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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 20
RICHARD: And, not only was I interested as to why a ‘unmanifest, non-existent ... no-thing’ would be called ‘actual’, I had intended to query what the word <real> means, in your use of language, in your ‘matter is real but not actual’ sentence ... but you have already explained that ‘real’ indicates that space and time and matter are not fact, not actual and are but illusions or concepts. Viz.: [Respondent No. 4]: ‘It is only the manifestation of energy as materiality that I regard as impermanent and therefore as illusion, as non-actuality. Illusion is real, time-bound, ever-changing, arising and vanishing. Actuality is not real, not time-bounding, not ever changing’. <snip>. There is really nothing else I wanted to ask you about. I already have intimate comprehension, of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’, which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’ because the ‘me’ as soul, who was parasitically inhabiting this body, was that non-material consciousness night and day for eleven years (only ‘he’ called it ‘The Absolute’) ... so there is nothing I am not already aware of, from first-hand experience, that I could become aware of from your ‘nobody knows’ song. Nevertheless, there may be something which you wish to address – or an aspect of the previous E-Mail you may want me to respond to specifically – in which case I am only too happy to reply. If not ... I do appreciate that the discussion was able to happen. RESPONDENT: Translation: Now that I understand that I cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong, I can rest my case. For since I cannot find that flaw, what you say is true, and in that it is true, it must be the case that I know it all already. For I am innocence. I am truth. And so in conclusion, there is nothing for me to speak to you about, I know everything already, though you might want to learn something from me, if you care to ask. RICHARD: You are joking, I presume? Because, if not, and if you have read the lengthy and detailed exchange, whence came this quote of mine (further above), then you were obviously defending the indefensible by saying lamely that Richard ‘cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong’. As this is patently incorrect then the conclusions you thus come to are equally erroneous and not able to be responded to. And, further, if you are indeed not joking and if you have indeed not read the lengthy and detailed exchange, whence came this quote of mine (further above), then what you write here is ignorantly erroneous and equally not able to be responded to. And if you are joking ... I do not get the point of such laboured humour. RESPONDENT: Can’t decide which interpretation to go with? RICHARD: I would not make such a basic mistake as what you suggest here ... surely it must be obvious I was doing no such thing as you are surreptitiously implying: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). So I will ask again: You were joking, I presume? RESPONDENT: Your post shows that you cannot decide whether I am joking or not. RICHARD: No ... my post shows that I am asking you whether you were joking or not (and that you do not answer is an example of what I mean by holding your cards close to your chest). RESPONDENT: And apparently my first reply did not help you decide the question. RICHARD: It is this simple: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). So I will ask again: You were joking, I presume? RESPONDENT: My suggestion is that this indicates something amiss in your faculties of discernment. Since I think that it is not difficult to detect the humour in making my point. RICHARD: Is this an oblique way of saying that you were not joking when you wrote ‘now that I [Richard] understand that I [Richard] cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong, I [Richard] can rest my case’ ... but were using humour to make your point that I could not find a flaw and that I was resting my case? If so, and if this is indeed your point, why does it take three E-Mails just to establish a firm base from which to discuss a topic sensibly? RESPONDENT: You asked me whether or not it was humorous ... RICHARD: I did not: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). RESPONDENT: ... and I answered: ‘I think that it is not difficult to detect the humour in making my point.’ RICHARD: You did not: you replied by asking ‘can’t decide which interpretation to go with?’ RESPONDENT: Which means that the response is at least partially meant to be humorous. RICHARD: Am I to take it that you were not joking when you wrote ‘now that I [Richard] understand that I [Richard] cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong, I [Richard] can rest my case’ ... but were using humour to make your point that I could not find a flaw and that I was resting my case? If so, and if this is indeed your point, why does it take four E-Mails just to establish a firm base from which to discuss a topic sensibly? RESPONDENT: Indeed, I found it odd that you did not discern this yourself in reading the original post. RICHARD: I have learnt, throughout all of your 40 plus E-Mails to me and through reading your responses to others on this Mailing List, not to ‘discern’ anything from what you say. To do so simply provides you with the opportunity to say ‘what happens when people fail to understand another’s intentions is they invent and imagine what those intentions are based on their conditioned reactions’. Thus what you describe (much further below) as ‘this lengthy, repetitious discussion’ is all your own creation. Is this not a impractical way to conduct an honest, frank and sincere discussion between two fellow human beings vis-à-vis the global suffering engendered by the human condition? * RESPONDENT: Selfless pomposity is funny, but I would not expect you to see the reflection. RICHARD: Where is this ‘selfless pomposity’ which you see? For it to be ‘funny’, for me to ‘see the reflection’ which you see, it would have to be factual pomposity (else you are but laughing at your own intrapolation). RESPONDENT: Of course, you can claim that it is my interpolation. RICHARD: Hmm ... if I had wanted to say that it is your ‘interpolation’ (‘an insertion of something additional or different’) I would have said ‘interpolation’. Whereas, as what you are doing is intrapolating, I said intrapolation (‘an inference within the scope or framework of what is known’). Consequently, as there is not the slightest trace of ‘selfless pomposity’ in this flesh and blood body it cannot be a ‘claim’ I am making that it be your intrapolation ... it is indeed your intrapolation. Whereas a person saying ‘I am Humble – I am God On Earth’ could be said to be displaying ‘selfless pomposity’. RESPONDENT: You are asserting that which is being challenged. Therefore it is correct to refer to it as a claim. From your point if view, it is the truth. But from mine, it is only a claim to what is the truth. RICHARD: Yet instead of examining whether your intrapolation (that what I am presenting is ‘the truth’) is an accurate ... um ... discernment, you not only find it funny enough in the first place to post your ‘translation’ to this Mailing List ... but persist in seeing your own self-centric ‘translation’ humorous even after four, ever-more lengthy, E-Mails which explain explicitly what is going on. In case it still be not clear ... ‘the truth’ was consigned to the waste-bin of history, where it belongs, over eight years ago. * RESPONDENT: But I gave two examples directly below. Instead of holding off your response until you read those examples, you start in with some defence. RICHARD: You apparently read/respond to E-Mails differently than I do: I first read the E-Mail from beginning to end as-it-is on-line; I then put it through an auto-cleaner (which strips out everything but raw text and then auto-formats it); I then read it through a second time in its re-formatted layout in a Word Processor ... and then type in my response with this refreshed appraisal of the general thrust the whole of the E-Mail in mind. RESPONDENT: But that preparation does not help you respond to what the writer is getting at. RICHARD: Uh?? RESPONDENT: I think it is less confusing if your response takes into consideration the information that is provided later on. RICHARD: I will say it again (sequentially):
And your response to this explicit description of twice taking into consideration all the information provided? Viz.:
