Tarin, could you please go into a little more detail about how and why you hit the wall with the actualism method and decided to pursue enlightenment as a stepping stone? You mentioned this briefly in your discussion with Dan, but the details are scant. I'm really curious.

I ask this because, while I see tremendous value in actual freedom, I still find the vanilla actualism method too difficult to implement. When I try it, I often find myself in a state of joyless conflict with myself. I am considering following the same path you took, because, as I mentioned before, I do get good results (greater ease, peace, freedom, enjoyment, clarity) from practices that lead to enlightenment.

If you knew back then (at the time you hit the wall with the actualism method) what you know now, would you have been able to persevere and get through it (and, if so, how? what were you doing wrong? what would you have done differently?) Or was arhatship (or at least stream entry) somehow necessary in your case to break through that wall?

Best,
Neil

Yes, Tarin. I too am wondering what are your reasons for attaining enlightenment when you already knew of and wanted an AF. Or what was the wall that was in your way?

It puzzled me at first reading that in fact enlightenment did not eradicate all suffering

If someone claims to get enlightenment, it is sure that they are not. After all, who is it that is claiming enlightenment.

Are you sure? Basically, this is saying, "Only the unenlightened are qualified to speak about enlightenment". Are you sure this is not just unexamined religious folklore, an expression of the crab bucket syndrome?

A much better way to hold this, in my opinion and experience, is this Bill Hamilton one-liner:

[indent]"The Buddha's enlightenment solved his problem. It didn't do anything for you."[/indent]

There is a problem to solve, and it isn't the problem of other people claiming things I can't fit into my world-view.

Hello Tarin,

It was interesting to hear you talk about time and movement. I was wondering if you have read Nagarjuna's Mula madhyamaka karika. It appears to me that the place where Peter (or Richard) wanted you to get to when pointing out the movement of the second hand is where Nagarjuna wants the reader to get to. I would like to hear your opinion on it. Here is a link to Nagarjuna's Mula madhyamaka karika: http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/verses2.htm

You may just read the Investigation of conditions, coming and going and time to form your opinion.

Where you talk about restlessness and movement, it reminds me of the following:

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: "The flag is moving."

The other said: "The wind is moving."

The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them: "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

Tarin: .......there is movement and yet there is nothing that moves.........

This is where samsara and nirvana are not different. These are the two truths, a relative truth of movement and ultimate or absolute truth of nothing that moves.

i have just read the chapters you indicate and have no opinion. what is it precisely which you would like to hear my opinion on?

i am familiar with this anecdote about the sixth patriarch of ch'an/zen.. do you have any purpose in bringing it up (other than because you are reminded, for whatever reason, of it)? have you experienced something that suggests to you this story's relevance to the recorded discussion in which i took part or to this thread?

tarin

actually, what i meant by saying 'there is nothing that moves' is that there is no substance of 'time' which moves (or passes, as in the phrase 'time passes'). hence, my saying so had nothing to do with either the things that move (the objects in the world) being a 'relative truth of movement' and/or the lack of time-as-a-substance (which, not actually existing, cannot move) being an 'ultimate or absolute truth of nothing that moves'.

tarin

Could someone get to the same place where you got to when pointed to the second hand of clock by Peter (or Richard) after reading the said chapters?

When there is restlessness in the mind, there is movement and vice versa.

And what did you mean by saying 'there is movement'?

i don't know.. does reading those chapters get you to a place which is sensuous in a very direct and bodily way, in where the sense of stillness is effortlessly palpable (in that direct and sensuous way), and where peace and security abound (because there really is nothing to fear in a world this distinct and clear)?

ok.. i can see how when there is a restlessness in the mind, there is a (sense of) movement which is not there when there is not that feeling of restlessness. is this what you mean? and are you suggesting that this is what the sixth patriarch meant by what he said in that story ('Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving')?

i meant, for example, that my hands are moving right now as i type this and post it.

