Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RICHARD: Generally speaking a realisation is an understanding of something previously not cognised and an actualisation is the putting of that comprehension into action ... as in acting upon that cognisance so that it is experiential and not only intellectual.

For instance:

• [Richard]: ‘It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. I am having so much fun ... those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I understood that there was nobody stopping me but myself, I had the autonomy to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore. As soon as I realised nobody was standing in the way but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover and to find the ‘secret to life’ or the ‘meaning of life’ or the ‘riddle of existence’, or the ‘purpose of the universe’ or whatever one’s quest may be called. To dare to be me – to be what-I-am as an actuality – rather than the who ‘I’ was or the who ‘I’ am or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history ... or one’s personal history, at least.
To seek and to find; to explore and uncover; to investigate and discover ... these actions are the very stuff of life! (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 6, 17 December 1998).

Here is another:

• [Richard]: ‘Love is usually considered sacrosanct ... yet just as sorrow is essential for its antidotal compassion to flourish love is the antitoxin for malice: without malice, love has no raison d’être. I started to empirically encounter this, whilst sailing my yacht around tropical islands off the north-east coast of Australia with a choice companion, towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation. Strangely enough it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – in 1987 which triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness.
It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation – my initial enquiry had begun in India in 1984, whilst single and celibate, upon becoming suss about the Buddhist ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion) and ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) – hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be addressed squarely. Eventually what happened was that at anchor one velvety night with an ebbing tide chuckling its way past the hull what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face:
It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine – and upon such exposure ‘She’ (aka Love Agapé) disappeared forever ... nevertheless it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition.
There is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 41, 10 February 2003).

And another:

• [Richard]: ‘... many years ago, during my five years of an itinerant lifestyle, I would jot down various things in pencil in a notebook: some time later (maybe six weeks or six months) when looking back through the jottings I would quite often be taken by some of them and would wonder why I was not living them ... why they were not an actuality in my life.
In short: sometimes (or even quite often) it takes a while before a realisation becomes an actualisation. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27e, 3 April 2003).

RESPONDENT: The ‘sensational’ event did not remove the survival drives?

RICHARD: The event in 1981, which also precipitated much sensational activity at the nape of the neck, did not remove the basic survival passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) ... there was, in effect, a sublimation/ transcendence of them.

RESPONDENT: Was the experience of transcendence of the passions sufficiently entrancing enough to fool you into thinking that the passions were truly vanished and you had achieved the desired ends?

RICHARD: No ... immediately after the 1981 event it was obvious that the nature, or character, of experiencing was not that of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) but of an altered state of consciousness (ASC) which I was soon to be made cognisant of as being popularly known as spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘I had never heard the words ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Nirvana’ and so on until 1982 when talking to a man about my breakthrough, into what I called an ‘Absolute Freedom’, via the death of ‘myself’ in September 1981. He listened – he questioned me rigorously until well after midnight – and then declared me to be ‘Enlightened’. I had to ask him what that was, such was my ignorance of all things spiritual. He – being a nine-year spiritual seeker fresh from his latest trip to India – gave me a book to read by someone called Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was to be the beginning of what was to become a long learning curve of all things religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical for me. I studied all this because I sought to understand what other peoples had made of such spontaneous experiences and to find out where human endeavour had been going wrong.
I found out where I had been going wrong for eleven years ... self-aggrandisement is so seductive’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 16, 8 January 2001).

RESPONDENT: Is it only in retrospect that you viewed your intended self-immolation as both ego and being selves dying? In other words, did you have the clear distinction of the two types of identity in mind when you originally chose to get rid of your SELF?

RICHARD: Basically, all that I knew (from the four-hour PCE in mid 1980 which set the entire process in motion) was that there were two types of identity – specifically labelled, then, as a social ‘me’ and a grand ‘Me’ – and that there was someone/ something else which had observed those two ‘me’s.

*

RESPONDENT: [The ‘sensational’ event did not remove the survival drives?] Or if it did, somehow a vestigial self/ identity remained?

RICHARD: In essence what remained, as is the case with any spiritually enlightened/ mystically awakened being, was the rudimentary animal ‘self’ (an inchoate affective presence, an embryonic feeler, an incipient intuiter), which virtually all sentient beings are per favour blind nature’s rough and ready survival software hereditarily endowed at conception, aggrandised like all get-out.

RESPONDENT: Presumably, in spite of the ‘aggrandising’, it took you 11 years to get what was happening sufficiently to do something about it.

RICHARD: I got what was happening after about six years ... for instance:

• [Richard]: ‘(...) love is usually considered sacrosanct ... yet just as sorrow is essential for its antidotal compassion to flourish love is the antitoxin for malice: without malice, love has no raison d’être. I started to empirically encounter this, whilst sailing my yacht around tropical islands off the north-east coast of Australia with a choice companion, towards the end of 1987 and by about mid 1988 the unfolding of experience came to its inevitable realisation. Strangely enough it was the disclosure of the intrinsically manipulative nature of love – and ‘unconditional love’ at that – in 1987 which triggered the expansion of comprehension and experiential understanding of the composition of the affective faculty ... with the concomitant growth of awareness.
It was with Love Agapé being such a ‘sacred cow’ that there had initially been considerable uneasiness about a direct investigation – my initial enquiry had begun in India in 1984, whilst single and celibate, upon becoming suss about the Buddhist ‘karuna’ (pity-compassion) and ‘metta’ (loving-kindness) – hence there was a three year-long gestation period before the fact could be addressed squarely. Eventually what happened was that at anchor one velvety night with an ebbing tide chuckling its way past the hull what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face:
It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine – and upon such exposure ‘She’ (aka Love Agapé) disappeared forever ... nevertheless it was not until 1992 that it all came to fruition.
There is a vast difference between ‘realisation’ and ‘actualisation’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 41, 10 February 2003).

Somewhere around 1989-90 it increasingly dawned upon me that I was being dilatory – putting-off going that extra step – for a number of reasons ... the main one being that it was all uncharted territory/ untraversed terrain.

‘Twas no little thing to do, to venture where none had gone before, and the apprehension was considerable.

RESPONDENT: What will follow is some other ‘I’ being born and experiencing life, starting from scratch its individual existence (no past life memories or reincarnation). It leads to the conclusion that death is not that bad. It is an end of one life which marks a beginning of another life.

RICHARD: The awareness that is this flesh and blood body called Richard started right along with this body over half a century ago and – barring war, accidents and disease – will cease somewhere around 2030 because they are one and the same thing. Then, when this body ceases being animated its constituent particles will re-combine with other particles of matter into other forms – some of which will be carbon-based life-forms and therefore animate – but only if that life-form is another human being will there be an ‘I’ ... and another opportunity for the universe to experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being.

RESPONDENT: I think there is a slim chance that all my atoms will build another single life form. But I don’t think this is an important point what percentage of my molecules will build a future human being after my death. The atoms belong to nobody. What matters, I think, is that human being with its reflective capabilities will enjoy life again.

RICHARD: Aye ... it immediately matters inasmuch as we are here anyway doing this business called being alive. If peoples were not killing. maiming, torturing and otherwise harming each other it would not be so urgent, perhaps ... but, then again, there is always this opportunity to ask:

Why am I (No. 7) here?

*

RESPONDENT: It does matter what we leave for the future generations because we are doing it for our own future ‘selves’.

RICHARD: Yes, whatever gets one of one’s backside is worthy of contemplation ... ‘I’ need all the inspiration ‘I’ can muster to enter into what is, after all is said and done, ‘The Voyage of a Life-Time’.

RESPONDENT: By ‘The Voyage of a Life-Time’ do you mean enjoying this life as it is here and now as nobody in particular?

RICHARD: It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. I am having so much fun ... those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I understood that there was nobody stopping me but myself, I had the autonomy to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore. As soon as I realised nobody was standing in the way but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover and to find the ‘secret to life’ or the ‘meaning of life’ or the ‘riddle of existence’, or the ‘purpose of the universe’ or whatever one’s quest may be called. To dare to be me – to be what-I-am as an actuality – rather than the who ‘I’ was or the who ‘I’ am or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history ... or one’s personal history, at least.

To seek and to find; to explore and uncover; to investigate and discover ... these actions are the very stuff of life!

RESPONDENT: I keep day-dreaming/ thinking and get into fears and anxieties ... my mind slips away from a simple state (awareness of the moment) to some complex state (memories, feelings, thoughts, recollections) and I get confused.

RICHARD: It is really very, very simple (which is possibly why it has never been discovered before this): one felt good previously; one is not feeling good now; something happened to one to end that felicitous/ innocuous feeling; one finds out what happened; one sees how silly that is (no matter what it was); one is once more feeling good.

JAMES: What about when I find out what happened to end feeling good and I see that it is silly to keep worrying about it yet that doesn’t stop the worrying and I am not back to feeling good?

RICHARD: Two things immediately leap to mind ... (1) you value feeling worry (a feeling of anxious concern) over feeling good (a general sense of well-being) ... and (2) you have not really seen it is silly to feel bad (a general sense of ill-being). What I would suggest, at this point, is to feel the silliness of feeling bad (in this case feeling anxiety) ... then the seeing (as in a realisation) might very well have the desired effect (as in an actualisation) of once more feeling good. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, James, 13 July 2004a).

RESPONDENT: a) I am not able to see the silliness of feeling bad ...

RICHARD: Do you comprehend that, although the past was actual when it was happening, it is not actual now and that, although the future will be actual when it does happen, it is not actual now ... that only this moment is actual?

If so, do you further comprehend that anytime you felt good/ will feel good does not mean a thing if you are not feeling good now ... that a remembered occasion/ an anticipated occasion pales into insignificance if you are feeling bad now?

Furthermore, do you understand that to be living this moment – the only moment you are ever alive – by feeling bad is to be frittering away a vital opportunity to be fully alive ... to totally enjoy and appreciate being what you indubitably are (a sensate creature) whilst you are here on this planet?

If so, is it not silly to waste this only moment you are ever alive by feeling bad ... when you could be feeling good?

RICHARD: ... faking care is not the distinction being referred to as the person feeling caring is being true to their feelings. It is not their fault that the truth is insincere.

RESPONDENT: I see now that ‘faking care’ isn’t what you mean by ‘feeling caring’. I’m curious, what would it take to be sincere? Is all feeling caring insincere – or are you saying that the person being true to their feeling of caring could be sincere by realizing that their caring is ‘self’ centred? Is it only possible to be sincere if one is actually free? Or ‘imitating’ the actual? Could you say more about what you mean – ‘It is not their fault that the truth is insincere’. What exactly is insincere about feeling that one cares for another? Is all feeling caring insincere? Or is insincerity due to one’s ignorance of the actual genesis of feeling caring? If all feeling caring is actually insincere – then it doesn’t seem we ‘beings’ have any choice about it, do we? If this is the case, the path to actual freedom would be becoming as sincere as possible, yet one couldn’t be completely sincere until once actually free. Is this how you see it? Or is one ‘imitating’ the actual also sincere – since they know all feeling caring is ‘self-centred’? Thus, anyone could be sincere just by realizing the ‘self-centeredness’ of feeling caring.

RICHARD: Unless a realisation is actualised, meaning that it operates spontaneously each moment again, it remains just that ... a realisation.

All I am indicating by saying that the truth is insincere is that, as the truth holds the promise of an after-death peace for the feeling being inside the flesh and blood body (as in ‘The Peace That Passeth All Understanding’), the truth is not sincere in regards to bringing about peace on earth ... which peacefulness is what caring is all about.

In short: feeling caring is incapable of delivering the goods.

As being sincere in the context under discussion is to have the pure intent to enable peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, it would therefore take a perspicuous awareness of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (seeing the fact) to be sincere ... rather than an instinctive feeling of what is unadulterated, genuine, and correct (intuiting the truth). The feeling of caring (be it a pitying caring, a sympathetic caring, an empathetic caring, a compassionate caring or a loving caring), being primarily the feeling being inside one flesh and blood body caring for the feeling being inside another flesh and blood body (or for an anthropomorphised feeling being called mother earth for instance), is insincere by its very nature. And to realise that such feeling caring is a ‘self’-centred caring – and thus corrupt and/or tainted – is the first step towards sincerity.

Anybody can be sincere (about anything) – all it takes is seeing the fact (of anything) – and in this instance the perspicacity born out of the pure consciousness experience (PCE) ensures sincerity in regards to enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth into becoming apparent. The basis of such sincerity lies in comprehending the fact that caring starts with oneself – if one is incapable of caring for oneself one cannot care about others (or anything for that matter) – lest it be a case of the blind leading the blind.

There are two forms of ignorance about the genesis of the affective feelings: nescience and ignoration – wherein the former is to be incognisant of the root cause and the latter is to be disregardant of the root cause – and the latter has much to do with what is often expressed as ‘you can’t change human nature’ (only recently on another mailing list the sentence ‘we can’t change biological predisposition’ was pithily presented as if it were a valid reason not to discuss the genetic inheritance of aggression). Meaning that, apart from fanciful notions about genetic engineering, it is generally held that as human nature (biology) cannot be changed therefore biology cannot be the root cause of all the ills of humankind ... or so the bizarre rationale goes.

Obviously part of the first step towards sincerity is the acknowledgement of blind nature’s legacy.

*

RESPONDENT: I just wanted to jump in and let you all know that I’m still around. I’ve been processing AF almost constantly and realizing just how upside down it looks from a ‘real world’ point of view. Reflecting on the many instances I’ve seen where Richard says that only a handful of the hundreds of visitors to the site actually ‘get it’ – I’m beginning to understand why. It takes persistence and stubborn will not to give up – no matter what. In other words, the 180 degree metaphor is no understatement – and it’s a bit like standing on one’s head until it ‘clicks in’.

RICHARD: Whenever the going gets tough it may be well to remember this what you say here ... many years ago, during my five years of an itinerant lifestyle, I would jot down various things in pencil in a notebook: some time later (maybe six weeks or six months) when looking back through the jottings I would quite often be taken by some of them and would wonder why I was not living them ... why they were not an actuality in my life.

