As I understand it, the actualism method is not asking HAIETMOBA nor is the method investigating feelings. The actualism method is to be happy and harmless each moment again. So the question for discussion is, how does being happy and harmless each moment again lead to self immolation?
This is really a nuts and bolts question. How does it work under the hood. Or skull in this case. And does an illusionary identity make a permanent choice to walk off the stage?
It doesnât! 
hence the note at the bottom of the actualism flowchart (Actualism Diagrams Hub - #3 by claudiu)
@Srinath or @geoffrey can better answer this one.
But as I understand itâs essentially about all of âmeâ fully agreeing to self-immolate. This is all thatâs ârequiredâ.
The objections to doing so are essentially the same, or have a vast overlap, with the objections to being happy and harmless, to enjoying and appreciating. So removing the objections to the latter help with the former. But there is no pre-requisite of having to have been enjoying and appreciating X amount for Y long, to self-immolatingâŚ
One of the elements most closely related to how the method works âunder the hoodâ is to imitate the actual, such as the enjoyment and appreciation experienced in a PCE on an ongoing basis:
consciously and with knowledge aforethought imitating the actual by enjoying and appreciating being alive/ being here each moment again, for as much as is humanly possible, until the actualism process, per favour the âgolden clewâ pure intent, invokes an out-from-control different-way-of-being momentum conducive to going blessedly into oblivion prior to physical death
It is interesting to note that the imitation of elements experienced in altered states of consciousness has been used by various disciplines as a means of returning to those states or as entry points to other desired states. Richard may have chosen to silence thoughts or heighten the senses (thus imitating other elements present in PCEs), but everything suggests that they would not have been successful for the goal proposed by AF.
Being ever-more happy & harmless, as a baseline, allows the always-existing purity & perfection inherent in the universe to operate ever-more freely in this body.
With that increasing purity penetrating, the contradictions between âmeâ and that purity become ever-more apparent, until a point comes that it becomes obviously sensible to âmeâ to allow the purity to take over.
Once that âonce-in-a-lifetimeâ decision is made to allow it to happen, the universe takes over and sooner or later, âIâ am extirpated⌠not of my doing, but âIâ had to allow it to happen.
How does it happen? Richard points to the substantia negra as being the potential source of âme,â and in my own amateurish neuroscientific investigations I uncovered some clues that the organization of the motivational âdopaminergic systemâ may be the source of âme,â or perhaps a larger system implicating more neuro-systems.
Either way, it seems that as âIâ am weakened, make that âonce-in-a-lifetimeâ decision, and allow the universe to do what it does (purity in operation), that dopaminergic system (which is self-perpetuating and verifying) is no longer able to sustain its structure, and collapses. With this collapse the frontal cortex is able to take up the load, with a completely different logic of operations than the âyes/noâ âblack/whiteâ âgood/badâ dopaminergic-amygdala pathways.
You have experienced a sneak-preview of what this looks like in operation, if you can remember a PCE.
Some evidence for this include that with Richardâs entrance to freedom he was unable to drink coffee for a time (coffee is a major dopamine dump) and experienced overwhelming sensory clarity (again, dopamine is implicated). The overall sensory clarity experienced in a PCE is something usually reserved for âvery special circumstancesâ by the dopaminergic system, but with freedom the on/off switch has been disabled, allowing for full engagement 100% of the time.
Interestingly, Richard seems to be the only one who had this experience with coffee⌠though perhaps one of our resident âfree peopleâ can chime in with their own experience. Richard notably went through enlightenment first.
This bit about dopamine is entirely my own conjecture, but at the very least something structural deep within the brain breaks down permanently, and a different system takes its place.
