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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 14
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’? RESPONDENT: An ‘actual freedom from the human condition’. Actual freedom (that which depends on the lack of human condition for its existence) and the human condition share a common boundary. RICHARD: But there is no ‘common boundary’ outside of your feverish imagination. The human condition ceases to exist. Finish. Kaput. Extinct. Something that does not exist has no boundary. RESPONDENT: To be actually free, you may not choose to experience any aspect of the human condition. RICHARD: This is not a matter of choice ... no ‘aspect of the human condition’ exists. RESPONDENT: Where one limited experience ends, the other begins, in turn, where the later ends the former arises. RICHARD: And on and on you go ... if you build an elaborate thesis on a false premise, your conclusions are bound to be erroneous. * RICHARD: If you build an elaborate thesis on a false premise, your conclusions are bound to be erroneous. RESPONDENT: Very well put. To remain simple and logically sound is the more effective method of arriving at verifiable and non-contradictory ends. RICHARD: I am glad that you agree ... can you put your agreement into action? * RICHARD: Which [erroneous conclusions] is what the flawed arguments – whilst ostensibly passing for a logically constructed metaphysics – in the remainder of this post are. RESPONDENT: Not at all. There is no motive other than what is inherent in the offerings, which is to logically examine the claimed nature of actual freedom and the assertion that arise from its practice. Certainly there has been no abstract nor speculative reasoning used. Each instance of logical fact has been self evident. Further, no reference to anything supernatural nor excessively subtle has been relied on. RICHARD: Hmm ... I am no great fan of ‘male logic’ (any more than I am of ‘female intuition’) and do not profess to be a logician. Logic does have its place (a lot of the technological creature comforts are in part the result of abstract reasoning) yet logic does have its limits (mathematics supposed exactitude is beset by logical inconsistencies). Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein spent a lifetime trying to do what you are doing here ... a ‘logical appraisal’ of sentence structure. He spawned (or was at the forefront of) the Twentieth Century’s obsession with Linguistic Philosophy ... and one of the ‘trickle-down’ effects has been all that ‘Post-Modernism’ nonsense. I would suggest that you have been befooled by the ‘from’ in the sentence structure (in ‘an actual freedom from the human condition’) as indicating a ‘here’ and ‘there’ co-existing (and with a boundary). Whereas an actual freedom from the human condition is when the human condition ceases to exist. Or, as I said (further above): An actual freedom is when the entity is not. * 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: ‘As dead as the dodo ... but with no skeletal remains’ Interesting imagery. However, the non-existence of the ability to experience the human condition does not alter the fact, more over it illustrates the fact, that actual freedom is not free, but is instead limited to that which is anything other than the asserted myriad aspects of the human condition. RICHARD: No ... it is not a case of ‘the non-existence of the ability to experience the human condition’ at all. The human condition ceases to exist. You make it into something I do not say ... and then proceed to argue against your own invention! An actual freedom is limitless, boundless because there is no ‘centre’ here (no entity) hence no circumference (boundary) just as there is no centre to this infinite universe. There is no ‘edge’ to this universe – and no beginning or end – and in an actual freedom there is the on-going apperceptive awareness of this consummate perfection. All this becomes apparent when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (the identity in its sordid totality) becomes extinct ... which is when the human condition ceases to exist. * 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. RESPONDENT: The responsibility for ‘... 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 ...’ must be shared equally regardless of any claims of dismissal, understanding or self immolation. RICHARD: Unlike yourself, I do not suffer from calenture, therefore I do not have to shoulder ‘infinite responsibility’ which you in your delirium as god must. The ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul that inhabited this flesh and blood body took full responsibility for ‘his’ part in all this mess and self-immolated ... and I am freed to be here, now. I have no sense of responsibility whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Until it is asserted and verified that actual freedom (you) has committed less ‘... wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ...’ than the non-actual freedom (me) any allusion of unequal responsibility would be better reserved. RICHARD: Firstly, as you well know I am speaking of the elimination of that which is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ... which is what you have called ‘ugly nature’ in past E-Mails. Secondly, am I to take it from this paragraph that you are no longer 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? If so, there is now room for a genuine dialogue. Allow me to refresh your memory from past posts so that you do not say yes in haste. Viz.:
And again:
And again:
And again:
And again:
And again:
And again:
And again:
