@geoffrey and @Srinath describe quite different ways to “induce”/allow a PCE….Srinath lays out his method very instructionally/methodically (found on his Simple Actualism website) whereas Geoffrey disagrees, I believe, with the notion of being able to give instructions or a recipe (beyond the sincerity to open one’s eyes and enjoy and appreciate).
As I understand it he cannot relate to Srinath’s method.
My take is, that what is essentially required for a PCE is the combination of felicity and sensuosity. It doesn’t matter how you start as long as you get to that combination (where naïveté and wonder can flourish and something from “outside” takes over). Most people find that felicity is a much much more reliable entry point.
@Srinath’s method is somewhat of an outlier, in that he seems to have engaged sensuosity first and foremost; before then using emotional awareness to increase his enjoyment of the senses. He had an approach called “mixing” which was about modulating these variables to get the desired effect.
This approach is unusual and some others such as @geoffrey warn people off sensuosity (and the Attentiveness and Sensuousness and Apperceptiveness article as well) - as it’s easy to get undesirable emotional outcomes from “forcing” sensuosity - such as ASCs, dissociation, dread, bleakness etc. There were apparently a lot of people (such as the “AFers”) who misunderstood, misinterpreted or appropriated actualism to their own ideologies/mythologies and went down a whole bad route with that. This does not seem to have been a problem with @Srinath, perhaps because he was putting so much emphasis on checking in with himself emotionally in his approach. He also spent time actively cultivating being childlike, being playful, being naive, contemplating infinitude, and things like that.
My take is that the part of the PCE “process”, that people are most likely to leave out, is the felicity part. Many people try to focus on sensuosity and never achieve feeling good out of that, let alone a PCE. The feeling good part is absolutely fundamental. This is why I encourage people to attempt PCEs when they are already feeling good.
I realise I’ve made a lot of comments on others in this post, including Geoffrey and Srinath - the accuracy of which they can correct if I’ve mischaracterised their approaches/views here. Cheers 