Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘D’ Correspondence

January 3 2013

Re: Very simple phenomenology questions

RESPONDENT: Dear Richard, I had been talking and emailing with Claudiu and a few questions arose that he thought might be best addressed to you. I had been waiting for a moment when this place calmed down a bit, but it looks like that might not happen soon, so, here goes.

One simple thing first, which may not be possible, but I can ask, and this is a request of the forum in general, not of you, Richard, specifically, though I am aware there is politics between us even if we have never communicated directly that I remember. Could this thread be kept to simple, practical points of differentiating what is what and how things are done and avoid the chaos, politics, personal stuff and all of that and that has recently been going on here? If people want to battle about whatever, hopefully some other thread will suffice.

I will start with something simple and see how this goes. If this question is answered somewhere in the million or so words at the AF Trust website, my apologies in advance, and a simple link will suffice.

The first question is: Are dreams actual?

More specifically, I had heard from Tarin (and I don’t want to get into a discussion of Tarin) that you, Richard, don’t dream, and initially I heard this was associated with actual freedom. I later heard that Vineeto does dream, and so then this changed that impression. I then thought along the lines of, ‘If actual freedom involves just this flesh and blood body, and dreams clearly would seem to be something other than that, how do the actually free dream, and if they can dream, how are those dreams different, if at all?’ This question relates to some of my later questions, but I will see how this goes first.

Thanks, [No. 36]

RICHARD: G’day No. 36, Although I am sure you would be aware that the word actual has a specific connotation in actualism terminology – drawing on a distinct usage difference, perhaps peculiar to the English language, betwixt it and the word real (and which dictionaries rarely make clear enough) – it is apropos to your query to restate it here.

First, some background information. Viz.:

[Co-Respondent]: And now, if my grandmother would ask me if God exists, I would tell her that it does, He’s real but it’s not actual. Ha-ha-ha ! And then she’ll ask me what actual means, I suppose that’s where the starts.

[Richard]: Back when I was a father, when my then children would ask me if Santa Claus was real, I would say yes but not actual like a table is, for instance, as their mother was full-on into the traditions and such diplomatic answers, rather than an outright no, made for relative domestic harmony ... and they had no difficulty whatsoever in grasping that concept (and applying it to witches riding broomsticks as well and fairies at the bottom of the garden and so on).

Curiously enough many years later (for I was a normal family man back then) that diplomatic response came in handy when endeavouring to come to terms with the existential dilemma I was living at the end of the enlightened period ... hence the term ‘actual’ in actual freedom.

If a child can grasp it anyone can (even though dictionaries draw no such distinction). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25, 19 July 2003).

Specifically, then, in actualism terminology the word real refers to what an identity – essentially a feeling-being – experiences (both an ‘inner-world’ and an ‘outer-world’) whereas the word actual refers to what a flesh-and-blood body only (‘only’ as in sans identity in toto/the entire affective faculty) experiences ... namely: the world of the senses, the sensate world, the sensorial world where flesh-and-blood bodies already reside (as experienced in PCE’s).

Now, as I was on my own in this actual world for eighteen years, before being joined by a handful of daring pioneers three years ago, it had long been an interest for me to finally be able to meet with another actually free person so as to compare notes and find out what was idiosyncratic to this flesh-and-blood body and what was species-specific.

And although the data-pool is still quite small – insufficient to reliably draw information from – there are enough indications to suggest that dreams and dreaming are not extinguished when that pivotal event/definitive moment occurs whereby all the instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof are totally eradicated/is rendered extinct, forevermore.

Indeed, in my situation it took much application and diligence and patience and perseverance, over many years prior to my pivotal event/definitive moment in an abandoned cow-pasture, to eliminate dreams and dreaming. In doing so I utilised a technique from my early childhood – organically developed of necessity, back then, to have nightmares cease whilst still asleep – which I only found out, after going online in 1997, already had a name: lucid dreaming.

A related feature – visualisation (aka forming images ‘in the mind’s eye’) – is also idiosyncratic to me; in fact, that facility vanished sometime during the first two years of being fully-awakened/ fully-enlightened, and not after an actual freedom, and I only noticed its absence when visiting with an acquaintance one night shortly before travelling to India in 1984; a severe storm was happening and, with all power cut-off, the lightning flashes were particularly prominent; my acquaintance had remarked upon an after-image occurring, whilst with his eyes shut, and to my surprise I found that this facility was no longer functioning for me.

Further to that discovery, and shortly afterwards, over a three-week period totally dreamless sleep occurred; I would drop off into sleep at night only to reawaken, as if but a few seconds later, and yet then discover by the clock that 7-8 hours had passed by; this dreamless sleep so impressed me – I had been plagued by horrific nightmares as a child – that I commenced my many years endeavour to eliminate dreams and dreaming then.

The disappearance of imagination itself, however, at the moment of becoming (newly) free of the instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof does seem to be species-specific, not idiosyncratic, and thus a feature of the affective faculty/its epiphenomenal psychic facility; indeed, the extinction of the entire psyche is the hallmark of an actual freedom from the human condition and, as the difference between imagination and hallucination is a difference of degree, and not of kind, it would be indicative of not being actually free if it did not disappear, totally, completely and utterly.

As you specifically mention Vineeto it is pertinent to mention that, although dreams and dreaming still occurs, it is changing over time, in the process of adjustment, acclimatisation and accommodation, inasmuch around a year ago she recalled a few vivid dreams, upon awakening, with an erratic story-line which made no sense; she also remembers those dreams as always being carefree and gay (with no worries or concern); nowadays, if she remembers dreaming at all on awakening, they have neither image-quality nor story-line; also none of them have had any meaning or significance.

Lastly, daydreaming, falling into a reverie, reminiscing (‘travelling down memory’s lane’), and so on, all become redundant as it is not possible to be anywhere else but here nor anywhen other than now.

And, as this actual world is a fairytale-like paradise, were such an option to be available it would not be wanted/ activated anyway.

Regards, Richard.

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