# Actual Freedom – Selected Writings from Richard's Journal

Richard’s Selected Writings on ## The Human Condition My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race … all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, which was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ … it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer … ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression and nurture and desire ruled the world … and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the ‘Human Condition’ … and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword I am not an Enlightened Master sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that is. I am a fellow human being, who happens to live in a condition of perfection and purity, offering my experience to whomsoever is interested. We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the ‘Human Condition’ ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the ‘Human Condition’ ... and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a lifetime to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword The genetically inherited passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) give rise to malice and sorrow. Malice and sorrow are intrinsically connected and constitute what is known as ‘The Human Condition’. The term ‘Human Condition’ is a well-established philosophical term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’. The battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun. The ending of malice and sorrow involves getting one’s head out of the clouds – and beyond – and coming down-to-earth where the flesh and blood bodies called human beings actually live. Obviously, the solution to all the ills of humankind can only be found here in space and now in time as this body. Then the question is: is it possible to be free of the human condition, here on earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body? Which means: How on earth can one live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst one nurses malice and sorrow in one’s bosom? Richard’s Article: Peace on Earth in This Lifetime What humankind has done is to take the instinct-bred ‘I’ as being actual by calling it real. In doing so it creates ‘humanity’, which is as real as the numerous ‘I’s that constitute its ‘being’. Human beings set out to assuage the nasty and pitiful results that all this causes by instilling in each and every baby arriving on earth, in whatever culture, the ‘Human Constitution’. The ‘First Rule’ of this ‘Human Constitution’ states that ‘life on earth is a place of suffering ... and we all pledge to forever venerate that self-same suffering’. Strange goings-on, considering that the human being is well-endowed with a large brain! However, this brain is fully occupied with instinctually derived societal forces. The acculturated mind is a veritable minefield of cherished psittacisms ... the mechanical repetition of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. In other words, there is little or no room for original thought. One needs pure intent, born out of a peak experience, to shatter the strangle-hold that the mythologically-based ‘wisdom’ has on the human mind. The universe’s inclination is to manifest itself as its best. It can make full use of the brain’s capacity to reach its prime potential; namely, to be able to free oneself from the tyranny of the belief in the ‘Human Constitution’ … which humans defend to the hilt. This ‘Human Constitution’ is the only purview on life so far – it is adhered to and repeated ad nauseam for ages unto ages – but is poised to become outmoded. If it can vanish in one human being it can likewise perish in another ... and another and another and so on. 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’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Three The main characteristic of the identity is its need, its must, to belong to the group. The group is the dominant authority, each member being forced into a role within the group according to the already existing hierarchical structure, which is common to all groups. Once the member has established its place – be it leadership or subservience – it feels ‘safe’, appreciated ... even loved. In order to preserve this ‘safety’, this belonging, this love, the member will not only defend and assert the group against other groups, but also its own role within the group. The moment this ‘safety’ is threatened, be it the individual’s position or the whole group’s, the identification with both the role and the group manifests itself as a matter of life and death. ‘I’ am at stake and ‘I’ will defend that ‘safety’ to the death if necessary. Conflict or war is the inevitable result. However, the eternal cry of each group-member, each identity, is: ‘But what about me? You only love me for what I do, for what role I play, for my looks, for my bank-balance ... or for whatever attribute that has secured my place. I want to be loved for me, a unique individual!’ Yet this ‘unique individual’ only knows itself as a group-member. It defends itself as being part of the whole. All that area of ‘myself’ which cannot be displayed publicly must be kept secret. ‘My’ deepest feelings, ‘my’ objections, ‘my’ goals, must be suppressed in order not to upset the status-quo of the group ... and therefore, ‘my’ precious ‘safety’. Their love for ‘me’, their acceptance, is paramount. ‘I’ must sell-out me as-I-am in order to belong. This is ‘my’ uneasy perversion. ‘I’ would rather carry on being corrupted – and corrupting others – than risk the dreaded loneliness resulting from the loss of love and its implied security through alienation from the group to which ‘I’ belong. The esteemed goal within each group is to reach for the leadership. There lies, seemingly, more power, more love, more acceptance and more individuality. There, it appears, ‘I’ can finally be myself. Supremacy, be it found in Spiritual Enlightenment, Religious Illumination, Mystical Union, or Philosophical Truth, is the Ultimate goal of the largest group within humankind: the Metaphysical Group. The Master, the Saint, and the Sage have all achieved the rewards of leadership: power over others, loving worship, fame and adulation ... and, quite often, wealth. Their sense of identity has fully expanded into identifying as a Divine Self. It is all at the expense of being me, however, for it is also lonely at the top. Loneliness may seem to diminish by belonging to the group, but it actually does not. Rather, it becomes more and more poignant the higher one climbs. The identity is alone and seeks Union with the Divine, thereby becoming a Universal Self. The cause of loneliness and aloneness is not, as is commonly believed, alienation from others. The single reason for being alone and lonely is from not being me as-I-am. By not being me, but being, instead, an identity, ‘I’ am doomed to perpetual loneliness and aloneness. ‘I’ am fated to ever pursue an elusive Someone or Something that will fill that aching void. When I am me, there is no void. By being me as-I-am, I have no need for others; hence I also have no need to place the burden upon them to fulfil that what was lacking. Not only do I free myself from that perpetual pursuit, but I also free others in my company from the task ‘I’ impose upon them. Being me is actual fulfilment, each moment again. Nevermore will I be needy, greedy and grasping. Nevermore will I plot and plan and manipulate others. Nevermore will I have to prostitute myself to others to assuage those main attributes of the identity: being lost, lonely, frightened and cunning. Not only am I free, but I set all others free of ‘my’ grace-less demands. Being me is to be free-flowing, spontaneous, delightful ... and it is fun. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Ten None of the supposed ‘innocence of children’ comes anywhere near to the matchless purity of the innocence of the actual. Nor does the assumed ‘innocence’ in the status generously and wrongly attributed to those old men, women and children classified as ‘innocent victims of war’; for these ‘victims’ are all guilty of instinctive anger and vicious urges themselves. As much as one might be sensitively considerate about their suffering, they cannot be labelled as innocent whilst they remain being ‘human’. They are not to blame: nobody is born innocent, all humans are already ‘guilty’ at conception. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are built into the ‘Human Condition’ … this is the ‘human nature’ that is said ‘cannot be changed’. These intrinsic urges and drives are known as the ‘instinct for survival’. This ‘instinct for survival’ is an animal necessity to ensure the blind continuation of the species. It served the human animal well until the emergence of the cerebral cortex brain, situated over the top of the primitive animal brain … the ‘reptilian brain’. This thinking, reflective brain gave rise to a brain pattern known as ‘the mind’. In here the ‘instinct for survival’ becomes the ‘will to survive’. Thus the biologically necessary blind instinctual patterns spilled over into the psychological arena ... with disastrous results. For five thousand years or more, human beings have been struggling to overcome the ‘will to survive’ with moralistic injunctions – derived from the Divine ‘Being’s Teachings – to no avail. The Teachings were fatally flawed. Although well-meant, they were abysmally improper. They have led to many appalling absurdities such as institutionalised human sacrifices to numerous Gods; exalted martyrdoms for futile ideals; honourable deaths through valour in wars; emotional sufferings whilst contemplating the torments of ‘hells’; Divinely inspired self-flagellations ... the list goes on. The culpability for these preposterous catastrophes must be laid squarely at the feet of those highly revered but sadly deluded Divine ‘Beings’. Their futile Teachings are inimical fulminations … ignorant railings against the neuro-biology of the ‘Human Condition’. The time has come, with the world population as large and as cosmopolitan as it is, to discard the psychological ‘will to survive’ – with all its biologically-based inherited savagery - and move on to a new paradigm. This paradigm I call actualism, which works to disempower the instinctual passions one is encumbered with by Blind Nature at birth. One can come upon an actual freedom – the third alternative – which is the actuality that delivers the goods so long yearned for: peace-on-earth. And it delivers here and now. War is over ... if you want it. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nineteen If one can only see all the misery – the animosity and the anguish – which abounds in the ‘human’ world then any observant and sincere person would realise that society can only be changed when the particular human being fundamentally and radically mutates. Then the onus for that falls upon the singular person – instead of upon an institution, an organisation – to change the world. It behoves one to put one’s money where one’s mouth is … to get off one’s backside and do something … now. Only action – action within oneself – will do the trick. To sit and idealise about change, about transformation, is simply not good enough. One has to do it … actually do it. No one else will do it for one; no one else can do it for one. One must mutate … and soon. And although one may think and feel that it would be a lonely journey to take on one’s own … it is not. It is the most joyous escapade one can ever enter into. It is the jaunt of a lifetime. It is what one is here for and only you can do it. It is not and never will be a mass movement. Then, and only then, will society be changed forever … and irreversibly so. When one sees the connection between the discord inside one and the discord in society; when one realises that one’s own condition is the ‘Human Condition’; then one understands, actually understands, that ‘I’ am ‘society’ and ‘society’ is ‘me’. ‘I’ live in the head as ego and in the heart as soul and one needs to go to the very root of ‘me’ as a rudimentary self to effect change in ‘society’ … for ‘I’ am no different from ‘society’. It is the ‘Human Condition’ which has created the ‘Human Constitution’ with its instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire … this is the genesis of malice and sorrow. And humans set about eagerly to change this animosity and anguish, fiddling with bits and pieces in a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to ameliorate the ‘Human Constitution’. This is not to decry the advances made in the civilising process … but to expect to fundamentally change human beings by changing the ‘Human Constitution’ is to invite disappointment. As long as one remains a social identity one creates and perpetuates this mess, this sorry lot that is the ‘Human Constitution’. There is only one person who can effect change in oneself – nobody else can do it for one – and the process can start now. Indeed, it must begin now, for this is one’s life one is living … the only life one has. To procrastinate is to perpetuate all the suffering and wretchedness that has beset humankind since time immemorial. It has now been made possible for any human, with sufficient willingness and purity of intent, to become actually free of identity at its roots as the rudimentary self. My mutation of consciousness, which eliminated the entire psyche, was triggered by an intense urge to evince and demonstrate what the universe was evidently capable of manifesting: the utter best in purity and perfection which all humans could have ever longed for. Blind Nature, which endows all creatures with the instinct for survival, has now been superseded, paving the way for a truly edified species of fellow human beings to live together in complete peace and harmony. However, even if one does not immediately rid oneself of the rudimentary self, there is a truly remarkable virtual freedom that can be attained. For those that would seek to justify their attitude on the grounds that I am an aberration of nature, some sort of freakish happening, this consideration belies this excuse. It is possible to be virtually free, virtually perfect, virtually pure. To be sure, to live actually requires more than the rescission of the right to be a social identity, but something quite exceptional is possible. One can, because of pure intent, voluntarily relinquish the persona and become virtually free, thus imbuing one’s life with a quality that far exceeds ‘normal’ human expectations anyway. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirty-Four I use the word extinct deliberately for it carries a definitive meaning. Physically, death is the end of an individual member of the species, whilst extinction is the ending of the species itself. The psychological annihilation of identity – in its entirety – is the psychological and psychic ending of the species known as ‘humanity’. It is the end of ‘being’ and the end of an illusion. It is also the end of ‘Being’ and the end of delusion. The ‘Human Condition’, with all its appalling sorrow and malice, has come to an end in one human being. All those would-be wise people who state smugly: ‘You can’t change human nature’ are, fortunately, wrong. Because it is possible for ‘me’ to become extinct, thereby releasing the body from the ‘being’ within, I can walk freely in the world as-it-is … this actual world. I am living in this clean and clear and perfect purity twenty-four-hours-a-day. I live in a state of benignity, which means a kindly and harmless disposition. Life is a playful game and I am free to enjoy it all, every moment again. ‘Humanity’, which gave birth to ‘me’, was being sustained by ‘me’ remaining as a ‘being’. ‘I’ am forever fettered by the ‘Human Condition’. The species known as ‘humanity’ has searched for an Ultimate Fulfilment within the arena of the ‘Human Condition’ for all of history. Such a search is endless and futile, for it is a search within an illusion. Only further illusions – further states of ‘being’ – can be found there ... or delusions. Becoming Divine is a delusion … a state of ‘Being’ that is an insult to one’s native intelligence. ‘I’ will never find the ultimate fulfilment for ‘I’ am standing in the way of the ‘Mystery of Life’ being revealed. There is no way out, ‘I’ am doomed. ‘I’ must, inevitably, cease to ‘be’. Instead of bemoaning ‘my’ fate and vainly searching for an escape, ‘I’ can see ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ am. This seeing is the beginning of the ending of ‘me’. The extinction of ‘me’ is the ultimate sacrifice ‘I’ can make to ensure the possibility of peace-on-earth for not only me but for all humankind. I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness lies all around, abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here now at all was a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings of the exquisite quality of life … who would have it any other way? Ultimate fulfilment lies beyond extinction. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Fifteen RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED WRITING 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