Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Sensation, Sensuousness

You might like trying to do the following:

Look at one of your hands, while understanding that you use the word hand as a pointer to focus your vision on it. [This is not a thought experiment you really need to do it actually.] Next use the word thumb as a pointer to focus on an aspect/fragment of that which you are looking at. Then find out if you can observe the difference between seeing (this visual quality of it) the thumb and feeling it. If you do this you find out that you can shift focus.

I think when words are solely used to point or label experienced qualities this kind of thinking is without any emotional investment or emotional involvement.

That’s a good example of what I was trying to get at by asking the question. There is thinking without any emotional content or emotional investment, and I think as your example shows, there is a pure sensorial experience of actuality without any corresponding thought or percept. In the case of viewing one’s thumb whilst using the word ‘thumb’, one has formed a percept and locked on to the visual and tactile sensations with a conceptual category: ‘thumb’. There may or may not be any emotional experience associated with these sensations. Given that ‘thumb’ is a rather neutral conceptual category, a body part, there is probably little or no corresponding emotional experience.

However when you say that words may be solely used to point or label experienced qualities, and that this kind of thinking is without any emotional investment or emotional involvement, I think that that may be true or it may not be. Because one may shift subtly from relatively neutral categories or percepts into a kind of thinking that has an associated emotion. But the important thing nevertheless is to be aware of what one is experiencing and see the subtle shift taking place from emotionless thought to having an affective experience. That is why running the question ‘How am I...’ presents one with a tantalizing and fascinating opportunity to observe one’s psyche in action and to find out how one is experiencing the present moment of being alive. Is there thinking without emotion? Is this an emotional experience? What emotion is this that I am feeling? When did it arise? What does it feel like? How does it affect my interaction with others? All of these are interesting questions to delve into.

The other thing that I have noticed while practicing actualism is that feelings and emotions (in other words, an affective experience) take place more purely with little or no thought process taking place. A feeling or emotion is then able to be felt out more clearly – I don’t know how to put it – but I think this has something to do with peeling away the layers of and eventually demolishing the social identity – the rock bottom, or base level instincts, if you will, are exposed to the light of awareness and experienced more fully. This is the nerves of steel part because one has run up against the atavistic fears and ancient hatreds of humanity. It takes nerves of steel to sit in these feelings and to feel them out rather than resorting to control or suppression as one has often learned to do.

To practice sensuous awareness is to bring awareness to the purely sensorial experience of actuality before one shifts into or locks on to an object with its percept. It would correspond to your focusing awareness on the visual and tactile sensations of the thumb without having a corresponding percept. There is some really good material in the actualism writings under the category of sensuousness.

Well, thanks anyway for the chat. I must be getting on about my business for the day. Gary to No 23

What I have discovered is when the sexual imperative disappears it becomes utterly clear that sex is not an essential need such as food or sleep. When it is not an essential need and there is no blind drive to have or want it, then it becomes an optional pleasure in a literal cornucopia of sensate pleasures. The particularly delicious thing about sex freed of the instinctual drive is that it is not a necessity for then it becomes what it is – one on one intimate innocent play. It is body pleasuring body, mutually agreed, freely given and taken, sensuous pleasure, never the same, always fresh. And the sheer sensual overload results in a post-sex looseness and limpness of the body, with the brain awash in serotonin or dopamine or whatever chemical it is.

Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. There is not the ‘blind drive’ to have or want sex now. Time will tell whether this is mere suppression or sublimation (sorry to resort to Freudian terms on you but I think they are apt here), in which case the sexual instinctive drive will out in renewed fury and intensity, or a natural kind of withering away of the sex drive as a result of practicing attentiveness and sensuousness leading to apperception. Please note that I am not saying that I want to eliminate sex. Far from it. I want to get to the bottom of my sexual hang-ups and free myself from the need to control sexual feelings as well as either resort to over-indulging or under-indulging in sex. In other words, I want to enjoy sex but don’t want to be blindly driven to have it or want it, as you have nicely stated. To me, it seems like a crucial difference. I think it is going to take a long time for me to get to that point. Gary to Peter

Often over the last three years since I wrote my journal I have been challenged with the comment ‘but you are not actually free yet’. Despite the fact that these challenges always came as a put-down from someone who hadn’t a clue what Actual Freedom was anyway, the question was nevertheless valid. Whenever this occurred or any other relevant and valid question arose, I would matter-of-factly re-evaluate what I was saying to check its authenticity and facticity, as well as run a check on own integrity. What I always found was that I could authentically write of the experience of actuality and the actual world from my pure consciousness experiences and that I could write with integrity and expertise about the process of actualism simply by the fact that I actively was doing it and logging up down-to-earth success. Unless both of these factors are present, it is relatively easy to detect someone who is talking the talk rather than walking the walk, as the expression goes.

I agree with what you are writing here – that one can write with integrity and expertise about Actual Freedom even while one is not actually free ... as long as one is cognizant of the limitation in that one is not actually free as a continuous and on-going experience.

