# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Honesty and Sincerity RICHARD: Honesty with oneself is paramount – a dishonest approach will produce a dishonest result – and unless one is scrupulously candid one is in danger of being swept up in the Glamour and Glory and Glitz of the ‘Enlightened State’ and suffer the delusion that one is god on earth (an embodiment of the ‘supreme intelligence’ that is beyond time and space and form) ... replete with that spurious ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. It is possible. RESPONDENT: ... [in my next email] back to No. 27, who has struck me as yet another person on this list (and I am seeing more and more of such folks as this conversation unfolds) who are willing to play the Diogenes Game even before the Actualist Game: in other words, regardless of our points of agreement or contention, wanting to have integrity at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the discussion ... being entirely unwilling to allow calenture and feverish defensiveness of any kind to carry the day as we examine together what is ‘on offer’. RICHARD: Just so there is no misunderstanding here is how you have described what you are now calling ‘the Diogenes Game’ in an earlier e-mail: • [Respondent]: ‘I’m just playing the role of Diogenes right now, in search of an honest man’. (‘Conversation Continuing’; Monday, 04 August 2003). Tradition ascribes to Mr. Diogenes (a Greek Cynic philosopher circa 400-325 BCE) the famous search for an honest man conducted in broad daylight with a lighted lantern. As he wound up espousing an anarchist utopia, in which human beings lived ‘natural’ lives, it is a fair bet to say that he was not an honest man himself. So as to keep with the analogy I would make the observation that your paragraph (above), as a generalisation, epitomises both the style and content of your posts to this mailing list ... in that it encapsulates the nature of the ‘lighted lantern’ you are carrying which makes it well-nigh impossible to see what you say you are searching for. To be more specific: you are inclined towards a certain liberality of assumptive phraseology which makes it difficult to detect any sincerity in your words ... such as the ‘being entirely unwilling to allow calenture and feverish defensiveness of any kind to carry the day’ phraseology above, for instance, as I have not been reticent about having been closely examined, over a three-year period by both an accredited psychiatrist and psychologist, and found to be having the following symptoms: 1. Depersonalisation (no sense of identity) as in no ‘self’ by whatever name. 2. Derealisation (lost touch with reality) as in reality has vanished completely. 3. Alexithymia (inability to feel the affections) as in no affective feelings whatsoever. 4. Anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure/ pain) as in no affective pleasure/ pain facility. If you can satisfactorily explain how a person sans the affective faculty (the emotional/ passional/ calentural faculty), and thus its epiphenomenal imaginative/ psychic facility, could possibly ‘allow’ something which does not exist – calentures (furious deliriums) and feverish defensiveness (excited ‘self’-protectiveness) – to happen, let alone be ‘entirely unwilling’ to allow those non-existent affective/ psychic reactions to happen, I will be most surprised ... so much so that at this point I would suggest taking pause and reflecting upon your modus operandi. ‘Tis only a suggestion, mind you. * RESPONDENT: I close with this, Richard, for your particular benefit: [Respondent]: ‘I like your commitment to investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’. [Richard]: ‘It is one thing to like another’s commitment to ‘investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’ ... and another thing entirely to emulate same’. [endquotes]. Have no fear about my emulating your commitment. RICHARD: If you had not snipped what immediately followed you would see that it is not my commitment at all I am speaking of: • [Richard]: ‘It is one thing to like another’s commitment to ‘investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’ ... and another thing entirely to emulate same. In other words the commitment made by the identity parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago, a total dedication to global peace and harmony, took just under 12 years to bring about an actual freedom from the human condition ...’.. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 6 August 2003). I have no such commitment – and I did nothing at all as I have been here all along just having a ball – because the necessary altruism is, just as selfism is, a core feature of the passionate identity within ... and not the flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: I will do no such thing. RICHARD: Suit yourself ... it is your life you are living, when all is said and done, and only you get to reap the rewards, or pay the consequences, of any action or inaction you may or may not do. All I can do is offer suggestions ... what the other does with these suggestions is entirely up to them, of course. RESPONDENT: I have my OWN commitment to integrity in this investigation, that depends not a whit upon yours. RICHARD: If I may suggest? Sincerity is the key to unlock one’s innate naiveté, the nourishing of which is essential if the wondrous magic of life itself is to be apparent, which naiveté effortlessly provides the ‘integrity’ you say you have your own commitment to. Speaking of which ... did you not notice that I said the commitment was a ‘total dedication to global peace and harmony’ (and not the ‘commitment to integrity’ you make it out to be)? Just curious. RESPONDENT: If, as time unfolds, your commitment, or anyone else’s should appear less that 100% ... RICHARD: Again (and put differently for emphasis) my commitment is 0.00%. RESPONDENT: ... my commitment to doing this investigation with integrity will be unaffected. RICHARD: So be it ... you stay with your commitment to ‘doing this investigation with integrity’ then, and let other people, who have twigged to the fact that naïveté is the closest that one can come to innocence (which is where integrity lies) whilst remaining a ‘self’, proceed on their way so that the results of your experiment can be assessed for viability against this salient bench mark. I might add, though, that naïveté does away with all that ‘heavy lifting’ you spoke of in an earlier e-mail. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘From what I can glean so far, virtual freedom is a period of ‘heavy lifting’. (‘Introduction’; Friday, 27 July 2003). Where you have gleaned this diaphoretic impression from has got me stumped ... here is but one of the many ways I describe the actualism practice: • [Richard]: ‘... the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way. One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 38, 20 February 2003). Or even more specifically to the point of your ‘heavy lifting’ comment: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘If it is the experiencer that makes efforts to be aware and stay aware, the centre is strengthened, not dissolved, right? • [Richard]: ‘Since when has naiveté been sudorific? (Richard, List B, No 12q, 5 January 2003). In short: if it be not either easy (effortless) or fun (enjoyable) then there is something to look at until it is again. * RESPONDENT: And ... at the end of the day (week, month, year), if I have concluded that indeed there is something radically different and radically worthwhile going on here (i.e. a legitimate 3rd alternative able to at long last deliver the goods ... i.e. AF), I will have no trouble, I assure you, in permanently re-adjusting my cognitive maps and models as you, Mr. Peter and Ms. Vineeto have done, regardless of my ultimate judgement of any of the PROMOTERS and their integrity at any given moment. RICHARD: I wonder why you do not see how you undo your claim to have, not only a background of PCE’s but having had one just recently, when you make comments such as above. For example: • [Respondent]: ‘Of course I have had PCE and have also had the ‘devolved’ experience of ASC. (‘Re: Introduction’; 28 July 2003). And: • [Respondent]: ‘FYI, this AM I woke up and disconnected from my self identity entirely (something I have done before, more than once). That catapulted me right into a pure and perfect PCE which lasted for well over an hour. As I got out of bed and took a shower, the experience was exquisite, sensual and overwhelming in a most pleasurable way. The sense of past and future had dropped away and I was experiencing life in the eternal present ... and that freshness has stayed with me throughout this day. even as I re-engaged as an egoic self’. (‘Conversation Continuing’; Monday, 04 August 2003). Yet you say now that, at the end of the day, week, month, or year, if you have concluded that indeed there is something radically different and radically worthwhile going on here (that is, a legitimate third alternative, an actual freedom, able to at long last deliver the goods) you will have no trouble, you assure me, in permanently readjusting your cognitive maps and models. Do you see why I look askance at the other things you have to say? Things like this for instance: • [Respondent]: ‘I’m not convinced that just because someone has created a different map (as perhaps Mr. Richard has), or is using a different vocabulary (as perhaps Mr. Richard is), that he is actually staking out some brand new territory. (‘Re: Ram Tzu Blues; Wednesday 06 August 2003’). As it is the PCE which convinces – and not any claims I make as my words are designed to precipitate a PCE in the reader (whereupon they can then experience perfection for themselves) so as to not have them believe me or be convinced by the sensibility of any description I offer – I would suggest there is a strong possibility that whatever it is you experienced, both before you ‘re-engaged as an egoic self’ and after disconnecting, it was not a PCE. Which could explain why you considered that Mr. Douglas Harding [Finding The Self], Ms. Byron Katie [God With God], Mr. Maximilian Sandor [Alienation/ Integration Of The Being], and Free Zone [The Beingness-By-Itself] were some places to look to see where an actual freedom from the human condition was already happening because Richard had not yet made an exhaustive investigation of all the other places it might have been happening up until now. More to the point: if it were indeed a PCE then your contributions to this mailing list would be of an entirely different nature to what they currently are. RESPONDENT: And finally, just so you and everyone else here knows: I’m very comfortable being proven wrong, about things small or large. RICHARD: As the only proof worthy of the name, in matters of consciousness, is experiential proof only you can prove yourself wrong. RESPONDENT: It is a comfort I commend to one and all ... RICHARD: Oh? Are you really recommending that people should emulate your comfort? If so, why then do you spurn emulation of the commitment to global peace and harmony the identity parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body made all those years ago? Is it a case of one rule for your advice ... and another rule for my advice? RESPONDENT: ... one that prevents, and even cures, premature hardening of the orthodoxies. RICHARD: Let me see if I comprehend the basis of your commendation (after 30+ years of having prevented, or even cured, premature hardening of the orthodoxies): • [Respondent]: ‘I’ve settled into a variant of Buddhism that doesn’t attempt to cross the fabled river to enlightenment in this lifetime, but rather assumes that for the vast majority it is simply not attainable’. (‘Re: Introduction – Clarifying Communication’; Fri 01 August 2003). If being ‘settled’ in a variant of Buddhism is not a hardening of the orthodoxies, be it premature or otherwise, then I would like to know what is ... or is there some inscrutable understanding in this deconstructionism method of yours that I am missing? Because I have yet to have it demonstrated how the method which worked, the one that delivered the goods, is not the one to emulate. RICHARD: ... faking care is not the distinction being referred to as the person feeling caring is being true to their feelings. It is not their fault that the truth is insincere. RESPONDENT: I see now that ‘faking care’ isn’t what you mean by ‘feeling caring’. I’m curious, what would it take to be sincere? Is all feeling caring insincere – or are you saying that the person being true to their feeling of caring could be sincere by realizing that their caring is ‘self’ centred? Is it only possible to be sincere if one is actually free? Or ‘imitating’ the actual? Could you say more about what you mean – ‘It is not their fault that the truth is insincere’. What exactly is insincere about feeling that one cares for another? Is all feeling caring insincere? Or is insincerity due to one’s ignorance of the actual genesis of feeling caring? If all feeling caring is actually insincere – then it doesn’t seem we ‘beings’ have any choice about it, do we? If this is the case, the path to actual freedom would be becoming as sincere as possible, yet one couldn’t be completely sincere until once actually free. Is this how you see it? Or is one ‘imitating’ the actual also sincere – since they know all feeling caring is ‘self-centred’? Thus, anyone could be sincere just by realizing the ‘self-centeredness’ of feeling caring. RICHARD: Unless a realisation is actualised, meaning that it operates spontaneously each moment again, it remains just that ... a realisation. All I am indicating by saying that the truth is insincere is that, as the truth holds the promise of an after-death peace for the feeling being inside the flesh and blood body (as in ‘The Peace That Passeth All Understanding’), the truth is not sincere in regards to bringing about peace on earth ... which peacefulness is what caring is all about. In short: feeling caring is incapable of delivering the goods. As being sincere in the context under discussion is to have the pure intent to enable peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, it would therefore take a perspicuous awareness of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (seeing the fact) to be sincere ... rather than an instinctive feeling of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (intuiting the truth). The feeling of caring (be it a pitying caring, a sympathetic caring, an empathetic caring, a compassionate caring or a loving caring), being primarily the feeling being inside one flesh and blood body caring for the feeling being inside another flesh and blood body (or for an anthropomorphised feeling being called mother earth for instance), is insincere by its very nature. And to realise that such feeling caring is a ‘self’-centred caring – and thus corrupt and/or tainted – is the first step towards sincerity. Anybody can be sincere (about anything) – all it takes is seeing the fact (of anything) – and in this instance the perspicacity born out of the pure consciousness experience (PCE) ensures sincerity in regards to enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into becoming apparent. The basis of such sincerity lies in comprehending the fact that caring starts with oneself – if one is incapable of caring for oneself one cannot care about others (or anything for that matter) – lest it be a case of the blind leading the blind. There are two forms of ignorance about the genesis of the affective feelings: nescience and ignoration – wherein the former is to be incognisant of the root cause and the latter is to be disregardant of the root cause – and the latter has much to do with what is often expressed as ‘you can’t change human nature’ (only recently on another mailing list the sentence ‘we can’t change biological predisposition’ was pithily presented as if it were a valid reason not to discuss the genetic inheritance of aggression). Meaning that, apart from fanciful notions about genetic engineering, it is generally held that as human nature (biology) cannot be changed therefore biology cannot be the root cause of all the ills of humankind ... or so the bizarre rationale goes. Obviously part of the first step towards sincerity is the acknowledgement of blind nature’s legacy. RESPONDENT: Yes there are many subtle misconceptions concerning the concept of ‘me’, one of them is that we can get away with all the problems by calling ourselves a ‘flesh and blood body’. RICHARD: No, not at all. One can not ‘get away with all the problems by calling ourselves a ‘flesh and blood body’. This physical universe, being perfect and pristine, has so arranged itself that nobody can get away with anything. If one is at all dishonest – as in intellectually unscrupulous – about ferreting out anything detrimental to one’s salubrity, that aspect of one’s personality that one has conveniently overlooked has the charming habit of sneaking up behind one and tapping one firmly behind the knees. If one is at all desirous of living a blameless and carefree life, one can not fudge a single issue. Thus, to merely call oneself a ‘flesh and blood body’ achieves nothing – unless one is so stupefied as to be so easily fooled by one’s own mendacity. Only when both the ego and the soul are extinct is this appellation veritable ... and the results of doing so are deliciously lived out in one’s daily life. * RESPONDENT: As for ‘pretending’, that remains unexamined. RICHARD: Self-deception is always well worthwhile examining. RESPONDENT: You have yet to provide any reason for your belief that they are inextricably intertwined. RICHARD: It is not a belief ... it is an obvious fact. They are all nothing but products of the lonely self and when the self becomes extinct both Love and its hateful counterpart vanish into thin air. The same applies for Beauty and its ugly cohort. Annihilation sure beats merely transcending duality and being alone for all eternity. RESPONDENT: This must be true for any definition of love or beauty, since your statement is not conditioned. RICHARD: It is an unconditional statement of fact. RESPONDENT: The person who is really mentally disturbed is the last to admit it, because he has a strong sense of being right versus everyone else being wrong or just dim. RICHARD: Hmm ... 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 actions 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 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. RESPONDENT: The grandiose feelings, feelings of being super-human give you great comfort in the world where the only certain thing is uncertainty. RICHARD: Not so ... physical death is one certainty that immediately springs to mind. RESPONDENT: If/ when you come back from your hallucination ... RICHARD: No, I persevered – I went forward instead of back – and so on through the hallucination so as to arrive here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: ... you will have a long and painful journey to make. RICHARD: Unlike your friend that you wrote about some time ago I had the gumption – and intellectual honesty – to see through the hallucination that I was ‘God on Earth’ or a manifestation of the ‘Supreme Intelligence’ and proceed on into the ‘Unknowable’ so as to find out for myself just what the nature, disposition and character of that which so many peoples have been ‘hollow bamboos’ or ‘channels’ or ‘open vessels’ for was. I penetrated into the ‘Mystery of Life’ ... and here I am. JAMES: I don’t have pure intent. Possessing and pursuing looks the same I’m living with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and it is making a difference. I want to live as my senses. RICHARD: Put it this way: do you have the intent to spend the remainder of your life on this verdant planet having malice and sorrow as a backdrop to your every waking moment? Which means that, although you may have shorter or longer periods of being carefree and considerate, greater or lesser moments of gaiety and benevolence, bigger or smaller interludes of being blithesome and benign and so on, do you have the intent to retain and maintain the current base-line of your day-to-day life (which is the fall-back position of animosity and anguish that requires the time-honoured coping methods to keep your head above water) until the day that you die? If your answer is ‘YES’ then you do not have pure intent, you are not pursuing happiness and harmlessness and you will not have a problem with ‘possessiveness’ about peace-on-earth. If your answer is ‘NO’ then you are already somewhat pursuing peace-on-earth, with at least a trace of pure intent, and the ‘problem’ of automatically trying to ‘possess’ freedom when it occurs will inevitably arise as you have success after success at inducing pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). The name of the game is to be able to ‘live as your senses’ more and more and for longer and longer periods (and to want this is to pursue it) and to the degree you do not make the instinctual ‘grab’ for ownership of these moments is the degree to which these moments will be prolonged ... and these moments are where you learn what it is to be free by direct experience instead of reading about it. Honesty with oneself is paramount – a dishonest approach will produce a dishonest result – and unless one is scrupulously candid one is in danger of being swept up in the Glamour and Glory and Glitz of the ‘Enlightened State’ and suffer the delusion that one is god on earth (an embodiment of the ‘supreme intelligence’ that is beyond time and space and form) ... replete with that spurious ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. It is possible. RESPONDENT: Just wanted to indicate that quitting the mailing list doesn’t mean I have lost my interest our contact. I am also very much enjoying the conversations between you and Konrad. I liked the few conversations we had. I am leaving the list and am putting in my private E-Mail address if you want to stay in touch. I share the address with my girlfriend. I’m writing you because I have a few questions. Since I am not sure about either of you I am asking these questions too both you and Konrad. RICHARD: I like your honesty. Please, whatever you do with me, throw faith, belief, trust and hope right out of the window ... along with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair Besides, I am a certified madman! IRENE to Vineeto: I don’t subscribe any more to Richard’s goal of getting rid of ‘me’, my identity, my emotions. This is what I meant when I said that I had seen through Richard’s method and his view that this is what freedom means. RICHARD: First off, if you no longer subscribe to your previously-held goal of ridding yourself of the ‘I’, that you saw standing in the way of peace-on-earth in one of the many outstanding peak experiences that you had years before you met me, then that is your own choice. Please, you give the impression that it was ‘Richard’s goal’ that you were subscribed to. Secondly, it was not ‘Richard’s view’ that this absence of ‘I’ was what freedom means at all ... you held this view long before you met me. It was the fact that I was living your goal and view that made you attracted to me in the first place ... for you told me that you could not – or would not – do it on your own. Thus was the basis for us living together as man and woman established from the beginning ... and that was your own choice too. Eleven years later you decided that you no longer wished to either pursue that goal or hold that view any more and you ceased living with me ... and that is your own choice as well. Honesty with oneself is important, otherwise there is a duck-shoving of amenability onto another for one’s own decisions at the time. As for your use of ‘I had seen through Richard’s method’ ... you have to be referring to the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ ... as that is the only method I advance. In what way, may I ask, have you ‘seen through it’? In what way is it either personally unhealthy or socially reprehensible ... for how else can it be deemed faulty? * IRENE to Vineeto: I tried for over 11 years and it was unsatisfactory for me as a whole person to live according to some man’s ideal, denying or doubting or feeling bad for being essentially me. RICHARD: When you tried for over eleven years to rid yourself of ‘being me’ – the ‘me’ that you saw standing in the way of peace-on-earth in one of the many outstanding peak experiences that you had years before you met me – that was your own ideal. Please, it was not ‘some man’s ideal’ that this absence of ‘being essentially me’ was what being a ‘whole person’ means at all ... you held this ideal long before you met me. Honesty with oneself is important, otherwise there is a duck-shoving of amenability onto another for one’s own decisions at the time. Also, this ‘some man’s ideal’ statement exemplifies just what your agenda is ... to blame men for most – if not all – of the ills of humankind. * IRENE to Vineeto: Intimacy can only exist between 2 people who are equally honest and dare to own up to their feelings as well as their thoughts, ideas, ideals, dreams, intimations and so forth. RICHARD: Whereas in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s honesty, daring ... or moods. It is an estimable condition to be in! ALAN: There is undoubtedly (i.e. by experience) a ‘common-sense’, which can operate, without this ‘common-sense’, necessarily ‘being’ something. It is an experiential matter – with ‘common-sense’ everything is self evidentially obvious and perhaps that is all one can say. One question which occurs, from what you say, is what has happened to others’ common-sense, when in a state of enlightenment? Assuming ‘common-sense’ to be something which exists, others experiencing an ASC choose to ignore their common-sense, that nagging question, which the grand ‘You’ could not ignore. Having seen the attraction of the Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz, as you put it, I can understand how easy it is to ignore ‘common-sense’. Can you expand further on why ‘You’ chose not to ignore it – why you? RICHARD: Why Richard? It stems from wanting to know, once and for all, just what was going on ... wanting to find out just what this entire business called living was. That question (‘Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s ... the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?’) was the basis for my investigation ... it was the bedrock from which I roamed abroad. Why would I have this rigour and not the others? A congenital integrity – not being susceptible to blandishment and flattery – and dignity. There was a certain quandary in my dealings with others when it came time to reveal my status so as to effect the desired result ... self-deception did not sit too well with me when it came to the nitty-gritty of interaction. I just knew in my heart of hearts that I had intentionally chosen for apotheosis – cunningly disguised as being chosen – over the actual. I was living out the fantasy of greatness partly out of curiosity. I discovered that it was humanity’s fantasy ... and I have always had a strong sense of individualism. * ALAN: This led on to the question ‘what am I?’ There are only two alternatives: 1) I am this flesh and blood body, only – and ‘I’ (the entity called Alan, as opposed to the physical body whom others recognise as ‘Alan’) do not actually exist, or 2) ‘I’ believe ‘I’ actually exist. From personal experience of the PCE, I know that premise (1) is not currently so for me, which left me with premise (2). RICHARD: Good, this is honesty with oneself in action ... and one has to be scrupulously honest with oneself if one is to go all the way. One cannot think or feel one’s way into this magical world – the world as-it-is in actuality – but one does need an absolute conviction that such a world exists. This conviction comes out of the pure consciousness experience ... and these peak experiences are momentary glimpses into the actual, the world of pristine perfection. To reiterate: in the PCE, it is immediately seen that ‘I’ do not actually exist. ALAN: In that case, perhaps I have not had a PCE for, as I said above, I cannot recall it being ‘immediately seen that ‘I’ do not actually exist’, only the fact that I was then fully participating in whatever was occurring and that there was no separation between me and the physical world around me. And I do not mean any metaphysical ‘I am that rock or I am that person and that person is me’. I did experience that once, which can be restated ‘I am God and you are God and we are God’. RICHARD: Going by what you have written in the past I have no doubts whatsoever that your experiences are full-blown PCE’s. Perhaps you did not ‘immediately see that ‘I’ do not actually exist’ but to be able to write what you do it is patently obvious that at those moments ‘Alan’ is not extant. My favourite description of this phenomenon comes from Grace where, in one outstanding PCE (and as soon at it became apparent) I was quick to ask her: ‘what happened to that concerned woman sitting on the couch that I was just talking to a minute ago?’ ‘Oh, her’, said Grace, without batting an eyelid, ‘she’s full of problems!’ The day proceeded famously from then on. RESPONDENT: I guess, if at all I would be able to have experience like yours, I would be filled with gratitude, not towards anybody but just plain gratitude. But then, I can not predict the future. May be my thinking would change. RICHARD: Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. As strange as it may initially seem, gratitude has the same deleterious effect upon one’s well-being as the resentment it seeks to reform. When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’, ‘Virtue’ and ‘Sin’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Despair’, ‘Gratitude’ and ‘Resentment’, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity. Purity is the hall-mark of the stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe ... which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. Unless the factuality of the existence of the third alternative is firmly grasped, one is forever fated to shuttle back and forth between the opposites. Gratitude simply does not work for it draws its energy from resentment itself ... and from nowhere else. Gratitude feeds off resentment – one cannot be grateful unless one is first resentful – and one cannot maintain any emotion without retaining its opposite. Neither does one adopt that other stratagem: transcendence. Transcendence is a form of sublimation ... to transcend is to confirm and endorse the reality of the opposites. One disposes of all these pathetic methods very simply: By being here now as this flesh and blood body. Being here now is to put your money where your mouth is, as it were. All other actions are methods, devices, techniques ... which are, in effect, delaying tactics. The most sincere form of flattery is not, as is commonly practised, imitating all the other people’s performance of standing back and expressing a feeling. To feel an emotion or be passionate about life is nowhere near the same as actually being