Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RICHARD: Please, whatever you do with me, throw faith, belief, trust and hope right out of the window ... along with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair.

Besides, I am a certified madman!

RESPONDENT: Are you not subject to the pain of loss? Wouldn’t this cause some fear?

RICHARD: Again, no. I am completely and utterly autonomous ... I do not need anyone to satisfy some lack in me. Thus I free the other from ‘my’ graceless demands.

I experience no fear whatsoever ... which does away with the need for trust, faith, hope and belief. This is my on-going experience twenty four hours a day, year after year.

RESPONDENT: I do not understand exactly what you are saying. Actuality is not always ambrosial.

RICHARD: You are talking about reality – an affective experience of the world of people, things and events – whereas I am using the word ‘actuality’ to refer to the sensate world only. It is this sensual experience that is ambrosial. By actual, I do not mean the real-world of normal human experience. Actuality is only seen by people in glimpses ... it is as if everyday reality is a grim and glum veneer pasted over the top of this actual world of the senses. When ‘I’ vanish in ‘my’ entirety – both the ego and the soul – this ‘normal’ everyday reality disappears and the underlying actuality becomes apparent. It was here all along. To experience the metaphysical Reality – usually with capitalisation – is to go further into the illusion of normal everyday reality, created by ‘I’, and to create a supernatural ‘True Reality’ ... which one could call an abnormal reality.

Thus normal everyday reality is an illusion and the abnormal metaphysical Reality is a delusion born out of the illusion ... a chimera, as it were. This is why only .000001 of the population ever become enlightened ... it is extremely difficult to live in a hallucination permanently. Speaking personally, I was so deluded, that for eleven years I lived in humanity’s greatest fantasy, before the dissolution of ‘me’ as soul finally brought salubrity through release from the human condition itself.

My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country.

Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition.

RESPONDENT: In the term of being logic, your statements are not inconsistency. But that a statement is logically consistent is one thing and that a statement is existentially true is another thing. So the point is whether I can trust your statements or not.

RICHARD: To ‘trust’ someone – anyone at all – is to invite betrayal ... to ‘trust’ someone is to impose a demand upon them that they may not be able to live up to (or want to) and I never do that. I have had no use for ‘trust’ at all: to ‘trust’ is to attract deception. Etymologically, ‘trust’ – a covenant with ‘The Truth’ – is in the same category as faith – loyalty to ‘The Truth’ – and both are aligned with belief. Belief means fervently wishing to be true. There is not much difference between ‘trust’ and faith ... as a generalisation perhaps ‘trust’ is used more in spiritual circles, whereas faith is more aligned with the religious. ‘Trust’ seems to have more solid connotations than faith – to the spiritual aspirant, who scorns religion and all its trappings – yet, essentially they amount to the same. They all give rise to hope. Hope, the antidote to despair, is what most people live on. Living in hope – having faith or trusting – is a poor substitute for the living purity of the perfection of the actual. Hope sets one up for disappointment time and again ... and all it is, is the antidote for despair. All trusting, believing, hoping and having faith and certitude are but the antidotes to distrust, disbelief, despair, doubt or suspicion.

I advise people not to believe, trust, hope or have faith and build a certitude ... I urge people to find out for themselves. Look upon what I have to say – and other actualists – to see if there is enough evidence for a prima facie case. This means that one listens with both ears and examines one’s own psyche – which is the human psyche – and discovers whether the words accord with the facts or not ... a fact is distinct from a ‘truth’. A belief – cunningly disguised as a truth – is not a fact. A fact is apparent, there can be no confusion or argumentation about a fact. By its very nature a belief is not factually true ... otherwise it would not need to be believed to be true. A fact is obvious, freely available for all to see as being correct. To believe something to be true is to accept on trust that it is so. A fact does not have to be accepted on trust ... a fact is candidly so. A fact is patently true, manifestly clear. A fact has actual verity, whereas a belief requires synthetic credence. One of the ways of ascertaining whether a ‘truth’ is a belief or a fact is that a belief demands loyalty; you give allegiance to it and to the group that espouses it. And look for passion ... the passionate involvement required to maintain the synthetic credibility of whatever is believed in, or what one has faith in, or what one trusts and what one hopes for or has certitude about. It is impossible to dispassionately believe, dispassionately have faith, dispassionately trust or dispassionately have hope or certitude. Anyone who claims otherwise does not understand the experiential reality lying under those words.

I am consistently urging not only the discarding of all beliefs, but to examine and discard the very action of believing itself. I only present a refutation to a particular belief in order that a person may come to see, not only how silly it is, but how dangerous it is to believe at all. I would not want anyone to stop believing in immortality, for example, and start believing in death as oblivion ... that would be to swap one belief for another and the action of believing remains intact. Where the action of believing remains intact, the ‘believer’ – the ‘I’ – is supported, affirmed, verified and perpetuated. This is the primary danger of beliefs. ‘I’ am, to a large part, an emotional ‘being’ ... ‘I’ am, to a large part, made up of beliefs, values, principles, ideals, theories, traditions, customs, mores and so on. Belief is an emotion-backed thought ... and not sensible thought at that. Personally, I never believed or trusted that it was possible; nor did I have hope or faith or certitude, for such an action of believing, trusting, hoping and having faith and certitude perpetuates the believer, the truster, the hoper and the faithful certifier. On the contrary, I could no longer believe that it was not possible ... which is a different action entirely. I stopped the activity of believing, period. The mind is a fertile breeding ground for fantasies and hallucinations; if one backs it up with trust, faith, belief, hope and certitude then anything weird can eventuate.

Instead, make full use of a confidence born out of the apperception that occurs in a pure consciousness experience (PCE); the surety that comes from a solid knowing ... an irrefutable knowing, not a flight of fancy from some religious epiphany or spiritual vision or mystical revelation or any metaphysical occurrence. One thus has the courage of one’s convictions – which is the certainty born out of the solid knowing as evidenced in a PCE – and can thus develop a superb assurance and a wondrous optimism. Therefore nothing can stand in one’s way in this, the adventure of a life-time.

RICHARD: The jumping in point is always here ... it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if you miss it this time around, hey presto ... you have another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.

RESPONDENT: You’re going to have to send more information or draw a clearer map to paradise.

RICHARD: Okay. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness does not mean a thing if one is miserable now ... and a hoped-for happiness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting.

Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now.

What ‘I’ did, eighteen years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective method of ridding this body of ‘me’. (Now I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). ‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?

RESPONDENT: An ambrosial air of peace and harmony as a categorical truth needs chaos and disharmony for its existence. If I am to relish the drink in the nectar of being here I have to constantly prop it up with my defeats and humiliation of yesterday, with the hopes of a tomorrow.

RICHARD: If it is seen as a ‘categorical truth’ then you are right. When it is lived as an actuality, however, the ambrosial air of peace and harmony has no need of yesterday’s defeats or tomorrow’s hopes. It is already always here at this moment in time and this place in space and requires no props whatsoever.

It is rather magical, you see.

RESPONDENT: Consider this. You are with your goal of ‘perfection’ and, therefore, you concede a state of imperfection for yourself which only exists conditional upon your goal.

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I have no goals at all ... I have no ambitions; no desires or wants at all.

RESPONDENT: If there were no goal to start with, you could neither be imperfect nor perfect, correct?

RICHARD: Incorrect. You are as you are born ... with fear and aggression and desire and nurture. I call that imperfect, by any definition.

RESPONDENT: As far as I recall his picture included natural phenomena and people.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... there is naught else but people, things and events. When ‘I’ am not, the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This natural universe is it ... anything else (beyond space and time) is metaphysical and therefore a delusion of the self’s aggrandisement.

RESPONDENT: Whatever is seen prior to thought is beyond anything that you can know or tell about.

RICHARD: May I rephrase your sentence? ‘Whatever is seen prior to thought – that which is actual – can only be seen apperceptively and is beyond anything ‘you’ can know or tell about’.

However, experiencing life, the universe and what it is to be a human being as this flesh and blood body only enables one to both know it thoroughly – by living it – and to speak and write about it with remarkable ease. One is an expert on any aspect of actuality simply by virtue of the fact that one has only to look around and write what one sees lying blatantly to view. There is no mystery here in actuality ... no ‘Truth’ that is ineffable. The ‘meaning of life’ can all be described in great detail ... life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away ... nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning. With the end of ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity.

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted ‘human’ hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end.

RESPONDENT: I evolve with the world as it is and move on ... to crystallise my thinking and doing is to die. Which means anyone can prove all this right or wrong in whatever context they wish to dream up.

RICHARD: Hokey-dokey ... the ‘context’ in which I place the only ‘change’ worthy of the name is freedom from the human condition which, as it has not happened anywhere at all that I have noticed, makes it all too easy to ‘prove all this wrong’ . My question then is this:

Is this a context I ‘wished to dream up’ ... or is it a physical context?

RESPONDENT: ‘Death from diseases’, is the main cause in this study (death from ‘all other causes’ in Wales and England has fallen from 35% to 14% of all deaths in 97 years) ... life is not all suicide, war and revenge. From this information I can postulate all kinds of cause and effect scenarios depending on the colour of ‘my’ glasses on the day.

RICHARD: Ahh, this may explain where you are coming from ... were you wearing your rose-coloured glasses, perchance, whilst you were writing all this?

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ took all my glasses off years ago. Concern and hope may push or pull ‘me’ towards an AF ‘belief system’ and it binds while ‘I’, (and others), persist in being superior, inferior, unequal instinct-ridden or problem-ridden.

RICHARD: What ‘glasses’ did you ‘take off years ago’ ? I only ask because what part does ‘hope’ have to play in one who has no glasses? Also, what is an ‘AF ‘belief system’’ when it is at home? Is it that bogus ‘belief system’ which ‘binds’ or is it the ‘hope’ that ties? Lastly, as an actual freedom from the human condition is so superior to anything any other human being has ever lived, it leaves any ‘being superior, inferior, unequal’ posturing in the litigious ‘Land Of Lament’ for dead. It has always amused me, whenever some spiritual aspirant takes me to task for being superior, that they praise the humility of their current hero ... all the whilst apparently not noticing that their ‘humble saviour’ is swanning about busily being ‘God On Earth’ or a ‘Supreme Being’ by any other name!

An actual freedom is such an exceedingly superior way of living life that its pre-eminence is unbelievable, unimaginable, unconceivable and incomprehensible.

RESPONDENT: Why am I afraid of ending the conflict?

RICHARD: Is it that up until now conflict has been ‘my’ raison d’être? Is it that ‘I’ have invested so much into it that it has become ‘my’ very identity? The reason is not all that important ... what is important is:

Just do it.

RESPONDENT: I will have to relinquish all of my hopes, dreams, desires, yes?

RICHARD: In order to enable that which is vastly superior to all your ‘hopes, dreams, desires’ ? Yes ... willingly, cheerfully.

RESPONDENT: All of my cherished pains, self-pity, causes, no?

RICHARD: All these and more are what ‘I’ am made up of ... these cherished things are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: And I have a market mentality. I want to know what I will get in exchange. I am quite bamboozled ... what to do?

RICHARD: There is no problem about a ‘market mentality’ whatsoever ... ‘sacrifice’ means an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present; to devote and give over one’s being as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest, a kind-hearted benefaction. A sacrifice is the relinquishment of something valued or desired for the sake of something more important or worthy ... it is the deliberate abandonment, relinquishment, forfeiture or loss for the sake of something illustrious, brilliant, extraordinary and excellent. It means to forgo, quit, vacate, discontinue, stop, cease or immolate so that one’s guerdon is to be able to be unrepressed, unconstrained, unselfconscious, uninhibited, unrestrained, unrestricted, uncontrolled, uncurbed, unchecked, unbridled, candid, outspoken, spontaneous, relaxed, informal, open, free and easy.

As I have remarked before, ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory.

RESPONDENT: Yes, sorry Richard, I was just pointing to the absurdity of it, it is perverse, exactly.

RICHARD: Surprisingly enough, even though love has such an appalling track record, there are still those who consider that the summum bonum of existence is to be love.

*

RICHARD: What do you have to offer, then, other than the hope you so readily proffered at the first opportunity ... and your amusement at the contrary way a deeply passionate connection operates (nine smilies in ten sentences)?

RESPONDENT: Nothing, the same way you couldn’t offer your ex’s anything either.

RICHARD: Oh? Not only do I have much to offer I have already advised, in my initial response, that at least one pertinent thing amongst all that was offered in that period was verified. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘... my previous companion came up to me in a café one day to let me know that she now understands, via this first-hand experience, that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are indeed innate’.

If I had nothing to offer I would never have gone public with my discovery of what lies beyond enlightenment in the first place ... ‘tis disingenuous, to say the least, to set-up a web page with a linked mailing list and then say one has nothing to offer.

RESPONDENT: They’re gonna get if and when they’re gonna get it.

RICHARD: My previous companion informed me that she would never had got it that the instinctual passions are innate if I had not consistently pointed it out to her in the first place ... to prove me wrong in this regard is what motivated her to observe for herself on a daily basis, by being a proxy maiden aunt over a 13 month period to a newly born baby girl being raised only by females, just what a supposedly innocent baby girl spontaneously experiences (she had a feministic theory/belief that males put such passions as fear and aggression and nurture and desire into female babies).

Which is why I appreciate her honesty in coming up to me in a café one day to let me know that she now understands, via this first-hand experience, that the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are indeed innate ... and, as there other people who have advised of similar outcomes from hearing/reading what I have to say, this is an example only and not a one-off incident.

RESPONDENT: Understanding is something that a person has to come to themselves on their own.

RICHARD: Yet unless a person’s attention is drawn to the very thing they have been overlooking there will be nothing looming on their horizon for them to understand ... it is what the sharing of experience is all about.

RESPONDENT: They have their agendas to fulfil, come hell or high water.

RICHARD: How do you account for those who discard their (unfulfilled) agenda and grasp the new with alacrity then?

RESPONDENT: Like children, they have to find out on their own.

RICHARD: Having previously been the parent of four children, plus being a qualified art teacher, I know first-hand that the passing-on of information is invaluable ... if it were not for the sharing of knowledge we could all be still living in caves dressed in animal skins and gnawing on raw brontosaurus bones.

*

RICHARD: ... has your buddy’s ex-partner discovered anything of note yet regarding deeply passionate connections?

RESPONDENT: I don’t know Richard, I doubt it, he suggested to her that she come out here with me, and I said, very funny, what the hell am I gonna do with her? :-) Just what I need. :-)

RICHARD: What would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, and why would interacting with his ex-partner be something for you to not need?

RESPONDENT: In other words, I need ‘misery’ like I need a hole in the head.

RICHARD: Apart from anticipating an interaction with your buddy’s ex-partner as being ‘misery’ ... what would be the point of coming out there with you, according to your buddy, seeing as how you have nothing to offer?

*

RICHARD: Or are platitudes (such as hoping the other is well/advising them to drive safely) sufficient unto the day in your neck of the woods?

RESPONDENT: Pretty much, as I stated above, yes. I wish them well.

RICHARD: As what you stated above is the reasoning behind such bromidic comments being ‘pretty much’ sufficient unto the day would you consider a re-examination of those statements to be a worthy enterprise? I only ask because to anticipate an interaction with one’s fellow human being as ‘misery’ is most certainly not conducive to happiness and harmlessness.

Neither for oneself nor for the other.