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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 25
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 21): The time has come, with the world population as large and as cosmopolitan as it is, to discard the passionate and emotional ‘will to survive’ – with all its biologically-based inherited savagery – and move on to a new paradigm. This paradigm I call actualism, which works to disempower the instinctual passions one is encumbered with by blind nature at birth. One can come upon an actual freedom – the third alternative – which is the actuality that delivers the goods so long yearned for: peace-on-earth, as this body, in this life-time. And it delivers it now at this moment in eternal time and here at this place in infinite space, for it is already always here ... now.
RESPONDENT: Sir, if the claims you make are true, and you are not deluding yourself, this is a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect ourselves back through the clear mirror of your conflict-free ‘is-ness’. RICHARD: Please, let us drop this ‘Sir’ business ... I accord no value to that affectation. This is my position: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. I, for one, am not taking the back seat. RESPONDENT: Please forgive me if I jump right into some questions. This ‘will to survive’ you posit is, just as you say, a paradigm. Let us not ‘move on’ to a new paradigm, but let us simply live the new way. RICHARD: And indeed I am ... are you? If not, then you are currently living via a paradigm. If this is the case, may I ask if this old paradigm is working for you? That is: are you as happy and harmless as is humanly possible for ninety-nine per cent of each day? If this is not the case ... then you may be interested in moving on to a new paradigm in order to enable the actual to be apparent. RESPONDENT: A paradigm is a conceptual re-presentation of the non-verbal actuality. RICHARD: Aye ... except for the psittacistic ‘non-verbal’ bit I agree. Again ... are you living this actuality? If not, then you may be interested in examining this new paradigm to see if it may deliver the goods. RESPONDENT: It is no good relying on the dead conceptual tools others have created based on prejudice and conditioning. RICHARD: Indeed no ... if one is not living the actual, then it is far, far better to rely upon living conceptual tools based upon apperceptively accurate descriptions of the actual. RESPONDENT: Let us stay aware that the ‘instinctual’ passions also include all human possibility – including the awakening of a totally different way of meeting life. RICHARD: Ah ... so you are not living the actual, I see. RESPONDENT: The mindset that looks down on instinct and posits a way of being beyond them is creating a wholly unnecessary division in which the innate intelligence of the instinct is unacknowledged and the karmic results of conditioning and choice are (falsely) pinned on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Except what you call the ‘innate intelligence of the instincts’ is busily killing people ... 160,000,000 million in wars this century alone. As for ‘karmic results’ ... I do not need to believe in that Eastern mystical twaddle. RESPONDENT: Finally, there is no such thing as ‘blind’ Nature. RICHARD: Nature is blind inasmuch as it does not care two-hoots about you or me. It is only concerned with the survival of the species ... and any species will do as far as nature is concerned. Therefore it is blind. There is no such thing as ‘Mother Nature’ outside of sentimental human imagination. Nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’. RESPONDENT: Nature exists as us, and if we do not see that nature is not blind through the multitude of ‘outer’ evidence, we cannot deny that nature sees through us (though perhaps far too myopically). RICHARD: Hmm ... look, if you think it is important for me to understand this sentence then perhaps you could re-write it in a way that makes sense? Does this ‘Nature’ need to visit an optometrist? You did claim (above) that nature has an ‘innate intelligence’ yet now you are saying it is ‘myopic’ ... and I cannot comprehend how a ‘myopic intelligence’ is going to set one free of the Human Condition. Do you actually know ... or are you making this up as you write? RESPONDENT: Is the universe you live in a dead mechanism, or are you a coextensive expression of the living/ conscious universe? RICHARD: I am not sure whether you have read many of my posts, but my oft-repeated refrain is: ‘I am this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being ... as me the universe is intelligent’. To be here at this place in infinite space and this moment in infinite time is to be living the perfection of this infinitude as purity personified. RESPONDENT: Is ‘biologically-based, inherited savagery’ shared by trees and butterflies? Is there not also biologically inherited gentleness and intelligence? RICHARD: Aye, you will find this explanation in the post that you snipped the opening quote above off ... you will see the word ‘tender’ in there. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: Does peace on earth, ‘in this lifetime’ mean that you claim knowledge of ‘former lives?’ What exactly did your statement ‘in this life’ refer to? RICHARD: What I mean is that it is possible to be free of the Human Condition in this life you are living now. In fact, if you do not become free of the Human Condition in this life you never will. Physical death is the end. Finish. Not that it matters at all then as physical death is oblivion. RESPONDENT: All that aside, what is it like to be so free (and wonderfully different) RICHARD: It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the psychological and psychic identity within the body struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. I have no furious urges, no instinctive anger, no impulsive rages, no inveterate hostilities, no evil disposition ... no
malicious or sorrowful tendencies whatsoever. The blind animal instinctual passions, which some neuro-scientists have tentatively located toward
the top of the brain-stem in what is popularly called the ‘reptilian brain’, have under-gone a radical mutation. I am free to be me as-I-am;
benign and benevolent and beneficial in character. I am able to be a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic This all happens in an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. RESPONDENT: And do you think there is any hope for the rest of us? RICHARD: 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 It is all in your hands. RESPONDENT: From your perspective, is anything vitally important in the ‘big picture’, or do we humans make a mountain out of our mole-hill? RICHARD: Yes ... a new way to live life on this verdant planet has been discovered which eliminates the need to humble oneself in a degrading surrender and servitude to some imagined deity. One eliminates the sense of identity that has been overlaid – from birth to the present day – over the self. With cheerful diligence and application born out of pure intent, one whittles away at the persistent social identity, abandoning the desire for unity, until one arrives at a virtual freedom. In virtual freedom one is ninety nine percent free and the other one percent causes very little trouble – if any – and with virtual freedom operating in every human being there could be a global peace-on-earth. Finally the day of destiny dawns wherein one is catapulted into actual freedom ... one has escaped one’s fate and universal peace and tranquillity emerges. Being free from malice and sorrow, innocence and benignity are one’s constant condition. In consummate purity and perfection, which wells up from the utter stillness of the infinitude of this material universe, one is this very actual universe experiencing itself in all its magnificence as a sensate and reflective human being. It is all possible.
