Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: What I have actually said is that I have had a perfect day – and that tomorrow will be another perfect day – and copy-pasting the words ‘nice day’ into the search engine and sending it through all the words I have ever written brought up only one hit. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘My companion and I are walking along the beach together, just the two of us. It is a particularly nice day towards the end of winter; the cold wind from the south that has been blowing for the past week has finally ceased and the temperature is such that I am in my shirt-sleeves. It is a couple of hours past midday and the sun is high in the western sky; a sky scattered with puffy white clouds standing stark against the intense blue’. [emphasis added]. (page 70, Article Ten; ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©1997The Actual Freedom Trust).

RESPONDENT: How do you know it was a nice day if you had no feelings?

RICHARD: The direct experience of perfection informs of a perfect day: in the (above) context the ‘nice day’ is being sensately experienced ... and not affectively.

RESPONDENT: ‘If you don’t have I or being then who knows it?

RICHARD: Not ‘who’ knows it ... what knows it: this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware knows it.

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RESPONDENT: They exist people that suffer from anhedonia. Is a fact. Does the brain of these people are different from yours as you operate now?

RICHARD: First of all, anhedonia is usually defined as the inability to affectively feel pleasure (from the Greek ‘an-’ [‘without’] plus the Greek ‘hedone’ [‘pleasure’] which is akin to Greek ‘hedys’ [‘sweet’] from the Latin ‘suavis’) and what is usually overlooked is the inability to affectively feel pain ... as in the pleasure/pain principle so often mentioned in mystical texts.

It has nothing to do with physical pleasure/pain.

Second, usually anhedonia is a central feature of a psychotic disorder ... for example:

• ‘anhedonia is a core clinical feature of depression, schizophrenia, and some other mental illnesses. (www.medterms.com).
• ‘anhedonia: certainly one cardinal feature of depression, and perhaps THE cardinal feature. (www.mentalhelp.net).

Third, from the descriptions I have heard and read it is a psychiatric condition for them ... and not a liberating condition. You may find what Ms. Kristina Luna has to report at the following URL illuminating in this regard:

http://juns.nursing.arizona.edu/articles/Fall%202002/luna_anhedonia.htm

Here is the abstract, summary, and conclusion, of that article: <snip>

As [quote] ‘the aetiology of anhedonia is still unknown’ [endquote] and anhedonia is [quote] ‘little understood by many in the psychiatric field’ [endquote] I cannot answer your query as to how the brain of those people operates differently from the brain in this skull other than to say that it appears to be a psychological condition and not a physiological condition (given that therapy can reverse the process somewhat).

RESPONDENT: You talk about your day but say there is no feeling of being. How then can you write about your experience?

RICHARD: As is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE), the flesh and blood body is entirely capable of thinking, reflecting, appraising and implementing considered action for benevolent reasons of its own accord. In fact it is remarkably simple: it is surprisingly easy to live and function without any ‘I’ and/or ‘Me’ or any ‘self’ and/or ‘Self’ whatsoever ... it is such a vast improvement upon ‘me’ doing all the daily tasks that it is a delight to just contemplate the difference. ‘I’ unnecessarily complicate this otherwise simple living with ‘my’ needs, ‘my’ demands, ‘my’ wants, ‘my’ shoulds, ‘my’ musts, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ morals, ‘my’ values, ‘my’ principles, ‘my’ ideals, and so on. Not to mention ‘my’ sadness and ‘my’ empathy, ‘my’ likes and ‘my’ dislikes, ‘my’ loves and ‘my’ hates, ‘my’ fears and ‘my’ trusts, ‘my’ revenges and ‘my’ pardons, ‘my’ jealousies and ‘my’ faithfulness, ‘my’ blamings and ‘my’ forgiveness, ‘my’ loneliness and ‘my’ belonging ... the list goes on and on.

This body is eminently competent in functioning autonomously: the stomach tells the brain (wherein lies the will which, with its data-correlating ability, is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising organ of the body) when it is empty. The stomach secretes a chemical when unoccupied which triggers a receptor in the brain that gives rise to a sensation humans ignorantly call ‘I am hungry’. Indeed, tests have been done by people who delight in doing these things, wherein the chemical was injected into volunteers who had just eaten a full meal: the chemical caused them to feel hungry despite their distended stomachs. Thus ‘I’, thinking and feeling that ‘I’ am an important part of the process, step in and incorrectly say: ‘‘I’ am hungry’. ‘I’ am not hungry at all (how can a psychological or psychic entity need corporeal food) ... it is that the stomach is simply signalling its emptiness to the brain via the autonomic nervous system.

Likewise the bladder tells the brain when it is full, and so on. When ‘I’ says ‘I want to got to the toilet’, ‘I’ am not busting for a pee at all ... the bladder is merely indicating its fullness. Once again, a psychological and psychic entity cannot manufacture physical urine ... it is absurd. Furthermore, the empty stomach instructs the legs, via the will function of the physical brain, to walk to the cupboard for food. The eyes, seeing an empty cupboard and thus triggering remembered experience, will advise the legs, via the brain’s organising capability, to walk the body to a shop. An empty wallet will tell the legs to take the body to a bank ... and an empty bank account will demonstrate that it is time to get a job (or go on a pension or whatever). I am neither being pedantic nor facetious here ... it is actually this simple. Without an ‘I’ and/or ‘me’, one is this very sensuous flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware, living in the actual world of people, things and events ... not an ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ living in the grim and glum real world, forever cut off from the magnificence of this luscious actual world by ‘my’ unreal existence, thinking and feeling that ‘I’ have to make responsible and onerous decisions.

‘I’ and/or ‘me’ can never be here in this magical fairy-tale-like actual world for ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ am an interloper, an alien in psychological and psychic possession of the body: ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ do not belong here. All this is impossible to conceive, believe, imagine or in any other way visualise ... which is why it is essential to be confident that the actual world does exist. In order to mutate from a self-centred licentiousness to a self-less sensualism, one must have confidence in the ultimate beneficence of the universe. This confidence is born out of knowing that the grim and glum ‘real world’ is pasted as a veneer over the top of actual world that underlies everyday reality. This knowing is a solid and irrefutable knowing which is derived from the PCE and is an essential ingredient to ensure success. In such a peak experience everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity and purity, to be already perfect – that humans are all living in perfection – if only one would act upon one’s seeing. Because in a PCE, wherein apperception is operating unimpeded, it is irrefutably experienced that thought, thoughts and thinking happen of their own accord as is necessary ... for it is the function of the brain to do so.

Consequently, this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware easily and delightedly writes about its on-going experiencing.

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