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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 50
RICHARD: When the delusion of ‘me’ transmogrified into ‘Me’ (‘I am That’) is seen ... that is the end of everything thus far known in human history as being the summum bonum of human experience. Thus the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ ends ... being atavistically tied to the spirit-ridden experience of the Bronze Age peoples is finally over. Set free from the apron-strings of spirit ... one can allow the actual to become apparent. RESPONDENT: 1): You mention a tie back to the ‘spirit-ridden’ Bronze Age. Why the Bronze Age in particular (the time around which mankind first became aware of ‘self consciousness’ and began to hear voices – the ‘I’ – in his head and invented a spirit to go with it)? RICHARD: No ... palaeontology has found circumstantial evidence of ‘self-consciousness’ I used the term ‘Bronze Age’ because hard evidence – written text – at the most dates back maybe 5,000 years ... thus I have no need to base what I propose upon somewhat speculative theories derived from scanty evidence. The texts themselves – the revered ‘Ancient Wisdom’ – can speak for itself ... and there are trillions of words dating from that era. RESPONDENT: 2): You have expressed, quite eloquently and cogently, an appreciation of ‘life’ from a non-dualistic viewpoint. One thing you haven’t said, and I’m surprised nobody else has asked the obvious question so far – how did it come about (and the rest of you, please lay off with the K-speak of ‘how implies a method, etc’.: I’m looking for a broad description). RICHARD: Okay ... a ‘broad description’ is quite a long story (and I can send you a précis privately if you wish or direct you to a URL) and some of it in part was just recently re-posted by another correspondent to this list (Message No. 01191 of Archive 00/06). But sufficient for this post would be to say that it came about from wanting to know, once and for all, just what was going on ... wanting to find out just what this entire business called living was. This mutation in the brain-stem, which eliminated the entire psyche, was triggered by an intense urge to evince and demonstrate what the universe was evidently capable of manifesting: the utter best in purity and perfection, which all humans could have ever longed for, as evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE). To me, it is all not much more complicated than it being the times we live in. The twentieth century was a century of exponential technological growth, leaving little room to continue to ignore the obvious. Just look at the medical discoveries going on regarding the brain for just one example. Peoples like Mr. Gotama the Sakyan and Mr. Rinzai and so on, not knowing anything about the seat of emotions being located in what is popularly called the ‘lizard brain’, looked elsewhere for solutions. Thus it has more than a little to do with technological progress ... less than 100 years ago I would have been insulated from the exposé that comparative experience reveals. The mass communication network of radio, films, videos, television, books, journals, newspapers, magazines – and now the internet – not only allows for collation and scrutiny but an exponential expansion of the accepted mind-set. Also, the invention last century of weapons of mass-destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear warfare – had a salutary effect upon complacency. Warfare has reached its zenith as being even remotely a viable way to settle differences ... the MAD policy (Mutually Assured Destruction) of the Cold War was aptly named. I got the message. Plus it was in my experience, during eleven years of swanning along in a state of Love Agapé and Divine Compassion, that commonsense would not let the ‘Me’ that I was get away with this solipsistic ‘Timeless and Spaceless and Formless’ void that ‘Me’ was living ... the clock ticked the hours and the sun moved through the sky and bodies walked around, for example. I find it so hilarious these days, when reading some master’s discourse on ‘Timelessness and Spacelessness and Formlessness’, where they look at their diamond-studded watch and say: ‘Enough for now, Evening Darshan will be at 6.00 PM’, and move as a body through the space between their podium and their inner sanctum ... taking time to do so. There was also a congenital integrity – not being susceptible to blandishment and flattery – and an inherent dignity which became apparent with a certain quandary in ‘My’ dealings with others when it came time to reveal ‘My’ divine status so as to effect the desired result ... self-deception did not sit too well when it came to the nitty-gritty of interaction. Somehow ‘He’ knew that ‘He’ had intentionally chosen for apotheosis – cunningly disguised as being chosen – over the actual back in 1981. In hindsight, I would say that I was living out the fantasy of greatness partly out of curiosity. By doing so I discovered that it was humanity’s fantasy – an institutionalised insanity – and I have always had a strong sense of individualism and the drive for autonomy. Also, and this is but a personal thing, a close friend of many years standing went ‘stark staring mad’ in December 1980 – what I nowadays know of as ‘divine madness’ – and the event shook me to the core. Thus I was determined to put to an end, once and for