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.

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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?

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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”!

VINEETO: 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>

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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.

VINEETO: 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).

VINEETO: 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”.

VINEETO: 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

May 1 2025

CLAUDIU: This reminded me also of what I saw recently which is that, I am a very driven person, it is how I tick – and this energy of being driven is precisely the level of energy needed to succeed with self-immolating! In other words it is not that I have to stop being driven, it is rather that I just re-direct that same energy itself in that same driven way, towards the task of enjoying and appreciating and self-immolating. …

ROY: … So with time my motivated and ambitious attitude seemed more and more to be the result of social conditioning (stemming from my life experiences) and less and less of genetic traits. But today, upon reflecting on this, I see that in fact I remain driven – simply in different aspects of life. This pursuit of a more happy and harmless way of being, all day, every day, even in the face of adversity, continues, for example.

VINEETO: Hi Roy,

Whilst it is useful to make a distinction between one’s social identity (one’s vocational, national, racial, religio-spiritual, ideological, political, class or caste identity, familial and sex/gender identity) and one’s genetic identity of the instinctual passions, it is advantageous to keep in mind that both categories of identity can be changed and ultimately abandoned. Neither is set in stone and neither does define you in your “pursuit of a more happy and harmless way of being, all day, every day”.

And that is wonderful.

ROY: But in general I have been questioning many aspects that I believed defined me. Do I believe myself to be driven? I think so, in relation to specific aspects, when I sleep well and am not sick. But is it an innate characteristic of mine? I have no idea. (…)

So the old recurring idea from self-help coaches — “find yourself” and “be true to yourself” – it’s all about the “self”… as if it were easy to know what it means to be “me”. That is… I know exactly what I feel “I” am, but I don’t know to what extent that is different from others. What, intrinsically, differentiates me from others? As I deconstruct beliefs about myself, what remains? The answer to “what makes me tick” seems to exist only in the context of my current circumstances, which keep changing and which I change along with them. (…)

VINEETO: It seems to me that because you believe that actualism is mainly to “deconstruct beliefs” you appear to be under the misconception that what is left after deconstruction is something you can define yourself as. Neither “self-help coaches” nor scientific psychological research can reveal what you are (devoid of identity) – this can only be experienced in a pure consciousness experience where the identity is temporarily in abeyance. There is no scientific research about this for two reasons –

1. Actualism is experiential not scientifical (for instance a ‘self’ and an absence of ‘self’ cannot be detected in a brain scan or any other medical scan) and

2. Because actualism is entirely new to human history, all researchers and scientists and self-help authorities are not only afflicted with the human condition as you are but also have no clue that a third alternative to either materialism or spiritualism exists. And actualism is not materialism.

ROY: I’m happy with that but using adjectives or anything to define myself, I may quickly end up using these to feed some story about me. Is there any problem with that? It depends on what purpose they are serving, I suppose. I want to perceive the world as it is, without being clouded by imagined stories about who I am and my place in this world.

VINEETO: This is exactly where sincere intent comes in – you are the one observing and investigating your psyche wherever it gets in the way of enjoying and appreciating being alive and this very intent (to be as happy and harmless as humanly possible) will aid you in recognizing when something is an imagined story or deceptive narrative instead of a fact. It’s like playing chess with yourself – on one side the identity programmed to keep the status quo and on the other side your sincere intent to feel good, feel excellent, be more naïve, more considerate, a friend to yourself and benevolent towards your fellow human beings. It’s a fun game once you get the knack of not putting yourself down for the tricks and deceits you discover or the negative traits and feelings you uncover in yourself. It’s all par for the adventure of a life-time.

ROY: I still believe it’s possible to have a direct perception without the existence of a self, that the reports are true – even the more mysterious ones, such as pure intent. It’s a belief, but I still believe there must be a scientific explanation for everything that doesn’t involved anything more than matter and energy. But I also recognize that there are limits to what I can discover through my conscious experience. That’s why I keep reading – because what I discover through my experience is limited to my experience. I shouldn’t draw conclusions about the universe based solely on my own experience. My experience may show me that the universe is benevolent, but is it really? What scientific basis is there to support that? Could that perception not simply come from the fact that I descend from creatures that evolved to benefit from this world? Just as it turns out it’s not the sun that revolves around the earth, but the earth that revolves around the sun – could it be that the universe isn’t benevolent toward me, but rather that I evolved to benefit and prosper in it?

VINEETO: It is essential to understand that actualism is not materialism – it is experiential – and experiential of a world outside of ‘I’/ ‘me’, the actual world. Ultimately you cannot understand the actual world when applying the template of the real world – materialism.

You had some experiences which you wondered if they were PCEs or not. Now after experimenting with the actualism method for a good while you again want to know for a fact if “the reports are true – even the more mysterious ones, such as pure intent”. The only answer for this will be in a clear unequivocal PCE, where you yourself can say with certainty – ‘this is the world I have been reading about on the AFT, this is how I want to live for the rest of my life, this is indeed magical’.

Unfortunately, you have presently all but closed the door to such a confirmation when you say “what I discover through my experience is limited to my experience” – this way you pre-emptively doubt whatever you will experience.

When feeling being ‘Vineeto’ first learnt about an actual freedom – and had barely a clue what this meant, ‘she’ passionately wanted to have a PCE to find out, ‘she’ became obsessed with having one happen, ‘she’ thought about it in ‘her’ free time for several weeks – and then it suddenly happened (A Bit of Vineeto). It was shocking in its ramifications of how incomparably different the actual world was to the real world and it gave ‘her’ the necessary certainty to whole-heartedly move forward.

I can recommend to suspend both belief and disbelief for this investigation. Frequent Question No. 64a, particularly the very last paragraphs on that page is a good place to start and also Richard’s text on ‘Sensuous’ in the AFT Library. It also relates to Richard’s first sentence where he explains the actualism method –

Richard: Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

Actual time is entirely different to the real-world time of past-present-future.

There is more on this topic in case you are interested. I wish you success in your experiential inquiry into actuality.

Cheers Vineeto