Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: But I have been doing nothing else but being honest. I am being factual, down-to-earth, practical and pragmatic. I am being sensible, literal, accurate and authentic. How much more honest can one be?

The Oxford dictionary defines apperception as being ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. It is where ‘I’, the self, cease to function as a perceiver and perception happens of itself. This is known as a ‘pure consciousness experience’ (or PCE for short) and is remarkably obvious during a peak experience. A peak experience is when everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’, the self, have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent.

The self, whilst being real – sometimes very real – is not actual. For many years I mistakenly assumed that words carried a definitive meaning that was common to all peoples speaking the same language ... for example ‘real’ and ‘truth’. But, as different person’s told me things like: ‘That is only your truth’, or: ‘God is real’, I realised that unambiguous words are required. (To a child, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are ‘real’ and ‘true’). Correspondingly I abandoned ‘real’ and ‘true’ in favour of ‘actual’ and ‘fact’, as experience has demonstrated that no one has been able to tell me that their god is actual or that something is only my fact. Therefore this keyboard is actual (these finger-tips feeling it substantiate this) and it is a fact that these printed letters are forming words on the screen (these eyes seeing it validate this). These things are indisputable and verifiable by any body with the requisite sense-organs.

Any sense of self is an identity ... the persistence of identity even into enlightenment is legendary by now: ‘I am God’, ‘I am That’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am Emptiness’, or even just ‘I am’. It is the continuance of identity – ‘I’ – in any way, shape or form that is the ‘spanner in the works’. There is only one thing that ‘I’ can do to remedy the situation. As ‘I’ am only real and not actual, ‘I’ can simply disappear. Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal the fulfilment of the perfection of being here as this body in the world as-it-is at this moment in time. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of the purity of that perfection being apparent ... ‘my’ presence prohibits consummation being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life that ‘I’ am searching for from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart. Nothing could be further from the case.

The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via thought can only ever be illusory states produced from visionary ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is a fertile breeding-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. As for feelings ... one can disregard feelings too, for emotions and passions beget the esoteric, the psychic world of materialisations and apparitions. One can easily become bewitched by the bizarre entities that inhabit the Supernatural Realms; one can become beguiled and enchanted by the promise of the Glory and Glamour and Glitz of the Altered State Of Consciousness ... one will become a victim of that most insidious aspect of vanity: Power and Authority.

So much for thought and feeling – there is this third alternative: Apperception. Apperception is something that brings a facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual.

Apperception, as I said, is the mind’s perception of itself – it is a bare awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ is extirpated. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity (ego, id, self, identity, persona, personality, lower ‘I am’, atman, soul, spirit, or whatever) forever seeking Union with ‘That’, by whatever name (Higher Self, True Self, Real Self, The All, Existence Itself, Consciousness, The Void, Suchness, Isness and so on).

Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is – the actual world – by ‘my’ very presence. Any identity whatsoever is a delusion.

Without ‘me’, the immediate is the ultimate.

RICHARD: The Oxford dictionary defines apperception as being ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. It is where ‘I’, the self, cease to function as a perceiver and perception happens of itself. This is known as a ‘pure consciousness experience’ (or PCE for short) and is remarkably obvious during a peak experience. A peak experience is when everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’, the self, have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent.

RESPONDENT: Very interesting. Okay, so much for the theory. Give me some nuts and bolts. How do I do this while eating a hamburger?

RICHARD: By appreciating the fact that, at this moment of biting into this hamburger, this is the only moment that I am actually alive. All past ‘me’s and all future ‘me’s have no actuality at all. I am only ever here, now. Likewise, all past hamburgers and all future hamburgers do not exist at this moment ... they are either memory or expectation and have no substantial existence. Of all the hamburgers I have ever eaten or will ever eat, only this one actually exists. This hamburger and I – and all that is around and about me at this moment – are it what we are living for. To experience this moment in time and this place in space fully is the whole point of existence. I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being ... and I am biting into a hamburger.

The taste buds on the tongue are relishing the explosion of sensation; the nasal receptors are satisfying their ability to smell the delicious aromas that waft endlessly past; the eyes are delighting in the colours and the form of whatever is in view; the ears are pleasing themselves in being able to hear the sounds of this moment’s happenings; the fingertips are enjoying the touch of the texture of this hamburger; the skin is gratifying itself with the feel of the air all about ... all this and more – the awareness of all this happening – is me at-this-moment.

I do not exist over time or from place to place. I am only ever here now. Any ‘I’ that appears to have a duration is a psychological entity – a cognitive and affective construct – which in no way is substantive. This construct is that intuition of ‘being’ – a ‘presence’ – that one mistakenly thinks and feels oneself to be. 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 ‘I’, taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will ‘be’ ... this sense of continuity, a psychological 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. Everything is immediate and direct. This is apperception. Apperception is when the immediate is experienced as the ultimate.

Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here now. Thus it appears that it is as if nothing has occurred, for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end, is there a middle? There are things happening, but nothing has happened or will happen ... or so it seems. Only this moment exists. This moment has no term, it takes no time at all to occur ... which gives rise to the inaccurate notion that it is timeless. This is an institutionalised delusion, for it stems from the egocentric feeling that ‘I’ am Immortal, that ‘I’ am Eternal.

Apperception – which is the mind’s perception of itself – reveals that this moment is hanging in eternal time ... just as this planet is hanging in infinite space. This moment and this place are in the realm of the infinitude of this actual physical universe. This physical universe is infinite and eternal. It has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go to. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute. I am always here and it is already now.

This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not Eternally Present. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. As one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being, any ‘I’ – always on the look-out for self-aggrandisement – grabs the universe’s eternity for itself. Also, what helps to create the feeling that the present is timeless is that human beings – as an identity – are normally out of this universe’s eternal time. Yet time is as intimate as this body being here now at this moment. It is so intimate that I – as a body only – am not separate from it. Whereas ‘I’, as a human ‘being’, have separated ‘myself’ from eternal time by being an entity. To be an ontological ‘being’ is to mistakenly take this body being here as containing an ‘I’, a psychological or psychic entity. To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally ... as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence. ‘I’ am an illusion; if ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ do exist, then ‘I’ am outside of eternal time. ‘I’ am forever complaining that there is ‘not enough hours in the day’, or ‘I am always running out of time’, or ‘I am always catching up with time’, or ‘I am always behind time’. All this activity is considered ‘normal’, as it is the common experience of humankind.

To be an entity is to be forever locked-out of eternal time. Complete security lies inside eternal time. ‘I’ will never look into eternal time; for ‘me’ eternal time is an enemy to be avoided at all costs. ‘I’ condemn ‘myself’ to the endless creation of grandiose schemes to save my soul; ‘I’ concoct all kinds of fantasies about Other-Worldly Dimensions. ‘I’ have to believe in multitudinous Heavenly Kingdoms wherein ‘I’ can reside as an Immaculate Spirit for all of Eternity. ‘I’ am driven to spin dreams and illusions because ‘I’ refuse to see what lies here on earth ... right under ‘my’ nose, as it were. ‘I’ can never live inside eternal time ... whereas I as this flesh and blood body can only be here now. Inside this body there is no ‘being’ ... nothing psychological or psychic left for ‘I’ am extinct. Time is a blessing, not a curse. I can never be out of time, nor anywhere but here, for I have actualised my destiny ... here on earth and now in time.

Little do people realise that what they are looking for lies just under their nose; the actuality of peace-on-earth is no further away than instantaneously now in time and properly here on this planet in space. It only takes a determination to evince for oneself something infinitely better than that which has been promised but never delivered. It only takes a sincerity of purpose and a pure intent to instigate a beginning of the end of woe and malevolence. It only takes a dedication to the actualisation of freedom to uncover and make apparent the factual perfection that lies open all around for those with the eyes to see. It only takes the devotion of one’s every waking moment to the delightful task of allowing the instant bestowal of individual universal peace at this moment in time ... befittingly here in the ultimate immediacy of this juncture in space.

I am mortal. Mortality is a fact and if one is to be at all exact, one must stick to the facts. To avoid a fact is to avoid involvement ... and there is no greater involvement than being here on earth now, at this point in time. Time and mortality are inextricably linked. Mortality is essential in order to be here, in time. I am glad that I am mortal; if it were not for death, I could not be free to be here. Perennial happiness is only possible because of death and extinction. This physical universe is perfect to the nth degree and I would not presume to change one little bit of it. To live with the fact is to live completely. Nothing is missing, nothing has ever been missing, nor ever will be missing. Life is already complete.

By avoiding death – which is avoiding the fact – ‘I’ am standing in the way of the exquisite purity of being alive. By searching for Eternal Life, ‘I’ shut ‘myself’ off from the perfection of being here. ‘I’ am wasting ‘my’ time in the most insidious way possible; but then again, ‘I’ am by nature cunning and deceitful. ‘I’ will do anything but face the fact of ‘my’ own demise. With ‘my’ psychological ‘death’, however, comes release from the fears of physical death. All of the unnamed terrors surrounding death arise from apprehension as to what will happen to ‘me’ as a ‘being’. I regard death with equanimity; when it happens I will welcome it as I do the oblivion of deep sleep each night. Like sleep, it is an agreeable actual occurrence.

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release.

Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe  it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away – nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning.

I am completely happy to be here, securely inside time and space, eating this hamburger.

RICHARD: Only apperceptive awareness will do the trick.

RESPONDENT: Of course, all of this conceptualising leads absolutely grievously nowhere. Krishnamurti says we must be constantly aware ... so far proven to be a virtual impossibility. Now you say apperceptive awareness will do the trick. Well, buddy, send me a couple of bottles of it, or better yet a life-time supply.

RICHARD: Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to there, along the way to there you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and that it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity.

All this is born only out of pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience gives rise to pure intent. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer.

RESPONDENT: 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 the clean perception of sensum just before one recognises the percept (the mental product or result of perception) and also before one identifies with all the feeling memories associated with its qualia (the qualities pertaining to the properties of the form) and this ‘raw sense-datum’ stage of sensational perception is a direct experience of the actual.

Clear perception is in 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 affectively subjectifies it ... which is just prior to clamping down on it viscerally and segregating it from the rest of 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 heedfulness ... or 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: My ability to understand your claim seems to hinge on my understanding of the word apperception. You claim that the word apperception means ‘seeing the world of people, things and events without the filter of identity’. You wrote about this previously:

[Richard]: ‘The word ‘apperception’ (awareness or consciousness of something) means: (1) ‘The mind’s perception of itself’. Apperceptive awareness – as distinct from perceptive awareness – is drawn from meaning (1) which indicates the brain being aware of itself being conscious ... instead of ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious. That is, awareness happening of its own accord without a ‘thinker’. Mostly peoples are of the borrowed opinion – a belief – that thought itself must stop for an unmediated awareness to occur. This is because they blame only thought for creating the ‘thinker’ – which is ‘I’ as ego – as per standard Eastern Spiritual Philosophy. Of course, when there is no identity in there messing up the works, there are many periods throughout the day wherein thought does not operate at all ... but there is apperception whether there is thinking or not’. [endquote].

I do not see how you got from the first dictionary meaning ‘The mind’s perception of itself’ to ‘without the filter of identity’.

RICHARD: Fair enough ... for starters I do not subscribe to the theory that ‘mind’ is something other than ‘brain’. The mind is the brain in operation: being conscious as in awake (not asleep) and perceiving and thinking and being aware. This neuronal activity – consciousness – is what ‘mind’ is. So when I read the Oxford Dictionary definition I read ‘the brain’s perception of itself’ or ‘consciousness being aware of being conscious’ ... which is all very impersonal.

Secondly, no one else – that I have been able to ascertain through eighteen years of scouring books and talking with people – has been living what I live for twenty four hours a day. Therefore, I can only presume that whoever wrote that definition for apperception had knowledge of pure consciousness experiences, for it is a very apt description, but no on-going experiencing as such that it has resulted in vast bodies of writing. This is all very new in human experience.

RESPONDENT: It seems to me that your identity is still maintained. You are a body sensing and reflecting, and a mind being aware of itself, even when there is no thinking. That awareness, the experience of sensing particular people, things and events, and the reflection on all that – does not all of it define you as a distinct entity to me, where there is also awareness happening of its own accord, and where there is a different set of sense experiences and reflections?

RICHARD: This flesh and blood body called Richard is a distinct physical organism to the flesh and blood body called No. 12. Each flesh and blood body is its own consciousness (there is no universal consciousness) hence each flesh and blood body is its own awareness, its own sensing, its own reflecting and its own ‘making sense’ of its own experience. None of this needs an identity in order for it to happen ... nor need it produce one. It is the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions situated in what is popularly known as the ‘Lizard brain’ – that is the genesis of ‘being’ ... and this identity as a rudimentary animal ‘self’, in human beings, produces ‘me’ as ‘soul’ and ‘I’ as ‘ego’.

RESPONDENT: Are we not discrete identities Richard?

RICHARD: We are discrete physical flesh and blood bodies. The feeling of identity has its origins in the common ancestry of the animal instincts and takes on the appearance of being separate because of being manifest in individual flesh and blood bodies ... hence to desire to regain ‘oneness’ with all sentient beings. ‘I’ am alone and lonely and long for the ‘connection’ that is evidenced in a relationship. When ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ become extinct there is no need – and no capacity – for a relationship. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was hopelessly wrong in his oft-repeated ‘Teaching’: ‘Life is a movement in relationship’. Only a psychological and/or psychic entity needs the connection of relationship in order to create a synthetic intimacy – usually via the bridge of love and compassion – and manifest the delusion that separation has ended. And if human relationship does not produce the desired result, then ‘I’ will project a god or a goddess – a ‘super-friend’ not dissimilar to the imaginary playmates of childhood – to love and be loved by.

RESPONDENT: Your awareness remains associated with your body whilst mine remains associated with mine. As the circumstances change around you surely there is something that remains the same, that defines you as you, and as separate to me. It is that claim of yours to have no identity I was wanting to chip away at, and am wanting to again.

RICHARD: It is the flesh and blood body that remains the same (with due allowance for the aging process) and defines Richard as Richard and you as you. The flesh and blood body’s characteristics (attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on) tend to stay the same ... but characteristics do not necessarily have to define an identity as being a ‘thing-in-itself’.

RESPONDENT: I am not quite sure of some of the things you claim, such as your ego and soul walking out the door, that you are extinct. That’s a bit esoteric for me right now.

RICHARD: Yet if one does not explore the esoteric – all the way – one will never be free from the human conditioning that overlays the human condition. Humanity is steeped into millenniums of esoterica ... it is its very foundation.

RICHARD: To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity.

RESPONDENT: Hello again, Richard, Nobody seems to want to talk about reality on this list, but maybe you will. OK ... take the nose. Your olfactory mucosa contains nerve endings that bind molecules in the air (odorants), which cause depolarisation of sensory neurones, producing electrical impulses that release neuro-transmitters onto inter-neurones, which project axons to other neurones in the brain which receive these electrical impulses. At the brain level, electrically excitable cells are stimulated by these inputs, which can, by various complex mechanisms, read the encoding of different odours so that the brain cells respond differentially to different odorant molecules. So far, there is no consciousness involved. There are reflexes linked to odour that can lead to behaviour without any consciousness. Pure non-conscious neurophysiology. At some level, in human beings, the electrical signals from the olfactory receptors interact with or become part of a mental process called consciousness, and we recognise the familiar perfume of Magnolia trees on a summer evening. Forget that it is a Magnolia tree or even that it is familiar, we are still consciously aware of the odour (it may or may not be pure biology that makes it pleasant as opposed to a stink). If you are aware of the odour, what does that mean? If there is no awareness, then you are like a plant, turning your leaves to the sun ... a purely non-conscious physiological process. You claim ‘awareness’. You called it ‘bare’ awareness. ‘To be the senses as a bare awareness’ you said. What does that mean?

RICHARD: The term ‘bare awareness’ is used by those who study such things as this to refer to raw sensory data that is unmediated. Mr. Bertrand Russell coined the phrase ‘sensedatum’ but it never really took off.

RESPONDENT: At what point do those electrical impulses travelling up your olfactory nerves turn into ‘bare awareness’?

RICHARD: Scientists are unsure ... it depends upon which school one ascribes to. Some tests have shown electrical activity at the source of interchange itself. For example, with the eye, at the back of the eyeball itself. It is further enhanced upon reaching the brain.

RESPONDENT: What precisely does awareness mean in this sense? Are you conscious ?

RICHARD: This body is conscious – as distinct from unconscious – yes.

RESPONDENT: Do you recognise the odour as being a particular odour? Do you sense it as coming from near or far?

RICHARD: There is the ability to distinguish one odour from another and near from far if that is necessary. Mostly it does not matter as curiosity does not feature largely in my life.

RESPONDENT: If you are conscious and you do recognise the odour (not name, just recognise), then what is the mental process going on? Whose mental process is it? Is the mental process going on a quality of your brain?

RICHARD: There is no ‘who’ to have a mental process ... the body is eminently capable of conducting all requisite sensory operations of its own accord. The mental process going on is indeed a ‘quality of the brain’ ... and it does it a whole lot better without an ‘I’ in there interfering with all its petty needs, shoulds, wants and demands. The mental process is integral to the body ... it is an intrinsic operation just like the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the kidneys secreting and so on.

RESPONDENT: Does the odour cause behaviour? Does your awareness of the odour cause intentional behaviour (eg., like going to find out the source of that wonderful perfume)? If so, whose intentionality is it?

RICHARD: It looks as though you are asking if there are agreeable or disagreeable odours ... or likes and dislikes. Yes, this body has certain substances that it experiences as pleasant and unpleasant. Like the taste-buds, for example, which are grouped in a certain configuration which makes some foods ‘delicious’ and others not so pleasant to the point of downright repellent. In normal people, ‘I’ step in and say that ‘I’ like this and ‘I’ hate that ... but it is only the arrangement of the taste-buds themselves. There are four basic receptors – sweet, sour, bitter and salt – which give gustatory quality to the food eaten and are clearly an hereditary trait as taste-blindness is quite widespread. It all has nothing to do with an ‘I’ at all.

RESPONDENT: What do you call the mental process underlying this perception?

RICHARD: Apperception. I take the Oxford Dictionary definition as a starting point: ‘The mind’s perception of itself’. Not an ‘I’ in there perceiving itself operating, but the mind perceiving itself. Unmediated consciousness, in other words.

RESPONDENT: What does it mean to ‘be’ these sensations? Do you ‘be’ a toothache?

RICHARD: Yes, it is a way of describing to those who wish to move from normal everyday reality to the actuality that underlies all apparent phenomenon. Sensations are inherent, and instead of ‘I’ having the sensations, one is the experience of these sensations. Awareness, in other words.

RESPONDENT: If I say I have a toothache, my use of the word ‘have’ is just folk jargon.

RICHARD: If you say so, but I sincerely doubt it. Intellectually you may see the nonsense of there being someone inside the body to ‘have’ these sensations, but such a seeing does nothing to actually dislodge this remarkably persistent identity. That is because it is not just a cognitive entity (psychological) but it basically has an affective (psychic) ontology ... born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth.

RESPONDENT: Of course, the ‘pain’, the perception of pain, is in the brain. There is no actual pain in the tooth, only the inflammatory physiological processes that lead to the neural process that generates electrical impulses in my brain, which manifest in a mental process that we, in English, label as pain. So, leaving trivial semantics aside, what do you mean when you say ‘to be’ these sensations.

RICHARD: When one is asleep – in deep sleep anyway – one is virtually unconscious and there is no awareness of sensation ... which is why there is relief from the pain of an illness by sleeping. So, literally, what one is, is waking consciousness; that is, being conscious of the world of people, things and events. When one is the experience of being conscious – bereft of any identity whatsoever – then this is apperceptive awareness.

RESPONDENT: Most normal people do have an awareness of their own body ... this is a natural consequence of our natural physiology (proprioception and such). But ... this is getting to be to much.

RICHARD: Internal bodily impulses stream from all parts of the body to the brain in something to the order of 160,000 nerve pulses per second. Added to all the sensory data, there is a lot going on in being alive. One can examine all this stuff under a microscope until the cows come home ... yet still the ‘I’ persists. ‘My’ source lies in the brain-stem.

RESPONDENT: OK ... so you got rid of your little inner dialoguing ‘I’. What does that mean?

RICHARD: Peace and harmony due to the absence of animosity and anguish; happiness and harmlessness due to the absence of malice and sorrow; benevolence and benignity due to the absence of fear and aggression; blitheness and gaiety due to the absence of love and compassion ... and so on. It means quite a lot ... in a phrase: peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: What does it mean, then, to be aware without the ‘I’? Are you aware of your body?

RICHARD: No, I am this flesh and blood body ... there is no ‘me’ to have an awareness of ‘my’ body. There is no ownership because the owner is dead ... extinct.

RESPONDENT: Are you aware of your physical separation from the chair you’re sitting on?

RICHARD: This body has a physical distinction from this chair just as this body is distinct from that body ... but there is no psychological distance betwixt an ‘I’ inside this body and the chair – or the ‘I’ inside that body – to cause separation. Here is a direct experience of the actuality of people, things and events.

RESPONDENT: You speak of ‘the most astonishing sense of freedom and release’. That sounds like consciousness. You clearly perceive the ‘sense of freedom’. This is certainly awareness. It is not just generic awareness, it is your awareness.

RICHARD: Actually it is the vast and utterly immeasurable awareness of this very material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. It is the most amazing and wondrous experience possible. I tend to use words like ‘ambrosial’ and ‘magical’ to convey the flavour of it. It is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and fantasies ... it is impossible to conceive, believe or imagine.

RESPONDENT: Furthermore, it is your awareness of your own sensations (emotions?).

RICHARD: There are no emotions – or passions – extant in this body anywhere. Sensations are purely physical and are intrinsically delightful in all there pleasurable sensuality. This is awareness in itself ... not ‘my’ awareness.

RESPONDENT: There you go ... self awareness. Pure neuro-biology. There’s nothing bad about it. Its natural.

RICHARD: If you are talking of what is deemed ‘normal’ ... then, yes it is natural. Fear and aggression and nurture and desire are very natural. After all, blind nature bestowed these instincts upon us when we were born. Killing someone is natural ... therein lies the rub. What I have done is very, very unnatural. I have eliminated the instincts ... I pressed the ‘delete’ button, as it were, for instincts are a software package, not hardware.

However, everyone tells me that you can’t change human nature ... so I must be lying.

RESPONDENT: Self awareness need not imply inner deception. One can be self aware without mistakenly misperceiving one’s self in a dualistic mode. So what does it mean, really, to get rid of the ‘me’?

RICHARD: To not have to be vigilant all the time. One is what is called virtuous without effort as one is automatically harmless ... there is no need for morals whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: Is it really possible?

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: Is it compatible with mental health and social behaviour?

RICHARD: Yes. Salubrity and sociability have not yet existed in human beings ... only a pale and pathetic imitation of the actual

RESPONDENT: Or is it an illusion?

RICHARD: No way. If it were an illusion, then it would not be working so impeccably for the twenty four hours of every day for the last five years ... it is impossible to live an illusion that consistently. If it is, then go for it ... it is an illusion well worth having!

Can you begin to imagine what it is like to live in a world without fear, for example? It is the extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety that results in a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, angst, fear, terror, horror or dread. There is no fear in a flower, a tree, an ashtray, an armchair, a rock ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact.

It is an eminently sensible way to live.

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