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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Enlightenment
RESPONDENT: If the essence of who I am is formless as you say on your website, then how can you see it and describe it as a beautiful rosy pearl nestled coyly amidst the delicate fleshy tissue of its host in its shimmering nacreous shell? RICHARD: G’day No. 11, You are obviously referring to an email exchange of ours, on this forum, over 2 & 1/2 years ago. Purely for the sake of clarity in communication I will re-present it in full. Viz.:
And, again for reasons of clarity in communication, in a follow-up email I expanded somewhat upon that which lay so gorgeously exposed, completely unprotected, a little after the witching-hour on that revelatory and empowering (to again utilise the jargon) night in mid-1987. Viz.:
Now, back to your question (about how can that which is essentially formless be seen and described as a beautiful rosy pearl and etcetera): first and foremost, the seeing is neither a retinal percipience – as in, the seer –> the retinae –> the seen – nor a dichotomous ‘inner’ perception (as in, the seer –> the seen) as the seer *is* the seen ... or, rather, there is only the seen (‘There is only That’). (In short, ‘seeing’, in my above words ‘the seeing is ...’, is being used in its figurative sense). Second, as that which is formless (as in, timeless and spaceless, ethereal and supernal, immaterial and incorporeal and so on) is not only neither existent nor non-existent, but is not neither existent nor non-existent either, then my lustrous pearl analogy serves to convey the ethereal radiant beauty of that which is devoid of any personality whatsoever – utterly non-egoic in any way, means or manner (aka, void) – and, thus, totally ‘other’, resplendently supreme, sacred and absolute. (In short, ‘seen’, in my further above words ‘... there is only the seen’, is also being used in its figurative sense). Lastly, as all my words and writings are informed by the post-parinirvana/ mahasamadhi condition known as an actual freedom from the human condition, it must be stressed that the ongoing experiencing, night and day, for the eleven years 1981-to-1992 was *not* of being a (capitalised) ‘Self’ or ‘Being’ – ‘God’ or ‘The Creator’ by whatever name – but of having gone behind that, in the first few weeks or so, into that which all such gods and goddesses arise out of or are grounded in. (In short, that whence all avatars and buddhas emanate). Viz.:
* I am also stressing this so as to address the mis-information/ dis-information bruited abroad by a pretermitting whippersnapper whose main function in life is, it would seem, to be a mouthpiece for a once-failed Singapore businessman he publicly identifies as Mr. John Tan (he may as well have said ‘John Smith’ or ‘Joe Citizen’). Ha ... this is all such fun! Regards, Richard. RESPONDENT: If the essence of who I am is formless as you say on your website, then how can you see it and describe it as a beautiful rosy pearl nestled coyly amidst the delicate fleshy tissue of its host in its shimmering nacreous shell? RICHARD: You are obviously referring to an email exchange of ours, on this forum, over 2 & 1/2 years ago. Purely for the sake of clarity in communication I will re-present it in full. Viz.: [...snip...]. Second, as that which is formless (as in, timeless and spaceless, ethereal and supernal, immaterial and incorporeal and so on)
is not only neither existent nor non-existent, but is not neither existent nor non-existent either, then my lustrous pearl analogy serves to convey
the ethereal radiant beauty of that which is devoid of any personality whatsoever – utterly non-egoic in any way, means or manner (aka, void) –
and, thus, totally ‘other’, resplendently supreme, sacred and absolute. [...snip...]. RESPONDENT: Existent and non-existent are one? RICHARD: G’day No. 11, If by ‘one’ you mean the two faces of the same coin then, yes, existent/ non-existent are one; mystical literature often mentions how the polar opposites continue to subsist (as complimentary poles) in awakenment/ enlightenment. Indeed, one of the appellations used to describe that integration of the divine/ diabolical divide upon transcendence, wherein the opposites unite without ceasing to be themselves, is the phrase ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ (coincidence of opposites). Another term is ‘complexio oppositorum’ (union of opposites). The (mystical) experience of being both existent and non-existent, simultaneously, is a god-experience (goddess, if feminine). But behind the god/goddess-experience (‘behind’, not beyond) is That which is not only neither existent nor non-existent, but is not neither existent nor non-existent either. This double-negation is not just a fancy play of words but a precise depiction of that which is, essentially, ineffable (as in, no attributes to speak of). RESPONDENT: Also, can you describe how one initiates the act of penetration into one’s being? RICHARD: Yes, and I can do no better, for now, than to confirm the selection made by a discerning reader in an earlier
post (#14009 RESPONDENT: Richard, God is real? RICHARD: If you are using ‘real’ as it is used in actualism terminology – unlike the dictionaries I draw a
sharp distinction between the word real and the word actual With no God (or gods and goddesses) to meddle in human affairs any longer one walks freely, as this flesh-and-blood body only, in the already always existing peace-on-earth. Regards, Richard. RESPONDENT No. 45 (List B): By which way the first ‘I’ (ego or self) can expand and create the second ‘I’ (‘I’ as soul/‘I’ as ‘Self’ as ‘me’)? RICHARD: As a generalisation it has been traditionally held that there are three ways: 1. Jnani (cognitive realisation
as epitomised by the ‘neti-neti’ or ‘not this; not this’ approach). 2. Bhakti (affective realisation as epitomised by devotional worship
