# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Freedom from the Human Condition RESPONDENT: What motivated your liberation? RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extirpation – annihilation, expunction, extinction – ensures peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: And does your freedom entail the total and complete erasure of the human consciousness that moves the common herd or just only the moral conditioning – the sense of right and wrong, good and evil? RICHARD: Yes, the total and complete erasure of the ‘human’ consciousness ... not just conditioning. The moral conditioning – the sense of right and wrong and what you called the knowledge of good and evil – are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. By and large this enterprise has proved to be relatively effective ... only a minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner. And although well-meant, it is but an ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, because people are irked by the restraints imposed upon what they indulgently imagine is the freedom of the natural state. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. For the deletion of the software package is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. That is, ‘being’ itself expires. The reward for so doing is immeasurable, however. The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ needs to be talked about and exposed for what it is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again. There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with enlightenment is that whilst the identity as ego dissolves, the identity as soul remains intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity ... ‘I am That’ or ‘I am God’ or ‘I am The Supreme’ or ‘I am The Absolute’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ and so on. This is the delusion, the mirage, the deception ... and it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an august state. This second identity – the second ‘I’ of Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana) fame – is a difficult one to shake, maybe more difficult than the first; for who is brave enough to voluntarily give up fame and fortune, reverence and worship, status and security? One has to be scrupulously honest with oneself to go all the way and no longer be a someone, a somebody of importance. One faces extinction; ‘I’ will cease to be, there will be no ‘being’ whatsoever, no ‘presence’ at all. It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for one to conceive that without a wayward ‘I’ there is no need for either a compliant ‘me’ or any values whatsoever ... or an ‘Ultimate Authority’. This is what freedom from the Human Condition is. RICHARD: Here is the point: not only the ‘I’ as ego but the ‘me’ as soul called No. 21 – ‘you’ at the core of ‘your’ being which is ‘being’ itself – are the root cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide that beset this fair earth we all live on being perpetuated forever and a day. Instead of attending to this with total attention, so that sorrow and malice are ended forever, you are going on a one-man crusade against all the drinkers, smokers, womanisers, liars, cheats, thieves, gluttons and intellectuals. I know the meaning of that pithy aphorism ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ ... do you? RESPONDENT: Has your state of awareness ended all of the suffering in the world? RICHARD: Yes, there is no suffering here in this, the actual world. Suffering still exists in the real-world of course ... all self-inflicted. RESPONDENT: If not, why assume mine would? RICHARD: But I am not assuming ... there is no suffering here. I am not special ... this is for anyone and everyone. This perfection already always exists. RESPONDENT: I will repeat what you are saying: that I am the cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide that beset this fair earth we all live on being perpetuated forever and a day ... and I am not attending to the problem within me. You are assuming a bit much here don’t you think? RICHARD: Okay ... let us find out if I am assuming, eh? Are you free of the Human Condition (by which I mean something vastly superior to the ‘state of grace’)? If not ... then I am not assuming anything at all. For it is then a fact that you are perpetuating all of the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide with your procrastination about becoming self-less. * RESPONDENT: What kind of freedom would that be? RICHARD: It is freedom from the Human Condition. The Human Condition is a term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of so-called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of the ‘self’. The elimination of the ‘self’ is the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. * RESPONDENT: My view of this is that the mind directs the body and something behind the mind directs the mind. RICHARD: Yes ... for 6.0 billion people this ‘something behind the mind’ is their genetic identity (‘being’) echoing through the millennia via the germ cells (the spermatozoa and the ova). RESPONDENT: How can an identity be genetic? A body can be genetic ... not an identity. RICHARD: Any metaphysical identity (a psychological, emotional, psychic or autological ‘being’) is an epiphenomenon of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that forms itself, out of survival necessity, as the centre-point of the instinctual passions that blind nature genetically encodes in all sentient beings at conception in the genes ... ‘I’ am the current end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s instinctual passions such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire. RESPONDENT: You are equating human nature and animal nature here. RICHARD: Aye ... this is because human nature is built on top of the underlying animal nature (somewhat akin to ‘Windows 9x’ being built on top of ‘MSDos’). All sentient beings are born with instinctual animal passions like fear and aggression and nurture and desire genetically bestowed by blind nature which give rise to a rudimentary animal ‘self’ – which is ‘being’ itself – that human beings with their ability to think and reflect upon their mortality have transformed into a ‘me’ as soul (a ‘feeler’ in the heart) and an ‘I’ as ego (a ‘thinker’ in the head). This second layer is the human condition ... and is epitomised by malice and sorrow and their antidotally generated pacifiers of love and compassion. RESPONDENT: There are serious differences between the two. RICHARD: Indeed ... the human animal, with its amazing ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for benevolent reasons, has the chance to become free of the human condition. Animals cannot think; only humans are intelligent ... and their intelligence is crippled by both the instinctual animal passions (fear and aggression and nurture and desire) and the cultivated human emotions (malice and sorrow and their – polar opposite yet complementary poles – love and compassion). ALAN: I would like to pursue further the question of the ‘Collective Unconscious’. What evidence is there for its existence? RICHARD: Published reports of subjective experience. ALAN: Is it psychic? RICHARD: Yes ... all this stuff is of the psyche which comes from the affective faculty bestowed upon sentient beings as instinctual passions located at the top of the brain-stem. ALAN: There is the ‘human condition’ which, from what I have learned (mainly from you) is the generally accepted definition for what we are born with – the ‘instincts’, mainly fear and aggression, nurture and desire. Then there is the ‘human conditioning’, which is the set of morals and beliefs, which are imbibed from our parents and our peers. RICHARD: No, all sentient beings have – more or less – these basic survival instincts and animals, being unable to think and reflect upon their mortality, have not converted savagery and tenderness into ‘good’ and ‘evil’ ... they do not have values. The term ‘Human Condition’ is peculiar to the human species (and so is ‘human conditioning’) ... I describe it thus: • [Richard]: ‘The Human Condition is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Peace-on-earth is possible only when there is freedom from the Human Condition. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of the self in its totality. The elimination of identity is simultaneously the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one then lives freely in the magical paradise that this verdant earth floating in the infinitude that the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy tale-like ambience that is never-ending’. (Richard, Abditorium, Human Condition). ALAN: So where does the ‘Collective Unconscious’ fit into this? Is it an instinct? You will also have seen mention of a ‘going with the herd’ instinct in my correspondence with Vineeto – maybe this is part of the ‘Collective Unconscious’? RICHARD: The term ‘collective unconscious’ was invented by Mr. Carl Jung to encompass all the atavistic memories, as evidenced in fables and traditions (Mr. Joseph Campbell collected a rich source of these), those bizarre and haunting and fantastical world of myths and legends that is contained in the human psyche). IRENE to Vineeto: The human conditioning is the curbing and controlling of this natural given [the human condition] ... the human conditioning can be studied and understood, so that it does not affect us any more in living our natural potential (...) once we have understood it empirically then we loose our emotional reaction to it and although the conditioning is still active in the world, it doesn’t disturb us any more in a personal way. Then we are free from the conditioning. RICHARD: This freedom – may I call it a ‘relative freedom’ for now – from the conditioning that humankind at large imposes upon all new recruits to the human race is quite remarkable in itself, is it not? To have sorted through all the social mores and psittacisms – those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning – and all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams is no mean feat. To have become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what one finds oneself to be – a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion – is an adventure in itself. My word, what a challenge that is! When one realises that a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological entity overlaying a psychic ‘being’ ... one can start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is. What a delight and joy that was for you at the time, eh? * IRENE to Peter: Richard says that he is no longer a human being. RICHARD: To be correct, I have never said that I am ‘no longer a human being’ ... what I have written is: • [Richard]: ‘Up until now, there has only been two ways to live: being ‘human’ or being ‘divine’. Now there is a third alternative ... I have ceased being ‘human’ (as in that oft-repeated excuse ‘I am not perfect I am only human’) and I am most definitely not ‘divine’. I am a fellow human being, writing about my experiencing of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, for them to do what they will with’. IRENE to Peter: Believing Richard’s words to be true and repeating them as teaching does not make Richard factually free from malice and sorrow. RICHARD: I couldn’t agree more ... I am factually free of sorrow and malice irrespective of whether person (A) believes my words to be true. Also, conversely, I am factually free of sorrow and malice irrespective of whether person (B) believes my words to be false. My freedom from the human condition has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people believe or disbelieve. However, their own freedom from the human condition – which is what is of crucial importance here – is dependent upon their remembering at least one of their PCE’s accurately ... and herein I can play a part in affirming and confirming their personal experience of the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. What I have to say is this: • [Richard]: ‘I do not want any one to merely believe me. I stress to people how vital it is that they see for themselves. If they were so foolish as to believe me then the most they would end up in is living in a dream state and thus miss out on the actual. I do not wish this fate upon anyone ... I like my fellow human beings’. Of course, if they believe my words to be false they close the door on their own freedom from the human condition and have to invent a synthetic freedom ... be it a freedom from human conditioning or whatever substitute for the actual they manage to spin out of dreams and visions. RICHARD: I do not have to personally experience schizophrenia in order to comprehend that it is undesirable as a modus operandi for living a salubrious life. I have read enough about it – and talked with enough people who do experience it – to ascertain that it is a living nightmare. RESPONDENT: I have a cousin who is a schizophrenic. He is 15 and at the moment is almost at the limit of what drugs can do without having uncontrollable shakes etc. Last weekend he was staying with my mum and dad who live close and was in a really bad state. Are you aware of anyone managing this condition with a method like, ‘How am I experiencing this moment’. It seems sensible to tackle this problem when the attacks are at a low ebb, but as far as I know, no method has been employed in this case to even attempt to change the status quo of the conditioning which is undoubtedly contributing to the problem. RICHARD: No one that I have ever spoken with, who is classified as having schizophrenia (and I spent considerable time with some as it was a condition I was vitally interested in at the time), ever indicated any willingness to join with me in a personal exploration – an experiential investigation – into the depths of their condition ... not one. In fact, as they backed-off, one and all, with marked degrees of alarm and distress, I desisted. I also had this happen with several peoples classified as having bi-polar disorder (manic depression) and my experience with peoples being clinically depressed was similar. There was one person, officially classified as having ‘episodes of paranoid schizophrenia’ (arguably the worst), who became so disturbed as I ‘walked with him’ into his world, that he became markedly wild. Another person in the room went outside and later said to me that the person had ‘become black’ and that there was ‘dark forces’. Thus, from these experiences and through discussions with relatives and friends of those mentally disturbed – and from my reading on the subject of mental disorders and discussions with psychologists and psychiatrists – I have adopted a sensible policy of making it clear that the person reading or listening to actualism words is a sensible human being who understands what a word means, has learned to function in society with all its the legal laws and the social protocols, and is a reasonably ‘well-adjusted’ personality seeking to find ultimate fulfilment and complete satisfaction. Actualism is of no use to one who is harbouring a neurotic or psychotic condition or who is an uneducated social misfit with a chip on their shoulder. Such a person is well-advised to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or an educator or attend classes on citizenship and cultural etiquette before even bothering to try to unravel the mess that is the Human Condition. I say and do this because when a ‘normal’ person becomes ‘psychotic’ it is because they have found the pressures of life too much to handle and have chosen for psychosis as their way out. As strange as it may sound to normal people, they are comfortable with their modus operandi and have no interest in budging one iota from their position ... despite their pleas for help (a part of their strategy). It may initially sound like ‘hard nails’ on my account ... but counsellors and therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists are the best people for the job of managing their condition. Let us first get sensible peoples free of the human condition ... then normal people may become interested. When normal people are free of the human condition then peoples genetically prone to mental disorders will not be subject to the ‘status quo of the conditioning which is undoubtedly contributing to the problem’ that makes them choose for psychosis as a way out. RESPONDENT: Reading Alan’s post got me thinking. [quote]: ‘At one stage, I suddenly thought that this is the primitive self in operation and, just as in a PCE the ‘strong link’ from the amygdala to the neo-cortex is ‘stunned’ into temporary in-operation, what happens in ‘clinical depression’ is that the ‘weak link’ is temporarily (and possibly, in severe cases, permanently) put out of action. There is therefore no ‘feedback loop’ to control the instinctive reactions (and chemical releases) of the primitive self and the basic instincts of fear and aggression are free to run riot without the ‘normal’ controls of morals and injunctions. This would also explain what happens when people ‘run amok’, out of control, in wars and occasions of heightened tension’ [endquote]. It may be actually possible to, by practice, strengthen the feedback link and reduce the chance of psychotic breakdowns. RICHARD: Hmm ... I have been examined by