I have to admit that I struggle to understand the use of the term “pure intent” to describe what is experienced during a PCE. “Intent” or “intention” are words reserved for subjects (I would even say for conscious beings) which is not the case with the universe. In the same way, how can something non-living have qualities like “benevolence” or “benignity”? Lastly, the term “life force” has been and is used to describe what gives life to matter in different traditions, but it’s a term I personally wouldn’t use, for various reasons. I find it puzzling that Richard chose them.
That the universe exists is quite easy to perceive through first-person experience. And that this conscious experience we have is real, I think is also something that can’t be contradicted.
But as an aside, I once gave an example in my journal of having the personal experience that the sun revolves around the earth, even though we know that’s not true. What I meant by that is that our experience can also, in times, trick us, if we misinterpret it.
@claudiu My question is, how can you say with certainty that this is actual based on your pure consciousness experience? My experience reveals something that is… perhaps similar?, but that I would describe differently (certainly influenced by what I’ve read about this topic):
Something must encompass all that there is — be infinite — and the term “universe” seems appropriate to me, considering how it is generally used.
There is a — at some level apparent — “stillness”, even though everything progressively and inevitably changes. It’s something you can experience.
It is perfect in the sense that it is as it is and cannot be otherwise. Just as I don’t look at a tree and say, “it’s imperfect”, what exists naturally — the rivers, trees, and life — has this perfection. I think our habit of judging something as imperfect has a lot to do with religions. In the case of roman catholicism, people were attributed free-will to hold them accountable for the choice made in the garden of eden, and from then on, we’re supposedly all born imperfect. But if we choose to look at ourselves and others in the same way we look at nature, and say — that cat is perfect, that rock is perfect, that person is perfect… Maybe that person was born with “messed-up” genetics, or in a “messed-up” environment, or has a brain tumor… that leads them to do something reprovable. Still, it is what it is and could not be otherwise because if it were, it would be because some circumstance had been different. What I’m trying to say, in this convoluted way, is that previous circumstances result in this moment, here and now, and it is “silly” to describe anything, here and now, as imperfect.
I’m commenting on this with genuine interest. My goal is not to question anyone’s subjective experience. I’m just interested in comparing and discussing, in order to learn. It’s possible “pure intent” is something entirely different I have never experienced.
EDIT: I actually just found a quote from Peter that resonates a lot more with me…
The pure intent of Actual Freedom comes from the peak experience or PCE wherein one has a glimpse of the purity and perfection of the physical universe untainted by any ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-produced meta-physical imaginations. [source]
That aligns much more with how I’m able to describe it
I remember having all these confusions myself too !
This was Richard’s explaination :
[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’.
[…snip ‘fate/destiny’ quote…].
Lastly, the term “life force” has been and is used to describe what gives life to matter in different traditions, but it’s a term I personally wouldn’t use, for various reasons. I find it puzzling that Richard chose them.
This question was raised to Richard by me hehe and thusly he clarified :
The expression “life-force” – originally one of several English translations of the French “élan vital”[](javascript:void(0)) coined by Mr. Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941), in his 1907 book ‘Creative Evolution’, as a hypothetical explanation for the driving force of evolution (élan = impetus, impulse, momentum) – has become a generic term meaning more-or-less whatever a writer/ a speaker chooses to have it refer to. For example, some 1920’s vitalism proponents gave “élan vital” a pronounced mystico-spiritual meaning (as denoting what is known as ‘prāṇa’ in Sanskrit) whereas latter-day evolutionists, geneticists for instance, were dismissive of any ‘driving-force’ hypothesis (in a similar way to the early 1900’s theoretical physicists’ dismissal of a luminiferous aether being the medium whereby radiant energy propagates through space).
As the word ‘life’ itself – just like the word ‘nature’ for instance – is also utilised in a generic (non-specific) way, on occasion, I am reminded of the following brief exchange.[snip exchange]
Thus 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 [snip]
I think Roy we think alike lol as I was terribly confused about the word benevolence…benignity was easy to grasp for instance thinking of a benign tumor or reflecting on the fact that a bullet coming to kill me is benign in the sense it has no intention to kill me
Here is what he clarified about benevolence :
Richard : Re your query about ‘the benevolence aspect’ of the actual world: perhaps if you were to think of it in a similar way to what is expressed in the phrase ‘a benevolent climate’, for instance, it might start to make sense.
Here are a few random samples from an Internet Search:
• [quote]: ‘… an ideal combination of fertile soil, high altitude and a benevolent climate …’ [endquote].
• [quote]: ‘These destinations, and the benevolent climate, attract national and international visitors …’ [endquote].
