Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

June 09 2006

RESPONDENT: Richard, I’ve just discovered your website and I found that some of your conversations are so true and real.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list, Young ... that would be because what is being discussed is actual (and not fantastical).

RESPONDENT: I’ve never heard of anyone speaking like this so far.

RICHARD: That would be because an actual freedom from the human condition is entirely new to human experience/ human history.

RESPONDENT: I heard a bit about Osho and Barry Long in the past, but I remain the same as before – confused and rebellious deep down.

RICHARD: That would be because spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment is fantastical (and not actual).

RESPONDENT: I would need some more time to explore further about this actual freedom site.

RICHARD: Okay ... the simplest way to comprehend it all is that, just as the ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) has to die, so as to become spiritually enlightened/ mystically awakened, so too does the soul-self/ spirit-self (aka ‘the feeler’) in order for the flesh and blood body to be actually free from the human condition.

RESPONDENT: My question to you is that a Korean meditation teacher published a book claiming a first ever interview with Jesus Christ in 2000 years. The book is titled ‘Messiah? Oh No!!’. She asked 100 questions about his birth, life, teachings and plans etc.

RICHARD: And here are a few sample answers from that book:

• [quote] ‘It is correct the woman in ‘The Last Supper’ is Mary Magdalene, I gave the greatest human love to Mary Magdalene as a person’.
• [quote] ‘It is correct Mary was a virgin. The father was the Universe itself. Taking the role of sperm is really easy. I was born by the method of self-fertilization’.
• [quote] ‘I never said I was the Messiah on my own but just said Heaven was the Messiah’.
• [quote] ‘In the Gospel of John 14:6 it says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ and here ‘I’ means the Original Nature of the Universe. And I who delivers the Original Nature am the representative of it’.
• [quote] ‘In the wavelength of the Universe something which forms the basis is love. When we see the world through love, we come to realize the ‘wavelength of heaven,’ in other words, the mind of the Universe, which is like the ‘mind of a mother’ in the state of a human being’. [endquotes].

The author of that book states that, through deep meditation, everyone can meet whomever he or she wants.

RESPONDENT: She (Moon Hwa Young) has many foreign disciples and the book will be published in English as well, I guess. According to her, Jesus learned Buddhism and many other teachings at the age of 15 and there was no physical resurrection and he remained single as well. She is claiming to have achieved the highest level of enlightenment possible so far.

RICHARD: She also claims to have visited the (supposedly) man-made planet Herodotus, in the Andromeda galaxy, whose inhabitants sport pointy tails and ears.

RESPONDENT: She teaches ‘Seon-gye’ the perfect energy realm in the Universe. It is the place where Seon-ins, or enlightened Beings, and the Creators, the highest level of Seon-ins reside and govern the Universe!!??

RICHARD: Speaking of levels ... the following is quite explicit:

• [quote] ‘Heaven is the world where people go before they could reach Seongye through training. It is divided into the Upper Heaven, the Middle Heaven and the Lower Heaven: If ones character reached upper class, one goes to the Upper Heaven, if medium class, the Middle Heaven, and if lower class, then the Lower Heaven. The dividing criteria is this: if a person cannot handle even himself, he belongs to the lower class, if a person can handle himself, then medium class, and if a person can handle not only himself but also others, he belongs to the upper class.’ (www.soosunjae.com/Org_Eng/06_01_view.asp?num=2&cp=1&sp=1).

RESPONDENT: It seems to me that there are real war is going on in other spirit worlds as well.

RICHARD: Aye, that is because the spiritual world – the word spiritual means ‘of, pertaining to, or affecting the spirit or soul’ (Oxford Dictionary) – is peopled by the self-same spirit/ soul as the human world is ... just as it is on earth so is it in heaven (or any other after-death realm).

RESPONDENT: I am confused as ever!! Please help. (Please note that English is not my first language).

RICHARD: Here it is in précis form:

1. There are three ways of experiencing the world of people, things and events: 1. sensate (senses); 2. cerebral (thoughts); 3. affective (feelings). The feelings include both the affectionate and desirable emotions/ passions (those that are loving and trusting) and hostile and invidious emotions/ passions (those that are hateful and fearful).
2. All sentient beings are born with instinctual passions like fear and aggression and nurture and desire genetically bestowed by blind nature which give rise to a rudimentary animal ‘self’ – which is ‘being’ itself – that human beings with their ability to think and reflect upon their mortality have transformed into a ‘me’ as soul (a ‘feeler’ in the heart) and an ‘I’ as ego (a ‘thinker’ in the head).
3. Thus there are three I’s altogether but only one is actual (sensate) and not an identity; I am this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. The primary cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on is the instinctual passions which give rise to malice and sorrow and the antidotally generated pacifiers of love and compassion which, if sublimated and transcended, give rise to Love Agapé and Divine Compassion. This ‘Tried and True’ solution to all the ills of humankind lies within the ‘Human Condition’ and, as it has had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate its efficacy, can be discarded as being the ‘Tried and Failed’.
4. I am mortal in that I was born, I live for a period of years, then I die and death is the end, finish. The material universe is infinite and eternal and was here before I was born and will be here after I die.
5. There are three worlds altogether but only one is actual; there is nothing other than this actual, physical universe (the normal ‘reality’ as experienced by 6.0 billion human beings is an illusion and the abnormal ‘Reality’ as experienced by 0.0000001 of the population is a delusion born out of the illusion because of the self-aggrandising tendency of the narcissism born of the survival instincts).
6. Peace-on-earth can become apparent to anyone at all irregardless of gender, age or race because the perfection of the infinitude of this spatial and temporal universe is already always here at this place in infinite space ... now at this moment in eternal time.
7. When ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul psychologically and psychically self-immolate – which is the end of ‘being’ itself – then the answer to the ‘Mystery Of Life’ becomes evident as an on-going existential experiencing; I am this physical universe experiencing itself as a reflective, sensate human being; as me, the universe is intelligent (there is no anthropomorphic ‘Intelligence’ that is creating or running existence).
8. There is a wide and wondrous path to actual freedom: one asks oneself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’? This gives rise to apperception. Apperception is the outcome of the exclusive attention paid to being alive right here and now. Apperception is to be the senses as a bare awareness, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) of the world as-it-is, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself.

9. 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.
Put succinctly: ‘my’ demise was as fictitious as ‘my’ apparent presence; I have always been here, in this actual world of sensorial delight, one realises, for it was that ‘I’ only imagined ‘I’ existed; ‘my’ presence had been but an emotional/ passional play in a fertile imagination; an emotional/ passional play which fuelled actual hormonal substances, however, triggered off from within the brain-stem by the instinctual emotions/ passions bestowed per favour blind nature. Thus the psyche – the entire affective faculty born of the survival instincts themselves – is wiped out forever and one is finally what one has actually been all along: a sensitive and reflective flesh-and-blood body simply brimming with sense organs revelling in this sensuous world of immediate experience. As this flesh-and-blood body only one is this infinite, eternal, and perdurable universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being ... as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. And this is truly wonderful.
Thus the search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end.

June 21 2006

RESPONDENT: As a scientist I always maintained that ‘the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference’. I was wondering whether you could add something more on that statement from the Actualist point of view.

RICHARD: Other than their curiosity value I have no interest in points of view (mental standpoints from which matters are considered) as properties are not a matter of opinion but are, instead, a matter of factuality.

Or, put differently, a physicist’s point of view that there is no design (and thus no designer) is as speculative as a metaphysicist’s point of view that there is design (and thus a designer).

RESPONDENT: I would like to ask you another question. We’ve been told from ancient times that we need to ‘looking in’ in order to experience ‘mystical awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’. Is it possible to comprehend the ‘actual freedom’ without the practice of any form of meditation?

RICHARD: It is impossible to comprehend an actual freedom from the human condition via spiritual/ mystical meditation (aka ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit and ‘jhana’ in Pali) as they are senseless and thoughtless states of being.

RESPONDENT: How to transcend the illusion of ‘I’ ‘me’ or ‘ego’ or ‘soul self’?

RICHARD: As an actual freedom from the human condition has nothing to do with transcendence, and everything to do with extinction, your query cannot be answered.

RESPONDENT: What happens ‘the watcher (observer)’ inside our consciousness when you realize the actual freedom?

RICHARD: As an actual freedom from the human condition has nothing to do with realisation, and everything to do with extinction, your query cannot be answered.