all, to all the religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical nonsense that has saturated and dominated both 5,000 years of recorded history and perhaps 50,000 years of pre-history. The war that I volunteered for in 1966 was not just an ideological war (capitalism versus communism) ... I went to war as a gilded youth in order to stop the spread of that ‘godless regime’ from sweeping south. The never-to-be-achieved triumph of ‘Good’ over ‘Evil’ has dominated all conflict since the dawn of human consciousness ... with the nature of both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ being culturally determined, of course. And yet another reason lies in that portion of my personal history where, being in a war-zone as a youth, my life became a living nightmare ... literally. I was trapped in an horrific world of revulsion, dread and foreboding and in order to escape from the savage barbarity of the situation my mind somehow created a new ‘reality’ built out of the extremities of animalistic fear, which hallucination I would nowadays call ‘unreality’. Thus, back then in a ‘kill or be killed’ country, I escaped into a place where all is calm and peaceful that was not unlike being in the centre of a cyclone – all about rages fear and hatred, anger and aggression – but in ‘there’ all was apparently calm and peaceful. Thus I knew from experience that it is possible to create an ‘unreality’ (dissociation) in order to escape the grim and glum ‘real-world’ reality. 26 years later I came to realise that the ‘Greater Reality’ was nothing but another escape – the mystical realm is a culturally revered dissociative hallucination – and that completion was already actually just here right now ... and had always been actually here all along. There are three world’s altogether ... the natural ‘reality’ that 6.0 billion people live in and the super-natural ‘Reality’ that .000001 of the population live in ... and this actual world. I call it actual because it is the world of this body and these sense organs only ... and nary a god or goddess or a devil or a demon to be found. Both the grim and glum ‘real world’ and the Glamorous and Glorious ‘Greater Reality’ vanished when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul became extinct. I would not – and could not – live a lie.
RESPONDENT No. 25: What happened to the spirit of sitting together as friends, under the shade of a beautiful tree, in order to talk over together and go into the problems of everyday life? It appears that K was right. Very, very few people are truly serious. RESPONDENT No. 34: I am still sitting here ... watching the scenery ... it seems that the angry children got to do some running around ... too much energy, and nowhere to spend it ... LOL. RESPONDENT No. 28: Let’s get some beer first! The shade under this beautiful tree demands an attention on ice-cold beer! This maple is so symmetrical, so perfect you can look at it for hours, it is so inviting. RESPONDENT No. 31: Yeah. But let the puppet show in front of us finish first. RESPONDENT No. 28: God knows how long it will take. Meanwhile the shade will disappear, the evening will come and go with no one to enjoy it, with no one to look at the frolicking fireflies dotting the darkness around. The puppets would be busy watching their own show. RESPONDENT: Seems like multiple, concurrent re-runs of Punch and Judy to me (Oh yes it IS! – Oh no it IS not!. You cannot challenge my assertions! – I assert that I can!). Sounds like the schoolyard. Wonder what might exist inside a human being to cause them to: a) personally attack another? b) respond to a personal attack? Who gives a shit? (‘Who, or what?’). If you disagree with each other, why not agree to disagree, let it rest at that and get on with some serious dialogue instead of bickering? Feel free to respond to this post with as many personal insults as you please. Rest assured I won’t respond. RICHARD: I am pleased to find someone who is wanting only a genuine investigation, an authentic enquiry, an honest examination of the human condition. Thank you for your invitation ... I would like to refer you to the following dialogue:
I see from your observations (further above) that the issue of the origin of animosity and anguish is still of vital concern to you (‘wonder what might exist inside a human being to cause them to: a) personally attack another? b) respond to a personal attack? Who gives a shit? (‘Who, or what?’). If you disagree with each other, why not agree to disagree, let it rest at that’). As up to 160,000,000 sane people were killed in wars alone, in the last 100 years, by their sane fellow human beings – and an estimated 40,000,000 people suicided in the same 100 years – it is of vital concern that a viable alternative to the schoolyard solution (‘why not agree to disagree and let it rest at that’) to the schoolyard problem be found ... and pronto. Three weapons with an unprecedented mass destruction capacity – chemical, biological and nuclear – were developed in the last 100 years making all but the most plethorically sanguine sit up and realise that war is no longer even a remotely viable means of settling disputes. And while the population has reached an unprecedented and staggering 6,000,000,000 instinctually driven human beings, the same technological expertise that is used to maim and kill one another has produced an unprecedented and amazing ability to investigate biology, sociology, palaeontology, anthropology, archaeology, cosmology, physics, politics, philosophy and so on. Technological expertise has also created the world-wide mass media and communication networks which provides unprecedented access to information never before available to the average person. This unprecedented access to information has provided the opportunity to carry out scholarly comparative religious studies ... and which has scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth ascribed to all the world’s scriptures. It has become startlingly evident to all but the most recalcitrant egos and compliant souls that the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have had at least 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the efficacy of their solution to all the ills of humankind ... and are being called to account, in an unprecedented manner, via the technological expertise that provides the recording equipment – both audio and video – which is hanging them by their own words and the reports of their contemporaries. There are at least five people writing to this list for whom I have the most regard: No. 12, No. 17, No. 14, No. 10 and No. 4. This is because they have each in their own way gotten off their backsides long ago and dared to experientially explore – rather than mere book-learning – into their own psyche ... which is the human psyche (‘I’ am ‘my’ psyche and ‘my’ psyche is ‘me’). That they have the nerve to have done so and continue to do so – plus put their experience and expertise forward for peer-group review – is why I enjoy corresponding with them so rigorously and, at times, vigorously. Consequently, I have taken this opportunity to begin to explore (further below) several of the points which you raised some months ago ... and invite you to respond in kind if you be so inclined. I would also invite any other disdainful spectator sitting safe on the side-lines with you, sipping their drugs and grooming their images, to bestir themselves from their rose-colored fantasy and – if not join a sincere dialogue – to take note that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti metaphorically ‘sat together as friends, under the shade of a beautiful tree, in order to talk over together and go into the problems of everyday life’ for over 60 years ... and ten days before his death insisted on recording his appraisal regarding the efficacy of that approach of his:
Anecdotal evidence from someone privy to off-the-record (unsubstantiated) conversations reports him questioning himself on this very issue, just prior to this recorded assessment, and saying ‘where have I gone wrong?’ Be that as it may, shall I sum it up this way? Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising?’ There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on. For starters: one needs to fully acknowledge the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are
the root cause of all the ills of humankind. The genetically inherited passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and
desire) give rise to malice Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? * RESPONDENT No. 00: How did this process of separation come into being? What triggered the whole thing off? Devil, negative energy ...? RESPONDENT: As far as I can see, the process is inherited through the ‘education’ we receive from our peers – who find themselves (unconsciously) stuck in the situation and therefore don’t know any better. RICHARD: If I may ask? Where did ‘our peers’ get ‘the process’ from, then, in order to ‘educate’ every one alive on the planet today? Which means: how did ‘our peers’ manage to ‘find themselves (unconsciously) stuck in the situation’ in the first place? RESPONDENT: It gets further reinforced by the apparent separateness of the physical body from its environment. RICHARD: Do you mean ‘apparent separateness’ in the ‘seemingly so’ meaning of ‘apparent’ or the factual ‘verifiably so’ meaning of the word? RESPONDENT: [It gets further reinforced by] formal education (which if not religious in tone, contains forms of separatist religious presuppositions). RICHARD: By ‘separatist religious presuppositions’ are you referring to the ‘we are not the body we are pure spirit’ belief of all the religionists, spiritualists and mystics? If so, not all ‘formal education’ has these ‘presuppositions’ as their basis ... secular schools, colleges and universities tend to propose, endorse, uphold and teach the biological facticity of non-separateness as evidenced by the ‘evolution of the species’ furore fuelled by the metaphysicalist’s fervour. RESPONDENT: And even more so [reinforced] by the dualism implicit in the forms of language we speak. RICHARD: As language can be demonstrably traced back 5,000 or more years before having its origins untraceable in prehistory (but implicit in myths and legends dating much further back), then this surely indicates that ‘our peers’ have had ‘the process’ operating in them for a long, long time. As the term ‘our peers’ refers to one’s contemporaries (alive in one’s lifetime) would you care to examine your primary theory that ‘the process is inherited through the ‘education’ we receive from our peers’ so as to establish the fact before moving on to the supplementary reinforcements to your hypothesis? In other words: what really is the primary cause of ‘the process’?
