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Selected Correspondence Vineeto Pure Consciousness Experience I have experienced many mini-PCEs and very slightly a PCE … Given that a PCE is the lodestone for an actualist by which to determine the difference between the actual world and the normal experience of ‘self’, I found it essential to be particularly careful not to blur the distinction between feeling excellent or feeling exceptionally happy and having a ‘self’-less experience. In a PCE a new magic dimension opens that was hidden by the presence of ‘me’ and the actual world is experienced in its brilliance and wonder. In distinction, when I am simply feeling excellent or feeling exceptionally happy, I can detect upon close attention either a grey or rosy veil that lies between ‘me’ and the crisp radiance and sparkle of the actual world. Only a ‘self’-less PCE is the genuine article, and it is so outstanding, so
perfect, so obviously the way I want to live for the rest of my life. A while ago we had some discussions on this list about
differentiating one’s experiences. You can find them in the library under Thank you for clearing up the confusion I had about PCEs and feeling excellent; there definitely was a ‘Self’ in the experiences I went through, but they were sooo good ... now I am having trouble trying to experience it again. There are plenty of
… and another from his correspondence –
Personally, what eventuated my first major pure consciousness experience was that I wanted to know, without any smidgen of a doubt, the difference between belief and actuality. I wanted to know by experience that which exists outside of my own head and heart, or other people’s heads and hearts, that which actually exists as opposed to that which is merely a man-made or woman-made belief, feeling, opinion, theory or concept. This single-pointed passion for what I then called ‘discovering the truth’ caused the veil of my beliefs to rip and lead me to discover the actual world – unspoiled by human-made feelings or beliefs, devoid of malice and sorrow, pure, benign, blithe and ever-now. There is something else I would like to ask, when Richard says,
couldn’t he do this with you and Peter, when anyone one of you is experiencing a PCE? Or maybe you and Peter also when and if you have a PCE at the same time? Actual Freedom and PCEs are the same in quality, aren’t they? The only difference is one is permanent and the other temporary, would this be right? A PCE is significantly different from an actual freedom from the human condition because a PCE can only ever be a temporary experience whereas an actual freedom is permanently ongoing and irreversible. I have many times experienced the actual world in a pure consciousness experience but once the ‘self’ returns as the PCE fades away, the purity and benignity of the actual world also fades and becomes but a memory. A PCE is something special for me because I know it can disappear any moment – it is only a holiday from ‘self’. Whereas Richard, being permanently devoid of the burden of being a ‘self’, is this infinite and perfect physical universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. For a more detailed description of life in actual freedom you can browse through
I explored this particular ‘hook’ on which my identity hung at first tentatively, then more boldly, knowing well that at any time I could discover the core of it and be lost. As part of this investigation I chatted to Peter about my explorations and a few days later to Richard, just to make sure that I would not succumb to the temptation of ‘forgetting’ a topic so close to the bone. My persistent inquiry triggered a pure consciousness experience and with astounding clarity I experienced myself as completely separate from Peter, two flesh-and-blood human beings not at all affectively or psychically connected in any way. It was utterly amazing and magical that two complete strangers – as in not psychically connected – get to interact with each other in utter intimacy. In such intimacy there is no ‘me’ trying to pull the strings, no ‘me’ thinking or feeling about ‘me’ in relationship to the other, and a fresh, unmediated and direct experiencing happens on its own accord. It is most striking when determined and ‘persistent inquiry’ of this sort triggers a PCE. Each time this happens, I see with renewed clarity how the affective and psychic entity prevents and precludes the experiencing of the purity and pristineness of the actual world. Yes, at such times it is often like going deep into a dark tunnel of unexplored passions and then suddenly coming out the other end where everything has always been perfect and benign. It is my ongoing conundrum how not only to weaken but to permanently switch off the magnetic force that inevitably sucks be back into being ‘me’ after a PCE. * This PCE confirmed that my holding onto a cozy relationship was nevertheless my identity in action. Although my relationship with Peter is founded on felicitous feelings only and I live with him in perfect peace and harmony, I clearly could see that ‘I’ as an identity was preventing something far, far superior to any psychic or psychological connection – an exquisitely delightful direct intimacy with a fellow human being. A couple of days later, when I checked what was left of ‘my’ relationship to Peter, I realized that not only had I lost any sense of my former affective connectedness but also my feelings of competition and comparison had disappeared. I had always regarded Peter as the better and older actualist and the better and more accurate writer and now I found such emotionally-charged comparisons had completely vanished. I also discovered that this entailed that I no longer feel obliged to respectfully wait until he becomes free before I dare the final jump. Now that I don’t relegate myself to a slot in an imaginary queue, nobody can prevent me from becoming free from the human condition. Seeing my identity in action in a similar way to you can fuel my intent, can it not? If I see clearly what is getting in the way of living in peace and harmony, in other words the ‘downside’ to affective feelings, then would that not tend to spur my intent to be free from those very things that get in the way? The comparison between a pure consciousness experience and my every day living experience certainly spurs me on. Seeing and understanding, over and over, the ‘‘downside’ to affective feelings’, as you say, does indeed weaken the magnetism of being ‘me’. However, I think that you need to have the firm intent to live in genuine peace, whatever the price, in order to be motivated to question and explore your identity and find out ‘what is getting in the way of living in peace and harmony’ . Then the potent combination of sincerity, naiveté and wonder will tip the balance towards making ‘the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent’, as Richard said to No 37. Seeing similarities between your social/instinctual identity and others certainly gives you confidence as to the accuracy and veracity of your investigations, but what spurred me on was success in becoming more happy and, even more importantly, more harmless. Experiencing that the actualism process demonstrably works over a substantial period of time and in all down-to-earth conditions then incrementally turns confidence into surety. Does the intent lead to a PCE or do you think something else is happening? There are the spontaneous PCEs that everyone experiences at some point in their lives, which I explain as a spontaneous temporary glitch in the instinctual programming that allows the perception to be purely sensate and thinking to be free from any affective influences. These PCEs seem to be more frequent in childhood when the identity is not yet set in concrete, so to speak. However, when a person has a good dose of sincerity, sufficient enough to re-awaken his or her naiveté, then he or she may develop an intent to live the purity, peace and wonder they have experienced in such rare moments of ‘self’-lessness as often as possible – i.e. it takes naiveté to devote one’s life to becoming happy and harmless. Only then, the memory of a spontaneously occurring PCE spurs me on to demolish the elaborate and firmly consolidated edifice of my ‘self’ in order to facilitate pure consciousness experiences happening again and again. You could compare it to living in a securely air-tightened bunker when suddenly a crack appears in the wall and brings in some pure sweet fresh air … and suddenly the whole bunker disappears along with ‘me’. The bunker eventually reassembles itself and the crack is automatically repaired – a process due to the ‘self’-sustaining nature of the social-instinctual programming. It is then up to ‘me’, the one who thinks and feels to be in that bunker, to either wait for another accidental crack – akin to waiting for Godot – or to actively do something so as to experience the magical actual world again. In other words, when the PCE fades, ‘I’ then have to get on with the moment-to-moment business at hand – to demolish the very structure that is ‘me’. A weakened and less ‘self’-centred structure of ‘me’ certainly provides more opportunities for ‘cracks’, i.e. PCEs, but all of ‘me’ needs to be extinguished in order that those ‘cracks’ don’t automatically ‘self’-repair and yet again shut out the splendour and purity of the actual world.
It is my ongoing conundrum how not only to weaken but to permanently switch off the magnetic force that inevitably sucks me back into being ‘me’ after a PCE. I was curious about your use of the word ‘conundrum’, but I see that it is indeed a puzzle of the highest sort. Peter advised me to pay particular attention to what happens during a PCE to cause it to diminish and fade. This has been most difficult to do, but it can be done. It is an ongoing ‘work in progress’. Is this the piece of Peter’s posts that you are referring to?
Peter suggested investigating what causes a period of feeling excellent to fade, not what causes a PCE to fade. A PCE by its very nature is a temporary experience, i.e. such experiences inevitably fade, they don’t need a cause to fade. As such, I can never determine what exactly causes a PCE to fade; I simply experience this fading as the unavoidable effect of being a ‘self’ – the ‘magnetic force’ of ‘me’. It is one thing to experience ‘self’-lessness for a temporary period of time as in a PCE, it is quite another to permanently abdicate the throne. The act of ‘self’-immolation is not the act of prolonging a PCE indefinitely – they are two distinctly separate experiences. A PCE is a temporary-only experience of the actual world whereas ‘self’-immolation is a once-only event that brings an irrevocable end to my very ‘being’. * I am also interested in what happens when investigation of particular affective feeling leads to the disappearance of that feeling and what causes it to come back. In my experience, it seems that certain issues come up again and again at times. I keep thinking that because they come back, I must have missed something in my investigation into them. Despite the fact that I had experienced in a PCE a completely non-spiritual material-only universe that was utterly majestic and magnificent, I still had to whittle away at a lot of aspects of my belief in something other than this physical actual world. In fact, I am still at it because ‘I’ am, by my very nature, non-physical, non-actual and therefore spiritual. In the beginning I also often thought that I had missed something when a feeling or an issue returned but the longer I study the human condition in me, and the more I observe other people, the more I come to understand the perversity and the deeply ingrained structure of ‘me’, the psychological/psychic being that is a direct product of this ancient animal survival program. An estimated one million years of human history – dependent upon somewhat whimsical speculations as to the transition from animal-only to animal-human is an enormous heritage to unravel. In the light of the extent and density of this programming, when a bit of the million-year old social programming or the billions-of-years old animal instinctual programming resurfaces, I came to understand that I haven’t necessarily missed something, I simply can’t understand it all or take it all in, at once. You could also say that one inevitably misses something the first time round in an investigation because particular issues have many aspects and many layers that are not all apparent at the first examination. Your thoughts on this are most helpful. It is a hard thing for me to pinpoint what happens to cause a PCE to dimmer and fade, but essentially it always involves some ‘self’-centred, egocentric experience to take the fore, whether by dint of fear, apprehensiveness, and often (I think) a deep and abiding terror of extinction. Once ‘I’ realize that I am no longer needed, ‘I’ dig my heels in ever deeper and cling passionately to my ‘job’ which is to survive. There are indeed many layers to this thing, and as usual I think I may have berated myself for ‘missing’ something, when the many layers and the density of this programming is to a large extent unconscious and hidden from view. Many of my discoveries while practising Actualism have been serendipitous ... a bit like spontaneous happenings, and sudden realizations in unguarded moments about the nature of ‘me’ and how ‘I’ stand in the way of perfection. This is not to say that there has not been hard effort and diligent persistence involved – a bit like wresting civilization from the wilderness, a deliberate hacking away and toiling to clear the ground. It seems to work in tandem. I can very well relate to what you describe as ‘a deep and abiding terror of extinction’. The trick that often helps me turn this terror into excitement is to remember that ‘I’ have a voluntary mission which is far more dignifying that ‘my’ survival – ‘I’ am to bring about peace-on-earth by vacating the throne, permanently. And although sometimes I feel as though I am only inching my way closer to ‘my’ destiny, I do recognize that I am making progress. I only need to look back at how I used to experience life a few years back to know this is a fact. And yes, unexpected insights and PCEs and deliberate exploration of ‘me’ do indeed ‘work in tandem.’ The serendipitous events happen when I again and again discover the already existing peace on earth in this wondrous and magnificent and not-passive universe. As the master wordsmith describes –
There are momentary glimpses, as you say, as glancing through a crack. Is this what it was like when we were children? I remember being completely unbound from time and space, totally absorbed in what was happening in front of me right then and there. Children are not born innocent as we have been made to believe by Eastern religions – they are little instinctually-driven beings that are in the process of being trained to curb their passions in a socially accepted way, the process known as instilling a social conscience. Young children follow their feelings more freely than adults because their socialisation process of shoulds and shouldn’ts is not yet complete and they might feel ‘unbound from time and space’ because their feelings are not yet burdened by the responsibilities of adulthood or the fear of death. Sometimes, however, children do glance into the actual world by accident – as do adults on occasion – and experience a pure consciousness experience. Clearly children are not wonderful innocent little beings. Far from it. However, as you say, at times they are directly connected to the actual. I remember having an experience occasionally before going to sleep where (and this is where words fail) I seemed to ‘expand’ to fill the universe, or maybe the gap between my skin and everything else disappeared. It was a calm clear place that would happen fairly frequently, but decreased in frequency over the years until my early teens or so, when I was awash in other more pressing matters. In a pure consciousness experience the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – temporarily disappears, because this separation is created by ‘me’, a psychological and psychic non-physical entity trapped inside the body. In actuality, there is no separation whatsoever between this physical body and anything or anyone else. Everything and everyone is the very self-same stuff that this physical world is and that this physical body is. Because there is no separation in the actual world, a pure consciousness experience is exemplified by utter purity and stillness in absence of the continuous noise that emanates from the emotions and passions of the alien ‘self’. This experience is, however, not to be confused with the spiritual experience of Oneness, epitomized in the phrase: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. The feeling of Oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the ‘self’ is nevertheless present. An altered state of consciousness often occurs as a result of intense feelings of loneliness, alienation and despair, a ‘dark night of the soul’ and then, as one seemingly makes a last instinctual grasp for survival, one is filled with grand thoughts and sublime feelings. To this day, I’ve missed that experience, assuming it was a childhood thing, never to recur, but maybe not... If you keep poking into your beliefs and feelings with sincerity and pure intent you are bound to find the crack in the door, the glitch in the ‘synaptic self’, as LeDoux calls it in his latest book, a glitch that eventuates a slipping out from control into a ‘self’-less experience. My first PCE occurred some months after beginning to practice actualism and it was this experience that finally confirmed Richard’s description of a state beyond Enlightenment to be factual. I then knew that this is what I wanted for the rest of my life. PS: Richard had some
I started thinking that if Richard was the only one free of ego, how could any of us ascertain the terrain accurately. Even if 0.000001 ego remained, wasn’t missing by an inch missing by a mile? Hmmm. Now I hope this is all clear because I was going over this with innocence, earnest but not with deadly seriousness. In a pure consciousness experience you know without doubt that you are, albeit temporarily, utterly free from both your ego and your soul. As long as there is a doubt that ‘I’ might be about, it is not a pure consciousness experience. But once you have had a PCE you can ‘ascertain the terrain accurately’ because you then know by your own experience the difference between normal experiencing, spiritual delusion and the perfection and purity of the actual world. I surmised the PCEs that I described were in effect PCEs as nobody made any commentary to the contrary. Nobody but you can be the arbiter of your experiences and that includes pure
consciousness experiences. Only you can determine if your experience was non-affective and ‘self’-less or an experience of
feeling excellent with heightened awareness or a delusionary altered state of consciousness. There are I thought of the days when we use to say I’m trying to find my self. How would you know you were lost? How would you know you were found, since you didn’t have a self in the first place? This body knows when it is free from the inhibiting and pernicious self – it is such an exuberant experience of liberation when the ‘self’ temporarily disappears – one’s senses are perceiving with unprecedented intensity and the brain is functioning with exceptional clarity. However, once the ‘self’ returns, the first thing that often happens is an attempt to dismiss, belittle and question the experience of purity and perfection in order for the ‘self’ to regain control. With practice you become experienced enough in your ‘self’-awareness to recognize these doubts as the very survival mechanism of the ‘self’. I started contemplating what is the criteria that one would know if they were no more? How does one recognize non-identity? Or the innocence of apperceptive awareness and will, as opposed to some subtle form of soul or egoic identity. I couldn’t wait to get to my office to write this e-mail. It was about 5:00 AM when I was at this. Still I questioned who would be ascertaining and determining that looking under every psychic nook and cranny was not some form of thinking/feeling identity? Well I kept asking the question, and was real excited about getting it over to you folks hoping Richard and the senior folks would comment. The ‘self’ is like a viral disease. This body knows when it is free of disease – it doesn’t need a confirmation from the ‘virus’ to know that there is no virus. My train ride is about an hour. I stayed with this topic and noticed less separation between existence and the question (What am I experiencing). Things became subtler and subtler. I noticed that actuality is very fast. Actuality is warp drive and I had to slow down considerably to consolidate having an ‘I’. My experience is that in a state of heightened awareness unhampered by my identity my senses are able to perceive my surroundings with more far detail and more depth. Un-interfered by my emotions I can think about the human condition or about some practical problem clearer and sharper. It is not that ‘actuality is very fast’ but that my sensual perception is not slowed down by fear and other ‘self’-centred survival instincts. And as you described, ‘I’ put the breaks on to stay in existence, and that is usually experienced as caution, fear or mental confusion. In my initial criticisms of Richard based on my own ignorance, I had made reference to what I thought was some form of detached self in Richard, especially when he would use adjectives describing the topography according to the only maps that I knew. Is there a clear demarcation point, that those of us with egos extant can be sure we are coming from apperceptive awareness, PCE as opposed to some form of self? For me the demarcation line between my nowadays normal state of feeling excellent and a pure consciousness experience is that in a PCE everything has an additional magical quality. There is a marked silence in my head as the identity suddenly stops generating subtle feelings and any emotional ‘connectedness’ to or wariness of people, things and events ceases. In a PCE, I am aware of an additional depth in my perception in that trees for instance are not only their shape, colour, movement and form but also their history, so to speak – they were a seedling, they have grown, they might be furniture or fertilizer one day. The same goes for computers, furniture, buildings or food – in this heightened awareness of a PCE one experiences that nothing is merely passive, everything changes, moves, grows or dies, is manufactured or is falling apart. The other very obvious difference is that in a PCE I have no feeling of separation at all – it is not that I feel ‘one’ with everything as in a spiritual experience but that the very feeling of separateness has disappeared together with the identity who feels separate. It is then obvious that I am as much the universe as people and things around me with the added bonus that I am capable of being exquisitely aware of all its wonder and magnificence. That’s what I didn’t understand about Richards comments about ‘perfection, coolness of the breeze etc. I thought those were examples of what Richard was talking about a ‘detached self’. A ‘self’ cannot imagine that a ‘self’-less – or ‘Self’-less – existence is possible. But the more you collect information from your pure consciousness experiences, the less convincing will be the ‘self’s’ claims that everyone needs a ‘self’ to survive and to sensately experience the actual world we humans live in.
What follows is a ramble. Would be delighted if you respond, of course. Emotion backed thoughts. Feelings. Emotions. Instincts. Instinctual passions. Thoughts. Beliefs. Thinker and Feeler and Social Identity and Instinctual Self. Apperception. Are all these things demonstrably distinct? Given that The more you become aware of your feelings as they are occurring and your underlying identity, the weaker your identity becomes, which in turn frees your awareness for sensuous perception that was previously stifled. At some point there is so much awareness freed of its normal ‘self’-centredness that you are able to be both aware of everything that is happening and of this awareness in operation as well – and to be aware of being aware is apperception and apperception is what happens in a pure consciousness experience. A PCE occurs when, for whatever reason, a ‘self’-less awareness is operating and awareness that is freed of the burden of ‘me’ becomes aware of itself. This is sometimes actuated either through a physically dangerous event like an accident, through a sudden shock, through drug use or an unusual relaxing experience like a nature experience. The actualism method – continuous and extensive attention, observation and questioning of ‘who’ you feel and think you are – is designed to increase awareness and facilitate apperception not only as a one-off event but as a more and more inevitable outcome of increased attentiveness.
It is a very brief description of the ‘social identity’ and it happened to me to be removed in a short period of time. What you have described in your first letter was not only a removal of your social
identity but from your description it was evident that this temporary vacuum was immediately filled with emotion – it became an
affective experience of ‘godliness’, also known as an Altered State of Consciousness. In such an ASC one feels that one knows
the Truth, one feels oneself to be all-knowing, all-powerful, one-with-everything, filled with Love for all, compassionate to
every living being and above and beyond all normal human experience. I once had such a powerful ASC that lasted for two days, and
having learnt from Richard about its pitfalls, I used the experience to investigate exactly how my intelligence and my sensibility
was devastatingly effected by these aggrandizing emotions. I was relieved when the experience was finally over and I was able to
again think clearly and reasonably without being driven by feelings of grandeur and delusion. You can find the You have described the experience ‘to be removed’ from your social identity in an earlier post –
In contrast to such altered states of consciousness, a pure consciousness experience is a non-affective ‘self’-less pure sensate experience where all of ‘me’, both ego and soul, both my social identity and my instinctual being are temporarily in abeyance. In a PCE there is no identity present to feel like a God living in an ethereal other-worldly realm. God, although everyone on the planet believes in him (or her) in some way or other, is nothing but a passionate imagination that only exists in people’s heads and hearts. In a pure consciousness experience one is one’s sense organs brimming with delight, wallowing in the enormous abundance of sensual experience that is perpetually here while one is at the same time fully aware of being an aware sensate and reflective human being. This bare awareness of being aware, apperception, is the fundamental key to a pure consciousness experience – both coincide with each other. With an investigative awareness running – how am I experiencing this moment of being alive? – one is able to examines one’s affective feelings, emotions and instinctual passions as they occur. The longer one practices such investigative awareness, the less one’s feelings, emotions and passions interfere with one’s sensuous attentiveness of being alive at this very moment – an awareness that simply registers sensate experiencing. This sensate awareness is not something one can practice or cultivate in isolation from removing the affective feelings that interfere with the simple delight of being alive. Given sufficient practice of the actualism method, an ongoing idle sensate attentiveness to being alive can momentarily turn into an awareness of being aware, which is apperception, and a pure consciousness experience takes place. And then you are hooked.
A while back there was the thread on humour. I puzzled then and since. Richard, as the only person living in actual freedom, expressed a fondness for darker humour. How does a sense of humour fit into a fully apperceptive universe? It seems to me that a sense of humour is a program itself, with the brain responding to a certain external stimulus, resulting in a predictable response. That sounds like a program to me. Maybe I’m missing the point... if one of the stated goals is to eliminate all the programs, how does one rationalize this apparent humour program? And if humour is a running program, then actualist are not eliminating the programs, and merely selecting the programs they prefer. Yes, here you are ‘missing the point’. The stated goal for me is to become free from malice and sorrow, not to ‘eliminate all the programs’. Although the ‘self’ consists of a social programming and an instinctual survival program, the process of becoming free from my ‘self’ does not equal (¹) questioning all programs per se. Actualism, the process of becoming free from my ‘self’, it is the practice of observing and investigating ‘me’ in action, and the way to do this is to examine my beliefs, feelings and emotions when and as they occur. In this process humour only enters as an issue of investigation if it contains malice or sorrow. As is evident in a PCE, the sense of the humour intrinsic to many of life’s situations and events is not eradicated but is magically bereft of any trace of malevolence, pathos or pity. An actual freedom is squeaky clean but far from humourless. I suspect this is the case, and it’s fine, because the implication is that the human is merely a collection of programs, then we make our choices and attempt to make the best ones. There is only one program I am concerned about and that is the human condition consisting of the social-spiritual programming and the animal-instinctual survival program of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. I could venture even further out on a limb and suggest that a PCE is in fact a program itself, but that sounds like a topic for another day). The PCE is marked by the absence of ‘me’, the social-instinctual program, in other words, the absence of my ‘self’, the psychological and psychic identity that has taken residence within this flesh-and-blood body. The temporary absence of ‘me’ provides the opportunity to see the workings of my social-instinctual program from the outside, so to speak. When ‘I’ am not present, the actual world, which is already always here, becomes apparent. You can compare the human condition with wearing gloomy or rosy filters in front of you eyes and actualism as a method to successively remove those filters. According to your supposition a PCE – when those filters are temporarily totally removed and one sees clearly – would be a new ‘seeing program’ as if one only exchanges filters. However, in a PCE you know without doubt that the ‘filter’ is completely removed – in a PCE there is no ‘me’ to be found anywhere. At this point it might be appropriate to mention that the actualist writings can only give you information so as to establish a working hypothesis for yourself. This hypothesis can only be confirmed experientially. Only when you have – or remember having had – a pure consciousness experience, will you know for sure by your own experience that a PCE is not another program or ‘filter’ but that it is an experience of pure sensual perception and clear thinking, completely unrestricted by any psychologic or psychic program whatsoever. As Richard phrased it in his recent post to No 34 –
In a PCE you experience, without doubt, for yourself, that there is indeed an actual world already here, all the time, and that this actuality exists regardless of whether human beings object to it or rile against it, what they feel about it, how they imagine it to be otherwise or how they want to change it to suit their whims.
It’s also clear that this state has been created by my identity, an entity that has an increasingly alien character. From my experience, it does not matter if ‘me’ as an identity – who I think and feel I am – has an alien character or a non-alien character – all of it is ‘me’, no matter into how many parts I preferred to split myself. In my days of therapy and spiritual practice I used to divide my ‘self’ into an ‘inner male’ and an ‘outer female’, the feeler and the watcher, the intuitive and the rational self, the lower ‘self’ and the higher ‘self’, the passionate old ‘me’ and the aware new ‘me’. Part of the job of backtracking out of the spiritual-psychological nonsense I had been conditioned with was to stop dividing me into various identities and recognize, acknowledge and affectively experience that ‘who I am’ is an instinctually driven, culturally tainted and spiritually conditioned identity. This shocking and unflattering acknowledgement prepared the ground for an actual change. Without going into the gory details, recently I’ve had another example of how insidious and entrenched the identity is, and how determined it is to protect its existence, at all costs. In this instance, the identity demanded the usual set of emotions (guilt, shame, etc.), and while I certainly felt them, I didn’t react in the typical fashion by cooperating and going on an affective tangential loop-de-doo. It was really quite amazing to observe this marvellously complex process at play, sort of like those documentaries on life on the deep ocean floor. I have spent a lot of time over the last 10 years digging into the various aspects of social conditioning (religion, socio-culture, gender, parents/authorities), a process accelerated over the last year by applying the AF method, and am relatively free of these overt influences. Now it’s time to take the elevator down to the next floor. Thanks all Your recent correspondences with Richard and me set me off thinking about the first few months when I started exploring actualism, and what it was that preceded and initiated my first major PCE. With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that my way of taking ‘the elevator down to the next floor’ was to decide to close the back door on a lot of aspects of my former life. Meditation and being the ‘watcher’ did not work because it did not make me happy, let alone make me harmless. Being a follower of Rajneesh and belonging to the Sannyas community did not work because it did not peace or happiness. There was still no peace in the world, neither within the Sannyasin community nor in any other spiritual or religious belief-system. So, although I did not quite know where I was going when I closed the back door, I nevertheless knew by experience where I would not find the solution – neither in the real world nor in the spiritual world. In closing the door on my past life, I abandoned my dreams and entered new territory with no option to turn back. I am convinced that it was this common sense commitment to say ‘no’ to the well-tried, and always-failed, methods and my daring to say ‘never again’ to holding on to my past hopes, dreams and beliefs that inevitably catapulted me into a PCE – the experience of being right here, right now, bare of any belief, truth, hope or preconceived idea. This pure consciousness experience radically changed my understanding of actualism because for the first time I understood, in my own experience, what Richard was talking about and what he is living 24 hours a day … and it’s paradise on earth.
What got my main attention out of all the writings that went back and forth is the one you have sent to Richard the other day: ‘And then it happened. I had the attack I formerly had at the moment of falling asleep. But now I was wide awake! A tremendous pressure wave penetrated from below my spine into my skull. It was exactly at the moment whereby I understood ... ... It was absolutely nothing!’ And also: ‘But now, for the first time there was a new kind of certainty. An absolute certainty based on absolutely nothing. I do not assert that this is always so, but at the moment the process started this WAS so. Therefore there was NO doubt. Not because I had found all the answers, but because there was no ‘I’ present any more that needed answers to end its own insecurities’ ... ‘The ending of all suffering, but also the ending of that what can make emotions a delight to have. (Beauty, love, understanding, etc.)’ ... ‘Well, I am absolutely sure of one thing. The process does not have ANY emotion in it whatsoever. No fear, as you suggested. No happiness. None.’ I have until now only this much description of what you call ‘your process’ and I
am fascinated by it because it reminds me strongly of the first peak experiences I had after I met Peter and Richard. For the
description of it I will attach what I have written in But the shock from the contrast was immense, it left me shaking for days. I, for myself, can definitely say that it was fear that coloured the interpretation and memory of this experience. What helped me since then to go back and be familiar in this pure, pristine, actual state was being able to communicate with Peter in this actuality, and the delight of meeting another human being so intimately as never before. It helped me to notice that even without beliefs I can still rely on my senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, thinking, talking, reflecting. With growing confidence I now can enjoy the heightened intensity of the senses, be safe in being with other human beings without the protective shell of ideas, beliefs, emotions and instincts. And it is now my experience that it is absolutely possible and imminently desirable to live in that state 24 hrs. a day. I am not lacking anything I would need to survive, my brain functions more sensibly and better than ever to supply whatever I need to take care of myself. I am writing this, I notice, to seduce you to experiment with what you call ‘your process’ into that direction, using all the senses and meeting another ‘human being’ as a delightful addition to being on your own, because I found it the best way to be alive since sliced bread. By communication this process for me has become practicably applicable, testable and magically down-to-earth. Becoming grounded into my senses as the media to experience the world rather than relying on my imagination and fear has helped me immensely to dwell in this ‘state’ for longer and longer periods, interacting with people with an ease I thought I could never have. And you say it yourself that there was ‘An absolute certainty based on absolutely nothing ... NO doubt.’ I call it obvious and evident.
And I found another line of Richard’s writing – a benefit of my extensive playing with the web-site:
There it was again – ‘altruistically self-immolated’ – and this time I could see the word from another angle. It has nothing to do with being altruistic for other people – whether they get something directly out of my becoming free or not. It has to do with being unselfish as in my ‘self’ getting out of the way, so that the perfection can become apparent. ‘I’ won’t even get a medal for my altruistic behaviour – ‘I’ will simply not exist anymore. And thus my hang-up with the Christian – and spiritual – morality of being selfish or un-selfish has finally been resolved. Now I can see the sparkling morning, the dewdrops glittering thousand fold on the thin tea-tree leaves, moving and shining like river stones, the birds chirping their birds-sounds and the air moist and warming for another glorious spring day. Everything is perfect when I stop insisting of keeping my ‘self’. Suddenly it is all easy and I am back on the wide and wondrous path – and the pain in the neck is just a signpost for the right direction. Ah, fantastic. Since I finished this letter I had another discussion with Richard about being here now, in this moment in time, with having a past or a future, and I experienced again the eerie wonderful and odd thing of being here now without a ‘self-induced’ story that keeps the moments together like pearls on a string. From this point of view, from simply being here each moment again there is no question whatsoever that Actual Freedom is what I want, 24 hrs a day. And, being back in having a bit of a past and a bit of a future, I am still determined to make it happen, no other reason needed. The continuing oddness of not really knowing where I left the ‘meaning of life’ that had tied my life together so nicely before, can only be a good sign. Ahoi.
I just woke up from one of those wonderful light after-dinner naps and the memory is still so remarkably fresh that I thought of describing this little PCE to you. It was fascinating and delightful to have thoughts and half-thoughts while drifting in and out of sleep like in and out of water and at the same time the brain was aware of itself being half asleep and doing its fluid thinking. What an extraordinary thing our human brain is, I thought while dreaming along, that it can unwind its thoughts from the day, be aware of it at the same time and this all while I am on the couch taking a nap, and listening to Peter clicking away on the keyboard! Such a nap beats any sort of meditation by a country mile! I agree, there is nothing like a good nap. I did not talk about just having a good nap. I was trying to describe to you a pure consciousness experience that happened while I was in that hypnagogic state where one is asleep and aware of being asleep at the same time. From this utter relaxation it is very easy to watch the brain thinking – or, as Richard put it:
One more thing, there is one issue that I don’t quite get... Sometimes, out of a sudden, I experience ‘time of my life’. All is deliciously beautiful moment by moment and there are no problems whatsoever. But then there is this sweet feeling of ‘completeness’ and not needing anything else at all. Sometimes it just goes on and on for a while. It won’t stop while I look at it... What is your experience about it? I am not so sure what you mean by ‘time of my life’. Maybe you can describe to me your last ‘time of your life’. Peter and I have described our peak-experiences, when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs. Life is then experienced as easy, obvious, safe, abundant and magical. Richard describes apperception as ...
Another option of ‘time of my life’ is an Altered State of Consciousness. The ASC is epitomised by a feeling of Oneness ... human love becomes Divine Love – what I call Love Agapé – wherein love ceases being a feeling and becomes a state of being ... ‘Pure Being’. This feeling of Union with The Divine – Unitary Awareness – is an Oceanic experience that assures immortality ... and is thus selfishness to its very core. Peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for residing in this Deathless State. The difference between a pure consciousness experience and ASC is that there is no ‘feeling’ or emotion in a peak-experience. There is simply this obvious, sparkling, intimate experience of the perfection and purity all around. Such peak-experiences became the reference points for me to clean myself up, to reach this purity 24 hrs a day. In the peak-experience you know that the only problem is ‘you’ and you set out to eliminate ‘your’-self, bit by bit.
Until I experience that place where you’ve been I cannot tell. I had described this peak-experience so one can root around in one’s memory to find maybe a similar experience, where one was neither in the heart nor full of worries (‘in the head’), an experience where the ‘self’ is completely absent. Many people actually experience this state many times in their lives although most people forget about it – for there is no emotional ‘I’ present to record the moment on its affective ‘tape-recorder’. So you have to look for this memory, it does not just pop up, you have to root around to recall a situation where you experienced life and the world around you as crisp, clear, perfect and peaceful, without a feeling of beauty or love and without any separate sense of ‘self’. The advantage of the actual world is, you can reach it from anywhere, it is always here. Everybody can see a coffee cup as a coffee cup, a tree as a tree and hear a cricket as a cricket. No spiritual achievement is needed for that – on the contrary, it leads you further away from the actual experience of the physical senses. But to keep God in existence you need many beliefs – the belief that God is all-present, all-knowing, all-pervading, the belief that God loves you, that God created the universe, that God will take care of you and take care of your soul after death. Question those beliefs and you will watch God disappear in front of your very eyes. God, by whatever name, actually does not exist. You don’t have to go anywhere ‘first’, you can experience it any time. You can start today by relentlessly questioning everything that is not evidenced by the physical senses, and what is left after all beliefs are dismantled is the actual, the factual. It needs courage and a bloody-mindedness and a good deal of common sense – but it is possible, one can start immediately.
Why, despite your transformation, are emotions still so important that you have to establish ‘mutual emotional credit’ first, before your ‘intelligence of the neocortex’ can begin to operate? Do you no longer practice ‘domination of emotions’? I hope this is no rhetorical question. If it isn’t I shall answer it. I begin to understand that people do not have emotions, but they are their emotions. Emotions are an expression of the social intelligence. There is a vital difference between ‘who’ I am and ‘what’ I am. ‘Who’ I am – my ‘self’, my identity, my ‘being’ – is determined both by the genetic instinctual programming and the social identity, or nature and nurture, as some may call it. ‘Who’ I am is both the instinctual passions and its resulting emotions and beliefs, whereas ‘what’ I am is this flesh and blood body. J. Krishnamurti made the assertion, that emotions arise out of thought. I didn’t believe it, but after a very extensive conflict with somebody on the Klavarskribo organ e-mail list, and meditating intensely on it, I saw that this was the essence of ‘the human condition’. Next to this, this is consistent with the Objectivist’ statement, that emotions are a manifestation in consciousness of automatic thought processes. Let me quote the Objectivists on this to show what emotions really are. Emotions as a Product of Ideas (Leonard Peikoff.) <snip> In other words, emotions stem from our thoughts! Exactly the thesis of J. Krishnamurti. This means, that to be truly to be without emotions, you must be without thoughts. Clearly, no actualist is without thoughts, if only because they all use language. You know, Konrad, when I experienced the world without the distorting veil of my emotional-instinctual ‘self’ in a pure consciousness experience, I saw everything as if for the first time. Everything was sparkling, pure, perfect, crystal clear and magical. With my ‘self’ temporarily absent I could see the world as it is and people as they are. I could also see that it is only ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual ‘self’, that stands in the way of experiencing this magical fairy-tale-like perfection 24 hours a day. From this first and many following PCEs I know that it is very well possible, despite your belief and that of thousands of others, to live without ‘self’ – without soul, without identity, without emotions and without the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. From the pure consciousness experience I also know that everyone else has got it wrong – every theory, every belief, every concept, everything we feel and think ourselves to be is not what we are. J. Krishnamurti, the objectivists, Carl Popper, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Agnostics, Mohan Rajneesh, and all the other teachers, believers and followers ... they all got it 180 degrees wrong. Fact is, when ‘me’, the emotional-instinctual entity inside this flesh and blood body, disappears then, and only then, there is peace on earth. The fashionable myth ‘that emotions arise out of thought’ is wrong and has always been wrong. Within the human condition most thoughts are emotion-backed, emotion-infused – they are contaminated with feelings tainted by instinctual survival passions and they are almost always self-centred. Examine and investigate your emotions and passions and you will find that your thoughts will become less frantic and more peaceful, less frequent and more capable of astounding clarity. The actualism method aims at eliminating the ‘self’, not eliminating the emotions. This is done by examining and thus diminishing good and bad feelings and increasing the felicitous feelings. If you do this with sincere intent and stubborn determination, it will eventually result in the collapse of the ‘self’ because the ‘self’ can only thrive on good and bad emotions – it does not get nourishment when I am happy.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. |
