Could you explain what the actualists mean when they write that,’ Matter gives rise to consciousness’ and what the spiritualists mean when they say that,’ Consciousness gives rise to matter’.

Spiritualists believe that God by whatever name (including some Divine Energy or disembodied Intelligence roaming the universe) has created the world and with it human beings.

Whereas when you have a pure self-less consciousness experience it is patently obvious that there is no God, no divine energy, no metaphysical realm and that the universe has always been here all along, arranging and rearranging itself in myriad forms from inanimate matter to the simplest carbon-feeding microbe below the earth to intelligent human beings. In a PCE one can experience that matter is not merely passive, that life in this infinite universe is so wondrous, so inherently benevolent and constantly evolving – bringing itself to fuller development – that at some stage the time was ripe for matter to become sentient (conscious) and then for sentient beings to develop intelligence.

Do actualists view consciousness as epiphenomenon of matter?

Yes, for an actualist initially this view is based on down-to-earth common sense, a view which soon becomes obvious in one’s everyday experience, whereas spiritualists would have us believe that matter is merely an epiphenomenon of some disembodied ‘Consciousness’.

In this respect, then actualism is not different from materialism (that the universe is comprised of matter and the conscious phenomenon is a by-product of it)?

No. Actualism is an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism and in this sense 180-degrees opposite to the usual either/or alternatives within the human condition – either spiritualism or materialism. In essence materialism is the experience of a grim reality, as in ‘life is a bitch and then you die’ as distinct form spiritualism, which is an imaginary experience of a supposed ‘other-reality’. A materialist’s experience of matter is distorted and corrupted by the instinctual passions and life is experienced as a continuous struggle and a perennial competition with one’s fellow human beings.

In actualism I know that matter – the physical material universe – is pure and perfect and it is only ‘I’ who stands in the way of experiencing this purity.

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Is that what you mean by ‘matter is not merely passive’?

No. Consciousness, the condition of being conscious – as in being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible (comatose) – is, as the definition suggests, a condition found in sentient beings, i.e. not all matter is conscious. As for a detailed description in what way matter is not merely passive I suggest ‘Frequently Asked Question No 54/2’:

I see what Peter is saying about the matter being circulated from inanimate to animate world continuously. Is that what he and you mean by matter is not merely passive?

In part, yes. Have a good look at your hand – do you notice how matter, your hand, is changing right in this moment? Blood circulates through the veins, calorific energy is absorbed and changed into moving-energy, tendons help moving the fingers, bits of your skin fall off, fingernails and hair grow and need to be cut regularly, the skin can heal over a cut and so on.

Whilst it is obvious that animate matter is not passive, what is rarely appreciated, let alone experienced, is that inanimate matter is not merely passive. The minerals and gases that are the very substance of the universe are not inert as in static, immutable, unchanging, rather they exist in perpetuus mobile and this is the quality of matter that one can experience as a sensuous vibrancy and an immediate intimacy in a pure consciousness experience.

Another point worth making is that it is fashionable in some quarters to make a distinction between things that are natural as in unmodified by human beings and things that are unnatural as in modified by human beings – hence wood is deemed to be natural, aluminium unnatural, Aloe Vera is deemed natural and antibiotics unnatural. A little thinking reveals that this distinction is disingenuous as all of the things that human beings make are made of the matter that is this planet, and hence none of it is unnatural, foreign or alien.

In order to experientially understand this you only need to reach out and touch the computer with your hand whilst reading these words and you can experience that the plastic/ silicon/ metal/ glass object is as ‘not merely passive’ as is your hand. Contemplation reveals that this object is fashioned from minerals of this earth; it is the same stuff as the hand that is touching it. And if you are wont to take it a step further you may well experience the fact that the separation between your hand and the monitor can magically disappear such that a sensuous intimacy can occur … particularly so if you bring your awareness to the finger tips where the touch is actually occurring as opposed to where the intellectual and affective interpretation of touch usually happens.

The post below from Richard talks about an ‘aliveness’. Is that a complimentary interpretation of ‘matter is not merely passive’?

It is not an interpretation, but the description of his ongoing everyday, every moment experience that matter is not merely passive.

I keep wondering about this because ‘actualism is defined (by Richard) to be the direct experience that matter is not merely passive’. So an actualist, by extension, is who has this experience... probably the PCE... and understands it.

An actualist is also someone who, based on a memorable experience that matter is not merely passive, dedicates their life to do whatever it takes to being able to live this magical experience 24hrs a day.

Can you elaborate on this aspect? Can you describe it further? What is the aliveness, magic you are talking about?

Given that there are no spirits outside the fervent imagination of passionate beings, can you understand that you *are* the matter that is not merely passive – and not only that, you are also matter that can marvel at its own existence?

Rather than trying to affectively feel or cerebrally (via thoughts) understand the magic and aliveness, you will be more successful when you begin to experience it sensately and sensuously for yourself.

Do you experience it whilst not in a PCE?

No. Whilst I nowadays feel excellent almost all the time, the magic only happens in a PCE. Sometimes it is so close that I can almost touch it, or smell it or sense it on the summer wind – but I never kid myself as I know that it only happens when ‘I’ let go of the controls completely (as in disappear) and allow it to happen.

Why choose this as the defining characteristic of actualism?

Ah, but it’s the other way around. When Richard became actually free and searched for a word that could best describe his ongoing experience of life he came across the word ‘actualism’ defined as ‘the theory that nothing is merely passive (now rare)’ Oxford Dictionary.

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Do you think that it will be possible to assemble molecules in a laboratory to produce life one day? And nothing mysterious is going on?

As far as I know, scientists have yet to discover where and how inanimate matter transformed into animate matter on this planet but I have heard that some favour the notion that it may well have been undersea vents where the hot mineral-rich magna from the earth’s core meets the salty water of the ocean.

The materialism has it that the difference between animate and inanimate matter is that of complexity and constituents: both are essentially matter. Do you differ from this viewpoint?

From my everyday observations, the difference between animate matter and inanimate matter is far more than ‘complexity and constituents’. The processes that make matter animate – cell division, reproduction, consumption, digestion, movement, aging, death, to name but a few, are astounding … and the addition of the ability of animate matter to be conscious is absolutely astonishing … and further the ability of animate matter be conscious of being conscious is truly wondrous.

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As to whether this, or any other animate-matter creating scenario can be duplicated in a laboratory one day I wouldn’t know, but given the astounding advances in biological knowledge and research of the last 100 years in particular it would be foolish to say no.

So, is a living thing an assembly of molecules and nothing else? In other words, ‘life’ is an epiphenomenon of matter?

Life is not an epiphenomenon of matter but is the very quality of animate matter. The physical universe is not inert.

Life – ‘The condition, quality, or fact of being a living organism; the condition that characterizes animals and plants (when alive) and distinguishes them from inanimate matter, being marked by a capacity for growth and development and by continued functional activity; the activities and phenomena by which this is manifested’. Oxford Talking Dictionary

I admit one needs a certain amount of naiveté to take those first six words of the website at face value, given that there are a glut of snake oil sellers out and about advertising their otherworldly rehash of ancient superstition as being not only new but also non-spiritual. However, if you have come across this Actual Freedom mailing list because you are in some way disenchanted with Eastern mysticism then I suggest you study the contents of the website rather than waste your time preaching to those who have moved on.

May I ask what is your personal experiential expertise for giving advice to others as how to conduct their lives? What of the wisdom you proffer has practically changed your life for the better in that it made you more happy and more harmonious in relation to your fellow human beings? So far I have only read that you practice being ‘tremendously aware of every movement of thought’ and that you practice ‘me listening to myself; like a mirror’. (To Richard, About Permanency, 29.9.2003). And your admonition to not bring dead people to the arena is odd given that it is you yourself who have come to this list offering the teachings of a LDM

As for ‘those who moved on’, I was referring to myself and those few intrepid pioneers who have moved on from the ancient spiritual practices and philosophies and are interested in actually changing themselves, not ‘saving’ others. As Actualism is a method to be practiced entirely on one’s own; there are neither gurus nor followers nor disciples, so your jibes completely miss the mark on this list. I suggest reading a post from No 47: http://www.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=908332140&sort=d&start=1982, as it might be useful to be aware of some responses to the other guru-busters and flamers who have come and gone before engaging in further foolishness.

As for the ‘illusion of spiritual progress’ – given that actualism is utterly and completely non-spiritual, as I have already explained in my last post to you – there is no such thing as ‘spiritual progress’. The progress lies in becoming more and more happy and harmless, more and more free from malice and sorrow and ever more delighting in being here. This progress is tangible, palpable and existing in fact.

No, both of your statements are wrong. You and I don’t ‘share the same consciousness field’. You follow the guidelines of a died-in-the-wool spiritualist who described himself as God-realized while I have long ago rid myself of all spiritual beliefs – you and I are poles apart.

There is a world of difference between a PCE and the ‘supreme intelligence’ of spiritual fame – 180 degrees opposite in fact (see ). Your statement is meaningless which makes your admonitions nonsense.

I certainly don’t want to be ‘as they are’ – I have studied the gurus, both male and female, both from afar and up close, and I didn’t like their lifestyle, I didn’t like how they were with their women or men and I didn’t like how they treated their fellow human beings. How can I be envious of them when I have found something far superior to spiritual enlightenment – the method to an actual tangible palpable freedom from the human condition, and the corroboration that the method works in practice – it has thus far produced a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow 99% of the time.

Has the thought ever crossed your mind, or should I say have you ever been aware of a movement of thought, that you might be wasting your time ‘busting’ what doesn’t exist here at all?

Given that you have no idea what this ‘mother-of-all-methods’ looks like in print, let alone how it works in practice, this statement is an inanity.

Wrong again. I am not searching for enlightenment. Enlightenment is a delusional feeling state whereas an actual freedom is actual and irreversible, because ‘self’-immolation deletes the entire affective faculty once and for all. And what gave you the idea that I ‘depend on someone else’ – I am applying a method that frees me from malice and sorrow. Where is the dependency?

Ah, here comes the hoary belief of a collective consciousness that ‘is divided and in permanent conflict’.

I no longer subscribe to any beliefs in a collective consciousness – such beliefs are only upheld by those who so desperately fear autonomy that they passionately cling to an imaginary collective. To uphold such beliefs is dependency writ large.

Consciousness is a function of each individual human brain and simply means the condition of being conscious, as in awake, aware, sentient, responsive, alert. Given that I have investigated my beliefs and feelings that arise from being a social identity and have become aware of my instinctual passions, as and when they arise, my consciousness is now neither collective, nor ‘divided’ nor ‘in permanent conflict’. It is utterly delightful not to be part of humanity’s mad and sorry consciousness.

Ah, another psittacism, from the spiritual teachings specifically designed to ensure that those who are spiritualists remain within the fold – the spiritualist’s resistance to any and all change is legendary, both in the West and in the East. This psittacism was one of the first I had to throw out in order that I could even consider that I could actually do something about my feelings of malice and sorrow. I found out that it is in fact possible to free oneself of the shackles of the human condition. It is possible to change human nature.

Been there, done that.

As someone who sincerely and persistently practiced this twaddle for 17 years I know that the method you propose (and then denied that it was a method) does not work to rid one of malice and sorrow – the only thing it can produce is a delusionary state of dissociation. I wanted better than that. I wanted to live with a man in peace and harmony and I wanted genuine peace.

Actualism delivers, but one first has to get off one’s butt, get one’s head out of the clouds, and want to actually change. Nothing less will do.

You lost me here, what ‘horses’ are you talking about? We have had others who see their sparring as ‘good sport’ – if that’s what you are referring to – but from this side of the fence I simply see that they are wasting a serendipitous opportunity.

You are not the only one who has come along and declared actualism to be yet another spiritual cult and then blithely bashes away at his or her own invention. In Australia we call it the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – anyone reporting success or achieving success is bound to have to run the gauntlet of others. It’s all par for the course, but I do suggest reading up on what you have set out to destroy – it looks rather silly when you never hit a target, don’t you think?

I used the term ‘pure consciousness experience’ deliberately to see how it felt to try it on – sort of like trying on a pair of blue jeans to see if they fit. It doesn’t, and they don’t.

There is no relation between consciousness and timelessness because mortal human beings thinking and feeling themselves to be timeless is nothing but fervent imagination based on ancient fairytales. In their awareness and resulting fear of death ancient humans have conjured up the belief that there is some other place to go after death, that there is something that will live on after this body dies – and 99.99% of humans haven’t dared to question this soothing belief ever since.