RICHARD: I would like to refer you to the following:
RESPONDENT: I don’t get at the root of the origin of the process here, merely at part of the way it (consciously) gets transmitted from generation to generation in education in the broadest sense. I hold the view that a lot of our deep conditioning exists at a physical/subconscious level and gets acquired by a combination of genetic inheritance and the interplay of the conscious/subconscious mind and the physical body. ‘Thinking’ exists in actuality as a physical process and (may be observed to) involve the physical organism as well as the so called ‘mind’ (and vice versa). RICHARD: Okay ... by ‘genetic inheritance’ do you mean the instinctual animal survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire)? * RICHARD: As up to 160,000,000 sane people were killed in wars alone, in the last 100 years, by their sane fellow human beings – and an estimated 40,000,000 people suicided in the same 100 years – it is of vital concern that a viable alternative to the schoolyard solution (‘why not agree to disagree and let it rest at that’) to the schoolyard problem be found ... and pronto. RESPONDENT: I entirely support your concern. ‘Agreeing to disagree’ provides a superficial solution only (as does ‘turning the other cheek’). It may defuse immediate conflict but if the people involved harbour deep, festering resentment, that will always break out in time. A superficial solution does not, to appear to me, to provide a complete solution and will not ‘control’ or adequately ameliorate the problems that face us. RICHARD: Good ... finding the root cause will automatically dispense with superficial coping methods
such as ‘agreeing to disagree’ (rationalism) and ‘turning the other cheek’ (pacifism) * RICHARD: Three weapons with an unprecedented mass destruction capacity – chemical, biological and nuclear – were developed in the last 100 years making all but the most plethorically sanguine sit up and realise that war is no longer even a remotely viable means of settling disputes. RESPONDENT: War never did ‘settle’ disputes, it merely renders one of the parties incapable of disputing for the time being. RICHARD: Indeed ... an uneasy and armed truce masquerading as ‘peacetime’. RESPONDENT: To the victor the spoils, but part of that comprises the ongoing deep resentment of the vanquished. The ‘dispute’ doesn’t go away, merely becomes hidden by the superficial solution (see above). As a recent historical example, Hitler’s rise and WWII arose out of the resentment felt by the ‘loser’ in WWI. RICHARD: Carrying a grudge, in other words ... as in ‘vengeance shall be mine’? * RICHARD: And while the population has reached an unprecedented and staggering 6,000,000,000 instinctually driven human beings ... RESPONDENT: Not entirely instinctual. RICHARD: As always I am targeting the root cause ... finding a superficial cause leads to a ‘superficial solution’. * RICHARD: ... the same technological expertise that is used to maim and kill one another has produced an unprecedented and amazing ability to investigate biology, sociology, palaeontology, anthropology, archaeology, cosmology, physics, politics, philosophy and so on. Technological expertise has also created the world-wide mass media and communication networks which provides unprecedented access to information never before available to the average person. RESPONDENT: Yes. I’ve seen it argued before (and once subscribed to it myself) that ‘technology’ exists as a neutral force and it depends on how mankind uses it whether or not it works for mankind’s benefit or not. I now personally reject that argument as far too simplistic. ‘Technology’, the word itself represents a huge nominalisation, only becomes developed according to the desire of the rich/powerful who will not develop it should it not suit their particular ends (i.e. the types of technology that develop do so to further establish the self aggrandisement of those behind it – a desire driven process on behalf of a minority). Let us not forget that the Internet exists as a spin off of military technology: since it can make money for others, it persists. RICHARD: Yes, I cannot see how the three weapons with an unprecedented mass destruction capacity – chemical, biological and nuclear – that were developed in the last 100 years could ever be described as existing as a ‘neutral force’ either. Nor the very first fisted hand or gripped stone or rude club or pointed stick (primitive spear) and so on. The advent of technology extends so far back in human development that its origins are lost forever in the mists of prehistory. However, the on-going study of the human primate’s closest cousins – the apes – is showing startling evidence of a common origin to both tool-making and all the mayhem and misery which epitomises the human condition. * RICHARD: This unprecedented access to information has provided the opportunity to carry out scholarly comparative religious studies ... and which has scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth ascribed to all the world’s scriptures. It has become startlingly evident to all but the most recalcitrant egos and compliant souls that the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have had at least 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the efficacy of their solution to all the ills of humankind. RESPONDENT: Oh yes, the barriers of censorship – in the broadest meaning of the word – have collapsed, at least for the time being (here in the UK, they busily rebuild them). But note that the