I've been reading trough threads on PCE and it has left me with some questions. I've decided to base the questions on an experience I've had, I don't believe it to be a PCE but I think I can relate better to what a PCE feels like if someone can debunk or affirm concepts I have about it.

1) When you enter a PCE does it feel more real than how you experienced life before? Will it make you think (at least to some extent) "I've been living a lie/illusion"?

3) When I had my experience it gave me a strange feeling like I was in a video game, not meaning I was hallucinating or tripping out, but just because a) it was so completely different from 'normal' reality, and b) my relationship to my "self", my body, was very third person-ish, I had the same relationship with myself as the unknown people I was passing on the street.

Thanks for the reply Jeff. When I said third-person I meant to reflect the neutral feeling/relationship I felt towards my own body. Looking forward to more answers, I am also curious what awareness feels like, or rather where it seems to be "located". For example is it located behind the eyes or "in the head", or is it panoramic; surrounding the body?

2) Does it give you a realization that everything you thought of as not-now is in fact now. (aka echart tolle-style)

5) Can you say that AF is the full realization of no-self, in other words can you reach it if you are able to fully eradicate the concept of self, or is additional perception abilities(?) needed?

4.
The reason I don't think my experience was a PCE is because it didn't feel that good, or at least not blissful, I just felt fine. That being said I didn't get much time to experience it, when I started reflecting on how I was feeling it started fading, lasted a total of maybe 10-20 seconds.

I see, so you can say that AF is doing a different take on the no-self thing. Traditionally we are trying to understand that the self is nonexistent, seeking to realize that this self can not find a no-self, it would just end up with another version of a self; this being the standard non-duality paradox. AF seems to be attacking this problem by shifting awareness "forward" so that perceptions are met before they get sliced trough a filter and used as construction for the self. The self never gets initiated. Therefore the self/no-self distinction, and the question itself, is not really relative anymore.

Am I getting closer?

I see, so you can say that AF is doing a different take on the no-self thing. Traditionally we are trying to understand that the self is nonexistent, seeking to realize that this self can not find a no-self, it would just end up with another version of a self; this being the standard non-duality paradox. AF seems to be attacking this problem by shifting awareness "forward" so that perceptions are met before they get sliced trough a filter and used as construction for the self. The self never gets initiated. Therefore the self/no-self distinction, and the question itself, is not really relative anymore.

Am I getting closer?

When one first becomes aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of the clean perception of sensum just before one recognises the percept (the mental product or result of perception) and also before one identifies with all the feeling memories associated with its qualia (the qualities pertaining to the properties of the form) and this ‘raw sense-datum’ stage of sensational perception is a direct experience of the actual. Clear perception is in that instant where one converges one’s eyes or ears or nose or tongue or skin on the thing. It is that moment just before one focuses one’s feeling-memory on the object. It is the split-second just as one affectively subjectifies it ... which is just prior to clamping down on it viscerally and segregating it from the rest of pure, conscious existence. Pure perception takes place sensitively just before one starts feeling the percept – and thus thinking about it affectively – which takes place just before one’s feeling-fed mind says: ‘It’s a man’ or: ‘It’s a woman’ or: ‘It’s a steak-burger’ or: ‘It’s a tofu-burger’ ... with all that is implied in this identification and the ramifications that stem from that. This fluid, soft-focused moment of bare awareness, which is not learned, has never been learned, and never will be learned, could be called an aesthetically sensual regardfulness or a consummate sensorial discernibleness or an exquisitely sensuous heedfulness ... in a word: apperceptiveness.

(Dictionary Definition: ‘apperceptive’ (a.) of or pertaining to apperception (the mind’s perception of itself). Thus: ‘apperceptiveness’ (n.): the condition or quality of being apperceptive; also: ‘apperceptively’ (adv.): the experience of being apperceptive and: ‘apperceptivity’: (n.): the capacity to be apperceptive).

In that brief scintillating instant of bare awareness, that twinkling sensorium-moment of consciousness being conscious of being consciousness, one apperceives a thing as a nothing-in-particular that is being naught but what-it-is coming from nowhen and going nowhere at all. Apperceptiveness is very much like what one sees with one’s peripheral vision as opposed to the intent focus of normal or central vision. One experiences a smoothly flowing moment of clear experiencing where one is interlocked with the rest of actuality, not separate from it. This moment of soft, ungathered sensuosity – apperceptiveness – contains a vast understanding, an utter cognisance, that is lost as soon as one adjusts one’s mind to accommodate the feeling-tone ... and subverts the crystal-clear objectivity into an ontological ‘being’ ... a connotative ‘thing-in-itself’. In the process of ordinary perception, the apperceptiveness step is so fleeting as to be usually unobservable. One has developed the habit of squandering one’s attention on all the remaining steps: feeling the percept, emotionally recognising the qualia, zealously adopting the perception and getting involved in a long string of representative feeling-notions about it. When the original moment of apperceptiveness is rapidly passed over it is the purpose of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to accustom one to prolong that moment of apperceptiveness – a sensuous awareness bereft of feeling content – so that uninterrupted apperception can eventuate.

6) Someone else touched on this before; is AF the realization that nothing is good or bad in and by itself, only human interpretation makes it so?
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Thanks for taking the time Jeff, really useful stuff. Some quick additions if you don't mind: 1) What is EE? 2) What does the physical body feel like when having a PCE? Do you feel energy releasing when you go from normal mode to PCE? 3) Would you say it's good advice to "be the body" (while practicing)?

What I found confusing though is this: You read and hear about all these different 'spiritual' practices that's focusing on being present, seeing that time is an illusion, dissolving the ego, connecting with your senses instead of thought&emotions, resting as awareness, mindfulness of this moment, etc. I understand how the end result of AF is different from the spiritual approach, but the techniques seem so similar. How is it that asking yourself HAIETMOBA is supposed to branch off to PCE/AF while practices that are focusing on related aspect leads you in the opposite direction?

Thanks for clearing that up. I think I got a bit lost in translation there as I use translated version when I ask myself. I interpreted it to something closer to 'how is it to be alive in this moment', but from what you're saying it's closer to 'how am I able to experience this moment of being alive' ?

The testimonials of those who have had PCE's seem to match perfectly with testimonials from people who have had no-self experiences.

If there is a difference how can you know?

In my quest for a real PCE I find it useful to first dissolve the 'soft self'. This way the accumulated knee-jerk defense mechanisms are dampened and I can better tune into sensuous experience. At best I get to what you might call an EE but still the instinctual fear and passions are there, together with a core sense of being. While the 'soft self' feels more like a bag of concepts or feelings, the instinctual stuff comes across as almost hard-wired. Any ideas on how to approach this?