|
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]. 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 to Peter: 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 to Peter: 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 to Peter: 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. RESPONDENT: ... There is in my view no better English word than ‘compassion’ to describe ongoing sensitivity to suffering sans personal suffering. Given its evolved consensus meaning and implications it suffices at least as well as any alternative English offers. 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.
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. RICHARD: As libido is null and void for me then being sexually active or not is purely a matter of preference. What this means in effect is that sexual congress, because of its utter proximity, has more to do with intimacy than anything else. Now, here is where it becomes quite an intriguing matter because, and as a generalisation only, women tend to place more emphasis on intimacy than men. Indeed, many a woman has bewailed the dearth of men prepared to make the big commitment required for such connubial accord. Yet they are deathly afraid of intimacy – the fear of intimacy is a subject most women have talked to me about – for it means loss of self. And therein lies the rub: the survival instincts can kick in big- time, especially during sexual congress, and the very opposite of the longed-for intimacy takes place (as in pulling-back, turning-away, closing-off, shutting-down, and so on). RESPONDENT: Very apt observations and understanding. Further more, the survival instincts, can kick in also because of the predator/ prey tendencies that men, inadvertently, display and their aloofness for intimacy. RICHARD: In normal men (and as a generalisation) ... yes, of course. Had I been born a female my response would have been couched in terms of how it is for a man/for men, in regards to sexuality and intimacy, during sexual congress with a woman actually free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: If you will indulge my question: is it possible still to have actual intimacy, even if the partner (man/woman) is evidently inhibited by self and survival instincts? RICHARD: Actual intimacy – no separation (no separative self whatsoever) cannot wax and wane/ come and go/ switch on and off here in this actual world (the world of the senses). Upon an actual freedom from the human condition an actual intimacy is the norm with every body and every thing regardless of whatever their or its current situation and circumstances might be. (Some peoples have looked at me blankly upon being informed there is an actual intimacy with, say, an ashtray or a polystyrene cup or a pebble or whatever). In terms of human sexuality, and due to its utter proximity, sexual congress sans identity/ affections is the exquisite experience of two flesh and blood bodies sensuously delighting in being sensually and sexually aroused. (As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies; at times this can be quite disconcerting, to say the least, for any identity feeling itself to be other than illusory). Because it can take an incredible amount of willpower for a pulled-back or turned-away or closed-off or shut-down identity to override (psychosomatically) its bodily arousal, its body’s natural sexuality, the body’s sensual delight, that exquisite experience can continue until such over-riding succeeds in its quite perverse anti-intimacy aim and arousal diminishes, sexuality declines and sensual delight falls away to nought. In short: although reciprocity is never needed there is, of course, a preference for sexual enjoyment and appreciation be mutual. * RICHARD: Put briefly: unless or until such a woman comes into my purview being single, in this respect, will remain my ongoing status. RESPONDENT: You do not prescribe to fellow humans, but do you recommend the above sensible approach rather than ‘experimenting’ with fellow human beings to explore sexuality or actual intimacy? RICHARD: Oh, no ... not at all (that above approach is only in regards to an actual freedom from the human condition). No, on the contrary, exploring sex and sexuality is enormously beneficial: there is no better way, in my experience, for a man and a woman to approach such intimacy than sexual congress. For instance, back when I was a normal man I came close to the loss of self already mentioned on several occasions (in my first marriage) only to instinctively pull-back, out of instantaneous fear at such imminence, as it intuitively seemed she would thus take over my mind and make me her slave for ever and a day. It was not until after the four-hour PCE, which initiated the process resulting in an actual freedom, that it became obvious to me what such loss of self actually meant. Accordingly, I deliberately set out to induce a PCE via giving myself completely to her – totally and utterly – whilst hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm (something which I had discovered whilst pubescent). And then ... !Hey Presto! ... no separation whatsoever. (Incidentally, rather than that intuitive fear of thus being her slave coming true it was quite instructive to have her then relate how she had been fantasising about a current heart-throb pop singer all the while I was giving myself to her totally). RESPONDENT: I am aware that PCE and EE are much more possible during sexual intimacy and congress hence the urge to experiment. RICHARD: Yes, indeed so. Both my third wife (de facto) and my second wife (de jure) were very keen to experiment. For instance, my third wife initially set out to explore her ‘wild side’ (to use the jargon) as she was most appreciative of being with a man with no limits – no limiting fear in regards the vast extent, and a near-insatiability at times, of female sexuality. Curiously enough, in the end it was her very own fear (of female sexuality) which set the limits. But, until then rampant sexuality took place morning, noon and night – all throughout the period of writing those millions of words to my fellow human beings – and much was uncovered/ discovered about female sexuality. She has a scale of quality in regards sexual experience: good, very good, great, excellent and magical.
To explain: togetherness is the companionship of doing things together – be it shopping, cooking, having sex, whatever – and pertains to the willingness to be and act in concert with another. A closeness is where the personal boundaries are expanded to include the other into one’s own space; this is a normal type of intimacy. A sweetness is when closeness entrées a lovely delight at the proximity of the other (although it can veer off into affection, ardency, love, oneness). A richness (aka an excellence experience) is where sweetness segues into a near-absence of agency via letting-go of control and one is the sex and sexuality (the beer and not the doer). Magical sex is where sex and sexuality are happening of their own accord – neither beer nor doer extant – and pristine purity abounds (an immaculate perfection). Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT No. 6: If you will indulge my question: is it possible still to have actual intimacy, even if the partner (man/woman) is evidently inhibited by self and survival instincts? RICHARD: Actual intimacy – no separation (no separative self whatsoever) cannot wax and wane/ come and go/ switch on and off here in this actual world (the world of the senses). Upon an actual freedom from the human condition an actual intimacy is the norm with every body and every thing regardless of whatever their or its current situation and circumstances might be. (Some peoples have looked at me blankly upon being informed there is an actual intimacy with, say, an ashtray or a polystyrene cup or a pebble or whatever). In terms of human sexuality, and due to its utter proximity, sexual congress sans identity/ affections is the exquisite experience of two flesh and blood bodies sensuously delighting in being sensually and sexually aroused. (As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies; at times this
can be quite disconcerting, to say the least, for any identity feeling itself to be other than illusory). RESPONDENT: Your comment about ‘As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies’ – was extremely useful in detecting some slippery and subtle identification in my interactions with others. RICHARD: Good ... (as I am never annoyed there is never any need for giving vent). Another poster
offered their experience on it recently (Message X) My second wife would oft-times say to others how it was not always easy to live with me as ‘she’ was totally ignored (in ‘her’ view) by me. (Please note it is an impossibility to ignore anything at all which has no existence in actuality and how I do pay lip-service, just as I am now, to the apparent existence of any identity feeling itself to be real). What my second wife was really referring to is the total absence of any supportive identity rapport/ affective connection. As this was amply corroborated by my third wife, it is a primary consideration when contemplating any
potential man-woman type of association which comes into my purview (in my experience the ménage a trois provided what a ménage
a deux cannot). RESPONDENT: The past week has hardly been light-hearted. I haven’t been happy and harmless. A female friend came to visit and the emotions that came out really threw me. I wanted to get emotionally entangled with her and it was making me miserable. To the point where I wasn’t asking myself HAIETMOBA very often, and even when I was I could barely figure out when the last time I was feeling good was. She’s gone now, and things have stabilised somewhat. (...) I’m wondering if there’s any way to want and get love without feeling bad at not having it. The fact is, I want it and I can’t see why I shouldn’t have it. So to just say ‘its silly to feel bad, return to the senses’ is a repression of the desire for love rather than genuinely nipping it in the bud. My attempt to nip it in the bud just leads to me wondering how I can go about trying to get love without having to feel bad either in the attempt, or in the case of a failure to get it. I cant ignore this question. What can I do here? RICHARD: You can always re-read your report, written a scant two months ago, of a pure consciousness experience (PCE): http://lists.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=912835235 Just in case you cannot access that page here is the relevant text:
The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness
– is but a pathetic imitation The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt. * RICHARD: The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness – is but a pathetic imitation of an actual intimacy (where there is no separation in the first place). The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt. RESPONDENT: So the desire for love is a desire for the imitation of that too. Ok, I think I got it. RICHARD: Essentially, a desire for oneness is the desire to remain existent (albeit rapturously so) forever ... in a word: immortality. RESPONDENT: At the time all this was happening, Richard, I felt very weak and helpless. Like having that love was the most important thing in the world, and despite seeing how wanting it was just making me feel awkward and unhappy and isolated, I just couldn’t stop wanting to have it again and again. RICHARD: Put succinctly: love is very, very appealing ... and addictive. RESPONDENT: Not trying to get it felt like being a cop-out because I think I’m not worthy of it or I’ll never be able to have it successfully from a desirable candidate (in the ‘real world’ sense), rather than because it is really a more sensible idea to not try for it. RICHARD: Feelings of unworthiness, of not being good enough, are symptomatic of love’s imminence ... love is redeeming (it makes the lover worthy, lovable, desirable, enchanting, and so on). RESPONDENT: I wonder if seeing that love is just a 2nd rate knock off will help if it happens again (if I get to a place of wanting it really bad again). RICHARD: Remembering the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is far more effective ... the glorious feeling of oneness, of rapturous union, being an ecstatic feeling/a euphoric state of being does not readily lend itself to being categorised as second-rate. RESPONDENT: When I was in the depths of wanting love, it was so urgent and overwhelming. The possibility of a PCE or even a sense of well-being seemed far away. RICHARD: The expression ‘love is blind’ is quite apt. RESPONDENT: And wrt to your report of actual intimacy. How was it different from your enlightened state. What’s the essential difference? RICHARD: The essential difference is that, with the absence of the entire affective faculty/ identity in toto, there is no separative identity such as to necessitate the (affective) intimacy of union/ oneness. RESPONDENT: I remember you saying it’s an actual physical intimacy. By that what do you mean. Let’s say both of us are in a room at the opposite ends of the room, does the Space between us NOT exist for you? RICHARD: Space most certainly exists here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: Can you please explain? RICHARD: As this flesh and blood body only what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/ psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body. That identity (‘I’/‘me’) is forever cut-off from the actual ... from the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: I was attracted to Barry Long for a while because he offers a very practical method. But that seemed not to have delivered either. I’ve got no idea. I’m utterly confused! When he said that ‘love is not a feeling’, he claimed not to be referring to psychic or emotive love. Is this the same love as the actualist rejects? RICHARD: The love which Mr. Barry Long was the embodiment of is the same love as what I use the term ‘Love Agapé’ for. RESPONDENT: Is Barry Long’s divine love the actualist’s apperceptive thrill by another name? RICHARD: Nothing in the actualism writings is love by another name ... nothing whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Barry Long offered more of a path than the last teacher to hold my attention, Tony Parsons, who said that there is no path to that which evidently is and all meditations, techniques and processes are completely besides the point. That rang very true at the time, how indeed could anything at all not be the totality I strive to lose myself in. Thus total acceptance of what is. But I still seem to be left with wretched feelings and lack of brilliance, the only two things I really want to get rid of. Where am I going wrong??? RICHARD: By only really wanting to get rid of two things, perchance? RESPONDENT: And I got to laugh, a few years back I was over this house with about a dozen or so folks all standing around in the living room. And this lamp across the room started to fall off this table, and I hurled myself across the room and caught the damn thing in mid-air. And everyone’s going whooaaaa, how’d you do that? :-) And I joked and said, I’m trained for this kind of stuff, I raised 4 kids. :-) RICHARD: Ha ... as I also raised four children, back when I was a parent, I can certainly relate to that. Speaking of which, not until the eldest was about ten years of age did it dawn upon me that children train their parents – they being so utterly helpless and totally dependent at birth – almost as much parents their children ... so much so that re-training is sometimes necessary to undo it all when they eventually leave the nest. RESPONDENT: Yes, children actually raise the parents. RICHARD: I was, of course, speaking of being rigorously trained by what are, initially, utterly helpless and totally dependent children until the appropriate reflex responses became second-nature ... so much so that there would be no thoughts occurring at the moment, as in your falling lamp example, and there would only be action. RESPONDENT: They keep us on the straight and narrow, they’re the bosses, they teach us love. RICHARD: I can be reasonably sure that, had you said to the folks standing around in the living room you are trained for this kind for stuff inasmuch the four children you raised taught you love, there may very well have been a look of askance here and there ... unless they all knew you well enough, of course, to know that you never miss a chance to preach. RESPONDENT: My youngest is 19 and was home from college for the summer, she said the first day she was home, ‘I am so getting a dog today, Mom!’ Guess who has the dog now? :-) RICHARD: Someone who is still a sucker for love, perchance? RESPONDENT: Ya think? :-) RICHARD: Having had many years experience myself it is a well-informed speculation. RESPONDENT: Hey, I’m trying to get you to take the damn thing, aren’t I? :-) RICHARD: As there is no love whatsoever in this flesh and blood body – neither the natural variety nor the taught version you refer to – all I can do is repeat what I already said (albeit rephrased accordingly): children teach their parents to love them – they being so utterly helpless and totally dependent at birth – almost as much parents their children ... so much so that deconditioning is sometimes necessary to undo it all even before they get around to eventually leaving the nest. RESPONDENT: I’ll tell you something funny though, I’m getting my pound of flesh out of this one way or another. :-) RICHARD: Well now ... as such is the nature of (supposedly) unconditional love she surely would not be expecting anything else than just that. RESPONDENT: My daughter, when she was here, didn’t want him eating any human food, only special dog food – when I would give him little treats, even scraps of meat, she would get all upset and tell me not to. So now that she’s gone, :-), I told her the other day and I said, hey, he really likes potato chips with guacamole dip. :-) Na, na, na, na, na. :-) It’s worth it all just to hear her silence. :-) RICHARD: Oops ... I just plain forgot all about hope springing eternal in the human breast (specifically that love might one day finally get its act together and actually deliver on its feeling-fed promise of delivering the goods so yearned-for by billions of otherwise intelligent peoples). I will now go and stand in the corner, penitentially facing the wall, until I have re-learnt the lesson, okay? * RICHARD: The very last example of having been thus thoroughly disciplined occurred for me, with unexpected clarity, a year or so after the last child passed out of my ‘care, custody, and control’ – as bureaucracy so eloquently puts it – even though I was seven years out from my first marriage and two years into my second (and childless) marriage, whilst shopping in a supermarket where an urgent cry of ‘Daddy!’, in a young and plaintively feminine voice, had me already part-way swinging around before the awareness of no longer being a father automatically aborted that well-trained reflex response. RESPONDENT: Bitter-sweet. I so relate to that. RICHARD: Oh, there was nothing bitter-sweet about it whatsoever ... if anything it was liberating (there is life after children). RESPONDENT: I understand, been there. RICHARD: Uh-oh ... back to the corner, Richard, you have still a lot to re-learn, yet. RESPONDENT: But, you got a life now do ya? :-) RICHARD: I have had a life all along ... that the twenty or so years in the middle of it also included parenting does not diminish it one iota. RESPONDENT: That’s veeeerrrry interesting. :-) RICHARD: Given that you dutifully played host, for an entire summer, to an adult who still calls your house her home – plus obligingly took her dog into your care, custody and control – it is not all that surprising you might find it very interesting that there is life after children (not to mention their pets). RESPONDENT: Tell me who’s the sucker again? :-) RICHARD: As an actual intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation – mutuality and reciprocity – there is one thing for sure: it ain’t yours truly. * RICHARD: Needless is it to add I have not looked back (pun intended) since that day? RESPONDENT: Can I interest you in a dumb hound dog? :-) RICHARD: Ha ... to paraphrase another cliché: it is your love; you deal with it. RESPONDENT: Yeah, well, you’re lookin at it. :-) RICHARD: Nope ... I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here in this actual world. What I am looking at, however, is the words a grandiose identity parasitically inhabiting the body currently known as ‘No. 36’ is persuading it to type out ... an identity so up itself that it feels as to be ever-present, having exhorted other lesser-blest identities for aeons to become as deluded as it is, and forever extolling the virtues (by oh-so-conveniently overlooking the vices) of that which never does deliver, because of those parenthesised reasons, on its feeling-fed promise. By my reckoning you have been Self-Realised for nearly eight and a half years now ... how much longer do you plan on giving that hoary experiment a go before ditching it in the waste-bin of history and starting afresh? I only ask because it is never too late to come to one’s senses ... both literally and metaphorically. RICHARD: ... here is an example, from a self-healing personal growth book published only recently, which maybe shows how a pure consciousness experience (PCE) can readily turn into being an altered state of consciousness (ASC) when feelings enter the picture: [snip quote]. The intense feeling of beauty, in such instances, is what reveals truth (or god/ goddess): beauty is the affective substitute for the purity of the perfection of this actual world ... just as love is the affective surrogate for actual intimacy. RESPONDENT: Yes, this is what happened to me and has happened many times. I start out open, innocent, no borders, no boundaries, everything clear and sparkling, realer than real (meaning that the mechanical, take-it-all-for-granted view of the existence that I’ve absorbed or formed as I matured falls away). Then I finish by appreciating, loving, cherishing all that is. I’ve bought into the love, love, love cultural directives in a big way. I thought this was what I was supposed to achieve. RICHARD: Such has been the received wisdom up until now. RESPONDENT: I drag myself out of bad moods by appreciating and loving the beauty and order of nature. I have made it a goal to create a solid love relationship with a man. This love thing is tricky. It’s slippery for me, when I try to look at it, it dives aside. Malice is right there, spread eagle, but love? RICHARD: Well, love is usually considered sacrosanct ... yet just as sorrow is essential for its antidotal compassion to flourish love is the antitoxin for malice: without malice, love has no raison d’être. I started to empirically encounter this, whilst sailing my yacht around tropical islands off the north-east coast of Australia with a choice companion, towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation. Strangely enough it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – in 1987 which 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 – my initial enquiry had begun in India in 1984, whilst single and celibate, upon becoming suss about the Buddhist ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion) and ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) – hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be addressed squarely. Eventually what happened was that at anchor one velvety night with an ebbing tide chuckling its way past the hull what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face: It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine There is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. RESPONDENT: Because the observer mind state is programming it moves according to a pattern determined by past experience. It is not free of that. RICHARD: There is more to it than this ... just for starters there are the affective feelings to take into account: sensory perception is primary; affective perception is secondary; thought perception is tertiary. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, in step No. 6 above only said [quote] ‘do not think’ [endquote] and never said ‘do not feel’ ... on the contrary, many times in other passages he expressly urges how important it is to feel beauty (and thus love) in the perceptive process. For example: ‘It is essential to appreciate beauty. The beauty of the sky, the beauty of the sun upon the hill, the beauty of a smile, a face, a gesture, the beauty of the moonlight on the water, of the fading clouds, the song of the bird, it is essential to look at it, to feel it, to be with it, this is the very first requirement for a man who would seek truth. (...) So it is essential to have this sense of beauty, for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love’. (‘Fifth Public Talk at Poona’ by J. Krishnamurti; 21 September 1958). Because of this imposition (the passions are the secondary stage of the perceptive process) the pristine purity of the actual world is nowhere to be found ... and, as ‘being’ itself has its presence in the passions, its arrogation of ownership ensures it never will be. For as long as it remains a ‘presence’ that is. RESPONDENT: If what you call being has its presence in the passions, feeling is distorted, corrupted. That is not love. RICHARD: As any affective feeling is a distortion and a corruption of the actual it matters not which is the correct distortion and corruption. RESPONDENT: Love as K said is entirely free of thought in terms of the self as the past. RICHARD: Yet love is undeniably the feeling of ‘being’ – be it past, present, future or timeless – which feeling of ‘being’ is what is secondary in the perceptive process ... sensate perception is primary and thus ‘being’-less. There is no ‘presence’ in bare sensory perception. RESPONDENT: There is no attachment involved. RICHARD: How could there be when love is all that is? RESPONDENT: No sense of possessiveness. RICHARD: The possessiveness of love is so total that it is rarely discerned as such ... it is an all-engulfing possessorship. RESPONDENT: It is not ‘my’ love. RICHARD: Whose love is it then? And before you answer I will remind you of the following:
Would it be in order to presume that the love you say ‘is not ‘my’ love’ is not yours in a
narrow exclusive sense but is yours in the sense that it is true nature or the ground in being of all things? RESPONDENT: I’ve been reading your web page and mail group for about 8 months. When I was 18 I had an experience on LSD that seems to match your descriptions of PCE’s and also ASC’s. That day I swung from one to the other. After that day I could never stop desiring to return to that space of unspeakable peace and miraculousness (PCE as I understand it) or messianic immortality (ASC as I understand it). RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... here is an example, from a self-healing personal growth book published only recently, which maybe shows how a pure consciousness experience (PCE) can readily turn into being an altered state of consciousness (ASC) when feelings enter the picture:
The intense feeling of beauty, in such instances, is what reveals truth (or god/goddess): beauty is the
affective substitute for the purity of the perfection of this actual world ... just as love is the affective surrogate for actual
intimacy. RICHARD: Why do you promote the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty? RESPONDENT: ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order will do! RICHARD: By saying that ‘ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order will do!’ are you saying that you know that the ‘Tried and True’ is effective in curing all the ills of humankind? Are you saying this despite the fact that the Gurus and the God-Men; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Masters and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘ONLY love, compassion, beauty, order’ ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found? I must ask you: 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 ‘love, compassion, beauty, order’ form a blanket 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, compassion, beauty’ under a microscope? If thought can get such rigorous scrutiny as the Mailing List gives it ... why not feelings? Are feelings sacrosanct? * RESPONDENT No. 3: Excuse me if this sound rude. What do I know? Nothing to speak of. RICHARD: You can be as rude as you wish ... I never take offence. As for your query ‘What do I know?’ and your NDA answer ‘Nothing to speak of’ ... for one who professes to know nothing to speak of, you spoke plenty already. Vis.: [Respondent No. 3]: ‘Agreement as to love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’. Thus by agreeing to ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ you make out that you know that the ‘Tried and True’ is effective in curing all the ills of humankind. You say this despite the fact that the Gurus and the God-Men; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Masters and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages have had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of ‘love’s success; compassion’s effectiveness and beauty’s encouragement’ ... and peace on earth is nowhere to be found. RESPONDENT: Now you see how hard it is to break beings from conditioning. RICHARD: Yes, it took me eleven years to break free from the institutionalised insanity that reveres the ‘Tried and Failed’ remedies like love and compassion and beauty. Then I realised that ‘being’ itself was the problem ... not just love and compassion and beauty. RESPONDENT: But, since we have the brains, the technology, the Internet Meeting of Minds (IMM), we should be able to break this conditioning. RICHARD: Indeed ... speaking personally, the Internet is my chosen means of correspondence and communication for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with it’s multiple feed-back capability – is second to none. RESPONDENT: [We should be able to break this conditioning]. I know how, do you? RICHARD: Okay ... but just so that there is no confusion, could you specify what this conditioning is
that you say ‘we should be able to break’ ? I was referring to putting feelings under the microscope. RESPONDENT: Richard, I am currently perplexed about ‘caring’. You distinguish between ‘feeling caring’ and ‘actually caring’. I think I understand the distinction for the most part – ‘feeling caring’ is caring based upon emotion – ‘feeling’ that one cares, and ‘actually caring’ is something that happens ONLY in a PCE or when one is actually free. Now, this results in the somewhat shocking statement that the only people who actually care are those in pure consciousness. RICHARD: Aye, it can indeed be a shock to realise that, for all the protestations of being caring, no one trapped in the human condition actually cares. However, apart from galvanising one into action, it is a liberating realisation as it releases one from the bonds that tie. There are always strings attached in affective caring. RESPONDENT: Now, I don’t want to debate the merits of this for one moment, but I would like to understand it better. For example, just how is it that ‘feeling-caring’ is an ‘illusion of caring?’ RICHARD: In saying ‘to create the illusion of caring’ (and ‘to create the illusion of intimacy’) I am referring to generating the false impression, or the deceptive appearance, of being caring (and being intimate) because of the reality which underpins all human interaction ... as the following passage where the quote comes from clearly shows:
Thus the feeling of caring (and the feeling of intimacy) is the antidote for feeling uncaring (and the restorative for feeling separate) and, as such, has a causal basis – meaning it has a dependant nature – resulting in an inevitable instability. Whereas actually caring (and an actual intimacy) cannot be switched off ... ever. RESPONDENT: Is it an illusion of ‘Actual caring?’ RICHARD: Yes, it is a synthetic substitute for actually caring (or an actual intimacy) ... an ersatz surrogate born out of the instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that feeling caring is caring on some level – since caring-for is actually happening. For example, take a mother who breast feeds her child – she may be ‘feeling-caring’ – therefore, under the illusion that she is actually caring for her child – yet the child is actually being taken care of – which isn’t an illusion at all. RICHARD: There is a difference between feeling care and taking care – you are mixing the sentiment of care with the action of care – wherein the former is a fancy and the latter is a fact. In other words, you are confounding the affective experience of care with the physical activity of care ... which is not what is meant by the expression ‘feeling caring’ as contrasted to the expression ‘actually caring’. To experience being caring as a feeling (born of separation) is a far cry from the experience of being caring as an actuality (sans separation). Feeding an infant feelings along with the food corrupts the action of caring. RESPONDENT: I also seem to experience a difference between what I might call ‘contrived’ caring and actually caring. For example, a waiter may completely contrive caring about the service they provide in order to get the largest tip possible – so they pretend to care about me when they actually care about the tip. Then with other waiters, I get the sense that they actually care about giving good service – just because it’s more fun to actually care about the person and engage them as a person – rather than a means to an ends. This is the normal distinction that I make between ‘illusory (contrived) caring’ and ‘actually caring’. RICHARD: Okay ... although faking care is not the distinction being referred to as the person feeling caring is being true to their feelings. It is not their fault that the truth is insincere. RESPONDENT: Yet it seems that you may want to push it further and say that all feeling caring is only an illusion of caring – this is what I don’t understand. RICHARD: No, I am not pushing your distinction further ... the distinction I talk of is in another category. RESPONDENT: It also seems you are saying that in some sense ‘I’ cannot actually care about anything or anyone else? RICHARD: No, what I am saying is that ‘I’ cannot experience the actuality of being caring ... ‘I’ can only experience the feeling of being caring. For example, the last time I visited my biological parents (1984) I was told ‘we worry about you’ ... which fretful feeling of apprehension/anxiety is, to them, being caring. They mean well, of course, as do most people. RESPONDENT: What is happening when I do ‘take care of’ other people and things? RICHARD: Well, things and other people do get taken care of – it is remarkable what is achieved despite all the hindrances – but it is the motivating factor which muddies the waters and undermines the result. Also, what is known as ‘compassion fatigue’ can happen as well. RESPONDENT: Are you saying this only happens in a selfish sort of way? That all feeling caring is selfish – therefore not really caring at all? RICHARD: I would rather say ‘self’-centred than ‘selfish’ ... when someone is touched by another’s suffering, as in being moved sufficiently to stimulate caring action, it is their own suffering which is being kindled and quickened. Thus feelings are being aroused, which motivate the activity of caring, and taking care of the other works to assuage the aroused feelings (as well as working to help the other of course). Shall I put it this way? They are missing-out on experiencing the actuality of the caring action, the helpful activity itself, which is taking place. RESPONDENT: If all ‘I’ can manage is the illusion of caring, how is ‘altruism’ or ‘pure intent’ possible? I don’t understand. RICHARD: First of all, in its biological sense altruism is an instinctive action – born of the drive to survive – such as in fighting to the death to protect the young, defend the group, or secure the territory, and is not so much a feeling of caring but an involuntary response ... a response which could evoke any number of feelings (such as fear, thrill, courage, excitement, exhilaration, euphoria and so on). Although it can be used to mean an unselfish feeling, the ‘self’-centred feeling of caring for others, that is a watering-down of the word as, properly speaking, altruism is an instinctive behaviour or deed which benefits others at the expense of self ... of the two survival instincts, individual survival and group survival, the instinct for the survival of the group is usually the stronger instinct. It takes a powerful instinct (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinct (selfism). The pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent is a determination, born of the PCE, and thus is indicative more of a dedication, a strength of purpose, as in the will to freedom, rather than a ‘self’-centred feeling of caring ... one taps in to the over-arching benignity and benevolence of the actual world. Then one is not on one’s own, in this, the adventure of a lifetime. * RESPONDENT: I have similar questions about the distinction between ‘feeling intimacy’ and ‘actual intimacy’. Could you define exactly what you mean by those terms – as well as just exactly what you would say is going on when there is a ‘feeling intimacy’? RICHARD: So as to circumvent coining new words I chose to make a distinct difference between the word ‘actual’ and the word ‘real’ (plus the word ‘fact’ and the word ‘true’) whereas the dictionaries do not: thus when I talk of the actual world, as contrasted to the real world, whilst both words refer to the physical world I am making a distinction in experience. I usually put it this way: what one is (what not who) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) inside the body means no separation whatsoever – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose. This entity, or being, residing in the body is forever cut-off from the actual – from the world as-it-is – because its inner world reality is pasted as a veneer over the actual world, thus creating the outer world reality known as the real world, and experiences an affective intimacy (oneness, union, unity, wholeness) wherein the separation is bridged by love and compassion ... instead of an actual intimacy (direct, instant, immediate, absolute) where there is no separation whatsoever. In other words, no separative identity in the first place means no division exists to be transcended. RESPONDENT: Is there no intimacy in feeling intimacy? RICHARD: Yes, there is the feeling of being intimate. RESPONDENT: If that’s the case, why do you call it feeling ‘intimacy’? RICHARD: Because that is what it is ... the feeling of being intimate. RESPONDENT: Lastly, I’m curious about the notion of ‘imitation’ of the actual. You once told me that someone pursuing actual freedom takes what they know of the actual world from the PCE and ‘imitates’ it. RICHARD: Yes ... but knowingly imitates it (thus one is not fooling oneself). RESPONDENT: Would their caring then become ‘virtual caring’ or somehow MORE actual? RICHARD: It is more a case of being in line with what is actual rather than being more actual: feeling happy and harmless, as much as is humanly possible each and every moment again, is as far-removed from the normal modus operandi as to be a virtual freedom. Or, to put that another way, the means to the end are not different from the end (other than being a feeling rather than the fact of course). RESPONDENT: Or is it still only ‘feeling caring’, thus an illusion? RICHARD: As all affective-based experiencing in the real-world is an illusion (including the real-world itself) you are, basically, asking me which part of the illusory experience is less of an illusion than any other part of the illusory experience. I pass. RESPONDENT: I guess what I’m asking is … if all feeling caring is an illusion of caring, how is one to care if one is pursuing an actual freedom? RICHARD: As happily and as harmlessly as is humanly possible ... in a word: benevolently. RESPONDENT: In other words, how can one actually care, when it is all too clear that actually caring can only happen in the PCE?? RICHARD: Exactly ... one cannot actually care unless one is free of the human condition. I have oft-times said that I have no solutions for life in the real-world ... the only solution is dissolution. Then all interaction is based upon fellowship regard. RESPONDENT: Or does one just continue with (attenuated) feeling caring – saying it is becoming more and more an imitation of actually caring? RICHARD: Yes, until the blessed dissolution happens, attenuating both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings whilst amplifying the felicitous feelings (hence being as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible) is what one does in the meanwhile. Thus the benefits are immediate ... and have the added benefit of preparing the way. RESPONDENT: I have searched through the website to answers to these questions – and there is much material that pertains to them, but I was unable to find any clear answers. So it would be great if you would shed some more light on these issues. Thanks! RICHARD: Okay ... perhaps it would be handy to mention that, in a close personal association (such as in a marriage or in a relationship), a being residing in the body can feel a connection, or a feeling rapport, with another being residing in another body (which relationship can be called a bond, a tie, a link, an attachment) giving rise to the feeling of caring ... be it a pitying caring, a sympathetic caring, an empathetic caring, a compassionate caring or a loving caring. This is because all sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. The affective energies are a two-way street ... mostly peoples initially overlook the ‘harmless’ part of my oft-used ‘happy and harmless’ phrase. In other words: how can one live freely in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst ‘I’ nurse malice and sorrow, and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion, to ‘my’ bosom? One cannot be happy unless one is first harmless ... and one cannot be harmless unless one is first happy. To be actually free one abandons ‘humanity’ in oneself – one cuts the umbilical cord – which means that the ability to connect-relate vanishes ... life is not ‘a movement in relationship’ (as one enlightened being was wont to say) here in this actual world. There is no relationship here – no bonding, no tying, no linking, no attaching – as there is no being, or entity, to necessitate such a connective affinity ... there is no ‘I’/‘me’ to either be affected or to affect others when one is free from the human condition. Furthermore, and this is a salutary point few comprehend, I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here – when a fellow human being tells me they are an identity inside the body I have to take their word for it – as nothing ‘dirty’, as it were, exists in actuality. There is only purity and perfection in this actual world. RICHARD: There is a third alternative: this actual world that the real world is pasted over as a veneer. RESPONDENT No. 34: Yes. The localised mind of man creates an inner self, an inner centred known observer, that superimposes an imaginary world over the actual. I would say: ‘the elimination of a centred known observer that becomes in time ...’ RICHARD: Why does the ‘centred known observer’ exist in the first place? Is the ‘centred known observer’ really a product of time (as in ‘becomes in time’?). Or is there a more fundamental cause? (The fundamental cause of the ‘centred known observer’ must be ascertained in order to bring about fundamental change). RESPONDENT: The ‘centred known observer’ is ‘EGO’. RICHARD: Yes, ego ... sometimes referred to as ‘self’ (with a lower-case ‘s’ so as to distinguish it from ‘Self’ with an upper-case ‘S’) RESPONDENT: Eliminate sorrow and you have rid yourself of the self-motivated centre (selfishness). This is where love begins. RICHARD: Not so ... the elimination of sorrow is not where love begins ... sorrow is essential for compassion to flourish; without compassion, love has no genesis. Therefore, you must sublimate sorrow so that transcendence can result ... then love begins. Incidentally, the question was: what is the primary cause of ego ... is it really just a product of ‘becoming
in time’ or is there a more fundamental cause? RESPONDENT: When you recognise that as your true nature – that is awakening. Then you see others as the same – because that ONE-NESS is all there is. You then see unity in creation – and you have true love for all. RICHARD: As love is an affective feeling (arising out of the ‘tender’ instinctual passions) any ‘true
love’ (and any ‘true compassion’ for that matter) is sourced in the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that forms of survival
necessity in the womb. To become free of the human condition one must dig deep into one’s affective feelings, deep down past the
superficial emotions into the depths of one’s being and see that malice Because if one does not, one may find oneself as malice and sorrow sublimating oneself into Love and Compassion – one will cease having one’s feelings happen to oneself as ego and instead become those sublimated feelings as soul in an on-going transcendent State Of Being – one will be Love Agapé and Divine Compassion as a ‘Supreme Being’. In other words: an infinitely expanded identity that is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’ and ‘Formless’. To become free of the human condition requires the elimination of the instinctual passions ... not merely a transcendence of malice and sorrow. It does mean the end of ‘me’, however, as an identity in ‘my’ totality (‘being’ itself) and not
just ‘I’ as ego surrendering and/or dissolving. RESPONDENT: Besides I have already told you, I am no longer deluded by your delusions and am too aware that I can learn nothing by perpetuating those futile dialog battles you still obviously relish. RICHARD: As I never asked you to be deluded by what you now experience as my delusions in the first place, then the rest of what you say here has nowt to do with me. For you they will, apparently, continue to remain ‘futile dialogue battles’. Speaking personally, nothing I do is futile. 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? RESPONDENT: The miracle of love is set free when the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed. RICHARD: Ahh ... this answers my question (further above) as to whether ‘the miracle of love [hidden] in the deepest sorrow’ vanishes (when ‘the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed’). Okay ... the next obvious question is this: what is it that makes it ‘the miracle of love’? 1. Is love a ‘miracle’ because it is hidden in sorrow? Or: 2. Is love a ‘miracle’ because it has supernatural qualities? RESPONDENT: Why not both? As in ‘Love is when sorrow is understood’, but also ‘love is when the self is not’. RICHARD: Because if it is ‘both’ then you have not dismissed ‘the fantasy of God’ after all (any god’s love is supernatural). Shall we try again? If it is (1) then is love dependent upon sorrow for its existence or is there some other reason for hiding in sorrow? If it is (2) then how is it that love is thaumaturgical yet has to skulk around in sorrow? RESPONDENT: Not dependent on sorrow, but buried by sorrow. Our failure to understand the nature of love may give it the appearance of a shameful quality. RICHARD: Okay. * RESPONDENT: Richard, thanks for your last post. Also for the entire thread. I’m wondering, with the amount of agreement that your last answer seemed to contain, where we differ in the end. RICHARD: Ahh ... my use of ‘okay’ was too ambiguous and misleading, I see in hindsight, as I was intending to indicate that I had no further queries in those areas as you had explained yourself fully (indeed you said that ‘I’m not sure what to say here ... my feeling is that I’ve already said it’ ). I would have been better-off writing ‘Okay, I have the picture now’. For example, if I arrange some of your sentences sequentially it reads (to me) like this:
If I were coming from the point of view that love, as the ground of reality, is the miracle solution to all the ills of humankind I would be in broad agreement with what you write ... and would wish to pursue it further with you so as to have it manifest in my daily life. However, I lived that manifestation, night and day, for eleven years and thus have major reservations as to love’s miraculous qualities vis-à-vis peace on earth ... so this is where I consider we differ:
In brief: I am suggesting that love’s innocence, as the ground of reality revealed when the self is not, does not meet the ‘free from sin or guilt; untouched by evil’ requirements for innocence (I cannot see how a person still subject to anger and anguish can be called innocent) ... which is why I propose that innocence is something totally new to human experience. RESPONDENT: Your discussion of innocence leaves me stumped for its radical position. Since it excludes all humanity, as it has walked the earth to date, I don’t know what it would actually entail. RICHARD: It entails a total end to both malice and sorrow plus their antidotal love and compassion: innocence means peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body ... not an after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’, as The Self (by whatever name), in a timeless and spaceless and formless realm. RESPONDENT: I’m also still wondering about your use of ‘affective feelings’, especially your inclusion of love in that category. RICHARD: Sure ... it is a radical proposition, I realise. However, this is because I have only ever
been interested in bringing to an end all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and
sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ... here on earth. RESPONDENT: Do you date? Cook? In both of these activities, some anxiety, in my opinion, is inevitable: am I conducting myself correctly in her presence? Will the love making be glorious? etc. RICHARD: Love does not feature in my life ... thus sexual congress is always excellent. RESPONDENT: Well, that sounds strange, if not contradictory, to me. RICHARD: I can comprehend your ‘sounds strange’ response given that the conventional wisdom is to cover-up the base carnal passions with a gloss of love ... but why ‘contradictory’ ? The total absence of the instinctual passions – and their compensatory love – enables an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever. An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible. Hence ‘always excellent’. RESPONDENT: I don’t agree that love is all but ‘compensatory to instinctual passions’. To love another person is to feel for him/her with the same intensity as we feel for ourselves. RICHARD: Ahh ... projected narcissism, you mean? RESPONDENT: Some of this feeling, I agree, is instinctual – for example, parents feel the pain of their children as their own. But, human beings also have the capacity to love others that they are not instinctively programmed to love. I can cite my love for my dear wife as an example. Her joys and pains and trials and tribulations are mine too with the same intensity. That is love. Without love we do not relate to another. So, I don’t understand the concept of actual intimacy sans love. Without love – which is feeling for another with the same intensity as for ourselves – there is no intimacy, in my humble opinion. RICHARD: Yet love, no matter how intense, is seeing (feeling) the other through rose-coloured glasses (feelings). The total absence malice and sorrow – and their compensatory love and compassion – enables an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever. An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible. * RICHARD: Pizza – even with cheese – is hardly haute cuisine. Sex without carnal desire enables a purity that far exceeds the greatest or most profound feeling of love. RESPONDENT: I didn’t equate love with carnal desire. RICHARD: Neither did I ... I said that sex without carnal desire enables a purity that far exceeds the greatest or most profound feeling of love. The conventional wisdom is to cover-up the base carnal passions with a gloss of love so as to effect a pseudo-intimacy. RESPONDENT: Love is the essence of intimacy: I am the other. RICHARD: As in ‘oneness’ (an illusory feeling of togetherness)? RESPONDENT: Without that intimacy, non-procreative sex is but a physical work out. RICHARD: Without that illusory feeling of togetherness an actual intimacy, a direct experience of the pristine actuality of another, is always experienced twenty-four hours a day ... unspoiled by any ‘me’ and ‘my’ neediness and greediness whatsoever. An actual intimacy surpasses the highest or deepest feeling of love possible. * RESPONDENT: Sorry about being Starr-like, but don’t you go through the pounding of heart, some tingling in and around various body parts, a surge of various emotions and excitements before, during, and after coitus with your, eh, companion? If yes, then I would say that you experience that creative anxiety that I mentioned. RICHARD: Ahh ... I think I get it, now. You seem to be indicating that if I were to add love into sex then I will have creative anxiety in my life? RESPONDENT: Well, what I am getting at is this: love makes the heart go fonder. The tingling sensation that being in love with one’s wife, girlfriend, even one’s companion, is what I referred to as creative anxiety. How do you relate with your companion? RICHARD: As there is no separation it is impossible – and unnecessary – to ‘relate’ . RESPONDENT: Do you buy her flowers? RICHARD: No ... I provide all of me twenty-four hours a day (no substitute giving is needed). RESPONDENT: Does anticipation of a romantic evening with her sets your heart aflutter? RICHARD: There is no room for ‘romantic evenings’ – or the necessity – in a twenty-four hour a day intimacy. RESPONDENT: When you hold her hands and look into her eyes does the cosmos come to a standstill? RICHARD: No ... the infinitude of this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is already always still. RESPONDENT: If yes, then you experience creative anxiety that I have in mind. RICHARD: Oh. You have given me the words of ‘creative anxiety’ ... but where is the essence? * RESPONDENT: Also, what, if any, emotions pass through your heart when you see your children and grandchildren? RICHARD: None at all. I experience all people equally with the same actual intimacy ... no separation whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Describe that intimacy to me, if you don’t mind. RICHARD: Sure ... pristine perfection twenty-four hours a day. RESPONDENT: What goes through your heart when you see your grandchildren? RICHARD: Blood. RESPONDENT: Do you embrace them, baby-talk with them? RICHARD: No ... I treat them as fellow human beings (plus I very rarely see them anyway as they live physically far away). RESPONDENT: Buy them toys? RICHARD: No ... I provide all of me twenty-four hours a day (no substitute giving is needed) when and if I ever see them. RESPONDENT: Does the cosmos come to a standstill when they shriek with joy in your ears? RICHARD: No ... the infinitude of this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe is already always still. * RESPONDENT: But, in my humble opinion, part of being human is to feel the emotions that I mentioned above. Makes sense? RICHARD: Indeed it does make sense – and more than just a little – inasmuch as you have convinced me that I need to have fear in my life ... and I am listening. How are we to proceed? RESPONDENT: By answering the above questions. RICHARD: You have given me the words of fear ... but where is the essence? RICHARD: What did you mean by ‘that’ll teach ya’ then if not more than a passing familiarity with the perverse nature of love (which can become obvious upon falling in love with someone ostensibly more loving than the person one is with)? RESPONDENT: Yes, sorry Richard, I was just pointing to the absurdity of it, it is perverse, exactly. RICHARD: Surprisingly enough, even though love has such an appalling track record, there are still those who consider that the summum bonum of existence is to be love. * RICHARD: What do you have to offer, then, other than the hope you so readily proffered at the first opportunity ... and your amusement at the contrary way a deeply passionate connection operates (nine smilies in ten sentences)? RESPONDENT: Nothing, the same way you couldn’t offer your ex’s anything either. RICHARD: Oh? Not only do I have much to offer I have already advised, in my initial response, that at least one pertinent thing amongst all that was offered in that period was verified. Vis.:
If I had nothing to offer I would never have gone public with my discovery of what lies beyond enlightenment in the first place ... ‘tis disingenuous, to say the least, to set-up a web page with a linked mailing list and then say one has nothing to offer. RESPONDENT: They’re gonna get if and when they’re gonna get it. RICHARD: My previous companion informed me that she would never had got it that the instinctual passions are innate if I had not consistently pointed it out to her in the first place ... to prove me wrong in this regard is what motivated her to observe for herself on a daily basis, by being a proxy maiden aunt over a 13 month period to a newly born baby girl being raised only by females, just what a supposedly innocent baby girl spontaneously experiences (she had a feministic theory/belief that males put such passions as fear and aggression and nurture and desire into female babies). Which is why I appreciate her honesty in coming up to me in a café one day to let me know that she now understands, via this first-hand experience, that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are indeed innate ... and, as there other people who have advised of similar outcomes from hearing/reading what I have to say, this is an example only and not a one-off incident. RESPONDENT: Understanding is something that a person has to come to themselves on their own. RICHARD: Yet unless a person’s attention is drawn to the very thing they have been overlooking there will be nothing looming on their horizon for them to understand ... it is what the sharing of experience is all about. RESPONDENT: They have their agendas to fulfil, come hell or high water. RICHARD: How do you account for those who discard their (unfulfilled) agenda and grasp the new with alacrity then? RESPONDENT: Like children, they have to find out on their own. RICHARD: Having previously been the parent of four children, plus being a qualified art teacher, I know first-hand that the passing-on of information is invaluable ... if it were not for the sharing of knowledge we could all be still living in caves dressed in animal skins and gnawing on raw brontosaurus bones. * RICHARD: ... has your buddy’s ex-partner discovered anything of note yet regarding deeply passionate connections? RESPONDENT: I don’t know Richard, I doubt it, he suggested to her that she come out here with me, and I said, very funny, what the hell am I gonna do with her? :-) Just what I need. :-) RICHARD: What would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, and why would interacting with his ex-partner be something for you to not need? RESPONDENT: In other words, I need ‘misery’ like I need a hole in the head. RICHARD: Apart from anticipating an interaction with your buddy’s ex-partner as being ‘misery’ ... what would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, seeing as how you have nothing to offer? * RICHARD: Or are platitudes (such as hoping the other is well/ advising them to drive safely) sufficient unto the day in your neck of the woods? RESPONDENT: Pretty much, as I stated above, yes. I wish them well. RICHARD: As what you stated above is the reasoning behind such bromidic comments being ‘pretty much’ sufficient unto the day would you consider a re-examination of those statements to be a worthy enterprise? I only ask because to anticipate an interaction with one’s fellow human being as ‘misery’ is most certainly not conducive to happiness and harmlessness. Neither for oneself nor for the other.
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-. All Rights Reserved. |
