I was having a conversation with someone today (he had some
history with various practices, vipassana, actual freedom, and recently
came across a famous Thai ajahn, etc) who shared about an experience of
dissolving into centerless space. I told him what I call anatta is not
just being centerless, it is the effulgence and radiance of the
transience. That is, regardless of any realization of no-self, and no
matter how centerless one feels or how centerless is one's experience of
awareness and so forth... still, anything short of direct realization
of the radiance or luminosity as the very stuff of transiency is still
not what I call the realization of anatta. (And that too is also just an
aspect of anatta, and furthermore not yet into the twofold emptying)
Was reminded of a conversation with Thusness back in Aug 2010 and found some excerpts from the Actual Freedom site:
"(12:22 AM) Thusness: for u, u will not be clear now... what Richard taught has some problem...that
focus is in the experience
u should focus on the realization
(12:22 AM) Thusness: the pce is what i told u, bring what u experience into the foreground
(12:23 AM) Thusness: Richard has a very important realization.
(12:24 AM) Thusness: that is, he is able to realize the immediate radiance in the transience
(12:25 AM) AEN: this is like ur second point of anatta in the anatta article?
(12:25 AM) Thusness: yes
(12:26 AM) Thusness: there is nothing to argue, it is obvious and clear.
(12:27 AM) Thusness: however i do not want to focus on the experience
(12:27 AM) Thusness: u need to go through a period of frustration first"
From the Actual Freedom site:
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selecte…/sc-relativism.htm
RESPONDENT: How do the qualities of ‘splendour and brilliance’ present themselves AS splendour and brilliance?
RICHARD: Directly ... as splendour and brilliance are intrinsic to the
properties of this actual world they present themselves openly where
apperception is operating: everything is literally bright, shining,
vivid, intense, sparkling, luminous, lustrous, scintillating and
coruscating in all its vitality here in this actual world.
.....
RICHARD: As I understand it (I am not a scientist nor have any
scientific training) a photometer can measure how bright or brilliant
something is in a more precise, reliable and universal way than the eye
can sensately determine ... and one can then talk about the brilliance
of that something if one wishes to convey to another what one is
experiencing (the word comes from the French ‘briller’ meaning ‘shine’).
• ‘brilliance: brilliant quality; intense or sparkling brightness,
radiance, or splendour; an instance of this’. (© Oxford Dictionary).
As for the splendour of something (the word comes from the Latin
‘spendere’ meaning ‘be bright; shine’) ... it is related to a brilliant
display:
• ‘splendour: 1. great or dazzling brightness,
brilliance. 2. magnificence; sumptuous or ornate display; impressive or
imposing character; a magnificent feature, object, etc. 3. distinction,
eminence, glory’. (© Oxford Dictionary).
Therefore, when I wrote
that ‘as [the qualities of] splendour and brilliance are intrinsic to
the properties of this actual world’ and that ‘they present themselves
openly where apperception is operating’ I am reporting that literally
everything is ‘bright, shining, vivid, intense, sparkling, luminous,
lustrous, scintillating and coruscating in all its vitality here in this
actual world’ ... thus it is not the imposition of subjective
attributes (which phrase may very well equate to what you called
‘internal percepts’ in the previous e-mail) that I am talking about.
Rather it is the absence of such subjectively imposed attributes – due
to the absence of identity – which reveals the world as-it-is.
...
RESPONDENT: This is what I meant in my question ‘present themselves AS splendour and brilliance?’
RICHARD: Okay ... incidentally, I do not go about seeing things in
terms of their properties, qualities or values (such classifications
never occur to me other than when having a discussion such as this) ... I
simply delight in the wonder of it all and marvel in the amazing
display.
Once experienced apperceptively – as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) – one will never again settle for second-best.
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selected…/sc-sensation.htm
RICHARD: Yes ... ‘how amazing’ indeed, eh? I am particularly pleased to
see you say that you had a ‘clear and unequivocal PCE’ as, of course, I
have no way of ascertaining the intrinsic quality of what any body
experiences other than what they describe – and I have no intention of
setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience anyway – so I
cannot adjudge the exact nature of what you experienced. The rule of
thumb is to ask oneself: is this it; is this the ultimate; is this the
utter fulfilment and total contentment; is this my destiny; is this how I
would want to live for the remainder of my life ... and so on. It is up
to each and every person to decide for themselves what it is that they
want ... as I oft-times say: it is your life you are living and only you
get to reap the rewards and pay the consequences for any action or
inaction you may or may not do. [...]
Having said that, and I am
not inferring anything either way by what I am writing here, it may or
may not be relevant to report that one must be most particular to not
confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience ... and
the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the
marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. This is where time
has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance
as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the
normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ ... there is only this moment in eternal time
at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being
apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it
were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious,
up-front and out-in-the open ... there is nowhere to hide and no reason
to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to
the universe: already always just here right now ... actually in time
and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless
awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe
experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the
universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.
In a PCE one
is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual
world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where
everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an
intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes
everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s
feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally
everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as
humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the
very actuality of all existence – the actualness of everything and
everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.
It is
one’s destiny to be living the utter peace of the perfection of the
purity welling endlessly as the infinitude this eternal, infinite and
perpetual universe actually is.
...
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selected…/sc-sensation.htm
RICHARD: Put simply: as there is no (subjective) experiencer there is no separation ... no ‘inner world’/‘outer world’.
RESPONDENT: If the images (presumably) are identical in quality, do you see them differently (e.g. in terms of clarity)?
RICHARD: Yes ... and just as the moving picture is visually brilliant,
vivid, sparkling, so too is the sound track aurally rich, vibrant,
resonant.
...
• [Richard]: ‘The whole point of
actualism is the direct experience of actuality: as this flesh and blood
body only what one is (what not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears
hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling
– and no separative identity (no ‘I’/ ‘me’) means no separation –
whereas ‘I’/ ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity, am inside the body
busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out
through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a
window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were
microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’
outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through
‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/ psychological baggage
to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood
body’.
...
• [Richard]: ‘I am speaking of the immediate
perception, of this body and that body and every body and of the
mountains and the streams and of the trees and the flowers and of the
clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so
on and so on ad infinitum, without the affective faculty existent
operating ... which reveals actuality in all its purity and perfection.
This applies not only to ocular perception but also to cutaneous
perception, to gustatory perception, to olfactory perception, to aural
perception ... and even to proprioceptive perception, for that matter.
There is no mystery where there is such direct perception of actuality
as described ... all is laid open, as it already always has been open
just here right now all along, because nothing is ever hidden. One walks
through the world in wide-eyed wonder simply marvelling at being here
doing this business called being alive on this verdant and azure
paradise called planet earth. This is what innocence looks like’.
As immediate, direct perception (sensuous perception) does not involve
either the affective faculty or the cognitive function the thinker (‘I’
as ego) and the feeler (‘me’ as soul) do not get a look-in ... hence I
call this direct perception ‘apperception’ (perception unmediated by
either ‘self’ or ‘Self’). Thus what I am is this flesh and blood body
being apperceptively aware (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ... which
means that the actuality of the physical can indeed be known, each
moment again, day after day.
I do not know if I can put it more briefly or succinctly than this.
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