Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

R: Is actual intimacy still vastly superior to love?

Q: Oh yes, because love spoils it; love is actually a great spoiler of actual intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing ... it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into ones life.

R: An unfortunate force?

Q: Because when there is an 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.

R: And as you are now, there is no yearning, pining, longing ... which is the down-side of love.

Q: And the disappointment ... none of that operates in actual intimacy. In love there can be a bruising going on.

R: Bruising?

Q: 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’.

R: What is that ‘bruising’?

Q: 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.

R: Oh, you do not mean bruised emotionally?

Q: 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 ...

R: Are you saying that emotions are unhealthy for the body?

Q: 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’?

R: Some people would say to let go of it ...

Q: 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 myself in existence. The good emotions are also me. This is my self.

R: 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.

Q: 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.

R: Love covers up what the person actually is like and presents them in a good light.

Q: Oh yes a fantastic light ... not just fantastic; love can make that man into the most perfect human being. Into a god.

R: Now what about actual intimacy? In intimacy you see the other as they actually are ... ‘warts and all’ is the expression.

Q: That is not only better ... it is far more interesting.

R: It does not make you repulsed. One is neither attracted nor repulsed.

Q: Exactly.

R: How are you with the other, then?

Q: One hundred per cent. They get the all of me.

R: 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?

Q: Oh, that’s delicious! That’s delicious because that is freedom. Then I’m free from the grip of emotions.

R: So, seeing the other for what they actually are, do you see ‘the good’ in them? The potential?

Q: 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 intimacy this whole moment, everything, is magnificent.

R: 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?

Q: I don’t feel like interfering at all. I stay in myself.

R: And you talk from that?

Q: 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.

R: 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?

Q: I want the very best. I would wish this upon them.

R: What do you say, then? Seeing the attractive and the repulsive ... and you do not try to draw out the good ...

Q: 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.

R: Ah! You want for the other to be here, where this moment is happening.

Q: Oh yes, of course. What else could I want ... that is the very best I can want.

R: 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.

Q: Yes, and that is all what I could want, too. Then they can experience it for themselves.

R: Then you can talk directly.

Q: Yes. Then we can all have fantastic fun. In intimacy.

R: Which is the direct experience of the other and the world about. No need for love?

Q: 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?

R: 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.