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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Pure Consciousness Experiences
RESPONDENT: Hi, I am from Poland(!), {and still learning English}. RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list. RESPONDENT: Anyway it was relief to me to find AF [few months ago] because it was proove, confirmation of my interest in this topic. As a matter of fact, I felt already relief when I found U.G. Krishnamurti and others with similar [the same?] experience of No-Self like Bernadette Roberts, John Lewis. Yet Roberts was tinged with spirituality and Krishnamurti was inconsistent and in some way biased. Your mode of expression appeals to me the most. However, I have problem, I am not sure whether I ever had PCE [here one question you said somewhere that the self in PCE is in suspension [or declutched], is your state different from PCE at all?], but you probably mentioned of possibility of evoking it by hallucinogens e.g. LSD [again I’m not sure]. Anyway I have taken several times LSD in my life and don’t know whether it is useful in ‘the path’ [maybe it was just ASC]. I feel still sometimes swayed by some feelings and emotions [I am 23] because of many years of using them [let say these positive], and it is hard to me to find balance between doing things emotionlessly and not getting bored. Anyway I am working on this. Please of some suggestion although I know you probably said everything already in those matters. RICHARD: First and foremost: the actualism method is not about doing things emotionlessly
... the following link explains this in some detail (half-way down the page): In regards hallucinogens: I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances (for obvious reasons). If, however, someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use as it is all-too-easy for an altered state of consciousness (ASC) to emerge rather than a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... there are many accounts available on the internet and 4 or 5 years ago I browsed through several web pages and never found any description that resembled a PCE. The expression I use for what happens in a PCE is that identity is in abeyance – which means ‘a state of suspension or temporary disuse; a dormant condition liable to revival’ according to the Oxford Dictionary – and is the closest experience possible to what an actual freedom from the human condition itself is without actually becoming free ... and anybody I have been whilst they were having a PCE has indubitably been experiencing the same-same experience as is my on-going experiencing. And it is neither the same nor similar to what the people you mention speak of. RESPONDENT: 4. Richard, was it HAIETMOBA that induced your first PCE ... RICHARD: No, the four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) in 1980, which initiated the remembrance of many such moments of perfection stretching way back into my childhood, and which set in train the entire process eventually resulting in an actual freedom from the human condition, was inadvertently precipitated by psylocibin (given to me by a well-meaning but somewhat misguided associate at the time who told me it was similar in effect to tetrahydrocannabinol only much stronger) ... just as you have described in an earlier e-mail:
Only I would not say ‘... into a bubble of perfection’ but rather ‘out of a bubble of imperfection’ – as there is only perfection in actuality – nor ‘being present in a perfect bubble of real time and real space and real things’ but rather ‘being just here, right now, in actual space and actual time as actual form’ (and thus out of the bubble of real time, real space, and real things) ... but I can comprehend that from a real-world perspective it looks to be the other way around. The ‘invisible membrane’ I can relate to ... as can some other people I have spoken to over the years. RESPONDENT: Something else that accompanied the experience of passing through this ‘invisible membrane’ was a peculiar sense that I’d entered into a new ‘day’. Hard to describe, but you probably know exactly what I mean. RICHARD: As in even though everything is familiar it has never been before – all is novel, never boring, all is new, never old, all is fresh, never stale – and never will be again? Or, as someone wrote on a now-defunct mailing list some time ago, when describing such an experience: ‘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’. RESPONDENT: I knew perfectly well it was the same day that I’d set out for my morning walk, but the ‘me’ who had set out for a walk that morning seemed to be aeons ago (metaphorically, not literally) – an artefact of a different time altogether. RICHARD: It is more that the ‘different time’ is an artefact of ‘my’ making ... time itself is the arena, as it were, in which all things happen. RESPONDENT: (But there was no loss of common sense. I knew it was still ‘today’). RICHARD: In fact commonsense operates better than ever, eh? * RESPONDENT: ... or did you develop the HAIETMOBA method as a result of a spontaneous PCE? RICHARD: RICHARD: Yes ... essentially ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ meant ‘what is preventing the PCE from happening at this very moment’ to me back in 1981 (six months after the initial PCE when I had thoroughly satisfied myself that the childhood PCE’s had, of course, nothing to do with any substance whatsoever). Or, to put that another way, it meant ‘what is preventing the already always existing peace-on-earth (as evidenced in the PCE) from being apparent’ ... and it usually was either a feeling or a feeling-fed thought (as in a belief ... oft-times cunningly disguised as a truth). The PCE demonstrates that the pristine perfection of the actual world is just here – right now – for the very asking.
RESPONDENT: For me, the PCE didn’t jog any specific memories at the time, but looking back now, there have been a few times over the years when a sensation (especially an unexpected smell or sound) has instantly brought back a flood of ... not memories exactly; that is, not memories of a specific event or experience, but memories of a particular way of experiencing that was characteristic of my early childhood, and pretty much identical to that ‘bubble of perfection’. (I don’t think mum was feeding me magic mushrooms back then). RICHARD: You may find the following to be of interest then:
Various people I have discussed these matters with over the years have invariably recalled similar ‘Technicolor Land’ experiences in childhood ... sometimes referred to as a ‘nature experience’, a ‘peak experience’, a ‘jamais vu experience’, or even an ‘aesthetic experience’. And not only have I witnessed children having such an experience, and spoken with them about while it is happening, but recall having the same myself on many an occasion: often in early childhood there would be a ‘slippage’ of the brain, somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear too soon, and the magical world where time had no workaday meaning would emerge in all its sparkling wonder ... where I could wander for hours at a time in gay abandon with whatever was happening. RESPONDENT: And how can anyone agree with you as there are so few PCE’s one experiences during life compared to the time spent busy being an identity? RICHARD: As a pure consciousness experience (PCE) is a direct experience of the pristine perfection of the peerless purity this actual world is then even a momentary experience (quality) will stand out amongst years of normal experiencing (quantity). RESPONDENT: It would be a very interesting report to read on this mailing list from someone who is experiencing a PCE while writing. Do you remember for such a thing to have happened in the past? RICHARD: No ... any such descriptions have been written after the event. RESPONDENT: Or do you have any links or descriptions of PCE’s that can be accessed off-site (as the actualist style of writing is quite -ism specific compared to umm … D. H. Lawrence for example). RICHARD: As the suffix ‘-ism’ (from the Latin/Greek ‘ismus’/‘isma’ meaning ‘of action’/‘something done’) simply forms a noun expressing the characteristics of a person or a thing it would be a contradiction, not only in terms but in action, if the actualist style of writing were not specific to actuality ... whereas a romanticist’s style of writing, for example, is specific to the characteristics of romanticism. RESPONDENT: For if it is such a global occurrence there would be many reports/descriptions of it, including on the internet. RICHARD: Most of the reports/descriptions I have come across have either been interpreted according to the cultural norm after the event or have devolved into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) during the event when affective feelings enter into the experience ... for example:
The intense feeling of beauty, in such instances, is what reveals truth (or god/goddess): beauty is the affective substitute for the purity of the perfection of this actual world ... just as love is the affective surrogate for actual intimacy. Here is non-affective report/description:
Incidentally, that (a 40-year-old memory of a then-remembered experience from 4 years of age) is a classic example of a quality experience standing out amongst a quantity of experience. RESPONDENT: Maybe this will trigger in my case some forgotten memories about forgotten PCE’s. RICHARD: Mostly PCE’s happen for no demonstrable reason at all – as in being a serendipitous event – and quite often occur in everyday surroundings doing everyday things ... I can recall being on a farmhouse verandah at age eight, looking into the glistening white of a full glass of milk in the early morning sunshine, when it happened for the entity within. Not being an affective experience they are not stored in the affective memory-banks (which is where the ASC is primarily located) and thus require a different type of recall to normal remembrance ... plus they are much more common in childhood and require further reach. RESPONDENT: I’d be interested to know whether Richard sees that what [Robert] Forman is talking about with the PCE is quite different than what he means by it. It seems to me that Richard has merely adapted Forman’s use of the term due to some (superficial) overlap in usage, but I think it would be misleading to think of Forman’s PCE as the same thing as what an actualist means by it, since Forman is still firmly planted as a spiritualist, and because for him, a ‘PCE’ is without content – meaning without thought or sensation – just pure unmediated consciousness of consciousness alone. The way Richard uses the word ‘apperception’ is closer in meaning (though not exactly the same) to what Forman means by a PCE than what Richard means by a PCE. As far as I am aware, no one in academia has categorized or pinned down the PCE the same way Richard has. The normal understanding of a ‘PCE’ is that it is mystical, spiritual, pure consciousness. Personally, I don't see any benefit that the actualists get from associating the PCE term with Robert Forman or the ‘Pure Consciousness Event’ – as such association is bound to be misleading. Given Forman’s definition of a PCE, it’s no wonder he doesn’t think it could be permanent. His PCE is 180 degrees opposite the actualist PCE. RICHARD: First and foremost: it was not because of a (superficial) overlap in usage: a pure consciousness event is not a pure consciousness experience because experiencing does not occur in a pure consciousness event (else it be not a pure consciousness event) and there is nothing superficial about that ... indeed it is fundamental to the reason why I chose to call the temporary occurrence of an actual freedom from the human condition a pure consciousness experience. When I first came onto the internet in 1997 I subscribed for a while to an academic consciousness studies mailing list associated with the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ and it was there I first heard of the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’ – with the emphasis that there be no experiencing in such a state – and thus chose the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience’ so as to make the generic phrase ‘peak experience’ more specific. As for associating the acronym (PCE) with Mr. Robert Forman: it was not until 1999 that I came across Mr. Robert Forman’s paper, published in the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998’ and entitled ‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’, from which I provided quotes your refer to earlier in your e-mail to demonstrate to another co-respondent the confusion engendered by peoples interpreting spontaneous pure consciousness experiences (most common in childhood) according to the prevailing norms of their culture ... which are derived from altered states of consciousness (ASC’s). ASC’s have two main characteristics: they can be extroversive or introversive. Mr. David Wulff has this to say:
I have also written about the introversive/extroversive distinction before:
In the paper mentioned (‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’) Mr. Robert Forman provides examples from both western and eastern mysticism (plus an event in his own life) to illustrate what he means by the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’. For example he talks about mystics becoming ‘utterly dead to things, encountering neither sensation, thought nor perceptions’ and ‘one becomes oblivious of one’s own body and all things’ and ‘one becomes unaware of all things, i.e. devoid of all mental and sensory content’ and then goes on to say that ‘in Buddhism such Pure Consciousness Events are called by several names: nirodhasamapatti, or cessation meditation; samjnavedayitanirodha, the cessation of sensation and conceptualisation; sunyata, emptiness; or most famously, samadhi, meditation without content’. Howsoever he is adamant that consciousness is still operating in a pure consciousness event ... for instance he says that ‘the Upanishads are insistent that one remains conscious, indeed becomes nothing but consciousness itself’ and ‘according to Yogacara Buddhist theorists one’s consciousness is said to persist as some form of content-less and attribute-less consciousness’. Bearing this in mind I accessed the links you provided and have drawn from them the following relevant quotes:
Here both authors are quite specific that consciousness itself ceases – just as Mr. Buddha said – which could explain the quote which started this discussion:
And Mr. Charles Tart also explains why it cannot be permanent (although his ‘seven days’ can only be an arbitrary figure):
It would appear that Mr. Robert Forman cherry-picked his data to support his own experience (which is easy enough to unintentionally have happen) and which brings me to a discussion you and I had over a year ago:
Now, even to say ‘There is only Bliss’ is to be saying too much for ‘Bliss’ is the last state of being experienceable before the fulfilment of the event itself (whereupon consciousness ceases completely) and the first state of being experienceable after the event ... the event itself is a comatose state about which nothing can be said. Also, where I say ‘There is only Bliss’ I am speaking primarily out of personal occurrences (although there are references to ‘Unspeakable Bliss’ in mystical literature) and why I say that ‘Bliss’ is the last state of being experienceable before/first state of being experienceable after is because that is the way it happened for me. If I were to delineate the way such an event can proceed it would look something like this: reaching deep down into the deeper feelings, past personal sorrow, there is universal sorrow (the sorrow of all sentient beings); by being that then out of that comes compassion, universal compassion, and not the common or garden variety; then in that, by being that, there is love, love of a nature that can only be rapturous; to be enraptured is to be euphoric, to be euphoric is to be ecstatic; in ecstasy there is only bliss ... then what happens is ineffable as all experiencing ceases (hence ‘timeless and spaceless and formless’). Which is why what I then called ‘The Absolute’ (God, Ground of Being, Truth, and so on) has no attributes whatsoever. However, upon conscious awareness re-establishing itself the passage of the sun across the sky, or the movement of the stars through the firmament by night, would show that time and space and form had carried on doing what it has always been doing all the while the episode was underway ... which is one of the main reasons why I am here where I am today. I just could not live a lie ... no matter how glorious (read vainglorious in hindsight) it be. RICHARD: ... a pure consciousness event is not a pure consciousness experience because experiencing does not occur in a pure consciousness event (else it be not a pure consciousness event) and there is nothing superficial about that ... indeed it is fundamental to the reason why I chose to call the temporary occurrence of an actual freedom from the human condition a pure consciousness experience. When I first came onto the internet in 1997 I subscribed for a while to an academic consciousness studies mailing list associated with the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ and it was there I first heard of the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’ – with the emphasis that there be no experiencing in such a state – and thus chose the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience’ so as to make the generic phrase ‘peak experience’ more specific. As for associating the acronym (PCE) with Mr. Robert Forman: it was not until 1999 that I came across Mr. Robert Forman’s paper, published in the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998’ and entitled ‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’, from which I provided the quotes you refer to earlier in your e-mail to demonstrate to another co-respondent the confusion engendered by peoples interpreting spontaneous pure consciousness experiences (most common in childhood) according to the prevailing norms of their culture ... which are derived from altered states of consciousness (ASC’s). RESPONDENT: I appreciate you making the distinction clear between the ‘pure consciousness event’ and the ‘pure consciousness experience.’ What seemed to me a nominally (superficial) overlap turns out to be worlds apart in meaning. When I read the quote from Forman at the beginning of the AF Library entry on ‘PCE’s,’ I originally interpreted you to be using the ‘pure consciousness event’ to provide additional evidence (backed by an academic source) that the PCE(xperience) occurs globally. RICHARD: I do see that The Actual Freedom Trust library entry can be misleading in that respect ... in the original e-mail, which that entry has been adapted from, I was explaining that most people interpreted their experiences of pure consciousness according to the prevailing norms of their culture, as it mostly devolved into an ASC anyway, and that because of the confusion (such as the ‘trophotropic’ and ‘ergotropic’ experiences and/or ‘apophatic’ and ‘kataphatic’ strands of mysticism Mr. Robert Forman referred to in that paper) I merely took the academically accepted phrase and substituted ‘experience’ for ‘event’, a couple of years previously, so as to regain the actual purity of the unadulterated experience. RESPONDENT: Though as I understand you now, you are actually using the ‘pure consciousness event’ as a contrasting point of departure to introduce something radically different – namely, the ‘pure consciousness experience’ – which is why you say there is no (superficial) overlap. RICHARD: Yes, that is a good way to put it – ‘as a contrasting point of departure to introduce something radically different’ – because my intention at the time (1997) was to introduce my discovery on the academic consciousness studies mailing list I was then subscribed to ... but an abortive attempt at a meaningful discussion with a tenured professor soon disabused me of the notion that any such intent would be received with anything other than the civil rejection it got. In short: I got the message (that one is not supposed to be living/experiencing/being that which one discusses in academia) and unsubscribed. RESPONDENT: If I understand you correctly, I am certainly glad to see that you never confused or conflated the two – and that my previous understanding was based upon a misunderstanding of the presentation of the quotes. RICHARD: I will see if the library entry can be made more clear ... and I appreciate you drawing attention to the fact that the second part of the quote was in reference to the ‘Dual Mystical State’ and have already removed it as mysticism is confusing enough already without a error in quoting on my part adding to it. RESPONDENT: In other words, previously, I thought Forman’s quote was there to help define what a ‘pure consciousness experience’ IS – rather than what it IS NOT. Or maybe a better way of putting it would be that both are pure consciousness, yet the Event and the Experience are 180 degrees apart. RICHARD: As what ‘pure consciousness’ means in a pure consciousness event is ‘consciousness without an object’ (an identity sans body), and what ‘pure consciousness’ means in a pure consciousness experience is ‘consciousness without a subject’ (a body sans identity), they are indeed 180 degrees apart. ‘Tis no wonder the tenured professor politely rebuffed me, eh? RESPONDENT: But a vast empty psychological space is still psychological space (a self) and still creates a feeling/distance barrier. In the PCE’s this emotion/feeling distance barrier (the self) dissolved and affected the way I (physically) experienced time, space and objects. In the PCE’s the security or confidence instilled by (physical) location in eternal time and infinite space is unmistakable. Everything exists in an absolute stillness and deep purity. Visually, the contrast of light and dark is heightened, colours are richer. Hearing is unrestricted, sounds are welcome. I could feel the nubbly fabric of the chair on my skin and I remember thinking I was in forbidden territory, that I was breaking a big taboo because everything was so easy and o.k. So those are the differences as I experienced them. Was attention/energy appropriated to the senses that otherwise would have been used by the psyche? RICHARD: It is the other way around: the naïve attention of the senses (a spontaneous awareness) is usually appropriated by the psyche ... and the psyche consumes a lot of calorific energy to maintain its dominance. Where the psyche is non-existent (either in abeyance in a PCE or extinct in an actual freedom from the human condition) sensory perception is freed to be what it has actually been all along ... an effortless delight. Nothing is being appropriated anywhere by anything. * RESPONDENT: Richard, what were you doing to induce PCE’s ‘on an almost daily basis’ all those years ago? RICHARD: The short answer is: by allowing them to happen. * RESPONDENT: Now regarding ‘a feeling is not a fact’. This is so tricky. The amygdale identifies various sense data with the need for certain chemicals: for a tiger you need this chemical, for a baby you need that chemical. But no, that would mean identification (thought) comes first. So that means that prior to identification happening, we get chemicals, based on unidentified sense data? RICHARD: Yes (if by ‘unidentified’ you mean cognitive identification): the raison d’être for the instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, genetically endowed by blind nature is that a split-second reaction occurs in situations where survival depends upon instant action. In addition to this basic programming, from birth onwards (thus prior to thought developing), an affective memory forms as the baby experiences itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective memory (which colours the cognitive memory). Thus when there a tiger is pouncing (to use your example), and there is no time for any leisurely appraisal of the situation before taking appropriate action, there is what has been called a ‘quick and dirty’ emotional/passional scanning of danger, and a near-instantaneous affective-based response. In a blind rage, for instance, where one instinctually lashes out it is common to later on reflect and say ‘I don’t know what came over me’ (or words to that effect). RESPONDENT: So that means I am anger waiting to happen, that the sense data that triggers it is not even really relevant. RICHARD: Well, not always relevant but, at the very least, sometimes so ... it is only a rough and ready software package, which blind nature endows, when all is said and done. RESPONDENT: I am love waiting to happen, etc. This looks too random. RICHARD: Whilst nature may be blind it is not necessarily haphazard, arbitrary ... it, being cause-and-effect based, is pragmatic (as opposed to principled) in an adventitious way. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ means those best fitted to the environment survive to propagate the species (and not necessarily survival of the most muscular as it is sometimes taken to mean). RESPONDENT: Am ‘I’ a constant chemical (emotional) combination waiting to focus as one or the other at the sight, smell, touch, of just about anything? RICHARD: At root, or at ‘my’ most basic ... yes: a hair-trigger entity genetically programmed to thoughtlessly (aka passionately) spring into action at the slightest hint of danger ... as is evidenced in trampling one’s fellow human beings to death at the exits in the blind panic for survival in a fire at a theatre or cinema, for example. RESPONDENT: How does this chemical saturation so instantly abate and allow a PCE to happen? RICHARD: You do seem to be disregarding the fact that, not only am ‘I’ anger waiting to happen (or any other of the ‘bad’ feelings) or love waiting to happen (or any other of the ‘good’ feelings), ‘I’ am also the felicitous feelings waiting to happen ... feelings such as happiness and harmlessness, for example. Put simply: neither a grim and glum person nor a loving and compassionate person has much chance of allowing the PCE to happen. RESPONDENT: Does this take nerves of steel? RICHARD: No, apart from spontaneous PCE’s (most common in childhood) it takes happiness and harmlessness: where one is happy and harmless a benevolence and benignity that is not of ‘my’ doing operates of its own accord ... and it is this beneficence and magnanimity which occasions the PCE. The largesse of the universe (as in the largesse of life itself), in other words. RESPONDENT: If it does, then it is a different way of using them than I am used to. Maybe this is what you meant when you said your method of inducing PCE’s on an almost daily basis all those years ago was just by ‘allowing them to happen’? RICHARD: What I meant by ‘allowing them to happen’ is just that ... allowing them to happen (ceasing to prevent them from occurring might be another way of putting it). I say this because it became patently obvious to ‘me’, via previous PCE’s, that there was this whole other world – what I now call this actual world – just sitting ‘there’ waiting to be apparent, as it were, and all ‘I’ had to do was allow it to happen ... or, to put that differently, all ‘I’ had to do was get out of the way. Of course when it did happen ‘there’ was here, where it has been all along, but I put it in those terms because that is how it was experienced at the time ... and it is only an ‘other world’ to ‘me’ as there is, in fact, only this one world. Also, pure intent is essential in the process of allowing the PCE to happen – else it may be an ASC that ensues – but I wanted to keep the answer as brief as possible for the impact it rightfully deserves. Because it is actually that simple. * RESPONDENT: It’s interesting that in practicing Actualism, we need to be in touch with our emotions enough to not be detached, but not so much in touch with them that we get dissociated as in enlightenment. RICHARD: For the sake of clarity in communication I would stress that the actualism method sits firmly upon the minimisation of both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and the optimisation of the felicitous feelings ... and merely being in touch with felicity will not do the trick. RESPONDENT: I looked up the word ‘dissociation’ and the first definition included the breaking up of chemical combinations into their simpler constituents. So is enlightenment singular attention being paid to only one chemical effect (emotion) happening (out of all of them ) or it is one chemical effect (emotion) drowning out the rest due to the sheer amount of it? RICHARD: As I use the word ‘dissociation’ in the psychiatric sense I am somewhat reluctant to extend its usage into the area you propose ... to break everything down into chemical effects (whilst not dismissing such effects of course) would be to rightly earn the label ‘reductionism’. In other words there is more to understanding the workings of the psyche than understanding chemistry. RESPONDENT: Is it physically draining to be enlightened? RICHARD: It can be ... especially when interacting with others as the transmission of love, and the intensity of compassion, consumes an inordinate amount of psychic energy. Roaming alone in nature was not as draining, however, as it was mostly affective energy ... although it must be said that there was 7-8 hours of sleep and three meals a day back then (as contrasted to 3-4 or 4-5 hours of sleep and one meal a day plus a snack now). RESPONDENT: Was there a change in your general or subtle state of health after AF? RICHARD: I have had what is called a healthy constitution all my life – I very rarely had the need of doctors – so I cannot readily point to any specific change other than the marked absence of any psychosomatic ailments. I can still come down with colds and flu’s, for example, although nowhere as near as often or as severe. RESPONDENT: It seems like a load is taken off my nervous system or something in a PCE. RICHARD: Indeed ... the entire load, in fact, which absence of stress can only have the effect of ensuring a more healthy immune system. * RESPONDENT: In a PCE everything is magically animate, doing what it’s doing, in a backdrop of infinite depth and stillness. RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘doing what it’s doing’ is about as informative as ‘a rose is a rose’: in actuality (as evidenced in a PCE) it is stunningly apparent that everything is the perfection of the purity which infinitude is and, as such, is perfection personified. RESPONDENT: No principle, no agenda. RICHARD: Ahh ... there is an agenda inasmuch as everything growing (aka ‘life’) is growing in purity as that perfection personified. RESPONDENT: ‘Life’ or liveliness is the way everything exists. RICHARD: As maybe 99.99% (an arbitrary figure) of the universe is inanimate then ‘life’ is not the way everything exists. For example, when some people talk to me about ‘nature’ they become somewhat bemused when I suggest that, as far as space exploration has been able to ascertain, there is no nature on the moon ... meaning that what life actually is is what flora and fauna are and not what rocks are. Now, if by ‘nature’ a person means absolutely everything (as in ‘life’ is the way everything exists) then the glass ashtray on my desk (being mainly silica) is as much ‘nature’ as the trailing plant cascading down from the shelf above the desk next to mine ... yet when I offer such a person a drink from a polystyrene cup they tell me it is not natural. Generally speaking, materialism has that rocks are dead, lifeless (yet only something that was alive can ever be dead) whereas what actualism is on about is the direct experience that matter is not merely passive. I chose the name ‘actualism’ rather simply from a dictionary definition which said that actualism was ‘the theory that matter is not merely passive (now rare)’. That was all ... and I did not investigate any further for I did not want to know who formulated this theory. It was that description – and not the author’s theory – that appealed. And, as it said that its usage was now rare, I figured it was high-time it was brought out of obscurity, dusted off, re-vitalised ... and set loose upon the world (including upon those who have a conditioned abhorrence of categories and labels) as a third alternative to materialism and spiritualism. Thus (to parallel your phraseology): actuality, or actualness, is the way everything exists. RESPONDENT: Richard, there is much I to discuss with you due to your most recent thorough reply that I wanted to get the Landmark stuff out of the way first so I could concentrate on this AF stuff. You asked me to elaborate on the ambience of ‘Home Free’ in a PCE. Well, even though it reads sequentially this is not in any order. I notice the disappearance of some invisible barrier, which makes everything seamless, no dirty distance between me and everything else. I notice that load off the nervous system we talked about which has to do with feeling pressured for time somehow, as being the weight and force of believing I am responsible, of being charged with knowing how it is supposed to happen and making it happen. But with that gone I feel so here, so relaxed and aware. Time is one big, long eternal moment of stillness. All the time in the universe is available for me to operate in. There is a purity penetrating everything and the very air in the room looks clearer and purer. And without me knowing what is supposed to happen, I do not know what is going to happen so in about two seconds life has turned into such a gas! All of a sudden life is physical ease in a huge, magic, endless wonderland that is , pure, still and miraculously my home. And I am off the hook. I don’t ‘have’ to do anything so my activity, or just sitting there, is playful. Whatever I do and wherever I go is or would be agreeable. I don’t have to ‘work’. RICHARD: Ah, yes it is certainly so that ‘all the time in the universe is available for me to operate in’ in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... and being free of ‘being charged with knowing how it is supposed to happen and making it happen’ describes the ambience perfectly. Life is indeed ‘such a gas!’ ... nothing is ‘work’ in this actual world – which includes working at a job – and everything is such fun. Thank you for your excellent description. RESPONDENT: There is a flavour of intrigue or taboo or something in there, too. But maybe that’s affect coming in at the end, or now that I look at it, maybe that’s the feeling of power and cunning ‘ I’ get by being able to stand in the way of actuality. Ooo, that’s sick. RICHARD: Ha ... that certainly would be sick but as you have mentioned this intrigue/taboo before (when referring to ‘forbidden territory’) it is worth commenting on: I do recall, when PCs first started occurring, that I had the distinct impression of having ventured into an area that I was not supposed to go into ... that it was a big secret, as it were, that we humans were not to acknowledge existed else we would not be able to be nasty anymore (licentious). Now, put that way, it sounds silly but then when I remembered, at age three, somehow knowing that something had ‘gone wrong’ somehow and everybody had forgotten why we were all here – to have fun and enjoy each others company in this grand adventure which life is – it all fell into place (and I was able to date it as being at age three by a particular incident which could only have happened at that age). In my journal I wrote it as ‘it is as if everybody is playing a game called ‘let’s pretend we are lost’’ ... except that life in the real-world is not a game – people do kill, maim, torture, rape, suicide, and all the rest – so I soon disabused myself of that notion and I only mention all this – as childish as it may sound – as that is what the impression was at the time. Of course as the years went by, and as I talked at length with many people from many walks of life about these moments of perfection, and discovered they had all had PCEs – all of them – it became sensibly clear what my childish notion was based on: everybody secretly knows, from those PCEs, that all the suffering is unnecessary ... *yet they still, perversely, insist on suffering anyway*. Hence your ‘flavour of intrigue or taboo or something in there, too’ – plus your earlier ‘forbidden territory’ observation – is quite valid, as far as I am concerned, and there is no need to attribute it to affect coming in at the end. RESPONDENT: I had put in the list some subjects on metaphysical facts. RICHARD: If you are referring to the 12, 027 words you copy-pasted from an after-death survivalist’s web site then you are using the word ‘facts’ very, very loosely ... so loosely that your usage of it is indistinguishable from what the word ‘beliefs’ commonly refers to. For example, the author you quoted at length first proposes there are two bodies (the finite physical body which contains the brain that dies and an infinite etheric body which contains a mind which does not die) and two worlds (the physical world and an etheric world) and then proposes that etheric body/mind is made-up of the sub-atomic particles of quantum theory and that etheric world is made-up of the missing dark matter of theoretical physics ... specifically the neutrino. In short: an after-death abode which lies in an invisible nine-tenths of the universe. Moreover the author then proposes that invisible universe is what is creating the visible universe:
As his proof for survival after death comes from materialisations of physically dead people via paranormal mediums I did not consider there was anything in what you copy-pasted to answer ... especially as nowhere on his web page did I see any mention of the meaning of life, peace on earth, happiness and harmlessness, freedom from malice and sorrow, or anything else of that ilk. Not that those subjects are of particular interest to you, of course, but they are to me. RESPONDENT: You was not bothered to answer, that means that you are stubborn in your beliefs. RICHARD: Oh? So it has got to the stage now that all you have to do is post reams and reams of words about after-death survival, classify them as being metaphysical facts, and if Richard does not respond then that means Richard is being stubborn in his beliefs, eh? RESPONDENT: Is your right to think the way you think ... RICHARD: If I may point out? The way thinking happens here has nothing to do with a ‘right’ to think that way as there is the direct experience of the actual – this which is actually happening – and thoughts form themselves in accord to that wherever necessary. For example these words are being typed as the very thing referred to is actually occurring – they are coming directly out of actuality – and not from some nebulous beliefs such as you would have be the case. RESPONDENT: [Is your right to think the way you think], but I strongly believe that you are in an altered state of consciousness ... RICHARD: Now here is a curious thing: I have never heard anyone say they weakly believe something. RESPONDENT: : [Is your right to think the way you think, but I strongly believe that you are in an altered state of consciousness], even if you are defined it like PCE. RICHARD: This is not the first time you have believed this:
Apparently all that has happened in the ensuing three months is that you now strongly believe it. RESPONDENT: Is your personal interpretation. RICHARD: No ... indeed one of the things I did before I went public with my discovery was to ascertain whether people from many walks of life could recall having had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) – as distinct from an altered state of consciousness (ASC) – for obvious reasons and without fail they all verified that what I had to report is correct. More to the point I have been able to ascertain that anybody that I have been with whilst they were having a PCE is indubitably experiencing the same-same experience as is my on-going experiencing ... plus they have tended to say things such as they now see what I have been saying all along for themselves; that everything I have ever said is accurate; that they understand what I have been getting at; that they know why it is difficult for others to comprehend; that they can now talk on an equal footing with me; that life is indeed grand ... amazing, marvellous, and truly wondrous. I usually ask pertinent questions: for example very early in the piece I asked my current companion, once the PCE was definitely happening, what she had to say now about love (always a hot topic): ‘Love?’ she said, ‘Why there is no room for love here!’ She went on to expand, saying there was no need for love as everything was already perfect, and there was no separation, and so on ... but she had said enough in her initial response to both satisfy and delight me. RESPONDENT: No one can say you are right or wrong ... RICHARD: Au contraire ... somebody who is having, or can recall having had, a PCE can indeed say so. RESPONDENT: [No one can say you are right or wrong], but the fact that Vineeto and Peter, that are so close to you, did not arrived yet there is the proof that everything you are experiencing could be your hallucination. RICHARD: Hmm ... do you realise that, as you ‘strongly believe’ I am in an ASC, you have just classified such a state of being as an hallucination? Apart from that: the fact that nobody has become actually free in the six years since I first went public only means that nobody has become actually free in the six years since I first went public – anything else is speculation – and to focus upon such speculation is to miss the truly remarkable virtual freedom that is possible by applying the actualism method ... and as a virtual freedom is way beyond normal expectations anyway then, irregardless of whatever happens in the future, my having gone public will not have been in vain. And even further to this point there are some people who, having taken in the gist of what I have to report about spiritual enlightenment, have dropped spiritualism for the crock it is and reverted to materialism ... so it is even of benefit to have gone public if only for the disillusionment of those who had hitched their star to some massively deluded person. All in all I am already well-pleased ... and, as it is only early days yet, I will probably be even more pleased one day. RESPONDENT: After all with what right Vineeto and Peter are defending you in the moment they don’t have personal experience? RICHARD: They do not have to have any ‘right’ – for what they have to report/say comes out of PCE’s and not just out of what I have to report/say – and it is rather telling that you would describe it as ‘defending’ me ... rather than, for instance, confirming what I have to report/say. RESPONDENT: That means they obey you ... RICHARD: It is the PCE which is a person’s lodestone ... not me and/or my words. Me and/or my words provide confirmation of what the PCE makes evident ... and provide the affirmation that a fellow human being has safely negotiated the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition. RESPONDENT: [That means they obey you] because of belief ... : No, a PCE is the direct experience of actuality ... belief plays no part in it whatsoever
(nor does faith, hope, trust, and certitude RESPONDENT: [That means they obey you because of belief] and might destroy other peoples’ life. RICHARD: If you can satisfactorily explain to me how being happy and harmless (virtually free from malice and sorrow) 99% of the time might destroy other peoples’ life I would be more than a little surprised ... which brings me to the obvious question: what is your objection to people being happy and harmless? My guess, and it is but a guess, is that the latter part of your last sentence would be more in accord with the truth if it were put something like this:
‘Tis only a guess, mind you. RESPONDENT: But I do think that the ‘glimpse’ which stunned thought has planted a seed. : Are you sure? Is it not the glimpse of the utter fullness which total attention makes apparent that is the trigger for stunning the thinker ... does not thought need to operate episodically as is required by the circumstances? If one thinks ‘upon reflection’ that ‘it seems thought is simply too one-dimensional to touch the multi-faceted fullness of that’ then the thinker concludes that thought must stop for that to happen ... thus precluding a twenty-four-hour-a-day happening. RESPONDENT: Well, it seems to me that ‘preclusion’ is only occurring for the thinker divided from the fullness of that. RICHARD: Yes, the thinker is forever divided from ‘the fullness of that’ ... the thinker is false, an illusion. The only constructive thing the thinker can do is allow itself to be disappeared (‘I was taken away by the utter fullness of it!’). RESPONDENT: Yes, but do you think that such an occurrence is the result of a direct action by thought (‘allowing itself to disappear’), or is it triggered by the proactive perception of that fullness? RICHARD: It is the result of a ‘direct action by thought’ inasmuch as it is the thinker thinking a seminal thought which is directly inspired by the ‘perception of that fullness’ (and not through reading about it). That inspired thought which the thinker thinks is the very thought that paves the way for such an occurrence. To wit: ‘I’, the thinker, joyfully agree 100% to allowing ‘myself’ to be ‘taken away by the utter fullness of it!’. It is a conscious decision. RESPONDENT: PCE = pure consciousness experience. Pure consciousness means that does not exist self right? RICHARD: Yes, neither ‘I’ (as ego) nor ‘me’ (as soul) are present where consciousness – the condition of being conscious – is a pure consciousness ... the word ‘pure’ in this context means the unadulterated condition of being conscious and the word ‘conscious’ means being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible (comatose). RESPONDENT: Now by adding the word experience, the question that arises is who has the experience? RICHARD: Why does that question arise? To be conscious is to be experiencing (perceiving) as perceiving (experiencing) is what the very word means at is most basic. For example:
RESPONDENT: [... who has the experience?] The body? RICHARD: The body is not ‘who’ has the experience... the body is *what* has the experience (of being unadulteratedly conscious) as the condition of being conscious is a bodily condition. RESPONDENT: The body works with the senses. RICHARD: That is one way of putting it but as sentience means being sensorial it would be more helpful for comprehension of what experiencing means to say that the body works as the senses: for instance, of all the senses – cutaneous, ocular, aural, olfactory, gustatory, and proprioceptive – the cutaneal sense, being by far the largest of all senses (the skin covers the entire body) is what defines/delineates where the body stops and the rest of the world begins/where the rest of the world stops and the body begins ... the skin is the main demarcation line, so to speak, thus cutaneous experiencing is major experiencing by any definition. RESPONDENT: If we must attach to the body even the consciousness, then we can go very far. RICHARD: That just does not make sense: consciousness – the condition of a body being conscious – is indistinguishable from what a body is (when it is alive, awake, and sensible) ... to say that consciousness is something attached to the body is to imply that consciousness (the condition of being conscious) is a clip-on, a removable accessory, as it were. RESPONDENT: We may have any illusion and blame the body for that. RICHARD: Yea verily ... anything but put the ‘blame’ onto where it really lies (on the ‘being’ within the body), eh? RESPONDENT No. 27: For me, the matter is simply a claim to be investigated – but it must be investigated in the manner in which the person making the claim specifies. If I am told that the only way to know it is the PCE, then that is what I have to investigate if I want to speak on equal footing. RESPONDENT: Fair and reasonable all the way, but just for fun, here’s a bit of twisty logic to sink your teeth into: Let P = ‘Time, space and matter began with the Big Bang.’ Let Q = ‘PCEs occur.’ According to Richard P => ~Q Q ––– ~P (Modus Tollens) If you accept R’s logic, and if you accept that PCE’s occur, it follows that you should already accept that time, space and matter did not begin with the Big Bang. See, according to R’s logic, the alleged evidence (PCE) is available if and only if that which it allegedly reveals is also true, so the mere occurrence of a PCE proves that time, space and matter did not begin with the ‘Big Bang’, regardless of whether it strikes you that way in a PCE. In other words, according to this logic, the mere occurrence of a PCE proves the falsity of the Big Bang. Your own interpretation of the experience is irrelevant to R’s proof. RICHARD: First and foremost: although you agreed it was ‘fair and reasonable all the way’ to investigate the claim in the manner specified (experientially) you immediately set out to investigate it in a manner not specified (logically). Second, you say ‘if you accept R’s logic’ as if it was indeed Richard’s logic and not your logic – not being a logician I never present what you have presented above in my name – as the modus tollens rule (the rule that the negation of the antecedent may be inferred from the conditional statement) is not something I have any familiarity with at all ... and seeing what you have done with it have no interest whatsoever in ever gaining such familiarity. Third, you base your entire logical conclusion upon an hypothetical answer to an hypothetical question – I did not write ‘(note ‘if’’)’ just for the sake of doing so – and even explained this in the following e-mail by saying I answered your hypothetical question as asked. Vis.:
Fourth, if logic can indeed produce the result that you put into words (above) then I am well-pleased not to be a logician ... not being a logician I have to be rational instead. Because if (note ‘if’) all time and all space and all form indeed had a beginning – as in there is no time, no space, no matter/there is time, is space, is matter – then there would be something other than the universe (an otherness which is time-less and space-less and form-less) which means that such a universe is not peerless (hence not perfect) thus a pure consciousness experience (PCE), the direct experience of the peerless purity this universe actually is, would not exist/could not happen ... and the summum bonum of human experience would be an altered state of consciousness (ASC) as ASC’s are epitomised by a non-material otherness by whatever name. As it has been up until now ... and which highest good, I might add, you are doing your level best to reinstate in other e-mails by classifying a particular ASC (where the intuitive/imaginative faculty is still extant) as being a PCE. As I coined the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience (PCE)’ you are on a hiding to nowhere trying to redefine it.
Footnote: (1.)according to Richard (at the reference you provided):
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE ON PURE CONSCIOUSNESS EXPERIENCES (Part Five) RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX 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.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001 |
