Introductory Post - Melbourne Australia

[jamesjjoo]

Feelings and beliefs are not the flesh and blood body. They are part of the psyche which is not the body. Iow, feelings and beliefs are not flesh and blood.
Do you mean the flesh and blood changes from moment to moment or do you mean the psyche changes from moment to moment?
Remember, the psyche is not the flesh and blood.

[Shashank]

Hi @Damian

Regarding fleeting enjoyment, its not what Actual Freedom is about…As an actually free person there is perpetual enjoyment and appreciation (although I’m not there yet myself but have experienced it temporarily in a PCE) :

Richard : A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event.

Richard : (Doing something pleasant/beneficial – or something pleasurable/beneficent happening – is a bonus on top of the sheer delight of being alive/being here).

This is why I oft-times say ‘it is all so simple here’ (here in actuality/ this actual world/ the sensate world).

Nothing, but nothing (no matter how unpleasant/ detrimental), can ever take away this sheer delight of being alive/being here at this very moment; one could be in solitary confinement, on that infamous bread and water diet, in some insalubrious penitentiary somewhere otherwise utterly displeasureable without this peerless perfection – this ‘perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless)’ purity of life itself/ existence per se – wavering one jot.

Cheers
Shashank

[Damian]

I was thinking about what you shared in relation to my starting point, which is to know who I am.

This starting point is creating some confusion for me to understand Actualism.

I don’t understand why you impress the point of saying you are only flesh and blood. When to look at a person from the relative level there is more to them then just the body. As state above when looking from that level they are also their feelings, personality traits, beliefs

[Shashank]

@Damian

What I dont understand is…that body is constantly changing. So how can you say you are the body?

Well…when its said that we are a body, it is to indicate that one has material existence versus a non-material existence or in other words, in actuality one’s existence is a what and not a who

There are constant changes in the body from dying of old cells to growth of new cells etc but still the fact remains that it is all physically existing…our photographs capture a physical body and it is what constitutes our ID proofs ! We could loose a limb or get a plastic surgery to alter our appearance, yet we still have a physical, material, corporeal existence regardless of the changes that happen.

Feelings and beliefs on the other hand form a fictitious identity which doesn’t have an actual physical existence…a quick simplified example would be a national identity based on the physical territory one is born into…there is a clearly demarcated international border humans have agreed upon yet these borders don’t exist in actuality

What about that which makes the body conscious?

The calorific energy coming from the physical food, water, oxygen is what keeps the body conscious…but I guess you might be asking where that initial spark of life/ consciousness comes from(which is a question I often got when engaging with people coming from a spiritual background) and I end up giving a car’s example…its the ignition mechanism (which is physical) in the car that starts the car, so there is something like this going on in humans too !

Regarding consciousness, I found this one of the most profound things when I came to Actualism…it is something I never thought in this way…Methinks, we like complicated and more grand answers thats why

Richard : This neuronal activity – consciousness itself – is what the human mind is and thus, contrary to popular belief, consciousness is not its content (content as in conditioning) but the very neuronal activity itself.

Cheers
Shashank

[Damian]

thanks S, I will have to read over this a few times! Appreciate your reply

[claudiu]

Hi Damian,

@Damian

was thinking about what you shared in relation to my starting point, which is to know who I am.

This starting point is creating some confusion for me to understand Actualism.

I don’t understand why you impress the point of saying you are only flesh and blood.

Firstly, it’s wonderful that you have already been able to grasp that actualism is different to spirituality, in that when the goal of actual freedom is attained, one is the flesh and blood body only, which indeed is completely contrary to the spiritual belief that one cannot be the body because “that body is constantly changing” ^[1].

It took me many years of conflating actualism and spirituality before I was finally able to separate it out, so you have a head start on me so far .

Secondly, I’d like to clarify what is being conveyed here.

What one is, is ultimately the consciousness that the actual, flesh and blood body generates. As Richard wrote:

RICHARD: When this body is in deep sleep or under anaesthesia, there is no awareness of consciousness … yet the body is still breathing, pumping blood, etcetera. Being alive and the awareness of being conscious of being alive are not necessarily the same thing … which is confusing to the uninitiated. I am this sensate and reflective body, yet when this body is unconscious, there is no awareness that this body is alive. So, strictly speaking, what I am is this body’s apperceptive consciousness – I am the awareness of being here now – and I am very much dependent upon the body being alive and awake to be conscious. When the body dies, this body’s apperceptive consciousness disappears … just as in deep sleep. To take consciousness as being ‘who I am’, independent of the body, is clearly a misconception … and a belief. The belief in Immortality is a denial of death … which is tantamount to saying that what is universally actual is, somehow, wrong!

When one ceases being in denial, something marvellous can happen. [Richard’s Journal, Article 27]

However, when James or me or another feeling-being is writing to you – what is writing to you is not a flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware. Instead, what is writing to you

However, when James or me or another feeling-being is writing to you – in that situation, a flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware is not writing to you.

Instead, who (not what) is writing to you is a feeling-being – which is an amorphous, illusory entity that is formed of the instinctual passions swirling around. What is happening is ‘me’ as a feeling-being, ‘I’ am controlling ‘my’ host body, which is an actually existing flesh and blood body, to write out what ‘I’ want to be written out – as opposed to this actual flesh and blood body writing to you directly, which will be the case for an actually free person or somebody in a PCE. And you, ‘Damian’ who is reading this right now, are also a feeling-being.

It is vital to understand that for ‘me’ as a feeling-being, ‘I’ am not a flesh and blood body. ‘I’ am an illusory entity, and when ‘I’ feel ‘myself’ to exist, this feeling of existence is affective and not actual, not tangible. ‘I’ feel like ‘I’ exist, but in actuality ‘I’ do not.

The distinction is vital. As an actual flesh and blood body, one is the sensate experience of being alive – one is the eyes seeing and the ears hearing, and so on. Whereas as a feeling-being, ‘I’ the illusory entity arrogate these sensory apparatuses and believe them to be ‘mine’, where ‘I’ am now sitting in the center of ‘my’ head or heart, seeing through ‘my’ eyes like little cameras and listening through ‘my’ ears like little microphones, and so on.

As Richard put it so well:

RESPONDENT: And wrt to your report of actual intimacy. How was it different from your enlightened state. What’s the essential difference?

RICHARD: The essential difference is that, with the absence of the entire affective faculty/ identity in toto, there is no separative identity such as to necessitate the (affective) intimacy of union/ oneness.

RESPONDENT: I remember you saying it’s an actual physical intimacy. By that what do you mean. Let’s say both of us are in a room at the opposite ends of the room, does the Space between us NOT exist for you?

RICHARD: Space most certainly exists here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: Can you please explain?

RICHARD: As this flesh and blood body only what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose … plus adding all kinds of emotional/ psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body.

That identity (‘I’/‘me’) is forever cut-off from the actual … from the world as-it-is. [ListAF76]

Not only that, but the actual world itself, which is where actual existence is to be found, is completely invisible to ‘me’, the feeling-being. Everything that is actually experienced is first filtered through ‘me’ as identity:

RESPONDENT: Hi Richard, Actual sensations VERSUS physical sensations.

Would you consider sharing an explanation of the difference?

RICHARD: G’day [No. 28], Sure … for a person living in this actual world (using the word ‘actual’ as per the reports/ descriptions/ explanations on The Actual Freedom Trust website and not as per the many and various dictionaries which equate it with the word ‘real’) there is no difference betwixt the actual sensation of, say, these fingertips touching these keyboard keys and the physical sensation of same.

For a person living in the real world (using the word ‘real’ as per its usage on The Actual Freedom Trust website and not as per the many and various dictionaries which equate it with the word ‘actual’) there is no actual sensation of, say, that person’s fingertips touching their keyboard’s keys as the physical sensation of same is overlaid, and thus tempered affectively/ psychically, by an ‘outer world’ reality imposed auto-centrically by virtue of their ‘inner world’ reality.

For the sake of clarity in communication:

1. Please note there is no ‘inner world’/‘outer world’ in actuality (using the word ‘actuality’ as per the reports/ descriptions/ explanations on The Actual Freedom Trust website and not as per the many and various dictionaries which equate it with the word ‘reality’) – nor any such [quote] ‘sense doors’ [endquote] as you refer to further below, which serve as an interface through which sensation is experienced, either – even though what is popularly known as ‘consensus reality’ currently informs around 7.0 billion peoples otherwise.

2. Please note that the actual world (using the word ‘actual’ as per the reports/ descriptions/ explanations on The Actual Freedom Trust website and not as per the many and various dictionaries which equate it with the word ‘real’) is invisible to all those 7.0 billion or so peoples currently informed by that consensus reality … and invisible, as in imperceptible/ indiscernible, not only ocularly but aurally, olfactorily, gustatorily, cutaneously and proprioceptively as well.

(Which means that only a handful of people alive today are capable of seeing me – the flesh-and-blood body typing these words – and/or hearing me, touching me, and so on, as a living actuality). [ListD28]

The reason this point is impressed upon so much is because it is vital to understand the distinction so that one can navigate from where one is, a feeling-being, towards having a PCE, which is when ‘I’ disappear entirely and the actual world becomes apparent.

If one doesn’t even know about this distinction, one will not even know that it is possible to have a PCE, of course.

