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Richard’s Correspondence On The Actual Freedom Mailing List With Correspondent No. 108
RESPONDENT: Last week, I had my first PCE after starting to read this website. RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list ... it would appear that the bright outlook/
not resenting being here, which you wrote about in your first e-mail RESPONDENT: I had been playing with a friend’s niece and nephew all afternoon and evening, when all of a sudden, while sitting in the sitting room with them at night, something ‘popped’ and I could hear and see and feel and just generally perceive with amazing clarity. My friend’s nephew was speaking to me, and mid-sentence, I wasn’t only listening to just the words he was saying, but could hear the tones and timbres in his voice and the slight echo it had from all around the room. I saw the shadows on the wall cast by the lighting, and the colours and shades were so vibrant and bright, not bright in a ‘more lighting’ way, but in a ‘more clear’ way. My skin felt so ‘close’ and immediate, and I noticed the way it felt (rather than just feeling it as a weight). And where before I was feeling happy and light-hearted, I no longer felt that – I didn’t feel whatsoever! ‘Empty-hearted’ might be the best way to put it. There was no separation between a ‘me’ that could feel and anything else, and in this was such a purity, for lack of better word. Being alive felt so real. I was also aware of this happening and recognised what it was, and it was funny. I described the experience as it was happening to the kids (‘wow I can really hear you, before I wasn’t really listening somehow’ and ‘wow everything looks so amazing, its all right here’) and they thought it was pretty funny too but that I was being awful weird. I’d had PCE’s in the past, spontaneous ones brought about by drug use, meditation, sometimes just everyday circumstances, but there were also too many ASC’s that blocked a clear recollection. Every time I tried to think about a PCE, I would just have too many affective responses and it wouldn’t get anywhere. This was the first out and out clear PCE. RICHARD: What particularly pleases me is that you grasped the essence of what has nowadays become known as the actualism method within a couple of weeks of reading The Actual Freedom Trust web site and put it into practice (it is the intent which counts) forthwith – with the advertised result – and now within a couple of months an out and out clear pure consciousness experience (PCE) as well. RESPONDENT: I really understand now why the felicitous feelings are to be maximised. In the past, before reading the actual freedom site, I had felt frustrated because I thought anything within the realm of a self would just be a lame imitation of the pure experience and that wouldn’t help anything. And even after reading the site I had doubts but thought it was worth doing anyway because it did sound right, and I had nothing to lose. But now I really know that the felicitous feelings are worthwhile in and of themselves, and now I also see how, while only being an imitation, they are related to and really do lead to the PCE. RICHARD: Aye ... I mean it when I say a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing a
PCE to occur RESPONDENT: Thank you very much. RICHARD: You are very welcome ... once one gets the knack of allowing a PCE to occur – by letting go of one’s habitual way of being (whereupon one’s life will live itself in much the same way as a work of art forms itself when the doer is in suspension) – they can happen more and more. Ain’t life grand!
RESPONDENT: The past week has hardly been light-hearted. I haven’t been happy and harmless. A female friend came to visit and the emotions that came out really threw me. I wanted to get emotionally entangled with her and it was making me miserable. To the point where I wasn’t asking myself HAIETMOBA very often, and even when I was I could barely figure out when the last time I was feeling good was. She’s gone now, and things have stabilised somewhat. (...) I’m wondering if there’s any way to want and get love without feeling bad at not having it. The fact is, I want it and I can’t see why I shouldn’t have it. So to just say ‘its silly to feel bad, return to the senses’ is a repression of the desire for love rather than genuinely nipping it in the bud. My attempt to nip it in the bud just leads to me wondering how I can go about trying to get love without having to feel bad either in the attempt, or in the case of a failure to get it. I cant ignore this question. What can I do here? RICHARD: You can always re-read your report, written a scant two months ago, of a pure consciousness
experience (PCE): http://lists.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=912835235 Just in case you cannot access that page here is the relevant text:
The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness
– is but a pathetic imitation The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt.
(...) RICHARD: The affective intimacy of love – the delusion that separation has ended via a glorious feeling of oneness – is but a pathetic imitation of an actual intimacy (where there is no separation in the first place). The expression ‘love is a bridge’ is quite apt. RESPONDENT: So the desire for love is a desire for the imitation of that too. Ok, I think I got it. RICHARD: Essentially, a desire for oneness is the desire to remain existent (albeit rapturously so) forever ... in a word: immortality. RESPONDENT: At the time all this was happening, Richard, I felt very weak and helpless. Like having that love was the most important thing in the world, and despite seeing how wanting it was just making me feel awkward and unhappy and isolated, I just couldn’t stop wanting to have it again and again. RICHARD: Put succinctly: love is very, very appealing ... and addictive. RESPONDENT: Not trying to get it felt like being a cop-out because I think I’m not worthy of it or I’ll never be able to have it successfully from a desirable candidate (in the ‘real world’ sense), rather than because it is really a more sensible idea to not try for it. RICHARD: Feelings of unworthiness, of not being good enough, are symptomatic of love’s imminence ... love is redeeming (it makes the lover worthy, lovable, desirable, enchanting, and so on). RESPONDENT: I wonder if seeing that love is just a 2nd rate knock off will help if it happens again (if I get to a place of wanting it really bad again). RICHARD: Remembering the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is far more effective ... the glorious feeling of oneness, of rapturous union, being an ecstatic feeling/a euphoric state of being does not readily lend itself to being categorised as second-rate. RESPONDENT: When I was in the depths of wanting love, it was so urgent and overwhelming. The possibility of a PCE or even a sense of well-being seemed far away. RICHARD: The expression ‘love is blind’ is quite apt.
RESPONDENT: From actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf68b.htm#06May05a. RICHARD: I have already elaborated (in the original e-mail exchange which that above quote was excerpted from). Vis.:
RESPONDENT: What was the influence/ effect of your parenting during that era on the child you mention? RICHARD: As mentioned at the beginning of that e-mail you found the above quote
in the relationship had changed, during that era, from one of parentage to one of friendship That was about nine-ten years ago ... she has since then married (a couple of years ago).
RICHARD: (...) ‘For most of the 11 years I was more than loving with children, more than compassionate, as I was love, I was compassion ... or, better put, there was only love, there was only compassion. At least one of the children in my care, custody and control at the time (I was a single parent for a number of years) bears the legacy of that era to this very day due to the powerful influence of such intense affection. [Co-Respondent]: ‘And what might that legacy be? [Richard]: ‘A sense of mission to search for The Absolute (or Truth, God, Being, Presence, Self, and so on), which is exemplified by love – Love Agapé – compassion, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, euphoria, goodness, beauty, oneness, unity, wholeness and a timeless, spaceless, formless immortal otherness which is a peace that passeth all understanding, of course. The powerful influence of such intense affection in a child’s formative years takes some shaking off ... it almost amounts to an imprinting’. [endquote]. RESPONDENT: What was the influence/ effect of your parenting during that era on the child you mention? RICHARD: As mentioned at the beginning of that e-mail you found the above quote in the relationship had changed, during that era, from one of parentage to one of friendship ... RESPONDENT: Do you think this change benefited your children ... RICHARD: No, I know that it did ... if nothing else it was much more fun. Essentially, all what is required of any progenitor is to ensure that their off-spring are adequately equipped for adulthood (are able to effectively operate and function independently in the environment they are born into). RESPONDENT: ... is it any better to be a friend to one’s child than a parent? RICHARD: It certainly is ... just for starters: being much more fun it readily promotes open learning (children are congenitally curious). RESPONDENT: If so, in what ways? I have already read this part: [quote] ‘(and they all appreciated that immensely ... as exemplified by the youngest often saying how glad she was that the ‘bossy-boots dad’ was gone)’ [endquote]. RICHARD: By not being either authoritarian (as distinct from authoritative) or disciplinarian a child’s innate inquisitiveness is not stifled – and many such educators have bemoaned the lack of motivation in their subject students – inasmuch curiosity’s concomitant keenness for discovery provides more than enough incentive. Apart from being innately curious children are also inherently imitative – as indicated by the term ‘role-model’
– and it should not take genius to suss out the advantages friendship has over parentship (or any other form of kinship for that
matter). * RICHARD: ... and (as also mentioned in that same e-mail) at age twenty two or thereabouts she said that she sometimes wished she had had a normal child/ father relationship as, unlike her then girlfriends who were getting married and having children of their own, she had ‘inherited’ a quest to pursue and could not settle down. RESPONDENT: Do you know what happened to the quest she inherited, presumably, from your enlightened years? RICHARD: Having openly and frankly discussed the events of her formative years on both that occasion and another a year or two later – plus having given her a copy of ‘Richard’s Journal’ and the address of The Actual Freedom Trust web site – there is every possibility that it has been shaken off. RESPONDENT: What has that drive led her to investigate? RICHARD: I do not know – being now an adult for many years she lives her own life completely independent of her erstwhile father – but going by what I recall, from the age twenty two or thereabouts conversation, she had investigated what some spiritual/ mystical peoples have had to report ... specifically, and not surprisingly, where it pertained to love (in all its forms and variations). RESPONDENT: The reason I ask is because the three people I know of that have achieved either an actual or a virtual freedom – yourself, Peter, and Vineeto – all went through a spiritual period. Do you find this to be merely coincidental ... RICHARD: Yes and no ... yes, it is coincidental insofar as spirituality/ mysticality has been the only alternative to materialism (up until now) and no, it is not, because the drive which has (previously) led to that is, fundamentally, the same intrinsic urge which inspires investigation into the third alternative. RESPONDENT: ... or is there some significance in it – such that would suggest that an inclination towards actualism is not likely if not preceded by an inclination towards spiritualism ... RICHARD: It is the inclination to know, to find out once and for all, the meaning of life which precedes any such proclivity. RESPONDENT: ... or that a prior interest in and pursuit of spiritualism has – even if by example of what not to do – been helpful in the practise of actualism? RICHARD: Not specifically ... no; parenthetically ... yes, of course. RESPONDENT: Do you know of anyone who has achieved a virtual freedom who has never had an interest in spirituality or held spiritual beliefs? RICHARD: I am yet to come across anyone who has never had an interest in spirituality, in some form or another, or has never held spiritual beliefs (no matter how attenuated they might be). RESPONDENT: Are there any practising actualists who have never had an interest in spirituality or held spiritual beliefs? RICHARD: You might as well ask whether there has been any practicing materialists who have never had or held same ... religiosity/ spirituality/ mysticality/ metaphysicality, of some type or degree, is as ubiquitous as the human condition itself.
RESPONDENT No. 53: ... you say you have no identity, yet you insist on having the identity of the 1st, last & only free person ... RICHARD: I have never even said that I am [quote] ‘the 1st, last & only’ [endquote] free person ... let alone insisted upon it as an identity. RESPONDENT No. 53: Are you not the first? Are there others? You may come clean here and now. (...) RESPONDENT: I’m guessing here, but I think what No. 53 is trying to ask is ‘are you the first and only flesh and blood human body to be without any identity whatsoever?’ RICHARD: Yet what my co-respondent asserted is that I [quote] ‘insist on having the identity of the 1st, last & only free person’ [endquote]. This may be an apt place for some background information: in the middle of October 2003 several people, most
of whom were also writing to a Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti forum, began writing to this mailing list with a similar theme RESPONDENT: ... and I thought its already clear that you’ve said ‘yes’ about that. RICHARD: What is already abundantly clear is that I have said ‘yes’ about being the first and, as far as is ascertainable since 1992, the only one so far to be actually free from the human condition (as in being a flesh and blood human body without any identity whatsoever). More to the point, however, is that it matters not one jot who discovered an actual freedom from the human condition – somebody has to be the first to discover something new in any area of human endeavour as a matter of course (such as discovering the cure for cancer for instance) – and why some peoples would want to turn that prosaic fact into being an egocentric issue is anybody’s guess. RESPONDENT: How he thinks ‘first and only’ also implies ‘last’ though, I have no idea. RICHARD: Perhaps by conveniently leaving-off the ‘so far’ (as in ‘the only one so far’) it might be possible that thoughts about singularity could begin to take root and grow ... the phrase ‘the only one’ might start to sound like ‘the one and only’ (as in ‘the only one of its kind’ or, more likely, as in ‘a never-to-be-repeated freak of nature’) if given the appropriate motivation. Speaking of which ... the following will give you some idea as to how such thoughts may very well have been planted:
CO-RESPONDENT: Richard, if thinking is neural activity how does this activity transform into words? RICHARD: As feelings are primal and primary then words, and thus thought, most likely developed ever-so-slowly out of intuitive cognitions as an extension of the growling, grunting, groaning, moaning, whimpering sounds which are so expressive of the feeling of what is happening ... most histrionic words have an affective etymological root. Thus the ‘first’ thoughts in proto-humans quite possibly would have been nascent expressions of the primal feelings patently evident in what is known as the higher order animals. CO-RESPONDENT: The ongoing process of thinking appears mostly as words and words and more words and just like the mental pictures that are also a part of thinking I wonder how is it that we get this ‘internal-hearing’ and ‘seeing’ from nerve conduction. It seems metaphysical. RICHARD: What you are referring to – the mental pictures and sounds, and so on, which are part and parcel of thought in most peoples – have no existence in this actual world ... thought occurs as words-only here. RESPONDENT: When you are looking at something linear (like a shelf) and trying to gauge its length, or looking at something planar (like a cardboard box) and trying to gauge the proportion between its width and its length, or shading a drawing and determining how dark to make this bit or that bit, are you thinking? And are these thoughts word-only? If not thinking, what do you call the mental process that’s taking place? RICHARD: What I am reporting above, as having no existence in this actual world, is the mental imagery – be it visual, audile, haptic, olfactory or kinaesthetic imagery – which is a feature of thought, thoughts and thinking in most normal human beings because of the intuitive/ imaginative facility ... hence my words-only characterisation of how thought operates here. Furthermore, this non-imagic thought functions only as required (mostly things get done on automatic pilot, so to speak, due to habituation) and for the main a general awareness operates. Thus specific to your examples, when estimating length, width, proportion, chiaroscuro, and so on, thought plays little part in the process. RESPONDENT: Also, in another recent post, you referred to ‘intuitive cognition’ when someone asked you about thought. RICHARD: Here is the exchange you are referring to:
RESPONDENT: What do you mean by this difference? RICHARD: In that instance I am using the word intuitive as opposed to the word discursive – ‘proceeding by argument or reasoning; ratiocinative; not intuitive’ (Oxford Dictionary) – for the very simple reason that dogs do not have thoughts, period (be they either of the rudimentary or possessive kind). More generally, the word intuitive refers to the thoughtless sensing (as in an instinct or a feel for something) which is eloquently expressed in the colloquialism gut-instinct (aka gut-feeling/ gut-reaction). Vis.:
CO-RESPONDENT: Actually I was blessed with two good parents. They gave me a reasonably quiet, secure, warm, and loving home and a lot of freedom to be myself. RICHARD: Not all parents comprehend that what their function is, essentially, is to instead prepare their offspring well for adulthood. CO-RESPONDENT: I’m grateful for the good, solid, well-balanced, foundation they gave me. RICHARD: Giving a child a lot of licence (aka the freedom to be themself as they instinctually are) is hardly the stuff of a good, solid, well-balanced foundation. CO-RESPONDENT: Seems here that so many people are not so fortunate. How about yourself Richard? RICHARD: Oh, I was given very little (if any) licence as a child ... thus I was well-prepared for adulthood. RESPONDENT: What is licence? RICHARD: More or less the same as permissiveness/ laxness/ a laissez-faire attitude (non-interference or indifference) ... or even lack of restraint/ lack of control. For instance:
RESPONDENT: What are some common examples of licence? RICHARD: Not knowing where one’s children are a night (such as roaming the streets in gangs); not setting boundaries/ parameters for them (as in giving in to temper tantrums); not providing guidelines/ not setting an example (letting them raise themselves in an ‘anything goes’ environment) ... in short: letting them be themselves as they instinctually are. RESPONDENT: And how is not giving any of it – and thus preparing a child for adulthood – different from being a ‘bossy boots dad’? RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to this:
There is a marked difference to being authoritarian (being an autocratic disciplinarian) and being
authoritative – as in proceeding from competent authority (expertise/ experience) – and children generally appreciate guidance
as the world at large can be, and often is, a bewildering/ frightful place for them ... especially in the playground (where the
bully-boys and feisty-femmes act-out the law of the jungle on a daily basis).
CO-RESPONDENT: Can one feel other’s feelings? RICHARD: Only if one is a feeling being. CO-RESPONDENT: Thoughts? RICHARD: Only if one is a feeling being with developed psychic abilities. CO-RESPONDENT: From a distance? RICHARD: In the first instance ... yes, from a near-distance; in the latter instance ... yes, from a far-distance. CO-RESPONDENT: In that case is it not that the ‘connection’ is actual? RICHARD: As the connection is between feeling beings – affective entities within bodies – it is not actual (in the sense that bodies, trees and rocks, are actual) but is quite real (in the sense that the affections, the affective entity and the psychic abilities formed thereof, are real) nevertheless. CO-RESPONDENT: If somebody can feel the thoughts and feelings of the other from a far distance, does it not mean that there is some kind of ‘actual’ transmission or connection going on? RICHARD: There is an affective/ psychic transmission/ connection going on ... but only between the feeling beings within bodies (there is no such thing going on between bodies). RESPONDENT: So if feeling being in body A affectively/ psychically affects feeling being in body B, such as feeling being A experiences anger and body A has the resulting hormonal secretions, and being B experiences fear, and body B has the result hormonal secretions, isn’t it so that those hormonal secretions are actual? RICHARD: Hormones – such as the adrenaline an angry and/or fearful identity psychosomatically induces a body to secrete – are indeed actual. Vis.:
RESPONDENT: And regardless of the affective nature of the emotions that cause them, doesn’t that mean that the hormonal secretions are not only actual, but also actually linked (transmitted, connected)? RICHARD: As the link – the transmission (from the feeling being in body A), the connection (betwixt the two feeling beings) – which causes the feeling being in body B to psychosomatically induce its hapless host to secrete hormones is an emotional and/or passional link (transmission, connection) there is no way its affective nature can be disregarded. Just so there is no misunderstanding: to say that the hormonal secretions are actually transmitted, as you did (in parenthesises) there, is to be saying that body A is emitting adrenaline, for example, and that body B is absorbing it.
CO-RESPONDENT: In both cases [thinking and feeling], the only actuality is the human brain in operation. RICHARD: Nope ... in the latter case the affective faculty in its entirety/the identity in toto is also in operation. CO-RESPONDENT: I did say ‘the only actuality’, so I question your answer here. Whatever thinking and feeling is going on, the only actuality (in your terms) is the neuro-chemical activity in the brain (etc). In other words, an actual brain in the process of thinking has the same ontological status as an actual brain in the process of feeling ... does it not? RESPONDENT: But an actual brain doesn’t feel, it’s the identity/ resident entity that feels. RESPONDENT No. 74: I experience thought. I experience pain. I experience hunger. What is the fundamental difference between these? Are they not all neuro-chemical events? RESPONDENT: When there is no ‘I’ there (identity/resident entity), thought and pain occur but hunger doesn’t because hunger (as different from the physical sensations that make ‘me’ hungry) only happens to ‘I’ – whereas thought and pain can happen without the resident entity. I’ve verified this myself. RESPONDENT No. 74: And where is (or what has) the ‘identity/resident entity’? Is it not also a neuro-chemical event of the body? RESPONDENT: The flesh and blood body has actual neuro-chemical events but the identity/resident entity isn’t actual – and neither is feeling, because an actual brain doesn’t feel, only an identity feels. Whatever the actual brain is doing while an identity feels isn’t itself feeling. RICHARD: Oh good ... someone who understands experientially. Continued on General Correspondence Page 13: No. 02 Continued on Mailing List ‘D’: No. 16
RETURN TO THE ACTUAL FREEDOM MAILING LIST INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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