Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

April 27 2005

RESPONDENT: I’m a 30 year old University student, living in Adelaide (Australia), who recently stumbled across the Actual Freedom website. It’s strange because what is described there seems to very closely resemble what has been occurring to me over the past year or so.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list ... as five weeks have gone by since you posted this e-mail you may have discovered by now that what may initially seem to be a close resemblance is not the case after all.

RESPONDENT: Around March of last year, having just begun my Honours year in Philosophy, I was doing a bit of reading around, looking for a good thesis topic, when I picked up one of my old Krishnamurti books. As I read the last chapter of part one, I had an unusual experience. It seemed like a culmination of some sort: a kind of psychological and physical precipitation or expression of the insights which I’d been understanding as I read the book. My head felt light and whole, a very nice feeling, and it seemed that my mind, for the first time, was functioning in a somewhat integrated manner. It came as a complete surprise.

Since this time, this way of living has developed into a semi-permanent state. Watching and investigating the contents and processes of my mind has led to the unravelling of my conditioning, which has been an absolute joy to experience. I’ve had some difficult periods along the way, with some of these insights being quite hard to take, leading to short periods of depression, though for the most part, it’s been a kind of effortless experience; though it does seem to be presupposed by something like what you’ve described as pure intent, and also a complete and utter dissatisfaction with our normal way of living.

RICHARD: As the ‘pure intent’ referred to on The Actual Freedom Trust web site is the sincere, totally dedicated intention of enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into being apparent in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body, then whatever it was which presupposed the integration of your mind, as an expression of the insights your reading of what Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was speaking of precipitated, it cannot possibly be that. For just one example:

• [Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti]: ‘I have found the answer to all this [violence], not in the world but away from it’. (page 94, ‘Krishnamurti – His Life And Death’; Mary Lutyens; Avon Books: New York 1991).

In short: peace-on-earth was never on his agenda.

RESPONDENT: It’s also clear to me that I’ve got some way to go – there’s still so much I don’t understand about myself, though what has occurred during the past year really is, to me, absolutely remarkable, and I’d never have thought it possible.

Anyway, I mention this for what it’s worth. I really just wanted to say that I’m very impressed with the contents of the site, and lend my voice to those who’ve spoken of the value and effectiveness of understanding oneself. To look within really is a marvellous and liberating thing. For me, there’s nothing else left to do: everything besides has no value. One can either build on wrong foundations, or tear them apart.

RICHARD: The problem with tearing foundations apart is that they will more than likely come back together again ... albeit in the guise of being integrated.

Only extinction will do the trick.