PETER to No 71: The fact that I know I am having a PCE and that I know that it is temporary and that it will end is a sure sign to me that, although for all intents and purpose there is no ‘I’ present, only ‘I’ could know that the experience is temporary because only ‘I’ can know that ‘I’ will eventually return. Peter to No 71 29.12.2005

RESPONDENT: I think you have hit on the one thing that does remain in a PCE that indicates that the SELF has some influence.

PETER: I notice that you have used the term the ‘SELF’ rather than ‘I’ (or ‘me’). Personally I favour using ‘I’ of ‘me’ as it is more indicative and descriptive of an identity that is entirely personal – ‘who’ I think and feel myself to be – whereas talking about ‘I’ or ‘me’ as ‘the SELF’ or ‘a self’ can often lead to dissociative discussions of a purely philosophical kind.

RESPONDENT: Although the emotions are truly in abeyance, the self-reflective mind can ‘kibbitz’ as it were, during the experience.

PETER: Whereas in a PCE, there is awareness that awareness is going on, the mind can be aware of itself and the ability to reflect is well and truly intact – what is obvious is that there is no ‘I’ let alone a ‘me’ usurping these functions. In short, it is evident that it is not the mind that stuffs things up – it is none other than ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: On AF the focus is primarily on the emotions as the seat of self in all its manifestations and the mind is given short shrift.

PETER: Whereas in spiritualism the mind is seen as the source of all anguish and the root of all evils, thereby avoiding the fact that the instinctual passions, manifest in this body and every body as ‘me’, an instinctual being’, who is the root cause of human malice and sorrow – whether it be self-inflicted or inflicted on others, whether it be deliberate or unconscious.

It was such a relief to ditch this belief; it was the beginning of allowing intelligence to relace passion as a means of discernment.

RESPONDENT: It is my opinion that self-reflection [the mind commenting on its state] is another aspect of self. Until the system goes down in toto the ability to self-reflect will remain.

PETER: And yet in a PCE, it is readily apparent that apperception is free to operate, unimpeded by ‘me’, i.e. in a PCE there is no self-refection, no self-obsession, no self-centredness, no self-castigation nor any self-glorification.

apperception: The mind’s perception of itself. Oxford Dictionary

RESPONDENT: The ‘no thought’ paths seem to put the emphasis on elimination of self-reflective thinking. Maybe they are putting the cart before the horse.

PETER: Am I to take this as an endorsement of the no-thought paths? If so I can only say that rather than putting the cart before the horse any beliefs that promote no-sense are well and truly putting a spanner in the works. This is what I wrote in my Journal –

[Peter]: ‘I can now look back, astounded to realise that the solution traditionally followed in order to eradicate the psychological and psychic entity – attaining an altered state of consciousness (Enlightenment) – is actually a denial of our intelligence, as well as a denial of the physical, actual world. To regard the world as an illusion and to become God is to miss the point entirely. The East has been denying the ‘mind’ for centuries, and the poverty, repression, lack of technological progress and basic education are the obvious consequences that I see. The Eastern religions are actively and insidiously promoting the retention of the primitive spirit-ridden and fearful brain when they talk of no-mind and promote practices like meditation.’ Peter’s Journal. Intelligence

RESPONDENT: Or not. In either case, the percipient certainly feels or thinks that the self is nowhere to be found.

PETER: Given your comment immediately above, I am somewhat confused as to which ‘case’ you are referring to. If you are talking about what happens as a result of following a ‘no-thought’ path, the percipient – to use your word – can get to the stage where they perceive their personal self, aka ego, to be missing thereby allowing an impersonal aggrandized Self to rule the roost. This switch of identity is what has passed for freedom till now, but this sleight of mind has now been exposed for what it is – narcissism writ large, albeit often masquerading as a divine-like Humbleness.

What is on offer here is way beyond Enlightenment.

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