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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 23
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 20): The whole purpose of this List, being under the auspices of the
teachings that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti bought into the world, is to converse deeply together with the avowed aim of setting ‘humanity’ free,
surely. As ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’, then this entails sincere and candid conversation, otherwise discussion
devolves into being intellectual masturbation. RESPONDENT: And how does conversation set humanity free? RICHARD: As the gentleman in question has been dead for over a decade, your question comes somewhat too late to get a direct answer. Be it far from me to answer for Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, but suffice is it for me to point out that he said publicly in 1928: ‘I have only one desire; to set humankind free’ ... whereupon he spent the best part of the next sixty-odd years engaged in the most sincere and candid conversation possible with whomsoever was vitally interested in peace-on-earth. May I ask: Are you not so vitally interested?
RICHARD: Be it far from me to answer for Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, but suffice is it for me to point out that he said publicly in 1928: ‘I have only one desire; to set humankind free’ ... whereupon he spent the best part of the next sixty-odd years engaged in sincere and candid conversation with whomsoever was vitally interested in peace-on-earth. May I ask: Are you not so vitally interested? RESPONDENT: Sure, I am interested in peace-on-earth. But how can that be brought about through doing what that old man did? In all those sixty years of earnest conversation, the earth was inundated with two world wars and the situation has consistently gotten worse. I ask again: how does conversation set man free? RICHARD: By learning from his biggest mistake. Also, just having a conversation will never set anyone free ... let alone ‘humanity’. Especially if the other party only expresses what appears to be a casual interest in peace-on-earth. (‘Sure, I am interested ... but how can ... and how will ... but ... and ...’) Yet if the conversation is sincere and candid, and if the other is vitally interested – if it is the number one priority in one’s life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with one’s very being – then something rather magical can happen. ‘Humanity’ disappears out of the one or the other or both, and then there is freedom from the Human Condition. The one or the other or both then has an sincere and candid conversation with another vitally interested person and then another similarly fascinated ... and then they too have an sincere and candid conversation with yet another who is vitally interested ... and so on and so on. It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to start off with the patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity preparatory to evoking the mutation, indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. With freedom from the Human Condition spreading like a chain-letter, in the due course of time, global freedom would revolutionise the concept of ‘humanity’. It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true. But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in the actual world. When one is free from the Human Condition, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is ... and here on earth in this life-time. One knows that one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe ... and that is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world – the ‘Land of Lament’ – fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is
a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Most human beings, being contumelious as they are, will probably continue to tread the
‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious So be it.
RESPONDENT: So, you are saying that the intensity of one’s being could inflame all mankind spreading passion for fundamental change like wildfire from one to another. RICHARD: I looked back through my post and for the life of me I could not find any reference whatsoever to what is conveyed by words like ‘intensity’, ‘inflame’, ‘passion’ or ‘wildfire’. So, in answer to your question: no, I am not saying that at all. I can only presume that it is you who is preoccupied with such revolutionary idealism. That kind of thing has been tried before again and again ... and has failed before again and again. Passion begets sorrow. RESPONDENT: This is the theme expounded in a book published many years ago by the Chinese Communist Party to incite worldwide social revolution beyond China and is called: ‘How To Start A Prairie Fire With A Spark’. RICHARD: Is that so? Is that where you got this notion from then? Thank you for taking the time to tell me that, but is it actually worth reading? Communism has never, ever appealed to me ... in fact, I went to war as a gilded youth in order to stop the spread of that godless regime from sweeping south. As communism is dead on the ground virtually all over the world, it hardly seems worth my while taking time out to study their obviously failed technique. Perhaps the grass was wet out on them thar prairies? RESPONDENT: I am being objectively critical and not cynical in pointing this out to you. RICHARD: Nobody here has said that you were being cynical ... to my knowledge. Did you think that you might have been? Of course it is a subjective evaluation as to whether oneself is being objective or not ... but I am sure you do not need me to tell you that. RESPONDENT: Yours is the evangelistic approach and reveal the working of delusion. RICHARD: And what delusion is that? That peace-on-earth is possible? But I thought you said that you were interested in peace-on-earth ... in fact, ‘are you vitally interested’ was the question that I asked. Were you just playing me along for a sucker? RESPONDENT: I am sorry, sir. RICHARD: There is no need to be sorry ... you just made a mistake, that is all. We all do, from time to time. And there is no real need to call me ‘sir’, either ... I do not stand on ceremony. RESPONDENT: I am working on something else: instantaneous awakening – global freedom in a finger snap. And this affects even the dragon flies. RICHARD: Does it now? While you are busily doing that, can I interest you in a re-posting of the last paragraph of my reply to what I mistakenly presumed to be an earnest question? It might help to clear up that ‘evangelistic’ notion you were harbouring about me:
Now that we have got all of that mandatory verbal sparring (as per standard Internet protocol) out of the way, shall we stop trying to score points of each other and attend to the subject at hand? To wit: • [Richard]: ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti said publicly in 1928: ‘I have only one desire; to set humankind free’ ... whereupon he spent the best part of the next sixty-odd years engaged in sincere and candid conversation with whomsoever was vitally interested in peace-on-earth. May I ask: Are you not so vitally interested? It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to start off with the patient dismantling off one’s accrued social identity preparatory to evoking the mutation, indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. I look forward to your considered response.
RESPONDENT: Yours is the evangelistic approach and reveals the working of delusion. RICHARD: And what delusion is that? That peace-on-earth is possible? But I thought you said that you were interested in peace-on-earth ... in fact, ‘are you vitally interested’ was the question that I asked. Were you just playing me along for a sucker? RESPONDENT: No, I wasn’t playing you along for a sucker. RICHARD: May I ask, then, are you vitally interested in peace-on-earth? By ‘vitally interested’ I mean this: Is it is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being? Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then as I said at the beginning of this thread, one’s posts to this list are only intellectual masturbation. RESPONDENT: I would like to explain why I feel that vital interest spreading from one to another through candid and earnest conversation is a process of delusion. RICHARD: I never said that ‘vital interest’ would spread from one to another. I said that as ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ – and if both one and the other are vitally interested – then something rather magical can happen if the conversation is sincerely candid. ‘Humanity’ disappears out of the one or the other or both, and then there is freedom from the Human Condition. The one or the other or both then has an sincere and candid conversation with another vitally interested person and then another similarly fascinated person ... and then they too have an sincere and candid conversation with yet another who is vitally interested ... and so on and so on. It is freedom from the Human Condition that would spread. In other words: peace-on-earth for the individual would spread person by person. Global peace can only happen when each and every person has their individual peace-on-earth. (Of course, the excellence of individual autonomy means that it does not matter much whether there is global peace or not ... it would be but an added bonus). RESPONDENT: I am not telling you this in a condescending way as though I have something to teach. RICHARD: This is the second time that you have felt obliged to explain what your motives are not made up of. (‘I am being objectively critical and not cynical in pointing this out to you’). Methinks thou doest protesteth too much. Thus you leave me with the impression that you are indeed cynical and condescending. Anyway, what is so wrong about having something to teach? If you know something, then say it ... and say it with firmness and boldness; say it with daring and audacity; say it with verve and vivacity. All this being humble business is only for the faint of heart and the weak of knee, who piously hope to earn their way into some god’s good graces by deprecating and humiliating themselves like all get-out. RESPONDENT: Peace-on-earth is the absence of human disorder. Is this a correct observation? If not, please tell me why? If it is so, what do you think this disorder is? RICHARD: Peace-on-earth has nothing to do with order or disorder ... order implies compliance to authority, be that authority either external or internal. Who is being ordered ... and by whom? The extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety does away with those ‘tried and true’ methods of disciplining the wayward self. Peace-on-earth is freedom from the Human Condition. The Human Condition is a term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of so-called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of the ‘self’. The elimination of the ‘self’ is the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. I can heartily recommend committing both psychological and psychic suicide.
RICHARD: Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. RESPONDENT: Does this fairy-tale-like ambience of yours have any borders? RICHARD: None whatsoever ... the physical space of this universe is infinite and its time is eternal ... thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. You see, what one is as this body is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go to. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. In other words: I am always here and it is already now. RESPONDENT: My life is not a fairy tale. RICHARD: Would you like it to be? By which I mean: are you vitally interested in peace-on-earth? And ‘vitally interested’ means that it is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: Your ambience don’t touch me. RICHARD: It is not my ambience and it will never be your ambience ... or anyone else’s either. It is the ambience of this actual world that manifests itself at this place in space and this moment in time. Have you never been deep in a rain-forest ... or any wilderness, for that matter? Have you ever, as you have travelled deeper and deeper into this other world of natural delight, ever experienced an intensely hushed stillness that is vast and immense yet so simply here? I am not referring to a feeling of awe or reverence or great beauty – to have any emotion or passion at all is to miss the actuality of this moment – nor am I referring to any blissful or euphoric state of being. It is a sensate experience, not an affective state. I am talking about the factual and simple actualness of earthy existence being experienced whilst ambling along without any particular thought in mind ... yet not being mindless either. And then, when a sparkling intimacy occurs, do not the woods take on a fairy-tale-like quality? Is one not in a paradisiacal environment that envelops yet leaves one free? This is the ambience that I speak of. At this magical moment there is no ‘I’ in the head or ‘me’ in the heart ... there is this apperceptive awareness wherein thought can operate freely without the encumbrance of any feelings whatsoever. It is not my ambience nor yours ... yet it is here for everyone and anyone for asking ... for the daring to be here as this body only. One does this by stepping out of the real world into this actual world, as this flesh and blood body, leaving your ‘self’ behind ... where ‘you’ belong. This ambience delivers the goods so longed for through aeons.
RICHARD: It is not my ambience nor yours ... yet it is here for everyone and anyone for the asking ... for the daring to be here as this body only. One does this by stepping out of the real world into this actual world, as this flesh and blood body, leaving your ‘self’ behind ... where ‘you’ belong. This ambience delivers the goods so longed for through aeons. RESPONDENT: You are not listening, Richard. I said that your fairy-tale-like ambience doesn’t touch me. RICHARD: If I may point out? It is you who are not listening ... I explained that it is not my ambience. In fact, you copied and pasted where I clearly said this (above). Viz.: ‘It is not my ambience nor yours ... yet it is here for everyone and anyone for the asking’. A suggestion only: If you ask somebody a question, read their answer before reaching for the keyboard. If you cannot do this simple thing, then how are you going to comprehend the intricacies of what is involved in setting yourself free of the Human Condition? RESPONDENT: It doesn’t touch the miserable human hordes and this God-forsaken planet either. RICHARD: I am well aware that it does not touch people ... whilst people stay as they are, that is. You want to be free without having to change yourself ... and change yourself radically, fundamentally. Reach out ... extend yourself ... dare to do it. As for not touching this planet ... this planet is swimming in it. RESPONDENT: Your infinite, borderless universe is therefore real unto yourself. RICHARD: It is my actual, on-going experience twenty four hours a day ... and has been for the last five years. Would you want it to be real unto you too? By which I mean: are you vitally interested in peace-on-earth? And ‘vitally interested’ means that it is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: What daring does it need to exist as the body only? RICHARD: It needs the most startling daring and audacity possible, coupled with nerves of steel ... it is most definitely for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. You see, ‘you’, as an identity – any identity whatsoever – will be become extirpated, extinguished, eliminated, annihilated ... in other words: extinct. Speaking personally, there is no ‘being’ ... no ‘presence’ at all. There is simply this flesh and blood body bereft of any identity whatsoever. RESPONDENT: The frightening thing is existence itself when there is no respite from pain for the body from its birth to its death. It is this fear that possesses the body. RICHARD: But there is a respite ... I have written about nothing else but that since I came onto this List. Obviously you are not listening. And not only a respite, but a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, angst, fear, terror, horror or dread. RESPONDENT: I refuted your contention that vital interest spreading from one to another through candid and earnest conversation would free the body from the human condition which is this fear. RICHARD: I wonder where you did this refutation ... I did not see it posted to this List. What did get posted was this:
I ask again: where in this is your refutation? Anyway, it was never my contention ‘that vital interest spreading from one to another through candid and earnest conversation would free the body from the human condition’. And I pointed this out to you, as follows:
It is you who is not listening to me, is it not? RESPONDENT: Such conversation – similar to that which is going on in this forum – is engendered by fear. We are that fear. Do you know how to end that fear? RICHARD: Yes.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 19): I just thought I might share that with you, as I consider that it may be important for you
to know that you are currently engaged in a correspondence with a madman. Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: You are safe here, Richard. You are here with friends. I am the doctor. RICHARD: Which doctor ... and just how safe? If your doctoring is similar to your debating skills, I would have to rate you as fair to medium on diagnosis; pathetic to fair on prognosis ... and zero to pathetic on follow-up procedures.
