Selected Correspondence: Excellence Experience

Richard’s Selected Correspondence

On Excellence Experience

ALAN: Turning to the PCE, you wrote: [Vineeto]: ‘In the interest of having clear, definable terms, a pure consciousness experience is just that – an experience of pure consciousness, where the ‘self’ is temporarily absent, completely. This means that there is no affective experience in a PCE whatsoever, no ‘love, bliss, rapture’ or the imagination of being ‘the saviour of mankind’. Whenever there is any feeling or emotion experienced whatsoever, it is not a PCE. For most people, the experience may well start as a PCE, but invariably ‘I’ will step in and seize the experience as ‘mine’ and interpret and feel it to be a spiritual experience. One needs to understand and practice Actualism to be sufficiently aware of one’s beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions in order to avoid the trap of Enlightenment on the path to Actual Freedom’ [endquote]. This seems to contradict what Richard wrote to me: [Richard]: ‘A ‘difference in degree’ sounds like an apt description ... I cannot, of course, recall with 100% accuracy what happened twenty-odd years ago (plus there is too much other stuff that happened which blurs precise recall), so I would have to say there was an affective response which varied from experience to experience from virtually non-existent to full-blown grandiosity’ [endquote].

VINEETO: Yes, I think, Richard is in trouble here. Joking aside, I’m sure he’ll explain it to you.

RICHARD: Ha ... you sure know how to get me out of the innards of computers and back to writing, eh? However, it is this simple: back in 1981 I had umpteen number of peak experiences – sometimes two-three times a day varying from minutes to hours – and they were wild and woolly times. Somewhere along the line I had lost sight of the four hour pure consciousness experience that had triggered my whole incursion into becoming free of the human condition and there was certainly a ‘difference in degree’ of the affective element in each experience ... ranging from virtually non-existent to full-blown grandiosity for the ‘me’ that was inhabiting this body. The PCE stayed pristine in its own domain, however, and stood me in good stead some eleven years later ... as I have recorded in ‘A Brief Personal History’:

• ‘It troubled me deeply that I was in such a situation because I seem to be driven by some force to ‘Spread the Word’ and that was never my intention all those years ago when I first had what is known as a ‘Peak Experience’ which initiated my incursion into all matters Spiritual, culminating in the ‘death’ of my ego and catapulting me into this Absolute State. My intent back then had been to cleanse myself of all that is detrimental to personal happiness and interpersonal harmony ... in other words: Peace on earth in my life-time. Instead of that rather simple ambition, I found that I was impelled on an odyssey to be the latest Saviour of Humankind in a long list of Enlightened Beings ... and this imposition did not sit well with me’.

Alan, you and I have had discussions, over the past two years or so, regarding the PCE devolving into an ASC when ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ step in and possess the experience – the affective element in other words – and I would say that Vineeto has expressed it (above) and in other places such that I have little to add. I was, of course, responding to your observation: ‘I have said that perhaps then I have not had a PCE, if that is what a PCE involves. Well, in a way, that was correct. This is the first time that ‘I’ have experienced, as an actuality, the validity of the statement – and it’s a whammer! And, of course I can now see that I have had previous PCE’s – but perhaps they were all ‘tinged’ with an, however slight, affective element and I guess this one is too ... perhaps it is just a difference in degree’ . If the experience is ‘perhaps tinged’ with an affective element then it is not, or is no longer, a pure experience. Indisputably the PCE has no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – no affective element whatsoever – as a PCE is a pure consciousness experience.

In view of all that has been explored and written about, in the twenty-odd years since the ‘I’ that was inhabiting this body first had a PCE, nobody has to follow my experience and blunder along in the dark. It is pertinent to point out that I am putting the story together ‘after the event’, as it were, endeavouring to present as coherent a picture as possible. If anyone were to sit down with me and hear all that transpired (which cannot happen as I do not remember a lot of it) they would go away totally confused ... it was a mish-mash of experiences; a jumbled, bumbled, delirious, chaotic, bizarre, freaky and peculiar trip I went on. Vineeto and Peter get regaled with bits and pieces of it every now and again ... snippets of anecdotes when some discussion jogs my memory and another crazy morsel is added to the weird smorgasbord already presented. But the main thing I stress through all these sagas is the only danger inherent on the wide and wondrous path: because of the affective faculty one may lose the plot and become seduced by the glamour and glory and glitz of enlightenment.