RESPONDENT: I will paraphrase what has preceded. You have discussed the mediocrity of the common human condition. RICHARD: No, it is not just mediocrity that is the problem with the Human Condition ... it is downright dangerous. There have been 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone. There is nothing mediocre about that ... it is atrocious. RESPONDENT: [You have discussed] sadness, no real meaning, seeking pleasure to distract ourselves from our misery, etc. RICHARD: Well, I certainly write about sadness and about finding ‘The Meaning To Life’ ... but I cannot envision myself ever bagging pleasure. It is such a delight to be alive. RESPONDENT: You have posited a ‘new paradigm’ in which sorrow and malice end and one experiences peace on earth in ‘this lifetime’. (I think we agree that ‘this’ and ‘lifetime’ – when put together – are redundant(?). RICHARD: You are a funny fellow ... but I will roll along with this. Let us do it your way. Viz.: ‘One experiences peace on earth in lifetime’. Hmm ... what do you think? RESPONDENT: Are you pointing out that peace is, and we can tune into it/resonate as it if we drop the ‘noise’ of our ‘separate’ selves? RICHARD: Yes ... peace-on-earth is already always here now. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul die so thoroughly that the ‘separate self’ is as extinct as the dodo but with no skeletal remains ... then this peace becomes apparent. One does not have to search for it ... just cease to ‘be’ and as this flesh and blood body only one is the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe personified. RESPONDENT: It is no good relying on the dead conceptual tools others have created based on prejudice and conditioning. Let us stay aware that the ‘instinctual’ passions also include all human possibility – including the awakening of a totally different way of meeting life. The mindset that looks down on instinct and posits a way of being beyond them is creating a wholly unnecessary division in which the innate intelligence of the instinct is unacknowledged and the karmic results of conditioning and choice are (falsely) pinned on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Except what you call the ‘innate intelligence of the instincts’ is busily killing people ... 160,000,000 million in wars this century alone. As for ‘karmic results’ ... I do not believe in that Eastern mystical twaddle. RESPONDENT: Man is the only primate (or animal for that matter) which kills his own species. RICHARD: Not so ... only recently I was watching a National Geographic programme on television about gorillas in Africa. They not only killed their cousins but all tucked in and had a feast of the flesh. Other species also kill their own. [Editor’s Note: The ‘National Geographic’ programme was about chimpanzees and not gorillas] RESPONDENT: We had perhaps better consider looking at the ability man has developed to conceptually divide from communion with the Whole as root of man’s [divisive] disease of ‘self’ and ‘other’ rather than blame it on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Why? That approach has been tried for thousands of years ... and it just has not worked. You are talking about re-trying the ‘Tried and True’ ... which is the ‘tried and failed’. There is as much suffering now as then. RESPONDENT: Finally, there is no such thing as ‘blind’ Nature. Nature exists as us, and if we do not see that nature is not blind through the multitude of ‘outer’ evidence, we cannot deny that nature sees through us (though perhaps far too myopically). RICHARD: Hmm ... look, if you think it is important for me to understand this sentence then perhaps you could re-write it in a way that makes sense? Does this ‘Nature’ need an optometrist? You did claim (above) that nature has an ‘innate intelligence’ yet now you are saying it is ‘myopic’ ... and I cannot comprehend how a ‘myopic intelligence’ is going to set one free of the Human Condition. Do you actually know ... or are you making this up as you write? RESPONDENT: First, no I do not pretend to know a method for curing the human race. Though that may be a good place for us to end this, let me try to re-write the above in a way that you will understand what I am pointing out. Just as one can not deny the Earth is a living being due to the fact that it has grass and other things growing all over its surface, it would be foolish to claim nature is not conscious given that we, and a multitude of other life-forms, are in fact conscious. Nature is ‘myopic’ when she looks through the perspective of the human consciousness that is making ‘much ado’ all over this planet. We humans have existed all of a nano-second (if that long) in the ‘grand scheme of things’ and yet we think we are IT. Rather tragic and humorous, in my opinion. Now, if we can grow out of our infancy, and tune into our potential ‘transformation’, then nature may no longer need an optometrist for her myopic mutation (aka: ‘humans’). Otherwise, nature might be better off scrapping the project so that humans can give way to some other (potentially) less-aggressive being. RICHARD: Yet all sentient beings are a product of nature. Nature endows all sentient beings with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, right? You are suggesting that this nature might be better of scrapping human beings for some other ‘less aggressive’ being. Yet it was nature that made human beings aggressive in the first place. Do you see the circular nature of what you are saying? RESPONDENT: I guess it is literally in our hands. RICHARD: Aye ... waiting for nature to scrap its project might not be the most appropriate way to live this peace-on-earth that is already always here now. RESPONDENT: Do you truly live the peace which you say? (and I hope you’ll understand the healthy scepticism I maintain given that anyone with a little imagination can start playing the enlightened Guru game). RICHARD: Be as sceptical as you wish ... I am quite used to it after all these years. However, to clarify the issue: I am no Guru because this actual freedom I talk of lies beyond enlightenment. To become enlightened one’s ego dies. To go beyond enlightenment one’s soul dies. Then one is here on earth as this flesh and blood body only. No identity whatsoever. None of that ‘I am God’ or ‘I am The Supreme’ or ‘I am The Absolute’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ or ‘I am That’ or whatever. I am a fellow human being who has successfully eliminated ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. RESPONDENT: Do you feel we can will our way into this transformation you hint at, or do we get it by grace? RICHARD: Not by ‘grace’ no ... that requires belief in an imaginary god. This is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself. RESPONDENT: To what do you attribute your finding this transformation? Can it be cultivated? RICHARD: In 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. In that four hours I lived the peace-on-earth that is already always here now ... and I saw that ‘I’ (an emotional-mental construct) was standing in the way of this actual freedom being apparent twenty four hours of the day. I knew that I would revert to normal ... and that ‘I’ would do whatever to live this perfection in this life-time. Once experienced – and remembered – it is impossible to settle for second-best. With a pure intent – born out of the PCE – patience and perseverance and diligence and application were ‘my’ forte. ‘I’ set out to undo this emotional-mental construct. This separative ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ – a psychological and psychic identity – is forever alienated from one’s body and from the world of people, things and events. To end the separative social identity, ‘I’ whittled away at all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. ‘I’ examined all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. ‘I’ become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what ‘I’ found myself to be ... a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion. As ‘mature adult’, ‘I’ was actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological ‘ego’ overlaying a psychic ‘being’. Then what ‘I’ did, voluntarily and willingly, was to press the button which precipitated an – oft-times alarming but always thrilling – momentum that resulted in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What ‘I’ did was that ‘I’ dedicated myself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and intentionally sacrificed ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entity residing inside this body – ‘I’ was gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ was what ‘I’ held most dear. The extinction of identity – both an ego death and a soul death – is a welcome release into actuality. I am finally here. I discover that I have always been here ... I have never been anywhere else for there is nowhere else ... except illusion and into delusion. The ‘everyday reality’ and the ‘Greater Reality’ had their existence only in ‘my’ fertile imagination. Only this, the actual world, genuinely exists. This exquisite surprise brings with it delightful relief at the moment of mutation ... life is perfect after all. But, then again, has one not suspected this to be so all along? At the moment of freedom from the Human Condition there is a clear sense of ‘I have always known this’. Doubt is banished forever ... no more verification is required. All is self-evidently pure and perfect. Everything is indeed well. It is the greatest gift one can bestow upon oneself and others.
RESPONDENT: You have posited a ‘new paradigm’ in which sorrow and malice end and one experiences peace on earth in ‘this lifetime’. (I think we agree that ‘this’ and ‘lifetime’ – when put together – are redundant(?). RICHARD: You are a funny fellow ... but I will roll along with this. Let us do it your way. Viz.: ‘One experiences peace on earth in lifetime’. Hmm ... what do you think? RESPONDENT: I think that you are a funny fellow too. Why not simply say: ‘One experiences peace’? RICHARD: Because it is the already always existing peace that is here on this physical earth and not in some mystical transcendental realm ... that is why. And because it is now in this life-time only and not after physical death in some spurious after-life ... that is why. If I just say ‘one experiences peace’ then people will automatically assume that I am referring to the ‘Tried and True’ peace which is anywhere but here in space and anywhen but now in time. They rattle on about peace that is ‘Timeless and ‘Spaceless’ and ‘Unborn and ‘Undying’ and ‘Formless’ and so on and so on. RESPONDENT: Are you pointing out that peace is, and we can tune into it/resonate as it if we drop the ‘noise’ of our ‘separate’ selves? RICHARD: Yes ... peace-on-earth is already always here now. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul die so thoroughly that the ‘separate self’ is as extinct as the dodo but with no skeletal remains ... then this peace becomes apparent. One does not have to search for it ... just cease to ‘be’ and as this flesh and blood body only one is the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe personified. RESPONDENT: It is no good relying on the dead conceptual tools others have created based on prejudice and conditioning. Let us stay aware that the ‘instinctual’ passions also include all human possibility – including the awakening of a totally different way of meeting life. The mindset that looks down on instinct and posits a way of being beyond them is creating a wholly unnecessary division in which the innate intelligence of the instinct is unacknowledged and the karmic results of conditioning and choice are (falsely) pinned on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Except what you call the ‘innate intelligence of the instincts’ is busily killing people ... 160,000,000 million in wars this century alone. As for ‘karmic results’ ... I do not believe in that Eastern mystical twaddle. RESPONDENT: Perhaps I could have used a better word, but perhaps you could have looked at my intended meaning as well (or do you propose I explore what you say but that you need not bother to explore what I have to say?) RICHARD: Pardon me for breathing ... but I did explore your proposal. You were running the line that blind nature was not blind and was only myopic as human beings. You posited that Eastern spiritual fantasy of ‘Karma’ as being the cause of suffering and were trying to persuade me that instincts are nature’s ‘innate intelligence’ that would lead to the ‘awakening of a totally different way of meeting life’. RESPONDENT: Karma means causation. Responsibility. If one drives down the highway on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, what results is their karma (aka: responsibility/ doing) I do not mean to imply former lives. RICHARD: If you are talking about being responsible when driving down a highway then would it not be better to say so instead of dragging in some Eastern religious term? Because karma is not at all what you say it is ... it is the force generated by a person’s actions and is believed to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence. Karma is the influence of an individual’s past actions on his future lives, or reincarnations and thus what one does in this present life will have its effect in the next life. The doctrine of karma reflects the Hindu conviction that this life is but one in a chain of lives (samsara) and that it is determined by a human’s actions in a previous life. This is accepted as a law of nature and is not open to further discussion. The moral energy of a particular act is preserved and fructifies automatically in the next life, where it shows up in one’s class, nature, disposition, and character. The process is mechanical, and no interference by God is admitted, except by some of the later and more extreme theists. Thus the law of karma explains the inequalities that are observed among creatures. In the course of the chain of lives, an individual can perfect himself, until he reaches the eminence of the god Brahma himself, or he can degrade himself in such an evil way that he is reborn as an animal. Not only do past acts influence the circumstances of the next life, they also determine one’s happiness or unhappiness in the hereafter between lives, where he will spend a time in either one of the heavens or one of the hells until the fruits of his karma have been all but consumed and the remainder creates a new life for him. Buddhism and Jainism incorporated doctrines of karma as part of their common Indian legacy. The Buddhists interpret it strictly in terms of ethical cause and effect. In Jainism, karma is regarded not as a process but as a fine particulate substance that produces the universal chain of cause and effect ... of birth and death and rebirth. Rebirth – also called transmigration or metempsychosis – in both religion and philosophy refers to the rebirth of the soul in one or more successive existences, which may be human, animal, or, in some instances, vegetable. While belief in reincarnation is most characteristic of Asian religions and philosophies, it also appears in the religious and philosophical thought of primitive religions, in some ancient Middle Eastern religions (Orphism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism) as well as in such modern religious movements as theosophy. In primitive religions, belief in multiple souls is common. The soul is frequently viewed as capable of leaving the body through the mouth or nostrils and of being reborn, for example, as a bird, butterfly, or insect. The Venda of southern Africa believe that, when a person dies, the soul stays near the grave for a short time and then seeks a new resting place or another body ... human, mammalian, or reptilian. Among the ancient Greeks Orphism held that a pre-existent soul survives bodily death and is later reincarnated in a human or other mammalian body, eventually receiving release from the cycle of birth and death and regaining its former pure state. Mr. Plato believed in an immortal soul that participates in frequent incarnations. The major religions that hold a belief in reincarnation – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism – all hold in common the doctrine of karma. In Hinduism the process of birth and rebirth – transmigration of souls – is endless until one achieves Moksha, or salvation, by realising the truth that liberates ... that the individual soul (Atman) and the absolute soul (Brahman) are one. Thus, one can escape from the wheel of birth and rebirth (samsara). Jainism, reflecting a belief in an absolute soul, holds that karma is affected in its density by the deeds that a person does. Thus, the burden of the old karma is added to the new karma that is acquired during the next existence until the soul frees itself by religious disciplines, especially by ahimsa (‘non-violence’), and rises to the place of liberated souls at the top of the universe. Although Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging, substantial soul, it holds to a belief in the transmigration of the karma of souls. A complex of psycho-physical elements and states changing from moment to moment, the soul, with its five skandhas (‘groups of elements’ as in body, sensations, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness) ceases to exist; but the karma of the deceased survives and becomes a vijñana (‘germ of consciousness’) in the womb of a mother. This vijñana is that aspect of the soul reincarnated in a new individual. By gaining a state of complete passiveness through discipline and meditation, one can leave the wheel of birth and rebirth and achieve nirvana, the state of the extinction of desires. Sikhism teaches a doctrine of reincarnation based on the Hindu view but in addition holds that, after the Last Judgment, souls – which have been reincarnated in several existences – will be absorbed in God. Central to the belief in reincarnation is Punna (‘merit’) which is a primary attribute sought by Buddhists, both monks and laymen, in order to build up a better karma (the cumulative consequences of deeds) and thus to achieve a more favourable future rebirth. The concept is particularly stressed in Theravada tradition of South East Asia. Punna can be acquired through dana (‘giving’, such as offering food and robes to monks or donating a temple or monastery); sila (the keeping of the moral precepts); and bhavana (the practice of meditation). Merit can also be transferred from one being to another. This is a central feature of the Mahayana schools, in which the ideal Buddhist is the bodhisattva (‘Buddha-to-be’), who dedicates himself to the service of others and transfers merit from his own inexhaustible store to benefit others. RESPONDENT: Man is the only primate (or animal for that matter) which kills his own species. RICHARD: Not so ... only recently I was watching a National Geographic programme on television about gorillas in Africa. They not only killed their cousins but all tucked in and had a feast of the flesh. Other species also kill their own. [Editor’s Note: The ‘National Geographic’ programme was about chimpanzees and not gorillas] RESPONDENT: No other species kills their own like humans do. RICHARD: Stating the obvious does not take away from the fact that you were holding beliefs about primates and animals that do not accord with actuality. Does this give you pause to re-consider other truths that you hold? RESPONDENT: We had perhaps better consider looking at the ability man has developed to conceptually divide from communion with the Whole as root of man’s [divisive] disease of ‘self’ and ‘other’ rather than blame it on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Why? That approach has been tried for thousands of years ... and it just has not worked. You are talking about re-trying the ‘Tried and True’ ... which is the ‘tried and failed’. There is as much suffering now as then. RESPONDENT: Finally, there is no such thing as ‘blind’ Nature. Nature exists as us, and if we do not see that nature is not blind through the multitude of ‘outer’ evidence, we cannot deny that nature sees through us (though perhaps far too myopically). RICHARD: Hmm ... look, if you think it is important for me to understand this sentence then perhaps you could re-write it in a way that makes sense? Does this ‘Nature’ need an optometrist? You did claim (above) that nature has an ‘innate intelligence’ yet now you are saying it is ‘myopic’ ... and I cannot comprehend how a ‘myopic intelligence’ is going to set one free of the Human Condition. Do you actually know ... or are you making this up as you write? RESPONDENT: First, no I do not pretend to know a method for curing the human race. Though that may be a good place for us to end this, let me try to re-write the above in a way that you will understand what I am pointing out. Just as one can not deny the Earth is a living being due to the fact that it has grass and other things growing all over its surface, it would be foolish to claim nature is not conscious given that we, and a multitude of other life-forms, are in fact conscious. Nature is ‘myopic’ when she looks through the perspective of the human consciousness that is making ‘much ado’ all over this planet. We humans have existed all of a nano-second (if that long) in the ‘grand scheme of things’ and yet we think we are IT. Rather tragic and humorous, in my opinion. Now, if we can grow out of our infancy, and tune into our potential ‘transformation’, then nature may no longer need an optometrist for her myopic mutation (aka: ‘humans’). Otherwise, nature might be better off scrapping the project so that humans can give way to some other (potentially) less-aggressive being. RICHARD: Yet all sentient beings are a product of nature. Nature endows all sentient beings with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, right? You are suggesting that this nature might be better of scrapping human beings for some other ‘less aggressive’ being. Yet it was nature that made human beings aggressive in the first place. Do you see the circular nature of what you are saying? RESPONDENT: I am not so sure. Fright is the intelligent response to danger. RICHARD: Not so ... fright is the instinctual reaction to danger. You are still believing that instincts are intelligent. Instincts are killing people. RESPONDENT: Crossing an urban multi-lane highway should awaken fright (and thus the increased awareness and energy). RICHARD: I cross highways much better these days than when adrenaline was pumped through my body and dictating my choices. RESPONDENT: Fear is seen here as the result of thought projecting a future occurrence through an image. Fear is only experienced by a divided consciousness. I do not see that plants or animals experience fear in the way we do. (In this sense I don’t think that ‘consider the lilies’ fits your ‘the tried and true’ refrain.) RICHARD: Plants do not experience fear ... only sentient beings do. Animals are sentient beings and are run by fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Comparing flora to fauna – that humans should live the way lilies live – is a good example of the silliness of the ‘Tried and True’ wisdom. RESPONDENT: Desire is likewise seen here as the result of thought and its images. RICHARD: Yet desire is affective ... meanwhile thought cops the blame. RESPONDENT: The innate intelligence of the body responds to nutritional depletion with a call for food. RICHARD: Indeed ... it is this simple. RESPONDENT: Thought mimics this quest for biological homeostasis by seeking a pseudo psychological homeostasis through images. Instead of being silent when this game does not turn out as planned, thought then cries in frustration over its dis-ease (until it musters enough courage to [again] chase a new image). RICHARD: Yes ... an ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – being psychological and psychic entities – could not possibly require a material substance called food. It is very obvious. RESPONDENT: I guess it is literally in our hands. RICHARD: Aye ... waiting for nature to scrap its project might not be the most appropriate way to live this peace-on-earth that is already always here now. RESPONDENT: Do you truly live the peace which you say? (and I hope you’ll understand the healthy scepticism I maintain given that anyone with a little imagination can start playing the enlightened Guru game). RICHARD: Be as sceptical as you wish ... I am quite used to it after all these years. However, to clarify the issue: I am no Guru because this actual freedom I talk of lies beyond enlightenment. To become enlightened one’s ego dies. To go beyond enlightenment one’s soul dies. Then one is here on earth as this flesh and blood body only. No identity whatsoever. None of that ‘I am God’ or ‘I am The Supreme’ or ‘I am The Absolute’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ or ‘I am That’ or whatever. I am a fellow human being who has successfully eliminated ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul. RESPONDENT: Do you feel we can will our way into this transformation you hint at, or do we get it by grace? RICHARD: Not by ‘grace’ no ... that requires belief in an imaginary god. This is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself. RESPONDENT: To what do you attribute your finding this transformation? Can it be cultivated? RICHARD: In 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. In that four hours I lived the peace-on-earth that is already always here now ... and I saw that ‘I’ (an emotional-mental construct) was standing in the way of this actual freedom being apparent twenty four hours of the day. I knew that I would revert to normal ... and that ‘I’ would do whatever to live this perfection in this life-time. Once experienced – and remembered – it is impossible to settle for second-best. With a pure intent – born out of the PCE – patience and perseverance and diligence and application were ‘my’ forte. ‘I’ set out to undo this emotional-mental construct. This separative ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ – a psychological and psychic identity – is forever alienated from one’s body and from the world of people, things and events. To end the separative social identity, ‘I’ whittled away at all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. ‘I’ examined all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. ‘I’ become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what ‘I’ found myself to be ... a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion. As ‘mature adult’, ‘I’ was actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological ‘ego’ overlaying a psychic ‘being’. Then what ‘I’ did, voluntarily and willingly, was to press the button which precipitated an – oft-times alarming but always thrilling – momentum that resulted in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What ‘I’ did was that ‘I’ dedicated myself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and intentionally sacrificed ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entity residing inside this body – ‘I’ was gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ was what ‘I’ held most dear. The extinction of identity – both an ego death and a soul death – is a welcome release into actuality. I am finally here. I discover that I have always been here ... I have never been anywhere else for there is nowhere else ... except illusion and into delusion. The ‘everyday reality’ and the ‘Greater Reality’ had their existence only in ‘my’ fertile imagination. Only this, the actual world, genuinely exists. This exquisite surprise brings with it delightful relief at the moment of mutation ... life is perfect after all. But, then again, has one not suspected this to be so all along? At the moment of freedom from the Human Condition there is a clear sense of ‘I have always known this’. Doubt is banished forever ... no more verification is required. All is self-evidently pure and perfect. Everything is indeed well. It is the greatest gift one can bestow upon oneself and others. RESPONDENT: What I am asking is what do you say caused your transformation/PCE experience to occur? Was it the result of delving deeply into a problem and then staying with it? RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extirpation – annihilation, expunction, extinction – ensures peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Was it sought? RICHARD: Yes. ... with all of ‘my’ being. RESPONDENT: Was it uninvited (which is what I meant by ‘grace’)? RICHARD: Then why not say ‘uninvited’ ... because the word ‘grace’ means unmerited divine assistance given to a human being for their regeneration or sanctification ... it is a virtue coming from God resulting in a state of sanctification. It is the spontaneous gift of the divine favour in the salvation of sinners, and the divine influence operating in humans for their regeneration. The English word ‘grace’ is the usual translation for the Greek ‘charis’ which occurs in the New Testament about 150 times. Although the word must sometimes be translated in other ways, the fundamental meaning in the New Testament and in subsequent theological usage is that contained in the Letter of Paul to Titus: ‘For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men’ (2:11). From the time of the early church, Christian theologians have developed and clarified the biblical concept of grace. The word grace is the central subject of three great theological controversies: (1) that of the nature of human depravity and regeneration, (2) that of the relation between grace and free will and, (3) that of the ‘means of grace’ ... whether the efficacy of the sacraments as channels of the divine grace is dependent on good works performed or dependent on the faith of the recipient. Christian orthodoxy has taught that the initiative in the relationship of grace between God and man is always on the side of God. Once God has granted this ‘first grace’, however, man does have a response to give and a responsibility for the continuance of the relationship. Although the ideas of grace and of merit are mutually exclusive, neither Augustine nor the Protestant defenders of the principle of justification by ‘grace alone’ could avoid the question of reward of merit in the relationship of grace. In fact, some passages of the New Testament seem to use charis for ‘reward’. The Roman Catholic theology of grace stresses the habitual character of the life created by the gift of grace and therefore ascribes merit to obedience to the law of God; classical Protestantism spoke of a cooperating grace after conversion as a way of including man’s activity in the life of grace, but it avoided language that would suggest that man earns something by his obedience in grace. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestants agree that grace is conferred through the sacraments, ‘the means of grace’. Reformed and Free Church Protestantism, however, has not bound grace as closely to the sacraments as have Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans. Baptists speak of ordinances rather than of sacraments and – as do evangelical Christians and those in the Reformed and Free Church traditions generally – insist that participation in grace occurs on the occasion of personal faith and not at all by sacramental observance. Therefore ‘grace’ requires belief in an imaginary god. An actual freedom is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself.
RESPONDENT: Let us stay aware that the ‘instinctual’ passions also include all human possibility – including the awakening of a totally different way of meeting life. The mindset that looks down on instinct and posits a way of being beyond them is creating a wholly unnecessary division in which the innate intelligence of the instinct is unacknowledged and the karmic results of conditioning and choice are (falsely) pinned on ‘instinct’. RICHARD: Except what you call the ‘innate intelligence of the instincts’ is busily killing people ... 160,000,000 million in wars this century alone. As for ‘karmic results’ ... I do not believe in that Eastern mystical twaddle. RESPONDENT: Perhaps I could have used a better word, but perhaps you could have looked at my intended meaning as well (or do you propose I explore what you say but that you need not bother to explore what I have to say?) RICHARD: Pardon me for breathing ... but I did explore your proposal. You were running the line that blind nature was not blind and was only myopic as human beings. You posited that Eastern spiritual fantasy of ‘Karma’ as being the cause of suffering and were trying to persuade me that instincts are nature’s ‘innate intelligence’ that would lead to the ‘awakening of a totally different way of meeting life’. RESPONDENT: Karma means causation. Responsibility. If one drives down the highway on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, what results is their karma (aka: responsibility/ doing) I do not mean to imply former lives. RICHARD: If you are talking about being responsible when driving down a highway then would it not be better to say so instead of dragging in some Eastern religious term? Because karma is not at all what you say it is ... it is the force generated by a person’s actions and is believed to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence. Karma is the influence of an individual’s past actions on his future lives, or reincarnations and thus what one does in this present life will have its effect in the next life. RESPONDENT: Let us stick to this life. RICHARD: Well now, I have been doing nothing else ... it was you who bought in the topic ‘karmic results’ and not me. I have only spoken of peace-on-earth as being here at this place in infinite space and now at this moment in eternal time ... in this lifetime. In fact you objected to me so specific, remember? Viz.:
RESPONDENT: What one does in the present moment, obviously effects what one ‘incarnates’ as in the next moment. RICHARD: Why do you put the word < incarnates > in quotes for? If it was the appropriate word to use it would stand on its own merits. The fact that you have to do so indicates that you are making a mystical word do something it is not intended to do. RESPONDENT: One ends conflict now, or suffering has continuation through time. RICHARD: It is possible to be free of the Human Condition in this life you are living now. In fact, if you do not become free of the Human Condition in this life you never will. Physical death is the end. Finish. Not that it matters at all then as physical death is oblivion. RESPONDENT: Now is key. Death cuts the chain. RICHARD: The ending of identity – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – can only happen now at this moment in eternal time and here at this place in infinite space ... yes. This death, however, does not ‘cut the chain’ ... it means the end of the chain. RESPONDENT: Future lives in a physical sense is only a way of (falsely) procrastinating one’s responsibility. RICHARD: If future lives are a false procrastination ... then what is a true procrastination? RESPONDENT: Often, the gist of a ‘religious’ belief is true, but it gets ‘organised’ into folly. RICHARD: Oh? Could you give an example? The gist of the Christian religion is that a mythical saviour hero came from an imaginary god – and in some unexplained way was that imaginary god even though all the while talking to him – and preached re-hashes of scriptural injunctions plus some folk-lore homilies for three years. He performed some trite miracles – for those that believe such things – which were puny things like turning water into wine at a family wedding (anyone outside the family has to buy wine) and giving a crowd one meal (never mind the starving millions) and curing a few local people’s blindness (not every blind person in the world) ... instead of eradicating sorrow and malice from a single person. (Malice and sorrow is the real issue confronting human beings. Hundreds of millions of people have been killed in wars ... and this hero walks across a lake to help his pals out on a fishing boat. Big deal, eh?) He died a fake death on a stake, spent three days in a mythical underworld, came back to ‘life’ and maybe forty days later bodily rose through the clouds into a mythical heaven. In some obscure way, if one believes and has faith that this fable figure ‘died’ for our sins, we would be redeemed from what two other fable figures set in practice for all humankind in the mythical beginning of what is eternal time and infinite space. Have I conveyed the gist accurately? Because the miracles and the death and resurrection are central to Christianity ... take them out and it all amounts to nothing. Would you like to give me the gist of Islam in a like manner? Judaism? Buddhism? Hinduism? Taoism? You will find that nothing of religion was ‘organised into folly’ ... it was already sick. RESPONDENT: Your original experience might suffer the same fate (has it?). RICHARD: But there is no religiosity or spirituality or mysticism or metaphysicality in me whatsoever. I am down-to-earth and matter-of-fact. How could facts and actuality ever be misconstrued? RESPONDENT: Man is the only primate (or animal for that matter) which kills his own species. RICHARD: Not so ... only recently I was watching a National Geographic programme on television about gorillas in Africa. They not only killed their cousins but all tucked in and had a feast of the flesh. Other species also kill their own. [Editor’s Note: The ‘National Geographic’ programme was about chimpanzees and not gorillas] RESPONDENT: No other species kills their own like humans do. RICHARD: Stating the obvious does not take away from the fact that you were holding beliefs about primates that do not accord with actuality. Does this give you pause to re-consider other truths you hold. RESPONDENT: Truth cannot be held. RICHARD: Aye ... passionate fantasies and imaginative hallucinations never can be. RESPONDENT: Gorillas are generally gentle creatures. Finding and over-emphasising an exception is not conducive to credibility. RICHARD: Be it far from me to be the one who is constantly correcting you, but the programme I watched said that the gorillas went on a killing spree regularly ... about once a month. The narrator speculated – as narrators are prone to do – that it must be a dietary craving for meat that motivates this behaviour. Nobody, but nobody, seems willing to examine feelings – emotions and passions – which are born out of the instinctual survival passions that all sentient beings are endowed with by blind nature. [Editor’s Note: The ‘National Geographic’ programme was about chimpanzees and not gorillas] RESPONDENT: It is interesting that you cite a fellow primate as an example though. RICHARD: Oh? Why is that? Does it tell you something about my character? Does it give you an insight into the devious
workings of my mind? Does it reveal my deepest, darkest secrets? Okay ... have a good think about it and work it all out as to just what manner of
a person would do such a thing ... and then cast your eye up five sentences of yours and you will see that it was you who first ‘cited a
fellow primate’ and not me. Do you see it? I was merely answering your question. But ... never mind though, you would make a good engineer RESPONDENT: Your views on animals appear to be based on second-hand theories rather than from your observation of them in the real world. RICHARD: I was born and raised on a farm and have had vast experience with animals throughout my life. A short list would have to include the domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens and corellas ... all of which – with the exception of the corellas – I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands. The wild animals would include kangaroos, emus, dingoes, foxes, rabbits, eagles, crows, magpies, pigeons and quail ... all of which – with the exception of the dingoes, foxes, eagles, crows and magpies – I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands (the dingoes, foxes, eagles and crows were killed for their bounty as they were considered pests). Stalking animals made me keenly aware of animal behaviour, whilst raising livestock for a living necessitated an eye for the detail of animals’ daily practice. I made a study of the differences between animals and humans – by reading countless scholarly studies made by enterprising people; by watching many a television program on animal life and by often visiting zoos – because I am vitally interested in life on earth. I observe animal action and behaviour and ascertain from research how an animal is likely to perceive itself and the world. For example: I have seen a dog acting in a way that can only be called pining; I have seen a cat toying with a mouse in a manner that can only be dubbed cruel; I have seen cows ‘spooked’ and then stampede in what must be described as hysteria; I have seen stallions displaying what can only be labelled aggression; I have watched many animals exhibiting what must be specified as fear ... and so on. Only recently a television programme was aired here on chimpanzees about studies made over many, many years of them in their native habitat and I was able to see civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, grief, group ostracism ... and so on. It is easily discerned by those with the eyes to see that animals do not have peace-on-earth. This insistence that the animal state being a natural state and therefore somehow desirable that is held by many people is just nonsense ... I am glad that I am human and that we are living in a civilised society with all that technology can offer. We have already improved on nature so much in the areas of technology, animal breeding and plant cultivation, for instance. There is no reason why we can not continue this fine work of overcoming the limitations imposed by blind nature and eliminate sorrow and malice from ourselves. Then – and only then – will we have global peace-on-earth. * RICHARD: All sentient beings are a product of nature. Nature endows all sentient beings with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, right? You are suggesting that this nature might be better of scrapping human beings for some other ‘less aggressive’ being. Yet it was nature that made human beings aggressive in the first place. Do you see the circular nature of what you are saying? RESPONDENT: I am not so sure. Fright is the intelligent response to danger. RICHARD: Not so ... fright is the instinctual reaction to danger. You are still believing that instincts are intelligent. Instincts are killing people. RESPONDENT: Crossing an urban multi-lane highway should awaken fright (and thus the increased awareness and energy). RICHARD: I cross highways much better these days than when adrenaline was pumped through my body and dictating my choices. RESPONDENT: I meant a 12 lane highway (expressway?) that is generally off-limits to pedestrians, if you wish to push the example. RICHARD: No ... it is you who is wishing to ‘push the example’ not me. And if you meant ‘a 12 lane highway (expressway?) that is generally off-limits to pedestrians’ rather than ‘an urban multi-lane highway’ then why did you not say so? But, it is okay by me ... I see that you like to change your mind. Now, I gather that you want me to cross a 12 lane highway – or is it an expressway – that I am forbidden by law to go on ... in order to see if I can get the adrenaline pumping? Is that it? RESPONDENT: Take the Dan Ryan in Chicago. RICHARD: I have never met Dan Ryan ... and I have never been to Chicago. I live in Australia. RESPONDENT: Fright is what keeps one alive in very dangerous places. RICHARD: Aye ... that is why all sentient beings – and not plants – are endowed by blind nature with fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... it is called the survival instinct. However, the very thing that ensures survival of the species – and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned – is killing people. Now, blind nature does not care about that ... but we humans do. The question is: shall we improve on blind nature, in this respect, just as we have already improved on nature so much in the areas of technology, animal breeding and plant cultivation, for instance. There is no reason why we can not continue this fine work of overcoming the limitations imposed by blind nature and eliminate sorrow and malice from ourselves. Then – and only then – will we have global peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: It is resistance to fright that paralyses one with fear through conceptual separation. RICHARD: Not so ... what paralyses is that fear produces a ‘fight or flight’ instinct and the muscles are charged with adrenaline ready for either action. However, it is up to you to make the decision whether to advance or flee ... and it is indecision that causes the muscles to lock tight. It is a classic example of panic ... two conflicting choices cancelling each other out creates freezing up. You will find this in any psychiatric text-book. RESPONDENT: Fear is seen here as the result of thought projecting a future occurrence through an image. Fear is only experienced by a divided consciousness. I do not see that plants or animals experience fear in the way we do. (In this sense I don’t think that ‘consider the lilies’ fits your ‘the tried and true’ refrain.) RICHARD: Plants do not experience fear ... only sentient beings do. Animals are sentient beings and are run by fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Comparing flora to fauna – that humans should live the way lilies live – is a good example of the silliness of the ‘Tried and True’ wisdom. RESPONDENT: Plants are sentient beings. The fact is self-evident. RICHARD: So it is self-evident that plants are capable of perception by the senses, eh? They have that which has sensation or feeling, do they? They are that what feels or is capable of feeling, you say? That they are having the power or function of sensation and are characterised by the exercise of the senses. (The word ‘sentient’ comes from the Latin ‘sentire’ which means ‘feel’ from the Latin ‘sensus’ meaning ‘faculty of feeling’, ‘sensibility’, ‘mode of feeling’ and thus ‘perception’). RESPONDENT: Consider: if a man falls in a field, and there is no tree to hear him, does he make a sound? RICHARD: May I ask? Are you on medication? RESPONDENT: You really must discard the distorting filters of old-fashioned pseudo-scientific theories. RICHARD: Who says I have them? RESPONDENT: Why assume plants are not sentient? RICHARD: I do not have to ‘assume’ ... plants are incapable of perception by the senses. They do not have that which has sensation or feeling. They are not that which feels or is capable of feeling. They do not have the power or function of sensation and are not characterised by the exercise of the senses. (The word ‘sentient’ comes from the Latin ‘sentire’ which means ‘feel’ from the Latin ‘sensus’ meaning ‘faculty of feeling’, ‘sensibility’, ‘mode of feeling’ and thus ‘perception’). RESPONDENT: How does a plant feel where the light is? RICHARD: It does not ‘feel’ as with feelings ... it is by photochemical reaction – a chemical reaction initiated by light – which will not proceed in the absence of light. Another important photochemical reaction is photosynthesis, in which the green plants produce carbohydrates and oxygen by the action of light on carbon dioxide and water. RESPONDENT: Why does it respond to music? RICHARD: Methinks I will let you sort that out ... you would only get offended again if I did, anyway. RESPONDENT: Do you subscribe to a ‘mechanistic universe’ theory? RICHARD: No ... I am an actualist. RESPONDENT: Do you feel we can will our way into this transformation you hint at, or do we get it by grace? RICHARD: Not by ‘grace’ no ... that requires belief in an imaginary god. This is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself. RESPONDENT: Was it uninvited (which is what I meant by ‘grace’)? RICHARD: Then why not say ‘uninvited’ ... because the word ‘grace’ means unmerited divine assistance given to a human being for their regeneration or sanctification ... it is a virtue coming from a god resulting in a state of sanctification. It is the spontaneous gift of the divine favour in the salvation of sinners, and the divine influence operating in humans for their regeneration. Therefore grace requires belief in an imaginary god. An actual freedom is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself. RESPONDENT: Nothing will set you free except getting out of your own way. RICHARD: Not so ... it is not a matter of ‘getting out of your own way’ at all. To put it bluntly: ‘you’ in ‘your’ totality, who are but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This extinction is an irrevocable event that eliminates the psyche itself. There will be no ‘being’ at all. RESPONDENT: Thus ‘helping’ others implies clearing the ‘way’ – not obscuring it. RICHARD: If you say so ... I have my own methods, though. Is that all right with you? RESPONDENT: Your interpretations of my use of ‘karmic’ and ‘grace’ lead me to wonder if you only associate traditional (tried and true) meanings to words rather than looking more deeply? RICHARD: They were not my ‘interpretations’ at all ... they were straight out of the ‘Oxford Concise Dictionary’ and the ‘Britannica Encyclopaedia’. Blame some academics in the United Kingdom for failing to consult with you first about the ‘deeper meanings’ to those words ... not me. RESPONDENT: Mistaking the label for the thing labelled (Krishnamurti’s ‘the description is not the described’) is like trying to eat a menu instead of what it re-presents. RICHARD: As that is virtually a straight quote out of the ‘Krishnamurti Primer’; Chapter Three: Page Thirty Nine ... all you are doing here is demonstrating that you can rote-remember. RESPONDENT: When I use grace I am pointing to the gist of that word. RICHARD: Well, you had better write to those professors in London and tell them the ‘gist of the word’, eh? RESPONDENT: I do not agree with your belief (dogma?) that grace necessitates ‘God’. RICHARD: It is so fascinating corresponding with you ... this rewrite you are doing of the dictionaries is obviously going to revolutionise humanity’s ideas about itself.