two accredited psychiatrists and am officially classified as having a severe psychotic condition, according to the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders – fourth edition) which is the analytical criteria used by all psychiatrists and psychologists around the world for establishing mental disorders. Thus the door to an actual freedom has ‘do not enter: insanity lies ahead’ written on it. It would seem that an increase, rather than a reduction, of ‘the chance of psychotic breakdowns’ are in order, no? RESPONDENT: Do you joke, laugh, flirt, act silly for the fun of it? (Please be prepared to receive a joke from me every now and then). Or have you become a serious man? Pleasure talking to you. RICHARD: I like to joke, yes and I laugh a lot ... there is so much that is irrepressibly funny about life itself. I have no ability to flirt, however, as my libido is nil and void ... yet I have an active sexual life. I do not ‘act silly for the fun of it’ as I have no repressions to seek relief from. Strangely enough I find that I enjoy black humour; whereas the ‘I’ that I was could not ... ‘he’ found it repulsive and sickening. Nevertheless, the humour I enjoy most is that which lampoons puffed-up power and its authority. For example: • A journalist had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, and she noted then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. She approached one of the women for an explanation. ‘This is marvellous’, said the journalist. ‘What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?’ Replied the Kuwaiti woman: ‘Land mines’. Although it looks superficially to be a sexist joke it is not ... the reverse would hold true for a matriarchal society. Human frailty exposes the lie of power. As for ‘serious’ ... the utter reliability of being always happy and harmless replaces the galling burden of being serious ... actuality’s blithe sincerity dispenses with the onerous responsibility that epitomises adulthood. What I do find funny – in a peculiar way – is that I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to search forever ... some people consider arriving to be boring. How can unconditional peace and happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be boring? Is a carefree life all that difficult to comprehend? Why persist in a sick game ... and defend one’s right to do so? Why insist on suffering when blitheness is freely available here and now? Is a life of perennial gaiety something to be scorned? I have even had people say, accusingly, that I could not possibly be happy when there is so much suffering going on in the world. The logic of this defies credibility: Am I to wait until everybody else is happy before I am? If I was to wait, I would be waiting forever ... for under this twisted rationale, no one would dare to be the first to be happy. Their peculiar reasoning allows only for a mass happiness to occur globally; overnight success, as it were. Someone has to be intrepid enough to be first, to show what is possible to a benighted humanity ... one has to face the opprobrium of one’s ill-informed peers. Thus one needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere ... most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all. * RICHARD: Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen hundreds of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended hereditably transmissible future. RESPONDENT: Is your point then that ‘my ego’ and anybody else’s ego are virtually identical (with only technical differences that are manifested as individual personalities of people). RICHARD: Not specifically the ego but the identity as a whole ... ‘me’ at the core of one’s ‘being’ is the rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings. That is, ‘being’ itself is the ancient-most of the ancient-most ... which is why it is said by some (Zen Buddhists) upon rediscovering it to be one’s ‘original face’. It gives rise to the cherished feeling of ‘oneness’ with all of life. RESPONDENT: Are we talking about the ‘deep’ psychological being which is experienced as ‘me’, bare awareness of both the external and internal worlds (the internal psychological world of my emotions and thoughts, etc ...). RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: The ‘me’ which, as you once said, upon discovery of its existence in all conscious beings, might dissociate itself into the feeling of an immortal, sublime and universal ‘Me’? RICHARD: Yes. RESPONDENT: This ‘me’ seems sometimes very simple, undemanding and peaceful. But often this ‘me’ is very complex, dynamic and associated with emotions and attachments. RICHARD: The root cause of the contradictory nature (a polite word for ‘perverse nature’) of human beings lies in the basic instinctual emotions: fear and aggression (savage) and nurture and desire (tender). The inherent perversity of all ‘being’ can be easily seen by examining the way that some noteworthy human beings have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and then realised themselves as unitive and enduring entities swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ (by whatever name) for all ‘Eternity’ (by whatever name). They have failed to face up to the facts and actuality of hereditary instincts squarely ... which comes out of a failure to understand human nature (which is quite understandable as all the ‘Great Beings’ throughout history have remained stuck in the Human Condition and seek to resolve problems instead of dissolving the cause of them). They merely add to the confusion ... and suck otherwise intelligent people into following them blindly into heroic self-sacrifice. All the while they weep crocodile tears at the abominable slaughter and misery that they actively promote and perpetuate out of their abject ignorance. All religious and spiritual thought – being mystical in origin – is nothing but an extremely complex and complicated metaphysics that does nothing to eliminate the self – the ego and soul – in its entirety. In fact, when one applies these eastern-derived religious and spiritual systems, one’s primal self is endorsed, enhanced, glorified and rewarded for staying in existence. And this is a monumental blunder. All the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that have eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed religiosity or spirituality attests to this. Also, all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered religious or spiritual teaching renders its mute testimony to anyone with the eyes to see. Culpability for the continuation of animosity and anguish lies squarely at the feet of the Master and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Gurus and the God-men. And their feet – upon close inspection – are feet of clay. They lacked the necessary intestinal fortitude to go all the way ... they stopped at the ‘Unknown’ by surrendering to the ‘Unmanifest Power’ that lies lurking behind the throne. To stop at ‘dissolving the ego’ and becoming enlightened is to stop half-way. One needs to end the soul as well, then any identity whatsoever becomes extirpated, extinguished, eliminated, annihilated ... in other words: extinct. To be as dead as the dodo but with no skeletal remains. To vanish without a trace ... there will be no phoenix to rise from the ashes. Finished. Kaput. Then there is peace-on-earth. Thus this self – ‘me’ – is not only ‘simple, undemanding and peaceful’ yet ‘very complex, dynamic and associated with emotions and attachments’ in some unknowable and paradoxical way at all ... by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am defiled; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am corrupt through and through; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. By ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am rotten at the innermost core. RESPONDENT: I will paraphrase what has preceded. You have discussed the mediocrity of the common human condition. RICHARD: No, it is not just mediocrity that is the problem with the Human Condition ... it is downright dangerous. There have been 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone. There is nothing mediocre about that ... it is atrocious. RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started in a war-torn country in June 1966, whilst dressed in a green uniform and aged nineteen, and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most ghastly way. There was I, a youth with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. RESPONDENT: You represented no such thing other than in your mind – you represented a naive young man with a weapon who had ceded his personal sovereignty to a government. RICHARD: I did not represent that at all. Given that all human beings are driven by instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then war is an essential facility for obtaining an imitation of peace – an uneasy truce called ‘law and order’ – at the point of a gun. This will continue to be the situation until every last man, woman and child on earth is free of the human condition. It does not make war any less ghastly ... but it is a fact that whilst humans are as they are, then war is here to stay. * RICHARD: There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. RESPONDENT: The flaming monk also represented nothing other than himself, a man who had ceded his personal sovereignty to a religious order. RICHARD: Is this a case of ‘while I have got a good theory running I will stick to it’? Once again, you fail to understand human nature. It is sovereignty that is the problem ... not a case of either ceding or not ceding it. For it is being a sovereign in the first place that is the cause of all the ills of humankind ... it is called being the ‘self’. * RICHARD: I was aghast ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... and it is my delight to share this discovery with my fellow human. RESPONDENT: For all your copious verbiage, it is quite clear that you’ve discovered nothing other than some eccentric nomenclature. RICHARD: You have obviously missed most of my posts. I have made it quite clear that none of us are to blame, for we are all victims of blind nature’s rather clumsy software package of instincts. However, once realised where the root cause of all the anguish and animosity lies, one can hit the ‘delete’ button and erase the lot, for it is software and not hardware. If one does not then one is a fool. Of course, both ‘I’ and ‘me’ will be what is deleted ... for ‘I’ am the passions and the passions are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Your ‘humanity’ (and, for that matter, ‘divinity’) is quite obviously still around and rather vigorously operative. RICHARD: There is another alternative to being either secular or spiritual ... which is long overdue as neither of them have produced peace-on-earth. This third alternative I call an actual freedom. RICHARD: The psyche is not memory at all ... it is born of the instinctual passions. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct the psyche vanishes ... then memory is understood as being the asset that it is and not a liability. RESPONDENT: The so-called human ego-structure, human conditioning is memory-based. There is thought of me before enlightenment, me after enlightenment, me becoming free etc. There is an experience and with that energy, conditioning dissolves. Thought converts that into attainment by me. But actually the process is impersonal. RICHARD: As I am bodily constituted of various bits and pieces of this physical universe and I am bodily animated by the calorific content of food and the oxygen content of air and so on – which are also various bits and pieces of this physical universe – and that due to the process of inevitable physical entropy I will bodily cease being animated (which is another way of saying birth then living then death) it is entirely reasonable to say that the entire process of being alive anyway is already impersonal. Giving credence to any ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul as being somehow essential in any part or all of this in any personal way is simply illusionary and narcissistic self-centredness in action. Yet there is this rudimentary animal ‘self’ of the survival instincts endowed by blind nature as evidenced in animals ... and there is the rub. The presence of this base ‘self’ – which is ‘being’ itself – has nothing to do with conditioning and programming or thought and memory ... you were physically born this way. * RICHARD: To put it bluntly: ‘you’ in ‘your’ totality, who are but an illusion, must die an illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This extinction is an irrevocable event that eliminates the psyche itself. There will be no ‘being’. RESPONDENT: It seems clearer to say that there is a dissolution of the conditioning that gives rise to the illusion of self. RICHARD: All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because past the conditioning is the Human Condition itself ... which caused the conditioning. To end this condition, the deletion of blind nature’s software package which gave rise to the rudimentary animal ‘self’ is required. This is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. That is, ‘being’ itself expires. RESPONDENT: So maybe we can discuss the nature of man. RICHARD: Okay ... I consistently delineate the nature of human beings with the term ‘Human Condition’ ... which is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. The ending of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides requires the ending of malice and sorrow ... which involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time. The Gurus and God-men have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to produce the goods with their ‘Timeless and Spaceless and Formless’ solution ... their ‘Tried and True’ is the ‘Tried and Failed’. So, the question is: is it possible to be free of the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body? Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? RESPONDENT: This is again heavily laden with anguish and agony. That is why at times my mind is filled with fear when I read your posts (this is a result of images). At times there is an element of ‘foxiness’. RICHARD: Indeed it is ‘heavily laden with anguish and agony’ for it is a description of the human condition ... it accurately catalogues the reality for 6.0 billion human beings. Unless this reality is brought up into my face (if I am a normal person) I will never begin to comprehend what is entailed in becoming actually free of the human condition. So when my mind is ‘filled with fear’ as I read Richard’s posts, then that indicates that the reality of my condition – which is identical to the reality of the human condition – is bringing me face-to-face with the reality of both myself and my fellow human being. I notice, from time-to-time, a ‘foxiness’ percolating through my mind and heart and I wonder why or what significance this has. RESPONDENT: Here I offer my understanding: a. That ‘human condition’ which you refer to as ‘well established’, just stays that way as an academic concept. Still there will be wars and violence. RICHARD: Then I notice (if I am a normal person) that the very first manifestation of this ‘foxiness’ that is percolating through my mind and heart is to shift the reality which is ‘heavily laden with anguish and agony’ that Richard put in my face off into the middle distance by making it nothing but an ‘academic concept’ ... and now my mind is not quite so ‘filled with fear’ as it was before. I notice that I can quite composedly say that ‘still there will be wars and violence’ because the term ‘Human Condition’ is only a ‘well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies’. Now, I ask myself (if I am a normal person) what does ‘the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies’ mean ... apart from the fact that ‘all babies are genetically disposed to suffer’. Because that is all I have understood so far ... is it because ‘there is so much detail in [Richard’s] posts’? Is that why I still ‘cannot get the central point’? RESPONDENT: b. That ‘human condition’ is mentioned as when babies emerge into this earth and all babies are genetically disposed to suffer. That is all I understood so far. There is so much detail in your post, I cannot still get the central point. RICHARD: I ask myself (if I am a normal person) is the ‘central point’ all that stuff that Richard writes about the Gurus? The ‘gurus’? Yes, of course the Gurus have failed ... but ... but that ... that is ‘evading responsibility by essentially transferring the problem to the other’! RESPONDENT: c. I agree that the gurus etc have failed. But that is essentially transferring the problem to the other and evading responsibility. RICHARD: I think to myself (if I am a normal person) that he seems to be ‘overlooking the compassion element in humans’ Ahh ... that’s it ... the ‘compassion that can root out violence in oneself’ ... because ... because ‘this is not a concept but a possibility’ ... just let me explain it to Richard ... ... RESPONDENT: d. You seem to overlooking the compassion element in humans. The compassion that can root out violence in oneself. This is not a concept but a possibility. Let me explain. Animals are aggressive by nature. So what is the difference between animals and humans? The cat kills the mouse. Is this evil? This seems to be a biological action/ necessity that is undertaken by nature to achieve balance. BALANCE. Have you considered this possibility? The consciousness of the mouse understands this. So there is really no evil or good at the biological level. This is instinctual. Now coming to the humans. What is it that differs here? It is thought of evil and good. The thoughts that are inter-mixed with the feelings and emotions. It is THOUGHT that is a danger here. And not aggression itself. Now in focussing on aggression, wars etc, are we not avoiding the whole issue altogether? Are we seeing external manifestations of aggression, the crimes? Or is it a worthwhile effort to look within the sources of these tendencies? We then have to understand and explore the thinking processes underlying these aggressive tendencies. Let me suggest a simple experiment. Don’t say ‘Hmm ... well’. Let us engage in meaningful dialog. Have you ever stayed with an aggressive thought? Do you experience aggression in yourself? I am also trying to watch my mind. What do you see? RICHARD: What I see is a Krishnamurtiite blaming thought for all the ills of humankind and not taking one jot of notice of anything that I wrote. You are born with aggression – and fear – and that biological fact has zilch to do with it being ‘THOUGHT that is a danger here’. RESPONDENT: I don’t really care about peace-on-earth. RICHARD: Then why are you on a Mailing List purportedly set up to investigate the mess that is the human condition? RESPONDENT: I can only investigate the mess that is me. RICHARD: Indeed ... yet ‘the mess that is me’ is the same-same mess that 6.0 billion human beings experience. It is known as ‘human nature’ or ‘the human condition’ and is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. Or, as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti said repeatedly ‘I am the world’. RESPONDENT: Everything else is wishful thinking, in my opinion. RICHARD: And where would the human race be without ‘wishful thinking’, eh? Still sitting in a cave, dressed in animal skins and gnawing on a brontosaurus bone? In investigating my nature I am investigating human nature (the human condition) ... and one is one’s own ‘guinea-pig’ because such an investigation is participatory observation ... the ‘investigator’ is both participant and experimenter at one and the same time Why not approach it this way: as I am a human being – and being born and raised in what is called the normal way – after allowing for idiosyncrasies any study of one’s own psyche is a study of the human psyche? Therefore, any verifiably common discoveries are valid for all peoples, given due allowance for gender, racial and era variance. Through face-to-face interaction and through reading and watching media it is entirely reasonable to deduce that the three ways of experiencing the world of people, things and events (sensate, cerebral and affective) is common to all human beings. And, essentially, there is no difference between English malice and sorrow and African malice and sorrow and Indian malice and sorrow and so on and so on. (I use the generally accepted convention of ‘malice’ and ‘sorrow’ as delineated by most religions and/or philosophies, that fall under the umbrella term ‘The Human Condition’, purely for convenience. In Christianity, for example, the word ‘suffering’ means the same affective feelings as the word ‘sorrow’ does. Similarly, the ‘Golden Rule’ (found in all religions) known in English as ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ points to the feelings covered under the catch-all word ‘malice’. Basically, ‘malice’ is what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on) and ‘sorrow’ (sadness, loneliness, melancholy, grief, masochism and so on) is what one does to oneself ... as a broad generalisation). Speaking personally, in my investigations I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. I found ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which is the instinctual rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings (which ‘original face’ is what gives rise to the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all other sentient beings). This is a very ancient genetic memory; being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. Hence: ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. RICHARD (to No. 18): Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ could make in order to reveal whatever is actual. And what is actual is perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of the purity of the perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits this ever-present perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very purity of life, that ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’ demise, this ever-fresh perfection is manifest. (Richard, List B, No. 18, 19 February 1998). RESPONDENT: How do you know this? Is this just an ‘I’-dea? RICHARD: I ‘know all this’ because this is how I live ... I am not writing a theoretical treatise. It all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. This entailed finding the source of ‘myself’ ... and I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression that this self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. Psychological self-immolation was the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ could make in order to reveal whatever is actual. And what is actual is perfection. Life is bursting with meaning as ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stood in the way of the purity of the perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibited this ever-present perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevented the very purity of life, that ‘I’ was searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’ demise, this ever-fresh perfection became manifest. Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life – who would have it any other way? I am this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. * RICHARD: You are born with aggression – and fear – and that biological fact has zilch to do with it being ‘thought that is a danger here’. Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? RESPONDENT No. 31: Yes. This is a fundamental question. Our enquiry starts here. But there is a BELIEF that one is nursing malice and sorrow. RICHARD: If I may point out? It is a fact. You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: Why are we not looking beyond that? We first have to look into these beliefs. RICHARD: May I ask? Why are you avoiding the fact? You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: I would suggest to keep things simple and converse innocently like a small child. RICHARD: Small children are not innocent ... they are born with aggression and fear. Understanding human nature is as simple as understanding this fact. Life is not complicated. (Richard, List B, No. 31a, 26 May 1999). RESPONDENT: Again here, Richard, you authoritatively make a statement that has no basis in fact. A child is NOT born with aggression and fear. RICHARD: This borrowed ‘Tabula Rasa’ (‘clean slate’) philosophy of yours has had a long innings in human history ... and is currently making a come-back in NDA circles as: ‘We are all born Little Buddhas’. The continued belief in this theory – in the face of the empirical evidence of the past 30 odd years demonstrating genetic inheritance – requires avoiding the biological fact. Just by putting the word ‘NOT’ in capitals does not miraculously turn a creed into a fact. RESPONDENT: Those are learned traits. RICHARD: I had a woman telling me a few weeks ago that boys are born with aggression and little girl babies are not ... and that girls learnt aggression from men (she had to explain ‘bitchiness’ somehow) and that it was men who had to change so that there would be peace on earth. Now you are telling me that fear and aggression are ‘learned traits’ and the question that immediately springs to mind is: learned from who? Because if fear and aggression are passed on non-genetically from generation to generation (parent to child) then what caused fear and aggression in the first sentient beings to emerge on this planet way back whenever. In other words: who started it all? RESPONDENT: Obviously, you were not a very observant parent or grandparent. RICHARD: I not only ‘observed’ my biological children from birth onward, I actively participated in finding out about myself, life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through intimate interaction at the grass-roots level of association ... bonding, nurturing and protecting. Indeed, I was a single parent for a formative period of my biological daughters’ upbringing ... and one cannot get closer than that. Infants and children are not as happy and harmless and benevolent and carefree as is so often made out to be the case ... and have never been so. They have malice and sorrow firmly embedded in them, for one is born with instinctual fear and aggression. Just watch a one month old baby bellowing its distress at being alone; just watch a one year old pinching its sibling in spite for taking its toy; just watch a two year old stamping its foot in a temper tantrum; just watch a three year old child fighting with its peers for supremacy. In the interests of having a sincere dialogue, I must ask: where in all this is the fabulous ‘Tabula Rasa’? The imposition of social mores – moral virtues, ethical values, honourable principles, decent scruples and the like – are essential to curb the instinct-born spiteful anger and vicious hatred that are part and parcel of the essential traits of being ‘human’. To achieve a truly ‘clean slate’, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease being ‘human’. To change ‘Human Nature’, they must give-up, voluntarily, their cherished identity ... the rudimentary animal self they were born with. * RICHARD: Anyway, at least you have acknowledged that one half of my oft-repeated ‘malice and sorrow’ diagnosis is valid. RESPONDENT: What is it that YOU have diagnosed as ‘malicious and sorrowful’ ... someone with feelings? RICHARD: I have used the generally accepted convention of ‘malice’ and ‘sorrow’ as delineated by most religions and/or philosophies, that fall under the umbrella term ‘The Human Condition’, purely for convenience. In Christianity, for example, the word ‘suffering’ means the same feelings as the word ‘sorrow’ does. Similarly, the ‘Golden Rule’ (found in all religions) of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ points to the feelings covered under the catch-all word ‘malice’. Basically, ‘malice’ is what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on) and ‘sorrow’ (sadness, loneliness, melancholy, grief, masochism and so on) is what one does to oneself. RESPONDENT: There is quite a difference in the intended meaning of ‘sorrow and malice’ and just simple ‘sadness’. RICHARD: Of course ... but it is a difference in degree and not a difference in kind. RESPONDENT: Is it natural to run over an animal and not be ‘sad’ about it? RICHARD: But I am not talking of being ‘natural’ (it is natural to kill one’s fellow human being) but of being un-natural (not killing one’s fellow human being). RICHARD: There are two entities who have taken up residence in each human being: a psychological entity and a psychic entity. Just as there are those Christians who are said to be ‘possessed’ by an entity that requires exorcism, so too is every human being ‘possessed’ ... except that it is called being normal. These entities are not actual, they exist in the psyche as emotional-mental constructs and are not at all substantive. RESPONDENT: I don’t get this. They exist in the psyche? But don’t you go on to say that these two are not substantive? You said now two entities in the human being, not body. That I understand. RICHARD: The word ‘substantive’ means: ‘essential, necessary, indispensable’. Therefore, the sentence reads: ‘they exist in the psyche as emotional-mental constructs and are not at all essential, necessary and indispensable’. Just like the ‘Possessed Christians’ that I gave as an example, both the ego and the soul can be ‘exorcised’. They both arise out of the rudimentary self, intrinsic to the instinctual fear and aggression, that all sentient creatures are endowed with by ‘blind nature’ as a means of ensuring the survival of the species – and any species at all will do, as far as ‘blind nature’ is concerned. Human beings, with their thinking, reflective brain, have the ability to trace back through the emotional-mental line to this rudimentary self ... and eliminate it along with its instincts. These instincts are but a rough and ready ‘package’, or ‘programme’, that ‘blind nature’ provides as a start in life. They are not set in concrete and they are, most definitely, not essential, necessary or indispensable. In fact, for peace-on-earth to ensue, their eradication is imperative. * RICHARD: Perhaps you would care to explore, through sincere dialogue, the mechanism most conducive to ridding one’s body of the pernicious and insidious ‘self’ that has taken up residence within. In fact, it is the only tool that will do the job successfully. I am referring to thought. In particular: Apperceptive thought. RESPONDENT: What sort of sincere dialogue already presupposes the answer? RICHARD: The best kind of sincere dialogue, of course. Why grope around in the dark, thrashing hither and thither, when the obvious is staring one in the face all along? Anyway, this is a mailing list; all we have to communicate with is words ... and words mean thought. What else can happen? We can not do a ‘sitting in silence’ at the keyboard in world-wide unison. RESPONDENT: By the way in that I am not a robot, I am not in need of a mechanism by which to be repaired. RICHARD: Many years ago I saw, in an edifying moment, that I was nothing but a marionette dancing on the strings of social conditioning. Once I started digging under the layers of that conditioning, I found that I was pre-programmed by blind nature to instinctually react with fear and aggression. I was not too disdainful to see that I was indeed ‘a robot’ ... and most certainly in need of ‘a mechanism by which to be repaired’ . That mechanism is that which sets the human animal apart from all other animals: reflective thought. And reflective thought led to contemplative thought, which led to apperceptive thought, which ensures freedom from the Human Condition. Hubris, however relatively satisfying, is a poor substitute for such a magnificent freedom. Apperceptive thought is the wide and wondrous mechanism that enables one to be here – fully here – at this moment in time and this place in space. * RICHARD: When one has taken the exciting adventure of a lifetime through one’s own psyche into an actual freedom from the Human Condition, one understands any human psyche. For ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. Nobody is as unique as they fondly imagine themselves to be. All that is left is a few idiosyncrasies peculiar to the particular. RESPONDENT: Yes we are not as unique as we believe. But we are also not identical. There is both uniqueness and commonality. Understanding our own minds does give us insight into others for there is a common structure (as you say and Krishnamurti often points out). But the other is not the same, only in some vague sense similar. We can be fooled into reading our own thoughts into them. That is to ignore the actuality of that unique existence. Indeed, are not your very claims set in the context of how very special you are. That you are not like others. So what are you saying, that you are special but everyone else is just a basic carbon based copy (excuse the pun) of each other? RICHARD: Yes, everyone has the same blue-print ... human beings are all born with the same basic instincts like fear and aggression and nurture and desire and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world thus have the same emotions and passions. Anger and forbearance, for instance, is anger and forbearance wherever it lives. There is no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be, they all have a global incidence. The same applies to cerebral activity like imagination, conceptualisation, hypothesising, believing and so forth. Once again, ubiquitous in its occurrence. As for psychic phenomena like prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination ... a world-wide correspondence that is almost uncanny in its similitude. So, apart from cosmetic cultural variations upon the theme and a few idiosyncrasies peculiar to the particular, where in all this is one’s cherished uniqueness? It would appear that there is indeed no fundamental distinction between one person and the next. The Human Condition is universal in its spread. There is no actual difference – other than superficialities – betwixt one and the other. But, step out of the Human Condition – as this body only – leaving the ‘self’ behind in the Land of Lament where it belongs, and immediately, the picture changes ... where there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’, none of the above characteristics apply. Where there are no basic instincts; where there are no emotions or passions; where there is no cerebral energisation; where there is no psychic manifestations, there is no identity whatsoever. With all these similarities null and void, there is now an actual difference between this person and the other. Now one is, for the first time, unique. RESPONDENT: Each individual is different. RICHARD: In what way different? Everyone has the same blue-print ... human beings are all born with the same basic instincts like fear and aggression and nurture and desire and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world thus have the same emotions and passions. There is no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be, they all have a global incidence. The same applies to cerebral activity like imagination, conceptualisation, hypothesising, believing and so forth. Once again, ubiquitous in its occurrence. As for psychic phenomena like prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination ... a world-wide correspondence that is almost uncanny in its similitude. There is no actual difference – other than superficialities – betwixt one and the other. RESPONDENT: Yes, the anger itself may be same, but when it gets manifested in an individual it takes different forms for example violence, repression, sorrow etc. So what makes anger to take different forms? I think it is the individual (which is nothing but a complex of feeling, beliefs, instincts etc.). RICHARD: Are you saying that anger takes on 6.0 billion different forms? There are slight variations according to cultural conditioning and one’s personal upbringing, but the disparity is minuscule ... the manifestation of anger has a remarkable correspondence globally. This is beneficial news ... it will help you to cease taking it all so personally. It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No. 4. RICHARD: Simply in the spirit of balance and objectivity, and to see how he actually wrote and spoke, it did not take me long to send the search function of the computer through the officially accredited words and writings of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti to find that he repeatedly used words such as follows: ‘degenerate, self-gratification, petty, self-serving, rubbish, parasitical, scoundrel, childish, loony, gaga, psychopathic, silly, tommyrot, shoddy, bilge, self-righteous, mess, blasted, wicked, debased, charlatan, shabby, dismal, arrogant, dull-witted, warmonger, self-conceited, nauseating, quack, deluded, lunatic, puerile, stupid, worthless, self-seeking, immature, garbage, bigoted, avaricious, self-righteous, absurd, decrepit, lazy, rigid, self-centred, putrid, rotten, monstrous, bizarre, nasty, nonsense, self-absorbed, licentious, knavery, venomous, self-indulgence, vicious, self-justification, tawdry, self-aggrandisement, psychotic, self-worship, monotonous, self-interest, grotesque, self-glorification, shallow, subservient, pernicious, perverted, self-concerned, narrow, phoney, withered, self-assertive, impoverished, irresponsible, lies, deplorable, egocentric, treacherous, travesty, hollow, infantile, hideous, foul, fanatic, farce, crippled, cruelty, cynical, abomination, selfish, egotistic. slothful, self-important, bankrupt, appalling, trivial, sloppy, cunning, demented, mediocre, senile, irrational, sham, callous, wretched, useless, sterile, trash, superficial, ugly, aberration, deformed, disgust, sordid, decayed, warped, stupor, slavish, barren, barbarous, stinks, atrophied and sluggish’. RESPONDENT: Thanks, Richard, I find this list strangely exhilarating. Have to wonder what that says about me. RICHARD: I would be very interested to hear what you discover as you explore what it ‘says about you’ as I find the subject fascinating. What have you discovered thus far? RESPONDENT: But aren’t all these words legitimate descriptions of what the world actually is, this man-made world in which we live? RICHARD: Very accurate indeed ... I am wont to describe it as ‘the litigious Land Of Lament’ when I am referring to the ‘real world’ (what you call ‘this man-made world’). RESPONDENT: If you sent a copy to Newt Gingrich or to the Republican politburo, they would probably thank you. Their language of political insult could do with a general overhaul; it has become such a stale code that the general public hardly responds to it any more. But perhaps they wouldn’t accept the gift, fearing that such language would be seen as a self-portrait their perverted ochlocracy. RICHARD: About a quarter of a century ago, when I learned that the Australian National Parliament was being broadcast on AM Radio whilst it was sitting, I tuned in for the first time in my life (being somewhat apolitical as I was). I was amazed, shocked and alarmed, as the dawning realisation came over me whilst I listened, riveted, that these squabbling, bickering, arguing, point-scoring, duck-shoving, backstabbing and bootlicking human beings were authorised by the populace to run this country. They had the power (backed by the officially sanctioned guns) to make major life-or-death decisions regarding the subject citizens (bearing in mind I had just recently finished six years of voluntarily serving in the military) ... and this was staggering to contemplate. What a fool I had been to believe. This foolish feeling enabled me to start looking into myself ... and I found the same-same in me. Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: I was wondering the other time, is such a thing like the human condition, as you are using to call it? RICHARD: This is how I have described it on The Actual Freedom Trust web site: the term ‘human condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. I am at a bit of a loss as why you would wonder if there is such a thing when it is so self-evident. RESPONDENT: It might be that what you call the human condition does not exist at all. RICHARD: If I may point out? That term existed long before I was born so there is no need to say it is what I call it. RESPONDENT: May be is just social condition. RICHARD: Just for starters: in order to say this you have to deny the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are the root cause of all the ills of humankind. The genetically inherited passions – such as fear and aggression (the savage side) and nurture and desire (the tender side) – give rise to malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion: these negative and positive feelings are intrinsically connected and constitute what is known as the human condition. RESPONDENT: I give some examples: we are leaned from our society to give some money to the beggar some money and they told us since children that this is a good thing. If they were told us when we see a beggar to give him a kick, that is what we should do. Is this human condition or social condition? RICHARD: Given that you said ‘learned from society’ and ‘they told us’ and ‘they were told us’ then either giving money to or kicking a beggar is human conditioning, an inculcation of societal values ... which is part and parcel of the socialising process. RESPONDENT: In India for example the sannyasins, the hermits are treated nicely. Here in Europe nobody gives a shit about them, they see them like failed people, losers, etc. Is this a human condition, or a social one? RICHARD: Again it is conditioning, socialisation ... in an extreme sense it could be called brainwashing. RESPONDENT: Everything is created by thought. RICHARD: Not everything, no. RESPONDENT: So is better to speak about thought condition. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler. RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/ reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler. RESPONDENT: Right. RICHARD: I am pleased that you agree that the feelings create the feeler. RESPONDENT: By saying that thought is creating the thinker you are including everything. RICHARD: No, you are the one that is including everything by saying that ... not me. RESPONDENT: Everything like the observing and the observer, the judging and the judger, the feelings and the feeler, everything is another way to describe the thought and the thinker. RICHARD: So when you said ‘right’ (further above) you did not mean it to be taken literally, eh? RESPONDENT: So by eliminating the thinker who is one illusion created by thought, does not mean that you are eliminating thought altogether. The same seems reasonable to say that by eliminating the feeler does not mean that you are eliminating the feelings. RICHARD: We have had this discussion before: • [Respondent]: ‘The feeler, can be eliminated, but why the feelings? • [Richard]: ‘Contrary to your (intellectual) assertion there cannot be feelings sans the feeler – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – and the elimination of the one is the elimination of the other. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44c, 15 September 2003). And: • [Respondent]: ‘As you have sensorial awareness, why not to have feelings awareness without the feeler? • [Richard]: ‘Simply because who ‘I’ am, at root, is ‘my’ feelings – ‘me’ and ‘my’ feelings are one and the same thing – and the elimination of the one is simultaneously the elimination of the other. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44c, 15 September 2003). * RESPONDENT: Thought has a tremendous effect on our nervous system. RICHARD: Thought has no deleterious effect whatsoever on this nervous system ... thoughts are sparkling, coruscating. RESPONDENT: So I am asking you exist such a thing like human condition or monkey condition (because they have found that some species of monkeys have a sense of self)? RICHARD: Yes, there such a thing as the human condition ... but not here in this actual world. There is evidence that the chimpanzee has self-consciousness – not the monkey – and as chimpanzees have been observed to have fear, aggression, territoriality, civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, nurture, grief, group ostracism, bonding, desire, and so on, they do indeed have their own condition. When thought – and thus intelligence – arises in them they will have the means to deal with it. RESPONDENT: Or is just a matter of social conditioning? RICHARD: All human conditioning – which is part of the socialising process – is a well-meant endeavour to somewhat ameliorate the effects of the human condition. RESPONDENT: A splitting of thought creating the thinker, the me, the ego, so to give continuity to itself? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: And that what you are doing, you are living in continuity 24 hours/ day 365 days/ year without feelings, is not boring? RICHARD: Everything is totally new here in this actual world – thus always novel – and novelty can never be boring. * RESPONDENT: You said in your email that the feelings are creating the feeler. RICHARD: Yes, from birth onwards, if not before (thus prior to thought developing), an affective ‘self’ forms as the baby feels itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective faculty (which colours the cognitive faculty) and perpetuates/ reinforces that feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’. Thus the feeling ‘self’ (‘me’ as soul) exists prior to and underpins the thinking ‘self’ (‘I’ as ego) ... the thinker arises out of the feeler. RESPONDENT: So it seems logical to me that the feelings, must exist prior of the feeler, because the creator must exist prior to its creation, right? RICHARD: I would not put it that way – ‘the creator’ and ‘its creation’ – as it conjures up an impression of a cause separate from its effect whereas, if you were to intimately examine this, feeling it out for yourself, you will find that you are your feelings (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). In hindsight it probably would have been better if I had never baldly said that the feelings *create* the feeler in the e-mail you refer to (further above) as I usually say the feelings *form* themselves into the feeler (as a feeling of ‘being’ or ‘presence’) as that better describes the process. For example: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘And from what stuff are we made of (our identities) anyhow that it cannot be determined by any magnetic scanning? • [Richard]: ‘Primarily the identity within is the affections (the affective feelings) – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ – as *the instinctual passions form themselves into* a ‘presence’, a ‘spirit’, a ‘being’ ... ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself. MRI scans, and all the rest, cannot detect a phantom being, the ghost in the machine. (...) Put expressively the affective feelings swirl around forming a whirlpool or an eddy (which vortex is the ‘presence’, the ‘spirit’, the ‘being’): mostly peoples experience ‘self’ as being a centre, around which the affective feelings form a barrier, which centre could be graphically likened to a dot in a circle (the circle being the affective feelings) which is what gives rise to the admonitions to break down the walls, the barriers, with which the centre protects itself. Those people who are self-realised have realised that there is no ‘dot’ in the centre of the circle ... hence the word ‘void’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25a, 10 June 2003). I put it in that expressive way because it is not possible to separate out the feeler from the feelings it is ... just as it is impossible to separate the whirlpool or the eddy – the vortex – from the swirling stuff which is the cause of it (a whirlpool or an eddy – a vortex – of water or air, for example, is the very swirling water or air as the one is not distinct from the other) ... hence ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: So the feelings are innative to the human being, that means they are actual. Instead the feeler is a real entity, but not actual. RICHARD: Again I would not put it that way ... just because the genetic-inheritance of the instinctual passions is actual – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), being a nucleic acid in which the sugar component is deoxyribose, is a chemical substance – does not necessarily mean that a feeling engendered by that genetic software programme, such as the feeling of fear for example, is actual – any more than the fearer it automatically forms itself into by its very occurrence is actual – especially as you go on to say that the feeler is a real entity but not actual (which implies that the fearer is not the fear – as in ‘I’ am *not* ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are *not* ‘me’ – which, at the very least, smacks of denial if not detachment/ disassociation or even full-blown disidentification from one’s roots). Now, I could go on from this to say that the feeling is a movement, a motion, and not a thing, as there is no such happening as a stationary (static) feeling and that it is this very movement or motion of the feeling in action when it occurs which automatically forms the feeler (such as in the whirlpool of water/ air analogy above) but, again, it would be far more fruitful if you were to intimately examine all this, by feeling it out for yourself rather than just thinking about it, and if you were to actually do so – literally feel it for yourself – you will surely find out, just as ‘I’ did all those years ago, that you are your feelings (as in ‘I’ *am* ‘my’ feelings) and your feelings are you (as in ‘my’ feelings *are* ‘me’). The actualism method is an experiential method ... not an intellectual method (an analytical method, a psychological method, a philosophical method) or any other self-preserving method of inaction. RESPONDENT No. 63 (to No. 25): I’m participating in a discussion list and suggesting that some of its members are full of bullshit. PETER: Over the years we have had many people who have come to this mailing list with this motive. It appears that for whatever personal reasons ... RESPONDENT: And they are ‘personal reasons’ indeed. PETER: ... [It appears that for whatever personal reasons] they are moved to fabricate distortions, concoct falsehoods, contrive exaggerations, broadcast innuendo, disseminate gossip, seed insinuations, create suspicion, encourage ambiguity, cast aspersions and, if that doesn’t work, revert to rudeness and even hostility ... RESPONDENT: It’s been a strange experience seeing this as I’ve never seen such extreme behaviour on another list. RICHARD: Not only is ‘such extreme behaviour’ a feature of this mailing list it is quite typical of what happens in some face-to-face interactions as well ... my previous companion oft-times observed that the more I continued to talk factually, with a fellow human being sitting with me on my veranda, about the actuality of life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, the more insane their responses became (and she used the word ‘insane’ advisedly as, still having a psyche intact, she was able to discern the quality of the psychic currents swirling all about). Further to the point: not only has my current companion also similarly observed this she has experienced the same for herself ... ‘tis not for nothing I stress that actualism is not for the faint of heart/ the weak of knee. It does indeed take nerves of steel to plumb the stygian depths of the human condition. SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON FREEDOM FROM THE HUMAN CONDITION (Part Two) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one. Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997- . All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity