Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RESPONDENT: It’s strange that I can’t remember the times that I had fun. Can’t remember as in feel the same feeling now. I had a lot of fun tonight with friends. All we did was sit, talk, and joke around. It was fun. But once I got back home or started driving the less festive atmosphere started to set in. It feels as if I lost a part of my life because as much as I try to think back on tonight it’s like I just wasn’t there. It feels like life is passing me by and it is always a bit disconcerting to me. This particular sequence of events has happened to me before, but I usually find that the crash back into my less festive world is hard and heavy. I get lost in my cynical or glum thoughts that life isn’t always fun. But not so this time as when I realize this is happening I remember and pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive.

And just the fact that this is the only moment of being alive is enough to dispel all of those thoughts as I realized at one point that to go anywhere else is to go into the world of imagination. Still I’m maintaining persistence in getting this thing running so that the momentum can build because there’s really nothing else that I want as much as this.

I’m having incremental success in my application of the method. I find that the guide that Peter put on the website matches my experience so far. When I get lost in thoughts or feeling reality then I immediately pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. I do find that the initial layer is the layer of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. I eventually get to a point where everything seems empty. I stick with it and try not to ‘move’ anywhere and eventually the fascination that it is this moment sets in and I am once more enjoying life. Still there is more work to be done though.

There was something else I wanted to write but I can’t remember. Specifics....hmmm .. will have to come back to it. That’s all for now. (Subject: Re: Log, 30 Dec 2013, Message 161xx).

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RESPONDENT: Yesterday I had some results that showed me that I was applying the method correctly. It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception. But it was brief.

I was in the kitchen and my grandma told me to clean some stuff since she was too tired to do anything. So I reluctantly agreed (I do not like cleaning the kitchen). As I was wiping down the counter tops I remembered ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’. And I was then again struck by the fact that it was this moment. Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling. Suddenly I saw my kitchen counter top for the first time. In great detail I saw everything but I wasn’t focused on anything at all. I experienced the very curvature of my eyeballs and everything became alive and three dimensional. This was in contrast to the ‘flatness’ of the real world. I found that I was delighting in cleaning the kitchen because to simply be alive was delightful.

‘I’ couldn’t stay back for long though as all ‘I’ could feel and think was ‘WOW! this is amazing!’. To think that all these ordinary things could be so extraordinary is wonderful. What have I been doing my whole life? (Subject: Re: Log, 31 Dec 2013).

RICHARD: G’day No. 44,

Your initial email – reproduced here as #161xx further above – almost prompted me to write a comment, when you posted it, as it clearly pinpoints the difference between a caused/ conditional enjoyment (‘I had a lot of fun tonight with friends’/ ‘all we did was sit, talk, and joke around’) and an uncaused/ unconditional enjoyment (‘the fascination that it is this moment sets in’/ ‘I am once more enjoying life’).

(A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginingless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event).

Your follow-up email – reproduced here as #161xx above – unambiguously indicates you are indeed [quote] ‘applying the method correctly’ [endquote] and it quite remarkably reminded me of certain everyday experiences which occasioned the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago to both devise and (successfully) implement what has become known as the actualism method.

What the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – which ‘he’ formulated back in early 1981 – meant to ‘him’ was ‘Why is that experience not happening at this very moment?’ or ‘What is preventing that way of being here occurring right now?’ or ‘How come that wondrous world is not currently apparent?’ (and so on and so forth).

By thus being vitally interested – with that degree of fascinated attentiveness – in this moment being the only moment ‘he’ was ever alive it soon became a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life, each moment again, and ‘he’ readily developed the knack of allowing apperception to happen as it is never not this moment (as in ‘time has no duration’/ ‘time does not move’) in actuality.

(The experiential knowledge that this moment is eternal – that it is never not this moment in actuality – is the key to more instances of apperceptive awareness taking place).

Now that you indubitably know what apperception is – as per your ‘It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception’ sentence – and how to evoke it (as in your ‘Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling’ sentences) you may very well come to look back upon this day as being the turning-point of your life, eh?

Ain’t life grand!

Regards,
Richard.

RESPONDENT: a) I am not able to see the silliness of feeling bad ...

RICHARD: Do you comprehend that, although the past was actual when it was happening, it is not actual now and that, although the future will be actual when it does happen, it is not actual now ... that only this moment is actual?

If so, do you further comprehend that anytime you felt good/will feel good does not mean a thing if you are not feeling good now ... that a remembered occasion/an anticipated occasion pales into insignificance if you are feeling bad now?

Furthermore, do you understand that to be living this moment – the only moment you are ever alive – by feeling bad is to be frittering away a vital opportunity to be fully alive ... to totally enjoy and appreciate being what you indubitably are (a sensate creature) whilst you are here on this planet?

If so, is it not silly to waste this only moment you are ever alive by feeling bad ... when you could be feeling good?

RESPONDENT: ... feeling bad seems to be the driving force for doing various things like laundry, which I am not interested in – and the only way feeling bad goes away is by doing it ... not by seeing the silliness of it ... am I missing something here?

RICHARD: Maybe an example will provide the clue: back in 1981, in the early days of starting on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition, I was standing in the kitchen of my ex-farmhouse, situated on a couple of acres of land in a remote countryside location, washing the breakfast dishes; I was not interested in washing the dishes/I had never been interested in washing the dishes; I did not like washing the dishes/I had never liked washing the dishes; washing the dishes was an uninteresting chore, an unlikeable task, that just had to be done (otherwise I would not be doing it/would never had done it/would never do it) ... and all the while the early-morning sun was streaming in through the large glass windows, in the eastern wall to my front, beckoning me, enticing me to hurry-up and get the uninteresting and unlikeable job over and done with so that I could scamper outside and get stuck into doing the interesting things I really liked doing/wanted to do.

Howsoever, the tool for facilitating the actualism method – asking oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) – had by now become a non-verbal approach to life, a wordless attitude towards being alive, and all-of-a-sudden, whilst standing there with my hands in the sink being anywhere but here, at anytime but now, it was a delight and a joy to be doing exactly what it was I was already doing anyway ... standing in the golden sunlight with hands immersed in delicious, tingling-to-the-touch, hot soapy water.

I find myself looking at what the hands are feeling (the hot soapy water) and become aware I have never seen hot soapy water before – have never really seen hot soapy water before – and become fascinated with the actuality of what is happening: it is as if the hands know what to do without any input from me; they are reaching for a plate, they are applying the scourer appropriately, they are turning the plate over, they are applying the scourer appropriately, they are lifting the cleaned plate out of the washing sink; they are dipping it into the rinsing sink; they are placing it in the rack to drip ... and all this while they are feeling the delicious tingling sensation of hot soapy water as it strips-away the grease and other detritus.

I am not required at all; I am a supernumerary; I am redundant; I can retire, fold in my hand, pack in the game, depart, disappear, dissolve, disintegrate, vamoose, vanish, die – whatever – and life would manage quite well, thank you, without me ... a whole lot better, in fact, as I am holding up the works from functioning smoothly.

‘I’ was not needed ... ‘my’ services were no longer required.

RESPONDENT: Hi, I am from Poland(!), {and still learning English}.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list.

RESPONDENT: Anyway it was relief to me to find AF [few months ago] because it was proove, confirmation of my interest in this topic. As a matter of fact, I felt already relief when I found U.G. Krishnamurti and others with similar [the same?] experience of No-Self like Bernadette Roberts, John Lewis. Yet Roberts was tinged with spirituality and Krishnamurti was inconsistent and in some way biased. Your mode of expression appeals to me the most. However, I have problem, I am not sure whether I ever had PCE [here one question you said somewhere that the self in PCE is in suspension [or declutched], is your state different from PCE at all?], but you probably mentioned of possibility of evoking it by hallucinogens e.g. LSD [again I’m not sure]. Anyway I have taken several times LSD in my life and don’t know whether it is useful in ‘the path’ [maybe it was just ASC]. I feel still sometimes swayed by some feelings and emotions [I am 23] because of many years of using them [let say these positive], and it is hard to me to find balance between doing things emotionlessly and not getting bored. Anyway I am working on this. Please of some suggestion although I know you probably said everything already in those matters.

RICHARD: First and foremost: the actualism method is not about doing things emotionlessly ... the following link explains this in some detail (half-way down the page):

In regards hallucinogens: I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances (for obvious reasons). If, however, someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use as it is all-too-easy for an altered state of consciousness (ASC) to emerge rather than a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... there are many accounts available on the internet and 4 or 5 years ago I browsed through several web pages and never found any description that resembled a PCE.

The expression I use for what happens in a PCE is that identity is in abeyance – which means ‘a state of suspension or temporary disuse; a dormant condition liable to revival’ according to the Oxford Dictionary – and is the closest experience possible to what an actual freedom from the human condition itself is without actually becoming free ... and anybody I have been whilst they were having a PCE has indubitably been experiencing the same-same experience as is my on-going experiencing.

And it is neither the same nor similar to what the people you mention speak of.

RESPONDENT: 4. Richard, was it HAIETMOBA that induced your first PCE ...

RICHARD: No, the four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE) in 1980, which initiated the remembrance of many such moments of perfection stretching way back into my childhood, and which set in train the entire process eventually resulting in an actual freedom from the human condition, was inadvertently precipitated by psylocibin (given to me by a well-meaning but somewhat misguided associate at the time who told me it was similar in effect to tetrahydrocannabinol only much stronger) ... just as you have described in an earlier e-mail:

• [Respondent]: ‘... all of a sudden, literally in a moment, all traces of anxiety dropped away completely, and it was as if I had walked through an invisible membrane into a bubble of perfection. Absolutely nothing had changed. The fields, mountains, trees, sky, clouds, all stood before me in their sparkling, pristine glory. There was no ‘emotion’, but there was a pure sensation of joy that made me grin from ear to ear. (...) I knew that I was walking on a country road outside town, but when I tried to precisely locate myself in relation to the river and the town, found I could not. I could not hold an abstract map in my mind at all. But it didn’t matter in the slightest. Where am I? I’m here! The whole question of where ‘here’ is only makes sense in relation to where somewhere else is, and what’s the point of that? For the next couple of hours I strolled along, drifting in and out of this bubble of perfection, feeling absolutely fine and carefree. There was no trace of ‘mysticism’ or ‘spirituality’ about it; just enjoyment of being present in a perfect bubble of real time and real space and real things. (‘PCE / ASC / psilocybin’; Fri 7/11/03).

Only I would not say ‘... into a bubble of perfection’ but rather ‘out of a bubble of imperfection’ – as there is only perfection in actuality – nor ‘being present in a perfect bubble of real time and real space and real things’ but rather ‘being just here, right now, in actual space and actual time as actual form’ (and thus out of the bubble of real time, real space, and real things) ... but I can comprehend that from a real-world perspective it looks to be the other way around.

The ‘invisible membrane’ I can relate to ... as can some other people I have spoken to over the years.

RESPONDENT: Something else that accompanied the experience of passing through this ‘invisible membrane’ was a peculiar sense that I’d entered into a new ‘day’. Hard to describe, but you probably know exactly what I mean.

RICHARD: As in even though everything is familiar it has never been before – all is novel, never boring, all is new, never old, all is fresh, never stale – and never will be again?

Or, as someone wrote on a now-defunct mailing list some time ago, when describing such an experience: ‘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’.

RESPONDENT: I knew perfectly well it was the same day that I’d set out for my morning walk, but the ‘me’ who had set out for a walk that morning seemed to be aeons ago (metaphorically, not literally) – an artefact of a different time altogether.

RICHARD: It is more that the ‘different time’ is an artefact of ‘my’ making ... time itself is the arena, as it were, in which all things happen.

RESPONDENT: (But there was no loss of common sense. I knew it was still ‘today’).

RICHARD: In fact commonsense operates better than ever, eh?

*

RESPONDENT: ... or did you develop the HAIETMOBA method as a result of a spontaneous PCE?

RICHARD: RICHARD: Yes ... essentially ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ meant ‘what is preventing the PCE from happening at this very moment’ to me back in 1981 (six months after the initial PCE when I had thoroughly satisfied myself that the childhood PCE’s had, of course, nothing to do with any substance whatsoever).

Or, to put that another way, it meant ‘what is preventing the already always existing peace-on-earth (as evidenced in the PCE) from being apparent’ ... and it usually was either a feeling or a feeling-fed thought (as in a belief ... oft-times cunningly disguised as a truth).

The PCE demonstrates that the pristine perfection of the actual world is just here – right now – for the very asking.

*

RESPONDENT: For me, the PCE didn’t jog any specific memories at the time, but looking back now, there have been a few times over the years when a sensation (especially an unexpected smell or sound) has instantly brought back a flood of ... not memories exactly; that is, not memories of a specific event or experience, but memories of a particular way of experiencing that was characteristic of my early childhood, and pretty much identical to that ‘bubble of perfection’. (I don’t think mum was feeding me magic mushrooms back then).

RICHARD: You may find the following to be of interest then:

• ‘One summer day, 40 years ago or so, I was walking along a residential street when an rich, earthy scent wafted my way and triggered, as smells are wont to do, a vivid recollection. Like Dorothy, stepping out of her front door into the Technicolor Land of Oz, I remembered another summer’s day when I was 4 years old, playing in a bank of warm, black dirt in the back yard of my home. I had a little red toy car for which I’d made a road slanting up the face of the dirt bank and, in my recollection, I was ‘driving’ the car up this mountain road while making motor noises. That’s all there was, no real action, yet the memory, in the few seconds before it faded away, was redolent with the smell and feel of the warm dirt, the bright colour of the toy, the hot sun – with simple but intensely pleasurable sensory experience. When I read Aldous Huxley’s account of his mescaline experience, of his feeling that the colours, shapes, and textures of his books on the shelves across the room were as intense an experience as he could bear and that he dared not look outside at the flowers in the garden, I thought of my brief revisitation of my childhood’. (Chapter 1, ‘Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment’; David Lykken; www.psych.umn.edu/psyfac/emeritus_sr/Lykken/HapChap%201.htm#_edn3).

Various people I have discussed these matters with over the years have invariably recalled similar ‘Technicolor Land’ experiences in childhood ... sometimes referred to as a ‘nature experience’, a ‘peak experience’, a ‘jamais vu experience’, or even an ‘aesthetic experience’. And not only have I witnessed children having such an experience, and spoken with them about while it is happening, but recall having the same myself on many an occasion: often in early childhood there would be a ‘slippage’ of the brain, somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear too soon, and the magical world where time had no workaday meaning would emerge in all its sparkling wonder ... where I could wander for hours at a time in gay abandon with whatever was happening.

RESPONDENT: And how can anyone agree with you as there are so few PCE’s one experiences during life compared to the time spent busy being an identity?

RICHARD: As a pure consciousness experience (PCE) is a direct experience of the pristine perfection of the peerless purity this actual world is then even a momentary experience (quality) will stand out amongst years of normal experiencing (quantity).

RESPONDENT: It would be a very interesting report to read on this mailing list from someone who is experiencing a PCE while writing. Do you remember for such a thing to have happened in the past?

RICHARD: No ... any such descriptions have been written after the event.

RESPONDENT: Or do you have any links or descriptions of PCE’s that can be accessed off-site (as the actualist style of writing is quite -ism specific compared to umm … D. H. Lawrence for example).

RICHARD: As the suffix ‘-ism’ (from the Latin/Greek ‘ismus’/‘isma’ meaning ‘of action’/‘something done’) simply forms a noun expressing the characteristics of a person or a thing it would be a contradiction, not only in terms but in action, if the actualist style of writing were not specific to actuality ... whereas a romanticist’s style of writing, for example, is specific to the characteristics of romanticism.

RESPONDENT: For if it is such a global occurrence there would be many reports/ descriptions of it, including on the internet.

RICHARD: Most of the reports/descriptions I have come across have either been interpreted according to the cultural norm after the event or have devolved into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) during the event when affective feelings enter into the experience ... for example:

• ‘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.

Here is non-affective report/description:

• ‘One summer day, 40 years ago or so, I was walking along a residential street when an rich, earthy scent wafted my way and triggered, as smells are wont to do, a vivid recollection. Like Dorothy, stepping out of her front door into the Technicolor Land of Oz, I remembered another summer’s day when I was 4 years old, playing in a bank of warm, black dirt in the back yard of my home. I had a little red toy car for which I’d made a road slanting up the face of the dirt bank and, in my recollection, I was ‘driving’ the car up this mountain road while making motor noises. That’s all there was, no real action, yet the memory, in the few seconds before it faded away, was redolent with the smell and feel of the warm dirt, the bright colour of the toy, the hot sun – with simple but intensely pleasurable sensory experience. When I read Aldous Huxley’s account of his mescaline experience, of his feeling that the colours, shapes, and textures of his books on the shelves across the room were as intense an experience as he could bear and that he dared not look outside at the flowers in the garden, I thought of my brief revisitation of my childhood’. (Chapter 1, ‘Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment’; David Lykken).

Incidentally, that (a 40-year-old memory of a then-remembered experience from 4 years of age) is a classic example of a quality experience standing out amongst a quantity of experience.

RESPONDENT: Maybe this will trigger in my case some forgotten memories about forgotten PCE’s.

RICHARD: Mostly PCE’s happen for no demonstrable reason at all – as in being a serendipitous event – and quite often occur in everyday surroundings doing everyday things ... I can recall being on a farmhouse verandah at age eight, looking into the glistening white of a full glass of milk in the early morning sunshine, when it happened for the entity within.

Not being an affective experience they are not stored in the affective memory-banks (which is where the ASC is primarily located) and thus require a different type of recall to normal remembrance ... plus they are much more common in childhood and require further reach.

RESPONDENT: I’d be interested to know whether Richard sees that what [Robert] Forman is talking about with the PCE is quite different than what he means by it. It seems to me that Richard has merely adapted Forman’s use of the term due to some (superficial) overlap in usage, but I think it would be misleading to think of Forman’s PCE as the same thing as what an actualist means by it, since Forman is still firmly planted as a spiritualist, and because for him, a ‘PCE’ is without content – meaning without thought or sensation – just pure unmediated consciousness of consciousness alone.

The way Richard uses the word ‘apperception’ is closer in meaning (though not exactly the same) to what Forman means by a PCE than what Richard means by a PCE.

As far as I am aware, no one in academia has categorized or pinned down the PCE the same way Richard has. The normal understanding of a ‘PCE’ is that it is mystical, spiritual, pure consciousness. Personally, I don't see any benefit that the actualists get from associating the PCE term with Robert Forman or the ‘Pure Consciousness Event’ – as such association is bound to be misleading.

Given Forman’s definition of a PCE, it’s no wonder he doesn’t think it could be permanent. His PCE is 180 degrees opposite the actualist PCE.

RICHARD: First and foremost: it was not because of a (superficial) overlap in usage: a pure consciousness event is not a pure consciousness experience because experiencing does not occur in a pure consciousness event (else it be not a pure consciousness event) and there is nothing superficial about that ... indeed it is fundamental to the reason why I chose to call the temporary occurrence of an actual freedom from the human condition a pure consciousness experience.

When I first came onto the internet in 1997 I subscribed for a while to an academic consciousness studies mailing list associated with the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ and it was there I first heard of the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’ – with the emphasis that there be no experiencing in such a state – and thus chose the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience’ so as to make the generic phrase ‘peak experience’ more specific.

As for associating the acronym (PCE) with Mr. Robert Forman: it was not until 1999 that I came across Mr. Robert Forman’s paper, published in the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998’ and entitled ‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’, from which I provided quotes your refer to earlier in your e-mail to demonstrate to another co-respondent the confusion engendered by peoples interpreting spontaneous pure consciousness experiences (most common in childhood) according to the prevailing norms of their culture ... which are derived from altered states of consciousness (ASC’s).

ASC’s have two main characteristics: they can be extroversive or introversive. Mr. David Wulff has this to say:

• ‘[Robert] Forman concluded that the introvertive mystical experience, which he relabelled a pure consciousness event to emphasise the absence of any experienced object, is the more elemental form [of mysticism]. Two further states develop from this – the dualistic mystical state, which combines a heightened awareness-of-one’s-own-awareness with consciousness of thoughts and objects, and the unitive mystical state, in which one’s awareness and its objects become one, which is [W. T.] Stace’s extrovertive experience. Forman rejected the label ‘extrovertive’ because it seems to suggest that one is having the experience ‘out in the world’. (page 401, ‘Varieties of Anomalous Experience’; ©2000 American Psychological Association).

I have also written about the introversive/ extroversive distinction before:

• [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 (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 Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998’, (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.

