# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Disidentification and Dissociation RESPONDENT: This may be the great flaw with AF ... the premise that the identity (often incorrectly called the Human Condition) can be eliminated. For instance, pain can’t be eliminated, but the attachment to pain (aka suffering) may be. RICHARD: It is not a ‘premise’ ... it is an experiential report, written as it is happening, that no identity whatsoever has residence in this flesh and blood body (and this has been the case, ever since a seminal event at a particular time and place witnessed by another, for more than a decade now). It is not ‘often incorrectly called the Human Condition’ ... simultaneous with ‘self’-immolation in toto, more than a decade ago now, the human condition likewise vanished and is nowhere to be found. Your analogy to physical pain conveys that identity cannot be eliminated but the attachment to identity can ... which, apart from being yet more of the ‘Tried and True’ (attachment-detachment-dissociation-enlightenment), amounts to being a foregone conclusion and effectively shuts the door on that which is actual ever being apparent. ‘Tis not for nothing identity is described as being very, very cunning. RESPONDENT: Correctly speaking, though, identity itself is an illusion. RICHARD: Yes, although the illusion, just like all psychosomatic illnesses, somatises noticeable effects (such as emotional beliefs and passional truths) which in turn affect behaviour ... and which is especially noticeable when the illusion transmogrifies into a delusion (such as ‘Tat Tvam Asi’). RESPONDENT: ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ is a simple observable fact – observer is the observed! RICHARD: As the ‘observer’ you refer to is an illusion how on earth can such an identification be observable as a fact? Only further illusions – or delusions such as ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ – can be observable by an illusion. Maybe you were meaning ‘truth’ and inadvertently wrote ‘fact’ instead? * RESPONDENT: Therefore, there is nothing that is rotten or not-rotten to the core. RICHARD: I beg to differ: it is a rotten illusion – just as its delusional core is – which rottenness is evidenced by its effects. RESPONDENT: Within the realms of causality and temporality things are rotten and non-rotten. For example, dependence on chemicals, anger, violence, etc. are rotten while a wholesome, serene and a healthy life are not-rotten. RICHARD: I am using the word ‘rotten’ in the sense of ‘corrupt’ and/or ‘tainted’, of course, and there is nothing of that description here in this actual world – the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum – as nothing illusional or delusional can get in. The realms you describe sound like the pits. RESPONDENT: I am referring to a realm that is beyond causality and temporality – in that realm, there is nothing that is rotten or non-rotten. RICHARD: As that realm is the projection of a rotten illusion it is a rotten realm ... so rotten, in fact, that it has deluded you into viewing all the wars and deaths and so on as an illusion. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘A true Yogi, in my opinion, will not be bothered by anything – wars, environment, etc. Because all this is but illusion. This message comes out loud in clear in the Bhagavad Gita wherein Lord Krishna advises Arjuna to pick up his arms and destroy the enemy. When Arjuna vacillates, Lord Krishna tells him: ‘you grieve for those who can not be grieved’ (meaning the body is mortal). He urges Arjuna to focus on truth and not be swayed by illusions (birth and death, relatives, loved ones, etc.). Krishna tells Arjuna: ‘Timeless, deathless, I alone am the eternal truth’. That is non-dualism. (www.escribe.com/religion/listening/m32400.html). To say that ‘all this is but illusion’ demonstrates a blatant lack of engagement in being here on this verdant and azure planet now ... and maybe the best way to show that such estrangement is a sickness would be to suggest that you try telling that to someone who is in a trench on the front-line; try telling that to someone whose fellow human has just been murdered; try telling that to someone who has just been raped; try telling that to someone who has just been tortured; try telling that to someone on the receiving end of domestic violence; try telling that to someone who is the victim of child abuse; try telling that to someone who is sliding down the slippery-slope of sadness to loneliness to melancholy to depression and then suicide. More specifically: if your daughter or mother or grandmother or sister was being raped, would you really stand by saying to her: ‘all this is but illusion’? * RESPONDENT: There is no core even. RICHARD: Exactly ... which means that Brahman, for example, has no existence outside of the human psyche. RESPONDENT: Brahma has no existence outside or inside of the human psyche. RICHARD: As what the word ‘existence’ can mean is easily equated with what the word ‘ubiety’ means it would be more useful for the purposes of communication to rephrase what I wrote above. Viz.: No core means that Brahma has no presence outside of the human psyche. RESPONDENT: That which is beyond existence is Brahma. RICHARD: As the illusory core is an illusory presence your connotative point is a moot point ... and going beyond an illusory presence and being a delusory presence instead only magnifies its rottenness (as is evidenced by your dissociated ‘all this is but illusion’ way of dealing with all the wars and deaths and so on). A dissociated presence can only deal with abstractions. RESPONDENT: The core isn’t this infinitude either ... RICHARD: Oh? What does ‘Ayam Atma Brahma’ mean to you, then? RESPONDENT: ... nor the universe. RICHARD: As the ‘infinitude’ you speak of is a delusory infinitude this physical universe is certainly not that ... this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is an actual infinitude. RESPONDENT: The core, like Brahma, doesn’t exist. Try peeling an orange to get to the core. It doesn’t exist! Same with the human beings – there is no ‘core’: just a bunch of illusions that masquerade as the ‘core’. RICHARD: I am adaptable enough in this instance to use your terminology if doing so will assist communication: in the same way that there is no core – just a bunch of illusions that masquerade as the ‘core’ – there is no Brahma: just a bunch of delusions that masquerade as ‘Brahma’. And a rotten bunch of delusions they are, too. RESPONDENT: In summary: the core – like Brahma – is neither rotten nor non-rotten and it doesn’t exist. RICHARD: Despite your ‘neither-nor’ avowal the evidence of the rottenness of Brahma’s presence is plain to see in its rotten effects ... I am, of course, referring once again to your dissociated ‘all this is but illusion’ way of dealing with all the wars and deaths and so on. Methinks you might find that facts have a remarkable way of exposing ‘the truth’ for what it is. * RICHARD: To say that ‘all this is but illusion’ demonstrates a blatant lack of engagement in being here on this verdant and azure planet now ... RESPONDENT: Most humbly, the ‘azure’ of the planet itself is an illusion. :-) RICHARD: Have the photographs of planet earth taken from satellites been colourised then? Viz.: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/ I only ask because the sub-heading on that web page reads ‘true-colour global imagery’. * RICHARD: ... if your daughter or mother or grandmother or sister was being raped, would you really stand by saying to her: ‘all this is but illusion’? RESPONDENT: Wars, rapes, etc. happen. Life goes on. The planet remains verdant and azure despite all the commotion. It is all a shadow play. A couple of years back they showed a person who lost his entire family to Pol Pot. The man, after 20+ years, was still in tears when he talked about how his children were murdered. [Respondent] loved his daughter dearly. Many years ago she was snatched away from him by a deranged woman. There are pathos galore in this house of mirrors. Still, the sun rises on a verdant and azure planet and stars wink at it at night. The show goes on. Therefore, O’ Australian Arjuna, do not get perturbed by what your senses tell you. Nor get elated by what your senses tell you at another time. Instead, focus your attention on that which is beyond the senses, beyond time, beyond space. RICHARD: This is how this thread started: • [Respondent]: ‘... identity itself is an illusion. From that simple starting point you have expanded this illusion theme into including everything as being an illusion – other than Brahma – which leaves me with but one question: Why do you write e-mails to your illusions? RICHARD: As happiness, harmlessness and a freed intelligence only comes about upon the elimination of the cause of malice and sorrow, so long as you maintain your godly delusion your hands are tied. So much for ‘infinite responsibility’ ... it must be such a shame that omnipotence did not come with the package, eh? RESPONDENT: Please allow me to re-state. I can do nothing, but I do everything. Omnipotence not only comes with the package, it is the package. I am infinitely responsible for I am responsible for each I that I create. I am responsible for being the action that are you, and I am responsible for the action that is I. RICHARD: In that case ... why did you kill yourself 160,000,000 times in ghastly wars this century? Why do you murder and rape and torture yourself ... and wreak havoc with all that appalling domestic violence and child abuse and suicides that you inflict upon yourself? There are 6.0 billion human beings suffering because they do not realise that they are you doing gruesome things to yourself? RESPONDENT: That was known, is known, as me each time it happens. RICHARD: And are you really saying that 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 ‘is alright with me’ ? RESPONDENT: Yes. RICHARD: You said that you believe that ‘each instance of harm is fine’. Which means that you believe that each instance of war is fine; you believe that each instance of murder is fine; you believe that each instance of rape is fine; you believe that each instance of torture is fine; you believe that each instance of domestic violence is fine; you believe that each instance of child abuse is fine and you believe that each instance of suicide is fine? RESPONDENT: Yep. RICHARD: Does ‘Beautiful Wife’ know that you believe that each instance of rape is fine? RESPONDENT: Yes – she chooses to feel differently – that is fine too. * RICHARD: Pacifism means that the bully-boys get to rule the world. The Tibetan situation is a particular case in point. RESPONDENT: Richard, there are no bully-boys. RICHARD: I classify that answer as being in a state of denial about what is happening in this world of people, things and events. RESPONDENT: Yes, you do Richard – your opinion is noted (...) the only meaningful denial is denial of responsibility, and denial of responsibility is the only delusion. RICHARD: Okay ... please correct me if I have got this wrong: upwards of 1.0 million Tibetans (as you) were brutally slaughtered by the Chinese (as you) because the Chinese (as you) were in a state of denial – ‘the only meaningful denial’ – about being you (as god). And, furthermore, this ‘denial of responsibility’ (the denial of the responsibility of being the one who creates such mayhem and misery by denying that one is god all along) is, you say, ‘the only delusion’. Have I understood you? RESPONDENT: Yes . RICHARD: Which is: god is doing brutal things to god because god is in denial about being god ... thus creating 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? How does that sound to you? Have I got it right? RESPONDENT: Yes. RICHARD: Does it look as silly to you – when viewed sensibly in print – as it does to me when I read what you say? * RICHARD: That there are peoples such as yourself intent on preserving the status-quo – the ‘Tried and True’ – instead of engaging in a discussion about the total absence of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in this actual world – then such denial and avoidance will ensure that all the starving goes on forever and a day. This is all in spite of the fact that there is no lack of food, water and knowledge here in this actual world – nor is there any ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here – as all mental and emotional sufferings and their pathetic ‘solutions’ only exist in the ‘inner world’ that is so cherished by one and all. All is carefree and abundant out here. RESPONDENT: Inner and outer – synonymous and identical to pain, isolation and fear. RICHARD: There is no ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ in actuality ... it is only when I am talking with a flesh and blood body that is inhabited by an entity, who creates the ‘inner world’ which is so cherished by one and all, that I make references to how all is carefree and abundant ‘out here’. Your affective ‘inner’ world has expanded to be all-inclusive of the illusory ‘outer’ world (known as the ‘real world’) which the entity sees through the senses ... hence your accurate comment that ‘inner and outer’ is ‘synonymous and identical to pain, isolation and fear’. The ‘Tried and True’ resolution of this ‘inner and outer pain, isolation and fear’ is to transcend the whole damn’ lot – lock stock and barrel – and retreat into a dissociated and solipsistic state of consciousness blatantly epitomised as being such by it being a timeless and spaceless and formless realm. I have had personal experience of the solipsistic state of consciousness that persuades the experiencer that ‘I Am All’ or ‘I Am That’ or Whatever Name ... as has many a guru and god-man, many a master and messiah, many an avatar and saviour, many a saint, sage or seer. It is but a fantastical illusion, a massive hallucination, a monstrous delusion. And all the mystics advise dissociation (wherein the painful reality of the ‘real world’ is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. Just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the gurus and the god-men, all the masters and the messiahs, all the avatars and the saviours, all the saints, sages and seers have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the ‘real world’s painful ‘reality’ into an unreal manifestation of the ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/ intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Such dissociation is a psychotic sickness culturally institutionalised into a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind ... hence the sacred perpetuation of all the misery and mayhem across the millennia through a belief in karma or samsara or some-such metaphysical reason being the cause of such aberrant behaviour. Mysticism is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism, institutionalised into a cultural metaphysics over thousands and thousands of years ... especially if accompanied by dissociative states such as ‘derealisation’ and ‘alternate personality disorder’ and others. It is also known as ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ ... dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. Thus I always urge peoples to come to their senses – both literally and figuratively – and thus live in this actual world ... leaving their ‘self’ and the ‘Self’ behind in the Land Of Lament (the ‘inner’ world) where it belongs. All is carefree in this actual world ... there is no ‘good’ or ‘evil’ here. RESPONDENT No. 4: Richard has gone to great lengths to explain why your concept of a ‘spiritual reality’ – that includes enlightenment, illusion (maya, as in this is all a dream), enlightened beings who can’t truly be understood by ordinary mortals and/or who magically are no more than mere mortals, etc. – is not his shtick. Yet, you keep repeating the same old song, like if he hears it once more he’s going to get it. Like ‘I once was blind, but now I see’. RESPONDENT: I’m now convinced. I’m finished with my conversation with him. I do have a lot of patience, but like everyone, I have my limit. Richard was worth the effort for me, I needed to try to connect with him, if possible. I didn’t. RICHARD: Seeing that you have brought the conversation to an end, I would like to express my appreciation for your taking the time, in a discussion with me spanning 10 E-Mails, to give your attention to the most fundamental issues pertaining to human life on earth today. Given that the population inhabiting this otherwise fair planet we all live on has reached an unprecedented and staggering 6,000,000,000 instinctually driven malicious and sorrowful and loving and compassionate human beings; given that technological expertise has multiplied exponentially in the last 100 years in a manner unprecedented in human history; given that 160,000,000 sane people were killed by their sane fellow human beings in wars alone in the last 100 years; given that 40,000,000 people committed suicide in the last 100 years; given that three weapons with an unprecedented mass destruction capacity – chemical, biological and nuclear – were developed in the last 100 years; given that the world-wide mass media and communication networks provide unprecedented access to information never before available to the average person; given that an unprecedented opportunity to carry out scholarly comparative religious studies has scotched the ‘wisdom’ myth ascribed to all the world’s scriptures; given that the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have had at least 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the efficacy of their solution to all the ills of humankind ... and given that the internet has the capability of bypassing both official censorship and the self-censorship of commercial publishers and reaching instantaneously into savvy individual’s homes via the rapid copying and distribution capacity of mailing lists with their multiple feed-back facility, it was a timely discussion. How rare is it to be able to have a dialogue with a self-acknowledged realised being ... to be able to put various propositions and questions for your perusal, appraisal and response in a public forum such as this. I am particularly appreciative that you were able to consider, clarify and publicly state both your affirmation and seal of approval to the following extremely important issues. Viz.: 1. All the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages are not amoral at all ... they both can and do display anguish and anger. 2. All the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages do not have peace-on-earth on their agenda. 3. All the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. 4. All the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages, having totally accurate feelings and a telepathic intuitive ability, are infallible. 5. All the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages cannot be understood by ordinary or normal people ... ordinary or normal people should surrender to them and accept what they say and agree with them. Again ... I do appreciate you giving your attention in detail to the most fundamental issues pertaining to human life on earth today. * RICHARD: You affirmed that all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. RESPONDENT: No, I never said that. RICHARD: I will fully acknowledge that you never used the word ‘dissociation’ (thus I fully concur that you ‘never said that’ word) but you said more than enough to make it abundantly clear that, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). You clearly and unambiguously expressed, loud and clear, your full endorsement of the Indian metaphysical conception of ‘maya’ and/or ‘samsara’ with such statements as ‘murders and wars are illusions in a sense’ and ‘people don’t actually ‘die’, this is the grand illusion’ and ‘what I’m saying is the essence of thousands of years of wisdom, nothing I say is ever original’ and ‘we are spirit beings seemingly trapped in this veil of tears material world’ and ‘why try to invent something that was perfect in the time of the Vedas?’ and ‘immortality is part of reality, not something to ‘attain’ and ‘reincarnation is reality, not something to ‘believe in’ ... this is what a buddha awakens to, the way things ‘are’, not some idea collection’ and ‘some of that [rape] is karma, people who have raped needing to be raped to understand how rape is not right’ and so on. As I am conversive with what is meant by that Indian concept I deliberately and consciously appraised, categorised and labelled it to be nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism, institutionalised into a cultural metaphysics over thousands and thousands of years, known psychiatrically as ‘dissociation’ ... especially if accompanied by dissociative states such as ‘derealisation’ and ‘alternate personality disorder’ and others. It is also known as ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ and dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. In everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for example. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. I fully stand by my usage of the term and am prepared to discuss it at length out of my own experience over eleven years ... its understanding is vital if there is to be peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: If you look at the god-realized, they are usually engaged in charitable works, self-help centres, humanitarian work, feeding the poor, etc. RICHARD: If I may ask? How does physical charity, physical self-help centres (or even emotional and/or psychological self-help centres), physical humanitarian work, physically feeding poor people and so on going to demonstrate that they are not dissociated? For, although to awaken in a dream is to be lucidly dreaming, one is still dreaming nevertheless. Therefore such activity, instead of affirming, endorsing and accentuating the concreteness of reality, is but a dream-like playing-out of what you say is the ‘grand illusion’ that is deceiving 6.0 billion people in the first place! Buddhism, for just one example, understands that when one wakes in the dream (Nirvana) the dream persists until final release at physical death (Parinirvana) brings the dream-world to an end. * RICHARD: [You affirmed that] all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. RESPONDENT: No, I never said that. RICHARD: I will fully acknowledge that you never used the word ‘dissociation’ (thus I fully concur that you ‘never said that’ word) but you said more than enough to make it abundantly clear that, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). RESPONDENT: No, the dark night of the soul is when you either go mad or find spirit. RICHARD: What is the difference between ‘going mad’ and ‘finding spirit’? Is it not madness to proudly proclaim to all and sundry that this body and that body and all the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the oceans and the sky and the clouds – and the stars at night – are but a ‘grand illusion’ ... and to try to suck other peoples into one’s sickness? Especially as it has been amply demonstrated over 3,000 to 5,000 years to not bring about peace-on-earth? RESPONDENT: They don’t disassociate at all, in fact it’s the complete opposite. Awakening makes you more aware of what’s going on around you, so you naturally feel the suffering more intensely. RICHARD: Except that the ‘what’s going on around you’ is a ‘grand illusion’ ... therefore, what you are ‘more aware of’ is the illusory nature of everything ... which is precisely what the dissociated state has turned the physical world into. This physical world is actually happening. Look, there is a simple experiment that will demonstrate the actuality of objectivity in a way that a thousand words would not: 1. Place a large spring-clip upon your nose. 2. Place a large piece of sticking plaster over your mouth. 3. Wait five minutes. Now, as you rip the plaster from your mouth and gulp in that oh-so-sweet and objectively actual air, I ask you: Do you still believe that all this is ‘grand illusion’? • Exit: dissociation. • Enter: facts and actuality. Seeing the fact will set you free to live in actuality. * RICHARD: You clearly and unambiguously expressed, loud and clear, your full endorsement of the Indian metaphysical conception of ‘maya’ and/or ‘samsara’ with such statements as ‘murders and wars are illusions in a sense’ and ‘people don’t actually ‘die’, this is the grand illusion’ ... RESPONDENT: Illusory in the sense of being all there is. RICHARD: This statement is a marked departure from ‘something that was perfect in the time of the Vedas’ ... are you re-inventing the ancient wisdom? The ancient wisdom has it unambiguously that material reality is illusion through and through (the word ‘maya’ translates as ‘only apparently real’). RESPONDENT: Don’t die as in total extinction. Your soul goes on. Whether you like it or not. RICHARD: Aye ... ‘ancient wisdom’ has it that one casts of the body, as if a suit of clothes, at physical death. Look, something that I have noticed, over the many years that I have discussed these matters, in the people I have met personally who have what may be described as a religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical and/or metaphysical point of view, is that as a last resort they invariably start threatening me with the dire consequences that ensue in the ‘after-death’ state because I do not agree with their belief system. So that this exchange does not devolve into you endeavouring to put the ‘fear of god’ into me (and I am not implying that you were going to), I take this opportunity to point out that your ‘whether you like it or not’ amounts to the same-same threat that some Christians, for example, have tried on me when they say that I will face their god’s ‘Judgement Day’ ... um ... whether I like it or not. I did not come down in the last shower. * RICHARD: As I am conversive with what is meant by that Indian concept I deliberately and consciously appraised, categorised and labelled it to be nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism, institutionalised into a cultural metaphysics over thousands and thousands of years, known psychiatrically as ‘dissociation’ ... especially if accompanied by dissociative states such as ‘derealisation’ and ‘alternate personality disorder’ and others. It is also known as ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ and dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. In everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for example. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. I fully stand by my usage of the term and am prepared to discuss it at length out of my own experience over eleven years ... its understanding is vital if there is to be peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: That’s ok, I’ll pass on this idea. RICHARD: Am I to take it by this statement, then, that you are not actually interested in peace-on-earth? RESPONDENT: Richard. Isn’t it possible then, that what you are now, is pure God? A plain, brief and straight-forward response appreciated, if you know that is. RICHARD: Yes, I do know. Plainly, briefly and straight-forwardly ... no, I am not ‘pure God’. RESPONDENT: Richard. I’m surprised by your remark. How is it that you know you are not God??? RICHARD: I know that I am not God for I was for eleven years – from September 1981 until October 1992 ... whereupon it become obvious to me that I was living in a massive delusion. In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that everything was already perfect as-it-is and that ‘I’, the psychological entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a free human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an emotional-mental fabrication ... a sense of identity with its conscience. I also saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called being normal. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic. That proved to be my undoing – as far as an actual freedom is concerned. Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order of things ... for an Absolute had been revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of peace and prosperity to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind! (As all this was happening, a passing thought occurred to me, which was briefly contemplated ... then banished: Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the social ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’? This trifling question was to be of immense benefit years later when I realised that I was living in a delusion and that there was an actual freedom lying beyond ... but I jump ahead of myself.) Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed on the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my Divine Awakening on a fine September morning. The ‘process’ was both prosaic and extraordinary: on the one hand I began undoing all the social conditioning that I had been subject to since birth and on the other hand I generated love for all and sundry. I examined all the social traditions and customs etc., one by one, and released myself from their iron grip. I diminished hate and anger and sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and oneness ... which is the best that a normal human could do by virtue of the socialisation process. I moved in and out of Sacred States of Heavenly Bliss and Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and immersed myself in the entire ‘process’ with dedication and resolution. I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and humility in all my interactions with other people and pondered the significance and ramifications of the Divine Order. I totally believed in and had supreme faith in The Absolute and its ability to bring about the Peace On Earth so long promised. That I was to play the central role in this Divine Plan no longer came as a surprise to me, as I began to realise that I had long yearned to be part of the Salvation Process. I understood that I had to die and be reborn and, consequently, went into a catatonic state that resulted in my being carted off to hospital and kept under intensive care for four hours until I came out of it. I was never to be the same again, as Divinity had been working on me whilst I was catatonic and from that date forward I was permanently in a state of human bliss and love ... I could do no wrong. About six weeks prior to sixth of September 1981 I had a revelation that I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again, and that I was to prepare myself for it. I mustered all of my faith and resolution, renewed all of my trust and dedication, and awaited the day. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion. The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before, I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very being. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was IT! was such a simple thing ... all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain – in the top of the brain-stem. I likened it to turning over a L.P. record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again. It was over. I had arrived. I had become Awakened to the Greater Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no separation between me and The Absolute. I was It. I had a Divine Sense of Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred Duty, gathering some disciples on the way, until 1984. Then I started to question just what I was doing and just what had happened to me. Something seemed to be wrong ... this had all been done before by other Masters and Messiahs, Saints and Sages, Avatars and Saviours, to no avail. In fact, instead of bringing Love and Peace, they had left in their wake much bloodshed and hatred ... and I was one of them! Accordingly I travelled to India to find out for myself exactly what was amiss with this whole Enlightenment business by meeting some of these hallowed Gurus and imbibing the centuries of Eastern Spiritual Tradition for myself, instead of merely reading about it in books. It was to take me eleven years to get out of this massive delusion I was living in and go beyond it to arrive at where I am today. It was eleven years of coming to terms with the understanding that what I was living was a delusion of grandeur ... and that it was what every human being believed in, in some way, shape or form ... but that is another story. Today, I am no longer an Enlightened Master living in an Exalted State of Being ... I am me-as-this-body only, a fellow human being who has no sorrow or malice whatsoever to transcend; hence I am both happy and harmless. I am what I was on that fateful night in 1980 when I asked the question: ‘Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?’ I am these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is ... by ‘my’ very presence. Any identity, such as ‘I am God’, is a delusion. * RESPONDENT: You successfully explained why you are not any vision of a kind of imaginary God you once believed in, or that the ignorant world looks to. You haven’t shown, however, how you can know you (i.e. your mind that is) are/ is not in fact pure true real God manifest in your body? I suggest you cannot know what you claim to know, that is, that you are not God. You have not forgotten the old false images you at one time embraced, and this emotional memory may be responsible for your ‘knowing’ the unknowable. RICHARD: But I do know that I am not ‘in fact pure true real God manifest in my body’ because by having eliminated any identity whatsoever – the ego and the soul – I can ascertain, with clarity, that there is no self or Self in this body or anywhere else outside of a person’s imagination. Likewise is it that any god – which is a projection of self – ‘exists’ only in the human psyche and not in the actual world. Therefore it follows that I can know, by direct experience, that I am not the ‘pure true real God’ because such an entity has no actuality. Without an ‘I’, I have no emotions. Hence no ‘emotional memory’. Knowing the ‘unknowable’ is only possible for a body bereft of any identity – complete with its emotions and passions – at all. This knowing is a direct experiencing of the actuality of people, things and events. It is a direct experiencing of the infinitude – the infinite and eternal character of the universe – here and now. It is a direct experiencing of the purity of the perfection of being here at this moment in time, as this body only, here on earth. It is a direct experiencing of the fact that I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being ... and that experience is ambrosial. I am without sorrow and malice, therefore I am both happy and harmless. Apart from the personal benefits of achieving perfection, the social benefit is enormous. It means peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I regret not being able to read Richard because of the typographical characters which do not pass with my navigator and make the reading of its letters almost impossible. RESPONDENT No. 33: Sorry to hear that. If Richard is reading this, he should do something to fix this problem. RICHARD: I am only too happy to send a text-only copy of this post to (xxx.xxx@xxx.com) in this instance if that will be of assistance. This is the essence of what I am reporting: In normal human beings sensate perception is primary; affective perception is secondary; cognitive perception is tertiary. That is, when the finger tip touches the glass which is a few millimetres to the front of these pixels you are reading there is the immediate perception of the actuality of the physical (skin-on-glass/ glass-on-skin). Mr. Joseph LeDoux has been able to demonstrate, again and again under strict laboratory conditions, that 12-14 milliseconds after the sensory impact/ contact there is the affective perception (he has specifically addressed fear) ... and that 12-14 milliseconds after that there is the cognitive perception. As the affective perception generates what is genetically programmed to be the appropriate response (initially the inherited as ‘freeze-flee-fight’ instinctual response) the brain is flooded with a veritable cocktail of chemicals ... which means that the cognitive perception is clouded by the affective perception’s automatic response (that is, it cannot think clearly). Now comes the contentious part: by and large ‘K-Readers’ have no difficulty with and/or objection to thought stopping (no cognitive perception/ response) ... but, by and large, object strenuously to my report that the affective faculty can likewise cease (no affective perception/ response). I will re-post a paragraph I posted only a few days ago that may have been overlooked in all the furore about the ‘reality can never be known’ issue. Viz.: • [Richard]: ‘I am speaking of the immediate perception, of this body and that body and every body and of the mountains and the streams and of the trees and the flowers and of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum, without the affective faculty operating ... which reveals actuality in all its purity and perfection. This applies not only to ocular perception but also to cutaneous perception, to gustatory perception, to olfactory perception, to aural perception ... and even to proprioceptive perception, for that matter. There is no mystery where there is such direct perception of actuality as described ... all is laid open, as it already always has been open just here right now all along, because nothing is ever hidden. One walks through the world in wide-eyed wonder simply marvelling at being here doing this business called being alive on this verdant and azure paradise called planet earth. This is what innocence looks like’. (Richard, List B, No. 4f, 13 July 2001). As immediate, direct perception (sensuous perception) does not involve either the affective faculty or the cognitive function the thinker (‘I’ as ego) and the feeler (‘me’ as soul) do not get a look-in ... hence I call this direct perception ‘apperception’ (perception unmediated by either ‘self’ or ‘Self’). Thus what I am is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ... which means that the actuality of the physical can indeed be known, each moment again, day after day. I do not know if I can put it more briefly or succinctly than this. * RESPONDENT: Thank you for your post. I think as you and Mr. Joseph LeDoux that the sensate perception is immediate then comes emotional faculty (an emotion like the fear for example) and then cognitive perception. You call apperception sensuous, immediate perception without the emotional faculty nor the cognitive function. But do you believe that one can dissociate the sensory vision (sight of the snake for example) of the emotional answer (fear) which seems ineluctable? RICHARD: I do not have to ‘believe’ anything as apperception has been my on-going experiencing, night and day, since 1992 ... the challenge for me has been how to present this discovery to my fellow human beings (for whom the affective faculty is inviolable if not sacrosanct). Hence I need to refer to scientific (repeatable on demand) experiments so as to pre-empt responses that capriciously dismiss my experiential report as being an idea, a posit, an imagining, a belief, an opinion, a perspective, a standpoint, a view, a viewpoint, a point of view, a world-view, a concept, a theory, a conjecture, a speculation, an assumption, a presumption, a supposition, a surmise, a thought, an inference, a precept, a judgement, a position, a mind-set, a state-of-mind, a frame-of-mind, a stance, an image, an intellectualising, an intellectual understanding, an analysis, a doctrine, a policy, a canon, a dogma, a code, a tenet, a creed, a credo, a rule, a principle, an ideology, a faith, an act of faith, an article of faith, a philosophy, a religion, a metaphysics, a psychology, a cult ... the entire 101 stock-standard denials of the possibility of being happy and harmless, here on earth in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. There is no fear here in this actual world ... there is no fear in a flower, a rock or in this computer monitor, for example. Only sentient beings have fear (plus the other instinctual passions such as aggression and nurture and desire). There is a way to ascertain the validity of my report for oneself: when one first becomes aware of something there is a fleeting instant of pure perception of sensum, just before one affectively identifies with all the feeling memories associated with its qualia (the qualities pertaining to the properties of the form) and also before one cognitively recognises the percept (the mental product or result of perception), and this ‘raw sense-datum’ stage of sensational perception is a direct experience of the actual. Pure perception is at that instant where one converges one’s eyes or ears or nose or tongue or skin on the thing. It is that moment just before one focuses one’s feeling-memory on the object. It is the split-second just as one hedonically subjectifies it ... which is just prior to clamping down on it viscerally and segregating it from pure, conscious existence. Pure perception takes place sensitively just before one starts feeling the percept – and thus thinking about it affectively – which takes place just before one’s feeling-fed mind says: ‘It’s a man’ or: ‘It’s a woman’ or: ‘It’s a steak-burger’ or: ‘It’s a tofu-burger’ ... with all that is implied in this identification and the ramifications that stem from that. This fluid, soft-focused moment of bare awareness, which is not learned, has never been learned, and never will be learned, could be called an aesthetically sensual regardfulness or a consummate sensorial discernibleness or an exquisitely sensuous distinguishment ... in a word: apperceptiveness. Then there is no need to ‘dissociate’ ... ‘I’/ ‘me’ has never existed (in this actual world). RESPONDENT: Regarding [Mailing List ‘C’] conversation – People believe what they believe because it makes them feel real now, and gives hope for continuity into the eternal future. No. 3, in my opinion, represents what I would call the worst of the East. Blind regurgitating of fantastic theories of astral beings, and planes of existence, of ancient wisdom un-critiqued, of ascended beings, and enlightened masters, of you can’t know the awakened state until you have awakened. It’s a horrid, elitist viewpoint that sees others as less evolved, and thus less worthy, perhaps, of happiness. Gods who punish and reward, allow evil but aren’t evil. Saviours and Purushas and on and on. RICHARD: There is a term for this stubbornness against facing up to facts and actuality: cognitive dissonance. The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory ... such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures. The scientific method has evolved, in a large part, to reduce the impact of this human penchant for jumping to such amenable yet erroneous self-justifying conclusions. RESPONDENT: You talk about solipsism later – as if this is evil or bad. Yet being beyond all desires means that one will not care about peace on earth – that one will not get involved with the suffering or happiness of anyone – knowing there is a higher purpose. I would say that true and final enlightenment is beyond all desires and includes amorality. RICHARD: But I did not indicate that solipsism was ‘evil or bad’ ... I noted that your paragraph displayed ‘a very, very sick attitude towards the pain and suffering 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 and the such-like’ (particularly the ‘no desire for world peace’ observation and the ‘who cares if is was a nightmare ... it was not real’ head-in-the-sand statement that cavalierly dismisses all pain and suffering). As you have repeated it above (‘one will not care about peace on earth’) it was obviously not an hastily-written or casual statement ... but a central part of your philosophy of life. Look well at what you say further below (‘none of this is really happening – it is the dream – and there is nothing to do here’) ... try telling that to someone who has just been raped; try telling that to someone who is in a trench on the front-line; try telling that to someone being tortured; try telling that to the person on the receiving end of domestic violence; try telling that to the recipient of child abuse; try telling that to someone sliding down the slippery-slope of sadness to loneliness to melancholy to depression and then suicide. More specifically, try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Hindu soldier; try saying that to the Hindu mother whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by zealous Christians; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Buddhist/ Shinto soldiers; try saying that a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion. If your wife and/or daughter and/or mother and/or grandmother and/or sister was being brutally raped, would you really stand by saying to her: ‘None of this is really happening – it is the dream – and there is nothing to do here’? * RESPONDENT: In Enlightenment there can be no more desires, no more teaching, no desire for world peace – just nothing. Ultimate Enlightenment is realising that none of this is happening. It is all a dream. You and I do not exist. We are just a lower form of reality – like a dream. It doesn’t matter what happens in a dream – in the end the dream is over and none of it matters. Who cares if is was a nightmare? It was not real. Even though it seemed to be real at the time. You see there is a DILEMMA within awakening. AWAKENING, for me, is knowing that this is a dream – My Dream, God’s Dream. He (or what I REALLY am) is the DOER. Just like in a dream the dreamer (asleep on the bed) is the real doer. There is only one dreamer (doer) but there may be many people in the dream. The dream people are not real. It is the same here. You do not exist even though you appear to. It is all a game – the game of maya – the play of God. God playing his own game with himself. Only he cannot play the game unless he becomes many – creation is God becoming many. God is SIMULTANEOUSLY separate from the creation and playing the game. BOTH are true. The Dreamer is really asleep on the bed but he is also engaged in the dream. Now morality and amorality takes on a new light. The question of morality only exists in duality – where there is more than one. But in REALITY there is ONLY ONE ... there is ONLY GOD, there is ONLY YOU. So, the question of morality disappears. There are no other being alive – they are just a dream. In an existence where there is ONLY ONE PERSON – no morality exists. Further, nothing happens – there is no time or space. Now ULTIMATE ENLIGHTENMENT is KNOWING this. So then, when you teach – WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO AWAKEN? There is ONLY YOU. It is all different forms of YOU. Once YOU are awake it is over ... no more teaching, no more desires, just nothingness or everythingness. RICHARD: Hmm ... this is solipsism (and displays a very, very sick attitude towards the pain and suffering 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 and the such-like). RESPONDENT: Again – we have the same dilemma. In awakening the awakened one will care deeply and will selflessly offer help – he cares deeply. However in the ultimate enlightenment it changes – one becomes ‘god-like’ and detached. RICHARD: I realise that being ‘detached’ is highly prized in some disciplines ... but it amounts to nothing more and nothing less than dissociation. Peoples everywhere are already detached – that is the very problem – and anyone who consciously practices ‘detachment’ is twice-removed from actuality. RESPONDENT: No more desires as one comes to the profound realisation that none of this is really happening – it is the dream – and there is nothing to do here. I the awakening one wants to help others – he may become a teacher. In the final stages of enlightenment he has nothing more to say – he has no desire even to awaken others – as he recognises that it is all happening perfectly from the elevated viewpoint. RICHARD: As I have asked before: if your wife and/or daughter and/or mother and/or grandmother and/or sister was being brutally raped, would you really stand by saying to her: ‘this is all happening perfectly from the elevated viewpoint’? RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions. 1) Do you see enlightenment as pathological? RICHARD: Yes, my experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that it is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’, complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the all-expansive ‘Self’). Generally speaking, all dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional stress and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. Thus, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into an unreal ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/ intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Mysticism in general is a psychotic sickness; a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind and is otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ (a vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil). The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism that became culturally institutionalised, into being a legitimate and venerated social metaphysics, over thousands and thousands of years. RESPONDENT: 2) Do you see enlightenment as necessary step to get to where you are at? RICHARD: No ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps for I had to run the full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain. No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat. RICHARD: My experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’. RESPONDENT: Please allow me to be frank. My impression from reading your post is that you don’t really know anything about enlightenment. You obviously know quite a lot about ‘disassociative identity disorder’, however you have erroneously equated this with the state of enlightenment. RICHARD: It is but one of the ways of describing it ... I was answering a question about whether enlightenment was pathological and I couched my reply in similar terminology. I did mention that it can be otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ ... which is nothing but a spurious vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. The theological dilemma goes something like this: 1. God and/or Goddess is All-Loving and All-Powerful. 2. Evil exists. 3. Therefore God and/or Goddess is either All-Loving but not All-Powerful or All-Powerful but not All-Loving. Of course theodicy is a word most often used to describe the various and far-fetched monotheistic philosophical-style resolutions (non-experiential) ... but the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’, goes something like this: • Only self can really be known ... all else is an illusion, a dream. • As I am the creator of all this illusion/ dreaming, and as only Self (God and/or Goddess) exists, therefore Self is Who I Really Am (‘I Am God’ and/or ‘I Am Goddess’; ‘I Am That’; ‘That Thou Art’ and so on). • Thus, as all is but a dream there is no Evil, really ... it is all ‘Lila’ (‘God’s and/or Goddess’s Divine Play or Sport’). Which all amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... if nothing else, the very name (‘Self-Realisation’) is a dead give-away to all but the most humbly conceited and pious egoist. * RESPONDENT: ‘All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages’ – what, maybe a couple of hundred of them at most? Compared to billions of people focusing on evil? What chance did they have? Just because you can’t illuminate the night sky with a match doesn’t mean that the match doesn’t give off light. RICHARD: May I remind you of what you have already detailed (further above)? Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘An enlightened being sees that they are all of those actions and that none of them have the slightest importance. They are the perpetrator and the victim, and both are merely holographic images in this play called manifested reality. When we go to the theatre the action we see is actually taking place, but its not Real. The actors are not really angry at each other, its just a big pretence, an act. The same goes for this manifested reality, it’s actually happening but its not Real’ [endquote]. Your justifying/ excusing of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages precisely correlates to what I described in the previous post as the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’, which goes something like this: • Only self can really be known ... all else is an illusion, a dream. • As I am the creator of all this illusion/ dreaming, and as only Self (God and/or Goddess) exists, therefore Self is Who I Really Am (‘I Am God’ and/or ‘I Am Goddess’; ‘I Am That’; ‘That Thou Art’ and so on). • Thus, as all is but a dream there is no Evil, really ... it is all ‘Lila’ (‘God’s and/or Goddess’s Divine Play or Sport’). Which all amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... but why take my word for it? Shall we ask Mr. Gotama the Sakyan? Viz.: • [Mr. Bahuna]: ‘... Lord, freed, dissociated, and released from how many things does the Tathagata dwell with unrestricted awareness?’ • [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Freed, dissociated, and released from ten things, Bahuna, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Which ten? Freed, dissociated, and released from form, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Freed, dissociated, and released from feeling ... Freed, dissociated, and released from perception ... Freed, dissociated, and released from fabrications ... Freed, dissociated, and released from consciousness ... Freed, dissociated, and released from birth ... Freed, dissociated, and released from aging ... Freed, dissociated, and released from death ... Freed, dissociated, and released from stress ... Freed, dissociated, and released from defilement, the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness ... the Tathagata – freed, dissociated, and released from these ten things – dwells with unrestricted awareness. (AN 10.81; PTS: AN v.151; (Bahuna Sutta); http://world.std.com/~metta/canon/anguttara/an10-81.html). There are countless examples scattered throughout the trillions and trillions of words in the mystic literature of many, many cultures ... eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed. Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment, the Awareness of I Am, is what is ‘detrimental’ to ego. RICHARD: Enlightenment, where the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the All-Expansive ‘Self’), is detrimental to individual and communal salubrity ... as is evidenced by the perpetuation of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like by all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages advising dissociation as being the best means of dealing with the instinctual passions such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment is the freedom from the human condition. RICHARD: Enlightenment is a spiritual and/or mystical freedom still within the human condition ... as enlightened beings are demonstratively known to still have anger and anguish from time to time it is no wonder there is no global peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for an intellectual to Let Go of just one accumulated be‘lie’f. Intellectuals are faithfully ATTACHED to the Ego Complex. Their knowledge is their god. Their knowledge is an accumulation of their own and others ancestral be’lie’fs. RICHARD: If I may make a suggestion? This conclusion you have come to that Richard is an intellectual may very well be clouding your thinking and driving your argument. ‘Tis only a suggestion, mind you. RESPONDENT: Two Aware entities would never have a discussion about god, the past, or the future. RICHARD: If you say that this is so then it is so ... for you. I will keep my own counsel, however. RESPONDENT: Awareness is in the Now. RICHARD: Everything is happening only at this moment in eternal time ... there is nowhere or nowhen else than just here right now. RESPONDENT: Try thinking you are in the Now. You can not do it. RICHARD: But I am not ‘in the Now’ ... this flesh and blood body is already always just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time. RESPONDENT: Thinking is always in the past, and it always manifests from memory. RICHARD: Au contraire ... when thought, thoughts and thinking are happening – a delightful episodic event – they are happening now. Also, memory is accessed only when accumulated knowledge is required to appraise a current event with the view to proposing beneficial action. RICHARD: Any and all imprinting which happens after birth imprints itself onto, into, and as, this already existing basic set of survival passions that form themselves into being the intuitive presence which, at root, is what any ‘me’ ultimately is ... as does any and all societal, familial, and peer-group conditioning. RESPONDENT: This would be a major departure from k, right? RICHARD: It would be indeed ... a radical departure, in fact. So far I have only been able to come across 15 passages where Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti uses the word ‘genetic’ and nowhere on those 15 occasions does he come even anywhere near comprehending the implications and ramifications involved in the affective feelings being rooted in the genetically-encoded instincts ... rather than in conditioning (be it societal, familial, peer-group or environmental conditioning). For an example: • ‘The other day as one was walking along a secluded wooded lane far from the noise and the brutality and the vulgarity of civilisation, right away from everything that was put together by man, there was a sense of great quietness, enveloping all things – serene, distant, and full of the sound of the earth. As you walked along quietly, not disturbing the things of the earth around you, the bushes, the trees, the crickets, and the birds, suddenly around the bend there were two small creatures quarrelling with each other, fighting in their small way. One was trying to drive off the other. The other was intruding, trying to get into the other’s little hole, and the owner was fighting it off. Presently the owner won and the other ran off. Again there was quietness, a sense of deep solitude. And as you looked up, the path climbed high into the mountains, the waterfall was murmuring down the side of the path; there was great beauty and infinite dignity, not the dignity achieved by man that seems so vain and arrogant. The little creature had identified itself with its home, as we human beings do. We are always trying to identify ourselves with our race, with our culture, with those things which we believe in, with some mystical figure, some kind of super authority. Identifying with something seems to be the nature of man. Probably we have derived this feeling from that little animal. One wonders why this craving, longing, for identification exists’. (10 March 1983; ‘Krishnamurti To Himself’; ©1987 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.). But he does not wonder why it is probable that ‘we have derived this feeling from that little animal’ for very long as soon he has left behind everything that thought had put together and has completely forgotten himself ... so much so that soon there is no longer any sense of being a human being even: • ‘As you climbed, leaving the little village paths down below, the noise of the earth – the crickets, the quails and other birds began their morning song, their chant, their rich worship of the day. And as the sun rose you were part of that light and had left behind everything that thought had put together. You completely forgot yourself. The psyche was empty of its struggles and its pains. And as you climbed, there was no sense of separateness, no sense of even being a human being’. (10 March 1983; ‘Krishnamurti To Himself’; ©1987 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.). The word ‘dissociation’ seems particularly apt. * RICHARD: Both imprinting and conditioning need substance to latch onto, sink into, and be ... it all washes off a clean slate like water off a duck’s back. Innocence is something entirely new to human experience. RESPONDENT: Why not ‘a quality we, as species lost, as the self displaced it’? RICHARD: Are you suggesting there was an era when the human species had no instinctual survival passions? RESPONDENT No. 42: In order to come into contact with nothingness wouldn’t you first have to become nothing? (Becoming not as a goal, but as necessity). RESPONDENT: Well, you already are nothing, you only think you are something. Just drop this whole idea – if you dare! RESPONDENT No. 42: After you, please. RESPONDENT: Dropping the idea of being something is a great bliss, and will dissolve this web of duality. So I was just asking: where are you waiting for ? And please, do not follow me, because I’m not on a path, I leave no trail ... RESPONDENT No. 42: That’s a good thing, otherwise you might be spotted by the enlightenment brigade which seeks to eliminate aware people from this list. RESPONDENT: That’s a good one, the enlightenment brigade ... I must have triggered you a lot, isn’t it? Is it because I’ve told you that you already are nothing? The last thing I would do is to attack someone: I would then attack myself equally. I am the angry in angry people, just as I am the love in loving people. So please let your brigade bring in their verdict of guilty, and eliminate me from this list for being aware, but please realize you eliminate also a part of yourself if you do so. Yes, I know I can be sharp – my archetype is the bald eagle. And we are the same – just like you I have to admit that I have certain expectations of this list (I joined the list only yesterday ...). About 25 years ago I met Krishnamurti a couple of times, and I was just curious what happened in the mean time ... RICHARD: You have caught my interest ... and the term ‘the enlightenment brigade’ is a misnomer because the appellation generally represents ‘the failure brigade’ (you will find that failure is highly revered on this Mailing List and success is dismissively belittled under some bizarre rationale that hails such disparagement of accomplishment as being the hallmark of humility). I find your words transparently revealing – as in attacking another is to attack oneself – inasmuch as you clearly say ‘I am the angry in angry people, just as I am the love in loving people’. I read with equal interest where you wrote, in another thread (Message #00104 of Archive 00/12), ‘I am sinless, and the root of sin derives from me’ and ‘I am peace and war has come because of me’ ... which is also so totally unambiguous as to leave no room to quibble over what you mean. You have a way of explaining/ describing which is crystal clear to those who are listening ... in yet another thread (Message #00073 of Archive 00/12) you explained that this comes about ‘only when my mind gets tired of its own merry-go-round’. You say that only then is there ‘the possibility that I can enter the window, the vortex, my soul’ and, in combination with your ‘you already are nothing, you only think you are something’ sentence, this ‘vortex’ – your ‘soul’ – is already nothing. In other words, you are saying you do not have to become it, you already are it (aka ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’). I appreciate you saying that, upon being this ‘vortex’ (your ‘soul’), it then appears ‘there has never been a question, or an answer – and what is left is just at-one-ment with the essence, pure and without words’ ... in other words, as ‘soul’ there is nothing that has to be done or achieved. I see that you expressly say that the mind ‘is nothing more then a movie, presented to me by my senses as something real and tangible. But there is no real thing out there – what evidence is there for something ‘real’, besides my reconstruction based on information coming from my senses ? Without an observer, there is no observed – aren’t we all co-creators in the process of observation?’. (Message #00073 of Archive 00/12). Yes, indeed ‘there is no real thing out there’ when it is seen that the observer is the observed: Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says, over and again, that when the observer is the observed there is only observation ... ‘there is only that’ (‘vortex’ or ‘soul’). Indeed you point this out in your first E-Mail: ‘I realized that there is no problem, only my way of dealing with it ... at the end, the mind slows down and eventually gives up, and at that point I realized that I am both the observer and the observed. I am the process, rather then the entity. I’m not the swimmer – I am the swimming, as well as the water I’m swimming in. I experienced that the restless susceptibility of my senses creates all questions and problems, and that there is no need to solve anything, which is a great bliss’. (Message #00024 of Archive 00/12). Once again you are saying, in other words, there is nothing that has to be done or achieved ... there is only ‘great bliss’. What particularly caught my attention (seeing that you also explained in the other thread (Message #00104 of Archive 00/12) ‘I am the substance and the one who has no substance, for I am the one who alone exists, and I have no one who will judge me’), is your comment further above about meeting Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti a couple of times 25 years ago. My question is whether you credit your current dissociated and solipsistic state of consciousness to having listened to him all those years ago? I also ask because this Mailing List is predicated upon ‘listening’ with the totality of your being ... and it would appear that you certainly have. If this is so, then what you have to say is of the utmost importance to this list. The utmost importance. * RESPONDENT: Richard, it warms my heart to read that I have touched upon another soul. I can unsubscribe now from the list with peace of mind. Be blessed. RICHARD: Oh? Leaving so soon? When you have so much to contribute? But, then again, maybe you have already said enough ... those who are listening with both ears will understand anyway without the need for yet more words. Also, you have satisfied my query, re listening to Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, in another post (‘Re: In The Meantime’; Mon 4/12/2000’), wherein you report what it was you listened to with all of your being. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘Krishnamurti once told me: ‘Everything where you are looking for, is already at your doorstep – why don’t you see yourself as I see you?’. Yes, indeed it is a case of ‘see yourself as I see you’ ... Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti oft-times said he was a mirror in which you could see yourself. I do appreciate your input on this important subject. RICHARD (to No 85): (...) in regards to where you asked if I would sit, with eyes closed, touching a porcelain cup without thought operating (so as to provide a comparison with what occurred when you did likewise) I can provide the following information: 1. It is quite the norm for this flesh and blood body that, on a daily basis, thought is often not operating – I tend to call it ‘mind in neutral’ – yet apperception (the mind’s perception of itself) still occurs regardless. 2. To close the eyes is to mask but one of the senses – touch, smell, taste, hearing, and proprioception, remain unmasked – thus, at the very least, subliminal processing of those sensations is still occurring and, consequently, a below-the-threshold-of-conscious-awareness sensitivity of being alive right here, in space, just now, in time, is in operation. 3. To sit, thoughtless, touching a porcelain cup (presumably only with a fingertip) is to be cutaneously feeling something, even though it is not being recognised, just as the (seated) buttocks and thighs are also cutaneously feeling something – if only pressure – therefore it cannot be faithfully said, without dissociating, that there are no sensations/ that there is no experience. Although all there is to go by is what you chose to write, and given you did report that you could not tell [quote] ‘that there were sensations’ [endquote] and that [quote] ‘there was no experience’ [endquote], there is sufficient indication that dissociation *was* taking place and, moreover, as you also report you felt that you were not different from anything in the whole universe – not in terms of material but in terms of something indescribable – it is more than likely that some trance-like affective state of being was occurring. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 85, 22 April 2005) RESPONDENT: (...) It is beyond my comprehension that my wife’s report she couldn’t tell ‘that there were sensations’ and that ‘there was no experience’ should be ‘sufficient indication that dissociation was taking place’ and ‘some trance-like affective state of being’. RICHARD: When someone – anyone at all – explains to another, in the context of having had something happen at the base of their skull, where something shook and it was like it turned over, whereupon they ‘woke up’ and are consequently enquiring as to whether they are either actually or virtually free from the human condition, that when touching a porcelain cup five days after the wakeup, with eyes closed and without thinking, they could not tell there were sensations (specifically expressed as ‘there was no experience’) yet all the while *feeling* they were not different from anything in the whole universe (explicitly articulated as being not in terms of material but in terms of something indescribable) there is, going solely by those words they chose to write, sufficient indication that dissociation had been/ is taking place and it is more than likely that some trance-like affective state of being had been/ is occurring ... especially so when they then go on to write about how they are not sure that Richard saying he is the body is actually it. RESPONDENT: This is a very simply and objective experiment. Everybody can do the same simple experiment and report back. What can you/ everybody report back about experiencing the sensing of a cup with hand/ fingers without using any feelings/ thoughts/ words to describe the experience WHILE (!) sensing the cup with the fingers/ hand? RICHARD: As I have already unambiguously detailed this, in my initial response, all you are doing here is demonstrating that you did not either (1) read it ... or (2) take any notice of it. Here it is again (to save you scrolling up the page): • [Richard]: ‘To sit, thoughtless, touching a porcelain cup (presumably only with a fingertip) is to be cutaneously feeling something, even though it is not being recognised, just as the (seated) buttocks and thighs are also cutaneously feeling something – if only pressure – therefore it cannot be faithfully said, without dissociating, that there are no sensations/ that there is no experience’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 85, 22 April 2005) I cannot see how I can put it any more clearly than that. RESPONDENT: What do you take out of this experience of sensing a cup? RICHARD: That there has just been a cutaneous experience (a sensate feeling) of something. RESPONDENT: What can you remember about it? RICHARD: That there had been a sensate feeling (a cutaneal sensation) of something. RESPONDENT: The surprising answer is: nothing! RICHARD: As I have read through each and every one of the 104+ e-mails you have posted to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list, since you first wrote 28 days ago, it is not at all surprising that your answer would be ‘nothing!’ ... and, to be quite frank, it is highly unlikely that anything else you might conjure up (if you were to write again) will be a surprise, either. RESPONDENT: And therefore [Respondent No 85] said ‘that there was no sensations’ and that ‘there was no experience’ – and for no other reason! RICHARD: Meanwhile, all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides, and so on, are still going on unabated. RESPONDENT: It’s interesting that in practicing Actualism, we need to be in touch with our emotions enough to not be detached, but not so much in touch with them that we get dissociated as in enlightenment. RICHARD: For the sake of clarity in communication I would stress that the actualism method sits firmly upon the minimisation of both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and the optimisation of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings ... and merely being in touch with felicity will not do the trick. RESPONDENT: I looked up the word ‘dissociation’ and the first definition included the breaking up of chemical combinations into their simpler constituents. So is enlightenment singular attention being paid to only one chemical effect (emotion) happening (out of all of them ) or it is one chemical effect (emotion) drowning out the rest due to the sheer amount of it? RICHARD: As I use the word ‘dissociation’ in the psychiatric sense I am somewhat reluctant to extend its usage into the area you propose ... to break everything down into chemical effects (whilst not dismissing such effects of course) would be to rightly earn the label ‘reductionism’. In other words there is more to understanding the workings of the psyche than understanding chemistry. RESPONDENT: Is it physically draining to be enlightened? RICHARD: It can be ... especially when interacting with others as the transmission of love, and the intensity of compassion, consumes an inordinate amount of psychic energy. Roaming alone in nature was not as draining, however, as it was mostly affective energy ... although it must be said that there was 7-8 hours of sleep and three meals a day back then (as contrasted to 3-4 or 4-5 hours of sleep and one meal a day plus a snack now). RESPONDENT: Was there a change in your general or subtle state of health after AF? RICHARD: I have had what is called a healthy constitution all my life – I very rarely had the need of doctors – so I cannot readily point to any specific change other than the marked absence of any psychosomatic ailments. I can still come down with colds and flu’s, for example, although nowhere as near as often or as severe. RESPONDENT: It seems like a load is taken off my nervous system or something in a PCE. RICHARD: Indeed ... the entire load, in fact, which absence of stress can only have the effect of ensuring a more healthy immune system. * RESPONDENT: I haven’t written for a long time and I want you to know I am still practicing Actualism, reading the website over and over, running HAIETMOBA and reading what’s sent to Topica. My stumbling block is being felicitous, as usual. You’ve already coached me on this, I know it’s up to me to do it. I think also I am fairly detached, too, and what I have taken for a ‘good’ day is really more of a day of ... calmness, but a sort of contrived, finessed calmness. I feel stuck in the mud partly because I’m not having any PCE’s, the voice in my head will not shut up (It didn’t used to bother me, maybe I was not aware of it) and also the problem of felicity. Also, inquiring into the root of emotions is tricky to do by yourself (my mind wanders) and I find myself in my head so much it is irritating as hell. I don’t think my self is getting any thinner, it seems to have co-operated up to a point and then put on the brakes. I will not give up, though, because I’ve experienced what is right under my nose four times now. If you have any input, I’m listening. RICHARD: As Vineeto has already responded to your e-mail. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 8.2.2004) (she knew I would be out of town last week and thus away from the computer) there is little I would add at this stage except to emphasise what she pointed out regarding detachment/ dissociation ... because what stands out in your (above) words is the ‘I am fairly detached’ phrase. It is no wonder you are experiencing ‘a sort of contrived, finessed calmness’ ... the main problem in life is that peoples everywhere are already separate from the actual world and to practice detachment is to be twice-removed from actuality. Viz.: • Actual freedom: By being born a separative ‘self’ one lives in a painful reality (being detached from actuality) and sensuousness ends this detachment with the resultant apperception revealing the actual world. • Spiritual freedom: By becoming detached from the separative ‘self’ (and thus being twice-removed from actuality) dissociation from painful reality manifests a metaphysical greater reality in the psyche rendering the physical world a nightmarish dream. (Richard, Articles, 180 Degrees Opposite). For an example of detachment leading to dissociation (known as ‘vippayutta’ in Pali): • [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Freed, dissociated, and released from ten things the Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Which ten? Freed, dissociated, and released from form (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from feeling (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from perception (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from fabrications (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from consciousness (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from birth (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from aging (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from death (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from stress (...) Freed, dissociated, and released from defilement (...) the Tathagata – freed, dissociated, and released from these ten things – dwells with unrestricted awareness. (Bahuna Sutta). It is not for nothing I say everyone has been going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. 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