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Richard’s Correspondence On The Actual Freedom Mailing List with Correspondent No. 46
RESPONDENT: Douglass Harding, Byron Katie, Maximillian Sandor, bunches of folks in the ex-scientology camp (put ‘freezone’ into your search engine) are all, in their various ways, about using INSIGHT to deconstruct to iron grip of ego-self without getting caught up in the big SELF spiritualist experience of Ramana Maharshi, Bernadette Roberts, et al. RICHARD: The following quotes may very well throw some light upon the matter:
RESPONDENT: Douglass Harding, Byron Katie, Maximillian Sandor, bunches of folks in the ex-scientology camp (put ‘freezone’ into your search engine) are all, in their various ways, about using INSIGHT to deconstruct to iron grip of ego-self without getting caught up in the big SELF spiritualist experience of Ramana Maharshi, Bernadette Roberts, et al. RICHARD: The following quotes may very well throw some light upon the matter: (snip quotes from Mr. Douglas Harding [Finding The Self], Ms. Byron Katie [God With God], Mr. Maximilian Sandor [Alienation/Integration Of The Being], and Free Zone [The Beingness-By-Itself] for reasons of space). RESPONDENT: You’re a bit of a researcher ... so good on ya! RICHARD: All I did was provide some referenced quotes which, for anyone with access to an internet search engine and ten minutes or so to spare, can easily be found ... for example:
If doing the above, and similar for the other three quotes, constitutes being ‘a bit of a researcher’ in your eyes – and somehow deserving of a ‘good on ya!’ commendation – then all I can say is that the Dean of Students at ‘The New Mexico Institute for Buddhist Studies’, an American institution of religious learning to provide an accessible means of providing a foundation in Pure Land Buddhism, is all-too-easily pleased ... seeing that you are using his e-mail address perhaps you could draw his attention to the following? Vis.:
I, for one, can easily see the words ‘their Higher Self’ and ‘who they really are’ and ‘eternal life’ in amongst that lot (add another 59.00 seconds). RESPONDENT: I like your commitment to investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS. RICHARD: It is one thing to like another’s commitment to ‘investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’ ... and another thing entirely to emulate same. In other words the commitment made by the identity parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago, a total dedication to global peace and harmony, took just under 12 years to bring about an actual freedom from the human condition ... and what do you have to show after 30+ years? Vis.:
It would appear that deconstructionism has not delivered/does not deliver the goods in this lifetime ... but, then again, Amida Buddhism has it that enlightenment is much more accessible in the Pure Land – the ‘Amida Heaven’ as it were – provided one gets there after physical death, that is, and does not become side-tracked into contemplating the distinct possibility of living the pristine perfection of the peerless purity of such a mundane thing as peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, and thus court descent into one of the many Buddhist hells. Golly ... with the fate of one’s eternal life (aka eternal soul) at stake one will probably construct a wide range of facile RESPONDENT: So ... I’m with you. RICHARD: If only you were ... for example:
I, for one, can easily see the words ‘our true self’ in amongst that lot (add another 71.00 seconds). RESPONDENT: We can toss ALL these folks on the ancient spiritualist bone pile and keep moving on. RICHARD: If only you would ... it is so easy to say ‘ALL those folks’ whilst simultaneously excluding one’s own spiritual guide, eh? RESPONDENT: Now that we’re talking (more or less) I invite you to deal DIRECTLY with the heartwood of my questions ... as articulated in my last post to Respondent No. 59, et al. That’s a good place to shed some light, if indeed light is to be shed. RICHARD: If I may point out? I am already doing just that ... I provided four quotes (plus two more in this e-mail) which make it patently clear that your ‘some places to look’ are, quite simply, nothing other than more of the same-old same-old tried and failed spiritual solution to all the ills of humankind. Vis.:
As for your claim, that I have not yet made ‘an exhaustive investigation of all the other places’ an actual freedom from the human condition ‘might’ have been happening up until now, this may be an apposite moment to explain that, even though I have talked with many and varied peoples from all walks of life (I have both travelled the country and overseas), and watched television, videos, films (whatever media is available), plus read about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers (and latterly on the internet), for more than two decades so as to find somebody else actually free from the human condition, but to no avail, I do not rely upon that kind of verification to be able to know that an actual freedom is something entirely new to human experience. In 1985 I had the first of many experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment (as described in ‘A Brief Personal History’ on my part of The Actual Freedom Trust web site) and it had the character of the ‘Great Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being ‘That’ which is attained to at physical death when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’ ... which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism). Thus I knew even before becoming actually free that this condition was entirely new to human experience while still alive ... furthermore, in the ensuing years, as I proceeded to penetrate deeper and deeper into the state of being known as spiritual enlightenment, the psychic footprints, as it were, of those who had explored some of the further reaches of ‘Being’ itself gradually became less and less in number and finally petered out altogether leaving only virgin territory wherever the (psychic) eye would look. I was truly on my own ... no one had ventured into this terrain before.
RICHARD: If doing the above [providing a referenced quote which, for anyone with access to an internet search engine and two or three minutes to spare, can easily be found], and similar for the other three quotes, constitutes being ‘a bit of a researcher’ in your eyes – and somehow deserving of a ‘good on ya!’ commendation – then all I can say is that the Dean of Students at ‘The New Mexico Institute for Buddhist Studies’, an American institution of religious learning to provide an accessible means of providing a foundation in Pure Land Buddhism, is all-too-easily pleased ... seeing that you are using his e-mail address perhaps you could draw his attention to the following? Vis.: (snip quote from the New Mexico Institute for Buddhist Studies containing the words ‘their Higher Self’ and ‘who they really are’ and ‘eternal life’). RESPONDENT: You might have missed my introductory salutation to the group. RICHARD: No, not at all ... I read it as soon as it came into my mail-box, and again after having copy-pasted it into a long document in my word processor, where it sits in its sequence with all the other posts you have written so as to be able to read what you write next in context, prior to responding, when I refresh my memory by re-reading what you previously had to say. Just as I have done with this e-mail. RESPONDENT: So here it is again: [quote] ‘I’d like to introduce myself to this list. I’m intrigued by what I am reading on the AF site. Without going into a lot of boring details, I’ve been on the path for 30+ years. It has led into and out of several variants of what I am coming to see is a common ‘spiritualism’, whether eastern or western. Suffice it to say that it has not produced the results of being either happy or harmless in my own life ... not just yet, at any rate. I am open to the idea that perhaps Richard has uncovered an entirely new way of looking at things and doing things in this so-called ‘Third Alternative’. Naturally, I do have some questions I’d like to ask about it’. [endquote]. Now I don’t mind the least little bit that you have taken the time and the bother to do a write up on Pure Land Buddhism ... RICHARD: Oh, it was no bother at all – and it hardly took any time as, having some familiarity with it already, no research was required – because I enjoy discussing the many and varied ways my fellow human beings have attempted to make sense of what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Thus it never occurred to me that you would not mind thinking that you had caused me to do what you thought I did (having ‘taken the time and the bother to do a write up on Pure Land Buddhism’ that is) ... let alone the least little bit of minding. RESPONDENT: ... which has been the admittedly spiritualist path that I have settled into. I have made no bones about saying that this had been the best I was able to come up with so far ... RICHARD: Sure ... I read that the first time you said it: the whole point of doing a brief resumé of Pure Land Buddhism was to have it established in plain words that (a) it was the particular variant of Buddhism you were speaking of ... and (b) that it too was nothing other than the same-old same-old tried and failed spiritual solution to all the ills of humankind ... and (c) its teachings being the context for where an adherent of its tenets is coming from, currently at, and (supposedly) going to. In short: I was addressing the ‘heartwood’ of your questions, as invited, whilst simultaneously situating it in its contextual background for clarity. RESPONDENT: ... and that I was looking very seriously about the claims and statements being made about AF by you, Mr. Peter and Ms. Vineeto ... with (read carefully here) an open mind, suspending both belief and disbelief. RICHARD: If I may point out? I always ‘read carefully’ what my fellow human being considers important enough to share with me (as evidenced by my responses being direct and relevant to the point under discussion) ... the question is: do you? RESPONDENT: That suspension includes (read carefully here again) suspending belief and disbelief in spiritualism in general, and Pure Land Buddhism in particular. I am perfectly capable of doing that ... of looking at this topic sans calenture of any kind ... based on my own background experience of having PCE’s. RICHARD: Ahh ... here is the nub of the issue: if, as you say, you are looking at this topic (of whether or not actualism is indeed the third alternative to materialism and spiritualism) based on your own background experience of having pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) then where does the necessity to have ‘an open mind’ on top of such direct experience come from? More to the point: the PCE, being self-evidentiary, does away with the intellectual approach of suspending ‘both belief and disbelief’ (which is why I stress its importance in the actualism practice). RESPONDENT: In fact, just so you and all see the open hand I am entering this conversation with, I wrote the head of the organization I am affiliated with, letting him know that I was undertaking just such an investigation. Here’s the text of my note to him, which will perhaps relieve you of the burden of your judgements of me and my motives. RICHARD: Just for the record: it is no ‘burden’ for me to make judgements as to where the other is coming from, currently at, or going to (each and every person already has a background, a frame of reference, an agenda, when they first come across actualism) when they discuss life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being, as the very character of what is actual brings what is not out into the open sooner or later ... the challenge is to have that occur sooner rather than later as I like my fellow human being and would rather their self-induced suffering cease as soon as possible. For example:
I have been thoroughly enjoying this challenge for many years now ... and the secret to success in making such judgements lies in not taking them to be anything other than a current appraisal in the first place. Vis.:
Put succinctly: I am having so much fun here at the keyboard. RESPONDENT: [Here’s the text of my note to him]: ‘I have been spending a good deal of time lately musing on the past 30+ years of my life. In particular, I have been challenged to take inventory of myself and my path because of the writings of some folks who speak of a ‘Third Alternative’, different than either the mundane realism of those who don’t know and don’t care, and the various forms of Spiritualism, eastern, western and ‘new age’ that I have looked into in search of answers to the fundamental questions of life itself. At this point I am wondering if all I have done, and taught others as well (including my own children) is a well meaning mistake. As I look around, it seems to me that clearly our spiritualist directions haven’t fulfilled the mandate of bringing a state of being happy nor harmless to self or to others. That’s not a moral judgment, but rather a clinical one. Here’s an excerpt of some of the material I’ve been reading and digesting. I’m not sure where I am going with this ... but I am open to what is being said. At the same time, I don’t want to disturb any of my other friends, in case this is a blind alley or a cul-de-sac. I can give you a call some time to discuss, if you’d like. My intent isn’t to convince you (or anyone else) of anything, but merely to share with you, as a friend, what is rumbling around inside my skull right now. Best as ever ... [endquote]. So we can, in good faith for the purposes of this exploration, throw Amida Buddhism (Pure Land Buddhism) on the bone pile with Ram Tzu, et al. No need to get distracted by deconstructing this further ... though of course you are free to do whatever you please. RICHARD: Where do you gain the notion that I ‘get distracted’ ... or that I am into ‘deconstructing’ spiritualism for that matter? I did not go about ‘deconstructing’ spiritualism ... I lived it, night and day for eleven years, and *experientially* found it wanting. Be that as it may ... seeing that deconstructionism is your modus operandi (you have used the word ‘deconstruct’ in one form or another 33 times in your e-mails thus far and are advising others to do the same) it may be pertinent to point out that this is the second time you have sought to deflect somebody else from applying your method. Vis.:
And now:
All I did was to address the ‘heartwood’ of your questions as invited ... you claimed that Mr. Douglas Harding, Ms. Byron Katie, Mr. Maximilian Sandor, and bunches of folks in the ex-scientology camp (The Free Zone) were some places to look to see where an actual freedom from the human condition was already happening because Richard had not yet made an exhaustive investigation of all the other places it might have been happening up until now. In other words I provided four quotes in my first response, and two more in my second, which make it patently clear that your claims of where what I have discovered is already happening are, quite simply, nothing other than more of the same-old same-old tried and failed spiritual solution to all the ills of humankind ... yet now you protest that you have said right from the beginning (quoting part of your initial e-mail and now a private e-mail to the head of the organisation you are affiliated with) that you have suspended both belief and disbelief and have an open mind. Where is the evidence of this in your actions (actions such as having others go on a wild goose chase through spiritualist writings)? RESPONDENT: I have already conceded (from the moment I arrived here) that in the context of actualist taxonomy, every path I have ever trodden personally would be described as a spiritualist one ... including Amidism. RICHARD: Why do you add the qualifier ‘in the context of actualist taxonomy’ when it is well-known, for example, that Buddhism is spiritual and that Buddhists are spiritualists? I neither invented the words spiritual/spiritualist nor placed Buddhism/Buddhists, for example, in those classifications as they already existed/were classified long before I was born ... but, apart from that, whilst you may now say that you have already conceded, from the moment you arrived here on this mailing list, that every path you have ever trodden personally would be described as a spiritual one your very first words were that those paths were what you are ‘coming to see’ as being spiritual paths. Vis.:
How is doing a rewrite of history going to aid understanding? RESPONDENT: Having dispensed with all that ... RICHARD: And thus, after a digression through a topic which has nothing to do with the subject to hand, with a dismissive sweep of the pen my entire response to the ‘heartwood’ of your questions has been dispensed with (synonyms: done away with, got rid of, disposed of, brought to an end) ... and all without even an acknowledgement that you have been unable to provide any instance where an actual freedom from the human condition was already happening because Richard has not yet made an exhaustive investigation of all the other places it might have been happening up until now. Do you see how easy it is to make an (intellectual) allegation yet how difficult it is to substantiate it? Speaking personally, I have talked with many and varied peoples from all walks of life (I have both travelled the country and overseas), and watched television, videos, films (whatever media is available), plus read about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers (and latterly on the internet), for more than two decades, to find somebody else actually free from the human condition, but to no avail ... obviously I have not done a door-to-door survey of every man, woman and child currently alive, or perused all the records of every man, woman and child that has ever lived, yet with the advent of mass communication, the accessibility of information on an unprecedented scale, such a course of action is hardly necessary (which is just as well as it is impossible to personally verify absolutely everything and everyone). Howsoever, if you can demonstrably show where another human being has been, or currently is, actually free I would be most chuffed as we could compare notes, as it were, and thus advance human knowledge even further. RESPONDENT: I invite you (yet again) to deal with the heartwood of my questions ... as you can read in my email to Respondent No. 59 entitled ‘Conversations Continuing’. RICHARD: If I may point out (yet again)? I am already doing just that – I provided four quotes in my first response and two more in my second which make it patently clear that your ‘some places to look’ are, quite simply, nothing other than more of the same-old same-old tried and failed spiritual solution to all the ills of humankind (plus I added an apposite explanation as to how I know, irregardless of any face-to-face or media research, that an actual freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human experience) – yet you choose to ignore/dismiss my response, by dispensing with it through a side-tracking trail of protestations about having already suspended both belief and disbelief and thus being already open, along with associated comments about imagined bothers and burdens all this is for me, only to invite me (yet again) to ‘deal with the heartwood’ of your questions as if I were not already doing so. Which is why I asked (further above) if you ‘read carefully’ what your fellow human being considers important enough to share with you. Vis.:
Nowhere in this e-mail do you even acknowledge, let alone make a response to, what I have to report/have to say, by way of description/ explanation, on this matter. * RESPONDENT: I’ll be reviewing and expanding upon my questions in my next email ... RICHARD: As a suggestion only: why not stick with the ‘heartwood’ of your questions – instead of ‘expanding’ upon them – and review what your co-respondents have to say (as well as reviewing your own contributions of course)? Surely you would find it far more fruitful than constructing yet more facile intellectualisms (see below) so as to have something to deconstruct? RESPONDENT: ... [in my next email] back to Respondent No. 27, who has struck me as yet another person on this list (and I am seeing more and more of such folks as this conversation unfolds) who are willing to play the Diogenes Game even before the Actualist Game: in other words, regardless of our points of agreement or contention, wanting to have integrity at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the discussion ... being entirely unwilling to allow calenture and feverish defensiveness of any kind to carry the day as we examine together what is ‘on offer’. RICHARD: Just so there is no misunderstanding here is how you have described what you are now calling ‘the Diogenes Game’ in an earlier e-mail:
Tradition ascribes to Mr. Diogenes (a Greek Cynic philosopher circa 400-325 BCE) the famous search for an honest man conducted in broad daylight with a lighted lantern. As he wound up espousing an anarchist utopia, in which human beings lived ‘natural’ lives, it is a fair bet to say that he was not an honest man himself. So as to keep with the analogy I would make the observation that your paragraph (above), as a generalisation, epitomises both the style and content of your posts to this mailing list ... in that it encapsulates the nature of the ‘lighted lantern’ you are carrying which makes it well-nigh impossible to see what you say you are searching for. To be more specific: you are inclined towards a certain liberality of assumptive phraseology which makes it difficult to detect any sincerity in your words ... such as the ‘being entirely unwilling to allow calenture and feverish defensiveness of any kind to carry the day’ phraseology above, for instance, as I have not been reticent about having been closely examined, over a three-year period by both an accredited psychiatrist and psychologist, and found to be having the following symptoms:
If you can satisfactorily explain how a person sans the affective faculty (the emotional/ passional/ calentural faculty), and thus its epiphenomenal imaginative/ psychic facility, could possibly ‘allow’ something which does not exist – calentures (furious deliriums) and feverish defensiveness (excited ‘self’-protectiveness) – to happen, let alone be ‘entirely unwilling’ to allow those non-existent affective/ psychic reactions to happen, I will be most surprised ... so much so that at this point I would suggest taking pause and reflecting upon your modus operandi. ‘Tis only a suggestion, mind you. * RESPONDENT: I close with this, Richard, for your particular benefit: [Respondent]: ‘I like your commitment to investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’. [Richard]: ‘It is one thing to like another’s commitment to ‘investigation, empiricism, pragmatism, ACTUAL FACTS’ ... and another thing entirely to emulate same’. [endquotes]. Have no fear about my emulating your commitment. RICHARD: If you had not snipped what immediately followed you would see that it is not my commitment at all I am speaking of:
I have no such commitment – and I did nothing at all as I have been here all along just having a ball – because the necessary altruism is, just as selfism is, a core feature of the passionate identity within ... and not the flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: I will do no such thing. RICHARD: Suit yourself ... it is your life you are living, when all is said and done, and only you get to reap the rewards, or pay the consequences, of any action or inaction you may or may not do. All I can do is offer suggestions ... what the other does with these suggestions is entirely up to them, of course. RESPONDENT: I have my OWN commitment to integrity in this investigation, that depends not a whit upon yours. RICHARD: If I may suggest? Sincerity is the key to unlock one’s innate naiveté, the nourishing of which is essential if the wondrous magic of life itself is to be apparent, which naiveté effortlessly provides the ‘integrity’ you say you have your own commitment to. Speaking of which ... did you not notice that I said the commitment was a ‘total dedication to global peace and harmony’ (and not the ‘commitment to integrity’ you make it out to be)? Just curious. RESPONDENT: If, as time unfolds, your commitment, or anyone else’s should appear less that 100% ... RICHARD: Again (and put differently for emphasis) my commitment is 0.00%. RESPONDENT: ... my commitment to doing this investigation with integrity will be unaffected. RICHARD: So be it ... you stay with your commitment to ‘doing this investigation with integrity’ then, and let other people, who have twigged to the fact that naïveté is the closest that one can come to innocence (which is where integrity lies) whilst remaining a ‘self’, proceed on their way so that the results of your experiment can be assessed for viability against this salient bench mark. I might add, though, that naïveté does away with all that ‘heavy lifting’ you spoke of in an earlier e-mail. Vis.:
Where you have gleaned this diaphoretic impression from has got me stumped ... here is but one of the many ways I describe the actualism practice:
Or even more specifically to the point of your ‘heavy lifting’ comment:
In short: if it be not either easy (effortless) or fun (enjoyable) then there is something to look at until it is again. * RESPONDENT: And ... at the end of the day (week, month, year), if I have concluded that indeed there is something radically different and radically worthwhile going on here (i.e. a legitimate 3rd alternative able to at long last deliver the goods ... i.e. AF), I will have no trouble, I assure you, in permanently re-adjusting my cognitive maps and models as you, Mr. Peter and Ms. Vineeto have done, regardless of my ultimate judgement of any of the PROMOTERS and their integrity at any given moment. RICHARD: I wonder why you do not see how you undo your claim to have, not only a background of PCE’s but having had one just recently, when you make comments such as above. For example:
And:
Yet you say now that, at the end of the day, week, month, or year, if you have concluded that indeed there is something radically different and radically worthwhile going on here (that is, a legitimate third alternative, an actual freedom, able to at long last deliver the goods) you will have no trouble, you assure me, in permanently readjusting your cognitive maps and models. Do you see why I look askance at the other things you have to say? Things like this for instance:
As it is the PCE which convinces – and not any claims I make as my words are designed to precipitate a PCE in the reader (whereupon they can then experience perfection for themselves) so as to not have them believe me or be convinced by the sensibility of any description I offer – I would suggest there is a strong possibility that whatever it is you experienced, both before you ‘re-engaged as an egoic self’ and after disconnecting, it was not a PCE. Which could explain why you considered that Mr. Douglas Harding [Finding The Self], Ms. Byron Katie [God With God], Mr. Maximilian Sandor [Alienation/ Integration Of The Being], and Free Zone [The Beingness-By-Itself] were some places to look to see where an actual freedom from the human condition was already happening because Richard had not yet made an exhaustive investigation of all the other places it might have been happening up until now. More to the point: if it were indeed a PCE then your contributions to this mailing list would be of an entirely different nature to what they currently are. RESPONDENT: And finally, just so you and everyone else here knows: I’m very comfortable being proven wrong, about things small or large. RICHARD: As the only proof worthy of the name, in matters of consciousness, is experiential proof only you can prove yourself wrong. RESPONDENT: It is a comfort I commend to one and all ... RICHARD: Oh? Are you really recommending that people should emulate your comfort? If so, why then do you spurn emulation of the commitment to global peace and harmony the identity parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body made all those years ago? Is it a case of one rule for your advice ... and another rule for my advice? RESPONDENT: ... one that prevents, and even cures, premature hardening of the orthodoxies. RICHARD: Let me see if I comprehend the basis of your commendation (after 30+ years of having prevented, or even cured, premature hardening of the orthodoxies):
If being ‘settled’ in a variant of Buddhism is not a hardening of the orthodoxies, be it premature or otherwise, then I would like to know what is ... or is there some inscrutable understanding in this deconstructionism method of yours that I am missing? Because I have yet to have it demonstrated how the method which worked, the one that delivered the goods, is not the one to emulate.
RETURN TO THE ACTUAL FREEDOM MAILING LIST INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX 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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