Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘B’ Correspondence

I grew a bit worried about him, as he seemed to be a bit manic. When I next saw him, he really was in a manic state. He had moved away from his wife and children, spent all his money on expensive furniture and at the same time selling everything he had previously owned. I asked him why he did this and what was going on in his mind. He had this strange look when he told me that he had heard voices that told him that he had ‘the face of love’ and that the voices called him ‘his holiness’. He was convinced that he was going through the same ‘process’ that K had gone through. When I suggested that he might need some professional help, he became angry and said that nobody could understand him. He said ‘I’m going my way’ and continued to sell everything he owned. Daily he spent several hours just wondering around streets and told me that he had close contact with nature, that he could feel very deeply the beauty of the nature. He didn’t want to see his wife or children.

As time went on, he began to isolate and didn’t want to see anyone. Occasionally he let me visit him. He was still in a manic state and told me enthusiastically about an experience he’d had: he had felt a flowing feeling in his head, he had felt that his body was not separate from the world around him. He believed that at that moment he was one with the world, that there was no separation anymore between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ He laughed when he told me that he had had to wrap a scarf around his head tightly so that he could still feel that his head ‘belonged to him’. Also he told me that he’d had an experience where he felt that something was pulled from his head, he thought that it was his spirit being pulled away. He told me that he had panicked but then the voices had told him ‘calm down my dear child, you are not going to die, it is not always easy to be new’. This experience convinced him that he was ‘chosen one’ and that he was a living example of ‘living the teachings’.

His life quickly deteriorated. He quit his job, stopped caring about personal hygiene and only occasionally let me or his family see him. He showed me his writings, which were incomprehensible – he explained that he had found connections between almost everything in the world and he tried to express this in his writing. When anyone tried to suggest that he see a doctor, he began to had these fits of rage, he kept repeating that no-one would understand him, that he was well, he had never felt better in his life and that he would never under any circumstance accept to have medication.

This episode lasted about nine months. For the last few months I didn’t see him. Then he phoned me and spoke in a whispery voice and told me that he couldn’t understand what had went on. I went to see him. He had returned to his family and was a shadow of his former self. He told me couldn’t remember everything about the past months, but he remembered that he had felt extremely powerful. He told me that he had heard sounds louder than normally, also that the colours had looked brighter than usual and he had been much quicker than usual in anything he did. Now he was desperate and depressed and said that he felt totally empty. Nowadays he takes medication for depression and panic attacks and mainly stays at home.

So: could reading Krishnamurti be a threat to your sanity?

RICHARD: Given that 160,000,000 people were killed by sane people in wars this century, then what your friend experienced is/ was a move toward a mental health that dismisses such concepts as ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’. Speaking personally, I experienced similar ‘parousia’ experiences and in the process lost wife, children, business, house, car, personal possessions and so on ... and both sanity and insanity. Any exploration into the human psyche – which is the human psyche – is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. The rewards for daring to do so are immense, however, and I thoroughly recommend entering into what others call ‘madness’.

Western counsellors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists have little or no grounding in matters esoteric and see neurosis or psychosis where other cultures see the profound, the sublime, the transcendent and the awesome. In India, for example, what your friend experienced is not necessarily alarming but also inspiring ... and such peoples so blessed – ‘Masts’ (male) and ‘Mastanis’ (female) – are described by Mr. Mervin Irani (aka Meher Baba) as God-mad, God-intoxicated and God-merged: [quote]:

‘In these three types, greed, anger, avarice and lust do not exist, since the minds of the God-mad and God-intoxicated are always turned towards God, and the God-merged has no mind; their bodily actions are not under their control. They are indifferent to everything, so that their actions are either indifferently controlled, or are controlled by God. Whatever they do, whether it be called good or bad from worldly standards, it has no selfish motive or personal deliberation. So if these persons laugh or cry, seem happy or morose, caress others or beat them, they are not conscious of what they do, or of how they behave. Nevertheless, their doing acts in anger helps those on whom this unconscious anger is spent, because their selfless anger destroys the anger sanskaras of the recipient. (... ...) When the mind does not pay attention to the body, the body, naturally, automatically survives and looks after itself. Now because of a kind of universal working on the gross plane, a sort of automatic attraction takes place, which causes a man who is indifferent to cleanliness to be attracted to place himself in dirty surroundings. He does not purposely choose an unclean place, but tends to gravitate towards it, for he is himself quite indifferent either to cleanliness or to dirt on the physical plane. For those who are God-mad, God-intoxicated, or God-merged, this dirtiness does not affect their health, because the mind is not attached to the body. For those souls, good or bad, cleanliness or dirt, a palace or a hut, a spotless avenue or a filthy gutter are all the same, and they are driven into any of these places according to circumstance. It is natural for a mast to have a dirty body, and it is natural for him to be driven to dirty surroundings; but if the devotee of a mast happens to give him comfort and cleanliness, he takes it because it is forced on him – but he is quite indifferent to it. (...) Now why does one mast become a jalali, another a jamali, another a mahbubi, and so forth? Everyone has to pass through innumerable lives. If one man, who in his past life lived in an environment of strife and great activity, becomes in this life a mast, he is of the jalali type. If another, who led his past life in a quiet village, or was perhaps in a dull and idle environment, becomes in this life a mast, he is of the jamali type. If in his previous life a man was a bachelor, who may, or may not, have committed the sexual act, and becomes in this life a mast, he is of the mahbubi type. This is because the sanskaras of love for women were unexpressed in his past life, and in this life they find expression in the wearing of some part of a woman’s dress, or in acting in some ways like a woman’. [endquote]. – Meher Baba; The Wayfarers; William Donkin, pp. 34-35 Copyright 1988 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust. http://sandman.npac.syr.edu:8888/Baba/nomotive.html

