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Richard’s Correspondence On Mailing List ‘C’ with Respondent No. 4
RESPONDENT: Richard, could you summarise please? RICHARD: The single root cause of all the mayhem and misery that epitomises the human condition is the persistent feeling of being an identity inhabiting the body: an affective ‘entity’ as in a deep, abiding and profound feeling of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter or a phantom hiding behind a façade, a mask, a persona; as a subjective emotional psychological ‘self’ and/or a passionate psychic ‘being’ (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) inhabiting the psyche; a deep feeling of being a ‘spirit’; a consciousness of the immanence of ‘presence’ (which exists immortally); an awareness of being an autological ‘being’ ... the realisation of ‘Being’ itself. In other words: everything you think, feel and instinctually know yourself to be ... is to be an alien in an alien world. The complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ is the end to all the ills of humankind. To become spiritually free the ego-self (‘I’ as ego) must die/dissolve ... all genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions) wherein the personal self (or ‘being’) transmogrifies into the impersonal self or ‘being’ (or non-self) ... and which ‘being’ (often capitalised as ‘Being’) exists timelessly, spacelessly and formlessly. To become actually free the soul-self (‘me’ as soul) must also die/dissolve ... the total elimination of ‘being’ (and thus ‘Being’) itself. In a word: extinction. To explain: in my investigations into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions and calentures (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. I found ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which is the instinctual rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings (otherwise mistakenly known as the ‘original face’ and is what gives rise to the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all other sentient beings). It is a very, very ancient genetic memory ... but hoariness does not make it automatically wise, however, despite desperate belief to the contrary. Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’. These passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the ice-burg and not the main issue at all. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because past the conditioning is the human condition itself ... which caused the conditioning. To end this condition, the deletion of blind nature’s software package which gave rise to the rudimentary animal ‘self’ is required. This is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. Which means that ‘being’ itself expires ... thus the physical cause necessitates a physical solution (the extinction of the instinctual ‘being’ itself) and will not eventuate unless the temporary absence or abeyance of the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) which created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced, remembered and activated. This peak experience is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and is essential to the process of freeing oneself from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny. RESPONDENT: How briefly can your way be taught? RICHARD: The first and most important step is to remember a PCE (everybody that I have spoken to at length over the last nineteen years – everybody – has had at least one PCE) and thus start thinking for oneself (although most people cannot initially remember a PCE and may need a lot of prompting to retrieve it from their memory). Then each next step becomes obvious of its own accord in one’s daily life as one goes about one’s normal business in the market place. The pure intent born out of the PCE actively works on eliminating the animal ‘self’ bestowed by blind nature each moment again. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is one’s only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now ... and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All one gets by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if one misses it this time around, hey presto ... one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this. There is a wide and wondrous path to actual freedom: One asks oneself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? This can give rise to apperception. Apperception is the outcome of the exclusive attention paid to being alive right here just now. Apperception is to be the senses as a bare awareness, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) of the world as-it-is, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Which means that attentiveness and sensuousness will facilitate what the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about: a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). Thus, delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the PCE, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive. Then one is no longer just intellectually making sense of life ... the wonder of it all drives all intellectual sensing away. Such delicious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté the nourishing of which is essential if the charm of it all is to occur. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and I am the experiencing of what is happening. But try not to possess it and make it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. RESPONDENT: How many have you taught successfully? RICHARD: First, I do not teach anyone ... the PCE does that. I am not required for the process of understanding (as in a ‘personality cult’ that can grow around a ‘charismatic leader’). As facts and actuality can be commonsensically conveyed by the written word, this means that the third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’ can be accessed by anyone discriminating enough long after I am physically dead. All I have ever wished for is for the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition to exist in the world so that they are available for anyone who comes across it, in any indeterminate future, to draw affirmation and confirmation from ... for anyone to avail themselves of if it be in accord with their own experience and/or aspirations. That is, it is an affirmation that their experience is not only valid but a confirmation in that a fellow human being has traversed this territory in an eminently satisfactory way. I just happened to discover the already always existing peace-on-earth, the purity of which is so perfect that I am reporting my experience to my fellow human beings. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nobody else living an actual freedom from the human condition ... for nineteen years I have scoured the books to no avail. Now the information exists – and has taken on a life of its own – and I am well content and having so much fun. As I measure success by quality and not quantity it has exceeded my expectations already ... since going public but three years or so ago a handful of pioneers, with the requisite daring to abandon the ‘Tried and True’ in favour of a sensible, down-to-earth, non-spiritual path to an actual freedom, have had the audacity to achieve varying degrees of incrementally freeing themselves from malice and sorrow. If one minimises the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (as explained above) and activates the felicitous feelings in conjunction with sensuousness then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness. If it does not ... then one is way ahead of normal human expectations anyway as the aim is to enjoy and appreciate being just here right now for as much as is possible. It is a win/win situation. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A précis of what an actual freedom from the human condition is on about is available for access
RESPONDENT: Richard, could you summarise it even more? RICHARD: The human condition, as is epitomised by all the misery and mayhem throughout human history due to each and every human being nursing malice and sorrow to their bosom, has a single root cause: the persistent feeling of being but an identity – a ‘being’ – inhabiting the body. The solution to all the ills of humankind requires one to step out of the grim and glum ‘real world’ (the everyday ‘reality’ for 6.0 billion peoples pasted as a veneer over the pristine and consummate actual world by the affective faculty) into the actual world of the sensate faculty as is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... and leave ‘yourself’ behind in that blood-soaked ‘Land Of Lament’ where ‘you’ belong. The mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into a ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Such dissociation is a psychotic sickness culturally institutionalised into a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind ... hence the divine perpetuation of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like across the millennia through a belief in karma or samsara or some-such metaphysical reason being the cause of such aberrant behaviour (that people need to be raped etc., because they raped in a supposed past-life and so on). Mysticism is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism, institutionalised into a cultural metaphysics over thousands and thousands of years, known psychiatrically as ‘dissociation’ ... especially if accompanied by dissociative states such as ‘derealisation’ and ‘alternate personality disorder’ and others. It is also known as ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ and dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. I am fully conversant with that hallucinogenic and delusory ‘Timeless and Spaceless and Formless’ realm from my own intimate experience over eleven years ... its understanding is vital if there is to be peace-on-earth. * RESPONDENT: Richard, could you summarise please? RICHARD: The single root cause of all the mayhem and misery that epitomises the human condition is the persistent feeling of being an identity inhabiting the body: an affective ‘entity’ as in a deep, abiding and profound feeling of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter or a phantom hiding behind a façade, a mask, a persona; as a subjective emotional psychological ‘self’ and/or a passionate psychic ‘being’ (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) inhabiting the psyche; a deep feeling of being a ‘spirit’; a consciousness of the immanence of ‘presence’ (which exists immortally); an awareness of being an autological ‘being’ ... the realisation of ‘Being’ itself. In other words: everything you think, feel and instinctually know yourself to be ... is to be an alien in an alien world. RESPONDENT: Okay, that is a description. RICHARD: All words are a description ... it is what the words describe which is important: the root cause of 160,000,000 sane people being killed by their sane fellow human beings in wars alone in the last 100 years; the root cause of 40,000,000 killing themselves in the last 100 years; the root cause of the 34 wars occurring as you read this (wherein people are actually killing and wounding and being killed and wounded); the root cause of all the murders such as the someone, somewhere who is being murdered and the someone, somewhere who murdering as these words scroll past you; the root cause of all the tortures, as detailed by ‘Amnesty International’, which are going on right now; the root cause of all the domestic violence such as the someone, somewhere who is being beaten up at this very instant in some unsafe home; the root cause of all the child abuse wherein somewhere some child is being brutalised, frightened out of their wits at this very moment; the root cause of all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide all over the world ... such suffering is going on in uncountable numbers of utterly miserable lives. It is for reasons like this that I pushed the envelope all those years ago and got out of the institutionalised insanity known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ ... and yet you say: ‘Okay, that is a description’. It is a description of why all that misery and mayhem is actually happening globally ... and all that anguish and anger is most definitely not a dream. * RICHARD: The complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ is the end to all the ills of humankind. RESPONDENT: Okay, that is a belief. RICHARD: I beg to differ ... I do not ‘believe’ in peace-on-earth ... I experience peace-on-earth twenty four hours a day, day after day. When I go to bed at night I have had a perfect day ... and I know that I will wake up to yet another day of perfection. This has been going on, day-after-day, for years now ... it is so ‘normal’ that I take it for granted that there is only perfection. Plus I can easily put it all into words so as to unambiguously share my experience with my fellow human beings. Thus I can easily describe how this already always existing peace-on-earth became apparent: It was through the complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ as an irrevocable event ... not via ‘a belief’. RESPONDENT: Where is the proof? RICHARD: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which subjective experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’. Doctrines like pacifism, for example. * RICHARD: Becoming free of the human condition is an irrevocable occurrence, wherein the ‘lizard-brain’ mutates out of its primeval state ... but if this mutation is not allowed its completion one becomes enlightened. RESPONDENT: This sounds like speculation upon neuro-psychology theories ... are you claiming it is fact? RICHARD: Yes ... this has been my on-going experiencing, night and day, for years now ... it is so ‘normal’ that I take it for granted that there is only perfection. * RICHARD: To become spiritually free the ego-self (‘I’ as ego) must die/dissolve ... RESPONDENT: So many gurus say that ... yes? RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings say this ... yes (for this is the very point I am establishing as a basis for the remainder of my explanation). * RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions). RESPONDENT: Who would you recognise as enlightened? RICHARD: To give but three persons from the last 100 or so years as an example:
* RICHARD: A single edifying moment of awakening is where the personal self (or ‘being’) transmogrifies into the impersonal self or ‘being’ (or non-self) ... and which ‘being’ (often capitalised as ‘Being’) exists timelessly, spacelessly and formlessly. To become actually free the soul-self (‘me’ as soul) must also die/dissolve ... the total elimination of ‘being’ (and thus ‘Being’) itself. In a word: extinction. RESPONDENT: Now you’ve gone from physiology to cognition to ontology. Where is the evidence that this can be done, other than your subjective claims? RICHARD: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which subjective experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’. Doctrines like unconditional love, for example. * RICHARD: To explain: in my investigations into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions and calentures (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. <SNIP> RESPONDENT: I snipped the above this because it seems more like a rumination. I appreciate that you do this but it does not speak practically. RICHARD: Okay ... I make no pretensions whatsoever of being a biologist ... I am a lay-person dabbling in an ad hoc general reading of the subject. It is important to comprehend that I am putting a story together ‘after the event’ so as to throw some light on what happened for me. My experiential sensate-feeling experience (sensation) tells me that it was the brain-stem (reptilian brain) where all the activity took place to free me from the human condition. Those people, who have dedicated themselves to the particular type of research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at and around the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is irregardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic instinctual passions include fear and aggression and nurture and desire (there are more but scientists tend to disagree about matters scientific according to what school or discipline they are working in). There has been much research into this growing science in these last few years. To take fear as just one example: Mr. Joseph LeDoux (and others) has demonstrated that much of the (non-cognitive) emotional memory is laid down before the infant can think ... let alone comprehend cause and effect. This instinctive reactionary behaviour (which he calls the ‘quick and dirty’ reaction) is blind nature’s survival instinct in action. It can (and has been) observed and documented again and again ... yet he and other commentators predict massive denial from all kinds of people to this scientifically demonstrated data. I say that the instinctive response can be described ... and that I do describe it. What are people going to do with this person called Richard and his report of his experience? Dismiss him and his report ... along with all those empirical scientific investigators like Mr. Joseph LeDoux? He has demonstrated that the amygdala non-cognitively generates instinctual fear (an instinctual passion) 14 milliseconds before any sensory information gets to the cerebral cortex. This fear response simultaneously releases adrenaline, which floods the body and the cerebral cortex, before thinking begins. Thus the thoughts are fear-filled thoughts ... he has been hot on the trail of empirically finding this cause. Vis.:
Despite dealing with people’s feelings every day, few therapists can give more than a basic explanation of what exactly instinctual passion is (what neurobiologists call ‘emotion’), and how it influences human functioning. Evolutionary biology plays a strong role in what Mr. Joseph LeDoux calls ‘the emotional brain’, those emotional drives which are inherited from humans’ prehistoric ancestors, such that conscious (explicit) emotional experience can be easily seen as higher-order forms of the sub-conscious survival instinctual (implicit) passions ... if one examines oneself moment-to moment. One critic of his book ‘The Emotional Brain’ wrote:
Another critic wrote:
And another:
Mr. Stephen S. Hall wrote in the New York Times, February 28, 1999:
Mr. Joseph LeDoux’s laboratory continues to investigate the workings of the brain ... and they maintain a web page that may be worth a visit (although it takes some wading through). Vis.: www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/ Mr. Daniel Goleman has written:
This is a clear statement of fact: ‘Intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway’ . There is a wealth of information both in print and on the Internet ... which all reinforces what I have been experiencing myself for many years now: the passionate memory of all emotional hurts (indeed all the affections) was extinguished when the passionate memory faculty itself was extirpated ... the intellectual memory operates with the clarity enabled by the absence of the instinctual passions which normally cloud the remembrance with attractions and repulsions; likes and dislikes; shoulds and should nots and so on. In other words: free of malice and sorrow. To recap: the brain has two ‘memory banks’ and the passionate memory is both non-conscious and primal. This primal memory faculty (so far located mainly in the amygdala) mediates all sensory data and triggers hormonal secretions before such data reaches the intellectual memory faculty (located mainly in the neo-cortex). Consequently, as the neo-cortex is suffused with hormonal secretions a split-second before thinking commences, all thought is tainted, polluted ... crippled by the affective faculty before it starts. This has been empirically detected and exhaustively verified by the recent technological experimentation and research into the passions (for just one example the passion of fear was partly explained above). Thus modern empirical science has put the kibosh on ‘ancient wisdom’ once and for all. Humankind is poised on the cusp of the dawning of a fresh era; an era wherein an evolution in the brain-stem is beginning to happen. The seat of the instincts, tentatively located in the popularly named ‘reptilian brain’, is capable of undergoing a mutation. No longer will blind nature have to operate; the perpetuation of the species will become a matter of lucid thought and personal choice. No longer will vicious wars of group survival be necessary. Already, with the advent of mutually assured destruction because of chemical, biological and nuclear capability, people are questioning the advisability of war as a means of settling disputes. The apprehension of a cataclysmic end to human life has shaken the habitual and apathetic ‘human’ complacency to such an extent that the mind is now ready to be receptive to something entirely new in human history. I do consider that these are exhilarating times to be living in. * RICHARD: I found ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which is the instinctual rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings (otherwise mistakenly known as the ‘original face’ and is what gives rise to the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all other sentient beings). It is a very, very ancient genetic memory ... but hoariness does not make it automatically wise, however, despite desperate belief to the contrary. Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: This seems no different from Patanjali. RICHARD: I am somewhat bemused at your comparison ... the Patanjali Yoga-Sutras (also known as the Gonardiya Yoga-Sutras and/or the Gonikaputra Yoga-Sutras) are a categorisation of Yogic thought arranged in four volumes with the titles ‘Psychic Power’, ‘Practice of Yoga’, ‘Samadhi’ (a transcendental state induced by trance), and ‘Kaivalya’ (liberation). The Yoga-Sutras are the earliest extant textbook on Yoga and span several centuries, the first three volumes apparently written in the second century BC and the last book in the fifth century CE. Authorities therefore tend to credit more than one author writing under this name, although there is wide variance in opinion. There is a possibility that many men used this name, as it was also used by the authors of a number of other works on such diverse subjects as medicine, metrics, music, and alchemy. The name itself is obviously a pseudonym, since it denotes no caste and implies divine descent from the Great Serpent Shesa. Scholars now generally agree that the author of the Yoga-sutras is not the grammarian Mr. Patanjali. In any case, the Yoga-Sutras stand in close relation to the Samkhya or Sankhya (‘Enumeration’; ‘Number’) system, so much so that tradition regards the two systems as one. In Samkhya there is belief in an infinite number of similar but separate Purushas (selves), no one superior to the other. Purusha and Prakriti being sufficient to explain the universe, the existence of a god is not hypothesised. The Purusha is ubiquitous, all-conscious, all-pervasive, motionless, unchangeable, immaterial, and without desire. Prakriti is the universal and subtle (unmanifest) nature and, as such, is determined only by time and space. The chain of evolution begins when Purusha impinges on Prakriti, much as a magnet draws unto itself iron shavings. The Purusha, which before was pure consciousness without an object, becomes focused on Prakriti, and out of this is evolved Mahat (‘Great One’) or Buddhi (‘Spiritual Awareness’). Next to evolve is the individualised ego consciousness ‘ahankara’ (‘I-maker’) which imposes upon the Purusha the misapprehension that the ego is the basis of the Purusha’s objective existence. The Patanjali Yoga-Sutras adds a twenty-sixth principle to the Samkhya list of twenty five (the Supreme Lord Ishvara) and has thus earned the name of ‘Seshvara-Samkhya’ (Theistic Samkhya). Furthermore, there is a difference in their attitudes: Samkhya is intellectualistic and emphasizes metaphysical knowledge as the means to liberation; Yoga is voluntaristic and emphasizes the need of going through severe self-control as the means of realizing intuitively the same principles. In the Yoga-Sutras, God is defined as a distinct Self (Purusha), untouched by sufferings, actions and their effects; his existence is proved on the ground that the degrees of knowledge found in finite beings, in an ascending order, has an upper limit (omniscience), which is what characterizes God. He is said to be the source of all secular and scriptural traditions; he both revealed the Vedas and taught the first Fathers Of Mankind. Surrender of the effects of action to God is regarded as a recommended observance. The attitude of the Yoga-Sutras to the human body is ambivalent. The body is said to be filthy and unclean. Thus, the ascetic cultivates a disgust for it. Yet, much of the discipline laid down in the Yoga-sutras concerns perfection of the body, with the intent to make it a fit instrument for spiritual perfection. Steadiness in bodily posture and control of the breathing process are accorded a high place. The perfection of body is said to consist in ‘beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness’. The Patanjali Yoga-Sutras lay down an eightfold path consisting of aids to Yoga: (1)
restraint (yama), (2) observance (niyama), (3) posture (asana), (4) regulation of breathing (pranayama) The fifth stage (5) pratyahara (‘withdrawal’) involves control of the senses, detachment from the senses or the ability to withdraw the attention of the senses from outward objects to the mind. These first five stages are called external aids to Yoga; the remaining three are purely mental or internal aids. Number (6) dharana (‘holding on’) is the ability to hold and confine awareness of externals to one object for a long period of time (a common exercise is fixing the mind on an object of meditation, such as the tip of the nose or an image of the deity). (7) dhyana (‘concentrated meditation’) is the uninterrupted contemplation of the object of meditation, beyond any memory of ego and (8) Samadhi (‘self-collectedness’) is the final stage and is a precondition of attaining release from the cycle of rebirth. In this stage the meditator perceives or experiences the object of his meditation and himself as one. Yet you say ‘this [what Richard wrote] seems no different from Patanjali’ whereas I see it as 180 degrees different ... could you elaborate? * RICHARD: These passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the ice-burg and not the main issue at all. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: Patanjali, Ramana ... this is so similar. RICHARD: If I may ask ... how is it similar? I cannot see any correspondence whatsoever. Vis.:
* RICHARD: Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because past the conditioning is the human condition itself ... which caused the conditioning. To end this condition, the deletion of blind nature’s software package which gave rise to the rudimentary animal ‘self’ is required. This is the extinction of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which means that ‘being’ itself expires. RESPONDENT: Okay, for those that don’t have nerves of steel ... where is the proof that this can happen? You’d appreciate that your mere claim is not sufficient evidence. RICHARD: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which subjective experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’. Doctrines like not being judgemental, for example. * RESPONDENT: How briefly can your way be taught? RICHARD: The physical cause necessitates a physical solution (the extinction of the instinctual ‘being’ itself) and will not eventuate unless the temporary absence or abeyance of the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) which created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced, remembered and activated. This peak experience is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and is essential to the process of freeing oneself from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny. The first and most important step is to remember a PCE (everybody that I have spoken to at length over the last nineteen years – everybody – has had at least one PCE) and thus start thinking for oneself (although most people cannot initially remember a PCE and may need a lot of prompting to retrieve it from their memory). Then each next step becomes obvious of its own accord in one’s daily life as one goes about one’s normal business in the market place. The pure intent born out of the PCE actively works on eliminating the animal ‘self’ bestowed by blind nature each moment again. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is one’s only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now ... and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All one gets by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if one misses it this time around, hey presto ... one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this. There is a wide and wondrous path to actual freedom: One asks oneself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? This can give rise to apperception. Apperception is the outcome of the exclusive attention paid to being alive right here just now. Apperception is to be the senses as a bare awareness, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) of the world as-it-is, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. RESPONDENT: Sounds like Ramana ... it even sounds like No. 3. RICHARD: If I may ask ... how does it ‘sounds like Ramana’? I cannot see any correspondence whatsoever between what I experience and describe and what Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer experienced and talked about. Vis.:
I am not even going to ask how it ‘sounds like No. 3’ because he is on record as echoing and endorsing the ‘ancient wisdom’ unreservedly: [No. 3]: ‘Just accept what I say and agree with me, because what I’m saying is the essence of thousands of years of wisdom, nothing I say is ever original (...) you can’t argue with Krishna, Christ, or Buddha. Not it you know what’s good for you (...) I have nothing to say to my teachers, no argument, no disagreement, only ‘I love you’ (...) why try to invent something that was perfect in the time of the Vedas? I have your number Richard. You need to surrender to that’ (...) this [surrender] is not a new process, this has been going on for at least 5000 years of recorded history beginning with Krishna. Probably much longer, probably as long as history itself’. [endquotes]. Therefore, whatever they experienced is what he obligingly experiences as well. * RICHARD: Which means that attentiveness and sensuousness will facilitate what the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about: a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). RESPONDENT: Sounds reasonable but hardly new. RICHARD: You have my interest here: whereabouts in what I write is it ‘hardly new’ and where have you read or heard of it before? If you can provide me with names or URL’s or book titles of these peoples who have already discovered an actual freedom from the human condition I would be well pleased to contact and/or or read about them. I have been scouring the books and talking with people from all walks of life for nineteen years now ... to no avail. I would be delighted to hear of another human being’s experience of living life as this flesh and blood body only being apperceptively aware (sans both ego-self and Soul-Self) and who says that death is the end, finish. Extinction. * RICHARD: Thus, delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the PCE, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive. Then one is no longer just intellectually making sense of life ... the wonder of it all drives all intellectual sensing away. Such delicious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté the nourishing of which is essential if the charm of it all is to occur. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and I am the experiencing of what is happening. But try not to possess it and make it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. RESPONDENT: And not so simple or persistent. RICHARD: Au contraire ... it is the most simplistic thing possible (which is why naiveté is essential) and if one has the altruistic desire for peace-on-earth one will be perpetually living in this magical fairy-tale-like paradise, that this verdant earth actually is, for the remainder of one’s life. * RESPONDENT: How many have you taught successfully? RICHARD: First, I do not teach anyone ... the PCE does that. I am not required for the process of understanding (as in a ‘personality cult’ that can grow around a ‘charismatic leader’) <SNIP> As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nobody else living an actual freedom from the human condition ... RESPONDENT: How did you ascertain that? RICHARD: The same way that I ascertain anything about anybody and everybody ... I ask and I listen. Plus I read about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers and on the internet. I watch TV, videos, films ... whatever media is available. I have been scouring the books and talking with many and varied peoples from all walks of life for nineteen years now for information on an actual freedom from the human condition ... but to no avail. Now the information exists – and has taken on a life of its own – and I am well content and having so much fun. As facts and actuality can be commonsensically conveyed by the written word, this means that the third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’ can be accessed by anyone discriminating enough long after I am physically dead. All I have ever wished for is for the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition to exist in the world so that they are available for anyone who comes across it, in any indeterminate future, to draw affirmation and confirmation from ... for anyone to avail themselves of if it be in accord with their own experience and/or aspirations. That is, it is an affirmation that their experience is not only valid but a confirmation in that a fellow human being has traversed this territory in an eminently satisfactory way. I just happened to discover the already always existing peace-on-earth, the purity of which is so perfect that I am reporting my experience to my fellow human beings. The ‘flow-on’ effect from reading actual freedom writings is that if one minimises the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (as explained further above) and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings in conjunction with sensuousness then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness. If it does not ... then one is way ahead of normal human expectations anyway as the aim is to enjoy and appreciate being just here right now for as much as is possible. It is a win/win situation.
RETURN TO MAILING LIST ‘C’ 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.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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