Richard’s Selected Writings

There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension ... let alone anxiety, angst, fear, terror, horror or dread. And look, there is no fear in a flower, a tree, a rock, an armchair, an ashtray ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact. All sentient beings are born with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear and aggression and nurture and desire. They are Blind Nature’s – rather clumsy – software package designed to give one a start in life. Contrary to popular belief they are not hardware, but like all software, they can be deleted ... instincts are not set in concrete. These instincts form a rudimentary self – a passionate entity – situated in the ‘reptilian brain’ at the top of the brain-stem, in all animals. The human animal, with the unique ability to know its impending demise – and the capacity to think and reflect – has taken this rudimentary self and blown it up all out of proportion into an identity.

No other animal has an ‘I’ as an ego in the head, or a ‘me’ as a soul in the heart.

Having been started in a family and society, being shaped by its structures, its rules on dependency and conformity, ‘I’ know of no other way of living but in a group. ‘I’ have learned to fear being an outcast, alone and lonely without the continuous endorsement of being a member. ‘I’ have ‘my’ particular – but adopted – beliefs and values, dogmas and creeds, ideals and ‘truths’, myths and superstitions, and so on, that make ‘me’ an accepted member of the group. The adult life of each new recruit to the human race is already laid out before one ... and having been dis-empowered for all of ‘my’ life, ‘I’ am now looking forward to climbing further up the hierarchical ladder. ‘I’ will start ‘my’ own family – dependent upon ‘me’ this time – and ‘I’ will reinforce all of ‘my’ brainwashing by indoctrinating ‘my’ children. ‘I’ will make them, like ‘me’, into social identities ... and wards of ‘our’ culture.

However, the stirrings of wanting to discover just exactly what one is, outside of being a group member, are stronger than the fears about loneliness and being an outcast. To be able to relate to oneself and one’s partner, each moment again with impunity, as to what one actually feels, thinks and experiences is a luxury and freedom never possible within the group. The group does not allow for frank discussion about – and an honest questioning into – the venerated causes for its very existence. My way of living has taken a while to become accustomed to as I often feared to drown, to dissolve in a vast freedom wherein there are no boundaries. Here is a total lack of conformity and compromise. This is my life as-it-is ... and what a magical life it is.

What I have is a complete confidence in is the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this universe which, to my never-ending delight, brings about serendipity.

All discussion about fear eventually turns around death. This is a fact that needs be faced squarely. To not ‘be’ is inconceivable; it is impossible to imagine not ‘being’ because all one has ever known is ‘being’. There are no terms of reference to compare against – which is the normal way of thinking – and with no comparison there is no possibility of thought dealing with the fact of death. If pursued diligently, thought gives up the attempt and stops ... it cannot proceed further. The affective rushes in to fill the gap left by the absence of thought and fear turns to dread ... contemplation of extinction invariably turns fear to dread. The instinct to survive takes over and dread flips to its opposite: awe. As it says in some revered scriptures: ‘Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. Most religious and spiritual tracts refer to awe and dread when contemplating the majesty and mystery of some Transcendental ‘Being’ lying beyond time and space. Temporal transience is replaced by a firm faith in a timeless and spaceless Divinity that antedates birth and postdates death. Driven by the instinct for survival at any cost – Blind Nature is rather clumsy – one attempts to transcend the duality of Life and Death and achieve Immortality .

If successful, ‘I’ disappear and mysteriously reappear as ‘Me’, the Eternal Self or the Immortal Soul. One is then apparently without fear because one is Deathless ... one is Unborn and Undying. One disseminates one’s findings to all and sundry, finding a multitude of gullible penitents willing to suspend sensible reason and sensitive rationality for a chance at avoiding extinction. Such strange goings-on are the way that the denizens of the real world deal with the existential dilemma of facing the facticity of death’s oblivion. It is called being in a state of denial ... and results in avoidance and escapism. One’s native intelligence is nowhere to be found operating in all this. What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not an opposite ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not here. Now that I am alive, I am here. After death I will not be here ... just like before birth. Where is the problem?

The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. Extinction releases one into actuality ... as this flesh and blood body only I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this verdant planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in time and this place in space.

This actual world is an ambrosial paradise.

‘I’ am the sole cause of the tried and failed systems, such as ‘community spirit’, being considered essential if humans are to have peace on earth. ‘I’ am the arch-villain in this world-wide scenario ... ‘me’ and billions of other ‘me’s. Solutions and cures are not necessary when the cause is eradicated. Without ‘me’ there is no problem to be solved. However, what initially stands in the way of implementing these words, translating them into action, is the fear that one will become an outcast. The whole thrust of ‘humanity’ is to foster the sense of belonging ... it is a large part of one’s social identity. One automatically feels that by no longer belonging one will live in isolation. Nothing could be further from the truth, because this is a feeling, not a fact.

The fact of being on one’s own is vastly different from the feeling of being alone ... which is loneliness. Yet one is already lonely, is this not so? Otherwise why the need to belong? By daring to be an outcast – that is, standing on one’s own – one discovers that loneliness vanishes. I do not belong to this community, nor do I belong to any other group. Yet I live here, in the hub of this market-place, in the public eye. Because I have found intimacy – with one and with the other and with all people – the need to belong has become absurd. Besides, the sense of belonging is a dangerous illusion. Losing oneself in the crowd renders one susceptible to not only group highs but to mass hysteria ... and mob riots. Just as marital disharmony can lead to domestic violence, so too can neighbourhood disputes lead to civil unrest and communal violence. International riots are called war.

So much for belonging!

I am mortal. Mortality is a fact and if one is to be at all scientific, one must stick to the facts. To avoid a fact is to avoid involvement ... and there is no greater involvement than being here now. Time and mortality are inextricably linked. Mortality is essential in order to be here now, in eternal time. I am glad that I am mortal; if it were not for death, I could not be free to be here now. Perennial happiness is only possible because of death as extinction. This universe is perfect to the nth degree and I would not presume to change one little bit of it. To live with the fact is to live completely. Nothing is missing; nothing has ever been missing, nor ever will be missing. Life is already complete.

By avoiding death – which is avoiding the fact – ‘I’ am standing in the way of the exquisite purity of being alive. By searching for Eternal Life, ‘I’ shut ‘myself’ off from the perfection of being here now. ‘I’ am wasting ‘my’ time in the most insidious way possible; but then again, ‘I’ am by nature cunning and deceitful. ‘I’ will do anything but face the fact of ‘my’ own demise. Ironically, with ‘my’ psychological ‘death’ comes release from the fears of physical death. All of the unnamed terrors surrounding death arise from apprehension as to what will happen to ‘me’ as a ‘being’. I regard death with equanimity; when it happens I will welcome it as I do the oblivion of deep sleep each night. Like sleep, it is an agreeable actual occurrence.

I am completely happy to be here now, securely inside eternal time.

When one exposes one’s instincts, all of one’s atavistic feelings of fear surge up. To repeat: ‘I’ am these instincts; these instincts are ‘my’ very ‘being’. Here is where ‘I’ experience ‘myself’ in the most direct form ... all alone, forever separate from others. Here is where ‘me’ as ‘being’ is forever threatened, for ‘I’ should not ‘be’ at all. ‘I’ take up individual space and ‘I’ am ashamed of existing ... ‘I’ am an apology just waiting to happen. Simultaneously, self-consciousness shows that this utterly personal feeling of ‘I’ being at stake is identical to the psychological ‘will to survive’ of ‘humanity’ at large. ‘I’ and ‘humanity’ are one and the same thing. ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’. Both affective-based concepts are equally absurd and harmful, and – most important of all – contrary to the actual condition of the infinitude of this physical universe.

Humans have created a separative identity and then frustratedly railed against this benevolent, benign universe.

This universe knows what it is doing ... to assume that it does not is absurd. This universe was miraculously able to give birth to me, it is marvellously capable of bearing me and will, eventually, wondrously manage to end me. This is the physical, actual order of things in this, the only universe there is. There is nowhere else but here ... and there is no time but now. Anything else than here and now exists only in an enthusiastic imagination ... enthused by ‘me’, by any ‘being’ at all. Any intuition of ‘being’ is created and sustained by emotive thought ... it is the egocentric fear of not ‘being’ that gives rise to the notion of an ‘myself’. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the demise of an apparently enduring psychological entity. The ‘death’ of ‘me’ is a non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place.

There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have Eternal Life .

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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.

Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997