Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RESPONDENT: Sometimes I think you are purposely being ignorant of the meaning of my questions.

RICHARD: As what you ‘think’ I am being, and what I am actually doing, are two entirely different things it might very well pay to focus on the latter ... to wit: I answered your questions in accord with the way they were written.

RESPONDENT: Despite my inability to properly convey what should be taken as an a priori meaning in my questions to you, you should be able to decipher it.

RICHARD: Here is your first question from your previous e-mail:

• [Respondent]: ‘If a fellow human being threatened to kill you, how would you respond to that?

And here is what you say, further below in this very next e-mail, ‘should be taken as an a priori meaning’ contained in that question which I ‘should be able to decipher’:

• [Respondent]: ‘If someone threatened to kill you while you while they were pointing a gun to your head and asked you to plea for your life with real tears, could you do it?

Not being a mind reader I have no notion whatsoever what goes on in your mind when you write other than the portions of those goings-on you choose to put into words and post to this mailing list ... to then tell me what I ‘should’ be able to do with those written words, and then further tell me that failure to do so can only mean either purposeful ignorance or an inability to decipher meanings, borders on the fantastical.

RESPONDENT: That can only mean that what you call ‘actuality’ is either purposeful ignorance or an inability to decipher meanings in improper sentences. This inability leads to having very little in common with most people with identity thus resulting in a lack of friends.

RICHARD: Now here is a notion for you: as it is your ‘inability to properly convey’ what goes on in your mind when you write how about you deal with your lack of communication skills ... rather than drawing erroneous conclusions from what you say I ‘should’ be able to do with the portions of those goings-on you choose to put into words and post to this mailing list?

RESPONDENT: Anyway, I will accept the difficulty you are either purposely or unexpectedly creating for me by rephrasing my questions in a more careful manner.

RICHARD: As I neither ‘purposely’ nor ‘unexpectedly’ created anything for you – I merely answered your questions in accord with the way they were written – there is no such difficulty to accept.

RESPONDENT: 1) If someone threatened to kill you while you while they were pointing a gun to your head and asked you to plea for your life with real tears, could you do it? 2) If that person killed you and they got away from the law somehow, some way as this is a rare but possible case, should they receive some penalty in the eyes of the Universe for having killed you? Can you please answer these questions without inserting any judgement of them?

RICHARD: Here are your previous questions 1) and 2) and my response in sequence:

• [Respondent]: ‘If a fellow human being threatened to kill you, how would you respond to that?
• [Richard]: ‘In accord with the legal laws of the country, of course.
• [Respondent]: ‘If they succeeded, and got away with that would it be justifiable that they receive some kind of penalty for it?
• [Richard]: ‘How would such a person have ‘got away with that’ when, in accord with the legal laws of the country, such a threat was duly reported to the police and thus recorded on file for later reference?

If you could show me where I inserted ‘any judgement’ it would be most appreciated.

RESPONDENT: So that my time and your time will not be wasted.

RICHARD: If I may point out? This entire e-mail is a waste of your time as I have already made it clear to you, in another e-mail in this thread, that (a) the notion of justice is a human concept and is nowhere to be found in actuality ... and (b) the only eyes this universe has are the eyes of sentient creatures (thus there is no need for your hypothetical questions in whatever form).

Moreover, as your response to (a) was [quote] ‘yawn’ [endquote], and your response to (b) was [quote] ‘duh’ [endquote], it is entirely up to you whether you continue to waste your time or not ... put simply the universe, being physical, is value-free (aka non-judgemental) and your god, being metaphysical, is value-loaded (aka judgemental).

In short: it is entirely up to humans to sort out their own affairs.

RESPONDENT: I can never be the judge of another’s behaviour. It’s questionable whether I should even judge my own. Isn’t that what traps us?

RICHARD: Shall I put it this way (about not being judgmental)? Do you personally:

• Condone rape and child abuse?
• Approve of rape and child abuse?
• Have no opinion about rape and child abuse?
• Disapprove of rape and child abuse?
• Proscribe rape and child abuse?

Is it not simply a fact that one makes appraisals of situations and circumstances each moment again in one’s daily life ... this judging is called making a decision regarding personal and communal salubrity.

RESPONDENT: I’m not sure of your use of language here.

RICHARD: I was responding to your statement that you ‘can never be the judge of another’s behaviour’. When a person rapes someone, or when a person abuses a child, that activity is called ‘behaviour’ . As it is not your behaviour in the scenario I sketch then from your point of view that person’s behaviour (raping and abusing) is called ‘another’s behaviour’ . What I am asking you this:

• Do you personally condone that person’s behaviour? (Condone: overlook, disregard, ignore, close the eyes to, excuse, forgive, pardon).
Or:
• Do you personally approve of that person’s behaviour? (Approve: endorse, support, agree, commend, back up, grant, consent).
Or:
• Do you personally have no opinion about that person’s behaviour? (Opinion: view, estimation, judgment, attitude, belief, outlook).
Or:
• Do you personally disapprove of that person’s behaviour? (Disapprove: object to, frown on, censure, dislike, criticize, condemn, reject).
Or:
• Do you personally proscribe that person’s behaviour? (Proscribe: ban, bar, forbid, exclude, make illegal, veto, rule out).

Put simply: if you are 100% genuine where you say that you ‘can never be the judge of another’s behaviour’ then you are relying upon other people (police, magistrates, jurors and so on) to do your ‘dirty work’ for you so that you will be (somewhat) safe from criminals or banditry in general. And if these police, magistrates, jurors and so on adopted your principle of never judging another’s behaviour as well as you then the bully-boys and feisty-femmes would soon rule the world.

Perhaps, in hindsight, it was but an unliveable ideal?

RESPONDENT: I also doubt that the person who is unhurt (innocent) needs rules to proscribe ‘rape and child abuse’.

RICHARD: Ahh ... good. This is what I was asking (further above): is it possible to live without the need for ‘principles’; without the need to ‘obey these principles’; without the need to ‘accept them’ (so that one may obey them)? For is this not what ‘innocence’ means?

RESPONDENT: The rules that society has invented to control human behaviour may be as much an expression of how low we have sunk as a necessity to regulate human conduct.

RICHARD: Okay ... so rules (moral and/or ethical principles) are indeed human rules that human society has invented to control human behaviour ... which means that the ‘ground of reality’ they are embedded in (the ‘miracle of love’) is human love after all?

And human love is an affective feeling ... as is hatred, for example.

RESPONDENT: I have noticed also that if only one or two senses are in operation (I mean if someone is aware of one or two senses only, because the senses are in operation all of them, regardless if one is aware or not), then the ‘I’ is in operation judging, saying this is nice this is ugly I prefer this etc.

RICHARD: Hmm ... even though being non-judgemental is a well-known spiritual teaching it is not a hall-mark of enlightenment as the enlightened ones are as judgemental as all get-out: take Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, for example, whose judgement was that not only being alive as a flesh and blood body sucks but that the entire universe was the pits (as in ‘all existence is ‘dukkha’).

Generally speaking enlightened beings do not like being here on this verdant and azure planet ... either now or at any other time.

RESPONDENT No. 31: As a matter, I really appreciate if you keep things simple and present your ideas one at a time.

RICHARD: Yet I do keep things simple because I have only one central point: everybody is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

RESPONDENT: Your central point is a judgement of others?

RICHARD: May I ask? Why do you attempt to stifle free speech? How will the human race become free of the human condition if each and every person adopted that NDA wisdom of ‘Thalt shall not be judgmental’ (which is but a re-hash of that ‘Tried and Failed’ Christian adage about ‘Judge ye not ...’ anyway)? Why? Do you really want 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 for ever and a day?

Put it this way (about that being judgmental nonsense) do you personally:

• Condone rape and child abuse?
• Approve of rape and child abuse?
• Have no opinion about rape and child abuse?
• Disapprove of rape and child abuse?
• Proscribe rape and child abuse?

Do you see what I mean when I repeatedly write about morals being those ‘unliveable edicts handed down by bodiless entities’? It is simply a fact that one makes appraisals of situations and circumstances each moment again in one’s daily life ... this ‘judging’ is called making a decision. And all those wannabe ‘angelic beings’ castigate anyone who thinks for themselves ... whilst secretly doing the very self-same thing.

RESPONDENT: Do you include yourself?

RICHARD: Are you asking: ‘Is Richard going 180 degrees in the wrong direction?’ No.

RESPONDENT: And if you see an opposite is appropriate, do you not adopt this?

RICHARD: Of course ... this is called making a decision after taking an appraisal of the situation and circumstances (what some would call ‘making a judgement of others’ ).

RESPONDENT: In fact, just so you and all see the open hand I am entering this conversation with, I wrote the head of the organization I am affiliated with, letting him know that I was undertaking just such an investigation. Here’s the text of my note to him, which will perhaps relieve you of the burden of your judgements of me and my motives.

RICHARD: Just for the record: it is no ‘burden’ for me to make judgements as to where the other is coming from, currently at, or going to (each and every person already has a background, a frame of reference, an agenda, when they first come across actualism) when they discuss life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being, as the very character of what is actual brings what is not out into the open sooner or later ... the challenge is to have that occur sooner rather than later as I like my fellow human being and would rather their self-induced suffering cease as soon as possible. For example:

• [Richard]: ‘... I am always well-pleased, when somebody gets something from reading/hearing what I have to report, for I like my fellow human being no matter where they are coming from, where they are at, or where they are going to ... each person has a background, a frame of reference, an agenda, and the challenge of communication lies in engaging such a person in a sincere, frank, and honest discussion.
Which is precisely what is happening in this e-mail exchange’.

I have been thoroughly enjoying this challenge for many years now ... and the secret to success in making such judgements lies in not taking them to be anything other than a current appraisal in the first place. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘As I have remarked before in our other thread, I do not have a viewpoint in regards to an actual freedom from the human condition. In other areas where I do have opinions, make estimations, find it reasonable to presume and so on, I never hold it to be ‘true and correct’ in the first place ... for I am well aware that it is only a current appraisal until further investigation shows otherwise.

 Put succinctly: I am having so much fun here at the keyboard.

RICHARD: How will the human race become free of the human condition (...)?

RESPONDENT: To me, this sounds like a contradiction in terms.

RICHARD: Okay, I will put it this way: how will human beings (both individually and thus collectively) become free of the instinctually-derived malice and sorrow? Does that clear up the apparent ‘contradiction in terms’ adequately? If so, please allow me to re-present my question. Viz.:

How will human beings (both individually and thus collectively) become free of the instinctually-derived malice and sorrow if each and every person adopted that NDA wisdom of ‘Thalt shall not be judgmental’ (which is but a re-hash of that ‘Tried and Failed’ Christian adage about ‘Judge ye not ...’ anyway)?

RESPONDENT: I am not judging you, however.

RICHARD: Judge away to your heart’s content ... I do not subscribe to that Alternate/New Age morality borrowed from the Christians: ‘Thou shalt not judge’.

RESPONDENT: I am just pointing out to you that your opinions of what others have said is not absolute, nor are they truth.

RICHARD: Yet what I say is factual ... I can substantiate all my statements. Whenever I do offer an opinion I always say that it is but an opinion ... or a guess or a speculation or an hypothesis and so on.

*

[...]

RESPONDENT: Or is it that you insist on being right even in the face of information which casts doubts on your theories?

RICHARD: What information? All that you have presented to me is but variations on mysticism. This is not information ... it is passionate fantasy.

RESPONDENT: I can understand, if that is the case, why you would be more concerned with labelling me than with clarifying your position.

RICHARD: I have been doing nothing else but clarifying my position ever since I came onto this Mailing List. As for labelling ... I label away to my heart’s content for I do not subscribe to that Alternative/New Age morality borrowed from Christianity: ‘Thou shalt not label’.

PETER: No bleatings of ‘you’re being judgemental’ will work with me – it’s a furphy that’s been bandied around since morals and ethics were first chiselled in stone and devised to silence the sensible. ‘Judge ye not’ is a platitude invented by God-men and other charlatans in order that no one would question the rest of their inane platitudes. It is one of many dimwitacisms, passed off as Guru-wisdom, that have no other meaning or purpose than to keep their followers and disciples under control, humble, grateful, loyal and above all non-thinking.

RICHARD: Ha ... ‘dimwitacisms’ , eh? Where will this all end ... the English language may never be the same again!

Also, I am reminded of something that you wrote on another Mailing List some time ago. Viz.:

• [Peter]: On the spiritual path you will be admonished to leave your mind at the door, surrender your will, and trust your feelings.

I was sitting at the caff the other day, with a woman whom I have never met before, discussing life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. She listened intently and with interest to my story – she was not adversarial – and was seeking to comprehend what I was experiencing (she ran through a short list of the usual spiritual attributes to no avail) until she sat eyeing me reflectively.

‘I see’, she finally pronounced, ‘you don’t judge people’.

‘Goodness me’, quoth Richard, ‘I am as judgemental as all get-out ... surely you are not neutral on 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 are you? Do you not appraise people, things and events and come to a considered opinion as to what is a sensible course of action ... and what is silly?’

She sat a while longer, considering.

‘I feel there is no charge in you’, she said, ‘that is why it is okay to assess’.

‘What do you mean by ‘no charge’ ?’

‘No emotions’.

‘Aye ... but more importantly, no identity that needs constant protection by those highly respected feelings’.

‘Then this is indeed Enlightenment’, she concluded, somewhat triumphantly.

‘When I say I have no identity whatsoever I mean it ... I am not God on Earth’.

Puzzled silence.

‘I am a fellow human being ... with no instinctual passions nor the ‘self’ engendered thereby’.

Bewildered silence.

‘I am talking of the elimination of the instinctual animal ‘self’ that gives rise to the ‘we are all one’ psittacism’.

Astounded silence.

We may or may not meet again ... she works as a spiritual-group facilitator.

RESPONDENT: 5. Once I have understood what the other person is saying, then I judge it. Now, in true listening, this judging happens at a depth and is mostly autonomous. I don’t have to consciously reject what you are saying, if it is not true, but such rejection happens automatically. Vice-versa, I don’t need to accept the truth of your statements consciously; such acceptance comes from a depth.

RICHARD: Oh dear ... feelings are notoriously unreliable when it comes to establishing the veracity of something. A feeling is not a fact. Feelings have led humankind awry for aeons, without ever being queried as to whether they are the legitimate mechanism for deciding the authenticity of the matter. Feelings are held to be hallowed; they are given a trustworthiness they do not merit and are seen to be the ultimate adjudicator in any disputatious topic.

RESPONDENT: Hence, listening involves processes that are deeper than thinking. There is a silence in which real listening and learning takes place.

RICHARD: Again, a feeling is not a fact. Again, feelings have led humankind astray for millennia, without ever being questioned as to whether they are the correct tools for determining the correctness of a matter. Again, feelings are held to be sacrosanct; they are given a credibility they do not deserve. They are seen to be the final arbiter in a contentious issue: ‘It’s a gut-feeling’, or ‘My intuition is never wrong’, or ‘It feels right’, and so on. Thought, shackled by emotion and/or passion and/or calenture, cannot operate with the clarity it is capable of. At the centre of feelings lies a calentural entity known as the soul (by any name). The soul, which has no substance whatsoever, is revered as being the seat of ‘me’; it is ‘my’ essential ‘being’. The feeling of ‘being’ is the impression of being present; it is the perception of a ‘presence’ that transcends time and space and form as a vast silence ... giving rise to the improper assumption that ‘I am that Silence’ (or ‘There is only That’ if one is really cunning). It must be stressed again that all this is derived from calenture; nothing in this has any facticity. This is because ‘I’ generate unfortunate misinformation on account of ‘being’. ‘I’ may be real ... but ‘I’ am not actual. Any ‘Ultimate Reality’ is never actuality ... everyday reality is a world-view created and sustained by emotive thought born out of the instinctual passions. This affective vision is a blinkered version of what is actual. Time is actual, space is actual, form is actual ... and any personal interpretation of the actual is an emotional transubstantiation of it into an illusion called reality. To then transcend this reality is to take a mystical leap into an other-worldly realm ... a supernatural ‘Ultimate Reality’ where silence speaks louder than words.

RESPONDENT: I’ve met some towering folks myself in my time and none of those would dare assert their superiority.

RICHARD: Yet is it not stunningly clear, to the discerning observer, that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have squandered their heyday? With this modern era’s rapid and comprehensive publication and communications network, none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice. Anyone who is at all astute will have perceived that they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity.

RESPONDENT: Enlightened beings are beyond unenlightened judgement.

RICHARD: If I may point out? This stock-standard ‘master’s reply’ simply does not work on me: I experientially detected the facticity of the hypocrisy in spiritual freedom all those years ago. ... and anyway, ‘unenlightened judgement’ also shows they have indeed fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity.

RESPONDENT: Enlightenment means freedom from ignorance. You become one with God’s creation.

RICHARD: If I may remind you? I already am aware of this (as I am already aware of all of your other non-responsive-to-the-issue replies in this post) due to eleven years of experiential living of enlightenment. You are not addressing the issues at all ... what has this reply have to do with intelligently responding to ‘none of their gaffes and improprieties elude notice ... they have fallen short of their own standards ... and have failed to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity’ ? Does ‘you become one with God’s creation’ mean that ‘God’ falls short of ‘God’s own standards ... and thus fails to deliver the goods so readily pledged to a credulous humanity? Because, as there are more than a few recorded incidences of ‘Enlightened Beings’ displaying both anguish and anger, you seem to be indicating that the altered state of consciousness known as ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ (an embodiment of ‘The Truth’ by whatever name) does not bestow such a remarkable freedom that amorality indubitably is.

RESPONDENT: So you say everything is fate, correct?

RICHARD: No ... there is scope for action which affects events.

RESPONDENT: You would not judge me if I bomb the world, because ‘killing’ for feeding oneself is the ‘law of nature’. It’s what there is.

RICHARD: The human animal, being able to think, reflect, plan, can implement considered action for benevolent reasons ... no other animal can do this. Thus human beings, over countless years, have formulated agreements as in regards common goals and behaviour for mutual benefit. Thus it is sensible to comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols. So, of course I would judge you for not acting in a mutually beneficial way – I am not silly – although I am more interested in pointing the finger at a person feeling – and thus thinking – in a non-mutually beneficial way.

There are already enough people censuring behaviour.

RESPONDENT: Neither do you have any compassion for the one who is killed by me, right?

RICHARD: Where there is no sorrow there is no compassion (the opposites go hand-in-hand) ... nor any need. Thus I actually care about my fellow human being ... instead of merely feeling care.

RESPONDENT: He had to die anyway ...

RICHARD: I am not a fatalist ... in this scenario you are describing he did not ‘have to die anyway’ at all: you killed him. It was a deliberate action which, as I said above, affects events.

RESPONDENT: I can’t see this as illustrious and brilliant.

RICHARD: Fatalism is nothing but a sick justification to explain away events in a self-righteous manner.

RESPONDENT: Using comparisons you’re doing propaganda.

RICHARD: No, using comparisons is to be doing appraisals ... if there be no appraisals nothing means anything.

RESPONDENT: I have no interest in anybody’s ‘mental extraordinary’ experiences and much less to try to copycat them. And this is why I stepped in when I read your associate’s [Vineeto], desire to live permanently in it – or at least having more of it: ‘a stunning luminous and perfect ‘self’-less experience’ (which your method promises?). Can you help her on that, or there is nothing permanent in life?

RICHARD: Are you saying that Vineeto’s pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) are the ‘mental extraordinary’ experiences you have no interest in and much less interest in trying to copycat? If so, are you not making an appraisal based upon some (unstated) comparisons and thus, under your assertion, doing propaganda?

Be that as it may ... the desire to live permanently (that is for the remainder of one’s life) in what the PCE shows to be possible, or at least experiencing more of them, is what the actualism method was devised for, in 1981, by the identity who used to inhabit this body. Furthermore, the actualism method does not merely ‘promise’ ... it delivers: it delivers either a virtual freedom (thus both my example and my words have already helped) or an actual freedom (which, other than yours truly, is yet to be demonstrated by another person or persons).

As for what is permanent in life: have you not ever noticed that it is never not this moment?