Glossing over a bunch of details...I found that affective experiences only occur during one phase of the attention wave, i.e. the non-sensory phase.



Rather than being sensate, I found that the affective is best described as "imaginary". Not in the sense of "unreal", but in the sense of "having experiential qualities akin to a daydream, as opposed to the senses". In fact, I would guess that anything that is as vibrant as you describe, is likely to be non-affective...hence my questions.

I have applied a great deal of dry insight to the matters of actual and affective experience, inspired ultimately by the precision and detail that you emphasize in MCTB with respect to the process by which one attains paths. What I have learned through that has been very valuable. I would be surprised if, trying the same, you did not also find out interesting and valuable things for yourself which could help your practice (and help to figure out what the nature of the experiences you report is).

EDIT:



I have often found that actual experiences are compelling, because (a split-second after they happen) there is a gross affective reaction which is the thing that compels...in other words, the actual experience compels causally by generating an affective experience which has the quality "desirable / compelling".

For example, I have always been attracted to music. And although I long had an affective reaction to it, and an affective desire to pursue it for that reason, it was never ultimately the affective reaction that I wanted, or the satisfaction of the affective desire...as I pared away my affective reaction to music, I found that the only worthwhile thing about it (which I would have recognized at any previous time) had been the way it sounded. But the better it sounded, the larger the affective reaction was..

So, it can happen that an experience is compelling because its actual component, being perceived by a mind that is in the habit of affectively reacting, gives rise to a strong affective reaction and desire. If the affective reaction covers up the actual experience, confusion about what is what, and what is done for what reason, can ensue.

The theological problem of evil.

How does, in an actual universe, all the sick twisted shit actually happen?? Let alone how does anything happen at all.

Is functional harmlessness the same as having no will to harm?

What role does emotion play in the fractal infinitude of now? If it (emotion) is meant to be extinguished, who said so, and then we must consider how 'meant to be' implies an ultimate authority.


Can we trust the universe? What does that look like in practice?

Hi Daniel,

So nice to hear about your lucid dreaming and "traveling". I assume you mean what they used to call "astral travelling". Have you ever verified a real OOB journey? So many stories, so little evidence. I've never done astral traveling but I have done a fair share of lucid dreaming. I can see how the anticipation of losing that ability would drain some motivation for pursuing AF. I noticed not one of those counted among the Actually Free on this forum responded with their experiences of lucid dreaming after attaining Actual Freedom. That does not surprise me, as I would rank lucid dreaming as one of the most compelling "affective" and altered states of consciousness that I have ever experienced. I agree with Bruno on the affective nature of dreams and the daytime counterpart of daydreaming. The sense of "I AM" feels very strong to me in the lucid dream state.
"BEINGNESS" feels gleefully strong, exalted, powerful. Quite the opposite, from my understanding, of the PCE.
When you wrote back later to testify that you no longer considered losing that ability as a problem, I figured that must count as "Progress" to the people living in Actual Freedom. I can't tell the difference however, between that type of "progress" and ordinary dis-identification. You have a skill, in lucid dreaming, and you put a high value in that skill based on the pleasure, enjoyment, and perhaps other benefits, that it gives you. Then you dropped that attachment, or value, in favor of Actual Freedom. Ordinary people do this frequently:

"We've learned that, after identifying with some things for one purpose or to fulfill one desire, we have to dis-identify with them for the purpose of fulfilling another desire. For example, you may identify with your fingernails when they look attractive, but when they get too long you have to cut them and throw the cut-off pieces away." Thanissaro Bhikkhu
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html

Progress or dis-identification? We judge certain things in our lives as having inherent meaning and value, yet we have the capacity to withdraw meaning and value from those things, and we usually do this maneuver below the level of conscious awareness. The same way we "decide" on an action, based on "facts", "information", and "evidence", without realizing that the actual process of decision making takes place subconsciously. Science has shown that our brains work differently than we assume. We make decisions unconsciously and then reverse-engineer our thinking and memory to justify our decisions. Really we just make shit up all the time.
Richard traded in his "me" and became a ME, a Meaning Engineer. If you can re-engineer MEANING below the level of conscious awareness, then no one can interfere with your perfect world.
Daniel, I think that if you do lose OOBE skill and lucid dreaming skill in the process of attaining Actual Freedom, then you will have paid a high price for AF.

The people who have attained Actual Freedom have usually portrayed AF as a Win/Win kind of attainment. They simply don't put value on what they lose in the process. Let's review a few of those things:

1) At least some, if not most of the imagination abilities
2) Probably the ability to lucid dream as both an imaginative and affective faculty, and travel "out of the body"
3) The affective faculty of felt empathy or felt compassion
4) Romantic love, familial love, brotherly love, and other forms of felt love
5) Affective based healing abilities
6) The ability to think CLEARLY and COHERENTLY, and make intelligent decisions

Just a quick partial list off the top of my head. I don't think we have seen a full accounting yet for the price people pay, in terms of LOSSES, in attaining Actual Freedom. No one talks much here about a price paid for Actual Freedom. I feel happy that you brought the subject up. I also take pleasure in learning that the neo actualists actually enjoy recreational drug use. Again we don't see them stampeding to this thread to comment. We seem to get a very limited stream of information from these kids. They don't have much so say about things that they lose or drugs that they use.

I wonder why. Why they don't comment, and why they do use drugs. Come to think of it, the neo actualists don't talk about Actualism bringing about a lasting world peace whereas the original Aussie crew used to expound on at it length. I suspect that the neo actualists don't want to say anything that would put Actual Freedom in a negative light. And that whole "World Peace" angle seemed geared to sell more DVD's. Why no talk here here devoted that holiest of all holy grails? Maybe they don't believe it will happen like Richard did.

WORLD PEACE NOW!!!!

I made fun of the Aussie Actualists because of their talk of World Peace, but at least they put it on the table. I have to give them a little credit for that. Here at this forum, I don't see it discussed at all. What better motivation for practicing Actualism and losing the first five (never mind #6-really) features/abilities I noted above than to help bring about World Peace?
Hey, if EVERYONE becomes Actually Free, then we will have World Peace, right? Doesn't that drive the agenda here? Doesn't that make it necessary to censor criticism of AF, or put it in the dungeon of the so called Dharma Battleground?
Because we gots to get more people to Actual Freedom before we (the human race) completely ruin the environment and SELF DESTRUCT!
come on people now! smile on your brother!
Get on the PEACE TRAIN!
Any path that brings happiness and fulfillment only to one's self and does not help bring about World Peace has no relevance in the 21'st century.

I can guess why they don't comment on all this stuff, I would just like to hear it from a real AF type. And getting back to the drug use, why WOULD they use drugs? Like you, Daniel, I come from a non judgmental standpoint with this question. I just wonder, if they experience the perfection living in utter peace and stillness, in every timeless moment, in the beautiful Actual World, then how does THAT get any BETTER through the use of drugs? Or instead of something better, do they just experience something different, thrilling or amazing, like someone doing hang gliding off a cliff or going downhill skiing at dangerous speeds?


And how do they personally experience different drugs? If they use hallucinogens, do they get the same effects, experiences, hallucinations, that non AF people get? Remember Ram Dass, AKA Richard Albert dosing his guru with LSD? As I recall, the guru acted like nothing special happened under the influence of LSD-
Ha- you gotta love the internet- I found this story in seconds:

"In 1967 when I first came to India, I brought with me a supply of LSD, hoping to find someone who might understand more about these substances than we did in the West. When I had met Maharajji(Neem Karoli Baba), after some days the thought had crossed my mind that he would be a perfect person to ask.

The next day after having that thought, I was called to him and he asked me immediately, "Do you have a question?"
Of course, being before him was such a powerful experience that I had completely forgotten the question I had had in my mind the night before. So I looked stupid and said, "No, Maharajji, I have no question."
He appeared irritated and said, "Where is the medicine?"
I was confused but Bhagavan Dass suggested,
"Maybe he means the LSD." I asked and Maharajji nodded. The bottle of LSD was in the car and I was sent to fetch it.

When I returned I emptied the vial of pills into my hand.
In addition to the LSD there were a number of other pills for this and that--diarrhea, fever, a sleeping pill, and so forth. He asked about each of these. He asked if they gave powers. I didn't understand at the time and thought that by "powers" perhaps he meant physical strength. I said, "No." Later, of course, I came to understand that the word he had used, "siddhis," means psychic powers.
Then he held out his hand for the LSD. I put one pill on his palm.
Each of these pills was about three hundred micrograms of very pure LSD-
-a solid dose for an adult. He beckoned for more, so I put a second pill in his hand--six hundred micrograms. Again he beckoned and I added yet another, making the total dosage 900 micrograms--certainly not a dose for beginners. Then he threw all the pills into his mouth. My reaction was one of shock mixed with fascination of a social scientist eager to see what would happen. He allowed me to stay for an hour--

and nothing happened.

Nothing whatsover.
He just laughed at me.

http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/neem-karoli-baba-lsd-alpert.html



Weird story, huh? As the story continued Ram Dass later gave the guru 1200 MCG of LSD (a very hefty dose) and the guru joked around as if again, nothing unusual had happened.
Not to compare an Indian Guru to an AF person, I would just assume that the AF person would also have a different experience than the ordinary person under the influence of LSD. Like the MRI tests, it might give us useful information about the AF state.

Getting back to lucid dreaming, I also wondered why you have experienced such an increase in lucid dreaming as your AF practices continue. It does not make any sense to me that you would get an increase in lucid dreaming as a side effect of AF practice, then have it drop to zero upon attaining AF. And since no one else commented on this aspect, I have to wonder what connection (if any) exists between lucid dreaming and AF practice. I'll have to read the book Eternal Now suggested. (I got access using Don Juan's method as reported or imagined by Castenada, and then LaBerge's more methodical technique). Stephen LaBerge, by the way, did the original research at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory proving the phenomena called lucid dreaming actually exists, when most sleep researchers denied the POSSIBILITY that you could have conscious awareness while in the dream state. He did this in the sleep lab by using specific eye movements to signal through the eye electrodes, that he had achieved lucidity while in REM sleep. (note- lucid in this case does not mean clear or vivid. It means full conscious awareness, as in "Oh, I am dreaming this right now" WHILE in the dream and assuming almost full control, as an active conscious agent.) I don't think we can convey, to people who have not experienced this, the WOW factor of your first fully lucid dream.

Hey, I always thought that full and complete awakening in "life" would resemble awakening into a lucid dream. Even AF might resemble it. Awakening in the lucid dream confers a state of astounding freedom. In that state, you have a different relationship to these 7 factors -- TIME, PAIN, DEATH, GRAVITY, CONSISTENCY, COMPLEXITY, and MUTUAL AGREEMENT.
1) You inhabit a timeless reality in a sense, because you don't have to work to survive, or assume any responsibilities. What work do you need to do in a lucid dream? You have freedom from all social agreements. Purposelessness=timelessness, or at least a generally complete reduction in time urgency.
2) I don't fear pain or experience significant pain in a lucid dream, because I have confidence that nothing in the dream can hurt the "real" me. (a few weeks ago, I had a dream where I drove a large bus accidentally over a cliff. I became lucid in mid-air and stopped worrying. What will happen when I hit the ground? How charming! Falling with confidence gives me about as much pleasure as flying. I don't know how the other people on the bus felt, but I did not hear them screaming, so maybe they had confidence in my bus driving abilities, although one might assume that the rather straightforward manner in which I had just driven the bus off the cliff would tend to undermine such confidence in my driving abilities, especially as the bus continued to plunge headlong toward the ground. Seconds later, without any conscious effort on my part, the whole bus slowed down to a snails velocity just before touching the ground lightly).
Pain CAN happen in a lucid dream, but it does not, in my experience, come anywhere close to real physical pain.

3) I don't fear death because nothing in the dream world can kill my sleeping body. Unlike "The Matrix", you can die in a lucid dream and wake up later in another dream, (after a brief interlude in the dream-void), or wake up in real life.
4) Gravity does not have a hold on me because I can fly at will.
5) We have a quality of consistency in our daily waking world. We do not have much consistency in the dream world. Anything can happen almost all the time. Sometimes consistency in the real world leads to boredom. The "same old same old" expression comes out of the daily consistency of same work, same relationships, same entertainment, same routines, etc. etc. This may lead to boredom. I never get bored in a lucid dream. I have never heard or read a report of someone getting bored in a lucid dream.
6) I feel burdened sometimes by the complexity of daily life. Not so in lucid dream life. Take my bus driving adventure. If that happened in real life, I would have to deal with real life consequences, assuming I survived it anyway. I would have to take responsibility for causing injury or death to other people. I would have guilt, sadness, possible lawsuits, personal physical pain and injuries, financial costs, etc. All of these complexities of real life don't come into play in the lucid dream. Hence the sheer glee I experienced as the bus plummeted down. Responsibilities? I don't really have any in the lucid dream, except perhaps the task or adventure I sometimes set up in my waking mind prior to the dream.
7) Mutual agreement. What kind of responsibilities do I have toward other people in the lucid dream? Since no separation exists between dream figures and myself, I only have responsibility that I choose. In real life, we have laws, behavior codes, ethics, and morality. We have codified these things and we have codified punishment for those who break specific agreements. Other people don't really exist in lucid dreaming, so I don't have to follow any guideline. I can do whatever I want whenever I want with no apparent consequences to "other people" or the "environment".

Heh- excuse me while I cough up an old hairball.

I did not include "space" on this list, because I think mutual agreement creates shared space. I "argued" with Ricky about this years ago. I take the position that nothing exists outside of the mind/minds or Mind of the perciever(s). Steven LaBerge wrote about his first Tibetan teacher who came to the USA and knew only a few words of English. His talks consisted mostly of saying "all this" "all this" and gesturing to include the room, the people, himself, the world.
"All this... DREAM!" and then laughs as if he came to a great punchline. I have never come upon a better explanation of the universe or multiverse.
Ricky argued that space must exist outside of consciousness or perception otherwise how could you
http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/gardolcorrespondence/14How-I-Achieved-Actual-Freedom.htm

wait for it-

have dinosaur bones!
Yes, dinosaur bones proves to Ricky that we have not just mutually dreamed up this world because we could NOT have mutually dreamed up dinosaur bones! Right? Also a person in a coma proves it, because the room they abide in still exists, regardless of the persons deficits in perception and brain activity. Also in reality, you can drive a CAR to a BANK and WITHDRAW MONEY. He basically took the position of the early 20th century logical positivists. Dreams happen in imaginary space, reality happens in REAL space. Dreams happen in a physical brain. Reality happens in the real world in real time. No connection exists between those two things. You can't withdraw money from a dream bank and spend it in the real world.

By mutual, and by mind, I don't mean just human beings. I include all perceiving entities, including animals, bugs, fungi, and trees. Anything with awareness, or consciousness. Not small mind- Big MInd. Ricky could not grasp this concept.
People on this forum, including AF attainees, may have no problem with this concept, but Ricky sure did. Part of his 180 degrees thing. Don't ask me why I get on this particular, and probably pointlessly pedantic soapbox. Sometimes I choose my soapboxes, sometimes they choose me. I wonder if I will ever find my one true soapbox and one true fight, in that intersection between conscious awareness practice/awakenings, and our current desperate political reality. Sometimes I think I may never GET THINGS RIGHT in any permanent sense.

I can only hope, that in the future, I will make better mistakes.


I agree with the Tibetan dude.
"All this.... DREAM!
That does not make me a solipsist, because I don't equate reality with MY personal dream. I equate it with the mutual dream, which makes it more "real". Occam's Razor supports my side of the argument, as the simplest explanation to fit the facts. Why complicate things with a "real world space" that you can not prove? We have evidence that people can experience shared dreams and report seeing the same things in these "spaces". I have never seen a shred of evidence that the real world exists outside of the mutual or individual perception of it.
I say if you have mutual agreement, then as a result, the elements such as pain, death, gravity, time, consistency, and gravity come into play. The presence of these characteristics make the mutual dream seem "real".

The 7 elements I listed above all have one common theme. I can reduce it to a single word. That word takes up a lot of enk on this forum. A little puzzle for anyone interested.


You know, Daniel, I did not have a window into you until these recent posts of yours.
Now I think I get you and I look forward to your future reports on your quest. I wonder if you could say anything about how or if your AF practice varies from the norm. You say this:

"The more practice I do, the more elaborate, lucid and fully-formed my dream life becomes. Is it really true that it will continue to go in that direction and then, at one sudden moment, cut off all that in one radical and surprising reversal of direction, like some giant bait and switch?"

No one else I know of has said that their AF practice increases lucid dreams. I wonder, did this increase in lucid dreaming begin recently, or has it corresponded with your AF practice since the start? Also, with so many different approaches to AF floating around these parts, I have to ask to you - do you do anything different in your AF practice that might cause more lucid dreams? You have also stated, after all -

"It is a bit ironic that, while I run a public forum for people to discuss their practice, I myself have generally kept about 95% of my practice details to myself."

Maybe something in that 95% has caused an increase for you, in the frequency(?), and intensity of your lucid dream adventures.
By the way,I would guess that you have a lot more pressure on you than most people trying out AF. You have responsibilities as an ER doctor, a householder, author, teacher, and you have this website. You have a lot of plates spinning. No wonder you love lucid dreaming! The writer/teacher role must make the jump to Actual Freedom all the more difficult. I had a point here, but I just can't put my finger on it.

I'll say this- for myself, I think lucid dreaming occurs as an expression of my true nature as this particular human being living in this place and time. I don't know if I would trade in a part of my true nature for AF, because I don't see anything wrong with my true nature. Sometimes, after I have "moved on" from something that had great value to me, I find that months later or years later, that which I "left behind" or "transcended" or "transformed" or whatever, comes back to me of it's own accord, perhaps with a different MEANING, and I thank goodness for that.

Personally, though, I hope you do manage to combine AF and lucid dreaming and whatever other "powers" interest you. Steph had an interesting idea- I would propose it this way- What happens if you try to get a PCE while in a lucid dream?

After each "awakening" I have had in my life, I get the impression that NOW I see reality more clearly. I have begun to understand that really, I have just peeked under a veil. And each time I peek under another veil, after a while, I notice that I really see, not reality, but yet another veil. And I can't remove the veil now in front of me using the same method that I used for the last veil. I really don't know how I can remove the next one.



In my real waking life, I remember sitting with Adi Da on a very sunny day and seeing everything around and through me composed of nothing but light. Years later, I received a powerful transmission from Eli Jackson Bear and wandered around sacred ground in the pre dawn hours as if in a faery land, intoxicated by everything I saw. I watched a cat trying to catch any of several bats flying around it. It made amazing leaps into the air, twisting and turning in mid-air. At one point the cat caught one in it's claws. I rushed up to it and saw that the bat had a bluish tinge. I had seen bats before, but not like this one. It had ROUNDED bluish wings, like elongated ovals rather than the usual bat-shape wings. I don't think these bats exist in the actual world. (if anyone else has seen them let me know). The bat escaped the clutches of the cat and flew off, and the game continued.
My experiences with Adi Da and Eli come closest in my waking experience to the ecstatic freedom and love I experience in the lucid dream state. You want to talk powers, those guys had/have serious POWER. Papaji had POWER. Just sit with someone like that and you will know.

Until I learn to levitate and fly at will in physical reality, I won't consider myself fully "enlightened".

Gardol Yack

P.S. Speaking of Adi Da, 1.5 years have passed since the last deliriously optimistic update on the AFT website. (May 29, 2010).
http://actualfreedom.com.au/announcement.htm#Addendum4
This fascinating page includes a stratospherically weird conversation between Ricky and R-22, (AKA Marius K), regarding such sundry topics as when did "----" last have sex, Adi Da... did Irene die.
Anyone curious as to what has happened at the home office of the franchise? Pretty quiet there.
Oops. Another hairball... sorry

Just sayin', bubba, just sayin'.

PPS- This may have nothing to do with anything I've said, and I can't recommend watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_1Q

And don't even bother with this one-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtkgmZ9ZccU&feature=related



All you need is love.
Not really, I know everyone needs more than that, but love enhances relationship
which enhances meaning. Meaning transforms pain.
Meaning=manna.
To deprive myself of love will deprive me of a source of meaning, enjoyment, connection, and healing.
Depriving myself of lucid dreaming would do likewise.

Regarding meaning- (spoiler alert) Don't watch this unless you have seen the movie "Mask" Here you see the portrayal of a mother doing some "meaning engineering" to deal with intolerable grief and suffering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7tJtLw7BE8&feature=related

Happy trials, ;-) and Merry Chexmix,

G

If you could distill all your posts into something comprehensible like this, or - better yet - PRACTICAL and relevant to the thread, that would be rad. I don't have any beef, I just understand better if it's more straightforward.

Smoking a cigarette? Having a drink? Smoking weed? Man, if these trivial, trivial things trouble ('interest') you to any extent whatsoever, you'd flip if you knew half of what there is to know about certain "AF people". (Remember old Bill Hamilton's treatise on "Saints and Psychopaths"?)

All I can say is, no matter how much you might respect and admire certain "AF kids", do not take any claims about the nature of AF on trust.

John

maybe i should refrain from posting this because i'm not any of these people and can't speak for them. but, i can speak from my experience being raised in a judeo-christian society (the u.s.)... here we're guilted from a very young age at school, church, etc. to not do drugs because they're morally wrong. further guilted that if we so much as take a single hit from a joint we might wind up a drug addicted prostitute on the streets or death row criminal. so then, the usage of drugs (possibly ties in with alcohol, & cigarettes, but possibly less so) for af people might be more of an abandoning of their guilt trips about moral codes than anything else.

I wonder what your experience of belief is? Experientially, for me, it's nature is the patterned movement of emotion that moves away from, and makes impossible, the experience of the pristine stillness of the PCE.

Belief is no more possible for a permanent PCE state, than Catholicism is possible for my cat.

My understanding is that for "the powers" to be developed, requires the psyche/self to exist, yes?

quote from AFT website

=====
RESPONDENT: One would expect a certain energy field.

RICHARD: The affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated: I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever. There is no ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here in this actual world.
=====


You say "Richard" "unique-to-him" "seemed to assume" etc, etc - you make lots of conjectures, put words in his mouth, perhaps Richard could confirm directly, Otherwise conjecture is a waste of time.

"Richard had his beliefs,views and take on things conditioned by..." - did you mean "I (Nikolai) have a belief/opinion/conjecture that Richard had his beliefs,views and take on things conditioned by....."? or do you have direct knowledge that "Richard had his beliefs,views and take on things conditioned by..."

"AFers can't be wrong in your opinion, John?"

Now I am having words put in my mouth for me. To be clear, belief is a movement of emotion not possible in the PCE. So no, they can't be wrong where wrongness is based on having a belief. Anyone can be wrong in trivial matters of second-hand information, or faulty memory.