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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 45
RESPONDENT: If the essence of the first ‘I’, the ‘thinker’, is thought and is mostly the result of the second ‘I’, the ‘feeler’, which essence is affective, where does this affective essence come from, what does create the ‘feeler’ or second ‘I’? RICHARD: The instinctual survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are what constitute the inchoate basis of ‘being’ ... they are both the core of self and the source of the instinctive impression of self and other (the other may be animal, vegetable or mineral). The evidence that the ‘feeling being’ can be intuitively self-conscious is indicated in the chimpanzee, for an example, but not in the monkey. RESPONDENT: I understand that you consider a primordial ‘being’ or third ‘I’ (this flesh and blood body) which has instinctual survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) because the body needs them for living. RICHARD: No, the ‘primordial ‘being’’, the core ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself), is the root of the second ‘I’ and has nothing to do with the flesh and blood body only. Where I initially said that there are three I’s altogether it would have been clearer for communication, in retrospect, to have said that there are three I’s altogether (and not have used smart quotes in that particular sentence). I did go on to say, however, that I use the first person pronoun, without smart quotes, to refer to this flesh and blood body sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul ... as in: I am this flesh and blood body only. My mistake ... I will put it this way: the third <I> is not an entity (identity). Therefore, this ‘primordial ‘being’’ (usually capitalised as ‘Being’ upon Self-Realisation) is, genetically, umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘Being’ is so anciently old that ‘we’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’/‘me’ is thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future in flesh and blood bodies (not as flesh and blood bodies). RESPONDENT: From the primordial feelings rises the ‘feeling being’, to be intuitively conscious of the own existence, and from this primordial feeling rises the sense of feeler or second ‘I’, and from this feeler or second ‘I’ thought/cognition makes the thinker or first ‘I’. Is this what you mean? RICHARD: Yes. Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events
is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic
instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am and/or ‘me’ is the end-point of myriads of
survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am and/or ‘me’ is the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear
and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of
the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’
am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’. These passions are the very energy source of the
rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the ice-burg and not the main issue at all. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. * RESPONDENT: Also, many feelings are felt only when the thinker is thinking on it, but when the thinker stops and there’s silence those feelings also stop, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are only the two sides of the same coin. RICHARD: The surface emotions, the agitated feelings, stop but not the deepest, most quiet feeling of being ‘me’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself). RESPONDENT: Yes, the surface ‘conscious’ thinker stops and then the surface emotions also stop, but whereas the thinker and his worries are still boiling in the deepest of conscious the deepest emotions and wishes would not stop. In this way, the thinker and the feeler can be the same yet. RICHARD: If so, then this is not yet ‘silence’ ... ‘silence’ is when the thinker is not. That is, ‘silence’ is pure feeling (usually called ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’). * RICHARD: As for ‘only the two sides of the same coin’: the ‘thinker’ cannot exist unless the ‘feeler’ exists – however quiescent it may be (as in ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’) – whereas thought, thoughts and thinking can either operate or not operate irregardless of either the presence or the absence of the ‘thinker’ or the ‘feeler’ (the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul). RESPONDENT: Yes, thoughts and thinking can either operate or not operate irregardless of either the presence or the absence of the ‘thinker’ or the ‘feeler’, and also the ‘thinker’ cannot exist unless the ‘feeler’ exists. But also the own ‘feeler’ or sense of ‘I am feeling’ cannot exist when there’s not thinker. RICHARD: Again, the ‘sense of ‘I am feeling’, which disappears when the thinker is not, is pure feeling or impersonal feeling (usually called ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’). RESPONDENT: When mind is in this situation observing a sunrise, without the thinker operating, there’s only the sense of beauty without the sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: Rather, without the sense of a personal feeler feeling it: impersonal feeling. That is, pure feeling or pure being (sans the personal identity) is impersonal identity or impersonal ‘being’. RESPONDENT: It seems that the sense of observer and feeler does not exist then, only exists apperceptive awareness as what is observed (the sunrise) and the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: I can easily agree that when the observer is the observed there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... except where there is ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) there is impersonal awareness ‘as what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... and not apperceptive awareness. Although I do not have the corner on the phrase ‘apperceptive awareness’, this impersonal awareness is best called ‘choiceless awareness’ here so as to avoid confusion of terms. RESPONDENT: In this way, the thinker and the feeler seem to be the same again. Do you consider this observation correct? RICHARD: If the observer is the observed (and there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’) then, yes, this observation is correct. However, apperceptive awareness, in the way I am using the term, is when ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) is not. It is bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses). * RICHARD: A pure consciousness experience shows that thought, thoughts and thinking can either operate or not operate sans the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – apperceptive awareness is ever-fresh – which means both the innate feeling of ‘being’ and its affective feelings are not necessary at all to operate and function in the world of people, things and events. On the contrary ... it and its precious feelings are a hindrance to both personal and communal salubrity. RESPONDENT: It seems that sanity is when the thinker and the feeler are not, independent of that they are two faces of the same ‘I’ or two different ‘I’. RICHARD: The sanity that is of impersonal feeling or impersonal being – spiritual ‘sanity’ you refer to as contrasted to secular sanity – is not, as you say, ‘independent of that they are two faces of the same ‘I’ or two different ‘I’’ ... it is vital that the root of the second ‘I’ (‘me’ as soul) be ascertained for what it is (primary as in primordial) else all that is written in this thread has come to naught. Speaking personally, I have not been sane for years ... there is no sanity here in this actual world of the senses. * RESPONDENT: On the other hand, when observing a sunrise and the conscious thinking is stopped a feeling of beauty can also rise in silence, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are different. RICHARD: Yes, well said, for therein lies the allure which has beguiled many a soul for millennia: this is where most investigation into the nature of ‘being’ ceases and all effort is focussed upon stopping thought (under the mistaken notion that thought alone creates the ‘thinker’) so as to dwell in the feeling of beauty. This is because, apart from beauty being a grand passion, beauty is where what is called ‘the truth’ can be intuitively encountered. RESPONDENT: I thank your advise because I intuit a tramp in this traditional approach of stopping thought and conscious mental chattering through effort and training. In this approach perhaps the superficial thinker can be stopped through effort and training but the sense of ‘I’ and its creations and actions perhaps would remain in the deepness yet. On the other hand, I have observed that, when there’s understanding of the ways the thinker works and of its creations, the thinker tends to stop his movement without effort or training and gaps of silent awareness, without a sense of observer, rise by themselves, without any previous process of watching thoughts or any other training of the mind. Do you consider this approach different to the first one or a new ruse? If the last, why? RICHARD: If impersonal feeling has not been taken into account then it is a ‘new ruse’. * RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second. RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings. RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’. Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings. Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility). RESPONDENT: So that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of bodily sensations but the thinker is what can trigger off them, what can create a response of fear or sorrow when it is indeed unnecessary. RICHARD: It is emotional memory ... a non-verbal memory located in what is popularly called the ‘lizard brain’ or ‘reptilian brain’ at the top of the brain-stem/base of the skull. RESPONDENT: This points me that the instinctive bodily responses and sensations can exists by themselves without a so called ‘feeler’ at their root, they are an essence of the body, they seem to be natural and it is not necessary to extinct them, it seems only necessary to extinct the thinker, who makes false interpretations of reality and creates unnecessary situations of insecurity and threat, triggering off then these prior existing bodily responses and sensations. Do you consider the above correct? If not, why? RICHARD: No, because they not only ‘seem to be natural’ ... they are indeed natural. It is natural to feel fear and aggression and nature and desire ... these feelings are blind nature’s instinctual survival passions. However, now that a thinking, reflective brain has developed sensible thought, thoughts and thinking these instinctual survival passions can be safely eliminated. In fact, what was once essential for survival is nowadays the biggest threat to survival. * RICHARD: The second case is the demonstration of this being factual (as is the instant instinctive feeling of fear, for another example, in an imminently dangerous situation). It has been exhaustively tested and scientifically (repeatable on demand) demonstrated that feelings come before thought in the perception-reaction process. RESPONDENT: The feelings come before ‘conscious’ thought, but the feeling of fear does not arise in an imminently dangerous situation if there’s not recognition of this situation and what it means (when child, you are not afraid of fire whereas you don’t know its effects). RICHARD: Yet the child develops an emotional memory of danger (such as fire), even before thought, thoughts and thinking commences, in the ‘reptilian brain’ as an environmentally-learned supplement to the instinctual passions genetically endowed. RESPONDENT: Recognition is a very quick unconscious thinking process, so that thought seems to come before feelings. RICHARD: Yet this ‘unconscious thinking process’ is a non-verbal, or affective feeling process (stored as emotional memory). Animals display this method of learning environmental dangers and safeties very clearly ... to even the most casual observation. RESPONDENT: Also, it has been scientifically demonstrated that the amygdala can process subliminal information, without conscious thinking involved, and this can rise a feeling. But subliminal information can only be re-cognised in an unconscious way if thought is operating in the deepness, so that thought as thinker seems to be again the first and the trigger of natural bodily responses named ‘feelings’. RICHARD: All this you say depends upon unconscious recognition genuinely being ‘thought operating in the deepness’ and not the non-verbal emotional responses RESPONDENT: These bodily responses can be raised by the thinker, in a conscious or unconscious way, as un-sane response to events of the reality. RICHARD: In a ‘conscious way’ yes ... the ‘unconscious way’ is the non-verbal emotional response. RESPONDENT: Again, the thinker seems to be the problem and the creator of sorrow, and not the bodily responses aka feelings which are triggered by the thinker. How do you interpret it? RICHARD: The intuitive feeling of being a ‘self’ is the creator of sorrow ... thought merely formalises the feeling (and complicates through adding complexity). It is all so very simple. * RESPONDENT: It seems that you consider ‘mind’ and ‘being (soul or second ‘I’)’ as different, which are these differences? RICHARD: The mind is the human brain in action inside the human skull (cognition is a neuronal activity) whereas the ‘being’ is the instinctual passions in action in the ‘lizard brain’ at the top of the brain-stem (at the base of the skull). RESPONDENT: But then the so called ‘being’ is also a neuronal activity. RICHARD: Is ‘lizard brain’ activity ‘neuronal activity’ (do reptiles have a mind)? RESPONDENT: If so, could these instinctual passions be a natural neuronal activity, sensitive, inherent to the body, so that all the problem is originated by another insane neuronal activity, cognitive, aka the thinker? RICHARD: In these discussions, no matter how well-explained, the focus invariably comes back to thought copping all the blame whilst feelings get off scot-free. * RICHARD: The liberation or salvation of enlightenment, being anti-life, does not include, and cannot enable, peace-on-earth (as expressed so explicitly in Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s description of the place where the sun don’t shine as being ‘there, I say ... is the end of dukkha’). RESPONDENT: Why is it anti-life? RICHARD: Is it not obvious? A total withdrawal from the physical world and the physical body ... a dissociation based upon Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s insight that all existence is ‘dukkha’ because it is but transitory existence born out of craving (‘tanha’) for physical existence in the first place. Viz.: [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Freed, dissociated, and released from ten things the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Which ten? Freed, dissociated, and released from form, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Freed, dissociated, and released from feeling ... Freed, dissociated, and released from perception ... Freed, dissociated, and released from fabrications ... Freed, dissociated, and released from consciousness ... Freed, dissociated, and released from birth ... Freed, dissociated, and released from aging ... Freed, dissociated, and released from death ... Freed, dissociated, and released from stress ... Freed, dissociated, and released from defilement, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness ... the Tathagata – freed, dissociated, and released from these ten things – dwells with unrestricted awareness. (AN 10.81; PTS: AN v.151; (Bahuna Sutta). Apart from being ‘freed, dissociated, and released’ from ‘form’ and ‘feeling’ and ‘perception’ and ‘[mental] fabrications’ and ‘consciousness’ (aka ‘I am not the body; the world is not real’) he is also ‘freed, dissociated, and released’ from ‘birth’ and ‘aging’ and ‘death’ (aka ‘unborn and undying’ aka ‘immortal’). Lastly he clearly indicates that life as this flesh and blood body, on this verdant and azure planet, in this immeasurably vast universe, is ‘dukkha’ and is ‘āsava’ ... the only cure of which is to be ‘freed, dissociated, and released’ from it all and scarper off to the place where the sun don’t shine. The word ‘āsava’ is particularly telling ... it is a cutting indictment of the body, the planet and the universe.RESPONDENT: I don’t know if Buddha’s insight is pointing that all existence is ‘dukkha’ or that all existence ‘as self’ is unsatisfactory. Did he point anything on earthly existence without self or did he consider any kind of life, human or no human, as defilement and abject? RICHARD: Any kind of life at all (all existence is ‘dukkha’): Mr. Gotama the Sakyan expressly states that the self is not to be found anywhere in phenomenal existence ... as he so clearly enunciates to compliant monks in the ‘Anatta-Lakkhana’ Sutta (‘The Discourse On The Not-self Characteristic, SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66). Viz.:
This ‘disenchantment’, then, is brought about by ‘right discernment’: an examination of the ‘Satipatthana Sutta’, shows ‘right discernment’ to be a pronounced and deliberate withdrawal from the world of the senses and this flesh and blood body itself through reflecting upon its transitory nature. Viz.:
There is much, much more in this vein in the entire ‘Satipatthana Sutta’ ... and in the ‘Mahasatipatthana Sutta’. (DN 22; PTS: DN ii.290; http://world.std.com/~metta/canon/digha/dn22.html). RESPONDENT: Also, the statement [‘unrestricted’ awareness] is curious because if mind is not freed, dissociated, and released from form, feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness, birth, aging, death, stress, and defilement how can awareness be ‘unrestricted’? Deep sleep seems to be also without feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness, birth, aging, death, stress, and defilement, but at sunrise body wakes up and goes on living its earthly life. I am not sure what state of mind is Buddha trying to convey with the words ‘unrestricted awareness’. RICHARD: As I have said before: a consciousness-less state known as ‘jhana’ in Pali (Sanskrit ‘dhyana’). * RESPONDENT: What would be anti-life and cannot enable peace-on-earth in Mr. Buddha’s supposed enlightenment and ending of sorrow? RICHARD: The end of ‘dukkha’ he says, is to be found neither on this verdant and azure planet nor anywhere in this immeasurably vast universe. Viz.: [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; ... neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support. This, just this, is the end of dukkha’. (Udana 8.1; PTS: viii.1; Nibbana Sutta). The whole point of enlightenment is release from re-birth ... peace-on-earth is not even on their agenda. RESPONDENT: Buddha’s words are enigmatic indeed, but I think that