activities of majority of the minority of the Earth’s population that actually have access to the Internet only reflect the activities of the rest (i.e. ‘sex’, ‘drugs’ and ‘rock and roll’ aka ‘bread and circuses’) and that the number of serious people, (in which I would include ALL members of this list) having an interest in such things probably already realised these things anyway. Most of the ‘teachers’ have pushed division and belief – and its ultimate conclusions in intolerance, cruelty, bloodshed and war. 500yrs ago, most of the members of this list would have been burnt at the stake for heresy. So perhaps things have improved a little bit. RICHARD: My experience in writing to mailing lists shows me that peoples have not ‘probably already realised these things anyway’ ... recalcitrant egos and compliant souls abound in all their glory wherever I have been on the internet. * RICHARD: The Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages are being called to account, in an unprecedented manner, via the technological expertise that provides the recording equipment – both audio and video – which is hanging them by their own words and the reports of their contemporaries. Shall I sum it up this way? Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising?’ There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on. RESPONDENT: Yes. I’ve had lengthy discussions with others about this (i.e. not working) – and some have touched on it obliquely in discussions about science and such in this forum from time to time. To restate it briefly, various ‘laws’ of science can be verified by almost anyone with a secondary school education by carrying out a few simple, repeatable experiments. You get the same results in Bombay or Birmingham, Chicago or Sydney. In short, when one does ‘A’, the result comes out as ‘B’ – pragmatic truths available at first hand. With K’s teachings (as with the teachings of many others), such is not the case – IT DOESN’T WORK in pragmatic terms for the ordinary, sane well meaning human being. That’s a matter of fact and K recognised it himself. So, what’s wrong? I’ll throw up some points for dialogue (and more may exist) thus: a) K, as he said himself, was an evolutionary freak 000’s of years before his time; b) we don’t ‘try’ hard enough (although trying seems an antithesis in this context); c) the conditioning/daily reinforcement has by far too powerful a grip on us, and living everyday lives we’ll never break free of it (and it seems like those who live like monks never do either); d) K’s own conditioning as a Brahmin got in the way of his message e) conversely (or in parallel) his refusal to compromise and ‘step down’ the teachings into practical form makes them inaccessible to the everyday human f) he shot himself in the foot by continually insisting on ‘instantaneous and radical transformation’ – which in itself contradicts the ‘process’ that he underwent AND contradicts the direct experience of anyone who seriously applies what he said (the majority of whom seem to experience a series of insights and gradually grow in awareness). I could go on: fact is that what he offered doesn’t work for whatever reason. Why doesn’t it? How can one ‘make’ it work? RICHARD: One can never ‘make it work’ simply because Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was not ‘an evolutionary freak 000’s of years before his time’ ... he was at the tail-end of 3,000 to 5,000 years of his time. Also, his ‘own conditioning as a Brahmin’ did not ‘get in the way of his message’ because Advaita Vedantism (plus a dash of Buddhism) is his message. Vis.:
As I have already remarked: my experience in writing to mailing lists shows me that peoples have not ‘probably already realised these things’ (the ‘wisdom’ myth ascribed to all the world’s scriptures and sages and seers) ... recalcitrant egos and compliant souls abound in all their glory. * RICHARD: For starters: one needs to fully acknowledge the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are the root cause of all the ills of humankind. RESPONDENT: I disagree here. All manner of creatures in the animal kingdom possess instinctual passions and yet they don’t build weapons, they don’t harbour grudges, they don’t fight wars, they don’t persecute, threaten, torture and kill each other in the name of one cause or another or arm themselves to such a point that any major conflict between them would probably mean their mutual destruction. This extends beyond the animal kingdom into the chemical kingdom and beyond. Using vocabulary in a loose form, hydrogen has an ‘animal passion’ to mate with oxygen to form water: electrons an ‘animal passion’ to mate with protons in order to form all various types of matter. Likewise, two electrons or protons will repel, etc. The ‘passion’ thing – attraction/repulsion – works throughout the natural world and does not confine itself to the human kingdom – yet the rest of the world gets on more or less OK with itself ‘We’ have the passions, yes, as all else in nature does, but behaviour full of ongoing conflict appears a peculiarly human trait. RICHARD: Yet you can only say that ‘behaviour full of ongoing conflict appears a peculiarly human trait’ by ignoring, for an example, the excellent ‘National Geographic’ articles and videos on chimpanzees. Ms Jane Goodall was shocked to witness – and record – civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, grief, group ostracism and so on. Being a woman she was especially disturbed by an episode (filmed) of female aggression towards a baby chimpanzee