The term ‘pure’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct but related axes, each carrying significant theoretical weight. In the Platonic inheritance — most elaborated in the Philebus and Timaeus — purity denominates a quality of pleasures, knowledge, and forms: ‘true pleasures’ are those ‘unalloyed with pain,’ and ‘pure reason’ asserts its sovereign action by refusing subordination to sensory limitation. This epistemological register links purity to authenticity, unmixedness, and proximity to essence. The I Ching tradition, as rendered through Wang Bi and Liu I-ming, mobilizes purity cosmologically: Qian as ‘Pure Yang’ and Kun as ‘Pure Yin’ articulate the generative polarity underlying all change and transformation. In Aurobindo, purity characterizes the condition of consciousness that has shed mixed or dependent engagement — the ‘pure self-awareness’ dissolved back into pure being — a usage resonant with Govinda’s Tibetan Buddhist formulation of ‘pure, white’ Mirror-like Wisdom in Aksobhya’s field. The alchemical literature invokes the ‘pure Tincture’ as the distillate of transformative work. In pharmacological-clinical contexts (Grof), ‘pure LSD’ marks a methodological control condition. What unifies these deployments is a persistent logic: purity signals the removal of admixture, distortion, or contaminating dependency — whether epistemic, cosmological, psychological, or material — and marks proximity to an originary or essential state.
Qian [Pure Yang] means strength and dynamism [jian]; Kun [Pure Yin] means submissiveness and pliancy
Wang Bi’s commentary establishes purity as a cosmological predicate, naming the two primal trigrams ‘Pure Yang’ and ‘Pure Yin’ to signal their unalloyed, archetypal natures as poles of all transformation.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994thesis
True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour and form… of which the want is painless and unconscious… unalloyed with pain.
Plato distinguishes ‘true’ or pure pleasures as those unmixed with pain, establishing purity as an epistemological and axiological criterion for evaluating experiential states.
, Philebus, -360thesis
the argument has all along been seeking a parallel to pleasure, and true to that original design, has gone on to ask whether one sort of knowledge is purer than another, as one pleasure is purer than another.
Plato extends the criterion of purity from pleasures to forms of knowledge, arguing that degrees of purity correspond to degrees of certainty and proximity to truth.
, Philebus, -360thesis
Reason, on the other hand, asserts its pure action, when accepting our sensible experiences as a starting-point but refusing to be limi[ted]
Aurobindo identifies ‘pure reason’ as reason’s sovereign mode — transcending mere phenomenal description to assert an autonomous, non-sense-dependent grasp of being.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being.
Aurobindo posits ‘pure being’ and ‘pure self-awareness’ as the deepest condition of Infinite Consciousness, a state in which all differentiating knowledge dissolves into unmixed, luminous self-subsistence.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
the pure, white (Vatrocana-like) light of the Mirror-like Wisdom, in which the forms of all things are differentiated… the pure, spontaneous awareness (the spontaneity of ‘satori’ in Zen-Buddhism)
Govinda identifies pure light and pure spontaneous awareness as the hallmark of the Mirror-like Wisdom in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, linking purity to unobstructed, impartial consciousness.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
Solomon tells us in his Song that its inner dwelling is not far from the navel, which resembles a round goblet filled with the sacred liquor of the pure Tincture.
John Pordage’s alchemical-mystical text, cited by Jung, uses ‘pure Tincture’ to designate the quintessential spiritual substance produced by the opus, located at the body’s sacred centre.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
pure intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second; to the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of shadows
Plato’s Republic assigns ‘pure intelligence’ to the highest epistemological register, establishing purity as the defining quality of intellect’s most direct contact with the Forms.
, Republic, -380supporting
for any single class to be left by itself pure and isolated is not good, nor altogether
Plato complicates the valorization of purity by suggesting that pure isolation — of pleasures or any faculty — is itself a deficiency, pointing toward necessary mixture as the condition of the good life.
, Philebus, -360supporting
pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor yet the second, but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable, and the like, the eternal nature has been found.
The Philebus places measure and proportion above pure pleasure in its hierarchy of goods, contextualizing purity within a broader normative structure.
, Philebus, -360supporting
only 126 were treated with pure LSD; the o[ther subjects were exposed to illicit substances of unknown composition]
Grof employs ‘pure LSD’ as a pharmacological control term, distinguishing pharmaceutically verified substances from uncontrolled street samples in clinical research design.
, LSD Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine, 1980supporting
the evidence that pure LSD causes chromosomal aberrations is rather problematic and inconclusive.
Grof notes that even in controlled clinical contexts the effects of pure LSD on chromosomal integrity remain methodologically contested, using purity as a variable in genetic risk assessment.
, LSD Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine, 1980aside
Kun (Pure Yin, Hexagram 2)… Kun (Pure Yin [Earth, Mother] Trigram)
The index to Wang Bi’s Classic of Changes consistently glosses Kun as ‘Pure Yin,’ affirming the canonical status of purity as a designator for the fundamental cosmic principles.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside