Claudiu: Hi Vineeto,
Vineeto: I have no problem with your writing, and of course for a feeling being there is always in identity operating so the scare quotes are often purely academic. But when Syd singled out this single paragraph for reposting I wanted to avoid a misunderstanding in his mind so as to not emphasise ‘my’ action in the experiencing of a general sensuousness, as in ‘look at me I am being sensuous here’ because that would be counterproductive.
Claudiu: Ok, that makes sense now. The point of confusion is if you were saying that sensuousness is something only occurring in a PCE. And then I found this quote (emphasis added):
RESPONDENT: Richard, in reading your recent contributions to this list, such as the example above, I am beginning to question whether you and I use certain words, such as ‘emotions’ in the same way. For it seems that perhaps I use that word in a more inclusive sense of which your use is a subset. Perhaps your use is more restrictive / precise. For example when you express that communicating via the internet is great ‘fun’ – I equate fun to have an emotional component. If joy and fun are non-emotional, they also are not machine like nor dead. What do you call that vivifying facet of each breathtaking moment if not emotional?
RICHARD: I appreciate that what you want to discuss is the ‘vivifying facet’ … for it cuts straight to the nub of the issue. Put simply: sensuousness and its in-built apperceptive awareness is the vivifying facet. It is the ability to fully enjoy and appreciate being just here – right now – at this moment in eternal time and at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body. In this full enjoyment and appreciation is an amazement that all this wondrous event called life is actually happening … and a marvelling at the perfection of it all. [link] (Richard, List B, No. 25g, 8 Dec 2000).
i.e. that “sensuousness” has an “in-built apperceptive awareness”, and thus I thought it may be actual only.
Hi Claudiu,
I am delighted that it makes sense to you now. When you say “actual only” – being actually free automatically includes “apperceptive awareness” as the “vivifying facet”. That also means that the more the identity is in the background, the more one experiences the utterly delightful enjoyment and appreciation of sensuousness. I remember Kuba recently saying –
Kuba: And this experience of literally coming to my senses has been happening since yesterday and today in a way which I haven’t experienced before. It was particularly “vibrant” just before I wrote my post to you yesterday, like the entire world was shimmering with aliveness. And then there is the seeing that in the world of the senses ‘I’ have no existence at all, and where ‘I’ am not, all is pristine.
Fascinating times indeed. (10 Feb 2026)
Claudiu: However I see now that you were just drawing an emphasis away from ‘me’ and towards the object/ point of sensuousness, rather than saying it can’t happen outside of a PCE – and of course, Richard was in that quote describing sensuousness as it occurs whilst apperceptive (PCE or actually free), not excluding that there is a feeling-being sensuousness that a feeling-being can make use of in order to lead towards apperception (much like enjoyment and appreciation itself being actual during a PCE/when actually free, and affective when outside of a PCE!)
Yes, I am pleased you can see that.
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Claudiu: Reading the whole article I can see now how it could be referring to just something that occurs in apperception.
Vineeto: The article is about how attentiveness and sensuousness can lead to apperceptiveness.
Claudiu: Yes, that is what I had thought before!
I think the first sentence of the article specifies it most precisely –
Richard: Apperceptiveness is a word describing a condition which happens of its own accord and attentiveness depicts an activity that one vitalises with remarkable verve and vivacity which activates the quality that the word sensuousness specifies. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness).
Btw, I read in this thread, in a conversation you had with Kuba earlier, that you “never did like” the article (link). I understand you well because ‘Vineeto’ also did not particularly like the article, it was too confusing for ‘her’. However now, especially when I read only a few sentences here and there, I am impressed at the detail and precision of Richard’s observations and descriptions of how human consciousness operates. Now that there is no identity that might obscure what I read with previous concepts or ideas so as to confuse the content of Richard’s writing, it is treat to read it.
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Vineeto: If you analytically take apart the words and try to fit them into a logical concept you will always get into trouble with actualism – it is experiential and the words are describing the experiential event.
Claudiu: Yes, in this case it made sense though, the from which is logical (and aligns with experience) that it’s something that leads to a PCE as well, not only something in a PCE.
Vineeto: What is your own recollection when you experience sensuousness? Does it only occur in a PCE? Or can you delight in sensual and sensuous experiencing when feeling happy or feeling excellent?
Claudiu: It was a matter of what the words refer to – there is something that I was experiencing outside of a PCE that I was calling “sensuousness”, and then I became unsure that that was what to call it. Now I am sure again that it had been the correct word all along.
Sensuousness really beings to shine during an excellence experience, where it takes on an aspect of that magical quality that is intrinsic to PCEs. At that level it really is a wide-eyed wonder at just how amazingly, thoroughly delightful and enjoyable being alive really is! It continues to knock my socks off.
Yes, sensuousness can operate at any time, and the quality of it varies the less ‘you’ the identity interferes with feelings and classifications, and the more magical it can be.
Vineeto: It’s curious that you now say you “think of sensuousness as more analogous to pure intent” whereas in the beginning of this post you wrote “I did think sensuousness referred to something ‘I’ do”. In either case, pure intent is not something ‘you’ do.
Claudiu: Haha oops. The ‘analogy’ was in the sense of sensuousness being something ‘I’ allow rather than something ‘I’ do. Sensuousness is more like an “allowing” rather than a “I can do it like I can move my hand” kind of thing. It does seem to really take on a life of its own once pure intent is in the picture, which imbues it all with that ‘magical quality’.
Ah, that’s wonderful, especially when it takes on “a life of its own once pure intent is in the picture, which imbues it all with that ‘magical quality’”. That’s what is drawing you irresistible closer and closer to your destiny.
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Syd: Per Miguel’s paraphrasing, Geoffrey defines [the connection to] Pure Intent as the very “revival” (rememoration) of one’s PCE in this moment right now.
Vineeto [to Syd]: Whereas Miguel correctly said – “That “revival” would be the connection with pure intent, the ‘golden thread’ mentioned by Richard.”
Vineeto [to Syd]: Be careful not to water down the meaning of pure intent for yourself – from revival (rememoration) being “the connection” to pure intent, by putting “[the connection to]” in square brackets. From there it is easy (for the cunningness that one’s identity is) to forget the words in square brackets and equate “the connection” with pure intent itself.
Claudiu: Incidentally and for similar avoiding-watering-down purposes, I don’t like that phrasing of “rememoration is the connection with pure intent” (as I wrote here)… because pure intent already (besides being “a manifest life-force; a genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe”) is also “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”.
Thus we would have it that “rememoration is the connection with the 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”.
Indeed it would be too easy to drop the first ‘connection’ and be left with the erroneous “rememoration is the 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 think a better phrasing would be that rememoration is the key to allowing pure intent (my only hesitation is that I’m not sure if it is the only key, so perhaps “one of the keys” is better).
Yes, “one of the keys is better”. You certainly have a gift with words.
Claudiu: In any case then we would have that “rememoration is the key to allowing that 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”, as well as “rememoration is the key to allowing the experience of that manifest life-force; that genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe”.
Yes, and once the connection is firmly established, pure intent (the universe, so to speak) can run one’s life, as in letting go of the controls, and interruptions or interference by dominant feelings happen less and less.
Claudiu: Although it is true all this is experiential and the words can only describe it, it is so much nicer when we can have our cake and eat it too, such that the words used are also more resilient and robust in the face of an analytical taking-them-apart. It won’t matter much for those already with a firm experiential basis (whether actually free or still a feeling being), nor for those feeling-beings who are more intuitive in nature [e.g. the ~90% of the population that is not an “NT” type on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator], but it can perhaps benefit the more analytically-inclined among us [e.g. the ~10% of the population that is an “NT” type, i.e. those of type INTJ/INTP/ENTJ/ENTP].
Ha, I didn’t even look up all those acronyms. But I remember when studying social sciences and psychology at university in my twenties, and after, I jumped at every possibility to figure out how to classify myself according to body-type, emotional or psychological make-up, even in the astrological category and many others. While discovering patters is what the human brain enjoys and is good at, to make certain patterns into ‘self’-classifications/ categorizations (make them a designated feature of one’s identity, like hanging a certificate on the wall) is not very practical when whittling away one’s identity. The human brain is, after all, malleable, else one would not be able to change human nature.
Cheers,
Claudiu (link)
Cheers Vineeto