RICHARD: Which doctor ... and just how safe? If your doctoring is similar to your debating skills, I would have to rate you as fair to medium on diagnosis; pathetic to fair on prognosis ... and zero to pathetic on follow-up procedures. RESPONDENT: Richard, you are in a serious state of denial. RICHARD: Pray tell me ... what am I in denial of? I have been very explicit in all my posts about the state of the human species ... just what am I denying? RESPONDENT: You are tucked in this actual ambrosial world. RICHARD: Oh, yes ... but not ‘tucked’ ... walking freely in this very ambrosial world. RESPONDENT: The Bowing Buddha is Peace-On-Earth. And both of you are living on a planet scorched by misery. RICHARD: Five point eight billion human beings are living on a planet ‘scorched by misery’ ... and scorched by malice, too, do not forget. Yet all malice and misery are feelings and are not, therefore, actual. They may be real – very real at times – but they are not actual. The direct results of having these feelings – these emotions and passions – are acted out in this actual world in the form of wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, child abuse, suicides and so on ... but all these actions are unnecessary. They all stem from feelings and feelings – emotions and passions – are self-induced (‘I’ am passion and passion is ‘me’) and, as such, can be eliminated. Then there is peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Reality is painful but we have got to hang in there and deal with it. RICHARD: You have the choice to ‘hang in there’ if that is what you want to do ... but you do not ‘have to’. Who told you that furphy? Only sadomasochists wish to prolong suffering ... are you saying that five point eight billion human beings are sadomasochists? And are you suggesting – or demanding – that I ‘come back’ and join you all? What would that achieve? One more unhappy and malicious person would simply be more fuel for the fires of hatred and pain. RESPONDENT: Behaving like trauma-stricken kids withdrawn into paradisiacal states of fantasy is dementia. RICHARD: Behaving like a sulky child and refusing to give up your animosity and anguish is not only personally silly ... but is socially reprehensible. Do you want to perpetuate all these wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, child abuse, suicides and so on for ever and a day? What is your investment in prolonging suffering? Job security? RESPONDENT: You keep this up and you will soon have No. 5 and No. 20 sucked into that tractor beam of yours. No. 19 too. RICHARD: I think not. No. 5 is locked too deeply into his adopted Hindu/ Buddhist belief system to come up for air; No. 20 is chasing after Love and Beauty whilst pretending there is no hatefulness and ugliness inextricably entwined with them ... and No. 19 has assured everyone that her course in reality is firmly locked on auto-pilot. I guess that leaves you ... are you interested? In fact, are you vitally interested in peace-on-earth? And ‘vitally interested’ means that it is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. I just thought that I would ask. RESPONDENT: Is this your idea of changing the world? RICHARD: Yes. You see, peace-on-earth already is here – here in this actual world – and no one needs to invent it. It is all a matter of entering into it; making it apparent; allowing it to emerge; watching it unfold ... or whatever description. Everyone is either rushing about trying to make an imitation peace ... or sitting back moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all. I did not devise, concoct or contrive this peace-on-earth ... it was already here ... as it always has been and always will be. I just happened to discover it, that is all ... and it being so perfect that I wished to inform my fellow human beings of its existence. What they do with this information is their business.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 10): I did not devise, concoct or contrive this peace-on-earth ... it was already here ... as
it always has been and always will be. I just happened to discover it, that is all ... and it being so perfect that I wished to inform my fellow
human beings of its existence. What they do with this information is their business. RESPONDENT: So, you happened to discover this peace-on-earth and you want to inform your fellow human beings of its existence, do you? Am I one of your 5.8 billion fellow human beings, Richard? RICHARD: I do not actually know ... I was rather working on the assumption that printed words appearing on my computer screen indicated a fellow human being at the other end. But maybe I was wrong ... so could you tell me: Are you, in fact, a fellow human being? If you are not it would explain a lot about your inability to follow through on any topic. RESPONDENT: Has it occurred to you that you are not a man of truth but a lonely person in search of attention? You see, only a lonely person would go around hawking the truth. RICHARD: Where has the word ‘truth’ appeared in any of my posts? I tend to make a big thing about facts and actuality ... to the point of bagging truth entirely. May I suggest a touch of research before propounding your latest theory? RESPONDENT: You have an obvious hunger to close the deal with any passer-by who stops to listen to your fancy sales pitch. RICHARD: Well, you see, it works ... after all, you have stopped to listen have you not? And you seem to be interested ... but are you interested enough? In fact, are you vitally interested? And ‘vitally interested’ means that peace-on-earth is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: Denial is the refusal to see the reality of one’s situation. RICHARD: But you can take heart from the fact that you cannot keep on denying forever ... you do seem to be relenting a little on your previously hostile stance. It is encouraging, is it not, to see progress? No matter how little, some progress is better than none. Keep up the good work! RESPONDENT: A lonely person assumes a fictitious identity and takes on a role of the anointed one, like the Bowing Buddha, who has a coveted attainment – something that everyone shouldn’t be without – and he would graciously give of it to all if only they would gather around him. RICHARD: Okay, you seem to have blown my cover so I will come clean: my name is really Rachel and I am a twenty-year old student at the Australian National University. I have concocted this whole story just to see how many people I could con into writing back to me. I plan to do a Doctoral Thesis on the psychology of social misfits and I bet my girl-friends that I could find at least one sucker on this Mailing List who would be willing to bare their prejudices in public. RESPONDENT: Let’s put your proposition into perspective. If the way to change the world is through a one-on-one candid and earnest conversation, as you insist, how long will it take to infect all 5.8 billion considering that – at a 5% birth rate – you have 800,000 more a day coming your way if every God-forsaken soul wants to listen to you. And don’t forget, there are hundreds of languages in India alone, a profusion of weird dialects in China, and not many of the rest of the world understand English. You speak Hakka? RICHARD: It is indeed a daunting proposition, no doubt ... and I can see that you beavered away like mad to get it right ... working out all those percentages and all. The only problem with your – simply devastating – treatise is that I have already told you twice before about an entirely different method that leaves me sitting in the lounge-room with my feet up on the coffee table watching television. But I am happy to re-post it for the third time for your edification.
RESPONDENT: You are like a holy man on a one-man crusade to purify the filthy Ganges by picking up sewage with a tea-cup. RICHARD: Well ... no, I think not. You see, none of that matters when one is already living freely in the actual world.
When one is free from the Human Condition, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is ... and here on earth in this life-time. One knows that
one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe ... and that is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who
stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world – the ‘Land of Lament’ – fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who
lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow
and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Most human beings, being contumelious as they are, will probably
continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious I am looking forward to your next post ... I see a glimmer of intelligence trying to emerge through the nihilistic confusion and hurt.
RICHARD: Okay, you seem to have blown my cover so I will come clean: my name is really Rachel and I am a twenty-year old student at the Australian National University. I have concocted this whole story just to see how many people I could con into writing back to me. I plan to do a Doctoral Thesis on the psychology of social misfits and I bet my girl-friends that I could find at least one sucker on this Mailing List who would be willing to bare their prejudices in public. RESPONDENT: In this rat-hole, everybody is a Ph.D. What is a social misfit? Let’s see if you have the brains to define this. RICHARD: A social misfit is anyone who nurses sorrow and malice to their bosom. RESPONDENT: By the way, Rachel, you write like an old codger with coarse hair all over his body. RICHARD: I have a beard, if that is what you mean by ‘coarse hair’ ... and I have been on this planet for over half a century ... if that is what you mean by ‘old’. As ‘codger’ means a ‘mildly eccentric and usually elderly’ ... well I guess that fits too. But I do not have ‘coarse hair all over my body’. Still, three out of four ain’t bad, bro ... go to the top of the class. RESPONDENT: You must be a real ugly co-ed to be spending this much time writing E-Mails instead of getting laid. RICHARD: There is much more to life than ‘getting laid’ all the time. For example, the wee small hours are my favourite time for writing and I most often wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning and write until the first kookaburras start their laughing-like call from some trees over the back fence. Then I like to sit and sip an early morning coffee, with my feet up on the computer desk, and be with the first grey light coming into the room ... through to the first glow of pre-dawn ... and then the sunrise itself. It sure beats being a root-rat. RESPONDENT: Somehow my fighting instincts tells me that there are things to kick between your legs. How is this for prejudice? RICHARD: This is not prejudice at all ... it is simply pointless belligerence. You know, you really are a fascinating person ... you just cannot follow any topic through at all, can you? Perseverance is not your strongest suite, is it? Still, you are apparently entertaining for some of the other posters ... a sort of ‘court jester’, I suppose one could say. The main trouble with someone setting oneself up to be the ‘court jester’ is that while trying to make a fool of oneself for laughs, they actually do make a fool of themself.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 31): ‘A spring that knows no summer’ ... do you get it? RESPONDENT: I don’t get it. As a matter of fact, I can’t even figure out what is the largest possible product for two even integers whose sum is 38. Can you tell me which are the possible answers – 72, 76, 136, 280, or 360? KONRAD: The possible answers are: 72, 136, 192, 240, 280, 312, 336, 352 and 360. From your list of possible answers 76 is a mistake. The answer to your question is therefore 360. It is rather a dull problem. I thought you did not like mediocrities? ...<SNIP> ... I think that you are on the wrong mailing list. I advise you to try [the Objectivists] out. They are people who take themselves very, very seriously. And they hate mediocrities, like you do. RESPONDENT: What you think is unimportant to me, Konrad. You see men as a body of fluids and your view of human relationship is characteristically Dutch and pornographic. Richard’s enlightenment is assertively Australian – loud and boorish (he is neither self nor soul and just the body but he has seven grandchildren! What a kangaroo, he is.) It was quite silly of the two of you to bare your butts for all to see. RICHARD: Well, well, well ... your posts to me started out as being pathetic and have steadily deteriorated ever since. Now you have resorted to mathematical problems and type-casting people according to the country they live in and how many grandchildren they have. What next, one wonders? Irish jokes? Polish jokes? Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you ... how are you going with your plan for the global awakening of dragonflies with the snap of your fingers? Have you progressed very far? Having teething problems are you? The dragonflies here in Australia are still suffering, albeit in a loud and boorish manner, of course ... but suffering is suffering in any cultural milieu. Could you expedite the completion of your plan perchance?
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 12): Then what baby is it that I am throwing out? The baby that produces the delusion that it
exists in a timeless realm, of course. There is no ‘timeless realm’ here, in actuality. Living here, at this moment in time, there is
only this moment that is actual. As it is already always this moment, to the unaware it appears to be ‘timeless’. It is not. This moment
is hanging in time like this planet is hanging in space. Just as the universe’s space is infinite, so too is this universe’s time eternal.
