Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

I do not understand exactly what you are saying. Actuality is not always ambrosial.

You distinguish between real and actual things the same as between illusory and actual things. It seems very unclear considering their definitions. In any case, since no thing labelled real or actual has any truly independent ongoing substantial existence, we can say that its existence is apparent. Clinging to the notion of some truly existing ‘me’ or some truly existing actual thing or physical body or physical universe seem to be an expression of the same fearful clinging.

When a person is not experiencing either ASC or PCE, what is one experiencing? Is the ‘actual’ person NOT seeing the ‘actual’ world? NOT hearing the ‘actual’ world? NOT smelling, tasting, and touching the ‘actual’ world? I haven’t noticed people walking into walls or failing to respond when called. What’s happening? I won’t presume that my understanding based on my experience matches yours, but I find it intriguing that you used the phrase ‘pasting as a veneer over actuality’. I understand that all 6B+ persons are experiencing the ‘actual’ world but in addition to that, like a veneer, imagine and project concepts such as social relationships. In this way, ‘PCE’ is always available, in fact occurring now, and is experienced when we cease believing in concepts and/or free our attention from them.

What do you mean by ‘world’, the world of people interactions – ‘society’ or something else? Here is the world I live in: it has no streams, no trees, no flowers, no stars, yet it has plenty of people (6000 persons per square km as an average), millions of cars and concrete buildings; as a matter of fact it’s a concrete world, THE concrete world ... and it is a very polluted one. I wonder if this, the world I experience on a daily basis, is part of the actual world you talk so much about. It’s a grey world, but I wonder if it’s really grey because of ‘my’ worldview or this is its true colour.

Obviously I’m having a little trouble leaving behind some of my spiritual baggage. I wonder if perhaps I have misinterpreted what you said to me in an earlier email: [Richard]: ‘The entire psychic world is real – at times very real – but none of it is actual’. Initially I interpreted this as ‘real’ meaning something akin to the spiritual concept of maya – seemingly real but ultimately not so. Now I am re-reading the definition you give of ‘actual’ and it occurs to me that perhaps you mean only the actual world is important – I’m guessing that’s something made clear during PCE’s and in Actual Freedom itself? – and that the world of the ‘real’ is more unimportant than illusory. Would this be an accurate summary?

Richard, it would be nice to better understand a few things that have perplexed me. 1) How is it possible for a ‘normal’ human life to be worthwhile, valuable, and at least somewhat happy (as you have told me in the past) – yet you often call life in the ‘real’ world ‘grim and glum’ and ‘miserable?’ You also state in your Journal that [quote] ‘It is all so pathetic, actually, to be caught up in the socialised world of ‘human’ one-upmanship. It is an abysmal state of affairs to be ‘me’, living in the real world. Especially when this, the actual world, is right here under one’s nose, as it were, just waiting to be discovered’. (Article 12). Again, how is it that life can be relatively happy, and an abysmal state of affairs all at the same time? Do you mean it is ‘abysmal’ only in comparison with innocence?

If there is no ‘me’ inside this body, why insist that ‘one’ must die to find out the actuality?