Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

August 08 2003

RESPONDENT No. 59: What is Actualist Calenture? A continuous sequence of emotion-backed thoughts which give rise to yet another version of who I am and what I identify with – or who I want to be (or not be) and what I want to identify (or un-identify) with; as in a bunch of ‘my’ ideas, images, feelings and thoughts (influenced by feelings) on what Actualism seems to be all about and living according to them. (snip examples).

RESPONDENT: ... thank you for your post on this fascinating topic. I am fairly new here to this list and to experimenting with the process. Before I read your post, I wasn’t sure what calenture was ... but I do now report that I have some of the actualist variety in me. Until identified it is somewhat subtle ... and I thank you so much for listing the symptoms. Thanks again!

RICHARD: I am none too sure how a furious delirium can be ‘somewhat subtle’ ... you may find this helpful:

• ‘calenture: ka-len-chur; noun; 1593 [etymology: from Spanish: calentura; calenture heat, fever, from calentar: to heat, from Latin: calent, calens, calere to be warm.]: calenture is a name formerly given to various fevers occurring in tropics; especially to a form of furious delirium accompanied by fever, among sailors, which sometimes led the affected person to imagine the sea to be a green field, and to throw himself into it; to see as in the delirium of one affected with calenture; (Example: Wordsworth: ‘Hath fed on pageants floating through the air. Or calentures in depths of limpid flood’); synonyms: passion, ardour, fervour, fire, zeal, rapture, ecstasy.

There is no such thing as ‘the actualist variety’ of calenture ... such a delirium that can lead the affected person to imagine the sea to be a green field, and to throw themself into it, can only arise out of a mistaken notion of what is on offer on The Actual Freedom Trust web site. Viz.:

• [Respondent No. 59]: ‘... as in a bunch of ‘my’ ideas, images, feelings and thoughts (influenced by feelings) on what Actualism *seems* to be all about and living according to them’. [emphasis added].

And earlier:

• [Respondent No. 59]: ‘After I suspended my major beliefs in spiritualism I started believing in Actualism ... hence I started doubting Actualism. I had the ‘actualist calenture’ you speak of, *which has absolutely nothing to do with actualism*, and this was finally dispelled with by common sense, naivety and the remembrance of a PCE ... it’s so simple that it is darn nearly impossible to comprehend whilst being a believer. [emphasis added]. (www.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=908289840&sort=d&start=1905).

Moreover if this train of thought, introduced just recently by a self-acknowledged spiritualist with the declared aim of applying ‘a hatchet’ to an intellectual construct of their own invention, keeps getting some mileage it may very well come to the stage where gullible peoples are sagely discussing ... um ... ‘Actualist Rapture’, ‘Actualist Ecstasy’, ‘Actualist Euphoria’, ‘Actualist Bliss’ and so on and so on.

The actualism being presented on The Actual Freedom Trust web site has nothing to do with belief ... nowhere do I advise believing me (or anybody else for that matter) and I make this quite clear on numerous occasions. For just one example:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I know a system of belief is not actual freedom; you do also ...
• [Richard]: ‘Yes ... I do not want any one to merely believe me. I stress to people how vital it is that they see for themselves. If they were so foolish as to believe me then the most they would end up in is living in a dream state and thus miss out on the actual. I do not wish this fate upon anyone ... I like my fellow human beings. What one can do is make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and only when they are seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written.
Then it is the PCE that is one’s lodestone or guiding light ... not me or my words. My words then offer affirmation ... and confirmation in that a fellow human being has safely walked this wide and wondrous path. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000).

The PCE is the litmus test ... not any claims I make (my words are designed to precipitate a PCE in the reader so that they can experience perfection for themselves and thus not have to believe me or be convinced by the sensibility of any description I offer).

Nor do I advise having faith ... or any other word of that ilk as I am on record on many an occasion as saying that belief, faith, hope, trust, and certitude play no part in attaining an actual freedom from the human condition whatsoever and are, in fact, a hindrance to success.

Put succinctly: actualism is experiential ... not intellectual.

August 11 2003

RESPONDENT: According to Richard and others, everyone has had a PCE sometime in their life.

RICHARD: I usually add a qualifier so as to obviate anyone having to ask a ‘how can you know that’ type of question ... for instance this is how I put it on the home page of my part of The Actual Freedom Trust web site:

• [Richard]: ‘I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory ... and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), *which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had*, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which personal experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). The PCE occurs globally ... across cultures and down through the ages irregardless of gender, race or age. However, it is usually interpreted according to cultural beliefs – created and reinforced by the persistence of identity – and devolves into an ASC. Then ‘I’ as ego – sublimated and transcended as ‘me’ as soul – manifest as a god or a goddess (‘The Truth’ by any name) and preach unliveable doctrines based upon their belief that they are ‘not the body’.
Doctrines like acceptance, pacifism and unconditional love, for example. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Homepage).

And here is an example of how I put it in conversation:

• [Richard]: ‘I do recollect that when I was a normal human being I would oft-times repeat the phrase ‘there must be more to life than this’ and when I had a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) in 1980 I finally understood the origin of that optimism: throughout my life I had had numerous PCE’s (more so in childhood) that I had not consciously remembered ... and *everybody that I have spoken to at length* eventually recalls moments of such perfection throughout their life.
It is the amorphous memory of perfection lying somewhere or somewhen that keeps one going. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27a, 30 April 2002).

Anywhere I have baldly said that ‘everyone has had a PCE sometime in their life’ (or words to that effect such as in Article Six of ‘Richard’s Journal’) would only be because I omitted to add the qualifier which obviates anyone having to ask a ‘how can you know that’ type of question.

RESPONDENT: And, a good question here: Does Richard or others know this to be a fact ...

RICHARD: What I know for a fact is that all the people I have spoken to at length could recall having had a PCE – as distinct from an altered state of consciousness (ASC) – although it sometimes took a quite a while for them to remember. Once it took over three hours of intensive description/discussion – as being sans any affective content whatsoever the PCE cannot be stored in the affective memory banks (which is where the ASC is primarily located) – plus they are much more common in childhood and require further reach.

Also ‘I’ have a vested interest in not remembering such an experience of pristine perfection as it would mean the beginning of the end of, not only ‘me’, but the extinction of ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) ... which is quite often capitalised as ‘Being’ (aka ‘Truth’, ‘God’, ‘Isness’, ‘All That Is’, ‘That’, and so on) upon self-realisation.

It is far easier to say that it can only be an assumption that everyone has had a PCE sometime in their life ... and then get on to the much safer topic of discussing whether such an assumption is reasonable.

RESPONDENT: ... or is it a reasonable assumption?

RICHARD: As everybody I spoke to at length – everybody – could recall at least one PCE, and usually more, it would be a very strange situation indeed that it be not an experience common to all people but only to those whom I engaged with on an ad hoc basis for two decades or more.

Plus I have read descriptions of such experiences at random over the years – and seen/heard descriptions on television/radio – thus it is not a matter of my prompts implanting such a notion or even me putting words in their mouth ... and a good example of this happened only recently when a co-respondent referred me to books written by some ‘positive psychologists’, whilst discussing the subject of happiness in normal people, one of which books I found on-line in its totality. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter which immediately caught my eye:

• ‘One summer day, 40 years ago or so, I was walking along a residential street when an rich, earthy scent wafted my way and triggered, as smells are wont to do, a vivid recollection. Like Dorothy, stepping out of her front door into the Technicolor Land of Oz, I remembered another summer’s day when I was 4 years old, playing in a bank of warm, black dirt in the back yard of my home. I had a little red toy car for which I’d made a road slanting up the face of the dirt bank and, in my recollection, I was ‘driving’ the car up this mountain road while making motor noises. That’s all there was, no real action, yet the memory, in the few seconds before it faded away, was redolent with the smell and feel of the warm dirt, the bright colour of the toy, the hot sun – with simple but intensely pleasurable sensory experience. When I read Aldous Huxley’s account of his mescaline experience, of his feeling that the colours, shapes, and textures of his books on the shelves across the room were as intense an experience as he could bear and that he dared not look outside at the flowers in the garden, I thought of my brief revisitation of my childhood’. (Chapter 1, ‘Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment’; David Lykken; www.psych.umn.edu/psyfac/emeritus_sr/Lykken/HapChap%201.htm#_edn3).

The various people I have discussed these matters with have invariably recalled similar ‘Technicolor Land’ experiences in childhood ... sometimes referred to as a ‘nature experience’, a ‘peak experience’, a ‘jamais vu experience’, or even an ‘aesthetic experience’. And not only have I witnessed children having such an experience, and spoken with them about while it is happening, but recall having the same myself on many an occasion: often in early childhood there would be a ‘slippage’ of the brain, somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear too soon, and the magical world where time had no workaday meaning would emerge in all its sparkling wonder ... where I could wander for hours at a time in gay abandon with whatever was happening.

They were the pre-school years: soon such experiences would occur of a weekend (at school I became known as ‘the dreamer’ and had many a rude awakening to everyday reality by various teachers) ... so much so that I would later on call them ‘Saturday Morning’ experiences where, contrary to having to be dragged out of bed during the week, I would be up and about at first light, traipsing through the fields and the forests with the early morning rays of sunshine dancing their magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; where kookaburras are echoing their laughing-like calls to one another and magpies are warbling their liquid sounds; where an abundance of aromas and scents are drifting fragrantly all about; where every pore of the skin is being caressed by the friendly ambience of the balmy air; where benevolence and benignity streams endlessly bathing all in its impeccable integrity.

This magical world is what occasions me to write like this:

• [Richard]: ‘When one walks naked (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) in the infinitude of this actual universe there is the direct experiencing that there is something precious in living itself. Something beyond compare. Something more valuable than any ‘King’s Ransom’. It is not rare gemstones; it is not singular works of art; it is not the much-prized bags of money; it is not the treasured loving relationships; it is not the highly esteemed blissful and rapturous ‘States Of Being’ ... it is not any of these things usually considered precious. There is something ultimately precious that makes the ‘sacred’ a mere bauble.
It is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe – which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent – as a physical actuality. The limpid and lucid purity and perfection of actually being just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time is akin to the crystalline perfection and purity seen in a dew-drop hanging from the tip of a leaf in the early-morning sunshine; the sunrise strikes the transparent bead of moisture with its warming rays, highlighting the flawless correctness of the tear-drop shape with its bellied form. One is left almost breathless with wonder at the immaculate simplicity so exemplified ... and everyone I have spoken with at length has experienced this impeccable integrity and excellence in some way or another at varying stages in their life.
This preciosity is what one is as-one-is – me as I am in actuality as distinct from ‘me’ as ‘I’ am in reality – for one is the universe’s experience of itself. Is it not impossible to conceive – and just too difficult to imagine – that this is one’s essential character? One has to be daring enough to live it – for it is both one’s audacious birth-right and one’s adventurous destiny – thus the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is but the harbinger of the potential made actual. (Richard, List B, No. 19k, 27 October 2001).

Put succinctly: there is an unimaginable purity which is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart.

One must come to one’s senses ... both literally and metaphorically.

*

RESPONDENT: I have searched my memory banks and the only thing I can recollect is a possible PCE that I had when I was 3 or 4 years of age. I will describe it ... although this description is undoubtedly a memory of a memory of a memory ... since it was so long ago. I was sitting on the concrete under a tree in the back yard of my house. I was playing with something ... and I looked at the sky. I remember feeling so untroubled, so unusually peaceful ... just staring at the perfectly blue sky ... and then the green leaves of the tree gently dancing in a slight cool breeze. I don’t know how long the experience lasted ... it was so unique ... that I set the memory of it apart in my brain ... for I wanted to save it to refer to and savour later. This experience was so different from any other childhood or adult experiences that I ever had. The experience was so direct and fresh and perfect.

RICHARD: Yes, these moments of perfection are indeed ‘so direct and fresh and perfect’ that they speak for themselves, as it were, and no literary work, no philosophy tome, no religious tract, no musical rendition, no artistic piece, and so on, can say what actuality has to say.

Which is more or less why I abandoned a flourishing career as a practising artist ... nothing can compete with actuality.

RESPONDENT: Since I have had this ... .I have concluded, by contrast, that all of my other life experiences are muddy, stained ... (dare I say as looking through a glass darkly? ... which I think is an accurate description).

RICHARD: No, what is seen ‘through a glass darkly’ is an imagined actuality.

RESPONDENT: If I had never had this experience, I would have concluded that muddy is the only experience there is ... that clarity, conceivably ‘actuality’ is nonexistent ... only a far off dream for myself ... at best.

RICHARD: This actual world is magnificent beyond ‘my’ wildest dreams.

RESPONDENT: Does this sound like a PCE to anyone.

RICHARD: Yes ... and, more to the point, it goes to reinforce the inclination that what I would consider an unreasonable assumption would be the assumption that these experiences are not universal.

RESPONDENT: If so ... how can I use this recollection in the more pragmatic, practical way ... if at all?

RICHARD: It is where confidence lies.

August 11 2003

RESPONDENT: Richard claims to be the first one on the planet to experience Actual Freedom: How can he or anyone know this to be a fact?

RICHARD: The following link provides a description of how I experientially know: (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History,#2).

I recently supplied a brief exegesis of what can be found on that page:

• [Richard]: ‘In 1985 I had the first of many experiences of going beyond spiritual enlightenment (as described in ‘A Brief Personal History’ on my part of The Actual Freedom Trust web site) and it had the character of the ‘Great Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being ‘That’ which is attained to at physical death when an Enlightened One ‘quits the body’ ... which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’ (Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism).
Thus I knew even before becoming actually free that this condition was entirely new to human experience while still alive ... furthermore, in the ensuing years, as I proceeded to penetrate deeper and deeper into the state of being known as spiritual enlightenment, the psychic footprints, as it were, of those who had explored some of the further reaches of ‘Being’ itself gradually became less and less in number and finally petered out altogether leaving only virgin territory wherever the (psychic) eye would look.
I was truly on my own ... no one had ventured into this terrain before.(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 46, 6 August 2003).

I also knew early in 1981, at the commencement of the path that would eventually lead to an actual freedom from the human condition, that such a freedom was entirely new to human experience as I had had a four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) six months prior wherein it was manifestly obvious that what the human race had made of such experiences was a degradation of the actual.

Speaking in the context of the only religio-spiritual language I knew then (from the culture I was born into) I would say, to anyone prepared to listen, that everybody has got it wrong because nobody has to physically die to get to heaven ... that eternity was just here right now because, as it was already always happening, it cannot cease at physical birth and recommence at physical death after a 70+ year interregnum.

After the ‘something turning over in the base of the brain/nape of the neck’ event of September 1981, and as the western-style mysticism I was experiencing moved deeper into being an eastern-style mysticism (I can recall telling my then wife at that time I was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire as somebody had to sort this mystery out), I just knew that, in order to be able to speak meaningfully about going beyond enlightenment I had to go through enlightenment so as to, not only understand it experientially, but to be able to have insider information, so to speak, to pass on to my fellow human beings.

For what is the point of enabling peace-on-earth, and thus demonstrating the actual way to live life for a benighted humanity, if one cannot explain the how and why [and what for] of it?

RESPONDENT: Maybe there was a culture eons ago that discovered this ...

RICHARD: Ha ... the knowledgeable race of people, living in the fabled ‘Golden Age’ of yore, who vanished without a trace (leaving no history for their fellow human beings) despite their sapience, eh?

If (note ‘if’) there ever were such a culture then in effect they might as well have never existed.

RESPONDENT: ... maybe just one person ... and maybe the culture was in no way receptive to Actual Freedom ... so this individual kept it to his or her self.

RICHARD: As an actual freedom from the human condition requires an all-inclusive altruism to effect – and altruism wipes away selfism completely – it would be a contradiction, not only in terms, but in effect to not pass on the discovery of the already always existing peace-on-earth to one’s fellow human beings.

Put simply: because of the inherent character of fellowship regard, here in this actual world, if a person can keep an ‘Actual Freedom’ to themselves it ain’t an actual freedom from the human condition.

Furthermore, and to get it out of the realm of speculation, the many and varied cultures around the planet today are demonstrably not receptive to what I have to report (at a guess only maybe 99% of the responses on The Actual Freedom Trust web site are objections to being happy and harmless for instance) yet I wrote it all down anyway so as to have the descriptive/explanatory writings exist in the world as a sensible record after my demise ... and if Peter had not come along, with the suggestion of the relative anonymity of the internet, I would have found some way of making their storage durable for posterity.

Meaning that this (abstract) person you speak of would have done the same (as in hieroglyphics impressed in clay tablets for a simple example).

RESPONDENT: And, even if Richards claim is true ... why make it?

RICHARD: It is somewhat difficult to report to one’s fellow human beings that one has discovered something new to human experience without saying that it is ... um ... something new to human experience.

RESPONDENT: I mean no disrespect ... but I would like some feedback from anyone ... including Richard ... so I can go on with my life!!!

RICHARD: The following exchange may be of assistance (the question is particularly perspicacious):

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Do I understand correctly from your mail, that your being unique in this is not what is important: that you merely wanted to stress with it that you bring something that is entirely new?
• [Richard]: ‘Yes. The on-going experiencing of the already always existing peace-on-earth is entirely new to human experience ... everybody I have spoken to at length has temporarily experienced such perfection, in what is called a pure consciousness experience (PCE), but nobody has been able to provide a clear, clean and pure report as an on-going actuality. Usually the PCE is interpreted and/or translated according to selfish personal desires, and by corresponding cultural conditioning, as a variation of the many types of an Altered State Of Consciousness (ASC) which perpetuates the ‘self’ as the ‘Self’ (by whatever name) in some spurious after-life ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’. And thus all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides have gone on forever and a day.
Now the opportunity exists for an eventual global peace-on-earth: with 6.0 billion outbreaks of individual peace-on-earth no police force would be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the dreadful past ... terror would stalk its prey no more. People would live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight.
But do not hold your breath waiting. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 15, 22 December 2002).

As the complete exchange (three e-mails) covers various associated issues such as you have raised/may in future raise you might care to peruse it in its entirety ... it starts here: (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 15, 19 December 2000).

Put succinctly: abstract logic has never freed anyone from the human condition.

September 17 2003

RESPONDENT: Emaho doesn’t appear to fit Richard’s profile of a spiritual leader ... albeit an enlightened one. And to this day I don’t know if Emaho is enlightened or actual ... maybe I will know when I begin to have PCE’s or begin to be actually living an actualist’s life.

RICHARD: You do not have to wait until you begin anything ... the following quotes are freely available on the internet:

• ‘The most sacred prayer is not coming from a book, it’s not coming from somebody else’s mouth, it’s coming from your own heart’. – Emahó. (www.emaho.ws/page3.html).
• ‘It is our intent that changes us (...) the intent of our heart. It is what leads me’. – Emahó (www.emaho.ws/index.html).
• ‘Since the dawn of wants, we’ve been at war with ignorance, which has not had the time or knowingness to realize that we have finally ended up at war only with ourselves – called death. So I ask you what is it that you always wanted to hold in the palm of your hand since your birth? Wood? Metal? or Another Hand ?’ – Emahó. (www.emaho.ws/pointsofview.html).

There are at least 30 video-taped talks available ... here are some representative examples of their contents:

‘Little tiny spirits that we are; How to surf the emotions; The Heart is creative force; The real adventure of one’s self; The illusive word called Truth; Cause and effects belongs to this earth; Creation never stops; Your body is your ashram’. (www.aarauposters.com).

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Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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