# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

> Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative Re: Privacy vs. Public Interest RICHARD: It is no secret that I had two major ‘nervous breakdowns’, and at least one minor one (where I became catatonic and was rushed to a local hospital’s EU), the first of which occurred ‘with sudden onset’ (one of the diagnostic symptoms) at sunrise on the 6th of September, 1981, and the second, also ‘with sudden onset’, in the late afternoon of the 30th of October, 1992, in an abandoned cow-pasture. RESPONDENT: Hi Richard, Appreciate the response. You say that that you have suffered two major nervous breakdowns. The first one led to enlightement. RICHARD: G’day No. 29, First, a technical point: a breakdown does not lead to something; a breakdown is the onset of something – as per that ‘with sudden onset’ wording above – and that ‘something’, a mental disorder of some sort, can be either mild or severe and either acute (of short duration) or chronic (long-lasting) and either curable or incurable (inasmuch palliative care is prescribed to help manage the symptoms). So, the first major breakdown was the onset of a very severe psychotic disorder – so severe, in fact, as to entail massive delusions of grandeur and megalomania, such as being the ‘Parousia’ and the next ‘Maitreya’, for instance, with acute dissociative and solipsistic thought patterns plus major reality impairment (object estrangement, space dislocation and time distortion) – which persisted, night and day, for eleven years. Now, at the time I did not know that it was a mental disorder – let alone a very severe psychotic disorder – even though there was something suss about it all; it was only in that 30+ month period afterwards it gradually became clear to me that spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment was insanity ... albeit an institutionalised insanity. Viz.: • [Co-Respondent]: There is one important point that hit me in your response: • [Richard]: ‘After my break-through into actual freedom I went through thirty months of mental anguish thinking that I had lost the plot completely (although physically everything was perfect). No one could help me as nobody had traversed this territory before’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 11 June 2000). How did you experience the mental anguish from the perspective of actual freedom? • [Richard]: As a severe cerebral agitation ... it all happened only in the brain cells. There was perfect sensate experiencing: the direct, startlingly intimate sensuousness of the eyes seeing, the ears hearing, the skin feeling, the nose smelling and the tongue tasting all of their own accord (deliciously unfettered by a ‘me’ or an ‘I’) yet the cognitive faculty was face-to-face with the stark fact that it had been living a deluded dissociative state for eleven years and that religion – fuelled by its spirituality and mysticism – was nothing short of institutionalised insanity. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 14 June 2000). In fact, at the time of the onset of that very severe psychotic disorder, I did not even know that it was spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment as I had never even heard of those terms let alone what they referred to. Viz.: • [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’). • [Co-Respondent]: 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 ‘my-self’, 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. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 16, 8 January 2001). RESPONDENT: The second to AF. RICHARD: As I am an actualist, and not an affer, your query indicates a double confusion (stemming from both text popping-up hither and thither on the internet and claims of aff posted to various buddhistic forums) which would not have come about had you utilised what is freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust website as your guaranteed-to-be-accurate source material. I have written to this forum before about how vital it is that there be this guaranteed-to-be-accurate repository, of authentic reports/ descriptions/ explanations of an actual freedom from the human condition, so as to obviate any such confusion as peoples are nowadays subject to (and thus necessitating me coming out of my retirement from writing in order to clarify what others have muddied). Viz.: #5388 From: S[...snip...].x@...> Date: Sun May 10, 2009 7:53 am Subject: Re: Richard • [Respondent No. 6]: Thank you, Richard for sharing your experiences and discovery on the AF site. • [Richard]: Does everybody reading this now see how vital it is that the integrity of The Actual Freedom Trust web site remain inviolate? • [Respondent No. 6]: I understand it fully. And protection of accuracy is of utmost importance as much of the person behind it. And i speak out of personal experience that radical departure from conformity is persecuted as a rule rather than an exception. • [Richard]: And I ask this question because, once I am dead and gone, The Actual Freedom Trust web site, with its (legally) registered imprimatur, will remain the only guaranteed-to-be-accurate repository of authentic reports/ descriptions/ explanations of an actual freedom from the human condition. • [Respondent No. 6]: And that even an innocuous attempt to change it/ or style can lead to compromising of the entire enterprise. and lucky, [No. 4]!! ( i am already jealous!) :-) [...]. (Richard, List D, No. 6, 10 May 2009) Having clarified that: the second major breakdown was the onset of what has been officially diagnosed as a chronic psychotic disorder entailing depersonalisation, derealisation, alexithymia and anhedonia – which began with a 30+ month period of a macabre and gruesome ‘mental anguish’ that both psychiatrists and psychologists were baffled by – and which has persisted for 20+ years. Now, lest there be any confusion generated by my own words I will take this opportunity to add that I have oft-times stated how I do find it cute that peace-on-earth, in this life-time and as this flesh-and-body, be considered, by sane peoples, to be insanity. Viz.: • [Co-Respondent]: It is just my impression that you’re a neurotic, semi-insane fake. • [Richard]: I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and officially diagnosed as genuinely psychotic (not just ‘neurotic’) and genuinely insane (not just ‘semi-insane’) ... only in these days of political correctness the words ‘mental disorder’ are used instead of the word ‘insane’. There is nothing ‘fake’ about it ... is an official record, duly stamped and notarised and so on. Having clarified that point ... did you notice that your words ‘a neurotic, semi-insane fake’ amount to more or less the same thing that Mr. William James said at the end of the quote I posted previously? Viz.: [quote]: ‘... the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in indistinguishable combination. Withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant, and the kind of experience we call pathological ensues’. (William James, ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’; New York: The Modern Library, 1929; page 147). Hmm ... ‘pathological’, eh? I do find it cute that the enabling of the already existing peace-on-earth, via an actual freedom from the human condition, is considered to this very day to be a severe and incurable psychotic disorder. • [Co-Respondent]: I can’t substantiate that, and certainly have no proofs or bibliography to back it up – it’s just a feeling I have. Apologies if I’m wrong. • [Richard]: There is no need to apologise as I am incapable of taking offence ... ‘twould be far better to invest such regretful energy into examining what necessitated the need for an apology in the first place, non? (Richard, List B, No. 54, 17 May 2001a). Even more to that point is that those same sane peoples, who consider me insane, consider insanity (albeit institutionalised) to be the solution for all the ills of humankind – as in, all the ills of sanity – and deliberately leave it out of the DSM IV because of ‘religious sensitivities’. So as to clarify the entire sanity-insanity issue I will draw your attention to the following quotes. Viz.: • [Richard]: ‘I have not been sane for many, many years now’. (Richard, List B, No. 10e, 18 April 2003). • [Richard]: ‘As I was insane for 11 years – and sane for the preceding 34 years – I can report from direct experience that there is a third alternative’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25, 10 February 2003). • [Richard]: ‘When ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) becomes extinct all its states of being, ranging from sanity through to insanity, also cease to be ... there is no ‘presence’ whatsoever here in this actual world to be either sane or insane’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003). • [Richard]: ‘There is, of course, a third alternative to either sanity or insanity (insanity is but an extreme form of sanity) ...’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60d, 6 February 2005). Furthermore, I characterise that third alternative, to either sanity or insanity, as salubrity (and the third alternative, to either being sane or being insane, as being salubrious). • ‘salubrity: the quality of being salubrious, healthiness, wholesomeness [conducive to general well-being]’. ~ (Oxford Dictionary). • ‘salubrious: favourable to health; healthy [salutary in effect], health-giving; esp. of surroundings, a place, etc.: pleasant, agreeable’. ~ (Oxford Dictionary). Here are some examples. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘I can understand your point of view: ‘if this is sanity, let me be insane ... let me go out of my mind’. • [Richard]: ‘No, that is not what I have been saying at all: what I have been asking is whether it is possible for you to see sanity so completely that you will cease being sane ... end of story. Here in this actual world all is salubrious and irreprehensible ...’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003). • [Richard]: ‘(...) Richard’s condition, as evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE), is a most salubrious and irreprehensible condition ...’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 18f, 14 January 2005). • [Richard]: ‘(...) the salubrity and irreprehensibility of life in this actual world is pristine ..’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 43, 25 April 2003). • [Richard]: ‘Apperceptiveness makes possible salubrity and sagacity’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness). Moreover, as I clearly state that it is sanity which is the problem (and that insanity is not the solution), the entire email exchange starting at ... (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 12 April 2003) ... and going on for 9-10 emails is well worth a read. Here are a few excerpts. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘Are you telling me that when I see bombs dropping and people with their limbs blown off that what I am seeing is sane ... • [Richard]: ‘Yes ... the bombs dropping, and people with their limbs blown off, is nothing other than sanity in action. And sanity prevails all over the world: for instance an estimated 2.5 million [currently 5.0 million] sane peoples have been killed in the civil war in the Congo (aka Zaire) by their sane fellow human beings ... perhaps it is because it is not being displayed 24/7 on television screens there seems to be very little outrage. Or maybe it is because without the good ol’ US of A to yet again mercilessly whip around the block there is no outlet for the outrage? It is sanity which is the problem world-wide ... it is what you are seeing when observing the world (peoples in general) and yourself’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 13 April 2003b) • [Richard]: ‘(...) you classified what you see, when observing the world (peoples in general) and yourself, as being [quote] ‘insanity’ [endquote] and all I did was point out that what was really going on was sanity in action (and, further to the point, that sanity sucks big-time)’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003) • [Richard]: ‘(...) Speaking personally, for the first 34 years of my life I was sane (the ordinary, normal, common, or everyday sanity of people in general all over the world) and peace-on-earth was nowhere to be found; for the next 11 years I was in a transformed state of being (which I gradually came to realise was an institutionalised insanity) called The Absolute or Truth, God, Being, Presence, Self, and so on, which was exemplified by (...) a timeless, spaceless, formless immortal otherness which was a peace that passeth all understanding ... yet all the while peace-on-earth was still nowhere to be found. By ‘institutionalised’ I mean altered states of consciousness that have become institutions over the aeons: instituted as being states of consciousness which are universally accepted as the summum bonum of human existence ... a model to either live by, aspire to, become, or be. (...)’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003). • [Richard]: ‘When ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) becomes extinct all its states of being, ranging from sanity through to insanity, also cease to be ... there is no ‘presence’ whatsoever here in this actual world to be either sane or insane. I just find it cute that the solution to all the ills of humankind be considered insanity by sane people (most of whom live by, or aspire to become, the model provided by the insanity of the altered states of consciousness which have become institutionalised over the aeons by being universally accepted as the summum bonum of human existence anyway).’ (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003) • [Richard]: (...). Here in this actual world all is salubrious and irreprehensible ... just consider, for a moment if you will, that it is only a sanity-based analysis which would determine that permanent happiness and harmlessness be insanity (it speaks volumes about the nature of sanity that it does so). I know I have said it many times before but I will say it again for emphasis: I do find it cute that peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, be considered a chronic and incurable psychotic mental disorder’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 April 2003). [end excerpts]. RESPONDENT: So they aren’t quite a deliberate process of a guy to get into enlightement ... RICHARD: The identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was not engaged in a process to ‘get into enlightenment’ at all (as already mentioned ‘he’ knew naught of enlightenment) as what ‘he’ was actively involved in was enabling the peerless purity and pristine perfection which had been indelibly imprinted in ‘his’ (non-affective) memory banks during a 4-hour PCE six months previously. RESPONDENT: ... and later, AF, but outcomes out of those two major breakdowns? RICHARD: If I might suggest? Try reading at least some of what is freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site, first, before asking me what has the appearance of being un-researched and/ or ill-informed questions. Before doing so, however, please read Message No. 10915 (Richard, List D, Claudiu, 7 February 2012). Regards, Richard. * Re: Privacy vs. Public Interest RICHARD: [...]. I did not respond to the rest of your email ‘about all the allegations’ partly for the reason my response was way too long already but mainly because to have done so would have detracted from the far, far more important central theme ... to wit: that it is sanity which is the problem (and that insanity is not the solution). RESPONDENT: Okay. My concern was you arrived at actual freedom from a position of insanity. And further that insanity itself arrived from a severe psychotic disorder. So whether the enterprise is conducive for normal people like me. I use normal here to talk about guys without any breakdown and disorders. And sane. You have pointed out that sanity is the problem. I wonder whether the mutations that is entailed in actualism process can be done by normal people. The likes of vineeto peter and few others have shown that it can be done. Let me digest all of this. RICHARD: G’day No. 29, Sure ... just a couple of minor points, in regards to your reply above, to aid the digestive process. First, I did indeed arrive at an actual freedom from the human condition from ‘a position of insanity’ (aka fully-fledged spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment). However, to say further that ‘insanity itself arrived from a severe psychotic disorder’ is to confuse terminology within itself as the word insanity is but another word for the (politically correct) term ‘severe psychotic disorder’. (Otherwise, what you are saying, in effect, is ‘and further that insanity itself arrived from insanity’). Second, regarding whether the enterprise is conducive for normal people like yourself (people without any breakdown, disorders and sane): nobody, absolutely nobody, has to and/or needs to – or even can nowadays (if they were silly enough to want to) – follow in my footsteps. The direct-route to an actual freedom – a down-to-earth manumission hitherto only available dangerously via spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment – obviates going through (institutionalised) insanity to get to the other side. Regards, Richard. Re: Privacy vs. Public Interest RESPONDENT No. 25: Has it escaped your notice that Richard’s claims in his Journal and his website to have become actually free in 1992, which commenced a couple year period where (purely cognitive) angst was experienced (but not physically evident), and Richard refers to this experience as at least partly ‘grotesque’ [...] and it occurred after becoming actually free, whereas in the various PTSD articles, he refers to a ‘breakdown’ in 1992 whereas he sought medical help in 1993 when he could no longer bear the effects of PTSD (including the physical effects mentioned in the article(s) and not cognitive only) and only after that found his way to an actual freedom? The reason why the authenticity and veracity of these articles are important: 1. They contradict the official accounts in Richard’s journal and website. 2. Richard will not address it to date, either in the negative or affirmative. [...]. So, for me, the question now is.... What is Richard hiding and why is he not forthcoming regarding the article(s)? And why is he painting the messengers out to be liars and fabricators, yet still will not simply state that the article(s) is a fabrication? I understand his explanation is that answers beget further inquiries, but why is that important specifically in this case for him to not address it, when he freely answers other questions that have arisen, such as his denial of accidentally leaving a memory stick in India during his visit in 2010? RESPONDENT No. 29: So in the website’s version... a normal guy puts into a method he devised to induce changes: first enlightement and then AF. And this PTSD article suggests the outcome was a desperate strategy of a mentally disturbed guy trying to cope with all the manic psychic changes that PTSD was causing in him. RESPONDENT: Spot on. To me, the second is an even more impressive tale. What a horrific and heart-wrenching process, and what an incredibly courageous and determined man he was to go through all that, and to come out the other side a happy man. I thoroughly admire much of what Richard has done. He’s a much greater man than I’ve ever been or ever will be. [...]. RICHARD: G’day No. 25, No. 29, & No. 4, It is no secret that I had two major ‘nervous breakdowns’, and at least one minor one (where I became catatonic and was rushed to a local hospital’s EU), the first of which occurred ‘with sudden onset’ (one of the diagnostic symptoms) at sunrise on the 6th of September, 1981, and the second, also ‘with sudden onset’, in the late afternoon of the 30th of October, 1992, in an abandoned cow-pasture. The first breakdown resulted in a severe psychotic disorder – so severe, in fact, as to entail massive delusions of grandeur (another diagnostic symptom) and megalomania such as being the ‘Parousia’ and the next ‘Maitreya’, for instance, with acute dissociative and solipsistic thought patterns plus major reality impairment (object estrangement, space dislocation and time distortion) – which persisted, night and day, for eleven years before culminating in the second breakdown, resulting in an official diagnosis as having become depersonalised, derealised, alexithymic and anhedonic (diagnosed as a chronic, thus incurable, psychotic disorder that began with a 30+ month period of a macabre and gruesome ‘mental anguish’ (yet another diagnostic symptom) that baffled both psychiatrists and psychologists) and which has persisted for all 20+ years through to the present day. (Editorial note: see Richard, Personal Webpage, Various, A Statement of Events). Just why certain peoples are getting so all huffed-and-puffed about a comparatively minor anxiety disorder, such as what post-traumatic stress is, simply denies comprehension ... especially so when that secular approach, in the presentation of actualism/ actual freedom, is something I have already posted at least two emails about to this very forum (in fact, just a few months before I went to India). Viz.: #7318 From: richard.actualfreedom Date: Tue Nov 7, 2009 12:57 am Subject: Re: Peculiar Information # 5 • [Richard]: [...]. I am gradually putting together a personal web-page – a more biographical account (plus many snapshots taken at various stages of my life going back to childhood) in a secular way of presentation – which goes into the personal details of my childhood experiences, my military experience, my marriage experiences, my parental experiences, my artistic experiences, my latter-day lifestyle and so on and so forth. I have long had the intention of presenting my discovery in that manner – in a secular way – so as to have more emphasis on the philosophical/ psychological features and a marked de-emphasis on the mystical/ metaphysical aspects. (I have, on occasion, verbally presented my story to peoples of a materialist/ humanist persuasion, without recourse to any metaphysicality at all, and they have had no difficulty in their comprehension of it when delivered in that manner)’. (Richard, List D, No. 14, 7 November 2009). Here is part of a follow-up response of mine to some quite rare encouragement feed-back. Viz.: #7459 From: richard.actualfreedom Date: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:18 am Subject: Re: Peculiar Information # 5 • [Rick]: Excellent idea, Richard, and thank you for continuing to ‘reach out’ to all of us like through the secular approach you mentioned. I for one will be really, really looking forward to this. • [Richard]: G’day Rick, I appreciate your words of encouragement. It is a secular approach only in its way of presentation as the content is no different, in essence, from what I already have online. Indeed, I started my new website by copy-pasting paragraphs from here and there on my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust website and then adding to it, or subtracting from it, whatever seemed suitable. In other words, although there is some new material (mainly of an autobiographical nature) it is essentially no different to that which is already available. (Although I am noticing how it is beginning to take on a life of its own, as it were, as I add a bit here and a bit there and delete something here and something there, and so on). (Richard, List D, Rick, 10 November 2009). Also, here is a timely reminder: • [Respondent No. 50 (List AF)]: (: Are there doctors that are interested in keeping track of you besides psychiatrists? • [Richard]: Nobody from the medical profession is keeping track of me these days (the psychiatric tracking you refer to was only for three years in the early-to-mid ‘nineties). The last thing the psychiatrist said to me back then was that *this is beyond psychiatry*. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 30 September 2003). While I am at it, here is a bit of humour, just for fun. Viz.: • [Richard to Respondent No. 4]: For obvious reasons I will not be responding, either in the negative or the affirmative, to any such queries about any living person having a genealogical linkage ... what I will say, though, is this: I do find it cute that both you and your elder sibling are saying, in effect, that peace-on-earth is a disease, an illness, with an unidentified cause. (Richard, List D, No. 4 = Actual Freedom List, No. 60, 23 May 2005) Finally, I will hereby state, loud and clear, that I will never, ever be so foolish as to get sucked into answering either in the negative or the affirmative to any ‘did you write this’ queries/ demands regarding pages of text popping up hither and thither on the internet for, at the very least, the following four reasons: 1. I would have to go through each page of text not only line-by-line but word-by-word as well, comparing it with something of mine somewhere on a multi-million word web site as certain peoples can and do add, delete or substitute words as they see fit for nefarious purpose. 2. Even if (note ‘if’) some text somewhere did match, line-by-line and word-by-word, with something of mine somewhere amongst all of my millions of words then, by virtue of not having authorial and editorial control over it there is no way of it being guaranteed that words will not be added, deleted or substituted afterwards. 3. If there is something I want to publicly share with my fellow human being it will be found on The Actual Freedom Trust website ... that is what the (registered) legal entity ‘The Actual Freedom Trust’ was set-up for. 4. I have a life. Regards, Richard. * Re: New direction for the list: aye yet again..:) ... What Say Ye. RESPONDENT No. 25: Considering that it is apparently your attitude(s) towards ‘Richard’ that have changed, not your understanding of events, facts, etc.... do you think that the information you provided regarding your personal experiences and perspective on the documents you posted, etc. was in any way important or valuable (outside) of the ‘energy’ you refer to that fueled their postings? RESPONDENT: Concerning the origin and content and authorship of those docs I haven’t changed my mind at all. I thought that was quite plain, but if it isn’t: there you have it. Regarding their relevance/ importance, I guess you mean two sides to it: the content, and the politics of its publication. Re content: I said before, I think it’s the best thing Richard ever wrote. (Richard, I know it hasn’t been formally established as your work, but I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending that there’s any doubt in my mind about its authorship. Having made the mistake of posting them, I’m at least going to give my true opinion of their content and significance). To me these documents give a much more vivid and inspiring account of how deeply messed up the human condition can be, and how something radical can be done about even the very worst of it. I find it a much more powerful presentation than the presentation that seems geared toward [former] spiritual seekers. (But, to have taken the choice to publish it upon myself was just stupid; it’s not my place to decide what another can or should or shouldn’t reveal about himself, and the way in which it should be revealed). Regarding the practical significance of ‘mental disorders’: Richard has said that his mental disorders were so severe that they make ‘mere’ PTSD a relatively minor anxiety disorder. People can do with that information as they see fit. (For me, it would not be a deterrent; more an inspiration in fact). * Just one other point on that: On the second day of my first visit to Richard, he told me a lot about his war experiences, and he also said something (details vague and sketchy here) about how his psychologist or psychiatrist was aghast, turned white, at the prospect of someone choosing to go all the way into and *through* insanity. Now, at the time, I had not realised the full extent of what that actually entailed. (Nowhere near it). But it’s worth pointing out that Richard hadn’t tried to conceal that from me. He told me it in a context where he knew I’d be writing about our conversations too. What this means is, I’ve been using something against him, for political purposes, that he never really tried to conceal. I’m sorry for that Richard. What could have been a true inspiration to people turned into a hatchet job. RICHARD: G’day No. 4, I am pleased you have been able to recall, albeit in a vague and sketchy manner, that I talked with you a lot about my war experiences (and how a psychologist and a psychiatrist were aghast – it was the psychiatrist who paled visibly – at the prospect of me choosing to go all the way into and *through* insanity, culminating in those 30+ months, to the other side) as it provides a sound basis for this matter currently at hand to continue to unfold. Ponder this, for a moment, if you will: given that I was so frank with you – a person known to me solely from the internet – on only the second day of having met for the first time (as well as me knowing full well you would be writing publicly about our conversations) does it not occur to you I was, at the very least, equally frank with ... um ... your Indian source/ Indian friend? Also, given I was able to tell you as much as I did, in those few short days, does it not also occur to you just how much more I would have shared with someone – similarly known to me solely from the internet – over a much, much longer period? In other words, stories being bandied about in regards to (supposedly) concealed information only being discovered *after* I left India for Australia – be it on some-such memory stick as was (purportedly) ‘accidentally left behind’ or otherwise – can only begin to be somewhat believable, surely, provided there be a prior assumption of me being uncharacteristically (as per your above remembrance) close-mouthed with her, eh? Besides which, here is a snippet from a post to the Google Groups forum at the time (more, in context, further below): On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:04 PM, [Respondent No. 6] wrote: [...snip...]. As regards the person, Richard is totally and utterly dedicated to bring suffering of people to end and put himself under unabashed scrutiny. it is better to scrutinize and understand what is being posited before rushing in to criticize. [...snip...]. Before I go on some follow-up words of yours are particularly apposite to what I am going to say next. Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘(...) anyone who really engages with Richard, and with what he’s on about, will sooner or later find themselves in the same murky territory that I’ve been in, that my Indian friend has been in, and that anyone who’s had any intense and protracted involvement with Richard has been in ...’. (Message No. 12xxx). That ‘same murky territory’ you are referring to is the human condition in action – currently being played-out, on computer screens, to the mutual benefit of all concerned – and which is gradually unfolding, step-by-step, as this onscreen, and thus public, melodrama builds towards its ultimately happy ending. Now, the reason why I say melodrama – which is ‘a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions’ according to the Oxford Dictionary – is because the genesis of all those stories that have been bandied about was a rather daring person’s decision to set in motion an experiment (her word exactly) to find out whether an alternate route to an actual freedom from the human condition could be forged via the (affective) fusion of love. Viz.: Google Groups Forum: * On Wed, Apr 21, 2010, • [Respondent No. 6] wrote: Greetings, No. 19 yes, i was able to meet Richard. [...snip...]. Further more, i have discovered something else that can facilitate my freedom and it is marvelous. It is like being intoxicated on every moment of life, packing it with wonder and life, each moment again. [...snip...]. P.S.: ccing No. 14 and Richard since they do not subscribe to this group mailing system. * On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 3:41 PM, • [Respondent No. 29] wrote: And what is that ‘something else’...not sure you have described it ... On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:04 PM, • [Respondent No. 6] wrote: companionship, love, relationship – fusing yourself with the love of your life. this fusion is not being with the person, but is more like merging and fusing so that separation does not exist and operates even when physically apart. to my mind, that is the best way that a relationship can be lived. It is not a surrender but fusion. I have long held the theory and/ knew/ that it was possible, but i am putting it in practice now. My exploration is now slightly different from actualism per se. I make use of understanding of actualism and methods etc, but i am on my own trip , in some ways. Just an experiment to see where it leads me to. To come back to meeting with Richard: It is essential for anyone who is interested in actualism to read from the website sans biases – as in suspend them all for a while – to derive understanding. Else a reader will end up projecting and misunderstanding the whole premise. As regards the person, Richard is totally and utterly dedicated to bring suffering of people to end and put himself under unabashed scrutiny. it is better to scrutinize and understand what is being posited before rushing in to criticize. The reason i say so is that the first response to something radical tends to be in opposition to the idea. * On Mon, May 17, 2010, • [Respondent No. 6] wrote: greetings, [No. 29] [...snip...]. • [Respondent No. 29]: And why you have gone in this route? Is it an underlying fear of losing that person of love? You know this is not an intellectual query for me. Neither is this idle curiosity. So please to explain if you can. And what and how exactly is this ‘fusion’ consist of ? • [Respondent No. 6]: I have taken this route because a person is now a part of my life and it seems like a viable course to me. ‘fusion’ really means giving myself 100% to the person, as in aiming for ‘no separation’. If i am able to do this, then i will be giving myself and the person the best of me, the whole of me, 100% undivided attention and locked open intimacy. As a fringe benefit everyone and everything else will receive the same attention. As for any apprehension that if an actually free person can sustain a relationship with a non-actually free person (a feeling being). In my experience, it is not only possible but something to look forward to – imagine being with a person who is 100% sensible, not given to moods, does not have any anger/ aggression, regards you as a fellow human being and does not curb your independence or freedom, is 100% attentive and intimate 24 x 7. No man or woman (feeling being) could resist such a proposition. In view of the public interest in experimenting with various routes – such as Srid’s current experiment with an ‘equanimity towards all physical sensations’ practice (based upon Mr. Satya Goenka’s misunderstanding of the Pali word vedāna) – it is timely to append the score thus far. Viz.:
> 1. Via insanity | 0 f. & 1 m.
> 2. Via direct-route | 4 f. & 1 m. (NB.: updated on 08Aug2015).
> 3. Via aff practice | 0 f. & 0 m.
> 4. Via love’s fusion | 0 f. & 0 m.
> 5. Via equanimity | 0 f. & 0 m.
Regards, Richard. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• P.S.: So as to give some idea of what played a significant part, in motivating all that made-up stuff, an email of mine at the following URL is worth a close reading (including and particularly the post-script). Viz.: (Richard, List D, Rick, 31 December 2011). In case you miss that postscript this is its URL: (Richard, List D, Rick, Footnote 1). It begins with ‘Vineeto took efficacious advantage of a ...’ (and that event, in and of itself, is what played a significant part in setting it all in motion). * Re: New direction for the list: aye yet again..:) ... What Say Ye. RICHARD: [...]. Ergo, conjure phantasm –> impute a fallacy –> impugn the fallacy–> preach morality/ ethicality –> propose the solution. (And this has been going on, and on, for around 8 & 1/2 years). Speaking personally, there is no ‘us vs them’ operating here – here in actuality – as we are all fellow human beings here (in actuality). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 9 January 2013c). RESPONDENT: Yep. Things are falling into place nicely now. Thank you. I’m only now beginning to see how many of the negative impressions I had of you are actually inseparable from the positive ones. The more I tried to escape the ambivalence by validating either one of the projections, the more it reinforced the other, and made my stuckness between the two poles inescapable. (Psychically inescapable anyhow). Much becoming clear. Wow. RICHARD: Yes, there is neither saint nor sinner (aka ‘the lotus has its roots in mud’) here – here in actuality – where 7+ billion flesh-and-blood bodies are already living, and any ascribing of (idealistic) saintly qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body stems from attempting to counteract the imputed sinner qualities (i.e. automorphically imputed). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 10 January 2013). RESPONDENT: And even the ‘third alternative’ (neither sinner nor saint) had been misappropriated as yet another psychic image/ entity: A heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits and, due to lack of an intuitive faculty, wasn’t able to properly understand itself. It’s basically another way of inadvertently turning a what into a ‘who’. And no surprise that the result doesn’t come close to capturing the innocence of a PCE. RICHARD: G’day [No. 4 (real name)], Whilst none too sure precisely what you had in mind when you wrote that as such descriptive words, as a ‘heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits’, and ‘due to lack of an intuitive faculty’ was not able to ‘properly understand itself’, do read as if it is an ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body. The ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities is already featured, on more than a few occasions, in my archived correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website. Viz.: • [Co-Respondent]: Richard, I should like to ask the simple question ‘In which way one person that lost his being and ego, is different than a robot?’ • [Richard]: Just because a person actually free of the human condition has no identity whatsoever (neither ego-self nor soul-self/ spirit-self) parasitically residing inside the flesh and blood body – and therefore no affective feelings – this absence of identity and its precious feelings does not thus make that person a machine, an automaton, an android (a robot, somewhat resembling a human being in appearance, designed to function in place of a living organism and carrying out a variety of tasks mechanically in accord with a pre-programmed circuitry). I do not read/ watch science fiction but as I get these type of questions from time to time I have gradually been made aware of various ‘Star Trek’ characters, for instance, and it is pertinent to point out that the stuff of science fiction (creations of imagination) is entirely different to actuality ... a writer replete with identity/ feelings trying to visualise life sans identity/ feelings can, apparently, only conceive of a robotic-like creature speaking in a flat, monotone voice, and devoid of a sense of humour. I am yet to hear of a robot that experiences life like this, for example: • [Richard]: ‘I live in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world where, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, everything and everybody 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 everybody. We do not live in an inert universe’. In fact a robot, being a machine, does not experience anything at all. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44a, 10 July 2003). As well as that, the ascription of anosognosia type qualities also already features, on several occasions, on the website. Viz.: • [Co-Respondent]: I am exploring into the issue of whether one can experience anything without knowing that one is experiencing it. So for example, there may be anger, emotional pain etc, and one does not know that. • [Richard]: The medical term, for the symptoms you describe here, has popularly become known as anosognosia. However, the people observing such a person, who does have this disorder, can vouch for displays of [quote] ‘anger, emotional pain etc.’ [endquote] whilst the person in question is not personally feeling them ... needless is to say that no such displays of [quote] ‘anger, emotional pain etc.’ [endquote] have been detected by anybody who has contact with me? And I have been scrutinised closely by many, many people over the last nine years. (Richard, List B, No. 31d, 16 May 2002). If what you had in mind was the ascription of, say, sociopathic personality disorder type qualities (or some-such dissociative/ repressive attributes) it would be a sub-set of the imputed ‘sinner qualities’ – i.e. automorphically imputed – already canvassed, much further above now, in the earlier part of this exchange. Regards, Richard. * Re: New direction for the list: aye yet again..:) ... What Say Ye. RICHARD: [...]. Ergo, conjure phantasm –> impute a fallacy –> impugn the fallacy–> preach morality/ ethicality –> propose the solution. (And this has been going on, and on, for around 8 & 1/2 years). Speaking personally, there is no ‘us vs them’ operating here – here in actuality – as we are all fellow human beings here (in actuality). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 9 January 2013c). RESPONDENT: Yep. Things are falling into place nicely now. Thank you. I’m only now beginning to see how many of the negative impressions I had of you are actually inseparable from the positive ones. The more I tried to escape the ambivalence by validating either one of the projections, the more it reinforced the other, and made my stuckness between the two poles inescapable. (Psychically inescapable anyhow). Much becoming clear. Wow. RICHARD: Yes, there is neither saint nor sinner (aka ‘the lotus has its roots in mud’) here – here in actuality – where 7+ billion flesh-and-blood bodies are already living, and any ascribing of (idealistic) saintly qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body stems from attempting to counteract the imputed sinner qualities (i.e. automorphically imputed). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 10 January 2013). RESPONDENT: And even the ‘third alternative’ (neither sinner nor saint) had been misappropriated as yet another psychic image/ entity: A heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits and, due to lack of an intuitive faculty, wasn’t able to properly understand itself. It’s basically another way of inadvertently turning a what into a ‘who’. And no surprise that the result doesn’t come close to capturing the innocence of a PCE. RICHARD: Whilst none too sure precisely what you had in mind when you wrote that as such descriptive words, as a ‘heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits’, and ‘due to lack of an intuitive faculty’ was not able to ‘properly understand itself’, do read as if it is an ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body. The ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities is already featured, on more than a few occasions, in my archived correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website. Viz.: [...snip android/ robot quote...]. (Richard, List D, No. 4, 5 January 2013). As well as that, the ascription of anosognosia type qualities also already features, on several occasions, on the website. Viz.: [...snip anosognosia quote...]. (Richard, List D, No. 4, 5 January 2013). If what you had in mind was the ascription of, say, sociopathic personality disorder type qualities (or some-such dissociative/ repressive attributes) it would be a sub-set of the imputed ‘sinner qualities’ – i.e. automorphically imputed – already canvassed, much further above now, in the earlier part of this exchange. RESPONDENT: Yes, you’ve understood me, and I believe I’m understanding you. I’d created an ‘actually free identity’ that purports to be the third alternative to the sinner/ saint, but was (as you’ve correctly pointed out here) another variant/ sub-set of the ‘sinner’: one that is damaged and oblivious rather than ruthlessly self-centred. RICHARD: G’day [No. 4 (real name)], Yes, we are indeed understanding each other and, even further to this understanding, do we both – now – understand that the third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions? Put differently, do we now both understand that anything outside of the human condition – actually outside of it – truly is (as I have remarked on many an occasion) inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable? Hence, of course, the ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities – some science-fiction alien from another galaxy – or even of a ‘real stranger’ (for instance) from ‘another space’. Viz.: • [quote]: ‘Dalai Lama: ‘Sometimes I Get Angry, Too’. Buddhist leader brings Dan Harris inside the mind of a monk’. {04/18/2011}. • [Intro; 01:26]: ‘Even though the Dalai Lama has supported extensive scientific research on meditation, asking his own monks to put their own heads inside of scientist’s brain-scanners, he admits that even if you do hours and hours of meditation it’s by no means some sort of silver bullet; it will not guarantee you perfect happiness’. • [Mr. Dan Harris; 01:45]: ‘Is your mind always calm?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso; 01:47]: ‘Hopefully’. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘You never lose your temper?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘No-no-no-no. Occasionally I lose my temper’. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘You do?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘Oh yes. If, uh, someone never lose temper then, perhaps, that may come from {gesturing upwards} another space’. {chuckles}. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: {laughs}. • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: Real stranger. {laughs}. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘So, if someone says to you ‘I never lose my temper’ you don’t believe them?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘Oh, no. No ...’. (abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/dalai-lama-angry-13400561). Moreover, because the third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is literally inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable – as well as actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions – it is not at all surprising how all of the pragmatic/ hardcore dharma leaders/ practitioners, for example, spuriously demoted my eleven years intimate experience, night and day, of fully-fledged spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment in order to posit actualism/ actual freedom as being ... um ... ‘ten-fetter’ arahantship. (Otherwise they would be face-to-face with the (metaphysical) fact that the long-awaited ‘Maitreya’/ ‘Mettaya’/ ‘Jampa’ has been and gone and they all missed-out on that event of the millennia). Furthermore, because this third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is literally inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable – as well as actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions – it is not at all surprising how all but a few of the sane peoples (inclusive of, and particularly so, counsellors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists) have no choice but to diagnose both my eleven years of full enlightenment/ awakenment and my twenty-plus years of an actual freedom from the human condition as insanity. (Hence their demotion of that enlightened/ awakened experiencing of being the ‘Parousia’, the ‘Maitreya’, the ‘Messiah’, etcetera, to that of a patient in a psychiatric ward thinking they be Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte or Ms. Marie Antoinette, or whoever, else they all missed-out on that event of the millennia as well). RESPONDENT: It’s fascinating stuff. In practical terms, it was really casting a shadow over my recollection and evaluation of PCEs, and I’m really chuffed to find that, along with my growing insight into the creation of identities and stances, the innocence of the PCE is being restored. RICHARD: Interestingly enough, when Devika transmogrified into Irene (which she pronounced ee-rain-ah) she declared both of her primary peak experiences (her term for PCE’s) in Amsterdam long before she met me – both her brief riding-a-bicycle-across-an-intersection one and her three-weeks-of-being-beyond-enlightenment experience – as having been corrupted, polluted, by the numerous PCE’s she had after having met me/ whilst being with me and similarly sought to recollect and re-evaluate them. (Which, in her case, involved surreptitiously slipping agape love and compassion into them and, thus, rendering both indistinguishable from ASC’s). RESPONDENT: (Oddly, for all my talk of ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, and what-not, I don’t mind being the guy who’s fascinated by ordinary things like the play of light in a glass ashtray. It occurs to me as I write this that I was probably subject to some rather cynical and repressive influences around the age of seven, but it never *quite* crushed that naiveté out of me. Anyway, still learning as I go, here...). RICHARD: Hmm ... could you be referring, by any chance, to the same personality whom you referred to in Message No. 9615 (plus follow-ups in 9616 & 9617) just before advising you were off to England again and, hopefully, then to northern Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago? (Message 9619) • [Respondent]: ‘(...) I know a thing or two about narcissism and narcissists ... possibly more than anyone in this forum ... and not from books. You see, I’ve spent large parts of my life – decades – witnessing first-hand how a narcissistic/ (non-violent) psychopathic personality thinks and behaves, and oftentimes being embroiled in their self-created dramas. The difference between a narcissist and an ordinary person – let alone an actualist – is stunning (and shocking at times). A narcissist’s genuine unconcern for other people couldn’t be learned or faked, even if you tried ...’. (Message 9615, Actualism, Others, No. 4 Report, 3 April 2010)). Regards, Richard. RICHARD (to No. 4): I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and have been officially classified as suffering from a pronounced and severe mental disorder. My symptoms are: 1. Depersonalisation. 2. Derealisation. 3. Alexithymia. 4. Anhedonia. Also, I have the most classic indication of insanity. That is: everyone else is mad but me. I just thought I might share that with you, as I consider that it may be important for you to know that you are currently engaged in a correspondence with a madman. (Richard, List B, No. 4, 20 November 1998). RESPONDENT No. 19: Richard, I’m going to let my light out from under the bushel and tell you what I see: You are still ‘crazy’, and I still have affection and/or compassion for you. RICHARD: As I am a person devoid of either latent or active enmity, I require no restorative affection whatsoever to create the illusion of intimacy in my human interactions. And as I am also a person devoid of either latent or active sorrow, I require no antidotal compassion whatsoever to create the illusion of caring. Thus, in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s affection and/or compassion ... or mood swings. If this is being crazy – if this is a severe mental disorder – then it sure beats the sanity of the real world ... which is a sanity that produces wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. RESPONDENT No. 19: Maybe No. 4 will come around to loving you, also. RICHARD: Hmm ... my posts are written in appreciative response to a fellow human being who is spending the most precious gifts they have – their time and sincerity – to communicate with me about the sense they have made, so far, of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. To put it another way: I always value another human being simply for daring to be here on this fair earth – and therefore actively doing this living business – irregardless of where they are coming from. Ain’t life grand! (Richard, List B, No. 19b, 22 November 1998). RESPONDENT: So this would also imply that one trying to make sense of a madman might also be mad. RICHARD: Such a person is maybe not quite mad yet ... but somewhat inclined towards madness? Yes. RESPONDENT: This bring ups the issue of verifying sanity. RICHARD: Yes, Mr. Sigmund Freud defined sanity as ‘ordinary human unhappiness’ (or some such statement). The standard psychiatric definition of normal every-day sanity usually reads some thing like: ‘A well-adjusted personality coping adequately with the conflicting demands of self and society’. RESPONDENT: How do you verify this Richard, are you independently claiming sanity? RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... I left sanity behind years and years ago. My condition is well-described by the four symptoms. 1. Depersonalisation is an apt description of being bereft of any identity whatsoever ... there is no one at all to answer back when I ask that time-honoured question: ‘Who am I?’ ... not even a silence that ‘speaks louder than words’. 2. Derealisation an appropriate term, for the grim and glum ‘normal’ and mundane reality of the everyday real world as experienced by 6.0 billion people has vanished forever ... along with the loving and compassionate ‘abnormal’ and heavenly Greater Reality of the metaphysical Mystical World as experienced by .000001 of the population. 3. Alexithymia is the term used to describe the condition of a total absence of feelings – usually exhibited most clearly in lobotomised patients – which has been my on-going condition for many, many years now. It has also come to mean being cut off from one’s feelings – as in dissociation – yet the psychiatrists ascertained that I was not dissociating. 4. Anhedonia literally means unable to feel pleasure – affectively feeling pleasure – as in the feeling of beauty when viewing a sunrise or listening to music and so on. My condition is classified as a psychotic condition in the DSM – IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) which is the diagnostic criteria used by all psychiatrists and psychologists around the world for diagnosing mental disorders. I mean it when I say: ‘I have the most classic indication of insanity. That is: everyone else is mad but me’. The sanity of the real world – which is a sanity that produces wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide – is a sickness, a blight upon this fair earth. Thus, whichever way it is defined, I am not sane ... I have oft-times been told that only a fool – a simpleton – can be happy and harmless in the world of people, things and events. The doorway to an actual freedom has the words ‘Warning: do not open ... insanity lies ahead’ written on it. I opened the door and walked through. Once on the other side – where thousands upon thousands of atavistic voices were insistently whispering ‘fool – fool – fool’ – I turned to ascertain the way back to normal. The door had vanished – and the wall it was set in – and I just knew that I would never, ever be able to find my way back to the real-world ... it had been nothing but an illusion all along. I walked tall and free as the perfection of this material universe personified ... I can never not be here ... now. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable and malicious in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic actual universe. To defend the belief that this life is forever fatally flawed – defend to the point of idiocy – is actually a cowardly attempt to stay hidden inside ‘humanity’. To skulk behind a sick social contract is a desperate ploy to remain ‘human’. If one takes one’s intellectual ability back from the decrees of the cultured sophisticates – to which one has surrendered – one has taken a courageous step. One has cast oneself out of the biggest group there is ... humanity. If one stays within the group, for its perceived safety and security, one is selling out to the system because of a pusillanimous character. Thus one secretly despises oneself, with disastrous consequences ... one has to be numbed to such a degree that defies credibility in order for nothing but psittacisms to come from their mouths. Humankind is so stultified – stupefied by the centuries of socialisation overlaying the instincts – that only madness can be allowed ... and it masquerades as an ailing ‘normal’. The precarious status-quo is defined as being sanity ... and anything outside this description is classified as insanity. Such a blatant ignoring of the facts begs the question as to just who is salubrious. Without fear and aggression, one has dignity for the first time. RICHARD: In view of our recent conversation regarding compensation claims you may find the following to be of interest. The figure at the end ... that is an additional one billion dollars! The moral of the story: If one is at all eligible ... then one is a fool not to claim it. A legal advocate has explained to me that all this is a ‘medico-legal’ issue and has nothing to do with either the government being caring (‘compassionate’) or the recipient deserving it. The law states: if one meets the requirements one is entitled ... by law. As it is well known that ‘The Law is an Ass’, I guess they leave it up to the recipient to explain their personal understanding of a social conscience to their ‘Maker’ ... and either make their peace or suffer their punishment come their ‘Judgement Day’. [quote]: ‘105th CONGRESS 2d Session H. R. 3948: To maintain health care coverage for veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs for tobacco related illnesses, and to provide for additional authorization of appropriations for the Department. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES May 22, 1998 A BILL: To maintain health care coverage for veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs for tobacco related illnesses, and to provide for additional authorization of appropriations for the Department. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: SECTION 1. The Congress finds that the United States has both directly and indirectly facilitated tobacco use by members of the Armed Forces in that: (1) from the time of the Civil War until 1956, the Army was required by law ‘to cause tobacco to be furnished to the enlisted men of the army at cost prices, exclusive of the cost of transportation, in such quantities as they may require, not exceeding sixteen ounces per month’ with the cost deducted from their pay; (2) the Air Force is still required by law to make tobacco available for sale to enlisted members; (3) cigarettes have been distributed free of charge to members of the Armed Forces as part of the food and sundries packets referred to as ‘C-rations’; (4) tobacco products have been and continue to be sold by military exchanges at substantially discounted rates, thus actively encouraging tobacco usage by military personnel, and as late as 1996 commissary tobacco prices were as much as 76 percent lower than commercial retail prices; (5) the military culture historically has recognized, encouraged, and supported cigarette smoking by service members (‘Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.’); (6) a significant number of veterans were non-smokers upon entering military service and began smoking during military service, and reliable studies indicate that 75 percent of World War II veterans began smoking tobacco products as young adults during the course of their military service; (7) labelling requirements warning of the addictive nature of nicotine and the dangers of tobacco-related products, which were applicable to tobacco products sold in the commercial market, were not mandated for products distributed through the military system until 1970, five years after the requirement was applied to products sold in the civilian market; (8) the Department of Veterans Affairs has been authorized by law to provide tobacco to veterans receiving hospital or domiciliary care since 1957 and was authorized to do so by regulation since at least 1933. SECTION. 2. Service-connected compensation for tobacco-related illnesses of veterans: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, for purposes of sections 1110 or 1131 of title 38, United States Code, in the case of a disability of a veteran from a disease or injury that may be attributable, in whole or in part, to that veteran’s use of tobacco products, the veteran shall be entitled to payment of compensation under chapter 11 of such title. SECTION. 3. Increase in authorization of appropriations for the department of veterans affairs: In addition to amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated for the Department of Veterans Affairs for fiscal year 1999, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the Department $1,000,000,000 for such fiscal year’. [endquote]. To me, it is a further example that I am living in an enormous insane asylum with 5.8 billion patients ... and the attendants are as mad as the inmates. There was a case in the USA a few months ago where a convicted murderer was executed after ten or more years on Death Row. She had ‘seen the light’ and become a born-again Christian ... and pleaded clemency due to abject remorse and repentance. The Governor of the State – who had the temporal power to grant a reprieve – declined her request and noted: ‘I will leave it up to a Higher Power to judge whether she is cleansed of sin or not’ (or words to that effect) and promptly pulled the lever that ended her life (or whatever they do to execute someone over there). Now, as dead is dead, I am glad that I have learnt to appreciate ‘black humour’ by watching shows like ‘Black Adder’, otherwise it would have all become too much. As I remarked before, it is a wonder that more people do not have nervous breakdowns. Insensitivity, I guess. However, like all good lunatic asylums, the gardens are lovely ... and one is well-fed every day if only one admits that one is mad (it enables ‘them’ to think they are sane). I watched the BBC ‘Hard Talk’ interview with Mr Robert McNamara (US Secretary for Defence during the Vietnam War) a couple of nights ago. He estimated that 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century. I have always understood it to be 100,000,000 ... which was bad enough. So much for sanity. RESPONDENT: Respondent No. 40 may have a point about your brain being damaged ... RICHARD: Here is ‘a point’ for you (only a factual point this time): 160,000,000 people with no brain-damage were killed in wars alone in the last 100 years by people with no brain-damage. RESPONDENT: I agree, Richard. That is gross. RICHARD: Indeed it is ... however, it is what it means, or what it indicates, which is important (and not just say that it is ‘gross’ and leave it at that) for it shows that people with no brain-damage are the problem. * RESPONDENT: ... and the thing is that a brain so damaged cannot know that it is damaged. RICHARD: There is a psychiatric term for what you describe: anosognosia. RESPONDENT: Now I’m not saying that your brain is damaged in that way ... RICHARD: Then why did you say it? RESPONDENT: Back in 1970, I moved into the mountains, much as you moved to the island to ‘search for the truth.’ I experienced a three month period in which I lived in a veritable ‘garden of eden.’ I really liked everyone; I had no feelings of malice or sorrow towards anyone or anything. The world was truly a magical place. However, what was magic to me seemed too strange to my family and psychiatrists, and I ended up on the ‘6th Floor’ because the word ‘no’ was not in my vocabulary. My brother finally convinced me that if I didn’t take my medication, I would be put ‘someplace’ where I would have to take it. That scared me. I asked my mother to bear with me; that I knew that I was not ‘all right’ but that I would be by Saturday. I had no clue as to why I said ‘Saturday’ – I never knew what was going to come out of my mouth until I heard it myself. Well, Saturday came, and on that day, there was an audible (to me) ‘snap’ inside of my head as the two parts of the brain came together. I was then back in ‘this’ world. Somehow, the brain had become unbalanced – perhaps functioning only on the right side – I don’t know. This was a testimonial. RICHARD: And I appreciate that you write your testimonial ... it clarifies what you wrote a couple of years back where you abruptly lost interest in exploring (and thus understanding) what I say. • [Respondent]: ‘And find alexithymia? No thanks, I was released from the ‘6th Floor’ 28 years ago, and I’m not anxious to go back’. (Message No. 00713 of Archive 98/06). Most countries have their version of your ‘6th Floor’ (in this neck of the woods it is called ‘Richmond Clinic’) and the words ‘psychiatric ward’ strike fear into the heart of the erstwhile explorer. Thus peace-on-earth remains un-enabled ... thanks to the psychiatric profession this time. For what it is worth, my second wife had a three-week experience such as you describe many years before she met me ... and she too reports of an ‘audible ‘snap’’ (for her an ‘audible click’ in the base of the brain) which precipitated her return to the ‘real world’ when she decided to no longer be on her own in a world where no one could understand what she spoke of or who could relate to her ... or her to them. Even though it be the very place, where the peace-on-earth that most peoples say they long for, lies open for all to live in. * RESPONDENT: ... but I do know that a brain that has had a terrible shock to it, may have to adjust its thinking to accommodate what it can accept in order to survive without going totally stark raving mad. RICHARD: But as I am already what you call ‘totally stark raving mad’ according to official diagnoses by accredited psychiatrists ... where does that leave your amateurish psychologising? In the same place as your amateurish scientism, perchance? RESPONDENT: More than likely and right along the side of actualism. RICHARD: I have never made a secret of the fact that the doorway to an actual freedom from the human condition has the words ‘insanity lies ahead’ blazoned upon it ... which is why peace-on-earth has never been enabled before in human history. People everywhere are wasting time looking for a door marked ‘sanity’ or ‘peace’ (or some similar name). RICHARD: A pure consciousness experience shows that thought, thoughts and thinking can either operate or not operate sans the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – apperceptive awareness is ever-fresh – which means both the innate feeling of ‘being’ and its affective feelings are not necessary at all to operate and function in the world of people, things and events. On the contrary ... it and its precious feelings are a hindrance to both personal and communal salubrity. RESPONDENT: It seems that sanity is when the thinker and the feeler are not, independent of that they are two faces of the same ‘I’ or two different ‘I’. RICHARD: The sanity that is of impersonal feeling or impersonal being – spiritual ‘sanity’ you refer to as contrasted to secular sanity – is not, as you say, ‘independent of that they are two faces of the same ‘I’ or two different ‘I’’ ... it is vital that the root of the second ‘I’ (‘me’ as soul) be ascertained for what it is (primary as in primordial) else all that is written in this thread has come to naught. Speaking personally, I have not been sane for years ... there is no sanity here in this actual world of the senses. RESPONDENT: The question is ‘Does God care’? RICHARD: Before one can ask ‘does god care’ it must be first ascertained if any god can exist without calenture; whether any god exists outside of a person’s emotion-backed feverish imagination ... otherwise it is a question based on a false premise. RESPONDENT: Why does God allow all the evil and the killings to happen? RICHARD: Do you see how you race away with further questions without first establishing the bona fides of your god? RESPONDENT: The answer is – He doesn’t get involved – because he cannot. RICHARD: May I suggest? Maybe – just maybe – a god (any god or goddess) does not get involved because no god (or goddess) has any existence outside of a person’s emotion-backed feverish imagination? Have you never noticed that all gods were immortal ... yet when peoples stop believing in them they cease to exist? RESPONDENT: Because God is not a person – only god into expression is a person – an awakened person. RICHARD: May I ask? Has it ever occurred to you that someone – anyone – who solemnly proclaims themselves to be ‘God On Earth’ is seriously deluded? And further, other than such people’s utterances (scriptures), there is no evidence that any god or goddess exists? * RESPONDENT: Maybe – but you cannot deny that such persons do manage to live remarkable lives. RICHARD: Yea verily ... so too do the most notorious dictators live ‘remarkable lives’ . Unless a person’s ‘remarkable life’ includes peace-on-earth then it is just more of the same-old same-old. RESPONDENT: Like Jesus saying ‘father forgive them’ when he is being crucified. Pretty amazing feat of non-violence. RICHARD: Not really ... he believed himself to be immune from death; all gods are (supposedly) immortal. RESPONDENT: There is some pretty strong evidence of ‘strange’ occurrences that you would find hard to explain in normal terms. RICHARD: I have no difficulty in explaining them in psychotic terms. RESPONDENT: Did you follow gurus or shrinks? RICHARD: No. 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 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. As for the ‘shrinks’ ... given that sanity is defined as something like ‘a well-adjusted personality coping with the conflicting demands of both the inner and outer worlds’ then psychiatric medication and psychological counselling are designed to bring those who are suffering from any of three main psychotic categories (Bi-polar Disorder, Schizophrenia and Clinical Depression) and any psychotic/ neurotic sub-categories, back to a state of as near-normal functioning as possible (and ‘normal’ is categorised by Mr. Sigmund Freud as ‘common human unhappiness’). No psychiatric or psychological treatment could meet what any ‘I’/ ‘me’ is wanting – and I was looking to go beyond both normal (‘human’) and abnormal (‘divine’) – thus I was seeking to find out, experientially (as I did in other fields) what was the extent and range of other human’s experience and solutions in the West. Psychology and psychiatry has failed just as dismally as theology and spirituality. Yet other humans – some of whom who are downright suspicious of me – have been unable to detect anything untoward at all despite the closest observation possible. There are people here in my daily life who observe me closely – very closely – for all of the waking hours of the day. This kind of scrutiny has been going on for eighteen years now ... and has been fruitless as in regards to finding a fault for the last eight years. No-one has been able to observe a discrepancy between what I say about myself and what they see in my behaviour. No one has been able to observe any trace of an identity or an affective feeling – an emotion or a passion or calenture – in me since 1992. I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists (and by one of them every three months for more than three years) and also by a psychologist (who followed my condition at three-weekly intervals from March 1994 to January 1997) and I was found to have: 1. Depersonalisation: which is an apt description of being bereft of any identity whatsoever ... there is no one at all (neither ‘I’ as ego nor ‘me’ as soul) to answer back when I ask that time-honoured question: ‘Who am I?’ ... not even a silence that ‘speaks louder than words’. 2. Derealisation: which is an appropriate term because the grim and glum ‘normal’ and humdrum reality of the everyday ‘real world’ as experienced by 6.0 billion people has vanished forever ... along with the loving and compassionate ‘abnormal’ and heavenly ‘True Reality’ of the metaphysical mystical world as experienced by .000001 of the population. 3. Alexithymia: which is the term used to describe the condition of a total absence of feelings – usually exhibited most clearly in lobotomised patients – which has been my on-going condition for many, many years now. It has also come to mean merely being cut off from one’s feelings – as in dissociation – yet the psychiatrists ascertained that I was not dissociating. 4. Anhedonia: which literally means unable to feel pleasure – affectively feeling pleasure in the ‘pleasure centre’ of the brain – as in the feeling of beauty when viewing a sunrise or listening to music and so on. My condition is thus classified as a ‘severe psychotic condition’ in the DSM – IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) which is the diagnostic criteria used by all psychiatrists and psychologists around the world for diagnosing mental disorders. I do find it so cute that an actual freedom from the human condition is considered to be a severe mental disorder. GARY: There are in-built hormonal and neuronal mechanisms that mediate the fight-or-flight response of the organism to danger and extreme stress. These are permanently altered when one has been the object of violence or exposed to extreme stress. RICHARD: Yet there are no child-hood hurts extant in this flesh and blood body ... my experience demonstrates that nothing in the affective faculty is either ‘hard-wired’ or permanent. GARY: Would you say your experience is exceptional, indeed, unusual? RICHARD: I have been scouring the books and talking with many and varied peoples from all walks of life for nineteen years now ... I would be delighted to meet someone with a similar experience as we could compare notes, as it were, or to even read about such a person’s experience, if that person were to be now deceased, would be of immense interest to me. GARY: I was referring to research on PTSD that shows that there are actual hormonal and neuronal changes following exposure to extreme stress. RICHARD: Yes, this is my understanding too regarding the research ... PET scans and MRI scans show deviations from normal people’s brain activity in people diagnosed PTSD (suggesting neuronal change). Blood tests and other physical symptoms indicate changed hormonal secretions ... which are yet to be conclusively linked to the neuronal changes but every indication is that this is so. GARY: Probably I was wrong to say that these are ‘permanent’ – that is jumping too far. RICHARD: The current wisdom – psychiatric and psychologic expertise – is that PTSD is a permanent disorder. Psychiatrical medication and psychological counselling seeks to modify the condition somewhat so as to make it manageable ... a chemical straight-jacket in concert with coping mechanisms and management techniques. GARY: But once these hormonal and neuronal mechanisms are chronically altered, it seems to me it makes interrupting the cycle of hyper-arousal and psychic numbing extremely difficult. RICHARD: Or extremely easy ... being normal is so culturally accepted and reinforced that it makes it extremely difficult to depart from the norm. If one already has a ‘severe psychotic disorder’ (a politically correct term for a ‘basket case’) ... what has one to lose by daring to be more different than one already is? Is one going to dumbly accept one’s fate – as decreed by the conventional wisdom of sane people – because the ‘software package’ has a developed a glitch? Bearing in mind that 160,000,000 sane people were killed in wars in the last century by their sane fellow human beings – and that 40,000,000 people killed themselves in the same period – what is one going to do with such sane people’s advice? GARY: Perhaps I should not use the word ‘interrupt’ – that implies something continuous. What I hear you saying is that there is a discontinuity. Am I correct? RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘discontinuous’ means breaking continuity, intermittent interludes, interrupting intransience. I would rather stay with extirpated, eliminated, extinguished ... never to return. GARY: When you say ‘there are no childhood hurts extant in this flesh and blood body ...’, are you saying the memories of hurt have been extinguished? RICHARD: The passionate memory of all emotional hurts (indeed all the affections) was extinguished when the passionate memory faculty was extirpated ... the intellectual memory operates with the clarity enabled by the absence of the instinctual passions which normally cloud the remembrance with attractions and repulsions; likes and dislikes; shoulds and should nots and so on. In other words: free of malice and sorrow. The brain has two ‘memory banks’ and the passionate memory is both non-conscious and primal. This primal memory faculty (mainly in the amygdala) mediates all sensory data and triggers hormonal secretions before such data reaches the intellectual memory faculty (mainly in the neo-cortex). Consequently, as the neo-cortex is suffused with hormonal secretions a split-second before thinking commences, all thought is tainted, polluted ... crippled by the affective faculty before it starts. All this has been empirically detected and exhaustively verified by recent technological experimentation and research into the passion of fear (for just one example). Modern empirical science has put the kibosh on ‘ancient wisdom’ once and for all. RESPONDENT: I myself had two teachers, Stephen Gaskin and John Panama. Also, if you are claiming realization, then you should be able to test it in others. I claim to be able to do that as should you be able to. If you can come to the United States, I would be happy to meet with you and you could test me and I you. This may clear up some of the confusion. RICHARD: I am not interested in ‘testing’ you (or anyone else) ... it is of no concern to me whether you are fully realised or not: spiritual enlightenment sucks. And for as long as you continue to see me in terms of ‘awakening’ or ‘realisation’ or ‘enlightenment’ or any other name for the ‘Tried and True’ you would be wasting your time ... there is no ‘being’ lurking around inside this flesh and blood body to put through the hoops. For example: an awakened ‘Spiritual ‘Teacher’ personally checked me out face-to-face some years ago ... and made me the subject of the nightly discourse, warning the faithful followers that Richard is an example of the dangers on the spiritual path. To wit: Richard is insane. As the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people (regular society) in the West 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 ‘test’ another lunatic and declare him to be insane (thereby implying that the ‘tester’ is not). Ah ... c’est la vie, I guess. * RICHARD: For example: an awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ personally checked me out face-to-face some years ago ... and made me the subject of the nightly discourse, warning the faithful followers that Richard is an example of the dangers on the spiritual path. To wit: Richard is insane. RESPONDENT: I think we may have touched on something here. This is an unbearably cruel thing to do to anyone. Although the false self must be shattered, this in not the way to do it. RICHARD: Oh, it was not ‘an unbearably cruel thing’ at all ... I had a thoroughly pleasant time explaining my experience (just as I do here). It was, as always, great fun ... at least for me, anyway (I cannot answer for the awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ of course). RESPONDENT: In my opinion. I’m really sorry your had to go thru this experience, it seems you may be still angry about this? RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... I have these nonsensical character analyses gratuitously given to me on an almost daily basis. It is this simple: there is no way I can politely say ‘everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction’ without someone getting their nose out of joint. It is all par for the course. RESPONDENT: If I might ask, were you following this teacher at the time, were you part of a group? RICHARD: You may have missed my answer to your question about having a teacher or guru in a previous post wherein I explained how I came to be here where I am today. Just so that there is no further misunderstanding I will make my experience crystal clear: • 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. (Richard, List B, No. 31d, 9 May 2002). * RESPONDENT: I post to other forums and just yesterday someone was talking about ‘normal’ people as being insane and I said that was too severe a summation. Deluded would be accurate. I believe in accuracy. RICHARD: Oh, normal people are sane alright (it is they who make the definition when it is all said and done). I have not been sane for years ... I was making the point that the Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) called spiritual enlightenment is an institutionalised insanity where I wrote: ‘conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them’. Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: Actually, the whole idea of a teacher ‘testing’ you in front of others is to me totally ridiculous. This teacher is obviously deluded himself. RICHARD: That is the whole point of my story: [Richard]: ‘as the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people (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 ‘test’ another lunatic and declare him to be insane (thereby implying that the ‘tester’ is not). RESPONDENT: A real teacher would never do that. And if you went to test yourself with a real teacher, you would do this in silence, your consciousness would connect with that of the teacher and you would commune with him telepathically, the ‘test’ would be to see whether your ego could withstand it, or if it would freak you out. RICHARD: First, I would never, ever, go to an ‘Enlightened Being’ to ‘test myself’ ... I was enlightened for eleven years and know it through and through intimately. Second, there is neither ‘I’ as ego nor ‘me’ a soul extant in this flesh and blood body: if I were so silly as to do what you recommend, then because there is (a) no ‘I’ as ego there would be no possibility of ‘freaking out’ ... and because there is (b) no ‘me’ as soul there would be no possibility of ‘telepathic communion’ . Thus, as I remarked before, you would be wasting your time ... there is no ‘being’ lurking around inside this flesh and blood body to put through the hoops. RESPONDENT: The teacher would sense immediately your inner condition, there would be no need for you to explain yourself at all, as you radiate your whole condition, nothing is hidden to the enlightened. RICHARD: If I may interject? It looks like you have either misunderstood or have missed the point of my story entirely. There is no ‘radiation of my whole condition’ to be felt; there is no ‘charisma’ nor any ‘energy-field’ here. I am a fellow human being sans identity because the affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated. I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever. There is no ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: Now I am quite certain of your fakery. Only a self-protective, self-serving mind resorts to ‘tactics’ in order to paint another as he wants himself and others to see that other. RICHARD: If I may point out? You are assuming that I ‘resorted to ‘tactics’’; you are assuming that I arranged your words sequentially ‘in order to paint another’ in a particular way; you are assuming that I am a person who ‘wants himself and others’ to see you as I supposedly ‘paint’ you. Therefore your certitude about Richard’s ‘fakery’ is based upon a raft of assumptions. RESPONDENT: You know, if I chose to arrange some of your statements sequentially, as you have done mine, I am quite sure that the list would require several emails, and at the end of it, I could make a case for complete insanity on the part of the subject of that list. RICHARD: Why would you want to do that? I make no secret of the fact that I have been rigorously examined, by two accredited psychiatrists and a psychologist over a three-year period, and have been found to have a severe and incurable psychotic mental disorder – what used to be called insanity in less politically correct days – and have an official certificate to the effect that my condition corresponds with the criterion laid down in the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders – fourth edition) which is the analytical criteria used by all psychiatrists and psychologists around the world for establishing mental disorders. I have the following symptoms: 1. Depersonalisation: which is an apt description of being bereft of any identity whatsoever ... there is no one at all (neither ‘I’ as ego nor ‘me’ as soul) to answer back when I ask that time-honoured question: ‘Who am I?’ ... not even a silence that ‘speaks louder than words’. 2. Derealisation: which is an appropriate term because the grim and glum ‘normal’ and humdrum reality of the everyday ‘real world’ as experienced by 6.0 billion people has vanished forever ... along with the loving and compassionate ‘abnormal’ and heavenly ‘True Reality’ of the metaphysical mystical world as experienced by .000001 of the population. 3. Alexithymia: which is the term used to describe the condition of a total absence of feelings – usually exhibited most clearly in lobotomised patients – which has been my on-going condition for many, many years now. It has also come to mean merely being cut off from one’s feelings – as in dissociation – yet the psychiatrists ascertained that I was not dissociating. 4. Anhedonia: which literally means unable to feel pleasure – affectively feeling pleasure in the ‘pleasure centre’ of the brain – as in the feeling of beauty when viewing a sunrise or listening to music and so on. However, if this is not sufficient evidence then please do go ahead with your list of sequentially arranged statements of mine ... anything I have to say can breeze through any kind of scrutiny and be found to completely support the official findings of a severe and incurable psychotic mental disorder. * RESPONDENT: Only a fool would believe it because people watch what you DO, your tricks, how you tend to beat up on people when you feel they are intellectually weaker than you are, and how you twist the words of others to disguise your inability to meet those words adequately. RICHARD: Hmm ... again this ‘you feel’ diagnosis of yours is as inaccurate as the conclusions you draw. Plus, experience has shown that when the other starts telling me that I am twisting their words it usually indicates that they have nothing of substance to say ... and that the discussion is about to be terminated. ‘Tis only a generalisation, though. RESPONDENT: Either you are stone nuts or you are sinister. RICHARD: I am well aware by now that anyone proposing peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body, is considered to be ‘stone nuts’ (my condition has been officially diagnosed as a severe psychotic mental disorder) ... but this ‘sinister’ analysis of yours intrigues me (‘sinister’: menacing, ominous, evil, baleful, creepy, threatening). Especially since you have previously told me that I am ‘a scoundrel’, ‘a deceiver’, ‘a liar of the worst kind’, ‘a vulture’, ‘a buzzard’, ‘a mamba snake’ and that it is ‘a shame to have all that verbal ability and to use it so nefariously’ (‘nefarious’: wicked, evil, despicable, immoral, reprehensible, disreputable). And you say that it is I that displays ‘paranoia’, eh? RESPONDENT No. 12: Well; if you are not capable of that; or if you are; makes no difference to me. Why? Because I enjoy ‘your’ ‘company’; that’s ‘why’. RICHARD: You never, ever enjoy my company – I am not that personality your viewpoint superimposes over or into this flesh and blood body – and whomsoever it is whose company you enjoy is all in your mind. There is a particularly apposite word worthy of consideration in this regard ... you will find it further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). Put simply: you are busily enjoying a fantasy figure’s company. RESPONDENT No. 12: So shall I ring ‘you’ when I arrive in Byron and we could go out to lunch or coffee? RICHARD: You will find my response further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). RESPONDENT: Richard, I have one question about this series of emails: why do you never say frankly, outspoken or plain that you don’t want to see [names withheld], instead of evading into indirectness? I know, you’re implying it almost all the time, but why don’t you say (sorry, write) it explicitly? RICHARD: For a number of reasons: first of all, I am conscious of the fact that I am writing to a fellow human being, and not to words appearing on a screen, who has publicly informed me of their medical condition. Viz.: • [quote]: ‘By the way, I have major depression; and probably it is of the bipolar variety; at this stage somewhere around the bipolar II range on the bipolar spectrum disorder characterisation. I take medication for that and it works well ... and at times toward the depressed end of the swing of my genetic pendulum I go into silence and inactivity for varying lengths of time. This may help to explain to you – should you be interested – why it is that sometimes I do not write for awhile’. (‘Second question from the defence’; Fri 11/24/000). I have intimate experience, over many years, of interacting with people who have been suffering from varying degrees of this particularly distressing disorder ... and in my experience (and verified via their own feedback) the most helpful way of interacting is by (a) being sensible and practical at all times and (b) enabling or facilitating the ability to make their own decisions based upon sound physical reasons. It is important, vital, to not pander to flights of fancy and stay down-to-earth and matter-of-fact in any, oft-times fluctuating, instance. Also, there is a ‘game-play’ being acted out here which I am incapable of being drawn into – and I do indeed value my privacy for all the reasons stated – wherein the whole question of authority comes to be focussed on this one (possibly contrived) incident. It is far, far better for another person to see for themselves rather than making me into their authority figure ... and then riling against the decisions that their authority figure then makes. It is called being autonomous. RESPONDENT: I wonder if the readers of this site realize that when Richard glowingly puts up his diagnosis by psychiatrists of psychosis and depersonalisation that this is not a light fickle assessment. RICHARD: I was not aware that I was ‘glowingly’ putting up the psychiatrist’s diagnosis ... are you sure you are not reading something into it here that simply does not exist outside of your imagination? RESPONDENT: This is a very serious affliction which is encompassed by delusions of thinking oneself to ‘not exist or to be perfect’. RICHARD: You apparently know more about the matter of depersonalisation than the psychiatrists I consulted as neither of them ever said to me that I had delusions of thinking myself to ‘not exist or to be perfect’ ... can you provide the source from which you obtained this quote? RESPONDENT: Does anyone see how analogous this is to thinking oneself is Christ or Napoleon? RICHARD: No ... such delusions of grandeur as you refer to here are in a different category entirely to depersonalisation. * RESPONDENT: I had a friend who constantly use to tell me rather argumentatively that she also had ‘no identity’. I would query, ‘then who is arguing so adamantly for their particular point of view’. She was oblivious to the fact that she was a definitive person, who was born at a specific time, had a particular life history, and occupied a particular physical space. She would continually pronounce that she didn’t exist. RICHARD: Unlike your friend I am a definitive flesh and blood body, that was born at a specific time, that has a particular life history and occupies a particular physical space ... I most certainly exist as a flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: She had been sexually abused at an early age and certain boundaries were beyond her perceptive abilities. RICHARD: I was not sexually abused at an earlier age – nor at any age – and I am well aware of all the normal human boundaries ... plus I rather fail to see why you would want to be likening me to someone you know personally who is oblivious to bodily existence. * RESPONDENT: Do any of you realize the magnitude of what it is when someone is called psychotic. RICHARD: Well, I certainly do (as I have personal experience of being diagnosed thus). RESPONDENT: It is not a haphazard, cutesy, light state of affairs. RICHARD: I have never said that it is a ‘haphazard, cutesy, light state of affairs’ ... what I have repeatedly said is that I find it cute that an actual freedom from the human condition – meaning peace-on-earth in this lifetime – should be classified as a psychotic illness ... it speaks volumes about the lack of salubrity in what is called sanity. I am using the word cute in its ‘quaint, fascinating’ meaning. (Oxford Dictionary). RESPONDENT: Its a serious disturbance in ones ability to perceive reality on Planet Earth! RICHARD: You are now speaking about derealisation – losing contact with reality – and I make no secret of the fact that I am living in the actuality of the world as-it-is ... and not in the reality that the identity imposes over it as a veneer. Your appeal to the status-quo does not cut ice with me. RESPONDENT: If you still have feelings extant and this person through accident, breakdown or some unknown explanation doesn’t, it seems a little foolhardy follow their blueprint as to how to navigate your life to optimal existence. RICHARD: In my case it was no ‘accident, breakdown or some unknown explanation’ ... I clearly delineate how, when and where I came to be in this condition. RESPONDENT: I’ve been wanting to stay on board in this enterprise but the more I’m reading the more disturbing it seems. RICHARD: You are not the first person to be initially pleased to discover actualism only to later on find it disturbing ... and I dare say you will not be the last. RESPONDENT: My brother a bona fide born-again Christian reports that his life is wonderful. He weighs in at 300lbs, his wife 400lbs as well as the accompanying health, wealth and relationship problems. RICHARD: Whereas I am the normal weight for my height and age and have no health, wealth or relationship problems. RESPONDENT: I’m not going to argue with him. I’m not starting a group. Moonies and Daidists, as well as people connected with Osho all report feeling wonderful at various times along a continuum. I don’t think that life’s answers lie