‘I’ was willing to lose everything, but I have lost nothing, only my chains. And to get there ‘I’ did nothing special, but walking a very well-paved and wide road.

There is no reason for anybody not to join.

The road is safe.

Audio version:

• [Questioner 1]: do you know for a fact this is not a long PCE?

• [Geoffrey]: The event was nothing like the ‘entry’ in a PCE. It was definitely a one-time event, nothing like anything I’d ever experienced. It was unmistakable, and obviously irrevocable.

There is no identity lurking in the shadows. This is a very obvious difference when you live it, but I could not have ‘imagined’ what it would be like. A great purity abounds.

I did have some doubts when in a long PCE once as to whether I was actually free, but there is no way now that actually free to even think of it as a PCE.

• [Questioner 2]: that’s fantastic! How much success did you have with the actualism method prior to this event?

• [Geoffrey]: Enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive... is what I do. 

The method makes so much sense now. It is so obvious that is the way to live.

Prior to the event? well it is hard to quantify. I guess you’re asking if this could be considered a ‘condition’, i.e. you’d have to have reached some level of ‘success’ with the method to be able to self-immolate... I don’t think so.

Although (you would not believe how clear it is to me now that) it makes no sense at all not to be enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive.

If I was to put any ‘conditions’ on it (I’m not) it would have to do with knowing what you’re aiming for and going for it (once you know, there is no choice). And for me this required numerous PCEs, and a solid connexion to Pure Intent.

The method is imitative of the actual. In my understanding the correct application of the method was through the ‘naive remembrance’/the ‘presentiation’ of the PCE... 

• [Questioner 3]: Do you recall a definitive moment when you took that “once in a lifetime” irrevocable decision ? Also, did you experience a different way of being before the main event ?

• [Geoffrey]: That is an interesting question. The last few days (the first paragraph of my report) could be said to have been about allowing pure intent to be “dynamically operative”.

But at the time it did not feel like a “different way of being”, at least it did not occur to me that it might be (I guess it would, if it were that ‘different’). It’s only in retrospect that I began asking that question: was that it?

There was a definite ‘shift’ in my attitude after my last PCE, about one week before the event. I remember going out of that (quite short, like a ‘reminder’) PCE with the definitive intent to “go for it”. That PCE was a ‘wake-up call’ so to speak. I thought something like: “Oh that’s right, that is what I’m aiming for... let’s go for it.” And again, there was a sincerity to that “let’s go for it” that I was constantly amazed at: “Wow I’m really going for it!”

This could be called a “once in a lifetime” irrevocable decision if one wishes. But I did not see it this way at the time. Only in retrospect. [...]

I never aimed for Virtual Freedom (of any kind), I aimed right for the end goal, Actual Freedom, from the very start. [...]

If any kind of Virtual Freedom happened for me, it was ‘en passant’.

I followed the PCE, my eyes stuck on it (pure intent) like on a lighthouse, not really interested at where precisely I was walking at that moment. With a good compass one does not need a map. The road is straight and amazingly easy to follow.

This is not an advice. This is a report. Anyone’s way is different.

• [Questioner 2]: thanks Geoffrey, do you have any tips on enjoying and appreciating? I don’t find I can just will myself to feel good? I have had one PCE but I’m not able to rememorate the ambiance of it; although I do get a taste of something sometimes when watching the DVDs.

• [Geoffrey]: When I encountered actualism I remembered only one PCE, from years before (this memory was, I guess, why actualism immediately made sense). But as a memory it was not satisfactory, as that PCE happened in some ‘spiritual’ context, and obviously quickly devolved into an ASC. The first goal I set for myself as an ‘actualist’ was to have another PCE, a ‘clean’ one, to use as a benchmark. And for a few weeks I worked on ‘inducing’ a PCE, reading anything available on the topic, and focusing on that intent. Once I’d had (a few) PCEs, and established a connexion to pure intent, I found that ‘feeling good’ just made sense. That ‘enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive’ just made sense. It was never an ‘effort’ for me. And it didn’t require a ‘commitment’. It just made sense.

• [Questioner 4]: So, for a few days, your aim was to self-immolate over anything else in actualism? Also, how did you handle your own objections to self-immolating during those few days?

• [Geoffrey]: My aim was to self-immolate over anything else from the first time I opened the AFT site. I always saw Actual Freedom as the one goal of actualism, with everything else deriving from it. “That was Richard’s original approach” – is what I told myself when I felt like a heretic around here (haha). Especially with all my ‘failed attempts’ and stories of ASCs.

In the last days I was, as I wrote in my report, “giving myself permission to allow it to happen.” This sounds like a convoluted sentence, but that is exactly what I was doing. And it made perfect sense to me considering my history of ‘forcing it’. I was very aware that ‘I’ would not be the one doing it. That something ‘outside of me’ was required. And that was obviously pure intent. Which is why “allowing pure intent to be dynamically operative” would be another way to describe what I did.

I also talked about “rising to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself”, which amounts to the same thing – and could be linked, I guess, to [Man from Brisbane]’s contemplation of “what it would be like to live in the world of people, things, and events.”

These are all different ways to describe the same thing.

And as for objections, in the last days there were none I could see. But not really because I had tackled them one by one, but more because the ‘light’ of the actual (the flame to the moth) was so overpowering that no potential objection made any sense.

• [Questioner 5]: Incredible and inspiring stuff. Love the way you’ve described everything so simply and elegantly. Can you tell me what things were like in the weeks or months before before you decided to allow pure intent to be dynamically operative and self-immolation to occur? e.g. was there a gradual buildup? were you engaged with the question of self-immolation, having regular PCE’s or maybe not really doing much?

• [Geoffrey]: That is another one where I have to say again that this is not advice, but only my report. Anyone’s way is going to be different.

Here is what I posted here on the 4th of September, when coming back from a few months ‘away’:

“Well, I felt like I was hitting a wall again and again regarding going further towards self-immolation. I knew it had something to do with ‘trying’ to much, or ‘doing’ too much. That I was, in my ‘adventures’, stuck inside ‘me’, that it was all (but PCEs and Pure intent) inside ‘my’ realm, whatever I was doing.

So I decided I needed a holiday from ‘doing’, from ‘trying’. There must have been some actualist morality in my endeavors, and some cunning, that kept me inside ‘me’ while faking ‘progress’ towards the end of ‘me’.

So I closed Slack [actualism discussion forum] and went on with my life. Not ‘pushing’ towards anything. I found out I enjoyed and appreciated, without it being something I was ‘supposed’ to do. I had EEs here and there, quite a few realizations. And it was all much more easy and peaceful, ‘natural’ somehow, without the ‘pressure’ I was putting on myself to ‘perform’ actualism-wise.

No PCEs though... until a few days ago. This PCE got me back here. And back on track towards self-immolation.”

What I would add now, in hindsight, is what I’d done in those months was getting rid of excessive ‘luggage’, and keeping nothing but the memory of the PCE and pure intent, but not as something I was supposed to do as an actualist, not as an ‘accessory’ to the goal of self-immolating, but as something that was ‘naturally’ in my mind, like the air I breathed.

Then that spontaneous PCE occurred, and I was ready.

Note: Geoffrey is from France, and, by his own words, suggested “an indication on the report page that I am from France might be useful, so that people don’t assume that this is exclusively an Australian thing”. He also indicates, with the same intention, that he had never met any actually free person.

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