I remember pondering this a few years ago but I could not find any explanation on the AFT website.
RICHARD: In this context, then, as the term ‘pure intent’ refers to an intimate connection betwixt the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté and the pristine-purity of that actual innocence which is inherent to living life as a flesh-and-blood body only (i.e., sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty) then the benedictive/ liberative impetus, or agency as such, stems from and/or flows from that which is totally other than ‘me’/ completely outside of ‘me’ (this factor is very important as it is vital that such impetus, such agency, be not of ‘me’ or ‘my’ doings) and literally invisible to ‘me’ … namely: that flesh-and-blood body only being thus apperceptively conscious (i.e., apperceptively sentient).
So you have the affective feeling being side of the connection:
A) the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté
And the actual side of the connection:
B) the pristine-purity of that actual innocence
And the connection itself:
RICHARD: […] pure intent manifests in the connection [between A and B]
I’m not really sure why Richard is using the word “connection”, he also phrases it in other ways like “gives rise to” which makes more sense to me. Personally I would use “gives way to”, “facilitate”, “makes possible”, “allows for”, “enables” and the like.
If anyone wants to take a swing at it this is the topic to do so.
Is this referring to the contact being with ‘me’? I guess the important factor to bear in mind is that ‘I’ have no actual existence, Pure intent being actual has no way of establishing contact with that which has no actual existence.
Right yes I see so pure intent is something that is outside of ‘me’ and yet it requires a connection between naiveté (‘me’) and the purity.
So looking at it this way I guess a better wording would be something like naiveté opens one up to / allows one to be receptive to Pure intent.
Maybe a diagram to illustrate anyone ??
What I have got in my mind is a picture of a big tunnel (both the tunnel itself and its contents is ‘me’) with the actual world at the far end of the tunnel, usually the tunnel is completely clogged up with all sorts and as such the actual world is invisible or barely visible.
When one is being naiveté the tunnel is clear of any and all obstructions (the tunnel aka ‘me’ is still there but it is wide open) so that the Purity of the Actual is freely streaming across.
So there is the purity of the actual world, that actually exists.
In a PCE or when actually free, I am that purity. In these ways of being conscious, “I” refers to the flesh and blood body being apperceptively conscious. One of the ways the term “pure intent” is used is to refer to this purity in and of itself.
In regular feeling-being consciousness, it is possible to experience this purity. The nature of the experience is different, but it is the same thing being perceived – the purity itself. In this way of being conscious, “I” refers to ‘me’ the ‘feeling-being’ that doesn’t actually exist – but ‘me’ experiencing ‘myself’ essentially co-exists with the experiencing of the purity.
This situation in and of itself - the state of ‘me’ “co-existing” with the experience of the purity - is also called “pure intent”.
So “pure intent” can refer both to the purity in and of itself, and to the experience of the purity while ‘being’ a feeling-being.
Ok I was able to say all without using the word “connection” . Now to get to this word …
The word “connection” introduces an ambiguity because “connection” implies three things: a Thing-A, a Thing-B that is different from the Thing-A, and the Connection-Thing which connects the two. e.g. if you connect yourself to your dog with a leash, then you are Thing-A, the dog is Thing-B, and the leash is the Connection-Thing .
If we are talking about just the purity itself, as in a PCE, there is no “connection” at all - I simply am the purity already.
If we are talking about the co-existence situation … … what, really, is the “connection”? Because I would say that:
The Thing-A is the purity in and of itself.
The Thing-B is the purity that is being experienced “co-existing” with ‘me’ as the feeling-being.
And the Connection-Thing is… … again, the purity in and of itself .
So it is a bit tautological, it’s like the purity is “connected” to itself via the purity, which is just another way to say that it is the purity that is being experienced.
Now when Richard wrote:
RICHARD: In this context, then, as the term ‘pure intent’ refers to an intimate connection betwixt the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté and the pristine-purity of that actual innocence which is inherent to living life as a flesh-and-blood body only (i.e., sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty) […]
What we can say of this connection is that it’s something other than the one I described above. I might say it’s being used metaphorically. At the very best I could say:
The Thing-A is the experience of the purity / the purity itself.
The Thing-B is the ‘naive-me’
The (!!!) ‘Connection-Thing’ is essentially ‘me’ allowing that purity to be experienced.
But note well the warning – now we aren’t talking about an actually-existing thing anymore, but rather a metaphorical thing, or perhaps an action - ‘me’ allowing something to happen.
So I could say that it is that ‘I’ discover that when ‘I’ am being sincere and/or sincerely naive and/or naivete itself, ‘I’ have this ability to allow this actually-existing purity to become apparent (with greater or lesser degrees), and ‘me’ actively doing this allowing is what brings about the experience of the purity … … and the “connection” in this sense is nothing other than ‘me’ realizing ‘I’ can allow it, and doing that very allowing it to bring about that purity.
Ok not sure if that helps… … curious what you all think.
The way I perceive it in my mind is that pure intent is this actually-existing pure beam of eternal light (eternally existing, infinite in either direction). And ‘me’ as feeling-being am on the outskirts of the beam of light, getting closer to it but never able to touch it… but ‘I’ can essentially ‘hitch my ride’ to the beam of light (without touching it ) and ride it away off to ‘me’ disappearing.
Ah I think you are on to something, maybe this connection (C) is referring to “the ability to experience pure intent/purity whilst being a feeling being (not in abeyance (PCE) or actually free)”. After all, considering pure intent in this context is always about feeling beings ability to tap into that purity, not being pure intent personified or the purity of the actual world in and of itself.
So, to put it into a quirky metaphor: A fingertip (A) connects with a fingerprint reader (B) and that connection (C) opens a door … pure intent: it manifests in the connection.
Couldn’t help myself I don’t think it really clarifies this conversation any further but it is fun to try to present these things in visual format.
The main thing is that Pure intent (in various degrees) is something that is accessible at all points in the journey, at the beginning it might be a faint memory of perfection which was tasted at some point, and a sense that there must be more to life. This leads to a sincere intent to come out of the whole mess and one is soon feeling good more and more. Via imitation this felicity and innocuity gets one closer to the fabric of that purity that was experienced once upon a time.
Eventually one establishes a firm connection to this Purity via Naiveté.
In terms of the touching, the main point seems that ‘I’ am never that purity, it is always sourced outside of ‘me’ and ‘I’ can never be it.
Instead what ‘I’ do is allow this purity to be operant by getting out of the way. So the connection itself is the action of finding and allowing this purity each moment over.
…the pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent, as evidenced in the pure consciousness experience (PCE), is activated with the nourishment of one’s innate naiveté via ‘the wonder of it all’ … whereupon an intimate connection, a golden thread or clew as it were, is thus established whereby one is sensitive to and receptive of the over-arching benignity and benevolence of the ‘another world’ of the PCE – which is already always just here right now anyway – and one is not on one’s own, in this, the adventure of a lifetime.
And sincerity works to awaken one’s dormant naiveté.
Incidentally, just before/ just as the PCE starts to wear off, if one unravels (metaphorically) a ‘golden thread’ or ‘clew’, as one is slipping back into the real-world, an intimate connection is thus established betwixt the pristine-purity of an actual innocence and the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté.
…
In this context, then, as the term ‘pure intent’ refers to an intimate connection betwixt the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté and the pristine-purity of that actual innocence which is inherent to living life as a flesh-and-blood body only (i.e., sans identity in toto/ the entire affective faculty) then the benedictive/ liberative impetus, or agency as such, stems from and/or flows from that which is totally other than ‘me’/ completely outside of ‘me’ (this factor is very important as it is vital that such impetus, such agency, be not of ‘me’ or ‘my’ doings) and literally invisible to ‘me’ … namely: that flesh-and-blood body only being thus apperceptively conscious (i.e., apperceptively sentient).
I remember reading elsewhere that hedonic tone has a key role to play because the hedonic tone of near-actual innocence / naivete has a very enjoyable tone, it creates the possibility for the ‘self’ to be attracted to it, to continue following it. It’s outside of ‘me,’ but the proximity of innocence/naivete to the actual means that there is a form of accessibility (as illustrated by the arrows in @Kub933 's diagram above).
Eventually this accessibility, when nourished and fostered, allows for the possibility for the once-in-a-lifetime choice to be made to allow the purity to ‘take over,’ meaning the ending of ‘me’
It seems that naivete is a thin place in ‘me,’ so that may be the most fruitful place to look for more about what this ‘connection’ consists of
Finally the most difficult parts of pure intent have reappeared (they have been treated in Zulpi and/or Slack), which I think is good.
In principle, instead of investing time in exposing my ideas, I will share some quotes I found interesting (as @henryyyyyyyyyy did), that may be useful for you to maintain/refine/change your views (basically I prefer you all to keep working while I’m reading your words ).
The quotes follow a kind of order -at least in my mind-, from those closest/more related to “the self side”, to those closest/more related to “the purity side”.
And what’s “in the middle”?
Well… I’ve emphasized the last one because it seems to me that it has a key… but I don’t know for sure.
• [Rick]: […]. Incidentally, I cannot recall what you told me in-person about how and why or wherefrom you came to choose the words ‘pure intent’ when you coined that very term. Would you mind sharing that again here?
• [Richard]: ‘Twas the feeling-being in residence who named it thataway, circa January/February 1981, upon realising how only that which was outside of ‘himself’ (i.e., outside of the human condition) could do the trick.
The choice of the word ‘pure’ should be self-explanatory by now, from all the above, and the word ‘intent’ is because of the agency-association it had, in ‘his’ mind, with the word ‘destiny’ … as in, ‘escape one’s fate and achieve one’s destiny’.] (Mailing List 'D' Rick)
RESPONDENT:I have tried ‘What am I’ and several other meditations. From your mails etc. I read you don’t need to meditate. If I don’t meditate my life gets clogged with intentions. The only ways to relieve myself are to sleep or to relax. Relaxation is a direct result from meditating. Another result is creative thought.
RICHARD: Be it far from me to advise you to stop meditating … Konrad is trying this at this moment with some interesting results. If you do, it is essential that you replace it with something else … something better. As you say that your life gets ‘clogged with intentions’ then channel this energy into one big intention: what I call pure intent. Selected Correspondence: Contemplation
The intent is you will become happy and harmless. The intent is you will be free of sorrow and malice. The intent is you will become blithesome and benign. The intent is you will be free of fear and aggression. The intent is you will become carefree and considerate. The intent is you will be free from nurture and desire. The intent is you will become gay and benevolent. The intent is you will be free of anguish and animosity. The intent is that, by being free of the Human Condition, you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body … as is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE). An actualist’s intent is a pure intent – experientially apparent in the PCE as a manifest life-force, a genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity, which originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe – and discovering how to blend this pure intent (via attentiveness) into one’s conscious life is the process that places one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom … this path is a virtual freedom. (Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness)
RESPONDENT:I don’t have pure intent. Possessing and pursuing looks the same I’m living with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and it is making a difference. I want to live as my senses.
RICHARD: Put it this way: do you have the intent to spend the remainder of your life on this verdant planet having malice and sorrow as a backdrop to your every waking moment? Which means that, although you may have shorter or longer periods of being carefree and considerate, greater or lesser moments of gaiety and benevolence, bigger or smaller interludes of being blithesome and benign and so on, do you have the intent to retain and maintain the current base-line of your day-to-day life (which is the fall-back position of animosity and anguish that requires the time-honoured coping methods to keep your head above water) until the day that you die? If your answer is ‘YES’ then you do not have pure intent, you are not pursuing happiness and harmlessness and you will not have a problem with ‘possessiveness’ about peace-on-earth.
If your answer is ‘NO’ then you are already somewhat pursuing peace-on-earth, with at least a trace of pure intent, and the ‘problem’ of automatically trying to ‘possess’ freedom when it occurs will inevitably arise as you have success after success at inducing pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s). The name of the game is to be able to ‘live as your senses’ more and more and for longer and longer periods (and to want this is to pursue it) and to the degree you do not make the instinctual ‘grab’ for ownership of these moments is the degree to which these moments will be prolonged … and these moments are where you learn what it is to be free by direct experience instead of reading about it. (Frequently Asked Questions Where does Pure Intent Come from?)
RESPONDENT № 4:I actually do have an active connection to pure intent … RICHARD: […] the usual way of verifying whether an ‘active connection’ currently manifesting is indeed pure intent as reported/ described/ explained is to find oneself being sincerely naïve, at the very least, if not to be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as ‘me’) – and to be naïveté itself is to be the closest one can come to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not) whereby one is both likeable and liking for herewith lies tenderness, sweetness and togetherness, closeness – whereupon one is walking through the world in a state of wide-eyed wonder and amazement, simply marvelling at the magnificence of this physical universe’s absoluteness and delighting in its beneficence, its largesse, as if a child again (guileless, artless, ingenuous, innocuous), with a blitheness and a gaiety yet with adult sensibilities (whereby the distinction betwixt being naïve and being gullible is readily separable), such that the likelihood of the magical fairy-tale-like paradise, which this verdant and azure planet actually is, becoming ever-so-sweetly apparent is almost always imminent. (Frequently Asked Questions Where does Pure Intent Come from?)
RICHARD: Perfection is an actual condition – intrinsic to this universe – that a human being can tap into by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated again and again with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naive is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless, ingenuous, simple and unsophisticated … and pure intent manifests in the connection between the intimate aspect of oneself (that one usually keeps hidden away for fear of seeming foolish) and the purity of the perfection of the peak experience. (Frequently Asked Questions Where does Pure Intent Come from?)
[…] when I first wrote, some 20-odd years ago in ‘Richard’s Journal’, that “pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of…&c…” it is the dynamic factor implicit in the above “matter is not merely passive” observation that the generic term “life-force” refers to (élan vital=lit. vital impetus).
I could have as easily written something like: “pure intent is a palpable potency; an actually occurring stream of…&c…”, for instance or, for another example, “pure intent is a palpable puissance; an ever-fresh permeation of …&c…”, because what is being conveyed by those words is the invigorative quality, or dynamic nature, of that [quote] “immaculate perfection and purity welling ever-fresh as the vast and utter stillness of this universe’s spatial, temporal and material infinitude” which I spoke of intimately experiencing when this ‘perpetuus mobilis’ universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude. (Frequently Asked Questions Where does Pure Intent Come from?)
[…] perhaps if you were to think of pure intent as being both (simultaneously) the palpable life-force and that (experiential) “state of being connected” it might make more sense, to start off with, as the experience is of them being one-and-the-same-thing … to wit: an indistinguishable composite; as in, no such grammatically-induced subject-object connective dichotomy). (Frequently Asked Questions Where does Pure Intent Come from?)
I think that pure intent is the connection to purity (it is the thin place that allows for purity to be experienced by ‘me’) so then saying ‘connecting to pure intent’ is saying, ‘connecting to the connection’
I don’t have any problems with any of this, there is no contradiction
Maybe the most useful way to say it though is like, “I am now experiencing pure intent bc of ‘x’ event
Because it is pure intent that is the connection itself
Think we have a winner This makes sense. Using the word “connection” is not intended as a technical description of an interface between the actual world and the real world but the experience of being connected.
That is cool, I have read this quote before but reading it just now made me realise this is specifically what I did following that 25 or so minute PCE about 6 months ago.
I remember specifically setting an intent to do this, because the PCE was so stable it seemed like I could find my way back to ‘that’ place easily so as I was coming out of it I specifically focused on ‘unraveling the golden clew’.
Initially the first few months after that PCE were actually very turbulent, like the floodgates were opened up and all sorts of things were experienced deeply and directly for quite a while but it all eventually stabilised.
It may still raise the question — in “the experience of being connected”, what exactly is “connected” ?
It seems strange that it’s hard to describe. It’s very evident experientially lol.
I would say it’s not that ‘I’ am connected to the purity … but rather ‘I’ allow the purity to be experienced , existentially (ie not by ‘me’). And then ‘I’ can increasingly rely on that purity , which means ‘I’ don’t have to do all the things I feel I usually have to because the purity takes care of it. ‘I’ don’t need to suppress ‘myself’ with moral injunctions anymore - ‘I’ am free to be exactly how ‘I’ am, rotten through and through, with all ‘my’ ugliness and perversions - and it’s “ok” because the purity makes it safe and ensures ‘I’ won’t direct the body to harm anyone. This allows ‘me’ to see ‘myself’ fully which in turn makes it obvious what must be done … …
Anyway it is strange that “the state of being connected” makes sense as a descriptor but I can’t describe what really is connected. But all that matters is we can convey the experience to each other and to others.
@rick haven’t heard from you since I asked you the $64,000 question :D. Is ‘Rick’ the feeling-being and all of ‘Rick’s feelings pure in the way you are experiencing what you call purity?
I guess if I think about holding a hammer in my hand I am connected to it by the action of my hands grasping. One is connected to pure intent by the action of allowing it to operate each moment over. It is not an intrinsic connection like my arm being connected to my shoulder for example which requires no action to exist, however if my hand stops grasping the hammer drops and the connection is severed.
If I regress back to being normal such as what happened to Devika then the connection to pure intent is also severed.
The other thing I just realised whilst making this diagram - Depictions of Pure intent is the role that apperception plays in this. It’s really saying what we have already said in a different way… pure intent cannot be experienced via thought or feeling hence it is always outside of ‘me’, and the way pure intent is experienced is apperceptively which is another way of saying that it is an existential experiencing.
Which also speaks to why as ‘I’ get out of the way more pure intent becomes more accessible, because as ‘I’ get out of the way more, apperception can more haply occur as opposed to ‘ordinary perception’ as per my diagram. Yet the connection is always there to an extent, but often it is overshadowed by ‘me’.
I have a hesitation to agree here … it is a terminological one, as Richard has written apperception is binary, it either happens or not, only happens in a PCE.
Apperception refers to the mind’s perception of itself directly… in this sense i agree it only happens in a PCE
I note Vineeto called it a near-apperceptive awareness… maybe that is more appropriate?
Basically I’m not sure I would equate apperceptive awareness with existential awareness… rather id say existential awareness leads to apperceptive awareness. At which point maybe we can day apperceptive awareness is it’s own existential awareness? Lol. I’m not sure one could separate the two at that point.
Experientially… I can see what you’re getting at. But the experience is different outside of aPCE vs inside. Outside is like a hint or clue that the actual world exists. While inside I directly experience the actual world and know directly that it exists
“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”
I ask because this is what Richard writes in the ASA article and to me this seems to imply that apperceptiveness is ALWAYS current, even right now as I type these words, however what happens is ‘I’ squander all the attention and as such apperceptiveness is unobservable. But this means it is not binary at all, rather it is always happening. All the contents of the mind happen within apperception, which is why I specifically put the big dotted square in the diagram to show that even ‘I’ happen within that field, it is just that “one has developed the habit of squandering one’s attention on all the remaining steps”
Aye I never knew how to interpret it. I believe I asked Richard on the yahoo group at one point but he didn’t reply. My experience is that it isn’t always happening yet fleeting. Rather is a binary thing.
Richard also writes elsewhere that the actual world is totally invisible to a feeling-being, which matches my experience too
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I don’t think it really clarifies this conversation any further but it is fun to try to present these things in visual format.
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