# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Love and Love Agapé Re: Don’t have to do a thing. JAMES: My partnership with [name deleted] is going fantastic. We met at a cabin in the Ozarks for a week and it couldn’t have been better. We planned to enjoy and appreciate and have fun and if any issues come up to speak them out and investigate them. However, no issues to speak of came up. The sex was great and my ed seems to be cured so we just enjoyed the whole time. She is coming here this week to spend a week with me here which will also be great and we will take it from there as to what’s next. However, there is one thing which I still consider. Is it better to live alone? I don’t really know the answer to that so I have decided that I don’t have to do a thing. If she is here do that and if I am alone do that. I can enjoy and appreciate and investigate whatever issues come up either way. (Message 198xx) JAMES: I visited her at her home in Florida for a week and it was great. This time I won’t see her again for a month. However, something has been bothering me about it and I have finally realized what it is. Love has reared its ugly head again. I miss her and it is because I love her that I have pain and suffering about it. The partnership is doomed and I am doomed as long as love is involved. I want to have a partnership without love so that she is free to do what she wants and I am free to do what I want. I don’t know how this will play out but I do know that I will not continue down the love road. (Message 203xx) RICHARD: G’day James, This is quite an apt place to refer you to the last paragraph of my June 21st email to Alan on this very topic. Viz.: • [Richard]: “(...) I well recall the period when feeling-being ‘Peter’ first began putting what he was then reading in ‘The Actualism Journal’ into practice with a newly-found female companion – which ‘he’ wrote about in ‘Peter’s Journal’ – as it soon became obvious to both Grace and myself that the first flush of male-female attraction was self-evidently having ‘him’ under the impression that the sublime oneness-intimacy ‘he’ was experiencing (as in an ASC) was an actual intimacy (as in a PCE) and so we bided our time, until that (affectively-induced) ‘chemistry’ began to wear off and ‘he’ came to ‘his’ senses of ‘his’ own accord, as the heightened rush of blind-nature’s mating passions are too powerful a force to be reckoned with. (Richard, List D, Alan, 21 June 2015) Not only did feeling-being ‘Peter’ write about being in love, in ‘Peter’s Journal’, feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ did as well (in a chapter entitled “A Bit of Vineeto”). At the following URL ‘she’ quotes from both chapters: (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, James2, 13.3.2004) The relevant portions of what feeling-being ‘Peter’ wrote, in ‘Peter’s Journal’, are available online in “Peter’s Selected Writing”. Viz.: • [Peter]: “(...). Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why, increasingly, were there misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties between us? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our matter-of-fact contract and investigations, we had *fallen in love!* We were both exhibiting the classic symptoms, emotions and feelings associated with *being in love*. I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. I realized that I had been *jealous, possessive, pushy, demanding and obsessive* with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when *the impossible demands of love* are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to *disappointment, resentment, withdrawal, spite and eventually hate*. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that, unless something changed, this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure ...”. [emphases added]. (Peter, Selected Writings. Love, #4). And again: • [Peter]: “(...).What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention for peace and harmony made me able to completely drop *this destructive behaviour*. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. The *realizing and facing of the facts, coupled with a clear intent, left ‘me’ with no choice. It wasn’t that ‘I’ made a decision – there was actually no decision to make. Action happened by itself, exactly as it would in swerving to avoid hitting another car while driving*. (...).A week later, we both realized the full extent of the dramatic change that had occurred. *A certain excitement seemed to be missing, a passion and a bond in our lives. It was quite tangible, and a sense of loss overwhelmed us*. It was apparent I had fallen in love about three weeks after we met and had been in love for about six weeks until I had called a halt to the battle. I hadn’t recognized at the time that this behaviour of mine was really *love in operation*; I only saw it in the end as an emotional turmoil that *was destroying my enjoyment of being with Vineeto*. So, what we had seen was love in operation – *a practical demonstration in our lives, not just a theoretical concept*. As we sat down to talk about what had happened *we both had tears in our eyes* ...”. [emphases added]. (Peter, Selected Writings. Love, #4)5 The relevant portions of what feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ wrote, in the chapter entitled “A Bit of Vineeto”, are also available online. Viz.: • [Vineeto]: “(...). One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt *I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself*. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – *the romantic dream that most women have* about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, *44 years old and as silly as a teenager!* After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. (...). That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. *My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself.* I had *recovered my autonomy* – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness”. [emphases added]. (Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, Love). And again: • [Vineeto]: “(...). Even after dismissing love as a concept or an option of relating, I still had to be watchful of my ‘love-attacks’, as I called them. They would *come through the backdoor, seduce me with a rose-colored mood and appear so nice and cosy* – such a temptation to surrender back into loving Peter instead of meeting him directly. However, I had understood and experienced often enough that any feeling for the other, howsoever sweet and soothing, would only make him *a projected imaginary figure on my own screen of emotions, which can so easily change at the slightest whim. It had nothing to do with the actual person* or situation. Being vigilant and persistently nibbling away at my habit of falling back into love proved to be a long process. After all, love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues! Later, *love changed into the subtler version* of feeling ‘connected’ to Peter, of having, through him, some kind of identity in my life. I caught myself wanting to use him as an outline for my own existence, as an anchor to define me as ‘person-in-relation’, a ‘self’. Examining it closer I discovered that this need for an anchor derives from the female instinct for protection. (...). I remember in the past whenever I had talked with girlfriends about the qualities of the future ‘perfect’ man, the worst and most terrible vision was to live with a man who was without feelings and emotions! The only option I could think of then was that he would repress his emotions and eventually explode, or that he would be a robot, a walking computer! At that time it was simply unimaginable that I would be able to relate to, let alone delight in living with such a man. And because *my only identity and power had been to feel and express emotions, it was also inconceivable for me to be without them myself*. Now living together is so simple, each of us minding our own business, down to details like money, car, sewing on a button or taking care of one’s health. And each of us is free to do it the way each prefers. Of course I enjoy making Peter a cup of coffee or he delights in cooking a meal for us. (...). Applying Richard’s method has forced me to examine and eliminate the very issues and beliefs that are triggering those emotions. It revealed to me that *emotions are the crucial part of the ‘self’ – the very cause of my being unhappy and malicious*. It has enabled me to question the beliefs that *both defined and confined me as a woman*. Chiselling away my psychological and psychic entity has *made emotions and feelings redundant* and has left me increasingly free to enjoy every person I meet, every situation that happens and everything that this abundant universe offers. In my ‘role-play’ I am neither a ‘woman’ nor a ‘man’, but simply a human being ... a female, of course! [emphases added]. (Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, Love2). It is, of course, advisable to re-read the above sections in their context at those online URLs. * ‘Tis unfortunate the wealth of experience obtained by Someone Uniquely Recognisable By Her Inglish is not available for the elucidation of all feeling-beings – I am reluctant to make public knowledge of the details of an experiment unique in human experience/ human history, wherein a rather daring feeling-being deliberately and with knowledge aforethought fell deeply in love with a resident of the actual world (a process she publicly declared to be “a viable course” in becoming actually free via the ‘fusion’ aspect of love), due to the entire five-month experience having afterwards left her hurt, hurting and hurtful; e.g.: vindictive and vengeful – as considerable light was thrown, for instance, on the fundamental necessity of possessiveness (a non-negotiable insistence on exclusivity) being an integral part of love’s maintenance. Howsoever, despite this unfortunate lack of detail the outcome of that rather daring experiment has already been made public in the most melodramatic manner possible (i.e., via that seditious attempt to stop the global spread of peace-on-earth dead in its tracks – via the dissemination of all manner of made-up stuff about “Richard & Associates” until the outright ridiculousness those salacious fabulations brought about its ignominious melt-down – recently referred to in Message № 20220. Richard, List D, No. 48a, #Richard&Associates). Nevertheless, back in 1997 when Devika was in the process of transmogrifying into being Irene, where she would flip back-and-forth betwixt the two personae, I recorded a conversation we had about love’s possessive nature one delightful morning in early winter (the weather at this latitude is such that winter-time is the dry season wherein the days are warm and sunny, mostly with brilliant blue skies and a clear atmosphere, and the nights are crisp to cold) as a feeling-being’s memory of apperceptive awareness is notoriously unreliable when it comes to the allure of love. Viz.: • [Richard: “(...). After all these delicious years of living together and exploring together, a rather salient and curiously unforeseen event has taken place. She has fallen in love ... and has spent the last six weeks endeavouring to come to terms with the shifting kaleidoscope of passions that swing her from one point of view to another. All the experiential understanding of a virtual freedom gets tossed aside in the twinkling of an eye ... only to come back solidly when she is able to come to her senses once again. We recorded one of our conversations only two weeks ago in order to have something factual – other than one’s notoriously unreliable memory – to fall back upon in the times of love’s stress. * “Is actual intimacy still vastly superior to love?” “Oh yes, because love spoils it; love is actually a great spoiler of intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing ... it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into one’s life”. “An unfortunate force?” “Because when there is actual intimacy there is a pleasure that is more substantial, more of the earth, of me – of my body – and all of my body is intimate. It is that orgastic sensation”. “And as you are now, there is no yearning, pining, longing ... which is the down-side of love”. “And the disappointment ... none of that operates in actual intimacy. In love there can be a bruising going on”. “Bruising?” “Because of the emotion. After the emotion has gone there is a bruising feeling; I don’t want that emotion because it bruises me again and again. I don’t want the love of another person to ‘fill me up’”. “What is that ‘bruising’?” “You can either feel tired or you can have a whingeing pressure pain around the heart and diaphragm... and that is what I would call a bruising. It’s after the emotion has already gone”. “Oh, you do not mean bruised emotionally?” “No, it’s physical. The emotion is an onslaught on my physical body ... that’s how I would experience an emotion. It’s like ... you are feeling great and your heart starts pounding and you ...”. “Are you saying that emotions are unhealthy for the body?” “Yes, it’s good to have as little of them as possible ... rather none at all. This does not mean that therefore one should repress them. When an emotion is there, take it in hand ... put it in the middle of the table, as it were, and walk around it, have a good look at it and feel every aspect of it. Become aware of it and ask: ‘What is so good about this emotion’?” “Some people would say to let go of it ...”. “No, no, no. I don’t ‘let go of it’. By looking at it, it goes. This looking and feeling is looking and feeling with total awareness ... all of me is aware of what this emotion is doing to me as this body. Where, in the body, do I feel it the most? Does it really feel good? Is it one hundred per cent good? No, it is not ... there is always a ‘Yes, but ...’. Even the good emotions can never live up to what they promise. By looking at them they disappear; you see how unnecessary they are. That is with hindsight of course, for you cannot see that they are unnecessary – that there is ‘life after emotions’ – when you are in the grip of the emotion. This is getting to the ‘nitty-gritty’ of me. It is so fascinating ... all these emotions have always kept me in existence. The ‘Good’ emotions are also me. This is my self”. “This is what you are. It is often said ‘We are emotional beings’. It is excellent to be rid of this for one can see clearly, understand cleanly and act appropriately. For example, love puts a gloss on people ... one sees only the best in the other and is blind to the worst”. “Now I can look at a person and see such a normal person and I wonder how can such a person be so attractive to one who is in love. This is something I would never see when I was in love; I would never see that aspect”. “Love covers up what the person actually is like and presents them in a good light”. “Oh yes a fantastic light ... not just fantastic; love can make that man into the most perfect human being. Into a god”. * “Now what about actual intimacy? In intimacy you see the other as they actually are ... ‘warts and all’ is the expression”. “That is not only better ... it is far more interesting”. “It does not make you repulsed. One is neither attracted nor repulsed”. “Exactly”. “How are you with the other, then?” “One hundred per cent. They get the all of me”. “In actual intimacy, when you are with another person one hundred per cent – and there is neither attraction or repulsion – and you see clearly what other people would call attractive or repulsive ... what does that do?” “Oh, that’s delicious! That’s delicious because that is freedom. Then I’m free from the grip of emotions”. “So, seeing the other for what they actually are, do you see the ‘Good’ in them? The potential?” “There is good and bad in everybody. I am aware of what humans call good or bad. I can see them with either eye, as it were; I can see them with intimate eyes or ‘human’ eyes. I am aware of that and I don’t take much notice of the ‘human’ measurement. In actual intimacy this whole moment, everything, is magnificent”. “In the orthodox way, people who are described as ‘Goody-goodies’, see the good in somebody and try to draw out the good and make them a better person. What do you do, in actual intimacy, when you see both good and bad?” “I don’t feel like interfering at all. I stay in myself”. “And you talk from that?” “I talk from here, yes. I respond according to the circumstance, whereas my identity would react. In intimacy I can respond, taking the whole scenario, the whole situation, into consideration. Whilst the identity goes from identity to identity. In intimacy I can easily sit here ...there is me as I think I am; there is me as I feel I am; there is me as I assert myself and there is me as I actually am. I am this body ... I have given way for the universe to live this body and with that I go anonymous. There are ripples of pleasure going through the body”. “So you are like that, in virtual freedom there are ripples of pleasure, and being like that, what are you doing with the other person? What do you want, for them?” “I want the very best. I would wish this upon them”. “What do you say, then? Seeing the attractive and the repulsive ... and you do not try to draw out the good ...”