# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Guilt RESPONDENT: While we’re on this topic – I recently read where you (Richard) regard having an ‘I’ as socially reprehensible – as in blameworthy. I’m curious as to just what constitutes being ‘socially reprehensible’ for you ... a mere thought or ‘temptation’ – or more concrete action. You have even gone to the point of using the term ‘guilty at conception’. I wonder what guilt could possibly consist of if not in action? To take this to the extreme – would an aborted foetus be ‘guilty’? Or possibly ‘socially reprehensible’? Is one guilty just because they have the potential to do harm? RICHARD: First of all a normal person does not have an ‘I’ (or have a ‘me’) as they are an ‘I’ (or are a ‘me’) ... and ‘I’ exist inside the body only because all human beings are genetically endowed at conception with a package of instinctual survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) which gives rise to emotions (such as malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) and this emotional and passional package is ‘me’ (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). And irregardless of whether ‘I’, who am the emotional and passional impulses, persuade the body to physically act or not ‘I’ involuntarily transmit emotional and passional vibes (to use a 60’s term) into the human world in particular and the animal world in general: therefore ‘I’ am not harmless even when ‘I’ refrain from inducing the body into physical action ... which is why pacifism (non-violence) is not a viable solution. Children also involuntarily transmit emotional and passional vibes (thus they are not born innocent as certain peoples maintain) ... and a foetus would too (albeit in a very rudimentary form). There is nothing that can stop other sentient beings picking up these vibes and/or picking up what are sometimes called psychic currents. This is because there is an interconnectedness between all the emotional and passional entities – all emotional and passional entities are connected via a psychic web – a network of invisible vibes and currents. This interconnectedness in action is a powerful force – colloquially called ‘energy’ or ‘energies’ – wherein one entity can either seek power over another entity or seek communion with another entity by affective and/or psychic influence. For example, these interconnecting ‘energies’ can be experienced in a group high, a community spirit, a mass hysteria, a communion meeting, a mob riot, a political rally and so on ... it is well known that charismatic leaders ride to power on such ‘energies’. Put simply: it is not violence per se (as in physical force/ restraint) or the potential for violence which is the problem: it is ‘me’ as the emotions and passions fuelling the violence, or fuelling the potential for violence, who begets all the misery and mayhem. Violence itself (as in physical force/ restraint) is essential lest the bully-boys and feisty-femmes would rule the world. And if all 6.0 billion peoples were to become happy and harmless overnight (via altruistic ‘self’-immolation) it would still be essential lest the predator animals should have the human animal for its next meal. Yet even if all the predator animals were to cease being predatory (à la the ‘lion shall lay down with child’ ancient wisdom) it would still be essential if the crops in the field be not stripped bare by the insect world. And so on and so on: taking medication – even traditional medicine – does violence to the whole host of bacterial life; so too does drinking water as one drop contains at least 1,000-10,000 tiny shrimp-like and crab-like creatures; even breathing does violence as a breath of air contains untold numbers of microscopic life-forms. RESPONDENT: For example, I don’t think I’ve done anything that would be considered ‘socially reprehensible’ by most people. Sure, I’ve stolen small amounts of money from my parents when I was a kid – not always told the whole truth – not always been the ‘stellar’ person I’ve wanted to be – but I have never hurt someone in a ‘reprehensible’ way. When I think ‘reprehensible’, I think murder, rape, abuse – all the atrocities in the human world. Now it’s possible that I’ve done something in my past that is ‘reprehensible’ and that it’s not currently coming to mind, but I’m curious just how you intend your usage of ‘socially reprehensible’? RICHARD: I do not necessarily mean it only in the way you describe – there are already enough people censuring behaviour without me joining in the chorus as well – as I am more interested in pointing the finger at the root cause of all the misery and mayhem: the identity parasitically inhabiting the flesh and blood body (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ... and this entity is not only socially reprehensible by its very existence but individually insalubrious as well. No matter how well-behaved and well-adjusted a normal person is – urbane, polite, civilised, educated – they cannot help but generate malicious and sorrowful feelings from time-to-time ... and neither malicious feelings towards another nor sorrowful feelings towards oneself, or vice versa, are conducive to a happy and harmless life (be it the communal life or an individual life). And to then become loving and compassionate, either towards another or towards oneself, is to but gild over the negative with the positive ... with less than satisfactory results. And such has been the case for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history ... the ‘tried and true’ is demonstrably the tried and failed. RESPONDENT: I’m not out murdering, raping, abusing people and that sort of thing – as many people are not. Is one ‘guilty’ just by having a ‘human nature’? RICHARD: Not by having a human nature ... by being human nature (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’): ‘I’ am guilty by virtue of ‘my’ very presence: it is ‘me’ as a psychological/ psychic ‘being’ (at root an instinctual ‘being’) who is guilty of being harmful just by existing ... but it is not ‘my’ fault as ‘I’ am not to blame for ‘my’ existence (if anything it is blind nature which is at fault or to blame). In the normal human world one is considered guilty where one does nothing about one’s human nature. Traditionally people try to avoid this ‘doing nothing’ guilt by living in accord with culturally-determined morals and ethics and values and principles and mores and so on. However, when push comes to shove, this thin veneer of civilised life can vanish in an instant and the instinctual survival passions can come surging out in full force (such as in peoples being trampled to death in the stampede for the exit in a theatre or cinema when there is a fire). I have had personal experience of the veneer of civilised life vanishing: I happened to be in New Delhi in October 1984 when Sikh bodyguards assassinated India’s Hindu Prime Minister Ms. Indira Gandhi after the assault by the Indian army on the Harimandir of Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. This set off a rampage of terror and violence that closed down the city for three days ... the normally ubiquitous police were nowhere to be seen for the entire period. I was there – with a nine year old daughter – and saw with my own eyes what happened: it was out-and-out internecine conflict ... after three days of unrestricted rioting the military came in with helicopters, planes, tanks, armoured vehicles, machine guns and so on and eventually law and order was restored by sheer brute force. The atmosphere – and the destructiveness I personally witnessed – was identical to my experience in a war-torn foreign country in 1966 when I was a serving soldier in a declared war-zone. The solution to all this is to be found in the actual world: in a pure consciousness experience (PCE), where ‘I’ as ‘my’ feelings am temporarily absent, it will be experienced that one is innocent for the very first time ... in a PCE there is not the slightest trace of guilt whatsoever to be found. ‘Tis a remarkably easy way to live. RESPONDENT: If the reason is that one is guilty by one’s ‘potential’ – wouldn’t it be smart to throw people in jail who fit the demographic for criminal behaviour – regardless their actions? RICHARD: Ha ... if people were to be gaoled for their potential then all 6.0 billion peoples on this planet would find themselves behind bars: anyone and everyone who nurses malice and sorrow, and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion, to their bosom has the potential to act, not only in socially reprehensible ways, but in ways which are personally insalubrious as well. RESPONDENT: Guilt by ‘potential’ is a strange concept – and I’m not sure it would fit any common usage of the word ‘guilt’ or ‘reprehensible’. RICHARD: Well ... as I said, the potential to act in socially reprehensible (and individually insalubrious) ways is traditionally held in check by morals and ethics and values and principles and mores and so on – all backed-up either by public censure and/or ostracism or by legal laws enforceable at the point of a gun – so it would appear that there is at least a tacit agreement that ‘guilt by potential’ is in common usage ... if only by implication. RESPONDENT: I realize this must be balanced with your view that nobody is to blame for having a self – though I’d like to read just how you balance the two, if you don’t mind. RICHARD: Perhaps this e-mail will show that there is nothing to balance after all as nobody is at fault or to blame for the human condition (and it is pointless to fault or blame blind nature for continuing to provide the instinctual survival passions which were necessary all those thousands of years ago). Now that intelligence, which is the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons, has developed in the human animal those blind survival passions are no longer necessary – in fact they have become a hindrance in today’s world – and it is only by virtue of this intelligence that blind nature’s default software package can be safely deleted (altruistic ‘self’-immolation). No other animal can do this. RESPONDENT: I also don’t intend these comments as an attempt to pin you down under self-contradiction – I know there are ‘ways out’ of these quandaries – I’m just curious about your view of these issues. Thanks. RICHARD: Sure ... I have always sought for that which is non-contradictory and would always look askance at any attempt to gloss over something contradictory by someone saying that it was a paradox one just had to live with. I have been unable to find anything paradoxical here in this actual world. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• P.S.: I am aware that words like guilty, reprehensible and culpable carry the implication that some person or persons (or peoples collectively) decide or have decided what is right and what is wrong or what is good and what is bad or what is correct and what is incorrect and so on ... a standard to be judged by, in other words. The following exchange should be helpful in this regards (especially so as you say in this e-mail that you have wanted to be a ‘stellar’ person): • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Who decides what is ‘personally insalubrious’ and ‘socially reprehensible’? • [Richard]: ‘Not ‘who’ ... peace-on-earth decides, each moment again, and relentlessly brings the wayward ego and compliant soul face-to-face with its own culpability, each moment again, for being the progenitor of all the ills of humankind. (...) The pristine nature of peace-on-earth is impeccable ... nothing dirty can get in. (Richard, List C, No. 1, 9 March 2000) Ain’t life grand! * RESPONDENT: I do think our usages of ‘socially reprehensible’ diverge. I would reserve the word ‘reprehensible’ for the truly atrocious things that people do – rape, murder, abuse, etc. – but I wouldn’t exclude what are commonly referred to as ‘misdemeanours’ as socially reprehensible either. RICHARD: Putting aside the ambivalence displayed in saying that you reserve usage of the word for major infractions of the social code of conduct whilst simultaneously not excluding usage of the word for minor infractions ... how is this substantially different from saying your usage of the word covers the entire range of antisocial conduct? As a matter of interest only: I have never taken the word as being reserved for the truly atrocious things that people do – I have always understood it as being applicable to anything which incurs criticism – so much so that when your e-mail came in I looked through the various dictionaries I have access to so as to see if I had been overlooking something all my life. The following definition best describes how I have always experienced its usage: • reprehensible: worthy of or deserving reprehension. • reprehension: the act of reprehending. • reprehend: to voice disapproval of. (©Merriam-Webster Dictionary). There is no qualification such as you propose ... and ‘to voice disapproval of’ can range all the way through reproval: from chiding, admonishing and rebuking through to reprimanding, censuring and condemning (according to the various thesauruses and other dictionaries I have access to). Where my usage of the word differs from the norm is to also apply it to that which is the cause of the antisocial conduct ... which strikes me as being an entirely sensible thing to do. RESPONDENT: I also don’t doubt there are such things as ‘reprehensible’ vibes – when it is apparent that someone is hating or being aggressive even without overt expression – but there are more subtle vibes that happen all the time which are sorrowful or malicious that I would hardly term ‘socially reprehensible’. RICHARD: Why not? A difference in degree is not a difference in kind ... are you sure you are not being unduly influenced by your preference to reserve the word for the major infractions (the apparent feelings in this instance) so much so that you inadvertently exclude the minor infractions (the more subtle feelings in this instance) despite saying further above that you would not exclude the misdemeanours? RESPONDENT: ‘Insalubrious’ may be a better term. RICHARD: Why? If something is reprehensible, no matter whether it be major or minor, apparent or subtle, what purpose does it serve to relabel it into being something which it is not? Please note that I am not telling you what you should or should not do in any of this ... I am, rather, suggesting that you question why your line of reasoning is following the path it is currently travelling along. RESPONDENT: As an example, my son may try to hit me when he is extremely upset – but I don’t regard that as ‘reprehensible’ – rather it is ‘normal’, yet ‘insalubrious’ as well. RICHARD: Unless one lives as an isolated hermit or recluse it is a fact that one lives amongst other people (aka society) and it is these other people who will disapprove of actions such as trying to hit someone when ‘extremely upset’ even if you do not. And if you do not bring it to your son’s attention that such emotion-backed behaviour is socially unacceptable – in the sense that society requires him to take responsibility for his feeling-fed actions – then other people surely will (and they will try to instil feelings of guilt and/or shame into him at the same time so as to have him control his aggressive feelings with countervailing feelings of remorse and/or contrition) ... for such is society’s way of dealing with antisocial feelings. To illustrate this I will take the liberty of altering your sentence so as to show what it looks like when the situation you describe is taken out of the family setting and other people are brought into the picture: • my son may try to hit someone when he is extremely upset but society doesn’t regard that as reprehensible. Of course I do not know what society you live in but the society I am familiar with certainly disapproves of someone trying to hit someone else when extremely upset. Now whilst your son is not to blame for being born with the human condition hereditarily implanted – it is not his fault that he comes into the world with the basic survival passions genetically endowed – somewhere along the line he will be required to be amenable to society’s legal laws and social protocols just like any other human being. Hence reprehension ... it is society’s way of conveying/ reinforcing its conventions to each and every one of its citizens so that some semblance of what passes for peace can prevail. Incidentally, that you consider it ‘normal’ that your son may try to hit you when extremely upset speaks volumes about how ubiquitous the instinctual passions are ... and it is because of attitudes such as this that I take the term ‘socially reprehensible’ deeper into the human condition so as to bring the source of antisocial conduct into the arena of public awareness. This way the cause can be addressed rather than continuing to just treat the symptoms. RESPONDENT: I would agree that being a ‘being’ is personally insalubrious. RICHARD: Good ... I am pleased that this is obvious as it establishes a basis from which to see the communal ramifications of such a lack of well-being (which is where being personally insalubrious is to be socially reprehensible). RESPONDENT: Also, I agree that a ‘being’ has the potential for socially reprehensible deeds. RICHARD: Okay ... my intention, in discussions such as these, is to dig deeper so as to find out how and why the potential exists in the first place (rather than just acknowledging the potential for such deeds exists). Where there is no potential there is no need for checks and balances. RESPONDENT: I suppose my preference is though to reserve the word ‘reprehensible’ for deeds of more severity than common forms of insalubrity. RICHARD: Apart from repeating your ‘reserve for severity’ preference (as if you had never said you would not exclude misdemeanours) I notice that you have written ‘common forms of insalubrity’ rather than ‘common forms of reprehensibility’. If something is reprehensible it is reprehensible whether it be of a severe form or common form ... reprehensibility does not miraculously become insalubrity just because it is a minor infraction rather than a major infraction. RESPONDENT: Use the word however you prefer – I just want to make sure I understand your usage. I do like your convention of sensible vs. silly – it is much better than words that carry blame, like ‘reprehensible’. RICHARD: Essentially all I am doing is taking a word, which denotes the incurrence of disapproval from one’s fellow human beings when one’s behaviour is not in accord with civil order, into an area where it has never been applied before – into where the cause of the aberrant behaviour lies – and it is an area where !Lo! and !Behold! the blaming aspect of the word has no application (it is an exercise in futility to blame blind nature for continuing to provide the instinctual survival passions which were necessary all those thousands of years ago). The release from blame does not release one from consequences, however, hence the word is still applicable when referring to that which is not conducive to living happily and harmlessly with one’s fellow human beings. * RESPONDENT: ... let’s take an example where I am in a car accident and I am deemed ‘guilty’. Now, in this case I am guilty because I am at fault – I ‘caused’ the accident. Yet it would seem to do no good whatsoever for me to blame myself for being the guilty party in the accident. Rather it would be better for me to understand the causes of my negligence and work towards correcting it. I take it you are saying something similar about being ‘guilty at conception’. It is not my fault that I am born as a ‘being’. And it doesn’t help to wallow in feeling guilty, rather one should understand how to rectify one’s negligence and flawed nature. A question arises about this sort of guilt. Does it help to feel guilty? RICHARD: No ... which is the whole point of realising that it is not ‘my’ fault and that ‘I’ am not to blame: it makes no more sense to feel guilty about being born with the human condition in situ than it does to feel guilty about the colour of one’s skin, for example, or any other characteristic which is determined at conception. The same would apply to feeling shame. It is pertinent to point out at this stage that I am not advocating immorality but rather the elimination of the cause of that which requires morality to keep in check ... then one is automatically amoral (neither moral nor immoral). In a word: innocent. RESPONDENT: No one is to blame, so I’m assuming it doesn’t really help to ‘feel guilty’ – so you are not trying to put a ‘guilt trip’ on anyone, rather pointing out the insalubrity of being a ‘being’. RICHARD: I am not only pointing out the insalubrity of being a ‘being’ but also the social reprehensibility of being insalubrious. RESPONDENT: I find that feeling guilt doesn’t help me at all to rectify anything, but seeing the silliness of something and aiming to be more sensible does indeed help. Maybe what is happening here is that you are using language like ‘reprehensible’ and ‘guilty’ and ‘blameworthy’ and ‘culpable’ where all these words normally imply a feeling of guilt – then you come back and say that no-one is to blame – which for me, is a bit confusing. RICHARD: All I mean by the word guilty in the phrase ‘guilty at conception’ is not-innocent ... and I only use the word because so many people over the years have told me that children are born innocent and that adults have lost their childhood innocence (the Tabula Rasa theory). I see that I first used the term ‘guilty at conception’ – and in that very context – in ‘Richard’s Journal’ many years ago: • ‘None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously and wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. *They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception*. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the ‘Human Condition’ ... this is the ‘human nature’ that is said ‘cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. [emphasis added]. (pages 127-7, ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©1997, The Actual Freedom Trust). Not only did I preface it with ‘they are not to blame’ but I see that I even put the word ‘guilty’ in scare quotes to indicate that I did not mean it in the normal sense (a practice which I seem to have later dropped). * RESPONDENT: So ‘guilt’ for you is not to blame, but to point to the cause of socially reprehensible acts. I have to wonder whether it would be better to stick with ‘insalubrious’ or ‘silly’ – rather than ‘reprehensible’ or ‘guilty’ – which do (to me anyway) carry the implication of blame. RICHARD: Yet neither ‘silly’ nor ‘insalubrious’ work to counteract the ‘children are innocent’ claim. Viz.: • [Typical Statement]: ‘All children are born innocent. • [Response No. 1]: ‘I beg to differ: all children are born silly (or are silly at conception). • [Response No. 2]: ‘I beg to differ: all children are born insalubrious (or are insalubrious at conception). The only other antonym to the word ‘innocent’ that I have come across is the word ‘sinful’. * RESPONDENT: ... Rather than leave my conclusion vague, let me summarize. I agree that being a ‘being’ is ‘personally insalubrious’ – as in being a much better decision for one’s own and other’s sake(s) to self-immolate. One is better off whittling away at the social identity and instinctual passions. RICHARD: I do not see how you can draw the conclusion that it is a much better decision for ‘other’s sake(s)’ from the term ‘personally insalubrious’ only ... if there be no term referring to the communal benefit it would be (correctly) seen as being a selfish enterprise to ‘self’-immolate for personal reasons alone. Besides which the necessary ingredient for ‘self’-immolation – altruism – would be missing thus rendering any such endeavour powerless and doomed to failure from the start. I mean it when I say that, with the pristine nature of peace-on-earth being impeccable, nothing dirty can get in. RESPONDENT: Personally, I would stay away from phrases like ‘guilty at conception’ or ‘socially reprehensible’ to describe human nature because they imply blame. RICHARD: I am well aware that words such as ‘guilty’ and ‘reprehensible’ have blaming implications ... and I invite you to undertake the exercise in futility of putting the blame where it rightly belongs (onto blind nature) so that you can see for yourself how human beings have been unnecessarily berating themselves since time immemorial for something they are simply not to blame for. What I have observed over many years is that a normal person has a propensity to blame – to find fault rather than to find causes – when it comes to dealing with the human condition ... if for no other reason than that finding the cause means the end of ‘me’ (or the beginning of the end of ‘me’). Whereas endlessly repeating mea culpa keeps ‘me’ in existence. RESPONDENT: For me, ‘guilty’ is merely a term pointing to a person who caused something (also it is a legal term) – but it has much room for confusion, since one must qualify how it is possible to be ‘guilty’ without ‘blame’. RICHARD: I am at a loss to see how my qualification has ‘much room for confusion’ as I am quite specific about what I mean by the term ‘guilty at conception’ (meaning not innocent at conception let alone born innocent) ... and even without qualification surely it is obvious that one is not personally to blame for that which is determined at conception? RESPONDENT: ‘Reprehensible’ to me carries moral underpinnings. RICHARD: A lot of words can carry ‘moral underpinnings’ – after all they were coined by peoples trapped within the human condition without knowing how or why – yet even so I would rather stay with existing words rather than coining new words. RESPONDENT: There are indeed atrocious and not so atrocious acts and vibes that might be termed ‘reprehensible’, but I don’t see the value in saying that we are ‘socially reprehensible’ at birth or ‘guilty at conception’. RICHARD: Just for starters the value of it lies in setting the record straight in regards the erroneous claims that children are born innocent (and thus irreprehensible) ... which means it has value inasmuch one will cease reaching back into childhood – or back into some projected ‘Golden Age’ – for that which is simply not there ... innocence (and hence irreprehensibility) is entirely new to human history and exists only in the actual world. It has value in that the way is cleared to see what has been just here right now all along. ALAN: The next question to be answered is whether the ASC is a worthwhile goal to pursue. The ASC surely beats the shit out of being ‘normal’ and I certainly felt happy and harmless, to use your expression. RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘felt’ happy and harmless is the operative word here! There is nothing harmless about divinity ... this is a very selfish and self-centred approach to life on earth ... something that all metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s Immortality is unambiguously selfish ... peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined soul after physical death. So much for their humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and humaneness. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to perpetuate oneself for ever and a day. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Leaders fall foul of this existential dilemma. They pay lip-service to the notion of self-sacrifice – weeping crocodile tears at noble martyrdom – whilst selfishly pursuing the Eternal After-Life. The root cause of all the ills of humankind can be sheeted home to this single, basic fact: the overriding importance of the survival of ‘self’. As for being happy ... the manifestation of love – the antidote for malice – and the manifestation of compassion – the antidote for sorrow – self-evidently bespeaks the spurious basis for their contingent happiness. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand how can anything be wrong in this universe. According to Richard (in fact, according to many Enlightened ones, but Richard never accepts it), the world is so perfect that nothing can be wrong here. RICHARD: 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 grief to depression and then suicide. And as for religiosity or spirituality or mysticality not being wrong just try saying that to the Buddhist woman who is being raped by a Hindu soldier; try saying that to the Sikh father whose son has been brutally tortured by Muslim terrorists; try saying that to a Jewish grandmother whose entire family has been wiped out by pious Christians; try saying that to a Taoist girl whose life has been violated and ruined by Shinto soldiers; try saying that to a Zen monk whose whole city has been razed by an atomic explosion! Life in the real-world is a grim and glum business. Only this actual world is already perfect. RESPONDENT: Then where is the question of bringing peace to earth. RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. This is why I am so insistent in what I write. After my experience in a war-zone I wished to do something constructive with my life; I wished to rid myself, personally, of the ‘human nature’ which all people say can not be changed. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extinction – extirpation, annihilation, expunction – ensures that the already always existing peace-on-earth will become apparent. This is because this actual world is already perfect. SETH: Animals have a sense of justice that you do not understand, and built-in to that innocent sense of integrity there is a biological compassion, understood at the deepest cellular levels. In your terms man is an animal, rising out of himself, from himself evolving certain animal capacities to their utmost; not forming new physical specialisations of body any longer (again in your terms), but creating from his needs, desires and blessed natural aggressiveness inner structures having to do with values, space and time. To varying degrees this same impetus resides throughout all creature-hood. Such a task meant that man must break out of the self-regulating, precise, safe and yet limiting aspects of instinct. The birth of a conscious mind, as think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free will. Built-in procedures that had beautifully sufficed could now be superseded. They became suggestions instead of rules. Compassion ‘rose’ from the biological structure up to emotional reality. The ‘new’ consciousness accepted its emerging triumph – freedom – and was faced with responsibility for action of a conscious level, and with the birth of guilt. A cat playfully killing a mouse and eating it is not evil. It suffers no guilt. On biological levels both animals understand. The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. The cat uses the warm flesh. The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain. (As Seth-Jane delivered this material, my mind flashed back many years to a summer day when I was about eleven years old. With my two brothers 1 sat in the back yard of the house in which we grew up, in a small town not far from Elmira. Our next-door neighbour’s cat, Mitzi, had caught a field mouse. She played with it in the grass; with conflicting feelings I watched Mitzi, of whom I was very fond, block off each attempt of the terrified mouse to escape – until finally, having had her sport, she ate it. At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life energy they share, and are not – in those terms – jealous for their own individuality’. RESPONDENT: To me the above is far closer to Richard’s natural amoral stance. RICHARD: Just so that there is no misunderstanding: Richard does not have a ‘natural amoral stance’ at all. • First and foremost: nothing is a ‘stance’ (or a philosophy or a metaphysics or a thesis and so on) as, unlike Ms. Jane Roberts, all that I write is a description which comes out of my direct and spontaneous experiencing at this moment in time ... my words are an ‘after the event’ report, as it were. • Second: there is nothing ‘natural’ in what I did in regards the elimination of the instinctual passions and the animal self in the ‘lizard brain’ ... it was a very, very unnatural thing to do (it is fear and aggression and nurture and desire which are natural). • Third: to be ‘amoral’ is when a person can totally and reliably be capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception. The $64,000 question then appears to be this: Did the wisdom of a bodiless spirit called ‘Seth’ (an aspect of ‘God’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom upon Ms. Jane Roberts as amorality indubitably is? And further: how has anyone benefited from a wisdom that promotes a ‘blessed natural aggressiveness’ by equating what a cat does with a mouse as being ‘playfully killing’ and thus ‘that innocent sense of integrity’ and ‘sense of justice’ wherein there is a ‘biological compassion’ because (and this is the central argument) the ‘consciousness of the mouse’ (and a ‘terrified mouse’ at that) ‘leaves its body’ via an ‘innate knowledge of impending pain’ as being a ‘‘new’ consciousness’ by virtue of the ‘emerging triumph’ known as ‘free will’ whereupon all these instinctual impulses are somehow ‘superseded’ by an ‘emotional reality’ induced by ‘the birth of guilt’ wherein committing all the aforementioned mayhem and misery is now felt as being a ‘suggestion’ to live by rather than a ‘rule’ ... and gratuitously called ‘freedom’? This inhumane ‘suggestion’ (condoning and/or advocating the inducing of terror in another) and gruesome ‘‘new’ consciousness’ (condoning and/or advocating homicide as it is the body and not the consciousness which is killed) is identical to that divine wisdom found in the Bhagavad-Gita where Mr. Krishna (‘God’ by whatever name) assures Mr. Arjuna that it is quite okay to kill his relatives in war because (a) it is his duty by virtue of the caste he was born into ... and (b) he would not be killing the person anyway but only the body. May I ask? How do you see this as being even remotely close to what Richard experiences and thus promulgates? RESPONDENT No. 1: It surprises me to see morality thrown into a debate about truth. Morality (...) will stand in the way to honesty and truth. A lover of truth (...) is neither ‘moral’, nor ‘immoral’, but unconcerned about it; ‘amoral’, if you want. RICHARD: Indeed, yet a person is amoral only when they can totally and reliably be capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception. The $64,000 question then appears to be this: Does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is? (Richard, List C, No. 1, 7 March 2000). RESPONDENT: If there is just living there cannot be good and bad. RICHARD: Does your phrase ‘just living’ represent amorality for you (neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’)? If so, what are the qualities that epitomise ‘just living’? Does ‘neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible’ constitute equitable qualities worthy of the name ‘amoral’? RESPONDENT: I have no idea where I am going with this e-mail but we’ll just see ... kind of just thinking aloud on issues I have not really thought about. RICHARD: I am sure you will find, as you read through where you went in your response, that although you started with the question on amorality it rapidly became a discussion about morality ... even to the point of positing a ‘True Morality’. The question is about amorality ... not morality (nor immorality). RESPONDENT: Let’s get to the heart of the matter. What I call ‘just living’ is beyond all morals. There are no morals. That is how a child inherently lives. A child may poke his mother in the eye. There is nothing evil in that – he is just experimenting – just playing. Now when we grow older we know that such an action causes pain so we would not do it. A child just lives. When he wants milk he cries. He doesn’t care if it is convenient for the mother. Now what happens when we grow older and realise that sometimes what we want may be inconvenient to others. This is the whole point of morals. Let’s say I decide I need £10,000. So I go and rob some bank, because I don’t care about others. Now that is not an acceptable form of behaviour. And if that is enlightenment then people will say ‘Well you can just keep your enlightenment. It’s not for me’. We live in a society – not in isolation. Society needs rules, and they need to be enforced because otherwise some people will take advantage. So we end up with the type of society we have. Enforcing the rules may cause reactions when some feel it is not fair. Lots of things are not fair. Reactions are the central issue. Reactions happen from hurt feelings and from resentment, when we take things personally. When we react we may perform actions that will deliberately hurt or harm others ... because we feel justified. This is also done on a larger scale – wars are started because a country may feel it is justified in taking a certain position to defend another country, or the rights of certain people. It is all about ‘I am right’ and ‘you are wrong’, which are all opinions. I am merely observing here – not taking a position. So now let’s compare this to an enlightened person – or an enlightened society. Ideally there will be no reactions. Each person does whatever they choose without deliberately hurting another. Sometimes another will be inadvertently hurt. That person does not react but just accepts it as part of life and learns from it – asks himself ‘What is life teaching me’ instead of ‘I’ll get that person back’. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is much deeper – it is recognising there is no ‘wrong’ and therefore nothing to forgive. It is ultimately realising that whatever happens it is all for a reason – the advaita view – that we are not the doers. Whatever happens just happens – there is a higher purpose. This concept is a central part of many religions. Guru Nanak (Sikhism) talks of this a lot – that God is the Doer – and further says that once we live this way the ego disappears. We are not the doer and there in no more reaction. We want life to happen our way – but it doesn’t. Once we learn to take life as it comes there is no more reaction – we just accept. No more blaming – we live in acceptance of what is. We can still have goals – but we don’t get too concerned with the results. This is the central teaching of the Gita – Krishna explains this to Arjuna. True Morality then becomes a matter of being ourself – doing whatever we choose – just so long as we do not consciously harm another. It is having respect for the freedom of others too. Live and let live. Not the mechanical obedience of fixed rules – but living from the heart. Mechanical obedience of fixed rules creates a ‘good and bad’ standard and we then condemn those who fit into the ‘bad’ category, and this becomes the trap: we now condemn others – blame – this causes resentment. There is no way out. Reactions cause further reactions and before you know it you have WW3 on your hands. RICHARD: There are several key points that come to light in this exploration: 1. Where you say ‘a child just lives’ you are clearly stating that a child meets your criterion for ‘just living’ ... and that this is because what a child does is not ‘evil’. As the definition of innocence is the absence of evil, then you have to be indicating that a child is inherently guiltless (born innocent) ... which they are not. 2. Where you correctly observe that the child ‘doesn’t care’, it shows that a child is inherently inconsiderate towards others ... which means that the (supposed) innocence of the child has inconsiderateness as one of its qualities. 3. You observe that as the child grows older it realises the inconvenience caused to others by its unawareness of inconsiderateness ... thus what looks like innocence in a child is actually ignorance (not knowing). This awakening of awareness of others being the same as oneself is what is called ‘theory of mind’ ... and is what sets the human animal apart from other animals. 4. Where you state ‘we live in a society – not in isolation’ the ‘theory of mind’ undeniably signifies that, because one lives among one’s fellow human beings, one is as considerate towards others as one is towards oneself. 5. Where you say ‘reactions are the central issue ... reactions happen from hurt feelings’ I am in full agreement with your observations (which are essentially about the affective feelings): when a person’s precious feelings get hurt (either justified or not) the faecal matter hits the rapidly turning blades and sensibility is nowhere to be found. Nations (which are nothing more and nothing less than peoples collectively) have feelings just the same ... hurt is inevitable to anyone nursing feelings to their bosom. However, unlike individual emotional hurts (resulting in fisticuffs or whatever), nations these days hurl million dollar missiles at each other ... a nation’s ‘fisticuffs’ do far more damage and cause far more destruction. Yet it is precipitated by the self-same affective feelings that each and every person holds so dear. 6. Where you hypothesis that in ‘an enlightened person – or an enlightened society – ideally there will be no reactions’ you have to be referring to either (a) feelings not getting hurt (a coping method), or (b) no feelings to get hurt (the elimination of feelings). 7. You then propose that ‘another will be inadvertently hurt ... that person does not react but just accepts it’ which indicates you have opted for option (a) by proposing either: (1) fatalism, or (2) tolerance ... by your advice to ‘just accept it’. 6. You then propose a religious and/or spiritual and/or mystical or some form of metaphysical explanation (a ‘higher purpose’ ) for all the ills of humankind ... to the point of putting forward the notion (quoting an ‘Enlightened Being’s dictum that ‘God is the Doer’), that the Sikh’s God really did the killing of the 160,000,000 people ordinarily thought of as being killed by their fellow human beings in wars in the last 100 years. Likewise this ‘higher purpose’ accounts for 40,000,000 people ordinarily thought of as having killed themselves in the depths of despair in the same 100 year period (what mere mortals call suicide). 9. Then you introduce your ‘True Morality’ which says that ‘we do not consciously harm another’ as one of its qualities ... which is the same-same as virtually any society’s morality (which prompts me to half-facetiously ask whether if one does ‘consciously harm another’ then is this act called a ‘True Immorality’!). 10. Next, ‘respect for the freedom of others’ is another one of the qualities of ‘just living’ ... also just the same as virtually any society’s morality. 11. So as to distinguish ‘True Morality’ from virtually any society’s morality you insist upon ‘living from the heart’ as being the criterion that promises success. I sincerely question the advisability of placing absolute reliability on an affective feeling (or feelings) as being the ultimate guide/ authority on how to interact in the world of people, things and events as feelings are notoriously fickle. Maybe this is why ‘living from the heart’ has to be backed-up with a ‘True Morality’ ... presumably backed-up by God’s Authority? What I was curious about was whether your phrase ‘just living’ represented amorality for you (neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’) and that, if so, what the qualities were that epitomised ‘just living’ ? What I gathered, from your response, is that ‘just living’ is not amorality at all ... and is, in fact, predicated on a ‘True Morality’ that is based on (so far unnamed) heart-felt feelings and at least two clearly stated dictums regarding how other people are treated (with no stated qualities on how you treat yourself). Is this a fair appraisal? * RESPONDENT: Are you saying that a child is NOT born Innocent? Are you saying a child has evilness built in? I maintain that a child is born innocent. Please explain what you mean here. RICHARD: The hoary belief that all children are born innocent (the ‘Tabula Rasa’ theory) is dying a lingering death ... but dying it is. The genetic mapping project and brain imaging studies of recent times have conclusively shown empirically that instinctual passions (the survival instincts) are physically encoded in the DNA and/or RNA of every foetus at conception. These genetically-inherited passions include fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... and all sentient beings, to some degree or another, come biologically equipped with this rudimentary ‘software package’ of basic animal passions per favour blind nature as a rough and ready start to life. And the potential for malice with all of its derivations (including evil) lie latent in that ‘software package’. * RICHARD: You observe that as the child grows older it realises the inconvenience caused to others by its unawareness of inconsiderateness ... thus what looks like innocence in a child is actually ignorance (not knowing). This awakening of awareness of others being the same as oneself is what is called ‘theory of mind’ ... and is what sets the human animal apart from other animals. RESPONDENT: Yes – the child is innocent – but the innocence is from ignorance. This does not take the innocence away – it simply means it is a different type of innocence. The child is still innocent. RICHARD: I notice that you used the word ‘innocent/ innocence’ five times in this short response ... just repeating a hoary belief again and again like a mantra does not miraculously turn it into a fact. The fabled ‘innocence’ of child-hood (the ‘Tabula Rasa’ theory) turns out to be nothing more than a lack of knowledge, regarding the function that the instinctual passions play, on the part of those who invented that theory. Modern empirical scientific research has shone more than a little light on factors that the ancients simply did not yet know (satellite photographs and astronaut’s/ cosmonaut’s reports, for example, finally set the ‘flat earth’ theory conclusively to rest once and for all). A child is instinctively driven just as adults are ... only on a more rudimentary scale. * RESPONDENT: The child is selfish – but there is nothing wrong with that – because the child is not yet aware that there are others to consider. So the child’s quality of ‘being selfish’ is not ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. It is innocent. There is no evil intent. RICHARD: I am not talking of the legal definition for culpability here (wherein the offender has to know that they are doing wrong in order to be guilty). This is not a court of law ... this is biology. RESPONDENT: I am talking about intent. Intent is what matters. If I ACCIDENTALLY kill someone in my car – that is not ‘evil’. If I do it on PURPOSE it would be considered ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’. The INTENT is what matters. RICHARD: Are you really saying that any parent protecting their helpless progeny from a predator with all their might and main is ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’ simply because of their ‘intent’ to kill. And does the same apply to the military ... who protect you and your kin from invaders? The police ... who protect you and your kin from banditry? Are they ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’ simply because of their ‘intent’ to kill? Do you propose nihilistic anarchism? Pacifism in principle translates as anarchy in action; the bully-boys and feisty-femmes get to rule the world because of gullible peoples ‘just accepting’ aggression in others through obeying unliveable edicts handed down on high from bodiless entities. Tibet is a particular case in point ... is this the world you would pass on to your children and children’s children and so on? RESPONDENT: Actually LEGALLY it is different because the law says ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’. RICHARD: Aye ... but if you have ever been a parent yourself you will know by direct experience that society requires that you instil values and principles in your children through reward and punishment. Usually, by about the age of seven, your child knows ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ (as is evidenced in an exasperated parent taking the child to task with an oft-repeated ‘you should know better by now’). This implies, under your definition of culpability, that you make your children guilty for doing what comes natural. RICHARD: ... and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like have been the odious result of [belief, faith, trust, hope and the uneasy certitude engendered] for far too long to persevere in giving credence to the fantasies and hallucinations that pass for sagacity. Fuelled by an emotional imagination, human beings down through the centuries have given voice to their passionate dreams and nightmares, with abominable consequences. RESPONDENT: Some of that is karma, people who have raped needing to be raped to understand how rape is not right. RICHARD: Once again ... 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: ‘people who have raped need to be raped to understand how rape is not right’? Not only is she being raped but on top of that horrific experience you are hanging a guilt trip upon her that she did some raping herself in a past life ... infallibly intuited, presumably, by your ‘totally accurate’ feelings and non-interpreted ‘ideas’, perchance? RESPONDENT No. 20: Are you speaking about existing without self? RICHARD: Yes, but not only without a self ... without a ‘Self’ as well. One is well-advised to pay attention to those basic instincts that give rise to what the Christians coyly call ‘Original Sin’. ‘I’ and ‘me’, in any way, shape or form, am rotten to the core ... this is the source of all guilt and its band-aid solutions like love and compassion. Zen’s ‘Original Face’ has its genesis in the rudimentary self of the instincts. Eliminate those survival instincts and not only does ‘Original Sin’ vanish ... even the ‘Original Face’ disappears. Then – and only then – is there peace-on-earth guaranteed. This is because it is already always here. (Richard, List B, No. 20b, 20 July 1998) RESPONDENT: Obviously what disappears can not be original face, which is nothingness. RICHARD: Oh, yes it can ... and does. At the risk of sounding like No. 22, ‘nothingness’ is a concept. People, seeing everything to be transient, seek permanence and posit an enduring ‘nothingness’ ... then yearn to live in it. It being a massive delusory hallucination, only a rare few succeed. Yet all this while, this physical universe – being infinite and eternal – is permanent. Why do people look for something beyond it? Something metaphysical? * RESPONDENT: If there is an actual physical threat yet no immediate evaluative (emotional) response to that physical threat gets registered, a valuable feedback loop is absent. RICHARD: Yes ... the instinctual survival passions are what has enabled all sentient beings alive today to be here on the planet: all animals – including the human animal – are the end-result of the ‘success story’ of what you rightly describe as the ‘immediate evaluative (emotional) response to that physical threat’. RESPONDENT: We have the capacity to immediately intuit through feelings what is what without the time and delay required for thinking that there is a threat, calculating the nature of the threat and assessing in a linear manner what is the optimal response to that threat. RICHARD: Yes, those who study these things with precision instruments have repeatedly determined that the non-cognitive or emotional brain receives the perceptive signal 12-14 milliseconds before the cognitive brain. The non-cognitive brain releases chemicals which flood the brain – including the cognitive brain – and the remainder of the body with what is non-cognitively (emotionally) assessed as appropriate ... this is described as ‘the quick and dirty’ response. The perceptive signal takes 24 milliseconds to reach the cognitive brain: by the time thinking commences thought is flooding with chemicals ... and is receiving signals from the emotional brain through a direct neuro-pathway. There is also a neuro-pathway from the cognitive brain back to the non-cognitive emotional brain which transmits signals for the emotional brain to continue, alter or cease the chemical release. This neuro-pathway back to the non-cognitive brain, in contrast to the ‘broadband’ neuro-pathway from the emotional brain to the cognitive brain, is a ‘narrowband’ neuro-pathway ... which is why thought takes time to calm the non-cognitive brain if its emotional reaction is cognitively adjudged inappropriate. If cognitively adjudged appropriate it can signal an increase in the chemical release which, via the broadband/ narrowband feed-back loop, can escalate all the way through to what can be called ‘blind rage’ ... as in ‘I saw red’ or ‘I don’t know what came over me’. This is because the considered cognitive response – being flooded with chemicals – cannot necessarily consider with clarity until the chemical release ceases ... which can result in chagrin or mortification (another chemical release) or some other feeling (some other chemical release) after the event if the emotionally reactive behaviour was inappropriate. Shall I follow this through but one of the many, many possible scenarios? The feeling of chagrin or mortification can result in a feeling of shame or guilt (another chemical release); shame or guilt can result in a feeling of regret or remorse (another chemical release); regret or remorse can result in a feeling of penitence or repentance (another chemical release); penitence or repentance can result in a feeling of absolution or forgiveness (another chemical release); absolution or forgiveness can result in a feeling of thankfulness or gratitude (another chemical release); thankfulness or gratitude can result in a feeling of affection or love (another chemical release); affection or love can result in a feeling of belonging or oneness (another chemical release). These chemical floods are so addictive, of course, that they can lead to what could be called continuous substance abuse ... both legally and morally recommended and sanctioned by society at large. RESPONDENT: The absence of fear in a tree or ashtray or armchair implies that intelligence (clear perception of a threat) is not operating on the level of the particular. RICHARD: The neuro-scientists would be hard-pressed to describe the ‘quick and dirty’ response – the non-cognitive emotional reaction – as ‘intelligence’ or ‘clear perception of a threat’ ... if by ‘clear’ and ‘intelligence’ you mean a non-emotional, thoughtful response. And a ‘tree or ashtray or armchair’ are not perceptive at all ... let alone emotional or thoughtful. RICHARD: Just taking one example out of what you quoted back at me – ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ – would send your students into an intellectual paroxysm. RESPONDENT: Well, it sent me into one as well. Time has no duration? Innocence prevails? Watchatalkin’boutman? RICHARD: Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here now. Thus it appears that it is as if nothing has occurred, for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end, is there a middle? There are things happening, but nothing has happened or will happen ... or so it seems. Only this moment exists. This moment has no term, it takes no time at all to occur ... which gives rise to the inaccurate notion that it is timeless. This is an institutionalised delusion, for it stems from the egocentric feeling that ‘I’ am Immortal, that ‘I’ am Eternal. Apperception – which is the mind’s perception of itself – reveals that this moment is hanging in eternal time ... just as this planet is hanging in infinite space. This moment and this place are in the realm of the infinitude of this actual physical universe. This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not Eternally Present. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. As one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being, any ‘I’ – always on the look-out for self-aggrandisement – grabs the universe’s eternity for itself. Also, what helps to create the feeling that the present is timeless is that human beings – as an identity – are normally out of this universe’s eternal time. Yet time is as intimate as this body being here now at this moment. It is so intimate that I – as a body only – am not separate from it. Whereas ‘I’, as a human ‘being’, have separated ‘myself’ from eternal time by being an entity. To be an ontological ‘being’ is to mistakenly take this body being here as containing an ‘I’, a psychological or psychic entity. To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally ... as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence. ‘I’ am an illusion; if ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ do exist, then ‘I’ am outside of eternal time. ‘I’ am forever complaining that there is ‘not enough hours in the day’, or ‘I am always running out of time’, or ‘I am always catching up with time’, or ‘I am always behind time’. With no ‘I’ whatsoever to keep one out of this moment in time, one is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously and wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the ‘Human Condition’ ... this is the ‘human nature’ that is said ‘cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. The ‘self’ is born out of the instinctual passions. * RICHARD: With no ‘I’ whatsoever to keep one out of this moment in time, one is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. RESPONDENT: That is very nice. However, I rejected ideas like innocence, sin and guilt a long time ago. They are mental constructs. The old Zen fogies talk about carrying water, chopping wood, eating when you are hungry, and sleeping when you are tired. That’s your ‘innocence’ in action. RICHARD: You are, of course, entirely free to reject them as being ‘mental constructs’, as it is your life you are living and only you can live the consequences of whatever you do ... or do not do. * RICHARD: As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. RESPONDENT: Now here we have an interesting Christian notion creeping in: all human are already guilty at conception? I am sure that next you will drag in that slut Eve and put the blame on her. RICHARD: This comment shows that you have not ‘rejected ideas like innocence, sin and guilt a long time ago’ as this is a strong reaction. Incidentally, this old fogy merely depresses a lever to obtain instant hot or cold water, watches the automatic heater turn itself up and down, goes to a restaurant when hungry and sleeps on an orthopaedic bed with an electric blanket under a feather-down doona when sleepy. Ain’t technology grand! * RESPONDENT: Richard, dear. I was being sarcastic and/or ironic in regard to your concept of ‘already guilty at conception’. It struck me as an unhelpful kind of concept for one like you. Please explain what you mean. RICHARD: I deliberately used the expressive phrase ‘‘guilty’ at conception’ (and elsewhere ‘Born in Sin’) because I am currently writing to a western audience. When I write to people raised in the eastern tradition I write ‘ignorant at conception’ and ‘Born in Maya’. I do this because I wish to prompt the reader into actually looking at the facts of the human condition. The human condition is characterised by malice and sorrow ... both of which are intrinsic to the self, which comes out of the instinct for survival that humans are born with. One can not become free of anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, spitefulness, vindictiveness and so on, without eliminating sorrow and malice. One eliminates sorrow and malice by extirpating the self ... which is only a psychological/ psychic entity anyway. But as it has its roots in the instincts – which we are born with – its hold upon the body is tenacious, to say the least. Understanding the mechanics of humane and inhumane behaviour can only be efficacious if the source of all distress is located. Hence: ‘‘guilty’ at birth’ (or ‘Born in Maya’). RESPONDENT: As of now I am a vegetarian, if I discard this belief, what would happen? Would I eat meat without guilt? The reason I am vegetarian is that I don’t think I should cause pain and suffering to fellow sentient beings just for a burger. So what would happen to this belief and action if I self-immolated? RICHARD: There are two ways to answer this question about guilt ... and they are contained in what I have already written. Allow me to paraphrase for ease and clarity. Viz.: (1) When ‘I’ am no longer extant there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs. As there is no ‘believer’, there is no ‘I’ to be guilty ... one is then free to not eat meat, or eat meat, as the circumstances permit. It is an act of freedom, based upon purely practical considerations such as the taste bud’s predilection, or the body’s ability to digest the food eaten, or meeting the standards of hygiene necessary for the preservation of decaying flesh, or the availability of sufficient resources on this planet to provide the acreage necessary to support the conversion of vegetation into animal protein. It has nothing whatsoever with the avoidance of ‘pain and suffering to fellow sentient beings’. (2) Whilst ‘I’ am still extant ‘I’ can face the very fact that one is alive means consuming nutrients ... and staying alive means that something, somewhere must die in order to supply these nutrients. This is a fact of life ... and the marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on ... but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. Most people think and feel that choice implies freedom – having the freedom to choose – but this is not the case. Freedom lies in seeing the obvious, and in seeing the obvious there is no choice, no deliberation, no agonising over the ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ judgment. In the freedom of seeing the fact there is only action. If you followed the discussion thoroughly and see for yourself – not merely believing me – the actuality of being alive then your feelings of guilt will be long gone. For all that I am demonstrating is that feeling guilty is born out of holding on to a belief system that is impossible to live ... as all belief systems are. I am not trying to persuade you to eat meat or not eat meat ... I leave it entirely up to you as to what you do regarding what you eat. It is the guilt that is insidious ... feeling guilty is a sure sign that one is being controlled. * RESPONDENT: I don’t know how you wove religion, sages and an afterlife into E-Mail, as they have nothing to do with my views. RICHARD: I beg to differ. You wrote to me about guilt and morals regarding meat eating and non-meat eating. Morals – with their attendant feelings of guilt, condemnation, blame, opprobrium, censure, reproach, reproof, reprehension, shame, disgrace, mortification, humiliation, contrition, ignominy, dishonour, regret, remorse, mortification, embarrassment, abasement, self-consciousness, repentance and so on – have every thing to do with your views. I ‘wove’ (as you so cutely put it) ‘religion, sages and after-life into my reply’ because it is religion – and the Saviour or Messiah, the Avatar or Prophet, the Saint or the Sage – who invented this entire insidious edifice of negative feelings (and if you think that I am making this up or exaggerating, just reflect upon Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene who went about declaiming: ‘Repent ye, for the Kingdom of God is at hand’. As repentance requires that one goes through guilt, regret, remorse and then repentance ... and on to forgiveness and remission of sins, thus enabling one to enter into his After-Life, then I consider that what I wrote was not ‘woven’ in but fundamental to a clear understanding as to why a person would feel guilty about anything at all (eating meat for example). These ‘God-intoxicated’ people invented morals ... and they are all dead and buried ... if they lived at all. The peoples alive today are living – and feeling – the dictates of dead deities. It is utter nonsense, upon sober reflection, to be ruled by the morals of deluded persons who may, or may not have lived, two, three or four thousand years ago! RESPONDENT: When I was seven years old I asked my mother where meat came from. The answer was: animals. I felt guilty after I knew the facts. It was a choice I made, a moral choice. Just as I try not to harm or kill humans so too with animals. So I guess that means you’d kill 5 year old children by the dozen, without guilt, for any reason at all. Of course if you would not eat homemade human hamburgers you’d show a BELIEF that humans are ‘superior’ animals, as I remember the Christians saying for centuries. RICHARD: Where you say: ‘I try not to harm ...’ you give the game away. In actual freedom I do not harm anything or anyone whatsoever. I do not have to ‘try’ not to ... harmlessness is my basic nature. It is all so effortlessly easy. With actual freedom, I am pure innocence personified, for I am literally free from sin and guilt. I am untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. I am utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, has come to its full flowering in me. I am unequivocally able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any striving at all. The pure intent, born out of coupling one’s intrinsic naiveté with the perfection of the infinity of the universe as unveiled in a peak experience, is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon ‘I’ the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. I can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual grace and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. So why do you ‘guess’ that I would kill children and eat them ... and by the dozen, too? I have written about this utter freedom before ... have you forgotten? What are you trying to prove? That it is impossible to rid oneself of sorrow and malice and that one must forever be controlled by the self-whipping feelings of guilt that are intrinsic to that application of the morals laid down by these long-dead deities? Do you, or do you not, wish to live your life happily and harmlessly? In perfect purity and freedom? To live in the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe at this moment in time means not feeling the slightest urge to be eating children by the dozen – or any other bizarre scenario you might feel inspired to invent. Please, put some thought into your responses before firing off an ill-considered broadside like: ‘Homemade human hamburgers’. RESPONDENT No. 3: Realize that and be enlightened. RICHARD: If I may ask? What motivates you to advise me to ‘be enlightened’ ... and, in particular, what will be the result of entering into the ‘Enlightened State’? Does doing so mean an end – an absolute end – to anger and anguish forever? Which means: will I be happy and harmless (free of malice and sorrow) for the remainder of my life? (Richard, List C, No. 3d, 2 May 2000). RESPONDENT: Have you redefined harmless? RICHARD: Not at all ... the word ‘harmless’ means ‘lacking intent to injure, devoid of hurtful qualities, marked by freedom from strife or disorder, innocuous free from guilt; innocent, blameless, faultless, irreproachable, lily-white; safe, non-dangerous, gentle, mild, peaceful, peaceable’. Contrary to popular belief a pacifist is not harmless: it is malice and sorrow that is the problem and a coping-mechanism such as pacifism does not work to ensure peace and harmony. This is because pacifism is an ideal; in an idea of peace people are into altering behavioural patterns (rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic) whereas what I speak of is the elimination of that which causes the aberrant behaviour in the first place. As pacifists and their ilk (those who live the doctrine of non-violence) do not eliminate the source of aberrant behaviour then they have to imitate the effortless ease of an actual freedom from the human condition by making a big splash about their ‘goodie-goodie’ behaviour. Where there is no identity extant there is no malicious ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety (the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it). By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you cannot change human nature – then one is innocent (free from sin and sinning) and thus automatically harmless ... which means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in: one is then free to act or not act, in response to something or someone, as the state of affairs require. Thus, when there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul there is no need for pre-conceived truths or beliefs ... then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: if one were to be devious enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate one’s course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh – which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel – and you would be getting nothing but the platitudes and pap from me that you get from others. As I am harmless (with no malice extant), if someone were to bop me on the nose I am free to bop them back – or not – dependent upon the situation and circumstances. RESPONDENT: Can you guarantee that you would not harm another individual? RICHARD: There is a 100% guarantee of being totally and reliably capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception. An actual freedom enables the ability to always be harmless (free from malice) at any time, at any place, in any situation. The Christians, for just one example, purport to comprehend this salient point: • ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law ... it was said to the people long ago: ‘do not murder, anyone who murders will be subject to judgment’ ... but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment ... be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’. (Matthew 5:17, 21-22, 48). But as even their saviour-hero could not live-up to his own ‘Teachings’ no one has taken much notice of this admonition. But, then again, as their ‘Heavenly Father’ is an angry (yet antidotally loving), vengeful (yet antidotally compassionate) and jealous (yet antidotally forgiving) god, then the ‘Source’ of the ‘Teachings’ is also corrupt ... so who can blame them for being recalcitrant? For it is nobody’s fault ... ‘tis the once-necessary survival instincts that is the root cause. RICHARD: This is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: Only if it is the right kind of freedom. RICHARD: Goodness me ... I long ago abandoned ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because far too many of my fellow human beings have been killed because of what is ‘right’ ... or savagely punished because they were ‘wrong’. It is far better – and much more understandable – to appraise one’s feelings, thoughts and actions as being either ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. It is simply silly to drive on the wrong side of the road, for example, because of the obvious danger to one’s own life and limb and to others ... not ‘wrong’ with all its judgemental condemnations of one’s implicit wickedness and badness. It is sensible to find out why one is driven to perform socially unacceptable acts, for instance, rather than to refrain from committing these deeds because such restraint is the ‘right’ thing to do. Because ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are emotive words loaded with reward and punishment connotations – which is poor motivation for salubrious action anyway – then one has dignity for the first time in one’s life. So, the question is: Is an actual freedom a silly freedom ... or a sensible freedom? It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the psychological and psychic identity within the body struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. This alternate freedom has never before been discovered anywhere in the history of humankind ... the most one could aspire to in order to transcend the ‘human realm’ was the much-touted ‘Divine Realm’, which has always brought bloodshed and suffering in its wake. This is because an imitation innocence was produced by the transformed identity now being humble ... it never was and never will be the genuine article. However, the way is now clear for that most longed for global peace-on-earth to happen. Because it is possible in one human being, the possibility exists for it to be replicated in another ... and another ... and another ... and so on. And the crux of its success is innocence. None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously but wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the Human Condition ... this is the very human nature that is so often said as an excuse: ‘This is just human nature and human nature cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. This ‘instinct for survival’ is an animal necessity to ensure the blind continuation of the species. It served the human animal well until the emergence of the cerebral cortex brain, situated over the top of the primitive animal brain ... the ‘reptilian brain’. This thinking, reflective brain – corrupted by affective feelings – gave rise to a brain pattern known as ‘the mind’. In here the ‘instinct for survival’ becomes the passion-driven ‘will to survive’. Thus the biologically necessary blind instinctual patterns spilled over into the psychological arena ... with disastrous results. For five thousand years or more, human beings have been struggling to overcome the emotion-laden ‘will to survive’ with moralistic injunctions – derived from any Divine Being’ s ‘Teachings’ – to no avail. The ‘Teachings’ were – and are – fatally flawed. Although well-meant, they were abysmally improper. They have led to many appalling absurdities such as institutionalised human sacrifices to numerous gods; exalted martyrdoms for futile ideals; honourable deaths through valour in wars; emotional sufferings whilst contemplating the torments of hells; inspired self-flagellations ... the list goes on and on. The culpability for these preposterous catastrophes must be laid squarely at the feet of those highly revered but sadly deluded Divine Beings. Their futile ‘Teachings’ are but inimical fulminations ... ignorant railings against the neuro-biology of the Human Condition. The time has come, with the world population as large and as cosmopolitan as it is, to discard the passionate and emotional ‘will to survive’ – with all its biologically-based inherited savagery – and move on to a new paradigm. This paradigm I call actualism, which works to disempower the instinctual passions one is encumbered with by blind nature at birth. One can come upon an actual freedom – the third alternative – which is the actuality that delivers the goods so long yearned for: peace-on-earth, as this body, in this life-time. And it delivers it now at this moment in eternal time and here at this place in infinite space, for it is already always here ... now. It is yours for the choosing. * RICHARD: It is a freedom well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only an actual peace but an actual innocence. One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice or sorrow exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent ... innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. RESPONDENT: If one is free from the standard whereby innocence would be defined or understood, the freedom would just be ignorance, wouldn’t it? RICHARD: No, no, no ... to be free from sin and guilt one has free from the ‘sinner’ who has a pernicious existence within this body. That is, ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul is a ‘walk-in’ (if I may use some current jargon) and is corrupting the thoughts and actions of this flesh and blood body. Then there is no need for a standard ‘whereby innocence would be defined’ because one would be innocence personified. RESPONDENT: Freedom from guilt does not necessarily mean compliance with or union with the principles of innocence. RICHARD: Once again, I am not talking about principles ... I am talking about freedom from the state of being wherein principles are a necessity to stop one from carrying out actions that are either personally insalubrious or socially reprehensible. I am not talking about ‘compliance with principles’ ... I am talking about being free of the instinctual urges, impulses and drives that necessitate ‘compliance with principles’. I am talking about a truly remarkable freedom. * RESPONDENT: If I were to kill someone in a fit of anger, should I say to myself ‘darn! ... what a silly thing I just did’? ‘Should I clean up now or later?’ RICHARD: Well, only if you wish to remain a sorrowful and malicious psychological and psychic identity living a parasitical existence inside this flesh and blood body ... busily perpetuating all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. So, tell me: do you consider murder sensible then? RESPONDENT: There were wars that needed to be fought. RICHARD: Actually, the question was ‘do you consider murder sensible’? Do you? RESPONDENT: I consider some wars to be extremely sensible. RICHARD: Goodness me ... you not only think that peace-on-earth is silly but you are now telling me that some wars are sensible! RESPONDENT: Have you ever noticed that is such a thing as a tyrant or dictator? RICHARD: Yes ... when I was but a boy in short pants at state school such people were called ‘bully-boys’. The girls had their own variety called ‘catty-bitches’. RESPONDENT: Do you consider the country fighting in self defence to be equal in causality to the perpetrator that started the whole thing? RICHARD: As a country is nothing but a grouping of peoples complete with the entire software package of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then they are as covertly ‘guilty’ as the bully-boys and catty-bitches are overtly ‘guilty’. RESPONDENT: It is silly to categorise all wars as the same, not sensible. RICHARD: All wars are silly. RESPONDENT: That stand exudes a self righteous ‘above it all’ stand. RICHARD: Not so ... when one is ‘right’ or ‘good’ one is inevitably self-righteous. It is much better to be a sensible person. RESPONDENT: You may be able to reason with the one defending but you will never get anywhere with the tyrannical aggressor. RICHARD: As no country – which is each and every citizen – has rid itself of sorrow and malice then such speculation can only be that ... speculation. I would rather speak from my personal experience. Dealing sensibly with another is infinitely more effective than any self-righteous anger any day. * RESPONDENT: His ‘natural’ or animal state, that you refer to, puts him in a state of conflict, unlike the animals. The animal has anger or fear, kills, fights or runs and returns to rest or goes to sleep in peace. RICHARD: Being born and raised on a farm, and having a life-long interest in animals, I have been able to observe over time that, by and large, animals generally do not rest or sleep ‘in peace’ ... they are constantly on the alert, vigilant, scanning for attack. Some, like ducks for example, ‘sleep’ half of the brain at a time. Apart from bears and the such-like in hibernation (oblivion) it is not very restful being an animal. RESPONDENT: I should have just said that animals have no psychological conflict over their actions. RICHARD: Okay ... this is because animals are not intelligent (they cannot think). Thus they are not aware of their instinctually passionate behaviour ... and, not having a ‘theory of mind’, have no conscious consideration for others (only the blind instinctual passions of provide/ protect and nurture/ nourish operates robotically). RESPONDENT: Many animals will engage in a fight to the death and in a short time be licking their paws in a relaxed manner. RICHARD: Yep ... totally unaware of any consequences of their instinctually passionate behaviour (ignorance is bliss). There are more than a few peoples who ascribe similar ‘ignorance is bliss’ qualities to an infant human (the supposed ‘innocence’ of childhood) with their hoary Tabula Rasa theory. RESPONDENT: The child’s underlying or potential nature has not had time to develop. Until it develops there is a kind of grace period where they are kind of angelic until their parents begin to corrupt them which does not take long at all. Compared to the adults, they are innocent. RICHARD: Uh-huh ... more ‘god-words’, I see (‘grace, ‘angelic’). Shall we move into this or not? Apart from the many, many proper studies done on this very issue, I have personally seen an 11 month infant pinching her sibling maliciously ... which is not ‘angelic’ behaviour by any standard. Similarly, a child’s temper tantrum makes the term ‘grace period’ look either silly or meaningless. And if you are going to compare the human infant to human adults to get some imitation of innocence up and running then you must be referring to their animal behaviour (as already discussed). If you are going to classify animal behaviour as being innocent then you are equating ignorance (not knowing) with the legal definition for culpability (wherein the offender has to know that they are doing wrong in order to be guilty). This is not a court of law ... this is biology. As for ‘angelic until their parents begin to corrupt them which does not take long at all’ ... if you have ever been a parent yourself you will know by direct experience that society requires that you instil values and principles in your children through reward and punishment. Usually, by about the age of seven, your child knows ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ (as is evidenced in an exasperated parent taking the child to task with an oft-repeated ‘you should know better by now’). This implies, under your definition of culpability, that you ‘corrupt’ your children by making them guilty for doing what comes natural (what you called ‘innocent’). It is this simple. RESPONDENT: The imputed appearance of such a one does not mean there is actually a separate person that can have qualities or achieve. RICHARD: There is indeed an actual flesh and blood body ... unless you believe that Eastern mystical twaddle about this world of people, things and events being an illusion. Therefore, if by ‘person’ you mean ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (or any other description) then there is certainly psychological separation. This causes sorrow. Combine this with malice and then we have all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. If you personally do not wish to participate in peace-on-earth, then that is your business ... yet realise, the next time you complain about all the violence you see on TV, that you are as ‘guilty’ as the next person. RESPONDENT No. 19: When we go against what we know in our heart and stomach is the wrong thing to do; when we choose to do it anyway, we will suffer the guilt (some may not). It is certainly not a ‘belief’, as you suggest, that I am the initiator of a wrong or right action. It is a fact. How do I know I know it is a fact? I can only know that by listening to the feelings I get when I do it. It is wrong because it ‘feels’ wrong. It is not just something that I have to be told. This is the essence of right and wrong. Are you suggesting that there is no right and wrong, that right and wrong exist only by judgement brought on by conditioning? Surely not! RICHARD: After all your years of sincere self-investigation are you really going to go on record as saying that feelings are to be relied upon as the final arbiter for living a salubrious and sociable life? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... people have been living according to their feelings for millennia ... just look at the mess the world is in. Calenture is no better than the conditioned judgement you rightly put aside. ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. (Richard, List B, No. 19a, 18 July 1998). RESPONDENT: So is there a suggestion about the ‘absence’ of feelings for a ‘peaceful’ life? What about the Unabomber? I presume the Unabomber had no ‘guilt’. Is the world a mess because of ‘feelings’? Or the non understanding of these ‘feelings’? RICHARD: A partial absence of feelings – guilt, for example – leads to socially reprehensible acts ... like the Unabomber example you give. A sociopath (psychopath) has no feelings of shame or guilt ... and look what they get up to. It is the feelings that lie under the socially-imposed controls that need to be eliminated ... the deep feelings. These are the passions that all sentient beings are born with. It is the ‘being’ – the rudimentary self that arises out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and desire and nurture – that is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. It is through the ending of ‘being’ that one can live freely without either the animosity or anguish that epitomises the sense of identity that infiltrates from the affective faculties into the cognitive ... and needing to be controlled. A conscience is a social identity ... a psychological creation manufactured by society to act as a guardian over the wayward self one was born with. Everyone is born with a biologically coded instinctive drive for personal physical survival which, when one is operating and functioning with a group of people, is potentially a danger to the survival of other group members. Hence the need for moral rules and ethical laws to regulate the conduct of each person ... with appropriate rewards and punishments to ensure compliance. In a well-meant but ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, the social identity – a psychological guardian – is fabricated in an earnest endeavour to prevent the offences from happening in the first place. This ‘guardian’ is programmed with a set of values and charged with the role of acting as a conscience over the wayward self. A conscience is made up of a sure knowledge of what is Right or Wrong and Good or Bad ... as determined by each society. By and large this enterprise has proved to be effective – only a small minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner – but the price for this effectiveness is the lack of the ability to be unique. The lack of uniqueness results in a generalised suffering for all of ‘humanity’. ‘Humanity’ is faced with the invidious choice between curbing aggression and ensuring suffering, or curbing suffering and ensuring aggression ... or so it has been up until now. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to this culturally-imposed social identity ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a rudimentary self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity as is evidenced in a PCE. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. The virtual magnanimity endowed by pure intent obviates the necessity for a social identity, born out of society’s values, to be extant and controlling the wayward self with a societal conscience. Societal values are a psychological method of control. RESPONDENT: The fundamental and most important aspect of a human being, Richard, concerning the overall effects to the mind of mankind – and consequently to mankind as a collectivity – is his ability to overcome fragmentation. All violence and incongruities in our planet are a direct consequence of fragmentation, isn’t it? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Please keep in mind that I have some difficulties with the language. It is the fact that one feels to be an isolated being that brings with it this sense of isolation, insecurity, fear and the following violence. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: If a man keeps an eye on pacifism, the other eye will be focused in his own right for peace. If a man looks at human rights with one eye, the other will be on his own ones obviously. RICHARD: Aye ... but ‘human rights’ are a human construct – an agreement between human beings to conduct themselves in a certain way in relation to other human beings – and are designed to counter the insalubrious effects of the instinctual passions bestowed upon all sentient beings by blind nature via genetic inheritance. A ‘right’ is a legal entitlement ascribed to a person or persons with an equitable or fair claim to the terms of that agreement. A ‘right’ is therefore something ‘given’ by humans to humans – and to a certain extent to other animals – but what is given can be taken away ... at the point of a gun. There are no ‘rights’, in actuality, other than what human beings agree on ... and ‘rights’ have to be enforced at the point of a gun, anyway. Thus, where you say ‘if a man keeps an eye on pacifism, the other eye will be focused in his own right for peace’ the flaw in this argument becomes immediately obvious: nobody actually has any ‘right’ for peace – apart from whatever pseudo-peace others are inclined to grant – so long as they nurse malice (and sorrow) to their bosom. To adopt a policy of pacifism – to take a vow of non-violence – is to be superficially altering outward behavioural patterns in that one only resolves to abstain from using physical force. And the resolve is traditionally augmented by covering up one’s malice (and sorrow) with the antidotal love and compassion ... which depend upon malice and sorrow for their fuel. It is malice (and sorrow), not physical force, that is the source of the problem of aggressive behaviour ... ‘non-violence’ is nothing but a salve to a conscience that is secretly aware that one is as covertly guilty of malice (and sorrow) as one’s aggressive assailant is overtly guilty of malice (and sorrow). When the cause of malice (and sorrow) is eliminated, then the already always existing peace-on-earth becomes apparent ... and it far exceeds any pseudo-peace obtained with a hypocritical vow and/or policy of pacifism (non-violence). RESPONDENT: Integrity, non-fragmentation, is a ‘quality’ (sorry) that agglutinates all possible good qualities for mankind, according to natural intelligence. RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘good qualities’ only exist to counter the ‘bad qualities’. When the source of malice and sorrow is eliminated, the ‘good’ vanishes along with the ‘bad’ ... then there is a freed intelligence. A ‘natural intelligence’ is an intelligence hindered by the instinctual passions, like fear and aggression and nurture and desire, and will seek to heighten the tender feelings so as to diminish the savage feelings. RESPONDENT: When you say: ‘Incidentally, the ‘innocent’ do not suffer ... innocence is something totally new to human experience’, I wonder. RICHARD: I am, of course, using ‘innocence’ in its ‘free from sin or guilt; untouched by evil’ dictionary meaning ... as in a complete absence of malice and sorrow. Being void of malice and sorrow means no suffering is possible ... ‘the innocent’ cannot and do not suffer, ever. To be incapable of suffering is a blessing. RESPONDENT: Would it be because the innocent do not resist death or anything else they may meet in the course of life? Does lack of resistance mean no suffering? RICHARD: A person nursing malice and sorrow to their bosom may very well ‘not resist death or anything else’ until they are blue in the face and never, ever come across innocence. Quite the obverse, in fact: their ‘lack of resistance’ actively perpetuates suffering. RESPONDENT: Perhaps the acceptance of death is the key for the true appreciation of life. Without including (enclosing) death we miss the essence of life. RICHARD: All peoples I have spoken with at length deep down resent being here (‘I didn’t ask to be born’) and one cannot embrace death until one first appreciates the marvel of being alive. I would be particularly inclined to examine your sentence ‘... one could, of course, ask God why he has arranged things in this blatantly unfair way’ in this respect (with a view to locating the basic resentment). Indignation (a feeling associated with unfairness) is usually an indication of resentment, for example. RESPONDENT: One other point. I hadn’t equated ‘the glorification of sorrow’ (your term) with ‘comforting the self’. But in a new book by Sunanda Patwarden about her life with the k factor, she stresses how insistent he was on the subject of psychological hurt as the centre of the self. And thus ‘the perpetuation of suffering’ that you point to above. RICHARD: Yes, this is what I mean by the term ‘nursing malice and sorrow to one’s bosom’ ... which brings me back to your central point where each and every person, who continues to do nothing about their ‘pathology’ , thus rightfully earns the full fruits of their culpability. I am specifically interested in exploring: ‘furthermore, hasn’t he [God] hidden the miracle of love in the deepest sorrow?’ for therein lies the key to understanding both the origin of the glorification of sorrow and the perpetuation of suffering. RICHARD: (...). Yet innocence as a liveable actuality – an actual innocence (not the pseudo-innocence of those ‘State of Grace’ and ‘Blank Slate’ fabulations) in other words – is entirely new to human experience/ human history. [...]. Not surprisingly, the word innocent (as in, ‘harmless’, ‘innoxious’; ‘sinless’, ‘guiltless’; ‘artless’, ‘naive’; ‘simple’, &c.) stems from the same root as the word nocent (as in, ‘harmful’, ‘hurtful’, ‘injurious’; ‘guilty’, ‘criminal’, &c.) does ... namely: the Latin nocēns, nocent-, pres. part. of nocēre, ‘to harm’, ‘hurt’, ‘injure’, with the privative ‘in-’ affixed as a prefix (i.e., in- + nocent). Viz.: • innocent (in′ȱ-sënt), a. and n. [‹ ME. innocent, innosent, ‹ OF. (also F.) innocent = It. innocente, ‹ L. innocen(t-)s, harmless, blameless, upright, disinterested, ‹ in- priv. + nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt: see nocent]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • nocent (nō′sënt), a. and n. [‹ L. nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt, injure]. I. a. 1. hurtful; mischievous; injurious; doing hurt: as, ‘nocent qualities’. 2. guilty; criminal; nocently (adv.): in a nocent manner; hurtfully; injuriously [rare]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). JONATHAN: We had a useful theological and semantic discussion ... RICHARD: The semantic part of the discussion pertained to you saying the opposite of pride was embarrassment (see Srid’s Report) – whereupon I pointed out that being humble (aka humility) is the more usual antonym – but given that humiliation and embarrassment are more or less synonymous it required what you characterise as a theological discussion to tease out differing connotations ... to wit: the difference betwixt shame and guilt. As a broad generalisation the feeling of shame (as in ignominy, disgrace, mortification, &c.) is more a public affair than private – whereas the feeling of guilt is more a private matter than public – and features mostly in eastern cultures (quite prominently, for instance, in China and Japan) rather than in western cultures where the feeling of guilt, being private, is conducive to the west’s emphasis on individuality over familiality (i.e., ‘the quality of being familial’ where familial means ‘of or relating to family’) ... which is particularly obvious in Christian-based societies such as inhabit what is known as the Anglosphere. JONATHAN: ... but it his [Richard’s] point about patting yourself on the back which is most pertinent here. RICHARD: The following is a quote which will serve to illustrate just what it is you are referring to. Viz.: • [Co-Respondent]: I can’t thank you enough for reiterating how to use HAIETMOBA?. I have read it fifty times, but this time it clicked. There is something to watch out for, which is the feeling of upset. I am just used to living with my upsetting feelings by ignoring them or repressing them, because I shouldn’t get upset ... you know? ... it’s not right to be upset, etc. So to go looking for the incident like you suggest wasn’t working because ... I’m always upset! due to repressing or analysing why I shouldn’t have the bad feeling. I mean, where would I start? When I saw this about myself I was happy and from there I was able to locate an upsetting incident that day. • [Richard]: Good ... and once one gets the knack of it (it does take diligence and application and patience and perseverance in the beginning) it all becomes such fun to find out, each moment again, how one ticks. One thing I did, way back when I started doing that method, was to make sure I would never, ever, tell myself off for slipping back into the old ways – after all ‘I am only human’ and it is bound to happen from time-to-time – and instead I would pat myself on the back for being astute enough to notice that I had slipped back and thus get on with the business of being happy and harmless again ... and feeling good about myself for being able to do so. It is important to be friends with oneself – only I get to live with myself twenty four hours of the day (other people can and do move away) – and if I am at war with myself, disciplining myself, telling myself off, I am alienating the only person who can truly help me in all this. In short: be nice to yourself, not nasty ... there are already enough people doing that anyway. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 11 October 2003). JONATHAN: He [Richard] said that feeling beings inner dialogue is quite self-critical. RICHARD: The following is a quote which will serve to illustrate just what it is you are referring to. Viz.: • [Rick]: I feel more at ease with life, yes. • [Richard]: I have just now re-read our only other exchange (five months ago) wherein, regarding the application of the actualism method, you reported [quote] ‘it’s having some success in that it’s helping me cope’ [endquote] and what immediately springs to mind is that [quote] ‘feeling more at ease with life’ [endquote] is streets ahead of merely being helped to cope. And I am not just ‘talking you up’ as experience has shown that, while peoples are quite ready to self-criticise and bemoan their fate, they are less likely to as readily self-congratulate and applaud their progression out of same. Try patting yourself on the back for each and every success ... as a boost to confidence a well-deserved accolade is a tonic like no other. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Rick, 30 September 2005). The following (quite lengthy) quote is particularly informative vis-a-vis both this and related issues. Viz.: R: Do you see that you do not need to [mentally go back over an item again and again]? Catch yourself doing it: ‘Why am I going through it again. I already know this.’ This is also fun. To watch how your thought process works. Q: And notice how often you put yourself down. R: Tell yourself off. Q(1): For thinking it! R: One discovers that the way one tells oneself off; if one were to talk to another person like that – a friend – one would not have any friends left. You have to live with yourself twenty four hours a day; if you are talking to yourself in such a way that you are not a good friend to yourself, then what are you doing? If I were to talk like that to you, be sharp with you, you would have nothing to do with me. Are you not sharp upon yourself? Q(1): I am very sharp upon myself. R: It is a good thing to become friends with yourself, to decide not to tell yourself off any more: ‘Okay, I will make mistakes from time to time, because I am still human, but if I ‘goof-up’ I will not exacerbate the situation by imposing a condemnation upon myself.’ One always has another chance, another moment in which to do better, to make it work this time. It is always a quick thought, a swift reproach: ‘Oh, you fool!’ or ‘You shouldn’t do that!’ or ‘How stupid!’ Q: Or you’re not good enough: ‘You should know better than that!’ R: It is good to cease doing that because only you live with yourself for the twenty four hours of the day. Everybody else comes and goes, but you remain, ever constant ... for the rest of your life. I can not stress enough how important it is for you to be your own best friend. For then you get to know yourself – you are no longer against yourself. You can discover things about your own make-up: ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting’ or ‘I like that one’ or ‘I didn’t know I was carrying that’ or ‘I’m glad that one is out of the way’. Sometimes, of course, something can come back, three days, three weeks or three months later: ‘Goodness me, I thought I had eliminated that one’. See how vital it is that you are your own best ‘buddy’? You say: ‘Well, I thought I had dealt with that but never mind, I have another moment here, another chance’. This way you work with yourself, instead of in opposition. It is very important. And it is such good fun! Then, everything you do in your daily life, moment to moment, is taking advantage of multiple opportunities. Every moment again is an occasion to improve your lot ... when you are interacting with someone, either face to face or on the telephone ... or a back-ache: ‘Oh god, how terrible!’ ... another opportunity. It is bad enough to feel pain, why make it worse by adding an emotional suffering like ‘I feel terrible’? To feel terrible, emotionally, on top of the physical pain is simply silly when it is possible to disentangle oneself, emotionally, and still feel good about being alive, about being here. This is being sensible, is it not? To feel good, if not happy, all the time? Q: And top of that: ‘I deserve it, too’. You know, god punishes immediately! ‘It’s my own fault’ or ‘I shouldn’t have done that’. Q(2): Or conformity: ‘If everyone else suffers, why shouldn’t I too?’ R: This is a lot easier than that new-age one about not being judgemental. ‘I shouldn’t be judgemental!’ or ‘I’m always evaluating, judging everything and everyone’. This is a much more gentle way of being with oneself. Be kind to yourself – one needs all the help one can get and who is the best person to help you if not you yourself? Who else is going to do it? Only you can live your life, nobody else can do the living of it for you. It is really good to become friendly with yourself, to get to know yourself, to enjoy yourself ... and for goodness sake, stop berating yourself! About being judgemental: It is only a belief – a New-age belief resurrected from the old scriptural injunction: ‘Judge not that ye be judged thyself’. What is wrong with appraising a situation or person or an event? One can not live without evaluating, so the injunction merely makes one feel guilty. Nobody lives according to it anyway – it is an unliveable bit of nonsensical doctrine that frankly does not make sense. Q(1): It’s funny about how I handle this judging business ... what follows is that I can’t do it in any practical way. R: It is a re-run of that hoary one of being tolerant ... another New-age belief is: ‘Be accepting’. What balderdash! Does anyone accept a murderer? A rapist? A pederast? A traitor? A thief? Nobody does these things, they simply mouth regurgitated pap and fondly think themselves to be wise and righteous people. These commandments just have not worked – they have had thousands of years to demonstrate their efficacy at producing peace on earth and they have failed miserably. Most of the New-age stuff is a re-hash of the old ‘tried and true’, which is, actually, ‘the tried and failed’. Q: When someone tells you not to be judgemental, they actually mean: ‘Your opinion doesn’t count’. Their own opinion is, of course, valid – but you are not to question it. It is a clever way of gagging you. R: One woman accused me, years ago, of being judgemental. I said: ‘Of course I am, I do not hold that belief.’ I am neither a New-age aficionado nor a Christian so I can be as judgemental as all get-out ... not that I use the word, personally. Try ‘appraisal’; that will get you away from the moralistic overtones. One does an appraisal of a person, a thing or an event: ‘That’s useful; that’s not. That is silly; that is sensible’. Of course one does this. How on earth can one conduct one’s affairs without appraising, without reviewing, in some way? It is helpful to rid oneself of the concept of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ and utilise ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’. You will be a lot better off. For example: It is silly to be unhappy, it is sensible to be happy. Q(1): It’s using the same word for ‘Good and Bad’ and ‘Right and Wrong’. R: Not at all. It is not moralistic; it is about the workability of something, the usefulness of whatever it is. I am talking about a very practical thing: It is sensible to be happy; it is silly to be unhappy. It is silly to feel rotten; it is sensible to feel well. You see, it is not self-righteous at all – it is a matter-of fact appraisal. Q(1): No, I wouldn’t use moralistic for that – about being happy. R: Nor for anything. Please, do not use ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ as a substitute for moralistic values ... that would defeat the purpose. It is a practical, everyday, common-sense thing: ‘How am I feeling at this moment?’ or ‘Am I feeling good?’ or ‘Am I feeling bad?’ ... ‘Oh that’s silly, I’ll do something about myself until I feel good’. Simply, it is sensible to feel good. This is my moment of being alive – I am not alive five minutes ago, nor am I alive five minutes ahead. This is my only moment of being here. How am I experiencing this moment? If I am not experiencing it well now, when will I? It will be a ‘now’ moment when I do, so why not make this ‘now’ moment ... this one that is happening right now. Why waste it by feeling rotten? Why not enjoy it? It works! I am not merely talking theory, this is what I did back in ‘81. I have not missed a moment for sixteen years ... it is always this moment. What a misspent life, to waste each moment waiting for a future happiness ... to sit around feeling rotten, berating oneself, feeling guilty, and so on. (Audiotaped Dialogues, Silly or Sensible) JONATHAN: So it is a very good idea to pat yourself on the back whenever it will promote felicity or get you feeling excellent so you can move on to wide eyed wonder. RICHARD: No, what is a very good idea (to use your phrasing) is to pat yourself on the back whenever you succeed in finding out just what it is which is preventing this moment of being alive – the only moment you are ever actually alive – from being lived at its optimum. In doing so you get to find out how you operate and function (just what it is that makes you ‘tick’ as it were) each moment again. JONATHAN: So if you are a salesman and just made a big sale, pat yourself on the back with the aim of increasing your current happiness so you can on move to feeling excellent and then to wide eyed wonder. RICHARD: No, I neither said that nor anything of that nature (I am clearly talking of success, no matter how slight it may be, regarding consciousness and not in regards to materialistic success). RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one. 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