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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 14
RICHARD (to Respondent 22): It [‘this truly existing
ego that is not fact other than an image or an idea’] is the cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and
domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide ... that is what it is. RESPONDENT: I am thinking it is time to examine the above assertion. ‘Cause’: (1) That which produces an effect or consequence; the person, event, or condition responsible for an action or result. (2) A basis for an action or decision; ground; reason motive. (3) Good or sufficient reason or ground. (4) A goal or principle served with zeal. (5) The interest of a person or group engaged in a struggle. (6) Law. (7) A subject under debate or discussion. If you wish us to assume your assertion is to be associated with definition (1) then your insistence on ridding oneself of ego, would be ill founded, for you would have us remove that which is ‘responsible for an action or result’ – in other words, you would encourage us to remove that which would be responsible for its own removal (action or result). This would be but another exercise in tail chasing. RICHARD: Yet it is ‘I’ that is ‘responsible for an action’ that results its own demise
... without really doing the expunging itself (and I am not being tricky here). It is ‘I’ that is the cause of bringing about
this ‘ego-death’ in that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’
that will ensure ‘my’ demise. And ‘I’ do not really end ‘myself’ in that ‘I’ do not do the deed itself ... for an
‘I’ cannot end itself. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button which precipitates an – oft-times
alarming but always thrilling – momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What one does is that one
dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and intentionally
sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological and/or psychic entity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’
most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. The act of initiating this ‘process’ is altruism RESPONDENT: If we are to associate your assertion with definition (2) we would need to assume an entity that can act on motives, a doer as it were. RICHARD: There is no assumption involved ... 5.8 billion people daily demonstrate that being normal is to be ego-driven. That ego is indeed the entity that can ‘act on motives’ ... that is indeed a ‘doer’. RESPONDENT: This does not seem fit with your insistence on being without identity of any ilk. RICHARD: But there is no identity extant in this flesh and blood body ... it died. Death is the end, finish. Just how many times do you think something can die? RESPONDENT: For it brings about the identity of the doer, she or he who can evaluate and act on motives. RICHARD: It does not ‘bring about the identity of the doer’ at all ... a rudimentary identity already exists at birth. RESPONDENT: It makes I separate from my motives (thoughts) – it puts I outside the sensate world. RICHARD: A normal person’s motives arise out of being a separate entity desiring union or oneness. Such an entity – being an alien – is forever shut out of the sensate world. The only sensible thing ‘I’ can do is self-immolate psychologically and psychically ... ‘I’ will never know actuality. RESPONDENT: The same must be said of ‘cause’ as it is examined in (3), (4) and (5). Definition (6) and (7) are hardly fit for this discussion. I think Richard, that you are blaming the jump for the frog, the rendering for the painter. Ego, as it is, is a result rather than a cause. RICHARD: Now this is an interesting slant on the topic. Are you trying to tell me that all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide are the cause of an ego appearing in 5.8 billion people? If so, then what is the cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide in the first place? RESPONDENT: That which does produce the effect or consequence ego, is equally responsible for producing the effect or consequence harmlessness. RICHARD: If you think that it is important for me to understand this sentence, then you will have to write it in a way that makes sense. Because – being a mysterious ‘that’ which does all this – I can only conclude that you are talking about a god (by whatever name). And no god can render anyone harmless. * RICHARD: All mysticism denies any ultimate reality to the material world. RESPONDENT: Not so Richard. The fruition of all mysticism is the realisation of the ultimate (the basic fundamental fact, the final point, the conclusive result, the conclusion) reality of the material world. RICHARD: Aye ... and that ‘Ultimate Reality’ shows the mystic that the material world – all this physical universe – is but an illusion. RESPONDENT: Though some traditions, in particular Buddhism, bring this end about through negating the physical, the aim is realisation of ultimate reality. RICHARD: That is correct ... and the Buddhist’s ‘Ultimate Reality’ is ‘Parinirvana’.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the Buddhist analysis of the human situation, delusions of egocentricity RESPONDENT: Let us look at this statement as an example of the Buddhist metaphysical approach: ‘A form seen in the distance becomes clearer the closer we get to it. If a mirage were water, why would it vanish when we draw near? The farther we are from the world, the more real it appears to us; the nearer we draw to it, the less visible it becomes, and like a mirage, becomes sign-less’. The Dalai Lama: ‘Other traditions, such a Christian Mysticism use a more affirming methodology. The Christians do not tarry with breaking down work a day apprehension to reveal the ultimate, they rather sweep clean normal apprehension through declaration of the ultimate. As an example, Paul declared: ‘One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all’. The flexibility of the Buddhist approach can be demonstrated here with a quote from Soygal Rinpoche, a Buddhist mystic of the Tibetan tradition, that very closely mirrors Paul: ‘We and all sentient beings fundamentally have the Buddha nature as our innermost essence’. The Jewish mystical traditions also follow this methodology of by passing the destruction of normal perception, evident in the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist method, and simply declaring the ultimate, for example, from the Essential Cabbala: ‘The divine emanates existence’, or, ‘Ein Sof has no will, no intention, no desire, no thought, no speech, no action – yet there is nothing outside of it’. The Hindu texts contain a flowery combination of destruction and declaration, an example from Abhinavagupta is: ‘The Ultimate, formed of consciousness, is always present everywhere, and is devoid of spatial or temporal dimensions, of prior and subsequent; it is undeniable and unconcealed. What then can be said of it?’ An interesting addition is this quote from the Muslim Sufi tradition: ‘According to this testimony, God is distinct from all things and nothing can be compared to Him. Now perfect incomparability requires that nothing can be set face to face with the incomparable and have any relationship whatever with it; this amounts to saying that nothing exists in face of the Divine Reality so that, in It, all things are annihilated. ‘God was and nothing with Him and He is now such as He was’’. It demonstrates a destructive methodology, but in reverse – it is rather a paradoxical use of Aristotelian logic. ‘God is beyond comparison, therefore there can exist no-thing to compare to God’. Mysticism does indeed affirm the ultimate reality of the manifest world, Richard. RICHARD: Goodness me ... I only have to look hither and thither in the above to see phrases like ‘If a mirage were water, why would it vanish when we draw near’ and ‘sweep clean normal apprehension through declaration of the ultimate’ and ‘Ein Sof has ... nothing outside of it’ and ‘The Ultimate ... is devoid of spatial or temporal dimensions’ and ‘nothing exists in face of the Divine Reality’ and ‘God is distinct from all things and nothing can be compared to Him’. But – so as to avoid getting bogged down in arguing the toss over all those quotes – let us just take Advaita Vedanta, for an example. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Advaita (being the Sanskrit word for Non-dualism) as expounded by Mr. Shankara, was one of the most influential of the schools of Vedanta ... Vedanta being the then orthodox spiritual philosophy of India. Advaita was built on the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy of Sunyata (‘Emptiness’) and maintains that there is no duality; the mind – awake or dreaming – moves through Maya (‘illusion’); and only non-duality (Advaita) is the final truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance of the illusion of Maya. There is no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only the atman (‘all-soul’), in which individuals may be temporarily delineated ... just as the space in a jar delineates a part of main space: when the jar is broken, the individual space becomes once more the main space. Now, Mr. Shankara does not start from the empirical world with logical analysis but, rather, directly from Brahman (‘The Absolute’). If interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanishads teach the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he develops a complete epistemology to account for the human error in taking the phenomenal world for real. Fundamental for Mr. Shankara is the tenet that the Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality or plurality is an illusion. The self is nothing but Brahman. Insight into this identity results in spiritual release. Brahman is outside time, space, and causality, which are simply forms of illusory empirical experience. No distinction in Brahman or from Brahman is possible. Mr. Shankara points to scriptural texts, either stating identity (‘Thou art that’) or denying difference (‘There is no duality here’), as declaring the true meaning of a Brahman as Nirguna (without qualities). Other texts that ascribe qualities (Saguna) to Brahman refer not to the true nature of Brahman but to its personality as Ishvara (God). Human perception of the unitary and infinite Brahman as the plural and infinite is due to human beings’ innate habit of adhyasa (superimposition), by which a thou is ascribed to the I (I am tired; I am happy; I am perceiving). The habit stems from human ignorance which can be avoided only by the realisation of the identity of Brahman. So, Brahman, the Absolute or Supreme Existence is the font. Brahman is the eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, spiritual source of the apparent universe of finiteness and change. According to Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is categorically different from anything phenomenal, and human perceptions of differentiation are illusively projected on this reality. (Of course, in early Hindu mythology, Brahman is personified as the creator god Brahma and placed in a triad of divine functions: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.) Similar thinking – with cultural variations – applies to any mysticism ... hence my statement that all mysticism denies any ultimate reality to the material world. RESPONDENT: That it is different than the widely accepted and increasingly less firm reality of modern science, or from the conceptualisation (and your quote does indeed include a conceptualisation as I will demonstrate following the end of this post) you offer in this quote: [Richard]: ‘But the fingertips touching form require no recognition – or conceptualisation – to verify that form exists as an actuality. No thought is required at all in this verification ... touch is immediate and direct’. It may make it disagreeable to you, however, it does not render it not having been declared. RICHARD: It is not ‘disagreeable’ to me at all ... I am currently enjoying such childish debates as this. RESPONDENT: As to your quote: ‘conceptualisation’: the noun form of the verb conceptualise – to form concepts, theories, or ideas. ‘Touch is immediate and direct’ is correct, however, this does not affirm ‘form’ without conceptualisation, Richard. All that is immediate in sensation (a perception associated with stimulation of a sense organ or with a specific bodily condition) is sensation, nothing further can be attested to without forming an idea, or concept of what sensation arises from. RICHARD: Not so. What you are doing here – if one strips away much verbiage – is saying that ‘sensation is sensation’ ... which is as useful a statement as that supposed profundity ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’. You need to do better than that if we are to have a conversation. When this finger-tip touches something it comes into contact with form ... this is felt directly and without conceptualisation. Recognition of what form it is requires thought and memory, yes ... but awareness of form existing, no. RESPONDENT: Sensation neither affirms or denies the reality of either the finger, nor the glass in your instance, sensation in and of itself is whatever is present in the instance that it is present. RICHARD: But this is just more of the same kind of gobbledegook that you have been spouting for ages: [this is not a quote]: ‘what is happening is whatever what is, is doing at this present moment’ ... or some such thing. Now I know – and you know that I know this – that you know that ‘what is’ is a nom de guerre for god ... but I am not supposed to say that on this list. RESPONDENT: One may, as in the definition of sensation, associate (to connect in the mind or imagination) sensation with the conceptualisation of form but this is a further act of conceptualisation and not ‘an actuality’ as you wish to demonstrate by making conceptualisation and actuality opposing terms in your statement ‘require no recognition – or conceptualisation – to verify that form exists as an actuality’. RICHARD: Yet I am not making that association, I am very clear and distinct. I said: ‘touch is immediate and direct’. Where is the recognition and/or conceptualisation in the action of touch? Form must exist for touch to happen ... otherwise one’s finger is poking at empty space. The very word ‘touch’ means that form exists ... without form, the word ‘touch’ would not be in our lexicon. * RICHARD: Only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person participating in their search for freedom for the first time in their life. RESPONDENT: Richard, is it not obvious in this instance of becoming curios about the workings of oneself, that oneself is the curiosity? What is ticking as that particular moment is curiosity. RICHARD: Aye, and a person would rather duck and weave and slip and slither than be curious about their own workings. They would either rather blame and complain or do a ‘Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein’ on words and language ... for to become curious leads to fascination and fascination leads to obsession and obsession leads to inevitability. That is, ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul will become extinct ... one will cease ‘being’ if one becomes curious. It is not the fear of death per se that is the problem ... it is the fear of not ‘being’ that is so dreadful to the identity. * RICHARD: People mostly look to rearranging their beliefs and truths as being sufficient effort ... ‘I’ am willing to be free as long as ‘I’ can remain ‘me’. In other words: their notion of freedom is a ‘clip-on’. Then curiosity becomes fascination ... and then the fun begins. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to what others around one would classify as ‘obsession’. A 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is thus actively discouraged by one’s peers. Eventually one realises that one is on one’s own in this, the adventure of a life-time, and a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness to proceed against all odds ensues. Then one takes the penultimate step ... one abandons ‘humanity’. Freedom is then virtually guaranteed. RESPONDENT: To ‘virtually guarantee’ freedom, Richard, is to deny it utterly. Freedom must needs mean to be without limitation, without condition, or as the dictionary says ‘Not affected nor restricted by a given condition or circumstance’. To place on freedom either; the possibility of its denial – that which is actual while freedom is being virtually guaranteed; or the condition of freedom arising through effort; ‘a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness to proceed against all odds’ makes that which is achieved through guarantee and effort other than freedom. That something else might exist, i.e. that which is actual while freedom is virtually guaranteed, makes freedom’s existence dependent on a condition. To make freedom the result of effort, i.e. ‘a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness to proceed against all odds’ makes freedom the result of conditions – thus not freedom at all. That you are free to ‘proceed against all odds’ affirms the freedom you have always been, but achieves absolutely nothing other than a ‘a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness’. RICHARD: This is a well considered thesis that would leave any undergraduate gasping with envy ... yet it overlooks one pertinent fact. That is, 5.8 billion people are not free of the human condition. In reality, so un-free are some, that they have invented a god and imagined that they are it ... in order to feel free. However, feeling free is not being free ... a feeling is not a fact. * RICHARD: It requires nerves of steel to delve into the stygian depths of the Human Condition. The journey into the psyche is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. The rewards for doing so are immense, however ... and are of far-reaching consequences not only for oneself but for humankind as a whole. RESPONDENT: It requires no such manifestation of a macho tainted imagination ‘... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. ‘There is nothing to rally against – there is nothing to push oneself over, nothing to face down. There is simply the Cosmos doing as it does absolutely freely – for there is nothing to bind it. It may be the ever-macho Sir Richard the Lionhearted, believing he is facing himself down, or the it can be a ‘a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness’, it can be this sentence, it can be whatever thought is there now. At no time is there anything to overcome, proceed over, face down, defeat, kill, destroy, murder, or eliminate, there is nothing to harm you, fight you, resist you, spook you, or interfere with what you are being, thus there is absolutely no necessity to being strong kneed or to be made of metal. RICHARD: Aye, it is all a nightmare in the human psyche ... but facing the reality – not the actuality – of the stygian depths of that psychic nightmare keeps 5.8 billion people trapped in their illusion of non-freedom. Thus suffering continues unabated in the real-world ... and probably another 160,000,000 people will be killed in wars this coming century. All the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide are pretty heavy stuff for any ‘Cosmos’ (another nom de guerre) to take responsibility for, eh? Just as well this god does not exist ... such a creature would face a lot of stick come judgement day when 5.8 billion human beings would file up to lodge their complaints about such a raw deal, eh? * RICHARD: What is essential is to remember one of your pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). A PCE is when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself ... it is a pure awareness. RESPONDENT: It is ALL pure awareness, Richard, there has never been anything other than pure awareness doing as it does – being the moment there now, and now, and now – there simply is nothing else. I paraphrase for lack of immediate reference, but the thoughts from there have said ‘... rearranging itself’. It might arrange itself into any particular moment for it is absolutely free – with no other to bind it or restrict it. The greatest delusion mind has ever hoisted is that of duality – ‘that which is’ and ‘that which must be over come to realise that which is’. Pure delusion, but freedom must needs include it, less there is no freedom. RICHARD: Not so ... that is not freedom. That is fatalism * RICHARD: 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 is when the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is not and an unmediated awareness occurs. The pure consciousness experience 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, unmoderated by any ‘self’ whatsoever. One is able to see that ‘I’ and ‘me’ have been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential character of this moment of being here becoming apparent. RESPONDENT: If perfection; the state, quality, or condition of being perfect (lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete in complete of its nature’) can be moderated; ‘to make less violent, severe, or extreme – to abate’ then it is not perfection is it? RICHARD: Certainly not. However, apperception enables the already always existing peace-on-earth to be apparent ... ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul have been standing in the way. RESPONDENT: Every moment is perfect and perfectly what is – ‘lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete in complete of its nature’. RICHARD: Indeed ... and when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct, this already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. RESPONDENT: Even the delusion that this is not so, that you are being, is perfect and lacks absolutely nothing to be exactly perfectly what it is. RICHARD: Not so ... that is not freedom. That is fatalism. It is like saying that there cannot be a ‘good’ without a ‘bad’. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here in this actual world. The delusion is pernicious ... and leads to all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide being perpetuated for ever and a day. * RICHARD: Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is in abeyance. RESPONDENT: If the ‘thinker’ or ‘feeler’ is in abeyance (the condition of being temporarily set aside) your statement has created nothing but another controller of the ‘thinker’ or ‘feeler’, who must needs to be further set aside to charge toward the unmoderated (being without control) experience you see as your aim. RICHARD: Hmm ... you obviously cannot remember any of your PCE’s. In such a peak experience there is no ‘other controller of the ‘thinker’ or ‘feeler’ who must be further set aside’. But the undergraduates would applaud this paragraph enthusiastically. RESPONDENT: A completely unnecessary infinite regression – but of course, freedom must needs include the possibility of entertaining such delusions. RICHARD: Not so ... that is not freedom. That is fatalism. It is like saying that there cannot be a ‘good’ without a ‘bad’. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here in this actual world. The delusion is pernicious ... and leads to all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide being perpetuated for ever and a day. * RICHARD: One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being. RESPONDENT: Now you are on to it! Now, leave alone this thought of human being – it is another unnecessary adornment. RICHARD: Aye ... for you the body does not exist – or the physical world – so therefore anything physical would be an ‘unnecessary adornment’, eh? * RICHARD: 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. Apperception is something that brings the facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. RESPONDENT: Ahh! You have lost it Richard! You again wish to introduce the delusion of something that can interfere with direct experience! RICHARD: As you cannot remember one of your PCE’s then there is definitely something interfering. You have had to invent a god – and become it – to dissociate yourself from painful reality. RESPONDENT: ‘There is no ‘outside’’, and there is no inside – hence no place for ‘the perfection of the universe to come from’. RICHARD: Yet what I said was that there was no outside of the universe for a person to come from. You are trying to make it look as if I am saying that perfection comes from somewhere ... it does not. It is already always here ... now. RESPONDENT: But likewise, no place for any interference to come from. Every moment is ‘lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete in complete of its nature’. RICHARD: What on earth does ‘complete in complete of its nature’ mean? The undergraduates are puzzled! RESPONDENT: Even if that moment is being the belief that this is not true. There is absolutely no-thing to integer – there is only ‘the perfection of the universe’. RICHARD: Not so ... that is not freedom. That is fatalism. It is like saying that there cannot be a ‘good’ without a ‘bad’. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here in this actual world. The belief is pernicious ... and leads to all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide being perpetuated for ever and a day. * RICHARD: Then 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 actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence. RESPONDENT: Phooey! I is not inside anything – it is everything. RICHARD: Yea verily ... for you, this is so. The mystics say it well: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. RESPONDENT: I create what is by becoming what is. I am the intelligence that rearranges itself endlessly. This body, that body, the entire cosmos is but the evidence of I. RICHARD: Why do you not just say: ‘I am God’ and be done with it? Why be so coy? Is it the mandatory humility that comes with the package? * RICHARD: If you are not aware of the abject misery of suffering – not only in oneself but all of humankind – then one is not old enough to be able to be reading these words ... can you not think for yourself? Do you not have feelings? RESPONDENT: Richard, your assertion; ‘Then 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’ seems to leave very little room for a ‘you’ to have (to be in possession of) feelings. RICHARD: Right on ... there are no feelings – emotions or passions or calentures – whatsoever in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Or that could (pass tense of can meaning to be in possession of a certain ability) think. RICHARD: Oh, the brain can think for itself perfectly well ... infinitely better than when there was an ‘I’ in there arrogating responsibility and interfering by being a ‘thinker’. RESPONDENT: Which way will you have it Richard? Should a person be with or without an ‘I’? RICHARD: Speaking personally, I thoroughly recommend psychological and psychic self-immolation. That is, no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul ... no ‘being’ at all. * RICHARD: Why settle for second-best? Demand excellence for yourself ... for your life and for all human beings! RESPONDENT: Richard, you can certainly not be of the belief that there is there is two of a person can you? RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: Whom or what is it that might raise up and make demands, and whom or what might acquiesce? RICHARD: It is ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul, that is who. RESPONDENT: You ask a person to become a complete schizophrenic, left with the fear of the eventual usurpation of the ‘demander’ by its, for now, compliant slave. RICHARD: I would not wish schizophrenia upon anyone as it is a ghastly experience. However, methinks you are making a popular mistake and are really meaning ‘split-personality’, eh? There are not two, but three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Had you not made a point of telling me in past posts that you have eliminated this duality? Why do you encourage it in others? RICHARD: One starts from where the other is at. A person tell me that they are suffering. I do not say: ‘That is perfect if that is what perfection is doing/being at this moment’ (or some-such gobbledegook). I make full use of a valuable asset called memory and relate via 34 plus 11 years experience. After all, I can relate to the other because we are fellow human beings ... I am not god. * RICHARD: If one is not living fully – being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space – then one is most definitely wasting their life. RESPONDENT: One has no choice Richard – what you are being is perfect – lacking nothing (full, not deficient or partial; complete). That you may wish to be something else, so be it, that too is perfect and has no opportunity to be other. An utterly absurd belief Richard. Life can not be wasted (use(d) to no avail). RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: Who would you have decide the impact of life? RICHARD: The person who is experiencing it, of course. It is called, in the jargon, being responsible. RESPONDENT: Who stands outside of life to pronounce this judgment? RICHARD: Standing outside of what? This infinite and eternal universe? How? RESPONDENT: Life is the fulfilment of life – it is as it is fully and completely. RICHARD: This is as useful a statement as that supposed profundity ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’. * RICHARD: It is your life you are living and provided that you comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols you will be left alone to live your life as wisely or as foolishly as you choose. RESPONDENT: As if this needs to be said. RICHARD: Oh, it does, it does. It is amazing how it makes someone sit up and think. * RICHARD:. Ask yourself this question each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ And ‘how’ means affectively, of course ... that is how one is experiencing this moment. The ‘how’ simply means ‘what feeling am I experiencing right now with’ ... which is: ‘Am I bored?’, ‘Am I resentful?’, ‘Am I at ease?’, ‘Am I glad?’, ‘Am I sad?’ and so on. RESPONDENT: Again you wish a person to be schizophrenic. RICHARD: Not so ... a person is already a ‘split personality’. Not everyone solves problems by going into a state of denial. RESPONDENT: To ask is to be the moment of questioning Richard. RICHARD: Well, there you are, then ... there is method in my madness, is there not? RESPONDENT: There is no one to stand back and ask – there is only the Cosmos being the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RICHARD: Hmm ... do you really expect people to imagine that god is busily being that question? RESPONDENT: Foolishness Richard – when the moment is being the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ that is the right now – the only right now there is or will ever be. RICHARD: I can agree that it is foolishness to imagine that this moment is being that question ... this moment is the arena wherein the universe can experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being. RESPONDENT: One would need to step back yet another step and ask: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ about the moment of being the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ in order garner any knowledge of the particular moment. Again you have suggested that a person swallow their own tail and spend their time in an infinite regress. RICHARD: Obviously you cannot remember experiencing apperception. Apperception is an awareness of being conscious (an awareness ... not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious). RESPONDENT: In the arising of the moment of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ that which is being asked about has already passed, it is no longer. RICHARD: Aye ... and the person finds that they were experiencing it affectively. This affective experiencing ensures separation. RESPONDENT: All what can sensibly asked is ‘How am I experiencing that moment of being alive?’ and then one must rely on one’s memory of the past moment. RICHARD: Not so ... the point of asking is to ensure the experiencing of this moment directly. * RICHARD: Peace-on-earth is here right now – the perfection of the infinitude of this universe is happening at this moment – and one is missing out on it because one is feeling what it is like to be here instead of actually being here. RESPONDENT: Ahh! The song of the happy guru! RICHARD: I have never heard of any Guru singing a song with those words in it. * RICHARD: ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ means: ‘What feeling is preventing the on-going experiencing of peace-on-earth?’ 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. RESPONDENT: Yet you instruct that a person spend their time questioning the moment that has passed? RICHARD: One needs to become aware of what one has been doing, instead of actually being here. * RICHARD: 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 one gets 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 one misses it this time around, hey presto, one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this. What ‘I’ did, all those years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective way to be able to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive each moment again (I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). It does take some doing to start off with but, as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes progressively easier to enjoy and appreciate being here each moment again. One begins by asking, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? RESPONDENT: There is only one way to live the moment of this question and it is as the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ If it is you are actually asking ‘How am I experiencing that moment of being alive?’ then you have put yourself to always examining and correcting a moment that is no longer and is of absolutely no use to your present happiness. It would make more sense to say ‘How am I to experience the next moment of being alive?’ RICHARD: Hmm ... you would advise a person to live in the future? * RICHARD: As one knows from the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s), which are moments of perfection everybody has at some stage in their life, that it is possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most (‘feeling good’ is an unambiguous term – it is a general sense of well-being – and if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all). Thus, by asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ the reward is immediate; by finding out what triggered off the loss of feeling good, one commences another period of enjoying this moment of being alive. It is all about being here at this moment in time and this place in space. RESPONDENT: Ahh! The song of happy gurus! RICHARD: I have never heard of any Guru singing a song with those words in it. * RICHARD: If you are not feeling good you have no chance whatsoever of being here in this actual world. A grumpy person locks themselves out of the perfect purity of this moment and place. RESPONDENT: A completely false belief. A grumpy person is ‘the perfect purity of this moment and place’. If the moment is being a grumpy person, then the moment is perfectly that. There is no moment outside of that grumpy person waiting discovery, there is only the Cosmos as it is as that moment. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: Of course, once you get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy’. And after that: ‘feeling perfect’. These are all feelings, this is not perfection personified yet ... but then again, feeling perfect for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day is way beyond normal human expectations anyway. Also, it is a very tricky way of both getting men fully into their feelings for the first time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings one by one instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once. One starts to feel ‘alive’ for the first time in one’s life. RESPONDENT: Thus is another utterly foolish belief Richard. There is no choice about being fully into one’s feelings. If one’s feeling is that they are not fully into their feelings-that is their feeling and they are fully and inescapably in IT. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: Being ‘alive’ is to be paying attention – exclusive attention – to this moment in time and this place in space. This attention becomes fascination ... and fascination leads to reflective contemplation. Then – and only then – apperception can occur. Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being fully alive right 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 ... and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity ... as a sensate body only, one is automatically benevolent and benign. Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ as ‘me’ being can make in order to reveal that which is actual. And that which is actual is a clear and clean and pure perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ and ‘me’ are no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ and ‘me’ stand in the way of the clarity and purity of the clean perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ very presence prohibits this ever-present perfection being evident. ‘I’ as ‘me’ being prevents the very purity of life, that ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’ demise, this ever-fresh perfection is now manifest. Peace-on-earth was here in this actual world all the time. It is all so simple, in the actual world; no effort is needed to meet the requisite morality of society. I have no ‘dark nature’, no unconscious impulses to curb, to control, to restrain. It is all so easy, in the actual world; I can take no credit for my apparently virtuous behaviour because actual freedom automatically provides beneficial thoughts and deeds. It is all so spontaneous, in the actual world; I do not do it – it does itself. Vanity, egoism, selfishness – all self-centred activity has ceased to operate when ‘I’ as ‘me’ being ceased to be. And it is all so peaceful, in the actual world; it is only in actualism that human beings can have peace-on-earth without toiling fruitlessly to be ‘good’. The answer to everything that has puzzled humankind for all of human history is readily elucidated when one is actually free. The ‘Mystery of Life’ has been penetrated and laid open for all those with the eyes to see. Life was meant to be easy. So: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? It beats any pathetic mantra by a country mile. RESPONDENT: Richard, would you have it then – live your life being the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? Do not take time to examine the fact that the question leads you to dine on your own tail and to continually chase yourself backward into an infinite regress of trying to question how one questions. Do not stop to realise that the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is how you are being the moment of being alive and can never actually be examined except as a memory which is of no use? This post, from the opening phrase ‘Only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself’ is nothing but the most obvious treatise on duality and schizophrenia I have ever encountered. One might become harmless through such inanity, but only because they will be so confoundedly confused as to which of the entities you have split them into (the one who demands or the one who acquiesces to the demand; the one who is the moment or the one who stands back and asks about the moment; the one that is the thought or the one who has the thought; the one who is the feelings or the one who might have feelings; the one who is kept at abeyance or the one who keeps the gate; the one who is free to pursue freedom, or the one that will become free through the effort) is actually them, they will be unable to act at all. When mind is so divided as you have instructed all manner of unnecessary understanding is manifested. RICHARD: Not so ... one is actually being here – now – for the first time in one’s life. RESPONDENT: The more one analyses the universe (which is not other than this moment), the more one has to analyse. To implore one to examine the moment is to ask one to then examine the moment of examining. That is why it is said here that such an exercise is like counting the ripples on a pond by touching each with a stick – it is a futile and never ending exercise – the more you do, the more there is to be done. If you wish to be of service, do not ask that mind be set after itself – this is to set up an endless whirl of run after your own feet. We do not need paranoia, mind beside itself, we need metanoia, the mind with itself so free from itself. RICHARD: Yet an un-examined life is second-hand living. There are 5.8 billion people daily demonstrating the wisdom of not being curious about what makes them tick. RESPONDENT: The true ‘straight and narrow way that leadeth unto life’ is this alone; life is complete in each moment – whole, undivided, and ever new – to understand the sense of the doctrine that in eternal life God, the undefinable this, is all in all and is the Final Cause or End for which everything exists. RICHARD: Which aptly demonstrates what I meant when I said that all mysticism denies any ultimate reality to the material world. RESPONDENT: God is not a definition of this state but an exclamation about it. RICHARD: Thus spake No. 14! RESPONDENT: Nothing is wasted, everything is of the absolute highest meaning, without ever being necessary outside of the moment that it is. No moment is of any class or stature other than every moment. RICHARD: This ‘moment is moment’ is as useful a statement as that supposed profundity ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’. RESPONDENT: There is no ‘one’s destiny’ for there is no ‘one’ to be destined. RICHARD: It is a standard convention that when referring to an identity one uses little quotes – like ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘one’ or ‘you’ for example – and the word < one > is but a means of referring to the body empty of identity so as to avoid confusion. Of course, some undergraduate comes along every now and then and tries to score some cheap points by trying to make out that they are wise. RESPONDENT: There is certainly freedom to be ‘a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness’ and even to believe that there is ‘all odds’ to proceed against, but these beliefs are not necessary to understanding and, are really, at the heart of it, the dualistic problem from the start. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: Freedom must needs include its own denial, lest it would not be freedom, but something other that exists only on conditions, the exact antithesis of the actual freedom we are. Bodies, at their most, are borrowed elements. In actuality, a body has never existed, for the body is not other than what it is doing whether that is being the worm that eats it or doing the thought that is there now. to say ‘a body’ is to be deluded for a body has never existed and is but a wave on an ocean that is not ever separate from any wave of itself. RICHARD: Basically, what you are saying is that the body is an illusion. Like I said, all mysticism denies any ultimate reality to the material world. RESPONDENT: I do not doubt your sincerity, Richard. You are for us all, this I have faith in. But to borrow from the thoughts that were you at the moment that it was you, you are simply misguided. That you intentionally do no harm is wonderful, but if you are to be of help, you need to re-examine your message. RICHARD: I take it that you mean I must tell people: ‘You are IT!’ ... and deny any ultimate reality to the material world, eh?
RESPONDENT: I am wondering, what exactly is ‘talent’ in the philosophy you have expounded here? RICHARD: I am aware that the word ‘talent’ would signify the divine endowment of this quality as a means of self-improvement to you – given your predilection for living out the hallucination that this infinite and eternal universe is but a manifestation of an imaginary divinity – but it has a secular meaning as well. It is an ability, a skill, an aptitude to do something well. RESPONDENT: That is interesting that you imagine that about me, Richard. RICHARD: Oh, I do not have to imagine it ... it is simple to work this one out. You see, I have read more than a few of your posts and have visited your Web Page ... being divine is your whole life. Therefore the secular meaning of the word would not apply to you. * RICHARD: I am this very material universe experiencing itself in all its magnificence as a sensate and reflective human being ... that is the sense of being alive. Also, as me, this universe can be intelligent ... and that is very sensible in view of the proliferation of solipsists these days. RESPONDENT: Is then the knowledge that this is so material? RICHARD: There is nothing but this material universe ... and with it being infinite and eternal then how much bigger and better than the best can you get, eh? It takes a super-charged imagination – born of discontent – to fantasise about something better than this perfection which is already always here now. RESPONDENT: That which is alive can hardly breath without bringing harm or destruction to some aspect of the environment, yes? The whole exercise of personal existence must be a heavy measure on the side of silliness when a larger view is taken toward its effect. Does it not seem silly that this body should eat while another starves? RICHARD: The very fact that one is alive means consuming nutrients ... and staying alive means that something, somewhere, must die in order to supply these nutrients. This is a fact of life ... and the marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on ... but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. Most people think and feel that choice implies freedom – having the freedom to choose – but this is not the case. Freedom lies in seeing the obvious, and in seeing the obvious there is no choice, no deliberation, no agonising over the ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ judgement. In the freedom of seeing the fact there is only action. RESPONDENT: Gracious! What I am asking Richard, is how is the silliness of an action determined? RICHARD: I have already explained (above) ... did you not read with both eyes but rushed here to show your ignorance? Seeing the fact determines action. RESPONDENT: I am sorry Richard, I have again visited your reply and found no answer. The silliness of an action is determined by (I could fill in any sentence or phrase from your reply and it would not complete the question). As for rushing, no, I do not believe I have rushed. Actually it took me a reasonable amount of time to complete the evaluation of your reply against its fitness as answer to my question. I actually went sentence to sentence placing my question in front of it to make this determination. RICHARD: Be it far from me to know whether you did or did not rush but you give that impression because the answer was in the first paragraph ... specifically the last sentence. The remainder of the original post is an expansion of that paragraph in general and that sentence in particular. Here, let me copy and paste to save you more time. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: For most comical I liked the silliness of an action is determined by ‘Do as the Revered Scriptures say and turn the other cheek’. RICHARD: Nothing ‘comical’ about it ... many are the gullible penitents who have suffered as a result of believing that twaddle. RESPONDENT: Is it silly, for example, to kill a bacteria so that a human body can live? RICHARD: I have already explained (above) ... did you not read with both eyes but rushed here to show your ignorance? Seeing the fact determines action. RESPONDENT: Perhaps I rushed here, Richard – I did not go through and make the above exercise to determine the fitness in this case. Having memorised you speech, however, I am confident that the result would be near the same. RICHARD: Is your confidence a trifle shaken now that the error of your ways has become clear? RESPONDENT: Does the bacteria think it silly to do what it needs to survive? RICHARD: What kind of hallucination is it that you are living in? There is no Noddy and Big Ears here ... bacteria cannot think. RESPONDENT: Ahh! Interesting belief. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: I can see where you could easily rationalise your belief system as survival of the fittest based on your response. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: Who determines what is silly? RICHARD: I have already explained (above) ... did you not read with both eyes but rushed here to show your ignorance? Seeing the fact determines action. RESPONDENT: Hmm? Perhaps this will make it easier to see what I am on about – what fact? RICHARD: When there are no pre-conceived truths or beliefs standing in the way, then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: If I were to be silly enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate my course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh ... which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel. RESPONDENT: What is the criteria for that which is silly, and that which is sensible? RICHARD: I have already explained (above) ... did you not read with both eyes but rushed here to show your ignorance? Seeing the fact determines action. RESPONDENT: As for ignorance – that is interesting that is ignorance you see. Thank you for sharing that. RICHARD: You are welcome ... it is beneficial for you, is it not, that you now acknowledge that you ignored the answer and rushed to the keyboard to dash out the demonstrative sentence: ‘Gracious! What I am asking Richard, is how is the silliness of an action determined?’ Your doing that easily conveyed the impression to me that you actually do not read what is written with the eye to understand ... but would rather try to score cheap points. * RICHARD: And then there is the matter of one’s fellow human beings. Some of them – in fact at times a lot of them – are desirous of invading the country that one is living peacefully in, with the avowed intent of killing, torturing, raping, pillaging and subjugating oneself and one’s fellow citizens. If one holds a strong and passionate belief in not causing any pain and suffering to other sentient beings then one must be more than a fruitarian ... one must be a pacifist as well. This amounts to hanging out a sign – if everybody else in the country one lives in adopts this specific belief – which says, in effect: ‘Please feel free to invade us, we will not fight back, for we hold firmly to the principle of not causing pain and suffering to any sentient being whatsoever’ (the Tibetan situation is a particular case in point.) Thus anarchy would rule the world – all because of a belief system handed down by the Saints and the Sages, the Messiahs and the Avatars, the Redeemers and the Saviours, the Prophets and the Priests, century after century. All this is predicated upon there being an enduring ‘I’ that is going to survive the death of the body and go on into the paradisiacal After-Life that is ‘my’ post-mortem reward for being a ‘good’ person during ‘my’ sojourn on this planet earth. RESPONDENT: This hardly need be the case. I am both a vegan and a pacifist and gladly wear a sign that says, ‘I will do you no harm’. RICHARD: You can eat whatever you choose as far as I am concerned ... but know full well that by being a pacifist in this world as it is with people as they are then you are relying upon other human beings to risk their lives to protect you and your ilk. Skulking behind the most enormous military machine in the world and wearing a pacifist badge is but a public demonstration of hypocritical idiocy. Not to mention the State Police troopers, the FBI agents, the CIA operatives and so on who go out of their way to enable you to sleep somewhat peacefully in your bed at night. These are all people behind the badge ... your fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Each of these entities are as much responsible for the supposed non-peace the claim to protects us form as the alleged ‘peace’ they preserve. RICHARD: This is a ‘straw man’ argument ... I never said they were not as much responsible and I never said they preserved any peace. I said that they protect you and your ilk so that you can sleep ‘somewhat’ peacefully. May I ask? What is this ‘supposed non-peace’ ? Are you still in a state of denial about all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide? We had an extensive correspondence about this some months ago. And you told me that you ‘bear our conversations in mind’. RESPONDENT: One does not create Peace through defence. RICHARD: I never said that one does ... only the elimination of identity in its totality will enable
the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent. Until that happens on a global scale, some semblance of law and
order will need to be maintained at the point of a gun. Hence pacifists are wankers RESPONDENT: But one creates Peace through the defencelessness that arises with the understanding that it really just doesn’t matter if one is alive or dead, with possessions or no. RICHARD: Aye ... this is the ‘turn the other cheek’ decree that you found so ‘comical’ (above). When put in practice it means that the bully-boys rule the world. RESPONDENT: It will be as you choose it to be. If you believe that the preservation of a particular body is important, then yes, defence is a comforting commodity. If one is angered when what they believe are their possessions are taken, then yes, a police force is a comforting commodity. RICHARD: I do understand pacifism ... I was deluded enough to be one myself for eleven years. But the fact remains that you are only able stay alive to practice it by relying upon other human beings to risk their lives to protect you and your ilk. Skulking behind the most enormous military machine in the world and wearing a pacifist badge is but a public demonstration of hypocritical idiocy. Not to mention the State Police troopers, the FBI agents, the CIA operatives and so on who go out of their way to enable you to preserve your body and keep your possessions. These are all people behind the badge ... your fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Personally, I have no particular care for either life or possessions. RICHARD: Hmm ... do you lock and bolt your doors and windows? Do you keep your money in a bank – and thus protected by armed security personnel – or out in the open on a tray on the kitchen table for anyone on the street to see through the open front door? If you have a car ... do you wind up the windows and lock the doors in a public car-park ... and remove the keys from the ignition? If you use a bicycle ... do you chain it to a lamp-post? Need I go on? I have many more bits and pieces like this that expose pacifism ... as I said, I was a pacifist for eleven years and it was becoming aware of minutiae like these that showed me how silly I was to allow principles decreed by Gurus and God-men – who declared that they were not the body – to rule my life ... because I am this body. The military personnel and custom officers are the locks on the doors and the bars on the windows (the borders) of the country you live in. RESPONDENT: Currently I have an abundance of both, I enjoy this. RICHARD: And why are you able to do this? Only by relying upon other human beings to risk their lives to protect you and your ilk. Skulking behind the most enormous military machine in the world and wearing a pacifist badge is but a public demonstration of hypocritical idiocy. Not to mention the State Police troopers, the FBI agents, the CIA operatives and so on who go out of their way to enable you to preserve your body and keep your possessions. These are all people behind the badge ... your fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Tomorrow either might be gone – it makes no difference to me, and what it may mean to the rest of the world – that is on them. RICHARD: Hmm ... any plans for noble martyrdom in the pipeline? Or is this but flatulence talking? RESPONDENT: I ask for no protection, wish no particular law enforced. RICHARD: Then stop skulking behind the most enormous military machine in the world and the State Police troopers, the FBI agents, the CIA operatives and so on. If that is too complicated to do, then do this simple thing: take all your money out of the bank and keep it on the kitchen table and leave all your windows and doors unlocked and unbarred and open night after night and day after day, eh? After all, you ‘have no particular care for possessions’, you say. RESPONDENT: But for the rest of the world – that is on them – they have asked for these military forces you describe to enforce their particular belief system – they have them. It does seem, however, that very few have found any peace through that wish being granted. RICHARD: It is not peace being sought but some respite or even a truce ... any military or police force is but armed protection from the bully-boys of the world. Ever-vigilant protection is not peace. * RESPONDENT: I have no belief in an after-life. RICHARD: What solipsist would ... there is no life in the first place, in their belief system, as it is all an illusion anyway. RESPONDENT: But ... I have no belief that it is all an illusion anyway. RICHARD: There could hardly be an actuality for the person who wrote this. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: The reward is the action. RICHARD: What ‘action’? It is the gullible youth and dedicated career soldiers that do all ‘the action’. The pusillanimous pacifist can sit safely at home ... all the while casting guilt trips at those who have the intestinal fortitude to get off their backsides and do something. RESPONDENT: This is not even remotely the case. You have greatly damaged your claim of being a factual based man Richard. RICHARD: I have done nothing of the sort ... not only have I experienced this first-hand from pacifists with banners and gibes on the quayside when personally embarking on the voyage to a war-zone, but have read about it and watched documentaries on the subject. What planet are you on? RESPONDENT: When I was 20 I did a stint in the Army – it was an experience. I met no patriots. Most of the lot was, like me, unmarried young men who needed quick cash and a warm place to stay. The food was good and if you could see the silliness of the whole futile endeavour, the game was easy enough to play. RICHARD: Good grief ... would you call this a reasoned dialogue? Millions of patriots do exist ... so much has been written on the subject in books, newspapers, magazines, documentaries and so on. You are in a serious state of denial. RESPONDENT: As for current career soldiers, I have no feeling one way or another. Every man’s path is where their foot falls (or marches if that is the case). I feel no gratitude for what they have chosen for themselves, nor any dismay. What shall be is decided as I as them, and needs no concern from here. Would I ask any person to kill another to preserve my own life – no. Would I ask anyone to stop killing to preserve their own belief system that includes the importance of the preservation of their own state of possessions or body, no. Do as you do Richard. RICHARD: Yes ... all this idealism is fine if you kept it for yourself. No one is hurt by your
philosophy but yourself, that way. But as you have children * RESPONDENT: Why the fear of anarchy? RICHARD: I looked back at what I had written and for the life of me I cannot see anarchy anywhere there. I guess all this commonsense talk must have stirred up your fears and you have projected them onto some innocuous writing. It is only a guess, though. RESPONDENT: I will not ask you to surrender your life, however, do allow me to assist you – perhaps you have rushed. ‘Thus anarchy would rule the world’. RICHARD: Fair enough ... it was careless writing on my part. It was meant to read: ‘I looked back at what I had written and for the life of me I cannot see ‘fear of anarchy’ anywhere there’. My error. Shall I start again ... because there is no ‘fear of anarchy’ there. RESPONDENT: What could that mean to someone who perfectly at Peace? RICHARD: Ah ... now this sentence does throw some light upon the puzzle. The capitalisation of the word ‘Peace’ means that you are referring to your Holy Peace and not the secular peace-on-earth that I talk about. Yea verily ... you should indeed be trembling in your boots. The wrath of your god will descend any moment now. RESPONDENT: What god Richard? RICHARD: The one that you fondly imagine you are ... this one: [Respondent]: ‘You are IT!’ RESPONDENT: I looked back at what I had written and for the life of me I cannot see god anywhere there. RICHARD: Try looking in your past posts and on your Web Page. RESPONDENT: I guess all this commonsense talk must have stirred up your fears and you have projected them onto some innocuous writing. It is only a guess, though. RICHARD: Not so ... I go by all you write over a period of time. There is nothing innocuous about that lot. RESPONDENT: Are you afraid of not having all you desire? RICHARD: Have you ever noticed that once someone starts projecting they cannot stop? RESPONDENT: No, is that your experience? RICHARD: Yes ... and it is observed by psychiatrists and psychologists and counsellors too. RESPONDENT: Are you afraid of being in pain? RICHARD: It is the word fear that is the give-away ... it being what gives a pacifist their pseudo-courage. RESPONDENT: Well, yes now that you mention it is beginning to look as though projecting is rather hard to bring under halt when it is started. RICHARD: Good ... you have now noticed that you were doing that, eh? RESPONDENT: Are you afraid of the possibility of total extinction at death? RICHARD: No ‘possibility’ about it. Death is oblivion. RESPONDENT: Interesting belief. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RESPONDENT: Any conception of the afterlife is a fantasy. RICHARD: Your whole life is a fantasy ... you are the person who came onto this Mailing List declaring that ‘I am IT!’ and that ‘objective reality is solipsism’! RESPONDENT: You can produce no fact, as it were, about the afterlife. RICHARD: Facts mean nothing to you. For you there are no facts. Facts require an actuality and for you none of all this is real ... let alone actual. RESPONDENT: I bid you, Richard ... for a moment at the least, move away from your rather wanker-like (I Love that word!) dissecting of me and meet the statement as it is: ‘You can produce no fact, as it were, about the afterlife’. RICHARD: Look, it is not a dissection of you ... it is a relentless exposé of the eastern spiritual mysticism that you espouse that I am doing. I make no bones about this and – as I know full well what it is that I am doing – it is not wanking ... given that a wanker is an ‘ineffectual’ person (not having any feelings I cannot relate to the ‘contemptible’ part of the dictionary meaning of the word). As for how I can know about any ‘after-life’ ... when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul die one already knows what happens at physical death. There is no identity – no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – inside this flesh and blood body to go into any ‘after-life’. Therefore, any ‘after-life’ is but an invention of pious egoists who desire immortality. They will not be disappointed, however, as physical death is oblivion. * RICHARD: When ‘I’ am no longer extant there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs. As there is no ‘believer’, there is no ‘I’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs’ yet you believe: (1) [Richard]: ‘The word ‘talent’ would signify the divine endowment of this quality as a means of self-improvement to you’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is obvious that the secular meaning of the word could hardly apply to the person who wrote this. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (2) [Richard]: ‘Everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... everybody does tell me this. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (3) [Richard]: ‘One already knows what happens at physical death’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is something that I do already know. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (4) [Richard]: ‘Facts mean nothing to you, for you there are no facts’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... facts need an objective reality. There could hardly be facts for the person who wrote this. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (5) [Richard]: ‘Your whole life is speculation’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is obvious that the person who wrote this is indulging in nothing but speculation. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (6) [Richard]: ‘Holding fervently to any belief is a sure sign that there is a wayward ‘I’ that needs to be controlled’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it. When there is no wayward ‘I’ there is no believing possible ... it is something that is observed in my own moment-to-moment living experience. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (7) [Richard]: ‘One is automatically harmless ... which does not mean abstaining from killing’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is something that observed in my own moment-to-moment living experience. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (8) [Richard]: ‘Death is oblivion’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is simply the case that when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul die one already knows what happens at physical death. There is no identity – no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – inside this flesh and blood body to go into any ‘after-life’. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (9) [Richard]: ‘The capitalisation of the word ‘Peace’ means that you are referring to your Holy Peace’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is a fact that you wrote and told everybody so. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (10) [Richard]: ‘... you should indeed be trembling in your boots. The wrath of your god will descend any moment now’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is well known that a believer can incur the displeasure of their god. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (11) [Richard]: ‘Bacteria cannot think’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is obvious that they simply cannot think. However, if you can produce a bacteria for me that can conceive in, or exercise the mind with, or form, or have in the mind, an hypothesis, a theory, a supposition, a plan, a design, a notion, an idea, or can conceive of mentally as in meditate on, turn over in the mind, ponder, contemplate, deliberate or reflect on and come to the understanding – in a positive active way and form connected objectives – or otherwise have the capacity to cogitate and conjecture and choose mentally (as in form a clear mental impression of something actual) then I will acknowledge that you are correct and I am in error. RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (12) [Richard]: ‘You have taken a straight-forward matter-of-fact way of appraising a situation and attempted to turn it into morality’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... because it is very apparent that you did. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: [You say] ‘there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs yet you believe: (13) [Richard]: ‘Being alive is a risk’. RICHARD: I do not have to believe it ... it is commonsense knowledge that you are but a missed heart-beat or two away from risk to life and a moment’s carelessness away from risk to limb. * RICHARD: By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is automatically harmless ... which does not mean abstaining from killing. RESPONDENT: These words have not come from here, ergo the claim that everybody tells you that is not a fact at all. RICHARD: Nothing in all your words to this Mailing List or anywhere on your Web Site shows the slightest bit of evidence that you have changed human nature. You are but dissembling ... divine nature is nothing but human nature glorified and sanctified. RESPONDENT: ABSOLUTELY!!!!!! RICHARD: Then your human nature is not changed ... it is simply re-arranged and/or altered (as in an ‘altered state of consciousness’). The word ‘change’ means a mutation; an entirely different state or quality; a making or being distinctly different; the substitution of one thing or set of conditions for another (etymologically the word ‘change’ comes from the Middle English (Anglo-Norman) word ‘chaunge’ and Old French word ‘changer’ meaning ‘as next’). Maybe you were thinking of the Celtic word ‘changeling’? It comes from the Latin word ‘cambire’ meaning ‘exchange’ which is derived from the Late Roman ‘cambiare’ meaning ‘barter’. * RICHARD: It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to kill or not kill something or someone, as the circumstances require. RESPONDENT: Circumstances can effect no outcome, be responsible for no result, determine no course of action, nor make any act of sentience – ever. RICHARD: Well, they do on this planet I am living on. When it rains I put up the umbrella or go inside so as to not get wet ... that is doing something according to the circumstances. RESPONDENT: If one’s belief system includes the preservation of their body and the satisfaction of their own tastes being more important than the life of another being, then yes, they will kill animals to eat. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: If one’s belief system includes the idea that the preservation of their own life and the current state of their possessions is more important than the life of another, then yes, they will kill in defence. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: If one believes that their prompt arrival at work is more important than the life of a young child on a bike, yes they will speed their vehicle to arrive at work. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: The circumstances are meaningless except as we believe about them. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: If one believes that watching TV is more important than responding to a post form a friend, then indeed the TV will be activated. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: Eating meat, for example, is an act of freedom, based upon purely practical considerations such as the taste bud’s predilection, or the body’s ability to digest the food eaten, or meeting the standards of hygiene necessary for the preservation of decaying flesh, or the availability of sufficient resources on this planet to provide the acreage necessary to support the conversion of vegetation into animal protein. It has nothing whatsoever with sparing sentient beings any distress. RESPONDENT: Foremost of which is the belief that the preservation of one’s own body is more important than the life of the animal killed. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: I would expect this rationalisation to be among your beliefs. RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: Thus ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. RESPONDENT: This is all very lofty Richard, but it does not even remotely address where, originally, the whole ‘conditioning process’ began. Whom conditioned the first conditioned person? How did the idea of conditioning first originate? How do you know that your oft repeated belief about good and bad is not other than conditioning? RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: The feeling of ‘Right and Wrong’ is born out of holding on to a belief system that is impossible to live ... as all belief systems are. I am not trying to persuade anyone to eat meat or not eat meat ... I leave it entirely up to the individual as to what they do regarding what they eat. It is the belief about being ‘Right or Wrong’ that is insidious, for this is how you are manipulated by those who seek to control you ... they are effectively beating you with a psychological stick. And the particularly crafty way they go about it is that they get you to do the beating to yourself. Such self-abasement is the hall-mark of any religious humility ... a brow-beaten soul earns its way into some god’s good graces by self-castigating acts of redemption. Holding fervently to any belief is a sure sign that there is a wayward ‘I’ that needs to be controlled. RESPONDENT: Controlled by what? RICHARD: A socially constructed conscience. RESPONDENT: No, no – who controls the ‘I’ you believe needs controlling? RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: Controlled how? RICHARD: By reward and punishment ... and by awe and dread. RESPONDENT: No, this ‘I’ you believe needs controlling – once you have established for me whom controls it – how is that control accomplished? RICHARD: This undergraduate ploy does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and finger-tips and stop using it. * RICHARD: What is the use of living in the delirium that you are a god if you cannot give anything to anyone, eh? RESPONDENT: I do not seem to need to have a ‘use’ to live Richard. Seems a rather heavy bag to carry, but to each their own. RICHARD: This seems to be at odds with your ‘Infinite Responsibility’ statement ... surely that implies being of vast use. RESPONDENT: I will offer that it seems rather ‘silly’ to be on a tirade about the fallacy of right and wrong when: one – you have asserted it is an individual choice as to what philosophy one practices and: two – the entire soliloquy was a exercise in determining what is right and wrong. RICHARD: Not so ... you have taken a straight-forward matter-of-fact way of appraising a situation and attempted to turn it into morality. It is not a matter of merely substituting ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ for ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’. RESPONDENT: This is claim hardly braced up in your words. It is only in the young people who come here to live that I see such a conviction that the painted window shades are the sun coming up. RICHARD: Hmm ... look, if you think it is important for me to understand this sentence then perhaps you could re-write it in a way that makes sense? What has painted window shades have to do with morality?
CORRESPONDENT No. 14 (Part Four) 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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