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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Evolution
RESPONDENT: I’m going to pass on commenting about explaining things reductionistically for now, but about nature being pragmatic – yes. It just uses what’s at hand, is that what you mean? RICHARD: The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ means those organisms most fitted to the environment prosper (and not necessarily those most muscular as is popularly believed) and those least fitted to the environment languish and, eventually, die out ... it is a pragmatic process (as opposed to principled) in an adventitious way. Given the fierce opposition spiritualists mounted against the evolution theory, when it was first proposed
(and in the ensuing years), it would not be entirely unreasonable to consider that the ‘law of the jungle’ misinterpretation
bruited abroad stemmed from such sources. RESPONDENT: (...) As it is now, it seems that the Buddhist-paradigm is essentially synonymous with any spiritual-paradigm hence the extreme opposition of Actualism vs. Spiritualism assumed to be accurate (hence factual) and posed as such by the actualists. Furthermore actualism being based on if not grounded in a Darwinian paradigm and ... definitely hence rejects the option of the possibility of immortality. RICHARD: Whereas the actualism presented on The Actual Freedom Trust web site – the direct experience that matter is not merely passive – is not based on, let alone grounded in, anything other than the direct experience that matter is not merely passive. As for immortality: the very stuff of this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe – which is matter either as mass or energy – neither comes into nor goes out of existence ... if you were to hold a hand up before the eyes, palm towards the face, and rotate it slowly through space (all the while considering that the very stuff the hand is comprised of is as old as the universe) whilst looking from the front of the eyes, as it were, and not through the eyes, it may very well become apparent that, as this flesh and blood body only, one is perpetuum mobilis. In short: what many otherwise intelligent peoples have been searching for over aeons – permanence – has
been no further away, all the while, than coming to one’s senses. RESPONDENT: (...) But the thing is that infinity cannot evolve/ improve and that’s why I’m sticking with this actual-list thing (more the actual than the list). Richard’s experience of life and my clouded glimpses of it, is superior to that of any dead or alive human ... not sure about all would-be humans. Hey Richard, if you state that as a fact or at least as an educated guess, you’ll become more than outrageous ... I’ll invent a new word to describe your claim: orgioutrageous. RICHARD: As the word ‘outrageous’ has the connotations of extraordinary, extreme, extravagant, and
so on, and as your ‘orgi-’ prefix bespeaks of an intemperance characterised by or of the nature of excessive indulgence, it
would appear that you do not fully grasp what a truly wonderful thing it is that infinitude Both evolution and improvement are purely local events. RESPONDENT: 3 – As a person who ended all beliefs and look at the world clearly ... RICHARD: If I may interject? It was the believer, so to speak, who came to an end (hence the ability/ capacity to believe is null and void) and thus there is the direct experience of the world ... a clean, clear, and pure experiencing. RESPONDENT: ... you don’t see any possibility of some God running the show? RICHARD: When the believer – ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – ended so too did any and all supreme beings become similarly extinct ... thus it has nothing to do with ending all beliefs that no possibility is seen of some god/ goddess running the show. There is no god/ goddess in this actual world: here all is pristine, pure ... nothing ‘dirty’, as it were, can get in. RESPONDENT: Since you don’t claim to be omniscient, and haven’t searched through the galaxies, how can you rule out superior intelligence somewhere? RICHARD: Are you are now asking about extra-terrestrial intelligence (such as the SETI people are looking out for)? If so, I do not rule out some life-form, or life-forms, with a superior faculty of understanding and comprehending (as in intellect and sagacity) to the human faculty – which means with a superior ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, reflect, appraise, plan, and implement considered activity for beneficial reasons (and to be able to rationally convey reasoned information to other similar life-forms so that coherent knowledge can accumulate throughout that species and to the next generations) – existing somewhere and somewhen other than the life-form on planet earth. RESPONDENT: The Santa Claus example is clearly a belief. RICHARD: If I may point out? I clearly said it has nothing to do with ending all beliefs that no possibility is seen of some god/ goddess running the show ... when the believer – ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – ended so too did any and all supreme beings become similarly extinct. RESPONDENT: But even after you grow out of the belief of the God, it still makes sense to ask: Is there something out there? No? RICHARD: I will say it again for emphasis: there is no god/ goddess in this actual world: here all is pristine, pure ... nothing ‘dirty’, as it were, can get in. * RESPONDENT: Or even some greater meaning or a purpose towards which the evolution is moving? RICHARD: Hmm ... some ‘greater meaning or a purpose’ than what? Where one is the flesh and blood body only (sans identity in toto) one is this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself apperceptively ... as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. And this is truly wonderful ... what, just what, could have ‘greater meaning or a purpose’ than that? RESPONDENT: For the species to be able to go out in the space ... RICHARD: If space-travel constitutes a ‘greater meaning or a purpose’ to you than this universe experiencing its own infinitude as an apperceptive sentient being then all I need to point to is the result that space-travel has so far produced ... to wit: astronauts on the earth’s moon extolling the virtues of the Judaic/ Christian god. RESPONDENT: ... evolve more faculties that are superior to one’s we have. RICHARD: What kind of faculties do you have in mind ... and in what way would they be able to operate and function cleanly, clearly, and purely (given that whilst the affective faculty, and its epiphenomenal imaginative/ psychic facility, are still in situ those faculties would also be crippled)? RESPONDENT: I don’t know. Can we not ask whether such possibilities exist? RICHARD: Sure you can ... when you ask them of me, however, you will be asked in return to think them
