Roy to Kuba: I think I got my point across because Shashank understood it. I’m simply commenting on that specific description of “pure intent”! (link)
Hi Roy,
I looked through the first message you received from Shashank to understand in what way Shashank understood you and others did not. Here is the first one (I snipped out Richard’s quotes to clearly understand what Shashank personally is saying) –
Shaskank: I remember having all these confusions myself too ! (snipped quotes)
Roy: 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.
Shaskank: This was Richard’s explanation : (snipped quotes)
Roy: 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.
Shaskank: This question [regarding life-force] was raised to Richard by me hehe and thusly he clarified : (snipped quotes)
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 [Richard] clarified about benevolence : (snipped quotes)
What I get from this message from Shashank to you (apart from very helpful and clarifying quotes is that he understands your dilemma because he had all these confusions himself as well and hence concludes that you think alike.
However, when you write out your answer you seem to concur with Shashank’s understanding only in his first remark but not regarding the meaning of benevolence contained in the quotes he provided –
Shashank: […] 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.
Roy: 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.
If I may interject here – Shashank had not further inquired into benignity because it made preliminary sense to him. Benignity is indeed something positive – “of being favourable, propitious, salutary”.
Respondent: I’m trying but I still don’t fully understand. Any value is of human invention, surely?
Richard: The values under discussion – the benignity (as in being favourable, propitious, salutary) and benevolence (as in being well-disposed, beneficent, bounteous) inherent to the perfection, the purity, of the infinitude and/or absoluteness that this actual universe is – are most certainly not human inventions. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 110a, 25 May 2006).
Roy: So the following makes sense to me:
Shashank quoting Richard: “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.”
Richard: “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.”
Richard: “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.” (all quotes from Richard, List D, No. 32, 14 Jun 2013).
Roy: 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. (link)
Here again you perceive “‘a benevolent climate’” and “conducive to life’/ ‘conducive to growth” as the universe being “indifferent/neutral”. Would your classification rather read indifferent/neutral to life, indifferent/ neutral to growth and indicate that there is no abundance but ‘just enough to survive’? Doesn’t this indifference/ neutral come close to the ubiquitous belief that life is a ‘vale of tears’, perhaps because nobody cares about ‘me’?
Here is another quote Shashank provided in this message –
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. (Richard, List D, No. 32, 14 Jun 2013).
Do you seriously suggest that the words “any such kindly disposition – being well-disposed, bountiful, liberal, bounteous, beneficent (aka benevolent) and being favourable, propitious, salutary (aka benign)” in combination with the definition of the word “kindly” indicate indifference or neutrality to you?
If so, the last five words of the first paragraph might give you a clue.
Shashank quoting Richard: “what is being conveyed by those words is the invigorative quality, or dynamic nature, of that [quote] “immaculate perfection and purity [snip] (Richard, List D, No. 32a, 10 July 2015). (link)
Again, the words “invigorative quality, or dynamic nature” point to the different experience of materialism (“indifferent/neutral”) and actualism.
[Edit]: I just found your recent post, Roy, where you said –
Roy: The end matches my experience, now that I understand what people mean with “benevolent”. (link)
I am very pleased you can see that.
So to pre-empt you experiencing me like another “wise one showing the student the way” (link) perhaps it is pertinent to point out that you would know from your own life that because you experience something, it is not necessarily factual but tainted by your beliefs (often disguised as truths), principles, worldview, conditioning and most of all your feelings.
Besides, feeling being ‘Vineeto’ took 12 long years to work out all the various accurate meanings of the words used in Richard’s writings and often had to lay aside some puzzling questions and put them in the background as open questions, until they became experientially clear to ‘her’ during moments of apperception (link).
However, what ‘she’ always found encouraging was that ‘she’ more and more unravelled, discovered, de-mystified how ‘she’ ticked, how the cunning aspect of ‘me’ (the ‘self’-survival instincts in action) got in the way, and ‘she’ recognized and dismantled one by one of those tricks to keep ‘her’ in ‘her’ cage, and as a consequence life became more and more enjoyable, delightful and even exuberant.
Out of this exuberance (coupled with sincerity) slowly, hesitantly, came naiveté, that curious ingredient which first makes one feel foolish, like a simpleton, but which is the very quality which allows one to experience life with fresh eyes, to discover a new depth of meaning in Richard’s words and to naïvely explore what else it is that I have missed all my life, because nobody told me about it.
This is really the key – nobody told you about it because until recently nobody had been told themselves by their elders or the elders of the elders. Basically, the good life, you were told, was to start after death. Life on earth is/was a serious business. Children had to grow up and be serious.
All I am saying, there is more, much more to life than all these serious grown-ups taught you and are teaching you in their ‘scientific’ treatises and philosophies, and the best way to discover your hidden-away-during-puberty childhood naïveté is to allow it to happen whenever possible – this is also where a memory of a childhood PCE can be hidden and new PCEs can and will happen.
Then a lot of puzzling question may fall in place of their own accord.
Cheers Vineeto