RICHARD (to Respondent No. 14): Your use of sophistry (what I call ducking and weaving and slipping and slithering) to
avoid having the apt description ‘pacifist’ applied to your modus operandi has already been covered in our previous conversation. RESPONDENT: If I may interject, truth is like that is it not? RICHARD: Aye ... the day-to-day ‘truth’ is pretty well whatever anyone wants to make it be – and if the other buys that truth it is mutual masturbation – and the eternal ‘Truth’, being ineffable, is but ‘my will be done in heaven as here on earth’. RESPONDENT: Descriptions do not apply to the actual, actual world like they do to the actual conceived (by thought) world – do they? RICHARD: May I suggest? Publish this rewrite of the dictionaries, that you are busy with, as soon as possible so that others can know what you mean? In the meanwhile, the word ‘actual’ means: ‘already occurring; existing as factually true; as in act; deed’ ... which means physically existing here on earth, visible to the senses. Whereas the word ‘fantasy’, being derived from ‘phantasy’ means: ‘phantom made visible by imagination’. ... and etymologically, the word ‘believe’ means: ‘fervently wishing to be factually true’. I only mention this because a world ‘conceived (by thought)’ can never be actual. RESPONDENT: Perhaps No. 14 is a little too immersed in the actual, actual world for your classification net(s)? RICHARD: If I may point out? A word’s meaning, as per dictionary definition, foreordains that any word I use cannot be my ‘classification net(s)’. It is just that common usage has blurred the distinction betwixt fact and belief so much so that anyone using sufficient sophistry can get away with anything at all and still be considered wise these days. RESPONDENT: By the way, ‘blind forces of nature’ is only the illegitimate child of a ‘divided from its source’ mentality. RICHARD: With this ‘source’ that you speak of being nature itself (and definitely not ‘blind nature’ as you make clear) – and by you being able to so categorically state this ‘illegitimate child’ metaphor as being factual – am I to take it that you are not ‘divided from your source’? Which means that, as nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’, then savagery, brutality and violence is what your nature is, eh? Allow me to post but a few observations made by some observant peoples: • ‘A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city’. (Mr. P. D. James (b. 1920), ‘Devices and Desires’, chapter. 40 1989).
RICHARD to No. 14: Your use of sophistry (what I call ducking and weaving and slipping and slithering) to avoid having the
apt description ‘pacifist’ applied to your modus operandi has already been covered in our previous conversation. RESPONDENT: If I may interject, truth is like that is it not? RICHARD: Aye ... the day-to-day ‘truth’ is pretty well whatever anyone wants to make it be – and if the other buys that truth it is mutual masturbation – and the eternal ‘Truth’, being ineffable, is but ‘my will be done in heaven as here on earth’. RESPONDENT: What? RICHARD: If the calentural eternal ‘Truth’ is indeed ineffable (because it is unknowable) then those who believe in its existence have to attribute to it their imaginings (otherwise it does not exist for them). Therefore they project impossible qualities onto ‘IT’ ... impossible because those imagined qualities are born out of their misunderstandings of earthly life. And they do misunderstand earthly life because if they did not misunderstand earthly life they would not have to believe that the eternal ‘Truth’, with its un-real qualities, is real. Which is why I wrote that the eternal ‘Truth’ is nothing other than ‘my will be done in heaven as here on earth’.
* RESPONDENT: Descriptions do not apply to the actual, actual world like they do to the actual conceived (by thought) world – do they? RICHARD: May I suggest? Publish this rewrite of the dictionaries, that you are busy with, as soon as possible so that others can know what you mean? In the meanwhile, the word ‘actual’ means: ‘already occurring; existing as factually true; as in act; deed’ ... which means physically existing here on earth, visible to the senses. RESPONDENT: But I do each time I write ... it is like a river though: always changing (which is very convenient for a sophistry wizard like myself. LOL). Do you believe in the little man up in the control room of the brain who receives all the incoming data from the senses and then plans, predicts/orchestrates his reactions to Life? If so, LOL). RICHARD: I have no intuitive or imaginative faculties whatsoever ... that all disappeared in 1992. I am incapable of the activity of believing ... let alone believing in something.
* RICHARD: Whereas the word ‘fantasy’, being derived from ‘phantasy’ means: ‘phantom made visible by imagination’ . ... and etymologically, the word ‘believe’ means: ‘fervently wishing to be factually true’. I only mention this because a world ‘conceived (by thought)’ can never be actual. RESPONDENT: Well it (the thought conceived world) is actual in the sense that it is superimposed onto the actual world and thus actually divides one (conceptually) from the actual world. RICHARD: Given that a conceptual world is not the actual world (being a fantasy) to then superimpose a conceptual world onto the actual world cannot be actual in the sense that it ‘actually divides one (conceptually) from the actual world’ because the superimposition renders the actual world invisible. Thus you are being divided (conceptually) from a conceptualised actual world and not from the actual world itself. Therefore, it is not actually a separation from the actual world at all but a conception of being actually divided (conceptually) from the conceptually imposed superimposition. Pray tell me ... do you practice detachment?
* RESPONDENT: Perhaps No. 14 is a little too immersed in the actual, actual world for your classification net(s)? RICHARD: If I may point out? A word’s meaning, as per dictionary definition, foreordains that any word I use cannot be my ‘classification net(s)’. It is just that common usage has blurred the distinction betwixt fact and belief so much so that anyone using sufficient sophistry can get away with anything at all and still be considered wise these days. RESPONDENT: If you use a dictionary definition which foreordains the ‘objectivity’ of the words you use then that is your choice of classification net(s). You would have been in a real mess if you had been born in a culture without dictionaries, no? Or, perhaps you would have written one and thus given birth to sophistry? RICHARD: If I may point out? You are trying to rope me into your own ‘classification net(s)’ by classifying my use of the dictionary meaning of the word as being my ‘classification net(s)’) because it is your ‘classification net(s)’ that made you classify my clarity as being ‘Richard’s classification net(s)’ in the first place.
* RESPONDENT: By the way, ‘blind forces of nature’ is only the illegitimate child of a ‘divided from its source’ mentality. RICHARD: With this ‘source’ that you speak of being nature itself (and definitely not ‘blind nature’ as you make clear) – and by you being able to so categorically state this ‘illegitimate child’ metaphor as being factual – am I to take it that you are not ‘divided from your source’? Which means that, as nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’, then savagery, brutality and violence is what your nature is, eh? RESPONDENT: The division from the source is just a nightmare we collectively dream (a phant(om)-asy in your net). Dividing from the source isn’t necessarily a terrible thing if it is a tool used by one rather than a tool which makes use of one (as its tool). Nature is brutal only to an outsider (one divided who sees Nature as ‘other’). What you are describing is a misinterpretation of Nature by a divided-from-its-source primate. Cannibalism is indeed the way. We eat our own kin – mammals, fish. birds, rodents, bugs, plants, trees, you name it. We (life-forms native to Earth) eat each other and thus become each other. It is only brutal to a self who feels unconnected to all that. It is only brutal from a divided-self mentality. RICHARD: Am I to take it then, that you actively condone all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides by approving of them as being natural? And that, furthermore, anyone who wants 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 come to an end is, in fact, a person ‘divided from the source’? So that, in order not to be ‘divided from the source’, you will knowingly perpetuate 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 for ever and a day? May I ask? Are you also one of those people who think that ‘every instance of rape is fine’?
* RICHARD: Allow me to post but a few observations made by some observant peoples: • ‘A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city’. (Mr. P. D. James (b. 1920), ‘Devices and Desires’, chapter. 40 1989). • ‘The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries’. (Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), ‘Table-Talk’ (Complete Works, vol. 1, 1886). • ‘Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself’. (Mr. John Ruskin (1819-1900), Letter, 3 April 1871). • ‘Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, ‘I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway’. (Ms. Maya Angelou (b. 1928), ‘Maya Angelou: An Interview’ Conversations with Maya Angelou, 1989). RESPONDENT: Okay, here are some more quotes: ‘Nature is part of our life. We grew out of the seed, the earth, and we are part of all that, but we are rapidly losing the sense that we are animals like the others. Can you have a feeling for the tree? Look at it, see the beauty of it, listen to the sound it makes; be sensitive to the little plant, to the little weed, to that creeper that is growing up the wall, to the light on the leaves and the many shadows. You must be aware of all this and have that sense of communion with nature around you. You may live in a town but you do have trees here and there. A flower in the next garden may be ill-kept, crowded with weeds, but look at it, feel that you are part of all that, part of all living things. If you hurt nature you are hurting yourself’. (J. Krishnamurti; (Letters to the Schools, Volume 2, 1983; cited in: Krishnamurti, J., On Nature and the Environment, p.41). ‘We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it ‘wild’ for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the Wild West’ began’. (Chief Luther Standing Bear, 1933). Isn’t the savage, brutal, wild tooth and claw view of nature a bit narrow minded? Isn’t it the projection of the fears of the divided from its source mentality? RICHARD: No. It is that an individual freedom from the human condition could lead to a global freedom from the human condition It is possible for a chain-reaction effect to ripple through all the peoples who inhabit this planet; imbuing the populace with peace and prosperity. And this freedom from the human condition 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. No longer need people lament the futility of trying to escape from the folly of the ‘Human Condition’. Never again would fear rule the earth; terror would stalk its prey no more ... but even if global peace was a long time coming – as is most probable due to stubbornly recalcitrant identities – the most appealing aspect of actual freedom is its instant bestowal of universal peace upon the individual daring enough to go all the way. And another 160,000,000 human beings would not be killed in wars by their fellow human next century
* RESPONDENT: Isn’t it fear of Death which biases that whole view? RICHARD: You do seem to be unaware as to whom you write this conceptualised picture of death and nature to. At age seventeen I volunteered for the military and was vigorously and rigorously trained, by the best-trained killers that this country could produce, to kill my fellow human being with nine different weapons (including rifle, pistol, machine pistol, machine gun, hand-grenades, booby-traps, bayonet and knife). I am a fully qualified state-trained killer ... and I served my time in a war that is infamous in twentieth-century western history. I know the nature of killing and death ... and I know the nature of human beings. I was born and raised on a farm and had vast experience with killing and death from before I can consciously remember coming face-to-face with killing and death. A short list of animals would have to include the domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens and so on, all of which I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands. The wild animals would include kangaroos, emus, dingoes, foxes, rabbits, eagles, crows, magpies, pigeons and quail ... all of which – with the exception of the dingoes, foxes, eagles, crows and magpies – I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands (the dingoes, foxes, eagles and crows were killed for their bounty as they were considered pests). Stalking animals made me keenly aware of the human being’s primal animal nature, whilst raising livestock for a living necessitated an eye for the detail of animals’ basic nature on a daily basis. I have made a study of the differences between animals and humans – by reading countless scholarly studies made by enterprising people; by watching many a television program on animal life and by often visiting zoos – because I am vitally interested in life on earth with its death and killing all around. Also, I observe animal action and behaviour and ascertain from research how an animal is likely to perceive itself and the world so as to throw some light onto conditioned human behaviour ... to ascertain the difference between ‘nature and nurture’. For example: I have seen a dog acting in a way that can only be called pining; I have seen a cat toying with a mouse in a manner that can only be dubbed cruel; I have seen cows ‘spooked’ and then stampede in what must be described as hysteria; I have seen stallions displaying what can only be labelled aggression; I have watched many animals exhibiting what must be specified as fear ... and so on. Only recently a television programme was aired here on chimpanzees about studies made over many, many years of them in their native habitat and I was able to see civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, grief, group ostracism ... and so on. It is easily discerned by those with the eyes to see that animals do not have peace-on-earth by being natural. This insistence that the animal state being a natural state and therefore somehow desirable because human are ‘divided from nature’ that is held by many people is just nonsense ... I am glad that I am human and that we are living in a civilised society with all that technology can offer. We have already improved on nature so much in the areas of technology, animal breeding and plant cultivation, for instance. There is no reason why we can not continue this fine work of overcoming the limitations imposed by blind nature and eliminate sorrow and malice from ourselves. Then – and only then – will we have global peace-on-earth.
* RESPONDENT: May I ask a favour? Please, before sending the reply you write, distil it into a précis of what you’ve written (otherwise I may not be up to the rather formidable task of continuing this thread with you). RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... I did just that.
CORRESPONDENT No. 25 (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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