Claudiu: The most crucial part was when I was contemplating on the fact that whatever ‘I’ could do for the world, e.g. if I dedicate my life to philanthropy, or doing good works, or doing this company or that thing – nothing would be as me doing the most I could as self-immolating. There would always be an aspect of it where I am not giving it my all, where it ends up being self-centered for ‘me’, rather than actually for the benefit of the world / of humanity etc. But the most I can do, the very best I can do, is to self-immolate!
Hi @Claudiu,
Ha you got it in one – the very best ‘you’ can do to benefit both the flesh-and-blood Claudiu and every human being “is to self-immolate”.
And the wonderful thing is that you can do all the other activities as well, if you still find it sensible, and thoroughly enjoy it and delight in it as the actually free Claudiu.
Claudiu: The other thing I resolved delightfully is I started to feel an objection like that I want to know what it’s like before I do it, and somehow feeling it’s unfair that I can’t. And then I saw it was silly, because it’s just a fact that I won’t know what it’s like until it happens. The delightful analogy that came up is that it’s like having sex for the first time, you can read all about it and try to simulate it but you don’t know what it’s actually like until it happens! And if you wait until knowing what it’s like before you do it you’ll just always remain a virgin haha. So better to just go for it even if you don’t exactly know what you’re doing at first.
That’s a great analogy. It goes much further than that too. Just contemplate what life would be like if you knew every experience beforehand, you might not even want to be born! What’s the point of having an experience if you know what it is like in detail beforehand? There would be no adventure, no exploration, no naiveté, no interest to do anything because nothing will be new and fresh.
Whereas you know from experience, when you are in a PCE or near-PCE then every moment is new, fresh, never happened before.
Richard: This moment of being alive has never happened before and will never happen again. It is unique. As it is always this moment already, everything is immediately peerless. Therefore it is never boring … it is ever-fresh … I am never boring … I am ever-fresh. I have never been here before … everything is happening for the very first time … I am happening for the very first time. Because I am ever-new, I am automatically innocent. Innocence prevails where time has no duration. (Richard, List A, No. 23, No. 01)
Richard: I have never been here before, I am perpetually new. I appear as this moment appears. As each moment is fresh, new, so too am I novel, artless and innocent. I can never gather dust, as it were, for I cast no shadow. I have no presence, no being. I do not exist, psychologically speaking. With no entity within to mess things up, I am actually perfection personified, pure and simple, through no effort at all. I can take no credit for my unimpeachable character, it all happens of itself as the universe intends it to. (Richard, List A, No. 5a, No. 20)
Richard: All this is just happening of its own accord. Everything I experience is actual to this moment. And this moment is occurring now. This particular moment of being here has never happened before … and it will never happen again. This moment is ever-fresh, perennially new. It is consistently so; dependable in its originality and reliable in its uniqueness. For twenty-four-hours-a-day it is like this, day-in-day-out … therefore it is impossible for it to ever become boring. This moment does not exist in the ‘real world’, it exists in the actual world. Only the present can exist in reality. (Richard, List A, No. 22, No. 01)
Cheers Vineeto