# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On the Social Identity RESPONDENT: I wonder if I could go back there [move back in with my parents] and practice the AF method so that by changing myself and myself only that would automatically lead to alleviating my parents’ emotional issues. RICHARD: Given that your original plan, prior to coming across The Actual Freedom Trust web site a couple of days before posting your initial e-mail at 2:20 PM on Wednesday 2/02/2005 AEDST – which is six days before posting this e-mail – was to move back in with your parents and ‘help’ them free themselves of their interpersonal obstructions by serving as an example of spiritualist practice (via having had meditation practices/ buddhistic beliefs and having lived in a monastery/ sat four hours day) there is a distinct possibility that your current plan is an accommodation to your original motivation (filial/ tribal duty), non? RESPONDENT: That’s one of the issues I’ve been mulling over. I don’t feel attached to my parents in any filial sense, but I suppose the socially conditioned ‘ethic’ of keeping my promise to move back is what I need to examine more closely. RICHARD: As your promise was to move back in with your parents as an example of spiritualist practice (via having had meditation practices/ buddhistic beliefs and having lived in a monastery/ sat four hours day) – and not as a practitioner of the actualism method – is it not more a case of no longer subscribing to their beliefs and practices that is the issue ... rather than anything else? RESPONDENT: When I originally told my mom, she was ecstatic, and if I were to tell her that I changed my mind, I fear that I would cause harm, which goes against being ‘harmless.’ RICHARD: What the word ‘harmless’ refers to, on both The Actual Freedom Trust web site and mailing list, is being sans malice – just as being happy refers to being without sorrow – thus provided there be no malice generating/ driving/ motivating one’s thoughts, words, or actions, being no longer capable of fulfilling a previously made pledge can in no way be going against being harmless. None of this is to deny that another’s feelings may, and can be, self-induced to feel hurt as a result ... the simple fact of the matter is that if they choose to harbour such feelings that is their business. Put simply: one does not become either actually or virtually free of the human condition just to be guided by and/or run by other people’s feelings ... here is a classic example: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Fallacy are you man. Go to fuck with a duck and don’t bother me, idiot. My feelings are not extinct, as yours, and listening you is bringing to my ego a strong sense of repugnance. Is it clear, big sod? (...) You are a malicious sod, a repulsive cyber guru that gets me nausea because my feelings are not extinct and listening your shit is too much for my ego. Was not clear that you are a pure fallacy, was not clear my meaning? • [Richard]: ‘Am I to take it that, because you feel nausea (and, previously, repugnance) when reading my words, these feelings then prove that I am ‘a pure fallacy’? In other words, your feelings are to be taken as being the arbiter of what I am? Are you really telling me that I am to be guided by your feelings? I did not spend eleven years, delving deep into the depths of ‘my’ psyche (which is the ‘human’ psyche) exposing, and thus eliminating through the exposure, anything whatsoever that was insalubrious ... only to be run by your feelings when I came onto the internet to share my discoveries with my fellow human being. Look, it is this simple: for as long as you continue to be as you currently are then I am sure you will find, as a consequence, that other people’s responses will have the self-induced effect on you of you feeling nausea, repugnance or whatever other feeling that you may thus activate in that entire repertoire of feelings you nurse to your bosom’. (Richard, List B, No. 53, 17 May 2001). RESPONDENT: Is this fear part of the social conditioning package? RICHARD: Aye ... many years ago the identity inhabiting this body was conversing with ‘his’ then mother-in-law, painstakingly explaining why’ he’ was no longer able to do something – something which eludes memory nowadays – and was both surprised and pleased to hear the following words ‘he’ spoke in response to her reproachful ‘oh, you have hurt my feelings’ (manipulative) reply to ‘his’ carefully explicated account: • ‘Then why carry [harbour/ nurse] such feelings ... surely you leave yourself open to all manner of hurt by doing so?’ Needless is it to add that ‘he’ was to ask himself that very question on many an occasion from that day forwards? * RICHARD: Incidentally, and also given you said you are now not sure what your agenda is, does living with your parents whilst pursuing just the masters in physics (instead of the previously intended PhD) have anything to do with the convenience of ready-made board and lodging – aka the basic necessities of life – just as currently living in a monastery does? RESPONDENT: I won’t move back until I’m done with the masters, and living in the monastery right now isn’t really like how most people live in monasteries. I’m in my office at university all day (besides for surfing) and then I just go back to the monastery to sleep. So, moving back to my parents’ would be more convenient, but this wasn’t ever a big issue for me, because I’ve been on my own (necessities-wise) for 5 years and I do enjoy the independence. So this is minor compared to the aforementioned issue of benefiting my parents. RICHARD: In which case, then, that brings it all back to the issue of filial/ tribal duty ... because otherwise it would matter not whom you move in with (along with the intention of automatically leading to an alleviation of their emotional issues by practicing the actualism method in order to change yourself and yourself only). In other words, why not move in with Mr./Ms. Smith, of High Street, Any-Town with that intention? RESPONDENT: That aside, my point is: you believe in your method ... RICHARD: It is neither my method nor do I believe in it: it is the method devised by the identity who used to inhabit this flesh and blood body all those years ago and, as ‘his’ method worked to deliver the goods (which no method before in human history has), its proven track-record means there is no need to believe in it. RESPONDENT: ... you claim it delivers the goods, unlike what the LDM’s have left for us in their respective wakes ... RICHARD: As the many and varied sages, saints, and seers were/ are still subject to anger and anguish (usually elevated to the status of a Righteous Wrath and a Sacred Sorrow by some-such name) – and thus still subject to the antidotal pacifiers love and compassion (usually elevated to the status of a Love Agapé and a Divine Compassion by some-such name) – one does not have to be a genius to suss out that the altered state of consciousness (ASC) popularly known as spiritual enlightenment does not deliver the goods ... presuming, of course, that the goods in question be peace on earth and not some spurious Peace That Passeth All Understanding in some specious timeless and spaceless and formless realm where there is no dratted body to stuff things up. And as their mystico-religious answer lies not in the world, but away from it, there is no prize for guessing what their goods really are. RESPONDENT: ... and as I have said, you have a nice, easily digestible, presentable format ... RICHARD: If I may point out? As what you have to say (further below) demonstrates you have not the slightest notion of what is on offer on The Actual Freedom Trust web site it would appear that it is only the presentable formats/ perfect frameworks/ slideshow-like styles that you find easily digestible ... and as the phrase ‘all style and no substance’ epitomises your posts to this list it is no wonder. RESPONDENT: ... you believe in its contents and its subsequent effects on the problems of humans as you have pointed out in your text. RICHARD: If you can provide the instances – or even one instance – of the text where I have ever said I ‘believe’ in the contents and its effects I will most certainly address your comment ... until then I will take this to be the male bovine faecal matter it is and move on without further remark. * RESPONDENT: Currently we have an educational system that prepares you to earn a livelihood and a religious system that perpetuates the ‘human condition’, and is so enmeshed, inter-twined and is currently the software that is running the human machine – if I have interpreted what you have written correctly. RICHARD: Why interpret what I have to report ... why not take it at face value? Viz.: • [Richard]: ‘Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’. The instinctual passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. *That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the iceberg and not the main issue at all*. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. 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. Which means that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. Just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have desperately done precisely this thing ... during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’. 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 human conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which caused the conditioning in the first place. *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 elimination of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. The complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ is the end to all the ills of humankind. [emphases added]. (Richard, Homepage). As this is on the home page of my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust web site I am being right up-front and out-in-the-open as to what is ‘the software that is running the human machine’ ... how you can interpret that as meaning the ‘so enmeshed, inter-twined’ educational system/ religious system (let alone why you would) instead of taking it at face value has got me stumped. Furthermore, all of the above is graphically spelled out in the ... um ... pretty impressive presentable format/ perfect framework/ slideshow-like ‘Introducing Actual Freedom’ presentation for those who find [quote] ‘wordy, verbose prose’ [endquote] off-putting. RESPONDENT: You have said the current software needs deleting and your method is the anti-virus software necessary to do the job, so to speak. RICHARD: As what you say I call ‘the current’ software is not only as old as humankind itself, but even predating the first humanoid, you are way, way off the mark as to what manner of deletion my discovery entails and, if I may make the observation, typical of what was made fashionable by none other than Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. And this is because nowhere does he come even anywhere near comprehending that the root cause of all the misery and mayhem which epitomises the human condition is genetically-encoded ... rather than being caused by the conditioning (be it societal, familial, or peer-group conditioning) which he sought to remedy by starting his own religiously-orientated schools. For an example of this ignorance: (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 51, 30 September 2003). RESPONDENT: Why not have it as part of the current widespread educational system to rewire the human being for peace on earth? RICHARD: As a suggestion only: first find out what actualism is on about, and then test the actualism method for efficacy in your day-to-day life, before proffering advice as to how best it be promulgated as the third alternative to either materialism or spiritualism. ‘Tis only a suggestion, though. RICHARD: The instinctual passions [such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire] are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. (...) Past the human conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which caused the conditioning in the first place. 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 elimination of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. The complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ is the end to all the ills of humankind. (Richard, Homepage). RESPONDENT: ‘Being’ to me implies an ongoing, static, state that never ends. If you say that it can become extinct, then it must be impermanent. Therefore it falls under the category of a conditioned (impermanent) thing? RICHARD: Yes ... and an illusory/ delusory thing at that. RESPONDENT: The extract you sent in the previous dialogue is dealing with erasing the human ‘self’ or ‘being’ but do you not agree that the two issues (permanency and ‘self’/ identity) are linked? RICHARD: Not as an actuality, no (the issue of permanency is linked to the issue of the properties of the universe). RESPONDENT: Is not the sense of being a human being tied up with the belief in permanence, i.e. the belief that ‘I’ am at the root of everything (as a permanent entity)? RICHARD: As the (sensorial) ‘sense of being a human being’ is tied up with impermanence – as in mortality – you can only be referring to the intuitive ‘sense of being a human being’ (as in immortality) ... the affective feeling of being a ‘presence’ inside the body (aka ‘being’ itself), in other words, as a psychological/ psychic entity (a metaphysical identity) rather than the sensitive feeling of being this body as a sensate/ material entity (a physical creature). Hence spiritualism has it that, whilst the ego-self is impermanent, the soul-self is permanent and that ego-death, while the body is a living body, is essential to reveal who one really is – an immortal spirit-being – whereas actualism has that identity-death in toto (extinction) is essential to make apparent what one actually is (a mortal human being) ... and therein lies the rub: as a spirit-being one is so very real, so very, very real at times, one is prepared to do virtually anything – virtually anything at all – than go blessedly into oblivion so that what is actually permanent can become apparent. This infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is not conditioned by any definition of the word (especially No. 3): • ‘conditioned: (from the noun) 1. having a (specified) disposition or temperament; in a particular condition or state; 2 placed in certain conditions; circumstanced, situated; (from the verb) 3. subject to conditions or limitations; dependent on a condition; not absolute or infinite; 4. brought into a desired state; with the balance of certain qualities adjusted; 5. taught to accept certain habits, attitudes, standards, etc.; accustomed to. (© Oxford Dictionary). * RICHARD: Where I say I am this living flesh and blood body I am not identifying with this flesh and blood body – identifying with this flesh and blood body as an identity be it intrinsic or not – as what I am describing is what I am (what, not ‘who’) ... only an identity would translate my descriptions as describing a particular core/a static essence/an intrinsic identity (or a true identity/a real identity or whatever). (...) Perhaps if I were to put it this way: being alive, being a living body, is to be a process of constant change – birthing, growing, ageing, dying – on all levels (microscopic and macroscopic and anywhere in between). Furthermore, nothing is ever static – everything, literally everything, is in constant motion, constant change; nothing, literally nothing, is ever stagnant, ever stays the same – thus all is novel, never boring, all is new, never old, all is fresh, never stale. In short: the entire universe is a perpetuus mobilis. RESPONDENT: What is wrong with saying: there are no permanent conditioned things? RICHARD: Because nowhere have I ever come across a ‘teaching’ which says that ‘being’ itself (aka God, Truth, That, Nirvana, Suchness, Isness, and so on), or ‘presence’, is an impermanent conditioned thing ... on the contrary, all the sages, seers, god-men/ god-women, gurus, masters, messiahs, saviours, saints, and so on, over the centuries have been saying that it is a permanent unconditioned thing (and, more often than not, the only permanent unconditioned thing into the bargain). This is what you had said (the modified version) in response to my initial query: • ‘The actual freedom I believed is a possibility (before encountering your site) would be thus: 1) There are no permanent [conditioned] things (including I/Me, identity, self, states etc). 2) Consequently there is no [conditioned] basis for suffering to arise. Which is why I was attracted to your site. Its not that it [no permanent conditioned things] was a new concept, it’s more that I agreed with it. I guess I realise at some level that the crux of the issue is the above (as in points 1 and 2) and that if I had to pick out the two most important things in a ‘teaching’ it would have to be those’. RESPONDENT: Is this statement at odds with actuality/ your above statement? RICHARD: What is at odds with actuality/my above statement is that any ‘teaching’ has ever said that ... spirituality is all about the permanence (aka immortality) and unconditionality (aka absoluteness) of ‘being’ itself. RESPONDENT: How about: all conditioned things are impermanent. RICHARD: If your phraseology ‘all conditioned things’ includes ‘being’ itself (aka God, Truth, That, Nirvana, Suchness, Isness, and so on), or ‘presence’ (quite often capitalised as Being or Presence upon self-realisation) then there is no problem with putting it that way ... this is one of the ways I have summarised it before (a modified version): 1. Where does any ‘teaching’ say that there is no such thing as reincarnation (aka rebirth), that there is only this one mortal life currently being lived, and that physical death is the end, finish? 2. Where does any ‘teaching’ say that there is no such thing as god, truth (a non-material sacredness by whatever name), and that there is nothing other than this physical universe? 3. Where does any ‘teaching’ say that there is no such thing as immortality (a non-material deathlessness by whatever name) and that only this physical universe is infinite, eternal, and perpetual? 4. Where does any ‘teaching’ say that the answer to all the misery and mayhem lies here on earth (aka in the world), right now in time (aka this moment), and not away from the world (aka a spiritual dimension) sans time altogether (aka timeless)? And I have summarised it this way because eastern spirituality is fundamentally all about avoiding rebirth – and attaining a (specious) post-mortem reward – and is not about peace on earth as a flesh and blood body (sans identity/ affections in toto) ... just as western spirituality is not about peace on earth as a flesh and blood body either (it is fundamentally all about avoiding a (specious) post-mortem punishment and attaining a (specious) post-mortem reward). In short: peace-on-earth is nowhere to be found in spiritualism – nor in materialism for that matter – which is one of the reasons why I say actualism is the third alternative to both. The main reason why is, of course, in regards to the meaning of life. RESPONDENT: Thanks. I like putting it that way. RICHARD: Are you aware this implies you like putting it that the unconditioned permanence all the sages, seers, god-men/ god-women, gurus, masters, messiahs, saviours, saints, and so on, over the centuries have found is, in fact, a conditioned impermanent thing ... when all the while the only permanent (aka immortal) unconditioned (aka absolute) thing has been this physical universe they erroneously took to be an impermanent conditioned thing? If so, do you now comprehend why I say that an actual freedom from the human condition is 180 degrees in the opposite direction? RESPONDENT: I had suspected that the appreciation of something like sharp mustard was a ‘learned’ behaviour, hence conditioned, but it’s merely a complex material for which the appreciation develops over time, as one’s experiential base broadens. RICHARD: You seem to be now talking more of an acquired taste – and acquired taste can be culturally influenced of course – which need not be any more complex than diversifying ... coming to appreciate variety. RESPONDENT: ‘Culturally influenced’ is different from culturally conditioned? RICHARD: Yes ... for example: • ‘influence: an action exerted, imperceptibly or by indirect means, by one person or thing on another so as to cause changes in conduct, development, conditions, etc’. • ‘condition: teach, accustom (a person, animal, etc.) to adopt certain habits, attitudes, etc.; establish a conditioned reflex or response in. (©Oxford Dictionary). • ‘influence: causing something without any direct or apparent effort; a cognitive factor that tends to have an effect on what you do; the effect of one thing (or person) on another; • ‘condition: establish a conditioned response; train by instruction and practice; esp. to teach self-control (‘parents must discipline their children’; ‘is this dog trained?’); discipline, train, check. (©WordNet 1.7). • ‘influence: a power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that operates without any direct or apparent effort (‘the influence of television on modern life’); power to sway or affect based on prestige, wealth, ability, or position’. • ‘condition: to cause an organism to respond in a specific manner to a conditioned stimulus in the absence of an unconditioned stimulus. (©The American Heritage® Dictionary). • ‘influence: the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command; the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways’. • ‘condition: to adapt, modify, or mould so as to conform to an environing culture; to modify so that an act or response previously associated with one stimulus becomes associated with another’. (©Merriam-Webster Dictionary). • ‘influence: to cause (someone) to change their behaviour or the way they think about something, or to cause (something) to be changed; the power to have an effect on people or things, or someone or something having such power. • ‘condition: to train or influence a person or animal mentally so that they do or expect a particular thing without thinking about it; a conditioned reflex/response’. (©Cambridge Dictionary). Most, if not all, artists acknowledge the influences on their art ... for instance the Post-Impressionists were influenced by Oriental aesthetics – mainly in regards to the flattening of perspective – and my work was in turn influenced by them. Another instance was, when working in ceramics, being taken with the artistic expression of one Japanese master-artist in particular who, having traced Japanese pottery back to its origins on the Korean peninsular, developed a blend of ancient and modern and thus my artistic appreciation was again doubly influenced – and the aesthetic appreciation of the people who bought my work was similarly affected – yet there is no way it could be said that this acquired aesthetics (a learned taste) was culturally conditioned. As you had portrayed ‘learned’ behaviour as being conditioned behaviour in your ‘‘learned’ behaviour, hence conditioned’ phrasing (further above) – and as the term ‘an acquired taste’ is more or less interchangeable with ‘learned to appreciate’ and/or ‘learnt to like’ in popular parlance – it was necessary to acknowledge that learned appreciation can be acquired by inspiration (being spontaneously stimulated), as distinct from a learned appreciation instilled by inculcation (being deliberately taught), before commenting that an acquired taste need not be any more complex than coming to an appreciation of variegation or diversification. RESPONDENT: As in the conditioning that we strive to eliminate? RICHARD: Where one becomes aware of a culturally conditioned behaviour (an instilled/ inculcated behaviour) the cultural conditioning (the programming) drops away of its own accord ... no striving is required. It vanishes so completely one wonders what all the fuss was about. RESPONDENT: Or is this a case of not throwing the baby out with the bath water? RICHARD: There are no ashes here for a phoenix to arise from ... an actual freedom from the human condition is the genuine article. RESPONDENT: I’m just here more or less alone, I guess. RICHARD: Each and every human being is on their own as a flesh and blood body ... dependent upon no one; autonomous. Being ‘alone’ or lonely is a feature of being a self: ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: I didn’t mean lonely by alone. RICHARD: One of the hallmarks of self-realisation is to no