and surrender of will). 3. Yoga (bodily realisation as epitomised by the raising of ‘kundalini’ and the opening of ‘chakras’). RESPONDENT: Richard, I’ve been following this discussion with interest and have a couple of questions for you: Which of the 3 ways did you use to achieve spiritual enlightenment in 1981? RICHARD: Well, none of those 3 ways, actually ... I inadvertently ‘discovered’ another way: ignorance. I was aiming for the pure consciousness experience (PCE) and landed short of my goal ... and it took another 11 years to get here. To explain: I have never followed anyone; I have never been part of any religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical group; I have never done any disciplines, practices or exercises at all; I have never done any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any praying, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities; nor did I endlessly analyse my childhood for ever and a day; nor did I do never-ending therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... and again and again. 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. I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough, into what I called an ‘Absolute Freedom’ via the death of ‘myself’, in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I studied all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such spontaneous experiences and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong. I found out where I had been going wrong for eleven years ... self-aggrandisement is so seductive. RESPONDENT: If people can use any of these three techniques, and I’m thinking in particular of the 3rd via raising of the kundalini, doesn’t this verify part of the spiritual theory? RICHARD: The ‘spiritual theory’ needs no further verification than that it is indeed possible to become illuminated or enlightened. Similarly, it is also possible to become angry or sad or loving or compassionate ... and so on. It is also possible to be intuitive, to be telepathic, to be clairvoyant (not accurately though). As well as that it is possible to see fairies or sprites or goblins ... the whole range of psychic phenomena. RESPONDENT: If one can practice to send the kundalini up the sushumna opening chakras along the way – for this to work mustn’t there be a kundalini? RICHARD: Not only the ‘kundalini’ ... there must also be ‘the sushumna’ , the ‘chakras’
and ‘prana’ (one cannot practice ‘pranayama’ if there be no ‘prana’). The word ‘prana’ For many early peoples (called ‘primitive people’) what animated the body was breath (air, vital
air, vital force, life force, life principle and so on), because when a person stopped breathing they were dead ... their soul had left their body
as their last breath. In the animistic religions (called ‘pagan’) of the Bronze Age and earlier, spirit was everywhere, especially in the air
(in the ‘ether’) Facts, of course, are irrelevant to spiritualists ... even though, these days we know that the ‘vital force’ in the air we breath is oxygen and that what we breath out is carbon dioxide (amongst other elements) which is the ‘vital force’ that plants imbibe ... and plants exude the very oxygen we breath in. And, unless science can be proved incorrect about the physical element called oxygen, and the wisdom of the ancients proved right about the non-physical etheric force, called prana or chi and so on, the following has no relationship whatsoever to physical actuality. Viz.:
The sublimated carnal passions (the ecstatically blissful sexual energies in the pleasure centre of the amygdala), coupled with a fertilised imagination, do have amazingly energetic manifestations. RESPONDENT: Obviously I’m having a little trouble leaving behind some of my spiritual baggage. I wonder if perhaps I have misinterpreted what you said to me in an earlier email: [Richard]: ‘The entire psychic world is real – at times very real – but none of it is actual’. Initially I interpreted this as ‘real’ meaning something akin to the spiritual concept of maya – seemingly real but ultimately not so. Now I am re-reading the definition you give of ‘actual’ and it occurs to me that perhaps you mean only the actual world is important – I’m guessing that’s something made clear during PCE’s and in Actual Freedom itself? – and that the world of the ‘real’ is more unimportant than illusory. Would this be an accurate summary? RICHARD: The ‘world of the real’ is the ‘inner world’, born of the affective faculty, and superimposed as a veneer over this actual world ... creating what is known as the ‘real-world’ (the ‘outer world’). There is no ‘inner world’ or ‘outer world’ in actuality: there is only 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. And, yes, this actual world is stunningly obvious in a pure consciousness experience (PCE). RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions. 1) Do you see enlightenment as pathological? RICHARD: Yes, my experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that it is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’, complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the all-expansive ‘Self’). Generally speaking, all dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional stress and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. Thus, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into an unreal ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Mysticism in general is a psychotic sickness; a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind and is otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ (a vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil). The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism that became culturally institutionalised, into being a legitimate and venerated social metaphysics, over thousands and thousands of years. RESPONDENT: 2) Do you see enlightenment as necessary step to get to where you are at? RICHARD: No ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps for I had to run the full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain. No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat.
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED 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.
Richard’s Text ©The
Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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