RESPONDENT: 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 become a fully expanded ego (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: 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: 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: 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 No. 8: Have you ever been in the company of a truly enlightened being?

RICHARD: Yes – night and day for eleven years – thus I have intimate knowledge ... and enlightenment sucks.

RESPONDENT: Richard, whose company was that?

RICHARD: The most optimum company possible for a ‘hands on’ exploration and investigation into the inner workings of ‘Tried and True’ solution ... the grandiose ‘Me’ that was inhabiting this body from 1981 to 1992.

There was nowhere to hide.

*

RICHARD: My experience, night and day for eleven years, showed me intimately that ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is indeed a morbid condition. In psychiatric terminology it is a dissociative state of being, sometimes known as ‘disassociative identity disorder’.

RESPONDENT: Please allow me to be frank. My impression from reading your post is that you don’t really know anything about enlightenment. You obviously know quite a lot about ‘disassociative identity disorder’, however you have erroneously equated this with the state of enlightenment.

RICHARD: It is but one of the ways of describing it ... I was answering a question about whether enlightenment was pathological and I couched my reply in similar terminology. I did mention that it can be otherwise described (in non-psychiatric terminology) as ‘Theodicy’ ... which is nothing but a spurious vindication of a god’s and/or goddess’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. The theological dilemma goes something like this:

1. God and/or Goddess is All-Loving and All-Powerful.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore God and/or Goddess is either All-Loving but not All-Powerful or All-Powerful but not All-Loving.

Of course theodicy is a word most often used to describe the various and far-fetched monotheistic philosophical-style resolutions (non-experiential) ... but the mystical (solipsistic) resolution of the existential dilemma of the ubiquitous presence of evil, via experiential ‘Self-Realisation’, goes something like this:

• Only self can really be known ... all else is an illusion, a dream.
• As I am the creator of all this illusion/dreaming, and as only Self (God and/or Goddess) exists, therefore Self is Who I Really Am (‘I Am God’ and/or ‘I Am Goddess’; ‘I Am That’; ‘That Thou Art’ and so on).
• Thus, as all is but a dream there is no Evil, really ... it is all ‘Lila’ (‘God’s and/or Goddess’s Divine Play or Sport’).

Which all amounts to the same thing as what the psychiatric term ‘dissociation’ refers to ... if nothing else, the very name (‘Self-Realisation’) is a dead give-away to all but the most humbly conceited and pious egoist.

*

RESPONDENT: Nothing could be further from the truth. Enlightenment has nothing to do with disassociation ...

RICHARD: If I may interject? What does the phrase ‘you are not the body’ indicate if not a total disassociation from the world of people, things and events?

RESPONDENT: ... and it has everything to do with intimacy, merging, acceptance and oneness. These are the exact opposites of disassociation. Enlightenment involves unconditionally accepting and loving everything – this is the exact opposite of running away from/disassociating from everything.

RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment is when the separative self realises and/or remembers its true identity (‘God’ and/or ‘Goddess’) and the physical world is seen for the illusion it really is. The whole point of ‘intimacy, merging, acceptance and oneness’ is to facilitate this remembrance/realisation ... and ‘God’ and/or ‘Goddess’ is Timeless and Spaceless and Formless. That which is Timeless and Spaceless and Formless is totally removed from time and space and form ... in a word: dissociation.

*

RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment is a dissociative state of being complete with self-important delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal demands for recognition, adulation, surrender and total obedience ... the ‘contracted ego’ (or ‘self’) has become a fully expanded ego (the all-expansive ‘Self’).

RESPONDENT: I don’t know which enlightened beings you have been hanging out with, but the ones I’ve been hanging out with display the exact opposite qualities to the ones you describe. I have never heard any of them demanding recognition or adulation and certainly never total obedience.

RICHARD: Then the ones you have been ‘hanging out with’ are not enlightened.

RESPONDENT: As far as surrender goes the surrender that ‘gurus’ speak about is surrender to the Truth.

RICHARD: Aye, and an ‘Enlightened Being’ is a person who has realised that they are ‘The Truth’ ... and only ‘The Truth’ exists.

RESPONDENT: Surrender to Who You Really Are.

RICHARD: And yet ‘Who You Really Are’ is none other than ... ‘The Truth’.

RESPONDENT: Never surrender to the will of the ‘guru’.

RICHARD: If the ‘guru’ has a will then they are not enlightened.

RESPONDENT: If there are gurus that have the qualities that you describe then they don’t know anything about enlightenment either!!!

RICHARD: If they do not have those qualities they are not enlightened.

*

RICHARD: 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: Running/disassociating from ‘what is’ by way of fear is what 99.99% of society does and it ‘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’.

RICHARD: Yet the term ‘what is’ as you are using it does not refer to this what is actual – time and space and form – but to the metaphysical ‘what is’ ... which is the whole point of what I am saying (above). Turning my words back onto me via a slick dialectic trick does nothing to further a mutual dialogue. This body and that body and every body is what is – what is just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time – which means 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 what is.

Only this that is actual is what is ... the metaphysical ‘what is’ is a fantasy.

RESPONDENT: Merging with, accepting and loving all things such that there is no more fear is part of what is known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ and nothing is more Peaceful and more threatening to cultural institutions.

RICHARD: Shall I put it this way? All of the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have convincingly demonstrated, over 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history, the abject failure of the efficacy of ‘merging with, accepting and loving all things’ when it comes to eradicating suffering off the face of the earth. Eventually one has no recourse but to face the facts and the actuality of the human situation squarely. Which is: if the ‘ancient wisdom’ is so worthwhile, why has it not worked? How long must one try something before abandoning it in favour of something more promising? There is as much animosity and anguish now as back then. The experiment has failed.

Clear the work-bench and start fresh ... learn from those that have gone before and move on.

RESPONDENT: What I’ve previously said concerns the self, yet I’m also interested in discussing about the Self. In various religions this is, paradoxically, with all their interest in God, a taboo topic. As I’ve already said in my previous emails, the experience I’ve had was not of my Self, but of another person’s Self, a female. The Self I’ve experienced is a very old archetype, resembling somehow a printing press, a matrix, it looked like a 1000 years old child, very powerful yet very vulnerable. Its being consists of light, thus enabling the Self to be present everywhere and anytime. It’s a wonderful, beautiful Being, impossible to comprehend by pure intellectual reasoning, let alone described by words. It has to be lived in order to be known.

RICHARD: There was a period during my eleven years of being in the enlightened phase (in my sixth year) whereupon what I called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Eventually I was able to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and was able to see ‘Her’ other face:

It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine – and upon such exposure ‘She’ disappeared forever.

RESPONDENT: The state in which you’re able to know your Self is a state in which you are blown up through space and time, becoming everything. You are thus able to understand the world objectively, as you know the substance out of which every single thing is made. My greatest surprise was to discover that the Whole of humanity is literally dead, and that the universe is alive and intelligent, humans retrieving themselves in an illusory, false refuge they call world. What followed after was Respondent taking that experience and using for its own purpose, which is what usually happens in the spiritual world of teachers and followers. You have to trust my word that what I’ve lived it’s nothing short than heaven. One reason for me in partaking to this discussing list is that I want to know if that was an illusory heaven.

RICHARD: To put is succinctly: yes (as is all which you describe here).

RESPONDENT: I invite all of you who have had a Self experience to try describing it.

RICHARD: Sure ... there was only The Absolute (the Self by whatever name) and nothing else existed.

RESPONDENT: I question if actual freedom from Human Condition is attainable without surpassing the last psychic Archetype, the Self, our Creator, out of which everything has begun?

RICHARD: My experience is that an actual freedom is attainable by going beyond spiritual enlightenment ... however I do not advise going that route (via enlightenment) as it is too traumatic.

Also it is just plain silly.

RESPONDENT: And if that so, the enlightenment ratio being 1/1.000.000 what would it be the AF ratio of success?

RICHARD: As it is exceedingly difficult to live in the massive delusion that spiritual enlightenment is I would easily estimate that the ratio would be much less for those that would go directly.

Much, much less.

RESPONDENT: Could it be that only the one who knows God may be called an atheist?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: Another thing I want to mention is that the state described by Richard (I’m not yet sure if actual or virtual freedom :)) is very similar in its characteristics with the intermediate state between the normal condition of mankind and the Self state of affairs.

RICHARD: Then I suggest that you re-read my descriptions ... I make it perfectly clear that an actual freedom is beyond ‘the Self state of affairs’ (and not before). For just one example:

RESPONDENT: I can say that as I’ve pass through this before enlightenment took place.

RICHARD: It is often the case that a PCE can devolve into the altered state of consciousness (ASC) known as spiritual enlightenment – such is the power of identity sweeping back in – and it is not uncommon to then self-centredly take the ASC as being superior to the PCE.

The ASC is exceptionally self-centred (it is sometimes expressed as ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) ... just look at your own words (further above):

• [Respondent]: ‘The state in which you’re able to know your Self is a state in which you are blown up through space and time, becoming everything’.

Need I say more?

RESPONDENT: Did you see or listen to K as a ‘mirror’?

RICHARD: No ... I had already been living the enlightened state, night and day, for about six months before I first heard of Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti.

To explain: I have never followed anyone; I have never been part of any religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical group; I have never done any disciplines, practices or exercises at all; I have never done any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any praying, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities; nor did I endlessly analyse my childhood for ever and a day; nor did I do never-ending therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... and again and again. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning.

I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough, into what I called an ‘Absolute Freedom’ via the death of the ‘ego’, in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I examined all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such experience and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong.

I found out where it had been going wrong over an eleven year period ... self-aggrandisement is so seductive.

RICHARD: There is a wealth of information in many books written by differing peoples from all walks of life who were in contact with Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti at various stages throughout the 60+ years that he travelled about speaking of the matters discussed on this list ... No. 33 is one of those people who had direct personal contact (in his case whilst being at the Rishi Valley school) and as such his report would not, at the very least, be dismissed out of hand by any thoughtful person as being merely an ‘interpretation’.

RESPONDENT: No. 33’s interpretations were not ‘dismissed out of hand’, but were dismissed after viewing his many contradictory posting assessments.

RICHARD: I have read No. 33’s posts for maybe four years now – and when the original archives were on-line I backtracked through to the beginning to find out what had already been published – and I took notice of the general thrust of what he put forward regarding Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti and the ‘Teachings’ over the many years that he has been writing. I found that, by and large, he was reasonably consistent (given that it is touchy subject to question and that he received very little support and/or encouragement) and that it is to his credit that he still persists. It is such an obvious thing to do, to establish whether the speaker is living the ‘Teachings’ he promulgates, that I wonder why there is so much opposition to doing so.

RESPONDENT: And I wonder why there is so much obsession with proving that K did not live what he preached.

RICHARD: It is not an ‘obsession’ ... it is a simple, straightforward and obvious case of ascertaining whether the enlightened state is a worthwhile state to live in or not.

RESPONDENT: I wonder what is the agenda in wanting to promulgate that concern.

RICHARD: My agenda is quite clear and unambiguous: spiritual enlightenment has been proposed by many peoples throughout human history as being the solution to all the ills of humankind – not just by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti – and as it does not release the enlightened person from anger or anguish in toto it is therefore not worthwhile pursuing.

I found the following observation to be quite explicit:

• [No. 33]: ‘Only a mindless K-devotee will buy the argument that in seeing the fact of anger/fear etc. will it end completely.
• [No. 05]: ‘It isn’t an argument, it is a fact – but *only in the moment of seeing*. In another moment, anger and/or fear may arise unobserved and be externalised. To ‘end it completely’ isn’t necessarily to end it for good. (Re: Aryel Sanat on Krishnamurti; Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002).

There are many examples of saints and sages and seers displaying varying degrees of those emotions I usually group under the ‘catch-all’ words malice and sorrow. Most commonly they were subject to anger and anguish (often disguised/designated as being ‘Divine Anger’ and ‘Divine Sorrow’ by themselves and their devotees/followers/readers).

RESPONDENT: It would seem to me that one have to ask the man point blank to know for sure what is was speaking from.

RICHARD: Well, as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti is dead that is not an option but you could try asking No. 10 ... here is what he had to say, on this very mailing list some time ago, on the subject of experiencing anguish:

• [No. 33]: ‘What do you mean by she ‘dulled your world’?
• [No. 10]: ‘I was dulled (robotic) for two weeks after it.
• [No. 33]: ‘How did you deal (emotionally) with your finding?
• [No. 10]: ‘... I went into our bedroom and for about two hours experienced all of the pain of trust lost, separation of us, and the agony of the worst pain we humans experience, that of infidelity, it has been happening for millions of years and is the deepest pain a human can suffer, even greater than the loss of a person through death. (Message No. 00152 of Archive 00/07: Subject: Re: Age and Aging; Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000.).

RESPONDENT: Lively exchanges can certainly be misinterpreted.

RICHARD: True ... but they can also be seen accurately too.

RESPONDENT: Therefore, it is very possible that No. 33 cannot objectively tell the difference between ‘lively intensity’ and ‘anger’.

RICHARD: Yet it is equally very possible that he can objectively tell the difference ... he certainly knew what the appropriate questions to ask No. 10 were.

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: I wonder why anyone would ‘want’ to feel they have exceeded the understanding of such a one as Buddha or Christ?

RICHARD: Why would anyone want to merely ‘feel’ that have done anything correctly or incorrectly ... let alone exceeding Mr. Buddha’s or Mr. Jesus’ ‘understanding’ ? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... why feelings should be given the honour of being the final arbiter in any issue speaks volumes about the human condition and indicates why people are unable to directly address the issue under question, which is: why do human beings suffer?

RESPONDENT: Actually feelings are totally accurate, when felt without the interpretation of your intellect. People suffer because they have egos and are reactive and are ignorant of their higher selves, that self that is telepathic and beyond the material plane incarnation.

RICHARD: Just as in a previous post you proposed that ‘ideas’ were subject to ‘interpretation’ only in a person with ‘separated awareness’ you are now putting forward that ‘feelings are totally accurate when felt without the interpretation of the intellect’ ... are you not insinuating an infallibility for ‘Spiritual Enlightenment once again?

Since the advent of audio-taped and video-taped discourses, has there been any ‘Enlightened Being’ who has been demonstrably infallible?

RESPONDENT: I’ve met some towering folks myself in my time and none of those would dare assert their superiority.

RICHARD: Yet is it not stunningly clear, to the discerning observer, that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have squandered their heyday? With this modern era’s rapid and comprehensive publication and communications network, none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice. Anyone who is at all astute will have perceived that they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity.

RESPONDENT: Enlightened beings are beyond unenlightened judgement.

RICHARD: If I may point out? This stock-standard ‘master’s reply’ simply does not work on me: I experientially detected the facticity of the hypocrisy in spiritual freedom all those years ago. ... and anyway, ‘unenlightened judgement’ also shows they have indeed fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity.

RESPONDENT: Enlightenment means freedom from ignorance. You become one with God’s creation.

RICHARD: If I may remind you? I already am aware of this (as I am already aware of all of your other non-responsive-to-the-issue replies in this post) due to eleven years of experiential living of enlightenment. You are not addressing the issues at all ... what has this reply have to do with intelligently responding to ‘none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice ... they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity’ ? Does ‘you become one with God’s creation’ mean that ‘God’ falls short of ‘God’s own standards ... and thus fails to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity? Because, as there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, you seem to be indicating that the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is.

*

RICHARD: And for as long as you continue to see me in terms of ‘awakening’ or ‘realisation’ or ‘enlightenment’ or any other name for the ‘Tried and True’ you would be wasting your time ... there is no ‘being’ lurking around inside this flesh and blood body to put through the hoops.

RESPONDENT: Okay, but there certainly seems to be someone in there.

RICHARD: This ‘there certainly seems to be someone in there’ phrasing indicates that there may very well be a psychological and/or psychic entity still inhabiting the body that is writing these words to me. Hence you presumably have no alternative but to see in what I write ‘someone in there’ ... which process, if this is what is happening, is called egocentricity (viewing another through one’s own feelings and/or standards).

*

RICHARD: For example: an awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ personally checked me out face-to-face some years ago ... and made me the subject of the nightly discourse, warning the faithful followers that Richard is an example of the dangers on the spiritual path. To wit: Richard is insane.

RESPONDENT: I think we may have touched on something here. This is an unbearably cruel thing to do to anyone. Although the false self must be shattered, this in not the way to do it.

RICHARD: Oh, it was not ‘an unbearably cruel thing’ at all ... I had a thoroughly pleasant time explaining my experience (just as I do here). It was, as always, great fun ... at least for me, anyway (I cannot answer for the awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ of course).

RESPONDENT: In my opinion. I’m really sorry your had to go thru this experience, it seems you may be still angry about this?

RICHARD: Goodness me, no ... I have these nonsensical character analyses gratuitously given to me on an almost daily basis. It is this simple: there is no way I can politely say ‘everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction’ without someone getting their nose out of joint. It is all par for the course.

RESPONDENT: If I might ask, were you following this teacher at the time, were you part of a group?

RICHARD: You may have missed my answer to your question about having a teacher or guru in a previous post wherein I explained how I came to be here where I am today. Just so that there is no further misunderstanding I will make my experience crystal clear:

• I have never followed anyone; I have never been part of any religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical group; I have never done any disciplines, practices or exercises at all; I have never done any meditation, any yoga, any chanting of mantras, any tai chi, any breathing exercises, any praying, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities; nor did I endlessly analyse my childhood for ever and a day; nor did I do never-ending therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... and again and again.

RESPONDENT: And also if you don’t mind, who was this teacher?

RICHARD: Why is it important to know who this awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ was? It could be anybody of mystical persuasion ... they are all saying the same-same esoteric thing, fundamentally. Please, it is the outcome of the conversation, which I was describing in my previous E-Mail, that is important ... rather than have this discussion devolving into an exercise in disparaging a particular person. I like my fellow human beings ... no matter what mischief they get up to.

It is the phenomena of ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ that I am talking about ... not the person per se.

RESPONDENT: Or were you just checking yourself out? Like Kenny Rogers, ‘just checking in to see what condition your condition is in?’

RICHARD: No, I have no need to ‘check myself out’ ... I was simply discussing spiritual enlightenment and my experience of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are with a fellow human being. This awakened ‘Spiritual Teacher’ took my explanation of myself, and my description of going beyond enlightenment, to be an indication of insanity ... let me re-present the point I am making: [Richard]: ‘as the ubiquitously called ‘straight’ people (regular society) consider that anyone dabbling in things mystical are the ‘lunatic fringe’ (conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them), I am sure that they must find it quaint that one lunatic would ‘test’ another lunatic and declare him to be insane (thereby implying that the ‘tester’ is not).

I find the entire situation hilarious.

RESPONDENT: I post to other forums and just yesterday someone was talking about ‘normal’ people as being insane and I said that was too severe a summation. Deluded would be accurate. I believe in accuracy.

RICHARD: Oh, normal people are sane alright (it is they who make the definition when it is all said and done). I have not been sane for years ... I was making the point that the Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) called spiritual enlightenment is an institutionalised insanity where I wrote: ‘conveniently ignoring the fact that their ‘God On Earth’ is one of them’.

Ain’t life grand!

RESPONDENT: Awakening is the beginning ... the goal of total enlightenment only happens (I believe) when we lose all desires.

RICHARD: Okay ... but does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is? Is the ‘loss of all desires’ (including the desire for peace-on-earth) the factor that precludes amorality from happening in ‘total enlightenment’?

RESPONDENT: Awakening is the BEGINNING. Enlightenment is the ultimate goal – the final state of being. In Enlightenment there can be no more desires, no more teaching, no desire for world peace – just nothing. Ultimate Enlightenment is realising that none of this is happening. It is all a dream. You and I do not exist. We are just a lower form of reality – like a dream. It doesn’t matter what happens in a dream – in the end the dream is over and none of it matters. Who cares if is was a nightmare? It was not real. Even though it seemed to be real at the time. You see there is a DILEMMA within awakening. I’ll talk about myself because I cannot talk for others – I do not know their experience. AWAKENING, for me, is knowing that this is a dream – My Dream, God’s Dream. He (or what I REALLY am) is the DOER. Just like in a dream the dreamer (asleep on the bed) is the real doer. There is only one dreamer (doer) but there may be many people in the dream. The dream people are not real. It is the same here. You do not exist even though you appear to. It is all a game – the game of maya – the play of God. God playing his own game with himself. Only he cannot play the game unless he becomes many – creation is God becoming many. God is SIMULTANEOUSLY separate from the creation and playing the game. BOTH are true. The Dreamer is really asleep on the bed but he is also engaged in the dream. Now morality and amorality takes on a new light. The question of morality only exists in duality – where there is more than one. But in REALITY there is ONLY ONE ... there is ONLY GOD, there is ONLY YOU. So, the question of morality disappears. There are no other being alive – they are just a dream. In an existence where there is ONLY ONE PERSON – no morality exists. Further, nothing happens – there is no time or space. Now ULTIMATE ENLIGHTENMENT is KNOWING this. So then, when you teach – WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO AWAKEN? There is ONLY YOU. It is all different forms of YOU. Once YOU are awake it is over ... no more teaching, no more desires, just nothingness or everythingness.

RICHARD: Hmm ... this is solipsism (and displays a very, very sick attitude towards the pain and suffering of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like).

RESPONDENT: Something just occurred to me. Maybe, just maybe, the ultimate enlightenment cannot happen until everyone awakens; maybe that is why the awakened ones try to awaken others. Because I have heard it said that it is an on-going journey ... maybe it ends when everyone becomes enlightened. Just a thought.

RICHARD: Are you saying that peace-on-earth is not possible until every single man, woman and child becomes enlightened?

RESPONDENT: Well now, I guess I have opened a can of worms ... anyone care to examine them?

RICHARD: I am always happy to explore all issues relating to life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are ... but at this point I only want to keep asking the $64,000 question until I get an answer:

Does the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is?

RESPONDENT: It seems, from my understanding, that ‘enlightenment’ has to do with freeing the awareness from being bound to the body ...

RICHARD: Yes ... you are understanding enlightenment correctly (in enlightenment consciousness is seen as being the source of matter and had become entangled in its own creation).

RESPONDENT: ... and that with the awakening of awareness, telepathy starts to develop ...

RICHARD: Yes ... prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination and so on can become quite pronounced in enlightenment. For example, a Twentieth Century God-Man, Mr. Mohan Rajneesh had enough enlightened prescience to clairvoyantly know 18 years ago that:

• [quote] ‘beginning next year, the world will face 15 years of catastrophic natural and man-made disasters – including nuclear war. Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Bombay all will be destroyed – but the holocaust will not be confined to these major political centres. And unless human consciousness changes totally, man cannot survive. As he is right now, he is already out-dated. There will be floods which have never been known since the time of Noah, along with the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and everything else that is possible through nature. There will be wars which are bound to end in nuclear explosions, hence no ordinary Noah’s Arks are going to save humanity. (Here) we are creating a Noah’s Ark of consciousness, remaining centred exactly in the middle of the cyclone. I say to you that except this there is no other way’ [endquote]. (© ‘The Rajneesh Times’ 2 September 1983).

RESPONDENT: ... and the habitual self-referencing ends.

RICHARD: Yes ... and when the personal self-referencing ends the impersonal Self-Referencing begins (‘I am God’ or ‘I am That’ and so on).

RESPONDENT: Awareness is now free to experience itself ‘as’ reality, rather than separated from it.

RICHARD: Yes ... there is an all-encompassing loving and compassionate total oneness (an utter ‘Aloneness’) being all that is, was, and ever will be (‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) in enlightenment.

As an aid to understanding why my experience differs, it is important to comprehend that the entire psyche has ceased to exist ... the affective faculty (emotions, passions, calenture) and its epiphenomenal psychic facility (intuition, imagination, visualisation) was extirpated when the instinctual passions (complete with the primal animal self) ceased to exist.

Which is why it is all so simple in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: Is that all there is to it?

RICHARD: That is not ‘all there is to it’ for those who believe in this eastern mystical thought ... it is their whole ground of being. It is their passion, their very being. It is one of the main causes of the promotion and perpetuation of all the anguish and animosity that has beset this fair planet since time immemorial. Many years ago – nearly a quarter of a century ago – back in my ‘hippy’ days when I lived in and travelled around this country in a psychedelic ‘bus for five years, I had that painted along the sides. Not many passer’s-by could work it out ... eastern mystical thought had not infiltrated into the West so thoroughly then as now. Anyway, I believed in it through and through ... so much so that I lived it as a reality for eleven years. I was situated in a living nightmare of what I came to see was nothing short of institutionalised insanity. Any altered state of consciousness was a delusion born out of the illusion of self ... but only because of humankind’s ignorance. It is truly dreadful to be trapped in a massive delusion for eleven years, unable to find any way out and knowing that no other human being can help, for the altered state has been held up for millennia as being the Summum Bonum of human existence. All the literature on the subject praised the state of consciousness I was in (Enlightenment, Illumination, Moksha, Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Sunyata and so on) and yet I just knew it was a mirage that I was living. I am simply sharing my experience for others to do what they will with. Is not that what this List is here for?

RESPONDENT: Very interesting story. Thanks for talking about it with us. I don’t quite understand why you insist it was such a waste of time, and yet have repeated it here on this list as if it is for our edification.

RICHARD: I am insisting because unitary perception is a delusion born out of the illusion of self. All the Great Thinkers of the past and present – and the future too, the way things are going – are spell-bound by the insidious seduction of the glamour and the glory and the glitz of the altered states of consciousness. The most beguiling of them all is spiritual enlightenment (Moksa, Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Sunyata and so on).

You are not the only one to wonder at my perseverance ... No. 5 has noted persistence and determination and queries my disavowal of passion. It is just that unitary perception is a solution that has been hawked around for thousands of years ... realising oneness. Those peoples who have realised this have lead a gullible humankind, that is desperately searching for answers, astray. All the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that has eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed master attests to this. All the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered master’s teaching offers its mute testimony.

All the Saints and the Sages; all the Masters and the Messiahs; all the Saviours and the Avatars; all the Gurus and the God-men have not been able to bring about their much-touted global Peace On Earth. This has been the sorry lot of humankind since time immemorial. Over 160,000,000 million people have been killed in wars alone this century. Nigh on 200 wars have occurred since the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945.

RESPONDENT: Please keep it simple, I am trying to fathom your posts. Of course your account of your adventures make fascinating reading and contemplation. Ramana Maharshi adopted a similar approach (forgive me). He proceeded to enquire ‘Who am I’ starting from the human body and further on. I am not clear about the second ‘I’ you mentioned.

RICHARD: When one sees – as an actuality – that enlightenment itself is a delusion born out of the illusion of everyday reality, then something very curious happens. This second ‘I’ dies also. Then any identity whatsoever becomes extirpated, extinguished, eliminated, annihilated ... in other words: extinct.

Speaking personally, there is no ‘being’ ... no ‘presence’ at all. There is simply this flesh and blood body bereft of any identity whatsoever.

Now, there is peace-on-earth ... it exists in the actual world. There can never be peace in the real world. The reality of the real world is an illusion. The Reality of the Mystical World is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles.

They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years.

RESPONDENT: Although teachers pointing to the truth have been around, not many are interested in hearing what they say. This lack of interest is not the fault of teachers. We have no interest in exposing our misconceptions to the light of truth and escape in any way possible.

RICHARD: No way do I buy this ... philosophical wisdom, psychological knowledge and spiritual enlightenment have had their day and are proving themselves to be inadequate to meet the requirements of this modern era. For thousands of years – maybe tens of thousands of years – humankind has known of no alternative manner of living life on this verdant planet. The passing parade of philosophers and preachers, masters and sages – geniuses and thinkers of all description – have failed abysmally to deliver their oft-promised ‘Peace On Earth’.

RESPONDENT: If they themselves are at Peace, they have failed not. The only success is what one accomplishes for themselves.

RICHARD: So you advocate arrant selfishness? Is this why they gather disciples by the multitude ... who they know will slaughter disciples of other Masters and Sages?

RICHARD: To become spiritually free the ego-self (‘I’ as ego) must die/dissolve ...

RESPONDENT: So many gurus say that ... yes?

RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings say this ... yes (for this is the very point I am establishing as a basis for the remainder of my explanation).

*

RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions).

RESPONDENT: Who would you recognise as enlightened?

RICHARD: To give but three persons from the last 100 or so years as an example:

• Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer, in mid-1896 at age 17, had his spiritual awakening when he suddenly felt a great fear of death; lying very still he imagined his body becoming a stiff, cold corpse. Following a traditional ‘neti-neti’ (not this, not that)’ practice, he began self-inquiry by asking ‘Who am I?’ and answering: ‘Not the body, because it is decaying; not the mind, because the brain will decay with the body; not the personality, nor the emotions, for these also will vanish with death’. His intense desire to know the answer brought him into an altered state of consciousness beyond the mind, a state of bliss called ‘Samadhi’ by the Hindus. He said: ‘But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the I within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless spirit. All this was not dull thought. It flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. I was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that I. From that moment onwards the I or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on’. Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer consequently taught the traditional Vedic philosophy that death and evil were maya (illusion) and that liberation from rebirth could be dissipated by the practice of ‘vicara’ (self-pondering inquiry) and ‘bhakti’ (devotional surrender) either to Shiva Arunachala or to Ramana Maharshi (as he was known by his disciples) by which the true Self and the unity of all things would be discovered.
(Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica).
• Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti had his spiritual awakening on the nineteenth August 1922 which process he describes as: ‘I felt acute pain at the nape of my neck and I had to cut down my meditation to fifteen minutes ... there was a man mending the road; that man was myself; the pickaxe he held was myself; the very stone which he was breaking up was a part of me; the tender blade of grass was my very being, and the tree beside the man was myself ... just then there was a car passing by at some distance; I was the driver, the engine, and the tyres; as the car went further away from me, I was going away from myself. I was in everything, or rather everything was in me, inanimate and animate, the mountain, the worm, and all breathing things ... I began to lose my physical body ... I was semi-conscious ... my head was pretty bad and the top part felt as though many needles were being driven in (...). I sat cross-legged in the meditation posture under the pepper tree which is near the house ... I felt myself going out of my body ... I saw myself sitting down with the delicate tender leaves of the tree over me. I was facing the east. In front of me was my body and over my head I saw the Star, bright and clear. Then I could feel the vibration of the Lord Buddha; I beheld Lord Maitreya and Master K.H. I was so happy, calm and at peace. I could still see my body and I was hovering near it. There was such profound calmness both in the air and within the lake, I felt my physical body, with its mind and motions could be ruffled on the surface but nothing, nay nothing, could disturb the calmness of my soul ... nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters at the source of the fountain of life and thirst was appeased. Never more could I be thirsty, never more could I be in utter darkness ... I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world ... I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated’
(‘Krishnamurti: The Years Of Awakening’ Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York, 1991).
• Mr. Mohan Rajneesh said: ‘Just before the twenty-first of March, 1953 a new energy arose out of nowhere ... those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light, became so intense that it was almost unbearable as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness ... it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing ... the mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away ... by the evening it became so difficult to bear it ... something was very imminent, something was going to happen ... I felt a great presence around me in the room ... I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration ... a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal ... that night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya ... that night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the really real ... call it god, call it truth, call it Dharma, call it Tao ... I walked towards the nearest garden ... for the first time I was not alone ... something was pulling me ... I was just floating ... I was not there. IT was there, call it god, god was there ... and I was just carried away ... carried by a tidal wave ... everything became luminous, it was all over the place, the benediction, the blessedness ... the whole universe became a benediction ... I must have been there by clock time at least three hours ... but it had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless ... there was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality; uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable ... since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it ... since that day the world is unreal ... that night of March twenty-first, the person who had lived for many, many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old, started to exist ... that night the death was total. It was a date with death and god simultaneously’. (‘The Discipline of Transcendence’, Vol 2, Chapter 11; © Osho International Foundation).

RESPONDENT: 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: Richard, is enlightenment a thing at all?

RICHARD: It is certainly possible to be enlightened ... therefore it is ‘a thing’ inasmuch as an altered state of consciousness can and does happen, but it is not actual.

RESPONDENT: Is it a biological condition, a belief?

RICHARD: It is ‘a biological condition’ as enlightenment occurs in the psyche and the psyche is born of the genetically inherited instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) ... which passions are indisputably biological. Likewise is ‘a belief’ biological as the activity of believing per se – along with imagining, intuiting, visualising, conceptualising, trusting, hoping, having faith and so forth – also occur in the psyche (all of which can give rise to epiphenomenon such as prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination and other psychic effects).

RESPONDENT: Does it exist?

RICHARD: It does ‘exist’ as a metaphysical ‘Reality’ in the psyche but it is not actual (actual as in the sensate world of this body and that body and 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). It is a delusion born out of the illusion of the ‘real-world’ reality – everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses – which is why only .000001 of the population have ever become enlightened.

It is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination full-time.

RICHARD: My experience, for eleven years in the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’, was an on-going ecstatic state of rapturous, ineffable and sacred bliss: Love Agapé and unconditional Divine Compassion poured forth for all suffering sentient beings twenty four hours of the day. It was a truly euphoric state of being.

RESPONDENT: Richard, sounds like your Enlightenment was very pleasurable. Why have you criticised it elsewhere?

RICHARD: Because it is an absolute self-centredness (usually capitalised as ‘Self’) replete with all that inheres in a vainglorious expansion of self into being ‘All That Is’ (as in ‘I Am That’). The mystics who (accurately) report that the polar opposites become complimentary poles are well aware that the diabolical underpins the divine ... some call all the misery and mayhem ‘Lila’ (‘God’s Sport’ or ‘The Divine Play’).

All of which points to why peace on earth is not on their agenda.

*

RESPONDENT No. 8: Have you ever been in the company of a truly enlightened being?

RICHARD: Yes – night and day for eleven years – thus I have intimate knowledge ... and enlightenment sucks.

RESPONDENT No. 6: Richard, whose company was that?

RICHARD: The most optimum company possible for a ‘hands on’ exploration and investigation into the inner workings of ‘Tried and True’ solution ... the grandiose ‘Me’ that was inhabiting this body from 1981 to 1992. There was nowhere to hide.

RESPONDENT: Richard, what did you think, feel and say during that time of ‘enlightenment’? Please help me see that it is exactly the same ‘enlightenment’ that you have said others are talking about.

RICHARD: In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that perfection already always existed in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are and that ‘I’ and/or ‘me’, the psychological and/or psychic entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society ... ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, moral, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was an emotional-mental fabrication ... a sense of identity with its conscience. I also saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called being normal. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic.

That proved to be my undoing – as far as actual freedom is concerned – as ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love which led to an emanation of Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order. The Absolute had been revealed to me in the Love and Compassion – it was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of Love and Truth to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind!

Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed in the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981 when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my Divine Awakening. The ‘process’ was both prosaic and extraordinary: on the one hand I began undoing all the social conditioning that I had been subject to since birth and on the other hand I generated love for all and sundry. I examined all the social traditions and customs etc., one by one, and released myself from their iron grip. I diminished hate and anger and sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and oneness ... which is the best that a normal human could do by virtue of the socialisation process.

I moved in and out of sacred states of Heavenly Bliss and Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and immersed myself in the entire ‘process’ with dedication and resolution. I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and humility in all my interactions with other people and pondered the significance and ramifications of the Divine Order. I totally believed in and had supreme faith in The Absolute and its ability to bring about the Peace On Earth so long promised. That I was to play the central role in this Divine Plan no longer came as a surprise to me, as I began to realise that I had long yearned to be part of the Salvation Process.

I understood that I had to die and be reborn and, consequently, went into a catatonic state that resulted in my being carted off to hospital and kept under intensive care for four hours until I came out of it. I was never to be the same again, as Divinity had been working on me whilst I was catatonic (known as ‘Samadhi’ in Hinduism) and from that date forward I was permanently in a state of human bliss and love ... I could do no wrong. About six weeks prior to the sixth September 1981 I had a revelation that I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again, and that I was to prepare myself for it. I mustered all of my faith and resolution, renewed all of my trust and allegiance, and awaited the day. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion.

The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before, I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very being. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was !IT! was such a simple thing: all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do.

Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain – in the top of the brain-stem – which I likened it to turning over a L.P. record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again.

It was over ... I had arrived.

Love had surrounded me and accepted me completely. I was immersed in Love; I was completely one with Love – Unconditional Love, Love Agapé – for I was home at last. Unexpectedly, I had all knowledge – all that I had ever heard or known had been swept away – and I knew all knowledge: I knew that death did not exist ... I knew that I had existed since the moment of creation; I knew that I shall always exist. I knew that all consciousness is in the act of becoming; I knew that there is no sin or evil; I knew what free will meant – that we choose everything – and I knew that choosing the Absolute had been the only choice to make. I had become Awakened to the Greater Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no separation between me and The Absolute.

I had a Divine Sense of Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred Duty. As Mr. John DeRuiter has said: ‘I am not my own – I belong to Truth. Whatever Truth does or says is what I do and say and that’s now what I’m here for’. Bewitched and beguiled by the Glamour and Glory and Glitz of the seductive state of ‘Being’, that ensues when one surrenders to the ultimate ‘Power and Authority’ known as ‘The Truth’, I spoke of love as being ‘the way; the means and the end’. ‘There was no such thing as death’, I would say, ‘for I know the secret of ‘Being’. I had realised the ‘Absolute’ and I lived only for ‘The Truth’: ‘The Truth must be spoken’, I would say, ‘though ‘The Truth’ be ineffable it must be told’ ... and so on and so on.

I spent the first three years swanning along in a state of ‘Oneness’ with everyone and everything. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion all rolled up into one ... and my reward for being the latest Saviour Of Humankind was to be able to live in an on-going ecstatic state of rapturous, ineffable and sacred bliss. All told, for eleven years I lived in the Altered State Of Consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ – night and day for eleven years means I have intimate knowledge – thus I had plenty of time to examine all its nooks and crannies ... and I found much that was murky and dirty lurking around in the outer darkness.

Whereas ‘Me’, at the centre of ‘Being’, was dazzling.

RESPONDENT: Richard, I loved your last post. Your knowledge of philosophy is impressive. Would you like to write some articles for www.4DPortal.com ? I’m planning to start introducing some formal philosophy/science of consciousness stuff to the site. What I want to do is find some common ground between the academics and the mystics.

RICHARD: Oh, there is ‘common ground between the academics and the mystics’ alright ... it is just that the mystics do it and the academics study it. Also, an ‘academic’ is not necessarily a philosopher ... the ‘academics’ study philosophers as much as they do the ‘mystics’. This is because the ‘Truth’ of the philosophers is but a nom de guerre for ‘God’ ... when all is said and done.

RESPONDENT: At the moment they seem to be off in different camps using completely different words to discuss the same things and not really paying any attention to what the other camp is doing/saying. For example, I didn’t know that all us enlightenment people where solipsists – my Webster’s defines solipsism as ‘the theory that nothing but the self exists and therefore that the self is the only object of real knowledge’. Do they mean the Universal Self or the personal self?

RICHARD: Both. A solipsistic ‘personal self’ has the choice of withdrawing into neurotic self-isolation or expanding into psychotic self-aggrandisement ... usually the latter. Energised by the ‘will to survive’, that grew out of the bodily survival instinct, the self-aggrandising tendency – narcissism – born of the dominance and submission which instinctual aggression and fear brings (exemplified by the ‘Alpha Male’ prototype found in many animals) means that power and authority runs rampage when transformed into the ultimate ‘Power and Authority’ or ‘Cosmic Energy’ through sublimation and transcendence.

RESPONDENT: Which brings me to the question about how Richard’s evaluation is as to the part of the still invisible Mr Osama Bin Laden is playing in this current Human drama.

RICHARD: I usually do not write about current affairs as I can only ever provide a superficial opinion (they are not matters I am fully informed about) ... but as I understand it the basis of the part which Mr. Osama Bin Laden is playing would perhaps be best understood by reading the words of a ‘Fatwa’ which he, and some other people, made public on 23 Feb 1998 at the following URL: http://www.emergency.com/bladen98.htm

This is what it reads in part:

• ‘The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together’, and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God’.’

A newspaper article, written on 15 Feb 1999, which provides what seems to be a reasonable account of the relevant background information at that time, can be found at the following URL: http://past.thenation.com/cgi-bin/framizer.cgi?url=http://past.thenation.com/issue/990215/0215hiro.shtml

RESPONDENT: From an Islamic viewpoint the Name of the Game is ‘Jihad’. From a Western point of view it appears that Mr. Bush steadily is pushing for ‘War against Terrorism’.

RICHARD: You seem to be mixing and matching two separate issues here ... it could be better put this way:

1. The religious/spiritual issue: an Islamic perspective (Jihad) and a Christian perspective (Crusade) ... with both sides saying that the other is evil.
2. The political/ideological issue: a Middle Eastern perspective (fighting Western imperialism) and a Western perspective (fighting Middle Eastern terrorism) ... except that the latter has now expanded to become a war against all terrorism world wide.

RESPONDENT: Well I’d say that it’s a spiritual war anyway and it’s very unholy (unholy because I find some dignity implied with the word holy).

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I can no longer find any of the dignity implied in the word ‘holy’ with which I was inculcated in my child-hood.

RESPONDENT: Currently we have at any place on earth outbreaks of violence and I come to wonder why would not happen outbreaks of enlightenment as we safely can say that participators in these outbreaks are all more or less suffering from psychosis.

RICHARD: Oh, there have been outbreaks of enlightenment happening all over the place ... the following URL may be of interest: http://www.angelfire.com/realm/bodhisattva/gurulist.html. And here is another URL: http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm

There are over 1100 teachers/gurus/masters listed on that page.