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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 19
RESPONDENT No. 18: Too many people and too much greed may cause earth to
give one last sigh and rid itself of these nobodies. Peace. RESPONDENT: All nature has to do is give one good ‘burp’ and we could all disappear. My dad used to say, ‘no telling how many times we’ve come this far before and wiped ourselves out’. I remember Carl Sagan’s ‘time line’ in which his graph showed man’s numbers from his appearance on Earth to the late 19th century as almost a flat line, and then we had a population explosion that caused the line to go straight up. War was given as one of the most common devices of population control of ancient. So if we do not thin ourselves out, Mother Nature may have to do it for us. RICHARD: Whilst not wishing to be overly optimistic, I find that peoples around the world are beginning to wake up to this recent exponential population growth and are gradually putting practices into place to slow the rise until it reaches some kind of equilibrium. I freely acknowledge that this is being done mostly out of desperation – as in China and increasingly in India – but it is happening anyway, for whatever reason. A glimmer of light is that a few Western countries are even dipping below Z. P. G. already. War was but one of many factors controlling the population growth of old. One could add rampant disease, poor hygiene, insoluble famine, childbirth mortality ... not to mention infanticide, patricide, fratricide and cannibalism. I consider that the human race has come a long way with improving on blind nature in the area of technology, animal husbandry and plant cultivation. I have the utmost confidence that the human race will solve this problem too. But because of the momentum of generational growth, global Z. P. G. may not be reached in my lifetime. RESPONDENT: Nevertheless, Mother Nature has been around too long to let a few billion ‘mealy mouth’ human beings come along and destroy her. The Earth has become nothing but a garbage dump anyway, and a good house cleaning is in order. So for those who have no plans to leave on a space ship, it might be wise to work harder at uncovering the root of all problems – the self. RICHARD: The earth has not ‘become’ a garbage dump, as you so quaintly put it; it always has been so. Every human that has ever lived has discarded their refuse onto the earth – there just were not so many people back then to have enough waste material accumulate to call it pollution. Pollution has everything to do with massive population ... and a good start has already been made on becoming aware of the issue. It only was talked about in the fifties – now something is being done ... a good start has been made. ‘Mother Nature’ is a concept that has no bearing on facts and actuality. Nature is not caring or nurturing – which is what the concept so fondly conveys – it has not the slightest consideration for you or me or any other individual. Blind nature is only intent on the survival of the most fitted to survive ... and as the human being has a thinking, reflective brain, we will improve on nature even more than we have already done ... and are doing. And we do this because we humans alone care about ourselves. And yes, by all means let us uncover the self ... so as to put an end to the wars, the murders, the tortures, the rapes, the domestic violence, the corruptions, the sadness, the loneliness, the sorrows, the depressions and the suicides. Then we can truly work together to turn this earth into a paradise garden. Yet there is a lot we have done, are doing and will do, whilst we are busy doing the uncovering. Life is not all gloom and doom.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 18): Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ could make in
order to reveal whatever is actual. And what is actual is perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess
things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of the purity of the perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits this ever-present
perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very purity of life, that ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’
demise, this ever-fresh perfection is manifest. RESPONDENT: How do you know this? Is this just an ‘I’-dea? RICHARD: I ‘know all this’ because this is how I live ... I am not writing a theoretical treatise. It all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. This entailed finding the source of ‘myself’ ... and I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression that this self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. Psychological self-immolation was the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ could make in order to reveal whatever is actual. And what is actual is perfection. Life is bursting with meaning as ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stood in the way of the purity of the perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibited this ever-present perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevented the very purity of life, that ‘I’ was searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’ demise, this ever-fresh perfection became manifest. Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life – who would have it any other way? I am this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 31): Konrad and I are corresponding privately. I am finding his experience fascinating, and
his views on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being extremely intriguing. RESPONDENT: What! NOW you tell me this. You traitor! RICHARD: Traitor? Who ... me? No way! In Australia it is called: ‘Stirring the possum’.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 13): Succinct means concise, pithy, to the point. I was amused by the use of the word ‘succinct’
when seen in the context of who made the request, that is all ... and I capitalised on it. I happen to like the English language, you see. RESPONDENT: You may like to read the English language, but it is much more fun to read people. The English language is a tool which is used to ‘read’ others or things. Perhaps this is what you are not reading, whilst being ‘hung up’ on just reading the words. Her posts may be abstruse in the sense of ‘difficult to understand’ in the way she puts her words together, but in no way are they concealing her. I feel as though I know her from reading her posts because she has been very open, vulnerable, and has shared her ‘self’ with everyone. RICHARD: Golly ... what can I say? Apparently I am ‘hung up’ on ‘just reading words’ ... yet that is all there is to read. I do not – and can not – ‘read’ people ... that is called forming an image about the other. The ‘image-maker’ has vanished out of me. The humour was in the writing style – the words themselves as arranged together – and not in poking fun at the (unknown) person writing them. My style had just been accurately dubbed ‘compressed format’ – which I found humorous because it is – and I extended this humour to include another person’s style, which by no stretch of the imagination could be called ‘succinct’. It’s no big deal ... humour is just finding something funny. RESPONDENT: And while I’m ‘reading you’ in your posts, I’ll comment some of the others, if you don’t mind. [Richard wrote]: ‘Apperceptive thought is the wide and wondrous mechanism that enables one to be here – fully here – at this moment in time and this place in space’. [endquote]. My dictionary gives the meaning of apperception as: 1. ‘introspection or self consciousness’, and 2. ‘The process of understanding something perceived in terms of previous experience’. Apperception, according to my dictionary’s meaning, means merely that memory is in operation, and how can memory possibly understand the moment. It cannot. Memory, in fact, stands in place of the present moment. RICHARD: Now herein is a prime example of the danger in ‘reading’ people – forming an image – and the silliness in so doing. Your dictionary is not the only dictionary in the world; there are others which are more comprehensive. For example, the Oxford Dictionary, out of which I drew this meaning of the word apperception: ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. This is the third meaning of the word ... the two you quoted above are also in the Oxford Dictionary. (I also use a Webster’s Merriam which, like yours, only gives the first two meanings). The general meaning of apperception is: ‘how things are represented in consciousness’. For those who can remember how thinking happened of its own accord during a PCE in a peak experience, the third meaning is at once obvious and evident. Apperceptive awareness – this body being conscious without an ‘I’ in any way, shape or form – has a global occurrence ... it is universal in its scope. It is just that most people either forget about their PCE – for there is no emotional ‘I’ present to record the moment on its affective ‘tape-recorder’ – or they interpret the experience according to their culture’s icons. I have given the Oxford Dictionary definition of this third meaning two times in my recent posts. Viz:
I will not respond to your third ‘reading’ as the paragraph that you build your case on was not written by me. It was selected from a recent E-Mail to me from a woman whom I know personally and I used it as an example about how an experience can be described. I clearly stated underneath her paragraph that it was from someone other than me:
A suggestion only: If one is going to ‘read’ people by reading their posts, then one is well-advised to actually read their posts ... before presenting one’s ‘readings’ for public scrutiny.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): There is no ‘me’ inside this body to be alone or to seek unity. With ‘my’ complete
demise – ‘I’ as both ego and soul – ‘unity’ vanishes. ‘Oneness’ was merely a concept created by ‘I’ to perpetuate ‘my’
existence as a soul ... now transmogrified into a ‘Timeless Self’. It is delicious to live freely in this actual world of sensual delight. RESPONDENT: I don’t read a lot of posts when there are so many to pick from, and I haven’t read many posts which contain terminology I am not familiar with, e.g. PCE, apperception, and now ‘transmogrified’, which according to the Merriam-Webster means: ‘to alter or change often with grotesque or humorous effect’. You state that I may be misreading your posts, and rightly so, for I have not read or responded to many of them at all. RICHARD: Oh, I like this ... someone is thinking for themselves and picking up a dictionary into the bargain ... and I am not being facetious here, for words are incredibly important as they are the only means of communication we have. And, yes, I deliberately used ‘transmogrified’ because, whilst it has the similar meaning to ‘transformed’, it has this added meaning of: ‘with grotesque or humorous effect’. RESPONDENT: I am interested now in what you are saying. I will attempt again to ‘read’ if you are saying that you change often into other forms – sometimes humorously or grotesquely? This must be lots of fun! Is this a description of creation? RICHARD: No, I am not saying that, but it is simple to put your understanding of what I wrote to rights. By putting ‘I’ into smart quotes I was following the convention that one is referring to that ‘self’ inside the body that is causing all the ills of humankind. It is this ‘I’ that can transform itself – often with ‘grotesque or humorous effect’ – into a ‘Me’. This ‘Me’ is usually capitalised to indicate divinity and the resultant ‘Enlightened State’ is either ‘grotesque’ (when one considers all the religious wars with the hideous hatred and bloodshed ... what is happening in Israel, for example) or ‘humorous’ (when one considers the degree of megalomania involved in proclaiming oneself to be God ... Mr. Franklin Jones, for example). RESPONDENT: I have experienced some of the sensual delights, but I thought they were just hallucinations. Is this of which you speak? RICHARD: Sensual delights are most definitely not hallucinations ... they are very, very, earthy. What are hallucinations are the chief characteristics of Enlightenment – ‘Union with the Divine’, ‘Universal Compassion’, ‘Love Agapé’, ‘Ineffable Bliss’, ‘The Truth’, ‘Timelessness’, ‘Spacelessness’, ‘Immortality’, ‘Aloneness’, ‘Oneness’, Goodness’ ... to name but a few. RESPONDENT: Is this anything like ‘shamanism’ which seems to be making quite a come back in the alternative life styles community? I even heard Dr. Andrew Weil speak about this yesterday. RICHARD: In that shamanism is concerned with altered states of consciousness – and spiritual enlightenment is a particular altered state of consciousness – yes, transmogrification is like that ... a massive delusion. Mr. Carlos Castaneda popularised shamanistic rituals some time ago ... I can not recall, at this moment, what he called it ... was it ‘non-ordinary reality’? Ms. Isabel Allende was another; she wrote in the style of magic realism, which incorporated fantastic and mythical elements into realistic fiction. It is all psychic in nature, however, and has nothing to do with actuality. A lot of it comes out of psychotropic substances, which unless handled appropriately, can take one into the mystical and miraculous dimensions of one’s super-charged imagination ... coupled with access to the ‘collective unconscious’ which Mr. Carl Jung spoke of (the bizarre and haunting and fantastic world of myths and legends that is contained in the human psyche). RESPONDENT: I am still curious. Are these sensual experiences ‘hallucinations’ or the creation of a transmogrified ‘I’? RICHARD: As I have already partly answered above: this sensual experience is actual. By actual, I do not mean the real-world of normal human experience. Actuality is only seen by people in glimpses ... it is as if everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses. When ‘I’ vanish in ‘my’ entirety – both the ego and the soul – the normal everyday reality disappears and the underlying actuality becomes apparent. It was here all along. To experience the metaphysical Reality – usually with capitalisation – is to go further into the illusion of normal everyday reality, created by ‘I’, and further create a supernatural ‘True Reality’ ... which one could call an abnormal reality. Thus normal everyday reality is an illusion and the abnormal metaphysical Reality is a delusion born out of the illusion ... a chimera, as it were. This is why only about .000001 of the population ever become enlightened ... it is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination permanently. Speaking personally, I was so deluded, that for eleven years I lived in humanity’s greatest fantasy, before the dissolution of ‘me’ as soul finally brought salubrity through release from the human condition itself. RESPONDENT: Do you think that this is the ‘transformation’ of which Krishnamurti spoke. RICHARD: If you are referring to what I am living, most definitely not ... although he spoke out against Gurus and Gods, he himself was indeed enlightened. He worshipped [quote]: ‘that which is sacred, holy’. [end quote]. RESPONDENT: Is this the ‘freedom’ of which he spoke? RICHARD: No. He did somehow know, however, that there was something else. One of Ms. Mary Lutyen’s biographies relates how he had an intimation (at age eighty nine if I remember correctly) that he would live for a few – or was it five – more years because ‘something new’ would come into the ‘teachings’. He died without anything changing, however. Other enlightened persons have spoken about ‘going beyond enlightenment’ ... but their teachings remained the same. Mostly, the ultimate state is put after physical death: the Buddhist ‘Parinirvana’ (Complete Nirvana) and the Hindu ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Great Samadhi) being two that spring to mind. It means the end of ‘being’, you see. In other words: extinction. RESPONDENT: Is this transmogrification what freedom means? RICHARD: No, the freedom of enlightenment is not an actual freedom ... it is a solution found within the human condition, for there is still an identity; be it as a self or a being or a presence. Once again, speaking personally, I am none of these ... I am this body being apperceptively aware. An actual freedom means freedom from the human condition. This what I experience is the same as is experienced in a PCE (pure consciousness experience) which generally happens spontaneously in what is called a peak experience. This has been my condition since October 1992, twenty four hours a day. This is the perfection and the purity of the infinitude of this physical universe personified. I am the universe – this material universe – experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. This on-going experience is ambrosial, to say the least.