My only frame of reference for understanding Actual Freedom as an ongoing and continuous state are the pure consciousness experiences which, by definition, are transient experiences. But nevertheless, the pure consciousness experiences themselves are so superb, so completely matchless in their purity and clarity, that they form a valid basis for talking about what an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition is and what it is like. Without the clear memory of a pure consciousness experience as a guide, one is essentially running about in circles trying to describe Actual Freedom.

With the memory of this experience(s), one not only knows experientially that it is possible to experience the physical world with a bare sensuousness, bereft of an interfering ‘self’, but one can describe it accurately to others. With the pure consciousness experience as one’s guide, one is essentially standing in two worlds: one has the best that life offers, the PCE, on the one hand as a comparison point, and on the other hand, one is still living by varying degrees in ‘normal’ everyday reality, doing the process of actualism and experiencing the incremental improvements and successes as a result of the practice. Gary to Peter

The whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad the world is and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at one’s lot in life. If you want to change your lot then you change it. Similarly the whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless with people as-they-are – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad people are and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at the human condition. If you want to become free of the human condition then you set about irrevocably changing yourself.

Once you get the gist that actualism is about going down the road never travelled before in human history you start to realize the full implications of the fact that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong. One then starts to see the folly of the human condition in toto and the envy, umbrage and criticism of others still ensnared by the old ways can be easily and clearly seen for what it is.

Yes, I think it has never been done before but now it is and I want to be in on it in a front seat. It means the end of ‘me’ and nothing but experiencing the 24hour a day perfection and purity of this physical universe, all while doing what one usually does, whether it be working, driving, tending a garden, going to meetings, whatever. The virtually free state or the PCE is at once an extraordinary and ordinary experience ... I don’t know if you know what I mean about ‘ordinary’. I don’t mean ordinary in the sense of dull or mundane, it is certainly not that. But I mean ordinary in comparison to the ecstatic Altered States of Consciousness. As it is a purely sensory experience, completely devoid of emotional content, it can be part and parcel of one’s ordinary sensory experiencing of life in general. It is something that everyone has experienced before and may be potentially experiencing as soon as they focus their awareness on attention and sensuousness. It is indeed something that is right here and right now.

One needn’t go off to some monastery or trooping off to Byron Bay to make a pilgrimage to visit Richard to begin to experience this pure sensuous quality of life. It is right here right now. One becomes progressively more and more practiced in identifying what it is that is standing in the way of experiencing this perfection all the time, 24 hours a day. Gary to Peter

Only when I started to apply the method of actualism could I begin to dare to really acknowledge what was going on in my feeling department, because now I had the tools to investigate and eliminate the cause of my anxiety, my dependency, my sorrow, my anger, my insecurity and my loneliness. Neither suppressing nor expressing my emotions but becoming aware and investigating the cause of the feelings did the trick – it stopped me running away from my bad feelings and stopped me chasing the good feelings. The vividness and a magical splendour of actuality that becomes apparent when both bad and good feelings disappear, is far superior to any ‘feeling good’ that drugs, love, praise or Divine Love can every deliver.

I used to get a bit confused by actualist’s descriptions of ‘feeling good’, ‘feeling fine’, and ‘feeling excellent’, and tried to differentiate how this contrasted with other feeling and emotional states because after all ‘feelings are feelings’. I still cannot determine if the feeling-good part of the so-called excellence experience or PCE is a feeling or a sensation. My memory of PCEs I have had is that there is certain exhilaration associated with it. Not a manic type high at all, or even a drug-like euphoria, but there certainly is an exhilarating, ever-fresh, yes, vividness is a good word, and there is an exceptional clarity to it all which is the chief difference so far as I am concerned. The PCE is characterized by an incredible clarity of perception and sensation. The most ordinary and mundane objects are fascinating in their own right and everything is imbued with a clarity and liveliness that is missing in the ordinary ‘normal’ state. So the experience itself must be one chiefly of sensuousness and not emotion. Nevertheless one can speak of ‘feeling excellent’ as the word ‘feeling’ can also refer to the faculty of sensation. I’ve probably taken something here and over-complicated it all, but I thought I would mention it. When both bad and good feelings disappear, something so exceptional happens that everything else pales by comparison. The realization that ‘I’ am the only thing standing in the way of this magical perfection and purity turns what is initially an interest into a full-time obsession to experience the best that life on this planet can offer. Gary to Vineeto

I have been fascinated to observe and contemplate upon the machinations that are occurring in the most recent flair-up of a religious conflict that has been ongoing for some two thousand years. There is a wealth of information to be had about the human condition simply by observing and thinking clearly about what is happening. There is also a salient opportunity to check on one’s own emotional reactions so as to ascertain where one is hooked, by one’s own social programming. in to feeling anger, sorrow, despair, fear, piousness, aloofness, or whatever.

The current world crisis is tremendously fertile ground for one’s own ‘self’-investigations, I agree. One sees the Human Condition is action in the most extravagant ways possible. One sees full-fledged savagery in action and one can, unless one is completely self-immolated, feel the tug of these emotions and feelings in one’s own heart. Yet whilst practicing actualism, I have found that my emotional life is curiously attenuated. The only discernible emotional reaction, and I am not even sure that it was an emotional reaction, to the news of the World Trade Centre collapse was that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up for a few seconds. I have felt none of the horror, shock, resentment, desire for revenge and retaliation. Surprise yes.

There has been a recognition of the fear too that is sweeping humanity at present time as the hostilities are about to commence. It is fear that binds ‘me’ to humanity, indeed, that makes ‘me’ a human being, and it is fear, along with the other savage passions and tender passions that is making life on this otherwise fair planet a living hell. But it seems that everybody else has gone off in the wrong direction looking for a completely wrong reason for the mess that humanity is in.

Meanwhile, life from here has not changed in any significant respect. There is no fear in the lovely fall foliage, nor in the lovely sun-dappled and dew-dropped grass on the lawn. There is no fear in the hills that surround us, nor in the cool breeze that gently caresses my cheeks as I make my way yet again to the car for the ride to get breakfast this morning. The hills will still be here after ‘I’ am gone. As ‘I’ am doomed to extinction anyway, why not make the best of it right now? Gary to Peter

There is a world of difference between a spiritualist’s debasement or dismissal of the nature of matter, a materialist’s indifference and disinterest in the nature of matter and an actualist’s sensual appreciation of the magic inherent in the nature of matter. One only needs to see the multiplication of cells that occur when a sperm fertilizes an ovum, to see a plant seed burst open and begin to sprout, to see lava or hot springs bubbling from the earth or to feel the rain, wind or sun on one’s skin to experience the magical non-passiveness of the actual world.

The sensual appreciation of the world about one is present in the most common, everyday, down-to-earth experiences. Taking a shower, for instance, can be a cascade of pleasurable experiences as the soothing warm waters wash over one’s body. Or one’s partner running her hand lightly across one’s skin. Or, the delight in seeing an exquisitely and voluptuously shaped human figure. All these things are worth a king’s ransom, and one realizes that they have never been missing, just covered up by the tedious emotional/affective overlay that the instinctual passions constantly paste over actuality. Gary to Peter

Where you say ‘I take the sense of vision’, are you saying that you are using the sense of vision as an example, a ‘for instance’, a test case in which to share your experiences, or are you strongly vision oriented? In other words, while you are having this experience of factuality, as you term it, is the sense of vision dominant for you or are all the senses running at the same time? The reason why I ask these questions is that it has seemed to me that I am at times more sight-oriented. Vision, and particularly the clarity of vision, is most noticeable at times, yet at other times the senses coalesce and I cannot say that one sense is dominant over the others.

Yes, I take vision only as an example, but it’s true that this sense is predominant in me. Seeing like that is also for me a test of factuality.

This is similar to my own experience. Vision seems to be the dominant sense. I have not devised any tests of actuality (keeping with the convention of using the same words to describe common experiences). When there are these pure experiences, PCEs, something qualitatively changes, and experiencing something becomes a much richer experience: colours seem brighter, lustrous, and objects take on an incredible lushness and depth that they lack at other times. I find that the most common objects become fascinating in their own right: for instance, the feel of the fabric of my clothes, the look of my coffee cup, the shades of light dancing across the floor. If anything, perception in non-PCE mode is much flatter and lacklustre by comparison.

When you say that senses can sort of coalesce I cannot agree with you; if you are really conscious, present I mean, you experience only with a sense, you cannot do that with many senses, be conscious of two senses at a time. I cannot swear it but it seems that experiences on the functioning of brain has demonstrated that (i.e. the flow of blood is at one moment always predominant in a group or many groups of brain zones associated with one function). The brain remains however unconsciously active for the other senses (smell, touch, etc) not actually aware in you, as present seeing for example. But I can be wrong, and willing to learn something new about that!!

Since I reading your post originally, I put sensory experience to the test, so to speak, and sought to determine if it were possible to experience with more than one sense simultaneously. The results of my extremely informal and off-the-cuff research leads me to conclude that not only is it possible to experience with more than one sense at a time but that such experiences are common. Upon more close consideration, what seems to happen is that if I am sensing something through one sense, take vision for example, and then I want to see if it is possible to sense through the other senses, there is initially a pause as attentiveness is apparently re-directed to other aspects of the sensory experience. This pause is very brief and then there is the sensing through the other sensory organs. On the other hand, if one is giving exclusive attention to something through the visual sense, for example, the narrow focus of attention makes it difficult (but not impossible) to sense something through the other senses. I wonder also about the operation of thought and thinking here: for instance, if I am particularly engrossed in looking at something interesting in my visual field, then want to shift perception to other senses, there is a momentary lag whilst one thinks something of the sort: ‘I am feeling the wind on my face’ or some such cognition. In this case, there is a higher executive function occurring in the brain which then directs attention to other senses, or there is something like that occurring. Gary to No 46

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