* RESPONDENT: A line such as ‘there is nothing for me to speak to you about, I know everything already’ ... RICHARD: But that is your line, and not mine, which you are laughing at. RESPONDENT: This is not an honest reply to the example. Taking a line out of context leaves out information. RICHARD: Oh? I will put it into context, then. Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘Translation: Now that I understand that I cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong, I can rest my case. For since I cannot find that flaw, what you say is true, and in that it is true, it must be the case that I know it all already. For I am innocence. I am truth. And so in conclusion, there is nothing for me to speak to you about, I know everything already, though you might want to learn something from me, if you care to ask’. Put into context I see that the entire paragraph – and not just the line – is your paragraph, and not mine, which you are laughing at. RESPONDENT: No, I meant that it is not in the context of what you wrote, not that is not in the context of what I wrote. And immediately below, you seem to understand this. RICHARD: How can I possibly take the line you wrote out of the context of the sentence I wrote? Your line was never in the context of the sentence I wrote in the first place (it is your intrapolation). * RESPONDENT: But my point is not what your point to Respondent No. 4 was, but how you are expressing it!! Why is there NOTHING?? Why do you know EVERYTHING?? Those are absolutist terms for what is not an absolute matter. RICHARD: You must be referring to this sentence (at the top of the page): [Richard]: ‘I already have intimate comprehension, of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’, which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’ because the ‘me’ as soul, who was parasitically inhabiting this body, was that non-material consciousness night and day for eleven years (only ‘he’ called it ‘The Absolute’) ... there is nothing I am not already aware of, from first-hand experience, that I could become aware of from your ‘nobody knows’ song’. The reason why there is ‘NOTHING’ I could become aware of from the ‘nobody knows’ song should be strikingly obvious: if ‘nobody knows’ there is ‘NOTHING’ to be obtained from the ‘nobody knows’ song. The reason why I know ‘EVERYTHING’ of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’, which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’ is because the ‘me’ as soul, who was parasitically inhabiting this body, was that non-material consciousness night and day for eleven years (only ‘he’ called it ‘The Absolute’). RESPONDENT: This is what I find funny; especially the position that you know everything of that nature, when there was no one there to know anything of that nature. RICHARD: Which is why I keep on saying it is your intrapolation ... there was someone there then (‘me’ as soul, aka non-material consciousness, aka god by any name). RESPONDENT: That is the example of selfless pomposity. RICHARD: No, the ‘selfless pomposity’ exists only in your intrapolation ... ‘me’ as soul became extinct in 1992. Whereas a person saying ‘I am the selfless Self’ (aka ‘I am God On Earth’) could be said to be displaying ‘selfless pomposity’. RESPONDENT: I do not know if any of that is clearer for you. RICHARD: It has been clear to me for years now why peoples say ‘there is no one there’ when a selfless Self struts the world stage preaching humility. RESPONDENT: Perhaps we can review the two statements. First, you say there is nothing to be obtained, but there is indeed something to be obtained from that nobody knows song: i.e. the understanding that nobody can know it, and why nobody can know it. That is not insignificant. RICHARD: Yet it is not an ‘understanding’ (unless the word ‘understanding’ now means ‘belief’) because the nature of non-material consciousness can be ascertained ... which ascertainment is incredibly significant. RESPONDENT: Secondly, you say that you know everything, and then identify this song with existence as ‘soul’, but that is your interpretation of what Respondent No. 4 has said. RICHARD: It is not my ‘interpretation’ at all. The word ‘soul’ points to the same-same as what the phrase ‘non-material consciousness’ points to (the word is not the thing). RESPONDENT: Why do take the liberty of identifying NMC with what you called the Absolute? RICHARD: Because what the phrase ‘The Absolute’ points to is the same-same as what the phrase ‘non-material consciousness’ points to (the word is not the thing). * RICHARD: They are indeed ‘absolutist terms’ for it is indeed an ‘absolute matter’ ... and the way I am ‘expressing it!!’ is simple, straightforward, direct to the point, up-front and out in the open. I lay all my cards on the table from the very beginning ... my agenda is explicitly expressed: it is possible to enable peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body only. RESPONDENT: And so on ... but absolute terms do not allow for the possibility of you misunderstanding what Respondent No. 4 intended to say, and there are grounds for claiming that you have not fully understood what he was pointing at. RICHARD: What grounds? Although you say (further below) you have read the in-depth and detailed exchange, you also say that reading it does not imply that you have studied it (‘reading it does not imply that I studied it. I study that which I find to be worth studying’). Ergo: the ‘grounds for claiming that [I] have not fully understood what he was pointing at’ exist only in your intrapolation. * RESPONDENT: ... or a line such as ‘I already have intimate comprehension, of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’ ...’ is based on the belief that you have an intimate comprehension of that energy which is innocence. RICHARD: In order for you to find it funny – and in order for you to get me to see the humour – it must first be established, that your mind-reading abilities that it is ‘based upon a belief’ that I have, be accurate (else you are but laughing at your own intrapolation). RESPONDENT: No, this is not the way humour operates. Humour operates by suggestion, and the line is suggestive of that belief. RICHARD: What ‘belief’? Are you referring to your intrapolation that my intimate comprehension (of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’ which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’) is based on ‘the belief’ that I have an intimate comprehension of that energy which is ‘innocence’? If so, all that the line ‘is suggestive of’ is your intrapolation. Thus the humour which is operating is operating only in your intrapolation. RESPONDENT: I infer that you object to the use of ‘belief’ for you are saying that it is so. We will have to disagree on whether or not it fits your description of belief. RICHARD: Why will we ‘have to disagree ...’? The subject of belief vis-à-vis knowing was discussed about halfway through the 41 E-mails you and I have exchanged. RESPONDENT: My point about humour, however, was elsewhere. I was saying that humour only needs to meet a much lower threshold. It only has to be suggestive. What actually goes on is not the basis for humour. RICHARD: Ahh ... I see: your humour has nothing to do with fact? That is, this whole enterprise of yours was a ‘suggestive’ way of lowering the threshold on fact – reminiscent of trivialising the fact – so as to obtain some laughter from the peanut gallery? RESPONDENT: And this accounts for why people find an unintentional double entendre to be funny. RICHARD: Where is the ‘unintentional double entendre’ in the paragraph of mine (at the top of the page)? RESPONDENT: So even if this is not a belief that you have, it is still funny. RICHARD: What is so funny about having an intimate comprehension of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’ which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’ if it be not a belief that I have? Such an intimate comprehension – insider information – is a comprehension of incredibly significance. * RESPONDENT: You are looking for there to be some factual determination of what is actually in your mind, in order to find what you say funny, and this is not what happens. RICHARD: So I have noticed. RESPONDENT: Human beings have a great ability to understand what others think, believe and feel, and this has nothing to do with mind reading. That does not mean that they get it always right. But they get it right a great deal of the time. And there are reasons for this, if you are interested. So calling it my mind reading abilities, must be seen as an attempt to avoid and defend against the possibility of another seeing you for what you are. RICHARD: This is the second time in this E-Mail that you have raised this notion of ‘defend’ or ‘defence’ (as in ‘you start in with some defence’) as if my responding in the negative, to what you intrapolated, has some profound psychological implications. Maybe if I put what you suggest into an outrageously simple example: if I were to say to a female ‘you are a male, and that is not my intrapolation because it is my great ability to understand’, and if she then said to me ‘no I am not a male’ I could then rightfully say, according to your above rationale, ‘calling it my mind reading abilities must be seen as an attempt to avoid and defend against the possibility of another seeing you for what you are’. RESPONDENT: It isn’t profound. RICHARD: Then why do you make such a big thing out of it (three times in one E-Mail)? And you even do it again in this E-Mail (further below):
If it be not ‘profound’ then why persist in presenting something superficial? RESPONDENT: And I do not see how your analogy is relevant, in that the female did not tell you that you were playing the role of mind reader. RICHARD: I am only too happy to re-phrase my analogy then:
Is there anything else that I can correct before you will look at what is being conveyed? If so, I am only too happy to re-phrase my analogy again so as to accommodate. RESPONDENT: The question is why are you using this label of ‘mind reader’? RICHARD: No, the question is why my setting the record straight should be construed as something other than me setting the record straight? You have already explained that ‘what actually goes on is not the basis for humour’ so why would you be looking for a hidden agenda when I engage in an honest, frank and sincere discussion to ascertain why you would be muddying the waters for a cheap laugh from those with low thresholds? * RICHARD: Is this not a silly approach to adopt in an honest, frank and sincere discussion between two fellow human beings vis-à-vis the global suffering engendered by the human condition? RESPONDENT: I don’t know. RICHARD: Would you like to know? RESPONDENT: This discussion does have the potential to deteriorate into so much quibbling. But it seems to me that there are a number of misunderstandings at work here, which might be useful to shed some light on, so I am working on it. RICHARD: Good. * RESPONDENT: And that belief is contrary to the nature of innocence. RICHARD: If you were to read what I said with both eyes you will see that the ‘innocence’ I was referring to is in quotes and italicised ... it is the supposed ‘innocence’ of the non-material consciousness (by whatever name) I was speaking of. And yes, that supposed ‘innocence’ has the supposed nature of humility and would give the impression to the gullible that it is indeed humble. And now here is a ‘God-Man’ joke for you: ‘I Am Humble – I am God On Earth’. RESPONDENT: Do you notice your use of ‘gullible’, your use of ‘see with both eyes’. These are put downs of the person who is challenging you. I don’t care that you are resorting to these underhanded tactics at intimidation, they do not have the desired effect. But it is important to point out what you are doing!! You want the right to put down the other and at the same time claim that you don’t have a self. You want to provoke hurt in another, and yet you speak about peace on earth. But you don’t see any of this. All you see is the belief that you are truth, you are innocence (in italics). How can you ever see that you are mistaken, when you leave no error in your conception of who you are, for making such errors? RICHARD: Of course I know that I wrote ‘if you were to read what I said with both eyes’ (I said it because you had obviously overlooked and/or only part-read what I was saying) ... and you do it again here: ‘all you see is the belief that you are innocence (in italics)’. So I will say it again: if you were to read what I said with both eyes you will see that the ‘innocence’ I was referring to is the supposed ‘innocence’ of the non-material consciousness (by whatever name) that I was speaking of. I do not have ‘the belief’ that I am ‘innocence (in italics)’ and nowhere do I say that I am that supposed ‘innocence’ (and nowhere do I say that I am ‘truth’, either, for that matter). Therefore, it is not a ‘putdown of the person who is challenging’ me at all; it is not an ‘underhanded tactic at intimidation’; it is not an indication that I ‘want to provoke hurt in another’ ... as that is not what I am ‘doing!!’ at all. I am suggesting that you read what I have to say with both eyes ... then you will be much better informed in your ‘challenging’ of me. RESPONDENT: OK that clarifies your intent, and I will leave it like that. No you did not say that you are truth or innocence. you said ‘I already have intimate comprehension, of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’, which ‘itself never suffers’, From that I inferred that you were saying that at one time (eleven years in duration) the ‘me’ did identify with innocence, truth (the Absolute). RICHARD: Yes ... just as all the saints, sages and seers do and have done for 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. RESPONDENT: I also understand that you are saying that the ‘me’ or soul was eradicated, so you no longer identify as such. RICHARD: Yes ... there is no identity extant to ‘identify’ period (let alone ‘as’ anyone or anything). RESPONDENT: Yet it seems that you are saying that you can only say what is the truth, and that what you represent must be innocence, in that there is no longer any of the three selves. Is this correct? RICHARD: No ... there are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual: I am this flesh and blood body only. An identity (an ‘I’ as ego and/or a ‘me’ as soul by whatever name) can never, ever, be innocence. There is a vast difference between a fact and ‘the truth’. It is a fact that what I am is this flesh and blood body ... whereas ‘the truth’ says ‘I am not the body’. * RICHARD: As for my use of ‘gullible’ ... surely one would have to be gullible to buy their ‘I Am Humble – I am God On Earth’ message, no? Therefore, my use of the word is not a ‘putdown of the person who is challenging’ me at all; it is not an ‘underhanded tactic at intimidation’; it is not an indication that I ‘want to provoke hurt in another’ ... as that is not what I am ‘doing!!’ at all. It is but an accurate description of why the saints, sages and seers have been getting away with their hypocrisy for centuries. RESPONDENT: It is funny that you feel one must be gullible to believe in the message of saints and sages ... RICHARD: I do not ‘feel’ that one must be gullible to believe in the message of saints and sages and seers ... it is a fact that one is gullible to be believing in the message of saints and sages and seers. RESPONDENT: ... but that you do not see that it is also gullible to believe in what you profess and state as accurate reports of experiences. RICHARD: Yet I have repeatedly stated that I do not want anyone to believe me ... which you would have already known if you had found the in-depth and detailed exchange ‘worthy of study’ for I repeated it again there for the benefit of my co-respondent who had not taken any notice of me saying exactly that before in an earlier E-Mail. * RICHARD: Do you get the ‘incompatible tension’ in that statement? After all, it is incompatible tension that ‘makes for humour’, eh? RESPONDENT: Yes, I did get the humour. I also got the ill-spirit that went with it. RICHARD: Yet there was no ‘ill-spirit that went with it’. Maybe the ‘ill-spirit’ you experience is sourced in the absurdity of the saints, sages and seers strutting the world stage preaching humility, whilst saying (either subtly or blatantly) ‘I Am God’ or ‘I Am That’, and so on, in conjunction the absurdity of the gullible buying it, hook, line and sinker, that the saints, sages and seers are, in fact, humble? Just a suggestion, mind you. RESPONDENT: The ill spirit was in the way you presented your example. It is funny that someone struts the world stage preaching humility and saying at the same time that they are God ... RICHARD: Yes ... it is comical because it is absurd, preposterous, farcical, ridiculous, nonsensical and foolish. RESPONDENT: ... even that they succeeded in finding truth when others live in darkness. RICHARD: But they did indeed find ‘truth’ ... that is not what is comical. RESPONDENT: But your two lines ‘Do you get the ‘incompatible tension’ in that statement? After all, it is incompatible tension that ‘makes for humour’, eh?’ you are not laughing, so it seems that you do not agree that it is funny. RICHARD: Ever since I became capable of appreciating ‘black humour’ (thanks to the TV series ‘Black Adder’) I sometimes have a difficult job to not roll about the floor laughing. What makes it black humour is that such hypocritical duplicity perpetuates 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 forever and a day. RESPONDENT: So why pretend to accept my point about humour, when you do not? RICHARD: What can I say except to say that your discernment is awry once again? * RESPONDENT: You set yourself up as some All knowing One, and at the same time claim that there is no self present that is doing that. RICHARD: The capitalised phrase ‘All knowing One’ is religio-spiritual jargon and does not apply to me at all ... I am a fellow human being sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. Again, you are laughing at your own intrapolation. RESPONDENT: Maybe All Knowing One is religio-spiritual jargon for you. You interpret a great deal that way, because it fits so well into your frame of reference. I don’t believe in any of that. RICHARD: Yet it was you who used the ‘All Knowing One’ phrase in the context you created (‘the belief that you are truth, you are innocence (in italics)’) and not me. As I am not ‘truth’ and as I am not ‘innocence (in italics)’ therefore I am not setting myself up ‘as some All knowing One’ ... it is you who made that ‘translation’ replete with all its religio-spiritual connotations and not me. RESPONDENT: For me it means megalomania. RICHARD: Then why not say ‘megalomania’ in the first place? RESPONDENT: Because it does not specifically convey that the claim to knowing everything is central. RICHARD: Where have I ever said that I am ‘knowing everything’? In fact I was asked, in the in-depth and lengthy exchange, what I know ... and if you had found it ‘worthy of study’ you would already be cognisant of what I say that I know and what I do not. To extrapolate (from me saying that the reason why I know ‘EVERYTHING’ of the nature of the non-material consciousness is because the ‘me’ as soul was the non-material consciousness night and day for eleven years) that I am thus saying I am ‘knowing everything’ is an outrageous inference to make. Apart from that ... what does the phrase ‘All Knowing One’ mean to you then if it be neither specifically ‘megalomania’ nor its religio-spiritual meaning? * RESPONDENT: The defence in all this is so clear. RICHARD: Here again is this notion of ‘defence’ (as in ‘you start in with some defence’) or ‘defend’ (as in ‘calling it my mind reading abilities must be seen as an attempt to defend’) as if my responding in the negative, to what you intrapolated, has some profound psychological implications. It does not ... I am simply setting the record straight. RESPONDENT: The motive behind setting the record straight is the defence. RICHARD: No ... the motive behind setting the record straight is to set the record straight for clarity of communication. RESPONDENT: Why after all do you even care to set the record straight? RICHARD: Because I actually care about my fellow human being. RESPONDENT: Why do put so much time and effort into all these explanations. RICHARD: So that countries, with their artificial borders can vanish along with the need for the military. So that, as nationalism can expire, so too can patriotism with all its heroic evils. So that no police force would be needed anywhere on earth and no locks on the doors or bars on the windows. So that gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past ... because terror would stalk its prey no more. RESPONDENT: What difference does it make to you what I think? RICHARD: Because global peace-on-earth would be nice. * RESPONDENT: You don’t find anything funny about yourself, so it must be that it is all in my mind. RICHARD: It is this simple: there is no ‘megalomania’ (aka an ‘All Knowing One’) in this flesh and blood body to find funny ... therefore it can only be all in your mind. RESPONDENT: I understand that you are not able to laugh at yourself. That is another sign of that megalomania. RICHARD: How can you possibly come to these two conclusions from me saying ‘there is no ‘megalomania’ (aka an ‘All Knowing One’) in this flesh and blood body to find funny’? * RESPONDENT: But it is funny that a person claims that they are selfless, as in ‘I am selfless’, and that is what you keep doing in a variety of forms over and over. RICHARD: I generally say ‘I am a fellow human being sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul’ or ‘there is neither ‘self’ nor ‘Self’ in this flesh and blood body’. I also say that there are three I’s altogether but only one is actual (this flesh and blood body). I also say that I use the first person pronoun so as to save writing in a stilted fashion such as this:• ‘This flesh and blood body generally says ‘this flesh and blood body is a fellow human being sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul’ or ‘there is neither ‘self’ nor ‘Self’ in this flesh and blood body’. This flesh and blood body also says that there are three I’s altogether but only one is actual (this flesh and blood body). This flesh and blood body also says that this flesh and blood body uses the first person pronoun so as to save writing in a stilted fashion such as this’. RESPONDENT: Yes, I get that point. RICHARD: Good. RESPONDENT: But you still do not get mine. RICHARD: You do not have one. RESPONDENT: You are saying that it is not funny if you would see that actually ‘I’ does not mean what you think it means. RICHARD: I do not ‘think’ it means this, that or anything else ... I intimately know what it means. RESPONDENT: But that does not mean that it is still not funny. That I cannot get across to you. RICHARD: Do you never wonder why? RESPONDENT: And secondly, though you do not mean by ‘I’ what is normally meant by ‘I’, there is still a division going on between the observer (the flesh and blood body) and the observed (the concept of what it means to be selfless). RICHARD: I do not have any ‘concept’ of what it means to be ‘selfless’ ... I only know the actuality. There has to be an ‘I’ as ego (and/or ‘me’ as soul) in order to conceptualise ‘what it means to be selfless’. Then, and only then, is there a ‘a division going on’ between ‘the observer’ and ‘the observed’. RESPONDENT: And that division is the self. RICHARD: This statement of yours is what I mean by intrapolation (‘an inference within the scope or framework of what is known’). Put simply: all your attempts to comprehend what I write are based on what is known (what I call the ‘Tried and True’). * RESPONDENT: And this incompatible tension is that what makes for humour. Of course, in order to get that humour, there needs to be the ability for you to laugh at your superciliousness. RICHARD: Again, in order for you to get me to see the humour it must first be established that there is any ‘superciliousness’ in me ... outside of your own mind, that is. And, again, you are but once more laughing at your own intrapolation. RESPONDENT: I do not know whether I can get you to see the humour. RICHARD: It may be becoming more clear, by now, that this is because ‘the humour’ only exists in the same place as your ‘translation’ exists? RESPONDENT: What is becoming clear is your inability to get the humour, nothing more ... RICHARD: This is because there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul extant in this flesh and blood body to find such things funny. RESPONDENT: ... though you earlier wrote, pretending to understand how funny it is to be both humble and believe that ‘I am God’. RICHARD: Not ‘pretending’, no ... because that is where the phrase ‘selfless pomposity’ is comical. * RESPONDENT: To do that would require that you can see yourself. RICHARD: No, to do that would require that I see myself as you see me. RESPONDENT: That too would work. can you do that for even a few seconds? RICHARD: No ... there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul extant in this body to see things as you do * RESPONDENT: But since you claim that the ego is extinct, you find that there is nothing at all to laugh at, or that can laugh. RICHARD: Not just ‘I’ as ego ... ‘me’ as soul is also extinct (the identity in toto is not extant). Of course you are correct that there be nothing in what you have intrapolated that I can find to be humorous at all ... I do not even find it funny that you do so. As for your last statement (‘... or that can laugh’) I can assure you, for what that is worth, that one has no need to have an ‘ego’ in order to laugh. RESPONDENT: That ‘I’ that is assuring me, could be that mysterious ego. RICHARD: Again, I use the first person pronoun so as to save writing in a stilted fashion such as this: Not just ‘I’ as ego ... ‘me’ as soul is also extinct (the identity in toto is not extant). Of course you are correct that there be nothing in what you have intrapolated that this flesh and blood body can find to be humorous at all ... this flesh and blood body do not even find it funny that you do so. As for your last statement (‘... or that can laugh’) this flesh and blood body can assure you, for what that is worth, that one has no need to have an ‘ego’ in order to laugh. RESPONDENT: But despite how you wish to define yourself ... RICHARD: If by ‘define’ you mean accurately describe ... then yes that is how I define myself. But if you mean by ‘define’ the ‘that is only your definition’ meaning so prevalent on this Mailing List (and elsewhere) then ... no. RESPONDENT: ... that ‘I’ might still be that mysterious ego, which seems to elude detection. RICHARD: It is not just the ‘I’ as ego that ‘seems to elude detection’ for most people ... the ‘me’ as soul is particularly elusive for everyone. It has eluded detection for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. * RESPONDENT: Your statement as to what an egoless person can and cannot do, rests on nothing but your claim that you do not have an ego and that you laugh. RICHARD: Not just ‘I’ as ego ... ‘me’ as soul is also extinct (the identity in toto is not extant). The whole point of this Mailing List is to discuss together each others’ experience so as to clarify what oneself understands. There is enough written by enough people to find similarities that may be reliably taken as a prima facie case for investigation without having to believe anyone. It is called ‘establishing a working hypothesis’ ... and can further human knowledge and thus experience. One can read one saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words – and cross-reference them with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words – so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to). This is the whole point of communication: to share experience so that another does not have to travel down the same-same path and find out for themselves what others have already discovered. RESPONDENT: What you regard as the whole point of this mailing list and communication is a personal statement. I would answer that there are many reasons. RICHARD: Of course you would. However, I prefer to be advised by the reasons set out on the Mailing List ‘Menu-Page’ itself rather than what you ‘would answer’. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: I would also say that I am not as concerned with another’s experiences, as with understanding what we are, understanding the illusions, distortions, deceptions, obstacles. RICHARD: How can you understand what ‘we’ are if ‘another’s experiences’ are something you are ‘not as concerned with’ with as you are in understanding ‘the illusions, distortions, deceptions, obstacles’? Or do you mean by the word ‘we’ the royal ‘we’ (only yourself and your ‘illusions, distortions, deceptions, obstacles’)? RESPONDENT: What a person takes to be grounded in his experience, can after all be mistaken. RICHARD: So I have noticed ... therefore, is it not useful – if not essential – that one shares experience so that another does not have to travel down the same-same path and find out for themselves what others have already discovered (in this context the ‘Tried and True’)? If everybody was so self-centred as to consider that they can discover everything of their own accord we would all still be huddled in a cave somewhere gnawing on raw brontosaurus bones ... saying ‘I am not as concerned with your experience of discovering [insert whatever here] as I am in discovering [insert whatever here]’. I am so appreciative of the words of those brave peoples who have dared to explore their psyche ... if it were not for them having shared their experience I would not be where I am today. * RESPONDENT: If we do not accept the premise that you do not have an ego, then the deduction fails. RICHARD: I would simply suggest that I am proffering sufficient validated information and annotated quotes, in combination with a personal report, such as to generate a prima facie case that is worthy of further investigation – ‘self’-investigation – rather than capricious dismissal. RESPONDENT: I am sorry if I have given you the impression that what you are describing is capriciously dismissed. It is not. RICHARD: Okay ... but is it worthy of further investigation? RESPONDENT: But it must be clear to you, that what you are saying is not validated simply by you saying it. RICHARD: I validate all the accredited information I provide with annotated quotes ... I only include a personal report so as to fore-stall that other tendency so prevalent upon this Mailing List (and elsewhere) that if what one writes be not one’s direct experience (lived experience) it is but theorising, conceptualising, book-learning and so on. RESPONDENT: You do raise an interesting question in these remarks. How would you suggest going about such an investigation? RICHARD: By reading all the validated information (the annotated quotes) with both eyes. This way the saints, sages and seers hang themselves with their own words. No one has to believe me ... the evidence is freely available for those who wish to see. One has to dare to care, of course, about all the misery and mayhem, and then care to dare ... dare to face the opprobrium of one’s peers who insist that the saints, sages and seers know it all and that Richard does not. RESPONDENT: Is it possible to avoid the problem that it largely rests on the veracity of testimonials? RICHARD: Yes ... read all the validated information (the annotated quotes) with both eyes. * RICHARD: I laugh a lot ... there is so much about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is, sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul, that I find irrepressibly ludicrous. RESPONDENT: But there is something that is serious in your reply. RICHARD: No, there is nothing ‘serious’ in what I do or say – sincere yes – but ‘serious’? No way ... life is too much fun to be serious (in order for there to be seriousness there must be an in situ responsibility). RESPONDENT: Oh my, didn’t you learn that it is a lot of fun to take things seriously? RICHARD: No ... surely you are not really suggesting that it is ‘a lot of fun’ (‘fun’: playful, humorous, comical, amusing, entertaining, pleasurable) to be ‘serious’ (‘serious’: solemn, staid, stolid, sombre, grave, stern, grim)? RESPONDENT: Your Thesaurus isn’t telling you the whole story. Yes, I am suggesting that ‘serious’ is not to be considered an opposite. Unlike these synonyms, serious reflects regard for the necessity or importance of the task. RICHARD: As I said: in order for there to be seriousness there must be an in situ responsibility. RESPONDENT: It is to be deeply interested. It is funny, but we can take having fun seriously. And in even the most difficult tasks, there can be lot of fun if there is passion and care. That is the message behind Thomas Edison saying that he never worked a day in his life. RICHARD: I have no ‘passion’ whatsoever ... thus I can actually care (instead of feel that I ‘care’). * RESPONDENT: You do believe that you have found a flaw in Respondent No. 4’s presentation. RICHARD: I do not ‘believe’ I have found a flaw ... I know it to be flawed (the entire proposition is fatally flawed from its very first premise). RESPONDENT: It is not knowledge unless it has been established by fact. Until that demonstration, I continue to regard it as your belief. RICHARD: The ‘demonstration’ is contained in the in-depth and detailed exchange which, although you say (further below) you have read, you also say that reading it does not imply that you have studied it (‘reading it does not imply that I studied it. I study that which I find to be worth studying’). Ergo: you have missed the ‘demonstration’ through not having read it with both eyes. RESPONDENT: Or it is not there. RICHARD: It is there. RESPONDENT: But why do you resist presenting it when that is requested? RICHARD: I am not resisting ... I am merely saying that, as it is your theory and not mine, then you do your own leg-work. If I obliged every person the way you want me to oblige you then I would be endlessly busy doing other people’s bidding. RESPONDENT: What is the point of all this? RICHARD: Enabling peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as the flesh and blood body, for that body and any body. * RESPONDENT: So here is your chance to repeat that penetrating analysis. RICHARD: Nope ... it is your proposal that there be no flaws [demonstrated] so you do your own work in demonstrating your theory to be correct. RESPONDENT: Either you are interested in explaining your point or not. RICHARD: If I might point out? It is your point that I ‘believe’ I have found a flaw ... not mine. I cannot explain your point other than to say it be an intrapolation. RESPONDENT: It is a logical inference from your assertion as to you knowing it. RICHARD: Yet reading with both eyes does away with the need for such abstract reasoning. * RESPONDENT: You can find someone else to do your bidding. RICHARD: If I might point out? It is your ‘bidding’ ... not mine (‘you do believe that you have found a flaw in Respondent No. 4’s presentation. So here is your chance to repeat that penetrating analysis’). It is you who discerns it be but what I ‘believe’ and not me. RESPONDENT: It is easy to discern that you believe it, it is implied in saying that you know it to be flawed. RICHARD: Again: reading with both eyes does away with having to ‘discern’ what is ‘implied’, via abstract reasoning, in my one-line response to you. * RESPONDENT: I have nothing to demonstrate to you, in that I have not found where you have presented a reasoned argument for demonstrating a flaw. RICHARD: You do have something to ‘demonstrate’ to me: you need to substantiate your ‘great ability to understand what others think, believe and feel’ in that you have discerned that I ‘believe’ that I have found a flaw. RESPONDENT: Sorry, but I do not feel that I need to demonstrate that to you. I have discerned that you believe it, by your statements. RICHARD: Okay ... carry on with your abstract reasoning then. But if you did not expect me to operate the way you do then these E-Mails will be a lot less lengthy and not at all repetitious. RESPONDENT: Belief does not preclude that it is valid. You seem to have some resistance to ‘belief’, which you do not have for ‘know’. But without beliefs, there is no knowing. RICHARD: Again: the subject of belief vis-à-vis knowing was discussed about halfway through the 41 E-mails you and I have exchanged (as well as seriousness and responsibility). * RESPONDENT: And instead of reproducing this argument so that it can be reviewed, you turn to the person requesting the information, and claim they have a theory? or a proposal? RICHARD: Why would I reproduce something you did not find worthy of studying in the first place? Anyway, as it is your ill-informed discernment which you are speaking of having ‘be reviewed’ then that is what I am already busily reviewing. Once that is cleared up maybe – just maybe – we can review what I actually did say. It is up to you, of course, if you wish to do that. RESPONDENT: I said that the entire discussion was not worthy of study. This does not mean that a part of that discussion is not worthy, and I told you what part I did find worthwhile. RICHARD: Aye ... and the end result of the part you found ‘worthwhile’ and what you found ‘not worthy of study’ was this:
RESPONDENT: What I have found are many cases where you have attempted to package what Respondent No. 4 has said, so that it is flawed. RICHARD: I have not packaged anything. RESPONDENT: We differ on this point. I call packaging a presentation that is substantially different from what the person was pointing at. RICHARD: In what way is it ‘substantially different’? RESPONDENT: Perhaps you do not intentionally do this. RICHARD: But I did not do ‘this’ at all ... let alone ‘not intentionally’. * RESPONDENT: That is not an honest attempt of dealing with what he has presented. For example, what does it mean that NMC (non-material consciousness) is not ascertainable? RICHARD: It means that ‘water can never find out what water is’. Viz.: [quote]: ‘You can feel it in the room now. It is happening in this room now because we are touching something very, very serious and it comes pouring in (...) I don’t want to make a mystery: why can’t this happen to everyone? If you and Maria [Ms. Mary Lutyens and Ms. Mary Zimbalist] sat down and said ‘let us enquire’, I’m pretty sure you could find out. Or do it alone. I see something; what I said is true – I can never find out. Water can never find out what water is. That is quite right. If you find out I’ll corroborate it (...) somehow the body is protected to survive. Some element is watching over it. Something is protecting it. It would be speculating to say what. The Maitreya is too concrete, is not simple enough. But I can’t look behind the curtain. I can’t do it. I tried with Pupul [Ms. Pupul Jayakar] and various Indian scholars who pressed me’ . [endquote]. (‘Krishnamurti – His Life and Death’; Mary Lutyens p. 160. © Avon Books; New York 1991). RESPONDENT: This does not seem to be an answer to what I asked. RICHARD: Okay ... would you say that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was what you have been calling ‘selfless’ in this E-Mail? If so, then I can answer what you asked in further detail. If not, then you are indeed correct and I have not answered what you asked. * RESPONDENT: Before you can determine that this is flawed, do you not have to first understand why NMC is not ascertainable? RICHARD: Indeed ... yet when I do say that I do understand you say ‘why is there NOTHING?? Why do you know EVERYTHING?? Those are absolutist terms for what is not an absolute matter’. RESPONDENT: Perhaps then what is needed is for you to be explicit. RICHARD: Okay ... the reason I can understand why ‘NMC’ is not ascertainable’ by the non-material consciousness is because I already have intimate comprehension of the nature of the non-material consciousness or energy which is ‘innocence’, which ‘itself never suffers’, which is ‘independent of its manifestations’ because the ‘me’ as soul, who was parasitically inhabiting this body, was that non-material consciousness night and day for eleven years (only ‘he’ called it ‘The Absolute’). Therefore, there is nothing I am not already aware of, from first-hand experience, that I could become aware of from the ‘nobody knows’ song about why ‘NMC’ is not ascertainable’ by the non-material consciousness. RESPONDENT: That is the serious effort I am looking for in this lengthy, repetitious discussion. RICHARD: If I may point out? If you were to cease intrapolating then this discussion would be a lot less lengthy and not at all repetitious. RESPONDENT: Yes, we seem to differ on the need for intrapolation. Drawing inferences from what others write is part of the process of critical analysis. The question is whether those inferences are sound or not. RICHARD: You do seem to be missing what the word ‘intrapolation’ means: ‘an inference within the scope or framework of what is known’. Which means that, as all your attempts to comprehend what I write are based on what is known (what I call the ‘Tried and True’), then your understanding through ‘drawing inferences from what others write’ (in this case my writing) is incorrect. You are basing your inferences (about what I write) from what others have written (such as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, for example) regarding what ‘selfless’ means (to be without ego and to allow the ‘supreme intelligence’, aka non-material consciousness, aka soul, to have free reign. Viz.:
To become actually free from the human condition is a different ball-game entirely to the spiritual path of surrender with its absolution of responsibility * RESPONDENT: And though you want me to do the work in setting up the issue for you, it is your discussion and your conclusion that I am attempting to review. RICHARD: Not so ... it is your ‘translation’ and your ‘conclusion’ that you are ‘attempting to review’. You are yet to even touch upon what I am on about. RESPONDENT: No, my translation is not relevant. I am asking for your argument. RICHARD: If your ‘translation’ be not ‘relevant’ then why post it in the first place? * RESPONDENT: Reading it does not imply that I studied it. I study that which I find to be worth studying. RICHARD: My point exactly. Therefore, as it is your ill-informed proposal that there be no flaws demonstrated then it is up to you do your own leg-work in demonstrating your theory to be correct ... and not me. RESPONDENT: I am interested in studying what you consider to be the flaw. Perhaps if I studies that lengthy discussion I would detect it. But that seems to be a lot of work ... RICHARD: Aye ... it would entail reading with both eyes. RESPONDENT: ... only to come back to you to ask you whether this is the argument. So it would be helpful if you provided it, for discussion. RICHARD: If you were to read with both eyes – and see it for yourself – you would not have ‘to come back to [me] to ask [me] whether this is the argument’ ... it would be your own seeing (the seeing would be its own authority). * RICHARD: I have had lengthy correspondence with you in the past – extending over two or so years – and you demonstrated again and again that you have the proclivity of holding your cards close to your chest ... as if this be a poker game rather than an honest, frank and sincere discussion between two fellow human beings vis-à-vis the global suffering engendered by the human condition. RESPONDENT: I do not recall lengthy conversations. I recall only a few conversations in this period of time. RICHARD: Okay ... it is simply a matter of what constitutes ‘lengthy’ according to each persons’ experience: I call 41 E-Mails, covering 84 pages of text (52,676 words or 1,008 paragraphs) a lengthy correspondence and you recall it as ‘only a few conversations’. RESPONDENT: I find it surprising that your records indicate that I sent you some 20 e-mails ... RICHARD: 41 E-Mails. RESPONDENT: ... each one averaging 2 pages. But over the course of two years, 20 E mails is not a substantial number. RICHARD: As I said: it is simply a matter of what constitutes ‘lengthy’ according to each persons’ experience: I call 41 E-Mails, covering 84 pages of text (52,676 words or 1,008 paragraphs) a lengthy correspondence and you say ‘... not a substantial number’. It is not an issue to lose sleep over. RESPONDENT: And the apparent length might be distorted by the repetition of material involved in reproduction for the purpose of offering a reply. How do you arrive at these figures? RICHARD: I click ‘Tools’ on Menu Bar and then click ‘Word Count’ ... 2 to 3 seconds later the computer informs me that there are, not only 84 pages of text, 52,676 words and 1,008 paragraphs, but that there are 250,670 characters (with no spaces) or 302,338 characters (with spaces) and 4,513 lines of text as well ... the latter information I considered irrelevant. Computers are great in this regard ... not only can I read through, or scroll through, everything you and I have ever written to each other – so as to refresh my memory plus gain an overall grasp of what you have thus far conveyed to me – but I can type any word or phrase into the search function and find instantly all the times you and I have already covered the same point. * RESPONDENT: Nor do I recall even one instance where I have not directly answered one of your questions. RICHARD: There are several ... but one instance will suffice for now: I was having a discussion with two co-respondents and you posted a 10 sentence quote of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, without any words of your own, to which I responded with a ‘I take it that you ...’? and ‘Does not this ...’? type of reply (giving reasons). To which you replied ‘that was not the point I was making in providing that quote ...’ (as if you had somehow made your point clear already) because you went on to say ‘it depends on the intentions of the contributor’ (yourself) as if I was somehow able to glean that from the bare quote. I eventually wrote ‘as you appear to be in agreement with ...’, so as to ascertain your intentions, to which you replied: ‘but my views on this statement were never made public. My reason for posting it may only be ...’. Given that you said ‘may only be’ I responded by saying ‘I am curious as to what makes you ‘think K was saying’ that ...’. This third probe for information as to your reason and intentions elicited this response: [Respondent]: ‘Up to this point the conversation was about the reasons for my posting the quote. I attempted to explain the reasons for posting it, and to show that your view on why I posted it was incorrect. But now the conversation turns from a discussion of these reasons, to a discussion of why I interpret K the way I do. In that I understood that you and I do not agree on the interpretation, I anticipated this development, and explained that I was not really interested in this sort of hermeneutic discussion. But you seem to feel that it is important ...’’. Now perhaps you may see why I wrote (much further above): [Respondent]: ‘Can’t decide which interpretation to go with? [Richard]: ‘I would not make such a basic mistake as what you suggest here ... surely it must be obvious I was doing no such thing as you are surreptitiously implying: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). So I will ask again: You were joking, I presume? ‘Tis no wonder that I now ask for your intention up-front and out in the open, eh? RESPONDENT: Thank you for going into this. Although it is the past ... RICHARD: I do like to learn the lessons of history ... this way I do not make the same mistake over and again. RESPONDENT: ... it helps to explain why you feel the way you do about me. RICHARD: It does not explain the way that I ‘feel’ about you at all. It explains why I will not make such a basic mistake as what you suggested (towards the top of this page) ... it explains why I was doing no such thing as you were surreptitiously implying (‘interpreting’ your intention). RESPONDENT: As for the earlier posts, I do not have a copy, but I recall that I told you that my interest in posting that text was in order to provoke some discussion of it. RICHARD: Aye ... and it took 3 E-Mails to extract that intention from you. However, you qualified that intention by saying that you were ‘not really interested in this sort of hermeneutic discussion’ but that I ‘seemed to feel that it is important ...’. As I said: I do like to learn the lessons of history even ‘although it is the past’ ... because this way I do not make the same mistake over and again. RESPONDENT: I recall that you felt that somehow by posting the text, it followed that I agreed with it, and that I explained does not follow. RICHARD: Yes ... and you are not the only one who performs this pusillanimous stunt. RESPONDENT: I also recall that we differed on our interpretations of K. You presented a few texts in support of our interpretation, which I felt were not representative of what I took to be K’s mature period. And this you rejected. So we did somewhat get into interpreting K after all. Does this correspond with what you recall? RICHARD: No ... the quote you posted sans commentary was about authority. When you finally did delineate what you considered Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘mature period’ I provided a quote from that era wherein he clearly states what the only authority is (the ‘supreme intelligence’) which you attempted to explain away. This was that quote:
When you read that last, short sentence (‘the only authority then is intelligence’) is he clearly designating ‘intelligence’ (otherwise known as ‘god’ or ‘truth’ or ‘otherness’ or ‘that which is sacred, holy’ and so on) as being ‘the only authority’ or not? Viz.:
After attempting to explain it away you wrote:
As nobody did ‘provide such examples’, and as I am not going to do your bidding in this thread either by providing what I have already detailed in the in-depth and detailed exchange, then once again nothing gets to be really examined. Incidentally ... this current thread is the first time since that quote that you and I have discussed anything. * RESPONDENT: But I do confess to finding your posts quite funny, and this goes back to our very first conversation. RICHARD: If I may point out? It is your ‘translation’ of what I have to say which you find ‘quite funny’ ... and this goes back to our very first conversation. RESPONDENT: Yes, there is some symmetry in the presentations. I find that also to be funny. It seems we are back there again. RICHARD: You are ‘back there again’ ... and why do you find the correct and pleasing proportion of the various parts of ‘the presentation’ (the harmony of the parts with each other and the whole presentation; the regular or balanced arrangement and relation of the parts) to be ‘funny’? * RESPONDENT: That is what happens when people fail to understand another’s intentions, they invent and imagine what those intentions are based on their conditioned reactions. RICHARD: Which is why I asked you whether your initial post was a joke ... a simple question that you still have not answered (except obliquely) and are instead telling me to use my discernment as to your intentions. Viz.: [Richard]: ‘You are joking, I presume? Because, if not, and if you have read the lengthy and detailed exchange, whence came this quote of mine (further above), then you were obviously defending the indefensible by saying lamely that Richard ‘cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong’. As this is patently incorrect then the conclusions you thus come to are equally erroneous and not able to be responded to. And, further, if you are indeed not joking and if you have indeed not read the lengthy and detailed exchange, whence came this quote of mine (further above), then what you write here is ignorantly erroneous and equally not able to be responded to. And if you are joking ... I do not get the point of such laboured humour’. [Respondent]: ‘Can’t decide which interpretation to go with?’. [Richard]: ‘I would not make such a basic mistake as what you suggest here ... surely it must be obvious I was doing no such thing as you are surreptitiously implying: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). So I will ask again: You were joking, I presume?’. [Respondent]: ‘Your post shows that you cannot decide whether I am joking or not’. [Richard]: ‘No ... my post shows that I am asking you whether you were joking or not (and that you do not answer is an example of what I mean by holding your cards close to your chest)’. [Respondent]: ‘And apparently my first reply did not help you decide the question’. [Richard]: ‘It is this simple: I was asking you if it were a joke you were making (and providing reasons why I asked). So I will ask again: You were joking, I presume?’ [Respondent]: ‘My suggestion is that this indicates something amiss in your faculties of discernment. Since I think that it is not difficult to detect the humour in making my point’. [Richard]: ‘Is this an oblique way of saying that you were not joking when you wrote ‘now that I [Richard] understand that I [Richard] cannot find some flaw in your arguments to show you that you are wrong, I [Richard] can rest my case’ ... but were using humour to make your point? If so, and if this is indeed your point, why does it take three E-Mails just to establish a firm base from which to discuss a topic sensibly?’. Yet you are now saying that ‘what happens when people fail to understand another’s intentions is they invent and imagine what those intentions are based on their conditioned reactions’. Is it clear yet why I now ask for your intention up-front and out in the open? RESPONDENT: Yes, it is clear. You have difficulty understanding what my points are. RICHARD: No ... you have difficulty in making your intention up-front and out in the open. Your ‘points’ are quite explicit and easily understood (‘what happens when people fail to understand another’s intentions is they invent and imagine what those intentions are based on their conditioned reactions’). * RICHARD: I am up-front and out in the open in all my writings. RESPONDENT: The only reason for you writing this is to compare your image of what you are doing, with your image of what you think I am doing. RICHARD: In order for your appraisal to be valid it must first be established that your mind-reading abilities (that ‘the only reason’ I have for writing that I am up-front and out in the open in all my writings is ‘to compare [my] image’ of what I am doing with ‘[my] image’ of what I ‘think’ you are doing) be accurate ... else your appraisal is but your ‘great ability to understand what others think, believe and feel’. RESPONDENT: These are not mind reading abilities. RICHARD: Okay ... it was but a guess (mind-readers are notoriously way off the mark). RESPONDENT: I’ll take the second part of the disjunction. But it isn’t my great ability, but what is commonly shared. In any case, you only pretend to validate the second alternative, you actually mock it. RICHARD: I am not mocking it ... I am quoting your own words back to you (including your ‘great’). If you consider them to be mocking words then it is your own words that be doing the mocking. RESPONDENT: And it is not surprising, that you find that you are the noble and sincere one. RICHARD: Am I to take it that your phrase ‘the noble and sincere one’ is not religio-spiritual jargon? Can you substitute what you really mean by this phrase before I am so foolish as to assume that you mean what the words say? RESPONDENT: Noble means right and just. Sincere means says what he feels. RICHARD: Then I am not ‘the noble and sincere one’ whom you discern. RESPONDENT: And that is funny that an egoless person needs to do this. RICHARD: Not just ‘egoless’ ... ‘soulless’ as well (the identity in toto is extinct): I am this flesh and blood body sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. And, as this ‘only reason’ I have (for writing that I am up-front and out in the open in all my writings) is ‘to compare [my] image’ of what I am doing with ‘[my] image’ of what I ‘think’ you are doing is but your ‘great ability to understand what others think, believe and feel’, there is nothing of substance for me to respond to. RESPONDENT: Yes, there is nothing here you regard as having any validity, for you maintain that you have no images. RICHARD: Not only no ‘images’ ... the entire intuitive/imaginative facility (born of the affective faculty) is not extant. I could not form an image if my life depended upon it. RESPONDENT: For you it seems that being upfront and open ... RICHARD: Yet it is not the case that it ‘seems’ to be that at all ... I am indeed being up-front and out in the open. RESPONDENT: We differ on that. RICHARD: Uh huh ... you ‘differ on that’ (via your discernment). I remain exactly as I was before your discernment. RESPONDENT: [it seems that being upfront and open] is about expressing what you think about yourself. RICHARD: I am not expressing what I ‘think’ about myself ... I am giving an accurate report of my on-going experiencing of being this flesh and blood body sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. RESPONDENT: The veracity of that account of course rests solely with you. RICHARD: Exactly ... yet all through these E-Mails you have been insisting that your discernment is more accurate than my accurate report of my on-going experiencing, each moment again. RESPONDENT: Where is the possibility of error in this self-closed method of determining accuracy? RICHARD: By the marked absence of the pristine perfection of the already always existing peace-on-earth ... the actual is fail-safe. * RESPONDENT: For me it is about the ability to actually look at what you are doing, and saying. RICHARD: Good ... when are you going to start? RESPONDENT: Meaning you are not open to the possibility that is already happening. RICHARD: Au contraire, I am always open to the possibility ... it is just that, thus far, it is yet to happen. RESPONDENT: But this is a joke. RICHARD: No ... I am entirely sincere. RESPONDENT: The point has to do with you looking at yourself and not me looking at you. RICHARD: I do look at myself each moment again (allow for the subject/predicate copula in language usage). As such ‘looking’ is apperceptive awareness it happens all of its own accord. RESPONDENT: And the evidence is that you do not allow for the possibility of being in error. RICHARD: What ‘evidence’? * RESPONDENT: And I have yet to find evidence that you have that ability. RICHARD: Sure ... this is possibly because, although you say (further above) that you have read the in-depth and detailed exchange, you also say that reading it does not imply that you have studied it (‘reading it does not imply that I studied it. I study that which I find to be worth studying’). Ergo: you have ‘yet to find evidence’ through not having read it with both eyes. RESPONDENT: Do you believe that if I study that dialogue I am going to find the evidence that you actually see through all these images you have of yourself? RICHARD: As I neither ‘believe’ nor have any ‘images’ there is nothing of substance to respond to here. RESPONDENT: That isn’t hard to understand, it is simply that you present yourself as the perfect embodiment of what you believe to be the highest truth and the greatest good. RICHARD: Yet apparently it is, for you, ‘hard to understand’ that I am not presenting myself as ‘the perfect embodiment of what [I] believe to be the highest truth and the greatest good’ at all. If you had read what I have to say with both eyes it would be patently clear to you that I am not ‘the embodiment’ of anything whatsoever (let alone ‘the highest truth’ or ‘the greatest good’). At the risk of being chastised for using discernment ... they are religio-spiritual terms pointing to the supposed innocence of the immaterial consciousness which manifests (on this planet at least) maliciously and sorrowfully, rather than happily and harmlessly, and thus requiring the antidotal pacifiers of love and compassion. Whereas I am a fellow human being sans both ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. RESPONDENT: I am aware that you describe yourself quite differently. RICHARD: Good. RESPONDENT: But is there anything substantially different, or is it all conceptual packaging? RICHARD: If you were to read with both eyes you would see for yourself (and the seeing would be its own authority). RESPONDENT: Isn’t actualism what you have presented as totally and completely true? RICHARD: No ... given the slipperiness around the word ‘true’ I always emphasise that what I present is fact (because it is actual). Plus I explain, every now and again, what the distinction is that I draw between that which is true and that which is fact (given that dictionaries do not make such a distinction). RESPONDENT: Did you not say that in the whole history of mankind no one has discovered this prior to yourself? RICHARD: As far as I have been able to ascertain, yes ... I have scoured the books (all media) and have travelled and talked with people from all walks of life for twenty years but to no avail. RESPONDENT: Do you not live this 24 hrs a day? RICHARD: Yes ... since 1992.
CORRESPONDENT No. 20 (Part Seven) RETURN TO CORRESPONDENCE LIST ‘B’ INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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