Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 14
RESPONDENT: Why go through all the mash of mush that follows? Seems rather like wanking, yes? RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... it is not a ‘mash of mush’ or ‘rather like wanking’ at all. Perhaps we had better clear up this problem before I move on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations, eh? RESPONDENT: If you would choose to, please do proceed. From here, I would much rather discuss your answer to my original request, which, as a reminder was: ‘If you would, Richard, please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. RICHARD: Indeed, I too, share your preference to discuss your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 106 puzzled reservations ... but what point would be served by rushing in when the essential ground for a fruitful dialogue has gaping holes in it? * RICHARD: Otherwise, if this simple observation is left to rancour with you, such festering will grow into a huge doubt, in your mind, about my integrity and honesty. RESPONDENT: Please Richard, such a huge doubt is nowhere to be found. The honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer is now established here, and I am very clear about what I can trust of your offerings. Doubt really does little good, it is more of a distraction I think. It is much more sensible, wouldn’t you agree, to observe and establish what it is you can trust rather than be worried with doubt? RICHARD: Oh no, no ... most definitely not. Now that you have seen fit to bring in the assumption that I operate on trust so as to allay doubt mayhap it be worthwhile to set your mind at rest regarding this very pertinent issue? Trust is but the antidote to doubt ... without doubt, where is the need for trust? And, as doubt arises out of insecurity, then your trust is based on – and fuelled by – uncertainty and lack of confidence in your ability to discern and appraise. * RICHARD: Therefore, I will clear up this misunderstanding – and receive your response – before proceeding to the original answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations. This way I will know that we are not going too fast for your comprehension ... RESPONDENT: Thank you for your concern, but as I stated above, the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer is now established here, and I am very clear about what I can trust of your offerings. As to the subject matter, you were very clear in your explanation of your perspective, and I indicated this in my last reply. I see no reason to keep from moving on without delay. RICHARD: It is important, is it not, to not take another’s words on trust? Is it not essential that one sees for oneself what is being said? To examine and thus eliminate any cause of insecurity? * RICHARD: I am prepared to stick at this one misunderstanding, through thick and thin, until you have ‘got it’ ... and then we can get on with the actual business to hand. RESPONDENT: Again, at this point, I have no difficult with either what I can trust about the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer, and I understand the perspective you explained in your last post. You have been very clear in both regards. I thank you, and I am ready to move on to the further development of the business at hand without further delay. RICHARD: Where you say ‘I understand the perspective you explained in your last post’ are you referring to an intellectual understanding or an actual understanding? * RICHARD: Now, the fact is that I did not ‘choose my identification’ in the above paragraph at all. RESPONDENT: Richard, I never asserted that you did. For your satisfaction, I hereby promise that I never will assert that you chose your identification in the above paragraph. if you will, please let us move forward. RICHARD: But you do say ‘I never asserted that you did’ followed by an implausible platitude ‘I hereby promise that I never will assert that you ...’ . It rings hollow, to me and indicates a lack of sincerity and understanding. * RICHARD: I cannot see how you got ‘you choose your identification’ out of a very clear sentence that says: ‘I do not identify ...’. RESPONDENT: I hereby promise, that I will never ask you to see how I got it. Please Richard, I now have your full statement on the issue, I understand it, I thank you for it, and have nothing further to add in connection with it. RICHARD: Well, maybe it is the way you put a sentence together, but here you seem to be telling me than you will change your behaviour and not the underlying scepticism ... a sort-of rearranging the deck-chairs on the ‘Titanic’. How did you get ‘you choose your identification’ out a sentence that clearly says ‘I do not identify ...’? Your answer will throw some light on why you are having so much difficulty in grasping such a simple thing as the physical differentiation betwixt a flesh and blood body and a glass and plastic computer monitor, you see. * RICHARD: And further to this point, I clearly stated in my resolution of your first question that, sans identity, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation. Viz.: 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 ... which indicates no ‘identification’ at all. I went on to explain that this is called ‘apperceptive awareness’ (and that it is not to be confused with ‘choiceless awareness’) because apperception is consciousness being aware of being consciousness (which clearly indicates no identity). Now, as this is a ‘direct experience of the actual’ and thus totally foreign to your experience, I did consider that you probably would not comprehend that this experiencing is entirely dissimilar to ‘Pantheism’ (wherein one solipsistically identifies as being everything) so I bethought to bring this to your attention. Hence my very clear statement: ‘I am not a Pantheist: I do not identify with the objects of perception in an all-embracing oneness’ (from which statement you somehow deduced that I ‘chose my identification’ ). Are we together thus far? I will wait until I receive your comeback before proceeding on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations. Until the understanding of this non-identification is no longer ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind ... it is no use to proceed further to the more advanced discussions. RESPONDENT: See, this is exactly the thing about observing and learning what to trust. That you would choose to stall at this point is no surprise to me. As a matter of fact, it very closely mirrors the profile I created of this conversation. RICHARD: Ahh, but this exemplifies one of the down-sides of relying upon trust based on your conceptualising (creating a profile or image) to allay doubt: misconception. I am not stalling ... I am full-on sincere. RESPONDENT: Well, as promised I have nothing further to add in connection with this particular road block you have created. RICHARD: A further misconception ... I am not creating a road-block. It is you. You are stalling the smooth flow of mutual dialogue and sincere probing into the workings of the human psyche. I was proceeding merrily with my response and you chose to stick in a dig based on your prejudice of me. To wit:
It was not merely ‘all very interesting’ ... for that paragraph was my answer. And you overlooked and dismissed it with a frivolous throwaway line of the type that draws self-congratulatory applause from the primate-mentality peanut gallery. RESPONDENT: I am aware, having just now reviewed the questions and comments I have sent you to this point, there is much fertile ground that could be covered effectively and very little of it has anything to do with the issue of this post. RICHARD: Indeed and I am glad to see that you have taken the time to re-visit our dialogue and see for yourself that I was proceeding famously in a very fertile area. RESPONDENT: As I have clearly stated twice in this letter I have no difficult with what I can trust about the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer, and I understand the perspective you explained in your previous post. You have been very clear in both regards. I thank you, and I am ready to move on to the further development of the business at hand (which, in the original of this post, was not other than my request for you to demonstrate the difference between the experience of the actual, and the actual you imply is being experienced) without further delay. If you would kindly inform me as to your decision to move on in answering my questions or to retire from further sharing, it would be greatly appreciated. If you choose to continue to feel it impossible to move on from this point, I would also gladly attend to any suggestion you may have concerning beginning again – I have saved each of the questions I have posted you. RICHARD: Excellent ... I too have all of our correspondence. I keep it in a long document in my word processor and, as such it is a simple task to type a word or phrase in the search and find function of my computer and send it back through every single word that you and I have written to each other over this past fourteen months or so. We have covered a lot of territory, you and I, and I do appreciate you taking the time and interest to share with me your thoughts. RESPONDENT: My understanding of your perspective is this: There is an experience, let us call it sense data, and in your explanations, these data were sight and touch. From this sense data you build certain images, in your explanation the specific image was ‘... computer monitor is a glass and plastic object ...’