longer feel the common or garden variety of loneliness but to experience the utter aloneness of being ‘The One With No Other’; the mystical literature abounds with descriptions of the master being alone ... in its root meaning of ‘all+one’ (ME ‘al one’ from ‘al ane’ from OE ‘al ana’ from ‘al an’ where ‘al’=‘all’ and ‘ana’/ ‘an’=‘one’). And I am not necessarily being pedagogic by digging around in the dictionaries ... for example: • [Spiritual Seeker]: ‘Contrary to what you have said, Krishnamurti never says that he has a Soul, a Self. • [Richard]: ‘I beg to differ: [quote]: ‘I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal ... this is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself’. [end quote]. • [Spiritual Seeker]: ‘His use of ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ do not make him so, though you use the dictionary to establish your point. Krishnamurti often departed from the dictionary meaning and substituted another meaning. For example, ‘alone’ he made to mean ‘all one’. • [Richard]: ‘Once again, I beg to differ: he did not make ‘alone’ mean ‘all one’ at all ... etymologically it already means ‘all one’. (Richard, List B, No. 20a, 28 May 1998). The mystical quality applied to ‘alone’ has popularly come to mean ‘we are all one’ ... but the master is indeed alone in the sense of being solitary. In solipsism only oneself exists – there is no ‘others’ – and in some of the more archaic religions this gives rise to speculation that their god or goddess dreams universes peopled with beings for amusement or sport ... out of loneliness and/or boredom. Speaking personally, I was alone for eleven years – but never lonely – and one of the first things I noticed, upon breaking free of the massive delusion of godliness, was the ending of aloneness ... and I am still never, ever lonely. As a discrete flesh and blood body I am physically on my own and autonomous, but with no separative entity to feel either lonely or alone – cut off from the magnificence of the actual – the entire feeling of being solitary has ceased to exist. RESPONDENT: Simply, here I am, without a whole cast of characters ‘inside’ of me. RICHARD: Okay ... although thus far you have acknowledged a two-part character inside of you: ‘a way of seeing’ ... ‘ego I’ (or a ‘being aware’ ... ‘ego I’ ) which presumably is a mental or cognitive character and ‘a feeling ‘self’’ which is obviously an affective character. There are other, more superficial aspects to the identity. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 28 January 1999). but, going by what you describe in your next E-Mail that I am yet to respond to, you are already cognisant of these. However, given your previous description of your primal response to your children’s actions it would appear that being cognisant of the role of ‘mother’ does not necessarily free you from being a mother. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘I experience the most primitive feelings towards my children. My teenage daughter goes out at night, and is later than she is supposed to be, and I panic. It is so chemical it is almost comical. I can laugh about it and I do, but the reaction is instantaneous. In my guts, I’m driven to keep both my kids alive’. Finding out about what makes one tick is such fun, is it not? * RICHARD: Is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing matters of significance ... and of consequence not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet because of this? One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. RESPONDENT: Yes, makes me think of the previous alone statement. How odd. We are discrete and autonomous, yet even our conception required the cooperation of two other people. We are born helpless and would die without the caring of other humans for a number of years. RICHARD: Yes ... I recall talking, some years ago, with an immigrant to this country from what was then Yugoslavia: he told of arriving in a strange country; with little English; only one suitcase of possessions and ten dollars to his name and so on. I responded – half-jokingly – with my story: I arrived in this strange country stark naked; no language whatsoever; no money; no means of making a living; unable to even look after myself ... and two well-meaning people took me and cared for me for fifteen years. During this time they stuffed me full of all their social mores and psittacisms (those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning) and all their beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all their other schemes and dreams. They socialised me; they conditioned me; they programmed me; they brainwashed me with all the methods and techniques that are used to produce what one thinks and feels oneself to be ... a wayward social identity careering around in confusion and illusion (a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity). If I had arrived in another country I would have received but a differently flavoured package ... a variation on the theme. This has been going on for thousands and thousands of years: all the different types of enculturation (peer-group conditioning, parental programming and societal brainwashing in general) are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over innumerable aeons to seek to curb the instinctual animal passions. RESPONDENT: The list has too much activity and I do not wish to bring such disorder to my mailbox. I noticed a post here recently that suggested the list be used to post topics and people could interact directly. This would reduce the traffic for whom ever that may be relevant. I am presently keen to explore the topic of ethnic orientation and violence but would correspond on other aspects of life as well. RICHARD: ‘Ethnic orientation and violence’ ... the two would seem to go hand-in-hand, would you not say? And has it not got a lot to do with beliefs and the action of believing itself? And does it not all believing stem from separation? I see, first of all, that there is a separation of male and female from each other by gender identification as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – two distinct social identities – leading to a localised discontent and resentment, causing the battle between the sexes. Then there is the separation of oneself – by being a ‘me’, a psychological identity – from one’s body and therefore from the world about, leading to a generalised discontent and resentment, causing wars between tribal groups. To end the separation is to end the violence. To end the separation, can one not whittle away at all the social mores and psittacisms: all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams? One can surely become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one finds oneself to be ... a wayward ego and soul careering around in confusion and illusion. I see that a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning ‘entity’ inside the body. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is under all the beliefs ... do you not think so? Do not beliefs come in from another person, or persons, starting from day one as a new-born baby? Mother and Father – or a substitute parent – require the child to conform to the already existing world of fact and fiction. Through actions and words, carrots and sticks, the child is taught to believe until it is sufficiently indoctrinated, having made these beliefs their own ‘truths’. The child can not compare these beliefs with anything outside of their environment, because they do not know there is an outside ... so they have no reason not to swallow the entire package, this whole reality. This process is called socialisation and results in forming the social identity; a process which may take, perhaps, up to twelve years to complete. All this while the child has learned, by trial and error, reward and punishment, precept and example – with endless repetition – how to feel afraid, secure, loved, disliked, greedy, proud, lonely, etcetera ... no matter what culture one is born into. Humankind is now sufficiently programmed into believing that this what human beings are is ‘human nature and it cannot be changed ... we are all stuck with it’. Such is the extent of believing. What one can do, however, is ask oneself whether one wants to continue to live an illusory life? Following blindly in the footsteps of ancestors is to perpetuate fiction over fact, as being the only way to live. One has taken on their beliefs and made them one’s own ... their beliefs are who one is. One’s image of oneself is a totally borrowed picture ... which one believes to be one’s very identity. It is what one thinks – and feels – one is as ‘me’. Does one wish to continue to defend an illusion? Family ties, tribal customs and national mores all contribute in the making of one’s identity. Religious beliefs, ideological creeds and cultural values all go to cement the psychological make-up of one’s very real self. One’s identity is what one has adopted as being ‘me’. How much longer does one wish to go on defending ‘someone’ that is not me? How much longer does one want to go on living in pathos as a group member ... which is what a social entity is. If one thinks – and feels – that this identity is me as I actually am, then ‘I’ must belong to a group. Out of loneliness ‘I’ must have a sense of belonging. This culturally created psychological entity that ‘I’ identify as is always lonely for it is an alien, a fictional creation of the group, who can not exist outside of the group mentality. But what about me as-I-am? Stripped of the identity, I can be never lonely, for I am complete, sufficient unto myself. Loneliness is as fictional as the identity that has been created as ‘me’ by all those other lonely entities which were here before one arrived as a baby. One has made it one’s own and called it ‘me’. Whereas, by being me, me as I actually am, I can never be a belief. RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second. RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings. RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’. Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings. Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility). RESPONDENT: Individuality of Richard is the effect of his learning, his environment, etc. and so is mine. RICHARD: Richard’s idiosyncrasies are ‘the effect of his learning, his environment, etc.’ ... the ‘individuality of Richard’ is the effect of the elimination of all the genetically-inherited instinctual passions ... the extinction of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that is umpteen thousands of years old and carried in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova. RESPONDENT: The two are not the same: cannot be the same. Even identical twins must be different because they are exposed to different stimuli and hence grow differently. RICHARD: The study of identical twins certainly demonstrates that differences such as gender, racial and era cultural beliefs, truths, morals, ethics, principles, values, ideals, theories, customs, traditions, superstitions and so on are the result of ‘different stimuli’ ... one such study was of orphaned twins accidentally separated at birth in the immediate post-war Germany: one was sent for adoption in the USA and the other was raised in the West German culture. When re-united in their thirties there was the one who was self-righteously triumphant at winning a just war ... whilst the other carried the self-deprecatory guilt at waging an unjust war. Such superficial studies are used to justify the ‘nurture versus nature’ view-point over the ‘nature versus nurture’ view-point ... but I ask: where in all this is their precious ‘individuality’? How is any person ‘unique’ when each and every one of the perhaps 10.0 billion human beings – 6.0 billion human beings now living and the maybe 4.0 billion now dead – on this otherwise fair earth that we all live on are all robotically run by being, at root, a ‘self’ born of the same-same instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire genetically endowed by blind nature? RESPONDENT: So, when you say ‘hence no separation whatsoever’ that is a very general statement, based upon the argument ‘human brain in action in the human skull is the carrots and the beans and the cheese (or whatever food) eaten and the air breathed and the water drunk, then there can never be ‘a separate ‘mind’ (as in separate from this body)’. RICHARD: It is not a ‘very general statement’ ... it is an exact and easily observable fact. Put it this way: you demonstrate to me that the flesh and blood body (which includes the mind that is the human brain in action in the human skull) that answers to the name <No. 33> came from ‘outside’ this universe and I will sit up and take notice of the observing that you are, presumably, making with the objectivity of a scientist that you are indeed separate from everyone and everything. RESPONDENT: Human reality, human identity, the brain, the perceiving mind is not just the carrots and beans and cheese eaten: it is a lot more complex and involved phenomena than that. RICHARD: Yet, physiologically, there is no separation whatsoever between this body and that body or anything ... it is the lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity known as the ‘self’ that feels separate and desires ‘oneness’ with ‘All That Is’ (a super-self by any name) to supposedly end the aching void within. There are three I’s altogether ... but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Richard, would it be correct to say that while you can experience physical pain, you still cannot suffer, as suffering requires a ‘sufferer’? RICHARD: Yes ... and that observation goes someway towards explaining the query you report as having burnt within you 10 days ago: • [Respondent]: ‘If there can be thoughts w/o a thinker as the actualist’s say, why can’t there be feelings w/o the feeler (...)