Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: Has it ever occurred to you that if nobody passed-on what they discovered we would all still be sitting in caves or bough shelters, dressed in animal skins and covered with lice, gnawing on raw brontosaurus bones?

Here are a few examples of how I have responded to such a question (you can take your pick):

• [Richard]: ‘All I have ever wished for is for the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition to exist in the world so that they are available long after I am dead. This is so that a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’ is available for anyone who comes across it, in any indeterminate future, to draw confirmation and affirmation from ... for anyone to avail themselves of if it be in accord with their own experience and/or aspirations. That is, it is a confirmation that their experience is not only valid but an affirmation in that a fellow human being has traversed this territory in an eminently satisfactory way. For nineteen years I have scoured the books ... to no avail. Now the information exists – and has taken on a life of its own – and I am well content and having so much fun.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘What would you have me do? Keep my mouth shut? That is, I can discover something that no one else has found – as far as I have been able to ascertain – that eliminates the cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide ... but I am not to pass this information on to my fellow human beings to do with as they will? Would it not be self-centred – selfish – to keep it to myself?
(…)
I like people ... and I care for my fellow human being. I am simply passing on my experience of life. What they do with this information is their business. There is no need in me to do this because I have no problems whatsoever. Why I do it is because other people tell me that they are suffering so I explain how I ended suffering in myself. One of the triggers that started me on this voyage into the psyche was the realisation that human beings are driven to kill their fellow human beings ... and I was one of them.
Now I am not ... and I share that what triggered me because it may trigger them.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘I am a fellow human being sans identity (which was ‘being’ itself). As such, this flesh and blood body is apperceptively aware ... and the already always existing peace-on-earth is apparent all about. It being so perfect I wish to notify my fellow human beings of its existence ... what they do with this information is their own business.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Why would you want to notify other people of its existence?
• [Richard]: ‘Because my fellow human beings tell me that they are (a) suffering ... and (b) wanting to know the meaning of life.

And:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Thank you for your time. May I know why you are on this list?
• [Richard]: ‘To participate in the facilitation of global peace-on-earth.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘What I do is sit at my computer, when the whim takes me, and share my discovery with my fellow human beings ... being retired, and on a pension, instead of pottering around in the garden I am pottering around the internet. It is a leisure-time activity, a retirement pastime-come-hobby, as it were, and a very pleasant thing to do indeed.
I am having a lot of fun here at this keyboard.

RESPONDENT: I would think that sitting on the back porch, listening to birds, looking at the wind blow through trees, and sipping on some herbal tea would provide a much better series of moments than the ones spent haggling with so many dolts who have it 180 degrees wrong.

RICHARD: As an actual freedom from the human condition is an unconditional happiness and harmlessness no such conditions are required. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘… it [individual peace-on-earth] does not require anybody else’s cooperation ... mutuality and reciprocity (…) neither adds to perfection nor does their absence detract from perfection.

In short: I like my fellow human being … no matter what mischief they get up to.

RESPONDENT: Ego is expressed as ideas, and your ideas are extremely complex, and not only that, but conflicted. For example, you say you have no emotion, no love, no feeling, and yet you constantly bring up the plight of 6 billion sentient beings on this earth as if you had concern for them.

RICHARD: Not ‘as if’, I actually like my fellow human being and wish the best for each and every one ... and the best is already always here now.

RESPONDENT: A person with no feelings surely doesn’t care about anything, let alone ‘best wishes’ for his fellow humans.

RICHARD: Well, I do.

*

RESPONDENT: What is the concern for the plight of the people from a person who has no feeling, no emotion, no caring, no nurturing, no love?

RICHARD: Are you saying that the feelings – the emotions, passions and calentures – that are born out of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire are the essential ingredients to care about one’s fellow human beings? Even though it is those very same feelings that are causing all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place?

RESPONDENT: No, I’m not saying that at all because emotions are not born out of fear and aggression.

RICHARD: Okay, I will use your language then: Are you saying that the feelings – the emotions, passions and calentures – that are ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’ are the essential ingredients to care about one’s fellow human beings? Even though it is those very same feelings that are ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’ which are causing all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place?

RESPONDENT: No, it is not the same feelings that are causing the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place – absolutely NOT!

RICHARD: Okay ... what feelings are causing the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides in the first place if it is not the feelings that are the ‘learned traits as a result of responding to the environment via the central nervous system that humans are born with’?

*

RESPONDENT: I still don’t understand your ‘concern’ for the 6 billion abused people if you have no feelings.

RICHARD: I enjoy and appreciate being alive and being here in this amazing physical world ... and I take particular delight in spending time with my associate adventurers on this grand escapade we are all intimately involved in. We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it. I, for one, am not taking the back seat.

I like being here.

RESPONDENT No. 18: ... and certainly if No. 23 deliberately is being vague about his cult fear claiming to have good reasons for not disclosing anymore information as to his previous memberships of organisations labelled by him as being cults methinks that there is fair risk that this list is moving into the bullshit zone ...

RICHARD: I can assure you, for whatever that is worth, that I am entirely sincere in wanting clarification so that it will become clear to me just what it is that certain peoples are trying to tell me. Look, are we not fellow human beings who found ourselves (when we first noticed what was going on) having been born into the human world as it was ... a mess? And do we not all seek to find a way through this mess ... and share our findings with one another? And if I have made a mistake by going public to share my discovery and understanding is it not beneficial that someone else will point that out to me? I can benefit from such interaction as much as the other ... we all benefit.

VINEETO: Richard, if you had ‘made a mistake by going public to share [your] discovery and understanding’ then it is too late now.

RICHARD: True ... but others can benefit, nevertheless. That is, if somebody else ever discovers the already always existing peace-on-earth they will now know, because of my mistake, that if they share this discovery with their fellow human beings then any discussion about it will not be cultic unless their fellow human beings become interested enough to want to live in that already existing peace-on-earth themselves.

I would guess, therefore, that this next discoverer will phrase the sharing of their discovery in a similar fashion to the way Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti has shared what he is experiencing.

‘Tis only a guess, though.

RESPONDENT: Richard, have you ever thought of offering different translations of your website, for non-English speaking folk?

RICHARD: I do not have a website ... any notion of offering different translations of The Actual Freedom Trust web site (currently weighing in around 170 MB’s and growing daily) would be a matter for the directors, either current or future, of The Actual Freedom Trust to consider.

I have never personally entertained any such notion.

RESPONDENT: I would certainly like to see your writings available to anyone who can read (in whatever language).

RICHARD: I would suggest accessing the following URL: www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml

It is a webpage which lists the numbers 1-10 in 5,000 non-English languages ... and, as those few numbers alone constitutes a 1.1 MB file, I will leave it to you to do the maths.

RESPONDENT: Richard, if you regard human subjects like art, psychology and Quantum Physics as a waste of time, a claim that may in turn be seen as the ranting of a mad or just plain dumb fellow, then what subjects on earth occupies your mind? And with that, are they limited in the broader human spectrum or just not applicable to social reality?

RICHARD: The problem with asking loaded questions is that they cannot be answered as-is ... for example:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You have a background in art, hence have an appreciation for visual aesthetics ... do you draw or paint now?
• [Richard]: ‘I have not drawn or painted much since I started writing – the last time was back in 1987-88 – as of all the arts I prefer literature ... the art of letters.
(...)
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I am a musician, and have wondered if pursuing this path would eliminate all desire to play music.
• [Richard]: ‘Yep ... all desire vanishes without a trace.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘So if it is not desire that draws you to literature, what motivates you to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard?
• [Richard]: ‘What motivates me to write is nothing more mysterious than the fact that I like my fellow human being: I am simply passing on my experience and understanding of life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are because the other person tells me that they are suffering ... so I report how suffering ended in myself and describe what life is like in this actual world.
The motivation also stems from the period 1981-1992: all I ever wanted was the words and writings of an actual freedom from the human condition to exist in the world as I scoured the books during that eleven years to no avail ... I would rather have it that nobody else need go through what I went through. I am well pleased that the third alternative to materialism and spiritualism is now available throughout the world inasmuch as anyone who finds themselves travelling this path will have the assurance that another has successfully traversed the terrain.
In essence this means these words provide a confirmation that the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is universal and an affirmation that the pristine purity a PCE evidences is possible twenty four hours of the day.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘The sensory pleasure of producing words or handling a pen, coupled with an aesthetic appreciation for forming pleasing combinations of words?
• [Richard]: ‘The reason why, of all the arts, I prefer literature – the art of letters – is that it is the only means of expression (communication) which leaves no room for the ambiguity all other art-forms have ... plus an actual freedom from the human condition cannot be conveyed in any other form than by words anyway.
As for ‘forming pleasing combinations of words’ ... when I start a sentence I have no means of knowing in advance what will transpire, let alone how it will end. All I need to be aware of is the topic and the subject matter unfolds of its own accord. I do have a reliable and repeatable format and style, which has developed over the years, so it is not an ad hoc or chaotic meandering.
It is all very easy ... it is a delight to be these finger-tips dancing over the keys.
It may be useful for me to explain that what I write is expressive prose – it is not a thesis – as I am conveying the lavish exhilaration of life itself. My writing is not intended to stand literary scrutiny for scholarly style and grammatical form and so on – the academics would have a field-day with it – for it is an active catalyst which will catapult the reader, who reads with all their being, into this magical wonder-land that this verdant and azure planet is.
Then actuality speaks for itself’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 28, 15 March 2003). / (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 28, 28 March 2003).

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