Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Richard’s Selected Correspondence

On Affective Experiences versus Pure Experiences

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’. (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History, #Peak Experience 1).

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.

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’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 5, #Peak Experience).

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 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. (Sundry, Journal Samples, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, Homepage, #Peak Experience).

*

• [Richard]: ‘Pure intent is derived from the PCE experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life’. (Richard, Selected Writing, Awareness, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 25a, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 22, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 20, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 19, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 14b, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, List B, No. 4b, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan-a, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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 presents 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’. (Richard, List A, No. 8, #Peak Experience).

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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’. (Richard, Konrad Correspondence, Page 6, #Peak Experience).

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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’. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive, #Peak Experience).

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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’. (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 2, #Peak Experience).

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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’. (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History, #Peak Experience).

*

• [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’. (Richard, Konrad Correspondence, Page 1, #Peak Experience).

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 (Richard, List C, No. 4b, #Nature Experience) 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’. (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.

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.

RICHARD: When I first started writing on the internet I tended towards saying things like ‘I find your description to be an accurate portrayal of what I have been calling a peak experience’ and ‘going by what you have written I have no doubt that your experience is a PCE’ and so on, as it was important to both establish a common basis for discussion and to build up a data-base of differing people’s descriptions for others to read and draw affirmation and confirmation from. Yet herein lay a catch-22 that became increasingly obvious as more and more people reported their experience ... I was, by default, setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience by (a) my words of corroboration or negation ... or (b) by the inclusion of their description in or the exclusion of their description from the data-base!

GARY: Yes, particularly since on my part there has been some confusion on account of the terminology, some lack of clarity about the difference between the so-called peak experience and the PCE and, now, what is described as an excellence experience ...

RICHARD: Writing on mailing lists has been beneficial for me in that feedback made me aware that I had to get my act together over precise terminology ... I was straddling two eras, as it were, and had never realised that the term ‘peak experience’, as made popular by Mr. Abraham Maslow, was so loaded with the metaphysical content it has (I had mixed and mingled the phrases). As for this term ‘excellence experience’, it is being suggested to represent the penultimate ... the best of what can be experienced, in what is termed ‘virtual freedom’, wherein ‘I’ am so thinly in existence ‘I’ am virtually not there.

I use the word ‘virtual’ deliberately (it has nothing to do with the virtual reality of cyber-space) as ‘virtual’ means ‘almost as good as’ or ‘nearly the same as’ or ‘in effect comparable to’ and so on. This is because it is humanly possible to thoroughly improve one’s lot in life, before the ultimate happens, wherein one lives in a well-earned happy and harmless way 99% of the time ... and which is streets ahead of normal human expectations.

• Dictionary Definition: virtual: that is so in essence or effect, although not recognised formally, actually, or by strict definition as such; almost absolute. Possessed of certain physical virtues or powers; effective in respect of inherent qualities. Capable of producing a certain effect or result’. (Oxford Dictionary)

GARY: ... it is good that you are not lending affirmance in order to establish the validity of these conditions. One needs to ‘see for themselves’ what is up by comparing the experience with what is written and by talking to others.

RICHARD: These words are music to my ears.

RICHARD: The most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element ... in a PCE one is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence – the actualness of everything and everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.

GARY: In hindsight, the description of the PCE fits the bill, with the magical, fairy-tale like quality. The excellence experience may be more common to me lately that I hitherto thought. In the excellence experience, there is a commonness to it not found in the PCE.

RICHARD: Ahh ... good, I am pleased to have feedback that shows this to be a facet of experiencing that more than just a few people have so far reported. It all helps to clarify and aided communication.

GARY: In the PCE, there is a clear sense that something of momentous importance is happening, at least it seemed that way for me.

RICHARD: Excellent ... words conveying what ‘momentous importance’ conveys are words such as what I look for in a description, for it is no little thing what one does/ what we are doing. What is conveyed is what impelled ‘me’, all those years ago, into proceeding with the utmost dispatch so as to enable peace-on-earth sooner rather than later ... so much so that when the going got rocky, from time to time, when ‘I’ put ‘my’ foot on the brake pedal in order to slow the process down the pedal went straight to the floor.

‘I’ was on the ride of a life-time.

GARY: The excellence experience, if not labelled such, might seem to be an experience of exceptional clarity and lucidity. With the PCE, words like bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth, vibrant, clear, alive, animate, come to mind.

RICHARD: The words ‘exceptional clarity and lucidity’ strikes me as being a very good description of the distinction when compared with ‘bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth’ and so on as I am swimming in largesse.

GARY: One of the things that was most striking about it was how uncommon everything appeared, how rich and variegated everything was.

RICHARD: Yes, I took particular note of your depiction of the stone in the gravel pit: sometimes peoples have looked at me in shock when I wax eloquent about actual intimacy with a stone, a brick, a glass ashtray, a polystyrene cup and so on, but I just tell them that I am officially mad and/or that I am a war veteran and they, presumably, go away content that all has been thus satisfactorily explained.

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:

• [Gary]: ‘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]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Gary, 14 August 2000).

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.

RESPONDENT: I seem to agree to some extent with No. 5, but not to the extent of being mad with Vineeto. I also do not find anything radical in Richard’s teachings. I already am aware of most of this stuff thanks mainly to Osho and other eastern philosophies .

RICHARD: I am well aware that many people initially get the impression that I am saying the same thing as do those people who are living in an altered state of consciousness known as spiritual enlightenment ... as detailed in Eastern spiritual philosophy. However, an actual freedom from the Human Condition is not an altered state of consciousness (ASC) wherein the identity transmogrifies ... it is an on-going pure consciousness experience (PCE) wherein the identity is annihilated in its totality.

In an ASC the identity shifts its focus, when ‘I’ as ego undergoes an ‘ego-death’, and ‘me’ as soul realises its ‘True Self’ as epitomised in the phrase: ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’. The next step is the realisation that ‘Me’ and ‘God’ (not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues) are one and the same thing and, as such, one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. Thus, being now ‘Spaceless and Timeless’ one has achieved ‘Divine Immortality’ and one can confidently say – as Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain did – that one is ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet’. Eastern mystical philosophy stipulates that the temporal world – the entire material universe – is but an illusion, and only God is real ... God as ‘Pure Being’ (The Brahman, The Buddha, The Tao, The Void, The Whatever) and not the god of the churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Whereas in the PCE the identity disappears when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul is expunged, eliminated, extirpated ... as extinct as the dodo but with no skeletal remains.

Then one is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware ... what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence.

RESPONDENT: Another thing I want to mention is that the state described by Richard (I’m not yet sure if actual or virtual freedom :)) is very similar in its characteristics with the intermediate state between the normal condition of mankind and the Self state of affairs.

RICHARD: Then I suggest that you re-read my descriptions ... I make it perfectly clear that an actual freedom is beyond ‘the Self state of affairs’ (and not before). For just one example: (Richard, Articles, A Brief Personal History, #2).

RESPONDENT: I can say that as I’ve pass through this before enlightenment took place.

RICHARD: It is often the case that a PCE can devolve into the altered state of consciousness (ASC) known as spiritual enlightenment – such is the power of identity sweeping back in – and it is not uncommon to then self-centredly take the ASC as being superior to the PCE.

The ASC is exceptionally self-centred (it is sometimes expressed as ‘I am everything and Everything is Me’) ... just look at your own words (further above):

• [Respondent]: ‘The state in which you’re able to know your Self is a state in which you are blown up through space and time, becoming everything’.

Need I say more?

RESPONDENT: As for ‘ASC-PCE?’, the state I’ve experienced back then had had in my view the same properties as the PCE, the same fairy-tale magic, things being covered with sparkling silver, continuously living in the split-of-a-second, etc. But I guess you’re more entitled to speak about it as 3 hours can hardly be compared with 11 years.

RICHARD: As well as that there is a vast body of mystical literature which gives many, many descriptions of the ASC (and the enlightened state itself) which, despite your earlier rewrite of your enlightenment experience, and your recent redefinition of love, speak unambiguously about love not only being one of the key features but affective into the bargain. For example:

• [Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti]: ‘We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a battle going between the sacred and the profane. We have divided what love is from what love should be, so we never know what love is. Love, surely, is a total *feeling* that is not sentimental and in which there is no sense of separation. It is complete purity of *feeling* without the separative, fragmenting quality of the intellect’. [emphasis added]. (page 76, ‘On Living and Dying’; Chennai [Madras], 9 December 1959; ©1992 Krishnamurti Foundation of America).

In other words, spiritual/ sacred love is human love transformed into a state of being called Love Agapé (or some-such name).

Also, there is no Divine Compassion in a PCE (hence no magnetic properties to draw people to one) thus one can pass unnoticed in the world – a definite plus if there ever was – and judgement operates very well indeed as whatever qualities are apparent are easily recognised for what they are (arising out of properties) so that actual values easily ensue.

Plus the delusion of omniscience (the impression of having absolute knowledge of everything) does not arise in a PCE.

Incidentally, there are no ‘things being covered with sparkling silver’ here in this actual world and, as there is only ever this moment, it is eternal ... hence no ‘continuously living in the split-of-a-second’.

RESPONDENT: It is also the fact that after it ended no memory of it remained (no possible representation or residual taste), just a feeling of peace and perfection for the following days. Yes, and the Vortex, resembling a tornado ... swirling above and around. Who let the dogs out?

RICHARD: As the Self is the Vortex that is easily answered, non?

RESPONDENT: Is it that the instincts can escape our psychical body ...

RICHARD: No, the ‘psychical body’ is a product of the affective faculty’s epiphenomenal psychic facility ... the psyche, and all its other-worldly adumbrations, is the instinctual passions in action.

RESPONDENT: ... or is it this greater reality created, the last stand?

RICHARD: Ha ... the ‘last stand’ has been lasting, at the very least, over 3,000-5,000 years of recorded history.

RESPONDENT: And the same definite sensation: people are cut off from the felicitous World (these ideas are taken directly from the 2 poems I’ve wrote in order not to mix with what I’ve learned in the meantime). I’ve contemplated lately what would have happened if that big I vanished ... it would probably would have been the same.

RICHARD: No, not the same ... without ‘the big I’ it would have been a PCE.

RESPONDENT: There is so much to talk about, for instance why when I’m interested in something I find that thing? Your email list is no exception. For instance I was thinking how many people are subscribed to this discussion list and a day later a response arrived.

RICHARD: What generally happens with intuitive/ psychic events is that people conveniently forget all the times when whatever it was they had prescience, precognition, or a premonition about did not occur.

When tested properly it usually works out at about 50-50 ... the same as guessing.

RESPONDENT: I appreciate your sense of humour (...) may we have more of it?

RICHARD: There is so much about life which is irrepressibly comical there is bound to be more.

RESPONDENT: And alcohol is indeed a bad choice, as you’re feeling quite nasty afterwards.

RICHARD: True ... although it is a blessed relief to be rid of the need for any mood-enhancing or mind-altering substances.

RESPONDENT: And a few words about me ... I’m a young adult, 26 years of age, single, male, quite sane, living in Eastern Europe, with an above the average IQ, a normal personality, earning an above the average income, quite happy with my life as-it-is, yet I know that much more is possible.

RICHARD: Much, much more ... here in this actual world lies the pristine perfection of the peerless purity that the infinitude of this material universe actually is.

RESPONDENT: Only when 20 years old, this life came so close to never happen.

RICHARD: Now that the third alternative (to either materialism or spiritualism) is available there is the distinct possibility that more than a few people will similarly escape such a fate.

The days of nonsense passing for sagacity are numbered.

RESPONDENT: Your experience is that enlightenment is a degeneration of the third state of consciousness (PCE), am I correct?

RICHARD: No, and a pure consciousness experience (PCE) is not ‘the third state of consciousness’ anyway ... here is how you detailed the four states of the ‘fourth way’ system of spiritual philosophy of Mr. Georges Gurdjieff and Mr. Petyr Ouspensky:

• [Respondent]: ‘My reference system consists mainly in ‘fourth way’ ideas, ideas brought to the west by Gurdjieff and later on Ouspensky. I’ve chosen this system of thought as it is the most practical I’ve ever encountered. (...) There are four states possible for man:
state no. 1 is ordinary sleep.
state no. 2 is waking sleep, the state in which mankind lives.
state no. 3 is what is called awakening, man no. 4 [a man that has balanced all the three functions (1– motor-instinctive function; 2 – emotional function; 3 – intellectual) in him] has glimpses of it, yet it becomes almost permanent for a man no. 5 [a man that has awakened and thus knows himself objectively; possess a molecular body, that is a soul].
state no. 4 is available for man no. 6 [a man that is enlightened and objective about the outside world, his Being body made of light stretching within the Earth atmosphere, he has acquired Spirit, he is God, has real I, Self, whatever] and beyond [a man having a body that is free within the limits of the Solar system and thus obtaining the highest possible for a man], it is the state I’ve described [the experience of the state is like that of an atomic bomb detonated over your head, an atomic bomb made of love, bliss, freedom, will and extraordinary ecstasy (like your most powerful orgasm x 10000000). Everyone around you is literally dead, whether a spiritual man, a scientist or a savage from Africa. Being in all things you know them directly, their inner substance, you don’t need any descriptive procedure based on observation. (...) Another thing is that in the fourth state there is nothing more to know. You have Absolute knowledge of Every thing]. Man no. 5 can have glimpses of it in the same way in which man no. 4 can have short glimpses about the 3rd state’. (‘Verification’; 30 July 2001).

As you describe ‘the third state of consciousness’ as being an awakened state wherein one ‘possesses a molecular body, that is a soul’ it simply does not equate with a PCE as a PCE only happens when the psychological/ psychic identity within (both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) goes into abeyance: a PCE is a temporary experience of an actual freedom from the human condition ... it is a flesh and blood body only (sans both ego-self and soul-self/ spirit-self) being apperceptively aware.

Put succinctly: a PCE is not an ASC.

RESPONDENT: I suspect that this enlightenment state of consciousness is layered on top of the PCE ...

RICHARD: Perhaps it would help to explain that the PCE can devolve into an ASC, such as a satori/ samadhi experience, when the psychic identity (‘me’ as soul) comes sweeping back and claims the experience for its own ... thus grandiosely usurping the infinitude of the universe.

RESPONDENT: ... as I cannot find a more plausible explanation for the fact that the world had had the same magical qualities, was a perfect place to live in and that some senses were very accurate (I was having a wider field of vision somehow different from the usual ‘window sight’, I was hearing all the noises of the moment, as for the other senses I don’t remember).

RICHARD: This is the way I have explained my usage of the word ‘magical’:

• [Richard]: ‘I was using the word ‘magical’ in its stage-magician sense of prestidigitation. Viz.: [quote] ‘all ‘I’ had to do for it [the meaning of life] to be apparent was to disappear. It is all rather magical’. [endquote]. Also, this actual world is rather magical in the way it is all just here right now of its own accord (without any cause)’. (Re: Magic? Meaning, Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27b, 14 July 2002).

Whereas you say that the physical world is not just here right now of its own accord, without any cause, but that everything has begun out of the Self (aka Creator):

• [Respondent]: ‘I question if actual freedom from Human Condition is attainable without surpassing the last psychic Archetype, the Self, our Creator, out of which everything has begun? (self vs. Self; 07 July 2002).

The enlightened state of consciousness is in no way ‘layered on top of the PCE’ ... just as an actual freedom from the human condition is beyond enlightenment so too is a PCE beyond any ASC.

RESPONDENT: The ‘sparkling silver’ sensation (it was like thin silver powder filled the air) combined with something resembling Music (the effect of various vibrations I suppose) may very well belong to the realm of ASC.

RICHARD: No matter what realm it belongs to it has no existence whatsoever here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: Yet, immediately after this state ended I had dinner and I remember how extraordinary delicious the taste of food was: it’s still the best meal I have ever had in my life.

RICHARD: It is quite common to have heightened sensory perception in an ASC (provided it be an extroversive ASC as contrasted to an introversive ASC): the nature mystics have written extensively about such experience: http://www.jnani.org/natmyst/natmyst_set.html

However, the introversive ASC is generally held to be both superior and more significant as it is exemplified by (a) the disappearance of all the physical and mental objects of ordinary consciousness and, in their place, the emergence of a unitary and undifferentiated consciousness and thus (b) the event is non-temporal (timeless), non-spatial (spaceless), and non-material (formless).

Mr. Robert Forman, on page 131 of the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 1998b’, (in a paper called ‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’), described the introversive ASC as a pure consciousness *event* so as to emphasise the absence of any experienced object – it is pure subjectivity in other words – which is also why such terminology as ‘Consciousness Without An Object’ is used to describe the totally senseless and thoughtless trance state known as ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit (Hinduism) and as ‘jhana’ in Pali (Buddhism).

In the West such a state can only be described as catalepsy ... apart from Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana), in his early years, possibly the best-known example could be Mr. Gadadhar Chattopadhyay (aka Ramakrishna): onlookers can see the body is totally inward-looking, totally self-absorbed, totally immobile, and totally functionless (the body cannot and does not talk, walk, eat, drink, wake, sleep ... or type e-mails to mailing lists).

A never-ending ‘dhyana’ or ‘jhana’ would result in the body wasting away until its inevitable physical death ... as a means of obtaining peace-on-earth it is completely useless.

RESPONDENT: I do remember another experience I would put the PCE stamp on it; when sitting on a bench in the park with a female companion and looking at the moon through the branches of the trees, I was feeling a perfect man in a perfect world, with no desire to change it for anything else ... she asked me what I was thinking, I ashamedly said ‘nothing’, she replied that that was a genius’s characteristic. We both laughed ...

RICHARD: One of the distinguishing characteristics of the PCE, other than the abeyance of identity in toto of course, is the absence of the affective feelings.

RESPONDENT: The question arises: is what you are living ‘24 hours a day/ 7 days a week’ that which is called in the eastern tradition Satori (third state of consciousness) or is Parinirvana?

RICHARD: An actual freedom from the human condition is beyond any state of being, by any description, as ‘being’ itself has become extinct ... the expression ‘an altered state of consciousness’ is but another way of saying an altered state of being (wherein ‘being’ has transformed into ‘Being’).

RESPONDENT: The only difference I can see right now between these two is that in Satori (third state of consciousness, temporarily no ego being present, PCE) the instinctual program is still there, only temporary suspended at that particular instance.

RICHARD: The difference is that the identity in toto (both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) is in abeyance in a PCE ... whereas in a ASC only one half of the identity (‘I’ as ego) is not present.

RESPONDENT: First reply – [Richard]: ‘Second, the ‘lack of personal ‘touch’ in our email exchange’ which you were quite irritated by is easily explained: if you were to knock-knock at this brain there would be no-one there to answer ... my previous companion eventually became so disappointed by the lack of personal touch (as in ‘no-one to make a connection with’ so as to have a relationship) that upon making a deeply passionate connection with another person she packed her bags and moved out. You may find this exchange helpful: [Co-Respondent]: ‘As you were mentioning that the real world has exceeded Monty Python and that nonetheless you are having a ball all the way, I fail yet to get a clear picture of you being also a person or is this perhaps a very subtle touch of black humour that you have introduced into our conversation? [Richard]: ‘It is this simple: as there is no alien identity in this flesh and blood body you cannot recognise me (it is only in a PCE that another person can relate to me). [endquote]. In all fairness to my previous companion it must be remembered that the person she met, and initially formed an (undying) relationship with, was an *enlightened* being – she was showered with, drenched in, and subordinated by, Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and not this actual Richard ... whereas my current companion only knows me as-I-am (thus there is no-one to miss)’. [emphasis added].

Second reply – [Respondent]: ‘I’m also curious about your former partner, Devika, the one who got away with an enlightened man (after spending approx. 10 years in your company) ... [Richard]: ‘Golly ... this is the information I supplied to you: [Richard]: ‘... my previous companion eventually became so disappointed by the lack of personal touch (as in ‘no-one to make a connection with’ so as to have a relationship) that upon making a deeply passionate connection with another person she packed her bags and moved out’. I neither said ‘enlightened’ nor ‘man’ ... or even said she ‘got away’ with this other person. [endquote]. I understood from your first reply that her new boyfriend was an enlightened person, that is a man, or is she a lesbian (‘matrilineal love’)? (‘got away’ was a more ‘humanly conditioned’ way to say it).

RICHARD: I see ... whereas the enlightened being my first reply refers to, whom she initially met and formed an (undying) relationship with, was the one parasitically inhabiting this flesh and blood body at the time of that meeting (in 1986).

I only became apparent when that grandiose identity died (in 1992) ... and, although she valiantly accommodated herself to the startling change in her relationship for the next five years, it can be said, but only in retrospect (which is why the word ‘undying’ is parenthesised), that all the while she longed for the affective connection of the preceding six years (after all she had been showered with, drenched in, and subordinated by, Love Agapé and Divine Compassion for the first two of those six years).

Which is why I said ‘in all fairness to my previous companion ...’.

In fact, both of my ex-wives had a difficult time with their husband: my first wife, being conventionally religious, and upon being faced with her husband’s spiritual enlightenment in the fifteenth year of a normal marriage, chose for the status-quo and, as far as I know, to this very day is still faithfully waiting for the ‘Second Coming’ of her God-Man (he who has a different notion of what a ‘generation’ means than virtually anyone else).

She stills speaks nostalgically about the person she married.

And my second wife, as I have already mentioned, upon being faced with her husband’s actual freedom from the human condition in the sixth year of an abnormal marriage – and being of a feministic mystical persuasion long before we met – chose for what she says is ‘True Love’ (‘Matrilineal not Patrilineal’) and, as far as I know (as of March 2000), is still faithfully waiting for the ‘True Peace’, which she further said only a female can manifest via ‘True Intimacy’, to manifest itself.

Whereas my current companion only knows me as-I-am (thus there is no-one to miss and/or long for).

RESPONDENT: And a few more questions ... what was the difference in experiencing sleep when enlightened compared to your actual present state of consciousness?

RICHARD: In a word: identity.

RESPONDENT: As for what impressed me about enlightenment is probably the very same thing that impressed you. The process of being catapulted in ‘That’ lasted 10 seconds, yet the Enlightened state lasted 3 hours so as to be no misunderstanding. In terms of experiences it was the most intense and wonderful experience of my life I remember til now. I’m not sure if That keeps me from remembering a PCE.

RICHARD: It could be ... consciously recalling a PCE means the beginning of the end of ‘me’ (whereas consciously recalling an ASC reinforces and perpetuates ‘me’ immortally) and, as such, one has a vested interest in not being able to locate the memory.

RESPONDENT: What still keeps me busy around here is that you say actual freedom is better then Enlightenment (a big wow! from my part) and realising with whom I’m dealing here; someone who has lived That for 11 years.

RICHARD: Aye, it is no little thing that is taking place on this mailing list ... those who are discussing these matters have before them a vital opportunity to partake in the precipitation of humankind’s long-awaited emergence from animosity/ amorosity and sorrow/ succour into benevolence and benignity.

RESPONDENT: It’s impossible for some folks on the list to imagine what this means and in my case with only this in mind I tend to be more appreciative to what you report.

RICHARD: Yes, it means that the current ‘Savage Ages’ will eventually become a thing of the dreadful past ... so much so that they will pass into the waste-bin of history like the ‘Dark Ages’ have.

RESPONDENT: I’ve said that it seems to me impossible to exit the Enlightened state on your own accord as that was All there was. Where to exit?

RICHARD: There is no ‘exit’ – there is no way out – only when ‘All That Is’ (aka ‘The Absolute’ which is ‘Being’ itself) ceased to exist, via altruistic ‘self’-immolation in toto, did the actual become apparent.

RESPONDENT: I was not referring to the help you received from your former partner or some other person but more to where you get the will from.

RICHARD: Ahh ... pure intent, born out of the PCE, is what ensured success: I could not, would not, and did not, continue to live a lie.

RESPONDENT: Just as a curiosity, in what specific way did she help you?

RICHARD: Put briefly: a pact was formed, in the first hour of meeting on a sunny beach, that we would stay true to the peerless purity of the PCE so as to ensure that man and woman could live together in peace and harmony.

RESPONDENT: And one more thing, if you were not to be enlightened prior to actual freedom, I would not be here and probably many others.

RICHARD: Ah, yes ... I have written of this before:

• [Richard]: ‘After the ‘something turning over in the base of the brain/ nape of the neck’ event of September 1981 (as detailed in ‘A Brief Personal History’), and as the western-style mysticism I was experiencing moved deeper into being an eastern-style mysticism (I can recall telling my then wife at that time I was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire as somebody had to sort this mystery out), I just knew that, in order to be able to speak meaningfully about going beyond enlightenment I had to go through enlightenment so as to, not only understand it experientially for myself, but to be able to have insider information, so to speak, to pass on to my fellow human beings.
For what is the point of enabling peace-on-earth, and thus demonstrating the actual way to live life for a benighted humanity, if one cannot explain the how and why [and what for], of it? (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 47, 11 August 2003).

Thus being a whistle-blower was my express intention all those years ago as, and this is but a personal thing, a very close friend of many years standing went ‘stark staring mad’ in December 1980 – what I came to know of as ‘divine madness’ – and the event shook me to the core ... hence I was determined to put an end, once and for all, to all the religious, spiritual, mystical and metaphysical nonsense that has saturated and dominated both 5,000 years of recorded history and perhaps 50,000 years or more of pre-history.

Accordingly, I then resurrected the four-hour PCE of mid-1980 and, on the very first day of 1981, irrevocably set foot on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition which fascinatingly opened up by taking such a step.

RESPONDENT: Why is it that when the Absolute dissipates (temporary experiences), one is falling back to the real-world and not to the actual world (in all cases)?

RICHARD: As there were many occurrences too numerous to mention, during the years 1985-1992, when the temporary dissolution of ‘The Absolute’ occasioned a falling-back, as it were, into this actual world your ‘in all cases’ codicil makes no sense.

It was those numerous direct experiences of the actual which prompted me to oft-times say to my then-companion (and rather clumsily put into 80,000 or so words on an old-fashioned type-writer) that there is an actual world, the world of the senses, of such pristine perfection and peerless purity that so far exceeded one’s wildest dreams as to be unconceivable/ unimaginable, and that spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment was not the summum bonum of human experience ... which, of course, occasioned her to urge me on in the many different ways she had at her disposal (and there is nothing quite like shooting one’s mouth off to others to galvanise having to put one’s money where one’s mouth is).

Incidentally, when those PCE’s would dissipate there was a falling-back into ‘The Absolute’ (once enlightened/ awakened there is no falling-back to normal).

RESPONDENT: Why is it that when the Absolute dissipates (temporary experiences), one is falling back to the real-world and not to the actual world (in all cases)?

RESPONDENT: So an enlightened man is not that far (‘twice removed’) from the actual world ...

RICHARD: You are obviously referring to this exchange:

• [Respondent]: ‘I have trouble in understanding the difference between the words ‘sense’ and ‘direction’ when comparing the AF method with spiritual ones.
• [Richard]: ‘The oft-repeated ‘180 degrees in the other direction’ phrase simply means coming to one’s senses rather than going further away (withdrawing from the senses) from the world as-it-is than one already is ... everyone is already detached and to practise detachment is to be twice-removed from actuality’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25b, 19 July 2003).

RESPONDENT: ... [So an enlightened man is not that far (‘twice removed’) from the actual world] and not that delusional as previously considered.

RICHARD: No ... an enlightened person is indeed that far (twice-removed) from actuality and is most certainly that delusional ... all I said was that, as the temporary dissolution of ‘The Absolute’ occasioned a falling-back, as it were, into this actual world on many an occasion too numerous to mention, during the years 1985-1992, your ‘in all cases’ codicil made no sense.

RESPONDENT: I would personally say that he is twice as close to the actual world ...

RICHARD: Well now ... as you are most insistent that intelligence operates [quote] ‘much better/ freed’ [endquote] when enlightened than when normal it is not at all surprising you would say that an enlightened person, a person so deluded as to typically testify to not being the body/ to physicality having no substance, would be twice as close to actuality as a normal person.

RESPONDENT: ... being the affective faculty (secondary processor of information) compared to someone in the real-world living primarily in the mind (tertiary processor of information).

RICHARD: Except that, by virtue of the delusion of having become ‘Being’ (born out of the illusion of being nothing other than an affective ‘being’), an enlightened one typically experiences not being the body/ physicality having no substance.

RESPONDENT: Did you fall back into the real-world also?

RICHARD: I see that I provided the following information almost immediately below:

• [Richard]: ‘Incidentally, when those PCE’s would dissipate there was a falling-back into ‘The Absolute’ (once enlightened/ awakened *there is no falling-back to normal*). [emphasis added].

RICHARD: It was those numerous direct experiences of the actual which prompted me to oft-times say to my then-companion (and rather clumsily put into 80,000 or so words on an old-fashioned type-writer) that there is an actual world, the world of the senses, of such pristine perfection and peerless purity that so far exceeded one’s wildest dreams as to be unconceivable/ unimaginable, and that spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment was not the summum bonum of human experience ... which, of course, occasioned her to urge me on in the many different ways she had at her disposal (and there is nothing quite like shooting one’s mouth off to others to galvanise having to put one’s money where one’s mouth is).

RESPONDENT: Hmm ... woomen.

RICHARD: As my then-companion may very well have been a male, had my sexual-orientation been homosexual rather than heterosexual, for all the difference gender makes in such a situation and set of circumstances, your (apparently) patronising comment adds nowt to a sensible discussion about why is it not necessarily always the case that, when the Absolute dissipates, there is a falling-back to normal and not to actuality.

RICHARD: Incidentally, when those PCE’s would dissipate there was a falling-back into ‘The Absolute’ (once enlightened/ awakened there is no falling-back to normal).

RESPONDENT: I’m the exception to your rule.

RICHARD: It is neither my rule nor is your three-hour, and thus temporary, altered state of consciousness (ASC) an exception to the historical reality that, once enlightened/ awakened 24/7, and thus permanently, there is no falling-back to normal.

RICHARD: (...) Put succinctly: an enlightened/ awakened/ transformed identity is still an identity, nevertheless.

RESPONDENT: As I suspected, you are using the term ‘enlightenment’ in a much different fashion than I ...

RICHARD: As you are on record as stating there is no difference between an altered state of consciousness (ASC) and a pure consciousness experience (PCE) it is not at all surprising. Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I really really tried to understand the purported difference between an ASC and a PCE, but guess what, dey’s da same’. (Sunday, 25/12/2005 3:00 AM AEDST).

Which could be why you snipped-off that which was being put succinctly. Viz.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I have been reading your webpage and correspondence which is a lot to read.
• [Richard]: ‘The simplest way to comprehend it all is that, just as the ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) has to die, for spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment (aka transformation) to occur, so too does the spirit-self (aka ‘the feeler’) in order for the flesh and blood body to be actually free from the human condition.
Put succinctly: an enlightened/ awakened/ transformed identity is still an identity, nevertheless’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 109, 9 March 2006).

But, then again, it could also be because you say you have never understood the distinction between ego-self/ the thinker and spirit-self/ the feeler (aka soul-self). Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I have never understood the distinction between ego and soul, as presented in the AF glossary. Soul is apparently the spiritual-seeking part of the makeup ... I don’t see how it is distinguished from ego, at least in my case. Really’. (Friday, 19/03/2004 1:56 PM AEDST).

RESPONDENT: ... [As I suspected, you are using the term ‘enlightenment’ in a much different fashion than I], Buddha, Huang Po, Wei Wu Wei, et al.

RICHARD: As Mr. Terence Gray, who published his scholarly works under the pseudonym ‘Wei Wu Wei’, was not free of the ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) then his usage of such terminology is also quite rightly suspect.

RESPONDENT: They stipulate unequivocally that there is no identity to become enlightened.

RICHARD: Nowhere in the Pali Canon does Mr. Gotama the Sakyan deny the existence of self: what he expressly states is that the self is not to be found anywhere in phenomenal existence ... as he so clearly enunciates to compliant monks in the ‘Anatta-Lakkhana’ Sutta (The Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic, SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66). Viz.:

• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Form, monks, is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease (...) But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease (...) Seeing thus, the instructed noble disciple grows disenchanted with the body (...) Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, ‘Fully released’. He discerns that ‘Birth is depleted, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world’. (www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/samyutta/sn22-59.html).

As for Mr. Huang-po ... here is what he had to say (from a translation found in Mr. Stephen Mitchell’s ‘The Enlightened Mind – An Anthology of Sacred Prose’, Harper Perennial, 1991):

• ‘All Buddhas and all ordinary beings are nothing but the one mind. This mind is beginningless and endless, unborn and indestructible. It has no colour or shape, neither exists nor doesn’t exist, isn’t old or new, long or short, large or small, since it transcends all measures, limits, names, and comparisons. (...) This pure mind, which is the source of all things, shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. (...) Above, below, and all around you, all things spontaneously exist, because there is nowhere outside the Buddha mind’. [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Perhaps you mean that the identity is extant ‘after’ enlightenment?

RICHARD: Aye, the spirit-self (aka ‘the feeler’) must also cease to exist in order for the flesh and blood body to be actually free from the human condition.

RESPONDENT: No argument there ... first there is a mountain etc.

RICHARD: What you are referring to is from a discourse attributed to Mr. Ch’ing yuan Wei-hsin. Viz.:

• ‘Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters (...)’. [endquote].

He then goes on to ask:

• ‘(...) Are the three understandings the same or different?’ [endquote].

Here is a clue: the second understanding is per favour the comprehension of buddhistic emptiness (that phenomenal existence is void of self).

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