Actual Freedom – Selected Writings from Richard's Journal

The third alternative – actual freedom – is not an Ineffable State. Unlike The Altered State, it can be easily and adequately described in unambiguous terms. All is plain to view, nothing is hidden. Nothing is Unknowable. There is no Mystery any longer. The secret to life is solved. In actualism, a person sees all that is religious or spiritual or mystical for the superstitious metaphysical anachronism that it is ... it all belongs to the best that those within the ‘Human Condition’ can aspire to. To be actually free is to be completely free from the ‘Human Condition’ in all its entirety. Free from The Good as well as from The Bad; from Love as well as Hate; from Beauty as well as Ugly; from The True as well as The False; from God as well as Evil ... from any thing Diabolical or Divine at all. To be actually free is to be free, at last, to be ordinary. To be this flesh and blood body. To be mortal. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirteen

Human beings have various attitudes towards death. As far as it has been able to be ascertained, humans are the only creatures that are aware of their own demise. The ability to reflect upon one’s own death has been a source of inspiration to philosophers, theologians and their ilk down through the ages. To other people, death is a subject to be avoided, to be not thought about; it is a taboo topic for dinner-table conversation. It is not until a close friend or relative dies that they are brought face-to-face with their own mortality ... and they usually endeavour to ‘get over it’ as soon as possible. A sure way to be told that one is morbid is to talk about death: to invoke an uneasy reaction, one needs only to ask if they have ever considered the ramifications of death; of no longer being alive; of not being a ‘human’; of not ‘being’ at all. Nevertheless, why avoid the subject? Surely it is of the utmost importance to explore all the unknown aspects of being a ‘human’ – especially those that bring trepidation – for therein lie the causes for not only one’s uneasiness about life, but all the problems that beset ‘humanity’. Anything that remains hidden will continue to influence one’s life in an unconscious way, continuously plaguing one’s every moment of being alive and affecting one’s state of well-being.

It is impossible to try to imagine death, to try to visualise not ‘being’. What does it mean to not ‘be’? One has always been busy with ‘being’; being alive, being in the world, being a ‘human’, being ‘me’. What is it to not exist? There seems to be a general consensus among human beings that death is a mystery that one cannot penetrate, and that the ‘Mystery of Life’ will be revealed only after death. There, they say, lies peace and Ultimate Fulfilment. It all appears to be an exercise in futility to think about what is entailed in death, which is the end of ‘being’ ... and it is. The end of ‘being’, at physical death, can only ever be a speculation; it has to be experienced to know it. Just like one cannot know the taste of something until one eats it ... so too is it with death as the end of ‘being’. Yet to wait for death will be leaving it too late to find out what it is to not ‘be’ … as death is oblivion of consciousness there will be no awareness of not ‘being’. The question is: can one experience the end of ‘being’ before this body dies and therefore penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’, in full awareness, and find that Ultimate Fulfilment ... here on earth?

Yes one can. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Fifteen

The commonly accepted notion, by the majority of people, is that ‘I’ reside temporarily inside this body until the body dies. Then ‘I’, as Spirit – by whatever name – will return whence ‘I’ came ... some mysterious, Other-Worldly Realm that goes by many titles. The details may vary from culture to culture, but the basic thrust of the concept remains the same: one will still remain ‘being’ after death. All this is to deny death as being oblivion … such peoples are living in a state of denial. To deny oblivion is like, for instance, denying that gravity exists. It is a fact. If the word ‘death’ does not mean an ending to ‘being’ then the word is, in itself, meaningless. Then there is a minority who, realising this, maintain that the ‘I’ inside this body will die with the body ... and that that is all there is to it. Life, to them, is short and brutal and poignant with death at the end. The people who believe in the survival of their Spirit say that their belief gives life meaning ... and set about concocting all kinds of fanciful notions about ‘life after death’. Those who believe in the ending of the Spirit at death say that their belief makes life pointless ... and set about concocting all kinds of fanciful notions by posing existential questions. A few people, a rare few, say that they have died already – their ego has died – and that they know what it is like to be dead. They state that they have found the Ultimate Fulfilment that humankind is searching for.

Unfortunately for their argument, they maintain that their Spirit will ‘quit the body’ at physical death and continue to exist in some Eternal Oneness that is situated nowhere in particular. Therefore, if they are going to live forever, obviously they are still ‘being’. So how can they say that they know what death – as being the end of ‘being’ – is like? They too, come up with all kinds of fanciful notions about the Ultimate State of ‘humanity’. They say they have found The Truth about life ... yet they do not know what death entails, for they are still ‘being’. They too, are denying that death’s oblivion exists! ‘Being’, apparently, goes on forever ... ‘only the body dies’, they say. Is there anything at all in this that is a fact? Are not these statements nothing but psittacisms common to all Holy Beings? Surely, to experience what is factual is of far greater import than any conclusion arrived at by thought or feeling … no matter how highly refined the thought or fanatically felt the feeling. To experience the factuality of the ending of ‘being’ whilst this body is still breathing is of the utmost importance, if one is to penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’ and discover the ultimate fulfilment ... here on earth. To come upon a fact, all that is fiction must be stripped away.

All Sacred Cows must be mercilessly exposed to the most extreme scrutiny, nothing or no-one being exempt from critical examination. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Fifteen

The peak experience provides an objective standpoint to view the identity from. It is easily seen from here that ‘I’ stand in the way of ultimate fulfilment ... of ‘my’ destiny. Pure contemplation is the means to provide one with repeated opportunities to make this examination thorough; all doubt is removed and only surety remains. This is the only way one will be convinced that ‘I’ must vanish altogether. This is why I can say, confidently, that the ‘death of the ego’ is not sufficient, for it only means substituting an impersonal ‘I’ – now called ‘Being’– for the personal ‘I’. ‘Being’, whether it goes with a capital to denote Divinity or not, means an ‘I’ is still in existence. Therefore the ‘death of the ego’ people’s ‘discoveries’ about the fate of ‘humanity’ are questionable, to say the least, and their ‘solutions’ to life’s problems are equally suspect. Unless there is an end to ‘being’, which is what death is, one cannot say one has penetrated into the ‘Mystery of Life’, one has not found ultimate fulfilment, one has not achieved peace-on-earth. One is only fooling oneself – and some other gullible people – if one is so easily satisfied.

This ‘death of the ego’ is only for the orthodox-minded people; it is for those who are easily seduced by the Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz of the much-touted Altered State. This is why pure intent is an essential prerequisite to ensure a guaranteed passage through the psychic maze. With pure intent one will not rest until one has gone all the way. One will not be bewitched by the psychic Power and Authority, either. All these allurements are but welcome food for the cunning identity, which wanting only its own survival, readily sublimates itself into the Spirit. With the clarity born of pure intent one can see this play for what it is and move on freely and willingly to what lies at the end of the wide and wondrous path ... the end of ‘being’. With pure intent one will not settle for second best, for it has been seen in the PCE’s that the very best is possible, here on earth. One sees that ‘I’ must disappear entirely. There will be no transcendence, no transmutation, no metamorphosis ... not any of these. For one who goes all the way, no phoenix will exist to arise from the ashes … nothing Metaphysical will remain. ‘I’ will become extinct.

I use the word extinct deliberately for it carries a definitive meaning. Physically, death is the end of an individual member of the species, whilst extinction is the ending of the species itself. The psychological annihilation of identity – in its entirety – is the psychological and psychic ending of the species known as ‘humanity’. It is the end of ‘being’ and the end of an illusion. It is also the end of ‘Being’ and the end of delusion. The ‘Human Condition’, with all its appalling sorrow and malice, has come to an end in one human being. All those would-be wise people who state smugly: ‘You can’t change human nature’ are, fortunately, wrong. Because it is possible for ‘me’ to become extinct, thereby releasing the body from the ‘being’ within, I can walk freely in the world as-it-is … this actual world. I am living in this clean and clear and perfect purity twenty-four-hours-a-day. I live in a state of benignity, which means a kindly and harmless disposition.

Life is a playful game and I am free to enjoy it all, every moment again. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Fifteen

This universe knows what it is doing … to assume that it does not is absurd. This universe was miraculously able to give birth to me, it is marvellously capable of bearing me and will, eventually, wondrously manage to end me. This is the physical, actual order of things in this, the only universe there is. There is nowhere else but here ... and there is no time but now. Anything else than here and now exists only in an enthusiastic imagination … enthused by ‘me’, by any ‘being’ at all. Any sense of ‘being’ is created and sustained by emotive thought ... it is the egocentric fear of not ‘being’ that gives rise to the notion of an ‘myself’. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the demise of an apparently enduring psychological entity. The ‘death’ of ‘me’ is a non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place.

There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have Eternal Life. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eighteen

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The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

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.

Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-.  All Rights Reserved.