“I undertook the study of metaphysics many times but happiness always interrupted me.”
“Varias veces intenté el estudio de la metafísica, pero siempre me interrumpió la felicidad.”
(Attributed to William Henry Hudson, quoted by Jorge Luis Borges)
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“As time is eternal – just as space is infinite and matter is perpetual – to be here now as this flesh and blood body only is to be living an ongoing experiencing of this infinitude of this very material universe (I am using the word ‘infinitude’ in its ‘a boundless expanse and an unlimited time’ meaning). Therefore, infinitude – having no opposite and thus being perfection itself – is personified as me … a flesh and blood body only. Hence my oft-repeated refrain: ‘I am the material universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being’ or ‘I am the experience of infinitude’. The infinite character of physical space, coupled with the eternal character of time and the perpetual character of matter, produces a here and now infinitude that can be understood experientially by one who is apperceptive. To grasp the character of infinitude with certainty, the reasoning mind must forsake its favoured process of intellectual understanding through logical and/or intuitive imagination and enter into the realm of a pure consciousness experience (apperception) In a PCE which is where there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ extant – the essential characteristics of infinitude are transparently obvious, lucidly self-evident, clearly apparent and open to view.
I will say it again this way: By being here now as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ – for the relative is the absolute – and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ – as matter is energy and energy is matter – and I am already here as it is always now.
And no ‘timelessness’ nor ‘truth’ to be seen at all” - Richard
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Q(1): Oh! I don’t like to hear that! Although what you say is true, I don’t want to … do you mean to say that nothing we have all tried has worked? I don’t want to hear that we have all been wasting our time for thirty years! Nothing that any human anywhere has tried has worked?
R: Where is there peace and tranquillity? Where is there happiness and harmony? Where is there an absence of malice and sorrow? How does one determine success? By looking around with clear eyes. There is no Peace On Earth, anywhere … nor has there been at any time in human history.
By neither expressing nor repressing emotions, something new can happen. The emotion is put into a bind, it has nowhere to go. Next time anger, say, comes up in a situation, simply decline to have it happen. Observe it as it gets up to all kinds of tricks to have its way. Do not express it – but do not repress it either. Watch what happens … you will be surprised. Personally, I rid myself of anger in about three weeks when I started on this all those years ago. The more subtle variations like getting peeved, getting irritated and getting annoyed took a little longer, but losing my temper in an angry outburst ended after about three weeks. I kid you not. It all has to do with the determination to succeed, with patience and diligence born out of the pure intent garnered from a peak experience. You just know that it is possible to be peaceful because you have seen it for yourself. One will do whatever is required to be that experience, twenty-four-hours of the day.
Here we can start afresh. Here we can have success.
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"PETER: I remember when I first came across Richard, I was fired and enthused by actualism and was in the middle of the many emotional upheavals of leaving spirituality behind. Many a time I was confrontational, defensive, provocative, probing, challenging, off-balance, not cool, etc, as I interacted with others. As I have said, this business is not a dispassionate business – yet another way of ‘keeping the lid’ on your passions and your enthusiasm. How else to investigate your beliefs, morals, ethics, feelings and passions but as they arise in the robust adventure of living in the world of people, things and events? However, one can feel anger without lashing out physically, one can feel sorrow without dumping it on others. One can feel, experience and investigate all of the human animal passions without inflicting them on others – hence ‘keep your hands in your pockets’.
But, when you do ‘stuff up’ on occasions, it makes no sense to then berate yourself for it, for this is simply another old taught reaction replete with feelings of guilt, remorse, etc.
Stuffing up is inevitable and it provides a wealth of opportunities for ‘self’-observation and investigation.
Just another little ‘pass-on’ that I found very useful on many occasions. It relates to the inevitable reactions and comments that others will offer to you on the path – when they offer their intuitive, insightful assessments as to what you are feeling or what you are ‘putting out’. I used to take these assessments on board until I discovered that, more often than not, their assessment was false, emotionally charged, defensive, attacking, etc.
With practice, diligence and determination, I learned to be my own counsel, judge and jury, to make an honest assessment of my own feelings and reactions and not rely on others. The key word is honest and this is where genuine intent, firmly based on your own pure consciousness experiences of perfection and purity, will be your guide – for the last person you want to fool is you.
The expression I like to keep in mind is ‘don’t let the buggers get you down’, for others will have a vested interest in cutting you down to size and bringing you back to the herd.
The ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is what it is known as in this country. I wrote in my Journal about daring to stick my head above the parapet and when you do you have to have the intestinal fortitude to keep it there and not let the buggers get you down. Richard’s writings on spiritual mailing lists provide ample evidence of actual innocence personified in the face of personal attacks and spurious assessments by others."
[Richard]: ‘This is where one starts to realise that it is all a grand drama one has to play out in order to be here. Of course, you will go through moments of sitting on the couch thinking ‘nothing’s happening … have I lost it?’ Then, a day or two later, when all hell has broken loose one thinks wistfully of that time sitting on the couch with nothing happening! It’s all okay, no matter how wacky. It is important to never translate one’s thoughts into action. Keep your behaviour as near normal as possible so as to not attract attention. Keep your hands in your pockets and let the thoughts race’.
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Respondent: I’m having incremental success in my application of the method. I find that the guide that Peter put on the website matches my experience so far. When I get lost in thoughts or feeling reality then I immediately pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. I do find that the initial layer is the layer of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. I eventually get to a point where everything seems empty. I stick with it and try not to ‘move’ anywhere and eventually the fascination that it is this moment sets in and I am once more enjoying life. Still there is more work to be done though.
R: You said that in the middle of it that you remembered something that I had written that was important to you. Where I have written about traversing a barren wasteland … about needing nerves of steel whilst in durance-vile. You realised that back in your spiritual days this was where you would have gone for hope, so as to avoid falling into despair. To come out of despair one must enter into hope. And you said that you were sitting there, up on the hill over-looking the ocean …
Q(1): … and I realised that I couldn’t go into hope again.
R: … couldn’t go into hope again … and you sat there and realised that you were to simply sit in this starkness, this barrenness, and not move in any direction whatever. Not move psychologically, I mean. That is; emotionally or mentally. That is very, very important – not to move.
Another way to describe ‘not moving’ is, ‘enduring.’ Enduring the emotion happening, not going elsewhere.
“Neither expressing nor repressing” describes the same moment too, per Quotes - #23 by milito.paz
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“Naiveté is so vital to freedom. … Pure intent can be activated with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. … to be naïve means to be simple and unsophisticated.”
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“What the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – which ‘he’ formulated back in early 1981 – meant to ‘him’ was ‘Why is that experience not happening at this very moment?’ or ‘What is preventing that way of being here occurring right now?’ or ‘How come that wondrous world is not currently apparent?’ (and so on and so forth).”
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RESPONDENT: Want is desire.
RICHARD: Yes, the ‘I’ that was revved up desire like ‘he’ had never desired before … only ‘he’ channelled all of ‘his’ desire into enabling the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent through ‘his’ demise. And ‘he’ succeeded.
RESPONDENT: Desire is ego.
RICHARD: Oh yes … and the ego has a job to do: 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.
This is altruism … pure and simple.
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I always love when quotes are posted here. I hope people post here liberally 
I’ll be sure to keep it in mind.
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“…I ceased believing that life on earth was a grim business with only scant moments of reprieve… yet I did not start believing in perfection. To repeat: I stopped believing, period. All sorrow and malice stems from the activity of believing… which arises from the believer. ‘I,’ as a psychological entity, can only believe - or disbelieve - in possibilities and impossibilities. … By believing perfection to be possible ‘I’ perpetuate ‘myself,’ ‘I,’ by ‘my’ very presence, inhibit that splendid perfection becoming apparent.”
-Richard on infinitude
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Make no mistake in thinking that it needs a personal contact with Richard in order to take the last step to becoming actually free. What it needs is the unwavering and undiminished intent (100%) to bridge the separation that stands in the way of an actual intimacy with another human being – any human being – and secondly the awareness and intent that what one is doing is not for oneself but for everybody in order for the self-less purity to unfold its magic.
Cheers Vineeto
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Being this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it as I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away … nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen … not to ‘me’ but just happening … moment by moment … one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. ,
Richard is something else!
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Ha… quite literally!
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"…being sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty (plus its epiphenomenal psychic facility) any residence or venue of mine is marked by an absence of both affective vibes and psychic currents … a pristine ambience made all the more marked, for many a person, upon returning from the ‘real-world’ environs after a previous visit.
(For instance, my second wife would say, upon her return after an outing on her own into town, that it was like coming back in to a sanctuary. Even a stranger, a real-estate agent (known as a realtor in some places), after showing some potential clients around the duplex I was at the time renting, took me aside and told me how fresh and clean the ambience was; I said it must be because of no children, no cats or dogs, no wild parties, etc., but she looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘no, it’s you; it’s you who makes the ambience clean and fresh’).
Now, this pristine ambience is conducive to a sincere actualist activating their potential – albeit temporarily – as in some form of an out-from-control/ different-way-of-being (to whatever degree of intimacy they be comfortable with at the time). Furthermore, experience has shown that these intimacy experiences can be contagious, so to speak, for other sincere actualists also present as the atmosphere generated affectively/ psychically by the first to be out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being can propagate a flow-on effect, on occasion.
In short: a felicitous and innocuous atmosphere, begotten in an ever-fresh affectless/ selfless ambience, fosters a milieu where happiness and harmlessness can be the norm rather than the exception."
-Richard
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One is the universe ’s experience of itself as a human being … after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe.
There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe - for"you" - to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity.
Apperception is something that brings the facticity born out of a direct experience of the actual .
Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me.
Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the actual world – the world as-it-is – by ‘my’ very presence.
Because I do not grasp that " – There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe for"you" to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity.– I feel separate and cut off from the Actual.
Italics ,[ for “you”] , is my addition.
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Thanks for posting this. I never saw it like this before that it is the identity that thinks there is a separate outside to the universe. W/o the identity I am the same stuff as the universe. There is no inner and outer.
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RESPONDENT: I understand what you are saying. But I still fail to grasp why (and how you can say) that ‘physical death’ is essential for being happy and harmless (as you haven’t died but still are happy and harmless).
RICHARD: It is the very fact of physical death – everybody alive today on this planet will eventually be dead – which ensures happiness and harmlessness … if everything alive today were to all-of-a-sudden endure forever then everything would matter in the long-term (everything would be of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense) and, therefore, life would be a serious business.
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Thank you @jamesjjoo for your response. Yes I can totally relate, to what you are saying; many times I think that I have read what Richard has said, but by re-reading it more intently, ( slowly, word for word and with intention of eaatmoba) I find that I have missed a big gem once again 
No wonder Richard says that some people have had PCEs just by intently reading his writings.
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180 Degrees Opposite
Actual freedom: Time and space and form are actual (the timeless, spaceless and formless reality is a dream).
Spiritual freedom: The timeless, spaceless and formless is real (time and space and form are a dream).
Actual freedom: This physical universe is infinite and eternal (boundless and limitless).
Spiritual freedom: God (by whatever name) is infinite and eternal (boundless and limitless).
Actual freedom: This physical universe is beginningless and endless (unborn and undying).
Spiritual freedom: God (by whatever name) is beginningless and endless (unborn and undying).
Actual freedom: This physical universe is the source of human life (matter gives rise to consciousness).
Spiritual freedom: God (by whatever name) is the source of both the universe and human life (consciousness gives rise to matter).
Actual freedom: One is this flesh and blood body only.
Spiritual freedom: One is not the physical body.
Actual freedom: Physical death is the end, finish: mortality.
Spiritual freedom: Physical death is not the end: immortality.
Actual freedom: The soul (by whatever name) is an illusion.
Spiritual freedom: The soul (by whatever name) is real.
Actual freedom: Totally new (modern) wisdom substantiated by rigorous empirical objectivity (individualistic commonality).
Spiritual freedom: Totally old (ancient) wisdom substantiated by thoughtless metaphysical subjectivity (solipsistic oneness).
Actual freedom: Peace-on-earth is possible as this flesh and blood body.
Spiritual freedom: Peace-on-earth is not possible … peace can only happen after the body physically dies.
Actual freedom: Suffering is eliminated (via immolation).
Spiritual freedom: Suffering is transcended (via sublimation).
Actual freedom: Both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul are extinguished.
Spiritual freedom: ‘I’ as ego surrenders and/or dissolves and ‘me’ as soul expands to be God (by whatever name).
Actual freedom: Any ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dichotomy is not actual.
Spiritual freedom: The ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ become one.
Actual freedom: Love and compassion only exist as long as malice and sorrow exists (both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ become extinct).
Spiritual freedom: Love and compassion are the antidotes to malice and sorrow (the ‘good’ is dependent on the ‘bad’ for its existence).
Actual freedom: The facts are the key to success and are to be sensately found in the actual.
Spiritual freedom: The truth is the key to success and is to be found in the feeling of beauty.
Actual freedom: A sensate-feeling experience (sensation only) empirically experienced as a body-mind (human consciousness).
Spiritual freedom: An affective-feeling experience (calenture only) imaginatively experienced as a bodiless Mind (Divine Consciousness).
Actual freedom: A temporary pure consciousness experience (PCE) such as a peak experience of perfection/nature experience provides a glimpse of one’s actual destiny.
Spiritual freedom: A temporary altered state of consciousness (ASC), such as a satori/samadhi/epiphany, provides a glimpse of one’s imaginary destiny.
Actual freedom: By being born a separative ‘self’ one lives in a painful reality (being detached from actuality) and sensuousness ends this detachment with the resultant apperception revealing the actual world.
Spiritual freedom: By becoming detached from the separative ‘self’ (and thus being twice-removed from actuality) dissociation
from painful reality manifests a metaphysical greater reality in the psyche rendering the physical world a nightmarish dream.
Actual freedom: Total elimination of the rudimentary ‘self’ born of the instinctual survival passions (due to the altruism inherent in the survival instincts).
Spiritual freedom: Total aggrandisement of the rudimentary ‘self’ born of the instinctual survival passions (due to the narcissism inherent in the survival instincts).
Actual freedom: Belief, faith, trust and hope play no part.
Spiritual freedom: Belief, faith, trust and hope are fundamental.
Actual freedom: Intuition, imagination, visualisation, prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy and divination are non-existent in actual freedom.
Spiritual freedom: Intuition, imagination, visualisation, prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy and divination are commonplace in spiritual freedom.
Actual freedom: Actual freedom is consistent: it is neither contradictory nor hypocritical.
Spiritual freedom: Inconsistency, contradiction and hypocrisy are central to spiritual freedom.
Actual freedom: The wide and wondrous path to actual freedom offers incremental success through methodical moment-to-moment examination of feeling-fed beliefs disguised as ‘truths’ (virtual freedom).
Spiritual freedom: The straight and narrow path to spiritual freedom offers an all-or-nothing non-incremental practice through disciplined moment-to-moment enhancement of feeling-fed beliefs revered as ‘truths’ (renunciate or anchorite).
Actual freedom: Autonomy and independence (through altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice) are the hallmarks of actual freedom.
Spiritual freedom: Submission and dependency (through self-seeking ‘self’-surrender) are the hallmarks of spiritual freedom.
Actual freedom: Gratitude is a hindrance on the path to an actual freedom.
Spiritual freedom: Gratitude is essential on the path to a spiritual freedom.
Actual freedom: Dignity is both the means to the end and the end in actual freedom.
Spiritual freedom: Humility is essential if one is to be God On Earth.
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@FrankN Yes, as I recall I had a pce the first time I read what Richard wrote when he came to an old K list that I was on. However, it could have been an asc because I didn’t know the difference at the time. Never the less, it was Richard’s writings that got me to where I am now.
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