# Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions Frequently Asked Questions ## Difference between Apperception and Choiceless Awareness? RICHARD: Apperception is another ball-game entirely. I take the Oxford Dictionary definition as an established ‘given’ (‘apperception: the mind’s perception of itself’). This means that there is not an ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious, but it is an un-mediated awareness of itself. Thinking may or may not occur ... and apperception happens regardless. Thought does not have to stop for apperception to happen ... it is that the ‘thinker’ disappears. As for feelings in apperception; not only does the ‘feeler’ disappear, but so too do feelings themself. Apperception is the direct – unmediated – apprehension of actuality ... the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: This is similar to what I was saying to No. 20 but you use a different term, apperception. Do you understand apperception as different from choiceless awareness? RICHARD: Oh yes, most definitely ... which is why I choose to call this actual awareness that is my on-going experience ‘apperceptive awareness’. I lived ‘choiceless awareness’ for eleven years, and when I read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1984-1985, I could relate to his use of that phrase. I have been wondering if we cannot come at explaining the difference between these two expressions using some different phraseology ... we have become bogged down in that run of what you have aptly called ‘never ending goodbye and best wishes message’. Because what I am going to write is that ‘choiceless awareness’ is an affective and sensate apprehension of the world of people, things and events, whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ is a sensate-only apprehension of the world of people, things and events. Both ‘choiceless awareness’ and ‘apperceptive awareness’ are only possible when there is no ‘I’ in the head as the ‘thinker’ ... the ego or self. But ‘choiceless awareness’ is where one experiences the world by feeling out its nature as a ‘me’ in the heart as the ‘feeler’ ... the soul or Self. One is the affective faculties – which is pure being – and there is an oceanic sense of oneness ... a ‘wholeness’. Whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ can only occur when the affective is extinguished entirely ... which means that there is neither an ‘I’ in the head or a ‘me’ in the heart. No self or Self. No identity, no being at all ... no presence whatsoever. But I have used all those words before, to no avail. So, another approach: literally, I have no feelings – emotions and passions – whatsoever ... and have not had for five years. This is why I have been diagnosed as ‘alexithymic’ by two accredited psychiatrists ... which is not strictly correct for alexithymia means not able to feel feelings. Other people can see such a person being angry, for example, but he/she will not be aware of this. It is not a case of him/her denying their feelings – or not being in touch with their feelings – but is a morbid condition. It is most common in lobotomised patients. This is all the result of finding the source of ‘myself’ ... I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression and nurture and desire that this rudimentary self is made up of ... the instincts. But as this rudimentary self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. Gone too is fear and aggression and nurture and desire. As I am devoid of calenture entirely, I can see and understand clearly what happens when one ‘surrenders one’s ego’, or ‘stops thought’, or ‘merges with the cosmos’ ... or whatever phrase is applicable. The questions no one seems to have successfully answered are: What is this ego? Where is it, precisely? What is its function? Where did it come from? What if we were to say, in order to simplify matters for now, that the ego is nothing more – and nothing less – than the instinctual passionate will to survive codified by the very necessary conscience ... that socialised knowledge of Right and Wrong? What if we were to say that it is located in the forehead in line with the temples just above and between the eyes? What if we were to say that it is the little man/ woman who pulls all the levers and presses all the controls ... and fondly considers itself to be vitally important in the scheme of things? What if we were to say that it is born out of the passionate instinct for survival that blind nature endows us with at conception: fear and aggression and nurture and desire? Would this help to clarify anything? Thus its nature would be that of an emotional and passionate self. Therefore, no one can really ‘surrender their ego’ whilst the affective faculties are still extant ... they can only give up their will. Not for nothing do all scriptures have some equivalent saying to the Western biblical command: ‘Not my will but Thy will, Oh Lord’. This is why obedience, supplication, humility, penitence, entreaty and so on are the requisite demands to be met in order to relinquish the strangle-hold the wilful self has on the psyche. If successful, the wilful self dissolves and mysteriously re-appears as the compliant Self. One is pure spirit. The instinct for survival has triumphed over adversity and one is immortal at last. One views everyday reality through the eyes of beauty and love and beholds great mystery and majesty. This is ‘choiceless awareness’ ... divine obedience. Whereas I, being autonomous and apperceptively aware, am free to choose whatever. RESPONDENT: Apperception is awareness without any motive, it is immediate. RICHARD: I would not say ‘without motive’ ... but it is certainly immediate. It is immediate and direct, unmediated by any feelings whatsoever. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function ... not a self. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the self is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence ... and has naught to do with Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s disembodied ‘intelligence’ . RESPONDENT: By the way can you go slightly deeper into actualist attention and Buddhist mindfulness in detail please. It would be of great assistance to me. RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to this: • [Richard]: ‘... the words ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ simply refer the make-up of the attentiveness being applied ... as distinct from, say, the buddhistic ‘mindfulness’ (which is another ball-game entirely). In other words the focus is upon how the identity in toto is standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent just here right now’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005). The focus of the buddhistic ‘sati’ – a Pali word referring to mindfulness, self-collectedness, powers of reference and retention – is upon how self is not to be found in the real-world ... as Mr. Gotama the Sakyan makes abundantly clear, for example, to compliant monks in the ‘Anatta-Lakkhana’ Sutta (The Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic, SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66). Which is why it is another ball-game entirely. RESPONDENT to No. 14: Now I understand the whole thing about PCE. Osho created situations in which we could get PCE’s and hence have a bench mark to work with. While Richard is asking us to remember a PCE, defined with a description, to take it as a bench mark. RICHARD: My understanding (I have read about 80-90 ‘Osho’ books), is that Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain ‘created situations’ so that his sannyasins could have the affective oceanic experience of the ‘oneness’ or ‘union’ that epitomises the ‘deathless state’ (gnosis, samadhi, satori and so on) ... not PCE’s. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain consistently stated that he ‘was not the body’ whereas in a PCE one is clearly this body only ... and in actual freedom death is the end. Finish. In a PCE there is the direct sensate experience of being here – at this place in infinite space – right now in this moment of eternal time ... there is no affective qualities like ‘Euphoria’ or ‘Bliss’ or ‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Rapture’ leading one to the transcendent ‘Goodness’ (‘Love’ and ‘Compassion’) and to the supramundane ‘Truth’ (‘Beauty’ and ‘Wholeness’) where the awesome ‘Sacred and Holy’ reigns in all its miraculous ‘Ineffability’. In a PCE one is now living – as I do – in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. We do not live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality. I am mortal RESPONDENT to Peter: Dynamic Meditation helped me get the first PCE and other Osho’s meditations helped me get consequent PCE’s. That is a fact, take it or leave it. Based on these experiences and one of Osho’s discourses I read early on made me write the statement that Osho was creating situations for us to have PCE’s. RICHARD: Now you have caught my attention ... could you post the quote (giving the name of the book and the chapter number that the discourse is in) as I am always keen to read of another’s description of a PCE. I ask this because in the 80-90 books that I read I never came across him describing a PCE ... he consistently described the mystical experiences of being ‘unborn and undying’ in a metaphysical ‘herenow’ ... which is a ‘timeless and spaceless void’ or a ‘formless and deathless emptiness’ wherein reigns an ‘unknowable and immutable presence’ which is an ‘immortal and ceaseless being’ ... and so on. After all, he did dictate his own epitaph to be inscribed on enduring marble: ‘Never Born: Never Died; Only Visited This Planet’ ... did he not? As I am vitally interested in facilitating the self-less and already always existing physical peace-on-earth to become apparent – and not in narcissistically chasing the self-centred and ‘tried and failed’ metaphysical ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’ – I do appreciate your interest, attention and input into this very important matter. Bringing about an end to 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 is such a fine way to spend a spring day. Would you not agree? RESPONDENT (to No. 15): Feeling good to me is a relatively simple and easy state to achieve. It takes nothing more then dropping seriousness for carefreeness. Feeling good is not a state where the controls are let go of. Feeling good is much more like what I recommended to No. 21, when I said ‘I can see the benefit of having a more loose grip on them thar controls.’ Did you happen to miss that? Perhaps this goes some way into why I don’t see ‘letting go of the controls’ as a prerequisite to the practice of actualism. Actually having let go of the controls is to be having a peak experience and while that is a important thing, it doesn’t necessarily involve any conscious/ intentional letting go and is not the main task of a fledgling actualist. The main tasks for a beginning actualist is to get attentiveness up and running and to investigate all of one’s beliefs, seeing the silliness of prolonging suffering (for any reason). To put much emphasis on ‘letting go of the controls’ in the beginning of the practice of actualism may very well lead to one practicing something other than the actualism method (as the Sedona Method/ the Release Technique is very much similar to buddhism, it would seem this could be yet another way that spiritualism slips into actualist practice). This may intellectually sound subtle, kind of like the difference between ‘choiceless awareness’/ passive awareness/ awareness watching awareness versus actualist attentiveness/ awareness but it is a noticeably different on a experiential level. I’m not sure if I have succeeded in clarifying this, but I gave it a go. RICHARD: G’day No. 12, I appreciate you giving it a go to clarify and a timely word from me will make your clarification complete. First of all, it is probably inevitable the phrase out-from-control be (incorrectly) expressed as ‘letting go of control’ yet the fact remains that the controller, being the controls, cannot let go of that which they are. Secondly, the hyphenated term you mention as me having been calling [quote] ‘an out of control virtual freedom as opposed to a in control virtual freedom’ [endquote] clearly has the hyphenated term different-way-of-being immediately after the forward slash betwixt the two hyphenated terms. Viz.: [Richard]: [...] being sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty (plus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) any residence or venue of mine is marked by an absence of both affective vibes and psychic currents ... a pristine ambience made all the more marked, for many a person, upon returning from the ‘real-world’ environs after a previous visit. [...] this pristine ambience is conducive to a sincere actualist activating their potential – albeit temporarily – as in some form of an out-from-control/ different-way-of-being (to whatever degree of intimacy they be comfortable with at the time). Furthermore, experience has shown that these intimacy experiences can be contagious, so to speak, for other sincere actualists also present as the atmosphere generated affectively/ psychically by the first to be out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being can propagate a flow-on effect, on occasion. In short: a felicitous and innocuous atmosphere, begotten in an ever-fresh affectless/ selfless ambience, fosters a milieu where happiness and harmlessness can be the norm rather than the exception. (Richard, List D, 14a, 4 December 2009). Upon reflection it will be seen I am not – repeat not – referring to a PCE as ‘being’ is in abeyance then (the very fact not ‘being’ renders any different way of ‘being’ impossible). Thirdly, and most importantly for any flow-on effect, in a PCE there is similarly a marked absence of both affective vibes and psychic currents – a pristine ambience – to that of an actual freedom. (As an aside: the 5-month PCE was as useless in regards affectively/ psychically fostering a milieu, where happiness and harmlessness can be the norm rather than the exception, as is an actual freedom). An obvious out-from-control/ different-way-of-being virtual freedom is an on-going excellence experience (EE) but an on-going intimacy experience (IE) may very well be the most likely state as an EE, being so close to a PCE as to be barely distinguishable is not so likely to readily occur sooner rather than later. (Being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being is quite daunting to contemplate as an on-going EE marks the end of the beginning of the end of ‘me’ and the commencement of the actualism process – as distinct from the actualism method – wherein a momentum not of ‘my’ doing takes over and an inevitability sets in; in an on-going EE the actual world has the effect of impelling one towards it – like a moth to a candle as the overarching benignity and benevolence of the actual increasingly operates such as to render ‘my’ felicity/ innocuity increasingly redundant; this is where being the nearest a ‘self’ can be to innocence – the naiveté located betwixt the core of being and the sexual centre (where one is both likeable and liking) – is attached as if with a golden thread or clew to the purity of actual innocence; an on-going EE is, thus, where one becomes acclimatised to benignity and benevolence and the resultant blitheness because the purity of the actual is so powerful that it would ‘blow the fuses’ if one was to venture into this territory ill-prepared). Fourth, as any being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being (and there are varying degrees of such intimacy experiences) implicitly requires pure intent – which renders the necessity for morals/ ethics/ values/ principles null and void – it is certainly not the territory a fledgling actualist (to use your phraseology) has any business venturing into precipitously. Fifth, as any ‘letting go of the controls’ by the controller means, ipso facto, the controller still remaining in situ it can only refer to – just as you do – something of the nature of a [quote] ‘certain degree of letting go (of beliefs and old patterns)’ [endquote] else it does indeed bring a spiritualist practice into an actualist practice ... complete with the still in situ controller cunningly morphing into the watcher of religio-spiritual/ mystico-metaphysical lore and legend. Sixth, regarding your comment about somewhere Irene (pronounced ee-rain-uh incidentally) saying something like ‘no I don’t ‘let go’; in the seeing it just goes’ (see Audio-Taped Dialogues, Actual Intimacy is vastly Superior to Love) you might be recollecting the following excerpt from ‘Richard’s Journal’ (the only instance a computer search through my second wife’s writings for the word seeing came up with): • [Devika]: ‘One of my peak experiences happened on the fore-shore. All of a sudden, unpremeditated, ‘I’ and ‘my’ world-view had disappeared and an immediate intimacy became apparent. Although I had lived in this village before and had grown very fond of it and its residents, there had always been a distance between me and other people, which had to be bridged by temporary feelings of love and affection which were never satisfying for long. Now a shift in seeing had occurred, and looking at the people around me, I noticed that the distance between me and others had miraculously vanished. Not only between me and other people but equally between me and the trees, me and the houses on the boulevard, even between me and the ocean. Nowhere was there a boundary. Another dimension had taken its place, which I initially experienced as a closeness closer than my own heartbeat, yet it was certainly not love for all or oneness with everything. It was another paradigm than the one in which the opposites play their major role (...)’. (Richard’s Journal 1997, Article Thirty, pp 192) If it is not then I do not know what you are referring to but one thing is for sure: Irene (as distinct from Devika) never spoke in such a manner as to bring about the out-from-control/ different-way-of-being virtual freedom which Devika lived for thirteen months, from November 1996 to December 1997, such as to occasion me to coin that term (and during which she penned those now-italicised passages of hers specifically for inclusion in what was to become ‘Richard’s Journal’). (At the time of writing it was titled ‘The Actualism Journal’ and was written in such a manner as to make it impossible to know which of the two persons featured – an unnamed man and a woman – was the one actually free and the one virtually free as we had figured the whole focus on something better than love and compassion would be more palatable if the gender of the actually free person remained unknown). * Lastly, I will take this opportunity to suggest that your own classification system – mini-PCE and virtual-PCE for just a couple of instances – may be worth a revisit as to their necessity (or validity for that matter) as they can be confusing to others, just as they are to me, because the term mini-PCE, for example, was first used by Respondent No. 27 (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27a, 18 May 2002), (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27c, 24 September 2002) simply to refer to a PCE of only a few seconds duration (and not to some peak experience in which a not-quite-abeyant being’s imagination/ visualisation is occurring). ‘Tis just a suggestion, mind you. 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