RICHARD: This on-going experience is ambrosial, to say the least. RESPONDENT: Or is ‘heavenly’, to say the most. RICHARD: Why ‘heavenly’? It is possible to be actually free of the Human Condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body. This on-going experience of perfection personified is earthly ... there is no need of anything metaphysical whatsoever here.
RESPONDENT No. 22: Exposing is giving attention to the concepts as they occur. For example we can give attention to the notion of a ‘you’ that can be angry, an ‘I’ that can drop or hold beliefs. Awareness of those concepts as they arise, clarifies their conceptual nature and allows them to drop on their own. RICHARD: But would you not wish to live a life wherein these concepts never arise? Therefore you never have to go about
‘clarifying their conceptual nature’ all the time? A life where all these things do not have to be constantly observed and clarified?
And when they drop, they only drop until next time, anyway. What a laborious task it is to have to be ever-vigilant. RESPONDENT: No, No, I would not wish that. Yes, Yes, I would like that. Yes, it is terribly laborious to watch, to remind oneself to watch, to be vigilant, wondering if one is doing it enough, should one be more vigilant constantly, and then watching the never being in the present moment. ‘It’ has been experienced only for a few minutes in the last twenty five years. Only once did the observer and the observed merge. Only a few times have I felt that Real compassion, forgiveness, Love. Only a couple of times have I had experience with the ‘other’ dimension. RICHARD: It is entirely possible, throughout the vast majority of one’s time, for there to be no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action of its own accord and effortlessly does its thing. All the while there is an apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur in the brain – other than when necessary – for it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here now. Consequently, one is always blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake and here on this verdant planet now. When the psychological ego and psychic soul willingly relinquish their sovereignty and take their leave, the senses can act in
the optimum manner. Just as when a normal person becomes blind and all their other senses are heightened, so too does the abdication result in a
phenomenal increase in the pleasurable and luxurious sensitivity of being a corporeal body in this very physical world. The resultant benevolence
produces easy good-will, kindness and altruism This is an actual freedom from animosity and anguish – as distinct from becoming enlightened and thus having merely transcended and smothered them over with a honeyed coating of Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I am inordinately pleased whenever someone can grasp the priceless character of what this means for peace on earth. It is one thing to bask in Ineffable Bliss, Ecstasy and Euphoria while perpetuating the status-quo ... and quite another to delightedly enjoy the ripples of pleasure that this body is patently capable of manifesting whilst actualising benignity and blitheness. These organic waves of sensational pleasure are usually constrained by the demands of the ego and soul for emotional and passionate feelings ... which are the synthetic compensations for the supposed indignity of ‘me’ having to be here at all in this despised body. You see, what one is as this body is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. The physical space of this universe is infinite and its time is eternal ... thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go too. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. In other words: I am always here and it is already now. RESPONDENT: AND I still struggle, want, strive to understand this ‘illusory self’ that everybody says doesn’t exist but obscures that Reality which does exist, and if it (self) doesn’t exist, then how does it have such power over the physical? Nobody denies that the physical exists (with the exception of a few weirdos) and yet, this self that doesn’t exist can make the body do things like cry, smile, yell, cuss, get a sick stomach, muscles tie up in knots, get cancer, a headache, get horny, commit murder, rape, leave town, etc. (all in your list). For something that doesn’t exist, the self, the thinker, the ‘I’, the ego, can sure cause a lot of havoc in a physical world, which some on the list say doesn’t exists either or is a figment of one’s imagination, or if we believe that is what we have, then that is what we have. RICHARD: There is a rather simple way to understand this. For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language ... for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required (to a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this monitor screen is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs. Now, to a person who believes ardently in their god, then for them their god is real ... not actual, mind you, but real. Usually they tell me that their god is more real than we humans are ... that is how real their fervency makes of their belief (it is the same as the child with the Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy example I gave above). So too, is it with regards to this wretched ‘self’. The ‘self’, whilst not being actual, is real ... sometimes very, very real. The belief in a real ‘thinker’ and ‘feeler’ is not just another passing thought. It is emotion-backed imagination at work. ‘I’ passionately believe in ‘my’ existence ... and will defend ‘myself’ to the death if it is deemed necessary. All of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – will come to the fore then, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, linking ‘my’ survival with the body’s physical continuation. Nothing could be further from the truth for ‘I’ play no part in perpetuating physical existence: ‘I’ am not necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die for a cause ... and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a Noble Ideal. That is how real ‘I’ am. * RICHARD (to Respondent No. 22): Only apperceptive awareness will do the trick. RESPONDENT: Of course, all of this conceptualising leads absolutely grievously nowhere. Krishnamurti says we must be constantly aware ... so far proven to be a virtual impossibility. Now you say apperceptive awareness will do the trick. Well, buddy, send me a couple of bottles of it, or better yet a life-time supply. RICHARD: Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to there, along the way to there you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and that it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity. All this is born only out of pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience gives rise to pure intent. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With pure intent operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer. * RICHARD (to Respondent No. 22): And all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this
place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: I’ve got the gumption, if you’ve got the stuff, and I AM ready to proceed on into my destiny ... or IS this my destiny? RICHARD: The day finally dawns where the definitive moment of being here, right now, conclusively arrives; something irrevocable takes place and every thing and every body and every event is different, somehow, although the same physically; something immutable occurs and every thing and every body and every event is all-of-a-sudden undeniably actual, in and of itself, as a fact; something irreversible happens and an immaculate perfection and a pristine purity permeates every thing and every body and every event; something has changed forever, although it is as if nothing has happened, except that the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending. And what a marvellous difference this makes to being alive! RESPONDENT: I await further instructions. RICHARD: If one is at all genuine, you will be delighted to find much more of the above on my Web Page under ‘A Brief
Personal History’.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 23): I can heartily recommend committing both psychological and psychic suicide. RESPONDENT: I ask you for a bottle of the stuff that would do the trick, and you only send me a down-load of more words, e.g., ‘apperception’, ‘PCE’, and a book of actualities for $29.95. Is there something you can say that Krishnamurti didn’t say that can relieve one of the human condition? RICHARD: As about ninety-nine per cent of what I write was never said by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, I rather fail to grasp the point you are making. To become enlightened is to find a solution within the Human Condition, and like all solutions found there, it does not work. The Masters and Messiahs, the Saints and the Sages, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Gurus and the God-men have had thousands of years to demonstrate the efficacy of their ‘Message’, their ‘Teachings’. There is still as much suffering now as there was then. The ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘Tried and Failed’. Unless this fact is thoroughly grasped, anything I write will be read in the same context as spiritual enlightenment and will be seen as merely more of the same old stuff. It is not. The ‘reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Are you the Dr. Kovorkian of the psyche? If so, please send more further instructions. RICHARD: I like your analogy. I take particular note that Dr. Kovorkian only provided the way ... the recipient does the actual deed. Nobody, but nobody can set you free other than yourself. This fail-safe mechanism is an example of how perfect and pure this universe actually is. It is entirely up to you to seek and to find; to explore and uncover; to investigate and discover ... and these actions are the very stuff of life! However, it is even more fun to go hand-in-hand with a fellow human being ... it is actual intimacy in action. It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. I am having so much fun ... those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ and wish to be twenty-one again leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I realised that there was nobody stopping me but myself – that nobody had to give me permission but myself – that realisation became an actualisation, and I was free to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore; I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover ... and to finally find the ‘Secret to life’ (or whatever one’s quest may be called). I have been talking with people about these matters for eighteen years now ... with many, many people.
People are basically the same wherever they live, whatever their culture. Everybody suffers from sorrow and malice, with its attendant love and
hate, compassion and anger, fear and trust, aggression and pacifism Besides, everyone has the right to live their life as they see fit. Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the wisdom of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting both myself and humankind free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so lovely to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! One can realise that one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. One is, after all, made up of the very stuff of the universe ... and I mean this as a physical actuality. The very material that this body is constituted of is the material of the universe ... one did not come from ‘outside’ of it and be randomly placed ‘in’ here by some god for some mysterious purpose that is not up to humans to fathom. It is possible to fully know the ‘Mystery of Life’ to such an extent that one is completely satisfied and utterly fulfilled. Nothing more needs to be done other than to live it each moment again and to fully enjoy and appreciate it all totally. The utter purity of this perfect living – and the understanding of it – defies imagination and is impossible to believe. All of one’s wishes and dreams are answered ... and more. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life ... it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants. To dare to be me, to be what-I-am as an actuality, rather than the who ‘I’ was, or the who ‘I’ am, or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history ... or one’s personal history, at least.
RESPONDENT: Is there something you can say that Krishnamurti didn’t say that can relieve one of the human condition? RICHARD: As about ninety-nine per cent of what I write was never said by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, I rather fail to grasp the point you are making. RESPONDENT: I fail to grasp the point you are making. RICHARD: Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was talking about the metaphysical world whereas I write about the actual world. To become enlightened is to find a solution to the ills of humankind in a metaphysical dimension, and like all solutions found there, it does not work here on earth in this physical dimension. The Masters and Messiahs, the Saints and the Sages, the Avatars and the Saviours have had thousands of years to demonstrate the efficacy of their ‘Message’, their ‘Teachings’. There is still as much suffering now as there was then. The ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘Tried and Failed’. Unless this fact is thoroughly grasped, you will read anything I write in the same context as spiritual enlightenment and it will be seen as merely more of the same old stuff. It is not enlightenment that I am speaking of ... it is all about going beyond enlightenment into the actuality of being here on this very physical planet that is meandering about in a very actual universe. Not only must the ego dissolve (like his did) but the soul must die as well (which his did not). Then one is here in this actual world – not the real world that five point eight billion people are living in – but the actual world that is accessible only when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct. * RICHARD: The ‘reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. RESPONDENT: I see a lot of what Krishnamurti said in what you say, and I understand what you are saying. RICHARD: If I may point this out to you? As you state that you see a lot of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti in what I am saying then you do not understand what I am saying. Please, see above for a clear and unambiguous explanation. RESPONDENT: But I really don’t know what to make of your saying there is no need for ‘Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness ... or any of those baubles’, and yet you have used these very words to describe the state you are in. In one recent post you stated that you lived in a perpetual state of Ecstasy. RICHARD: As I compose all my posts in my word processor, before exporting them to my E-Mail client, I have all of my E-Mails to this Mailing List in a long document. Thus it is an easy matter for me to type ‘Ecstasy’ into the search function and send it looking for all references wherein I used that word. For the life of me I can not find anywhere that I have stated that I lived in a ‘perpetual state of Ecstasy’. Perhaps you could send me your copy so that I can make the necessary amendments to my version here on my hard disk. * RICHARD: There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Who/what are these three I’s. Will the real ‘I’ please stand up? RICHARD: That is the trouble, is it not ... all those ‘real ‘I’s’ are standing up all over the world! There are three worlds altogether, but only one is actual. * RICHARD: However, it is even more fun to go hand-in-hand with a fellow human being ... it is actual intimacy in action. RESPONDENT: Sounds to me like you are having the sexual time of your life, you and Eve, if this is not that state of Love that you have no need for. Richard, do you Really know where you are? RICHARD: Yes. As you have explained to me before that you do not read all the E-Mails that come in you may have missed a post of mine to another on the Mailing List. Perhaps this paragraph may go some way towards making it all clearer:
RICHARD: Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was talking about the metaphysical world whereas I write about the actual world. RESPONDENT: J. Krishnamurti talked about the actual world, otherwise, I would not have been interested in reading him at all. RICHARD: If I may point out? Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was talking about the real world ... but with rose-coloured glasses on. He saw the real world through the eyes of beauty and love, and thus never noticed the actual world that under-pins the reality that an identity pastes over the top of it. RESPONDENT: He talked a whole lot more ‘actuality’ than you do with your ‘fairy tale world’. The descriptions you give of a world without the self ‘rings’ truth with me. RICHARD: He also saw the real world through the eyes of compassion and truth ... and again missed the actual. The actual is pristine, pure, unadulterated, unimpeachable, undefiled, virginal, unsullied, innocent, guileless ... in a word: Perfect. In the press of everyday business, normal people do not notice this ... to keep with the analogy of glasses it is as if everybody has grey-coloured glasses on. Somebody becomes enlightened and puts rose-coloured glasses on over the top of the grey-coloured one’s. I have taken off the grey-coloured glasses ... and no longer need the rose-coloured glasses of beauty, truth, love and compassion to make reality palatable. Normal reality and mystical Reality have both vanished along with the last trace of identity. The words and phrases that I use, like ‘magical’ and ‘fairy-tale-like’ and ‘arcadian’ and ‘ambrosial’ are but descriptive phrases intended to convey a flavour. I am not, most definitely not, ‘off with the fairies’. That is too childish to contemplate. RESPONDENT: That is why I say I see similarities in what you both are pointing to. In fact, reading all what you talk about, it is more metaphysical than anything I ever read Krishnamurti to say. RICHARD: Okay ... but then again, I do not lie on a bed, with two women looking after ‘the body’ whilst ‘They’ work on me in some unknown dimension ... like he did. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti not metaphysical? You’ve got to be kidding! RESPONDENT: It seems that you want to think you are saying something original, and you are not really. You talk about an ego and a soul that both must die in order for one to be free. I take it to mean that this soul you talk about is the idea that Masters and Messiahs have about ‘something else’, i.e., ‘enlightenment’, occurring between the enlightenment and the freedom, that also must die. RICHARD: I am not too sure what you are getting at here with ‘i.e., enlightenment’. I will plunge on regardless, and you tell me if I have misunderstood what your point is. Various masters have spoken about a ‘something else’. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti said that there was ‘Something beyond Love’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain spoke of an ‘Unknowable’ and talked of going beyond enlightenment (and as his Teachings never changed he obviously did not do this) Mr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff spoke briefly about a ‘Greater Beyond’ that lay past enlightenment ... and so on. Hints, allusions, suggestions ... but nothing substantial, nothing demonstrable, nothing lived. Buddhists posit the ultimate reality to be after physical death ... and have made a virtue out the fact that Mr. Gotama the Sakyan was too pusillanimous to take the ‘final step’ (what they call the ‘Bodhisattva Principle’). For Hindus it is also after the death of the body ... Mahasamadhi. RESPONDENT: You have also dispensed with the idea of soul, and that is good, for it was also part of the ego. I don’t why you have divided the ego into a soul that also must die. You have divided death. RICHARD: The soul is not a part of the ego, it is part of the identity. To dissolve the ego is to only go half way into the complete and utter extinction of the identity ... it means the end of the psyche itself. Hence no good or evil roams about here, in this actual world where I live. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is on record a saying something like: ‘I have always felt protected ... there is a repository of ‘Good’ into which the ‘Bad’ is always trying to enter and one has to be on one’s guard lest evil gets in’. (This is not a direct quote). My experience of being enlightened is that ‘I’, as a soul was sheltered and protected from sorrow and malice by a cocoon of Divine Compassion and Love Agapé ... and my experience was affirmed by what I read in various books, one of which was written by Ms. Pupil Jayakar about Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti wherein she describes how the people around him were not to mention the word ‘evil’ as it would send him ‘shrinking’ ... if my memory serves me correct. Mr. Barry Long is reported to have said: ‘The silver-tongued Devil is Eternal’. RESPONDENT: All you are saying is that all of the Masters and Messiahs and the Sages, etc. have had all kinds of metaphysical solutions for thousands of years and nothing has been solved here on Earth. This is exactly the same thing that Krishnamurti was saying. RICHARD: He may have said it but he did not live it. To be enlightened is to transcend duality. ‘Transcend’ means to rise above, which implies that what you have transcended still exists, only it is beneath you now. This is borne out by the ‘Enlightened Beings’, who generally state that they have eliminated the ego and transcended duality ... I have yet to come across any enlightened master who consistently states that they have eliminated duality ... if there is any at all who say that. In an actual freedom, both sorrow and malice are eliminated – not transcended – along with the ego and the soul. Evil does not exist in the world, it exists only in the human psyche ... eliminate the psyche in its entirety and you have eliminated both Good and Evil (because ‘Good’ is a psychic phenomenon created to combat ‘Evil’). As the enlightened beings have only transcended duality, they have to cling to ‘The Good’ in order to resist ‘The Bad’. Hence also their pacifism, but that is another story. RESPONDENT: There is no authority to truth, reality, actuality ... one must give up all teachers, be completely on one’s own. RICHARD: There is indeed an authority to truth ... it is usually called God. Some people disingenuously call it: ‘that which is sacred, holy’ . There is indeed an authority to reality ... it is called: ‘Might is Right’ ... and it comes from the point of a gun. But, there is no authority in actuality ... there are no forces, no energies or no powers here. This is the realm of utter equality ... there is no hierarchy here. RESPONDENT: As for Krishnamurti’s soul, or theory of dying, I don’t think he ever mentioned the word soul. He never divided death into the death of ego and the death of the soul. Death was death, complete. I think you have just added a step within your transformation which was formed from your admitted delusion. RICHARD: He would never have used the word ‘soul’ ... yet when Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was a few days short of his physical death, he reputedly said (something like) ‘I am going up to that mountain top and then I will find out for myself’. I take it from this that he bethought of himself to possess something that would survive physical death. He would also talk about a ‘stream of thought’ or a ‘river of consciousness’ (I am going by memory here) that was not affected by physical death. Then there was that rather peculiar conversation with Mr. Alain Naudé and Mrs. Zimbalist after Mr. John Fields death where he effectively hedged the question of reincarnation with talk about ‘echoes’ lasting ten years or ten thousand years or a million years before coming to an end ... and again that ‘stream of consciousness’ thing. Personally, I cut to the chase. I call it a soul. The word ‘soul’ can be a generic term for all those other words that indicate something insubstantial surviving physical death. It is a product of the psyche, and – as I have indicated already – it can vanish whilst this body is alive and breathing. Then there is peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: You’re the one who brought up the word ‘enlightenment’ as a stopping off point in one’s search for the truth, not me, nor Krishnamurti RICHARD: Yes, indeed I did. No one, to my knowledge, has ever experienced this before ... with the possible exception of Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti. But he does not know what happened to him and has no solutions to offer. He is simply a curiosity to those who go to see him. He states that he is a ‘never to be repeated sport of nature’. Whereas I know where I came from and where I am at and how I got here.
RESPONDENT: You’ve often mentioned three I’s; three worlds: an ego, a soul, and the actual, right? Step one is the death of the ego, right? Step two is death of the soul, right? Step three is ambrosial, actuality, etc. etc., right? You are saying that Krishnamurti experienced the death of the ego and was enlightened, just as other Masters and Messiahs have been, right? You are saying that Krishnamurti didn’t experience the death of the soul, and remained between step one and two, right? And as a result he never became totally free, as you have, because you have completed all three steps, right? You defend your conclusions of what you have achieved by the belief that Krishnamurti and the world teachers did not achieve what you have achieved – something called ‘actuality’ which is not reality, truth, love, sacredness, holiness, and those other baubles, right? There is no one other than that other Krishnamurti guy who has experienced what you have, and he doesn’t want to talk about it because he doesn’t know what it is or how it came about, right? Then, there is you who also lives in this state, only you know how you got there, where you are now, and where you came from, right? So, if I am reading this correctly, you are the only one in this whole world who knows all this, right? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, or anything like. I’m only trying to sort through what you’ve written in my own way of understanding so that I can proceed further. Have I sorted and stated your position fairly accurately or not? RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: Are you the ‘world teacher’ to carry on where Krishnamurti (and/or others) left off? Just curious. RICHARD: ‘Just curious’? Or just plain facetious? Can I put it this way: We each come on to this List for many reasons, but, is it not basically to share our experience of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being with one another? And that through sincere and candid discussion, we may be able to find out together about what it is that is standing in the way of human beings living in peace and harmony on this verdant planet? This is my position: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. I, for one, am not taking the back seat. A very brief personal history to explain: Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. I entered into an ongoing Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the 6th of September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. I spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Spiritual Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the 30th of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. Nowadays I know, intimately, why an Altered State Of Consciousness does not deliver the goods, for it is but a delusion ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position, driven by a ‘Divine Sense Of Mission’ to bring ‘Truth and Love’ to the world ... and what a relief that is. I am a fellow human being, albeit neither ‘normal’ nor ‘divine’, living in a condition of perfection and purity offering my discoveries to whomsoever is vitally interested in peace-on-earth. It is possible to be actually free of the Human Condition, as this body, in this life-time, here on earth. The ‘World Teacher’ business is a myth hatched many, many centuries ago and revitalised by the Theosophical Society around the turn of the century. All religions have this myth running through their fantasy. For example, Christianity has the second coming of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene; Buddhism has their Mr. Maitreya; Islam has their Mr. Mahdi; Hinduism has their Mr. Kalki; Judaism has their Mr. Messiah ... and so on. The moral of the story? People want somebody else to do all it for them. Nobody, but nobody, can set you free but yourself.
RESPONDENT: All you are saying is that all of the Masters and Messiahs and the Sages, etc. have had all kinds of metaphysical solutions for thousands of years and nothing has been solved here on Earth. This is exactly the same thing that Krishnamurti was saying. RICHARD: He may have said it but he did not live it. To be enlightened is to transcend duality. ‘Transcend’ means to rise above, which implies that what you have transcended still exists, only it is beneath you now. This is borne out by the ‘Enlightened Beings’, who generally state that they have eliminated the ego and transcended duality ... I have yet to come across any enlightened master who consistently states that they have eliminated duality ... if there is any at all who say that. In an actual freedom, both sorrow and malice are eliminated – not transcended – along with the ego and the soul. Evil does not exist in the world, it exists only in the human psyche ... eliminate the psyche in its entirety and you have eliminated both Good and Evil (because ‘Good’ is a psychic phenomenon created to combat ‘Evil’). As the enlightened beings have only transcended duality, they have to cling to ‘The Good’ in order to resist ‘The Bad’. Hence also their pacifism, but that is another story. RESPONDENT: Richard, On this list we have the presence of The Bodhisattva (he thinks he is God) and his Holy Brother, who is assuredly enlightened, and, oh yes, there is also The Man of Truth, who came and left, and other assorted Beloved Friends and Vermin who all are claiming enlightenment. And you, Richard, are one of two in the whole world who knows the actual. We are a hodgepodge of souls, we are. RICHARD: This is the whole purpose of this Mailing List, is it not? To discuss together; to investigate; to explore; to seek; to separate out the wheat from the chaff; to find out through candid conversation, just what is going on. How can this be done if we all hide our lights under a bush. I consider anyone who dares to come out with what they see or consider themselves to be, to be very, very brave. Especially when there are some people who seem to get their rocks off by trashing whatever someone dares to put in print. It is just as well that this forum is somewhat anonymous. RESPONDENT: I wonder what the ‘insane world’ is doing tonight? RICHARD: I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and have been officially classified as suffering from a pronounced and severe mental disorder. My symptoms are:
Also, I have the most classic indication of insanity. That is: everyone else is mad but me. I just thought I might share that with you, as I consider that it may be important for you to know that you are currently engaged in a correspondence with a madman. Ain’t life grand!
RICHARD: It is not enlightenment that I am speaking of ... it is all about going beyond enlightenment into the actuality of being here on this very physical planet that is meandering about in a very actual universe. Not only must the ego dissolve (like his did) but the soul must die as well (which his did not). Then one is here in this actual world – not the real world that five point eight billion people are living in – but the actual world that is accessible only when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct. RESPONDENT: Richard, I’m understanding what you are saying and I find little confusion with the exception of the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. The way I understand the self is that it is all that I am, and then you come along and divide the self into an ego and a soul. RICHARD: It is the identity that has two parts to it, not the self. The ‘self’ equates with ego (which is one half of the identity) and the ‘Self’ equates with soul (which is the other half of the identity). They go by so many different names according the school one subscribes to or the culture one is born into or whose practices one adopts. I am merely using the standard English terminology that is generally accepted in the West. The self (ego) is mortal; the Self (soul) is immortal. RESPONDENT: This is the extra step that you have put in that one must take to be free, and then assign that assumption that others who did not take the final step of the ‘death of the soul’ were merely metaphysical because they did not solve the ‘problem’. RICHARD: As the Self (soul) is immortal it is, by definition, metaphysical. RESPONDENT: What is the problem, Richard? Is it not the self? Please don’t try to divide that self into ego and soul. It just doesn’t work for me – unless you can come up with some real concrete evidence that there is a soul to die. RICHARD: That is just it ... because it is supposed to be immortal it cannot die. I challenged this passionate and fervently held belief ... and the Self (soul) died. It was not so immortal after all. * RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): It is vitally important to look at and touch physical things – trees, armchairs,
ashtrays, flowers, whatever – otherwise one goes into an inner state, a trance state. One then enters into a mystical state of being ... which is
to be of this world but not in it ... or in this world or not of it ... or whatever nonsense people come out with dressed up as sagacity. This is
the mistake all religious and spiritual people make. One needs to come to one’s senses – both literally and figuratively – and then the ‘vast
and luminous nectar of awakened consciousness or awareness’ becomes actual. RESPONDENT: What does this have to do with the death of the soul? It is just a matter of being ‘there’, awake to what one is actually doing. We touch things all of the time, but our thoughts are what wastes the energy needed to ‘be there’ in totality. RICHARD: This is precisely what I am getting at ... wanting to be ‘there’, and not here, is to chase immortality in a metaphysical dimension. I am suggesting that one turn one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction ... and be here. But be fully here as an actuality and not a reality. This is where this body is: here at this place in space and now at this moment in time. Nobody wants to do this because it entails acknowledging death’s oblivion. I am mortal. Death is the end. Finish. If you do not become free here and now whilst this body is breathing you never will. * RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): I am mortal. RESPONDENT: You certainly are, and so am I. RICHARD: If this was all that you wrote, all would be well. But you do not mean it when you say ‘so am I’ because you immediately follow it with ‘something else’. RESPONDENT: There also may be ‘something else’ beyond the mortal, something you are not/have not experienced. Is that a possibility? RICHARD: Yes, it is more than a possibility ... it is the mystical world ‘Reality’ that I lived in for eleven years. It just happens to be a delusion born out of an illusion called the real world ‘reality’. There is nothing actual beyond the mortal. RESPONDENT: He who says he knows the answer to that is speaking only from what he ‘thinks’ which is spoken from the self / knowledge. RICHARD: This stance is sometimes known as being agnostic ... and the people I have met personally, over many years that I have discussed these matters, who embrace this position have invariably been firmly convinced that this course of inaction is the intelligent approach. Mostly they have been academics ... it is a variation on that hoary adage: ‘he who says he does not know, really knows’. I guess it makes them feel intellectually comfortable. RESPONDENT: ‘The ‘something else’ cannot be known by a separate being. RICHARD: Agreed. One must cease identifying as the ‘I’ as ego (self) in the head and identify as the ‘me’ as soul (Self) in the heart. The ensuing oceanic feeling of beatitude will enable one to know the ‘Unknown’. If this delusion is carried far enough, one will realise that ‘I am God’. RESPONDENT: ‘That’ cannot be known. It can only be – Creation. RICHARD: Careful now ... this capitalisation indicates divinity. Divinity is non-physical ... which is what metaphysical means. Do you see what I am getting at, now? RESPONDENT: Creation ... which has never been before and will never be again. RICHARD: The only thing that has never been before and never will be again is this moment in time and this place in space. By being here – as this body – at this moment in time and at this place in space, one experiences the infinity of space now and the eternity of time here. This is actual. You see, what one is as this body is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. The physical space of this universe is infinite and its time is eternal ... thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go too. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. As I am always here and it is already now, the spurious immortality of some specious after-life fades into the oblivion it deserves.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 21): Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and
benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself. Once set in motion, it is no
longer a matter of choice: it is an irresistible pull. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to
not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life – it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness.
Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants. RESPONDENT: How can one be sure of anything because the one that is sure is made up of an idea that this is what it wants? What is this absolute surety you talk about? RICHARD: It is the surety born of apperceptive awareness. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity. Such a mind is absolutely sure. Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to there, along the way to there you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. RESPONDENT: You say that it is a ‘palpable life force’ that is occurring benignly somewhere in the universe and is somehow set in motion and then there is no turning back. RICHARD: All this is born only out of pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the pure consciousness experience (PCE) experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience ensures pure intent continuing to operate. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With pure intent operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer. RESPONDENT: Is it ‘one’ who turns on the faucet and then can’t turn it off? You may live in paradise, but I sure don’t know ‘how’ ‘you’ got there. RICHARD: Something can definitely be achieved in regards to this ‘I’ and ‘me’ ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the wisdom of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which – as I wrote above – is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting both myself and humankind free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so lovely to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! The day finally dawns where the definitive moment of being here, right now, conclusively arrives; something irrevocable takes place and every thing and every body and every event is different, somehow, although the same physically; something immutable occurs and every thing and every body and every event is all-of-a-sudden undeniably actual, in and of itself, as a fact; something irreversible happens and an immaculate perfection and a pristine purity permeates every thing and every body and every event; something has changed forever, although it is as if nothing has happened, except that the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending. And what a marvellous difference this makes to being alive!
RESPONDENT: Richard, I’m understanding what you are saying and I find little confusion with the exception of the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. The way I understand the self is that it is all that I am, and then you come along and divide the self into an ego and a soul. RICHARD: It is the identity that has two parts to it, not the self. The self equates with ego (which is one half of the identity) and the Self equates with soul (which is the other half of the identity). They go by so many different names according the school one subscribes to or the culture one is born into or whose practices one adopts. I am merely using the standard English terminology that is generally accepted in the West. The self (ego) is mortal; the Self (soul) is immortal. RESPONDENT: This is the extra step that you have put in that one must take to be free, and then assign that assumption that others who did not take the final step of the ‘death of the soul’ were merely metaphysical because they did not solve the ‘problem’. RICHARD: As the Self (soul) is immortal it is, by definition, metaphysical. RESPONDENT: What is the problem, Richard? Is it not the self? Please don’t try to divide that self into ego and soul. It just doesn’t work for me – unless you can come up with some real concrete evidence that there is a soul to die. RICHARD: That is just it ... because it is supposed to be immortal it cannot die. I challenged this passionate and fervently held belief ... and the Self (soul) died. It was not so immortal after all. RESPONDENT: Richard, I would like to suggest that it was the one self which thought there were two identities in the first place – a self that divided itself into an ‘ego’ self and a ‘soul’ self (which you chose to capitalise). RICHARD: I did not choose to capitalise ... I am merely following the convention that is common around the world. One has only to read works by and about Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana), for example, to see this convention in action. As for your suggestion ‘that it was the one self which thought there were two identities in the first place’ ... are you, too, telling me that it is thought ‘imputing’ identities where they do not exist? So it is contagious then, this ‘imputing’ business. Obviously, ‘I’ will do anything but see the fact. RESPONDENT: It is still this one self that concludes that there are two selves (identities) that must die. You are challenging something that never existed in the first place ... two separated selves. RICHARD: Okay, since you insist, let us do it your way. What now? How do I proceed to get this self back into my imagination again so that I can experience the world like you do? RESPONDENT: The self is fragmented and fragments, and I think yourself is still fragmenting. There are not two selves, one with a capital ‘S’ and one with a lower case ‘s’. There is just one self. Richard, I repeat, there is only ONE self. RICHARD: Okay ... okay ... you have convinced me. There is only ONE self ... got it! Now what? RESPONDENT: Yes, there is a delusion of the self being ‘immortal’. People like to think that there is ‘something’ immortal about ‘us’. RICHARD: And that includes yourself, as is evidenced by your last post ... viz.:
To which I can only repeat what I wrote before:
Do you want to find out? Do you want to know? Because if you do not find out while you are alive and breathing you will never know. RESPONDENT: Another suggestion, Richard, is that you give up all of your conclusions and start afresh from no thought about everything you hold so dearly. That is death of the ego, the self. RICHARD: Why? So that I will become happy and harmless? So that I will be free of sorrow and malice? So that I will become blithesome and benign? So that I will be free of fear and aggression? So that I will become carefree and considerate? So that I will be free from nurture and desire? So that I will become gay and benevolent? So that I will be free from anguish and animosity? So that, by being free of the Human Condition I will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body? So, tell me how you went about giving up all of your conclusions and starting afresh from no thought about everything you held so dearly. Tell me, please, how you eventuated the death of your ego, the self, and became free of the Human Condition. May I suggest something in return? One would be well-advised not to give directives that one is not living oneself twenty four hours a day, year in year out. Otherwise one is mouthing empty rhetoric. And they are silly directives anyway ... it is the ‘Tried and True’ that you are promulgating and it is nothing but the ‘Tried and Failed’. The Saints and Sages have been handing out these half-baked inanities, dressed-up as sagacity, for thousands of years ... to no avail. There is still as much suffering now as there was then. It is high time something totally new hove into view ... and it has. I call it actual freedom.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): What if we were to say, in order to simplify matters for now, that the ego is nothing more
– and nothing less – than the instinctual passionate will to survive codified by the very necessary conscience ... that socialised knowledge of
Right and Wrong? What if we were to say that it is located in the forehead in line with the temples just above and between the eyes? What if we
were to say that it is the little man/woman who pulls all the levers and presses all the controls ... and fondly considers itself to be vitally
important in the scheme of things? What if we were to say that it is born out of the passionate instinct for survival that blind nature endows us
with at conception: fear and aggression and nurture and desire? Would this help to clarify anything? RESPONDENT: What if we were to call the self, ego, by its real name, its actual name? Would this help clarify anything? You can call it anything you want, but its real name is Memory (not indicating holiness). The self is memory, plain and simple, period, finite, caput. When memory is not, the mind is still, very still, quiet. You are crediting the mind with more than what it is. RICHARD: And you operate and function perfectly well in the world of people, things and events without memory? This is that ‘stopping thought’ business that has such a stranglehold on spiritual practitioners. They go away into a quiet place, where they will not be disturbed, and meditate. If successful, thought stops – memory ceases – and there is only now ... because without thought the ‘thinker’ is not extant. One enters into the affective realm and the ensuing oceanic feeling of oneness makes them feel that they have solved the ills of humankind ... until thought – and memory – returns as it must. One cannot operate and function in the world of people, things and events without thought and memory. Just look at amnesiacs, for example ... they have to be escorted everywhere, or carry a notebook about with them to tick off everything they have done so as to avoid doing the same thing over and over again. So, if ego is memory – or thought – then there will never be peace-on-earth. I am finding it so cute that nobody is willing to examine the affective faculties.
RESPONDENT: The self is fragmented and fragments, and I think yourself is still fragmenting. There are not two selves, one with a capital ‘S’ and one with a lower case ‘s’. There is just one self. Richard, I repeat, there is only ONE self. RICHARD: Okay ... okay ... you have convinced me. There is only ONE self ... got it! Now what? RESPONDENT: What happens then? I don’t know. It may be more than just living in a sensuous, hedonistic state of actuality. This is all I have to say on this matter. RICHARD: I was wondering when someone would first use the phrase ‘hedonistic’ ... and who it would be. RESPONDENT: Goodbye and best wishes. RICHARD: Good-bye and best wishes too you, too.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 10): I did not devise, concoct or contrive this peace-on-earth ... it was already here ... as
it always has been and always will be. I just happened to discover it, that is all ... and it being so perfect that I wished to inform my fellow
human beings of its existence. What they do with this information is their business. RESPONDENT: Should I use this information to commit psychological and psychic suicide by jumping into the deep end with boots and all on ? RICHARD: Oh, no. Not with your boots on ... do not take any baggage with you at all. Go forth, more naked than you would be by taking your clothes off, into the world of people, things and events. RESPONDENT: Which ‘I’ should jump first, the ego I or the soul I? Mine have been fighting. One says, ‘you go first’, and the other one says, ‘No. you go first’. RICHARD: Good, you have your sense of humour. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all. Be totally sincere, most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. All that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. However, I mean it most sincerely about the two parts to one’s identity. It matters not at all if one has been raised by agnostic or atheistic or theistic parents ... it is in the culture – the society one is born into – anyway. And, apart from that, it is what one is born with ... if the word ‘soul’ does not work for you then use the word ‘being’. It is your feeling of being – the real ‘me’ – that is evidenced when one says: ‘But what about me, nobody loves me for me’! For a woman it is: ‘You only want me for my body ... and not for me’. For a man it is: ‘You only want me for my money ... and not for me’. For a child it is: ‘You only want to be my friend because of my toys (or sweets or whatever)’. That sense of ‘me’ – that being – is what I call the soul. It arises out of the basic instincts that blind nature endowed us all with as a rough and ready ‘soft-ware’ package to make a start in life. These instincts – mainly fear and aggression and nurture and desire – appear as a rudimentary self. This is why it is felt to be one’s ‘Original Face’ ... to use the Zen terminology. RESPONDENT: Neither one can see any place to jump into, anyway. We’re getting nowhere first. RICHARD: The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if you miss it this time around, hey presto ... you have another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this. RESPONDENT: You’re going to have to send more information or draw a clearer map to paradise. RICHARD: Okay. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness does not mean a thing if one is miserable now ... and a hoped-for happiness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. What ‘I’ did, eighteen years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective method of ridding this body of ‘me’. (Now I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). ‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? It was a bit of a chore to start with, but as success after success started to multiply exponentially, it became automatic to have this question running as an on-going thing ... because it delivered the goods right here and now ... not off into some indeterminate future. Plus the successes were repeatable – almost on demand – and satisfied the ‘scientific method’. As ‘I’ knew, from the PCE that started ‘me’ off into ridding this body of ‘me’, that it was possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set a minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. (‘Feeling good’ is an unambiguous term ... if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all.) If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end that good feeling? Ah ... yes ... ‘he said that and ...’, or ‘she didn’t do this and I ...’, or ‘what I wanted was ... and I didn’t get it ...’, and so on. One does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most. This way, the reward is immediate; by finding out what triggered off this loss of feeling good, one commences another period of enjoying this moment of being alive. You may remember what I wrote to you some days ago about attention, fascination, reflection, contemplation and apperception? Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to there, along the way to there you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity. Okay, it is all about being here at this moment in time and this place in space ... and if you are not feeling good you have no chance whatsoever of being here. A grumpy person locks themselves out of the perfect purity of this moment and place. If you do not want to be here, then forget it. Of course, once you get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy’. And after that: ‘feeling perfect’. These are all feelings, you will notice, this is not perfection personified yet ... but, then again, feeling perfect for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day is way beyond normal human expectations anyway. Also, it is a very tricky way of both getting men fully into their feelings for the first time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings one by one instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once. But one has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. This method will bring one into being more fully here than anyone has ever been before. It is really important to understand the point I have been pushing about the soul ... getting into feelings like this – ‘perfect’ feelings – leaves one in imminent danger of the seductive snare of Love and Beauty, and, conveniently ignoring their opposites, becoming enlightened, or at least illuminated. ‘Me’ – that intuition of ‘being’ that I call the soul – sugar coats itself with Love and Compassion and Beauty and Truth and swans along in a state of Blissful Euphoria. Thus one then goes off into some mystical State of Being in some metaphysical world and misses out on the clean and clear perfection of this actual world. It is very, very difficult to get out of the enlightened state and go ‘beyond it’ into this actual world of the senses. So: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? It beats any pathetic mantra by a country mile ... because it is useful.
CORRESPONDENT No. 19 (Part Two) 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.
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