Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

April 10 2001

RICHARD: This is an opportune time to vitalise any sincere study of actualism with a pertinent observation: life is neither a random, chance event in an otherwise empty and meaningless universe (the materialist experience) nor the deliberate, determined expression of a malicious/loving and sorrowful/compassionate divinity (the spiritualist experience). Rather it is due to the inevitable emergence of its intrinsic character that this physical universe is spontaneously personifying itself as a sensate, reflective and apperceptively aware human being: as such the universe is stunningly conscious of its own infinitude.

To paraphrase/ plagiarise: both materialism (aka western dualism) and spiritualism (aka eastern non-dualism) miss something essential; they have seen and scrutinised what has happened, and in each their own way how it has happened (movingly expressed in trillions of words), but they are shutting their eyes to this which makes human life possible, this which is here to be lived now.

Which means that there is no fundamental significance in regards to people, things and events if humans miss the actuality of this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space whilst being the particular form perpetual matter is organising itself as; for such people remain embedded in either the huge surface crust of everyday reality or the massive subterranean core of Divine Reality.

In actuality it is the magic of the perfection of the purity of the infinitude this physical universe actually is that peoples are unwittingly trying to analyse or subjectify; only when a person eliminates the human condition in its entirety can the factual significance of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, be directly experienced and thus intimately known.

This experiential understanding is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and schemes.

April 15 2001

RICHARD: Here is an informative quote (from ‘The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion’ delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-1902) which could very well have been written yesterday rather than a 100 years ago:

• [quote]: ‘It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments, since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times in the same person; and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provoke. These have their source in another sphere of existence altogether, in the animal and spiritual region of the subject’s being. Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it as it exists, purely by itself, without your favourable or unfavourable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear endued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator’s mind. The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of this fact. It transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc from a corpse-like grey to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole world to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his life. So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they are there, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon non-logical, often on organic conditions. And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts – gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non-logical and beyond our control ... Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world’s materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferently whatever alternating coloured lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in the gallery. Meanwhile the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in indistinguishable combination. Withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant, and the kind of experience we call pathological ensues’. (William James, ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’; New York: The Modern Library, 1929; page 147).

Thus the factual world (the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum) when ‘stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you’, is proposed by this influential writer to be ‘as it exists, purely by itself ... a condition of negativity and deadness ... the whole collection of its things and series of its events [being] without significance, character, expression, or perspective’.

(Yet a pure consciousness experience (PCE) evidences that the actual world, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality, is abounding in vibrant aliveness and sparkling significance).

Needless to say, the factual world is then deemed to be the passive recipient of ‘our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts’ ... specifically ‘the passion of love’ and other ‘pure gifts of the spectator’s mind’ such as ‘fear, indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship’ so as to endue ‘our respective worlds’ with ‘value, interest, or meaning’.

Consequently ‘the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in indistinguishable combination’. Nevertheless, if you ‘withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant, the kind of experience we call pathological ensues’.

Hmm ... ‘pathological’, eh? I do find it cute that the enabling of the already always existing peace-on-earth via an actual freedom from the human condition is considered, to this very day, to be a psychotic disorder.

July 19 2001

RICHARD: As ListBot has advised that they will be closing down all discussion-type mailing lists, as of 06 August 2001, I have been looking around for a new venue for The Actual Freedom Mailing List with the intention to shift sometime in the next couple of weeks. In the last 48 hours, however, the ListBot mailing list service has developed some glitches and the last three E-Mails (numbers 2328, 2329 and 2330), for example, are stuck in the archives featuring a ‘An error has occurred. That message is not available for display’ warning sign.

Consequently, I have shifted The Actual Freedom Mailing List to the service offered by ‘Topica’ and an invitation to all persons currently subscribed to this ListBot service is being sent out at this very moment inviting subscription to The Actual Freedom Mailing List at its new venue. The invitation requires a confirming reply being sent by the recipient so as to ensure that nobody is subscribed against their wishes. Any current subscriber not wanting to shift to Topica simply need do nothing at all and the invitation will languish.

Anybody with outstanding messages not yet replied to are advised to re-send them to the new address (after the confirmation of their subscription reply arrives, of course). As is presently the case, all subscriptions are un-vetted and all posts are un-moderated. The new archives will available to be read on-line at any time at the following URL: www.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read

July 19 2001

Welcome to The [New] Actual Freedom Mailing List.

This is a forum for discussion about an end to malice and sorrow forever and an actual freedom for all peoples. The sincerity of your participation will increase the opportunity for an on-going investigation, for both yourself and anyone else who is genuinely concerned about becoming free of the Human Condition, and thus effecting peace-on-earth in this life-time. Those who are discussing these matters have before them a vital opportunity to partake in the precipitation of humankind’s long-awaited emergence from animosity and anguish into benignity and benevolence. We fellow human beings writing here today are actively engaged in ensuring that the current ‘Savage Ages’ will eventually become a thing of the dreadful past ... so that they will pass into the waste-bin of history like the ‘Dark Ages’ have.

It is not a little thing we are doing.