Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

June 08 2003

RESPONDENT: Hi, this is all very interesting and delightful! I have been wondering if anyone else was having an experience similar to mine ... for the last year I have felt the barrier between the here and now and the illusory self-created now slowly but surely becoming transparent.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... I usually wait for a week or two before replying, so that others can respond first, as I do not wish to dominate the mailing list anymore than I already do by being what I am (nor can I respond to each and every e-mail anyway) but as three-plus weeks have gone by it looks as if nobody else is going to pick-up on your query.

As I would have to recall events of over two decades ago, in order to relate to your experience of this past year, your query may be better served if I were to give a more general response: I can appreciate that, upon directly experiencing being just here, at this place in infinite space, right now, at this moment in eternal time, the normal here and now (what you describe as ‘the illusory self-created here’ and now) as experienced by maybe 6.0 billion peoples is seen as having been but an illusion. I can also appreciate that, whilst once more living in ‘the illusory self-created here’ and now, there seems to be a barrier betwixt the two worlds ... and that, further, the barrier can become ‘slowly but surely’ transparent.

What I would like to point out, though, is that any barrier is as illusory as ‘the illusory self-created here’ and now ... and, furthermore, so too is any transparency.

In other words: there is either the direct experience ... or there is not.

RESPONDENT: As such I find myself more and more a wanderer through the world with a small sense of the naiveté and delight that you speak of.

RICHARD: Any sense of naiveté, no matter how small, is to be encouraged ... and the cultivation of naiveté (the closest approximation to innocence a ‘self’ can be) via sincerity is, of course, enhanced by delighting in being alive on this wondrous paradise called planet earth.

In this context delight is the sensuous experience of the thrill that being a flesh and blood body automatically evokes: the delicious (physical) excitation of the senses ... all the senses tingling with utter enjoyment and exhilaration.

My previous companion would describe it as tinkling rather than tingling.

RESPONDENT: Up till now I could not pinpoint or explain it ... but what you have written Richard (and others) makes a whole lot of sense.

RICHARD: The words describing actualism make a whole lot of sense because an actual freedom from the human condition is a sensible condition.

RESPONDENT: I feel grateful to you for having the courage and energy to communicate this to the world – thankyou!

RICHARD: Whilst I understand your sentiments please do watch out for gratitude because the warm fuzzy feeling can lead to affection and thus to love (tellingly enough enlightened masters instruct their disciples to be grateful to ‘existence’ ... and to ‘existence’ for sending them a master).

It takes no courage to inform one’s fellow human beings that peace-on-earth already exists – that it always has and always will – as it is a delight to share such experience ... plus one gets to talk about one’s favourite subject (life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are).

RESPONDENT: I am eager to learn more about what you have clearly taken to it’s logical conclusion, and the way to do so with more surety.

RICHARD: Now that is an interesting way to put it ... what actually happened was that the identity within had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) wherein it was patently obvious that ‘he’ was standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent ... so ‘he’ altruistically ‘self’-immolated in ‘his’ entirety.

I did nothing – I have been here all along having a ball – and what I do is report what is happening, describe how things operate in this actual world, with the clarity born of apperception ... maybe it is this matter-of-fact reporting which looks like taking things to their logical conclusion?

Anyway ... it is where the surety comes from.

RESPONDENT: I stumbled onto the actual freedom homepage one day at work ... in what was surely a moment of what you have labelled quite appropriately a PCE I entered unthinkingly WAY TO FREEDOM FROM WORLD OF ILLUSION into a search engine and wow pow came up with the AF Homepage as one of the thousands of links ... . Serendipity? Perhaps.

RICHARD: Yep ... ‘serendipity’ is a better description than ‘a PCE’ (there is more to inducing a PCE than being thoughtless).

Although, as The Actual Freedom Trust web site has 5,316 files (97.8MBs) it leaves quite a large footprint for web crawlers to index ... maybe it was not just a happy and unexpected accident but also the sheer volume which produced the hit.

RESPONDENT: Hah! Well it is great to be here! Thankyou!

RICHARD: You are very welcome ... just as any further contribution you may make is (the more and diverse the input the better is human knowledge advanced).