you consider his teachings as focused to getting freedom from a supposed re-birth and afterlife, despising earthly life. Yes? RICHARD: Yes. Dissociation (‘vippayutta’ It is a total disassociation of self (by whatever name) from the world of people, things and events. * RESPONDENT: Do you consider that the first or the second ‘I’ or any residual activity of thinking or whatever can remain in any form when the body dies? RICHARD: None whatsoever. It goes on in other people, of course, meaning that all babies are genetically encoded with the instinctual survival passions the moment the spermatozoa penetrates the ova and the first cell starts doubling. RESPONDENT: When reading saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words and crossing references with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to), there’s similitude: 1. Tibetan Buddhism understands all post-mortem experiences as mentally-projected images, making the world beyond ‘akarmically corresponding image of earthly life’. According to the Bardo Thodol, those visions which appear in the intermediate state (bar-do) following death are neither primitive folklore nor theological speculations. Viz: ‘After death, a person is engaged in every sense, memory, thought, and affection he was engaged in the world: he leaves nothing behind except his earthly body’. (The Bardo Thodol Chenmo text, Ch. LXVII, LXVIII). 2. Mr. Krishnamurti seems to point that part of the personality survives bodily death. Viz: ‘Then there is this problem that the vast majority of people, of human beings, never come to the freedom from death but are caught in a stream, the stream of human beings whose thoughts, whose anxieties, pain, suffering, the agony of everything that one has to go through, we are caught in that stream. And when a human being dies he is part of that stream. (...) And the Psychical Research Societies and other societies, when they, through mediums and all the rest of it, when they call upon the dead, they are calling people out of that stream’. (3rd Public Talk, Ojai, 14th April, 1973). ‘When you die your thought of yourself goes on in that stream as it is going on now – as a Christian, Buddhist, whatever you please – greedy, envious, ambitious, frightened, pursuing pleasure – that is this human stream in which you are caught’. (Talks in Saanen 1974, 6th Public Talk). ‘To step out of the stream is to step out of this whole structure. So, creation as we know it is in the stream. Mozart, Beethoven, you follow, the painters, they are all here’. (‘The Reluctant Messiah’). Many supposed observations have been recounted and they point to some residual activity which remains when the body dies. How do you interpret all this? RICHARD: There is no need to interpret as the genetic inheritance via the germ cells is not even considered let alone addressed. So: again thought cops the blame for all the ills of humankind; again feelings get off scot-free. * RESPONDENT: Though the thinker seems to be indeed a material process, near 6 billions humans consider the thinker as an immaterial soul. RICHARD: Yet the 6.0 billion peoples have got it wrong ... hence 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 and so on go on forever and a day. RESPONDENT: Yes, human being is getting something wrongly ... hence all that. Sometimes all seems to be so complicate, so long and heavy if one don’t want to end into a mental ruse. Thank you for your conscientious dedication sharing your view and experience on these conflictive points. RICHARD: It is only ‘so complicate, so long and heavy’ because the cognitive faculty is being investigated in lieu of investigating the affective faculty ... feelings escape detection over and again. This is because ‘me’ at the core ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) will do anything to divert attention away from the root cause of all the malice and sorrow, the anger and anguish, the misery and mayhem ... even to the point of, not only denigrating thinking, but stopping the thought process entirely so it alone can rule the roost. It is all so very, very simple.
RESPONDENT: Many feelings are felt only when the thinker is thinking on it, but when the thinker stops and there’s silence those feelings also stop, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are only the two sides of the same coin. RICHARD: The surface emotions, the agitated feelings, stop but not the deepest, most quiet feeling of being ‘me’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself). RESPONDENT: Yes, the surface ‘conscious’ thinker stops and then the surface emotions also stop, but whereas the thinker and his worries are still boiling in the deepest of conscious the deepest emotions and wishes would not stop. In this way, the thinker and the feeler can be the same yet. RICHARD: If so, then this is not yet ‘silence’ ... ‘silence’ is when the thinker is not. That is, ‘silence’ is pure feeling (usually called ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’). RESPONDENT: I mean when there’s a bit of silence because conscious thinking stops for a while. Then, the associated feeling (fear when thinking on whatever) also fades away seeming that it was a thinking dependent process. It seems that there’s not fear if there’s not re-cognition (thought, conscious or unconscious). Fear seems to be a physical response to factual events, triggered when a threat is re-cognised. Fear wakes up the body in a nanosecond and provokes a movement of fleeing or attack; it promotes survival, it seems natural and good for survival, a momentary physical response to factual event, like sleep or be thirsty. When child, a small dog is a factual threat and there’s fear, but when we are grown up and 195 tall the small dog is not a factual threat and there’s not fear. Fear rises or not as a physical bodily response to threats. But when there’s a thinker operating and the response of fear is triggered by interpretations and hopes from this thinker, fear becomes an insane response. You point out that, when there’s not thinker (‘I’ as ego or first I), remains the feeler (‘me’ as soul or second ‘I’) as source of fear and it must fade away, but I can not understand this. RICHARD: It all depends upon one’s aspirations ... does one aspire to only be free of thought-induced fear (what you call the ‘insane response’) or does one