I do look forward to your considered response ... it is always so fascinating having a discussion with you because I am well aware that for a solipsist nobody else actually exists (which means that for you, you are me saying these words to yourself). * 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. RESPONDENT: There is nothing to fall for offered, nor any particular disagreement with AA’s reliance on an appeal to higher power for changed behaviour (‘I can’t, He can, I will let Him’). What is offered is fact, and has, through 10 years of work with what are commonly referred to as ‘chemically dependent’ adolescents, been observed to be an effective strategy for changing the very small percentage of an ‘alcoholics’ behaviours that are commonly labelled ‘alcoholism’. Interestingly, I have had 2 letters in the past 5 years asking if material from The Forest’s Edge website and manuscript could be used as a supplement to the standard 12 step program AA employs. RICHARD: This is all very interesting I am sure ... but it has nothing to do with what is being discussed (which is you saying that it is an ‘ill conceived assumption’ that ‘an alcoholic cannot begin their ‘cure’ until they acknowledge that they have a problem’). I never, ever said anything about ‘AA’s reliance on an appeal to higher power for changed behaviour’. This is called a ‘red-herring’. * 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.: [Respondent]: ‘We are the creator ... We are the Absolute ... You are it! ... There is indeed Peace on earth and it is here as me now. The experience of God’s Love is being God’s Love for all God is. God is All. Peace on Earth exist here, now, as me. All you will ever see is yourself. What is lacking is your own lack as Love’. [endquote]. A quick visit to your Web Page shows that something similar is currently being displayed ... hence my usage of ‘divine waffle’. RESPONDENT: Thank you for sharing this passage, very nice. The fact is: ‘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’. That the offering is a logical fact is self evident. That it is a waffle, divine or otherwise, is wholly dependent on opinion, and said opinion, in this case, was poorly conceived. RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... I have now read it for the third time: you seem to be saying that person (A) who is searching for an actual freedom from the human condition is as equally free as person (B) who is actually free from the human condition as a result of a successful search. And this you say, is a ‘self-evident logical fact’? I still see it as divine waffle ... and very sick divine waffle too. 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. RESPONDENT: Mental gymnastics is an interesting image, since it calls for one to imagine a mind performing body-building exercises, however, like the other images offered it is ill conceived. RICHARD: It requires mental gymnastics of an almost unprecedented magnitude to fondly imagine that 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 ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’. As I have already said: 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. No way can I call it perfect that 160,000,000 people have been killed by their fellow human beings this century in wars alone. RESPONDENT: What has been offered from here is logical fact, it requires no special turning of consciousness to understand. Actual freedom is not freedom, but is instead a certain choice of existence which is incapable of experiencing what is being called the human condition, thus rendering it unable to fulfil the capacity to exercise free will and choice. RICHARD: Ahh ... now I see which way your mind is working. You are coming from the position of virtue, which states that one is not virtuous unless one has the capacity to be malicious and sorrowful (‘bad’) as well as loving and compassionate (‘good’) ... and chooses to be good (loving and compassionate). Mr. Bertrand Russell (as well as other peoples like Mr. Leo Tolstoy for example) have written extensively about this. Mr. Bertrand Russell stated that the ‘bad’ must of necessity exist in order for there to be free will. Not only am I not a Christian, I am not virtuous either ... there is no need for morality or ethicality or values or principles whatsoever in an actual freedom from the human condition. RESPONDENT: That which proceeds the state of conditioned existence called actual freedom is, without question, equally as much freedom (or more correctly; non-freedom) for it can only exist, according to the offerings, where actual freedom does not. RICHARD: It is not ‘according to the offerings’ at all ... that is what you make of it. RESPONDENT: That which proceeds actual freedom is free to pursue actual freedom, however, according to the offering, actual freedom is not free to pursue the human condition. RICHARD: Indeed not ... I could not become malicious or sorrowful if my life depended upon it (nor could I become loving and compassionate). RESPONDENT: Though the offerings contend that the case is that actual freedom is not free to experience the human condition, such limitation is considered dubious. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: Again, it is offered that actual freedom is not the gaining of freedom (for it is not freedom at all) but is instead the result of freedom choosing to be a particular experience which includes several illogical and self contradictory assertions about its own nature including thinking itself freedom but being unable to be free. RICHARD: Where you say ‘the result of freedom choosing to be a particular experience’ you are implying – if not stating loud and clear – that the current state of affairs for 6.0 billion people is freedom. I am sure that the vast majority of them would be in disagreement with you ... most of the people I meet face-to-face or read about or watch via various media are of the opinion that life is a sick joke (or whatever morbid description). Once again, these peoples you call ‘free’ killed 160,000,000 of their fellow human beings in wars this century alone. Your notion of freedom is as sick as your notion of perfection.
