# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Ancient Wisdom and the New Dark Age RESPONDENT: Now, this is only my intellectual comprehension and not my experience. In fact I don’t remember of any peak experience kind or PCE, which you say everybody has once in a while. So, to me it does not matter, if what you are saying is ‘new’ or not. If you have experienced it and can help me experience it, I am ready to learn because I already see, intellectually, the need for it. RICHARD: Good ... but we need to be clear what it is that you want to experience. Nothing that I am on about will you find in the scriptures. Nothing. Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: ‘If the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so good, why has it not worked? How long must we try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising?’ There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Love and its Compassion; Beauty and its Truth have had thousands of years to demonstrate their efficacy ... where is the evidence that they should be persevered with? Where is the Peace On Earth that they promised? Why is it that only 0.0000001 of the population becomes enlightened? Why? Why?? Why??? Clear the work-bench and start fresh. Learn from those that have gone before and move on. RESPONDENT: I would still insist that this is not the first time I am hearing this. I have read about getting into the minute (I know this is not the right word, but my vocabulary is poor, the Sanskrit word is Sukshma) ego on the spiritual path. RICHARD: Would you be referring to ‘Sukshma Sarira’? Sometimes known as ‘Sukshama Sharira’? RESPONDENT: No I was referring to Sukshma Ahamkara. RICHARD: Oh? May I ask? Just what has ‘ahamkara’ (be it subtle or not) got to do with what you initially stated (top) and what I responded with (second from top)? I was clearly talking of an actual freedom (as in a PCE) from the real-world when ‘me’ as soul becomes extinct – which is ‘being’ itself expires – and not what happens when ‘I’ as ego transmogrifies. Whereas enlightenment (as in an ASC), which is liberation (Moksha) from the bonds of samsara (anava, karma and maya), consists of the soul (atman or purusha) extricating itself from its mistaken assumption of personality or individuality (aham). This assumption is because of its focus (‘ahamkara’ translates as ‘I-Maker’ in English) on material nature (samsara or prakriti) and when there is the recognition of its total difference from it – and non-involvement in it – such enlightenment (Moksha) is the freedom from the fettering power of these reincarnational bonds. These bonds do not cease to exist but no longer have the power to fetter or bind the soul (atman), until its final release at physical death (Mahasamadhi) whereupon atman is Paramatman (or the Brahman). And in case that paragraph is difficult to follow, I am talking of the soul (atman) being annihilated ... and you are talking about ‘getting into the minute (sukshma) ego on the spiritual path’. RESPONDENT: The scriptures have warned against falling into illusion of being one with God and against the danger of acting as a Guru. RICHARD: These scriptures that you are referring to ... are they Jain Scriptures by any chance? RESPONDENT: No, I have not read Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Okay ... then are you referring to Buddhist scriptures? RESPONDENT: I have indeed read earlier of the need of completely annihilate the ‘I’ and not falling into the delusion of being one with God. RICHARD: If it is the Jain Scriptures then this is simply a matter of the terms of reference being used ... becoming a ‘Siddha’, for example and residing in a state of perpetual bliss in ‘Siddha-Shila’. RESPONDENT: As I said I don’t know much about Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Now, I can keep up this guessing game – until the moon turns blue if you wish – as I am already free of the Human Condition. However, would it not be easier for you – and quicker – if you just name your scriptures? Then we can have a practical discussion. RESPONDENT: Also what you tell about ‘this seeing is me ...’ is somewhere in Osho’s teaching itself. Now I may not be able to quote the exact book and page number etc. because I never did the study to be able to convince somebody or to argue. My studies of the spiritual text have been only to learn for myself. If you want to believe me, this is my understanding of the spiritual text I have studied. RICHARD: No, I do not wish to believe you, given that all the scriptural texts that I have ever seen do not talk about what I experience and write of ... and I have been scouring books for eighteen years. It is to no avail to say to me that you already know all this that I write about from your understanding of the scriptures ... and then become rather vague about what you do know. Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that nothing other than this physical universe is it; nowhere does it say that only this lifetime is it; nowhere does it say that death is the end, finish, oblivion. They speak of a timeless and spaceless void; a formless and deathless emptiness; an unknowable and immutable presence; an immortal and ceaseless being and so on. They say that the physical universe is an illusion, a dream and not ultimately real. They talk of reincarnating through multiple lifetimes until ‘Liberation’ frees one from ‘Karma’ and one never needs being born again. They say that physical life is inherently sorrowful and the best thing to do is to scarper ... into a metaphysical realm of the ‘unborn’. I must ask: where in all this does it relate to what I speak of? RESPONDENT: Let me correct myself a bit. When I said it is not new to me, what I mean is that is not surprising to me. I thought vaguely (yes vaguely, as I have not experienced it) about this possibility also. My understanding is not based on one particular teacher or book. It is a complex of various things which I have been hearing/ reading for so many years and adding my own interpretation to it. RICHARD: Okay, could you detail these various things that you have been ‘hearing/ reading for so many years’? Because I have not come across it in eighteen years of hearing/ reading multitudinous various things. RESPONDENT: I will just give an example. The snake and the rope metaphor is well known in Hindu philosophy. It says that a rope lying on a way may look like a snake to somebody. It is explained that the illusion of snake is ‘maya’ which arises because of ‘aham’ (‘I’). When there is no aham, there is no illusion (maya) and therefore rope is rope (the brahma). Aren’t you saying the same thing? Just replace brahma by actual world and maya by real world. RICHARD: No. This actual world is material – as in tangible, corporeal, physical, substantial, palpable, tactile and sensate – and is evident when ‘I’ as ego (aham) and ‘me’ as soul (atman) become extinct. There is nothing other than this infinite and eternal actual phenomenal universe. Whereas ‘the brahma’ is the supreme existence or absolute, the noumenal font of all things – the eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, spiritual source of the universe of finiteness and change – and is realised when aham remembers that its true nature (atman) is brahma. And according to the Advaita (Non-dualist) school of Vedanta, brahma is categorically different from anything phenomenal, and human perceptions of differentiation are illusively projected on this physical reality. The Bhedabheda (Dualist-Non-dualist) school maintains that brahma is non-different from the world, which is its product, but different in that phenomenality imposes certain adventitious conditions (upadhis) on brahma. The Vishistadvaita (Non-duality of the Qualified) school maintains that a relation between brahma and the world of soul and matter exists that is comparable to the relation between soul and body and that phenomenality is a glorious manifestation of brahma (as a personal god, Brahma, is both transcendent and immanent). The Dvaita (Dualist) school refuses to accept the identity of brahma and world, maintaining the ontological separateness of the supreme, which it also identifies with a personal god. I must ask again: where in all this does it relate to what I speak of? RESPONDENT: I understand the same thing by the famous Zen story of ‘mountains were mountains again’. RICHARD: Yet Zen is grounded in the experience of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, who based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering ... all physical existence is ‘dukkha’, he said. Living amid the impermanence of everything and being themselves impermanent, human beings search for the way of deliverance, for that which shines beyond the transitoriness of human existence; he asserted there was no essential or ultimate reality in things. He said: ‘There is an unborn, an unoriginated, an unmade, an uncompounded; were there not, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the made, and the compounded’. Thus, for Zen Buddhists, the ‘mountains which were mountains again’ are now known to be an illusion ... whilst before they were not. Whereas for me this material world is actual. RESPONDENT: Yes, the ancient scriptures are mostly written in poetic form and are open to interpretation. RICHARD: You will find, upon closer examination, that they are uncommonly faithful – and not open to poetic interpretation – about several fundamental and core beliefs. To wit: They mostly say that something other than this physical universe is it; they mostly say that this lifetime is not it; they mostly say that death is not the end, finish, oblivion. They mostly speak of a timeless and spaceless void; they mostly speak of a formless and deathless emptiness; they mostly speak of an unknowable and immutable presence; they mostly speak of an immortal and ceaseless being and so on. They mostly say that the physical universe is an illusion, a dream and not ultimately real. They mostly talk of reincarnating through multiple lifetimes until spiritual freedom releases one from temporal bondage and one never needs being born again. They mostly say that physical life is inherently sorrowful and the best thing to do is to scarper ... into a metaphysical realm of the ‘unborn’. * RICHARD: Oh, there is a point all right. Like all ‘Awakened Teachers’ of mystical persuasion he is saying the same-same esoteric thing, fundamentally. Which is: narcissism rules supreme. RESPONDENT: It is all vague to discuss because we can’t agree upon what was the point. RICHARD: I am having no trouble ascertaining the point at all ... which is that you are hopelessly wrong in your understanding of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain’s self-proclaimed divinity. RESPONDENT: I think that is where Osho seemed to have failed. Many of his close associates seem to got him so wrong. Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’. There may be many methods how to achieve it. RICHARD: Aye ... except that their ‘here and now’ is a metaphysical (timeless and spaceless) ‘here and now’ (and Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain oft-times used the word ‘herenow’ to distinguish it from the temporal location) and it is anywhere but here as this place in infinite space and anywhere but now as this moment in eternal time. And his method for attaining happiness is to end separation by creating the illusion of intimacy through attaining union or oneness as ‘Pure Love’ – what I call Love Agapé‚ – and not through ending the separative self per se. RESPONDENT: Fortunately, what I already understood from ‘here and now’ is exactly what you are telling now. That is, here in this ‘actual’ space and now as this ‘actual’ moment. Well, the word ‘actual’ might have come to my mind after reading you. RICHARD: If, as I have already mentioned, you are referring to the Jain Scriptures, then you will be hard-pushed to explain how ‘alokakasha’ (the non-universe) is actual. RESPONDENT: I was not referring to Jain scriptures. RICHARD: Okay, then in whatever scriptures you were referring to when you said ‘Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’’, they all mean a metaphysical ‘here and now’ ... usually accessed by entering into a trance state somewhat akin to catatonia (clumsily translated as ‘meditation’ in English) wherein both time and space cease to be. RESPONDENT: It is just plain common sense. For me whenever somebody says here and now it has to be here and now in this world otherwise it is already there and then. RICHARD: Aye, the word ‘here’ literally means ‘this physical place in space’ – unless one is a mystic – and the word ‘now’ literally means ‘this moment in time’ ... unless one is spiritual. (Incidentally, the word ‘intelligence’ literally means ‘the human brain thinking and reflecting’ ... unless one is enlightened). RICHARD: The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. The gurus and god-men have been peddling their snake oil for centuries to no avail. They have had two to three thousand years to demonstrate their effectiveness as being the ultimate solution. Their time has come to either put up or shut up. RESPONDENT: What if it is not gurus fault but people understood them incorrectly once they died. RICHARD: Are you saying that millions upon millions – if not billions – of otherwise intelligent and/or pious and/or studious and/or devout peoples throughout these thousands of years have all misunderstood what the ‘Teachers’ teach? Does that not stretch one’s credibility somewhat? And given that billions have ‘misunderstood’, according to you, how come you are so special – in that you fondly imagine that you understand – and they do/ did not? Are you outstanding among the millions and millions? Or are the ‘Teachings’ and the ‘Teachers’ – and the source that the ‘Teacher’s Teachings’ come from – horribly and terribly sick? RESPONDENT: Has Richard ever met Michael Roads, a fellow Australian, author of works such as Talking With Nature, Journey into Nature, Journey into Oneness? Michael is as unpretentious as they come ... and I find a lot expansiveness in his perspective on life. Check him out and give me a critique if you please. RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... Mr. Michael Roads, a native of the United Kingdom, emigrated to Australia with his wife, Ms. Treenie Roads, in 1964 and farmed in Tasmania for twelve years; in the process he became known as an expert in organic farming and a consultant in the field. They are the founders of the ‘Homeland Community’ – based on the model of Findhorn in Scotland – and now live in Queensland, Australia. His ‘Journey Into Nature; A Spiritual Adventure Into Oneness’ is said by some to be a spiritual journey as profound as Mr. Carlos Castaneda’s in ‘The Teachings of Don Juan’ or Mr. Dan Millman’s in ‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’. Mr. Michael Roads explores the nature of energy, the foundations of personal power, and the frontiers of reality. Through a dazzling series of visions, he goes beyond communicating with nature and becomes blackberry, dog, and crystal. He enters the ‘Guidestone’ and encounters the ‘Power Gates’; he accepts the ‘Great God Pan’ as his guide; he merges consciousness with water; he experiences the worldwide effects of pesticides on the plant kingdom and he fulfils the destiny of a dolphin as it travels from death to rebirth. In ‘Journey Into Oneness; A Spiritual Odyssey’ he has passed the initiations posed by the ‘Great God Pan’, and has earned the right in consciousness to enter into the non-physical realms. He says: ‘when I stepped through those Doors, linear time and normal reality ended. Everything of the known was abruptly replaced by an absolute unknown. Time, if it had any meaning at all, was spherical, so that all points of a sphere were the same time – always’. He then finds himself in his light body and, catapulted through one spiritual doorway after another, he meets numerous ‘Beings’ who expand his awareness of the dimensions of reality. Step-by-step, he is led to the greatest understanding of his journey into ‘Oneness’. As ‘Consciousness’, he evolves from gas, to mineral, to plant, to animal, and finally to human, experiencing the pull of ‘Self’ to express itself through physical form. He explores the infinite universe and comes to know the meaning of ‘I AM THAT I AM’. His ‘Into A Timeless Realm; A Metaphysical Adventure’ was followed by ‘Getting There’ which established this ‘New Age writer’s entry into ‘Visionary Fiction’ ... according to a critic. Mr. Michael Roads is not even enlightened ... let alone actually free of the human condition. His contribution to peace-on-earth is zero ... and may even help pull western civilisation, which has struggled to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance, back into the supernatural ... as the Eastern mystical thought that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people is becoming more and more widespread. RICHARD: In actualism the third alternative always applies. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’, ‘Virtue’ and ‘Sin’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Despair’, ‘Gratitude’ and ‘Resentment’, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity. RESPONDENT: This is typical Taoism. RICHARD: Are you sure? Shall we take just one pair of opposites as an example? Virtue and Sin? In Taoism, virtue does not disappear along with its cohort, sin ... it transforms into a superior virtue called ‘Te’. Now, ‘Te’ is the power acquired by the Taoist and is known as the efficacy of the Tao in the realm of ‘Being’ (‘Being’ is life on earth as opposed to ‘Non-being’ which is the abode of the ‘Hsien’ ... Sages known as ‘The Immortals’). Indeed, Mr. Lao-Tzu viewed it as being vastly different from ordinary (Confucian) virtue: • The man of superior virtue is not virtuous, and that is why he has virtue. The man of inferior virtue never strays from virtue, and that is why he has no virtue’. The ‘superior virtue’ of Taoism is a latent power that never lays claim to its achievements; it is the ‘mysterious power’ (‘Hsuan Te’) of Tao present in the heart of the sage: • ‘The man of superior virtue never acts (‘Wu Wei’), and yet there is nothing he leaves undone’. I have no need for any virtue whatsoever ... either the common or garden variety or the superior model. I have written about this previously: • ‘It is all so simple, here in this actual world; no effort is needed to meet the requisite morality of society. I have no ‘dark nature’, no unconscious impulses to curb, to control, to restrain. It is all so easy, here in this actual world; I can take no credit for my apparently virtuous behaviour because actual freedom automatically provides beneficial thoughts and deeds. It is all so spontaneous, here in this actual world; I do not do it ... it does itself. Vanity, egoism, selfishness ... all self centred activity has ceased to operate when ‘I’ ceased to be. And it is all so peaceful, here in this actual world; it is only in living this actual world that human beings can have peace-on-earth without toiling fruitlessly to be ‘good’. The answer to everything that has puzzled humankind for all of human history is readily elucidated when one is actually free. The ‘Mystery of Life’ has been penetrated and laid open for all those with the eyes to see. Life was meant to be easy’. (Page 98 ‘Richard’s Journal’ © The Actual Freedom Trust 1997). RESPONDENT: Are other aspects of actualism also derived from Ancient Wisdom? RICHARD: You are yet to establish that these aspects of actual freedom are derived from the ‘Ancient Wisdom’. * RICHARD: I am not saying that if you bring ‘peace to yourself’ that ‘peace on earth will follow’ ... like they say. Peace-on-earth is already here; it always has been here and always will be here ... now. It is ‘me’ that stands in the way of this already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent. When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ totality, then the individual peace-on-earth is evident ... for one person. Then one is living in this actual world ... the value-free world of the senses. RESPONDENT: This sounds very much like basic Tantra teaching. Just replace your term ‘peace-on-earth’ with ‘enlightenment’ or ‘my Buddha nature’. ‘Enlightenment is already here, my Buddha nature is already here; it always has been here and always will be here ... now. It is ‘me’ that stands in the way of this already always enlightenment being apparent, it is ‘me’ that stands in the way of my Buddha nature being apparent’. RICHARD: Agreed ... so far. RESPONDENT: ‘When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ totality, then the individual enlightenment, the individual Buddha nature is evident ... for one person’. RICHARD: Not so ... when ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ totality – and totality is the operative word – then one is beyond enlightenment and living an actual freedom. To become enlightened – to realise one’s ‘Buddha-nature’ – it is important that only ‘I’ as ego dies ... thus leaving ‘me’ as soul the licence to expand like all get-out in a veritable frenzy of self-glorification. RESPONDENT: ‘Then one is living in this actual world ... the value-free world of the senses’. Is it so? RICHARD: No way ... then one is living in the ‘Greater Reality’ (by whatever name) which is the value-packed world of the psyche ... powered by the affective faculty. I like your approach here! * RICHARD: Being here now is to put your money where your mouth is, as it were. All other actions are methods, devices, techniques ... which are, in effect, delaying tactics. The most sincere form of flattery is not, as is commonly practised, imitating all the other people’s performance of standing back and expressing a feeling. To feel an emotion or be passionate about life is nowhere near the same as actually being here now. In being here now one is completely involved. Being here now is total inclusion. One demonstrates one’s appreciation of life by partaking fully in existence ... by letting this moment live one so that one is doing what is happening. One dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here now as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ willingly and voluntarily sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological or psychic identity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what one holds most dear. RESPONDENT: Did you read the ‘Being Here Now’ book by Ram Das? Do you recall the bit where the young Richard Alpert is off to find the truth and comes across a holy man who just is not interested in his stories of the past, in his emotions or imaginings, only in ‘Being Here Now’. Hence the title of the book. Could you explain how ‘your’ ‘Being Here Now’ is different than the ‘Being Here Now’ of Richard Alpert, who, I am assuming, is, in your estimation, one of those gurus who has caused the whole bloody mess this planet is in? RICHARD: First off, I do not point the finger at the Gurus and God-men for creating all the mess but for perpetuating it forever and a day with their specious solution. It is ‘blind nature’ that is the root cause of all the anguish and animosity. Secondly, Mr. Richard Alpert does not claim to be enlightened – or he did not the last time I looked at his work about 12 years ago – but his influence has encouraged many an otherwise intelligent person to trek eagerly off to the Himalayas for that permanent ‘high’. The phrase ‘being here now’ has become rather hackneyed, yet there is no other expression that conveys the immediacy of experiencing what ‘I’ used to call ‘the cutting edge of reality’ back in the days that there was an ‘I’ inhabiting this body ... and therein lies the clue to the difference: reality. Mr. Richard Alpert’s ‘being here now’ lies in a ‘Mystical Reality’ that is ‘spaceless and timeless’. This is where mystics deceive both themselves and their gullible listeners ... this blurring of distinction between the physical and the metaphysical. There is a lack of intellectual rigour in all this in that time and space is actual and ‘being here now’ can only be at this place in space and this moment in time. The confusion lies around the nature of time: time is eternal ... eternal as in physically without beginning and without end. Now I know that the word ‘timeless’ can mean eternal, but it is a metaphysical use of the word because it implies time stopping or vanishing. In that context, the mystics use it in conjunction with ‘spaceless’ ... ‘I am Timeless and Spaceless; Unborn and Undying; Birthless and Deathless’ and so on. As this physical body has a limited life-span, they can only be referring to a psychic entity receiving its post-mortem reward of immortality. Thus the reality of their psychic ‘being here now’ is vastly different to the actuality of sensately being here now. There is no ‘spacelessness’ here or ‘timelessness’ now, in actuality. Living here, at this moment in time, there is only this moment that is actual. As it is already always this moment, time has no duration when ‘I’ am not ... and to the unaware it appears to be ‘timeless’. It is not. This moment is hanging in eternal time like this planet is hanging in infinite space. There is no beginning or end to the infinitude of this universe’s space and time, therefore there is no middle, no centre. Thus, here and now is nowhere in particular and one is easily always here as it is already now. In apperceptive awareness – which is this flesh and blood body being conscious sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – there is the direct experience of the immediate being the ultimate and the relative being the absolute. This is what I describe by saying ‘being here now’. RICHARD: Do you see what I mean when I repeatedly write about morals being those ‘unliveable edicts handed down by bodiless entities’? RESPONDENT: I see your point and elect to focus instead on right living in the moment rather than considering your version of ‘ain’t it awful’. RICHARD: If I may point out? Your ‘right living’ is based upon re-hashed pithy aphorisms (which may or may not include ‘right’ views, ‘right’ intention, ‘right’ speech, ‘right’ action, ‘right’ livelihood, ‘right’ effort, ‘right’ awareness and ‘right’ concentration). Thus you are ‘electing to focus’ upon ‘Ancient Wisdom’ instead of thinking for yourself. RESPONDENT: Excuse me if this sound rude. What do I know? Nothing to speak of. RICHARD: You can be as rude as you wish ... I never take offence. As for your query ‘What do I know?’ and your NDA answer ‘Nothing to speak of’ ... for one who professes to know nothing to speak of, you spoke plenty already. Viz.: • [Richard]: ‘Why do you promote the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty?’ • [Respondent]: ‘Agreement as to love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’. Thus by agreeing to ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ you make out that you know that the ‘Tried and True’ is effective in curing all the ills of humankind. You say this despite the fact that the Gurus and the God-Men; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Masters and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found. Therefore I ask, just how much longer will a ‘Tried and Failed’ system continue to be so highly revered despite its abject failure to produce the goods? Is it because these attitudes and attributes form a ‘web’ of solace and succour wherein ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul can be comforted, stroked, endorsed and perpetuated? Is this why nobody will put love and compassion and beauty under a microscope? If thought can get such rigorous scrutiny as the Mailing List gives it ... why not feelings? Are feelings sacrosanct? RICHARD: Coincidentally, Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti recommends the same course of action ... as do all the Saints and Sages, Gurus and God-men, Messiahs and Masters, Avatars and Saviours down through the ages. This is the ‘Tried and True’ ... it has had thousands of years to demonstrate its efficacy for bringing about peace-on-earth and it has failed again and again. The time-honoured methods of living a life happily and harmoniously have failed miserably, yet peoples persist in travelling the hoary path, again and again, thinking it is they who are doing something wrong by not applying ‘The Teachings’ correctly. Nobody has the temerity to question the ‘wisdom’ of the ages. RESPONDENT: I don’t need to question the wisdom of the ages. I question myself because whatever is of the ages is what I am. Why should I waste energy wading through endless ideas of antiquity and modernity trying to discover what is so? If all that had any value, we would have become an enlightened species long ago. I look at what is happening NOW. That is where the real energy is, the real possibility of comprehension – not the words of others. RICHARD: Okay ... ignore the evidence of history if you wish. Remake the mistakes of the past ... at least you will be able to say that you failed all of your own accord. * RESPONDENT: You say you were spontaneously enlightened and that you searched to see the meanings others had attributed to that state, ‘to see where they had gone wrong’. That sounds rather arrogant to me because you are taking for granted that you, Richard, are in fact, enlightened or clear; you don’t question this, and you move from there to the belief that you know what is right and that you are capable of disclosing who, through-out history was wrong, and why and how they were wrong. You will pardon me if I find that belief wanting. RICHARD: You can only say all this by conveniently ignoring the fact that I wrote [quote]: ‘I thus found out via personal experience where I had been going wrong for eleven years’ [endquote]. RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti was wrong. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: Buddha was wrong. RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: Everybody has been wrong but you. RICHARD: No ... I too was wrong for eleven years. RESPONDENT: Only you know truth. RICHARD: No ... I knew truth for eleven years – like Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and Mr. Gotama the Sakyan and so on – and now I am free from the self-aggrandisement that all that is. RESPONDENT: My god, man, don’t you see what you are doing to yourself? RICHARD: Indeed ... I am free of the human condition. I have gone beyond enlightenment into an actual freedom. I am autonomous; beholden to no one and no thing I stand on my own two feet ... instead of prostrating myself in abject humility and self-abnegation. This actual perfection is excellent and free. It is the freely available bonus of daring to be me as-I-am. Unadorned I am more free than a bird on the wing and cleaner than a sea-breeze on a sweltering summer’s day. To be me as-I-am is to be fresh, each moment again. RESPONDENT: 1. The man that really knows, doesn’t speak. 2. The man that speaks, doesn’t really know. RICHARD: Who first spoke these ancient ‘Words of Wisdom’? Man No. 1? Or ... Man No. 2? I am just curious. Because it can not be Man No. 1 ... he does not speak. Therefore it must be Man No 2. As Man No. 2 does not really know what he is talking about, then this pithy aphorism is not worth even the paltry piece of rice-paper that it was written upon all those years ago. Great stuff, is it not, to think for oneself instead of relying upon some hallowed but specious ‘wisdom of the ancients’? RESPONDENT: For sure at this point this is a lost, violent, confused world and something is needed soon. RICHARD: Not so ... it is only the real world – as manifested by normal human beings – that is ‘a lost, violent, confused world’. The real world is an illusion pasted over the top of the actual world. This actual world – which is apprehended sensately when there is no ‘I’ present in any way, shape or form – is clean and clear and pure and perfect because there is no good or evil here. In this actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. RESPONDENT: Yes agreed we seem, at least to me to be speaking with different words of the same thing. RICHARD: Not so ... words like ‘Oneness’, ‘Love’, ‘Compassion’, ‘Truth’, ‘Openness’ and so on play no place here. Nor what those words ‘point to’, as you are also fond of saying. Here all can be described cleanly and with clarity ... and with no ambiguity whatsoever. Here thought and thinking, knowledge and knowing, seeing and understanding all have their place because the ‘thinker’ has vanished ... not thought. Thus it is entirely possible, throughout the vast majority of one’s time, for there to be no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action and effortlessly does its thing. All the while there is an apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur in the brain – other than when necessary – for it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here now. Consequently, one is always blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake and here on this verdant earth now. RESPONDENT: From the rest of your writing I can only detect that actual completeness in the process of consciousness is not something you have ever experienced consciously. It can be compared to beauty, it can also be called integration in full awareness. I have reached an haven in heaven (thanks to you) and have decided to go back to earth to find out if heaven can also be found in the Beauty of Music or the Completeness of Logic or even in the Acceptance of Arrogance. There are some things wonderful beyond actuality. But it sure as Hell isn’t the ‘tried and true’. RICHARD: For a start, an ‘actual completeness’ in a ‘process of consciousness’ is a contradiction in terms. A process is never complete ... if it was it would no longer be a process. Secondly, I have experienced beauty; I have experienced integration; I have experienced full awareness and I lived in heaven – and on earth into the bargain – for eleven years. Thirdly, ‘Beauty of Music’ and ‘Completeness of Logic’ and ‘Acceptance of Arrogance’ is nothing but fancy words. Fourthly, anything beyond actuality can only be fantasy. And lastly, it is guaranteed to be some re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’ dressed up to look different. * RESPONDENT: There are some things wonderful beyond actuality! RICHARD: The only thing ‘beyond actuality’ is fantasy. This physical universe – being infinite in space and eternal in time – is all there is ... and it is what is wonderful. You see, you give yourself away with that statement ... this is what the Sages and Gurus have been saying for centuries. They say that there is something beyond time and space ... and that when you die you cast off your body like a suit of old clothes and go into the ‘Greater Beyond’. And here is you saying that there is something beyond actuality ... something beyond this physical universe. This is why I have been saying that you are coming out with a re-hash of the ‘Tried and True’. Do you see it now? RICHARD: I am autonomous and free; beholden to no one and no thing I stand on my own two feet ... instead of prostrating myself in abject humility and self-abnegation. This actual perfection is excellent and free. It is the freely available bonus of daring to be me as-I-am. Unadorned I am more free than a bird on the wing and cleaner than a sea-breeze on a sweltering summer’s day. To be me as-I-am is to be fresh, each moment again. Owing nothing to no one I am free from corruption ... perversity has vanished forever. Unpolluted as I am by any alien entity, my thoughts and my deeds are automatically graceful. Goodwill, freed of social morality, comes effortlessly to me for all internal conflict is over. I am gentle and peaceful in character. Freeing myself of the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment was the last step into actuality. RESPONDENT: ‘I’ am the thought of being somehow separate in time apart from everything else. If there seems to be someone in time free from anything, that is duality. If ‘I’ am aware that I am aware, or aware that I am ‘free’, that is division. RICHARD: So, according to you, if someone is aware that they are free ... then that is proof that they are not free? Are you for real? This is but a variation on that pithy aphorism: ‘He who knows does not speak’. Next you will be coming out with that tired and hoary maxim about ‘he who knows nothing, really knows’. Perhaps you may care to again peruse the following: • [Richard]: ‘It is an amazing thing that not only are we humans able to be here experiencing this business of being alive ... on top of that we can think about and reflect upon what is entailed. In addition to this ability, we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next. (Richard, List B, No. 12, 24 February 1998). I would not be where I am today if it were not for all those brave people who went before me ... and I am so pleased that they left a record of their ventures’. (Richard, List B, No. 12, 8 March 1998). This is written by one who is aware that he is free – and says so unabashedly – and one who knows that he knows and is unrepentantly speaking. My attitude is this: if you know something, then say it ... and say it with firmness and boldness; say it with verve and vivacity; say it with daring and audacity. All this being humble business is only for the faint of heart and the weak of knee, who piously hope to earn their way into some god’s good graces by deprecating and humiliating themselves like all get-out. It is arrant selfishness to discover peace-on-earth ... and keep it to yourself! * RESPONDENT: Observation and reflection from memory of limited past experience is thought is it not? RICHARD: Yes ... only in a normal person there is always an affective component that makes it real. RESPONDENT: The intelligence that is the universe is not limited to memory stored in a particular brain. RICHARD: Just what ‘intelligence that is the universe’ is this that you are referring to? The only intelligence that the universe has is as a human being ... which means this brain. Surely you are not bringing the ‘intelligence’ that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti revered into this discussion ... that ‘intelligence’ is nothing but what is known in the West as the ‘Omniscience of God’. RESPONDENT: When the brain is operating from programming, is there any room for that energy and intelligence of the universe to contact the brain? RICHARD: You are talking about becoming one with god ... by whatever name. RESPONDENT: There is not. Because there is no silence, no space (and thus no contact), intelligence is thought to exist outside of what is, beyond the universe structured by thought. But that is like saying the ocean is outside of the wave. The movement of a wave is particular but there never was a wave apart from ocean. RICHARD: I have heard all this before – I lived it for eleven years – and it is self-aggrandisement. This is Eastern Mysticism ...‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. * RICHARD: Yet I do not have an ‘wholistic intelligence’ ... therefore I present facts. The fact is that human suffering has at least a 3,000 to 5,000 year recorded history – and as peoples everywhere are relying upon an ‘Ancient Wisdom’ that is 3,000 to 5,000 years old – all it takes is a simple observation to see that everybody is going in the wrong direction. To wit: How come it has taken 3,000 to 5,000 years ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found? RESPONDENT: Look at the idea of people relying on an ‘Ancient Wisdom’. What is old is what is known, memorized, and conceptualised. RICHARD: Yes ... and what is more it has failed to deliver the goods. RESPONDENT: Wisdom is a readiness or openness to see what is ever-changing; a motiveless passion to understand through direct observation. RICHARD: Speaking personally, the ‘I’ that was inhabiting this body was motivated like all get-out to put an end to 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 inside this flesh and blood body ... and succeeded. Thus I thoroughly recommend motivation. How are you going with attempting to fool yourself that you have no motivation? RESPONDENT: Ancient Wisdom is a contradiction in terms. RICHARD: Only if one believes the ‘Ancient Wisdom’s’ denial of the actuality of this infinite universe’s eternal time ... surely you are not one of those who do deny time? RICHARD: For those who are ‘that’, punctuating this pithy aphorism should be a breeze. For those who are not ‘that’, punctuating the witty doggerel should be an eye opener. For those who are not interested in ‘that’ at all, clicking the delete button should bring great satisfaction. Viz.: ‘I am that that is I am that that is that that is is and is not simultaneously I am that that is and is not and that is it it is it really is it’. RESPONDENT: ‘I am that. That is, I am that that is. That that is is and is not simultaneously. I am that that is and is not and that is it. It is, it really is it’. Is that it? RICHARD: Near enough: (‘I am that. That is, I am that that is. That that is, is and is not simultaneously. I am that that is and is not – and that is it. It is. It really is it!’) RESPONDENT: Is that all there is to it? RICHARD: That is not ‘all there is to it’ for those who believe in this eastern mystical thought ... it is their whole ground of being. It is their passion, their very core identity. RESPONDENT: What’s it to you? RICHARD: It is one of the main causes of the promotion and perpetuation of all the anguish and animosity that has beset this fair planet since time immemorial. Many years ago – nearly a quarter of a century ago – back in my ‘hippy’ days when I lived in and travelled around this country in a psychedelic bus for five years, I had that painted along the sides. Not many passer’s-by could work it out ... eastern mystical thought had not infiltrated into the West so thoroughly then as now. Anyway, I believed in it through and through ... so much so that I lived it as a reality for eleven years. I was situated in a living nightmare of what I came to see was nothing short of institutionalised insanity. Any altered state of consciousness was a delusion born out of the illusion of self ... but only because of humankind’s ignorance. It is truly dreadful to be trapped in a massive delusion for eleven years, unable to find any way out and knowing that no other human being can help, for the altered state has been held up for millennia as being the Summum Bonum of human existence. All the literature on the subject praised the state of consciousness I was in (Enlightenment, Illumination, Moksa, Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Sunyata and so on) and yet I just knew it was a mirage that I was living. I am simply sharing my experience for others to do what they will with. Is that not what this List is here for? RESPONDENT: Do you really want to go at it with me? Let’s have a go at it, what do you say? RICHARD: Have a go at what? A self-centred (and therefore selfish) belief system devised by our stupefied ancestors? Is it really worth fighting over? RESPONDENT: Seriously, isn’t the above little exercise a waste of time? RICHARD: I think not. RESPONDENT: What are you trying to prove with such statements, how witty one can be? RICHARD: Oh ... wit. Yes, that comes next. You have only solved the ‘pithy aphorism’ part. (For those who are ‘that’, punctuating the pithy aphorism should be a breeze) The ‘wit’ lies in the second solution. (For those who are not ‘that’, punctuating the witty doggerel should be an eye opener: ‘I am that. That is, I am that that is. That that is, is and is not. Simultaneously, I am that that is – and is not – and that is ‘It’. It is? ‘It’ really is ‘It’?’ Seeing that you appear a trifle disappointed, maybe you should have followed the sensible advice: ‘For those who are not interested in ‘that’, clicking the delete button should bring great satisfaction’. You still can, you know. RICHARD: Are you saying: ‘No, I do not, nor will not, defend myself with physical force’? RESPONDENT: I find it much clearer to say; I will not harm in order to avoid being harmed. Moreover, I can not defend myself, I am myself. RICHARD: Hmm ... so if and/or when an assailant physically attacks you, he and/or she is really you physically attacking you, eh? RESPONDENT: Without question, yes. RICHARD: There is a name for this attitude: fatalism. RESPONDENT: (...) there is no fate, nor any agency that might predetermine experience, recognized here, thus no fatalism. When you (I) want to feel differently you (I) will. RICHARD: If, as you say, there is ‘no fate, nor any agency that might predetermine experience’ then why are 6.0 billion human beings suffering (as in malice and sorrow) in the first place? RESPONDENT: They fail to acknowledge their responsibility. RICHARD: Are you saying that a squalling baby in distress, a frightened infant waking in the dark of night, a spiteful toddler pinching their sibling, a nervously shy pre-schooler quaking in anxiety on their first day, a terror-stricken four-year-old lost in the forest and so on are all experiencing this malice and sorrow simply because ‘they fail to acknowledge their responsibility’? * RICHARD: If the end of human suffering is so simple, as you say, that all that they (as you) have to do is to ‘want to feel differently’, then what is determining that 6.0 billion human beings should want to feel the way that they currently do? RESPONDENT: They fail to acknowledge their responsibility. RICHARD: May I ask? How old would a human being need to be to be able to comprehend that ‘they fail to acknowledge their responsibility’? What is the age of understanding that it is ‘without question, yes’, that when an assailant physically attacks you, he and/or she is really you physically attacking you? How would a sexually abused baby, a sexually abused infant, a sexually abused toddler – a sexually abused child of any gender – have any notion that all this is happening because ‘they fail to acknowledge their responsibility’? * RICHARD: If, as you so clearly state, that human suffering is not due to the human condition but is due to ‘not acknowledging responsibility for what one creates’ then what, may I ask, causes one (as god) to create it in the first place? RESPONDENT: That is decided as me in each instance. The explanation is in the action. RICHARD: Could you please clarify by explaining more carefully who ‘decided as me’ is ... so that I do not fall victim to the ‘hypnosis of poorly used language’? Is it the flesh and blood body called No. 14 that ‘decides as me’ or is it the flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’ that ‘decides as me’ ... or is it a bodiless ‘Universal Mind’ (by whatever name) that ‘decides as me’. I ask this because this physical universe, this material planet and the various carbon-based life-forms – including sentient beings called human beings complete with malice and sorrow – all already existed prior to when I first emerged on this planet as a baby in 1947. Thus it is clear that the flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’ did not create the suffering that the billions of human beings were experiencing in 1947 ... and neither did they create the suffering, as their experience – each and every one of them – was identical to my experience in 1947. That is, that the suffering of sentient beings existed prior to each and every human being emerging on this planet as a baby. * RICHARD: Why is one (as god) so reluctant to acknowledge responsibility for what one (as god) creates? RESPONDENT: That is decided as me in each instance, however, that is the first meaningful question you have asked. RICHARD: I am sure that you (as god) know the answer. Would you care to give forth of your wisdom to a benighted humanity? RESPONDENT: Yes, of course, I do, and the answer is evident in every instance. The explanation is in the action. Humanity does not need the answer – it simply needs to acknowledge it. RICHARD: Hmm ... yet the answer is not ‘evident in every instance’ and the explanation is not ‘in the action’ for maybe 6.0 billion human beings. Why will you not share with ‘humanity’ your knowledge? Would you have 6.0 billion human beings remain in ignorance whilst you alone know the cause of all the suffering of the sentient beings that existed prior to each and every human being emerging here as a baby? Your answer of ‘yes of course I do’ followed by ‘humanity does not need the answer’ smacks to me of elitism and contumely ... especially as you said that it ‘is the first meaningful question you have asked’. Am I to take it, then, that you will patiently answer all my meaningless questions ... yet prevaricate upon being faced with my ‘first meaningful question’? * RICHARD: What I am getting at is: why are you (as god) doing/ being all this mayhem and misery? RESPONDENT: That is decided as me in each instance. The explanation is in the action. RICHARD: Hmm ... unless this is the ‘hypnosis of poorly used language’, are you artfully avoiding saying that you do not know why there is malice and sorrow in 6.0 billion human beings in the first place? Do you actually know the cause of all the suffering of sentient beings that existed prior to each and every human being emerging here as a baby? If not, you are in illustrious company ... neither did Mr. Gotama the Sakyan. * RICHARD: May I suggest? Stop being abhorrent and then your imaginary friend ‘Ol’ Dick’ will stop finding you to be abhorrent. Speaking personally ... I find what you say (that you are god) to be so silly that I re-post it every now and then so as to show would-be eastern spiritual mystics what wanking looks like in print. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘We are the creator ... We are the Absolute ... You are it! ... There is indeed Peace on earth and it is here as me now. The experience of God’s Love is being God’s Love for all God is. God is All. Peace on Earth exist here, now, as me. All you will ever see is yourself. What is lacking is your own lack as Love’. RESPONDENT: I’ve been thinking lately (with all this war occurring) about what it’s usually called a ‘doomsday scenario’ and if that is to be considered a possibility in the near future. There are some things that triggered these thoughts; the Apocalypse (Revelation) by St. John or Luca, I don’t remember exactly, a book which I’ve read a couple of years ago; the fact that humans have never invented a weapon without making use of it; the current state of affairs within the human psyche (which is widely explained on this site). RICHARD: The ‘current state of affairs within the human psyche’ is essentially no different to the state of affairs in the human psyche 3,000-5,000 years ago (according to recorded history) and 5,000-50,000 years ago (according to legendary pre-history) and, presumably, 50,000-120,000 years ago (according to archaeology and palaeontology). Have you never noticed that many an otherwise intelligent person has been afflicted by the doomsday syndrome all throughout human history? If so, the words ‘all throughout human history’ should speak for themselves. RESPONDENT: I bring this topic into discussion although I know it is not a desirable or too pleasurable subject for discussing. I don’t know how many of you have read the Apocalypse ... RICHARD: I started to read it yet had some difficulty getting past the first sentence (Rev 1:1) ... by the third sentence (Rev. 1:3) the writer has used up the last remnants of any credibility he had left. Upon writing the second-last sentence (Rev 22:20) the writer should have twigged to the fact that, as a (biblical) generation is 40 years, it was all but a frantic hallucination and gone and sought psychiatric help. RESPONDENT: ... but when I’ve read it, there were many things which resemble the current global situation. RICHARD: There is nothing in it which resembles the current ‘global’ situation as the earth was flat for most people in that part of the world, when the writer had his delusory visions, and the Americas (the continents) did not exist as far as they were concerned. Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene (if he ever existed that is) was a flat-earth god-man with a limited comprehension of worldly affairs. RESPONDENT: As I’ve personally experienced an ASC-PCE?, I know firsthand that in these kind of states it’s possible to know things which are not available in an ordinary state of consciousness ... RICHARD: As the above ‘things’ are an example of what is knowable in an altered state of consciousness (ASC) it is just as well they are not available in ordinary states of consciousness ... the global situation is in a parlous enough state with sanity running rampant. RESPONDENT: ... and that these states have the possibility to transcend time. RICHARD: As long as you keep on insisting that an ASC is a PCE (a pure consciousness experience), despite the correspondence you have had with me these last 22 months on that very subject, you will not comprehend a single thing on The Actual Freedom Trust web site. Time is *not* transcended in a PCE ... all of the above is the fruit of ASC’s. RESPONDENT: So, I somehow regard what’s written there, with all the rudimentary language trying to describe things of the future, as a highly possible outcome. RICHARD: What is ‘a highly possible outcome’ is that human beings, being contumacious as they are, will continue to tread the ‘Tried and True’ paths little realising that they are the ‘Tried and Failed’ paths. For such is the case with stubborn perversity. RESPONDENT: If you are interested I can bring about exactly those passages in the book which are the most relevant ... I’m very much interested in what you have to say. RICHARD: Hmm ... if you actually were you would have been reading with both eyes and this conversation would not had to have taken place. Plus by now you might even have been making your contribution to global peace-on-earth. RICHARD: ... I was agreeing with you that the metaphysical meaning you give to the word intelligence was the same as I started off with. Viz.: [No. 42]: ‘... an all pervasive intelligence which operates outside of thought. (...) Intelligence to me is not a material quality that can be projected’. [Richard]: ‘I too had started out with the heart-felt conviction that the nature of that movement was that of an ‘all pervasive intelligence’ . RESPONDENT: You started with a religious bias, heartfelt conviction, and intuitive belief. In dropping belief as to an omniscient deity, you nevertheless continue to operate from assumption as to the nature of the absolute. Otherwise, you would simply state the obvious ... that the essential nature of the absolute is beyond human comprehension. RICHARD: But what if the essential nature of the absolute is not beyond human comprehension ... do you see how you close the door on enquiry by saying that it be obvious that it is? RESPONDENT: It is quite evident when you are at the end of the rope of thought. RICHARD: Only where thought is tethered by the ‘Self’ (aka ‘That Thou Art’) is it experienced as a ‘rope of thought’. RESPONDENT: You can examine and know or comprehend objectively only when you are there as an observing subject separate from what is observed. But what is absolute is beyond any such subject/ object split. RICHARD: You are now providing the ‘tried and true’ reason as to why you have closed the door on enquiry into the nature of the absolute ... for example: • [quote]: ‘Water can never find out what water is’. (‘Krishnamurti – His Life and Death’; Mary Lutyens p. 160. © Avon Books; New York 1991). Obviously something else, other than the traditional way of comprehension, is required if the enquiry is to proceed ... I call it apperception (which is what occurs when both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul die). It takes great daring to move out past one’s comfort zone. * RESPONDENT: You might consider having a photo taken and going to Rabbit Photo; they will give you the photo on CD – in digital format – so you can have your image on the internet by this evening. Or you can keep limiting your exposure to your conceptualisation which in the end is as valid as mine; or Osho’s’; or Veeresh’s; or Ramana Maharshi’s; or Leonard Cohen’s; or Isaac Shapiro’s ... RICHARD: This is an example of a vital opportunity being frittered away with empty rhetoric again (with some brand-names thrown in for good measure). RESPONDENT: Am I hearing that you consider each of these people – living or deceased – to have value ONLY as ‘brands’ – or alternatively, as fodder for the anti-branding brigade – rather than inherent value as an actual human person? In your way of seeing; do I have value as a person? Do you? RICHARD: May I suggest taking my words at face value? I am always straightforward and up-front; there is no subterfuge, no hidden meaning, no secret agenda, no ulterior motive – I mean what I say and I say what I mean – and I have oft-times said that I like my fellow human being irregardless of whatever mischief they get up to. And if someone wants to be valued as an actual human being then they ought to get off their backside and do something about being actual instead of presenting an image for public consumption (although when that happens the whole notion of being valued is meaningless). The term ‘brand-names’ has quite a common usage ... take the automobile industry, for example: Rolls Royce is a brand-name; Cadillac is a brand-name; Porsche is a brand-name; Lamborghini is a brand-name and so on. Each name conveys a quality according to public opinion or personal predilection ... consumers buy a car from a particular brand-name’s stable because of their track record; reliability, safety, after-sales service or whatever other criterion is considered valuable. There is a corollary in the spiritual bazaar (given the billions of dollars that changes hands it is undeniable that there is a product being marketed with the discerning consumer in mind) and seekers are often uncompromising (sometimes to the point of being rabid) when it comes to lineage, for instance. And you mentioned some recognisable ‘brand-names’, to demonstrate your point, that are readily comparable to the commercial world of motor vehicles inasmuch as it could be said there is a Rolls, a Stretch Limousine, a Bentley, a Hearse and a Datsun Bluebird on offer. But not necessarily in that order. RICHARD: When the delusion of ‘me’ transmogrified into ‘Me’ (‘I am That’) is seen ... that is the end of everything thus far known in human history as being the summum bonum of human experience. Thus the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ ends ... being atavistically tied to the spirit-ridden experience of the Bronze Age peoples is finally over. Set free from the apron-strings of spirit ... one can allow the actual to become apparent. RESPONDENT: 1): You mention a tie back to the ‘spirit-ridden’ Bronze Age. Why the Bronze Age in particular (the time around which mankind first became aware of ‘self consciousness’ and began to hear voices – the ‘I’ – in his head and invented a spirit to go with it)? RICHARD: No ... palaeontology has found circumstantial evidence of ‘self-consciousness’ dating from at least 50,000 to 60,000 years ago (reverential burying of the dead with artefacts). Archaeological digs on the North-West Indian sub-continent has shown similar concern for the well-being of a departed ‘self’ in grave-sites estimated at maybe 9,000 to 11,000 years ago. Twentieth-Century contact with what is described as ‘primitive peoples’ shows even clearer (direct and living) evidence of the human race being spirit-ridden back to maybe 10,000 years ago ... the highland natives of New Guinea being but one example (I have seen black and white film taken in 1932 when contact was first made). I used the term ‘Bronze Age’ because hard evidence – written text – at the most dates back maybe 5,000 years ... thus I have no need to base what I propose upon somewhat speculative theories derived from scanty evidence. The texts themselves – the revered ‘Ancient Wisdom’ – can speak for itself ... and there are trillions of words dating from that era. RICHARD: Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because past the conditioning is the human condition itself ... which caused the conditioning. To end this condition, the deletion of blind nature’s software package which gave rise to the rudimentary animal ‘self’ is required. This is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which means that ‘being’ itself expires. RESPONDENT: Okay, for those that don’t have nerves of steel ... where is the proof that this can happen? You’d appreciate that your mere claim is not sufficient evidence. RICHARD: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which subjective experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’. Doctrines like not being judgemental, for example. KONRAD: If we look at a table, we do not only recognize the table by our senses, but there is always something ‘added’. If the table had, for example, only three legs, but we could not see the missing leg from our perspective, we would experience some surprise when we discover it. Or, in the same sense, we would be surprised when the table turned out to be attached, glued to the ground. These are simple examples that show that the recognition of a table involves an act of thinking. Add to this, that if we walk around the table, we experience the table to be one and the same object, in spite of the fact that the information of the senses continues to change. This ‘space – vision’ picture of the world is situated in the right hemisphere of the brains. Normally only the left hemisphere of the brains is dominant. However, it can happen that a switch occurs, that causes the right hemisphere to be the dominant one, and the left the one being dominated. I think that this is what has happened with Richard. This causes him to see, what takes place inside of him. But it also causes him to experience the world from the Euclidean invariant of the 3-dimensional space. In effect, he IS this 3-dimensional space. And this makes him conclude, that he is able to observe the world ‘directly’, although he errs. It explains also, why he thinks to have gone through a transformation. Richard is most consistent for he clearly realizes that what he is in is not the enlightenment of J. Krishnamurti. But he errs in thinking that it is something beyond enlightenment. RICHARD: I see that you are still trying – in vain – to explain Richard’s condition away with ever-frantic theories. Fancy having to drag in that hoary ‘Left-Brain/ Right-Brain’ hypothesis in a futile attempt to dismiss one person’s discoveries about freedom from the Human Condition. What about the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth? Where do they fit into your borrowed ‘Left-Brain/ Right-Brain’ speculation? Nowhere in your thesis have you addressed the issue of the total absence of malice and sorrow in Richard ... in fact you have never gone into this issue. You would rather babble on with convoluted quantum-like concepts about time/ space continuums and four-dimensional realities than eliminate the root cause of all human suffering from within yourself. A concept is just that ... a concept. It has nothing to do with actuality. Meanwhile war, murder, rape, torture, abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide run rampant in the world. With all this happening, does it matter whether one sees three legs to a table or four? Or whether they are glued to the floor or whatever? What about people blind in one eye ... where is their three-dimensional vision? What has this to do with achieving peace-on-earth, anyway? KONRAD: In enlightenment there is a balance between the right hemisphere of the brains and the left, and not a total domination of one of the halves. Only when both are in balance, there is a mutual ‘mirroring’, a feedback loop that manifests itself in a clear process. Therefore the absence of this process in him. RICHARD: ‘Both in balance’ eh? Sounds like a variation on the ‘Tried and True’ wisdom of the centuries ... Yin and Yang harmonised and the inner ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in conjunction and the ‘Middle Way’ and all that twaddle ad infinitum ad nauseum. 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. I wonder how many of them – and their killers – had ever thought about how they visually saw table-legs. Maybe if they had they would still be alive today. RESPONDENT: The dictionary is not a sacred text. RICHARD: And I am very pleased that it is not, because faith and trust is not a requisite, when looking-up a word in a dictionary. Instead, a dictionary is a summation of all the understanding humans have had for millennia, codified as sounds that we call words – which may have their origins in grunts – and are thus an expression of experience. As such they are an indication only of what is or can be experienced ... dictionaries (unlike sacred texts) are descriptive and not prescriptive. As such, it is indicative of human experience that the mind can indeed be aware of itself, as is epitomised by the descriptive collection of grunts ‘apperception’ and is not intended to be prescriptive as (presumably) your sacred texts do in insisting that you believe it to be not possible. (I say ‘presumably’ because I obviously cannot know what you feel, think, read, believe in or not believe in, or whatever, in order to be as silly as ‘The Ancients’ ... maybe you are capable of being silly all of your own accord). RESPONDENT: Words only point at truth. RICHARD: Yet these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to a timeless and spaceless void; these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to a formless and deathless emptiness; these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to an unknowable and immutable presence; these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to an immortal and ceaseless being and so on. These ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to the physical universe as being an illusion, a dream and not ultimately real. These ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to reincarnating through multiple lifetimes until ‘Liberation’ frees one from ‘Karma’ and one never needs being born again. These ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to physical life as being inherently sorrowful and the best thing to do is to scarper ... off into a metaphysical realm of the ‘unborn and/or deathless’ state by whatever name. (That, The Real Self, The Higher Self, The True Self, The Greater Reality, The Essence, The Truth, The Absolute, The Supreme, The Universal Mind, The Ground Of Being, The Tao, Cosmic Consciousness, Nirvana, Satori, Samadhi, Thatness, Suchness, Isness and so on). Nowhere in the scriptures do these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to nothing other than this physical universe being it; nowhere in the scriptures do these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to it being that only this lifetime is it; nowhere in the scriptures do these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ consistently point (more or less) to it being that death is the end, finish, oblivion. Truly, these ‘words’ that you claim ‘only point’ are amazingly accurate pointers ... one could almost say, that the words you use, are the thing prescribed, eh? RESPONDENT: The mind cannot see itself. RICHARD: I fully agree that the mind that is busily ‘being still and knowing that it is god’ cannot see itself. Yet if that self-same mind would become genuinely concerned about the plight of humanity – and be a mind that actually cares about one’s fellow human being – then such a considerate mind would observe that it is swamped by a transmogrified and vainglorious identity that has realised that it is god for purely self-serving post-mortem reasons. Then there would be action ... and such action is not of ‘my’ doing. Voila! The already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent upon ‘my’ demise. * RESPONDENT: You are what you seek, Richard. RICHARD: Ahh ... this is that ‘seek thee not’ adage is it not (as in ‘seek thee not that thee be thee that thee seeketh’)? Or do you mean ‘seek thee not thine’ (as in ‘seek thee not thine, that thee be sought by thine that seeketh thee when thee seeks thee not’)? I oft-times mused upon just who was seeking who in the first place ... I found it much simpler to ‘seek not thee nor thine’ (as in ‘seek not thee nor thine, that thee which be not sought by thee, nor by thine that seeketh thee when thee seeks thee not, may be extirpated’). Thus I am freed to ask: are thee thine ... or are thee thee? RESPONDENT: Nevertheless, Mother Nature has been around too long to let a few billion ‘mealy mouth’ human beings come along and destroy her. The Earth has become nothing but a garbage dump anyway, and a good house cleaning is in order. So for those who have no plans to leave on a space ship, it might be wise to work harder at uncovering the root of all problems – the self. RICHARD: The earth has not ‘become’ a garbage dump, as you so quaintly put it; it always has been so. Every human that has ever lived has discarded their refuse onto the earth – there just were not so many people back then to have enough waste material accumulate to call it pollution. Pollution has everything to do with massive population ... and a good start has already been made on becoming aware of the issue. It only was talked about in the fifties – now something is being done ... a good start has been made. ‘Mother Nature’ is a concept that has no bearing on facts and actuality. Nature is not caring or nurturing – which is what the concept so fondly conveys – it has not the slightest consideration for you or me or any other individual. Blind nature is only intent on the survival of the most fitted to survive ... and as the human being has a thinking, reflective brain, we will improve on nature even more than we have already done ... and are doing. And we do this because we humans alone care about ourselves. And yes, by all means let us uncover the self ... so as to put an end to the wars, the murders, the tortures, the rapes, the domestic violence, the corruptions, the sadness, the loneliness, the sorrows, the depressions and the suicides. Then we can truly work together to turn this earth into a paradise garden. Yet there is a lot we have done, are doing and will do, whilst we are busy doing the uncovering. Life is not all gloom and doom. * RESPONDENT: Are you the ‘world teacher’ to carry on where Krishnamurti (and/or others) left off? Just curious. RICHARD: ‘Just curious’? Or just plain facetious? Can I put it this way: We each come on to this List for many reasons, but, is it not basically to share our experience of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being with one another? And that through sincere and candid discussion, we may be able to find out together about what it is that is standing in the way of human beings living in peace and harmony on this verdant planet? This is my position: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. I, for one, am not taking the back seat. A very brief personal history to explain: Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. I entered into an ongoing Altered State Of Consciousness on Sunday, the sixth of September 1981, becoming ‘Enlightened’ in the Eastern spiritual sense of the term. I spent the next eleven years endeavouring to discover why it did not work ... why it did not deliver the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise ... and why it was not for everyone. Accordingly I sought to go beyond Spiritual Enlightenment into a condition I had glimpsed on many an occasion during those eleven years. On Friday, the thirtieth of of October 1992, I succeeded and landed in actuality ... as distinct from either ‘reality’ or the ‘Greater Reality’. Nowadays I know, intimately, why an Altered State Of Consciousness does not deliver the goods, for it is but a delusion ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position, driven by a ‘Divine Sense Of Mission’ to bring ‘Truth and Love’ to the world ... and what a relief that is. I am a fellow human being, albeit neither ‘normal’ nor ‘divine’, living in a condition of perfection and purity offering my discoveries to whomsoever is vitally interested in peace-on-earth. It is possible to be actually free of the Human Condition, as this body, in this life-time, here on earth. The ‘World Teacher’ business is a myth hatched many, many centuries ago and revitalised by the Theosophical Society around the turn of the century. All religions have this myth running through their fantasy. For example, Christianity has the second coming of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene; Buddhism has their Mr. Maitreya; Islam has their Mr. Mahdi; Hinduism has their Mr. Kalki; Judaism has their Mr. Messiah ... and so on. The moral of the story? People want somebody else to do all it for them. Nobody, but nobody, can set you free but yourself. * RESPONDENT: No one can answer that. That is what Krishnamurti says may ‘come to you’. You cannot go to it. I’m not saying I believe him; I’m not saying that I don’t believe him. I’m just saying what he said, emphasising a point. RICHARD: And what ‘point’ might that be ... that you are gullible? Have you ever been to India to see for yourself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of ‘That’ coming to you? I have, and it is hideous ... and it is also sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following them down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking ‘otherness’ ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Otherness’ is simply Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s term for ‘The Absolute’ ... which is another word for ‘Brahman’ (the Hindu ‘Ground Of Being’). Thus any designated ‘Intelligence’ translates easily as ‘God’s Word’. The trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity is that they do not realise that by turning to the Eastern spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the West have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the Western mind that is desperately looking for answers. The Christian conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the insidious doctrines of the East. At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing. * RESPONDENT: If the ego is so big that it cannot see the vastness of itself, it can believe it responsible for any and everything and get away with that delusion, don’t you think? RICHARD: Yes, it requires repeated injections of commonsense to penetrate the chinks in the otherwise inviolable bastions of ‘Goodness’ that protects, nourishes and sustains the infinitely expanded identity. As this ‘Reservoir of Goodness’ shields the apotheosised identity from ‘Evil’ – and the physical world is believed ‘evil’ as in the ‘temptation of the senses’ meaning – then commonsense has its work cut out to even make a dent. The outcome? When commonsense is labelled ‘worldly’ – and the gullible seeker buys this shrewdness – then the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ propagated by the ‘Bodiless Ones’ reigns supreme. Then they can declare ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ – whatever that means – and even weep crocodile tears of Divine Compassion for the suffering of humanity. Because in the ‘real world’, when a Government Minister, for example, is caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ he and/or she ‘takes responsibility’ and resigns, at the very least, and pines away ... if suicide be not an option; in the Military Forces, not too long ago, when a Ranking Officer committed an unpardonable sin he ‘took responsibility’ by ritual disembowelment or shooting himself or whatever (‘the buck stops here’). But when a Guru or God-Man – whose ‘Ancient Wisdom’ initiated the morals in the first place that cause these outrageous suicides – displays anger (or any other human trait) it is said to be ‘Divine Anger’ (or any other Divine Trait) and is indicative of the fragile and elusive link between ‘Purusha’ and ‘Prakriti’ (consciousness and nature) and known by some as being ‘Sacred Schizophrenia’. For example: ‘Two birds, inseparable companions, are perched on the same tree; one eats the sweet fruit and the other looks on without eating’. (Rig Veda I.164.20). This vision, deemed to be meaningful, is duplicated in Mundaka Upanishad (I.III.1) and in Shvetashvatara Upanishad (IV.6). In the same way as the two birds are inseparable, a human being is not thought complete and whole without both the aspect of ‘Prakriti’ (which experiences the domain of time and space and form) and the aspect of ‘Purusha’ (which is timeless and spaceless and formless). Mr. Ishvarakrishna (compiler of ‘Samkhyakarika) pointed out: ‘Purusha without Prakriti is lame and Prakriti without Purusha is blind’. Thus a Guru or God-Man’s ‘Spiritual Essence’ is counter-poised with their ‘Basic Nature’ ... which is the human condition: ‘The Saint is the sinner; the Sinner is the saint’ or ‘Emptiness is form; Form is emptiness’ or ‘I am Everything and everything is Me’ ... and so on and so on. Similarly, when Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene got angry and cursed the out-of-season fig tree for not bearing fruit, he is excused by apologists as not being ‘In The Spirit’ ... taking ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ means absolutely zilch when you are god ... but it sure sounds good to the desperate believer. Why, even Mr. Ken Wilbur can write pages of meaningless justifications for the Guru’s and the God-Men’s failure to eliminate ‘Basic Nature’ rather than merely transcending it ... and that failure is the only place where ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ has any meaning. Perhaps Mr. Christopher Calder’s attitude sums up why these antics are condoned: • ‘My answer is that the ego is an integral part of the structure of the human brain. It is not simply psychological, it is physical and hard wired into our neural pathways. It is a self-defence, self-survival mechanism that cannot be destroyed unless the body dies. If you are a bodiless soul you do not need self-defence and you do not need an ego. That is why I agree with author and teacher Huston Smith when he says he believes no man attached to this mortal coil can achieve the ultimate transcendence. You first have to physically die and when the last coil is broken you are totally free. I believe the ego steps aside and becomes less of a problem for most enlightened men but it is never totally destroyed as long as you have a physical body. It would be wonderful to believe that enlightened men were perfect in every way. That would make life simpler and sweeter but it would be fiction, not fact’. Christopher Calder: www.clipper.net/~calder/Osho.html In other words: they are saying that it is not possible to be free from the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body. And is it no wonder ... after all, the Buddhist’s ‘Ancient Wisdom’ extols ‘Parinirvana’ and the Hindus ‘Ancient Wisdom’ exalts ‘Mahasamadhi’ and the Christians inscribe R. I. P. on their tombstones and so on and so on ... on unto the after-death ‘Ultimate Freedom’. After all, the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ propagated by the ‘Bodiless Ones’ reigns supreme here on earth. The ending 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 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. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time. RESPONDENT: It seems that passions or feelings are just changing phenomenon that seemingly arise and pass away in awareness just as thoughts. RICHARD: You have used the words ‘seems’ and ‘seemingly’ ... and both in the one sentence. What is conveyed is this: ‘manifest to the senses or mind as real or true on the basis of evidence that may or may not be factually valid; external appearance as distinguished from true character; having an often deceptive or delusive appearance on superficial examination; meaning not actually being what appearance indicates; suggesting appearance to unaided senses that is not or may not be borne out by more rigorous examination or greater knowledge; implying a false impression based on deceptive resemblance or faulty observation, or influenced by emotions that prevent a clear view; implying a character in the thing observed that gives it the appearance, sometimes through intent, of something else and suggesting a discrepancy between an openly declared or naturally implied aim or reason and the true one’. Are you trying to tell everyone that you do not actually know anything? Because you did the same only recently in a post. [Respondent]: ‘It seems that what arises out of nothingness is only apparently real’ . But, I did predict some little while ago that next someone will come trotting out with that tired old maxim about being truly wise only when one can say that one does not know any more. RESPONDENT: To label that ever-changing phenomenon as an instinctual self seems to be the addition of thought. RICHARD: I am beginning to consider that there is not only a touch of Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influence happening here ... there is an indication of something else operating. I did not just ‘label’ mindlessly ... my words accurately describe a reality that the ‘I’ that used to be in this body saw that I needed to be free from. Words in themselves are not a problem, for words are a description of something ... and it is that something that is being lived which is trapping you ... not the words. I know that some people (Post-Modernists, for example) re-arrange words and definitions to suit themselves, but the underlying reality remains the problem. Semantics is only a superficial problem, in spite of those who write profound tomes about it as if it were the problem in itself. Maybe another person’s post from another Mailing List last year may be able to explicate this syndrome for you: • [Richard]: All creatures are born with the instinct for survival, which manifests itself as fear and aggression. • [Respondent]: Wrong. Fear and aggression is a human interpretation of value free behaviour. A lion does his lion thing and we call it aggression. • [Richard]: Animal behaviour is not ‘value free’. When a lion does its lion thing humans do not just call it aggression ... it is aggression. (Oxford Dictionary: Aggression: ‘The act of beginning a quarrel or war; behaviour intended to injure a person or an animal’). I am sure that you will find that numerous studies have been done that clearly demonstrate that animals are subject to both fear and aggression. I have watched many, many television nature documentaries for this very purpose and have always made sure that I was not being misled by anthropomorphism. • [Respondent]: Oh, yes. I forgot. Lions write dictionaries. We label behaviour (hence our compulsive need to cite dictionaries). Animals behave. What animals experience when they appear to manifest fear and aggression, humans don’t know. We don’t know what it feels like to be a lion. Whatever behaviour they manifest, however, has served through years and years of evolutionary processes to preserve a specific species. I would venture to guess that the ‘meaning of life’ is to make more life, or to preserve life; so when a lion exhibits ‘fear’ or ‘aggression’ that’s the life force showing through. (Richard, List A, No. 3, No. 07). People will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid facing facts and actuality. RICHARD: 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. RESPONDENT: Was it sought? RICHARD: Yes. ... with all of ‘my’ being. RESPONDENT: Was it uninvited (which is what I meant by ‘grace’)? RICHARD: Then why not say ‘uninvited’ ... because the word ‘grace’ means unmerited divine assistance given to a human being for their regeneration or sanctification ... it is a virtue coming from God resulting in a state of sanctification. It is the spontaneous gift of the divine favour in the salvation of sinners, and the divine influence operating in humans for their regeneration. The English word ‘grace’ is the usual translation for the Greek ‘charis’ which occurs in the New Testament about 150 times. Although the word must sometimes be translated in other ways, the fundamental meaning in the New Testament and in subsequent theological usage is that contained in the Letter of Paul to Titus: ‘For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men’ (2:11). From the time of the early church, Christian theologians have developed and clarified the biblical concept of grace. The word grace is the central subject of three great theological controversies: (1) that of the nature of human depravity and regeneration (2) that of the relation between grace and free will and (3) that of the ‘means of grace’ ... whether the efficacy of the sacraments as channels of the divine grace is dependent on good works performed or dependent on the faith of the recipient. Christian orthodoxy has taught that the initiative in the relationship of grace between God and man is always on the side of God. Once God has granted this ‘first grace’, however, man does have a response to give and a responsibility for the continuance of the relationship. Although the ideas of grace and of merit are mutually exclusive, neither Augustine nor the Protestant defenders of the principle of justification by ‘grace alone’ could avoid the question of reward of merit in the relationship of grace. In fact, some passages of the New Testament seem to use charis for ‘reward’. The Roman Catholic theology of grace stresses the habitual character of the life created by the gift of grace and therefore ascribes merit to obedience to the law of God; classical Protestantism spoke of a cooperating grace after conversion as a way of including man’s activity in the life of grace, but it avoided language that would suggest that man earns something by his obedience in grace. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestants agree that grace is conferred through the sacraments, ‘the means of grace’. Reformed and Free Church Protestantism, however, has not bound grace as closely to the sacraments as have Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans. Baptists speak of ordinances rather than of sacraments and – as do evangelical Christians and those in the Reformed and Free Church traditions generally – insist that participation in grace occurs on the occasion of personal faith and not at all by sacramental observance. Therefore ‘grace’ requires belief in an imaginary god. An actual freedom is all one’s own doing ... nobody can set you free but yourself. * RICHARD (to No. 12): It would be more conducive to a mutual understanding – and less repetitive – if you could move past this ‘he who knows does not speak’ fixation. The man who you like to quote clearly made no secret that he knows ... and he spoke for sixty-plus years (as did the man who first penned that pithy aphorism). (Richard, List B, No. 12e, 1 August 1999). RESPONDENT: It was Lao Tzu who originated: ‘those who know don’t speak; those who speak don’t know’. RICHARD: Yes, there are at least 48 translations into English, which have slight variations on your version. Viz.: • ‘She who knows does not speak. She who speaks does not know . – Translated by Charles Muller Revised, July 1997. • ‘Those who know the natural way have no need of boasting, whilst those who know but little, may be heard most frequently; thus, the sage says little, if anything at all. – Translated by Stan Rosenthal, UK. • ‘Who understands does not preach; Who preaches does not understand. – The GNL Tao Te Ching Copyright © 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 Peter A. Merel. • ‘Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. – Translated by S. Mitchell. • ‘He who knows does not speak; He who speaks does not know. – Translated by Lin Yutang; 1976. What I have always found amusing is: who first spoke these words of wisdom? Surely not ‘he who knows’ because ‘he who knows does not speak’. Therefore, these ‘words of wisdom’ were spoken by ‘he who speaks’ and as ‘he who speaks does not know’ these words are not worth anything because he knows not of what he speaks. RESPONDENT: Are you saying Lao Tzu spoke for sixty plus years – surely you are not (?). RICHARD: Why not? Mr Lao Tzu could easily have spoken for sixty plus years (if he lived at all) for legend has it that he was an old man when he penned what is now known as ‘The Tao Te Ching’. (One meaning of the words ‘Lao Tzu’ is ‘Old Man’ which, in the context of teaching and learning, also means ‘master’ or ‘scholar’ (compared with ‘pupil’ or ‘student’) and the same two characters which form the Chinese ‘Lao Tzu’, form the words ‘old scholar’ in Japanese and are pronounced as ‘Roshi’). To put it all in context, it helps to understand the origins of ‘The Tao Te Ching’: in its original form, ‘The Tao Te Ching’ consisted of eighty-one short chapters, these being arranged in two sections, known as the ‘Tao Ching’ and the ‘Te Ching’ (anybody who has read both the ‘I Ching’ and the ‘Tao Te Ching’ will readily appreciate from many of Mr. Lao Tzu’s statements that he was certainly well versed in the concepts of ‘I Ching’ (‘Book of Changes’) and accepted its major precept, that all things are always in a state or process of change). The first of these sections was comprised of thirty-seven chapters, and the second of forty-four chapters. The length of the original work was approximately five thousand characters written on bamboo strips or slats bound together to form two scrolls, somewhat like a venetian blind with vertical slats, which were a common form of ‘record’ in the period (‘The Period of the Warring States’) that Mr. Lao Tzu is said to have lived. However, it is not known with absolute certainty that Mr. Lao Tzu actually lived during the period of the warring states ... even the biography of Mr. Lao Tzu, which may be found in the ‘Historical Records’ (Shih-chi) of Ssu-ma Ch’ien (second century B.C.), is not without its inconsistencies. Be that as it may, this record describes Mr. Lao Tzu as having been an archivist of the Court of Chou, and further states that he is said to have personally instructed Mr. Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius). According to legend, it is said that on his retirement from public office, Mr. Lao Tzu headed west, and that the guardian of the pass to the state of Ch’in requested that he write a treatise on ‘The Tao’ before departing. It is then that Mr. Lao Tzu is supposed to have sat for two days, in which time he wrote the ‘Tao Te Ching’, after which he left, some writers stating that he was never heard of again, others describing his ascent to heaven in the form of a magnificent dragon. It is known that the keeper of the pass was a well known Taoist of the period named Mr. Yin Hsi (also referred to as ‘Mr. Kwan Yin’) and, as a Taoist, he was familiar with the teachings of Mr. Lao Tzu even though, as he himself is supposed to have told the old philosopher, because of the nature of his work he had not been able to avail himself of personal tuition from the master. Thus Mr. Lao Tzu was well known in his own province, if not nationally, else Mr. Yin Hsi would not have recognised the figure of Mr. Lao Tzu or his name and would not have made his request to that particular traveller. Therefore, ‘if’ he lived at all and ‘if’ he instructed Mr. Kung Fu Tzu and ‘if’ Mr. Yin Hsi knew of him and his work and ‘if’ he were an old man when he retired then he certainly did disseminate his wisdom for many, many years ... and thus did not heed his own advice – ‘he who knows does not speak’ – like all the enlightened masters down through the ages. It is a case of ‘do as I say and not do as I do’ with virtually all Saints and Sages, Gurus and God-Men, Masters and Messiahs, Avatars and Saviours. RESPONDENT: My understanding is that K said: ‘you can be sure, if someone says ‘I know’, that they do not’. His point was that knowledge is always of the past, whereas Life is now, living and ungraspable (by knowledge), at least in what I read his statement to be saying). RICHARD: Yes, the ‘Truth’ cannot be known (according to mystics) because it is a mystery ... it is the ‘Unknowable’. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain popularised the old wisdom that there is the ‘known’, the ‘unknown’ and the ‘unknowable’ and that one can cease living in the ‘known’ (where 6.0 billion peoples live) and reside in the ‘unknown’ (where 0.0000001 of the population live) but never in the ‘unknowable’ as it is forever inscrutable, unfathomable, immeasurable and so on. Thus anyone who says that they know (according to mystics) obviously is not living in the ‘unknown’ (it is one of those ‘tests’ of enlightenment). One cannot ‘live’ in the ‘unknowable’ (according to mystics) until after physical death (known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ for Hindus and ‘Parinirvana’ for Buddhists). Thus (according to mystics) the ‘Secret to Life’ or the ‘Riddle of Existence’, or whatever one’s quest is called, cannot be known until the ‘afterlife’ (by whatever name). However, this is not what is meant by ‘he who knows does not speak’ because nobody (according to mystics) can know the ‘unknowable’ until after death. The ‘he who knows does not speak’ is possibly a popular misunderstanding of the intent of the Chinese characters that Mr. Stan Rosenthal, UK possibly more correctly translates as: ‘Those who know the natural way have no need of boasting, whilst those who know but little, may be heard most frequently; thus, the sage says little, if anything at all’ (which boasting is what No. 12 is so insistent about, despite the fact that virtually all the sages had much to say, even if they covered up their ‘boasting’ with humility). I say ‘possibly’ because the origins of Taoism are so vague and Chinese pictograms are so open to a variety of equally valid conceptions that it will never be known for sure. Just by-the-by, there is a very intriguing conversation recorded by Ms. Mary Lutyens where Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says: • [quote]: ‘If you and Maria (Ms. Mary Lutyens and Ms. Mary Zimbalist) sat down and said ‘let us enquire’, I’m pretty sure you could find out. Or do it alone. I see something; what I said is true – I can never find out. Water can never find out what water is. That is quite right. If you find out I’ll corroborate it (... ...) somehow the body is protected to survive. Some element is watching over it. Something is protecting it. It would be speculating to say what. The Maitreya is too concrete, is not simple enough. But I can’t look behind the curtain. I can’t do it. I tried with Pupul (Ms. Pupul Jayakar) and various Indian scholars who pressed me’. (‘Krishnamurti – His Life and Death’; Mary Lutyens p. 160. © Avon Books; New York 1991.) RESPONDENT: What is your view of all this? RICHARD: I have posted it before so I will present a shortened version. Viz.: The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the Unknown, stopped short of the final goal ... the Unknowable. Notwithstanding the cessation of a personal ego operating, they were unwilling to relinquish the Self or Spirit ... and an ego-less Self or Spirit is still an identity, nevertheless. In spite of the glamour and the glory of the Altered State Of Consciousness, closer examination reveals that these ‘Great’ persons had – and have – feet of clay. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, they have led humankind astray. Preaching submission or supplication they keep a benighted ‘humanity’ in appalling tribulation and distress. The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the identity in its entirety is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. When the ego dies, the separated identity dissolves into Oneness ... I am Everything and Everything is Me. The eyes seeing is Me looking at Me. I am The Absolute and The Absolute is Me. But beyond Me – beyond The Absolute – lies the actual ... and the actual is already always here now. In actuality there is no ‘Me’ and/or ‘The Absolute’. When the soul dies the need for oneness – unitary perception – dissolves ... as does any ‘Otherness’. Then I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Now I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. One is now living in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvelous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. Human beings do not live in an inert universe but ‘I’ am forever cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, Divine Compassion and Love Agapé. The purity of the actual world owes its excellence to the fact that there is no sorrow and malice here ... hence no need for succour. The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Rapture or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. * RESPONDENT: Except if you consider how man’s intellect has allowed him to blindly contaminate his own house: the Earth (capitalization is a term of respect for Grandmother Earth and is not meant to deify her). RICHARD: Good grief ... more NDA platitudes and yet more ‘intellect-bashing’. It is the instinctual passions that cripple the intellect ... and the instinctual passions are bestowed by ‘Grandmother Earth’s’ daughter ... ‘Mother Nature’. RESPONDENT: In the spirit of paraphrasing, here are the main points of this discussion so far: 1. [Richard]: human beings are the same at the level of instinctual passions. 2. [No. 33]: human beings are different as each one experiences the world differently. 3. [No. 33]: genetically we are different, and we grow to be different human beings. 4. [No. 33]: these differences – how each one experiences the world – is the essence of creativity and the reason for our species’ survival and (apparent) superiority. I will grant you (1) that there are certain instincts that we are born with. RICHARD: Would you care to name and describe these ‘instincts that we are born with’ so that we have a common ground for discussion? RESPONDENT: I will still argue that the human being can transcend (at least some) instincts: for example, human beings can transcend sexual, reproductive instincts as also life preservation instincts. A human being is, in my opinion, unique in that respect. RICHARD: What is it that you are conveying with the use of the word ‘transcend’? Are you conveying it in its ‘beyond the range or grasp of human experience, reason, belief, etc.’ meaning (Oxford Dictionary) ... as in ‘of, pertaining to, or belonging to, the divine as opposed to the natural world’ meaning (Oxford Dictionary) ... and thus being ‘above and independent of and existing apart from the limitations of the material universe’ (Oxford Dictionary)? I only ask because you refer to Mr. Aurobindo Ghose (below) as being a prime example of ‘meta-evolution’ and Mr. Aurobindo Ghose’s ‘meta-evolution’ can be described as follows: • [quote]: ‘Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first, gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo’s rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man’s present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to Heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Super-Mind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this Super-Mind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one’s True Self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga’. [endquote]. (www.miraura.org/bio/sketch-a.html). RICHARD (to No. 25): Yet I do not have a ‘wholistic intelligence’ ... therefore I present facts. The fact is that human suffering has at least a 3,000 to 5,000 year recorded history – and as peoples everywhere are relying upon an ‘Ancient Wisdom’ that is 3,000 to 5,000 years old – all it takes is a simple observation to see that everybody is going in the wrong direction. To wit: How come it has taken 3,000 to 5,000 years ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found? (Richard, List B, No. 25a, 6 June 1999). RESPONDENT: Wisdom that has 3000 to 5000 years? RICHARD: Yes. In the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic thread (depending upon which school of research) the Sumerian texts are dated circa 3,000 B.C. (5,000 years ago) and the Abrahamaic texts circa 2,000 B.C. (4,000 years ago) and the Mosaic texts are dated circa 1400 B.C. (3,500 years ago). In the Hindu/ Buddhist/ Jain thread (depending upon which school of research) the Vedas are dated circa 3,000 B.C. (5,000 years ago) and the Upanishads 2,000 B.C. (4,000 years ago). The Taoist/ Confucian thread (depending upon which school of research) is drawn from the Yellow Emperor (Huang Ti) oral traditions (depending upon which school of research) are dated circa 2,000 – 3,000 B.C. and the written texts are dated circa 200 B.C. Current archaeological research is becoming ever more accurate. RESPONDENT: That is clearly a conceptualised wisdom. RICHARD: Well, yes and no ... the enlightened sages certainly lived their delusion as a reality and not as a concept (and most peoples would disagree with your description that Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, for example, lived a ‘conceptualised wisdom’). Yet, either way, their influence on gullible minds has been enormous ... just look at what is discussed on this Mailing List for starters. RESPONDENT: Wisdom never had, has not, and will never have an age. RICHARD: Yet, the ancient wisdom probably pre-dates the written word (3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history) and gets lost in the mists of pre-history ... that seems to be what I would call quite an age by any standards. And that piece of wisdom you just espoused is precisely the same-same piece of wisdom that was espoused 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. If you fondly imagine that you are being original, then dream on. Meanwhile, 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 rage on around you. Which is what has been happening for 3,000 to 5,000 years. RESPONDENT: Man of Wisdom never tried to save the world. RICHARD: I have no idea what books you read ... but all the versions I have read show the opposite of what you say. RESPONDENT: Only the delirious ones, for the human world is the summing up of the individuals. RICHARD: Uh huh ... and the ones that were not delirious (who are not the ‘summing up of individuals’ presumably) were not of the ‘human world’ then? In what way did/ do they differ from the ‘Wisdom of the Ancients’... and who are/ were they anyway? RESPONDENT: Chain reaction of Wisdom (you mentioned somewhere)? What’s that? RICHARD: No ... I never mentioned ‘wisdom’ anywhere. I advocate individual action (the extinction of identity in it’s totality), not the acquiring of ‘wisdom’ ... be it ancient or modern. I wrote that an ‘individual freedom from the human condition could lead to a global freedom from the human condition’. This unilateral action could precipitate a ‘chain-reaction’ effect ... or not. It does not really matter either way because even if global peace was a long time coming – as is most probable due to stubbornly recalcitrant identities – the most appealing aspect of actual freedom is its instant bestowal of universal peace upon the individual daring enough to go all the way. RESPONDENT: This is an intellectual viewpoint, the viewpoint of ego. RICHARD: Not so ... intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. RESPONDENT: I heard an interesting quote that fits here. Its from 6 iv 5 of the book Course in Miracles. ‘the ego uses the body to conspire against your Mind, and because the ego realizes that its ‘enemy’ (the Mind) can end them both (ego and body) merely by recognizing they are not part of you, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. RICHARD: I am not inclined to take much notice of the wisdom of a bodiless entity ... if any notice at all. The Web Page – ‘A Course in Miracles’ – describes in great length how [quote]: ‘A Course in Miracles was ‘scribed’ by Dr. Helen Schucman through a process of inner dictation she identified as coming from ‘Jesus’. A clinical and research psychologist and tenured Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, she was assisted by Dr. William Thetford, her department head, who was also a tenured Professor of Medical Psychology at the Medical Centre where they both worked. A Course in Miracles was first published in 1975’. [end quote]. Today, this would be described as ‘Channelling’ ... that is, some ‘Disincarnate Entity’ speaking through some specially selected person to bring a ‘Message To Mankind’. And how would such a bodiless entity advise flesh and blood bodies to operate and function in the world of people, things and events? One way and one way only: dissociation (‘I am not the body’), of course. RESPONDENT: The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the Mind, which is real, that the Mind is the ego’s learning device, and further, that the body is more real than the Mind. No one in his right Mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right Mind does believe it’. RICHARD: As both ‘the ego’ and ‘the Mind’ are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to who persuades who as to who is more real or who is learning for who or who is believing who or what, or when, or where, or how or why. This is such fun, eh? RESPONDENT: If so, then that is karma in action and is my just due. RICHARD: Okay ... speaking personally, I have no need for that hypothesis. RESPONDENT: No, Karma is not a hypothesis. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... or if it be not a hypothesis then it is a metaphysical belief that the force generated by a person’s actions perpetuate transmigration and its ethical consequences determine the nature of the person’s next existence. Karma is the influence of an individual’s past actions on their future lives, or reincarnations and thus what one does in this present life will have its effect in the next life. The doctrine of karma reflects the Hindu conviction that this life is but one in a chain of lives (samsara) and that it is determined by a human’s actions in a previous life. This is accepted as a law of nature and is not open to further discussion. The moral energy of a particular act is preserved and fructifies automatically in the next life, where it shows up in one’s class, nature, disposition, and character. The process is mechanical, and no interference by a god and/or goddess or gods and/or goddesses is admitted, except by some of the later and more extreme theists. Thus the law of karma seeks to explain the inequalities that are observed among creatures. In Hinduism, in the course of the chain of lives, an individual can perfect themselves, until they reach the eminence of the god Brahma himself, or they can degrade themself in such an evil way that they are reborn as an animal. Not only do past acts influence the circumstances of the next life, they also determine one’s happiness or unhappiness in the hereafter between lives, where one will spend a time in either one of the heavens or one of the hells until the fruits of one’s karma have been all but consumed and the remainder creates a new life for one. Buddhism and Jainism incorporated doctrines of karma as part of their common Indian legacy: the Buddhists interpret it strictly in terms of ethical cause and effect and in Jainism, karma is regarded not as a process but as a fine particulate substance that produces the universal chain of cause and effect ... of birth and death and rebirth. Rebirth – also called transmigration or metempsychosis – in both religion and philosophy refers to the rebirth of the soul in one or more successive existences, which may be human, animal, or, in some instances, vegetable. While belief in reincarnation is most characteristic of Asian religions and philosophies, it also appears in the religious and philosophical thought of primitive religions, in some ancient Middle Eastern religions (Orphism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism) as well as in such modern religious movements as Theosophy. In primitive religions, belief in multiple souls is common. The soul is frequently viewed as capable of leaving the body through the mouth or nostrils and of being reborn, for example, as a bird, butterfly, or insect. The Venda of Southern Africa, for example, believe that when a person dies the soul stays near the grave for a short time and then seeks a new resting place or another body ... be it human, mammalian, or reptilian. Among the ancient Greeks, Orphism held that a pre-existent soul survives bodily death and is later reincarnated in a human or other mammalian body, eventually receiving release from the cycle of birth and death and regaining its former pure state. Mr. Plato believed in an immortal soul that participates in frequent incarnations. The major religions that hold a belief in reincarnation – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism – all hold in common the doctrine of karma. In Hinduism the process of birth and rebirth – transmigration of souls – is endless until one achieves Moksha (salvation) by realising the truth that liberates ... that the individual soul (Atman) and the absolute soul (Brahman) are one. Thus, one can escape from the wheel of birth and rebirth (samsara). Jainism, reflecting a belief in an absolute soul (‘Siddha’), holds that karma is affected in its density by the deeds that a person does. Thus, the burden of the old karma is added to the new karma that is acquired during the next existence until the soul frees itself by religious disciplines, especially by ahimsa (‘non-violence’), and rises to the place of liberated souls at the top of the universe (‘Siddha-Shila’). Although Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging, substantial soul, it holds to a belief in the transmigration of the karma of what can only be described as souls. A complex of psycho-physical elements and states changing from moment to moment with its five skandhas (‘groups of elements’ as in body, sensations, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness) ceases to exist; but the karma of the deceased survives (the soul by another name) and becomes a vijñana (‘germ of consciousness’) in the womb of a mother. This vijñana is that aspect of the soul reincarnated in a new individual. By gaining a state of complete passiveness through discipline and meditation, one can leave the wheel of birth and rebirth and achieve Nirvana, the state of the extinction of desires. Sikhism teaches a doctrine of reincarnation based on the Hindu view but in addition holds that after the Last Judgment, souls – which have been reincarnated in several existences – will be absorbed in God. Central to the belief in reincarnation is Punna (‘merit’) which is a primary attribute sought by Buddhists, both monks and laymen, in order to build up a better karma (the cumulative consequences of deeds) and thus to achieve a more favourable future rebirth. The concept is particularly stressed in Theravada tradition of South East Asia. Punna can be acquired through dana (‘giving’) such as offering food and robes to monks or donating a temple or monastery; sila (the keeping of the moral precepts); and bhavana (the practice of meditation). Merit can also be transferred from one being to another. This is a central feature of the Mahayana schools, in which the ideal Buddhist is the bodhisattva (‘the Buddha-to-be’), who dedicates himself to the service of others and transfers merit from his own inexhaustible store to benefit others. Until survival after physical death be substantiated and demonstrated ‘karma’ remains a hypothesis ... or belief. RESPONDENT: Our present actions spawn future actions, this is a fact. RICHARD: What you are talking of is known as ‘cause and effect’, and not all ‘present actions’ spawn future actions ... there are literally hundreds of things one does in the daily course of events that have no effect on ‘future actions’ whatsoever. RESPONDENT: If I am hostile in my actions towards others, in all likelihood I will find my hostility returned in the future. This hypothesis is easily verified to be true. RICHARD: Why do you say ‘in all likelihood’ instead ‘without exception’ or ‘inevitably’ or some-such absolute? Is it because you somehow know that if you are hostile in your actions towards a pacifist, for example, they will seize upon it as an opportunity to be ‘loving’ or ‘accepting’ or whatever and not return your hostility? And not only pacifists ... speaking from personal history, the ‘I’ that was inhabiting this body in 1965 was hostile – quite self-righteously aggro in fact – towards someone close to ‘him’ (a fellow soldier) and to this day that person has never returned the hostility. And as that person was killed in combat two years later, he is never going to be able to. The belief in ‘karma’ looks pretty silly when viewed sensibly, eh? 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