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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 19
RESPONDENT: So you are saying, Richard, that freedom is possible here and now as this flesh and blood body?RICHARD: Yes ... where else? RESPONDENT: Perhaps when/where the physical body is not. RICHARD: How would a bodiless freedom bring about peace-on-earth? RESPONDENT: I was not talking about bringing about freedom on earth. RICHARD: Oh? You were when we started ... may I take this opportunity to re-connect the beginning of this post that you snipped off two posts ago? The subject is indeed about ‘freedom on earth’ ... and you were full of huff and puff about ‘responsibility arising’.
RESPONDENT: When I look at the skies at night from this one small ball dangling in space, I see thousands, if not millions, of stars in that vast space. RICHARD: So, am I to understand that, although you can write mordantly about ‘understanding arising in the mind’ and ‘responsibility’ and No. 14’s ego being ‘bigger than Texas’ (and say similar about me at the bottom of this post), that within two posts of writing your wisdom you are off star-gazing and seeking a bodiless freedom? RESPONDENT: To judge your observations from just what you see on this planet seems to me to be a narrower view. RICHARD: Are you really saying that peace-on-earth is a ‘narrow point of view’? May I ask? Do you really condone all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides? * RESPONDENT: I know that you have said that before, and I do not rule out that possibility. RICHARD: Good ... there is no other possibility. RESPONDENT: Are you sure? RICHARD: Yes. Becoming free from the human condition by physically dying most definitely will not bring about peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I was/am not obsessing over ‘peace-on-earth’. RICHARD: Am I to take it that anyone who genuinely takes responsibility for cleaning up their act so as to bring to an end, say, rape and domestic violence and child abuse, is ‘obsessing’? RESPONDENT: There may never be ‘peace on earth’. RICHARD: Hmm ... not at the rate you are going. RESPONDENT: There may, however, be peace that is not on this earth. RICHARD: And what use is a bodiless peace? How is that going to help, for example, the 40,000 children RESPONDENT: We appear to be just a manifestation of the energy that IS (us) from the beginning. RICHARD: Perhaps you would be better off corresponding with No. 14. Because, speaking personally, I am a manifestation of the calorific energy of the food I eat. Besides ... eternity means no beginning. RESPONDENT: Poor Richard. RICHARD: I have no need for your pity ... and it is such a useless emotion anyway. RESPONDENT: What percentage of life is not visible nor present on this planet? What percentage that you are not aware of? RICHARD: What percentage of life is not visible on this planet? If it is not visible on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured it cannot be known what percentage of life is not visible on this planet. What percentage of life is not present on this planet? If it is not present on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured then it cannot be known what percentage of life is not present on this planet. What percentage is it that I am not aware of? If I am not aware of it then I cannot measure it ... and if I cannot measure it I cannot know what percentage it is that I am not aware of. What percentage of life, that is not visible or present, was it that you imagined you were not aware of? RESPONDENT: Absolutely none of which you droned on about above makes sense. You personally measure things from your perspective of the blood and bones body and you say ‘this is all there is’. RICHARD: If I may point out? It was you, not me, that said ‘this is all there is’ in the part of the post you snipped off. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: Again, that shows the narrowness of your perspective. RICHARD: Whoops ... it was you wrote it, not me. Do you still maintain that someone who writes ‘this is all there is?’ has a ‘narrow perspective’? RESPONDENT: There is a vast dimension which has nothing to do with time and space, and your wanting to measure that from your small bones and blood body is an indication of your huge ego. RICHARD: Have you noticed – this is just something that I have noticed – that you dispense this ‘big ego’ wisdom of yours rather liberally on this Mailing List ... and usually to posters with male names? Do you not have something less feminist to contribute? RESPONDENT: This blood and bones body is just one small, minute percentage of that vastness. The brain that is housed in your blood and bones body and which ‘is always present’ is entirely incapable of the measurements of which you speak. RICHARD: As I look back at the ‘measurement’ questions you posed and the answers I gave I see that you are full of queries but remarkably short on answers. Seeing that you know so much – and are so liberal with your censure of anyone seeking to end human suffering – how about you answer your own questions so as to show me where I am going wrong and you are going right. That is: you give the percentage, that you asked me for, without using ‘small blood and bones body’ measurement – and show the world just what you are doing to yourself in private. There is a saying: if you cannot put up ... then why not shut up? RESPONDENT: You say if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. RICHARD: Well, no ... I never wrote anything of the sort. I said that if you cannot measure it the percentage cannot be known. Viz.:
So, I will ask again: what percentage of life, that is not visible or present, was it that you imagined you were not aware of? RESPONDENT: Perhaps you should join No. 14 in ‘Texas’. RICHARD: You really have no idea of what you are doing here, have you?
RICHARD: Nature, be it blind or not, can never be described as benevolent. RESPONDENT: Nature IS kind and benevolent, and I might add that ‘she’ is giving, protective, quiet, wild; beautiful, and from all of that, nature is detached. RICHARD: I will take this opportunity to re-post a correspondence from 16 months ago to which I have nothing to add. Viz:
* RESPONDENT No. 14: If it is understanding that the whole thing is like trying to kick off your own foot, then a new peace arises, and that is what nature is. RICHARD: There is an already always existing peace-on-earth that can only become apparent when ‘I’
as ego and ‘me’ as soul self-immolate ... that is: identity itself becomes extinct. One can decamp from one’s fate (bestowed
by blind nature) and achieve one’s destiny (implicit as this universe). It is yours for the choosing. RESPONDENT: Richard, your sentences are full of contradiction and conflict which you try to hide with you use of complex ideation and big words. RICHARD: May I ask? Where is the ‘contradiction’? Where is the ‘conflict’? Where is the ‘complex ideation’?
RICHARD: You are born with aggression – and fear – and that biological fact has zilch to do with it being ‘thought that is a danger here’. Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? RESPONDENT No. 31: Yes. This is a fundamental question. Our enquiry starts here. But there is a BELIEF that one is nursing malice and sorrow. RICHARD: If I may point out? It is a fact. You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: Why are we not looking beyond that? We first have to look into these beliefs. RICHARD: May I ask? Why are you avoiding the fact? You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: I would suggest to keep things simple and converse innocently like a small child. RICHARD: Small children are not innocent RESPONDENT: Again here, Richard, you authoritatively make a statement that has no basis in fact. A child is NOT born with aggression and fear. RICHARD: This borrowed ‘Tabula Rasa’ (‘clean slate’) philosophy of yours has had a long innings in human history ... and is currently making a come-back in NDA circles as: ‘We are all born Little Buddhas’. The continued belief in this theory – in the face of the empirical evidence of the past 30 odd years demonstrating genetic inheritance – requires avoiding the biological fact. Just by putting the word ‘NOT’ in capitals does not miraculously turn a creed into a fact. RESPONDENT: Those are learned traits. RICHARD: I had a woman telling me a few weeks ago that boys are born with aggression and little girl babies are not ... and that girls learnt aggression from men (she had to explain ‘bitchiness’ somehow) and that it was men who had to change so that there would be peace on earth. Now you are telling me that fear and aggression are ‘learned traits’ and the question that immediately springs to mind is: learned from who? Because if fear and aggression are passed on non-genetically from generation to generation (parent to child) then what caused fear and aggression in the first sentient beings to emerge on this planet way back whenever. In other words: who started it all? RESPONDENT: Obviously, you were not a very observant parent or grandparent. RICHARD: I not only ‘observed’ my biological children from birth onward, I actively
participated in finding out about myself, life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through intimate interaction at
the grass-roots level of association ... bonding, nurturing and protecting. Indeed, I was a single parent To achieve a truly ‘clean slate’, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease being ‘human’. To change ‘Human Nature’, they must give-up, voluntarily, their cherished identity ... the rudimentary animal self they were born with. RESPONDENT: Humans are born with a central nervous system for responding to the environment. Fear and aggression are learned traits as a result of the environment. RICHARD: By ‘environment’ you can only mean the world about ... the world of what you call ‘Mother Nature’. Thus you are saying that fear and aggression are leaned from a ‘kind and benevolent’ Mother Nature? That is, fear and aggression is learned from ‘she’ who is giving, protective, quiet, wild and beautiful’, eh? But okay ... I will have it your way, then. You are right and Richard is wrong. The question that immediately springs to mind is: how are you going to unlearn these traits that are learned as a result of ‘responding to the environment’? Which means: what is your plan? What success have you had? Have you unlearned all these learned traits yet? Or is all this that you write merely theory? You see, in my ignorance I naively thought that these traits were genetically inherited and so I deleted them like the software they were. Consequently I never get sad or lonely or sorrowful or grief-stricken; I never get angry or hateful or furious or filled with rage. Therefore I never have to become affectionate or compassionate or loving to compensate; I never have to gaze longingly at the stars ... yearning for a bodiless peace. I discovered the already always existing peace-on-earth ... how naïve of me.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 31): Small children are not innocent ... they are born with aggression and
fear. Understanding human nature is as simple as understanding this fact. Life is not complicated. RESPONDENT: Again here, Richard, you authoritatively make a statement that has no basis in fact. A child is NOT born with aggression and fear. RICHARD: This borrowed ‘Tabula Rasa’ (‘clean slate’) philosophy of yours has had a long innings in human history ... and is currently making a come-back in NDA circles as: ‘We are all born Little Buddhas’. The continued belief in this theory – in the face of the empirical evidence of the past 30 odd years demonstrating genetic inheritance – requires avoiding the biological fact. Just by putting the word ‘NOT’ in capitals does not miraculously turn a creed into a fact. RESPONDENT: You just don’t understand about conditioning, do you Richard? How long does it take an infant to be conditioned?? Maybe a minute? Maybe a year? Maybe a second? RICHARD: Why are you asking me? It is your theory – you say that I am wrong and that you are right – yet you do not know what to say to back your statement. And as for ‘maybe a second’ ... ye gods, your theory becomes fantasy. RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti talked 60 plus years about freeing oneself from the entanglement of conditioning. Krishnamurti said that he was never conditioned, and that he did not know why that was the case. His mind remained ‘vacant’. RICHARD: And you believe him? Despite all the documentation to the contrary? Ah, well ... such is faith, I guess. RESPONDENT: I have been observing my 10 month granddaughter closely since the day she was born. I have as yet to observe any fear, aggression, malice, and/or especially sorrow. It is just not there. Will she ever come to know hatred, anger, sorrow, fear, aggression, etc.? It will be a sad day to see conditioning take a hold on her. You talk about your simplicity, and that is a laugh. My granddaughter is simple; that is beauty, love, and a joy to behold. She will have to first become conditioned in order to ‘achieve a truly ‘clean’ slate’, for as of right now, she is a ‘truly clean slate’. RICHARD: Am I reading this correctly? Are you really saying, that in order to become ‘clean’, one has to become ‘unclean’ first ... even though one is already born ‘clean’? RESPONDENT: Obviously, you were not a very observant parent or grandparent. RICHARD: I not only ‘observed’ my biological children from birth onward, I actively participated in finding out about myself, life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through intimate interaction at the grass-roots level of association ... bonding, nurturing and protecting. Indeed, I was a single parent for a formative period of my biological daughters’ upbringing ... and one cannot get closer than that. Infants and children are not as happy and harmless and benevolent and carefree as is so often made out to be the case ... and have never been so. They have malice and sorrow firmly embedded in them, for one is born with instinctual fear and aggression. Just watch a one month old baby bellowing its distress at being alone; just watch a one year old pinching its sibling in spite for taking its toy; just watch a two year old stamping its foot in a temper tantrum; just watch a three year old child fighting with its peers for supremacy. In the interests of having a sincere dialogue, I must ask: where in all this is the fabulous ‘Tabula Rasa’? The imposition of social mores – moral virtues, ethical values, honourable principles, decent scruples and the like – are essential to curb the instinct-born spiteful anger and vicious hatred that are part and parcel of the essential traits of being ‘human’. To achieve a truly ‘clean slate’, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease being ‘human’. To change ‘Human Nature’, they must give-up, voluntarily, their cherished identity ... the rudimentary animal self they were born with. RESPONDENT: To achieve a truly ‘clean slate’, something entirely old must go out of existence. That old is the conditioning which we acquire whilst on this planet. RICHARD: You do have my interest ... your grand-daughter is ‘clean’ and the ‘unclean’ people already here – yourself included – are going to make her ‘unclean’ so that she can then endeavour to become ‘clean’ like you are endeavouring to do? Do I understand you correctly? RESPONDENT: Humans are born with a central nervous system for responding to the environment. Fear and aggression are learned traits as a result of the environment. RICHARD: By ‘environment’ you can only mean the world about ... the world of what you call ‘Mother Nature’. Thus you are saying that fear and aggression are leaned from a ‘kind and benevolent’ Mother Nature? That is, fear and aggression is learned from ‘she’ who is giving, protective, quiet, wild and beautiful’, eh? But okay ... I will have it your way, then. You are right and Richard is wrong. The question that immediately springs to mind is: how are you going to unlearn these traits that are learned as a result of ‘responding to the environment’? Which means: what is your plan? What success have you had? Have you unlearned all these learned traits yet? Or is all this that you write merely theory? You see, in my ignorance I naively thought that these traits were genetically inherited and so I deleted them like the software they were. Consequently I never get sad or lonely or sorrowful or grief-stricken; I never get angry or hateful or furious or filled with rage. Therefore I never have to become affectionate or compassionate or loving to compensate; I never have to gaze longingly at the stars ... yearning for a bodiless peace. I discovered the already always existing peace-on-earth ... how naïve of me. RESPONDENT: At what expense? Madness? RICHARD: Uh oh ... I gain the distinct impression that you are getting yourself ready to trot out the line that you do not have to look at the instinctual passions (and will instead waste your time endlessly unlearning those traits that you claim are only learned as a result of ‘responding to the environment’) because you have nothing to gain from Richard sharing his experience with you ... because he has what is officially classified as a severe mental disorder. Which means: what can a madman have to say to a normal sane person that is of value, eh? Yet 160,000,000 human beings were killed by normal sane people in wars this century – peoples like yourself – and they do know what they are doing ... do they not?
RICHARD: There is an already always existing peace-on-earth that can only become apparent when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul self-immolate ... that is: identity itself becomes extinct. One can decamp from one’s fate (bestowed by blind nature) and achieve one’s destiny (implicit as this universe). It is yours for the choosing. RESPONDENT: Richard, your sentences are full of contradiction and conflict which you try to hide with you use of complex ideation and big words. RICHARD: May I ask? Where is the ‘contradiction’? Where is the ‘conflict’? Where
is the ‘complex ideation’? RESPONDENT: Ego is expressed as ideas, and your ideas are extremely complex, and not only that, but conflicted. For example, you say you have no emotion, no love, no feeling, and yet you constantly bring up the plight of 6 billion sentient beings on this earth as if you had concern for them. RICHARD: Not ‘as if’, I actually like my fellow human being and wish the best for each and every one ... and the best is already always here now. RESPONDENT: What is the concern for the plight of the people from a person who has no feeling, no emotion, no caring, no nurturing, no love? RICHARD: Are you saying that the feelings – the emotions, passions and calentures – that are born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire are the essential ingredients to care about one’s fellow human beings? Even though it is those very same feelings that are causing all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place? RESPONDENT: Is it all just a big show of big words? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Do you talk just for the sake of argument ... trying to prove a point that you deem yourself an authority on? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: There appears to be no length to which you will not go to protect the image you hold of yourself; no defence you will not throw up when you feel your ideas assailed; no words you will not use to prove that you ‘know it all’. RICHARD: Look out folks ... here comes the cop-out. RESPONDENT: Really, Richard, I do not consider your ideas worth two ‘hoots’, and I ascribe to nothing you say, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you may be male. It has more to do with the realization that you are quite mad. RICHARD: If I may point out? What could be more mad than 6.0 billion people living on a planet that is swimming in the perfection of the infinitude of this very tangible universe ... and killing each other for whatever passionate reason that grips them at the time? RESPONDENT: I am indeed sad for you, even though it is such a worthless emotion. I am not emotionless, but I am not the slave of emotion. It is natural to be sad: why else would this blood and bones body be able to cry ‘actual’ tears? RICHARD: And there it is in a nutshell ... ‘it is natural to be sad’. How on earth can you maintain that your grand-daughter is a clean slate if ‘it is natural to be sad’. Why is sadness not included in your ‘learned from the environment’ traits? Anyway, at least you have acknowledged that one half of my oft-repeated ‘malice and sorrow’ diagnosis is valid.
RESPONDENT: When I look at the skies at night from this one small ball dangling in space, I see thousands, if not millions, of stars in that vast space. RICHARD: So, am I to understand that, although you can write mordantly about ‘understanding
arising in the mind’ and ‘responsibility’ and No. 14’s ego being ‘bigger than Texas’ (and say
similar about me at the bottom of this post), that within two posts of writing your wisdom you are off star-gazing and seeking a
bodiless freedom? RESPONDENT: I am not seeking anything, Richard. What gave you that idea? (I said I observe stars in the sky at night, and I have since I was a child. Is that seeking? Really, Richard!) I only said that the possibility exists ... many possibilities abound of which it is possible that you know nothing about. That is another possibility, right? RICHARD: Let me re-post the thread from where you bought into it at the beginning ... and you will see for yourself that you have gone a full circle and that indeed you are now prattling on about the way to be responsible about the plight of humanity is to look at the possibility of an after-death peace!
If you have read through to this far, you will see that you are more concerned about immortality than taking responsibility for the plight of humankind. If you do not see it ... please re-read it until you do. * RESPONDENT: To judge your observations from just what you see on this planet seems to me to be a narrower view. RICHARD: Are you really saying that peace-on-earth is a ‘narrow point of view’? May I ask? Do you really condone all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides? RESPONDENT: Get real, Richard, or should I say ‘get actual?’ You can’t pull that one off that I condone all of the things you mentioned above. You’re the one who has no emotion, no feeling, no compassion, so why on earth do you talk about child abuse and sadness, etc. if you have no ‘feeling’ about it. RICHARD: I talk about it because I like my fellow human beings and wish only the best for all of us ... and because I have naively discovered the peace-on-earth that has always been already here ... now. * RESPONDENT: I know that you have said that before, and I do not rule out that possibility. RICHARD: Good ... there is no other possibility. RESPONDENT: Are you sure? RICHARD: Yes. Becoming free from the human condition by physically dying most definitely will not bring about peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I was/am not obsessing over ‘peace-on-earth’. RICHARD: Am I to take it that anyone who genuinely takes responsibility for cleaning up their act so as to bring to an end, say, rape and domestic violence and child abuse, is ‘obsessing’? RESPONDENT: You just suggested above that I was condoning rape, etc. You are the one who ‘obsesses’ over peace on earth, war, rape. Perhaps it has something to do with your stint in Nam and the fiery death of the monk. Are you still having post traumatic syndrome? RICHARD: I write as I do to gain another’s interest ... and gaining another’s interest is but the preliminary stage. Because only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person participating in their search for freedom for the first time in their life. Then curiosity becomes fascination ... and then the fun begins. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to what others around one would classify as ‘obsession’. A 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is thus actively discouraged by one’s peers. * RESPONDENT: There may never be ‘peace on earth’. RICHARD: Hmm ... not at the rate you are going. RESPONDENT: There may, however, be peace that is not on this earth. RICHARD: And what use is a bodiless peace? How is that going to help, for example, the 40,000 children that die each year from preventable diseases whose deaths may very well be caused, not only by people ‘whose egos are bigger that Texas’ ... but through romanticists gazing yearningly at the heavens instead of the issue at hand? To wit: the malice and sorrow you nurse to your bosom? RESPONDENT: We appear to be just a manifestation of the energy that IS (us) from the beginning. What percentage of life is not visible nor present on this planet? What percentage that you are not aware of? RICHARD: What percentage of life is not visible on this planet? If it is not visible on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured it cannot be known what percentage of life is not visible on this planet. What percentage of life is not present on this planet? If it is not present on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured then it cannot be known what percentage of life is not present on this planet. What percentage is it that I am not aware of? If I am not aware of it then I cannot measure it ... and if I cannot measure it I cannot know what percentage it is that I am not aware of. What percentage of life, that is not visible or present, was it that you imagined you were not aware of? RESPONDENT: Exactly, Richard. It cannot be measured. I’m glad you finally realized that. RICHARD: You are talking to a person who repeatedly says that he apperceptively experiences the infinitude of this universe ... and infinity and eternity can never be measured with intelligence. I have no notion as to what you are trying to achieve with this exercise (above) but it is so far a complete waste of time if you fondly think that through doing this you have made me ‘finally realise’ that infinitude cannot be measured! Until space exploration is such that carbon-based life-forms are discovered to have arisen elsewhere as well as on planet earth, then this is the only known place where a carbon-based life-form is. * RESPONDENT: Absolutely none of which you droned on about above makes sense. You personally measure things from your perspective of the blood and bones body and you say ‘this is all there is’. RICHARD: If I may point out? It was you, not me, that said ‘this is all there is’ in the part of the post you snipped off. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: Richard, are you out of your mind? It was you who said ‘this is all there is ...’, this blood and bones body. RICHARD: If you take the time to re-read what I re-posted you will see that I said that it is only in the ‘real world’ that the phrase ‘this is all there is’ is valid. I even stuck ‘whoa-up there’ in front of it to catch your attention. The actual is vast beyond belief and comprehension. * RESPONDENT: Again, that shows the narrowness of your perspective. RICHARD: Whoops ... it was you wrote it, not me. Do you still maintain that someone who writes ‘this is all there is?’ has a ‘narrow perspective’? RESPONDENT: Oh, yes, you did write it. I asked you a point blank question: ‘are you saying, ‘this is all there is’’? And in your narrow perspective you contend that there is nothing but this blood and body. RICHARD: Do you actually read what I write? RESPONDENT: There is a vast dimension which has nothing to do with time and space, and your wanting to measure that from your small bones and blood body is an indication of your huge ego. RICHARD: Have you noticed – this is just something that I have noticed – that you dispense this ‘big ego’ wisdom of yours rather liberally on this Mailing List ... and usually to posters with male names? Do you not have something less feminist to contribute? RESPONDENT: How low will you go? RICHARD: As low as you wish to go ... it is you who sets the pace. To the best of my recollection you have never used your ‘big ego’ wisdom on a poster with a female name. You will write disparagingly about roosters strutting and fighting ... but never about hens preening themselves. * RESPONDENT: This blood and bones body is just one small, minute percentage of that vastness. The brain that is housed in your blood and bones body and which ‘is always present’ is entirely incapable of the measurements of which you speak. RICHARD: As I look back at the ‘measurement’ questions you posed and the answers I gave I see that you are full of queries but remarkably short on answers. Seeing that you know so much – and are so liberal with your censure of anyone seeking to end human suffering – how about you answer your own questions so as to show me where I am going wrong and you are going right. That is: you give the percentage, that you asked me for, without using ‘small blood and bones body’ measurement – and show the world just what you are doing to yourself in private. There is a saying: if you cannot put up ... then why not shut up? RESPONDENT: You say if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. RICHARD: Not so. I said that if it cannot be measured its percentage cannot be known ... nowhere did I ever say ‘if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist’. RESPONDENT: Why don’t you put up that it doesn’t exist? RICHARD: Because I do not hold that view. RESPONDENT: First, you say it can’t be measured, and then you say it you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. RICHARD: Not so. I said that if it cannot be measured its percentage cannot be known ... nowhere did I ever say that ‘if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist’. RESPONDENT: Which is it Richard? It does or doesn’t? RICHARD: I cannot say it does or does not ... until space exploration is such that carbon-based life-forms are discovered to have arisen elsewhere as well as on planet earth, then this is the only known place where a carbon-based life-form is. Anything else is speculation ... and how is such speculation going to bring about peace-on-earth? * RESPONDENT: You say if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. RICHARD: Well, no ... I never wrote anything of the sort. I said that if you cannot measure it the percentage cannot be known. Viz.: [quote] ‘if it is not visible on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured it cannot be known what percentage of life is not visible on this planet. If it is not present on this planet then it cannot be measured ... and if it cannot be measured then it cannot be known what percentage of life is not present on this planet. If I am not aware of it then I cannot measure it ... and if I cannot measure it I cannot know what percentage it is that I am not aware of’ [endquote]. So, I will ask again: what percentage of life, that is not visible or present, was it that you imagined you were not aware of? RESPONDENT: I have no ‘idea’. That was my whole point. RICHARD: Hmm ... what has this gem of an insight have to do with taking responsibility for the plight of humankind? RESPONDENT: Perhaps you should join No. 14 in ‘Texas’. RICHARD: You really have no idea of what you are doing here, have you? RESPONDENT: ROARING LAUGHTER RICHARD: Aye ... but will you be roaring with laughter when your angelic grand-daughter begins displaying, in a way that is obvious even to you, the malice and sorrow that inevitably arises out of the genetically inherited instinctual passions she is born with? After all ... even you say that ‘it is natural to be sad’. Are you beginning to have an idea of what you are doing here?
