1983-0603-First-Know-Thyself-Boulder-Colorado

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Title	1983-0603-First-Know-Thyself-Boulder-Colorado
Recorded date	June 3, 1983
Location	Boulder, Colorado
Number of tapes
Other recorders audible?
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Source	DW, SN. Rose Pub. ver is here: 1983-0603-Boulder-Colorado-commercial-recording
No. of MP3 files	All 3 versions including RP CD: 2 files: 31 min + 14 min.
Total time
Transcription status	First pass in process, Feb 2015
Link to distribution copy	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ (need password)
Link to PDF	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ Or try http://selfdefinition.org/rose/
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Remarks	This is only the first 45 minutes - where is the end of the lecture?
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URL at direct-mind.org	https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1983-0603-First-Know-Thyself-Boulder-Colorado
	For access to this wiki or the audio files please send an email to: editors@direct-mind.org
Revision timestamp	20240313124007

Notes

This is a fragment.

Versions: DM, DW, and Rose Publications all are only 45 minutes only

The title is taken from a poster Rose mentions in the lecture.

This recording is available from Rose Publications: richardroseteachings.com/audio.html

File 1

00:00 Well, I think they can see me better, but I can’t see the paper better.

I find this a very difficult subject to talk about. Not that I don’t think I know it thoroughly, but there’s a difference between knowing something – you don’t verbalize this when you learn it. It’s like having a hunch of which horse to play in the race; there’s no logic why you have that hunch, and it might be a correct hunch. And a lot of philosophy is more subjective than logical. That consequently, to produce something that a lot of readers or listeners would immediately react to on a logical basis, put you sometimes in a spot of trying to find the proper words to say something exactly that isn’t exact, and never is exact.

01:05

We have some posters they put out, and I think it’s on the tickets you have, it says “First Know Thyself”. And [when I was young] I thought this was hackneyed. Over used, trite, in philosophic circles. But yet when I was young - I’m going to get a little in my background so you’ll get an idea of – I don’t think it matters as much or any more of what I have to say than who I am. Because a man doesn’t learn as much as he becomes. And if you hear the process of what caused me to become, I think it’s more important than to read a book I have written which I could have hatched out of sheer cloth.

02:05

But I heard this when I was quite young, in religious circles: first know thyself, and I never paid any attention to it. I thought, “Who doesn’t know themselves?” And so it came up with tremendous importance when you finally know yourself. And so you go around telling other people, “Know yourself.” And they say, “That guy’s absurd. Of course I know who I am.” I had a fellow tell me one time – I said, “Well ho are you?” And he said, “I’m the guy who’s sitting in front of you.” But that’s his presumption. He had a projection of the guy who was sitting there

02:54

So I was sitting, talking a couple nights ago with some friends and a lady said to me, “Why is it so important that you’ve got to know yourself?” And I went home and I got to thinking about it and I thought, “There’s something here that I’ve overlooked.” And that’s the presumption that everybody knows what I’m talking about. But why do we go to a psychiatrist? It’s because we don’t know ourselves. And nobody ever bothers to question themselves in that direction until they have to go to a psychiatrist.

The other thing of course is anything we do in life, you go down you get a job and you’re hired in and you’re making pretty good money, and the next thing you’re fired. And you find some personality incompatibility, meaning that you projected. Now if I use words, incidentally, that you don’t understand what I mean – when I use the word projected I imply that the majority of people create a fantasy land in which they live, and they are part of the fantasy. The person projects. Like I’ve got a suit of clothes on – this is part of my projection. But it’s not quite as shocking as if I didn’t have anything on. But regardless, we put out this projection and we get to believing it.

04:22

Then we go through life with the pretense that everybody accepts us at that. We come in and a group of people set you down and say, “I don’t buy your projection.” They don’t say it in that many words, but they rebuff you.

And I use the little incident of falling in love. Young people are the people who project the most, because they’re full of romance and glamour and make-believe and all that sort of thing. They feel very keenly and very sensitively, and they have a beauty inside themselves. And they project a little world of their own, that that’s what it has to be, for that beauty to express itself.

So they go out and they fall in love. They project onto the woman, or the man if it’s a girl, qualities that that party doesn’t have. And they get married and maybe get pregnant, and a few months later they hate this party. They literally hate this character. Because there’s something behind the projection they never dreamed about. So they blame the party for not living up to this projection. And they know [find] sooner or later is the fault is their own. Because of wrong analysis. Because they didn’t know themselves.

05:50

So that the real meaning, the real reason for using that, first know thyself, is spiritual but it applies right down through the psychological field. Now we talk about success. You know. The keys and the mysteries that aid in a spiritual growth, the same things are applicable to every effort, ambition that you want in life You can’t be a successful businessman if you are kidding yourself. If you’re projecting something, you’re going to be rebuffed. Or people will just move away from you: “I can’t stand that fellow’s conceited opinion of himself.”

06:36

So the thing is that we aren’t basically – what we’re doing is we are basically lying to ourselves. And we take a step from there, that whenever you lie to yourself – in other words – I was talking to a fellow the other night. I don’t know what he wanted, but he was telling us how many people he had shot and how many Russians he had killed, and he blew up a little building of them to get a certain point. And of course I thought it was all phony, but nevertheless, what he wanted was acceptance. He was lying. All this stuff was lying, to cause the listeners to believe that this was a man. He hungered for recognition. He had lived too long in a mediocre job and he got into this business of bragging and lying.

07:31

And people very seldom stop to think that when you lie, you lie to yourself, basically. Because ultimately you get to believing it. Or you get to believing that other people believe it, which is the same as believing it yourself.

So this calls then for a sort of system by which you know yourself. You quit lying to yourself; you start backing off and looking. I written a few books back there [on the table] incidentally, and they’re the product of this observation of the self. And people, even a person who observes themselves is a dichotomy. Whether it’s for a spiritual purpose or for a for a psychological elucidation, it’s a dichotomy.

08:23

And we continue to split ourselves, even in the noblest of efforts, sometimes lying to ourselves, sometimes just excusing ourselves. But what follows from this – the philosopher becomes aware of this and he searches, and he calls it the search for truth. And I think this the most accurate thing [to call it] because I think it’s more important to search for truth than it is to search for God. Because God is [only] a word until proven; God is a word until met. Or perhaps God is a word until you become it. So what we’re doing is sort of double-talking ourselves out of really discovering anything. But we have no choice.

09:21 [volume very low in DM version, walks away from podium. Check RP version]

Now I have drawn some stuff up here, if you get a chance you can look at it. This is a diagram from the book, and I call it the observer. [which? Psychology of the Observer?] But this is what we’re stuck with. And there’s a fellow by the name of Hubert Benoit who wrote a book on this – alternate reality I think it was? – no, the Supreme Doctrine. But this I thought was very good. This [line AB] is the so-called linear thinking, the relative ?? Our thinking processes are polarity. Everything we do is polarity. It’s either good or bad. We can’t conceive of anything except – we search for the extreme, not the middle. If we want to define oxygen, it has to be pure oxygen. We don’t want a faulty chemical analysis. We want to get distinct opposites,

10:15

So we have black and white, good and bad, high and low, all this sort of thing. All of which in the final analysis don’t exist. But regardless, he pointed this out, that what you have here, with white and black, in between we have all shades of gray. And you only arrive at that by looking at it from another viewpoint; this is called the conciliatory principle. Now this is the whole pattern of living: somatic thinking, intuitive thinking, absolute thinking.

[back to microphone]

10:53

And the basic idea of taking – everything that we have in the polarity field, all of our legal systems, everything that we have in the line of legal systems, philosophy or anything else has to be objective. And after awhile you come to the conclusion that there is a more constant – this principle up here is more constant than the relative.

As long as we’re stuck in these relative definition systems, we can never find out what’s in the next dimension. Because we’re, it’s basically a bicameral thing and the next dimension doesn’t have our relative system of judgment. It may not have our time. Our time here is based upon the sun. So you get, if there’s a possibility of another dimension such as heaven you could presume that they might have 5 suns or none. So the time system would be entirely different. The whole system of looking at things would be different. So you’d have a different basis for your relative thinking, but it would still be relative thinking.

12:17

But what transcends this is the ability to rise above that so your thinking is absolute. [away from mic again] This is at the top here

[some inaudible, need headset]

somatic, we judge whether we want to eat an apple or a banana. We judge whether we want to get up and go out or stay in the house, whether we want to become a doctor or a lawyer. And so this [away from mic, inaudible] going on all the time we’re dealing with ?? And finally you become aware, or you develop a faculty? something called intuition, and then when you realize that you have hope of consciousness? ?? ?? intuition nothing more accurate than ??

umpire. In other words, your umpire is what causes the young soldier to throw himself on a hand grenade. By intuition he wouldn’t have been on the battlefield.

[back to microphone]

13:26

Well, anyhow, I wanted to – we are not going to hold this to an exact time; the card says 7 to 9, but if my wind lasts I’ll talk to you as long as you have questions to ask. And the same thing tomorrow. We have a seminar 1983-0604-Seminar-Boulder-missing-tape The seminar is listed for 3 hours, but I realize that this thing I have to cover is going to be difficult to cover in 3 hours.

So I’m going to run through, to give you some idea of, basically what I have to say is what I am. And so I want to run through, give you an idea of how I came about what I have to say. This will have a strong bearing of the different steps that change your thinking or let’s say proves it or makes it more complete.

Some of it – there’s a little paper they handed around. One of the boys [Mike] Treanor started to write a book on, a biographical book, and he got as far as that. We put it in the back of another book. [which book?] But it’s pretty accurate.

I started off when I was quite young with the idea that I wanted to know God; because my mother believed in God and I believed in my mother. She was a devout person, and I thought that if you’re going to trust anybody, this is the person you trust.

15:00

So I went away – I was born in a Catholic family and I went away to study to be a priest when I was 12 years old. And of course I expected that within a few weeks I would be talking to this fellow one-to-one. Because my intentions were good and I had lived the right life. I never pushed any ducks backward [in the water]

And so nothing happened, though. Except that I became more and more disillusioned with the good holy men that were trying to tell me something. I sensed that there was tremendous shallowness to the whole thing. And I got out by the time I was 17. I have never regretted it

15:49

I went back in fact – I didn’t go back but I have to tell you this, it’s kind of a sideline thing, to show you my reactions to my early training. I had heard – when I was in the seminary there was a priest there, what we called a, he was like a monitor, I think, I’ve forgotten the name – a prefect, they called him a prefect. And he was a nice guy, and quite and very compassionate. He put up with a lot of stuff from me, asking questions and being rebellious and that sort of thing.

So I left, and years later I found out that, I’m from West Virginia, and he was down in Charleston. I had heard he had a parish down there. In the meantime I had been married and was raising three kids. And I had also absorbed a tremendous lot of philosophy; I never stopped searching. Just because I had dropped out of that seminary it didn’t mean I stopped looking for God.

But I was looking for him externally, incidentally. And this is the tremendous mistake. I think sometimes that it’s good to search all by yourself, because you never get snowed, you never get taken, ripped off by some huckster. But by the same token, if you try to do it all by yourself you don’t have anything to compare.

It’s like if you go through the woods, you get a guide. He tells you where the rattlesnake dens are and that sort of thing. 17:22

save people some steps

Charleston. I was about 45, he was about 45-47

“What did you learn?”

“Do you know anything for sure?”

“Good, tell me about it.”

monastic buildings

you see that woodwork? At one time that was a tree

“Lo and behold we have the board”

“Man couldn’t have done it by himself.”

I might have been studying under this fellow all these years

“How about immortality?”

house burns down

this reminds me of Abbot and Costello

“Do you people read this out of a handbook?”

one of the boys died

“That ain’t Joe.” he must be someplace else

The dog must be someplace else too.

dangers I went through

min 22

I saw genuine materializations

never left a stone unturned

I would have gone to India if it wasn’t in the Depression

in India there is no steel industry

all they have is words

sometimes the greatest catalyst is your wife

min 23

21 years of age

pretty much of an atheist

rotten meat, but boty, when they sell you rotten religion

I got rather bitter

until 25

but I got into yogs

there were no books

read a little, then act

you are what you do

you are the act

brother killed during the war

he came back and talked to me

I was living in the night time rather than the daytime

when I got a few dollars I started travellian

bales of Rosicrucian literature

Masons

Radha Soami

Kirpal Singh

Eckankar

denied the Indian background

they didn’t charge

number, there is no price on religion

enormous rip off of thousands

min 27

if you could buy it for a million dollars

fracture a law

break that law inside your hhead

so you block it automatically

robes, trappings

altar boy, priest

I won’t sit still for them

intimidation

I don’t believe in is secrecy

book on Transmission and transmutation

but I’ve changed my mind since then

min 29

It’s perfectly alright if somebody has a tape recorder. I don’t care. Because if you don’t have this stuff in you, you’re not going to do anything with it anyhow. You can use this same thing to go out and make a success in your business if you wish to, if that’s all you want. But that to me is not the highest objective. But you’re welcome to it. And you’re welcome to the information.

Because you can’t use it unless you have a tremendous determination and a follow-up, of an output of energy. You just can’t wish this thing, and I can’t give it to you by pill or injection. So consequently, you’re welcome to take anything that’s going on.

30:12

But anyhow, I became a little bit, when my brother got killed [about 1942], I became a little bit more of a searcher again. [1942 – 1917 = at 25 years of age] I went back to the old drawing board. I got in touch with a Zen teacher [in 1960, 18 years later], and that was where I learned this thing of transmission. But I applied it years later. When I was 30 years of age …

[break in tape]

[side dw1 ends at 30:38]

File 2

[no loss in words

30 years of age I had giving up. I was losing my teeth and my hair

first class idiot, wasting your life and don’t have a thing to show for it

and these other people are behaving like good sheep in the pasture, maybe God was smiling at them

so I became pretty disgruntled and decided that I was going to get married, or have fun

So I got on the bus – I knew a girl in Seattle, Washington

I was going to marry her for her money. So I went out, and naturally it didn’t work out. because it was just a …

the reason I mention it is that it’s good to realize that if you’re – I made a commitment to find the truth. I think that’s all you have to do to find the truth is make a commitment

follow certain rules

truth – except for the judge: you should never stick your head in the guillotine

wherever possible speak the truth

above

we are like blind minnows in a black ocean

catch another minnow and communicate

piling up the data, putting it in the computer coming out with a collection of minnow wisdom

this is what happens

you’ll meet dozens and dozens of teachers and gurus

if they’re not truthful, you’ll waste 10 years of your life before you get wise to it

number one is friendship. If you can’t be a friend to a person you’re not worth listening to. And the second thing is to be as truthful as far as you possibly can; if ou don’t know something, say that you don’t know it

to Seattle

went out there with the intention of stealing, you might say.

fortunately we weren’t compatible and she threw me out. She said, “Get lost”

top blew off my head

I went out through the window

Cascade Mountains, they were snow covered at the time

when I came back I didn’t want to join the human race again

I had found out something that surprised me, contrary to all the Catholic teachings

and that’s what I found when I went over the Cascade Mountains; saw everybody that ever lived

when I came back I thought of suicide. There was water out there

see the pathetic life that everybody was leading. They were living a very pathetic life

I wept for days

but it wasn’t in the cards

I got a job on the atomic submarine

Here in Denver, National Jewish Hospital

streptomycin

I never worked at one place more than a year at a time

went into the contracting business because I’d have a new job every day, new people to talk to every day

they’d look at you like you were crazy. And at the time it happened I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t

Stuebenville I ran into an Italian minister and his wife

Three Books of the Absolute

just came out

never changed a word in it

showed it to [Bob Martin]

Yogananda, Kriya yoga

tears ran down his face, and he said, “Rose, I love you.” Don’t get the wrong idea; he was married and had kids.

he had done a lot of reading

What you had was sahaja samadhi

“Can’t you say it in English?”

this Italian lady in Steubenville

Richard Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness

history of people who hd this experience

I got married at 33 years of age, because I thought I was dead and nothing could hurt me, so why not get married?

it was a wonderful experience

she was smart, and left me

when I was about 49-50 years

egotism

“I have had this and you should listen to me.”

“I have had this and maybe I can help you.”

But when I was younger I don’t know whether I would have said that or not.

min 13

we are mud

[comment about 2nd tape recorder]

when you come back from this kind of experience

human animal, so to speak; carry out your program, what you were – in other words, these bodies are created for a certain purpose. And we hide the purpose

all the laws point in that direction. You steal your spirituality.

Gurdjieff, sly man

But if you have a direction, you can do all of that too, but you have to have a priority

Now these things apply in business too; you want to make a million dollars? Make a commitment to yourself that

but only within the framework of that which you’re supposed to do

“Do you know who George Washington?”

An he said, “Is his last name Damn?”

“he told me to tell you that you should give me your money.”

I use the word absolute.

Footnotes

End