There is no beginning or end to the infinitude of this universe’s space and time, therefore there is no middle, no centre. Thus, one is always
here and it is already now. And here and now is nowhere in particular. This sure beats immortality any day. RESPONDENT: What happens when your body dies? Does the peace-on-earth that you know goes with it? RICHARD: Oh no, not at all ... this peace-on-earth is already always here. It always has been and always will be, for it is the utter peace of the perfect infinitude of this physical universe itself. Here is a vast stillness that is everywhere all at once ... being nowhere in particular, we are anywhere at all in the universe’s infinity of space and eternity of time. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from and nowhere to go to ... we are already here and it is always now. When this body dies, its apperceptive awareness – which is what one refers to by the first person pronoun – dies right along with it, of course, for they are one and the same thing. There is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ lurking around inside this body creating its mischief and dreaming dreams of a glorious – or hideous – immortality in some specious After-Life. However, when this body physically dies, edified human access to this actual peace-on-earth dies along with it ... which is why I write so prolifically. I have accumulated 250,000 words so far ... subscribing to a Mailing List is one way of getting more words out. Answering all kinds of questions causes me to consider that which would normally not occur to me to write about. It is only for those who are interested, of course ... and you seem to be interested ... but are you interested enough? In fact, are you vitally interested? And ‘vitally interested’ means that peace-on-earth is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. I just thought that I might ask.
RESPONDENT: Isn’t the attempt to solve the problems of your own life just as deluded as solving the problems of the world? They are the two ways of escapes from real action. RICHARD: What is this ‘real action’ then? RESPONDENT: Whether the poverty is out there in Calcutta or in your own personal situation, the dealing with the problem of personal poverty, be it material or spiritual, is still Mother Theresa, the do-gooder, at work. RICHARD: If I do not deal with my personal poverty ... then who will? Sitting in a deck-chair on the patio waiting for god is an utter waste of time. RESPONDENT: Feeling sorry for others is no different from feeling sorry for yourself. They are both the action of selfishness. RICHARD: Agreed. RESPONDENT: As Krishnamurti has said, violence or anger is neither yours or mine, it is human violence. RICHARD: It is the Human Condition. However, ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. When this body is rid of ‘me’ – permanently – then ‘humanity’ in me also vanishes ... along with its anger and violence. It is a highly desirable condition to be in. RESPONDENT: But you see the ugliness not as human ugliness but your own personal ugliness as opposed to ugliness in the world outside, and you say to yourself, ‘I will deal with this and sort out my own business. I won’t be a busybody. I deal with myself first. If I can clean up my act, I would have found a way to clean up everybody’s act and can offer the solution to the world like Richard from down under can’. RICHARD: It seems that this Richard and his ambrosial paradise bothers you like all get-out ... because you keep harping on it. It really does get on your goat, does it not, that the solution to all your problems lies only in your hands. What a bummer it is that it is up to you to fix yourself up after all ... were you all this while waiting for some god to do it for you? RESPONDENT: So, the non-busybody (lay-person) busies herself from the inside while the busybody (Mother Theresa) fusses about outside. They are both the same thing except for the geography. Of course, if one has a messy temporal karma, one has best deal with the business of living a personal existence – getting the husband or the wife to shape up or ship out, feeding the kids, finding the money to pay the bills – and not go about playing world saviour either through self-fiddling or mucking around with the world at large. RICHARD: Okay, I have got my ‘messy temporal karma’ straightened out; I am indeed ‘best dealing with the business of living a personal existence’; I have got ‘the wife shipped out’ (because she simply would not ‘shape up’); I presume ‘the kids’ have been feeding themselves all right (I shipped them out as well); I have stopped making bills by going on a pension ... in other words: all is well in the land of oz. So may I, pretty please, now go about playing world saviour? I rather like ‘mucking around with the world at large’, you see.
RESPONDENT: Isn’t the attempt to solve the problems of your own life just as deluded as solving the problems of the world? They are the two ways of escapes from real action. RICHARD: What is this ‘real action’ then? RESPONDENT: Wouldn’t you like to know? RICHARD: In any ultimate sense ... no, not particularly. I only asked out of curiosity because we are fellow human beings, communicating to each other on this List, about what sense we make of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. If we are to truly communicate, we do need to know where each other is coming from. I do not hide my light under a bush ... I blow my own trumpet loud and clear. RESPONDENT: Working on the outer world is delusion. Working on the inner world is also delusion. This doesn’t mean that you do nothing and watch everything that comes and go. RICHARD: I never said that what one does is just watch ... that was someone else’s observation. RESPONDENT: And the body is not rid of anything either because even the body is illusory. RICHARD: Okay – unless you are being disingenuous here or playing a petty little ‘I trapped you!’ game – then I start to understand what you are on about. If the body is illusory then it follows that this planet is illusory ... and even this universe. Right so far? If so, then this is oh-so-familiar ... it is the traditional Hindu/ Buddhist line that all this actual stuff is not it. In other words: only the metaphysical is real. This is why I use the word actual. One has to just try putting a spring clip upon one’s nose and a large piece of sticking plaster over one’s mouth for a few minutes to discover what actuality is. As one rips the plaster from one’s mouth and gulps in that sweet and actual air, one knows that one is certainly here on earth, living this life. Humans live only here, in this physical world ... it is a factual experience, a sensible experience. It is down-to-earth ... objectively verifiable. It is not some airy-fairy, far-removed-from-here affective dream-world conjured up out of abstinence and sublimation. To project a fantasy and then yearn to live in it is simply an insult to clear intelligence. Human beings eat corporeal food, drink tangible water and breathe physical air, in order to be here, to be alive at all. All this living is necessary in order to discuss these very matters. RESPONDENT: So, is the violence and anger gone? RICHARD: Yep. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. And you ask: ‘Is the violence and anger gone?’ May I ask in return if – by declaring the body to be illusory – has the violence and anger gone for you? RESPONDENT: Hell, no. You understand, kangaroo? RICHARD: I do understand, only too well. Also, you have such a sophisticated turn of expression ... such that would leave school children gasping with envy. What would your epithet for me be if my E-Mail address was ‘The Antarctic’ ... which is the only continent on earth to have no resident animals? RESPONDENT: What is sorrow, deep sorrow, that permeates all life without borders and is neither transformed into a confused world out there nor translated to become the pains of being a man, woman or child? RICHARD: Universal sorrow. I presume you will be familiar with ‘The Wholeness Of Life’ ... the conversations between Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mr David Bohm and Mr. David Shainburg? If not, you will find Dialogue VII (May 20 1976 – Monday Afternoon) particularly illuminating.