I kid you not ... ‘Article 36’ of ‘Richard’s Journal’ spells this out in no uncertain terms.

It may well be that this is an opportune time to address what you phrased as being the difference between ‘PE’s, PCE’s and actual freedom (‘AF’)’ in another post: the term ‘peak experience’ is an all-encompassing phrase ... a ‘catch-all’ term for many and varied experiences. I have explained how I came about the term to this Mailing List before. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘Mostly peoples interpreted them according to the prevailing norms of their culture, as mostly the PCE devolves into an ASC, anyway. For example (if you really wish to get confused) in a paper called ‘What does Mysticism have to Teach us About Consciousness?’ Mr. Robert Forman says: ‘PCE’s, encounters with consciousness devoid of intentional content, may be just the least complex encounter with awareness per se that we students of consciousness seek. (...) This experience, which has been called the pure consciousness event, or PCE, has been identified in virtually every tradition. (...) The pure consciousness event may be defined as a wakeful but content-less (non-intentional) consciousness ...<SNIP>...’.
‘I merely took the academically accepted phrase (Pure Consciousness Event) and substituted ‘Pure Consciousness Experience’ for it, a couple of years ago, so as to regain the actual purity of the PCE back from those who ascribe ASC properties (mystical purity) to it. Before that I had been using the expression ‘Peak Experience’, as popularised by Mr. Abraham Maslow, for about eleven years. In the beginning I used hippie terminology (from my ‘alternate’ background after the sixties) but PCE (Pure Consciousness Experience) seems most suitable. I also favoured the word ‘experience’ over ‘event’ because Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti makes such a thing about his ASC not being an experience. An actual freedom is very earthy and, living this experience twenty four hours a day is all new in human history ... thus I get to invent names (like ‘Actual Freedom’) and describe qualities and properties, like any explorer ... it is all good fun’ [endquote].

I typed <peak experience> into the search function and sent it through my web page and came up with 157 entries. I see that I often mix and mingle the phrase with <pure consciousness experience> and this would lead to confusion only if one disregards the places where I clearly delineate what I mean. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘These pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) which usually occur in a ‘peak experience’, as they are sometimes called, change one’s life forever. In a PCE everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already perfect ... that humans are all living in perfection ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing’.
This is from ‘Article 4’; page 38; ‘Richards Journal’ and can be found as an excerpt on-line and a variation of the same is on page 5 of the ‘Introduction’ to ‘Richard’s Journal’. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘I was already in an Altered State Of Consciousness and my companion had, prior to our meeting, experienced moments of perfection and purity in what is known as ‘pure consciousness experiences’. In such a peak experience everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already always perfect ... that humans are all living in purity ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing’.
This can also be found as a sample article on-line.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Obviously, the physical cause necessitates a physical solution (the extinction of the instinctual ‘being’ itself) and this altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice will not eventuate unless the temporary absence or abeyance of the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) which created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced, remembered and activated. This peak experience of one’s potentiality is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and is essential to the process of freeing oneself from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘I came across this nomenclature two years ago when I first came onto the Internet and accessed all the ‘Consciousness Studies’ groups (like the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ operating out of Cambridge and another one in Tucson and so on) and found them using PCE as in ‘pure consciousness event’ (but then linking it to the teachings of Mr. Buddha and Patanjali Yoga and their ilk). I subscribed to one of their Mailing Lists at the time and thus adopted their usage. Prior to that I had been using Mr. Abraham Maslow’s term ‘Peak Experience’ as a more respectable substitute for my own use of ‘tripping’ born out of my hippie background. The experience of pure consciousness has a global incidence, independent of race, gender, age or era’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘There are many, many instances of people experiencing being ‘not me’. They are called ‘Pure Consciousness Experiences’ (PCE’s) and occur in what is known as a ‘Peak Experience’. What stands out in a PCE is that there is, in fact, no ‘me’ anywhere at all – either inside the body or out of it – to be having the experience. It is this sensate body experiencing itself ... and the term ‘this body’ includes this physical brain perceiving. There is even a name for this ‘me-less’ thought: Apperception. With apperception, the brain is able to perceive itself ... not ‘I’ perceiving ‘my’ brain thinking, as is normal, but awareness happening of its own accord’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘An actual freedom, here on earth, in this life-time, as this body is not an idea – it is an actuality. This can be ascertained apperceptively via a pure consciousness experience (PCE) which can occur in a peak experience’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Your dictionary is not the only dictionary in the world; there are others which are more comprehensive. For example, the Oxford Dictionary, out of which I drew this meaning of the word apperception: ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. This is the third meaning of the word ... the two you quoted above are also in the Oxford Dictionary. (I also use a Webster’s Merriam which, like yours, only gives the first two meanings). The general meaning of apperception is: ‘how things are represented in consciousness’. For those who can remember how thinking happened of its own accord during a PCE in a peak experience, the third meaning is at once obvious and evident. Apperceptive awareness – this body being conscious without an ‘I’ in any way, shape or form – has a global occurrence ... it is universal in its scope. It is just that most people either forget about their PCE – for there is no emotional ‘I’ present to record the moment on its affective ‘tape-recorder’ – or they interpret the experience according to their culture’s icons’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘You obviously cannot remember any of your PCE’s. In such a peak experience there is no ‘other controller of the ‘thinker’ or ‘feeler’ who must be further set aside’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘For eleven years I was driven by some ‘energy’ to spread ‘The Word’ (by whatever name) and that had never been my intention before that when I first had what is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE). That peak experience initiated my incursion into all matters metaphysical’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘One cannot think or feel one’s way into this magical world – the world as-it-is in actuality – but one does need an absolute conviction that such a world exists. This conviction comes out of the pure consciousness experience ... and these peak experiences are momentary glimpses into the actual, the world of pristine perfection. To reiterate: in the PCE, it is immediately seen that ‘I’ do not actually exist’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Psychedelics – known technically as psychotropic substances – have been used for centuries to produce ‘different realities’ – known technically as ‘Altered States of Consciousness’. They can be useful so long as one is clear as to one’s intentions, otherwise one will be led astray by the various mystical phenomena that presents itself. If one is guided by pure intent – that is, to live the very best that is possible for both oneself and all of humankind – then psychotropic substances can produce a ‘peak experience’, giving rise to apperception. This is not an ‘Altered State of Consciousness. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself – it is a bare awareness ... apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. This is called a peak experience. The experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that is arrived at by contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking ... and thinking takes place of its own accord. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity. All this is born out of pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘‘I’ am not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ can tap into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universal with a pure intent born out of the PCE that one has during a peak experience. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘I find your description above to be an accurate portrayal of what I have been calling a peak experience. At other times I have named it an actual intimacy, which I defined as: ‘The direct experience of the actuality of people, things and events’. It is a condition wherein the psychological distance disappears and everything is immediate and ultimate’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘In spite of the fact that every single human being has had at least one pure consciousness experience (PCE) – and usually more – in their lifetime, they somehow can not differentiate between that peak experience of apperception (wherein ‘I’, the thought and felt ‘being’, temporarily quits the scene and the actual world becomes apparent) and their pre-conceived notions that everyday reality is an illusion disguising some metaphysical ‘Greater Reality’.

*

• [Richard]: ‘Everyone I have ever questioned has reported at least one PCE in their life. Usually more than one ... and they can last from as little as one-two seconds to several hours. One woman I spoke with had it last all afternoon and night, finally going to sleep at 2.00 AM ... only to find it still happening upon waking. It gradually diminished during the course of the morning. And it is not only my observation ... many are the accounts I have read of this ... the subject is currently being discussed around the world in the fields of academia. It comes up in the new study (of the last fifteen years or so) called ‘Consciousness Studies’. This is where I obtained the phrase ‘PCE’ from ... I had called it a ‘Peak Experience’ (after Mr. Abraham Maslow) until then. Oh, there are many, many websites discussing the nature of consciousness itself ... one such site is called ‘The Journal Of Consciousness Studies’ and operates out of Cambridge University in the UK’.

I have also asked Vineeto and Peter if they would include the phrases ‘nature experience’ and ‘jamais vu’ in their ‘180 Degrees Opposite’ schematic so as to help clarify the matter as that is how I first described what I would now call pure consciousness experiences back in 1980-1981. And I see that Vineeto has posted a paragraph (derived from page 226; ‘Richards Journal’ and an excerpt of which can be found on-line) wherein I describe the ‘nature experience’ unambiguously. As for jamais vu: while jamais vu (‘never seen’) is not so common as déjà vu (‘already seen’), it can be just as compelling. Jamais vu is the opposite of déjà vu: instead of being extra familiar, as in déjà vu, a familiar situation seems totally unfamiliar. The world of people, things and events are experienced as for the first time ... there is little or no connection between long-term memory and perceptions from this moment. When a person is in this state nothing they experience seems to have anything to do with the past; everything suddenly becomes novel, totally new.

The sense of knowing people or things or events – and knowing how to relate to them – simply vanishes. Details one has seen a thousand times suddenly become engaging; the background is as equally important as the figure that occupies centre-stage. Or, as someone wrote on a now-defunct mailing list some time ago: ‘jamais vu is a feeling that you have never seen anything around you; it seems like everything around you is new and you’ve never been there before – as opposed to déjà vu when everything seems like you’ve lived it before – and you feel that you’ve never done this particular thing before, even when you know you have’.

This odd, uncanny, surreal experience can happen to people who temporarily lose their memory or, more commonly, in an epileptic seizure (psychiatrically known as ‘temporal lobe epilepsy’ or TLE). For example, one such epilepsy sufferer wrote:

• [quote]: ‘I wonder, along with the doctors, if these mighty episodes which are so intimate yet so strange and autonomous for us epileptics, are after all just the random detour of chemicals and brain voltage caused by circuitry problems. Quite a few of us who have already-seen’ would dare to see even more; would actually follow that dangerous, disappearing, inbound road consciously and witness for the first time what is usually jamais-vu and hidden, and I mean the steady dark frolic of neurons and the ghost that is called ego’ [endquote].
(http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/neurowebforum/GeneralFeedbackArticles/YellowBrickRoad.html)

Incidentally, there are four types of déjà vu that clearly delineate between associated, but different, neurological experiences. These are déjà vecu (already experienced), déjà senti (already felt) and déjà visité (already visited) and déjà entendu (already heard). Déjà vecu is the most common déjà vu experience and involves the sensation of having done something or having been in an identical situation before and knowing what will happen next. These sensations are not only experienced as the outstanding sensations – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching – but can also include the proprioceptive sensations.

So ‘jamais vu’ was my original nomenclature ... and yet another way of describing the pure consciousness experience is with the psychiatric terms ‘depersonalisation’, ‘derealisation’, alexithymia’ and ‘anhedonia’ ... which descriptions I have scattered throughout my correspondence. The article ‘Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’ may be well worth a visit in this regard. The characteristics already detailed (‘depersonalisation’, ‘alexithymia’, ‘derealisation’, ‘anhedonia’) are the result of expressing actual freedom in the psychiatric models of the human condition – which reflects the ‘human’ struggle to understand this fundamentally simple process called consciousness – and are inherently arbitrary in that they do not exist as separate items. The extinction of identity in its totality with its ensuing loss of reality coupled with the inability to affectively feel pleasure along with the ending of the feeling faculty all takes place in the space of a few glorious moments. Peace-on-earth is the certain result ... because it is already always just here right now.

Then one is this universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being.

I see that this naming dialogue was re-opened when Peter suggested introducing the phrase ‘excellence experience’ to describe the penultimate virtual freedom experience ... and all this discussion is well worthwhile, eh? My companion, who is exacting when it comes to grading herself/her experiences, has classifications ranging from good, very good, very, very good, excellent ... and the perfection peak experience (PCE). She is most particular to not confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience ... and the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. What I describe as ‘magical’ she prefers to call ‘entering into the fourth dimension’ (not to be confused with the Hindu fourth state known as ‘Turiya’).

This magical ‘other dimension’ is where time has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ ... there is only this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious, up-front and out-in-the open ... there is nowhere to hide and no reason to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to the universe: one is perennially just here right now ... actually in time and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

It may or may not be a useful phrase to others ... which is what Peter was asking. I cannot definitively say one way or the other as I am not an expert on virtual freedom ... virtual freedom is derived from what the ‘I’ that was lived from March to September in 1981 and was first put into practice by my previous companion. When she dropped the baton, so as to pursue other avenues, Peter and Vineeto had already taken up the challenge to pioneer the wide and wondrous path. They are the first couple to live together in peace and harmony – by being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day – and both they and Grace intimately know far, far more about the intricacies of the daily living of it than I do.

By and large I go by their reports as to how effective it is.

GARY: Yesterday I had the first really clear and unequivocal PCE since starting with this ... previously, I had had what I call ‘mini-PCE’s’. They lasted only very brief periods of time, say an hour or so, and I wasn’t really sure it was a PCE. Yesterday, however, I had no doubt at all about the experience, as it accorded in all details with what I have read about PCE’s ... I had some trouble at work ... some old fears of mine concerning work, authority, success, etc. came up for me. I found myself in some turmoil about these issues and, investigating deeper into it, I once again saw the futility of a feeling-based life, a so-called ‘normal’ life of sorrow, malice, nurture, and desire ... I wrote in my journal to myself what I would do to bring about peace-on-earth, for myself and others. A little later, I sat in my chair and was still for quite awhile. The PCE experience started there and continued for the rest of the day, at times most vividly, at other times diminishing somewhat, but always lustrous, vibrant, and rich. One of the things I noticed most strongly was the intensity of sensation – the clearness and brilliance of colours, and the ability to hear every little sound around me ... at a gravel pit ... I saw a stone popping out of the ground that had some interesting features to it. I ran my hand along the exposed top of it and it felt to be alive. Similarly, the texture and surface of the stone appeared to be actually a living thing. It reminded me of psychedelic drug experiences I had when I was younger, except that it was natural and uncontaminated by any emotions of fright, fear, doubt, etc. Later on we went to the supermarket to do the week’s shopping. Another thing I noticed about the experience was how any object, even the most ordinary and mundane, instantly had become amazingly interesting and wonderful to look at. Everything I looked at had a life of its own. Everything appeared fresh and new. Everywhere I looked there were sensual delights to behold. Another thing was that there was some kind of very pleasurable sensation located near the solar plexus region. I find this difficult to convey but it was a very satisfying visceral sensation. I shall have to, in future, see what I can notice about it ... I found that I could refresh the experience by running the ‘How am I ...’. question and by increased attentiveness to the feelings that contaminated the experience. A couple of times, the experience would come back in full bloom in all its’ lustrousness. The PCE stands out in such dramatic contrast to ordinary, every-day perception and sensation ... another key feature of the experience – no affective element, no feelings, no disturbance whatsoever – there was nothing that could disturb the experience, take anything away from it, or detract from it. In other words, there was no feeling ‘me’ to spoil the experience. How amazing.

RICHARD: Yes ... ‘how amazing’ indeed, eh? I am particularly pleased to see you say that you had a ‘clear and unequivocal PCE’ as, of course, I have no way of ascertaining the intrinsic quality of what any body experiences other than what they describe – and I have no intention of setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience anyway – so I cannot adjudge the exact nature of what you experienced. The rule of thumb is to ask oneself: is this it; is this the ultimate; is this the utter fulfilment and total contentment; is this my destiny; is this how I would want to live for the remainder of my life ... and so on. It is up to each and every person to decide for themselves what it is that they want ... as I oft-times say: it is your life you are living and only you get to reap the rewards and pay the consequences for any action or inaction you may or may not do.

When I first started writing on the internet I tended towards saying things like ‘I find your description to be an accurate portrayal of what I have been calling a peak experience’ and ‘going by what you have written I have no doubt that your experience is a PCE’ and so on, as it was important to both establish a common basis for discussion and to build up a data-base of differing people’s descriptions for others to read and draw affirmation and confirmation from. Yet herein lay a catch-22 that became increasingly obvious as more and more people reported their experience ... I was, by default, setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience by (a) my words of corroboration or negation ... or (b) by the inclusion of their description in or the exclusion of their description from the data-base!

I am finding these things out as I go along and I am left with no alternative but to devise a stock-standard disclaimer such as this: I am simply reporting my experience and it is entirely up to the other to do with it what they will ... and I stress that it is the pure consciousness experience (PCE) that is one’s guiding light – one’s authority or one’s teacher – and not me or my description of a PCE. The evidence of human history demonstrates that there is a distinct possibility that things can go awry wherever the human psyche is being subjectively investigated. Yet there are some notable people (or notorious people) in this field of endeavour who have rashly promised that they will take care of everything if only the person investigating will believe them and/or have faith in them and/or trust them and/or surrender to them and/or obey them ... and so on. And there are more than a few of these gullible persons currently occupying places in psychiatric wards as a direct result ... and the person who promised to ‘take care of everything’ is remarkably unforthcoming (it is counsellors and therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists who have to pick up the pieces).

I cannot save anybody at all.

Having said that, and I am not inferring anything either way by what I am writing here, it may or may not be relevant to report that one must be most particular to not confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience ... and the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. This is where time has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ ... there is only this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious, up-front and out-in-the open ... there is nowhere to hide and no reason to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to the universe: already always just here right now ... actually in time and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

In a PCE one is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence – the ‘actualness’ of everything and everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.

It is one’s destiny to be living the utter peace of the perfection of the purity welling endlessly as the infinitude this eternal, infinite and perpetual universe actually is.

RICHARD: When I first started writing on the internet I tended towards saying things like ‘I find your description to be an accurate portrayal of what I have been calling a peak experience’ and ‘going by what you have written I have no doubt that your experience is a PCE’ and so on, as it was important to both establish a common basis for discussion and to build up a data-base of differing people’s descriptions for others to read and draw affirmation and confirmation from. Yet herein lay a catch-22 that became increasingly obvious as more and more people reported their experience ... I was, by default, setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience by (a) my words of corroboration or negation ... or (b) by the inclusion of their description in or the exclusion of their description from the data-base!

GARY: Yes, particularly since on my part there has been some confusion on account of the terminology, some lack of clarity about the difference between the so-called peak experience and the PCE and, now, what is described as an excellence experience ...

RICHARD: Writing on mailing lists has been beneficial for me in that feedback made me aware that I had to get my act together over precise terminology ... I was straddling two eras, as it were, and had never realised that the term ‘peak experience’, as made popular by Mr. Abraham Maslow, was so loaded with the metaphysical content it has (I had mixed and mingled the phrases). As for this term ‘excellence experience’, it is being suggested to represent the penultimate ... the best of what can be experienced, in what is termed ‘virtual freedom’, wherein ‘I’ am so thinly in existence ‘I’ am virtually not there.

I use the word ‘virtual’ deliberately (it has nothing to do with the virtual reality of cyber-space) as ‘virtual’ means ‘almost as good as’ or ‘nearly the same as’ or ‘in effect comparable to’ and so on. This is because it is humanly possible to thoroughly improve one’s lot in life, before the ultimate happens, wherein one lives in a well-earned happy and harmless way 99% of the time ... and which is streets ahead of normal human expectations.

• (Dictionary Definition: virtual: that is so in essence or effect, although not recognised formally, actually, or by strict definition as such; almost absolute. Possessed of certain physical virtues or powers; effective in respect of inherent qualities. Capable of producing a certain effect or result’).

GARY: ... it is good that you are not lending affirmance in order to establish the validity of these conditions. One needs to ‘see for themselves’ what is up by comparing the experience with what is written and by talking to others.

RICHARD: These words are music to my ears.

RICHARD: The most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element ... in a PCE one is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence – the ‘actualness’ of everything and everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.

GARY: In hindsight, the description of the PCE fits the bill, with the magical, fairy-tale like quality. The excellence experience may be more common to me lately that I hitherto thought. In the excellence experience, there is a commonness to it not found in the PCE.

RICHARD: Ahh ... good, I am pleased to have feedback that shows this to be a facet of experiencing that more than just a few people have so far reported. It all helps to clarify and aided communication.

GARY: In the PCE, there is a clear sense that something of momentous importance is happening, at least it seemed that way for me.

RICHARD: Excellent ... words conveying what ‘momentous importance’ conveys are words such as what I look for in a description, for it is no little thing what one does/what we are doing. What is conveyed is what impelled ‘me’, all those years ago, into proceeding with the utmost dispatch so as to enable peace-on-earth sooner rather than later ... so much so that when the going got rocky, from time to time, when ‘I’ put ‘my’ foot on the brake pedal in order to slow the process down the pedal went straight to the floor.

‘I’ was on the ride of a life-time.

GARY: The excellence experience, if not labelled such, might seem to be an experience of exceptional clarity and lucidity. With the PCE, words like bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth, vibrant, clear, alive, animate, come to mind.

RICHARD: The words ‘exceptional clarity and lucidity’ strikes me as being a very good description of the distinction when compared with ‘bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth’ and so on as I am swimming in largesse.

GARY: One of the things that was most striking about it was how uncommon everything appeared, how rich and variegated everything was.

RICHARD: Yes, I took particular note of your depiction of the stone in the gravel pit: sometimes peoples have looked at me in shock when I wax eloquent about actual intimacy with a stone, a brick, a glass ashtray, a polystyrene cup and so on, but I just tell them that I am officially mad and/or that I am a war veteran and they, presumably, go away content that all has been thus satisfactorily explained.

It is great that you are here for your input from all your posts is invaluable.

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The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.