here now. In being here now one is completely involved. Being here now is total inclusion. One demonstrates one’s appreciation of life by partaking fully in existence ... by letting this moment live one so that one is doing what is happening. One dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here now as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ willingly and voluntarily sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological or psychic identity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what one holds most dear. RESPONDENT: Do you joke, laugh, flirt, act silly for the fun of it? (Please be prepared to receive a joke from me every now and then). Or have you become a serious man? Pleasure talking to you. RICHARD: I like to joke, yes and I laugh a lot ... there is so much that is irrepressibly funny about life itself. I have no ability to flirt, however, as my libido is nil and void ... yet I have an active sexual life. I do not ‘act silly for the fun of it’ as I have no repressions to seek relief from. Strangely enough I find that I enjoy black humour; whereas the ‘I’ that I was could not ... ‘he’ found it repulsive and sickening. Nevertheless, the humour I enjoy most is that which lampoons puffed-up power and its authority. For example: • A journalist had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, and she noted then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. She approached one of the women for an explanation. ‘This is marvellous,’ said the journalist. ‘What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?’ Replied the Kuwaiti woman: ‘Land mines.’ Although it looks superficially to be a sexist joke it is not ... the reverse would hold true for a matriarchal society. Human frailty exposes the lie of power. As for ‘serious’ ... the utter reliability of being always happy and harmless replaces the galling burden of being serious ... actuality’s blithe sincerity dispenses with the onerous responsibility that epitomises adulthood. What I do find funny – in a peculiar way – is that I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to search forever ... some people consider arriving to be boring. How can unconditional peace and happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be boring? Is a carefree life all that difficult to comprehend? Why persist in a sick game ... and defend one’s right to do so? Why insist on suffering when blitheness is freely available here and now? Is a life of perennial gaiety something to be scorned? I have even had people say, accusingly, that I could not possibly be happy when there is so much suffering going on in the world. The logic of this defies credibility: Am I to wait until everybody else is happy before I am? If I was to wait, I would be waiting forever ... for under this twisted rationale, no one would dare to be the first to be happy. Their peculiar reasoning allows only for a mass happiness to occur globally; overnight success, as it were. Someone has to be intrepid enough to be first, to show what is possible to a benighted humanity ... one has to face the opprobrium of one’s ill-informed peers. Thus one needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere ... most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all. * RESPONDENT: The question ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ seems to be a very pleasurable activity. I like its simplicity. In my previous ‘spiritual’ era I would obsess and hope to become an influential enlightened master with a following of devotees. I would indulge in spiritual literature because it would promise wonders ... I don’t read spiritual books anymore. I think my life now is about getting from ‘there’ to ‘here’ as fully as I can, and it is very enjoyable. As I am asking myself now ‘How am I experiencing this moment’ I am happy, relaxed and somewhat over-eaten. RICHARD: These words of yours (‘in my previous ‘spiritual’ era I would obsess and hope to become an influential enlightened master with a following of devotees ...’) are music to my ears. I appreciate your honesty. * RESPONDENT: I would like to know, how useful for the goal of living it permanently, from your perspective, are exercises where you relax different parts of your body and focus your attention on various physical sensations (without preference for what sensation you focus on, tune-in or ‘become’). RICHARD: Speaking personally, I have never done any disciplines, practices or exercises at all ... I have never done any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any dietary regimes, any praying, any surrendering, any trusting, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities. Nor does one have to endlessly analyse one’s childhood for ever and a day. Nor does one have to do endless therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... likewise relaxation exercises will never set you free. Coming to one’s senses does not mean merely relaxing one’s toes, for example. As I have previously written, in order to facilitate a peak experience of perfection, one needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere – most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential – and come to your senses as efficaciously as possible. If you ‘focus your attention on various physical sensations’, then look to becoming the experience of these sensations happening ... rather than having them happen to you. And remember that an actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. And then the condition is ripe for a PCE to occur ... and although each pure consciousness experience brings a fresh beginning, an absolute newness, the condition of freedom from ‘I’ has indubitable character traits ... each time discovered anew with the same delight as if it were the first time. With each experience one finds oneself here in this ever-fresh, never contaminated moment. Here is an atmosphere free from ‘human’ feelings, from ‘humanity’s truisms, from religion’s morals and from civilisation’s mores ... all of which are humanistic and cultural coping-mechanisms and agreements. There is a delicious surprise to be found in actualism: it is so livable. It is living, here on earth, as this actual body, simply brimming with sensory organs ... yet completely devoid of emotions and passions manifesting as hallucinatory thoughts and utopian idealism. It is indeed possible to live peacefully, at ease and undisturbed by these futile feelings and delusive thoughts. It is an entirely different ball-game with different rationale which, from the ‘human’ view-point, lies diametrically opposed to the orthodox rules and regulations based on those venerated thoughts and feelings ... the more ancient the better. Yet it is all so patently obvious. RESPONDENT: Yet, in its very verbosity, and impenetrable cohesion and monologueness, leaves me with the feeling that meeting this Richard in the actual reality of his idyllic seaside village would be a bit like being fucked by an actual steam train? RICHARD: Only if you were an ‘Awakened Teacher’ who was actively propagating those ‘Tried and True’ psittacisms called ‘Teachings’ that perpetuate all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide for ever and a day. You would indubitably be stopped short in your tracks ... those well-worn tracks leading from illusion to delusion. Eastern mystical philosophy is an extremely complex and complicated metaphysics that does nothing to eliminate identity – both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – and in fact, if one were to apply his eastern-derived religious and spiritual system, one’s self would be endorsed, enhanced, glorified and rewarded for staying in existence. If it were not for all the mayhem and misery, it would be entertainingly amusing ... for the self does not exist in actuality. All this monstrous behaviour is about something fictitious. The self – and the Self – are only psychological and psychic entities ... phantasms in mundane reality and in a super-charged Reality. It is all much ado about nothing. However, it is no laughing matter ... it is far too serious when appalling suffering is concerned. It behoves one to put aside the selfish ego-driven and soul-ridden will to survive and look again at what exactly is occurring. One will no longer be entranced by the bewitching promises proffered so alluringly by these self-appointed guardians of virtue and morality ... all self-serving, mind you. It is a must that one establish one’s integrity and set about ridding oneself of any psychological and psychic entity whatsoever. For there is nothing harmless about this divinity – this is a very self-centred and self-seeking approach to life on earth – something that all metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s Immortality is unambiguously selfish ... peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined soul after physical death. So much for their humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and humaneness. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to perpetuate oneself for ever and a day. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical 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 the Eternal After-Life. 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’. All this gets played out in the human psyche ... and not in this actual world. For those rare few who succeed, their reward for narcissism 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 ‘blithesome actuality’, 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: Could you comment at length please? RICHARD: Indeed I could – I have over half-million words at my command – but as this E-Mail forum is restricted to 9 KB per mail we will have to settle for this for now. Is there anything in particular that you would like to discuss? For the way is clear to do so, now that we have got all of that mandatory verbal sparring (as per standard Internet protocol) out of the way. Shall we stop trying to score points of each other and attend to the subject at hand? To wit: How to enter into a genuinely blithesome actuality? * RESPONDENT: What do you now mean by introducing the concept of reaching out? Extending myself? I do not recall you using these terms before. Reach out to people? RICHARD: Not to people, no. I am not talking about other people doing anything at all ... I am talking about you. I am talking about your unilateral action irregardless of what anyone else does or does not do. This actual freedom does not require the cooperation of a single person ... let alone 6.0 billion people. This is for you. This is your peace-on-earth. Of course, it is entirely possible that a chain-letter effect may ripple through the denizens of the ‘Land Of Lament’ ... but what they do is their business. As long as they comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocol, they are free to live their lives as wisely or as foolishly as they choose. You do not have to concern yourself about any other person’s modus operandi at all. The best way you can help another is by being free of the Human Condition yourself ... otherwise any help is but the blind leading the blind. The words ‘reach out’ and ‘extend oneself’ are figures of expression indicating the intensity of purpose requisite for consummation. It is possible to not only seek but to find ... thereby enabling one to live life in full meaning twenty-four-hours-a-day. The problem with the people who embark upon the search for meaning is that they approach it in the incorrect way. One cannot think one’s way into meaning ... nor can one feel one’s way, either. Thinking and feeling – through logical imagination and irrational intuition – are the two tools that everyone has been taught to use to conduct the affairs of their everyday life: they are not at all appropriate for uncovering the perfection that they are searching for. There is an unimaginable purity that is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart. To proceed thus is to become involved in a fruitless endeavour to make life fit into one’s own petty demands and desires. Life is not like that ... one has only to look into the marvels of nature to see that life-forms have arranged themselves in a myriad of exquisitely delicate shapes, colours, textures, qualities and character. So too has the universe gracefully arranged itself in regards to providing intrinsic meaning. The universe is innately perfect and pure. It is already always immaculate and consummate. Nothing ‘dirty’ can breach the blameless bastions of this unimpeachable purity and perfection ... even the most profound thoughts and the most sublime feelings are self-centred. The self – ‘I’ – is not only defiled, it is corrupt through and through. ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. ‘I’ am rotten at the very core. There is one thing that ‘I’ can do, however, to remedy the situation. ‘I’ can disappear. Psychological and psychic self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of that purity being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life, which ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart. Nothing could be further from the truth. RICHARD: Seeing that you have brought the conversation to an end, I would like to express my appreciation for your taking the time, in a discussion with me spanning 10 E-Mails, to give your attention to the most fundamental issues pertaining to human life on earth today. RESPONDENT: I wonder whether this is sarcasm or what? Seems like it could be. RICHARD: Indeed not ... I am entirely sincere. I like my fellow human beings and wish only the best for them ... each and every one. Hence this discussion and other public dialogues of the same nature and with the same topic. To wit: peace-on-earth, as this flesh and blood body, in this lifetime. It is not possible to have an honest, candid and frank discussion until both parties place their cards on the table. Now that you have done so we can proceed with expedition – and without resorting to time-wasting and petty undergraduate debating techniques à la standard internet protocol – if that be of mutual agreement. If not, I will simply use a copy of this page (anonymously) as an established starting point in another discussion with another person on another day ... which is why I am particularly appreciative that you were able to consider, clarify and publicly state both your affirmation and seal of approval to these extremely important issues. It demonstrably shows other people that I am not making all the details of this mysticism up, you see. * RESPONDENT: Right, like you believe that or respect it. Ha, ha. The truth is Richard, if you actually believed that, we would be having a whole different conversation. RICHARD: If I may interject? I neither need to ‘believe that’ nor ‘respect it’ as I have so far only had dialogues with two self-acknowledged realised beings, in a public forum on the internet such as this, whilst I have had hundreds of discussions on-line with wannabe angelic beings ... therefore it is indeed rare. As for a ‘whole different conversation’ ... they both responded by attempting to defend the indefensible somewhat the same as you are. RESPONDENT: One doesn’t even need to be telepathic or self-realized to see your insincerity. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... I am entirely sincere. Because I actually like my fellow human beings, and not merely feel that I do, then I wish only the best for them ... each and every one. I actually care, you see, and not merely feel that I care. RICHARD: This is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: Only if it is the right kind of freedom. RICHARD: Goodness me ... 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. So, the question is: Is an actual freedom a silly freedom ... or a sensible freedom? It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the psychological and psychic identity within the body struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. This alternate freedom has never before been discovered anywhere in the history of humankind ... the most one could aspire to in order to transcend the ‘human realm’ was the much-touted ‘Divine Realm’, which has always brought bloodshed and suffering in its wake. This is because an imitation innocence was produced by the transformed identity now being humble ... it never was and never will be the genuine article. However, the way is now clear for that most longed for global peace-on-earth to happen. Because it is possible in one human being, the possibility exists for it to be replicated in another ... and another ... and another ... and so on. And the crux of its success is innocence. RESPONDENT: The notion that there is some real ‘I’, or thinker or feeler seems like a belief and if the body/ mind is observed carefully cannot be found. RICHARD: Years ago, as an aid in understanding myself, I would look very carefully at little things I said or wrote – like that ‘slip of the tongue’ phrase – because little things could be very revealing to me of something I was overlooking. What I see above is that where you say ‘[the] thinker or feeler seems like a belief’, you follow it with ‘body/ mind’ and not ‘heart/ mind’. If, as you say, the ‘I’ ‘seems like a belief’ to you, then the heart must come into the picture. This is because a belief is an emotion-backed thought. Believing itself – the very action of believing – is passionate imagination. Maybe – just maybe – if you look into your heart you may find ‘me’ lurking there. RESPONDENT: The notion of an ego and soul also seem to be beliefs that cannot be found if life is carefully observed. RICHARD: They can not be found if life is merely observed carefully ... if one is that calm, detached observer on the hilltop. Yet when one looks deeply into one’s psyche; when one plumbs the depths of one’s being; when there is profound and sincere intent ... then the ego and soul can be located. They can be seen ... and at that moment of seeing, one is no longer them. Then what one is – what not ‘who’ – is this flesh and blood body being aware. This awareness – not that spiritual awareness – is called apperception. (Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself – Oxford Dictionary). * RICHARD: When ‘I’ freely and intentionally sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entities residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold 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 ‘real world’ 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 ecstatic 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: This does not make any sense. How does something that supposedly truly exists cause its own demise? RICHARD: Simply by the earnest and sincere desire to do something constructive about all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide ... instead of indulging in intellectual masturbation. It is called being altruistic. RICHARD: An open question is a seminal question: ‘I’ ask the question (what am I here for) in such a way that ‘I’ do not just get a carefully thought-out and reasoned answer and be satisfied with that. ‘I’ want an experiential result ... and ‘I’ keep the question burning in the depths of ‘my’ psyche, discarding any intellectual answers (no matter how accurate) that inevitably pop-up in the course of time. And then it happens as a direct result of keeping the question open. RESPONDENT: So there must be seriousness and a fatigue of seeking escape? RICHARD: As the goal is peace and harmony – what I describe as being ‘happy and harmless’ – then in no way will seriousness do the trick. Be sincere, yes – utterly sincere – but seriousness ...?? No way ... life is too much fun! RESPONDENT: Sincerity is my favourite cup of tea. Great! (it makes sense too). RICHARD: Good ... sincerity is sourced in naiveté. 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: 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. Living in a western democracy in the ’nineties one is so well-provided for that there is hardly the incentive to find out about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is, eh? Yet ... you would not want to care? Is this why you started this thread by stating: ‘I do not see that the words of another can point out the utter necessity for the ending of malice and sorrow’. After all, you do say ‘then it starts again’. What makes it start again? Idle curiosity? Boredom? After all, you did write – in a recent post to another – that you agree that truth destroys ‘what is’ ... particularly, you said, ‘if the what is, is the false’. Now that reads as if you have had personal experience of this happening ... have you? Because you did add this codicil: ‘That’s where it ends though, that which seeks to befriend truth can never be truth, so the lie (self-importance) lives on’. Is this your experience? Or is this all but platitudes based upon your reading? Does ‘self-importance’ play a big part in your life? Have you seen ‘The Truth’? Did it destroy your falseness? Yes? No? If ‘yes’, then you must be living truly, now ... if ‘no’ then you cannot know that ‘truth destroys that which is false’ now can you? It thus amounts to being nothing but a belief. RESPONDENT: But we can get the /feel/ of it through words. RICHARD: As an example of two or more meanings to a word: I cannot accurately respond to your the use of the word <feel> without an explanation as to how you are using it. The word <feel> usually serves two faculties (sensate and affective) as in ‘I feel the sun on my face’ or ‘I feel the wind in my hair (sensate feeling) and ‘I feel hateful’ or ‘I feel loving’ (affective feeling). Thus it can also be used to mean ‘sense’ as in ‘but we can get the sense of it through words’ ... which could mean intellectually grasping the meaning of what is being described (a mental understanding known as ‘making sense’) or, by blurring the distinction between the sensate-based perception (a use known as ‘seeing’) and the affective-based sensitivity (otherwise known as a ‘gut-feeling’ or a ‘hunch’) it could mean an intuitive empathy to the meaning of what is being described (as in ‘it feels true’). RESPONDENT: For example, while reading your words, I get a feel of what you are trying to get at. I understand you at a depth that is not entirely verbal – you convey to me something that is original, that is sincere, that is universal. In short, I sense truth in your writing. Without offending most other writers, I don’t get the same feeling when I read their postings. So, I usually skip their postings, or read them and not think too much about it. The question is: is K trivial (corrupt)? I don’t think so. When I read his writings, I get a feel of something authentic, something universally true. Now, this could very well be a devotee-effect: that I am a K-devotee and hence find his writings to be authentic and true. RICHARD: What I am saying is not the same-same as what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says ... yet you effectively use similar descriptions of what you ‘get the /feel/ of’ whilst reading these two radically diverging positions (you use ‘universal’ and ‘true/ truth’ in both instances coupled with ‘original/ sincere’ on the one hand and ‘authentic/ not trivial’ on the other ... which effectively amounts to the same thing). Consequently, I ask whoever I am discussing these matters with to remember a PCE – and preferably have this direct experience again – which does away with having to rely upon ‘feeling’, ‘perceiving’, ‘sensing’, ‘intuiting’ and so on altogether. As for the ‘devotee-effect’ ... you appear to already know the answer to that. Viz.: [Respondent]: ‘I do feel dependent on him for sustenance: he is constantly in my thoughts, talking to me. There are times when his presence is very real and I can hear him guiding me, telling me things. His presence is very reassuring ...’ [endquote]. 3,000 to 5,000 years of accumulated ‘ancient wisdom’ is a lot to discard ... overnight, as it were. This inherited ‘wisdom’ creates a mind-set that finds meaning in the non-sense ... and prevents something new to human historical experience penetrating through to one’s native intelligence. This effect is known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ whereby the recipient literally cannot afford to take in what is being presented. What I have noticed, over the years, is that if I persist in presenting my case – which of necessity includes questioning the other’s borrowed wisdom – that the other’s responses become more and more irrational as I proceed. It is a grand adventure we are all involved in! RESPONDENT: I am a bit concerned about the words ‘effective, and ‘accomplishment’ when you use them too. It’s not clear for me myself, why I would prefer the question of ‘how deep has it been for you’ instead of ‘how effective’. RICHARD: Sure ... I was not so much enquiring, at that initial stage in the discussion which the (above) exchange refers to, as to ‘how deep’ the experience of utter fullness was ... but rather how effective the after-the-event reflective thought had been in enabling further experience. The reason for this is that the experience itself is the best ‘teacher’, as it were, and the more the experience occurs the more clear it is what is required of ‘the thinker’ in order for this to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day happening for the remainder of one’s life. Also, there are no degrees of freedom in the total and complete end of human suffering (no shades, gradations or nuances of depth) as it is a case of all or nothing. It either is or is not: otherwise it is not total; it is not complete; it is not ultimate ... it is not the utter perfection of the purity of innocence. RESPONDENT: The second one somehow leaves a more mechanical impression. One worries for a second if this is the question of a mind that is looking for ‘success’? RICHARD: A sincere mind definitely is looking for success ... otherwise it is not sincere. To be living in peace-on-earth, twenty four hours a day for the remainder of one’s life, is the greatest success ever (it has never happened before in human history). RESPONDENT: There is a lot unkindness and self in the notion of ‘success’. And a great potential to bring suffer for the world, including the human beings. RICHARD: The genuine article – an actual freedom from human suffering – is fail-safe because the perfection of the purity of the already always existing peace-on-earth is so immaculate that nothing ‘dirty’ can get in. Thus benignity, benevolence and blitheness abounds ... ‘tis a peaceful, friendly and happy world one lives in. JAMES: Yes, two things stand out: pure intent and don’t possess it. I am looking at pure intent to see if I have it and I am on guard to not pursue it or possess it. RICHARD: You say that ‘two things stand out’ ... yet you slip in a third thing as if I had said it (‘to not pursue it’) when it is really ‘ancient wisdom’ that promotes that view. Speaking personally, the ‘I’ that was pursued it like ‘he’ had never pursued anything before ... ‘he’ made it the number one priority in ‘his’ life. ‘He’ was a married man, with four children, running ‘his’ own business, with a house mortgage to pay off and a car on hire purchase ... in other words: normal. And all the while that ‘he’ pursued it, ‘he’ was working twelve-fourteen hour days, six-seven days a week ... yet ‘his’ pursuit of peace-on-earth took absolute precedence over all other matters and dominated ‘his’ every moment (‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’). (Richard, List B, James, 19 October 1999). RESPONDENT: Eido Rochi of Dai Bosatsu Zendo once said to us (mid 80s) that if we want enlightenment, we must want it as a drowning man wants air; that the closer we come to it, the more compelling it will be, of itself. RICHARD: Yes, ‘compelling’ indeed ... once started in earnest (which means launching the sincere 100% commitment that one’s peers will call ‘obsessive’ so as to adroitly avoid having to do so themselves) a thrilling momentum takes over and one is impelled ineluctably to one’s destiny. One is finally out from being under control ... which is perhaps why so many hesitate to take that first and final step. What an adventure it is to be alive! RESPONDENT No. 34: Each time we remember our true identity and see through the deceptions of ego, that is a liberation – negativity, emotions and thoughts are purified, and we become stronger in our wisdom nature. RESPONDENT No. 20: It is not in the elimination of self that there is wholeness, or in the belief that there was never a self that must be eliminated, but in the integration within the totality. In that integration is the immediate transformation into something else. For the very nature of self is in that which is not integrated, which is separate. RICHARD: Thought has arrogated the ardent survival mechanism into a fervent ‘will to survive’, creating an emotion-backed version of the self called ‘ego’ ... which is the ‘I’ that one believes one is. ‘I’ as ego am separated from ‘myself’ as ‘being’ and seek integration. Then, ‘I’ fondly imagine, ‘I’ will become ‘whole’. If successful, then ‘I’ will indeed be ‘something else’ ... pure ‘Being’ ... pure ‘Soul’ ... pure ‘Spirit’ ... pure ‘Thatness’ ... pure ‘Isness’ ... pure ‘Whatever’. It is all delusion born out of the illusion of self created by blind instincts. There is only this flesh and blood body here in actuality. (Richard, List B, No. 20b, 11 July 1998). RESPONDENT: Is integration becoming whole or is it seeing from wholeness? There may be the delusion of a part seeking to join with an image of wholeness. Then ‘I’ in here want to join with that out there. This is identification with an image of a separate body/ mind. That is indeed self-centred activity. RICHARD: Even integration as ‘seeing from wholeness’ is self-centred ... any integration is self-serving. There is integrity ... which is not to be confused with integration. In this respect, integrity means: ‘uprightness, honesty, rectitude, righteousness, virtue, probity, morality, honour, goodness, decency, truthfulness, fairness, sincerity, candour; principles, ethics’. RESPONDENT: When there is no image created of ‘me’ in here, there is no division between flesh and blood bodies containing separate ‘me’s’. When the delusion of self is seen through, there is freedom not for me but from ‘the me’. RICHARD: ‘I’ am not only an image ... ‘I’ am also an emotional entity conjured up from the instinctual passions. When ‘I’ die a real psychological and psychic death then there is no separative entity to cause division between me as a flesh and blood body and other flesh and blood bodies. But they still are divided from me by the presence of their ‘me’ ... and can be loving or hateful, kind or cruel, generous or spiteful and so on as the mood strikes them. When the delusion of self is seen through – and ‘I’ and ‘me’ die a real psychological and psychic death – then there is indeed freedom for me. I have been here all along, it is just that ‘I’ and ‘me’ were so dominating and demanding that I could not get a word in edgeways ... except in a peak experience when ‘I’ and ‘me’ temporarily vacated the premises. And what an ambrosial freedom it is. 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