? (Saturday 16/07/2005 9:47 AM AEST). The following may be of assistance: • [Richard]: ‘As animals other than the human animal display this ‘fright-freeze-fight-flee’ instinctually passionate reaction it is patently obvious that the feeling self [aka soul] is primal and the thinking self [aka ego] derivative ... and that the thinking self is, fundamentally, affective in substance. Moreover, there is some evidence that awareness of being this primordial ‘self’ – as in ‘self’-consciousness – has arisen in other animals: the chimpanzee, for example, can recognise its image in a mirror as being itself and not another of its species (such as the canary does for instance) and there are preliminary reports that the same may be happening for the dolphin. Further to the point, as the essential affective feelings are in situ before thought first arises in infancy – a baby is born already feeling – it becomes even more obvious that the feeler, as an embryonic feeling being, is innate in sentient beings ... that the already existing basic set of survival passions form themselves into being the intuitive presence which, at root, is what any ‘me’ ultimately is long before the thinker comes into being. Any and all conditioning, be it familial, societal, peer-group, or environmental imprinting, needs substance to latch onto, sink into, and be ... it all washes off a clean slate like water off a duck’s back. Innocence is something entirely new to human experience’. (Richard, List B, No. 12r, 16 January 2003). RESPONDENT: The basic question is can the ego be seen as a whole with all its qualities and seeing the truth of all that it ends. RICHARD: Oh yes ... indeed it can. Speaking personally, in 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. In that four hours I lived the peace-on-earth that is already always here now ... and I saw that ‘I’ (an emotional-mental construct) was standing in the way of this actual freedom being apparent twenty four hours of the day. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’ for the social identity that ‘I’ was. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was a passionate construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an fabrication in the psyche ... a social identity which is its conscience. I then saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity ... what I later came to know as ‘ego’. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with an identity as ego ... and it was called being normal. When ‘I’ saw that this was all ‘I’ was ... I was no longer that. I was me ... this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ... as this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. What was it that was observing these two other ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’? There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: Oh, an actual I. Is it a varying or constant quality? RICHARD: What I am is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. The first person pronoun is not used here to refer to any psychological or psychic identity because in actuality there is nothing other than the physical ... this carbon-based life-form being conscious. There is a consistent quality of perfection ... an unvarying purity. Here is an on-going innocence, an ever-fresh magnanimity which ensures a nobility in character that is vitalised as an endless benevolence ... all effortlessly happening of its own accord. Thus probity is bestowed gratuitously ... dispensing forever with the effort-filled vigilance to gain and maintain righteous virtue. One is free to be me as-I-am; benign and beneficial in disposition. One is able to be a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic and unattainable moral strictures of ‘The Good’: being humane, being philanthropic, being altruistic, being beneficent, being considerate and so on. All this is achieved in a manner any ‘I’ could never foresee, for it comes effortlessly and spontaneously, doing away with the necessity for morality and ethicality completely. One is swimming in largesse. RICHARD: It is for reasons like this [to uncover the root cause of 160,000,000 sane people being killed by their sane fellow human beings in wars alone in the last 100 years; to uncover the root cause of 40,000,000 killing themselves in the last 100 years; to uncover the root cause of the 34 wars occurring as you read this (wherein people are actually killing and wounding and being killed and wounded); to uncover the root cause of all the murders such as the someone, somewhere who is being murdered and the someone, somewhere who murdering as these words scroll past you; to uncover the root cause of all the tortures, as detailed by ‘Amnesty International’, which are going on right now; to uncover the root cause of all the domestic violence such as the someone, somewhere who is being beaten up at this very instant in some unsafe home; to uncover the root cause of all the child abuse wherein somewhere some child is being brutalised, frightened out of their wits at this very moment; to uncover the root cause of all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide all over the world ... such suffering is going on in uncountable numbers of utterly miserable lives] that I pushed the envelope all those years ago and got out of the institutionalised insanity known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... and yet you say: ‘okay, that is a description’. It is a description of why all that misery and mayhem is actually happening globally ... and all that anguish and anger is most definitely not a dream. RESPONDENT: Many of us know it’s not a dream – that’s very patronising. RICHARD: Hmm ... just as I know it is not ‘okay, that is a description’ (which is very dismissive). RESPONDENT: No it’s indicative. It indicates that your description is not immediately practical. RICHARD: I demur ... my description is indeed ‘immediately practical’ for it clearly and concisely portrays and personifies the root cause of all the ills of humankind. Allow me to re-present the particular paragraph which you dismissed as ‘okay, that is a description’ so that you may see for yourself: • [Respondent]: ‘Richard, could you summarise please?’ • [Richard]: The single root cause of all the mayhem and misery that epitomises the human condition is the persistent feeling of being an identity inhabiting the body: an affective ‘entity’ as in a deep, abiding and profound feeling of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter or a phantom hiding behind a façade, a mask, a persona; as a subjective emotional psychological ‘self’ and/or a passionate psychic ‘being’ (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) inhabiting the psyche; a deep feeling of being a ‘spirit’; a consciousness of the immanence of ‘presence’ (which exists immortally); an awareness of being an autological ‘being’ ... the realisation of ‘Being’ itself. In other words: everything you think, feel and instinctually know yourself to be ... is to be an alien in an alien world’. • [Respondent]: ‘Okay, that is a description’. (Richard, List C, No. 4a, 17 April 2000). For an example of how defining and clarifying the problem, through portraying and personifying the root cause, provides the necessary basis for an investigation into all the ills of humankind I need only recall my own origins: I was born in Australia, of an English/ Scottish Hong Kong-born father and an English/ English Australia-born mother. With this British background, I was enculturated into believing that I was, literally, an Australian citizen ... but with British blood. Now, blood is blood ... there is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. Thus the wars and the suicides – the blood shed and the tears shed – are precipitated because of the absurdity of identification ... is not all this acculturation ridiculous! However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was so programmed as to be unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use as a standard to determine which was which, as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but similarly conditioned into being an ‘ethnic’ human being. Thus I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker. As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was deeply mired in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ acculturated ethnicity ... ‘I’ was brainwashed into being a ‘man’ and not simply a flesh and blood male body. Under the enculturated layers lies a further identity ... the genetically-inherited animal ‘self’. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. By identification as ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’ ... I discovered that a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body and that this ‘walk-in’ was ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Richard, I don’t know if you are subscribed to the list or not, but I would appreciate your input on the posting [regarding identification]. RICHARD: I was born in Australia, of an English/ Scottish (Hong Kong-born) father and an English/ English (Australia-born) mother. With this British background, I was raised to believe that I was, literally, an Australian citizen ... but with British blood. Now, blood is blood ... there is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. All the wars, all the blood-shed, all the racial misery and mayhem is precipitated because of the absurdity of identification ... is this not all ridiculous! However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, ‘I’ was unable to discriminate fact from fiction. ‘I’ had no terms of reference that ‘I’ could use as a standard to determine which was which as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but an ‘ethnic’ human being. Thus ‘I’ bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker. As ‘I’ slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was in by unravelling it in me, ‘I’ discovered a second layer under ‘my’ ethnicity ... ‘I’ was a ‘man’, and not simply a flesh and blood male body. Under that lay a further layer ... it took ‘me’ years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’– a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. There, and only there, was the root cause of animosity and anguish. By identification as ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians, for example, who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’ ... I discovered that a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body and that this ‘walk-in’ was ‘me’. So, superficially there is a composite conditioned social identity that encompasses: 1. A vocational identity as ‘employee’/ ‘employer’, ‘worker’/ ‘pensioner’, ‘junior’/ ‘senior’ and so on. 2. A national identity as ‘English’, ‘American’, ‘Australian’ and etcetera. 3. A racial identity as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’ or whatever. 4. A religious/ spiritual identity as a ‘Hindu’, a ‘Muslim’, a ‘Christian’, a ‘Buddhist’ ad infinitum. 5. An ideological identity as a ‘Capitalist’, a ‘Communist’, a ‘Monarchist’, a ‘Fascist’ and etcetera. 6. A political identity as a ‘Democrat’, a ‘Tory’, a ‘Republican’, a ‘Liberal’ and all the rest. 7. A family identity as ‘son’/ ‘daughter’, ‘brother’/ ‘sister’, ‘father’/ ‘mother’ and the whole raft of relatives. 8. A gender identity as ‘boy’/ ‘girl’, ‘man’/ ‘woman’. These are related to roles, rank, positions, station, status, class, age, gender ... the whole organisation of hierarchical structure and control. But behind all that – underlying all socialised classifications – is an impression of being a presence, a phantom hiding behind a persona; a sense of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter; a feeling of being a spirit, a being that exists immortally ... an affective ‘entity’; an emotional or passionate psychological ‘self’ ... a subjective psychic ‘thing’ inhabiting the psyche. Not just ‘I’ as ego ... but ‘me’ as soul. This is ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being ... which is ‘being’ itself. A person’s deepest feeling of ‘being’ – the real ‘me’ – is evidenced when one says: ‘But what about me, nobody loves me for me’. For a woman it may be: ‘You only want me for my body ... and not for me’. For a man it may be: ‘You only want me for my money ... and not for me’. For a child it may be: ‘You only want to be my friend because of my toys (or sweets or whatever)’. That deep feeling of ‘me’ – that ‘being’ itself – is at the core of identity. It arises out of the basic instincts that blind nature endowed all human beings with as a rough and ready ‘soft-ware’ package to make a start in life. These instincts – mainly fear and aggression and nurture and desire – appear as a rudimentary self common to all sentient beings. This is why it is felt to be one’s ‘Original Face’ – to use the Zen terminology – when one accesses it in religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical meditation practices and disciplines. This is the source of ‘we are all one’, because ‘we’ are all the same-same blind instinctual self that stretches back beyond the dawn of human memory. It is a very, very ancient genetic memory. Hoariness does not make it automatically wise, however, despite desperate belief to the contrary. RESPONDENT: Would you tell the victims of Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan to inquire into themselves? RICHARD: Yes ... if they asked me. Identifying with by relating and belonging to a group – and espousing group ideals – invites attack from the bully-boys of another group who deem themselves superior. Why identify? Why relate? Why belong? The pertinent question to ask oneself now is: ‘Why do I have the need to identify by relating to anyone or belonging to any group at all’? This is inquiring. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that by relating to a group I am relating less, not more, because a group excludes those who ‘don’t belong’. RICHARD: Everybody I speak with – every one of them – tells the same story: ‘I just do not fit in; I do not belong; I am not like them; they exclude me; they all belong but I don’t’ ... and so on and so on. Is it not significant that everyone experiences life like this? (And I have talked with literally thousands of people over the last eighteen years about this). Loneliness is pandemic. In fact it has a global incidence and spares no one. RESPONDENT: If I do not relate to others then I can relate only to myself, a group of one, then none. A lonely life. RICHARD: Perhaps if I include something written by someone whom I have had an association with for some time may throw some light onto this subject. Viz.: • ‘Each social identity thrives on attention; it needs to be needed; it needs to belong, it needs to be accepted, it needs to be lovable ... and it loves to be able to fight for its maintenance. If these needs are not being met, one feels desolate, lonely and forlorn; one risks falling into a melancholy, into a depression. What inevitably follows is the unvarying advice to ‘come back to reality’ and to turn to the group for support. This imperative to belong is bred into the human being from birth onwards. Yet curiously enough, when two or more persons have spent sufficient time together, niggles, arguments and fights all prove to be inescapable. Too many needs to be met and too little attention to go around leaves all concerned disappointed and in despair. • ‘The only hope, it seems, is to try one’s luck with either someone else or with some Metaphysical Group ... only to be disappointed once more. One is advised by others to lower one’s expectations about any happiness on earth, as it is seen to be foolish and unrealistic to count on perfection in ‘this imperfect world’. Although the same warnings, the same words of advice and the same hopes and despairs have been running their course, to no avail ever, for all of human history, this orthodox understanding of human life is still religiously adhered to and is never to be questioned. Despite all their passionate attempts to make the conventional way work, people are still living dismally unhappy lives; lives in which very little time is spent in undisturbed peace and harmony with oneself or another ... let alone month after month and year after year. Is it possible that everybody has been hoodwinked into believing that this was ordained to be the fate of humankind forever? • ‘Like everybody else I too was hoodwinked for many years. I remained swindled until, together with Richard, I started to question the ‘human’ archetype with its relentless beliefs and needs, hopes and despairs. Nothing sanctioned by ‘humanity’ ever seemed to lead to the sweet destiny that I had seen in a PCE and known as being possible for all of humankind. And now, after an extensive odyssey, I know without a shadow of a doubt that personal peace-on-earth is my birthright, as it were, and is always available to be achieved. Nevermore do I feel a need to belong, because I do not feel alone and lonely by myself. As I do not have a precarious social identity to protect, a battle of wills with another is no longer an attractive option; no ego-victory is sweet enough to want to relinquish one’s personal peace for. I experience anger, for example, to be a thoroughly rotten emotion; an emotion which has no redeeming features whatsoever and which, in my view, only perpetuates me as a social identity, thus assuring continued potential for aggression. Nor do I need to be needed, loved, or appreciated’. (Devika in Richard’s Journal, Article Twenty-Nine, pg. 210). The last sentence is particularly relevant to your question: ‘Nor do I need to be needed, loved, or appreciated’. RESPONDENT: Can I instead relate to the largest possible group, to all? RICHARD: A sheer impossibility ... 5.8 billion people are far too many to meet personally. Therefore, such relating would be only imaginary ... and amounts to becoming lost by being submerged in the crowd, anyway. RESPONDENT: Relate with the maximum possible effort, with all my heart? Is this another way to lose the psychological self? RICHARD: What makes one want to relate with ‘all my heart’? Is not that where the psychological self lives? Is this not ‘me’ at the core of one’s ‘being’? Would this action not affirm, endorse and perpetuate the very psychological self one is proposing to lose? One may be a loving self now ... but one is still a self, nevertheless. The pertinent question to ask is this: What is the nature of loneliness? RICHARD: All babies are born alike in respect to the genetically-inherited instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) ... therein lies the root cause of all the mayhem and misery which epitomises the human condition. And all the different types of socialisation (peer-group conditioning, parental conditioning and societal conditioning in general) are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over innumerable aeons to seek to curb the instinctual animal passions. 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 instinctual passions – 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 as an antidote, as compensating pacifiers ... and the investigation ceases. 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 below or behind the conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which necessitated the controls (conditioning) in the first place. Thus the conditioning can prevent the investigation of the human condition itself. RESPONDENT: I have tried ‘What am I’ and several other meditations. From your mails etc. I read you don’t need to meditate. If I don’t meditate my life gets clogged with intentions. The only ways to relieve myself are to sleep or to relax. Relaxation is a direct result from meditating. Another result is creative thought. RICHARD: Be it far from me to advise you to stop meditating ... Konrad is trying this at this moment with some interesting results. If you do, it is essential that you replace it with something else ... something better. As you say that your life gets ‘clogged with intentions’ then channel this energy into one big intention: what I call pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the pure consciousness experience (PCE) experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience ensures pure intent continuing to operate. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation – not meditation – rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. It is a matter of coming to one’s senses – both literally and figuratively – and one does this by understanding that only this moment is actual. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer. RESPONDENT: When there is that centreless observation, there is no thought or perception of someone trying to get somewhere. If I am trying to get somewhere, is that peace? RICHARD: Of course not ... I would never advise anyone to try to get somewhere. I tend to say things like: • [Richard]: ‘In 1980, at the beginning of what was to be a four-hour PCE that was the turning-point in my life, ‘I’ saw ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ was (a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning social identity) and the instant ‘I’ saw ‘myself’ ... I was not that. Thus (when I reverted back to normal in the ‘real world’) ‘I’ knew, by direct experience, that ‘I’ was standing in the way of the actual being apparent ... and ‘I’ had to go – become extinct – and not try to become something ‘better’. That is, ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ could never, ever become perfect or be perfection. The only thing ‘I’ could do – the only thing ‘I’ had to do – was die (psychologically and psychically self-immolate)’. (Richard, List B, No. 34a, 2 June 1999). And ‘he’ did just that ... thus the already always existing peace-on-earth became apparent. RESPONDENT: You abolished the reviled ‘Human Condition’ and exited to become the actual flesh-and-blood body. RICHARD: Yes ... a new way to live life on this verdant planet has been discovered which eliminates the need to humble oneself in a degrading surrender and servitude to some imagined deity. One eliminates the sense of identity that has been overlaid – from birth to the present day – over the self. With cheerful diligence and application born out of pure intent, one whittles away at the persistent social identity, abandoning the desire for unity, until one arrives at a virtual freedom. In virtual freedom one is ninety nine percent free and the other one percent causes very little trouble – if any – and with virtual freedom operating in every human being there could be a global peace-on-earth. Finally the day of destiny dawns wherein one is catapulted into actual freedom ... one has escaped one’s fate and universal peace and tranquillity emerges. Being free from malice and sorrow, innocence and benignity are one’s constant condition. In consummate purity and perfection, which wells up from the utter stillness of the infinitude of this material universe, one is this very actual universe experiencing itself in all its magnificence as a sensate