Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

Q(1): Something has definitely changed in me.

R: Since that day – what was it now – four days ago?

Q(1): Four days ago, yes. Before I can remember being like ... there was two people inside. It was like ... today I was walking along the beach and it was like: ‘Who I was’ and: ‘Who I was becoming’. There was this – sort of – split personality going on ... like a battle going on inside. Now it’s more like: ‘Who I am now’, which is definitely different to who I am normally ... that is, who I was nine months ago. That has changed, what with all the beliefs I’ve examined, what ever I have dropped ... but I had a glimpse of: ‘What I am’.

R: This has been going on for all the four days?

Q(1): Yes. So now it’s more like: ‘This is what I am’ and: ‘This is who I am’. Does this make any sense to you?

R: It makes a lot of sense to me.

Q(1): So there’s not so much of the battle raging inside of me, the confusion or the ... it feels a lot calmer since then. In the sense that I can make of it.

R: The sense that you make of it?

Q(1): I remember saying when it first happened that I could look back and see what I was thinking about immediately before. Which was ...

R: You described it – that evening when you came here – as being: ‘I could look back and see that I was thinking ‘entity’ thoughts’. And those thoughts, what you call ‘entity’ thoughts, was the entity trying to work out how to get here. And I remember asking you how successful those thoughts were; I also asked you how you would explain to someone else how to effect this change.

Q(1): Yes. Where does one begin.

R: By asking the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. One can get this question going all the time – in the beginning one has to remember to ask it, but eventually the question is running all of the time.

Q(1): It becomes an obsession.

R: Yes. We talked about that, about being fascinated first of all, and then becoming obsessed. First of all one becomes curious – curiosity is inherent – about what it is to be a human being. I call this being interested. When this interest develops into a fascination, one does not have to generate enthusiasm, as is the case when one is merely interested. Fascination pulls one forward. Not many people become fascinated with life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. They eventually lose interest. Fascination makes it easy to investigate. Fascination leads to obsession.

I remember you saying some time ago that you had become obsessed – which I was very pleased to hear. It may initially sound strange, to someone who does not realise what we are talking about, to have as one’s aim becoming obsessed. However, one does not have any success with becoming free from the Human Condition without becoming obsessed. That is what swings one through into ‘something else’.

So would you say that you have come to your senses?

Q(1): Oh yes, much more, these days. That’s what the experience is of: ‘What I am’. Much more realising that ... yes, it is a case of: ‘Coming to my senses’.

R: What I am is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this voice talking, these fingers touching, this brain thinking ... and so on.

Q(1): ‘This brain thinking’ is the most interesting one at the moment. We have experience of the senses – and we can have them heightened – and to understand them as being me is simpler than understanding the thinking processes. Because until I saw that entity thinking ‘entity thoughts’ I couldn’t understand. Before then ...

R: ... you were intricately involved ...

Q(1): Before then it was like ‘what’ I wanted to become, compared with ‘who’ I was leaving behind. At some stage in the middle there was no real ... it was like a split personality.

R: So if we run back through a few of the things that you have experienced over the time that you have been coming here: there was that time where you were driving your car. ... you were changing gears, steering, going up a hill and around a corner. So there was that one. Then there was that time when you went out onto your balcony and there lay perfection and you were stepping through into it – and then you had this thought: ‘What about me’. Then you had your ‘fair-ground’ experience in the park by the beach ... I am trying to remember more that you have told me ...

Q(1): There have been many in my relationship.

R: Ah, yes. Like when you were walking with her along the beach, simply being with another human being, and realising that you did not have to think about what they were thinking or feeling – whether good or bad – it had no affect upon you. It was the experience of being able to be totally with another person – totally intimate – yet not being affected by their ‘trips’. Which is not to be taken to mean that you do not care about the other, it does not mean that you are not considerate, it simply means that you are not investing in ...

Q(1): You are just there ...

R: ... You do not invest in the security of the relationship as in: ‘How are you?’. Or: ‘If you are not feeling good then I am not either’ ... and all the rest of that nonsense.

Q(1): You realise that all that gets in the road ...

R: My word it does! You have two people in sorrow then. This is called empathy, however, and is revered by normal people.

Q(1): Of course, we have stripped love away between us.

R: Yes, well that is very important, seeing the connection between love and sorrow. Empathy – and compassion – come out of sorrow ... they do not have the root word ‘pathos’ in them for nothing..

This is good. Four days ago, eh? I remember it well ... You came in here giggling [Laughter] ... that is the joke, isn’t it? You said: ‘Well, I am doing it!’ You said: ‘I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or not, but it’s happening!’ [More laughter].

Q(1): Did I say that? [laughter].

R: Words to that effect. Well, of course you have no idea ... let us be honest: we are fiddling with the levers and controls ... with the basic wiring of the brain ... the fundamentals of who you are. It is undermining ... it is getting at what underpins everything. You say: ‘Well let’s pull out that pin ... and we will pull out that pin ... and we will shift that bit’. Of course, one wonders will the whole thing collapse? Will one become a gibbering wreck? Will one wind up in a psychiatric ward? Will one run amok in the streets? Will one do something anti-social? Will one wind up in jail? Will wonder become a vegetable? These are the ‘black’ things that we automatically think of when we face an unknown change.

Q(1): The other thing that has been running in me – and it’s been running very strongly – is the phrase: ‘Happy and harmless’. I have been asking myself when was the last time that I was deliberately malicious ... or cause harm to somebody?

R: Spiteful.

Q(1): Or when was the last time that I was unhappy? Miserable? Sad? Just checking those two things out, constantly, made me reflect: ‘My goodness, this thing works!’ [Laughter]. I am actually becoming what I wanted to become. That’s what I thought just before I came here this evening.

R: I remember you talking about some of the negative things that can happen. You spent the best part of one day experiencing panic ... we are looking for some negative things. For as far as I can remember, that was four months ago. Then there was that time you experienced everything as being stark – barren was the word you used.

Q(1): Yes, I thought that I had gone back into that spiritual stuff that I used to experience.

R: You said that in the middle of it that you remembered something that I had written that was important to you. Where I have written about traversing a barren wasteland ... about needing nerves of steel whilst in durance-vile. You realised that back in your spiritual days this was where you would have gone for hope, so as to avoid falling into despair. To come out of despair one must enter into hope. And you said that you were sitting there, up on the hill over-looking the ocean ...

Q(1): ... and I realised that I couldn’t go into hope again.

R: ... couldn’t go into hope again ... and you sat there and realised that you were to simply sit in this starkness, this barrenness, and not move in any direction whatever. Not move psychologically, I mean. That is; emotionally or mentally. That is very, very important – not to move.

Q(1): I just knew that I could not go back into ‘God’ again. Gurus, Masters, Spiritual Leaders ... that’s all to do with living in hope.

R: So, all this has paid off. Then there was that day of panic. I remember you telling me that very expressive phrase once you were in the midst of it: ‘Bugger you, Richard’. [Laughter].

Q(1): Oh, right! I remember that very well. I remember that I came round here and I said: ‘Bugger you, Richard!’ I said: ‘What have you got me into here?’ [More laughter]. Or: ‘What have I got myself into?’.

R: I remember well, you saying that. I thought to myself: ‘Well, that’s good’. Because that indicated to me that something was very strongly happening to you ... no matter how unpleasant. Not that I wish a panic experience upon anyone – but if it happens it is part of life’s experience. That is where the ‘unknown’ of it comes in. That is where you think: ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I doing to myself?’ Or: ‘What is going on?’. I consider that is what lay behind you coming in the other night giggling and saying: ‘I don’t know for sure what’s going on’ – not your exact words, but something similar. The sense I got of it was: ‘I’m not too sure what’s going on, whether this is a good thing or not, but it’s happening!’ But, you are doing it.

Q(1): And I remember that it was very much to do with ... like looking at my hand and realising this is the hand of a human being – and a human being obviously lives on this planet. And I could see it like a claw ... I could see ‘chicken-skin’ ... and also that it was getting old ... that this was the end of a 49-year old man ... and that’s it.

R: I can relate to that from seventeen years ago when I first started getting into all this. I too looked at my hand, wondering why I had never seen my before – it had a stark quality to it. Stark is a good word but it unfortunately has negative connotations – for it was seeing stark reality for the first time. I remember being fascinated, despite my qualms, and then one day it shifted through to an actuality in which the magical qualities of the intimacy of directly experiencing the actualness of my hand became apparent.

Q(1): Yes, it is undeniably actual.

R: Undeniable. Yes. One sees the actualness of ... I can not think of a better word for it than that: Actualness.

Q(1): And its ageing, it’s obviously going to die.

R: So that is clear seeing – visually – and you were saying, about a week ago, that you were walking up a stream in the mountains and you could see the trees and the water and the rocks and all the rest of it as the actuality of ‘being here’.

Q(1): Yes, and I have had experiences of that elsewhere – at a cafe, on the beach, or anywhere. It took the mystique out of nature.

R: It is important to strip the mystique away from everything. Without the mystique the magical quality of actuality becomes apparent.

Q(1): That it’s actually there is extraordinary.

R: The mystique hides the actual.