also aspire to be free of ‘natural’ fear (what is mostly called the ‘sane response’)? Can there be peace-on-earth whilst one is still subject to the sane response (‘natural’ fear) from time-to-time? * RESPONDENT: When mind is in this situation observing a sunrise, without the thinker operating, there’s only the sense of beauty without the sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: Rather, without the sense of a personal feeler feeling it: impersonal feeling. That is, pure feeling or pure being (sans the personal identity) is impersonal identity or impersonal ‘being’. RESPONDENT: It seems that the sense of observer and feeler does not exist then, only exists apperceptive awareness as what is observed (the sunrise) and the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: I can easily agree that when the observer is the observed there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... except where there is ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) there is impersonal awareness ‘as what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... and not apperceptive awareness. Although I do not have the corner on the phrase ‘apperceptive awareness’, this impersonal awareness is best called ‘choiceless awareness’ here so as to avoid confusion of terms. RESPONDENT: In this way, the thinker and the feeler seem to be the same again. Do you consider this observation correct? RICHARD: If the observer is the observed (and there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’) then, yes, this observation is correct. However, apperceptive awareness, in the way I am using the term, is when ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) is not. It is bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses). RESPONDENT: I see, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ feelings, I think I grasp what you are conveying here: when there’s not thinker remains yet a feeler (a being who can feel), and these feelings are impersonal (without an ego-thinker feeling it), and in this state there’s also impersonal (choiceless) awareness. Right until here, but you are going beyond and pointing that there’s an state where this impersonal feeler also fades away, and in this state there’s ‘apperceptive’ awareness, [‘bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses)’]. I cannot understand this because it seems to me that an ‘impersonal feeler’ is inherent to be alive, how can exist a being if there’s not an impersonal feeler? RICHARD: It is the ontological ‘being’ which cannot exist if there is not an impersonal feeler ... not the flesh and blood body (a human being). RESPONDENT: Without grasping the last, I can not understand what do you mean by ‘apperceptive awareness’ and why is it different of impersonal (choiceless awareness). Can you elaborate further on it? RICHARD: Yes, ‘choiceless awareness’ is where the fragment (the ontological ‘being’) is the whole (an autological ‘being’ usually capitalised as ‘Being’) ... whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ is where the fragment – and therefore the whole – has ceased to be (‘being’ and/or ‘Being’ itself is not). * RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second. RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings. RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’. Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings. Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility). RESPONDENT: By bodily sensations I don’t mean affective feelings, I mean bodily physical responses of discomfort to a threat (rubor, tachycardia, sweating ...). When the threat is to our self image then, this physical discomfort associated to a thinking process on self image, is named ‘shame’. The threat is an illusory thinking process but it is a threat, so that the bodily physical response also arises. The thinker seems to be again the problem, making an illusory self image and later a threat to this self image, triggering a natural physical response to the illusory threat, and naming all it as ‘shame’. RICHARD: I will put it this way: the ‘natural responses’ (such as the heart pumping furiously; the palms sweaty; the face ruddy; knuckles gripped; body tensed and so on) never occur where the instinctual passions are not. * RESPONDENT: So that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of bodily sensations but the thinker is what can trigger off them, what can create a response of fear or sorrow when it is indeed unnecessary. RICHARD: It is emotional memory ... a non-verbal memory located in what is popularly called the ‘lizard brain’ or ‘reptilian brain’ at the top of the brain-stem/base of the skull. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that in the human there’s: 1. thought as no-emotional memory and thought as emotional memory (dates associated to bodily sensations): 2. bodily physical sensations. Why do you consider that emotional memory is not thought? Memory is registration, is thought. RICHARD: Because it is a feeling memory (affectively registered) evoking an emotional response and not a thought memory (cognitively registered) eliciting a thoughtful response. RESPONDENT: It seems that in the lizard brain there is not a self conscious thinker, there’s a feeler-being and physical reactions to the environment leading their behaviour. But there’s also capacity of memory (registration and remembering), a rudimentary kind of thought I would say. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that in the lizard brain there is no ‘self-conscious thinker’ (the
saurian brain cannot think) ... there is an intuitive self-consciousness RESPONDENT: It has been observed recently that hamsters and dogs can remembering and reliving past events from memory when dreaming, it seems thought again. A class of monkeys and also dolphins have sense of self existence and can recognize themselves in a mirror, it is thought again, memory. And humans have made a thinker-entity from thought. RICHARD: Is it not possible to allow that the hamsters, dogs, primates, dolphins and so on have a feeling-entity? Why does the feeling of ‘self existence’ necessarily involve imputing thought, albeit rudimentary thought, into animals? There is no evidence that animals can think (as in observe, recall, reflect, appraise and propose considered plans for beneficial results) ... in a drought or famine, for instance, animals languish and/or die through lack of foresight. RESPONDENT: All they, from lizards to humans, have instinctual survivals passions but only humans seems to have a thinker and to live in sorrow. RICHARD: In the canine family, for just one example, it is easily observed that dogs can and do pine. RESPONDENT: It seems that the thinker is the creator of sorrow and that there’s not problem with these instinctual survivals passions when there’s not an ego-thinker leading them. RICHARD: Yet the saints, sages and seers display that they are still subject to sorrow from time-to-time. * RESPONDENT: This points me that the instinctive bodily responses and sensations can exists by themselves without a so called ‘feeler’ at their root, they are an essence of the body, they seem to be natural and it is not necessary to extinct them, it seems only necessary to extinct the thinker, who makes false interpretations of reality and creates unnecessary situations of insecurity and threat, triggering off then these prior existing bodily responses and sensations. Do you consider the above correct? If not, why? RICHARD: No, because they not only ‘seem to be natural’ ... they are indeed natural. It is natural to feel fear and aggression and nature and desire ... these feelings are blind nature’s instinctual survival passions. However, now that a thinking, reflective brain has developed sensible thought, thoughts and thinking these instinctual survival passions can be safely eliminated. In fact, what was once essential for survival is nowadays the biggest threat to survival. RESPONDENT: Why? Don’t you wish a drink when you are thirsty? RICHARD: No, there is no thirsting whatsoever. Nor any hungering for food, a craving for sexual congress, a yearning for love ... or a hankering for pleasure, for that matter, either. All desire ceases forthwith where there is no ‘being’. RESPONDENT: Are survival passions a threat to survival or is the thinker leading these survival passions the unique threat? RICHARD: There is no question that thought, thoughts and thinking have occasioned sophisticated ways of harming both oneself and one’s fellow human being – in ways that animals can not and do not – but to sheet home all the blame onto thought is to ignore all the evidence that animals can and do commit what humans call tribal war, murder, rape, cannibalism, patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide and many other deleterious behaviours ... deleterious to both individual and communal well-being. The only way to not ignore the evidential behaviour is to attribute the ability of thought, thoughts and thinking onto animals. * RICHARD: The second case is the demonstration of this being factual (as is the instant instinctive feeling of fear, for another example, in an imminently dangerous situation). It has been exhaustively tested and scientifically (repeatable on demand) demonstrated that feelings come before thought in the perception-reaction process. RESPONDENT: The feelings come before ‘conscious’ thought, but the feeling of fear does not arise in an imminently dangerous situation if there’s not recognition of this situation and what it means (when child, you are not afraid of fire whereas you don’t know its effects). RICHARD: Yet the child develops an emotional memory of danger (such as fire), even before thought, thoughts and thinking commences, in the ‘reptilian brain’ as an environmentally-learned supplement to the instinctual passions genetically endowed. RESPONDENT: Right, thought seems an environmentally-learned supplement to ‘something’ (aka passions) instinctual genetically endowed ... RICHARD: If I may interject? I do not see what you are saying ‘right’ to as you go on to say ‘thought seems an environmentally-learned supplement’ (when what I wrote was ‘the child develops an emotional memory ... as an environmentally-learned supplement’) even when I read on to what you say next (immediately below). RESPONDENT: ... but it seems that human child uses principally thought and learning for survival instead this ‘something’ instinctual, contrarily to as the reptilian brain does. Even before thought? I have observed small children to touch fire for first time, getting a sensation of hight discomfort, and the parents saying ‘it’s fire, danger!, don’t touch it’, and fire becomes a concept, an image, a memory, which lets the child re-cognition and avoiding of fire even before language and elaborated thinking, but it seems yet thought, memory, a registration of an event of hight discomfort (danger). RICHARD: If it be ‘before language’ then there is no way that the baby RESPONDENT: Survival seems to depend more on thought than on genetic in humans. RICHARD: Yet whenever push comes to shove the instinctual passionate response leaps to the fore. RESPONDENT: On the contrary, primitive lizard brain seems to depend more on ‘something’ instinctual genetically endowed than in memory-thought. But this ‘something’ aka ‘instinctual passions’ seems to be neuronal and chemical automatic responses to the environment. RICHARD: Indeed they are ‘automatic responses’ ... it is the emotional memory operating as an environmentally-learned supplement to the instinctual passions genetically endowed. RESPONDENT: The body of the child has also neuronal and chemical automatic responses to the environment but has not infrared vision and receptors of hight heat or whatever for discovering a dramatic change in the environment (fire) and avoiding it, so that child depends completely of thought-learning-memory for detecting and avoiding fire and other dangers. I cannot see a ‘being-feeler’ behind these ‘instinctual passions’ so that eliminating the feeler results in eliminating his ‘instinctual passions’ . The so called ‘instinctual passions’ seems indeed inherent to the body in humans and in lizards, neuronal and chemical processes, why must it be eliminated and how? RICHARD: There is no ‘it must be eliminated’ ... only if one wants to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth will it be obvious that altruistic ‘self’-immolation is the way to go. It is a voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice for the benefit of this body and that body and every body. RESPONDENT: For example, darkening of postorbital skin in the lizard Anolis