In the paper mentioned (‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’) Mr. Robert Forman provides examples from both western and eastern mysticism (plus an event in his own life) to illustrate what he means by the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’. For example he talks about mystics becoming ‘utterly dead to things, encountering neither sensation, thought nor perceptions’ and ‘one becomes oblivious of one’s own body and all things’ and ‘one becomes unaware of all things, i.e. devoid of all mental and sensory content’ and then goes on to say that ‘in Buddhism such Pure Consciousness Events are called by several names: nirodhasamapatti, or cessation meditation; samjnavedayitanirodha, the cessation of sensation and conceptualisation; sunyata, emptiness; or most famously, samadhi, meditation without content’.

Howsoever he is adamant that consciousness is still operating in a pure consciousness event ... for instance he says that ‘the Upanishads are insistent that one remains conscious, indeed becomes nothing but consciousness itself’ and ‘according to Yogacara Buddhist theorists one’s consciousness is said to persist as some form of content-less and attribute-less consciousness’.

Bearing this in mind I accessed the links you provided and have drawn from them the following relevant quotes:

• [Mr. Charles Tart]: ‘The ultimate goal is a state called nirodh, which is beyond awareness itself. Nirodh is the ultimate accomplishment in this particular version of Buddhism, higher than the eighth jhana on the Path of Concentration’.
• [Mr. Alan Hefner]: ‘Beyond the nirvana is the nirodh (cessation), which consists of the absolute cessation of consciousness ...’. (www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/meditation.html).

Here both authors are quite specific that consciousness itself ceases – just as Mr. Gotama the Sakyan said – which could explain the quote which started this discussion:

• [Mr. Ken Wilber]: ‘In my scheme, the PCE is a causal (formless) state of consciousness; since, as Forman points out, it is always a temporary state, it cannot become a permanent structure (if it did, it would become a type of irreversible nirodh, or permanent formless cessation)’.
(http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/psych_model/psych_model6.cfm/xid,4301884/yid,2377916).

And Mr. Charles Tart also explains why it cannot be permanent (although his ‘seven days’ can only be an arbitrary figure):

• [Mr. Charles Tart]: ‘This is an extremely difficult state to obtain because the body’s metabolism drops to minimal level for existence; thus the state can be maintained for no longer than seven days. The meditator is required beforehand to determine the length he or she will remain in this state. (www.psychedelic-library.org/soc17.htm).

It would appear that Mr. Robert Forman cherry-picked his data to support his own experience (which is easy enough to unintentionally have happen) and which brings me to a discussion you and I had over a year ago:

• [Respondent]: ‘A question specifically for Richard. It’s interesting to me that many who have this ‘no-self’ experience say that it’s not an ‘experience’ at all – like for example, Bernadette Roberts and U.G. Krishnamurti – and here I see that Ann [Faraday] says virtually the same thing. That is, no experiencer – therefore no experience. Any clue whether this is just a difference in terminology? Or rather whether there may be some actual, qualitative difference?
• [Richard]: ‘In the Buddhist tradition, which is where she apparently gained her understanding from going by her use of the capitalised word [quote] ‘Empty-ness’ [endquote] four times to describe the state of being she underwent, there is a qualitative difference ... I have already written before, on Jan 03 2001, about the state of being called ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit (known as ‘jhana’ in Pali) so I will refer you to the following link: [snip link]. Suffice is it to say here that this state of being, otherwise known as ‘entering into samadhi’, is a trance state – a state called catalepsy in the West – wherein ‘Form’ and ‘Feeling’ and ‘Perception’ and ‘Mental Fabrications’ and ‘Consciousness’ (all experiencing) cease to exist totally.
There is only Bliss.

Now, even to say ‘There is only Bliss’ is to be saying too much for ‘Bliss’ is the last state of being experienceable before the fulfilment of the event itself (whereupon consciousness ceases completely) and the first state of being experienceable after the event ... the event itself is a comatose state about which nothing can be said.

Also, where I say ‘There is only Bliss’ I am speaking primarily out of personal occurrences (although there are references to ‘Unspeakable Bliss’ in mystical literature) and why I say that ‘Bliss’ is the last state of being experienceable before/ first state of being experienceable after is because that is the way it happened for me.

If I were to delineate the way such an event can proceed it would look something like this: reaching deep down into the deeper feelings, past personal sorrow, there is universal sorrow (the sorrow of all sentient beings); by being that then out of that comes compassion, universal compassion, and not the common or garden variety; then in that, by being that, there is love, love of a nature that can only be rapturous; to be enraptured is to be euphoric, to be euphoric is to be ecstatic; in ecstasy there is only bliss ... then what happens is ineffable as all experiencing ceases (hence ‘timeless and spaceless and formless’).

Which is why what I then called ‘The Absolute’ (‘Ground of Being’, Truth, and so on) has no attributes whatsoever.

However, upon conscious awareness re-establishing itself the passage of the sun across the sky, or the movement of the stars through the firmament by night, would show that time and space and form had carried on doing what it has always been doing all the while the episode was underway ... which is one of the main reasons why I am here where I am today.

I just could not live a lie ... no matter how glorious (read vainglorious in hindsight) it be.

RICHARD: ... a pure consciousness event is not a pure consciousness experience because experiencing does not occur in a pure consciousness event (else it be not a pure consciousness event) and there is nothing superficial about that ... indeed it is fundamental to the reason why I chose to call the temporary occurrence of an actual freedom from the human condition a pure consciousness experience. When I first came onto the internet in 1997 I subscribed for a while to an academic consciousness studies mailing list associated with the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies’ and it was there I first heard of the phrase ‘pure consciousness event’ – with the emphasis that there be no experiencing in such a state – and thus chose the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience’ so as to make the generic phrase ‘peak experience’ more specific. As for associating the acronym (PCE) with Mr. Robert Forman: it was not until 1999 that I came across Mr. Robert Forman’s paper, published in the ‘Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998’ and entitled ‘What Does Mysticism Have To Teach Us About Consciousness?’, from which I provided the quotes you refer to earlier in your e-mail to demonstrate to another co-respondent the confusion engendered by peoples interpreting spontaneous pure consciousness experiences (most common in childhood) according to the prevailing norms of their culture ... which are derived from altered states of consciousness (ASC’s).

RESPONDENT: I appreciate you making the distinction clear between the ‘pure consciousness event’ and the ‘pure consciousness experience.’ What seemed to me a nominally (superficial) overlap turns out to be worlds apart in meaning. When I read the quote from Forman at the beginning of the AF Library entry on ‘PCE’s,’ I originally interpreted you to be using the ‘pure consciousness event’ to provide additional evidence (backed by an academic source) that the PCE(xperience) occurs globally.

RICHARD: I do see that The Actual Freedom Trust library entry can be misleading in that respect ... in the original e-mail, which that entry has been adapted from, I was explaining that most people interpreted their experiences of pure consciousness according to the prevailing norms of their culture, as it mostly devolved into an ASC anyway, and that because of the confusion (such as the ‘trophotropic’ and ‘ergotropic’ experiences and/or ‘apophatic’ and ‘kataphatic’ strands of mysticism Mr. Robert Forman referred to in that paper) I merely took the academically accepted phrase and substituted ‘experience’ for ‘event’, a couple of years previously, so as to regain the actual purity of the unadulterated experience.

RESPONDENT: Though as I understand you now, you are actually using the ‘pure consciousness event’ as a contrasting point of departure to introduce something radically different – namely, the ‘pure consciousness experience’ – which is why you say there is no (superficial) overlap.

RICHARD: Yes, that is a good way to put it – ‘as a contrasting point of departure to introduce something radically different’ – because my intention at the time (1997) was to introduce my discovery on the academic consciousness studies mailing list I was then subscribed to ... but an abortive attempt at a meaningful discussion with a tenured professor soon disabused me of the notion that any such intent would be received with anything other than the civil rejection it got.

In short: I got the message (that one is not supposed to be living/ experiencing/ being that which one discusses in academia) and unsubscribed.

RESPONDENT: If I understand you correctly, I am certainly glad to see that you never confused or conflated the two – and that my previous understanding was based upon a misunderstanding of the presentation of the quotes.

RICHARD: I will see if the library entry can be made more clear ... and I appreciate you drawing attention to the fact that the second part of the quote was in reference to the ‘Dual Mystical State’ and have already removed it as mysticism is confusing enough already without a error in quoting on my part adding to it.

RESPONDENT: In other words, previously, I thought Forman’s quote was there to help define what a ‘pure consciousness experience’ IS – rather than what it IS NOT. Or maybe a better way of putting it would be that both are pure consciousness, yet the Event and the Experience are 180 degrees apart.

RICHARD: As what ‘pure consciousness’ means in a pure consciousness event is ‘consciousness without an object’ (an identity sans body), and what ‘pure consciousness’ means in a pure consciousness experience is ‘consciousness without a subject’ (a body sans identity), they are indeed 180 degrees apart.

‘Tis no wonder the tenured professor politely rebuffed me, eh?

RESPONDENT: But a vast empty psychological space is still psychological space (a self) and still creates a feeling/distance barrier. In the PCE’s this emotion/feeling distance barrier (the self) dissolved and affected the way I (physically) experienced time, space and objects. In the PCE’s the security or confidence instilled by (physical) location in eternal time and infinite space is unmistakable. Everything exists in an absolute stillness and deep purity. Visually, the contrast of light and dark is heightened, colours are richer. Hearing is unrestricted, sounds are welcome. I could feel the nubbly fabric of the chair on my skin and I remember thinking I was in forbidden territory, that I was breaking a big taboo because everything was so easy and o.k. So those are the differences as I experienced them. Was attention/energy appropriated to the senses that otherwise would have been used by the psyche?

RICHARD: It is the other way around: the naïve attention of the senses (a spontaneous awareness) is usually appropriated by the psyche ... and the psyche consumes a lot of calorific energy to maintain its dominance. Where the psyche is non-existent (either in abeyance in a PCE or extinct in an actual freedom from the human condition) sensory perception is freed to be what it has actually been all along ... an effortless delight.

Nothing is being appropriated anywhere by anything.

*

RESPONDENT: Richard, what were you doing to induce PCE’s ‘on an almost daily basis’ all those years ago?

RICHARD: The short answer is: by allowing them to happen.

*

RESPONDENT: Now regarding ‘a feeling is not a fact’. This is so tricky. The amygdale identifies various sense data with the need for certain chemicals: for a tiger you need this chemical, for a baby you need that chemical. But no, that would mean identification (thought) comes first. So that means that prior to identification happening, we get chemicals, based on unidentified sense data?

RICHARD: Yes (if by ‘unidentified’ you mean cognitive identification): the raison d’être for the instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, genetically endowed by blind nature is that a split-second reaction occurs in situations where survival depends upon instant action.

In addition to this basic programming, from birth onwards (thus prior to thought developing), an affective memory forms as the baby experiences itself and its world ... and even when cognition develops the circuitry is such that sense impressions go first to the affective memory (which colours the cognitive memory).

Thus when there a tiger is pouncing (to use your example), and there is no time for any leisurely appraisal of the situation before taking appropriate action, there is what has been called a ‘quick and dirty’ emotional/passional scanning of danger, and a near-instantaneous affective-based response.

In a blind rage, for instance, where one instinctually lashes out it is common to later on reflect and say ‘I don’t know what came over me’ (or words to that effect).

RESPONDENT: So that means I am anger waiting to happen, that the sense data that triggers it is not even really relevant.

RICHARD: Well, not always relevant but, at the very least, sometimes so ... it is only a rough and ready software package, which blind nature endows, when all is said and done.

RESPONDENT: I am love waiting to happen, etc. This looks too random.

RICHARD: Whilst nature may be blind it is not necessarily haphazard, arbitrary ... it, being cause-and-effect based, is pragmatic (as opposed to principled) in an adventitious way. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ means those best fitted to the environment survive to propagate the species (and not necessarily survival of the most muscular as it is sometimes taken to mean).

RESPONDENT: Am ‘I’ a constant chemical (emotional) combination waiting to focus as one or the other at the sight, smell, touch, of just about anything?

RICHARD: At root, or at ‘my’ most basic ... yes: a hair-trigger entity genetically programmed to thoughtlessly (aka passionately) spring into action at the slightest hint of danger ... as is evidenced in trampling one’s fellow human beings to death at the exits in the blind panic for survival in a fire at a theatre or cinema, for example.

RESPONDENT: How does this chemical saturation so instantly abate and allow a PCE to happen?

RICHARD: You do seem to be disregarding the fact that, not only am ‘I’ anger waiting to happen (or any other of the ‘bad’ feelings) or love waiting to happen (or any other of the ‘good’ feelings), ‘I’ am also the felicitous/ innocuous feelings waiting to happen ... feelings such as happiness and harmlessness, for example.

Put simply: neither a grim and glum person nor a loving and compassionate person has much chance of allowing the PCE to happen.

RESPONDENT: Does this take nerves of steel?

RICHARD: No, apart from spontaneous PCE’s (most common in childhood) it takes happiness and harmlessness: where one is happy and harmless a benevolence and benignity that is not of ‘my’ doing operates of its own accord ... and it is this beneficence and magnanimity which occasions the PCE.

The largesse of the universe (as in the largesse of life itself), in other words.

RESPONDENT: If it does, then it is a different way of using them than I am used to. Maybe this is what you meant when you said your method of inducing PCE’s on an almost daily basis all those years ago was just by ‘allowing them to happen’?

RICHARD: What I meant by ‘allowing them to happen’ is just that ... allowing them to happen (ceasing to prevent them from occurring might be another way of putting it).

I say this because it became patently obvious to ‘me’, via previous PCE’s, that there was this whole other world – what I now call this actual world – just sitting ‘there’ waiting to be apparent, as it were, and all ‘I’ had to do was allow it to happen ... or, to put that differently, all ‘I’ had to do was get out of the way.

Of course when it did happen ‘there’ was here, where it has been all along, but I put it in those terms because that is how it was experienced at the time ... and it is only an ‘other world’ to ‘me’ as there is, in fact, only this one world.

Also, pure intent is essential in the process of allowing the PCE to happen – else it may be an ASC that ensues – but I wanted to keep the answer as brief as possible for the impact it rightfully deserves.

Because it is actually that simple.

*

RESPONDENT: It’s interesting that in practicing Actualism, we need to be in touch with our emotions enough to not be detached, but not so much in touch with them that we get dissociated as in enlightenment.

RICHARD: For the sake of clarity in communication I would stress that the actualism method sits firmly upon the minimisation of both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and the optimisation of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings ... and merely being in touch with felicity will not do the trick.

RESPONDENT: I looked up the word ‘dissociation’ and the first definition included the breaking up of chemical combinations into their simpler constituents. So is enlightenment singular attention being paid to only one chemical effect (emotion) happening (out of all of them ) or it is one chemical effect (emotion) drowning out the rest due to the sheer amount of it?

RICHARD: As I use the word ‘dissociation’ in the psychiatric sense I am somewhat reluctant to extend its usage into the area you propose ... to break everything down into chemical effects (whilst not dismissing such effects of course) would be to rightly earn the label ‘reductionism’.

In other words there is more to understanding the workings of the psyche than understanding chemistry.

RESPONDENT: Is it physically draining to be enlightened?

RICHARD: It can be ... especially when interacting with others as the transmission of love, and the intensity of compassion, consumes an inordinate amount of psychic energy. Roaming alone in nature was not as draining, however, as it was mostly affective energy ... although it must be said that there was 7-8 hours of sleep and three meals a day back then (as contrasted to 3-4 or 4-5 hours of sleep and one meal a day plus a snack now).

RESPONDENT: Was there a change in your general or subtle state of health after AF?

RICHARD: I have had what is called a healthy constitution all my life – I very rarely had the need of doctors – so I cannot readily point to any specific change other than the marked absence of any psychosomatic ailments.

I can still come down with colds and flu’s, for example, although nowhere as near as often or as severe.

RESPONDENT: It seems like a load is taken off my nervous system or something in a PCE.

RICHARD: Indeed ... the entire load, in fact, which absence of stress can only have the effect of ensuring a more healthy immune system.

*

RESPONDENT: In a PCE everything is magically animate, doing what it’s doing, in a backdrop of infinite depth and stillness.

RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘doing what it’s doing’ is about as informative as ‘a rose is a rose’: in actuality (as evidenced in a PCE) it is stunningly apparent that everything is the perfection of the purity which infinitude is and, as such, is perfection personified.

RESPONDENT: No principle, no agenda.

RICHARD: Ahh ... there is an agenda inasmuch as everything growing (aka ‘life’) is growing in purity as that perfection personified.

RESPONDENT: ‘Life’ or liveliness is the way everything exists.

RICHARD: As maybe 99.99% (an arbitrary figure) of the universe is inanimate then ‘life’ is not the way everything exists. For example, when some people talk to me about ‘nature’ they become somewhat bemused when I suggest that, as far as space exploration has been able to ascertain, there is no nature on the moon ... meaning that what life actually is is what flora and fauna are and not what rocks are.

Now, if by ‘nature’ a person means absolutely everything (as in ‘life’ is the way everything exists) then the glass ashtray on my desk (being mainly silica) is as much ‘nature’ as the trailing plant cascading down from the shelf above the desk next to mine ... yet when I offer such a person a drink from a polystyrene cup they tell me it is not natural.

Generally speaking, materialism has that rocks are dead, lifeless (yet only something that was alive can ever be dead) whereas what actualism is on about is the direct experience that matter is not merely passive.

I chose the name ‘actualism’ rather simply from a dictionary definition which said that actualism was ‘the theory that matter is not merely passive (now rare)’. That was all ... and I did not investigate any further for I did not want to know who formulated this theory. It was that description – and not the author’s theory – that appealed. And, as it said that its usage was now rare, I figured it was high-time it was brought out of obscurity, dusted off, re-vitalised ... and set loose upon the world (including upon those who have a conditioned abhorrence of categories and labels) as a third alternative to materialism and spiritualism.

Thus (to parallel your phraseology): actuality, or actualness, is the way everything exists.

RESPONDENT: Richard, there is much I to discuss with you due to your most recent thorough reply that I wanted to get the Landmark stuff out of the way first so I could concentrate on this AF stuff.

You asked me to elaborate on the ambience of ‘Home Free’ in a PCE. Well, even though it reads sequentially this is not in any order. I notice the disappearance of some invisible barrier, which makes everything seamless, no dirty distance between me and everything else. I notice that load off the nervous system we talked about which has to do with feeling pressured for time somehow, as being the weight and force of believing I am responsible, of being charged with knowing how it is supposed to happen and making it happen. But with that gone I feel so here, so relaxed and aware. Time is one big, long eternal moment of stillness. All the time in the universe is available for me to operate in. There is a purity penetrating everything and the very air in the room looks clearer and purer. And without me knowing what is supposed to happen, I do not know what is going to happen so in about two seconds life has turned into such a gas! All of a sudden life is physical ease in a huge, magic, endless wonderland that is , pure, still and miraculously my home. And I am off the hook. I don’t ‘have’ to do anything so my activity, or just sitting there, is playful. Whatever I do and wherever I go is or would be agreeable. I don’t have to ‘work’.

RICHARD: Ah, yes it is certainly so that ‘all the time in the universe is available for me to operate in’ in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... and being free of ‘being charged with knowing how it is supposed to happen and making it happen’ describes the ambience perfectly.

Life is indeed ‘such a gas!’ ... nothing is ‘work’ in this actual world – which includes working at a job – and everything is such fun.

Thank you for your excellent description.

RESPONDENT: There is a flavour of intrigue or taboo or something in there, too. But maybe that’s affect coming in at the end, or now that I look at it, maybe that’s the feeling of power and cunning ‘ I’ get by being able to stand in the way of actuality. Ooo, that’s sick.

RICHARD: Ha ... that certainly would be sick but as you have mentioned this intrigue/taboo before (when referring to ‘forbidden territory’) it is worth commenting on: I do recall, when PCs first started occurring, that I had the distinct impression of having ventured into an area that I was not supposed to go into ... that it was a big secret, as it were, that we humans were not to acknowledge existed else we would not be able to be nasty anymore (licentious).

Now, put that way, it sounds silly but then when I remembered, at age three, somehow knowing that something had ‘gone wrong’ somehow and everybody had forgotten why we were all here – to have fun and enjoy each others company in this grand adventure which life is – it all fell into place (and I was able to date it as being at age three by a particular incident which could only have happened at that age).

In my journal I wrote it as ‘it is as if everybody is playing a game called ‘let’s pretend we are lost’’ ... except that life in the real-world is not a game – people do kill, maim, torture, rape, suicide, and all the rest – so I soon disabused myself of that notion and I only mention all this – as childish as it may sound – as that is what the impression was at the time.

Of course as the years went by, and as I talked at length with many people from many walks of life about these moments of perfection, and discovered they had all had PCEs – all of them – it became sensibly clear what my childish notion was based on: everybody secretly knows, from those PCEs, that all the suffering is unnecessary ... *yet they still, perversely, insist on suffering anyway*.