I read other chapters as well and it took me to where there were no conceptions about anything at all. It took away all the restlessness in the mind.

Yes, that is what I think sixth patriarch meant.

ok.. but did the restlessness in your mind being thus gone reveal, to your perception, a place which is sensuous in a very direct and bodily way, in where the sense of stillness is effortlessly palpable (in that direct and sensuous way), and where peace and security abound (because there really is nothing to fear in a world this distinct and clear)?

why do you suppose, then, that in addition to saying that the 'mind is moving', he also told the others, 'not the wind, not the flag' (which indicates that he did not think that either the wind or the flag themselves actually moved)?

No, the above is not equivalent to saying that only the unenlightened are qualified to speak about enlightenment.

To understand this, one has to look with a nondual mind where there is movement yet there is nothing that moves. Then it will make sense. Otherwise it may seem as crab bucket syndrome or something else.

Have you experienced that there is movement yet nothing that moves?

When mental chatter stopped, just the senses remained, so it was direct and as there was no restlessness, there was peace and security.

He said that to break the concept of wind and flag so that the restlessness caused by concepts goes away and there is stillness.

So when you stated 'movement' in the first part of the sentence, you meant physical movement such as that of hand and in the second part when you stated 'nothing that moves' you meant it in the sense of substance of time. Does that mean you were trying to point to the concept of movement of the hands of a clock that gets tied to the sense of time and maybe if that breaks, it will be of help to others just as it did for you? That it will result in stillness?

What if all the concepts that you hold in your mind are not there? That will be a state where there is no movement. At that point it is also possible to see that how 'movement' comes about in the mind, that it is a fabrication of the mind. So you can see movement as well as no movement.

This may or may not be helpful but try watching a youtube video. Does your mind make the video appear 3D? Now try if you can see it as flat/2D which is what it is. If you can do this, you may also see that your mind fabricated the 3rd dimension.

when the mental chatter stopped, and just the senses remained, what was the affective quality of your experience, if there was any?

so, regardless of whether your mind is still or restless, does the wind move? does the flag move?

the movement of the hands of a clock is not a concept, it is a physical happening. here, the sense of time's passage is the illusion. when the illusion is seen through, the sense of time's passage vanishes, and the hands of a clock simply move.

for a feeling being, there is a palpable stillness in seeing this - the experience is sensuous in a very direct and bodily way. the stillness engenders an easeful sensitivity that feels so light and delicate, wafer-thin.. nothing untoward can happen here, nothing stressful can enter in. then, when the stillness is total, those light and delicate feelings vanish, too, and where they were, now only the sensate, and its immediate apperception, are (because there really is nothing to feel in a world so distinct and clearly real).

In fact, that is largely what my practice is at this time. I just found this "space element" thing in visual sensations one day. Nice twist with the youtube video.

Any answer to that would be a view, as there were no views at that point, there isn't an answer.

ok... so would a sailor who is experiencing this state (whose mind is is still in this way, and who thus has no views), be able to tell that the wind is blowing, discern which direction it is blowing from, hoist his sail accordingly, and sail where he is trying to go?

Just finished listening to the hurricane ranch discussion of AF. Thank you Tarin and Daniel for putting it out there. What I find surprising is how Daniel and Tarin’s descriptions of PCE and the mode of perception and experience aimed for in AF are uncannily familiar to me from my vipassana practice. I am not a highly advanced vipassana practitioner, and yet it is vipassana more than any other activity that I have found reliably produces such states, albeit temporarily, in their vividness and glory. To dwell permanently in this way is what I imagine to be the fruit of sustained and intensified vipassana practice.

Am I wrong? How does the PCE differ from what Kenneth Folk (following Bill Hamilton) calls “vipassana consciousness”?

I am not interested in weighing into the debate about whether AF is old or new but I am keen to identify the most effective methodology for liberation from ignorance and suffering and to experience life in the way that Daniel and Tarin describe so nicely in the podcast.

The Buddhist tradition, for all its faults, offers a very clear set of methodologies that have been tried and tested for millennia and continue to reveal their transformative potential to anyone who perseveres with them.

‘Actual Freedom’ on the other hand, is primarily represented by one cranky website. Like many people, I was put off by the Actual Freedom Trust site and Richard’s persona, but like many people here, I also find it impossible to dismiss something that people who are clearly intelligent, discerning - and a hell of a lot more experienced in vipassana than I am - should nevertheless find well worth pursuing.

Daniel, Tarin and Trent still give some of the best advice available to those on the vipassana trail, and “Actual Freedom” now seems to represent the gold standard in their own experience. “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha” maps out the vipassana terrain with unprecedented clarity and reassures us that it does lead to a permanent and definite shift in consciousness after all. But when the advance guard seems to waver in his convictions, how could it not be disorienting for the rest of us?

If there is a shortcut to the goal (or worse, to an unimaginably greater goal)

why should we fritter away our limited time sitting on our asses ascending the vipassana nanas? At least, those are some of the anxieties that had popped into my mind when I first heard read about Daniel’s apparent ‘conversion’ to AF.

But then listening to the Hurricane Ranch discussion, I feel somewhat reassured by the close fit between what Daniel and Tarin call PCE and my own vipassana experiences. Surely the distinctive conceptual framework of AF (or Buddhism) is of less consequence than these experiential testimonies?

Do other people find that Daniel and Tarin’s descriptions of PCE map onto their vipassana experiences?

If you want to know that would it be possible to live life while the mind is still, my answer is yes, even if it involves sailing. And if there are other people involved while sailing the boat, he will use the words wind and direction and other words as necessary. I think that if there are others like him, there will be less need to use the words or maybe none at all? Things may just get done.

Yes, Tarin. I too am wondering what are your reasons for attaining enlightenment when you already knew of and wanted an AF. Or what was the wall that was in your way?

i wish you success in your endeavour to live, full-time, in this restful, peaceful, secure, affectless, and conceptless state you describe in a fully functional way that allows you to use words as necessary and drive your truck safely. let us know when it becomes permanent.

I don't endeavour to live full time in this or that state. Whatever happens, happens. Neither do I strive to make any state permanent.

I have 2 questions to ask from you. Do you ever get knots in your spine? If you look at a video on a flat screen, do you see the picture as 2D or 3D?

as regards the question about a video on a flat screen: 4D.

;)

Are you trying to dodge my question?

Here's a question:

When you see the dew drops on a plant. Do you 'feel' the wetness?

Perhaps not. The screen is not relevant, your eyes are getting the same information to work with. Moreover, optical illusions are just as effective in 3d as they are in 2d, just harder to construct.

Here's a question:

When you see the dew drops on a plant. Do you 'feel' the wetness?

What I said was that the 3rd dimension on a flat screen when watching a video (which is 2D) is an illusion. Yes I know that my eyes are getting the same information. It is the mind that produces the 3rd dimension. Just as the time gets produced by the mind when it sees a clock, so does the 3rd dimension. Maybe you didn't understand what I said otherwise you wouldn't say that a flat screen is not relevant.

My question to actually free people is whether they see a video on a screen which can only produce a 2D picture appears as 3D? In case it appears 3D, can you try and see if you can see it as 2D?

What does this have to do with AF or the Heart Sutra, for that matter?

RESPONDENT: Richard, a question came to me this evening while watching a video of U.G. Krishnamurti. He stated that for him, perception has no ‘depth’. In some sense, everything seen is ‘flat’. This seems to relate specifically to his claim that ‘thought’ is what gives rise to ‘self’. The reason I say this is that it seems that he is saying that his perception has had any mental content stripped away – some sort of pure perception. Of course, I know your position differs with his account on this.

An example he gives is of seeing a tree. He says the tree trunk is not round to his eyesight – it is flat. It’s as if all 3 dimensionality has evaporated. To me, it sounds similar to what some psychologists have speculated the perceptual experience of a newborn might be like – seeing ‘surfaces’ only – without concepts.

