Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘A’ Correspondence

RICHARD: Right on, Bro!

RESPONDENT: You sound like a remarkable man and I would like to ask a question. I have been reading your posts with considerable interest, most of it I had already seen and I was trying to do somewhat the same but I found this gap. The gap between knowing that all sense of identity is a construct, knowing that all joy/pain and happy/sad is ego driven and knowing the internal-I can and should be rid from and actual dissolution. I know that information is having effect but surely not as drastically as described by you so let me ask if something can be done, is it a question of time or simply more reasoning or more information. Also, could you affirm that all this is one happening in the now and that it is possible to experience it like that.

RICHARD: Where you say ‘you sound like a remarkable man’ , if you mean it sincerely I would like to congratulate you for your perspicacity, because I must emphasise that it is vital that you aspire to being a remarkable person yourself ... or else you will not succeed in ridding yourself of your sense of identity. This is very important, because people can put themselves down only too easily as being not good enough, not intelligent enough or not capable enough. I am not gifted or special ... I was born of ordinary parents, was sent to an ordinary state school – receiving an average education until I was fifteen years of age – took an ordinary job and worked for a living. I eventually got married and had four children and bought a house and ... in short, I was relatively normal and did all the expected things. Thus did I live my life for thirty two years according to the ‘tried and true’ methods as laid down by the countless millions of other humans that had lived before me. I tried my best to make their system work to produce the optimum result ... but to no avail. Only then did I make the first and most important movement of my own volition ... I discarded the ‘tried and true’ as being the ‘tried and failed’. (I did say ‘I was relatively normal’ because one thing, and one thing alone, stood out that distinguished me from whomsoever else I met: I wanted to know – as an actuality – just what it was to be a human being here on this planet, as this body, in this life-time.)

Eighteen years ago I looked – actually looked for the first time – at the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the oceans and the sky and the clouds ... and the stars at night ... and just knew that this enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. It was all too big, too enormous, too magnificent and too marvellous to be forever a ‘vale of tears’. I realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that we all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. I felt foolish that I had believed for thirty two years that the wisdom of the world I had inherited – the human world that I was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed me to get in touch with my dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that I had been subject to. Then when I looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice of humankind I could not stop. I knew that I had just devoted myself to the task of setting myself and thus humankind free of impurity and imperfection ... I willingly dedicated my life to this most exemplary cause. It is so delicious to devote oneself whole-heartedly – the ‘boots and all’ approach I called it then – to something so eminently worthwhile as invoking and actualising purity and perfection here on earth.

Purity is an actual condition, intrinsic to the perfection of the infinitude of this universe ... the only one we have. A human being can tap into this purity by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated with sincere attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naive is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless – in short: ingenuous. Naiveté is a much-maligned word, having the common assumption that it implies gullibility. Nevertheless, to be naive means to be simple and unsophisticated. Pride is derived from an intellect inured to naive innocence; to such an intellect, to be guileless appears to be gullible, stupid. In actuality, one has to be gullible to be sophisticated, to be wise in the ways of the real world. The ‘worldly-wise’ realists are not in touch with the purity of innocence; they readily obey the peremptory decrees of the cultured sophisticates. A sample of such decrees are: ‘I didn’t come down in the last shower’, or ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’, or ‘You’ve got to be tough to survive in the real world’, or ‘It’s dog eat dog out there’ ... and so on. Such people are said to have ‘lost their innocence’. Human beings have not ‘lost their innocence’ – they never had it in the first place.

Innocence is something entirely new; it has never existed in human beings before. It is an evolutionary break-through to come upon innocence. It is a mutation of the human mind. Naiveté is a necessary precursor to invoke the condition of innocence. One surely has to be naive to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign, friendly. One needs to be naive to think that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile. To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope, how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic and actual universe.

You write: ‘let me ask if something can be done’ about ridding oneself of the ‘internal-I’. Something can definitely be achieved in regards to the socially-imposed identity ... one can readily do something about it if one is suitably motivated to do so. You write: ‘is it a question of time or simply more reasoning or more information?’ ... to which I say yes to all three, but also something far more important than that. If you have followed what I have written so far, you will see it is a question of attitude, predilection, disposition and intent, because one can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté, as I have said, is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity of the infinitude of this physical universe. To reiterate: this connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity.

To unilaterally relinquish one’s esteemed identity is to go in the face of all received wisdom. Any psychiatrist would readily advise against such a foolish move – they will state that one would fall into a condition of mental and emotional ill-health. They would diagnose that one is likely to suffer from a severe mental disorder – probably ‘Depersonalisation’ and ‘Derealisation’ – with its accompanying anxiety and panic attacks, resulting in the prescribing of anti-psychotropic medication and prolonged psychological counselling. To ‘lose one’s identity’ and to ‘lose contact with reality’ is considered a very serious psychiatric illness indeed. So one must proceed carefully – with the indispensable aid of pure intent – in order to dismantle, step by step, one’s accrued identity and reality. It is important to examine all the beliefs – masquerading as ‘truths’ – that one has accumulated since birth. These beliefs support and encourage the emergence of the much-prized psychological entity inhabiting the psyche of all human beings. This apparent disembowelment is initially resisted, for not only has it never been contemplated before, it also goes against the egocentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric mind-sets that all humans have been endowed with since time immemorial. It is a radical break with the past ... something akin to an evolutionary mutation, so personally seditious is its revolutionary opening gambit.

In order to mutate from the self-centred licentiousness to a self-less sensualism, one must have confidence in the ultimate beneficence of the universe. This confidence – this surety – can be gained from a peak experience, wherein ‘I’, the psychological entity, temporarily ceases to exist and reality becomes actuality. This is called a pure consciousness experience (PCE). Life is briefly seen to be already perfect and innocent ... it is a life-changing experience. One is physically experiencing first-hand, albeit momentarily, this actual world – a spontaneously benevolent world – that antedates the ‘normal’ world. The ‘normal’ world is commonly known as ‘the real world’ or ‘reality’. Repeated peak experiences can be brought about on virtually a daily basis with constant application of pure contemplation of the actual. In pure contemplation, ‘I’, the identity, cease seeing and seeing takes place of its own accord ... this is called apperception, which is defined as ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. Then this actual world – this benign world – that the ‘real world’ was superimposed over, becomes apparent ... except that ‘I’ am not here to experience it.

‘I’ can never be here in this actual world for ‘I’ am an interloper, an alien in psychic possession of the body. ‘I’ do not belong here. All this is impossible to imagine which is why it is essential to be confident that the actual world does exist. This confidence is born out of knowing, which is derived from the PCE in the peak experience, and is an essential ingredient to ensure success. One does not have to generate confidence oneself – as the religions require of one with regard to their blind faith – the purity of the actual world bestows this confidence upon one. The experience of purity is a benefaction. Out of this blessing comes that pure intent, which will consistently guide one through the travails of daily life, gently ushering in an increasing ease and generosity of character. With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more self-less. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric and soul-oriented. Eventually the moment comes wherein something definitive happens, physically, inside the brain and ‘I’ am nevermore. ‘Being’ ceases – it was only a psychic apparition anyway – and malice and sorrow are gone, forever, in one human being.

So yes, you are correct where you say: ‘all this is one happening in the now’ , for only this moment in time and this place in space are actual here and now. This time and place is the arena wherein the infinitude – the eternity and infinity of time and space – of this physical universe becomes apparent. Thus I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. This on-going experience is ambrosial, to say the least. Does all this go some way to explicating just what the ‘gap’ is where you wrote: ‘the gap between knowing that all sense of identity is a construct ... and actual dissolution’ ?

Because yes, it is indeed possible to ‘experience it like that’ ... everyday, for the rest of your life.