Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RESPONDENT: Here then are last night’s/this morning’s questions. I have written a helluva lot here. I realise it will take a long time to answer them all (guilt/ hope surfaces ... plough on) ... if the universe is experiencing itself through this flesh and blood body ...

RICHARD: If I may interject? The universe experiences itself *as* this flesh and blood body (and the distinction is not trivial).

RESPONDENT: ... and if actual pleasure comes from just being that experience without possession or identity, doesn’t it follow that the end of the flesh and blood body leaves behind something which continues in some way to experience itself (in other forms)?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: And if that, is it not possible to say that in some way ‘I’ continue after the flesh and blood body dies?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: I don’t mean ‘I’ as a psychic or spiritual entity, a ‘realised state’, rather ‘the universe experiencing itself’ continues; ‘the experience of this’ that is actually known remains.

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: Many spiritual teachers say in a similar (although, I don’t know, perhaps a subtly and vitally different) way to you that there is a difference between the spiritual or deeply psychic ‘realisation’ and consequent (and stunningly subtle) false identity, and an actual and real enlightenment where all identity disappears.

RICHARD: Any spiritual teacher who says that [quote] ‘all identity’ [endquote] disappears upon spiritual enlightenment/mystical awakenment is being disingenuous.

RESPONDENT: Could it be that when they have used words that you reject, Self, God and so on ...

RICHARD: I do not reject words such as Self, God and so on ... I lived that/was that, which those words aptly refer to, night and day for eleven years, and found it wanting.

RESPONDENT: ... [Could it be] that sometimes they are referring to the same state as you?

RICHARD: No, it could not be ... not at all.

RESPONDENT: If not, why?

RICHARD: Because of this (for instance):

• [Mr. Tony Parsons]: ‘Everything is generated from unconditional love – all of this is only unconditional love manifesting as a wall or a flower or a candle. This is unconditional love, candle-ing. You are unconditional love, Bill-ing or Joe-ing or whatever (that’s to say, that body/mind is). All of that is generated from a totally liberated unconditional love – which is beyond our normal concept of love, which tends to be needy, which tends to want things and need things. This love is totally radiant; it fills everything. But it also is neutral in the sense that it allows everything. It’s a totally liberated love which allows any manifestation. Nothing can be except in that love, including Hitler, or whichever baddy you have in your head. And certainly awakening is totally beyond just the idea of awareness. Certain people teach that awakening is the seeing that there is no doer; that consciousness is all there is. But there’s something that knows that consciousness is all there is ... is the lover ... is the ultimate ... is what you are’. (‘All There Is’; Tony Parsons; published 2003; ISBN: 0-9533032-2-5).

Or this (for another instance):

• [Mr. Tony Parsons]: ‘This is just about remembering something that maybe we feel we have lost or mislaid. Some people here have remembered – also, quite a lot of people in this room have sensed or glimpsed what they thought was lost. And the nature of what we think is lost is timeless being. It’s totally, utterly simple – the one thing we long for more than anything else is actually totally and utterly simple and immediate and available. And strangely enough, the thing that we long for has never left us. In simple terms, all that happens is that when we are very young children, there is simply being, without a knowing of being; there is simply being. And then someone comes along and says ‘You’re Bill’ or ‘You’re Mary’ – ‘You’re a person’. And in some way or other, the mind – the ‘I’ thought, the identity, the idea that ‘I am a person’ – takes over the energy of being and identifies it as Bill or Mary or whatever. (...) You can close your eyes, if you want to, and sense the energy that you think is ‘you’. It’s like an aliveness ... For some people it’s a sense ‘I exist’ ... But that energy, that sense of ‘you’ being there, is actually not you. That sense of who you think you are – that sense of aliveness and energy – is being; it’s just being. It never came and it never went away – it’s never left you; it’s always been there. You thought it was you – it’s just pure being. It isn’t who you are – it’s what you are. What you are is simply being, presence, life. You are life, life happening, but it doesn’t happen to anyone. Sitting on that chair isn’t happening to you – sitting on that chair is what’s happening, to no one. There’s just being. You are being – you are divine being. And it’s so amazing because wherever you go, there is being. Whatever you apparently do, there is being. Whatever you apparently don’t do, there is being. There always has been being, whatever you’ve apparently done or not done, however unworthy or neurotic or ignorant or selfish you think you are. All of those qualities arise in what you are, which is being. All there is is being’. (‘All There Is’; Tony Parsons; published 2003; ISBN: 0-9533032-2-5).

And this (just in case there still be some ambiguity):

• [Mr. Tony Parsons]: ‘Emotions arise in this body/mind. I have to say that for this body/mind they don’t have the drama, there’s no great charge to them anymore – there is simply an emotion that arises and lives for a few seconds and then is no more’. (‘All There Is’; Tony Parsons; published 2003; ISBN: 0-9533032-2-5).

RESPONDENT: Tony Parsons for example, while pointing to a crucial event in his life (a ASC? a PCE?) ...

RICHARD: An altered state of consciousness (ASC).

RESPONDENT: ... and while using words like enlightenment, liberation, fulfilment, freedom, oneness and so forth, all of which might be evidence of his misguidedness, says that ‘the open secret’ is in fact absolute death of ‘I’.

RICHARD: Oh? How about this, then:

• [Mr. Tony Parsons]: ‘It’s the final step that’s taken ... I mean, most people live their lives without, let’s say, seeking enlightenment. At [physical] death, of course, they find what they’ve always been seeking all their life ...’. [bracketed insertion added from context]. (‘All There Is’; Tony Parsons; published 2003; ISBN: 0-9533032-2-5).

RESPONDENT: I’m not sure that [the end of suffering being previously considered to be only possible after physical death] is true. I’ve found many teachers who claim that the end of suffering is possible now ...

RICHARD: I have already provided four referenced quotes (on Tuesday 14/06/2005 1:19 PM AEST) from one of the teachers you mentioned who clearly said [quote] ‘emotions arise in this body/mind’ [endquote] in the third one ... here is another, even more explicit, one: [Questioner]: ‘When I was five years old, it was so easy. I remember thinking about what would happen when I’m dead and I found myself in this space. Then I wanted to go back to my grandparents, and I came out of the space. There was no fear. [Mr. Tony Parsons]: ‘When this is a living thing, *fear can still arise*, though, because in the end there is no separate island here. Living in oneness there is an at-one-ness with everything, and in everything there can be fear as well’. [emphasis added]. If the continued arousal of emotions in general, and fear in particular, after awakening constitutes an ‘end of suffering’ (editorial note) in your book then there is no way you are going to comprehend just what it is that is on offer on The Actual Freedom Trust web site.

RESPONDENT: (...) in your Tony Parsons quote, there is the idea that here and now there is a ‘oneness’ and a union that surpasseth understanding, and all of that.

RICHARD: Never mind the [quote] ‘idea’ [endquote] you postulate as being in Mr. Tony Parson’s words above ... do you see that one of the many teachers you found explicitly reports that fear can still arise after awakening (despite your assertion they claim that ‘the end of suffering’, albeit a mistranslation of ‘dukkha’, is possible now)?