I don’t know what you know of Bernadette Roberts – but she says virtually the same thing – her perception of the world is ‘flat’ – which is very close to the way U.G. describes his perception. Anyway, there is no way for me to know what their ‘non-experience’ is like, but I don’t hear anything from you that is like what they are saying.

During my experience of a ‘mini-PCE’ as I’ve called it, I don’t remember perception as ‘flat’ or ‘without depth’. You describe the actual world as there being ‘no separation’, yet still space and time exist. Does that mean that there is still ‘depth’? I’m not sure how better to ask this question, but I think maybe you understand what I’m asking?

What is really amazing to me is that Bernadette Roberts and U.G. describe what seem to be very similar ‘states’ – and actual freedom is also likewise without ‘self’ – yet I anticipate that your experience is much, much different. I am guessing you will say that there is ‘depth’ to your perception in the actual world.

If I’m correct that your experience is drastically different from U.G.’s in this respect ... do you have any idea at all what might have happened to U.G. that at least partially nullified the working of thought, meaning, mind, etc in his ‘experience?’ Whatever it was seems to be repeated to some degree in Bernadette Roberts.

RICHARD: First and foremost: as the physical world is a three-dimensional world, as evidenced by bodily locomotion, three-dimensional perception (stereoscopic vision) is in accord with actuality – whereas two-dimensional perception (flat vision) is not – and even a blind person knows that a tree is round by running their hands around it (perceiving tactually rather than visually).

One way to comprehend what flat vision is like is to cover one eye and observe what happens when stereoscopic vision is no longer operating ... which is a device I learned at art college when beginning to draw and paint and initially had difficulty in transcribing the three-dimensionality of objects in the physical world into the two-dimensionality of objects in the representational world of paper or canvas. It will be seen that the depth of stereoscopic vision (depth of field) vanishes and everything is reduced to overlapping two-dimensional planes (as on paper or canvas) with size (near or distant) and chiaroscuro (light and shadow) and distinction (clear or hazy) being the main characteristics of one-eyed visual depth.

As to why the people you refer to see the world in a one-eyed way I could speculate that it may be nothing more than an involuntary outcome of dissociation: as the physical world is unreal to a dissociated mind (Mr Uppaluri Krishnamurti claims that thought creates time and space and matter) the resultant object estrangement can render everything two-dimensional visually – in a cardboard cut-out dream-like way – even though such a person still behaves in a three-dimensional manner (such as walking around in their visually flat world) ... which should bodily demonstrate to them that their vision is playing tricks upon them. And I only say this because I can recall seeing everything in a cardboard cut-out dream-like way myself, when in a solipsistic state many years ago, where everything was as if it were stage-prop scenery ... as in painted back-drops.

Locomotion soon disabused me of this notion, however.

I would suggest taking Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti’s ruminations on the subject of visual perception (as in a flat perception somehow being a pure perception) with a grain of salt ... as I would suggest doing with virtually all his explanations. For example, as he claims that thought creates the tree referred to (a tree is matter located in space and existing in time) it follows that when thought is not operating there would be no tree at all – a non-dimensional tree as it were – yet it turns out that there is a tree after all ... albeit a two-dimensional tree.

O what a tangled web they weave when first they practice to deceive.

Put simply: stereoscopic vision has nothing to with whether there is an identity present inside the body or not and has everything to do with two side-by-side eyes x-distance apart being able to converge on the same thing simultaneously – in contrast to those animals with eyes on either side of their head being unable to converge – which provides for depth of field vision. This is born out by aerial mapping where two cameras mounted under each wing provide photographs in relief as contrasted to a single camera providing photographs without relief.

Lastly, my experience is that, irregardless of whether thought is happening or not, stereoscopic vision operates anyway

Wouldn't anyone of you want to know if an actually free person is constructing something imaginary?

I don't know about you or the others, but that's just beating about the bush.

What I really need to know is whether Actually Free people talk about Unicorns when having sex.

I can't help but notice how we're merrily constructing something imaginary here.

I just wanted to know does an actually free person sees it as such always?

Wouldn't anyone of you want to know if an actually free person is constructing something imaginary?

I want to know that because of the claims that they don't have any imagination. Though claims of two actually free people may differ ranging from one having no free will (Richard's claim as pointed out by Guillherme) and having unfettered free will as claimed by Trent.

It follows then that whether one is perpetually discerning the dimensional quality of this monitor's screen (or the room it's sitting in) has nothing to do with one's imagination (unless one imagines that to be the case).

That is what I wanted to know whether an actually free person can discern dimensional quality of the monitor or not (I used the word imagination for the work that mind does to shield the 2D quality of the monitor, maybe more appropriate would be subconscious imagination).

Aman, could you give an example of what you consider to be an non mediated (be it mediated via 'subconscious imagination' or whatever) experience?

Your intermittent search for gaps seems to reveal a type of "Mexican standoff"*:
You recognise that the information (i.e. Actual Freedom from the Human Condition) is true and don’t want to deny it, but at the same time you don’t want to accept its implications. So, you can not go forward or go back...
Why not give to yourself an experiential period to actually test the actualism method and its 'assumptions'?
Maybe a 40 days experiment...
Nothing left to lose, remember? And during this empirical test, like a collateral effect, do you have a great possibility to achieve that so-called "Emptiness". Who knows?
Anyway, once you discover and atest your own explanation of the human condition then you will know that all your dilemmas are now explained.
Once you know this, that the human condition - including your own condition - has been explained and defended at the core level, you can leave the issue of your own and the world’s alienation behind as effectively dealt with and - why not? - allow the dissemination of this information throughout the rest of the world and to a fresh generation. Altruism.
Five millennium living under the impasse of the human condition was enough.
Go ahead my fellow!
Sincerely,
Luciano

Great Aman!
Your today approach are more down-to-earth.
I agree that subjective "emptiness" experience of the mind (from a live and physical brain´s operation) could be self-fabricated, as the dreams and hallucinations (ASC). Meditation and other forms of mental skills also allow one to enhance - or suppress - different aspects of the mind at will.
So, your goal is improve your intelligence?
If you put the 'donkey' (i.e. the instinctual passions located in the primitive reptilian brain) in standby mode you could to ascertain this meta... and much more!
The human being conscience have developed to a high degree, right? And that experiences we have of "pure" selflessness happens when psychological angst lost its power over the mind and the body conscience becomes the dominant perception or agent in our mind (remember: there are three I's altogether... but only one is actual).
But in everyday life all our minds systems (animal self, social identity, thoughts, customs, etc) are functioning together. A perfect mess, I mean, "Human Condition". This includes our more ancient "selfish" mind plenty of behaviour which has no reflective autonomous component (because its origin predates our social stage) and thus "conscience" like aspect.
Think about my fellow.

My goal is to improve knowledge using the limited intelligence that I have. Up until now, I have observed that relying too much on sensations can cloud the intelligence.

I agree with Tarthang Tulku when he says:

An integrated, natural intelligence, unfragmented into reason, emotions, sensations, and intuition, is our greatest treasure, and our key to progress. (p. xxxiv, TSK) http://tska.info/know3.html#

You know that emotions cloud intelligence. But may be do not know that sensations themselves do the same thing.

I don't want to lose the greatest treasure to gain perfection based on sensations.

.. however, I am highly skeptical as to whether this 'greatest treasure' or 'knowledge' or 'intelligence' has any relevance to either ordinary everyday experience or being happy and harmless. As I remarked above, it seems to me that you are only interested in total acceptance [of whatever happens] and/or the primordial awareness that accepts everything.

All I can suggest at this point is to re-read our 2007 discussion, as I too unfortunately had this opinion
http://harmanjit.googlepages.com/conv-sridhar-daniel.html

It did me no good, man.

Aman, could you give an example of what you consider to be an non mediated (be it mediated via 'subconscious imagination' or whatever) experience?

When there is no one to claim about sensations (no mind as in zen, instead of someone claiming sensations as in AF) and there is absolutely perfect synchronization between the physical body and the universe (as Richard claims it that he has no free will).

But maybe this is impossible to achieve?

I like Tarin's remarks about the ethical implications. IIRC, in the first Hurricane Ranch discussion (Hokai, Vince, Daniel, Kenneth, Tarin), towards the very end, Tarin already remarked how AF amounts to sila. He gets back to this, and at 32:50 in the first half of the present discussion, he remarks: "... without leaving the Buddhist framework, it can be looked at this way that seeing things as they are, attaining to arahatship, sensations as they arise and pass, arise and pass, without sticking to anything - that's debatable, like, why are they arising anyway if they are not sticking to something - I won't go into that ... I'll go into that later"

Since you never got around to this in the recording - can you go into this now? The interrelationship of the attention wave and the stickiness and dependent arising? I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for a long time now (if that's what it is and I understand your terms correctly).

to conceive of the illusion of 'being' (which gives rise to stickiness) as something which exists in a way that can be clearly observed is also an illusion; at root, no such thing can be found. at root, only its void can be found (yet finding its void does nothing in itself to dispel the illusion - doing so only serves to establish the void as the source of those arisen things).

Thanks, Tarin.



I'm getting the impression that this is at the bottom of the difference between insight and AF. Can you expand on this a bit?

Cheers,
Florian

ok:

without the void at the 'core' of 'being', there would be no source for feelings to arise from (and so no feelings would arise). this would be great, because in the absence of the source of fear, grief, and ill-will, there is the absence of fear, grief, and ill-will.

yet, practitioners do not see this, because they take the void to the be metaphysical source of all things (it is easy enough to wind up giving it credit for being the universe's primordial origin - there are people left and right demonstrating this[1]). these people either are identified with this 'source' (because they have disidentified from everything to which the void can be identified, which is everything else) or they have an allegiance to it (because they are loyal to the people who believe that they are this 'source'). neither believing in this source nor fervently indulging its experience will bring about the absence of fear, grief, and ill-will, as what this 'source' really is is the core of the instinctual passions.. that is, the instinctual passion for 'being' - for survival.

yet, the drive for individual survival (narcissism) can be overcome by - even channelled into - the drive for group survival (altruism). and it is the desire for group survival (the altruistic instinct) which motivates one to find a way to entirely cease being afraid, aggrieved, and malicious... and so to cease being completely.

tarin

[1] the wish to expend energy speculating about such metaphysical matters at the expense of coming out of fear, grief, and ill-will completely is the passional instinct for survival in operation - madness in motion.

yet, practitioners do not see this, because they take the void to the be metaphysical source of all things (it is easy enough to wind up giving it credit for being the universe's primordial origin - there are people left and right demonstrating this). these people either are identified with this 'source' (because they have disidentified from everything to which the void can be identified, which is everything else) or they have an allegiance to it (because they are loyal to the people who believe that they are this 'source'). neither believing in this source nor fervently indulging its experience will bring about the absence of fear, grief, and ill-will, as what this 'source' really is is the core of the instinctual passions.. that is, the instinctual passion for 'being' - for survival.

yet, the drive for individual survival (narcissism) can be overcome by - even channelled into - the drive for group survival (altruism). and it is the desire for group survival (the altruistic instinct) which motivates one to find a way to entirely cease being afraid, aggrieved, and malicious... and so to cease being completely.

Apart from the religious interpretation (just why this is so seductive to so many people is beyond me, but to each his own delusion; somehow, "nothing" always ends up meaning "something", which is really weird) - is this analogous to what Daniel calls "anagami dreams", just not about the void core of self but the void core of being?

That's good to know.

Cheers,
Florian

...practitioners do not see this, because they take the void to the be metaphysical source of all things [...] these people [...] are identified with this 'source' (because they have disidentified from everything to which the void can be identified, which is everything else) .

yet, the drive for individual survival (narcissism) can be overcome by - even channelled into - the drive for group survival (altruism). and it is the desire for group survival (the altruistic instinct) which motivates one to find a way to entirely cease being afraid, aggrieved, and malicious... and so to cease being completely.

can you explain what you mean more?

I was referring to anagami "traps" or "dreams" like subtle identification with the source, or the void-like potential, or the observer etc., and extending that to "being".

Cheers,
Florian

Is this the identification you avoided, upon recognizing it's temptation and understanding all the warnings you had had over it (as I remember you saying somewhere), as you approached arahatship? If so what does it mean for you to then 'complete the circle' and discover arahatship, without presumably this essential ingredient?

Or, in what way is the deluded condition you chose to induce a better starting point (in your consideration) than the deluded condition of the non arahat? (statistical considerations aside.)

A great model from which to refine ones intent!

'completing the circle' meant seeing clearly that the sensations which imply 'i' are fundamentally sensations all the same as any other (sensation) and, from a certain perspective, that they share the same characteristics (of fleeting, immediate, and spontaneous existence). this was so with regard to all bodily sensations, this was so with regard to all feelings, this was so with regard to all states of mind, and this was so with regard to all the qualities of mind and of mind objects (including the subtler aspects of those things like space and super-space and silence and awareness and the sense of movement and of time's passage and the list goes on). seeing as much, i discerned clearly that what i had felt driven to look for was what i was looking at.

Yet, practitioners [...] they take the void to be the metaphysical source of all things [...]. these people either are identified with this 'source' (because they have disidentified from everything to which the void can be identified, which is everything else) or they have an allegiance to it.

I can relate with you Aziz Solomon with your relating it to Vipassana. The way it hits me is PCE is something like Goenka Body scanning, where you train yourself to neglect your thoughts and emotions and focus only on sense experiences. In his case, only sensations. In AF's case, all 5 senses.

I have felt PCE's during meditation, on retreat, in everyday life in days of strong meditation, during childhood, and am able to tap into it easily when I try (although i've only tried it while reading about it on this site therefore somewhat calm). It feels good and also has this momentum to it. I feel emotions and thoughts stir up like ripples that try tear the PCE apart, (...)

challenging my focus muscles. I've always found the PCE state Very cool and were among my most memorable and favorite meditation experiences. It gave me alot of drive to meditate and get enlightened because I thought that enlightenment WAS the PCE state.

Q1
The PCE hits me as a concentration state. I never found in reading texts about the Brahma Vihara's what exactly was the "Equanimity" mind state. Upekkha is considered a concentrated state, contrasting "beginner's mind", mindful awareness/single pointed awareness, Kenneth's 3rd gear (w/c also hits me as beginner's mind). Perhaps PCE lines up to the practice of Upekkha?

Q2
If PCE is a concentrated experience, does it limit or inhibit the range of behavioral possibilities? Does it change the psyche and in any way possibly make one indifferent, cold, or insensitive, or even if not, does it have an effect on their personalities? How does one in a PCE react to jokes/humor?

Q3

You guys describe the shift to PCE as permanent. Do you just mean that it can be effortlessly applied anytime and in any situation, and can be switched on and off? Or do you mean that you Can't go back and that there was a real change in the consciousness/brain/physiology (like the enlightenment bio-energetic process)

Signlessness

Q4
I experience states of seeing the signlessness of things when in High Equanimity Nana and near Fruitons. Sometimes for moments sometimes for longer. I really love this experience. It's like seeing everything as dead, seeing myself in the mirror as an animated corpse... my attempts at PCE though seem to not give me a state as pure or perfect or absolute as this, but it seems to lead in that direction? Does PCE increase the chances of having these glimpses and experiences of "signlessness"?