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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Identity
RESPONDENT: Would you clarify something for me in this arena? On Aug. 14, 2001 Richard responds to Correspondent 19, ‘and away you went on a nonsensical discussion about the word uttered as ‘Richard’’. When you call something nonsensical ‘who’ is assessing whether something makes sense or not. Doesn’t that imply some identity whether you want to label it as one or not? RICHARD: Where there is an actual freedom from the human condition there is neither a ‘who’ to assess whether something makes sense or not nor is there a ‘who’ that wants to label or not ... it is the flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware that makes assessments and applies labels. RESPONDENT: When you say life is ‘perfect’ that also is an assessment of a situation. ‘Who’ is assessing that life is perfect? RICHARD: When I say that life is perfect it is a question of what is assessing rather than ‘who’ is assessing ... specifically the apperceptive brain is doing the assessing. RESPONDENT: This is not meant in an argumentative fashion. From my level of understanding for someone to do this it means some identity is in place whether the party chooses to acknowledge it or not! RICHARD: That is the normal state of affairs for maybe 6.0 billion peoples, yes. However, where there is an actual freedom from the human condition it is not a case of lack of acknowledgement of some identity in place – of being in a state of denial about it – as it is simply an experiential fact that there is no identity in any way, shape or form. Put simply: there is no director whatsoever in charge of this body. RESPONDENT: I wonder what it means to be the first to find something when there is no identity to do the finding. RICHARD: I have been asked a similar query before:
RESPONDENT: And if you have no identity what replaces it? RICHARD: Nothing ... all that is inside this flesh and blood body is heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and so on, and so forth. RESPONDENT: After all you still have memories of what your flesh and blood body has done, do you not? RICHARD: No, it is this flesh and blood body which has memories of what this flesh and blood body has done. RESPONDENT: Is this not in itself a form of identity? RICHARD: No, this is simply what this flesh and blood body has memories of. RESPONDENT: Is this newness not simply the newness of experiencing life as-it-is? RICHARD: No, the newness being referred to is that an actual freedom from the human condition is now available for the first time in human history/ human experience. RICHARD: Mostly peoples are rightly suspicious of another’s hidden agenda for there is indeed something ‘underneath the surface’ ... even in those who have purportedly gone deep and have attained to a superior virtue that transcends normal morality. I would guess that what is motivating you to ‘chip away’ is in order to see – and thus expose – this ‘being’ that is underneath the surface in 6.0 billion human beings ... plus the 0.000001 of the population who are ‘Self-Realised’ and have identified as ‘Pure Being’. You will find no ‘being’ here – or ‘Being’ – only a flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. This body called Richard hosts no identity whatsoever ... I use the first person pronoun for convenience. RESPONDENT: You claim that ‘this body called Richard hosts no identity whatsoever’. I would like to understand more deeply what it is that the body called Richard does not host. What do you mean by ‘identity’? RICHARD: I was born in Australia, of an English/Scottish Hong Kong-born father and an English/English Australia-born mother. With this British background, I was enculturated into believing that I was, literally, an Australian citizen ... but with British blood. Now, blood is blood ... there is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. Thus the wars and the suicides – the blood shed and the tears shed – are precipitated because of the absurdity of identification ... is not all this acculturation ridiculous! However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was so programmed as to be unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use as a standard to determine which was which, as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but similarly conditioned into being an ‘ethnic’ human being. Thus I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker. As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was deeply mired in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ acculturated ethnicity ... ‘I’ was brainwashed into being a ‘man’ and not simply a flesh and blood male body. Under the enculturated layers lies a further identity ... the genetically-inherited animal ‘self’. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. By identification as ‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’ ... I discovered that a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body and that this ‘walk-in’ was ‘me’. So, superficially there is a composite conditioned social identity that encompasses:
These are related to roles, rank, positions, station, status, class, age, gender ... the whole organisation of hierarchical control. But behind all that – underlying all socialised classifications – is the persistent feeling of being an identity inhabiting the body: an affective ‘entity’ as in a deep, abiding and profound feeling of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter or a phantom hiding behind a façade, a mask, a persona; as a subjective emotional psychological ‘self’ and/or a passionate psychic ‘being’ (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) inhabiting the psyche; a deep feeling of being a ‘spirit’; a consciousness of the immanence of ‘presence’ (which exists immortally); an awareness of being an autological ‘being’ ... the realisation of ‘Being’ itself. In other words: everything you think, feel and instinctually know yourself to be. Your feeling of being – the real ‘me’ – is evidenced when one says: ‘But what about me, nobody loves me for me’. For a woman it may be: ‘You only want me for my body ... and not for me’. For a man it may be: ‘You only want me for my money ... and not for me’. For a child it may be: ‘You only want to be my friend because of my toys (or sweets or whatever)’. That deep feeling of ‘me’ – that ‘being’ itself – is at the core of identity. It arises out of the basic instincts that blind nature endowed all human beings with as a rough and ready ‘soft-ware’ package to make a start in life. These instincts – mainly fear and aggression and nurture and desire – appear as a rudimentary self common to all sentient beings. This is why it is felt to be one’s ‘Original Face’ – to use the Zen terminology – when one accesses it in religious/spiritual/mystical meditation practices and disciplines. This is the source of ‘we are all one’, because ‘we’ are all the same-same blind instinctual self that stretches back beyond the dawn of human memory. It is a very, very ancient genetic memory. Hoariness does not make it automatically wise, however, despite desperate belief to the contrary. RESPONDENT: You also claim that there is ‘a flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware’. Is not that bodily apperceptive awareness, your identity? RICHARD: No. This brain is these sense organs being conscious: these eyes seeing is this brain ‘on stalks’, as it were, being aware. Thus these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching, this nose smelling and these thoughts thinking are all the brain being directly aware of being alive and being awake and being here ... now. Whereas ‘I’, the entity, 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: Identity is ‘the state or fact of remaining the same one, as under varying aspects or conditions’, ‘the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another’ (Macquarie, 2nd. ed.). Are you claiming that there is nothing that remains the same (in you) as (your) sense and reflective experience changes? RICHARD: Indeed, I am stating that unequivocally ... there is no subjective psychological ‘entity’ existing in this flesh and blood body to either remain the same or change. There are many words to describe ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ ... shall I just present them here for clarity? I do not have the Macquarie Dictionary but I presume it is somewhat similar as I have the Webster’s Merriam Dictionary to check the Oxford Dictionary against. I also use the Britannica Encyclopaedia as being a generally recognised and acceptable academic standard. Vis.:
And it is so good to be rid of that lot! RESPONDENT: Surely there are patterns associated with your reflectivity. You tend to reflect on things in a certain way, and I have a different tendency. Does not that tendency define your identity? Or do you have no such tendency? RICHARD: I certainly have that tendency ... and I revel in it. These are attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on. They are not the ‘thing-in-itself’. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that your identity is still maintained. You are a body sensing and reflecting, and a mind being aware of itself, even when there is no thinking. That awareness, the experience of sensing particular people things and events, and the reflection on all that – does not all of it define you as a distinct entity to me, where there is also awareness happening of its own accord, and where there is a different set of sense experiences and reflections? RICHARD: This flesh and blood body called Richard is a distinct physical organism to the flesh and blood body called No. 12. Each flesh and blood body is its own consciousness (there is no universal consciousness) hence each flesh and blood body is its own awareness, its own sensing, its own reflecting and its own ‘making sense’ of its own experience. None of this needs an identity in order for it to happen ... nor need it produce one. It is the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions situated in what is popularly known as the ‘Lizard brain’ – that is the genesis of ‘being’ ... and this identity as a rudimentary animal ‘self’, in human beings, produces ‘me’ as ‘soul’ and ‘I’ as ‘ego’. RESPONDENT: Are we not discrete identities Richard? RICHARD: We are discrete physical flesh and blood bodies. The feeling of identity has its origins in the common ancestry of the animal instincts and takes on the appearance of being separate because of being manifest in individual flesh and blood bodies ... hence to desire to regain ‘oneness’ with all sentient beings. ‘I’ am alone and lonely and long for the ‘connection’ that is evidenced in a relationship. When ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ become extinct there is no need – and no capacity – for a relationship. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was hopelessly wrong in his oft-repeated ‘Teaching’: ‘Life is a movement in relationship’. Only a psychological and/or psychic entity needs the connection of relationship in order to create a synthetic intimacy – usually via the bridge of love and compassion – and manifest the delusion that separation has ended. And if human relationship does not produce the desired result, then ‘I’ will project a god or a goddess – a ‘super-friend’ not dissimilar to the imaginary playmates of childhood – to love and be loved by. RESPONDENT: Your awareness remains associated with your body whilst mine remains associated with mine. As the circumstances change around you surely there is something that remains the same, that defines you as you, and as separate to me. It is that claim of yours to have no identity I was wanting to chip away at, and am wanting to again. RICHARD: It is the flesh and blood body that remains the same (with due allowance for the aging process) and defines Richard as Richard and you as you. The flesh and blood body’s characteristics (attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on) tend to stay the same ... but characteristics do not necessarily have to define an identity as being a ‘thing-in-itself’. RICHARD: When this flesh and blood body is rid of the psychological and psychic entities that live a parasitical existence in their unwitting host, one is able to appreciate that what I am (‘what’ not ‘who’) is this body. Then I am automatically benevolent and carefree ... and happy and harmless, for one has eradicated malice and sorrow with the demise of the ego and the soul. RESPONDENT: Parasitical nature of psychic and psychological ‘entities’ hasn’t been carefully considered from this (my) point of view; but then, little credence has been given ‘them’. Would you say more about the nature of such entities? Do you mean just the ego and the ‘soul’? RICHARD: The ego and the soul, yes. In my experience I have found that ‘I’, as an identity, a ‘being’ called the self, am made up of two parts: the ego and the soul. As a generalisation only, the ego is located mostly as being in the head and the soul as being in the heart. As it is commonly agreed that to be egotistical is to be selfish (and thus acting in a way that is not conducive to social harmony) it is the current wisdom that ‘I’, the self as ego, must psychologically self-immolate. In a valiant effort to right the wrongs that beset oneself and all of humankind, one can dissolve the (mortal) ego and realise oneself as the (immortal) soul, for the good of society in general and the individual in particular. One is then in unity – a state of oneness – with that which is sacred and holy. The resultant Altered State Of Consciousness is called Enlightenment, which has been held to be the Summum Bonum of human existence for at least three thousand years ... if not more. Yet there is still as much suffering now as there was back then. Therefore, something is not working to produce the desired result ... peace on earth. Why is this so? Upon closer inspection one finds that one has jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. When the self dissolves – as ego – one’s sense of identity remains intact. Instead of identifying as the self (ego), one now – as an Enlightened Being – identifies as the Self (soul). ‘I’ am no longer existing, now, as an ego, but ‘I’ am still in existence, forever, as a soul. ‘I’ am disguised as a timeless and eternal ‘Being’ (always written with a capital ‘B’) – and continue to wreak ‘my’ havoc upon an unsuspecting public. One is still ‘being’, now a blissful enlightened ‘Being’ – emanating Love Agapé and Divine Compassion to all and sundry. It is being any presence at all, as a ‘being’ or a ‘Being’, that is the problem. RESPONDENT: There seems to be something very wrong in my approach to our conversation. <SNIP> But bliss would be basic. This state can be experienced and I have and can. It is called actuality by you. RICHARD: It is not called actuality by me at all ... this physical world of people, things and events is actuality. What you wrote above is just your attempt to make out that you know what I am talking about. And you do not, for you are talking of the inner world of the psyche ... which is where the identity lives. (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul). RESPONDENT: If you look closely at the argument of the sensate reflecting mirrors you will see that I do not talk of identity, but of an opposite. RICHARD: You do indicate an identity, however. You say ‘the sensation of perfect reflection would again be dominant in their lives with only one body remaining’ which is another way of saying ‘oneness’ ... which is still an identity identifying with the outer. For you do go on to say ‘It would leave room for reflection onto the outside world’ ... and in actuality there is no ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. It is the identity – the ‘self’ – which creates the illusion of an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ world. Faced with this dichotomy, the ‘self’ merges with everything ... which is indicated by you where you say ‘this rippling state would be preferable because movement can withstand intervention much better than hardness’. This is what is known in the jargon as ‘going with the flow’ ... which is a direct take from Taoism (‘wu wei’). And the clincher is you saying ‘but bliss would be basic’ ... bliss is indicative of the altered state of consciousness known as enlightenment. There is no bliss in actuality because bliss is an affective state of being ... and ‘being’ is identity. RESPONDENT: There is nothing in this world other than the actual in which our body is one of the structures and so is the mind. RICHARD: Why do you separate the body and the mind? Is it not because the mind is this abstract realm wherein ‘you’ as identity reside? And ‘you’ as identity – a non-material psychological entity – desire oneness with the outer. This is what you are saying – using different words – where you write ‘they would momentarily need a process of interaction but could always just move closer and closer to each other until the ripple on the one plain would interact with the other plain and both ripples thus would change until they would coincide exactly with each other’ . Do you see it? RICHARD: If only ‘I’ in the head cease, then the sense of identity – as pure feeling – attains an imitation of freedom through unification with the observed ... a ‘wholeness’. As the woman says: ‘The concept of bonding, belonging and relationship could simply not be applied, not even with my partner, as there was nobody inside to do the relating’ . This is because apperceptive awareness can only happen when there is ‘me as-this-body’ only. RESPONDENT: Identification with body drops away just as identification with thought and feeling. There is no separate body to be found. There is boundless awareness that encompasses all that is. RICHARD: When you say: ‘there is no separate body to be found’ , do you actually mean that flesh and blood bodies merge together? Physical form is distinct in being one here and one there and another over there. There is physical distance betwixt this body typing and the monitor screen and the person sitting on the couch behind me. You say: ‘identification with (...) drops away ...’ . Identification with something may indeed drop away, but identity itself remains, however. This is the delusion that ‘wholeness’ or ‘oneness’ or ‘centre-less life’ can produce. One has expanded one’s boundaries and has merged with the all of everything, becoming more than the sum of the parts. This something that is more than the parts is something non-physical. RESPONDENT: The problem is not with knowledge but with identification with the known ... RICHARD: Ahh ... good. I take it then that you are withdrawing your ‘Pay for View Special – $25.00; Richard knowledge vs. Konrad knowledge. Tonight at 9 P.M’. cynicism as being an unfounded and ill-thought out exercise that only appealed to the peanut gallery? RESPONDENT: ... and the aggressiveness, pride and ambition that go with it. RICHARD: Yet it is not ‘identification with’ (anything at all) that is the root cause of all the misery and mayhem ... it is identity itself. To merely cease ‘identifying with ...’ is to keep the identity intact (only a ‘detached identity’ now). Sounds like Neo-Buddhism to me. RICHARD: I am indeed talking of the already always existing physical before-death peace-on-earth which becomes apparent when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct. Yet it is the universe that is ‘deathless’ ... not me. I was born, I live for a number of years, then I die ... and death is the end. Finish. RESPONDENT: Okay. Let me see what the above sounds like when I translate it into language which makes sense to me (please correct any mistranslations and provide me with the benefit of your feedback): when the entity made up of past thoughts ... RICHARD: It matters not whether thoughts are about the past, the present or the future ... thoughts are not problematic unless they be emotion-backed thoughts protecting the instinct-born entity with beliefs, truths, values, principles and so on. Thus (if I am to be precise) it would read: ‘when the entity made up of emotion-backed past thoughts and emotion-backed present thoughts and emotion-backed future thoughts ...’ RESPONDENT: ... and feelings ... RICHARD: Feelings (emotions and passions and calentures), although they can be cultivated and refined by thought and triggered off by thought are not created by thought; feelings are born of the genetically encoded instincts. Thus (if I am to be precise) it would read: ‘... and instinctually-based feelings ...’ RESPONDENT: ... is not dragged into the present ... RICHARD: The entity has no existence in the past (nor in the future); the entity is generated by/as the instinctual passions which, of course, only exist now (the body is only alive now). Thus (if I am to be precise) it would read: ‘... is not present ...’ RESPONDENT: ... one is connected with the immeasurable ‘peace’ that is the living universe. RICHARD: When the entity is not present (either in abeyance if a PCE or extinct if an actual freedom) then one is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. And as this flesh and blood body is the very stuff of this actual universe there is no separation at all (just as a hill or a mountain – although distinct – is the very earth it sits upon). And as this actual universe is infinite and eternal it is perfection (it has no opposite) and perfection is peace. Thus (if I am to be precise) it would read: ‘... one is this actual universe experiencing itself, as the immeasurable peace that it is, as a flesh and blood human being’. Thus: ‘when the entity made up of emotion-backed thoughts and instinctually-based feelings is not present one is this actual universe experiencing itself, as the immeasurable peace that it is, as a flesh and blood human being’. RESPONDENT: When the organism dies physically, the particular body and its associated thoughts and feelings ends there, fini. But the universe continues. RICHARD: Yes. RICHARD: Apperception is something that brings a facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual RESPONDENT: If you would, Richard, please demonstrate the evidence that supports the implication that there is difference between ‘the actual’ and the ‘direct experience of the actual’. RICHARD: Sure ... ‘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. Whereas, sans identity, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is 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. This is called ‘apperceptive awareness’ (not to be confused with ‘choiceless awareness’). Apperception is consciousness being aware of being consciousness ... and this is a ‘direct experience of the actual’. I am not a Pantheist: I do not identify with the objects of perception in an all-embracing oneness. KONRAD: The problem with a serious discussion of such a chain of statements leading to a particular statement is simply, that it is too much work to unravel every step. Especially so, because you never give in to anything. You never admit that you make a mistake, not even on the plain of thought and thinking. And that, while even in your actualism position this is no ‘sin’ (pardon me the expression), because you have distantiate your identity from your thinking. And thinking can always make mistakes, even in you, without it discrediting your position in any way. RICHARD: I do not ‘distantiate my identity from my thinking’ for there is no identity anywhere at all either inside this body or outside. Thinking happens freely here. It is entirely possible, throughout the vast majority of one’s time, for there to be no thoughts running at all ... none whatsoever. If thought is needed for a particular situation, it swings smoothly into action of its own accord and effortlessly does its thing. All the while there is an apperceptive awareness of being here ... of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space. No words occur in the brain – other than when necessary – for it is a wordless appreciation of being able to be here now. Consequently, one is always blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing. Doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus of happiness and pleasure on top of this on-going ambrosial experience of being alive and awake and here on this verdant planet now. RICHARD: The question is: Why would someone misconstrue an otherwise innocuous social protocol? Why would someone attempt to read into an ingenuous service an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda? That is what matters. RESPONDENT: I do not want to make of your comment more than it is. As far as I am concerned it was completely in order to ask for the correction. My point has to do with some of the funny consequences of the perspective that there is no actual difference between one person and the next. For if this is so, then what does it matter? To be concerned with getting the author right on a posting is a very simple thing. It is also a good indicator that these things do matter. It is unfair to you to believe that you said things that you do not agree with. But in this view of respect towards the person involves a number of values that we must give attention to. We cannot say on the one hand that these values have significance and on the other that the existence of the person is nonsense. Does this make sense to you? RICHARD: I am happy to agree with your suggestion not to make more of my comment than it is, for I see that you wish to explore something else instead. By all means let us go into the ramifications of this perspective that there is no actual difference between one person and the next. First we would need to ascertain if this is a fact ... and then we could look at what values inhere – if any do – and what significance they have where there is no person for them to apply to. Is this what you are referring to when you ask: ‘does this make sense to you?’ So, let me rearrange your paragraph to take out all reference to the other issue: You wrote: ‘What are some of the funny consequences of the perspective that there is no actual difference between one person and the next? In this view, respect towards the person involves a number of values that we must give attention to. We cannot say on the one hand that these values have significance and on the other that the existence of the person is nonsense’. Firstly: Is there no actual difference betwixt one person and the next? There is that truism that states: ‘We are all unique’. I say ‘truism’ deliberately, for I am immediately reminded of that scene in ‘The Life Of Brian’ where Brian addresses the crowd saying: ‘You are all individuals’. The crowd roars back in unison: ‘We are all individuals’. Down the back a lone voice cries out: ‘I’m not!’ Of course, the Monty Python crew were making a social comment, when they wrote that scene, about the conditioned identity of the average citizen when it comes to following a spiritual leader, but one can consider whether it holds well for humankind at large. Human beings are all born with the same basic instincts and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world have the same emotions and passions. Anger and forbearance, for instance, is anger and forbearance wherever it lives. There is no difference between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and tolerance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be, they all have a global incidence. The same applies to cerebral energisation like imagination, conceptualisation, hypothesising,
believing and so forth. Once again, ubiquitous in its occurrence. As for psychic phenomena like prescience,
clairvoyance, telepathy, divination So one can conclude that the perspective that there is no actual difference – other than superficialities – between one person and another is correct. RESPONDENT: Has it occurred to you that you are not a man of truth but a lonely person in search of attention? You see, only a lonely person would go around hawking the truth. RICHARD: Where has the word ‘truth’ appeared in any of my posts? I tend to make a big thing about facts and actuality ... to the point of bagging truth entirely. May I suggest a touch of research before propounding your latest theory? RESPONDENT: You have an obvious hunger to close the deal with any passer-by who stops to listen to your fancy sales pitch. RICHARD: Well, you see, it works ... after all, you have stopped to listen have you not? And you seem to be interested ... but are you interested enough? In fact, are you vitally interested? And ‘vitally interested’ means that peace-on-earth is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: Denial is the refusal to see the reality of one’s situation. RICHARD: But you can take heart from the fact that you cannot keep on denying forever ... you do seem to be relenting a little on your previously hostile stance. It is encouraging, is it not, to see progress? No matter how little, some progress is better than none. Keep up the good work! RESPONDENT: A lonely person assumes a fictitious identity and takes on a role of the anointed one, like the Bowing Buddha, who has a coveted attainment – something that everyone shouldn’t be without – and he would graciously give of it to all if only they would gather around him. RICHARD: Okay, you seem to have blown my cover so I will come clean: my name is really Rachel and I am a twenty-year old student at the Australian National University. I have concocted this whole story just to see how many people I could con into writing back to me. I plan to do a Doctoral Thesis on the psychology of social misfits and I bet my girl-friends that I could find at least one sucker on this Mailing List who would be willing to bare their prejudices in public. RICHARD: As an identity is the inevitable result of being born, any blame is pointless – and worse – it creates resentment. Being an identity is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. These passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to think and reflect upon its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary ‘self’ into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and from this core of ‘being’ the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. This process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born ... which is conditioning and programming. It is part and parcel of the socialising process. Thus seeing the ego is invalid and being ‘attentive to the ways of the ego’ is not sufficient ... there is a ‘me’ lurking in the heart to take over the wheel. RESPONDENT: Sorry, I can’t see that this process can be bypassed. If one cannot ‘see’ – if one is dependent on the authority of words – then that is the fact from which he must act. RICHARD: Sure, keep on doing the process that you are doing as that is what you see to be correct ... and what you see to be correct is what is important. I can only suggest ... what you do with my suggestions is entirely up to you. It is your life that you are living and as long as you comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocol, you are left alone to live your life as wisely or as foolishly as you choose. Only you reap the rewards or pay the consequences for any action or inaction you may or may not do. RESPONDENT: What keeps the ‘me’ lurking at the heart that is what maintains it as real even when the illusion is seen. RICHARD: Yes ... ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ supplies the fuel that drives ‘I’ as ego. It is ‘being’ that is the energy source that creates and maintains the illusion that the real-world exists. RESPONDENT: I must say here that the nature of existence does change with the attention to the ways ‘ego’. RICHARD: What is the nature of this change? RESPONDENT: I am not defending that way as THE WAY, but I feel more must be seen to act as you say. RICHARD: Indeed ... that is why there is communication. RESPONDENT: One attempts to see things clearly by firstly removing what is blocking the vision. RICHARD: One can whittle away at all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. One can examine all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to control what one finds oneself to be ... a wayward ego and compliant soul careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning psychological entity overlaying a psychic ‘being’. RESPONDENT No. 19: When we go against what we know in our heart and stomach is the wrong thing to do; when we choose to do it anyway, we will suffer the guilt (some may not). It is certainly not a ‘belief’, as you suggest, that I am the initiator of a wrong or right action. It is a fact. How do I know I know it is a fact? I can only know that by listening to the feelings I get when I do it. It is wrong because it ‘feels’ wrong. It is not just something that I have to be told. This is the essence of right and wrong. Are you suggesting that there is no right and wrong, that right and wrong exist only by judgement brought on by conditioning? Surely not! RICHARD: After all your years of sincere self-investigation are you really going to go on record as saying that feelings are to be relied upon as the final arbiter for living a salubrious and sociable life? Feelings are notoriously unreliable ... people have been living according to their feelings for millennia ... just look at the mess the world is in. Calenture is no better than the conditioned judgement you rightly put aside. ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. RESPONDENT: So is there a suggestion about the ‘absence’ of feelings for a ‘peaceful’ life? What about the Unabomber? I presume the Unabomber had no ‘guilt’. Is the world a mess because of ‘feelings’? Or the non understanding of these ‘feelings’? RICHARD: A partial absence of feelings – guilt, for example – leads to socially reprehensible acts ... like the Unabomber example you give. A sociopath (psychopath) has no feelings of shame or guilt ... and look what they get up to. It is the feelings that lie under the socially-imposed controls that need to be eliminated ... the deep feelings. These are the passions that all sentient beings are born with. It is the ‘being’ – the rudimentary self that arises out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and desire and nurture – that is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. It is through the ending of ‘being’ that one can live freely without either the animosity or anguish that epitomises the sense of identity that infiltrates from the affective faculties into the cognitive ... and needing to be controlled. A conscience is a social identity ... a psychological creation manufactured by society to act as a guardian over the wayward self one was born with. Everyone is born with a biologically coded instinctive drive for personal physical survival which, when one is operating and functioning with a group of people, is potentially a danger to the survival of other group members. Hence the need for moral rules and ethical laws to regulate the conduct of each person ... with appropriate rewards and punishments to ensure compliance. In a well-meant but ultimately short-sighted effort to prevent gaols from being filled to over-flowing, the social identity – a psychological guardian – is fabricated in an earnest endeavour to prevent the offences from happening in the first place. This ‘guardian’ is programmed with a set of values and charged with the role of acting as a conscience over the wayward self. A conscience is made up of a sure knowledge of what is Right or Wrong and Good or Bad ... as determined by each society. By and large this enterprise has proved to be effective – only a small minority of citizens fail to behave in a socially acceptable manner – but the price for this effectiveness is the lack of the ability to be unique. The lack of uniqueness results in a generalised suffering for all of ‘humanity’. ‘Humanity’ is faced with the invidious choice between curbing aggression and ensuring suffering, or curbing suffering and ensuring aggression ... or so it has been up until now. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to this culturally-imposed social identity ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a rudimentary self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity as is evidenced in a PCE. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. The virtual magnanimity endowed by pure intent obviates the necessity for a social identity, born out of society’s values, to be extant and controlling the wayward self with a societal conscience. Societal values are a psychological method of control. RESPONDENT: Would you tell the victims of Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan to inquire into themselves? RICHARD: Yes ... if they asked me. Identifying with by relating and belonging to a group – and espousing group ideals – invites attack from the bully-boys of another group who deem themselves superior. Why identify? Why relate? Why belong? The pertinent question to ask oneself now is: ‘Why do I have the need to identify by relating to anyone or belonging to any group at all’? This is inquiring. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that by relating to a group I am relating less, not more, because a group excludes those who ‘don’t belong’. RICHARD: Everybody I speak with – every one of them – tells the same story: ‘I just do not fit in; I do not belong; I am not like them; they exclude me; they all belong but I don’t’ ... and so on and so on. Is it not significant that everyone experiences life like this? (And I have talked with literally thousands of people over the last eighteen years about this). Loneliness is pandemic. In fact it has a global incidence and spares no one. RESPONDENT: If I do not relate to others then I can relate only to myself, a group of one, then none. A lonely life. RICHARD: Perhaps if I include something written by someone whom I have had an association with for some time may throw some light onto this subject. Vis.:
The last sentence is particularly relevant to your question: ‘Nor do I need to be needed, loved, or appreciated’ . RESPONDENT: Can I instead relate to the largest possible group, to all? RICHARD: A sheer impossibility ... 5.8 billion people are far to many to meet personally. Therefore, such relating would be only imaginary ... and amounts to becoming lost by being submerged in the crowd, anyway. RESPONDENT: Relate with the maximum possible effort, with all my heart? Is this another way to lose the psychological self? RICHARD: What makes one want to relate with ‘all my heart’ ? Is not that where the psychological self lives? Is this not ‘me’ at the core of one’s ‘being’? Would this action not affirm, endorse and perpetuate the very psychological self one is proposing to lose? One may be a loving self now ... but one is still a self, nevertheless. The pertinent question to ask is this: What is the nature of loneliness? RESPONDENT: The list has too much activity and I do not wish to bring such disorder to my mailbox. I noticed a post here recently that suggested the list be used to post topics and people could interact directly. This would reduce the traffic for whom ever that may be relevant. I am presently keen to explore the topic of ethnic orientation and violence but would correspond on other aspects of life as well. RICHARD: ‘Ethnic orientation and violence’ ... the two would seem to go hand-in-hand, would you not say? And has it not got a lot to do with beliefs and the action of believing itself? And does it not all believing stem from separation? I see, first of all, that there is a separation of male and female from each other by gender identification as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – two distinct social identities – leading to a localised discontent and resentment, causing the battle between the sexes. Then there is the separation of oneself – by being a ‘me’, a psychological identity – from one’s body and therefore from the world about, leading to a generalised discontent and resentment, causing wars between tribal groups. To end the separation is to end the violence. To end the separation, can one not whittle away at all the social mores and psittacisms: all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams? One can surely become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one finds oneself to be ... a wayward ego and soul careering around in confusion and illusion. I see that a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning ‘entity’ inside the body. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is under all the beliefs ... do you not think so? Do not beliefs come in from another person, or persons, starting from day one as a new-born baby? Mother and Father – or a substitute parent – require the child to conform to the already existing world of fact and fiction. Through actions and words, carrots and sticks, the child is taught to believe until it is sufficiently indoctrinated, having made these beliefs their own ‘truths’. The child can not compare these beliefs with anything outside of their environment, because they do not know there is an outside ... so they have no reason not to swallow the entire package, this whole reality. This process is called socialisation and results in forming the social identity; a process which may take, perhaps, up to twelve years to complete. All this while the child has learned, by trial and error, reward and punishment, precept and example – with endless repetition – how to feel afraid, secure, loved, disliked, greedy, proud, lonely, etcetera ... no matter what culture one is born into. Humankind is now sufficiently programmed into believing that this what human beings are is ‘human nature and it cannot be changed ... we are all stuck with it’. Such is the extent of believing. What one can do, however, is ask oneself whether one wants to continue to live an illusory life? Following blindly in the footsteps of ancestors is to perpetuate fiction over fact, as being the only way to live. One has taken on their beliefs and made them one’s own ... their beliefs are who one is. One’s image of oneself is a totally borrowed picture ... which one believes to be one’s very identity. It is what one thinks – and feels – one is as ‘me’. Does one wish to continue to defend an illusion? Family ties, tribal customs and national mores all contribute in the making of one’s identity. Religious beliefs, ideological creeds and cultural values all go to cement the psychological make-up of one’s very real self. One’s identity is what one has adopted as being ‘me’. How much longer does one wish to go on defending ‘someone’ that is not me? How much longer does one want to go on living in pathos as a group member ... which is what a social entity is. If one thinks – and feels – that this identity is me as I actually am, then ‘I’ must belong to a group. Out of loneliness ‘I’ must have a sense of belonging. This culturally created psychological entity that ‘I’ identify as is always lonely for it is an alien, a fictional creation of the group, who can not exist outside of the group mentality. But what about me as-I-am? Stripped of the identity, I can be never lonely, for I am complete, sufficient unto myself. Loneliness is as fictional as the identity that has been created as ‘me’ by all those other lonely entities which were here before one arrived as a baby. One has made it one’s own and called it ‘me’. Whereas, by being me, me as I actually am, I can never be a belief. * RICHARD: ‘Ethnic orientation and violence’ ... the two would seem to go hand-in-hand, would you not say? RESPONDENT: Are you suggesting that ethnic orientation would not exist without identification and any form of identification, not seeing what you are actually, free from identification, is violence? RICHARD: Yes, this is my experience. I was born in Australia, of a British-born father and a first-generation Australian mother from an English background. Thus I was raised to believe that I was, literally, an Australian-born citizen ... but with British blood! (Blood is blood ... is this not all ridiculous!). However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use a standard to judge by as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but an ‘ethnic’ human being. Thus, as I wrote in my previous post, I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker. As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ ethnicity ... ‘I’ was a ‘man’, and not simply a flesh and blood body. Under that lay a further layer. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. There, and only there, was the root cause of violence. By identifying as a ‘me’, a psychological entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, (if I may be a touch melodramatic) every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’; for me ... a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body! RESPONDENT: If there were no need to identify, ethnic orientation would merely fall away? RICHARD: Yes. There is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. All the wars; all the blood-shed; all the appalling misery is because of the absurdity of identification. But not just ethnic orientation, as I have already said above. RICHARD: There is much more to one’s background than conditioning ... one begins to comprehend that all the different types of socialisation (peer-group conditioning, parental conditioning and societal conditioning in general) are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over innumerable aeons to seek to curb the instinctual animal passions. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition. They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instinctual passions – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion as an antidote, as compensating pacifiers ... and the investigation ceases. It takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because below or behind the conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which necessitated the controls (conditioning) in the first place. Thus the conditioning can prevent the investigation of the human condition itself. RESPONDENT: I seem to remember the statement ‘instincts on rampage balk at investigation’. For the most part, then, we are content to, as you say, paddle around on the surface, avoiding deep investigation into ourselves. We want to have an image of ourselves as reasonable, respectable people rather than the bloodthirsty killers that we are. Pardon the hyperbole; perhaps that is putting it too starkly. RICHARD: Is it really true that ‘we want to have an image of ourselves as reasonable, respectable people’ which makes one ‘avoid deep investigation into ourselves’ ... or is such societal conditioning a necessity in order to curb the savage beast that lurks deep within the human breast? In other words: what if one has been inadvertently blaming conditioning all along for something that is not its fault? If one realises this is so ... then what happens? RESPONDENT: We may never have actually snuffed out a life, directly, but the potential for actual violence is there in the instinctual drives, the ‘human condition’ that you refer to. Yet the instinctual animal passions are there for a reason, are they not? RICHARD: Yes, to give one a (rough and ready) basic ‘software package’ operating system ... so as to give one a start to life. RESPONDENT: What is their basic function or raison d’être? RICHARD: To ensure the survival of the species ... and any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned. Survival of the fittest means the most fitted to survive live to pass on their genes ... the species which is most fitted to the environment succeeds in the perpetuation of their species. Those that cannot adapt to the ever-changing environment are automatically weeded-out. The (supposed) ‘resurgence’ of viruses immune to the vast array of antibiotics (for instance) empirically demonstrates this ‘survival of the most fitted to the environment theory’ to be an actual occurrence. Thus ‘The Evolutionary Theory’ is now ‘The Evolutionary Fact’. RESPONDENT: Once necessary for survival, why have they continued on? RICHARD: Is this not because peoples have been conditioned by various sages and seers to blame the conditioning for causing what is actually caused by the human condition itself ... the very instinctual passions which necessitated the controls (conditioning) in the first place. Thus the fixation on the conditioning can and does prevent the investigation of the human condition itself. If one realises this is so ... then what happens? RICHARD: This universe can experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being: as such the universe can know itself apperceptively. What one does is acquiesce to life by embracing death ... one wholeheartedly dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself right now: it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Yes, I had that understanding some time ago. At that time I phrased it, ‘We are how god knows itself’. I was not implying some God-guy or God entity. God to me was both the universal substance, as well as the cohesive and organizing principle, but not a person or a prior consciousness or even the ground of being. The universe did not somehow emanate from god. If one’s mindset is that there is God and the universe, then if one takes God out of the picture, the universe is dead matter – the materialists’ view. RICHARD: May I ask? What did/does the word ‘god’ signify to you, then? Did/does what you call ‘universal substance’ and ‘the cohesive and organising principle’ provide meaning and/or purpose for you? RESPONDENT: On the other hand, as I understand it, from your point of view, God and the universe is the misapplication of the rightful attributes of the universe to an imaginary God. But, if god is subsumed into the universe, because the universe right here, now, exactly as it is accounts for all the attributes that we formerly attributed to some god, who was immanent, but other even if only to an infinitesimal degree, then you have a pretty happy state of affairs. Subsumed might not be the correct word. Maybe God is just dropped when no longer needed! RICHARD: Given that ‘subsumed’ means included into or under another larger or more expansive category, then what I see happening here is but a reversal of roles: previously the universe was subsumed into or under god ... now you are subsuming god into or under the universe. Why? RESPONDENT: Subsumed might not be the correct word. Maybe God is just dropped when no longer needed! RICHARD: Indeed ... in my experience I did not ‘drop’ god myself ... when ‘I’ and ‘me’ became extinct, god vanished. From this I can draw the only obvious conclusion. To wit: god (or goddess) was but an autological projection of ‘my’ own identity ... ‘me’ as animal self.
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON IDENTITY (Part Two) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001 |
