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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Peace-on-Earth
RESPONDENT: Where is the question of bringing peace to earth? RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampart. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. This is why I am so insistent in what I write. After my experience in a war-zone I wished to do something constructive with my life; I wished to rid myself, personally, of the ‘human nature’ which all people say can not be changed. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extinction – extirpation, annihilation, expunction – ensures that the already always existing peace-on-earth will become apparent. This is because this actual world is already perfect. RESPONDENT: Well, now that Rome is not burning anymore ... RICHARD: There are 32 ‘major’ wars (armed conflicts with more than 1,000 casualties) currently occurring around the globe – wherein people are killing and wounding and maiming/being killed and wounded and maimed – and 18 ‘minor’ wars (armed conflicts with less than 1,000 casualties) as you read this ... and 19 wars have only recently been either concluded or suspended. Given that in the last century an estimated 160,000,000 sane people were killed by their sane
fellow human beings, during wars alone In monetary terms, world-wide military spending for the year 2003 was $997.2 billion. Furthermore, all the murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides (in the last century an estimated 40,000,000 people killed themselves) will continue on unabated unless radical change occurs: someone, somewhere is being murdered and someone, somewhere is murdering as these words are being written; someone, somewhere is being tortured and someone, somewhere is torturing as these words scroll past you; someone, somewhere is being raped and someone, somewhere is raping right now; someone, somewhere is being beaten up and someone, somewhere is doing the beating, in yet another case of domestic violence, at this very instant; somewhere some child is being brutalised, frightened out of their wits in yet another case of child abuse, at this very moment ... and such suffering, as sadness, loneliness, grief, depression, and so on, is going on in uncountable numbers of utterly miserable lives all around the world. It could be said, metaphorically, that the entire world is still ablaze. RESPONDENT: ... at least in one person, one might ask who exactly laid the fire (...). RICHARD: The root cause of all those wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides, and so forth, is blind nature’s genetically-endowed instinctual survival passions/the rudimentary animal ‘self’ automatically formed thereof. RICHARD: May I ask? What is your goal? RESPONDENT: This is a difficult question to answer. I ask this to myself many times and I do not still know the honest answer. Perhaps I will define my goal to be happy and peaceful without the fear of loosing that happiness and peace. It is not that I am not interested in peace on earth. But I see no way I can make that happen and not even sure if that is possible. That’s why I prefer to keep that out of my goal. RICHARD: May I suggest that you re-read this paragraph of yours and you will see that although your goal is ‘to be happy and peaceful’ you prefer to keep ‘peace on earth’ out of your goal? I am agog to know just how you are going to achieve this sleight of hand ... because where else can you be ‘happy and peaceful’ if not here on earth? RESPONDENT: I still don’t understand the meaning of individual peace on earth. Does that mean that I will not be able to see the agony of the fellow human beings ? RICHARD: 6.0 billion human beings are living a life marred by agony ... and infected by animosity, too, do not forget. Yet all agony and animosity are feelings and are not, therefore, actual. They may be real – very real at times – but they are not actual. The direct results of having these feelings – these emotions and passions and calentures – are acted out in this actual world in the form of wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, child abuse, suicides and so on ... but all these actions are unnecessary. They all stem from feelings and feelings – emotions and passions and calentures – are self-induced (‘I’ am passion and passion is ‘me’) and, as such, can be eliminated. Then there is peace-on-earth ... why would anyone wish to prolong suffering? You will be able to see the effects of your fellow human beings’ agony and animosity ... but you will not be able to feel it, for it exists only in the psyche. There is no malice and sorrow here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: I am still not able to dedicate myself to peace on earth. But if you say annihilate ‘I’ and there will be peace on earth, I am ready for it. But in that case for me peace on earth would just be a by-product. RICHARD: I would be very interested as to why you would want to annihilate ‘I’ ... yet not dedicate yourself to peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I think I answered this question earlier in this mail. However I want to understand this dedication. Why would anybody dedicate himself to anything? I think it would be mostly because of feelings, emotions, attachment, greed, etc., towards that thing. If I understand you correctly you don’t have those in actual world. So why in actual world one dedicates himself to peace on earth ? RICHARD: I was talking of you living there in the ‘real-world’, not me, here in this actual world ... I am already always living peace-on-earth. I was talking, out of experience, just what it took for this individual peace-on-earth to become apparent. The ‘I’ that inhabited this body dedicated ‘himself’ to ensuring that this would occur ... and ‘he’ self-immolated, psychologically and psychically. It was the adventure of a life-time for ‘him’ ... ‘he’ went out in a blaze of glory. It is so lovely to dedicate yourself to something so worthwhile ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! RESPONDENT: What is the value of this? RICHARD: The value of it is an individual peace-on-earth for you. When there are six billion outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth there will be global peace-on-earth. Thus all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will be at an end. Now that is value, eh? Yet there is more ... you will have solved the ‘mystery of life’ and be living the actual. You will be the universe’s experience of itself as a sensate and reflective human being. You will be living the infinitude of the universe’s infinite space and eternal time – here and now – instead of waiting for some specious immortality after physical death. You will be living – as I do – in the fairy-tale-like actual world with its quality of magical perfection and purity. Everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive. A rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are. This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. We do not live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality. RESPONDENT: You want no such thing. That is just a cover. RICHARD: If you say so, then it is so ... for you, that is. Tell me: why do you object so much to peace-on-earth? Is it that you would willingly sacrifice an earthly peace for a spurious divine immortality? RESPONDENT: And as far as peace is concerned, you certainly haven’t demonstrated peace in your communication with me. RICHARD: Indeed I have. Where there is no identity extant there is no malicious ‘I’ or sorrowful ‘me’ to disturb the peace that is already always here ... now. One is peaceful only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is innocent (free from sin and sinning) and thus automatically peaceful ... which means one does not have to be a pacifist (which is but an imitation of the actual). It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to act or not act in response to something or someone, as the circumstances require. Thus, when there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul there is no need for pre-conceived truths or beliefs ... then one clearly sees the fact of the situation. The fact will tell one what is the most appropriate course of action. For example: If I were to be silly enough to be a pacifist, then all of the pre-conceived truths – the beliefs which come with being a pacifist – dictate my course of action and not the facts of the situation themselves. Thus one never meets each situation fresh – which is pretty silly seeing that each situation is novel – and you would be getting nothing from me but the cloying platitudes and pap that you get from others. RESPONDENT: Stop playing these power games, Richard. RICHARD: It is the beliefs, truths, values, principles, ideals, traditions, customs, mores, ethics, morals and so on being questioned that turns this discussion into ‘power games’ ... and relentlessly so. It is only to the degree that the person identifies with these ever-failing coping-methods that they feel personally having a ‘power game’ played upon them. I calmly yet trenchantly explicate just what has been going wrong and what can be freely and happily done to correct all the ills of humankind. What I say and write is both heretical and iconoclastic ... a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. I am no ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’ – or whatever inanity it is that the myth says – and there is no ‘turning the other cheek’ here. There have been 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone ... now that is where the phrase ‘power games’ actually means something. RESPONDENT: Seeking peace on earth is wishful thinking. RICHARD: Well, there you go then. I did not have that attitude. I did seek peace-on-earth ... and I did find peace-on-earth. RICHARD: My question remains: Why is it that everyone who writes to me is so busy defending the indefensible? Why? RESPONDENT: My question for you is simple ... tell me what it is, the impetus that infuses your quite formidable intellect with such [delight] for ‘peace on earth?’ RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started in a war-torn country in June 1966, whilst dressed in a green uniform and aged nineteen, and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most ghastly way. There was I, a youth with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... and it is my delight to share this discovery with my fellow humans. What they do with this is entirely up to them. RESPONDENT: You represented no such thing other than in your mind – you represented a naive young man with a weapon who had ceded his personal sovereignty to a government. RICHARD: I did not represent that at all. Given that all human beings are driven by instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then war is an essential facility for obtaining an imitation of peace – an uneasy truce called ‘law and order’ – at the point of a gun. This will continue to be the situation until every last man, woman and child on earth is free of the human condition. It does not make war any less ghastly ... but it is a fact that whilst humans are as they are, then war is here to stay. * RICHARD: I was aghast ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... and it is my delight to share this discovery with my fellow human. RESPONDENT: For all your copious verbiage, it is quite clear that you’ve discovered nothing other than some eccentric nomenclature. RICHARD: You have obviously missed most of my posts. I have made it quite clear that none of us are to blame, for we are all victims of blind nature’s rather clumsy software package of instincts. However, once realised where the root cause of all the anguish and animosity lies, one can hit the ‘delete’ button and erase the lot, for it is software and not hardware. If one does not then one is a fool. Of course, both ‘I’ and ‘me’ will be what is deleted ... for ‘I’ am the passions and the passions are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Your ‘humanity’ (and, for that matter, ‘divinity’) is quite obviously still around and rather vigorously operative. RICHARD: There is another alternative to being either secular or spiritual ... which is long overdue as neither of them have produced peace-on-earth. This third alternative I call an actual freedom. The Buddhist monk broke one of the cardinal precepts of ‘ahimsa’ ... he killed someone. This points to the startlingly obvious fatal flaw in the creed of ‘non-violence’ ... it does not work because it cannot work. To be a conscientious objector is to stick one’s head in the sand; it is to rely upon others to do one’s dirty work of protecting the national interest when it is threatened. What if everyone in the country was so stupefied as adopt this stance? It would be like hanging out a sign at the border saying: ‘Please feel free to invade ... we will not fight back’. The Tibetan situation is a particular case in point. And not only external threats to security, it also applies internally ... what if the police force adopted ‘ahimsa? Who would protect you and yours from banditry? And it is not just Buddhism, of course. Mr. Jesus, with his ‘turn the other cheek’ homily advocates and promotes martyrdom ... an apparently ‘noble virtue’ that permits the bully-boys to run rampant. So much for the ‘wisdom’ of the Sages. It is all about failing to face up to the facts and actuality squarely. It comes out of a failure to understand human nature ... which is quite understandable as all the ‘Great Beings’ throughout history have remained stuck in the Human Condition and seek to resolve problems instead of dissolving the cause of them. They merely add to the confusion ... and suck otherwise intelligent people into following them blindly into heroic self-sacrifice. All the while they weep crocodile tears at the abominable slaughter and misery that they actively promote and perpetuate out of their abject ignorance. All religious and spiritual thought – being mystical in origin – is nothing but an extremely complex and complicated metaphysics that does nothing to eliminate the self – the ego and soul – in its entirety. In fact, when one applies these eastern-derived religious and spiritual systems, one’s primal self is endorsed, enhanced, glorified and rewarded for staying in existence. And this is a monumental blunder. All the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that have eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed religiosity or spirituality attests to this. Also, all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered religious or spiritual teaching renders its mute testimony to anyone with the eyes to see. Culpability for the continuation of animosity and anguish lies squarely at the feet of the Master
and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Gurus and the God-men. And their feet –
upon close inspection – are feet of clay Then there is peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: I recommend letting go of such contentious piffle and getting on with your presentation as to how and why your personal position is so much more likely to bring about world peace than any other such position in the history of humanity. That is your thrust, isn’t it? RICHARD: No, not at all ... I am on about individual peace-on-earth. I am on record as saying, repeatedly: ‘Do not hold your breath waiting for global peace’. My ‘contentious piffle’ is all about achieving individual peace-on-earth in this lifetime, as this body, here on earth ... sound familiar? I have repeated that line ad infinitum. That is what you call my ‘presentation’ ... I have been doing my ‘presentation’ ever since I came onto this List ... hadn’t you noticed? Must be those reverential eyes that are obscuring your vision! RESPONDENT: To this interesting list, I wonder if any of you are complete, actualised, perfect, if so you may indeed see that the secret of life is to join and be joined by another and all of what you did and said would be to move towards this happening in order for it to happen. No. 10, Moving with and towards Sharon. RESPONDENT No. 12: If there is completeness, is there a movement to join or unite with some thing or someone else ‘out there’? By the way, No. 23 is relieved that you are not moving in on him. RESPONDENT: No not moving in on you, or any other, just seeing if a new way of being can be brought forth. If one becomes complete with themselves (perfect) a discovery may be made, we are a world of two, male and female, until we find a way (which is of what I speak) to join and become as one, this world will remain a violent, and ever deadening place. RICHARD: Surely you do not mean to imply that no matter what one does about eliminating one’s own malice and sorrow, that arises out of the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that all sentient beings are born with, there can be no peacefulness and liveliness until one attains union with a member of the other gender? You do say that until one does ‘this world will remain a violent, and ever deadening place’ . That means that one’s own achievements can be nullified by the intransigence of another ... hardly a recipe for successfully living life freely according to one’s own honest endeavours. Why, it puts one at the mercy of another’s predilection and proclivity! And even if one were to achieve this oneness with one other, would the entire world then be miraculously transformed? If so, do it, man, do it ... No. 23 has been waiting for ages for someone like you to act. And other people, too ... I watched the BBC ‘Hard Talk’ interview with Mr Robert McNamara (US Secretary for Defence during the Vietnam War) a couple of nights ago. He estimated that 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century. I have always understood it to be 100,000,000 ... which was bad enough. I would suggest that you and Sharon better get your act together sooner rather than later if Peace On Earth depends upon your joining and becoming as one ... there are 29 wars going on at this moment. All joking aside – for it is all somewhat pathetic rather than amusing – you came onto this list trumpeting a new ‘Transformation’ that lay ‘Beyond Enlightenment’. You said it was what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Enlightenment ‘pointed to’ ... yet all I have seen written by you is ‘quantumised’ rehashes of the ‘Tried and True’ spiritual and metaphysical hocus-pocus which has been demonstrated to be the ‘Tried and Failed’ through thousands of years of appalling suffering by all who applied the revered and sacred ‘Teachings’ of ‘The Ancients’. Just what is so new and efficacious about oneness? RESPONDENT: Your comment about if two would ever join would this cause a Transformation of our world, I say it is possible that, ‘That’ just might be true. RICHARD: Hey, I was only joking ... ‘That’ is the stuff of folk-lore and fantasy. RESPONDENT: For sure at this point this is a lost, violent, confused world and something is needed soon. RICHARD: Not so ... it is only the real world – as manifested by normal human beings – that is ‘a lost, violent, confused world’. The real world is an illusion pasted over the top of the actual world. This actual world – which is apprehended sensately when there is no ‘I’ present in any way, shape or form – is clean and clear and pure and perfect because there is no good or evil here. In this actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. Thus nothing ‘is needed soon’ . It is, as it always has been, already perfect. You see, peace-on-earth already is here – here in this actual world – and no one needs to invent it. It is all a matter of entering into it; making it apparent; allowing it to emerge; watching it unfold ... or whatever description. Everyone is either rushing about trying to make an imitation peace ... or sitting back moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all. I did not devise, concoct or contrive this peace-on-earth ... it was already here ... as it always has been and always will be. I just happened to discover it, that is all ... and it being so perfect that I wished to inform my fellow human beings of its existence. What they do with this information is their business. RESPONDENT: Insight in your condition is only reaching me in the form of conclusions, actually. And I do not see how you are pointing to it. You are pointing something out, but the ‘HOW’ is, to me at least, unrecognisable. Can you elaborate on this ‘HOW’. (Or maybe on why it happened?). RICHARD: It is all to do with humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to peace-on-earth ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. For me it all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampart. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition. My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. RESPONDENT: Indeed peace is the actuality so there is no need for effort from a state of disturbance. RICHARD: But for 6.0 billion peoples, peace is not ‘the actuality’ ... so there is indeed a need for ‘effort from a state of disturbance’. The ‘state of disturbance’ is what is happening, is it not, and not peace as an actuality? Therefore, when you contrive, ‘from a state of disturbance’ to effect a motiveless passion to understand through direct observation, for example, you are just attempting to fool yourself that you have ‘no need for effort from a state of disturbance’ when you do. Incidentally, as the Mailing List is under the auspices of the teachings that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti bought into the world, it is tacitly assumed that anyone joining the List is familiar with at least some of his words on the matter ... and if they did not they soon would be, anyway. As it is public knowledge that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti had indeed effected effort from a state of disturbance in order to undergo some ‘process’, which resulted in experiencing living in a way somewhat different from the norm, to pretend that one has no need for some similar effort from a state of disturbance is to be disingenuous. However, you are not the only person adopting this stance of make-believe ignorance ... there are others on this List that like to think that by feigning effortlessness that they will achieve something. Just how this sleight-of-hand (or should I say sleight-of-mind) is going to be efficacious in bringing about the desired result remains to be seen. Nevertheless, such dissimulation is not unknown ... some Buddhists too, indulge in a similar craftiness. They pretend that they do not desire Nirvana ... in the hope that they will thus achieve it. Some Christians, maintaining that to be alive is to remain a sinner, manifest a spurious humility in order to be worthy of God’s Grace and admission into Heaven whilst all the while saying that they are not worthy. Some Hindus maintain that by not enjoying the fruits of their labour they will gain the ultimate fruit of such labour ... called Moksha. The same sort of sanctimony holds true for many other religions and disciplines. RESPONDENT: Why do you say ‘peace on earth’? Is that an insistence that every person annihilate the two ‘I’s, the soul etc. RICHARD: No, not at all. When one is already living freely in the actual world, life is experienced as being perfect as-it-is right now and here on earth. One knows that one is living in a beneficent and benevolent universe – and that is what actually counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world, fail to impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who lives in the vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. Human beings, being as they are, will probably continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that they are the ‘tried and failed’. There is none so doggedly obdurate as a self-righteous soul who is convinced that they know the way to live ... as revealed in their ancient and revered scriptures or in secular philosophy. RESPONDENT: Or is there peace on earth because there is no ‘I’, no ‘soul’ to ‘experience’ the turmoil? RICHARD: No, not quite ... though I see why you would say that. In actual freedom there is no turmoil. ‘I’ create the turmoil by ‘my’ very existence. All suffering is self-inflicted (I am not talking about physical pain). All sorrow and malice – and the love and hatred engendered – exist only in the psyche. There is no good or evil in the actual world. This is not to be taken as being detached or indifferent ... I do not suffer from disassociation. I am well aware of the incredible anguish and animosity that everybody experiences and acts out in their daily life ... I watch the news bulletins on television and interact with people on a daily basis. There has been 160,000,000 people killed in wars this century alone ... and nearly 200 minor wars since 1945. I personally served in a war zone in 1966. Yet it is all self-inflicted. RICHARD: Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. RESPONDENT: This is a rather sweeping indictment. There is indeed Peace on earth and it is here as me now. RICHARD: It is not only sweeping ... it is a far reaching and incisively cutting indictment ... I was referring to global peace as well you know. Do you not realise that over 160,000,000 million people have been killed in wars alone this century? Do you not grasp the fact that nigh on 200 wars have occurred since the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945? And you talk about a solution that has been hawked around for thousands of years ... realising oneself to be ‘it’. Those peoples who have realised this have lead a gullible humankind, that is desperately searching for answers, selfishly astray for centuries. All the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that has eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed master attests to this. All the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered master’s teaching offers its mute testimony. All the Saints and the Sages; all the Masters and the Messiahs; all the Saviours and the Avatars; all the Gurus and the God-men have not been able to bring about their much-touted global Peace On Earth. This has been the sorry lot of humankind since time immemorial. The ‘Teachers’ – and their ‘Teachings’ – have been at fault all along, for they still had an identity. In a valiant effort to right the wrongs that beset oneself and all of humankind, one can dissolve the ego and realise oneself as ‘it’ ... that which is sacred and holy. However, upon closer inspection one finds that one has jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. ‘I’ still exist – now disguised as a timeless and eternal ‘being’ – and continue to wreak ‘my’ havoc upon an unsuspecting public ... albeit now a blissful ‘being’ emanating Love Agapé and Divine Compassion to all and sundry. However, all is not lost: just as the ego can dissolve, so too can the soul disappear. In my experience I have found that the identity is made up of two parts: the ego and the soul. ‘I’, as an ‘identity’, as a ‘being’, must become extinct. Then, and only then, is there a chance for global peace. With ‘I’ in ‘my’ entirety extinguished, the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that blind nature endows all creatures with at birth vanishes ... along with the malice and sorrow engendered. One is then spontaneously happy and harmless; one is automatically blithe and benevolent; one is candidly carefree and considerate. Thus, for the one who dares to go all the way, individual peace on earth for the remainder of one’s life is immediate and actual. This is the actual peace-on-earth – not an hallucination – and, as such, could possibly spread from one to another ... if one and the other are vitally interested. RESPONDENT: While we’re on this topic – I recently read where you (Richard) regard having an ‘I’ as socially reprehensible – as in blameworthy. I’m curious as to just what constitutes being ‘socially reprehensible’ for you ... a mere thought or ‘temptation’ – or more concrete action. You have even gone to the point of using the term ‘guilty at conception’. I wonder what guilt could possibly consist of if not in action? To take this to the extreme – would an aborted foetus be ‘guilty’? Or possibly ‘socially reprehensible’? Is one guilty just because they have the potential to do harm? RICHARD: First of all a normal person does not have an ‘I’ (or have a ‘me’) as they are an ‘I’ (or are a ‘me’) ... and ‘I’ exist inside the body only because all human beings are genetically endowed at conception with a package of instinctual survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) which gives rise to emotions (such as malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) and this emotional and passional package is ‘me’ (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). And irregardless of whether ‘I’, who am the emotional and passional impulses, persuade the body to physically act or not ‘I’ involuntarily transmit emotional and passional vibes (to use a 60’s term) into the human world in particular and the animal world in general: therefore ‘I’ am not harmless even when ‘I’ refrain from inducing the body into physical action ... which is why pacifism (non-violence) is not a viable solution. Children also involuntarily transmit emotional and passional vibes (thus they are not born innocent as certain peoples maintain) ... and a foetus would too (albeit in a very rudimentary form). There is nothing that can stop other sentient beings picking up these vibes and/or picking up what are sometimes called psychic currents. This is because there is an interconnectedness between all the emotional and passional entities – all emotional and passional entities are connected via a psychic web – a network of invisible vibes and currents. This interconnectedness in action is a powerful force – colloquially called ‘energy’ or ‘energies’ – wherein one entity can either seek power over another entity or seek communion with another entity by affective and/or psychic influence. For example, these interconnecting ‘energies’ can be experienced in a group high, a community spirit, a mass hysteria, a communion meeting, a mob riot, a political rally and so on ... it is well known that charismatic leaders ride to power on such ‘energies’. Put simply: it is not violence per se (as in physical force/restraint) or the potential for violence which is the problem: it is ‘me’ as the emotions and passions fuelling the violence, or fuelling the potential for violence, who begets all the misery and mayhem. Violence itself (as in physical force/restraint) is essential lest the bully-boys and feisty-femmes would rule the world. And if all 6.0 billion peoples were to become happy and harmless overnight (via altruistic ‘self’-immolation) it would still be essential lest the predator animals should have the human animal for its next meal. Yet even if all the predator animals were to cease being predatory (à la the ‘lion shall lay down with child’ ancient wisdom) it would still be essential if the crops in the field be not stripped bare by the insect world. And so on and so on: taking medication – even traditional medicine – does violence to the whole host of bacterial life; so too does drinking water as one drop contains at least 1,000-10,000 tiny shrimp-like and crab-like creatures; even breathing does violence as a breath of air contains untold numbers of microscopic life-forms. RESPONDENT: For example, I don’t think I’ve done anything that would be considered ‘socially reprehensible’ by most people. Sure, I’ve stolen small amounts of money from my parents when I was a kid – not always told the whole truth – not always been the ‘stellar’ person I’ve wanted to be – but I have never hurt someone in a ‘reprehensible’ way. When I think ‘reprehensible’, I think murder, rape, abuse – all the atrocities in the human world. Now it’s possible that I’ve done something in my past that is ‘reprehensible’ and that it’s not currently coming to mind, but I’m curious just how you intend your usage of ‘socially reprehensible’? RICHARD: I do not necessarily mean it only in the way you describe – there are already enough people censuring behaviour without me joining in the chorus as well – as I am more interested in pointing the finger at the root cause of all the misery and mayhem: the identity parasitically inhabiting the flesh and blood body (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ... and this entity is not only socially reprehensible by its very existence but individually insalubrious as well. No matter how well-behaved and well-adjusted a normal person is – urbane, polite, civilised, educated – they cannot help but generate malicious and sorrowful feelings from time-to-time ... and neither malicious feelings towards another nor sorrowful feelings towards oneself, or vice versa, are conducive to a happy and harmless life (be it the communal life or an individual life). And to then become loving and compassionate, either towards another or towards oneself, is to but gild over the negative with the positive ... with less than satisfactory results. And such has been the case for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history ... the ‘tried and true’ is demonstrably the tried and failed. RESPONDENT: I’m not out murdering, raping, abusing people and that sort of thing – as many people are not. Is one ‘guilty’ just by having a ‘human nature’? RICHARD: Not by having a human nature ... by being human nature (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’): ‘I’ am guilty by virtue of ‘my’ very presence: it is ‘me’ as a psychological/psychic ‘being’ (at root an instinctual ‘being’) who is guilty of being harmful just by existing ... but it is not ‘my’ fault as ‘I’ am not to blame for ‘my’ existence (if anything it is blind nature which is at fault or to blame). In the normal human world one is considered guilty where one does nothing about one’s human nature. Traditionally people try to avoid this ‘doing nothing’ guilt by living in accord with culturally-determined morals and ethics and values and principles and mores and so on. However, when push comes to shove, this thin veneer of civilised life can vanish in an instant and the instinctual survival passions can come surging out in full force (such as in peoples being trampled to death in the stampede for the exit in a theatre or cinema when there is a fire). I have had personal experience of the veneer of civilised life vanishing: I happened to be in New Delhi in October 1984 when Sikh bodyguards assassinated India’s Hindu Prime Minister Ms. Indira Gandhi after the assault by the Indian army on the Harimandir of Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. This set off a rampage of terror and violence that closed down the city for three days ... the normally ubiquitous police were nowhere to be seen for the entire period. I was there – with a nine year old daughter – and saw with my own eyes what happened: it was out-and-out internecine conflict ... after three days of unrestricted rioting the military came in with helicopters, planes, tanks, armoured vehicles, machine guns and so on and eventually law and order was restored by sheer brute force. The atmosphere – and the destructiveness I personally witnessed – was identical to my experience in a war-torn foreign country in 1966 when I was a serving soldier in a declared war-zone. The solution to all this is to be found in the actual world: in a pure consciousness experience (PCE), where ‘I’ as ‘my’ feelings am temporarily absent, it will be experienced that one is innocent for the very first time ... in a PCE there is not the slightest trace of guilt whatsoever to be found. ‘Tis a remarkably easy way to live. RESPONDENT: If the reason is that one is guilty by one’s ‘potential’ – wouldn’t it be smart to throw people in jail who fit the demographic for criminal behaviour – regardless their actions? RICHARD: Ha ... if people were to be gaoled for their potential then all 6.0 billion peoples on this planet would find themselves behind bars: anyone and everyone who nurses malice and sorrow, and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion, to their bosom has the potential to act, not only in socially reprehensible ways, but in ways which are personally insalubrious as well. RESPONDENT: Guilt by ‘potential’ is a strange concept – and I’m not sure it would fit any common usage of the word ‘guilt’ or ‘reprehensible’. RICHARD: Well ... as I said, the potential to act in socially reprehensible (and individually insalubrious) ways is traditionally held in check by morals and ethics and values and principles and mores and so on – all backed-up either by public censure and/or ostracism or by legal laws enforceable at the point of a gun – so it would appear that there is at least a tacit agreement that ‘guilt by potential’ is in common usage ... if only by implication. RESPONDENT: I realize this must be balanced with your view that nobody is to blame for having a self – though I’d like to read just how you balance the two, if you don’t mind. RICHARD: Perhaps this e-mail will show that there is nothing to balance after all as nobody is at fault or to blame for the human condition (and it is pointless to fault or blame blind nature for continuing to provide the instinctual survival passions which were necessary all those thousands of years ago). Now that intelligence, which is the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons, has developed in the human animal those blind survival passions are no longer necessary – in fact they have become a hindrance in today’s world – and it is only by virtue of this intelligence that blind nature’s default software package can be safely deleted (altruistic ‘self’-immolation). No other animal can do this. RESPONDENT: I also don’t intend these comments as an attempt to pin you down under self-contradiction – I know there are ‘ways out’ of these quandaries – I’m just curious about your view of these issues. Thanks. RICHARD: Sure ... I have always sought for that which is non-contradictory and would always look askance at any attempt to gloss over something contradictory by someone saying that it was a paradox one just had to live with. I have been unable to find anything paradoxical here in this actual world. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• P.S.: I am aware that words like guilty, reprehensible and culpable carry the implication that some person or persons (or peoples collectively) decide or have decided what is right and what is wrong or what is good and what is bad or what is correct and what is incorrect and so on ... a standard to be judged by, in other words. The following exchange should be helpful in this regards (especially so as you say in this e-mail that you have wanted to be a ‘stellar’ person):
Ain’t life grand! •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• RICHARD: ... 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: I see now that ‘faking care’ isn’t what you mean by ‘feeling caring’. I’m curious, what would it take to be sincere? Is all feeling caring insincere – or are you saying that the person being true to their feeling of caring could be sincere by realizing that their caring is ‘self’ centred? Is it only possible to be sincere if one is actually free? Or ‘imitating’ the actual? Could you say more about what you mean – ‘It is not their fault that the truth is insincere’. What exactly is insincere about feeling that one cares for another? Is all feeling caring insincere? Or is insincerity due to one’s ignorance of the actual genesis of feeling caring? If all feeling caring is actually insincere – then it doesn’t seem we ‘beings’ have any choice about it, do we? If this is the case, the path to actual freedom would be becoming as sincere as possible, yet one couldn’t be completely sincere until once actually free. Is this how you see it? Or is one ‘imitating’ the actual also sincere – since they know all feeling caring is ‘self-centred’? Thus, anyone could be sincere just by realizing the ‘self-centeredness’ of feeling caring. RICHARD: Unless a realisation is actualised, meaning that it operates spontaneously each moment again, it remains just that ... a realisation. All I am indicating by saying that the truth is insincere is that, as the truth holds the promise of an after-death peace for the feeling being inside the flesh and blood body (as in ‘The Peace That Passeth All Understanding’), the truth is not sincere in regards to bringing about peace on earth ... which peacefulness is what caring is all about. In short: feeling caring is incapable of delivering the goods. As being sincere in the context under discussion is to have the pure intent to enable peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, it would therefore take a perspicuous awareness of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (seeing the fact) to be sincere ... rather than an instinctive feeling of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (intuiting the truth). The feeling of caring (be it a pitying caring, a sympathetic caring, an empathetic caring, a compassionate caring or a loving caring), being primarily the feeling being inside one flesh and blood body caring for the feeling being inside another flesh and blood body (or for an anthropomorphised feeling being called mother earth for instance), is insincere by its very nature. And to realise that such feeling caring is a ‘self’-centred caring – and thus corrupt and/or tainted – is the first step towards sincerity. Anybody can be sincere (about anything) – all it takes is seeing the fact (of anything) – and in this instance the perspicacity born out of the pure consciousness experience (PCE) ensures sincerity in regards to enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into becoming apparent. The basis of such sincerity lies in comprehending the fact that caring starts with oneself – if one is incapable of caring for oneself one cannot care about others (or anything for that matter) – lest it be a case of the blind leading the blind. There are two forms of ignorance about the genesis of the affective feelings: nescience and ignoration – wherein the former is to be incognisant of the root cause and the latter is to be disregardant of the root cause – and the latter has much to do with what is often expressed as ‘you can’t change human nature’ (only recently on another mailing list the sentence ‘we can’t change biological predisposition’ was pithily presented as if it were a valid reason not to discuss the genetic inheritance of aggression). Meaning that, apart from fanciful notions about genetic engineering, it is generally held that as human nature (biology) cannot be changed therefore biology cannot be the root cause of all the ills of humankind ... or so the bizarre rationale goes. Obviously part of the first step towards sincerity is the acknowledgement of blind nature’s legacy. RESPONDENT: ... but I do know that a brain that has had a terrible shock to it, may have to adjust its thinking to accommodate what it can accept in order to survive without going totally stark raving mad. RICHARD: But as I am already what you call ‘totally stark raving mad’ according to official diagnoses by accredited psychiatrists ... where does that leave your amateurish psychologising? In the same place as your amateurish scientism, perchance? RESPONDENT: More than likely and right along the side of actualism. RICHARD: I have never made a secret of the fact that the doorway to an actual freedom from the human condition has the words ‘insanity lies ahead’ blazoned upon it ... which is why peace-on-earth has never been enabled before in human history. People everywhere are wasting time looking for a door marked ‘sanity’ or ‘peace’ (or some similar name). RICHARD: It is so simple being this flesh and blood body only ... and salubrious. RESPONDENT: Well I have wasted too much time here and all with some one who can’t even get past first base with a simple greeting or thank you. So forget it. You can’t even make peace on a mailing list Richard let alone offer it to your fellow man. Bye. RICHARD: I wonder if it has occurred to you yet that the umbrage evident in the last post of yours – and this dramatic departure – is all because I asked a very simple question:. Vis.:
So far you have passed-up three opportunities to address the one and only point I am making ... you have chosen to discuss all manner of things rather than attend to this ‘Ancient Wisdom’. And, of course, you may respond to this E-Mail in any way you see fit – or not answer at all – but the one thing, and one thing only that this thread is about, is the central reason as to why there is no peace on earth after 3,000 to 5,000 years of enlightened wisdom. To wit: The ‘Ancient Wisdom’ licence says: it is okay to kill the body as you are not killing the person. RICHARD: Voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice means an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present; to devote and give over one’s being as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest, a kind-hearted benefaction. A sacrifice is the relinquishment of something valued or desired for the sake of something more important or worthy ... it is the deliberate abandonment, relinquishment, forfeiture or loss for the sake of something illustrious, brilliant, extraordinary and excellent. It means to forgo, quit, vacate, discontinue, stop, cease or immolate so that one’s guerdon is to be able to be unrepressed, unconstrained, unselfconscious, uninhibited, unrestrained, unrestricted, uncontrolled, uncurbed, unchecked, unbridled, candid, outspoken, spontaneous, relaxed, informal, open, free and easy. As I have remarked before, ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory. RESPONDENT: Richard, my two cents on this topic: I don’t think there is so much fanfare in actual life as you mention in your posts. RICHARD: Yes ... a person resigned to their fate settles for second-best. RESPONDENT: I don’t understand. Are you saying that one whose ego ends without much fanfare has resigned to his fate and settled down for second best? RICHARD: No. I am saying that one who learns to live in peace and harmony has ‘resigned to his fate and settled down for second best’. RESPONDENT: What makes you think so? RICHARD: Your words (below). Vis.: ‘and learns to live in peace and harmony’. Freedom either is or is not: there is no ‘learns to live in peace and harmony’ in an actual freedom ... peace and harmony is already always just here right now. RESPONDENT: Second best ... what? Please explain. Thanks. RICHARD: A second-best way of living; a second-rate life; an ersatz life-style in lieu of the best. RESPONDENT: Well, then let me explain myself differently. There appear to be two different modes/expressions of finding peace and harmony (please read between the lines): (a) the glorious ending of the ego, a once in a life time event, etc., and (b) a quiet realization that there is no point in living a life of conflict. RICHARD: It does not make any difference to re-present your words in a point (a) and (b) layout ... they are still the same or similar words signifying the same or similar concept. Vis.:
The main difference between the two proposals is that you have left off the ‘and learns to live in peace and harmony’ section of your initial proposal in your point (b) rearrangement. * RESPONDENT: I think what happens is that a person realizes the futility of acting in ways that produce conflict and learns to live in peace and harmony with him/herself and with his/her surroundings. RICHARD: Yes ... a person settling for second best often redecorates. RESPONDENT: Once again, a general failure to comprehend what you are getting at. What I am saying is this: a person realizes the futility of conflict and starts living peacefully with himself and his surroundings. RICHARD: I was responding to your description of ‘a person’ who ‘learns to live in peace and harmony’ ... an actual freedom is gratuitous peace and harmony. No learning needed. RESPONDENT: What is ‘second best’ here and what is ‘redecorated’. Please explain. Thanks, again. RICHARD: Missing out on the pure and perfect – and gratis – peace and harmony which is already always just here right now is second best by any criteria ... and ‘redecorated’ is an expressive way of describing what a person is doing when he/she ‘learns to live in peace and harmony’. I could have said renovate, refurbish, revamp, spruce up, smarten-up, fix-up, give a face-lift and so on. RESPONDENT: When there is world peace someone will come along and demand more – and create war. RICHARD: Not so ... what part of the phrase ‘world peace’ do you not understand? There will be global peace-on-earth only when there are 6.0 billion outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth ... hence no one to ‘come along and demand more’. RESPONDENT: How can you stop them? While there is ‘wanting’ and selfishness – there will be conflict. RICHARD: Indeed ... only unilateral action will do the trick (do not hold your breath waiting for global peace-on-earth). * RESPONDENT: Will you enforce world peace? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: How? RICHARD: Nothing lasting is ever gained through coercion. RESPONDENT: It is impossible. Suppose a government puts up taxes. Some citizens refuse to pay. They are locked up. Family members become upset – and break them out of prison. In the process other innocent people are hurt. I could go on and on. How will you possibly get peace here? RICHARD: Through example and not just precept. Which means: putting one’s money where one’s mouth is (practice what one preaches). No more inconsistencies; no more contradictions; no more hypocrisies; no more justifications; no more lame-duck excuses ... and so on. RESPONDENT: I am all for peace on earth. RICHARD: Excellent ... the desire for peace-on-earth – to the point that others will call obsessional – is the factor that will bring about ‘my’ demise. RESPONDENT: I would love for that to happen. Just tell me how. I will be happy to help to implement it. RICHARD: Are these E-Mails throwing some light upon the root cause of all the mayhem and misery? Because knowing the root cause is the essential first step. The next step then becomes obvious each moment again in one’s daily life. Through application and diligence borne upon the pure intent for peace-on-earth for all, one can voluntarily forsake the social identity and go into exile, into ‘self’-retirement as it were, whilst remaining in the market place. One does this by examining all of one’s feelings that are supporting one’s beliefs – masquerading as ‘truths’ – each moment again and watching them vanish as if they had never existed. One can observe oneself in one’s moment-to-moment activities as one goes about daily life. Gradually one notices that ‘I’ have grown rather thin, as if withering away, until ‘I’ become merely a shadow of ‘my’ former self ... causing very little trouble and then only occasionally. This condition will continue to subsist until the inevitable happens and ‘I’ cease to exist in ‘my’ totality of ‘being’. As only this moment is ever-actual, one puts this exploration into effect by asking oneself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: That awakened person can get involved. RICHARD: Yet there have been many, many ‘awakened persons’ getting involved for 3,000 to 5,000 years of recorded history. And these many and varied ‘Enlightened Beings’ have been claiming to have discovered that which will right the wrongs of the human condition ... and for 3,000 to 5,000 years they have been abjectly failing to live up to their own standards (let alone bringing about their promised Peace On Earth). How on earth is one going to obtain peace-on-earth by following their failed example? RESPONDENT: Well most of them did not preach peace on earth. Jesus said – ‘my kingdom is not of this world’. RICHARD: Yea verily ... and therein lies the nub of the issue: is one desiring peace-on-earth or is one longing for the metaphysical ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’ that is only accessible after physical death (the Christian ‘R. I. P’ is matched by the Hindu ‘Mahasamadhi’ and the Buddhist ‘Parinirvana’ and so on). This is a very selfish and self-centred approach to life on earth ... something that all metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s immortality is unambiguously selfish ... peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined soul or spirit or whatever after physical death. So much for their humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and humaneness. All religious and spiritual and mystical quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to perpetuate oneself for ever and a day. All religious and spiritual and mystical leaders fall foul of this existential dilemma. They pay lip-service to the notion of self-sacrifice – weeping crocodile tears at noble martyrdom – whilst selfishly pursuing the ‘Eternal After-Life’. The root cause of all the ills of humankind can be sheeted home to this single, basic fact: the overriding importance of the survival of ‘self’. All religious and spiritual thought – being mystical in origin – is nothing but an extremely complex and complicated metaphysics that does nothing to eliminate the ‘self’ – the ego and soul – in its entirety. In fact, when one applies these ancestor-derived religious and spiritual systems, one’s primal self is endorsed, enhanced, glorified and rewarded for staying in existence. And this is a monumental blunder. All the wars, murders, tortures, rapes and destruction that have eventually followed the emergence of any specially hallowed religiosity or spirituality attests to this. Also, all the sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide that has ensued as a result of following any specifically revered religious or spiritual teaching renders its mute testimony to anyone with the eyes to see. Culpability for the continuation of animosity and anguish lies squarely at the feet of the Masters
and the Messiahs; the Saints and the Sages; the Avatars and the Saviours; the Gurus and the God-Men. And their feet –
upon close inspection – are feet of clay Then there is peace-on-earth. RESPONDENT: And I investigate that mess not to improve the world, or bring peace-on-earth, but because I don’t like this mess that I am in. It is too disturbing, too annoying, and wasteful. RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... but through your interactions with other peoples – and especially on Mailing Lists such as this – do you not find that other people, more or less, do not ‘like this mess that they are in’ because ‘it is too disturbing, too annoying, and wasteful’ also? What makes you think that you are so special? In other words, whether you like it or not, any investigation you do into yourself is going to be of benefit to ‘the world’ and will be moving towards ‘peace-on-earth’ anyway. Why not acknowledge the fact and give your investigation the impetus it deserves? Much more productive than arguing over ‘selfishness’ versus ‘unselfishness’, eh? KONRAD: For you STILL have not proved to me, that you can admit to errors. RICHARD: But where is the error? Up until about a year ago, I would use the figure of 100,000,000 killed in wars this century (which figure I gained from my ad hoc reading years ago during my pacifist/hippie days). Then I watched the BBC ‘Hard Talk’ interview with Mr Robert McNamara (US Secretary for Defence during the Vietnam War) one night. He estimated that 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century ... and I considered that he had access to statistics that enabled him to be more informed so as to know better than me. So I ‘admitted my error’ and changed to using his figure of 160,000,000 peoples killed. The International ‘War Child Organisation’ estimate the figure to be a conservative 60,000,000. Vis.:
A quick round-up of the most obvious of the major western conflicts are as follows:
This total of 86,056,000 is why I had stuck to my (rounded-out) 100,000,000 figure for so long (before switching to Mr Robert McNamara’s estimate). So it would appear that the amount lies somewhere between 60,000,000 and 160,000,000 ... which is nowhere near to the total that you are trying to brow-beat me into using. Where do you get your figure of 1.600,000,000 from? Will you provide a table of statistics to demonstrate where you are correct and I am in error? Or will you climb down off your High Horse and converse reasonably once again with a mere mortal like myself? KONRAD: Okay, Richard, so it is a maximum of 160.000.000. RICHARD: Good ... maybe now you may begin to appreciate how easy it is to become so enamoured of one’s own beliefs and suspicions – and thus erroneous conclusions – that it makes one blind to the facts? Perchance you would care to re-visit some of your wildly inaccurate diagnoses (below) so that you might re-consider your position carefully? Then, when all this bombast and blather is cleared up and out of the way, it mayhap that you and I can have an honest and reasoned discussion about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are? RESPONDENT: If I were to kill someone in a fit of anger, should I say to myself ‘darn! ... what a silly thing I just did’? ‘Should I clean up now or later?’ RICHARD: Well, only if you wish to remain a sorrowful and malicious psychological and psychic identity living a parasitical existence inside this flesh and blood body ... busily perpetuating all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide. So, tell me: do you consider murder sensible then? RESPONDENT: There were wars that needed to be fought. RICHARD: Actually, the question was ‘do you consider murder sensible’ ? Do you? RESPONDENT: I consider some wars to be extremely sensible. RICHARD: Goodness me ... you not only think that peace-on-earth is silly but you are now telling me that some wars are sensible! RESPONDENT: Have you ever noticed that is such a thing as a tyrant or dictator? RICHARD: Yes ... when I was but a boy in short pants at state school such people were called ‘bully-boys’. The girls had their own variety called ‘catty-bitches’. RESPONDENT: Do you consider the country fighting in self defence to be equal in causality to the perpetrator that started the whole thing? RICHARD: As a country is nothing but a grouping of peoples complete with the entire software package of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then they are as covertly ‘guilty’ as the bully-boys and catty-bitches are overtly ‘guilty’. RESPONDENT: It is silly to categorise all wars as the same, not sensible. RICHARD: All wars are silly. RESPONDENT: That stand exudes a self righteous ‘above it all’ stand. RICHARD: Not so ... when one is ‘right’ or ‘good’ one is inevitably self-righteous. It is much better to be a sensible person. RESPONDENT: You may be able to reason with the one defending but you will never get anywhere with the tyrannical aggressor. RICHARD: As no country – which is each and every citizen – has rid itself of sorrow and malice then such speculation can only be that ... speculation. I would rather speak from my personal experience. Dealing sensibly with another is infinitely more effective than any self-righteous anger any day. RESPONDENT: I do agree with you that self condemnation is another way of playing god with ourselves. RICHARD: Who are you agreeing with? I never said anything like that ... all gods are figments of a fertile imagination – an imagination fuelled by dread and awe – and it is therefore a meaningless statement. Is this an example of you being sensible? RESPONDENT: Bragging about how happy you are with yourself ... hoping to cause others to envy and want what you have. RICHARD: Well now ... global peace-on-earth would be jolly nice, would it not? It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state. Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true. RESPONDENT: There is nothing to remove or prevent or break away from to go beyond, is there? RICHARD: Only if there is no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul (an identity by any other name) lurking around inside the flesh and blood body and/or bodies that is each and every one of the 6.0 billion human beings currently inhabiting this fair planet we all live on. Such an identity reveals its presence by contaminating this moment of being alive with the malice and sorrow (or the antidotal love and compassion) or any derivatives that are generated by the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire that all sentient beings are born with (which instincts are the origin of ‘self’). As I was explaining, in the paragraph you snipped the sentence at the top of this post from, the most effective way to get to know one’s every thought and feeling and impulse is to ask oneself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ Which means: what is preventing the PCE from happening ... right now? Or, to put it another way: what is preventing the already always existing peace-on-earth (as evidenced in the PCE) from being apparent? Peace-on-earth is here – right now – for the very asking. RESPONDENT: Before we were here – before we asked – was there no peace? RICHARD: Peace-on-earth is already always right here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time. Therefore, it was here ‘before we were here’ as well as ‘before we asked’ ... and it is freely available every moment again. RESPONDENT: And is peace just another idea of what is not? RICHARD: No, it already always is ... and is apparent when ‘me’ and all ‘my’ ideas are not. RESPONDENT: Is your imaginary peace so vulnerable to contamination? RICHARD: It is not my peace-on-earth nor anybody else’s. It is freely available. And it is not ‘vulnerable to contamination’ because nothing dirty can get in ... therefore it is wide-open and unprotected. I have no imagination whatsoever ... the intuitive/imaginative faculty is not extant in this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Or so you would have us imagine. RICHARD: No, I always advise against using imagination ... and idealising, visualising, believing, trusting, hoping and having faith and so on. RESPONDENT: If peace is invulnerable, what’s the problem: peace is always here but we (6,000,000,000) always deny it – well then how do you know it’s here? RICHARD: Unless I am an aberration of nature, what I experience anyone can experience and, as the PCE has a global occurrence, a temporary episode of experiencing peace-on-earth is already evidenced by other people’s reports as well. RESPONDENT: How do you know that peace is so far beyond me (or me beyond it)? RICHARD: It is neither beyond you nor are you beyond it ... as any ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ is standing in the way of peace-on-earth, only the ending of identity in its totality makes it apparent. RESPONDENT: Are you struggling to end struggling? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Is it working? RICHARD: As ‘struggling to end struggling’ is your gratuitous interjection, I will leave that up to you to answer.
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON PEACE (Part Two) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001 |
