Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

Q: I feel trapped, because I feel like ... if I go through life not hurting other people, then I hurt myself because I’m not fulfilled. But, if I do things that make me feel fulfilled – yet in the process, hurt other people – I feel guilty. Therefore I am still hurt. Because the guilt hurts, anyway.

R: You can not see your way out, though it?

Q: No, not yet. I need to stop feeling guilty.

R: Yes, then whatever you do – if you do not intentionally set out to hurt other people – you do freely. What can happen is that they may become hurt into the bargain ... but it is up to them to deal with that. It is their hurt, when all is said and done.

Q: But you can foresee it. You can see that you are going to hurt someone else – even if you don’t intentionally do it. If you can see it in advance and you can’t avoid it ...

R: Okay. Now what gets hurt in the other people? It is their feelings, is this not it?

Q: Yes.

R: And if they did not have those feelings then they would not get hurt. It is their precious feelings that they hold so dearly.

Q: True.

R: When somebody says to you ... no ... when somebody says to me: ‘You’ve hurt my feelings’, then I say: ‘Oh, that is interesting. Why do you have them? Because that means that you set yourself up for hurt – for a disaster. If you go around with those feelings, somebody, somewhere is going to hurt them. Be rid of those feelings. Then you will not get hurt.

Q: Then you won’t be able to feel happy.

R: Ah, but there is something far, far better than feeling happy. Remember those moments of perfection?

Q: Mmm.

R: That is beyond feeling happy. It is beyond having to feel anything. There is simply a purity and perfection that is far beyond anything else. You see, speaking personally, I have no feelings at all. There is something vastly superior to feelings.

Q: No feelings at all?

R: No. The last time I felt happy was years ago ... and it only lasted for five minutes or something, thankfully. It temporarily took me away from that which is far better than feeling happy. That something wherein there is an on-going experience – not a feeling – of that perfection which is always here. Here in this world; here in this room, right now. It is here, not off in some airy-fairy spiritual dimension or some religious after-life. It is right here, on earth, in this armchair, in this room, in this suburban house ... and in those trees and flowers outside the windows.

Q: So you have no feelings at all? Of happiness or sadness; or love or hate?

R: That is right. Nothing at all. One rids oneself of the lot ... most people try to get rid of the ‘bad’ ones and hold on to the ‘good’ ones. They endeavour to let go of hate and hold on to love; they hold on to happiness and attempt to rid themselves of sadness. You toss them both out, and then there is perfection – a perfection which far surpasses any feelings you can ever have. And I know that you have experienced this perfection ... I was with you at the time.

Q: Well, children fall more easily into that ...

R: They may be closer to it, but it is not locked away from you forever. You have it secreted in a place in you where you do not usually look.

Q: Mmm.

R: And you can experience it again, at virtually any moment if you reach deep down inside yourself. It is something you have not used for a long, long while. It merely became lost for a number of years while you were at school and busy with your first job and all that ... you had to find out what the real world was made up of. You may have been unduly influenced by reality, but it is no big deal, you can shrug it of in a matter of seconds at any time ... perfection is not gone away, it is always here.

Q: But I don’t know if I want to give up feeling love and happiness!

R: Well, there you go then. You will also feel hatred and unhappiness ... and sadness and boredom and guilt. It comes as a package and if you want to hang on to the one, unfortunately you are going to have the other. If you are prepared to let go of them all and live in perfection and purity ... everyone else will probably think you to be mad, but does that matter?

Q: (Laughing) No. What other people think of me doesn’t bother me at all.

R: Then you are free – free of the whole Human Condition.

What can you remember of perfection? What was your very best experience? What comes closest to what I am talking about?

Q: I don’t know ... I can’t remember them. I don’t have much memory of my childhood at all.

R: Once when you said to me, looking at a particularly bushy garden: ‘The word ‘bush’ gets in the way of seeing it’.

Q: I didn’t say things like that, did I?

R: Oh yes. You would have been maybe nine years old; I took particular note for you were seeing the actuality of the world at that moment. You see, you superimpose reality of the actuality of people, things and events by your very being. Reality is dull and grim and static, whereas actuality is vivid, intense and dynamic.

You have only temporarily forgotten it. As I said before, you have locked it away in a place that you have not accessed for years and years.

Q: Yes, it’s true. I can think of things happening like that when I have taken a psychotropic drug ... but it doesn’t last for long ... it wears off.

R: You can decide to make it permanent. For me it has lasted for seventeen years now. I had a peak experience – which is what they are called – when I was thirty three years of age. I knew, then, that this is what I had been looking for all my life.

I said: ‘I am going to have this’.