Defining-the-Truth
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PART 1
Source: http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-09.html#2
TAT Journal Issue 9
PART 2
Source: http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-14.html#4
TAT Journal Issue 14
Part 1
Defining the Truth (Part 1) by Richard Rose
including
The Grand Work of the TAT Society
Defining the Truth by Richard Rose
Most serious-minded people talk about the "Truth." But they take it for granted. They never get down to setting up measurements by which to gauge the Truth so that they will realize it when they hear it. They presume to be able to recognize it, and some go as far as to presume to be the fortunate possessors of it.
The Truth is a path more than a realization of measurability. The scientist feels that he is a pursuer of Truth, but the products of the scientific laboratory are more likely to be cannons and culture rather than inklings of the first cause or man's picture of ultimate destiny. And the same scientist who may be trying to crack the atom or split a chromosome, may privately have massive rationalizations about religion, personal definition, or personal destiny. So that he is a mechanical seeker, but not an entire and dynamic seeker,—even though he functions mechanically in his scientific quest much more valuably than most of humanity.
Truth is a path because it is never fully realized, and because many aspects of the search for Truth remain relative. Man is a being whose consciousness depends upon fickle senses and a mind largely capable of witnessing in a relative manner, and largely incapable of direct knowledge.
Truth may well be absolute in nature, but to bicameral man with the necessary bi-polar survey of all things,—a definition of absolute or abstract things or states may be readily seized and accepted in relative form, that is, with relative and possibly equivocal words.
Every last one of us thinks we are right. Which means that we think we have the Truth or that if we do not have it, no one else will do any better. But everyone has a different definition of it. And with this different definition upon the minds of men, we have a subtle, unseen Tower of Babel which stands between the minds of men so that they cannot strive together. There is much talk of the brotherhood of seekers for Truth, but this brotherhood is split up into myriad groups with no common language or understanding. And all of this is because they presupposed, a priori, that which they expected Truth to be, and so defined it, rather than sought it for whatever it might be when found.
The Bible indicates that we should seek if we wish to find. Yet with equal authority Christ exhorts us to believe in Him if we wish to be saved. Now finding the Truth and being saved may be two entirely different projects, but believing is not compatible with seeking. The believer does not seek; he accepts that which another extends.
And with this bit of ambiguity the Christian world, for one, is hampered in honestly seeking for Truth. Lazily each sect rests upon a belief rather than upon a conviction. They comfort one another with the mutual back-scratching, and make decrees to the effect that other religions are worthy seekers also, but perhaps less fortunate. They comfort their congregation and financial supporter by telling them that man was never supposed to learn the True nature of things, and dumbfound the mind with the cliché that the finite mind will never perceive the infinite.
It cannot be that terrible. Absolute Truth is not absolutely inaccessible to us, and relative truth is definitely accessible. We must desire the Truth, and have a capacity for it else we could not receive it even if it came to us by accident.
We cannot shut our mind to any phase of reality, and still have a capacity for Truth in another field. For if we rationalize about one thing, then rationalization may well be a mental habit cooperating with our laziness or desire-thinking, and we are liable to rationalize about vital things. We cannot lie to ourselves in little things, or what we consider little things, and still be competent to receive knowledge of that which we admit to be more vital or more important. The divergences of beliefs among men, whether these beliefs be religious, philosophic, or political, are not an indication of the infallibility of the masses nor of justification for the idea that everyone is correct to a degree. We like to think that the divergent observer is just looking at Truth from another or oblique angle. And rather than solve the problem, the divergent parties democratically vote everyone to be correct.
These procedures make for compatibility and social harmony, but they put the mind to sleep. We are either right or wrong. And if we are honest with ourselves and true to ourselves we do not wish to wait for twenty years to outgrow a religion. It is our sacred right as profaned animals to understand our state. It is our sacred right to doubt and to question. It must remain our valued trust,—that we trust no authority. We must listen and sit down with an occasional book, but any acceptance should be tentative until we have a complete picture.
When I say that we are either right or wrong, I am speaking of relative truth-seeking. In the absolute state, things may well be neither right or wrong, or both. And while we aspire to an absolute state, and to absolute Truth, it remains doubtful if we will ever attain the absolute Truth if we compromise relative truth, or shut our eyes to reality.
Let us not pretend to be seekers while we remain addicted to vanity or enslaved to conventions. Likewise we are living a lie when we dedicate years or decades to the pursuit of pleasure or ambition, when in the honest analysis, we can find no valid gain for our search. And when we are guided by fear or emotion to accept a creed, we have neither a chance for truth nor an honest self-identification.
Many people have found reality for the first time in the depths of alcoholism, or drug addiction, or rather, have found reality after passing through the depths. They managed to become alcoholics because alcohol alone, or drugs alone, made it possible for them to live with massive rationalizations in the form of religion or social mores, from which their inner intuition rebelled.
We live in a cloud of illusions. We cling to them, legislate them in our councils, create and deify them in our religious dogma, breed them into our children, and rarely realize that we are spinning this web of fiction for all the hours and days of our lives unless we are fortunate or unfortunate enough to die slowly. I was shocked the first time I heard a priest at a funeral pray that all of those present might be granted a slow death. For a moment I thought him a barbarian carrying to the extreme his cult of masochism. But perhaps that slow death may be the only moments of reality for the total life of many earthlings. Because a dying man is forced to face the fact that he is about to become zero, and the pseudo-comforts that promised glorious lights, trumpets and escorting angels, now have no meaning. All that the dying man knows is that he is about to begin to rot. Nothingness has more meaning to him, and embodies his world of reality more than all of the religions and clichés of a human-animal philosophy eternally cursed and confounded by language and its deceptions.
This dying man knows too late the value of the doubt, and the foolishness of faith unless that faith be in his own power to solve the problem or cut the Gordian knot. Blind faith is only rationalization. It is the little pig that does not wish to grow up, and procrastinates weaning. It is the weakling-child that replaces sturdy effort with boasting and lies of pretended achievement. The most fanatical and dangerous (that is recriminatory) type of religious zealot is the one that would make a political cause out of his favorite religion, rather than go through the effort to make his life a true religion of Search. There is but one Truth. To equivocate for the sake of social compatibility is to sell our spiritual nature for cowardly bargaining with the herd, when the bargaining is not necessary. For ages the wise men have served notice that we must remain inconspicuous, and this silence will help avert the teeth of the herd. But unless someone occasionally speaks up, the sincere will have no encouragement.
We might ask here, "How shall we know the Truth?" "What is Reality?" We can only know the Truth by teaching ourselves to face the truth in all things. If we encourage our computer to come up with erroneous answers, because they are more desirable, then we are developing a computer that we may never be able to trust.
Let us take examples in social experience. Many of us, and many people we know employ incomplete formulae to govern their lives. After decades of misery they realize that they were lying to themselves. The decades would usually be prolonged but the person's friends become alienated, or they continue until some disastrous climax brings the truth into focus. This distress is usually caused by inadequate or incomplete assessment of the general picture of life.
We have the young bully who thinks that he is invincible. Repeated conquests have led him to believe that kindness is a sign of weakness. He may even believe that he is a gigantic avatar sent by the gods to boot the peasants of the earth into line. He does not bother to find out what line the gods want him to follow, for in reality it is his line.
The bully will eventually be rebuffed. Someone will change his philosophy with the same convincing-force he meted out to others. His sadism will become inverted and he will see that he did not even have half of the picture of his destiny. But he may have rationalized half or three-fourths of his life away trying to be a bully before he relents and admits that he has little sure destiny except the all-conquering grave. And by the time he relents and realizes, it is too late for his brutalized brain to ponder anything beyond the grave.
Everyday we meet people who admit that they have been fooling themselves for years. They are generally up in years, and will be found more frequently in ale-houses than in churches. Instead of group-therapy, the churches specialize in mass-make-believe.
It is difficult to prescribe a conduct of Seekers of Truth. But Truth is that which is. A person who dyes his hair or wears a wig is not truthful. A person who wears clothes other than to cover himself is not truthful. A person who uses cosmetics except for comedy, is not truthful. The naked body with its tell-tale wrinkles, its sagging folds of fat, bowed legs, and collapsing organs, may be much more conducive to Truth than years of church-attendance, if we just observe in it our unglamorous destiny.
I am not advocating nudity since nudity may well be a rationalization or excuse to emphasize the urges of the body. Yet it is hard to tell which would do the worse for our salvation (enlightenment),—a parade of undyed nudes or a parade of vain clothes-horses on Easter Sunday.
Much of our religion is vanity. We clothe ourselves in it and strut about as if to mock the feathers of our neighbors. Too many of us think that we have chosen the true religion by virtue of our better intellect. We even manage to glorify ourselves by manifesting compassion for those who are less concerned with such toys as missionary work and conversion. We will carry a badge to show our superior position. The badge will be a quotation from the Bible, a talisman, a secret word, water on the head, or a missing foreskin.
What do we know for sure? We know very little. We find ourselves to be a rotting body, with thoughts and hope for something more permanent. Yet like children, we deck the body with importance, even as we vainly embalm the corpse to delay the truth. I am reminded of the case of the Narcissist, a woman who always wished to be a nun. She maintained that she was living for God, and that she was remaining pure for Him. In reality she was remaining pure because she abhorred change and aging. But her grand rationalization carried right through until her death. She refused a doctor out of modesty, and the result was a slow death. This woman never seemed to contemplate that God might have intended for her to reproduce. We evince the most blatant egotism when we announce that we are doing something for God. We who are not able to identify ourselves are about to oil the eternal mechanisms.
Let us look at this woman with candor. Let us just see that which she is. We will not presuppose that God created her, or that God is even around or concerned. This we do not know. But we know that she has been born with female organs, and feminine instincts to promote her female functioning. The prompting of those instincts, and the uncontrollable cycles imposed upon her by nature have become evil things or sins. She feels responsible for the hormones that might find their way into her blood, or the consequent thoughts that might find their way into her thinking. She lives a life of self-recrimination and confession in never-ending apology for having a body that she did not ask for, and which may have been created by agencies who are more responsible for it than the sufferer.
Again we do not denounce this unfortunate lady. Her tactic was her only means available to seek a better existence. She saw only a facet of the picture, and thought she had found the only door in the universe. She was a seeker in her own way, and her death-ordeal testifies to her intensity. But we cannot help but feel that her dynamic energy was wasted somewhat, and that the waste lies at the feet of the priest-union that preferred to let her make a life of sincere effort and tangential uselessness, out of what may have been a more articulate and understanding seeker. The priest-union preferred this to making an admission concerning the relative importance of moral teachings.
The purpose of this example is to show that it is possible for persons to follow a diligent tack all through life, which tack is absurd to minds of most other observers. It is possible that similar zealots find themselves on these life-long tangential paths because somewhere early in their lives they formed a fabric of rationalization rather than face reality.
That which is believed by the majority of humanity is not necessarily the truth. This is a common error, man makes. Man thinks that if everyone or the majority of people believe a thing, that popularity makes it the truth. At one time the universal concept was that the sun revolved about the earth. At one time the thinking or scientific world had a "phlogiston" theory which was later dissipated.
Faith can change material things to a limited degree only. It did not render the earth flat nor did it arrest the cycles of the sun. If the sun danced at Fatima it would have involved motions for that star which would not only have been noticeable elsewhere, but would have required that the sun travel at fantastic speeds out of its regular position. So that while millions of people may believe that the sun danced at Fatima, it is equally valid to offer or to believe that the minds of the viewers were simultaneously hallucinated, or hypnotized. I do not mean to imply that the hypnosis was caused by human agency, necessarily. Religious leaders when weary of their theological diggings, resort to edict and dogma. The scientific world, while more laborious, is prone to lean heavily upon its "concepts" and "theories," and much of the engineering in new fields treats these theories as fact by virtue of habit.
Again let us return to the observation of the two apparent' types of truth. There is actually only one real Truth, but too soon we must admit that real Truth is absolute and ideal in nature. We are apt to coin another word, "relative truth," for want of a better word to express our attempts to calibrate validity with a relative and restricted mind. It is better to understand that while searching for the Truth we will believe things that we will later no longer believe to be the truth, and this previous state of appreciation I would prefer to call incomplete truth, leading perhaps eventually to absolute Truth.
The human family is constantly finding things to be more true or less true. It is finding more perfect material formulae, and is discarding inefficient or erroneous formulae. If it can apply this weeding-out process to the vast tangle of metaphysical and religious formulae, it will begin to make progress.
The human family has been in the past in the habit of accepting ideas or spiritual concepts without even a half-hearted attempt to set up a formula. We know nothing of life after death, of the nature of our own essence, or of the motivating agencies of the visible or invisible worlds. The human family for centuries has just accepted that which sounded good or quieted their fears and made the children more tractable.
Our civilization has come to a point where we know about quality and demand that our food contain certain qualities, and that those who handle it do so with clean hands. But that admittedly most valuable food which is spiritual, too often comes from mountebanks, misfits, and often degenerates who know that their pretense may never be challenged, or their venality exposed. Modern society accepts religions that render compatibility, that keep down crime, and that work in harmony with the state.
We are allowing ourselves to be tortured by our clergy, even as the witch-doctor applied the needle of fear to keep his sinecure, in primitive cultures. The clergy maintained darkness for centuries with their "Anti-modernistic Oaths," or equivalents of such. They were not concerned with the laity, who over those centuries were reacting with more mature common-sense. While unable to deny that their function was that of a hammer, they maintained that God was the hand that swung the hammer. Generally if the peasant questioned the identity of the swinger of the hammer, he received a blow from the hammer.
[Illustration: "The Tower of Babel casts its shadow on all levels. We are dissembled and mute."]
A new trend now is growing. The men of science and the beatniks who proclaim their own common sense, have united to admit that God is dead. The new trend has no more validity than the old one. Yet, we may take a note. If the existence of God in the minds of men may be maintained by faith or belief, then denial or belief of non-existence may bring an end to God,—if God has no more existence than in the minds of men. We must seek for that which is, and we will find that such facts are indestructible and not dependent on belief or human acceptance.
There is but one way to begin and promote such a search. It is the sorting of the most likely answer from the oceanic froth of data. It requires courage, diligence, perseverance and an open mind.
The Grand Work of the TAT Society
It has been my privilege to know, at different times in my life, three enlightened people. Besides those three, I know of several more whom I did not meet, but became aware of their depth of Spiritual awareness or their claim to have reached some enlightenment, by writing to them.
I found a common denominator in my association with all of these people, and that was that we could not work together. I considered Spiritual Work to be the most important human function, and I am sure that they did also. But privately all of them knew that we could not find a common language, nor could each find a common ground for working together in what appeared to be necessarily highly individualized systems or paths of teaching, and sometimes we could not even find a good method of just keeping in contact and exchanging ideas.
This knowledge made me feel very desperate and determined to do something about it. After all, are we not all working for the same goal, which is Truth, or for the Absolute, if the Absolute is found through a search for Truth?
There are millions of people looking for the Truth through established religions, and they profess that they are equating Truth with God. And the world is continually dismayed to find religious wars by millions who profess to be killing for the "true God." They do not know that they are killing for the "true God," they merely believe or have faith. And we can probably write off their isms, noting that they will not get anywhere until they quit believing and start seeking.
But there are hundreds of thousands who have turned away from blind faith, and have joined some esoteric, metaphysical or occult group in the hopes that this group will be recognized (by its fruits) as a bona fide method of searching and seeking. And in this smaller group of people we find that it is really a loose conglomerate of many cults, smaller still, each of which has a language and method peculiar to itself. Divisiveness is the chief denominator of these groups also. Some of this divisiveness is caused by financial competition, or the campaign for membership that sometimes involves one movement stating its claims in such superlatives that any future demonstrations for tolerance by its leaders or writers for other movements would imply the other movements might be worthwhile.
We go on to the highest form of Spiritual Work, the Realization of the Essence of Man. The final definition of man. And with this definition,—the realization of ultimate and absolute definitions of the nature of everything visible. This last sentence is included in this level of work because of the testimony of those who claim to have reached self-definition. The claim is that self-definition brings with it the definition of all things, and a realization of the Nature, or Absolute, or God, behind all things.
And this third category, whose membership involves no more than one in a million people if we are to believe Richard M. Bucke, has likewise no harmony between its members. The Tower of Babel casts its shadow on all levels. We are dissembled and mute.
Over a period of many years I tried to do something about this Spiritual Babel. I traveled back and forth across the country visiting people, temples, ashrams, and prelates of established churches. Everywhere I met the same smiles of patient condescension that indicated that I had just not reached their level of understanding yet. I received this attitude regardless of the level from which the person came. They did not bother to ask me about my level; each felt that there was only one church,—one spiritual path,—and one level and that was the one with which they identified themselves.
I did not give up. In 1956 I placed an ad in a magazine that was published for people of occult interests. I received hundreds of answers, and almost each represented a different tangent than the others. It was discouraging, but I still learned a lot from those letters.
For instance, I have just named three major categories of seekers. The first might be called the Believers. The second group, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands, might be called the Investigators. This second group are really trying to use their heads. They are very sincere, usually, but they spend entire individual lives in a single investigative search, such as Magic, Astrology, Trance Work, Yoga, Astral Projection, or in the examination of any or all of the gimmicks that come out of the East packaged as holy merchandise.
The third category we might call the Becomers. These people go in for ways to find the Truth by processes which usually involve a change of state of mind and this in turn leads to a change of being. Those who have reached enlightenment, (the word being synonymous with Sahaji Nirvakalpa Samadhi, an attainment of an Absolute state or ultimate trip) all equate that acquisition or realization with a necessary change of being. Man does not discover the Truth. He becomes the Truth.
I learned that you cannot just put people into these categories and pigeon-hole them securely. They infiltrate different levels and tend to convey naïveté if they are reaching upward into a group beyond their complete understanding, and they convey unwarranted encouragement if they reach down to a group that may use their name and reputation to further the aims of a lesser group.
But the most unfortunate thing that I learned was that truly enlightened people, are still confused about proper communication with those on lower levels, and this communication uses such poor systems or vehicles for conveying their instruction as to proper methods for attaining higher consciousness,—that the general enquirer often winds up doubting that the person is enlightened at all because of the latter's preoccupation with what is often a waste of time.
Paul Wood was one of the men whom I met, who convinced me that he was truly enlightened. However, his system was discouraging to almost everyone he met. He insisted upon having people repeat and study the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer is basically part of the structure of organized Christianity, which is identified as being in the group called Believers. Now the strange truth is that Paul himself came upon his Realization while clinging to the Lord's Prayer for counsel and guidance. He had an opening of the mind as a result. It seems only fair to assume that if Paul is going to transmit, it will be done by the same leverage that was used upon him. But this is not true... each man blossoms from a different catalyst. The only thing that enlightened men have in common is that which they find. So that it is better to encourage the inward search, without demanding to find for the student an exact formula or discipline. Likewise, we are saying that we should pursue the search, which process may be helped by creating conditions that will help anyone regardless of their unique catalysts. These conditions include the conscious effort to bring people together, and to provide retreats or ashrams for meditative purposes.
Katherine B., a lady who had experienced Cosmic Consciousness, approached me twenty years ago, enquiring as to that which she could do with her Realization. We have another case of genuine Realization, but accompanied by no direction or method. She was overwhelmed with the urge to now become a healer. She knew that no one would listen to her advice unless she met them on some sort of sensational basis, and exuded some sort of dynamic purpose and compelling language. She argued that she would attract attention with her healing, as Christ did, and then give out her advice in the form of a devotional message. I could not find myself in that type of picture and our correspondence ended. She was a living, walking example of a person who has experienced all of life and death, and who is now walking amongst us. But, this person cannot make herself properly understood, nor can she work with people on the "Becomers" level. She too is back in the "Believers" section, because she is talking of healing through faith.
We can see where the highest of levels can become once more entangled with lower levels and lose their importance. There are also many individuals who have reached the highest experience, but who despaired all their lives about communication, and did not ever communicate. I was one of these people until I accidentally met some energetic young people who pledged themselves to work at the grand task
We can add more confusion to the problem when we realize that enlightenment is not the property of any particular level alone. Some Believers, like St. Theresa, and John of the Cross, penetrated their level and transcended it. The Kabbalists are Investigators whose literature gives evidence that some of them may have reached an ultimate formula. And on the other hand, many of those who join a cult aimed at Becoming, often get side-tracked in preconceptions of what they think Becoming should be for them rather than allowing themselves to change in response to the inevitable refinements of Truthfulness, and the parallel labor of constantly retreating from untruth.
And so we, as a group, set ourselves a task. We realize that we must make available, if possible, more advantage than that which brought us forth from ignorance, and uncertainty. The task lies in attempting to find better and better ways to reach into all levels or groups for the purpose of bringing fellows together. The aim is not gregariousness, but the sharing of many experiences that took many lives in the gathering. The aim is also the making available of the function of transmission for those who might recognize the usefulness of such.
The TAT Society undertook this in 1973, to bring together, in a sort of Chautauqua, people from all levels and experiences, so that people could meet other people of like and also of different interests. We speak of a Spiritual Ladder, and a Law regarding it. How can there be a ladder without rungs? While we know that we cannot function expeditiously on all rungs, and also know we can function at best on three, (the one we are on, the one above to which we look for advice and teaching, and the one below where we can help others without too much risk) we can still help someone on the rung below who in turn needs to work on still a more basic rung to help still more people. To provide people for all these opportunities needed to fulfill the Law of the Ladder we must be prepared to bring together people of all those many levels.
Of course, you cannot go out into the crossroads and drag in, or allow in, everyone who wants to mingle. There must be some fundamental purpose in each besides being involved socially. And each must abide by certain simple rules. No one should make a pest of himself, and no one should bring alcohol or narcotics to the meetings, in their body or on their body.
I know that many people who know of this effort of ours will minimize its importance, saying that things like this should be left to chance or gravity, or indicating that we can easily contact fellows of like interest through the many media whenever we wish.
It is true that we can advertise and get large responses. But it is another thing when we try to communicate with hundreds of people for the purpose of sorting out two or three that we can work with. I have been honestly trying to bring these various esoteric factions together for forty years, and in the first thirty-four years was able to meet only about a dozen people, who appeared to be in agreement with the idea of cooperation.
In the last six years I have been fortunate in meeting at least a hundred people who are in agreement. Part of this success has occurred because of a miraculous decade that began around 1965, and is now ending. The pendulum is swinging back into another long era of dormant, established religions, pressing against anything that appears less than that which is currently defined as being conventional. Esotericism has already been assailed as being the pastime of sinners, atheists and degenerates. And many of the cults that herded together under the banner of transcendentalism and esotericism, have rightly earned for themselves, and for the whole field of esoteric investigation, the criticism and disdain of the public.
We are returning to the dark days of forty years ago. The alchemist, kabbalist and mystic must once more become inconspicuous. And this is going to make it harder for mystic to find mystic, or for sage to find students of worth.
The job is upon us and it is worthwhile. The job is to encourage membership in the TAT Society, and to prepare at the farm, a better place for them to meet.
[End part 1]
Defining The Truth (Part 2)
by Richard Rose
THE DRIVE BEHIND ALL SPIRITUAL AND ESOTERIC searching is the fear of death. And that fear itself is not caused by our own deductions or determinations. Like any other being in the animal kingdom, we are programmed to fear. Pain and the fear of death are preservers of life. But it is a life without quality, if we must be tortured in order to serve out an unexplained sentence, chained in the cave of Plato.* We do not cause ourselves to fear. All creatures, insects, animals, mice and men are programmed to react with fear. Animals likewise are programmed to desperately try to avoid being killed. We may think that they are merely trying to avoid injury, when they flee from predators, but personal observations will show deeper potentials for animals in the realm of thinking and awareness.
- Plato's Republic
Protoplasm itself is programmed to avoid death, or else it would not have been endowed with antibodies for diseases, the ability to heal its wounds and clot the flowing blood. Protoplasm is an example of extremely astute engineering. Which each jackass views as his own possession, even though his own knowledge is incapable of providing self-protection or self-healing. He has to depend upon factors unknown to himself to keep him alive each day.
Man is better endowed than animals. His endowments are discovered by an ever-evolving technology. Yet all of the magnificent technology may only be a distraction for that which might be an even better technology,—the work on a science of the beginnings and limits of his consciousness.
Man finds himself, (by comparing himself with other animals), to be an extraordinary being. He is also endowed with individual self-esteem, or egotism, to believe that he is also better endowed than most other human beings. And yet he individually knows that he must die, and that no eulogy or funereal elegance will alter the finality of disintegration. Yet, man's reaction to his death, and the death of relatives, is not too different from the reactions of chickens. There is a moment of lamentation, and the chickens go back to picking and clucking.
In the human family, each generation has less time for death, and for the moments of introspection that might occur at the funeral of a relative or friend,—introspection, which, in turn might lead the mind to try to solve some of the mystery of life and death.
If we are here on this earth to vegetate, and supply bodies for predators alone,—then the least that we can do is prevent future births into this meat-grinder. It is time that we should not only pause at funerals for introspection, we should also realize that the sex-act is a willful act, from which much misery is produced. No one can be blamed for being born, and no one should be blamed for the sexual urges with which he is programmed to perpetuate the system that furnishes more candidates for anguish and death.
Now, I have just stated something which will appear foolish to many. For those who think that sex is a wonderful gift from God, or the sole comfort for a drab animal life, let me reply that they should first define God and then examine sex to see how much is gift and how much is a curse.
The statement which might appear foolish, is the advice to prevent future births. There is no doubt, that it is unwise to continue to play a losing game. However when these things are stated, a paradox is immediately set up. It is also unwise to try to thwart a game that is fixed, when that game seems to apply to life forms, on the massive scale that is found in this earthly greenhouse. If as seekers, esotericists or metaphysicians we see a pointlessness to life, we also will have seen, along the way that life is not haphazard. First we realize that the game is fixed. We cannot identify the agency, but we give a name to the code of the computer that monitors life on the planet. We call it Nature.
This Nature-code will react, and its reaction will not be a bolt of lightning from the sky, nor an earthquake. The rumble will come from the zombie-masses, who will blame their crusade on God. The rumble will also come from the individual's body who tries to outwit the "purpose" by abortions, homosexuality, bestiality or ideosexuality.
We also find that Nature is not designed for an uncontrollable overpopulation or a runting-down from premature pregnancies. Nature controls the herd, but does not encourage the herd to multiply beyond a limited food supply. The automatic neutralization that occurs in clans that cause pregnancies in the young females, is manifested in the consequent runting and poverty. The breed tends to extinguish itself. Likewise, overpopulation would ultimately be adverse to any Nature-code that wished to promote the human species.
By observing the existence and habits of nonsexual monastic population-segments down through the centuries, we find that Nature has left a door open for their existence. But this door must be a neutral door.... homosexuality will destroy the monastic sect, but to be sexless (celibate) there will be no blame. Even armies have been slow to attack the monasteries.
The door is the door of neutrality or innocence. In fact Nature may well have the same reaction to armies which destroy innocent monasteries, as it does to individuals who attack or impregnate the children. It is my opinion that this door of escape was not created by a compassionate or maternal deity speaking through the Nature-code. I think that it was a result of positive coding in regard to the approval of sexual restraints. This is a paradox of Nature. There are certain penalties for those who resist reproduction, even in a neutral manner, such as in celibacy. The celibates have to cope with prostatitis and cancer in the males, and in the females we may find amenorrhea, and dysfunction of the pituitary gland,—not to mention the migraine headaches that beset both sexes when sexual routines are upset.
But most of these maladies occur only after the sex habits have been in existence for a while. So that the penalties are delayed for the child and young adolescent. So that if you continue to live as a child, there is found a combination to the door.
Nature definitely leaves a door open for Spiritual direction. The Spiritual quest, however, passes through the door not smoothly, but with great risk. The escapee must be well disciplined, alert and fearless. And he must possess an intuition equal to his courage.
Going back to the paradox which resulted from the statements I made about preventing births for the meat-grinder, and a manifest inability to oppose a game that is apparently fixed, we have now a solution to the paradox.
In that there has been found a door of escape, and in that there may in fact be a Nature-code to protect our detachment from Nature,—there is a hint of solution to the paradox. But there is more to this problem of escaping. People generally escape to monasteries or convents. This is good. There is an Ashram or monastery principle which insures for the individual protection, an atmosphere conducive to serious thinking, and a clearinghouse for ideas among colleagues. But, on the other hand, we find most monastic centers to be counter-productive. They generally seem to be dominated by dogmatists rather than seekers; they become populated by dharma-bums rather than dynamic pioneers; and they fall into a discipline which is necessary in any institution where large numbers of people must share the same space, but which promotes robotism, passivity and forgetfulness of intended purposes and a loss of personal introspection.
And once more the door seems to close. But there is another method, another way of life. Its description is also paradoxical. (Perhaps the only solution to a paradox is another paradox). The human spiritual quest must become a vector, with all of that human's energy behind that vector. And the shortest distance between aim and objective is supposed to be a straight line. But success in a spiritual venture requires the ability to run between the raindrops, which may appear to be a zig-zag course, which may include dynamic feints and matched states of high indifference.
Writers, knowledgeable to the difficulties and hazards of a spiritual path have outlined ways or systems which they believed would take a person a certain distance. There is the Way of Service, (often called Bhakti Yoga), the Way of the Monk, the Way of the Raj Yogi, and DeRopp adds another, the Way of the Warrior. Some of these "Ways" are well defined, and finely detailed.
I have written a paper about still another Way, which is too detailed, and dependent upon all of its details for proper understanding for it to be inserted here. However this new Way evolved from a lifetime of perseverance ending in a final experience.
At this point I do not wish to get too deeply into "Ways," until we carefully cover the stumbling blocks on the path which too many seekers falsely identify certain steps as being true steps.
We cannot start at the top. If we are hooked on thinking that a spiritual system should be peaceful and serene we may be disappointed. So I will try to outline some of these directions or pseudo-steps, in the hope that some readers may recognize which steps are comfortable resting places, but are not steps that lift the party to clearer realizations.
Our original question here was: do we react to unanswered questions about death (and life) only through fear? If not how do we react to the fear of death, and how do we react to our knowledge of our own lack of knowledge?
There are some statistics available, at least in regard to mankind's spiritual directions which are indications of mass beliefs or popular choices. Those statistics would be found in the number of people (in relation to world population) who belong to the Christian, Mohammedan, Tibetan, Hinduistic religions whose members accept the doctrines of heaven and hell. While we can presume that most of these movements may have employed fear to sell their wares, the merchandisers of those wares would not have been successful if the followers were not motivated by a fear of death, or a fear of post-mortem pitfalls or hazards.
It would be extremely difficult to come up with exact figures of that which people believe. People change their minds. Good Christians, Mohammedans, and Hindus may be drifting toward atheism and agnosticism with the help of Communism. And we cannot be sure of that which the individuals,—for instance, who have been caught in Communistic take-overs,—really believe.
To know that which people really believe about subjective matters, it is necessary to talk to people individually. Such a talk cannot be limited to a standardized set of questions. Each individual will have special meanings for words and terms, and may not be sure of that which he really believes, or, may be reluctant to admit that he might have fear as a motive.
And of course we are not interested as much in the motive for believing, as much as we are in the excuses for not acting in face of the knowledge of our lack of well-defined knowledge of that which will happen to us after death.
From my childhood I have been interested in the subject of immortality, and do not doubt that it originated in fear. But I tried to do something about that interest and fear. I began by talking to anyone who showed an interest in religion or esotericism. It was not an easy task. Most professional people recoil when asked about their religious beliefs, or even a simple questioning about their beliefs about life after death.
When I was in the seminary, (age twelve to seventeen) I was slapped in the face, because my questions indicated that I did not accept that which I should believe. I began to look upon priests as ardent members of a union or gang, who felt threatened at the prospects of having a potential member being a non-believer of the party line.
In later years I went to work in different research laboratories, and questioned some of the scientists with whom I worked. I found that most of them were men with technological skills, and their mental abilities prompted scientific egos. Most of them were agnostics, and they believed that any wisdom about life after death would only come from superior scientists like Einstein, and that other scientists such as biochemists and mathematicians should work for the infinite prolongation of life.
There were several exceptions. A man who was a genius in the heat-transfer work related to the atomic fueling of submarines, was also a sincere Christian Scientist. His name was Kooistra. I have forgotten his first name. I was young at the time, and I found it amazing that a man whom I respected as one of the greater scientific minds, could devote an equal amount of energy to an unproven belief system. Christian Science is called a science, but in the stricter understanding of the word science, the two requirements of predictability and proof are lacking.
I became a sort of gadfly to Kooistra, arguing with him about proofs for the existence of God, and about faith in the light of faith possibly being merely wishful thinking. I had been on a few occasions up to Cleveland, and once had stopped to listen to the street-orators in the public square. A Christian Scientist on a podium (the step before a statue) was being confronted by an agnostic. The agnostic told the speaker, that he knew a man who had been a Christian Scientist, had gotten seriously ill, yet had refused to go to a doctor.
"You know what happened," warned the agnostic, "The guy died."
But the Christian Scientist responded, "If your friend wants to think he is dead, let him think he's dead."
At the time, I thought this encounter eloquently indicated the limitations of Christian Science. And of course, I uncharitably used it to test Kooistra's faith... or patience.
But Kooistra was a very solid person, and a person of great intuition. In fact he invented a procedure which the other scientists scoffed at, saying that it could not work. The procedure involved floating an armature in liquid metal, K-Na.
It was this same intuition which prompted the man to see the possibility of mind being superior to flesh, which I believed as possible at that time. I could not prove it then, nor can I prove it now. And I still think that anyone who believes in this mental ability should be very careful of testing the theory in a very serious illness. Perhaps there will come a day when we can replace a limb that is destroyed, or return the dead to life, but not yet.
I have mentioned elsewhere that my life has been a continuous search. The first thirty years were spent in looking for the correct answer, or for the final mental state in which all things would be understood. The remainder of my life I have spent looking for symbols to express my findings, and looking for people as companions on the path... and for fellow-translators of intuitional language and non-dimensional language into words for four-dimensional minds.
I spent some time with theologians. Long after I left the seminary, I continued to meet with priests and ministers when I found that they showed some genuine sincerity. I have met some clerics that candidly admitted that they were running a business. Others were faithfully producing arguments to maintain the Church-Militant. They do not make good companions on the path.
I gravitated toward metaphysical groups. I think that this group of investigators is in reality a pool of frontiersmen in the search for real answers to phenomena, as well as answers to questions about ultimate essence, and ultimate purposes for us.
Like the theists, I found them to be blocked in their various stages of searching. I think it is of a great value to us in understanding them, and to them in possibly seeing their blocks. Of course, if they see their blocks, that in itself is not a major accomplishment, if there is not a concurrent discovery of some technique to help them understand other important points of view. Many people rebel against a religion or a parental belief, but down the line they become frozen into an alternate spiritual venture or obsession with a particular adventure into the world of phenomena. The mere fact that one breaks away from that which one considers to be useless, should indicate that the new obsession may later be proven to be only a step, a phase, or even a device unconsciously used by the rebellious mind, to distract that mind from doing any real work.
The Passive Person
I recently received a letter from a lady who had read several of my books. She told of years of searching, and years of hardship. I gathered that she recognized the searching as the cause for the hardship. She had set out to find the meaning for her existence. Suffering and hardship resulted. She has now taken the passive path to inner peace and harmony.
The warrior comes back scarred and weary. It does no good to guess now about mistakes made in the battle, or the quality of intelligence used in making decisions. The warrior rests in the shade and is overwhelmed by the seeming peacefulness of nature. In this interlude he may have a spiritual experience... may in fact be visited by Cosmic Consciousness. In any event, the warrior is experiencing a spiritual plateau, a resting place between two upward battles or periods of growth. The plateau can be recognized by its accompanying bliss. There is no bliss in the final realization. The final realization is the understanding of everything and nothingness. There is no pain nor bliss there, because there is no polarity.
But, how do we talk with this type of person? What is our point in trying to communicate with dissembled minds? Of course our point (for communicating) is the response to the unwritten law, that a person must give in order to get; and another law that you can only help certain people, not everyone; and still another resolution that we are most likely to find people who will understand our language, in some group whose efforts and evolution might be similar to our own. Such a group is often a sanghat, or a brotherhood, or an unnamed circle of respected friends.