. RICHARD: Well, no ... I do not ‘build certain images’ . I see apperceptively ... the image-maker is extinct. RESPONDENT: Further, and concerning the image you construct of the sense data, you believe that the image is dissociated from the sense data, that is to say, you believe that the ‘... computer monitor (that) is a glass and plastic object ...’ exists independently of and beyond the sense data from which you constructed the image. RICHARD: Well, no ... I do not ‘believe’ anything. The ability to believe vanished years ago ... the entire intuitive/imaginative faculty is extirpated. I have shared this inability to believe with you ad infinitum, in our past correspondence. Viz.: ‘This undergraduate debating ploy does not work on me and you may as well save your time and fingertips and stop using it’. RESPONDENT: More, you believe that the image is independent of all sense data as is evident in your words ‘... that stays on the desk when the body gets up and walks away’. RICHARD: Not so ... this undergraduate debating ploy does not work on me and you may as well save your time and fingertips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: These same steps of sense data, image construction and object permanence are quite easily seen to be repeated a second time in that same statement. There is sense data, that being perhaps, a certain olfactory experience, and perhaps a certain pressure, from which you construct an image of a body that is independent of the motion detected in the sense data. See it here ‘... the body gets up and walks away’. This specific image building process would be expected based on your often repeated image of a flesh and bone body. RICHARD: I do not have an ‘image’ of being this flesh and blood body ... I actually am this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Lastly, you are clearly seen to believe that the image you construct from the sense data is the most legitimate revelation of the actual world you believe dwells beyond experience (sense data). RICHARD: Well, no. You see, what I was describing in those two paragraphs was how normal people in the ‘real world’ experience sense-datum as a ‘reality’ perceived through the senses by the entity that they feel and think they are. I was not speaking of the actual world and/or actuality at all. I clearly wrote [quote]: ‘For a normal person (approximately 6.0 billion peoples currently alive on this planet) the experience just described is as if ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body looking out through ‘my’ eyes (as if looking out through a window to the world outside a house) ... and ‘I’ see an object called a computer monitor. Just to be sure that it is really there, ‘I’ reach out and feel that it is there through ‘my’ finger-tips ... thus ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body and ‘I’ experience the world of people, things and events ‘outside’ the body indirectly (through ‘my’ eyes, through ‘my’ ears, through ‘my’ nostrils, through ‘my’ mouth and through ‘my’ skin)’ [endquote]. Whereas what I am, I have previously explored with you ... for example, just recently in the ‘this sentence is a 800 times 600 dots resolution’ discussion we had. RESPONDENT: When asked to speak about the nature of the actual world you provided the image you have constructed out of experience. RICHARD: Not so. In fact I clearly asked you [quote] ‘Are we together thus far? I will wait until I receive your response before proceeding to explore the difference between this indirect experiencing (as just detailed) and a ‘direct experience of the actual’ as in my initial article (quoted at the top of this post). Until the workings of this indirect activity is grasped ... it is no use to proceed further. Then we can progress to the more advanced discussions’ [endquote]. Obviously you missed the pertinent phrase ‘indirect experiencing’ in your rush to impose your ‘profile’ (an image of me based upon your doubt-allaying trust) onto what I am describing. And all I have received since then is reservations on your part that need clarifying. RICHARD: Goodness me ... it is not a ‘mash of mush’ or ‘rather like wanking’ at all. Perhaps we had better clear up this problem before I move on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations, eh? RESPONDENT: If you would choose to, please do proceed. From here, I would much rather discuss your answer to my original request, which, as a reminder was: ‘If you would, Richard, please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. RICHARD: Indeed, I too, share your preference to discuss your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 106 puzzled reservations ... but what point would be served by rushing in when the essential ground for a fruitful dialogue has gaping holes in it? RESPONDENT: Then by all means, and with God’s speed, do move on. The only gaping hole is the one that marks the distance between the evidence respectfully asked for and the interesting, yet insufficient, answer you provided. Even with that being the case, please – let us examine the evidence, if you would please demonstrate it, that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. The essential ground, more over, the only ground for the discussion that would arise from an examination of the requested evidence, is the respectfully requested evidence. RICHARD: I am none too sure about the advisability your notion of moving on with ‘God’s speed’ ... going by the speed at which any of the gods have been bringing about their much-trumpeted ‘Peace On Earth’ one would be waiting for countless life-times and still it would not be happening. Shall we move faster than that? All we have to do is clear up this problem about the ground and it is ‘full steam ahead’. * RICHARD: Otherwise, if this simple observation is left to rancour with you, such festering will grow into a huge doubt, in your mind, about my integrity and honesty. RESPONDENT: Please Richard, such a huge doubt is nowhere to be found. The honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer is now established here, and I am very clear about what I can trust of your offerings. Doubt really does little good, it is more of a distraction I think. It is much more sensible, wouldn’t you agree, to observe and establish what it is you can trust rather than be worried with doubt? RICHARD: Oh no, no ... most definitely not. Now that you have seen fit to bring in the assumption that I operate on trust so as to allay doubt mayhap it be worthwhile to set your mind at rest regarding this very pertinent issue? RESPONDENT: If you would, please demonstrate the physical existence of the mind you clearly state I own, i.e. ‘... to set your mind ...’