Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: No ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps for I had to run the full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain.

No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat.

RESPONDENT: Is enlightenment a more useful or evolved place to be than pre-enlightenment?

RICHARD: No, to be enlightened is to be anti-life ... peace-on-earth is scornfully discarded so as to secure a vainglorious after-death ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’.

In other words: selfish immortality.

RESPONDENT: And why are you so persistent in saying to those walking this path to stay away from enlightenment?

RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to draw your attention to a previous discussion? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I question if actual freedom from Human Condition is attainable without surpassing the last psychic Archetype, the Self, our Creator, out of which everything has begun?
• [Richard]: ‘My experience is that an actual freedom is attainable by going beyond spiritual enlightenment ... however I do not advise going that route (via enlightenment) as it is too traumatic.
Also it is just plain silly.
• [Respondent]: ‘And if that so, the enlightenment ratio being 1/1.000.000 what would it be the AF ratio of success?
• [Richard]: ‘As it is exceedingly difficult to live in the massive delusion that spiritual enlightenment is I would easily estimate that the ratio would be much less for those that would go directly.
Much, much less. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25, 6 August 2002).

Can you not see that the reason why I am ‘so persistent in saying to those walking this path to stay away from enlightenment’ is because (a) it is too traumatic ... and (b) it is just plain silly ... and (c) as it is exceedingly difficult to live in the massive delusion that spiritual enlightenment is the ratio of success can easily be estimated to be much less – much, much less – for those that would go directly?
If you cannot see this then perhaps it would help to provide the analogy I usually give:

• [Richard]: ‘... all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours, and the Saints and the Sages and the Seers did not have peace-on-earth on their agenda. Obviously someone had to be the first ... and this fact was thrilling to the nth degree. It meant that an actual freedom from the human condition, here on earth in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body had been discovered and could be demonstrated and described ... no one else need ever take that route again (and I would not wish upon anyone to have to follow in my footsteps and run that full gamut of existential angst to break through to what lay beyond). I always liken it to the physical adventure that Mr. James Cook undertook to journey to Australia two hundred plus years ago. It took him over a year in a leaky wooden boat with hard tack for food and immense dangers along the way. Nowadays, one can fly to Australia in twenty-seven hours in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain.
No one has to go the path of the trail-blazer and forge along in another leaky wooden boat. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 14 June 2000).

I do not know how much more clearer I can put it than this ... but I will give it a go (further below).

RESPONDENT: How can you speak of a way towards ‘actual freedom’ not via the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ if you haven’t walked that route yourself?

RICHARD: It is quite simple: provided the soul is not resurrected/does not resurrect itself from the waste-bin (and that proviso is of vital importance) there is then only a direct route to an actual freedom from the human condition ... thus no need for me to have walked that route myself. 

RESPONDENT: There is still proof to come for this route to actually exist ...

RICHARD: If I may interject again? As you say (further below) that you can ‘can intellectually figure out a major difference between a PCE and an ASC’ can you not also intellectually figure out that the proof for the direct route lies in the very fact that a PCE can happen in the first place?

RESPONDENT: ... and then we can speak of an efficient viable method of riding ourselves from the human condition.

RICHARD: And just what is not efficient and viable about altruistic ‘self’-immolation, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body, brought about by asking oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) with the pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth stunningly evident in the PCE become apparent sooner rather than later?

RESPONDENT: Till now the logical conclusion based on ‘facts’ is that there will be no ‘peace-on earth’ if this is a method unintentionally designed for the One in 10.000.000.

RICHARD: The actualism method, first put into practice in 1981 by a normal person with a normal wife and a normal family and a normal mortgage and so on, is not designed for the ‘One in 10,000,000’ person (not even unintentionally) as it was born out of the initial four-hour PCE in June 1980, which set the whole process in motion in January 1981, and not out of the enlightened state which came about in September 1981 as a result of the vitally important proviso not yet being known (someone has to be the first to discover something new in any field of human endeavour) let alone being remembered/applied under all circumstances ... circumstances such as falling in love, for example, and being bitten badly by the enlightenment bug as a direct result of the love being unrequited.

I kid you not ... the only danger on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is that one may become enlightened instead.

RESPONDENT: There is still evidence to come for a person to safely arrive to ‘actual freedom’ and then to convey how it was ‘via the non-enlightenment route’.

RICHARD: As I safely arrived via the massive delusion called spiritual enlightenment why would arriving via a non-delusory path be any less safe?

I would easily estimate it to be more safe ... far, far more safe.

RESPONDENT: I bet it would be a very interesting account.

RICHARD: The account of the next person to become actually free would indeed be interesting ... maybe this is an apt moment to put this hoary subject to bed, pat it on the head and send it to sleep, until somebody new to this mailing list raises it again as if it has never occurred to Richard that an actual freedom from the human condition has not yet been replicated (even though they may say, in the next breath, that it has been lived before)? Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘Let us be realistic, though. When you talk about .00001 percent ... we have not yet demonstrated that anyone can replicate my condition. (...) Can my condition be replicated? Who knows? Only time will tell. (...) So we can say that we can demonstrate that something [virtual freedom] is actually possible, but it has not yet been demonstrated that it is possible to replicate me. I may be a freak. (Richard, Audio-taped Dialogues, There is a Third Alternative).

Those words were spoken somewhere between May-July 1997 ... and even before I went public I wrote the following in my journal:

• [Richard]: ‘... even if one does not immediately self-immolate psychologically and psychically there is a truly remarkable virtual freedom that can be attained through application and diligence borne upon pure intent. For those that would seek to excuse themselves on the grounds that I am freak, an aberration of nature, this factor belies this justification. (page 143, ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997).

And even more explicitly:

• [Richard]: ‘My keenness for another’s experience always accords to the following sequence:

1. I am primarily interested for your sake (for the sake of the particular flesh and blood body) as you are a fellow human being.
2. I am secondarily interested for everybody’s sake (for the sake of flesh and blood bodies in general) as another person being actually free increases the possibility of setting a chain-reaction in process.
3. I am lastly interested for my own sake (for then not only am I am no longer arguably a ‘freak of nature’ but I can compare notes, as it were, so as to more reliably separate out what is species specific from that which is idiosyncratic). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan-b, 12 June 2001).

Furthermore I have acknowledged there may be other methods:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘The reason I ask this is because the one question method of Actualism is way too simplistic to be effective.
• [Richard]: ‘It is the only method, in all of human history, which has worked to deliver the goods ... there may be other methods, yet to be discovered, but this is the only one so far proven to be effective. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 38, 20 February 2003).

And:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘[Your method] is not new ...’.
• [Richard]: ‘As an actual freedom from the human condition is new to human history then any method to enable this to come about is also new’.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... it is not the only method that works but it is fine’.
• [Richard]: ‘As no one else is actually free from the human condition, as yet, then other methods are still in the experimental stage. Until one of them works then this method I offer – which worked for me – is the only one available’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12d, 23 November 2000).

And:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I ask this as there are now almost 6 years since you went public with your discovery and the method to achieve it, you must have some feedback ...
• [Richard]: ‘The only feedback is what can be read publicly ... I rarely, if ever, conduct a private correspondence these days.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... or is it a perfect method needing no improvement?
• [Richard]: ‘There may be other methods, yet to be discovered, but this is the only one so far which has delivered the goods.’ (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25a, 15 June 2003).

There are other references but maybe these will do for now ... put succinctly the replication of my condition presently calls for pioneers, people with the necessary derring-do to pilot a one-seater aeroplane by the seat of their pants to this pristine wonderland, and not for those who will follow in their wake in air-conditioned comfort, eating hygienically prepared food and watching an in-flight movie into the bargain.

And nobody knows who that pioneer aviator is until that person actually lands here ... not even me.

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