Richard’s Selected Writings

Being here now is vastly different from ‘being’ or ‘Being’ . Being here now is to be alive, fully alive, as an actually free human, without any ‘being’ at all. Here, this moment lives me – me as this body – rather than an ‘I’ living in the present ... let alone the past or the future. There is no one inside this body, no psychological or psychic entity of any description. This body is an empty shell, psychologically and psychically speaking, owing allegiance to no one or no ‘One’ , living or dead. No entity exists in this body; there is no one left to die. The only me is this very body ... I am this body being conscious ... pure consciousness. I am happy to be mortal; if it were not for death, I could not be free to be here now, eating this delicious lunch and enjoying this moment of being alive. In this moment the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute in all its exquisite purity. Purity far exceeds Beauty, despite all its Glamour and Glory and Glitz. To be actually free is to be free, at last, to be ordinary ... to be this flesh and blood body.

To be mortal.

Human beings have various attitudes towards death. As far as it has been able to be ascertained, humans are the only creatures that are aware of their own demise. The ability to reflect upon one’s own death has been a source of inspiration to philosophers, theologians and their ilk down through the ages. To other people, death is a subject to be avoided, to be not thought about; it is a taboo topic for dinner-table conversation. It is not until a close friend or relative dies that they are brought face-to-face with their own mortality ... and they usually endeavour to ‘get over it’ as soon as possible. A sure way to be told that one is morbid is to talk about death: to invoke an uneasy reaction, one needs only to ask if they have ever considered the ramifications of death; of no longer being alive; of not being a ‘human’; of not ‘being’ at all. Nevertheless, why avoid the subject? Surely it is of the utmost importance to explore all the unknown aspects of being a ‘human’ – especially those that bring trepidation – for therein lie the causes for not only one’s uneasiness about life, but all the problems that beset ‘humanity’. Anything that remains hidden will continue to influence one’s life in an unconscious way, continuously plaguing one’s every moment of being alive and affecting one’s state of well-being.

It is impossible to try to imagine death, to try to visualise not ‘being’. What does it mean to not ‘be’? One has always been busy with ‘being’; being alive, being in the world, being a ‘human’, being ‘me’. What is it to not exist? There seems to be a general consensus among human beings that death is a mystery that one cannot penetrate, and that the ‘Mystery of Life’ will be revealed only after death. There, they say, lies peace and Ultimate Fulfilment. It all appears to be an exercise in futility to think about what is entailed in death, which is the end of ‘being’ ... and it is. The end of ‘being’, at physical death, can only ever be a speculation; it has to be experienced to know it. Just like one cannot know the taste of something until one eats it ... so too is it with death as the end of ‘being’. Yet to wait for death will be leaving it too late to find out what it is to not ‘be’ ... as death is oblivion of consciousness there will be no awareness of not ‘being’. The question is: can one experience the end of ‘being’ before this body dies and therefore penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’, in full awareness, and find that Ultimate Fulfilment ... here on earth?

Yes one can.

The commonly accepted notion, by the majority of people, is that ‘I’ reside temporarily inside this body until the body dies. Then ‘I’, as Spirit – by whatever name – will return whence ‘I’ came ... some mysterious, Other-Worldly Realm that goes by many titles. The details may vary from culture to culture, but the basic thrust of the concept remains the same: one will still remain ‘being’ after death. All this is to deny death as being oblivion ... such peoples are living in a state of denial. To deny oblivion is like, for instance, denying that gravity exists. It is a fact. If the word ‘death’ does not mean an ending to ‘being’ then the word is, in itself, meaningless. Then there is a minority who, realising this, maintain that the ‘I’ inside this body will die with the body ... and that that is all there is to it. Life, to them, is short and brutal and poignant with death at the end. The people who believe in the survival of their Spirit say that their belief gives life meaning ... and set about concocting all kinds of fanciful notions about ‘life after death’. Those who believe in the ending of the Spirit at death say that their belief makes life pointless ... and set about concocting all kinds of fanciful notions by posing existential questions. A few people, a rare few, say that they have died already – their ego has died – and that they know what it is like to be dead. They state that they have found the Ultimate Fulfilment that humankind is searching for.

Unfortunately for their argument, they maintain that their Spirit will ‘quit the body’ at physical death and continue to exist in some Eternal Oneness that is situated nowhere in particular. Therefore, if they are going to live forever, obviously they are still ‘being’. So how can they say that they know what death – as being the end of ‘being’ – is like? They too, come up with all kinds of fanciful notions about the Ultimate State of ‘humanity’. They say they have found The Truth about life ... yet they do not know what death entails, for they are still ‘being’. They too, are denying that death’s oblivion exists! ‘Being’, apparently, goes on forever ... ‘only the body dies’, they say. Is there anything at all in this that is a fact? Are not these statements nothing but psittacisms common to all Holy Beings? Surely, to experience what is factual is of far greater import than any conclusion arrived at by thought or feeling ... no matter how highly refined the thought or fanatically felt the feeling. To experience the factuality of the ending of ‘being’ whilst this body is still breathing is of the utmost importance, if one is to penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’ and discover the ultimate fulfilment ... here on earth. To come upon a fact, all that is fiction must be stripped away.

All Sacred Cows must be mercilessly exposed to the most extreme scrutiny, nothing or no-one being exempt from critical examination.

The peak experience provides an objective standpoint to view the identity from. It is easily seen from here that ‘I’ stand in the way of ultimate fulfilment ... of ‘my’ destiny. Pure contemplation is the means to provide one with repeated opportunities to make this examination thorough; all doubt is removed and only surety remains. This is the only way one will be convinced that ‘I’ must vanish altogether. This is why I can say, confidently, that the ‘death of the ego’ is not sufficient, for it only means substituting an impersonal ‘I’ – now called ‘Being’ – for the personal ‘I’. ‘Being’, whether it goes with a capital to denote Divinity or not, means an ‘I’ is still in existence. Therefore the ‘death of the ego’ people’s ‘discoveries’ about the fate of ‘humanity’ are questionable, to say the least, and their ‘solutions’ to life’s problems are equally suspect. Unless there is an end to ‘being’, which is what death is, one cannot say one has penetrated into the ‘Mystery of Life’, one has not found ultimate fulfilment, one has not achieved peace-on-earth. One is only fooling oneself – and some other gullible people – if one is so easily satisfied.

This ‘death of the ego’ is only for the orthodox-minded people; it is for those who are easily seduced by the Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz of the much-touted Altered State. This is why pure intent is an essential prerequisite to ensure a guaranteed passage through the psychic maze. With pure intent one will not rest until one has gone all the way. One will not be bewitched by the psychic Power and Authority, either. All these allurements are but welcome food for the cunning identity, which wanting only its own survival, readily sublimates itself into the Spirit. With the clarity born of pure intent one can see this play for what it is and move on freely and willingly to what lies at the end of the wide and wondrous path ... the end of ‘being’. With pure intent one will not settle for second best, for it has been seen in the PCE’s that the very best is possible, here on earth. One sees that ‘I’ must disappear entirely. There will be no transcendence, no transmutation, no metamorphosis ... not any of these. For one who goes all the way, no phoenix will exist to arise from the ashes ... nothing Metaphysical will remain. ‘I’ will become extinct.

I use the word extinct deliberately for it carries a definitive meaning. Physically, death is the end of an individual member of the species, whilst extinction is the ending of the species itself. The psychological annihilation of identity – in its entirety – is the psychological and psychic ending of the species known as ‘humanity’. It is the end of ‘being’ and the end of an illusion. It is also the end of ‘Being’ and the end of delusion. The ‘Human Condition’, with all its appalling sorrow and malice, has come to an end in one human being. All those would-be wise people who state smugly: ‘You can’t change human nature’ are, fortunately, wrong. Because it is possible for ‘me’ to become extinct, thereby releasing the body from the ‘being’ within, I can walk freely in the world as-it-is ... this actual world. I am living in this clean and clear and perfect purity twenty-four-hours-a-day. I live in a state of benignity, which means a kindly and harmless disposition.

Life is a playful game and I am free to enjoy it all, every moment again.

‘I’ am ‘humanity’ personified ... the end product of all humankind’s ‘wisdom’. ‘Humanity’ is the sole cause of humankind’s sorrow, just as ‘I’ am the sole cause of all ‘my’ misery. With ‘me’ no longer assuming authority, ‘humanity’ ceases to exist in me. The blight is eradicated; ‘humanity’ has irrevocably come to its end where ‘I’ am extinct. Now this universe can experience itself as me, unimpeded by ‘my’ fantasies and realities. Unlike within the ancient ‘human’ purview on life, compromise, allegiance, authority, hierarchy, tolerance, acceptance and other methods of coping, play no part here. What does play a part here is consensus, independence, autonomy, equity, reciprocal understanding based on clear articulation and a general ease of living together in mutual peace and harmony.

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted ‘human’ hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time.

It never goes away ... nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning.

All this is a delusion born out of an illusion ... it is all a feverish play in a super-active imagination, spurred on by a morbid dread of not ‘being’. Death is viewed as a calamity, a tragedy. ‘I’, being non-material, cannot accept, let alone embrace, that which is physical, that which is actual. Mortality is a physical phenomenon; it is a fact to be faced and understood. To act otherwise is a denial of the actual. This universe is so enormous in its scope, so grand in its order, so exquisite in its form, that it is sheer vanity and utter insolence to presume that what occurs intrinsically to the scheme of things is somehow ‘Wrong’. With an attitude like that, no wonder people hate having to be here on earth. It is no wonder that they feel that they have to ‘Cope with the Now’ whilst waiting for death to release them. It is such a shame that billions of human beings are missing out on the unadulterated perfection of being fully alive; missing out on rejoicing in being here now; missing out on deriving immense pleasure at living this moment, here on earth.

This universe knows what it is doing ... to assume that it does not is absurd. This universe was miraculously able to give birth to me, it is marvellously capable of bearing me and will, eventually, wondrously manage to end me. This is the physical, actual order of things in this, the only universe there is. There is nowhere else but here ... and there is no time but now. Anything else than here and now exists only in an enthusiastic imagination ... enthused by ‘me’, by any ‘being’ at all. Any intuitive sense of ‘being’ is created and sustained by emotive thought ... it is the egocentric fear of not ‘being’ that gives rise to the notion of an ‘myself’. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the demise of an apparently enduring psychological entity. The ‘death’ of ‘me’ is a non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place.

There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have Eternal Life .

The day finally dawns when something irrevocable happens inside the brain. In an ecstatic moment of being present, ‘I’ expire. ‘I’ am extirpated, rubbed out. ‘I’ cease to exist, permanently. There is a sensation inside the top of the brain-stem that is experienced as a physical ‘turning over’ of some kind ... something that can never, ever, turn back. Something irrevocable happens and everything is different, somehow, although everything stays the same physically ... with the outstanding exception of a perfection and purity permeating all and everything. Something has changed, although it is as if nothing has happened ... except that the entire world is transformed into a magical fairy-tale-like playground full of incredible joy and delight that is never-ending. ‘My’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent ‘presence’. I have always been here, I realise, and that ‘I’ only imagined that ‘I’ existed. It was all an emotional play in a fertile imagination ... which was, however, fuelled by an actual hormonal substance triggered off from within the ‘reptilian brain’ towards the top of the brain-stem.

With no ‘me’ inside to mess things up, I can ascertain, with clarity, that there is no soul inside this body. The soul was a feeling, not a fact. With no soul to ‘quit the body’ at physical death, there is, perforce, nowhere to go to. There is no After-Life; it was all a creation of ‘me’ and ‘my’ longings for Immortality. Being here now, this moment is perennial, not Infinite. I am perpetually here, not Eternally Present. The present has vanished, as did the past and the future, into the mists of ‘my’ time.

With ‘me’ gone, all myths end.

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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