Thanks @edzd I thought I was going crazy as I couldn’t find this anywhere, will have another read of it today.
OMG last time I read this quote I was like “what’s more than merely intelligent?? Like super intelligent? That which creates intelligence?”
But now I see Richard says it right there - apperceptively aware!! Lol. So apperception isn’t intelligence , interesting. Makes sense I think.
Also re the initial post, Richard isn’t saying there’s no cause and effect period … just that there is no cause and effect regarding infinitude / eternity (universe was always here). So that answers that I guess !
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Isn’t this to separate something from that infinitude again though? Because what is the universe if not infinite space, eternal time and perdurable matter (in the form of energy/mass). So if the fundamental character of the universe (of space, time and matter) is infinitude and thus one where cause and effect does not apply, then exactly which part of the universe does it apply to? It seems it only applies to the part where intelligence operates, a certain lens.
To me this seems to read that although the actual condition of the universe (as experienced apperceptively) does not work according to cause and effect, intelligence projects this anyways as it is what allows for comparing, reflecting etc.
So cause and effect becomes somewhat of a lens that intelligence uses to go about in this world. But this has me wondering at what point does this become merely a belief?
But the main question becomes… Can cause and effect be experienced apperceptively (can that very mechanism be seen in apperception, doing its thing) or is it merely an intellectual explanation? Isn’t it that in apperception things are simply happening of their own accord, now? It seems in order to say one caused the other I need to step back from this very experience of things happening now, I step back and formulate an idea - this is intelligence in operation.
Things happening of their own accord move/change in certain patterns for sure but without the one causing and the one being affected. That is a simplistic and convenient way of looking at the world, and I am not even suggesting that it is to be rid of, just exploring this line between that which is actual (as experienced apperceptively), that which intelligence utilises (potentially for practical reasons) and that which is an illusion (arising from the affective faculty).
This was a key insight for me too, that apperception sees existence on a level that intelligence cannot comprehend, hence the never-ending wonder. Richard has been living in the actual world for time now and yet he still describes it as a fascination which never goes away, each moment again. I get a sense that this is related to this very feature. He is able to apperceptively experience that which even his own intelligence can never quite get its hands around neatly in order to ‘box it in’.
Also it reminds me of Geoffrey mentioning in the video about going ‘deeper into actual freedom’ and how he cannot currently see why there would ever be an end to this ‘going deeper’. I think this is referring to the same feature.
Or Srinath mentioning how earth seemed like it could be the dying remains of some huge god creature (not literally), These explanations are the best that intelligence can do to try to ‘box in’ that which is being experienced apperceptively, that which could never be reduced purely to a concept - even if devoid of affective illusions.
And I am still like a dog with a bone maintaining that in actuality cause and effect is a concept 
I tried posing this question to another law of nature such as gravity and this came up with something interesting too. Kinda reminds me of what Andrew mentioned here :
I can ask what is gravity and intelligence (A) is able to come up with an impeccable answer however then I take it that step further and I ask again what IS gravity though, with the intent to experience it apperceptively (B)
Is A and B the same? It seems that the apperceptive experience of what we describe as gravity via intelligence will never be the same.
There is a gap that even intelligence cannot bridge via the most well-chiseled concepts.
I have always liked the definition of intelligence as “pattern matching”.
The better the ability of a creature to find, remember, and recognise patterns, the more “intelligent” we say it is.
It’s not really evolved to find ultimate answers as to the how and why, rather patterns.
Right and the cool thing is that apperception seems to allow a human being to experience the universe even past this very useful pattern matching.
In short it has to be lived to be known, damn this got me excited 
I think you’re taking cause and effect as a concept and then pointing out correctly so that concepts only exist in human minds, not as an intrinsic quality of the universe per se.
Which is true for the concept of cause and effect, but … that doesn’t mean there actually is no such thing as cause and effect!
Things actually happen. This is undeniable. But what does it mean for something to happen? Does it mean infinitude changes , infinite space or eternal time? No… does it mean matter is created or destroyed? No … but what It means is that the configuration of matter , in still space and time , changes.
And for something to change it has to be one thing , and then another thing after that. Otherwise it would not be a change.
In a PCE you see that you are the experience of things actually changing. It’s something that fantastically and undeniably is happening.
Intelligence can observe things happening and notice patterns, if you hold an apple and then drop it it falls. This intellectual understanding exists only in the brain. But the factuality of bodies with mass attracting each other , is factually a quality of the universe (of mass in particular). If it wasn’t then it wouldn’t be happening.
Did you letting go of the Apple ‘cause’ it to fall? Well that’s not seeing the bigger picture , that the earth was always attracting it. What caused it then - the earth or your hand? Well a combination of both plus maybe other factors (air resistance etc). Whatever it is doesn’t matter, but factually the apple wasn’t falling , then it was. Something actually changed for that to start happening. This change actually happened. If that change hadn’t happened then the apple wouldn’t have fallen — as far as we can tell.
So the qualities of the matter in the particular configuration are such that when certain things change , this leads to other configurations. This seems to obviously be a property of the matter itself. When matter is arranged this way, and this change happens, that leads to matter arranging itself in this other way.
Is it a Physical Law? ‘Must’ it happen that way? I think so - the qualities are qualities. But obviously whatever humans say they are is not necessarily what they are. We can be mistaken. We make theories that are right enough for certain purposes. But the universe does what it’s going to do anyway.
But the qualities are what determine the causality …
This reminds me of the feature that beliefs fall away when something better becomes available. It is not that we get rid of the ‘good’ and then fall back to just being ‘bad’. We find something that is better than both good and bad, something that is complete.
In the same way this kind of line of enquiry might appear that I am removing cause and effect to leave a void, but I don’t think this is what happens… Instead what is underneath those concepts can come more into the picture, something that is even closer to the actual nature of existence can be experienced. And that something is so much more than the concept itself, it is more complete not less complete.
Like you say @claudiu it is obvious that all this stuff is happening it would be silly to deny it, but what I am seeing is that the concepts only describe a partial picture of something that is way more complete and definitely very magical.
The way I am seeing is that cause and effect is like analog and seeing what’s underneath is like digital, it is a step into a greater clarity of what is actually going on.
Haha you mean the other way around? As digital is just an approximation of analog 
In any case to draw an analogy … we can conceptualize the actual world, describe it, say it’s like this and that, have a belief in it. And then we can have a PCE where all that disappears. It doesn’t mean there is no actual world… it means the actual world we were believing doesn’t exist, but there is an actual world there. But then when you describe it… you end up having a description that looks just like the descriptions we had before that were previously conceptualized. It doesn’t mean description is wrong, just means the concept/belief/description is not the experience.
I think you’re doing the same with cause and effect. You’re thinking cause and effect is just the conceptual/belief , and that it isn’t actual. Which is true. And then you’re saying there is “something that is way more complete and definitely very magical” when the belief falls aways… … which is true. What is left when it falls away? The actual world of course, and how it actually works. And then in describing how things happen in actuality, you end up with… a description of cause and effect lol. But similarly it doesn’t mean that description is wrong, just the belief/concept/description of cause&effect, is not the apperceptive experience of it.
I may be wrong though! I look forward to your description of what happens in the actual world, regarding this topic .
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Yeah whichever one is the more complex one should come second
Could say like from black and white to endless colours.
That’s how I often ehem… conceptualise actuality vs realty. It is like millions of shining colours vs the simple black and white of reality. Like one is a cave man trying to build the wheel and the other is a super advanced civilisation that is light years ahead in development and understanding.
Haha yes queue the next PCE pls so I can see for myself
The other thing that comes up to me from what you mentioned above @claudiu is just in what way does intelligence operate.
The actual universe is all time, space and matter interwoven into 1 actuality all happening now of its own accord. What the mind inevitably does when looking to understand, compare, reflect on 1 variable is it ‘picks it up and holds it’, in this intellectual vacuum of sorts. As at that particular time I am looking at this 1 variable segregated from the rest of actuality, I can then compare it with a 2nd 3rd etc variable which are equally held in this vacuum and thus segregated. I then come up with an intellectual understanding which might be brilliant.
And yet there is that 1 step which cannot be avoided, the ‘picking it up and holding in a vacuum’ and the inevitable fact that those variables are now segregated from the millions of other variables which are actually also at play!
So for example I determine that cause of A was B as I held these 2 up, but in doing so I had to inevitably ignore C,D,E and the rest all the way into infinity. The infinity of variables interacting together. This is what allowed me to say it was these 2 that were responsible. Similar to what I was writing yesterday about blame, you keep painting a more complete picture and keep seeing that the previous picture was always slightly incomplete. And it is a case of at which point are you satisfied to stop and say, for all intents and purposes this is sufficient. This is intelligence in operation.
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I guess the problem is that without this application of intelligence I am only able to say that things happen because they do… which might be factually correct in an actual sense but it does nothing for helping to navigate the world.
Right intelligence can only segregate part of it
But in terms of whether cause and effect is actual, outside of the intelligence in operation … what would it be other than the qualities of the particular configuration of matter (together with the properties of infinitude and eternity and perdurability ) , that makes things happen the way they do ? Whether a human intelligence can truly appreciate all the factors that lead to a particular happening or not , is besides the point with regards to this.
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One isn’t going to make a smartphone with “it just is” as one’s scientific basis.
A whole lot more than concepts goes into navigating the world.
If one regards intelligence as “pattern matching”* the it makes perfect sense to me that the actuality of infinitude can’t be represented as a “pattern”.
It would be a more intense than a mandalbrot set, running for eternity, held as an intelligent thought.
How could intelligence (defined as pattern matching) hold an infinite and eternal pattern?
Hence, the reports that there is no limit to how “deep” the experience of actual freedom goes.
*Languages are a great example of pattern matching, and arguably a huge part of human intelligence.
Consciousness however, isn’t concerned with “making sense, labelling, or matching patterns” so it isn’t restrained by the storage problem intelligence has.
That makes more sense now, it is the quality of 1 particular object which interacts with the quality of another object - this is what we call cause and effect.
So the qualities of water when presented with the qualities of a cloth ensure the next configuration or the ‘outcome’ being a wet cloth.
But just as I can say the water caused the cloth to get wet I could equally say the cloth caused the water to be absorbed from the kitchen counter. The cause and effect seems still to be a concept which depends on which way I decide to look at the situation.
The thing that cannot be denied is that the qualities of 2 objects interacted.
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This. It’s a navigation tool, which holds discrete, “segregated” patterns.
Because I remember how to get to my local shops, doesn’t mean I know how to get to all the shops.
I can speak a language. Doesn’t mean I can speak all languages.