Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

PETER: I know what you are saying and I think I know why you are saying it as it was something that haunted me in my early days.

I can remember sitting in Richard’s living room one afternoon after a particularly intense session of trying to understand what he was on about and thinking that what he was talking about was astounding. Richard was busy making coffee at the time and all of a sudden I said something like – ‘well, I’m hooked. You can let me in to the secret now. You can tell me what’s really going on’. From memory, the expression of bemusement on Richard’s face made me realize that there was no hidden meaning or secret in what Richard was saying in the normal sense of the words. He hadn’t ‘arrived from another planet to save us humans’, he wasn’t ‘the next Saviour of Mankind’, he wasn’t ‘in possession of some long-lost wisdom’ he wasn’t ‘the re-incarnation of some LDM’, and so on.

From memory, it was soon after this that I discovered for myself the hidden meaning or secret in what Richard was saying when I remembered that I had had a PCE and that I had experienced that there is in fact an actual world that is pure and that is perfect. From then on I knew what Richard was talking about – it was not an impossible dream or an ancient fairy tale, it was an actuality in the very sense of the meaning of the word.

So when I say I understand where you are coming from, it is because I have been there myself. My only advice is that if you want to really understand what Richard is on about then keep going, keep reading and start to be attentive to your feelings because it is only your own vital interest in these matters that will push you beyond your fears and beyond your suspicions and thereby pave the way to either remembering or provoking a pure consciousness experience.

RESPONDENT: My mind tends to make various connections when reading something, for example ‘extinct as the Dodo’, this bird being considered in popular culture a clumsy and unfitted for survival species (thus associating it with the identity).

PETER: Oh, yes. There were things that Richard has written and still writes that literally leap off the page at me. It is as though he is offering both an invitation and a challenge to those who read his words and care enough to take them at face-value.

For me the challenge was and still is – am I sincere in wanting peace on earth, which in down-to-earth terms meant and still means am ‘I’ willing to devote my life to the business of becoming happy and harmless?

I liked your questions because they were all questions I asked myself at one time or other. They were all issues that I found that I eventually had to put to one side if I was sincere about wanting to become actually free of the human condition. It’s a big list to wade through and I had to do it on my own – none of my peers or friends were interested in actualism so I eventually gave up seeking their counsel. I can only report that even if a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow was the only thing possible then all of the effort has been well worthwhile. And yet I don’t dismiss the fact that leaving ‘the fold’ is a difficult business, and that this is particularly so for the pioneers in this business. 

RESPONDENT: Then one more question arises. What’s your hidden motivation? I am very curious.

RICHARD: An actual freedom for you ... in this life-time, as this body, here on earth.

This is my position: we are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence ... and we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition ... and we want to know why. We report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. We are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. My motivation was three-fold: to bring about peace-on-earth; to solve the mystery of life ... and to ensure peace and harmony between man and woman. My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand, representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to peace. I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’.

This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humankind – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in this body – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better than others at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampart. I saw that animal instincts – what I now know to be fear and aggression and nurture and desire – ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with.

This is why I am so insistent in what I write. After my experience in a war-zone I wished to do something constructive with my life; I wished to rid myself, personally, of the ‘human nature’ which all people say can not be changed. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition ... and my attitude, all those years ago was this: I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly. Twenty six years later I found the third alternative ... but only when ‘I’ ceased to exist in ‘my’ entirety. There was no change or transformation big enough or grandiose enough to cure ‘me’ ... only extinction – extirpation, annihilation, expunction – ensures that the already always existing peace-on-earth will become apparent.

This is because this actual world is already perfect. You see, peace-on-earth is already here – here in this actual world – and no one needs to invent it. It is all a matter of entering into it; making it apparent; allowing it to emerge; watching it unfold ... or whatever description. Everyone is either rushing about trying to make an imitation peace ... or sitting back moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all. I did not devise, concoct or contrive this peace-on-earth ... it was already here ... as it always has been and always will be. I just happened to discover it, that is all ... and it being so perfect that I wished to inform my fellow human beings of its existence.

What they do with this information is their business.

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Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless