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Richard’s Correspondence On Mailing List ‘C’ with Respondent No. 3
RESPONDENT No. 1: It surprises me to see morality thrown into a debate about truth. Morality (...) will stand in the way to honesty and truth. A lover of truth (...) is neither ‘moral’, nor ‘immoral’, but unconcerned about it; ‘amoral’, if you want. RICHARD: Indeed, yet a person is amoral only when they can totally and reliably be capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception. The $64,000 question then appears to be this: does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is? RESPONDENT: Ideas like amoral or moral depend on the interpreter for their true meaning. RICHARD: Yet ‘ideas’ can never have a ‘true meaning’ – irregardless of interpretation – for the very nature of ideas is that they can mean whatever anyone wants them too. RESPONDENT: But regardless of this, there are some natural laws that have to be given their due eventually. RICHARD: Okay, then the question can be re-phrased like this: does ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ bestow a ‘natural law’ of amorality? RESPONDENT: Like gravity, these are the only laws that really must be obeyed. You don’t disobey gravity and jump off a cliff, so eventually you don’t disobey the law of suffering and get angry either. RICHARD: As there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, you seem to be indicating that the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is. RESPONDENT: Each of us has built into us the laws of existence, firmware if you want, we are part of the whole and not outside the laws of nature. All truth has a resonance, an inner feeling, that we must train ourself to feel, this is how we truly know life and what is true. We become one with truth, we don’t just intellectually have it make sense to us. RICHARD: I am in full agreement that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is the living of it ... not just intellectually making sense of it. RESPONDENT: We actually become our ideas, our thoughts are realities in themselves so they cannot be speculated about, they must be realized for their being alive. RICHARD: Are you saying that becoming ‘one with truth’ is the living-out of ‘ideas’? That it is a thought-created reality that one makes come true through being ‘realised’? If so, is it ‘ideas like amoral’ that get ‘realised’ and not the actuality?
RESPONDENT: Ideas like amoral or moral depend on the interpreter for their true meaning. RICHARD: Yet ‘ideas’ can never have a ‘true meaning’ – irregardless of interpretation – for the very nature of ideas is that they can mean whatever anyone wants them too. RESPONDENT: Yes, true if you live in a separated awareness ... RICHARD: It is also true when one lives in a non-separated awareness (a whole awareness; an holistic awareness; an integrated awareness; a non-fragmented awareness; an expanded awareness and so on). The very nature of ideas is that they can mean whatever anyone wants them to irregardless of one’s state of awareness ... unless you are positing infallibility in regard to a non-separated person’s ideas? RESPONDENT: ...it ‘seems’ that way, but if you really try to sense the feeling-tone of a thought, you can find out whether it has any energy to it or not. RICHARD: By ‘feeling-tone’ are you referring to the affective feelings? If so, then the ‘energy’ you are talking of is an emotional energy, a passionate energy, a calentural energy ... or any derivation thereof arising from the genetically-inherited instinctual passions (the survival instincts) physically encoded, by blind nature, in the DNA and/or RNA of every foetus at conception. As feelings are notoriously fickle, I sincerely question the advisability of placing absolute reliability on the affective ‘feeling-tones’ as being the ultimate guide/authority on something so important as being totally and reliably capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events without recourse to any morals whatsoever ... and without being immoral. Because this is what ‘amoral’ means. RESPONDENT: If not then toss it. This is how I try to navigate, or ‘be moral’ if you must. I don’t think in that way normally, I just go by sense of feel, if it feels strange, then it’s probably not something I want to pursue. RICHARD: Where you say ‘sense of feel’ and ‘if it feels strange’ you seem to be indicating an intuitive and/or instinctive ‘feeling-fed knowing’ to back-up the ‘ideas like amoral’ so as to legitimise them into having ‘true meaning’ ... which indicates that ‘true meaning’ translates as ‘it feels right’. And as is the case with any ‘it feels right’ feeling-tone or ‘it feels wrong’ feeling-tone ... one is back in the land of morality and immorality once again. * RESPONDENT: But regardless of this, there are some natural laws that have to be given their due eventually. RICHARD: Okay, then the question can be re-phrased like this: does ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ bestow a ‘natural law’ of amorality? RESPONDENT: It gives you sensitivity to the feelings of thoughts. RICHARD: All feelings arise out of the genetically-inherited instinctual passions physically encoded in the DNA and/or RNA of every foetus at conception by blind nature as survival instincts (fear, for example, with its compulsive ‘freeze, fight or flight’ imperative; or nurture, for another example, with its impulsive protect, provide and nourish obligation). Thinking negative or positive thoughts merely triggers these already existing feelings ... thought does not create feelings. Of course, thought can cultivate, enhance and refine the base passions into evermore finer feelings. Yet just as the lotus-blossom still has it roots in mud ... so to are the ‘finer feelings’ rooted in the animal instincts. RESPONDENT: For me moral and immoral don’t have much feeling. Having sex with my neighbour’s wife behind his back or stealing do so I think of it more as feelings related to actions, which I guess is the same as morals. Yes? RICHARD: Yes. * RESPONDENT: Like gravity, these are the only laws that really must be obeyed. You don’t disobey gravity and jump off a cliff, so eventually you don’t disobey the law of suffering and get angry either. RICHARD: As there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, you seem to be indicating that the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is. RESPONDENT: Sure, enlightenment means being free of the delusion of separateness, and gives you an expanded state of awareness, it doesn’t make you perfect. The bad habits of mind have to be examined and changed, just like for everyone else. RICHARD: Indeed ... and because ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) is not amoral, then this means that an ‘Enlightened Being’ is still ruled by morality/ immorality but, as you say, with ‘an expanded state of awareness’. It also means (because they are ‘one with truth’) that ‘The Truth’ is not amoral either ... in fact it is ‘The Truth’ that is the source of their morality/immorality. Hence all the religious injunctions down through the aeons – which are the genesis of any society’s morals – are what intuitively and instinctively ‘feels right’ and what intuitively and instinctively ‘feels wrong’. The question now is: knowing that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ does not make one perfect ... what will? * RESPONDENT: We actually become our ideas, our thoughts are realities in themselves so they cannot be speculated about, they must be realized for their being alive. RICHARD: Are you saying that becoming ‘one with truth’ is the living-out of ‘ideas’? That it is a thought-created reality that one makes come true through being ‘realised’? RESPONDENT: I’m saying that thoughts affect your awareness, your state of being, if you run negative thoughts through your mind, you deplete your energy and make yourself tired, sick, and depressed. Your thoughts do actualise, so we have to be very careful. They actualise as actions eventually, the more you play with a certain idea, the more likely you are to actualise it. And it affects your condition. If you think vain thoughts, it changes the way you feel to others. Haven’t you ever looked at someone and could tell without even talking to them that they were in love with themself? If you think kind, loving, expansive thoughts, it changes your condition to well-being. RICHARD: Okay ... I would like to offer this: if one does not nurse malice Without sorrow (‘bad’) ... where is the need for compassion (‘good’)? Similarly, without malice (‘bad’) ... where is the need for love (‘good’)? * RICHARD: If so, is it ‘ideas like amoral’ that get ‘realised’ and not the actuality? RESPONDENT: It is your awareness that is affected by your thoughts, most people have a continual stream of deluded ideas which pollute the awareness and there are so many thoughts for the awareness to deal with that there’s hardly any room for the awareness to pay attention to anything else, such as the way life feels. RICHARD: As you say ‘the way life feels’ in your response to the question ‘is it ideas like amoral that get realised and not the actuality’ I would now re-phrase the question this way: Is it not so that it is the ‘feeling-fed ideas like amoral’ which get ‘realised’ ... and not the actuality? As morality/immorality lies in the affective realm (the feeling faculty), how can the actuality of amorality (neither moral nor immoral) be found via feeling around for it in the self-same realm (among ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings)? Is it not so that actuality lies outside of the world of feelings?
RESPONDENT: You apparently have the secret that evaded Christ, Buddha, Krishna and all the so-called enlightened ones. Could you please tell us how you came to your realization and how you tend to the sufferings of our planet? RICHARD: I am a fifty three year old male, the progenitor of four adult children and eight grandchildren from my first marriage ... all now scattered far and wide and living their own lives. My companion and I are, by choice, childless and will stay so ... enough is enough. I currently live on the most easterly point of the Australian seaboard in a small village called Byron Bay. I rent a suburban three-bedroom brick duplex about one kilometre from the beach – the ocean is an almost constant back-drop in Byron Bay – and the wee small hours are my favourite time for writing ... I most often wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning and write until the first kookaburras start their laughing-like call from some trees over the back fence. Then I like to sit and sip an early morning coffee, with my feet up on the computer desk, and be with the first blue-grey light coming into the room ... through to the first glow of pre-dawn ... and then the sunrise itself. I have an affinity for the small-town life as I was born and raised on a dairy farm in the south-west of Australia ... I had a normal birth and upbringing. I went to a standard state school and took a regular job at fifteen and then volunteered for a six-year stint in the Military at seventeen. I went into a commonplace marriage at nineteen and had an average family. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning by going beyond Spiritual Enlightenment – which turned out to be an Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) – into the actuality of being here on earth and now in time as this flesh and blood body. For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because this freedom is located here in this very physical world, this actual world of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond Spiritual Enlightenment. My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that animal instincts such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. In September 1981 I underwent a monumental transformation into an Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) which can only be described as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. I became enlightened as the result of an earnest and intense process which commenced in the January of that year. At approximately six o’clock on the morning of Sunday 6th September 1981, my ‘ego’ disappeared entirely in an edifying moment of awakening to an Absolute Reality. I called this ASC an ‘Absolute Freedom’ because there was definitely a metaphysical Absolute in all this – as distinct from the temporal and spatial and material – that was ever-present, and this State Of Being immediately imbued me with Love Agapé and Universal Compassion for all sentient beings. I seemed to be driven by some force to spread The Word and that had never been my intention when I first had what is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) in 1980. My intent back then had been to cleanse myself of all that is detrimental to personal happiness and interpersonal harmony ... in other words: peace on earth in our life-time. Instead of that rather simple ambition, I found myself impelled on an odyssey to be the latest Saviour of Humankind in a long list of Enlightened Beings bringing Truth and Love to a suffering humanity ... and that imposition did not sit well with me, as they had all failed in their Divine Work. After something like five thousand years of recorded history, ‘humanity’ is nowhere nearer to Peace On Earth than before. Indeed, because of the much-touted Love and Compassion, much Hatred and Bloodshed has followed in their wake. This abysmal fate is something I wished to avoid repeating, whatever the personal cost in terms of losing the much-prized State Of Being. My diagnosis was simple: If I am driven by some force – no matter how Good that force be – then I am not actually free. I travelled the country – and overseas to India – meeting with people from all walks of life in an attempt to discover why Spiritual Enlightenment, which has been within the human experience for thousands of years, had not delivered the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise. As the process of becoming Enlightened is an extreme test of one’s mettle, requiring nerves of steel, it seemed that only a rare few humans were destined to become Self-Realised ... only 0.0000001 of the population, in a recent estimate. The question that commanded my attention was why this was so. I was looking beyond the superficial and questioning even the most closely held ideas and beliefs. Was there something more to discover ... something that lay beyond Enlightenment that would usher in the beginning of a genuine possibility of peace for all? Some Masters hinted at and alluded to ‘Going Beyond Enlightenment’ ... yet their Teachings remained exactly the same. Some disciplines suggested that such a condition existed after physical death: when the soul ‘quit the body’. The Hindu Mahasamadhi and Buddhist Parinirvana are two examples of this kind of thought. Over the eleven years I had numerous experiences of a condition that seemed so extreme that one must
surely die to attain to it. To go beyond Enlightenment seemed to be an impossibility whilst still alive and breathing. Then at midday on Friday the
30th October 1992 a curious event occurred, due to my intense conviction that it was imperative that someone evince a final and complete condition
that would ‘deliver the goods’ so longed for by humanity for millennia. Just like my ego had dissolved, back in 1981, my ‘soul’
disappeared. I was no longer a ‘Self’ existing for all Eternity and transcending Time and Space. I no longer had a feeling of ‘being’ –
nor ‘Being’ – and I could no longer detect the presence of The Absolute. There was no ‘Presence’ at all. Since that date I have continued
to live in a condition of complete emancipation and utter autonomy ... the condition is both permanent and actual. I lived in the Enlightened State
for eleven years, so I have an intimate understanding of the marked difference between spiritual freedom and actual freedom ... it is different in
that it is most definitely substantial: there is no longer a transcendence, for I have neither sorrow nor malice anywhere at all to rise above.
They have vanished entirely, leaving me both blithesome and benign – carefree and harmless – which leads to a most remarkable state of affairs.
The chief characteristics of Enlightenment – Union with the Divine, Universal Compassion, Love Agapé, Ineffable Bliss, Divine Rapture, The
Truth, Timelessness, Spacelessness, Immortality, Aloneness, Oneness, Pacifism I like communicating, sharing experience, comparing notes as to what sense we have made out of being alive ... about being here on this planet earth as a human being. Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. Nowadays I know, experientially, why Enlightenment does not deliver the goods ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is. I am a fellow human being, who happens to live in a condition of perfection and purity, offering my experience to whomsoever is interested because we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence – we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition – and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. I am having so much fun ... those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I understood that there was nobody stopping me but myself, I had the autonomy to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore. As soon as I realised nobody was standing in the way but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover and to find the ‘secret to life’ or the ‘meaning of life’ or the ‘riddle of existence’, or the ‘purpose of the universe’ or whatever one’s quest may be called. To dare to be me – to be what-I-am as an actuality – rather than the who ‘I’ was or the who ‘I’ am or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history ... or one’s personal history, at least. Nevertheless, despite of the fact that every single human being has had at least one pure consciousness experience (PCE) – and usually more – in their lifetime, they somehow can not differentiate between that peak experience of apperception (wherein ‘I’ and ‘me’, the thought and felt ‘being’, temporarily quits the scene and the actual world becomes apparent) and their pre-conceived notions that everyday reality is an illusion disguising some metaphysical ‘Greater Reality’. The Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz of the Altered State Of Consciousness has a tenacious grip upon the minds and hearts of a benighted humanity. It is indeed strange, to the point of being bizarre, that so many persons will turn their backs on the purity of the perfection of being here – of being fully alive – at this moment in time. Here in this actual world, which is where this flesh and blood body is living anyway, is the peace that everyone says they are searching for. All that is required is that one comes to one’s senses – both literally and metaphorically – and spend the rest of one’s life without malice and sorrow. One will then be blithe and benign, gay and carefree. It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to the patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. With an actualism spread like a chain-letter, in the due course of time, global freedom would revolutionise the concept of humanity. It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past ... terror would stalk its prey no more. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true. But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in the actual world. In actual freedom, life is experienced as
being perfect as-it-is here on earth. One knows that one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe – and that is what actually counts.
The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world, fail to impinge upon the blitheness and
benignity of one who lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to
be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Human beings, being as they are, will probably
continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious I live in peace and tranquillity, beholden to none. With no loyalty to bind me, I have nothing to defend. With nothing to defend I have no need to attack. I have no sense of mission to ‘change the world’. I am not driven by mystical forces to evangelise, to proselytise, to convert. If anyone is genuinely interested in finding out what the reason for their existence is, I am only too happy to participate in their enquiry. I am retired and on a pension and I am currently pottering around the Internet instead of pottering around in the garden. Nevertheless, I can only help those who wish to be helped in the only way that I can help. I am free to be here in the world as-it-is. Unadorned and unencumbered, I can stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to no-one and nothing at all. I am supremely content with life as-it-is, for perfection can be found in what others call imperfection ... and I have no desire to change anything. To be here, intimately here at this moment in time, where this actual world is such a marvellous place to be alive in, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the chronicles of antiquity. Actual intimacy – being here now – does not come from love and compassion, for the affective states of being stem from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love and compassion produces is but a meagre imitation of the direct experience of the actual. In the actual world, ‘I’ as ego, the personality, and ‘me’ as soul, the ‘being’ – both subjectively experienced as one’s identity – have ceased to exist; whereas love and compassion accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other similarly afflicted persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials ... to verify ‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without the separative identity ... and therefore free from the need for love and compassion with their ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. There is an actual intimacy between me and everyone and everything ... actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other as-they-are. I am having a superb time ... and it is a well-earned superb time, too. Nothing has come without application – apart from serendipitous discoveries because of pure intent – and I am reaping the rewards which are plentiful and deliciously satisfying. Actual intimacy frees one up to a world of factual splendour, based firmly upon sensate and sensuous delight. The candid and unabashed sensorial enjoyment of being this body in the world around is such a luscious and immediate experience, that the tantalising but ever-elusive promise of the mystique of love and compassion has faded into the oblivion it deserves. Thus the search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and these sense organs – and thus the external world – disappears. To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart) – to have sensations happen to them, I am the sensations. The entire affective faculty vanishes ... blind nature’s software package of instinctual passions is deleted. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not happening to an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To live life as these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and magic. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away – nor has it ever been away – it was just that ‘I’/‘me’ was standing in the way of the meaning of life being apparent. Life is not a vale of tears ... this is an actual freedom from the human condition: it is indeed possible to be actually free, here on earth, as this body, in this life-time. To seek and to find; to explore and uncover; to investigate and discover ... these actions are the very stuff of life!
RESPONDENT: Richard, I wonder however how your experience really ‘differs’ from what Buddha or Christ or many of the living teachers experience. From what I understand, they all realize the same thing, a common experience. RICHARD: Perhaps if I provide a (by no means exhaustive) list of the major ways in which my experience differs it may clarify the situation somewhat. Viz.: Actual freedom: Time and space and form are actual (the timeless, spaceless and formless reality is a dream). Actual freedom: This physical universe is infinite and eternal (boundless and limitless). Actual freedom: This physical universe is beginningless and endless (unborn and undying). Actual freedom: This physical universe is the source of human life (matter gives rise to consciousness). Actual freedom: One is this flesh and blood body only. Actual freedom: Physical death is the end, finish: mortality. Actual freedom: The soul (by whatever name) is an illusion. Actual freedom: Peace-on-earth is possible as this flesh and blood body. Actual freedom: Suffering is eliminated (via immolation). Actual freedom: Both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul are extinguished. Actual freedom: Any ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dichotomy is not actual. Actual freedom: Love and compassion only exist as long as malice and sorrow exists (both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ become
extinct). Actual freedom: The facts are the key to success and are to be found in the actual. Actual freedom: A temporary pure consciousness experience (PCE) such as a peak experience provides a glimpse of one’s
destiny. Actual freedom: By being born a separative ‘self’ one lives in a painful reality (being detached from actuality) and
sensuousness ends this detachment with the resultant apperception revealing the actual world. Actual freedom: Belief, faith, trust and hope play no part. Actual freedom: Intuition, imagination, visualisation, prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy and divination are non-existent in
actual freedom. Actual freedom: Actual freedom is consistent: it is neither contradictory nor hypocritical. Actual freedom: Autonomy and independence (through altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice) are the hallmarks of actual freedom. Actual freedom: Gratitude is a hindrance on the path to an actual freedom. Actual freedom: Dignity is both the means to the end and the end in actual freedom. RESPONDENT: In the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, in the chapter ‘Resurrection of Yukteswar’, Yukteswar has died recently and appears to the author, Yogananda, and explains to him in telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words, what the actual condition of life beyond the material world is like. He explains that once the physical form is discarded, then one lives in the astral/subtle and mental/causal bodies. He lives on the astral realm and says that what happens there is that we reincarnate there again and again just like we do on earth, then transcend to the mental/causal realm and do the same there. How does that explanation coincide or differ from your understanding? RICHARD: First, as Mr. Yukteswar Giri is dead then any ‘appearance’ of his for Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh (aka
Paramhansa Yogananda) is ascertained in Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s psyche (the imaginative/intuitive psychic facility) and not in the physical world Neither the ‘astral/ subtle and mental/ causal body’ nor the ‘mental/causal realm’ exist in this physical actuality ... they exist in a metaphysical reality. RESPONDENT: It seems, from my understanding, that ‘enlightenment’ has to do with freeing the awareness from being bound to the body ... RICHARD: Yes ... you are understanding enlightenment correctly (in enlightenment consciousness is seen as being the source of matter and had become entangled in its own creation). RESPONDENT: ... and that with the awakening of awareness, telepathy starts to develop ... RICHARD: Yes ... prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination and so on can become quite pronounced in enlightenment. For example, a Twentieth Century God-Man, Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain had enough enlightened prescience to clairvoyantly know 18 years ago that:
RESPONDENT: ... and the habitual self-referencing ends. RICHARD: Yes ... and when the personal self-referencing ends the impersonal Self-Referencing begins (‘I am God’ or ‘I am That’ and so on). RESPONDENT: Awareness is now free to experience itself ‘as’ reality, rather than separated from it. RICHARD: Yes ... there is an all-encompassing loving and compassionate total oneness (an utter ‘Aloneness’) being all that is, was, and ever will be (‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) in enlightenment. As an aid to understanding why my experience differs, it is important to comprehend that the entire psyche has ceased to exist ... the affective faculty (emotions, passions, calenture) and its epiphenomenal psychic facility (intuition, imagination, visualisation) was extirpated when the instinctual passions (complete with the primal animal self) ceased to exist. Which is why it is all so simple in this actual world.
