Is there any correspondence on AFT regarding a state where the “I” stays intact but “me” dissolves? We have the other two cases–where “I” goes extinct but “me” doesn’t, and both “I” and “me” extinguish.
Hi @Kiman , and welcome to Discuss Actualism 
As ‘I’ and ‘me’ can be synonymous, and for clarity of communication, I am presuming by ‘I’ you mean ‘ego’ and by ‘me’ you mean ‘soul’. As we have:
- Enlightenment: ‘ego’ goes extinct but ‘soul’ doesn’t
- Actual Freedom: both ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ extinguish
To answer the question: it’s not possible for the ‘soul’ to go extinct but for the ‘ego’ to stay intact, because the ‘ego’ arises out of / and is formed from the ‘soul’. The ‘soul’ is the “substance” from which the ‘ego’ is built. Thus without a ‘soul’ – without instinctual passions, for example – there is nothing from which an ‘ego’ can arise.
Can I ask what motivated this question? It is helpful to know where people are coming from to provide the best answers and advice 
Cheers,
Claudiu
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Thank you. It clarifies. It just popped up in my head while thinking about psychopaths. They are (largely?) devoid of emotions but aren’t actually free.
Anyway, another query🙂: Do you know any other person(s) who became actually free but not through AF practise? Richard wrote he hadn’t come across any but that news is many years old.
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Yes they have both ‘ego’ & ‘soul’ fully intact. They still have emotions, just a reduced set of emotions as compared to ‘regular’ people.
I’m not sure how anyone would find out about such a thing, but as it took thousands of years for the first person to become actually free, it is very unlikely someone else would independently, without any contact with actualism, become actually free.
Further of the people that have come in contact with actualism, but tried other methods besides the actualism method - they have all failed.
I recommend sticking with what has been shown to work and repeatably so
What’s your interest in actualism and actual freedom?
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Hi, @Kiman.
To your first question, I would add to @claudiu’s answer that from the point of view of cognitive psychology we should not expect the most primitive and deep-rooted functions (from an evolutionary perspective) to disappear or be significantly weakened first (except perhaps through very special pathological damage). That is why, at least in my comprehension, there have been so many reported cases of enlightenment (relatively speaking, of course) and so few of AF.
Regarding psychopaths, the question is interesting but based on that very widespread misconception. As @claudiu pointed out, psychopaths present an absence, weakening or distortion of certain emotions (or resulting feelings, but lets leave that distinction aside), otherwise experiencing the same good and bad feelings -and deficiency in feeling good- as everyone else.
Furthermore, consider that even the serial killer with which psychopathy is popularly characterized, is driven like all of us by an urge to avoid displeasures and to approach pleasures (regardless of whether their causes and/or the intensity of that urge are atypical compared to the rest of the people).
Therefore, they would indeed require to eliminate their “I” and “me” to become actually free.
I’d like to add to this, some places on the actual freedom site Vineeto refers to the ‘Guardian,’ which is a remnant identity which remains after freedom and directs to a lesser extent the actions of the free being, albeit with no emotional backing. For example, if someone identified as a rotaryan before becoming free, they might maintain that ‘shadow identity’ after freedom for awhile almost out of habit. It requires additional investigation after freedom to remove the guardian, and for that reason R+V distinguish between ‘Free’ and ‘Fully Free’ (no Guardian remains).
The Guardian could be described as the remnant me - or at least a shadow of ‘me.’
The guardian is the social identity which, not being instinctual but socially inculcated, remains after the disappearance of the feeling-being, and forms a ‘centre’ and an ‘agent’ to the experience of (basic) actual freedom, until it abdicates. It is not comparable to the ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ of the feeling-being (nor is it a remnant of such).
It is un-imaginable (to the feeling-being), and attempting so would be of no interest (to the feeling-being).
In short: you’ll see when you get there. 
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@Miguel agree with other points. Regarding the rarity of AF though, it has to be borne in mind that the number of people aiming for AF is quite minuscule compared to the number of people aiming for enlightenment in Asian traditions that have been around for many centuries. One of the things that motivated me to become free was what I thought was a pretty good success rate given a very small pool of actualists
True… Didn’t think about that before 
Likewise. I consider AF to have a pretty good success rate amongst the people who persist with it beyond an initial interest. Both for becoming actually free and having PCEs.
Enlightenment seems very rare with many dubious claims. It’s my opinion most people who got anywhere with it are having absolute experiences but aren’t becoming enlightened. And even those are rare.
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