Super interesting Rick. Impressive research too. Makes me wonder if Richard then followed a sort of hybrid approach to go out-from-control - perhaps not 180 degrees but more like 90 degrees 
Yes, perhaps it did the trick enough in terms of allowing him to go of malice and sorrow, but eventually was a bit of a time bomb as it pushed him into enlightenment.
From my memory he leaves enlightenment the same way he came in, through love. Specifically when Devika asks him if he could love one woman rather than the world.
Vineeto talks about a parallel between this and her experience of actual freedom here. Back in the day I couldn’t really understand the parallel.
"The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind.
Those who are concerned that my report be consistent with Richard’s process of becoming free might consider that Richard gave all of ‘himself’, an enlightened Being at the time, to Devika. She had challenged him to, instead of loving All, to instead love one person only and Richard took the challenge. He cared enough to dare – he fell in love with Devika and gave her all of ‘himself’. That total commitment proved to be the beginning of the end of ‘him’."
Reading it now, I’m still not really sure I quite get it hahaha. I see the logic, but I wonder if the comparison is being stretched a bit too far. Wonder what she would say about this now. Should have asked her when I saw her but it wasn’t on my mind.
Maybe present discussion can shed some light on this though. Perhaps an actualist can extract something useful from love - the ‘giving oneself’ bit. Imagine a venn diagram with intersecting circles, one with love and another with near actual caring. Maybe the shaded bit in the centre is what they have in common. You would then think that both someone who has not known love at all as well as someone prizes love too much e.g. the romantic or love addict - would be at a disadvantage with regards to self-immolation as they would struggle to reach that ‘giving oneself’ stage.
Then she also says this which I can fully appreciate:
“The key component for both of us had been caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster.”
“To put it in context of my own experiences: Over the years I increasingly allowed myself to dare to care for my fellow human beings, and gave up dissociating, rationalizing and turning away from the plight of humanity, something which I had practiced as a kind of ‘self’-defence during my spiritual years. I instead gave myself permission to become acutely aware of their pain and suffering, which was also ‘my’ pain and suffering. This in turn increased the urgency to do something about the human condition in myself in order to set others free from my suffering and animosity with the added intention that after becoming actually free I would be able to show by example how others who are interested could do it for themselves.”
My experience was similar. I wasn’t much of a spiritualist, but I think actualists can have a blind spot with regards to caring too. As an actualist I thought of anything in the empathic, caring territory as being akin to garlic for a vampire and ran the hell away from it! I had to soften and start to feel something for others, but knew that love was a dead end - there was somewhere else this needed to be taken … into biological atruism territory that is.
Any thoughts?