first ever practice journal!

I should also add that one of the most distinct things was the impression of immense richness in the music; the subjective perception of clarity and depth was remarkable.

Also, I find very little to say about this experience in terms of a change in or the absence of "self", "I", "me" and so on, because from my vipassana practice I no longer really think those are good ways to characterize any experience. As I said, I do recognize some sensations in normal experience that "being" seems to be a label that's as good as any for (but I don't think any label is really helpful for them). Pre-path, I might have described this experience as having absolutely no sense of self and absolutely no sense of "no-self", but at the moment I think that's more likely to be confusing than helpful, but I state it anyway.

Excellent work man. Sounds very much like a pce or at least very very close. My eyes are glued to this thread. Very helpful to see this stuff written down.

"The only real reflection I have after this experience is that every emotion and every affect seems to be a poor and unhappy caricature of what experience would be like if those things were gone."

@emotions: they appear so rude and primitive compared to the pure awareness

I 'm just glad to read your journal. I nearly had exactly the same experiences. So if we are on the titanic the last thing we will have is an unprecedented party in any case

mumuwu: Glad to hear that these kinds of descriptions and reflections are helpful for other people, not just me. I'll keep writing, for sure.

locoaustriaco: "Rude" is a really good description.

The most distinctive thing for me about emotions is that they really did (in that state) appear to be caricatures. In the state I described, experience is in some ways "the same" as outside of it. It's not like jhana, where lots of stuff is suppressed and all this new bliss / equanimity arises, or like 3rd gear outside of direct mode, where it's as if one's viewpoint shifts in a trippy way. In that state, experience presents however it presents; right now, the same sensory experiences would present as a caricature of that, with a strong resemblance between the two modes; the main difference is only that, as a caricature, the latter appears to be distorted. The really striking point for me (one of the reasons that the experience was not what I imagined a PCE to be) is the fact that experience appeared to be *more or less the same* but minus some kind of distortion.

I made some notes to myself about how this seemed to work while I was in the state, and have been fleshing them out recently. Right now I have an attempt at a analytic, precise description of the difference between affective experience and non-affective experience. It clarifies things for me because I can describe the difference in terms of the way I learned to describe experience through vipassana, which makes sense to me, whereas the AF terminology does not make sense to me, and neither does the terminology used by non-AFers to describe their understanding of the PCE. I will try to write it up tomorrow.

However, I would really like more opinions on whether what I described is a PCE or is some kind of confusion. An analytic description of something that's rooted in confusion isn't going to help me or anyone else.

My memory of the experience becomes more distorted as time passes. When I think about it now, I imagine something heavy-handed, like being hit over the head with whatever "divine ecstasy" means. Something one-dimensional, like super-hard 2nd jhana. Even though this is the best I can imagine, I know it is absolutely wrong, because at the time I noted that the experience had an immense subtlety to it.

Last night I played around with some alternative possibilities as I was going to sleep, for the sake of fully exploring alternative possibilities. Perhaps it was an A&P event, or some kind of A&P / direct mode hybrid. Yesterday I was very chilled out, much less affect than normal, and focus was not very precise-seeming. So, dissolution? On the other hand, I had an endless reserve of energy (not feeling energized, just having endless energy), wasn't moving slowly, didn't feel "murky". So maybe not. Also, every A&P experience I've had only had dissolution as a very temporary stopping point before the DN. At best for an hour. So, if I were in dissolution for more than a day, that would be a first.

So, probably not A&P leading to dissolution, but it was worth exploring.

More later.

Here's my write-up. This is my best understanding at the moment, based mostly on my notes in the assumed-PCE, and fleshed out afterwards. I may find that it's wrong as I continue on with direct mode practice, or if the experience I described was not actually a PCE or close to one. You know, the usual caveats.

Apart from that, my direct mode practice is strong and pretty effortless, but surprisingly I find that the usual "state 6" / "state 7" is not a good way to taxonomize it since two days ago.

This is my attempt to explain precisely what the difference between affective and non-affective experience is. It's a technical explanation; I'll need to use some
technical language. There's also a long preliminary explanation to tie things in with vipassana.

Experiences can appear to have "perspective". The most notable way that they do (for yogis in our tradition) is that they have the perspective "this belongs to a self," "this is experienced by me, a self," "this is something that I, a self, react to." After path, these perspectives can change. One can think "Experience used to appear as if it belonged to me, affected me, or was experienced by me, but now I see it belongs to no one, happens to no one, is experienced by no one." This is not the relinquishment of perspective, or a recognition of how things are without imposing a perspective on them, but actually a new perspective. "This is experienced by me" and "this is not experienced by me," as descriptions of how experiences seem to be, are both perspectives.

A simplified analytic description of what's going on is this. Pre-path, an experience (say "redness") arises, and another experience, which is the perspective "this is mine, this affects me, I perceive this, I react to this," also arises. Both are mind objects. The yogi reflects "redness seems to be mine, affecting me, something I perceive, something I react to," because they blur these *TWO* experiences, redness and the perspective-object "my perception of redness," together. The ability to discern that there is even a second object is not yet developed. (This is why the purely intellectual understanding of no-self is not enlightenment and not helpful for attaining enlightenment; understanding is a third, unrelated object; what the yogi needs is the ability to discern the second object, not to generate an extra object.)

I call the second type of object a "perspective-object". I define "conceptual perspective" as the blur involving the primary object (in this case, redness) and the perspective-object.

Post-path, the yogi has the sense that there was previously redness and some kind of confusion about redness, and also has the sense that with the abandoning of that confusion, there is no perspective left. So they reflect "there is no self that perceives or is affected by redness, there was just a delusion concerning it." But the sense that there is no perspective is another perspective-object, subtler, which replaced the first. Redness and the new perspective-object are blurred together; it *seems* like redness is perceived by no-one and affecting no-one, and conceptual perspective is precisely what this "seeming" is. Other experiences may still seem to be self or perceived by self or affecting self, but the yogi has some ability to discern the perspective-object and see that it isn't true, and so disbelieves the "seeming" and continues towards further paths.

The end of vipassana, as I understand it, is the recognition that (with respect to the delusion of "self") the only things there are or ever were in experience are primary objects, perspective-objects, and conceptual perspective. Redness is just redness. If redness arises with a perspective-object, there are two separate objects. Perspective-objects do not affect the experience of redness. If there is conceptual perspective, then there are three separate objects, namely redness, a perspective-object, and a perception of blur between the first two. The perception of blur is not redness and a perspective-object being distorted; it is just another object. Before this point, one thinks otherwise because one simply can't discern redness and the perspective-object clearly.

In other words, the end of vipassana is the recognition that *everything* is free of any ultimate perspective. Redness is free of that. Perspective-objects are free of that. Conceptual perspective is free of that. This is sunyata and everything partakes in it. Sunyata is not conceptual perspective; no object needs to "seem" to be free of ultimate perspective to partake in it (that would be more conceptual perspective); one can just reflect "every object is just there, and *precisely that* is the absence of an ultimate perspective." In other words, sunyata, freedom from an ultimate perspective, has no qualities and doesn't seem any way whatsoever because it isn't anything at all (it is literally absolutely nothing). Recognizing sunyata does seem a certain way, because recognition is an object, but the "seeming" is just the arising of a mental object, and not at all part of sunyata. (And of course, the seeming partakes in sunyata.) Recognizing sunyata just is the ability to discern objects precisely enough, built up from lots of vipassana practice, plus reflection.

When one reaches the end, conceptual perspective stops arising, and certain perspective-objects stop arising. Other perspective-objects still arise, but one is "free" from them because one discerns that they are merely perspective-objects. One recalls that, when conceptual perspective arose and one thought that they were a self, perceiver, affected by objects, and so on, one was actually free of those things (conceptual perspective was merely an object), but believed otherwise due to lack of discernment. One reflects that conceptual perspective is suffering, and one is better off without it, but was free either way. Because everything partakes in sunyata, everywhere and everywhen.

Some traditions emphasize the non-arising of conceptual perspective as what is important (Theravada variants), some traditions emphasize recognizing sunyata as what is important (Mahayana variants), but the two are inextricably linked.

(This is *my* explanation of the end of vipassana, from my own experience, and you are free to judge that it is the end or isn't the end.)

Apart from this, there is something else perspective-like in experience. If you see a car passing you by, you may have the sense that the car is "there" in relation to the seeing which is "here," and the car moves in relation to 'here." This is not a belief (though you can reflect on it and make it a belief) or some kind of identification or blur between objects. This is just a property of the visual object itself. Seeing the car has the quality of the car being "there" in relation to where your eyes are. It is built into the experience. I call this "structural perspective."

The lack of ultimate perspective does not mean that there is no such thing as structural perspective. Structural perspective is just how some experiences are. It is a linguistic concept we invent in order to describe qualities of experiences. No amount of vipassana changes structural perspective. Structural perspective can change (you can do things with your eyes to make visual experience not look three-dimensional, for example), but changing it has nothing to to with discernment, but only with altering the causes and conditions (in this case: whatever your visual cortex does with retinal input, or whatever) that generate it.

When structural perspective is altered, "experience + old structural perspective" is not what was given up, and "experience + new structural perspective" is not what occurs. "Experience" is not a term that the two share, except conceptually. Rather, Experience A is replaced by Experience B. Structural perspective isn't "on top of" experience. It's built into experience. Experience B shares many of the qualities of Experience A, but not all of them...in particular, not the qualities that "old structural perspective" referred to. Thinking that structural perspective is "on top of" experience is making the error of thinking that the linguistic concept "old structural perspective" one invented purely to talk about Experience A actually reflects something real about that experience.

In other words, the plus in "experience + old structural perspective" is just a conceptual way of explaining the qualities of that experience, nothing fundamental or ultimate, but occasionally useful.

A pithy way of summing up vipassana is that one begins with the delusion that "self" is a structural perspective (built into experience), but one eventually recognizes that it's a conceptual perspective. In other words, one first thinks "redness" has the structural perspective of being perceived by a self, but eventually sees that there is only redness, a perspective-object, and conceptual perspective.

(This leaves me open to the claim that what I think is structural perspective is actually a perspective-object and conceptual perspective. To that all I can say is, decide for yourself. Go outside, look at passing cars, do vipassana until you have a seizure, and find out. Don't mistake a genuine change in experience for analyzing the same visual experience into something visual + a perspective-object. In other words, pay *very close attention* to whether your visual experience with the typical structural perspective is exactly the same as your visual experience without it, and the structural perspective is an actual separate mental object, or whether they are just different experiences that can be distinguished very well by the made-up concept "structural perspective."

Another method, which may be more illuminating, is to eat a very hot pepper and see if the pain is the same at the very beginning, before endorphins start flowing, compared to the middle, where endorphins are altering it. The sensation from hot peppers has a structural perspective. The burning may be equal in intensity at the beginning and the middle, but the *whole sensation*, I claim, including what is perceived as painful about it, changes drastically. I used to think that vipassana would make previously painful experiences not hurt [because I would be absolutely unattached to them], but I have run this test or variants of it many times during my vipassana practice to keep myself honest, and the only difference, when I'm being honest, is that my attainment increased my psychological fortitude and allowed me to not react to what was actually just as painful no matter how many paths I got...in other words, vipassana did not alter the structural perspective of "pain" one bit, though I did see that there is no perceiver of the pain, and holding non-reaction long enough transmutes the pain to something less painful.)

OK. Here's the core analysis, the point of reading all this. Affect is a structural perspective of sensations. The structural perspective can be characterized as something like "hurts [here]" or "pleases [here]". What this means is that affective experience has the built-in quality of hurting or pleasing. Via vipassana it can become obvious that there is no one to hurt or please, but the common observation is that emotions and affect work exactly the same after 4th path, still being painful or pleasant.. And why? Because vipassana does not alter structural perspective. Vipassana only reveals what experiences are like, whatever qualities they have, and the structural perspective of affective experience, a quality it has, is "hurts [here]" or "pleases [here]".

The structural perspective "[here]" is analogous to seeing a visual object passing by in relation to the the "here" where your eyes are. That's why it's a structural perspective. Experiences with it present as-if they happen in relation to something else, in this case the non-self non-perceiver location in mental space called "here." (It is not a spatial or physical location, but thinking about it that way is a good metaphor.)


For clarity, I'll repeat that "[here]" is not a thought or belief, not a mental object, not a perception of a location, not formless, not actually anything at all that is different from the experience of pleasing or hurting. It's just a structural perspective, a way of talking about the qualities of those experiences that is conceptually simple.

I include "[here]" because I want to indicate that it truly is indispensable to understanding the qualities of those experiences, but I put it in square brackets to indicate that there is absolutely no possibility of having a structural perspective "hurts" or "pleases", as far as I can see, that is different from "hurts [here]" or "pleases [here]"...so in a sense, "[here]" is optional depending on how you want to conceptualize things. "Hurts" *IS* "hurts [here]" and the same goes for "pleases." Again, as I said, structural perspective is just a linguistic concept that allows us to talk about the qualities of experience, and as a linguistic concept, it isn't fundamental to the experience, which means that you may choose to conceptualize it in a different way, so I put it in square brackets so you can see that you have the option of describing experience with the more natural structural perspective of "hurts" if you prefer to.

(Yogis at a different point in their practice might want to substitute "hurts [me]" and "pleases [me]" in order to understand this more intuitively, bearing in mind that the "[me]" is conceptual perspective that occludes "[here]"...also keeping in mind that when the conceptual perspective is done away with, the primary object which is perceived to hurt or please will remain exactly the same in its hurting or pleasing.)

This is what I think AFers are getting at when they say that "'I' am my feelings and my feelings are 'me'" or that "feelings are the feeler." Feelings and affect have the structural perspective "hurts [here]" or "pleases [here]." Anything that hurts or pleases presents as if there is a here (an AF-'me') to hurt or please. In my experience of what I think was a PCE or near-PCE, what's distinctive about its onset is not the vanishing of "hurts" and "pleases" but the vanishing of "[here]"...but when "[here]" is gone, so is hurting and pleasing. "Hurts" is the same as "hurts [here]" is the same as "hurts 'me'" is almost the same as "hurts [me]". Same for pleasing. The feeling and the feeler are one...to be precise, one singular experience, which is why they cannot be separated.

It is very difficult to see what "hurts [here]" means and *why* that can't be distinguished from "hurts" until you see what a non-affective experience is like. Non-affective experience shares most of the qualities of affective experience, just minus the structural perspective "[here]." And without "[here]" there is no hurting or pleasing. I don't have an argument for why this is true; remember that my goal is to explain, not to argue. (On the other hand, I'm not sure I have an argument for why everything partakes in sunyata, either.)

What is good about non-affective experience has nothing to do with "pleases [here]". What is good about non-affective experience is its other qualities. This is hard to describe. Without pleasure and pain, what of value could be left? Well, it is obvious to me that this question can be answered, but it wasn't obvious to me until very recently. If all your experience is affective, then you start to believe that anything good must be affective, because you have never recognized any exception to that. And this is the position I found myself in (believing that nothing could be valuable apart from affective experience), which seemed completely airtight and reasonable, possibly even true by definition, but which now seems (as beoman said about something recently) "retarded."

Curiously, it shocked me to realize that what is good about *affective* experience has nothing to do with "pleases [here]" either. "Pleases [here]" is one quality of an experience among many. It's always the *other* qualities that are good. "Pleases [here]" is suffering. But that is hard to see because, as the Pali Buddha says,

"When beings are not free from passion for sensual pleasures '” devoured by sensual craving, burning with sensual fever '” their faculties are impaired, which is why, even though sensual pleasures are actually painful to the touch, they have the skewed perception of 'pleasant.'"

( www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.075x.than.html )

"Pleases [here]" is suffering. ("Hurts [here]" is suffering, too, but we all know that.) This is why seeing the qualities of experiences clearly is not in itself the cure for suffering.

Keep in mind that none of this is inconsistent with sunyata. "[here]" is not a self. When "[here]" is gone, what is left is not any more no-self than what came before. Experiences with structural perspective or the lack of structural perspective are fundamentally perspective-free, everywhere and everywhen.

Bhante Gunaratana wrote:

"Traditionally, Buddhists are reluctant to talk about the ultimate nature of human beings. But those who are willing to make descriptive statements at all usually say that our ultimate essence or Buddha nature is pure, holy and inherently good. The only reason that human beings appear otherwise is that their experience of that ultimate essence has been hindered; it has been blocked like water behind a dam."

From the perspective of the PCE, this is a good metaphor. The dam is affect. Without affect, what is left is pure, holy, and good. Fortunately for us, there are holes in the dam and we can get glimpses of that nature outside of the PCE...but the derangement of sensual fever causes the belief that it is the dam that is good. As if one would argue "without the dam, where would the holes be that you appreciate so much when water drips through them?" What could be good about experience without the dam, with no holes left for water to drip through? What could be good about existence if all the affect were sucked out of it?

Well, what do you think?

An addendum. "No emotion / no affect" does not do a good job of explaining what a PCE is like to someone who hasn't had one. Sensual fever makes "no affect" impossible to understand correctly. If I had never heard of direct mode, the PCE, AF, and all that, I would never have thought to use the term "affect" in describing any of this at all, though it turns out to be a very useful, very precise technical term. The other extreme would be to call the PCE "pure, holy, and good," or "divine ecstasy," but that is misleading in so many other ways.

All the qualities of existence that were ever good are still there, and nothing new (in a certain sense) seems to be added. It's just that, for a change, you get to see it all.


END



Comments are welcome.

Merely paying attention to my experience generates some kind of direct mode kind of perception (though I can't easily categorize it as state 6 or 7). Formal direct mode practice produces a state that is about as deep as what I called "deeper" state 7 in the taxonomy I gave some time ago. The richness is striking. It seems that my baseline experience has been elevated somehow.

Here's a new metaphor for direct mode, the swimming pool.

State 6: walking down the steps, or dangling your feet over the sides, the water comes to your ankles; you're wet, the water is refreshing, but you're still somehow not in the pool.

State 7: The water comes up to about your chest; you can splash around, splash other people, have fun, reminisce about childhood innocence. It's pleasant and carefree. But the ground is still firmly beneath your feet.

"Deeper" state 7: Just passing the divider between the shallow end and the deep end, all there is, is water everywhere...immersing you...carrying you away...except that when you put your feet down and point your toes, you can still touch the ground anytime you want. You half-remember this, even as you're floating on your back happily and obliviously in the rays of the sun. You want to swim with the adults, but you secretly relish the fact that you're tall enough to reach the bottom in case you get a cramp from all the beer and barbecue you had before jumping in.

(some in-between stuff I have no idea about)

PCE / near-PCE: You're standing on the high-dive board, trying to figure out whether you have the balls to jump, when your friend pushes you off. No choice left, down you go! Diving is awesome, but you can't see that while you're standing around worrying. Your friend is an *sshole for pushing you...but that's what friends are for.

Anyway. I am so profoundly grateful to Kenneth for starting me on the path that led to this. Words are not sufficient. I thought I was hot sh*t with my vipassana skills, but I wasted so much time accomplishing nothing...not so hot after all. It only took a short conversation with Kenneth to set me straight about what I couldn't yet see. He has the most important quality of a teacher (saying what each person needs to hear, in the way they need to hear it, when they need to hear it) in spades.

Unfortunately, I don't live up to him as a student. I think I jerked around for a few months before actually putting his ideas into practice in a serious way. God, I'm retarded. I probably would have fared better if I had managed to go to his NYC classes regularly instead of whenever my head wasn't stuck up my ass (which was rarely). But, my failings are not a stain on him. Kenneth is amazing.

Lots of things since the site went down, but for now, just a metaphor to help explain the whole affect thing.

What the AFers call 'me' and what I referred to as "[here]" is like the word "it" in the sentence "it rains." It's a fake subject, not referring to anything whatsoever, but required by the grammar of the language. If you want to speak the language of feelings, the fake subject is mandatory. If you want to speak another language, you don't say "it rains," you say "clouds, raindrops, wetness, soft light, perfection."

Just because the required subject is fake doesn't mean it functions in some way other than a real subject would in the grammar of the language. It functions the same way. "[here]" is no different from the pre-path "[me]" in terms of suffering. An argument for why there is a difference is just semantics, and missing the point.

Think of the struggle for 4th path as a long course in semantics. You're no longer fooled; it's a fake subject, without reference, not a self! A+! But you used it before you walked into the class and you'll use it as you walk out too.

So, I don't really know how to summarize my practice since a few days ago. The PCE (or near-PCE) I had made some change in the way my mind works. State 6 / state 7 is not a taxonomy that matches my experience anymore. There's just direct mode in various gradations, and the only way I can see that is useful to taxonomize those gradations is in terms of how much PCE-esque stuff (affectlessness, wonderfulness, richness, subtlety) comes through. So I'm giving up on my old taxonomy unless something changes.

It's possible that the changes above were just what it's like to attain Kenneth's stage 6 and stage 7. I don't recognize anything in my experience that is a "mental" emotion, and I don't recognize any proprioceptive sense of self, apart from the body sensation of "being." But I don't recall any particular moment where these stages would have been attained, so who knows.

I've had a lot of time to reflect on what the PCE means to me and what it means for my future practice. I could write some extremely personal things here, but suffice it to say, PCE-esque experiences are the only reason I ever got interested in spirituality and the only reason I ever started meditating and the only reason I ever started to pursue vipassana. I have actually had many PCE-like experiences before, and was surprised to recognize that after having a PCE or near-PCE and reflecting for a while on something that tarin said to me on the DhO. Those past experiences were so profound to me that at the time I would always reflect that there was something defective about human life and that it was a terrible thing to be condemned to have seen that state (so far outside of the bounds of anything I have experienced otherwise, so far outside the bounds of anything I could imagine being possible to experience) and yet still to toil away in the muck of regular life, knowing that there was something better. (cont)

I always tried to ignore or forget about those reflections, but now that I see that it is possible to be in a fuller version of that state (a PCE rather than an extremely powerful EE distorted by whatever affect remained and by my own confusion about the state), and to make it permanent, it's no longer a helpful defense mechanism to push them away. So, that is what I'm pursuing now.

I don't consider myself to have become an actualist. I don't have a good grasp on what actualism is. If anything, I consider myself to only now have understood what Buddhism is about. Buddhism isn't about the bullsh*t I thought it was when I was playing around with the paths because I thought the practice was interesting and that attaining paths would be somehow good for me and I was curious about them and hoped that there was something better at the end. Buddhism is about this: Life is suffering, suffering is caused by craving, there is a way to end suffering in this life, and there is a path to that end.

Life is suffering, no matter how many pleasant feelings or how much dissociation or how much equanimity is plastered over it. All those things are forms of suffering in disguise. I've had enough of them. They don't live up to the hype. I want the real, genuine end of suffering. Not because I'm an unhappy person (according to the common standard), but because the end of suffering is unimaginable happiness beyond my ability to describe or explain.

I picked the name "End in Sight" because I had floundered in my practice for so long after 4th path, and Kenneth was able to wipe the confusion away and show me where to look for progress. I had a sense that I was coming to the end of the spiritual path, since I could finally see in some vague way what was ahead of me whereas before it was all darkness. It's still an appropriate name, but the end turns out to be very different than I imagined. Funny. (cont)