RESPONDENT: In the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, in the chapter ‘Resurrection of Yukteswar’, Yukteswar has died recently and appears to the author, Yogananda, and explains to him in telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words, what the actual condition of life beyond the material world is like. He explains that once the physical form is discarded, then one lives in the astral/subtle and mental/causal bodies. He lives on the astral realm and says that what happens there is that we reincarnate there again and again just like we do on earth, then transcend to the mental/causal realm and do the same there. How does that explanation coincide or differ from your understanding? RICHARD: First, as Mr. Yukteswar Giri is dead then any ‘appearance’ of his for Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh is ascertained in Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s psyche (the imaginative/ intuitive psychic facility) and not in the physical world actuality (which is ascertained sensately). Which means that ‘life beyond the material world’ is not actual (existing in fact) and is accurately described as being ascertained by ‘telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words’ (which is the clue that his vision is not a sensorial actuality but a prescient reality). Thus the entire explanation does not coincide with my experience at all: my actual experience (factual) clearly shows me that death is the end, finish; extinction (no reincarnation or after-life). RESPONDENT: This is an assumption, one that I agree with you does not match the rest of your realization, but this doesn’t mean that it is not actual. RICHARD: I am somewhat at a loss as to how you can be so certain that it is ‘an assumption’ of mine that ‘death is the end, finish; extinction’. As there is no identity (neither ‘I’ as ego nor ‘me’ as soul) there is no ‘being’ whatsoever extant in this flesh and blood body to survive the physical decomposition and/or combustion of this body upon death. RESPONDENT: I believe that Paramhansa’s experience is actual. RICHARD: I am not suggesting that Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh did not actually have an experience ... it is the contents of the experience that are not actual (Mr. Yukteswar Giri’s ‘appearance’ was not an actual appearance ... actual appearances only happen in the physical world). RESPONDENT: But I do understand your belief system, but I think it’s based on assessment of your own experience, which ... it should be. RICHARD: As I have no ‘belief system’ I am somewhat bemused in regards to what it is that you understand. RESPONDENT: But that doesn’t mean it’s final, you too are in a condition of development, which will change. RICHARD: Yet a fact is always final ... a fact never changes (otherwise it is not a fact). It is a fact that there is only heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and so on ‘within’ this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: And you may in the future find yourself, as you have in the past, needing to revise your assumptions. RICHARD: Indeed ... any and all assumptions I make are ever open to revision or discarding. Usually I preface my words with ‘I assume ...’ or ‘As an opinion ...’ or ‘Presumably ...’ or ‘Theoretically ...’ and so on. An hypothesis is always a ‘working model’ until the fact is ascertained. As for my past: a ‘truth’ is not a fact nor is ‘The Truth’ factual ... facts are pretty thin on the ground in the religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical world ... which is one of the many things that made me suss ’way back then. RESPONDENT: We’ll just have to see whether death is in fact final, won’t we? RICHARD: Maybe it would be best to only speak for yourself ... I already know for a fact that ‘death is final’. Incidentally, this stance (‘we’ll just have to see whether death is in fact final’) is sometimes known as being agnostic ... and the people I have met personally, over the many years that I have discussed these matters, who embrace this position have invariably been firmly convinced that this ‘I don’t know’ approach is the intelligent approach. Mostly they have been academics or mystics ... is it a variation on that hoary adage: ‘He who says he does not know, really knows’? I guess it makes them feel intellectually comfortable. Do you want to know? Do you want to find out? RESPONDENT: I tend to accept Yogananda’s version that death is in fact only relative to the physical body and that there is in fact a spiritual form (though not physical) that we continue on in. RICHARD: This ‘a spiritual form (though not physical)’ phrasing indicates that there may very well be a psychological and/or psychic entity still inhabiting the body that is writing these words to me. Hence you presumably have no alternative but to see what I write as being ‘a belief system’ or ‘an assumption’ ... which process, if this is what is happening, is called egocentricity (viewing another through one’s own experience and/or standards). * RICHARD: Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s visionary experience (non-factual) ... RESPONDENT: You can’t be sure of this. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... I can be sure of this. You accurately described his experience as being ascertained by ‘telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words’ ... which is the clue that his experience is not a sensorial actuality but a visionary prescient reality. Only sensate actuality is factual. * RICHARD: ... [Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s experience] shows him that ‘the physical form is discarded’ at death by the ‘astral/subtle and mental/causal body’ which then continues to incarnate and ‘reincarnate again and again’ in the ‘mental/causal realm’. Neither the ‘astral/subtle and mental/causal body’ nor the ‘mental/causal realm’ exist in this physical actuality ... they exist in a metaphysical reality. RESPONDENT: It depends on what you term physical. RICHARD: I term ‘physical’ that which is material, corporeal, substantial, concrete, tangible and palpable as ascertained sensately (or by extension to the senses such as telescopes, microscopes, x-rays and so on). RESPONDENT: Perhaps the more subtle realms are indeed just as real as this one, only at a more subtle rate of vibration. RICHARD: Have you never noticed that a Christian, when having a vision of God, typically sees a pale-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene hanging on a cross ... whilst a Hindu having a vision of God typically sees a blue-skinned Mr. Krishna playing on a flute ... and not vice versa? This and many, many other examples of comparative religious studies shows that what a believer sees (as being real) in visions is culturally determined. Before modern technology provided a world-wide communication network of newspapers, magazines, books, libraries, telegraph, radio, telephone, television and now the internet, such visions had an imperative force because isolation beggars comparison. Thus modern scholarly research has thoroughly scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth of the revered fables and legends of yore. Although, speaking of ‘subtle realms’, I notice that Mr. Aristotle the Stagirite’s ‘aether’ is under-going a revival as Quantum Theory gets ever more frantic due to the mathematicians who, having taken over physics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are bemiring themselves more and more in their futile efforts to prove their god to be a mathematician.
RESPONDENT: In the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, in the chapter ‘Resurrection of Yukteswar’, Yukteswar has died recently and appears to the author, Yogananda, and explains to him in telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words, what the actual condition of life beyond the material world is like. He explains that once the physical form is discarded, then one lives in the astral/subtle and mental/causal bodies. He lives on the astral realm and says that what happens there is that we reincarnate there again and again just like we do on earth, then transcend to the mental/causal realm and do the same there. How does that explanation coincide or differ from your understanding? RICHARD: First, as Mr. Yukteswar Giri is dead then any ‘appearance’ of his for Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh is ascertained in Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s psyche (the imaginative/ intuitive psychic facility) and not in the physical world actuality (which is ascertained sensately). Which means that ‘life beyond the material world’ is not actual (existing in fact) and is accurately described as being ascertained by ‘telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words’ (which is the clue that his vision is not a sensorial actuality but a prescient reality). Thus the entire explanation does not coincide with my experience at all: my actual experience (factual) clearly shows me that death is the end, finish; extinction (no reincarnation or after-life). RESPONDENT: This is an assumption, one that I agree with you does not match the rest of your realization, but this doesn’t mean that it is not actual. RICHARD: I am somewhat at a loss as to how you can be so certain that it is ‘an assumption’ of mine that ‘death is the end, finish; extinction’. As there is no identity (neither ‘I’ as ego nor ‘me’ as soul) there is no ‘being’ whatsoever extant in this flesh and blood body to survive the physical decomposition or combustion of this body upon death. RESPONDENT: Goddamn it Richard you’re really starting to piss me off! Just kidding. Ok, forget about I or Richard but there is something inside of you right now reading this message that is sitting inside the location coordinates formerly known as Richard, right? RICHARD: Not so ... there is only heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and so on ‘in’ this flesh and blood body. I explained this in my initial response to your query ‘Tell Us About Yourself Richard’ Viz.:
So as to read it in context you will find it towards the end of the article. I have also explained it towards the end of another post:
Where I say ‘I am the sensations’ and ‘I am these sense organs in operation’, I mean what I write ... because I write what I mean. As sensations cannot occur without senses, and as senses cannot exist without a flesh and blood body, then when this flesh and blood body physically decomposes or is burnt upon death so too do the senses, sensations ... and me. RESPONDENT: There is an awareness there and this is what will go on. RICHARD: Not so ... apperception (which is what awareness is sans identity) only occurs when this flesh and blood body is alive (not dead), awake (not asleep), conscious (not unconscious). The oblivion of concussion, anaesthesia and night-time sleep demonstrate this fact admirably. RESPONDENT: That unique awareness that is what we think of as ourselves. RICHARD: Ahh ... therein lies the rub: who ‘I’ think ‘I’ am, who ‘I’ feel ‘I’ am and who ‘I’ instinctively know ‘I’ am (the identity ‘in’ the flesh and blood body) mistakenly seeks immortality because of the self-aggrandising tendency of the narcissism born of the survival instincts. * RESPONDENT: I believe that Paramhansa’s experience is actual. RICHARD: I am not suggesting that Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh did not actually have an experience ... it is the contents of the experience that are not actual (Mr. Yukteswar Giri’s ‘appearance’ was not an actual appearance ... actual appearances only happen in the physical world). RESPONDENT: As real as the experience you are having right now of reading these words. Watch it! RICHARD: Not so ... visionary states only seem ‘as real’ (arguably more real) as everyday experience to the lost, lonely frightened and very, very cunning identity within who is forever cut-off from the magnificence of the actual world. All the identity normally sees is the grim and glum reality (the ‘real world’) that is pasted as a veneer over actuality ... hence visionary states are incredibly attractive. * RESPONDENT: But I do understand your belief system, but I think it’s based on assessment of your own experience, which ... it should be. RICHARD: As I have no ‘belief system’ I am somewhat bemused in regards to what it is that you understand. RESPONDENT: That’s good. You be bemused. RICHARD: May I ask? Why would you want a fellow human being to remain bemused? Are you not interested in open, frank communication? How can I respond appropriately if you do not explain what you are thinking? I am not a mind-reader (I have no prescient facilities whatsoever) and such a stance as this leaves me no alternative but to guess what is going on for you ... to conjecture, to make suppositions, assumptions, presumptions and so on. * RESPONDENT: But that doesn’t mean it’s final, you too are in a condition of development, which will change. RICHARD: Yet a fact is always final ... a fact never changes (otherwise it is not a fact). It is a fact that there is only heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and so on ‘within’ this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Yes that qualify as material plane stuff. Why couldn’t there be non-material plane stuff? Why limit stuff? Isn’t that being a bit stuffy? RICHARD: Yet ‘material stuff’ is not limited: this physical universe, being infinite and eternal, is boundless and limitless. The physical infinitude that this very material universe actually is, is comprised of an unlimited amount of ‘material stuff’ perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of form all over the unbounded reaches of infinite space throughout the immeasurable extent of eternal time. Thus the ‘material stuff’ that is this flesh and blood body is the very same-same ‘material stuff’ as the ‘material stuff’ of this infinite and eternal physical universe, in that I come out of the ground (‘material stuff’) as a variety of carrots and lettuce and milk and cheese and whatever (‘material stuff’), combined with the air (‘material stuff’) that I breath and the water (‘material stuff’) that I drink and the sunlight (‘material stuff’) that I absorb. As such there is no ‘limit’ whatsoever and, as this flesh and blood body (‘material stuff’), I am this very ‘material stuff’ universe experiencing its own infinitude (‘material stuff’) as a sensate and reflective human being (‘material stuff’). This very physical universe (‘material stuff’) is also experiencing itself as cats and dogs (‘material stuff’) and all other sentient beings (‘material stuff’). How on earth can all this magnificence be ‘a bit stuffy’ (dull; lacking in freshness or interest)? Everything is in a constant state of flux: nothing stays the same, each moment again everything is novel, fresh, vital, dynamic. One can never, ever be bored. * RESPONDENT: We’ll just have to see whether death is in fact final, won’t we? RICHARD: Maybe it would be best to only speak for yourself ... I already know for a fact that ‘death is final’. RESPONDENT: Yeah well we will see what you tell me after you die. You won’t be so smug then will you? RICHARD: Something that I have noticed, over the many years that I have discussed these matters, in the people I have met personally who have what may be described as a religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical point of view, is that as a last resort they invariably start threatening me with the dire consequences that ensue in the ‘after-death’ state because I do not agree with their belief system. So that this exchange does not devolve into you endeavouring to put the ‘fear of God’ into me (and I am not implying that you were going to), it may be advantageous to comprehend why I have every reason to be ‘smug’ (complacent, pleased, satisfied, content). I am this very material universe experiencing its own infinitude as a sensate and reflective human being; I am living my destiny. * RICHARD: Incidentally, this stance (‘we’ll just have to see whether death is in fact final’) is sometimes known as being agnostic ... and the people I have met personally, over the many years that I have discussed these matters, who embrace this position have invariably been firmly convinced that this ‘I don’t know’ approach is the intelligent approach. Mostly they have been academics or mystics ... is it a variation on that hoary adage: ‘He who says he does not know, really knows’? I guess it makes them feel intellectually comfortable. RESPONDENT: I’m not agnostic at all. I’m convicted. I’m certain there is an afterlife, positive. I’ve seen evidence. It’s the only way of course. It will never make sense intellectually. Never. Ever. RICHARD: Okay ... am I to take it then, that your ‘we’ll just have to see whether death is in fact final’ response to me was just rhetoric and not a genuine communication (in that you already know but pretended you did not)? If so, do you often treat your co-respondents this way instead of being up-front and laying your cards on the table? * RESPONDENT: I tend to accept Yogananda’s version that death is in fact only relative to the physical body and that there is in fact a spiritual form (though not physical) that we continue on in. RICHARD: This ‘a spiritual form (though not physical)’ phrasing indicates that there may very well be a psychological and/or psychic entity still inhabiting the body that is writing these words to me. Hence you presumably have no alternative but to see what I write as being ‘a belief system’ or ‘an assumption’ ... which process, if this is what is happening, is called egocentricity (viewing another through one’s own experience and/or standards). RESPONDENT: Do I sense hurt feelings? RICHARD: How could I know what you sense or do not sense? I am not a mind-reader ... therefore, as a suggestion only: this ‘a spiritual form (though not physical)’ phrasing indicates that there may very well be an affective identity still inhabiting the body that is writing these words to me. Hence you presumably have no alternative but to ‘sense’ what I write as being the result of ‘hurt feelings’ ... which process, if this is what is happening, is called egocentricity (viewing another through one’s own feelings and/or standards). * RICHARD: Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s visionary experience (non-factual) ... RESPONDENT: You can’t be sure of this. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... I can be sure of this. You accurately described his experience as being ascertained by ‘telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words’ ... which is the clue that his experience is not a sensorial actuality but a visionary prescient reality. Only sensate actuality is factual. RESPONDENT: ‘And words’ is the way you talk to physically manifesting individuals, such as the check-out person at the market. You probably don’t talk to him/her in telepathic imagery though, but you might, well not you, but some might. RICHARD: It is well known that a person can have both visual and auditory hallucinations (voices in their head). There was a person some years ago in the USA (from memory called the ‘Son of Sam’ or some-such thing) who had his god telling him he must ‘kill all the whores’ (he was arrested for killing street prostitutes). And, although I have never had auditory hallucinations, I did have visual hallucinations back in 1981 ... visions in which ‘God’s Plan’ was revealed to me. The entire esoteric realm with all its psychic adumbrations is fraught with danger. * RICHARD: ... [Mr. Mukunda Lal Gosh’s experience] shows him that ‘the physical form is discarded’ at death by the ‘astral/subtle and mental/causal body’ which then continues to incarnate and ‘reincarnate again and again’ in the ‘mental/causal realm’. Neither the ‘astral/subtle and mental/causal body’ nor the ‘mental/causal realm’ exist in this physical actuality ... they exist in a metaphysical reality. RESPONDENT: Yes, and? RICHARD: ... and thus ‘life beyond the material world’ is not actual (existing in fact) and is accurately described as being ascertained by ‘telepathic mental pictures ‘and’ words’ (which is the clue that his vision is not a sensorial actuality but a prescient reality). Thus the entire explanation does not coincide with my experience at all: my actual experience (factual) clearly shows me that death is the end, finish; extinction (no reincarnation or after-life). I am simply explaining how my experience differs (in answer to your original query) and why. * RESPONDENT: It depends on what you term physical. RICHARD: I term ‘physical’ that which is material, corporeal, substantial, concrete, tangible and palpable as ascertained sensately (or by extension to the senses such as telescopes, microscopes, x-rays and so on). RESPONDENT: So don’t you ever feel sometimes in your dreams that your dream life is more real than your waking one? RICHARD: No ... I sleep soundly (oblivion) and am unaware of any dreaming occurring whilst/if it is happening. * RESPONDENT: Perhaps the more subtle realms are indeed just as real as this one, only at a more subtle rate of vibration. RICHARD: Have you never noticed that a Christian, when having a vision of God, typically sees a pale-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene hanging on a cross ... whilst a Hindu having a vision of God typically sees a blue-skinned Mr. Krishna playing on a flute ... and not vice versa? This and many, many other examples of comparative religious studies shows that what a believer sees (as being real) in visions is culturally determined. Before modern technology provided a world-wide communication network of newspapers, magazines, books, libraries, telegraph, radio, telephone, television and now the internet, such visions had an imperative force because isolation beggars comparison. Thus modern scholarly research has thoroughly scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth of the revered fables and legends of yore. Although, speaking of ‘subtle realms’, I notice that Mr. Aristotle the Stagirite’s ‘aether’ is under-going a revival as Quantum Theory gets ever more frantic due to the mathematicians who, having taken over physics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are bemiring themselves more and more in their futile efforts to prove their god to be a mathematician. RESPONDENT: All I can say is that you seem to have taken a totally empiricist’s materialism and somehow mixed it up with spiritual realization, which is a very odd combination, if you ask me. RICHARD: Yet what I experience is neither materialism To be actualistic is to be living the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like 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 that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. We do not live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality. I am mortal.
RESPONDENT: Okay, I think I see where you are at, Richard: I wonder why anyone would ‘want’ to feel they have exceeded the understanding of such a one as Buddha or Christ? RICHARD: Why would anyone want to merely ‘feel’ that they have done anything correctly or incorrectly ... let alone exceeding Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s or Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene’ ‘understanding’? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... why feelings should be given the honour of being the final arbiter in any issue speaks volumes about the human condition and indicates why people are unable to directly address the issue under question, which is: why do human beings suffer? As feelings lie all around the root cause of suffering (thus protecting and concealing it) then to give feelings the power to be the ultimate adjudicator means never finding the root cause. RESPONDENT: Few feel they can even begin to fathom the depths of realizations of those two towering figures. RICHARD: Speaking personally, I always let the facts speak for themselves ... and the facts are very simple in regards to the ‘realisations’ of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan and Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene: neither offered peace-on-earth and both proposed non-earthly salvation (‘Deathless’ and ‘Heaven’) after physical death. It does not take a genius to suss out that they were both anti-life to the core. The paramount ‘realisation’ of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan was that everything material (physical) – which includes the entire universe – being transitory, impermanent, was ‘dukkha’: therefore cease craving physical existence (do not even bother looking for peace-on-earth). Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene’ major ‘realisation’ was essentially the same: everything material (the heavens and the earth) shall pass away – therefore resist the temptations of the flesh – as his kingdom, which was before the heavens and the earth were, endures (do not even bother looking for peace-on-earth). Both men eschewed actual time and space and form and urged everybody to seek the non-actual timeless and spaceless and formless. I did not just ‘begin to fathom the depths’: I have experientially fathomed ‘the depths of realizations of those two’ to the very core of ‘being’ itself ... I lived it night and day for eleven years. Their ‘realisations’ and ‘understandings’ (and those of all God-Men and Gurus) does not include peace-on-earth. Therefore, their ‘wisdom’ means that 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 the such-like will go on forever and a day. And yet you say that it is me who is deluded? RESPONDENT: I fear you are suffering from delusion here Richard. RICHARD: Okay ... what is the nature, the characteristics of the delusion, according to you? Bearing in mind that I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written. The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’. Doctrines like pacifism, for example. RESPONDENT: To even consider oneself any where near the understanding of those two, let alone beyond them is bordering on the danger zone. RICHARD: Why? 2,500-odd years and 2,000-odd years have gone by and despite millions upon millions – if not billions – of otherwise intelligent and/or pious and/or studious and/or devout peoples throughout these thousands of years faithfully and trustingly applying their ‘Teachings’ ... there is still as much mayhem and misery as way back then. Does this not stretch one’s credulity somewhat? RESPONDENT: I’ve met some towering folks myself in my time and none of those would dare assert their superiority. RICHARD: Yet is it not stunningly clear, to the discerning observer, that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have squandered their heyday? With this modern era’s rapid and comprehensive publication and communications network, none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice. Anyone who is at all astute will have perceived that they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity. RESPONDENT: I think you are mistaken Richard, you seem to have gone on an intellectual journey that has taken you to some never-never land. RICHARD: What inspires you to say this? Why is almost everybody held in thralldom to failed ancestors? Is it not obvious that the whole thrust of humanity’s wisdom – polluted as it is by belief, faith, trust, hope and the uneasy certitude engendered – has been going horribly wrong? Wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and corruption have been the odious result of such practices for far too long to persevere in giving credence to the fantasies and hallucinations that pass for sagacity. Fuelled by an emotional imagination, human beings down through the centuries have given voice to their passionate dreams and nightmares, with abominable consequences. All of humanity’s sublime feeling and profound thought has been a purview predicated upon doom and gloom regarding life here on this fair earth. And yet you see a fellow human being’s discovery of the already always existing peace-on-earth as an ‘intellectual journey’ into a ‘never-never land’. When I go to bed at night I have had a perfect day ... and I know that I will wake up to yet another day of perfection. This has been going on, day-after-day, for years now ... it is so ‘normal’ that I take it for granted that there is only perfection. If this is what an ‘intellectual journey’ into a ‘never-never land’ produces then I thoroughly recommend such a journey to all and sundry. This is peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body ... as an actuality. RESPONDENT: What I hear in your explanations is just ordinary consciousness, which you should not confuse with superiority to enlightenment. RICHARD: Okay ... would you expand on your observation so that I may see for myself what you see? And, to save you wading through all that I have written, I will provide a précis ... perhaps you may point out where you see the ‘ordinary consciousness’ being ‘confused with superiority to enlightenment’ in action? Viz.:
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 MAILING LIST ‘C’ 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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