Richard’s Selected Writings

Actuality is not to be confused with any Other-Worldly Reality in some Timeless Dimension ... actuality is here-and-now and on-the-ground. Actuality is physical, not metaphysical. It is perennial, not Timeless. It is perpetual, not Spaceless. ... The actual world has nothing to do with ‘me’ and ‘my’ machinations: ‘my’ hopes, ‘my’ dreams, ‘my’ ideals, or ‘my’ longings. All these things come from the heart ... and the heart has led humankind astray for countless centuries. Passion, coupled with imagination, can only produce variations on that Timeless Reality so beloved by the Religious, Spiritual and Mystical peoples. Being ‘human’ is a feeling; being Divine is a passion. Feelings – emotions and passions – are a liability to one who is going to be actual. In actual freedom I am neither ‘human’ nor Divine, for I am not metaphysical.

I am the third alternative: this very actual body.

I have no plans at all for the future. Is there a future? If one is to believe the Enlightened Masters, when the ego dies there is no past or future ... they say there is only the Eternal Present. The Present stretches Spaceless and Timeless in all directions. One is then Unborn and Undying ... they say that they have overcome death’s mortality and become Immortal. They describe a sense of Oneness with all sentient ‘beings’ and speak of an awareness of ‘A Presence’ ... all spelled with a capital to denote Divinity. This State Of ‘Being’ is called an Altered State Of Consciousness or Spiritual Enlightenment. One has realised oneself as being the Unmanifest Self: All-Expansive, All-Encompassing and All-Pervasive. In Spiritual terms this is known as the death of ego, of self. One has arrived! The past and the future do not exist ... yet, paradoxically, all Masters are known to believe in at least one important future ... important for them, that is.

At physical death, they state, their Immortal Soul will finally ‘quit the body’ and merge with the Ocean Of Oneness.

Millions of well-meaning followers have diligently put their Teachings into practice, prostrating and belittling themselves like all get-out in a hopeful attempt to live the un-liveable. Yet no-one, it seems, dares to question the Teachings themselves; instead the humiliated penitents obligingly blame themselves for failing to achieve release from the ‘Human Condition’. To seek freedom via profound and lofty thought or sublime and exalted feelings is to blindly perpetuate all the horrors and sufferings that have plagued humankind since time immemorial. The time has come to put to an end, once and for all, the blight that has encumbered this fair earth for far too long. It behoves one to question all of the received ‘wisdom’ of the centuries, all of the revealed ‘truths’ ... all of the half-baked inanities that pass for understanding.

Then, and only then, there is a fair chance that one can come to an actual freedom ... a freedom the nature of which has never been before in human experience.

Thus, after The Altered State Of Consciousness has manifested itself, the soul is still present as The Self. No matter how Enlightened or Liberated one may be, an ‘I’ is still in existence ... Timeless maybe, but still an ‘I’, still in the body. The soul, as The Self, is a psychic entity identifying as being an Enlightened Master. The ego is only half of one’s identity; the other half is the soul. When the ego dies, one has dispelled an illusion – the illusion of a personal self – only to wind up living in a delusion ... the delusion of an impersonal Self. To take oneself to be The Self, the Immortal Soul, The Supreme, The Absolute, or God On Earth, is nothing short of institutionalised insanity. The delusion must be dispelled in order to be actually free: along with the ‘death of the ego’ there must be a corresponding ‘death of the soul’. Then ‘I’ – the self or the Self – do not exist, psychologically or psychically speaking, in any way at all. Then the Eternal Present also vanishes ... along with all that other capitalised nonsense.

Surpassing the Altered State Of Consciousness is the third alternative ... an actual freedom.

People would rather be Sacred than actual. ‘Unfathomable’ translates into Holy ... suppressed sexuality and sensuality can produce the Sublime Experience. To end repression is to abandon Spirituality. A bold step indeed. Yet I discover that this actual world – in which this body is living – easily fulfils all the longings and desires that are commonly channelled into the Spiritual Realms. That mystical, Other-Worldly Dimension is, in other words: anywhere but here and any time but now. Why then would people rather be Sacred, Spiritual, Holy ... not actual? Because their only alternative is to be vulgar, worldly, pagan ... which they associate with the Diabolical, the Demonic, the Sinister. Enmeshed in a world-view wherein everything is divided into opposites, nobody is able to consider a third alternative: to be actual. In the divided world-view, the actual is never seen, and the physical is perceived to be uncivilised, anarchical, and hedonistic ... and categorised by them as being profane.

My intent was to find a way to continue to live in this undivided and indivisible actual world as ascertained sensately, instead of the ambivalent world-view of opposites with its necessarily discriminating groups, its opposing camps.

A person’s character is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘I’, taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be ... this sense of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration.

Therefore I am never lonely, for there is no separation; there is only actual intimacy.

This early-morning stroll is but the prelude to a full day. A large box of rainforest trees, seedlings yet in their little pots, that were purchased last weekend at the local market, are waiting to be planted out. The bare lower slopes of the hill on the other side of the newly dug large lake are begging for some growth. I could not resist the impulse to produce some greenery; a lush, future forest is, I consider, definitely called for. I have already built a bench seat halfway up the hill and my companion painted it yellow and brown. We often go to sit there of an evening, where one can overlook the entire property as it changes colour whilst the sun is setting behind the long mountain range that looms large to the west of here. Inspired into action, I soon find myself in the garden shed collecting tools, stakes, mulch, some chicken manure for fertiliser – I like to give the trees a best possible start – and I water the box of seedlings and place them, with the other things, in the wheelbarrow, ready to go. The sun is still not high in the sky; the temperature will remain pleasant enough to allow some heavy exertion for a while yet. Time enough to have an early-morning cup of coffee on the verandah. There is no sense of rush or haste here; it is as if I have all the time in the world.

What I do have, in actuality, is sufficient time to achieve all that needs to be done. It is one of the many charming characteristics of life that emerges spontaneously when one is activated by pure intent. Pure intent is not to be confused with being a ‘do-gooder’, or being full of ‘righteousness’, or being ‘moralistic’. Pure intent is the quality that encompasses what morals and ethics aspire to but never reach. ‘Good’ fails to reach its desired goal because it opposes ‘Bad’ ... the fight between Good and Evil has raged for centuries. Pure intent enables one to be liberated from both Good and Evil. This freedom from perversity is a guarantee of success. By perverse I mean not only being corruptible and corrupted, but obstinately persisting in being corrupt.

Absence of perversity enables one, each moment again, to perform in the optimum manner; be it physically or psychologically.

It has been raining overnight and I wake to a morning made fresh and cool ... a welcome relief from the sub-tropical heat of the past few weeks. The mid-summer sun has been bearing down intensely as I awaited the onset of the wet season; I delight in this seasonal largess. The sun rises early at this time of the year and, although behind some large clouds, it is well up into the sky as I sit here at ease in my adjustable deck chair. Sipping my morning cup of coffee, I am relishing the scope of the colourful garden which surrounds the sweet little caravan that is my current home. The picturesque scene is a feast for my eyes ... I can never tire of these salutary rewards for the past year’s feat of phenomenal stamina that transformed a deserted tract of wasteland into this paradisiacal wonderland. With those powerful white clouds in the sky above the hills to the east of where I am sitting on this homely verandah ... what more could I ask for?

This remarkable life, this exquisite world, is truly fabulous ... made all the more fabulous by the complete harmony between my companion and I ... between male and female.

Gardening is a pastime we gain great satisfaction and enjoyment from doing ... the more flowers we plant the more gay the scene. I have the pump running and the sprinklers are ‘tic-ticking’ away, spreading water on the lawn and the flower gardens. The pump also operates a small water-fall I built for my own pleasure on the opposite side of the pond to the steps. I have arranged the water-fall to drop over three flights formed out of natural rock and then flowing under a quaint little bridge, spanning the small stream. There is a plentiful supply of water as the pond fills from underground springs fed by the surrounding hills. Two wild ducks fly in from the south, coming to rest with vee-shaped ripples that cause the water-lilies to bob gently in their wake. Altogether it is an exquisite day and a pleasure to be here, doing our things together.

We are very pleased to be us, male and female, in this magnificent world that we live in.

I am exploring the implications and ramifications of time, which is germane to the awareness of ‘being’. Through pure contemplation, awareness happens – not that there is an ‘I’ to be aware – awareness happens of itself. There is a realisation akin to that of ‘me’ having not happened yet ... and time seems to have come to a halt. As time stopping is patently absurd, it is worthy of further investigation. Time is an observable fact: the clock measures the hours, the day becomes night, a leaf falling from a tree takes time to reach the ground. Yet, psychologically speaking, does time exist? Many philosophers have said it does not, but I demur. Something does happen with time, subjectively, when this moment lives me – instead of ‘me’ living in the present – but what is it that happens? Is this moment actually timeless as some say that it is?

Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here now. Thus it appears that it is as if nothing has occurred, for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end, is there a middle? There are things happening, but nothing has happened or will happen ... or so it seems. Only this moment exists. This moment has no term, it takes no time at all to occur ... which gives rise to the inaccurate notion that it is timeless.

This is an institutionalised delusion, for it stems from the egocentric feeling that ‘I’ am Immortal, that ‘I’ am Eternal.

Apperception – which is the mind’s perception of itself – reveals that this moment is hanging in eternal time ... just as this planet is hanging in infinite space. This moment and this place are in the realm of the infinitude of this actual physical universe. This moment is perennial, not timeless. I am perpetually here – for the term of my natural life – as this moment is; I am not Eternally Present. It is the universe that is eternal ... not me. As one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate human being, any ‘I’ – always on the look-out for self-aggrandisement – grabs the universe’s eternity for itself. Also, what helps to create the feeling that the present is timeless is that human beings – as an identity – are normally out of this universe’s eternal time. Yet time is as intimate as this body being here now at this moment. It is so intimate that I – as a body only – am not separate from it. Whereas ‘I’, as a human ‘being’, have separated ‘myself’ from eternal time by being an entity. To be an ontological ‘being’ is to mistakenly take this body being here as containing an ‘I’, a psychological or psychic entity. To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally ... as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence. ‘I’ am an illusion; if ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ do exist, then ‘I’ am outside of eternal time. ‘I’ am forever complaining that there is ‘not enough hours in the day’, or ‘I am always running out of time’, or ‘I am always catching up with time’, or ‘I am always behind time’. All this activity is considered ‘normal’, as it is the common experience of humankind.

But I am supremely blasé about the opinion of others, for their ‘truths’ do not work ... they do not live in peace and tranquillity. They do not experience the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive; a purity welling-up in all directions from the vast, immeasurable stillness of the infinitude of this universe. They remain ignorant of the excellence of the absence of ‘being’. In short, their ‘truths’, their philosophies on life, do not work. The criterion of a fact is that it works, it produces results.

Because I live here, where the immediate is the ultimate and the relative is the absolute, I have never known sorrow or malice.

I am busy in the kitchen, boiling the kettle and making the preparations for a freshly-brewed pot of coffee. My life here on earth, is most definitely mature, most assuredly consummated ... I know only perfection. I am constantly amazed at the untainted quality of my simple existence. There is no ‘me’ inside this body thinking about Metaphysical matters or feeling out the ‘Rights’ and ‘Wrongs’ in life ... in short, making a nuisance of itself. The presence of ‘me’, with all its mischief, prohibits the apperception of this vast stillness which is the progenitor of purity.

Being here now, as this body, is to be living inside eternal time. In here lies security, utter safety. Nothing can go ultimately wrong inside eternal time, all is forever well. It is only when one thinks and feels that ‘I’ exist that the troubles begin. To locate this entity, one has only to tune into the feeling of ‘being’. In ‘being’ there is a sense of ‘presence’, a feeling of being present. The Spiritual people tell everyone, peremptorily, that humans are all One. They endlessly praise Unity and revere Oneness. If one has done what they advise to do, one will have come across a Presence ... which goes by many names.

Clearly this Presence is a psychic projection of ‘my’ own ‘presence’. They describe this Presence as being the Timeless One that creates and sustains all of Existence. They maintain that by believing in this Timeless One, one will have Absolute Peace, by which they mean Eternal Life. It is the fear of death that has set this entire system of belief into motion: ‘I’ dread extinction. To be extinct is, of course, not to ‘be’. ‘Being’ is the root-cause of the perceived tragedy of life. Life is seen to be tragic because it has death at the end; if it were not for death, according to the received ‘wisdom’, life would be good.

In actuality, the concept of living forever, as a psychic entity, is the original cause of abject sorrow and malice ... not extinction.

To be an entity is to be forever locked-out of eternal time. Complete security lies inside eternal time. ‘I’ will never look into eternal time; for ‘me’ eternal time is an enemy to be avoided at all costs. ‘I’ condemn ‘myself’ to the endless creation of grandiose schemes to save my soul; ‘I’ concoct all kinds of fantasies about Other-Worldly Dimensions. ‘I’ have to believe in multitudinous Heavenly Kingdoms wherein ‘I’ can reside as an Immaculate Spirit for all of Eternity. ‘I’ am driven to spin dreams and illusions because ‘I’ refuse to see what lies here on earth ... right under ‘my’ nose, as it were. ‘I’ can never live inside eternal time ... whereas I as this flesh and blood body can only be here now. Inside this body there is no ‘being’ ... nothing psychological or psychic left for ‘I’ am extinct. Time is a blessing, not a curse. I can never be out of time, nor anywhere but here, for I have actualised my destiny ... here on earth and now in time.

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.

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.

There is an utter purity in the perfection of this universe that one and all live in which wells up ever-fresh from an immense stillness which is the genesis of all that is apparent. This universe is infinite – it has no beginning and no end – it has always been and always will be here ... now. Things may come and things may go but the universe itself is everlasting. As the universe’s space is infinite, it follows that it has no edges. As there are no edges to this universe it means there is no centre to it. And as the universe’s time is eternal, it follows that it has no beginning or ending ... hence there is no middle. One is nowhere in particular ... and I mean this literally, factually. One and all are floating in limitless space and time upon this planet earth, going nowhere and coming from nowhere. The goal in life is to actualise this infinitude and live it as an actuality each moment again. The living of it is to experience being anywhere all at once whilst being nowhere in particular, for this is the living experience of infinitude. For most people, infinitude just means endless ... but this is a limited understanding based upon what the self-bound mind can grasp intellectually.

One can realise that one is the universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. One is, after all, made up of the very stuff of the universe ... and I mean this as a physical actuality. The very material that this body is constituted of is the material of the universe ... one did not come from ‘outside’ of it and be randomly placed ‘in’ here by some god for some mysterious purpose that is not up to humans to fathom. It is possible to fully know the ‘Mystery of Life’ to such an extent that one is completely satisfied and fulfilled. Nothing more needs to be done other than to live it each moment again and to enjoy and appreciate it all fully and totally. The utter purity of this perfect understanding – and the living of it – defies imagination and is impossible to believe. All of ones wishes and dreams are answered ... and more. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life ... it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s ‘normal’ life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants.

It is possible to be actually free.

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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