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.

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:

• [Respondent]: ‘... where before I was feeling happy and light-hearted, I no longer felt that – I didn’t feel whatsoever! ‘Empty-hearted’ might be the best way to put it. There was *no separation* between a ‘me’ that could feel and anything else, and in this was such a purity, for lack of better word’. [emphasis added]. (Monday, 30/01/2006 6:17 AM AEDST).

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.

*

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 – and upon such exposure ‘She’ (aka Love Agapé) disappeared forever ... nevertheless it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition.

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:

• [Respondent]: ‘Insight comes from mind that is not yours or mine in a narrow exclusive sense but is yours and mine in the sense that it is true nature or the ground in being of all things. (www.escribe.com/religion/listening/m35022.html).

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:

• ‘I must have been six or seven, and I remembered lying in the grass in front of my house. My mind had become completely immersed in my own private world of grass and dirt and bugs. I examined each blade of grass, noticing the tiny striated segments, and could even see the various cells in each blade. The dirt was emanating a warm humid, earthy smell. The grass was fragrant, and I became ‘riveted’ in my little kingdom. My mind, utterly focussed, came to a complete standstill, and in that moment of absolute stillness it seemed as if time itself stood still. I found myself immersed in a bath of peace. The grass seemed to shimmer with an intense beauty. Everything scintillated and was bursting with life. It seemed as if only a moment had gone by when I heard my mother’s voice calling me in to dinner. As I got up I realised at least an hour must have slipped away as I had somehow ‘dropped into the gap’. My soul had quietly revealed itself to my innocent child-self’. (pages 48-49, ‘The Journey’, ©Brandon Bays 1999; published by Thorsons; ISBN 0 7225 3839 1).

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:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Richard, I’m going to let my light out from under the bushel and tell you what I see: You are still ‘crazy’, and I still have affection and/or compassion for you.
• [Richard]: ‘As I am a person devoid of either latent or active enmity, I require no restorative affection whatsoever to create the illusion of intimacy in my human interactions. And as I am also a person devoid of either latent or active sorrow, I require no antidotal compassion whatsoever to create the illusion of caring. Thus, 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 affection and/or compassion ... or mood swings.

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 and sorrow antidotally generates love and compassion.

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:

• self-knowledge is the precondition of innocence; the failure to understand the nature of love may give it the appearance of a shameful quality; people are proud to exhibit their hurt rather than ashamed about their failure to end it; in that trap they invent and glorify sorrow and perpetuate suffering; unresolved hurt will beget problems; innocence is the end of hurt; the psychological principle of hurt begets all the problems of the ego; if hurt is seen as the father of the psyche then the ending of hurt by exposure would end all affective accumulation; the psyche is a complex defence mechanism; people have buried love underneath their worries; the solution lies in the resolution of those unresolved feelings which makes room for love and compassion; love is when sorrow is understood; love is set free when the sentimentalism of sorrow is exposed; love is not dependent on sorrow, but buried by sorrow; affective feelings live in the psyche, love is when there is no psyche; love is when the self is not; the miracle of love is the ground of reality itself.

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:

• [Richard]: ‘the evidence of history shows that the saints and sages and seers have been unable to extricate or isolate love and compassion out from malice and sorrow and vice versa ... innocence is totally new to human experience’.
• [Respondent]: ‘I can see that ‘the problem lies in the affective feelings’, the unresolved feelings I would say ... the solution lies in the resolution of those feelings which makes room for love and compassion’.

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.:

• [Richard]: ‘... my previous companion came 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’.

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.