carolinensis occurs more rapidly in dominant males during social interaction and functions as a social signal limiting aggressive interaction. RICHARD: Yes, and the scaly membrane around the neck of the chlamydosausus kinggii (‘frilled lizard’) standing perpendicular to the body when irritated, thus enabling the lizard to surprise its enemies by suddenly displaying a head several times its normal size, having its correspondence with the bristling of the mammalian mane (to also make the head appear much larger) can be experienced in the human animal as the hairs on the back of the neck standing out in a fearful situation. RESPONDENT: This visual social signal inhibiting aggression is coincident with limiting serotonergic and noradrenergic activity in subiculum, hippocampus, nucleus accumbens, and medial amygdala. RICHARD: True ... yet if there be no aggression in the first place (induced by the ‘natural fear’) then all this is rendered null and void. RESPONDENT: But physical stress (handling) mimics social stress by producing rapid serotonergic changes in the same locations, seeming that the so called ‘instinctual passions’ are neuronal and chemical responses to threats. The threat can be social or physical, and in humans can be triggered by the thinker. The threat can be real or illusory but the physical bodily response to threats is the same, inherent to the bodily. RICHARD: Unless one no longer wishes to be run by the instinctual passions. * RESPONDENT: Recognition is a very quick unconscious thinking process, so that thought seems to come before feelings. RICHARD: Yet this ‘unconscious thinking process’ is a non-verbal, or affective feeling process (stored as emotional memory). Animals display this method of learning environmental dangers and safeties very clearly ... to even the most casual observation. RESPONDENT: But if it is memory, so it would be thought yet. I can not understand why ‘memory’ is thought but ‘emotional memory’ is not thought. RICHARD: Maybe it is the very word ‘memory’ that creates the difficulty? The word ‘memory’ can also used in other, non-verbal, situations as well: a computer’s ‘memory’ has nothing to do with thought, for example, or the ‘genetic memory’, for another instance, relates to information stored as the sequences of nucleotides in chromosomal DNA or RNA ... wherein thought plays no part at all. Thus emotional memory, which all animals operate from in their day-to-day living, is distinctly different to – and separate from – thought memory ... and predates such conscious memory by billions of years. ‘Tis atavistically embedded deep within the human psyche. * RESPONDENT: Also, it has been scientifically demonstrated that the amygdala can process subliminal information, without conscious thinking involved, and this can rise a feeling. But subliminal information can only be re-cognised in an unconscious way if thought is operating in the deepness, so that thought as thinker seems to be again the first and the trigger of natural bodily responses named ‘feelings’. RICHARD: All this you say depends upon unconscious recognition genuinely being ‘thought operating in the deepness’ and not the non-verbal emotional responses. RESPONDENT: Yes, that’s the problem, I can not see these non-verbal emotional responses as different of the own thought operating in the deepest, through recognition and memory. RICHARD: Are you suggesting that thought is all-pervading? Even in the ‘subliminal’, the ‘non-verbal’, the ‘unconscious’, the ‘deepness’? RESPONDENT: These bodily responses can be raised by the thinker, in a conscious or unconscious way, as un-sane response to events of the reality. RICHARD: In a ‘conscious way’ yes ... the ‘unconscious way’ is the non-verbal emotional response. RESPONDENT: It is unconscious but it is based on memory and recognition so that it seems to be thought operating in an unconscious way. Why do you consider that it is not thought? RICHARD: For number of reasons: through personal experience; by interaction with human babies; by observation of animals both in the wild and in human environment; via reading about and watching scientific demonstration ... by being open to possibilities that the ancient wisdom (aka ‘atavistic wisdom’) just does not countenance. RESPONDENT: Again, the thinker seems to be the problem and the creator of sorrow, and not the bodily responses aka feelings which are triggered by the thinker. How do you interpret it? RICHARD: The intuitive feeling of being a ‘self’ is the creator of sorrow ... thought merely formalises the feeling (and complicates through adding complexity). It is all so very simple. RESPONDENT: I observe that when there’s not thinker there’s not sorrow, but the sense of self existence seems to remain, so the thinker seems to be the creator of sorrow anew. RICHARD: Again: the saints, sages and seers display that they are still subject to sorrow from time-to-time. Which is why, when reading a saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words and cross-referencing them with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words, so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to), there is no need to travel into that tried and failed cul-de-sac ever again. There is a third alternative. * RESPONDENT: It seems that you consider ‘mind’ and ‘being (soul or second ‘I’)’ as different, which are these differences? RICHARD: The mind is the human brain in action inside the human skull (cognition is a neuronal activity) whereas the ‘being’ is the instinctual passions in action in the ‘lizard brain’ at the top of the brain-stem (at the base of the skull). RESPONDENT: But then the so called ‘being’ is also a neuronal activity. RICHARD: Is ‘lizard brain’ activity ‘neuronal activity’ (do reptiles have a mind)? RESPONDENT: Yes, ‘lizard brain’ activity is neuronal and chemical. As you know, they have a lot of neurons responding to environment and leading their behaviour. RICHARD: I see that I put that sentence rather badly ... put simply: does the ‘lizard brain’ activity give rise to a mind? RESPONDENT: Furthermore, measured responses induced by social stressors of aggression with those provoked by physical stress are the same in the lizard brain. It seems to me that, like in humans, survival passions are inherent to the body and can be triggered by physical or social events, or the own thinker (in humans). The problem seems to be the trigger instead the survival passions. In humans, the thinker is a trigger working in a crazy way. If there’s not an insane trigger, why are survival passions a problem at all? RICHARD: Yet a ‘trigger’ cannot trigger anything unless there be something to trigger (the emotional ‘being’) ... which is why I asked if reptiles have a mind. I only put it the way I did because the atavistic wisdom stresses that the ‘no-mind’ state of being as being the solution to all the ills of humankind (ostensibly no ‘neuronal activity’). RESPONDENT: If so, could these instinctual passions be a natural neuronal activity, sensitive, inherent to the body, so that all the problem is originated by another insane neuronal activity, cognitive, aka the thinker? RICHARD: In these discussions, no matter how well-explained, the focus invariably comes back to thought copping all the blame whilst feelings get off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Sorry :) Richard. I am trying to grasp what you are trying to convey but, by now, I find all the above difficulties. RICHARD: I am, as always, endeavouring to provide focus to the place where focus has not been directed before. RESPONDENT: Thought as thinker seems to be always behind, making the sorrowful human condition, I cannot see why instinctual passions could be a problem if there’s not an insane thinker leading them. RICHARD: Okay ... this comment of yours (‘an insane thinker’) appears often: are you suggesting that if this ‘insane thinker’ is not (which is what the saints, sages and seers recommend) then the instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, will not ‘be a problem’? How so? For just a few generalised examples (and this is neither an all-inclusive nor exhaustive list): to
deal with fear they advocate faith and/or trust; to deal with aggression they advocate restraint and/or pacifism Is it not simpler to be totally void of fear and aggression and nurture and desire? * RESPONDENT: Do you consider that the first or the second ‘I’ or any residual activity of thinking or whatever can remain in any form when the body dies? RICHARD: None whatsoever. It goes on in other people, of course, meaning that all babies are genetically encoded with the instinctual survival passions the moment the spermatozoa penetrates the ova and the first cell starts doubling. RESPONDENT: When reading saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words and crossing references with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to), there’s similitude: 1. Tibetan Buddhism understands all post-mortem experiences as mentally-projected images, making the world beyond ‘akarmically corresponding image of earthly life’. According to the Bardo Thodol, those visions which appear in the intermediate state (bar-do) following death are neither primitive folklore nor theological speculations. Viz: ‘After death, a person is engaged in every sense, memory, thought, and affection he was engaged in the world: he leaves nothing behind except his earthly body’. (The Bardo Thodol Chenmo text, Ch. LXVII, LXVIII). 2. Mr. Krishnamurti seems to point that part of the personality survives bodily death. Viz.: ‘Then there is this problem that the vast majority of people, of human beings, never come to the freedom from death but are caught in a stream, the stream of human beings whose thoughts, whose anxieties, pain, suffering, the agony of everything that one has to go through, we are caught in that stream. And when a human being dies he is part of that stream. (...) And the Psychical Research Societies and other societies, when they, through mediums and all the rest of it, when they call upon the dead, they are calling people out of that stream’. (3rd Public Talk, Ojai, 14th April, 1973). ‘When you die your thought of yourself goes on in that stream as it is going on now – as a Christian, Buddhist, whatever you please – greedy, envious, ambitious, frightened, pursuing pleasure – that is this human stream in which you are caught’. (Talks in Saanen 1974, 6th Public Talk). ‘To step out of the stream is to step out of this whole structure. So, creation as we know it is in the stream. Mozart, Beethoven, you follow, the painters, they are all here’. (‘The Reluctant Messiah’). Many supposed observations have been recounted and they point to some residual activity which remains when the body dies. How do you interpret all this? RICHARD: There is no need to interpret as the genetic inheritance via the germ cells is not even considered let alone addressed. So: again thought cops the blame for all the ills of humankind; again feelings get off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Right, but even if the thinker or first ‘I’ is indeed a creation of a feeler or second ‘I’ genetically inheritance via the germ cells, the question would be the same: can any residual activity of this thinker or whatever remain in any form when the body dies? RICHARD: None whatsoever ... it goes on in other people, via genetic inheritance, however. RESPONDENT: The ashes of the physical body remain, could ashes of the thinker remain? I was curious about why many supposed observations and saints, sages or seers including the own K said it in different ways. RICHARD: There is no phoenix to arise from the ashes here in this actual world. If I may re-quote Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti from another thread? Viz.:
He says that sorrow ‘goes beyond thought (...) you can feel it’ (emphasis added). RESPONDENT: Well, at least you are grasping that K said exactly what he said on afterlife. RICHARD: Yes, he is very clearly impressing the urgency of before-death action ... to step out of the stream prior to physical death else the stream goes on in the after-death state (thus occasioning re-birth).
RESPONDENT: I wonder why No. 33 and No. 20 are arguing that K was talking about psychological dead instead of physical dead. How can we cross references with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to) if we are distorting their words and meanings so easily? RICHARD: I do find it intriguing that someone who was so articulate could be so readily misrepresented.
RETURN TO CORRESPONDENCE LIST ‘B’ INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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