hi mitch,
Dark Night Yogi:
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.
the practice of actualism is not training oneself to 'neglect thoughts and emotions'. rather, it involves both:
1- attending to sensuous[1] experience (which comprises the five senses plus mental activity.. it just so happens that most of what goes on is physically sensate)
and 2- attending to one's feelings (so that 'i' really get to know what makes me 'tick'.. it just so happens that attending to one's feelings with the aim of knowing them as clearly as possible orients one toward the elimination of the condition upon which feelings dependently arise - the condition of 'me').
Dark Night Yogi:
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, (...)
well, emotions do 'tear the PCE apart' in the sense that when they are stirred up, one is simply no longer in a pce. thoughts, on the other hand, do not necessarily, unless they are precipitated by a passional stirring.
Dark Night Yogi:
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.
what motivates you now?
Dark Night Yogi:
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?
no, the pce does not line up to the brahma vihara state upekkha. knowing how to do upekkha well probably wouldn't hurt though.
Dark Night Yogi:
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?
as the pce is not a concentrated experience, then strictly speaking, your questions here are unanswerable. however, i can say, from my own experience anyway, that experiencing pce's did not (and being actually free does not) make me indifferent, cold, or insensitive.. experiencing the actual world is far too vivid, fun, and rich to possibly be uninterested, aloof, or dull.
as regards a change in personality, i find that i'm no longer ever sarcastic, not even slightly. (what reason is there to be?)
Dark Night Yogi:
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)
presumably, what you are talking about is becoming actually free. if so, the latter - there was a real change and, as far as i can tell, i can't go back.
if, on the other hand, you are talking about people who are not actually free having pce's (wherein 'being' goes into abeyance), then it is a temporary experience, despite whatever else it may convey.
Dark Night Yogi:
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"?
i'll answer your question, but if you could first clarify something: what is it about 'seeing everything as dead, seeing in the mirror as an animated corpse' that you find to be 'pure or perfect or absolute'?
tarin
[1]
‘sensuous’ (a.): Of, derived from, or affecting the senses aesthetically rather than sensually; readily affected by the senses, keenly responsive to the pleasures of sensation. Also, indicative of a sensuous temperament. Apparently first used by Mr. John Milton, to avoid certain associations of the existing word ‘sensual’. (Oxford Dictionary).