# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Authority and Expertise RESPONDENT: And I am not your authority. RICHARD: I never said that you were my authority ... what on earth gives you that idea? The peace-on-earth which became apparent in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) was the authority all those years ago. What is your authority? CO-RESPONDENT: Actually I was blessed with two good parents. They gave me a reasonably quiet, secure, warm, and loving home and a lot of freedom to be myself. RICHARD: Not all parents comprehend that what their function is, essentially, is to instead prepare their offspring well for adulthood. CO-RESPONDENT: I’m grateful for the good, solid, well-balanced, foundation they gave me. RICHARD: Giving a child a lot of licence (aka the freedom to be themself as they instinctually are) is hardly the stuff of a good, solid, well-balanced foundation. CO-RESPONDENT: Seems here that so many people are not so fortunate. How about yourself Richard? RICHARD: Oh, I was given very little (if any) licence as a child ... thus I was well-prepared for adulthood. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 31, 12 June 2006). TARIN: What is licence? RICHARD: More or less the same as permissiveness/ laxness/ a laissez-faire attitude (non-interference or indifference) ... or even lack of restraint/ lack of control. For instance: • ‘licence: excessive liberty or disregard for law or propriety; an instance of this; licentiousness’. (Oxford Dictionary). TARIN: What are some common examples of licence? RICHARD: Not knowing where one’s children are a night (such as roaming the streets in gangs); not setting boundaries/ parameters for them (as in giving in to temper tantrums); not providing guidelines/ not setting an example (letting them raise themselves in an ‘anything goes’ environment) ... in short: letting them be themselves as they instinctually are. TARIN: And how is not giving any of it – and thus preparing a child for adulthood – different from being a ‘bossy boots dad’? RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to this: • [Tarin]: ‘... is it any better to be a friend to one’s child than a parent? • [Richard]: ‘It certainly is ... just for starters: being much more fun it readily promotes open learning (children are congenitally curious). • [Tarin]: ‘If so, in what ways? I have already read this part: [quote] ‘and they all appreciated that immensely ... as exemplified by the youngest often saying how glad she was that the ‘bossy-boots dad’ was gone’ [endquote]. • [Richard]: ‘By not being either authoritarian (as distinct from authoritative) or disciplinarian a child’s innate inquisitiveness is not stifled – and many such educators have bemoaned the lack of motivation in their subject students – inasmuch curiosity’s concomitant keenness for discovery provides more than enough incentive. Apart from being innately curious children are also inherently imitative – as indicated by the term ‘role-model’ – and it should not take genius to suss out the advantages friendship has over parentship (or any other form of kinship for that matter)’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Tarin, 14 April 2006). There is a marked difference to being authoritarian (being an autocratic disciplinarian) and being authoritative – as in proceeding from competent authority (expertise/ experience) – and children generally appreciate guidance as the world at large can be, and often is, a bewildering/ frightful place for them ... especially in the playground (where the bully-boys and feisty-femmes act-out the law of the jungle on a daily basis). RESPONDENT: An auspicious month then, as the moment is always :) Just yesterday, 2 things occurred while on a flight trip : – 1. While entering the security check-in gates, I was frisked by a rather rude group of security staff and I realized that my bad feelings were coming because of seeing them in a position of power and ‘me’ being helpless and at their mercy. I wondered how to turn around this and I realized that such events are going to happen ad-infinitum and it kind of hit home a bit deeper that there is just no long term solution to be found in the ‘human’ world of feelings – the seeing of this landed into a short EE. I still haven’t got the guts to abandon humanity yet and I can see how it is a sort of a ‘virtual’ cord that is linking ‘me’ to the ‘human’ world. 2. While in the flight I happened to remember Richard’s ‘looking between the stars instead of looking at the stars and realizing infinity’ (paraphrasing here) and I wondered how could there be infinity when the line joining the stars is finite until I happened to look behind that line and away (along the line of sight itself) and whoa it sucked for me a second or two into an infinite like abyss – but again the logical mind comes back to say ‘nah dont commit to infinity’.. but in all was a fun exercise ! back to having fun in the only moment :) RICHARD: G’day No. 32, In regards to the first of the two things which happened to you while on a flight trip: the realisation that your fellow human beings, when in an everyday position of power and control, will (on occasion) pull a power-trip on their fellow human beings – per favour blind nature’s rough and ready software survival package – can be of an on-going benefit (as well as that immediate long-term benefit, which you have already reported, of it hitting home to you more deeply how there is just no long term solution to be found in the human condition) but only provided your on-the-spot realisation manifests as an actualisation, of that valuable insight, in your moment-to-moment living. An anecdote might best illustrate what I mean: many years ago my then-companion Devika would oft-times say to me that I should stand up for myself and not let peoples (such as you describe) push me around ... indeed, it was one of the reasons she created a psychic force-field in her psyche (which is, of course, the human psyche) so as to protect what she saw, experientially, back then as innocence personified. (She was wont to exclaim, on occasion, how ‘Richard brings something marvellous – something absolutely wonderful – into the world and yet everyone deposits ordure on it’ ... albeit not expressed quite so politely as that). What she did not realise – except during a PCE of course – is that innocence itself (the genuine article and not the so-called innocence of children) requires no affective vibe/ psychic current protection whatsoever and, therefore, in vain would I explain to her that, in everyday situations such as you report (where the whole point of the exercise is to walk out the door with the goodies which those in a position of power and control can either dispense or withhold), I had no interest whatsoever in futilely striving to win a puny ego-battle with some officious power-tripper but, instead, walk away with the said goodies each time. RESPONDENT: We are not taking a fresh look ourselves. RICHARD: You would be better off speaking for yourself ... apperceptive awareness ensures that an ever-fresh percipience is constantly happening of its own accord. RESPONDENT: I indulge in authoritative pronouncements sometimes, but I realize they are not very helpful. How about you? RICHARD: I have no problem whatsoever about the authority of the expertise which comes from the intimate comprehension that lived understanding endows because it is actual ... meaning that it is automatically beneficial of its own accord. * RESPONDENT: I don’t doubt that you believe what you say and that you feel what you have to offer could be helpful. RICHARD: I do not have to ‘believe’ that what is being written is beneficial at all as the words describing what is on offer are being typed as the very thing referred to is actually occurring ... they are coming directly out of actuality – factual experiencing – and not from some nebulous feeling of helpfulness such as you would have be the case. RESPONDENT: Even if one speaks authentically as to experiencing, haven’t you noticed that it doesn’t change anything for the listener one iota? RICHARD: No ... those peoples who listen to or read what I have to say without adding it on to an existing mind-set (by virtue of naiveté as already detailed previously) tell me that such authenticity as the actual indubitably is has been of inestimable benefit. * RESPONDENT: When I represent my experience as something others should seek or emulate, I am trying to lead. But it is my experience and others can only imagine that. RICHARD: Whereas I provide a description of life in this actual world such that others who are vitally interested in peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, can recall, or have happen again, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... and, as the PCE enables one to know for oneself what is being described, it is what does the leading. As this leaves me sitting watching TV, with my feet up on the coffee table, it is a most estimable state of affairs. RESPONDENT: Actual experiencing enables one to better understand but obviously that can not be given to another. RICHARD: Does it not give you cause to reconsider when it is pointed out that what is on offer has been presented, is being presented, and will continue to be presented, by descriptive words ... and by these words alone? Speaking personally I find it remarkable what language is capable of ... peace-on-earth is no little thing. RICHARD: Nowhere in all the latest responses of yours have you even come close to addressing the key point of this thread: ‘The Wisdom Of A Bodiless Spirit’. Just as the previous respondent passed-up three opportunities to focus upon the one and only point I am making, so too have you chosen to discuss all manner of things rather than attend to this ‘Ancient Wisdom’. RESPONDENT: There is another point; after you have finished with that one. To wit: the reason there is no Actual Peace on this Actual Mailing list is: The ‘Actualist Wisdom’ license says: It is okay to belittle the correspondent as you are not belittling an Actualist. RICHARD: It is nothing so trivial as merely ‘belittling’ the ‘I’ and/or the ‘me’ and/or the ‘person’ and/or the ‘personality’ and/or the ‘ego’ and/or the ‘self’ and/or the ‘soul’ and/or the ‘atman’ and/or the ‘being’ and/or the ‘Being’ and/or the ‘Self’ and/or the ‘God’ and/or the ‘Goddess’ and/or the ‘Truth’ and/or ‘That’ (the identity by whatever name) as I am laying culpability for all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like directly at the feet of that ‘being’ ... that psychological and/or psychic entity who has taken up parasitical existence in an otherwise innocent flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: Belittling is not trivial. RICHARD: Belittling is but petty schoolyard tactics ... whereas putting one’s finger on the root cause of all the misery and anguish is way, way past such childish ploys. RESPONDENT: It is one of the causes of war and rape and murder. RICHARD: It is one of the many, many triggers – as is taunting and other schoolyard tactics – and not ‘one of the causes’. The causes of war go far, far deeper ... deep into one’s core of ‘being’. RESPONDENT: It is part of the Ancient License. RICHARD: Not necessarily – the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ licence says it is okay to kill the body as you are not killing the person – and the ‘Enlightened Beings’ may or may not belittle depending upon their temperament. RESPONDENT: Can you not convince your selfless self to stop it! Can you not examine why you keep on doing it?? Hmm?? RICHARD: If I may point out? Apart from there being no such thing as a ‘selfless self’ this is what is called a ‘straw-man argument’ (wherein you invent something I am not doing then criticise your own invention as if you are commenting on what I am actually doing). * RICHARD: I am way, way past ‘belittling’ – this is not kindergarten – this is the Actual Freedom Mailing List. RESPONDENT: Hmm ... interesting. HEY! Richard!! I like you! I like your Actual Freedom Mailing List!! Now are you able to say No. 10 I like you? Hmm?? Or are you too busy making a point. RICHARD: I like everybody irregardless of what mischief they get up to ... and I do not stop liking them when I am making a point. RESPONDENT: Are you able to say – hey No. 12! You been on this planet as long as me! Hey! Let’s compare notes. Really! You got value from Humaniversity! RICHARD: Nope ... I would never say that as the ‘Humaniversity’ is spiritually-based ‘Tried and True’ teachings and workshops. RESPONDENT: AND you also have problems with their approach?? Really ... how can that be, how can both be true? RICHARD: Nope ... I would never say that as they cannot both be true. RESPONDENT: You’ve got a friend who is a therapist WOW! Hey really! You know there is no spiritual world AND you recommend that some people who are stuck and bored do some Tantra. RICHARD: Hmm ... I will have to check with Vineeto, of course, but I would be most surprised if she were to say that she was indeed ‘stuck and bored’ . RESPONDENT: Hey I don’t understand that approach ... RICHARD: Indeed not ... I like my fellow human being and I would never advise attending spiritually-based ‘Tried and True’ teachings and workshops. RESPONDENT: ... but hey I met you and I like you so tell me how that can be .... I want to understand ... RICHARD: I already understand ... I lived enlightenment night and day for eleven years, thus I have intimate knowledge of its seductive ways. RESPONDENT: ... because I am a limited human just like you ... RICHARD: Except that I am not a ‘limited human just like you’. RESPONDENT: ... and one day I will be gone ... so let’s enjoy each other while we are here! RICHARD: But I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate your being here already ... I always have done and always will do. RESPONDENT: And hey, No. 12 do you mind if we put some of your writing on our website? RICHARD: I simply keep a copy of my correspondence on the Web Site for ease and convenience ... to save clicking through tens of thousands of E-Mails in various public mailing list archives throughout the world. The only difference is that I make the respondent anonymous a matter of courtesy. If I may suggest? If you do not want what you write to be in the public domain then do not write to mailing lists. RESPONDENT: Hmm? We’ll only do it if that is what you want ... because friendship is important on this planet! RICHARD: It has nothing to do with friendship as I like people anyway. RESPONDENT: And No. 10! Wow! You are intelligent and persistent. I appreciate that. RICHARD: Every body is intelligent ... it is just that human intelligence is crippled by the survival instincts. RESPONDENT: The point does not seem so important now. RICHARD: The point is important irregardless of what the other does or does not do or does or does not say for there is no compromise possible here in this actual world ... nothing ‘dirty’ can get in. RESPONDENT: I’d like you to be my friend. Because you know ... I got tired of all the rape and murder and war and opposition on this planet RICHARD: As I like everybody anyway I never have to sell out for the sake of a friendship. Besides, I never need the other to fulfil me ... or whatever it is that makes people bargain and compromise for the sake of such a fickle thing as a relationship. I like being here ... I am totally fulfilled and utterly satisfied each moment again. RESPONDENT: ... and I think people who think like you and me could be friends ... how about it?? Wanna come and have a coffee with me?? Relating is so simple. As simple as freedom actually. RICHARD: There is more to an actual freedom from the human condition than merely thinking alike ... one gets off one’s backside and actually does something. * RICHARD: And, of course, you may respond to this E-Mail in any way you see fit – or not answer at all – but the one thing, and one thing only that this thread is about, is the central reason as to why there is no peace on earth after 3,000 to 5,000 years of enlightened wisdom. To wit: The ‘Ancient Wisdom’ licence says: it is okay to kill the body as you are not killing the person. RESPONDENT: I agree with you. And that is stupid; ridiculous; and inappropriate. Not only that it sucks. Not only that it is at the root of war and sorrow ... RICHARD: Then why do you feel ‘belittled’ ? RESPONDENT: ... and disidentification. RICHARD: May I ask? Instead of ‘self’-immolating, psychologically and psychically, have ‘you’ un-identified as being ‘me’ as soul who survives physical death ... and re-identified as being the flesh and blood body? If so, then this could very well be why ‘you’ feel ‘belittled’ . RESPONDENT: Richard, when you turn my point around from: let’s discuss the belittling that is happening amongst you and your adherents to: No. 10 why do you feel belittled, that is a perfect example of belittlement on your part. RICHARD: It is nothing so trivial as merely ‘belittling’ the identity (by whatever name) as I am laying culpability for all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like directly at the feet of that ‘being’ ... that psychological and/or psychic entity who has taken up parasitical existence in an otherwise innocent flesh and blood body. In case it is still not clear: I am not ‘belittling’ you ... I am doing far more than that. RESPONDENT: Why are you bringing feelings into this? RICHARD: Because it would appear that instead of ‘self’-immolating psychologically and psychically ‘you’ may very well have un-identified as being ‘me’ as soul who survives physical death ... and re-identified as being the flesh and blood body. It is the reference to ‘disidentification’ that prompts me to suggest this. RESPONDENT: I am saying you have a tendency to want to be right. RICHARD: I do not have to ‘want to be right’ ... because when it comes to the matter of being free from the human condition – the total extinction of the animal self and all its affective feelings – I am always right already as I speak from experience. RESPONDENT: And to achieve that you read meanings into people’s communication that suits your purpose. RICHARD: Okay then ... have all the affective feelings disappeared, in toto and never to return, in the flesh and blood body known as No. 10? RESPONDENT: And that is the underlying dynamic of Actualism that you have passed onto the ‘inner circle’ as I call it facetiously. Period. Examine it. Or don’t. RICHARD: I do not need to ‘examine it’ ... I already know that I relentlessly put my finger on the root cause of all the mayhem and misery. That is why The Actual Freedom Trust exists; that is why the Actual Freedom Web Page exists; that is why the Actual Freedom Mailing List exists ... and that is why I am writing. If all you feel is that my words are ‘belittling’ ... then you ain’t seen half of it yet! RESPONDENT: Richard, this is kindergarten stuff ... pass the blame to the self. RICHARD: Okay ... let us do it your way, then: where do you lay the blame for all the animosity and anguish that exemplifies the human condition? RESPONDENT: Tell everyone you don’t have one. RICHARD: I already am ... have you not noticed? RESPONDENT: Tell them what they believe and know. RICHARD: I always advise against believing (and trusting and hoping and having faith and so on). RESPONDENT: Tell them you are special. RICHARD: I already do ... have you not noticed? RESPONDENT: Because you are free. Yeah sure baby. RICHARD: I rather fail to see the point you are making. * RESPONDENT: You said once that you value your privacy. RICHARD: Yes ... I am having too much fun, living my life in the way I see fit, to clutter up my lifestyle with ‘guru-circuit’ peoples, who cannot think for themselves, trooping daily through my front door. RESPONDENT: Let us get to some facts Richard. You have been on the internet how many years? Your email address has been available to how many people in that time (in your estimation – approximately)? How many of those people have emailed you asking to come and ‘troop through your front door’ to get a more close up delivery of your wisdom? In other words; is it happening already that people are using the communication channel you do have open (email) to request a meeting with you in Byron Bay? How many people have done that already Richard? You can count me as one (and I still cherish the times we spent together discussing this and that and eating fish). Now, since you state already you are having fun living the way you see fit without the ‘‘guru-circuit’ peoples’ cluttering up your lifestyle we must assume either that not many people have made the request thru email; or you have refused many requests. Could you document the facts on this matter? Then we may be in a position to establish some projection about the likely number of guru seekers who would come to you if your name and photo were also available to the public. RICHARD: Before you go on to develop your thesis further with the collation of statistics, the plotting of graphs, considering appropriate interpolations, adding projections, contemplating bell curves and so forth, I wonder if I may point out something so obvious that you may be overlooking it? If I were actually publicising myself as you are so insistent that I do, before you first heard about an actual freedom from the human condition per Peter’s and Vineeto’s posts to the sannyas list you were subscribed to, what you would be likely to be saying now instead of the above would be demanding to know why I have set myself up as some sort of here-on-earth ... um ... actualism master replete with name, an advertised address, beaming photographs for the adoring actualists, actualism discourses, actualism workshops and ... and the whole kit and caboodle. You only have to look at some of your own correspondence (starting 6/06/2000 in the List Bot archives) to see this very accusation in full flower anyway ... and without all the publicity photographs and so on. I also recall that on 14/06/2000 you were proposing ‘... an actual freedom workshop, a weekend of exploring together what it means to be actually free on this planet in the year 2000 ... Byron Bay in the Spring’. This came just after your circular advertising and promoting a spiritually-based tantric-sex workshop that you were collecting the $375.00 participation fee for. You are not the only person to try to turn an actual freedom into a pay-as-you-participate religion ... and you will not be the last. RESPONDENT: By implication from your above writing; you imagine, or know, or have the point of view, or directly perceive, (which?), that the publication of your surname and your photo would dramatically increase the number of people who cannot think for themselves wanting to meet you. Is that how you think about it? RICHARD: No. How I think about it is how I explained it to you in this very E-Mail you are responding to: • [Richard]: ‘I am a fellow human being sans identity: the affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated. There is no ‘charisma’ nor any ‘energy-field’ here as I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever. Therefore it is the words that convey ... words are words, whether they be spoken, printed or appear as pixels on a screen. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 22 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘Ultimately it is what is being said or written, by the writer or the speaker that lives what is being expressed, that is important ... and facts and actuality then speak for themselves. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘What this body physically looks like is neither here nor there. It is the words written that convey the information’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘Now the words exist – as the actual freedom writings – and I am not necessary for the process at all. It is entirely possible that I will cease writing one day and go and live on a tropical island and watch the fish leap in the lagoon. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘The Internet is my chosen means of dissemination for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan, 12 January 1999). • [Richard]: ‘The words ‘connect up’ with the person reading them with both eyes open ... I am not necessary for the process’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘It is the words that communicate what needs to be said and not me. Nor is the number of words presented ... I initially presented 114,000 words’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘As it is the words that express what a human being has discovered then where this body is means nothing at all’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). • [Richard]: ‘The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with its multiple feed-back capability – is second to none’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000). RESPONDENT: If so; how do you justify your belief with facts Richard? What evidence do you have that you would be any more in demand by the guru seekers if your name was on the site along with your photo? RICHARD: I will provide an example that illustrates why the Internet is my chosen means of dissemination for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. A self-confessed guru-seeker from the other side of the world came to see me, having had some contact with the actual freedom writings, with the view of being able to be finished with gurus forever. Every afternoon for nearly six weeks this person had a private face-to-face interaction – for four to six hours every afternoon for 39 days this person had a one-on-one intimacy – and then this guru-seeker went back to their guru. Now do you see why the electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with it’s multiple feed-back capability – is second to none? * RESPONDENT: I consider my role to be more of journalistic than as a seeker after actual truth; or as a potential client of your way. RICHARD: Is this really how you still see it after all these discussions? Oh well ... c’est la vie, I guess. RESPONDENT: Of course. I do not want to be a client. And I do not want you to be a server. And vice-versa; both. The client-server model of effective structuring of systems was very popular a decade or so ago; but is fast losing validity and respect; and even is losing the possibility of remaining a viable option; as the autonomous peer model that the internet is built on becomes understood more widely. The internet was built to survive a nuclear attack; so the underlying structure is a great model to utilise for human communication systems; and for understanding and increasing immersion in; the underlying actual state of affairs underneath all that. I trust you picked all that up from my communication above when you were reading my words at face-value. RICHARD: What I ‘picked-up’ then, and what I ‘pick-up’ now (as in reading your words at face value), is that you are still not talking to me. You are persisting in talking to an image in your mind called ‘Richard The Server’ (in this instance you cite) created in situ by the viewpoint which you hold to be ‘correct and true’ ... and which, although you allow it may not be, you never actually do. And the resultant problems you thus create is what ‘empty rhetoric’ and ‘mindless repetitions’ and ‘vacuous statements’ actively look like when played-out in print (this E-Mail exchange goes on and on around this one issue). I will put it this way: a potential client (a customer, a shopper, a buyer, a purchaser, a consumer) can only flower to their full potential if a merchant has set-up their stall in the market-place, fully stocked with their product, so as to peddle their wares. A client/ merchant relationship, in other words, has to mutually pre-exist as a potentiality for the colloquialism ‘it takes two to tango’ to swing into gear. In the context which you wrote your sentence ‘or a potential client of your way’ (the ‘Actual Freedom’=‘Actual Truth’ aka ‘God’ by ‘Whatever Name’ context) you can only be talking to an image in your mind ... as I am not that personality (the merchant) your viewpoint seeks to superimpose over my words and thus attempts to insert into this flesh and blood body. Hence I wrote: ‘is this really how you still see it after all these discussions’ (as in does your viewpoint really still manipulate you into fondly imagining that you and this flesh and blood body answering to the name ‘Richard’ have, or have ever had, a merchant/ client relationship)? There never has been such a relationship; there is no such relationship now; and there never will be such a relationship. The personality you are wanting friendship from, the personality you want to respect you, the personality you want to be valued by and the personality you want accreditation from has no existence outside of your mind. * RICHARD: I will put it this way: a potential client can only flower to their full potential if a merchant has set-up their stall in the market-place, fully stocked with their product, so as to peddle their wares. A client/ merchant relationship, in other words, has to mutually pre-exist as a potentiality for the colloquialism ‘it takes two to tango’ to swing into gear ... I am not that personality (the merchant) your viewpoint seeks to superimpose over my words and thus attempts to insert into this flesh and blood body. There never has been such a relationship; there is no such relationship now; and there never will be such a relationship. The personality you are wanting friendship from, the personality you want to respect you, the personality you want to be valued by and the personality you want accreditation from has no existence outside of your mind. And it is to no avail whatsoever to come seeking that personality here in Byron Bay, to endeavour to make contact with that entity personally, as there is only a flesh and blood body here being apperceptively aware. There is no person answering to that description at this address. Or to put it another way: all you will get by ringing me is an answering machine playing the same-same message as is displayed for all the world to see on The Actual Freedom Web Site. RESPONDENT: Great. I will ring your answering machine if and when my friend [name witheld] and I arrive; and ‘we’ can perhaps arrange a lunch or coffee ‘together’. I can imagine that the ‘flesh and blood body’ would enjoy ‘being apperceptively aware’ in the beach hotel restaurant or some such. RICHARD: Yet I already enjoy my current lifestyle, as it is, totally, completely, utterly. I fully enjoy my own company; I fully enjoy the company of a choice companion; I fully enjoy the company of select associates; I fully enjoy all current associations ... my social calendar is thus fully booked out by simply living. I live a normal lifestyle: this is the lifestyle I have chosen; this is the lifestyle I wish to live; this is the lifestyle I am living. I enjoy normal things: I live in a normal suburban duplex; I eat at normal restaurants; I meet normal people at cafés; I chat about normal things; I have normal pastimes ... to be able to freely live this normal lifestyle in a seaside village is why I set out to become free of the human condition all those years ago. I never intended – and I do not intend – to become some sort of latter-day atheistic-saviour of humankind wherein I cannot live a normal lifestyle. I do indeed value my privacy highly ... which is one of the reasons why I chose the internet to share my discovery of peace-on-earth with my fellow human beings. You have been persistent in attempting to intrude into this normal living – and thus violate both my lifestyle and that of my companion and associates – so as to make me into some kind of public figure-head replete with publicity photographs and pay-as-you-participate workshops ... even though I have been consistent in providing the following pertinent information, relevant reasons and articulate answers: • [Richard]: ‘I am having too much fun, living my life in the way I see fit, to clutter up my lifestyle with ‘guru-circuit’ peoples, who cannot think for themselves, trooping daily through my front door’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘I will put it this way: a potential client can only flower to their full potential if a merchant has set-up their stall in the market-place, fully stocked with their product, so as to peddle their wares. A client/ merchant relationship, in other words, has to mutually pre-exist as a potentiality for the colloquialism ‘it takes two to tango’ to swing into gear ... I am not that personality (the merchant) your viewpoint seeks to superimpose over my words and thus attempts to insert into this flesh and blood body’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12f, 28 November 2000a) • [Richard]: ‘I am a fellow human being sans identity: the affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated. There is no ‘charisma’ nor any ‘energy-field’ here as I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever. Therefore it is the words that convey ... words are words, whether they be spoken, printed or appear as pixels on a screen’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12b, 28 July 2000) • [Richard]: ‘Ultimately it is what is being said or written, by the writer or the speaker that lives what is being expressed, that is important ... and facts and actuality then speak for themselves. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘It is the words that communicate what needs to be said and not me. Nor is the number of words presented ... I initially presented 114,000 words’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘Now the words exist – as the actual freedom writings – and I am not necessary for the process at all’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘The words ‘connect up’ with the person reading them with both eyes open ... I am not necessary for the process’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12e, 26 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘It is entirely possible that I will cease writing one day and go and live on a tropical island and watch the fish leap in the lagoon’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12e, 26 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘The Internet is my chosen means of dissemination for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12e, 26 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with it’s multiple feed-back capability – is second to none’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12e, 26 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘A self-confessed guru-seeker from the other side of the world came to see me, having had some contact with the actual freedom writings, with the view of being able to be finished with gurus forever. Every afternoon for nearly six weeks this person had a private face-to-face interaction – for four to six hours every afternoon for 39 days this person had a one-on-one intimacy – and then this guru-seeker went back to their guru’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12e, 26 November 2000) • [Richard]: ‘I have experimented, over the three years or so since I went public with my discovery on the internet, to see whether I am correct or incorrect (and not merely theorising) in saying that it is the words that convey an actual freedom from the human condition, and to thus find out for myself as to whether it is pointless coming to see me in person or not. It is indeed pointless coming to see me in person’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12f, 28 November 2000) I have said before that the words and writings promulgated and promoted by The Actual Freedom Trust fully explicate the workings of an actual freedom from the human condition and a virtual freedom in practice in the market place (which means there is no meditating in silence or living in a monastery shut away from the world). I have pointed out that there are no celibacy or obedience requirements or dietary demands or daily regimes of exercise ... nor is one is excluded by age or racial or gender origins. I have emphasised that there are no courses to follow or therapies to undergo or workshops to endure or any clique to join ... I have been emphatic that there are no fees to pay. Furthermore, not only are there no prescribed books to study, the latest count shows that more than 3.1 million words are available for free on The Actual Freedom Web Page. It pleases me immensely that the way to access an actual freedom from the human condition is available for free. However, one is well-advised to read about the way thoroughly ... thus it is apt to quote some words shared to the world at large, by one of your fellow human beings, on The Actual Freedom Web Page: • [Peter] ‘About this time I started to come to grips with an undercurrent of feelings that had been welling up in me as I got further along this path to freedom. As I began to increasingly understand the full extent of what Richard had discovered, I had begun quite cunningly to plot my role in the Movement that would sweep the world. Images of money and fame began to subtly occur – and sometimes not so subtly. I would see myself travelling and talking to halls full of people, spreading the message! Yes, it was good old power and authority again – the attraction of the Glamour, Glory and Glitz. No wonder the Enlightened Ones are seduced and then trapped by it! It seemed to me an instinctual grab for power by my psyche, which rightly felt threatened with elimination. I also had to admit to myself that power and authority was a definite attraction in my desire for Enlightenment – a sort of spiritual version of ‘Money for nothing and your chicks for free’. (page 88; ‘Peter’s Journal’ © The Actual Freedom Trust 1998). Needless to say, as it would appear that you still do not comprehend plainly spoken sensibility and practicability, I will try an entirely different tack ... and then maybe you can work backwards from there, so as assimilate somewhat the reasons given above, into your ‘correct and true’ viewpoint which, although you allow it may not be ‘correct and true’, you are still rigidly holding to be ‘correct and true’ despite all evidence to the contrary. 1. [Respondent]: ‘I find myself at a time in my life when I am much more interested in my own writing than anyone else’s’. 2. [Respondent]: ‘What makes you imagine that I – for example – would have any more interest in hearing the ‘after the event’ reporting of your direct experience than I have in ... eating pizza?’ 3. [Respondent]: ‘At the moment it does not interest me to read more’. 4. [Respondent]: ‘I do not have a need to read more’. 5. [Respondent]: ‘I may as well eat pizza and be actually free as read more of your words’. 6. [Respondent]: ‘I may respond at a later time as I am busy and engaged elsewhere right now’. 7. [Respondent]: ‘I will quickly scan your latest contribution’. 8. [Respondent]: ‘I cannot pretend to have read even half of what you write below; but certainly I will’. 9. [Respondent]: ‘Certainly I have the intention of responding point by point to points’. 10. [Respondent]: ‘Certainly I intend to take up the points I dropped’. 11. [Respondent]: ‘I will write more later’. And when you have finished contemplating your own writing (1-11 above) there is a dictionary definition of an apposite word worthy of musing over: • Narcissism: [from Latin: Narcissus; from Greek: Narkissos: a youth in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in water and pined away]: self-love, extreme vanity; (psychological): emotional or erotic gratification gained from contemplation of one’s self or one’s appearance; (noun): narcissist: a person affected or characterized by narcissism; an excessively self-admiring person. (Copyright © 1998 Oxford Dictionary). All of which could very well bring you to a full appreciation of a particular piece of correspondence you had with me just before your current enterprise began: • [Respondent]: ‘I am doing fine right now amidst working on my major disability which is DNA based. • [Richard]: ‘This DNA-based disability – the human condition – is the very stuff for derring-do, eh? • [Respondent]: ‘Could you explain what you mean when you say ‘this DNA-based disability – the human condition – is the very stuff for derring-do, eh?’ ‘Derring-do’ ... what do you mean? Is it fun? • [Richard]: ‘Yes, it is fun – sincere and thrilling fun but fun nevertheless – to embark on the voyage of a lifetime ... and an exploration into ‘my’ psyche is a journey into the ‘human’ psyche as ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. The phrase ‘derring-do’ means ‘daring to do’ ... anybody still run by the instinctual passions – specifically fear – coincidentally has recourse to the valour to match (where there is no fear there is no courage). It requires great audacity to fly in the face of the ‘Tried and True’ ... after all, could it really be so that 6.0 billion peoples now living (and maybe 4.0 billion having once lived) have all got it wrong? • [Respondent]: ‘Please forgive me if this is kindergarten stuff and has been covered on the list previously. • [Richard]: ‘Exploring the psychic world is not ‘kindergarten stuff’ at all and unless one has successfully removed the need for a social identity (a conscience) such a journey is fraught with danger ... one may become enlightened. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12c, 9 November 2000). Provided you assimilate that exchange into your ‘correct and true’ viewpoint which, although you allow it may not be ‘correct and true’, you are still rigidly holding to be ‘correct and true’ despite all evidence to the contrary ... this following correspondence may become much clearer: • [Respondent]: ‘Richard, you claim you were once enlightened. • [Richard]: ‘Yes. • [Respondent]: ‘Richard; my hearing is you were in psychosis. • [Richard]: ‘Yes ... ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is a psychotic state of mind; a dissociated state of consciousness, replete with delusions of grandeur that are tempered only by it being a solipsistic state. A person who believes they are enlightened when they are not do not have this temperance ... hence out-of-control megalomania is both possible and probable. • [Respondent]: ‘That is ok; many people move in and out of psychosis; but some recognise and acknowledge it. • [Richard]: ‘If only the ‘Enlightened Beings’ would ‘recognise and acknowledge it’, eh? (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12c, 9 November 2000). In the final analysis I can only suggest ... what another does with my suggestions is, of course, entirely up to them. It is they who either reap the rewards or pay the consequences for any action or inaction that they may or may not do. Provided a person complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols they will be left alone to live their life as wisely or as foolishly as they wish. I cannot save anyone. * RESPONDENT: I could call or not call; I am curious; if you answer is NO; what has changed ... RICHARD: You will find my response further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). RESPONDENT: ... because last time you responded positively to my company. In fact you informed me that No. 12 is almost the only one who comes to visit Richard. except for the circle of initiates. RICHARD: It is far wiser to stay with factual (printed and published in the public domain) words than conjure up words out of the air when writing to a public mailing list. This way what person ‘A’ alleges person ‘B’ to have said or not said and what person ‘B’ alleges person ‘A’ to have said or not said can be verified from the archives ... otherwise sensible conversation devolves into a ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t, ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t, ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t schoolyard wrangle. For instance: there is no way I would ever say, what you are suggesting I said, to anyone at all at any time at all at any place at all ... I never, ever use the word ‘initiates’, for just one example, let alone ‘circle of initiates’. I have no interest in ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t, ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t, ‘tis/ ‘tisn’t schoolyard wrangles whatsoever. RESPONDENT: So; has something changed? RICHARD: You will find my response further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). RESPONDENT: Could it be for instance that ‘you’ are capable of being pissed off with your friends? RICHARD: First, in an actual freedom from the human condition it is impossible to not like someone whatever the mischief is they get up to ... an actual intimacy is impossible to switch off. Second, in an actual freedom from the human condition it is impossible to have ‘friends’ as an actual intimacy operates unilaterally in regards every man, woman and child without exception ... no body is special because every body is special. Third, in an actual freedom from the human condition it is impossible to get even mildly peeved ... let alone angry. Why do you ask? Surely you are already aware of all this ... or is your ‘Actual Truth=Actual Freedom’ a fake? And in this respect I would also draw your attention to your comment the other day, to another correspondent, where you said that ‘Richard gets up my nose right now’ (that ‘Richard’, of course, being the ‘phantom-friend’ in your mind you give so much reality too). What effect does it have to discover you have had a phantom up your nose all this while? RESPONDENT: Well; if you are not capable of that; or if you are; makes no difference to me. Why? Because I enjoy ‘your’ ‘company’; that’s ‘why’. RICHARD: You never, ever enjoy my company – I am not that personality your viewpoint superimposes over or into this flesh and blood body – and whomsoever it is whose company you enjoy is all in your mind. There is a particularly apposite word worthy of consideration in this regard ... you will find it further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). Put simply: you are busily enjoying a fantasy figure’s company. RESPONDENT No. 12: So shall I ring ‘you’ when I arrive in Byron and we could go out to lunch or coffee? RICHARD: You will find my response further above (in the ‘snipped for space’ section). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12g, 30 November 2000). RESPONDENT: Richard, I have one question about this series of emails: why do you never say frankly, outspoken or plain that you don’t want to see [names withheld], instead of evading into indirectness? I know, you’re implying it almost all the time, but why don’t you say (sorry, write) it explicitly? RICHARD: For a number of reasons: first of all, I am conscious of the fact that I am writing to a fellow human being, and not to words appearing on a screen, who has publicly informed me of their medical condition. Viz.: • [quote]: ‘By the way, I have major depression; and probably it is of the bipolar variety; at this stage somewhere around the bipolar II range on the bipolar spectrum disorder characterisation. I take medication for that and it works well ... and at times toward the depressed end of the swing of my genetic pendulum I go into silence and inactivity for varying lengths of time. This may help to explain to you – should you be interested – why it is that sometimes I do not write for awhile’. (‘Second question from the defence’; Fri 11/24/000). I have intimate experience, over many years, of interacting with people who have been suffering from varying degrees of this particularly distressing disorder ... and in my experience (and verified via their own feedback) the most helpful way of interacting is by (a) being sensible and practical at all times and (b) enabling or facilitating the ability to make their own decisions based upon sound physical reasons. It is important, vital, to not pander to flights of fancy and stay down-to-earth and matter-of-fact in any, oft-times fluctuating, instance. Also, there is a ‘game-play’ being acted out here which I am incapable of being drawn into – and I do indeed value my privacy for all the reasons stated – wherein the whole question of authority comes to be focussed on this one (possibly contrived) incident. It is far, far better for another person to see for themselves rather than making me into their authority figure ... and then riling against the decisions that their authority figure then makes. It is called being autonomous. RESPONDENT: Meaning in terms of verbal expression depends upon context. RICHARD: If you ever lose your day job you could always earn pin-money tutoring elderly matriarchs qua ovo fellare ... if you were to cast your gaze upwards you will see these words: [Richard]: ‘... by me not deviating one hair’s breadth away from what the words ‘the outside is the inside’ and ‘the observer is the observed’ say, *in the context they sit in*, you are now reduced to making the point that ...’. [emphasis added]. RESPONDENT: Your pleasure at proving yourself ‘right’ (in your own mind at least) is once again noted. RICHARD: You might as well tear the page out of your notebook now, where you jotted down that theory, as all I was doing was pointing to the textual evidence which demonstrates that this is not kindergarten. RESPONDENT: Interesting. And you sense no feeling involved in the reference to kindergarten? RICHARD: As there are no affective feelings whatsoever in this flesh and blood body – they of course vanished right along with the ‘being’ when that identity finally ‘self’-immolated – there is never any ‘feeling involved’ in any situation or circumstance ... least of all in regards to something so elementary as pointing out where someone is presuming to advise somebody of something already explicitly stated as being a condition of the discussion’s viability. In short: the comment in question is a simple matter-of-fact observation ... albeit somewhat droll (although it would appear its drollness got lost in transit). RESPONDENT: You are side-stepping the fact that a disparaging comment was made from a feeling of superiority. RICHARD: You have made it more or less apparent by now, via several unsolicited character analyses, that you might very well be proposing a, somewhat tenuous, theory about me being in denial, because of avoidance, and thus out of touch with the feelings you are (maybe intuitively) convinced are in my words, yet just by calling it ‘the fact’ that my comment was made from a feeling does not make your certitude a certainty. If you were to put this conviction back where it came from and re-read what I wrote you may be able to see that I provided a full, explanatory response with no side-stepping whatsoever. RESPONDENT: The feeling comes through quite often in what you write. RICHARD: Whilst I appreciate your concern the conviction it arises from is entirely unfounded. RESPONDENT: I doubt many people miss it. RICHARD: Over the last decade I have interacted with many and varied people in the flesh – and face-to-face communication is a more accurate way to get reliable feedback in regards to the affective feelings than e-mails – yet almost without exception their concern, if any, has been about the absence of an affective response. And, as I remarked in an earlier e-mail, I have been examined by experts in the field for many, many years now. RESPONDENT: You go to a great deal of effort to show off intellectual and verbal skills and often scoff at what others say in as clever a manner as you can think up. RICHARD: It is no effort at all to write intelligently and skilfully, as I happen to like words and have always enjoyed the wide range this particular language commands, and have no intention of dumbing-down just because someone has an ill-founded objection to such proficiency. RESPONDENT: I see this dynamic in my own actions sometimes. RICHARD: And that is the best place to see it ... not only can you know it is happening you can actually do something about it. RESPONDENT: There is a difference between having no feelings and being out of touch with one’s feelings. RICHARD: Indeed ... having no feelings far, far better (as the ‘self’ is still extant in a person out of touch with their feelings). RESPONDENT: Feelings are what motivate us. RICHARD: Whereas the very fact of being alive on this verdant and azure paradise is what motivates me. RESPONDENT: The interest here is what kind of feelings are occurring in myself and what role is the conditioning we call self playing in those feelings? RICHARD: There is more to a ‘self’ than conditioning ... at root it is the very feelings you say it is playing a role in. RESPONDENT: That said, I’m finding your site useful and insightful. RICHARD: Good ... all I ever wanted, all those years ago when I scoured the books to no avail, was for the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition, and a virtual freedom in practice, to exist in the world. Now they do – they have taken on a life of their own and will continue to exist after my demise – and I am well-pleased. I did not want anybody to have to repeat what I went through. RESPONDENT: I’m grateful for the content and the attractive interface as well. RICHARD: The way the web site is set-up and maintained, other than my portion of it, is all Vineeto’s doing and the content of the web pages which do not have my name in the URL is either by Peter or Vineeto (unless otherwise referenced) – the entire library, for instance, or the introduction to actual freedom, for another, is not of my doing at all – and I do not vet anything that either Vineeto or Peter publish on the web site ... meaning that I do not decide, as you put it in another e-mail, what is of value and what is not (when I say there is no authority here in charge of a hierarchical organisation I mean it) as in a PCE actuality speaks for itself. It is all so simple here. RICHARD: If you are not aware of the abject misery of suffering – not only in oneself but all of humankind – then you are not old enough to be able to be reading these words. Can you not think for yourself? Do you not have feelings? Are you so inured to violence that 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 do not affect you at all? RESPONDENT: Yes, of course, I could be hanging on your every word because you’ve got this freedom thingy that I want. RICHARD: You say ‘could be’? If only you would be ... because it is you and your freedom I am interested in. RESPONDENT: The point was that I wasn’t going to give up to an authority and quit questioning. RICHARD: If I may point out? You have already ‘given up to an authority’ ... and are misunderstanding those ‘authoritative words’ into the bargain. May I ask? Why this hang-up about authority? If I wish to learn to play the piano, I go to an expert piano-player ... I do not invent piano-playing all over again from the beginning. Is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing these matters of great momentousness ... and momentous not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet? It is not an amazing thing that we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input? One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. (However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next). Speaking personally, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today. There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power. (The power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I freely acknowledge – and delight in – my expertise on all matters pertaining to actual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. This expertise is drawn out of my personal experience on a day-to-day basis, for the last eighteen years ... twenty four hours a day. If one wishes to maintain that this makes me an ‘authority’ as in the spiritual meaning of the word ‘master’ then one is entirely missing the point of all I have said, written and demonstrated. Because those otherwise intelligent ‘Enlightened Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either ‘The Truth’ or ‘The Absolute’. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. Power is what the ‘authority’ of a guru/ master/ sage/ avatar/ messiah/ saint is all about. As they have surrendered to an ‘Higher Authority’, everyone else has to slot into the inevitable hierarchy which ensues. And so the battles rage. The hunger for power – or the subservience to it – is the curse of humanity. RICHARD: Mostly people do not grasp what I am getting at for some months, for I am talking about a condition that lies beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: It really worries me that you are introducing a subtle form of authority here. If you are an authority on something that lies beyond enlightenment I have to believe you at your word. You told me what you think of that and I agree, mostly. RICHARD: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power. (The power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I ask no one to ‘believe me at my word’ ... that would be silly, for the most that the other could attain would be to live out that belief and not the actuality. It just would not work. I am merely pointing out to anyone who is interested in life, the universe and what it is to be a human being that an actual freedom exists of its own accord and that I arrived here via an altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment. My experience was that it lay beyond enlightenment, given that for enlightenment to happen one’s ego died ... and for an actual freedom to occur one’s soul had to expire in a like manner. It is a description of how I did it ... another may find a more direct route that by-passes enlightenment altogether. I would rather that someone does, as I went through some considerable mental trauma and experiential angst to ‘arrive’ ... which I would not wish upon anyone at all. RESPONDENT: If enlightenment can be discarded altogether than actuality is the main thing. But that implies that I should try to grasp beyond something I haven’t even experienced! So again I need a guru to tell me where to go? RICHARD: Not at all ... I am a fellow human being that is reporting to anyone who is at all interested that something far better than any altered state of consciousness exists here in this actual world ... here on earth. Spiritual enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years ... and there is still no peace on earth. Nowadays I know, experientially, why enlightenment does not deliver the goods ... and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is. As everyone I have spoken with at depth about this in the last eighteen years has eventually remembered at least one pure consciousness experience (PCE), that is virtually identical to an actual freedom, then I find that it is universal to the human experience. When remembered, the PCE tells one ‘where to go’ ... not some super-guru! We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. * RESPONDENT: I hope you see the mistake if you are making one, because claiming authority is ‘not harmless’. I am only shortly beginning to understand that more fully. RICHARD: This is because those otherwise intelligent ‘Self-Realised Beings’ have surrendered their integrity to the psychic Power that lies hidden as the ‘Unmanifest Authority’ behind the scenes. This divine entity can go by many names, most of them obviously a god, but the most pernicious is the one usually described as either The Truth or The Absolute. To have surrendered to ‘that which is sacred’ is the root cause of all the religious wars that have beset this planet since time immemorial. 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 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. * RESPONDENT: Your response has not resolved my feeling of uneasiness with your authority. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: Though your arguments sound plausible there is no relaxation within me on this point. RICHARD: Again: Why? RESPONDENT: I also recognize the difference between expertise and authority. RICHARD: If you do, then why do you still have difficulty with my writing? RESPONDENT: And I fully understand the difference between realisation as a process of change (actuality) and concluding as a process of reality. RICHARD: Actual freedom is not a process of change ... it is the end of the search. Nothing more needs to be done or discovered ... it is a joy and a delight to be alive, living here at this moment in time and this place in space. I have arrived ... this is complete. RESPONDENT: My point is that no-one can be an authority on the inner. RICHARD: Why not? RESPONDENT: To state that you are makes ‘actual’ interaction impossible. RICHARD: Why? RESPONDENT: I thus miss openness in you. RICHARD: I am not open to any religiosity or spirituality whatsoever. I lived the metaphysical Reality for eleven years and found it wanting. I went beyond enlightenment into an actual freedom that satisfies every single thing that humankind has been yearning for over millennia. Why would I remain open to something that just does not deliver the goods? Why would I be open to something I have lived and seen through and found to be false? Are you still open to Sinterklaas being real, for example? RESPONDENT: For example: You do not acknowledge meditation. RICHARD: No indeed I do not. Why would I? Nor do I countenance prayer. Nor self-flagellation. Nor fasting. Nor chanting a mantra. Nor ... many, many things. * RESPONDENT: Maybe even superiority feelings. This is how arrogance stems from authority. RICHARD: As actual freedom easily surpasses any altered state of consciousness, I do not have to feel superior ... for I am superior. Thus there is no need for anything so pathetic as arrogance ... or its petty antidote modesty. Also, to forestall your next objection, as I do not suffer from pride, I do not have any need for humility. Thus the marked absence of hubris in any way, shape or form makes actual freedom is a truly remarkable freedom. RESPONDENT: I think I see you are not investigating anymore. RICHARD: I know that I am not. As there is nothing left to investigate ... why would I? I have arrived; the mystery is solved; the process is complete. Here is peace and harmony; here is purity and perfection. Since you know more about where I am going wrong than I do, what would you suggest I investigate? RESPONDENT: Though your pointers are correct the surrounding tissue of authority produces follower ship. RICHARD: What is your solution then, to this dilemma of yours? Should I stop writing? Burn all my books and sit in silence? Watch my fellow human beings suffer needlessly and do nothing about it? Or perhaps you could examine dependency. RESPONDENT: What the hell is this structure that your authority stems from Richard? RICHARD: My expertise stems from success. RESPONDENT: Please investigate. RICHARD: I have already investigated ... I have already found out why belief, hope, trust, faith and certitude are an abomination and a blight on humankind, for example. Owing allegiance to no one, I am free to enjoy myself thoroughly as I explain the vastness of actual freedom to whomsoever is genuinely interested. Thus far I have written over 350,000 words on the subject ... and still going strong. Perhaps you could investigate why you are following the ‘Tried and True’ path that creates perdition on earth instead of peace-on-earth? The current world situation is a direct result of following the ‘Wisdom of the Ages’. Methinks you are defending the indefensible. RESPONDENT: Thanks for your cutting and pasting style of correspondence. It has been helpful in the process of recovery from a guru-disciple complex. RICHARD: This is good to hear. I am sometimes criticised for copying and pasting ... yet all that is going on is that if I have previously written comprehensively and completely on that particular topic I have nothing further to add. I can only re-phrase the same thing in but a few ways. Also, sometimes some people ask a rearranged version of the same question ... which tells me that that they did not read the original answer with both eyes. So I deliberately resend it. Also I have no idea whether what I wrote to person ‘A’ was read by person ‘B’ or how much someone has read of the Actual Freedom Web Site ... or understood. Sometimes something sinks in only upon the umpteenth reading anyway. It certainly is not laziness on my part ... I like words and thoroughly enjoy talking and writing. The study of the ‘Guru/ Disciple’ complex is a fascinating exploration into the nature of love and its power to override reason, basically. IRENE to Vineeto: I often said (before I left) that this [actual freedom] is not something to copy but it can be the opportunity to really make up your own mind by relying on your own senses, not only in what you hear, read, see, think and have learnt by rote, but all the other senses that you so conveniently have come to despise, in emulation of Richard: intuition, sense of where the other person actually comes from (not just your preconceived and concreted interpretation of what you believe the other must be at). RICHARD: I must acknowledge that I read this through three times before I could make out a full sense of what you were saying ... so please correct me if I have it wrong. Because you do seem to be saying that actualism is an opportunity to find out for oneself ... except that by so doing one stands accused of emulating Richard. What is one to do? Is it not an amazing thing that not only are we humans able to be here experiencing this business of being alive ... on top of that we can think about and reflect upon what is entailed? In addition to this ability, we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. However, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next. The belief in the power of intuition is one such example. Exhaustive studies have been done – by those people who care to do these things – that demonstrate again and again that the very best scores for intuition were a 53.4% success rate ... which is barely over guess-work. The vast bulk of the intuitive peoples tested scored 50/50 ... which is the odds for guessing. What are these ‘all the other senses’ that you referred too? * IRENE to Vineeto: [on three occasions where Vineeto was referring to Richard’s expertise] 1. ‘With this you make it clear that Richard is your authority’. 2. ‘Perfect example of ‘hiding’ behind the master’. 3. ‘If you deny being a disciple you’d better not advocate Richard’s method’. RICHARD: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power (the power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. Because I live in an actual freedom twenty four hours a day, I am automatically an expert about what it is like to experience freedom from the Human Condition. I have no power – or powers – whatsoever. It is very simple to be an expert on actual freedom ... one has but to live it and report to others from this on-going experience of being here now. (Expert as in specialist, professional, virtuoso ... or being experienced, proficient, able, accomplished, apt, competent and so on). I have no power – or powers – at all, for I have not surrendered to any one or any thing whatsoever. There is no trace of humiliation in me at all. * IRENE to Vineeto: An intellectual interpretation may appear to be perfectly sound. RICHARD: I do not know how many people have trotted out the line that what I say is an ‘interpretation’ ... and here you say it is an intellectual interpretation at that. May I ask? Would an emotional interpretation be better? An intuitive interpretation, perchance? Also, why is pointing out facts an interpretation? If I say ‘look ... here is a computer monitor’ am I making an interpretation? No ... Richard is only making an interpretation when he points out a fact that pulls the rug from under one’s elaborate belief system slyly dressed up as truth. IRENE to Vineeto: But any defensive or condescending attitude shows the repressed emotions nevertheless. RICHARD: Why is it that my reporting to you that my direct experience of myself is different to what you intuit it to be is me being defensive? And if you experience my words to be ‘condescending’ ... then I can only suggest that you cease being so stubbornly inferior. IRENE to Vineeto: I have a more realistic approach than following Richard’s solution, which is yet again following the old tried and failed authority trip. RICHARD: May I ask? Why this hang-up about authority? If I wish to learn to play the piano, I go to an expert piano-player ... I do not invent piano-playing all over again from the beginning. Is it not marvellous that we are able to be discussing these matters of great momentousness ... and momentous not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet? It is not an amazing thing that we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input? One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again. Speaking personally, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today. RESPONDENT: I have been noticing this trend of authoritative behaviour for sometime now. I could be wrong of course, but it seemed to me that it was increasing over time. I decided to give my view on it. I’ve seen the trend of authority increase not only here but other places I go on the net, places which are supposed to be serving the interest of human understanding and self-knowledge. RICHARD: In other words: do not ever do or achieve anything outstanding that would lead to bettering oneself ... especially totally. Or if you do – and you report to your fellow human beings about it – be well aware that some malcontent somewhere will pop up and tell you that you are ... [insert whatever sour-grapes here] ... in order to make themselves feel better. It is called ‘The Tall Poppy Syndrome’. RESPONDENT: It is called turning the ideas of another around to suit yourself. Of course you’re free to do that if it entertains you. RICHARD: May I ask? Turning what ideas around to suit me? And whose ideas at that? I am quite capable of thinking for myself ... and I fail to see the relevance of this statement to what is being discussed. Can we lift the level of discussion? After all, you did write: ‘places which are supposed to be serving the interest of human understanding and self-knowledge’ ... and I am writing to this Mailing List for that very reason. The question I ask is this: How can ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ be best served if anyone who dares to speak of their personal experience gets slammed for their ‘authoritative behaviour’? Given that this is an edict implanted by Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti, I can only assume that this is not a place where ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ can be best served ... because you seem hell-bent on muzzling the people who question the edict-maker’s edict. RESPONDENT: Bettering oneself? Don’t you think that is the essence of illusion: thinking one has achieved something great and that others, for that reason, should follow one? RICHARD: Hmm ... it is a standard convention that when referring to an identity one uses little quotes – like ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘one’ or ‘you’ or ‘oneself’ or ‘myself’ for example – and the word < oneself > is but a means of referring to the body empty of identity so as to avoid confusion. Of course, some dilettante comes along every now and then and tries to score some cheap points by trying to make out that they are wise. Although this can be done only by ignoring the fact that I wrote ‘bettering oneself ... especially totally’. Another way to dismiss what may be valid findings is to say ‘you think that you are ...’ or ‘you believe that you are ...’ or ‘you feel that you are ...’ and so on. A third way is to accuse the person – who actually gets off their backside and does something about their human condition – of desiring followers when they report to others of their experience ... that he/she is setting himself/ herself up to be a guru or whatever. RESPONDENT: Incidentally, there are just too many syndromes floating around these days. RICHARD: I used a colloquialism ... and it did not travel well, apparently. It is a well-known expression in Australian – where knocking someone ‘down to size’ who has ‘got too big for their boots’ has developed into a National Pastime – and is not actually a psychological syndrome at all. It is a joke. However, the phrase has been around for many, many years according to the Oxford Dictionary: ‘Tall poppy: A tall or striking thing or person; especially a privileged or distinguished person. Now chiefly Australian’. RESPONDENT: What one feels uncomfortable with, becomes some-body else’s ‘syndrome’. RICHARD: Okay ... just what is Richard ‘uncomfortable’ with? I freely acknowledge my authority – my expertise sits very comfortably with me – and puerile snippiness from others does not faze me at all. * RESPONDENT: I’m discussing authority solely from the point of view of force: The attempt to nullify another’s ideas based on one’s belief that one is speaking from some state of mind or being which one feels gives one the right to determine for another the ‘state’ of his psychology, and/or one’s belief that one has the right to define another based on the spoken or unspoken premise: ‘Because I said so’. One has the right to attempt the force of authority. I am saying that if there is to be actual dialog, it is a good idea to question, even challenge, the idea of such authority just as one questions and challenges most other ideologies. RICHARD: Yet you will not question, let alone challenge, the power – which is the forceful authority – of compassion, for example. Coincidentally Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ praise the power of compassion to the skies and beyond ... even to the point of calling it ‘intelligence’. His ‘Teachings’ also praise love and beauty and truth and other revered mystical values – which he clearly identifies as being synonymous with god – and does No. 4 question them? In fact, where does No. 4 get the backing for his posts about forceful authority from anyway? Maybe – just maybe – you have been sucked in badly. * RESPONDENT: Yes. Australia is probably nice, with many ‘Tall poppies’. That is not what you meant. You used that term in conjunction with a statement about malcontents who want to make them-selves feel better by tearing someone else down. Stop lying. RICHARD: Golly ... where is the lie? I was merely explaining a colloquialism that is apparently only understood by residents of Australia. My original comment still stands ... you, for example, are demanding that I be equal to you because, you say, having a dialogue with someone who I say has ‘bettered themselves ... especially totally’, is ‘unproductive of intelligent exploration’. What you want with another amounts to the blind leading the blind. Speaking personally, I was always only to happy to converse with someone who had expertise ... I unabashedly picked their brains until I obtained all the wisdom I could gain. I did not insist that they come down to my level ... I wanted to know, I wanted to understand. RESPONDENT: Well, if you freely acknowledge your authority and ‘expertise’, naturally nothing will faze you because you feel superior to everything else. RICHARD: As I pointed out (above) one of the ways of dismissing the validity of someone’s statement is to say ‘you think that you are ...’ or ‘you believe that you are ...’ or ‘you feel that you are ...’ and so on. However, you told me ‘Don’t play the language game with me’ when I said so. I guess you will just continue with this undergraduate ploy as it ensures that you do not have to deal with the issue the other is raising. However, I will put it into plain English: I do not feel superior ... I am superior. RESPONDENT: But realise that the only authority you have is the authority others give you through their belief that you have it. That is unfortunate for both they and you. RICHARD: Not so ... I am an authority on freedom irrespective of whether person (A) believes my words to be true or whether person (B) believes my words to be false. My freedom from the human condition – and the expertise this ensures – has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people believe or disbelieve. However, their own freedom from the human condition – which is what is of crucial importance here – is dependent upon their remembering at least one of their PCE’s accurately ... and herein I can play a part in affirming and confirming their personal experience of the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. How on earth can this be ‘unfortunate for both they and me’? It means peace-on-earth. * RESPONDENT: Good luck with gnawing your brontosaurus bones. RICHARD: You may jest, yet even your jests are in error. I am not a Luddite – I do not live in the past – and I have always been happy to hear or read of somebody else’s discoveries in their exploration into the ‘mystery of life’. I do not have a hang-up – or a borrowed opinion – about authority ... if someone could share with me their experience I took note of it. I would not be where I am today if it were not for the progress made by all those enterprising individuals who went before me and left a written record of their essays into human experience for others to read. I value expertise. RESPONDENT: I’m discussing authority solely from the point of view of force: The attempt to nullify another’s ideas based on one’s belief that one is speaking from some state of mind or being which one feels gives one the right to determine for another the ‘state’ of his psychology, and/or one’s belief that one has the right to define another based on the spoken or unspoken premise: ‘Because I said so’. One has the right to attempt the force of authority. I am saying that if there is to be actual dialog, it is a good idea to question, even challenge, the idea of such authority just as one questions and challenges most other ideologies. RICHARD: Yet you will not question, let alone challenge, the power – which is the forceful authority – of compassion, for example. Coincidentally Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘Teachings’ praise the power of compassion to the skies and beyond ... even to the point of calling it ‘intelligence’. His ‘Teachings’ also praise love and beauty and truth and other revered mystical values – which he clearly identifies as being synonymous with god – and does No. 4 question them? In fact, where does No. 4 get the backing for his posts about forceful authority from anyway? * RESPONDENT: When someone says to me in essence: ‘I know and you don’t ... I’m speaking from clarity and you aren’t ... so what I say is right and what you say is wrong ...’, yes, he/she may expect serious challenge from me if he/she is discussing with me. RICHARD: Indeed ... after eighteen years experience of talking with recalcitrant egoists I expect – and am quite capable of meeting – any serious challenge. When are you going to start? So far, all your objections have been marked by their lack of intellectual rigour. RESPONDENT: I am quite ruthless with that kind of authority – not the person, but the attitude. It is unproductive of intelligent exploration and attempts to reduce another to the role of devotee. RICHARD: Yet I am an atheist ... a devotee can only exist in relationship with a person who is deluded enough to imagine they are divine. I am not enlightened ... I have gone beyond enlightenment into the actuality that lies beyond the indescribable ‘Truth’. Beyond the delusion that ‘I AM LOVE’, for example. I never need to use ‘god-words’ like ‘sacred’, ‘holy’, ‘ineffable’ and so on. I am a fellow human being sans identity ... and I share my experience, understanding and knowledge with my fellow human beings for them to do with what they will. I will not pretend to be equal ... I have too much regard for the other’s integrity to pull that stunt. RESPONDENT: I don’t think that ‘human understanding and self-knowledge’ can exist in that type of haughty, exclusive environment. RICHARD: It is unfortunate that you see another’s success as automatically making them haughty ... this actual freedom is so superior to any other way of living that I do not have to stoop so low as to be haughty or arrogant or vain or whatever in order to prop it up. It is an estimable condition to be living in. RESPONDENT: You may associate that with Krishnamurti if you prefer to. RICHARD: Thank you ... I will. I do prefer to because it is obvious, to those with the eyes to see, the sneaky cleverness of any form of humility. RESPONDENT: Well, I’ve spent enough time reading the site to know that my letter will be blocked by Richard’s ego, as No. 4 was. RICHARD: Apart from starting your very first post to The Actual Freedom Mailing List with an abject air of resignation, in what way do you predict that your letter will be blocked? And in what way was No. 4’s post blocked? He had specifically stated that he wrote only to share his thoughts, and was not looking for anybody’s answers, so I responded suggesting unambiguously that reciprocity was far, far better than one-way monologues. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 4a, 8 September 1999). I would call that ‘opening-up’ a discussion rather than ‘blocking’ ... would you not agree? RESPONDENT: Or replied to ‘predictably’ with Richard’s usual over excited egotistical arrogance ... RICHARD: Hmm ... this is the second time that you have used this word ‘ego’ – and now in combination with ‘arrogance’ to boot – and my experience on Mailing Lists has shown that it is usually female correspondents who throw this meaningless contribution to dialogue into the ring. May I ask? What do you hope to achieve with such pointless taxonomy? RESPONDENT: ... feigned harmlessness, cut and paste laziness and of course those impressive ‘big words’ that make him look like an inconsiderate idiot. Then one of his parrots will come to their guru’s defence using his cloned vocabulary and corrupted aggro attitude. RICHARD: My, my ... you do go on. Nevertheless, I am only too happy to attend to your worries: 1. You do not know me personally so you have no way of knowing whether my harmlessness is ‘feigned’ or genuine. 2. I do not ‘copy and paste’ out of laziness at all ... it is just that there is only a finite number of ways of saying the same thing differently before one starts duplicating what one has said elsewhere. I basically said all I had to say with 114,000 words in my journal years ago ... and the count is over 2,000,000 words by now. Also, experience has shown that someone may not ‘get it’ the first time around, or the second or third, but will have it sink in on the umpteenth repeat. And there is also the matter of not being able to remember who I have said what to and when and where ... nor knowing whether what I wrote to person ‘A’ was read by person ‘B’ anyway. 3. You are not the first person to have a problem about another’s erudition and scholarship ... yet the English language has upwards of 650,000 words in it. Do you really suggest that I restrict myself to the usual 4,000 to 6,000 that is the extent of the vocabulary of the average person? If so, why? Must all peoples remain semi-illiterate just because peoples like yourself find linguistic expressiveness to be ‘inconsiderate’ towards those lacking the gumption to flex their minds with what you revealingly call ‘impressive big words’? 4. The use of the word ‘parrots’ is like the throwaway ‘egotistical’ line you used above ... easy to say and contributing zilch to investigative dialogue (and ‘parroting’ is a word to describe mindless imitation of another anyway). 5. As I am on record as saying – over and over again – that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through I hardly see why you bother to try and hang the appellation ‘guru’ upon me. But then again, it is so easy to chuck these phrases around, is it not? Much easier than thinking things through for yourself, eh? 6. It is very difficult for anyone to say the same thing whilst not using the words and phrases of one another ... somewhat like your use of ‘ego’, ‘egotistical arrogance’, ‘impressive big words’, ‘inconsiderate idiot’, ‘parrots’, ‘guru’, ‘cloned vocabulary’, ‘aggro attitude’, ‘thick skulls’, ‘alienating’, ‘wanking’ ... but never mind ... you would make a good engineer. RESPONDENT: I am not telling you this in a condescending way as though I have something to teach. RICHARD: This is the second time that you have felt obliged to explain what your motives are not made up of. (‘I am being objectively critical and not cynical in pointing this out to you’). Methinks thou doest protesteth too much. Thus you leave me with the impression that you are indeed cynical and condescending. Anyway, what is so wrong about having something to teach? If you know something, then say it ... and say it with firmness and boldness; say it with daring and audacity; say it with verve and vivacity. All this being humble business is only for the faint of heart and the weak of knee, who piously hope to earn their way into some god’s good graces by deprecating and humiliating themselves like all get-out. RESPONDENT: I see that you have set aside responding to the rest of my email, because I have caused a misunderstanding. I should have said that I was not interested in others’ (just in general, but not including or excluding yours, by the way) claims of *authenticity* (and hence, of authority) which is where so many discussions can and do become uselessly fixed, as these are entirely not settleable by third parties. RICHARD: This sweeping dismissal – ‘entirely not settleable’ – indicates to me that you are again not taking note of what I am saying in regards the pure consciousness experience (PCE). Perhaps if I were to put it this way: it is the PCE which is authentic – and hence authoritative – and the validity of the authenticity and authority of the PCE can certainly be settled by any body ... it is experiential. To use an old-fashioned – and possibly now politically incorrect – phrase: one has to ‘go native’ to fully understand. RESPONDENT: However, I am quite interested in your ‘report’ and others’ inasmuch as they *unpack* the subtler aspects and layers of what they feel to be going on, rather than, say, merely making capsule apodictic statements. RICHARD: There are many, many descriptive articles and passages available on The Actual Freedom Web Page ... not all of what I write is in the form of apodictic statements. I will say it again: it is the PCE where the necessary facticity or complete certainty of these matters is clearly demonstrated or established ... then there is no need to ‘feel’ what is going on. Furthermore, to ‘feel’ what is going on will keep one away from the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: I think there is much subtly to what you are addressing by ‘apperception’, and I hope we can continue getting at it beginning by way of the rest of my last email. RICHARD: Not by way of your last e-mail, no ... I read it through three times before I responded as I did and in it you made it patently obvious that unless a matter was able to be settled in the ‘third-person’ way then it was a matter of [quote] ‘outright speculations’ [endquote] to discuss it ... in fact you observed that otherwise [quote] ‘usually, fine and entertaining disputes develop’ [endquote]. You may not have been subscribed to The Actual Freedom Mailing List long enough to notice that those peoples that have had, or remember having had, a PCE do not dispute what actualism is on about – nor do they have to have recourse to ‘third party’ settlement – rather that there is a sharing of experience and understanding and the querying of the various statements with the aim of elucidation rather than argumentation. RESPONDENT: I believe our heretofore good clarifications of words/ referents can arrive at an shared understanding of the dynamics of what you are calling apperception which does not depend on any claims of authenticity, but rather elucidates features which become testable against the observations of one’s own experience. RICHARD: Hmm ... you want to claim the authenticity (and hence the authority) of the ‘third-person’ way of validation but seek to deny me of the authenticity (and hence the authority) of the experiential way of validation. Yet the subject under discussion – human consciousness – is an experiential matter and not a ‘third-person’ matter. Here is the example you provided to explain what ‘third-person’ means to you (in item No. 2 of your previous e-mail): • [Respondent:]: ‘... molecules of water are of the third-person; that is, they can exist even if no living creatures exist’. It is this simple: if no living creatures exist then no human consciousness exists. RESPONDENT: Sorry for the confusion. RICHARD: Oh ... there was no confusion: you made it quite clear where you stood (just as you continue to do in this e-mail). * RESPONDENT: Thought I’d better add a little more to my reply, so we can get back on track in our discussion. (... ...) You see, appalling as it might at first seem, it has never really mattered to me whether a source of insight came from a sage or a madman, a well-grounded philosopher or a psychotic street musician, a family man or a freak of nature, the poised or the spastic, a man of honesty and integrity or a hypocrite and a plagiarist. RICHARD: Sure ... I gained useful information from many, many people over many, many years: the most valuable information, however, came from those that put their words into practise (those that spoke from their on-going experience). For example: a heroin addict might say ‘drugs are detrimental to your well-being’ (and the explanation why from their own situation is useful information) ... but what an ex-heroin addict has to say is valuable information (because such a person knows how to free oneself of the addiction). The corollary to this example is that maybe 6.0 billion peoples are addicted, as it were, to the human condition – and any one of them may say that it is detrimental to one’s well being and explain why – but the person that is free of the human condition knows how to be free of it. Otherwise it is a case of the blind leading the blind. RESPONDENT: Now, establishing the authenticity, integrity, etc. of someone or their claims about themselves doubtless has value and is a very important matter, depending on one’s interests and especially if one aims to guide one’s actions based on their authority or validity. And settling such matters is no small affair and usually involves much investigation and disputation. However, this is no what is of interest to me presently. RICHARD: Okay ... but there is, however, an easier and more reliable way: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of the words available on The Actual Freedom Web Site so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which personal experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. RESPONDENT: What does matter to me is this: where a certain act or idea (from whatever source, be it ‘sane’ or ‘insane’) presents in my present state of inquiry as heuristic (an exploratory aid), I explore, discuss, and ply its suggestions and implications, both intended and unintended, until either the source or the act or idea are exhausted or fully flowered. That’s what I’m trying to do with you and your use of ‘apperception’. I’m sure there are many aspects we could unfold. RICHARD: Aye ... but I would point you to the following URL, and the links contained thereon, first: (Library, Topics, Apperception). I have always found that some preliminary research saves a lot of unnecessary repetition. RESPONDENT: So, with that, perhaps we can return to items 1-3 of my original post of 17 July. RICHARD: I would prefer to start afresh ... the ‘third-person’ way of validation leads nowhere fruitful in regards to experientially understanding human consciousness. 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