RICHARD: It seems that this Richard and his ambrosial paradise bothers you like all get-out ... because you keep harping on it. It really does get on your goat, does it not, that the solution to all your problems lies only in your hands. What a bummer it is that it is up to you to fix yourself up after all ... were you all this while waiting for some god to do it for you? RESPONDENT: No, your paradise did not bother me. You did claim that you are just the actual body and no longer have any feelings. So, I went out for some fly-fishing and started jabbing at your ambrosial. RICHARD: It has nothing whatsoever to do with feelings; it is an observation of a fact. I may not have been posting lately, but I have read through whatever comes onto the List and you have made more than a few references to ‘ambrosial paradise’ ... as you acknowledge below: ‘it took me a few tries’. RESPONDENT: I kept casting my line – you saw that as harping – and it took me a few tries before you went for the bait. RICHARD: I not only saw it as harping ... it was harping. (Oxford Dictionary: ‘Harping’: dwell on, persist in talking about, repeat complaints about, nag about, press or labour the point about, go on and on about.) Why are you so fondly imagining that you need to cast a bait? What are you trying to catch? What are you trying to demonstrate? Are you trying to prove that this world is a sick place? Does it stick in your craw that someone can be happy here? RESPONDENT: The damn corpse moved! You are as phoney as a three-dollar bill, you kangaroo. RICHARD: Wouldn’t it be so good if I was indeed a phoney ... then you could keep on with your ultra-pessimistic outlook on life. May I ask: Are you a Malist, by any chance?
RESPONDENT No. 22: If there is no concept of a soul, there is no need to dissolve anything. RICHARD: Whoa up there now! First of all there is already a concept of a soul ... every culture has some word for it.
Secondly, just because there is not yet a concept for something does not mean that it does not exist. Humans did not have a concept that the earth
was a globe until relatively recently in human history ... even after Mr. Christopher Columbus’ epic voyage there was still disputation about the
veracity of the earth’s globular nature. Yet satellite photographs demonstrate that this is so despite the lack of the concept. (Assuming, of
course, that the once-flat earth did not suddenly decide to become round coincidental to Mr. Yuri Gagarin being shot into orbit). Are you not
saying that all the suffering of 5.8 billion people is only because each and every one of them has not yet developed a concept that the soul is the
root cause of human suffering ... even though it can be observed as an actual happening in daily life? Yet to go on and say that if such a concept
is never made then there is no need to dissolve it is to bury one’s head in the sand. There is indeed a need to dissolve something ... what we
are discussing is just what the nature of this something is. I am promoting the point that ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being – in fact ‘being’
itself – is the root cause of all anguish and animosity. RESPONDENT: I don’t even buy your pitch about the world being globular with your fancy
satellite imagery RICHARD: Of course you would not. It is well-known that Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene was a flat-earth god ... even though his ‘Father Who Art In Heaven’ was omniscient and all that. Space exploration has poked a rather large hole in the veracity of ‘God’s Word’. You display an amazing propensity for persisting in defending the indefensible. RESPONDENT: Who deserves a crown of thorns and public execution if not a total fool. RICHARD: Nobody deserves execution ... ever. Capital punishment – revenge subtly disguised as ‘justice’ – is a left-over of the barbaric vengefulness of the old testament era. RESPONDENT: Heaven and earth can go away, but I will not be different. RICHARD: I guess that what you are saying is that a total fool is one who is incapable of learning from his mistakes ... no matter how painful. RESPONDENT: I forgive you for you know not what you do. RICHARD: I know what I do very well indeed ... totally, in fact. What price your forgiveness now?
RESPONDENT: I don’t even buy Richard’s pitch about the world being globular with his fancy satellite imagery and all. RICHARD: Of course you would not. It is well-known that Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene was a flat-earth god ... even though his ‘Father Who Art In Heaven’ was omniscient and all that. Space exploration has poked a rather large hole in the veracity of ‘God’s Word’. You display an amazing propensity for persisting in defending the indefensible. RESPONDENT: Have you ever played poker with a guy holding a pair coming up against your Royal Flush? I feel like I am doing just that with you right now. The other suckers at this table don’t have anything and they won’t fold. Let’s play. If space exploration is mightier than Jesus and poked a hole in God’s words, then you can’t know what you are talking about until that exploration is over and done with. RICHARD: I call your bluff, compagnon ... what a puerile argument. Why would I not know that the earth is not flat until ‘space exploration is over and done with’? Zillions of photographs have already been taken – and are taken every second of the day – so it has already been amply demonstrated. As space is infinite, exploration will never be over and done with. Are you of the school that feels secure by stating smugly that ‘we’ll never know’? RESPONDENT: And yet, you strut around with your ambrosial actuality with the finality of God himself. RICHARD: No, I strut around with the finality of facts ... no god is required here in actuality. RESPONDENT: How would you know that the next space probe would not blow a hole in your theology? RICHARD: Are you so sure that you are holding a pair, even? Do you really mean to say that the ‘next space probe’ would take photographs of a flat earth? Or did you type those words out somewhat hastily? Let us keep this simple: If Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene could take the time to do such a trivial thing as turning water into wine at a wedding, do you not think that he might mention in passing – say around the campfire at night – something to the effect of: ‘Hey guys ... just by the way and while I think of it ... the earth is round, not flat, and you can sail from Europe to the Americas without falling off the edge. Just thought I’d mention it’. He could then go back to the oh so serious business of curing a few people’s blindness with spittle and mud. It would not have taken him long to correct humanity’s mistake about the earth being flat, now would it? And I do not have a ‘theology’. Your nomenclature reveals a paucity of expression ... ‘Theo’ is Greek for ‘God’ and ‘ology’ is from the Greek ‘Logos’ meaning – as used here with the connecting ‘o’ – ‘discourse’. Thus ‘theology’ means ‘God’s discourse’ or ‘discourse about God’ ... neither of which applies. RESPONDENT: Life is made up of the man of religion, the man of science and the man of truth. The man of religion, meaning you, looks over the shoulder of the man of science and formulates and updates his theology accordingly each time science pokes a hole in theology. RICHARD: I am none of the above ... if I am to be categorised as anything I am a man of actuality. I have been called many things by many people ... but never a ‘man of religion’. I am sure that every one who has ever read anything at all of what I write would see that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through. If this demonstrates the quality of your diagnostic skills it makes me wonder how you ever got through Med School. And ‘Theology’ again. Did you not have to learn at least a smattering of Latin – with its Greek derivatives – at Uni in order to qualify and write out prescriptions? Or is your certificate to practice a pirated copy? RESPONDENT: The man of truth has nothing to do with the shenanigans of the other two. He is me. Your call. RICHARD: If I were you, I would not sit pat on what you fondly think is a pair. Discard all five cards and deal yourself a new hand.
RESPONDENT: This [what someone else wrote] is a good point. I support this: ‘What you have
given has nothing to do with the bible. I am not defending the veracity or accuracy of the bible. The fact is that it says practically nothing at
all on the subject of whether the earth was round or flat. You are creating something out of your own conjecture that is not there. What ‘Christians’
have said or believed is irrelevant to the subject. They most likely believed whatever their ‘scientists’ told them as we do now’. RICHARD: Why is it a good point? To take just one example where Christians did not believe the scientists one does not have to look further than what happened when Mr. Galileo Galilei asked them to look through his telescope and see for themselves. They refused to look ... much like you are refusing to acknowledge the satellite photographs. He was tried by the Inquisition in Rome, found guilty of heresy, ordered to recant, and forced to spend the last eight years of his life under house arrest. Hardly the stuff of Christians believing ‘whatever scientists told them’, eh? RESPONDENT: You are trying to browbeat with a load of crap. RICHARD: Since when has pointing out a fact been ‘browbeating’? Oh, I know ... right throughout human history! RESPONDENT: You affirm that you are an atheist, and the Bible is book of crap to an atheist. RICHARD: I cannot speak for atheists in general of course, but I for one value ‘The Bible’ very highly indeed ... I would not be where I am today without its most able assistance. This is because ‘The Bible’ is a priceless example of the power that belief holds on the minds of the believers ... who staunchly continue to believe despite the presentation of facts. ‘The Bible’ is so shot full of blatant discrepancies and outright untruths that it staggered the imagination ... and thus freed me from the action of belief in itself. RESPONDENT: Why would an atheist use a book of God to argue from? Does that make sense? RICHARD: Of course it does ... what on earth are you getting at? Are you saying that when someone quotes from a particular source the other cannot use that source? This is just silliness. RESPONDENT: It is like an avowed vegetarian wolfing down a pot of lamb stew with a meat eater. RICHARD: Good grief. That is not an analogy even worth the effort of typing out ... let alone taking the trouble to click ‘send’. Will you deal the next hand or shall I?
RICHARD: And I do not have a ‘theology’. Your nomenclature reveals a paucity of expression ... ‘Theo’ is Greek for ‘God’ and ‘ology’ is from the Greek ‘Logos’ meaning – as used here with the connecting ‘o’ – ‘discourse’. Thus ‘theology’ means ‘God’s discourse’ or ‘discourse about God’ ... neither of which applies. RESPONDENT: You are an eager beaver teacher who is too clever by half. Theology, meaning literally the study of God, is a discipline of religious thought that is restricted in its narrower sense, because of origination and format, to Christianity, but in its broader sense, because of its themes, to other atheistic religions as well. RICHARD: Etymologically, ‘theos’ meaning: ‘god’ comes from ‘the-’ meaning: ‘divine’ (‘divine’ as opposed to ‘human’). And ‘divine’ means ‘heavenly’ (‘heavenly’ as opposed to ‘earthly’). And ‘religion’ means a worship of ‘divine power’. Thus there is no such thing as an ‘atheistic religion’ ... it is simply a contradiction in terms. Those religions called ‘atheistic religions’ simply refer to a religion without a creator god in it ... but divinity (as opposed to earthly) is there with bells on! RESPONDENT: The themes of theology are God, man, the world, salvation, and eschatology. The Greek philosopher Plato, with whom the concept emerges for the first time, associated with the term theology a polemical intention – as did his pupil Aristotle. For Plato theology described the mythical. This identification of theology and mythology also remained customary in the later Greek thought. In distinction to philosophers, ‘theologians’ testified to and proclaimed that which they viewed as divine or, as in your case, actual. RICHARD: Actual means ‘things’ ascertained sensately ... divinity (being heavenly as opposed to earthly) can never be apprehended by the senses. Thus the divine is not actual. But you are right about identification of theology and the mythical ... it fits in well with the etymological origins of those words as I outlined at the beginning of this post. RESPONDENT: Theology thus became significant as the means of proclaiming myths. RICHARD: Agreed. (Is this not an achievement? You and I are in agreement, for once). RESPONDENT: Myths like loss of feelings, ambrosial paradise. RICHARD: I, for one, have never heard of ‘loss of feelings’ described as being a myth. It is an established psychiatric diagnosis called ‘alexithymia’. As you say you are a doctor, you may already know this. (But if your certificate to practice is indeed a pirated copy, then you are excused for your ignorance, of course). RESPONDENT: Of confessing to them, and of teaching and ‘preaching’ this confession much in the way that you are doing with your hare-brained discoveries. RICHARD: Why ‘harebrained’? Are you seriously suggesting that peace-on-earth is harebrained? Do you condone animosity and anguish, then? RESPONDENT: In this practice of ‘theology’ lies the prefiguration of what later would be known as theology in the history of Christianity. In spite of all the contradictions and nuances that were to emerge in the understanding of this concept in various Christian confessions and schools of thought, a formal criterion remains constant: theology is the attempt of adherents of a faith to represent their statements of belief consistently, to explicate them out of the basis of their faith, and to assign to such statements their specific place within the context of all other worldly relations and spiritual processes. In the first place, theology is a spiritual or religious attempt of ‘believers’ to explicate their faith. In the second place, theology is influenced by its origins in the Greek and Christian traditions. If I then speak of a theology of an atheist, I am aware of the fact that the concept ‘theology’, provides no access to the theos (‘god’) of theology of theistic religion. RICHARD: I am stunned ... we are in agreement again! RESPONDENT: If I nonetheless speaks of theology in this regard, I imply the way in which you, as a representative of your spiritual silliness, understand yourself. RICHARD: As ‘spiritual’ means ‘the immaterial element in human beings’ and I state categorically that I have nothing immaterial operating in me, I rather fail to see how you can say ‘spiritual silliness’. As for the ‘silliness’ part, is peace-on-earth silly, in your view? Almost all of your posts have this common theme: suffering is here to stay. You do seem to want suffering to continue forever, do you not? Are you a doctor of medicine or a doctor of psychiatry? If it is the latter then all is understood. You are therefore concerned about job security.
RICHARD: Will you deal the next hand or shall I? RESPONDENT: I am in, that’s for sure; and you can deal. You are an enlightened human being with a highly developed intellect, familiar with the discoveries of science and well-read in religion. RICHARD: No, I am not ‘enlightened’ ... an actual freedom lies beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: Tell you what. I will argue against the globular earth and defend the Bible as an infallible book of truth. How’s that? This would be like me having a poker game with a card sharp using a deck that is stacked against me. RICHARD: Yes, you might as well fold your hand and slink away as play that game. That deal is a recipe for disaster and I do not enjoy taking candy from a baby. Besides, Christianity is such a pathetic religion – in that it reveres suffering – that it is tedious to even discuss it. Please, deal yourself a better hand. RESPONDENT: A globular earth is a three dimensional object. That is to say it has dimensions along three axes: left and right, front and back, up and down. This means that the globular earth exists in space. And where there is space, there is time. An inhabitant of a globular earth is a prisoner of a space-time reality. RICHARD: If by ‘prisoner’ you mean that one has no choice but to be here on earth ... then one can always commit suicide. If one stays alive it means one wants to be alive. This is important for it establishes a basis for being a human being on planet earth. To wit: ‘I want to be here’. Now that one knows that one chooses to stay here on earth voluntarily ... one is no longer a prisoner. Now one is free to find out about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. Have you ever had any intimations of your destiny? RESPONDENT: Is this reality an illusion – a product of thought – or is it the absolute, immutable truth in which man lives? RICHARD: Space and time are actual ... all this is being alive business is genuinely happening. Physical earth – and this material universe – is not some dream, as some religions would have us believe. However, if you are suffering – if you experience sorrow and malice – then there is an alien ‘you’ inside the flesh and blood body that creates a grim and glum reality over the top over the pristine actuality that this physical planet and material universe actually is. This ‘everyday reality’ is not just ‘a product of thought’ ... its genesis is in the instinctual passions one is born with. These passions – which are both savage and tender – infiltrate thought and turn thinking into passionate imagination, emotional belief and calentural hallucinations. Being here in ‘reality’s space and time’ thus becomes a dreadful nightmare one longs to escape from ... and being in the ‘Greater Reality’s timelessness and spacelessness’ becomes an awesome dream one longs to be in. The ending of this alien ‘you’ – which is what you think and feel yourself to be as an identity – releases you, as this body only, into the pure and perfect actuality that the grim and glum ‘reality’ is but a veneer over. This ambrosial actuality easily qualifies for your description: ‘the absolute, immutable truth in which [Richard] lives’ ... only I avoid words such as ‘the truth’ like the plague. RESPONDENT: If the earth is globular, so is the moon. A two-dimension lunar form can be perceived as a round disc. How is the third dimension – depth – visually perceived? Is it not through the inference of thought that the moon (or the earth) assumes its globular form? RICHARD: The physical eye faithfully receives whatever data impinges upon the retina. It is the brain that sorts it into two or three dimensionality according to experience. Thus a person blind from birth who is given sight by modern surgical procedures has to learn how to make sense of what is seen. Initially they see indeterminate shapes and colours ... and have to move around touching things as they did when blind so as to translate that what they felt into what they now see. A person born with sight goes through this process from birth onwards until everything becomes familiar. Then the process is automatic and thought plays no part in it at all ... until something unfamiliar is encountered. (Like those drawings of water running uphill by Mr. Maurits Escher.) As a child I remember seeing the moon as a flat circle ... and I was told that it was a globe. I puzzled over this until I could see it as globular ... just. When I first looked through a powerful telescope it was patently and immediately obvious ... it took my breath away, I remember. I discussed this very subject – about twenty-five years ago – with a Swiss artist working in the centre of Australia. He was drawing and painting Aboriginal people and went to the more remote areas where the desert Aborigines lived to get a more authentic picture of them in their traditional landscape. The people he came to draw and paint had had minimal contact with the European settlers ... especially the children. When he showed them the drawings and paintings – even photographs – that he had done of them they could not see anything recognisable ... and he was a realistic artist of considerable skill. It took him a while to get one of them – a child – to see the illusion of three-dimensionality on paper and canvas. When the child ‘got it’ she broke into an enormous grin ... and proceeded to teach her peers and elders how to ‘see it’ ... to see their own image. Then it became automatic. RESPONDENT: If one is very still, without any movement of thought to shape perception, all visual forms become two dimensional because depth, and therefore space, is an illusion – which is conceptual interpretation of sensate phenomena. RICHARD: I made a living as a practising artist myself for a number of years in my twenties and thirties. To successfully render the three-dimensional scene in the world about on the two-dimensional canvas and paper required me to learn how to see the physical scene in two-dimensions ... and then draw or paint that. I can still do this ‘two-dimensional’ seeing today if I try too. One way to get an idea of this is to cover one eye and look at something. Until the brain compensates – usually quite quickly – one sees somewhat two dimensionally. However, I know – as a fact – that the physical scene is three-dimensional because I can walk about in it ... behind the table and chair or tree or fence or whatever. Therefore space is not an illusion. Thus I can extrapolate from this experience when I look at the moon ... and I can know that it is three-dimensional. For final verification that I was not still fooling myself, I have looked long and hard at those NASA photographs and movies! And these words that you are reading are written by a living, breathing fellow human being.
CORRESPONDENT No. 23 (Part Two) RETURN TO CORRESPONDENCE LIST ‘B’ INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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