RESPONDENT: There is no motive other than to logically examine the claimed nature of actual freedom and the assertion that arise from its practice. Certainly there has been no abstract nor speculative reasoning used. Each instance of logical fact has been self evident. RICHARD: Hmm ... I am no great fan of ‘male logic’ (any more than I am of ‘female intuition’) and do not profess to be a logician. RESPONDENT: Personal opinion aside, the fact is – actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: Why do you brush aside what I have to say with a ‘personal opinion aside’ dismissal? Is there two sets of rules here (as in what you say is ‘self-evident logical fact’ and what Richard says is merely ‘personal opinion’)? Do you want a dialogue or a monologue? And of what kind of a contribution to a discussion is it to just flatly say ‘actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations’ without any supporting substance? What are these ‘specific limitations’ that you state are being experienced by Richard? Where is it demonstrated that actual freedom is an experience of specific limitations’ as a ‘self-evident logical fact’? Just repeating actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations’ again and again (as you do below) as if it were some mantra does not make it into a ‘self-evident logical fact’ merely by constant repetition. * RICHARD: Logic does have its place (a lot of the technological creature comforts are in part the result of abstract reasoning) yet logic does have its limits (mathematics supposed exactitude is beset by logical inconsistencies). Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein spent a lifetime trying to do what you are doing here ... a ‘logical appraisal’ of sentence structure. He spawned (or was at the forefront of) the Twentieth Century’s obsession with Linguistic Philosophy ... and one of the ‘trickle-down’ effects has been all that ‘Post-Modernism’ nonsense. I would suggest that you have been befooled by the ‘from’ in the sentence structure (in ‘an actual freedom from the human condition’) as indicating a ‘here’ and ‘there’ co-existing (and with a boundary). Whereas an actual freedom from the human condition is when the human condition ceases to exist. Or, as I said (further above): An actual freedom is when the entity is not. RESPONDENT: Thank you, regardless of Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein life long efforts, the fact is actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: Okay ... if you just ignore the evidence of history by ignoring other people’s contribution to the advancement of human knowledge, then what kind of a contribution to a discussion is it to just flatly say ‘actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations’ without any supporting substance? What are these ‘specific limitations’ that you state are being experienced by Richard? Where is it demonstrated that actual freedom is an experience of specific limitations’ as a ‘self-evident logical fact’? Just repeating actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations’ again and again (as you do below) as if it were some mantra does not make it into a ‘self-evident logical fact’ merely by constant repetition. * RESPONDENT: The non-existence of the ability to experience the human condition does not alter the fact, more over it illustrates the fact, that actual freedom is not free, but is instead limited to that which is anything other than the asserted myriad aspects of the human condition. RICHARD: No ... it is not a case of ‘the non-existence of the ability to experience the human condition’ at all. The human condition ceases to exist. You make it into something I do not say ... and then proceed to argue against your own invention! RESPONDENT: Not at all. The human condition does indeed remain, according to the offerings, as the vast majority of the earth’s fellow citizenry. RICHARD: You are slipping sideways here and are no longer talking about Richard’s experience. No way is this an example of ‘logically examining the claimed nature of actual freedom and the assertion that arise from its practice’ and no way does this fall under the criteria of being a ‘self-evident logical fact’. RESPONDENT: The fact is that though the human condition persists. RICHARD: The human condition does not ‘persist’ ... it is ended, finished. Kaput. Extinct. As dead as the dodo ... but with no skeletal remains. RESPONDENT: Actual freedom is incapable of experiencing it. RICHARD: Because it does not exist any more ... this is why it is an actual freedom and not yet another god-sourced mystical freedom. Somehow you seem to be trying to make a case that your divine freedom is a true freedom because it includes the choice to be malicious and sorrowful and/or loving and compassionate. Which is why it is a sick freedom (as is evidenced by all the religious wars down through history). Love and compassion are nothing but compensatory feelings counteracting the malice and sorrow that spawns them. RESPONDENT: Ergo, actual freedom is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: How on earth can the total absence of malice and sorrow and the antidotal love and compassion possibly be ‘an experience of specific limitations’? It is such an unimaginable relief to be no longer driven by instinctual urges, impulses, desires and drives – with the on-going necessity of superimposing ‘goodie-goodie’ behaviour – that it beggars belief. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here in this actual world. * RICHARD: An actual freedom is limitless, boundless because there is no ‘centre’ here (no entity) hence no circumference (boundary) just as there is no centre to this infinite universe. RESPONDENT: It is senseless to say ‘An actual freedom is limitless, boundless because ...’ anything. Freedom is not caused, less it is not freedom at all, but an experience dependent on condition(s). RICHARD: You do keep on saying this as if I do not get your point ... whereas I do understand what you have been saying. What you do not seem to get is that an actual freedom is a freedom of absence ... an absence of the human condition. If you had not brushed aside what I wrote (further above) you might have comprehended this by now instead of having to repeat it again and again like some mantra. RESPONDENT: To suggest actual freedom is limitless or boundless because of any condition is not to prove its limitlessness or boundlessness, but rather to deny the statement’s assertion by defining its boundaries and limits. RICHARD: No ... that is what you do with it. You put a condition on it (despite what I have to say about the total absence of the human condition) and then set to and argue against your own mental construct as if it were you brilliantly setting straight something that I am saying. RESPONDENT: Experience (as in the experience of actual freedom, which is not freedom but the experience of specific limitations) is the result of freedom. RICHARD: Here you go repeating your mantra again as if you have just proved something. It is your misunderstanding you are arguing against ... not what I am saying. Otherwise known as a ‘straw man’ argument. * RICHARD: There is no ‘edge’ to this universe – and no beginning or end – and in an actual freedom there is the on-going apperceptive awareness of this consummate perfection. All this becomes apparent when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (the identity in its sordid totality) becomes extinct ... which is when the human condition ceases to exist. RESPONDENT: If in fact the ‘‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (the identity in its sordid totality) becomes extinct’ it would be that statements that express personal opinion and taste, i.e. ‘Your notion of freedom is as sick as your notion of perfection’, ‘I do look forward to your considered response’ and ‘I am no great fan of ‘male logic’ (any more than I am of ‘female intuition’)’ must needs be extinct. RICHARD: Why must I not say these things? Your notion of freedom is indeed as sick as your notion of perfection because it says that 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 ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’. It is not an expression of ‘personal opinion and taste’ at all. Try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Hindu soldier; try saying that to the Hindu mother whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by zealous Christians; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Shinto soldiers; try saying that a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion. Secondly, I do indeed look forward to your considered response ... because I prefer a considered response over an ill-considered response any time. Thirdly, I do not value ‘male logic’ any more than I value ‘female intuition’ ... I value facts and actuality. * RICHARD: You seem to be saying that person (A) who is searching for an actual freedom from the human condition is as equally free as person (B) who is actually free from the human condition as a result of a successful search. And this you say, is a ‘self-evident logical fact’? RESPONDENT: Yes, without question. One is no more limited than the other. RICHARD: So, someone who is run by malice and sorrow and needs must apply the antidotal love and compassion is ‘no more limited’ than someone who can never become malicious and sorrowful and never has to be loving and compassionate as a compensation? Do I understand your ‘self-evident logical fact’ correctly? If so ... it is indeed waffle. * RICHARD: I still see it as divine waffle ... and very sick divine waffle too. RESPONDENT: Opinion noted. RICHARD: Hmm ... does this comment mean that you jot it down in a note-book so as to consider it in more depth later? Or is it just a slick way of avoiding the issue and you do not actually take notice of it but mentally dismiss it with a cheap throwaway line? Can you recall all the other things I have written to you in the past that you ‘noted’? Have you ever come back to them? No need to answer ... because you never have. * RICHARD: It requires mental gymnastics of an almost unprecedented magnitude to fondly imagine that 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 ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’. RESPONDENT: Not at all. RICHARD: What do you mean by ‘not at all’? Is it a fact that you say that 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 ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’ or not? I can easily find quotes from you to demonstrate your stance if that is what it will take ... quotes like this, for example. Viz.:
And, as at this moment there are wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides happening all over the world, you are saying that this state of affairs is ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’. So why slip and slither away from it with an ‘not at all’ dismissal? RESPONDENT: The fact is self evident. It would take what is imagined to be mental gymnastics to believe that any necessary aspect of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides is absent. RICHARD: But I do not have to believe that the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire are totally absent ... it is my on-going experiencing day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. So what ‘fact is self evident’? RESPONDENT: Or other than it must be for 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 to be 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. RICHARD: Are you saying that all the empirical scientific evidence (that all sentient beings are genetically encoded with survival instincts) are nothing but mental gymnastics and not repeatable-on-demand factual demonstrations of what is actually happening in the brain? That means that all the PET scans and the MRI scans – in fact all the recent brain-mapping data – is nothing but mental gymnastics ... according to you? * RICHARD: As I have already said: 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. No way can I call it perfect that 160,000,000 people have been killed by their fellow human beings this century in wars alone. RESPONDENT: Thank you for sharing your opinion. RICHARD: May I ask? Is this but a variation on ‘opinion noted’? I could do the same by saying that your ‘opinion’ is that 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 ‘perfect, lacking nothing essential to the whole, complete of its nature’ ... but what benefit to a discussion is it if we devolve into saying ‘that’s just your opinion’ whenever a subject gets too close to actually uncovering