resulting in the infant’s crudely ripped-apart death ... and subsequent cannibalism. It is easily discerned by those with the eyes to see that animals do not have peace-on-earth. The insistence that the animal state being a natural state and therefore somehow innocent 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 the instinctual survival instincts (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire which give rise to malice and sorrow) from ourselves. Then – and only then – will we have global peace-on-earth. * RICHARD: The genetically inherited passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) give rise to malice and sorrow. Malice and sorrow are intrinsically connected and constitute what is known as ‘The Human Condition’. The term ‘Human Condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. RESPONDENT: I don’t accept that in the least. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ only exist as value judgements. When the lion (instinctively) rips the side out of the wildebeest, no good or evil enters into the process, the lion merely survives by the process of what it does. Likewise, when the same lion suckles its young, no ‘good’ enters the process – the instinctive thrust for the survival of the species merely operates. In my view, good and evil arise from dualistic thinking processes. RICHARD: Except that I said that the instinctual passions give rise to malice an sorrow and that it is malice and sorrow which constitute the human condition ... I was not suggesting that lions have the requisite degree of awareness of being a self to manifest malice and sorrow. That degree of self-consciousness is evidenced in only a few animals ... in the chimpanzee, for an example, but not the monkey. * RICHARD: The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. The ending of malice and sorrow involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time as this body. Then the question is: is it possible to be free of the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body? RESPONDENT: As given, I agree with your last three sentences, not necessarily with the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ stuff which to me exist not as actualities, but as human judgements. RICHARD: Yet it is undeniable that 6.0 billion human beings nurse malice and sorrow to their breasts ... out of which come the antidotal love and compassion. That malice and sorrow be called the ‘dark side’ or ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ – or not – and that love and compassion be called the ‘light side’ or the ‘good’ or ‘god’ – or not – is beside the point as these passions exist in the psyche as a reality and are evidenced in behaviour ‘as actualities’. However, let us do it your way, then: now that you have neatly solved the existential dilemma that has bothered thinkers and theologians for centuries by dismissing such realities as malice and sorrow and their antidotal love and compassion as being but ‘value judgements’ where are you at? As there is no global peace-on-earth, do you have individual peace-on-earth? Has your understanding and explanation enabled you to be happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day, seven days of the week, three hundred and sixty five days of each year? Which means: has malice and sorrow completely vanished from your bosom ... for the remainder of your life here on earth? * RICHARD: Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? RESPONDENT: I don’t agree with the assumption that I nurse such things in my bosom. I may behave in selfish ways, but that’s different to what you say. RICHARD: Okay ... again I will ask: has malice Then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent. * RESPONDENT: As far as I can see, the process [of separation] is inherited through the ‘education’ we receive from our peers – who find themselves (unconsciously) stuck in the situation and therefore don’t know any better. RICHARD: If I may ask? Where did ‘our peers’ get ‘the process’ from, then, in order to ‘educate’ every one alive on the planet today? Which means: how did ‘our peers’ manage to ‘find themselves (unconsciously) stuck in the situation’ in the first place? RESPONDENT: Yes. Very good question – where did all this stuff actually originate? As given previously, I only described the mechanism of transmission/reinforcement – which to some extent one can actually observe in operation. The transmission processes I discussed merely represented the superficial (mainly languaging) processes. There also exists deep genetic conditioning (in physical/nervous system/deep psychological form) – where instinctual behaviour lives, and ongoing interplay twixt the conscious behaviour of various generations with what we call the subconscious in the manner of the ‘hip bone connected to the thigh bone, etc., the latter being the mechanism whereby genetic programming take4s place. (One can observe this fairly simply by noting the effects that various stimuli/thought processes have across the entire nervous system – cf also Rossi/Cheek ‘Mind-Body Therapy’ Section II. RICHARD: Could you be specific about just what it is that is ‘deep genetic conditioning’ and ‘instinctual behaviour’ as you seem to be at odds with all what I have presented (above) regarding the instinctual survival passions? * RESPONDENT: It gets further reinforced by the apparent separateness of the physical body from its environment. RICHARD: Do you mean ‘apparent separateness’ in the ‘seemingly so’ meaning of ‘apparent’ or the factual ‘verifiably so’ meaning of the word? RESPONDENT: Every single atom of material of every single human being that lives, has lived, or will live comes out of the common pool of universal matter. ‘Men’ only exist as little, evolved mobile bits of planet Earth (as do the rest of the ‘animal’ kingdom. Ultimately, we ‘evolved’ from the soil. RICHARD: True. As I am the air breathed, the water drunk, the food eaten and the sunlight absorbed there is no actual separation whatsoever betwixt this body and that body and anything else. Just because each flesh and blood body being consciously aware is being aware as a private domain, as it were, (as opposed to the public domain) and that this body is discrete (physically distinct) to that body, it does not imply separation ... unless there is an ‘I’ as ego and/or a ‘me’ as soul in residence inside the body asserting property rights. A hill or mountain is the same stuff as the very earth it seemingly sits upon, for example. Everything and everyone is the very self-same stuff that this planet earth – and this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe – already always is ... hence no separation whatsoever. I did not come from outside this universe – there being no outside to infinity – nor was I put here by some metaphysical god and/or goddess for some inscrutable reason ... and neither am I some timeless and spaceless and formless ‘ground of being’ manifesting an ‘apparently real’ time and space and form (‘Maya’) for ‘My’ sacred sport or divine play (‘Lila’). * RESPONDENT: [It gets further reinforced by] formal education (which if not religious in tone, contains forms of separatist religious presuppositions). RICHARD: By ‘separatist religious presuppositions’ are you referring to the ‘we are not
the body we are pure spirit’ belief RESPONDENT: 99.999% of people who live in Christian cultures (as I do) believe they ‘are’ an immortal soul, the ‘I’ inhabiting the body. This gets drummed into the individual from knee-high (primary school, peer teaching etc.) and exists as endemic belief. The duality also exists in the language system (‘I this, I that, me/mine, etc’) and has done for thousands of years – and note that in the past that religion had a far stronger grip on people. Islamic peoples believe in a like soul, and the Hindu’s have the atman. I accept that (some) secondary schools and places of higher education do not reinforce such stuff in a formal manner – but by then, the basic presuppositions have got firmly cast in place. Whilst the typical materialist may outwardly reject the religious base of his conditioning, he still operates on the basis that he has an actual ‘ego’, an internal ‘I’ (which came about as the early/endemic or cultural dualistic ‘religious’ conditioning) that exists in day to day opposition to the universe at large. RICHARD: Okay ... in other words, most people (including atheistic materialists) would deny that physical death is the end, finish. Oblivion. * RESPONDENT: And even more so [reinforced] by the dualism implicit in the forms of language we speak. RICHARD: As language can be demonstrably traced back 5,000 or more years before having its origins untraceable in prehistory (but implicit in myths and legends dating much further back), then this surely indicates that ‘our peers’ have had ‘the process’ operating in them for a long, long time. As the term ‘our peers’ refers to one’s contemporaries (alive in one’s lifetime) would you care to examine your primary theory that ‘the process is inherited through the ‘education’ we receive from our peers’ so as to establish the fact before moving on to the supplementary reinforcements to your hypothesis? RESPONDENT: See above with reference to more on transmission base. Extend word ‘peers’ to include ‘predecessors’ as well. RICHARD: Sure ... the word ‘peers’ now has to include Homo Erectus some millions of years ago, then. I will rearrange the question accordingly: where did Homo Erectus get ‘the process’ from, then, in order to ‘educate’ every one alive on the planet today? Which means: how did Homo Erectus manage to ‘find themselves (unconsciously) stuck in the situation’ in the first place? In other words: what really is the primary cause of ‘the process’? * RICHARD: In other words: what really is the primary cause of ‘the process’? RESPONDENT: Yes, a very, very good question – which has led me to some deep internal reflection, observation and dialogue with others. As said earlier, since the animal/insect (and other) kingdoms in Nature possess what we term ‘instincts’ in abundance – yet they don’t embark on the organised, destructive behaviours (to the edge of self annihilation as you quite rightly said) that mankind does, one must look elsewhere for the source. So, I started looking inside myself – a typical bonehead member of the human species that reflects all their foibles and faults – to see if I could find anything there. I watched, I asked like minded people, people who share my (and your and the rest’s) concerns. I stuck with the problem like a dog with a bone, and little by little several things came together. 1) As you have said elsewhere, language is recorded as existing (fairly definitely) about 5,000 yrs ago – which doesn’t seem long to me, but my own linguistic sources say the same thing. It may (also as you said) go back further (which I myself suspect), but no hard evidence exists. 2) By self observation, one can quite easily become aware that as well as the linguistic imaging facility (the thing that creates internal dialogue) we have others. In particular, we possess a powerful visual imaging facility, which, unlike the linguistic one, works directly in a parallel processing fashion. One can visually ‘image’ oneself in various situations quite easily – without the need for language. 3) Evidence exists that man had rudimentary tool making ability in the Old Stone Age – the Palaeolithic period some 3,500,000 years ago. For one to fashion a tool of any kind requires a significant visual imaginative facility (one must somehow conceptualise the task, how the task might be performed, how the conceived tool might help/be used (in the latter, one must conceive of oneself using it) and then further, how to make the tool. (Even if the first ‘tools’ were discovered by accident, the manufacture, development and improvement of others required the faculties I have outlined above. The indications exist therefore that man had the ability to image in a fairly powerful fashion several million years ago. 4) Entirely excluding 1) (language), and welding together 2) and 3) above, the indications are that ‘stone age’ man had the ability to create an image of himself VISUALLY long, long before he acquired anything we might call languaging. Hence the self, as a visual rather than language image, has existed for something in excess of 3,500,000 years. 5) In terms of instinctual behaviour, once the visualised self gets around to imagining itself in situations that bring positive instinct (pleasure), it will pursue them: likewise, it will use the visualisation skills to avoid situations that go negatively against instinct (pain). Thus, the ‘stone age’ entity used the (new found, evolutionary innovation of) imaging facility in planning and probably cooperating for pleasurable experience (sex, good food, shelter) and likewise in ‘looking ahead’, in avoiding predators and potentially painful experiences. 6) Accordingly, I hypothesise that the inner/external conflict in mankind (malice and sorrow as you put it) does not arise in the instincts, but in the image making faculty evolved in the ‘stone age’ DRIVING THE INSTINCTS. The fault lies/originates in the misdirected (selfish, limitless) imaginative faculty running berserk. 7) language, a relatively recent evolutionary innovation by all accounts, merely exacerbates the process as a means of secondary imaging and labelling – although the particularly slow and hypnotic nature of language (a process with a linear type output that requires massive parallel processing to operate), especially the language conditioned ‘I’ image appears to ‘convenience package’ imaging to some degree and reinforce the process. RICHARD: The crux of what you are saying here seems to be that imagination is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like ... and not the instinctual survival passions? RESPONDENT: OK, that’s my 2p worth. I don’t claim to have all the answers and I make the statements above in a tentative spirit – the spirit of investigation. If anyone wants a dialogue, I welcome your response. (I’ve let a lot of ‘if’, ‘and’, ‘perhaps’, etc. statements and questions out of all this in order to concentrate on replying to the main thrust of Richard’s post. I will put one rather mischievous observation in: from a non-dual viewpoint, the almost synchronous arrival of Krishnamurti and the hydrogen bomb on the planet did not occur as a coincidence). RICHARD: Your ‘one rather mischievous observation’ has been very helpful to me in formulating my response ... because I do not see how the birth of a human being, who taught a mixture of Advaita Vedantism and Buddhism, has anything at all to do with enabling peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body. This is patently obvious because technological expertise has created both an unprecedented and amazing ability to investigate biology, sociology, palaeontology, anthropology, archaeology, cosmology, physics, politics, philosophy, theology and so on and the world-wide mass media and communication networks which provides unprecedented access to information never before available to the average person. This unprecedented access to information has provided the opportunity to carry out scholarly comparative religious studies which have scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth ascribed to all the world’s scriptures and sages and seers. It has become startlingly evident to all but the most recalcitrant egos and compliant souls that the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Sages and the Seers have had at least 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the efficacy of their solution to all the ills of humankind ... and are now being called to account, in an unprecedented manner, via the technological expertise that provides the recording equipment – both audio and video – which is hanging them by their own words and the reports of their contemporaries. Specifically, Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, who taught a mixture of Advaita Vedantism and Buddhism, was but the latest in a long line of sages and seers promulgating a Bronze Age spirit-ridden wisdom .. and such enlightened beings demonstrably manifest anger and anguish from time to time. Hence the ‘Tried and True’ is indisputably the ‘tried and failed’ as in regards bringing peace to earth as none of them are/were free of the human condition (malice and sorrow and the antidotal love and compassion). Shall I sum it up this way? Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on.
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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