What is pure intent?

[claudiu]

@roy

@claudiu

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?

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?

Putting it together with what you quoted earlier, now we have:

1. “pure intent […] comes from the peak experience of PCE”
2. “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.

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@roy

@claudiu

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.

If there is meaning, what is it? Can you describe it simply?

The meaning of life is to be living the experience of being the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood body, directly/apperceptively.

@roy

Does it have anything to do with human beings?

The question of “what is the meaning of life?” isn’t about what it means to be a dog, is it?

@roy

Perhaps with a special place they hold in the universe?

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.

@roy

How can you say the universe has meaning without implying that it has intentions and desires?

I can say it like this:

@claudiu

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!

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@roy

@claudiu

In short, there is more to it than you have seen so far.

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.

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:

@claudiu

CLAUDIU [to Vineeto]: Thank you for sharing that delightful conversation. I found it scintillatingly wonderful and brilliant.

The part that stood out to me most was this one:

RESPONDENT: Richard, an uncluttered space in which to clarify some key issues: What is your basis for claiming that the universe is infinite and eternal?

RICHARD: Apperception (unmediated perception) … as a flesh and blood body only one is this infinite, eternal and perpetual universe experiencing itself apperceptively: as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.

And this is wonderful.

RESPONDENT: With regard to attaining ‘actual freedom from the human condition’, does it matter whether the universe is infinite and eternal?

RICHARD: It is infinitude which makes such a freedom possible … only that which has no opposite is peerless (hence perfect).

RESPONDENT: If time, space and matter had begun with a ‘Big Bang’, would PCE’s still be possible?

RICHARD: No … the peerless perfection of the pure consciousness experience (PCE) would not exist.

RESPONDENT: Would ‘actual freedom’ from the human condition still be possible?

RICHARD: No … the pristine purity of this actual world would not exist.

RESPONDENT: Ok, you experience the universe as infinite, beginningless and endless.

RICHARD: To be precise: this flesh and blood body, being sans identity in toto, has the direct experience of infinitude when awake, not asleep, when sensible, not insensible (comatose) whether thought is operating or not.

RESPONDENT: Given that eyesight is limited, range of hearing is limited, sense of smell has a shorter range, taste even less, and tactile sensation is confined to the very boundaries of the body, which sense organ in this flesh and blood body is capable of apperceptively perceiving infinity? Which sense organ is apperceptively able to determine what happened or didn’t happen in the distant past? Which sense organ is apperceptively able to determine what will or will not happen in the distant future? Which sense organ reveals the shape or shapelessness of the universe?

RICHARD: You asked ‘what is your basis for claiming that the universe is infinite and eternal’ and I answered as asked: the basis for my claim that the universe is spatially infinite, temporally eternal, and materially perpetual is the apperceptive awareness (unmediated perception) of infinitude.

Perhaps if I were to put it this way: if the infinitude directly experienced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) is not the infinitude of the universe then what is it the infinitude of … a god (using the word ‘god’ in the ‘ground of being’ sense)?

In other words if it be not a physical infinitude then it falls into the realm of being a metaphysical infinitude. (List AF, No. 60a, 25 Jan 2004b) {emphasis added [in original email]}.

Those last two paragraphs struck me. I can’t find the proper words to express it. It is so remarkably straightforward and matter-of-fact, and even logical in the simplest possible sense. Yet it points to an undeniable fact: that the infinitude experienced in a PCE is actual, and not metaphysical (and thus illusory/delusory).

Because infinitude is experienced in a PCE (or can be if not always)… so it must be an experience of something. And it is not an infinitude of a God or other such thing, because the very substance that Gods are made out of is gone. So what is it an experience of, then? It must be the infinitude of actuality.

The reason it struck me is that it drove home that this infinitude is actual – and thus that it is something worth sacrificing myself for. [emphasis in original email]

That bold and italic part is what struck me about it.

I don’t really know how else to put it. The magnitude and significance of that was stark, immediate, incredibly meaningful, and I don’t think the words I’m using here to describe it do it justice – but perhaps you can appreciate what I am getting at regardless.

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.

@roy

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 [emphasis added].

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).

@roy

And there is no space, in the brain or anywhere else, for cosmic meanings. That doesn’t make anything less marvelous.

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.

@roy

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).

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:

RICHARD: I remember the first time I experienced being the senses only during a PCE. There was no identity as ‘I’ thinking or ‘me’ feeling … simply this body ambling across a grassy field in the early-morning light. A million dew-drenched spider-webs danced a sparkling delight over the verdant vista and a question that had been running for some weeks became experientially answered: without the senses I would not know that I exist as this flesh and blood body. And further to this: I was the senses and the senses were me. With this came an awareness of being conscious – apperception – rather than ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious.

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DEVIKA: In my first peak experience (PCE), I saw the perfection with my bodily senses, as this body. The cloud of ‘human’ superstition was momentarily lifted; no Authority, no Power, no Love and no Faith was playing a role in this perfection … for there was no need for them. There was no lack, no want, no desires, no longing whatsoever. I saw that they only belonged inside ‘me’, as a psychological entity, and ‘my’ world-view. Nothing was wrong anywhere in this physical, earthly perfection. All what had ever been thwarting this wondrous purity, were ‘my’ ‘human’ misconceptions and prejudices. I saw instantly that I, as this body, was actually meant to live like this all the time … like all people could. This perfection of the universe itself has never ordained that human life should be playing an exceptional role of imperfection and ignominy. There is no outside to perfection. This whole planet is perfectly situated in this infinite universe which is characteristically propelled to the best it can grow into.

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RESPONDENT NO. 00K: I had a few glimpses today of some interesting and amazing things about the actual world. I was listening to music and tried to activate delight, soon the music wasn’t happening in ‘my’ head but was out there in the world, what followed after was that the music was still happening outside of me but there was no more inside/outside, it felt totally intimate. Then it got better and better, I started contemplating and soon I was experiencing the stillness that Richard speaks of. The music was actually happening now, but it was totally still as in coming from nowhere and going nowhere and I was the experience of it.

The experience of stillness was actually very profound and gave this security that I can’t explain very well. Also shortly before that I had a quick glimpse of infinity and it was very thrilling to the point that I pulled back, my whole body was tingling. Anyway the things just kinda kept unfolding and soon the best part presented itself. It actually was like a nice surprise or a gift or something, I saw what the actual world is like and that it is a perfect, benevolent place. This melted away any resentment I had at that moment. Also whereas before all these ideas of perfection etc were more intellectual now they were seen like no joke its actually perfect!

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).

Cheers,
Claudiu