[quote]: ‘Dhondibua the Mast, who, when given anything for his material needs, would refuse it saying ‘I cannot bear comfort’! He would remain naked in all weather, be it in the blazing sun or piercing cold; and when a shirt or blanket were given to him by someone, he would gently but firmly reject the gift explaining that comfort did not agree with him and he could not bear any contact with it. [Meher Baba] said this was from the agony of love for God that the genuine Masts have. He went on ‘You cannot have the slightest idea of what such love means – it is an unbelievable agony that continually burns the lover, so that he is but a living fire! This Love is a gift from God, whereas God-realization is attained only by the Grace of the Perfect Master. Even these real men of God, the Masts, do not all gain God-realization – as a matter of fact, out of very many only one gets it! As Hafiz says in reference to God-realization: ‘For ages the lovers of God long for and await what but one in a hundred thousand achieves!’’ Baba went on to say that this Love such as the Masts have, is very, very rare. [endquote]. – Mani S. Irani; 82 Family Letters; p. 151, Copyright 1976 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust. http://sandman.npac.syr.edu:8888/Baba/agony.html

September 21 1999:

RESPONDENT: Richard, you have been diagnosed as psychotic.

RICHARD: Oh yes, it is official ... I find it so cute that a freedom from the human condition is classified as a severe mental disorder. It would appear that mental order (sanity) is stringently defined as having the ability to successfully keep instinctive drives, furious urges, impulsive rages, inveterate hostilities, evil dispositions – all malicious and sorrowful tendencies – under control with the aid of compensatory nurturing, sympathising, empathising, being compassionate, being loving, keeping hope alive, having faith, being trusting and so on, so as to produce a ‘well-adjusted personality’ ... and never, ever do something so sensible as to eliminate the entire instinctual package. And so, 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 go on for ever and a day.

RESPONDENT: You are feeling great, wonderful, you’ve overcome all the human limitations, life is bliss to you.

RICHARD: Well ... no. That is more of a description of how it was during my eleven years of delusion when in an Altered State of Consciousness known as ‘Enlightenment’. 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 ... it has been my constant condition since 1992. It is so perfectly pure and crystal-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 know them well because I lived them for that eleven years.

RESPONDENT: You may also know that one of the surest signs of severe mental illness is the inability to see and admit the serious symptoms.

RICHARD: Indeed ... that everybody else is mad but me is the classic indication of insanity.

RESPONDENT: The person who is really mentally disturbed is the last to admit it, because he has a strong sense of being right versus everyone else being wrong or just dim.

RICHARD: Hmm ... I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s actions being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations ... which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway.

Then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life.

RESPONDENT: The grandiose feelings, feelings of being super-human give you great comfort in the world where the only certain thing is uncertainty.

RICHARD: Not so ... physical death is one certainty that immediately springs to mind.

RESPONDENT: If/when you come back from your hallucination ...

RICHARD: No, I persevered – I went forward instead of back – and so on through the hallucination so as to arrive here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: ... you will have a long and painful journey to make.

RICHARD: Unlike your friend that you wrote about some time ago I had the gumption – and intellectual honesty – to see through the hallucination that I was ‘God on Earth’ or a manifestation of the ‘Supreme Intelligence’ and proceed on into the ‘Unknowable’ so as to find out for myself just what the nature, disposition and character of that which so many peoples have been ‘hollow bamboos’ or ‘channels’ or ‘open vessels’ for was.

I penetrated into the ‘Mystery of Life’ ... and here I am.

RESPONDENT: You will have to admit that you are no more or no less than any of us.

RICHARD: Why? Are you of that school of thought that says: ‘You can’t change human nature’?

RESPONDENT: You will feel pain that is beyond words.

RICHARD: You are starting to sound like you are wishing ill upon me ... is this your compassion in action?

RESPONDENT: I just hope you’ll have help.

RICHARD: May I ask? Just what is your beef about enabling peace-on-earth? Why do wish so ill upon someone daring enough to break through that which has kept humankind in thralldom for aeons? Do you have a vested interest in suffering? Do not 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 make you sit up and take notice and start to ask questions about what is going on?

Why do you wish such doom and gloom upon me?

September 21 1999:

RESPONDENT: Richard, I do not wish doom and gloom to you

RICHARD: Okay ... maybe it is the way you arrange your sentences, then. For example: [No. 35]: ‘If/when you come back from your hallucination, you will have a long and painful journey to make. You will have to admit that you are no more or no less than any of us. You will feel pain that is beyond words’. [endquote] certainly reads like the verdict of a magistrate ... like a sentence upon me. Viz.: ‘you will have a ...’ and ‘you will have to ...’ and ‘you will feel ...’. In any context it reads like, if not wishing doom and gloom, at least extreme pessimism. May I ask? Do you belong to the school that maintains that ‘you can’t change human nature’?

RESPONDENT: I wish you somehow broke through your illusion of going past enlightenment into some sort of super inner centre of life.

RICHARD: What makes you so sure – so positive – that going past enlightenment is an illusion? Is enlightenment the Summum Bonum for you? And that, therefore, anyone going beyond enlightenment is, by definition, in an illusion? If so, are you interested in exploring this point for its validity?

Or you have some other reason for being so convinced of the correctness of your conclusion?

RESPONDENT: And if you do come back, you will feel pain when you remember where you were mentally. That is what I was trying to convey.

RICHARD: Whoa-up there ... here you go again, giving lie to your sentiments expressed (above) that you ‘do not wish doom and gloom’ to me. If you do not so wish, then what am I to make of your ‘you will feel pain’ pronouncement?

Are you wearing a black cap?

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Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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