Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RESPONDENT: Sounds to me like you are having the sexual time of your life, you and Eve, if this is not that state of Love that you have no need for. Richard, do you Really know where you are?

RICHARD: Yes.

As you have explained to me before that you do not read all the E-Mails that come in you may have missed a post of mine to another on the Mailing List. Perhaps this paragraph may go some way towards making it all clearer:

Have you never been deep in a rain-forest ... or any wilderness, for that matter? Have you ever, as you have travelled deeper and deeper into this other world of natural delight, ever experienced an intensely hushed stillness that is vast and immense yet so simply here? I am not referring to a feeling of awe or reverence or great beauty – to have any emotion or passion at all is to miss the actuality of this moment – nor am I referring to any blissful or euphoric state of being. It is a sensate experience, not an affective state. I am talking about the factual and simple actualness of earthy existence being experienced whilst ambling along without any particular thought in mind ... yet not being mindless either. And then, when a sparkling intimacy occurs, do not the woods take on a fairy-tale-like quality? Is one not in a paradisiacal environment that envelops yet leaves one free? This is the ambience that I speak of. At this magical moment there is no ‘I’ in the head or ‘me’ in the heart ... there is this apperceptive awareness wherein thought can operate freely without the encumbrance of any feelings whatsoever.

It is not my ambience nor yours ... yet it is here for everyone and anyone for the asking ... for the daring to be here as this body only. One does this by stepping out of the real world into this actual world, as this flesh and blood body, leaving your ‘self’ behind ... where ‘you’ belong.

This ambience delivers the goods so longed for through aeons.

IRENE to Peter: Intimacy can only exist between 2 people who are equally honest and dare to own up to their feelings as well as their thoughts, ideas, ideals, dreams, intimations and so forth.

RICHARD: Whereas in an actual freedom, intimacy is not dependent upon cooperation. I experience an actual intimacy – a direct experiencing of the other – twenty four hours of the day irrespective of the other’s honesty, daring ... or moods.

It is an estimable condition to be in!

RESPONDENT: And wrt to your report of actual intimacy. How was it different from your enlightened state. What’s the essential difference?

RICHARD: The essential difference is that, with the absence of the entire affective faculty/identity in toto, there is no separative identity such as to necessitate the (affective) intimacy of union/oneness.

RESPONDENT: I remember you saying it’s an actual physical intimacy. By that what do you mean. Let’s say both of us are in a room at the opposite ends of the room, does the Space between us NOT exist for you?

RICHARD: Space most certainly exists here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: Can you please explain?

RICHARD: As this flesh and blood body only what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body.

That identity (‘I’/‘me’) is forever cut-off from the actual ... from the world as-it-is.

RESPONDENT: I have similar questions about the distinction between ‘feeling intimacy’ and ‘actual intimacy’. Could you define exactly what you mean by those terms – as well as just exactly what you would say is going on when there is a ‘feeling intimacy’?

RICHARD: So as to circumvent coining new words I chose to make a distinct difference between the word ‘actual’ and the word ‘real’ (plus the word ‘fact’ and the word ‘true’) whereas the dictionaries do not: thus when I talk of the actual world, as contrasted to the real world, whilst both words refer to the physical world I am making a distinction in experience.

I usually put it this way: what one is (what not who) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) inside the body means no separation whatsoever – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose.

This entity, or being, residing in the body is forever cut-off from the actual – from the world as-it-is – because its inner world reality is pasted as a veneer over the actual world, thus creating the outer world reality known as the real world, and experiences an affective intimacy (oneness, union, unity, wholeness) wherein the separation is bridged by love and compassion ... instead of an actual intimacy (direct, instant, immediate, absolute) where there is no separation whatsoever.

In other words, no separative identity in the first place means no division exists to be transcended.

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