Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RESPONDENT: This is similar to what I was saying to No. 20 but you use a different term, apperception. Do you understand apperception as different from choiceless awareness?

RICHARD: Oh yes, most definitely ... which is why I choose to call this actual awareness that is my on-going experience ‘apperceptive awareness’. I lived ‘choiceless awareness’ for eleven years, and when I read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1984-1985, I could relate to his use of that phrase.

I have been wondering if we cannot come at explaining the difference between these two expressions using some different phraseology ... we have become bogged down in that run of what you have aptly called ‘never ending goodbye and best wishes message’. Because what I am going to write is that ‘choiceless awareness’ is an affective and sensate apprehension of the world of people, things and events, whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ is a sensate-only apprehension of the world of people, things and events. Both ‘choiceless awareness’ and ‘apperceptive awareness’ are only possible when there is no ‘I’ in the head as the ‘thinker’ ... the ego or self. But ‘choiceless awareness’ is where one experiences the world by feeling out its nature as a ‘me’ in the heart as the ‘feeler’ ... the soul or Self. One is the affective faculties – which is pure being – and there is an oceanic sense of oneness ... a ‘wholeness’. Whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ can only occur when the affective is extinguished entirely ... which means that there is neither an ‘I’ in the head or a ‘me’ in the heart. No self or Self. No identity, no being at all ... no presence whatsoever.

But I have used all those words before, to no avail. So, another approach: literally, I have no feelings – emotions and passions – whatsoever ... and have not had for five years.

This is why I have been diagnosed as ‘alexithymic’ by two accredited psychiatrists ... which is not strictly correct for alexithymia means not able to feel feelings. Other people can see such a person being angry, for example, but he/she will not be aware of this. It is not a case of him/her denying their feelings – or not being in touch with their feelings – but is a morbid condition. It is most common in lobotomised patients.

This is all the result of finding the source of ‘myself’ ... I discovered that ‘I’ was born out of the instincts that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth. This rudimentary self is the root cause of all the malice and sorrow that besets humankind, and to eliminate malice and sorrow ‘I’ had to eliminate the fear and aggression and nurture and desire that this rudimentary self is made up of ... the instincts.

But as this rudimentary self was the instincts – there is no differentiation betwixt the two – then the elimination of one was the elimination of the other. One is the other and the other is one. In fact, with the elimination of the instincts, ‘I’ ceased to exist, period. Gone too is fear and aggression and nurture and desire. As I am devoid of calenture entirely, I can see and understand clearly what happens when one ‘surrenders one’s ego’, or ‘stops thought’, or ‘merges with the cosmos’ ... or whatever phrase is applicable. The questions no one seems to have successfully answered are: What is this ego? Where is it, precisely? What is its function? Where did it come from?

What if we were to say, in order to simplify matters for now, that the ego is nothing more – and nothing less – than the instinctual passionate will to survive codified by the very necessary conscience ... that socialised knowledge of Right and Wrong? What if we were to say that it is located in the forehead in line with the temples just above and between the eyes? What if we were to say that it is the little man/woman who pulls all the levers and presses all the controls ... and fondly considers itself to be vitally important in the scheme of things? What if we were to say that it is born out of the passionate instinct for survival that blind nature endows us with at conception: fear and aggression and nurture and desire? Would this help to clarify anything?

Thus its nature would be that of an emotional and passionate self. Therefore, no one can really ‘surrender their ego’ whilst the affective faculties are still extant ... they can only give up their will. Not for nothing do all scriptures have some equivalent saying to the Western biblical command: ‘Not my will but Thy will, Oh Lord’. This is why obedience, supplication, humility, penitence, entreaty and so on are the requisite demands to be met in order to relinquish the strangle-hold the wilful self has on the psyche. If successful, the wilful self dissolves and mysteriously re-appears as the compliant Self. One is pure spirit. The instinct for survival has triumphed over adversity and one is immortal at last. One views everyday reality through the eyes of beauty and love and beholds great mystery and majesty. This is ‘choiceless awareness’ ... divine obedience.

Whereas I, being autonomous and apperceptively aware, am free to choose whatever.

RESPONDENT: Apperception is awareness without any motive, it is immediate.

RICHARD: I would not say ‘without motive’ ... but it is certainly immediate. It is immediate and direct, unmediated by any feelings whatsoever. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function ... not a self. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the self is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will, is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence ... and has naught to do with Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s disembodied ‘intelligence’.

RESPONDENT: By the way can you go slightly deeper into actualist attention and Buddhist mindfulness in detail please. It would be of great assistance to me.

RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to this:

• [Richard]: ‘... the words ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ simply refer the make-up of the attentiveness being applied ... as distinct from, say, the buddhistic ‘mindfulness’ (which is another ball-game entirely). In other words the focus is upon how identity in toto is standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent just here right now’.

The focus of the buddhistic ‘sati’ – a Pali word referring to mindfulness, self-collectedness, powers of reference and retention – is upon how self is not to be found in the real-world ... as Mr. Gotama the Sakyan makes abundantly clear, for example, to compliant monks in the ‘Anatta-Lakkhana’ Sutta (The Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic, SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66).

Which is why it is another ball-game entirely.

RESPONDENT to No. 14: Now I understand the whole thing about PCE. Osho created situations in which we could get PCE’s and hence have a bench mark to work with. While Richard is asking us to remember a PCE, defined with a description, to take it as a bench mark.

RICHARD: My understanding (I have read about 80-90 ‘Osho’ books), is that Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain ‘created situations’ so that his sannyasins could have the affective oceanic experience of the ‘oneness’ or ‘union’ that epitomises the ‘deathless state’ (gnosis, samadhi, satori and so on) ... not PCE’s. Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain consistently stated that he ‘was not the body’ whereas in a PCE one is clearly this body only ... and in actual freedom death is the end. Finish. In a PCE there is the direct sensate experience of being here – at this place in infinite space – right now in this moment of eternal time ... there is no affective qualities like ‘Euphoria’ or ‘Bliss’ or ‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Rapture’ leading one to the transcendent ‘Goodness’ (‘Love’ and ‘Compassion’) and to the supramundane ‘Truth’ (‘Beauty’ and ‘Wholeness’) where the awesome ‘Sacred and Holy’ reigns in all its miraculous ‘Ineffability’. In a PCE one is now living – as I do – in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the actualness of everything and everyone. We do not live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality.

I am mortal

RESPONDENT to Peter: Dynamic Meditation helped me get the first PCE and other Osho’s meditations helped me get consequent PCE’s. That is a fact, take it or leave it. Based on these experiences and one of Osho’s discourses I read early on made me write the statement that Osho was creating situations for us to have PCE’s.

RICHARD: Now you have caught my attention ... could you post the quote (giving the name of the book and the chapter number that the discourse is in) as I am always keen to read of another’s description of a PCE. I ask this because in the 80-90 books that I read I never came across him describing a PCE ... he consistently described the mystical experiences of being ‘unborn and undying’ in a metaphysical ‘herenow’ ... which is a ‘timeless and spaceless void’ or a ‘formless and deathless emptiness’ wherein reigns an ‘unknowable and immutable presence’ which is an ‘immortal and ceaseless being’ ... and so on. After all, he did dictate his own epitaph to be inscribed on enduring marble: ‘Never Born: Never Died; Only Visited This Planet’ ... did he not?

As I am vitally interested in facilitating the self-less and already always existing physical peace-on-earth to become apparent – and not in narcissistically chasing the self-centred and ‘tried and failed’ metaphysical ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’ – I do appreciate your interest, attention and input into this very important matter. Bringing about an end to all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide is such a fine way to spend a spring day.

Would you not agree?

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