there. RICHARD: I agree completely ... I lived that/ was that enlightenment experience, night and day, for eleven years and thus have intimate knowledge that it is not the answer. RESPONDENT: I don’t know what happened to Richard. RICHARD: I give clear and articulate descriptions of what happened – they are plastered all over the website and in my journal – and you say, in another e-mail, you have read [quote] most things on the site, Peter’s Journal and about 100 pages of Richard’s journal [endquote] ... so I fail to see why you are still claiming ignorance of what happened. RESPONDENT: If he feels happy, harmless and is self-sustaining, more power to him. RICHARD: But I do not ‘feel’ happy and harmless ... the affective faculty is no more. RESPONDENT: There are plenty of people in institutions and out and about who are in their own ‘private Idaho’. RICHARD: Sure ... but I am not one of them. RESPONDENT: Much like U.G. Krishnamurti or Da Free John something has happened that changed or short circuited the wiring. RICHARD: I am not at all like Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti or Mr. Franklin Jones. RESPONDENT: I’ve read similar accounts before!! RICHARD: Oh? I have travelled the country – and overseas – talking with many and varied peoples from all walks of life; I have been watching TV, videos, films, whatever media is available; I have been reading about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers (and latterly on the internet) for twenty one years now, for information on an actual freedom from the human condition, but to no avail. I would be delighted to hear about/ meet such a person or such peoples ... so as to compare notes, as it were. If you could provide names and addresses or book titles or URL’s ... or refer me to the relevant magazine articles, newspaper reports, manuscripts, pamphlets, brochures or whatever it is that you are cognisant of I would be most pleased. RESPONDENT: A personal issue: Richard once mentioned that his brain was slightly damaged in some war era. Perhaps that is one factor to consider. RICHARD: As I have the original of every single e-mail I have posted to this mailing list it is an easy matter to send this computer’s search engine through them all so as to locate any reference I have made to my wartime experience ... the following paragraphs came up eight times: • [Richard]: ‘My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being 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, which 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 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. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extirpation – annihilation, expunction, extinction – ensures peace-on-earth. (Richard, List B, No. 13, 26 May 1999), Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword How you can translate that into being ‘Richard once mentioned that his brain was slightly damaged’ has got me stumped ... but just for the record I will unambiguously state that I never received any bullets, shrapnel wounds or blows to the head at all. What I discovered was that the ending of all the wars (and the murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on) requires the ending of malice and sorrow ... which involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. As the problem of the human condition is happening here on earth (in space) each moment again (in time) in these flesh and blood bodies (in form) called human beings, then the solution to the human condition quite obviously can only be found here in space and time and form. As the saints and the sages and the seers have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to produce the goods with their ‘Timeless and Spaceless and Formless’ solution their ‘Tried and True’ is obviously the ‘Tried and Failed’. Thus far in human history one has had only two choices: being human or being divine. Neither option has brought about peace on earth. So, the question is: is it possible to be free of the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body? Which means: how on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? * RESPONDENT: I am exploring into the issue of whether one can experience anything without knowing that one is experiencing it. So for example, there may be anger, emotional pain etc, and one does not know that. RICHARD: The medical term, for the symptoms you describe here, has popularly become known as anosognosia. However, the people observing such a person, who does have this disorder, can vouch for displays of ‘anger, emotional pain etc.’ whilst the person in question is not personally feeling them ... needless is to say that no such displays of ‘anger, emotional pain etc.’ have been detected by anybody that has contact with me? And I have been scrutinised closely by many, many people over the last nine years. RESPONDENT: Given this factor, and given Richard’s condition, why are we (including myself) spending so much energy about proving and disproving his points? RICHARD: But, as both ‘this factor’ and ‘Richard’s condition’ are not the givens which you say they are, the validity of your question falls flat on its face ... you have built your entire case out of nothing. RESPONDENT: Again, I am sorry and I apologize to Richard that this sensitive issue is brought up. I do not intend any harm. RICHARD: I do not find it to be a ‘sensitive issue’ at all as anybody that reports that they have found the answer to all the ills of humankind can expect to have their bona-fides examined. And rightly so. * RESPONDENT: I think in your discussions with Konrad, there was a mention about some thing that happened to your brain. RICHARD: I sent the search engine through my discussions with Konrad and only the following exchange came up: • [Konrad]: ‘By the way, I think you are right about my opinion of you being mentally damaged. It is flawed. I have learnt a lot about the human brain lately. And I know it can adapt to anything and everything. So I think that it is possible to switch off the emotions as you assert it can. • [Richard]: ‘The word I use is ‘eliminate’ ... not ‘switch off’ . Some thing ‘switched-off’ can be ‘switched-on’ again ... actualism is a one-way trip wherein malice and sorrow will never again rear their ugly heads. I could not get angry or sad if my life depended upon it ... I have no buttons to press ... nor anything under where the buttons used to be. RESPONDENT: Unfortunately the archives are not available. RICHARD: I have all of my discussions with Konrad at the following link: (Richard, Konrad Correspondence Index) * RESPONDENT: Of course I cannot question if you deny about the brain damage. RICHARD: Just so long as you realise that I am not in what is called ‘a state of denial’ about any supposed brain damage ... I am unambiguously stating, as a matter of fact, that I never received any bullets, shrapnel wounds or blows to the head at all. RESPONDENT: I could take your word for it. RICHARD: Well now, you are taking my word for it that I was in a war in the first place ... everything I write about myself is a personal report. RESPONDENT: But your posts does not indicate that sanity in the brain. RICHARD: I have not been sane for years ... sanity sucks. As 160,000,000 sane people were killed in wars alone, in the last 100 years, by their sane fellow human beings your appeal to the status-quo (humankind’s sanity) cuts no ice with me. RESPONDENT: In your discussions with Konrad there was some acknowledgement about the brain damage, I am pretty sure. RICHARD: You are very welcome to browse through any of my discussions with Konrad at the above link. * RESPONDENT: No. 35 once asked about Richard’s brain condition too ... RICHARD: You will find these queries and my responses at the following link: (Richard, List B, No. 35, 21 September 1999) * RESPONDENT: I think in your discussions with Konrad, there was a mention about some thing that happened to your brain. Unfortunately the archives are not available. (...) In your discussions with Konrad there was some acknowledgement about the brain damage, I am pretty sure. RESPONDENT No. 20: In that the archives are not available, Konrad’s posts to the list cannot be reviewed. Perhaps it may help if I add what I recall to what you have said. I do not remember any discussion between Konrad and Richard where Richard’s brain damage during the war was mentioned. I remember that Konrad claimed that this is what Richard had told him, and that this supported his theory as to what accounted for Richard’s behaviour. RESPONDENT: So it seems that Konrad was wrong in that claim, despite his assertion that that was what Richard told him, and there is no way of knowing whether it is true or false. RICHARD: Au contraire ... there is a very simple way: write and ask Konrad himself. Just in case you do not get around to it I wrote to him yesterday and received a long e-mail in response ... here is the relevant portion of that post: -----Original Message----- From: Konrad Swart [dimens4@xs4all.nl] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 11:36 PM Subject: Re: A Personal Issue Dear Richard. You have no brain damage whatsoever as far as I know. You have never mentioned to me that you had. Greetings, Konrad. So endeth the speculation. Now to get back to your original issue: • [Respondent]: ‘A personal issue: Richard once mentioned that his brain was slightly damaged in some war era. Perhaps that is one factor to consider. (...) Given this factor why are we (including myself) spending so much energy about proving and disproving his points?’ You will surely have to acknowledge by now, seeing that ‘this factor’ is not the given which you say it is, that the validity of your question has fallen flat on its face ... that you have indeed built your case out of nothing. I do look forward to your considered response. * RESPONDENT: I was not building my case against or for you and out of nothing. RICHARD: You were indeed ... you explicitly said [quote] ‘Richard once mentioned that his brain was slightly damaged in some war era’ [endquote]. As it has now been demonstrated that Richard never, ever mentioned what you said he mentioned you were most definitely building your case out of nothing. All that is needed now is your acknowledgement that this is so and this thread is finished ... over and done with. RESPONDENT: It amazes me why you did not reply as simply you did now (where you post your correspondence with Konrad and No. 20) earlier. RICHARD: What amazes me is that you did not do as I did only yesterday (write to Konrad yourself) instead of speculating whether he did or did not say this or that about me ... it being such a simple and obvious thing to do. As for posting my previous correspondence with Konrad ... I did (but you took no notice). Viz.: • [Konrad]: ‘By the way, I think you are right about *my opinion* of you being mentally damaged. *It is flawed*. I have learnt a lot about the human brain lately. And I know it can adapt to anything and everything. So I think that it is possible to switch off the emotions as you assert it can’. [emphasis added]. Incidentally ... I have had no correspondence with No. 20 on this issue. RESPONDENT: Instead you posted pages and pages of correspondence in earlier posts that I am still having difficulty wading through, due to lack of time. RICHARD: You had specifically said [quote] ‘unfortunately the archives are not available’ [endquote] so I provided you with a URL to the sixteen pages comprising all of my correspondence with Konrad so that you could see for yourself (after I had sent my search engine through them and provided the only quote (above) regarding ‘damage’). If you had indeed had access to the archives it would have taken you far, far longer to wade through them as they comprise of thousands and thousands of pages. RESPONDENT: ‘Falling flat on its face’ is again your imagination ... RICHARD: I beg to differ ... it has factually fallen flat on its face because of the textual evidence provided. RESPONDENT: ... because there was already a possibility of taking your word for it as far as the brain damage is concerned. RICHARD: We have been down this road before ... you are taking my word for it that I was in a war in the first place (all that I write about myself is a personal report) so, following your rationale, you cannot even start your argument thus: • [Respondent:]: ‘A personal issue: Richard once mentioned that his brain was slightly damaged *in some war era*. Perhaps that is one factor to consider’. [emphasis added]. In your attempt to avoid acknowledging that you were in error, after my first detailed response, you are digging yourself deeper and deeper into a mire of your own making. RESPONDENT: Perhaps what falls flat in the face is your inability to deal with simple questions ... RICHARD: I did deal with the simple question easily and straightforwardly ... I categorically declared, in my first response, that I [quote] ‘unambiguously state that I never received any bullets, shrapnel wounds or blows to the head at all’ [endquote]. Apparently that was not sufficient for you and so on and on this issue has gone (just as it is in this e-mail). RESPONDENT: ... but you deal with it with complex ‘artificial intelligence like’ cut and paste, piecing of words ... RICHARD: If you see my providing of textual evidence to demonstrate a point I am making as being something other than as an aid to sensible discussion then that is your business. You, apparently, would rather rely upon vague recollections that somebody might have said something or another somewhere at at some unspecified time. RESPONDENT: ... self defined semantics software ... RICHARD: I have no clue whatsoever what this phrase is supposed to mean ... I use the standard English language as defined in a dictionary. RESPONDENT: ... that indeed does indicate some brain disorder. RICHARD: I see that you are still trying to find some basis for your original question (no matter how meagre or how silly it has become by now). Viz.: • [Respondent:]: ‘Given this factor [supposed brain damage] why are we (including myself) spending so much energy about proving and disproving his points?’ Maybe the question should now read: ‘why am I (Respondent:) spending so much energy about proving brain damage in Richard?’ Is it because the points I raise are valid points, well-backed by accredited quotes, which cannot be refuted by sensible discussion and that you have had to revert to attempting to discredit the soundness of the brain that is putting forward these points (and quotes) for thoughtful consideration? ‘Tis only a suggestion, though, as I am not a mind reader. RESPONDENT: Isn’t AF complexly crazy? (Question No. 16). RICHARD: This is what this looks like in full: • [example only]: ‘isn’t an actual freedom from the human condition completely crazy? As I have been rigorously examined by two accredited psychiatrists (one of them over a three-year period) and determined to be suffering from a chronic and incurable psychotic disorder then, according to the prevailing real-world wisdom, yes it is indeed completely crazy to be actually free from the human condition. In other words, to be utterly happy and harmless (absolutely free from malice and sorrow) and thus living in the already always existing peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, is to be insane according to sane people ... however, as 160,000,000 sane people were killed in wars alone, in the last 100 years, by their sane fellow human beings, one would be well-advised to take sanity’s wisdom with a grain or two of salt. Mainly because there is a third alternative to both sanity and insanity. RESPONDENT: A suggestion for a more actual [accurate] meaning of PCE = Perturbation of Consciousness Endlessly. RICHARD: Suit yourself ... it is your life you are living, when all is said and done, and only you get to reap the rewards, or pay the consequences, of any action or inaction you may or may not do. Provided you comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols you will be left alone to live your life as wisely or as foolishly as you wish. I can only suggest (offer tips, hints, clues, insider information, and so on) ... what the other does with these suggestions is entirely up to them, of course. RESPONDENT: A dream state is projection but attention that is not bounded by the psyche (which is memory) sees the illusion of becoming. RICHARD: The psyche is not memory at all ... it is born of the instinctual passions. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct the psyche vanishes ... then memory is understood as being the asset that it is and not a liability. RICHARD (to No. 19): I just thought I might share that with you, as I consider that it may be important for you to know that you are currently engaged in a correspondence with a madman. Ain’t life grand! (Richard, List B, No. 19, 14 March 1998). RESPONDENT: You are safe here, Richard. You are here with friends. I am the doctor. RICHARD: Which doctor ... and just how safe? If your doctoring is similar to your debating skills, I would have to rate you as fair to medium on diagnosis; pathetic to fair on prognosis ... and zero to pathetic on follow-up procedures. * RESPONDENT: Myths like loss of feelings, ambrosial paradise. RICHARD: I, for one, have never heard of ‘loss of feelings’ described as being a myth. It is an established psychiatric diagnosis called ‘alexithymia’. As you say you are a doctor, you may already know this. (But if your certificate to practice is indeed a pirated copy, then you are excused for your ignorance, of course). RESPONDENT: In Enlightenment there can be no more desires, no more teaching, no desire for world peace – just nothing. Ultimate Enlightenment is realising that none of this is happening. It is all a dream. You and I do not exist. We are just a lower form of reality – like a dream. It doesn’t matter what happens in a dream – in the end the dream is over and none of it matters. Who cares if is was a nightmare? It was not real. Even though it seemed to be real at the time. You see there is a DILEMMA within awakening. AWAKENING, for me, is knowing that this is a dream – My Dream, God’s Dream. He (or what I REALLY am) is the DOER. Just like in a dream the dreamer (asleep on the bed) is the real doer. There is only one dreamer (doer) but there may be many people in the dream. The dream people are not real. It is the same here. You do not exist even though you appear to. It is all a game – the game of maya – the play of God. God playing his own game with himself. Only he cannot play the game unless he becomes many – creation is God becoming many. God is SIMULTANEOUSLY separate from the creation and playing the game. BOTH are true. The Dreamer is really asleep on the bed but he is also engaged in the dream. Now morality and amorality takes on a new light. The question of morality only exists in duality – where there is more than one. But in REALITY there is ONLY ONE ... there is ONLY GOD, there is ONLY YOU. So, the question of morality disappears. There are no other being alive – they are just a dream. In an existence where there is ONLY ONE PERSON – no morality exists. Further, nothing happens – there is no time or space. Now ULTIMATE ENLIGHTENMENT is KNOWING this. So then, when you teach – WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO AWAKEN? There is ONLY YOU. It is all different forms of YOU. Once YOU are awake it is over ... no more teaching, no more desires, just nothingness or everythingness. RICHARD: Hmm ... this is solipsism (and displays a very, very sick attitude towards the pain and suffering of 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). RESPONDENT: Again – we have the same dilemma. In awakening the awakened one will care deeply and will selflessly offer help – he cares deeply. However in the ultimate enlightenment it changes – one becomes ‘god-like’ and detached. RICHARD: I realise that being ‘detached’ is highly prized in some disciplines ... but it amounts to nothing more and nothing less than dissociation. Peoples everywhere are already detached – that is the very problem – and anyone who consciously practices ‘detachment’ is twice-removed from actuality. RESPONDENT: I agree. I do not advocate detachment. RICHARD: If I may point out? You just did (above). Viz.: ‘one becomes ‘god-like’ and detached’. RESPONDENT: Instead we should truly care. RICHARD: How about actually caring ... rather than feeling-caring? RESPONDENT: The detachment I refer to is different. You don’t do it. You care deeply. The detachment is simply knowing the ultimate reality. I do not advocate consciously trying to be detached. All that creates is a sick sense of ‘not-caring’ and selfishness – the opposite of what is required. RICHARD: Hmm ... I remained unconvinced that you comprehend what is being discussed here regarding detachment. What you are doing is positing a ‘True Detachment’ as if that means ‘Truly Caring’. Anybody who is dissociated from all the misery and mayhem is sick – dissociation is a psychiatric term – and a person so dissociated as to say that this body and that body and the mountains and streams and stars and planets and so on are only a dream is perhaps beyond psychiatric help. RESPONDENT: If they give you one injection of adrenaline, will you be able to control your angriness? RICHARD: What ‘angriness’ are you talking off? There is neither anger nor anguish in this flesh and blood body ... do you really take an actual freedom from the human condition to be a suppression, or even a repression, of the affective feelings? Just for the record, however, when I have a dental injection to anaesthetise the jaw I always make sure the dentist uses a procaine mixture which does not contain adrenaline, which most such mixtures do, because its effect is psychotropic (just as caffeine, a chemical cousin to cocaine, is). RESPONDENT: Sometimes, I read that meditation is damaging the brain. RICHARD: I do not, and never have, meditated. RESPONDENT: Does not mean that somebody becomes crazy, but can alter the feelings functions. RICHARD: As spiritual enlightenment is patently pathological it all depends on what the word ‘crazy’ means to you: as the word ‘meditate’ is the (inaccurate) English translation of what is known as ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit (Hinduism) and as ‘jhana’ in Pali (Buddhism) wherein there is a total withdrawal from sensory perception and a cessation of thought, thoughts, and thinking – a totally senseless and thoughtless trance state which could only be described as catalepsy in the West – and, as the resultant state of being (sometimes known as ‘consciousness without an object’) is praised as being the summum bonum of human experience, it thus may very well pay to re-examine whatever it is that you take the word ‘crazy’ to mean. This is because a never-ending ‘meditation’ (‘dhyana’ or ‘jhana’) – wherein the body is totally inward-looking, totally self-absorbed, totally immobile, and totally functionless (the body cannot and does not talk, walk, eat, drink, wake, sleep or type e-mails to mailing lists) – would result in the body wasting away until its inevitable physical death ... as a means of obtaining peace-on-earth it is completely useless. Speaking personally I find the word ‘crazy’ far too mild an epithet ... it is quite simply an institutionalised insanity. RESPONDENT: You admitted that something happened in your brain ... RICHARD: No, I acknowledged that something happened in the brain-stem: • [Respondent]: ‘You said that you felt a brain change. • [Richard]: ‘More specifically: I said that there was a physical sensation in the brain-stem (at the base of the brain/ nape of the neck). • [Respondent]: ‘Did you ever thought that you might altered your brain? • [Richard]: ‘No ... all the activity occurred in the brain-stem. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44, 11 June 2003). 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 is indeed ‘damage’ .... and big-time damage at that (a chronic and incurable psychiatric disorder). 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: Is good to be aware of our conditioning and make if possible some change to our lives, because this conditioning is man made (Society). RICHARD: Indeed ... how are you going with curing yourself of agoraphobia? RESPONDENT: But to arrive to the point by our self to alter or change our brain, may be dangerous also. RICHARD: In what way is it ‘dangerous’ to become free from the human condition? I am neither in gaol nor a psychiatric institution; I can orient myself in space and time and navigate from point A to point B; I can defend myself when necessary by circumstances; I feed, clothe and house myself, paying all my bills on time; I make contingency plans to meet projected situations; I manage four net-worked computers, an internet domain, a web page, a mail server, and so on, without any prior experience or training; I write millions of words meaningfully strung together in sentences and paragraphs ... and, most importantly, I am neither a danger to myself or to others (which is the very first thing any psychiatrist/ psychologist ascertains). As this has been the situation for over a decade your prognosis is totally invalid. * RESPONDENT: When you as you say was for 11 years enlightened, you was in an ASC, and to my opinion you still are. RICHARD: Only three weeks ago you strongly believed I was in an ASC ... what has happened in the meanwhile to change your strong belief into an opinion? RESPONDENT: Feelings have a location in the human brain. You have altered your brain for some reason. RICHARD: We have been down this path before (four times in fact): • [Respondent]: ‘You said that you felt a brain change’. • [Richard]: ‘More specifically: I said that there was a physical sensation in the brain-stem (at the base of the brain/ nape of the neck)’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44a, 11 June 2003). And: • [Respondent]: ‘Did you ever thought that you might altered your brain? • [Richard]: ‘No ... all the activity occurred in the brain-stem’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44a, 11 June 2003). And: • [Respondent]: ‘You admitted that something happened in your brain ...’. • [Richard]: ‘No, I acknowledged that something happened in the brain-stem’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44a, 11 July 2003). And: • [Respondent]: ‘So after the change took place in your brain ...’. • [Richard]: ‘Why you choose to ignore what I have to report I cannot know ...’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44b, 17 July 2003). Apart from that ... why do you say ‘for some reason’ when I make it crystal clear that this is what happened when the identity in toto became extinct as a direct result of setting out to have what was experienced in the initial four-hour PCE happen twenty four hours of the day seven days of the week? RESPONDENT: You know that mental diseases are not detected by magnetic topographies etc., unless a severe trauma happened to the brain. RICHARD: No, I do not know that ... what I do know, however, is that for all of 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), no researchers have been able to locate the identity within the body which maybe 6.0 billion people feel they are. RESPONDENT: I mean one schizophrenia for example, not that you are schizophrenic, can not be detected with instruments. The diagnosis can only be made by observation of the symptoms. RICHARD: Just for the record, then, here are the symptoms I have been diagnosed as having by two accredited psychiatrists: 1. Depersonalisation (no sense of identity) as in no ‘self’ by whatever name. 2. Derealisation (lost touch with reality) as in reality has vanished completely. 3. Alexithymia (inability to feel the affections) as in no affective feelings whatsoever. 4. Anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure/ pain) as in no affective pleasure/ pain facility. Does this throw any light upon whatever it is you are getting at? RESPONDENT: Human being is a feeling being. RICHARD: And therein lies the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on ... specifically the ‘being’ or ‘presence’ (aka the identity) the feelings automatically form themselves into. RESPONDENT: I don’t say that you intentionally try to cheat other people ... RICHARD: And I am not unintentionally cheating anybody either as I am upfront and out in the open right from the very beginning on The Actual Freedom Trust web site ... which includes, for just one example, what my second wife had to say about both me and actualism after she packed her bags and moved out. And not only is all that readily available for anyone to read and make up their own mind for themselves there are also hundreds (if not thousands) of e-mails from many and varied peoples ... all answered, point-by-point mostly, with no dodging of questions or fudging of issues, in a clear and unambiguous manner. RESPONDENT: [I don’t say that you intentionally try to cheat other people], but you are harming them, by loosing their time, because even if they want they can’t alter their brain. RICHARD: First and foremost, how is it harming people to suggest they become as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible in their day-to-day life via a demonstrated-to-be-effective attentiveness method being applied each moment again with the pure intent to have peace on earth sooner rather than later? Second, how is it a loss of time to have the goal of peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, yet not a loss of time to have the goal of an after-death peace in some timeless and spaceless and formless immortality? Lastly, how do you know that another human being cannot have the same radical change happen in the brain-stem (at the base of the brain/ nape of the neck) as what happened with this flesh and blood body ... or are you making a case for me being somebody special? RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE 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. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity