I’m a private person and do not wish reveal too much about myself. I’ll say that I came across Richard’s website when researching a consciousness experience I’ve had as a child and now very recently. It made me re-evaluate my entire world view about what it means to be human. I’m still reading the website and seeing a lot parallels with what Richard calls PCE.
But, I’m put off by Richard’s views in some matters. As someone who is very rational and with a science background (I do not wish to be any more specific than that), I am initially setting out to discern “facts vs factoids.” Along with my colleagues, I’m scrutinizing Richard’s opinions on these tangential matters as thoroughly as possible and I welcome comments from everybody here. I may come across as egotistical (people tell that to me) but in the end we are all here to learn. I hope you welcome my participation in this forum.
Wonderful to hear it! If I may ask , could you say more about the experience you had? What was it like? What triggered it (no need for personally identifying details of course)? What about it caused you to re-evaluate your entire world view about what it means to be human?
You are not the only one
I remember distinctly one day when I was visiting Richard and Vineeto, that I was listening to Richard talking and had the sudden visceral and intuitive feeling that I was listening to an utter madman! I was instantly put on high alert. The feeling was so strong. I wasn’t sure what to do at first but then I realized I could just listen to what exactly he’s saying that indicates he’s a madman. And I found that every sentence he was uttering made sense, was sensible, sensibly followed from what came before (and so was rational and cohesive and cogent) and in no way indicated insanity. I couldn’t actually point to anything that could lead to the conclusion of “insane”. Thus was the intuitive feeling fully and totally banished never to recur.
The human condition is really really weird. So getting out of it is a very strange process . Actuality lies outside of ‘sanity’ - so it can appear to be ‘insanity’ from the perspective of being within ‘sanity’ - but as you may have seen in your experience, it isn’t actually insanity. It’s outside of both sanity and insanity. A totally new way of being conscious!
Of course you have to investigate and evaluate for yourself what the case may be. But that’s what this forum is for, to share our thoughts and experiences. I hope you have a pleasant and fruitful stay .
They happened on their own. But it was the recent consciousness experience that brought to memory the various facets of the initial one that happened when I was about 10 years old.
I experienced time standing still, everything stopped moving. It is already a delight to be eating these foods, but the cake I was eating became a source of bucketload of culinary pleasures. I did not think this was like a drug induced experience. I felt it could be a permanent state. That led me to search the internet to find similar experiences.
I talked to my wife about all of this. She is alarmed at the prospect of losing all feelings including my love for her. Richard is quite clear that all positive feelings are removed along with the negative ones. Is no one bothered by it? Missing love?
Hi again, I didn’t find anything “egotistical” at all from what you have written. Although we are all indeed “identities” which does include many aspects which people call "egotistical ". People love to talk about “ego” , and it’s usually some sort of “put down”.
Any amount that I’m bothered by it mostly has to do with concern that others will be bothered by it
The PCEs I’ve had have made it very obvious that that is the way to live… the most convincing argument for me is that the ‘self’ is a package, you can’t just remove the bad feelings. The good & bad come together, so as long as I try to hang onto loving, I’ll never know when feelings of sorrow & aggression will come up too - including toward those I love.
Hey @lexej welcome to the forum, how about turning it on this angle - were you bothered by it (lack of both positive and negative feelings) during that consciousness experience? As in when time stood still, you were delighting etc was there a sense of missing love? Or a sense that in fact anything was missing? Or was there a completeness?
What Richard is talking about is living that very experience as a permanent condition.
Ahh but the feelings are not removed per se. Rather ‘I’ am what is “removed”. Feelings are simply the way that ‘I’ as a feeling-being experience the world.
But as you have seen, ‘I’ can disappear while consciousness continues. And this self-less consciousness experiences being alive as intrinsically delightful!
Just as a normal cake can be basically eaten while being ignored — while the same cake can be experienced as a bucketload of culinary delight — so too with the experience of being intimate with another human being.
Reveling in the delight and intimacy of another, the exquisite experience of the other without any barriers or separation between the two, the thorough enjoyment of joyous interaction — it’s simply of a superior quality than that which can be obtained via love.
From being within the human condition it feels like something will be missed , something of value lost — but an experience of pure consciousness with the other will show you that the fact of what it’s like is totally different than that.
From personal experience, sex can be a great way (though certainly not the only way) to evince such intimate experiences! If it can happen for you, then during the joy and delight of it, before ‘you’ come back and it all fades to normality, it may be a good time to ask if you miss it then!
To that end I can recommend these correspondence pages for you to peruse:
Also one last note, my partner has been similarly alarmed in the past. But when I put it to her that pure intimacy (sans love) is “that which love aspires to but never reaches” (my words), she immediately perked up at that and I could tell was intensely interested.
The moment faded quickly but from this I gathered that she intuitively felt / instinctually knew that, despite her desire for it, love in and of itself is, ultimately, lacking somehow …
Listen, Sky, there are right ways to scrutinize someone’s words and there are wrong ways. You chose a very, very wrong way. If you truly want prisons to “become a thing of the dreadful past” like you say you do, then stop this behavior.
Bahahah. I was wondering when “humanbeingafellow” would grace these waters.
I can’t even be that upset. The replies and conversation was all genuine. It just happens to not be “lexej”/“Sky” saying it but rather the folks at the themotte.org comment threads.
Suffice to say, a stroke of curiosity surrounding a small quip made in this forum’s recent smoking thread sent me down a little rabbit hole which, after some digging, led to the discovery. Took a while still for the penny to drop, but when it did it was facepalms and laughter. Humans, eh?
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