For a few days I had been doing nothing but giving permission to myself to allow self-immolation to happen,
rising to the challenge of being here as the universe’s experience of itself. I was genuinely thinking: anytime now. For the first time it was
sincere, up to then there was always some ‘pretending’ going on, some ‘fake it until you make it’. I was actually surprised at my own sincerity.
There was no consideration about ‘how will I tell the tale’ like previous times, no consideration about what people would think. There was no fear,
no objections I could see. Things were happening of their own accord and all was well. Thoughts were popping in my mind like: "everything is
in place", "I know all I need to know", "I’ve done whatever I could", "there is nothing else to wait
for"…
On the 6th of September I went on a walk after lunch. I had about one hour and a half before needing to be back in front of the
computer. The sky was blue, the wind was nice. I walked on a country road, amongst the corn fields and pastures, towards a little wood nearby.
I stood there, the sun in my back, full of sensuousness, delighting in Pure Intent, amazed at how the actual is so
safe. I was thinking about the unknown path lying before me (the path that deliver the goods – as I knew from the PCE), and realised in a flash that
the unknown path is the safe path. That the known is the unsafe. That ‘I’ am the unsafe.
For a split second I saw like a veil in front of me. I saw how I could be on the other side of the ‘mirror’, on
the safe side, the magical side, how I could… But there was a last second resistance: My precious! I will not give away my precious!
Later on the way back, I was thinking about this ‘precious’ thing, how only here on this tiny planet right now
there are 7 billion people just as ‘unique’ and ‘precious’ as my self, when it clicked… and I burst into laughter. This was simply
hilarious. Everybody is so precious. I must then be SO precious hahaha.
Every little ‘me’ waging wars against other little ‘me’ because they are so precious. Whereas they are just the
same product of evolution and animal passions, with the same hiding place, the same hunger, the same dirtiness. You can’t be serious!
I saw without a shadow of a doubt that ‘I’ am the cause of every evil, corruption, dirt… just because ‘I’
am ‘so precious’. How ‘I’ mess everything up for myself and everybody just because ‘I’ am. And not some dissociated ‘I’ with enough quotes
not to be me, but me right now thinking this.
There was the actual world just right there in front of me, obviously existing, pure and perfect, and then there
was ‘me’, ‘humanity’. The contrast was simply hilarious. I can’t describe how hilarious this contrast was. What we’ve all been doing forever
and ever, on a ridiculous parade of malice and sorrow, with the greatest seriousness.
I realised that I would indeed gladly die right now, gladly give away all I am, all I ever was, all I’ve done and
felt since I was born, for peace-on-earth to be apparent (not even for me but) for everybody. For things to be as they are. And that it would be of no
importance at all. No ‘weight’, no drama… just the only thing that made sense, the only sensible thing.
I was walking on a dirt path, in the shadows of the trees, a few hundred meters from home, with a big smile on my
face, when everything stopped.
I saw the vortex that is ‘me’ drastically slow down, as it could not move in the overarching stillness, and
evaporate, as it had no substance but movement.
Then there was nothing left. And nothing missing.
Living the peace-on-earth actual freedom, I am constantly amazed at how each of those words is perfectly
accurate: it is peace, it is on earth, it is actual, and it is freedom. Nothing short of magical.
‘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.