Tommy M:
Here's another interesting thing. When Nick suggested the description "consciousness without object" to describe apperception, Richard quickly pointed out, and also made a point of deliciously copypasta'ing over to the AFT to emphasize it, that he said this in relation to apperception:
Richard:
"to regain the actual purity of the unadulterated sensuous experience of *consciousness without a subject* (a body sans identity) from the adulterated mystical experience of consciousness without an object (an identity sans body)’"
This is something I've been thinking about for a while...In my experience of proper, stable, full-on, subjectless PCE's, the distinction between "subject" and "object" no longer has any validity; there's no subject to objectify anything, no object to be subjectified, it's just bare sensate experience, i.e. in the seeing, only the seen etc etc.
It seems that this distinction between "without object" and "without subject" is what Richard bases the entire "180 degrees" argument on, he sees the practices people like me are using, basically a hybridized mix of "HAIETMOBA" and attentiveness/mindfulness (see Bhante G), as leading "away from" the PCE, a.k.a. aiming 'inwardly'...based on my current experience, I find this highly unlikely.
I wonder why Nick didn't get back to Richard's reply.
Richard is making a good point - One Mind is different from No Mind or anatta. Whereas in One Mind all objects and perceptions are subsumed to a single field of awareness/Mind undivided in terms of subject and object, in No Mind, it is the Subjectivity/Mind/Awareness that is deconstructed or dissolved... Only the self-luminous sensations. Even so, no mind (pce) experience should not be mistaken as the realization of anatta, the latter is more important, without which no mind will be a mere passing state, nothing seamless or effortless. In One Mind, though nondual experience is there, there will be this tendency to trace back to a Source, so those nondual awareness practitioners always trace back to a source. Therefore objectivity is subsumed into an ultimate mind, but subjectivity is not deconstructed. And this ultimate Source, Mind, etc is rightly pointed out by Richard to be mere illusion. But for this DhO community, I think most of us aren't talking about One Mind, it might be more relevant for those advaita or awareness practitioners (plenty even in Buddhism). For anatta, there is no source to trace, it is fully manifested as the immediate moment of manifestation or as this flow of action.
The key to a PCE is not non-conceptuality (an intense state of aliveness can also be experienced in nonconceptuality but without dissolution of self/Self). It is also not about stripping perception bare. Therefore Bhante Gunaratana's article which Richard plagiarized, only managed to describe the naked, bare, mirror bright clarity aspect but the aspect of no-mind is not so clearly stated. Whereas Richard's main concern was to use that practice of attentiveness to cultivate the pce and eventually into actual freedom/self-immolation. Non-conceptual, bare, mirror bright are not the main emphasis. Even though all these are present in a pce. However, even those of the I AM phase or the One Mind phase, practitioners also talk about non conceptuality and stripping perception bare, they also directly realized the luminosity. The key difference and the key to the PCE is the complete dissolution of any Subjectivity or self/Self sense, even that of an ultimate Mind or what richard calls "soul/feeler" and not just the stripping of personal constructs (the small self). So when the stress is on non conceptuality and being bare, Richard wasn't sure if Nick knew what a PCE was as he wasn't able to express the "key" or the "essence" or PCE, and actual freedom, which lies in "self immolation".
As I said earlier:
""AF" is not just Thusness Stage 4 (One Mind), it is going beyond 4 but not seeing the full aspect of 5.
That is, "AF" is able to elucidate the faults of Stage 4 and goes into certain aspect of 5:
https://www.box.com/shared/sbyi64jrms
("Actual Freedom and Buddhism" written by me)
Richard:
"And the reason why I provide the full version is because Mr. Alan Watts clearly reports that it is quote ‘because’ endquote of the awareness of himself, from inside himself, that the distance or separation (between himself and his senses, on the one hand, and the external world, on the other) seemed to disappear ... as contrasted my report that it is quote ‘with’ endquote the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’ that the distance or separation (between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and these sense organs and thus the external world) disappears.
In other words, with no identity whatsoever there is no-one to be either in a state of separation (aka duality) or in a state of union (aka non-duality).
....
Richard: ‘To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. *Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart)* ...’. emphasis added.
Again the reason why I provide the full version is because to be living *as* the senses (as a flesh and blood body only) is a vast cry from a remaining, and non-detached observer, having *become* the sensations (as in having identified with and/or having arrogated them).
...
A quick search of the internet showed that the quote you provided comes from an essay, in ‘This is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience’, entitled ‘The New Alchemy’ and goes on to say, immediately after where you ended it, the following:
• ‘For it implies that experience is not something in which one is trapped or by which one is pushed around, or against which one must fight. The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity: the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event which happens, not to me or from me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety’.
That polarity of subject/ object, knower/ known, feeler/ feeling, experiencer/ experience is an unmistakable description of mystical experiencing wherein the polar opposites unite (aka non-duality) – known in some mystical literature as ‘complexio oppositorum’ (union of opposites) ‘or coincidentia oppositorum’ (coincidence of opposites) – and thus shows that my counselling of very careful and considered use of psychotropic substances is a well-advised monition.
Here in this actual world neither duality nor non-duality have any existence."
Contrast this with Thusness's description of his stages:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html
Effectively Phase 4 is merely the experience of non-division between subject/object. The initial insight glimpsed from the anatta stanza is without self but in the later phase of my progress; it appears more like subject/object is an inseparable union, than absolutely no-subject. This is precisely the 2nd case of the Three levels of understanding Non-Dual. I was still awed by the pristineness and vividness of phenomena in phase 4.
Phase 5 is quite thorough in being no one and I would call this anatta in all 3 aspects -- no subject/object division, no doer-ship and absence of agent.
However the aspect of the 1st stanza of anatta, and experiencing in terms of a process, activity, and dependent origination is lacking. Experience is skewed towards Thusness 2nd stanza of anatta ( http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html ) but without reifying One Mind. "