James:
Richard: With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more selflessly motivated. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric … the humanitarian ideals of peace, kindness, caring, benevolence and humaneness become more and more evident as an actuality.
And all this while I asked ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive? … and the essential character of the perfection of the physical infinitude of this material universe was enabled by ‘my’ concurrence. This enabling is experienced as a ‘pure intent’ running as a ‘golden thread’, as it were, from the purity and perfection of the PCE to that little-used faculty: naiveté (which is the closest one can get to innocence). (Richard, List B, James, 17 Oct 1999a).Kuba: Oh and I have to add that it was Vineeto’s wonderful post to Andrew that helped me put this together too – Andrew - #1478 by Vineeto (link)
Vineeto: Indeed, it is to allow this “little-used faculty: naiveté” to flourish, which will enable one to see “the “hard” in actualism”, the addiction to being ‘me’, as a superfluous appendix that can joyfully be discarded. (link)
James: I haven’t noticed this before where Richard said above that pure intent is essentially a golden thread. (link)
Hi James,
I wonder if you noticed the difference in how Richard’s phrased the report of his experiencing and you phrased it –
Richard: (…) This enabling is experienced as a ‘pure intent’ running as a ‘golden thread’, as it were, (…) [emphasis added].
Whereby “as it were” means the experience “in the existing circumstances”.
James: “… pure intent is essentially a golden thread …”
You turned Richard’s description of his experience “in the existing circumstances” into a fixed rule, a category, a philosophy, a static statement by adding the word “essentially” into the sentence. “Essentially” is “used to emphasize the basic, fundamental, or intrinsic nature of a person or thing”.
As far as a feeling being is concerned they either experience such “genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity” in this moment or they are not. When they experience it then pure intent is “‘running as a ‘golden thread’”, when they don’t experience it, it ain’t. Hence the qualifying term “as it were”.
To put it in another way – when you don’t experience pure intent, the ‘golden thread’ does not exist for you, whereas pure intent, the “genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity” always exists, whether you experience it or not. Benevolence and benignity are the values inherent to the perfection and purity of infinitude.
Richard: The fundamental characteristic, or nature, of the universe is its infinitude – specifically having the properties of being spatially infinite and temporally eternal and materially perdurable – or, to put that another way, its absoluteness … as such it is a veritable perpetuus mobilis (as in being self-existent/ non-dependent and/or self-reliant/ non-contingent and/or self-sufficient/ unconditional and/or self-generating/ unsupported).
Having no other/ no opposite this infinitude and/or absoluteness has the property of being without compare/ incomparable, as in peerless/ matchless, and is thus perfect (complete-in-itself, consummate, ultimate).
And this is truly wonderful to behold.
Being perfect this infinitude and/or absoluteness has the qualities (qualia are intrinsic to properties) of being flawless/ faultless, as in impeccable/ immaculate, and is thus pure/ pristine.
And which is indubitably a marvellous state of affairs.
Inherent to such perfection, such purity, are the values (properties plus qualities equals values) of benignity – ‘of a thing: favourable, propitious, salutary’ (Oxford Dictionary) – and benevolence (as in being well-disposed, beneficent, bounteous, and so on) … and which are values in the sense of ‘the quality of a thing considered in respect of its ability to serve a specified purpose or cause an effect’. (Oxford Dictionary).
And that, to say the least, is quite amazing. (Richard, AF List, Rick, 30 Sep 2005)
So if you want pure intent to be a golden thread for you then you do whatever you can to experience this “genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity” on an ongoing basis or as much as possible. It is truly wonderful.
Cheers Vineeto