# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Humanity RESPONDENT: I remember a correspondence where you said something like: ‘it took 5 years to unravel the legacy of Richard the identity in relation to ‘his’ family’. RICHARD: I found two references to my then-children which include the word ‘legacy’ ... here is the one you are referring to: • [Richard]: ‘Speaking personally, ‘I’ lost everything: ‘my’ wife, ‘my’ children, ‘my’ business, ‘my’ house, ‘my’ car ... the lot. But, most importantly, I lost ‘me’ ... and they were ‘his’ wife, children, business, house, car and so on, anyway ... not mine. I inherited all ‘his’ stuff when ‘he’ disappeared, and I took five years to taper-off all of ‘his’ legacy. Nowadays, being me as-I-am, I have an entirely new life that is infinitely better ... vastly superior. That lifestyle was ‘his’ choice, not mine, and suited ‘his’ temperament only’. (Richard, General Correspondence, Alan, #children). And here is the other one ... perhaps more relevant to what your female friend is enquiring about: • [Richard]: ‘... for the first 34 years of my life I was sane (the ordinary, normal, common, or everyday sanity of people in general all over the world) and peace-on-earth was nowhere to be found; for the next 11 years I was in a transformed state of being (which I gradually came to realise was an institutionalised insanity) called The Absolute or Truth, God, Being, Presence, Self, and so on, which was exemplified by love – Love Agapé – compassion, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, euphoria, goodness, beauty, oneness, unity, wholeness and a timeless, spaceless, formless immortal otherness which was a peace that passeth all understanding ... yet all the while peace-on-earth was still nowhere to be found. By ‘institutionalised’ I mean altered states of consciousness that have become institutions over the aeons: instituted as being states of consciousness which are universally accepted as the summum bonum of human existence ... a model to either live by, aspire to, become, or be. • [Co-Respondent]: ‘(...) How are you with children, after you became insane? • [Richard]: ‘For most of the 11 years I was more than loving with children, more than compassionate, as I was love, I was compassion ... or, better put, there was only love, there was only compassion. At least one of the children in my care, custody and control at the time (I was a single parent for a number of years) bears the legacy of that era to this very day due to the powerful influence of such intense affection. (...) These days children are, like everybody else, my fellow human beings and fellowship regard epitomises all interaction: with the cessation of the institutionalised insanity, and its pathetic intimacy, an actual intimacy lies open all around. It is impossible to not like somebody, whatever the mischief is they get up to, as an actual intimacy does not switch on and off and operates unilaterally in regards every man, woman and child without exception ... nobody is special because everybody is special simply by being alive as a flesh and blood body’. (Richard, List B, No. 19l, #sane). RESPONDENT: I am interested in a more in-depth explanation of this topic by yourself. RICHARD: Okay ... nationalism, and thus patriotism with all its heroic evils, is an amplified form of tribalism: tribalism is an augmentation of clanism; clanism, being familistical, is but a much larger extension of the extended-family; and the extended-family stems, of course, from where blood is the thickest it can ever possibly be than water ... to wit: the core family group itself. Now, although the root cause of war itself is the instinctual passions in action, the primary impulse for warfare at large is, more often than not, none other than kinship bonds (or any extension thereof no matter how attenuated in modern-day nations) and yet the ties of consanguinity are widely held in high esteem, almost to the point of being subject to taboo, and thus generally exempt from an investigation into the human condition (as is evidenced from time-to-time both on this mailing list and others, for example, by derogatory comments about the way I interact with the fellow human beings who happen to be my progeny). Here in this actual world, where everybody is special simply by being alive as a flesh and blood body, kinship ties/ family bonds are nowhere to be found ... which means that, not only is the root cause of war eliminated, the fundamental impulse for warfare at large, generally speaking, has been similarly eradicated. It is all so simple, here. JAMES: Are you saying that when the time is right I simply abandon the instincts? RICHARD: One abandons ‘humanity’. And one knows ‘when the time is ripe’ because one finds out these things as they are happening or after they have happened and the realisation that this abandon is actually happening is stimulating, to say the least (there are weird feelings such as ‘a rat deserting a sinking ship’ to feel for example). One will no longer belong anymore to the largest group there is ... ‘humanity’ (which is way, way past all gender groups, racial groups, age groups and other social groups). One realises that one is on one’s own in this, the adventure of a life-time, as an actuality. * RICHARD: And why will ‘I’ not abandon the known path that does not deliver the goods ... even when ‘I’ know that the known path does not deliver the goods? JAMES: ‘I’ know that ‘I’ can survive on the known path because that is who ‘I’ am. There is fear of not surviving if I abandon the known path. RICHARD: Is this not another way of saying that, because of ‘my’ fear of death, ‘I’ will carry on suffering for the rest of ‘my’ life? * RICHARD: As ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ then ‘my’ path is the path of suffering ... which is humanity’s path is it not? And, as humanity is suffering and suffering is humanity, is it not equally true that humanity is also addicted to suffering? And further to that point ... have you ever noticed that humanity reveres its addiction so much that escape is taboo? JAMES: Interesting. It does make sense that humanity is addicted to suffering but I am still not sure if it is addiction to suffering or if it is fear of not surviving. The fear of ‘me’ not surviving could be causing the addiction to ‘me’ suffering. RICHARD: I should have put scare quotes around the word humanity as the word itself can refer to two different things: in its all-humankind meaning it is a more comprehensive word for what the word group refers to (which ranges through family, band, clan, tribe, race, nation and species) and, just as the group’s survival traditionally takes precedence over an individual’s survival, the group’s fears of not surviving have priority over an individual’s fears of not surviving. When fear comes into the picture, however, the word humanity no longer refers to all people collectively but takes on a life of its own, as it were, and becomes an entity in its own right in the same way ‘I’ am an entity inside the flesh and blood body. And just as ‘I’ suffer because ‘I’ exist (suffering is ‘my’ very nature) ‘humanity’ suffers because it exists (suffering is very nature of ‘humanity’) and thus a virtue is made out of suffering because the survival of ‘humanity’ is at risk ... hence the taboo on escape Yet ‘humanity’ has no existence outside of the human psyche. RESPONDENT: However, this capacity also exists along side the innate defence capacity to develop self severing, security oriented views of oneself and life that result in the operation of strategies for self aggrandisement, aggression, destruction, materialistic acquisition, longing, fearful avoidance, and squelching joy and loving. For reasons we do not understand, perhaps for factors related to the survival of the species, humans seem to be overly endowed with the latter defensive capacity which is seen to begin crystallising into definite patterns of behaviour as the child reaches the so called age of self awareness at 14 months or so and is influenced by social influences which further stimulate this defensive nature. RICHARD: Okay, so we can now see that an actual freedom from fear and aggression has never existed, then. What you have just described above does not jell with what you wrote before: ‘I afraid your scenario paints the picture of humans born as monsters to be tamed’. It is not my ‘scenario’, it is a fact that all sentient beings are born with fear and aggression ... this is blind nature’s way of ensuring the survival of the species. This is commonly called the ‘Human Condition’ and most people will