Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: In a word: altruism.

RESPONDENT: Is it a physical event? Part of the cause & effect universe?

RICHARD: The following (from the homepage of my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust web site) should be self-explanatory:

• [Richard]: ‘The day finally dawns where the definitive moment of being here, right now, conclusively arrives; something irrevocable takes place and every thing and every body and every event is different, somehow, although the same physically; something immutable occurs and every thing and every body and every event is all-of-a-sudden undeniably actual, in and of itself, as a fact; something irreversible happens and an immaculate perfection and a pristine purity permeates every thing and every body and every event; something has changed forever, although it is as if nothing has happened, except that the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending.
Something has changed, although it is as if nothing has happened ... except that the entire world is a magical fairy-tale-like playground full of incredible joy and delight that is never-ending. ‘My’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent presence. I have always been here, I realise, 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 thinking and reflective flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs, delighting in this very sensual world of actual experience’.

RESPONDENT: What was your last thought/ feeling before the events?

RICHARD: I was musing idly upon the irony that the change in human needs regarding physical survival had wrought such radical transformation in the attitudes toward the environment during the forty five years I had been upon this planet. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘... in the late afternoon of the day before Friday the thirtieth of October 1992, whilst out in an abandoned cow-paddock planting tree seedlings, I was struck by the curious fact that at the beginning of my life I had been engaged in chopping down trees to turn the land into cow-pasture. Now the needs of the situation were sharply reversed and so I paused in my task and stood erect, looking about me in this little sub-tropical valley that the ex-dairy farm was nestled in. As I looked I idly mused upon the irony that the change in human needs regarding physical survival had wrought such radical transformation in the attitudes toward the environment during the forty five years I had been upon this planet. In a flash of a moment a vast understanding of the enormity of the Human Condition transfigured my comfortable comprehension of what it was to be an Enlightened Master ... a Self-Realised Being. My entire affective and cognitive configuration – my highly prized state of awareness – was seen at a glance to be nothing more than a passionate mental construct. In other words, my world fell apart’.

RESPONDENT: By saying ‘counter-frequency thought’ I mean the exactly right thought/words that will someday do the trick. I’m thinking the exactly right thought/idea will be the one that exactly duplicates the function/purpose of the psyche/identity, and because two things cannot occupy the same space, then, ZAP.

RICHARD: Okay ... all I can say is that the notion of ‘frequency’ does not ring any bells for me (meaning I cannot relate to it). As for the right thought/idea (or, rather, realisation/thought): I have been asked, on occasion, about the significance of the realisation that occurred in an abandoned cow-paddock which preceded/triggered the break-through into an actual freedom from the human condition and by now I basically have a multiple-choice answer (you can take your pick).

1. It had no significance whatsoever (what was being realised/thought about at that particular moment merely preceded the event) – hence the wording ‘idly mused’ in my report of the episode – as that moment just happened to be when the culmination of the seminal question asked 5-6 weeks prior (‘what am I in relation to other people?’), which had been kept running in the depths of the psyche so as to effect an experiential answer, came about.
2. It was the trigger which induced the culmination of the seminal question asked 5-6 weeks prior (‘what am I in relation to other people?’) which had been kept running in the depths of the psyche so as to effect an experiential answer – in regards to what I was engaged in at that period of my life – hence the wording, in my report of the event, ‘struck by the curious fact’ regarding what I was engaged in at that particular moment.

As what I was ‘struck by the fact’ of had nothing whatsoever to do with the seminal question then No. 2 seems unlikely ... which leaves No. 1 as being the likely candidate.

In other words, it was the seminal question which delivered the goods – when they were good and ready to be delivered so to speak – and being struck by a fact about something else entirely was simply what was happening when the experiential answer being asked for came about.

However, as the fact which I was struck by was that clearing forests to plant grass was no longer valid – and that clearing grass to plant forests was – it would seem that No. 1 is unlikely ... which leaves No. 3 as the likely candidate.

3. The culmination of the seminal question asked 5-6 weeks prior (‘what am I in relation to other people?’), which had been kept running in the depths of the psyche so as to effect an experiential answer, was that the wisdom of yesteryear was no longer valid (meaning that being an enlightened being had reached its use-by date).

Yet as the ancient wisdom of the spirit-ridden bronze-age peoples never was valid – whereas clearing forest to plant grass was – it would seem that No. 2 is the likely candidate as what I was actually struck by was that it had got to the stage that I did not actually know what the right thing to do was any longer ... meaning that I was, finally, ready and ripe to be the answer (which is what the word ‘experiential’ refers to when all is said and done).

As I said: you can take your pick.

*

RESPONDENT: Does the psyche identify itself or is it identified by ... common sense?

RICHARD: The psyche, being affectively-based, identifies itself intuitively – hence intuition is often held in high esteem – inasmuch as intuitively knowing means instinctively knowing (and not insightfully knowing as it is sometimes used to mean) ... and as one’s native intelligence can barely get a foot in the door to where the instinctual passions hold sway the psyche usually eludes being identified commonsensically.

RESPONDENT: You say it doesn’t end itself, but pushes a button to make it happen. What is that button?

RICHARD: You must be referring to something like this:

• [Richard]: ‘‘I’ do not do the deed itself for an ‘I’ cannot end itself. What ‘I’ can do to bring about this ‘death’ is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously – and with knowledge aforethought (from the PCE) – set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and intentionally, is to press the button which precipitates a momentum – oft-times alarming but always thrilling – that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What one does is that one dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ freely and cheerfully sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological and psychic entities residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is the greatest gift one can bestow upon this body and that body and every body.

The button is, of course, dedication (‘what one does is that one dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself’) and/or devotion. Here is how I put in my previous e-mail:

• [Richard]: ‘... when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so exquisite to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then!

And one of the best ways of ascertaining when one’s commitment has reached 100% is when the peoples one knows start calling one obsessed and slip the word ‘insanity’ into their well-meant advice every now and again.

Despite all the rhetoric 100% commitment is avoided like the plague in the real-world.

*

RESPONDENT: No, I have not experienced this for myself, as you queried. You are the one who experienced the emotionally fabricated nature of your identity that day out in the pasture planting trees.

RICHARD: As nowhere have I ever said that what happened in an abandoned cow-pasture had anything to with a psychic circuit which operates upon a particular frequency it is unreasonable to associate your speculation – let alone your speculative-based hypothesis – with my experience (which is why I have gone into the event in some detail further above).

Just to refresh your memory this it what you wrote:

• Respondent]: ‘I am wondering if the psychic circuit operates at a particular frequency and could be eliminated by introducing a duplicate counter-frequency. Maybe this is what happens when ‘I’ sees it is nothing but an emotional action/fabrication? The exactly accurate thought/realization of what ‘I’ am blows that circuit.

You see, in this is implied, not only that thoughts/realisations operate at frequencies, but that the psyche is a (frequency-based) circuit as well ... and, furthermore, that a cognitive frequency (if there be such a thing) can be calibrated to counteract an affective frequency (if there be such a thing).

Perhaps if I were to put it this way: the psychic facility is an epiphenomenon of the affective faculty (at root the instinctual passions) and thoughts/realisations are what the cognitive faculty does ... and neither the cognitive faculty nor the affective faculty (let alone its epiphenomenal psychic facility) are the means by which actuality becomes apparent. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘It is indeed strange, to the point of being bizarre, that so many persons will turn their backs on the purity of the perfection of being here now – of being fully alive – at this moment in time. Here in this actual world, which is where this body is living anyway, is the peace that everyone says they are searching for. All that is required is that *one comes to one’s senses* – both literally and metaphorically – and spend the rest of one’s life without malice and sorrow. One will be blithe and benign ... that is, carefree and harmless.
It is, of course, a bold step to *forsake lofty thoughts, profound feelings and psychic adumbrations* and enter the actuality of life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself, with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to the patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity indicates a strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences, not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole. [emphasises added].

