Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Flogged Misconceptions

RESPONDENT No. 51: If you are no ‘being’ what are you?

RICHARD: What I am is this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being ... as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. And this is truly wonderful.

RESPONDENT: Pure identification then with the universe. For eleven years, you were identified with the absolute. Now you say ‘I am ...’, you made a shift to the universe, only the subject of identification changed.

RICHARD: Did you not read the question I was responding to? Perhaps if I were to put it this way then: for eleven years, night and day, it was the ‘being’ within the body who identified with ‘The Absolute’ ... whereas what I am, as this flesh and blood body only (sans ‘being’ itself), is this universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being.

As the universe also experiences itself as a cat, a dog, and so on, and so on, what you are saying, in effect, is that every body is identifying themselves with the universe ... which is patently silly (if only because no body needs to identify with what they actually are).

It is this simple: the very stuff of this body (and all bodies) is the very same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe in that it comes out of the ground in the form of the carrots and lettuce and milk and cheese, and whatever else is consumed, in conjunction with the air breathed and the water drunk and the sunlight absorbed.

I am nothing other than that ... that is what I am, literally.

RESPONDENT: Richard, today I gave a new look to actualfreedom website. You are saying: [quote] ‘‘My’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent presence. I have always been here, I realize, it was that ‘I’ only imagined that ‘I’ existed. It was all an emotional play in a fertile imagination ... which was, however, fuelled by an actual hormonal substance triggered off from within the brain-stem because of the instinctual passions bestowed by blind nature. Thus the psyche – the entire affective faculty born of the instincts itself – is wiped out forever and one is finally what one actually is … this thoughtful flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this sensuous world of actual experience. I am this very material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’. [endquote]. You are stating that ‘I have always been here’ and then you say ‘one is finally what one actually is … this thoughtful flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this sensuous world of actual experience’. After the above statements, I should like to ask you: 1) Who is making the statement ‘I have always been here’? Who is this I that always has been here?

RICHARD: It is not a question of ‘who’ is making the statement but rather what ... as in the ‘one is finally *what* one actually is’ (emphasis added) phrasing in the quote you have provided.

RESPONDENT: 2) If (you=A) (‘always have been here’=B) and if ‘(you=A) (are actually ‘this thoughtful flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this sensuous world of actual experience’=C), then follows logically that – this thoughtful flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this sensuous world of actual experience – always has been here. Because if A=B and A=C then follows that B=C. Can you see the nonsense (no sense) of what you are stating?

RICHARD: Why is it ‘nonsense (no sense)’ to report that, as this flesh and blood body only (sans identity in toto), I have been here all along ... all the while there was both the illusion of being an ego-self and the delusion of being a soul-self/spirit-self operating within per favour blind nature’s instinctual passions?

RESPONDENT: 3) In the moment all our body faculties are fuelled by actual hormonal substances and are actual, why then the ‘I’, which also, as you say ‘is fuelled by an actual hormonal substance triggered off from within the brain-stem because of the instinctual passions bestowed by blind nature’, you considered an alien and an imagination?

RICHARD: If you were to re-read what you have quoted (further above) you will see that it is [quote] ‘an emotional play in a fertile imagination’ [endquote] which is fuelled by an actual hormonal substance ... and there is no way that an emotional play in a fertile imagination is, as you make out, actual (as in your ‘and are actual’ conclusion).

To give an obvious example: for about a week, in the early days of being enlightened, I was ‘The Parousia’ and it was not until I met another person who was similarly afflicted that it dawned upon me it was but an emotional play in a fertile imagination ... there was sufficient rationality operating to comprehend there could not be two (simultaneous) manifestations of the ‘Second Coming’.

Incidentally, this other person was far more deluded than I was ... they had manifested the typical stigmata.

RESPONDENT: To your words ‘‘I’ only imagined that ‘I’ existed’ with your logic also thought must be an imagination and delight must be an imagination, because also delight is fuelled by hormonal substances, endorphins or whatever, triggered from parts of the brain which is actual.

RICHARD: If I may point out? It is your logic ... not mine (by and large I leave logic to the logicians).

RESPONDENT: 4) Finally you are saying: ‘I am this very material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’ which is equivalent to ‘I am this very material universe experiencing itself as this thoughtful flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this sensuous world of actual experience’. Is this not one identification with the universe?

RICHARD: No ... and we have already discussed this topic previously:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘If you are no ‘being’ what are you?
• [Richard]: ‘What I am is this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being ... as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. And this is truly wonderful.
• [Respondent]: ‘Pure identification then with the universe. For eleven years, you were identified with the absolute. Now you say ‘I am ...’, you made a shift to the universe, only the subject of identification changed.
• [Richard]: ‘Did you not read the question I was responding to? Perhaps if I were to put it this way then: for eleven years, night and day, it was the ‘being’ within the body who identified with ‘The Absolute’ ... whereas what I am, as this flesh and blood body only (sans ‘being’ itself), is this universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being.
As the universe also experiences itself as a cat, a dog, and so on, and so on, what you are saying, in effect, is that every body is identifying themselves with the universe ... which is patently silly (if only because no body needs to identify with what they actually are).
It is this simple: the very stuff of this body (and all bodies) is the very same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe in that it comes out of the ground in the form of the carrots and lettuce and milk and cheese, and whatever else is consumed, in conjunction with the air breathed and the water drunk and the sunlight absorbed.
I am nothing other than that ... that is what I am, literally. (October 11 2003).

RESPONDENT: Instead like other stating that they are the higher self or Atman and are identified with it, or with the universal consciousness, you have identify your self with the universe. ‘I am the universe ...’ you say.

RICHARD: I say no such thing.

RESPONDENT: If this is not identification what the heck it is?

RICHARD: A misrepresentation on your part, obviously.

RESPONDENT: And all these because of a PCE as you call this state. The other people that identify themselves with Atman Brahma etc also had their PCE’s.

RICHARD: They had no such thing ... there is a vast difference between pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) and altered states of consciousness (ASC’s).

RESPONDENT: Only the object with which you have identify changed, the mechanism is the same.

RICHARD: The ‘mechanism’ is not the same: in a PCE there is a total absence of identity (whereas in an ASC there is only identity).

RESPONDENT: But you can not see it, because you subtly have projected your self in the union with the universe.

RICHARD: The reason I cannot see it is because I have done no such thing.

RESPONDENT: You say you are selfless, but is it so?

RICHARD: It is indeed so.

RESPONDENT: I don’t state that you are a fraud, you are in delusion.

RICHARD: You can, of course, state anything you like ... the stating of it does not miraculously make it so, however.

*

RESPONDENT: You have qualities. In the main page of the actualfreedom website, is written: ‘in this area are miscellaneous corespondents with the DISCOVERER of the method’ so you are something.

RICHARD: You can only be referring to the following (copy-pasted from the main page):

• ‘This website [‘The Third Alternative’] encompasses selections from the writings of the ‘discoverer’ of actual freedom and includes a substantial, wide-ranging correspondence. The journey into the institutionalised insanity of Spiritual Enlightenment and the emergence of actual freedom is clearly described in unambiguous terms’.

RESPONDENT: You are a discoverer ...

RICHARD: The word ‘discoverer’ is put in scare-quotes because I never discovered anything – it was the identity within that did all the work – as well you already know. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘Richard, one sentence attracted my attention in your email. [quote]: ‘I never discovered anything ... the ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul discovered both the actualism method and the wide and wondrous path’. [endquote]. So it follows logically that ...’. (October 11 2003).

Apart from that ... are you really suggesting that discovering something – anything – proves that a flesh and blood body is not ‘self’-less (aka sans ‘self’ in toto)?

RESPONDENT: ... and then you are giving lessons to as to eliminate our social identity.

RICHARD: I am doing no such thing ... this is what I am doing:

• [Richard]: ‘... what I offer is a do-it-yourself method with a proven track-record, plus an unambiguous report of my experience, clear descriptions of life here in this actual world, lucid explanations of how and why, and clarifications of misunderstandings. For an example: I always make it clear that there cannot be happiness without harmlessness ... and there cannot be harmlessness without happiness. What another does with the method, my report, my descriptions, my explanations, and my clarifications is their business, of course.

RESPONDENT: Is this not one illusion and one hypocrisy? Even if you are not aware about it?

RICHARD: As ‘this’ is not happening your queries have no substance.

RESPONDENT: I was few days ago to find actualfreedom.com.au site and got very much interested into learn what Richard and others apparently are experimenting, something beyond enlightenment, as they word it.

RICHARD: I am pleased to see that you comprehend this salient point very early in the piece ... it saves a lot of explaining.

RESPONDENT: Well, I don’t know if I am understanding it ... this is why I need to ask some questions (which I do). Intellectually, yes: I think I am grasping some of what you affirm. I’ll explore these concepts a bit more, if you don’t mind, through question and answer. You are being very kind to answer me; much thanks.

RICHARD: However it is, that you comprehend an actual freedom being beyond enlightenment, is already a big plus ... there are more than a few people who prefer to see no distinction.

RESPONDENT: Richard, although I can easily understand what you mean by giving up the Self (God, or Universal Presence, no matter the name) ...

RICHARD: If I may interject in order to clarify? I did not ‘give up the Self (God, or Universal Presence, no matter the name)’ at all: when the identity in toto (both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ‘self’-immolated ‘the Self (God, or Universal Presence, no matter the name)’ vanished without a trace.

Ergo: ‘the Self (God, or Universal Presence, no matter the name)’ was identity writ large (‘self’-‘Self’ aggrandisement).

RESPONDENT: ... I still don’t see how when there’s no ‘me’ plus no Self, how you can think of yourself as Richard, like you do. How a [flesh and blood] body by itself has sense of entity?

RICHARD: As there is no ‘sense of entity’ extant I am unable answer your query.

RESPONDENT: How can [it] think?

RICHARD: This flesh and blood brain thinks of its own accord ... it is what the human brain is very good at doing (especially where there is no entity in there trying to run the show).

RESPONDENT: Is not this phenomena of a consciousness arising from a ‘body’ and remaining localized there, pointing to some kind of ‘me’ – or ‘I’ – again?

RICHARD: Not an apperceptive consciousness ... no.

RESPONDENT: In other words, to me, what makes sense as ‘beyond enlightenment’, or beyond Self, is a complete void of consciousness ...

RICHARD: Whereas it makes no sense to me whatsoever – no consciousness means no awareness – as a person in a coma or anaesthetised, being examples of someone ‘completely void of consciousness’ could not write e-mails to you.

Just the same as a person in Samadhi or Dhyana or any other cataleptic trance state cannot do so either.

*

RESPONDENT: How you Know (capital) you are not again into another suggestion game (self hypnosis), a game of ‘imagining actual freedom’ and so?

RICHARD: The intimate knowing (no capital) of direct experiencing: this actual world is so perfect that nothing ‘dirty’ can get in.

RESPONDENT: Where is (in the world or anywhere) the dirty stuff that can not get in?

RICHARD: In the human psyche ... there is no malice or sorrow here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: And: what is ‘in’, in of what?

RICHARD: For a person living in the ‘real world’ this actual world is as if it were another dimension ... it is the identity that cannot ‘get in’. It is but a manner of speaking, of course, as no ‘getting in’ ever occurs: when identity ceases to exist this actual world becomes apparent in all its pristine abundance. It was/is already always just here right now irregardless.

RESPONDENT: When identity ceases to exist what remains to gather any experience of itself? Some ‘Richard’?

RICHARD: This flesh and blood body remains.

RESPONDENT No. 25: I’m one of those who try to figure out what actualism really is and most of all what real living means. What I’ve found until now it’s a lack of practical ‘things’ one must/must not do in order to become free from the human Condition-ing and let’s say some actual methods. Also about the so-called apperception (Richard) I want some details. I suppose it’s something in which you’re both aware of yourself and the outside world ...??

RICHARD: There is nothing ‘so-called’ about apperception ... and apperception reveals that there is no ‘outside world’ (or ‘inside world’): apperception is where the creator of the ‘outside world’ is not extant. Apperception – a clear and clean perception – means that the peace-on-earth which is already always just here right now will be apparent. And the actualism method, first put into action in 1981, is a potent method specifically aimed at experiencing a condition of uninterrupted apperception.

Ask yourself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

To explain: when one first becomes aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure perception of sensum, just before one affectively identifies with all the feeling memories associated with its qualia (the qualities pertaining to the properties of the form) and also before one cognitively recognises the percept (the mental product or result of perception), and this ‘raw sense-datum’ stage of sensational perception is a direct experience of the actual.

Pure perception is at that instant where one converges one’s eyes or ears or nose or tongue or skin on the thing. It is that moment just before one focuses one’s feeling-memory on the object. It is the split-second just as one hedonically subjectifies it ... which is just prior to clamping down on it viscerally and segregating it from pure, conscious existence. Pure perception takes place sensitively just before one starts feeling the percept – and thus thinking about it affectively – which takes place just before one’s feeling-fed mind says: ‘It’s a man’ or: ‘It’s a woman’ or: ‘It’s a steak-burger’ or: ‘It’s a tofu-burger’ ... with all that is implied in this identification and the ramifications that stem from that.

This fluid, soft-focused moment of bare awareness, which is not learned, has never been learned, and never will be learned, could be called an aesthetically sensual regardfulness or a consummate sensorial discernibleness or an exquisitely sensuous distinguishment ... in a word: apperceptiveness.

The word ‘apperception’ literally means: consciousness being conscious of being consciousness ... as distinct from the normal ‘self’-conscious way of perception (‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious).

• [Dictionary Definition]: ‘apperception (n.): the mind’s perception of itself: apperceptive (adj.): of or pertaining to apperception: apperceptiveness (n.): the condition or quality of being apperceptive: ‘apperceptively’ (adv.): the experience of being apperceptive: ‘apperceptivity’: (n.): the capacity to be apperceptive’. [Fr. aperception or mod. L apperceptio(n-) (Liebniz), f. (non-productive) prefix ap- (assim. form of L ad-) + perception].

In that brief scintillating instant of bare awareness, that twinkling sensorium-moment of consciousness being conscious of being consciousness, one apperceives a thing as a nothing-in-particular that is being naught but what-it-is coming from nowhen and going nowhere at all.

Apperception is very much like what one sees with one’s peripheral vision as opposed to the intent focus of normal or central vision. This moment of soft, ungathered sensuosity – apperception – contains a vast understanding, an utter cognisance, that is lost as soon as one adjusts one’s mind to accommodate the feeling-tone and subverts the crystal-clear objectivity into an ontological ‘being’ ... a connotative ‘thing-in-itself’.

In the process of ordinary perception, the apperception step is so fleeting as to be usually unobservable. One has developed the habit of squandering one’s attention on all the remaining steps: feeling the percept; emotionally recognising the qualia; zealously adopting the perception and getting involved in a long string of representative feeling-notions about it. When the original moment of apperception is rapidly passed over it is the purpose of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to accustom one to prolong that moment of apperception – a sensuous awareness bereft of feeling content – so that uninterrupted apperception can eventuate.

Apperception is the clear and direct experiencing of being just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time – sans identity and its feeling-fed realities – and it is a wordless appreciation of being alive and awake on this verdant and azure planet.

Apperception is where one is living in the already always existing peace-on-earth and is where one is blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing: doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus on top of the never-ending perfection of the infinitude which this material universe is.

Apperception is where one is the universe being stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

RESPONDENT: This is a very valuable example of the efficiency the exercise of the world view called actualism ...

RICHARD: I notice that you still are unable to discern the difference between a description of actuality, plus the method whereby actuality may become apparent, and your ‘world view called actualism’.

RESPONDENT: ... specifically, the act of transcending experience, splitting in two, and asking the then imagined self: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

RICHARD: I cannot see where I am suggesting that there be the act of going beyond the range or grasp of experience and/or being above and independent of experience. Furthermore, unless one is desirous of being GOD, there is no need whatsoever to split into two imagined selves ... and have one imagined (transcendent) self ask the other imagined (non-transcendent) self how it is experiencing anything.

RESPONDENT: Which is claimed to be ‘... a potent method specifically aimed at experiencing a condition of uninterrupted apperception’, with apperception being ‘... and (apperception) is a wordless appreciation of being alive and awake on this verdant and azure planet’. Yet despite a history of two decades of practice, upon receipt of the offering, uninterrupted apperception (uninterrupted wordless appreciation) was passed over in favour of 738 word response ...

RICHARD: How can you construe that apperception ‘was passed over’ when there is a very clear explanation that doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus on top of it?

What is it about the word ‘uninterrupted’ that you do not comprehend?

RESPONDENT: ... which must needs be based on ‘focus(ing) one’s feeling-memory on the object’.

RICHARD: Perhaps if you were to re-read the above description you will see that it is based upon sensuous perception (‘the pure perception of sensum’) ... which, of course, occurs prior to ‘one’s feeling memory’ surging into action?

RESPONDENT: Of course there is the escape hatch; ‘Apperception is ... doing nothing: doing something – and that includes thinking’.

RICHARD: Needless is it to say that any conceptualised ‘escape hatch’ can only have its existence somewhere in the recesses of your ‘world view called actualism’?

RESPONDENT: If you were enlightened as you declare for 11 years, that means that you supposed to have lost your self 11 years ago ...

RICHARD: The ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) ... yes: 23 years ago.

RESPONDENT: ... because I never heard about a person being enlightened genuinely and have a self.

RICHARD: Have an ego-self ... indeed not.

RESPONDENT: But the way you write in the web site, you give the impression that you lost your self through actual freedom.

RICHARD: Lost the soul-self/spirit-self (aka ‘the feeler’) ... yes: 12 years ago.

RESPONDENT: That proves that you were not enlightened but in one state of illusion.

RICHARD: It does no such thing.

RESPONDENT: If so, why you continue to say that you were enlightened for 11 years? Are you calling the illusion enlightenment?

RICHARD: No.

*

RESPONDENT: How you know you are not in an altered state of consciousness?

RICHARD: Because of eleven years of experiencing, night and day, what an altered state of consciousness (ASC) really is ... as a living reality.

RESPONDENT: Because the one who is in an altered state of consciousness, does not have any means to know it.

RICHARD: As I am not in an ASC your (borrowed) wisdom has no application.

Actual Freedom Homepage

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Design, Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.