Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

April 22 2005

RESPONDENT (to Vineeto): I have written this in my diary this morning and was wondering if you could show it to Richard to see if his interpretation of AF is the same: ‘... there are 3 things that I can be compared with a computer in terms of my functioning: [1] When I am asleep, my senses are on HIBERNATE and take a longer time to come online. [2] When I am awake and not thinking then my senses are on STANDBY. [3] When I am functioning and doing a task because of discomfort of the body, or out of necessity, then my senses are ON. And my hypothesis is when my senses are off – either they are not functioning (e.g. to be blind) or I am dead. The only thing is that to get from STANDBY to ON is only necessary when I need something’.

RICHARD: Your analogy, of a computer’s power-saving modes, is not all that much assistance in conveying how you are currently functioning as the only essential difference between ‘off’ and ‘hibernate’ (for a computer) is what transpires after the computer is manually switched back on – to either the default desk-top or to the desk-top as it was (with previously selected programmes running) – and the only difference between ‘on’ and ‘standby’ is that some devices (such as monitors and hard disks) are switched off, by the absence of key-stokes/ mouse-movements, until being switched back on by a key-stoke/ mouse-movement.

Furthermore, whether awake or asleep, thinking or not thinking, the senses are functioning anyway – all it takes to bring this flesh and blood body into wakefulness, when asleep, is an unexpected/ unusual touch (the cutaneal sense), or smell (the olfactory sense), or sound (the aural sense), or light (the ocular sense), or taste (the gustatory sense), or posture (the proprioceptive senses) – so it does not follow that the senses can be hibernating, standing-by, or switching-on ... they are always on, so to speak, for as long as a body is alive and not dead.

Thus it would appear that what you are referring to, via your computer analogy (it is not entirely unhelpful), is the processing of sensation – be it either cutaneous, ocular, aural, olfactory, gustatory, or proprioceptive sensation – in terms of such processing being deliberated evaluation (for whatever reason) ... and (1) while asleep such an appraisal is in suspension and, for you at least, takes longer to be mobilised than (2) when awake but inactive and thoughtless (where such purposeful assessment is also in suspension) ... whereas (3) when you are active (as in performing a task) and thoughtful (as distinct from thoughtless activity), it is, of course, concurrently in action.

*

I have read through the remainder of your e-mail, which Vineeto forwarded to me, and in regards to where you asked if I would sit, with eyes closed, touching a porcelain cup without thought operating (so as to provide a comparison with what occurred when you did likewise) I can provide the following information:

1. It is quite the norm for this flesh and blood body that, on a daily basis, thought is often not operating – I tend to call it ‘mind in neutral’ – yet apperception (the mind’s perception of itself) still occurs regardless.
2. To close the eyes is to mask but one of the senses – touch, smell, taste, hearing, and proprioception, remain unmasked – thus, at the very least, subliminal processing of those sensations is still occurring and, consequently, a below-the-threshold-of-conscious-awareness sensitivity of being alive right here, in space, just now, in time, is in operation.
3. To sit, thoughtless, touching a porcelain cup (presumably only with a fingertip) is to be cutaneously feeling something, even though it is not being recognised, just as the (seated) buttocks and thighs are also cutaneously feeling something – if only pressure – therefore it cannot be faithfully said, without dissociating, that there are no sensations/that there is no experience.

Although all there is to go by is what you chose to write, and given you did report that you could not tell [quote] ‘that there were sensations’ [endquote] and that [quote] ‘there was no experience’ [endquote], there is sufficient indication that dissociation *was* taking place and, moreover, as you also report you felt that you were not different from anything in the whole universe – not in terms of material but in terms of something indescribable – it is more than likely that some trance-like affective state of being was occurring.

It is not, therefore, at all surprising that you then go on to write about how you are not sure that Richard saying he is the body is actually it.

Whereas, where any affective being whatsoever is absent – either in abeyance in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) or extinct upon an actual freedom from the human condition – it is patently obvious that what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is the flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ... whether thought is operating or not.

And, as a flesh and blood body is not separate from that which it forms itself with, one is the infinite and eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself apperceptively ... as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

And this is truly wonderful.