RESPONDENT: Richard, you wrote: [quote] ‘I see that extracting myself from the Altered State Of Consciousness and finding out an alternative way of living, outside of any psychic consciousness at all, is the optimal choice, a freely selected way to live no matter how macabre and gruesome this transition phase is proceeding.’ (../richard/selectedwriting/sw-asc.htm).

I am intrigued by the words macabre and gruesome ...

The word ‘macabre’ comes from the Old French ‘macabré’

• ‘macabre: grim, gruesome; orig. in ‘dance macabre’ cf. ‘danse macabre’ [dance of macabre = danse macabre]. (Oxford Dictionary).

The following probably best describes its morbid connotation:

• ‘danse macabre: a medieval dance in which a skeleton representing death leads a procession of others to the grave; synonym: dance of death. (UltraLingua English Dictionary).

My use of the word ‘gruesome’ is to convey the sense of a grisly/ghastly morbidness or a macabre preoccupation with death:

• ‘morbid thoughts/details: gruesome, grisly, macabre, hideous, dreadful, horrible, unwholesome.
• ‘a morbid person: death-orientated, death-obsessed, death-fixated’. (Oxford Dictionary).

RESPONDENT: .... [I am intrigued by the words macabre and gruesome] and I’m curious as to which aspect of your new condition made you choose words that are usually (AFAIK) associated with fear, revulsion or horror, even though fear could not have been present.

RICHARD: Yes ... and I have elsewhere used the words ‘mental anguish’ to depict the cranial agitation which went on for 30+ months after the identity who used to inhabit this flesh and blood body expired. Here is an explanation of why:

• [Richard]: ‘... in 1992, when the break-through into this actual world occurred, the following thirty months or so were a time of intense brain agitation – neuronal excitation – which I have described before as being ‘mental anguish’ (not to be confused with emotional anguish) so as to convey the intensity of the cognisance that no body in human history had ever lived this up until now. That this disconcerting perplexity was only cerebral was evidenced by no sweaty palms, no increased heartbeat, no rapid breathing, no palpations in the solar plexus ... none of those things connected with ‘being’. If I were to look in a mirror during that period and ask ‘who am I’ there was no answer – not even ‘the silence that speaks louder than words’ that I had been experiencing for eleven years – yet the answer to ‘what am I’ was patently obvious and undeniable ... I am this body.
The cognitive agitation was in determining the validity of uncharted territory – 5,000 years of recorded history and perhaps 50,000 years of oral tradition made no mention of this dimension of human experience – for I was irreversibly plunked fair-square in the midst of either ‘insanity’ (the psychiatric model) or ‘the unknowable’ (the metaphysical model). In the context of metaphysical human experience this condition is only achievable after physical death: the Buddhists call it ‘Parinirvana’ and the Hindus call it ‘Mahasamadhi’.
This was no ‘dark night of the soul’ – which I knew from 1981 when enlightenment happened – this was something else ... beyond either psychiatric or mystic human experience. It was pretty freaky stuff for a mere boy from the farm – who was he to set himself up to be the final arbiter of human experience – and what was I doing in this territory anyway? What had I become? No self or Self (Depersonalisation)? No reality or Reality (Derealisation)? No feeling or Being (Alexithymia)? No beauty or Truth (Anhedonia)? In the context of physical human experience this was a severe mental disorder ... a psychotic condition according to the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders – fourth edition – the diagnostic criteria used by all Psychiatrists and Psychologists around the world for diagnosing mental disorders). On top of that was the obvious fact that everybody else other than me – especially the revered and respected ‘Great Teachers’ of antiquity – were insane ... which is held to be a classic indication of insanity in itself.
I do consider it so cute that freedom from the human condition is considered a mental disorder’.

RESPONDENT: Was it mainly the shock of being unable to locate any ‘self’ whatsoever?

RICHARD: No (that was expected): it was mainly two things: not having any feelings whatsoever – with the apparent, if erroneous, interpretation of being sociopathic (popularly known as psychopathic) – and having been insane, night and day, for eleven years (along with the intimate comprehension that all the revered wisdom of humankind was lunatic) ... with the corresponding, if erroneous, implication that the current condition might possibly be an even deeper insanity.

There is, of course, a third alternative to either sanity or insanity (insanity is but an extreme form of sanity) ... but that was only determined in hindsight.

RESPONDENT: (Having no answer whatsoever to ‘who am I?’ must be pretty freaky, no matter how much preparation and/or anticipation is involved).

RICHARD: No (that was quite matter-of-fact): it was the stark realisation that nobody – absolutely no person anywhere alive or dead – could possibly help me (as in providing confirmation/affirmation or elucidation/explanation, and so on, through precedent) ... I was truly on my own in this.

For just one example ... in lieu of any other option I booked myself into a local hospital (a small-town hospital) on the weekend when the neuronal excitation first started occurring and the nursing sister on duty – who, incidentally, gave me the expression ‘mental anguish’ – took it upon herself to give me a 10 mg injection of diazepam (which sent me into deep sleep) until a doctor could be located: upon coming to, at 2.00AM, with no change whatsoever in the intensity of the cerebral agitation I (groggily) found the duty doctor, a learned man of Indian heritage, leaning over me and earnestly informing me that it was all to do with kundalini arising and that self-realisation could be imminent ... and gave me a cassette-player with meditative (atonal) music on it and (borrowed) words of wisdom.

Needless is it to say that I booked myself out of the hospital forthwith (at 8.00AM that very morning)?

RESPONDENT: Or was it perhaps the shock of the intense physicality of post-psychic existence?

RICHARD: Actually, an incident occurred much later on which threw a lot of light onto the neuronal excitation itself (and thus to all the useless introspection detailed further above and elsewhere) ... I have described it this way:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... what ‘process’ was going on for (...) thirty months in 1993-4 when you were ‘unstable as all get out’?
• [Richard]: ‘The medical diagnosis was that there was an excess of dopamine in the post-synaptic receptors ... an excitation of the brain cells, which was happening of its own accord irregardless of events, and thus not under voluntary control.
These days I am in agreement with that determination as some considerable light was thrown upon it all a few years ago when I drank three cups of strong coffee (I only drink decaffeinated coffee nowadays) in a two-hour period and it set-off a psychotropic episode lasting 5-6 hours ... an episode indistinguishable from what was occurring in (...) 1993-1994.
I have since found out that caffeine is a chemical cousin to cocaine (chemical not biological) ... and, as a similar episode occurred a couple of years ago as a result of having a dental injection to anaesthetise the jaw, I now make sure the dentist uses a procaine mixture which does not contain adrenaline, which most such mixtures do, because its effect is also psychotropic.
I am also hypersensitive to alcohol ... even a liqueur chocolate has a deleterious effect’.

I go into in far greater detail here:

RESPONDENT: Does the sheer immediacy of the flesh and blood and eyeballs and tongues and sex organs etc seem ‘gruesome’ in its intense physicality after all those years of thinking of oneself as a person and/or a spirit?

RICHARD: No, not at all ... the sheer immediacy of the flesh and blood and eyeballs and tongues and sex organs, etcetera, was a delight (that was the strange part about it all as obviously nothing was actually amiss).

RESPONDENT: Or was it something else?

RICHARD: Yes, put expressively, it was akin to having what is colloquially known as a bad trip on acid (all physical) ... primarily the main symptom were a saturated sensuosity of such brilliance and vividity (as in psychedelic), which satiation can be likened to a television set receiving 4 or 5 channels all at once (inasmuch thought, and thus speech, was unable to keep up with the resultant cacophonic ‘white noise’), that the brain cells themselves were undergoing a non-volitional (chemical) excitation of such a magnitude as to be almost impossible for awareness to sustain itself (as in too much to bear).

It was altogether unpleasant, to say the least.

RESPONDENT: Also, do you think the macabre and gruesome nature of the transition phase is an inevitable consequence of going through psychic disintegration ...

RICHARD: No, not at all ... it was mostly idiosyncratic (pertaining to this flesh and blood body’s physical make-up).

RESPONDENT: ... or did the fact that you had been in an altered state for the preceding 11 years make it more macabre and gruesome than it would be for a ‘normal’ person?

RICHARD: Definitely ... which is why I advise that nobody should attempt to follow ‘my’ footsteps – to go through enlightenment/awakening and beyond – but to be a pioneer instead:

• [Richard]: ‘... all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours, and the Saints and the Sages and the Seers did not have peace-on-earth on their agenda. Obviously someone had to be the first ... and this fact was thrilling to the nth degree. It meant that an actual freedom from the human condition, here on earth in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body had been discovered and could be demonstrated and described ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps and run that full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain.
No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat’.

And (further on in the same e-mail) the modified version/addendum:

• [Richard]: ‘... put succinctly the replication of my condition presently calls for pioneers, people with the necessary derring-do to pilot a one-seater aeroplane by the seat of their pants to this pristine wonderland, and not for those who will follow in their wake in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain.
And nobody knows who that pioneer aviator is until that person actually lands here ... not even me’.

RICHARD: ... when I was first catapulted into an actual freedom from the human condition I was astonished to discover that beauty had disappeared (I had trained as an art teacher and had made a living as a practising artist). Howsoever I was to discover that beauty is but a pale imitation of the purity of the actual.

Even so, it was initially disconcerting (to say the least).

RESPONDENT: If I may interject here? By the time you became actually free you had experienced numerous PCE’s, some of which had come while painting and/or listening to music. If I am not mistaken, you had even produced some of your best work when ‘you’ were absent. Why, then, would it be disconcerting, or even surprising, to find yourself experiencing on a permanent basis something which you had experienced many times before and had actively sought to make permanent?

RICHARD: First and foremost: there was absolutely no precedent – the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago did not have the millions of words now available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site to refer to – and, whilst it is true that ‘his’ best work was produced when ‘he’ was absent (and thus beauty played no part at all), when ‘he’ came out of abeyance and reviewed that art ‘he’, of course, automatically imbued it with beauty ... as did the viewers who bought ‘his’ work (reinforcement).

Second, when a pure consciousness experience (PCE) occurs the contrast with what was immediately prior (everyday normality) is so startling, plus there is so much going on (the !Wow! effect), that it never struck ‘him’ afterwards, when ‘he’ came out of abeyance, that there was no beauty in actuality.

Third, although a PCE is so close to what this flesh and blood body experiences 24/7 as to be virtually identical in every respect it must be borne in mind that it is a temporary experience wherein identity is in abeyance and not extinct and thus, by being latent, can cast an ever-so-slight influence upon what is being experienced ... which influence, and once again through lack of precedence, that identity all those years ago was not aware of.

Last, but not least, as the main focus during ‘his’ eleven years of spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment lay in questioning love and compassion, pacifism and appeasement, timelessness, spacelessness and formlessness, immortality and ‘being’ itself, it simply never occurred to ‘him’ to question beauty ... ‘he’ (unknowingly) took the pristine purity of the actual, which beauty is but a pathetic imitation of, to be beauty itself.

RESPONDENT: Also, if I may ask, how did you experience being disconcerted without the affective faculty?

RICHARD: Just because there are no affections whatsoever it does not mean it is not possible to be (mentally) astonished, astounded, surprised, uncertain, baffled, puzzled, perplexed, nonplussed, and so on, on occasion.

Here is an in-context example:

• [Richard]: ‘... in 1992, when the break-through into this actual world occurred, the following thirty months or so were a time of intense brain agitation – neuronal excitation – which I have described before as being ‘mental anguish’ (not to be confused with emotional anguish) so as to convey the intensity of the cognisance that no body in human history had ever lived this up until now. That this disconcerting perplexity was only cerebral was evidenced by no sweaty palms, no increased heartbeat, no rapid breathing, no palpations in the solar plexus ... none of those things connected with ‘being’. If I were to look in a mirror during that period and ask ‘who am I’ there was no answer – not even ‘the silence that speaks louder than words’ that I had been experiencing for eleven years – yet the answer to ‘what am I’ was patently obvious and undeniable ... I am this body.
The cognitive agitation was in determining the validity of uncharted territory – 5,000 years of recorded history and perhaps 50,000 years of oral tradition made no mention of this dimension of human experience – for I was irreversibly plunked fair-square in the midst of either ‘insanity’ (the psychiatric model) or ‘the unknowable’ (the metaphysical model). In the context of metaphysical human experience this condition is only achievable after physical death: the Buddhists call it ‘Parinirvana’ and the Hindus call it ‘Mahasamadhi’.
This was no ‘dark night of the soul’ – which I knew from 1981 when enlightenment happened – this was something else ... beyond either psychiatric or mystic human experience. It was pretty freaky stuff for a mere boy from the farm – who was he to set himself up to be the final arbiter of human experience – and what was I doing in this territory anyway? What had I become? No self or Self (Depersonalisation)? No reality or Reality (Derealisation)? No feeling or Being (Alexithymia)? No beauty or Truth (Anhedonia)? In the context of physical human experience this was a severe mental disorder ... a psychotic condition according to the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders – fourth edition – the diagnostic criteria used by all Psychiatrists and Psychologists around the world for diagnosing mental disorders). On top of that was the obvious fact that everybody else other than me – especially the revered and respected ‘Great Teachers’ of antiquity – were insane ... which is held to be a classic indication of insanity in itself.
I do consider it so cute that freedom from the human condition is considered a mental disorder’. 

RESPONDENT: I understand that, but I do not yet understand how such perplexity can be experienced as suffering when there is neither physical pain nor affective distress.

RICHARD: I did not experience such perplexity as suffering ... I specifically say it was [quote] ‘disconcerting’ [endquote] in that above passage which I provided as an in-context example, in response to your query about being disconcerted when first freed from the human condition, and in no way mean by that what the word ‘suffering’ can mean. Here is what being disconcerted means to me:

• ‘disconcert: to throw into confusion’. (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary).

Thus that last sentence could have been written like this:

• [example only]: ‘That this confusing perplexity was only cerebral was evidenced by no sweaty palms, no increased heartbeat, no rapid breathing, no palpations in the solar plexus ... none of those things connected with ‘being’. [end example].

As for that intense brain agitation – the neuronal excitation – I have elsewhere described it as [quote] ‘altogether unpleasant’ [endquote]. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘... primarily the main symptom was a saturated sensuosity of such brilliance and vividity (as in psychedelic), which satiation can be likened to a television set receiving 4 or 5 channels all at once (inasmuch thought, and thus speech, was unable to keep up with the resultant cacophonic ‘white noise’), that the brain cells themselves were undergoing a non-volitional (chemical) excitation of such a magnitude as to be almost impossible for awareness to sustain itself (as in too much to bear).
It is altogether unpleasant, to say the least’.

RESPONDENT: You seem to have suffered a lot during that period, yet you also say that actual freedom is the end of all suffering.

RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to take the liberty of replacing one word in your sentence with what I wrote, in response to your query about being disconcerted, it may become more clear? For example:

• [example only]: ‘You seem to have been (mentally) astonished, astounded, surprised, uncertain, baffled, puzzled, perplexed, nonplussed, and so on, a lot during that period, yet you also say that actual freedom is the end of all suffering’. [end example].

RESPONDENT: Is there any real-world analogues that would convey the nature of that suffering?

RICHARD: There are no real-world analogues that could convey the nature of that disconcerting perplexity as it was only cerebral (as evidenced by no sweaty palms, no increased heartbeat, no rapid breathing, no palpations in the solar plexus ... none of those things connected with ‘being’).

The intense brain agitation – the neuronal excitation – is akin to having what is colloquially known as a bad trip on acid (lysergic acid diethylamide).

RESPONDENT: Had you experienced anything like it before?

RICHARD: I had experienced the neuronal excitation before, during some of the many PCE’s, but never to that extent (let alone duration).

RESPONDENT: Are you still able to suffer in that way?

RICHARD: As I now have 13+ years experience, of being a flesh and blood body only, there is no foreseeable reason why such disconcerting perplexity would ever come about again.

Nor for anybody else, either, as the validity of both a virtual and an actual freedom from the human condition is now established.

RESPONDENT: Did your ‘sensational’ event have any of the aspects of my event?

RICHARD: Oh, yes ... for instance I can recall [quote] ‘flashes of light and crackles and pops of sound and feeling of pressure’ [endquote] as well as affective energy [quote] ‘flowing freely like 2 hoses left on the ground (waving and twisting in the space around my head)’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Presumably the 1992 sensational event had somewhat different qualities to it.

RICHARD: Somewhat ... in most respects, though, it was more or less a repeat of the 1982 effects (only more so).

RESPONDENT: What particulars about the two events seem to be significantly different?

RICHARD: Oh, the finality of the 1992 event (as in the finality of death, when someone close dies, as contrasted to their temporary departure).

RESPONDENT: Was passionate altruism as motivating as previously?

RICHARD: Not at the moment, no.

RESPONDENT: Or was disgust with the trap of ‘being’ more to the forefront?

RICHARD: No.

What specifically initiated the final event was the salutary realisation that the received knowledge of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ was but a house of cards ... an ornate edifice built upon shifting sands. Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You answered my question about what the right thought was that caused AF in you. I’m saying because of the seminal question, you had to admit you had been fooling yourself when you realized your enlightened motivation (survive!) to plant trees was no different than your unenlightened motivation (survive!) to plant grass.
• [Richard]: ‘Oh no, planting grass really was the right thing to do all those years ago – it is only modern-day peoples who castigate the pioneers for doing what was right then – just as planting trees is the right thing to do nowadays ... what is the right thing to do, in any era, changes into another right thing to do as changes caused by doing the previous right thing happen.
What I really realised, at that moment and in that context, was that I no longer knew what the right thing to do was anymore ... and at that moment I was, finally, ripe and ready to be what I actually am’.

Of course, the situation and circumstances (cutting down long grass in an abandoned cow-paddock preparatory to planting trees) were peculiar to me and my context at that time and had I been some other person in some other context I could very well have been washing the dishes, for example, or riding a bicycle.

And had I been some other person in some other context the salutary realisation would have been different too ... meaning that only the particular person can know what they must do – and they will not know what that is until it happens – and when they do know what to do it will be too late to stop the happening.

Hence all the procrastination – it means the end of ‘me’ – because it can, and will, happen just here right now.

*

RESPONDENT: I ask because I am wondering if there are myriad types of events or they follow a certain pattern.

RICHARD: Over the eleven years (1981-1992) I heard about/read of numerous accounts of similar events to the 1981 incident ... but none even vaguely like the 1992 incident (either before or since).

RESPONDENT: What in particular stands out as entirely unique to the 1992 event that makes you confident that it was unknown to all other humans?

RICHARD: The resultant complete absence, and markedly so, of the entire affective faculty/the identity in toto.

RESPONDENT: I have read your statements regarding the lack ‘psychic footprints’ as proof of the uniqueness of your state.

RICHARD: That is how I can personally know that, prior to 1992, no one else had ever gone beyond spiritual enlightenment/mystical awakenment.

RESPONDENT: Is it the sudden lack of basic survival drives and emotions?

RICHARD: Yes, upon an actual freedom from the human condition one has no instinctual urges, drives, or impulses at all – the biological imperative is null and void – nor any emotions/ passions whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: What other specifics are unique to Richard?

RICHARD: Presuming you mean unique to an actual freedom from the human condition, and not what is idiosyncratic to this flesh and blood body, the main characteristics are delineated at the following link:

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RICHARD: In essence what remained [after the 1981 ego-death event], as is the case with any spiritually enlightened/mystically awakened being, was the rudimentary animal ‘self’ (an inchoate affective presence, an embryonic feeler, an incipient intuiter), which virtually all sentient beings are per favour blind nature’s rough and ready survival software hereditarily endowed at conception, aggrandised like all get-out.

RESPONDENT: Presumably, in spite of the ‘aggrandising’, it took you 11 years to get what was happening sufficiently to do something about it.

RICHARD: I got what was happening after about six years (...) Somewhere around 1989-90 it increasingly dawned upon me that I was being dilatory – putting-off going that extra step – for a number of reasons ... the main one being that it was all uncharted territory/untraversed terrain. ‘Twas no little thing to do, to venture where none had gone before, and the apprehension was considerable.

RESPONDENT: I fully appreciate the ‘daring to go where no one had gone before’.

RICHARD: Your next sentence gives the lie to what you are professing to be appreciating in such a manner.

RESPONDENT: I think that you are mistaken about the singularity of your journey.

RICHARD: I have travelled the country – and overseas – talking with many and varied peoples from all walks of life; I have been watching television, videos, films, whatever media is available; I have been reading about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers (and latterly on the internet) for twenty four years now, for information on an actual freedom from the human condition, but to no avail. If you could provide web page links, book titles, magazine articles, newspaper reports, manuscripts, pamphlets, brochures or whatever it is that you are privy to, wherein the words of the people can be found who have written about being actually free from the human condition, I would be most pleased.

We could compare notes, as it were, so as to determine what is idiosyncratic, and what is species specific, and thus advance human knowledge.

RESPONDENT: But that doesn’t discount the daring in the least.

RICHARD: To venture into uncharted territory/untraversed terrain, where none have gone before, is distinctly different to setting off with a guide-book/travel-guide, maps/charts, compass bearings/points of reference, recommended route options/warnings of possible dangers, and the sure knowledge, from having had some form of interactive correspondence with them, that another human being is alive and well at one’s intended destination.

RESPONDENT: Taking your first sky-diving jump isn’t much easier just because others have gone before.

RICHARD: As no others had gone before, into the uncharted territory/untraversed terrain beyond spiritual enlightenment/mystical awakenment, your analogy to what Mr. Fauste Veranzio made possible about 500 years ago has no application to what is being discussed ... to wit: one of the reasons (the main one) why the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago was dilatory, for a couple of years, after getting what was happening regarding what remained after the 1981 ego-death event sufficiently to do something about it.

RESPONDENT: The departure from the general consensus and the human condition is as radical as a person can get.

RICHARD: Aye, and as no such radical departure had ever been made before it was no little thing, for the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago, to do ... the apprehension was considerable.

RESPONDENT: I get the heebie jeebies just contemplating it.

RICHARD: Sure ... now multiply same by, say, a factor of ten and you may very well gain that full appreciation this time around. 

RESPONDENT: Richard, you wrote [quote] ‘Becoming free of the human condition is a physiological occurrence, centred at the nape of the neck (the top of the brain-stem/ base of the brain), wherein the ‘lizard-brain’ mutates out of its primeval state ... but if this mutation is not allowed its completion one becomes enlightened’ [endquote]. What do you mean by [quote] ‘but if this mutation is not allowed its completion one becomes enlightened’ [endquote].

RICHARD: What I mean is that if the identity does not allow the process to run its full course an actual freedom from the human condition will be still-born and spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment will ensue (the survival instinct runs deep).

Speaking from personal experience: had the identity in residence in 1981 known what is known nowadays ‘he’ would not have let the process stop halfway through ... by my reckoning it would have all been over in a matter of maybe 6-10 seconds (rather than 6 seconds plus eleven years).

RESPONDENT: Is it physically not possible for some for this mutation to be allowed completion?

RICHARD: No ... that quote is clearly about not allowing the occurrence its completion.

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