This forum is an anti-groupthink groupthink.
My teacher wasn’t enlightened and most people who follow and interpret religion aren’t either which is why religions contain so much useless garbage. Which is also the danger of conveying truths allegorically rather than stating them explicitly - they are prone to misinterpretation - another advantage of Richard’s thoroughness of communication. And also the advantage of having a living free being. You can’t ask the dead for clarity, you can only interpret what they’ve already said and if there are gaps, the ignorant can fill those gaps with confused interpretations.
This seemed like a pretty direct and obvious allegory to me. It might have been theoretical; practitioners may have seen the trajectory without fully going there themselves. I think the failure was in my teacher’s understanding, not mine. But it’s a pointless argument, because whoever made it is gone now.
The same will be true of any quote I present here; we can only argue the dead words, as the predecessors who wrote them are gone. That’s why I titled this thread “allusions to actual freedom”, not proof.
For example, the vast majority of Osho’s talks are Being-focused, some Non-Being, then near the end of his life he talks about going beyond enlightenment, that mundane reality holds the ultimate truth:
“First go beyond mind. Then go
beyond enlightenment too.Don’t get stuck anywhere until you are simply an ordinary part of the existence, with the trees, with the birds, with the animals, with
the rivers, with the mountains.You feel a deep harmony - no
superiority, no inferiority.
“ To go beyond enlightenment is not to become greater than Gautam Buddha.
To go beyond enlightenment is to become an ordinary human being. To forget all about enlightenment and all about great spiritual aspirations and to live simply joyously, playfully… this ordinariness is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world.”
But you will not be able to recognize him. Up to Gautam Buddha you will be able to recognize, but as a person moves beyond Gautam Buddha, he will start slipping out of your hands. Those who have recognized him as an enlightened being may remain aware of who he is, but those who come new will not be able to recognize him at all, because he will be simply a very innocent, ordinary human being — just like a child collecting seashells on the beach, running after butterflies, gathering flowers. No division of body and soul, no division of matter and spirit, no division of this life and that — all that is forgotten; one has relaxed totally.”
“Enlightenment makes you special. That means something of the ego in some subtle form still remains. Others are ignorant, you are a knower; others are going towards hell, your paradise is guaranteed. These are the last remnants of a dying ego. And when this ego also dies the buddha becomes an ordinary human being, not knowing at all that he is holier than thou, higher than thou, special in any sense — so ordinary that even a bottle of wine is acceptable. The whole of life is acceptable; the days and the nights, the flowers and the thorns, the saints and the sinners – all are acceptable, with no discrimination at all. This ordinariness is really the greatest flowering of human reality”
You could quote a ton of shit from Osho to make the point that he was enlightened rather than actually free, because the vast majority of the teachings were from that perspective. Again, he’s dead, so we can’t press him.
But these quotes sound plenty like what Richard is saying to me.
I would turn the groupthink argument back to you: why are you bent on interpreting these quotes in a way that supports Richard’s assertion that he is the first person to ever become actually free? Can you admit that the ambiguity of interpretation makes it possible that all these sources are describing the same thing he was, even though we can’t know for sure?
They certainly sound like they’re describing the same thing. It doesn’t make them a good roadmap; the roadmap Richard provided was unique. But I don’t know if he’s the only one who ever went there, even if he was the first to write about it in the ways he did and suggest a unique course to get there.