• [quote]: ‘… could not understand why residents of Southern California settled for widespread use of deciduous trees and shrubs when a benevolent climate could …’ [endquote].
• [quote]: ‘The year-round agriculture and benevolent climate gives distinct seasonal character to this area …’ [endquote].
• [quote]: ‘Abundant natural resources with benevolent climate is the primary source of this historical prosperity …’ [endquote].
Of course, I mean it in much more than a ‘conducive to life’/ ‘conducive to growth’ sense … oft-times expressed by me as ‘I am swimming in largesse’, for example, so as to convey the super-abundance of life, here, in this pristine paradise which this verdant and azure planet is in actuality. Viz.:
• [Richard]: (…) this actual world, the world of the senses, is indeed characterised by benevolence and benignity (there is neither cruelness nor horrors in actuality). However, in the real world, the world of the psyche, any such kindly disposition – as in being well-disposed, bountiful, liberal, bounteous, beneficent (aka benevolent) and being favourable, propitious, salutary (aka benign) – being not readily apparent, as in directly experienceable, requires naiveté for its intellectual ascertainment.
I am, of course, using the word ‘kindly’ in its Oxford Dictionary ‘acceptable, agreeable, pleasant; spec. (of climate, conditions, etc.) benign, favourable to growth’ meaning … and which I generally express by saying I am swimming in largesse.
For example:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘In the PCE, there is a clear sense that something of momentous importance is happening, at least it seemed that way for me. The excellence experience, if not labelled such, might seem to be an experience of exceptional clarity and lucidity. With the PCE, words like bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth, vibrant, clear, alive, animate, come to mind.
• [Richard]: ‘The words ‘exceptional clarity and lucidity’ strikes me as being a very good description of the distinction when compared with ‘bounteousness, bursting, pouring forth’ and so on as I am swimming in largesse’.(Actual Freedom Mailing List, Gary, 15 August 2000)
Or even more specifically:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Does this [allowing a PCE to happen] take nerves of steel?
• [Richard]: ‘No, apart from spontaneous PCE’s (most common in childhood) it takes happiness and harmlessness: where one is happy and harmless a benevolence and benignity that is not of ‘my’ doing operates of its own accord … and it is this beneficence and magnanimity which occasions the PCE.
The largesse of the universe (as in the largesse of life itself), in other words’.(Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 44d, 30 September 2003)
In short: I do not use the words benevolent/ benevolence and benign/ benignity as antonyms to the words malevolent/ malevolence and malign/ malignity (such as to require reconciliation) as the latter exists only in the human psyche
If you can remember the purity and perfection that is a great start. If you can allow yourself to taste it now then you can look around and wonder at the fact that this very same perfection and purity “grew” the verdant and azure planet called earth, which is teeming with life. Furthermore the earth grew the flesh and blood humans which are now populating the planet, as those flesh and blood humans the universe is able to experience itself, the perfection and purity can know itself apperceptively. Furthermore all this happens of its own accord, with no “metaphysical assistance” at all.
If you can wonder with amazement at all this then you can ask yourself - what kind of a universe is capable of doing this?
If you can do this naively and without turning it into an intellectual exercise then you can discover for yourself what the words pure intent are referring to.
It will change your life, perhaps why there is such resistance to allowing it in the first place.
Yes, it makes sense to me if “benignity” is described as in “harmless”, but usually the term is used to indicate that something is beneficial/positive in some way, and my experience is that the universe is simply neutral, or even, I would say, indifferent. So the following makes sense to me:
This is a great way to put it and complements the observation that the universe is indifferent/neutral. I wasn’t able to put that into words.
Thanks for sharing these quotes @Shashank! They bring some clarity. I’m still not a fan of describing it as a “life force”… and even “pure intent”, I refrain to use those words, because I don’t find them to be clear, to be honest.
The universe has no intent, but it possesses the capacity — the necessary properties or conditions — for those things to occur. We are in agreement. I may be missing your point though…
I think it’s because you probably spend more time than me reading the website that you would use those words to describe the experience. If you stick to a dictionary, the words “pure intent” make little sense, in my opinion, to describe it.
I think I got my point across because @Shashank understood it. I’m simply commenting on that specific description of “pure intent”! You write like the wise one showing the student the way, but I’m simply trying to describe what I experience and confirm it with others because it’s not always easy to put experience into words.
Can I suggest something? And please don’t take this the wrong way: If you ignore everything you’ve read on the site, after you have a “pure consciousness experience”, try to describe it in your own words. Would you use the same words that are on the site? Is there a chance that you’re being influenced by what you’ve intellectually learned?
