# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On What is Actual Freedom RICHARD: I might say this much, however: It is extremely pleasant to be sitting here at this computer terminal, luxuriating in the joy of being alive and being able to discuss matters of great momentousness for not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet. It is 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. JAMES: I have heard you make a distinction between the instincts and the instinctual passions ... RICHARD: As the words ‘instincts’ and ‘instinctual survival mechanism’ my co-respondent was using covers a wide range of innate behaviours – heritable traits such as the display movements of birds (as in peacocks for instance), or the web-spinning actions of spiders, the burrowing habits of marine worms, the prey-catching techniques of weasels or wolves, the food-hoarding activity of squirrels, the browsing methods of antelope, birds flying north (or south) for winter, river eels travelling thousands of kilometres out into the ocean to spawn and the eelings finding their own way back to the self-same river, and so on – it seemed necessary to point out, for clarity in communication, that I was referring to the instinctual survival passions in particular, the genetically-encoded affective feelings, and not the instincts in general. JAMES: ... and here above you are saying that the instinctual passions are pumping freeze-fight-flee chemicals through the body. Do the instinctual passions arise from the instincts? RICHARD: No, they are biologically inherited just as all the other instincts are ... and although there is no absolute consensus among biologists and their ilk, as to what feelings are primary and what feelings are cultivated derivations, wherever I have listened to, read about, or watched professionals in this field discussing the issue, at least four basic passions cropped up again and again: the feelings of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. JAMES: Are they connected? RICHARD: Not necessarily ... although a great many instinctual actions are infused with, if not motivated by, the instinctual passions. JAMES: How does this work? RICHARD: A readily observable instinctive reaction in oneself, that is not necessarily affective, is the automatic response known as the reflex action (inadvertently touch a hotplate, for instance, and there is an involuntary jerking away of the affected limb) or the startle response. A classic example of this occurred whilst strolling along a country lane one fine morning with the sunlight dancing its magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; these eyes are delighting in the profusion of colour and texture and form as the panorama unfolds; these ears are revelling in the cadence of tones as their resonance and timbre fills the air; these nostrils are rejoicing in the abundance of aromas and scents drifting fragrantly all about; this skin is savouring the touch, the caress, of the early springtime ambience; this mind, other than the sheer enjoyment and appreciation of being alive as this flesh and blood body, is ambling along in neutral – there is no thought at all and conscious alertness is null and void – when all-of-a-sudden the easy gait has ceased happening. These eyes instantly shift from admiring the dun-coloured cows in a field nearby and are looking downward to the front and see the green and black snake, coiling up on the road in readiness to act, which had not only occasioned the abrupt halt but, it is discovered, had initiated a rapid step backwards ... an instinctive response which, had the instinctual passions that are the identity been in situ, could very well have triggered off freeze-fight-flee chemicals. There is no perturbation whatsoever (no wide-eyed staring, no increase in heart-beat, no rapid breathing, no adrenaline-tensed muscle tone, no sweaty palms, no blood draining from the face, and so on) as with the complete absence of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ in the primordial brain the limbic system in general, and the amygdala in particular, have been free to do their job – the oh-so-vital startle response – both efficaciously and cleanly. Re: Discussion about ‘Actual freedom is highly possible’ RESPONDENT: Although this forum has been mostly busy with ‘house cleaning stuff’ lately, I want to discuss, now that Richard is participating in this forum, with hopefully, his participation, a quite perplexing paragraph he wrote. Given his writings are definite and not vague or ambiguous, there are some ‘truths’ or ‘facts’ that I don’t understand where Richard got or concluded from, nor could I find any writings with the reasonings or observations that brought him to these conclusions. I would love to grasp the meaning of this paragraph and it’s apparent (correct me if you think I’m wrong) ‘truths’ or ‘facts’, because I think doing so those might do a good job helping a human being (at least myself) to understand Richard line of thought, and the human condition, as much as reading and understanding other writings that are on the AF site. If you say, ‘nah, this is not important, these are just small points’ then I don’t see how can this be ‘less important’ than reading the AF site at all, as the writings on the site are made of details, and these are some of the details. I have tried to discuss this paragraphs before, here, with no real success from the discussions in understanding where exactly those ‘truths’ or ‘facts’ have been concluded from. Here’s the paragraph: [Richard]: ‘This is an exciting period to live in. For the first time in human history, it is possible for anyone who applies themselves with sufficient application and diligence – guided by pure intent – to become virtually free, virtually pure, virtually perfect. It is then highly possible that this person can actualise the ultimate as being the immediate.’ (Richard, Selected Writings, Instinctual Passions). 1: Why exactly ‘For the first time in human history, it is possible for anyone who applies themselves with sufficient application and diligence – guided by pure intent – to become virtually free, virtually pure, virtually perfect.’? Why definitely ‘For the first time in human history’? It must mean that once it was impossible, not it is possible. Why? Where does this conclusion come from? 2: Why and based on what fact or reasoning is this sentence written?: ‘It is then highly possible that this person can actualise the ultimate as being the immediate.’ Why it is possible for anyone who applies vs. it is then highly possible? It can only leave a room to some fate or genetic impotence as to what decides if one achieves AF or not. Because, if not it must be ‘possible to anyone’ and not just ‘highly possible’. Any thoughts? RICHARD: G’day No. 9, A quick note as I am about to be away from my computer all day. The key-word is ‘history’. I scoured the books, to no avail, for many, many years looking for information about what is nowadays known as an actual freedom from the human condition. Thus it is information – or knowledge, if you will – which makes it highly possible, rather than just possible, not genetics (or whatever). More later if it is still not clear. Re: Discussion about ‘Actual freedom is highly possible’ RICHARD: ‘For the first time in human history, it is possible for anyone who applies themselves with sufficient application and diligence – guided by pure intent – to become virtually free, virtually pure, virtually perfect. It is then highly possible that this person can actualise the ultimate as being the immediate.’ RESPONDENT No. 9: When was asking of why is it highly possible/highly likely, I was meaning to this: how this is a matter of possibility? Isn’t this a matter of personal choice? Also you choose the words – it’s possible to achieve VF when so and so, meaning it is a matter of personal choice, but when talking about AF you say it is only highly possible. How can the words ‘highly’ + ‘possible’ be used if it is a matter of personal choice? RESPONDENT: No. 9, I will attempt to answer this. I’m quite sure Richard will answer it separately too, and comment on what I’ve written (below). VF is a matter of personal choice – one only needs to look at Irene’s correspondence with Richard (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Irene) to realize that. AF isn’t a matter of personal choice (No person in VF can arrive there by thinking/ feeling himself/ herself to be actually free) but VF is an essential precursor (unless one wants to go through the heart which is another matter altogether). [quote] • [Respondent]: Are you (the thinker or chooser) bringing about this psychic death? • [Richard]: Yes and no ... and I am not being tricky here. Yes, in that ‘I’ bring about this ‘death’ in that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. And no, in that ‘I’ do not do the deed itself for an ‘I’ cannot end itself. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What one does is that one dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and intentionally sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entities residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is a welcome release into actuality. I am finally here. I discover that I have always been here ... I have never been anywhere else for there is nowhere else ... except illusion and into delusion. The ‘real world’ and the ‘Greater Reality’ had their existence only in ‘my’ fertile imagination. Only this, the actual world, genuinely exists. This exquisite surprise brings with it ecstatic relief at the moment of mutation ... life is perfect after all. But, then again, has one not suspected this to be so all along? At the moment of freedom from the Human Condition there is a clear sense of ‘I have always known this’. Doubt is banished forever ... no more verification is required. All is self-evidently pure and perfect. Everything is indeed well. It is the greatest gift one can bestow upon oneself and others. (Richard, List B, No. 12, 6 March 1998). Does this justify Richard’s use of the words ‘possible’ and ‘highly possible’? RICHARD: G’day No. 8, !Bingo! You’ve got it in one ... thank you. (All the rest is either red-herrings or straw-man arguments). What a difference experiential knowing/ understanding makes, eh? (As in being able to more readily/ more easily read with both eyes open ... as is also evidenced by your parenthesised ‘go through the heart’ add-on). RESPONDENT: A few more questions: 1. Richard, what is the physiological nature of the ‘process’ that you (and J Krishnamurti, Konrad Swart and numerous others) underwent during ego dissolution? RICHARD: In a word: electrochemical (the spinal cord, through which all the main nerve fibres go, transmits all kinds of electrochemical signals ... which can result in all manner of psychic manifestations on occasion). In the Indian Tradition they are known as ‘Kriyas’. RESPONDENT: 2. Is ego dissolution a necessary precursor to ‘soul death’ ... RICHARD: No ... if I had known, back in 1981 at the moment of ego-dissolution, what I now know I would not have let the process stop halfway through its happening. RESPONDENT: So electro-chemical ‘self-immolation’ is not just metaphorical, eh? RICHARD: Indeed not: it is all very, very real ... more real than anything has ever been. RESPONDENT: You were really that close? RICHARD: Yes ... I have written before about how I unwittingly discovered yet another way to become enlightened: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Richard, I’ve been following this discussion with interest and have a couple of questions for you: Which of the 3 ways [Jnani, Bhakti, Yoga] did you use to achieve spiritual enlightenment in 1981? • [Richard]: ‘Well, none of those 3 ways, actually ... I inadvertently ‘discovered’ another way: ignorance. I was aiming for the pure consciousness experience (PCE) and landed short of my goal ... and it took another 11 years to get here. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 16, 8 January 2001) RESPONDENT: I wonder then, what is it that stops most spiritual seekers from going the final yard? RICHARD: Quite possibly it is the narcissistic nature of ‘being’ itself (plus it is incredibly difficult to resist being the ‘Chosen One’). RESPONDENT: Is it because the intermediate state brings with it a marvellous sense of having arrived, and you have no idea at the time that there is further to go? RICHARD: Yes ... there was the overwhelming feeling of having ‘Come Home’. RESPONDENT: Or do you feel that if you go any further you’ll surely (physically) die? RICHARD: Indeed so ... once in the tenacious grip of that exalted state the only thing beyond enlightenment is the physical death that will bring final release (as in ‘Parinirvana’ and ‘Mahasamadhi’ for instance) and one has to first fulfil one’s Mission as the Saviour of Humankind. RESPONDENT: Or maybe it’s because there is no cultural precedent for a state beyond enlightenment, other than physical death? RICHARD: Yes ... which lack of a precedent is the very reason why The Actual Freedom Trust, and thus the web site and this mailing list, exists. RESPONDENT: I’m getting the point, that one has to ‘tidy up ones house’ first before self-immolating. RICHARD: Provided it be not an excuse for continued procrastination (as in ‘I’m not ready yet’) it is entirely sensible to become as happy and harmless as is humanly possible before the magical event, which renders all such house-cleaning null and void, actually happens. RESPONDENT: I think I’ve been trying to do it without really becoming a happy ‘being’ first. RICHARD: As the general thrust of your e-mails has been that the ‘self’-immolation in toto, as described on The Actual Freedom Trust web site, is not [quote] ‘a new concept’ [endquote] it would appear that whatever it is you have been trying to do it has had nothing to do with what actualism is on about. RESPONDENT: I have (big) issues to sort out first before I will be able to make the leap. RICHARD: As there is no ‘leap’ – an actual freedom is not a spiritual freedom – it would indeed appear so. RESPONDENT: I guess there are no shortcuts. RICHARD: What I find telling – and this is a general observation – is just how much peoples object to being happy and harmless ... the vast majority of the correspondence in the archives is, in fact, a cutting indictment on the human condition itself. Do you realise – and this is a personal observation – you have just said, in effect, that you guess you will have to become a happy ‘being’ before you can become actually free from the human condition (as if were there a way to be thus free without having to do so you would not)? Whereas it is actually such a delight to finally be able to be happy (and harmless) ... and a relief. RESPONDNET: Holding it, commenting it, expecting it, rejecting it, making choices and priorities, is not at all actual freedom, not true? But maybe I am just playing mind games and I have not at all understood what is Actually Being Here and Now! RICHARD: I have been intimately and actively involved – meaning a hands-on approach – in the whole consciousness-study activity for twenty years now. In that time I have interacted with many, many people likewise engaged ... and it is a fascinating exploration. And there have been several times where someone, who has but half-listened to what I have to say, has gone off half-cocked into an enhanced or enlarged or extended state of consciousness in which, believing themselves to be thus awakened or illumined or enlightened or whatever, they then seek confirmation and/or recognition and/or accreditation from me. Sometimes the delusion is so grandiose that the person feels that they have gone beyond or have surpassed in some way and then turn it all around and proceed to tell me (or start teaching me) where I have gone agley. Invariably they call on the ‘Tried and True’ to bolster their insistence that I take notice of their atavistic wisdom ... until my consistent pointing out of facts either brings them back to their senses or they depart for some gullible pastures. This is all par for the course as long as there are people who will not listen with both ears. Being actually free from the human condition means that I am under no obligation whatsoever to become some sort of latter-day atheistic-saviour of humankind wherein I cannot live a normal lifestyle ... and this is what some peoples will not listen to. I fully 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. To be fully able to freely live a normal lifestyle in a seaside village is why I set out to become free of the human condition all those years ago. And this is what an actual freedom from the human condition is ... it is right here in the market place. The way to freely live a normal life is now available for all 6.0 billion people. RESPONDENT: My god, man, don’t you see what you are doing to yourself? RICHARD: Indeed ... I am free of the human condition. I have gone beyond enlightenment into an actual freedom. I am autonomous; beholden to no one and no thing I stand on my own two feet ... instead of prostrating myself in abject humility and self-abnegation. This actual perfection is excellent and free. It is the freely available bonus of daring to be me as-I-am. Unadorned I am more free than a bird on the wing and cleaner than a sea-breeze on a sweltering summer’s day. To be me as-I-am is to be fresh, each moment again. * RICHARD: It has been – and still is – a great trip. RESPONDENT: Yes. A great trip, but a ‘trip’ nevertheless. RICHARD: Yea verily ... it is somewhat like having a twenty four hour a day drug trip – if that is what you are implying – except that there are no side-effects and it is not illegal. Owing nothing to no one I am free from corruption ... perversity has vanished forever. Unpolluted as I am by any alien entity, my thoughts and my deeds are automatically graceful. Goodwill, freed of social morality, comes effortlessly to me for all internal conflict is over. I am gentle and peaceful in character. Freeing myself of the altered state of consciousness called spiritual enlightenment was the last step into actuality. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least. (Richard, List B, No. 4a, #pacifist). RICHARD: But I do not want you (or anybody) coming to me – for their own freedom – as 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. The Internet is my chosen means of dissemination for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with its multiple feed-back capability – is second to none. Words are words, whether they be thought, spoken, printed or appear as pixels on a screen. 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. Anyone who has met me face-to-face only gets verification that there is actually a flesh and blood body that lives what these words say. I am a fellow human being sans identity ... there is no ‘charisma’ nor any ‘energy-field’ here. The affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated: I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever. There is no ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: Richard, you have said many times in the past that you are free of all feelings. RICHARD: Yes ... more specifically: free of the persistent identity (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). It is impossible to be a stripped-down ‘self’ (divested of feelings) ... such a person who tries to do that absurdity has what is called by psychiatry ‘a sociopathic personality’ (commonly known as a psychopath). RESPONDENT: Is not this ‘fun’ you are having part and parcel of the feeling of enjoying what you are doing? RICHARD: Not the ‘feeling’ of enjoyment ... direct enjoyment: I have not felt happy for years and years. RESPONDENT: Could you even go so far as to say that you love what you are doing? RICHARD: No ... this is much, much more than ‘loving’ what I am doing. It is also much more than being in love and even more than being love. RESPONDENT: It is quite obvious that you take great delight in knowledge and your knowledge of words and are quite a showman with the English language. RICHARD: Yes ... words are vital; knowledge is vital; knowledge of words is vital. As for ‘showman’ ... I freely acknowledge that my writing is flowery – which is a polite way of saying ‘convoluted and over-ornamental’ as an editor once explained to me – but that is an idiosyncrasy which brings me great delight. I make no apologies for an extravagant exuberance with words ... I am conveying the lavish exhilaration of life itself. RESPONDENT: Are there ever times when there are absolutely no words, no movement of this knowledge inside the flesh and blood body that is you. RICHARD: Yes, large parts of my daily life are comprised of ‘absolutely no words, no movement of this knowledge’ ... thinking is an episodic event that occurs of its own accord as the situation and circumstances require. All the while however, thought or no thoughts, there is an apperceptive awareness, of being just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time, which is full, complete and utter ... neither thoughts nor no-thoughts, neither knowledge nor no-knowledge, neither showmanship nor non-showmanship can ever disturb this on-going experiencing of infinitude. Being just here right now is so fulfilling, so utterly satisfying in itself that to be doing something (including thinking) is but a bonus on top of this completeness. RESPONDENT: In other words, is there a freedom from knowledge that is as much a part of the human condition as the genetic makeup of instinctual passions? RICHARD: Yes ... most of what I write is a story or a description (an accurate story/description mind you) of why it is the pits to be in the ‘normal-world’ reality (where 6.0 billion people live) and why it sucks to be in the ‘abnormal-world’ Greater Reality (where 0.0000001 of the population live) ... and how one wound up being there in the first place. When there is nobody around none of this happens. And, despite my millions of words, I essentially have only one thing to say. Viz.: Step out of the ‘real world’ into this actual world of sensuous delight and leave your ‘self’ behind in the ‘Land Of Lament’ where ‘you’ belong. * RICHARD: My experiences on an uninhabited island in the tropics off the north-eastern Australian seaboard was where I finally discovered that it was Spiritual Enlightenment that was at fault and that I could ‘purify’ myself via the ‘Tried and True’ means until the moon turned blue ... to no avail. The first of these experiences occurred at maybe three in the morning (I had no watch) and was accompanied by a sense of dread the likes of which I had never experienced even in a war-zone ... made all the more acute because I had not experienced fear for four years (I was living in a state of Divine Compassion and Love Agapé which protected me from malice and the underlying fear). The condition I experienced was of the nature of some ‘Great Beyond’ (I have to put it in capitals because that is how I experienced it at the time) and it was of the nature of which has always been ascribed, in all the spiritual/mystical writings I had read, as being ‘That’ which one merges with at physical death when one ‘quits the body’. Sometimes known as ‘The Ocean of Oneness’ or ‘Mahasamadhi’ or ‘Parinirvana’. It seemed so extreme that the physical body must surely die for the attainment of it. RESPONDENT: I’m not clear about what you are saying Richard when you say that the ultimate freedom is a state of ‘nothingness’. RICHARD: No ... it is not ‘a state of ‘nothingness’’ at all: an actual freedom from the human condition is when the identity is extinguished in its totality (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul). A spiritual freedom is when the personal identity/contracted identity (‘I’ as ego) dissolves into the impersonal identity/expanded identity (‘me’ as soul) and which is most often capitalised as ‘Me’ (‘I Am That’) or ‘Supreme Soul’ (‘That Thou Art’) and all those other names. What I was describing in the paragraph (further above) is how the condition which becomes apparent after the extinction of ‘me’ as soul occurs was temporarily experienced seven years before the pivotal event actually happened. Thus I was describing it in terms of the then current human understanding ... there were no other terms of reference to use at the time. That paragraph is but one paragraph out of a general description of the progression of events leading to where I am today ... a potted history or a brief story-line, as it were. It is but one of the ways that an identity can view what remains after its own demise. It is sometimes culturally viewed as ‘The Ocean of Oneness’ or ‘Mahasamadhi’ or ‘Parinirvana’ and so on. It is not a description of an actual freedom. RESPONDENT: Are you talking about the individual ‘Richard’ that is annihilated ... RICHARD: If by ‘the individual ‘Richard’’ you mean the identity inhabiting the body being annihilated ... then yes. It does not refer to physical death ... it refers to everything that one thinks one is; everything that one feels one is; everything that one instinctually knows one is. The identity in its entirety, completely and without exception, vanishes ... as if it had never been. An illusion/delusion, in other words. RESPONDENT: ... or do you mean that ‘The Ocean of Oneness’ is annihilated ... RICHARD: It also vanishes ... for it is but a projection of ‘Me’ into ‘My’ spurious after-death timeless and spaceless and formless ... um ... [insert whatever cultural name ]. An illusory/delusory hallucination, in other words RESPONDENT: ... into the ‘great void of nothingness’ ... RICHARD: Another institutionalised hallucination. RESPONDENT: ... a blackness, nothing, ‘non’? RICHARD: Not ‘a blackness’ no. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Does not exist; never did exist; never will exist. RESPONDENT: I will proceed after your response. RICHARD: Please do ... this seems to have become unnecessarily complicated where it is not at all complex. It may be because mysticism has rendered the conventional meaning of ‘nothing’ (not anything, non-existent, zero, nought, nil, zilch, naught, zip, nix) into being a mysterious ‘something that is not anything’ (a full emptiness, a great void, a vast abyss). Whereas what is here after the identity vanishes ‘in toto’ is a flesh and blood body having the time of its life! RICHARD: I am this infinite and eternal universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being ... and this is marvellous. RESPONDENT: You say ‘I am this infinite and eternal universe’. Does this mean that you feel you and this universe are one and the same thing? If so, how is this different from solipsism? RICHARD: It is ‘different from solipsism’ because I do not snip the other half of the sentence off so as to make it sound like a grandiose claim. Viz.: ‘experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’. There are 6.0 billion sensate and reflective human beings ... and the universe is also experiencing itself as cats and dogs and so on. Just the same as any other sensate being, I am the carrots and the beans and the cheese (or whatever food) eaten and the air breathed and the water drunk. There is no separation whatsoever betwixt this body and anything or anyone else. Everything and everyone is the very self-same stuff that this physical world – and this material universe – is. I did not come from outside this universe – there being no outside to infinity – nor was I put here by some metaphysical god for some inscrutable reason. We all come out of the ground ... and this earth is the very stuff that this universe is. We are as infinite and eternal as the universe that we are made up of ... and we can be conscious of this as an actuality. All human beings are discrete (physically distinct) flesh and blood bodies which, being the very stuff that is this entire universe, are not separate from anything at all. It is the feeling of identity (which has its origins in the common ancestry of the animal instincts and takes on the feeling of being separate because of being manifest in individual flesh and blood bodies) that has the desire to regain ‘oneness’ with all sentient beings via relationship. ‘I’ am alone and lonely and long for the ‘connection’ that is evidenced in a relationship ... especially in a loving relationship. When ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ become extinct there is no need – and no capacity – for a relationship, for who is there to need to unite? Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was hopelessly wrong in his oft-repeated ‘Teaching’ that ‘Life is a movement in relationship’. Only a psychological and/or psychic entity needs the connection of relationship in order to create a synthetic intimacy – usually via the bridge of love and compassion – and manifest the delusion that separation has ended. And if human relationship does not produce the desired result, then ‘I’ will project a god or a goddess – a ‘super-friend’ not dissimilar to the imaginary playmates of childhood – to love and be loved by. Apperception is something that brings the facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence. Thus I say: I am this infinite and eternal universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being ... and this is marvellous. RICHARD: How about: ‘I’ want that direct experience of the actual twenty four hours of the day with all of ‘my’ being’? ‘I’ want that perfect peace and understanding, so much so, that ‘I’ will do [insert whatever is applicable] to enable it? ‘I’ want it (peace-on-earth) like ‘I’ have never wanted anything before? RESPONDENT: I want the magic lamp. I want perpetual youth, no sickness, no death, beautiful women, and not a worry in the world. RICHARD: The magic lamp is the PCE and to be living the PCE twenty four hours a day (an actual freedom from the human condition) is perpetual ‘youthfulness’, no psychological or psychic sickness whatsoever, no psychological or psychic death menacing each moment, an actual intimacy with everyone and everything – not just beautiful women – and the absolute inability to worry. KONRAD: Or is it so, as is with the position of the TM people, that just having contact with you will bring this marvellous state about by itself. RICHARD: Meeting me face-to-face does nothing other than verify that there is indeed a flesh and blood man of fifty-plus years who writes these words. I would have nothing different to say than this kind of thing that I write ... although in speech I am prone to use more colloquialisms than in writing. Some people report getting a ‘lift’, but that is entirely subjective. Having no feelings – emotions and passions – there is no ‘energy-field’ here. There is the physical assurance that it is indeed possible to be entirely free from the Human Condition. * KONRAD: I know from experience that the adoration of your followers is something you can really become a prisoner of. RICHARD: And what adoration would that be? And what followers? I am no leader, no charismatic master. I am a fellow human being who – by actually doing something about his life – is living in the actual world of sensate delight. Mostly it is insecurity that necessitates one being a leader with adoring followers ... and insecurity is an outcome of fear. It is fear that prevents one from actually being here now ... what I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am here ... now. After death I will not be ... just like before birth. Where is the problem? The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here ... now. Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth actually is. Being here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending. Peace-on-earth is possible only when there is freedom from the Human Condition. Freedom from the Human Condition is the ending of identity in its totality. The elimination of the ‘identity’ is simultaneously the demise of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within oneself. Then ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ vanish forever along with the dissolution of the psyche itself ... which is the only place they can live in. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight – where I live as this flesh and blood body – one lives freely in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. No cooperation is required whatsoever. Now, a chain-letter effect may or may not occur in the fullness of time ... if it does, a global peace-on-earth would be possible. If it does not, then apart from the salubrity of living as perfection personified for the remainder of one’s life, one is no longer preventing the ingress of a global peace-on-earth by one’s very ‘being’. This is the adventure of a life-time! * KONRAD: By the way, I think you are right about my opinion of you being mentally damaged. It is flawed. I have learnt a lot about the human brain lately. And I know it can adapt to anything and everything. So I think that it is possible to switch off the emotions as you assert it can. RICHARD: The word I use is ‘eliminate’ ... not ‘switch off’. Some thing ‘switched-off’ can be ‘switched-on’ again ... actualism is a one-way trip wherein malice and sorrow will never again rear their ugly heads. I could not get angry or sad if my life depended upon it ... I have no buttons to press ... nor anything under where the buttons used to be. KONRAD: And I also think that it has probably happened in the way you describe it. I also think it is possible to design a special training that accomplishes that in others. RICHARD: Good ... there is a distinct possibility for peace on earth after all. KONRAD: I only think, contrary to you, that it is a bad idea. RICHARD: I gain the distinct impression, Konrad, that you do not think ... maybe you chew a thistle (or something) which makes your ears flap ... and you mistake this activity for the action of thinking? Because what you are saying (above) is that you think that being happy and harmless (eliminating malice and sorrow) is a ‘bad idea’ . Is this why there is no peace on earth? KONRAD: Good luck! RICHARD: I neither need ‘good luck’ nor does ‘luck’ exist outside of passionate human imagination. What I am today is the result of eleven years of diligence, application, patience, perseverance, determination and much internal and external observation, investigation, uncovering and discovering. I know where I am at, where I came from and how I got here. RICHARD: I consider that to be an excellent idea. Please, give your evaluation born of your examination. And we can take it from there. RESPONDENT: And with this understanding, your description of your daily normal experiences take on a totally different context. There seems to be two basic concerns in your post below: 1. The actual in contraposition to the real. 2. The moral basis of a life of actuality. Perhaps we can use your text below to raise some questions for further discussion? RICHARD: ‘I am not going anywhere in a hurry; I like to freely enjoy being here, savouring the world in all its sensual delight. I am pleased to see, running parallel to this track, the main highway in and out of town; busy with cars buzzing to and fro, it adds bright splashes of colour to my vista. On my other side lies a magnificent large swamp, with well-adapted trees and shrubs growing out of its still and turbid water. Birds and crickets are filling the air with their sweet melodies and all is alive with life. With a few puffy white clouds scattered randomly in a light-blue sky, the stage is well set for me to partake in the sheer joy of being alive in this physical world and going about my daily delectations. All this is just happening of its own accord. Everything I experience is actual to this moment. And this moment is occurring now. This particular moment of being here has never happened before ... and it will never happen again. This moment is ever-fresh, perennially new. It is consistently so; dependable in its originality and reliable in its uniqueness. For twenty-four-hours-a-day it is like this, day-in-day-out ... therefore it is impossible for it to ever become boring’. RESPONDENT: Yes this vivid experiencing is never boring. This state does seem to be that which is experienced by many if not all people. RICHARD: This vivid experiencing of the direct apprehension of actuality has been spontaneously experienced by every single human being that I have spoken to about these matters over the last eighteen years. It is called a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and was personally experienced in 1980 artificially with psylocibin ... which triggered off numerous memories of the exact same PCE at odd moments throughout my life. Specifically, there was one clearly remembered in detail at eight years of age, for example. I have been told – and read – that it can also be induced by other psychotropic substances like ‘lysergic acid’ and ‘ecstasy’ and ‘mescaline’ and ‘peyote’ and the like. Mr. Alan Watts is a veritable gold-mine of information on the subject ... but alas, he attributed to it the religious/spiritual/mystical experience and went off into the eastern metaphysical philosophies. RESPONDENT: But the state deteriorates, the mind grows weary, and the vividness is lost. This has something to do with the way in which the mind distances itself from the experiencing. This involves thinking about the experience, but it also involves the way in which memory and accumulating experiences dulls. RICHARD: Yes, the temporary experience does ‘deteriorate’ ... but this state shows the genuine aspirant what is possible. One then makes the living of this condition, twenty four hours a day, one’s number one priority in life. It is called being here at this moment in eternal time and at this place now in infinite space ... one is then this physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. For this to happen, not only ‘I’ as ego must dissolve, but ‘me’ as soul must disappear as well. Then, when there is no identity ‘being’ whatsoever, the clean and clear and pure perfection of the infinitude of this self-same universe becomes apparent. Peace-on-earth was here all the time. Is the deterioration because ‘the mind distances itself’ ? Is it because of ‘memory accumulating experiences’ ? When I recall what happened back in 1981 when activating the PCE on a daily basis in order to make the condition permanent, thought and memory operated easily and without causing the state to deteriorate. It was feelings that precipitated re-entry into everyday reality ... the reassertion of ‘me’ being. The mind’s activities – like thought remembering and planning – cops a lot of blame, whilst feelings get off scot-free. Emotions and passions – especially passion itself – are the real spanners in the works. The only way I would point the finger at the mind’s actions would be in believing and imagining ... which are emotional and passionate actions of thought, anyway. Logical and intuitional thought – being both irrational – fall into this calenture-based category. Whereas rational thought – sensible thought – is a pleasure ... a delight and a joy to behold. * RICHARD: ‘This moment does not exist in the ‘real world’, it exists in the actual world. Only the present can exist in reality. Reality is not actuality. Reality is the world that is perceived through the senses by ‘me’, the psychological entity that resides inside the body. Actuality is the world that is apperceived at the senses by me as this body-consciousness’. RESPONDENT: Can you explain this difference between ‘apperceived at the senses by me’ and ‘perceived through the senses by ‘me’’? RICHARD: The ‘I’ in the head and ‘me’ in the heart are aliens having a parasitical existence in the psyche itself ... it is as if everybody has a couple of ‘walk-ins’ living inside of them. They, as ‘I’ or ‘me’, look out through the eyes as if looking out of a window onto the outside world. In a PCE they temporarily abdicate the throne and everyday perception becomes apperception ... which is the eyes seeing, the ears hearing and so on. Then one is this flesh and blood body only being aware of its own accord. I use the first person pronoun in reference to what I am – not who I am – and what I am is this body only. But I am not an identity ... just as one can shift one’s identity from the mind to the heart to imitate enlightenment, so too can one shift one’s identity from the mind to the heart and then to the body in order to imitate an actual freedom. This virtual freedom thus engendered I call actualism. But one must go dangerously through the heart first ... it is a risk well worth taking. RESPONDENT: You seem also to make a basic distinction between ‘this moment’ and ‘the present’. What is the difference for you ? RICHARD: The ‘present’ is sandwiched betwixt the ‘past’ and the ‘future’ and is a product of belief and imagination. Whereas this moment exists in its own right ... independent of any observer as a believer or an imaginer. RESPONDENT: Why is your concept of reality limited to what is perceived through the senses, what about the inferences of thought, analysis, mathematics? RICHARD: Speaking personally, I have no problem with things like thought as in ‘analysis and mathematics’ ... because it is understood that they are abstract concepts and – while being useful tools – have no substance in actuality. For a person in the real-world, such tools are taken to be real in themselves ... that is, substantial. * RICHARD: Reality is objectively reinforced as being ‘real’ by other entity-encumbered bodies that ‘I’ speak to. They endorse ‘my’ perception of the ‘real world’ as being the genuine, authentic world. It is not. Only the actual world is genuine and authentic. It is primary and pre-eminent ... and it is perfect. RESPONDENT: What enables you to find that what is taken by others as the real world is not authentic, whereas the actual, which is validated or verified only in experiencing, is the only authentic one? What are the facts that stand behind this valuation as to what counts as authentic? RICHARD: If the real world is ‘authentic’ then it means that malice (with its wars and rapes and murders and tortures and abuse) and sorrow (with its sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide) are here to stay. Can you not remember a PCE wherein all was already perfect as-it-is and always has been? Thus the obvious facts come, of course, primarily from personal experience ... backed up by abundant scholarly research and personal face-to-face discussion with my fellow humans to ascertain them as being objective facts. I spent the first thirty four years of my life living in the normal reality as experienced by 5.8 billion human beings and the next eleven years living in the abnormal Reality as experienced by .000001 of the population. I do not live in isolation. My first wife lived with me during my breakthrough from normal ‘reality’ into abnormal Reality. My second wife lived with me during my breakthrough from abnormal ‘Reality’ into this on-going actuality that I have been living for five years. My current companion only knows me as I am now. Thus there are people who can personally verify that whenever they have a PCE – and experience for themselves what I talk of – that it is more than a coincidence that I always have one too! They have thus come to understand, through repeated experience, that I am already always here. There is a man who knows me personally who has written about his experience of life as a result of his interaction with me. He has just recently published a book about actualism in action and it can be accessed on his Web Page under ‘Peter’s Journal’. You can always write to him ... or his partner ... and ask whatever questions you like. Other than that, there remains a critical examination of all the words that I advance as being obvious facts to ascertain if they are intrinsically self-explanatory. When they are seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the obvious facts speak for themselves. An obvious fact is a fact as seen in an insight, for example, or more easily with apperceptive awareness. An ‘objective fact’ is not so reliable – other than those ascertained by technology – as they are subjective experiences in common ... that is, shared by others. Mass hallucination is only too common. Ultimately one sees that there is no choice but to have the courage of one’s own conviction as is born in the PCE. After all, it is your life you are living, and it is you who reaps the rewards or pays the consequences of any action or inaction you may or may not undertake. In other words, I am the only person who can change myself – and I am the only person I can change – thus it is entirely up to me as to whether I will become happy and harmless by eliminating the root cause of sorrow and malice. And who would have it any other way, upon sober reflection? * RICHARD: ‘I have arrived at my destination and am wandering through this vast warehouse, packed from end to end with all that anyone could require ... in the way of household furnishings. There is simply an abundance of goods and chattels here; a multitude of beds to choose from. A friendly staff member comes to assist me and is proving to be a fund of useful information. Eventually I settle for an orthopaedic ensemble and buy some sunny yellow sheets and pillowcases with a matching valance. I set off to examine the varied styles of bed-side tables ... there are so many and I am happy to be taking my time choosing, for it is a joy to be here, doing all this. The man is not hurrying me at all and is patiently showing me through the diversity he has available. It seems almost too soon, yet I have been here for ages, and I have opted for a pine-wood setting with a compatible bookcase-come-television-cabinet for the set I have in the bedroom. The blonde pine will complement the sunny yellow bedding and create a cheerful ambience. I pay for it all and arrange for delivery sometime in the late afternoon. Bidding the gregarious salesman farewell, I repair to the nearby café to sit in the sun with a welcome cappuccino. All in all it is being a felicitous morning ... faultless in its simple pleasure’. RESPONDENT: And now what happens where there is great disturbance, discomfort, where you are put out by others, your car is smashed, you are in pain, and you are on your way to the emergency room where the facilities are still poorly maintained, equipped and staffed. Is your world still serene and cheerful? RICHARD: Yes, the clean and clear and pure perfection of peace-on-earth never goes away. There is a preference for the creature-comforts, of course, but one takes the world of people, things and events as it is. Even if every single human being was happy and harmless, there would still be cyclones and earthquakes and tidal waves and fires and crocodiles and sharks and mosquitoes and so forth. Life is an adventure, after all. Every day is like this in this actual world, although I can occasionally meet unhelpful people, unhappy people, even rude people ... the entire gamut of human expression. I can easily make allowances for them for I know that they all live in reality ... and life can be a grim and glum business there. Here, all is benevolent, friendly and kind; no perversity has ever existed in actual freedom. There is a marked absence of malice here; evil has no foothold, no being anywhere at all. RESPONDENT: You do not have it, but you are therefore pushed, you are taken advantage of, now what happens psychologically, how do you react? RICHARD: Unlike in enlightenment, pacifism plays no part here. Being free of sorrow and malice – not having merely transcended them and sugar-coated ‘me’ with Love and Compassion and Beauty and Truth – if someone bops me on the nose, I am free to bop them back with a liberated impunity. * RICHARD: ‘When ‘I’ cease to exist as a psychic entity, so too does the diabolical disappear. To put it bluntly: ‘I’ am a mixture of Good and Evil ... both are psychic forces which have waged their insidious battle in the human psyche for aeons. ‘I’ try heroically, but vainly, to attain to ‘The Good’, hoping thereby to conquer ‘The Bad’, for so have humans been taught, been mesmerised, with precept and example, by the Saints and the Sages throughout the ages. All this is a futile drama played out in the realm of reality. In actuality, neither Good nor Evil have any substance whatsoever. With utter purity prevailing everywhere, virtue has become an outmoded concept. It is vital only in reality, in order to curtail the savage instincts that generate the alien entity’. RESPONDENT: Yes, the moral obligation does bring with it suppression and inner conflict . RICHARD: There is no need for morality where there is no sorrow and malice. One still complies with the legal laws and observes the social protocols ... this being exceedingly sensible given that people are as they are. * RICHARD: ‘It is all so simple, in the actual world; no effort is needed to meet the requisite morality of society. I have no ‘dark nature’, no unconscious impulses to curb, to control, to restrain. It is all so easy, in the actual world’. RESPONDENT: Where did the dark nature go? Did you think it away? Is it not possible that it is there, but you do not want to admit to it, to look at it, for that would mean that actualism is not ‘perfect’? So what makes you feel that it is not there any longer? RICHARD: The ‘dark nature’ was extinguished along with the extinction of identity ... and so too went its opposite ‘light nature’. The ‘Good’ is a psychic force that exist solely to combat the ‘Bad’. Thus a ‘God’ needs a ‘Devil’; ‘Love’ needs ‘Hate’; ‘Compassion’ needs ‘Anger’; ‘Beauty’ needs ‘Ugly’; ‘Truth’ needs ‘False’... and so on. There are no opposites here in actuality. One cannot think these things away ... just as one cannot feel one’s way into actuality. Seeing the obvious facts of actuality sets one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom. And there is nothing that is ‘there’ that I do not want to admit to or not look at or to not acknowledge ... it is all gone. Finished. Extinct. I do not ‘feel’ that all that is ‘not there any longer’ for feelings have also gone (and feelings are notoriously unreliable for ascertaining a fact anyway). I know experientially that there is nothing untoward here ... besides, it is impossible to fake this for five years. * RICHARD: ‘I can take no credit for my apparently virtuous behaviour because actual freedom automatically provides beneficial thoughts and deeds. It is all so spontaneous, in the actual world; I do not do it ... it does itself. Vanity, egoism, selfishness ... all self-centred activity has ceased to operate when ‘I’ ceased to be. And it is all so peaceful, in the actual world; it is only in actualism that human beings can have peace-on-earth without toiling fruitlessly to be ‘good’’. RESPONDENT: In what way does the psychology work here? What leads from actualism to spontaneously doing what is beneficial? What in your description above showed beneficence? Is there concern for others? Is there feeling for not harming others? And for helping them? What happens if someone needs help and you want to sit in your cafe? RICHARD: There is indeed a concern for others ... we are all fellow human beings. There is no psychology operating here, all is spontaneous and free. There is no need for a feeling of not harming others, for one is already always harmless in character. I am free to help those who want the only kind of help that I can give ... other than common physical assistance, of course. Mostly people want to be helped in the way they think and feel that they should be helped ... which usually amounts to comforting with consolation and succour. Those people who want to be actually free of the Human Condition are rather thin on the ground ... which generally leaves me happily sitting in the café! However, I am actively discussing these matters with my fellow humans on a face-to-face basis, as well as through writing. I have over a quarter of a million words in print ... 165,000 available free on my Web Page. * RICHARD: ‘The answer to everything that has puzzled humankind for all of human history is readily elucidated when one is actually free. The ‘Mystery of Life’ has been penetrated and laid open for all those with the eyes to see’. RESPONDENT: Freedom and being informed seem to be two completely different things. Answers to everything is not given with freedom. Quite to the contrary. Freedom is basically freedom from those answers, and quite often, from the questions themselves. RICHARD: Freedom is freedom from identity. Then the questions and answers are obvious. There is still room for the acquisition of skills and expertise in various disciplines ... but I was referring to the ‘Ultimate Answer’. It is wide-open to view and is everywhere all at once. I see it; I breathe it; I drink it: I eat it; I hear it; I smell it; I taste it ... all the time. It never goes away, nor has it ever been away. It has always been already here and always will be. Perfection is always like this. * RICHARD: ‘Life was meant to be easy’. RESPONDENT: Is that a form of escapism? A should be when we are confronted by this world wide crises? Is this a relationship of disassociating from the problems and disorder of this world? RICHARD: I am not suffering from disassociation ... I watch the news of the world and speak with people on a daily basis and I see all the unnecessary suffering going on because its reality is taken to be actual. Life in the actual world is what is genuine and authentic ... to escape from a grim and glum illusion and not become seduced into the loving and compassionate delusion of mysticism is an eminently sensible thing to do. You may call it ‘escapism’ and be probably correct ... but it sure beats the masochism and sadism of everyday reality. The only good thing about suffering is when it ends. Yet it can end for anybody ... and when it ends for everybody, there is global peace. This ‘escapism’ sounds pretty good to me! I may be a lot of things ... but I am not silly. RESPONDENT: Does responsibility and seriousness come with being carefree? RICHARD: No, the utter reliability of being always happy and harmless replaces the onerous burden of being responsible ... and actuality’s blithe sincerity dispenses with the gloomy seriousness that epitomises adulthood. It is funny – in a peculiar way – for I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to search forever ... they consider arriving to be boring. How can unconditional peace and happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be boring? Is a carefree life all that difficult to comprehend? Why persist in a sick game ... and defend one’s right to do so? Why insist on suffering when blitheness is freely available here and now? Is a life of perennial gaiety something to be scorned? I have even had people say, accusingly, that I could not possibly be happy when there is so much suffering going on in the world. The logic of this defies credibility: Am I to wait until everybody else is happy before I am? If I was to wait, I would be waiting forever ... for under this twisted rationale, no one would dare to be the first to be happy. Their peculiar reasoning allows only for a mass happiness to occur globally; overnight success, as it were. Someone has to be intrepid enough to be first, to show what is possible to a benighted humanity. One has to face the opprobrium of one’s ill-informed peers. RESPONDENT: So, according to the apperceptive-brain model, all we perceive comes to us through the senses. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: So what you call ‘space’ is in fact something that the brain processed through electrical impulses and interpreted it as ‘space’. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: The same with ‘materiality’. Trough the sense inputs the brain is able to interpret that data, and in a indirect way, call it as ‘material’. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: The sense organs themselves are interpretations of the brain in a very analogous manner – sense inputs, electrical impulses. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: This leads us to say, according to this model, that the ‘real’ nature of things are unavailable to the brain, because it only deals with the senses. RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Correct me if I am wrong ... so far. RICHARD: You have misunderstood inasmuch as you are coming from the point of view that there is a ‘someone’, an identity (a psychological and/or psychic entity) inside the flesh and blood body to do the perceiving of what you say ‘comes to us through the senses’ ... and from this basic premise make all your following deductions. But where the identity, the psychological ‘thinker’ (‘I’ as ego) and psychic ‘feeler’ (‘me’ as soul) is not extant then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these very sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain (or as you say ‘all we perceive comes to us through the senses’ ). Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence. Unable as ‘I’ am to be the direct experiencing of actuality as-it-happens ‘I’ can only conclude ‘that the ‘real’ nature of things are unavailable to the brain, because it only deals with the senses’ . Whereas I am the direct sensate experiencing of what is happening right here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time. Which is the experiencing of infinitude. RESPONDENT: My life is not a fairy tale. RICHARD: Would you like it to be? By which I mean: are you vitally interested in peace-on-earth? And ‘vitally interested’ means that it is the number one priority in your life inasmuch that it amounts to a fascinated obsession with your very being. Is your intention to become free of the Human Condition, in this life-time and as this body, the over-riding factor in all of your day-to-day dealings? If this is not the case, then what are you doing with your life? Why settle for second best when all this while the perfect purity of being alive at this moment in time and this place in space is just sitting here – right under your nose – freely available for anyone with the gumption to proceed on into their destiny. RESPONDENT: Your ambience don’t touch me. RICHARD: It is not my ambience and it will never be your ambience ... or anyone else’s either. It is the ambience of this actual world that manifests itself at this place in space and this moment in time. Have you never been deep in a rain-forest ... or any wilderness, for that matter? Have you ever, as you have travelled deeper and deeper into this other world of natural delight, ever experienced an intensely hushed stillness that is vast and immense yet so simply here? I am not referring to a feeling of awe or reverence or great beauty – to have any emotion or passion at all is to miss the actuality of this moment – nor am I referring to any blissful or euphoric state of being. It is a sensate experience, not an affective state. I am talking about the factual and simple actualness of earthy existence being experienced whilst ambling along without any particular thought in mind ... yet not being mindless either. And then, when a sparkling intimacy occurs, do not the woods take on a fairy-tale-like quality? Is one not in a paradisiacal environment that envelops yet leaves one free? This is the ambience that I speak of. At this magical moment there is no ‘I’ in the head or ‘me’ in the heart ... there is this apperceptive awareness wherein thought can operate freely without the encumbrance of any feelings whatsoever. It is not my ambience nor yours ... yet it is here for everyone and anyone for asking ... for the daring to be here as this body only. One does this by stepping out of the real world into this actual world, as this flesh and blood body, leaving your ‘self’ behind ... where ‘you’ belong. This ambience delivers the goods so longed for through aeons. * RESPONDENT: I am a bread and butter man myself and like to deal with matters on simple terms, nothing grandiose. So, help me figure out how remarkable your freedom is. RICHARD: Sure can ... the reason why I am not impulsively thinking these terrible thoughts is that in an actual freedom I have no furious urges, no instinctive anger, no impulsive rages, no inveterate hostilities, no evil disposition ... no malicious or sorrowful tendencies whatsoever. The blind animal instinctual passions, which some neuro-scientists have tentatively located toward the top of the brain-stem in what is popularly called the ‘reptilian brain’, have under-gone a radical mutation. I am free to be me as-I-am; benign and benevolent and beneficial in character. I am able to be a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic and unattainable moral strictures of ‘The Good’: being humane, being philanthropic, being altruistic, being magnanimous, being considerate and so on. All this is achieved in a manner ‘I’ could never foresee, for it comes effortlessly and spontaneously, doing away with the necessity for virtue completely. RESPONDENT: Are you free from hunger? You must eat and therefore you need money to buy food. RICHARD: I am indeed free from hunger ... if by ‘hunger’ you mean the desire to eat. I eat only once a day anyway and can easily skip doing that on occasion. RESPONDENT: Are you free from the need to empty your bowels? RICHARD: The heart beats itself; the lungs breathe themselves; the bladder empties itself; the bowels move themselves and so on. All these bodily functions are quite automatic and do not require a psychological ‘I’ or psychic ‘me’ to run the show. RESPONDENT: You must shit. Not anywhere, mind you, but in a proper toilet that you must pay for one way or another. RICHARD: Aye ... it is a matter of intelligence to bury one’s ordure – or dispose of it in some suitable manner – to help prevent the spread of pathogens. This is something that people in the world’s most spiritually advanced country seem to be oblivious of. Perhaps it says something about their belief that they are not the body. RESPONDENT: Are you free from slumber? You must sleep and that was why you had to go out on your bicycle to buy that mattress. RICHARD: I sleep maybe three-four hours a day ... and I did not have to bicycle; it was a delightful day and I chose to ride instead of taking a taxi. I did not have to buy a mattress for it was simply a matter of choosing a particular creature-comfort from the many available. RESPONDENT: I could go on and on but the bottom line is you need food, clothing, shelter, bicycle, computer, Windows 95, modem and Internet connection. RICHARD: There are basically five genuine needs: the air one breathes; the water one drinks; the food one eats; a roof over one’s head and the clothes on one’s back (in a cool climate). Pretty well anything else is a want ... a desire. When the ‘I’ as ego and the ‘me’ as soul are no more then what was previously the objects of ‘wants’ and ‘desires’ become – magically – delightful creature-comforts that one can easily do without ... and without turning a hair. RESPONDENT: All that make you as liberated as the average Joe who needs to go out and work to earn the money to pay for all those stuff. RICHARD: Before I retired onto a pension I found it a delight to work ... work is play when there is no ‘I’ as ego and the ‘me’ as soul within this body. All this writing I do on this computer is such fun. RESPONDENT: Even if you don’t have to work, you are still plugged into the economic system which – unless you are as well-heeled as me – gives you the financial room of a shoe box in which to make ends meet. RICHARD: I am swimming in largesse. RESPONDENT: So, tell me, how have you arrived, how does that Greater Reality fit into the basic reality of life that I have outlined? RICHARD: I would have thought that you would at least have read the basic thrust of what a person has written ... I am not in a ‘Greater Reality’ . I was for eleven years ... and I found it wanting. Eastern ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ is commonly considered to be the Summum Bonum of human experience. It is not. By being born and raised in the West I was not steeped in the mystical religious tradition of the East and was thus able to escape the trap of centuries of eastern spiritual conditioning by going beyond enlightenment – which turned out to be an Altered State Of Consciousness – into the actuality of being here on earth and now in time as this flesh and blood body. For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because this freedom is located here in this very world, this actual world of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond spiritual enlightenment’s ‘Greater Reality’ . Beyond the ‘Greater Reality’ lies the actual ... and the actual is already always here now. In actuality there is no ‘Greater Reality’ . When the soul dies the need for transcendental realms disappears. Then I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Now I am the sense organs: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is. ‘I’ am eternally separate from the benignity of the actual, where the utter absence of any angst and anger at all is infinitely more rewarding than the deepest, the most profound, Divine Compassion and Love Agapé. The purity of the actual world owes its excellence to the fact that there is no sorrow and malice here ... hence no need for succour. The ‘everyday reality’ of the ‘real world’ is an illusion. The ‘Greater Reality’ of the ‘Mystical World’ is a delusion. There is an actual world that lies under one’s very nose ... I interact with the same kind of people, things and events that you do, yet it is as if I am in another dimension altogether. There is no good or evil here where I live. I live in a veritable paradise ... this very earth I live on is so vastly superior to any fabled Arcadian Utopia that it would be impossible to believe if I was not living it twenty four hours a day ... there is no use for belief here. It is so perfectly pure and clear here that there is no need for Love or Compassion or Bliss or Euphoria or Ecstasy or Truth or Goodness or Beauty or Oneness or Unity or Wholeness or ... or any of those baubles. They all pale into pathetic insignificance ... and I lived them for eleven years. It is remarkably easy to live in actuality. RESPONDENT: When you say that the (apparent) identity disappears, does the personality/ characteristics of the f&b body change at all? RICHARD: The following exchange may be helpful in this regard: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Surely there are patterns associated with your reflectivity. You tend to reflect on things in a certain way, and I have a different tendency. Does not that tendency define your identity? Or do you have no such tendency? • [Richard]: ‘I certainly have that tendency ... and I revel in it. These are attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on. They are not the ‘thing-in-itself’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 28 January 1999) And: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Your awareness remains associated with your body whilst mine remains associated with mine. As the circumstances change around you surely there is something that remains the same, that defines you as you, and as separate to me. It is that claim of yours to have no identity I was wanting to chip away at, and am wanting to again. • [Richard]: ‘It is the flesh and blood body that remains the same (with due allowance for the aging process) and defines Richard as Richard and you as you. The flesh and blood body’s characteristics (attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on) tend to stay the same ... but characteristics do not necessarily have to define an identity as being a ‘thing-in-itself’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 28 January 1999) RESPONDENT: That is, if the f&b b (can I refer to this as a person for now?) liked telling jokes, would the person still like this after the identity has died? RICHARD: I like to joke and I laugh a lot – there is so much that is irrepressibly humorous about life itself – and what has changed is that the joking and laughing is not malicious (as in spiteful, for instance) and/or sorrowful (as in lugubrious, for example). ‘Tis a remarkable change, by the way, and not some minor thing. RESPONDENT: If self-immolation is successful do you become like Spock? RICHARD: No. I have not watched Star Trek but I have been made aware of the various personalities by some peoples likening me to this ‘Spock’ character. I have noticed that people, who do not read what I have to say with both eyes open, gain the impression that I am suggesting that people are to stop feeling ... which I am not. My whole point is to cease ‘being’ – psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which means that the entire psyche itself is extirpated. That is, the biological instinctual package handed out by blind nature is deleted like a computer software programme (but with no ‘Recycle Bin’ to retrieve it from) so that the affective faculty is no more. Then – and only then – are there no feelings ... as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) where, with the self in abeyance, the feelings play no part at all. However, in a PCE the feelings – passion and calenture – can come rushing in, if one is not alert, resulting in the PCE devolving into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... complete with a super-self. Indeed, this demonstrates that it is impossible for there to be no feelings whilst there is a self – in this case a Self – thus it is the ‘being’ that has to go first ... not the feelings. It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly known as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. What the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about is a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). Then everything I write about is self-evident. * RESPONDENT: I don’t know Richard or any Actualists personally. When the Advaita Vedantists use to say that they weren’t the body I would say, ‘how about we don’t let you go to the bathroom for a day, and you let me know what your not ; or how about we take an ice pick up your frontal lobes, and we show in effect how there is no demarcation between you and your brain. No takers! End of the debate!! RICHARD: I agree completely (I have often said similar things to the people who tell me that they are not the body) ... however your example has no application in my case as I am clearly and definitively stating that I am this flesh and blood body only. RESPONDENT: If something similar happened to Richard such as being kicked in the nuts, or similar potential dangers I would bet the farm that a definitive identity was in place, and very concerned with its protection and well being. RICHARD: You would lose your bet ... this flesh and blood body is entirely capable of looking after itself without the need of any identity whatsoever. RESPONDENT: Since he is claiming something that here-to-fore has never existed I trust that nobody has a problem with wanting more detail. RICHARD: Speaking personally I am only too happy to supply detail – the millions of words available for free on The Actual Freedom Website already show this – as I have always had the intent to provide anything that may be of assistance (which includes, for just one example, my ex-wife’s critique of me). RESPONDENT: A person can claim to be Christ, Napoleon or be devoid of any feeling. It doesn’t make it so! RICHARD: As I am not claiming to be anything other than this flesh and blood body called Richard I rather fail to see the value of lumping the absence of the affective faculty into the same sentence as some people’s delusions of grandeur ... in other words this is not an aid to a sensible discussion. RESPONDENT: There are people who don’t feel pain. RICHARD: This flesh and blood body does experience physical pain. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘Pain and anguish are part of life. • [Richard]: ‘Hmm ... it is helpful to draw a distinction betwixt physical pain and emotional and mental pain. Physical pain is essential, else one could be sitting on a hot-plate and not know that one’s bum was on fire until one saw the smoke rising. Emotional and mental pain (which is what I indicated by using ‘animosity and anguish’) are totally unnecessary. RESPONDENT: It is a very dangerous condition because they are oblivious of a bursting appendix, or being on fire, and similar potential dangers. RICHARD: Of course ... however your example has no application in my case as I am clearly and definitively stating that this flesh and blood body experiences physical pain. RESPONDENT: There is a world of difference between appropriate emotive response, that lets the individual know that something is amiss, and taking offence at sleights to ones perceived identity. RICHARD: Yet there is no need for the ‘appropriate emotive response’ at all ... the physical pain elicits the requisite action of its own accord. RESPONDENT: There is a world of difference between not being part of the usual insanities of the world and being devoid of emotionality. RICHARD: But the main thing I stress is being devoid of identity ... not just being ‘devoid of emotionality’ (the absence of emotions is a side-effect and not the main event). RESPONDENT: I read these postings and still see a semblance of an identity. RICHARD: Okay ... I can only advise ‘self’-investigation so as to ascertain whether your seeing of a ‘semblance of an identity’ is correct or not. RESPONDENT: Isn’t it an identity that is making the decision that it wants to go all the way to self-immolation. RICHARD: Yes ... it is an altruistic decision. It may help in your understanding to mention that I did nothing at all in order to be just here right now as it was the identity inhabiting this body that did the necessary work all those years ago. I have been here all along, for 55 years, having a ball. RESPONDENT: There is an account in a book by Susan Segal where she reports of a similar condition to Richards. The New Age community then did its various interpretations on what was transpiring for her. She died at a really early age oblivious to the raging cancer in her system. RICHARD: I had a medical check-up about six weeks ago ... I can assure you that I have no cancer (about two years ago I had a small and benign skin cancer surgically removed from my back). RESPONDENT: Catatonics have no emotive responses either . Highly undesirable state-of-affairs. RICHARD: I am not catatonic ... although I am familiar with that state having had an experience of catatonia back in 1981 wherein I was rushed to hospital and held in intensive care for four or five hours until I came out of it. RESPONDENT: Isn’t there shades of grey as opposed to black and white? RICHARD: If you wish to settle for a life of mediocrity then that is your business, of course. RESPONDENT: The proposition of Actualism is that the earth is perfect; despite tornadoes, draughts, the various whims of nature; animals starving, people starving. Its perfect. RICHARD: No, the ‘proposition’ is, rather, that it is possible to experience perfection despite all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on. RESPONDENT: Yet in terms of humans a grave mistake was made and we were given emotions. RICHARD: ‘Twas not a ‘grave mistake’ at all ... it is blind nature’s instinctual survival program that is under investigation (a survival mechanism that was once essential for life in the wild but is now redundant and working against both personal and communal salubrity). RESPONDENT: The whole area of the brain was thereby imperfect and flawed. It needs to be destroyed. Not perfect according to the tenets of Actualism . Am I mistaken? RICHARD: Yes, you are mistaken in your appraisal of what actualism is on about. RESPONDENT: Please correct me if I am. Perhaps I have the meaning of the word perfect wrong? RICHARD: It would appear so. RESPONDENT: You guys are proposing that there is a major imperfection built into the blueprint of humanity! RICHARD: Not at all ... that is what you have made of it. RESPONDENT: I myself use the word perfection very judiciously. Could you please comment on these things? RICHARD: Certainly ... I am speaking of the experience of the perfection of being alive as a flesh and blood body, as evidenced in a PCE, whereas you are speaking of a perfect physical world (a world without ‘tornadoes, draughts, the various whims of nature; animals starving, people starving’ ). RESPONDENT: Since I don’t know any of you personally I have to rely on assessing things from readings, sites and my own explorations. I will continue. After 25 years of involvement in various spiritual movements, practices, growth groups I’m not aligned with any as I’ve never found the stuff worked or people walked their talk. I ‘m not disputing your claims. Not that any of you would care if I did. RICHARD: But I do care (otherwise I would not be going public with my discovery when I would rather remain anonymous). RESPONDENT: Outside of my continually asking myself the question and intention, & continual reading there seems no definitive way that I can assess that what your saying is a desirous state of affairs. RICHARD: Yes there is a definitive way ... the PCE. For the sake of emphasis I will repeat again what I said previously: • [Richard to Respondent]: ‘I am pleased to read that you had a PCE – one experience is worth thousands of the words explaining actualism – as all that has been written is then self-evidently factual and plain to view (...) the PCE is central to comprehending what an actual freedom from the human condition is’. RESPONDENT: I think you are telling the truth but as to whether to strive to the described condition is an ongoing story. It’s like the problem with any descriptions from ‘anyone’ or in your case ‘no one’. Richards words mean little if you are not living at that address. RICHARD: Hmm ... I can suggest, offer tips, hints, clues, anecdotes, insider information and so on. Essentially my words can act as confirmation for another in that their own experience in a PCE is common to humankind ... and act as an affirmation in that a fellow human being has safely walked the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition. RESPONDENT: It’s akin as to why Christ or Buddha’s words never had any real effect. RICHARD: I demur ... Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene and Mr. Gotama the Sakyan were living in a delusional state whereas what I live is an actual condition one experiences where one is sans identity in toto. RESPONDENT: To just parrot the words while not experientially living them is ludicrous. RICHARD: Of course. RESPONDENT: I will keep at it, although I question the concepts regarding ‘no identity’ as being extant or whether it is even possible. RICHARD: Never mind ‘the concepts’ ... what about the self-evident factuality as experienced your PCE (if that is what it was)? RESPONDENT: Irregardless the question (how am I experiencing this moment), in and of itself is invaluable and ridding oneself of a lot of histrionics and emotional baggage is highly desirous. RICHARD: True. Yet there is something which is much, much better than merely being rid of ‘histrionics and emotional baggage’ ... which is to be living in the already always existing peace-on-earth. It is all so easy here. RESPONDENT: Richard, I should like to ask the simple question ‘In which way one person that lost his being and ego, is different than a robot?’ RICHARD: Just because a person actually free of the human condition has no identity whatsoever (neither ego-self nor soul-self/spirit-self) parasitically residing inside the flesh and blood body – and therefore no affective feelings – this absence of identity and its precious feelings does not thus make that person a machine, an automaton, an android (a robot somewhat resembling a human being in appearance designed to function in place of a living organism and carrying out a variety of tasks mechanically in accord with a pre-programmed circuitry). I do not read/watch science fiction but as I get these type of questions from time to time I have gradually been made aware of various ‘Star Trek’ characters, for instance, and it is pertinent to point out that the stuff of science fiction (creations of imagination) is entirely different to actuality ... a writer replete with identity/ feelings trying to visualise life sans identity/ feelings can, apparently, only conceive of a robotic-like creature speaking in a flat, monotone voice, and devoid of a sense of humour. I am yet to hear of a robot that experiences life like this, for example: • [Richard]: ‘I live in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world where, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, everything and everybody has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything ‘alive’ and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everybody. We do not live in an inert universe’. In fact a robot, being a machine, does not experience anything at all. * RESPONDENT: You admitted that something happened in your brain ... RICHARD: No, I acknowledged that something happened in the brain-stem: • [Respondent]: ‘You said that you felt a brain change. • [Richard]: ‘More specifically: I said that there was a physical sensation in the brain-stem (at the base of the brain/nape of the neck). • [Respondent]: ‘Did you ever thought that you might altered your brain? • [Richard]: ‘No ... all the activity occurred in the brain-stem. (Re: For Richard; June 11, 2003 , Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 44a, 11 June 2003). I was saying what I meant and meaning what I said. RESPONDENT: ... but could you explain scientifically what? RICHARD: As far as I have been able to ascertain from an ad hoc reading of scientific texts it was most probably in the Reticular Activating System (RAS), in general, and quite possibly in the Substantia Nigra, in particular (arguably the seat of consciousness) that the identity in toto expired. RESPONDENT: Because a change in the brain is a material thing and can be measured and observed. RICHARD: As no scientist has been able to locate the identity (the self by whatever name) despite all their RI scans (Radio Isotope), CAT scans (Computerised Axial Tomography), CT scans (Computed Tomography), NMR scans (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography), MRA scans (Magnetic Resonance Angiography), MRI scans (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and fMRI scans (functioning Magnetic Resonance Imaging) I do not see how they are going to measure and/or observe the absence of it. RESPONDENT: If something material happened, then if it is not considered damage, then must be one evolutional process. RICHARD: Hmm ... psychiatry and psychology consider that the combination of depersonalisation, derealisation, alexithymia, and anhedonia is indeed ‘damage’ .... and big-time damage at that (a chronic and incurable psychiatric disorder). Yet what the instinctually-driven humans do to each other, and themselves, as evidenced by 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, for example, is what ‘damage’ really looks like in action. Howsoever, as that is accepted as normal, and any action to cease being normal is actively discouraged, the word ‘crazy’ seems particularly apt here. RESPONDENT: If evolution of Darwin exist, because also this is a theory. RICHARD: Nope ... evolution is scientific fact (as evidenced by the microbial evolution, in response to antibiotics for instance, which is mistakenly called ‘developing an immunity’). * RESPONDENT: Is good to be aware of our conditioning and make if possible some change to our lives, because this conditioning is man made (Society). RICHARD: Indeed ... how are you going with curing yourself of agoraphobia? RESPONDENT: But to arrive to the point by our self to alter or change our brain, may be dangerous also. RICHARD: In what way is it ‘dangerous’ to become free from the human condition? I am neither in gaol nor a psychiatric institution; I can orient myself in space and time and navigate from point A to point B; I can defend myself when necessary by circumstances; I feed, clothe and house myself, paying all my bills on time; I make contingency plans to meet projected situations; I manage four net-worked computers, an internet domain, a web page, a mail server, and so on, without any prior experience or training; I write millions of words meaningfully strung together in sentences and paragraphs ... and, most importantly, I am neither a danger to myself or to others (which is the very first thing any psychiatrist/psychologist ascertains). As this has been the situation for over a decade your prognosis is totally invalid. * RESPONDENT: So whatever I tell you you will defend your points of view and me mine ones. RICHARD: What I write about life here in this actual world is a description coming immediately from the direct experience of this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space ... there is this which is happening and the words form themselves in accord to the very thing being referred to as it is occurring – they are coming directly out of actuality – and not from some nebulous ‘points of view’ such as you would have be the case. Just so that there is no misunderstanding: nothing I write about life here in this actual world are viewpoints or views either ... or stances, perspectives, standpoints, positions, world-views, mind-sets, states-of-mind, frames-of-mind, opinions, ideas, beliefs, concepts, conjectures, speculations, assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, surmises, inferences, judgements, intellectualisations, imaginations, posits, images, analyses, or any other of the 101 ways of dismissing a direct report of what it is to be actually free from the human condition you may come up with. RESPONDENT: Richard claims to be the first one on the planet to experience Actual Freedom: How can he or anyone know this to be a fact? RICHARD: The following link provides a description of how I experientially know: (Richard, A rticles, A Brief Personal History) I recently supplied a brief exegesis of what can be found on that page: • [Richard]: ‘In 1985 I had the first of many experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment (as described in ‘A Brief Personal History’ on my part of The Actual Freedom Trust web site) and it had the character of the ‘Great Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being ‘That’ which is attained to at physical death when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’ ... which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism). Thus I knew even before becoming actually free that this condition was entirely new to human experience while still alive ... furthermore, in the ensuing years, as I proceeded to penetrate deeper and deeper into the state of being known as spiritual enlightenment, the psychic footprints, as it were, of those who had explored some of the further reaches of ‘Being’ itself gradually became less and less in number and finally petered out altogether leaving only virgin territory wherever the (psychic) eye would look. I was truly on my own ... no one had ventured into this terrain before. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 46, 6 August 2003) I also knew early in 1981, at the commencement of the path that would eventually lead to an actual freedom from the human condition, that such a freedom was entirely new to human experience as I had had a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) six months prior wherein it was manifestly obvious that what the human race had made of such experiences was a degradation of the actual. Speaking in the context of the only religio-spiritual language I knew then (from the culture I was born into) I would say, to anyone prepared to listen, that everybody has got it wrong because nobody has to physically die to get to heaven ... that eternity was just here right now because, as it was already always happening, it cannot cease at physical birth and recommence at physical death after a 70+ year interregnum. After the ‘something turning over in the base of the brain/ nape of the neck’ event of September 1981, and as the western-style mysticism I was experiencing moved deeper into being an eastern-style mysticism (I can recall telling my then wife at that time I was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire as somebody had to sort this mystery out), I just knew that, in order to be able to speak meaningfully about going beyond enlightenment I had to go through enlightenment so as to, not only understand it experientially, but to be able to have insider information, so to speak, to pass on to my fellow human beings. For what is the point of enabling peace-on-earth, and thus demonstrating the actual way to live life for a benighted humanity, if one cannot explain the how and why of it? RESPONDENT: Maybe there was a culture eons ago that discovered this ... RICHARD: Ha ... the knowledgeable race of people, living in the fabled ‘Golden Age’ of yore, who vanished without a trace (leaving no history for their fellow human beings) despite their sapience, eh? If (note ‘if’) there ever were such a culture then in effect they might as well have never existed. RESPONDENT: ... maybe just one person ... and maybe the culture was in no way receptive to Actual Freedom ... so this individual kept it to his or her self. RICHARD: As an actual freedom from the human condition requires an all-inclusive altruism to effect – and altruism wipes away selfism completely – it would be a contradiction, not only in terms, but in effect to not pass on the discovery of the already always existing peace-on-earth to one’s fellow human beings. Put simply: because of the inherent character of fellowship regard, here in this actual world, if a person can keep an ‘Actual Freedom’ to themselves it ain’t an actual freedom from the human condition. Furthermore, and to get it out of the realm of speculation, the many and varied cultures around the planet today are demonstrably not receptive to what I have to report (at a guess only maybe 99% of the responses on The Actual Freedom Trust web site are objections to being happy and harmless for instance) yet I wrote it all down anyway so as to have the descriptive/explanatory writings exist in the world as a sensible record after my demise ... and if Peter had not come along, with the suggestion of the relative anonymity of the internet, I would have found some way of making their storage durable for posterity. Meaning that this (abstract) person you speak of would have done the same (as in hieroglyphics impressed in clay tablets for a simple example). RESPONDENT: And, even if Richards claim is true ... why make it? RICHARD: It is somewhat difficult to report to one’s fellow human beings that one has discovered something new to human experience without saying that it is ... um ... something new to human experience. RESPONDENT: I mean no disrespect ... but I would like some feedback from anyone ... including Richard ... so I can go on with my life!!! RICHARD: The following exchange may be of assistance (the question is particularly perspicacious): • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Do I understand correctly from your mail, that your being unique in this is not what is important: that you merely wanted to stress with it that you bring something that is entirely new? • [Richard]: ‘Yes. The on-going experiencing of the already always existing peace-on-earth is entirely new to human experience ... everybody I have spoken to at length has temporarily experienced such perfection, in what is called a pure consciousness experience (PCE), but nobody has been able to provide a clear, clean and pure report as an on-going actuality. Usually the PCE is interpreted and/or translated according to selfish personal desires, and by corresponding cultural conditioning, as a variation of the many types of an Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) which perpetuates the ‘self’ as the ‘Self’ (by whatever name) in some spurious after-life ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. And thus 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 have gone on forever and a day. Now the opportunity exists for an eventual global peace-on-earth: with 6.0 billion outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth no police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past ... terror would stalk its prey no more. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight. But do not hold your breath waiting. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 15, 22 December 2000). As the complete exchange (three e-mails) covers various associated issues such as you have raised/ may in future raise you might care to peruse it in its entirety ... it starts here: (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 15, 19 December 2000). Put succinctly: abstract logic has never freed anyone from the human condition. (more on this specific angle Sundry, Common Objections, CRO 01) RESPONDENT: Sometimes things are much more simple than we make them. Actual freedom is incredibly simple, Richard. RICHARD: Aye, all it takes is altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice ... the utter extinction of ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ a soul. RESPONDENT: It is the communication that is problematic and difficult ... RICHARD: Speaking personally, I do not find communication ‘problematic and difficult’ at all ... of course the other person does need to actually read what I write. RESPONDENT: ... and that does not change the fact that actual freedom is. RICHARD: Your experience (what you have communicated so far) can in no way be described as an actual freedom from the human condition. RESPONDENT: And in that actual freedom what we have is distinct autonomous people communicating their points of view with words. RICHARD: I do comprehend that this is your ‘point of view’ . But I am not communicating a ‘point of view’ ... nothing I write or say about an actual freedom from the human condition is either a ‘point of view’ or a mindset or a world-view or a philosophy or a metaphysics or a thesis and so on. It is all actual. 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. * RESPONDENT: You say that suffering is not happening for you because you have though some deliberate action brought about an end to the self that suffers. RICHARD: I did not do anything at all – I have been here all along having a ball – as it was the identity in parasitical residence who did all what was necessary. RESPONDENT: I understand what you mean though I find it an odd way of explaining the process. RICHARD: It is not an odd way of explaining the process at all when what the first person pronoun is being used to indicate – this flesh and blood body – is spelled-out in its place: • ‘This flesh and blood body did not do anything at all – this flesh and blood body has been here all along having a ball – as it was the identity in parasitical residence who did all what was necessary. There is no identity whatsoever inside this flesh and blood body ... which is why I can unequivocally say that there is no inner and outer in actuality. * RICHARD: In all mystical descriptions there is invariably a subtle – a very subtle – distinction between the mystic and the absolute which creeps in ... which subtle differentiation, it is intimated, will only cease upon physical death. It was this oh-so-subtle demarcation which occasioned the ‘being’ who was to proceed beyond the norm. RESPONDENT: You indicate that the universe is experiencing you as a flesh and blood body. RICHARD: More precisely: as this flesh and blood body only I am this material universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being ... as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. RESPONDENT: Experiencing implies awareness or mind. RICHARD: Indeed ... experiencing is awareness of what is happening whilst it is happening; the mind, which is the human brain in action in the human skull, has this amazing capacity to be, not only aware, but aware of being aware at the same time (a simultaneity which is truly wondrous in itself). And it is where this awareness of being aware is unmediated (apperceptive awareness) that this universe knows itself. RESPONDENT: The contact between you as flesh and blood body and awareness that is not limited to the particular can be understood on many levels. RICHARD: There is no ‘contact’ between this flesh and blood body and the unlimited awareness (apperceptive awareness) which it is ... there is no separative identity, no particular, in the first place to necessitate such a thing. RESPONDENT: Why jump to a conclusion that the experiencing that you say you alone speak from is the only genuine experiencing of that contact? RICHARD: But I am not saying that which you describe is what is happening now – that was during the eleven years of mystical experiencing – as what is happening now is beyond enlightenment. RESPONDENT: Doesn’t a claim of exclusivity more likely imply a delusion of grandeur? RICHARD: No ... it only indicates that somebody has to be the first to discover an actual freedom from the human condition (as is the case in any field of human endeavour). What is so strange about that? RICHARD: Then we can truly work together to turn this earth into a paradise garden. RESPONDENT: The paradise garden that you dream of is a childish infatuation men outgrew long time ago. If you want to work together what is stopping you? If you are perfect and I am not how can we ever work together? We can work together only if we share the same frame of reference. Furthermore, if a paradise is existentially dependent on you and I becoming perfect then that is a dream state – it is never going to be self-existing, self-consistent existence. RICHARD: Now I did say in my last post: ‘Global peace can only come about when there are five point eight billion individual ‘outbreaks’ of peace-on-earth. Do not hold your breath waiting for global peace’. I am living in a veritable paradise already ... but it can be tidied up a lot. This is how I experience my life: • ‘It is always a joy to come shopping, so prolific is the supply of food available to all and sundry, at a reasonable cost. The shelves are stacked, from end to end, with a staggering array of viands from everywhere throughout the country ... indeed, from all over the world. Food-stuffs are virtually tumbling into my basket, so loaded are the shelves, and I am extremely happy to be here, partaking of the goods that are the result of human endeavour. I fully realise that I, personally, live in a western society – a consumer society it is belittlingly called – but even the developing countries, with assistance from the west, are usually able to feed themselves these days ... when they are not at war, that is. With this proviso in mind, it is heartening to reflect upon the great strides humankind has made this century in terms of material well-being, compared with what transpired over the tens of thousands of years that humans have been inhabiting this planet. Long gone are the days of the hunter-gatherer; days wherein the human race was at the mercy of the elements for their physical survival. Long gone are the times when humans had to eke out an animal-like existence; full bellies in a time of plenty, and starvation in a famine. Nowadays, when famine strikes one part of the world, aid in the form of basic provisions come in from other areas experiencing plenty. (Richard’s Journal 1997, Article Twenty-Two) • ‘In terms of the supply of goodies, I find that I am literally living in a veritable ‘Garden of Eden’. My every physical need is met with a bewildering array of abundance; it is a time of cornucopia, of which I am pleased to take full benefit as is my due. I am astonished at the lack of appreciation displayed so vehemently by peoples I meet and articles I read about in the press. Why do the peoples of this country not realise that they are well-off, luxuriating in the freedom from want? Why is there looks of dissatisfaction on the faces of my fellow shoppers? Why do they have the temerity to complain when they are living in the land of plenty? Is there no way of pleasing these people? Fancy complaining about ‘having to do the shopping’ when it is such a delight to share in the benefits of human inventiveness; ingenuity in the face of the vagaries of the natural world. I am immensely appreciative of being alive now and not at some other age in which I would have had to struggle for my ‘daily bread’... those dreadful times one reads about in the history books and literary works. It is amazing what has been achieved despite the Human Condition’. (Richard’s Journal 1997, Article Twenty-Two) RESPONDENT: Secondly, for you to be ‘perfect’ you would need me to be ‘imperfect’ – but then how would we ever exist together? RICHARD: But, as I have already explained, I do not need you to be imperfect ... it is what you choose to be, each moment again. Your destiny is in your hands ... and your hands alone. Nobody is preventing you from living in paradise except yourself. RESPONDENT: I am a bit concerned about the words ‘effective, and ‘accomplishment’ when you use them too. It’s not clear for me myself, why I would prefer the question of ‘how deep has it been for you’ instead of ‘how effective’. RICHARD: Sure ... I was not so much enquiring, at that initial stage in the discussion which the (above) exchange refers to, as to ‘how deep’ the experience of utter fullness was ... but rather how effective the after-the-event reflective thought had been in enabling further experience. The reason for this is that the experience itself is the best ‘teacher’, as it were, and the more the experience occurs the more clear it is what is required of ‘the thinker’ in order for this to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day happening for the remainder of one’s life. Also, there are no degrees of freedom in the total and complete end of human suffering (no shades, gradations or nuances of depth) as it is a case of all or nothing. It either is or is not: otherwise it is not total; it is not complete; it is not ultimate ... it is not the utter perfection of the purity of innocence. RESPONDENT: The second one somehow leaves a more mechanical impression. One worries for a second if this is the question of a mind that is looking for ‘success’? RICHARD: A sincere mind definitely is looking for success ... otherwise it is not sincere. To be living in peace-on-earth, twenty four hours a day for the remainder of one’s life, is the greatest success ever (it has never happened before in human history). RESPONDENT: There is a lot unkindness and self in the notion of ‘success’. And a great potential to bring suffer for the world, including the human beings. RICHARD: The genuine article – an actual freedom from human suffering – is fail-safe because the perfection of the purity of the already always existing peace-on-earth is so immaculate that nothing ‘dirty’ can get in. Thus benignity, benevolence and blitheness abounds ... ‘tis a peaceful, friendly and happy world one lives in. 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