Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

ALAN: Turning to the PCE, you wrote: [Vineeto]: ‘In the interest of having clear, definable terms, a pure consciousness experience is just that – an experience of pure consciousness, where the ‘self’ is temporarily absent, completely. This means that there is no affective experience in a PCE whatsoever, no ‘love, bliss, rapture’ or the imagination of being ‘the saviour of mankind’. Whenever there is any feeling or emotion experienced whatsoever, it is not a PCE. For most people, the experience may well start as a PCE, but invariably ‘I’ will step in and seize the experience as ‘mine’ and interpret and feel it to be a spiritual experience. One needs to understand and practice Actualism to be sufficiently aware of one’s beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions in order to avoid the trap of Enlightenment on the path to Actual Freedom’ [endquote]. This seems to contradict what Richard wrote to me: [Richard]: ‘A ‘difference in degree’ sounds like an apt description ... I cannot, of course, recall with 100% accuracy what happened twenty-odd years ago (plus there is too much other stuff that happened which blurs precise recall), so I would have to say there was an affective response which varied from experience to experience from virtually non-existent to full-blown grandiosity’ [endquote].

VINEETO: Yes, I think, Richard is in trouble here. Joking aside, I’m sure he’ll explain it to you.

RICHARD: Ha ... you sure know how to get me out of the innards of computers and back to writing, eh? However, it is this simple: back in 1981 I had umpteen number of peak experiences – sometimes two-three times a day varying from minutes to hours – and they were wild and woolly times. Somewhere along the line I had lost sight of the four hour pure consciousness experience that had triggered my whole incursion into becoming free of the human condition and there was certainly a ‘difference in degree’ of the affective element in each experience ... ranging from virtually non-existent to full-blown grandiosity for the ‘me’ that was inhabiting this body. The PCE stayed pristine in its own domain, however, and stood me in good stead some eleven years later ... as I have recorded in ‘A Brief Personal History’:

• ‘It troubled me deeply that I was in such a situation because I seem to be driven by some force to ‘Spread the Word’ and that was never my intention all those years ago when I first had what is known as a ‘Peak Experience’ which initiated my incursion into all matters Spiritual, culminating in the ‘death’ of my ego and catapulting me into this Absolute State. My intent back then had been to cleanse myself of all that is detrimental to personal happiness and interpersonal harmony ... in other words: Peace on earth in my life-time. Instead of that rather simple ambition, I found that I was impelled on an odyssey to be the latest Saviour of Humankind in a long list of Enlightened Beings ... and this imposition did not sit well with me’.

Alan, you and I have had discussions, over the past two years or so, regarding the PCE devolving into an ASC when ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ step in and possess the experience – the affective element in other words – and I would say that Vineeto has expressed it (above) and in other places such that I have little to add. I was, of course, responding to your observation: ‘I have said that perhaps then I have not had a PCE, if that is what a PCE involves. Well, in a way, that was correct. This is the first time that ‘I’ have experienced, as an actuality, the validity of the statement – and it’s a whammer! And, of course I can now see that I have had previous PCE’s – but perhaps they were all ‘tinged’ with an, however slight, affective element and I guess this one is too ... perhaps it is just a difference in degree’ .

If the experience is ‘perhaps tinged’ with an affective element then it is not, or is no longer, a pure experience. Indisputably the PCE has no ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – no affective element whatsoever – as a PCE is a pure consciousness experience.

In view of all that has been explored and written about, in the twenty-odd years since the ‘I’ that was inhabiting this body first had a PCE, nobody has to follow my experience and blunder along in the dark. It is pertinent to point out that I am putting the story together ‘after the event’, as it were, endeavouring to present as coherent a picture as possible. If anyone were to sit down with me and hear all that transpired (which cannot happen as I do not remember a lot of it) they would go away totally confused ... it was a mish-mash of experiences; a jumbled, bumbled, delirious, chaotic, bizarre, freaky and peculiar trip I went on. Vineeto and Peter get regaled with bits and pieces of it every now and again ... snippets of anecdotes when some discussion jogs my memory and another crazy morsel is added to the weird smorgasbord already presented. But the main thing I stress through all these sagas is the only danger inherent on the wide and wondrous path: because of the affective faculty one may lose the plot and become seduced by the glamour and glory and glitz of enlightenment.

