Apperception

RICHARD: Time cannot be described in isolation as time and space and form are seamless in that they do not and cannot operate as separate or disparate units. Time and space and form are material inasmuch that they are actually existing and form can be material in its specific meaning as actual things (solid stuff) or active force (energetic stuff). Therefore time can be portrayed as the measure of the movement of form in space and the periodicity of its rearrangement; space is an arena in which form can exist, move and rearrange itself endlessly; form is matter (either in its solid aspect or energetic phase) occupying space (which is infinite) and taking time (which is eternal) to reconfigure itself (which is perpetual). The properties of eternal time and infinite space designate a vast and utter stillness and the properties of perpetual form designate liveliness; a scintillating, sparkling vitality. In a word: infinitude. When one directly ascertains (apperceptive awareness) the properties of infinitude (infinite and eternal and perpetual) the qualities of the property of infinitude become apparent (infinitude has no opposite): pristine and consummate and impeccable.

RICHARD: The stillness of time itself is ascertained apperceptively (unmediated perception).

RICHARD: The other aspect of the actualism method – other than felicity/ innocuity – is sensuosity: feeling felicitous/ innocuous, each moment again, brings one closer to one’s senses and the resultant wonder at the brilliance of the sensate world can enable apperception … the direct experience of the world as-it-is.

Thus awareness is an attraction to the fact that one is always here – and it is already now – and as one is already here and it is always now then one has arrived before one starts. Such delicious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté (which is the closest ‘I’ can get to innocence) the nourishing of which is essential if the charm of it all is to occur. The potent combination of awareness – fascinated reflective contemplation – and sensuousness produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself (‘I’ disappear).

RICHARD: With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ … a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality … and I have always been here like this … so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety … a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions.

Repeated peak experiences can be brought about on virtually a daily basis with constant application of pure contemplation of the actual. In pure contemplation, ‘I’, the identity, cease seeing and seeing takes place of its own accord … this is called apperception, which is defined as ‘the mind’s perception of itself’.

RICHARD: Being ‘alive’ is to be paying attention – exclusive attention – to this moment in time and this place in space. This attention becomes fascination … and fascination leads to reflective contemplation. Then – and only then – apperception can occur. —Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Contemplation

A PCE is when one’s sense of identity temporarily vacates the throne and apperception occurs.

Being a ‘Software Test Engineer’ in the Windows Vista team, I was sitting in the Richmond office close to 5pm, working on C++ tests - which at that time was the most boring thing I could be doing that I hated it! Then, somehow, my mind without any prompt^* ‘slipped’ into higher-gears^* of some sort where everything started functioning smoothly. This so-called menial task had became a neutral ‘mental activity’^* and my awareness of it took a magical turn … in that, I started appreciating the various nooks and crannies of ‘the brain in operation’. At this meta level, the interest-level of the task did not matter - because the very fact that the brain is working on it in its intricate levels was so wonderful to observe. I was able to work on the task most effectively, and while enjoying it thoroughly, with a complete 360 degrees awareness of it as it was happening (and there was a total immediacy, unlike the traditional modality of ‘me’ being ‘up there somewhere’ lost in some semi-fancy despite being physically located here).

VINEETO: Undertaking an exploration of one’s own feelings when and as they are occurring – becoming fascinated with the business of being alive – is the means to developing apperceptive awareness, a prerequisite to becoming free of the human condition itself.

Being ‘alive’ is to be paying attention – exclusive attention – to this moment in time and this place in space. This attention becomes fascination … and fascination leads to reflective contemplation. Then – and only then – apperception can occur. An apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being fully alive right now. This moment is your only moment of being alive … one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here … even if you start walking over to ‘there’, along the way to ‘there’ you are always here … and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here … and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now … then one has arrived before one starts.

The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. Apperception is an awareness of consciousness. It is not ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious; it is the mind’s awareness of itself. Apperception – a way of seeing that can be arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought – is when ‘I’ cease thinking and thinking takes place of its own accord … and ‘me’ disappears along with all the feelings. Such a mind, being free of the thinker and the feeler – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is capable of immense clarity and purity … as a sensate body only, one is automatically benevolent and benign.

The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and these sense organs – and thus the external world – disappears. To be living as the senses is to live a clear awareness in operation … which is known as Apperception, a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. —A Précis Of Actual Freedom

RICHARD: Unfortunately it is not such a simple matter as merely exposing and dropping beliefs and misconceptions. I would suggest asking who is doing the exposing and dropping. I would enquire into just who is holding the beliefs and misconceptions concerning an on-going self. ‘I’ cannot drop the belief that ‘I’ exist because ‘I’, the would-be ‘dropper’, am what is to be dropped. Like-wise, ‘I’ the would-be ‘exposer’, am what is to be exposed. Only apperceptive awareness will do the trick.

I do that by neither dramatising the fear nor pushing it away, by seeing it more as a by-product of this strange thing I am doing. I don’t ‘support’ a panic-attack by embroidering it, and neither do I let myself be numb, bored or dull. Then, by quietly noticing what is happening, without attaching any identity to an ‘observer’, apperception happens – with some rumbling going on in the background – while I get on with the pleasures of being here, be they food, sex, a walk into town, playing with the web-site, interaction with other people, going to work or watching television. And by ‘my’ stepping out of the way I am doing what is happening, any rumbling or grinding in the background included.

RICHARD: The activity of attentiveness reminds one of why one is doing this: in actualism, one puts one’s attention on being here … now. When feelings cause one’s awareness to wander from actualism’s focus, it is attentiveness that reminds one that one’s mind is being manipulated … and why one is doing this happening called being alive. It is attentiveness that brings one back to the object of actualism: apperception.

The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. One starts by dismantling the shadowy social identity which has been overlaid, from birth onward, on top of the innate self until one is virtually free from all the social mores and psittacisms (those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning). One can be virtually free from all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques which were used to produce what one feels and thus thinks oneself to be: a wayward identity careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is.