Richard's Selected Writing on Awareness and Apperception

Richard’s Selected Writings

on

Apperception versus Choiceless Awareness

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted ‘human’ hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’ senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To be these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away ... nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning. Only this moment actually exists, for there is no lasting ‘I’ present which would make the past and future real. The freedom from enduring over a time known as the past, the present and the future, leaves one completely able to appreciate the impeccable purity of being here now. This appreciation is evidenced by being alive right here and just now as apperceptive awareness, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself.

Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being alive now. This moment is one’s only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever one is, one is always here ... even if one starts walking over to there, along the way to there one is always here ... and when one arrives ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which occurs when awareness happens of itself. 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 reflective and fascinating 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.

What one is as this body is this material universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. The physical space of this universe is infinite and its time is eternal ... thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending ... and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go too. We are nowhere in particular ... which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there ... for the relative is the absolute.

Life is not a vale of tears.

Only this moment actually exists, for there is no lasting ‘I’ present which would make the past and future real. The freedom from enduring over a time known as the past, the present and the future, leaves one completely able to appreciate the impeccable purity of being here now. This appreciation is evidenced by being alive right here and just now as apperceptive awareness, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself.

All this is born only 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. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment and place is here and now. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. Diligent mindfulness paid to the peak experience gives rise to pure intent. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief.

‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer.

Apperception, or pure awareness, can quickly disabuse oneself of the notion that there is an entity, an ‘I’, which has any substance anywhere inside this body. Initially, ‘I’ think – and feel – that it is ‘I’ who is the one being aware ... this is not apperception. This is an arrogation of responsibility that is most definitely not called for. Such self-promotion can be revealed for the hubris that it is, by contemplation of the fact that ‘I’ stand in the way of apperception happening. When apperception occurs, ‘I’ disappear. When ‘I’ disappear, reality also vanishes. Then I am here, as-I-am, in this actual world of these senses ... I am living the third alternative. There are three I’s altogether, but only one is actual.

Being here now as-I-am is to be blithe and gay, for life is a delightful adventure in itself. I do not have to do anything to ‘get out of it, man’ for it is sensational to realise, each moment again, that I am actually here now. I am fresh, ever-new ... I have never been here before. All that is happening is happening now for the first time. Never before in history has this particular moment occurred, so of course it is exciting. There is no way of knowing for sure what will happen next ... how much more stimulated can one be than this? Yet there is an utter safety in all this, for in the actual world nothing can go ‘Wrong’. The actual world is epitomised by a perfection that is unassailable ... whatever happens is appropriate to the circumstances. Being here now as-I-am enables one to be aware of the grand scheme of things, and everything falls into place. A vast understanding, beyond ‘normal’ human comprehension, is instantly available to one who is genuine. This actual world is rich and vital in all its happening. I am the universe experiencing itself in all its splendour and magnificence as a sensate reflective human being.

It is abundant, bountiful, luscious ... I luxuriate in being here now, so fantastic is it to be alive as me as I actually am.

When this body is in deep sleep or under anaesthesia, there is no awareness of consciousness ... yet the body is still breathing, pumping blood, etcetera. Being alive and the awareness of being conscious of being alive are not necessarily the same thing ... which is confusing to the uninitiated. I am this sensate and reflective body, yet when this body is unconscious, there is no awareness that this body is alive. So, strictly speaking, what I am is this body’s apperceptive consciousness – I am the awareness of being here now – and I am very much dependent upon the body being alive and awake to be conscious. When the body dies, this body’s apperceptive consciousness disappears ... just as in deep sleep. To take consciousness as being ‘who I am’, independent of the body, is clearly a misconception ... and a belief. The belief in Immortality is a denial of death ... which is tantamount to saying that what is universally actual is, somehow, wrong!

When one ceases being in denial, something marvellous can happen.

A confidence based upon fact, of course, not merely eager optimism ... I am not at all interested in ‘thinking positive’ any more than I am in ‘thinking negative’. So forget thought – the mind can be a fertile breeding-ground for hallucinations – and forget feelings, for emotions and passions beget the esoteric, the psychic world of fantasies and phantasms. You can easily become bewitched by the bizarre entities that inhabit the Supernatural Realms; you can become beguiled and enchanted by the promise of the Glory and Glamour and Glitz of the Altered State Of Consciousness ... you will become a victim of that most insidious aspect of vanity: Power and Authority. So much for thought and feeling ... what about the third alternative? The third alternative is something that brings a confidence born out of a direct experience of the actual. Have you never come across apperception?

Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself ... it is a bare awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. This is called a pure consciousness experience. This peak experience is as if I have eyes in the back of my 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. I am able to see that the ‘who’ of me has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential character of myself becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely; by negating the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ ... calenture disappears entirely in apperceptive awareness. I am the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe.

There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; I only instinctually felt and thought that I was a separate identity.

Now ‘my’ moment had come. In the late afternoon of the day before Friday 30th of October 1992, whilst out in an abandoned cow-paddock planting tree seedlings, I was struck by the curious fact that at the beginning of my life I had been engaged in chopping down trees to turn the land into cow-pasture. Now the needs of the situation were sharply reversed and so I paused in my task and stood erect, looking about me in this little sub-tropical valley that the ex-dairy farm was nestled in. As I looked I idly mused upon the irony that the change in human needs regarding physical survival had wrought such radical transformation in the attitudes toward the environment during the forty five years I had been upon this planet. In a flash of a moment a vast understanding of the enormity of the ‘Human Condition’ transfigured my comfortable comprehension of what it was to be an Enlightened Master ... a Self-Realised ‘Being’. My entire affective and cognitive configuration – my highly prized state of awareness – was seen at a glance to be nothing more than a passionate psychic construct.

In other words, my world fell apart.

Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being fully alive right now. This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here ... even if you start walking over to ‘there’, along the way to ‘there’ you are always here ... and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here ... and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now ... then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. 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 reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord ... and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. Such a mind, being free of the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity ... as a sensate body only, one is automatically benevolent and benign.

It is really important to understand about the soul ... getting into feelings like this – ‘perfect’ feelings – leaves one in imminent danger of the seductive snare of Love and Beauty, and, conveniently ignoring their opposites, becoming enlightened, or at least illuminated. ‘Me’ – that sense of ‘being’ that I call the soul – sugar coats itself with Love and Compassion and Beauty and Truth and swans along in a state of Blissful Euphoria. Thus one then goes off into some mystical State of ‘Being’ in some metaphysical world and misses out on the clean and clear perfection of this actual world. It is very, very difficult to get out of the enlightened state and go ‘beyond it’ into this actual world of the senses.

I found out for myself how difficult it was ... I lived enlightenment for eleven years ... the same as the ‘Tried and True’ teachings that all the Saints and the Sages, the Messiahs and the Masters, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Gurus and the God-men have been touting as being the cure-all for the ills of humankind for millennia. I found these solutions to be the tried and failed. I found that, in an altered state of consciousness such as spiritual enlightenment which results when the ego dissolves, the sense of identity does a quantum leap from the head to the heart. One realises oneself as being ‘Me’ at the core of ‘my’ very ‘being’ ... one becomes Pure ‘Being’. The resultant oceanic state of unitary perception – called by some choiceless awareness – creates the delusion that the illusion of identity is ended. There is an on-going experience of oneness and wholeness which expresses itself as: ‘I am everything and everything is Me’.

For those who go all the way into this delusion, they realise that ‘I am The Self’ or ‘I am The Buddha’ or ‘I am God’.

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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.