Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

Q(1): I was talking with a man yesterday from up in the hills – a hippie-type of person and a nice enough chap too – and he had virtually two pieces of advice to give. The first was to follow your heart ... a fairly typical advice on how to guide your life, but his second was interesting. He said: ‘Don’t expect yourself to be perfect ... don’t give yourself a hard time if you’re not perfect’. Basically he said not to expect perfection.

Q: That’s a very interesting statement, for that is what I stopped doing. I expected myself to be perfect ... I wanted it. I demanded it of myself, too, at times where I was still able to make a choice and go in the old way or the new one.

R: Why settle for anything less than perfection? Why settle for second best?

Q(1): That’s what I thought. I thought: if that is everybody’s code of living ... and my code of living before ... it’s like ... well, was it? I always wanted to be the best in everything, I just didn’t see the way. Now I can only see: it is possible. It’s happening. That’s the amazing thing .

R: Not only is it possible ... it is happening. Your life is becoming cleaner and clearer and better and better.

Q(1): I was driving along this morning and I thought: well everything is perfect ... the trees ... well there is no such thing as an imperfect tree. It’s perfect. Everything is perfect. And why shouldn’t human beings be perfect? What’s the thing going on? Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I get rid of suffering? Why shouldn’t I get rid of the things in me that inhibit perfection? And why shouldn’t I aim to be perfect? For unless I am, I am a burden and a nuisance to somebody else ...

R: And to yourself.

Q(1): ... and to myself. I am not living my potential. Because the potential is to be perfect like everything around me.

Q: Isn’t it is lovely to hear that from somebody else?

R: Yes. To go for it – to realise that perfection is possible within this life-time – and to go for it. To say: ‘I am going to do this!’

Q(1): However it happens, I am going to do this.

R: Interestingly enough, the Master you listened too when you were pursuing the spiritual path kept on saying that life on earth was not perfect ... nor ever would be. He said it again and again and again. I read about ninety of his books and it was a familiar refrain of his. ‘Don’t expect yourself or another to be perfect here on earth, accept your limitations as a body’ ... or something similar.

Q(1): It is drilled into us by religion ... all of the religions say it is impossible to be perfect.

R: ‘You are a sinner and will always remain a sinner. Repent!’

Q(1): They even put it in there that you are born a sinner and you will remain one until you die.

R: ‘Be contrite’ ... repentance, remorse, contrition ... what a way to live a life. When perfection is possible, too. And this man, of course, said to you: ‘Don’t expect to be perfect’.

Q(1): Well, I think that that underlies so much of our life ... it’s what ... well, that’s it, isn’t it? There’s no way that anybody can say they are perfect. Or that they want perfection.

R: No. It is one of the classic excuses for being human. ‘I am only human’, or ‘Nobody’s perfect’. I have heard it so many times over the last sixteen years ... when I stick my hand up and say: ‘I am’, they say: ‘You only think you are’. I say: ‘No, it is possible’ and they say: ‘No, it is not’. They have closed the door ... when one makes that statement, one closes the door and chooses to live a second-rate life. They say: ‘We can only make the best of a bad situation’ and I say: ‘No-no, that is just ‘looking on the bright side’, that is ‘thinking positive’ ... there is something infinitely better than that’. There is some-place here in this life where the situation is not a ‘bad situation’ ... this universe, this earth, is a perfect situation.

Q(1): A perfect life.

R: As you said: there is no such thing as an imperfect tree.

Q(1): If you are in a perfect world, then why not be perfect yourself? To believe that it is all wrong, or bad, or ...

R: Or will stay wrong. That there is no way out.

Q(1): All is promised in some After-life ... that’s where the perfection is: in the After-life.

R: The cute thing in that is when you’re dead ... you’re dead!

Q: There is nothing after death. But what I would often notice – and Richard actually helped me with this – is that you have to go ... you have to dare to be as megalomaniacal ... it is not only audacity and intrepidness ... you actually need a good dose of megalomania to contemplate going somewhere past the gods. Somewhere where God is left behind; somewhere where God does not play a role. That is The Authority that keeps everybody ultimately in control. Ultimately, every body, every culture, is held by their god ... at ransom. They believe in their god. And that is what nobody dares to contemplate: to dare to go beyond God. When you do, you see that the god never existed in the first place.

It’s like in childhood with St. Nicholas ... for nine years I believed in him ... he existed! Then all of a sudden I realised he had never existed, he was only in my mind. For nine years only did he ‘exist’ ... but he had never existed. That was the biggest cheat, I found, it was all for nothing.

Q(1): The other thing that occurred to me was ... one thing is God, but the other thing is stepping out of humanity as we know it.

Q: Yes, stopping being human.

Q(1): It’s not ... a while ago I was contemplating my friends dropping away and things like that. But now it’s like ... you actually step out of all of it. Because all of it is one big group ... it’s the security of ‘everybody else’.

R: That is a big one you have realised.

Q(1): That’s going beyond stepping out of friends ...

Q: It is stepping out of the largest ‘family’ you’ve ever known, the largest there is: Humanity itself.

Q(1): Yes, stepping out of the largest.

R: You have had more than a few realisations recently ... but if you have realised that one ...

Q: It’s delightful to hear you say that, it is such excellent feed-back. We talk a lot and people listen, then weeks go past, then all of a sudden this comes up.

The biggest group, the biggest family ... stepping out of all that you’ve known, all you have thought you were. With the whole authority of the past ... which is an authority in itself, the older the ‘better’; the more ancient the ‘better’ it is. Now, what does all that do to you? How does that feel to you? Is it a shock, or a relief, or ...

Q(1): It has expanded my vision of what losing friends was ... it meant: ‘Oh, right! Okay!’

Q: Do you feel on your own? Standing on your own two feet?

Q(1): It’s more like ... it’s an inevitability ...

R: That is great. No choice.

Q(1): ... and [laughter] you guys are around to play with anyway! [more laughter] It’s not like I’m off in some dark cave or whatever ... being a hermit. [much more laughter]

Q: This is better than being friends.

R: ‘Being in some cave’ ... that was my experience, of course: being on my own in all this.

Q(1): Yes, you were on your own ... absolutely. I realise this and I think: ‘Oh my God!’. This is totally unknown. How did you do it?

R: When I met my companion I thought: ‘Oh good, there is at least one other human being in the world who has got some sense’ ... and not only sense, but someone who was willing to go all the way. Brilliant!

Q: That’s why it is such a delight to hear your own words ... what you have realised yourself, because it seems like you are going to go all the way too.

Q(1): Oh yes.

Q: You have no objection. Isn’t that delicious? Because that means you don’t know what is going to happen next ... but it will be good. That is what is so lovely about freedom: it is always good. It may look as if it goes the wrong way, some times, in the opposite direction. Sometimes that is the case; you go in the opposite direction to where you have been going too ... according to ‘Their’ wisdom.

There is a good simile: It is like this is a stage and we are all actors improvising our lines ... I really like that aspect of it, that there is no ‘lines’ written in advance. That is what makes it so alive.

It’s incredible. It’s really good, the way things are going.

Q(1): Nobody talks about perfection. It’s like going beyond enlightenment, for the spiritually minded person, should be a logical progression to talk about. It is not. When you talk about perfection, it’s something that’s not a feasible ... ideal ... in the planet.

R: Okay, it is radical, but it is in the ... in the what ... it is in the ‘line’ of the enlightenment process. This is the perfection of the ‘Paradise’ – which is often talked about by the enlightened people after physical death – but what is radical is that it is possible here on earth. It is entirely new in the human experience. That is what is not talked about. It is not that I am so much against enlightenment ... although I can understand a person thinking that if they only half listen to me. This is the next step in the human evolution.

That is all it is – and anyone who comes out with anything new has always been castigated in the beginning – but years later, the new paradigm is up there with the rest of them. So why shouldn’t Richard be decried for coming out with something so radically new? Give it time and everybody will be talking about ‘beyond enlightenment’ ... about perfection here on earth. It is just a case of ... although the Masters have talked about ‘going beyond enlightenment’ they have not been able to describe it, for no-one has been here yet. That’s all. This is simply the next step.

I sit here ... and I can describe what it is like.

Q: It is certainly here on earth, it is not in the fantasies of the mind. That is the big difference. This is actual. It is here .

R: It is bringing the perfection of the ‘After-Life’ here on earth.

Q: There was a Master who tried to bring ‘Heaven down to earth’ that I was inspired by when I was younger ...

R: But he did not succeed because he was only an enlightened man. One needs to go beyond enlightenment to accomplish ‘Heaven on earth’. That’s all. [laughter] ‘That’s all’? That is a bit pejorative, isn’t it? This is the most marvellous thing, and I say: ‘That’s all’. How deprecatory of me!

Q(1): Richard’s understatement of the year! [more laughter]

R: But that is what I have done, though. I have brought ‘Heaven down to earth ... or the ‘After-Life’ or the ‘Parinirvana’ or whatever one wishes to call it. ‘Paradise Earth’, perhaps.

Q: It’s what people have secretly believed to be possible, anyway. So it’s not something new that comes up unexpected. Everyone has secretly known that it exists ... be it in some other time or some other dimension. Some-place where you’ll be utterly perfect ... and where we will all be happy together. Ancestor worship has always kept us enslaved.

You have always known it, haven’t you? Something you have secretly longed for? Yearned for? [to Q(1).]

Q(1): That one day I would be living in perfection? Yes, that is what I’ve been searching for.

Q: It’s just that a lot of people deny that; they have already given up. Even some children have already given up ... it’s so sad.

R: Closed the door, eh?

Q: ‘I’d rather do it my parent’s way ... my ancestor’s way’. Anything but a way that works. Isn’t it amazing how reluctant people are to change? And for the better.

R: I am fond of saying that they stick to the ‘tried and true’ little realising that it is the ‘tried and failed’. How many times must one traipse endlessly down the well-trodden path that leads to nowhere fruitful ... and vigorously defend their right to do so?

Q(1): This in-built theory that life is not perfect, that life can not ever be perfect, gives people the excuse to forgive themselves. There is a sloppiness around that.

Q: That’s it. You be sloppy because you can stay human ... because ‘nobody’s perfect’. What an excuse!

Q(1): With that I can stay sloppy in my life. Where I’m not taking care of myself ... and as I’m not, how it affects other people. The ripple that it sends out by not being ... by not acknowledging that I can be perfect.

Q: Being lenient on yourself?

R: It is more than merely being lenient upon yourself, it is that if you stay a normal human being you are able to indulge in licentious behaviour.

Q: That’s right. People will applaud, laugh, because you’re being ...

R: Naughty.

Q: Naughty, yes. You give that up ... for something far better.

R: That is my experience: It is impossible for me to be licentious. Don’t get me wrong ... I still have a lot of fun ... still? I have far more fun, these days, than I ever did in my previous life. But other people’s idea of fun is of the naughty kind ... breaking the law, cocking one’s nose at the police ... maybe getting drunk and wrecking a telephone booth or tipping over rubbish bins and so on. Or the more subtle, the more ‘mature’ – sophisticated – versions of such adolescent behaviour. Ridicule, disparagement, scorn, sarcasm ... stuff like that. This is what I mean by ‘licentious’. I would obtain no joy from that at all.

People are reluctant to give that up ... they think upon it as a freedom, yet it is licence. It is impossible for me to be naughty, mischievous, offensive, monstrous and malicious. It does not mean that I am a ‘goody-goody’, as you may have noticed.

This perfection is so magnificent that I can not praise it highly enough. All your prayers are answered ... and more. Here are things that you could never think about in your wildest dreams. It can not be imagined ... it has to be lived to be believed.

I say: Go for it!