I’m not saying that Richard is wrong or that the site is wrong, only that the way each person describes their experience depends on many factors. I think it would be very strange if we all described the experience in the same way. It could be an indication that the knowledge may be acting as a form of conditioning — an interpretation of the experience.
I don’t know if it is a satisfying answer, but the certainty comes from the experience itself. Not just one time but, a gradual confidence as I was able to replicate it more and more, and see it lined up with what Richard and Vineeto call pure intent, and with what others call pure intent.
It also has been fascinating to see how I am able to tell, experientially, that the pure intent I experience when not in a PCE, is the same pure intent that I then am, in a PCE. And how in an EE it takes on a much more prominent and dynamic quality then when not in an EE, albeit still not quite like a PCE. And, how pure intent is automatically operative now that I am out-from-control.
In other words it is all confidence borne from experience.
I recently re-remembered how I first confidently came upon pure intent, it was while visiting Richard and Vineeto for the first time. You might like to read about it and see if you can do it yourself too: Andrew - #1290 by claudiu .
From what you wrote here I would say it sounds like you have gotten the flavor of it already, glimpses perhaps, but it is not confidently established yet. I would encourage you to keep going in the direction you have found here, and see if you can experience it to even greater degrees!
The term is sort of funny (as in odd/strange). I initially had same reaction as you. “Intent” sounds like something a human possesses, not the universe… like in “sincere intent”. So why “pure intent”, it sounds like “pure” is modifying “intent” and as such it’s a human thing (and not a universe thing).
What I come to conclude is… it is really the best term I have seen haha. Nothing else quite works. I just think of it like this: the “pure” is because it is pure, unadulterated, outside of the human condition, nothing to do with ‘me’, etc. The “intent” is because there is a quality of an “agency” aspect of it pulling you towards/into actuality, it is a guiding light to go towards, etc. Not only that but there is indeed an aspect coming “from the universe”, an impetus, that this needs doing.
So “intent” basically ends up working well.
Another thing to consider is that in a PCE, you are a flesh and blood body being apperceptively conscious, and are at that point pure intent. The experience of it is very different. I remember one fine afternoon in Spain, while I was allowing pure intent as much as I could, and then suddenly it “snapped” into place, and I thought ah – now I really am allowing it! I wasn’t allowing it before, but now there is no longer a separation between me and the pure intent, so this is what allowing it really is. But then I realized actually I had entered a PCE! And that’s why the experience of it changed. Before it was ‘me’ allowing pure intent, and experiencing it to a degree, while afterwards I was pure intent, temporarily.
The point is that even outside of a PCE, the actual flesh and blood body is still being conscious, and this consciousness is actually occurring… so in some way, pure intent is occurring as this body being conscious as well. It is perhaps this aspect of pure intent that comes through to ‘me’ that provides the impetus, i.e. the very flesh and blood body I am inhabiting, being a source of this purity, via a human being conscious.
This is not to say it only exists as a human being conscious – it exists intrinsically, as part of the universe, but it is one of the ways it manifests, if it makes sense.
Do you really experience it as something “from the universe” — something outside of you — compelling you to act? That’s not my experience, and so it means it is indeed not simply a matter of using different words. Personally, I don’t feel compelled to do anything different. If I’m “not doing anything”, I’m in a way “compelled” to continue not do, what I would usually want do, and think — I just “be”. I’m just happily experiencing whatever is happening. If I’m doing something, i’ll happily do that something, and it’s like there’s nothing else.
I think this shows that what you and Richard describe as pure intent is something more than what Peter describes in that quote I shared. I’m not consciously allowing anything to happen to me during my PCEs. There’s no special mode of behaving… I’m just able to consciously experience reality in a “pure way” — as in without the usual constrains that result from normally experiencing life as a “self”. Does that make sense?
And because of paying attention to my conscious experience, I don’t believe that the “universe” has any special force, purpose, etc… There’s nothing “extraordinary” going on… I don’t mean it’s not marvelous/wonderful — it’s that the ordinary is marvelous/wonderful.
This neutral and indifferent universe contains an earth with marvelous abundance and our “self” prevents us from experiencing that. Once you are able to consciously experience that, it is incredible and life changing. Not sure if we are saying the same thing.
I have been considering why my post (which was an invitation for you to experience pure intent for yourself) would grind your gears like so. I remember another forum member recently had a similar response when I suggested putting aside the intellectualisations and allowing pure intent instead (I can’t find the specific post).
Why is it that people have such issues locating and understanding about pure intent? Why is it so often a point of contention?(as demonstrated recently on the forum, in @Andrew’s journal). Why would people rather intellectualise about it than experience it for themselves? Why is it such an affront to suggest for someone to locate it?
It clicked just now, it is precisely because it exists outside of the human condition and once located it will be the beginning of the end of ‘me’. ‘I’ have an investment in making sure pure intent is ‘difficult’ to locate/understand.
Yes! More precisely, it is something outside of me when I am not in a PCE. And when I am in a PCE, it is what-I-am.
Hmmm, it isn’t compelling me to act. This would indicate something is amiss. Rather it’s more that it draws me in/attracts me towards it. It’s more an attractive force than a compelling force, if that makes sense?
The impetus does come from that outside-of-me life force, but maybe the “this needs doing” part is more properly me taking it on and dedicating myself to doing it, i.e. the part coming from me, the dedicatory part, rather than that coming from pure intent per se.
Peter’s quote in question is:
The pure intent of Actual Freedom comes from the peak experience or PCE wherein one has a glimpse of the purity and perfection of the physical universe untainted by any ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-produced meta-physical imaginations. [source]
But his quote doesn’t describe pure intent at all. It just says it comes from the PCE. But not what it is, or any qualities of it, etc etc. So I can see why you might say it aligns more with what you say, because you are able to fill in your own descriptions of it?
It might be a matter of degree rather than kind. There are PCEs with different flavors, and the ones that have the meaning-of-life flavor, really blow the socks off. There are others that are more (extra-ordinarily) ordinary like you write here.
You just have to bathe in it a bit more lavishly . The universe is not neutral and indifferent at all, far from it. It is bursting with meaning in every moment. A cool pleasant breeze on a sunny walk… the sun’s warming rays on your skin… a pod of whales and dolphins jubilantly spouting forth… all of these are opportune instances where one can apperceive this meaning.
In short, there is more to it than you have seen so far. The sky is not the limit! Note this is not meant to downplay what you have achieved so far, but the contrary, to encourage you to naively go forth even more
As I sit here now reveling in the purity, I can report my experience and maybe it is helpful.
It is surprisingly hard to put into words sometimes even though it is so clear what I am experiencing!
It is immaculate in its existence. It thoroughly permeates everything. As I allow it in more, my body responds with joy and lightness. There is a carefreeness and lightness of spirit it readily engenders. It is like a pure stream of richly flowing silk-like quality that permeates my experiencing. At times it seems like golden is a more apt descriptor, other times like a cool breeze, other times like something richly flowing.
In some moments it’s like a deep richness, as if something in the very air turns in on itself and out pours this deep and enduring thoroughness and saturation.
There is no desire or pushing or forcing or being compelled coming from it. It exists, clearly, on its own, and is available for me to avail myself of to whatever degree I want. It does not force me in and it does not reject me out. It is pure in its self-completeness.
As it is so immanently enjoyable, there is a natural attractive quality to it, to allowing it more. And yet simultaneously I experience a putting-on-the-brakes of not going “too far” into it – this is my survival instincts putting up barriers to it, only natural. This is the point I find myself at generally, I am looking for that which is deeply personal to me that I want deep-down, which is for the benefit of not just myself or others, to allow the more powerful altruistic instincts to be able to override the survival ones. (This latter part is a thought-out reflection of my situation.)
It readily reveals the universe is far from indifferent. There is a benevolence, a being well-suited for life and the flourishing of it. If it were to “want” anything it would “want” all to thrive and flourish. But it is not that it “wants” it in the way a person wants something. It is more like the way you could say water “wants” to flow downhill. It does flow downhill, perfectly, because that is the nature of the water and the earth and the gravity and how they interact. Lightning always follows the path of least resistance, perfectly. It is not that water “wants” anything – it is inanimate – however the universe is set up such that that is what it does. And similarly, the universe is set up for life to flourish, for this deeply intrinsic meaning and delight to be available to all, for the universe to develop itself into creatures that are able to be aware of themselves being the universe being conscious of itself. This is what the meaning of life is, and pure intent is the way to go from here to there!
I find myself without a satisfying way to conclude this post, so I leave it here for now
Elsewhere on that page, he says “an Actualist needs pure intent”. What I understand from those sentences is that he’s saying pure intent is the pure intention that you, as a subject/person, create within yourself when experiencing the physical purity and perfection of the world. What meaning am I “filling in” here?
If there is meaning, what is it? Can you describe it simply? Does it have anything to do with human beings? Perhaps with a special place they hold in the universe? How can you say the universe has meaning without implying that it has intentions and desires?
It’s possible that there is something I have not yet experienced. It’s also possible that what you experience, in your description, does not actually exist. A subjective experience can be real for the person experiencing it but have no existence in objective reality / actuality. I read your descriptions, and honestly, they don’t seem any different from descriptions that could come from a Buddhist tradition, for example, in the sense that they cannot be explained in an objective and physical way.
