Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on Pure Consciousness Experience

The other thing that quickly emerged from these early discussions was the essential reference point of the ‘peak experience’, or Pure Consciousness Experience. It is an actual experience in one’s life when, for a brief period of time, one has an experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily in abeyance and everything is experienced as perfect and pure, magical and delightful. It took me a while to remember one, and I was sceptical at first, because it was an experience I had had after having taken the drug ecstasy. It had happened some twelve years ago. I had arranged with my partner at the time to take the drug by the foreshore of a large salt-water lake, opposite a holiday house where we were staying for the weekend. We arranged a comfortable picnic spot by the lake and popped a tablet each.

As the effect came on, I remember walking in the shallow water marvelling at my magical fairy-tale-like surroundings. A vast blue sky overhead with an ever-changing array of wispy white clouds. The sun glistens on the tiny ripples of water washing gently over my feet. The sensual feel of the mud oozing between my toes as they sink into the muddy beach. Huge pelicans glide overhead and I liken them to the jumbo jets of the bird world as they come in to land on the water some distance out. The sun on my skin is warming me through and through, the breeze is ruffling my hair and tingling my forearms, and the water is cooling on my feet. It is so good to be alive, senses bristling as if on stalks and everything is perfect. Absolutely no objections to being here – pure delight!

After a while I turn to my partner who is sitting in the shade beneath a wonderfully gnarled and ancient tree on the lake’s edge. There sits a fellow human being to whom I have no ‘relationship’. Any past or future disappears; she and I are simply here together, experiencing these perfect moments.

The past five years that I have known her, with all the memories of good and bad times, simply do not exist. It is just delightful that she is here with me, and I do not even have any thoughts of ‘our’ future. In short, everything is perfect, always has been, and always will be. It is an experience of actual freedom where I, as this flesh and blood body only, am able to experience with my physical senses the perfection and purity of the universe, totally free of any psychological and psychic entity within. I am also free of the delusion that this is all the work of some mythical maker to whom I owe gratitude for ‘my’ being here. I am actually here, in the physical universe, and enjoying a direct and unfettered involvement, every moment.

As I racked my memory in the weeks after meeting Richard and Devika, this was the ‘pure consciousness experience’, the PCE, that stood out – this was how I wanted to experience life permanently, twenty-four hours a day, and this now became my intention. To replicate that ‘self’-less experience, as this mortal flesh and blood body, permanently, effortlessly, without drugs, became my intent in life and, very soon, my total obsession. Peter’s Journal, ‘Introduction’

During this time, I remember driving up the escarpment that encircles the lush semi-tropical coastal plain where I live. I stopped and looked out at the edge of the greenery, where a seemingly endless ribbon of white sand neatly bordered it from the azure ocean. Overhead great mounds of fluffy white clouds sailed by in the blue of the sky. Right in the foreground stood a group of majestic pines towering some thirty meters tall. I was struck by the vastness, the stillness and the perfection of this planet, the extraordinariness of it all, but ... and the ‘but’ are human beings! Human beings who persist in fighting and killing each other and can’t live together in peace and harmony. It was one of those moments that forced me to do something about myself, for I was one of those 5.8 billion people.

It was exactly one of those moments that forced me to do something about being able to live with a woman in peace and harmony. To prove it was possible.

No longer was it then sensible to relentlessly pursue that which has failed for billions of people for thousands of years. Hope, faith and trust, when they fail, turn inevitably to despair, doubt and suspicion. I put my stock in confidence, certainty and a good deal of bloody-mindedness to try something different and the results are beyond my wildest dreams! First, I made it the most important task in my life. Second, I realised that nobody could do it but me. Then I simply had to ride out the fear that arose from changing my behaviour – from actually eradicating part of myself. To live without the emotions and feelings of love defies all that we hold dear, but the facts are that love always fails, always ends in misery and suffering, or at best in compromise and bondage. Love is, after all, a well-meaning but doomed attempt to cover up the maliciousness and sorrow that is at the core of the Human Condition.

Of course there is something which is an alternative to love, something vastly superior, and I knew it the day I looked out over the ocean. There is an ease, a simplicity, and a delight in being in the company of a fellow human being who is equally committed to discovering and permanently experiencing this very perfection that is the physical universe.

There is a contentment, satisfaction and exhilaration in knowing we have eliminated sorrow, resentment, jealousy, dependency, moodiness, pining, competitiveness, neediness; indeed, all the emotions and feelings of love. The reward is an actual intimacy that is tangible, sensual, priceless, magical, alive, ever-fresh and ever-present. And this direct unfettered experience of the other is both delightful and delicious! We now get to constantly enjoy the fruits of our own labours. Cute hey! Peter’s Journal, ‘Love’

When the self is eliminated, or absent as in the peak experience, what remains is bare awareness or apperception. Apperception is best understood as experienced in the ‘peak experience’, when the bare awareness gives what appears to be a 360 degree vision. One experiences life with heightened physical senses and one’s intelligence operates without obstruction, free to respond to each situation appropriately – to people, things and events. All emotions and feelings (sorrow and malice) simply do not exist. Everything is then perfect, immediate, effortless, actual and delightful – free of the psychic entity. But, of course, recalling or remembering the ‘peak experience’ is tricky since there are no emotions happening at the time and therefore no emotional imprint is left to anchor the memory. I found it useful to deliberately attempt to bring whatever information possible ‘back’ from the peak experience to the ‘me’ functioning in the real world.

The inducing of peak experiences is therefore an essential process and can be undertaken by whatever means best suits. For me this includes sex and certain activities I particularly enjoy – sitting on the balcony late at night or early morning or walking the beach. The transition from the emotional, feeling self to the free functioning of apperception eventually produces a radical mutation, and requires a pure intent firmly based on the peak experience. Ridding oneself of emotions and feelings is a shocking concept to human beings, anathema to what we regard as our very human-ness.

But therein lies the cure to the disease of the Human Condition for those courageous enough to face the illusionary demons and dragons on the way. What I found happening was that as ‘I’ became thinner and was less in the way, an innate intelligence or awareness became obvious as functioning in my brain. A common sense was operating that made any morals, ethics, or any need to believe anyone else, simply redundant.

I came to a sort of delicious halfway point where I found I was not doing ‘the clean-up’ but, rather, it was happening to me. The right circumstances seemed to occur – an ease, a rush, as though I was on a kid’s slide, and all I had to do was let go and stop resisting ... and then whoosh, I would become free of the psychological and psychic entity. It appeared as though I could at last let go of the burden of being ‘me’ – the pretence, the trying, the struggle, the effort – and could just relax into being the actual me: not who I am, but what I am. Not to become some super-ego inflated ‘Man of God’, but the me as this flesh and blood body who has been there all along; the one who was searching for a way out of the madhouse he was in; the one who knew he was similarly inflicted as the other inmates and was searching for a cure.

From then on I had no more doubt that I was becoming free of this psychological and psychic entity inside myself. Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’

Also I personally found marijuana useful, when used with intent, as an aid to discussing a particular issue or when musing over some aspect of the human condition. I found it gave me the ability to delve deeper or see more clearly. It is a stimulant that somehow allows an opening to the actual: free of the primitive brain. Used socially to get ‘out of it’, it is a dead loss, of course, but to get ‘in’ to the psyche, I found it was useful to me. Also, marijuana is possibly useful in order to induce a peak experience of the actuality of being here in the physical world, with all its accompanying delights, its purity and perfection. Peak experiences are like signposts on the way – invaluable as knowledge of what I am aiming for, of my destiny from the moment I decided to give this one hundred percent, from the moment I determined I had nothing left to lose. Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’

And when one first peeks through a crack in the door out from this world it can look overwhelming fearful – that is why it takes pure intent and a certain courage to tackle the journey out.

The essential thread for me was having had a significant peak experience in which I had experienced an absence of ‘self’, and where I actually experienced the delight, ease and magic purity of this planet. I think most people have had similar experiences, sometimes through drugs, and these glimpses of such a startling potential sent so many of us to the East in the first place. But then, of course, with the newly acquired ‘spiritual’ beliefs firmly in place any subsequent experiences became spiritual in nature – and I’ve had a few in my time. I am not talking about the fickle feelings of bliss, love, beauty, or oneness. Here I am talking about a direct experience of the actual physical world of people,

events and things as they physically are – be it an ashtray, a sunset, a rainy day, talking to the cashier at the bank, the bedroom ceiling, going to work on a Monday, getting a flat tyre, doing nothing or something, having breakfast for the 17,000th time – in short, everything and anything actual. The world of people, events and things – not the world of imagination.

By living in the actual world I now associate with people in an entirely new way. Gone is the need for ‘friends’ to share my sorrow with. Gone is the need to be part of a ‘group’ as a protection from imaginary fears, or for the sharing of common beliefs. Gone is the need for someone to look after me, someone to care and support me.

I have no need for love as a temporary bridge to overcome the feelings of loneliness and separation.

I have actually always been on my own and looked after myself very well in my life, and people have simply come and gone, for varying periods of time and involvement. It’s only that now I don’t have any pretences or bargains, where I do something for someone only in return for their helping me. Now if someone does something for me it is an unexpected bonus and if I do something for someone else it is a pleasure, freely given. I am, for the first time, living my own life, not someone else’s. The bargains, bonds, deals, clinging and neediness have simply disappeared. I now regard allowing freedom, as far superior to giving love, with its accompanying needs, demands and expectations.

To allow anyone I meet to be free of me, as I am free of them. A free association. I am now able to enjoy and delight in the company of my fellow human beings for as long as is appropriate. It may be rather constantly with Vineeto, or briefly with the check-out girl at the local supermarket. However, I am under no illusion, and know that the essential nature of people is malicious and sorrowful; in fact, now it is even more obvious to me, so well do I know the Human Condition. I am now free to take people as I find them, without investment or expectation, suspicion or competition, attack or defence. Consequently my interactions are invariably delightful and interesting – but then again so am I, so why not? Peter’s Journal, ‘People’

I remember going sailing once. A wealthy businessman I knew, a Rajneesh disciple, had a luxurious 26 metre long wooden cruising yacht built to sail the world. Well, he got as far as Sri Lanka, left it there, and then got back into the business world. A friend took on the job of bringing it back home, and asked me if I would crew. We flew out to find a tired looking boat that had been mouldering in the tropics for a year. After a bit of maintenance, and stocking up of some vegetables and a few dead chickens from the local market we headed off – and straight into a storm. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I asked myself as the boat heeled at seemingly impossible angles while crashing and shuddering through the waves. The curry I had eaten the night before disappeared overboard and over me, and I found myself looking for that ‘fast-forward’ button again. But within a day or two the storm was a thing of the past and we were cruising.

A few days after that we ran out of wind as we hit the Doldrums – that area in the tropics where there often is no wind for weeks. Like all sailors before us we all went a bit mad as we drifted aimlessly in a flat mirror-like ocean beneath a baking cloudless sky. The only point of orientation was a faint horizon line separating two almost identical shades of blue – the sky and the sea. Our diesel fuel, unbeknown to us, had been contaminated in the tropics, and we had no alternative but to sit it out and wait for a wind, day after day.

I would deliberately take the midnight-to-dawn watch, alone on deck at the helm, while the others slept below. The sky was velvet black, carelessly strewn with a myriad of diamond stars, the moonlight dancing on the dark ocean. The sky was intense, endless in depth; the ocean fluid, also seemingly endless in depth, and I and the boat I was on, insignificant in size and location. The nights were superb; it was a constant pleasure and delight just to be alive – just to be here!

These were nights when I understood the vast endlessness of the physical universe and there was no question of a god or an ‘energy’ or a ‘creator’ of any sort. It was all actually sensational – purely of the senses. The warm feel of the tropical air, the salty smell of the ocean, the movement of the boat, the sound of the water on the hull, the delightful feast to the eyes – the vast stillness and purity of it all. I was no-where in particular, a mere speck on the globe of the earth, hanging somewhere in an infinite black space. The days had no names, the hours no numbers, so time had no reference, I was simply here. Night after night of peak experiences – doing nothing but being thrilled at being a part of the physical universe. Not at ‘one’ with it, but the bit of it that was able to go ‘Wow – how amazing!’ To delight in and contemplate on the wonder of the physical universe. Of course the experiences I had on the boat wore off when the journey finished.

But they stayed tucked in my memory as an experience of the actuality of the physical universe. I was a human being sitting on a boat located no-where in particular in the majesty of the universe. On reflection, those nights and other similar experiences, have had an accumulative effect on me. A year or two later, when I did intensive meditation sessions, it was always a little strange to me that the meaning of life should be to sit rigidly for hours on end with my eyes shut trying to get somewhere else. How come the meaning of life was to either deny life or hide from it? Peter’s Journal, ‘The universe’

Recently someone said of Richard’s writings: ‘Why is he talking of everyday things?’ Well, when I lived in the world of emotions, feelings, energies and spirits, it was a full-time neurosis, and I couldn’t savour the delights of food, sex, conversation, doing ‘nothing’, playing FreeCell, reading a book, walking, sitting and watching the sky (or the ceiling). Now I do. Having nothing meaningful or useful or significant or urgent or exciting to do, day after day: and yet experiencing every day, each moment as perfect. Everyday life, everyday things. It has to be lived to be fully understood.

We have a small flat, television, video, a couple of computers, two couches, a balcony with another couch and a couple of comfortable chairs, and a kitchen stocked with our favourite foods. In short, there is everything I need in life, and I live life in this flat as I did on the yacht those nights, many years ago. The physical ordinary things of life in this house are as actual, as extraordinary, as the wonders of nature. The universe has done a wonderful job in providing me with all the comforts I require for a delightful life, and I only need to work a little to earn sufficient money to pay the bills. Peter’s Journal, ‘The universe’

Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.

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