Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RICHARD: Having been started in a family and society, being shaped by its structures, its rules on dependency and conformity, ‘I’ know of no other way of living but in a group. ‘I’ have learned to fear being an outcast, alone and lonely without the continuous endorsement of being a member. ‘I’ have ‘my’ particular – but adopted – beliefs and values, dogmas and creeds, ideals and ‘truths’, myths and superstitions, and so on, that make ‘me’ an accepted member of the group. The adult life of each new recruit to the human race is already laid out before one – and having been disempowered for all of ‘my’ life, ‘I’ am now looking forward to climbing further up the hierarchical ladder. ‘I’ will start ‘my’ own family – dependent upon ‘me’ this time – and ‘I’ will reinforce all of ‘my’ brainwashing by indoctrinating ‘my’ children. ‘I’ will make them, like ‘me’, into social identities ... and wards of ‘our’ culture.

However, the stirrings of wanting to discover just exactly what one is, outside of being a group member, are stronger than the fears about loneliness and being an outcast. To be able to relate to oneself and one’s partner, each moment again with impunity, as to what one actually feels, thinks and experiences is a luxury and freedom never possible within the group. The group does not allow for frank discussion about – and an honest questioning into – the venerated causes for its very existence. My way of living has taken a while to become accustomed to as I often feared to drown, to dissolve in a vast freedom wherein there are no boundaries. Here is a total lack of conformity and compromise. This is my life as-it-is ... and what a magical life it is. What I have is a complete confidence in the purity and perfection of this universe which, to my never-ending delight, brings about serendipity.

What one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that ‘I’ feel so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ – a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality ... and I have always been here like this ... so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety – a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nine

RESPONDENT: How can you explain synchronicity events then?

RICHARD: The way I can explain the simultaneous occurrence of events, which appear meaningfully related in the real-world but have no discoverable causal connection, is quite simple ... in a word: happenstance.

RESPONDENT: I can understand synchronicity explained in regards to the human/animal world by the existence of the collective unconscious, but I can’t explain the seeing/forecasting of future events exclusively related to inanimate matter as the work of the human/animal psychic web. Synchronicity in regards to the inanimate matter can only satisfactorily be explained if matter has ‘psychic’, aka ‘electric’ properties (I can’t find a better word).

RICHARD: Matter, be it either in its mass phase or energy phase, has no psychic properties.

For what it is worth: even though I use the term ‘psychic currents’, to refer to the extrasensory transmissions conducted via affective vibrations (colloquially known as ‘vibes’), and even though affective feelings are associated with electrochemical activity in brain scans, it does not necessarily mean they are electric currents ... and neither does it necessarily mean they are currents of water or air, either, as that word (literally meaning ‘to run’ as in ‘flowing’ or ‘streaming’) is nothing more than a convenient word to utilise.

RESPONDENT: Although you are freed from the psyche, the flesh and body known as Richard has electric properties (your brain processes work with/on electric impulses, one possible explanation for telepathy).

RICHARD: As this flesh and blood body is not at all telepathic your [quote] ‘possible’ [endquote] explanation is an impossible explanation in actuality.

RESPONDENT: ... or to put that another way, some of your body processes are cellular, some are molecular and some are electric.

RICHARD: This flesh and blood body is part cellular (matter as mass) and part electric (matter as energy) ... a ‘molecule’, just like an ‘atom’, is a mathematical model.

RESPONDENT: The operating of the electric processes is that which differentiates between a sleeping body and an awakened one (in both cases the senses are operating).

RICHARD: As all it takes to bring this flesh and blood body into wakefulness, when asleep, is an unexpected/ unusual touch (the cutaneal sense), or smell (the olfactory sense), or sound (the aural sense), or light (the ocular sense), or taste (the gustatory sense), or posture (the proprioceptive senses) it does not follow that it is the operating of electric processes which differentiates between a sleeping and an awake body ... the operating of *some* electric activity would be what distinguishes.

Whether awake or asleep a body subconsciously processes sensation continuously ... there are, if memory serves correctly, on average up to maybe 150,000 nerve impulses firing in any given second.

RESPONDENT: As the senses operate in both cases, it results that you are not the senses per se, but the ‘awareness’ of the senses, in other words: consciousness per se.

RICHARD: As the first person pronoun is used by the flesh and blood body writing these e-mails (for both convenience and so as not to be unduly pedantic) to refer to this flesh and blood body only it may all become clear if it be put this way: when the flesh and blood body writing this e-mail is asleep the flesh and blood body, whilst not consciously aware of being sentient, is subliminally aware of sentience ... or, put differently, upon waking this flesh and blood body’s subconscious awareness of being alive heightens (into being a conscious awareness).

In other words ... a difference in degree (and not of kind).

*

RESPONDENT: On the other hand, by serendipity (luck) I understand the moment when preparedness meets opportunity.

RICHARD: There is no such thing as luck here in this actual world: there are, however, opportunities that occur (happenstance) which either may or may not be taken advantage of ... for example: even though Peter describes meeting Richard as being a serendipitous event there are those who also have who do not (more than a few would probably not even remember it).

Look, what generally happens is that human beings have a penchant for recalling the few occasions when something they wanted/needed fell into their lap (happenstance) and for forgetting, or rather not even noticing, the many occasions when something they neither wanted/needed did ... the number of vacant taxicabs, for instance, cruising city streets at a particular time on any given day is more or less the same whether one is currently being sought for or not (as a permanently-on camera at that place would reveal) and which gives lie to the oft-repeated plaint that they are always cruising by when not wanted.

There is nothing mystical/ miraculous about it at all ... fortuitousness is simply what humans assess such opportunities as being.

To give but a recent example: I had been postponing moving residence for, maybe, more than a year partly because wireless internet connection in this country was downright unsuitable (14 Kbps and 33 cents per minute peak-hour/15 cents per minute off-peak) for what I was requiring and yet I eventually moved anyway, making arrangements with peoples who had wired connections so as to have at least once or twice weekly uploads/ downloads, for other reasons ... only to find, almost immediately after having moved/ settled-in, that wireless internet connection in this country is coming of age (I now all-of-a-sudden can have 144 Kbps at .50 cents per MB with unlimited time) and by the end of the year what is currently being made available in metropolitan areas (300-600 Kbps) will have been rolled-out country-wide.

For those inclined to say that my timing was spot-on all I can say is that it was nothing other than the sensibility of moving/settling in after the heat of summer and before the cold of winter which determined the decision ... the all-of-a-sudden wireless availability is purely circumstantial.

But very welcome nevertheless (hence ‘fortuitous’).

ALAN: Perhaps it is simply memory which does the job – something like (without forming the words) ‘Oh yes, this is the enlightenment one has read about and been warned about, how interesting’. This also ties in with the next point: [Richard]: ‘I also had other experiences that I overlooked in favour of these ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’ experiences. If I had not been taken in by delusions of grandeur I would have paid particular notice of experiences like the first time I experienced being the senses only during a PCE’. [endquote]. Yes, while identity is operating it is not possible to be ‘here’. But what is it that can take ‘particular notice of experiences like this’, when ‘me’ or ‘Me’ is going to do all it can to ignore or forget them?

RICHARD: What it is that takes ‘particular notice’ is the native intelligence which is me as-this-body. There are three I’s altogether ... but only one is actual. I have been here for 51 years (behind the scenes for 34 plus 11 years) and have my own memory. The ‘walk-in’ that dominated for the 34 plus 11 years – complete with ‘his’ affective memory has vanished entirely – leaving me here where I have always been ... ‘he’ had no chance whatsoever to be here. Thus when ‘he’ realised that ‘he’ was an alien entity ‘he’ self-immolated so that I would become evident ... and in order for the already existing peace-on-earth to be apparent.

*

RICHARD: Now, four times irritated in eleven years may not sound like much ... but it was enough to make me question. Also, there were three or four ‘bleed-throughs’ of fear from the sublimated passions in that period ... the evidence indicating the transcendent nature of the ASC became too much to ignore.

ALAN: Again this raises the question, too much for who or what to ignore?

RICHARD: Too much for salubrity, sobriety, lucidity, benignity, serendipity, propriety, dignity, gentility, congruity, nobility, magnanimity, integrity, generosity and so on. This is where native intelligence and communal sensitivity coincide.

MARK: I have chosen not to tell acquaintances of this happening as I have no wish to invoke pity, sympathy or such that would only serve to strengthen the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’ of same. Two ‘selves’ live in totally different worlds so any sharing (of fear, grief, love) is not actually possible anyway! I have never before felt so at ease with aloneness (engendered by the gradual falling away of the shared beliefs of the ‘real’ world).

RICHARD: Aye, when loneliness ends, and one stands on one’s own two feet, this independence is a relief ... yet there is more. Even aloneness can end. Where you wrote (Part One) that ‘all I can do is proceed, with pure intent, to continue to nibble away at ‘me’, I can only recommend proceeding with all dispatch. When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ entirety, the separative entity’s isolation disappears too ... and an actual intimacy emerges that beggars comparison. This is because a person’s isolation is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘me’, taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be ... this sense of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration. Therefore I am never alone, for there is no separation; there is only actual intimacy. Whereas ‘I’, out of loneliness, attempt to bridge the separation between ‘myself’ and others similarly afflicted with ‘being’, via emotions – be it affection, love, pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion – to induce an artificial intimacy. The problem with emotion is that it is fickle; one can switch it on and off. A person can be said to be generous with their love ... or parsimonious. Such illusory intimacy is unreliable, dependent upon predilection, mood and receptivity. Actual intimacy – the direct experience of the other – is ever-constant; it is not in the control of a wayward ego or a compliant soul. It cannot be switched on or off, given or withheld. It is not ‘mine’, it is simply here, all of the time.

‘I’ am the sole cause of the tried and failed systems being considered essential if humans are to have peace on earth. ‘I’ am the arch-villain in this world-wide scenario ... ‘me’ and billions of other ‘me’s. Solutions and cures are not necessary when the cause is eradicated. Without ‘me’ there is no problem to be solved. However, what initially stands in the way of implementing these words, translating them into action, is the fear that one will become an outcast. The whole thrust of ‘humanity’ is to foster the sense of belonging ... it is a large part of one’s social identity. One automatically feels that by no longer belonging one will live in isolation. Nothing could be further from the truth, because this is a feeling, not a fact. The fact of being on one’s own is vastly different from the feeling of being isolated ... and when one has found intimacy the need to belong has become absurd. Besides, the sense of belonging is a dangerous illusion. Losing oneself in the crowd renders one susceptible to not only group highs but to mass hysteria ... and mob riots. Just as marital disharmony can lead to domestic violence, so too can neighbourhood disputes lead to civil unrest and communal violence. International riots are called war. So much for belonging!

With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ ... a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality ... and I have always been here like this ... so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety ... a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions.

RESPONDENT: 3. I can analyse my past and other peoples’ experiences. This is a scientific approach to analysing myself, or my life (not a ‘real time’ analysis).

RICHARD: Being aware of ‘other people’s experience’ is very helpful ... the point of this Mailing List is to discuss together each others’ experience so as to clarify what oneself understands, or is yet to understand. This is the value of communication: to share experience so that another does not necessarily have to travel down the same-same path and find out for themselves, through repeated trial and error, what others have already discovered.

RESPONDENT: It happens sometimes that the mode (1) and (3) occur simultaneously, as a combination of both my real time alertness and my effort to learn about myself. The analysis happens by itself and I am not the one who is doing it. Then I don’t know what will happen next.

RICHARD: The best ‘discoveries’ are those that happen of their own accord (serendipity) ... virtually anything of merit that happens along the wide and wondrous path to freedom happens of its own accord irregardless of ‘my’ doing. That being said, however, unless one has the pure intent to enable the already always existing perfection (as ascertained in the PCE) from becoming apparent, then these ‘best discoveries’ will never, ever ‘happen of their own accord’.

Or as I oft-times put it: one will never become free of the human condition by sitting in a deck-chair on the patio waiting for the ‘grace of god’ (by whatever name) to descend.

RESPONDENT: Not only that, I don’t even care what will happen next; I enjoy the sequence of unpredictable events, thoughts, emotions and their analysis as long as it lasts.

RICHARD: Hmm ... the ‘I’ that was inside this flesh and blood body most definitely ‘cared what would happen next’. If it were not for ‘him’ and his utter caring, I would not be able to be freely here today typing these words. Which leads back to the initial question: are you ‘paying close attention’ so as to ascertain the basic nature of ‘me’ with the pure intent to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent?

If so, then when ‘that ‘me’ simplifies’ one will see that there is only one thing that ‘I’ can do to remedy the situation. ‘I’ can disappear. Psychological and psychic self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of that purity ascertained in the PCE being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life, which ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. By ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am forever locked-out of being just here in infinite space right now in eternal time.