Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

June 29 2001

RESPONDENT: Peace on earth? I just stepped in here and all I see is war and ugly hatred. Is this a joke? After reading Peter’s web site, I joined this list in the hopes of some constructive dialog. What a disappointment!

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List.

To answer your query: no ... peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, is not ‘a joke’.

It is possible.

July 13 2001

RESPONDENT: Richard, I’ve read about a third of your selected correspondence page with interest. I have several questions, but what struck me first is, why is there a need for any ‘ism’ (as in ‘actualism’)?

RICHARD: Simply because I was well aware, when I went first went public with my experience and understanding, that it would be categorised, judged and labelled anyway (before then I had not named it anything at all). I recall that I discussed the matter with Peter at the time, explaining why I saw the need to pre-empt the freely living of life, in the already always existing peace-on-earth, becoming known, for example, as ‘Richardism’ ... and to obviate anyone who became interested in enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into being apparent becoming known, for example, as ‘Richardists’. The word ‘actualism’ is right up there alongside ‘materialism’ and ‘spiritualism’ ... it is a generic word.

This is because the already always existing peace-on-earth has nothing to do with me ... I only happened to discover it.

RESPONDENT: Systems are, after all, destroyers of freedom.

RICHARD: As all 6.0 billion human beings on this planet are not yet free they have no ‘freedom’ in the first place for a system to destroy.

RESPONDENT: I don’t mean that in a practical way, of course, that would be silly. But what difference is there say, between any of the modern ‘ism’s’ and traditional religions?

RICHARD: As I understand it, all the ‘traditional religions’ started off as a cult ... a religion is a cult that has become mainstream through the passage of time and the number of adherents, basically.

RESPONDENT: How could ‘actualism’ possibly be any different from those?

RICHARD: Simply because of the direct experiencing of actuality that the word refers to.

RESPONDENT: Why try to systematize life, why try to reduce it to a few ‘essential’ principles?

RICHARD: There are no ‘principles’ ... actualism is the experiential living of what the words refer to.

RESPONDENT: I agree that life is to be lived right here and right now.

RICHARD: Good ... provided you are talking about living here in space and now in time, that is.

RESPONDENT: Once we define how it should be lived though we’ve gone and destroyed life’s spontaneity ...

RICHARD: Indeed ... which is why I describe how I am actually living.

RESPONDENT: ... we’re living somewhere else, for an ideal, something to be strived for, something that distracts us from the love that is right here and right now.

RICHARD: There is no ‘love’ here in the pristine purity of this actual world ... it being so perfect nothing ‘dirty’ can get in, as it were.

RESPONDENT: Why not just talk about the eternal moment without this awkward distraction of yet another useless ‘ism’ in the world?

RICHARD: By all means ... let us do it your way, then. I wait with interest to see how you phrase it all without making distinctions between what is commonly happening for people who are not living ‘the eternal moment’ and what is commonly happening for those who are.

Because it is the distinctions that attract the categorising, judging and labelling.

July 13 2001

RESPONDENT: Richard, my next question is this: you said that Alan Watts, a writer whose works I’m familiar with, was ‘faking freedom’. What exactly did you mean by this and, not being Alan Watts himself, how could you possibly know this?

RICHARD: He did not live what he wrote about so prolifically and gave numerous lectures on.

July 14 2001

RESPONDENT: Richard, my next question is this: you said that Alan Watts, a writer whose works I’m familiar with, was ‘faking freedom’. What exactly did you mean by this and, not being Alan Watts himself, how could you possibly know this?

RICHARD: He did not live what he wrote about so prolifically and gave numerous lectures on.

RESPONDENT: You’ll pardon me for being persistent, but this doesn’t seem to answer the question at all.

RICHARD: I am only too happy to rephrase it: he was not enlightened.

RESPONDENT: You say that Alan Watts did not live what he wrote, but how do you know this? Are these observations based on things you read?

RICHARD: The observation ‘he did not live what he wrote about so prolifically and gave numerous lectures on’ (aka he was not enlightened) is based upon what I read.