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Richard’s Correspondence on Mailing List ‘B’ with Respondent No. 54
RESPONDENT No. 39: Richard, in a discussion on violence here I stated that we are ‘born with violence’ and that there is scientific evidence to support this. Most of the responses I got did not think that this is true. RICHARD: I am not surprised ... the ‘Tabula Rasa’ theory of yore is still a truth for many a person (sometimes re-presented nowadays as ‘babies are born little buddhas’ or some-such thing). RESPONDENT No. 39: Do you agree that we are ‘born with violence’ ... RICHARD: The human animal is certainly born with the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, genetically encoded for survival purposes, which passions can also be readily ascertained in other animals (especially in what is called the ‘higher order’ animals) with direct observation. RESPONDENT No. 39: ... and if so could you post a few facts on this topic? RICHARD: There is far, far too much information to put even a précis of it all into one e-mail ... however, I can provide you with a by no means exhaustive list of books relating to the whole subject of human nature/human biology. For on-line references a useful page of links can be found at this URL: http://evolution.humb.univie.ac.at/jump.html. Also, you could try typing ‘agonistic behaviour’ in a search engine and see what comes up ... there are all manner of studies being done on all manner of creatures. Speaking personally, I did not know of any research on this subject when I started to actively investigate the human condition in myself 20 or more years ago: as I intimately explored the depths of ‘being’ it became increasingly and transparently obvious that the instinctual passions – the source of ‘self’ – were the root cause of all the ills of humankind. It was the journey of a lifetime! RESPONDENT: Richard, there is a big difference between animal aggression and the kind of human violence that prevails on this planet. RICHARD: I need only point to the extensive studies of the chimpanzee (as per the bibliography I provided) ... a difference in degree is not a difference in kind. RESPONDENT: Surely an enlightened being would not be as silly to think that Nazism is in the genes. RICHARD: True ... no ‘enlightened being’, for as far as I have been able to ascertain, pinpoints the genetically inherited instinctual passions as being the root of the problem by any description. RESPONDENT: This seems to be your suggestion. RICHARD: I am talking of the root cause ... not the cultivated branches. RESPONDENT: Why, as we have evolved away from the animal, have we become more violent? RICHARD: Put simply: the arising of ‘self’-consciousness in the affective faculty. There is some evidence to suggest, for an example, that the chimpanzee intuitively recognises itself as being a separate ‘self’ (albeit rudimentary). RESPONDENT: Not one single human behaviour has ever been causally linked to a certain gene. If you have any ‘facts’ that prove otherwise, I’d love to see them. And by facts I don’t mean another lengthy bibliography. RICHARD: You may notice that I did clearly and explicitly say (further above) that I did not know of any research on this subject when I started to actively investigate the human condition in myself 20 or more years ago? Thus I found out for myself – just as you say (further below) that ‘we are born with plenty of animal instincts’ yourself – and I only provided a ‘lengthy bibliography’ because my experience on this Mailing List has shown that my reports of what I experientially discovered for myself – an intimate ‘hands-on’ experiencing – are capriciously dismissed as being ideas, beliefs, opinions, viewpoints, points of view, concepts, theories, conjectures, speculations, assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, surmises, thoughts, inferences, judgements, positions, mind-sets, stances, images, intellectualising, analyses ... the entire 101 stock-standard denials of the possibility of being happy and harmless, here on earth in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body. I make no pretensions whatsoever of being a biologist – I am a lay-person dabbling in an ad hoc general reading of the subject – and I have no personal need for an interest in biology at all (since I began reporting my experience to my fellow human beings I have had to find out about all manner of things). My way of becoming free of the human condition was simple: I stepped out of the ‘real world’ into this actual world of pristine purity and left ‘myself’ behind in the Land of Lament where ‘I’ belonged. RESPONDENT: By the way, we are not born as ‘little buddhas’ either. RICHARD: Good ... I am pleased to see that you do not buy that hoary myth. RESPONDENT: We are born with plenty of animal instincts – how these end up as human violence is a different problem altogether. RICHARD: ‘Tis not ‘human violence’ per se (as in physical force/restraint) which is the problem: it is the instinctual passion of aggression fuelling the violence, in conjunction with ‘self’-consciousness, that begets all the misery and mayhem. In a word: malice. RESPONDENT: And one that no psychologist or socio-biologist has yet answered. RICHARD: Indeed ... this is entirely new in human history.
RESPONDENT: I maybe wrong, but I get the feeling that Richard is living an idealised version of ‘enlightenment’, rather than the real thing. RESPONDENT No. 19: I just love the way that people on here know the other better than they know themselves – second guessing everything. RESPONDENT: A state without emotion, sexuality, passions, ‘animal instincts’ just sounds rather hollow and dead to me. As I said above, I certainly might be wrong. RICHARD: Your words ‘just sounds rather hollow and dead’ reminded me of a passage I read recently wherein an arguably influential writer speaks of ‘a condition of negativity and deadness’ when trying to imagine what the universe would be like sans emotion (from ‘The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion’ delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-1902):
Thus the factual world (the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum) when ‘stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you’, is conceived to be ‘as it exists, purely by itself ... a condition of negativity and deadness ... the whole collection of its things and series of its events [being] without significance, character, expression, or perspective’. Yet a pure consciousness experience (PCE) evidences that the actual world, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality, is abounding in vibrant aliveness and sparkling significance. Irregardless of this pristine actuality, however, the physical world is then deemed to be the passive recipient of ‘our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts’ ... specifically ‘the passion of love’ and other ‘pure gifts of the spectator’s mind’ such as ‘fear, indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship’ so as to endue ‘our respective worlds’ with ‘value, interest, or meaning’. What price human vanity, eh?
RESPONDENT: A state without emotion, sexuality, passions, ‘animal instincts’ just sounds rather hollow and dead to me. As I said above, I certainly might be wrong. RICHARD: Your words ‘just sounds rather hollow and dead’ reminded me of a passage I read recently wherein an arguably influential writer speaks of ‘a condition of negativity and deadness’ when trying to imagine what the universe would be like sans emotion. <snip quote> (‘The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion’ delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-1902; William James, ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’; New York: The Modern Library, 1929; page 147). Thus the factual world (the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum) when ‘stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you’, is conceived [by him] to be ‘as it exists, purely by itself ... a condition of negativity and deadness ... the whole collection of its things and series of its events [being] without significance, character, expression, or perspective’. Yet a pure consciousness experience (PCE) evidences that the actual world, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality, is abounding in vibrant aliveness and sparkling significance. Irregardless of this pristine actuality, however, the physical world is then deemed [by him] to be the passive recipient of ‘our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts’ ... specifically ‘the passion of love’ and other ‘pure gifts of the spectator’s mind’ such as ‘fear, indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship’ so as to endue ‘our respective worlds’ with ‘value, interest, or meaning’. What price human vanity, eh? RESPONDENT: I wouldn’t argue with any of that – it’s not difficult to see that the mind needs to invest the world with meaning. RICHARD: Good ... and how difficult is it to see why it is that ‘the mind needs to invest the world with meaning’ when the world is already abounding in vibrant aliveness and sparkling significance? RESPONDENT: It is just my impression that you’re a neurotic, semi-insane fake. RICHARD: I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and officially diagnosed as genuinely psychotic (not just ‘neurotic’) and genuinely insane (not just ‘semi-insane’) ... only in these days of political correctness the words ‘mental disorder’ are used instead of the word ‘insane’. There is nothing ‘fake’ about it ... is an official record, duly stamped and notarised and so on. Having clarified that point ... did you notice that your words ‘a neurotic, semi-insane fake’ amount to more or less the same thing that Mr. William James said at the end of the quote I posted previously? Viz.:
Hmm ... ‘pathological’, eh? I do find it cute that the enabling of the already existing peace-on-earth, via an actual freedom from the human condition, is considered to this very day to be a severe and incurable psychotic disorder. RESPONDENT: I can’t substantiate that, and certainly have no proofs or bibliography to back it up – it’s just a feeling I have. Apologies if I’m wrong. RICHARD: There is no need to apologise as I am incapable of taking offence ... ‘twould be far better to invest such regretful energy into examining what necessitated the need for an apology in the first place, non?
RESPONDENT: I can’t substantiate that [my impression that you’re a neurotic, semi-insane fake], and certainly have no proofs or bibliography to back it up – it’s just a feeling I have. Apologies if I’m wrong. RICHARD: There is no need to apologise as I am incapable of taking offence ... ‘twould be far better to invest such regretful energy into examining what necessitated the need for an apology in the first place, non? RESPONDENT: There wasn’t an apology, Richard. There was an apology IF I was wrong. I have no way of telling whether I’m right or wrong and therefore have no need to invest any energy in anything. Oui? RICHARD: It is ‘Oui’ only if you wish to render your (seemingly) sincere ‘apologies if I’m wrong’ expression totally meaningless, reducing it into being nothing other than a paying of lip-service to correct socialised manners ... and indicating a lack of intellectual rigour. It is your call.
RESPONDENT: What we were questioning is what the teaching was – not whether or not the teaching is realisable. RESPONDENT No. 33: If it is not realizable, it is not teaching: he himself repeated that assertion umpteen number of times. RESPONDENT: Well, I would say it is realisable. I think he and many others down the ages would, too. RICHARD: Perhaps the following words may throw some light upon the subject? Viz.:
RESPONDENT: What he said was watch violence or suffering with your whole being and the fragmentation and division end. What on earth does ‘the observer is the observed’ mean, if not that? Very simple, sir. RICHARD: Quite simply ‘the observer is the observed’ means ‘I am everything and everything is Me’ (if one is brazen) or ‘There is only That’ (if one is coy).
RESPONDENT No. 31: ... Ramana Maharshi said that if you point out wrong in others, it is a greater wrong. RICHARD: Who did he say that to? RESPONDENT No. 31: Please refer to (www.ramana-maharshi.org/publish/julaug01.htm) and the article there appears below: [quote]: Right and Wrong. Q.: ‘If it is a question of doing something one considers wrong, and thereby saving someone else from a great wrong, should one do it or refrain?’ Bhagavan: ‘What is right and wrong? There is no standard by which to judge something to be right another to be wrong. Opinions differ according to the nature of the individual and according to the surroundings. They are again ideas and nothing more. Do not worry about them. But get rid of thoughts. If you always remain in the right, then right will prevail in the world’. (The devotee was not satisfied with this answer and asked for further elucidation). Sri Bhagavan then pointed out that to see wrong in another is one’s own wrong. The discrimination between right and wrong is the origin of sin. One’s own sin is reflected outside and the individual in ignorance superimposes it on another. The best course for one is to reach the state in which such discrimination does not arise. Do you see wrong or right in your sleep? Be asleep even in the wakeful state, abide as the Self and remain uncontaminated by what goes on around. Moreover, however much you might advise them, your hearers may not rectify themselves. Be in the right yourself and remain silent. Your silence will have more effect than your words or deeds. RESPONDENT: I think that was Richard’s emergent sense of humour at work. RESPONDENT No. 31: Am I supposed to make any assumptions about the questioner and the context in which the dialog was conducted? RESPONDENT: I’m not sure I understand the question. Is that your sense of humour at work? It was good of you to answer the question; I was just pointing out that Richard was possibly being a little ironic. RICHARD: I can assure you that there is no irony in me ... I am entirely sincere. I was merely nipping this hypocritical wisdom in the bud before it bloomed into yet another (unexamined) pithy aphorism tirelessly trotted out by those who cannot think for themselves. For a hoary example (which I have used before on this Mailing List):
Who spoke those words of wisdom? Surely not those who know (for they do not speak). If it was spoken by those who speak ... then it is not worth the rice-paper it was written upon all those centuries ago as they do not know of what they speak. Great stuff, is it not, to think for oneself instead of relying upon hallowed (but specious) ‘ancient wisdom’?
RESPONDENT: I think that was Richard’s emergent sense of humour at work. RESPONDENT No 31: Am I supposed to make any assumptions about the questioner and the context in which the dialog was conducted? RESPONDENT: I’m not sure I understand the question. Is that your sense of humour at work? It was good of you to answer the question; I was just pointing out that Richard was possibly being a little ironic. RESPONDENT No 31: No actually I was darned serious. After I read what you said about Richard’s humour, I realized the possibility of it. Anyway, sorry for the confusion. What I was saying is that on reading Richard’s question, about ‘who did he say to’, I went ahead and posted the references, thinking that Richard would like that, as is evident in his posts where he gives long references. Perhaps accuracy was needed here. Also I am not making any assumptions about the questioner who was speaking to Ramana and the context. So I posted the extract anyway, and readers can interpret whatever they want. As to Richard’s re-emergent humour, there is really nothing like ‘emerging’ humour, except that it can manifest at certain times. Perhaps that humour need not be searched in a haystack full of explanations and difficult dictionary words. So in a nutshell, I had an image of Richard as a man who stresses the accuracy and the source of words and I failed to see the humour. RICHARD: Good ... speaking personally I do not find it funny at all as I am entirely sincere. Another co-respondent noticed the discrepancy: [No. 28]: ‘Hahahaha! However, Richard has a very valid point here, though. :-) And, that’s not all. Bhagavan implicates himself further as he announces: ‘What is right and wrong? There is no standard by which to judge something to be right another to be wrong. Opinions differ according to the nature of the individual and according to the surroundings. They are again ideas and nothing more’. And the next moment he is alleged to observe ‘... if you point out wrong in others, it is a greater wrong’. [endquote]. 160,000,000 people were killed in wars alone, in the last 100 years, by their fellow human beings – and an estimated 40,000,000 people suicided in the same 100 years – and a revered sage sits there and pontificates about not pointing out wrong in others (all the whilst doing the exact same thing himself)? Yet when I explicate the blatant discrepancy with six short words it is seen as either my ‘emergent’ humour or me being ironic? ‘Tis wisdom such as this which shows why no god can save the human race ... only humans can save themselves. RESPONDENT: Irony does not preclude sincerity, and does not necessarily involve humour. RICHARD: Sincerity renders irony null and void ... else it be not sincerity. RESPONDENT: I realised the intention of your point ... RICHARD: Good ... that is what the post was for. It was short and to the point ... succinct. RESPONDENT: ... but the question was framed in an ironic way. RICHARD: May I ask? Does irony have the same sort of feature sometimes given to beauty (it exists only in the eye of the beholder)? RESPONDENT: What irony means, according to my Oxford Dictionary, is ‘an expression of meaning, often humorous or sarcastic, by the use of language of a different or opposite tendency’. RICHARD: I can assure you that there is no sarcasm in me ... I am entirely sincere. RESPONDENT: Lack of sincerity does not come into it. RICHARD: I am incapable of lacking sincerity. RESPONDENT: If there had been no irony at all in your original question, you would simply have said what you ultimately did below. RICHARD: Not so. I was successful in explicating the blatant discrepancy with six short words – ‘who did he say that to?’ – as is demonstrated by another saying ‘Richard has a very valid point here’ (even you yourself say ‘I realised the intention of your point’). What I ‘ultimately did’ was expand upon my original point into the area where ‘a greater wrong’ is physically taking place:
That I added ‘all the whilst doing the exact same thing himself’ in brackets was simply to verify that that was indeed the original point I was making. RESPONDENT: Quite simple. RICHARD: If I may point out? It was originally ‘quite simple’ (quite laconic) until you came along to muddy the waters. Howsoever I did get the opportunity to make the following point: ‘Tis wisdom such as this which shows why no god can save the human race ... only humans can save themselves.
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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