I kid you not ... ‘Article 36’ of ‘Richard’s Journal’ spells this out in no uncertain terms.

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It may well be that this is an opportune time to address what you phrased as being the difference between ‘PE’s, PCE’s and actual freedom (‘AF’)’ in another post: the term ‘peak experience’ is an all-encompassing phrase ... a ‘catch-all’ term for many and varied experiences. I have explained how I came about the term to this Mailing List before. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘Mostly peoples interpreted them according to the prevailing norms of their culture, as mostly the PCE devolves into an ASC, anyway. For example (if you really wish to get confused) in a paper called ‘What does Mysticism have to Teach us About Consciousness?’ Mr. Robert Forman says: ‘PCE’s, encounters with consciousness devoid of intentional content, may be just the least complex encounter with awareness per se that we students of consciousness seek. (...) This experience, which has been called the pure consciousness event, or PCE, has been identified in virtually every tradition. (...) The pure consciousness event may be defined as a wakeful but content-less (non-intentional) consciousness ...<SNIP>...’.
‘I merely took the academically accepted phrase (Pure Consciousness Event) and substituted ‘Pure Consciousness Experience’ for it, a couple of years ago, so as to regain the actual purity of the PCE back from those who ascribe ASC properties (mystical purity) to it. Before that I had been using the expression ‘Peak Experience’, as popularised by Mr. Abraham Maslow, for about eleven years. In the beginning I used hippie terminology (from my ‘alternate’ background after the sixties) but PCE (Pure Consciousness Experience) seems most suitable. I also favoured the word ‘experience’ over ‘event’ because Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti makes such a thing about his ASC not being an experience. An actual freedom is very earthy and, living this experience twenty four hours a day is all new in human history ... thus I get to invent names (like ‘Actual Freedom’) and describe qualities and properties, like any explorer ... it is all good fun’ [endquote].

I typed <peak experience> into the search function and sent it through my web page and came up with 157 entries. I see that I often mix and mingle the phrase with <pure consciousness experience> and this would lead to confusion only if one disregards the places where I clearly delineate what I mean. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘These pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) which usually occur in a ‘peak experience’, as they are sometimes called, change one’s life forever. In a PCE everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already perfect ... that humans are all living in perfection ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing’.
(This is from ‘Article 4’; page 38; ‘Richards Journal’ and can be found as an excerpt on-line at:
... and a variation of the same is on page 5 of the ‘Introduction’ to ‘Richard’s Journal’. Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘I was already in an Altered State Of Consciousness and my companion had, prior to our meeting, experienced moments of perfection and purity in what is known as ‘pure consciousness experiences’. In such a peak experience everything is seen, with unparalleled clarity, to be already always perfect ... that humans are all living in purity ... if only one would act upon one’s seeing’.
(This can also be found as a sample article on-line at:
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• [Richard]: ‘Obviously, the physical cause necessitates a physical solution (the extinction of the instinctual ‘being’ itself) and this altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice will not eventuate unless the temporary absence or abeyance of the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) which created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced, remembered and activated. This peak experience of one’s potentiality is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and is essential to the process of freeing oneself from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny’.
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• [Richard]: ‘Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life’.
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• [Richard]: ‘I came across this nomenclature two years ago when I first came onto the Internet and accessed all the ‘Consciousness Studies’ groups (like the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ operating out of Cambridge and another one in Tucson and so on) and found them using PCE as in ‘pure consciousness event’ (but then linking it to the teachings of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan and Patanjali Yoga and their ilk). I subscribed to one of their Mailing Lists at the time and thus adopted their usage. Prior to that I had been using Mr. Abraham Maslow’s term ‘Peak Experience’ as a more respectable substitute for my own use of ‘tripping’ born out of my hippie background. The experience of pure consciousness has a global incidence, independent of race, gender, age or era’.
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• [Richard]: ‘There are many, many instances of people experiencing being ‘not me’. They are called ‘Pure Consciousness Experiences’ (PCE’s) and occur in what is known as a ‘Peak Experience’. What stands out in a PCE is that there is, in fact, no ‘me’ anywhere at all – either inside the body or out of it – to be having the experience. It is this sensate body experiencing itself ... and the term ‘this body’ includes this physical brain perceiving. There is even a name for this ‘me-less’ thought: Apperception. With apperception, the brain is able to perceive itself ... not ‘I’ perceiving ‘my’ brain thinking, as is normal, but awareness happening of its own accord’.
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• [Richard]: ‘An actual freedom, here on earth, in this life-time, as this body is not an idea – it is an actuality. This can be ascertained apperceptively via a pure consciousness experience (PCE) which can occur in a peak experience’.
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• [Richard]: ‘Your dictionary is not the only dictionary in the world; there are others which are more comprehensive. For example, the Oxford Dictionary, out of which I drew this meaning of the word apperception: ‘the mind’s perception of itself’. This is the third meaning of the word ... the two you quoted above are also in the Oxford Dictionary. (I also use a Webster’s Merriam which, like yours, only gives the first two meanings). The general meaning of apperception is: ‘how things are represented in consciousness’. For those who can remember how thinking happened of its own accord during a PCE in a peak experience, the third meaning is at once obvious and evident. Apperceptive awareness – this body being conscious without an ‘I’ in any way, shape or form – has a global occurrence ... it is universal in its scope. It is just that most people either forget about their PCE – for there is no emotional ‘I’ present to record the moment on its affective ‘tape-recorder’ – or they interpret the experience according to their culture’s icons’.
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• [Richard]: ‘You obviously cannot remember any of your PCE’s. In such a peak experience there is no ‘other controller of the ‘thinker’ or ‘feeler’ who must be further set aside’.
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• [Richard]: ‘For eleven years I was driven by some ‘energy’ to spread ‘The Word’ (by whatever name) and that had never been my intention before that when I first had what is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE). That peak experience initiated my incursion into all matters metaphysical’.
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• [Richard]: ‘One cannot think or feel one’s way into this magical world – the world as-it-is in actuality – but one does need an absolute conviction that such a world exists. This conviction comes out of the pure consciousness experience ... and these peak experiences are momentary glimpses into the actual, the world of pristine perfection. To reiterate: in the PCE, it is immediately seen that ‘I’ do not actually exist’.
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• [Richard]: ‘Psychedelics – known technically as psychotropic substances – have been used for centuries to produce ‘different realities’ – known technically as ‘Altered States of Consciousness’. They can be useful so long as one is clear as to one’s intentions, otherwise one will be led astray by the various mystical phenomena that present itself. If one is guided by pure intent – that is, to live the very best that is possible for both oneself and all of humankind – then psychotropic substances can produce a ‘peak experience’, giving rise to apperception. This is not an ‘Altered State of Consciousness. Apperception is the mind’s perception of itself – it is a bare awareness ... apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. This is called a peak experience. The experience is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s 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’.
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• [Richard]: ‘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 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. All this is born 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’.
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• [Richard]: ‘‘I’ am not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ can tap into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of the PCE that one has during a peak experience. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself’.
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• [Richard]: ‘I find your description above to be an accurate portrayal of what I have been calling a peak experience. At other times I have named it an actual intimacy, which I defined as: ‘The direct experience of the actuality of people, things and events’. It is a condition wherein the psychological distance disappears and everything is immediate and ultimate’.
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• [Richard]: ‘In spite of the fact that every single human being has had at least one pure consciousness experience (PCE) – and usually more – in their lifetime, they somehow can not differentiate between that peak experience of apperception (wherein ‘I’, the thought and felt ‘being’, temporarily quits the scene and the actual world becomes apparent) and their pre-conceived notions that everyday reality is an illusion disguising some metaphysical ‘Greater Reality’.
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• [Richard]: ‘Everyone I have ever questioned has reported at least one PCE in their life. Usually more than one ... and they can last from as little as one-two seconds to several hours. One woman I spoke with had it last all afternoon and night, finally going to sleep at 2.00 AM ... only to find it still happening upon waking. It gradually diminished during the course of the morning. And it is not only my observation ... many are the accounts I have read of this ... the subject is currently being discussed around the world in the fields of academia. It comes up in the new study (of the last fifteen years or so) called ‘Consciousness Studies’. This is where I obtained the phrase ‘PCE’ from ... I had called it a ‘Peak Experience’ (after Mr. Abraham Maslow) until then. Oh, there are many, many websites discussing the nature of consciousness itself ... one such site is called ‘The Journal Of Consciousness Studies’ and operates out of Cambridge University in the UK’.

