Sorry, I missed this.
You ignored and omitted “doesn’t matter whatever “it” is” 
But that’s the key. “It” matters to us, it didn’t matter to him.
Do you really think Richard did all that, given it requires a lot of free time, while preoccupied with family affairs upto his neck and managed to almost become actually free within 10 months? Isn’t it obvious(along with what he said about “questioning” and “thinking”) that insights came to him as he applied the method consistently?
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Hey, @Kiman, have you seen this one?
• [Richard]: ‘What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet’.
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When I visited R+V they didn’t tell me to attempt pure contemplation specifically (though I don’t have anything against that approach), but they did specifically tell me to investigate only while feeling good. So the recommendation was still to investigate
This pure contemplation is very interesting though
I think there is definitely a lot of overlap, as @claudiu pointed out. That settles the investigation:yes vs investigation:no discussion I think
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I am not suggesting you drop investigation. I don’t drop myself either. It’s helpful.
I am just saying, investigation, like the way we do, can be dispensed with and yet become free if only we can consistently apply the method like Richard did.
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By that time he already grokked to the bones of his being that the only moment available to him to live was the present moment(which is why he emphasises “before you apply actualism, it is essential to…” before he describes the method). He was just bringing attention to the emotions that he missed emerging to not have them repeated(He didn’t delve deep into them, the insights came upon him later when they came). They were “silly” to him because his pure intent was strong.
The point is, he couldn’t have dissected through all the questions that were bothering him, reasoned through the silliness of the reasons of his troubling emotions in a short time of 10 months barely having any free time–nor is it required–because he knew they (whatever “they” were) were silly.
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Yes I agree that the critical choice with any emotion is, ‘is it silly’ / ‘why is it silly,’ and I’ve wondered before if/why that was easier for Richard to arrive at than it has been for me and others at times. If it can be arrived at relatively immediately then it saves a lot of time
Seems to me that we are overcomplicating things here. As I posted earlier, there are different functions for different needs: sometimes you need velocity, sometimes you need to remove obstacles. It’s a just a toolkit and you use whatever tool you think is sensible at any given time, right?
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Ok, I’ve determined that the issue is that ‘pure contemplation’ can only take place with no ‘thinker,’ aka when ‘I’ am in abeyance, aka in a PCE. If you are doing all of your investigation from the position of PCE then that is excellent, but it isn’t likely for most people most of the time.
Pure Contemplation is a wonderful thing and the more the better, but as long as I’m not in a PCE I’ll continue trying to figure things out via any means necessary - from the position of feeling as good as possible.
edit:
Perhaps Reflective contemplation is a better descriptor for the state you’re describing @Kiman
“Diligent attention paid to the peak experience ensures pure intent continuing to operate. With pure intent running as a ‘golden thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation – not meditation – rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. It is a matter of coming to one’s senses – both literally and figuratively – and one does this by understanding that only this moment is actual. When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness … and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper, an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer.”
Was it you I spoke with on the phone a couple of years ago?
One should also remember that Richard was an artist. A Potter.
One is not particularly cognitively engaged when working with one’s hands. I know, because I spent years as a tradesman. It’s easy to just automatically do the work and think about whatever you want to.
So, 14 hours of work, is 8 hours of thinking, allowing for the times one has to think about the work.
Office work isn’t like this at all. There’s a lot of cognitive involvement.
Richard also had both the 4 hour PCE and a 24 hour Peak Experience* with his then wife (mother of his 4 children), and they had started together. She didn’t last long, before she was actively against it.
Nothing like being actively scorned and tested to get one’s resolve hardened!
Edit: for what it’s worth, when I was 26 I also was working long days (up at 5am, building my house, going to work, coming home and working on the house, raising 2 kids, with 1 on the way) and I managed to get into “illuminated” territory. I was very much into something I would call “layers”. I believed that what one fears is what one needs to love. So I would investigate a layer of fear, until I got to a layer of love.
Within a few months friends would comment on the “charisma” coming off me. I would walk around in “unity” states.
Getting into enlightenment territory, at least the foothills, isn’t that hard.
Also, Richard wasn’t doing the actualism method as advertised, as he wasn’t minimising love. Love was mistakenly included in what he was maximising. Hence, enlightenment.
*I believe that the 24 hour peak experience is where the “sex dripping from the walls” description comes from. It could have been an EE, or ASC…I can’t recall.
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Further, after the 1982 enlightenment, and the break up of his marriage, and with the youngest child leaving after he had raised them as a single dad, he spent 5 years sussing out, investigating et al, in what he calls his “puritan period”. Alone, celibate, itinerant, living on islands etc.
He travelled to India around this time with his daughter. All the while investigating, pondering, writing, talking.
I would argue that Richard did more investigation than this entire list put together!!
And then, as others pointed out, another 7 years living and investigating with Devika.
So, if there is a short cut, it’s reading the AFT thoroughly and gleaning as much from those already investigated topics, and see how they may apply to your particular circumstances and conditioning et al.
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emphasis added.
I reread the thread, and saw that desire at your workplace is not the issue at all.
You definitely have something to investigate.
Is there anyone here arguing against investigation? I only browse, I’m a browser but I haven’t noticed anyone arguing against investigation. Yet I keep reading replies insisting that Richard did investigate. Of course he did.
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Kiman believes that he can go straight to minimising desire (around maximising profit at work), without investigating the reason he is at work at all, it would seem.
I don’t think anyone doubts that Richard investigated all sorts of things. What I think @Kiman is getting at is, how much investigating did he do to avoid feeling bad? The answer is nothing:
Dona: for clarification, Richard was out-from-control virtually free, which is a shift, a “different way of being”. He said he only had one instance of “slipping back to normal”, which only lasted a few minutes, and he didn’t do anything to get back to being out-from-control.
It seems from your question you might be referring to “in control” virtual freedom, where someone is feeling good at this moment, and each moment again for the rest of their lives. Richard skipped right over this, and right into “out from control” virtual freedom.
Alan: Richard lived the out-from-control virtual freedom for about 9 months before losing his ego and becoming enlightened for 11 years. It is not necessary to become out-from-control before becoming actually free (see Dona’s reply below).
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And yet, it has been retrospectively named “out-from-control”, as in one step from actual freedom, whilst the result was the delusion of enlightenment. So, accurately speaking, he was under-the-control of…Love.
Why else would he have to regain his “surrender” all those years later?
Frankly, Richards way of doing it, as in what he did in 1981, is bound to lead to enlightenment.
In fact, as he is the only one to have practiced his method, and the result was enlightenment, then the data is exactly 1 for 1.
Which is why the “direct route” was formulated. Even then, both Peter and Vineeto, (and others since) had enlightenment experiences (without permanent loss of ego).
Craig may have replicated Richard’s 1981, “no investigating required” method, (going straight for the PCE experience whilst never looking at identity issues), and many here regard him as not actually free, but something else.
Perhaps we bring back the “indirect method” and all get enlightened. Then, go beyond.
This seems to be true. If Richard had also minimised good feelings, why did he end up enlightened in 1981? (But then his having a strong pure intent means he would minimize good feelings, or may be he just wasn’t attracted to good feelings but was suddenly hit by massive doses of love and compassion just before he enlightened?)
If that is so, how can Richard say he was in out-from-control virtual freedom in 1981 preceding his enlightenment?
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