Intent, the generative impulse

What is intent?

In the series of books authored by Carlos Castaneda (view list), his teacher don Juan Matus describes intent as “the force that creates and animates the universe”.

Warriors know that intent is the abstract, the element that propels the warrior; intent is the flow of things, intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive; power; the force that permeates everything; intent is what makes the world.

Source: Creative Victory by Tomas

Intent is a faculty of the dreamer, and because the principal centre of communication between the dreamer and the dreamed is the heart centre, the heart is also the principal center through which intent is activated. However, it must be pointed out that pure intent is actually expressed through that centre in the head of which the manifestation is the pineal gland. Nevertheless, since it is only through the instrumentation of the heart centre that the pineal gland can be brought into activity, Toltecs look upon the activating of intent as originating from the heart, in the same way that true mind can only be accessed through the heart.

Théun Mares, The Toltec Power of Intent

Others have their own names for this force. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich! called it Infinite Intelligence. Some call it spirit. Industrial designer Edward Matchett adopted various names including media, Creative Action (he wrote a book with this title), and primal power of the cosmos.

It would be quite good to consider media along the lines of something seeking to manifest through us.

Anthony Blake, Director of Studies at The DuVersity, who knew and collaborated with Edward Matchett

View a list of related terms

I refer to intent as a generative impulse, but this is nothing more than a placeholder description. Intent is an aspect of primal world, where names, descriptions and definitions are absent.

The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the mother of all things.

Tao Te Ching

Intent’s two aspects

Intent has two aspects.

One is the originating aspect, which is concerned with initiating new creations.

The other is the fulfilling aspect, concerned with bringing these creations to fullness.

How the Newcreator becomes a channel for intent

The 147 assembly is analogous to a British three-pin electrical plug. Each pin has a specific function, but all three pins must be engaged for the plug to work.

What intent is not

Intent is not a declaration of personal purpose, which would be a rightside produced (right side of the body, left hemisphere of brain) concept of questionable generative potential. All Newcreators share the same purpose — manifesting intent — although each will do this in his or her own particular way.

Intent is unrelated to strategic intent (pdf), a management concept originated by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad. Intent precedes strategy. Strategy serves intent.

Intent is not the same as intention — see Intent versus Intention; Is there a difference? by Sheri Rosenthal.

Intent is not a resource for us to exploit for self-serving purposes. Rather, we incorporate it into our beings with it and act as a spokesperson for those who will experience the value, meaning and joy that will be generated down the track.

Although we can’t tell Intent what to do, Toltecs do invoke it and use it. I know that this seems to be a contradiction in terms. But since we are all part of the one universal life, if our purpose is the same as the purpose of the Infinite, then our command becomes the command of the Infinite. When this happens, we can align with Intent and utilize it in creating our life.

Sheri Rosenthal, Intent versus Intention; is there a difference?

What is intent’s purpose?

Intent does not have a purpose. Intent is purpose. We cannot know why intent does what it does — we can only know what it does. And what it does is seek to create the new and bring to fullness that which has been created.

What is the source of intent?

The source of intent is the unmanifest, the unknown and unknowable.

Intent at the impersonal and personal levels

Intent streams from the unmanifest into the manifest through the gap in time.

Nothing is continuous in the manifest realm, not even time.

“Even God’s clock goes tick tock.” —Alfred Karius

So what exists between the smallest units of time, between tick and tock?

Nothing.

Read more about the gap in time here: The truly new comes from nothing

Receiving intent: the radio metaphor

The human is something like one of those old radios that required an aerial (antenna) and an earth (ground) connection in order to function.

Faith is the tuning mechanism. When the Newcreator has Faith in the heart, Openness connects to intent’s originating aspect and Groundedness connects to the fulfilling aspect. This is how the Groundedness–Faith–Openness assembly (147) becomes a receiver of intent.

During an appearance on the television show BBC Breakfast, the acclaimed film composer David Arnold was asked how he goes about composing music. He replied: “You walk around with your aerials out and it gets delivered to you. It’s more about feeling it than thinking about it.”

Some others who have written about intent

Edward Matchett

Edward ‘Ted’ Matchett (1929–1998) was a pioneer in the field of industrial design and in the wider Now-to-New arena.

Ted was a design engineer who transcended the confines of industrial design to develop methods of creativity of astonishing spiritual genius.

Anthony Blake, The DuVersity | View source

Read more about Edward Matchett

In the First Edition of his book Creative Action, Matchett talks about Creative Action as something we might do.

Every human being has a creative potentiality greater than he can ever tap. The fact of material existence in a material world is the greatest of his constraints to true freedom. The limitations of his particular personality further inhibit his expression. At any one moment, his mechanical identifications can result in virtual enslavement by his circumstances, without the vision of a better future to which he might aspire.

Behind these apparent constraints to creative expression lie possibilities for freedom. Creative Action is the intelligent search for and proper use of such opportunities. When an opportunity is grasped, and responsibility taken, then the Action has its maximum effect. But Creative Action is really a continuous flow of creative acts; it generates a force that can heal divisions, make better use of all resources, solve urgent problems and bring more meaning into all achievements and pursuits.

By bringing forth people’s latent potentialities in a business, home or social situation, all kinds of breakthroughs become possible. The chief value of Creative Action is that it can bring about an understanding of the essential needs and priorities in a complex world, bringing as its fruits increased harmony and fulfilment. The principles can be summarised as follows:

Action extends consciousness, capability and attainment only where it involves a genuine personal sacrifice.

Action succeeds to the extent that it is needed by and benefits the community as a whole.

Action succeeds to the extent that it complements and gives direction to efforts, impulses, desires and concerns already existing within the immediate and wider community.

Action succeeds to the extent that people can identify with it: thus making that action the true extension or projection of themselves.

Action succeeds to the extent that the negative as well as the positive aspects of human nature are recognised and taken into account.

Action succeeds to the extent that it is a genuine service, well beyond the notions of “doing good”.

Action succeeds to the extent that it becomes at one with the primal creative process, which is active behind and within all the affairs of nature and of man.

Edward Matchett, The Principles for Creative Action, in Creative Action, First Edition (Turnstone Books, 1975)

In the Second Edition, Matchett describes Creative Action as a “stream” that “issues forth” from “the eternal realm”.

The Creative Action of the eternal has a latent, very definite, constant predisposition to produce meaning⁶ in whatever matter it meets and combines with. Its own nature demands this.

The Creative Action of the eternal always ‘issues forth’ in space-time on a waveband of meaning. Its own nature demands this too, and it must always remain true to that nature⁷.

Creative Action is utterly prolific: not obviously so in most of the works of man – these usually make little or no contact with it – but quite definitely so throughout the natural world where it drives and sustains everything, including the entire process of Evolution.

Creative Action can become the chief and constant component of all our ‘own’ work and play – and, when it does, all that we put our hands to thus gains a wealth of meaning and appropriateness.

We can learn to link with a stream of Creative Action so fully that it seems that all we think and do originates from within ourselves, rather than from the eternal realm. This degree of rapport and unification with Creative Action is exhilarating and deeply satisfying.

Source of the five statements: Author’s Introductory Comment, Creative Action, Second Edition (2010), by Edward Matchett | Read the full Introductory Comment elsewhere on this website

6. Matchett defines meaning as “that which makes life and work truly worthwhile”.

7. He is referencing his 5M equation: Appropriate form requires and demands that Media-plus-Matter be Made Meaningful in time dt {the immediate Moment we label ‘now’). dt (𝛿t) is delta time, which has two meanings, detailed here. For Matchett, delta time is not in fact “the immediate Moment” but rather the nothingness between two moments.

The Angels

What happened in Matchett’s life during the 35 years between the two editions that led to the shift from Creative Action as something we might do, to Creative Action as something that inspires, helps or even compels us to do?

The answer, at least in part, lies is his discovery of the book Talking with Angels, a collection of esoteric teachings given by four ‘angels’ in Hungary during the Second World War.

The English language version of Talking with Angels first appeared in 1988 and I have a photocopy of a handwritten index made by Matchett, so this is a plausible explanation.

These are some of the relevant themes running through the Angels’ teachings:

Our task is to become a conscious link between the created world (the manifest, actuality, matter, the temporal) and the creating world (the unmanifest, possibility, spirit, the eternal). The book’s explanatory diagrams (see here) led to the discovery of the seven creative powers.
Joy is our task. “There is only one certainty, and that is joy. Everything can be explained: joy has no explanation. We cannot explain why we are joyful. Joy is our task.”
In order to transcend the mundane, we must understand that matter, feelings and thoughts belong to “the world of opposites” (mundane world) and become aware of how they act in us.
We have a seventh sense: Light-Awareness (the sixth is what some might call intuition). Light-Awareness is the means by which we connect with intent and incorporate it into our beings. Read more about Light-awareness
Instead of fixing what is broken or rearranging what already exists, we must create the truly new.
Time is not what we think it is.

The gateway to the narrow path is: Omega – Alpha.
The one who passes through it bodily – in time – steps into death.
The one who passes through it spiritually – beyond time – steps into eternity.
Can you measure time between Omega and Alpha?
A fleeting instant ends – a new instant begins.
Between the two, there is no time.
BETWEEN THEM IS ETERNITY.
There is a gateway to eternity:
It opens not at the beginning, but at the end.
The Creator sets in motion
and the new instant is;
the old is no more.

AT THE DEATH OF EACH INSTANT
YOU CAN ENTER INTO ETERNITY,
INTO THE CREATING WORLD.
AND THERE YOU – YOURSELF – SET IN MOTION.

The Angels | Capitalisation as found in the book Talking with Angels | Read more here: The truly new comes from nothing

Further reading

Talking with Angels

The truly new comes from nothing

Carlos Castaneda

In the Carlos Castaneda books, don Juan describes intent as “the force that creates and animates the universe”. The term Divine energy also appears.

Here are some quotes:

In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.

The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable.

There’s no way to put a limit on what one may accomplish individually if the intent is an impeccable intent. Don Juan’s teachings are not spiritual. I repeat this because the question has come to the surface over and over. The idea of spirituality doesn’t fit with the iron discipline of a warrior. The most important thing for a shaman like don Juan is the idea of pragmatism.

Napoleon Hill

In his 1937 bestseller Think and Grow Rich!, Napoleon Hill uses the term Infinite Intelligence.

“Infinite Intelligence” is the term Hill uses to describe “God,” or “Divine Power,” or the “Supreme Being” at work in the universe and whose influence is felt everywhere within it. His conception of God, or Infinite Intelligence, is richly textured and multi-faceted. God, to Hill, is more than a divinely spiritual, personal, moral force. God is a source of intelligence, direct communication, and exchange of information—between the Supreme Intelligence itself and the individual, and even between individuals. It is clear that Hill writes primarily from a Judeo-Christian perspective, but his view of Infinite Intelligence is nonsectarian and widely encompassing. As you read the book, notice how Hill sees Infinite Intelligence at work in the lives of Jesus, Gandhi, and Mohammed, as well as in all individuals whose mental states are “attuned” to the power of Infinite Intelligence. Hill is never “preachy” about Infinite Intelligence and how one should respond to it, but to fully understand and utilize The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy, it is necessary to understand the part that Infinite Intelligence—God—plays in it.

Ross Cornwell, Endnotes, Think and Grow Rich! The Original Version, Restored and Revised | Download pdf—397 pages