I absolutely agree. I have read about PCEs but if you have some helpful links, please post them here.
Is it enough to ask “How am I experiencing this moment of being alive” all day long?
This is a good source of descriptions of PCEs: Various Descriptions of PCE's
I would suggest set aside some time and read them and try to experience the flavor that they are conveying , as you are reading it. You have (almost guaranteed) had them in the past - likely in childhood - so you are essentially looking to experience the flavor of something that will appear familiar to you. If you get a whiff of it then keep going in that direction!
I’d also suggest going out in nature to try to induce a PCE , it always puts me in a better state to do it.
Read about them, reflect on it, look for it in your own experience, become absorbed in it, set the intention to have one … and it may very well happen sooner rather than later!
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I liked this expression because I always say (especially to those outside of AF who ask me about my past existential angst, my previous search for meaning, etc.) that in my experience whenever I have a PCE it is not that the meaning of life is revealed, but rather that the very questions about its meaning and purpose disappear (and, as a consequence, the search for answers).
What remains is a fullness that has no gaps that need to be filled.
If I understand you well, is another way of posing the possibility that there is “something” -a superior entity, God, etc.- (if not, correct me).
When I have considered this possibility after AF, I always end up concluding that it wouldn’t matter.
The underlying problem in my opinion is not whether “something” ultimately exists or not, but the emotional causes of our craving for that “something” to exist due to the desire for perpetuation generated by our self/identity, which always negatively affect our well-being and hinder -or directly impede- its weakening/disappearance.
At the same time, in my PCEs that anxiety disappear, my well-being cannot be better and I do not perceive that “something” exists. But that doesn’t prove that there couldn’t be something anyway.
So several times I thought about whether it would make a difference to Richard, Vineeto and Peter (now to @geoffrey and @Srinath) if ultimately there’s no “nothing”. And I always conclude it would not (but may be I’m wrong), as I still do not see any better way to generate a better life for us and for humanity.
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No, that was more or less the opposite of what I meant @Miguel 
It’s all good though.
ETA: Any musings about why I was even thinking about it was turning into such a speculative mess that I didn’t think it worth it to include. As you say, in a PCE it doesn’t matter anyway.
The purpose of asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is to determine what your current-time emotional experiencing is. When you find that you’re feeling bad, or feeling the ‘good’ loving & affectionate feelings, then you know you’ve got something to investigate, some belief that it’s more important to feel that feeling than it is to do what actualism is about: feeling happy & harmless as a means of ‘being’ the closest ‘you’ can be to the actual world.
So the method itself is enjoying & appreciating this moment of being alive; asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is an accessory to ascertain where one is (affectively/emotionally) at, in each moment, so you can make the necessary adjustments to get back to enjoying & appreciating (which is the method itself).
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As many an atheist has noted; if there was a creator, then he is cunt.
But asides from the animosity and crudeness of the obvious, one can via subtle and polite means work from a priori axioms to establish that the universe not only doesn’t need a creator, but there isn’t space for one.
As Spinoza noted, or I infered, one cannot fit 2 litres of milk in a 1 litre jug. The infinite and eternal universe has only space for one infinite and eternal thing; itself.
I always liked to look at it from the angle of inside/outside also. As in for some creator to be in charge of bringing this universe into existence he would need to be somehow on the outside of his creation, not affected by the same laws as it.
In fact for any sort of spiritual force to have actual existence it would also need to be somehow fundamentally separated from the physical and yet existing in the same universe at the same time.
The more one thinks about the above the more nonsensical it becomes. As Richard wrote somewhere we have a concept of inside/outside eg I am inside the room, but what happens when the walls of the room are demolished, am I still inside/outside? And if I was to continue doing this and apply the same to the universe what happens then? Is there such as thing as a inside/outside? (in terms of being fundamentally separated and yet occupying the same space), it just does not make any sense.
There is 1 stuff in existence which is the Actual stuff, any other fundamental divisions arise out of calenture - Writes the entity that believes himself to be fundamentally separate 
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A lot of atheists I have met (and agnostics) see in themselves a superior sense of morality than can be inferred from the lack of action from a God, if such a being existed.
I was discussing with @Kiman about my atheism, the ultimate reason that I became an atheist was that the thought of a creator didn’t make me feel good. It doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t make me content. It doesn’t give me relief. It doesn’t make me afraid of some all powerful authority.
For those who believe and have faith and get such a great high from their belief in a God or who really fear their God, that they must be good/worthy, this is such an alien concept. I realise they can’t understand where I am coming from.
Before I was exposed to AF I had learned enough about the changing nature of the body regarding the flux of molecules. That each day I am something new. I didn’t pinpoint that it was my sense of self and that identification process that makes everything the same, tree, wall, dog, yawn…just stuff I have seen already, boring, move on.
I remember thinking about time and realising all our measurements of time were in reference to matter interacting with matter, a year is the Earth around the Sun, a day the Earth rotating on it’s axis, an hour a subdivision of this rotation, an atomic clock measures time by monitoring the frequency of radiation of atoms, all matter interacting with matter. If there were no potential differences then matter and matter wouldn’t be able to interact, i.e. all matter and energy being condensed into one point.
Then I remember thinking that the Earth is constantly moving, and the solar system moves and the galaxy moves, so I am never really absolutely in the same place I was lol. In a certain frame of reference, it seems like this is my house, but my house has never been in this exact position and frame of reference as regards the solar system, the galaxy or from outside our galaxy lol.
When I eventually experienced the jamais vu aspect of a PCE, it reminds me of that realisation I had and it seems to tie in with that sense of novelty, every combination of matter and everything really is novel and new, places I had walked a hundred plus times seemed brand new.
There is some strong relationship between the self/entity and the need to identify/categorise (categorize for you American English peeps) things. Separation, we demarcate what is us and what isn’t and then constantly chase some union and connection a way to break the separation.
That’s exactly what I was thinking a few years ago. If if all apples vanish from the face of the earth it still doesn’t mean there is nothing. The matter forming the apple just transforms into something else which is again matter. There is just no possibility of an actual nothing.
Not quite. There is also the experiance of nothingness in an altered state of conciousness.
This experiance is quite profound, hence spiritual people cling to it in the first place.
Yes exactly, atom for atom and all energy merely converted into something else.
How can nothingness have an experience…then it is somethingness lol. I have surprisingly not heard of this before lol.
Hmm, you experiance yourself as a something with/as a center, don’t you Mr. Nothing? 
In a ASC this center can be exposed and be experianced as not taking place (Ego/SI).
For some it vanished permanently (enlightment).
Subjective it is, but profound and very, very real.
I talk to myself as thoughts in the head. And experience sensations and feeling emotions some of which feel in the head, in my guts, my heart rate, and the affect across different parts of my body. I guess there is some sense of an agent to whom experiences are happening to. I guess it seems like I am behind the eyes, in the head, if I was to try and locate myself. Like sight has primacy.
I don’t think I get it lol sorry. Not trying to be difficult here. Have you experienced this before? Can you elaborate?
There is really no getting it without having experianced it. It’s basically the same illusion you are describing above, minus the “talking to myself” illusion.
Thinking completely stops.
The thinker stops.
The center stops.
Sensory perception remains hijacked by “being”.
Then only being is left.
A centerless, borderless, impersonal, conscious… nothing.
There is only immaterial consciousness.
Awakeness, unborn and undying.
Matter is merely appearance, not profound at all.
If you are interested then Richard’s correspondence in regards to ASC’s is very informative.
I experianced several ASC’s in my spiritual days, but only one very profound one aka “the observer is the observed”.
It was an absolutely stunning experiance.
I could only shake it off completely after my first PCE.
Oo I had one very similar. I had my eyes open and vision got hazy then cross-hatched then went to black, then I felt my center shifting down from center of my head to the top of my chest and completely vanish. All that there was was an apparently eternal and utterly still “Peace” with a capital P. It was something I felt I could “take refuge” in, that no matter what happened in this material world I could always get back to that immaterial Peace, escaping this world essentially (though I wouldn’t have put it like “escape” at the time.)
Funnily tho I never found my way back there. My thought now is that this was an experience of a genuine “arupa” realm (the “nothingness” maybe?), and also that the meditation stuff like the DhO leads away from it not towards it (because it would also be something just to be seen as sensations , perceptions , therefore impermanent etc - which is besides the point with regards to this).
It was probably the most profound experience I had in my meditative days.
But anyway the PCE is better . More fun certainly.
So you have no perceptions??? No seeing, smelling, feeling (as in touch), hearing…etc?
So one becomes the agent of experience rather than an agent having experiences…is that correct?
Yet a nothing dependent on something, the body…eating…drinking…breathing lol.
As the agent is not matter itself but arises in matter. One deludes oneself that one is beyond that matter…this body?
Fascinating lol. I can’t imagine matter not being profound lol. Though in a way, I can see how imaginary worlds have a similar flavour.
Yes, I read all pages back in the beginning (2004 to 2006) but a lot of pages that were of no interest esp stuff on ASC’s and other spirituality discussions. I have never gone back to so many pages. I tend to search based on subjects that have individual relevance, like doubt, sorrow etc.
I have had some weird ASC’s relating to anxiety and one regarding love like state but nothing as odd as what you have described here.
It is like this sense of agency taking utter primacy.
What made it stunning?
When did your first PCE happen? Thanks for sharing openly.
I have had friends experience something similar to this on drugs, on hallucinogens. Though for them things came back into their senses piece by piece, like a vase, a door, sounds, it was like re-piecing together of sensory perception piece by piece.
The immaterial plane sounds to have similar comfort as the imaginary worlds I have created in fantasising and creative writing.
Why was it profound? Is this just because of being so novel and alien?
Which did you experience first?
Well ‘my’ entire ‘ego’ / ‘me’ as ‘ego’ completely disappeared. For someone who takes themselves to be an ‘ego’ (as we feeling-being normally do in the course of regular consciousness), that’s quite a remarkable thing! I simply didn’t know that this could happen, before I experienced it happening.
Interestingly, unlike Elgin, all thoughts did not stop for me. I was still there, in some form, commenting on the thing. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time. I guess I didn’t fully believe in/go into the experience, or that probably would have stopped too. But it was no mistake that ‘me’ as ‘ego’ was totally gone.
This first, PCE after. The PCE is more fun cause you get to do stuff. And the peace of the PCE doesn’t depend on being apart from the material world, which the immaterial Peace does. PCE is not life-denying, while the Immaterial Peace is.
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I didn’t knew you had an spiritual background Claudiu! Yes, this utter peace is a hallmark of an ASC. That peace really comes from the sense of expansion, quietness of the mind/soul and from… IMMORTALITY of course. I just “realized” that death is an illusion and I cannot describe the utter joy of it.
If you don’t experiance a PCE in this very moment or are AF, then your perceptions are hijacked by being as well.
Everything goes on as usual, but since you are not matter/body, but Consciousness itself they are mere appearances as well.
No, there is no agent. There is only experiance.
I doesn’t perceive itself as agent, but as all that is happening. The observer is the observed.
The obverse is true in such an ASC.
Everything arises out of nothingness.
Just like in modern cosmology.
There is no agent. Aware nothingness is before matter so to speak.
There is no secondary really. It is all one.
Immaterial, aware nothingness. There is only that.
Being boundless, eternal, immortal, at utter peace. It’s incomprehensible.
A few years later when I turned my back on spirituality and stumbled over AF. I took me 2 or so years before my first clear PCE. Then it was absolutely clear that Richard was right and spirituality was wrong. The body and matter were not just actual, they were magically vital, energized and absolutely, unmistakably concrete. I laughed loudly. I could finally dismiss the memory of that ASC which bound me to spirituality. I would never look back again.
For me it is still mind-boggling how Richard could escape this 'permanent" state of glory.
Most people have absolutely no clue what this man has accomplished. Unbelievable.
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AF was the first thing to make me think of a division of ego/soul in that way, I had soul beliefs and understood concepts of the self/ego and had read about things like the id, super-ego and other concepts explored in the history of psychology and abnormal psychology. I never really explored my internal experiences of consciousness beyond the basics. I had realised there were sensations, thoughts and feelings. My friend always went on about the self being illusion before AF, so introduced me to some ideas but for some reason I never went as deep. Maybe because I believed imagination and learning were the two ultimate goals. I never thought too much about how I experience being a self…if that makes sense. It seems to me a lot of people on the spiritual journeys have explored a lot of the different possibilities of their internal experience. With different forms of mediation and mindfulness techniques and such things.
This is what interested me, that there could be something pleasant/enjoyable/amazing that was unconditional. When I eventually experienced it and knew it as a fact of a possible experience it then showed how clearly conditional everything else is. Whereas the PCE is not conditional but is denied by the condition of the self…so does that make it sort of conditional? Conditional that the self goes in abeyance?
So, I am the ultimate blocker.
Interesting, that the immaterial peace depends on being apart from the material world, when that being still arises from a material world. For surely the ability to reflect and remember it and qualify it are brain functions right? To define, identify and remember it.
Do you think somebody in this apart from the material world state could then detach themselves so much that if they were physically tortured they could overcome the experience by not experiencing it? Or would torture end the state and force them to acknowledge that they are a physical body? And this body takes primacy.
What the suffering of my accident taught me was that the body was primary to my attempt to try and hide in worlds of imagination, pain and suffering would take primacy to my ability to imagine, suddenly a lifetime habit didn’t work. I couldn’t ignore or escape the pain. It is like your entire body and being needs you to do something about it…hey do something…make this go away. A lot of this was made worse because I couldn’t swallow tablets (dispersible paracetamol was useless) back then you couldn’t get dispersible codeine without a prescription in the UK, there is a lower dose you can get now, but I needed a liquid form of a stronger pain killer and I was too embarrassed to just say please help I need a liquid form of pain killer. So silly, to just allow myself to suffer more over a perceived embarrassment. I knew my doctor well though because when I eventually did break and need it after a couple of months of agony, they mocked me saying I am like a child or a baby. In this new depressed and anxious state I had become really sensitive as well. Several times being criticised by my dad, or at work or friends I would break down crying. It was like I couldn’t tolerate any psychological harm of top of the physical harm I was experiencing.
Yes, I get this now because I have had PCE’s. At first, I struggled a bit to understand what the description of the PCE was alluding to. I guess the Ghost in the Machine anime and comics were the first thing to make me think of that, like what am I, but I guess I was afraid to look deeper. A lack of self awareness as to how I operate. I know this sense of self thinks it is in control but I have had experiences in the emotional spectrum to show this is a delusion too, a panic attack for example. Experiences that have made me question the concepts of free will as well.
Yet, this thing has arisen from matter so what would happen if suddenly hurt extremely? Or if suddenly in a near death situation? Everything just is? Is one able to bypass the fear of death/pain/suffering etc in this state too?
Ok, in this way sounds similar to a PCE, the direct experience of everything.
I don’t quite understand sorry, as in all that is happening in the universe or locally? One sees oneself observing the agent?
You mean like what Krauss postulated. I remember discussing about him at uni, I never read his book actually. I do recall my classmates at the time arguing about the definition of nothingness. That was one of those books I always meant to read but forgot about.
I might start another discussion about the universe/nothingness. It is interesting.
Oh man…I a confused 
Do you think you could articulate it differently? Or should I give up?
So like the oneness/unity state? Or subtly different to that too?
Imagination is still routed in the material world, where this sounds disconnected from everything, I could imagine myself without boundaries, infinite and eternal and omnipotent too. But it was not an experience of those but an imagining of them. Whereas you describe it as some knowing/direct experience. How did one determine these properties you describe? Were there any negatives to it? Why didn’t you perpetuate that state? What brought about its end?
Ok, sounds like an experience that could have trapped you forever but obviously didn’t last and you turned your back on spirituality. Why exactly did you reject spirituality? Apologies, if that is too personal.
Yes, I have no clue or experiential reference point on this. It all just meant nothing and a lot of that stuff went over my head. As I said, stuff with no frame of reference I seldom revisited re-reading or thinking about. Having had a small taster of a love type ASC I could see how that at some earlier point in my life could have been a terrible trap.
It was a spontaneous event that Richard broke out of that state right? I was looking for the page I found this reference again:
Richard: Over the eleven years I had numerous experiences of a condition that seemed so extreme that one must surely die to attain to it.(A Brief Personal History)* To go beyond Enlightenment seemed to be an impossibility whilst still alive and breathing. Then at midday on Friday the thirtieth of October 1992 a curious event occurred, due to my intense conviction that it was imperative that someone evince a final and complete condition that would ‘deliver the goods’ so longed for by humanity for millennia. Just like my ego had dissolved, back in 1981, my ‘soul’ disappeared. I was no longer a ‘Self’ existing for all Eternity and transcending Time and Space. I no longer had a feeling of being – or ‘Being’ – and I could no longer detect the presence of The Absolute. There was no ‘Presence’ at all.
Since that date I have continued to live in a condition of complete emancipation and utter autonomy … the condition is both permanent and actual. This is different from Enlightenment in that it is most definitely substantial: there is no longer a transcendence, for I have neither sorrow nor malice anywhere at all to rise above.
In this way, it was out of his control to have had that experience. Serendipity then?