In short: sometimes (or even quite often) it takes a while before a realisation becomes an actualisation.

RESPONDENT: An auspicious month then, as the moment is always :)

back to having fun in the only moment :)

RICHARD: G’day No. 32, In regards to the first of the two things which happened to you while on a flight trip: the realisation that your fellow human beings, when in an everyday position of power and control, will (on occasion) pull a power-trip on their fellow human beings – per favour blind nature’s rough and ready software survival package – can be of an on-going benefit (as well as that immediate long-term benefit, which you have already reported, of it hitting home to you more deeply how there is just no long term solution to be found in the human condition) but only provided your on-the-spot realisation manifests as an actualisation, of that valuable insight, in your moment-to-moment living.

An anecdote might best illustrate what I mean: many years ago my then-companion Devika would oft-times say to me that I should stand up for myself and not let peoples (such as you describe) push me around ... indeed, it was one of the reasons she created a psychic force-field in her psyche (which is, of course, the human psyche) so as to protect what she saw, experientially, back then as innocence personified.

(She was wont to exclaim, on occasion, how ‘Richard brings something marvellous – something absolutely wonderful – into the world and yet everyone deposits ordure on it’ ... albeit not expressed quite so politely as that).

What she did not realise – except during a PCE of course – is that innocence itself (the genuine article and not the so-called innocence of children) requires no affective vibe/ psychic current protection whatsoever and, therefore, in vain would I explain to her that, in everyday situations such as you report (where the whole point of the exercise is to walk out the door with the goodies which those in a position of power and control can either dispense or withhold), I had no interest whatsoever in futilely striving to win a puny ego-battle with some officious power-tripper but, instead, walk away with the said goodies each time.

Regarding the second of the two things which happened to you on that flight trip: there have been more than a few peoples ask me (but as a ‘gotcha’ question, of course, in their minds) what sensory organ it is whereby the infinite nature of this physical universe’s space can be detected – whereupon I usually answer that it is simply a matter of apperceptive awareness (inasmuch it is ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself, who automatically creates a boundary to ‘my’ awareness by virtue of being the centre of ‘my’ consciousness) – and it makes for a pleasant change to read what you have to say upon having gazed deeply into that velvety darkness betwixt the stars and thereby experienced for yourself ‘an infinite like abyss’ for a second or two.

(Incidentally, that ‘abyss’ description comes from an experience of that nature being a momentary loss of ‘self’ – or even partial loss more likely – as any such abyss-experience stems primarily from a (temporarily) non-egoic glimpsing of death-of-ego, rather than ‘self’-immolation/ ‘self’-extinction in ‘my’ entirety, as it is a feature of pre-awakenment/ pre-enlightenment experiences as well).

Please note that I am not suggesting for a moment that the human eye – be it partially/ fully ‘self’-less or not – is powerful enough in its reach, or receptive enough in its absorption, to be viewing infinite space in a measuring sense (such as estimating the distance to a mountain peak, say, ten miles or so away) as infinity simply cannot be measured.

The human eye is, rather, looking into infinity (when gazing deeply into that velvety darkness betwixt the stars) in the sense that there is no limit to its seeing ability other than its own physical capacity due to having evolved on a planet a short distance away, in astronomical terms, from its central star (aka the sun).

RICHARD: Hence it came to pass one fine evening that feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ realised, with a profound visceral impact, how ‘she’ had never actually cared – although ‘she’ certainly felt caring (in fact ‘she’ had a deeply-ingrained and ongoing feeling of caring about all the misery and mayhem) – and upon that realisation transforming itself into an actualisation (as per the intimacy-yearning process detailed in the ‘Direct Route Mail-Out № 05 email part-quoted at the top of this page) it activated “a caring which is as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” and there was indeed action which was not of ‘her’ doing ... to wit: the ending of ‘her’ and all ‘her’ subterfuge and trickery (just to stay in keeping with the above wording purely for effect).

Thus Vineeto is emphatic that unless this “near-actual caring” term refers to “a caring which is as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” with a marked-action effect, such as is illustrated above, it is to no avail to utilise such terminology.

The other example provided (at the top of this page) similarly instances a marked-action effect of “a caring which is as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” inasmuch ‘she’ was sitting amongst a group of people, as one of many, wherein ‘her’ sole interest was that everyone present, including ‘herself’ as one of those present, enjoyed themselves and obtained the maximum benefit from their meeting due to an abeyance of the ‘doer’ and the ascendancy of the ‘beer’ (i.e., an out-from-control/ different-way-of-being virtual freedom).

Needless is it to add that instances such as these are beyond the ken of social behaviourist-type therapists and counsellors (and especially those who slyly avoid ‘empathy burnout’ via shedding the very empathy their patients thrive on)?

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