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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Love, Love Agapé and Actual Intimacy
RESPONDENT: You said in your email that you are using the word love in the same way JK uses it. How you know it? RICHARD: Experientially ... it is the self-same experience (like recognises like). RESPONDENT: JK never defined love. RICHARD: Hmm ... what is this then? Vis.:
He is unambiguously saying that love is ‘a total feeling’ and a ‘complete purity of feeling’ ... if that is not defining it then I would like to know what is. RESPONDENT: Was defining not love. RICHARD: What about this then? Vis.:
RESPONDENT: He was saying that you can’t define love. RICHARD: Not only did he define it he also delineated where it comes from (sorrow). Vis.:
He is most explicit that if you escape from passion (he specifically says the root meaning of sorrow is passion) you lose that quality ... and that out of that quality comes compassion (and only then you will begin to understand what it means to love). And once that happens this happens:
Which is why he can say this:
You may recall this exchange:
Does it all start to make sense now? RESPONDENT: How you know then what was he meaning? RICHARD: Again, it is an experiential matter ... I only provide quotes (such as above) for people who have not experienced it for themselves. RESPONDENT: Did you passed through this experience of love, and then you are saying that it does not exist? RICHARD: No, I was that – to be enlightened is to be love – and when ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) ‘self’-immolated for the benefit of this body and that body and every body the love that it was also ceased to exist. RESPONDENT: If does not exist how possibly you had any experience of love? RICHARD: Just because it has no existence here in this actual world it does not mean it has no existence in the real-world (the world of the human psyche). RESPONDENT: How can you experience something that does not exist? RICHARD: Is this a before or an after question? RESPONDENT: If you never experienced though how can you tell that you are using it the same way he did? RICHARD: As it is you who is saying I never experienced it I will leave that for you to mull over. RESPONDENT: You see the absurdity here? RICHARD: No ... and that is because there is none (other than the one you invented). RESPONDENT: For him was very real, for you does not exist and you still say you both are using the word with the same meaning. RICHARD: For me it was very real ... more real than anything else, in fact, to the point that there was nothing but love: love was everything and everything was love; love was all and all was love; love was it and it was love – and it was love’s compassion which poured forth endlessly, unstoppable, for all suffering sentient beings. RESPONDENT: Is this a conundrum, or something else? RICHARD: Neither ... that is what you are making of it all. RESPONDENT: I do hope that we can continue to be friends on that basis. RICHARD: You have raised this before in a previous exchange some months ago. Vis.:
It would appear that personal friendships are important to you ... as is being respected, being valued and being accredited (to name but three of the things you have wanted from me in this current exchange of E-Mails). There is only one thing which will impress me: the other person being actually free from the human condition. This is because then they too, just like me, will be incapable of not liking another just because of whatever mischief it is they get up to. It is impossible to ‘switch off’ an actual intimacy ... ever. RESPONDENT: In fact, in around 48 hours, it is highly likely that a friend and I will begin driving north to Byron Bay and I would like to meet you once again for the enjoyment of each others company; and my friend, [name witheld] from Holland, has expressed interest in meeting the Richard I have been corresponding with. Would you like that? RICHARD: I have experimented, over the three years or so since I went public with my discovery on the internet, to see whether I am correct or incorrect (and not merely theorising) in saying that it is the words that convey an actual freedom from the human condition, and to thus find out for myself as to whether it is pointless coming to see me in person or not. It is indeed pointless coming to see me in person. RESPONDENT No. 27: I don’t recall talking to No. 40, but Richard and I had a few verbal exchanges on actuality. Apparently, we did not see ‘actuality’ actually the same, though I forget what we actually saw, but I would be surprised if he doesn’t still have an actual computer record of what was actually said by everyone, even if his interpretations tended to distort whatever was actually said. <s> RESPONDENT: You seem to have came across the same distortions and limitations I did <s>. Yes it was disappointing to discover Richard mental clarity was not infinite and had its shut off point, just like the rest of us poor impassioned human beings nursing our bosoms. LOL. At the moment he’s pussyfooting and trying desperately to hide his distaste and frustration at one of his fellow list members who refuses to be brow beaten into seeing actualism Richard’s way. The list member (who has just recently created a new website called actualfreedom.com and seeks to link it with Richards actualfreedom.com.au in a bid to spread the good word) is on his way up to Byron Bay with a friend to meet Richard for a chat and pristine cup of coffee at the pub for the 4th or so time. But Richard is so pissed off he plans to deny this recalcitrant disciple his esteemed audience. It seems Richard sees no point in retaining friendships with those who do not see life HIS WAY (so much for his actual intimacy??). The list member has been told his answering machine will be on and no one will be home. Which just goes to show that friendship in Richards – oh so perfect world – is still conditional and dependent on his actualism being ‘accepted’. And so the plot thickens. (Message #01200 of Archive 00/11: Subject: ‘Richards Methods’). RICHARD: It would appear that the failure to recognise a trope when it is writ large results in tripe. Needless to say, none of this misinformation above (or is it disinformation) which you pen to this Mailing List, for whatever obscure reason it is that you would do such a thing anyway, has any connection whatsoever with what is actually happening ... maybe it is your disappointment about ‘Richard’s mental clarity’ which has emotionally flooded your cognitive ability to accurately discern facts and makes you see only ‘distortions and limitations’ instead? For starters, the person whom you are referring to as ‘this recalcitrant disciple’ is a disciple of Mr. Mohan Rajneesh (aka a ‘friend of Osho’) who first approached me on the internet nearly two years ago (February 1999) under the guise of being a ‘creative writer’ wanting to publicise ‘Richard’ (‘do you think it would be a good thing for ‘Richard’ to be more widely known?’). I declined, giving reasons, and then stating clearly and succinctly [Richard]: ‘I value my privacy very highly and have no desire for a public profile’ [endquote]. (Message #363 Mon, Jan 25, 1999 and Message #393 Tue, Feb 2, 1999; ‘Subject: Re: ‘Simplifying Richard’). This ‘friend of Osho’ (aka a disciple of Mr. Mohan Rajneesh) was remarkably persistent ... there followed a series of E-Mails wherein I made my position crystal clear ... for example [Richard]: ‘... as I have remarked before, I do value my privacy highly and have no desire for a public profile. Consequently I am not liberal with handing out my telephone number, street address or last name to people ...’ [endquote]. (Fri, 19 Feb. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). This response was because again the guise of being a journalist wishing to interview me vis-à-vis an actual freedom was being presented ... for example: [quote]: ‘... my motivation for meeting you would be to flesh out my experience of you, in order to be able to write an article about Actual Freedom. My intention would be to publish such an article’ [endquote]. (Wed, 17 Feb. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). And again I made my position crystal clear ... for example: [Richard]: ‘... nothing can be gained from meeting me face-to-face other than the verification that there is a flesh and blood body that writes these words – hence I turn down all requests for a photograph. Nothing is obtained from a personal talk that cannot be gained from reading the interactive exchange of words on the Internet’. (Tue, 2 Mar. 1999; Subject: Re: Can We Meet?). All that (and more) was all nearly two years ago ... if you have been even superficially following the current exchange on the other Mailing List you will find my words (above) of February and March 1999 very, very familiar and thus see that my current words are not ‘pussyfooting and desperately hiding distaste and frustration’ at all ... let alone ‘brow-beating’ . I am simply saying the same thing over and again: I wish to preserve my chosen lifestyle as-it-is and share my discovery on the internet because an actual freedom is epitomised by being conveyed by words alone ... and is the ability to fully live a normal lifestyle. Second, where you say that this person has set-up a web page in ‘a bid to spread the good word’ you are apparently oblivious to the actuality ... it has been set-up to downplay what I am saying, only under the same name (‘actual freedom’). That this ploy has sucked you in goes to show that the association of similar domain names (‘actualfreedom.com’ and ‘actualfreedom.com.au’) has the effect of misleading the undiscerning ... to the point that this ‘friend of Osho’ can then state that ‘Actual Freedom’=‘Actual Truth’ (aka ‘The Truth’ aka ‘God’ aka ‘Whatever Name’). It is somewhat akin to the propensity Hinduism has, for instance, of absorbing all potentially conflicting alternatives under its all-embracing umbrella. Third, where you say that ‘Richard sees no point in retaining friendships with those who do not see life HIS WAY’ you are apparently also oblivious to the fact than an actual intimacy experiences every body equally ... an actual intimacy plays no favourites and brooks no exclusive friendship. This includes racial and biological kith and kin ... no body is special as every body is special. Fourth, where you say ‘(so much for his actual intimacy??)’ ... I am conscious of the fact that I am writing to a fellow human being, and not to words appearing on a screen, who has publicly informed everyone on the Mailing List (including yourself) of their medical condition. Vis.:
I have intimate experience, over many years, of interacting with people who have been suffering from varying degrees of this particularly distressing disorder (popularly known as ‘manic depression’) ... and in my experience (and verified via their own feedback) the most helpful way of interacting is by (a) being sensible and practical at all times and (b) enabling or facilitating the ability to make their own decisions based upon sound physical reasons. It is important, vital, to not pander to flights of fancy and being always down-to-earth and matter-of-fact in any, oft-times fluctuating, instances. Fifth, where you say that this person ‘has been told his answering machine will be on and no one will be home’ is where you go for a trip on the trope ... and in a big way: the ‘friend of Osho’ would not read, or would only partly read, my responses to all the attempts to downplay what I am saying into being yet another version of the ‘Tried and True’. The ‘answering machine’ analogy only came towards the end of a long series of back and forth E-Mails wherein I was told repeatedly by this ‘friend of Osho’ that they had no interest in reading my words at all. And, as all that they would get from seeing me in person – or ringing me on the telephone – would be me saying nothing different from what my words in the E-Mails and on the Web Page were saying, I put it that all that they would get by ringing me, in other words, would be an answering machine responding with the same-same as what is already in words on the web ... except that the printed words say it a lot better than I do as I tend to waffle on a lot in voice. Lastly, as this person’s point of few forced them to only see an ‘enlightened master’ (by whatever name) in this flesh and blood body called Richard, I explicitly said ‘there is no person answering to that description at this address’. How you can translate that into Richard saying that ‘his answering machine will be on and no one will be home’ I do not know ... maybe it is your propensity to see plots where there is none (‘and so the plot thickens’). However, it may very well turn out that your plot has thinned a little having read all this. RESPONDENT: Not to nitpick, but the challenge isn’t to be here now as the universe’s experience of itself, but to come to a full understanding of that. Whether I know it or not, I am the universe’s experience of itself. RICHARD: Hmm ... this is what comes of me writing ‘shorthand’. I meant it as it was written (further above) and virtually everywhere else:
Of course, whether people ‘know it or not’ they are indeed currently ‘the universe’s experience of itself’ ... but it is experiencing itself as malicious and sorrowful and antidotally loving and compassionate human beings. The challenge is to do something entirely new to human experience on this otherwise fair planet: be happy and harmless through the elimination of malice and sorrow. This challenge requires far, far more than to ‘come to a full understanding of that’ ... this requires hands-on actualisation. There are no spiritual-style ‘realisation’ short-cuts to the actual world; nothing dirty can get in. For example, I started to empirically encounter that sorrow is essential for compassion to flourish and that love is the antidote for malice towards the end of 1987 (without compassion, love has no genesis and without malice, love has no raison d’être). By about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation ... but my investigation into compassion had begun in India in 1984 with the Buddhist ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) and ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion). Strangely enough, it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love in 1987 – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – that triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness. It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation ... hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be faced squarely. Nevertheless, it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition ... there is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. IRENE to Vineeto: A person who despises love has a reason to repress love, either because of the absence of love in his/her life or because of deep disappointment in love-affairs, which says nothing about love itself but everything about the experiencer, who could be just incapable of loving or is angry with it as it proved to be different from lust, owning, possessing, using the other and expecting the other to be available. RICHARD: This is the second time you use the word ‘despises’ ... here it is love that you are saying is being despised and further above it was intuition and some unnamed ‘other senses’. As ‘despise’ means detest or hate or condemn – and they are all feelings – then I rather fail to see how you have come to this conclusion. For the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – actualism – is all about being as free of emotions, passions and calenture as is humanly possible. I cannot consider for a moment that anyone could make out a case for an actualist bothering to replace love with despisal, detestation and hatred. That would be silly ... and what a pathetic way to live one’s life anyway! As for a ‘deep disappointment in love-affairs’ having nothing to with the fault of love itself but ‘everything to do with the experiencer’ ... do you not find it strange that every human being has had this said about them? Is love that sacred that one is never to question its efficacy in being capable of delivering on its implicit promise? Is every human being who has ever lived or is now living – ten billion people – all been ‘incapable of loving’? If so, that makes love unreachable ... it is akin to what Mr. Leo Tolstoy so aptly described as that moral perfection that is not able to be achieved ... but one is to strive for it, anyway. It is like a light one holds out to one’s front on the end of a long stick ... the more one moves toward it, the more it moves ahead of one. But ... you are exhorted to follow that elusive light, anyway. Whereas the actual intimacy of being here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is to be the perfection of the purity of infinitude personified ... here on earth now and in this life-time. In regards to love being ‘different from lust, owning, possessing and using the other’ ... may I refer you to an observation Devika made – on audio tape – when she was deeply in love? Who knows, it may jog your memory,
Lastly, in reference to your comment about ‘expecting the other to be available’ ... with actual intimacy, one is always available as it is impossible to be closed off. Speaking personally, you are welcome any time. IRENE: Feelings of affection, care and consideration for others bring the juice and the cream to the surface of life as a human being, they make us vivacious! RICHARD: Hmm ... and if that is what lies on the ‘surface of life’ ... what lies underneath? Those pesky instincts that give rise to malice and sorrow perchance? IRENE: Caring and consideration are feelings, affections that cannot exist when the whole faculty for feeling, for being human is wiped out, eliminated, exterminated. RICHARD: Etymologically the word ‘care’ comes from the Old English ‘caru’ meaning ‘charge’ or ‘oversight’ (‘charge’ as in the Latin ‘carricare’ from ‘carrus’ meaning ‘wagon’ – thus ‘carry’ – and ‘oversight’ as in ‘overseeing’) and basically means ‘an object or matter of concern’ as in ‘a thing to be done or seen to’ or ‘protective overview’ or ‘guardianship’. The only way to make it a particular feeling is by linking it with the Gothic and Germanic word ‘kara’ meaning ‘grief’ or ‘lament’ (as derived from ‘karar’ meaning ‘bed of sickness’). In popular use it appears to mean worrying about the other. The word ‘consideration’ is from the Latin ‘considerare’ meaning ‘examine’ (perhaps from the Latin ‘sider’ or ‘sidus’ meaning ‘constellation’ or ‘star’) and basically means ‘the action or fact of examining and taking into account of anything as a reason or motive with regard for the circumstances of another’. In popular use, however, it generally means ‘don’t hurt my feelings’. IRENE: Intimacy can only exist between 2 people who are equally honest and dare to own up to their feelings as well as their thoughts, ideas, ideals, dreams, intimations and so forth. RICHARD: Whereas in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s honesty, daring ... or moods. It is an estimable condition to be in! 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: The meeting was contained within your mind, it would seem. RICHARD: Oh, no ... it definitely happened. At the seaside restaurant set amidst trees and bushes as described. Other people were there too. RESPONDENT: Here again, you miss my point. Yes, of course there was a seaside restaurant amidst trees and bushes, and there were other people there, and there was a Richard and a man whose name begins with ‘?’, and you reported very well the flavour of the environment, and the concepts elicited in your mind. RICHARD: You were proceeding famously up until you felt impelled to stick in your pet theory. To emphasise: What I live is not conceptual ... this is actual. RESPONDENT: But what is missing from your report is some description of an actual meeting between two human beings. There is no indication in your report that a meeting really happened – there would just seem to be the coincident spatial relationship between 4 people. No meeting in the real sense of the word. This would seem to me to be a fact. RICHARD: Okay ... ‘would seem to me to be a fact’ is the operative phrase here. I experience an actual intimacy with all people, things and events irregardless of where they are at ... hence an actual meeting wherever and with whomsoever. If by ‘no meeting in the real sense’ you mean making a connection – one entity relating to another entity – then no, there was no ‘real’ meeting. RESPONDENT: There was no meeting outside your mind. Your mind met itself in the seaside restaurant, amidst the tropical foliage. RICHARD: I see that you have absorbed the mystical philosophical gobbledegook rather well ... but it does not accord with the facts of the situation. Would you care to examine that borrowed statement of yours: ‘your mind met itself’? I am not being difficult here for the sake being difficult yet this recondite mental posturing – designed to be enigmatic – is impressive only to those who over-intellectualise. Thus ‘your mind met itself’ sounds kind of silly when one considers it sensibly, does it not? RESPONDENT: It is words and concepts you seem to want to convey in your article, rather than some account of a meeting with another human being. RICHARD: You do seem to be pushing this theme about ‘words and concepts’ ... life is to be lived as an actual experiencing, each moment again. the reason that the conversation appears to be one-sided is because it was one-sided – he had nothing of substance to offer – and nothing to say other than what is reported in the article. RESPONDENT: Richard, You speak as if a person who has Transformed them self is responsible for the violence of this world. RICHARD: No, I do not say that your ‘Transformation’ causes violence ... I say that it perpetuates violence. RESPONDENT: The violence has been here forever and I for one am bringing forth a new world, void of violence. RICHARD: Yet the world that you are bringing forth is full of ‘Love’ ... and ‘Truth’ and ‘Compassion’ and so on. There is nothing new about this ... it has all been tried before. As for being ‘void of violence’ ... please look carefully at the nature of Love and Compassion.
* RESPONDENT: Compassion needs no thing to thrive on, and Love needs no fuel, are you a fool? RICHARD: No ... but I was a fool for eleven years ... yet during that time I was somehow aware that both Love and Compassion were being fuelled. My question was: By whom? Obviously you are blinded by the Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz and cannot see the malicious and sorrowful undercurrent that your ‘Transformation’ sits upon ... the diabolical down-side of the exalted ‘new way of being’. I can demonstrate by asking one question:
RICHARD: Therefore I ask, just how much longer will a ‘Tried and Failed’ system continue to be so highly revered despite its abject failure to produce the goods? Is it because these attitudes and attributes form a ‘web’ of solace and succour wherein ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul can be comforted, stroked, endorsed and perpetuated? Is this why nobody will put love and compassion and beauty under a microscope? If thought can get such rigorous scrutiny as the Mailing List gives it ... why not feelings? Are feelings sacrosanct? RESPONDENT: Hum Richard, what does ‘sacrosanct’ mean? RICHARD: Off-limits. (Oxford Dictionary: sacrosanct: exempt from criticism; inviolable, sacred; secured from violation or infringement (as) by religious sanction). RESPONDENT: As long as you ‘show’ your knowledge your ‘Intelligence’ cannot show through (if there is any). RICHARD: As you are on record as defining ‘Intelligence’ as being ‘love in action’ then am I to take it that you, too, are not going to put it under the microscope? I guess not ... given that you have oft-times proudly explained how you are an ‘empty vessel’ for Love and/or Truth to come through, eh? RESPONDENT: Feelings are not real, they are like knowledge, a lie! (No. 10, being non knowledgeable). RICHARD: Aye ... and to think that all this while you have been busily being an ‘empty vessel’ for something that is ‘not real’ to come through. Is this because Love and/or Truth is sacrosanct? RESPONDENT: Okay Richard, here it is: Love: has no feelings; is eternal; cannot be ‘perfectly’ described. RICHARD: If Love ‘has no feelings’, as you say, is it because it ‘cannot be ‘perfectly’ described’ that it cannot be perfectly examined? If you cannot put it into words satisfactorily (cannot think about it thoroughly) then how can you understand it ... let alone examine it for its feeling content? To put it another way: if Love is not affective ... what is its disposition? If Love is not cognitive ... what is its constitution? If Love is not sensate ... what is its nature? Because, if Love ‘is eternal’ as you say (and flesh and blood bodies are not), then is Love not immaterial (non-physical)? RESPONDENT: Compassion: something a person needs for themself to themself 100% of the day. RICHARD: If Compassion is ‘something a person needs for themself to themselves’ then it is obviously essential ... especially as you explicitly state ‘100% of the day’ . If it is that crucial, then does it stand scrutiny for being impeccable? Is Compassion affective in its nature ... or sensate (surely it is not cognitive)? RESPONDENT: Beauty: I don’t know, it is of thought that beauty is born. RICHARD: Ahh ... but is beauty solely the product of thought? Does it not have an affective component (as in ‘it was so beautiful it took my breath away’)? And where is Truth to be found if not in beauty? Is Truth a product of thought? RICHARD: So, stripping out all that is not information about Love and/or Truth, I see that you are saying: ‘Feelings are not real, they are like knowledge, a lie! Love: has no feelings; is eternal; cannot be ‘perfectly’ described. Compassion: something a person needs for themself to themself 100% of the day. Beauty: it is of thought that beauty is born. Beauty must be thought first then exclaimed, the claim ‘it took my breath away’ is from thought. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. When K says ‘for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love’ he has missed the mark, beauty is of thought and love has no feeling. Truth cannot be found in beauty, nor thought for both are thought. Love is none of the three, they (sensate, cognitive, affective) they are all of thought which is and confusion in action’. I do not know what you make of it all, but what I understand is that this Love and/or Truth, that you are an ‘empty vessel’ for so as to transform ‘all of NATURE’, is not sensate, not affective and not cognitive ... which means that it is an immaterial, eternal (bodiless) Love and/or Truth, eh? A metaphysical Love and/or Truth, in other words ... and the nature, character, constitution or disposition of which either you are ignorant of or are being secretive about. Which is it? * RICHARD: What I am endeavouring to ascertain is if Love is not affective ... what is its disposition? If Love is not cognitive ... what is its constitution? If Love is not sensate ... what is its nature? RESPONDENT: Love is none of the three, they (sensate, cognitive, affective) they are all of thought which is and confusion in action. RICHARD: Okay ... is the physical (this body and that body and the mountains and streams and planets and stars) actual or ‘all of thought’ too? RICHARD: Remember, the notion of a fragmented mind arises from an apparently whole life existing in the heart. RESPONDENT: Also Krishnamurti states clearly that love is not emotion, not sentiment, but a state of being that knows no separation. RICHARD: I am in total agreement that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti clearly stated that love is not an emotion or sentiment. It is not ... it is passion. In fact he repeatedly stressed passion as being essential ... and passion is an affective state. [quote] ‘Love is compassion, passion. Passion for everything’. [end quote]. Any state of being is an affective state ... that is what a ‘state of being’ means. It is not sensate or cognitive, so that only leaves the affective ... unless you want to suggest that it was the esoteric, the psychic, the occult, as being what he was referring to. A ‘state of being that knows no separation’ is an affective state of oneness, union, wholeness ... I have discussed this before with you. RESPONDENT: What I understand as love is not born out of thought or time. RICHARD: Agreed. It is a thoughtless state of being wherein the passions have overtaken intelligence. It cannot be ‘timeless’ because the sun still moves through the sky and day follows night as do the seasons follow each other. Enlightened people have a dickens of a job convincing even the gullible that this physical world is not actual. When they can persuade them into to believing that ... then they will believe anything at all. RESPONDENT: Again, you give dualistic definitions of love or compassion, and argue that they are false. Of course they are! What do you expect to find in dictionaries other than dualistic explanations of terms? That is all the authors could understand. If you will read Krishnamurti with an open mind, you will find that he uses ordinary terms like love or ecstasy or contentment but goes on to discuss that he does not mean something that has an opposite. If there is no freedom from sorrow, there is no genuine love, no compassion. This is precisely what Krishnamurti pointed to! RICHARD: If there is freedom from sorrow, there is freedom from love ... be it genuine or not. I have read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti with an open mind ... because I wanted to know, for myself, if this ‘Love’, this ‘Compassion’, this ‘Beauty’, this ‘Truth’, this ‘Goodness’, this ‘Intelligence’, actually had no opposite.
Speaking personally, I found it well worthwhile to investigate ... experientially. RICHARD: Okay ... I will go with you in your irrelevant dissertation: seeing that this is a Mailing List set up under the auspices of the ‘Teachings’ brought into the world by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti (who used the word ‘compassion’ frequently and with special emphasis on what he meant by it) then it would serve far better to use his example than speculate about what a long-dead deity such as Mr. Buddha may or may not have said or done (if he lived at all). As Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was sometimes moved to tears, becoming visibly distressed, when giving talks about human relationship (and as this is on tape no one will have to go chasing anywhere through any ancient scrolls) there is no evidence of dispassionate consideration and care. It would appear then that, seeing as at least one enlightened person puts lie to what you say above about the ‘ongoing sensitivity to suffering sans personal suffering’ meaning that you are trying to impose upon the word, it may be quite reasonable to consider that the etymology of ‘compassion’ (‘pathos in common’) still holds true despite your assurances that it has an ‘evolved consensus meaning and implications’ that makes it exempt from the meaning ‘suffering together’. I am happy to explore any other irrelevancies you fancy to bring forward ... until then: given that what I was saying (further above) was that ‘suffering together’ is not a sign of health, what word or words would you use to convey a dispassionate consideration and care for one’s fellow human being if one is not to understand the affective roots of the commonly used words for such sensible concern ... such as ‘pity’, ‘sympathy’, ‘empathy’, ‘commiseration’, ‘solicitous’ and ‘compassionate’? RESPONDENT: K’s harsh words are as rare as your words of kindness. RICHARD: I have never taken a count so as to be able to provide evidence either way ... and as it is your proposition it is up to you to go through all his words and then through mine so as to statistically substantiate your statement. Until you do ... I will just take this for the rhetoric that it is and ignore it completely. RESPONDENT: Though you say you are an expression of the kindliness of the Universe??? RICHARD: I prefer the word ‘benevolent’ (‘well-wishing’) as it cannot be misconstrued. Some people would attribute an affective component to the word ‘kindliness’ ... and then, indeed find me devoid of what they are looking for. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul became extinct, the entire affective faculty vanished ... which means all the feelings (the emotions and passions and calentures). Which may explain why you detect no ‘warmth’ in me ... you may very well be looking for love and/or compassion. I have no love nor compassion for you whatsoever for I have no malice and sorrow that needs such counterparts. * RESPONDENT: Please ... take care of yourself Richard! Love ... RICHARD: I lived that ‘Tried and True’ remedy of love for eleven years and found it wanting. Now, whilst love seems to promise to take care of you it does not, has never done and never will. It is the ‘Tried and Failed’ ... is not 5,000 years of recorded history’s documentation of love’s failure enough evidence for you? Or are you not interested in learning from the lessons of history? RICHARD: If so, why do you promote the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty? RESPONDENT: ?? RICHARD: Human love and compassion and beauty can be sublimated and transcended so that these human feelings become Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and Truth as a state of being called by some ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. This transmogrification of the human passions into divine passions has been going on for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years ... as evidenced by your and my correspondence regarding ‘Purusha’ and Prakriti’. It has been tried and tried again and again and it has failed and failed again and again. Those ancient Gurus and God-men got up to the self-same antics as do the current bunch. Yet they are worshipped and revered or otherwise looked up to as being the font of wisdom ... as the epitome of ‘Goodness’. Why? Can I put it this way: what is the ‘thousand-petalled lotus’ growing in? Which means: from what are the roots of ‘Goodness’ drawing nourishment? RESPONDENT: I am honoured that you gave attention to my post. RICHARD: I sincerely doubt it ... but you already know that, don’t you? RESPONDENT: Be well Richard. RICHARD: You just do not get it, do you? I am already always well, so your papal-like blessings do not do one single thing for me. But then again, they do nothing for anyone else either, whether they are well or unwell. I guess writing them and saying them goes towards making you feel benevolent though. RESPONDENT: I Love you dearly. RICHARD: And herein lies the problem ... you probably really do. Hence all the trouble in the real world: people attempt to cover-up their hatred – for oneself and others – by becoming a loving self. To become a loving self – or Self – is to but gild the lily ... ‘I’ survive to live another day and wreak ‘my’ havoc on an otherwise perfect paradise of a planet simply hanging in infinite space and eternal time.
RESPONDENT: Poor Richard, a soul without passion. RICHARD: There cannot be a ‘soul without passion’ ... a soul is made of passion. No passion equals no soul. RESPONDENT: Oh God please do not allow me to evolve to that state. RICHARD: No, never, ever evolve ... hang onto your passion by all the means under your control. Passion like anger, hatred, rage, spitefulness, maliciousness, revenge, jealousy, sadness, sorrow, misery ... and their band-aid solutions like love and compassion and empathy and sympathy and so on. Why, if you did evolve there would be peace-on-earth ... and that is the last thing you would want, apparently. RESPONDENT: ROTFLMAO RICHARD: As my ‘Poor Richard’ condition (a classified psychiatric mental disorder) is experienced by you as something to roll on the floor laughing about, all I can say is I am glad to be the recipient of a sample of your much-touted love and compassion. It proves my point that love and compassion always fail to bring the Peace On Earth that is promised ... and why they fail. They fail because they arise out of malice and sorrow. As you have just so ably demonstrated. RESPONDENT: I do, though, have reverence for the teachings that came through Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, but I have no personal adoration for the man himself – the flesh and blood individual. RICHARD: Those teachings come from Brahman ... the Indian name for what Mr. Paul Tillich (a theologian and philosopher) called ‘The Ground Of Being’. RESPONDENT: The teachings point the way to love, but it is up to each one to discover that for himself. (Please don’t give me a tirade on ‘love’ paling in hue in the light of ‘actuality’.) RICHARD: Okay, I will go in the other direction then. Love – both secular and sacred – has been revered as the ‘cure-all’ for just about everything. So why has it not done its job? To understand this, one needs to comprehend that for love to exist at all there must be separation between ‘me’ and the person, the persons, the object or the god that ‘I’ am to love. Not for nothing is the statement ‘Love is a bridge’ promoted abroad for all and sundry to take in. My question is: A ‘bridge’ between what two shores? Who are the two ‘I’s that are separate? Do ‘I’ exist, actually exist? ‘I’ may be real, but am ‘I’ actual? If ‘I’ am an illusion then any ‘bridge’ will only reinforce ‘my’ existence ... my very real existence. If a person is said to be ‘egotistic’ or ‘ego-driven’, then a goodly dose of love is advised to ameliorate the phenomenon. Yet the persona is still in existence ... a loving and lovable persona, of course, but still here. ‘I’ am the ‘spanner in the works’ and to cover my ‘self’ over with a coating of love is to gild the lily. ‘I’ still lurk around, shielded now by love, wreaking my mischief in disguise. Also, intrinsic to the nature of love is its – always unfulfilled – promise of eternity. One’s life here is here on earth now ... what use is a spurious Eternal Bliss in some conjectured After-Life? Love has produced wars, murders, rapes and aggression since time immemorial ... it staggers me that it still retains its credibility. To kill for ‘Love of Country’ or ‘Love of God’ is surely proof enough for any discerning person. Then there are those ‘Crimes of Passion’ that are brought about by love’s constant companions: possessiveness, jealousy and envy. If these examples are considered too extreme then what about the heartache, the longing, the pining and the yearning that all peoples report as accompanying love’s bliss? This leads to the search for True Love which, supposedly, does not induce these unpleasant characteristics so common to everybody’s experience of love. True Love is simply a fiction ... it is impossible to manifest it here on earth, hence the notion of an After-Life to encompass it. To repeat: Love never delivers on its implied promise. It never has done nor ever will. Its days are numbered, as more and more people are beginning to notice that love itself – not the sensate human body – is failing to live up to its ill-deserved curative reputation again and again. RESPONDENT: One who tried and failed to discover Love has said that love has failed. RICHARD: Oh really? Who was that fool? Was it someone on this List? RESPONDENT: Someone ... has said that love has failed because hundreds (thousands?) (millions?) of ‘seekers’ have failed to find a certain state they were looking for, which they titled ‘love’. Of course, they did not find love because a self cannot find love. RICHARD: Then there is not much chance that all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides will ever cease then is there? They will go on and on ad infinitum unless these ‘seekers’ can begin to understand that love perpetuates all the ills of humankind and stop seeking what you say is impossible to find (only .000001 of the population reach these lofty heights anyway) and start looking for the cause of the problem rather than being seduced into a band-aid solution that just does not work. RESPONDENT: They can find actuality, and it is a good bet that in that actuality there will no be love. RICHARD: I can assure you that there is no love in actuality ... it is more than a ‘good bet’. This is because the soul ‘me’ must expire for actuality to become apparent ... and this soul ‘me’ is love. RESPONDENT: Because one can neither ‘find’ nor ‘try’ Love. Love comes of its volition, not because one has sought after it. RICHARD: Yea verily ... and, as I have said before, it has come to only .000001 of the population. Hardly a recipe for success, now, is it? RESPONDENT: Richard, it is not love that failed, it was the ones looking for love who failed. RICHARD: How can you possibly know this as a fact? Is this your experience talking ... or just something that you have read somewhere and are parroting for my benefit. RESPONDENT: Only one who vows that he knows even the unknowable would state that there is no such thing as Love if he himself had looked and failed to find it. RICHARD: Who is this ‘one’ that you are referring to again? No one called Richard has said that ‘there is no such thing as Love’. Speaking personally, I am on record as saying, over and over again, that Love is a feeling – born out of the affective faculties of the psyche – and is very real. It is not actual, like a human body is, or a tree, or an ashtray, but it is very, very real indeed. Why, it is as real as god is. RESPONDENT: The fact that this person never found Love doesn’t mean that love was ‘tried’. It has never been tried because it was never found and never will be. RICHARD: I wonder just who ‘this person’ is? Speaking personally again, for eleven years, when there was no ‘I’ as ego in this body, Love lived on earth as a human being. However, the native intelligence of this body operated well enough to find the Source of Love. Lo and behold! it was ‘me’ as soul ... coyly hiding in the heart and being as humble as all get-out in the hope that it would remain undiscovered. This exposure was the ending of ‘me’ ... and Love disappeared simultaneously. So did the Absolute. Instantaneously, I was here in this actual world ... this ambrosial paradise. RESPONDENT: I have looked under just as many rocks as you, Richard, but the rocks I have looked under were the rocks of the self ... it is not there. If it’s not under my individual rock, it certainly isn’t under other’s rocks, either – the holy, enlightened men whom you have read and remember with such conformity to correctness. RICHARD: Then if ‘the holy, enlightened men’ have never lived as Love then who has? Or are you – like another person – now saying that Love has never been on earth yet? * RESPONDENT: Love is not anywhere to be found. It is a game of hide and seek where Love is the only player. RICHARD: This must be so frustrating for you. RESPONDENT: No. Maybe I just don’t want it badly enough. ‘Not wanting it badly enough’ may be ‘not wanting it’ at all. RICHARD: Nothing worth anything is gained without extending oneself way beyond the norm. One has to want freedom like one has never wanted anything before. I say: rev up desire until one feels that one must surely implode ... and rev it up some more. Unless freedom is one’s number one priority in life – amounting to an obsession – one will always live a second-rate life. RESPONDENT: Krishnamurti says it finds you, not the other way around . RICHARD: How did Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti know this, according to you? Did Love find him? If so, has it found anyone else – living or dead – according to you? RESPONDENT: I have no reason to doubt that he knew what he was talking about. RICHARD: But did Love find him? RESPONDENT: In fact, I have many reasons to accept that he did know what he was talking and writing about. RICHARD: But, again you are not answering the question ... why not? Did he, or did he not, live as Love on earth ... according to you? RESPONDENT: But he added that each one must discover it for himself. As I stated before, Richard, if you are happy, that makes me smile, for you deserve happiness, in my opinion. RICHARD: Not only happy, but harmless ... and that is equally important. Mostly people overlook that part ... and so all the wars go on. RESPONDENT: I suspect that one must be very, very still for it to find us ... yeah, dead. RICHARD: Psychologically dead, of course ... there is no ‘After-Life’. Freedom is here-on-earth ... there is nowhere else than here. But a ‘very, very still’ self is still a self, nevertheless. And whilst there is a self it is not going to happen. So, back to the drawing board, eh? RESPONDENT: A very still self is a self that is not. RICHARD: If it is a self that is not, then there is no way it can be described as a ‘very, very, still self’ . RESPONDENT: You knew what I meant. RICHARD: I know very well what you meant. You meant what you wrote: ‘a very, very still self’ . Look, if you do want Love (Spiritual Enlightenment) and not go all the way to an actual freedom, then being still is not going to do the trick. This is because not only can you not find Love ... Love does not come to you, either. The way it works is that when you become love then Love is You. Here is how to be Love:
It is quite easy, really. RESPONDENT: Out of a context of experiencer separate from the experience it appears that we can experience ‘not me’. But, as you seem to agree, there is no way for us to experience it. RICHARD: No, I am not agreeing that there is ‘no way for us to experience it’ . We can – and we do – experience ‘not me’ ... as in a PCE, which was explained above and in previous posts. RESPONDENT: There is no experiencer separate from experience. RICHARD: The experiencer is indeed separate from experience ... that is the whole problem. This is the cause of the perception that one is separate ... causing all kinds of frenetic activity like seeking union with some imagined god to end the pain of separation. Or wanting love. Love is a bridge betwixt this ‘I’ and that ‘I’, creating an illusion of intimacy and appearing to end separation. Love does not end separation. The two ‘I’s’ are still in existence ... albeit in emotional or passionate union.
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON LOVE (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 |
