Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘A’ Correspondence

RICHARD: If the above is read in the context of drawing a distinction between ‘real’ (as in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are real to a child) and ‘actual’ (as in eyes seeing, ears hearing, fingers touching and so on), then the observations are entirely straightforward.

RESPONDENT: Existence is only implied in reality. We can be enlightened about existence using only real inferences.

RICHARD: However, this throws the whole paragraph into a different context ... and throws light onto your use of the word ‘existence’ (another word for God). I am not talking about enlightenment; I am not talking about any god; I am talking of an actual freedom which far surpasses enlightenment or any other altered state of consciousness. The facticity of existence (existence as in being here, not ‘existence’ as in ‘God’) can be experienced via apperception – which is where ‘I’ vacate the scene and there is a direct experience of the actuality of people, things and events. No need for inferences at all. Everything lies open, in plain view, leaving no room – no need – for doubt ... as there is with inferences.

RESPONDENT: Reality itself is a sensual construct. Origin is essence. The essence of reality is existence. Existence, being essence, has no origin. Existence is pure awareness with no delusion of past or imaginary future. It is a ubiquitous cognitive pulse.

RICHARD: Reality is not a ‘sensual construct’ – there is nothing the matter with the senses. It is ‘I’, that psychological parasite inhabiting the body, that constructs a reality over the top of the actuality of the world because ‘I’ view it through ‘my’ eyes, ears, etc. It is ‘I’ who creates an ‘origin’, an ‘essence’, an ‘existence’ that has no origin ... which are just other names for the ‘Uncreated Creator’ ... which is just another way to avoid using the word ‘God’.

The past and the future are neither imaginary or delusory. They do not exist in that they are not actual now, but the past did happen and the future will happen. What makes the past real is the psychological connection via nostalgia and sentimentality. What makes the future real is the psychological investment in it via hope and faith. This provides the basis for making the present real ... instead of actual, which is what this moment in time is. It is ‘I’ who is imaginary or delusory ... and ‘I’ project that onto the ‘unreal’ past and the ‘unreal’ future in order to sustain and perpetuate ‘my’ existence as being the only thing real in a ‘unreal’ world.

Religious/spiritual/mystical/metaphysical people will do almost anything to retain their sense of identity – even to the point of the intellectual dishonesty of denying that people, things and events are actual.

The Hindu and Buddhist Philosophy of ‘Maya’ is a particular case in point.

RESPONDENT: There is no hell in nature; only in our own interpretations of it. Man creates his own hell out of his own ignorance. ‘Nature is not malicious, only subtle’. – Albert Einstein.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... but it is not ignorance that is the problem; it is the persistence of identity. There is no good and evil in the actual world ... they exist only in the human psyche. The generator of the psyche is the ‘I’, the psychological entity within. The chief characteristics of this entity are sorrow and malice, giving rise to sadness, loneliness, misery, grief, depression and suicide and to war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption.

There is one thing that ‘I’ can do, however, to remedy the situation. ‘I’ can disappear. Psychological self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal peace and perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of innocent purity being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits perfection 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 truth. The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via thought can only ever be visionary states produced from utopian 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. They never completely satisfy for they never last ... they have no substance, no intrinsic viability and doubt is never far away. In a valiant attempt to remove doubt, passion can be brought into the search. Passion can produce love.

When ‘I’ experience love ‘I’ feel that life has meaning after all. Some brash souls have attained a state of Love Agapé, thereby believing that they have found the ‘Ultimate Meaning’. They have disseminated their findings to all and sundry down through the ages ... with ruinous results. They have led humankind astray, propelling people into the heights of hope ... before plunging them into the depths of despair, when their prognostications turn out to be invalid. Yet they continue to dish out rays of hope to their desperate believers – the demand for hope by an ever increasing population in despair creates the marketing of ‘feel-good’ enterprises, giving rise to a lucrative market for Spiritual entrepreneurs. Their product is love ... and the feelings that love induces: self-acceptance, self-worth, self-esteem and the feeling of being needed. All these feelings serve to prop up an ailing self ... yet love, however lofty, is fickle and manipulative and ‘I’ must be ever vigilant. ‘I’ consist of a kaleidoscope of emotions and passions and therefore doubt is still not far away. This can hardly be called a satisfactory destination for the quest into finding the meaning of life.

From the vantage point of freedom from ‘I’ – which can be accomplished by a peak experience – a miraculous shift is seen to have occurred. It is a mutation from the self-centred personality to a condition of self-less anonymity ... which is a blessed release from the onerous responsibility of being ‘someone’. No longer self-centred, that last little elusive bit which ‘I’ could not purify ‘myself’ has expired, enabling me to be here. The perfection and purity and peace that is already here, where it has always been, is now available to be fully appreciated by me. That ‘I’, which was always perverting and spoiling every endeavour, is no longer present. ‘I’ was only an illusion, whereas I am actual. I am this body and I am independent and free. I am unable to be swayed by feelings; be they love or hate, hope or despair, despondency or enthusiasm and so on. Nor do I need to be needed by others, so compassion plays no part in my life. The dubious Authority of the noble feelings of Love Agapé, Divine Compassion and Rapturous Bliss are revealed to be pathetic boasting ... and a meagre surrogate for the tranquil intimacy, benevolence and blitheness of the beneficence that is the actual nature of this wondrous universe.

RICHARD: The past did happen and the future will happen ... it is that they are not actual now. Only this moment is actually happening now. However, I was describing the impression that certain people gain when they experience this moment in time as being all there ever has been and will be ... in their own words: ‘The past is not real, the future is not real, only the present is real’. I wrote ‘as if’ because the impression – not the actuality – is that ‘only the present is real’, and because it is a strong impression, it has led people astray for centuries. Time is a fact, not the illusion that those certain people are so wont to say it is.

RESPONDENT: Past and future are mental ‘products’. They have no independent existence of their own .

RICHARD: Past and future are not mental products: the past did happen and the future will happen as an actuality. They do not exist now so the impression, when one experiences being here for the very first time, is as if they never did or never will ... but it is only an impression. This impression is what is the ‘mental product’, not the actuality. And the past, when it was happening, did have an ‘independent existence of its own’; so too with the future, when it happens. Other-wise, how can one plan to answer an E-Mail if it is a ‘mental construct’ only?

It is a question that the Saints and Sages have ducked and weaved around for centuries. Generally they dissemble by issuing a nebulous edict like: ‘The Truth can not be spoken’, or: ‘True Reality is ineffable’, or some such inscrutable profundity.