|
Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Aggression
RESPONDENT: Richard, lets say hypothetically a stranger had a gun aimed at your face, what sort of thoughts might occur in your mind? RICHARD: Having been rigorously trained in the military, until the appropriate reflex responses became second-nature, for multiple variations of such contingencies – plus having gone to war as a youth – it can be said with a high degree of confidence that there would be no thoughts occurring at the moment ... there would only be action. The whole point of such intensive drilling is that (to use a cliché) there is the quick ... and there is the dead. RESPONDENT: Another trivial question: what happens when someone pinches you very hard? RICHARD: As nobody has ever pinched me very hard, over the thirteen years of being apparent 24/7, I cannot answer your query. RESPONDENT: Is my guess wrong that you would say: ‘it hurts, but I feel no pain’ ... RICHARD: Perhaps this may be of assistance:
And even more explicitly:
RESPONDENT: ... and that you would defend yourself, if the pinch does not stop, thanks to the uninhibited functioning of the ratiocinative process? RICHARD: It is a freed intelligence, and not just uninhibited ratiocination (the action or process of reasoning), which ensures an appropriate-to-the-situation-and-circumstances defence when attacked. RESPONDENT: Richard, you have written that it took three weeks for you to rid yourself of anger. RICHARD: You are, presumably, referring to the following text:
RESPONDENT: Can you please sketch what you did in that time? RICHARD: Sure ... as I was able to locate and identify that basic resentment which all
people I had spoken to have – to wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ – the first thing I did was to
unconditionally say !YES! to being here on earth. Remembering the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) I had
experienced was vitally important for success because they showed me, first hand, that an actual freedom from the human
condition is already always just here ... right now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in
mind that basic resentment went, of course, never to return again. Then it was a relatively easy task to eliminate anger
forever. I did this by neither expressing or repressing anger whenever an event happened that would previously trigger
an outbreak. RESPONDENT: Were you analysing, reflecting on all possible situations in which anger arises? RICHARD: No ... it was an at-the-moment riddance. RESPONDENT: Or were you angry at something and tried to observe it deeply? RICHARD: No ... the instant the anger would have otherwise arisen there was the delicious experience of it being stillborn. RESPONDENT: Were you making yourself mad by thinking about various situations and through self-observation and reasoning and attentiveness eradicated it? RICHARD: No ... as there were more than enough situations anyway there was no need to fabricate any. RESPONDENT: Were you isolated at this point or did this exercise with your partner? RICHARD: Even though I was married at the time – I was a normal family man, with a wife and four children to support and a house-mortgage to pay off and a car on hire-purchase, running my own business and working twelve-fourteen hour days six-seven days a week – I was essentially on my own in the whole enterprise ... my then wife, although initially intrigued and interested for herself in what I was engaged in, lapsed back into normalcy within a few months. As a matter of related interest ... one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends ... justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on). I have touched upon this elsewhere:
ALAN: From what I have read it appears others experience anger, while in an ASC. When I was in what I called an ASC, I could not possibly have experienced annoyance, never mind anger, and I think you said you had not experienced anger since your enlightenment in 1980? RICHARD: That is correct – inasmuch that full-blown anger never arose – however minor annoyance did ... which is another area where native intelligence made me question enlightenment. I have located the following exchange:
Now, four times in eleven years may not sound like much ... but it was enough to make me question. Also, there were three or four ‘bleed-throughs’ of fear from the sublimated passions in that period ... the evidence indicating the transcendent nature of the ASC became too much to ignore. I owe a lot to my companion at the time for her persistence in endeavouring to ‘unmask the guru’ (this is her verbatim – and very apt – terminology at the time). RESPONDENT: I have a question for anyone kind enough to answer. How do I relate to someone who has physically harmed me? Who wishes to harm me again? RICHARD: Unless it is a sociopathic stranger prowling the streets taking any victim at random, the physical harm one receives is invoked by the way one feels about one’s assailant ... whether one’s feelings are acted upon in behaviour or not. And controlling one’s attitude towards them does nothing to stop the other picking up on one’s vibes (to use a 60’s term). If one has the slightest trace of malice or sorrow toward the other, the prevailing wisdom is to be loving or compassionate ... yet it does not work in practice. This is because there is a psychic connection between humans who have feelings. Modifying one’s negative feelings toward the other by coating them with positive feelings may fool some people for some of the time. Usually, however, one is only fooling oneself, because the positive is born out of the negative. Without the negative feelings there are no positive feelings. No feelings at all means one is happy and harmless and the other leaves one alone ... which does away with the need for that dubious remedy of pacifism (non-violence). Until one is interested enough with the workings of one’s psyche to dig deep into one’s feelings – into the core of one’s being – and uncover the root of all malice and sorrow, one has no choice but to apply the ‘Tried and True’ remedies again and again ... and fail and fail, again and again. The pertinent question to ask oneself is: ‘Why do I have the need to relate to anyone at all?’ IRENE: Life without feelings is indeed barren and sterile. RICHARD: I am living such a rich, full, sparkling, vital and magical life for the twenty four hours of every day ... and all without the affective faculty. Where do you get your information from about the barrenness and sterility of life without feeling? IRENE: Freeing myself from aggression and fear didn’t come about by covering them over (...) my aggression and fear that I had not wanted to look at yet, would come out in my attitude and sharp remarks from time to time (...) I am so pleased with what I’ve done (...) I couldn’t have envisaged this particular outcome ever. RICHARD: You see, here you do some kind of sleight-of-hand ... you condemn me for not having these basic feelings whilst proclaiming to be free of them yourself. Perhaps the clue lies in your not mentioning the other basic feelings – nurture and desire – in the above sentence. Just get rid of the ‘bad’ feelings and hang onto the ‘good’ ones, eh? IRENE: There is life after the basic feelings of aggression and fear, they don’t have to dominate forever! RICHARD: Here is confusion with the word ‘dominate’ ... have you freed yourself from aggression and fear or not? If you have ... why condemn me for doing so? If you have not ... why do you give the impression that you have? IRENE: By ‘authentic’ I do not mean the natural instincts we are all born with. They become only active in a physical or deeply emotional threat to your well-being. RICHARD: Aye ... and thus all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day. So, are you now saying that you are not free from these basic – these natural – instincts after all? What does ‘there is life after the basic feelings of fear and aggression’ mean then? IRENE: Wherever I am I am at peace (...) I now find myself living what my very first peak-experience showed me to be my destiny (...) I am a fully human being with all my feeling-faculties and instincts intact. RICHARD: Once again confusion ... all your ‘feeling-faculties and instincts intact’ . Yet you are simultaneously ‘free from aggression and fear’ ... which are basic instincts. As they will become active in ‘a physical or deeply emotional threat to your well-being’ then what have you done towards achieving peace-on-earth? IRENE: As an authentic being I am not afraid of others, nor of myself, because I have nothing to hide or to cover up any more, or to be afraid or ashamed of (...) I certainly feel and have the capacity to feel intact. RICHARD: Yet to not be ‘afraid’ or not to be ‘ashamed’ are feelings, are they not? Are you selective about what feelings to retain and what feelings to eliminate? RESPONDENT: Each individual is different. RICHARD: In what way different? Everyone has the same blue-print ... human beings are all
born with the same basic instincts like fear and aggression and nurture and desire and, no matter which culture one was
socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world thus have the same emotions and passions. There is
no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance
and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be,
they all have a global incidence. The same applies to cerebral activity like imagination, conceptualisation,
hypothesising, believing and so forth. Once again, ubiquitous in its occurrence. As for psychic phenomena like
prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination RESPONDENT: Yes, the anger itself may be same, but when it gets manifested in an individual it takes different forms for example violence, repression, sorrow etc. So what makes anger to take different forms ? I think it is the individual (which is nothing but a complex of feeling, beliefs, instincts etc.). RICHARD: Are you saying that anger takes on 6.0 billion different forms? There are slight variations according to cultural conditioning and one’s personal upbringing, but the disparity is minuscule ... the manifestation of anger has a remarkable correspondence globally. This is beneficial news ... it will help you to cease taking it all so personally. It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No. 4. ALAN: We have also discussed the ‘vibes’, which some people may have and whether it is possible for another to sense them. I presume you consider these to fall within the realm of psychic powers? RICHARD: No, emotional ‘vibes’ are fairly obvious as in you can feel another’s fear, anger, love and so on when in physical proximity. Whereas psychic ‘currents’ span distance instantly. This is where the power play really happens between sentient beings ... vibe violence and verbal abuse and physical aggression are the outcome of psychic power-tripping and not the source. The same applies to the ‘good’ side ... loving vibes and affectionate words and physical caresses are control measures – power-play – and originate in the psyche as psychic currents. ALAN: While not 100% convinced, my view is that these do not exist, other than in the form of subtle body language. RICHARD: Body language plays a part, yes, and tone of voice and so on ... but there is an undercurrent as is evidenced when sitting in silence with another whilst not facing each other. There is an ‘atmosphere’ as is expressed in ‘the air was so thick that you could cut it with a knife’. RESPONDENT: [Rajneesh]: ‘Very difficult to accept it, because you have been conditioned for centuries. You have been given ideals and you go on comparing with ideals. You say, ‘How can I be perfect? – I still have anger in me. How can I be perfect? – I still have sex in me. How can I be perfect? – I still have violence in me. How can I be perfect?’ You are comparing. Comparison is the disease, the very illness’. RICHARD: Methinks it is anger, violence and so on that is the disease, the illness ... not comparison. Without comparison there would be no basis for appraisal and decision-making. RESPONDENT: [Rajneesh]: ‘You are you. If anger is there, what can you do? You have to accept it’. RICHARD: For the first thirty four years of my life, I too had this attitude ... then I stopped ‘accepting it’ and changed myself radically, completely, totally and utterly. As a result, there is no anger whatsoever in me ... and has not been for years and tears. RESPONDENT: [Rajneesh]: ‘If you try first to be beyond anger and then live, you will never live. Listen to me. Accept the anger and live. And I tell you – by living, the anger will disappear’. RICHARD: Yet Mr. Mohan Rajneesh has been observed to be angry from time-to-time ... so what is his advice worth? RESPONDENT: This is really heavy stuff. RICHARD: Aye ... it is. So is 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 that they have helped perpetuate for 3,000 to 5,000 years. RESPONDENT: I don’t have time. But am I correct in saying that you are asserting that even the gurus and god men are prone to violence and anger and yet they are excused and worshipped? Let