Hence your ‘flavour of intrigue or taboo or something in there, too’ – plus your earlier ‘forbidden territory’ observation – is quite valid, as far as I am concerned, and there is no need to attribute it to affect coming in at the end.

RESPONDENT: I had put in the list some subjects on metaphysical facts.

RICHARD: If you are referring to the 12, 027 words you copy-pasted from an after-death survivalist’s web site then you are using the word ‘facts’ very, very loosely ... so loosely that your usage of it is indistinguishable from what the word ‘beliefs’ commonly refers to.

For example, the author you quoted at length first proposes there are two bodies (the finite physical body which contains the brain that dies and an infinite etheric body which contains a mind which does not die) and two worlds (the physical world and an etheric world) and then proposes that etheric body/mind is made-up of the sub-atomic particles of quantum theory and that etheric world is made-up of the missing dark matter of theoretical physics ... specifically the neutrino.

In short: an after-death abode which lies in an invisible nine-tenths of the universe.

Moreover the author then proposes that invisible universe is what is creating the visible universe:

• [Mr Michael Rolls]: ‘The great strength of the powerful materialists who control orthodox, scientific thinking is that they are banking on the fact that most people are not making an effort to understand even basic subatomic physics. Even a cursory glance at the subject shows that the physical universe is being produced from the invisible – the etheric universe’. (www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/background/scientificproof/scientificproof1.html).

As his proof for survival after death comes from materialisations of physically dead people via paranormal mediums I did not consider there was anything in what you copy-pasted to answer ... especially as nowhere on his web page did I see any mention of the meaning of life, peace on earth, happiness and harmlessness, freedom from malice and sorrow, or anything else of that ilk.

Not that those subjects are of particular interest to you, of course, but they are to me.

RESPONDENT: You was not bothered to answer, that means that you are stubborn in your beliefs.

RICHARD: Oh? So it has got to the stage now that all you have to do is post reams and reams of words about after-death survival, classify them as being metaphysical facts, and if Richard does not respond then that means Richard is being stubborn in his beliefs, eh?

RESPONDENT: Is your right to think the way you think ...

RICHARD: If I may point out? The way thinking happens here has nothing to do with a ‘right’ to think that way as there is the direct experience of the actual – this which is actually happening – and thoughts form themselves in accord to that wherever necessary. For example these words are being typed as the very thing referred to is actually occurring – they are coming directly out of actuality – and not from some nebulous beliefs such as you would have be the case.

RESPONDENT: [Is your right to think the way you think], but I strongly believe that you are in an altered state of consciousness ...

RICHARD: Now here is a curious thing: I have never heard anyone say they weakly believe something.

RESPONDENT: : [Is your right to think the way you think, but I strongly believe that you are in an altered state of consciousness], even if you are defined it like PCE.

RICHARD: This is not the first time you have believed this:

• [Respondent]: ‘After all you are not saying much different things than Jiddu Krishnamurti.
• [Richard]: ‘Ha ... an actual freedom from the human condition is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the spiritual enlightenment he spoke so eloquently of for 60+ years.

Apparently all that has happened in the ensuing three months is that you now strongly believe it.

RESPONDENT: Is your personal interpretation.

RICHARD: No ... indeed one of the things I did before I went public with my discovery was to ascertain whether people from many walks of life could recall having had a pure consciousness experience (PCE) – as distinct from an altered state of consciousness (ASC) – for obvious reasons and without fail they all verified that what I had to report is correct.

More to the point I have been able to ascertain that anybody that I have been with whilst they were having a PCE is indubitably experiencing the same-same experience as is my on-going experiencing ... plus they have tended to say things such as they now see what I have been saying all along for themselves; that everything I have ever said is accurate; that they understand what I have been getting at; that they know why it is difficult for others to comprehend; that they can now talk on an equal footing with me; that life is indeed grand ... amazing, marvellous, and truly wondrous.

I usually ask pertinent questions: for example very early in the piece I asked my current companion, once the PCE was definitely happening, what she had to say now about love (always a hot topic):

‘Love?’ she said, ‘Why there is no room for love here!’

She went on to expand, saying there was no need for love as everything was already perfect, and there was no separation, and so on ... but she had said enough in her initial response to both satisfy and delight me.

RESPONDENT: No one can say you are right or wrong ...

RICHARD: Au contraire ... somebody who is having, or can recall having had, a PCE can indeed say so.

RESPONDENT: [No one can say you are right or wrong], but the fact that Vineeto and Peter, that are so close to you, did not arrived yet there is the proof that everything you are experiencing could be your hallucination.

RICHARD: Hmm ... do you realise that, as you ‘strongly believe’ I am in an ASC, you have just classified such a state of being as an hallucination?

Apart from that: the fact that nobody has become actually free in the six years since I first went public only means that nobody has become actually free in the six years since I first went public – anything else is speculation – and to focus upon such speculation is to miss the truly remarkable virtual freedom that is possible by applying the actualism method ... and as a virtual freedom is way beyond normal expectations anyway then, irregardless of whatever happens in the future, my having gone public will not have been in vain.

And even further to this point there are some people who, having taken in the gist of what I have to report about spiritual enlightenment, have dropped spiritualism for the crock it is and reverted to materialism ... so it is even of benefit to have gone public if only for the disillusionment of those who had hitched their star to some massively deluded person.

All in all I am already well-pleased ... and, as it is only early days yet, I will probably be even more pleased one day.

RESPONDENT: After all with what right Vineeto and Peter are defending you in the moment they don’t have personal experience?

RICHARD: They do not have to have any ‘right’ – for what they have to report/say comes out of PCE’s and not just out of what I have to report/say – and it is rather telling that you would describe it as ‘defending’ me ... rather than, for instance, confirming what I have to report/say.

RESPONDENT: That means they obey you ...

RICHARD: It is the PCE which is a person’s lodestone ... not me and/or my words. Me and/or my words provide confirmation of what the PCE makes evident ... and provide the affirmation that a fellow human being has safely negotiated the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition.

RESPONDENT: [That means they obey you] because of belief ...

: No, a PCE is the direct experience of actuality ... belief plays no part in it whatsoever (nor does faith, hope, trust, and certitude for that matter).

RESPONDENT: [That means they obey you because of belief] and might destroy other peoples’ life.

RICHARD: If you can satisfactorily explain to me how being happy and harmless (virtually free from malice and sorrow) 99% of the time might destroy other peoples’ life I would be more than a little surprised ... which brings me to the obvious question: what is your objection to people being happy and harmless?

My guess, and it is but a guess, is that the latter part of your last sentence would be more in accord with the truth if it were put something like this:

• [example only]: ... might destroy other peoples’ after-life.

‘Tis only a guess, mind you.

RESPONDENT: But I do think that the ‘glimpse’ which stunned thought has planted a seed.

: Are you sure? Is it not the glimpse of the utter fullness which total attention makes apparent that is the trigger for stunning the thinker ... does not thought need to operate episodically as is required by the circumstances? If one thinks ‘upon reflection’ that ‘it seems thought is simply too one-dimensional to touch the multi-faceted fullness of that’ then the thinker concludes that thought must stop for that to happen ... thus precluding a twenty-four-hour-a-day happening.

RESPONDENT: Well, it seems to me that ‘preclusion’ is only occurring for the thinker divided from the fullness of that.

RICHARD: Yes, the thinker is forever divided from ‘the fullness of that’ ... the thinker is false, an illusion. The only constructive thing the thinker can do is allow itself to be disappeared (‘I was taken away by the utter fullness of it!’).

RESPONDENT: Yes, but do you think that such an occurrence is the result of a direct action by thought (‘allowing itself to disappear’), or is it triggered by the proactive perception of that fullness?

RICHARD: It is the result of a ‘direct action by thought’ inasmuch as it is the thinker thinking a seminal thought which is directly inspired by the ‘perception of that fullness’ (and not through reading about it). That inspired thought which the thinker thinks is the very thought that paves the way for such an occurrence. To wit: ‘I’, the thinker, joyfully agree 100% to allowing ‘myself’ to be ‘taken away by the utter fullness of it!’.

It is a conscious decision.

RESPONDENT: PCE = pure consciousness experience. Pure consciousness means that does not exist self right?

RICHARD: Yes, neither ‘I’ (as ego) nor ‘me’ (as soul) are present where consciousness – the condition of being conscious – is a pure consciousness ... the word ‘pure’ in this context means the unadulterated condition of being conscious and the word ‘conscious’ means being alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible (comatose).

RESPONDENT: Now by adding the word experience, the question that arises is who has the experience?

RICHARD: Why does that question arise? To be conscious is to be experiencing (perceiving) as perceiving (experiencing) is what the very word means at is most basic. For example:

• [Respondent]: ‘You always are covering behind the word ‘apperceptively aware’. How you know you are alive? Do you have any other mean except thought to know it?
• [Richard]: ‘Yes ... you will see, upon re-reading my response (above) regarding proprioception, that I clearly say the sense of being here, in space, as a body is not just because of sight (visual perception), sound (auditory perception), touch (cutaneous perception), smell (olfactory perception), and taste (gustatory perception) but proprioception as well.
And sensory perception is what consciousness is at its most basic ... perception means consciousness (aka awareness). Viz.:
• ‘perception: the state of being or process of becoming aware or conscious of a thing, spec. through any of the senses; the faculty of perceiving; an ability to perceive; [synonyms: (...) awareness, consciousness]. (Oxford Dictionary).
And consciousness means sentience. Viz.:
• ‘sentience: the condition or quality of being sentient; consciousness, susceptibility to sensation’. (Oxford Dictionary).
And sentience is direct, immediate (sensate perception is primary; affective perception is secondary; cognitive perception is tertiary).

RESPONDENT: [... who has the experience?] The body?

RICHARD: The body is not ‘who’ has the experience... the body is *what* has the experience (of being unadulteratedly conscious) as the condition of being conscious is a bodily condition.

RESPONDENT: The body works with the senses.

RICHARD: That is one way of putting it but as sentience means being sensorial it would be more helpful for comprehension of what experiencing means to say that the body works as the senses: for instance, of all the senses – cutaneous, ocular, aural, olfactory, gustatory, and proprioceptive – the cutaneal sense, being by far the largest of all senses (the skin covers the entire body) is what defines/delineates where the body stops and the rest of the world begins/where the rest of the world stops and the body begins ... the skin is the main demarcation line, so to speak, thus cutaneous experiencing is major experiencing by any definition.

RESPONDENT: If we must attach to the body even the consciousness, then we can go very far.

RICHARD: That just does not make sense: consciousness – the condition of a body being conscious – is indistinguishable from what a body is (when it is alive, awake, and sensible) ... to say that consciousness is something attached to the body is to imply that consciousness (the condition of being conscious) is a clip-on, a removable accessory, as it were.

RESPONDENT: We may have any illusion and blame the body for that.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... anything but put the ‘blame’ onto where it really lies (on the ‘being’ within the body), eh?

RESPONDENT No. 27: For me, the matter is simply a claim to be investigated – but it must be investigated in the manner in which the person making the claim specifies. If I am told that the only way to know it is the PCE, then that is what I have to investigate if I want to speak on equal footing.

RESPONDENT: Fair and reasonable all the way, but just for fun, here’s a bit of twisty logic to sink your teeth into:

Let P = ‘Time, space and matter began with the Big Bang.’

Let Q = ‘PCEs occur.’

According to Richard:

P => ~Q

Q

–––

~P (Modus Tollens)

If you accept R’s logic, and if you accept that PCE’s occur, it follows that you should already accept that time, space and matter did not begin with the Big Bang. See, according to R’s logic, the alleged evidence (PCE) is available if and only if that which it allegedly reveals is also true, so the mere occurrence of a PCE proves that time, space and matter did not begin with the ‘Big Bang’, regardless of whether it strikes you that way in a PCE.

In other words, according to this logic, the mere occurrence of a PCE proves the falsity of the Big Bang. Your own interpretation of the experience is irrelevant to R’s proof.

RICHARD: First and foremost: although you agreed it was ‘fair and reasonable all the way’ to investigate the claim in the manner specified (experientially) you immediately set out to investigate it in a manner not specified (logically).

Second, you say ‘if you accept R’s logic’ as if it was indeed Richard’s logic and not your logic – not being a logician I never present what you have presented above in my name – as the modus tollens rule (the rule that the negation of the antecedent may be inferred from the conditional statement) is not something I have any familiarity with at all ... and seeing what you have done with it have no interest whatsoever in ever gaining such familiarity.

Third, you base your entire logical conclusion upon an hypothetical answer to an hypothetical question – I did not write ‘(note ‘if’’)’ just for the sake of doing so – and even explained this in the following e-mail by saying I answered your hypothetical question as asked. Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I am simply trying to understand why you argue that, if time space and matter had not always existed, neither PCE nor AFftHC would be possible.
• [Richard]: ‘I am not arguing anything ... you proposed a hypothetical scenario and I responded as asked.

Fourth, if logic can indeed produce the result that you put into words (above) then I am well-pleased not to be a logician ... not being a logician I have to be rational instead.

Because if (note ‘if’) all time and all space and all form indeed had a beginning – as in there is no time, no space, no matter/there is time, is space, is matter – then there would be something other than the universe (an otherness which is time-less and space-less and form-less) which means that such a universe is not peerless (hence not perfect) thus a pure consciousness experience (PCE), the direct experience of the peerless purity this universe actually is, would not exist/ could not happen ... and the summum bonum of human experience would be an altered state of consciousness (ASC) as ASC’s are epitomised by a non-material otherness by whatever name.

As it has been up until now ... and which highest good, I might add, you are doing your level best to reinstate in other e-mails by classifying a particular ASC (where the intuitive/ imaginative faculty is still extant) as being a PCE.

As I coined the phrase ‘pure consciousness experience (PCE)’ you are on a hiding to nowhere trying to redefine it.

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