I have also asked Vineeto and Peter if they would include the phrases ‘nature experience’ and ‘jamais vu’ in their ‘180 Degrees Opposite’ schematic so as to help clarify the matter as that is how I first described what I would now call pure consciousness experiences back in 1980-1981. And I see that Vineeto has posted a paragraph (derived from page 226; ‘Richards Journal’ and an excerpt of which can be found on-line at:
wherein I describe the ‘nature experience’ unambiguously. As for jamais vu: while jamais vu (‘never seen’) is not so common as déjà vu (‘already seen’), it can be just as compelling. Jamais vu is the opposite of déjà vu: instead of being extra familiar, as in déjà vu, a familiar situation seems totally unfamiliar. The world of people, things and events are experienced as for the first time ... there is little or no connection between long-term memory and perceptions from this moment. When a person is in this state nothing they experience seems to have anything to do with the past; everything suddenly becomes novel, totally new.

The sense of knowing people or things or events – and knowing how to relate to them – simply vanishes. Details one has seen a thousand times suddenly become engaging; the background is as equally important as the figure that occupies centre-stage. Or, as someone wrote on a now-defunct mailing list some time ago: ‘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’.

This odd, uncanny, surreal experience can happen to people who temporarily lose their memory or, more commonly, in an epileptic seizure (psychiatrically known as ‘temporal lobe epilepsy’ or TLE). For example, one such epilepsy sufferer wrote:

• [quote]: ‘I wonder, along with the doctors, if these mighty episodes which are so intimate yet so strange and autonomous for us epileptics, are after all just the random detour of chemicals and brain voltage caused by circuitry problems. Quite a few of us who have already-seen’ would dare to see even more; would actually follow that dangerous, disappearing, inbound road consciously and witness for the first time what is usually jamais-vu and hidden, and I mean the steady dark frolic of neurons and the ghost that is called ego’ [endquote]. (http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/neurowebforum/GeneralFeedbackArticles/YellowBrickRoad.html)

Incidentally, there are four types of déjà vu that clearly delineate between associated, but different, neurological experiences. These are déjà vecu (already experienced), déjà senti (already felt) and déjà visité (already visited) and déjà entendu (already heard). Déjà vecu is the most common déjà vu experience and involves the sensation of having done something or having been in an identical situation before and knowing what will happen next. These sensations are not only experienced as the outstanding sensations – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching – but can also include the proprioceptive sensations.

So ‘jamais vu’ was my original nomenclature ... and yet another way of describing the pure consciousness experience is with the psychiatric terms ‘depersonalisation’, ‘derealisation’, alexithymia’ and ‘anhedonia’ ... which descriptions I have scattered throughout my correspondence. The article ‘Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’ ... may be well worth a visit in this regard. The characteristics already detailed (‘depersonalisation’, ‘alexithymia’, ‘derealisation’, ‘anhedonia’) are the result of expressing actual freedom in the psychiatric models of the human condition – which reflects the ‘human’ struggle to understand this fundamentally simple process called consciousness – and are inherently arbitrary in that they do not exist as separate items. The extinction of identity in its totality with its ensuing loss of reality coupled with the inability to affectively feel pleasure along with the ending of the feeling faculty all takes place in the space of a few glorious moments. Peace-on-earth is the certain result ... because it is already always just here right now.

Then one is this universe experiencing itself as an apperceptive human being.

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I see that this naming dialogue was re-opened when Peter suggested introducing the phrase ‘excellence experience’ to describe the penultimate virtual freedom experience ... and all this discussion is well worthwhile, eh? My companion, who is exacting when it comes to grading herself/her experiences, has classifications ranging from good, very good, very, very good, excellent ... and the perfection peak experience (PCE). She is most particular to not confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience ... and the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. What I describe as ‘magical’ she prefers to call ‘entering into the fourth dimension’ (not to be confused with the Hindu fourth state known as ‘Turiya’).

This magical ‘other dimension’ is where time has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ ... there is only this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious, up-front and out-in-the open ... there is nowhere to hide and no reason to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to the universe: one is perennially just here right now ... actually in time and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

It may or may not be a useful phrase to others ... which is what Peter was asking. I cannot definitively say one way or the other as I am not an expert on virtual freedom ... virtual freedom is derived from what the ‘I’ that was lived from March to September in 1981 and was first put into practice by my previous companion. When she dropped the baton, so as to pursue other avenues, Peter and Vineeto had already taken up the challenge to pioneer the wide and wondrous path. They are the first couple to live together in peace and harmony – by being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes a day – and both they and Grace intimately know far, far more about the intricacies of the daily living of it than I do.

By and large I go by their reports as to how effective it is.

RESPONDENT: I’ve been reading your web page and mail group for about 8 months. When I was 18 I had an experience on LSD that seems to match your descriptions of PCE’s and also ASC’s. That day I swung from one to the other. After that day I could never stop desiring to return to that space of unspeakable peace and miraculousness (PCE as I understand it) or messianic immortality (ASC as I understand it).

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... here is an example, from a self-healing personal growth book published only recently, which maybe shows how a pure consciousness experience (PCE) can readily turn into being an altered state of consciousness (ASC) when feelings enter the picture:

• ‘I must have been six or seven, and I remembered lying in the grass in front of my house. My mind had become completely immersed in my own private world of grass and dirt and bugs. I examined each blade of grass, noticing the tiny striated segments, and could even see the various cells in each blade. The dirt was emanating a warm humid, earthy smell. The grass was fragrant, and I became ‘riveted’ in my little kingdom. My mind, utterly focussed, came to a complete standstill, and in that moment of absolute stillness it seemed as if time itself stood still. I found myself immersed in a bath of peace. The grass seemed to shimmer with an intense beauty. Everything scintillated and was bursting with life. It seemed as if only a moment had gone by when I heard my mother’s voice calling me in to dinner. As I got up I realised at least an hour must have slipped away as I had somehow ‘dropped into the gap’. My soul had quietly revealed itself to my innocent child-self’. (pages 48-49, ‘The Journey’, ©Brandon Bays 1999; published by Thorsons; ISBN 0 7225 3839 1).

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.

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It is great that you are here for your input from all your posts is invaluable.

RESPONDENT: (...) I’d like to hear anything you might say about what this is.

RICHARD: It would appear that ‘this’ – which is where and how you want to be; where you feel great instead of feeling as in a vice; where you no longer think or feel there is any limitations or can be (and where any of those are not really that); where you do not know how it works (other than any limitations being not really that but are, maybe, the structure of experiencing it) or what to do; where not knowing the hows and whys thereof is not a problem (because you can explore and learn in any way you want); where you kind of feel like the body feels the sensations (rather than you feeling the body); where you feel calm and even and open – which is where you can still feel fear/have sweating hands/have physical tension is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) of some kind ... especially so if it is the same place where you previously reported that [quote] ‘it seems that there’s only a little bit waiting to be done’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: I really appreciated receiving your comments. I’ve been working everyday solid since then, writing and rewriting follow-ups (trying to find a clear understanding and a way to write it), working with new things I’m seeing, and working on applying the ‘method’. I haven’t anything else that is ready to post yet, but before any more time went by, I thought I’d post this. I didn’t want to leave the description the way it was. If you have any comments, I’m very interested.

RICHARD: The only comment I can make at this stage is that there is insufficient information to provide a meaningful comment ... besides which I am somewhat reluctant to appraise another’s description unless it be strikingly obvious just what it is as experience has shown that when another tells me they do not know whether such-and-such an experience was an ASC, or something else, it is, as a generalisation, not a pure consciousness experience (PCE) … in a PCE it is startlingly apparent to the experient that is indeed a PCE. For just one example:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Yesterday I had the first really clear and unequivocal PCE since starting with this ... previously, I had had what I call ‘mini-PCE’s’. They lasted only very brief periods of time, say an hour or so, and I wasn’t really sure it was a PCE. Yesterday, however, I had *no doubt at all* about the experience, as it accorded in all details with what I have read about PCE’s (...) [emphasis added].

RESPONDENT: I don’t know if the above was an ASC, or something else. Whatever it was, the way that I wrote about it was vague, and further, if I apply what I know of your approach to word usage, my wording choices there (such as ‘feel’s and ‘feeling’s) communicate almost the opposite of what I intended. I didn’t want to use words in a new way that wasn’t integrated ‘in me’ – and I knew the meaning would be clear, at least to me, later.

RICHARD: By and large it is quite obvious that the words ‘feel/feels’ and ‘feeling/ feelings’ can refer to either a sensate experience (as in ‘the sun’s rays feel warming’ and ‘I am feeling the wind’s cooling caress’ for instance) or to an affective experience (as in ‘love/hate feels good/bad’ and ‘I have feelings of sorrow/compassion’ for example) ... what is a little less obvious, generally speaking, is that they can also refer to an intuitive, and therefore affective, sensing (as in ‘it feels right/true’ and ‘I have feelings of rightness/trueness’).

Put succinctly: an intuitive sensing (an affective feeling) of limitlessness is a difference in kind, and not of degree, to the fact of being without limitation (being sans the psychological/psychic identity) and thus directly experiencing the infinitude that this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is.

RESPONDENT: Perhaps I shouldn’t have posted it the way it was. Here’s some clarification: I decided to put together the best attempt to move forward that I could, and try it. What I could see in-advance was that I wanted to step out of ‘When is this here-and-now going to be infinitely-great like I wish it would be?’ and into ‘This here and now is fully unsurpassable – right here, right now.’ (That’s what the ‘where’ in ‘where and how I want to be’ from the posting refers to). I also wanted to step out of ‘Why aren’t I experiencing this fully, now?’ and into – actually fully and actively experiencing this unsurpassibility here and now. (And that’s what the ‘how’ in ‘where and how I want to be’ refers to).

RICHARD: Harking back to your first words in your initial e-mail – [quote] ‘for as long as I can remember I’ve been trying to live fully in what was experienced in what seem to be what you call PCE’s’ [endquote] – your intent was, presumably, to step-out of the one and step-into the other once-and-for-all (as in never-to-return)?

And I am asking as it is the intent which is the key factor ... preferably pure intent.

RESPONDENT: So: As completely as I could, I left the one and went into the other. Then it seemed that I was just experiencing. Nothing had changed about the circumstance (‘there’s no evidence that anything is different’) yet it was all entirely different because the experiencing was entirely different. It seemed so obvious that limited experiencing could never give anything but limited experience.

RICHARD: Bearing in mind that a limited ‘self’ (an identity by another name) can experience itself as being limitless (and a limitless ‘Self’ is still an identity nevertheless) what factors were there about the key words in that description – your ‘then it seemed that I was just experiencing’ sentence – that would indicate it was experiencing sans a limitless identity?

RESPONDENT: The next part, about ‘limitations’, was that I didn’t have any sense of being limited whatsoever.

RICHARD: Again, was it a direct (unmediated) sensing or an intuitive (affective) sensing?

RESPONDENT: It’s not that I had transcended the physical laws and become special; it was that the physical laws weren’t limiting in any way, because I’m the same stuff that everything else is, so there’s nothing about this that could be in opposition to anything else. The sentence: ‘Any ‘limitations’ here don’t seem like they’ll really be limitations – just the way it all works – the structure of experiencing it (?)’ – was more of how physical laws and characteristics weren’t confining (which they sometimes seem to be from a spiritual or metaphysical standpoint) and that rather, they seem to be liberating because they seem to be the very thing that is experienceable.

RICHARD: I will say this much: this flesh and blood body is subject to ‘the physical laws’ (such as, for an obvious instance, gravity and, for another example, cause and effect) and these material parameters are most appreciable – and thus most appreciated – else nothing would make sense.

RESPONDENT: I don’t remember a place for feelings to be there – (in the beginning when I noticed that I felt great – it seemed like something different than a typical feeling), until when I started to feel fear. To the degree that fear came in – I lost the sense of being there. When I went back to paying attention to here and now, the fear got left behind. So, it doesn’t seem as if feelings could be a part of it, from what I remember.

RICHARD: In an ASC feelings cease being the affections one has as they have become an (affective) state of being ... else it be not an ASC.

RESPONDENT: Soon I stopped actively doing it so that I could reflect on what it all was – and I drifted back nearer to what I usually do, and that’s where I am still.

Everything seemed – here, clear, and maybe a bit extraordinary – but not very vivid or magical.

RICHARD: It would appear then, that whatever it was, it was neither an ASC (of the nature popularly know as spiritual enlightenment/mystical awakenment) nor a full-blown PCE ... howsoever the key words – in your ‘then it seemed that I was just experiencing’ sentence – do stand out as being significant ... and very much so.

As do ‘there’s nothing about this that could be in opposition to anything else’ for that matter.