April 1 2025

ROY: I actually just found a quote from Peter that resonates a lot more with me…

That aligns much more with how I’m able to describe it.

Hi Roy,

Of course it would. Peter wrote what you quoted in January 2000, about 2 years after he first came in contact with Richard and actualism. Whatever understanding you and others draw from this quote, it is worthwhile keeping in mind that it is based on “a glimpse of the purity and perfection of the physical universe”, whereas what Richard writes is grounded in the 24hrs every day experience of an ongoing full appreciation of his own apperceptive sensate and reflective experience.

Hence the note written on top of this book review (and appropriate notes on each page of ‘Peter’s’ and ‘Vineeto’s’ writings and correspondences) –

Note: “Please note that Peter’s book review below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/ same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free.”

ROY: 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.

Of course, Claudiu and Richard describe pure intent as something more than what Peter describes – they both had overall more experiential expertise with pure intent than Peter in January 2000.

ROY: 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?

I am not cognisant of/have not found yet any specific description of a PCE you had. Would you be so kind to publish one so I can comprehend better what you are referring to when you say you “consciously experience reality in a “pure way” — as in without the usual constrains that result from normally experiencing life as a “self””. This way it will be much easier to compare notes, so to speak.

ROY: 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 marvellous/ wonderful — it’s that the ordinary is marvellous/ wonderful.

See, when you say “I don’t believe that the “universe” has any special force” you are really saying, I am not sure but I wish this to be true (belief at root = wishing to be true). That means you are open that it could be different. This is great – you are (perhaps) open to the possibility that –

Richard: The purity of life emerges from the perfection that wells up constantly due to an immense stillness which is utterly immense in its scope and magnitude. This stillness of infinitude is that something which is precious. It is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. This stillness happens as me. This stillness is my essential disposition, for it is the principle character, the intrinsic basis of everything. It is this universe at its genesis. It is not, as it might commonly be supposed, at the centre of everything ... there is no centre here. This stillness, which is everywhere all at once, is the be all and end all of life itself. I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being. (Richard’s Journal, Article Twenty-Five).

ROY: This neutral and indifferent universe contains an earth with marvellous abundance and our “self” prevents us from experiencing that.

Indeed, our “self” prevents us from experiencing that despite the “marvellous abundance” of this verdant and azure planet one perceives, like one’s elders did, that the universe is “neutral and indifferent” despite sometimes noticing the very “marvellous abundance”, which demonstrates that the universe is being benign and benevolent, conducive to life and growth, invigorative and dynamic – the very evidence of matter being “not merely passive”.

ROY: Once you are able to consciously experience that, it is incredible and life changing. Not sure if we are saying the same thing.

Yes, if by “consciously experience that” you mean “an earth with marvellous abundance”. However, I don’t know how you manage the miracle that a “neutral and indifferent” universe contains “an earth with marvellous abundance”? Is the marvellousness only a value/a perception that ‘you’ add and not intrinsic to the earth itself and therefore the universe?

The difficulty often is that the ‘self’ takes over after the PCE fades, so much so that the experience of pure consciousness is interpreted in, and overlaid with, the paradigm of ‘me’. That’s often unavoidable, and you only discover that this happened in the next PCE. But eventually you find out how to rememorate (revive in the memory) the flavour of the PCE (before reinterpretation by ‘me’) more and more and tie a connecting thread to this special flavour – this is the beginning of becoming acquainted with pure intent.

Cheers Vineeto

April 1 2025

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”!

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) –

SHASHANK: 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.

SHASHANK: 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.

SHASHANK: 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 tumour 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 tumour 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, Actual Freedom 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.

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).

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”.

I am very pleased you can see that.

*

So to pre-empt you experiencing me like another “wise one showing the student the way” 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 (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive, #apperception).

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