Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: Yes, I do know. Plainly, briefly and straight-forwardly ... no, I am not ‘pure God’ .

RESPONDENT: Richard. I’m surprised by your remark. How is it that you know you are not God???

RICHARD: I know that I am not God for I was for eleven years – from September 1981 until October 1992 ... whereupon it become obvious to me that I was living in a massive delusion.

In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that everything was already perfect as-it-is and that ‘I’, the psychological entity, was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from achieving the ultimate goal of being a free human. In that peak experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society and nothing more. ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs, values, morals, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines, ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an emotional-mental fabrication ... a sense of identity with its conscience. I also saw that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning – entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called being normal. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic.

That proved to be my undoing – as far as an actual freedom is concerned. Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order of things ... for an Absolute had been revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of peace and prosperity to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind!

(As all this was happening, a passing thought occurred to me, which was briefly contemplated ... then banished: Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’? This trifling question was to be of immense benefit years later when I realised that I was living in a delusion and that there was an actual freedom lying beyond ... but I jump ahead of myself.)

Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had witnessed on the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981when I began a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my Divine Awakening on a fine September morning. The ‘process’ was both prosaic and extraordinary: on the one hand I began undoing all the social conditioning that I had been subject to since birth and on the other hand I generated love for all and sundry. I examined all the social traditions and customs etc., one by one, and released myself from their iron grip. I diminished hate and anger and sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and oneness ... which is the best that a normal human could do by virtue of the socialisation process. I moved in and out of Sacred States of Heavenly Bliss and Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and immersed myself in the entire ‘process’ with dedication and resolution. I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and humility in all my interactions with other people and pondered the significance and ramifications of the Divine Order.

I totally believed in and had supreme faith in The Absolute and its ability to bring about the Peace On Earth so long promised. That I was to play the central role in this Divine Plan no longer came as a surprise to me, as I began to realise that I had long yearned to be part of the Salvation Process. I understood that I had to die and be reborn and, consequently, went into a catatonic state that resulted in my being carted off to hospital and kept under intensive care for four hours until I came out of it. I was never to be the same again, as Divinity had been working on me whilst I was catatonic and from that date forward I was permanently in a state of human bliss and love ... I could do no wrong. About six weeks prior to 6^th September 1981 I had a revelation that I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again, and that I was to prepare myself for it. I mustered all of my faith and resolution, renewed all of my trust and dedication, and awaited the day. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme conclusion.

The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had reached an unbearable level the night before, I lay back on my pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror, I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled deep into the depths of my very being. All of a sudden I was sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was IT! was such a simple thing ... all I had to do was die ... and that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out ... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ... pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over in the base of my brain – in the top of the brain-stem. I likened it to turning over a L.P. record in order to play the other side ... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back again.

It was over. I had arrived. I had become Awakened to the Greater Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no separation between me and The Absolute. I was It. I had a Divine Sense of Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred Duty, gathering some disciples on the way, until 1984. Then I started to question just what I was doing and just what had happened to me. Something seemed to be wrong ... this had all been done before by other Masters and Messiahs, Saints and Sages, Avatars and Saviours, to no avail. In fact, instead of bringing Love and Peace, they had left in their wake much bloodshed and hatred ... and I was one of them! Accordingly I travelled to India to find out for myself exactly what was amiss with this whole Enlightenment business by meeting some of these hallowed Gurus and imbibing the centuries of Eastern Spiritual Tradition for myself, instead of merely reading about it in books.

It was to take me eleven years to get out of this massive delusion I was living in and go beyond it to arrive at where I am today. It was eleven years of coming to terms with the understanding that what I was living was a delusion of grandeur ... and that it was what every human being believed in, in some way, shape or form ... but that is another story. Today, I am no longer an Enlightened Master living in an Exalted State of Being ... I am me-as-this-body only, a fellow human being who has no sorrow or malice whatsoever to transcend; hence I am both happy and harmless. I am what I was on that fateful night in 1980 when I asked the question: ‘Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s – the ego ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?’ I am these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is ... by ‘my’ very presence.

Any identity, such as ‘I am God’, is a delusion.

*

RESPONDENT: You successfully explained why you are not any vision of a kind of imaginary God you once believed in, or that the ignorant world looks to. You haven’t shown, however, how you can know you (i.e. your mind that is) are/is not in fact pure true real God manifest in your body? I suggest you cannot know what you claim to know, that is, that you are not God. You have not forgotten the old false images you at one time embraced, and this emotional memory may be responsible for your ‘knowing’ the unknowable.

RICHARD: But I do know that I am not ‘in fact pure true real God manifest in my body’ because by having eliminated any identity whatsoever – the ego and the soul – I can ascertain, with clarity, that there is no self or Self in this body or anywhere else outside of a person’s imagination. Likewise is it that any god – which is a projection of self – ‘exists’ only in the human psyche and not in the actual world. Therefore it follows that I can know, by direct experience, that I am not the ‘pure true real God’ because such an entity has no actuality.

Without an ‘I’, I have no emotions. Hence no ‘emotional memory’. Knowing the ‘unknowable’ is only possible for a body bereft of any identity – complete with its emotions and passions – at all. This knowing is a direct experiencing of the actuality of people, things and events. It is a direct experiencing of the infinitude – the infinite and eternal character of the universe – here and now. It is a direct experiencing of the purity of the perfection of being here at this moment in time, as this body only, here on earth. It is a direct experiencing of the fact that I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being ... and that experience is ambrosial.

I am without sorrow and malice, therefore I am both happy and harmless. Apart from the personal benefits of achieving perfection, the social benefit is enormous.

It means peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: [Heretic am I, hear me roar]. So, being that your obviously the antichrist ...

RICHARD: Ha ... as the scriptural text (1 John 4: 1-3) which specifically refers to ‘antichristou’ (literally ‘instead of the anointed one’) delineates such a being as ‘pneuma’ (aka spirit) your apostatical bellowing is not really worth hearing.

RESPONDENT: Oh, quite the contrary dearest Richard. No antichristos worth his salt would show himself as ‘spirit’. Too easy for the fundamentalists to warn everyone.

RICHARD: As such a being does have to be spirit (aka pneuma) in the first place, so as to be able to not show itself as such, your contrariness has no substance whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: If there ever was a antichristos, you would be indeed perfect as you hold out a secular, atheist path to the total elimination of all suffering ...

RICHARD: As the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition has, as its blessed conclusion, the total elimination of the sufferer – the extinction of which is, of course, inclusive of any such lying/hating deceiver – your apostatical bellowing is still not worth hearing.

RESPONDENT: ... (making spirituality, let alone religion and God totally unnecessary). As a former Christian, I can think of nothing more insidious than that!

RICHARD: ‘Tis just as well you are not a former Muslim else you would be heretically roaring about Dajjal (literally ‘the deceiver’) ... or maybe about Mara, if formerly Buddhist, or perhaps even about Maya, if formerly Hindu, and so on and so forth, through all the many variations on the divine/diabolical (delusory/deceptive) alternative.

There is neither duality nor non-duality in this actual world (the sensate world) ... it being so pure and perfect nothing ‘dirty’can ever gain an entrance here.

(...)

RESPONDENT: I must confess, that I’m not sure at this point that you understood my original ‘antichrist’ post as a joke!

RICHARD: As I expressly prefaced my response with [quote] ‘Ha ...’ [endquote] your unsurety is incongruous. Vis.:

• ‘ha ha (also ha ha ha, ha-ha(-ha), hah hah, etc.): expr. hearty or open amusement or repr. laughter; laugh aloud: a loud or open laugh; a joke’. (Oxford Dictionary).

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