# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On The Third Alternative RICHARD: There is a third alternative: this actual world that the ‘real world’ is pasted over as a veneer. RESPONDENT: Yes. The localised mind of man creates an inner self, an inner centred known observer, that superimposes an imaginary world over the actual (...) Once that the self has been left behind, one is the mind of mankind. One is the humanity, but the possibility of self-centeredness is understood and ‘seen through’. RICHARD: Aye ... and therein lies the rub. There is a vast distinction betwixt the ‘Tried and Failed’ solution of ‘leaving the self behind’ and this third alternative: the elimination of identity in its totality. That is: the difference between ‘transformation’ and ‘extinction’. RESPONDENT: Sorry, I don’t understand ‘Aye’. Is it a yes or no? Anyway I would say: ‘the elimination of a centred known observer that becomes in time ...’ RICHARD: Yes ... why does the ‘centred known observer’ exist in the first place? Is the ‘centred known observer’ really a product of time (as in ‘becomes in time’?). Or is there a more fundamental cause? (The fundamental cause of the ‘centred known observer’ must be ascertained in order to bring about fundamental change). (The word ‘aye’ is ‘yes’ as in an ‘eternal’ sense that it is so ... for example: ‘yes, unfortunately it has always been this way’. Its roots are: Gothic ‘aiws’ meaning ‘age’ or ‘eternity’ and relates to the Latin ‘aevum: ‘age’ and the Greek ‘aie(i): ‘ever’). RESPONDENT: All that a man perceives in this situation is the mind of mankind, but now, something more emerges. I agree that one is not the average humanity, although average humanity is also here, now. My senses, brain, are and will be human till the day I die. Again, all that is perceptible, sensible, is the human mind as one. I’m a tri-dimensional flesh and blood man ... and more. What is the more that emerges? To see this one must be real or actual or factual. We are somewhere. This is the more. We are contained in something adimensional. Be careful here. We must not deal with concepts. This container (approximate word, don’t look it up in the dictionary), is the universal mind. All there is, is contained, or thought by this universal mind that moulded everything that is, was, will be, manifested, non-manifested ... etc. I’ll stop here for now. RICHARD: Okay, no dictionary ... I will put this simply: the ‘Universal Mind’ is nothing but the ‘human mind’ sublimated and transcended. RESPONDENT: What happened? Why do you say this? The sun was here before mankind, although all we perceive of it is ‘as mankind’. Instead of universal mind we may call it the ‘primordial matter’, or ‘emptiness’. Why do you object? RICHARD: Because you went mystical. (‘All there is, is contained, or thought by this universal mind that moulded everything that is, was, will be, manifested, non-manifested’). There is no ‘universal mind’ outside of the imaginative/ intuitive faculty of the human being. * RICHARD: Yet I do keep things simple because I have only one central point: everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. RESPONDENT: Could you please clarify who ‘everybody’ is? Are they the ones from your relations, the ones from this list, or everybody else on the planet? RICHARD: It is a categorical, wide-ranging, all-inclusive ‘everybody’ (with the marked exception of a handful of people). It is every man, woman and child currently alive on this planet ... all 6.0 billion. It also includes the (possibly) 4.0 billion that have been alive on this planet for perhaps the last 50,000 years ... it includes both the sane people and the insane people. There is a third alternative. * RESPONDENT: Which is the third alternative? With original words ... please. RICHARD: It is possible to live in this modern era, freed from out-dated philosophy and psychiatry, challenging every spiritual and metaphysical tenet and surpassing any of the Altered States Of Consciousness. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thraldom 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. It is now possible for any human being to be totally free from sorrow and malice; the two fundamental elements that prevent one from being happy and harmless. Gone now are the days of having to assiduously practice humility and pacifism in an ultimately futile attempt to become free by transcending the opposites ... the traditional and narrow path of denial and fantasy, negation and hallucination. A wide and wondrous path of blitheness and gaiety is now available for one who wishes to live the freedom of the actual. Actual freedom is a tried and tested way of being here now in the world as it actually is ... stripped of the veneer of reality or Greater Reality that is super-imposed by the psychological or psychic entity within the body. This entity is that sense of identity that inhibits any freedom and sabotages every well-meant endeavour. Thus far one has had only two choices: being ‘human’ or being ‘divine’. Now there is a third alternative ... and it supersedes any mystical Altered State. Philosophical wisdom, psychological knowledge and spiritual enlightenment have had their day and are proving themselves inadequate to meet the requirements of this modern era. For thousands of years – maybe tens of thousands of years – humankind has known of no alternative manner of living life on this verdant planet. The passing parade of Philosophers and Preachers, Masters and Sages – geniuses and thinkers of all description – have failed abysmally to deliver their oft-promised ‘Peace On Earth’ ... in fact, because of their much-vaunted love and compassion, they have left in their wake much hatred and bloodshed, the likes of which beggars description. Millions of well-meaning followers have diligently put their ‘Teachings’ into practice, prostrating and belittling themselves like all get-out in a hopeful attempt to live the unliveable. Yet no-one, it seems, dares to question the ‘Teachings’ themselves; instead the humiliated penitents obligingly blame themselves for failing to achieve release from the ‘Human Condition’. To seek freedom via profound and lofty thought or sublime and exalted feelings is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial. The time has come to put to an end, once and for all, the blight that has encumbered this fair earth for far too long. It behoves one to question all of the received ‘wisdom’ of the centuries, all of the revealed ‘truths’ ... all of the half-baked inanities that pass for understanding. Then, and only then, there is a fair chance that one can come to an actual freedom ... a freedom the nature of which has never been before in human experience. The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the ‘Unknown’, stopped short of the final goal ... the ‘Unknowable’. Notwithstanding the cessation of a personal ego operating, they were unwilling to relinquish the Self or Spirit ... and an ego-less Self or Spirit is still an identity, nevertheless. In spite of the glamour and the glory of the Altered State Of Consciousness, closer examination reveals that these ‘Great’ persons had – and have – feet of clay. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, they have led humankind astray. Preaching submission or supplication they keep a benighted ‘humanity’ in appalling tribulation and distress. The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the identity in its entirety is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. All through the ages and in all cultures, one basic predicament exemplifies the problem of human relationship: man and woman have never been able to live together in peace and harmony and delight for the twenty-four hours of every day. Each and every person alive today has entered this world the only possible way ... one is the progeny of man and woman and the quality of the start of life is in part dependent upon the quality of the relationship of one’s progenitors. The child can only blindly follow the example – and the precepts – bequeathed with love and compassion by the parents. What I have done has been an investigation and an exploration; an uncovering and a discovering of the problems which have tormented both genders ... difficulties which were seemingly set in concrete and not to be disputed. I could not and would not accept the status-quo. I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker – let alone a quarrel – then the universe was indeed a sick joke. This appalling prognosis I was patently incapable of believing. Everyone I have spoken to has experienced moments of perfection and purity in what is known as ‘pure consciousness experiences’ (PCE’s). In such a peak experience everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already always perfect ... that humans are all living in purity ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing. In these moments, good and bad, love and hate, fear and trust, generosity and parsimony ... all these and more, are simply irrelevant. Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons, all the battles that have raged throughout the ages are but a nightmare of passionate ‘human’ fantasy. There is a marked absence of hierarchy; no religious figure can match the matter-of-fact equality that pervades everything. A quality of kindly understanding prevails, dispensing forever with the need for Authority and Love and Truth and Power. And ... of course man and woman live together in peace and harmony. So one has good reason to try for the ‘impossible’ dream of complete harmony between man and woman. What I write is both heretical and iconoclastic ... a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. The divine ‘Beings’ have been peddling their snake oil for centuries to no avail. Their time has come to either put up or shut up ... how much longer than these thousands of years do peoples need to further test the efficaciousness of their failed Divine Message? If Love Agapé and Divine Compassion, for example, were the way to go, then there would already be global peace, as they have had two to three thousand years to demonstrate their effectiveness as being the ultimate solution. There is no ‘Peace On Earth’ ... nor has there ever been; there has only ever been a truce from time to time between warring parties. To call these periods ‘peacetime’ is to misuse the word and make it mean something it does not. In actualism it is readily experienced and understood that Divine Compassion – which is born out of sorrow – is but a paltry substitute for the over-arching benevolence of the actual world. Similarly, Love Agapé is seen and known to be a pathetic surrogate for the actual intimacy of direct experiencing ... Love Agapé and Divine Compassion are deep feelings which the psychological or psychic identity within creates in order to sustain itself and perpetuate its self-centred existence. Love is born out of malice and is touted as being the cure-all for humankind’s failings because it imitates the intimacy of the actual via a feeling of oneness. The feeling of oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the self survives triumphant, only to wreak its havoc in the real world once again. Life can be a grim and glum business in the real world, for separation ceases only when the psychological and psychic entity inside the body – the ego and the soul – is extirpated. In actual freedom there is a universal magnanimity which is so vastly superior to petty forgiveness or pardon that any comparison is worthless. The self is what one is born with – it equates with being born in Sin, or being on the wheel of Karma – and can be dispensed with by a curious irrevocable occurrence, which eliminates the entire psyche, was triggered by an intense urge to evince and demonstrate what the universe was evidently capable of manifesting: the utter best in purity and perfection which all humans could have ever longed for. Blind nature, which endows all creatures with the instinct for survival, has now been superseded, paving the way for a truly edified species of fellow human beings to live together in complete peace and harmony. The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. One starts by dismantling the sense of social identity that has been overlaid, from birth onward, over the innate self until one is virtually free from all the social mores and psittacisms ... those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. One can be virtually free from all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one thinks and feels oneself to be ... a wayward social identity careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is. One can become virtually free from all the insidious feelings – the emotions and passions – that fuel the mind and give credence to all the illusions and delusions and fantasies and hallucinations that masquerade as visions of ‘The Truth’. One can become virtually free of all that which has encumbered humans with misery and despair and live in a state of virtual freedom ... which is beyond ‘normal’ human expectations anyway. Then, and only then, can the day of destiny dawn wherein one becomes actually free. One will have obtained release from one’s fate and achieved one’s destiny ... and the world will be all the better for it. This, the third alternative, is now possible. RESPONDENT: Though you may have ‘witnessed’ my previous naïve responses, I’m rather confident that over the years our conversations can be considered to have been ‘fruitful’. Nevertheless though it has been (as I have understood sensible) to discriminate between being worldly and spiritual at this point I do not longer find that a sensible discrimination. RICHARD: The classifications ‘materialism’ and ‘spiritualism’ existed long before I was born ... I am merely keeping with that convention for the sake of both consistency and clarity in communication. RESPONDENT: Given the fact that at large spiritual and political notions are so well blended that it seems that the one can/ needs not be <accurately/ sensibly> discriminated from the other. I for one find this aptly reflected in the rhetoric (albeit somewhat more or less pathetic) of most of the world leaders I have listened to. Thus the third alternative (this being actualism) I from now would like to consider as the second alternative thus possibly facilitating the choice to be made by aspirant students between the traditional ways (tried and proved to have been a failure) and a hitherto not existing alternative now named Actualism. If you have a different opinion as to this matter of discrimination naturally I would gladly take notice of. RICHARD: Better than mere opinion I can state it as a fact that there is neither ‘materialism’ nor ‘spiritualism’ here in this actual world (the former being an illusion and the latter a delusion born out of the illusion). Thus there is not even a ‘second alternative’ in actuality. RESPONDENT: I didn’t mean to compare my feeling more neutral with respect to ‘disapproving of the universe happening’ with a PCE. Not at all. RICHARD: The two descriptions I provided were in the nature of realisations – not PCE’s – and may very well throw some light upon what ‘neither approving nor disapproving’ means (other than being neutral) as the middle ground between black and white, for an analogy, is grey. As a general rule of thumb, when one comes upon a dichotomous situation, there is quite often a third alternative ... the most obvious one being neither suppressing nor expressing a feeling, such as anger for a ready-enough example, whereupon the feeling is put into a bind, as it were, and in the interregnum a third alternative can hove into view. RESPONDENT: I both understand and experience the felicitousness you speak of. I have no problem distinguishing between that kind of well-being and the seesaw of nurture/ aggression, love/ hate, etc. and everything between the two extremes. I share the sense of wonder for the universe, this world, people just as it all is. I no longer need to displace my wonder into the spiritual or otherworldly. The fact that I am simply here, and the world as it is, is simply here only increases my sense of wonder and joy. RICHARD: True ... it is such a wondrous thing that all this is happening – all in such luscious colour too – and a marvel that we are all doing this business called being alive! RESPONDENT: But, for some time I’ve simply accepted the occasional appearance of suffering as a part of being alive. RICHARD: Ahh ... ‘accepted’, eh? Thereby hangs a tale: the word ‘acceptance’ has a lot of currency these days and popular usage has given it somewhat the same meaning as ‘allow’ or ‘permit’ or ‘tolerate’ ... as I have remarked in an earlier E-Mail, nineteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the physical world and just knew that this enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ the persona realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ the persona felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the wisdom of the ‘real-world’ that ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. I ceased accepting, allowing, permitting or tolerating suffering there and then. Which is why I say to people to ‘embrace death’ (as in unreservedly saying !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body) as a full-blooded approval and endorsement. Those peoples who say that they ‘accept’ ... um ... a rapist, for just one example, never for one moment are approving and endorsing ... let alone unreservedly saying !YES! to the rapist. So much for ‘acceptance’ as a viable modus operandi. RESPONDENT: I don’t feel either condemned by it or justified by it. RICHARD: Good. RESPONDENT: I’m not tormented by it or uplifted by it. RICHARD: Excellent. RESPONDENT: So, I don’t quite know what to make of your proposition. A simple and simplistic solution to the ‘human condition’ is somewhat reminiscent of the promises of Self-realization and transcendence. RICHARD: Oh yes, it is similar in some respects because it is a condition that lies beyond enlightenment ... and is much, much better as this is actual and not a fantasy just for starters. But there is more to it than that ... there is all the advantages of spiritualism and none of the disadvantages; there is all the advantages of materialism and none of the disadvantages. Actualism is a genuine third alternative. RESPONDENT: Mind you, my problem with the spiritual shtick isn’t that its method for perfect bliss fails – it’s that it distances itself from this perfect world that to me is perfect not because it is happy or unhappy, but simply because it is. So once I gave up on the idea that there was somewhere to go better than here, and something to be better than what I was – it has never occurred to me that being perfectly undisturbed was a prerequisite for being perfectly content with being alive. RICHARD: Only if one wants it ... the universe does not force anyone to be happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one will travel. RESPONDENT: I was quite successful in my spiritual endeavours, but I found I didn’t want to distance myself from being here, being this body, being a physical being. RICHARD: Yea verily, ‘distance oneself’ is the appropriate term: all religiosity, spirituality, mysticality and metaphysicality is 180 degrees in the wrong direction ... it is unequivocally a massive dissociation. RESPONDENT: I found I just really wanted to be HERE. So, there is something new for me, a new slant about this physical primitive reptilian self you speak of. RICHARD: Great stuff, is it not? Personally, I am so glad to be able to be alive and living in this era wherein all kinds of discoveries have been made which threw off the stranglehold religion had upon the Western mind for centuries (people used to be burnt at the stake for much less heretical writing than what I do). This emerging clarity of Western thought has been swamped recently by the insidious doctrines of the Eastern mind creeping into scientific research ... it is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the pundits of the East down the slippery slope of ‘spiritual science’ and ‘mystical philosophy’ ... thinking that it has nothing to do with religiosity. But I am confident that this is but a passing phase. RESPONDENT: However, I do care about the wars, the domestic violence, the child abuse, the misery of the world. RICHARD: By watching/ reading the news bulletins with whatever media one has access to, and utilising one’s affective feelings to really, deeply, primally feel all the anguish and animosity inherent in all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides that parades across billions of TV screens daily, one can become vitally interested in ridding oneself of that which the human animal shares in common ancestry with all sentient beings: the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Because unless one deeply, primally cares about peace on earth one will never even begin to free the crippled intelligence from the debilitating passions bestowed by blind nature. Yet becoming vitally interested is but the preliminary stage, because until one becomes curious as to whether what is being written on an actual freedom can be applied to themselves, only then does the first step begin. For it is only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person participating in their search for freedom for the first time in their life. This is because people mostly look to rearranging their beliefs and truths as being sufficient effort ... ‘I’ am willing to be free as long as ‘I’ can remain ‘me’. In other words: their notion of freedom is a ‘clip-on’. Then curiosity becomes fascination ... and then the fun begins to gain a momentum of its own. One is drawn inexorably further and further towards one’s destiny ... fascination leads to commitment and one can know when one’s commitment is approaching a 100% commitment because others around one will classify one as ‘obsessed’ (in spite of all their rhetoric a 100% commitment to evoking peace-on-earth is actively discouraged by one’s peers). Eventually one realises that one is on one’s own in this, the adventure of a life-time, and a peculiar tenacity that enables one to proceed against all odds ensues. Then one takes the penultimate step ... one abandons ‘humanity’. Freedom then unfolds its inevitable destiny. RESPONDENT: I do enjoy the conversations. RICHARD: It is a pleasure and a privilege to partake in a discussion about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Because it is us human beings alive today we are discussing ... although other than a handful of people, I am yet to find someone with something original to say; they have all regurgitated either the wisdom of the ‘real world’ or the wisdom of the received teachings from some ‘Greater Reality’. I find it amazing that people are content to live on pap ... and then proceed to complain to me that life is, literally, a vale of tears. Life was meant to be easy. MARK: I feel very blessed as I start to write to you – blessed to have found someone who seems to me to be speaking the truth unconditionally!! Thank you. My story briefly: I am a ‘seeker’ and have been for 20 or more years and after so long ‘at it’ I can say that it feels as if I have learned or gained just about zero from all the searching and self obsessed introspection. I thought from a very early age that somehow my simple presence on earth should be enough and all else would or should be taken care of .So it seems that my life has consisted of a process of trying this and trying that and then saying ‘well not that’ ... ‘and not’. Along the way I chose to alienate myself from the emphasis on any career or money considerations and now I find myself at 46 yrs of age feeling like a failure in all aspects of life. The past 8 months has been a time of physical ill health, mental depression and questioning of all my beliefs about life and my part in it. I recognise the futility of my beliefs but any real change in my structure seems tediously slow, I get stuck and lost in the mire. I should add that in this recent ‘dark’ period there is an air of ‘pregnancy’ that is somehow encouraging. In short, my mind, during this time runs some (many!!) continuous wobbly beliefs primarily about lack (of money, love, talent, meaning, etc.) about ill health and that my body can and will cause me ‘undeserved’ pain and feels unsafe and at risk of injury, and I also feel often as tho’ I have this animal adrenalised fight or flight mechanism switched on all the time. Richard, I suppose the question that I ask is – what is the most effective way to deconstruct my mumbo jumbo belief system. Thank you for your time and compassionate availability. RICHARD: I am pleased that you have already found something of benefit from The Actual Freedom Web-Site. Where you say: ‘I feel very blessed to have found someone who seems to me to be speaking the truth – unconditionally!!’, you will soon see, if you proceed further, that actualism has nothing to do with ‘The Truth’ and is all about facts and actuality. Ultimately, by going beyond ‘The Truth’ one will find oneself living with total freedom in this world as-it-is with people as-they-are. You say: ‘I am a seeker and have been for 20 or more years and after so long at it I can say that it feels as if I have learned or gained just about zero’. I presume you are referring to the spiritual search for enlightenment. If so – and as you have ‘gained about zero’ – you may indeed have come across what will provide the break-through that you have been looking for ... or not. Actualism is all about furthering the search to a condition that lies beyond spiritual enlightenment ... and for anything to develop at all, a whole raft of beliefs – masquerading as ‘truths’ – have to be examined. What I have to say is both heretical and iconoclastic ... so it may turn out to be of no use to you at all. Just so as I am right up-front from the beginning, I like to make my position crystal clear ... although the next few paragraphs are to be found on the Web-Page, you may have missed them amongst all that is written. By repeating them here, I then know that you are familiar with my back ground ... then there is a level playing field from the start. And I write all this in order to share my experience on the whole subject of the Eastern ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’, as it is commonly considered to be the Summum Bonum of human experience. It is not. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning by going beyond enlightenment – which turned out to be an Altered State Of Consciousness – into the actuality of being here on earth and now in time as this flesh and blood body. For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because this freedom is located here in this very world, this actual world of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond Spiritual Enlightenment. In September 1981 I underwent a monumental transformation into an Altered State Of Consciousness which can only be described as Spiritual Enlightenment. I became Enlightened as the result of an earnest and intense process which commenced in the January of that year. At approximately six o’clock on the morning of Sunday, the sixth of September 1981, my ‘ego’ disappeared entirely in an edifying moment of awakening to an ‘Absolute Reality’. I lived in the Enlightened State for eleven years, so I have an intimate understanding of the marked difference between Spiritual Enlightenment and actual freedom. Over the eleven years I had numerous experiences of a condition that seemed so extreme that one must surely die to attain to it. To go beyond Enlightenment seemed to be an impossibility whilst still alive and breathing. Then at midday on Friday the thirtieth of October 1992 a curious event occurred, due to my intense conviction that it was imperative that someone evince a final and complete condition that would ‘deliver the goods’ so longed for by humanity for millennia. Just like my ego had dissolved, back in 1981, my ‘soul’ disappeared. I was no longer a ‘Self’ existing for all Eternity and transcending Time and Space. I no longer had a feeling of being – or ‘Being’ – and I could no longer detect the presence of The Absolute. There was no ‘Presence’ at all. Since that date I have continued to live in a condition of complete emancipation and utter autonomy ... the condition is both permanent and actual. This is different from Enlightenment in that it is most definitely substantial: there is no longer a transcendence, for I have neither sorrow nor malice anywhere at all to rise above. They have vanished entirely, leaving me both blithesome and benign – carefree and harmless – which leads to a most remarkable state of affairs. The chief characteristics of Enlightenment – Union with the Divine, Universal Compassion, Love Agapé, Ineffable Bliss, The Truth, Timelessness, Spacelessness, Immortality, Aloneness, Oneness, Pacifism, Surrender, Trust, Beauty, and Goodness – being redundant in this totally new condition, are no longer extant. Herein lies the unmistakable distinction between this condition, which I call actual freedom, and the Enlightened State: I am no longer driven by a Divine Sense Of Mission to bring The Truth, Universal Love and Divine Compassion to the world. I am free to speak with whomsoever is genuinely interested in solving the ‘Mystery of Life’ and becoming totally free of the Human Condition. So, if you are still with me after digesting the above, I will continue with your E-Mail. You say: ‘I thought from a very early age that somehow my simple presence on earth should be enough and all else would or should be taken care of’. Actually, you are quite correct – apart from the five physical necessities of air, water, food, clothing and shelter – one does not have to do anything at all to live life happily and harmlessly when one is free to be here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space ... when one is free, that is, from malice and sorrow. When the elimination of all animosity and anguish is one’s on-going life-goal, one has taken a giant step towards salubrity and achieving one’s birth-right. You say: ‘So it seems that my life has consisted of a process of trying this and trying that and then saying ‘well not that, not that’. Along the way I chose to alienate myself from the emphasis on any career or money considerations and now I find myself at 46 yrs of age feeling like a failure in all aspects of life’. A failure, maybe, in the eyes of society at large ... with the culture’s emphasis on success being determined by the status of career achievement and the amount of money one commands control over. But, apart from the physical necessities of life, one needs very little to be successful ... becoming happy and harmless puts paid to all other definitions of success. Speaking personally, I live on a pension in a rented brick-veneer duplex ... and I am the most successful person in the entire world. RESPONDENT: Richard, from your conversation with No. 12 I noticed that you discussed three realities: 1. Real life: as most people perceive it. We are totally identified with our feelings, emotions, thoughts and moods. Also, with wealth, love, etc. RICHARD: Yes, ‘real life’ (or the ‘real world’) is that normal-world reality or every-day reality that 6.0 billion people live in. One is totally identified as self – an ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ – experiencing a sufficient variety of fluctuating moods at random – gladness/ sadness, happiness/ unhappiness, kindness/ unkindness, gentleness/ offensiveness and so on – to convince all but the naïve questionist that life is a bitch and that one can be but as ‘good’ as possible so as to reap one’s post-mortem reward ... or just get on with living without thinking about it too much. Whereas 0.0000001 of the population have attempted to ameliorate their lot and have gone for the big prize: the ‘true life’ or that ‘other-world’ is the abnormal-world Reality or Timeless Reality so beloved of the mystics. One is totally identified as The Self – Me – experiencing Love Agapé, Divine Compassion, Rapturous Bliss, Ecstasy, Euphoria and so on. Whereas this actual world is here under people’s noses all the while ... there are three worlds altogether, but only one is actual. RESPONDENT: 2. Actual reality (second best as you call it). We are identified as a witness to the world of thoughts, emotions, feelings, instincts, etc. We can be ruthless and loving without feeling identified with either action. We experience bliss whenever we become a witness. Everything is happening to us. We are being pulled and pushed around by our heart. RICHARD: Yes, well said. The term ‘actual reality’ is No. 12’s phrase by which I understand was meant what is really going on ‘within’ as compared with the facade or image one socially presents to others ... and fools oneself into believing. Such observation is useful as a preliminary step in one’s journey into one’s psyche – which is the human psyche – but to remain ‘being authentic’ is to remain a ‘sannyasin’ forever. Unless this inner reality is expunged, all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day. To become the spiritual ‘witness’ is to have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and – by calling this bundle ‘Intelligence’ – to eventually realise oneself to be the unitive and centreless ontological entity (called ‘God’ by any other name) swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ ... unborn and undying; birthless and deathless; timeless and spaceless; formless and ceaseless; immortal and immutable. Yet, unbeknown to those who perform this prestidigitation, to be divinity is to be cacodemonic ... diabolical in the sense that the savage feelings are kept subliminally alive. RESPONDENT: 3. Actuality. Where the sense of ‘I’ is gone and there is no witness, no centre in awareness. RICHARD: There is no identity whatsoever here in this actual world ... it is pristine here and nothing ‘dirty’ can get in. No ego or Soul (self or Self) will ever be able live in actuality ... and a ‘centreless awareness’ in the spiritual jargon means an impersonal identity that has expanded like all get out until it has become ‘All That Is’ or ‘That’ or ‘Suchness’ or ‘Isness’ or whatever. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, for example, stopped saying ‘I am God’ by the late twenties and started to say ‘There is only That’. This may very well have been an attempt to counter the ‘I am That’ which Hinduism promotes so as to be more aligned to the Buddhist denial of both Self and No-Self. Exploring the shrewd twists and turns of arcane thought is a fascinating preparation for freedom from the human condition ... humble grandiosity is rife in the esoteric world and runs riot when unchecked. To have as one’s goal the exposure of the already always existing peace-on-earth through psychological and psychic self-immolation is essential to persuade the pious egoist from arrogating responsibility for bringing a metaphysical ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’ (Love and Truth) to earth. RESPONDENT: What is this ‘further’ you are suggesting for me? Perhaps you only mean that I increase the number of hours I experience actual peace. Or that I experience it more deeply? Or do you mean something else again? RICHARD: Something else. There are three worlds altogether, but only one is actual. There is no good or evil here in this actual world of sensual delight ... one can live freely in this magical paradise which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. RESPONDENT: When there is a message, it will be eagerly replied to. RICHARD: If only that were so. For example, further on in this post (below) you dismiss some of what I have to say with three half-sentences: • [Respondent]: ‘I know all that. I have heard it all before. Now I’m hearing it from you’. What I live and describe very clearly has never been said before ... the Buddhists, for example, place it after physical death – Parinirvana – and the Hindus do likewise – Mahasamadhi – and no-one has ever considered that such an ultimate condition is possible whilst this flesh and blood body is alive and breathing. RICHARD: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started in a war-torn country in June 1966, whilst dressed in a green uniform and aged nineteen, and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most ghastly way. There was I, a youth with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. RESPONDENT: You represented no such thing other than in your mind – you represented a naive young man with a weapon who had ceded his personal sovereignty to a government. RICHARD: I did not represent that at all. Given that all human beings are driven by instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire, then war is an essential facility for obtaining an imitation of peace – an uneasy truce called ‘law and order’ – at the point of a gun. This will continue to be the situation until every last man, woman and child on earth is free of the human condition. It does not make war any less ghastly ... but it is a fact that whilst humans are as they are, then war is here to stay. * RICHARD: There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. RESPONDENT: The flaming monk also represented nothing other than himself, a man who had ceded his personal sovereignty to a religious order. RICHARD: Is this a case of ‘while I have got a good theory running I will stick to it’? Once again, you fail to understand human nature. It is sovereignty that is the problem ... not a case of either ceding or not ceding it. For it is being a sovereign in the first place that is the cause of all the ills of humankind ... it is called being the ‘self’. * RICHARD: I was aghast ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... and it is my delight to share this discovery with my fellow human. RESPONDENT: For all your copious verbiage, it is quite clear that you’ve discovered nothing other than some eccentric nomenclature. RICHARD: You have obviously missed most of my posts. I have made it quite clear that none of us are to blame, for we are all victims of blind nature’s rather clumsy software package of instincts. However, once realised where the root cause of all the anguish and animosity lies, one can hit the ‘delete’ button and erase the lot, for it is software and not hardware. If one does not then one is a fool. Of course, both ‘I’ and ‘me’ will be what is deleted ... for ‘I’ am the passions and the passions are ‘me’. RESPONDENT: Your ‘humanity’ (and, for that matter, ‘divinity’) is quite obviously still around and rather vigorously operative. RICHARD: There is another alternative to being either secular or spiritual ... which is long overdue as neither of them have produced peace-on-earth. This third alternative I call an actual freedom. RICHARD: The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension. RESPONDENT: If ‘you’ are a flesh and blood body, an object separate from other objects, that is the everyday reality of the ‘real world’ is it not? RICHARD: Oh dear ... if only you had written: ‘If ‘you’ are [in] a flesh and blood body, an object separate from other objects, then that is the everyday reality of the ‘real world’ is it not?’ For then we would be in agreement. You see, if ‘you’ – as an identity – try to avoid extinction of ‘self’/ ‘Self’ by shifting identification from being an ‘I’ as ego and the ‘me’ as soul into being an ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ as this body ... then one is fooling oneself in a most insidious way. One must be scrupulously honest with oneself in order to be totally free of the Human Condition. There are three ‘worlds’ altogether ... but only one is actual. Thus I say, as you quoted me above, that: ‘The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension’. To put it bluntly: ‘you’ who are but an illusion, must die an illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. RESPONDENT: I am confused here. You do not deny the facts. But why then undertake this ‘esoteric’ journey to nothingness? Is it because of going beyond facts due to boredom? RICHARD: ‘Due to boredom’, eh? That is actually quite humorous ... maybe it is as good a motive as any! No, it is not a case of going beyond facts ... going beyond fiction, more like. Shall I put it this way? The enlightened masters state – quite correctly – that normal people are living in an illusion ... right? This means that every-day reality is a dream, a figment of the imagination ... the real world is not what it appears to be. Okay, so far? So, they say, it is possible to ‘wake up’ from this dream and realise who you really are ... As Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana) says: ‘There are two ‘I’s ... the self and The Self’. Realise that you are ‘The Self’ – existing for all eternity – and you will have realised your ‘True Nature’ ... you will be residing in the ‘Greater Reality’. This ‘Reality’ – by whatever name – I discovered to be a delusion born out of the illusion of everyday reality. And it is all to do with the persistence of identity. ‘I’ – as ego – dissolve and one transfers one’s identity, via a quantum leap, into being ‘Me’ ... by whatever name. ‘I’ survive, triumphant now, for ‘I’ am one with everything and everyone. ‘I’ manifest Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and tout ‘The Truth’ all around the world to a suffering humanity. Some are so deluded – Mr. Franklin Jones, for example – that the ‘I am everything and everything is Me’ Oceanic feeling of Oneness and Unity translates as: ‘I am God’, or ‘I am The Supreme Being’ or whatever ‘Being’ one may name it (capitalisation is nearly always important, you will notice). RESPONDENT: And there is only one person who has gone beyond enlightenment (as you claim), does that offer mankind much cause to be optimistic about our future? RICHARD: Yes. Because it is now possible for any human being to be totally free from sorrow and malice; the two fundamental elements that prevent one from being happy and harmless. Gone now are the days of having to assiduously practice humility and pacifism in an ultimately futile attempt to become free by transcending the opposites ... the traditional and narrow path of denial and fantasy, negation and hallucination. A wide and wondrous path of blitheness and gaiety is now available for one who wishes to live in the freedom of the actual world. It is very clear, to the discerning intellect, that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity. For thousands of years they have been promising Peace On Earth – which is nowhere to be found – and a specious immortality in some dubious after-life. It is now possible to live freely in this newly emerging post-spiritual epoch, attaining full and mature use of one’s innate cerebral faculty ... and easily superseding all of the revered saints and sages. An actual freedom is a tried and tested way of being here in the world as it actually is ... stripped of the veneer of reality that is super-imposed by the psychological and/or psychic entity within the body. This entity is the sense of identity that inhibits any freedom and sabotages every well-meant endeavour. In an actual freedom from the human condition one finds that the need for the ‘Ultimate Reality’ has vanished along with the ego and soul ... the ‘self’ and the ‘Self’. Thus far in human history one has had only two choices: being human or being divine. Now there is a third alternative ... and it outstrips any Altered State Of Consciousness. RICHARD (to No. 10): There is no ‘Peace On Earth’ ... nor has there ever been; there has only ever been a truce from time to time between warring parties. To call these periods ‘peacetime’ is to misuse the word and make it mean something it does not. (Richard, List B, No. 10, 16 March 1998). RESPONDENT: Peace on Earth exist here, now, as me. All you will ever see is yourself. What is lacking is your own lack as Love. RICHARD: What I am lacking is that insidious and pernicious ‘me’ that lurked around inside this body for all those years causing untold anguish and animosity. I am so pleased that ‘I’ committed psychological and psychic self-immolation. The world is a far, far better place because of ‘my’ demise. Thus, the ‘reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... and for the last five years. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. Now there is a chance for global peace. RICHARD: And on and on you go with more of your borrowed Hindu religious belief system. Have you ever been to India to see for yourself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of spiritual living? I have. RESPONDENT: Yes, and I didn’t think much of it. East and West is not that great an analysis really. It is just a historical fact that much spiritual science has come from the so called East. Of course there is the same in other cultures, e.g. Aboriginal, Maori, native American Indians – I don’t have any problems with that – but it hasn’t been brought to the front-line as much as it could in terms of global awareness, but probably will in due course – albeit much of it now changed with other influences – that’s fine – its not a problem either. it doesn’t matter where it comes from – that’s irrelevant – the point is whether its useful, intuitionally, scientific and practical. RICHARD: The point is that it (‘spiritual science’) is not useful at all ... it is practically and demonstrably deleterious to both individual and communal well-being. That is why one only needs to look at where this ‘spiritual science’ has been practiced for thousands of years to see how badly it has failed to live up to its promise of peace and harmony and prosperity for all. India is an excellent example of this ... but if you wish to bring other cultures into the discussion, the same holds true for all native cultures such as the few you mentioned. The Australian Aborigines had their inter-tribal wars ... as did the New Zealand Maoris and the American Indians. Spiritual science indeed! It is all clap-trap, hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo, superstitious religious stuff dressed up to appeal to the jaded Western mind desperate for some answers that abstract logical speculation and analytic deduction just can not provide. Both the spiritual and the secular methods of producing peace on earth have each failed miserably ... it is high time for a third alternative to hove into view ... something new that has never been tried before. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when the results of doing so are plain to view in such cultures as we have just discussed? RESPONDENT: When a person attains to true wisdom, he can readily recognise the wisdom of others. RICHARD: Right on! I do not claim ‘true wisdom’ ... I am only interested in facts and actuality. I have not discovered ‘The Truth’ (which is where ‘true wisdom’ comes out of), therefore, of course I do not give any credence to the wisdom of others at all. To me, ‘The Truth’ is but a fantasy spun out of a delusion born out of an illusion. Therefore any ‘true wisdom’ is spurious and detrimental to the well-being of humankind. It is why there is so much warfare that is religiously and spiritually based. RESPONDENT: I’m afraid that you are merely engaging in empty semantics here. After all, you are here on this forum preaching a message, which basically reads: ‘I have reached perfection and virtually everyone else is deluded’. Thus you have a ‘True Wisdom’. You may think that it is a completely unreligious and unspiritual kind of wisdom, but it is still a ‘True Wisdom’ of sorts nonetheless. Thus, you would do well to recognise that you are no different to anyone else in this regard. We are all bound by words in our attempts to communicate. RICHARD: I beg to differ: The words are not ‘empty semantics’ – an accusative phrase which, by the way, is the catch-cry of those who do not understand the reality that underlie words – for ‘true wisdom’ describes the very real experience of apparent sagacity that people have upon discovering ‘The Truth’. I espoused ‘true wisdom’ for eleven years for I, too, had discovered ‘The Truth’. These days I speak only of facts and actuality, hence it can not be ‘still a ‘True Wisdom’ of sorts nonetheless’ ... and the fact that you were impelled to add ‘of sorts’ implies that you recognise this. And I do not ‘think’ that it is ‘a completely unreligious and unspiritual kind of wisdom’, for I know that it is, as a fact. RESPONDENT: Words can either be used wisely or foolishly. What a wise person means by a particular word is completely different to what an ignorant person means by it. Words like ‘wisdom’, ‘Truth’, ‘ego-less’, ‘perfection’, etc., each have entirely different meanings, depending on who is using them. RICHARD: I know that ‘what a wise person means by a particular word is completely different to what an ignorant person means by it’ ... and this is the whole point of me writing and speaking about it. I know that I have written this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: • [Richard] ‘Actual freedom is a tried and tested way of being here in the world as it actually is ... stripped of the veneer of reality that is super-imposed by the psychological entity within the body. This entity is that sense of identity and self that inhibits any freedom and sabotages every well-meant endeavour. Thus far one has had only two choices: being normal or being spiritual. Now there is a third alternative ... and it supersedes any Mystical Altered State. • ‘Philosophical wisdom, Psychological knowledge and Spiritual enlightenment have had their day and are proving themselves to be inadequate to meet the requirements of this modern era. For thousands of years – maybe tens of thousands of years – humankind has known of no alternative manner of living life on this verdant planet. The passing parade of Philosophers and Preachers, Masters and Sages – geniuses and thinkers of all description – have failed abysmally to deliver their oft-promised ‘Peace On Earth’ ... in fact, instead of their much-vaunted love and virtue, they have left in their wake much hatred and bloodshed, the likes of which beggars description. • ‘Millions of well-meaning followers have diligently put their Teachings into practice, prostrating and belittling themselves like all get-out in a hopeful attempt to live the unliveable. Yet no-one, it seems, dares to question the Teachings themselves; instead the humiliated penitents obligingly blame themselves for failing to achieve release from the human condition. To seek freedom via profound and lofty thought or sublime and exalted feelings is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial. The time has come to put to an end, once and for all, the blight that has encumbered this fair earth for far too long. It behoves one to question all of the received ‘wisdom’ of the centuries, all of the revealed ‘truths’ ... all of the half-baked inanities that pass for understanding. Then, and only then, there is a fair chance that one can come to an actual freedom – a freedom the nature of which has never been before in human experience. • ‘The blame for the continuation of human misery lies squarely in the lap of those inspired people who, although having sufficient courage to proceed into the Unknown, stopped short of the final goal – the Unknowable. Notwithstanding the cessation of a personal ego operating, they were unwilling to relinquish the Self ... and an ego-less Self is still an entity, nevertheless. In spite of the glamour and the glory of the Altered State Of Consciousness, closer examination reveals that these ‘Great’ persons had – and have – feet of clay. Bewitched and beguiled by the promise of majesty and mystery, they have led humankind astray. Preaching submission or supplication they keep a benighted humanity in appalling tribulation and distress’. [end quote]. (Richard, Homepage). The death of the ego is not sufficient: the extinction of the self in its entirety is the essential ingredient for peace and prosperity to reign over all and everyone. RESPONDENT: Thus, it would be foolish to judge people simply on the fact that they use words like ‘God’ or ‘Truth’. Rather, they should always be judged on their understanding of these terms. To dismiss people purely on a semantic quibble is ludicrous to the extreme, as is dismissing all the words of the wise men in history simply because foolish people use them to justify war and slaughter. RICHARD: I do not consider it ‘foolish to judge people simply on the fact that they use words like ‘God’ or ‘Truth’ for I know that judging them is the only sensible thing to do. ‘The Truth’ is simply the philosopher’s term for ‘God’; thus any wisdom designated ‘True Wisdom’ translates easily as ‘God’s Word’. The trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity is that they do not realise that by turning to the Eastern Spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the West have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the Western mind that is desperately looking for answers. The Christian conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the insidious doctrines of the East. At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. As you so aptly said (in a different context): ‘Foolish people use them to justify war and slaughter’. RICHARD: The self, whilst being real – sometimes very real – is not actual. It is as much a delusion as the ego is. For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language ... for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required. (To a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this keyboard is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words on the screen (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs. Any sense of self is an identity ... the persistence of identity even into enlightenment is legendary by now: ‘I am God’, ‘I am That’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am Emptiness’, or even just ‘I am’. It is the continuance of identity – ‘I’ – in any way, shape or form that is the ‘spanner in the works’. There is only one thing that ‘I’ can do to remedy the situation. As ‘I’ am only real and not actual, ‘I’ can simply disappear. Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal the fulfilment of the perfection of being here as this body in the world as-it-is at this moment in time. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of the purity of that perfection being apparent ... ‘my’ presence prohibits consummation being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life that ‘I’ am searching for from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart. Nothing could be further from the case. The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via thought can only ever be visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is a fertile breeding-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. As for feelings ... one can disregard feelings too, for emotions and passions beget the esoteric, the psychic world of materialisations and apparitions. One can easily become bewitched by the bizarre entities that inhabit the Supernatural Realms; one can become beguiled and enchanted by the promise of the Glory and Glamour and Glitz of the Altered State Of Consciousness ... one will become a victim of that most insidious aspect of vanity: Power and Authority. So much for thought and feeling – there is a third alternative: Apperception. Apperception is something that brings a facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself – it is a bare awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. This is called a peak experience. The experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is extirpated. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity (ego, id, self, identity, persona, personality, lower ‘I am’, atman, soul, spirit, or whatever) forever seeking Union with ‘That’, by whatever name (Higher Self, True Self, Real Self, The All, Existence Itself, Consciousness, The Void, Suchness, Isness and so on). Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence. Any identity whatsoever is a delusion. (Richard, List A, No. 15, No. 07). RESPONDENT: No comment. Seriously, I think what you wrote there was good. I would be interested to see whether you can live up to what you have written – if indeed that is your intention. And what are your views regarding relationships and what people call ‘love’? Do you think it’s possible for two identity-less beings to fall in love with each other? RICHARD: You make a valid point ... however, it is not a case of ‘living up to what I have written’ ... it is a case of currently and continuously living it now. It is not ‘my intention’, it is my actuality ... I write directly out of my on-going experience. Otherwise it would all be only theory and conjecture, speculation and surmise ... and what follows would amount to nothing but bombast and blather. There is an actual intimacy between me and my companion. Actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other. It is an actuality born out of pure intent. Pure intent was activated by paying intense attention – exclusive attention – to one’s peak experiences. A peak experience is where ‘I’, the identity, temporarily abdicate the throne and everything is seen to be already always perfect. A chief characteristic of the peak experience is the clarity of apperception ... the seeing through of the belief in ‘my’ existence. In the months that followed the peak experience, the pure intent – this unwavering attention – amounted to an obsession for ‘me’, the identity, for what a sin it was to be disconsolate and miserable when the world had been experienced as being so glorious. To be here, intimately here at this moment in time, where this actual world is such a marvellous place to be alive in, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history. Actual intimacy – being here – does not come from love, for love stems from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love produces is but a meagre imitation of this direct experience of the actual. In this, the actual world, ‘I’, the personality, the subjectively experienced identity and self, have ceased to exist; whereas love accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other, similarly afflicted, persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials ... to verify ‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without separation ... and therefore free from the need for love with its ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. I am not apart from the universe ... I am the universe experiencing itself as a thinking, reflective human being. Whereas ‘I’ can never be intimate for ‘I’ am distanced from the actual by ‘my’ very ‘being’ ... ‘I’ stand in the way of actual intimacy. The intimacy that ‘I’ as a personality can have, as a feeling – an emotion or a passion – for another in a relationship, pales into insignificance when compared with the actual intimacy of being the universe experiencing itself. There is no need for a relationship here. Relationship requires a separated identity in order to do the relating. By being what I am – ‘what’ not ‘who’ – I am not separate from the universe. This body is literally made of the very stuff of the universe ... there is no difference whatsoever between this stuff and me. I am it. I do not make the mistake, as the people who have dissolved only their ego do, of identifying myself with Existence or Whatever ... as being God On Earth, or any of that deluded nonsense ... I have no identity or self whatsoever. Nothing that ‘I’ – as an ego-less ‘Self’ – experienced many years ago when ‘I’ lived in the Divine Realm (Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Sunyata and so on) can equal the magnificence of being here in this actual world. Being here as-I-am far surpasses any Religious Illumination, Spiritual Enlightenment, Mystical Union or any other Altered State Of Consciousness. For example: This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not immortal. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. I am free to be me; me as I actually am. I am free to be practical, straight-forward and down-to-earth. I am free of any guile, any hypocrisy, any duplicity, any cupidity ... any corruption at all. Innocence prevails only where time has no duration ... and this moment has no measure, it is ever-new. I have no need for such a paltry surrogate as Immortality ... Immortality fades into the oblivion it deserves when compared to the magnitude of experiencing the infinity of the universe as a human being living here, each moment again, fresh and new and pristine. I am free to live in this magical wonderland that is the actual world. Re: New direction for the list: aye yet again..:) ... What Say Ye. RICHARD: [...]. Ergo, conjure phantasm –> impute a fallacy –> impugn the fallacy–> preach morality/ ethicality –> propose the solution. (And this has been going on, and on, for around 8 & 1/2 years). Speaking personally, there is no ‘us vs them’ operating here – here in actuality – as we are all fellow human beings here (in actuality). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 9 January 2013c). RESPONDENT: Yep. Things are falling into place nicely now. Thank you. I’m only now beginning to see how many of the negative impressions I had of you are actually inseparable from the positive ones. The more I tried to escape the ambivalence by validating either one of the projections, the more it reinforced the other, and made my stuckness between the two poles inescapable. (Psychically inescapable anyhow). Much becoming clear. Wow. RICHARD: Yes, there is neither saint nor sinner (aka ‘the lotus has its roots in mud’) here – here in actuality – where 7+ billion flesh-and-blood bodies are already living, and any ascribing of (idealistic) saintly qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body stems from attempting to counteract the imputed sinner qualities (i.e. automorphically imputed). (Richard, List D, No. 4, 10 January 2013). RESPONDENT: And even the ‘third alternative’ (neither sinner nor saint) had been misappropriated as yet another psychic image/ entity: A heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits and, due to lack of an intuitive faculty, wasn’t able to properly understand itself. It’s basically another way of inadvertently turning a what into a ‘who’. And no surprise that the result doesn’t come close to capturing the innocence of a PCE. RICHARD: Whilst none too sure precisely what you had in mind when you wrote that as such descriptive words, as a ‘heartless/ soulless identity that lacked the endearing human traits’, and ‘due to lack of an intuitive faculty’ was not able to ‘properly understand itself’, do read as if it is an ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities onto an actually free flesh-and-blood body. The ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities is already featured, on more than a few occasions, in my archived correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website. Viz.: [...snip android/ robot quote...]. (Richard, List D, No. 4, 5 January 2013). As well as that, the ascription of anosognosia type qualities also already features, on several occasions, on the website. Viz.: [...snip anosognosia quote...]. (Richard, List D, No. 4, 5 January 2013). If what you had in mind was the ascription of, say, sociopathic personality disorder type qualities (or some-such dissociative/ repressive attributes) it would be a sub-set of the imputed ‘sinner qualities’ – i.e. automorphically imputed – already canvassed, much further above now, in the earlier part of this exchange. RESPONDENT: Yes, you’ve understood me, and I believe I’m understanding you. I’d created an ‘actually free identity’ that purports to be the third alternative to the sinner/ saint, but was (as you’ve correctly pointed out here) another variant/ sub-set of the ‘sinner’: one that is damaged and oblivious rather than ruthlessly self-centred. RICHARD: G’day [No. 4 (real name)], Yes, we are indeed understanding each other and, even further to this understanding, do we both – now – understand that the third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions? Put differently, do we now both understand that anything outside of the human condition – actually outside of it – truly is (as I have remarked on many an occasion) inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable? Hence, of course, the ascription of androidic/ robotic qualities – some science-fiction alien from another galaxy – or even of a ‘real stranger’ (for instance) from ‘another space’. Viz.: • [quote]: ‘Dalai Lama: ‘Sometimes I Get Angry, Too’. Buddhist leader brings Dan Harris inside the mind of a monk’. {04/18/2011}. • [Intro; 01:26]: ‘Even though the Dalai Lama has supported extensive scientific research on meditation, asking his own monks to put their own heads inside of scientist’s brain-scanners, he admits that even if you do hours and hours of meditation it’s by no means some sort of silver bullet; it will not guarantee you perfect happiness’. • [Mr. Dan Harris; 01:45]: ‘Is your mind always calm?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso; 01:47]: ‘Hopefully’. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘You never lose your temper?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘No-no-no-no. Occasionally I lose my temper’. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘You do?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘Oh yes. If, uh, someone never lose temper then, perhaps, that may come from {gesturing upwards} another space’. {chuckles}. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: {laughs}. • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: Real stranger. {laughs}. • [Mr. Dan Harris]: ‘So, if someone says to you ‘I never lose my temper’ you don’t believe them?’ • [Mr. Tenzin Gyatso]: ‘Oh, no. No ...’. (abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/dalai-lama-angry-13400561). Moreover, because the third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is literally inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable – as well as actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions – it is not at all surprising how all of the pragmatic/ hardcore dharma leaders/ practitioners, for example, spuriously demoted my eleven years intimate experience, night and day, of fully-fledged spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment in order to posit actualism/ actual freedom as being ... um ... ‘ten-fetter’ arahantship. (Otherwise they would be face-to-face with the (metaphysical) fact that the long-awaited ‘Maitreya’/ ‘Mettaya’/ ‘Jampa’ has been and gone and they all missed-out on that event of the millennia). Furthermore, because this third alternative to either spiritualism or materialism is literally inconceivable and/or unimaginable and incomprehensible and/or unbelievable – as well as actually non-imputable (i.e. automorphically) in any way other than some variant of the many and various sinner/ saint ascriptions – it is not at all surprising how all but a few of the sane peoples (inclusive of, and particularly so, counsellors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists) have no choice but to diagnose both my eleven years of full enlightenment/ awakenment and my twenty-plus years of an actual freedom from the human condition as insanity. (Hence their demotion of that enlightened/ awakened experiencing of being the ‘Parousia’, the ‘Maitreya’, the ‘Messiah’, etcetera, to that of a patient in a psychiatric ward thinking they be Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte or Ms. Marie Antoinette, or whoever, else they all missed-out on that event of the millennia as well). RESPONDENT: It’s fascinating stuff. In practical terms, it was really casting a shadow over my recollection and evaluation of PCEs, and I’m really chuffed to find that, along with my growing insight into the creation of identities and stances, the innocence of the PCE is being restored. RICHARD: Interestingly enough, when Devika transmogrified into Irene (which she pronounced ee-rain-ah) she declared both of her primary peak experiences (her term for PCE’s) in Amsterdam long before she met me – both her brief riding-a-bicycle-across-an-intersection one and her three-weeks-of-being-beyond-enlightenment experience – as having been corrupted, polluted, by the numerous PCE’s she had after having met me/ whilst being with me and similarly sought to recollect and re-evaluate them. (Which, in her case, involved surreptitiously slipping agape love and compassion into them and, thus, rendering both indistinguishable from ASC’s). RESPONDENT: (Oddly, for all my talk of ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, and what-not, I don’t mind being the guy who’s fascinated by ordinary things like the play of light in a glass ashtray. It occurs to me as I write this that I was probably subject to some rather cynical and repressive influences around the age of seven, but it never *quite* crushed that naiveté out of me. Anyway, still learning as I go, here...). RICHARD: Hmm ... could you be referring, by any chance, to the same personality whom you referred to in Message No. 9615 (plus follow-ups in 9616 & 9617) just before advising you were off to England again and, hopefully, then to northern Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago? (Message 9619) • [Respondent]: ‘(...) I know a thing or two about narcissism and narcissists ... possibly more than anyone in this forum ... and not from books. You see, I’ve spent large parts of my life – decades – witnessing first-hand how a narcissistic/ (non-violent) psychopathic personality thinks and behaves, and oftentimes being embroiled in their self-created dramas. The difference between a narcissist and an ordinary person – let alone an actualist – is stunning (and shocking at times). A narcissist’s genuine unconcern for other people couldn’t be learned or faked, even if you tried ...’. (Message 9615, Actualism, Others, No. 4 Report, 3 April 2010). Regards, Richard. 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