So from Richard’s statement that his experiences with sleep and dreams are possibly idiosyncratic (which is still to be determined when a second person becomes actually free) you automatically assumed that the quality of how Richard experiences life 24hrs a day is just that – merely idiosyncratic to the specific body of Richard and has nothing to do with the fact that his ‘self’ in toto has become extinct?

A PCE, which everybody whom Richard has spoken to at length has been able to remember having had in their lives, easily confirms that the actual world as described by Richard exists as a fact and is neither ‘personal’ nor idiosyncratic.

I said ‘everybody whom Richard has spoken to *at length*’.

As for what you call ‘mind boggling conclusion’ – my first PCEs were mind-boggling in that I saw the world for the first time in my life not from the usual ‘self’-centred perspective a ‘self’ is bound to always see it – something which in itself is quite mind-boggling indeed. As I had more frequent PCEs and became more used to the new territory, so to speak, I was able to look around and use the clarity of a ‘self’-less experience to get answers on some burning questions I had.

Maybe the most mind-boggling conclusion that I drew from one of my first pure consciousness experiences is that everybody, I mean everybody, including me, had got it 180 degrees wrong – we have all been suckered into believing in and following the wrong solutions, big time.

Once I came to grips with this insight everything Richard had to report fell into place much more easily.

*

Nowhere did I say that you should stop asking questions. What I am saying is that it makes no sense to me to answer your questions when all you do with it is invalidating my understandings regarding my experiences as mere beliefs. Vis –

When there is no ‘self’, there are no beliefs, only actuality.

No 107: Unless you are without a ‘self’, your statement is a belief you hold.

It is ‘ultimate’ as in ‘that’s it, full stop, no ‘self’-centred comment’ – in other words no ‘self’ interferes with ‘my’ judgements, beliefs, opinions, interpretations, imagination and emotions about what it is that these eyes, ears, this skin, nose, mouth perceive.

No 107: Again, another belief. re: beliefs, 22.8.2006

When the change happens one knows – even enlightened people know the exact moment when they have become irrevocably deluded whilst self-realized people talk about it being an ongoing process and many even say that there is no such thing as enlightenment.

No 107: Is this another belief or are you enlightened? re: more beliefs, 22.8.2006

Can you raise the bar a bit?

In a pure consciousness experience where my own ‘self’ is temporarily absent it is blatantly obvious that Richard’s ‘self’ is also absent and that the report he gives about his experiences of the actual world is consistent with my own experiences of the actual world. As I had more PCEs over a period of time I was able to confirm that Richard was always already in the actual world whenever I happen to step into it which is consistent with his report that he always lives in the actual world.

No belief required at all.

The reason I said that there is a remarkable difference between *feeling* harmless and actually being harmless is because it is easy to assess one’s happiness by checking if I am feeling happy whereas many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions *before* these translate into vibes and/or actions.

It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions. Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself to be harmless.

Can you say more about this? I usually feel harmless but have been thinking lately that I somehow still do harm simply by not paying attention and applying parity and consideration to others with whom I come into contact. How did you do this more and more? And how did you notice that you’re still harming someone even if you don’t have feelings of anger or aggression or the like? And how do you know it’s you harming them? Can you give a few examples? I’m finding it possible to consider this matter more now that I’m happier as its given me breathing room to be less self-centred, but it’s a pretty new subject to me. What keeps your mind on being considerate? Is it just a close scrutiny on the feelings and passions that arise? Are you more perceptive of others because the feelings and passions that are now arising are diminished so you’re naturally more attentive to other things as well, like what’s going on with other people?

Sure. When I met Peter I was full of good intentions to make our living together work, i.e. to be as happy and peaceful as possible, but I had continuous clashes of opinion with him, frustrations of foiled expectation, hurt feelings and revenge of hurtful remarks. I realized that in order to be able live with Peter in peace and harmony I had to sort out a lot – my beliefs, my ‘truths’, my loyalties, my gender ideas, my problems with authority and all other sorts of feelings.

I remember well the first evening when I looked at Peter and saw him as just another human being – not as a partner, a mate, a member of the other gender, a lover, a sexual object, a valuable addition to my circle of friends, and not as someone who would approve or disapprove of me – simple another fellow human being. Suddenly the separation I felt was gone and there was a delicious intimacy, as ‘I’ was no longer attempting to force him to fit into ‘my’ world.

I was astounded and shocked by this experience, being outside of my so familiar ‘self’-centred and ‘self-oriented skin, because I realized that never before, not once in our 3-months acquaintance, had I been able, or even interested, to see him as a person in his own right. I was shocked at how all of my perception and consequently all of my interactions were driven by what *I* wanted, what *I* expected and what *I* believed him to be and how much I was therefore constantly at odds with how he actually was. From then on I paid as much attention as possible to become aware of situations when my feelings, beliefs, expectations and general attitude were standing in the way of recognizing another person, first Peter and later anyone I came in contact with, as equal fellow human beings, as persons in their own right, who live their own life, follow their own goals and aspirations, have their own preferences and tastes, and also, have their own set of morals, ethics and beliefs.

The reason I am telling this story is because this experience was the beginning of a slow and wide-ranging realization that as long as I live in ‘my’ world – made up of ‘my’ worldview, ‘my’ beliefs, opinions, feelings and survival passions – I cannot help but struggle to fit everyone into ‘my’ world, as actors on the stage of ‘my’ play, so to speak, as family and aliens, as friends and enemies, as ‘good people and ‘bad’ people. And not only am ‘I’ busy trying to do this, everyone else – all six billion of us – are equally struggling to fit everyone into ‘their’ world.

It then comes as no surprise that being actually harmless is out of the question – until ‘I’ more and more leave centre-stage, stop resenting being here, stop being stressed, take myself less seriously, take notice of other people the way they are and start enjoying life.

Any ‘knowledge’ from full-blown altered states of consciousness is purely affective, and as such subjective, as you may remember from your own experience. In a spiritual altered state one usually feels as though one has entered into an ethereal reality. Whilst in this greater reality one feels as though one is above and beyond the social morals and ethics and as such is one prone to not only feel compassion for those ‘poor humans’ who are still enslaved by society’s rules and regulations but also feels that one knows all about this part of the human conditioning temporarily left behind – the outer layer of the ‘self’. In such a state one can have access to what are termed the ‘Akashic Records’, an expression to describe contents of the psychic web in which all sentient beings are more or less entrapped and entangled. In an altered state one can be psychically sensitive to what humans through the ages have affectively thought (all of the accumulated truths and wisdoms) and felt (all of the accumulated suffering) … and the power and glory of this feeling of omniscience and of being one with the ‘higher Being(s)’ is the trap that no enlightened being so far has been able to escape from, let alone even wanted to escape from … with one exception.

A PCE is very different. One can have a PCE without much thinking happening – so delightful and magical is the direct sensate experience of the actual world that the notion to take notes as it were rarely occurs. Because I was on a quest to find out about the human condition and what to do with my life, during each PCE that I had after encountering actualism I was careful to take note of what was different in a PCE to normal experiencing and to ASCs and as a consequence had direct insights into what exactly is the difference between a ‘self’-centred and a ‘self’-less experience. My intent in a PCE was to gain as much insight about life without ‘self’ as possible and consequently I obtained valuable information that I could use once the PCE faded. The ‘knowledge’ I gained in each PCE was about that which is actual, i.e. that which remains when the affective faculty responsible for both my automorphic worldview and humanity’s anthropocentric view of the universe itself does not interfere with direct experiencing.

It is as simple as taking one’s pink and one’s grey glasses off and then what has been lying in front of your eyes all along becomes readily apparent.

No 32: Yes, I taste this freedom from time to time as I gradually let go of the various social protective masks and aspects of my identity. I begin to get a taste of the powerful instinctual passions, especially fear (habitual response to ‘losing’ something) and anger (habitual response for not ‘getting’ something) and the self-centred perspective they automatically create even when operating as a background noise.

What I found was that the ‘background noise’ is actually the engine of ‘me’ running all the time ready to flare up at any given opportunity. Although the opportunities to ‘flare’ become more and more rare, given that I am no longer bait for most of the usual follies and passions, the engine noise will only stop when ‘I’ am finally extinct. Vineeto, List AF, No 32, 13.3.2005

When I try to compare the current ‘engine noise’ to the level I experienced before I started practicing actualism I can only vaguely remember what went on in my head and heart back then as the process of dissolving one’s ‘self’ leaves no scars. What I do remember though is that I had an uninterrupted stream of mostly worrying thoughts and feelings, which dominated my day-to-day life and that I felt a desperate need for feel-good ‘holidays’ in order to recover from my constant worries and sorrows.

When I began practicing actualism I naturally became more and more aware of the feelings that were driving those worrying thoughts and after I experienced the stillness of the absence of ‘me’ in a PCE it became all the more urgent to do something about the non-stop ‘noise’ of ‘me’.

Nowadays I feel excellent almost all the time, i.e. the ‘noise’ of ‘me’ is no longer interfering with me being happy. However, the presence of my ‘self’ is noticeable enough for me to know that the virtual freedom I enjoy is not the end of the path. The stillness that is always here and that becomes apparent when ‘I’ temporarily disappear in a PCE is bait enough to entice me to go all the way.

As guiding lights the memories of PCEs pervade every moment of my life but PCE nowadays do not happen very often. At the beginning of practicing the actualism method I had many stunning insights into the human condition and quite a few of them stunned me into pure consciousness experiences. In the years of practicing attentiveness I have developed a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the human condition and of actuality and as a consequence those PCE-triggering insights have become less frequent. Once in a while a PCE sneaks up on me when I am the least expecting it but what I am more concerned about is the quality of my life between PCEs for this is when the real work happens.

When all is said and done a PCE is not within my control, certainly not ‘my’ control, but how I experience my daily life is something I can do something about on a moment-to-moment basis, and that is what the method of actualism is all about. To put it differently – the job that ‘I’ need to do can only be done by ‘me’, in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. And the moment I uncover the last bond and untie the last knot that connects me to humanity, ‘my’ demise will happen on its own accord.

[the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness/unhappiness] and ultimately the PCE experience.

To me the memory of PCEs is the touchstone for the work that ‘I’ need to do and the guiding light on the wide and wondrous path. As long as I am an instinctual identity, a PCE happens serendipitously, once in a while and is not, as the word ‘barometer’ seems to suggest, an indicator and a reward for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour.

My first major pure consciousness experience (PCE) was the turning point in which I began to understand that all spiritual beliefs are only happening within one’s mind and heart and that therefore all content of all beliefs is non-actual. This PCE was brought about by a naive investigation of something new coupled with increasing doubts about my spiritualist methods as well as my beginning to question my feeling of loyalty to the master and his group of believers.

This NEW possibility is actualised simply via the connection made between you and this Universe: pure intent.

This isn’t pure intent, this is the old ‘waiting for Godot’ scenario … or in secular terms, ‘waiting for Scottie to beam me up’. You have apparently replaced whatever spiritual beliefs you had before with a new spiritual belief – pantheism. By believing the physical universe to be a metaphysical entity (Universe with a capital U) it appears you have created yet another mythical God with whom you only need to connect in order that He/She/It will bring you deliverance.

This connection already exists because you, as this body, are an integral part of the physical Universe; IT manifests itself/ affects via the people, things and events of your everyday life. So, the process of ‘self’-immolation is not your doing, but the effect life’s facts/events have on a non-physical entity known as ... ‘you’.

Well, I guess we had to have someone try and make actualism into a pantheist belief and take it up as a teaching. This mailing list does represent a potpourri of spiritual beliefs – and the only mantra they have in common is ‘above all, don’t try to change’.

The ‘PCEs’ (my opinion) are used by the hardcore actualists in order to endorse/sustain their ‘actualist-self’. Once you experience a PCE, all the (repetitive) lingo associated with actualism will simply die out.

I understood from what you have written on this mailing list that you have acknowledged that you cannot remember having had a pure consciousness experience. If this is the case, you seem to be basing your advice to others on what you think a PCE might be. And yet this is what you said above –

Thoughts/ideas cannot generate experience, they can do all sorts of things: simulate, represent, imitate, emulate but they cannot experience.

I also noticed that you made comment to someone else on this list as to the authenticity of his experience, based on what you think a PCE is supposed to be. Personally I found the expression he used to describe the experience – ‘it was like being a tourist in my own neighbourhood’ – not only original and unique but also one that I could relate to from my own pure consciousness experiences.

This ‘lingo’ is at least a warning sign that a person creativity, innate originality, authenticity are seriously affected. The PCE is supposed to be the height of a person’s genuineness and naivety,

No. A PCE is a temporary experience of the total absence of ‘me’ – i.e. the absence of ‘me’ and ‘my’ disingenuousness and cynicism.

… the infinite source for new and original thoughts;

No. A PCE is a temporary experience of the total absence of ‘me’ – i.e. the absence of ‘me’ and ‘my’ hackneyed feelings and visceral thoughts.

… it’s supposed to be as perfect, new and refreshing as each new moment.

No. A PCE is a temporary experience of the total absence of ‘me’ – i.e. the absence of ‘me’ frees this body to sensately experience the seamless flawlessness of this moment. To describe this moment as ‘refreshing’ implies that previous moments were wearying or dull whereas even normal attentiveness reveals that this moment is ever-fresh, as in it has never been experienced before and can never to be experienced again.

Look into the site and see how repetitive it all is.

Yeah. Every time I come up with a good phrase or term Richard pinches it. He’s probably already got his eye on ‘conditional atheist’.

The same thing also happens in my work – as soon as I came up with something that was good someone else would pinch it, exactly as I did whenever I found something good. It’s how we human beings learn to do things better. I use a good deal of Richard’s phrases in my writing, particularly the simple catch-phrases such as happy and harmless, because it made sense to me to do so. Having said that, the fundamental reason the website is repetitive is that what is being said is so utterly simple and not at all convoluted or complex.

By the way, I have just given three descriptions of a PCE and I invite you to use your browser’s search engine and search the website in order to determine whether the descriptions are merely repetitive ‘lingo’.

This was my recent comment to a correspondent on this mailing list about this particular type of ASC –

The second type of ASC I would call the ‘far-out-there’ type because it is typified by a loss of all sense of perspective as well as any remaining sense of earthly reality. In such an experience the ‘Self’ is aggrandized to such an extent that it feels as though there are no boundaries to ‘Me’. ‘I am Everything and Everything is Me’ describes the feeling of far-out-there-ness that occurs in this ASC experience of Cool Nothingness. ‘I’ am so expanded that ‘I’ am the whole universe and this imaginary universe is then coloured by ‘my’ affective flavour, either ‘cool’ or ‘empty’ or ‘beautiful’ or some other affective experience.

I found this type of ASC harder to detect as being a delusion because such an ASC feels as though it is a ‘self’-less experience. When I had such an experience, my ‘self’ was transformed – blown out of all proportion – beyond recognition and the resultant feeling of ‘emptiness’ seemed to be not of ‘my’ making. What helped me to get my head out of the clouds and my feet back on the ground was when I opened my eyes and had to recognize that I was in fact laying on a couch in a room with four walls, that I was surrounded by material things that were anything but Nothingness. Then I knew that Nothingness and Emptiness were but my calenturous thoughts. Vineeto, List AF, No 50, 10.5.2003

First thing: neither of the above descriptions seems to quite match what happened to me. There was no ‘feeling of oneness’ or anything like that, no feeling that I am the Universe, no messianic urges, no sense of divinity, no sensory distortions, no feeling of being spaced out in a great ‘Nothingness’ or ‘Silence’ or ‘Stillness’ or ‘Void’ as described by mystics, and no loss of contact with the actual physical world around me. It was an ASC rather than a PCE, but of a rather different character from any kind of religious experience that I’ve heard or read about. (It was an LSD flashback, to be sure. I find it extremely interesting that it could be invoked at will, and I’m keen to understand what is actually happening here.)

Even if an experience starts off as a PCE, most often ‘I’ will step in and seize the experience as being ‘mine’ and interpret it to be a perfect experience according to ‘my’ idea or ‘my’ feeling of perfection. Or if one tries to induce a PCE as a deliberate repeat of a serendipitous event, ‘I’ want to remain on the stage in order to posses the experience as ‘my’ own. You described it well when you said –

For one thing, there was definitely a psyche present, even though there was no trace of emotion. Interesting experience, 11.12.2003

As for ‘there was no trace of emotion’ it is useful to understand that ‘I’, the alien entity within this flesh-and-blood body am not only lost and lonely but also very, very cunning. With this is mind your experience could well be interpreted in this light – if ‘I’ have to disguise myself as a non-emotional psyche in order to stay in existence, then ‘I’ will do just that. This is precisely why pure intent is so crucial if one wants to become actually free from the human condition.

The underlying quality of my consciousness was very much like it was in the psilocybin experience I described earlier (walking through an invisible membrane into a bubble of perfection), except that there was more cognitive activity. That cognitive activity is extremely difficult to convey, but I emphasise that it did not eclipse or obscure the brilliance and clarity of the actual world, or make me feel I was a ‘spirit’, or that the world was illusory. Rather it complemented the actual world (as experienced by the senses) by exposing what seemed to be an innate pattern-matching / symbol-generating faculty in the psyche, which created a sense of underlying mathematical order and perfection pervading both mind and world.

To convey this more clearly, I’ll probably have to post some sketches of a much more extreme version of this pattern-matching / symbol-generating madness, which I experienced about 10 years ago on LSD (because this experience is very clearly an echo of that). I don’t have time to do right now ... but probably will later, because I suspect this is going to be a recurring theme with me.

When I read your deliberations about the experience, two things come to mind.

Firstly it is clear that you have no doubt that this ‘interesting experience’, as you called it, was an ASC and not a ‘self’-less PCE, so the difference is very obvious to you. Secondly, the perfection of the actual world is an innate quality to the infinitude of the physical universe, it is pure and magical but certainly not mathematically ordered as pure mathematicians would have it.

Mathematics – the abstract deductive science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, including geometry, arithmetic, algebra, etc., studied in its own right (more fully pure mathematics), or as applied to various branches of physics and other sciences. Oxford Dictionary [Emphasis added]

Many pure mathematicians apparently believe that mathematics is the governing principle upon which the universe was created and many even proclaim that God must have been a mathematician, or that pure mathematics is Truth. There seems no limit to anthropocentricity – it manifests itself in all sorts of weird and wonderful, and not so wonderful, forms.

In a PCE I am both apperceptively and sensuously aware of what is actually happening and the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is a journey of incrementally removing and abandoning all of one’s affective and imaginative programming that stands in the way of this experience of pure awareness.

Whereas in an ASC ‘I’ interpret what is actually happening according to what ‘I’ feel and imagine as being good and right and perfect and as such the path to a permanent Altered State of Consciousness necessitates the embellishing of one’s emotional and imaginative programming, not the elimination of it. You alluded to this when you said that in your ASC your ‘cognitive activity’ ‘complemented the actual world’ and ‘created a sense of underlying mathematical order and perfection’, which can only mean that a psychic entity needed to be present in order to do the complementing and creating.

In an ASC, as the name suggests, the psyche is altered, as in expanded, aggrandized, embellished, infused, refined and particularly flavoured according to the image or concept ‘I’ have of the perfect world. Once I had intellectually understood and personally experienced the world of difference between a PCE and an ASC, I rapidly lost interest in any detailed examination of the contents or contexts of ASCs – I simply saw them as being like wake dreams, outbursts of an excited, as in stimulated, electrified and/or feverish, psyche.

P.S. If you haven’t already discovered this – there is a topic in the library called ‘Affective Experiences vs. Pure Experiences’ and Richard’s correspondence on imagination might also be of interest to you.

Even if an experience starts off as a PCE, most often ‘I’ will step in and seize the experience as being ‘mine’ and interpret it to be a perfect experience according to ‘my’ idea or ‘my’ feeling of perfection.

For a while (not sure how long) when I was sitting on the rocks looking at the breakers foaming in, there was nothing but purity and perfection. When it became clear that something was definitely happening, something stunningly different from normality, ‘I’ must have stepped in and started playing around, and that’s when I found the same ‘plasticity’ that I’d delighted in 10 years ago. (You’re right, it is the most compelling ‘vision’ of perfection I had/have ever seen).

The actualism method is certainly a very powerful tool and, as Richard emphasizes throughout his writings, the only danger on the wide and wondrous path is that one can become stranded on the Rock of Enlightenment, as Peter called it – or fall into any other permanent state of delusion. When I first used the actualism method I was quite curious to experience all of the different altered states that I had heard and read about but once I experienced two or three of them for a couple of hours or more each I could see the flaws in all of them when compared to a ‘self’-less PCE – neither were they pure nor were they a direct sensuous experience of what is happening here on earth were we human beings live – in other words, they weren’t actual but they were happening in my mind only.

I do see the potential for this. It must seem as if I’m being quite defensive about the ‘validity’ of my ‘interesting experience’, but what I’m actually trying to do is firstly express it as clearly as possible, and secondly figure out where it belongs in the scheme of things. I do appreciate the feedback.

You are welcome. I know from my own experience with actualism that feedback from other people’s experience can only go so far – I gained both reassurance and warning from Richard’s reports of his experiences but in the end I had to sort out my experiences for myself … and my benchmark for that was always my first major PCE. It was the experience of which I had the clearest memory simply because the difference to my normal day experience was so incredibly stunning and at the same time so unquestionably obvious.

*

Or if one tries to induce a PCE as a deliberate repeat of a serendipitous event, ‘I’ want to remain on the stage in order to posses the experience as ‘my’ own.

This is true I guess, but what it felt like was not exactly a conscious desire to possess it as my own (though I do see the potential for that happening), but rather a desire to play around with it aesthetically, like a kid with a kaleidoscope. I suppose one can desire to ‘possess’ something for two different motives, either as a way of empowering and glorifying one’s ego, or as a way of entertaining oneself. I think the latter is probably what made this PCE into an ASC. (But I can accept that the self is very cunning indeed).

‘A way of entertaining oneself’ implies that being here is experienced as needing some more entertainment, which is an assessment that ‘I’ make because there is no role for ‘me’ to play in the stunning clarity and sensuous delight of being right here in this moment in time. The more I paid attention to how I experience this moment of being alive the more I began to learn about how cunning ‘I’ am, how many ways and reasons ‘I’ invent and present in order for ‘me’ to stay in existence.

Well that really depends on what is meant by ‘I’ and ‘me’, doesn’t it? Being right here in this moment in time, can there be any sense of intention? In my experience, the answer is yes, for sure.

When I am right here in a ‘self’-less PCE there is no intent, I am already experiencing perfection. The intent comes in when the PCE ends and ‘I’ make an assessment what it is that ‘I’ need to do in order to live this experience 24/7.

In a PCE ‘who’ is it that dips his/her toes into a cool stream just for the joy of it? Dipping one’s toes in the stream doesn’t mean that ‘I’ and ‘me’ are there with all their status-seeking and emotional baggage, but the action happens. In a PCE there can be an ‘intent’, without there being an ‘intender’.

In a PCE there is no ‘who’ to ‘dipping one’s toes in the stream’ but ‘what’ – this body delights in the coolness of the stream on a hot day. ‘Who’ is the psychological and psychic entity who thinks and feels ‘he’ or ‘she’ is in control, whilst in a PCE this controller is temporarily absent. There is no intent in a PCE for I am simply the doing and experiencing of what is happening.

There can be thought without a thinker.

Yes. In a PCE thoughts happen or don’t happen depending on the situation.

*

Often it would take me days to discover that I had once again fallen for ‘my’ tricks, that I had believed ‘my’ reasoning as to why ‘I’ needed to run the show.

Ok, but while ever you are in ‘virtual freedom’ rather than ‘actual freedom’, you are indeed running the show.

The wonderful thing about being virtually free of malice and sorrow is that ‘I’ have become increasingly redundant – less and less am ‘I’ experienced as running the show or needing to be in control.

And part of the ‘you’ who is running the show is a ‘belief’ (for want of a better word) that ‘you’ as a psychic entity must disappear entirely in order to allow the already-existing purity and perfection of the actual world to manifest itself.

No. It was the ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience itself which revealed that normally there is an ‘I’ who thinks and feels she is running the show all the time and it also reveals that in order to allow the already-existing purity and perfection of the actual world to manifest itself ‘I’ have to disappear. This is not ‘a belief’ but recognition of a fact via direct perception.

I would argue (not to be contrary, and not to suggest that you are wrong to do so, but simply because it seems like the truth to me) that it is indeed ‘one of your tricks’ to treat as ultimately valid only those experiences in which ‘you’ are entirely absent. Within the terms of your goal (actual freedom), this is understandable. But that goal is necessarily ‘one of your tricks’, even if you choose to define it as the only thing that is not a trick.

What you are arguing is that ‘my’ experiences of ‘my’ psyche are as equally valid as the only experience that is common to all flesh and blood bodies – the pure consciousness experience of the already-existing purity and perfection of the actual world. I can only suggest that you contemplate on the fact that it is precisely because everyone values their own psychic experiences so highly that peace on earth between human beings remains but a pipe-dream.

Not trying to be a smartarse, but after virtually all of your social identity has disappeared, there remains ‘Vineeto the actualist’ (which is not itself actual). I know this doesn’t matter to you personally, but I say it nonetheless: I am not trying to criticise you in any way, just saying it as I see it.

Four weeks ago you described a pure consciousness experience –

There was no trace of ‘mysticism’ or ‘spirituality’ about it; just enjoyment of being present in a perfect bubble of real time and real space and real things. PCE / ASC / Psilocybin, 7.11.2003

When you described the experience of ‘being present in a perfect bubble of real time and real space and real things’ – did you have any doubt that this experience was ‘one of your tricks’ or did you know beyond doubt that this was one of those rare events where your ‘self’ was absent and you were experiencing actuality as it is?

I know, it is hard to remember what a PCE was like when one returns back to normal and often one begins to doubt that the experience was only a dream. But during a PCE I know with absolute certainty that this actual universe has always been here – I only missed it whilst I was busy being ‘me’. And the realization and recognition of this very fact is what has become my benchmark for determining how to proceed in the process of becoming free of malice and sorrow. In this process ‘I’ willingly decide to instigate ‘my’ own demise and then it is simply a matter of applying attentiveness – something that anyone can cultivate if they so desire.

*

As for ‘there was no trace of emotion’ it is useful to understand that ‘I’, the alien entity within this flesh-and-blood body am not only lost and lonely but also very, very cunning. With this is mind your experience could well be interpreted in this light – if ‘I’ have to disguise myself as a non-emotional psyche in order to stay in existence, then ‘I’ will do just that.

I can see the potential for that happening too, but I have to trust my own judgement here. There was no trace of emotion that I could detect; I actually looked for it, it just wasn’t there.

Sometimes I found that missing something familiar could trigger ‘me’ stepping back in, in order to provide the ‘missing link’, so to speak. Vis:

My first questions relate to what is (apparently) lost in AF. If there is no imaginative faculty, no mind-space at all in which to visualise objects and processes, how is it possible to understand systems and processes that do not occur right before one’s eyes? First questions, 7.11.2003

At first I had only Richard’s report that he has no imagination whatsoever and that imagination is an affective faculty of the psyche – later in the actualism process I could confirm this report by my own experience in that my imagination more and more disappeared and nowadays I have a hard time to activate it, for instance when I try to visualize objects others talk about that I have never seen. I don’t miss it though – it is one less distraction from sensually experiencing what is right here.

Right. I can understand this because in the PCE on a country walk I thought idly about where I was in relation to the town and river, found I could not construct a mental map, and did not give a damn. It didn’t matter in the slightest; it had no relevance. I was ‘here’, and that was all I needed to know. Besides, I was too busy perceiving to worry about creating some internal shorthand sketch of what was all around me in all its splendour. I do know what you’re talking about in this respect.

Good. And I take it that there was also no ‘desire to play around with it aesthetically, like a kid with a kaleidoscope’ as there was in your ASC. Interesting Experience, 15.12.2003

However, I am now starting to think that one can have one’s cake and eat it too.

Before you get carried away with this thought let me ask you how you think this would work in practice. The cake we are talking about is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, a ‘self’-less flesh-and-blood body living a pure consciousness experience 24/7. To ‘eat it too’ means to simultaneously have a psyche, which perceives the world as ‘pure’ in images and symbols? In other words you want to be ‘self’-less whilst remaining a ‘self’.

You can certainly entertain this as a philosophy but never live it as an actuality.

*

The question as to whether an actual freedom from the human condition ‘is actually possible for all people’ can only be answered on an individual basis because to achieve this freedom requires that an individual makes it the most important thing in his or her own life. Thus far I have met or have corresponded with very few people who are interested in doing so. If, however, you want empirical proof that an actual freedom does not require ‘a biological configuration unique to Richard’ then you will have to wait until a second, or third, person becomes actually free from the human condition. Personally, I didn’t want to waste my time waiting for that, I’ll rather be part of the proof.

Yeah, I’m with you there. I dunno whether our paths will diverge or converge in the end, but having set off on the journey it’s very unlikely that I’ll turn back. I know it seems to you that I’m playing a different ‘game’, a self-centred game in which I’m desperately clinging to some cunning disguised form of ‘self’ as ‘psyche-as-medium’ in order to stay in existence, but it’s really not how it seems to me.

The marvellous thing about actuality is that one cannot make it up, destroy it or alter it in any way – it is already here exactly as it is. Nobody can add to it, take anything away from it, shape it or diminish it, possess it for themselves or hide it from others and therefore nobody needs to hold it up or defend it – it is always here in all its splendour and perfection readily apparent whenever the bubble of the ‘self’ bursts.

*

Yep. The PCE I had last summer had none of this ‘pattern matching’ or ‘symbol-generating’, or ‘plasticity’, and the psyche was not ‘visible’ at all. There was an underlying similarity though that I can’t quite put my finger on, except to say that both seemed to have had a pure and perfect basis.

Would it be right to say that the first was a pure, i.e. ‘self’-less, experience while the other was an image of a pure experience created by your psyche?

Not quite. The other was an experience in which psyche was present, but it was not created out of or by the psyche. In both cases there was an underlying purity and perfection; in the latter case it was manifest in mind as well as in world. And the presence of a mind-medium (unlike ordinary ‘imagination’) did not in any way diminish the perfection and purity of the actual world as experienced by the senses.

The purity of the actual world means that there is no ‘self’ or psyche present and it is the affective ‘self’ or psyche that distorts the clear perception of what is actual.

If you decide to reinterpret ‘the perfection and purity of the actual world’ as being an experience of the psyche ‘manifest in mind as well as in world’ then we are talking about two different things. It does make communication a little confusing though.

I’ve been reading up on Actual Freedom site since a few months and I’m glad I came across this wonderful practice. I used to meditate in the ‘Ramana Maharishi’ method for about 1.5 years. Later ‘knowledge’ showed the light and I became a materialist/Atheist. I found the AF practice extremely simple and testable. I’ve been successful and happy with my ‘results’ at inducing a PCE mostly when I’m ‘outside’ (i.e. walking on the streets, in the garden, etc.).

Given that you say you ‘became a materialist/Atheist’ – have you been able to understand in what way an actual freedom from the human condition is the *third* alternative to both materialism and spiritualism?

My typical experience of PCE is as follows:

Title: Is something wrong with my ‘PCE’?

What is wrong with your PCE is that it is an altered state of consciousness but not a pure consciousness experience.

Let me explain it according to your own description –

1. Beauty is a feeling perception and as such cannot be part of a pure consciousness experience where the identity and with it the whole feeling faculty is absent.

2. In a PCE you *are* the body and there is no-one (no ‘I’) inside the body to feel the body doing things.

3. ‘Thoughtless’ is a quality attempted to achieve in spiritual practice where thoughts are being seen as the culprit whereas in a PCE – and in actual freedom – thoughts may or may not occur. How do you think living in actual freedom is possible (a permanent PCE so to speak) if there were never any thoughts to sort out the practical things in life, to contemplate about current events, to communicate with people such as on this mailing list, and so on?

However, when I try to have a PCE in the middle of ‘intellectually demanding’ actions, things start going wrong and thus this post.

Maybe those ‘‘intellectually demanding’ actions’ are really emotionally demanding actions? People often mistake their feelings to be thoughts, not recognizing the affective quality of most of their thoughts.

IMO, ‘Intellectualism’ needs modelling a future action + an object within one’s mind and estimating how the ‘model’ behaves for any given decision [snipped link to AI]. I see ‘Intellectuality’ as being in direct conflict with ‘living this moment as a flesh and blood body’. In such a scenario, like when being at work, I only see lips moving and sounds emanating from people. ‘Words’ don’t make ‘meanings’ for the ‘I’ isn’t even around to care. Is this an inherent ‘side effect’ of practicing AF? Or am I doing something wrong? It would be great to hear experienced people’s thoughts on this.

It appears that when you became a materialist/Atheist you nevertheless kept the spiritual idea that thoughts and consequently the content of words are impure and that therefore only a thoughtless body and meaningless sounds can be pure. Rather than it being ‘an inherent ‘side-effect’’ of practicing actualism this unliveable ethic of spiritualists and materialists alike is pure fantasy and can never work in everyday life.

In actualism, I recognize that it is the instinctual passions and the identity arising from these passions that is the problem, not thoughts or words or ‘intellectualism’ per se. When you recognize this fact in theory – as in seeing that it makes sense – then you can begin to put this understanding in practice. This requires that I pay an ongoing attention to how I experience this moment – what do I think, what do I feel and how do I sensately experience this moment of being alive.

This attentiveness alerts me to any of the non-felicitous feelings as and when they arise which allows me to feel the feeling (instead of the usual automatic reaction of repressing or expressing the feeling), in order to be able to label it, inquire what triggered it, examine what belief, moral or ethic may be responsible for having triggered it off, and so on. Eventually this attentiveness will result in unravelling all of one’s beliefs, ideas, ideals, philosophies, worldviews and social conditioning and enables one to become acutely aware of the instinctual passions as and when they arise.

Being aware of one’s feelings and instinctual passions will in turn enable you to differentiate between your affective and your non-affective thoughts, the later of which quite commonly occur in PCEs as well as in virtual freedom.

To No 106: – (…) It is not important to label the experiences as PCE or not. (…)

I disagree. If you want to become actually free from the human condition then it is vital to accurately ‘label the experiences as PCE or not’ because a pure consciousness experience is my touch stone and my guiding light, so to speak, to know what I want which direction I am heading and what I need to do to achieve my goal. A PCE is the one and only experience that makes me aware of and allows me to experience the actual world that lies hidden beneath the elaborate, confusing and ever-changing chimera created by the identity inside this body and a PCE is the one and only experience that can clearly guide me towards an actual freedom from the human condition.

Besides, unless one is able to accurately label a PCE as such and an altered state of consciousness as a non-PCE one will remain dependant on the words and experiences of others and can never be free from this dependency and the resulting resentment of such external authority.

I was practising Vipassana with the intent to be as happy and harmless as possible while facing the numerous feelings of both hardship and bliss that were revealed by the scrutiny of attentiveness, in order to eliminate those feelings and end up more happy and harmless... and what followed was a period of genuinely feeling really good, and then of naiveté and felicitous sensuousness, and then that resulted in a PCE!

No 60: Sounds like actualism with your eyes closed!

Yeah that’s what I thought too, and it worked.

Given that you have asked for my input let me say that I found it exceedingly useful for clarity’s sake to exactly label what I was feeling and what I was doing. In this case, going by your description you were not doing Vipassana as taught by the authorities in the field but an adaptation that was more like Jack said, ‘actualism with your eyes closed’ and it had a very different effect than the original Vipassana.

This is not to say that a PCE cannot occur doing the original Vipassana or anything else for that matter – I had a PCE whilst helping in a ‘Fisher-Hoffmann’ emotional release process, during a ‘Who-Am-I’ group, during an Avatar technique session and even during a discourse of Rajneesh, all of which I only recognized as PCEs in hindsight. A PCE, being a glitch in the generally operating control-program of ‘me’, can happen any time in life under the most ordinary or extra-ordinary of circumstances. However, if I want to not only have PCEs occur on a regular basis but also use them as a tool for becoming free from the human condition then it makes sense to stick with the process of actualism so as to avoid slipping into altered states of consciousness or getting hooked on the experience only whilst ignoring the process of becoming increasingly free from malice and sorrow.

*

No 60: (Or does it have ... ‘spiritual’ ... side-effects in your experience perhaps?)

On that course, I didn’t notice any spiritual side effects. I haven’t really sat much since because I just haven’t felt like it. My life’s been markedly better than before since I started with actualism in November last year. Sitting does make me feeling good, and I’m thinking of doing it from time to time as a way of giving myself a kick-start and activating delight… but I want to talk to Richard and the gang about it too.

I am not surprised that you ‘haven’t really sat much since’ as I had the same experience. Why waste my time sitting in the corner with my eyes closed when I can instead be out and about enjoying being alive doing everyday things!

Besides, I found that the trouble with wanting to integrate some old (spiritual) practices into the practice of actualism was that this would generally blur the distinction between the spiritual goal of dissociation and transcendence to a higher ‘Self’ on one side and the actualist’s goal of ‘self-immolation or ‘self’-diminishment as in a virtual freedom on the other. And going by my own experience, particularly in the beginning of practicing actualism I needed all the help for clarity that I could give myself.

Two things I particularly remember that helped me ‘kick-start and activating delight’ in the beginning – one was to deliberately change my habit of only being focussed on my plans and worries of the day the moment I awoke, and instead pay attention to my surroundings, the delights of the ever-changing weather and the many little sensate delights whenever they happened. The other was to regularly take time out, look around me, enjoy the weather, notice my fellow human beings, the delightful interactions that do occur and then, especially after an eventful day, put up my feet and contemplate about the specific events of the day, about the human condition in me and the feelings that occurred, why they occurred, and how I could prevent me from getting upset the next time round. Inevitably, having worked out some emotional problem that had surfaced in the day, would automatically re-activate delight and make me aware of how good life really is when all the petty worries of the day are neatly left behind.

Footnotes:

1.) Peter and Vineeto both have had a lot of experience with spiritual paths, and given their claims of the virtually free lives they live, their writings on the site, and Richard’s recognition that they understand what he’s talking about, I would value their input as well. Vineeto has also sat at least one Vipassana course so perhaps she might be able to point out things I’ve overlooked or haven’t thought through clearly. RE: things that cause a PCE, 29.7.2006

2.) Vipassana, according to its ‘home-place’, Theravada Buddhism, is practiced so that

‘the view of self will then be totally removed and security will be finally gained against the danger of rebirth in the realms of the hells, animals and petas. In this respect, the exercise is simply to note or observe the existing elements in every act of seeing. It should be noted as ‘seeing, seeing’ on every occasion of seeing. ... If not, based on this act of seeing there will arise sakkaya-ditthi, which will view it in the form of a person or as belonging to a person, and as being permanent, pleasurable, and self. This will arouse the defilements of craving and attachment, which will in turn prompt deeds, and the deeds will bring forth rebirth in a new existence.’ ‘Satipatthana Vipassana, Insight through Mindfulness’ by The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw

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