through. RESPONDENT: Finally the evolution LAW as said me Richard, not theory, does it needs human effort and methods? RICHARD: You must be referring to this exchange:
Neither did I say it is ‘LAW’ nor am I aware of any law of evolution (but I am not all that well-read on the subject) ... and I do not know of any ‘human effort and methods’ that are needed for evolution to naturally (aka blindly) take its course. The name given to purposeful evolution is ‘genetic modification’ or ‘genetic engineering’. RESPONDENT: As far as I know evolution of species happens spontaneously. RICHARD: As I understand it, which understanding is quite scant, when the carrier of genetic information, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a self-replicating material which is especially found in the chromosomes of nearly all living organisms, lays down the blueprint, so to speak, when the spermatozoa fertilises the ova a mutant blueprint (a blueprint somewhat out of the norm) can occur in the rapid shuffling of the genes. If the resultant embryo/ foetus can survive and be born, and further survive to puberty and propagate, it reproduces its mutation. If the mutant species thus engendered is more fitted to the environment than the norm (aka the survival of the fittest) the mutant species prospers and becomes the new norm as the old norm, less fitted to the environment, gradually dies off. This is what happens in the microbial evolution I referred to earlier: it is not that microbes ‘develop an immunity’ as it is rather that mutant species unaffected by the antibiotics in the first place can prosper whilst the affected microbes die off in droves ... until there is only the mutant microbes (the new norm) already resistant by accident, as it were, to the antibiotics left alive and multiplying. Hence the necessity to genetically modify antibiotics so as to stay ahead of the game. RESPONDENT: You admitted that something happened in your brain ... RICHARD: No, I acknowledged that something happened in the brain-stem:
I was saying what I meant and meaning what I said. RESPONDENT: ... but could you explain scientifically what? RICHARD: As far as I have been able to ascertain from an ad hoc reading of scientific texts it was most probably in the Reticular Activating System (RAS), in general, and quite possibly in the Substantia Nigra, in particular (arguably the seat of consciousness) that the identity in toto expired. RESPONDENT: Because a change in the brain is a material thing and can be measured and observed. RICHARD: As no scientist has been able to locate the identity (the self by whatever name) despite all their RI scans (Radio Isotope), CAT scans (Computerised Axial Tomography), CT scans (Computed Tomography), NMR scans (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography), MRA scans (Magnetic Resonance Angiography), MRI scans (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and fMRI scans (functioning Magnetic Resonance Imaging) I do not see how they are going to measure and/or observe the absence of it. RESPONDENT: If something material happened, then if it is not considered damage, then must be one evolutional process. RICHARD: Hmm ... psychiatry and psychology consider that the combination of depersonalisation,
derealisation, alexithymia, and anhedonia Yet what the instinctually-driven humans do to each other, and themselves, as evidenced by 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, for example, is what ‘damage’ really looks like in action. Howsoever, as that is accepted as normal, and any action to cease being normal is actively discouraged, the word ‘crazy’ seems particularly apt here. RESPONDENT: If evolution of Darwin exist, because also this is a theory. RICHARD: Nope ... evolution is scientific fact (as evidenced by the microbial evolution, in response
to antibiotics for instance, which is mistakenly called ‘developing an immunity’). RESPONDENT: I wrote and you answered: [Respondent]: ‘... must happen to humankind, then nature knows when and something will take place’. [Richard]: ‘The identity who used to parasitically inhabit this flesh and blood body acted on the observation that an individual life was too short to hang about waiting for blind nature to get its act together (plus the human condition was already in place by being born replete with instinctual passions anyway)’. [endquotes]. I ask you did we arrived from the Homo Erectus for example to where we are now in a life time? RICHARD: The human species did not evolve from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens in one lifetime, no. RESPONDENT: What is a life time for nature? What is a life time for evolution? RICHARD: When I re-read what you are responding to I see that I am clearly speaking of the identity who used to parasitically inhabit this flesh and blood body – who only had one lifetime – thus I have no interest whatsoever in going off into your tangent with you. As you have made it quite clear in another e-mail that fear, for example, is something you consider a necessity I do wonder why you are even writing to me. Viz.:
* RESPONDENT: I find it logical that a jump will take place when is needed. RICHARD: Nobody is twisting your arm to become free of the human condition ... all that blind nature is on about is survival of the species (and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned). Blind nature does not care two hoots about your condition ... the question is: do you? RESPONDENT: Actually blind nature cares about me, that’s why it gave me the condition. RICHARD: If being born as such passions as fear and aggression and nurture and desire is what the word ‘cares’ means to you then so be it. RESPONDENT: Blind nature cares about species, that’s why I told you that when it find out that is the right time will evolve the whole species. RICHARD: And in the meanwhile, as you are going to do nothing about the passions that you are, such as the fear you say you need more than ever today, all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides, and so on, will keep on keeping on. As will all the crocodile tears being wept at all the (self-inflicted and thus unnecessary) misery and mayhem. RESPONDENT: As far as your last question if I care, I really don’t know. I have a child to grow and a wife and I feel responsible toward them and I can not see how I can do it, by sitting with my legs on the coffee table watching comedies on TV. RICHARD: Here is a suggestion: first cure yourself of your agoraphobia (there is nothing like a
confidence boost to set things in motion). RESPONDENT: I just want to be sure we aren’t presupposing some primordial paradise where humans ‘got it’ and somehow lost it or had it stolen away from them by all those bad saviours and sages. RICHARD: Not at all ... there never, ever was a ‘golden age’. RESPONDENT: My take on this: Man is an animal that evolved the capacity to be conscious of itself being alive. He not only was experiencing being alive, but being aware of being alive he developed the capability of delving into what being alive might mean and how he fit into the scheme of things. One of the repercussions of having the capability to be aware of being aware of being alive is the concomitant awareness of death (and thus your primitive DNA encoded structures of aggression and nurture being an added burden to the thinking creature.) The development of language is inextricably tied to the awareness of being aware. RICHARD: Have you read Mr. Darryl Reanney at all? (‘The Death of Forever; A New Future for Human Consciousness’; By Darryl Reanney; (Late) teacher of microbiology and biochemistry, University of Canterbury. N. Z., LaTrobe University, Australia. Publisher: Longman 1991 ISBN 0 582 87054-2). He made a big thing out of language being the cause of ‘The Fall’ (he placed the ‘development of language’ about 8,000 BCE). Apart from his ‘Golden Age’ before his language/ thought dating fantasy, it just does not make sense to me ... so many people overlook the Australian Aboriginal of 200 plus years ago. They were what is classified as ‘Stone Age’ (no metal tools; no bows and arrows; no pottery; no houses/ villages; no written language and so on) yet they had a rich vocabulary (approximately 600 different languages and/or dialects) and a complex kinship/ marriage structure; trading agreements with other tribes; an established religion with a mystical possibility for all and so on and so on. Yet they were ‘Stone Age’: if some catastrophe had wiped them out prior to the European’s arrival 200 odd years ago, all that would remain would be traces of stone axe-heads and spear-tips; cave-paintings and bones etc. They would be classified as are other ‘Stone Age’ remnants found in other parts of the world ... and those same chauvinistic ‘stone age equals paucity’ attributes would have been applied to them as well. Just because there is no written language does not mean that a peoples in the ‘Stone Age’ era did not have an articulate, expressive and complex spoken language inclusive of ideation, conceptualisation, imagination, visualisation and so on. RESPONDENT: Language allowed man to share his understanding, thoughts, musings about what this universe is about, about being alive, about death and to hear others’ understandings and be affected by them. RICHARD: It may be nothing more than the way you put the sentence together, but there cannot be ‘thoughts, musings’ before the ‘development of language’. I cannot see how any ‘development of language’ can or ever will be known – or ever need to be known – as a fact. All the fuss about thought and/or language and/or symbols is generated by the mystics who insist that thought must cease in meditation practices for the ‘other’ to happen. I do not find thought, thoughts and thinking to be problematic at all. Thought, thoughts and thinking (and whatever their development may or may not have entailed) are not the root cause of the problem ... it is the feelings (the emotions, passions and calentures) which are the primary cause. And feelings do not necessarily require thought, thoughts and thinking in order to wreak their mischief ... indeed there is little or no thought in either ‘blind rage’ or ‘love is blind’ or ‘blinded by the light’ and etcetera. For what it is worth and as speculation only, I would guess that as feelings are primal and primary, language/ thought ever-so-slowly developed as an extension of the growling, grunting, groaning, moaning, whimpering sounds that are so expressive of the feeling of what is happening ... most histrionic words have an affective etymological root, I have noticed. Thus the ‘first’ thoughts in proto-humans would have been inchoate expressions of the primal feelings as are evident in the higher order animals. RESPONDENT: The capacity for language, the capacity for symbolic communication that had a sturdiness about it, that is an agreement that this word refers to this thing or the experience of this thing, opened the way for the body of knowledge, for culture. This capacity to be aware of being aware and then through language to create a generally agreed upon body of knowledge about what everything is and what it means is a very recent development re: the history of this earth as we currently understand it. RICHARD: Yes ... and I fully endorse the helpfulness of all this ingenuity and inventiveness. Knowledge is vital. RESPONDENT: The body of knowledge was created from scratch, so to speak, and altered, evolved, mutated, whatever over time. The best thought of any culture in any given time was probably the best it had to offer. The attributes we now know (through science, through commonsense, through millions of years of experience) belong to the physical universe were applied to the gods, the heavens, woo woo land, if you will, not to hoodwink the masses, but because that was about as good as could be done up to that point. RICHARD: Indeed ... if I were living ‘back then’ (whenever) I too would know the earth to be flat and stationary whilst it was the sun that was moving. I do remember being told as a child that the ‘flat circle’ moon I saw was in fact globular ... and I looked long and hard at it struggling to comprehend. I fully appreciate accumulated knowledge and expertise. RESPONDENT: So these attributes you speak of weren’t stolen from the physical universe, they were simply misapplied, from a hindsight view. No praise, no blame. To quote biologist Richard Dawkins, ‘There is a big difference between cumulative selection (in which each improvement, however slight, is used as a basis for future building), and a single-step selection (in which each new ‘try’ is a fresh one). If evolutionary progress had had to rely on single-step selection, it would never have got anywhere’. RICHARD: Yes ... I agree. I will revise my use of ‘stolen’ (although there is no excuse these days for those who continue to insist we revert to the ‘dark ages’ as a way to solve modern problems). RESPONDENT: Unless you think there is some teleological explanation for man, that the universe somehow ‘knew’ ahead of time where man was destined to end up, then attributes weren’t stolen, nor are saviours and sages generically responsible for all the woes of man. RICHARD: Not ‘teleological’, no ... as human beings the universe ‘knows’ but the universe per se, being perfect, has no need for a ‘known’ destiny for humankind. Also, I never say that the saviours and the sages are responsible for all the ills of humankind ... I always say they are responsible for perpetuating all the ills of humankind. * RESPONDENT: I recently read that for the first 3/4 of the time that life has existed on this planet reproduction was asexual and change came very, very slowly and the variety of life forms was relatively small. With sexual reproduction there was an explosion of life forms because of the continual combining and recombining of different genetic material. I think something analogous happened with the development of language and communication between humans. The combining and recombining we do in the world of language, thought, communication is truly amazing. It’s comparable to our tool making capacity which extends the reach of our senses. The richness of our language and thought extends us tremendously. I can write the words ‘blue book’ and send those words to you thousands of miles away, and you will understand at least generically what image I am trying to convey to you. RICHARD: Indeed ... is it not an amazing thing that we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input? RESPONDENT: This ties in somewhat to the ‘stone age’ issue. There was a pre-historical period called the stone age when the norm was no written language, tribal culture, no metal tools, etc. And then you have ‘stone age’ cultures still existing in modern times, such as the Australian Aborigines, tribal cultures in New Zealand, South America, etc. It’s pretty understandable why everyone was ‘stone age’ during the ‘stone age’. But, why did most cultures develop from tribal to medieval and then modern cultures, while others remained ‘stone age’? Geographical isolation and the ensuing lack of combining and recombining of thought, ideas, mores, etc. that happen automatically in more fluid, less homogenous, and larger societies. I don’t think written language developed in most tribal societies because it simply wasn’t necessary in smaller, more homogenous groups. Oral tradition met the needs of tribal societies. RICHARD: Agreed, different species evolve at different rates at different places around the world ... there is no uniform evolution wherein a change here automatically happens there and vice versa. This unsystematic process is called ‘mosaic evolution’. Viz.:
RESPONDENT: I absolutely agree that lack of written language doesn’t equal lack of a deep and complex culture. To sum it up, I think the big thinking brain that is aware of its own thinking is a breakthrough very similar in kind and effect as the move from asexual to sexual reproduction. Both have had explosive results. RICHARD: And is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing matters of significance ... and of
consequence not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet because of this? One does
not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current
knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. RESPONDENT: As you say that you have reached a permanent, immutable and ultimate state of consciousness (beyond enlightenment) possible for a human being, what were the thoughts of that enlightened man concerning you? RICHARD: As I am not a mind-reader I can only go by whatever thoughts another chooses to verbalise: one of the awakened teachers I spoke to face-to-face one fine afternoon, I was later informed, had made Richard’s condition the subject of their evening discourse that night as a warning of one of the many perils on the spiritual path ... to wit: Richard was insane. As the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people in the West (regular society) consider that anyone dabbling in things mystical are the ‘lunatic fringe’ (conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them), I am sure that they must find it quaint that one lunatic would declare another lunatic to be insane (thereby implying that they are not). RESPONDENT: I suppose he was interested in meeting you and vice-versa, so perhaps a mutually interesting exchange of ideas emerged. RICHARD: What ‘ideas’ are you referring to? The whole point of discussing with such persons, of either gender, is an experiential sharing. RESPONDENT: If it’s the ultimate in human development, are you fully aware of the implications? Were we (humans) not to evolve any further than that (in reference to consciousness) in 10.000 years, 100.000 or even a million years? RICHARD: Here is how I have described the apperception which epitomises both a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and an actual freedom from the human condition:
In what way do you propose that infinitude * RESPONDENT: Some comments about the ASC ... During and after the ASC it became crystal clear to me that all we humans called ‘progress’ has no value whatsoever, that is mainly the result of moving-intellectual brain’s skills applied to the world for the benefit of the silent lazy god within each man: the instinctive brain and its mission – survive and reproduce the species (in this way being connected with the sex). RICHARD: I would not say that all material progress has no value whatsoever (anaesthesia during surgery for just one example) nor would I say that the material results of progress are mainly for the benefit of the identity within either. I would agree that there has been no progress (thus no benefit) in regards the instinctual passions ... essentially there is no difference between, say, the Cro-Magnon homo sapiens and the Modern Day homo sapiens when it comes to the instinctual drives, impulses and urges. There has been much intellectual progress – and this advancement of human knowledge continues unabated – but there has been zilch spiritual progress ... the ancient wisdom of the bronze-age still has a large proportion of the peoples currently alive by the short and curlies. Witness the resurgence of a New Dark Age, for instance, wherein all manner of shamanic hocus-pocus is being ardently embraced. RESPONDENT: It must be said that these brains have an innumerable number of connections with each other, re-wiring them being an appropriate term indeed and a hard job to look after. RICHARD: I have generally used the term ‘rewiring’ to refer to sorting out conflicting beliefs and ideals (oft-times cunningly disguised as truths) which tend to be compartmentalised ... for example I saw a bumper-sticker on a car only recently:
It was positioned immediately below another bumper-sticker:
The major rewiring of the brain happens of its own accord due to the felicity/ innocuity born of pure intent ... other than sorting out such blind spots as the one above, and investigating inculcated social conditioning, or exposing factoids for what they are, and so on, all one has to do, basically, is be as happy and as harmless as is humanely possible, each moment again, and provided there be pure intent a benignity and benevolence which is not of ‘my’ doing becomes apparent and operates spontaneously. It is what does the major rewiring ... as such there is no ‘hard job’ to do. RESPONDENT: And further, is it not ironic that the more advanced we become technologically, the more interdependent we become? RICHARD: I was born in the nineteen forties and raised on a farm carved out of the forest by hand: I personally used axes and hand saws to cut down the trees to make pasture land; there was no plumbing; no sewage, no telephone; no electricity ... I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lamp. No computer; no television; no videos; no record players; no freezer; no electric kitchen gadgets ... and so on and so on. Yet the small farming/ forestry community was inextricably entwined and interdependent ... arguably more so than today in regards duty, obligation and responsibility. Any reading of history that I have done shows me that the further one goes back the more interdependent people were. The ‘break-down of the extended family’ and the ‘dehumanisation’ of society that so many lament (but which inextricably ties) is such an amazing step forward in that it played a large part in enabling me to abandon ‘humanity’ and become free of the human condition. Familial and societal ostracism used to mean death in days not long past ... the Australian Aboriginal is a much-studied example. RESPONDENT: Our technology is so complex that even a sheer genius could never master all of it. RICHARD: I read recently that 100,000 scientific journals alone are published each year ... no one single person can read – let alone absorb – that much. RESPONDENT: We grow both remarkably more autonomous and remarkably more entwined. RICHARD: I obviously see this differently: autonomy is only possible through disentwining totally. RESPONDENT: I think it’s great that no one of us has to think everything, know everything. Only the extremely enlightened fall into the trap of thinking they are all things to all men. RICHARD: Ah, yes. I oft-times say that I am not an expert on everything – only on a freedom from the human condition – and any other knowledge that I have is what I call ‘encyclopaedic’ ... whatever is just enough information gleaned from other people’s explorations for me to get by on. * RICHARD: Now that a thinking and reflective neo-cortex has developed over the instinctual lizard brain the instinctual passions can be deleted. With an unprecedented 6.0 billion chemically-driven malicious and sorrowful peoples (and 6.0 billion chemically-driven antidotally loving and compassionate peoples) populating the planet it is high time that we humans ceased looking to the past and reapplying failed solutions ... and got on with the business of living in deliciously sensible manner. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history. RESPONDENT: The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history because with our ever advancing technology, we have the capacity to do so much more harm with less effort. RICHARD: Yes ... for the western world, WWI was a turning-point: the machine gun altered the course of warfare forever. From then on maiming and killing one’s fellow human being became progressively more mechanised. RESPONDENT: However, I am always surprised when someone says humankind has not changed much at all over the centuries. Yes, from your point of view, the changes have to do with controlling, managing the instinctual passions, not extinguishing them. RICHARD: Yea verily; apart from superficial changes the modern human is no different from, say, Cro-Magnon human ... which is not to decry all the civilising facets of modern times. The banishment of forced slavery; the prohibition on cannibalism, head-hunting; the on-going attempts to outlaw torture and unlawful imprisonment and the death penalty, to name but a few, are decided improvements over the ‘good old days’. Yet all these ‘rights’ are gained, upheld and enforced at the point of a gun ... when push comes to shove the instinctual passions leap into action and savagery reigns supreme. The human world is ruled by terror (what the Christians call ‘The Devil’). Fundamentally, nothing – absolutely nothing – has changed one jot. RESPONDENT: Not having extinguished mine, I will simply take you at your word that you have done so. RICHARD: Good, I want no one to merely believe me. I simply suggest that I am proffering sufficient
validated information, in combination with a personal report, such as to generate a prima facie case that is worthy of further
investigation – self-investigation – rather than capricious dismissal RESPONDENT: However, do you think the realization of both self and Self as nothing more than physical instinct, and then finding the means to extinguish said physical extinct could have been done at any point in history? RICHARD: Possibly – freedom is potentially feasible at any time and any place and at any age in any era – but as I have found no reference anywhere whatsoever to anything such as this before then obviously ... no. RESPONDENT: Do you think that if you, Richard, had been born 1500 year ago when the moon was seen as a goddess, and there was no knowledge or technology to prove otherwise, do you think you would have discovered what you have discovered in the twentieth/ twenty first centuries with the benefit of all the scientific knowledge that has de-mythologized so much of our worldview? To my way of thinking, much has changed that makes possible some very fundamental changes. It’s not only the shoulders of giants that we stand on, but the shoulders of everyone who came before us. RICHARD: Definitely ... I scoured the books for years seeking to understand what was happening for me. I generally say as an example that a Christian, when having a vision of their God, typically sees a pale-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene hanging on a cross whilst a Hindu having a vision of their 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. We all benefit ... despite peoples’ initial discomfort. * RICHARD: I am so glad to be able to be alive and living in this era wherein all kinds of discoveries have been made which threw off the stranglehold religion had upon the Western mind for centuries (people used to be burnt at the stake for much less heretical writing than what I do). RESPONDENT: I daresay that there are still places in the world today (fundamentalist Islamic countries come to mind) where something bad would happen to you. RICHARD: Ah, yes ... which is why I wrote ‘Western’. It is undeniable that it is the western world that is leading the way out of squalor, ignorance, superstition and tyranny ... despite what the luddites protest. * RICHARD: This emerging clarity of Western thought has been swamped recently by the insidious doctrines of the Eastern mind creeping into scientific research ... it is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the pundits of the East down the slippery slope of ‘spiritual science’ and ‘mystical philosophy’ ... thinking that it has nothing to do with religiosity. But I am confident that this is but a passing phase. RESPONDENT: Being residents of affluent, western societies we may be a little unrealistic about how ‘passing’ these phases really are. Westerners have the leisure to recognize their dissociation, but it isn’t eased by the findings of science, as long as the dissociation is seen as a lack or sickness of spirit or soul. RICHARD: True ... I am confident because of the human will or determination to know, to understand, to apply and to enjoy the benefits of ingenuity and inventiveness. The evidence of the success of human creativity and resourcefulness abounds all about ... I do consider that ‘progress’ is on an inexorable roll and it can only get better and better. I am simply speeding up the process in the human consciousness area. RESPONDENT: I don’t know if you’ve checked out the illusion of enlightenment forum I mentioned to you. Obviously, the disillusionment with eastern spiritual systems is there. But, what isn’t there is the disillusionment with the idea of spirit itself. The tried and true may have been proven to be the tried and failed, but the belief in something ‘more than’ this present flesh and blood experience hasn’t been dismantled. RICHARD: Yet the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 brought home to all but the most recalcitrant the shocking fact that people are their own worst enemy. Here are a few impelling factors that may bring sufficient people to their senses to precipitate a critical mass (when given a viable third alternative):
Lastly, the internet has the capability of bypassing both official censorship and the self-censorship of
commercial publishers and reaching instantaneously into savvy individual’s homes via the rapid copying and distribution capacity
of mailing lists with their multiple feed-back facility ... which is why it is my chosen means of dissemination. RESPONDENT: I am able to question my spiritual beliefs. For example, I am open to discuss any gurus. RICHARD: Good ... that is right up my alley. Of course, for all my exposé of the Gurus and God-men, I
am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving
their written words behind I could not be where I am today. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is
possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that
went before. I would not be where I am today if it were not for all those brave people who went before me ... and I am so pleased
that they left a record of their ventures. RESPONDENT: Ain’t evolution wonderful? RICHARD: No. Mutation is swifter ... so swift as to be instantaneous. The only good thing about
suffering is when it ends ... permanently. Evolution is never-ending sorrow. RESPONDENT: Looked another way, each human being is a unique experiment on nature’s part to understand itself. Only in the human being does nature achieve a self-reflective consciousness that is capable of understanding itself. This point, in my opinion, is one essential driver for knowing oneself: the wonder, the awe, the curiosity as to ask these questions (who am I, where does the universe come from, etc.) is a uniquely human prerogative. RICHARD: Yes ... no other animal can do this and (so far as space exploration has currently ascertained) the human race is on its own with this agenda. RESPONDENT: In asking those questions, in the ensuing inner growth, essentially, nature is growing, evolving. RICHARD: Apart from the ‘inner growth’ phrase I agree ( ‘inner growth’ is blind nature’s legacy and is what is holding back evolution). RESPONDENT: Aurobindo calls this meta-evolution. But we need not get side-tracked by Aurobindo’s philosophy. Krishnamurti expresses this growth and wonder in his own poetic prose and so do, in my opinion, many a perceptive writer and poet. The key, I think, is that inner movement, which is the movement of nature itself. RICHARD: This ‘inner movement’ , which ‘many a perceptive writer and poet’ expresses (along with Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and Mr. Aurobindo Ghose), is the movement of blind nature and, as such, is the spanner in the works as regards any further evolution into a freed consciousness. Until the ‘Tried and True’ is seen for what it is (the ‘Tried and Failed’) the personalising potentiality of the material infinitude that this universe is will remain a non-actualised personalising potentiality. A human being, totally emptied of the ‘inner movement’ which precipitates ‘inner growth’ , is the universe experiencing itself as a freed human being and, as such, the universe is intelligently experiencing its own amazing, marvellous and wondrous physical infinitude. RESPONDENT: It is redundant, also erroneous, to posit this movement as movement towards ... there is no towards as it is evolution of nature/ matter/ consciousness/ totality/ whatever. This is how I interpret the following exchange from the previous post: [No. 33]: ‘I think what is of essence in a human being is his/her innate creativity ...’. [Richard]: ‘Oh, there is much, much more than that’. [endquote]. What do you say? Thanks for your time. RICHARD: I beg to differ in that it is the evolution of matter (mineral) into animate matter (life and/or nature) and thus animate matter (flora) into sensate animate matter (fauna) and sensate animate matter (saurian – mammalian – simian) into hominid sensate animate matter (proto-human) and hominid sensate matter into tool-making proto-human sensate matter (homo-habilis perhaps 2.0 million BCE) and tool-making proto-human sensate matter into tool-making fire-using human sensate matter (homo erectus perhaps 1.6 million BCE) and tool-making fire-using human sensate matter into tool-making fire-using symbol-writing human sensate matter (homo sapiens perhaps 100 thousand BCE). It is not until the advent of thought does the capacity to notice, remember, reflect, plan and thus implement considered activity for beneficial reasons (intelligence) evolve ... along with the amazing ability to pass this information to others of the species, including the next generation, via language communication skills rather than grunt and gesture conveyance. Then, and only then, emerges the trait that you describe as the ‘one essential driver for knowing oneself: the wonder, the awe, the curiosity as to ask these questions (who am I, where does the universe come from, etc.)’ which, as you say, is ‘only in the human being [where] nature achieves a self-reflective consciousness that is capable of understanding itself’. I could not agree more where you then say: ‘this point, in my opinion, is a uniquely human prerogative’.
Therefore, as to why thought, thoughts and thinking gets castigated as much as it does on this Mailing List, one can only
thank the Masters and Messiahs, the Gurus and God-Men, the Saints and Sages and the Avatars and Saviours of the last 3,000 –
5,000 years for their outstanding contribution to the retardation of evolution ... to the point where they induce you (an
Assistant Professor of MIS holding PhD and MS (MIS) degrees) to say: ‘it is redundant, also erroneous, to posit this movement
as movement towards ... there is no towards as it is evolution of nature/ matter/ consciousness/ totality/ whatever’ as if
it were a profound truth. RESPONDENT: Let me try explaining what I have in mind: as you also agree, this curiosity as to ‘who I am’ is a human trait. It comes from the self-reflection that we possess. Man thinks and with thinking his brain evolves, changes in unique ways. Therefore no two human beings are exactly alike and that is why human life has sanctity. This change that is going on within my mind is nature’s quest to understand itself. In thus understanding itself, nature is evolving. But what it is it evolving towards cannot be ascertained with any certainty because at every moment there is change. RICHARD: The particular moment changes, yes, and the components, parts and elements of this specific moment change in regards to that specific moment (the variety is infinite) ... but this moment itself, as an arena for events to occur in as it were, never changes. It is always this moment; this moment is already here ... it is eternally now. Thus there is no ‘going anywhere’ nor any ‘coming from’ anywhere. The evolution that I am describing (above) is purely local to this planet because the universe itself as a totality is already always utterly complete. Thus ‘what it [nature] is it evolving towards’ can indeed be ascertained with certainty ... it is the ability of the universe to experience itself (in this instance) as a freed human being intelligently experiencing its own amazing, marvellous and wondrous physical infinitude. And it is the experiencing of this utter completeness that requires matter to evolve into carbon-based human sensate animate matter (in this case here on planet earth). Elsewhere it may be evolving as ... um ... hydrogen-based life-forms, for an outlandishly speculative example, whom carbon-based life-forms might never be able to ascertain because such life-forms may not be accessible to sensate apprehension ... and so on through any variation of such science-fiction stuff. RESPONDENT: Hence, no God or Truth can ever be posited with any certitude. As you mentioned, this moment of being alive is the Truth. RICHARD: Oh dear ... I never, ever said that and never ever will. I am not talking of any God or Goddess or Truth whatsoever. RESPONDENT: But this moment of being alive is Truth only if there is that inner change, the evolution, the discovery of something new. The ’murtis of the list are not evolving, not changing, not experiencing anything new. For them the moment of being alive is better described as the moment of being comatose. RICHARD: Ha ... I like that one: ‘this moment of being comatose’ conveys a certain poetic nescience! RESPONDENT: So, while this moment of being alive is truth, where is that truth leading to cannot be ascertained. Hence this change, this evolution, is open-ended. That is what I implied. RICHARD: Okay ... I am going to have to do some research to find out where you gained this notion that
I said ‘this moment of being alive is truth’ from, but in the meanwhile let me say again that this moment of being
alive is the universe intelligently experiencing its own amazing, marvellous and wondrous physical infinitude as a sensate and
reflective flesh and blood human being. RESPONDENT: You are nature, yes? RICHARD: The carbon-based life-form called human beings are the only aspect of nature (as is so far discovered) to evolve intelligence ... and if the intelligence thus bestowed is not used appropriately then all the long evolutionary process will have come to naught. Not that this is of any concern to nature ... another carbon-based life-form will eventually evolve intelligence in the fullness of time and maybe that carbon-based life-form will not be so stupefied as the carbon-based life-form as is currently epitomised by those who are so hung up about assumptions that they insist that this what is happening now is, for better or worse, what is happing now (as if they were uttering a profound wisdom). Nature has all the time in the universe to personify perfection (as evidenced in the PCE) ... and that is eternal time. Whereas you have perhaps eighty or so years. RICHARD: In the West, the nineteenth century was optimistically called the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ (knowledge enlightenment) until Eastern mystics came onto the world stage at the turn of the century with ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... busily being hell-bent on returning the burgeoning thoughtful part of humankind to the darkness of fallacy and fancy. Western civilisation, which has struggled to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance, is in danger of slipping back into the supernatural as the Eastern mystical thought and belief that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people is becoming more widespread. RESPONDENT: Sounds like you are putting a rationalist argument forward? RICHARD: I am not a ‘rationalist’. I am simply describing history ... setting the background to the remainder of what the paragraphs have to say. * RICHARD: Prior to the recent influx of Eastern philosophy, if one realised that ‘I am God’, one would have been institutionalised ... and, to some degree, rightly so. RESPONDENT: To what degree? RICHARD: It is a sickness. * RICHARD: ‘I am That’, for example, is simply another way of saying ‘I am God’ (aka ‘I am The Truth’). At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. I have been to India to see for myself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living ... and it is hideous. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing ... but it is practically and demonstrably deleterious to both individual and communal well-being. RESPONDENT: I don’t know if this is completely fair. The West was a poor place too once. RICHARD: Indeed ... allow me to copy and paste (from above). Viz.: [Richard]: ‘In the West, the
nineteenth century was optimistically called the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ (knowledge enlightenment) until Eastern mystics came
onto the world stage at the turn of the century with ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... busily being hell-bent on returning the
burgeoning thoughtful part of humankind to the darkness of fallacy and fancy. Western civilisation, which has struggled to get out
of superstition and medieval ignorance, is in danger of slipping back into the supernatural as the Eastern mystical thought and
belief that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people is becoming more widespread’. RESPONDENT: I watched a TV show about the origins of the humanoid. Scientists are saying that they can trace the origins of our being to a single female who lived in Africa over 3 million years ago. Do we not all have her living atoms in our bodies? RICHARD: All human beings stem from common ancestors ... archaeology and palaeontology is already pushing discovery of beginnings further back than the example you give here. I am following with interest the recent investigations into the life-forms in and around deep undersea volcanic vents and two miles deep in mine shafts ... they do not require photo-synthesis as does all other life-forms but are the result of chemo-synthesis. These are very early days in such research and speculation has it that this may be the origin of life ... self-generated out of the very bowels of the earth itself. RESPONDENT: And where did her atoms come from? The universe? RICHARD: Yes. RICHARD: It is the fittest that survive: yet ‘survival of the fittest’ does not necessarily mean (as it is popularly misunderstood) that the strongest or most muscular always survive. It means ‘the most fitted to the ever-changing environment’ (those who adapt) get to pass on their genes. The most ‘on the ball’ – adroit or shrewd or sharp or smart or cunning or wily and so on – can defeat the strongest or most muscular from time-to-time ... as is evidenced by the long, slow evolution of intelligence in a rather puny animal devoid of claws, fangs, venom, hooves, horns, fur, feathers and so on. RESPONDENT: Richard, I have followed your writings so far. Your world view (or whatever you may call it), though interesting, it still leaves some questions unanswered. For example, if the human life form, as it is, is a result of evolution, where did creation come from? RICHARD: I notice with interest the recent investigations into the sulphide-oxidising microbes (bacteria and archaea) in and around deep undersea hydrothermal vents as they do not require photo-synthesis as does all other life-forms but are the result of chemo-synthesis. The bacteria oxidize the hydrogen sulphide and convert carbon dioxide into carbon compounds and the thermophilic and hyper-thermophilic archaea, that utilise sulphur, hydrogen, methane, manganese, ammonia and other compounds, have optimal growth rates at temperatures between 100°-110°C. A food-chain based directly on the microbes – mouth-less, gut-less tube worms that contain these microbes inside their trophosome cells and over 300 species of mussels, shrimp, clams and crabs – flourish in these mini eco-systems. Microbes have also been found in the two-mile deep heat of mine shafts in Africa. These are very early days in such research and, not surprisingly, speculation has it that this may be the origin of carbon-based life ... chemically self-generating out of the very bowels of the earth itself. RESPONDENT: Also, what is creation? RICHARD: The way in which carbon-based life forms itself. RESPONDENT: What was there before creation? RICHARD: The thermally heated planet earth that carbon-based life forms itself out of. RESPONDENT: Also, evolution assumes time. RICHARD: Yes ...enormous aeons of time compared with the human life-span.
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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