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Richard’s Correspondence On Mailing List ‘C’ with Respondent No. 7
RESPONDENT No. 6: Richard, I have some questions. 1) Do you see enlightenment as pathological? RICHARD: Yes, my experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that it is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’, complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the all-expansive ‘Self’). Generally speaking, all dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional stress and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control ... and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. Thus, just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into an unreal ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Mysticism in general is a psychotic sickness; a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind and is otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ (a vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil). The altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism that became culturally institutionalised, into being a legitimate and venerated social metaphysics, over thousands and thousands of years. RESPONDENT No. 6: 2) Do you see enlightenment as necessary step to get to where you are at? RICHARD: No ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps for I had to run the full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain. No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat. RESPONDENT: I disagree. From my observation, the ‘collective’ will indeed ‘have to go the path of the trailblazer ...’. RICHARD: Possibly ... human beings, being as they are, will probably continue to tread the ‘tried
and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious RESPONDENT: The ‘collective’ is going to have to ‘let go’ of the concepts of ‘constricted ego’ or the little self, and of the ‘all expansive ego’ or the perceived higher self. Enlightenment, from my observation is the ‘letting go’ of all attachments. RICHARD: Are they just ‘attachments’, though? Surely you are not proposing a ‘stripped down self’ free of all attachments? That would just be the ‘constricted ego or the little self, and the all expansive ego or the perceived higher self’ in yet another cunning disguise, would it not? RESPONDENT: Identifying with some delusional Universal Oneness, is just another ego trick. RICHARD: Yes ... my point exactly. RESPONDENT: All conditions are ‘morbid conditions’. The Unconditionality of Enlightenment is what’s left when conditions are ‘Let Go’. RICHARD: Okay ... do you mean that what is left is this flesh and blood body totally bereft of any psychological or psychic entity ... nary a trace of any ontological or autological being whatsoever? No ‘soul’, no ‘spirit’, no ‘being’ at all? RESPONDENT: ‘Object estrangement’ is a prerequisite to the Unconditionality of Enlightenment. RICHARD: Yes ... my point exactly. RESPONDENT: The concept of objects, of ‘self’ and ‘other selfs’ is a condition that must be ‘trail-blazed’. RICHARD: In other words: imagination? RESPONDENT: Concepts arise when subject separates ‘self’ from objects, ‘other selfs’. RICHARD: Conceptualising is only problematic as long as imagination operates. RESPONDENT: This separation is the beginning of intellect. RICHARD: Yet intellect is the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding ... thought is intrinsic to human beings. RESPONDENT: As intellect perceives the illusion of objects through the senses, memory is formed and stored. RICHARD: Memory is essential in order to operate and function in the world of people, things and events ... amnesiacs have a dickens of a job doing the most simple day-to-day things. RESPONDENT: Once memory storage has taken place, the process of thinking begins. Thinking is the anticipation of the future based on the memory of the past. RICHARD: The ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons – intelligence – is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals ... thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being. RESPONDENT: Past and future are ego concepts, conditions, that can not see the Now. RICHARD: The past, although it did happen, is not actual now; the future, although it will happen, is not actual now ... only this moment is actual. RESPONDENT: Object-ivity is any form is a promotion of ego. There are no objects. RICHARD: The physical world has an obvious facticity. There is no need for any debate about an objective universe ... no deliberation at all is required to determine objectivity’s self-evident factuality. There is a simple experiment that will demonstrate the actuality of objectivity in a way that a thousand words would not:
Now, as you rip the plaster from your mouth and gulp in that oh-so-sweet and objectively actual air, I ask you: Do you still believe that ‘there are no objects’?
Seeing the fact will set you free to live in actuality. RESPONDENT: The so-called Objective Sciences can not infold Truth, because objects are the barriers to Truth. RICHARD: All gods and goddesses exist only in the human psyche ... ‘The Truth’ has no inherent existence.
RESPONDENT No. 6: So I think you are saying that enlightenment is not a necessary step to where you are now? RICHARD: It is totally unnecessary ... plus detrimental to both individual and communal salubrity. RESPONDENT No. 6: Is enlightenment a more useful or evolved place to be than pre-enlightenment? RICHARD: No, to be enlightened is to be anti-life ... peace-on-earth is scornfully discarded so as to secure a vainglorious after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. In other words: selfish immortality. RESPONDENT: Are you in the right forum? RICHARD: Yes. I am discussing ‘Truth’ like all get-out and, as Mr. John De Ruiter is an Enlightened Being, then his philosophy is the philosophy of enlightenment ... and I am certainly comparing and contrasting and sharing my experience and expertise in the entire area of religiosity, spirituality, mysticality and metaphysicality as per the welcome message. Vis.:
The list is open to all ... why do you ask? RESPONDENT: Ego can never be salubrious ... RICHARD: If I may point out? I never said it was or could be ... this is what is called a ‘straw-man argument’ (wherein you invent something I did not say then criticise your own invention as if you are commenting on what I actually wrote). RESPONDENT: Nor does it have any idea what life is. RICHARD: Indeed ... ‘I’ as ego paste a grim and glum veneer over the pristine and perfect actuality then complain that life is a bitch (or some-such thing). RESPONDENT: This perceived reality, this clever ego illusion, this dream that you believe is real life, has buffered you from the Truth. Until you ‘trail-blaze’ this delusion, Let Go of ego’s obscuration, Surrender to who you Are, instead of insisting on being what you are not, your being here is pointless. RICHARD: If I may make a suggestion or two? You may be better off speaking for yourself instead of second-guessing how I experience life and what I should or should not do ... or else read what I write with both eyes before rushing to the keyboard and dashing off – what looks to be – a knee-jerk response. I trimmed off your ‘Dear Intellectual One’ salutation as it did not seem to fit in with your sign-off signature-piece (‘with Love and Presence’) ... but then again, maybe that is an example of your ‘Love and Presence’ in action, eh? If so, no wonder there is no global peace on earth.
RESPONDENT: The ‘collective’ is going to have to ‘let go’ of the concepts of ‘constricted ego’ or the little self, and of the ‘all expansive ego’ or the perceived higher self. Enlightenment, from my observation is the ‘letting go’ of all attachments. RICHARD: Are they just ‘attachments’, though? Surely you are not proposing a ‘stripped down self’ free of all attachments? That would just be the ‘constricted ego or the little self, and the all expansive ego or the perceived higher self’ in yet another cunning disguise, would it not? RESPONDENT: When we Realize who we Are, when ego’s masks are ‘let go’, the concept of self dissolves with it. RICHARD: The ‘concept of self’ dissolves, yes ... and then the reality of the ‘higher self’ is. The ‘higher self’ is All That Is, then. This ‘who we Are’ you talk of is the very ‘stripped down self’ I was referring to ... stripped of all concepts of ‘constricted ego or the little self, and the all expansive ego or the perceived higher self’. No longer ‘the perceived higher self’ ... the reality of that ‘higher self’. Unless all what is left is this flesh and blood body totally bereft of any psychological or psychic entity – with nary a trace of any ontological or autological being whatsoever – it is but another cunning disguise. * RESPONDENT: All conditions are ‘morbid conditions’. The Unconditionality of Enlightenment is what’s left when conditions are ‘Let Go’. RICHARD: Okay ... do you mean that what is left is this flesh and blood body totally bereft of any psychological or psychic entity ... nary a trace of any ontological or autological being whatsoever? No ‘soul’, no ‘spirit’, no ‘being’ at all? RESPONDENT: What I said was that you can not ‘gnow’ the Unconditional, which is Life, through conditions, which are not life. Conditions are frequencies, wavelengths, which are motions projected onto a holographic matrix by multiplying and dividing optical waves of simulated light. Unconditional Light is in the projector ... the condition we perceive as light, is a simulation, it is the light on a theatre’s screen. The Light is in the projector. RICHARD: Okay, I will re-present my question: if what is left is not just this flesh and blood body totally bereft of any psychological or psychic entity – with nary a trace of any ontological or autological being whatsoever – then what is the nature, the character, the disposition of this ‘Unconditional Light’ which is ‘in the projector’ (presuming that ‘the projector’ is an analogy for the flesh and blood body)? By which I mean: Does this ‘Unconditional Light’ (which is ‘who we Are’) die when the flesh and blood body dies? * RESPONDENT: ‘Object estrangement’ is a prerequisite to the Unconditionality of Enlightenment. RICHARD: Yes ... my point exactly. RESPONDENT: The concept of objects, of ‘self’ and ‘other selfs’ is a condition that must be ‘trail-blazed’. RICHARD: In other words: imagination? RESPONDENT: No, not imagination. There Really is no self ... as ego has defined self that is. There are no ‘objects’. RICHARD: Just so that it is crystal clear what you are saying (because this is the second time you have said ‘there are no objects’): do you not acknowledge this body and that body and every body are actually happening? Are you saying that one should deny the very existence of the flesh and blood bodies called ‘Richard’ and ‘Mary’ and ‘John’ and so on? Are you saying that the mountains and the streams; the trees and the flowers; the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum are not actual? Are you saying that the object, called a computer monitor, you are reading these words on is not actual? If you reply to these questions – especially the last – you are acknowledging the actuality of the object called ‘computer monitor’. * RESPONDENT: Concepts arise when subject separates ‘self’ from objects, ‘other selfs’. RICHARD: Conceptualising is only problematic as long as imagination operates. RESPONDENT: Conceptualising is a product of ego. Its not problematic, because concepts are delusions of ego. RICHARD: A flesh and blood body can conceptualise sans ‘I’ as ego ... mathematics, for example (2+2=4). RESPONDENT: Its not problematic, because concepts are delusions of ego. RICHARD: What I was referring to by conceptualising only being problematic as long as imagination is extant is this whole delusion which you call ‘Unconditional Light’. This which you say is ‘who we Are’ exists only in the psyche ... imagination running riot with concepts, in other words. Commonly called beliefs. * RESPONDENT: This separation is the beginning of intellect. RICHARD: Yet intellect is the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding ... thought is intrinsic to human beings. RESPONDENT: Intellect is only intrinsic to ‘human egos’. RICHARD: Not so ... intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. The ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons – intelligence – is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals ... thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being. RESPONDENT: The Birthing of Human Beingness begins when ‘intellect’ is Let Go. RICHARD: You do seem to be referring to that ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ adage so prevalent in spirituality and mysticality. As in: Leave your mind at the door; surrender your will; and trust your feelings. * RESPONDENT: As intellect perceives the illusion of objects through the senses, memory is formed and stored. RICHARD: Memory is essential in order to operate and function in the world of people, things and events ... amnesiacs have a dickens of a job doing the most simple day-to-day things. RESPONDENT: Memory is only essential to operate in the world of ego. RICHARD: Memory is essential in order to operate and function in the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum. Enlightened people can remember people, things and events, for example. RESPONDENT: Memory is part of the Ego Complex. It is ego has cleverly distorted reality so you ‘think’ memory is important. RICHARD: There is a simple test as to the veracity of your statement: find an enlightened person of your choice ... and start asking questions. If they cannot remember anything that happened before this moment – each moment again – then your hypothesis is correct. Then come back and we can have a genuine dialogue about peace-on-earth in this lifetime ... as this flesh and blood body. A ‘post-enlightenment’ discussion, as it were. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment observes each Moment as for the first time. RICHARD: In actuality there is no ‘as for the first time’ ... there is only this moment. RESPONDENT: As I said: memories are illusions of a past, and thinking is the anticipating of a future. In Light, past and future do not exist. RICHARD: And as I said: the past, although it did happen, is not actual now; the future, although it will happen, is not actual now ... only this moment is actual. There is nothing other than this moment in eternal time.
RESPONDENT No. 6: So I think you are saying that enlightenment is not a necessary step to where you are now? RICHARD: It is totally unnecessary ... plus detrimental to both individual and communal salubrity. RESPONDENT No. 6: Is enlightenment a more useful or evolved place to be than pre-enlightenment? RICHARD: No, to be enlightened is to be anti-life ... peace-on-earth is scornfully discarded so as to secure a vainglorious after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. In other words: selfish immortality. RESPONDENT: Are you in the right forum? RICHARD: Yes. I am discussing ‘Truth’ like all get-out and, as Mr. John De Ruiter is an Enlightened Being, then his philosophy is the philosophy of enlightenment ... and I am certainly comparing and contrasting and sharing my experience and expertise in the entire area of religiosity, spirituality, mysticality and metaphysicality as per the welcome message. Vis.: [List Moderator]: ‘Welcome to JdeR. I am happy to announce the John de Ruiter Truth Discussion group. You are invited to join. Please contribute. We are collecting resources, links etc. We aim to compare, contrast and share ideas in an open-minded way. You are invited to subscribe and then post, or just browse. The List is open to all (...) John de Ruiter’s philosophy, meetings, etc., Truth, acceptance, and being both warmly and gently OK with what is’. The list is open to all ... why do you ask? RESPONDENT: Richard, I’m very new to this forum. I too was under the impression that the discussion here was ‘Truth’. I did not observe any Truth in your post; it has been all intellectual perceptions. RICHARD: May I demonstrate something basic about assumptions masquerading as accurate deductions? Vis.: Version No. 1.:
Version No. 2.:
* RESPONDENT: All I know of John de Ruiter is what I read on his website (www.johnderuiter.com) and comments from an internet acquaintance. However, from this little, I wondered if you were in the right forum. RICHARD: Okay ... now that I have explained that I am indeed discussing ‘Truth’ like all get-out and (as Mr. John De Ruiter is an Enlightened Being his philosophy is the philosophy of enlightenment) as I am certainly comparing and contrasting and sharing my experience and expertise in the entire area of religiosity, spirituality, mysticality and metaphysicality as per the welcome message, am I to take it that you are not wondering anymore whether I am in the right forum? If not, please let me know because I am only too happy to discuss the subject of aptness further with you. RESPONDENT: You seem very intellectually, or ego driven. RICHARD: I can assure you, for whatever that assurance is worth, that there is no ‘ego’ driving what I write. All that I write comes out of my direct experiencing sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul ... plus I do not make the mistake of linking intellect with ego. Intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. RESPONDENT: As you know, I define intellect as that barrier to Enlightenment which initiates when subject separates itself from object. RICHARD: Yes, I am well aware that you have explained this to me before ... and I responded appropriately in my last post to you. The ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons – intelligence – is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals ... thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being. I am not a proponent of that ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ adage so prevalent in spirituality and mysticality ... it is not helpful to ‘leave your mind at the door; surrender your will; and trust your feelings’ if one wishes to live in a way that is neither individually insalubrious nor communally reprehensible. * RESPONDENT: Ego can never be salubrious ... RICHARD: I never said it was or could be ... this is what is called a ‘straw-man argument’ (wherein you invent something I did not say then criticise your own invention as if you are commenting on what I actually wrote). RESPONDENT: Richard said: ‘detrimental to both individual and communal salubrity’. Both ‘self’ and ‘other selfs’ are illusions of separation. Ego can never be salubrious. RICHARD: There does seem to be a misunderstanding ... unlike you I do not deny the actuality of people, things and events (as in your ‘there are no objects’ statement). Therefore, there are indeed 6.0 billion individual flesh and blood human bodies currently walking and talking, eating and drinking, urinating and defecating, waking and sleeping all over this verdant and azure planet. These individual flesh and blood bodies are not ‘illusions of separation’ here in this actual world. Thus 6.0 billion individual flesh and blood human bodies interact with each other in a way that is called communal ... and I was describing to another co-respondent that not only is enlightenment a totally unnecessary step towards an actual freedom from the human condition, but that it is detrimental to both individual and communal salubrity into the bargain. If your understanding (as in your ‘there are no objects’ statement) makes you read this as me saying ‘detrimental to both individual ego and communal ego salubrity’ then so be it ... I cannot take your understanding (as in your ‘there are no objects’ statement) into account each and every time I write to any other co-respondent and considerately phrase my words in a way that suits your understanding (as in your ‘there are no objects’ statement). Speaking personally, I either suss out what another means by a word via context or ask for clarification. * RESPONDENT: This perceived reality, this clever ego illusion, this dream that you believe is real life, has buffered you from the Truth. Until you ‘trail-blaze’ this delusion, Let Go of ego’s obscuration, Surrender to who you Are, instead of insisting on being what you are not, your being here is pointless. RICHARD: If I may make a suggestion or two? You may be better off speaking for yourself instead of second-guessing how I experience life and what I should or should not do ... or else read what I write with both eyes before rushing to the keyboard and dashing off – what looks to be – a knee-jerk response. I trimmed off your ‘Dear Intellectual One’ salutation as it did not seem to fit in with your sign-off signature-piece (‘with Love and Presence’) ... but then again, maybe that is an example of your ‘Love and Presence’ in action, eh? If so, no wonder there is no global peace on earth. RESPONDENT: Richard commented that No. 7 should not ‘second guess’ him. Do you see the ego in that? I am only reflecting back to you what you put out. RICHARD: If I may point out? I did not say that you ‘should not’ at all ... I made a ‘suggestion’ that you ‘may’ be better off speaking for yourself than second-guessing how I experience life and what I should or should not do. This is what is called a ‘straw-man argument’ (wherein you invent something I did not say then criticise your own invention as if you are commenting on what I actually wrote). RESPONDENT: I can not attack you ... you are the one who perceives an attack. RICHARD: Again, if I may point out, this is also what is called a ‘straw-man argument’ (wherein you invent something I did not say then criticise your own invention as if you are commenting on what I actually wrote). I never said you were attacking me ... I was suggesting that that you may be better off speaking for yourself (rather than second-guessing how I experience life and what I should or should not do) because you wrote some advice to me based upon what can only be your picture or image. I will re-present what you were mistakenly advising me to do:
As none of this advice applies to me I also suggested that you may be better off reading what I write with both eyes before rushing to the keyboard and dashing off – what looked to be – a knee-jerk response. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. RESPONDENT: If we are not perceiving ‘global Peace’, it is because our be‘lie’f system is projecting non-peace. RICHARD: It is not a matter of a belief system preventing the perception of global peace-on-earth ... it is a fact that 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 are happening right now as you read these words. RESPONDENT: So my dear intellectual one, it seems you need an epiphany to shake up this delusion you have accumulated. RICHARD: What delusion? It is a fact that there is no global peace-on-earth. All the misery and mayhem; all the animosity and anguish; all the malice and sorrow is not a projection ... it is really happening. RESPONDENT: Have you ever done JBC’s Supermarket Activity? Go to a supermarket, not a department store or mall, but a place like Safeway, Albertsons, or Acme. Enter the store without touching a door, do not touch a cart or basket, do not touch or read anything in the store, do not speak to anyone. Stay in the store for 1 hour, then leave without touching the door. If anyone touches or speaks to you, pick at an item quickly, pay for it and leave. Then try the Activity again at another time or place. Within a few hours of your departure, this transformational trigger exercise from the JBC should precipitate an intensity as if being immersed in a colloidal non-condition that rests between realities, like if you were water that had been stirred quickly in a bucket, and then suddenly converged into an expansiveness as the direction of the spin changed. So after you leave the supermarket, allow yourself some time to rest and ‘let go’ of who you think you’re suppose to be, and just be who you are. RICHARD: Yet I never think of ‘who’ I am ‘supposed to be’ at all ... it is already always patently obvious that what I am is this flesh and blood body called ‘Richard’. RESPONDENT: Check out: www.slimeworld.org/xxaxx/jbc_ndx.html. RICHARD: Thank you ... I did. I fail to see why you would want me to ask myself ‘wouldn’t it be kewl if life turned out to be like one big video game’ ... this actual world is brilliant beyond compare. May I ask? Do you like being here? RESPONDENT: Remember dear intellectual one, Descartes had it backwards. I think, therefore I Am is not True. RICHARD: It is neither ‘backwards’ nor forwards ... it is a circular argument. The infamous theorem ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’) is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘ergo sum’ (‘therefore I am’). This ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) premise is nothing but a subjective ‘a posteriori-like’ supposition (Mr. René Descartes called it ‘immediate intuition’) masquerading as an ‘a priori’ philosophical presentation ... which makes it a tacit assumption. His ‘proof’ for his premise ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) is therefore ‘proved’ for him by his ‘immediate intuition’ (‘I am’) ... which makes it an circular argument. The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions (‘immediate intuitions’) expose the lie of a philosophy’s wisdom. RESPONDENT: It is a delusion to think that the ‘ego’, the ‘I think’, the ‘not I’, comes before the ‘I Am’. RICHARD: As both ‘I’ as ego and ‘I’ as I Am are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to which comes where or when or how or why.
RESPONDENT: Remember dear intellectual one, Descartes had it backwards. ‘I think, therefore I Am’ is not True. RICHARD: It is neither ‘backwards’ nor forwards ... it is a circular argument. The infamous theorem ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’) is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘ergo sum’ (‘therefore I am’). This ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) premise is nothing but a subjective ‘a posteriori-like’ supposition (Mr. René Descartes called it ‘immediate intuition’) masquerading as an ‘a priori’ philosophical presentation ... which makes it a tacit assumption. His ‘proof’ for his premise ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) is therefore ‘proved’ for him by his ‘immediate intuition’ (‘I am’) ... which makes it an circular argument. The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions (‘immediate intuitions’) expose the lie of a philosophy’s wisdom. RESPONDENT: It is a delusion to think that the ‘ego’, the ‘I think’, the ‘not I’, comes before the ‘I Am’. RICHARD: As both ‘I’ as ego and ‘I’ as I Am are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to which comes where or when or how or why. RESPONDENT: A circular argument would be: ‘some disciples of Mahomet are said to advance the proposition that their holy book, the Qur’an, is infallible. why? it is asked. because it was written by Allah’s prophet. How do you know then that Mahomet is Allah’s prophet? Because it says so in the Qu’ran’. Descartes ‘I think, therefore I Am’, (which I could also say in Latin, but felt that any Catholics reading this may get confused) is not a circular argument. RICHARD: I am simply going by what Mr. René Descartes himself said. In ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642), Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is based upon ‘immediate intuition’. He finds certainty in the ‘immediate intuition’ that when he is thinking, even if deceived, he exists: The cogito (‘I think’) of ‘cogito, ergo sum’, he says, is a logically self-evident truth that gives certain knowledge of a particular thing’s existence – that is, one’s self – but the cogito (‘I think’) justifies accepting as certain only the existence of the person who thinks it. Now, intuition, to him, is an unmediated mental seeing or direct apprehension of something experienced ... and he finds certainty in the intuition that when he is thinking, he exists. Yet it does not; the only thing that is self-evident is that there is thinking going on (or walking or doubting or feeling and so on) ... unless one pre-supposes an ‘I’ as in ‘I think’ (cogito). And why? Because, at root, ‘I’ feel that ‘I’ am. That is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is affective ... (‘I know that I am because I feel it in my very ‘being’ that I am). Thus the certitude ascribed to intuition – his ‘indubitable immediate apprehension’ – is sourced in ‘I feel real’. When feelings enter the picture, rationality goes out of the window and one enters into the realm of belief, trust, hope ... and faith. Dress the self-serving circular argument up in a self-seeking pseudo-rationality and other-wise intelligent people will be convinced that their ‘feeling of being’ has now been logically proved. He also has to say this because if all he ever knew for certain was that he exists – and if one adhered to Mr. René Descartes’ method of doubting all that is uncertain one would – then he would be reduced to solipsism. This he cannot do ... Mr. René Descartes makes it clear in his ‘Dedication and Preface to Meditations On First Philosophy’ that he wishes to offer secular proof for the existence of ‘me’ as soul ... and for the revealed God of the scriptures. Yet his ‘proof’ of ‘god’ is as spurious as his ‘proof’ of ‘I’. Thus it is faith that stops the withdrawal into solipsism. And what persuades him to reason like this? Mr. René Descartes begins with the statement that he has an innate idea of God as a perfect being and then intuits that God necessarily exists, because, if he did not, he would not be perfect. This ontological proof for the existence of God is at the heart of Mr. René Descartes’ rationalism, for it establishes certain knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. This is the source of his ‘immediate intuition’ – which now starts to resemble faith – because he then argues that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings; therefore the world exists. Mr. René Descartes, the rationalist, failed to see that his ontologically-inspired ‘intuitional’ proof is word-magic based on the superstition that a metaphysical reality can be determined – and validated as being fact – by intuitive ideas and logical thought. It is, as I said before, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. RESPONDENT: ‘I think’ (thinking manifests from memory that anticipates the future) is ego. RICHARD: If I may point out? Enlightened people can think ... they can anticipate future events (‘Evening Darshan will be held at 6.00 PM’) and they can remember past experiences of people, things and events. RESPONDENT: Ego says, I Think, therefore I Am. However, the ‘Real I Am’ is not ego, and can only be ‘gnown’ when ego has been Let Go. RICHARD: Hmm ... ego, realising its inherent falseness, proposes a ‘Real I Am’ predicated upon its own falseness ... in a process otherwise known as inverse projection, eh? RESPONDENT: Enlightenment, the Awareness of I Am, is what is ‘detrimental’ to ego. RICHARD: Enlightenment, where the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has transmogrified into a fully expanded soul (the All-Expansive ‘Self’), is detrimental to individual and communal salubrity ... as is evidenced by the perpetuation of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like by all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages advising dissociation as being the best means of dealing with the instinctual passions such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment is the freedom from the human condition. RICHARD: Enlightenment is a spiritual and/or mystical freedom still within the human condition ... as enlightened beings are demonstratively known to still have anger and anguish from time to time it is no wonder there is no global peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: Unfortunately, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for an intellectual to Let Go of just one accumulated be‘lie’f. Intellectuals are faithfully ATTACHED to the Ego Complex. Their knowledge is their god. Their knowledge is an accumulation of their own and others ancestral be’lie’fs. RICHARD: If I may make a suggestion? This conclusion you have come to that Richard is an intellectual may very well be clouding your thinking and driving your argument. ‘Tis only a suggestion, mind you. RESPONDENT: Two Aware entities would never have a discussion about god, the past, or the future. RICHARD: If you say that this is so then it is so ... for you. I will keep my own counsel, however. RESPONDENT: Awareness is in the Now. RICHARD: Everything is happening only at this moment in eternal time ... there is nowhere or nowhen else than just here right now. RESPONDENT: Try thinking you are in the Now. You can not do it. RICHARD: But I am not ‘in the Now’ ... this flesh and blood body is already always just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time. RESPONDENT: Thinking is always in the past, and it always manifests from memory. RICHARD: Au contraire ... when thought, thoughts and thinking are happening – a delightful episodic event – they are happening now. Also, memory is accessed only when accumulated knowledge is required to appraise a current event with the view to proposing beneficial action. RESPONDENT: Thinking buffers the ‘freedom from the human condition’. Richard said: ‘thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being’. This is absolutely untrue. RICHARD: The human animal is the only species so far to have evolved the amazing of faculty of intelligence (the cognitive ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons). This contemplative ability is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals and thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being in that only the human animal can investigate its own instinctual passions with the view to enabling both personal and collective salubrity ... no other animal can do this. The human animal is nature in action ... and nature is nothing more or less than carbon-based life-forms. The process of evolution is such that the species most fitted to their environment prosper and those no longer fitted languish. This process of nature is such that if the human animal does not mutate – which mutation is a process of nature – there is a fair chance that the human species will kill itself off after many more abysmal trials and tribulations. Which means that, even though the carbon-based life-form called human beings are the only aspect of nature to so far evolve intelligence, if the intelligence thus bestowed is not used appropriately then all the long evolutionary process will have come to naught. Not that this is of any concern to nature ... another carbon-based life-form will eventually evolve intelligence in the fullness of time and maybe that carbon-based life-form will not be so stupefied as the carbon-based life-form as is epitomised by those who scorn the very faculty of investigation which enables them to be able to scorn it in the first place. Nature has all the time in the universe to manifest perfection ... and that is infinite time. Whereas each human being has perhaps seventy-eighty odd years. RESPONDENT: This is an intellectual viewpoint, the viewpoint of ego. RICHARD: Not so ... intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. RESPONDENT: I heard an interesting quote that fits here. Its from 6 iv 5 of the book Course in Miracles. ‘the ego uses the body to conspire against your Mind, and because the ego realizes that its ‘enemy’ (the Mind) can end them both (ego and body) merely by recognizing they are not part of you, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. RICHARD: I am not inclined to take much notice of the wisdom of a bodiless entity ... if any notice at all. The Web Page – ‘A Course in Miracles’ – describes in great length how [quote]: ‘A Course in Miracles was ‘scribed’ by Dr. Helen Schucman through a process of inner dictation she identified as coming from ‘Jesus’. A clinical and research psychologist and tenured Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, she was assisted by Dr. William Thetford, her department head, who was also a tenured Professor of Medical Psychology at the Medical Centre where they both worked. A Course in Miracles was first published in 1975’. [end quote]. Today, this would be described as ‘Channelling’ ... that is, some ‘Disincarnate Entity’ speaking through some specially selected person to bring a ‘Message To Mankind’. And how would such a bodiless entity advise flesh and blood bodies to operate and function in the world of people, things and events? One way and one way only: dissociation (‘I am not the body’), of course. RESPONDENT: The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the Mind, which is real, that the Mind is the ego’s learning device, and further, that the body is more real than the Mind. No one in his right Mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right Mind does believe it’. RICHARD: As both ‘the ego’ and ‘the Mind’ are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to who persuades who as to who is more real or who is learning for who or who is believing who or what, or when, or where, or how or why. This is such fun, eh?
RESPONDENT No. 9: If you’re really interested in Truth, which I’m sure you are (otherwise you wouldn’t be in this forum), then you will open yourself to what I’ve said ... really let it in ... time for some introspection ... is there any truth in what I’ve said? RICHARD: None whatsoever ... but do go on, please, for this is fascinating. RESPONDENT No. 9: Be honest with yourself ... let the defences down for a minute. RICHARD: May I ask? What ‘defences’? RESPONDENT: ‘May I ask, what defences’. Dear Richard, writer of trillions of unenlightened sentences, intellectual poster whose ego has put him beyond the All in All, self proclaimed agape lover who sees suffering ... your ego projection has manifested from the same regurgitated, un-original, so-called wisdom you find repulsive in others. RICHARD: I have scoured the books for nigh-on twenty years now and I am yet to read anything like what I have to say ... if you could provide some book titles or URL’s where this ‘same regurgitated, un-original, so-called wisdom’ which you say I am manifesting is to be found I would be delighted. RESPONDENT: Richard is not ‘having fun talking about life’, your discussion has only been an egoic one. On evil. ‘if you are sowing division, preaching perceptions, seeking or finding ‘evil’ in the world, even if you are looking for it with the intention of removing it, you are part of the problem, not the cure’. RICHARD: Hmm ... under your definition, anyone who finds ‘the cure’ had better keep their mouth shut (seeing as you are lurking in the wings waiting to pounce with your borrowed aphorism). Or are you, also, saying that there is no evil (malice) in the human psyche? RESPONDENT: There are no negative conditions, nor are there positive conditions. All situations are actually neutral. Negative and positive only seem to exist if we see them as such. RICHARD: Uh huh ... you too, eh? Just stop seeing malice (and sorrow) ‘as such’ and !Hey Presto! they cease to exist. RESPONDENT: Richard’s whole dialogue is one of useless happiness and useless suffering. RICHARD: The only good thing about suffering is when it ends ... permanently. As for ‘useless happiness’: I cannot come up with anything to say to a person who finds happiness ‘useless’ so I will pass without comment. RESPONDENT: Your idea of ‘love agape’ is bogus. You do not ‘become love’; you are already Love. There is nothing to seek, to become, to do; to Be the Love you already are, one only Lets Go of the barriers they have built against it. RICHARD: If this is what you wish to experience then that is your business ... I found it important to observe and examine the process closely so as to see where the switch happens. However, for those who do not examine closely there is a way to contemplate the question, bearing in mind what you are saying, so as to more readily understand the phenomenon of tyrants and dictators. Vis.:
‘Tis such fun finding out about the human psyche, eh? RESPONDENT: However, Richard does not wish to disengage from his barriers, from his memories. The idea that your ‘memories have disappeared’ is just another of your ego delusions, my intellectual post-mate. RICHARD: Apart from the fact that your second sentence negates following the advice in the first (as per the ‘pouncing hypothesis’ outlined further above), there are no childhood hurts extant anywhere in this flesh and blood body ... the slate was indeed wiped clean. As I said, I have been here for 53 years and have all my own memories. I have always been here like this; I have been having a wonderful, marvellous and amazing life for 53 years. RESPONDENT: Did you really expect an ego as entrenched as yours to tell you the truth ... to tell you that its not real? Your memories of seeing evil in the world, of seeing suffering sentient beings, of perceiving Mind as ego, as perceiving ‘I think’ as I Am, all your bull about liking your fellow human ‘regardless of whatever mischief they get up to’ ... are all ego give-aways. RICHARD: May I ask? Just what have you got against someone being happy and harmless? RESPONDENT: Enlightenment is the letting go of ego’s barriers and the remembering of Innocence. Innocence does not perceive suffering. Innocence is ‘illusion free’. Innocence does not generate its own thought system. Innocence does not study so-called ancient scriptures. Innocence ‘gnows’ god/goddess is an ego delusion. Innocence ‘gnows’ that the answers to all questions lie in the mirror. RICHARD: I cannot resist – it is probably just the way you put the sentences together – but the reference to all the answers being found ‘in the mirror’ is so reminiscent of Mr. Narcissus being enraptured through bathing in his own glory that he was oblivious to what was actually happening. RESPONDENT: If someone had something ‘original to say’, the Richard whose intellectual articulations paint these posts will not see it through the thickness of those egoic barriers. Richard, your pain, your suffering, is very pronounced in your postings. RICHARD: I can assure you, for whatever that assurance is worth, that I experience no ‘pain’ or ‘suffering’ whatsoever. Therefore I do not know what it is you are seeing in my writing which makes you think this ... or why. RESPONDENT: From what I’ve heard about being in John de Ruiter’s presence, from my observations that only healed Healers can heal, you should very much consider going to Edmonton. You need some rest my intellectual post-mate. Some rest from your trillions and trillions of beliefs that have your real Mind straight-jacketed. I Certainly wish you Peace. RICHARD: Hmm ... as you have capitalised ‘Peace’ it is just as well that your wishes are ineffective. RESPONDENT: Perhaps if you could just acknowledge one or two things happening in your life, and ask: what would someone have to believe to be having this experience? And keep asking and repeating that question till you get an answer. RICHARD: You are going to have to tell me what these ‘one or two things’ are because what is happening in my life is utter fulfilment and total contentment each moment again. The on-going experience of such happiness and harmlessness, as is already always here in this pristine actual world, has not come about through believing (or trusting, hoping, having faith and so on). One cannot enable peace-on-earth via ‘having to believe’. RESPONDENT: If you can, try asking that question without moving your tongue. Not moving your tongue is very effective in meditation. When we cease moving our tongue, our thinking quiets. As our thinking quiets, we merge more and more with the Now in the present. RICHARD: I have never meditated (either with or without moving the tongue) so I cannot comment on your advice. However, if you are advocating this technique as being an effective method to ‘merge more and more with the Now’ it does expose the lie of your protestations about how you ‘do not ‘become love’; you are already Love’. In other words:
But never mind ... you would make a good engineer. RESPONDENT: Richard, according to his own articulated dialogue, has not, in this lifetime, ever been in the Now. RICHARD: Except that I repeatedly say that the ‘Me’ that was did live ‘in the Now’ for eleven years ... thus I have intimate knowledge of what you speak of. The exchange you are referring to went like this:
This is because there are three I’s altogether ... but only one is actual.
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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