Once I dared to investigate my belief in some spurious after-life, in an eternal life and in some ever-present Energy – God by another name – and dared to face the fear of death, consciousness became a very simple thing to understand.

In a normal person, consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Consciousness is the state of being aware of one’s actions, sensations, feelings and thoughts. This marvellous ability of the human brain to be conscious is so miraculous in itself that any invented explanation of a Higher Timeless Consciousness having created this human consciousness pales in insignificance.

Given that each human being is born with an instinctual ‘self’ overlaid since birth with a further layer of social identity, this consciousness is a ‘self’-consciousness. Thus a consciousness of ‘who’ I think and ‘who’ I feel I am is constantly predominant and the bare consciousness of the flesh-and-blood-body only gets a peek in during a body-only pure consciousness experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. A naïve observation and contemplation about the workings of this amazing physical universe, or simply being immersed in the sensual pleasure of being alive, can bring on such pure consciousness experience.

Whereas when one wants to relate one’s own consciousness with this imaginary timelessness, the only way to proceed is to totally become immersed in one’s feelings, disidentify and disconnect from the body and all things physical, disassociate oneself from everything that is down-to-earth, actual, common sense and happening in this moment, and imagine oneself to be ‘somewhere else’.

To shed the belief in a Higher Power and a life after death was certainly daring – for there could be an angry god standing at my grave, couldn’t He? When I finally admitted that a timeless consciousness – the feeling of immortality – was a mere product of my fervent belief, I was then able to take my life into my own hands and proceed to change the programming in my brain. Acknowledging the fact that Timelessness and God have never existed is the only way to become free of malice and sorrow.

I could just as easily say that you ‘just haven’t discovered’ that your actualism and your PCEs are delusions of a mind in need of the false security of ‘the final solution’.

Of course you could say that – you could and do say anything. However, it just is not factual. You only need to take a good look around to see that the Eastern spiritual solution – the loyal and persistent pursuit of an ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ – has not brought any peace to earth in 3,500 years. Billions of people have applied the teachings of Eastern philosophy and religion and yet the wars, rapes, murders, corruption, sorrow and malice arising out of the genetically-encoded instinctual passions have not been diminished, to the contrary, the last century was the bloodiest of them all.

Don’t you think that this feeling of ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness’ is worth further and deeper investigation in terms of a more tangible result for human peace on earth?

Actualism is the very antidote to delusion because it is only based on that which is actual – ‘existing in fact as evidenced by the physical senses, in action or existence at this time, existing in act and not merely potentially or apparently’. I only write about facts and tangible provable repeatable experiences. In the last three years I have investigated every skerrick of belief, every notion of feeling and emotion and every bit of my social identity and replaced them with hard facts. This process has greatly diminished the alien entity that is my ‘self’, which has not existence other than beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions. The inevitable outcome of this persistent diminishing of ‘me’ is extinction, ‘self’-immolation.

There is no security whatsoever, either false or true, in the ‘final solution’ of ‘self’-immolation. It is the scariest and most thrilling enterprise one can ever undertake in one’s life. It is the pinnacle of what human consciousness is capable of – to delete one’s own social and instinctual programming.

It simply involves a mind which is quiet, not analyzing itself, not attempting to affect itself, to even understand itself. There is no interruption of what the mind is doing. For once, what is happening completely unfolds itself, whereas, usually, the mind is busy applying some approach, technique, practice, etc., which prevents the full comprehension of the self. Such uninterrupted unfoldment of psychological and physical reaction then, is causeless; there is no cause occurring, which is leading to an effect. In that case, it is pure consciousness which perceives its own limitations, its own tendency to project from both genetically based reaction, as well as from its social conditioning. There is, therefore, no effort required for self-comprehension.

No, what you describe is not pure consciousness, because pure consciousness is consciousness unpolluted by any self whatsoever. Only an instinctual and social entity has the ‘tendency to project from both genetically based reaction, as well as from its social conditioning’. You obviously live your teachings about a non-analyzing mind, for you have made no attempt at all to understand how your mind works, to what extent your intelligence is clouded by feelings and emotions, nor have you observed how all human beings are affected and driven by the genetically-encoded instinctual passions and to what extremes they will go to in order to deny this simple fact.

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You see, one function of a discussion is to explore what we both are saying, not to make conclusions based on what we think the other is saying. You do that when you feel that what you have to say is always and inherently correct not only for yourself but for another. Perhaps it might be you who are hung up on divinity since you see it so much in what I say. What is divinity? I’ve never ascribed to such. But it could be that your actualism has become divine to you, albeit unconsciously, and that the discussion of others naturally becomes demonic and ‘impure’ by comparison.

Well, from the amount of straw-man arguments in this post, you have not explored much of what I am saying. And as you have this aversion to words that are well explained in dictionaries and continuously present your own changeable, interpretations of words, I have no reliable basis to understand the words that are not the words of other English-speaking people. So if you want me to explore what you are saying, you will need to say what you mean and mean what you say.

Divinity is

‘the character or quality of being God or sharing the nature of God; godhood’ (Oxford Dictionary)

and you may be denying the fact, but ‘the unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ has an awful lot in common with the ‘the character or quality of being God or sharing the nature of God’ because God and ‘universal consciousness’ are one and the same name. But if you do not like the word ‘divinity’ I can simply say that ‘universal consciousness’ is meta-physical and not actual because it is not perceivable by the physical senses for it is psychic in nature.

From your previous comments above, it would seem that it is you who is trying to make actualism fit your experience and worldview, whereas I completely and utterly reject the notion of a universal Big Daddy consciousness that is looking after everything in general and ‘me’ in particular. If you are so convinced of your stance why not stick to it? Why befuddle your pure and loving message of ‘universal consciousness’ with something that is propagated by crazy people?

Wrong, in fact. When I actively and unconditionally investigate I make use of the brain’s ability to be aware of itself and therefore I can, with sincerity, persistence and diligence, become aware of my brain’s own programming.

Here is the contradiction. How can you ‘unconditionally’ investigate anything when you yourself admitted that you are socially and genetically programmed – which is what conditioning IS? ‘You’ cannot ‘make use’ of the brain’s abilities at all, because ‘you’ are part of the sickness that is the disability of the brain. If there is no actual awareness, there can be no ‘becoming’ aware. It is all just the same confusion going from one ideological pole of itself to the other. And persistence and diligence won’t help you because both imply effort, ‘you’ who are the programming ‘diligently’ and ‘persistently’ trying to end itself. You can’t end yourself because you must always be there ‘persisting’ – diligently.

If you had taken the time to read the whole paragraph before you conclude that it is a contradiction, you might have understood the nature of ‘self’-awareness. When you say that ‘‘you’ cannot ‘make use’ of the brain’s abilities at all’ it is because you have a metaphysical notion of consciousness. You have defined ‘consciousness [as] the energy of thought that is the thinking of the entire species’ which means you are denying the very capacity of the individual human brain to be aware both of its own functioning and of its capacity to be aware of being aware – apperceptive awareness. If you start off with the belief that your own consciousness is the core, the root of ‘all that is’ i.e. God-consciousness, then you are stymied from making any sort of investigation other than finding union with the Undivided Consciousness. This is neither awareness in operation nor an unconditional investigation – this is a fait à complit, based on finding out what you want to find out – seek and ye shall find God, by whatever other name.

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The modern scientific empirical discoveries of neuro-biology and genetics, with regard to the human brain and how it functions, have revealed that the brain is programmable in the same way a computer is programmable. The program is formed by physical connections or pathways between neurons, and this program is mostly formed after birth. These pathways (synapse) are capable of being changed at any time. The old connection simply ‘dies’ for lack of use and a new one is formed.

That may be so, but ‘you’ ARE the program, and as such, can only prolong it, not end it. ‘IT’ is YOU.

Yes, ‘I’ am the program, but there are three I’s altogether and only one is actual.

• normal I – A psychological and psychic entity residing within the flesh and blood body comprising both the ego (who you think you are) and the soul (who you feel you are).
• spiritual I – A Grand identity wherein the ego is not eliminated, but escapes into a massive delusion (ego-trip) of grandeur and Divine Splendour, Oneness and Immortality, while the soul is given free reign to indulge in psychic powers and blissful imagination.
• actual I – What I am is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. The first person pronoun is not used here to refer to any psychological or psychic identity because in actuality there is nothing other than the physical – this carbon-based life-form being conscious. One is free to be me as-I-am, benign and beneficial in disposition.

‘What I am’ is experienced in a non-affective pure consciousness experience, when both the normal ‘I’ and the spiritual ‘I’ are in abeyance. In a PCE one is startlingly aware of what is different, the absence of one’s own social/spiritual and instinctual programming. After returning to normal one can then proceed to do whatever is necessary to take apart and diminish one’s programming with the effective tool of ‘self’-awareness.

Again, if you start with the Eastern religious premise that ‘who you really are’ is the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ then you won’t even bother about investigating your own human consciousness. You simply observe it, suppress it, deny it and transcend it such that you eventually convince yourself that you really are the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ . Therefore ‘I’ am no longer that tacky, normal, mortal, program – I am this grand and glorious universal program. This practice of swapping programs or identities is the very substance of all spiritual teachings.

I am surprised that someone who speaks with such confidence about the ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness that is the universal consciousness itself moving as human consciousness’ does not even have the slightest experience and knowledge about the practical down-to-earth application of awareness. By observing and exploring one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions one applies awareness to examine one’s ‘self’. By questioning, examining and persistently investigating one can, in fact, deliberately change one’s actions, for instance stop being malicious, and consecutively eliminate one’s feelings, emotions and instinctual passions.

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Further, the human brain is programmed, via a genetic code, with a set of instinctual or base operating functions, located in the primitive brain system which causes automatic robot-like animal reactions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire to be transmitted via chemical messages to various parts of the body including the neo-cortex. Physiological alterations as an adaptation to changed circumstances are well documented even within the lifetime of individual members of a species.

But ‘you’ can’t delete the program. You ARE the program, the dysfunction. There is NO EXIT. Now if you can see that clearly, you will naturally become absolutely silent because there is NOTHING ‘you’ can do about ‘you’. That realization by the brain is the ending of its disease, that is, the ending of ‘you’.

By merely repeating the same superstition over and over again it does not become a fact. You may fervently believe that there is ‘NO EXIT’ to the prison of our instinctual programming and social conditioning, but I have experienced over the last three years that there is a successful method to disentangle myself from the insipid social conditioning, from passionate beliefs, from emotions and passions. However, the first step to do so is to forsake the passionate belief in some ‘unseparated, uncorrupted consciousness’, God-consciousness, and in ‘the energy of that universe itself as the human mind, which is ‘cleansing’ itself of the contamination of both genetically and socially based cause/effect reaction’ , God’s will. The deletion of ‘my’ program has to be done by me by myself, for there is no energy and no universe that will do it for me.

This passionate belief that the ‘the energy of that universe itself’ ... ‘is cleansing itself of the contamination’ is the very reason that you are so convinced that there is ‘NO EXIT’ to the prison of the program that ‘you’ are. This belief in God-consciousness and God’s will has entrapped human beings for millennia in the concept that it is not possible to change oneself.

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Further, since you are recalling, I also said that I question the idea of PCE as experienceable.

You do not understand. You have redefined what a PCE is and then declared that is not ‘experienceable’ – I am simply reporting my experience of a temporary ‘self’-less state. I know as a fact that a non-affective pure consciousness experience exists, that one can be without any identity whatsoever, even if only for a short period of time – a temporary glitch in the program of the brain, so to speak. Many people have reported similar ‘self’-less non-affective experiences with very accurate descriptions so I can ascertain that we indeed talk about the same type of experience.

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You are talking about ‘universal consciousness’ , another word for God, which is but a passionate fairy-tale created by a lonely ‘self’ imagining itself to be connected to a ‘universal consciousness’ or, if fully deluded, to be universal consciousness (God) itself. If you indeed believe that this state ‘is the human brain at its fullest point of development within nature’ then that is where your investigation necessarily begins and ends – as in going round in circles – and then you stop questioning ‘who’ is this entity called No. 8, who believes, feels and ‘instinctually knows’ to be this universal consciousness.

You are talking about ‘actualism’, another word for god intellectually stripped down to a philosophy of ‘the flesh and blood body experience’. Also, why do you think that actualism, as an ‘ism’, is not a fairy tale? Because it employs a less metaphorical language? Because you have replaced traditional language with your own? You yourself said that you were conditioned, yet you want to propose to me that you are clear enough to live what is actual? And you simply won’t stop changing my words into your own ideas: Another example of the intransigence of self-protective belief. How do you know that what I term universal consciousness is not a term that represents something which, in itself, cannot be put into words but is nonetheless actual? You don’t, do you? You can only see what I say from within your own, self-professed conditioning.

If you are having trouble describing the meaning of the term ‘universal consciousness’ then it cannot be that it ‘represents something which, in itself, cannot be put into words but is nonetheless actual’. Something that is actual as in palpable, tangible, tactile, corporeal, physical and material can easily be put into words by using one or more of 650,000 words of the English language.

Every human being has five physical senses that function in a very similar way in each of us, and the sensate experience of those senses can be put into a language that is understandable by others. The faculty of fanciful imaginary and affective thought, however, is literally unlimited in its capacity to produce ideas, concepts, ideologies, philosophies, viewpoints, beliefs, meanings and psychic worlds that are so personal and subjective that they cannot be accurately or succinctly described to someone else. Hence the reliance on metaphors, poetry, imagery, feelings and mutual affirmations to make what is purely meta-physical and ethereal appear real and of significance. The common fashion in spiritual circles is to invent or co-opt new terms for saying the same old thing so that it appears to be original and fresh as opposed to borrowed and hackneyed.

It is wonderful to be out of the spiritual world of belief.

When thought is no longer the dominant feature of human living, what else is operating but nature expressed in its most fully developed action as unobstructed human consciousness? Is it the word consciousness that bothers you? Then throw it away. The word is not what is actual anyway.

Your sentence above belies the your definition of consciousness as ‘the actual operation of a quiet mind’ that you have given before –

‘that such a quiet mind would not be clouded by feelings and emotions; that it would contain no barriers to full comprehension of the social mind and its behaviour; and that there could be no ‘instinctual passions’ operating’.

Despite the fact that it is common in spiritual circles to insist that the word is not the thing, it is nevertheless common in human-to-human communication to use words to describe a thing and as such the actual thing and the word used to describe it become inseparable in any sensible communication. But you might just as well throw the word ‘consciousness’ into the rubbish bin, as you do not know at all what you want to make of it. Vis:

Consciousness therefore, is its content, but when the content is aware of its limitations as the content, that is the transformation of that same consciousness. Yet that same consciousness was always there/here, forever unknown, unknowable, causeless, untouched even by its own outer shell of knowledge.

No 1: How do you know that?

I don’t. How can it be known?

Thus to you, consciousness cannot be adequately described in words, cannot be known, is generally unaware that it is limitless, contains no barriers and is only discovered when thinking is no longer dominant. What you are describing is the dream-like state of a universal consciousness that feels itself to be timeless, ineffable, pure and absolute. This universal consciousness is a god-intoxicated consciousness and 180 degrees opposite to the pure consciousness of a non-affective PCE.

Further, ‘uncontracted consciousness’, as in a mind unbounded by any common sense whatsoever, where the ‘feeler’ is very much alive and strutting the stage, has nothing at all to do with a pure consciousness or an apperceptive awareness that is free from feelings and instinctual passions – in fact they are 180 degrees apart.

What I refer to as uncontracted consciousness is merely consciousness without ‘you’, the body freed of the redundant and habitual cycle of self-centeredness.

No No 8. You are franticly back peddling yet again. You have defined your version of consciousness as ‘universal consciousness’ – ‘the energy of the universe’ – which is hardly a ‘merely’.

Apperceptive awareness is just another intellectual term to describe uncontracted consciousness. Uncontracted consciousness is a term that originated out of my own perception.

Do you mean to say you coined the term ‘uncontracted consciousness’ because nobody else had a similar experience and therefore nobody else had described that particular experience before, that the experience is original, that it is non-spiritual, purely No 8’s own? Let’s see in what context you are using your new term –

• ‘If in fact, that state of uncontracted consciousness was the state of his [Krishnamurti’s] mind, he would have been uniquely qualified to make the statement that he made because he lived it.’

• ‘That is because consciousness that is uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’ can only occur instantly, as this moment – which is the only moment possible.’

• ‘That state of uncontracted consciousness was the state of his [Krishnamurti’s] mind’ is clearly a meta-physical affective experience that includes Krishnamurti’s teachings of love, compassion, beauty, deathlessness and ‘supreme intelligence’. Adding words like ‘the body freed of ... self-centeredness’ does not make this ‘uncontracted consciousness’ any less spiritual.

• A ‘consciousness that is uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’’ points to a timeless consciousness separate from the body’s innate ability of being conscious – it points to the expanded ‘universal consciousness’ freed from the bondage of a conditioned body/mind – nothing but ancient spiritual teaching wrapped in one of No. 8’s new terms.

There is no such thing as a universal consciousness other than in the hearts and minds of human beings. The physical universe has no consciousness per se.

In your eagerness to explain yourself using terms of Richard’s description of Actual Freedom you have conveniently overlooked that apperception is the brain’s ability to be aware of being conscious. This has nothing to do with the meta-physical ‘universal consciousness’ ‘uncontracted as ‘me’ or ‘you’’ that you have accurately explained in your recent post to No. 1 as –

‘Consciousness is the energy of thought that is the thinking of the entire species. It is the energy that the brain produces as a species’.

This ‘uncontracted consciousness’ is when ‘you’, the ‘self’, are expanding into the consciousness of the species, also known as the psychic web. All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web ... a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ and from the Divine to the Diabolical.

With apperception one becomes aware of the folly of ‘uncontracted consciousness’, one becomes aware of the psychic powers and grand feelings that are part and parcel of this collective consciousness and in that clear awareness of the nature of ‘uncontracted consciousness’ itself one steps outside of this psychic web, outside of humanity, outside of ‘the energy that the brain produces as a species’.

When the astronauts orbiting the moon in Apollo 8 first saw our planet earth rising from behind the moon, one of them said ‘I saw the earth as it really is’. The photo of the earth rising over the moon’s surface has become famous ever since all over the Western world. The astronaut saw the earth from far, far away, and saw it as a whole blue planet, magnificently hanging in space. Only by being separate from the earth could he see what this planet is in fact.

This is analogous to what apperception is to ‘uncontracted consciousness’. When one develops apperception one becomes aware of the ‘consciousness,... the energy of thought that is the thinking of the entire species’ and by seeing it for the folly it is, one then steps out of it. With apperception one steps out of the real world and the psychic world into the actual world. Apperception is to be the senses as a bare awareness, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer and ‘me’ as a feeler to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another.

Apperceptive awareness is a term you borrowed from somebody else. When you don’t borrow from another’s knowledge, then what will you do?

No, using the same term for the same experience – apperceptive awareness – is not a problem but a useful practice for clear communication. When I write I only use terms i.e. language, that someone’s else has used before – but I make sure that the terms are specific and according to the facts. When I use the term apperceptive awareness then I make sure that I have thoroughly understood that my experience refers exactly to the same experience that Richard is describing.

This is called calling a spade a spade and not ‘a conglomerate of vegetable and mineral matter most commonly used by animate life to excavate and move vegetable matter’. Whereas you prefer to invent your own terms for your experiences and then substitute them arbitrarily with whatever other terms you read, without taking the care to ascertain that the experience being written about is in fact the same as your own.

Fortunately it is only a concept and not a fact that ‘‘doing’ and ‘being conscious of what you are doing’ are contradictory’. What you are describing is an emotional ‘doing’, as in ‘the ‘certainty’ arising from the decision is then felt’. When one focuses one’s awareness and emphasis on being an emotional ‘being’ then one is fully identified with the emotion and the emotional action as it is happening.

In actualism, however, I focus my attention on observing how I am experiencing this moment of being alive, whatever it is that is happening – be it thoughts, emotions or sensations. Admittedly, in the beginning it takes a bit of attentiveness and persistent training in self-observation but ‘‘doing’ and ‘being conscious of what you are doing’’ now happens with me quite naturally all the time. It is called ongoing ‘self’-awareness.

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