Richard: I was therefore commenting that (in this specific instance) India’s paramount contribution to the retardation of evolution over the last 3,000 to 5,000 years (in that after maybe the millions of years of evolution necessary to evolve thought, thoughts and thinking (intelligence) in one animal species alone, the Masters and the Gurus and the Avatars and all the God-Men would have us value being thoughtless and mindless as if that is the highest virtue one can aspire to) is part of the mosaic of the evolutionary process and would soon become superseded when a mutation more fitted for survival takes precedence over such fantasy. [emphasis added] (Richard, List B, No. 33b, 29 Nov 1999).
Kuba: There is no reason why those holy men could not have gone all the way, instead they became enlightened and brought insanity back with them. (link)
Ed: Many of those men were uneducated and steeped in religious beliefs during a time-period lacking the scientific discoveries we enjoy. It’s possible they had strong religious beliefs in place before their enlightenments, and would have little to no reason to question it if they did not have a memory of the PCE.
Richard on the other hand was barely catholic, had access to information, enjoyed more independence, and was reasonably wealthy. He likely had little preconceived ideas to shape his journey – he never even thought to get enlightened or read about it like many of us. It doesn’t seem like he ever considered the idea of escaping or ending the human condition until his 4-hour long PCE experience that kicked everything off. So he just went for that, with little to-no religious baggage or spiritual guidance.
These other men, lived in a time where people could be brutally killed for going against convention. They were likely inundated in religion from a very young age. And it’s possible their enlightenment validates their previous beliefs, even though it may not have turned out to be what they originally expected.
Religions would have existed with or without enlightenment as a means to explain the world. And feeling beings would have fought to protect those beliefs. It’s hard to separate the enlightened men from it as they were influenced by religion and they influenced religion. (link)
Hi Ed,
You gave an exonerative speech why nobody before Richard could have discovered an actual freedom but your facts are incorrect.
For instance, Richard was not “reasonably wealthy” – he had to work hard for his living, including from early childhood.
Richard: Having been born and raised on a dairy farm in the south-west of this country I have an affinity for the remote lifestyle (my progenitors were pioneer settlers carving a farm by hand out of virgin forest and sowing grasslands for animal husbandry). In this context I had a normal birth and upbringing (a bucolic lifestyle); I was educated in a normal state-run rural school (where being dux of the class came easy); I took on a typical occupation at age fifteen (full-time farming) becoming a high-school dropout in the process; I volunteered for a six-year stint in the military at seventeen (in a water-transport unit); I served my time in an overseas war at nineteen (on an army landing ship); I entered into a commonplace marriage upon my return (a knobstick wedding); I had a regular family, just as most peoples do, and, although I had about forty-to-fifty different jobs during my post-military itinerant-lifestyle working life – such as First Mate on an Arnhem Land landing craft, for instance, and as barman-cum-deckhand on a Coral Coast tourist ship, for example – my main occupation, having obtained a tertiary education with certified accreditation in the fine arts in my late-twenties, was as a part-time art teacher and a practicing artist (mainly in ceramics).
As both a boy and as a youth I personally used hand-held cross-cut saws and axes to help cut down and/or ring-bark the trees to make pasture land; I was involved in the fencing and ploughing and sowing and harvesting; I hunted game in the forest and helped raise domesticated animals; I tended the gardens and orchards and crops; I assisted in building sheds (barns) and outhouses from forest timber and learned improvisation from the ingenuity required in ‘making do’ with minimal commercial supplies. There was no plumbing, sewage, telephone, or electricity umbilicals (in effect, living the ‘off-grid’ lifestyle some forty years before the term was coined) – I went to bed with a candle and to the outdoor latrine with a kerosene lantern – thus no freezer, no electric kitchen gadgets, no record players, no videos, no television, no computer, and etcetera. (Richard, Personal Web Page)
He also had to work up to 12-14 hrs a day 6-7 days a week to support a family of six –
Richard: I found myself in a situation where I was married and raising four children. (Richard, AF List, No. 27e, 5 April 2003).
Richard: I gradually transformed myself from an itinerant worker (I worked at maybe 40-50 different jobs during my peregrinations) into a full-blown artist by enrolling at an art-college, full-time for three years, and practising same 12-14 hours a day 6-7 days a week, in the years after graduating, so as to support and provide for five other peoples as well as myself. (Richard, AF List, No. 25j, 7 May 2006).
After he became enlightened, he was even less “reasonably wealthy” to the point where he had “whittled my worldly possessions down to three sarongs, three shirts, a cooking pot and bowl, a knife and a spoon, a bank book and a pair of nail scissors. I possessed nothing else anywhere in the world and cut all family ties. During that period I was homeless, itinerant, celibate, vegan, (no spices; not even salt and pepper), no drugs (no tobacco, no alcohol; not even tea or coffee), no hair cut, no shaving, no washing other than a dip in a river or the ocean … in short: whatever I could eliminate from my life that was an encumbrance and an attachment, I had let go of. ” (Richard, List B, No. 21b, 23 March 2000)
Richard always maintained the Saints and Seers and Holy Men had ‘Feet of Clay’ ([link](Abditorium F of Clay)) because just like Richard they would be well aware at some instances of their enlightened state that there was a flaw, in that they experienced occasional bouts of anger or sadness, and furthermore that enlightenment was only a ‘perfect’ solution after death and therefore useless to every single human being still living. As Richard reported that everyone he spoke to at length could remember a PCE, often from childhood, your absolvitory argument falls flat on its face on that account as well. And as for certain recent discoveries, at least the enlightened masters of the last century since Darwin could have made use of this knowledge.
In, short, it was not the extraneous circumstances, which enabled Richard to go all the way, no matter the difficulties involved, but ‘his’ personal mettle. Additionally ‘he’ had the plain common sense not to fall for the fallacy, which “would have us value being thoughtless and mindless as if that is the highest virtue one can aspire to”. After all, it was the mailing list established to discuss Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Teaching on which he wrote the above paragraph. This attitude of disparaging thought and thus human intelligence, and not religion in general, is what made India stand out in its “paramount contribution to the retardation of evolution”.
Why are you so eager to exonerate the enlightened masters and the ancient wisdom they peddled for 3000-5000 years of human history, and why you even try to argue that only Richard’s circumstances were propitious enough, of the 12-15 billion people who have lived until now and/or are alive now, that he was the only person to be not “influenced by religion”?
I just want to have it on record that it’s not extraneous circumstances, with all the modern technology thrown in for good measure, which allow a person today to become free from the human condition. Something else is required.
Cheers Vineeto