Once again, I am not trying to diminish the importance of the universe, life, the body, consciousness, the senses, and the brain. I’m simply trying to analyze them for what they are. And there is no space, in the brain or anywhere else, for cosmic meanings. That doesn’t make anything less marvelous.
The pure consciousness experiences, those moments of conscious experience free from the limitations of a constructed and illusory “self”, have shown me that there is a way out, a way to free myself from what we generally call the human condition. But it doesn’t involve any kind of forces or intentions — I wouldn’t describe it that way, at least. It’s much simpler than that. It is about living in the physical world without constructed mental layers over your perception of it (I couldn’t come up with a better way to describe it in this moment).
I’m sorry if it came across that way; it wasn’t intentional. I simply don’t need that invitation, because I’ve already done that work (so to say).
But how do you know we’re intellectualizing? I am literally trying to describe an experience in clear and objective terms. It’s not an affront at all — I just can’t find it in the terms described. That’s all…
I think sometimes those “clicks” or intuitions need to be questioned. Personally, I don’t think it has anything to do with that. I think we’re going around in circles. But it’s very interesting that my description of conscious experience has no parallel in your own experiences.
Putting it together with what you quoted earlier, now we have:
“pure intent […] comes from the peak experience of PCE”
“an Actualist needs pure intent”
All that this says is the source of pure intent (the PCE) and that it is necessary for an actualist to be successful.
You have literally filled in everything else!! . Nowhere in #1 or #2 does it say that pure intent is something you “create within yourself” as a person nor that it is a person’s “intention” at all (pure or not).
Look it’s even right on the page where you quoted Peter from!!
You quoted what Peter wrote and then took it to be something you (feeling-being Roy) have or must generate, but ignored the part Richard wrote that it is “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”. Ignoring Richard’s definition allowed you to fill in your own.
Pure intent is not something you generate. Nothing can be further from what pure intent actually is, as the term is used in actualism lingo. Pure intent is something outside of you, that originates in the “perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe”, not in you as a feeling-being.
The better term for ‘your’ side of the equation is “sincere intent”. You do need to generate or create or nourish within yourself, a sincere intent to go forward and have all this happen. But this is not sufficient, at some point you need the other side of it, the side from the universe, to draw you in.
You are conflating the me-side “sincere intent” with the actuality-side “pure intent”. You aren’t the first one to do it, the term got really loose over the years even on the AFT site, but Vineeto has long-ago corrected all the ambiguous instances.
This is very vital so it is wonderful we are having this discussion about it now.
The meaning of life is to be living the experience of being the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood body, directly/apperceptively.
The question of “what is the meaning of life?” isn’t about what it means to be a dog, is it?
Well, in terms of the planet itself, humans being able to do the above (whereas a dog or a moth cannot, for example) does rather set us apart relative to the other animal life we find here.
I remember a long conversation I had with a spiritualist once who insisted that I couldn’t know that spiders were not every bit as intelligent as humans. I pointed out all the ways I could know that, actually, and she just kept falling back on “but you don’t know that for sure”. I realized at that point I just had to end the conversation.
In terms of the universe, I don’t see any reason other sufficiently evolved animate matter would not be able to experience the meaning of life as well, albeit they will be experiencing it as whatever they are made of rather than as humans. As the universe is infinite it would be strange indeed if humans were the only animate matter capable of this in all of existence.
I can say it like this:
Well, maybe if I put it this way. God can be felt to exist, and very powerfully so. And many people can claim to experience the same God. This indeed does not mean God actually exists.
The culprit in that case is the feeling-beings, feeling something to exist that doesn’t. The belief or hallucination of it is affective in nature. This is the cause of beliefs in a metaphysical Timeless and Spaceless etc realm a la Buddhism and other Eastern Spirituality.
The PCE reveals these all to be a delusion borne from the illusion of being a feeling-being.
Now there is something that is experienced in a PCE, with the feeling-being fully in abeyance… not only that, but it is what one experiences themselves to be. Is this, then, also an illusion, a hallucination, an experience of something that doesn’t actually exist?
And what’s more, one can draw out a connection to this purity as the PCE fades, and reliably follow it back to the PCE, such that it can function as one’s guiding light. Can this be a chimera, a hallucination then, when it tangibly and demonstrably works to enable PCEs to happen?
The answer to that question I think can be found by carefully and with eyes wide open reading the following correspondence Richard had in 2004, which struck me mightily when Vineeto sent it to me via e-mail:
In a similar sense, if this pure intent (which all actually free people are and many a sincere actualist has reliably experienced) be not an actuality then it falls into the realm of being a mere ‘reality’, i.e. an illusion or a delusion borne of an illusion, and thus apperceptive consciousness would not be apperceptive consciousness at all but merely the same-old feeling-being consciousness.
Humm perhaps it is sentences such as this one that allows Kuba to know that you are “intellectualizing”?
To be clear, I know you are describing your experiences of what you are calling pure intent and PCEs and trying to fit it together with what we’re saying. This is borne of experience for sure, but the doubts about the actuality of pure intent and of the meaning of life you are having are not experiential, they are intellectual, hence, intellectualizing.
It is normal though, sometimes you have to make rational sense of things to a degree before being able to move forward. Being, ehm, rationally-inclined myself, I can relate to this. But I can say it started to make much more sense after I had actually experienced pure intent for myself (again here is the link detailing, experientially, just how I did that, which you can try yourself too: Andrew - #1290 by claudiu).
I would advise you to just set aside such judgements, if possible, until you have a better experiential knowing of that which we’re talking about.
Things would certainly be less marvelous if the universe were an inert, neutral, meaningless occurrence with all of existence being just random chance of things bumping into each other.
This is, of course, just materialism. The other alternative up until a few decades ago was spirituality. This is not a solution either. But now there is a third alternative, actualism, which fits into neither of the other two categories. Note that part well: the meaning-of-life to be found via actualism is not the same as the meaning derived from the various Gods and Goddesses via spirituality.
Hmm I think you veered off course a little bit, it sounds like you are describing an experience with a minimized (or perhaps absent) ‘ego’ (“constructed and illusory “self” […] constructed mental layers”). Whereas a PCE is where ‘you’ in ‘your’ entirety (including your ‘soul’) are fully in abeyance.
Do you really consider what you are describing here to be the same as what’s reported on the Various Descriptions of PCEs page, for example? Emphases added:
I would just encourage you to be open to the possibility that there is more you have not seen yet – and try that experiential probing to see what happens!! (viz.: Andrew - #1290 by claudiu).
And a cool plot twist is that RESPONDENT NO. 00K was me I still remember the experience, it must have been about 12 years ago! I was 19 and trying my best to make sense of actualism before a long lay off. Ha I always knew that I was going to make a success of it sooner or later.
No @claudiu… That part that Richard is saying you had shared it before. It is what I started questioning in the first place! The life-force, the benevolence and benignity. Please, see my exchange above with @Shashank.
This is the full quote. What you are saying is that Peter starts by mentioning pure intent but never defines it. What I’m saying is that I think he meant “pure intent of Actual Freedom comes” — as in manifests itself (where? where else could be? In a conscious being, the only thing that can have intent) — “from the peak experience or PCE wherein one has a glimpse of the purity and perfection of the physical universe untainted by any ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-produced meta-physical imaginations”. It’s so interesting how two people can read the same thing and come to a completely different conclusion.
The screenshot you shared is great. Even the start:
“The driving force in the search for the Human Condition is intent”
In other words: It is was drives someone to have the intention to explore the human condition. Then it goes on to explore this point and contrast with the intent of a spiritual seeker, etc…
It is very different from what you are saying. I think you are the one giving extra meaning to what is being said, by Peter and Richard. The quotes @Shashank shared gave me some clarity to what Richard was talking about in there.
“Sincere intent” is not that different. The question here isn’t in the pure vs sincere, but the personal vs “universal” intent.
Well… can you really say for a fact that dogs don’t have a conscious experience, however completely different from ours? What makes you think that there is an universal meaning that is exclusive to human beings? In other words: why do you think we are so special? Don’t you think that may be your ego that needs to feel greater than it actually is?
But you still haven’t answered the question… What is this meaning? Ok this is from the post we wrote at around the same time:
I have to come back to this in a day or two For me to be honest, the biggest discovery was seeing the conscious experience as a “product” of the physical world, the body, the brain… I can see why you would mention materialism.
This is precisely what I mean. It’s interesting that you mention god, because people attribute all sorts of intentions to this infinite god and some go to the extent of saying the universe and god are the same. That’s a completely different and potentially long discussion. I don’t believe in God, anthropomorphic or not.
Exactly, analyzing/exploring these experientially… I think that’s not what Kuba meant in that context but I may be wrong. “Intellectualizing” can mean analyzing something in an abstract way, distancing oneself from direct experience.
How is this a judgement? I’m only saying that if you explore the brain, as scientists do, you will not find something that could explain what you are describing.
Well, I think you are wrong. I have had religious people tell me the same thing.
@claudiu I don’t know why you are saying this to be honest. I’m sharing my experience and I’ve admitted that there may be more that I have been unable to experience. The reason why I’m insisting in this point is not to discredit your experience, as you have no reason to lie. I’m only interested in comparing what is actual with what is not actual, and seeing the differences.
There’s a lot here and I missed it because we apparently replied at the same time. I thank you for describing your experience in such detail. I have a follow-up question but to be honest I’m afraid it may be misinterpreted. But here it goes anyway… You have practiced/studied a buddhist tradition in the past, have you not? I haven’t so I don’t have experiences to compare to, but there’s a lot of literature about the subject. Have you experienced bliss / blissfulness in the past? If so, are they different from this and in which ways? I thank you in advance and of course I understand if you don’t feel like answering. It may be a stupid question. Again, I’m simply trying to understand what is actual, what is not actual, and the differences, comparing my experience to the ones other actualists have. I’m not trying to pass a judgment or saying that any of the experiences you have/had are fake.
To give it a bit more context, my exploration of the day-to-day experience currently is mostly focused on the senses and the inner workings of my brain. I also use past memories from PCEs to understand a bit more about myself. And I read stuff about consciousness, the brain, etc… So that’s what I’m doing. I can go in more detail but I’m not sure if it matters. Maybe I can write another post later.
@claudiu If you feel like this is going off-topic, please feel free to move it elsewhere!
I’m unable to write so well unfortunately. I’ve shared in the past it took me a while to understand what people meant by “being the senses”. Overall I can relate to this description but I’m unsure I fully understand what Richard meant, for example, with the last sentence.
You can certainly say that I oversimplified my description of what a PCE entails. There’s nothing in this text that a person not familiar with the actualism lingo would be unable to comprehend. The first part you highlighted is how I experience it too, but it is a matter of perception, is it not? We both know that physically our bodies “will not live like this all the time” (what I mean is that they age).
“trying to active delight” is not something I do but it may not be relevant here, as it is prior to the PCE.
“soon the music wasn’t happening in ‘my’ head but was out there in the world […] there was no more inside/outside”, I have read this one before but can’t say I would describe my experience this way. It’s easier for me to explain this with the sense of sight. The way I’ve come to realize it is the senses are crucial but the brain does its job too. That’s why you can: see something; close your eyes and visualize something; dream with visual images when you are asleep. Your brain can provide the visualization without relying on the sense of sight. Once I started paying attention to it I started seeing “sight” in a completely different way.
The end matches my experience, now that I understand what people mean with “benevolent”.
Just to clarify the point about intellectualising :
So just to confirm this was referring specifically to what the forum member was doing not your posts. The only mention of “intellectual” with regards to you was the below
I don’t think that you are intellectualising in the sense of “distancing oneself from direct experience” , I think you are trying to understand about pure intent with the tools that you have at hand. My point is that pure intent cannot be understood by those tools, just like infinitude cannot be understood with those tools. This is because pure intent exists outside of the human condition.
It takes naiveté to allow that the universe is not indifferent/neutral but rather that it has a “built in” benevolence and benignity, it is actively beneficial.
The thing is that this goes against all of the beliefs which comprise the real world. It goes against the belief in the metaphysical but it also goes against the “cold and mechanical” understanding of materialism. So if ‘you’ the identity hang back in reality and attempt grabbing various components of it and then slotting them together to create an understanding of what pure intent is, then ‘you’ miss.
The actuality of what pure intent is can only be grasped experientially, and then you will be able to go back and make sense of it with the intellect. When you write things like the below :
This demonstrates that you are not aware of this “actively beneficial” component, and hence you do not have a clear understanding of what pure intent is, otherwise you would not write in this way.
It looks to me that you are still using your prior scientific/psychological/philosophical ‘training’ to make sense of what actualism is about. This is back to front as you end up using concepts from within the real world and trying to encompass actuality with them. Which means you can only end up with some kind of a hybrid that is neither here nor there.
Hence my invitation yesterday, you replied to say that it was not required and that you have “done the work” already but clearly this work did not bear fruit (yet) as you do not understand what the words pure intent are referring to. You may ask “how do I know this”, the way I know this is by reading your words and contrasting what you are describing with my experience of pure intent, then seeing that indeed they do not match up.
Yes agreed those “clicks” need to be scrutinised, along with anything else that ‘I’ come up with This scrutinisation is happening 24/7, ‘I’ have been scrutinising ‘myself’ obsessively for years haha. But I can see that you hold “epistemic humility” in high esteem, the kind of humility that a sceptic would utilise, this needs to be discarded along with pride as it is part of the “old paradigm”, it cannot assist one in discovering actuality.
I understand the point you’re making, but since actualism takes not only experience but also facts as its starting point, you can’t simply assume that you’ve arrived at facts just from experience itself, without comparing them with scientific knowledge.
My fixation on the brain and matter here is not because I’m completely convinced that there is nothing beyond the physical laws. It’s simply that this is the scientific basis we have available.
There are studies that you’ve surely read about people who change completely — their subjective/personal reality shifts entirely — after suffering brain damage.
You may also have heard of studies where fMRI scans were performed on monks — people who believed and practiced certain spiritual traditions and meditated for long periods over many years, often in silence or repeatedly chanting mantras… — Those scans showed that the brain activity of these monks is different from that of an average person.
Now… the point that remains is that saying they altered their brain isn’t necessarily a good thing. Alcohol can also cause permanent changes to the brain. Changes in the brain can be normal and necessary, but there’s also the possibility that they are literally causing brain damage.
My goal with my practice of actualism is to get closer to what is objectively real — what actually exists — not to attain a different subjective reality, whether or not it is more beneficial for my well-being.
All of this is to say that I don’t think it’s safe to believe in what you experience without contrasting it with scientific literature, because what you experience to be real may not actually be real.
Excluding the actualist method itself — which I use precisely because it doesn’t contain anything that could seem dangerous in any way — I question the rest of what is described on the site, such as this life force in the universe referred to as “pure intent”, so as not to let myself be influenced by knowledge that cannot be demonstrated through the scientific method.
You might say that I just need to recall a PCE I had as a child to know whether “pure intent” exists, and I would tell you that I have no memory of ever having felt that…
It’s also important to read the scientific knowledge available on memory and how our current mental state and understanding can distort/alter our past memories.
If I were to accept “pure intent” as it is described and convince myself of it — which we all know is something one should never do, as that would be the very definition of a baseless belief — then it’s very possible that I would be making the same mistake as those monks.
I find myself in a situation where the benefits of the actualist method have been obvious and life-changing, but there is no clear next step that can be taken safely, because:
What is described by the actually free people has no point of comparison with anything else I’ve found elsewhere
I can’t simply believe/trust what is said, as that would be the definition of a leap of faith
My investigation of my conscious experience does not point in the direction of the universe being benevolent (or malevolent) or of there being forces outside of me that I should allow. I have never experienced that.
Mostly, I have had the experience of what it is like to not have a “self”, experiencing time very differently, heightened senses, clarity in the “experience of the moment”, vastness and wonder — a poor description of it but it’s the best I can put it. But these are fleeting moments, not a permanent state.
I’m a bit lost where you currently stand – you were earlier saying that you think “pure intent” is basically synonymous with “sincere intent” and that’s how you think Peter and Richard were using the term. But now you are indicating that you know the term “pure intent” does refer to something else (a “life force in the universe”) which you currently don’t accept exists?
Is it the former or the latter? This will help tailor my response.
The term “sincere intent” doesn’t change the conversation I think, because the question is about who’s the subject of the intent.
The way @Shashank described “benevolence” and Peter described “pure intent” — as I interpret it, which appears to be different from your interpretation — make sense to me.
You, @Kub933 and Richard (in that specific quote you shared) explain a different type of “pure intent” that does not come from the individual, is a part of the universe, a life force, a “universal intent” (not sure if this is a correct way of putting it). That’s the part I haven’t “accepted” in the sense I can’t say I ever experienced it.
](javascript:void(0)) coined by Mr. Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941), in his 1907 book ‘Creative Evolution’, as a hypothetical explanation for the driving force of evolution (élan = impetus, impulse, momentum) – has become a generic term meaning more-or-less whatever a writer/ a speaker chooses to have it refer to. For example, some 1920’s vitalism proponents gave “élan vital” a pronounced mystico-spiritual meaning (as denoting what is known as ‘prāṇa’ in Sanskrit) whereas latter-day evolutionists, geneticists for instance, were dismissive of any ‘driving-force’ hypothesis (in a similar way to the early 1900’s theoretical physicists’ dismissal of a luminiferous aether being the medium whereby radiant energy propagates through space).
. The universe is not neutral and indifferent at all, far from it. It is bursting with meaning in every moment. A cool pleasant breeze on a sunny walk… the sun’s warming rays on your skin… a pod of whales and dolphins jubilantly spouting forth… all of these are opportune instances where one can apperceive this meaning.
I still remember the experience, it must have been about 12 years ago! I was 19 and trying my best to make sense of actualism before a long lay off. Ha I always knew that I was going to make a success of it sooner or later.
For me to be honest, the biggest discovery was seeing the conscious experience as a “product” of the physical world, the body, the brain… I can see why you would mention materialism.