my’ pathetic desires and demands. RESPONDENT: Why do you consider instinctual passions unhealthy when they are an efficient energetic response to actual danger to the organism? RICHARD: Speaking personally, I served my time in a war zone in my late ‘teens and it was indelibly imprinted that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) have no redeeming features whatsoever when it comes to an intelligent interaction with one’s fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: To the extent that aggressive instincts distort perception, they bring about confusion. On the other hand, the body is suddenly filled with the energy needed to face a challenge. RICHARD: Ahh ... but it is a ‘dirty’ energy. Whereas there is a clean, clear and pure energy available as, and when, it is truly needed ... one has all the energy of the universe, as it were, to act as is appropriate to the ever-changing situation and circumstances. An ‘I’ and/or a ‘me’ can never, ever access this pristine energy. RESPONDENT: What we are capable of doing in terms of observation (and thus insight and action) depends upon energy. RICHARD: Agreed. RESPONDENT: That energy is equally dissipated through conflict or through repression of desire. RICHARD: Agreed. * RESPONDENT: <snipped adversarial commentary> RICHARD: It is entirely permissible to snip without remarks ... if you received my response to your red-herrings as being ‘adversarial’ that is your business. Furthermore, I cannot comprehend what would motivate you to publicly reveal the workings of your mind by making an undemonstrated observation (snipping the alleged supporting evidence) such as you do above. It smacks of being a rather tawdry and theatrical gesture. RESPONDENT: I was teasing you a bit as you seem blissfully unaware of the aggressiveness/competitiveness revealed in your writings. RICHARD: You are doing it again (only you are telling me that you are receiving my response as being ‘aggressiveness/competitiveness’ this time). I readily acknowledge that I am relentless when it comes to exposing the human condition in action ... perhaps this is what you are seeing as being ‘adversarial’ and ‘aggressiveness/competitiveness’? * RESPONDENT: But what is without division (genuine love) has no opposite. RICHARD: And therein lies the rub: as a generalisation there are at least four varieties of love – Love Storge (the instinctual maternal, paternal or familial love), Love Eros (the passionate sexual, amorous or romantic love), Love Philios (the affectionate friendship, societal or humanitarian love) and Love Agapé (the supernatural godly, divine or sacred love) – and they all have their dark side, their not-so-hidden under belly. Or, rather, not-so-hidden to those who dare to care ... and thus care to dare. RESPONDENT: No matter how you label and categorize, there is a dark side only when ‘the me’ enters the picture. RICHARD: No matter how sparingly you ‘label’ (as in ‘genuine love’) and how adroitly you ‘categorise’ (as in ‘what is without division’ ) there is a dark side anyway. When the observer (‘the me’) is the observed it has not left the picture at all ... it is the picture (it is in union, it is in oneness, it is holistic). In other words: Tat Tvam Asi (‘Thou Art That’). RESPONDENT: To see that ‘thou art that’ means that the nature of spirit is directly realized and the way in which the phenomenal world is experienced and perceived is irrevocably altered. RICHARD: True ... provide it is realised that it has no existence outside of the human psyche. RESPONDENT: A dimension that is without opposites is revealed. RICHARD: I demur ... the opposites are experienced as being complimentary poles acting in unison. RESPONDENT: There is union between that which is of time and that which is timeless ... RICHARD: As I said: the opposites are experienced as being complimentary poles acting in unison. RESPONDENT: ... and love is a quality of that union. RICHARD: Aye ... and it is a love which (supposedly) has no opposite.
RESPONDENT: If ‘you’ are there assessing and evaluating, that is just thought evaluating its own content. RICHARD: There was no ‘me’; there was no assessing; there was no evaluating; there was no content to thought ... there was only love. For three years, by the calendar, there was only love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. Then love flew to India ... the rest is history. RESPONDENT: The confusion is that what is impersonal, i.e.- intelligence as direct perception and compassion, gets mistaken for something that I am or I was or I experienced. RICHARD: No ... there was no ‘I am or I was or I experienced’ at all. There was only love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. RESPONDENT No. 21: It would seem that if you had love, you would not give it up unless you found something wrong with it. RICHARD: Indeed ... this is a very perspicacious observation. RESPONDENT No. 21: What was it that was wrong with it? RICHARD: Just for starters ... it has its roots in hate (good exists only to combat evil). RESPONDENT: To have implies something known, experienced. RICHARD: There was no ‘to have’ at all. There was only love; there was nothing else but love; love was everything and everything was love; love was all and all was love; love was it and it was love ... and its compassion poured forth endlessly, unstoppable. RESPONDENT: People say they experience God or love or they want to have or know love. But what is known is of thought and memory, it is rooted in time, i.e.- the self. RICHARD: Hmm ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, using ‘thought and memory’, could readily recognise that which he variously called god, truth, that which is sacred, holy, the presence, the otherness and etcetera, each time again. For an example: [quote]: ‘That presence which was at il L. [two months previously at Il Leccio, Italy] was there, waiting patiently, benignly, with great tenderness. It was like lightening on a dark night but it was there, penetrating, blissful’. (June 27 1961; page 14, ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’, Harper & Row, New York 1976). It does pay to read with both eyes open (rather than listen only to the ‘he who says he knows does not know’ style of rhetoric), eh? RESPONDENT: There is a difference between the state of guest within guest, host within guest, guest within host and host within host. There is a relationship between the known and the unknown but ultimately the absolute is when the relative is not. RICHARD: As in ‘There is only That’? The enlightened being who was inhabiting this body for eleven years would say ‘There is only The Absolute’. RESPONDENT: K speaks of the otherness which implies a duality but it is not the duality of the centre or guest within guest. RICHARD: I can be in broad agreement with this way of putting it. RESPONDENT: Each state of being has its own art, religion, philosophy, etc. These matters have been discussed in depth by Taoist and Buddhist writers, by Ouspensky and Fourth Way writers, and by Osho for instance. RICHARD: I am familiar with most of the writings you mention bar Mr. Petyr Ouspensky ... I have only had a brief look at his work as it struck me as being a mixture of philosophy, psychology, theology, science – and even politics – all wrapped up in some form of intellectual gnosis. I have never been particularly taken by Mr. George Gurdjieff’s approach anyway. RESPONDENT: It is necessary to consider the state of the listener if there is to be any communication. RICHARD: Of course ... yet you often pull me up for doing so. RESPONDENT: So sometimes there is pointing to nonduality as the absolute and at other times, pointing is to the relative truth of the state of those involved. RICHARD: I would be pleased if this commonsense approach were to continue.
CORRESPONDENT No. 12 (Part Fifteen) 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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