Actualism and the Weird

Actualism
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We could go with the view that we live in a universe whose causal mechanisms we are only very dimly aware of - regardless of how educated and scientific we think we are. Our commonsense rationality is but a thin crust on an impossibly vast seething mass of chaos and irrationality that us puny primates have no hope of ever discerning completely.

Something of this view becomes a reality to me when from time to time I am able to peer into the infinitude of the universe. To call it enormous would be to diminish it. Likewise with calling it logical or intelligent. It is so so much more. That ‘so much more’ cannot be exhausted by anyone really.

Okay so that’s clearing some space for me to launch into some out and out speculation!

Truth be told I always did like the weird stuff of actualism knocking about in the background. I was glad it wasn’t some sterile Secular Buddhism purged of all the fun stuff (like Tulpas) to turn it into some sort of mental gymnastics or psychology system. But I was also glad it wasn’t esoteric and mystical or obviously it wouldn’t have been for me.

Some very tentative musings …

Pros: There is something to this psyche vs actual division for sure. When I became actually free in addition to vibes, a lot of liminal spooky stuff e.g. fear of the dark, seeing something out of the corner of my eye, a vague sense of unease in certain situations, wondering about the existence of extra-corporeal entities etc. dried up leaving me crystal clear. Whereas when I was a feeling being all that stuff felt quite substantial at times. Also Richard’s psychic vs. actual material division then has the advantage of at least including a lot of everyday affective experiences and strange phenomena that science would never get a look into. It is a fairly straightforward model that has explanatory power - if you can buy it. The whole thing is pretty elegant methinks. Wraps up most phenomena real and imagined pretty tidily.

Cons: Well it is pretty weird on the face of it. It’s not like your average atheist skeptic buddy is going to go, “oh a psychic blanket covering the earth causing ghosts and big-foot sightings, preventing me from becoming actually free you say? I’m into it, sign me up!” :grin: But ‘sciency’ people can be a bit uptight and boring as we know. I’d say weird stuff needs a weird model - much like self-immolation and the human condition. Moving on to other cons, what about the sheer gamut of things that psyche is responsible for. The list is pretty extensive as we find here. Is that over-inclusive or simply complete? Richard gives more of an existential (i.e. real) status to paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, telemetry, akashic records etc. than many here would probably agree with. But then it is simultaneously dismissed as the mere play of affect, frustrating both occultists and materialists in the process!

Moving away from the pro vs. con debate, I do find the non-local effects of both psyche and the actual to be quite an intriguing topic to which I have an open mind. I have had some minor experience with the paranormal as a feeling being - but nothing as far as the non-local effects of the actuality are concerned. Not all the paranormal stuff mentioned in the AFT is to my taste and psychic currents have always been an iffy one for me personally. I don’t think anyone should feel compelled to ‘believe’ in all of this. Your progress towards actual freedom need not suffer. Experience with vibes is very valuable and instructive however.

Miguel I don’t know if there is any kind of sufficient theory of the paranormal that would be acceptable to a sceptical physicalist. But ideas like quantum entanglement, holographic universe, psychological theories etc. have been invoked. Whether you’ll be convinced by them is another matter.

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Am I being a bit too grumpy saying that this is veering again into hyper-intellectual territory? :grin: This was an open question for experiences and not necessarily a discussion about how they show up… I genuinely don’t think they’re that easily explained. And before/if I get chastised for being too mystical about this (as in, “it can never be explained!”); I tend to think that most explanations for “supernatural”, or weird, phenomena end up being too prescriptive and frankly uncreative, but I’m also a bit too stiff to come up with anything better myself.

Soapboxing aside… I was rattled when the weird started coming out of AF (card-carrying skeptic and atheist). I eventually agreed with myself to try the weird on for size, in case it helped me think a bit outside the box. I’ve gone over the edge a couple of times and admittedly spent too much time being too prescriptive myself, but it did actually help to give up my ultra-rational stance in favor of more openness.

I can relate to @claudiu s experiences of the psychic web actually dragging you down almost like a maelstrom. It’s hard getting out of and it almost feels as if you’re doing something Really Really Bad if you try to, as if massive punishment is right around the corner.

Finally, I still think a lot of what Richard talked about around the time V and P became free was and is really weird though, and I’m not sure I buy it or understand it. The whole “the universe is so much more” intrigues me though. Massively.

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No, no, this is good. Yes, please rap us on the knuckles if we start to nerd out too much! Also your voice does help to balance things out and is quite refreshing and needed :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m happy to also hear more about experiences and off-hand reactions rather than more theories.

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@emp for an interesting take on the weird that isn’t stiff or boring, I love the podcast Weird Studies Gets a bit high-brow and intellectual at times so not sure you’ll like it, but its good for sceptics into art and literature who are looking for a way into the weird IMO

I also loved Twin Peaks the Return

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To add an experiential contribution – I think this stems from Richard’s experiences of such while he was Enlightened. He recounted a few stories to me… which have still stuck in my mind for being so out of the ordinary.

  • One day he was walking to meet some people, and he sort of looked down at his legs, and then simply lifted them up off the ground and folded them into a lotus position, with his upper body not moving at all. That is, his experience was that he was literally levitating off the ground, cross-legged.

    He said something like, he decided not to mention that he was doing this, when he met the people, and nobody commented on anything out of the ordinary. So he concluded they must have been perceiving him as walking (I guess he was already suspect of Enlightenment by then).

  • On one occasion, he was living in a remote enough area where it was pitch black at night. He recounted an experience of walking outside in the middle of the night, near his abode, complete pitch-blackness, yet he was able to literally see everything exactly as if it was the middle of the day. I got the impression he walked around for a bit exploring and he had the experience of being able to see everything perfectly.

    When I asked him what was ‘really happening’ during the above (which is patently a delusion) he said he had no idea.

  • A less ‘impressive’ one, but he said he could pick up objects and ‘know’ how old they were. Not sure of the accuracy of it.

So now when I hear stories of ‘psychic powers’ and hear of people levitating, displays of “true/real” magical abilities, etc., I have no problem whatsoever understanding these things as experiences that people really have (outside of ‘tricksters’ creating the illusion of the same, of course).

And I also have no problem with the notion that, if say there were a group of Enlightened beings (as in the Buddha’s sangha while the Buddha was still alive), that were one of them to begin levitating in this manner, it is possible the others would also see them levitating, as in a shared hallucination.

BTW it is for this and other reasons that is why Richard calls Enlightenment a massive delusion. The pragmatic dharma stuff doesn’t even come close.

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Yes same here, I never really had that much fascination with the psychic side of things but the weird side of Actuality has always been super fascinating.

I remember when I first came across actual freedom, going on walks by the canal and contemplating what was being written about. I was contemplating infinity at the time by looking at how the idea of inside/outside is relative only and does not apply to the universe.

All of a sudden I felt the intense thrill with tingles across my whole body at the realisation of the ramifications of the above, it was awesome :smiley:

Lately there is a certain thing which Richard mentions which has been clarifying itself experientially for me and these realisations always have the same sense of magic/weirdness that is super awesome. The phrase is - “the relative is the absolute and the immediate is the ultimate”.

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The AFT home page says that this is a down to earth freedom. I take that to mean what it says which to me doesn’t include psychic phenomena. Have I got it wrong?

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Also this might be a little off-topic @Srinath but I would be interested in reading more about what it is like living in the Actual world for you. E.g reading the below was fascinating, and that fascination has the effect of pulling me closer to discovering these things for myself :

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Seconded @Kub933 and @Srinath. I’d also like to hear how @geoffrey is coming along in his quest for full freedom.

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In my opinion and experience, your interpretation is correct and aligned with what has been exposed here: the actual does not include psychic phenomena; the real does. AFT and its method advocates an actual freedom, that is to say, also free of psychisms.

