Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘A’ Correspondence

RESPONDENT: I had something very much like the Kundalini feeling a few days ago. A surge of energy/electricity shot up my spine and into the back of my neck and into the base of my skull. My head just did a big jolt and it was really weird. But this had no real affect on my consciousness. Have you got any ideas what that was?

RICHARD: Obviously you are interested in this area of experiential research into consciousness, therefore various weird phenomena can be triggered off by your intense interest and unwavering desire to manifest something – that is: to make something happen. This is the correct approach. One has to have an extreme conviction that it is imperative that it is me who will evince a final and complete condition that will ‘deliver the goods’ so longed for by humanity for millennia. There is a curious decision made, deep in your psyche, that it is you who will dedicate your life to solving ‘The Mystery of Life’ by actually living it. This decision makes this goal the number one priority – all other matters are secondary and are used to serve this primary purpose.

At times this audacity – that it will be me who does it – approaches megalomania ... after all, one thinks, who am I to think that I can break through the impasse that has baffled humankind for millennia? As long as one does not succumb to delusions of grandeur, a healthy dose of what appears to be megalomania is appropriate ... otherwise one is held back by the mediocrity of those who say you can not do it. You can. The only requirement is that one be a human being – and that I hereby devote my entire life to breaking through to the perfection and peace that is lying open all around right now ... if only I had the eyes to see it. It takes great courage and fortitude to fly in the face of all those ‘would be’s’ and ‘want to be’s’ who, alas, only talk about it. One has to do it ... because, after all is said and done, it is my life that I am living.

Not all ‘weird phenomena’ produce a change in consciousness – but it indicates that something is happening, something is stirring, deep down in your psyche. I had many bizarre things happen – electrical bolts of lightning dazzling on my eyeballs; pressure-pains in the base of my neck; surges of power travelling up my spine and up over the back and the top of my head down to the forehead; exalted states of consciousness; convulsive twitching of limbs; energy surges from the pit of my stomach up through my diaphragm into the chest cavity through to the throat producing intense nausea ... many, many weird things. None of them are important in themselves (some people get caught up in them and manifest Psychic Powers, thus never proceeding to the final goal), what is important that one takes them as a sign that a process is underway ... and to rev up the process with one’s active consent.

The mark of success is to be willing to do whatever it takes, to proceed with all dispatch, employing much vim and vigour ... and have a lot of fun along the way. That last bit of advice is important: do not forget that the goal is to enjoy life now, to appreciate this moment of being alive now, no matter what is going on – be it good or bad, bearable or unbearable. One’s goal is to defeat blind nature, which endowed us with all these instinctual drives and impulses which we wish to overcome, by using our thinking, reflective brain to understand the need to become happy and harmless ... that is, to eliminate malice and sorrow. I say ‘blind nature’ for we are born with a self – albeit a rudimentary self – because it was necessary for species survival. Society has overlaid a sense of identity over the ego and soul (which emerge from this rudimentary self by about the age three and seven respectively) and this sense of identity can be undone, piecemeal, by examining all the beliefs and values and mores and so on that hold it together.

So there is plenty one can do when there is no ‘weird phenomena’ going on. Each event in your daily life will show you what to do ... once you have made this ‘curious decision’ I wrote about. The key factor to remember is: Only I can make it happen. And: It is only I who is holding myself back.

Nobody has control over you ... it only appears that way.

RESPONDENT: I have for the last 5 years been slowly examining all the societal mores, norms, beliefs and culture that have been forced upon me from a young age. Now I do this all the time. I became a vegetarian when I was 7, on my own, against my families wishes. I’m wondering whether this type of ‘reshuffling’ is useful. I’ve gone a lot further than just being vegetarian, my views are very different to the norm. Is your path more about discarding everything? I’m very much more into challenging consensus reality.

RICHARD: I like what you write. Yes, it is all about questioning and examining the norm for its obvious double-binds and hypocrisies and – rather than discarding them – watch with delight as a once-held belief (usually masquerading as a ‘truth’) disappears out of your life. It is deliciously liberating to be free of a belief that once held you in thralldom ... and you look forward to the next one that will automatically present itself to you in the normal course of your day-to-day life. Once you get the knack of it, they will disappear faster and faster until, one day, you will look around inside of yourself and find that there are none left.

As one’s sense of identity is, in part, comprised of beliefs and truths, it would be starting to wear a bit thin, by now. Another major part of the identity is the emotional and passionate investment one makes in supporting these beliefs. In fact feelings are largely what constitutes one’s intuitive sense of ‘being’ – as the New-Age adage goes: ‘We are all emotional beings’. These feelings pollute thought, creating the intuitive sense of ‘being’ – ‘I’ – which, in any way, shape or form, is the ‘spanner in the works’. There is only one thing that ‘I’ can do, ultimately, 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 the perfection of the infinity of the universe 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.

Dismantling one’s social identity so as to access the intuitive sense of ‘being’ is a very necessary step to enable the ‘I’ to self-immolate ... which brings me to your next point.

RESPONDENT: Marijuana helps my journey to proceed faster. I feel that by living a different reality for a while opens me up to new feelings and ideas, and the realisation that different realities are possible. What are your views on the use of psychedelic for this purpose?

RICHARD: Psychedelics – known technically as psychotropic substances – have been used for centuries to produce ‘different realities’ – known technically as ‘Altered States of Consciousness’. They can be useful so long as one is clear as to one’s intentions, otherwise one will be led astray by the various mystical phenomena that present itself. If one is guided by pure intent – that is, to live the very best that is possible for both oneself and all of humankind – then psychotropic substances can produce a ‘peak experience’, giving rise to apperception. This is not an ‘Altered State of Consciousness. I have written elsewhere:

“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). (quote from Richard’s Journal, Article Thirty-Three)

‘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’.

I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances. However, if someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use ... that is, that the objective is to gain apperception and a peak experience.

Then one sees for oneself the perfection and purity of the infinity of the universe at this moment in time. A direct experience of actuality is worth more than thousands of words of description.

RESPONDENT: As of now I am a vegetarian, if I discard this belief, what would happen? Would I eat meat without guilt? The reason I am vegetarian is that I don’t think I should cause pain and suffering to fellow sentient beings just for a burger. So what would happen to this belief and action if I self-immolated?

RICHARD: There are two ways to answer this question about guilt ... and they are contained in what I have already written. Allow me to paraphrase for ease and clarity. Viz.:

(1) When ‘I’ am no longer extant there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs. As there is no ‘believer’, there is no ‘I’ to be guilty ... one is then free to not eat meat, or eat meat, as the circumstances permit. It is an act of freedom, based upon purely practical considerations such as the taste bud’s predilection, or the body’s ability to digest the food eaten, or meeting the standards of hygiene necessary for the preservation of decaying flesh, or the availability of sufficient resources on this planet to provide the acreage necessary to support the conversion of vegetation into animal protein. It has nothing whatsoever with the avoidance of ‘pain and suffering to fellow sentient beings’.

(2) Whilst ‘I’ am still extant ‘I’ can face the very fact that one is alive means consuming nutrients ... and staying alive means that something, somewhere must die in order to supply these nutrients. This is a fact of life ... and the marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on ... but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. Most people think and feel that choice implies freedom – having the freedom to choose – but this is not the case. Freedom lies in seeing the obvious, and in seeing the obvious there is no choice, no deliberation, no agonising over the ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ judgment. In the freedom of seeing the fact there is only action.

If you followed the discussion thoroughly and see for yourself – not merely believing me – the actuality of being alive then your feelings of guilt will be long gone. For all that I am demonstrating is that feeling guilty is born out of holding on to a belief system that is impossible to live ... as all belief systems are. I am not trying to persuade you to eat meat or not eat meat ... I leave it entirely up to you as to what you do regarding what you eat. It is the guilt that is insidious ... feeling guilty is a sure sign that one is being controlled.

RESPONDENT: You say that you have no beliefs. Do you murder people? If not why not?

RICHARD: I have no urge or desire to as I have eliminated both malice and sorrow from myself ... thus I am happy and harmless. With no vindictiveness or anger, I have no need to control myself with moralistic injunctions as to what is ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’. It is only people who have a self – the genesis of malice with its hatred and aggression – that need to be controlled. Hence morals are essential to keep the wayward self from running amok.

RESPONDENT: Why do you do some things but not others? What is your drive in life?

RICHARD: I have no drive, no ambition and no urges whatsoever. I do some things because they are comfortable, (like sitting on a cushion instead of a concrete slab) and other things because they are determined by what is silly and what is sensible.

It is silly to be unhappy and sensible to be happy.

RESPONDENT: I don’t know how you wove religion, sages and an afterlife into E-Mail, as they have nothing to do with my views.

RICHARD: I beg to differ. You wrote to me about guilt and morals regarding meat eating and non-meat eating. Morals – with their attendant feelings of guilt, condemnation, blame, opprobrium, censure, reproach, reproof, reprehension, shame, disgrace, mortification, humiliation, contrition, ignominy, dishonour, regret, remorse, mortification, embarrassment, abasement, self-consciousness, repentance and so on – have every thing to do with your views. I ‘wove’ (as you so cutely put it) ‘religion, sages and after-life into my reply’ because it is religion – and the Saviour or Messiah, the Avatar or Prophet, the Saint or the Sage – who invented this entire insidious edifice of negative feelings (and if you think that I am making this up or exaggerating, just reflect upon Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene who went about declaiming: ‘Repent ye, for the Kingdom of God is at hand’. As repentance requires that one goes through guilt, regret, remorse and then repentance ... and on to forgiveness and remission of sins, thus enabling one to enter into his After-Life, then I consider that what I wrote was not ‘woven’ in but fundamental to a clear understanding as to why a person would feel guilty about anything at all (eating meat for example).

These ‘God-intoxicated’ people invented morals ... and they are all dead and buried ... if they lived at all. The peoples alive today are living – and feeling – the dictates of dead deities. It is utter nonsense, upon sober reflection, to be ruled by the morals of deluded persons who may, or may not have lived, two, three or four thousand years ago!

RESPONDENT: When I was seven years old I asked my mother where meat came from. The answer was: animals. I felt guilty after I knew the facts. It was a choice I made, a moral choice. Just as I try not to harm or kill humans so too with animals. So I guess that means you’d kill 5 year old children by the dozen, without guilt, for any reason at all. Of course if you would not eat homemade human hamburgers you’d show a BELIEF that humans are ‘superior’ animals, as I remember the Christians saying for centuries.

RICHARD: Where you say: ‘I try not to harm ...’ you give the game away. In actual freedom I do not harm anything or anyone whatsoever. I do not have to ‘try’ not to ... harmlessness is my basic nature. It is all so effortlessly easy. With actual freedom, I am pure innocence personified, for I am literally free from sin and guilt. I am untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. I am utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, has come to its full flowering in me. I am unequivocally able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any striving at all. The pure intent, born out of coupling one’s intrinsic naiveté with the perfection of the infinity of the universe as unveiled in a peak experience, is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon ‘I’ the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. I can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual grace and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence.

So why do you ‘guess’ that I would kill children and eat them ... and by the dozen, too? I have written about this utter freedom before ... have you forgotten? What are you trying to prove? That it is impossible to rid oneself of sorrow and malice and that one must forever be controlled by the self-whipping feelings of guilt that are intrinsic to that application of the morals laid down by these long-dead deities? Do you, or do you not, wish to live your life happily and harmlessly? In perfect purity and freedom? To live in the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe at this moment in time means not feeling the slightest urge to be eating children by the dozen – or any other bizarre scenario you might feel inspired to invent. Please, put some thought into your responses before firing off an ill-considered broadside like: ‘Homemade human hamburgers’.

RESPONDENT: So you BELIEVE living for you is GOOD, death for you is BAD ... anarchy is BAD, invasions are BAD. Fighting invasions is GOOD. Most belief systems are BAD. My belief system is GOOD. But since I have no I, I have no belief system. I shit on my carpet because I see nothing BAD about the smell, or the work involved in cleaning it up. I cannot make any choices, so when I go to get food, I flip a coin to decide which food I will buy. But first I flip a coin to decide which shop to go too, as no shops are GOOD or BAD, if I made a choice between the two shops, that means I would BELIEVE one was GOOD and one was BAD ... Explain some more, or admit some more.

RICHARD: Of course I can only go by the tone of your writing and the liberal use of emphasis ... but you do sound rather angry for a person who hopes to succeed in their avowed aim not to harm ‘fellow sentient beings’. Anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to aggression; aggression leads to violence; violence leads to killing. The answer is simple – and I do not have to ‘admit some more’ . It is silly and uncomfortable to defecate on carpets ... and all those other things that you are so fired up about. Please, calm down so that you can consider cleanly and clearly the facts I am writing about ... and look at what your ‘self’ is making you think and feel and write.

Please contemplate the matters raised attentively before you click ‘send’.