. RICHARD: Are you now telling me that you have lost your mind? But do you really have to ask someone on the other side of the world for help? Then again, it is your mind and if you want to disown it that is your business ... I am not going to go digging around inside your skull to see what one may find. Just have a look in the ‘mash of mush’ ... who knows what you may find. RESPONDENT: In your answer please also demonstrate if you would, the evidence that supports the implication that the I you imagine owns my mind is separate from that mind you clearly state it owns. Thank you. RICHARD: Are you so paranoid that you now take umbrage at normal sentence usage? To say ‘set your brain at rest’ would not have the same ring to it as the commonly accepted phrase ‘to set your mind at rest’. I am not about to re-write the phrase-book just to cater to your doubts and suspicions. * RICHARD: Trust is but the antidote to doubt ... without doubt, where is the need for trust? And, as doubt arises out of insecurity, then your trust is based on – and fuelled by – uncertainty and lack of confidence in your ability to discern and appraise. RESPONDENT: No, you have offered a mistaken assumption. Trust can only be based on one’s confidence in one’s ability to discern and appraise. Being doubtful of one’s ability to discern and appraise is already a lack of trust. RICHARD: Unlike you, I start from a dictionary definition ... it makes life so much easier. Trust is the ‘faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination’ ... and faith is ‘belief, especially without evidence or proof’. RESPONDENT: And if you would, please demonstrate the physical existence of each confidence, discern and appraise. In your answer also please include the evidence that supports the implication that there is a ‘me’, as per you statement ‘lack of confidence in YOUR ability to discern and appraise’ (emphasis mine) that exist separate, and there for is able to create a ‘lack of confidence’ in the ‘ability to discern and appraise’. When addressing this ‘me’ that is separate from what ever physical form ‘discern’ and ‘appraise’ your evidence supports ‘discern’ and ‘appraise’ having, please include a description of this me’s nature specifically addressing and explaining it’s ability to physically perform the feat of producing whatever physical forms of confidence, discern, and appraise you evidence demonstrates confidence, discern, and appraise having. Thank you. RICHARD: Well ... you can thank me all you like but, once again, I decline. We have been down this road before and as ‘me’ is self-evident (even Mr. René Descartes knew this) then any attempt at answering this query of yours is to become embroiled in a convoluted and tortuous and tautological academia-like quibbling and nit-picking and squabbling over of differing intellectual spasms of apparently pulchritudinous gems of such scintillating brilliance as to cause any hoary eastern mystical pundit to blush with shame at his ineptitude. If you do not know what ‘me’ is, means or feels like then we cannot have a communication. * RICHARD: Therefore, I will clear up this misunderstanding – and receive your response – before proceeding to the original answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations. This way I will know that we are not going too fast for your comprehension ... RESPONDENT: Thank you for your concern, but as I stated above, the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer is now established here, and I am very clear about what I can trust of your offerings. As to the subject matter, you were very clear in your explanation of your perspective, and I indicated this in my last reply. I see no reason to keep from moving on without delay. RICHARD: It is important, is it not, to not take another’s words on trust? RESPONDENT: If one has confidence in their ability to discern and appraise, and observes carefully, trust is a very useful and efficient tool. RICHARD: Yet if one ‘has confidence in their ability to discern and appraise’ then what is the need for a tool that uses faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing and reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination and, further, to have belief ... especially without evidence or proof? RESPONDENT: For example, in the case at hand, I have been able to establish what I can trust about the hypocrisy, honesty and integrity of the thoughts you create and offer. This is very helpful and effective in evaluating the life you have chosen to be and whether or not I have any interest in being a similar life, that would include the same delivering the same measure of hypocrisy, honesty and integrity. RICHARD: this is but waffle ... maybe divine waffle, but still waffle all the same. You consider me so hypocritical, so dishonest and so lacking in integrity that you use reams of bandwidth to make your irrelevant points known again and again with your spurious ‘proofs’. RESPONDENT: Blind trust, which is that trust not based on observing the offerings of another and confidently determining their honesty and integrity and simply following their injunctions because one is told repeatedly that they are the only right way and all other ways are wrong is fool hearted. RICHARD: And it is sentences like this that point to your previous verbiage as being waffle. There have been no ‘injunctions’ issuing forth from this keyboard ... only facts. It is a fact that human suffering has at least a 3,000 to 5,000 year recorded history – and as peoples everywhere are relying upon an ‘Ancient Wisdom’ that is 3,000 to 5,000 years old – all it takes is a simple observation to see that everybody is going in the wrong direction. To wit: How come it has taken 3,000 to 5,000 years ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found? RESPONDENT: This is even so when the offerings blindly trusted in have included linking wrong with wicked, i.e. ‘... one’s implicit wickedness and wrongness’, implicating that all other ways which are wrong are wicked, or have made grand and dubious promises of delivery and reward that far outreach any other artificial rewards associated with other paths. The outcome of this trust, which is just another manifestation of not acknowledging one’s own infinite responsibility, have demonstrably dubious results such as Jones’s Town, Heaven’s Gate, The Holocaust, the Manson followers, and the Ku Klux Klan. RICHARD: Goodness me ... you rashly place me in the same category as these peoples? Yet, have you noticed one thing they all have in common? Something they carry which Richard does not? A belief in a god of some description ... somewhat like yourself. * RICHARD: Is it not essential that one sees for oneself what is being said? To examine and thus eliminate any cause of insecurity? RESPONDENT: Yes, it is most essential to see for one self. Part of that process is observing carefully, determining the outcome of others and determining if in fact one is interested in that same outcome. Let us say, for example, that Dick entices me with grand promises of deliverance through the practice of jumping off a cliff 400 ft in height. RICHARD: Let us not say that, for example ... it is simply silly. RESPONDENT: Finding out for myself would include examining the remains of Dick after he has faithfully completed his own instructions. If, in the examination, what remains of Dick is twisted, grotesque, and utterly un-appealing to me, I can quite happily choose to not follow Ol’ Dick off the cliff, trusting if I do choose to follow him, what will remain of me will be similar to Ol’ Dick. Another case of finding out for myself may include determining whether or not I believe Dick has actually completed the course of action he repeatedly entices me to follow with grand promises of deliverance and reward. If, by observing carefully Ol’ Dick’s offerings and injunctions it becomes clear that they are not honest, and that his behaviours do not reflect or represent the state of being he promises to be found at the bottom of the cliff, I can confidently trust that his claims of completing his prescribed course and his grand promises of deliverance and rewards are untrue. With this trust I can happily choose not follow Dick’s injunction and instead place them in the pile of other imaginative and hypocritical scriptures. This being accomplished, I can once again go about finding out for myself, independent of the wishful and baseless injunctions of those who find their fellow beings abhorrent and thus set out to change the world in order to insure the Peace On Earth they hypocritically proclaim to have. RICHARD: May I suggest? Stop being abhorrent and then your imaginary friend ‘Ol’ Dick’ will stop finding you to be abhorrent. Speaking personally ... I find what you say that you are (god) to be so silly that I re-post it every now and then so as to show would-be eastern spiritual mystics what wanking looks like in print. Viz.:
* RICHARD: I am prepared to stick at this one misunderstanding, through thick and thin, until you have ‘got it’ ... and then we can get on with the actual business to hand. RESPONDENT: Please explain how imagining a particular course of events to involve both thick and thin and then preparing oneself for that imagined course of events is different than ‘... relying upon trust based on your conceptualising (creating a profile) to allay doubt’. Thank you. RICHARD: Well now ... I do not have to ‘imagine a particular course of events to involve both thick and thin’ for there is one unfolding right here in this E-Mail and the previous three or four. You have stretched out such a simple explanation of the direct experience of the actual to such gargantuan proportions by your objections that almost beggars description. I am having so much fun watching you make a fool of yourself ... and all because you refuse to explain how you got ‘you choose your identification’ out of a sentence that says ‘I do not identify ...’. Truly wondrous, are the workings of your mind. RESPONDENT: Again, at this point, I have no difficult with either what I can trust about the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer, and I understand the perspective you explained in your last post. You have been very clear in both regards. I thank you, and I am ready to move on to the further development of the business at hand without further delay. RICHARD: Where you say ‘I understand the perspective you explained in your last post’ are you referring to an intellectual understanding or an actual understanding? RESPONDENT: Both. Intellectually, I am the understanding that when asked ‘... please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’, you will not produce the evidence respectfully asked for, and instead of producing the evidence, you will go on about ‘... ‘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 ...’. RICHARD: It is like this: we have corresponded before, you and I, and it is impossible to discuss with a person who is in a state of denial about what is going-on in the ‘real world’. And until the ground is established as to the status quo ... all discussion is but waffle. RESPONDENT: Actually, I have never entertained any such idea as ‘ ... ‘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 ...’. Frankly, I find that a silly thing to believe. RICHARD: Yea verily ... what pantheist would entertain ‘any such idea’ , given that, for a pantheist, you are everything and Everything is You, eh? * RICHARD: Now, the fact is that I did not ‘choose my identification’ in the above paragraph at all. RESPONDENT: Richard, I never asserted that you did. For your satisfaction, I hereby promise that I never will assert that you chose your identification in the above paragraph. if you will, please let us move forward. RICHARD: But you do say ‘I never asserted that you did’ followed by an implausible platitude ‘I hereby promise that I never will assert that you ...’ . It rings hollow, to me and indicates a lack of sincerity and understanding. I cannot see how you got ‘you choose your identification’ out of a very clear sentence that says: ‘I do not identify ...’. RESPONDENT: I hereby promise, that I will never ask you to see how I got it. Please Richard, I now have your full statement on the issue, I understand it, I thank you for it, and have nothing further to add in connection with it. RICHARD: Well, maybe it is the way you put a sentence together, but here you seem to be telling me than you will change your behaviour and not the underlying scepticism ... a sort-of rearranging the deck-chairs on the ‘Titanic’. How did you get ‘you choose your identification’ out a sentence that clearly says ‘I do not identify ...’? Your answer will throw some light on why you are having so much difficulty in grasping such a simple thing as the physical differentiation betwixt a flesh and blood body and a glass and plastic computer monitor, you see. RESPONDENT: As promised, I have nothing more to add to that particular statement and the response you offered. RICHARD: And therein lies the rub. Until we can ascertain why you have so much difficulty in grasping such a simple thing as the physical differentiation betwixt a flesh and blood body and a glass and plastic computer monitor ... we cannot proceed on to the more advanced discussions. RESPONDENT: What I will respectfully ask is; If you would, Richard, please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. To which I will add, in order to be more clear, by what evidence do you determine the actual is something different than the direct experience of the actual? I will also now respectfully ask that you produce and demonstrate the evidence that supports the thought that I am separate from the behaviour identified as ‘No. 14’ as is clearly implied in your statement ‘... YOU will change your behaviour and not the underlying scepticism’ (emphasis mine). In you answer would you please address the following points: 1. What is the physical nature of scepticism and how is different from behaviour. RICHARD: Sure ... the scepticism that you convey in your posts can be experienced as a feeling of cynical doubt (if you wish to examine your feelings) and changed behaviour is but readjusted mannerisms designed to convey an impression to the unobservant that is at odds with the feelings so clearly expressed in the reams of bandwidth you use to make your irrelevant points known again and again with your spurious ‘proofs’. RESPONDENT: 2. If you are able to demonstrate the physical nature of scepticism, please demonstrate the evidence that supports your implication that changing an underlying scepticism is anything other than a changed behaviour. RICHARD: Sure ... your scepticism equals your doubt (as evidenced by your antidotal trust) and promising to change manners is patently hollow because this is but a repeat performance of what you have done in the past in our extensive correspondence. Therefore, the elimination of the cause of doubt (this deceitful ‘me’ that you are in denial about) and the cause of its antidotal trust (this ‘god’ that you say you are) is essential. RESPONDENT: 3. Please discuss the nature of the ‘I’ which I separate from both scepticism and the behaviour in what ever physical form your evidence supports scepticism and behaviour being in. Specifically discuss how this I performs the feat of producing physical effects and what is the origin of this I that is capable of producing physicality (perhaps you could discuss in a manner that clearly demonstrates what proceeds, thus produces physicality). Thank you. RICHARD: Well ... once again you can thank me all you like but, once again, I decline to examine the contents of your skull. Provided one complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols of the country one lives in, one will be left free to live one’s life as foolishly or as wisely as one chooses to. * RICHARD: And further to this point, I clearly stated in my resolution of your first question that, sans identity, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation. Viz.: 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 ... which indicates no ‘identification’ at all. I went on to explain that this is called ‘apperceptive awareness’ (and that it is not to be confused with ‘choiceless awareness’) because apperception is consciousness being aware of being consciousness (which clearly indicates no identity). Now, as this is a ‘direct experience of the actual’ and thus totally foreign to your experience, I did consider that you probably would not comprehend that this experiencing is entirely dissimilar to ‘Pantheism’ (wherein one solipsistically identifies as being everything) so I bethought to bring this to your attention. Hence my very clear statement: ‘I am not a Pantheist: I do not identify with the objects of perception in an all-embracing oneness’ (from which statement you somehow deduced that I ‘chose my identification’ ). Are we together thus far? I will wait until I receive your comeback before proceeding on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 93 puzzled reservations. Until the understanding of this non-identification is no longer ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind ... it is no use to proceed further to the more advanced discussions. RESPONDENT: See, this is exactly the thing about observing and learning what to trust. That you would choose to stall at this point is no surprise to me. As a matter of fact, it very closely mirrors the profile I created of this conversation. RICHARD: Ahh, but this exemplifies one of the down-sides of relying upon trust based on your conceptualising (creating a profile) to allay doubt: misconception. I am not stalling ... I am full-on sincere. RESPONDENT: Sincerity, (which I did not indicate I doubted you being) and stalling are not mutually exclusive. RICHARD: Good. Now that this point has been cleared up we can proceed: I clearly stated in my resolution of your first question that, sans identity, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation. Viz.: 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 ... which indicates no ‘identification’ at all. I went on to explain that this is called ‘apperceptive awareness’ (and that it is not to be confused with ‘choiceless awareness’) because apperception is consciousness being aware of being consciousness (which clearly indicates no identity). Now, as this is a ‘direct experience of the actual’ and thus totally foreign to your experience, I did consider that you probably would not comprehend that this experiencing is entirely dissimilar to ‘Pantheism’ (wherein one solipsistically identifies as being everything) so I bethought to bring this to your attention. Hence my very clear statement: ‘I am not a Pantheist: I do not identify with the objects of perception in an all-embracing oneness’ (from which statement you somehow deduced that I ‘chose my identification’ ). Are we together thus far? I will wait until I receive your comeback before proceeding on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 113 puzzled reservations. Until the understanding of this non-identification is no longer ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind ... it is no use to proceed further to the more advanced discussions. * RESPONDENT: Well, as promised I have nothing further to add in connection with this particular road block you have created. RICHARD: A further misconception ... I am not creating a road-block. It is you. RESPONDENT: If you would please bring your attention to the following: in examining the discussion thus far, I have not in any imaginable way indicated that we could not proceed forward, nor have I in any imaginable way indicated that the conversation must stop or end until any certain condition is met to my satisfaction. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... you are convinced that I ‘choose my identification’ when I repeatedly say that I experience no identity whatsoever. How can we proceed when there is so much doubt in your mind (despite all your antidotal trust) about the veracity of what I offer. It is you, and your useless trust that creating road-blocks. RESPONDENT: On the other hand, you have indicated on two occasion that the conversation must stop, or would end, or you would not proceed, until a particular aspect of the conversation was addressed to your satisfaction. RICHARD: No, no ... to your satisfaction. It is your mind that experiences my writing as an unsatisfactory ‘mash of mush’ ... speaking personally, I experience the ultimate satisfaction twenty four hours of the day. I have arrived at my destiny and am already always here now ... so I have nothing to prove and nothing to achieve. I am retired and on a pension and instead of pottering around the garden I am currently pottering around the Internet ... and I write as much or as little as the whim takes me. If my writing was dependent upon the other’s words being ‘addressed to my satisfaction’ , nothing would get written as only excellence will impress excellence. RESPONDENT: Those two occasions being ‘until the understanding of this non-identification is no longer ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind ... it is no use to proceed further to the more advanced discussions’ and: ‘until the workings of this indirect activity is grasped ... it is no use to proceed further’. RICHARD: Precisely ... I am glad that you may be starting to see that it is you who has difficulties with my clear statements of fact (to the point of being ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind) and not me. RESPONDENT: Further, I have made no suggest or instance that you change you your style, vocabulary, tactics or content, in any manner or way, thus performing no action actual or imagined that could possibly be misconstrued as ‘... stalling the smooth flow of mutual dialogue’. On the other hand, you have suggested or insisted that I change my style, vocabulary, tactics or content, thus ‘... stalling the smooth flow of mutual dialogue’. Specifically this suggestion is: ‘This undergraduate debating ploy does not work on me and you may as well save your time and fingertips and stop using it’. RICHARD: Well you will persist in using it ... it is you who repeatedly falls back on undergraduate debating techniques and not me. I am merely pointing this out ... again and again and again. And I am quite prepared to keep on with this, through thick and thin, until you have ‘got it’. * RICHARD: You are stalling the smooth flow of mutual dialogue and sincere probing into the workings of the human psyche. I was proceeding merrily with my response and you chose to stick in a dig based on your prejudice of me. To wit:
It was not merely ‘all very interesting’ ... for that paragraph was my answer. And you overlooked and dismissed it with a frivolous throwaway line of the type that draws self-congratulatory applause from the primate-mentality peanut gallery. RESPONDENT: Opinion of your fellow beings noted. RICHARD: Oh, it is not an ‘opinion’ , ... in fact I was told that I should aspire to the primate-mentality myself and stop being divided from my source. RESPONDENT: From here, the question respectfully asked was ‘please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. To which an answer might begin, ‘the evidence that demonstrates that there is a difference between the actual and the direct experience of the actual is ...’. Instead you went on about something that included no mention of the evidence that demonstrates that there is a difference between the actual and the direct experience of the actual. Now, your offering was not dismissed, in fact, as clearly stated, it was very found interesting. If upon your further consideration you continue to wish for that very interesting paragraph to remain your answer to the request ‘please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’, that is fine. If, however, you wish to provide an alternative answer that might begin with ‘the evidence that demonstrates that there is a difference between the actual and the direct experience of the actual is ...’ that will most appreciated. RICHARD: I am very happy to move on into the more advanced discussion, but until the indirect way of experiencing the world of people, things and events, by approximately 6.0 billion people, is clearly established as a basis for discussion ... how can we proceed? RESPONDENT: I am aware, having just now reviewed the questions and comments I have sent you to this point, there is much fertile ground that could be covered effectively and very little of it has anything to do with the issue of this post. RICHARD: Indeed and I am glad to see that you have taken the time to re-visit our dialogue and see for yourself that I was proceeding famously in a very fertile area. RESPONDENT: As I have clearly stated twice in this letter I have no difficult with what I can trust about the honesty and integrity of the thoughts you offer, and I understand the perspective you explained in your previous post. You have been very clear in both regards. I thank you, and I am ready to move on to the further development of the business at hand (which, in the original of this post, was not other than my request for you to demonstrate the difference between the experience of the actual, and the actual you imply is being experienced) without further delay. If you would kindly inform me as to your decision to move on in answering my questions or to retire from further sharing, it would be greatly appreciated. If you choose to continue to feel it impossible to move on from this point, I would also gladly attend to any suggestion you may have concerning beginning again – I have saved each of the questions I have posted you. RICHARD: Excellent ... I too have all of our correspondence. I keep it in a long document in my word processor and, as such it is a simple task to type a word or phrase in the search and find function of my computer and send it back through every single word that you and I have written to each other over this past fourteen months or so. We have covered a lot of territory, you and I, and I do appreciate you taking the time and interest to share with me your thoughts. RESPONDENT: Thank you, I find it kind of you to say so. RICHARD: Good. And it is not just me, either, that appreciates your input ... there are others who await your replies with an almost breathless anticipation. Dare I say that you are like a ‘god-send’ to wannabe mystics? RESPONDENT: My understanding of your perspective is this: There is an experience, let us call it sense data, and in your explanations, these data were sight and touch. From this sense data you build certain images, in your explanation the specific image was ‘... computer monitor is a glass and plastic object ...’. RICHARD: Well, no ... I do not build images. I see apperceptively ... the image-maker is extinct. RESPONDENT: Thank you, but the honesty and integrity of your offerings has already been made obvious. There is, from here, no further need for your repeat this claim. RICHARD: But ... there is a need. You see, you keep on insisting that I do make images (see below). RESPONDENT: Further, and concerning the image you construct of the sense data, you believe that the image is dissociated from the sense data, that is to say, you believe that the ‘... computer monitor (that) is a glass and plastic object ...’ exists independently of and beyond the sense data from which you constructed the image. RICHARD: Well, no ... I do not believe anything. The ability to believe vanished years ago ... the entire intuitive/imaginative faculty is extirpated. I have shared this inability to believe with you ad infinitum, in our past correspondence. Viz.: ‘This undergraduate debating ploy does not work on me and you may as well save your time and fingertips and stop using it’. RESPONDENT: I agree, you have shared this assertion ad infinitum, and as offered above, it is no longer necessary for you to continue. The assertion ‘The ability to believe vanished years ago ... the entire intuitive/imaginative faculty is extirpated’ or, ‘I have no intuitive or imaginative faculties whatsoever ... that all disappeared in 1992’ have been very useful in establishing the honesty and integrity of your offerings, and I thank you for that. RICHARD: Then why do you keep on insisting that ‘such-and-such is a belief’ when I explain how it is a fact (see below)? RESPONDENT: More, you believe that the image is independent of all sense data as is evident in your words ‘... that stays on the desk when the body gets up and walks away’. RICHARD: Not so ... this undergraduate debating ploy does not work on me and you may as well save your time and fingertips and stop using it. RESPONDENT: My image: Richard standing with his finger in his ears loudly chanting: ‘nah, nah, nah, nah nahnah boo, boo ... I can’t hear you’. I encounter this same childish defensiveness from the two Beautiful and borderline adolescent foster children here. Beside it being even more unbecoming from grown men than it is from troubled adolescents, it is not very conducive to establishing a clear understanding of what I offered, very clearly, as ‘My understanding of your perspective ...’. RICHARD: Well now (and overlooking your fantasy) I needs must point out that you offered: ‘More, you believe that the image is ...’ and completely ignored the fact that I expressly stated ... all the while trying to convince me that it is a belief. RESPONDENT: I have no interest in debating your experience, that would be as silly. RICHARD: So why are you doing just that, then? RESPONDENT: Once you have chosen to fulfil the respectful request to demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’ or any of the other requests for evidence I have respectfully made, or you produce the scientific study (as per my respectful request below) that you have made personally, or that you are quoting from that concludes ‘for a normal person (approximately 6.0 billion peoples currently alive on this planet) the experience just described is as if ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body looking out through ‘my’ eyes (as if looking out through a window to the world outside a house) ...’ we may have something to examine and debate. RICHARD: Whoa-up there ... you are racing ahead of yourself. We cannot proceed until your reservations are clarified and so that my words are no longer being ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind. RESPONDENT: Until such falsifiable evidence or study is presented we are left with only unsubstantiated puffery which is not worthy of attention or personal experience which, by its nature, is not falsifiable. RICHARD: What you mean is a door-to-door field survey of 6.0 billion peoples must be carried out before you will countenance furthering a discussion with Richard ... and you have the temerity to suggest it is I who is stalling, creating road-blocks and so on! RESPONDENT: These same steps of sense data, image construction and object permanence are quite easily seen to be repeated a second time in that same statement. There is sense data, that being perhaps, a certain olfactory experience, and perhaps a certain pressure, from which you construct an image of a body that is independent of the motion detected in the sense data. See it here ‘... the body gets up and walks away’. This specific image building process would be expected based on your often repeated image of a flesh and bone body. RICHARD: I do not have an ‘image’ of being this flesh and blood body ... I actually am this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Lastly, you are clearly seen to believe that the image you construct from the sense data is the most legitimate revelation of the actual world you believe dwells beyond experience (sense data). RICHARD: Well, no. You see, what I was describing in those two paragraphs was how normal people in the ‘real world’ experience sense-datum as a ‘reality’ perceived through the senses by the entity that they feel and think they are. I was not speaking of the actual world and/or actuality at all. I clearly wrote [quote]: ‘For a normal person (approximately 6.0 billion peoples currently alive on this planet) the experience just described is as if ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body looking out through ‘my’ eyes (as if looking out through a window to the world outside a house) ... and ‘I’ see an object called a computer monitor. RESPONDENT: There it is again. Are you able to see your image making? Are you willing to see it Richard? RICHARD: Put it this way ... you demonstrate that the 6.0 billion people do not experience the ‘real world’ this way, eh? Everyone I have personally met, read about or seen on the media indicate that this is their experience ... an indirect experiencing through the senses. * RICHARD: [quote]: ‘Just to be sure that it is really there, ‘I’ reach out and feel that it is there through ‘my’ finger-tips ... thus ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body and ‘I’ experience the world of people, things and events ‘outside’ the body indirectly (through ‘my’ eyes, through ‘my’ ears, through ‘my’ nostrils, through ‘my’ mouth and through ‘my’ skin)’ [endquote]. Whereas what I am, I have previously explored with you ... for example, just recently in the ‘this sentence is a 800 times 600 dots resolution’ discussion we had. RESPONDENT: When asked to speak about the nature of the actual world you provided the image you have constructed out of experience. RICHARD: Not so. In fact I clearly asked you [quote] ‘Are we together thus far? I will wait until I receive your response before proceeding to explore the difference between this indirect experiencing (as just detailed) and a ‘direct experience of the actual’ as in my initial article (quoted at the top of this post). RESPONDENT: You have now received two responses, and to this point have not proceeded to provide the evidence that was originally requested. RICHARD: Aye, and until all your doubt is cleared up, I am prepared to stick with this until you no longer need to trust my words. * RICHARD: [quote]: ‘Until the workings of this indirect activity is grasped ... it is no use to proceed further. Then we can progress to the more advanced discussions’ [endquote]. Obviously you missed the pertinent phrase ‘indirect experiencing’ in your rush to impose your ‘profile’ (a profile of me based upon your doubt-allaying trust) onto what I am describing. RESPONDENT: Originally I respectfully requested that you demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. I did not request, have not requested, and I am not now requesting an explanation of the difference between this indirect experiencing and a ‘direct experience of the actual’. RICHARD: You may not have asked for it, but you are getting it. Why are you trying to dictate how I explain my experience? Is it because you are god? RESPONDENT: I thank you for the effort you have put toward making an explanation of the difference between this indirect experiencing and a ‘direct experience of the actual’, however, I will once again respectfully ask you to direct your efforts toward fulfilling my original request and toward fulfilling those questions and request I have made since my original request. To repeat, I have never entertained any such idea as ‘... ‘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 ...’ Frankly, I find that a silly belief to be. RICHARD: Yea verily, what pantheist would entertain ‘any such idea’ ... given that you find that being whatever existence is ‘choosing to be being (doing)’ – what I call ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’ – is the ‘belief to be’ , eh? RESPONDENT: I would be interested, however, in the scientific study that you have made personally, or that you are quoting from that concludes ‘for a normal person (approximately 6.0 billion peoples currently alive on this planet) the experience just described is as if ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body looking out through ‘my’ eyes (as if looking out through a window to the world outside a house)’. RICHARD: Quite simply, as everyone I have personally met, read about or seen on the media indicate that this is their experience (an indirect experiencing through the senses), I did not need any ‘scientific study’ in order to proceed in seeking and finding and exploring and uncovering the already always existing peace-on-earth. * RICHARD: And all I have received since then is reservations on your part that need clarifying. RESPONDENT: The respectful request that you demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’ is continued to be made with no reservation, as are the several other requests that have been made since that original request. If you wish to continue to hold forth your original reply as your most considered answer to the respectful request that you demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’, please do indicate this wish. RICHARD: Well, no I will wait until I receive your response before proceeding to explore the difference between the indirect experiencing (as previously detailed) and a ‘direct experience of the actual’ as in my initial article (quoted at the very top of this post). Until the workings of this indirect activity is grasped ... it is no use to proceed further. Then we can progress to the more advanced discussions. RESPONDENT: I will then respectfully, and without reservation, hesitation or doubt, ask you to move on and develop a more thorough and appropriate answer to the next request I have respectfully made of you. RICHARD: And move on we will ... as soon as your trust is no longer needed. RESPONDENT: Otherwise, I will very happily attend to what ever other answer you care to offer in response to the original request. Thank you. RICHARD: Good. If you could happily attend to explaining how you get ‘you choose your identification’ out a sentence that clearly says ‘I do not identify ...’, then your answer will throw some light on why you are having so much difficulty in grasping such a simple thing as the physical differentiation betwixt a flesh and blood body and a glass and plastic computer monitor. And I will wait until I receive your comeback before proceeding on to responding to your reply to my answer to your query on my resolution of your first question to me at the top of the list of 113 puzzled reservations. Because until the understanding of this non-identification is no longer ‘rather like wanking’ or a ‘mash of mush’ in your mind ... it is no use to proceed further to the more advanced discussions. One step at a time, eh? RESPONDENT No. 25: Why are we so easily compliant: why do we give away our freedom so cheaply? RICHARD: But nobody ‘gives away their freedom’ because nobody is free to start off with. Freedom is gained through application and diligence, through patience and perseverance. RESPONDENT: Freedom is never gained, for that which is gained is always conditioned by the entity, location or circumstance from which it is gained. RICHARD: If your ‘freedom’ is ‘conditioned by the entity’ then it is a pseudo-freedom and not an actual freedom. An actual freedom is when the entity is not. As for the ‘location or circumstance from which it is gained’... the ‘location’ is planet earth and the ‘circumstances’ are known as ‘the human condition’. The phrase ‘human condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. An actual freedom from that lot is to be living an individual peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Interesting, the assumption that ‘nobody is free to start off with’. RICHARD: We have been down this road before, you and I, in previous correspondence ... and as long as you are in a state of denial about 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 that blight this otherwise fair planet we all live on, you will never be able to comprehend what I speak of. Just as an alcoholic cannot begin their ‘cure’ until they acknowledge that they have a problem ... so too is it with otherwise intelligent people who are so dissociated from what is going on in the world of people, things and events that they fool themselves into fondly imagining that it is all but a dream in which they are lucidly awake. RESPONDENT: He who is free to search for escape from circumstance through the application of diligence, patience and perseverance is equally as free as he who lives in the freedom that depends on that escape. RICHARD: This is waffle ... maybe divine waffle, but waffle all the same. RESPONDENT: Freedom is not attained or gained, however, Freedom is certainly able to be the experience of being free via escape from circumstance. RICHARD: Speaking personally (and thus not theoretically) in 1980, at the beginning of what was to be a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) that was the turning-point in my life, ‘I’, the entity that you referred to (further above) saw ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ was (a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning social identity) and the instant ‘I’ saw ‘myself’ ... I was not that. Thus (when I reverted back to normal in the ‘real world’) ‘I’ knew, by direct experience, that ‘I’ was standing in the way of the actual being apparent ... and ‘I’ had to go – become extinct – and not try to become something ‘better’. That is, ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ could never, ever become perfect or be perfection. The only thing ‘I’ could do – the only thing ‘I’ had to do – was die (psychologically and psychically self-immolate). Which is what ‘I’ did ... and now there is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware sans any entity whatsoever. RESPONDENT No. 25: Why are we so easily compliant: why do we give away our freedom so cheaply? RICHARD: But nobody ‘gives away their freedom’ because nobody is free to start off with. Freedom is gained through application and diligence, through patience and perseverance. RESPONDENT: Freedom is never gained, for that which is gained is always conditioned by the entity, location or circumstance from which it is gained. RICHARD: If your ‘freedom’ is ‘conditioned by the entity’ then it is a pseudo-freedom and not an actual freedom. RESPONDENT: Interesting image ‘your freedom’, a me (as in ‘your’) that has freedom. RICHARD: I was simply going by what you wrote (‘is always conditioned by the entity’) thus it was you who introduced ‘a me (as in ‘your’) that has freedom’ into the conversation and not Richard. So why has it all of a sudden become an ‘interesting image’ for you? * RICHARD: An actual freedom is when the entity is not. RESPONDENT: Being that actual freedom shares a boundary (ends where another condition arises) with a specific condition, actual freedom is contradictory to: ‘Freedom: n. 5. The capacity to exercise choice or free will’ and is not related to being free, in that free is: ‘not bound or constrained’. RICHARD: Yet where in all that I wrote have I ever said that an actual freedom from the human condition ‘shares a boundary (ends where another condition arises) with a specific condition’? If you build an elaborate thesis on a false premise, your conclusions are bound to be erroneous ... which flawed argument is what the remainder of your complex mental gymnastics – whilst ostensibly passing for a logically constructed metaphysics – in this post are. * RICHARD: As for the ‘location or circumstance from which it is gained’... the ‘location’ is planet earth and the ‘circumstances’ are known as ‘the human condition’. The phrase ‘human condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. An actual freedom from that lot is to be living an individual peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Actual freedom is then closely related to bound, in that bound is: ‘A boundary or limit’ (American Heritage of the English Language). Actual freedom, according to the offering, is bounded by the limit where ‘that lot’ begins. That which is gained is not freedom, for that which is gained through any action can just as surely be lost through further action. That condition which is gained by escaping the boundaries of a certain condition, any condition regardless of its nature, is no more or no less free than that which is escaped from, for, without out question, that which is gained and that which is escaped share a common boundary, and that which is bounded is not free. RICHARD: Once again you start from a false premise (‘actual freedom is bounded by the limit where ‘that lot’ begins’) ... and thus come to an erroneous conclusion. An actual freedom from the human condition only comes about when ‘that lot’ ends ... as in ‘come to an end’. Finish, kaput, cease to exist, extinct. As dead as the dodo ... but with no skeletal remains. There is no phoenix here to arise from the ashes. * RESPONDENT: Interesting, the assumption that ‘nobody is free to start off with’. RICHARD: We have been down this road before, you and I, in previous correspondence ... and as long as you are in a state of denial about 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 that blight this otherwise fair planet we all live on, you will never be able to comprehend what I speak of. RESPONDENT: What is offered, i.e. ‘nobody is free to start off with’, is mentally understood and dismissed as illogical and self contradictory. RICHARD: Aye ... I am well aware, after an extensive correspondence with you in the past, that you fondly imagine that all problems can be resolved through a mental dismissal. However, 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 are still happening on a daily basis ... despite your mental understanding and dismissal. * RICHARD: Just as an alcoholic cannot begin their ‘cure’ until they acknowledge that they have a problem ... RESPONDENT: Interesting, yet ill conceived assumption. There is all manner of opportunity for an alcoholic to begin practicing the behaviours labelled non-alcoholic regardless of an agreement to the term applied to a small percentage of current behaviours. They may include forced abstention due to illness, the acquiring of a new job or other avenue of time consumption, etc. RICHARD: Maybe you might like to write to ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ and share your intellectual understanding that it is ‘ill conceived’ with them? Maybe they will fall for it – although I doubt it – as I certainly do not. * RICHARD: [Just as an alcoholic cannot begin their ‘cure’ until they acknowledge that they have a problem] so too is it with otherwise intelligent people who are so dissociated from what is going on in the world of people, things and events that they fool themselves into fondly imagining that it is all but a dream in which they are lucidly awake. RESPONDENT: No such person is known personally. RICHARD: It is your life you are living and provided you comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols you will be left free to live as wisely or as foolishly as you wish. * RESPONDENT: He who is free to search for escape from circumstance through the application of diligence, patience and perseverance is equally as free as he who lives in the freedom that depends on that escape. RICHARD: This is waffle ... maybe divine waffle, but waffle all the same. RESPONDENT: There is no attempt to write evasively or to intentionally mislead included in the offering. The offering is a logical fact and is not vague. ‘Divine Waffle’ – interesting image. RICHARD: For you it may be ‘logical fact’ but for me – even as I re-read it in light of your assertion – it still looks like waffle. As for the divine waffle’ bit, I can only go by what you write ... and you are the person who first came onto this Mailing List on the 28 February 1998 proudly proclaiming that you were god on earth ... and trying to convince others that they were too!. Viz.:
A quick visit to your Web Page shows that something similar is currently being displayed ... hence my usage of ‘divine waffle’. RESPONDENT: Freedom is not attained or gained, however, Freedom is certainly able to be the experience of being free via escape from circumstance. RICHARD: Speaking personally (and thus not theoretically) in 1980, at the beginning of what was to be a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) that was the turning-point in my life, ‘I’, the entity that you referred to (further above) saw ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ was (a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning social identity) and the instant ‘I’ saw ‘myself’ ... I was not that. Thus (when I reverted back to normal in the ‘real world’) ‘I’ knew, by direct experience, that ‘I’ was standing in the way of the actual being apparent ... and ‘I’ had to go – become extinct – and not try to become something ‘better’. That is, ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ could never, ever become perfect or be perfection. The only thing ‘I’ could do – the only thing ‘I’ had to do – was die (psychologically and psychically self-immolate). Which is what ‘I’ did ... and now there is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware sans any entity whatsoever. RESPONDENT: This experience is thus bounded, that is; sharing a boundary with that which it must be without to be existent. Again, actual freedom is then closely related to bound or limited, or having a line beyond which it can not proceed or exist, or to be confined or restricted within certain limits. Without question that which proceeded this experience was equally actual(ly) free (in that actual freedom is to be bounded, limited) because it shares a common boundary with actual freedom. Freedom, if it is that freedom is to be the capacity to exercise choice or free will, (and freedom is to be so or not be freedom at all) is that which may or may not experience the conditioned state called actual freedom, or not, to love (be love), or not, to be anger, violence happiness, sadness, joyfulness, sullenness, logic, insanity, harmfulness, compassion, consciousness, or not. That the choice has been made do adopt actual freedom (to be bound, or limited) does not mean the freedom has been lost, it means that freedom has been exercised in becoming the experience called actual freedom. the experience actual freedom, could, at any moment, be utterly abandoned. Perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature, is what you are now Richard, it is what you were before, and what you will be always. You can never be anything other than perfectly what you are and what you are will always be perfectly what it is. This moment is perfectly what it is, nothing is lacking for it to be what it is, and what you are, and what is are perfectly the same thing. It is correct to think ‘I could never, ever become perfect ...’ because even the moment that is the experience that is the thought ‘I could never, ever become perfect or be perfection’ is perfect and could not be so. Perfection, like freedom, is not a thing gained but instead is truth realized and enjoyed. Thank you for sharing the experience actual freedom. RICHARD: Once again you start from a false premise (‘this experience is sharing a boundary with that which it must be without to be existent’) ... and thus come once again to an erroneous conclusion. There is no boundary other than in your fervent imagination. Because an actual freedom from the human condition is when ‘that which is within’ ends ... as in ‘come to an end’. Finish, kaput, cease to exist, extinct. As dead as the dodo ... but with no skeletal remains. There is no phoenix here to arise from the ashes. It not only took eleven years of diligence, application, patience and perseverance to bring this about, but determination and intent ... and much internal and external observation; much exploring and uncovering and investigating and discovering before ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul self-immolated. As all this is a far cry from your mental gymnastics you will possibly never understand. I know where I am at, where I came from and how I got here. CORRESPONDENT No. 14 (Part Seven) 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. Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust:
1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity |