# Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions Frequently Asked Questions ## What Is the Meaning of ‘Matter Is Not Merely Passive’?
| I find your insistence on ideological purity worrying too ... Okay, actualism isn’t an ideology but ...
| I remember seeing something on the site like ‘matter is not merely passive’ – approximate quotation. What do you exactly mean by that? Is (all) matter (water, trees, animals, various objects) alive and intelligent when experienced in a PCE? Is there a difference (concerning the quality of the object involved) when looking at a polyester cup in a PCE compared with our ordinary experience of it? And is that perception objective, in the sense ‘that’s the way that cup really is’?
| How can be reconciled the notion (for me) that the Universe is still (according to your experience of this moment) with the observable fact that matter is not passive (events taking place)?
| Richard, a) actualism is experiencing that matter is not merely passive ... what does it mean? If you have a stone in your hand (matter), it is passive right? The stone in the hand does not act or operate (at the moment you are holding in the hand), right? How is it not passive?
| In a PCE everything is magically animate, doing what it’s doing, in a backdrop of infinite depth and stillness. No principle, no agenda. ‘Life’ or liveliness is the way everything exists.
| The ‘direct experience that matter is not merely passive’ is certainly not a moral injunction, I agree. However is the daily business of trying to abort one’s psyche identical to the direct experience that matter is not merely passive? Both seem to go by the name ‘actualism’. In case it is unclear, I am referring to the daily process of aborting oneself and one’s feelings, not the ‘direct experience that matter is merely passive’.
| I have known for years that believing in god, soul, afterlife, and free will are all becoming increasingly suspect, but I would always think: hey what’s the alternative – to live a godless, nihilistic, unhappy life? Now I know from personal experience that removing superstition from life can clear the way to a abundantly happy life if one has a good secular philosophy(ies). I’m loving life as it is right now, and having a blast trying to leave a positive impact on this world right now and hopefully this effect will even pass on to the next generation. Actualism has been helpful in this journey, but I have serious doubts about it as a well rounded, all embracing philosophy. It is very sensible in some areas, but seems very narrow..
| Richard is not the first to understand actualism, that being the knowledge that one has only this moment and that at death, the ceasing of brain function and heart pumping that indeed the individual who’s brain and heart I just referred to ceases to function that indeed that being will cease to be. It is as it always has been and always will be, our individual experiences of the eternal have no impact on the eternal. We are here but for a moment ...
| Existence of something is independent of whether it is believed in or not.
| You ask people not to accept anything you say without verifying it for themselves. Yet when they come back and question your theories, you throw out the last card in your deck – ‘what I have to report/ describe/ explain is experiential ... as in coming out of ‘direct experience’. ... or what you like to call ‘experiential’ ...
| G’day Richard, I’m a bit confused about Pure Intent here – since it is a life-force, does it exist only in living organisms ? Basically I’m confused with the usage of the word life-force because it is pretty obvious that Pure Intent is not just in living organisms but all the matter of the universe.
| Do actualists view consciousness as epiphenomenon of matter? In this respect, then actualism is not different from materialism (that the universe is comprised of matter and the conscious phenomenon is a by-product of it)? I see what Peter is saying about the matter being circulated from inanimate to animate world continuously. Is that what he and you mean by matter is not merely passive? What is the aliveness, magic you are talking about? Why choose this as the defining characteristic of actualism?
| Statements like ‘Matter/energy is not only primary but it is all there is’ make me questioning the Actualist’s ‘Weltanschauung’. How do you know that this is not just another belief ...? ‘Mass and Energy are pure constructs of mind having no autonomous phenomenal meaning.’ An actualist should/could never come up with words like ‘matter’ and ‘energy’ to describe ‘his/her’ reality ... Matter/energy is not only primary but it is all there is’ is as a meaningless/meaningful phrase as ‘God is not only primary but He is all there is’.
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