Richard’s Selected Correspondence

On Humour

RESPONDENT: Anyways, emotions are there in my body – unlike in yours who have no emotions. This is puzzling me a bit. How is it that the old fears and strong sensations do not arise in your body ... I thought that there is an emotional memory ... like, when you feel a scent of a woman’s perfume you might remember your first lover who used to wear it dating you.

RICHARD: I have no emotional memory whatsoever ... there are no child-hood hurts or loves extant anywhere in this body. The affective memory disappeared when the ‘walk-in’ that inhabited this body for all those years vanished ... they were ‘his’ memories. Even so, when I tell stories out of my past it is somewhat akin to reading another person’s story from a book ... without the passion. I could not be nostalgic or indulge in reverie if my life depended upon it.

RESPONDENT: Do you joke, laugh, flirt, act silly for the fun of it? (Please be prepared to receive a joke from me every now and then). Or have you become a serious man? Pleasure talking to you.

RICHARD: I like to joke, yes and I laugh a lot ... there is so much that is irrepressibly funny about life itself. I have no ability to flirt, however, as my libido is nil and void ... yet I have an active sexual life. I do not ‘act silly for the fun of it’ as I have no repressions to seek relief from. Strangely enough I find that I enjoy black humour; whereas the ‘I’ that I was could not ... ‘he’ found it repulsive and sickening. Nevertheless, the humour I enjoy most is that which lampoons puffed-up power and its authority. For example:

A journalist had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, and she noted then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. She approached one of the women for an explanation. ‘This is marvellous,’ said the journalist. ‘What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?’

Replied the Kuwaiti woman: ‘Land mines.’

RESPONDENT: Although it looks superficially to be a sexist joke it is not ... the reverse would hold true for a matriarchal society. Human frailty exposes the lie of power.

RICHARD As for ‘serious’ ... the utter reliability of being always happy and harmless replaces the galling burden of being serious ... actuality’s blithe sincerity dispenses with the onerous responsibility that epitomises adulthood. What I do find funny – in a peculiar way – is that I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to search forever ... some people consider arriving to be boring. How can unconditional peace and happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be boring? Is a carefree life all that difficult to comprehend? Why persist in a sick game ... and defend one’s right to do so? Why insist on suffering when blitheness is freely available here and now? Is a life of perennial gaiety something to be scorned? I have even had people say, accusingly, that I could not possibly be happy when there is so much suffering going on in the world. The logic of this defies credibility: Am I to wait until everybody else is happy before I am? If I was to wait, I would be waiting forever ... for under this twisted rationale, no one would dare to be the first to be happy. Their peculiar reasoning allows only for a mass happiness to occur globally; overnight success, as it were. Someone has to be intrepid enough to be first, to show what is possible to a benighted humanity ... one has to face the opprobrium of one’s ill-informed peers.

Thus one needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere ... most definitely utterly earnest, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all.

RESPONDENT: To become one’s senses and bodily functions. It is the right way to live, you implied, and it sounds true to me. It sounds difficult to live it all the time but many times I have had at least partial experience of it.

RICHARD: Good. Experience is essential if perfection is to be revealed to be actual. Otherwise one goes off into self-enhancing visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. The mind, held hostage by ‘humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is a fertile breeding-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. They never completely satisfy for they never last; they have no substance or intrinsic viability and doubt is never far away. In a valiant attempt to remove doubt, passion can be brought into the search. Passion can produce love. When ‘I’ experience love ‘I’ feel, that with the feelings that love induces like self-acceptance, self-worth, self-esteem and the feeling of being needed, that life has meaning after all . Yet all these feelings serve to prop up an ailing self and because love, however lofty, is fickle and manipulative ‘I’ must be ever vigilant. ‘I’ consist of a kaleidoscope of emotions and passions and therefore doubt is still not far away. This can hardly be called a satisfactory destination for the quest into finding the meaning of life.From the vantage point of freedom from ‘I’ – which can be accomplished by a peak experience – a miraculous shift is seen to have occurred. It is a mutation from the self-centred personality to a condition of self-less anonymity ... which is a blessed release from the onerous responsibility of being ‘someone’. The perfection and purity that is already here, where it has always been, is now available to be fully appreciated. That ‘I’, which was always perverting and spoiling every endeavour, is no longer present. ‘I’ was only an illusion, whereas as this flesh and blood body I am independent and free ... and actual. I am unable to be swayed by feelings; be they love or hate, hope or despair, despondency or enthusiasm and so on. Nor do I need to be needed by others, so compassion plays no part in my life. The dubious Authority and Power of the noble feelings of Love Agapé, Divine Compassion and rapturous bliss, euphoria and ecstasy are revealed to be pathetic boastings ... and a meagre surrogate for the tranquil intimacy, benevolence and blitheness of the beneficence that is the actual character of this human experience of this wondrous universe.

RESPONDENT: I would like to know, how useful for the goal of living it permanently, from your perspective, are exercises where you relax different parts of your body and focus your attention on various physical sensations (without preference for what sensation you focus on, tune-in or ‘become’).

RICHARD: Speaking personally, 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 dietary regimes, any praying, any surrendering, any trusting, any fasting, any flagellations, any ... any of those ‘Tried and True’ inanities. Nor does one have to endlessly analyse one’s childhood for ever and a day. Nor does one have to do endless therapies wherein one expresses oneself again and again ... likewise relaxation exercises will never set you free. Coming to one’s senses does not mean merely relaxing one’s toes, for example. As I have previously written, in order to facilitate a peak experience of perfection, one needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere – most definitely utterly earnest, as genuineness is essential – and come to your senses as efficaciously as possible. If you ‘focus your attention on various physical sensations’, then look to becoming the experience of these sensations happening ... rather than having them happen to you. And remember that an actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape. And then the condition is ripe for a PCE to occur ... and although each pure consciousness experience brings a fresh beginning, an absolute newness, the condition of freedom from ‘I’ has indubitable character traits ... each time discovered anew with the same delight as if it were the first time. With each experience one finds oneself here in this ever-fresh, never contaminated moment. Here is an atmosphere free from ‘human’ feelings, from ‘humanity’s truisms, from religion’s morals and from civilisation’s mores ... all of which are humanistic and cultural coping-mechanisms and agreements. There is a delicious surprise to be found in actualism: it is so liveable. It is living, here on earth, as this actual body, simply brimming with sensory organs ... yet completely devoid of emotions and passions manifesting as hallucinatory thoughts and utopian idealism. It is indeed possible to live peacefully, at ease and undisturbed by these futile feelings and delusive thoughts. It is an entirely different ball-game with different rationale which, from the ‘human’ view-point, lies diametrically opposed to the orthodox rules and regulations based on those venerated thoughts and feelings ... the more ancient the better. Yet it is all so patently obvious.

RESPONDENT: You might consider having a photo taken and going to Rabbit Photo; they will give you the photo on CD – in digital format – so you can have your image on the internet by this evening. Or you can keep limiting your exposure to your conceptualisation which in the end is as valid as mine; or Osho’s’; or Veeresh’s; or Ramana Maharshi’s; or Leonard Cohen’s; or Isaac Shapiro’s ...

RICHARD: This is an example of a vital opportunity being frittered away with empty rhetoric again (with some brand-names thrown in for good measure).

RESPONDENT: Am I hearing that you consider each of these people – living or deceased – to have value ONLY as ‘brands’ – or alternatively, as fodder for the anti-branding brigade – rather than inherent value as an actual human person? In your way of seeing; do I have value as a person? Do you?

RICHARD: May I suggest taking my words at face value? I am always straightforward and up-front; there is no subterfuge, no hidden meaning, no secret agenda, no ulterior motive – I mean what I say and I say what I mean – and I have oft-times said that I like my fellow human being irregardless of whatever mischief they get up to. And if someone wants to be valued as an actual human being then they ought to get off their backside and do something about being actual instead of presenting an image for public consumption (although when that happens the whole notion of being valued is meaningless).

The term ‘brand-names’ has quite a common usage … take the automobile industry, for example: Rolls Royce is a brand-name; Cadillac is a brand-name; Porsche is a brand-name; Lamborghini is a brand-name and so on. Each name conveys a quality according to public opinion or personal predilection … consumers buy a car from a particular brand-name’s stable because of their track record; reliability, safety, after-sales service or whatever other criterion is considered valuable.

There is a corollary in the spiritual bazaar (given the billions of dollars that changes hands it is undeniable that there is a product being marketed with the discerning consumer in mind) and seekers are often uncompromising (sometimes to the point of being rabid) when it comes to lineage, for instance. And you mentioned some recognisable ‘brand-names’, to demonstrate your point, that are readily comparable to the commercial world of motor vehicles inasmuch as it could be said there is a Rolls, a Stretch Limousine, a Bentley, a Hearse and a Datsun Bluebird on offer.

But not necessarily in that order.

RESPONDENT: By the way; from various responses you give and have given and from discussions I have had back-channel there is a perception in me and certainly at least one other list member that you seem to lack the ability to discern irony when it is served up to you. Could that be part of your condition Richard?

RICHARD: No, I easily detect ‘irony’ … along with sarcasm, derision, scorn, cynicism, disdain, mockery, insincerity and all other pathetic forms of wit. I simply do not dignify it into the status of being a valid comment by responding, by pandering to that thinly disguised malice that passes for humour in the real world. It is very obvious that sarcasm is a subtle form of abuse – verbal violence – and to be sarcastic is to obtain amusement at another’s expense ...  it is a particularly cutting form of teasing, with vindictive undertones, and thus qualifies for the lowest rating on the humour scale. It is less obvious with irony yet, just as sarcasm is designed to make the recipient feel ridiculed, irony is designed to make the recipient feel rueful. They are thus both pathetic wit, even by definition, as the word ‘pathetic’ is derived from the root ‘pathos’, which indicates sorrow. Which all goes to show that the giver of either sarcasm or irony wishes the recipient to feel the incipient sorrow that is endemic among humans. Sorrow is a sickness that can lead, in extreme cases, to depression and suicide ... which I would not wish upon anyone. Thus sarcasm and irony are not what I, for one, consider fun.

Whereas to be facetious or droll, for example, is waggish ... a non-serious jesting.

GARY: Apparently, after self-immolation has taken place, having a good laugh is not ruled out, as Richard has written else-where about nearly rolling on the floor in laughter. Is this then ‘an affective experience’?

RESPONDENT: Sounds like it to me, Gary. Perhaps Richard could elaborate on this apparent contradiction?

RICHARD: It is only an ‘apparent contradiction’ if all laughter is first determined to be affective ... one can laugh with the sheer delight of being alive or in moments of great pleasure. I recall that when freedom first happened there was much laughter because it was as if I had been playing a great joke upon myself by searching everywhere and everywhen for something that was already always just here right now ... I am chuckling even now as I write about it (all suffering is self-caused and totally unnecessary).

Also, one can laugh where something is ludicrous, farcical, absurd, ridiculous and so on ... speaking personally, I find the TV series ‘3rd Rock From The Sun’ humorous as it oft-times demonstrates many of the foibles of human nature (as in the first thirty four years of my life). Plus it is hilarious that for eleven years I lived-out the experience of being the latest saviour of humankind ... there is much about life which is irrepressibly funny.

And I find it cute that an actual freedom from the human condition is deemed an incurable mental disorder.

RESPONDENT: Perhaps one should not dwell on (or believe), in the authority of others?

RICHARD: There is a distinct difference between the authority of experience (expertise) and the authority of law (rule).

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P.S. I typed the words ‘rolling’ and ‘the floor’ and ‘laughter’ into this computer’s search engine and sent it through all my written words ... this is what came up:

• [Richard]: This discussion is not a competition about which one of us knows the most or is the cleverest at putting words together. We are talking about the possibility of your peace and your happiness and your harmony coming about here on earth, as this body, in this lifetime. For you to personally experience the ultimate each moment again, twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days of the year ... for the remainder of your life.
• [Respondent]: Actually doesn’t sound that appealing – I don’t mind a bit of suffering – its good for the soul.
• [Richard]: Peace and happiness and harmony does not ‘sound that appealing’ ? Are you for real? Do you mean to say that you condone wars, murders, tortures, rapes, domestic violence incidents and child abuse ... not to forget all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression, despair and suicides? Do you really mean it when you say: ‘I don’t mind a bit of suffering’ ? If it was not so serious, I would be rolling about the floor laughing by now, at what you have just written ... for it is ludicrous. Read it again and see for yourself what nonsense it is. (Mailing List ‘A’; Respondent No. 5).

And:

• [Respondent]: ... [I agree that] it is funny that someone struts the world stage preaching humility and saying at the same time that they are God ...
• [Richard]: Yes ... it is comical because it is absurd, preposterous, farcical, ridiculous, nonsensical and foolish. (...) Ever since I became capable of appreciating ‘black humour’ (thanks to the TV series ‘Black Adder’) I sometimes have a difficult job to not roll about the floor laughing. What makes it black humour is that such hypocritical duplicity perpetuates 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 forever and a day. (Mailing List ‘B’; Respondent No. 20e).

RESPONDENT: Being in relationships does leave you at the brunt of a lot of jokes I’m afraid!

RICHARD: Strange ... nobody around here makes jokes about my relationships ... you have the dubious honour of being the first. Which makes me wonder just what kind of world you have created for yourself. Being in a relationship is one of the most delicious, delightful, fascinating and rewarding things that one can ever do. In case you have not taken it in, given that half of the population being female and the other half being male, it an actuality that we fit together. It is a ‘given’, as they say in scientific circles, like gravity. It is the method by which we all came to be here – there is no other way of becoming a human being other than the union of the ova and the spermatozoa. And strange indeed it is that most religious/spiritual/mystical/metaphysical paths, somewhere along the line, insist that one eschews anyone of the other gender. It amounts to nothing other than being in a state of denial.

Apart from that, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

*

RICHARD: Apart from that, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

RESPONDENT: You’ve obviously never watched ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ .

RICHARD: No, I have never even heard of them. To be sarcastic is to obtain amusement at another’s expense ... it is a particularly cutting form of teasing, with malicious undertones, and thus qualifies for the lowest rating on the humour scale.

RESPONDENT: What I meant was, understanding the difference between things falling (an observation) and gravity (a theory) has implications.

RICHARD: Okay. So would I be correct if I had said: ‘Things falling is a ‘given’, as they say in scientific circles?’

RESPONDENT: Yes, that would sound more correct to me. I’m sorry if you don’t appreciate my humour.

RICHARD: To be sarcastic is to obtain amusement at another’s expense ... it is a particularly cutting form of teasing, with malicious undertones, and thus qualifies for the lowest rating on the humour scale.

RESPONDENT: Oh, thank you so much for explaining that to me, Richard. I don’t know what poor ignorant me would do without your profound observations. By the way, where does irony fall on your wit-o-meter?

RICHARD: As I do not have any feelings your attempt at a put-down is totally wasted.

I do not have a wit-o-meter ... the ‘lowest form of wit’ phrase was simply an expression. Just as sarcasm is designed to make the recipient feel ridiculed, irony is designed to make the recipient feel rueful. They are thus both pathetic wit, by definition. As the word ‘pathetic’ is derived from the root ‘pathos’ – which indicates sorrow – then the giver of either sarcasm or irony wishes the recipient to feel the incipient sorrow that is endemic among humans. Sorrow is a sickness that can lead, in extreme cases, to depression and suicide ... which I would not wish upon anyone. Thus sarcasm and irony are not what I, for one, consider fun.

It is a subtle form of verbal abuse.

RICHARD: Speaking personally, you can name-call me to your heart’s content ... and I can dish out as good as what I get.

RESPONDENT: So I’ve noticed and hereby acknowledge.

RICHARD: Personally, I like to be rude in as polite a way as is possible with the English language ... it is much more fun that way. Being facetious beats sarcasm hands down, any day. Besides, sarcasm is a subtle form of abuse ... verbal violence. To be sarcastic is to obtain amusement at another’s expense ... it is a particularly cutting form of teasing, with malicious undertones, and thus qualifies for the lowest rating on the humour scale. So too with irony ... just as sarcasm is designed to make the recipient feel ridiculed, irony is designed to make the recipient feel rueful. They are thus both pathetic wit, by definition. As the word ‘pathetic’ is derived from the root ‘pathos’ – which indicates sorrow – then the giver of either sarcasm or irony wishes the recipient to feel the incipient sorrow that is endemic among humans.

Sorrow is a sickness that can lead, in extreme cases, to depression and suicide ... which I would not wish upon anyone. Thus sarcasm and irony are not what I, for one, consider fun.

Whereas facetiousness is waggish ... a non-serious jesting.

RESPONDENT: Glad that Richard’s ego is extinct.

RICHARD: If you were to actually read what I write with both eyes you will find that I lay particular emphasis on the extinction of the soul and not only the dissolution of the ego. Some human beings’ life does not always fit into the preconceptions that you may have of it.

RESPONDENT: So he will not be offended by my attempt to sprinkle some humour in the mix.

RICHARD: I am never offended … but could you make your humour funny?

*

RESPONDENT: I take it humour is one of the things you’ve cut all attachments to?

RICHARD: You see … this comment demonstrates that what I am writing (above) is correct. We have corresponded before, you and I, and you show here once again that you have not taken the slightest notice of my report about how I experience being here: I have not ‘cut all attachments’ to anything … let alone humour. I do not and never have, practiced detachment. To practice detachment is to be twice-removed from actuality.

RESPONDENT: If so, please do not be dissuaded by my fool-hearty posts. I am listening …

RICHARD: Hmm … ‘listening’ to what? Maybe your ‘listening’ is somewhat akin the ‘looking’ of Mr. Narcissus?

RESPONDENT: … even if the instrument which I am is not ‘quite-quite’. From one to another.

RICHARD: Uh-huh … but please include me out of your self-description.

*

RESPONDENT: The gist of what I am asking is if you see humour as a waste of time? Do you laugh? What types of things do you laugh about?

RICHARD: Humour is not a waste of time and I laugh a lot ... there is so much that is irrepressibly funny about life itself. Strangely enough I find that I enjoy black humour; whereas the ‘I’ that I was could not ... ‘he’ found it repulsive and sickening. Nevertheless, the humour I enjoy most is that which lampoons puffed-up power and its authority. For example:

• A journalist had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War, and she noted then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. She approached one of the women for an explanation.

‘This is marvellous’, said the journalist. ‘What enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?’

Replied the Kuwaiti woman: ‘Land mines’.

Although it looks superficially to be a sexist joke it is not ... the reverse would hold true for a matriarchal society. Human frailty exposes the lie of power.

What I do find funny – in a peculiar way – is that I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to search forever ... some people consider arriving to be boring. How can unconditional peace and happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be boring? Is a carefree life all that difficult to comprehend? Why persist in a sick game ... and defend one’s right to do so? Why insist on suffering when blitheness is freely available here and now? Is a life of perennial gaiety something to be scorned? I have even had people say, accusingly, that I could not possibly be happy when there is so much suffering going on in the world. The logic of this defies credibility: Am I to wait until everybody else is happy before I am? If I was to wait, I would be waiting forever ... for under this twisted rationale, no one would dare to be the first to be happy. Their peculiar reasoning allows only for a mass happiness to occur globally; overnight success, as it were. Someone has to be intrepid enough to be first, to show what is possible to a benighted humanity ... one has to face the opprobrium of one’s ill-informed peers.

Thus one definitely needs to have a keen sense of humour ... all that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. Be totally sincere ... most definitely utterly earnest, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. One has to want to be here on this planet ... most people resent being here and wish to escape.

This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all.

RESPONDENT: My comment about the t-shirts was intended to be humorous, but you were evidently offended by them.

RICHARD: I never take offence … and perhaps you could point out the humour in a line that says ‘Is there a web-site or 1-800 number where I can purchase a ‘Richard the cry-baby-crusher’ or a ‘Konrad the building-block-piler’ t-shirt?’

RESPONDENT: I am sorry you found my words offensive, but I do not take you as seriously as you take yourself.

RICHARD: All I said was a statement of fact: ‘It is obviously much easier to vilify from the peanut gallery, when presented with that which one does not understand (and without knowing that one does not understand or why), than thinking through the why’s and wherefore’s of the performance for oneself. Yet this is a Mailing List purportedly set-up to investigate and explore into the appalling mess that is the human condition’.

*

RESPONDENT: Well, for example, the pay per view t-shirt comment was frustration turned into humour, if I were you I would laugh and dismiss them.

RICHARD: What if – just what if – one day the frustration could not be turned into humour (as is usual when push comes to shove)? Thus 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 go on forever and a day.

RESPONDENT: I am not you, so you are free to dismiss them or not.

RICHARD: Aye, it is because I am not you that I chose to respond to your ‘frustration turned into humour’ instead of dismissing them … and this dialogue is the result.

RESPONDENT: And also because I place no conditions on you whatsoever.

RICHARD: Why not? I do … I keep on saying that this Mailing List is purportedly set up to investigate the appalling mess that is the human condition.

RESPONDENT: And because even if I did, it would not really constrain you at all.

RICHARD: If you were to say something original … then I would sit up and take notice.

RESPONDENT: Why does Richard go the way of eliminative reduction? I think it has something to do with his intellectual compulsion to eliminate all suggestion of ‘states’ from ‘Actualism’. Perhaps, this is a kind of reaction to his own personal history, which (apparently) kept him in the subtle thralldom of solipsistic qualitative states of what he calls ‘Enlightenment’ and the like. Perhaps derivative of this, when he, so to speak, gets a whiff of feeling he can’t stop coughing. And to stop coughing, he just stops breathing, or at least pretends to. Anyway, he does commit himself to a disembodiment of feelings, while still having them. I’m sure there are many examples, but here’s one:

I know I have personalized this now, but I feel it is unavoidable, because Richard’s mistake regarding feeling is not simply a cognitive error, it is a human hazard. And I think the self-delusion (what else would you call it) operating in the above illustration makes that hazard clear.

RICHARD: If you consider that a person sans the affective feelings (emotions, passions and calentures) should write robotically (‘the robotic words we would expect of one who has ‘extinguished’ the affective’) then I guess that decides the matter for you inasmuch as you then have to read affective feelings (‘some real underlying feeling, at least, and downright anger, at most’) into a humorous exchange such as the example you have quoted just above.

That particular exchange was the eighteenth e-mail with my co-respondent, who had previously enjoined me to know that they were god and that they can only be god, which I found comical at the time. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘One can not know God. One can only be God.
• [Richard]: ‘Oh, no ... not you too?
• [Respondent]: ‘Of course you can also be illusion ... you are the creator.
• [Richard]: ‘Please, careful with the word < you > oh creator ... you are speaking for yourself and not me. I did not create anything. The universe was already here before I was born and will still be here after I die. Seeing that you know that you are the creator, could you create global peace-on-earth as soon as you read this please? All this waiting is killing people. (listb18).

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘Be still and know that I am God.
• [Richard]: ‘And which god would that be? The last time I looked up the subject, there was upwards of twelve hundred different gods (and that did not include the Hindu Pantheon). (listb18).

When I read it through again I still find it comical – I always find it hilarious when a fellow human being tells me that they are god as I was one myself for eleven years in my enlightened phase – am I supposed to be humourless as well as robotic?

RESPONDENT: Richard (and list subscribers): 1. In Richard’s rebuttal to my quote of him as evidentiary of his having actual feelings, he has unwittingly provided us with further evidence of his powers of self-delusion. As in some other correspondence I recall seeing on the AF Trust website, he rationalises his language as ‘humour’.

RICHARD: If I may point out? I do not ‘rationalise’ (justify with plausible but specious reasons) my language as humour ... as it is indeed humour.

I am having so much fun here at the keyboard.

RESPONDENT: This will be recognized by everyone as the old ‘I was only joking’ or ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ defence teenagers and some adults use when they’ve said something hurtful or embarrassing and have been discovered.

RICHARD: Maybe you would be better served if you were to speak for yourself ... just because you have (erroneously) recognised it as a ‘defence’ does not mean that ‘everyone’ does.

I was uncomplicated in my reply: I found it comical at the time that a god would tell me that ‘mind cannot see itself’, when it is a fact that it can (and I even provided the dictionary definition of apperception which expressed that very fact), and I still find it comical.

It is comical because a god is (supposedly) omniscient.

RESPONDENT: However, regardless of the words Richard uses to cover or explain his language, no reading-into is required to find real feeling in operation.

RICHARD: If you are so convinced that you are not reading anything into my words then it seems that nothing I can say is going to alter that conviction ... I have already explained that it is nothing more than humour operating and you have already dismissed my explanation as a rationalisation.

At this point I am reminded of what you said in an earlier post about how ‘fine and entertaining disputes’ usually develop in discussions of this nature ... has it ever occurred to you that it could very well be your modus operandi which is fuelling such disputes?

I only ask because you seem so sure that you know me better than I do.

RESPONDENT: Richard said that K’s statement that the observer is the observed unambiguously indicates being the very thing referred to. And I pointed out that K himself said that this does not mean that you are the tree, as that would be ridiculous. Richard frequently gives an overly literal meaning to what he reads from others.

RICHARD: Ha ... this is actually quite humorous – given that it is written on a mailing list wherein there quite often is excoriation for interpreting what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s words say – in that by me not deviating one hair’s breadth away from what the words ‘the outside is the inside’ and ‘the observer is the observed’ say, in the context they sit in, you are now reduced to making the point that I am being ‘overly literal’ (whatever that means) ... and that I am ‘frequently’ doing so into the bargain. Wonders will never cease, eh?

RESPONDENT: In the above I detect the all too human feeling of resentment as to criticism.

RICHARD: You have to be grasping at straws to find resentment in my response as it is indeed comical – given the background regarding the non-interpretation caution Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti impressed upon listeners/readers – so much so that when the e-mail came into my mail-box another in the room asked me what the joke was which occasioned the chuckles (quite often I receive some of the jokes which do the rounds of the internet and I usually read the more amusing ones out loud).

Perhaps if it were put this way:

• [Version ‘A’]: ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says ‘ABC’: what he means is ‘XYZ’.
• [Response ‘A’]: ‘You are giving an interpretative meaning to what you read.
• [Version ‘B’]: ‘Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti says ‘ABC’: what he means is ‘ABC’.
• [Response ‘B’]: ‘You are giving an overly literal meaning to what you read.

Typically humour derives its comic impact from a sense of the ridiculous ... and the ability to laugh at such risibility can be very enriching.

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The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001