something? * RESPONDENT: What has been offered from here is logical fact, it requires no special turning of consciousness to understand. Actual freedom is not freedom, but is instead a certain choice of existence which is incapable of experiencing what is being called the human condition, thus rendering it unable to fulfil the capacity to exercise free will and choice. RICHARD: You are coming from the position of virtue, which states that one is not virtuous unless one has the capacity to be malicious and sorrowful (‘bad’) as well as loving and compassionate (‘good’) ... and chooses to be good (loving and compassionate). Mr. Bertrand Russell (as well as other peoples like Mr. Leo Tolstoy for example) have written extensively about this. Mr. Bertrand Russell stated that the ‘bad’ must of necessity exist in order for there to be free will. Not only am I not a Christian, I am not virtuous either ... there is no need for morality or ethicality or values or principles whatsoever in an actual freedom from the human condition. RESPONDENT: Not at all. The only position utilized is one of logically examining actual freedom, and the characteristics that arise from its practice. Nothing of virtue is mentioned or implied. Neither good nor bad have been mentioned or implied. RICHARD: Okay ... let us do it your way, by all means. Will you explain what you mean by ‘a certain choice of existence which is incapable of experiencing what is being called the human condition, thus rendering it unable to fulfil the capacity to exercise free will and choice’ instead of leaving it up to me to make sense of what you are saying. Free will and choice surely implies choosing between what you have called ‘ugly nature’ in past E-Mails and what you have called ‘god’s love’ ... or have you changed your position? RESPONDENT: The fact is that actual freedom is not freedom but is an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: Here is your mantra again. * RESPONDENT: That which proceeds actual freedom is free to pursue actual freedom, however, according to the offering, actual freedom is not free to pursue the human condition. RICHARD: Indeed not ... I could not become malicious or sorrowful if my life depended upon it (nor could I become loving and compassionate). RESPONDENT: Thank you. The fact is that actual freedom is not freedom but is an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: Here is your mantra again. * RESPONDENT: Again, it is offered that actual freedom is not the gaining of freedom (for it is not freedom at all) but is instead the result of freedom choosing to be a particular experience which includes several illogical and self contradictory assertions about its own nature including thinking itself freedom but being unable to be free. RICHARD: Where you say ‘the result of freedom choosing to be a particular experience’ you are implying – if not stating loud and clear – that the current state of affairs for 6.0 billion people is freedom. RESPONDENT: Loud and clear: without reservation, the current state of affairs of 6.0 billion people is the result of freedom. RICHARD: Which is why I say that your notion of freedom is as sick as your notion of perfection ... which observation you dismiss as being merely my opinion. Okay ... why does this ‘freedom’ that you are talking of choose to be either malicious and sorrowful and/or loving and compassionate here on earth instead of enjoying and appreciating each moment again the magical fairy-tale like playground this verdant planet actually is? Is this a salubrious freedom? In other words: are you a sick god? * RICHARD: I am sure that the vast majority of them would be in disagreement with you. RESPONDENT: That disagreement too, would be the result of freedom. RICHARD: No ... it would be the result of their commonsense operating. Apart from those who are sucked in badly to that eastern mystical nonsense, none of the other people I meet face-to-face or read about or watch via various media have ever said that they are ‘freedom’ choosing to be malicious and sorrowful and loving and compassionate. * RICHARD: Most of the people I meet face-to-face or read about or watch via various media are of the opinion that life is a sick joke (or whatever morbid description). Once again, these peoples you call ‘free’ killed 160,000,000 of their fellow human beings in wars this century alone. RESPONDENT: That opinion too, would be the result of freedom. RICHARD: This becomes ridiculous ... are you saying that all their suffering is the result of what you call ‘freedom’ choosing to suffer? That is, the-god-that-you-are-who-is-currently-being-6.0-billion-people chooses all this misery and mayhem just so as to exercise free will and choice? * RESPONDENT: Please count me among the people you communicate with that is not of the opine that life is a sick joke or any other morbid description. RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... what I get is that this whole enterprise (called being alive on the planet) has been set up by you-as-god so as to experience exercising your free will and choice. If this is correct, then of course you would not see it as a sick joke ... it would come under the heading of what other deluded peoples in history have called the ‘Dance of Shiva’, or the ‘Divine Play’ or the ‘Play of Lila’ and so on and so on. * RICHARD: Your notion of freedom is as sick as your notion of perfection. RESPONDENT: Personal opine aside, the fact is: freedom may include (as a choice) the experience of actual freedom, which is not freedom at all but an experience of specific limitations. RICHARD: Here is your mantra again ... this time accompanied by your ‘personal opinion aside’ and/or ‘opinion noted’ contribution to dialogue. You do seem to have replaced your ‘That is your belief’ dismissal with ‘That is your opinion’. This undergraduate debating ploy just does not work on me ... you may as well save your time and fingertips by not using it. When I came to respond to this post I stripped out all that was already discussed so as to shorten it. If I had also stripped out your non-committal ‘that is your opinion’ comments and your unsubstantiated ‘self-evident logical fact’ inanities and your oft-repeated ‘mantra’ ... there would have been nothing left. You really do not have much of substance to say, do you?
RESPONDENT No. 33: Man, who is also a part of nature, why is there disorder in his life (as manifested in sorrow and malice)? RICHARD: Because of the instinctual passions – such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire – genetically bestowed by blind nature at conception, in the DNA and/or the RNA, which give rise to all the affective feelings such as are grouped under the broad generalised categorisations of ‘malice’ and ‘sorrow’. The survival instincts, in other words. RESPONDENT: Richard, if you will please, explain how blind nature can bestow fear and aggression and nurture and desire. RICHARD: The instinctual passions are genetically encoded in the deoxyribonucleic acid and/or the ribonucleic acid which is self-replicating material in the chromosomes of living organisms and is the carrier of genetic information. All such hereditary survival data is the end result of the ‘success story’ of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression (the savage side) and nurture and desire (the tender side) coupled with an adroit or shrewd or sharp or smart or cunning or wily or sly intelligence over countless millennia ... if it were not for these survival instincts we would not be here having this discussion. This is because it is a fact of life that basic bodily survival is a kill or be killed situation ... a sentient creature has no choice but to live with a ‘what can I eat/ what can eat me’ attitude. It is the fittest that survive: yet ‘survival of the fittest’ does not necessarily mean (as it is popularly misunderstood) that the strongest or most muscular always survive. It means ‘the most fitted to the ever-changing environment’ (those who adapt) get to pass on their genes. The most ‘on the ball’ – adroit or shrewd or sharp or smart or cunning or wily and so on – can defeat the strongest or most muscular from time-to-time ... as is evidenced by the long, slow evolution of intelligence in a rather puny animal devoid of claws, fangs, venom, hooves, horns, fur, feathers and so on. RESPONDENT: If you will, please include in your explanation which of the following definitions of blind best describes nature. Blind; (1) Sightless (2) having less than 1/10 of normal vision in the more efficient eye when refraction defects are fully corrected by lenses. 2. unable or unwilling to discern or judge b. unsupported by evidence or plausibility (blind faith) b. lacking a directing or controlling consciousness 3 a. having no regard to rational discrimination, guidance (blind chance) b. Marked by complete insensibility. RICHARD: Certainly ... 2.b.: ‘lacking a directing or controlling consciousness’. Nature is blind
in that it does not care two hoots about you or me or him or her ... it is the survival of the species that is nature’s goal
(and any species will do as far as nature is concerned). Whereas, human beings (like species recognises like species) care about
each other and wish the best for one and all ... as is explained by the ‘theory of mind’
RICHARD: The mystical solution to duality is indeed to see the polar opposites as being complementary poles rather than contradictions (through their sublimation and transcendence in lieu of their elimination through altruistic ‘self’-extinction). For example:
Whereas there is no ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – no instinctual duality whatsoever – here in this actual world (there is no ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ in an actual freedom from the human condition) as all the opposites are but affectively-derived (and therefore dualistic) concepts which exist only in the human psyche. If ‘I’ insist on staying in existence ‘I’ will unvaryingly impose ‘my’ passionate duality on top of the actual via ‘my’ very ‘being’ forever and a day. ‘I’/‘me’ will never, ever experience the actual; ‘I’/‘me’ will never, ever experience perfection ... all ‘I’/‘me’ can do is altruistically ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body and that body and everybody. Then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. RESPONDENT: The offering ‘the mystical solution to duality is indeed to see the polar opposites as being complementary poles rather than contradictions’ is as easily disputed by evidence as it is supported. The crux of the mystic experience is not the complimentary juxtaposition of opposites, but the complete and utter destruction of the concept of polarity (duality). RICHARD: I beg to differ. It is not ‘as easily disputed by evidence as it is supported’ at all ... as the quotes you posted evidence so clearly. Also, you show your hand – and give the game away – by saying that what gets destroyed is ‘the concept of duality’ ... and not duality itself (let alone the cause of this duality). Nowhere in your words in this post, or in any post I have seen of yours over at least two years, do you say – even with words to the effect – that duality itself (let alone the cause of this duality) is unequivocally extirpated, extinguished, extinct. Just so that I am being up-front and clear, the cause of duality is ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (the identity by whatever name). A genuinely enlightened being is well aware that the diabolical underpins the divine – some call all the misery and mayhem ‘Lila’ (‘God’s Sport’ or ‘The Divine Play’) – because they know that they have sublimated and transcended the opposites (in lieu of their elimination through altruistic ‘self’-extinction). This is because spiritual enlightenment is an absolute self-centredness (usually capitalised as ‘Self’) replete with all that inheres in a vainglorious expansion of self into being ‘All That Is’ (as in ‘I Am That’). And why they know perfectly well that the polar opposites are complementary poles is because love depends upon malice and compassion depends upon sorrow and so on ... it is their very raison d’être. Take away malice and sorrow (bring all suffering to an end) and they would all be out of work. But job security is only one of the reasons why peace on earth is not on their agenda. RESPONDENT: For example, looking to Nicholas of Cusa we find him proposing ‘Oneness’ as the most suitable name for God, followed by ‘that oneness to which neither otherness nor plurality nor contrariety is opposed’. RICHARD: Nowhere does this quote ‘easily dispute’ the ‘polar opposites being complementary poles rather than contradictions’ ... for it clearly speaks of a ‘Oneness’ (and oneness is always all-inclusive) in which ‘neither otherness nor plurality nor contrariety is opposed’ (solipsistic oneness offers no resistance to otherness, plurality, contrariety). Nowhere does this quote say, even with words to the effect, that duality itself (the otherness, plurality, contrariety) – let alone the cause of this duality – is unequivocally extirpated, extinguished, extinct. And of all the mystics you had to chose from, quoting Mr. Nicholas of Cusa as No. 1 on your list of ten mystics’ quotes to demonstrate your point would have to be the silliest thing you could have done as I have already provided his phrase ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ (at the top of the page) as an example of mystics knowing only too well the union of opposites. Viz.:
Quoting Mr. Nicholas of Cusa has been to no avail as it has merely substantiated my point ... as do the other nine quotes. RESPONDENT: It is this experience of absolute and undeniable non-duality which is the core of all authentic mystical tradition. RICHARD: But nowhere in all those quotes you provided was there an ‘undeniable non-duality’ at all. What is ‘at the core’ of these ‘authentic mystical traditions’ is:
May I ask? Why are you so easily satisfied? Why not demand of these mentors that they go all the way before letting loose their disingenuous ‘Teachings’ on a suffering humanity? RESPONDENT: The exposition of the complementary nature of opposites is a teaching concept, at the most a method for exposing the fallacy of relying on concepts to define the actual from the start. RICHARD: I have heard this hoary ‘teaching concept’ or ‘method for exposing’ dissimulation many times before ... be they ‘teaching devices’, ‘teaching tricks’, ‘teaching tools’ ‘teaching methods’ and so on. I did not buy this ploy at all and I demanded the clarity and precision which comes from going all the way into extinction ... and got it. RESPONDENT: The mystical experience renders it possible to play with concepts without being caught up in the delusion that they are anything other than tools, playthings, and expression of perspectives. RICHARD: Indeed ... as slippery as all get-out, the lot of them. They will not be pinned down ... pleading ‘ineffability’ they have got away with this ‘playing with concepts’ excuse for centuries. RESPONDENT: Rumi refers to such teaching as removing a thorn (the obstruction to the experiencing of non-duality caused by conceptual intellect) with a thorn (conceptual intellect). RICHARD: Hmm ... the end justifies the means, eh? RESPONDENT: The Buddhist tradition uses the term ‘clever means’ to describe using the untrue to lead to the true (the absolute and undeniable experience of non-duality). RICHARD: Again ... the end (supposedly) justifies the means. However, the end is identical to the means. Why are you so easily content with pap? Why not demand of yourself that you go all the way before letting loose duplicitous platitudes on a suffering humanity? For you are again saying ‘the absolute and undeniable experience of non-duality’ without ever demonstrating that duality itself – let alone the cause of this duality – is unequivocally extirpated, extinguished, extinct. And thus the cause of duality (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul by whatever name) escapes intact as a inept pundit, not even superficially disguised, bowing all over the place and being what is happening because what is happening is what being is – which is to wash one’s hands of the whole sordid affair – all the while trumpeting ‘Infinite Responsibility’ as if a solipsistic mea culpa means something profound. It does not. RESPONDENT: In assisting others toward that end, and only from the understanding that arises from the absolute and undeniable experience of non-duality, different tools may be utilized that may include the use of concepts. RICHARD: And for a third time you are saying that the end justifies the means. The end never, ever justifies the means because then the end is always identical to the means: a conceptual removal of the concept of duality means that nothing has happened other than a lot of conceptual masturbation. RESPONDENT: No authentic mystical tradition would encourage the expectance of any concept as a replacement to the absolute and undeniable experience of non-duality. RICHARD: As you are again saying ‘the absolute and undeniable experience of non-duality’, without ever saying how this experience comes about as an actuality, it is patently obvious that it is indeed a ‘concept as a replacement’ for the unequivocal extirpation, extinguishment and extinction of the cause of duality. To wit: ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (the identity by whatever name). If ‘I’ insist on staying in existence ‘I’ will unvaryingly impose ‘my’ passionate duality on top of the actual, via ‘my’ very ‘being’ ... just like all this conceptual de-constructionist wisdom you have presented. Shall I put it this way? Apart from shooting yourself in the foot by quoting Mr. Nicholas of Cusa, who proposed ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ as describing best the union of opposites, your sign-off signature-piece is, more often than not, ‘love’ or ‘much love’ and you will also write ‘i love you dearly’ ... a recent post was titled ‘i Love You’ (Message #01925 of Archive 00/07; Subject: i Love You). Which shows that the polar opposites (be they complimentary poles or not) are still extant.
RICHARD: ... the word generally translated into English as ‘sorrow’ is the Pali word ‘dukkha’. ‘Dukkha’ is inherent in the transitory nature (‘anicca’) of ‘samsara’ (all phenomenon) ... because no self (‘anatta’) is to be found in that which is impermanent. RESPONDENT: This from ‘What the Buddha Taught’ by Walpola Rahula, Grove Press, 1959, 1974: ‘It is true that the Pali word ‘dukkha’ (or Sanskrit dukkha) in ordinary usage means ‘suffering’, ‘pain’, ‘sorrow’, or ‘misery’, as opposed to the word ‘sikkha’ meaning ‘happiness’, ‘comfort’, or ‘ease’. But the term dukkha as the First Noble Truth, which represents the Buddha’s view of life and the world, has a deeper philosophical meaning and connotes enormously wider senses. It is admitted that the term ‘dukkha’ in the First Noble Truth contains, quite obviously, the ordinary meaning of ‘suffering’, but in addition it also includes deeper ideas such as ‘imperfection’, ‘impermanence’, ‘emptiness’, ‘insubstantiality’. It is difficult, therefore, to find one word to embrace the whole conception of the term dukkha as the First Noble Truth, and so it is better to leave it untranslated, than to give it a inadequate and wrong idea of by conveniently translating it to mean ‘suffering’ and ‘pain’. RICHARD: I am sure someone else’s viewpoint is of interest to someone, somewhere – anyone’s viewpoint probably is – but as Mr. Walpola Rahula is not subscribed to this Mailing List (quite apart from the fact that he is dead) I cannot have a discussion with him (I have a passing acquaintance with a few of Mr. Walpola Rahula’s ecumenic view-points). If you have something to say on this topic I am more than happy to read it ... in posting a quote sans commentary you present yourself as being nothing more and nothing less than a qwerty. Incidentally, I will not translate the word ‘qwerty’ as it is better to leave it untranslated than to give an inadequate and wrong idea.
RESPONDENT No 12: Take care. RICHARD: All is carefree in this actual world ... there is no ‘good’ or ‘evil’ here. RESPONDENT No 52: Good one, Richard. Here’s another: ‘Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ – RUMI- RICHARD: You are, of course, aware that Mr. Jalal Rumi was a mystical poet? Thus by ‘a field’ he does not mean a literal field (a physical field in time and space) – he is referring to that timeless and spaceless and formless ‘field’ which is located ‘out beyond ideas of right and wrong’ – whereas I am living in this actual world: the world of this body and that body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on ad infinitum. In regards to the total absence of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ here in this actual world which I was writing about (further above) ... I need only refer to the following to find Mr. Jalal Rumi’s experience: • [Mr. Jalal Rumi]: ‘Save those who return to truth and do righteous deeds. God will change their evil into good’. (Discourse 32: Fihi Ma Fihi ‘It Is What It Is’; Translation by A. J. Arberry; published 1961 as ‘Discourses of Rumi’). So, although Mr. Jalal Rumi had the nous to suss out that ‘ideas of wrong doing and right doing’ were merely that – ideas – he was clearly of the school that was into transforming ‘evil’ into ‘good’. This is because there is ‘good’ and ‘evil’ 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. The ending of both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time as this body. Then the question is: how on earth can one live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst one nurses malice and sorrow in one’s bosom? ‘Tis an intriguing question, non? RESPONDENT: When their is the realization that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love naturally and spontaneously. RICHARD: Sure ... this is indeed what can happen when there is ‘the realisation that ...’ (you will have no demurral from me on that issue). However, what is being discussed (further above), in regards the total absence of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here in this actual world, is that the initial sentence of mine is a description, a report, written as a direct experience as it is happening. In other words, it is located in or based upon or drawn from actuality – factual experience – and not upon a realisation. Viz.:
In a pure consciousness experience (PCE) it is stunningly obvious that there is no ‘good’ or ‘evil’ here in this actual world ... and it is obvious as a direct experiencing and not as a ‘realisation’. RESPONDENT: ‘In my world, nothing ever goes wrong’. – Nisargadatta Maharaj, when asked by an interviewer to speak about the problems in his life. RICHARD: May I ask? Is this quote somehow supposed to show me that Mr. Nisargadatta Maharaj was talking about the total absence of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in this actual world ... the world of this body and that body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on ad infinitum? That is, is this quote somehow supposed to show me that Mr. Nisargadatta Maharaj had neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’ in his life (and had not merely transcended via the ‘Tried and True’ sublimation practice)? If so ... it shows nothing of the sort. And I have already read enough of your tautological words over the last couple of years, in regards to ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in your own solipsistic world, to know where you are at. I am, of course, referring to the world which you take ‘Infinite Responsibility’ for.
CORRESPONDENT No. 14 (Part Eight) 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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