# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Mr. Douglas Harding RESPONDENT: I presume you know about Douglas Harding. How would you classify him [his state]? RICHARD: It took me about 3 minutes to locate the following passages: • ‘He wanted to find out who he really was before he died. In a sense, any other question became secondary to this one: Who am I really? Harding finally discovered what and who was at centre not by thinking but simply by looking. This moment is described in his book ‘On Having No Head’ (Arkana). Basically, he realised he could see his legs, arms, trunk, but not his head. From where he was looking, he was headless. Instead of his head there was nothing – clear space, emptiness. And in this space was the world. He had ‘lost a head and gained a world’. This experience corresponds to what in other traditions might be called Liberation, Enlightenment, seeing God, seeing the Void, being centred’. (www.headless.org/English/main.html). And in his own words: • ‘Over the past thirty years a truly contemporary and Western way of ‘seeing into one’s Nature’ or ‘Enlightenment’ has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort’. (www.headless.org/English/thw.htm) • ‘Unself-conscious: The principle of this meditation is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For finding the Self is losing the self’. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm). * RESPONDENT: Here I have to make some digression. [snip digression]. I think though, my present ongoing experience is that of ‘Excellent experience’ or generally as you suggested above virtual freedom. RICHARD: No, I never suggested (further above) that your present ongoing experience is, generally or otherwise, that of virtual freedom ... on the contrary, I clearly stated that, even though all it takes is about three (3) minutes to locate the passages regarding what Mr. Douglas Harding has to say, which passages are blatantly self-explanatory to one who is virtually free of the human condition, you still had to ask me how I would classify him/ his state. And neither would I suggest your normal state is an on-going excellence experience (the penultimate virtual freedom experience) either ... just to refresh your memory: • [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘Over the past thirty years a truly contemporary and Western way of ‘seeing into one’s Nature’ or ‘Enlightenment’ has been developing. Though *in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines*, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort’. [emphasis added]. (www.headless.org/English/thw.htm). • [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘The principle of this meditation [‘Unself-conscious Meditation’] is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For *finding the Self is losing the self*’. [emphasis added]. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm). And while I am at it: • [Ms. Bernadette Roberts]: ‘It is quite possible that at some time or other everyone has made contact with the self-as-subject [as distinct from self-as-object]. All that is required for such an encounter is the cessation of the reflexive movement of the mind bending back on itself. Without this reflexive (or pre-reflexive) movement, we are no longer aware of our own awareness, our own feelings and thoughts, and thus we have encountered self-as-subject. But since this subjective self is as nothing to the mind, we cannot stay in this condition for long and soon fall back into self-consciousness or self-as-object. To remain in this un-reflexive condition for any length of time would mean encountering an emptiness, a void, a nothingness that is the subjective self – *which I have called no-self*’. [emphasis added]. (‘Pure Subjectivity’, from the book ‘The Experience of No-Self’, by Bernadette Roberts; 1982; http://norea.net/roberts/pure%20subjectivity.htm). And: • [Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti]: ‘This individual [referring to himself] is always in a state of meditation. (...) When there is no movement of thought, you don’t know whether it [the outer world] is inside or outside. (...) This absence of the movement of thought which recognises and names things is the state of samadhi, *sahaja (natural) samadhi*. You imagine that samadhi is something he [referring to himself] goes into and comes out of. Not at all; he’s always there’. [emphasis added]. (from Part Four, ‘The Mystique Of Enlightenment’; Second Edition; Published by: Akshaya Publications, Bangalore, INDIA. 1992: www.well.com/user/jct/moetitle.htm). What I would suggest, however, is that your initial LSD trip was an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... and here is another reason why (from the snipped digression): • [Respondent]: ‘I saw (...) also beauty of the world around ...’. Quite simply: beauty is an affective experience – the subjective ‘self’s pathetic imitation of the pristine purity of the actual – and, as you currently have a feeling of weightlessness (aka a lightness of being), I would also suggest your present on-going experience is an after-effect of feeling the same a couple of months ago whilst ingesting psilocybin on a daily basis over a two-week period ... a technique, by the way, almost guaranteed to reduce the effect. As I have remarked before, by and large, most substance-induced peak experiences are ASC’s, and not PCE’s (else an actual freedom from the human condition would surely have been discovered aeons ago), which is the main reason why I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances. Here is another way I have put it (from my first e-mail to you): • [Richard]: ‘(...) I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances (for obvious reasons). If, however, someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use *as it is all-too-easy for an altered state of consciousness (ASC) to emerge rather than a pure consciousness experience (PCE)* ... there are many accounts available on the internet and 4 or 5 years ago I browsed through several web pages and never found any description that resembled a PCE. (...)’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 61, 29 January 2004). I do not see how I could have put any more plainly than that. RESPONDENT: Douglass Harding, Byron Katie, Maximillian Sandor, bunches of folks in the ex-scientology camp (put ‘freezone’ into your search engine) are all, in their various ways, about using INSIGHT to deconstruct to iron grip of ego-self without getting caught up in the big SELF spiritualist experience of Ramana Maharshi, Bernadette Roberts, et al. RICHARD: The following quotes may very well throw some light upon the matter: • [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘Unself-conscious: The principle of this meditation is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For finding the Self is losing the self’. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm). • [Ms. Sunny Massad]: ‘And how was your relationship with your husband’s body? • [Ms. Byron Katie]: ‘Uhhhh. [Sighs.] First time we made love it was just amaaazing. It was radical! Cuz it was God with God. And it was the receiving of it and the giving ah, it was just amazing! (‘An Interview with Byron Katie’; reprinted from ‘The Noumenon Journal: Nondual Perspectives on Transformation’; www.realization.org/page/doc1/doc107b.htm). • [Mr. Maximilian Sandor]: ‘He [Gotamo Siddharto] summarised his message in ‘Four Special Truths’: (...) 2. The truth about how a Being alienates itself and becomes trapped in a Universe’. (‘A Summary of Gotamo’s Principle in Today’s Language’; ©1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.; http://orunla.org/pnohteftu/ch16.html). • [Mr. Maximilian Sandor]: ‘Before a Being can withdraw from this Universe, every connection to it must be dissolved (which is tantamount to a complete integration of the Being)’. (The Buddha Paradox; ©1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.; http://orunla.org/pnohteftu/ch441.html). • [The Editors]: ‘The Beingness-by-itself, the free, un-detached beingness is a factor outside the ‘playground’ of our world – in a broader sense outside of ‘the physically measurable’. Beingness-by-itself is the creator of consciousness, and consciousness is the creator of the world. An Individual evolves out of the Beingness-by-itself and brings itself into a ‘form’ with the help of consciousness. It is then subjected to the laws of freedom and compulsion’. (‘Central Statement’, ‘The Free Zone’; www.scientologie.org/se_nsumm.htm). RESPONDENT: P.S.: A friend of mine it’s very interested in your comments about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Have you something written about it, or could you send me some comments? Thank you. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet: • ‘Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not – body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that – nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being’. (www.nisargadatta.net/IamThat.html). Amongst other things he is saying that he is not the body ... that he is the limitless being. RESPONDENT: Do you Know Jim Leonard? He has promoted a method to enjoying all in life, he called it Vivation. It’s developed from the Rebirthing technique, but it’s completely opposite in essence. I insist you in exploring what Jim and Vivation proposes, because I think he is very near in his approach to yours. He emphasizes emotional dealing, as associated with spontaneous and mobile breathing. He promotes experiencing actually how ‘negative’ emotions can be ‘integrated’, in his terms, what means a transformation in ‘positive’ ones, for instance, anger integrates in determination, fear in alert, sorrow in gratefulness. I think you can study more carefully his writings, maybe in the web. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which speaks for itself: • ‘Everyone needs spiritual renewal. Vivation enables you to experience your own divine spirit directly, without belief systems. Every Vivation session gives you clarity. This is because your feeling awareness is more connected to your spirit than your thinking mind is. Your spirit reliably knows what’s best for you. Vivation resolves your emotions and enables you to feel the will of your spirit’. (www.vivation.com/UsesforVivation.htm). RESPONDENT: Another approach you could maybe explore, for its possible similitude with actualism in a practice called Katsugen-undo, that means in Japanese regenerative movement. It consists in letting the involuntary system of the body operate freely. In this practice, there is a main insistence in the primitive brain, that control involuntary reflects and movements. By the practice, all the conditioning about the more primitive responses of the body dissolves, and the body recovers innocent spontaneity, and sensitivity. In this process also breathing arises spontaneously, and emotions, that also normalises. Both Katsugen-undo and Vivation process, can and should also be applied in daily life. The main introductor of Katsugen was Ichio Tsuda. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which also speaks for itself: • ‘There are many benefits of Katsugen, and they are not all physical. Because the body, mind and spirit are interlinked and cannot really be separated, what interacts with one influences the other. And so it is with Katsugen. Katsugen is not limited to being only a physical movement but is a philosophy of living that encompasses the totality of body, mind and soul. Therefore, the benefits will correspondingly be to the sum of the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the human entity’. (www.katsugen.com/page4.html). RESPONDENT: By the end, do you know about Douglas Harding? Explore also about him, he explains a path he calls the headless way. He, as you, states the inexistence of a perceptor, only the world is perceived in all its magnificence and extreme brightness. If you have the time to investigate on him, you will see by your own. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which clearly indicates, amongst other names, that it is the enlightened state he is talking about: • ‘He wanted to find out who he really was before he died. In a sense, any other question became secondary to this one: Who am I really? Harding finally discovered what and who was at centre not by thinking but simply by looking. This moment is described in his book ‘On Having No Head’ (Arkana). Basically, he realised he could see his legs, arms, trunk, but not his head. From where he was looking, he was headless. Instead of his head there was nothing – clear space, emptiness. And in this space was the world. He had ‘lost a head and gained a world’. This experience corresponds to what in other traditions might be called Liberation, Enlightenment, seeing God, seeing the Void, being centred’. (www.headless.org/English/main.html). RESPONDENT: It’s very possible that you have yet explored about these people, in this case, please say me what do you think about them, if it is convenient. Thanks. RICHARD: They are all spiritual people. RESPONDENT: It strikes me (and I have wondered about this before) – that there is a kind of solipsism of experience going on here – as in much of the spiritual literature on enlightenment and non-duality. Douglas Harding expresses it quite well in his idea of ‘having no head’. I heard Bernadette Roberts put it exactly that way – and I also see it in UG’s statements about not being aware of his body. The ‘experience’ might be characterized by a consciousness being unable to reflect upon itself as to have ‘self’-consciousness – which is why they make so much of it being a non-experience. Ludwig Wittgenstein made this a dominant theme in his life and writing as well. It is an extreme scepticism about thought and knowledge that J Krishnamurti shares to some extent with UG, Wittgenstein, Bernadette Roberts, Douglas Harding, and probably most spiritualists – which is why the limits of knowledge is so important to them. JK talked about intelligence awakening when it discovers it’s limits – UG has similar themes, BR identifies greatly with the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ and makes much of unknowing, and Wittgenstein was instrumental in giving birth to the current spirit of postmodernism where doubt and scepticism are trusted more highly than common sense knowledge. I’m going on here, but I’m just writing as it occurs to me. The common theme is that reflective consciousness no longer comes into play in this state. The world doesn’t really have a past or future (only timelessness), there is no ‘self’, objects appear flat (no-3D), no ‘attachment’ to the past or future since they don’t exist, all that exists is what is given to present experience – everything else is ‘unknown’. Take that formula and turn in into a life and you get UG’s undivided consciousness. RICHARD: Yes ... an ‘undivided consciousness’ means there is, literally, no observer and the observed (aka subject and object) – the observer is the observed (aka ‘Tat Tvam Asi’/ ‘Thou Art That’) – wherein there is only observation (aka witnessing). In a word: solipsism. RESPONDENT: Could it be this easy? Undivided Consciousness = Solipsism of Present (non-reflexive) Consciousness? RICHARD: It is indeed that easy (although even the word ‘Present’ becomes nonsensical as it is a timeless state). RESPONDENT: I don’t know if you understand what I’m getting at, but I’m beginning to wonder whether you have a big smile of recognition on your face indicating that you understand it all too well – as in what you lived through? RICHARD: Indeed so ... and it is why I am responding to this e-mail ahead of the others awaiting my attention. RESPONDENT: Is this also be the reason why you sniff out solipsism wherever it rears it’s ugly head, because of the relationship between solipsism and spiritual realization? RICHARD: Yes, phrases such as ‘we are all one’ (as in an oceanic feeling of oneness) are meant to be taken literally (as in ‘there is no other’) ... as is ‘I Am That’ (not the ego-‘I’ though) or ‘Thou Art That’ meant to be taken literally. And if the mystic is really coy (which I was) they say ‘There is only That’ – hence the ‘Anatta’ (‘No-Self’) doctrine of Buddhism – and either decline to comment on after-death states or declare there is no such thing as death (such as I did). To awaken in the dream is to be but dreaming lucidly ... and is not to be taken as being awake. RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE 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- . All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity