Actual Freedom – Selected Writings from Richard's Journal

In the middle of town today there is a small gathering of citizens at the local war memorial; a shrine that commemorates those residents who lost their lives in all the wars that this country has been involved in. On this particular occasion these people have come together to pay their respects to the dead of a war some three decades ago in which several locals took part. They have come to remember their fallen comrades and relatives; to honour their memory in this greatest sacrifice a citizen can make for the country they live in. Half-a-dozen veterans, of that specific war which this day commemorates, are at the centre of the small crowd bowing their heads in silent tribute whilst the bugler plays the official lament. It is a moving ceremony for all concerned and the aftermath of war is brought home with the tears of an elderly mother mourning the loss of her young son many years ago. She stands still in the lightly falling rain knowing full well that she will never see him again. She will never see him succeed in his chosen career, see him buying a house, see him getting married, see him having children, see him growing older and becoming a grandparent in turn. All this was cut short on that fateful day so many years ago. It is a solemn scene, one that touches the hearts of all concerned ... and not a moment to be taken lightly.

All around the country, scenes such as this are taking place today. Probably, on any given day somewhere in the world a similar scene, with cultural variations of detail, is also taking place. War is a global predicament; no country is exempt, no person is immune, no environment is excluded, from the ravages of war. It is so common as to be seen as a normal event; like floods and famines, like cyclones and earthquakes, like fire and disease ... in short, one of the many calamities that humans must endure in order to live on this planet. It is argued, however, that something be done to put an end to war … the vagaries of the weather are an inescapable fact of life, but war is caused by humans and thus should be able to be done away with. But it has not happened yet; in spite of thousands of years of trying to live in peace, wars have beset humankind since the beginnings of human life. Treaties, conventions and pacts galore have failed dismally to put in place an effective barrier to the outbreak of hostilities. Nothing, it seems, can save ‘humanity’ from itself. Religions have tried and failed, again and again, exhorting their followers to practice morality and thus live a virtuous life ... to no avail. Paradoxically, Gods are invoked to take part in the wars; they are implored to aid and abet each of the believing sides towards their own victories! Humanitarian ideals notwithstanding, nothing has worked to put an end to war. Something is dangerously amiss in this whole state of affairs.

Something is seriously wrong indeed. War is intrinsic to the nature of ‘humanity’. War is the inevitable outcome of being ‘human’. For wars to come to an end, all people must cease to be ‘human’. As this is a highly unlikely scenario, given the current state of humankind’s development, what can one do as an individual citizen to help put an end to war? Can one do anything at all? Attend futile peace-rallies? Inveigh uselessly against the cupidity of politicians? Vainly participate in communal prayers for peace? Is there nothing constructive one can do? Is the notion of peace on earth just naive idealism? Is it but a dream fostered by the hopeful in order to escape from the reality of life’s most bitter pill? The inhumanity of humankind is legendary, causing many a person to bewail their loss of innocence and pine for the better times that, they believe, must have existed in some Golden Past.

There never was a Golden Past; humankind has never, ever, lived in peace. One has only to look to anthropological studies of ‘primitive cultures’ – especially of tribes discovered during this century – to see that they too had their internal and external squabbles and fights, wars and revenges. They also ruled themselves with authoritarian codes of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ and used – oft-times fierce – socialisation to lure their young into their tribal taboos and rites. Likewise, in current ‘civilised societies’, the same – sometimes draconian – acculturation is used to entice the young into line with the decreed national mores. Nowhere in the history of human settlement anywhere on earth has there been an age in which people lived in peace and harmony and tranquillity. Such a ‘Golden Age’ is only the stuff of myths and legends ... flights of fancy and fantasy designed to appease the apparent hopelessness of people’s current situation. The belief in a fabled past is essentially a traditional way of giving faith to the befuddled masses that all is not irredeemable. Still and all, to live in trusting ignorance is not a useful way of remedying a desperate situation, however wrenching it is to forsake a long-held sentiment.

As for the supposed ‘innocence’ of children ... a cursory study is all that is required to disabuse oneself of the notion that therein lies the genesis of the myth of a ‘Golden Past’. Just watch a three month old baby bellowing its distress; just watch a five year old stamping its foot in a temper tantrum; just watch a ten year old child fighting with its peers for supremacy; just watch what happens at puberty ... where in all this is the fabulous ‘innocence’ with its supposed peace and harmony and tranquillity? The imposition of social mores – moral virtues, ethical values, honourable principles, decent scruples and the like – are essential to curb the instinctive anger and vicious urges that are part and parcel of the essential traits of being ‘human’. To repeat: a ‘Golden Past’ has never existed at any period, or at any stage, of development. To achieve a truly golden age, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease being ‘human’. They must give-up, voluntarily, their precious identities.

As this will never happen en-masse, one must act on one’s own. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nineteen

All through the ages and in all cultures, one basic predicament exemplifies the problem of human relationship: man and woman have never been able to live together in peace and harmony and delight for the twenty-four hours of every day. Each and every person alive today has entered this world the only possible way … one is the progeny of man and woman and the quality of the start of life is in part dependent upon the quality of the relationship of one’s progenitors. The child can only blindly follow the example – and the precepts – bequeathed with love and compassion by the parents. What I have done has been an investigation and an exploration; an uncovering and a discovering of the problems which have tormented both genders … difficulties which were seemingly set in concrete and not to be disputed. I could not and would not accept the status-quo. I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker – let alone a quarrel – then the universe was indeed a sick joke. This appalling prognosis I was patently incapable of believing. <...>

It will be seen that the writing is both heretical and iconoclastic … a fact that I make no apology for. The wars and rapes and murders and tortures and corruptions and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that afflict this globe are far too serious a matter to deal with for me to spend time in mincing words. The Divine ‘Beings’ have been peddling their snake oil for centuries to no avail. Their time has come to either put up or shut up … how much longer than these thousands of years do peoples need to further test the efficaciousness of their failed Divine Message? If Love Agapé and Divine Compassion, for example, were the way to go, then there would already be global peace, as they have had two to three thousand years to demonstrate their effectiveness as being the ultimate solution. There is no ‘Peace On Earth’ … nor has there ever been; there has only ever been a truce from time to time between warring parties. To call these periods ‘peacetime’ is to misuse the word and make it mean something it does not. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Introduction

With discovering what I actually am, an actual freedom ensues. Love is easily seen as being a puny substitute for actual intimacy. Actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the actuality of people, things and events. No longer distanced from being here now, by the alien entity with its intrinsic pathos, I have no need for love – or Love Agapé – to bridge the gap between ‘me’ and the real world. Nor is there any need for pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion – or Divine Compassion – to combat pathos. Compassion is a sorrowful surrogate for actual benevolence. Actual benevolence is the ingenuous condition of a body innocent of any ‘being’. I wish well upon my fellow humans ... but I am not driven to bring The Truth to humankind with all its eventual appalling atrocities as has happened since time immemorial. I am free from both personal sorrow and Universal Sorrow and am able to be considerate without the emotional and passionate involvement that comes automatically with being an entity. I am thus able to be sensitive without being vulnerable.

And it is a joy to be gainfully employed … work is transformed into play. It is a delight to go to the bank, do the shopping, cook meals, wash clothes, and etcetera. If attacked in the street I can easily defend myself for there is no Diabolical entity within me disguised as Divinity ... an entity driven by the creed of non-violence to respond with a dubious pacifism. Love Agapé and Divine Compassion are the psychic defences of a compliant Self sitting alone in the Eternal Silence that is the Greater Reality or The Truth. As I am benign in character I have no need for any psychological or psychic defences whatsoever ... nor any need for control. It is simple perfection personified.

Finally, a genuine opportunity for peace-on-earth to happen has become possible. Persons anywhere can start the process by deciding to lock-on to pure intent and begin to discover just exactly what I am. Pure intent is born out of the peak experience wherein it is seen, with startling clarity and precision, what I actually am. If one can have a pure consciousness experience momentarily, one can have another ... and another ... and so on. Eventually, with application and diligence, one can have, more or less, continuous peak experience … one’s life has been transformed into a virtual freedom. Altogether, it is vastly better than attending yet another retreat in order to become ‘open and vulnerable’ and ‘loving and compassionate’.

This discovery works ... it delivers! Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eleven

War is never in me, for I am not ‘human’. Nor am I Divine. This is the third alternative ... a condition of actual freedom. In actual freedom I have no furious urges, no instinctive anger, no impulsive rages, no inveterate hostilities, no evil disposition ... no malicious tendencies whatsoever. The blind animal instinctual passions which some neuro-scientists have tentatively located toward the top of the brain-stem in the Substantia Nigra – what is popularly called the ‘reptilian brain’ – have under-gone a radical mutation. I am free to be me; benign and benevolent and beneficial in character. I am a model citizen, fulfilling all the intentions of the idealistic and unattainable moral strictures of The Good: being humane, being philanthropic, being altruistic, being magnanimous, being considerate and so on. All this is achieved in a manner ‘I’ could never foresee, for it comes effortlessly and spontaneously, bypassing virtue completely. This alternate route has never before been discovered anywhere in the history of humankind ... the most one could aspire to was the much-touted Divine Realm, which has always brought bloodshed and suffering in its wake. The way is now clear for that most longed for peace-on-earth to happen. Because it is possible in one human being, the possibility exists for it to be replicated in another ... and another ... and another ... and so on. The most difficult part – discovering the existence of the third alternative – has been accomplished. Now comes the easier part: finding a simpler way for others.

It is possible for a chain-reaction effect to ripple through all the peoples who inhabit this planet; imbuing the populace with peace and prosperity. No longer need people lament the futility of trying to escape from the folly of the ‘Human Condition’. Never again would fear rule the earth; terror would stalk its prey no more ... ... but even if global peace was a long time coming – as is most probable due to stubbornly recalcitrant identities – the most appealing aspect of actual freedom is its instant bestowal of universal peace upon the individual daring enough to go all the way. Thus the reward is immediate and nothing more needs to be done other than to joyfully participate in another person’s voyage of exploration and discovery. In the actual world, one can happily act as a mentor to the other person, freely facilitating their personal quest. It is a life well worth living indeed, for in actual freedom lies not only peace but actual innocence.

One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nineteen

Peace-on-earth has nothing to do with order or disorder ... order implies compliance to domination, be that sovereign either external or internal. ‘Who’ is being ordered ... and by ‘whom’? The extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety does away with those ‘Tried and True’ methods of disciplining the wayward identity. Peace-on-earth is freedom from the ‘Human Condition’ ... a term that refers to the situation that all human beings find themselves in when they emerge here as babies. The term refers to the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures … and there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone. As all humans have a ‘dark side’ to their nature and a ‘light side’, the battle betwixt ‘Good and Evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward identity that lurks deep within the ‘human’ breast … and some semblance of so-called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained … at the point of a gun. Because there is no good or evil in the actual world of sensual delight one then lives freely in the magical paradise, which this verdant earth floating in the infinitude of the universe, actually is. Being here at this moment in time and this place in space is to be living in a fairy-tale-like ambience that is never-ending.

I can heartily recommend committing both psychological and psychic suicide. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirty

Peace-on-earth, although eminently desirable and highly over-due, is not the Summum Bonum of human existence. There exists another world to the real world that peoples currently inhabit. I call it the actual world. Actuality antedates the reality that humankind lives in and is characterised by perfection and purity. When this moment lives one so that one is doing what is happening – instead of ‘me’, as an identity, living in the present – only the actual world exists. The real world has no substance; it exists only in ‘my’ passionate imagination. ‘I’ am a psychological and psychic interloper, and ‘I’ am the sole cause of all the ills of humankind. Without ‘me’ – and billions of other ‘me’s – war would take place no more. Rapacity, cupidity, duplicity, corruption and so on would have no place whatsoever. Nothing would be deliberately polluted for gain any more and in the event of an accidental contamination, no bitter acrimony about it would arise, as people would willingly co-operate to clean up the mishap. This is the inevitable outcome of peace-on-earth and is highly desirable. Nevertheless, there is much more to being alive. Peace-on-earth is not the be all and end all of life.

There is something precious in living itself. Something beyond compare. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Five

Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ as ‘me’ being can make in order to reveal that which is actual. And that which is actual is a clear and clean and pure perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ and ‘me’ are no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ and ‘me’ stand in the way of the clarity and purity of the clean perfection of the actual being apparent. ‘My’ very ‘presence’ prohibits this ever-present perfection being evident. ‘I’ or ‘me’ as ‘being’ prevents the very purity of life, which ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. With ‘my’ demise, this ever-fresh perfection is now manifest.

Peace-on-earth was here in this actual world all the time. Richard’s Articles, This Moment of Being Alive

The time has come, with the world population as large and as cosmopolitan as it is, to discard the psychological ‘will to survive’ – with all its biologically-based inherited savagery - and move on to a new paradigm. This paradigm I call actualism, which works to disempower the instinctual passions one is encumbered with by Blind Nature at birth. One can come upon an actual freedom – the third alternative – which is the actuality that delivers the goods so long yearned for: peace-on-earth. And it delivers here and now.

War is over ... if you want it. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nineteen

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The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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