sagely tell one that ‘you can’t change human nature’. To say that, or to pretend that humans are not ‘born monsters’ is to shut the door on investigation. The inhumanity of humankind is legendary, by now, and to not be able to see it in infants and children is but a denial of the actuality. The seeing of a fact is actual wisdom, and out of that direct experience of the actuality of the Human Condition there is action. This action is the beginning of the ending of the ‘self’ one was born with. RESPONDENT: Apparently it is only with a great deal of pain, fear, and diligent attentiveness to our inner attitudes, opinions, predispositions, feelings, and overt behaviour that we can begin to be aware of the magnitude of this inner defensive structure. For some it is a lengthy journey. For others it is a rather rapidly developing ‘dark night of the soul’ whereby this structure is experienced in depth, abandoned and the world experienced through the eyes of bliss, beauty, love, and carefree enthusiasm where everything appears beautiful just as it is. RICHARD: One’s ‘pain, fear ... inner attitudes, opinions, predispositions, feelings, and overt behaviour’ are humanity’s ‘pain, fear, inner attitudes, opinions, predispositions, feelings and overt behaviour’. For ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. It is a fact that ‘I’ am not as unique as ‘I’ would like to think and feel that ‘I’ am. ‘I’ am but a carbon copy of ‘everybody else’ and ‘everybody else’ is but a carbon copy of ‘me’. Seeing this is the beginning of the end of ‘me’ ... and the ending of ‘me’ is the ending of ‘humanity’. The ‘dark night of the soul’ is only experienced by religious and spiritual seekers, who wish to perpetuate themselves for all eternity. I suggest that this is a very selfish and self-centred approach to life on earth – something that all religiosity and spirituality is guilty of. The quest to secure one’s place in ‘Eternity’ is unambiguously selfish ... peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined soul after physical death. So much for the humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and humaneness. All Religious and Spiritual Quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to exist for ever and a day. All Religious and Spiritual Leaders fall foul of this existential dilemma. They pay lip-service to the notion of self-sacrifice – weeping crocodile tears at noble martyrdom – whilst selfishly pursuing Immortality. The root cause of all the ills of humankind can be sheeted home to this single, basic fact: the overriding importance of the survival of self as a soul. All this gets played out in the human psyche – and not in this actual world. For those rare few who succeed, their reward for enduring the ‘dark night of the soul’ is bliss, ecstasy, euphoria, love, compassion, beauty, truth and a few other glittering baubles ... which also only have an existence in the human psyche. But they do not get a ‘carefree enthusiasm’, for they are driven to ‘save the world’ and to ‘set mankind free’. Nor do they get an actual freedom from the Human Condition ... and certainly not peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Everything else is wishful thinking, in my opinion. RICHARD: And where would the human race be without ‘wishful thinking’, eh? Still sitting in a cave, dressed in animal skins and gnawing on a brontosaurus bone? In investigating my nature I am investigating human nature (the human condition) ... and one is one’s own ‘guinea-pig’ because such an investigation is participatory observation ... the ‘investigator’ is both participant and experimenter at one and the same time Why not approach it this way: as I am a human being – and being born and raised in what is called the normal way – after allowing for idiosyncrasies any study of one’s own psyche is a study of the human psyche? Therefore, any verifiably common discoveries are valid for all peoples, given due allowance for gender, racial and era variance. Through face-to-face interaction and through reading and watching media it is entirely reasonable to deduce that the three ways of experiencing the world of people, things and events (sensate, cerebral and affective) is common to all human beings. And, essentially, there is no difference between English malice and sorrow and African malice and sorrow and Indian malice and sorrow and so on and so on. (I use the generally accepted convention of ‘malice’ and ‘sorrow’ as delineated by most religions and/or philosophies, that fall under the umbrella term ‘The Human Condition’, purely for convenience. In Christianity, for example, the word ‘suffering’ means the same affective feelings as the word ‘sorrow’ does. Similarly, the ‘Golden Rule’ (found in all religions) known in English as ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ points to the feelings covered under the catch-all word ‘malice’. Basically, ‘malice’ is what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on) and ‘sorrow’ (sadness, loneliness, melancholy, grief, masochism and so on) is what one does to oneself ... as a broad generalisation). Speaking personally, in my investigations I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. I found ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which is the instinctual rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings (which ‘original face’ is what gives rise to the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all other sentient beings). This is a very ancient genetic memory; 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. Hence: ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: And I investigate that mess not to improve the world, or bring peace-on-earth, but because I don’t like this mess that I am in. It is too disturbing, too annoying, and wasteful. RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... but through your interactions with other peoples – and especially on Mailing Lists such as this – do you not find that other people, more or less, do not ‘like this mess that they are in’ because ‘it is too disturbing, too annoying, and wasteful’ also? What makes you think that you are so special? In other words, whether you like it or not, any investigation you do into yourself is going to be of benefit to ‘the world’ and will be moving towards ‘peace-on-earth’ anyway. Why not acknowledge the fact and give your investigation the impetus it deserves? Much more productive than arguing over ‘selfishness’ versus ‘unselfishness’, eh? * RESPONDENT: You seem to be arguing from your own experience – how you perceive the humanity to be the same everywhere. That argument, as coming from your own experience, is irrefutable. How can I argue against what is true to you? However, I disagree that science has empirically demonstrated universality of human experiences. Science might have demonstrated the universality of human emotions, but human experiences are intensely unique. RICHARD: First off ... you say ‘science might have demonstrated the universality of human emotions’ ... has it or has it not? Can you give a straight answer without the conditional ‘might have’ conceptual escape clause? Second, you have, as always, my concurrence in regards the ‘dissimilarities’ between each person’s individual experience (as detailed further above) ... yet as there is something so fundamental, so primal, so basic as instinctual passions and their derivative human emotions that underpins, permeates and drives each person’s individual experience, then the ‘dissimilarities’ all have an oh-so-common flavour. to wit: malice and sorrow and their antidotally generated love and compassion. RESPONDENT: Just as your experience of the humanity having a common denominator is only that – your own personal experience. No two people live under the same skin and there is nothing universal about human experiences. We are, all of us, each and every moment of our lives, different. You asked, if that is so, how is communication possible? We communicate our differences. We are different even to ourselves every time. In communicating our differences (i.e., how we think, feel, experience, differently), we constantly push the envelop of knowledge which has been the hallmark of our species and the reason for our survival. RICHARD: Perhaps it not so obvious to one who sits in an ivory tower ... but dissociation does not eliminate but makes unreal that which causes human suffering. Perhaps you may recall the ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ hit of the ‘60’s: ‘I am a rock’? Apart from being damn good music with exquisite lyrical over-tones, the words speak well of human experience as you describe it (but it is poetry of course). There is life after feelings ... but not through denial and detachment. RESPONDENT: Since we are constantly changing beings, religion is a lie. Science, on the other hand, can take our understanding of ourselves only thus far. Beyond which, we dwell upon the world within. Hence, meditating upon the world within is the only viable way to understand ourselves. And that understanding, by its own nature, will be one person, one instance at a time. RICHARD: Hmm, peoples are already detached from actuality ... that is the problem. To practice meditation (which is conscious detachment and withdrawal) is to be twice removed from actuality. But even ‘the world within’ is remarkably common to those who successfully access it. Yet even this extreme dissociation does not eliminate ... as there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow freedom from the affective feelings. The ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘tried and failed’. RICHARD: Even if you know ‘nothing of Buddhism, Hinduism, and very little of K’ and even if you ‘have no religion, never had one’ this what you write, for all your disclaiming, is mystical ... and ‘apperceptive awareness’ is not. RESPONDENT: When I say ‘choiceless’ it means that is all-inclusive. RICHARD: Whereas when I say ‘choiceless awareness’ I use Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s meaning ... and given that he made the phrase popular he ought to know best what it means. If you have given it another meaning than his – like ‘all-inclusive’ – but then write ‘all there is, is contained, or thought by this universal mind that moulded everything that is, was, will be, manifested, non-manifested’ then surely you must comprehend that you leave me no alternative but to understand that by ‘all-inclusive’ you are meaning the same-same thing as ‘wholeness’ or ‘unity’ and so on. Apperceptive awareness is not an awareness that ‘all there is, is contained, or thought by this universal mind that moulded everything that is, was, will be, manifested, non-manifested’ because the ‘universal mind’ is the human mind (‘humanity’) writ large. Apperception is when one steps out of ‘humanity’ ... not when one ‘steps out of the stream’. * RESPONDENT: No. The mind of humanity is one of the ‘things’ within the universal container or mind. RICHARD: Ahh ... this, then, is the difference betwixt ‘apperceptive awareness’ and ‘choiceless awareness’. Apperceptive awareness is when the ‘universal container or mind’ disappears along with the ‘mind of humanity’ ... whereas ‘choiceless awareness’ is when the ‘mind of humanity’ is realised to be the ‘universal container or mind’ made manifest. In other words: ‘Be still and know that I am God’. * RESPONDENT: This is not very clear yet. Because the universal mind is not the end of the line. It is only the ‘subtle matter’ from what any existence or not, is ‘made’. It is the ultimate tool. The ultimate ground is ‘beyond it’. RICHARD: Ahh ... this ‘ultimate ground’ would be the same-same as what some call ‘the ground of being’? Or, as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti would say: ‘Not the god of the churches, the mosques, the synagogues – but that which is sacred, holy’. RESPONDENT: If the mind of humanity disappears, human beings disappear. RICHARD: The flesh and blood human disappear? Or the ‘human’ that ‘I’ feel and think that ‘I’ am inside this flesh and blood body disappears? RESPONDENT: If the universal mind disappears ... only god knows what would remain. RICHARD: Do you mean ‘god knows’ literally or as an expression (as in ‘nobody knows’)? RESPONDENT: But, maybe you could clear this ... I find it interesting. Words must be perfectly defined at this point ... and onwards. But let’s see. Mind of humanity is a fragment of the universal mind, made manifest as humanity. RICHARD: By ‘mind of humanity’ I was referring to the human mind (‘humanity’) writ large ... the psychological and psychic ‘mind’ inhabiting the flesh and blood brain (popularly known as the ‘lizard brain’) like a parasite. When ‘I’ disappear (psychologically and psychically self-immolate) the ‘mind of humanity’ disappears, in one flesh and blood body, and there is an actual freedom from the human condition. The already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent and one is walking around in the literal paradise that this verdant planet is ... simply hanging in the infinitude of this very material and perfect universe. The ‘mind of humanity’ and the ‘universal mind’ and the ‘ground of being’ are a product of ‘my’ mind ... not the other way around. RESPONDENT: This is the way I see it. For example: there might be other minds manifested, which would manifest other beings, eventually non-humans, but this last part may be taken as speculation. If you say that the mind of mankind disappears ... I don’t understand. RICHARD: The ‘mind of humanity’ is simply ‘my’ mind collectively ... ‘I am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is me’. When ‘I’ self-immolate, ‘humanity’ disappears out of this flesh and blood body. There may very well be carbon-based life forms elsewhere, but until space exploration is such that that is discovered ... this planet earth is the only known place where the universe is experiencing itself as an intelligent flesh and blood human being. There is no ‘natural intelligence’ running this universe. RESPONDENT: ... ‘even though (except for a handful of people) virtually everyone tells me that I have got it all wrong’. This statement is very imprecise, and leaves room for misinterpretation, hence a distortion. What do you mean by ‘virtually everyone’? All of humanity? All on this list? All that you meet and whom speak to you? RICHARD: Okay ... to be precise, it is not only 99.9% of the people whom I interact with face-to-face or via the written word, but includes virtually everyone living and dead. I am well aware, that for anyone listening whose psyche is still in place, there is a psychic dimension wherein myriads of atavistic ‘voices’ are insistently whispering ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’. Mostly people experience this as being that they ‘intuitively know’ that Richard has ‘got it wrong’ or that a ‘still, quiet voice silently speaks the truth within’ and so on. RESPONDENT: Your statement could be read as: ‘I do not experience being beleaguered, even though [all of humanity] [everyone I meet] [everyone on this list] tells me that I have got it wrong’. Do you see what I am saying? Even if your words were confined to the people with which you have corresponded with on the list, I have seen a lot of people question you about your claims, but I would hardly say that they have all told you that you ‘have got it wrong’. Even though you made a statement that you are not beleaguered, the undercurrent of the statement says otherwise. Didn’t you write once that you are a firm believer in communicating with precision? RICHARD: I do like to be as clear as it is possible to be in communicating ... yet many of the words in any dictionary have two or more meanings ascribed to them. I generally like to explain which significance I am giving to that word, if that particular connotation is not readily apparent from the context of the sentence or paragraph or the subject being discussed, so as to obviate misunderstanding. Given the controversial nature of the topic, misunderstanding (through cognitive dissonance) is inevitable. As what I am living is unnatural it is predictable that it be received as me having ‘got it wrong’... and what you call the ‘undercurrent of that statement’ conveys this. RESPONDENT: The question I am asking is simple: what is already happening now? RICHARD: To be more precise, I put it this way: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: How is it more precise to include ‘I’ and focusing on this moment? RICHARD: Because it is honest to acknowledge ‘my’ part in stuffing up this moment – the only moment there actually is – by ‘my’ presence. RESPONDENT: Is this excluding others? RICHARD: No ... 6.0 billion people are avoiding the issue as well. RESPONDENT: Other moments? RICHARD: One does not have to exclude ‘other moments’ ... there is only this moment in actuality. RESPONDENT: Other people? RICHARD: Any investigation into ‘my’ psyche is an investigation into the ‘human’ psyche ... being born of blind nature’s genetic blue-print, ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. ALAN: All of these had some hope of continuation of ‘their’ existence in the imaginary afterlife. ‘I’ know that, by committing ‘self’ immolation, no such possibility exists. Hence the need for altruism. I now understand perfectly, what you meant when you wrote of that moment in 1981 (Appendix 1 – Richard’s Journal). RICHARD: You must be referring to this passage: • [Richard]: ‘About six weeks prior to the sixth of September 1981 I had a revelation that I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again, and that I was to prepare myself for it (...) The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion. The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before; I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very ‘being’. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was IT! was such a simple thing ... all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain ... in the top of the brain-stem. I likened it to turning over a long-playing record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again’. It was not just leaving ‘family and friends’, though, for to be free of the human condition is to abandon ‘humanity’ completely (leaving them to their fate, as it were, whilst one achieved one’s destiny) ... then, and only then, will one no longer be one of the ‘blind leading the blind’. ALAN: ‘I’ must say goodbye to all my friends and relatives, as no trace of ‘me’ will remain. Not even a little bit to take pride and glory in ‘my’ achievement. Shit, ‘I’ will not even be able to look down from heaven and say ‘that was me!’. RICHARD: Ha ... well said. I have oft-times put it this way: the extinction of ‘me’ is the ultimate sacrifice ‘I’ can make to ensure the possibility of peace-on-earth for not only this body but for that body and every body. Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are ... and a vast stillness lies all around, abounding with purity and perfection. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. Yet for me to be able to be here now at all was a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. ALAN: So, yes, altruism can be the only motive. ‘I’ do this for the benefit of my fellow human beings, or ‘I’ do this not at all. The only question which remains – do ‘I’ have the necessary intestinal fortitude to proceed? RICHARD: No ... because no one has ‘the necessary intestinal fortitude to proceed’ before they proceed: it comes in sufficient quality, and only as required by the circumstances, as one proceeds. The question is: what is preventing ‘me’ from proceeding? VINEETO: Richard, reading through your correspondence on the Krishnamurti list I have come across something that I cannot grasp. [Correspondent No. 12]: ‘If the many are reduced to one, what is the one reduced to?’ [Richard]: ‘When it is understood that the one is the epitome of the many and that ‘I’ am the ‘many’ and the ‘many’ is ‘me’ ... ‘I’ self-immolate at the core of ‘being’. Then I am this material universe’s infinitude experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. A desirable side-effect is peace-on-earth’. What does it mean, when you say ‘I’ am the ‘many’ and the ‘many’ is ‘me’? RICHARD: In the context that the quote was written, I was adapting my oft-repeated phrase ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ to fit in with the subject matter and focus the discussion away from its predictable and self-serving end-point (‘we are all one’). It was also apt as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was well known for his ‘you are the world’ saying ... which is probably where, years ago, I plagiarised the phrase from anyway. VINEETO: There was another quote in your correspondence with Alan, where you said: ‘Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen hundreds 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’. I have taken it simply that ‘me’, my instinctual programming, is as much part of my DNA as it has been the case in every human being on the planet since ‘the beginning of time’. RICHARD: Yes ... biologically all sentient beings are – very fundamentally only – identical. The survival instincts (fear and aggression and nurture and desire in some form or another) are more or less common to all creatures ... and have been essential to get sentient life to this point in the earth’s history. VINEETO: Yet I cannot identify with being ‘so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ...’ Do I need to in order to understand something vital? Does this instinctual ancient ‘me’ have something to do with the ‘many’? I do have a hunch that understanding this could be essential. RICHARD: As I understand it, in the on-going study of genetics the germ cells (the spermatozoa and the ova) have been classified as being of a somewhat different nature to body cells. This has led to speculation that each and every body is nothing but a carrier for the genetic lineage ... that the species, therefore, is more important than you and me or any other body. Now, whilst that theory is just a typically ‘humble’ way of interpreting the data, it did strike me, some years ago, that this genetic memory could very well be the origin of the immortal ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ (as contrasted to ‘I’ as ego who will undergo physical death). Hence it occurred to me that the source of ‘who ‘I’ really am’ could very well be nothing more mysterious than blind nature’s survival software. I have always had a bent for the practical explanation ... and solution. VINEETO: Last night serendipity provided the answer to my question to you, which had been going on in my head since I wrote. The experiential answer to ‘I am many and many is me’ presented itself in the form a TV program on International Humanitarian Aid Organizations and their role and accountability. For one and a half hours there was ample footage presented on human suffering and devastation in war, famine, genocide and racial ‘cleansing’ on one side and the helpless, well-intentioned, yet almost useless effort of people in the aid organizations on the other side. RICHARD: Basically, most people mean well ... it is just that, for all their best intentions, they are hog-tied. No one is to blame. VINEETO: The presentation was enough to make it utterly and unquestionably clear to me that there is no difference between me and the hundreds of thousands who have suffered and died and those who have, without success or effective change, tried to help – for ‘umpteen hundreds of thousands of years’. On an overwhelming instinctual level ‘I’ am ‘them’ and ‘I’ have had no solution and never will have a solution. RICHARD: There is no cure to be found in the ‘real world’ ... only never-ending ‘band-aid’ solutions. VINEETO: The devastation is enormous and the only way ‘out’ is ‘self’-sacrifice. RICHARD: Yet it is the instinct for survival that got you and me and every other body here in the first place. We peoples living today are the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes ... we are the product of the ‘success story’ of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Is one really going to abandon that which produced one ... that which (apparently) keeps one alive? Do you recall those conversations we had about loyalty (familial and group loyalty) back when you and I first met ... and what was required to crack that code? That was chicken-feed compared with this one. RESPONDENT: I found I just really wanted to be HERE. So, there is something new for me, a new slant about this physical primitive reptilian self you speak of. RICHARD: Great stuff, is it not? Personally, I am so glad to be able to be alive and living in this era wherein all kinds of discoveries have been made which threw off the stranglehold religion had upon the Western mind for centuries (people used to be burnt at the stake for much less heretical writing than what I do). This emerging clarity of Western thought has been swamped recently by the insidious doctrines of the Eastern mind creeping into scientific research ... it is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the pundits of the East down the slippery slope of ‘spiritual science’ and ‘mystical philosophy’ ... thinking that it has nothing to do with religiosity. But I am confident that this is but a passing phase. RESPONDENT: However, I do care about the wars, the domestic violence, the child abuse, the misery of the world. RICHARD: By watching/ reading the news bulletins with whatever media one has access to, and utilising one’s affective feelings to really, deeply, primally feel all the anguish and animosity inherent in all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides that parades across billions of TV screens daily, one can become vitally interested in ridding oneself of that which the human animal shares in common ancestry with all sentient beings: the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Because unless one deeply, primally cares about peace on earth one will never even begin to free the crippled intelligence from the debilitating passions bestowed by blind nature. Yet becoming vitally interested is but the preliminary stage, because until one becomes curious as to whether what is being written on an actual freedom can be applied to themselves, only then does the first step begin. For it is 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 to gain a momentum of its own. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to commitment and one can know when one’s commitment is approaching a 100% commitment because others around one will classify one as ‘obsessed’ (in spite of all their rhetoric a 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is 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 tenacity that enables one to proceed against all odds ensues. Then one takes the penultimate step ... one abandons ‘humanity’. Freedom then unfolds its inevitable destiny. * RESPONDENT: And further, is it not ironic that the more advanced we become technologically, the more interdependent we become? RICHARD: I was born in the nineteen forties and raised on a farm carved out of the forest by hand: I personally used axes and hand saws to cut down the trees to make pasture land; there was no plumbing; no sewage, no telephone; no electricity ... I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lamp. No computer; no television; no videos; no record players; no freezer; no electric kitchen gadgets ... and so on and so on. Yet the small farming/ forestry community was inextricably entwined and interdependent ... arguably more so than today in regards duty, obligation and responsibility. Any reading of history that I have done shows me that the further one goes back the more interdependent people were. The ‘break-down of the extended family’ and the ‘dehumanisation’ of society that so many lament (but which inextricably ties) is such an amazing step forward in that it played a large part in enabling me to abandon ‘humanity’ and become free of the human condition. Familial and societal ostracism used to mean death in days not long past ... the Australian Aboriginal is a much-studied example. PETER: If there is no God (a radical concept, I know) then humans only hope is intelligent, sensible, non-spirit-ridden, down-to-earth thought (another radical concept, I know). To date most people have trouble considering two radical non-populist thoughts in a row – still it’s early days. RICHARD: Yes. The problem is that to think autonomously – which is to dare to be without subjugation to some power – is deemed to be arrogance. One’s peers will go to great lengths to keep one trapped within ‘humanity’ ... where they are. RESPONDENT: Lastly, I do not think it will be possible for you to understand all the reasons behind all that violence which happened at the time. It will be like I making comments on situations in Ireland or Bosnia or Kosovo. In my opinion, one has to grow in that part to understand the underlying reasons for violence. RICHARD: If I may beg to differ ... this is a cop-out. One would have to have be born, raised and have lived in a particular part of the world to understand the motivations for that particular incidence of violence ... but the underlying cause of violence is intrinsic to the Human Condition and has a global occurrence. When one understands oneself totally, one understands all human beings ... for ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: However, if you were trying to say that Human Condition is responsible for all this violence then that is another matter. RICHARD: It is the only and fundamental matter worth spending precious time in understanding. May I ask? Are you so interested? Because the ending of the cause of violence in No. 5 would be the ushering-in of peace-on-earth ... and you do not seem to be all that keen on this happening? MARK: I have chosen not to tell acquaintances of this happening as I have no wish to invoke pity, sympathy or such that would only serve to strengthen the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’ of same. Two ‘selves’ live in totally different worlds so any sharing (of fear, grief, love) is not actually possible anyway! I have never before felt so at ease with aloneness (engendered by the gradual falling away of the shared beliefs of the ‘real’ world). RICHARD: Aye, when loneliness ends, and one stands on one’s own two feet, this independence is a relief ... yet there is more. Even aloneness can end. Where you wrote (Part One) that ‘all I can do is proceed, with pure intent, to continue to nibble away at ‘me’, I can only recommend proceeding with all dispatch. When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ entirety, the separative entity’s isolation disappears too ... and an actual intimacy emerges that beggars comparison. This is because a person’s isolation is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘me’, taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be ... this sense of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration. Therefore I am never alone, for there is no separation; there is only actual intimacy. Whereas ‘I’, out of loneliness, attempt to bridge the separation between ‘myself’ and others similarly afflicted with ‘being’, via emotions – be it affection, love, pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion – to induce an artificial intimacy. The problem with emotion is that it is fickle; one can switch it on and off. A person can be said to be generous with their love ... or parsimonious. Such illusory intimacy is unreliable, dependent upon predilection, mood and receptivity. Actual intimacy – the direct experience of the other – is ever-constant; it is not in the control of a wayward ego or a compliant soul. It cannot be switched on or off, given or withheld. It is not ‘mine’, it is simply here, all of the time. ‘I’ am the sole cause of the tried and failed systems being considered essential if humans are to have peace on earth. ‘I’ am the arch-villain in this world-wide scenario ... ‘me’ and billions of other ‘me’s. Solutions and cures are not necessary when the cause is eradicated. Without ‘me’ there is no problem to be solved. However, what initially stands in the way of implementing these words, translating them into action, is the fear that one will become an outcast. The whole thrust of ‘humanity’ is to foster the sense of belonging ... it is a large part of one’s social identity. One automatically feels that by no longer belonging one will live in isolation. Nothing could be further from the truth, because this is a feeling, not a fact. The fact of being on one’s own is vastly different from the feeling of being isolated ... and when one has found intimacy the need to belong has become absurd. Besides, the sense of belonging is a dangerous illusion. Losing oneself in the crowd renders one susceptible to not only group highs but to mass hysteria ... and mob riots. Just as marital disharmony can lead to domestic violence, so too can neighbourhood disputes lead to civil unrest and communal violence. International riots are called war. So much for belonging! With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ ... a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality ... and I have always been here like this ... so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety ... a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions. RICHARD: ‘The third alternative is not to be found in any Spiritual book nor heard of in any discourse from a Master, a Guru, a Spiritual Teacher or a Whatever. Some disciplines hint at its existence but no one has ever lived it to speak about it knowledgeably, hence the deafening silence. Some religions posit such a condition pertaining to the other side of physical death – Mahasamadhi and Parinirvana being two examples that spring to mind – but no useful information can be derived from there. I maintain that such a condition is possible while the body is still alive and breathing ... but for this to occur not only must the ego ‘die’ but the soul must be extirpated as well. Only then are all illusions and delusions dispelled. Only then can there be an actual freedom. Understanding all this promotes an actualism which ensures a virtual freedom. In actualism all of the previous world-views – human’s understandings of ‘humanity’ – are seen to be erroneous. Especially erroneous are the Divine solutions to the plight of ‘humanity’ ... however long such solutions may have been held in awe, venerated and viewed as being Sacred. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirteen RICHARD: As ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ – and if both one and the other are vitally interested – then something rather magical can happen if the conversation is sincerely candid. ‘Humanity’ disappears out of the one or the other or both, and then there is freedom from the Human Condition. The one or the other or both then has an sincere and candid conversation with another vitally interested person and then another similarly fascinated person ... and then they too have an sincere and candid conversation with yet another who is vitally interested ... and so on and so on. It is freedom from the Human Condition that would spread. In other words: peace-on-earth for the individual would spread person by person. Global peace can only happen when each and every person has their individual peace-on-earth. Of course, the excellence of individual autonomy means that it does not matter much whether there is global peace or not ... it would be but an added bonus. RESPONDENT No. 23: Such conversation – similar to that which is going on in this forum – is engendered by fear. We are that fear. Do you know how to end that fear? RICHARD: Yes. (Richard, List B, No. 23, 7 March 1998). RESPONDENT: How would you do that? RICHARD: It is not a question of how would I end that fear ... it is a question of how did I end that fear. Basically, it involves all that I have written about since I came onto this List ... it is the extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety that results in a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, fear, terror, horror, dread or existential angst. There is no fear in a flower, a tree, an ashtray, an armchair, a rock ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact. RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. ‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that ‘I’ had during a peak experience in 1980. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself. Once set in motion, it is no longer a matter of choice: it is an irresistible pull. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life – it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants. Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom of the real-world’ that ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice in every human being, ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so delicious to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly – the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! This entailed finding the source of ‘myself’ ... and I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression and nurture and desire that this self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. So, I can freely say that I, as I am today, did nothing to become free of the Human Condition. It was ‘I’ that did all the work. Consequently I find myself here, in the world as-it-is, as this flesh and blood body. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life – who would have it any other way? Thus I find myself to be this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. This is totally different to eastern spiritual enlightenment ... this is actual. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword RICHARD: The whole purpose of this List, being under the auspices of the teachings that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti bought into the world, is to converse deeply together with the avowed aim of setting ‘humanity’ free, surely. As ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’, then this entails sincere and candid conversation, otherwise discussion devolves into being intellectual masturbation. RESPONDENT: And how does conversation set humanity free? RICHARD: As the gentleman in question has been dead for over a decade, your question comes somewhat too late to get a direct answer. Be it far from me to answer for Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, but suffice is it for me to point out that he said publicly in 1928: ‘I have only one desire; to set humankind free’ ... whereupon he spent the best part of the next sixty-odd years engaged in the most sincere and candid conversation possible with whomsoever was vitally interested in peace-on-earth. May I ask: Are you not so vitally interested? RESPONDENT: Sure, I am interested in peace-on-earth. But how can that be brought about through doing what that old man did? In all those sixty years of earnest conversation, the earth was inundated with two world wars and the situation has consistently gotten worse. I ask again: how does conversation set man free? RICHARD: By learning from his biggest mistake. Also, just having a conversation will never set anyone free ... let alone ‘humanity’. Especially if the other party only expresses what appears to be a casual interest in peace-on-earth. (‘Sure, I am interested ... but how can ... and how will ... but ... and ...’) Yet if the conversation is sincere and candid, and if the other is vitally interested – if it is the number one priority in one’s life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with one’s very being – then something rather magical can happen. ‘Humanity’ disappears out of the one or the other or both, and then there is freedom from the Human Condition. The one or the other or both then has an sincere and candid conversation with another vitally interested person and then another similarly fascinated ... and then they too have an sincere and candid conversation with yet another who is vitally interested ... and so on and so on. It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to start off with the patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity preparatory to evoking the mutation, indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. With freedom from the Human Condition spreading like a chain-letter, in the due course of time, global freedom would revolutionize the concept of ‘humanity’. It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true. But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in the actual world. When one is free from the Human Condition, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is ... and here on earth in this life-time. One knows that one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe ... and that is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world – the ‘Land of Lament’ – fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Most human beings, being contumelious as they are, will probably continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realizing that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious as a self-righteous soul who is convinced that they know the way to live ... as revealed in their revered scriptures or in their cherished secular philosophy. So be it. * RESPONDENT: Isn’t the attempt to solve the problems of your own life just as deluded as solving the problems of the world? They are the two ways of escapes from real action. RICHARD: What is this ‘real action’ then? RESPONDENT: Whether the poverty is out there in Calcutta or in your own personal situation, the dealing with the problem of personal poverty, be it material or spiritual, is still Mother Theresa, the do-gooder, at work. RICHARD: If I do not deal with my personal poverty ... then who will? Sitting in a deck-chair on the patio waiting for god is an utter waste of time. RESPONDENT: Feeling sorry for others is no different from feeling sorry for yourself. They are both the action of selfishness. RICHARD: Agreed. RESPONDENT: As Krishnamurti has said, violence or anger is neither yours or mine, it is human violence. RICHARD: It is the Human Condition. However, ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. When this body is rid of ‘me’ – permanently – then ‘humanity’ in me also vanishes ... along with its anger and violence. It is a highly desirable condition to be in. RESPONDENT: But you see the ugliness not as human ugliness but your own personal ugliness as opposed to ugliness in the world outside, and you say to yourself, ‘I will deal with this and sort out my own business. I won’t be a busybody. I deal with myself first. If I can clean up my act, I would have found a way to clean up everybody’s act and can offer the solution to the world like Richard from down under can’. RICHARD: It seems that this Richard and his ambrosial paradise bothers you like all get-out ... because you keep harping on it. It really does get on your goat, does it not, that the solution to all your problems lies only in your hands. What a bummer it is that it is up to you to fix yourself up after all ... were you all this while waiting for some god to do it for you? RESPONDENT: So, the non-busybody (lay-person) busies herself from the inside while the busybody (Mother Theresa) fusses about outside. They are both the same thing except for the geography. Of course, if one has a messy temporal karma, one has best deal with the business of living a personal existence – getting the husband or the wife to shape up or ship out, feeding the kids, finding the money to pay the bills – and not go about playing world saviour either through self-fiddling or mucking around with the world at large. RICHARD: Okay, I have got my ‘messy temporal karma’ straightened out; I am indeed ‘best dealing with the business of living a personal existence’; I have got ‘the wife shipped out’ (because she simply would not ‘shape up’); I presume ‘the kids’ have been feeding themselves all right (I shipped them out as well); I have stopped making bills by going on a pension ... in other words: all is well in the land of oz. So may I, pretty please, now go about playing world saviour? I rather like ‘mucking around with the world at large’, you see. RESPONDENT: What is your view of all this? RICHARD: I have posted it before so I will present a shortened version. Viz.: The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the Unknown, stopped short of the final goal ... the Unknowable. Notwithstanding the cessation of a personal ego operating, they were unwilling to relinquish the Self or Spirit ... and an ego-less Self or Spirit is still an identity, nevertheless. In spite of the glamour and the glory of the Altered State Of Consciousness, closer examination reveals that these ‘Great’ persons had – and have – feet of clay. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, they have led humankind astray. Preaching submission or supplication they keep a benighted ‘humanity’ in appalling tribulation and distress. The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the identity in its entirety is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. When the ego dies, the separated identity dissolves into Oneness ... I am Everything and Everything is Me. The eyes seeing is Me looking at Me. I am The Absolute and The Absolute is Me. But beyond Me – beyond The Absolute – lies the actual ... and the actual is already always here now. In actuality there is no ‘Me’ and/or ‘The Absolute’. When the soul dies the need for oneness – unitary perception – dissolves ... as does any ‘Otherness’. Then I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Now I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. One is now living in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. Human beings do not live in an inert universe but ‘I’ am forever cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, Divine Compassion and Love Agapé. The purity of the actual world owes its excellence to the fact that there is no sorrow and malice here ... hence no need for succour. The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Rapture or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual. * RESPONDENT: Richard, when I read your posts I keep having the impression that you could be a CIA artificial intelligence entity attempting to play the spiritual messiah role. RICHARD: Yet I repeatedly say that there is no religiosity, no spirituality, no mysticality and no metaphysicality in me whatsoever ... that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through. I also say (repeatedly) that I set my sights further than merely being (yet again) another of the long list of failed Messiahs and Masters, Gurus and God-Men, Saints and Sages, Avatars and Saviours and that I am not likely to fall back into that position now that I am free from the human condition. I speak plainly, up-front, out-in-the-open, unambiguously and frankly ... I say what I mean and I mean what I say. How on earth anyone can get ‘playing the spiritual messiah role’ out of all my critiques on the ‘Tried and Failed’ beats me. So, as I do not know why you gain that impression ... it looks as if you will have to answer your own question. RESPONDENT: What a way to lead humanity – with a machine. RICHARD: What inspires you to assume I am ‘leading humanity’ ... I propose unilateral action. And what inspires you to liken me to a machine ... when machines cannot consciously reflect, plan and implement considered activity. RESPONDENT: Maybe I am just exposing my ‘we are all too much of the herd mentality’ concern. RICHARD: Going by your ‘messiah role’ and ‘lead humanity’ comments above you may very well be correct. RESPONDENT: As well as my concerns about the possibility of a big brother watching us. What do you say? RICHARD: If you mean ‘a big brother’ as in Mr. George Orwell’s paranoid fantasy I am totally unconcerned. If one complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols one is left free to live one’s life as wisely or as foolishly as one wishes. If you mean ‘a big brother’ as in an older sibling in a family hierarchy ... such a person only has as much psychological and psychic power over you as you give them leave to have such an effect. Apart from physical power, no-one can force their power on another without the other’s acquiescence and compliance. It is a truly and remarkably free world we live in! * RESPONDENT: I have heard of an observation of primates, in which a group from one isolated geographic locale (Galapagos Island?) began using a new tool in a novel way of to achieve some end. Suddenly, primates in geographic locales separate and far away from the original ones began likewise using the tool. These observations provided the same results as the rat experiments, except the participants were not subjected to pain by their human observers. RICHARD: In the 1950’s primatologists in Japan discovered and carefully documented the spread, from monkey to monkey, of a particular feeding behaviour within a group of macaques (rhesus monkeys) on Koshima Islet. The primatologists supplied a group of free-range macaques with sweet potatoes. One young macaque discovered that washing the potatoes in the sea or in a stream removed the dirt and sand. Gradually some other macaques in her group learned to wash their potatoes, which learning demonstrated, according to the primatologists, a ‘pre-cultural’ transmission of technique. However, it was alleged by Mr. Lyall Watson in his book ‘Lifetide’ that suddenly and spontaneously and mysteriously monkeys on other islands, with no physical contact with the potato-washing group, started washing potatoes. Was this really monkey telepathy or wishful thinking by the author? In 1979 Mr. Lyall Watson claimed his information came from ‘personal anecdotes and bits of folklore amongst primate researchers’ and in 1986, in a response to Mr. Ron Amundson’s critique in the summer edition of the ‘Sceptical Inquirer’, 1985, pp. 348-356, Mr. Lyall Watson mentioned ‘off-the-record conversations with those familiar with the potato-washing work’ as being his source-material. It makes for an alluring NDA story, but it is not factual: according to Mr. Robert Carroll (http://skepdic.com/monkey.html) after six years not all the monkeys on Koshima Islet even, saw the benefit of washing the grit off of their potatoes, let alone elsewhere ... the claim that monkeys on other islands had their consciousness raised to the high level of the potato-washing group has no basis in fact. Mr. Markus Possel contacted Mr. Masao Kawai (one of the original primatologists): • Mr. Markus Possel: [Are you] aware of any sweet potato washing or other skills that propagated more rapidly than would be expected by normal, individual, ‘pre-cultural propagation? • Mr. Masao Kawai: No. • Mr. Markus Possel: [Have you] heard any ‘anecdotes or bits of folklore’ among [your] primatologist colleagues regarding rapid behaviour propagation, and [do you] know of any contacts between Lyall Watson and [your] colleagues? • Mr. Masao Kawai: No. [I believe] that the idea of telepathy may have been introduced by Western countries. (www.csicop.org/si/9605/monkey.html). Undeterred by facts, the claim has lead to a burgeoning cult-movement known as ‘The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon’. Viz.: • ‘The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant. An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too. This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes. Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes – the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes. THEN IT HAPPENED! By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough! But notice. A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea – colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes. Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind. Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!’. (www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html). And again: • ‘[The Hundredth Monkey Principal] implies that, theoretically, fundamental change can be catalysed by a small proportion of people – a 51% majority is not needed. This principle was coined during 1950s studies of Japanese macaques. A certain number of macaques on one island learned to wash yams before eating them, to protect their teeth. It was then discovered that macaques on other islands were suddenly learning this too – without inter-island contact. Thus arose the notion that a field of awareness exists, common to all macaques. When sufficiently impregnated with a new idea, this mind-field allowed other macaques to utilise that idea. Thus, things change when their morphic patterns change. Legislators, reformers and revolutionaries have all tried to change our world, yet resistance, corruption or disunity lead to unfulfilled objectives – what’s missing is a shift in the heart of humanity. What is crucial is that humanity can make such shifts only of its own free will – anything less makes new problems. At the Millennium, we know that changes are needed, but we know not how. Today, many people are conscious that things aren’t right. Not knowing where to start, we avoid starting. Psychic trash, heartache, angst and buried dreams obstruct healthy social functioning: we defend our patch against them, and we thereby misunderstand both them and us. The hundredth monkey principle suggests that our deeper psyches are implicitly connected and talk to each other. If someone gives out a strong, clear, wholesome enough message deep in their heart and soul, it is registered deep down in the world psyche. If many people do it, the signal emitted is infinitely greater than the sum total of all individual signals’. (www.newage.com.au/home/M100.html). Editorial note: the text immediately above is no longer at that URL ... it remains here for its historical value and an example of how things come and go on the internet. RESPONDENT: I would even venture that indigenous peoples could probably convey the fact of a connected consciousness – not just between humans but between all life. But, would the more conceptual human bother to ask and/or listen [to them]? RICHARD: Well ... no (if by ‘the more conceptual human’ you are referring to yourself) in that it would appear that you have not ‘bothered to ask and/or listen’, or in any way demonstrated so far in your posts, investigated whether your concepts (like your ‘divided from their source mentality’ concept) are factually-based. It seems that the motto of ‘pseudo-science’ is: do not let the facts stand in the way of the truth. 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: Of course if one sees the seriously lacking nature of ‘humanity’ then it must at least be questioned. RICHARD: A rather redundant sentence, do you not think, upon reflection? In order to call it ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ then one must already be seeing it ... unless it is a platitude. Therefore, if one is already seeing it one is already questioning it ... how far have you proceeded in your questioning? A journey into your own psyche is a journey into humanity’s psyche ... for ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Too bad if the questioning is dropped in favour of the known comforts. RICHARD: As there is no purpose served in eschewing creature comforts in some misguided religious or spiritual zeal to blame the physical as being the root of evil ... you must be referring to psychological comforts? If one’s questioning has led to seeing through the belief in the truth of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy ... can one ‘drop the questioning’ and start believing in them again for some known comfort? Is this not silly? Once started, a sincere journey is a one-way trip ... you will never be the same again. RESPONDENT: This abandonment is to do with everything that you think you are, and more, so some discomfort is inevitable. RICHARD: Not just what you ‘think you are’ ... it is even more fundamental than that. It is what you feel that you are in the core of your ‘being’. This does not just cause discomfort. It requires nerves of steel to delve into the stygian depths of the Human Condition. The journey into the psyche is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. The rewards for doing so are immense, however ... and are of far-reaching consequences not only for oneself but for humankind as a whole. * RICHARD: Just what is this ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’ that you spoke of? RESPONDENT: It has to do with the way I see people treating each other. RICHARD: Okay ... how do you see people treating each other? And how do people treat you? And how do you treat people? RESPONDENT: Too bad if the questioning is dropped in favour of the known comforts. RICHARD: If one’s questioning has led to seeing through the belief in the truth of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy ... can one ‘drop the questioning’ and start believing in them again for some known comfort? Is this not silly? Once started, a sincere journey is a one-way trip ... you will never be the same again. RESPONDENT: At times I have wondered if it really is, because sometimes I just couldn’t care less. But then it starts again. RICHARD: Okay, you are saying that your investigation into the human psyche – which is your psyche – is spasmodic at best. RESPONDENT: No, I wouldn’t call it spasmodic but there are certainly breaks in the investigation. RICHARD: These ‘breaks in the investigation’ where you ‘couldn’t care less’ about your plight – and your plight is the plight of humanity – stem from what? Why is your investigation not top priority in your life? Do you, in fact, really see ‘the seriously lacking nature of humanity’? If you did ... would there be ‘breaks in your investigation’? Would it not be a twenty four hour a day investigation? Why do you not care about the plight of humanity ... which is your plight? * RICHARD: The doorway to an actual freedom has the words ‘Warning: do not open ... insanity lies ahead’ written on it. I opened the door and walked through. Once on the other side – where thousands upon thousands of atavistic voices were insistently whispering ‘fool – fool – fool’ – I turned to ascertain the way back to normal. The door had vanished – and the wall it was set in – and I just knew that I would never, ever be able to find my way back to the real-world ... it had been nothing but an illusion all along. I walked tall and free as the perfection of this material universe personified ... I can never not be here ... now. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable and malicious in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic actual universe. To defend the belief that this life is forever fatally flawed – defend to the point of idiocy – is actually a cowardly attempt to stay hidden inside ‘humanity’. To skulk behind a sick social contract is a desperate ploy to remain ‘human’. If one takes one’s intellectual ability back from the decrees of the cultured sophisticates – to which one has surrendered – one has taken a courageous step. One has cast oneself out of the biggest group there is ... humanity. If one stays within the group, for its perceived safety and security, one is selling out to the system because of a pusillanimous character. Thus one secretly despises oneself, with disastrous consequences ... one has to be numbed to such a degree that defies credibility in order for nothing but psittacisms to come from their mouths. Humankind is so stultified – stupefied by the centuries of socialisation overlaying the instincts – that only madness can be allowed ... and it masquerades as an ailing ‘normal’. The precarious status-quo is defined as being sanity ... and anything outside this description is classified as insanity. Such a blatant ignoring of the facts begs the question as to just who is salubrious. Without fear and aggression, one has dignity for the first time. RICHARD: 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. 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