Edzd: With the recent discussion regarding Pure Intent and rememoration, I thought a thread sharing PCE stories might be a good exercise to do from memory. Additionally, I’ve been wondering about some of the discussion specifically revolving around different flavors of PCEs. Having only one from memory, I have no other point of comparisons.
I also wonder about the reports where one wonders about potentially being in a PCE – perhaps an EE experience so close to a PCE that it’s hard to differentiate. I think I struggle understanding this because for me the PCE was so profound that it was night-and-day difference between feeling-being mode.
Specifically it was the meaning-of-life quality that the experience had due to the perfection, purity, and stillness that I couldn’t miss. It was everywhere. The experience was worlds beyond feeling excellent and I can’t imagine how things could get better. Ultimate fulfillment.
I sometimes wonder due to the profundity of the experience if I’ve set the PCE up to be something out of reach. It seems so extreme and radically different. BUT, it is also everything I have ever wanted from life. Double-back to this later.
Hi Ed,
Thank you for your long and extensive description of your memorable PCE.
It indeed sets an excellent benchmark for you to access pure intent by comparing your experience during the height of the PCE against your real-world experience, knowing that what you are aiming for is “night-and-day difference between feeling-being mode”, the “ultimate fulfillment” and “everything I have ever wanted from life”.
Even though not every PCE is a meaning-of-life experience, this experience nevertheless represents your ultimate destiny – the meaning-of-life freedom aka full freedom.
Edzd: I believe I’ve shared details but have never written a complete report so I’ll do that now. There will be spiritual details since that was where I was at, at the time:
2017? – I’m about 2-3 years into my quest for spiritual enlightenment and have never heard of actualism. During this period, I was pretty depressed which was a big motivator for finding a radical solution for my suffering and hence my interest in spirituality and enlightenment.
One evening while home alone I decided to try some LSD and contemplate life. (…)
Eventually the emotional movement came to an end and I sat on the couch silently – staring ahead at my desk but not looking at anything in particular and not thinking about anything. My usual running thoughts about whatever agenda I was interested in seemed like it had burned itself out for the moment. So I was just sitting there, kind of exhausted but relaxed and at peace.
I continued relaxing. It wasn’t like I was trying to relax or had an agenda on how to do it, it was more akin to unknowingly enjoying the relaxation. Like I was marinating in it instead of trying to do it. Somewhere during this period the first remarkable thing happened.
An extremely pleasant feeling arose in the solar plexus. At the time, I described it as being completely fascinated with what was happening – but also at the time, I took this feeling to be something other than myself. It seemed like it was coming from me but also something other than me. Trying to comprehend this feeling of total fascination, I concluded that this must be what pure love is.
If ever you are wondering how to provide the conditions for a PCE to happen without drugs, here are some clues in your own description how it started – “I was marinating in it [the relaxation] instead of trying to do it”. … “I described it as being completely fascinated with what was happening”. And you allowed the fascinated contemplation to continue even though “it seemed like it was coming from me but also something other than me”.
When you compare this to the following description you understand why I picked out those sentences of yours –
Richard: Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here … and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now … then one has arrived before one starts.
The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that can be arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord … and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity … as a sensate body only, one is automatically benevolent and benign. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).
Edzd: It was the coca-cola can on my desk which first caught my attention. Something was different about it. It was like it had come to life and this fascination was embedded in its very fabric. This fascination was embedded in everything. Everything was alive somehow. Scintillating. Bright.
The next few moments I do not remember. I suppose what was going on was a mix of me experiencing what was happening and trying to comprehend it. I would have been better served just trying to get a good look at it, but wasn’t prepared. Truly, as an identity I was eager to claim it and understand it for myself – trying to make a grab at things.
Still, I was enjoying the relaxation. At some point I decided to go outside and it was on the steps of my apartment when everything stopped and was still. I said out loud, “you mean I’m already here?” Ha, ha.
You probably figured it out already – this is where the PCE proper starts.
Edzd: Things were utterly perfect. The perfection was experienceable. I was completely fulfilled. All of my aching desires, concerns, responsibilities, were gone and replaced with this perfection that was everywhere. It was so clean and still. It was so enjoyable and invigorating.
And it had been here this whole time. That was another conclusion I came to. It was me that was missing out on it. I actually considered maybe everyone had been enjoying this perfection my whole life except me.
I do appreciate your conclusion at the time, especially the first one that you had been “missing out”. In a PCE, when you are actually here, at this moment in time, you can realize that you have always been here – as flesh-and-blood body that is – and only the ‘loudmouth’ of an identity had been standing in the way of experiencing this actuality.
That you then “considered maybe everyone had been enjoying this perfection my whole life except me” looks like an assessment made by the returning identity. It is indeed a totally different perspective when you are in the actual world than when ‘you’ live in the real world.
I know, from the perspective of being actually free, that everyone is missing out, every moment again, because actuality is available right here, right now – but I also know that they don’t know this, because I remember well how it was for feeling being ‘Vineeto’.
Edzd: At the time it was occurring, I considered this experience to be the meaning of life. That is to say, the meaning of life isn’t some sort of secret explanation to be revealed, but rather a way of experiencing being alive that is perfect. A gift but also a birthright in stark contrast to the alienation I typically felt in regards to the world and others.
Well said.
Edzd: I can see why some describe this experience as otherworldly but clearly upon reflection I was not in another world. I was right here. I even said it out loud. While otherworldly may give some indication to how radically different it is, I think it is a confused way of describing the situation and setting the actual world up to be somewhere distant when it’s not.
During the experience itself the actual world is not “otherworldly” at all – during the experience one is right here in the actual world. From the real-world perspective, of course, the actual world seems to be far away – another world altogether.
Edzd: This perfection didn’t last long. I didn’t even notice it diminish because I was too busy trying to make sense of what was happening. What happened next was the oceanic experience and I became everything. It’s experienced to be real, but much like the real-world or a belief is experienced to be real. It is like a belief with no doubt involved. Where as the perfection seemed to be the result of an absence of something, this was more like an exotic feeling state. A shift in one’s reality.
Devolving this state further, I thought that I may be god and decided to test out if I had any newfound power but I did not. The oceanic experience didn’t last long and I went back inside and laid down on the floor where I had a really terrible thought – that I must die to enter that dimension of perfection.
It was an intuitive apprehension and considering oblivion caused a lot of dread. I noticed how much I wanted to live which betrayed the previous months of depression and wishing for death.
While your PCE devolved into an ASC, most likely inspired by memories of religion and your spiritual quest you nevertheless focussed on one significant insight – “that I must die to enter that dimension of perfection”. Naturally, this triggered the identity to return in full force and this insight was accompanied by the ‘appropriate’ and natural passionate emotion when ‘you’, the identity experiences a threat to ‘your’ survival.
Edzd: Nothing much happened for a while but one more remarkable event did occur. While I was laying on the floor and my thoughts were winding down I was staring at the ceiling fan. Again, not thinking about much. All of a sudden it was as-if an invisible layer was peeled away. My problems, worries, responsibilities were gone as-if they never existed. I could hear how quiet and still everything was. It was like a noise I had become used to had stopped and its absence is what alerted me to its former presence.
BUT, there was no meaning-of-life perfection. It was still tremendous and a wildly better way of being alive than normal. There was nothing to hide. But the perfection and purity wasn’t present.
It could have been a short-lived excellence experience or something similar but not quite, certainly not the lodestone experience you described before.
Edzd: (…) I think the moment of perfection ceased when I began wondering/ believing that everyone else had been enjoying this perfection except me. I think that’s when I came back into the picture in a big way and I remember feeling confused, but still feeling amazing. (…)
Yes, you are correct and “in a big way” as well, the identity returned vindictively and ‘with a vengeance’, as the saying goes, creating the perfect ‘me’ against ‘me’ scenario designed to keep one locked in under the control of ‘me’.
Edzd: In the ensuing years much investigation has taken place, my baseline has raised significantly, and I’m a more liking and likable person. But I think what I’m missing is that connection to pure intent. I haven’t been able to develop it.
As I detailed above, there is certainly much potential to forge a clew to pure intent if the re-vivified flavour of your memory of this PCE is as clear as your excellent verbal description.
Edzd: For similar reasons to Josef, I haven’t spent significant time rememorating that night. Only recently have I started to cipher out the meaningful qualities in an attempt to hone in on them. The current discussion has been motivating and I think it could be more useful to work with what I got than try to resolve these questions and concerns that breed like rabbits and seem sillier by the day.
Regardless of how it happened, it serves as my peak experience to benchmark everything against. Perfect and effortlessly enjoyable – if only I had the muscle of appreciation and down-to-earth attitude at the time.
You can still apply “the muscle of appreciation” for this memory and can choose to enjoy that you had the opportunity and remembrance (link) of such an outstanding experience.
Edzd: The one thing that I have been curious about in regards to recent discussion is the moments where one wonders if they’re in a PCE only to evaluate that they’re not. I have had moments of feeling still, happy and harmless, almost perfect. At times I’ve wondered if I might be near a PCE and perhaps in one.
But that perfection isn’t there, and so it’s obviously not a PCE. Is it that there are more milder forms of PCEs? Perhaps the second moment when my ‘invisible layer’ was pulled off was such. Things were “perfect” so to speak because all of my problems, sense of time, and responsibility were gone, but the experiential perfection was missing. However, even that was night-and-day different to how I normally am and unmistakable.
The “milder forms” you are asking about are better described as excellence experiences in order to have a clear distinction between an outstanding delectable experience of well-being and a PCE, where purity and perfection and magicality are experientially obvious (and not just in comparison to real world experiencing).
Edzd: Finally, I think I may have set the PCE up to be unreachable due to not only how profound it was, but also due to feeling threatened by it. It seems so immense. I’ve heard it described as a down-to-earth perfection but the only part the seems down-to-earth about it is that it’s happening right here. (And would be immensely sensible to be, damnit it is down-to-earth but it’s so amazing too.) (…) (link)
Why should “the PCE […] be unreachable” because it was “profound”? You have certainly described the actual world in great detail and quality and other actualists can confirm this.
And it is not necessary to allow yourself to continue feeling threatened by it – it is natural/ intrinsic for the identity to fear for ‘your’ continued survival but that is the very nature of the purity and perfection – that nothing dirty can get it. This is why purity and perfection are the “utter fulfillment” which you aspire to.
In regards to “feeling threatened” – this is where the actualism method comes in handy. By observing and acknowledging the fear when it comes up, and being the fear instead of having fear, it will substantially diminish when you stop objecting to it. This allows you to eventually recognize that the perfection you experienced is worth every sacrifice, all of ‘me’, in order to live the purity and perfection 24/7.
Watering down the standard would be equivalent to settling for second best.
Cheers Vineeto