Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: In the context that the quote was written, I was adapting my oft-repeated phrase ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ to fit in with the subject matter and focus the discussion away from its predictable and self-serving end-point (‘we are all one’). It was also apt as Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was well known for his ‘you are the world’ saying ... which is probably where, years ago, I plagiarised the phrase from anyway.

VINEETO: There was another quote in your correspondence with Alan, where you said: ‘Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen hundreds of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future’. I have taken it simply that ‘me’, my instinctual programming, is as much part of my DNA as it has been the case in every human being on the planet since ‘the beginning of time’.

RICHARD: Yes ... biologically all sentient beings are – very fundamentally only – identical. The survival instinct (fear and aggression and nurture and desire in some form or another) is more or less common to all creatures ... and has been essential to get sentient life to this point in the earth’s history.

VINEETO: Yet I cannot identify with being ‘so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ...’ Do I need to in order to understand something vital? Does this instinctual ancient ‘me’ have something to do with the ‘many’? I do have a hunch that understanding this could be essential.

RICHARD: As I understand it, in the on-going study of genetics the germ cells (the spermatozoa and the ova) have been classified as being of a somewhat different nature to body cells. This has led to speculation that each and every body is nothing but a carrier for the genetic lineage ... that the species, therefore, is more important than you and me or any other body. Now, whilst that theory is just a typically ‘humble’ way of interpreting the data, it did strike me, some years ago, that this genetic memory could very well be the origin of the immortal ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ (as contrasted to ‘I’ as ego who will undergo physical death). Hence it occurred to me that the source of ‘who ‘I’ really am’ could very well be nothing more mysterious than blind nature’s survival software.

I have always had a bent for the practical explanation ... and solution.

VINEETO: Last night serendipity provided the answer to my question to you, which had been going on in my head since I wrote. The experiential answer to ‘I am many and many is me’ presented itself in the form a TV program on International Humanitarian Aid Organizations and their role and accountability. For one and a half hours there was ample footage presented on human suffering and devastation in war, famine, genocide and racial ‘cleansing’ on one side and the helpless, well-intentioned, yet almost useless effort of people in the aid organizations on the other side.

RICHARD: Basically, most people mean well ... it is just that, for all their best intentions, they are hog-tied. No one is to blame.

VINEETO: The presentation was enough to make it utterly and unquestionably clear to me that there is no difference between me and the hundreds of thousands who have suffered and died and those who have, without success or effective change, tried to help – for ‘umpteen hundreds of thousands of years’. On an overwhelming instinctual level ‘I’ am ‘them’ and ‘I’ have had no solution and never will have a solution.

RICHARD: There is no cure to be found in the ‘real world’ ... only never-ending ‘band-aid’ solutions.

VINEETO: The devastation is enormous and the only way ‘out’ is ‘self’-sacrifice.

RICHARD: Yet it is the instinct for survival that got you and me and every other body here in the first place. We peoples living today are the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes ... we are the product of the ‘success story’ of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Is one really going to abandon that which produced one ... that which (apparently) keeps one alive?

Do you recall those conversations we had about loyalty (familial and group loyalty) back when you and I first met ... and what was required to crack that code?

That was chicken-feed compared with this one.

RESPONDENT: Does anybody else describe ‘Enlightenment’ as a turning over in the brain stem?

RICHARD: I have not read of anybody else using that description.

RESPONDENT: Can one feel other’s feelings?

RICHARD: Only if one is a feeling being.

RESPONDENT: Thoughts?

RICHARD: Only if one is a feeling being with developed psychic abilities.

RESPONDENT: From a distance?

RICHARD: In the first instance ... yes, from a near-distance; in the latter instance ... yes, from a far-distance.

RESPONDENT: What do you mean by saying ‘all beings are connected’?

RICHARD: I mean what I say ... for example:

• [Richard]: ‘All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. Feeling threatened or intimidated can result from the obvious cues – the offering of physical violence and/or verbal violence – or from the less obvious ... ‘vibe’ violence (to use a ‘60’s term) and/or psychic violence. Similarly, feeling accepted can occur via the same signals or intimations. Power trips – coercion or manipulation of any kind – whether for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ purposes, are all psychic at root ... the psychic currents are the most effective power plays for they are the most insidious (charisma, for example)’.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘... a normal person does not have an ‘I’ (or have a ‘me’) as they are an ‘I’ (or are a ‘me’) ... and ‘I’ exist inside the body only because all human beings are genetically endowed at conception with a package of instinctual survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) which gives rise to emotions (such as malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) and this emotional and passional package is ‘me’ (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). And irregardless of whether ‘I’, who am the emotional and passional impulses, persuade the body to physically act or not ‘I’ involuntarily transmit emotional and passional vibes (to use a 60’s term) into the human world in particular and the animal world in general: therefore ‘I’ am not harmless even when ‘I’ refrain from inducing the body into physical action ... which is why pacifism (non-violence) is not a viable solution. (...) There is nothing that can stop other sentient beings picking up these vibes and/or picking up what are sometimes called psychic currents. This is because there is an interconnectedness between all the emotional and passional entities – all emotional and passional entities are connected via a psychic web – a network of invisible vibes and currents. This interconnectedness in action is a powerful force – colloquially called ‘energy’ or ‘energies’ – wherein one entity can either seek power over another entity or seek communion with another entity by affective and/or psychic influence. For example, these interconnecting ‘energies’ can be experienced in a group high, a community spirit, a mass hysteria, a communion meeting, a mob riot, a political rally and so on ... it is well known that charismatic leaders ride to power on such ‘energies’.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘It is not just the emotional/ passional ‘vibes’ which constitute the ethereal network but, more insidiously, the psychic currents – a network of intuitive/ affective energies that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ (aka ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’) – which stem from ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) irregardless of conscious intent. There are some peoples, of course, who cultivate these psychic currents such that they do become conscious intent (as in psychic powers)’.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘The colloquialism ‘vibes’ does not refer to body-language but to the affective feelings and gained currency in the ‘sixties (as in ‘I can feel your pain’ or ‘I can feel your anger’ and so on) – even the military are well aware of this as I had it impressed upon me, prior to going to war in my youth, that fear is contagious and can spread like wildfire if unchecked – and another example is being in the presence of an enlightened being (known as ‘Darshan’ in the Indian tradition) so as to be bathed in the overwhelming love and compassion such a being radiates.
Yet behind the feelings lie the psychic energies/ currents which emanate from being itself’.

And:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘A question to Richard: What about this psychic web? It seems at odds with the here and now down to earth stuff. Especially when it refers to ‘vibes’ between people who are present. I was taught in psychology classes that the verbal message is only 20 percent of the message, the rest being expression and body language. (...)
• [Richard]: ‘Put succinctly: there is no psychic web in this actual world – the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum – to be at odds with the ‘here and now down to earth stuff’.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘So I understand this to mean that the psychic web is something in the real world as opposed to the actual world and as such has no actual existence outside imagination.
• [Richard]: ‘It has no existence outside of the psyche – which includes the imaginative/ intuitive faculty of course – and whilst the psyche is in situ the psychic currents reign supreme ... albeit behind the scenes, as it were, and most often overlooked/ unnoticed.
Hence my observation regarding them being the most effective power plays’.

Actual Freedom Homepage

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless