Claudiu: It also increasingly strikes me that many things are actual that I did not think were actual before. I had some sort of thought that only the physical is actual, and the mental, or mental processes happening, is somehow “less actual” than physical things. This is silly seeing that consciousness is obviously actual (obviously in a PCE).
But it also struck me that, for example, a state of being focused is also actual (or at least has an actual component underlying it, if not in a PCE (in a similar way that even being conscious as a feeling being is only possible because of the actual basis of an actual flesh and blood body being alive)). The mind being focused on a task is different than the mind not being focused on a task, these are actual differences and both actually exist.
And in a similar way, for example a context at work also is actual. There are actual other people, actual memories and information stored in their actual brain cells, that get activated appropriately in response to various things, all of which contribute towards a common goal. These things are all actually happening, and are tangible, in a way that I am thinking is fundamentally similar to an object physically existing. Albeit perhaps a bit different – a whirlpool of water is an actually-existing thing, even though it is really just the process of the actual water swirling around that forms the whirlpool. But a whirlpool is different than water that is still.
So even though ‘me’ as an employee or ‘my boss’ as a ‘boss’ or ‘the company’ as an ‘entity’ that ‘I’ work for are not actual (those are all part of the real world), there is an actuality of the association of these various flesh and blood bodies actually working together that is actual.
Hi @Claudiu,
It sounds really wonderful.
I would like to add a notion of caution for everyone for the sake of clarity. The question is not what is actual but if what one is experiencing is actuality. Actuality can only be experienced in a PCE or when actually free. An identity will always only experience the identity’s ‘inner world’ and ‘outer world’. Here Richard makes a clear distinction between an excellence experience and a PCE –
• [Richard]: ‘… one must be most particular to not confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience … and the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. This is where time has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ … there is only this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious, up-front and out-in-the open … there is nowhere to hide and no reason to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to the universe: already always just here right now … actually in time and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.
In a PCE [a pure consciousness experience] one is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling … even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper … literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence – the actualness of everything and everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.
It is one’s destiny to be living the utter peace of the perfection of the purity welling endlessly as the infinitude this eternal, infinite and perpetual universe actually is. (Richard, List AF, Gary, #Apperception).
Claudiu: All delightful and fascinating to contemplate! The first part is the crucial part though – the point of being conscious is to enjoy being conscious
.
I experience myself as getting ever-closer to actually self-immolating. It is very different now, it’s no longer about rushing, or cajoling myself into doing it, or feeling like I ought to do it. It’s more like a wonderful and almost overwhelming aspect of being alive is accessible that is like a flowering wondrousness or magicality that is all-absorbing and fascinating in its imminent and immanent significance. It really is rather hard to put into words!
And here you say “like a flowering wondrousness or magicality” – ha, you may well be vacillating between “two worlds”?
How marvellous, how mirificent!
I am reminded of Peter’s description of becoming actually free –
Peter: In that moment I knew that Richard’s first playmate in the actual world of sensate delight would be a male best-mate playmate and that female playmates would then follow soon after.
After this, the sweet relaxed atmosphere that I experienced between us continued and became all-consuming as the “outside world” faded more and more in the background so as to completely disappear, as did the experience of time moving as I became more and more totally absorbed in the conversation and events unfolding, as it were.
The following evening, I found myself back on my couch, leaning across the little table that separated us, explaining to Richard that I experienced him as being on the other side of a veil – with only his face bulging through as it were. As was I explaining this to him, I was waving my hand in front of my face so as to illustrate the veil and I happened to look down at the table in front of me.
On the woven table mat my attention was drawn to a dark blue plastic cigarette lighter, an empty glass, a tobacco pouch and other sundry items. All of a sudden, Richard’s phrase “the actual world of people, things and events” came to mind and I found myself acknowledging that the things on the table existed in actuality, i.e. did in fact actually exist, and this being the case, here I was waving my hand in front of “people”, in this case Richard, saying that I experienced him as if behind a veil, i.e. not actually existing. It took only a few more seconds of switching my attention from the things on the table and my waving hand for the whole illusion of a separating veil to collapse – along with my illusory self-centred identity as I was gradually becoming aware of.
The whole experience was like a seamless transition between two worlds – from being a feeling being trapped within an illusionary all-encompassing self-created and sustained bubble to being here in the actual world. There was no dramatic end for ‘me’, no death-like traumatic experience, no prior psychic events or escapades, no “wall of fear”, no “abyss” – rather there was a profound experience of sweetness, a ready acknowledgement of my destiny and a final understanding that the feeling of separateness was nothing other than an illusion of ‘my’ own making. [emphasis added]. (Announcement1)
Cheers Vineeto