Also, what is it that actually happens to cause a PCE?

As for your question how to make a peak-experience happen I can say that I started to approach it the other way around. Given that peak-experience is our actual state when no emotion or belief is in the road, I am going for whatever obstacle I find at the time whenever I don’t experience this moment of being alive as perfect as I remember those moments of the peak experience. As you may know, I have been finding lots of interesting ghosts in my cupboard, often unexpected, expressions of pride, fear, impatience, annoyance, competition, love, loneliness, boredom and yet again another fear.

Whenever I am taking the bull by its horns and dig around in that specific emotion, explore, understand and eliminate it, what’s left is the perfect experience of the world as it is, delightful, safe and imminently fascinating – there it is, the searched-for peak-experience or PCE! So my approach is kind of indirect, being busy with the obstacles rather with the outcome. Of course, my intent and my goal is to eliminate those obstacles and each time round it becomes more easy and more of an adventure and a scientific enquiry rather than a ‘having-to-do-thing’. This way I am becoming more and more confident, I stop believing in my own emotions and I know that absolute everything will be examined under the microscope. By now, the ‘cupboard’, which was packed full of ‘ghosts’ is getting pretty clean...

In a PCE I can see the world as it is, people as they are, my emotions and beliefs and my ‘self’ for what it is – a passionate illusion – and thus I can easily discriminate facts from ‘truths’, beliefs, convictions, instincts and fears. I will only know what I have investigated so far, there is no magical all-knowing or all-understanding, no god-like wisdom. But because during a PCE the brain has no ‘sand’ ie emotions, beliefs and instincts in the system, it can function smoothly and I can see the facts for what they are. Old synapses have been severed, so the neurons can engage in free-flowing brainstorming. Mark described this kind of brainstorming really well in his last two letters.

What it does not explain is how a PCE occurs – any ideas? Perhaps some temporary pathways are formed, or maybe part of the substantial unused part of our brain is temporarily ‘fired’ into action? In the PCE, it appears to me that, for the first time, I start to use my brain to its full capacity. I know that part of the reason for the ‘lightning speed’ of thought is because one is operating without any inhibitions whatsoever – no feelings or beliefs to slow one up. Hence also the absolute clarity. I just remembered ‘I’ used to believe that the unused part of the brain could, if activated, enable ‘me’ to become telepathic and have all the other ESP abilities – too much science fiction reading, I guess. <snip> That is the great thing about it – the results are more or less immediate and continually incremental, apart from the occasional ‘backslide’.

How a PCE occurs? Peter called it a ‘glitch’ in the program, the ‘self’ goes in abeyance for a certain period of time. That would explain that many PCEs happen after near-death experiences, after a shock, during an intense period in life or as a result of a drug experience. After my first PCE I knew what to look for, I intentionally searched for the alternative to my normal programming and thus created new ways to think in the brain, functioning better each time. But I think that originally a PCE happens when the normal functioning of the program in the brain comes to its limits and ‘crashes’ – and then the actuality of the world without the program of the self becomes apparent. But there is always the possibility that a certain chemical in the brain is triggering this ‘crashing’ on normal thinking and maybe scientist will one day be able to produce it for everybody who wants it...

My first major peak experience happened after 3 months of emotional turmoil while I was trying to figure out how I could live with Peter and his new ‘philosophy’ and at the same time not give up my spiritual beliefs and friends of the spiritual community. It became more and more obvious that this was impossible. Within my ‘normal’ way of thinking, feeling and believing there was no solution, and the need for a solution became increasingly vital for my mental sanity. Further, my intent to not settle for second best made any compromise within myself impossible. Then, with the help of a mild joint and some wine, my whole belief system crashed – I popped through the fog of beliefs and saw the actual world for the first time in its – then shocking – purity.

Last night we were invited for a dinner party and one of the men described a peak experience he had when he was 19 years old. He had been diving off the West Australian coast when he got caught in the high surf while looking for an interesting ship wreck and, being completely exhausted after one hour in the cold water, did not know how to cover the long distance through the wild surf to the beach. He decided to take the risk to be smashed unto the rocks which were closer by – and just survived. His brother helped him out of the water unto the cliffs. Coming out, he experienced the world as pristine, perfect, without emotions, without a personal self and was simply astounded to be still alive. This remarkable PCE, which lasted for several hours, unfortunately later got diverted into the spiritual search and ‘translated’ into the ‘non-dualistic reality’ of Advaita Vedanta, where you are supposedly already ‘here’ and only need to stop believing in your ‘imaginary’ ‘self’. There is more in the AF library about this spiritual version of complete insanity, 180 degrees in the wrong direction – if you are interested.

The findings of LeDoux are, indeed, serendipitous and I have read them with great interest, though have not yet visited his website. The diagrams are extremely useful and one question which arises (to which I do not have an answer) – what happens in the brain when a PCE occurs?

That is a fascinating question. I have also wondered how it might work in the brain. Mind you, whatever I say is mere speculation and still has to be explored and verified in the laboratories. My speculation is that in a Pure Consciousness Experience the connection from the amygdala to the neo-cortex is temporarily out of order, like when you get a numb foot from an interrupted blood circulation. Very often this temporary interruption is caused by drugs or brain-sourced chemicals in intense situations, be they near-death experiences, shock, intense fear, or overwhelming sensual input like sex or nature. Also a PCE can occur after contemplating on a vital issue, while gaining a sudden insight, or just as an accidental short-circuit. With this temporary disconnection of amygdala and neo-cortex there is no input from the instinctual self, and the psychological self becomes fleetingly redundant and keeps quiet until something triggers both the ‘selves’ back into action.

Now to our ‘issue’ on hand, no PCE and the ever-ending of ‘me’...

I have felt nary a trace of fear for the last 2 weeks or so. I am very aware of ‘my’ attempts to ‘grab’ for actuality, in a futile attempt for survival – and simply ‘note’ them. It is as though I am living constantly ‘on the edge’ of a PCE, without having a PCE and is quite delicious. So, I am just enjoying each moment and have (largely) stopped attempting to ‘get there’. I suspect there will not be any more PCEs and the next time I experience this moment of being alive will be permanent.

And to Peter you wrote: One thing I cannot explain is why I have not had a PCE for some time. My life now is, continuously, very close to a PCE, in that there is no (or very little) ‘self’ in existence. I experience my life as being 99% perfect. Every activity is a pleasure. What is missing is that extra sparkle and vivacity – the 360 degree awareness. Can one little connection in the brain make all that difference?

Do you still experience PCEs?

I noticed that PCEs are different to the stunning delightful surprises in the beginning, which were full of tumbling realization, psychedelic-like experiences of my surroundings. They lately seem to be more rare and short minute-long flashes, just long enough to recognize the sparkle and the absence of ‘me’, before ‘I’ appear back on the scene. I put it down to the fear of the ‘real’ thing that might just ‘accidentally happen’ while ‘I’ am temporarily in abeyance, and also to the fact that my continuous persistent obsession with the final event is keeping fear close at hand and thus prevents the ‘extra sparkle’. Since you brought up the question I thought about it and figured that this fear is actually part of me keeping death at bay, as much as I may be convinced that I don’t do it – ‘I’ am verily lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning through and through.

But we have lots of very ordinary moments of living together, Peter doing his thing – being an architect or watching cricket or whatever else he takes pleasure in – and I do my thing – playing with pictures or on the website – and then we share lots of delightful pleasures of cooking, eating, a walk into town, a talk on the couch or a rompacious romp. These times seem so normal and ordinary that only in hindsight I recognize their innocence and particular taste of well-being. And then there are these moments, often hours of being excellent, but not quite experiencing a PCE, obsessed with the conundrum in my head of what is in the road of me disappearing. And while I am searching for and finding more and more blinding evidence that there is really, really no solution whatsoever within the boundaries of the ‘self’, there is this deliciously sweet and thrilling ‘taste or smell’ of the approaching inevitability, what Richard calls one’s destiny and I call ‘the proof of the pudding’. And, admittedly, that’s what I am more fascinated with than inducing a PCE.

Could it be that the ‘continuous persistent obsession with the final event’ is what is keeping it from happening? This has been my experience of the last few days. I have (largely) given up the attempt to get ‘there’ and by concentrating more and more intently on what is happening and activating ‘delight’, the ease and palpable perfection, which Peter speaks of, has become more and more evident.

On further observation re ‘how PCEs and PCE-like times changed for me’ I can say that what I used to call a PCE in the beginning of my exploration into actual freedom is now only ‘PCE-like’. This has to do with the fact that I am well aware of the thin, condom-like layer of the ‘self’ separating me from the universe and thus preventing the 100% direct experience of the magical actual perfection. Life is nevertheless pretty magical, much more than ever before are my days filled with delicious deepened sensuous experiences, an easy well-being, a delightful doing what I am doing; but the ‘self’ is hardly ever completely absent. It seems that my observation has become sharper with there being less difference between ‘normal’ and ‘magical’.

The second thing is that I wasn’t quite accurate when I said: ‘I put it down to the fear of the ‘real’ thing that might just ‘accidentally happen’ while ‘I’ am temporarily ‘in abeyance’. I know that ‘it’ won’t happen ‘accidentally’ but that it might soon happen by deliberate choice – and I have been toying with, observing closely and trying to understand the feelings and instincts about this death of ‘me’. No big realisation has come out of it but a gradual deepening of understanding the term ‘in concurrence’ that Richard used in the correspondence below. I am finding subtle objections, smug and cunning excuses, impatient pushing or worry that sometimes surface and need to be examined, and I have now developed a thorough knowledge about, and a familiarity with, my fears and survival mechanisms like one does with pet-dogs. I reckon that I won’t be likely to be surprised or overtaken by any of them any longer.

I went to the couch to follow up on this hot trail of contemplation and there it was – the sudden recognition and experience that the universe was breathing me, I was part of the big rhythm of life in its infinite variety, just one of 6 billion people, one human being out of the vast and boundless immensity and magnificence of this infinite, eternal, alive, magical and perfect universe, being breathed, being lived, being here, moment by moment. And it is safe, utterly safe, because this experience also makes clear that the physical universe is benevolent. As much as there is no fear in a rock or a tree there is no malice in a rock or a tree. There may be volcanic eruptions or earthquakes as part of earthly events, but there is no malice in that the rock is directed at me to destroy me. The universe is not out to get me, on the contrary, it is supportive and benevolent; the idea of danger was simply part of my chemically-supported instinctual imaginary identity.

In this moment I understood that survival instincts are indeed redundant. With no identity there is no threat and no need to fight for survival. The instinctual survival program has done a great job to facilitate evolution, species by species, to this point in time. Now sensate and reflective human beings are the peak of this development so far – and the next opportunity for evolving has come into reach – life without the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, life without identity, life without the feeling of separation from the rest of the universe.

While having these realizations, I had to check if there was possibly some grand ‘me’ lurking around the corner, someone wanting to claim the merit of this insight – but no, I was simply acknowledging the facts and delighting in the experience that the universe is breathing me, as it has always done. It is only throughout my life that ‘I’ had an altogether different story going in my head and heart.

Using the opportunity, I looked around for the remaining ‘self’. It was but a shed skin, twitching and jerking like a headless chook, pretending to have a life on its own, pretending to be actual. A very strange experience, while the stomach was trembling with thrill and the chemical hormones did their number, I could see the non-actual-ness of ‘me’, the passionate yet imaginary player that plays its part very convincingly. It will never have the same convincing effect again.

And all the while I am thrilled to the bone and rolling in the pleasure of being alive, each moment again.

I’ve had the PCEs Richard describes. Quite a few of them actually, this past year especially. Have seen in them that in spite of what I usually believe, there is nothing to fear in the universe, that it is utterly and completely friendly, including death.

Yes, that is how I experience it too. The peak experiences are feeding my intent, the urge me to do something about the time when I am not having a peak experience. The memory of these perfect moments, hours or days have always been driving me forward, to investigate further, to face fear, pride, embarrassment, loneliness, doubt and dread. And these peak experiences have been my reference point, the lively proof, that it is a fact that the solution to all my problems lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction than I had always searched for. The fact of experiencing the moment of being alive as a direct intimacy with everything around me made it impossible to turn this into another belief-system. With that clarity one can face and investigate any ghost in one’s cupboard until it is eliminated.

My experience with PCEs is that they are a rather sudden, intense, seeing all the way through to the heart of the matter, cutting through all fear, all identity, all sense of ‘me’ and its associated purposefulness and with them there is a sense of completeness and belonging to the universe, just as actually I am, without any resistance whatsoever.

PCEs are the flashlights in a basement of rubbish. One can enjoy being relieved from the misery and confusion, which is a wonderful thing to have. But when you have the PCE you can also look at the Human Condition from the clarity you have then and find out which particular bit stands out and needs to be tackled next. The clarity from the PCE always helped me to work out in which way I am obstructing perfection and that understanding then became my work-line.

If ‘I’ knew of a button to push to bring it about continuously, I would push that button right now.

There is no button, sorry. I found only heaps of rubbish obstructing this pure consciousness perception of the actual world on a permanent basis and that rubbish needed facing, questioning, abandoning, changing behaviour, losing identities, losing friends, losing the very ground I thought and felt I was standing on. Yes, wouldn’t it be nice, someone could push the button and then it’s all over? But the satisfaction from each belief I freed myself from was such a joy that it made every day of the journey fascinating and still does.

And that is the problem. While there is any button pusher left, there can be no PCE.

It is much more than just the ‘button pusher’ that is in the way. It is all that humanity has believed in up to now that needs to be investigated and eliminated – it is the very psychic and ‘self’-ish world we are living in, the way we see, feel, imagine, evaluate, reject everything we perceive.

Could this PCE that is used as the goal be just a state brought on by delusion of some spiritual teachings including Richard’s? I.e. I want it so I’ll invent it.

Once you have experienced a PCE you don’t have to ask that question. A PCE is characterized by the – temporary – complete absence of any ‘self’ whatsoever, including your faculty of feeling and imagination. You can’t invent the actual world – it is already here. A tree is a tree, I can’t invent it. I am this flesh and blood body, and it is obvious that I can perfectly live without a ‘self’. After feeling and imagining has ceased completely, the actual world becomes apparent. A bit like taking one’s grey and rose-coloured glasses off and seeing the world for the first time. One experiences perfection and purity, no separation from the things and people around, but neither love nor bliss are felt as in the feeling-induced spiritual experiences.

Here is a joke that conveys very well the very, very cunning ‘entity’ that we are, when we refuse to take off the grey and rose-coloured glasses:

‘Billy Bob goes to the local novelty shop and finds a pair of x-ray glasses. He checks them out, and isn’t fully convinced, but as usual, the store assistant comes along and closes the deal. On his way home, Billy Bob puts on his new x-ray glasses and, bingo! He sees everyone in the street naked. He takes them off for a moment, and everyone has their clothes on. Puts the glasses back on... everyone is naked! ‘Cool!’ As he arrives back home, he is eager to show his new toy to his wife but can’t find her. He goes up to the bedroom and finds his wife and the postman, naked in bed. He takes his glasses off, and the two are still naked. He puts them back on, and they are still naked. Billy Bob then says: ‘Damn, I just paid fifty bucks for these and they’re already broken!’

*

I don’t agree here, a vague memory of a distant PCE is nothing compared to the conditioning of ‘me’ with emotions and imagination. A PCE does point out though, the possibility of living a better quality of life, a standard to strive for.

In a PCE you experience the actual world of ease and perfection, and maybe this experience might tempt you too – as it has convinced me – not to stop at second best. See, for me it was the stunning, shocking and eye-opening experience of the PCE that kept me going when the investigation brought up sinister, fierce, embarrassing or otherwise uncomfortable feelings. When the floor shook under my feet, when I had yet again lost the ground of the passionate beliefs I thought I was standing on – the memory of peak-experience reassured me that I was on the right track. I knew the direction that I was heading for, I knew the purity I was aiming for and I knew that nothing could go wrong. In a peak-experience you know that the only thing that is ‘wrong’ is ‘you’, the alien ‘self’ – nibble away the ‘self’ and nothing can go wrong – you inevitable end up in the actual world – the only danger is you can ground on the Rock Enlightenment...

This sounds a bit idealistic. Say I am facing fear but am holding on to the memory of a PCE. The memory of a PCE can be a suitable distraction for a self-response that doesn’t want to face those emotions. Those emotion are, after all, the bread and butter of ‘me’. Years of being imprisoned as a self plus the experience of freedom is enough to want to be free.

What is this experience of freedom, if it is not a PCE? How do you know that you are looking for an actual freedom if you have never experienced it? How do you distinguish between a possible mental construct, maybe called ‘absolute permanent freedom’, and the experience of living here, at this moment, fresh, sparkling, alive and free from the Human Condition? A PCE is not ‘a suitable distraction’, it is your landmark, your goal, your burning desire, when fear and confusion threaten to overwhelm you and hold you back. A PCE is what gives you the daring to call a belief a belief, even if the whole world insists on it being a truth. Unless you know what you are aiming for, you will get lost in the labyrinth of the very cunning entity of the ‘self’.

I told you my story of the first few months of actual freedom to make it clear that without the intense search to solve my paradoxical situation of having two beliefs – the spiritual conviction and the then-belief of actualism – I would not been able to prepare the ground for, and thus facilitate, my first major peak experience. As I see it from hindsight, my pure consciousness experience only occurred because of my intense questioning and investigation into the nature of my spiritual beliefs. The word ‘PCE’ contains the word ‘pure’, a purity from one’s beliefs and feelings for this particular time, a purity from the very substance of ‘self’. It is well documented that a PCE often occurs after a particular shocking or dis-orienting experience, and I had actively caused that situation in myself by questioning beliefs and daring to look at facts squarely in the eye!

I was at a point where I was willing to question ALL my beliefs, whatever the outcome, because I had understood that this was the only way out of my dilemma, hanging between two opposing choices as to what to do with my life. I had no way to figure out the ‘right’ thing to do, because there was no authority that could point out the direction for me. There was no moral, ethical or ultimate spiritual value that I considered ‘true’ enough to rely on for a decision. I figured that ‘truth’, as I called it then, could not be something that one has to support by believing it or trusting it. It has to be something so obvious, so evident and reproducible that it can stand for itself.

The intensity of wanting to find that which could withstand all questioning, made me ready for the eye-opening break-through, tearing open and dissolving the curtain of my passionate beliefs that had blinkered my perception, obscured my clarity and prevented me from seeing the actual.

The PCE did not appear out of the blue by the grace of ‘Existence’ to be leisurely compared to my ancient spiritual beliefs – it was born out of my intent to find a way out of the need to believe and to find a solution to my failure to be happy and free. There was already a rip in the curtain, so to speak, of my nicely settled, second-rate existence, and that rip widened dangerously with every questioned emotion, belief or ‘truth’. It got so big that it became un-patchable and then, despite my fears, I thought: ‘Well, let it rip, I can’t hold it together anymore’ ... You’ll find the continuation of the story in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’ on our website.

The green arrows: During Pure Consciousness Experiences one is taking short excursions into the actual world, for minutes or hours, experiencing life as a kind of holiday stripped of the restricting, burdening, agonizing selfish and self-centred worldview of everyday life. In the beginning those PCEs open one’s eyes to a world never experienced before, never considered possible. On the path to freedom those PCEs are vital, absolutely necessary to determine the direction, to kindle one’s naiveté, to fuel one’s pure intent. The actual world is seen for what it is, and everything is self-evidently clear and obvious, and one recognizes that ‘what I am’ has always been here, I just never got a word in edgeways.

Nevertheless, once the PCE is over and the ‘self’ takes control again, there is only a faint memory left. The world of ‘grey arrows’ and the world of ‘green arrows’ never meet. Given that during a PCE one is without beliefs, feelings and emotions, there is consequently no emotional memory to draw from when one comes back to the ‘real’ world, and the experience can vanish without a trace unless one is very aware. Likewise, back in the world of beliefs, feelings and emotions, the faint memory of the purity and perfection can only be vaguely remembered but not relived or imagined. That’s where naiveté and pure intent are absolutely essential if one wants to experience an actual freedom state for 24 hours a day.

One other important point – spiritually inclined people, and that is almost everyone who is on a search for freedom, peace and happiness, usually confuse the ‘green arrows’ with some sort of spiritual higher ‘self’, Satori, god-experience, beauty, love, bliss or enlightenment. The ‘green arrows’ have clearly nothing to do with any emotion- or feeling-based experience, any Altered State of Consciousness or anything happening in the head or in the heart. ‘Green arrows’ is the sensate-only, sensuous and pure experience of the actual physical universe in its pure, magical, delightful and sparkling perfection.

The grey arrows: Due to the intrinsic quality genetically built into the physical fabric of the universe to be the best it can be, every human being has the potential to evoke naiveté and intent – the innate drive to look for a way out of the grim everyday experience of life. Given that Richard has discovered that one can totally eliminate one’s identity, conditioning and instinctual passions, and has also devised a practical and effective method to do so, it is now possible to use the experience of a PCE to reach to a permanent actual freedom from the Human Condition.

It is no longer necessary to interpret one’s glimpses of the perfection and purity of the actual world as some kind of ‘god-given Grace’, thus degrading and distorting the experience of pure magnificence into a feeling-based self-centred interpretation of beauty, love or ‘the divine’. Out of those moments of a pure consciousness experience one can dare to acknowledge ‘what I am’, a living and apperceptive organism, lived by this splendid and perfect universe, without any sense of ‘being’ whatsoever – and take the first step in direction of an actual freedom.

Whilst I have no memory of a PCE, I do remember that I used to sit outside my parents’ house and contemplate the beauty around me until I one day came to a point where there was, for a split second, no ‘me’ there. Unfortunately the feeling function kicked in suddenly I felt the ‘tremendous love’ for the universe and ‘God’. This unfortunate incident led me down the path of the spiritual seeker who is trying to attempt to ‘make sense of it all’.

I know from my own experience how tempting this grand feeling of ‘tremendous love’ for all is. I am glad that Richard had warned us not to ground on the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’, so I did not have to get lost into that passionate fantasy for too long. But it is good that I had the experience of that tremendous love so clearly because I know now from my own experience, where not to go. It only leads to power, sorrow for all and the whole enlightenment-saga.

That ‘split second’ of your experience is, as Alan points out, a fascinating bit, a split second of a PCE. When such a moment comes around the corner next time, you could stay with the physical – with the actual – with the senses. Then feelings of love and beauty have less chance to overtake the pure consciousness experience.

Could you describe what you refer to a PCE experience some more.

I see that you have asked Richard about the same subject – a very good idea.

After all he is the expert, living it 24 hours a day, every day. Peter and I have both described our outstanding peak-experiences in Peter’s Journal, I will give you the exact spots, if you want to read for yourself:

• Introduction
• Love
• People
• Intelligence
• Universe
• Bit of Vineeto

Those descriptions are to help you either induce or remember a peak-experience and distinguish it from any other emotional, blissful or spiritual experience where, upon examination, you will always find that wonderful warm buzzing loving feeling present. In a pur consciousness experience there is no ‘feeling’ entity present, that’s what makes it different to the usual ‘highs’. In a PCE you experience a clarity, a delight, heightened senses, and everything around you is just as it is, obvious, magically perfect, always been here. For me, whenever it happened, I thought, ‘where have I been?’ It, the actual world, is so very obvious, it needs no explanation. Answering the questions below I describe my every day life, where sometimes a ‘bleed-through’ of fear happens. In a peak-experience those emotions are completely absent.

Actual freedom is to strip yourself from all of your ‘self’ – your ‘Self’ included.

To understand what that means it is vitally important to remember or induce a peak experience. Richard, Peter, Alan and I have written a lot about peak experiences or Pure Consciousness Experiences to explain its nature and its significance. A peak experience gives you the opportunity to experience life without the otherwise ever-present self for a brief period of time. It is like breaking through a layer of thick clouds of one’s beliefs, emotions and inherent instinctual passions and seeing the actual world, as-it-is, for the first time. My first major peak experience happened after intense questioning and heart-churning investigations into my spiritual belief system of being a follower of Rajneesh – and it gave me the first glimpse that I was on the right track, finding the actual world that lay underneath all my constructs of fears and hopes, notions of right and wrong, good and bad. I have described it in ‘A Bit of Vineeto ’ –

It was such a life-shattering experience in that it made it blindingly obvious that the world runs perfectly well without my so dearly held beliefs and emotions, in fact, it made it clear that with all of my instinctual passions ‘I’ am but a dangerous disturbance, yet another loose cannon, to the peace and perfection of the physical universe. In the peak experience I could experience the world as it is and thus experience ‘me’, who I think and feel I am, as the alien entity inside my body, messing everything up. From this I understood and determined my aim in life, and born out of this pure consciousness experience was my intent to sacrifice this alien ‘self’, boots and all, in order to join the perfection that is already existent in this wondrous magical and perfect universe.

When I look back to see what it was that gave me the first glimpses of the actual world as opposed to my only-known world of thoughts and feelings, I can say that it was a repetitious reading of Richard’s journal, extensive discussions with Peter to find out what his words actually mean and the desire to find out exactly what it was different to the spiritual teaching that I knew. I was looking for the difference, not for any seeming similarity. I was not satisfied with the outcome of my spiritual search, I was looking for something that worked – and Richard obviously had discovered something that worked.

The next vital and essential break-through in understanding was my first major peak experience (PCE). What had started off one evening as ‘a roaming in the vast chambers of my mind’, psychic experiences and an expanded state of consciousness suddenly took a turn from ‘inner reality’ to actuality. It happened when Peter looked at me and said ‘hello, how are you doing?’ I popped out of my inner world of feelings and imagination and, questioning the very validity of all I felt and thought, entered the world beyond beliefs and feelings – the actual world. Here was another human being, a flesh-and-blood person without any particular identity and he wanted to talk to me. And here I was, also a flesh-and-blood person without a particular identity, sitting on an old couch and curious to talk to this man that I was meeting for the first time.

I had never met the actual Peter; I had only related to him through the curtain of my expectations and classifications, through the filter of my social identity, through the grey or rose-coloured glasses of my ‘self’. What was initially a shocking surprise quickly turned into fascination and delight to have discovered something so simple and so pure – actual intimacy with another person and the perfection of the actual world. Here we were, two human beings, meeting for the first time, without past or future. No grand feelings, in fact, no feelings at all, but the pleasure of mutual undivided attention as to what the other is going to say next...

All my churning questions from the weeks before as to what was right and what was wrong had disappeared from my tortured head and heart; the experience of the moment was all that mattered. In the course of the evening and the following night, insight upon insight occurred as the edifice of my beliefs system tumbled – the actual world, the world beyond belief opened up. Unbeknown to me it had been here all the time, a world where everything was simply obvious, perfect, pure, delightful, actual, factual and ‘wysiwyg’ (what you see is what you get). No deeper meaning, no God, no soul, no philosophy – meaning and significance abounds when living this moment without the burden of the ‘self’.

This pure consciousness experience became my reference point for what I wanted to achieve. It was also an essential reference point to understand what Richard was saying and writing. After all, this actual world is the very world he is living in all the time, and my PCE had just demonstrated how this world is usually tucked away behind the normal/spiritual worldview.

When you wrote to Richard on [List B], you related an experience of the actual –

I experienced the actual today and it is so clear that it is always right here right now because it is what actually is. The closest description I can give is that it was a direct experience of everything as it was happening. Everything was perfect as it is and I was where I should be. There was perfect clarity. Respondent to Richard, List B, 30.10.1999

The remembrance of this ‘self’-less perfection is the starting point to the dismantling of the ‘self’, first the outer layers of one’s social identity and then the core of one’s being, the instinctual passions. From the reference point of a PCE one is able to distinguish the actual from normal or spiritual, facts from beliefs and sensuous experience from affective feelings. One starts from an experience of the actual and daringly questions every truth, belief, faith, hope, trust and feeling. The clarity of a PCE is vital to distinguish facts from ‘truths’, and the PCE reveals feelings of fear and pride as unnecessary stumbling blocks and exposes the ‘self’ in action that is spoiling the already always-existing perfection.

What adventure, what delight, what serendipity.

You say you have had many awakenings. Did it ever occur to you that there is more awakening possible – maybe even awakening from the spiritual, compassionate dream?

... when the bubble of beliefs bursts and you experience the actual world for the first time with clean eyes, unrestricted by emotions, beliefs or instincts... I have described that bubble bursting:

... ‘I could see more of my ideas or concepts and other people’s ideas, but they were simply ideas. None of them had any relevance to the actuality of the physical world! In seeing the fact, everything stood still and the whole construct of beliefs suddenly disappeared. Then, for the first time in all my years of the spiritual search, I experienced several hours outside of the ‘psychic world’. Being outside, I could see that this ‘world’ is a huge, all-encompassing construct, created and held in place by the dreams, beliefs, bonds, power-battles, emotions and different spiritual ideas of all of humanity. Everyone is part of it, weaving and reproducing bits of this ‘psychic carpet’. The more people believe in one particular version the more that version becomes ‘real’ or ‘true’. Intuitive or ‘psychic’ people are simply a little better acquainted with the rules and occurrences of this ‘other-world’. It is never actual though, because it relies on constant re-creation through imagination and belief. The moment people cease to believe in a particular religion, idea or value, that very concept eventually disappears from the earth. Actual, on the contrary, is what is already here without anybody applying a feeling, an interpretation, a belief or any other ‘psychic effort’. It is simply here, visual, tangible, audible and tastable. A Bit of Vineeto

Those feelings are constantly changing and they are part of the ‘self’. In my peak-experience, and in moments of actual intimacy with Peter, I understood that there is ‘life beyond beliefs, emotions and feelings’. You might remember for yourself one of those periods, when the world is seen crisp, clear, perfect, magical, without emotions or feelings and experienced as utterly safe. The signals of our senses are usually filtered by the ‘self’, the psychological and psychic entity within each of us, resulting in ‘normal’, edited sensate experience. When this filter is temporarily absent, as in the peak experience or some drug-induced states, the sensate experience can be direct and unfiltered. Then the sensate-only experience is extra-ordinary. One has a heightened sensory perception free of any sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’.

These peak-experiences free from the ‘self’, and the resulting understanding that the self mainly consists of emotions and beliefs – any emotions and any beliefs – gave me the courage and the intent to investigate into each of my beliefs and emotions when they occurred. The resulting intimacy with Peter and also with everybody I meet is far superior to the sweet, yet unreliable feeling I had before. It is a constant experience of actually meeting the person without any moods or expectations, offence or hope.

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