Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RESPONDENT: Could you clarify what you mean by the above. It appears that you are saying that ‘it’ (‘self-centredness’) must have a powerful motivation to bring an end to itself. If I do understand this correctly then please explain further this ‘powerful motivation’. Specifically I am referring to what this motivation is (and its goals, if any) and from where does it come?

RICHARD: The ‘motivation’? Actually coming face-to-face – as a visceral experiencing – with the reality of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that are endemic to the human condition.

The ‘goal’? To bring to an end all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides that are endemic to the human condition.

Where does the ‘motivation’ come from? There is an intrinsic trait common to all sentient beings: self-sacrifice. This trait can be observed in almost all animals – it is especially easy to see in the ‘higher-order’ animals – mainly with the parental defending of the young to the point of fatal injury leading to death. Defending the group against another group is also simple to observe ... it manifests in humans in the way that one will passionately defend oneself and one’s group to the death if it is deemed necessary. Speaking personally, as a youth this self-sacrificing trait impelled me to go to war for ‘my’ country ... to ‘willingly lay down my life for kith and kin’. It is a very powerful passion indeed ... Christianity, to give just one example, values it very highly: ‘No greater love hath he that lay down his life for another’. However, all of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – come to the fore when psychologically and psychically threatened, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, confounding ‘my’ survival and the body’s survival. Nevertheless, ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ ... and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality.

This trait is called altruism ... albeit misplaced.

What is a feeling-fed ‘self’? A ‘self’ is not something ‘you’ have ... being an identity in whatever way, shape or form is what ‘you’ are and is an inevitable result of being born. Thus any blame is pointless – and worse – it creates resentment. Being an identity is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. These passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to think and reflect upon its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary ‘self’ into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and from this core of ‘being’ the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. This process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born ... which is conditioning and programming. It is part and parcel of the socialising process. Thus ‘dissolving the ego’ is not sufficient ... there is a ‘me’ lurking in the heart to take over the wheel.

What will become of ‘self-centredness’? To put it bluntly: ‘you’ in ‘your’ totality, who are but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short-cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This extinction is a physiological and psychic event that happens in the brain-stem which eliminates the psyche itself. When this is all over there will be no ‘being’ at all. Thus when ‘I’ willingly self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for oneself and all humankind ... for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘my’ moment of glory. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘my’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life.

What will ‘I’ do? Now, it is ‘I’ that is responsible for an action that results ‘my’ own demise ... without really doing the expunging itself (and I am not being tricky here). It is ‘I’ that is the cause of bringing about this sacrifice in that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. (‘I’ do not really end ‘myself’ in that ‘I’ do not do the deed itself for an ‘I’ cannot end itself). What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. What one does is that one dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself ... now. Peace-on-earth is the inevitable result because it is already here ... it is always now. ‘I’ was merely standing in the way of this already always existing peace-on-earth from becoming apparent.

The act of initiating this ‘process’ is altruism, pure and simple.

ALAN: Was this not enough? Was it not better to enjoy this life as ‘Alan’, the personality, than risk all on an unknown future?

RICHARD: I can recall the ‘Richard’ that was considering this very question ... yet ‘he’ just knew that ‘he’ would not be able to look in the mirror of a morning if ‘he’ did not proceed. Is it is an admixture of pride and dignity, perhaps?

ALAN: Yet, the knowledge of what is possible – even if only a recollection of the PCE – is sufficient to make ‘me’ continue reading, writing and exploring.

RICHARD: Not to mention all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides ... if peoples were not harming themselves and each other in the most grisly ways possible then this would all be but a game.

Peoples play ‘for keeps’ in the real world ... it is not fun.

ALAN: It is, indeed, a strange state of affairs.

RICHARD: It is ‘strange’ to the point of being bizarre ... weird, uncanny, eerie.

ALAN: Am ‘I’ going to continue, in the knowledge that the end result is ‘my’ demise. Or, am ‘I’ going to give up and settle for ‘second best’. Perhaps this is where ‘pure intent’ comes in. It is not a phrase I have been entirely comfortable with or, rather, completely understood.

RICHARD: Pure intent is derived from the purity of the PCE (which is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’) and everything is experienced to be perfect as-it-is at this moment and place ... here and now. Diligent attentiveness paid to the peak experience gives rise to pure intent and with pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation about being here doing this business called being alive rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself.

It is the quality of pure intent which pulls one forward with impunity ... pure intent transforms into action one’s determination to live a life full of gladness, peace and harmony with oneself, with a person of the other gender, and with all peoples. Pure intent produces total dedication – it is experienced as an irresistible enticement – and it makes it impossible not to do what is required (or to sweep an issue under the carpet and to let sleeping dogs lie) and to continue to conform to the long-failed dictates of the status-quo. Pure intent is not to be confused with being a ‘do-gooder’, or being full of ‘righteousness’, or being ‘moralistic’ or being ‘principled’. Pure intent is the quality that encompasses what morals and ethics aspire to but never reach. Pure intent is a manifest life-force; a genuinely occurring stream of benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe. Freed by pure intent from the very necessary social constraints – designed to control a wayward ego and a compliant soul – one can have generosity of character without striving. Pure intent guides one in each and every situation and circumstance – it is an essential prerequisite to ensure a guaranteed passage through the psychic maze – until the primacy of ‘me’ as a psychological or psychic entity withers away..

With pure intent one will not rest until one has gone all the way.

ALAN: Perhaps it is this ‘pure intent’ which keeps ‘me’ going, which insists that it ‘ain’t over till the fat lady sings’, which is the knowledge that this is not perfection, and perfection is possible.

RICHARD: Perfection is an actual condition – intrinsic to this universe – that a human being can tap into by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated again and again with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naive is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless, ingenuous, simple and unsophisticated ... and pure intent manifests in the connection between the intimate aspect of oneself (that one usually keeps hidden away for fear of seeming foolish) and the purity of the perfection of the peak experience. The experience of purity is a benefaction and out of this blessing comes the pure intent which consistently guides one through daily life, gently ushering in an increasing ease and generosity of character. With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more self-less. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric. It is the highway to an utter freedom – to one’s destiny – and it is a wide and wondrous path. Once activated, freedom is no longer a matter of choice – it is an irresistible pull – but pure intent will provide one with the necessary intestinal fortitude.

Inevitably the moment comes ... and ‘I’ am nevermore.

RESPONDENT: In writing this and the other things I wrote this weekend somehow there is no effort involved (perhaps that shows!). My experience is just deep, round, soft, full, still, pleasure of moments of being here, and of understandings building on each other.

RICHARD: Good ... yet one has to reach out – extend oneself – like one has never done before. One has to want peace-on-earth as the number one priority in one’s life. One has to desire freedom from the Human Condition to the point of obsession and beyond ... it is that urgent and essential. And one does it for a two-fold purpose: for the good of oneself in particular and for one’s fellow humans in general.

RESPONDENT: What do you now mean by introducing the concept of reaching out? Extending myself? I do not recall you using these terms before. Reach out to people?

RICHARD: Not to people, no. I am not talking about other people doing anything at all ... I am talking about you. I am talking about your unilateral action irregardless of what anyone else does or does not do. This actual freedom does not require the cooperation of a single person ... let alone 6.0 billion people. This is for you. This is your peace-on-earth. Of course, it is entirely possible that a chain-letter effect may ripple through the denizens of the ‘Land Of Lament’ ... but what they do is their business. As long as they comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocol, they are free to live their lives as wisely or as foolishly as they choose. You do not have to concern yourself about any other person’s modus operandi at all. The best way you can help another is by being free of the Human Condition yourself ... otherwise any help is but the blind leading the blind.

The words ‘reach out’ and ‘extend oneself’ are figures of expression indicating the intensity of purpose requisite for consummation. It is possible to not only seek but to find ... thereby enabling one to live life in full meaning twenty-four-hours-a-day. The problem with the people who embark upon the search for meaning is that they approach it in the incorrect way. One cannot think one’s way into meaning ... nor can one feel one’s way, either. Thinking and feeling – through logical imagination and irrational intuition – are the two tools that everyone has been taught to use to conduct the affairs of their everyday life: they are not at all appropriate for uncovering the perfection that they are searching for. There is an unimaginable purity that is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart. To proceed thus is to become involved in a fruitless endeavour to make life fit into one’s own petty demands and desires.

Life is not like that ... one has only to look into the marvels of nature to see that life-forms have arranged themselves in a myriad of exquisitely delicate shapes, colours, textures, qualities and character. So too has the universe gracefully arranged itself in regards to providing intrinsic meaning. The universe is innately perfect and pure. It is already always immaculate and consummate. Nothing ‘dirty’ can breach the blameless bastions of this unimpeachable purity and perfection ... even the most profound thoughts and the most sublime feelings are self-centred. The self – ‘I’ – is not only defiled, it is corrupt through and through. ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how sincerely and earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. ‘I’ am rotten at the very core.