@Damian

[I don’t understand why you impress the point of saying you are only flesh and blood.] When to look at a person from the relative level there is more to them then just the body. As state above when looking from that level they are also their feelings, personality traits, beliefs

A feeling-being is an illusory entity that is made up entirely of one’s feelings, emotions, passions, beliefs, convictions, etc. They are not only flesh and blood, but quite the opposite. This feeling-being does not have actual existence which is why people can imagine themselves to be spirits and deities, to have out-of-body experiences, to believe they can transcend time and space, etc.

On the other hand, an actually free person is a flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ^[2]. They are the flesh and blood body being conscious. They are the actually existing universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood body. They are the universe’s experience of itself – in the manner of an actually existing human body that is generating consciousness.

And you can have a preview of this yourself by having a PCE .

As to “personality traits” not everyone is the same and these distinctions continue to apply even once actually free (not all actually free people are the same)… for example:

RESPONDENT: When you say that the (apparent) identity disappears, does the personality/ characteristics of the f&b body change at all?

RICHARD: The following exchange may be helpful in this regard:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Surely there are patterns associated with your reflectivity. You tend to reflect on things in a certain way, and I have a different tendency. Does not that tendency define your identity? Or do you have no such tendency?
• [Richard]: ‘I certainly have that tendency … and I revel in it. These are attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on. They are not the ‘thing-in-itself’.

And:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Your awareness remains associated with your body whilst mine remains associated with mine. As the circumstances change around you surely there is something that remains the same, that defines you as you, and as separate to me. It is that claim of yours to have no identity I was wanting to chip away at, and am wanting to again.
• [Richard]: ‘It is the flesh and blood body that remains the same (with due allowance for the aging process) and defines Richard as Richard and you as you. The flesh and blood body’s characteristics (attributes, traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, features, peculiarities, flavours, mannerisms, gestures and so on) tend to stay the same … but characteristics do not necessarily have to define an identity as being a ‘thing-in-itself’.

RESPONDENT: That is, if the f&b b (can I refer to this as a person for now?) liked telling jokes, would the person still like this after the identity has died?

RICHARD: I like to joke and I laugh a lot – there is so much that is irrepressibly humorous about life itself – and what has changed is that the joking and laughing is not malicious (as in spiteful, for instance) and/or sorrowful (as in lugubrious, for example).

‘Tis a remarkable change, by the way, and not some minor thing.

The way I would put it is: a feeling-being is illusory and so doesn’t actually exist. What one ultimately is is the actual flesh and blood being conscious. The latter has tangible, actual existence – including that consciousness being generated. This is vitally distinct from the feelings, emotions and passions that ‘I’ am/‘I’ generate, which do not actually exist.

Thus the distinction being drawn is not that one’s personality, quirks, predilections, etc., are not also an aspect of what one is, but rather that what one actually is, as in having tangible existence, is this material, corporeal matter giving rise to a conscious self-awareness of existing, as distinct from the illusory feeling of existing that defines normal consciousness.

I’ve gone into great detail here in order to impress this point and reiterate it as it is a vital one. Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Claudiu

---

1. Note that the common usage around these parts of quoting what a correspondent is saying, is not a use of ‘scare quotes’ (i.e. signalling irony or doubt) but rather just a way to reference that correspondent’s own words for clarity of communication. ↩︎

2. RICHARD: The word ‘apperception’ literally means: consciousness being conscious of being consciousness … as distinct from the normal ‘self’-conscious way of perception (‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious). Viz.:

   • ‘apperception (n.): the mind’s perception of itself: apperceptive (adj.): of or pertaining to apperception: apperceptiveness (n.): the condition or quality of being apperceptive: ‘apperceptively’ (adv.): the experience of being apperceptive: ‘apperceptivity’: (n.): the capacity to be apperceptive’. [Fr. aperception or mod. L apperceptio(n-) (Liebniz), f. (non-productive) prefix ap- (assim. form of L ad-) + perception].

   [Abditorium: Apperception]

   ↩︎

[claudiu]

@Shashank

What about that which makes the body conscious?

The calorific energy coming from the physical food, water, oxygen is what keeps the body conscious…but I guess you might be asking where that initial spark of life/ consciousness comes from(which is a question I often got when engaging with people coming from a spiritual background) and I end up giving a car’s example…its the ignition mechanism (which is physical) in the car that starts the car, so there is something like this going on in humans too !

Just wanted to say this is a wonderful analogy! So simple and delightful

Cheers,
Claudiu

[henryyyyyyyyyy]

Hi @Damian, if you are interested in a video call to discuss actualism I am up for it. I have plenty of free time this month as I am not working, so time zones shouldn’t be a concern.