Generally, with the person addicted to passivity, there is little that can be done or said. If the friend is resting upon a spiritual plateau, nothing should be done. It is not for us to judge the duration of that dwelling on the plateau. Confrontation may drive him into depression, not illumination. We can confront action more safely, because most actions spring from a polarizing purpose, in that our actions generally are reactions to neutralize some other direction.
The person whose real mental state is one of laziness, (not recuperation), on the other hand, should be confronted. However, all confrontation should be in the mood of friendship, and not with the attitude of a pedant or critic.
We must always remember that, in this bipolar world, bliss will be best defined by agony. Peace and serenity, which are lesser levels, will be preceded or followed by conflict and trauma. Such transitions are difficult to predict. When the daylight is upon us we can easily predict the night... but for a person who stands alternately in light and darkness, it is extremely difficult to predict a day that never ends.
Instinctive and Emotional People
It is a waste of time to argue with instinctive people. The instinctive person reacts with anger at the prospects of being a victim without an ability to fight back. He usually believes in oblivion after death. He is totally digested by his predator. He is eaten by the lion which should have been his slave.
The emotional person babbles about love. In some cases he wishes to make love (have intercourse) with his cause (which he humanizes). He (or she) has a unique approach to the lion or spiritual predator. He makes love to it. And the lion eats his head off first, because the head criticizes the heart.
We should be patient with people whose admonitions for love follow on the heels of suffering from a past habit of hate. On the other hand, there are fundamentalists in many religions who believe that their love for their prophet, saviour or guru justifies murder for that personage or cause. Here the lion becomes flesh, often disguised as a lamb.
We have a tide of people running about the earth preaching social love. The politicians have conveniently taken up the cry and encourage little organizations to spring up by the hundreds to the point that they have become a pestilence. We have "big brothers" and "big sisters," street patrols called "Angels," Mad mothers, Hotline volunteers, Hug-your-neighbor sessions. Save the Indians movement. Save endangered predators. Volunteers to pester the elderly. Brotherhood-ostriches with their heads in the sands of a vicious environment.
Beware of people crusading for love. Some of them are politicians and prelates trying to create a zeitgeist of their own to further their own games. A large segment of the population are at work softening up the larger segment for purposes of domination.
The Logical Man
Most logic is vanity. However, we must approach problems in a sensible manner. In spiritual or esoteric fields, logic finds loose footing, whether it be used to qualify beliefs, conceptions or projections.
Logic requires a point of reference. In esoteric philosophy even if our point of reference is the planet earth, that point becomes unstable in the face of inter-galactic comparisons, but becomes even more unstable when we observe it in regard to its ultimate reality in relation to the subtle dimensions of the mind or spirit. Some physicists are leaping ahead of the mystics, in promoting the concept of the Hologram-Mind. In this theory, the human mind may be a tiny sensor in a formidable brain or mind, in which all of the universe is contained... possibly as visions.
I do not know how many mathematical formulae they have employed to give body to this concept, but it certainly says little more than the Indians advised for over a thousand years. To the Indian mystic all that we view with our limited senses is Maya, and theory is expressed in other terms by some Spiritualists who speak of a mental plane which is superior to this dimension.
When the persistent searcher reaches a state, or a state of mind, which is known as Sahaji Nirvakalpa Samadhi, he views the concept of the Hologram-Mind as being a concept that comes close to the experiences of Yogis in the final Samadhi. Yet, no amount of formulation or logic will express the true nature of that region which makes this region look like a nightmare.
I have said elsewhere, that our logical system employs the wrong point of reference when it attempts to deal with the inner spatial phenomena. The mind should be the point of reference. And of course that point of reference will be a moving faculty, depending upon the angle of its view or observation. If the mind looks at this dimension it will see the brain. If it looks within itself, it will see or become an infinite frontier.
Let us take a look now at another type of mind. This is the intuitive mind. The intuitive man is the new pioneer. Where the former man was conceptual (fabricating) and gestaltic, the new man intuitively perfected, will view the memory of man at a glance, and from that storehouse of countless factors or memories, will instantly know and experience everything. The monumental task will be that of individuation... bringing to non-intuitive minds with temporal words the knowledge of timelessness, and mental totality. How does the ocean explain to a falling raindrop that the latter will lose its apparent shape, but never its form, or being.
The intuitive man sees the need for using every tool available to the mind of man to discover the purpose of man's life—and possibly, all life. In the beginning he is not so vain as to presume to answer as to the reasons for the existence of everything. He knows he will be lucky if he can understand the purpose of his own life and the limits of that life.
He sees the need for emotional behavior toward his fellowman, because the assault upon total ignorance requires maximum help. He must have fellow-technicians, an association of observers and experimenters, if need be. His friendship for his fellow-seeker cannot be a pretence. He equates their survival with his own.
The intuitive man cannot be placid or passive. His passivity dares not extend beyond being honest and humble about his ignorance, about his physical disintegration, and his present helplessness. This honesty should not automatically accept helplessness.
He must use his own instinctive pool of physical power for energy and determination to fight back against annihilation, against fatigue, mental and physical.
He must use all the energies of his body to the fullest capacity.
He must use anger against procrastination and rationalization, against dalliance or failure... against any entity, human or noumenal.
If need be, his body must become a laboratory wherein might be found forces to improve his abstract calculations—or intuitions.
Intuition must be his modus operandi.
[End part 2]