me hear your response to this. RICHARD: Yes, I am stating that loud and clear. RICHARD: You are born with aggression – and fear – and that biological fact has zilch to do with it being ‘thought that is a danger here’ . Which means: How on earth can I live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst I nurse malice and sorrow in my bosom? RESPONDENT No. 31: Yes. This is a fundamental question. Our enquiry starts here. But there is a BELIEF that one is nursing malice and sorrow. RICHARD: If I may point out? It is a fact. You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: Why are we not looking beyond that? We first have to look into these beliefs. RICHARD: May I ask? Why are you avoiding the fact? You were born with aggression and fear. RESPONDENT No. 31: I would suggest to keep things simple and converse innocently like a small child. RICHARD: Small children are not innocent ... they are born with aggression and fear. Understanding human nature is as simple as understanding this fact. Life is not complicated. RESPONDENT: Again here, Richard, you authoritatively make a statement that has no basis in fact. A child is NOT born with aggression and fear. RICHARD: This borrowed ‘Tabula Rasa’ (‘clean slate’) philosophy of yours has had a long innings in human history ... and is currently making a come-back in NDA circles as: ‘We are all born Little Buddhas’. The continued belief in this theory – in the face of the empirical evidence of the past 30 odd years demonstrating genetic inheritance – requires avoiding the biological fact. Just by putting the word ‘NOT’ in capitals does not miraculously turn a creed into a fact. RESPONDENT: Those are learned traits. RICHARD: I had a woman telling me a few weeks ago that boys are born with aggression and little girl babies are not ... and that girls learnt aggression from men (she had to explain ‘bitchiness’ somehow) and that it was men who had to change so that there would be peace on earth. Now you are telling me that fear and aggression are ‘learned traits’ and the question that immediately springs to mind is: learned from who? Because if fear and aggression are passed on non-genetically from generation to generation (parent to child) then what caused fear and aggression in the first sentient beings to emerge on this planet way back whenever. In other words: who started it all? RESPONDENT: Obviously, you were not a very observant parent or grandparent. RICHARD: I not only ‘observed’ my biological children from birth onward, I actively participated in finding out about myself, life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through intimate interaction at the grass-roots level of association ... bonding, nurturing and protecting. Indeed, I was a single parent for a formative period of my biological daughters’ upbringing ... and one cannot get closer than that. Infants and children are not as happy and harmless and benevolent and carefree as is so often made out to be the case ... and have never been so. They have malice and sorrow firmly embedded in them, for one is born with instinctual fear and aggression. Just watch a one month old baby bellowing its distress at being alone; just watch a one year old pinching its sibling in spite for taking its toy; just watch a two year old stamping its foot in a temper tantrum; just watch a three year old child fighting with its peers for supremacy. In the interests of having a sincere dialogue, I must ask: where in all this is the fabulous ‘Tabula Rasa’? The imposition of social mores – moral virtues, ethical values, honourable principles, decent scruples and the like – are essential to curb the instinct-born spiteful anger and vicious hatred that are part and parcel of the essential traits of being ‘human’. To achieve a truly ‘clean slate’, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease being ‘human’. To change ‘Human Nature’, they must give-up, voluntarily, their cherished identity ... the rudimentary animal self they were born with. RESPONDENT: Humans are born with a central nervous system for responding to the environment. Fear and aggression are learned traits as a result of the environment. RICHARD: By ‘environment’ you can only mean the world about ... the world of what you call ‘Mother Nature’. Thus you are saying that fear and aggression are leaned from a ‘kind and benevolent’ Mother Nature? That is, fear and aggression is learned from ‘she’ who is giving, protective, quiet, wild and beautiful’, eh? But okay ... I will have it your way, then. You are right and Richard is wrong. The question that immediately springs to mind is: how are you going to unlearn these traits that are learned as a result of ‘responding to the environment’ ? Which means: what is your plan? What success have you had? Have you unlearned all these learned traits yet? Or is all this that you write merely theory? You see, in my ignorance I naively thought that these traits were genetically inherited and so I deleted them like the software they were. Consequently I never get sad or lonely or sorrowful or grief-stricken; I never get angry or hateful or furious or filled with rage. Therefore I never have to become affectionate or compassionate or loving to compensate; I never have to gaze longingly at the stars ... yearning for a bodiless peace. I discovered the already always existing peace-on-earth ... how naïve of me. RESPONDENT: At what expense? Madness? RICHARD: Uh oh ... I gain the distinct impression that you are getting yourself ready to trot out the line that you do not have to look at the instinctual passions (and will instead waste your time endlessly unlearning those traits that you claim are only learned as a result of ‘responding to the environment’ ) because you have nothing to gain from Richard sharing his experience with you ... because he has what is officially classified as a severe mental disorder. Which means: what can a madman have to say to a normal sane person that is of value, eh? Yet 160,000,000 human beings were killed by normal sane people in wars this century – peoples like yourself – and they do know what they are doing ... do they not? RESPONDENT: Call me a dewy-eyed optimist, but I truly believe that people are generally good. RICHARD: Yet believing something to be true – even ‘truly believing’ something to be true – does nothing to alter a fact. It helps to ignore the fact, gloss over the fact, but the fact never goes away. A fact simply sits there making your beliefs look silly by its very existence. All sentient beings are born with survival instincts ... that is what makes people instinctively ‘pick up a weapon with the intent to kill another’. RESPONDENT: Flawed perhaps, but for the most part good. RICHARD: I do see that, for the most, most people mean well – peoples generally are well-intentioned – it is just that, for all their best intentions, they are hog-tied by the instinctual passions bestowed by blind nature. No one is to blame. RESPONDENT: A lot of the trouble in this world is caused by inequity, where basic needs are not met. RICHARD: It is simple to check as to whether this theory of yours is valid or not: the incidence of domestic violence and child abuse (war at home is a difference in degree and not of kind) knows no distinction betwixt working class or middle class or upper class in any culture. And in the affluent technologically-advanced societies, where every material need is met with a degree of superfluity that staggers the imagination, ‘a lot of trouble’ is as rampant as in the less-technological societies where ‘basic needs are not met’ . So, physical violence between human beings is not solved by every material need being met. Inequity is not the root cause of physical violence. RESPONDENT: Solve the problems of inequity in the world, and although you will not solve all of the problems of mankind, you will go a long way towards breaking the cycle of violence. RICHARD: But as the ‘the cycle of violence’ has not abated one jot in the material-rich countries, where is the evidence to substantiate your theory? RESPONDENT: So, is the violence and anger gone? RICHARD: Yep. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. And you ask: ‘Is the violence and anger gone?’ May I ask in return if – by declaring the body to be illusory – has the violence and anger gone for you? RESPONDENT: Hell, no. You understand, kangaroo? RICHARD: I do understand, only too well. Also, you have such a sophisticated turn of expression ... such that would leave school children gasping with envy. What would your epithet for me be if my E-Mail address was ‘The Antarctic’ ... which is the only continent on earth to have no resident animals? RESPONDENT: As you know, all species are genetically programmed to ‘share’ themselves in the interest of their survival. RICHARD: Aye ... there was an article in a newspaper some months ago announcing the preliminary discovery of a place in the brain which – when stimulated by electrodes – produced an oceanic feeling of oneness. The scientists concerned have speculated that it is the instinctually-programmed socialising faculty ... it promotes communalism. The popular press has dubbed this place in the brain as the ‘God Spot’. I watch with interest for further developments. RESPONDENT: Their aggressiveness is a factor of that compassion. RICHARD: Aggression is a survival instinct that blind nature endows upon all sentient beings. RESPONDENT: That is compassion at the physiological, programmed level. RICHARD: Not so ... compassion arises out of sorrow. Sorrow is because ‘you’ are – by ‘your’ very nature – forever cut-off from the magnificence of being here now at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. That is, ‘you’ cannot know the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of this very material universe. This is called, in the jargon, separation. Because of this separation, ‘you’ desire union ... oneness, wholeness and so on. In a word: Love Agapé. How to come upon this divine love? RESPONDENT: If you have any valid insights, then get on with discussing them. RICHARD: I have much to say ... and I have said it and still do say it. You, however, arbitrarily dismissed some of it in one and a half sentences when writing to another. Vis.:
Now, there are those who hold the ‘Tabular Rasa’ philosophy – only at the expense of ignoring biology and denying that the human animal is an animal – and maintain that all the ills of humankind are the result of conditioning. Yet they cannot successfully answer the conundrum they thus create: who conditioned the first sentient beings to emerge on this planet? (There was even one woman who told me recently that girl-babies are born without aggression ... and that men put aggression into them). Yet I ask people to not only look at emotions ... I stress the entire affective faculty. That is: emotion, passion and calenture. What does No. 4 have to say about passion? Vis.:
Now, the word ‘calenture’ is an incredibly useful word as it describes the delirious passion needed to manifest the delusion that:
RESPONDENT: Richard, I agree with the above. To me you are very clear until you get to this instinct part – to me it’s fuzzy. Can you clarify? RICHARD: I most certainly can ... it is rather simple, actually. But what is required is that one first acknowledges that this physical body and this physical world and this physical universe are actual. Actual as in tangible, corporeal, material, substantial, palpable. It requires that one comes to one’s senses – both figuratively and literally – and cease trying to understand life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through religious or spiritual eyes. This is not a metaphysical matter ... it is very, very earthy. Those people, who have dedicated large parts of their waking hours devoted to the particular type of physical research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located at least four basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is regardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic passions are 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. After all, they are fallible, ego-ridden and soul-bound human beings trapped in the human condition like everybody else, and are seeking to find a way through all this mess that we humans are born into via the scientific method. Experiments with electronic probes on either reptiles – not having a bigger brain – or mammals – having a bigger brain – have demonstrated repeatedly that by touching various locatable areas of this ‘reptilian brain’, these emotions can be triggered at command. Thus the hapless animal will switch from trembling fear to rabid desire in the twinkling of an eye ... merely by applying the electrode to another area. Similarly, nurturing can be abruptly replaced by aggression ... again by moving the electrode. This has been demonstrated again and again with predictable results. Thus it is a fact. So, beginning with a fact and not a premise, we can reliably ascertain that these instincts are what we are born with. Consequently, all sentient beings have, at the very least, a rudimentary sense of ‘self’ and ‘other’ ... and I am not suggesting for a moment that any reptile or mammal has an ‘I’ or a ‘me’. I mean it in the sense that an animal displays behaviour that indicates that there is an awareness of its physical form as being separate from the form of the world about ... which a tree, for example, does not display. This has been tested with monkeys, for instance, where a mirror is placed in the cage and the monkey first looks behind the mirror to find the – apparently there – ‘other’ monkey. After a while, an understanding that is observable dawns upon the luckless creature ... and it starts pulling faces at itself and otherwise enjoying the clearly demonstrable fun that comes as a result of the monkey knowing that it is its own reflection it is looking at. In other words: a sense of self. With the hormonal power of the feelings engendered, one feels that a ‘me’ exists ... generally felt to be somewhere in the region of the heart. This is the ‘me’ that I consistently call the soul ... for convenience. This feeling – and feelings are so powerful that they can override intelligence – makes one think that an ‘I’ exists ... generally located in the head. This ‘I’, which for convenience I consistently call the ego, comes to realise that it is the spanner in the works when it comes to the ever-pressing matter of peaceful co-existence with other members of its species. ‘I’, realising (thinking) that ‘I’ am but an illusion in the mind, realise (feel) that ‘my’ true identity is to be found in those prior existent feelings (Zen Buddhism’s ‘Original Face’) and can, by dint of great endeavour, dissolve and become ‘Me’. This ‘Me’ – usually capitalised to indicate divinity – experiences an oceanic It is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the East down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking Divine Immortality ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Centre-less Being’, for example, is simply the Eastern term for ‘God’; thus any wisdom designated ‘Unitary Awareness’ translates easily as ‘God’s Word’ ... in Western terminology. At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. Have you ever been to India to see for yourself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living? I have, and it is hideous. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing. Of course, it is possible to be actually free of the human condition ... but it is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the ‘tried and true’. RICHARD: I would suggest setting anything that stands in the way of peace on earth on the agenda for exploration, examination and discovery. RESPONDENT: I would suggest that we place peace with ourselves first, for without that no peace on earth will ever happen. We, given our selfish petty minds destroy ourselves first then the destruction of others becomes easy. It is out of our own violence that the collective violence is born. RICHARD: I am proposing, from my own direct experience, that it is out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression that the individual violence is born. The collective violence is but individuals gathering together for support so as to be as big – if not bigger – than the collection of individuals that they are fighting. RESPONDENT: What causes our own personal violence towards ourselves? RICHARD: The instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... which give rise to malice and sorrow and thence all the other cultivated feelings and emotions are the result of socialisation. What do you propose as being the cause of ‘our own personal violence towards ourselves’? EDWARD: The fact that we as a child (before the age of four) gave ourselves up and became robots rather than humans. RICHARD: Okay ... why do all peoples (6.0 billion living and perhaps 4.0 billion that have lived) ‘give themselves up’ at such a young age? Is this the result of physical causes (genetic inheritance) or metaphysical causes (like the Christian ‘born in sin’ or the Buddhist ‘born of samsara’ and so on)? Such a mass result must have a mass cause (and not be each very young infant’s personal failing) surely? EDWARD: Now we are just people, which is 3 million years (miles) away for reality, that of being Human. RICHARD: Okay, ‘just people’ are characterised by malice and sorrow (affective drives and impulses) ... what is ‘being Human’ characterised by (what is the character of Love and/or Truth and/or Intelligence)? And perhaps a more useful answer than what Love and/or Truth and/or Intelligence are not, this time? What are they? RESPONDENT: If there is sadness or anger or whatever, it is included in the field of perception and examined with great interest as ‘what is’ reveals itself. See what I mean? RICHARD: Yes, indeed I do. This is the essence of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ The past – although being actual whilst it was happening – is not actual now. The future – although it will be actual when it happen – is not actual now. Only this moment is actual. If I am not happy and harmless here and now, then I am wasting this precious moment of being alive. Yesterday’s remembered happiness and harmlessness means nothing if one is not happy and harmless here and now ... and the same applies to tomorrow’s anticipated happiness and harmlessness. If one is not happy and harmless now, then one has something to look at to discover why not ... and one keeps on looking until one is back on track. Being ‘on track’ means a general sense of well-being ... a grumpy person has no chance whatsoever of becoming free. Once one has established this base, one up-levels the ‘feeling happy and harmless’ experience to ‘feeling the sheer perfection of being alive here and now’. It is possible to experience this for ninety-nine percent of the time ... and the other one percent provides very little trouble. I call this a virtual freedom. Virtual freedom far exceeds normal human expectations anyway, so if nothing else happened one would be light years ahead of normal. Virtual freedom is the essential springboard into an actual freedom. Through reflective thought and fascinated contemplation of the fact that one is already always here, one finds oneself stepping into the actual world of sensual delight ... leaving one’s ‘self’ behind in the ‘real’ world where it belongs. Fear – existential angst at finding oneself to be the contingent ‘being’ one always suspected oneself to be – is both the barrier and the way to freedom. Always included in fear is a thrilling aspect, and by focussing upon this and not fear itself, an energy gathers momentum which does the trick for one (thrilling as in a exciting sensation through the body, stirring, stimulating, electrifying, rousing, moving, gripping, hair-raising, riveting, joyful, pleasing. throbbing, trembling, tremulous, quivering, shivering, fluttering, shuddering and vibrating). ‘I’ cannot set ‘myself’ free ... but ‘I’ can set in motion a process that will lead to ‘my’ eventual demise. RESPONDENT: Images come and go freely without abiding so they are no problem. RICHARD: Good grief ... this is the trite comment I get on an almost daily basis here in Byron Bay, Australia (held by some to be the NDA ‘Mecca’). They say things like ‘anger comes and goes, or ‘sadness comes and goes’ and so on. They ‘merely observe’ the ‘rising and falling’ of feelings, images ... and the vicious, murderous impulses to blot the other person right out of existence! But ... okay then ... No 12’s images ‘come and go freely’ ... they are ‘not a problem’ ... and neither are all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides, eh? RESPONDENT: Why deny that they arise (when they obviously do) and boast that I am without image? RICHARD: Mainly because there is no identity whatsoever for them to ‘arise’ from ... why should the sharing of how this salubrious living came about, with my fellow human beings, have to be dismissed as ‘boasting’ ? Is it not something worth boasting about? Let us, by all means, turn this dialogue into a competition – No 12 versus Richard – and see who wins the contest: defending the spiritual title is:
And the upstart challenging the title is:
Do you really want to turn this dialogue into a competition? RICHARD: I am somewhat intrigued by your statement in another post that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti constantly espoused this point of view. Viz.:
Perhaps you could find the time to post a few quotes of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti where he explicitly states that you are a not a ‘who’ and that what you are is only this body being conscious. KONRAD: He never did explicitly. RICHARD: Good ... I have never seen it explicitly stated either ... so my guess is that you made it up. KONRAD: However, it follows from his observation, that we are not persons who are bothered with anger we must try to get rid of, but we ARE this anger. Therefore, if we try to get rid of anger, it is anger that tries to get rid of anger. It is also implied in his statement, that there are only thoughts and insights. It can also be seen from the fact, that he refers to himself as ‘the speaker’. RICHARD: I read through this response three times and for the life of me I cannot see how any of it ‘follows’ at all. If you are anger ... then you are a ‘who’. If you try to get rid of anger it is a ‘who’ trying to get rid of a ‘who’. And where you say ‘there are only thoughts and insights’ then you are referring to a ‘who’ again by the use of the word ‘only’. As for ‘the speaker’ ... that is a substitute title for ‘mystical teacher’, not a description of a flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT No. 34: And be responsible (as No. 14 says), or transcend fragmentation (the same). I wonder if you agree. RICHARD: You may stop wondering ... I do not agree. Nobody is responsible for being born with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... it is nothing but a rather clumsy software package genetically inherited by all sentient beings as a rough and ready start to life. If No. 14 wishes to self-aggrandise himself by taking an obviously ineffective ‘infinite responsibility’ for what the blind forces of nature have produced ... then that is his business. And if you wish to be equally ineffective in making apparent the already always existing peace-on-earth by ‘transcending fragmentation (the same)’ then that is your business. RESPONDENT No. 12: Why isn’t it clear that any ideation of self-mastery (e.g. belief that ‘I’ am free of conditioning or ‘I’ am infinitely responsible or ‘I’ have transformed myself and this change is permanent or that ‘I’ have taken on the blind forces of nature and brought them to an end in this flesh and blood body) is self-aggrandizement, thought praising itself for purported accomplishments? RESPONDENT: If the ego is so big that it cannot see the vastness of itself, it can believe it responsible for any and everything and get away with that delusion, don’t you think? RICHARD: Yes, it requires repeated injections of commonsense to penetrate the chinks in the otherwise inviolable bastions of ‘Goodness’ that protects, nourishes and sustains the infinitely expanded identity. As this ‘Reservoir of Goodness’ shields the apotheosised identity from ‘Evil’ – and the physical world is believed ‘evil’ as in the ‘temptation of the senses’ meaning – then commonsense has its work cut out to even make a dent. The outcome? When commonsense is labelled ‘worldly’ – and the gullible seeker buys this shrewdness – then the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ propagated by the ‘Bodiless Ones’ reigns supreme. Then they can declare ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ – whatever that means – and even weep crocodile tears of Divine Compassion for the suffering of humanity. Because in the ‘real world’, when a Government Minister, for example, is caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ he and/or she ‘takes responsibility’ and resigns, at the very least, and pines away ... if suicide be not an option; in the Military Forces, not too long ago, when a Ranking Officer committed an unpardonable sin he ‘took responsibility’ by ritual disembowelment or shooting himself or whatever (‘the buck stops here’). But when a Guru or God-Man – whose ‘Ancient Wisdom’ initiated the morals in the first place that cause these outrageous suicides – displays anger (or any other human trait) it is said to be ‘Divine Anger’ (or any other Divine Trait) and is indicative of the fragile and elusive link between ‘Purusha’ and ‘Prakriti’ (consciousness and nature) and known by some as being ‘Sacred Schizophrenia’. For example: ‘Two birds, inseparable companions, are perched on the same tree; one eats the sweet
fruit and the other looks on without eating’. (Rig Veda I.164.20). This vision, deemed to be meaningful, is duplicated
in Mundaka Upanishad (I.III.1) and in Shvetashvatara Upanishad (IV.6). In the same way as the two birds are inseparable,
a human being is not thought complete and whole without both the aspect of ‘Prakriti’ (which experiences the domain
of time and space and form) and the aspect of ‘Purusha’ (which is timeless and spaceless and formless). Mr.
Ishvarakrishna (compiler of ‘Samkhyakarika) pointed out: ‘Purusha without Prakriti is lame and Prakriti without
Purusha is blind’ Similarly, when Mr. Jesus got angry and cursed the out-of-season fig tree for not bearing fruit, he is excused by apologists as not being ‘In The Spirit’ ... taking ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ means absolutely zilch when you are god ... but it sure sounds good to the desperate believer. Why, even Mr. Ken Wilbur can write pages of meaningless justifications for the Guru’s and the God-Men’s failure to eliminate ‘Basic Nature’ rather than merely transcending it ... and that failure is the only place where ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ has any meaning. Perhaps Mr. Christopher Calder’s attitude sums up why these antics are condoned:
In other words: they are saying that it is not possible to be free from the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body. And is it no wonder ... after all, the Buddhist’s ‘Ancient Wisdom’ extols ‘Parinirvana’ and the Hindus ‘Ancient Wisdom’ exalts ‘Mahasamadhi’ and the Christians inscribe R. I. P. on their tombstones and so on and so on ... on unto the after-death ‘Ultimate Freedom’. After all, the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ propagated by the ‘Bodiless Ones’ reigns supreme here on earth. The ending 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 requires the ending of malice and sorrow ... which involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time. RESPONDENT: Can an insight, one moment of insight, have an effect here? Does this not call for something that is from moment to moment, ongoing. RICHARD: Yes, indeed it can. One fundamental moment of insight can alter the entire course of one’s life wherein becoming free of the Human Condition is no longer a matter of choice – it is an irresistible pull. And, yes, then there is something that is from moment to moment, ongoing. I choose to call this something: ‘Pure Intent’. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of this physical universe. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity, which is the essential character of the universe, by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. This connection is what I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. Pure intent is not to be confused with being a ‘do-gooder’, or being full of ‘righteousness’, or being ‘moralistic’. Pure intent is the quality that encompasses what morals and ethics aspire to but never reach. ‘Good’ fails to reach its desired goal because it opposes ‘Bad’ ... the fight between Good and Evil has raged for centuries. Pure intent enables one to be liberated from both Good and Evil. Pure intent renders morality redundant ... which is good news, as morality – although well-meant – never works successfully. Morality seeks to control; pure intent eliminates the need for control. With pure intent operating twenty-four-hours-a-day in one’s life, one can safely get out from being under control without going off the rails. One is then able to be virtually free from the resentment, the guilt, the remorse, and all the other factors which are the hall-mark of a wayward self under control. Pure intent is the highway to this utter freedom, to one’s destiny ... and it is a wide and wondrous path. RESPONDENT: For example, let us take the subject of anger. Will an insight dispel it? RICHARD: Yes, if the insight is actualised. RESPONDENT: And let us take the subject of the self, the psychological reactions that come forth when someone insults us, the search to be something, the becoming. Is that dispelled? RICHARD: There are too many subjects mixed up in one sentence. May I separate them?
Yes, if the insight is actualised.
The search to ‘be something’ is dispelled, yes ... but the search to not ‘be’ is intensified. One can pay intense attention – single minded attention – to one’s insight. This unwavering attention, without mincing words, amounts to an obsession; for how can a person possibly allow themselves to be discontented and disturbing when this world is such a marvellous place to be in? One can intensify the search to the point of addiction ... then, and only then, there is some guarantee of success. What a shame, what a pity ... no, what a sin it is to be disconsolate and disagreeable when this world is so glorious. To be here, intimately here as this body only, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history.
Ah! Herein lies the rub ... ‘becoming’ what? Becoming an enlightened ‘Self’? One can cease ‘becoming’ and start ‘being’, but that is to stop half-way. To go all the way, one ceases ‘being’ at all. RICHARD: There is that truism that states: ‘We are all unique’. I say ‘truism’ deliberately, for I am immediately reminded of that scene in ‘The Life Of Brian’ where Brian addresses the crowd saying: ‘You are all individuals’. The crowd roars back in unison: ‘We are all individuals’. Down the back a lone voice cries out: ‘I’m not!’ Of course, the Monty Python crew were making a social comment, when they wrote that scene, about the conditioned identity of the average citizen when it comes to following a spiritual leader, but one can consider whether it holds well for humankind at large. Human beings are all born with the same basic instincts and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world have the same emotions and passions. Anger and forbearance, for instance, is anger and forbearance wherever it lives. There is no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be, they all have a global incidence. RESPONDENT: What I am interested is in that you say anger disappeared for you after 3 weeks. RICHARD: You are, presumably, referring to the following text:
RESPONDENT: So this time period or rather the culmination of it in, say, that last moment in that 3rd week is what interests/puzzles me. Was it one final time of doing above (your quote above) and then it just never came back again? RICHARD: Yes ... it is not all that difficult to break a habit once the very reason for its existence, its underlying cause, is exposed in the bright light of awareness. RESPONDENT: Ok. If I understand correctly from that paragraph, your reason for getting angry was ‘I didn’t ask to be born’? RICHARD: No, the very reason, the underlying cause, for the existence of anger amongst the whole suite of affective feelings was the basic resentment at having to be alive in the first place (as expressed in popular phrases such as ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ and ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die!’ and so forth) ... whereas the reason, the trigger, for getting angry varied according to a range of situations and circumstances. Here is what some dictionaries have to say about the word ‘resentment’:
RESPONDENT: My reasons seem to be different ... RICHARD: If I may interject? Do you not see there is a distinction between me saying ‘the very reason for its existence ...’ (as in the underlying cause of anger itself) and you saying ‘my reasons ...’ (as in the triggers for getting angry)? RESPONDENT: ... stuff like righteous anger or other person feeling superior and acting cocky and insulting/ castigating/ ignoring me, my point of view opposed, etc., or I feeling superior to the other and doing the same. RICHARD: Sure, there is a whole rage of reasons for getting angry (which vary according to different situations and circumstances) ... maybe the following will be of assistance in regards righteous anger (aka indignation):
Put simply: nature is neither fair nor just – a volcanic eruption (for just one instance) does not discriminate between who or what it obliterates/destroys – and thus coupled with the basic resentment at having to be alive in the first place is the further grievance that life is inequitable/iniquitous. RICHARD: Yet I never asked for an apology for ‘the ‘boneheaded’ comment’ ... and both respect and disrespect are like water off a duck’s back to me anyway. RESPONDENT: If someone spit on you and slapped you in the face and wished potential death to you ... would it be any different to them hugging you and caressing your face while they wear a warm smile? RICHARD: Presuming that the spitting, slapping and death-wishing behaviour is what the word ‘disrespect’ educed for you, and the hugging, caressing and smiling behaviour is what the word ‘respect’ similarly educed, then they are indeed different (which is the whole point of the prefix ‘-dis’ in any word) ... yet there would be no difference in regard to the feeling which occasioned both behaviours being like water off a duck’s back to me. There are no affections here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: Of course it would, you would be aware of the exact value and potential for how much your life is in danger at that moment ... RICHARD: Here you have moved from referring to the feelings which occasioned the behaviour – respect/disrespect – and are referring to the behaviour itself. RESPONDENT: ... (no feelings included, lucky duck) ... RICHARD: I do realise you may very well be making an associative pun (from the ‘water off a duck’s back’ phrase) yet even so the total absence of feelings in this flesh and blood body has nothing whatsoever to do with luck. RESPONDENT: ... but would you care about a possible and probable potential death? RICHARD: I have over a decade’s experience of interacting with people replete with feelings and am well aware they can cause them to do all manner of things – up to and including possible and probable homicide – and thus always take into consideration that their rationality can be cast aside in an instant. RESPONDENT: If your arms were free to move, you wouldn’t punch back as it is useless because the force behind a punch is determined by the survival instincts and aggressive motivations right? RICHARD: Wrong. RESPONDENT: Does this mean the sport of boxing or a friendly spar now and again is out of the pick? RICHARD: I have no interest whatsoever in hitting my fellow human being in the name of sport or friendliness. RESPONDENT: When I feel righteously angry I consciously want to go back to ‘feeling good’, but since I feel justified in my anger, it feels good to be angry, making it difficult to get back to ‘feeling good’. RICHARD: One of the major issues the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago attended to very early in the piece was the indignation – ‘anger excited by a sense of wrong, or by injustice, wickedness, or misconduct; righteous anger’ (Oxford Dictionary) – which had dogged him from almost as early as ‘he’ could remember (‘he’ was often moved to indignancy because of injustice/unfairness whilst still in grade school for instance) as righteousness, being oh-so-readily justifiable, is such an insidious feeling. RESPONDENT: To me, corrupt has always meant, by definition, being evil. But how do I see this anger as corrupt when I accept that there is no good and evil? RICHARD: Just for starters: try seeing how the (readily justifiable) righteous anger, with
all its feel-good virtuosity, precludes one from enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive – the only
moment one is ever alive – through being as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible via felicitously feeling good
(rather than virtuously feeling good) ... instead of seeing righteousness as corrupt (and therefore, by a definition,
evil) which depravity RESPONDENT: Most things that are corrupt can be seen as survival strategies, which means they could be seen as neither good or evil. RICHARD: Indeed they could ... yet it is undeniable that maybe 6.0 billion peoples nurse malice and sorrow – and thus the antidotal pacifiers love and compassion – in their bosom. RESPONDENT: How can I make myself see corruption when I don’t see things as good or evil? RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it this way? Now that you have neatly solved the existential dilemma which has bothered theologians/metaphysicians for centuries (simply by redefining good and evil out of existence) ... where are you at? Here is a clue:
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON AGGRESSION (Part Two) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001 |