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A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this article, a review of meta analyses in the field of parapsychology. I didn’t care much for the ways the author tries to render ‘plausible’ such PSI phenomena within science, such as an appeal to some interpretation of QM (interpretations of QM are amazing that way, that you can wiggle your way into justifying anything with some interpretation of QM), but looked at the data. There seems to be a measurable effect for diverse PSI phenomena, some of which apply to what Richard describes, but that’s where it gets interesting: it’s a weak effect. So weak that indeed, despite all the precautions such studies seem to take (nowadays), skeptics can easily dismiss those results. The author’s main argument is that such effect sizes (deviations from random chance) are usually taken for sufficient in fields such as social psychology. So either one admits that there is such phenomena as PSI, however weak, and may attribute their mechanism (and their weakness) to whatever they want, or one should dismiss the results of e.g. social psychology (and other ’social’ sciences really, which rely on such effect sizes) as non-significant (and often not reproduced).
A detection, in hard sciences such as particle physics, requires ‘5 sigma’, which means a 1 in 3.5 million chance that e.g. the Higgs Boson does not exist and what was detected was a fluke. I can imagine Richard dismissing the discovery of the Higgs Boson though, seeing that he seems to dismiss most of modern science, and yet he accepts ‘psi’ phenomena such as vibes and psychic currents which are at best many orders of magnitude less detected (scientifically). So it is clear that the basis for his acceptance or dismissal is not science. What is it then?

As regards vibes and psychic currents, it can’t be the experience of apperception, as there is no such thing in actuality. It then has to be the experience of a feeling-being. His memory of his experience as a feeling-being, whether normal or enlightened.

I know of many feeling-beings, ‘myself’ included back then, who would not accept (intellectually) the existence of such phenomena, but rather dismiss those entirely as illusory, and attribute their perceived effects to perfectly-explicable-within-science mechanisms, such as below-conscious perception, various biases, post-hoc interpretation, etc. I insist on ‘intellectually’, because I can see how, despite thinking of ‘myself’ as a science-first materialist guy, and often regretting the insistence of the AFT material on such fantasies, ‘I’ was as ‘spiritual’ as any other feeling-being, and in particular went on my merry way acting as if there was such a thing as vibes and psychic currents, meanwhile comfortably abiding in my materialist world-view through attributing to them mere heuristic validity as models of the integration of below-consciousness perceptions or something of the kind.
So, ‘normal’ feeling-being experience (or the ‘memory’ of such), might be enough to assess the real-ness of such phenomena. With that caveat that this attribution of real-ness could be said to depend to some extent on the willingness of the said feeling-being to attribute it - meaning, ‘you’ can perfectly go by intellectually denying all that stuff. ‘I’ did. Although as some point you might realize that you’re acting as if anyway.

Perhaps there is in genuine enlightenment some kind of perception that make those phenomena obvious in their reality, I can’t comment on that obviously. Such an enlightened experience might bring some level of ‘certainty’ to the ‘real’ existence of those phenomena, and to their attribution specifically to ‘psychic’ causes - which appear to be clear-as-day for Richard. All I can say on the subject is that some of Richard’s weird anecdotal experiences when enlightened, as related above, don’t appear so weird to me - in the context of my history with psychedelics. Meaning, I’ve had comparable experiences. A good place to remind oneself that such a state as enlightenment is deemed by Richard delusory.

As for my current experience of Actual Freedom, there are no such things. And it is seen that there never was such things in actuality.

I don’t see how I could say much more on this subject, beyond using mere ‘memory’ of what ‘my’ experience used to be as a feeling-being, as well as debatable scientific data (restricted to measurable effects anyway), to perhaps try and intellectually attempt to make some sense of that whole psychic stuff - with the caveat that beyond this enterprise being mildly intellectually interesting, its benefit does not appear evident.

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In the context of this thread, I take this to be related to some potential ‘weird’ phenomena appearing in actual freedom - which could be thought of as appearing only in full actual freedom, or more and more with one getting closer to it, or more and more after one is fully free.
I don’t have a list in mind of those ‘weird’ phenomena, but at first glance no such phenomena have appeared in my experience.
I could be that I’m not fully actually free (I never claimed to be), or because those phenomena are restricted to Richard (as ‘genitor’) or Richard and Vineeto (as ‘equitable’), or because they require some interaction with other actually free people or people being close to actual freedom (that I’ve never had)…

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James: I agree with this.

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Reading what I wrote above, so much for “not nerding out” hahaha.
It looks like re-reading the article just before writing my post put me in full academic mode lol (be grateful that there were no footnotes. Me used to love footnotes.)
Here are a few emojis to balance things out :scientist: :brain: :exploding_head: :volcano: :star2: :black_circle:
:grin:

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@geoffrey Regarding what you said about the psychic stuff simply not existing/never having existed in the Actual world.

There is a bit in Richards journal, I can try to find the specific sentence if it helps? But Richard is writing about protests and how those types of events tend to be full of vibes which are palpably unpleasant and therefore not something he particularly wants to be involved in.

This leaves me wondering about how Richard could be aware of those palpably unpleasant vibes since they have no existence in the actual world?

Or is this again a case of ‘working from memory’ as to the vibes that the feeling being would experience in those situations, I as a feeling being am definitely aware of the palpably unpleasant vibes at protests for example.

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But Richard seems to refer always to his interlocutor (I assume that he is remembering that effect):

I could go with her to the protest rally for it is not against any principle that I hold. I readily concede that demonstrations can ‘get things done’. That is not my point … my point is the unwholesome atmosphere inhering at these rallies that reinforces the identity . The insalubrious ambience is always thick with ‘vibes’ that are palpable and factually unpleasant; be they going under the name of hate or love. Apparently she gets a ‘high’ from this, as further discussion with her elucidates the actual reason – the secretive motivation – for her attraction to these events. She admits, rather shame-facedly, that the ‘high’ makes her feel ‘alive’; by which she indicates that her daily life is dull, boring. She finds it thrilling to be at a confrontation; the adrenaline ‘buzz’ of a perceived imminent danger is irresistible to an addict. She does not appreciate the implied suggestion that she might very well be a ‘junkie’ herself, however. (Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Five) Richard's Selected Writing on Feelings

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Yes @Miguel that’s the one, that was super quick! You must have had this saved already no?

Ok I see so what you mean @Miguel is that the writing is relating to the experience that the protest loving lady would have if she was to attend, or any other feeling being.

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No, I searched “vibes” in his diary (my edition) and then in the site just in case, and there it was…

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Yes, I interpret that

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@geoffrey That makes sense in the context of the thread but I believe @Kub933 and @emp were asking out of context (e.g. Kuba said “this might be a little off-topic but …”)

I think what they are looking for - and which I would appreciate too!! - is some experiential reporting of what it’s like to be alive, for you and for @Srinath . The sort of thing that we feeling-beings could ‘read with our whole being’ to bring us closer to the actual world.

What I notice is that while I am in a PCE though it is astounding and amazing, there isn’t usually much of a ‘reason’ to describe what it’s like, and it has a sort of ordinary quality to it, even while at (perhaps) the same time somehow being gobsmacked by the wonder :smiley: . When I do find myself describing it, later while rememorating it, then I find my descriptions turn out much like Richard’s and other people’s of the PCE, i.e. it has that same extraordinary quality that ‘I’ find in their writings. Which, upon reflection, is accurate, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me while in the PCE, to write those things, or that it would be anything ‘special’.

What I’m failing to get at in a simple way is that, there may seem to be no reason to describe your experience, but to feeling-beings such reports can and do have a magical quality, that can propel us closer to the actual world – even if just describing ordinary things — so if I can paraphrase @Kub933 and @emp 's request… “Gimme!!!” :wink:

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