. “I’ve stopped doing that ... and I’ve also stopped stopping the bad. I sit with this totality of what is happening in the moment; this moment gives all this and this person is in front of me and there is this strange atmosphere between us and we both are trying – for I see that the other also wants the best – and I want for the other to be also here”. “Ah! You want for the other to be here, where this moment is happening”. “Oh yes, of course. What else could I want ... that is the very best I can want”. “Would you say, then, that you brush aside the potential for good or bad in the other and – simply because they are a human being they have all the qualifications necessary to be here – it does not matter where they come from? They are a physical body and you want them to be here where their body is? You invite them to partake in intimacy. You are able to do it, for everyone has the capacity to be here ... they are just unaware that it exists”. “Yes, and that is all what I could want, too. Then they can experience it for themselves”. “Then you can talk directly”. “Yes. Then we can all have fantastic fun. In intimacy”. “Which is the direct experience of the other and the world about. No need for love?” “No need for love. It is all so incredibly good; I am so pleased with everything ... I am enjoying this all so much ... and the self is still here. This is so ... so ... what a relief ... to have finally arrived. How can there be something better than this?” “Virtual freedom is beyond normal human expectations, anyway. Yet there is more to come. Much, much more. In actual freedom one is the universe’s experience of itself. One experiences the infinite purity and perfection of the vast stillness that is the essential nature of everything”. * But it has all been to no avail, the power of love surging through the bloodstream is too strong to deny ... the body can be persuaded to produce quite an array of chemicals; a veritable cocktail is available to the insidious entity that has a psychological and psychic residence within ...”. (from pp. 235-239, ‘Richard’s Journal’, 1st. Ed. (pp. 256-259, 2nd. Ed.), in Article 36, ‘There comes a Time when one must Leave the Nest and Fly’). Regards, Richard. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Footnote: [1]leaving her hurt, hurting and hurtful; e.g.: vindictive and vengeful: Viz.: • [Richard to No. 15]: [...] Indeed, that is the very reason for my ‘just a quick note’ to [No. 3] (#14174) wherein I made it abundantly clear that it was indeed a real-life drama (aka melodrama) and provided textual evidence which demonstrates the primary reasons as to why it is all taking place before our eyes as we all type out our respective words ... namely: love and its failure to deliver the goods (with its resultant blaming of the ‘love-object’, in lieu of facing the fact that love itself failed, along with its attendant resentment/ hatred and/or jealousy/ envy and/or bitterness/ vindictiveness and so on and so forth). [...]. (Richard, List D, No. 15, 24 June 2013) [return] RESPONDENT: You said in your email that you are using the word love in the same way JK uses it. How you know it? RICHARD: Experientially ... it is the self-same experience (like recognises like). RESPONDENT: JK never defined love. RICHARD: Hmm ... what is this then? Viz.: • ‘We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a battle going between the sacred and the profane. We have divided what love is from what love should be, so we never know what love is. Love, surely, is a total feeling that is not sentimental and in which there is no sense of separation. It is complete purity of feeling without the separative, fragmenting quality of the intellect’. (page 76, ‘On Living and Dying’; Chennai [Madras], 9 December 1959; ©1992 Krishnamurti Foundation of America). He is unambiguously saying that love is ‘a total feeling’ and a ‘complete purity of feeling’ ... if that is not defining it then I would like to know what is. RESPONDENT: Was defining not love. RICHARD: What about this then? Viz.: • ‘Love is passion’. (page 153,‘The Wholeness Of Life’; Part II, Chapter III: ‘Out Of Negation Comes The Positive Called Love’; ©1979 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.). RESPONDENT: He was saying that you can’t define love. RICHARD: Not only did he define it he also delineated where it comes from (sorrow). Viz.: • ‘There is this thing called sorrow, which is pain, grief, loneliness, a sense of total isolation, no hope, no sense of relationship or communication, total isolation. Mankind has lived with this great thing and perhaps cultivated it because he does not know how to resolve it. (...) Now if you don’t escape, that is if there is no rationalising, no avoiding, no justifying, just remaining with that totality of suffering, without the movement of thought, then you have all the energy to comprehend the thing you call sorrow. If you remain without a single movement of thought, with that which you have called sorrow, there comes a transformation in that which you have called sorrow. That becomes passion. The root meaning of sorrow is passion. When you escape from it, you lose that quality which comes from sorrow, which is complete passion, which is totally different from lust and desire. When you have an insight into sorrow and remain with that thing completely, without a single movement of thought, out of that comes this strange flame of passion. And you must have passion, otherwise you can’t create anything. Out of passion comes compassion. Compassion means passion for all things, for all human beings. So there is an ending to sorrow, and only then you will begin to understand what it means to love’. (‘A Relationship with the World’, Public Talks; Ojai, California; April 11 1976; ©1976/1996 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.) . He is most explicit that if you escape from passion (he specifically says the root meaning of sorrow is passion) you lose that quality ... and that out of that quality comes compassion (and only then you will begin to understand what it means to love). And once that happens this happens: • ‘When there is love, which is its own eternity, then there is no search for God, because *love is God*’. [emphasis added]. (page 281, ‘The First and Last Freedom’; ©1954 Krishnamurti Foundation of America). Which is why he can say this: • ‘I am God’. (page 65, Krishnamurti, ‘The Path’, 3rd Edition, Star Publishing Trust: Ommen 1930). You may recall this exchange: • [Respondent]: ‘There is not feeler, but you are the feelings. • [Richard]: ‘When the feelings become a state of being – as in the altered state of consciousness (ASC) popularly known as spiritual enlightenment – one no longer has feelings one is the feelings ... ‘being’ instead of ‘becoming’ (to put in a way you might be more familiar with). In other words one is nothing but the feeler ... the feeler is the state of being. This is because ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself (quite often capitalised as ‘Being’ upon self-realisation) ... *any god or goddess is affective by its very nature*. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44c, 15 September 2003). Does it all start to make sense now? RESPONDENT: How you know then what was he meaning? RICHARD: Again, it is an experiential matter ... I only provide quotes (such as above) for people who have not experienced it for themselves. RESPONDENT: Did you passed through this experience of love, and then you are saying that it does not exist? RICHARD: No, I was that – to be enlightened is to be love – and when ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) ‘self’-immolated for the benefit of this body and that body and every body the love that it was also ceased to exist. RESPONDENT: If does not exist how possibly you had any experience of love? RICHARD: Just because it has no existence here in this actual world it does not mean it has no existence in the real-world (the world of the human psyche). RESPONDENT: How can you experience something that does not exist? RICHARD: Is this a before or an after question? RESPONDENT: If you never experienced though how can you tell that you are using it the same way he did? RICHARD: As it is you who is saying I never experienced it I will leave that for you to mull over. RESPONDENT: You see the absurdity here? RICHARD: No ... and that is because there is none (other than the one you invented). RESPONDENT: For him was very real, for you does not exist and you still say you both are using the word with the same meaning. RICHARD: For me it was very real ... more real than anything else, in fact, to the point that there was nothing but love: love was everything and everything was love; love was all and all was love; love was it and it was love – and it was love’s compassion which poured forth endlessly, unstoppable, for all suffering sentient beings. RESPONDENT: Is this a conundrum, or something else? RICHARD: Neither ... that is what you are making of it all. RESPONDENT: K’s harsh words are as rare as your words of kindness. RICHARD: I have never taken a count so as to be able to provide evidence either way ... and as it is your proposition it is up to you to go through all his words and then through mine so as to statistically substantiate your statement. Until you do ... I will just take this for the rhetoric that it is and ignore it completely. RESPONDENT: Though you say you are an expression of the kindliness of the Universe??? RICHARD: I prefer the word ‘benevolent’ (‘well-wishing’) as it cannot be misconstrued. Some people would attribute an affective component to the word ‘kindliness’ ... and then, indeed find me devoid of what they are looking for. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul became extinct, the entire affective faculty vanished ... which means all the feelings (the emotions and passions and calentures). Which may explain why you detect no ‘warmth’ in me ... you may very well be looking for love and/or compassion. I have no love nor compassion for you whatsoever for I have no malice and sorrow that needs such counterparts. * RESPONDENT: Besides I have already told you, I am no longer deluded by your delusions and am too aware that I can learn nothing by perpetuating those futile dialog battles you still obviously relish. RICHARD: As I never asked you to be deluded by what you now experience as my delusions in the first place, then the rest of what you say here has nowt to do with me. For you they will, apparently, continue to remain ‘futile dialogue battles’. Speaking personally, nothing I do is futile. RESPONDENT: Please ... take care of yourself Richard! Love ... RICHARD: I lived that ‘Tried and True’ remedy of love for eleven years and found it wanting. Now, whilst love seems to promise to take care of you it does not, has never done and never will. It is the ‘Tried and Failed’ ... is not 5,000 years of recorded history’s documentation of love’s failure enough evidence for you? Or are you not interested in learning from the lessons of history? * RESPONDENT No. 27: I don’t recall talking to No. 40, but Richard and I had a few verbal exchanges on actuality. Apparently, we did not see ‘actuality’ actually the same, though I forget what we actually saw, but I would be surprised if he doesn’t still have an actual computer record of what was actually said by everyone, even if his interpretations tended to distort whatever was actually said. <s> RESPONDENT: You seem to have came across the same distortions and limitations I did <s>. Yes it was disappointing to discover Richard mental clarity was not infinite and had its shut off point, just like the rest of us poor impassioned human beings nursing our bosoms. LOL. At the moment he’s pussyfooting and trying desperately to hide his distaste and frustration at one of his fellow list members who refuses to be brow beaten into seeing actualism Richard’s way. The list member (who has just recently created a new website called actualfreedom.com and seeks to link it with Richards actualfreedom.com.au in a bid to spread the good word) is on his way up to Byron Bay with a friend to meet Richard for a chat and pristine cup of coffee at the pub for the 4th or so time. But Richard is so pissed off he plans to deny this recalcitrant disciple his esteemed audience. It seems Richard sees no point in retaining friendships with those who do not see life HIS WAY (so much for his actual intimacy??). The list member has been told his answering machine will be on and no one will be home. Which just goes to show that friendship in Richards – oh so perfect world – is still conditional and dependent on his actualism being ‘accepted’. And so the plot thickens. (Message #01200 of Archive 00/11: Subject: ‘Richards Methods’). RICHARD: It would appear that the failure to recognise a trope when it is writ large results in tripe. Needless to say, none of this misinformation above (or is it disinformation) which you pen to this Mailing List, for whatever obscure reason it is that you would do such a thing anyway, has any connection whatsoever with what is actually happening ... maybe it is your disappointment about ‘Richard’s mental clarity’ which has emotionally flooded your cognitive ability to accurately discern facts and makes you see only ‘distortions and limitations’ instead? For starters, the person whom you are referring to as ‘this recalcitrant disciple’ is a disciple of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain (aka a ‘friend of Osho’) who first approached me on the internet nearly two years ago (February 1999) under the guise of being a ‘creative writer’ wanting to publicise ‘Richard’ (‘do you think it would be a good thing for ‘Richard’ to be more widely known?’). I declined, giving reasons, and then stating clearly and succinctly [Richard]: ‘I value my privacy very highly and have no desire for a public profile.’ [endquote]. (Message #363 Mon, Jan 25, 1999 and Message #393 Tue, Feb 2, 1999; ‘Subject: Re: ‘Simplifying Richard’). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 2 February 1999). This ‘friend of Osho’ (aka a disciple of Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain) was remarkably persistent ... there followed a series of E-Mails wherein I made my position crystal clear ... for example [Richard]: ‘... as I have remarked before, I do value my privacy highly and have no desire for a public profile. Consequently I am not liberal with handing out my telephone number, street address or last name to people ...’ [endquote]. (Fri, 19 Feb. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). This response was because again the guise of being a journalist wishing to interview me vis-à-vis an actual freedom was being presented ... for example: [quote]: ‘... my motivation for meeting you would be to flesh out my experience of you, in order to be able to write an article about Actual Freedom. My intention would be to publish such an article’ [endquote]. (Wed, 17 Feb. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). And again I made my position crystal clear ... for example: [Richard]: ‘... nothing can be gained from meeting me face-to-face other than the verification that there is a flesh and blood body that writes these words – hence I turn down all requests for a photograph. Nothing is obtained from a personal talk that cannot be gained from reading the interactive exchange of words on the Internet’. (Tue, 2 Mar. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). All that (and more) was all nearly two years ago ... if you have been even superficially following the current exchange on the other Mailing List you will find my words (above) of February and March 1999 very, very familiar and thus see that my current words are not ‘pussyfooting and desperately hiding distaste and frustration’ at all ... let alone ‘brow-beating’. I am simply saying the same thing over and again: I wish to preserve my chosen lifestyle as-it-is and share my discovery on the internet because an actual freedom is epitomised by being conveyed by words alone ... and is the ability to fully live a normal lifestyle. Second, where you say that this person has set-up a web page in ‘a bid to spread the good word’ you are apparently oblivious to the actuality ... it has been set-up to downplay what I am saying, only under the same name (‘actual freedom’). That this ploy has sucked you in goes to show that the association of similar domain names (‘actualfreedom.com’ and ‘actualfreedom.com.au’) has the effect of misleading the undiscerning ... to the point that this ‘friend of Osho’ can then state that ‘Actual Freedom’=‘Actual Truth’ (aka ‘The Truth’ aka ‘God’ aka ‘Whatever Name’). It is somewhat akin to the propensity Hinduism has, for instance, of absorbing all potentially conflicting alternatives under its all-embracing umbrella. Third, where you say that ‘Richard sees no point in retaining friendships with those who do not see life HIS WAY’ you are apparently also oblivious to the fact than an actual intimacy experiences every body equally ... an actual intimacy plays no favourites and brooks no exclusive friendship. This includes racial and biological kith and kin ... no body is special as every body is special. Fourth, where you say ‘(so much for his actual intimacy??)’ ... I am conscious of the fact that I am writing to a fellow human being, and not to words appearing on a screen, who has publicly informed everyone on the Mailing List (including yourself) of their medical condition. Viz.: • [quote]: ‘I have major depression; and probably it is of the bipolar variety; at this stage somewhere around the bipolar II range on the bipolar spectrum disorder characterisation. I take medication for that and it works well ... and at times toward the depressed end of the swing of my genetic pendulum I go into silence and inactivity for varying lengths of time’. (Message #1410 ‘Second question from the defence’; Fri 11/24/000). I have intimate experience, over many years, of interacting with people who have been suffering from varying degrees of this particularly distressing disorder (popularly known as ‘manic depression’) ... and in my experience (and verified via their own feedback) the most helpful way of interacting is by (a) being sensible and practical at all times and (b) enabling or facilitating the ability to make their own decisions based upon sound physical reasons. It is important, vital, to not pander to flights of fancy and being always down-to-earth and matter-of-fact in any, oft-times fluctuating, instances. Fifth, where you say that this person ‘has been told his answering machine will be on and no one will be home’ is where you go for a trip on the trope ... and in a big way: the ‘friend of Osho’ would not read, or would only partly read, my responses to all the attempts in order to downplay what I am saying into being yet another version of the ‘Tried and True’. The ‘answering machine’ analogy only came towards the end of a long series of back and forth E-Mails wherein I was told repeatedly by this ‘friend of Osho’ that he had no interest in reading my words at all. And, as all that he would get from seeing me in person – or ringing me on the telephone – would be me saying nothing different from what my words in the E-Mails and on the Web Page were saying, I put it that all that he would get by ringing me, in other words, would be an answering machine responding with the same-same as what is already in words on the web ... except that the printed words say it a lot better than I do as I tend to waffle on a lot in voice. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12f, 28 November 2000a). Lastly, as this person’s point of view forced him to only see an ‘enlightened master’ (by whatever name) in this flesh and blood body called Richard, I explicitly said ‘there is no person answering to that description at this address’. How you can translate that into Richard saying that ‘his answering machine will be on and no one will be home’ I do not know ... maybe it is your propensity to see plots where there is none (‘and so the plot thickens’). However, it may very well turn out that your plot has thinned a little having read all this. RESPONDENT: Not to nitpick, but the challenge isn’t to be here now as the universe’s experience of itself, but to come to a full understanding of that. Whether I know it or not, I am the universe’s experience of itself. RICHARD: Hmm ... this is what comes of me writing ‘shorthand’. I meant it as it was written (further above) and virtually everywhere else: • [Richard]: ‘This universe can experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being: as such the universe can know itself apperceptively’. Of course, whether people ‘know it or not’ they are indeed currently ‘the universe’s experience of itself’ ... but it is experiencing itself as malicious and sorrowful and antidotally loving and compassionate human beings. The challenge is to do something entirely new to human experience on this otherwise fair planet: be happy and harmless through the elimination of malice and sorrow. This challenge requires far, far more than to ‘come to a full understanding of that’ ... this requires hands-on actualisation. There are no spiritual-style ‘realisation’ short-cuts to the actual world; nothing dirty can get in. For example, I started to empirically encounter that sorrow is essential for compassion to flourish and that love is the antidote for malice towards the end of 1987 (without compassion, love has no genesis and without malice, love has no raison d’être). By about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation ... but my investigation into compassion had begun in India in 1984 with the Buddhist ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) and ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion). Strangely enough, it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love in 1987 – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – that triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness. It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation ... hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be faced squarely. Nevertheless, it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition ... there is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. RESPONDENT: To become one’s senses and bodily functions. It is the right way to live, you implied, and it sounds true to me. It sounds difficult to live it all the time but many times I have had at least partial experience of it. RICHARD: Good. Experience is essential if perfection is to be revealed to be actual. Otherwise one goes off into self-enhancing visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is a fertile breeding-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. They never completely satisfy for they never last; they have no substance or intrinsic viability and doubt is never far away. In a valiant attempt to remove doubt, passion can be brought into the search. Passion can produce love. When ‘I’ experience love ‘I’ feel, that with the feelings that love induces like self-acceptance, self-worth, self-esteem and the feeling of being needed, that life has meaning after all. Yet all these feelings serve to prop up an ailing self and because love, however lofty, is fickle and manipulative ‘I’ must be ever vigilant. ‘I’ consist of a kaleidoscope of emotions and passions and therefore doubt is still not far away. This can hardly be called a satisfactory destination for the quest into finding the meaning of life. From the vantage point of freedom from ‘I’ – which can be accomplished by a peak experience – a miraculous shift is seen to have occurred. It is a mutation from the self-centred personality to a condition of self-less anonymity ... which is a blessed release from the onerous responsibility of being ‘someone’. The perfection and purity that is already here, where it has always been, is now available to be fully appreciated. That ‘I’, which was always perverting and spoiling every endeavour, is no longer present. ‘I’ was only an illusion, whereas as this flesh and blood body I am independent and free ... and actual. I am unable to be swayed by feelings; be they love or hate, hope or despair, despondency or enthusiasm and so on. Nor do I need to be needed by others, so compassion plays no part in my life. The dubious Authority and Power of the noble feelings of Love Agapé, Divine Compassion and rapturous bliss, euphoria and ecstasy are revealed to be pathetic boastings ... and a meagre surrogate for the tranquil intimacy, benevolence and blitheness of the beneficence that is the actual character of this human experience of this wondrous universe. RESPONDENT: Richard, You speak as if a person who has Transformed them self is responsible for the violence of this world. RICHARD: No, I do not say that your ‘Transformation’ causes violence ... I say that it perpetuates violence. RESPONDENT: The violence has been here forever and I for one am bringing forth a new world, void of violence. RICHARD: Yet the world that you are bringing forth is full of ‘Love’ ... and ‘Truth’ and ‘Compassion’ and so on. There is nothing new about this ... it has all been tried before. As for being ‘void of violence’ ... please look carefully at the nature of Love and Compassion. 1. What fuels Love? Where does it get its energy from if not from malice? 2. And what fuels Compassion? Does not Compassion thrive on sorrow? * RESPONDENT: Compassion needs no thing to thrive on, and Love needs no fuel, are you a fool? RICHARD: No ... but I was a fool for eleven years ... yet during that time I was somehow aware that both Love and Compassion were being fuelled. My question was: By whom? Obviously you are blinded by the Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz and cannot see the malicious and sorrowful undercurrent that your ‘Transformation’ sits upon ... the diabolical down-side of the exalted ‘new way of being’. I can demonstrate by asking one question: • If there were no sorrow or malice anywhere in the world (5.8 billion people miraculously made happy and harmless overnight) ... what then is the use of your much-prized Love and Compassion? * RICHARD: Therefore I ask, just how much longer will a ‘Tried and Failed’ system continue to be so highly revered despite its abject failure to produce the goods? Is it because these attitudes and attributes form a ‘web’ of solace and succour wherein ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul can be comforted, stroked, endorsed and perpetuated? Is this why nobody will put love and compassion and beauty under a microscope? If thought can get such rigorous scrutiny as the Mailing List gives it ... why not feelings? Are feelings sacrosanct? RESPONDENT: Hum Richard, what does ‘sacrosanct’ mean? RICHARD: Off-limits. (Oxford Dictionary: sacrosanct: exempt from criticism; inviolable, sacred; secured from violation or infringement (as) by religious sanction). RESPONDENT: As long as you ‘show’ your knowledge your ‘Intelligence’ cannot show through (if there is any). RICHARD: As you are on record as defining ‘Intelligence’ as being ‘love in action’ then am I to take it that you, too, are not going to put it under the microscope? I guess not ... given that you have oft-times proudly explained how you are an ‘empty vessel’ for Love and/or Truth to come through, eh? RESPONDENT: Feelings are not real, they are like knowledge, a lie! (No. 10, being non knowledgeable). RICHARD: Aye ... and to think that all this while you have been busily being an ‘empty vessel’ for something that is ‘not real’ to come through. Is this because Love and/or Truth is sacrosanct? * RESPONDENT: Okay Richard, here it is: Love: has no feelings; is eternal; cannot be ‘perfectly’ described. RICHARD: If Love ‘has no feelings’, as you say, is it because it ‘cannot be ‘perfectly’ described’ that it cannot be perfectly examined? If you cannot put it into words satisfactorily (cannot think about it thoroughly) then how can you understand it ... let alone examine it for its feeling content? To put it another way: if Love is not affective ... what is its disposition? If Love is not cognitive ... what is its constitution? If Love is not sensate ... what is its nature? Because, if Love ‘is eternal’ as you say (and flesh and blood bodies are not), then is Love not immaterial (non-physical)? RESPONDENT: Compassion: something a person needs for themself to themself 100% of the day. RICHARD: If Compassion is ‘something a person needs for themself to themselves’ then it is obviously essential ... especially as you explicitly state ‘100% of the day’ . If it is that crucial, then does it stand scrutiny for being impeccable? Is Compassion affective in its nature ... or sensate (surely it is not cognitive)? RESPONDENT: Beauty: I don’t know, it is of thought that beauty is born. RICHARD: Ahh ... but is beauty solely the product of thought? Does it not have an affective component (as in ‘it was so beautiful it took my breath away’)? And where is Truth to be found if not in beauty? Is Truth a product of thought? * RESPONDENT: What are some of the ‘infinitesimal amounts of information’? RICHARD: Oh ... allow me to re-post all that you have contributed, to this exploration into the Love and/or Truth that you are an ‘empty vessel’ for, so that you can see for yourself. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘Richard, what does ‘sacrosanct’ mean? As long as you ‘show’ your knowledge your ‘Intelligence’ cannot show through (if there is any). Feelings are not real, they are like knowledge, a lie! Please tell me anew, what does sacrosanct mean to you, Richard, perhaps using one word? No. 10, an empty vessel, for something that is ‘not real’ (or real) to pass through, unencumbered! No, feelings are not sacrosanct. Love: has no feelings; is eternal; cannot be ‘perfectly’ described. Compassion: something a person needs for themself to themself 100% of the day. Beauty: it is of thought that beauty is born. No. 10 lives under a 2000 power microscope of himself 100% of the time. Proceed with what Richard? Perhaps with your constant need to look smart? Or your need to look Intelligent? Or your need to control? All of your messages I have read are you saying the same thing which is HEY look at ME I am the authority! Huge Smile Richard, while your answer was long and ever repeating your other messages, I thank you for the intent. There was no anger. Just a little throw back at me what I threw towards you, noted. What is c’est la vie, (just a short answer would be perfect). Beauty must be thought first then exclaimed, the claim ‘it took my breath away’ is from thought. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. Something radical is what I have been doing for almost twenty years with a 99.9% failure rate! Perhaps the past can only see the past, and then note it? K is not my guru. Nor do all of his words mean anything to me, most do, however. When he says ‘for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love’ he has missed the mark, beauty is of thought and love has no feeling. The rest is true. To see the truth in what K says is important, equally important is to see where he missed just a bit. I was speaking as I speak and doing as I do long before ever reading something K said. To me he was/ is a quantum beyond the people of this planet! The difference is where he stopped I passed by. Are you holding Mr. J Krishnamurti as my leader, authority? If so please drop it. You have no idea of what he said nor what he did in order to say what he said; you just ‘study’ his words and use them to be ‘right’ when needed. He was speaking to a large number of people and used words to appeal to them all, for they do not speak in distinctions: they generalize. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. I have explained this to you before, and yet you do not hear, so what good would it be for me to explain anew? I have never been enlightened, nor do I care to be. Love is none of the three, they (sensate, cognitive, affective) they are all of thought which is and confusion in action. Sensitivity: 100% sensitive to our universe, world self and ALL of the people on this planet (not in this order it has no pecking order with me). Nature: the thing we live with on this planet and it is a violent as we are, if we Transform, all of NATURE will as well! Vulnerable mind: A mind that is 100% open, there is no way to hurt it for the open mind has no ego, has no need to be right, has no pain, has no anger, has no argument, has no reason, has no justification, has no explanation for it’s action. A vulnerable mind is a mind of Love, Intelligence and insight. Transformed! Richard, perhaps if we can sort all of this out we could find a mental meeting place for actual conversation. I would suggest that we place peace with ourselves first, for without that no peace on earth will ever happen. We, given our selfish petty minds destroy ourselves first then the destruction of others becomes easy. It is out of our own violence that the collective violence is born. What causes our own personal violence towards ourselves? The fact that we as a child (before the age of four) gave ourselves up and became robots rather than humans, now we are just people, which is 3 million years (miles) away for reality, that of being Human. Transformation is the Possibility of a new world. Transformation is the ending of the old and the beginning of new simultaneously for sure!’ RICHARD: So, stripping out all that is not information about Love and/or Truth, I see that you are saying: ‘Feelings are not real, they are like knowledge, a lie! Love: has no feelings; is eternal; cannot be ‘perfectly’ described. Compassion: something a person needs for themself to themself 100% of the day. Beauty: it is of thought that beauty is born. Beauty must be thought first then exclaimed, the claim ‘it took my breath away’ is from thought. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. When K says ‘for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love’ he has missed the mark, beauty is of thought and love has no feeling. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. Love is none of the three, they (sensate, cognitive, affective) they are all of thought which is and confusion in action’. I do not know what you make of it all, but what I understand is that this Love and/or Truth, that you are an ‘empty vessel’ for so as to transform ‘all of NATURE’, is not sensate, not affective and not cognitive ... which means that it is an immaterial, eternal (bodiless) Love and/or Truth, eh? A metaphysical Love and/or Truth, in other words ... and the nature, character, constitution or disposition of which either you are ignorant of or are being secretive about. Which is it? * RICHARD: What I am endeavouring to ascertain is if Love is not affective ... what is its disposition? If Love is not cognitive ... what is its constitution? If Love is not sensate ... what is its nature? RESPONDENT: Love is none of the three, they (sensate, cognitive, affective) they are all of thought which is and confusion in action. RICHARD: Okay ... is the physical (this body and that body and the mountains and streams and planets and stars) actual or ‘all of thought’ too? * RESPONDENT No. 21: From ‘Think On These Things’ ... 1964; p76. ‘You cannot learn how to love, but what you can do is to observe hate and put it gently aside. Don’t battle against hate, don’t say how terrible it is to hate people, but see hate for what it is and let it drop away; brush it aside, it is not important. What is important is not to let hate take root in your mind. If you encourage hate, give it time to take root, to grow, to mature, it becomes an enormous problem’. RESPONDENT: Perfectly spoken K, the problem is we already did, now what? RICHARD: What you can now do is to observe love and put it gently aside also. Do not protect love, do not say how transforming it is to love people, but see love for what it is and let it drop away as well; brush it aside, it is not important. What is important is not to let love take root in your heart. If you encourage love, give it time to take root, to grow, to mature, it becomes an enormous problem for you and your partner ... and all humankind. RICHARD: Remember, the notion of a fragmented mind arises from an apparently whole life existing in the heart. RESPONDENT: Also Krishnamurti states clearly that love is not emotion, not sentiment, but a state of being that knows no separation. RICHARD: I am in total agreement that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti clearly stated that love is not an emotion or sentiment. It is not ... it is passion. In fact he repeatedly stressed passion as being essential ... and passion is an affective state. [quote] ‘Love is compassion, passion. Passion for everything’. [end quote]. Any state of being is an affective state ... that is what a ‘state of being’ means. It is not sensate or cognitive, so that only leaves the affective ... unless you want to suggest that it was the esoteric, the psychic, the occult, as being what he was referring to. A ‘state of being that knows no separation’ is an affective state of oneness, union, wholeness ... I have discussed this before with you. * RESPONDENT: What I understand as love is not born out of thought or time. RICHARD: Agreed. It is a thoughtless state of being wherein the passions have overtaken intelligence. It cannot be ‘timeless’ because the sun still moves through the sky and day follows night as do the seasons follow each other. Enlightened people have a dickens of a job convincing even the gullible that this physical world is not actual. When they can persuade them into to believing that ... then they will believe anything at all. * RESPONDENT: Again, you give dualistic definitions of love or compassion, and argue that they are false. Of course they are! What do you expect to find in dictionaries other than dualistic explanations of terms? That is all the authors could understand. If you will read Krishnamurti with an open mind, you will find that he uses ordinary terms like love or ecstasy or contentment but goes on to discuss that he does not mean something that has an opposite. If there is no freedom from sorrow, there is no genuine love, no compassion. This is precisely what Krishnamurti pointed to! RICHARD: If there is freedom from sorrow, there is freedom from love ... be it genuine or not. I have read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti with an open mind ... because I wanted to know, for myself, if this ‘Love’, this ‘Compassion’, this ‘Beauty’, this ‘Truth’, this ‘Goodness’, this ‘Intelligence’, actually had no opposite. • He is on record a stating something to the effect of: ‘I have always felt protected. There is a reservoir of Goodness that Evil is always trying to get into. One has to be ever vigilant’. So, his ‘Good’ had an opposite. • He is on record as saying: ‘there is something beyond compassion’ ... and compassion is not the be-all and end-all as his compassion was born out of his sorrow – he called it universal sorrow – for he oft-times wanted to ‘cry for you all’. So, his compassion has an opposite. • He is on record as saying: ‘there is something beyond love’ ... and his love likewise has an opposite. • He is on record as describing his intelligence as ‘universal intelligence’ and ‘cosmic intelligence’ ... was there something beyond that? Yes ... and I wanted to know for myself what was beyond all this. • He is on record as saying there is ‘that’ which he called ‘the origin of everything’. Speaking personally, I found it well worthwhile to investigate ... experientially. * RESPONDENT: But what is without division (genuine love) has no opposite. RICHARD: And therein lies the rub: as a generalisation there are at least four varieties of love – Love Storge (the instinctual maternal, paternal or familial love), Love Eros (the passionate sexual, amorous or romantic love), Love Philios (the affectionate friendship, societal or humanitarian love) and Love Agapé (the supernatural godly, divine or sacred love) – and they all have their dark side, their not-so-hidden under belly. Or, rather, not-so-hidden to those who dare to care ... and thus care to dare. * RESPONDENT: Because the observer mind state is programming it moves according to a pattern determined by past experience. It is not free of that. RICHARD: There is more to it than this ... just for starters there are the affective feelings to take into account: sensory perception is primary; affective perception is secondary; thought perception is tertiary. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, in step No. 6 above only said [quote] ‘do not think’ [endquote] and never said ‘do not feel’ ... on the contrary, many times in other passages he expressly urges how important it is to feel beauty (and thus love) in the perceptive process. For example: ‘It is essential to appreciate beauty. The beauty of the sky, the beauty of the sun upon the hill, the beauty of a smile, a face, a gesture, the beauty of the moonlight on the water, of the fading clouds, the song of the bird, it is essential to look at it, to feel it, to be with it, this is the very first requirement for a man who would seek truth. (...) So it is essential to have this sense of beauty, for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love’. (‘Fifth Public Talk at Poona’ by J. Krishnamurti; 21 September 1958). Because of this imposition (the passions are the secondary stage of the perceptive process) the pristine purity of the actual world is nowhere to be found ... and, as ‘being’ itself has its presence in the passions, its arrogation of ownership ensures it never will be. For as long as it remains a ‘presence’ that is. RESPONDENT: If what you call being has its presence in the passions, feeling is distorted, corrupted. That is not love. RICHARD: As any affective feeling is a distortion and a corruption of the actual it matters not which is the correct distortion and corruption. RESPONDENT: Love as K said is entirely free of thought in terms of the self as the past. RICHARD: Yet love is undeniably the feeling of ‘being’ – be it past, present, future or timeless – which feeling of ‘being’ is what is secondary in the perceptive process ... sensate perception is primary and thus ‘being’-less. There is no ‘presence’ in bare sensory perception. RESPONDENT: There is no attachment involved. RICHARD: How could there be when love is all that is? RESPONDENT: No sense of possessiveness. RICHARD: The possessiveness of love is so total that it is rarely discerned as such ... it is an all-engulfing possessorship. RESPONDENT: It is not ‘my’ love. RICHARD: Whose love is it then? And before you answer I will remind you of the following: • [Respondent]: ‘Insight comes from mind that is not yours or mine in a narrow exclusive sense but is yours and mine in the sense that it is true nature or the ground in being of all things. (www.escribe.com/religion/listening/m35022.html). Would it be in order to presume that the love you say ‘is not ‘my’ love’ is not yours in a narrow exclusive sense but is yours in the sense that it is true nature or the ground in being of all things? RESPONDENT: ... There is in my view no better English word than ‘compassion’ to describe ongoing sensitivity to suffering sans personal suffering. Given its evolved consensus meaning and implications it suffices at least as well as any alternative English offers. RICHARD: Okay ... I will go with you in your irrelevant dissertation: seeing that this is a Mailing List set up under the auspices of the ‘Teachings’ brought into the world by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti (who used the word ‘compassion’ frequently and with special emphasis on what he meant by it) then it would serve far better to use his example than speculate about what a long-dead deity such as Mr. Gotama the Sakyan may or may not have said or done (if he lived at all). As Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was sometimes moved to tears, becoming visibly distressed, when giving talks about human relationship (and as this is on tape no one will have to go chasing anywhere through any ancient scrolls) there is no evidence of dispassionate consideration and care. It would appear then that, seeing as at least one enlightened person puts lie to what you say above about the ‘ongoing sensitivity to suffering sans personal suffering’ meaning that you are trying to impose upon the word, it may be quite reasonable to consider that the etymology of ‘compassion’ (‘pathos in common’) still holds true despite your assurances that it has an ‘evolved consensus meaning and implications’ that makes it exempt from the meaning ‘suffering together’. I am happy to explore any other irrelevancies you fancy to bring forward ... until then: given that what I was saying (further above) was that ‘suffering together’ is not a sign of health, what word or words would you use to convey a dispassionate consideration and care for one’s fellow human being if one is not to understand the affective roots of the commonly used words for such sensible concern ... such as ‘pity’, ‘sympathy’, ‘empathy’, ‘commiseration’, ‘solicitous’ and ‘compassionate’? RICHARD: If so, why do you promote the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty? (Richard, List B, No. 32, 27 May 1999). RESPONDENT: ?? RICHARD: Human love and compassion and beauty can be sublimated and transcended so that these human feelings become Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and Truth as a state of being called by some ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. This transmogrification of the human passions into divine passions has been going on for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years ... as evidenced by your and my correspondence regarding ‘Purusha’ and Prakriti’. It has been tried and tried again and again and it has failed and failed again and again. Those ancient Gurus and God-men got up to the self-same antics as do the current bunch. Yet they are worshipped and revered or otherwise looked up to as being the font of wisdom ... as the epitome of ‘Goodness’. Why? Can I put it this way: what is the ‘thousand-petalled lotus’ growing in? Which means: from what are the roots of ‘Goodness’ drawing nourishment? RESPONDENT: I am honoured that you gave attention to my post. RICHARD: I sincerely doubt it ... but you already know that, don’t you? RESPONDENT: Be well Richard. RICHARD: You just do not get it, do you? I am already always well, so your papal-like blessings do not do one single thing for me. But then again, they do nothing for anyone else either, whether they are well or unwell. I guess writing them and saying them goes towards making you feel benevolent though. RESPONDENT: I Love you dearly. RICHARD: And herein lies the problem ... you probably really do. Hence all the trouble in the real world: people attempt to cover-up their hatred – for oneself and others – by becoming a loving self.
| To become a loving self – or Self – is to but gild the lily ... ‘I’ survive to live another day and wreak ‘my’ havoc on an otherwise perfect paradise of a planet simply hanging in infinite space and eternal time. Please examine the NASA photograph of this paradise taken from the surface of the moon. If one looks closely – maybe up in the top right hand corner of the planet – one may see No. 14 busily wasting precious time by loving Richard dearly ... to no avail. But all joking aside, is it not a marvellous sight ... this place where we all live?

RESPONDENT: Poor Richard, a soul without passion.

RICHARD: There cannot be a ‘soul without passion’ ... a soul is made of passion. No passion equals no soul.

RESPONDENT: Oh God please do not allow me to evolve to that state.

RICHARD: No, never, ever evolve ... hang onto your passion by all the means under your control. Passion like anger, hatred, rage, spitefulness, maliciousness, revenge, jealousy, sadness, sorrow, misery ... and their band-aid solutions like love and compassion and empathy and sympathy and so on. Why, if you did evolve there would be peace-on-earth ... and that is the last thing you would want, apparently.

RESPONDENT: ROTFLMAO

RICHARD: As my ‘Poor Richard’ condition (a classified psychiatric mental disorder) is experienced by you as something to roll on the floor laughing about, all I can say is I am glad to be the recipient of a sample of your much-touted love and compassion.

It proves my point that love and compassion always fail to bring the Peace On Earth that is promised ... and why they fail. They fail because they arise out of malice and sorrow.

As you have just so ably demonstrated.

RESPONDENT: I do, though, have reverence for the teachings that came through Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, but I have no personal adoration for the man himself – the flesh and blood individual.

RICHARD: Those teachings come from Brahman ... the Indian name for what Mr. Paul Tillich (a theologian and philosopher) called ‘The Ground Of Being’.

RESPONDENT: The teachings point the way to love, but it is up to each one to discover that for himself. (Please don’t give me a tirade on ‘love’ paling in hue in the light of ‘actuality’.)

RICHARD: Okay, I will go in the other direction then. Love – both secular and sacred – has been revered as the ‘cure-all’ for just about everything. So why has it not done its job? To understand this, one needs to comprehend that for love to exist at all there must be separation between ‘me’ and the person, the persons, the object or the god that ‘I’ am to love. Not for nothing is the statement ‘Love is a bridge’ promoted abroad for all and sundry to take in. My question is: A ‘bridge’ between what two shores? Who are the two ‘I’s that are separate? Do ‘I’ exist, actually exist? ‘I’ may be real, but am ‘I’ actual? If ‘I’ am an illusion then any ‘bridge’ will only reinforce ‘my’ existence ... my very real existence. If a person is said to be ‘egotistic’ or ‘ego-driven’, then a goodly dose of love is advised to ameliorate the phenomenon. Yet the persona is still in existence ... a loving and lovable persona, of course, but still here. ‘I’ am the ‘spanner in the works’ and to cover my ‘self’ over with a coating of love is to gild the lily. ‘I’ still lurk around, shielded now by love, wreaking my mischief in disguise.

Also, intrinsic to the nature of love is its – always unfulfilled – promise of eternity. One’s life here is here on earth now ... what use is a spurious Eternal Bliss in some conjectured After-Life? Love has produced wars, murders, rapes and aggression since time immemorial ... it staggers me that it still retains its credibility. To kill for ‘Love of Country’ or ‘Love of God’ is surely proof enough for any discerning person. Then there are those ‘Crimes of Passion’ that are brought about by love’s constant companions: possessiveness, jealousy and envy. If these examples are considered too extreme then what about the heartache, the longing, the pining and the yearning that all peoples report as accompanying love’s bliss? This leads to the search for True Love which, supposedly, does not induce these unpleasant characteristics so common to everybody’s experience of love. True Love is simply a fiction ... it is impossible to manifest it here on earth, hence the notion of an After-Life to encompass it. To repeat: Love never delivers on its implied promise. It never has done nor ever will. Its days are numbered, as more and more people are beginning to notice that love itself – not the sensate human body – is failing to live up to its ill-deserved curative reputation again and again.

*

RESPONDENT: One who tried and failed to discover Love has said that love has failed.

RICHARD: Oh really? Who was that fool? Was it someone on this List?

RESPONDENT: Someone ... has said that love has failed because hundreds (thousands?) (millions?) of ‘seekers’ have failed to find a certain state they were looking for, which they titled ‘love’. Of course, they did not find love because a self cannot find love.

RICHARD: Then there is not much chance that all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides will ever cease then is there? They will go on and on ad infinitum unless these ‘seekers’ can begin to understand that love perpetuates all the ills of humankind and stop seeking what you say is impossible to find (only .000001 of the population reach these lofty heights anyway) and start looking for the cause of the problem rather than being seduced into a band-aid solution that just does not work.

RESPONDENT: They can find actuality, and it is a good bet that in that actuality there will no be love.

RICHARD: I can assure you that there is no love in actuality ... it is more than a ‘good bet’. This is because the soul ‘me’ must expire for actuality to become apparent ... and this soul ‘me’ is love.

RESPONDENT: Because one can neither ‘find’ nor ‘try’ Love. Love comes of its volition, not because one has sought after it.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... and, as I have said before, it has come to only .000001 of the population. Hardly a recipe for success, now, is it?

RESPONDENT: Richard, it is not love that failed, it was the ones looking for love who failed.

RICHARD: How can you possibly know this as a fact? Is this your experience talking ... or just something that you have read somewhere and are parroting for my benefit.

RESPONDENT: Only one who vows that he knows even the unknowable would state that there is no such thing as Love if he himself had looked and failed to find it.

RICHARD: Who is this ‘one’ that you are referring to again? No one called Richard has said that ‘there is no such thing as Love’. Speaking personally, I am on record as saying, over and over again, that Love is a feeling – born out of the affective faculties of the psyche – and is very real. It is not actual, like a human body is, or a tree, or an ashtray, but it is very, very real indeed. Why, it is as real as god is.

RESPONDENT: The fact that this person never found Love doesn’t mean that love was ‘tried’. It has never been tried because it was never found and never will be.

RICHARD: I wonder just who ‘this person’ is? Speaking personally again, for eleven years, when there was no ‘I’ as ego in this body, Love lived on earth as a human being. However, the native intelligence of this body operated well enough to find the Source of Love. Lo and behold! it was ‘me’ as soul ... coyly hiding in the heart and being as humble as all get-out in the hope that it would remain undiscovered. This exposure was the ending of ‘me’ ... and Love disappeared simultaneously. So did the Absolute. Instantaneously, I was here in this actual world ... this ambrosial paradise.

RESPONDENT: I have looked under just as many rocks as you, Richard, but the rocks I have looked under were the rocks of the self ... it is not there. If it’s not under my individual rock, it certainly isn’t under other’s rocks, either – the holy, enlightened men whom you have read and remember with such conformity to correctness.

RICHARD: Then if ‘the holy, enlightened men’ have never lived as Love then who has? Or are you – like another person – now saying that Love has never been on earth yet?

*

RESPONDENT: Love is not anywhere to be found. It is a game of hide and seek where Love is the only player.

RICHARD: This must be so frustrating for you.

RESPONDENT: No. Maybe I just don’t want it badly enough. ‘Not wanting it badly enough’ may be ‘not wanting it’ at all.

RICHARD: Nothing worth anything is gained without extending oneself way beyond the norm. One has to want freedom like one has never wanted anything before. I say: rev up desire until one feels that one must surely implode ... and rev it up some more. Unless freedom is one’s number one priority in life – amounting to an obsession – one will always live a second-rate life.

RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti says it finds you, not the other way around .

RICHARD: How did Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti know this, according to you? Did Love find him? If so, has it found anyone else – living or dead – according to you?

RESPONDENT: I have no reason to doubt that he knew what he was talking about.

RICHARD: But did Love find him?

RESPONDENT: In fact, I have many reasons to accept that he did know what he was talking and writing about.

RICHARD: But, again you are not answering the question ... why not? Did he, or did he not, live as Love on earth ... according to you?

RESPONDENT: But he added that each one must discover it for himself. As I stated before, Richard, if you are happy, that makes me smile, for you deserve happiness, in my opinion.

RICHARD: Not only happy, but harmless ... and that is equally important. Mostly people overlook that part ... and so all the wars go on.

RESPONDENT: I suspect that one must be very, very still for it to find us ... yeah, dead.

RICHARD: Psychologically dead, of course ... there is no ‘After-Life’. Freedom is here-on-earth ... there is nowhere else than here. But a ‘very, very still’ self is still a self, nevertheless. And whilst there is a self it is not going to happen. So, back to the drawing board, eh?

RESPONDENT: A very still self is a self that is not.

RICHARD: If it is a self that is not, then there is no way it can be described as a ‘very, very, still self’.

RESPONDENT: You knew what I meant.

RICHARD: I know very well what you meant. You meant what you wrote: ‘a very, very still self’. Look, if you do want Love (Spiritual Enlightenment) and not go all the way to an actual freedom, then being still is not going to do the trick. This is because not only can you not find Love ... Love does not come to you, either. The way it works is that when you become love then Love is You. Here is how to be Love:

> 1. First, look deep within yourself, past the emotions, into the deeper feelings – the core of your being – for there you will find intense human love.
> 2. Identify totally as this love – live it as being it fully every moment of your day – and surrender your will to existence itself.
> 3. Your identity as ‘me’ as soul will transmogrify itself into the Absolute.
> 4. You will then realise that this is your True Self ... the ‘Me’ that exists for all Eternity.
> 5. You will then be Love.

It is quite easy, really.

TARIN: The past week has hardly been light-hearted. I haven’t been happy and harmless. A female friend came to visit and the emotions that came out really threw me. I wanted to get emotionally entangled with her and it was making me miserable. To the point where I wasn’t asking myself HAIETMOBA very often, and even when I was I could barely figure out when the last time I was feeling good was. She’s gone now, and things have stabilised somewhat.

(...)

I’m wondering if there’s any way to want and get love without feeling bad at not having it. The fact is, I want it and I can’t see why I shouldn’t have it. So to just say ‘its silly to feel bad, return to the senses’ is a repression of the desire for love rather than genuinely nipping it in the bud. My attempt to nip it in the bud just leads to me wondering how I can go about trying to get love without having to feel bad either in the attempt, or in the case of a failure to get it. I cant ignore this question.

What can I do here?

RICHARD: You can always re-read your report, written a scant two months ago, of a pure consciousness experience (PCE): http://lists.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=912835235

Just in case you cannot access that page here is the relevant text:

> • [Tarin]: ‘... where before I was feeling happy and light-hearted, I no longer felt that – I didn’t feel whatsoever! ‘Empty-hearted’ might be the best way to put it. There was *no separation* between a ‘me’ that could feel and anything else, and in this was such a purity, for lack of better word’. [emphasis added]. (Monday, 30/01/2006 6:17 AM AEDST).

The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness – is but a pathetic imitation of an actual intimacy (where there is no separation in the first place).

The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt.

*

RICHARD: The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness – is but a pathetic imitation of an actual intimacy (where there is no separation in the first place). The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt.

TARIN: So the desire for love is a desire for the imitation of that too. Ok, I think I got it.

RICHARD: Essentially, a desire for oneness is the desire to remain existent (albeit rapturously so) forever ... in a word: immortality.

TARIN: At the time all this was happening, Richard, I felt very weak and helpless. Like having that love was the most important thing in the world, and despite seeing how wanting it was just making me feel awkward and unhappy and isolated, I just couldn’t stop wanting to have it again and again.

RICHARD: Put succinctly: love is very, very appealing ... and addictive.

TARIN: Not trying to get it felt like being a cop-out because I think I’m not worthy of it or I’ll never be able to have it successfully from a desirable candidate (in the ‘real world’ sense), rather than because it is really a more sensible idea to not try for it.

RICHARD: Feelings of unworthiness, of not being good enough, are symptomatic of love’s imminence ... love is redeeming (it makes the lover worthy, lovable, desirable, enchanting, and so on).

TARIN: I wonder if seeing that love is just a 2nd rate knock off will help if it happens again (if I get to a place of wanting it really bad again).

RICHARD: Remembering the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is far more effective ... the glorious feeling of oneness, of rapturous union, being an ecstatic feeling/ a euphoric state of being does not readily lend itself to being categorised as second-rate.

TARIN: When I was in the depths of wanting love, it was so urgent and overwhelming. The possibility of a PCE or even a sense of well-being seemed far away.

RICHARD: The expression ‘love is blind’ is quite apt.

RESPONDENT: I was attracted to Barry Long for a while because he offers a very practical method. But that seemed not to have delivered either. I’ve got no idea. I’m utterly confused! When he said that ‘love is not a feeling’, he claimed not to be referring to psychic or emotive love. Is this the same love as the actualist rejects?

RICHARD: The love which Mr. Barry Long was the embodiment of is the same love as what I use the term ‘Love Agapé’ for.

RESPONDENT: Is Barry Long’s divine love the actualist’s apperceptive thrill by another name?

RICHARD: Nothing in the actualism writings is love by another name ... nothing whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: Barry Long offered more of a path than the last teacher to hold my attention, Tony Parsons, who said that there is no path to that which evidently is and all meditations, techniques and processes are completely besides the point. That rang very true at the time, how indeed could anything at all not be the totality I strive to lose myself in. Thus total acceptance of what is. But I still seem to be left with wretched feelings and lack of brilliance, the only two things I really want to get rid of. Where am I going wrong???

RICHARD: By only really wanting to get rid of two things, perchance?

RICHARD: What did you mean by ‘that’ll teach ya’ then if not more than a passing familiarity with the perverse nature of love (which can become obvious upon falling in love with someone ostensibly more loving than the person one is with)?

RESPONDENT: Yes, sorry Richard, I was just pointing to the absurdity of it, it is perverse, exactly.

RICHARD: Surprisingly enough, even though love has such an appalling track record, there are still those who consider that the summum bonum of existence is to be love.

*

RICHARD: What do you have to offer, then, other than the hope you so readily proffered at the first opportunity ... and your amusement at the contrary way a deeply passionate connection operates (nine smilies in ten sentences)?

RESPONDENT: Nothing, the same way you couldn’t offer your ex’s anything either.

RICHARD: Oh? Not only do I have much to offer I have already advised, in my initial response, that at least one pertinent thing amongst all that was offered in that period was verified. Viz.:

> • [Richard]: ‘... my previous companion came up to me in a café one day to let me know that she now understands, via this first-hand experience, that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are indeed innate’.

If I had nothing to offer I would never have gone public with my discovery of what lies beyond enlightenment in the first place ... ‘tis disingenuous, to say the least, to set-up a web page with a linked mailing list and then say one has nothing to offer.

RESPONDENT: They’re gonna get if and when they’re gonna get it.

RICHARD: My previous companion informed me that she would never had got it that the instinctual passions are innate if I had not consistently pointed it out to her in the first place ... to prove me wrong in this regard is what motivated her to observe for herself on a daily basis, by being a proxy maiden aunt over a 13 month period to a newly born baby girl being raised only by females, just what a supposedly innocent baby girl spontaneously experiences (she had a feministic theory/ belief that males put such passions as fear and aggression and nurture and desire into female babies).

Which is why I appreciate her honesty in coming up to me in a café one day to let me know that she now understands, via this first-hand experience, that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are indeed innate ... and, as there other people who have advised of similar outcomes from hearing/ reading what I have to say, this is an example only and not a one-off incident.

RESPONDENT: Understanding is something that a person has to come to themselves on their own.

RICHARD: Yet unless a person’s attention is drawn to the very thing they have been overlooking there will be nothing looming on their horizon for them to understand ... it is what the sharing of experience is all about.

RESPONDENT: They have their agendas to fulfil, come hell or high water.

RICHARD: How do you account for those who discard their (unfulfilled) agenda and grasp the new with alacrity then?

RESPONDENT: Like children, they have to find out on their own.

RICHARD: Having previously been the parent of four children, plus being a qualified art teacher, I know first-hand that the passing-on of information is invaluable ... if it were not for the sharing of knowledge we could all be still living in caves dressed in animal skins and gnawing on raw brontosaurus bones.

*

RICHARD: ... has your buddy’s ex-partner discovered anything of note yet regarding deeply passionate connections?

RESPONDENT: I don’t know Richard, I doubt it, he suggested to her that she come out here with me, and I said, very funny, what the hell am I gonna do with her? :-) Just what I need. :-)

RICHARD: What would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, and why would interacting with his ex-partner be something for you to not need?

RESPONDENT: In other words, I need ‘misery’ like I need a hole in the head.

RICHARD: Apart from anticipating an interaction with your buddy’s ex-partner as being ‘misery’ ... what would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, seeing as how you have nothing to offer?

*

RICHARD: Or are platitudes (such as hoping the other is well/ advising them to drive safely) sufficient unto the day in your neck of the woods?

RESPONDENT: Pretty much, as I stated above, yes. I wish them well.

RICHARD: As what you stated above is the reasoning behind such bromidic comments being ‘pretty much’ sufficient unto the day would you consider a re-examination of those statements to be a worthy enterprise? I only ask because to anticipate an interaction with one’s fellow human being as ‘misery’ is most certainly not conducive to happiness and harmlessness.

Neither for oneself nor for the other.

*

RESPONDENT: And I got to laugh, a few years back I was over this house with about a dozen or so folks all standing around in the living room. And this lamp across the room started to fall off this table, and I hurled myself across the room and caught the damn thing in mid-air. And everyone’s going whooaaaa, how’d you do that? :-) And I joked and said, I’m trained for this kind of stuff, I raised 4 kids. :-)

RICHARD: Ha ... as I also raised four children, back when I was a parent, I can certainly relate to that.

Speaking of which, not until the eldest was about ten years of age did it dawn upon me that children train their parents – they being so utterly helpless and totally dependent at birth – almost as much parents their children ... so much so that re-training is sometimes necessary to undo it all when they eventually leave the nest.

RESPONDENT: Yes, children actually raise the parents.

RICHARD: I was, of course, speaking of being rigorously trained by what are, initially, utterly helpless and totally dependent children until the appropriate reflex responses became second-nature ... so much so that there would be no thoughts occurring at the moment, as in your falling lamp example, and there would only be action.

RESPONDENT: They keep us on the straight and narrow, they’re the bosses, they teach us love.

RICHARD: I can be reasonably sure that, had you said to the folks standing around in the living room you are trained for this kind for stuff inasmuch the four children you raised taught you love, there may very well have been a look of askance here and there ... unless they all knew you well enough, of course, to know that you never miss a chance to preach.

RESPONDENT: My youngest is 19 and was home from college for the summer, she said the first day she was home, ‘I am so getting a dog today, Mom!’ Guess who has the dog now? :-)

RICHARD: Someone who is still a sucker for love, perchance?

RESPONDENT: Ya think? :-)

RICHARD: Having had many years experience myself it is a well-informed speculation.

RESPONDENT: Hey, I’m trying to get you to take the damn thing, aren’t I? :-)

RICHARD: As there is no love whatsoever in this flesh and blood body – neither the natural variety nor the taught version you refer to – all I can do is repeat what I already said (albeit rephrased accordingly): children teach their parents to love them – they being so utterly helpless and totally dependent at birth – almost as much parents their children ... so much so that deconditioning is sometimes necessary to undo it all even before they get around to eventually leaving the nest.

RESPONDENT: I’ll tell you something funny though, I’m getting my pound of flesh out of this one way or another. :-)

RICHARD: Well now ... as such is the nature of (supposedly) unconditional love she surely would not be expecting anything else than just that.

RESPONDENT: My daughter, when she was here, didn’t want him eating any human food, only special dog food – when I would give him little treats, even scraps of meat, she would get all upset and tell me not to. So now that she’s gone, :-), I told her the other day and I said, hey, he really likes potato chips with guacamole dip. :-) Na, na, na, na, na. :-) It’s worth it all just to hear her silence. :-)

RICHARD: Oops ... I just plain forgot all about hope springing eternal in the human breast (specifically that love might one day finally get its act together and actually deliver on its feeling-fed promise of delivering the goods so yearned-for by billions of otherwise intelligent peoples).

I will now go and stand in the corner, penitentially facing the wall, until I have re-learnt the lesson, okay?

*

RICHARD: The very last example of having been thus thoroughly disciplined occurred for me, with unexpected clarity, a year or so after the last child passed out of my ‘care, custody, and control’ – as bureaucracy so eloquently puts it – even though I was seven years out from my first marriage and two years into my second (and childless) marriage, whilst shopping in a supermarket where an urgent cry of ‘Daddy!’, in a young and plaintively feminine voice, had me already part-way swinging around before the awareness of no longer being a father automatically aborted that well-trained reflex response.

RESPONDENT: Bitter-sweet. I so relate to that.

RICHARD: Oh, there was nothing bitter-sweet about it whatsoever ... if anything it was liberating (there is life after children).

RESPONDENT: I understand, been there.

RICHARD: Uh-oh ... back to the corner, Richard, you have still a lot to re-learn, yet.

RESPONDENT: But, you got a life now do ya? :-)

RICHARD: I have had a life all along ... that the twenty or so years in the middle of it also included parenting does not diminish it one iota.

RESPONDENT: That’s veeeerrrry interesting. :-)

RICHARD: Given that you dutifully played host, for an entire summer, to an adult who still calls your house her home – plus obligingly took her dog into your care, custody and control – it is not all that surprising you might find it very interesting that there is life after children (not to mention their pets).

RESPONDENT: Tell me who’s the sucker again? :-)

RICHARD: As an actual intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation – mutuality and reciprocity – there is one thing for sure: it ain’t yours truly.

*

RICHARD: Needless is it to add I have not looked back (pun intended) since that day?

RESPONDENT: Can I interest you in a dumb hound dog? :-)

RICHARD: Ha ... to paraphrase another cliché: it is your love; you deal with it.

RESPONDENT: Yeah, well, you’re lookin at it. :-)

RICHARD: Nope ... I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here in this actual world.

What I am looking at, however, is the words a grandiose identity parasitically inhabiting the body currently known as ‘No. 36’ is persuading it to type out ... an identity so up itself that it feels as to be ever-present, having exhorted other lesser-blest identities for aeons to become as deluded as it is, and forever extolling the virtues (by oh-so-conveniently overlooking the vices) of that which never does deliver, because of those parenthesised reasons, on its feeling-fed promise.

By my reckoning you have been Self-Realised for nearly eight and a half years now ... how much longer do you plan on giving that hoary experiment a go before ditching it in the waste-bin of history and starting afresh?

I only ask because it is never too late to come to one’s senses ... both literally and metaphorically.

RESPONDENT: I’ve been reading your web page and mail group for about 8 months. When I was 18 I had an experience on LSD that seems to match your descriptions of PCE’s and also ASC’s. That day I swung from one to the other. After that day I could never stop desiring to return to that space of unspeakable peace and miraculousness (PCE as I understand it) or messianic immortality (ASC as I understand it).

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... here is an example, from a self-healing personal growth book published only recently, which maybe shows how a pure consciousness experience (PCE) can readily turn into being an altered state of consciousness (ASC) when feelings enter the picture:

> • ‘I must have been six or seven, and I remembered lying in the grass in front of my house. My mind had become completely immersed in my own private world of grass and dirt and bugs. I examined each blade of grass, noticing the tiny striated segments, and could even see the various cells in each blade. The dirt was emanating a warm humid, earthy smell. The grass was fragrant, and I became ‘riveted’ in my little kingdom. My mind, utterly focussed, came to a complete standstill, and in that moment of absolute stillness it seemed as if time itself stood still. I found myself immersed in a bath of peace. The grass seemed to shimmer with an intense beauty. Everything scintillated and was bursting with life. It seemed as if only a moment had gone by when I heard my mother’s voice calling me in to dinner. As I got up I realised at least an hour must have slipped away as I had somehow ‘dropped into the gap’. My soul had quietly revealed itself to my innocent child-self’. (pages 48-49, ‘The Journey’, ©Brandon Bays 1999; published by Thorsons; ISBN 0 7225 3839 1).

The intense feeling of beauty, in such instances, is what reveals truth (or god/ goddess): beauty is the affective substitute for the purity of the perfection of this actual world ... just as love is the affective surrogate for actual intimacy.

*

RICHARD: ... here is an example, from a self-healing personal growth book published only recently, which maybe shows how a pure consciousness experience (PCE) can readily turn into being an altered state of consciousness (ASC) when feelings enter the picture: [snip quote]. The intense feeling of beauty, in such instances, is what reveals truth (or god/ goddess): beauty is the affective substitute for the purity of the perfection of this actual world ... just as love is the affective surrogate for actual intimacy.

RESPONDENT: Yes, this is what happened to me and has happened many times. I start out open, innocent, no borders, no boundaries, everything clear and sparkling, realer than real (meaning that the mechanical, take-it-all-for-granted view of the existence that I’ve absorbed or formed as I matured falls away). Then I finish by appreciating, loving, cherishing all that is. I’ve bought into the love, love, love cultural directives in a big way. I thought this was what I was supposed to achieve.

RICHARD: Such has been the received wisdom up until now.

RESPONDENT: I drag myself out of bad moods by appreciating and loving the beauty and order of nature. I have made it a goal to create a solid love relationship with a man. This love thing is tricky. It’s slippery for me, when I try to look at it, it dives aside. Malice is right there, spread eagle, but love?

RICHARD: Well, love is usually considered sacrosanct ... yet just as sorrow is essential for its antidotal compassion to flourish love is the antitoxin for malice: without malice, love has no raison d’être. I started to empirically encounter this, whilst sailing my yacht around tropical islands off the north-east coast of Australia with a choice companion, towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation. Strangely enough it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – in 1987 which triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness.

It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation – my initial enquiry had begun in India in 1984, whilst single and celibate, upon becoming suss about the Buddhist ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion) and ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) – hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be addressed squarely. Eventually what happened was that at anchor one velvety night with an ebbing tide chuckling its way past the hull what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face:

It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine – and upon such exposure ‘She’ (aka Love Agapé) disappeared forever ... nevertheless it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition.

There is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’.

RESPONDENT: The ending of sorrow is love.

RICHARD: If I may point out? The ending of sorrow is not love ... sorrow is essential for compassion to flourish; without compassion, love has no genesis. Therefore, the ending of sorrow would result in love being stillborn ... and love is the antidote for malice.

Without malice, love has no raison d’être.

RESPONDENT: Are you writing about your experience or just assuming?

RICHARD: I started to empirically encounter this towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation ... but my investigation into compassion had begun in India in 1984 with the Buddhist ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) and ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion). Strangely enough, it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love in 1987 – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – that triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness. It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation ... hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be faced squarely.

Nevertheless, it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition ... there is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’.

*

RICHARD: Why do you promote the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty?

RESPONDENT: ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order will do!

RICHARD: By saying that ‘ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order will do!’ are you saying that you know that the ‘Tried and True’ is effective in curing all the ills of humankind? Are you saying this despite the fact that the Gurus and the God-Men; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Masters and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order’ ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found?

I must ask you: just how much longer will a ‘Tried and Failed’ system continue to be so highly revered despite its abject failure to produce the goods? Is it because ‘love, compassion, beauty, order’ form a blanket of solace and succour wherein ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul can be comforted, stroked, endorsed and perpetuated? Is this why nobody will put ‘love, compassion, beauty’ under a microscope? If thought can get such rigorous scrutiny as the Mailing List gives it ... why not feelings? Are feelings sacrosanct?

*

RESPONDENT No. 3: Excuse me if this sound rude. What do I know? Nothing to speak of.

RICHARD: You can be as rude as you wish ... I never take offence. As for your query ‘What do I know?’ and your NDA answer ‘Nothing to speak of’ ... for one who professes to know nothing to speak of, you spoke plenty already. Viz.:

> • [Respondent No. 3]: ‘Agreement as to love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’. Thus by agreeing to ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ you make out that you know that the ‘Tried and True’ is effective in curing all the ills of humankind. You say this despite the fact that the Gurus and the God-Men; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Masters and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found. (Richard, List B, No. 3, 31 May 1999).

RESPONDENT: Now you see how hard it is to break beings from conditioning.

RICHARD: Yes, it took me eleven years to break free from the institutionalised insanity that reveres the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty. Then I realised that ‘being’ itself was the problem ... not just love and compassion and beauty.

RESPONDENT: But, since we have the brains, the technology, the Internet Meeting of Minds (IMM), we should be able to break this conditioning.

RICHARD: Indeed ... speaking personally, the Internet is my chosen means of correspondence and communication for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with it’s multiple feed-back capability – is second to none.

RESPONDENT: [We should be able to break this conditioning]. I know how, do you?

RICHARD: Okay ... but just so that there is no confusion, could you specify what this conditioning is that you say ‘we should be able to break’? I was referring to putting feelings under the microscope.

*

RICHARD: There is a third alternative: this actual world that the real world is pasted over as a veneer.

RESPONDENT No. 34: Yes. The localised mind of man creates an inner self, an inner centred known observer, that superimposes an imaginary world over the actual. I would say: ‘the elimination of a centred known observer that becomes in time ...’

RICHARD: Why does the ‘centred known observer’ exist in the first place? Is the ‘centred known observer’ really a product of time (as in ‘becomes in time’?). Or is there a more fundamental cause? (The fundamental cause of the ‘centred known observer’ must be ascertained in order to bring about fundamental change). (Richard, List B, No. 34a, 2 June 1999).

RESPONDENT: The ‘centred known observer’ is ‘EGO’.

RICHARD: Yes, ego ... sometimes referred to as ‘self’ (with a lower-case ‘s’ so as to distinguish it from ‘Self’ with an upper-case ‘S’).

RESPONDENT: Eliminate sorrow and you have rid yourself of the self-motivated centre (selfishness). This is where love begins.

RICHARD: Not so ... the elimination of sorrow is not where love begins ... sorrow is essential for compassion to flourish; without compassion, love has no genesis. Therefore, you must sublimate sorrow so that transcendence can result ... then love begins.

Incidentally, the question was: what is the primary cause of ego ... is it really just a product of ‘becoming in time’ or is there a more fundamental cause?

RESPONDENT: When you recognise that as your true nature – that is awakening. Then you see others as the same – because that ONE-NESS is all there is. You then see unity in creation – and you have true love for all.

RICHARD: As love is an affective feeling (arising out of the ‘tender’ instinctual passions) any ‘true love’ (and any ‘true compassion’ for that matter) is sourced in the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that forms of survival necessity in the womb. To become free of the human condition one must dig deep into one’s affective feelings, deep down past the superficial emotions into the depths of one’s being and see that malice and sorrow antidotally generates love and compassion.

Because if one does not, one may find oneself as malice and sorrow sublimating oneself into Love and Compassion – one will cease having one’s feelings happen to oneself as ego and instead become those sublimated feelings as soul in an on-going transcendent State Of Being – one will be Love Agapé and Divine Compassion as a ‘Supreme Being’. In other words: an infinitely expanded identity that is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’ and ‘Formless’. To become free of the human condition requires the elimination of the instinctual passions ... not merely a transcendence of malice and sorrow.

It does mean the end of ‘me’, however, as an identity in ‘my’ totality (‘being’ itself) and not just ‘I’ as ego surrendering and/or dissolving.

RESPONDENT: The miracle of love is set free when the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed.

RICHARD: Ahh ... this answers my question (further above) as to whether ‘the miracle of love [hidden] in the deepest sorrow’ vanishes (when ‘the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed’). Okay ... the next obvious question is this: what is it that makes it ‘the miracle of love’? 1. Is love a ‘miracle’ because it is hidden in sorrow? Or: 2. Is love a ‘miracle’ because it has supernatural qualities?

RESPONDENT: Why not both? As in ‘Love is when sorrow is understood’, but also ‘love is when the self is not’.

RICHARD: Because if it is ‘both’ then you have not dismissed ‘the fantasy of God’ after all (any god’s love is supernatural). Shall we try again? If it is (1) then is love dependent upon sorrow for its existence or is there some other reason for hiding in sorrow? If it is (2) then how is it that love is thaumaturgical yet has to skulk around in sorrow?

RESPONDENT: Not dependent on sorrow, but buried by sorrow. Our failure to understand the nature of love may give it the appearance of a shameful quality.

RICHARD: Okay.

*

RESPONDENT: Richard, thanks for your last post. Also for the entire thread. I’m wondering, with the amount of agreement that your last answer seemed to contain, where we differ in the end.

RICHARD: Ahh ... my use of ‘okay’ was too ambiguous and misleading, I see in hindsight, as I was intending to indicate that I had no further queries in those areas as you had explained yourself fully (indeed you said that ‘I’m not sure what to say here ... my feeling is that I’ve already said it’ ). I would have been better-off writing ‘Okay, I have the picture now’.

For example, if I arrange some of your sentences sequentially it reads (to me) like this:

> • self-knowledge is the precondition of innocence; the failure to understand the nature of love may give it the appearance of a shameful quality; people are proud to exhibit their hurt rather than ashamed about their failure to end it; in that trap they invent and glorify sorrow and perpetuate suffering; unresolved hurt will beget problems; innocence is the end of hurt; the psychological principle of hurt begets all the problems of the ego; if hurt is seen as the father of the psyche then the ending of hurt by exposure would end all affective accumulation; the psyche is a complex defence mechanism; people have buried love underneath their worries; the solution lies in the resolution of those unresolved feelings which makes room for love and compassion; love is when sorrow is understood; love is set free when the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed; love is not dependent on sorrow, but buried by sorrow; affective feelings live in the psyche, love is when there is no psyche; love is when the self is not; the miracle of love is the ground of reality itself.

If I were coming from the point of view that love, as the ground of reality, is the miracle solution to all the ills of humankind I would be in broad agreement with what you write ... and would wish to pursue it further with you so as to have it manifest in my daily life. However, I lived that manifestation, night and day, for eleven years and thus have major reservations as to love’s miraculous qualities vis-à-vis peace on earth ... so this is where I consider we differ:

> • [Richard]: ‘the evidence of history shows that the saints and sages and seers have been unable to extricate or isolate love and compassion out from malice and sorrow and vice versa ... innocence is totally new to human experience’. (Richard, List B, No. 42, 14 November 1999).
> • [Respondent]: ‘I can see that ‘the problem lies in the affective feelings’, the unresolved feelings I would say ... the solution lies in the resolution of those feelings which makes room for love and compassion’.

In brief: I am suggesting that love’s innocence, as the ground of reality revealed when the self is not, does not meet the ‘free from sin or guilt; untouched by evil’ requirements for innocence (I cannot see how a person still subject to anger and anguish can be called innocent) ... which is why I propose that innocence is something totally new to human experience.

RESPONDENT: Your discussion of innocence leaves me stumped for its radical position. Since it excludes all humanity, as it has walked the earth to date, I don’t know what it would actually entail.

RICHARD: It entails a total end to both malice and sorrow plus their antidotal love and compassion: innocence means peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body ... not an after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’, as The Self (by whatever name), in a timeless and spaceless and formless realm.

RESPONDENT: I’m also still wondering about your use of ‘affective feelings’, especially your inclusion of love in that category.

RICHARD: Sure ... it is a radical proposition, I realise. However, this is because I have only ever been interested in bringing to an end all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ... here on earth.

RESPONDENT: Do you date? Cook? In both of these activities, some anxiety, in my opinion, is inevitable: am I conducting myself correctly in her presence? Will the love making be glorious? etc.

RICHARD: Love does not feature in my life ... thus sexual congress is always excellent.

RESPONDENT: Well, that sounds strange, if not contradictory, to me.

RICHARD: I can comprehend your ‘sounds strange’ response given that the conventional wisdom is to cover-up the base carnal passions with a gloss of love ... but why ‘contradictory’ ? The total absence of the instinctual passions – and their compensatory love – enables an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever. An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible. Hence ‘always excellent’.

RESPONDENT: I don’t agree that love is all but ‘compensatory to instinctual passions’. To love another person is to feel for him/ her with the same intensity as we feel for ourselves.

RICHARD: Ahh ... projected narcissism, you mean?

RESPONDENT: Some of this feeling, I agree, is instinctual – for example, parents feel the pain of their children as their own. But, human beings also have the capacity to love others that they are not instinctively programmed to love. I can cite my love for my dear wife as an example. Her joys and pains and trials and tribulations are mine too with the same intensity. That is love. Without love we do not relate to another. So, I don’t understand the concept of actual intimacy sans love. Without love – which is feeling for another with the same intensity as for ourselves – there is no intimacy, in my humble opinion.

RICHARD: Yet love, no matter how intense, is seeing (feeling) the other through rose-coloured glasses (feelings). The total absence malice and sorrow – and their compensatory love and compassion – enables an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever.

An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible.

*

RICHARD: Pizza – even with cheese – is hardly haute cuisine. Sex without carnal desire enables a purity that far exceeds the greatest or most profound feeling of love.

RESPONDENT: I didn’t equate love with carnal desire.

RICHARD: Neither did I ... I said that sex without carnal desire enables a purity that far exceeds the greatest or most profound feeling of love. The conventional wisdom is to cover-up the base carnal passions with a gloss of love so as to effect a pseudo-intimacy.

RESPONDENT: Love is the essence of intimacy: I am the other.

RICHARD: As in ‘oneness’ (an illusory feeling of togetherness)?

RESPONDENT: Without that intimacy, non-procreative sex is but a physical work out.

RICHARD: Without that illusory feeling of togetherness an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, is always experienced twenty-four hours a day ... unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever.

An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible.

*

RESPONDENT: Sorry about being Starr-like, but don’t you go through the pounding of heart, some tingling in and around various body parts, a surge of various emotions and excitements before, during, and after coitus with your, eh, companion? If yes, then I would say that you experience that creative anxiety that I mentioned.

RICHARD: Ahh ... I think I get it, now. You seem to be indicating that if I were to add love into sex then I will have creative anxiety in my life?

RESPONDENT: Well, what I am getting at is this: love makes the heart go fonder. The tingling sensation that being in love with one’s wife, girlfriend, even one’s companion, is what I referred to as creative anxiety. How do you relate with your companion?

RICHARD: As there is no separation it is impossible – and unnecessary – to ‘relate’ .

RESPONDENT: Do you buy her flowers?

RICHARD: No ... I provide all of me twenty-four hours a day (no substitute giving is needed).

RESPONDENT: Does anticipation of a romantic evening with her sets your heart aflutter?

RICHARD: There is no room for ‘romantic evenings’ – or the necessity – in a twenty-four hour a day intimacy.

RESPONDENT: When you hold her hands and look into her eyes does the cosmos come to a standstill?

RICHARD: No ... the infinitude of this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is already always still.

RESPONDENT: If yes, then you experience creative anxiety that I have in mind.

RICHARD: Oh. You have given me the words of ‘creative anxiety’ ... but where is the essence?

*

RESPONDENT: Also, what, if any, emotions pass through your heart when you see your children and grandchildren?

RICHARD: None at all. I experience all people equally with the same actual intimacy ... no separation whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: Describe that intimacy to me, if you don’t mind.

RICHARD: Sure ... pristine perfection twenty-four hours a day.

RESPONDENT: What goes through your heart when you see your grandchildren?

RICHARD: Blood.

RESPONDENT: Do you embrace them, baby-talk with them?

RICHARD: No ... I treat them as fellow human beings (plus I very rarely see them anyway as they live physically far away).

RESPONDENT: Buy them toys?

RICHARD: No ... I provide all of me twenty-four hours a day (no substitute giving is needed) when and if I ever see them.

RESPONDENT: Does the cosmos come to a standstill when they shriek with joy in your ears?

RICHARD: No ... the infinitude of this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is already always still.

*

RESPONDENT: But, in my humble opinion, part of being human is to feel the emotions that I mentioned above. Makes sense?

RICHARD: Indeed it does make sense – and more than just a little – inasmuch as you have convinced me that I need to have fear in my life ... and I am listening. How are we to proceed?

RESPONDENT: By answering the above questions.

RICHARD: You have given me the words of fear ... but where is the essence?

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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.

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