There is one thing that ‘I’ can do, however, to remedy the situation. ‘I’ can disappear. Psychological and psychic self-immolation is the only sensible sacrifice that ‘I’ can make in order to reveal perfection. Life is bursting with meaning when ‘I’ am no longer present to mess things up. ‘I’ stand in the way of that purity being apparent. ‘My’ presence prohibits perfection being evident. ‘I’ prevent the very meaning to life, which ‘I’ am searching for, from coming into plain view. The main trouble is that ‘I’ wish to remain in existence to savour the meaning; ‘I’ mistakenly think that meaning is the product of the mind and the heart.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

RESPONDENT: Yes, two things stand out: pure intent and don’t possess it. I am looking at pure intent to see if I have it and I am on guard to not pursue it or possess it.

RICHARD: You say that ‘two things stand out’ ... yet you slip in a third thing as if I had said it ( ‘to not pursue it’ ) when it is really ‘ancient wisdom’ that promotes that view. Speaking personally, the ‘I’ that was pursued it like ‘he’ had never pursued anything before ... ‘he’ made it the number one priority in ‘his’ life. ‘He’ was a married man, with four children, running ‘his’ own business, with a house mortgage to pay off and a car on hire purchase ... in other words: normal. And all the while that ‘he’ pursued it, ‘he’ was working twelve-fourteen hour days, six-seven days a week ... yet ‘his’ pursuit of peace-on-earth took absolute precedence over all other matters and dominated ‘his’ every moment (‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’). I do not see how someone can become free of the human condition without becoming what one’s peers would call ‘obsessed’ (for that is how a 100% commitment is actively discouraged by others) and adopting instead a duplicitous ‘I will not pursue that which I desire’ attitude. It is unbelievably delicious to devote oneself wholeheartedly to such a valuable goal as peace-on-earth ... one starts to feel ‘alive’ for the very first time. Such dedication (‘he’ called it the ‘boots and all’ approach at the time) makes one’s petty life worthwhile after all ... ‘he’ went out in a blaze of glory. However, you are not the only person adopting this stance of not pursuing it ... there are others on this Mailing List that like to think that by feigning a non-pursuit that they will achieve something. Just how this sleight-of-hand (or should I say sleight-of-mind) is going to be efficacious in bringing about the desired result remains to be seen. Nevertheless, such dissimulation is not unknown ... some Buddhists too, indulge in a similar craftiness. They pretend that they do not desire Nirvana ... in the hope that they will thus achieve it. Some Christians, maintaining that to be alive is to remain a sinner, manifest a spurious humility in order to be worthy of God’s Grace and admission into Heaven whilst all the while saying that they are not worthy. Some Hindus maintain that by not enjoying the fruits of their labour they will gain the ultimate fruit of such labour ... called Moksha. The same sort of sanctimony holds true for many other religions and disciplines. And so, all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides go on for ever and a day.

RESPONDENT: I don’t have pure intent. Possessing and pursuing looks the same I’m living with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and it is making a difference. I want to live as my senses.

RICHARD: Put it this way: do you have the intent to spend the remainder of your life on this verdant planet having malice and sorrow as a backdrop to your every waking moment? Which means that, although you may have shorter or longer periods of being carefree and considerate, greater or lesser moments of gaiety and benevolence, bigger or smaller interludes of being blithesome and benign and so on, do you have the intent to retain and maintain the current base-line of your day-to-day life (which is the fall-back position of animosity and anguish that requires the time-honoured coping methods to keep your head above water) until the day that you die? If your answer is ‘YES’ then you do not have pure intent, you are not pursuing happiness and harmlessness and you will not have a problem with ‘possessiveness’ about peace-on-earth.

If your answer is ‘NO’ then you are already somewhat pursuing peace-on-earth, with at least a trace of pure intent, and the ‘problem’ of automatically trying to ‘possess’ freedom when it occurs will inevitably arise as you have success after success at inducing pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). The name of the game is to be able to ‘live as your senses’ more and more and for longer and longer periods (and to want this is to pursue it) and to the degree you do not make the instinctual ‘grab’ for ownership of these moments is the degree to which these moments will be prolonged ... and these moments are where you learn what it is to be free by direct experience instead of reading about it.

Honesty with oneself is paramount – a dishonest approach will produce a dishonest result – and unless one is scrupulously candid one is in danger of being swept up in the Glamour and Glory and Glitz of the ‘Enlightened State’ and suffer the delusion that one is god on earth (an embodiment of the ‘supreme intelligence’ that is beyond time and space and form) ... replete with that spurious ‘Peace That Passeth All Understanding’.

It is possible.

RESPONDENT: What motivated your liberation?

RICHARD: 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.

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 extirpation – annihilation, expunction, extinction – ensures peace-on-earth.

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