Roy: I made several decisions when writing that text that I’m happy with. I ended up calling the ego/self/ simply “identity” because, while it is an oversimplification, it is, in my opinion, the most useful way to look at it, in the context of Actual Freedom, for a person with no spiritual baggage.
For me it helps to think of the ego/self as an identity and think of it in terms of being a construct instead of an illusion. The term illusion is not great because it can mean:
Illusion:
a false idea or belief
a deceptive appearance or impression
an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience
The reason Richard used the term “illusion” was from his experience of actuality – ‘I’/ ‘me’ entirely disappeared upon self-immolation and as such had never been essential for physical survival. On the contrary, when I became actually free I could confirm that I – the physical flesh-and-blood body had been here all along (of course the identity, the software formed of instinctual passions, having arrogated charge of ‘my’ life).
As I said to Claudiu in a recent post –
Vineeto: ‘I’ am real, very real, as long as ‘I’ am a passionate entity hijacking and controlling the actual flesh body. Thinking that ‘I’ am an illusion while ‘I’ am in existence is to transfer information gained from apperceptive seeing during a PCE into the passionate realm of ‘me’ – what Richard calls from “3D-stunning” to “one-dimensional thought” in his correspondence about “utter fullness”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 25e, 16 June 2000). (link)
Hence I do understand your hesitation in regards the term illusion.
Roy: By using the term construct instead, I can then say that we can “deconstruct the construct” when we are investigating for e.g. our beliefs. Because it’s not a matter of removing beliefs. In a way, you replace “beliefs with other beliefs”.
Belief:
an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof
trust, faith, or confidence in (someone or something)
More precisely, you replace one belief with another idea that you trust to be true. Ideally, you’ve checked your biases, examined the data and facts, and arrived at an idea that’s closer to the truth. I don’t fool myself into thinking that I’ve swapped a misguided belief for an irrefutable scientific truth. The key point is that this new idea isn’t tied to my identity — I no longer identify with this belief. If someone comes along and says “You are wrong about that, here’s proof”, I’ll say “great!” without feeling attacked.
The problem with thinking that you can “deconstruct the construct” is that the human condition is not a construct. Here is what I found in some dictionaries –
- to build something, to create a theoretical concept (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
To 1. To make or form something by combining parts
To put together different parts to form something whole (Cambridge Dictionary)
To 2. A construct is a theoretical concept, theme, or idea based on empirical observations (…)
For example, psychologists develop and research constructs to understand individual and group differences (Scribbr)
As such to describe something which evolved and developed of its own accord from a rough and ready survival package and human ways to curb those survival passions for socially co-existing as being built (by someone) or as a theoretical concept is not conducive to comprehending the nature of the human condition. A theoretical concept (construct) does not describe the facticity, it rather keeps the raw reality of what ‘I’ am at a comfortable distance. To “deconstruct a construct” you are then bound to merely “replace one belief with another idea that you trust to be true”. Whereas the way the actualism method (dismantling one’s beliefs) works is to replace a belief with a fact instead of falling for another concept or belief.
There is also no need to ‘believe’ what I say or what is written on the Actual Freedom Trust website –
Respondent: Where is the proof?
Richard: I invite anyone to make a critical examination of all the words I advance so as to ascertain if they be intrinsically self-explanatory … and if they are all seen to be inherently consistent with what is being spoken about, then the facts speak for themselves. Then one will have reason to remember a pure conscious experience (PCE), which all peoples I have spoken to at length have had, and thus verify by direct experience the facticity of what is written (which subjective experiencing is the only proof worthy of the name). (Richard, List C, No. 4b, 19 April 2000).
By determining the fact of the matter you need to “no longer identify with this belief” or disidentify from this belief. It just drops away the moment you acknowledge/ recognize the fact of the matter.
Richard: I am interested in ‘facts but not ideas’ because only thus is there something that can not be erroneous or incorrect. A fact is actual, not a dream, an illusion or a delusion. A fact is patent, obvious, apparent, evident, tangible, palpable, substantial, tactile, verifiable and indisputable. The marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on … but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List A, No. 14, #No .09)
And being in accord with the fact is what sincerity is.
Hence belief, trust, faith, credulity, intuition and factoids can be readily abandoned. But it is certainly worthwhile to investigate each of one’s beliefs to the point where the pattern/ the core of the belief is seen in order that it can disappear when the fact is discovered. The difficulty in acknowledging/ recognizing one’s beliefs as being beliefs is the emotional investment in wanting them to be true, sometimes fervently so, when they are a significant aspect of one’s identity.
Richard: Please, whatever you do with me, throw faith, belief, trust and hope right out of the window … along with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair.
Besides, I am a certified madman! (Richard, List B, No. 11, 22 Mar 1998).
Roy: The other part that had me confused for a long time which I also wrote about was the no feelings. I always had a hard time thinking about this one. “How can someone have no feelings?”, I would think to myself. “Doesn’t that mean no pain?”. It was funny that the answer came from the now famous “Vineeto’s Encounters Cop” tale:
Vineeto: There was no thought of what to do next when suddenly I felt an uprising of a sob from the gut area and so I allowed it to continue, resulting in the eventual calming down of the police officer’s mood as I had obviously demonstrated the remorse he was looking for. (link)
Roy: All the sensations of discomfort and physical pain continue but don’t need to lead to negative feelings/ negative emotional state/ suffering. I did some more research on the website just now, which I could have done before (link)
I take it that you understand that actualism is not about stopping feeling but eventually ceasing to ‘be’ (and then, upon extinction, the instinctual passions, feelings, emotions and imagination disappear completely with the entire psychic faculty. Hence there are not only no events which “need to lead to negative feelings/ negative emotional state/ suffering” but such feelings/any feelings simply do not happen because the entire affective/ psychic faculty has disappeared together with the instinctual passions upon the extinction of ‘me’.
You are wondering about what life without emotions, passions and imagination would be like. Others have tried and failed miserably – here is one example –
RESPONDENT: A state without emotion, sexuality, passions, ‘animal instincts’ just sounds rather hollow and dead to me. As I said above, I certainly might be wrong.
RICHARD: Your words ‘just sounds rather hollow and dead’ reminded me of a passage I read recently wherein an arguably influential writer speaks of ‘a condition of negativity and deadness’ when trying to imagine what the universe would be like sans emotion (from ‘The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion’ delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-1902):
(snipped quote, to be found at original link)
Thus the factual world (the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the world of the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum) when ‘stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you’, is conceived to be ‘as it exists, purely by itself … a condition of negativity and deadness … the whole collection of its things and series of its events [being] without significance, character, expression, or perspective’.
Yet a pure consciousness experience (PCE) evidences that the actual world, with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality, is abounding in vibrant aliveness and sparkling significance.
Irregardless of this pristine actuality, however, the physical world is then deemed to be the passive recipient of ‘our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts’ … specifically ‘the passion of love’ and other ‘pure gifts of the spectator’s mind’ such as ‘fear, indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship’ so as to endue ‘our respective worlds’ with ‘value, interest, or meaning’.
What price human vanity, eh? (Richard, List B, No. 54, 17 May 2001)
You will find some answers in the FAQ section how life is without feelings (link Section E and F).
Actuality is unimaginable – imagination has no capacity to figure it out. It requires the direct experience of a PCE to consider and understand such a possibility. The reason is, to put it mildly, that ‘I’/‘me’ and the actual world are incompatible/ mutually exclusive.
GARY: It is indeed incomprehensible.
RICHARD: Yes … an actual freedom from the human condition is inconceivable, unimaginable, unbelievable and undreamed of. Actuality is far, far better than anything ‘I’ could want … ‘I’ did not know that this pristine perfection could possibly exist. (Richard, List B, Gary, 23 Nov 1999)
It became a much longer post than I intended but it might help you in figuring out even more precisely what actualism is about.
Cheers Vineeto