# Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence ## On Actual Intimacy On Many An Occasion While Growing Up For instance, there was a long-lost recall of reading aloud a child’s storybook tale (by virtue of being able to read before being sent to school at age five) upon being asked to by a platinum-haired girl a few months older than me. She was one of the several daughters born of a farmer and his wife some miles away and was quite special in the way she locked onto my reading eyes, drinking in each and every uttered word and meaning, as if being able to be reading for herself. With her wide-open eyes lustrous in excitation, her features alive with an eager anticipation, her whole being absorbed by intense comprehension, the simple tale unfolding soon drew us inexorably closer and closer together. This expansive togetherness thusly engendered, along with the sensitive closeness by-now ensuing, soon segues into a delicate tenderness blossoming, which is flowering as this luscious richness now opening up, out of which splendid exquisiteness the magical realm, where separation has never been nor ever will be, is oh-so-sweetly manifesting in all its wondrous splendour. Looking up over the pages of the booklet, gently gazing into those velvety eyes gazing softly back into my own, there is the mutual recognition of fellow travellers in this (normally) faraway land where time stands eternally still. She is the first to come with me, into this altogether other world, this ever-fresh alterity, and her naive delight at this haply event is a wonder in itself. Here is a female, my favoured of the human kind, who has never hurt me nor ever will, as here is a female who has never been hurt nor ever will be. For here, where separation has no subsistence at all, both hurting and being hurt never happen, thusly here is a female who is ever with me, with her fresh femininity pervasive, just as is ever the same with me for her, with my mint masculinity immanent. There is no modesty here as we are fully out-in-the-open, in total exposure, having nothing to hide and the very daring of doing so has rendered no privacy undisclosed for our naked ambition to be exactly as we are has revealed all. We can no longer pretend, upon any association hence, to again be someone we are not as our most intimate secret has outed itself. Her soft gaze shows, in this eternal instant of mutual showing, how she knows we both know what she too is knowing. Nary a word is expressed of this most precious revelation—indeed five year-old children know naught of these manner of words—as our very outing is speaking for itself in a language of its own. She asks, instead, where Kalamazoo and Timbuktu are. (Richard’s Personal web-page, tool-tip after “four exquisite hours”). Re: The Intimate Ambiance Experiment Audio Recordings CLAUDIU: G’day Richard, Something caught my eye on a second read-through of your latest email: • [Richard]: [...] the primary descriptors of being out-from-control is that it is of the nature of either an ongoing, and thus constantly dynamic, excellence experience (EE) *or a similarly dynamic intimacy experience (IE)*. [...] Now, as the primary descriptors of being out-from-control is of it being in the nature of either a constantly/ consistently dynamic EE *or IE*. [...].[emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 24 January 2016). Particularly, the mention of intimacy experience, as something distinct from an excellence experience, and yet being intimately related to that which is known as being out-from-control. Yet a google search through the Actual Freedom Trust site shows only three distinct phrases where you mentioning intimacy experiences, besides the above, all of which incidentally appear on your Selected Correspondence page regarding the Dynamic, Destinal Virtual Freedom: • [Richard]: Now, this pristine ambience is conducive to a sincere actualist activating their potential – albeit temporarily – as in some form of an out-from-control/ different-way-of-being (*to whatever degree of intimacy they be comfortable with at the time*). Furthermore, experience has shown that *these intimacy experiences* can be contagious, so to speak, for other sincere actualists also present as the atmosphere generated affectively/ psychically by the first to be out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being can propagate a flow-on effect, on occasion. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 14a, 4 December 2009). And: • [Richard]: An obvious out-from-control/ different-way-of-being virtual freedom is an on-going excellence experience (EE) *but an on-going intimacy experience (IE) may very well be the most likely state* as an EE, being so close to a PCE as to be barely distinguishable is not so likely to readily occur sooner rather than later. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 12, 9 December 2009). And: • [Richard]: Fourth, as any being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being (and there are varying degrees *of such intimacy experiences*) implicitly requires pure intent – which renders the necessity for morals/ ethics/ values/ principles null and void – it is certainly not the territory a fledgling actualist (to use your phraseology) has any business venturing into precipitously. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 12, 9 December 2009a). To compare, Google provides 13 (non-unique) results for both <site:actualfreedom.com.au ‘intimacy experience’> and <site:actualfreedom.com.au ‘intimacy experiences’>, while providing 90 (non-unique) results for the same with ‘intimacy’ replaced with ‘excellence’. Could you go into more detail as to what intimacy experiences are, how they differ from excellence experiences, and what role they play in being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being? Did they feature in feeling-being ‘Richard’s wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom? * • [Richard]: In other words, someone genuinely out-from-control is constantly (i.e., consistently) ‘feeling excellent’, come-what-may, by the very nature of what that term refers to. [...] Moreover, as ‘not being out-from-control’ also implies ‘not having a near-actual caring’ either [...]. Incidentally, this may be a good a time as any to publicly state that, based on re-evaluation derived from recent correspondences, as during the time I previously considered I may have been out-from-control, I was not consistently feeling excellent, come-what-may, I can now say I have never genuinely experienced being out-from-control... and, as such, nor can I say I have ever experienced a near-actual caring. Cheers, Claudiu RICHARD: G’day Claudiu, In the same way that excellence experiences (EE’s) were a notable feature of feeling-being ‘Richard’s virtual freedom experiencing circa March-September 1981, although of course not named as such back then, so too did intimacy experiences (IE’s) play a similarly significant role even though increasingly overshadowed by the insistent emergence of love – and, especially, Love Agapé – in the later months due to a marked lack of precedence and, thus, of any praxeological publications (nowadays made freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site) on the distinction betwixt the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté and the affectional intimacy of romance lore and legend. Just as the term ‘excellence experience’ came from feeling-being ‘Grace’ – who was exacting in evaluating ‘her’ differing ways of being a ‘self’ so as to not illude herself that ‘she’ was more progressive than was really the case – so too did the expression ‘different-way-of-being’. What gradually became more and more apparent was that a prevailing feature of ‘her’ differing ways of being was the degree of intimacy involved. The gradations of ‘her’ scale were, basically, good, very good, great, excellent, and magical perfect – whereby, in regards to intimacy, ‘good’ related to togetherness (which pertains to being and acting in concert with another); ‘very good’ related to closeness (where personal boundaries expand to include the other); ‘great’ related to sweetness (delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other); ‘excellent’ related to richness (a near-absence of agency; with the doer abeyant, and the beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian); and ‘magical’ ‘perfect’ related to actuality magicality (neither beer nor doer extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails) – all of which correlate to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence. [naming errors stemming from the original 10th of November 2009 post corrected]. The term ‘intimacy experience’ became part of the actualism lingo after a particularly instructive event in late spring, 2007, when at anchor upriver whilst exhorting feeling-being ‘Grace’ to no longer reserve that specific ‘way-of-being’ for those memorable occasions when ‘she’ was alone with me and to extend such intimacy to also include ‘her’ potential shipmates in order to dynamically enable the then-tentative plans for a floating convivium – which were on an indefinite hold at that time – to move ahead expeditiously (this was in the heady context of feeling-being ‘Pamela’ having already entered into an on-going PCE a scant five days beforehand due to ‘her’ specifically expressed concerns to me over the lack of intimacy between actualists). At some stage during this intensive interaction feeling-being ‘Vineeto’, who had been intently following every nuance, every twist and turn of the interplay, had what ‘she’ described as a ‘shift’ taking place in ‘her’ whereupon the very intimacy being thus exigently importuned came about for ‘her’ instead. To say ‘she’ was astounded with the degree of intimacy having ensued is to put it mildly as ‘her’ first descriptive words were about how ‘she’ would never have considered it possible to be as intimate as this particular way of being – an intimacy of such near-innocence as to have previously only ever been possible privately with ‘her’ sexual partner in very special moments – when in a social setting as one of a number of persons partaking of coffee and snacks in a sitting room situation. Intuitively seizing the vital opportunity such intimate experiencing offered ‘she’ took over from me and commenced interacting intensively in my stead – notably now a one-on-one feeling-being interchange – and within a relatively short while feeling-being ‘Grace’ was experiencing life in the same, or very similar, manner as feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ (hence that 4th of December 2009 report Richard, List D, No. 14a, of mine about how these intimacy experiences are potentially contagious, so to speak, for other sincere actualists as the atmosphere generated affectively-psychically can propagate a flow-on effect). As for your query regarding how the intimacy experience (IE) differs from an excellence experience (EE): qualitatively they are much the same, or similar, insofar as with both experiences there is a near-absence of agency – the beer rather than the doer is the operant – whereupon naïveté has come to the fore, such as to effect the marked diminishment of separation, and the main distinction is that the IE is more people-oriented, while the EE tends to be environmental in its scope. In other words, with an EE the ‘aesthetic experience’ feature, for instance, or its ‘nature experience’ aspect, for example, tends to be more prominent, whilst with an IE the ‘fellowship experience’ characteristic, for instance, or its ‘convivial experience’ quality, for example, comes to the fore. In either type of near-PCE – wherein the experiencing is of ‘my’ life living itself, with a surprising sumptuosity, rather than ‘me’ living ‘my’ life, quite frugally by comparison, and where this moment is living ‘me’ (instead of ‘me’ trying to live ‘in the moment’) – the diminishment of separation is so astonishing as to be as-if incomprehensible/ unbelievable yet it is the imminence of a fellow human’s immanence which, in and of itself, emphases the distinction the most. For instance, the degree of intimacy experienced with minera, flora and fauna upon strolling through some botanical gardens with either near-PCE occurring – as in, with rocks, trees and birds, for example – is to the same gradation as when in a social setting such as a typical sitting room situation (as in, with ashtrays, flowers and humans, for instance) yet it is the ‘fellow human being’ element which exemplifies the already astounding diminishment of separation which ensues upon the blessed onset of this near-innocent intimacy of naïveté. And that latter point – the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy – is another way the IE differs from the EE inasmuch if a near-PCE is initiated via intensive interaction with a fellow human being/ with fellow human beings it takes on the properties of an intimacy experience (IE) whereas if the near-PCE is triggered via interacting intensively with the world at large (as in, an aesthetic experience, a nature experience, a contemplative experience, for example) it takes on the properties of an excellence experience (EE). The role they play in an out-from-control/ different-way-of-being virtual freedom (entitled ‘The Dynamic, Destinal Virtual Freedom’ on that web page to distinguish it from the still-in-control/ same-way-of-being virtual freedom entitled ‘The Pragmatic, Methodological Virtual Freedom’) is, essentially, in enabling the actualism process to take over. In effect, the actualism process is what ensues when one gets out from being under control, via having given oneself prior permission to have one’s life live itself (i.e., sans the controlling doer), and a different way of being comes about (i.e., where the beer is the operant) – whereupon a thrilling out-from-control momentum takes over and an inevitability sets in – whereafter there is no pulling back (hence the reluctance in having it set in motion) as once begun it is nigh-on unstoppable. Then one is in for the ride of a lifetime! Re: The Intimate Ambiance Experiment Audio Recordings • [Claudiu to Richard]: “Could you go into more detail as to what intimacy experiences are, how they differ from excellence experiences, and what role they play in being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being? Did they feature in feeling-being ‘Richard’s wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom?” (Message № 21810). • [Respondent to Richard]: “In addition to that I would also like to ask about “real intimacy” and “actual intimacy”, I mean, is that intimacy you are talking about related to “real intimacy” or would it be “near-actual intimacy” or something like that?” (Message № 21811). • [Claudiu to Respondent]: “Just to clarify, since the phrase “real intimacy” doesn’t appear on the Actual Freedom Trust website—by “real intimacy” do you mean something like “intimacy in the ‘real’ world”, or, affective intimacy, as in, say, “the affective intimacy of love”? (Message № 21813). • [Respondent to Claudiu]: “Yes and yes, if you’re not actually free then I assume any intimacy will be affective anyway, that’s why I’d like clarification”. (Message № 21814). • [Richard to Claudiu]: “In the same way that excellence experiences (EE’s) were a notable feature of feeling-being ‘Richard’s virtual freedom experiencing circa March-September 1981, although of course not named as such back then, so too did intimacy experiences (IE’s) play a similarly significant role even though increasingly overshadowed by the insistent emergence of love—and, especially, Love Agapé—in the later months due to a marked lack of precedence and, thus, of any praxeological publications (nowadays made freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site) on the distinction betwixt the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté and the affectional intimacy of romance lore and legend. [...elide ten paragraphs re the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy...]”. (Message № 21835, Richard, List D, Claudiu, 24 January 2016). * RESPONDENT: Hello, Richard, there are lots of references to “actual intimacy” on your website but there is no mention of “real intimacy”. Is “real intimacy” the same as “The affective intimacy of love” mentioned below? Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Love, Love Agapé and Actual Intimacy. “The affective intimacy of love—the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness—is but a pathetic imitation of an actual intimacy (where there is no separation in the first place). The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt”. “This entity, or being, residing in the body is forever cut-off from the actual—from the world as-it-is—because its inner world reality is pasted as a veneer over the actual world, thus creating the outer world reality known as the real world, and experiences an affective intimacy (oneness, union, unity, wholeness) wherein the separation is bridged by love and compassion ... instead of an actual intimacy (direct, instant, immediate, absolute) where there is no separation whatsoever”. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Love).. I have copied a few dictionary definitions for “intimacy” below. OneLook Dictionary Search. [www.onelook.com/?w=intimacy&ls=a]. Quick definitions from Macmillan (intimacy) noun: a close personal relationship... more... something personal or private that you say or do... more... the sexual act: this word is used especially by lawyers or the police. Quick definitions from WordNet (intimacy) noun: close or warm friendship (“The absence of fences created a mysterious intimacy in which no one knew privacy”). noun: a feeling of being intimate and belonging together. noun: a usually secretive or illicit sexual relationship I would like to ask you if you can elaborate more on the difference between regular plain “intimacy” aka “real intimacy” and “actual intimacy”, so as to clarify for instance what kind of intimacy is involved in “The Intimate Ambiance Experiment”. I have to admit I have listened to very little of the recordings but it appears to be the intimacy of friends talking. I have the impression that most people still can’t tell the difference. Personally, I still desire the intimacy of close or genuine friendship where one can be honest about one’s true feelings and talk about anything. Also, there is something else related to intimacy I’d like to ask, which is, what is the difference between friends and associates? Because I know you say you don’t have friends, but associates instead, and I still value friends, especially of the genuine kind. Regards, [Respondent No. 46]. RICHARD: G’day [No. 46], I incorporated considerable detail relating to “near-actual intimacy” (as per your “in addition” query re-presented further above) into my response to Claudiu’s request—as in, “the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté” & “an intimacy of such near-innocence” & “the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy” & “a near-PCE...intimacy experience”, for example—whilst bearing in mind your “yes and yes” reply, to his clarifying-with-live-links email to you, on the assumption that the word ‘yes’ means ...um... ‘sim’ (i.e., ‘resposta affirmativa’) in Brazilian Portuguese. Look, the reason why that “real intimacy” term of yours does not appear on The Actual Freedom Trust web site is essentially no different to why a term such as, say, ‘real sincerity’ also does not feature even though countless peoples fake sincerity, as a matter-of-course, throughout many of their interactions with their fellow human beings—developing that particular skill-set is considered an essential part of on-the-job training, for instance, in matters of commerce (e.g., used-car salespersons) and politics (e.g., ambassadorial attachés) for some obvious instances—inasmuch the distinction between such unreal sincerity and a real sincerity (just as is the case with unreal intimacy and real intimacy) is not the focus of what is on offer on the website. Indeed, the entire focus is upon how being alive, as a conscious/ sentient creature on this verdant and azure planet, is experienced during perfection experiences which are known, for convenience in communication, as pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s)—as contrasted to how life is experienceable when either an ordinary state of being is operating or a non-ordinary state of being, a.k.a. an altered state of consciousness (ASC), is operational in its stead—and rather than coining new words, when reporting/ describing/ explaining such experiencing, it was far more practicable to instead exploit an anomalous distinction, which exists in everyday usage of the English language (however, not in Brazilian Portuguese, though), between the word ‘real’ and the word ‘actual’. Viz.: • [Respondent № 25]: “And now, if my grandmother would ask me if God exists, I would tell her that it does, He’s real but it’s not actual. Ha-ha-ha! And then she’ll ask me what actual means, I suppose that’s where the <go> starts”. • [Richard]: “Back when I was a father, when my then children would ask me if Santa Claus was real, I would say yes but not actual like a table is, for instance, as their mother was full-on into the traditions and such diplomatic answers, rather than an outright no, made for relative domestic harmony and they had no difficulty whatsoever in grasping that concept (and applying it to witches riding broomsticks as well and fairies at the bottom of the garden and so on). Curiously enough many years later (for I was a normal family man back then) that diplomatic response came in handy when endeavouring to come to terms with the existential dilemma I was living at the end of the enlightened period ... hence the term ‘actual’ in actual freedom. If a child can grasp it anyone can (even though dictionaries draw no such distinction)”. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25b, 19 July 2003). This anomalous usage is only possible because the word real (from Late Latin reālis, from Latin rēs, ‘thing’) has increasingly come to mean, in everyday usage, more or less whatever is perceived, felt or intuited to be a reality for the percipient, the feeler, or the intuiter thereof (e.g., “you create your own reality”)—and corresponds to a similarly self-centrically subjective usage of the word truth (e.g., “that’s your truth”) as distinct from the word fact—whereas the word actual definitively refers to that which exists, or occurs, as a matter of verifiable fact and has thus far remained intact, as such, despite the veritable onslaught objectivity has been assailed with since relativity infected mainstream academic thought due to mathematicians having taken over physics, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with their abstractive mathematical models. Furthermore, as the term ‘real world’ is a regular feature of everyday English usage (e.g., “life in the real world”)—and especially so in a pejorative sense, as in, “welcome to the real world”, for example, or “life’s tough in the real world” and “it’s dog-eat-dog in the real world”, for instance—it readily lends itself to being contrasted to the unadulterated actual world (i.e., the world of the senses, the sensate world, the world where flesh-and-bodies already reside) where being alive, as a conscious/ sentient creature, takes place on a paradisaical terraqueous globe, as an everyday actuality. Thus, by the prefacing of the word ‘intimacy’, in this instance, with the word ‘actual’—so as to refer to how intimacy is experienced in actuality (where flesh-and-bodies already reside)—the necessity of explaining what newly-coined words mean is thereby obviated. Viz.: • [Respondent № 110]: “Perhaps it would help me if you explained what felicity is”. • [Richard]: “One way to put it would be to say that the felicity being discussed—the felicity inherent to perfection—is what the feeling of happiness is but an affective substitute for ... and to then say that when I went public to inform my fellow human being of my discovery I chose to not coin new words, as that would be counter-productive, but to instead make a distinct difference between the word ‘actual’ and the word ‘real’ (plus the word ‘fact’ and the word ‘true’) whereas the dictionaries do not. Suppose I had used the letters ‘qwerty’ (the first six letters on a standard keyboard) to refer to what is inherent to perfection; would it not have led to being asked what that means? For example: • [example only]: ‘Happiness is dependent upon felicitous events whereas qwerty, being inherent to perfection, occurs all the while regardless of infelicitous events’. [end example]. Besides which ... anybody having had a memorable PCE knows exactly what I am talking about”. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 110b, 13 June 2006). Therefore, what you are effectively asking—via your “is ‘real intimacy’ the same as ‘the affective intimacy of love’ mentioned below?” wording—is whether or not intimacy, for feeling-beings, is the same as the intimacy of love. Yet, because intimacy can be referred in several ways (i.e., via its denotation, its connotations, and its consuetude) by feeling-beings—as indicated by those quick dictionary definitions you provided—then your query makes about as much sense as its obverse would (i.e., whether or not the intimacy of love is the same as intimacy). As the word ‘intimacy’ refers to the state or condition of being intimate—a word which comes from Latin intimātus, ‘to make familiar with’, past participle of intimāre, intimāt-, ‘to make known’, from Latin intimus, ‘innermost’, ‘deepest’; from intus, ‘within’—perhaps some more extensive dictionary entries than those quick ones will throw some light upon what it is you are wanting to know about intimacy per se and the intimacy of love. Viz.: • intimacy (n.): 1. (a) intimate friendship or acquaintance; close familiarity; an instance of this (middle seventeenth century); [e.g.]: “So great was their intimacy that rumours of a stronger tie—amorous, even marital—persisted”. (A. Fraser); (b) (euphemistic), sexual intercourse (late seventeenth century); [e.g.]: “She stayed the night at his father’s house; intimacy took place on that occasion”. (Westminster Gazette); 2. inner or inmost nature; an inward quality or feature (middle seventeenth-late eighteenth century); 3. (rare): intimate or close connection or union (early eighteenth century); 4. closeness of observation or knowledge (early eighteenth century). [origin: middle seventeenth century from intimate (adjective) + -acy]. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary). • intimacy (n.; pl. intimacies): 1. the state of being intimate; close union or conjunction; [e.g.]: “Explosions occur only... where the elements concerned are... distributed among one another molecularly, or, as in gunpowder, with minute intimacy”. (Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903, “Principles of Psychology”, § 35); 2. close familiarity or fellowship; intimate friendship; [e.g.]: “Rectory and Hall, | Bound in an immemorial intimacy, | Were open to each other”. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, “Aylmer’s Field)”; “The peculiar art of alternate gushing intimacy and cool obliviousness, so well known to London fashionable women”. (Peep at Our Cousins, iv.); (synonyms): familiarity, etc.; see acquaintance. [from intima(te) + -cy]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). And here are their entries for ‘intimate’ in exhaustive detail: • intimate (n. & adj.): A. (n.): 1. a characteristic example of a human type (only in early seventeenth century); 2. a very close friend or associate (early seventeenth century); B (adj.): 1. (a): of or pertaining to the inmost nature or fundamental character of a thing; essential; intrinsic; now chiefly in scientific use (early seventeenth century); (b): entering deeply or closely into a matter (early nineteenth century); 2. proceeding from, concerning, or relating to one’s deepest thoughts or feelings; closely personal, private (middle seventeenth century); 3. involving very close connection or union; thoroughly mixed, united (middle seventeenth century); [e.g.]: “There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals”. (R. W. Emerson); 4. of knowledge: resulting from close familiarity; deep, extensive (middle seventeenth century); 5. (a): united by friendship or other personal relationship; familiar, close; also, pertaining to or dealing with close personal relations (middle seventeenth century); [e.g.]: “An intimate friend, a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul”. (L. M. Montgomery); “Having children in common they had something more intimate than could ever be shared by friends and lovers”. (A. N. Wilson); “Waking up with someone seemed more intimate than making love in some ways”. (J. Krantz); (b): familiarly associated; closely personal (late nineteenth century); [e.g.]: “These diminutive intimate things bring one near to the Old Roman life”. (H. James); (c): having or seeking to create an informal, warm, friendly atmosphere (early twentieth century); [e.g.]: “The armchairs had been arranged in intimate groups”. (W. Boyd); 6. (a): (euphemistic), having sexual intercourse (with, together) (late nineteenth century); [e.g.]: “Some of them were what newspapers call intimate together, without having undergone marriage”. (R. Macaulay); (b): pertaining to or involving the sexual organs or bodily orifices (early twentieth century); [e.g.]: “There was a long, fairly passionate embrace with a certain amount of intimate caressing”. (K. Amis); “And intimate searches (of body orifices) will be conducted by police officers”. (Times); (adv.): intimately (middle seventeenth century). [origin: early seventeenth century from Late Latin intimatus, past participle of intimare, from intimus, (n.): ‘a close friend’, (adj.) ‘innermost’ + -ate, suffix forming adjectives and nouns]. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary). • intimate (adj. and n.): I. (adj.): 1. inner; inmost; intrinsic; pertaining to minute details or particulars: as, ‘the intimate structure of an organism’; ‘the intimate principles of a science’; [e.g.]: “Enough beauty of climate hangs over these Roman cottages and farm-houses—beauty of light, of atmosphere and of vegetation; but their charm for seekers of the picturesque is the way in which the lustrous air seems to illuminate their intimate desolation”. (Henry James, “Italian Hours”); 2. pertaining to the inmost mind; existing in one’s inner thoughts or feelings; inward: as, ‘intimate convictions or beliefs’; ‘intimate knowledge of a subject’; [e.g.]: “They knew not | That what I motion’d was of God; I knew | From intimate impulse”. (John Milton, “Samson Agonistes”, 1. 223); “His characteristics were prudence, coolness, steadiness of purpose, and intimate knowledge of men”. (William Hickling Prescott, 1796-1859, “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic”, ii. 24); 3. closely approximating or coalescing; near; familiar: as, ‘intimate relation of parts’; ‘intimate union of particles’; ‘intimate intercourse’; [e.g.]: “When the multitude were thundered away from any approach, he [Moses] was honoured with an intimate and immediate admission”. (Robert South, “Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions”, Vol. I); “I crown thee [Winter] king of intimate delights, Fire-side enjoyments, homeborn happiness”. (William Cowper, “The Task, Book IV; The Winter Evening”, iv. 139); 4. close in friendship or acquaintance; on very familiar terms; not reserved or distant; [e.g.]: “I sent for three of my friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to rejoice”. (Richard Steele, “The Tatler”, No. 181); “Barbara... took Winifred’s waist in the turn of her arm—as is the way of young women, especially of such as are intimate enemies”. (John Williamson Palmer, “After his Kind”, p. 282); 5. familiarly associated; personal; [e.g.]: “These diminutive, intimate things bring one near to the old Roman life. ... A little glass cup that Roman lips have touched says more to us than the great vessel of an arena”. (Henry James, Jnr., “Little Tour in France”, p. 214); II. (n.): a familiar friend, companion, or guest; one who has close social relations with another or others; [e.g.]: “Poor Mr. Murphy was an intimate of my first husband’s”. (Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale-Piozzi (née Salusbury), Aug. 29, 1810); “Thackeray was one of the intimates at Gore House”. (Walter Besant, “Fifty Years Ago”, p. 204); “I testify that our lord and our Prophet and our friend Mohham’mad is his servant, and his apostle, and his elect, and his intimate, the guide of the way, and the lamp of the dark”. (quoted in Edward William Lane’s “Modern Egyptians”, I. 101). [from Latin intimatus, pp., ‘made known’, ‘intimate’; see the verb]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). What is immediately noticeable is how the listings in the various dictionary entries do not feature the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté. This is because there is a marked lack of information on the distinction between the intimacy of love and that naïve intimacy (as pointed out in the latter part of the first paragraph of my response to Claudiu on January 28, 2016). Viz.: • [Richard]: “(...) so too did intimacy experiences (IE’s) play a similarly significant role even though increasingly overshadowed by the insistent emergence of love—and, especially, Love Agapé—in the later months due to *a marked lack of precedence and, thus, of any praxeological publications* (nowadays made freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site) on the distinction betwixt the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté and the affectional intimacy of romance lore and legend”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 January 2016). Just pause for a moment, if you will, to allow due consideration of what this extraordinary fact betokens. For not only is an actual freedom from the human condition entirely new to human experiencing, and, thusly, totally new to human history as well, so too is this outstanding intimacy, intrinsic to being naïveté itself, completely new—and which near-innocence is still within the human condition, mind you, just as the pathematic oneness of being in love is—and so new, in fact, as to not feature in any dictionary or praxeological publications until the words and writings of both a virtual and an actual freedom from the human condition were first made public knowledge in 1997. Put succinctly, this intimity, this most intimate of intimacies, has been beyond the ken of humankind since forever! To continue: I also detailed how feeling-being ‘Grace’, who was exacting in evaluating ‘her’ differing ways of being a ‘self’, had gradations of scale in regards to intimacy (togetherness: → closeness: → sweetness: → richness: → magicality)—all of which correlated to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence—in the second and third paragraphs following on from the above. Thus your query (posted nearly seven hours after that January 28, 2016 response of mine to Claudiu) also bears no relationship to all of this “near-actual intimacy” detail I specifically incorporated into my response to Claudiu’s request as per your “in addition” query. * (Just by the bye, and purely as a matter of historical note, I first detailed the above gradations publicly on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, in Message № 7476 on this ‘Yahoo Groups’ forum, which—along with thirty-plus other posts of mine—was deliberately censored via being stricken from this forum’s archives and thus potentially hidden from view forever, as part of a concerted effort to stop the global spread of peace-on-earth dead in its tracks (in conjunction with several proposals to prevent me from publishing copies of my ‘Yahoo Groups’ correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust web site). * In regards to elaborating on the difference between intimacy as experienced by feeling-beings (i.e., the affective intimacy of the ‘real world’) and the actual intimacy experienced by flesh-and-blood bodies only (i.e., sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty), in the world as-it-is in actuality, it will be instructive to first provide the context from which you selected that second paragraph of mine you quoted (with that paragraph highlighted for convenience). Viz.: • [Respondent № 27]: “Richard, I am currently perplexed about ‘caring’. You distinguish between ‘feeling caring’ and ‘actually caring’. I think I understand the distinction for the most part—‘feeling caring’ is caring based upon emotion —‘feeling’ that one cares, and ‘actually caring’ is something that happens ONLY in a PCE or when one is actually free. Now, this results in the somewhat shocking statement that the only people who actually care are those in pure consciousness”. • [Richard]: “Aye, it can indeed be a shock to realise that, for all the protestations of being caring, no one trapped in the human condition actually cares. However, apart from galvanising one into action, it is a liberating realisation as it releases one from the bonds that tie. There are always strings attached in affective caring”. (...elided...). • [Respondent № 27]: “I have similar questions about the distinction between ‘feeling intimacy’ and ‘actual intimacy’. Could you define exactly what you mean by those terms—as well as just exactly what you would say is going on when there is a ‘feeling intimacy’?” • [Richard]: “So as to circumvent coining new words I chose to make a distinct difference between the word ‘actual’ and the word ‘real’ (plus the word ‘fact’ and the word ‘true’) whereas the dictionaries do not: thus when I talk of the actual world, as contrasted to the real world, whilst both words refer to the physical world I am making an experiential distinction (a distinction in experience). I usually put it this way: what one is (what not who) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling—and no separative identity (no ‘I’/ ‘me’) inside the body means no separation whatsoever—whereas ‘I’/ ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity, am busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose. *This entity, or being, residing in the body is forever cut-off from the actual—from the world as-it-is—because its inner world reality is pasted as a veneer over the actual world, thus creating the outer world reality known as the real world, and experiences an affective intimacy (oneness, union, unity, wholeness) wherein the separation is bridged by love and compassion ... instead of an actual intimacy (direct, instant, immediate, absolute) where there is no separation whatsoever*. In other words, no separative identity in the first place means no division exists to be transcended”. • [Respondent № 27]: “Is there no intimacy in feeling intimacy?” • [Richard]: “Yes, there is the feeling of being intimate”. • [Respondent № 27]: “If that’s the case, why do you call it feeling ‘intimacy’?” • [Richard]: “Because that is what it is ... the feeling of being intimate”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27d, 18 November 2002). Basically, I am sitting here (metaphorically) scratching my head and wondering just what it is you want to know which is ... (1.) not already explicated in that exchange ... and (2.) not already elaborated on in my ‘intimacy experiences’ response to Claudiu (posted nigh-on seven hours before this one of yours). Perhaps if I were to put it this way: a feeling-being, residing as they do in their ‘self’-created ‘inner world’, feels separated from other feeling-beings as a matter of course (who, whilst similarly residing in their own ‘self’-created ‘inner worlds’, nevertheless manifest as residing in that feeling-being’s ‘self’-created ‘outer world’) and seeks to bridge that ‘self’-generated separation in the only way a feeling-being can—affectively and psychically—such as to experience a feeling of being intimate (i.e., a feeling intimacy a.k.a. an affective intimacy), when successful, and even unto an affective-psychic union, a ‘oneness’ experience, when that feeling of being intimate, through having become a loving intimacy, then transforms itself, via what is known as “falling in love”, into a state of being called “being in love” (i.e, being love itself as “a state of ‘being’”). Meanwhile, here in this actual world—(where flesh-and-bodies already have ubiety and where nary a feeling-being nor any dichotomous inner-world/ outer world reality is to be found wheresoever)—any and all experiencing is intimate in its very nature by default (parenthetically expressed as “direct, instant, immediate, absolute”, in the above quoted paragraph), as in unmediated, and I have previously highlighted the all-inclusive nature of this by referring to “an actual intimacy with an ash-tray” for deliberate effect. Given that intimacy as typically experienced, in reality, by a feeling-being is so totally different to intimacy as bodily experienced, in actuality, then this impression you have (about how “most people still can’t tell the difference” between them) looks more like an impression in need of considerable review than anything else. And especially so as your speculation about the intimacy involved in “The Intimate Ambiance Experiment” (which to you “appears to be the intimacy of friends talking” despite having listened to very little of the recordings)—being based on the differentiation between a feeling-being’s intimacy, as typically experienceable, and intimacy as bodily experienced (else why ask for elaboration thereof and thus clarification thereby)—neither takes into account the very raison d’être of the experiment itself, despite such featuring in its title, nor the intimacy atypically experienced in the real world (so atypical, in fact, as to not feature in the listings in the various dictionaries). Here is a “thought for the day” (so to speak): unless you have or know of “friends talking” solely with the intent of [quote] “creating a felicitous/ innocuous/ intimate atmosphere via psychic currents (i.e. via each participant aiming to enjoy and appreciate each moment of being alive via (at least) affectively feeling good, thus automatically giving off general-sense-of-well-being psychic currents, to be picked up by the other participants and to reinforce their own general-senses-of-well-being, and so on in a feedback loop)” [endquote] then your “it appears to be the intimacy of friends talking” speculation similarly looks to be in need of considerable review as well. And especially so as you immediately go on to express how you, personally, are *still* desiring “the intimacy of close or genuine friendship where one can be honest about one’s true feelings and talk about anything” (which, bespeaking as it does of such “intimacy of friends talking” being yet to happen for you, suggests that the very nature of your speculation itself is based upon an ideal as to what constitutes an intimacy born of friendship). * As to your query regarding the word ‘associates’ vis-à-vis ‘friends’ the following exchanges are quite informative in respect to not only friendship/ comradeship and connubiality/ conjugality but also in regards to familial/ societal relationships as well. Viz.: • [Respondent № 88]: “A comparison between a relationship with love and a relationship with ‘actual freedom’, would be appreciated”. • [Richard]: “Okay ... first and foremost I am assuming you mean the word in a way more or less similar to this: • relationship (n.): a connection, an association, spec. an emotional (esp. sexual) association between two people. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary). As a relationship is *specifically* described as being an emotional association between two people—as in an affective connection, union, bond (as in ‘the bonds of friendship’) or tie (as in ‘family ties’)—it confuses the issue somewhat to call being together monogamously with another, when actually free from the human condition, “a relationship” ... indeed, in the first edition of ‘Richard’s Journal’, where I used that very word (albeit as a modern-day substitute for the word ‘marriage’), it caused enough confusion for some readers as to occasion my replacement of it with the term ‘an association’ when preparing the second edition. Having said all that ... there actually is no comparison between a relationship (either with or without love) and an association where there is an actual freedom from the human condition because the former, being within the human condition, is essentially an association with another identity whereas the latter is an association with another flesh and blood body. [emphasis in original]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 88, 27 April 2005a). And: • [Richard]: “Given that the primary basis of a meaningful friendship is an affectionate attachment, a tie or a bond based upon one identity making an affective connection with another identity, it speaks volumes about the underlying nature of relationship that a proposition of that ilk [viz.: an overture of friendship] deemed to be spurned incurs chagrin. A succinct description of this core nature can be as follows: • ‘friend: a person joined by affection and intimacy to another, independently of sexual or family love’. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary). • ‘friend: one attached to another by affection or esteem’. ~ (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary). • ‘friend: a person you know well and regard with affection and trust’. ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 1.6). • ‘friend (word history): a friend is a lover, literally. The relationship between Latin amicus, ‘friend’ and amos, ‘I love’ is clear, as is the relationship between Greek philos, ‘friend’ and phileo, ‘I love’. In English, though, it is necessary to go back a millennium before the verb related to friend can be seen. At that time, freond, the Old English word for ‘friend’, was simply the present participle of the verb freon, ‘to love’. The Germanic root behind this verb is fri-, which meant ‘to like, love, be friendly to’. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). Of course the words ‘friendly’ and ‘friendliness’ have different connotations to the root meanings of ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ ... such connotations as amity, affability, amiability, geniality, cordiality, courtesy, civility, helpfulness, kindliness, gentleness, benevolence, and so on. The need for a friend, and to be a friend, is an urge for an affectuous coupling based upon separation; an identity is alone and/or lonely and longs for the union that is evidenced in a relationship. When both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul become extinct there is no need—and no capacity—for such unity: the expression ‘life is a movement in relationship’ applies only to a psychological and/or psychic entity who wants the feeling of oneness—a synthetic intimacy per favour the bridge of affection/ love—which manifests the deception that separation has ended. And if human relationship does not produce the desired result, then one will project a god or a goddess—a ‘super-friend’ not dissimilar to the imaginary playmates of childhood—to love and be loved by. The ridiculous part in all this is that we are fellow human beings anyway (like species recognise like species) and to seek to impose friendship over the top of fellowship is, as someone once said in another context, like painting red ink on a red rose ... a garish redundancy. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Gary, 24 June 2003). To summarise: as a flesh-and-blood body only my experience of all other flesh-and-blood bodies—of which there are seven-plus billion of the human variety—is direct, instant, immediate, absolute ... as in, unmediated by any separative identity, whatsoever. In other words, as there are no feeling-beings in actuality then their highly-valued relationships/ friendships have no actual existence either. ’Tis all so simple, here. Regards, Richard. Re: What Near-Actual Intimacy Means Practically RICHARD: What did not get included in those second and third paragraphs, regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’ and her rigorous gradations, was ‘her’ oft-repeated observation – regarding the onset of the third stage, on that range of naïveness, where ‘her’ gradation of ‘great’ related to sweetness – about a bifurcation manifesting where the instinctual tendency/ temptation was to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate) as contrasted to a conscious choice being required so as to somehow have that sweetness then segue into a naïve intimacy via what ‘she’ described as ‘richness’ and graded as ‘excellent’. (Richard, List D, No. 46, 7 February 2016). MARTIN: What does that mean practically then Richard? RICHARD: G’day Martin, Essentially, what “that” meant practically for feeling-being ‘Grace’ was how ‘she’ needed to be fully alert, upon the emergence of (if not prior to) that third-stage ‘sweetness’, to the attractiveness of the feeling of affection/ of ‘self’-centrically being affectionate – so as to not instinctually veer off into the intimacy of love – and thereby remain steadfast with delighting in the physical proximity of the flesh-and-blood body typing these words (i.e., “the other”, in the nomenclature of the third paragraph from the top of this page, that ‘she’ conventionally referred to as “my partner”, when living what ‘she’ laconically termed “my other life”, during ‘her’ interactions on weekdays with female colleagues, friends, acquaintances, &c., in a neighbouring village). The reason for drawing attention to this instinctual tendency/ temptation – (i.e., to become loving and, consequently, feel even closer to another ‘being’ because of its affectuous intimacy) – in the above Footnote № 1 is two-fold: • It is the natural and normal (instinctual and default) course of action: see Message № 20312 (Richard, List D, James, 8 August 2015) for an extensive, fully referenced, elaboration. • It has sufficient explanatory power on its own to account for that historic [quote] “insistent emergence of love – and, especially, Love Agapé – in the later months” [end quote] overshadowing of the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté, in 1981, explicitly referenced in that first paragraph of mine (re-presented at the top of this page) for its specific ‘forewarned-is-forearmed’ effect. (By the way: this natural and normal course of action, this instinctual and default tendency and/or temptation, must surely feature majorly in any plausible hypothesis as to why an actual freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human experience/ human history). MARTIN: Obviously I have to start with an affective intimacy rather than the actual intimacy you describe (as I’m currently a feeling being). If I’m with a women should I let myself like them rather than love them, so there’s an experience of closeness / intimacy based on liking rather than affection? RICHARD: Because “an experience of closeness / intimacy” is already happening before the onset of the third stage depicted in that footnote, as per feeling-being ‘Grace’s gradations of scale regarding intimacy (good:→ very good:→ great:→ excellent:→ perfect), which correlates to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence (togetherness:→ closeness:→ sweetness:→ richness:→ magicality), your query has prompted me to pull together my scattered references to those gradations, bring them up-to-date (upon spotting a misnamed term in the original 10th of November 2009 post), and lay them out sequentially as an aide-mémoire. Viz.: • Togetherness (‘good’) is the companionship of being and doing things together – be it shopping, cooking, dining, communicating, copulating, sharing, travelling, and so on – and pertains to the willingness to be and act in concert with another in the regular connubial/ conjugal way of feeling intimate. • Closeness (‘very good’) comes about due to feeling sufficiently safe/ feeling secure enough, emotionally, to intuitively enable an inclusive-of-the-other expansion of viscerally-determined personal boundaries; this is a normal type of intimacy wherein the regular way of feeling intimate is intensified and/or deepened. • Sweetness (‘great’) is when closeness entrées a joyous delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other (it is at the onset of this stage that a bifurcation manifests whereby the instinctual tendency/ temptation is to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy due to the ‘self’-centric attractiveness of feeling affectionate). • Richness (‘excellent’) happens upon sweetness segueing into a near-absence of agency; with the controlling doer abeyant, and a naïve beer ascendant, being the experiencing of what is happening is inherently cornucopian (a.k.a. an excellence experience). • Magicality (‘perfect’) is whence neither beer nor doer be extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails (a.k.a. a pure consciousness experience). So, bearing in mind the distinction betwixt the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté and the affectional intimacy of romance lore and legend, as clearly demarcated in the two preceding email exchanges, plus the footnoted account regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’s oft-repeated observation (about a bifurcation manifesting upon the onset of the third stage), then ... yes, steadfastly being as true to an imitation of the actual as is feasible (i.e., staying as faithful as is imitatively doable to actuality) and thus unwaveringly liking one’s fellow human creature/ one’s fellow human creatures – despite that instinctual urge, drive, impulse, or any other similarly blind appetitive craving/ longing/ desiring for an affective-psychic coupling or bonding form of consummation (i.e., merging, blending, fusing, uniting, or any other state of integration, unification, oneness, nonduality, and etcetera) – is a significant feature in the enabling of the IE’s delineated in the first of the two preceding email exchanges. MARTIN: Is it as simple as that? RICHARD: As your nominative pronoun “it” draws its referencing function from the way in which intimacy experiences (IE’s) come about as per feeling-being ‘Grace’s gradations of scale regarding the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence – (this syntactically precise exegesis of the referent whence your query derives relevance is purely for the sake of clarity in communication) – then ... no, “it” is not “as simple as that” (in your case liking women rather than loving them; in ‘her’ case liking men rather than loving them) as some considerable finesse of focus is called for in order to discern this which is as entirely new to human experience/ human history as an actual freedom from the human condition is. Perhaps if I were to put it this way: untold billions of peoples down through the ages and across cultures have liked, rather than loved, another and/or others relationally, familially and societally – and yet even so the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté does not appear in the dictionary listings – to the point that it speaks volumes regarding the all-dominating puissance of blind nature’s rough-and-ready instinctual survival passions which, whilst self-evidently successful in its proliferative perpetuation of the species, nevertheless blindly dictate that no other course of action, vis-à-vis being intimate, than love’s affectuous intimacy will ever instinctually come about. Put succinctly: as all what blind nature is concerned about (so to speak) is the survival of the species – and even then any species will do as far as blind nature is concerned – then it is patent that blind nature cares not a whit about any such finesse of focus being articulated here. MARTIN: Also, I have a tendency to hide away / shut down my feelings, do you have any advice on overcoming that? RICHARD: My stock-standard response to advice-seeking reports of some personal or idiosyncratic tendency/ propensity/ predilection/ etcetera which only the person concerned is properly equipped to deal with – I cannot possibly know another person’s every thought, every feeling, every instinctual impulse; nor the nuances of their ethnic background, the intimate details of their familial upbringing, the subtleties of their peer-group coercions, and so on – is to suggest watching/ reading news bulletins ... for example: • [Respondent № 01]: “War is the most horrid thing ... if I say that I am just repeating what Krishnamurti said. I can’t grasp it at all. ... I don’t understand. In fact a lot of your book has got me ... what to do indeed”. • [Richard]: “War is indeed a most horrid thing ... along with all the murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides. It is all related: a war between two nations is not different in kind to an argument between two people ... it is only a difference in degree. When you throw a barbed insult at your wife – and vice versa – it is essentially no different to the USA throwing a ‘Cruise Missile’ into Bagdad and Iraq throwing a ‘Scud Missile’ in retaliation. It all stems from the genetically-inherited instinctual passions that all sentient beings are born with ... fear and aggression and nurture and desire are not your fault. No one is to blame ... you are born like this. In 1992 these instinctual passions – which is ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ itself – were extinguished: ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul became extinct. Kaput. Finished. As dead as the dodo but with no skeletal remains ... there is no phoenix here to arise from the ashes”. • [Respondent № 01]: “I want to do something – you always said to me that if I didn’t know what to do ... don’t do any thing”. • [Richard]: “Yes ... except that I said that in the context that is epitomised by that joke: ‘when in doubt ... panic!’. If you do not know what to do in a particular situation it is better to do nothing if doing something only makes it worse. I never meant it as a ‘Life-Time Philosophy’”. • [Respondent № 01]: “Mmm ... as the last 10 years (all my life) have shown me that, when I am by myself, I don’t do anything”. • [Richard]: “Try watching/ reading the news bulletins with whatever media you have access to and use your affective feelings – emotions and passions and calenture – to really, deeply, primally feel all the anguish and animosity inherent in all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides that parades across billions of TV screens daily. And try watching/ reading the ‘animals in the wild’ programmes so as to see where the human animal shares this common ancestry of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Your ‘do nothing’ inclination will soon turn into a ‘do something’ longing because unless one is vitally interested in peace on earth one will never even begin to free the crippled intelligence from the debilitating passions bestowed by blind nature ...”. (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 05, 1 October 1999). MARTIN: One way you describe sincerity is ingenuousness, are you referring to not hiding away? RICHARD: A computerised search of all my publicly available words for <ingenuousness> returns only one hit – where it is utilised in relation to being pure innocence personified in actuality – and wherever the word ingenuous is used to “describe sincerity” it generally appears linked to and/or synonymous with ‘straightforward’ as follows: • [Richard]: “The word ‘sincere’ can be traced back to the Latin sincerus, meaning ‘whole’ or ‘pure’ or ‘sound’, and which is arguably derived from the roots ‘sin-’ (one) and ‘crescere’ (to grow) in that the Latin ‘sincerus’ originally referred to a plant which was of pure stock – not a mixture or hybrid – and thus came to mean anything which was genuine (as in ‘true’ or ‘correct’) and not falsified, adulterated, contaminated. Thus sincerity is to be in accord with the fact/ being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity (as in being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous)”. (Richard, Abditorium, Sincere). Other than that, the word ingenuous usually appears in a list of synonyms for either naïve or naïveté – as in my recent ‘brief note’ Message № 22277 (Richard, List D, Alan, 29 February 2016) as per my [quote] “...‘the visceral wiliness of the wild’...is the direct opposite of naïveté (naïve = guileless, artless, ingenuous, unsophisticated, open, aboveboard, direct, frank, straightforward, child-like, simple &c.)” [end quote] wording for example – which, in that context, reads as being representative of ‘nothing to hide’ rather than your “not hiding away” suggestion. * As a matter of related interest, most dictionaries have ‘ingenuous’ as generally referring to being free from reserve, restraint, dissimulation, and so forth, such as to be lacking in cunning, guile, sophistication, worldliness, and etcetera, although ‘Princeton’s WordNet 3.0’, curiously enough, has [quote] “characterised by an inability to mask your feelings” [endquote] as its primary definition of the word. MARTIN: I have to make a conscious effort to not pull back, and to allow myself to have a feeling of liking for others and show this feeling (as opposed to introverting), but is this the same as expressing the feeling which you warn against? RICHARD: Hmm ... I write of the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago neither suppressing nor expressing either the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ feelings – and provide a personal example of (full-blown) anger being thusly put into a bind (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression), such as to occasion the third alternative to magically hove into view, whereafter (full-blown) anger played no active part in ‘his’ life ever again – and more than a few take this to be a general ‘rule of thumb’ applicable to all the affective feelings inclusive of the felicitous and innocuous affections (an unendorsed/ unsanctioned unilateral pursuit I have previously referred to, when talking face-to-face with some of those so inclined, as a suave-and-sophisticated “faux-actualism practice” being studiously observed, for its urbane effect, by its resultant “buttoned-down pseudo-actualist” practician). Look, the whole point of minimising both the malicious/ sorrowful feelings (the ‘bad’ feelings) and their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (the ‘good’ feelings) whilst maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings) is to make for a potent combination when this untrammelled conviviality operates in conjunction with a naïve sensuosity – whereby one is both likeable and liking – such that the benevolence and benignity of pure intent may increasingly become dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone ... to wit: for the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent, in this lifetime, as this flesh-and-blood body. As your proposed making of a conscious effort to not pull back – and to allow yourself “to have a feeling of liking for others and show this feeling” (which is indeed “the same as expressing the feeling” of course) – is on track with “maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings)” then here is an example of what that untrammelled conviviality could look like when translated into action. Viz.: • [James]: “What would it take [to have a global spread, in our life-time, of this totally new way of being conscious (a completely original consciousness)]?” • [Richard]: “Ha ... enjoying *and* appreciating being alive/ being here, each moment again come what may, by being as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible via minimising both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings and maximising both the felicitous *and* the innocuous feelings. Put simplistically (for maximum effect): the way to bring about global peace and harmony, in our lifetimes, is by having fun. (I am having such a ball here at the keyboard)”. [emphasis in original]. (Richard, List D, James, 2 July 2013) * MARTIN: I sometimes feel exposed though and this can prevent a relaxed intimacy. RICHARD: First of all, the raison d’être of being intimate – and the word itself, coming as it does from the Latin intimātus, past participle of intimāre, ‘to make familiar with’ from Latin intimāre, intimāt-, ‘to make known’, from Latin intimus, ‘innermost, deepest’; from intus, ‘within’, clearly reflects this – is to be fully exposed, with nothing hidden, and thus able to be yourself, as-you-are, with no pretence. Obviously, for any such intimacy to be “a relaxed intimacy” then any and all pretence at being anyone other than who you really are – as-you-are in reality, that is, and not a societal entity, in ideality, as per acculturation and acclimation – will be given short shrift/ will fall by the wayside. As pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) unequivocally evidence who you really are (as-you-are in reality), as distinct from what you actually are (as-you-are in actuality), as being nothing but the instinctual survival passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof – just like all the other 7.0+ billion pretenders busily pretending to be anyone other than who they really are, as-they-are, in reality – then the concomitant realisation that it is not your fault and how, like all the other 7.0+ billion feeling-beings, you were born thataway (per favour blind nature’s rough and ready survival passions), releases you from any shame/ embarrassment, and etcetera, for being who you really are, as-you-are, in reality. Furthermore, as who you really are (as-you-are in reality) has no existence whatsoever or howsoever either anywhere or anywhen in actuality – has no actual substance wheresoever or whensoever (i.e., is not only not actually extant but never was nor ever will be) – it is a lot of fun to be sincerely playing the game of finding out just what makes you tick (i.e., how you operate and function both in public and in private). MARTIN: Is the idea that if I’m sincere (as an guileless) that I have nothing to hide, and I can give up my hiding place? RICHARD: No ... “the idea” (as you put it) about being sincere – and the root meaning of sincerity is to be in accord with the fact/ to be aligned with factuality/ to stay true to facticity (i.e., being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous) – regarding aspirations for actuality is to be in accord with/ be aligned with the actual, per favour the PCE, as in, staying true to (a.k.a. remaining faithful to) actuality as experientially evidenced. The realisation that you are, essentially, the same as all the other 7.0+ billion feeling-beings parasitically inhabiting their host bodies – inasmuch you were all born thataway per favour blind nature’s rough and ready survival passions – means there is nothing unique about you, at the core of your being, which necessitates having “to hide” anything. Put differently, as your “hiding place” is the same-same “hiding place” as each and every other feeling-being’s “hiding place” (all 7.0+ billion of them) just who do you reckon you are really fooling, other than yourself, by remaining hidden not only from others but from yourself as well? In other words, how will you get to know yourself, intimately, unless you reveal yourself as-you-are in reality? Speaking personally, the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body circa 1980-1981 first began finding out just who ‘he’ was, as-he-was in reality, via the guise of being ‘an eccentric artist’ (a socially-acceptable way of being a bit of an oddball) due to the total lack of any precedent and, therefore, of any praxeological publications. (The first of the subsequent millions of words nowadays freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site had no public existence prior to 1997). It was such fun! And the more eccentric ‘he’ became – as more and more oddball facets of who ‘he’ really was, as-he-was in reality, emerged into play – the more ‘the others’ lapped it up! Talk about being encouraged by one’s peers to “just be yourself”, eh? Ha! What a hoot it all was – and quite the ‘Drama Queen’ on occasion as well – especially that ‘Latest and Greatest Saviour of Humankind’ part ... it would take some doing to top that (in the ‘oddball’ stakes) no matter what else you have hidden away there. MARTIN: And then I can be liking / naive? RICHARD: The way to be both likeable and liking – to be as near to innocence as is possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – is to retrieve and resurrect your long-lost naïveté (locked away in childhood, per favour the scorn, ridicule and derision poured forth upon it by the worldly-wise cynics and sophisticates, due to an infantile/ juvenile inability to separate out being naïve from being gullible), nowadays made readily possible by virtue of your adult sensibilities, and operate and function in the world at large by being naïveté itself (thus by-passing/ over-riding that instinctually/ viscerally felt core-of-being centre of ‘self’). MARTIN: Also, relevant to this is how as a body only (or when you were liking rather than loving as a feeling being) do you form an association with a woman? RICHARD: The following should be self-explanatory inasmuch it demonstrates, via a well-known instance being melodramatically played-out a couple of years afterwards on this very forum, how more than just a few women (who generally tend to place more emphasis on intimacy than men and who, despite their much-talked about fear of intimacy, have difficulty overlooking the man with precisely that on offer) find the opportunity to be intimate well-nigh irresistible. Viz.: • [Respondent № 14]: “My female partner said after some months of practice: ‘Your libido are too much to me!’. But we still married and happy together. So, if you permit one correlated impertinence: Why are you single now?” • [Richard]: “As libido is null and void for me then being sexually active or not is purely a matter of preference. What this means in effect is that sexual congress, because of its utter proximity, has more to do with intimacy than anything else. Now, here is where it becomes quite an intriguing matter because, and as a generalisation only, women tend to place more emphasis on intimacy than men. Indeed, many a woman has bewailed the dearth of men prepared to make the big commitment required for such connubial accord. Yet they are deathly afraid of intimacy – the fear of intimacy is a subject most women have talked to me about – for it means loss of self. And therein lies the rub: the survival instincts can kick in big-time, especially during sexual congress, and the very opposite of the longed-for intimacy takes place (as in pulling-back, turning-away, closing-off, shutting-down, and so on). As peculiar as it may sound, on a purely intellectual level, the very thing peoples most want is the very thing they most fear. When their very survival (as an identity) is at stake all manner of weird behaviour can take place – to the point of utter bizarrerie – as is readily evidenced in the archived correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website. I have said before, and will say it again, how actualism is not for the faint of heart or the weak at knee as it requires nerves of steel to delve the stygian depths of the human psyche. Put briefly: unless or until such a woman comes into my purview being single, in this respect, will remain my ongoing status”. (Richard, List D, No. 14a, 9 November 2009). Incidentally, and lest an erroneous impression again be obtained from both the above and its well-known melodramatic aftermath, it is vital to comprehension that it be read in conjunction with the following understanding: • [Richard to Respondent № 04]: “(...) it is pertinent to note that libido (Latin, meaning ‘desire’, ‘lust’, and referring to the instinctual sex drive, urge or impulse to procreate and perpetuate the species) is not, and never has been nor ever will be, the driver of the longing for intimacy, the yearning for an end to separation, the vital interest in loss of self ... nor even the means whereby altruism trumps selfism”. (Richard, List D, No. 4a, 23 June 2013). For instance: • [Respondent № 18]: “As to [an actual intimacy with every body and every thing and every event] I wonder if you could give any description as to this hmm experience of ‘intimacy with every body and every thing and every event”. • [Richard]: ‘Perhaps the words my current companion used, when experiencing an actual intimacy upon serendipitously meeting me in the street one day in 1996 (which experience prompted her to move in with me and my then companion), would convey it in a way you may be able to relate to ... she described it as a closeness which was more intimate than she had ever experienced with her own self. Or, for another description, my previous companion likened it to being closer than her own heartbeat was to her”. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 18e, 20 April 2004). MARTIN: You have to demonstrate interest or nothing will develop (I assume), but how does this come about without affectionately touching her on the arm for example? RICHARD: To cut to the chase: as I have been gratuitously informed by more than just one female that my physical touch – even a caressive stroking of their bared back for example – is tangibly a non-possessive and actually caring touch (i.e., a literally selfless touching) please be assured that nothing of value will be lost upon the extinction of the masculinist capacity to be “affectionately touching” the female of the species. MARTIN: In other words how does intimacy develop without an affectionate connection? RICHARD: The short answer is: it develops quite magically, of course, sans any such “affectionate connection” as you depict. Howsoever, here is a sample of how feeling-being ‘Peter’ went about putting into practice ‘his’ version of what ‘he’ had been reading/ hearing when ‘he’ first came into contact with actualism/ actual freedom words and writings. Viz.: • [Peter]: “(...). What was on offer [in ‘Richard’s Journal’] was clearly radically different to both the ‘normal’ and ‘spiritual’ approaches to men and women living together but, as I had always wanted a companion to happily share life’s pleasures with, I decided to ‘give it a go’. Having made the decision, the major problem then was to find a woman. I had been out of circulation in the social scene for quite a while so I sat down and came up with a short list of three women to whom I was physically attracted. Two of the women I had a few doubts about and that left a woman whose name I didn’t know and who I had never even spoken to. Still, if I was going to do this I needed a woman to do it with and, as I was in a hurry, this method of choosing seemed as good as any other. I finally hunted down her name and phone number, and after a few days of dithering, I couldn’t stand my lack of courage any longer. I rang, had to explain who I was, and asked her if she would like to go out for a meal. Surprisingly she said yes, and we arranged a time. After introductions and a bit of hesitant small talk, we sensibly ordered champagne, and I launched into it! I briefly told her what I was into and said, ‘I want to be able to live with a woman in peace and harmony. I realise that I have been equally responsible for the failures in the past, and I recognise that I will have to clean myself up to do this. But I’m willing to give it one hundred percent. Do you want to give it a try with me?’ When I look back it was quite audacious, but it proved an effective line to get her interested. She explained later that she had previously come to the resolution that she was not going to try and change the other, or resort to blame in any future relationship – so my proposition was very tempting. But it was the ‘one hundred percent’ bit that really got her! So together we entered into a simple pact or agreement. We established that the sole reason for being together was to live in perfect peace, harmony and equity and that we would each investigate and eliminate all that was in the way of that being possible. This was to not to be an aimless, listless liaison but, from the very start, a purposeful, challenging companionship ...”. (Peter, Selected Writings, Living Together). MARTIN: Also, there is a (perhaps absurd) fear that if I’m sincere / intimate with everyone as a feeling being (and if that naturally develops to further intimacy), that I may be put in awkward situations where I have to turn down women sexually that I am not personally attracted to. RICHARD: Well now ... welcome to the ‘world of womankind’, then, for whom turning-down unwanted advances, politely or otherwise, is part-and-parcel of the ‘job-description’ (so to speak) of being the female of the species. MARTIN: There is a fear that I will send out the wrong signals, or not be able to make choices if I don’t hold / hide some part of me back. RICHARD: Again, variations on this “send out the wrong signals” theme are par-for-the-course for the female of the species. MARTIN: Bearing in mind I’m not in a relationship and so can’t give that as a reason, can I be fully sincere / intimate and still say ‘no’? RICHARD: The approach which spontaneously came about during my itinerant and homeless years – which turned out to also be my single and celibate years – was to never say ‘no’ but, rather, to embrace the proposals enthusiastically (there were 20+ propositions of that nature with several being of the ménage à trois variety) with the fundamental proviso that the proposer be 100% committed to going all the way, inclusive of the then-current lifestyle and livelihood, unto the superlative best. MARTIN: What would you recommend saying in these situations, as the usual reasons like ‘I don’t have romantic feelings for you’ are somewhat disingenuous / insincere as I am not looking for romantic feelings with anyone! Thanks. RICHARD: You could, of course, try telling them just what it is you are looking for (in explicit detail). Going by the experience of the egoless feeling-being already mentioned, the last ‘he’ would ever hear from those egoistical proposers in respect to their ill-thought-out proposal – those whose spiritualised ‘self’-centeredness could see but a glamorous and glorious sex-object to use for their ‘self’-justifying delectation and scorecard enhancement – was the rapidly fading sound of their pitter-pattering footsteps as they scampered for the hills. ’Tis quite amazing the effect sincerity had – the genuine article, that is, and not the feeling of earnestness more than a few mistake as being such – on those 20+ par-for-the-course occasions. Regards, Richard. Re: Don’t have to do a thing. JAMES: My partnership with [name deleted] is going fantastic. We met at a cabin in the Ozarks for a week and it couldn’t have been better. We planned to enjoy and appreciate and have fun and if any issues come up to speak them out and investigate them. However, no issues to speak of came up. The sex was great and my ed seems to be cured so we just enjoyed the whole time. She is coming here this week to spend a week with me here which will also be great and we will take it from there as to what’s next. However, there is one thing which I still consider. Is it better to live alone? I don’t really know the answer to that so I have decided that I don’t have to do a thing. If she is here do that and if I am alone do that. I can enjoy and appreciate and investigate whatever issues come up either way. (Message 198xx) JAMES: I visited her at her home in Florida for a week and it was great. This time I won’t see her again for a month. However, something has been bothering me about it and I have finally realized what it is. Love has reared its ugly head again. I miss her and it is because I love her that I have pain and suffering about it. The partnership is doomed and I am doomed as long as love is involved. I want to have a partnership without love so that she is free to do what she wants and I am free to do what I want. I don’t know how this will play out but I do know that I will not continue down the love road. (Message 203xx) RICHARD: G’day James, This is quite an apt place to refer you to the last paragraph of my June 21st email to Alan on this very topic. Viz.: • [Richard]: “(...) I well recall the period when feeling-being ‘Peter’ first began putting what he was then reading in ‘The Actualism Journal’ into practice with a newly-found female companion – which ‘he’ wrote about in ‘Peter’s Journal’ – as it soon became obvious to both Grace and myself that the first flush of male-female attraction was self-evidently having ‘him’ under the impression that the sublime oneness-intimacy ‘he’ was experiencing (as in an ASC) was an actual intimacy (as in a PCE) and so we bided our time, until that (affectively-induced) ‘chemistry’ began to wear off and ‘he’ came to ‘his’ senses of ‘his’ own accord, as the heightened rush of blind-nature’s mating passions are too powerful a force to be reckoned with. (Richard, List D, Alan, 21 June 2015) Not only did feeling-being ‘Peter’ write about being in love, in ‘Peter’s Journal’, feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ did as well (in a chapter entitled “A Bit of Vineeto”). At the following URL ‘she’ quotes from both chapters: (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 23b, 13.3.2004) The relevant portions of what feeling-being ‘Peter’ wrote, in ‘Peter’s Journal’, are available online in “Peter’s Selected Writing”. Viz.: • [Peter]: “(...). Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why, increasingly, were there misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties between us? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our matter-of-fact contract and investigations, we had *fallen in love!* We were both exhibiting the classic symptoms, emotions and feelings associated with *being in love*. I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. I realized that I had been *jealous, possessive, pushy, demanding and obsessive* with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when *the impossible demands of love* are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to *disappointment, resentment, withdrawal, spite and eventually hate*. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that, unless something changed, this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure ...”. [emphases added]. (Peter, Selected Writings. Love, #4). And again: • [Peter]: “(...). What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention for peace and harmony made me able to completely drop *this destructive behaviour*. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. The *realizing and facing of the facts, coupled with a clear intent, left ‘me’ with no choice. It wasn’t that ‘I’ made a decision – there was actually no decision to make. Action happened by itself, exactly as it would in swerving to avoid hitting another car while driving*. (...).A week later, we both realized the full extent of the dramatic change that had occurred. *A certain excitement seemed to be missing, a passion and a bond in our lives. It was quite tangible, and a sense of loss overwhelmed us*. It was apparent I had fallen in love about three weeks after we met and had been in love for about six weeks until I had called a halt to the battle. I hadn’t recognized at the time that this behaviour of mine was really *love in operation*; I only saw it in the end as an emotional turmoil that *was destroying my enjoyment of being with Vineeto*. So, what we had seen was love in operation – *a practical demonstration in our lives, not just a theoretical concept*. As we sat down to talk about what had happened *we both had tears in our eyes* ...”. [emphases added]. (Peter, Selected Writings. Love, #5) The relevant portions of what feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ wrote, in the chapter entitled “A Bit of Vineeto”, are also available online. Viz.: • [Vineeto]: “(...). One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt *I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself*. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – *the romantic dream that most women have* about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, *44 years old and as silly as a teenager!* After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. (...). That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. *My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself.* I had *recovered my autonomy* – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness”. [emphases added]. (Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, #Love). And again: • [Vineeto]: “(...). Even after dismissing love as a concept or an option of relating, I still had to be watchful of my ‘love-attacks’, as I called them. They would *come through the backdoor, seduce me with a rose-colored mood and appear so nice and cosy* – such a temptation to surrender back into loving Peter instead of meeting him directly. However, I had understood and experienced often enough that any feeling for the other, howsoever sweet and soothing, would only make him *a projected imaginary figure on my own screen of emotions, which can so easily change at the slightest whim. It had nothing to do with the actual person* or situation. Being vigilant and persistently nibbling away at my habit of falling back into love proved to be a long process. After all, love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues! Later, *love changed into the subtler version* of feeling ‘connected’ to Peter, of having, through him, some kind of identity in my life. I caught myself wanting to use him as an outline for my own existence, as an anchor to define me as ‘person-in-relation’, a ‘self’. Examining it closer I discovered that this need for an anchor derives from the female instinct for protection. (...). I remember in the past whenever I had talked with girlfriends about the qualities of the future ‘perfect’ man, the worst and most terrible vision was to live with a man who was without feelings and emotions! The only option I could think of then was that he would repress his emotions and eventually explode, or that he would be a robot, a walking computer! At that time it was simply unimaginable that I would be able to relate to, let alone delight in living with such a man. And because *my only identity and power had been to feel and express emotions, it was also inconceivable for me to be without them myself*. Now living together is so simple, each of us minding our own business, down to details like money, car, sewing on a button or taking care of one’s health. And each of us is free to do it the way each prefers. Of course I enjoy making Peter a cup of coffee or he delights in cooking a meal for us. (...). Applying Richard’s method has forced me to examine and eliminate the very issues and beliefs that are triggering those emotions. It revealed to me that *emotions are the crucial part of the ‘self’ – the very cause of my being unhappy and malicious*. It has enabled me to question the beliefs that *both defined and confined me as a woman*. Chiselling away my psychological and psychic entity has *made emotions and feelings redundant* and has left me increasingly free to enjoy every person I meet, every situation that happens and everything that this abundant universe offers. In my ‘role-play’ I am neither a ‘woman’ nor a ‘man’, but simply a human being ... a female, of course! [emphases added]. (Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, #Love2). It is, of course, advisable to re-read the above sections in their context at those online URLs. * ‘Tis unfortunate the wealth of experience obtained by Someone Uniquely Recognisable By Her Inglish is not available for the elucidation of all feeling-beings – I am reluctant to make public knowledge of the details of an experiment unique in human experience/ human history, wherein a rather daring feeling-being deliberately and with knowledge aforethought fell deeply in love with a resident of the actual world (a process she publicly declared to be “a viable course” in becoming actually free via the ‘fusion’ aspect of love), due to the entire five-month experience having afterwards left her hurt, hurting and hurtful; e.g.: vindictive and vengeful – as considerable light was thrown, for instance, on the fundamental necessity of possessiveness (a non-negotiable insistence on exclusivity) being an integral part of love’s maintenance. Howsoever, despite this unfortunate lack of detail the outcome of that rather daring experiment has already been made public in the most melodramatic manner possible (i.e., via that seditious attempt to stop the global spread of peace-on-earth dead in its tracks – via the dissemination of all manner of made-up stuff about “Richard & Associates” until the outright ridiculousness those salacious fabulations brought about its ignominious melt-down – recently referred to in Message № 20220. Richard, List D, No. 48a, #Richard&Associates). Nevertheless, back in 1997 when Devika was in the process of transmogrifying into being Irene, where she would flip back-and-forth betwixt the two personae, I recorded a conversation we had about love’s possessive nature one delightful morning in early winter (the weather at this latitude is such that winter-time is the dry season wherein the days are warm and sunny, mostly with brilliant blue skies and a clear atmosphere, and the nights are crisp to cold) as a feeling-being’s memory of apperceptive awareness is notoriously unreliable when it comes to the allure of love. Viz.: • [Richard: “(...). After all these delicious years of living together and exploring together, a rather salient and curiously unforeseen event has taken place. She has fallen in love ... and has spent the last six weeks endeavouring to come to terms with the shifting kaleidoscope of passions that swing her from one point of view to another. All the experiential understanding of a virtual freedom gets tossed aside in the twinkling of an eye ... only to come back solidly when she is able to come to her senses once again. We recorded one of our conversations only two weeks ago in order to have something factual – other than one’s notoriously unreliable memory – to fall back upon in the times of love’s stress. * “Is actual intimacy still vastly superior to love?” “Oh yes, because love spoils it; love is actually a great spoiler of intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing ... it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into one’s life”. “An unfortunate force?” “Because when there is actual intimacy there is a pleasure that is more substantial, more of the earth, of me – of my body – and all of my body is intimate. It is that orgastic sensation”. “And as you are now, there is no yearning, pining, longing ... which is the down-side of love”. “And the disappointment ... none of that operates in actual intimacy. In love there can be a bruising going on”. “Bruising?” “Because of the emotion. After the emotion has gone there is a bruising feeling; I don’t want that emotion because it bruises me again and again. I don’t want the love of another person to ‘fill me up’”. “What is that ‘bruising’?” “You can either feel tired or you can have a whingeing pressure pain around the heart and diaphragm... and that is what I would call a bruising. It’s after the emotion has already gone”. “Oh, you do not mean bruised emotionally?” “No, it’s physical. The emotion is an onslaught on my physical body ... that’s how I would experience an emotion. It’s like ... you are feeling great and your heart starts pounding and you ...”. “Are you saying that emotions are unhealthy for the body?” “Yes, it’s good to have as little of them as possible ... rather none at all. This does not mean that therefore one should repress them. When an emotion is there, take it in hand ... put it in the middle of the table, as it were, and walk around it, have a good look at it and feel every aspect of it. Become aware of it and ask: ‘What is so good about this emotion’?” “Some people would say to let go of it ...”. “No, no, no. I don’t ‘let go of it’. By looking at it, it goes. This looking and feeling is looking and feeling with total awareness ... all of me is aware of what this emotion is doing to me as this body. Where, in the body, do I feel it the most? Does it really feel good? Is it one hundred per cent good? No, it is not ... there is always a ‘Yes, but ...’. Even the good emotions can never live up to what they promise. By looking at them they disappear; you see how unnecessary they are. That is with hindsight of course, for you cannot see that they are unnecessary – that there is ‘life after emotions’ – when you are in the grip of the emotion. This is getting to the ‘nitty-gritty’ of me. It is so fascinating ... all these emotions have always kept me in existence. The ‘Good’ emotions are also me. This is my self”. “This is what you are. It is often said ‘We are emotional beings’. It is excellent to be rid of this for one can see clearly, understand cleanly and act appropriately. For example, love puts a gloss on people ... one sees only the best in the other and is blind to the worst”. “Now I can look at a person and see such a normal person and I wonder how can such a person be so attractive to one who is in love. This is something I would never see when I was in love; I would never see that aspect”. “Love covers up what the person actually is like and presents them in a good light”. “Oh yes a fantastic light ... not just fantastic; love can make that man into the most perfect human being. Into a god”. * “Now what about actual intimacy? In intimacy you see the other as they actually are ... ‘warts and all’ is the expression”. “That is not only better ... it is far more interesting”. “It does not make you repulsed. One is neither attracted nor repulsed”. “Exactly”. “How are you with the other, then?” “One hundred per cent. They get the all of me”. “In actual intimacy, when you are with another person one hundred per cent – and there is neither attraction or repulsion – and you see clearly what other people would call attractive or repulsive ... what does that do?” “Oh, that’s delicious! That’s delicious because that is freedom. Then I’m free from the grip of emotions”. “So, seeing the other for what they actually are, do you see the ‘Good’ in them? The potential?” “There is good and bad in everybody. I am aware of what humans call good or bad. I can see them with either eye, as it were; I can see them with intimate eyes or ‘human’ eyes. I am aware of that and I don’t take much notice of the ‘human’ measurement. In actual intimacy this whole moment, everything, is magnificent”. “In the orthodox way, people who are described as ‘Goody-goodies’, see the good in somebody and try to draw out the good and make them a better person. What do you do, in actual intimacy, when you see both good and bad?” “I don’t feel like interfering at all. I stay in myself”. “And you talk from that?” “I talk from here, yes. I respond according to the circumstance, whereas my identity would react. In intimacy I can respond, taking the whole scenario, the whole situation, into consideration. Whilst the identity goes from identity to identity. In intimacy I can easily sit here ...there is me as I think I am; there is me as I feel I am; there is me as I assert myself and there is me as I actually am. I am this body ... I have given way for the universe to live this body and with that I go anonymous. There are ripples of pleasure going through the body”. “So you are like that, in virtual freedom there are ripples of pleasure, and being like that, what are you doing with the other person? What do you want, for them?” “I want the very best. I would wish this upon them”. “What do you say, then? Seeing the attractive and the repulsive ... and you do not try to draw out the good ...”. “I’ve stopped doing that ... and I’ve also stopped stopping the bad. I sit with this totality of what is happening in the moment; this moment gives all this and this person is in front of me and there is this strange atmosphere between us and we both are trying – for I see that the other also wants the best – and I want for the other to be also here”. “Ah! You want for the other to be here, where this moment is happening”. “Oh yes, of course. What else could I want ... that is the very best I can want”. “Would you say, then, that you brush aside the potential for good or bad in the other and – simply because they are a human being they have all the qualifications necessary to be here – it does not matter where they come from? They are a physical body and you want them to be here where their body is? You invite them to partake in intimacy. You are able to do it, for everyone has the capacity to be here ... they are just unaware that it exists”. “Yes, and that is all what I could want, too. Then they can experience it for themselves”. “Then you can talk directly”. “Yes. Then we can all have fantastic fun. In intimacy”. “Which is the direct experience of the other and the world about. No need for love?” “No need for love. It is all so incredibly good; I am so pleased with everything ... I am enjoying this all so much ... and the self is still here. This is so ... so ... what a relief ... to have finally arrived. How can there be something better than this?” “Virtual freedom is beyond normal human expectations, anyway. Yet there is more to come. Much, much more. In actual freedom one is the universe’s experience of itself. One experiences the infinite purity and perfection of the vast stillness that is the essential nature of everything”. * But it has all been to no avail, the power of love surging through the bloodstream is too strong to deny ... the body can be persuaded to produce quite an array of chemicals; a veritable cocktail is available to the insidious entity that has a psychological and psychic residence within ...”. (from pp. 235-239, ‘Richard’s Journal’, 1st. Ed. (pp. 256-259, 2nd. Ed.), in Article 36, ‘There comes a Time when one must Leave the Nest and Fly’). Regards, Richard. IRENE to Vineeto: A person who despises love has a reason to repress love, either because of the absence of love in his/ her life or because of deep disappointment in love-affairs, which says nothing about love itself but everything about the experiencer, who could be just incapable of loving or is angry with it as it proved to be different from lust, owning, possessing, using the other and expecting the other to be available. RICHARD: This is the second time you use the word ‘despises’ ... here it is love that you are saying is being despised and further above it was intuition and some unnamed ‘other senses’. As ‘despise’ means detest or hate or condemn – and they are all feelings – then I rather fail to see how you have come to this conclusion. For the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – actualism – is all about being as free of emotions, passions and calenture as is humanly possible. I cannot consider for a moment that anyone could make out a case for an actualist bothering to replace love with despisal, detestation and hatred. That would be silly ... and what a pathetic way to live one’s life anyway! As for a ‘deep disappointment in love-affairs’ having nothing to with the fault of love itself but ‘everything to do with the experiencer’ ... do you not find it strange that every human being has had this said about them? Is love that sacred that one is never to question its efficacy in being capable of delivering on its implicit promise? Is every human being who has ever lived or is now living – ten billion people – all been ‘incapable of loving’? If so, that makes love unreachable ... it is akin to what Mr. Leo Tolstoy so aptly described as that moral perfection that is not able to be achieved ... but one is to strive for it, anyway. It is like a light one holds out to one’s front on the end of a long stick ... the more one moves toward it, the more it moves ahead of one. But ... you are exhorted to follow that elusive light, anyway. Whereas the actual intimacy of being here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is to be the perfection of the purity of infinitude personified ... here on earth now and in this life-time. In regards to love being ‘different from lust, owning, possessing and using the other’ ... may I refer you to an observation Devika made – on audio tape – when she was deeply in love? Who knows, it may jog your memory, • [Quote]: ‘Love is actually a great spoiler of intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing ... it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into one’s life. Because when there is actual intimacy there is a pleasure that is more substantial, more of the earth, of me – of my body – and all of my body is intimate. It is that orgastic sensation. And the disappointment ... none of that operates in actual intimacy’. [endquote]. – A full version of the transcription of that taped conversation can be accessed on my Web Page under the title: ‘Actual Intimacy is Vastly Superior to Love’. It can also be found on page 236 of ‘Richard’s Journal’ © 1997 The Actual Freedom Trust. Lastly, in reference to your comment about ‘expecting the other to be available’ ... with actual intimacy, one is always available as it is impossible to be closed off. Speaking personally, you are welcome any time. IRENE to Peter: Feelings of affection, care and consideration for others bring the juice and the cream to the surface of life as a human being, they make us vivacious! RICHARD: Hmm ... and if that is what lies on the ‘surface of life’ ... what lies underneath? Those pesky instincts that give rise to malice and sorrow perchance? IRENE to Peter: Caring and consideration are feelings, affections that cannot exist when the whole faculty for feeling, for being human is wiped out, eliminated, exterminated. RICHARD: Etymologically the word ‘care’ comes from the Old English ‘caru’ meaning ‘charge’ or ‘oversight’ (‘charge’ as in the Latin ‘carricare’ from ‘carrus’ meaning ‘wagon’ – thus ‘carry’ – and ‘oversight’ as in ‘overseeing’) and basically means ‘an object or matter of concern’ as in ‘a thing to be done or seen to’ or ‘protective overview’ or ‘guardianship’. The only way to make it a particular feeling is by linking it with the Gothic and Germanic word ‘kara’ meaning ‘grief’ or ‘lament’ (as derived from ‘karar’ meaning ‘bed of sickness’). In popular use it appears to mean worrying about the other. The word ‘consideration’ is from the Latin ‘considerare’ meaning ‘examine’ (perhaps from the Latin ‘sider’ or ‘sidus’ meaning ‘constellation’ or ‘star’) and basically means ‘the action or fact of examining and taking into account of anything as a reason or motive with regard for the circumstances of another’. In popular use, however, it generally means ‘don’t hurt my feelings’. IRENE to Peter: Intimacy can only exist between 2 people who are equally honest and dare to own up to their feelings as well as their thoughts, ideas, ideals, dreams, intimations and so forth. RICHARD: Whereas in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s honesty, daring ... or moods. It is an estimable condition to be in! RICHARD: As libido is null and void for me then being sexually active or not is purely a matter of preference. What this means in effect is that sexual congress, because of its utter proximity, has more to do with intimacy than anything else. Now, here is where it becomes quite an intriguing matter because, and as a generalisation only, women tend to place more emphasis on intimacy than men. Indeed, many a woman has bewailed the dearth of men prepared to make the big commitment required for such connubial accord. Yet they are deathly afraid of intimacy – the fear of intimacy is a subject most women have talked to me about – for it means loss of self. And therein lies the rub: the survival instincts can kick in big- time, especially during sexual congress, and the very opposite of the longed-for intimacy takes place (as in pulling-back, turning-away, closing-off, shutting-down, and so on). RESPONDENT: Very apt observations and understanding. Further more, the survival instincts, can kick in also because of the predator/ prey tendencies that men, inadvertently, display and their aloofness for intimacy. RICHARD: In normal men (and as a generalisation) ... yes, of course. Had I been born a female my response would have been couched in terms of how it is for a man/ for men, in regards to sexuality and intimacy, during sexual congress with a woman actually free from the human condition. RESPONDENT: If you will indulge my question: is it possible still to have actual intimacy, even if the partner (man/ woman) is evidently inhibited by self and survival instincts? RICHARD: Actual intimacy – no separation (no separative self whatsoever) cannot wax and wane/ come and go/ switch on and off here in this actual world (the world of the senses). Upon an actual freedom from the human condition an actual intimacy is the norm with every body and every thing regardless of whatever their or its current situation and circumstances might be. (Some peoples have looked at me blankly upon being informed there is an actual intimacy with, say, an ashtray or a polystyrene cup or a pebble or whatever). In terms of human sexuality, and due to its utter proximity, sexual congress sans identity/ affections is the exquisite experience of two flesh and blood bodies sensuously delighting in being sensually and sexually aroused. (As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies; at times this can be quite disconcerting, to say the least, for any identity feeling itself to be other than illusory). Because it can take an incredible amount of willpower for a pulled-back or turned-away or closed-off or shut-down identity to override (psychosomatically) its bodily arousal, its body’s natural sexuality, the body’s sensual delight, that exquisite experience can continue until such over-riding succeeds in its quite perverse anti-intimacy aim and arousal diminishes, sexuality declines and sensual delight falls away to nought. In short: although reciprocity is never needed there is, of course, a preference for sexual enjoyment and appreciation be mutual. * RICHARD: Put briefly: unless or until such a woman comes into my purview being single, in this respect, will remain my ongoing status. RESPONDENT: You do not prescribe to fellow humans, but do you recommend the above sensible approach rather than ‘experimenting’ with fellow human beings to explore sexuality or actual intimacy? RICHARD: Oh, no ... not at all (that above approach is only in regards to an actual freedom from the human condition). No, on the contrary, exploring sex and sexuality is enormously beneficial: there is no better way, in my experience, for a man and a woman to approach such intimacy than sexual congress. For instance, back when I was a normal man I came close to the loss of self already mentioned on several occasions (in my first marriage) only to instinctively pull-back, out of instantaneous fear at such imminence, as it intuitively seemed she would thus take over my mind and make me her slave for ever and a day. It was not until after the four-hour PCE, which initiated the process resulting in an actual freedom, that it became obvious to me what such loss of self actually meant. Accordingly, I deliberately set out to induce a PCE via giving myself completely to her – totally and utterly – whilst hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm (something which I had discovered whilst pubescent). And then ... !Hey Presto! ... no separation whatsoever. (Incidentally, rather than that intuitive fear of thus being her slave coming true it was quite instructive to have her then relate how she had been fantasising about a current heart-throb pop singer all the while I was giving myself to her totally). RESPONDENT: I am aware that PCE and EE are much more possible during sexual intimacy and congress hence the urge to experiment. RICHARD: Yes, indeed so. Both my third wife (de facto) and my second wife (de jure) were very keen to experiment. For instance, my third wife initially set out to explore her ‘wild side’ (to use the jargon) as she was most appreciative of being with a man with no limits – no limiting fear in regards the vast extent, and a near-insatiability at times, of female sexuality. Curiously enough, in the end it was her very own fear (of female sexuality) which set the limits. But, until then rampant sexuality took place morning, noon and night – all throughout the period of writing those millions of words to my fellow human beings – and much was uncovered/ discovered about female sexuality. She has a scale of quality in regards sexual experience: good, very good, great, excellent and magical. Good sex relates to togetherness. Very good sex relates to closeness. Great sex relates to sweetness. Excellent sex relates to richness. Magical sex relates to actuality. To explain: togetherness is the companionship of doing things together – be it shopping, cooking, having sex, whatever – and pertains to the willingness to be and act in concert with another. A closeness is where the personal boundaries are expanded to include the other into one’s own space; this is a normal type of intimacy. A sweetness is when closeness entrées a lovely delight at the proximity of the other (although it can veer off into affection, ardency, love, oneness). A richness (aka an excellence experience) is where sweetness segues into a near-absence of agency via letting-go of control and one is the sex and sexuality (the beer and not the doer). Magical sex is where sex and sexuality are happening of their own accord – neither beer nor doer extant – and pristine purity abounds (an immaculate perfection). Ain’t life grand! RESPONDENT: Richard, I am currently perplexed about ‘caring’. You distinguish between ‘feeling caring’ and ‘actually caring’. I think I understand the distinction for the most part – ‘feeling caring’ is caring based upon emotion – ‘feeling’ that one cares, and ‘actually caring’ is something that happens ONLY in a PCE or when one is actually free. Now, this results in the somewhat shocking statement that the only people who actually care are those in pure consciousness. RICHARD: Aye, it can indeed be a shock to realise that, for all the protestations of being caring, no one trapped in the human condition actually cares. However, apart from galvanising one into action, it is a liberating realisation as it releases one from the bonds that tie. There are always strings attached in affective caring. RESPONDENT: Now, I don’t want to debate the merits of this for one moment, but I would like to understand it better. For example, just how is it that ‘feeling-caring’ is an ‘illusion of caring?’ RICHARD: In saying ‘to create the illusion of caring’ (and ‘to create the illusion of intimacy’) I am referring to generating the false impression, or the deceptive appearance, of being caring (and being intimate) because of the reality which underpins all human interaction ... as the following passage where the quote comes from clearly shows: • [Co-Respondent]: ‘Richard, I’m going to let my light out from under the bushel and tell you what I see: You are still ‘crazy’, and I still have affection and/or compassion for you. • [Richard]: ‘As I am a person devoid of either latent or active enmity, I require no restorative affection whatsoever to create the illusion of intimacy in my human interactions. And as I am also a person devoid of either latent or active sorrow, I require no antidotal compassion whatsoever to create the illusion of caring. Thus, in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s affection and/or compassion ... or mood swings. (Richard, List B, No. 19b, 22 November 1999). Thus the feeling of caring (and the feeling of intimacy) is the antidote for feeling uncaring (and the restorative for feeling separate) and, as such, has a causal basis – meaning it has a dependant nature – resulting in an inevitable instability. Whereas actually caring (and an actual intimacy) cannot be switched off ... ever. RESPONDENT: Is it an illusion of ‘Actual caring?’ RICHARD: Yes, it is a synthetic substitute for actually caring (or an actual intimacy) ... an ersatz surrogate born out of the instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that feeling caring is caring on some level – since caring-for is actually happening. For example, take a mother who breast feeds her child – she may be ‘feeling-caring’ – therefore, under the illusion that she is actually caring for her child – yet the child is actually being taken care of – which isn’t an illusion at all. RICHARD: There is a difference between feeling care and taking care – you are mixing the sentiment of care with the action of care – wherein the former is a fancy and the latter is a fact. In other words, you are confounding the affective experience of care with the physical activity of care ... which is not what is meant by the expression ‘feeling caring’ as contrasted to the expression ‘actually caring’. To experience being caring as a feeling (born of separation) is a far cry from the experience of being caring as an actuality (sans separation). Feeding an infant’s feelings along with the food corrupts the action of caring. RESPONDENT: I also seem to experience a difference between what I might call ‘contrived’ caring and actually caring. For example, a waiter may completely contrive caring about the service they provide in order to get the largest tip possible – so they pretend to care about me when they actually care about the tip. Then with other waiters, I get the sense that they actually care about giving good service – just because it’s more fun to actually care about the person and engage them as a person – rather than a means to an ends. This is the normal distinction that I make between ‘illusory (contrived) caring’ and ‘actually caring’. RICHARD: Okay ... although faking care is not the distinction being referred to as the person feeling caring is being true to their feelings. It is not their fault that the truth is insincere. RESPONDENT: Yet it seems that you may want to push it further and say that all feeling caring is only an illusion of caring – this is what I don’t understand. RICHARD: No, I am not pushing your distinction further ... the distinction I talk of is in another category. RESPONDENT: It also seems you are saying that in some sense ‘I’ cannot actually care about anything or anyone else? RICHARD: No, what I am saying is that ‘I’ cannot experience the actuality of being caring ... ‘I’ can only experience the feeling of being caring. For example, the last time I visited my biological parents (1984) I was told ‘we worry about you’ ... which fretful feeling of apprehension/ anxiety is, to them, being caring. They mean well, of course, as do most people. RESPONDENT: What is happening when I do ‘take care of’ other people and things? RICHARD: Well, things and other people do get taken care of – it is remarkable what is achieved despite all the hindrances – but it is the motivating factor which muddies the waters and undermines the result. Also, what is known as ‘compassion fatigue’ can happen as well. RESPONDENT: Are you saying this only happens in a selfish sort of way? That all feeling caring is selfish – therefore not really caring at all? RICHARD: I would rather say ‘self’-centred than ‘selfish’ ... when someone is touched by another’s suffering, as in being moved sufficiently to stimulate caring action, it is their own suffering which is being kindled and quickened. Thus feelings are being aroused, which motivate the activity of caring, and taking care of the other works to assuage the aroused feelings (as well as working to help the other of course). Shall I put it this way? They are missing-out on experiencing the actuality of the caring action, the helpful activity itself, which is taking place. RESPONDENT: If all ‘I’ can manage is the illusion of caring, how is ‘altruism’ or ‘pure intent’ possible? I don’t understand. RICHARD: First of all, in its biological sense altruism is an instinctive action – born of the drive to survive – such as in fighting to the death to protect the young, defend the group, or secure the territory, and is not so much a feeling of caring but an involuntary response ... a response which could evoke any number of feelings (such as fear, thrill, courage, excitement, exhilaration, euphoria and so on). Although it can be used to mean an unselfish feeling, the ‘self’-centred feeling of caring for others, that is a watering-down of the word as, properly speaking, altruism is an instinctive behaviour or deed which benefits others at the expense of self ... of the two survival instincts, individual survival and group survival, the instinct for the survival of the group is usually the stronger instinct. It takes a powerful instinct (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinct (selfism). The pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent is a determination, born of the PCE, and thus is indicative more of a dedication, a strength of purpose, as in the will to freedom, rather than a ‘self’-centred feeling of caring ... one taps in to the over-arching benignity and benevolence of the actual world. Then one is not on one’s own, in this, the adventure of a lifetime. * RESPONDENT: I have similar questions about the distinction between ‘feeling intimacy’ and ‘actual intimacy’. Could you define exactly what you mean by those terms – as well as just exactly what you would say is going on when there is a ‘feeling intimacy’? RICHARD: So as to circumvent coining new words I chose to make a distinct difference between the word ‘actual’ and the word ‘real’ (plus the word ‘fact’ and the word ‘true’) whereas the dictionaries do not: thus when I talk of the actual world, as contrasted to the real world, whilst both words refer to the physical world I am making a distinction in experience. I usually put it this way: what one is (what not who) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/ ‘me’) inside the body means no separation whatsoever – whereas ‘I’/ ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity, am busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose. This entity, or being, residing in the body is forever cut-off from the actual – from the world as-it-is – because its inner world reality is pasted as a veneer over the actual world, thus creating the outer world reality known as the real world, and experiences an affective intimacy (oneness, union, unity, wholeness) wherein the separation is bridged by love and compassion ... instead of an actual intimacy (direct, instant, immediate, absolute) where there is no separation whatsoever. In other words, no separative identity in the first place means no division exists to be transcended. RESPONDENT: Is there no intimacy in feeling intimacy? RICHARD: Yes, there is the feeling of being intimate. RESPONDENT: If that’s the case, why do you call it feeling ‘intimacy’? RICHARD: Because that is what it is ... the feeling of being intimate. RESPONDENT: Lastly, I’m curious about the notion of ‘imitation’ of the actual. You once told me that someone pursuing actual freedom takes what they know of the actual world from the PCE and ‘imitates’ it. RICHARD: Yes ... but knowingly imitates it (thus one is not fooling oneself). RESPONDENT: Would their caring then become ‘virtual caring’ or somehow MORE actual? RICHARD: It is more a case of being in line with what is actual rather than being more actual: feeling happy and harmless, as much as is humanly possible each and every moment again, is as far-removed from the normal modus operandi as to be a virtual freedom. Or, to put that another way, the means to the end are not different from the end (other than being a feeling rather than the fact of course). RESPONDENT: Or is it still only ‘feeling caring’, thus an illusion? RICHARD: As all affective-based experiencing in the real-world is an illusion (including the real-world itself) you are, basically, asking me which part of the illusory experience is less of an illusion than any other part of the illusory experience. I pass. RESPONDENT: I guess what I’m asking is … if all feeling caring is an illusion of caring, how is one to care if one is pursuing an actual freedom? RICHARD: As happily and as harmlessly as is humanly possible ... in a word: benevolently. RESPONDENT: In other words, how can one actually care, when it is all too clear that actually caring can only happen in the PCE?? RICHARD: Exactly ... one cannot actually care unless one is free of the human condition. I have oft-times said that I have no solutions for life in the real-world ... the only solution is dissolution. Then all interaction is based upon fellowship regard. RESPONDENT: Or does one just continue with (attenuated) feeling caring – saying it is becoming more and more an imitation of actually caring? RICHARD: Yes, until the blessed dissolution happens, attenuating both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings whilst amplifying the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (hence being as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible) is what one does in the meanwhile. Thus the benefits are immediate ... and have the added benefit of preparing the way. RESPONDENT: I have searched through the website to answers to these questions – and there is much material that pertains to them, but I was unable to find any clear answers. So it would be great if you would shed some more light on these issues. Thanks! RICHARD: Okay ... perhaps it would be handy to mention that, in a close personal association (such as in a marriage or in a relationship), a being residing in the body can feel a connection, or a feeling rapport, with another being residing in another body (which relationship can be called a bond, a tie, a link, an attachment) giving rise to the feeling of caring ... be it a pitying caring, a sympathetic caring, an empathetic caring, a compassionate caring or a loving caring. This is because all sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. The affective energies are a two-way street ... mostly peoples initially overlook the ‘harmless’ part of my oft-used ‘happy and harmless’ phrase. In other words: how can one live freely in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst ‘I’ nurse malice and sorrow, and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion, to ‘my’ bosom? One cannot be happy unless one is first harmless ... and one cannot be harmless unless one is first happy. To be actually free one abandons ‘humanity’ in oneself – one cuts the umbilical cord – which means that the ability to connect-relate vanishes ... life is not ‘a movement in relationship’ (as one enlightened being was wont to say) here in this actual world. There is no relationship here – no bonding, no tying, no linking, no attaching – as there is no being, or entity, to necessitate such a connective affinity ... there is no ‘I’/ ‘me’ to either be affected or to affect others when one is free from the human condition. Furthermore, and this is a salutary point few comprehend, I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here – when a fellow human being tells me they are an identity inside the body I have to take their word for it – as nothing ‘dirty’, as it were, exists in actuality. There is only purity and perfection in this actual world. RESPONDENT No. 6: If you will indulge my question: is it possible still to have actual intimacy, even if the partner (man/ woman) is evidently inhibited by self and survival instincts? RICHARD: Actual intimacy – no separation (no separative self whatsoever) cannot wax and wane/ come and go/ switch on and off here in this actual world (the world of the senses). Upon an actual freedom from the human condition an actual intimacy is the norm with every body and every thing regardless of whatever their or its current situation and circumstances might be. (Some peoples have looked at me blankly upon being informed there is an actual intimacy with, say, an ashtray or a polystyrene cup or a pebble or whatever). In terms of human sexuality, and due to its utter proximity, sexual congress sans identity/ affections is the exquisite experience of two flesh and blood bodies sensuously delighting in being sensually and sexually aroused. (As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies; at times this can be quite disconcerting, to say the least, for any identity feeling itself to be other than illusory). (Richard, List D, No. 6, 10 November 2009). RESPONDENT: Your comment about ‘As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies’ – was extremely useful in detecting some slippery and subtle identification in my interactions with others. RICHARD: Good ... (as I am never annoyed there is never any need for giving vent). Another poster offered their experience on it recently (Message X) when observing how an intuitive resistance to non-recognition as ‘me’ is even more powerful than the fear of engulfment. My second wife would oft-times say to others how it was not always easy to live with me as ‘she’ was totally ignored (in ‘her’ view) by me. (Please note it is an impossibility to ignore anything at all which has no existence in actuality and how I do pay lip-service, just as I am now, to the apparent existence of any identity feeling itself to be real). What my second wife was really referring to is the total absence of any supportive identity rapport/ affective connection. As this was amply corroborated by my third wife, it is a primary consideration when contemplating any potential man-woman type of association which comes into my purview (in my experience the ménage a trois provided what a ménage a deux cannot). RESPONDENT: I do hope that we can continue to be friends on that basis. RICHARD: You have raised this before in a previous exchange some months ago. Viz.: • [Respondent]: ‘HEY! Richard!! I like you! I like your Actual Freedom Mailing List!! Now are you able to say Respondent I like you? Hmm?? Or are you too busy making a point’. • [Richard]: ‘I like everybody irregardless of what mischief they get up to ... and I do not stop liking them when I am making a point’. • [Respondent]: ‘The point does not seem so important now’. • [Richard]: ‘The point is important irregardless of what the other does or does not do or does or does not say for there is no compromise possible here in this actual world ... nothing ‘dirty’ can get in’. • [Respondent]: ‘I’d like you to be my friend. Because you know ... I got tired of all the rape and murder and war and opposition on this planet’. • [Richard]: ‘As I like everybody anyway I never have to sell out for the sake of a friendship. Besides, I never need the other to fulfil me ... or whatever it is that makes people bargain and compromise for the sake of such a fickle thing as a relationship. I like being here ... I am totally fulfilled and utterly satisfied each moment again’. • [Respondent]: ‘... and I think people who think like you and me could be friends ... how about it?? Wanna come and have a coffee with me?? Relating is so simple. As simple as freedom actually’. • [Richard]: ‘There is more to an actual freedom from the human condition than merely thinking alike ... one gets off one’s backside and actually does something’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12b, 30 July 2000b) It would appear that personal friendships are important to you ... as is being respected, being valued and being accredited (to name but three of the things you have wanted from me in this current exchange of E-Mails). There is only one thing which will impress me: the other person being actually free from the human condition. This is because then they too, just like me, will be incapable of not liking another just because of whatever mischief it is they get up to. It is impossible to ‘switch off’ an actual intimacy ... ever. RICHARD: The self, whilst being real – sometimes very real – is not actual. It is as much a delusion as the ego is. For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language ... for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required. (To a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this keyboard is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words on the screen (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs. Any sense of self is an identity ... the persistence of identity even into enlightenment is legendary by now: ‘I am God’, ‘I am That’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am Emptiness’, or even just ‘I am’. It is the continuance of identity – ‘I’ – in any way, shape or form that is the ‘spanner in the works’. There is only one thing that ‘I’ can do to remedy the situation. As ‘I’ am only real and not actual, ‘I’ can simply disappear. Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal the fulfilment of the perfection of being here as this body in the world as-it-is at this moment in time. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of the purity of that perfection being apparent ... ‘my’ presence prohibits consummation being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life that ‘I’ am searching for from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart. Nothing could be further from the case. The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via thought can only ever be visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is a fertile breeding-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. As for feelings ... one can disregard feelings too, for emotions and passions beget the esoteric, the psychic world of materialisations and apparitions. One can easily become bewitched by the bizarre entities that inhabit the Supernatural Realms; one can become beguiled and enchanted by the promise of the Glory and Glamour and Glitz of the Altered State Of Consciousness ... one will become a victim of that most insidious aspect of vanity: Power and Authority. So much for thought and feeling – there is a third alternative: Apperception. Apperception is something that brings a facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself – it is a bare awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. This is called a peak experience. The experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is extirpated. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity (ego, id, self, identity, persona, personality, lower ‘I am’, atman, soul, spirit, or whatever) forever seeking Union with ‘That’, by whatever name (Higher Self, True Self, Real Self, The All, Existence Itself, Consciousness, The Void, Suchness, Isness and so on). 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. Any identity whatsoever is a delusion. (Richard, List A, No. 15, No. 07). RESPONDENT: No comment. Seriously, I think what you wrote there was good. I would be interested to see whether you can live up to what you have written – if indeed that is your intention. And what are your views regarding relationships and what people call ‘love’? Do you think it’s possible for two identity-less beings to fall in love with each other? RICHARD: You make a valid point ... however, it is not a case of ‘living up to what I have written’ ... it is a case of currently and continuously living it now. It is not ‘my intention’, it is my actuality ... I write directly out of my on-going experience. Otherwise it would all be only theory and conjecture, speculation and surmise ... and what follows would amount to nothing but bombast and blather. There is an actual intimacy between me and my companion. Actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other. It is an actuality born out of pure intent. Pure intent was activated by paying intense attention – exclusive attention – to one’s peak experiences. A peak experience is where ‘I’, the identity, temporarily abdicate the throne and everything is seen to be already always perfect. A chief characteristic of the peak experience is the clarity of apperception ... the seeing through of the belief in ‘my’ existence. In the months that followed the peak experience, the pure intent – this unwavering attention – amounted to an obsession for ‘me’, the identity, for what a sin it was to be disconsolate and miserable when the world had been experienced as being so glorious. To be here, intimately here at this moment in time, where this actual world is such a marvellous place to be alive in, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history. Actual intimacy – being here – does not come from love, for love stems from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love produces is but a meagre imitation of this direct experience of the actual. In this, the actual world, ‘I’, the personality, the subjectively experienced identity and self, have ceased to exist; whereas love accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other, similarly afflicted, persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials ... to verify ‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without separation ... and therefore free from the need for love with its ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. I am not apart from the universe ... I am the universe experiencing itself as a thinking, reflective human being. Whereas ‘I’ can never be intimate for ‘I’ am distanced from the actual by ‘my’ very ‘being’ ... ‘I’ stand in the way of actual intimacy. The intimacy that ‘I’ as a personality can have, as a feeling – an emotion or a passion – for another in a relationship, pales into insignificance when compared with the actual intimacy of being the universe experiencing itself. There is no need for a relationship here. Relationship requires a separated identity in order to do the relating. By being what I am – ‘what’ not ‘who’ – I am not separate from the universe. This body is literally made of the very stuff of the universe ... there is no difference whatsoever between this stuff and me. I am it. I do not make the mistake, as the people who have dissolved only their ego do, of identifying myself with Existence or Whatever ... as being God On Earth, or any of that deluded nonsense ... I have no identity or self whatsoever. Nothing that ‘I’ – as an ego-less ‘Self’ – experienced many years ago when ‘I’ lived in the Divine Realm (Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Sunyata and so on) can equal the magnificence of being here in this actual world. Being here as-I-am far surpasses any Religious Illumination, Spiritual Enlightenment, Mystical Union or any other Altered State Of Consciousness. For example: This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not immortal. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. I am free to be me; me as I actually am. I am free to be practical, straight-forward and down-to-earth. I am free of any guile, any hypocrisy, any duplicity, any cupidity ... any corruption at all. Innocence prevails only where time has no duration ... and this moment has no measure, it is ever-new. I have no need for such a paltry surrogate as Immortality ... Immortality fades into the oblivion it deserves when compared to the magnitude of experiencing the infinity of the universe as a human being living here, each moment again, fresh and new and pristine. I am free to live in this magical wonderland that is the actual world. RESPONDENT: You don’t make it clear whether ‘my companion’ refers to the Infinity of Nature (God) or an individual human being. I will assume you mean the latter. In that case I will ask you whether your ‘companion’ has exactly the same philosophical realisation and ambition as yourself? And would they mind if you were equally ‘intimate’ with lots of other people at the same time? RICHARD: My companion could not possibly be ‘the Infinity of Nature (God)’, as any God or Goddess is clearly nothing but a psychic projection of the ‘self’. I experience – and therefore acknowledge – the only infinity that there is: the infinity of this physical universe that is what we are all tangibly made up of. This flesh and blood body is the same corporeal stuff, simply in a different formulation, as the stuff of the stars and planets – some people mistakenly think that the universe is only out in space – it is as much this body and this room as anything else or anywhere but here. We are not constructed of some material from ‘outside’ of the universe by some unknowable god and put ‘in here’ for some inscrutable purpose. We are, literally, this infinite universe ... and there is no outside to infinity. RESPONDENT: Agreed. RICHARD: So yes, you assume correctly. My companion is a living, breathing, human being. RESPONDENT: I always thought a ‘companion’ was someone who keeps you company in old age when you have lost all dignity and are on your last legs, and comforts you that you’re not a waste of space when all reason says you are. RICHARD: As my companion and I are legally married I could have written ‘my wife’ ... only to be accused of being chauvinistic or patriarchal or possessive or old-fashioned or whatever. She refers to me as ‘my partner’ ... is that any better? I hereby submit a list of appellations for your consideration and approval ... please advise me as to which you find appropriate: My wife, My spouse, My partner, My colleague, My friend, My associate, My mate, My chum, My buddy, My pal, My supporter, My collaborator, My coadjutor, My peer, My acquaintance, My amigo, My playmate, My familiar, My compeer, My confidant, My crony, My accomplice, My comrade, My ally, My cohort, My confrere, My consort, My counterpart, My sidekick, My bosom buddy, My intimate, My helpmeet, My compatriot, My confederate, My concubine, My mistress, My courtesan, My paramour, My accessory, My woman, My inamorata, My girl friend, My chick, My old lady ... or if we want to degenerate entirely and go ocker: The ball and chain, The trouble and strife, The cheese and kisses, The old dear, The old chook ... and so on. Personally, I prefer ‘my companion’. * RICHARD: And, yes, she has exactly the same realisation and ambition, which is the primary reason that we are living together. RESPONDENT: My word! Then she is either a very exceptional woman or you are a common fraud. Your words concerning Reality have merit, but I have serious reservations about your actual understanding as it manifests in the way you live your life. Your words about ‘living in the moment’ don’t do much for me, as every mindless person I meet is actively promoting the lifestyle of ‘living in the moment’. It is the fashion of the age. RICHARD: She has had several peak experiences, of precisely the same nature that the ‘I’ that used to live in this body all those years ago had, and has no other objective in life but to live these experiences twenty-four-hours-a-day. RESPONDENT: She’s given-up work then? Declared war on femininity? And she is fully aware that she has to reach a state beyond all emotion (fear, desire, love, pity, etc.)? Forgive me, but I always have a good laugh when I hear of men seeking to keep the company of women while giving the reason that they are trying to spiritually advance themselves. But for all I know your female friend may be every bit as noble you think she is. She may indeed be a fully enlightened Buddha. It’s possible. Perhaps we can hear from her on this discussion list? RICHARD: It follows, of course, that not only does she not mind that I have an actual intimacy with everyone and everything ... she wants nothing but that for herself. Actual intimacy is the direct experience of the people, things and events in the world about, unmediated by any ‘who’ within ... that emotional and mental construct known as ‘I’. Actual intimacy has nothing to do with sexual proclivity – which is a matter of individual predilection – but refers to the absence of any psychological distance betwixt one and another. It is ‘I’ who creates this psychological distance; it is ‘I’ who then feels separate; it is ‘I’ who correspondingly longs for Union; it is ‘I’ who creates love to bridge the self-created gap; it is ‘I’ who invents Gods and Goddesses to become One with. It is ‘I’ who, being a fiction, desires Immortality to perpetuate ‘my’ real existence for all of Eternity – thus secretly despising this body and this physical life – and it is ‘I’ who, being a central figure in ‘my’ scheme of things, proposes that there is an outside to this material universe. There is not. This universe has no edges ... which means that there is no centre either. With no centre to existence we are nowhere in particular. Being here, as an actuality, is to be anywhere at all, for infinity is everywhere all at once. Why would she have to be an exceptional woman? The only requirement to wish to solve the ‘Mystery of Life’ is that one be a human being who, having had experiences of the actuality of being here in the world as-it-is, wants nothing other than to live that perfection twenty four hours a day. As to whether I am a common fraud ... that is for you to ascertain one way or the other ... and as you have serious reservations about the way I live my life (based on no more information other than that I live with a human being who happens to be a female) then it seems that you already know the closely kept secret that the only proof that one is a truly free person is that one eschews women and shuns them entirely. Also, I typed the words ‘living in the moment’ into the search function of this computer and sent it back through my posts and it could not find the phrase anywhere. Perhaps you could send me your copy where it does say that? What it did find, using the word ‘moment’ only, to search, was: 1. [Richard]: ‘To be here, intimately here at this moment in time, where this actual world is such a marvellous place to be alive in, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history. (Richard, Articles, Peace on Earth in this Life-Time). 2. [Richard]: ‘This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not immortal. (Richard, List A, No. 12, No. 01). 3. [Richard]: ‘Innocence prevails only where time has no duration ... and this moment has no measure, it is ever-new. (Richard, List A, No. 3, No. 03). 4. [Richard]: ‘Immortality fades into the oblivion it deserves when compared to the magnitude of experiencing the infinity of the universe as a human being living here, each moment again, fresh and new and pristine. (Richard, List A, No. 12, No. 01). 5. [Richard]: ‘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. (Richard, List A, No. 22, No. 01). 6. [Richard]: ‘Simply and magically, I am here as this moment is here ... living in the actual world of people, things and events as this flesh and blood body, bereft of both the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’. (Richard, List A, No. 6, No. 01). 7. [Richard]: ‘Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal the fulfilment of the perfection of being here as this body in the world as-it-is at this moment in time. (Richard, List A, No. 10, No. 02). 8. [Richard]: ‘One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. (Richard, List A, No. 12, No. 01). I, too have met people who are ‘actively promoting the lifestyle of ‘living at this moment’’. They do not seem to understand that as long as they are an ‘I’, a psychological entity living a parasitical existence within the body, then this moment of being alive is forever locked away in some other dimension. Only when ‘I’ am not is this moment apparent. As for ‘giving up work’: she does not have to work as we are retired and living on a pension ... we are doddering around in our senility being companions to each other, remember? And she has not ‘declared war on femininity’: she simply prefers to be a human being rather than living the socially prescribed role of ‘woman’ ... be it ‘mainstream’ or ‘feminist’ or anything else. And she is not ‘trying to spiritually advance’ for there is not the slightest trace of spirituality, religiosity or mysticism in what she is doing. And no, she is not the teeniest bit noble – sincere, yes – but noble? No. And she is most definitely not ‘a fully enlightened Buddha’ for she has no interest at all in living in a delusion like he did. And yes she is well aware about being beyond all ‘emotion (fear, desire, love, pity, etc.)’ ... in fact she can tell you about that herself: ‘I am immensely happy to simply be alive, to be here in this world. Many years ago I would not have been capable of living a life without any ‘stress’ whatsoever. As I was then – the old me – I would have found the prospect of an existence devoid of any disharmony and nervous tension to be utterly boring and uninteresting; a life surely wasted in apathy and complacency. A ‘goody-two-shoes’, as such a person is derogatorily called in the real world, is something one is fervently warned against by one’s contemporaries. It seems to be of the utmost importance there that each child, as soon as possible, learns to cope and deal with the Human Condition in the way that is accepted as being ‘normal’ in the orthodox mode of life. In other words: how it has always been done. Prolonged naiveté and non-conformity must be eradicated ‘in the best interests of the child’, so the person will not be hurt when they venture out and about in the real world. The newest recruit to humanity has thus not only been persuaded to sell themselves out to the system, but has entered into the society of stress, anxiety and all the other peer group pressures. By the time the child has reached adult-hood, they will never dare to be authentic, genuine, original ... and will be forever afraid to risk entering into an area believed to be boring, dull, unemotional and lethargic. [quote]: ‘For more than thirty years the old me had become almost convinced by the wisdom of the ways in the real world ... were it not for the subsequent loneliness, anguish, fear, stress and so on. Well-meant advice on the merits of ‘coping’ was endlessly forthcoming, yet never seemed to lead to anywhere pleasant, so as to be a sweet destiny to look forward to. The quality of my life dangerously approached that experienced by my contemporaries ... the same dismal condition endured by all of one’s predecessors, those highly respected ancestors. Some alternative way of living had to be found – and soon – before I too would timidly succumb to the conventional life-style, only to grow old in it. Accordingly, I set out on a voyage of exploration and discovery, a journey of investigating and uncovering. I enquired into – and endeavoured to locate – that something which I surely knew somehow existed in some intimate place and in some familiar time. I sought and I sought ... and I found. What I located is truly impressive for me and was well worth the fascinating search. Nowadays – as the new me – I am living in this wondrous alternative way. ‘My way can best be described as a state wherein I have freed myself from the Human Constitution. It is not to be confused with actual freedom, which only my partner can speak knowledgeably of, where one is freed from the Human Condition – there is no self at all. In my freedom my daily state of being is comparable to the quality of the peak experience. A peak experience, which all people have had at some stage in their life, is that moment wherein literally everything – including oneself – is seen as being already complete and perfect as-it-is. I encountered my first of many such experiences when I was twenty three years old and was then quite mystified, for what was most outstanding was the absolute equality that pervaded everything. Although an utter purity and clarity prevailed, there was a total lack of any Religious Authority whatsoever. This had nothing to do with anything I had ever learned to be true! Instantly I knew without a shadow of a doubt: this is my destiny. Even though I did not know how to yet, I knew that I was going to manifest this state of being in my everyday life, as it was distinctly meant to be achieved here-on-earth. It would be attained by being me as-this-body and would be possible many years before I would die. Although the whole experience lasted for only as long as it took me to pass through an intersection by bicycle, one thing was made magnificently clear: I was standing in the way of my own freedom and my entire purview on life was invalid. Both I and my current understanding had to be eliminated for this destiny to be lived. ‘This proved to be a sheer impossibility until I met the person with whom I have shared my life for the last eleven years. My partner, having lived in an absolute freedom for five years already, recognised immediately that we were to partake in living together. We ventured on an odyssey into my purview on life, into all the beliefs and mores of humanity which were restricting the accomplishment of my destiny. I am now here – as a new me – and my moribund outlook on life has been thoroughly decimated. No longer subservient to the beliefs and mores of humanity, I am pleasantly free to live a genuine life; naturally inclined toward ease, peace and tranquillity and just as naturally oscillated away from stress, anger and unrest. I have clearly seen and understood that the yoke of human principles regarding behaviour and feelings are an artificial and painful acquiescence to a mediocre life ... at best. The Human Constitution does not cater for a dispassionate and yet cheerfully carefree way of living. It does not permit a harmonious and serenely easy way of life ... not for anyone on this planet. It has always been seen as having been never meant to happen. Nowhere in the revered and Sacred scripts, anywhere in history, has there been a suggestion that unambiguously states: we humans are meant to be peaceful and happy here on earth. On the contrary, the only peace and happiness that is mentioned at all, in these highly valued works, lies waiting for each person in the After-Life ... a place where nobody ever arrives, of course, for it exists only in human imagination and nowhere else. ‘Consequently, very few people in history have even attempted to find it here in this actual world ... and the ones who did failed miserably in the actual living of it. This utterly sad fate of humankind – to be deprived from ease, peace and joy for the term of one’s natural life – has been what humanity has decreed for humans for as long as people have roamed the earth. Does this have to mean, though, that peace on earth, goodwill and prosperity for all is forever impossible? My answer is an emphatic no, because I have never accepted that it is to be the lot of human beings to be forever wretched, with only snatches of relative happiness as a temporary reprieve. I have discovered my niche in life, I do not miss being in distress, being frustrated, being under constant pressure and forever running on nervous energy. No kind of adrenaline rushes appeal to me any longer, be they the accompaniment of competition, anger, passion or peril. Against the dire warnings from my peers I dared to live an unorthodox, unconventional life of peace, ease and joy. Fascinated as I am with all things human, I am never bored for there is a never-ending stream of information coming into my field of interest: people I meet, articles I read, the television programmes I watch and so on. I can not help but notice that everybody I see and hear is, in their own words, enduring their life here on earth. They are coping with life as it currently is; content with merely surviving whilst hoping for some better future in some ill-defined way and forever suffering the whole gamut of emotions and passions. ‘Somewhere lost in the mists of time somebody has somehow determined and ordained that we humans are to remain emotional beings forever. Nobody has ever dared to break the sacrosanct seal around this decree, which all humans have learned to believe as The Truth. But exactly what good have emotions done for humankind so far? Do they actually promote an on-going happiness and peace for all concerned? Is a lack of anger and remorse, fear and trust, hatred and love, greed and repentance, sadness and compassion – to name but a few – necessarily going to leave humans bored, insipid and dull? As far as I am concerned, the opposite is the case. Without emotions running my life, I am deliciously free to thoroughly enjoy my stay here. No longer plagued by petty arguments, pathetic one-upmanships, paltry manipulations of others – or feelings of being a victim – I relish being here-on-earth every moment of my life’. (Devika in Richard’s Journal, Article Twenty-Eight). Is this enough? I can send more if you wish, for I have nothing else to do but potter around the house taking up space (seeing that ‘a companion is someone who keeps you company in old age when you have lost all dignity and are on your last legs, and comforts you that you’re not a waste of space when all reason says you are’.) But out of regard for others on this list in respect to the length of posts I will stop for now. 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