RESPONDENT: Ego is expressed as ideas, and your ideas are extremely complex, and not only that, but conflicted. For example, you say you have no emotion, no love, no feeling, and yet you constantly bring up the plight of 6 billion sentient beings on this earth as if you had concern for them. RICHARD: Not ‘as if’, I actually like my fellow human being and wish the best for each and every one ... and the best is already always here now. RESPONDENT: A person with no feelings surely doesn’t care about anything, let alone ‘best wishes’ for his fellow humans. RICHARD: Well, I do. * RESPONDENT: What is the concern for the plight of the people from a person who has no feeling, no emotion, no caring, no nurturing, no love? RICHARD: Are you saying that the feelings – the emotions, passions and calentures – that are born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire are the essential ingredients to care about one’s fellow human beings? Even though it is those very same feelings that are causing all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place? RESPONDENT: No, I’m not saying that at all because emotions are not born out of fear and aggression. RICHARD: Okay, I will use your language then: Are you saying that the feelings – the emotions, passions and calentures – that are ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’ are the essential ingredients to care about one’s fellow human beings? Even though it is those very same feelings that are ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’ which are causing all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place? RESPONDENT: No, it is not the same feelings that are causing the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place – absolutely NOT! RICHARD: Okay ... what feelings are causing the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place if it is not the feelings that are the ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’? RESPONDENT: Your argument just doesn’t make sense, Richard. RICHARD: Does it make sense using your argument (as I have just detailed above)? * RESPONDENT: Why do you think one must to be void of feelings and emotions in order to not be abusive, a rapist, a murdered or suicidal. RICHARD: Often people who do not read what I have to say with both eyes gain the impression that I am suggesting that people to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire psyche itself is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the affective faculty is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings ... as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) where, with the self in abeyance, the feelings play no part at all. However, in a PCE the feelings – passion and calenture – can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings. It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. What the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about is a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). If it does not ... then one is way ahead of normal human expectations anyway as the aim is to enjoy and appreciate being here now for as much as is possible. It is a win/win situation. * RESPONDENT: Really, Richard, I do not consider your ideas worth two ‘hoots’, and I ascribe to nothing you say, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you may be male. It has more to do with the realization that you are quite mad. RICHARD: If I may point out? What could be more mad than 6.0 billion people living on a planet that is swimming in the perfection of the infinitude of this very tangible universe ... and killing each other for whatever passionate reason that grips them at the time? RESPONDENT: Dunno. RICHARD: Well I do ... persisting in holding on to fear and aggression and nurture and desire by insisting that they are learned traits when the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe is always available as it is already here, now. * RESPONDENT: I am indeed sad for you, even though it is such a worthless emotion. I am not emotionless, but I am not the slave of emotion. It is natural to be sad: why else would this blood and bones body be able to cry ‘actual’ tears? RICHARD: And there it is in a nutshell ... ‘it is natural to be sad’. How on earth can you maintain that your grand-daughter is a clean slate if ‘it is natural to be sad’. Why is sadness not included in your ‘learned from the environment’ traits? RESPONDENT: Being ‘natural’ is a clean slate. RICHARD: Given that you say that ‘it is natural to be sad’ and that ‘being ‘natural’ is a clean slate’ then am I to take it that your definition of a clean slate is one with ‘being sad’ on it? If so, and it means that you are saying that your angelic grand-daughter has sadness in her, then what else is lurking about on this ‘clean slate’ of hers? RESPONDENT: But since you have no emotions, no feelings, you don’t understand that, do you? RICHARD: Shall we discuss this and see whether I can understand or not? Correct me if I am in error, but are you saying that ‘being sad’ is ‘clean’? That is: is sadness a clean feeling? RESPONDENT: I still don’t understand your ‘concern’ for the 6 billion abused people if you have no feelings. RICHARD: I enjoy and appreciate being alive and being here in this amazing physical world ... and I take particular delight in spending time with my associate adventurers on this grand escapade we are all intimately involved in. 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 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. I like being here. RESPONDENT: There is nothing ‘wrong’ with being sad, Richard. It is ‘ok’ to be sad. I get sad for a little while when something sad happens, like when my brother died. That was not ‘sorrow’. RICHARD: Okay ... so if sadness is not sorrow then is ... um ... scorn equally not malice under your schemata? * RICHARD: Anyway, at least you have acknowledged that one half of my oft-repeated ‘malice and sorrow’ diagnosis is valid. RESPONDENT: What is it that YOU have diagnosed as ‘malicious and sorrowful’ ... someone with feelings? RICHARD: I have used the generally accepted convention of ‘malice’ and ‘sorrow’ as delineated by most religions and/or philosophies, that fall under the umbrella term ‘The Human Condition’, purely for convenience. In Christianity, for example, the word ‘suffering’ means the same feelings as the word ‘sorrow’ does. Similarly, the ‘Golden Rule’ (found in all religions) of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ points to the feelings covered under the catch-all word ‘malice’. Basically, ‘malice’ is what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on) and ‘sorrow’ (sadness, loneliness, melancholy, grief, masochism and so on) is what one does to oneself. RESPONDENT: There is quite a difference in the intended meaning of ‘sorrow and malice’ and just simple ‘sadness’. RICHARD: Of course ... but it is a difference in degree and not a difference in kind. RESPONDENT: Is it natural to run over an animal and not be ‘sad’ about it? RICHARD: But I am not talking of being ‘natural’ (it is natural to kill one’s fellow human being) but of being un-natural (not killing one’s fellow human being). RESPONDENT: ‘Sorrow’ implies a deep, lingering, degenerative sadness whereas one can be sad for a second. RICHARD: Indeed ... but once again, a difference in degree and not a difference in kind. RESPONDENT: Are not tears ‘actual’. RICHARD: The watering of the eyes from the tear-ducts is actual, yes ... and is beneficial as a cleanser in all types of conditions. Dust, for instance, or smoke. RESPONDENT: Do you not have ‘actual’ tears, Richard? RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: When you accidentally kill something, are you not ‘sad’ about it? RICHARD: No ... nor when I deliberately kill something. Every time I breathe air, drink water, eat food, take a step, sneeze and so on, something, somewhere (if only on the microscopic level) is being killed by me. Being alive as a creature means other creatures inevitably die ... under your scheme I would be sad every second of the day. I watched a fascinating video, some time back, of fantastic camera work on the microscopic level ... a drop of dew from an early morning rose had millions of tiny ‘shrimp-like’ creatures in it all swimming around and multiplying and eating each other. A dew drop, mind you. Modern technology makes the ‘Sacred Teachings’ of those path-sweeping pacifistic Jain Monks look silly. RESPONDENT: What do you call your care and concern for the 6 billions abused, raped, murdered peoples on this planet? RICHARD: I particularly favour the word ‘benevolence’ (‘well-wishing’) but equally words like ‘consideration’, ‘regard’, ‘care’ and so on. I like my fellow human being and delight in their happiness and harmlessness and enjoyment in being alive and fully appreciate their company each time again. It is such fun being here. RESPONDENT: Concern? How does ‘concern’ manifest itself? With selling PCE over the internet at $35.00 a whack? RICHARD: If you are referring to the semi-autobiographical novel ‘Richard’s Journal’ ... it is AUS $29.95 and constitutes 114,000 words, of a more personal type, out of the more than 1,000,000 words about the human condition that are available for free on the web-site. It is not essential reading at all and any sales go to meet the overheads of legally maintaining and expanding the Trust ... I never personally receive any money from it. Also, by latest count, 576,000 words have appeared on this Mailing List and the Actual Freedom Mailing List ... also gratis. I am retired and on a pension and have more than sufficient for my needs for the remainder of my life. Just what is the point you are trying to make?
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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