Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RICK: A question, Richard: You wrote (about this other enlightened guy), ‘Incidentally, this other person was far more deluded than I was ... they had manifested the typical stigmata’. (actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-delusion.htm). Would you know how that person manifested the stigmata?

RICHARD: Yes ... stigmata mysticus (in all its cultural variations) is the physical manifestation of an emotional/ passional play in a fertile imagination.

RICK: I’ve always been curious ... Do people with stigmata inflict physical harm on themselves to form the wounds of Christ, or what?

RICHARD: Here is a useful word:

• ‘psychosomatic: designating, pertaining or relating to illnesses having both physical and mental components, usu. involving a physical condition caused or aggravated by mental or emotional disorder’. (Oxford Dictionary).

RICK: Being that you’ve had close encounters with the metaphysical and the transcendental I thought you might know about such things.

RICHARD: The following is of related interest:

• [Richard]: ‘.. it is the identity (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) residing parasitically in all human beings who is rotten to the core ... and it is this entity who stuffs up any lifestyle practice and/or political system – be it hunter-gather, agrarian, industrial or socialist, communist, capitalist and so on – no matter what ideals are propagated.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Correctly speaking, though, identity itself is an illusion.
• [Richard]: ‘Yes, although the illusion, just like all psychosomatic illnesses, somatises noticeable effects (such as emotional beliefs and passional truths) which in turn affect behaviour ... and which is especially noticeable when the illusion transmogrifies into a delusion (such as ‘Tat Tvam Asi’).
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Therefore, there is nothing that is rotten or not-rotten to the core.
• [Richard]: ‘I beg to differ: it is a rotten illusion – just as its delusional core is – which rottenness is evidenced by its effects’.

RESPONDENT No. 96: Dear friends, here we have to dill with a strwnge phenomenon. Mr.Richard is saying that his was enlightened and he thought he was the parussia.In his own words. Then he met another person that was saying he was the parussia as well,and he said is impossible to be two parussias.Is like some craisy in the mental hospital saying he is Napoleon the grait and then he founds another one saying he is also Napoleon the grait.,so is not possible to be two Napoleons.....I have read about many so called enlightened persons,but nobody said I am Jessus or,this or that. The person,Mr.Richard was in halussination. I think nobody who read about Krishnamurti,Nisargadatta Maharaj etc,nobody said I am this or that. He(Mr.Richard) claims that he was enligntened for so many years,but he was just in one self deciving,halussinating state.

RICHARD: You may find a kindred soul at the following URL: [snip link]. Just in case you cannot access that link the essence of it is as follows: ‘(...) AF for me is the product of a failing enlightenment. Richard wrote me that he was the ‘parousia’and met another that was in the same state,so he thought two can not be Jesus and gave up. It reminds me of a person that things he is Napoleon the grate and meets another person,who things he is Napoleon as well and the most logical of them gives up. Was the state Richard was,one enlighened state?Or one religious psychosis? Till now,when I was reading about enlightenment,I never found one to be Jesus,unless he was in a state of psychosis,because that is what the Greek word ‘parousia’means,the second representation of Jesus. That means he was not enlightened.He is lucky he escaped the psychosis’. [endquote].

CO-RESPONDENT: Richard, you thought you were Jesus when you were enlightened?

RICHARD: Another co-respondent gained a similar misconstruction from reading only the above quote. Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... Richard himself destroyed all his writings during his enlightenment time, that is, when he thought to be the Paraclete (an appellation of the Holy Ghost).
• [Richard]: ‘If you could provide the text, with an appropriate reference, wherein Richard said he thought to be the Paraclete – a god spiritually, as distinct from fleshly, active in the world – for the eleven years 1981 to 1992 it would be most appreciated.
Incidentally, Richard burnt all what he had written, in that period, post-enlightenment/ awakenment ... not during’.

The word Parousia – ‘Greek = presence (of persons), from pareinai be present’ (Oxford Dictionary) – in Christian Theology, and as distinct from the word Paraclete, refers to the Second Advent (aka the second coming) of the Christ (aka the Anointed One) on earth and is derived from the Latin ‘Christus’, from the Greek ‘Khristos’ (meaning ‘anointed’), from ‘khriein’ (anoint), as a translation from the Hebrew ‘masiah’ (Messiah) and refers to ‘The Messiah or Lord’s Anointed of Jewish tradition’ according to the Oxford Dictionary.

RESPONDENT: So being the Parousia is being the Christ. Correct?

RICHARD: By virtue of it being a Greek translation of the Hebrew written form of the Aramaic for ‘Messiah’ ... yes (which is why, despite ecumenicalism, the festering sore betwixt the two religions is incurable).

*

CO-RESPONDENT: If you don’t won’t to recount the whole thing could you just point me to a place where this is discussed on the site?

RICHARD: Here is where the above beat-up stems from:

• [Richard]: ‘If you were to re-read what you have quoted (further above) you will see that it is [quote] ‘an emotional play in a fertile imagination’ [endquote] which is fuelled by an actual hormonal substance ... and there is no way that an emotional play in a fertile imagination is, as you make out, actual (as in your ‘and are actual’ conclusion).
To give an obvious example: for about a week, in the early days of being enlightened, I was ‘The Parousia’ and it was not until I met another person who was similarly afflicted that it dawned upon me it was but an emotional play in a fertile imagination ... there was sufficient rationality operating to comprehend there could not be two (simultaneous) manifestations of the ‘Second Coming’ ...

RESPONDENT: So from the above it seems you are saying you felt/believed yourself to be the second coming of CHRIST. Is that correct?

RICHARD: It is an inherent knowing – intrinsic to the transcendental state of being popularly known as spiritual enlightenment/mystical awakenment – that one is the expected saviour of humankind (by whatever name) ... had I been raised in a different culture (a buddhistic society for example) the nomenclature would have been different (the Maitreya for example).

*

RICHARD: ... • [Richard]: ‘Incidentally, this other person was far more deluded than I was ... they had manifested the typical stigmata’.

RESPONDENT: Either one is very delusional.

RICHARD: Aye ... except that whilst the one receives professional treatment for an illness the other receives reverence and/or adoration (thus having a far-reaching life-or-death influence on entire nations).

There is no prize for guessing which one of the two is the most dangerous.

*

RICHARD: And that is it, in its entirety, written to a person on record as saying they use Greek in their everyday vocabulary. So as to clarify this whole business I will re-post the following:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘What do you make of Krishnamurti’s dying statement that a great energy used his body and such an energy will not re-appear for many years?
• [Richard]: ‘He was accurately and correctly reporting his experience. That Christianity has their Parousia; that Buddhism has their Maitreya; that Islam has their Mahdi; that Hinduism has their Kalki; that Judaism has their Messiah; that Taoism has their Kilin and so on all comes from the same type of experience.
It is part and parcel of being enlightened (‘I Am That’ or ‘That Thou Art’).
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Was he delusional by any chance?
• [Richard]: ‘All enlightened beings are deluded ... the altered state of consciousness (ASC) known as spiritual enlightenment is a delusional state. I am not ‘guru-bashing’ Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti per se ... it is the ASC itself I am targeting.
I can use the accredited writings of virtually any enlightened being to demonstrate my points’.

All what a person does, when they liken the enlightened/awakened experience of being the Parousia, the Maitreya, the Mahdi, the Kalki, the Messiah, the Kilin, and so on, to a patient in a psychiatric ward thinking they be Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte (or Ms. Marie Antoinette or whoever), is to air their ignorance of matters transcendental in public. It is not a strange (as in atypical) phenomenon at all.

RESPONDENT: Working in the mental health field, and experiencing spiritual illumination for varying amounts of time not more than 4-6 hours ‘straight’, and no more than about 10 hours in any day) I recognize the difference of being illuminated and believing that one is illuminated and hence understand the distinction you draw in your example.

RICHARD: Good ... it is not a little thing we are doing here, on this mailing list, discussing such matters.

RESPONDENT: Instead of observing with two eyes, can there be observation with ‘one eye’, i.e. with consciousness that is undivided?

RICHARD: Obviously there can be ... the latest estimate puts the number of one-eyed people at the 1.2 thousand mark.

RESPONDENT: It is possible to let what you see reveal what it is.

RICHARD: Only if it is hidden in the first place ... here in this actual world the ‘meaning of life’, or the ‘purpose of existence’, or however one’s quest was described, lies open all around.

As it has been all along.

RICHARD: This is how this thread started:

• [Respondent]: ‘... identity itself is an illusion’. [endquote].

From that simple starting point you have expanded this illusion theme into including everything as being an illusion – other than Brahma – which leaves me with but one question: Why do you write e-mails to your illusions?

RESPONDENT: Oh, that is simple: it is all His Leela! I do not write these e-mails – He makes me write them.

RICHARD: I am only too happy to re-phrase my question: why does Brahma make you write e-mails to your illusions?

RESPONDENT: Brahma doesn’t make anything happen. It is neither caused nor causes anything. That which is beyond cause is Brahma. Hence a correct statement ought to be: ‘e-mails happen’.

RICHARD: If I may point out? I am not asking how the e-mails happen but why they happen ... why as in what purpose does it serve to communicate with your illusions when you already know they are your illusions? Or, to put that another way, is it because your illusions do not realise they are your illusions that you write to them to tell them that they are your illusions?

In other words: have your illusions taken on a life of their own, as it were, and are denying that you are their creator?

RESPONDENT: Your comment about if two would ever join would this cause a Transformation of our world, I say it is possible that, ‘That’ just might be true.

RICHARD: Hey, I was only joking ... ‘That’ is the stuff of folk-lore and fantasy.

RESPONDENT: Richard, your joke is 100% serious to me.

RICHARD: Oh dear, then you must be far more deeply mired in love and compassion and truth than I had realised. All is not lost, however, for it is never to late to wake up from the transformational delusion that one has inveigled oneself into. It was an understandable attempt to escape from the secular illusion of being but a thought-bound entity by taking a ‘quantum leap on the other side of thought’ ... that ‘dimension beyond thought’. One can effectively vanish in ‘my’ entirety. Just as thought can stop, so too can the ‘thinker’ disappear ... and the ‘feeler’. ‘I’ and ‘me’ cease to be, period. Then what I am (what, not ‘who’) is this flesh and blood body as an actuality. No sense of identity, no feeling of being whatsoever ... no psychological or psychic entity anywhere at all within or without the body to need to ‘bring forth a new world’.

Needless to say, one has no need of aspiring to ‘join and become as one’ with a member of the other gender.

RICHARD: As happiness, harmlessness and a freed intelligence only comes about upon the elimination of the cause of malice and sorrow, so long as you maintain your godly delusion your hands are tied. So much for ‘infinite responsibility’ ... it must be such a shame that omnipotence did not come with the package, eh?

RESPONDENT: Please allow me to re-state. I can do nothing, but I do everything. Omnipotence not only comes with the package, it is the package. I am infinitely responsible for I am responsible for each I that I create. I am responsible for being the action that are you, and I am responsible for the action that is I.

RICHARD: In that case ... why did you kill yourself 160,000,000 times in ghastly wars this century? Why do you murder and rape and torture yourself ... and wreak havoc with all that appalling domestic violence and child abuse and suicides that you inflict upon yourself? There are 6.0 billion human beings suffering because they do not realise that they are you doing gruesome things to yourself ?

RESPONDENT: That was known, is known, as me each time it happens.

RICHARD: And are you really saying that 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 ‘is alright with me’?

RESPONDENT: Yes.

RICHARD: You said that you believe that ‘each instance of harm is fine’. Which means that you believe that each instance of war is fine; you believe that each instance of murder is fine; you believe that each instance of rape is fine; you believe that each instance of torture is fine; you believe that each instance of domestic violence is fine; you believe that each instance of child abuse is fine and you believe that each instance of suicide is fine?

RESPONDENT: Yep.

RICHARD: Does ‘Beautiful Wife’ know that you believe that each instance of rape is fine?

RESPONDENT: Yes – she chooses to feel differently – that is fine too.

*

RICHARD: Pacifism means that the bully-boys get to rule the world. The Tibetan situation is a particular case in point.

RESPONDENT: Richard, there are no bully-boys.

RICHARD: I classify that answer as being in a state of denial about what is happening in this world of people, things and events.

RESPONDENT: Yes, you do Richard – your opinion is noted (...) the only meaningful denial is denial of responsibility, and denial of responsibility is the only delusion.

RICHARD: Okay ... please correct me if I have got this wrong: upwards of 1.0 million Tibetans (as you) were brutally slaughtered by the Chinese (as you) because the Chinese (as you) were in a state of denial – ‘the only meaningful denial’ – about being you (as god). And, furthermore, this ‘denial of responsibility’ (the denial of the responsibility of being the one who creates such mayhem and misery by denying that one is god all along) is, you say, ‘the only delusion’. Have I understood you?

RESPONDENT: Yes.

RICHARD: Which is: god is doing brutal things to god because god is in denial about being god ... thus creating 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? How does that sound to you? Have I got it right?

RESPONDENT: Yes.

RICHARD: Does it look as silly to you – when viewed sensibly in print – as it does to me when I read what you say?

RESPONDENT No. 25: The instinctual passions are our base.

RICHARD: The very earth beneath our feet is ‘our base’ ... this planet grows human beings just as it grows the trees and the grasses and the flowers (although in the final analysis, of course, it is the universe itself which is ‘our base’ as it ‘grows’ the suns and planets ... and I am putting ‘grows’ in scare quotes deliberately as it is an analogous term).

RESPONDENT: ‘Creation’ is the word Krishnamurti used to describe the state of being not in time.

RICHARD: Aye, he certainly did. Whereas, in actuality, this planet grows human beings in time (and space), just as it grows the trees and the grasses and the flowers in time (and space), although in the final analysis, of course, it is the universe itself which is our base as it ‘grows’ the suns and the planets in time (and space) ... and I am putting ‘grows’ in scare quotes deliberately as it is an analogous term. There is no ‘Creation’ here in time (and space) ... this universe is perpetuus mobilis.

RESPONDENT: What do you think creation is if not ‘perpetuus mobilis’ when there is not time? Of course, we’re talking of psychological time, not actual time.

RICHARD: First, the phrase ‘psychological time’ is obviously a sop to the intellect, a paying of lip-service to rationality.

Second, I do not need to ‘think’ what ‘creation is if not ‘perpetuus mobilis’ when there is not [psychological] time’ as I know what it is (I lived it/was it for eleven years): it is a disassociated delusion, a massive hallucination.

In other words: human vanity writ large.

RICHARD: Do you actually know the cause of all the suffering of sentient beings that existed prior to each and every human being emerging here as a baby?

RESPONDENT: Yes.

RICHARD: May I refer you to your statements (previously):

• [Respondent]: ‘Let us be clear; I have no answers’ (...) ‘the source that I speak of (...) is the decision made, that which decides as me is something else entirely’.

Which means: you do not actually know the cause of all the suffering of sentient beings that existed prior to each and every human being emerging here as a baby ... because it is ‘The Unknowable’. May I ask? Is this ‘something else entirely’ the same as what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti referred to as ‘otherness’?

Is it ‘that which is sacred; that which is holy’?

*

RICHARD: If not, you are in illustrious company ... neither did Mr. Gotama the Sakyan.

RESPONDENT: LOL. Of course he did, Richard, he was I.

RICHARD: So, you are saying that you are Mr. Gotama the Sakyan incarnate, eh ... that explains why what you say looks silly in print. What he had to say looks silly in print, too.

RESPONDENT: For trivia’s sake, the company is rather mundane.

RICHARD: Is it now ... and it is a pleasure talking with you, too.

RICHARD: The only time there is feeling without thought is when one is deluded.

RESPONDENT: There are sensations without thought, perhaps you are alluding to this. But delusions seem to me to always involve thought coming to an inference as to what the meaning of those sensations are.

RICHARD: No, I was referring to affective feelings, not sensate feelings. If there is only feelings and no thought, one is swamped with whatever the contents of the psychic component of the unconscious are thus able to throw up at random. Without the control of thought itself (which is a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic influences) then there is delusion. One is said to have ‘lost touch with reality’ (meaning the objective world as ascertained sensately). There does not have to be thought operating, just images, symbols, visions and so on.

RESPONDENT: I am being objectively critical and not cynical in pointing this out to you.

RICHARD: Nobody here has said that you were being cynical ... to my knowledge. Did you think that you might have been? Of course it is a subjective evaluation as to whether oneself is being objective or not ... but I am sure you do not need me to tell you that.

RESPONDENT: Yours is the evangelistic approach and reveals the working of delusion.

RICHARD: And what delusion is that? That peace-on-earth is possible? But I thought you said that you were interested in peace-on-earth ... in fact, ‘are you vitally interested’ was the question that I asked. Were you just playing me along for a sucker?

RESPONDENT: I am sorry, sir.

RICHARD: There is no need to be sorry ... you just made a mistake, that is all. We all do, from time to time. And there is no real need to call me ‘sir’ , either ... I do not stand on ceremony.

RESPONDENT: I am working on something else: instantaneous awakening – global freedom in a finger snap. And this affects even the dragon flies.

RICHARD: Does it now? While you are busily doing that, can I interest you in a re-posting of the last paragraph of my reply to what I mistakenly presumed to be an earnest question? It might help to clear up that ‘evangelistic’ notion you were harbouring about me:

• ‘But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in the actual world. When one is free from the Human Condition, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is ... and here on earth in this life-time. One knows that one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe ... and that is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world – the ‘Land of Lament’ – fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Most human beings, being contumelious as they are, will probably continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious as a self-righteous soul who is convinced that they know the way to live ... as revealed in their revered scriptures or in their cherished secular philosophy’.

RESPONDENT: This is how the boundaries of reality become extended through extrapolation from the limits of sensation to the reaches of imagination.

RICHARD: Oh, well said ... only it was you – and not me – that stated that ‘time and space are perceivable and have measurable limits and boundaries’ . So, you too are a victim of imagination, eh?

RESPONDENT: Only the emptiness of no-mind can stop the speeding arrows of delusive thought.

RICHARD: Whatever you personally do in life, one thing is becoming patently clear. You do not have to bother about trying to empty your own mind ... it would appear that it already is. Tell me: was it grace ... or were you born without a mind of your own?

RESPONDENT: You still have far to go before you can sit with Buddhas.

RICHARD: You just do not get it, do you? I have no intention or desire to ‘sit with the Buddhas’. They are but a bunch of narcissists.

RESPONDENT: Getting rid of the ego and the soul is easy.

RICHARD: Well, well, well ... this shows that you are beginning to actually read what I write. Good.

RESPONDENT: The hard part is getting rid of a wooden head.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... first things first, eh? I do agree there is no use in your trying to tackle eliminating your ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul until you first get rid of your wooden head. May I suggest a possible line of approach to this problem?

What you fondly think is a quaint necklace that you are wearing is actually a sphincter muscle.

RESPONDENT: Richard. Isn’t it possible then, that what you are now, is pure God? A plain, brief and straight-forward response appreciated, if you know that is.

RICHARD: Yes, I do know. Plainly, briefly and straight-forwardly ... no, I am not ‘pure God’.

RESPONDENT: Richard. I’m surprised by your remark. How is it that you know you are not God???

RICHARD: I know that I am not God for I was for eleven years – from September 1981 until October 1992 ... whereupon it become obvious to me that I was living in a massive delusion.

In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that everything was already perfect as-it-is and that ‘I’, the psychological entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a free human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but 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 an actual freedom is concerned. Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order of things ... for an Absolute had been revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that 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 peace and prosperity 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!

(As all this was happening, a passing thought occurred to me, which was briefly contemplated ... then banished: Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the social ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’? This trifling question was to be of immense benefit years later when I realised that I was living in a delusion and that there was an actual freedom lying beyond ... but I jump ahead of myself.)

Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed on 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 1981when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my Divine Awakening on a fine September morning. 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 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 sixth of 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 dedication, 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. 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. 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 was It. I had a Divine Sense of Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred Duty, gathering some disciples on the way, until 1984. Then I started to question just what I was doing and just what had happened to me. Something seemed to be wrong ... this had all been done before by other Masters and Messiahs, Saints and Sages, Avatars and Saviours, to no avail. In fact, instead of bringing Love and Peace, they had left in their wake much bloodshed and hatred ... and I was one of them! Accordingly I travelled to India to find out for myself exactly what was amiss with this whole Enlightenment business by meeting some of these hallowed Gurus and imbibing the centuries of Eastern Spiritual Tradition for myself, instead of merely reading about it in books.

It was to take me eleven years to get out of this massive delusion I was living in and go beyond it to arrive at where I am today. It was eleven years of coming to terms with the understanding that what I was living was a delusion of grandeur ... and that it was what every human being believed in, in some way, shape or form ... but that is another story. Today, I am no longer an Enlightened Master living in an Exalted State of Being ... I am me-as-this-body only, a fellow human being who has no sorrow or malice whatsoever to transcend; hence I am both happy and harmless. I am what I was on that fateful night in 1980 when I asked the question: ‘Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?’ I am these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is ... by ‘my’ very presence.

Any identity, such as ‘I am God’, is a delusion.

*

RESPONDENT: You successfully explained why you are not any vision of a kind of imaginary God you once believed in, or that the ignorant world looks to. You haven’t shown, however, how you can know you (i.e. your mind that is) are/is not in fact pure true real God manifest in your body? I suggest you cannot know what you claim to know, that is, that you are not God. You have not forgotten the old false images you at one time embraced, and this emotional memory may be responsible for your ‘knowing’ the unknowable.

RICHARD: But I do know that I am not ‘in fact pure true real God manifest in my body’ because by having eliminated any identity whatsoever – the ego and the soul – I can ascertain, with clarity, that there is no self or Self in this body or anywhere else outside of a person’s imagination. Likewise is it that any god – which is a projection of self – ‘exists’ only in the human psyche and not in the actual world. Therefore it follows that I can know, by direct experience, that I am not the ‘pure true real God’ because such an entity has no actuality.

Without an ‘I’, I have no emotions. Hence no ‘emotional memory’. Knowing the ‘unknowable’ is only possible for a body bereft of any identity – complete with its emotions and passions – at all. This knowing is a direct experiencing of the actuality of people, things and events. It is a direct experiencing of the infinitude – the infinite and eternal character of the universe – here and now. It is a direct experiencing of the purity of the perfection of being here at this moment in time, as this body only, here on earth. It is a direct experiencing of the fact that I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being ... and that experience is ambrosial.

I am without sorrow and malice, therefore I am both happy and harmless. Apart from the personal benefits of achieving perfection, the social benefit is enormous.

It means peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: I’m just here more or less alone, I guess.

RICHARD: Each and every human being is on their own as a flesh and blood body ... dependent upon no one; autonomous. Being ‘alone’ or lonely is a feature of being a self: ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is.

RESPONDENT: I didn’t mean lonely by alone.

RICHARD: One of the hallmarks of self-realisation is to no longer feel the common or garden variety of loneliness but to experience the utter aloneness of being ‘The One With No Other’; the mystical literature abounds with descriptions of the master being alone ... in its root meaning of ‘all+one’ (ME ‘al one’ from ‘al ane’ from OE ‘al ana’ from ‘al an’ where ‘al’=‘all’ and ‘ana’ /‘an’=‘one’). And I am not necessarily being pedagogic by digging around in the dictionaries ... for example:

• [Respondent]: ‘Contrary to what you have said, Krishnamurti never says that he has a Soul, a Self.
• [Richard]: ‘I beg to differ: [quote]: ‘I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal ... this is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself’. [end quote].
• [Respondent]: ‘His use of ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ do not make him so, though you use the dictionary to establish your point. Krishnamurti often departed from the dictionary meaning and substituted another meaning. For example, ‘alone’ he made to mean ‘all one’.
• [Richard]: ‘Once again, I beg to differ: he did not make ‘alone’ mean ‘all one’ at all ... etymologically it already means ‘all one’.

The mystical quality applied to ‘alone’ has popularly come to mean ‘we are all one’ ... but the master is indeed alone in the sense of being solitary. In solipsism only oneself exists – there is no ‘others’ – and in some of the more archaic religions this gives rise to speculation that their god or goddess dreams universes peopled with beings for amusement or sport ... out of loneliness and/or boredom. Speaking personally, I was alone for eleven years – but never lonely – and one of the first things I noticed, upon breaking free of the massive delusion of godliness, was the ending of aloneness ... and I am still never, ever lonely. As a discrete flesh and blood body I am physically on my own and autonomous, but with no separative entity to feel either lonely or alone – cut off from the magnificence of the actual – the entire feeling of being solitary has ceased to exist.

RESPONDENT: Another thing that I should like to talk with you is the following. Few years ago dawn on me that the nature we see around us, is not really the way it is. Because if I look at a bird for example, I don’t see the actual bird. This thing that I call bird (even if it is not a thing), is sending photons in my retina.

RICHARD: Or, more correctly, the pigmentation of the bird’s feathers absorbs some of the spectrum of the sun’s radiation, or light waves, and deflects the remainder (which impinge upon the photosensitive receptors in the eye).

Interestingly enough most of the blue and green of bird feathers is due to an optical phenomenon called scattering (known as ‘Rayleigh Scattering’) and not pigmentation ... but that is another story.

RESPONDENT: Irrespectively of the process that follows (electrical signals etc) I see what the brain is decoding, if I can use this word decoding. And all these happens in a small area of the brain which is in the dark.

RICHARD: A part of the process you call decoding happens in the eye itself (there are upwards of 7 million cone-shaped receptors in the retina which detect fine detail and colour) ... and it is helpful for an understanding to comprehend that the eyes are the brain on stalks, as it were, and are not separate from the brain itself.

The same applies to all the senses: those medical textbooks which have transparent pages whereby layer after layer (first the skin then the muscles and so on) can be lifted off a diagrammatic body, as the pages are turned, until only the skeleton remains demonstrate this quite clearly.

RESPONDENT: That means that the tree is not green, the brain is giving the colour.

RICHARD: The green of a tree’s leaves is due to chlorophyll (a group of magnesium-containing green pigments) not absorbing a particular wavelength of light radiation: wavelength is a property of light and colour is the sensation caused by this property as it interacts with the eye ... which gives rise to the expression ‘what colour is a carrot in the ground’.

In other words quality (quale) is sourced in properties ... and not in the perceiver as more than a few peoples contend.

RESPONDENT: If something happens to my brain, I will see it like having a different colour of what you see for example. The same happens with all the senses.

RICHARD: However, if something does not happen to your brain the leaves of the tree will be seen as being green just as this brain does ... and the same happens with all the senses.

RESPONDENT: So if I close my eyes I can’t say that the tree is green.

RICHARD: Perhaps, upon reflection, you will find that you can ... just because the eyes are closed does not mean that the chlorophyll pigmentation in the leaves ceases deflecting a particular wavelength of the sun’s radiant energy and absorbing the rest.

Sometimes it is helpful to take a step sideways to ascertain what is going on: three-dimensional vision, for example, is also dependent upon the eyes being open ... yet ambulation shows that three-dimensionality does not all-of-a-sudden disappear upon closing the eyes (a blind person can determine that a tree-trunk is round by walking around it or running their hands over it).

RESPONDENT: Actually I can not say that what you call green is the same with what I call green. We assume it is, because we have the same brain.

RICHARD: Obviously the precise hue of the colour green varies from person-to-person (due, if nothing else, upon the number, quality, and arrangement of the cone-shaped receptors in the retina) yet the general colour green is the same for all normal human beings.

RESPONDENT: I am saying all these things, because it seems to me that we are co-creators in the universe.

RICHARD: The universe was here long before you or I arrived on the scene – and will be here long after we are not here – replete with the property of light known as wavelength.

The eye does not create colour any more than placing an elbow into water creates hotness or coldness ... the eye determines what particular wavelength an object is deflecting (and, by default, what it is absorbing), just as an elbow detects the degree of the temperature of water, and that particular wavelength is called either red, or blue, or yellow, and so on, just as the the temperature of water is called cold, cool, warm, hot, or any other gradation.

RESPONDENT: Without our brains can not take place creation.

RICHARD: This is verging upon solipsism ... there are peoples who say that the tree itself does not exist until they look at it. And pointing out the fact that anyone looking at that particular bit of space on this planet ‘creates’ the self-same tree (a pine tree for instance) usually has no effect on dislodging them from their belief.

Is a dog lifting its leg upon a tree urinating into empty space ... and if so why do other dogs consistently pick that bit of vacant space to relieve themselves into?

Or, to put that another way, why do solipsists rush about the countryside ‘creating’ trees for the dogs?

RESPONDENT: We are the universe creating its own self and experiencing it’s self.

RICHARD: The planet earth not only grows vegetation it also grows people – and all other sentient beings – and, as such, the universe can experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being (just as it also experiences itself as a cat or a dog and so on).

RESPONDENT: Why the hell this is not enough so send to hell the ‘I’ and the me?

RICHARD: Generally speaking because the identity within feels that it knows better than the universe just what is going on ... it could be called hubris.

The extreme version of this arrogance shows up most clearly in spiritual enlightenment: ‘I am God; God creates (or created) the universe; therefore I create (or created) the universe’.

RICHARD: The doorway to freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This extinction is an irrevocable event, which eliminates the psyche itself. When this is all over there will be no ‘being’ at all. Thus when ‘I’ willingly self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for oneself and all humankind ... for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘my’ moment of accomplishment. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘my’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory.

RESPONDENT: That which dies is judged and praised as noble?

RICHARD: If you do not find voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice by ‘I’/‘me’ (who is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like) to be noble, to be an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present for the human race ... then I guess you would not be willing to cheerfully devote and give over your ‘being’ as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest or a kind-hearted benefaction for the benefit of each and every body, eh?

RESPONDENT: If a delusion is seen as delusion, it stops.

RICHARD: When the delusion of ‘me’ transmogrified into ‘Me’ (‘I am That’) is seen ... that is the end of everything thus far known in human history as being the summum bonum of human experience. Thus the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ ends ... being atavistically tied to the spirit-ridden experience of the Bronze Age peoples is finally over.

Set free from the apron-strings of spirit ... one can allow the actual to become apparent.

RESPONDENT: It is silly to personify deluded thought and then praise an imaginary being for stopping itself.

RICHARD: Why on earth would you say ‘it is silly’? That was how the total, complete, absolute end of illusion came about. That was the finish, the extinction of delusion. Why would you call that which enabled peace-on-earth ‘silly’?

Sometimes the response I get from people defies sensible comprehension.

*

RESPONDENT: When a dream ends from realization that ‘this is a dream’ do you credit the imagined character in the dream for letting go of self-delusion? The character never had any inherently real identity although the dream was actually occurring.

RICHARD: I was not discussing night-time dreams in the paragraph (at the top of the page) which you chose to respond to but the elimination of the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like ... a vastly different situation.

First: I do not have to ‘personify deluded thought’ because personification is already a reality for 6.0 billion human beings ... thought is deluded by the ‘imaginary being’ long before I ever talk with anyone (everybody is born with this instinctual ‘being’).

Second: whenever I talk or write to someone I am talking or writing to this ‘being’ inside the body ... because that is who they think they are; that is who they feel they are and that is who they instinctually know they are. Illusion it is, but it is very, very real for 6.0 billion human beings who are living that reality ... hence 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.

Third: I praise this instinctual ‘being’ because I am vitally interested in peace-on-earth for my fellow human being ... and only the altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice of that very ‘being’ whom I am talking to will enable the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent.

Credit is where credit is due ... I have regard for the integrity my fellow human beings.

*

RESPONDENT: The illusion ends.

RICHARD: Yes ... totally, completely, absolutely. End, finish, extinction.

RESPONDENT: It is nothing special.

RICHARD: If it is experienced as ‘nothing special’ ... then the illusion cannot have totally, completely and absolutely ended for you, then.

RESPONDENT: Soon the flesh and blood body labelled as Richard will be dead and gone and the memory of all experiences with it.

RICHARD: Of course ... a million or more words detailing the experience remain in print, though.

RESPONDENT: Before death everything is equal and what we believe to be special is but human vanity.

RICHARD: Going by this, then, all I can say is that it may very well be that you believe which is preventing the total, complete and absolute end of illusion and delusion for you. The word ‘extinction’ means what it describes: along with the psyche itself the entire intuitive/ imaginative faculty is extirpated.

I do not have the capacity – let alone the need – to believe.