and reflective human being. RESPONDENT: To what do you attribute your finding this transformation? Can it be cultivated? RICHARD: In 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. In that four hours I lived the peace-on-earth that is already always here now ... and I saw that ‘I’ (an emotional-mental construct) was standing in the way of this actual freedom being apparent twenty four hours of the day. I knew that I would revert to normal ... and that ‘I’ would do whatever to live this perfection in this life-time. Once experienced – and remembered – it is impossible to settle for second-best. With a pure intent – born out of the PCE – patience and perseverance and diligence and application were ‘my’ forte. ‘I’ set out to undo this emotional-mental construct. This separative ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ – a psychological and psychic identity – is forever alienated from one’s body and from the world of people, things and events. To end the separative social identity, ‘I’ whittled away at all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. ‘I’ examined all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. ‘I’ become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what ‘I’ found myself to be ... a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion. As ‘mature adult’, ‘I’ was actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological ‘ego’ overlaying a psychic ‘being’. Then what ‘I’ did, voluntarily and willingly, was to press the button which precipitated an – oft-times alarming but always thrilling – momentum that resulted in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What ‘I’ did was that ‘I’ dedicated myself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and intentionally sacrificed ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entity residing inside this body – ‘I’ was gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ was what ‘I’ held most dear. The extinction of identity – both an ego death and a soul death – is a welcome release into actuality. I am finally here. I discover that I have always been here ... I have never been anywhere else for there is nowhere else ... except illusion and into delusion. The ‘everyday reality’ and the ‘Greater Reality’ had their existence only in ‘my’ fertile imagination. Only this, the actual world, genuinely exists. This exquisite surprise brings with it delightful relief at the moment of mutation ... life is perfect after all. But, then again, has one not suspected this to be so all along? At the moment of freedom from the Human Condition there is a clear sense of ‘I have always known this’. Doubt is banished forever ... no more verification is required. All is self-evidently pure and perfect. Everything is indeed well. It is the greatest gift one can bestow upon oneself and others. RESPONDENT: You do claim though, that having ended it yourself, you can pass it on somehow, how so? RICHARD: Oh, very simply ... we are all fellow human beings. The only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Consequently I know your fear and aggression and nurture and desire intimately ... writing (talking) to you is no different to thinking (talking) about myself. It is called, in the jargon, relating. RESPONDENT: Yes, but it is the individual that senses the nature of the self fragments and changes. Words are removed from that, even though they can draw attention to something. RICHARD: Not so ... your knowledge of your consciousness is words. Writing, talking and thinking are all of the same ilk. It is feelings – emotions and passions and calentures – that are ‘beyond words’. If you are going to let notoriously unreliable feelings be your final arbiter of a personally salubrious and socially beneficial way of living your life ... then yes, words are indeed ‘removed from that’ . As it is often said by the proponents of this ‘Tried and True’ wisdom: ‘words are merely pointers’. But as the ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘tried and failed’ ... then any discerning intellect will no longer scorn words. It is only through words that peace-on-earth is possible. RESPONDENT: The basic question is can the ego be seen as a whole with all its qualities and seeing the truth of all that it ends. RICHARD: Oh yes ... indeed it can. Speaking personally, in 1980 I had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that lasted for four hours. In that four hours I lived the peace-on-earth that is already always here now ... and I saw that ‘I’ (an emotional-mental construct) was standing in the way of this actual freedom being apparent twenty four hours of the day. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’ for the social identity that ‘I’ was. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was a passionate construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an fabrication in the psyche ... a social identity which is its conscience. Once I had seen this, I then saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity ... what I later came to know as ‘ego’. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with an identity as ego ... and it was called being normal. When ‘I’ saw that this was all ‘I’ was ... I was no longer that. I was me ... this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic. Incidentally, that ecstasy proved to be my undoing – as far as actual freedom is concerned. Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order of things ... for an Absolute had been revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of peace and prosperity to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind. (As all this was happening, a passing thought occurred to me, which was briefly contemplated ... then banished: What was it that was observing these two other ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’? This trifling question was to be of immense benefit years later when I realised that I was living in a delusion and that there was an actual freedom lying beyond ... but that is another story). There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: If yes can your words position another to see that? RICHARD: Yes, but it requires the 100% cooperation of the other. I cannot be more interested in another’s freedom than they are. Having had nigh on eighteen years experience of talking to recalcitrant egos I have no intention of inspiring, enthusing or exhilarating anyone. I am more than happy to participate in another’s enquiry until they ‘get it’ and begin their voyage of discovery into their psyche – which is the human psyche – but it is their energy that is needed to vitalise their search. RESPONDENT: I’m not disputing possibility here I want to see the proof of the pudding, so to speak. RICHARD: Well, all my words are written in a style that stimulates and arouses interest (I have often been accused of being ‘passionate’ such is the evocative power of words!). Gaining another’s interest is but the preliminary stage. The other may become curious as to whether what is being conveyed can be applied to themselves ... and only here does the first step begin. Because only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person participating in their search for freedom for the first time in their life. This is because people mostly look to rearranging their beliefs and truths as being sufficient effort ... ‘I’ am willing to be free as long as ‘I’ can remain ‘me’. In other words: their notion of freedom is a ‘clip-on’. Then curiosity becomes fascination ... and then the fun begins. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to what others around one would classify as ‘obsession’. A 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is thus actively discouraged by one’s peers. Eventually one realises that one is on one’s own in this, the adventure of a life-time, and a peculiar pig-headed stubbornness to proceed against all odds ensues. Then one takes the penultimate step ... one abandons ‘humanity’. Freedom is then virtually guaranteed. RESPONDENT: If on the other hand you are saying that with an attentiveness to the ways of self-ego it can be allowed to wither of its own accord then basically we are in agreement. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT No. 19: When we go against what we know in our heart and stomach is the wrong thing to do; when we choose to do it anyway, we will suffer the guilt (some may not). It is certainly not a ‘belief’, as you suggest, that I am the initiator of a wrong or right action. It is a fact. How do I know I know it is a fact? I can only know that by listening to the feelings I get when I do it. It is wrong because it ‘feels’ wrong. It is not just something that I have to be told. This is the essence of right and wrong. Are you suggesting that there is no right and wrong, that right and wrong exist only by judgement brought on by conditioning? Surely not! RICHARD: After all your years of sincere self-investigation are you really going to go on record as saying that feelings are to be relied upon as the final arbiter for living a salubrious and sociable life? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... people have been living according to their feelings for millennia ... just look at the mess the world is in. Calenture is no better than the conditioned judgement you rightly put aside. ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. (Richard, List B, No. 19a, 18 July 1998). RESPONDENT: So is there a suggestion about the ‘absence’ of feelings for a ‘peaceful’ life? What about the Unabomber? I presume the Unabomber had no ‘guilt’. Is the world a mess because of ‘feelings’? Or the non understanding of these ‘feelings’? RICHARD: A partial absence of feelings – guilt, for example – leads to socially reprehensible acts ... like the Unabomber example you give. A sociopath (psychopath) has no feelings of shame or guilt ... and look what they get up to. It is the feelings that lie under the socially-imposed controls that need to be eliminated ... the deep feelings. These are the passions that all sentient beings are born with. It is the ‘being’ – the rudimentary self that arises out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and desire and nurture – that is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. It is through the ending of ‘being’ that one can live freely without either the animosity or anguish that epitomises the sense of identity that infiltrates from the affective faculties into the cognitive ... and needing to be controlled. A conscience is a social identity ... a psychological creation manufactured by society to act as a guardian over the wayward self one was born with. Everyone is born with a biologically coded instinctive drive for personal physical survival which, when one is operating and functioning with a group of people, is potentially a danger to the survival of other group members. Hence the need for moral rules and ethical laws to regulate the conduct of each person ... with appropriate rewards and punishments to ensure compliance. In a well-meant but ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, the social identity – a psychological guardian – is fabricated in an earnest endeavour to prevent the offences from happening in the first place. This ‘guardian’ is programmed with a set of values and charged with the role of acting as a conscience over the wayward self. A conscience is made up of a sure knowledge of what is Right or Wrong and Good or Bad ... as determined by each society. By and large this enterprise has proved to be effective – only a small minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner – but the price for this effectiveness is the lack of the ability to be unique. The lack of uniqueness results in a generalised suffering for all of ‘humanity’. ‘Humanity’ is faced with the invidious choice between curbing aggression and ensuring suffering, or curbing suffering and ensuring aggression ... or so it has been up until now. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to this culturally-imposed social identity ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a rudimentary self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity as is evidenced in a PCE. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. The virtual magnanimity endowed by pure intent obviates the necessity for a social identity, born out of society’s values, to be extant and controlling the wayward self with a societal conscience. Societal values are a psychological method of control. In actualism it is readily experienced and understood that Divine Compassion – which is born out of sorrow – is but a paltry substitute for the over-arching benevolence of the actual world. Similarly, Love Agapé is seen and known to be a pathetic surrogate for the actual intimacy of direct experiencing ... Love Agapé and Divine Compassion are deep feelings which the psychological or psychic identity within creates in order to sustain itself and perpetuate its self-centred existence. Love is born out of malice and is touted as being the cure-all for humankind’s failings because it imitates the intimacy of the actual via a feeling of oneness. The feeling of oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the self survives triumphant, only to wreak its havoc in the real world once again. Life can be a grim and glum business in the real world, for separation ceases only when the psychological and psychic entity inside the body – the ego and the soul – is extirpated. In actual freedom there is a universal magnanimity which is so vastly superior to petty forgiveness or pardon that any comparison is worthless. The self is what one is born with – it equates with being born in Sin, or being on the wheel of Karma – and can be dispensed with by a curious irrevocable occurrence, which eliminates the entire psyche, was triggered by an intense urge to evince and demonstrate what the universe was evidently capable of manifesting: the utter best in purity and perfection which all humans could have ever longed for. Blind nature, which endows all creatures with the instinct for survival, has now been superseded, paving the way for a truly edified species of fellow human beings to live together in complete peace and harmony. The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. One starts by dismantling the sense of social identity that has been overlaid, from birth onward, over the innate self until one is virtually free from all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. One can be virtually free from all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one thinks and feels oneself to be ... a wayward social identity careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is. One can become virtually free from all the insidious feelings – the emotions and passions – that fuel the mind and give credence to all the illusions and delusions and fantasies and hallucinations that masquerade as visions of ‘The Truth’. One can become virtually free of all that which has encumbered humans with misery and despair and live in a state of virtual freedom ... which is beyond ‘normal’ human expectations anyway. Then, and only then, can the day of destiny dawn wherein one becomes actually free. One will have obtained release from one’s fate and achieved one’s destiny ... and the world will be all the better for it. This, the third alternative, is now possible. * RESPONDENT: What is the difference between the state you described (that lasted 4 hours, and changed your being) and the permanent state you are in now? RICHARD: Apart from the obvious quantitative difference (on-going for the remainder of one’s natural life) there is a qualitative difference that is more than the outcome of permanence. In a PCE, the identity is merely in abeyance – not extinct – and this abeyant ‘me’ casts an ever-so-faint shadow over the purity of the perfection made apparent. This ever-so-slight pall is of little or no account, however, given the vast differentiation betwixt ‘reality’ and the actuality being evidenced and what one sees is, more or less, what one gets. The actual is so perfect, you see, that nothing ‘dirty’ can get in, as it were ... thus it needs no protection whatsoever. Consequently, the actual freedom is qualitatively different in that there is a safety and security here that has to be lived to be known ... in a PCE one will inevitably revert to ‘normal’ where menace and insecurity prevail. In an actual freedom – as distinct from a PCE – one is pristine, immaculate, impeccable, unimpeachable, unassailable, untouchable and so on as an absolute and irreversible fact. One is utterly harmless and totally reliable ... and peace-on-earth occurs effortlessly. RESPONDENT: After this ‘experience’ you concluded, or felt, that Richard had to go. RICHARD: It was so blatantly obvious, when ‘I’ saw ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ was (a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning social identity), that thought and feeling had no part to play ... because at the instant ‘I’ saw ‘myself’, an action that was not of ‘my’ doing occurred, and I was not that identity. It all happened of its own accord as a direct result of the ‘seeing’ ... and I was this very material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. I was living in this fairy-tale-like actual world, that all carbon-based life-forms live in (and could be aware of if only they realised it), which has the quality of a magical perfection and purity; everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous 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 – because we do not live in an inert universe. The infinitude that this very material universe is, is epitomised apperceptively as an immaculate consummation that has always been here, is always here and will always be here. Thus nothing is ‘going wrong’, has ever been ‘going wrong’ and will never be ‘going wrong’. This was what ‘I’ had been searching for – for 33 years – and the joke was that ‘I’ had not known that this is what ‘I’ had been searching for! Thus, when I reverted back to normal in the ‘real world’, ‘I’ knew, with the solid and irrefutable certainty of direct experience, that ‘I’ was standing in the way of the actual being apparent ... and ‘I’ had to go – become extinct – and not try to become something ‘better’. That is, ‘I’ just knew that ‘I’ could never, ever become perfect or be perfection. It was flagrantly evident that the only thing ‘I’ could do – the only thing ‘I’ had to do – was die (psychologically and psychically self-immolate) so that the already always existing perfection could become apparent. Naturally, there was a lot of thinking and feeling about it all – and discussion with one’s peers who all said it was not possible twenty four hours a day – yet there was an awareness that predominated all the while that disregarded all this thinking and feeling and which simply and wordlessly said ‘THIS IS IT’ no matter what conclusions and decisions were reached. When one has experienced the best ... one cannot settle for second-best. RICHARD (to No. 21): I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s feelings, thoughts and actions as being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and to others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations – which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway – then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life. (Richard, List B, No. 21, 18 October 1998) RESPONDENT: First off, Richard, your wallpaper decorating is wonderful! Thank you for sharing your talent. RICHARD: I am pleased that you like it ... but it required no talent at all. I went wandering around the Web-Site dedicated to Mr. Franklin Jones’ delusion a few weeks ago, for some telling information to present to one of his misguided devotees, and pinched it from there. RESPONDENT: Second, I have been following this thread and find easy agreement with much of what you are on about. What though is to be made of the idea of morality being raised up to an exercise in relative functionality? It seems from here that if it is sensibility and silliness that are to be the pans of balance on which actions are weighed, where then would the scale fall when the entire enterprise of ‘being alive’ is put to it. What sense is there in being alive at all? RICHARD: Oh, every sense in the universe ... which means infinite sense. You cannot get bigger than that, now, can you? You see, I am this very material universe experiencing itself in all its magnificence as a sensate and reflective human being ... that is the sense of being alive. Also, as me, this universe can be intelligent ... and that is very sensible in view of the proliferation of solipsists these days. RESPONDENT: That which is alive can hardly breath without bringing harm or destruction to some aspect of the environment, yes? The whole exercise of personal existence must be a heavy measure on the side of silliness when a larger view is taken toward its effect. Does it not seem silly that this body should eat while another starves? RICHARD: The very fact that one is alive means consuming nutrients ... and staying alive means that something, somewhere, must die in order to supply these nutrients. This is a fact of life ... and the marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on ... but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. Most people think and feel that choice implies freedom – having the freedom to choose – but this is not the case. Freedom lies in seeing the obvious, and in seeing the obvious there is no choice, no deliberation, no agonising over the ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ judgement. In the freedom of seeing the fact there is only action. When it comes to the consumption of nutrients there are many and various beliefs one can hold dearly to. There are people who will not eat red meat at all ... only white meat and fish. Then there are people who will not eat any flesh of warm-blooded animals at all ... only fish and reptiles. Then there are people (vegetarians) who will not eat any meat at all, but will consume eggs and dairy products. Then there are people (vegans) who will eat only vegetables, grain and seed. Then there are people (fruitarians) who will only eat fruit. Then – as we go into myth and fantasy – there are those who live on water and air ... and finally those who live on air only. Some vegetarians maintain that as a carrot (for example) does not scream audibly when it is pulled from the ground there is no distress caused by the consumption of vegetables. Yet the carrot indubitably dies slowly by being extracted from its life-support system – the ground is its home – and is this not distressing on some level of a living, growing organism? It all depends upon the level, or degree, of ‘aliveness’ that one ascribes to things. Vegans, for instance, will not consume eggs as this prevents an incipient life from being born. Fruitarians go one step further and say that, as the consumption of carrots prevents them from going to seed and sprouting new life, vegetables are to be eschewed entirely. Then, as the eating of grain and seeds also prevent potential life-forms from growing, they will eat only the flesh of the fruit that surrounds the kernel and plant out the embryo plant-form (I have been a fruitarian so I know full well what I am speaking of.) The obvious fact is clearly demonstrated by taking all this to its ultimate consideration. What will one do – as a fruitarian causing no pain or the taking of life of anyone or anything – about those pesky things like mosquitoes, sand-flies, cockroaches, rats, mice and other ‘vermin’ that invade my house? Put up screens? What about outside? Will I slap them dead ... or just shoo them away? What will one do if attacked by a snake, a crocodile, a shark, a lion and so on? Do as the Revered Scriptures say and turn the other cheek? Will I humbly submit to my fate and be mauled severely myself – or even killed – simply because of a religious injunction, a moral scruple, a noble ideal, a virtuous belief, a passionate opinion, a deeply held ethical theory? In other words, have animals and insects been given the right, by some inscrutable god, to do with me whatsoever they wish? Is my survival dependent upon the non-existent benevolence of all those sentient beings that I am not going to cause distress to? What then about germs, bacteria, bacillus, microbes, pathogens, phages, viruses and so on? Are they not entitled to remain alive and pain free? If one takes medication for disease, one is – possibly painfully – killing off the microscopic creatures that one’s body is the host too. Some religions – the Jain religion in India, for example – has its devout members wearing gauze over their nose and mouths to prevent insects from flying in and they even carry small brooms to sweep the path as they walk so that they will not accidentally step on some creature. It can really get out of hand. For instance, small-pox has been eradicated from the world by scientists as a means of saving countless human lives ... is this somehow ‘Wrong’? What is ‘Right’ in regards to what I do in order to stay alive? If I do none of these things then I will be causing pain and suffering to myself – and I am a sentient being too. It is an impossible scenario, when pursued to its ultimate conclusion. And then there is the matter of one’s fellow human beings. Some of them – in fact at times a lot of them – are desirous of invading the country that one is living peacefully in, with the avowed intent of killing, torturing, raping, pillaging and subjugating oneself and one’s fellow citizens. If one holds a strong and passionate belief in not causing any pain and suffering to other sentient beings then one must be more than a fruitarian ... one must be a pacifist as well. This amounts to hanging out a sign – if everybody else in the country one lives in adopts this specific belief – which says, in effect: ‘Please feel free to invade us, we will not fight back, for we hold firmly to the principle of not causing pain and suffering to any sentient being whatsoever’ (the Tibetan situation is a particular case in point.) Thus anarchy would rule the world – all because of a belief system handed down by the Saints and the Sages, the Messiahs and the Avatars, the Redeemers and the Saviours, the Prophets and the Priests, century after century. All this is predicated upon there being an enduring ‘I’ that is going to survive the death of the body and go on into the paradisiacal After-Life that is ‘my’ post-mortem reward for being a ‘good’ person during ‘my’ sojourn on this planet earth. It is ‘I’ who is the ‘believer’, it is ‘I’ who will cause this flesh-and-blood body to go into all manner of contorted and convoluted emotion-backed thoughts as to what is ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’, what is ‘Good’ and what is ‘Bad’. If it were not for the serious consequences of all this passionate dreaming it would be immensely humorous, for ‘I’ am not actual ... ‘I’ am an illusion. And any grand ‘I’ that supposedly survives death by being ‘Timeless and Spaceless’, ‘Unborn and Undying’, ‘Immortal and Eternal’ am but a delusion born out of that illusion. Thus any After-Life is a fantasy spun out of a delusion born out of an illusion ... as I am so fond of saying. When ‘I’ am no longer extant there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs. As there is no ‘believer’, there is no ‘I’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is automatically harmless ... which does not mean abstaining from killing. It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to kill or not kill something or someone, as the circumstances require. Eating meat, for example, is an act of freedom, based upon purely practical considerations such as the taste bud’s predilection, or the body’s ability to digest the food eaten, or meeting the standards of hygiene necessary for the preservation of decaying flesh, or the availability of sufficient resources on this planet to provide the acreage necessary to support the conversion of vegetation into animal protein. It has nothing whatsoever with sparing sentient beings any distress. Thus ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. The feeling of ‘Right and Wrong’ is born out of holding on to a belief system that is impossible to live ... as all belief systems are. I am not trying to persuade anyone to eat meat or not eat meat ... I leave it entirely up to the individual as to what they do regarding what they eat. It is the belief about being ‘Right or Wrong’ that is insidious, for this is how you are manipulated by those who seek to control you ... they are effectively beating you with a psychological stick. And the particularly crafty way they go about it is that they get you to do the beating to yourself. Such self-abasement is the hall-mark of any religious humility ... a brow-beaten soul earns its way into some god’s good graces by self-castigating acts of redemption. Holding fervently to any belief is a sure sign that there is a wayward ‘I’ that needs to be controlled. Give me ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ any day. RESPONDENT: You talk about amorality as being a remarkable freedom. Yet you appear to want peace on earth. RICHARD: Morality is only ever needed as an antidote to immorality; where there is no immorality, there is no morality. Whilst one is busy being moral (desperately covering-up one’s immorality) peace-on-earth is nowhere to be seen. For example, when one ceases to nurse malice and sorrow to one’s bosom one is no longer immoral and the need for morality vanishes and peace-on-earth is enabled via amorality ... a remarkable freedom. However, you say ‘yet you appear to want peace on earth’ as if peace-on-earth is something opposed to a remarkable freedom ... whereas peace-on-earth is the most remarkable freedom. It is perfection personified. RESPONDENT: I agree with you – no more malice and sorrow. When we all live that way then yes – we have peace. You can do that yourself – remove malice and sorrow – but how do you get others to do the same? RICHARD: By example and not just precept. Which means: putting one’s money where one’s mouth is (practice what one preaches). No more ‘inconsistencies; no more contradictions; no more hypocrisies; no more justifications; no more lame-duck excuses ... and so on. RESPONDENT: What you are seeking is impossible in a dualistic world. You want ‘good’ without ‘bad’. RICHARD: Not so ... when both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ disappear (which is the end of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety) peace-on-earth becomes apparent. There is no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ here in actuality; and because there is no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the actual world of sensuous delight – where one lives as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. RESPONDENT: You want just ‘day’ and no ‘night’. This is the nature of this world of form. There will always be both sides. RICHARD: This is sloppy analogising. Both ‘day’ and ‘night’ are physical events which exist independent of human thought and feeling ... whereas ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are emotionally-backed mental constructs based on extinguishable instinctual passions. That is, ‘day’ and ‘night’ endure for as long as the planet earth revolves and the sun glows hot ... whereas ‘good’ and ‘bad’ exist only whilst one nurses malice and sorrow to one’s bosom so as to antidotally generate the compensatory love and compassion. RESPONDENT: And myself trapped in the wants of my organism, which does not die even when it sees nature as it is. RICHARD: In my experience it is possible to be free, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body ... the pure intent of naiveté is essential. RESPONDENT: Do you agree that your experience (advice) may be not applicable to me, because we are living in different conditions? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: What I want to say is, honestly Richard, I have always seen the world like you are describing (if I am understanding the things you say correctly) but because of exactly ‘what it is’ I am eating the rotten part of this apple. RICHARD: The apple is rotten to the core. RESPONDENT: So I can’t feel content. I am trapped in a complicated system human beings have devised that results in my loss of energy. RICHARD: There is much more to it than ‘a complicated system human beings have devised’ ... all the different types of ‘a complicated system human beings have devised’ or socialisation in general (peer-group conditioning, parental conditioning and societal conditioning in general) are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over innumerable aeons to seek to curb the instinctual animal passions. 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 instinctual passions – 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 as an antidote, as compensating pacifiers ... and the investigation ceases. 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 below or behind the conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which necessitated the controls (conditioning) in the first place. Thus the conditioning can prevent the investigation of the human condition itself. RESPONDENT: There is something I am unable to see. So I have been unable to ascertain whether the Self is an instinctive creation in all conscious animals, or instilled in the human brain during childhood at the urgings of parents and society. RICHARD: There is much more to one’s background than conditioning ... one begins to comprehend that all the different types of socialisation (peer-group conditioning, parental conditioning and societal conditioning in general) are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over innumerable aeons to seek to curb the instinctual animal passions. 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 instinctual passions – 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 as an antidote, as compensating pacifiers ... and the investigation ceases. 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 below or behind the conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which necessitated the controls (conditioning) in the first place. Thus the conditioning can prevent the investigation of the human condition itself. RICHARD: Any and all imprinting which happens after birth imprints itself onto, into, and as, this already existing basic set of survival passions that form themselves into being the intuitive presence which, at root, is what any ‘me’ ultimately is ... as does any and all societal, familial, and peer-group conditioning. RESPONDENT: This would be a major departure from k, right? RICHARD: It would be indeed ... a radical departure, in fact. So far I have only been able to come across 15 passages where Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti uses the word ‘genetic’ and nowhere on those 15 occasions does he come even anywhere near comprehending the implications and ramifications involved in the affective feelings being rooted in the genetically-encoded instincts ... rather than in conditioning (be it societal, familial, peer-group or environmental conditioning). RESPONDENT: I agree his knowledge of the language of genetics was marginal. RICHARD: So is mine – I am but a lay-person and not a geneticist – yet it takes only simple observation to comprehend that basic instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, are part and parcel of the biological package ... I could see this whilst still in childhood even. RESPONDENT: I don’t think it matters. His distinction between functional thought and psychological thought can easily cover your distinction between ‘affective feelings’ and conditioning. RICHARD: If I may point out? As the distinction I draw is between biological inheritance (that which is innate) and conditioning (that which is acquired) his distinction between ‘functional thought and psychological thought’ comes nowhere even near covering it. RESPONDENT: Conditioning is the entire psychological package (both thinking and feeling). RICHARD: Yet conditioning needs substance to latch onto, sink into, and be ... if it were not for the innate survival passions such conditioning would wash off, like water off a duck’s back, before it could get a hold. RESPONDENT: Rational functioning of our genetically inherited faculties is the sane package. RICHARD: Are you saying that instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, are not only a sane package but would function rationally if it were not for conditioning? See also (Sundry, Facts and Groupthink, Peasant Mentality). (Richard’s Personal Web-page, Various, Formation and Persistence of Social Identity). SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON SOCIAL IDENTITY (Part Two) 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