View source for Zen-and-Common-Sense-Fragments

{{Page header}}
[[Category:In Process]]
[[Category:Informal Talks]]
[[Category:Fragments]]
[[Category:Cleveland]]
[[Category:Zen and Common Sense]]
[[Category:Zen]]
[[Category:Has Talk Page]]
[[Category:Tape Lists]]
[[Category:Undistributed Tape]]
<div id="widthlimiter">

TRANSCRIPTIONS OF FRAGMENTS

FILES THAT ARE neither ZEN-CS KENT nor ZEN-CS ESSAY

There seem to be 2 different talks:

1. Informal meeting, ashram discussion, in some city (was 3d, 4a and 4b) => Category:Undistributed Tape <-- should be undistributed, but might be already.

2. Cleveland lecture (was 5a and 6a)

== to update ==

This fragments: "sn-informal-1 was 3D"  is [[1976-0708-Rose-at-PZS-Mtg-Pittsburgh]]

also sn-informal-2 was 4A

and sn-informal-3 was 4B

== Notes ==

See Talk page for correspondence.


Now going through the fragment directory

Start at sn4b-04:45 on page 12

== Informal Meeting possibly Ashram ==
Fragment files names are: 3D, 4A, 4B

New file names are: (begins with 2 because doesn’t start at beginning

sn-informal-1-was-3d-fragment-Zen-and-Common-Sense

sn-informal-2-was-4Ad-fragment-Zen-and-Common-Sense

sn-informal-3-was-4B-fragment-Zen-and-Common-Sense

Location and time of talk

1. Sounds like ashram

2. Lots of truck traffic

3. Gegenheimer is there

4. On fragment 4B Rose asks, “What time is it?” Somebody says, “9:30.” Rose says something about having to get up on Monday mornings.


==== Alternate version 7/8/1976 ====

ALTERNATE VERSION

SH tape dated as 7/8/1976

Temporarily titled Q&A after a rapport session.


=== file sn-informal-1 was 3D  ===
Informal meeting, maybe an ashram in the city, lots of laughter, loud noises inside as people ware working, lots of traffic outside, sounds like a city street]

check Essay to see if it has traffic sounds

Recording starts in the middle of informal talking with a small group

Fragment has total time of: 14:53

sn3d-00:00 

(Rose) ... start to drift in, perhaps a quotation from Krishnamurti or a quotation from Ouspensky or Gurdjieff or somebody else, or a philosopher, psychologist, who knows? 

Q. In other words, you relate it to somebody?

R. Right. Your desire was there; the desire was from suffering, only. By suffering does the individual give up looking at the 200 maybe pretty girls he was messing? with? witnesses?. He says, “The hell with that. I’m suffering. What the hell’s going on here? See. So then – he gets interested in psychology – because of his desire. Now if he’s brainwashed from birth by some family or something that think that this is all very good, to fatten, rot and then die, then that’s all he’ll do. He’ll just continue to look out the window

3d-00:52

And again, mingled with this all the time is always the possibility that somebody’s looking over your shoulder – the HGA  – if you [wish], help him out a bit.

Q. HGA meaning Holy Guardian Angel?

R. Right. This girl here thought I was being obscene. She was afraid to ask me. [laughter]

sn3d-01:27

Q. I’ve heard the analogy made that the individual is stuck at the window. That he cannot, he’s like grasping, he has a muscle spasm and can’t let go of them, he must see these images.

R. Some of them are. That’s the impression I get from looking in some people’s heads. They can’t let go. They just can’t let go. In other words, you say, “Hey,” it’s just like cigarettes, as an example, you can say, ‘Hey, cigarettes are killing you.” “I know, I know.”  

[ sound of truck or traffic, could this be in the city? ]

I had a friend who was dying of cancer and ?? smoking and lighting cigarettes up, a business partner from years ago. I went to see him in the hospital, 

[tire squeal, doesn’t sound like farm ]

and the doctor told his wife it’s no use ?? ?? ?? He knew they were lying to him, and they told him, they’d operate on him; they cut him open and sewed him back up. And they told his wife it’s just a few months. So he sensed it. He knew that everybody was lying to everybody else, he was pretending that he was feeling better? [if that makes them feel better?] But he get these cigarettes and he couldn’t stomach them, he was still smoking. And he’s get them and he’d light them up and he’d say, “Smoke, smoke you son-of-a-bitch, smoke yourself to death.” Every time he’d light up he’d say that. ?? ?? responsibilities? He couldn’t stop, even then. I guess, “What’s the use then?” After you, after it’s hopeless you can embrace anything.

sn3d-03:02

Q. Do you have to actually have your survival threatened, or feel fear of death, to align your  ...

R. You can’t, I don’t there’s too much spiritual work without a lot of cowardly fear. [laughs] We’re all shaking in our ?? [maybe looks up] looking. [laughter] If you want to call it that. I consider it wise; the courageous want to rush out and find oblivion before their time is through? due?

Q. You don’t think that’s necessary, though, do you?

R. Huh?

Q. It’s not necessarily the only reason, do you think?

R. No, no. I think, I like to think there’s people born different. [pause, noises] There’s manifestly people, this stuff, you can’t apply to everyone. [more loud truck sounds] You can’t apply this philosophy to everyone because – when I’m talking I’m implying that there’s balm in Gilead,   [but] for some there is no balm in Gilead, there is no chance, there’s no chance for consciousness.

Q. But in the reason for] searching for it, is not just because you’re afraid of death.

R. Well, that’s what spurs us, that’s what opens the eyeballs. It’s basically the, well, your egos. You’ve got a physical survival ego and you’ve got a spiritual survival ego. The fear of death eventually brings you to a realization that you’re going to die. There’s no – statistics show that death is universal. Everybody hits it. So then the next step is, how do we escape? How do we escape death?

sn3d-05:02

Q. Yes, I see what you mean, but I never thought I went into it that way, is what I asked, I thought it was just a ...

R. Well, you may have thought you were going to do it out of curiosity. But I think too that the curiosity – I had the same path when I was like in my late teens or early twenties. I was intensely curious. In fact, when I was around seventeen I thought I was immortal. I thought that, I just believed that I was immortal. And one day they hauled me into the hospital and I was dying.  [So then] I had a conviction to the contrary, that I wouldn’t make it. Now whether I was deluding myself then or not – of course, I tell you, I saw even a vision of total death. And I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t any light, or life after death, that it had to be generated. That you had to generate the capacity for it. That’s one way of putting it; maybe the right way of saying it is you’ve got to destroy that which separates you from [it]. 

sn3d-06:07

Your essence is indestructible. But it’s evident that we don’t remember who we were. This is the soul? solid? scientific evidence: we do not remember who we were in our past life, if we lived before. And the supposition is then that these complex creatures called humans are born for the first time as they are, with all these varying degrees of intense intelligence. Just born as they are, and here’s a clam or an oyster also born for the first, everything’s born for the first time. The alternate theory is that you were someplace before – which I believe. I believe that I was someplace before. I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation, but I believe I was someplace before. I cannot remember a previous incarnation

Q. What you really mean, you someplace else, right, when you go back the time thing? [?]

R. Yes, I believe my consciousness, this awareness here, was someplace else. Because the awareness is the ray that is indestructible. It comes from another dimension, the ray of the absolute, the finger of God, whatever you want to call it.

sn3d-07:24

Q. Why is there no hope for some?

R. Well, there’s no hope for them realizing it because they’re – somehow their vehicle is clouded. What do you get? – you get congenital idiots: what can you do with a congenital idiot? Anybody that ?? know the difference between himself and an animal. Like an imbecile.  Now I know they’re aware, incidentally. Your imbeciles, your mongoloid idiots,  are very much aware, but they can’t do a thing about it. What can a person do? I know a guy who’s got cerebral palsy: he can’t hold a book still long enough to read it. How’s he going to study, or communicate? He can’t talk; he jerks when he talks. He’s just completely out of control. He lives in a world in which he can’t make contact.

sn3d-08:18

So you have to make, you have to compare ideas. These intuitions may come to you, but the data comes from the world. You have to get your data from books, you have to verbalize. As I said, you have an intuition but it’s got to be verbalized by some sort of common-sense system, for your search to go on. Because a cow can have a hunch, but only a man can act on it. Cows have hunches of immortality, and cows are immortal. But they don’t remember. Sometimes they don’t even remember yesterday. [traffic outside, sounds like a city street] Sometimes people are the same way – they don’t remember yesterday. 

So there are different degrees of people, and these different degrees of people, when they die, have almost categorical reactions to death. I mean if they’re revived, the stories they tell are very similar. Instinctive people have no recall. Emotional people have emotional bonds that they find and meet, with just a ?? what I call a bardo – relative mind. They meet their mama and papa, grandfather, Jesus, that sort of thing. These are the stories they tell when they come back it seems.

sn3d-09:50

Q. What’s the difference between a baby just born and somebody who’s found the truth? A baby is aware. Or isn’t that possible? 

[heavy traffic]

R. Well – I think it’s pretty much the same. They’re pretty much the same, except I think the baby comes through a bardo before it gets here. And it’s, there’s a transition before it – it has to come down, considerably [?] – it doesn’t come down just directly from an absolute experience. But it’s – there’s nothing there, there are not enough mundane experiences to cloud its array of awareness. So that it’s very clear. It’s – what it’s thinking about is its previous experience. It’s still aware in its previous experience.

Q. [Dave Gold?]  Is this part of the intuition we have then, is from the birth ... ?

R. Well, a child is more intuitional than an adult. We lose it as we grow older. And of course, this is the reason Christ said, you know, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven you must become as a little child,  because a child has a pure mind. They’re aware of things that we forget. We get caught up in particularization, specialization, etc., and we lose 1)  the ability to see directly. The child sees directly. Most children, if they’re not loused up by adults – of course most of the children today are getting loused up by adults – but at least in the old days they protected the kids and kept them from getting their minds destroyed.
[there is no 2)   ]

sn3d-11:31

And if they are, if they have their faculties, they can walk into a group of people and they can pick out, if there’s anybody who has committed a crime or anything, they know it, sensitive children – they know you as soon as they look at you. 

Q. Can you raise a child, consciously raise a child to where he would not lose this?

R. I think you do, [can] yes. I think you can. You’ve got to have some of the cooperation, of course it takes two to raise, it takes two to hatch one. And it gets characteristics from both sides. But I think that the greatest contributor to a child is your love, and through the love you find the rapport with it. You don’t – reasoning and argument don’t get you anything with the children. But through love you communicate with the child. And you may fail. By that I mean the kid may slap you in the noses and leave; he may leave home when he gets to be 17 or 18 years of age. But the mark of that love is always on him, because he understands deep in his nature what you really are, you know, if you love him. And he’ll come back to you and understand your thinking perfectly when the time comes.

sn3d-12:53

But what he’s going through in his teens, he has, the little pigs have to be weaned, that’s part of this programmed pattern of nature. So that everyone gets disgusted with the nest and has to leave: that gives room for another batch of young ones to come up. So this is all programming. They’re programmed to break away. But if there is love, why, they will pick it up. They’ll pick it up.

Q. You said that – the reason then that the child then can’t go through the enlightenment experience is because he doesn’t realize that there’s an illusion, and doesn’t try to ...?

R. Well – the thing is, what it is, if you take a person who goes through an experience similar to death, and then you show it – like an acid trip. How could you get enlightened in an acid trip? And when a child is born, this [life] is like an acid trip: it sees beautiful colors, and fantastic happenings and intense pleasures. Its eating even, there’s a tremendous pleasure implanted in a child in order to get it to drink milk, to eat from its mother’s breast. A tremendous response there. So it’s all sorts of – it’s just one big bundle of experience going on. And this is to draw it away. So it eats and it goes back, you know, it goes back into the state for awhile. It goes back, lapses back into the old peaceful state. But it keeps being drawn out. New colors, people come in, tickling the baby, and turn the television on and so on. And pretty soon the baby becomes identified – and it loses. It dies to its clear stage.

So then enlightenment has to come by going clear through all this garbage and going back to the child. It has to go back and become a child again.

sn3d ends at 14:53

=== file sn-informal-2 was 4A  ===
This is not Zen and CS, it’s an unrelated fragment
Could be Columbus?  – Gegenheimer is there

Total time only 1 minute, 20 seconds


00:00

(Rose) ...if you go back with enough energy, you survive death, the death experience. If you don’t go back with enough energy, you don’t survive, you die. 

[noise sounds like a heater maybe, or equipment outside]

Q. When we don’t know, and people just die, I was just thinking about how many people maybe have that experience, like you say, maybe  ?? ?? where they give it all up and it’s right on the table, you know.

R. Right, right. There’s a lot of people I think – I think a lot of people have the experience. A lot of people don’t know how to talk about it, that’s all. I think many people, people who are devoutly spiritual, and live according to what they believe, and they change and they see the change, and that sort of thing – those people are called? come? upon sometimes, you know, when you [they?] least expect it. That’s when it’s supposed to be, when you least expect it. That makes it valid.

01:06

Q. [a woman] I wonder? if? I could? believe? in that? 

R. I always do? look? I’ve met a few people. I always thought Mike Gegenheimer’s mother had some sort of experiences. Are you here Mike?

Mike: Yes. 

R. Did your mother ever say anything to you about that?

Mike. Well, I ...

R. Did you get that impression?

sn 4a ends at 01:20

=== file sn-informal-3 was 4B  ===

Total time: 15:02

(Rose) ... he had come from a lot of trauma. She had been through a tremendous lot of trauma. And after you get into this trauma, are narcotized? by the clergy? [break in tape?] So consequently, their experiences, they don’t have the opportunity of going through, step by step of dropping of egos. It’s just blotto, they’re out. But there’s a transformation [that] may occur still, back in the mind itself, as a result of that. That the mind knows it’s dying and that sort of thing, and the experience of the inner – the person’s aware of it, but they don’t pick it up on the surface. But if that’s the case she’ll become increasingly aware of it. She’ll become increasingly, as the years go by, you’ll see her become increasingly aware, that she knows the score.

[audio volume variable]

sn4b-00:49

Q. [Mike?  Somebody else?] Well, she had a tremendous difficulty in getting back into that same routine she was in. She had trouble just keeping moving, like the stuff? steps? she couldn’t do, and she ?? ?? ??

R. Yeah, that it was foolish.

Mike. Yeah, and she can’t, she doesn’t hardly want to eat anymore.

sn4b-01:05

R. Well, that’s the symptoms

[loud sound of a truck]

sn4b-01:30

R. So do you think? Or do you think that you think that you think that you think that you think? Do you think that you think that you think that you think that you think? [laughs]

[working noises, people talking in another room]

sn4b-02:33

Q. So essence is immortal but we don’t remember who we were before?

R. ?? ?? [noise] ... because memory is? isn’t? material.

Q. I’ve always thought that the Observer and the essence are the same – is that right?

R. It depends on which observer you’re talking about. What I call the umpire, or the observer of the egos is not – this is the, this is just a, you might say an agreement, in which the mind, brain-mind, is watching its own mechanisms so it doesn’t get destroyed by one of its egos.

sn4b-03:13

So you’re aware, your awareness is there, and you’re aware, of your, you’re conscious of your possible deterioration, and that’s an observer. Now when I talk about an observer, I always capitalize the final, what I call it, the final Observer, the ultimate Observer. The ultimate Observer and the absolute are one. But this is not an observer in the sense that it speaks in words or has memories that are verbalizable, or that you would find something that’s correlated in the dictionary. Your observations from anything beyond the manifested mind are not words, they’re not verbalizable.

sn4b-04:05

Q. Is the umpire an ego also, or ...

R. Yes, pretty much so. The umpire is the survival ego, it says, “Hey,” you know. It’s the strongest ego you’ve got. You can encourage it. Just like we were talking about: you can have a sex ego and the sex can be very strong and it can kill you; you can get yourself weakened down, get sick and die from it. But if your survival ego is strong, why, it will inhibit the sexual ego or any other – eating. You can eat yourself into the ground too, just putting on a lot of weight, you don’t stop eating and the next thing you know, heart trouble and you drop dead.

sn4b-04:45

So the survival ego builds up a certain amount of strength with your health; that is, you encourage it to more or less stand guardian over the many voices outside of itself. And you deify, or you, let’s say, give it a position of importance, of control, allow it to take control. And then of course when you become conscious that there’s another ego besides that, the survival ego has possibly a spiritual survival – that too is an ego. Because – it’s all ego because there’s nothing to show that we are important enough, as microscopic creatures in relation to the universe, to survive. Why should a – look at a, what do you call it, a chicken louse or something, something microscopic, some little insect wobbling around in the water, a paramecium or something – you mean that’s immortal? What right does that thing have to be immortal?  It can’t talk [speak] English.

sn4b-05:55

And this is the, by the same attitude, let’s look at it from ourselves from the universal standpoint; the size of the earth when you compare it to the universe, the size of the human, who is like a flea on the back of the earth, if he’s as big as a flea, I don’t know what the comparison would be. Look, what does that flea expect of the universe? Why should it demand immortality, just because it’s a thought? So then ?? an ego. But strangely enough, it’s a possibility. 

4B-06:47

By the intense concentration, research, the mind, upon research along those lines, upon methods, ways and means, why, we discover more and more the possibility, the chances increase for our survival, ultimate survival.

And then of course we discover, we are not, we never know who the ultimate observer [is] until we – that’s what we call self-definition. That’s what that paper’s about. We’re attempting to define the self before you try to define the universe. And you find out automatically that when you define yourself you’ve defined the universe

sn4b-07:30

What time is it? Getting back to a Monday? inaudible

Q. 9:30
xxx
R. 9:30?

Q. [a woman, sounds new, so doubtful it’s at the farm] Before when you said an infant has more awareness than an adult, could you, could it also be said that maybe an infant is born with so much awareness that he’s born with maybe the truth of why we’re here? And then it, maybe something happens ...

R. Yes. I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt that anything that comes here knows it’s coming to school. [?] I believe that. It couldn’t tolerate it. ?? It couldn’t tolerate it and have some, if it didn’t have some mechanism for shutting off, it’s approaching a life of sorrow. And if its memory were strong, of the other side – some, I think some infants are. Because, if it [is] known that people were cruel to babies, that they just die. They didn’t die of any disease, they just die. And they’ve even carried out experiences with monkeys, and they find that monkeys that don’t have some degree of affection get sick, monkey babies, baby monkeys. They have to feel wanted and loved and that sort of thing. ??

sn4b-08:54

I’ve heard of cases, not only babies, but of children, five, six years of age that just died; they were being mistreated, abused and stuff. Maybe the parents would leave them up for adoption or something and they would mistreat them, and they just die.  Like I said they deliberately? die? Because the thing is, they remain still on the threshold, to the point where they could have a strange memory, of something else that is better than this. And little children, when they – they go back to case histories in psychology books, little children die very easily. And they’re not alarmed by the idea of death.

Q. You think that crib death,  supposedly, they call it, have no explanation for it, do you think this is ...?

R. Yes, where they’re not strangled by bedclothes and stuff, yes. I think that some children just leave, that’s all. They don’t, they lose the, the ability to identify, because there’s nothing that drags them [here]. See, a lot of people walk away and leave their kids, stick a bottle in its mouth, no affection, no – you have to be calling. You call to the child. You call to the child from [car horn sounds] the valley of death, the same as you call an old person back, and keep them alive. [a horn from a different car] You’re sitting at a person’s bedside and they start to die, you can call them back; you shout to them and tell them that you love them and that sort of thing. And they go through hell again.

sn4a-10:24

This is true. I know a doctor down there right below where I live; my wife was taking care of him. They throwed [threw] him out on the floor and pounded on his heart  ?? on his fists? ?? with their fists, and they brought him back. And the first thing he did was curse them. He knew what they did because he was a doctor.

Q. If life is sorrowful, why should we do it?

R. I don’t know why. A lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know how many hairs are on your head. I know there’s one less ?? than yesterday. Now we’re even. [laughter]  No, I don’t know, this pattern of why we go through this. It seems, you know, there’s all sorts of talk in the various religions of [on] the face of the earth that this is like a school in which we’ve got to come nd study – what for? This is objective knowledge, relative knowledge. When you go back, you don’t carry relative knowledge with you. That’s what they call “killing the mind”, and all that stuff is gone. You live in pure essence.

Now why this projection down here – there’s a cabbalistic interpretation, I don’t know how accurate they are, that God lost himself. He lost himself out on these fringes. The cabbala is interpreted in Genesis that the Lord was lonesome, the Elohim were lonesome,  and they created a playhouse for pleasure
Try this, by some rabbi: “Creation did not solve Elohim’s lonliness, so he made an imperfect replica of himself” at google books:  http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=rhLz70WjufcC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&dq=elohim+lonely+creation&source=bl&ots=G3jT-hcZ3t&sig=4WSjoO6fq_urG1j9oZoLjutQXog&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O8-oU6rVCuih8AGH-4GADg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=elohim%20lonely%20creation&f=false 

In other words, their imagination, they left their imagination create;  in the formulae in the cabbala it gives the formula for creation, which is the imagination plus the will, plus the fiat. That’s found in Genesis: “Let there be this and let there be that.” And then they, after this, ?? supposedly their glory, to look at this stuff. But each part of it was a part of themselves,  because nothing existed outside of this absolute, this assembly of minds

sn4b-12:45

So that all of these things were sent out. And they’re nothing more than the different aspects of God. But the consciousness was scattered, so to speak. And the Hindus talk about “finding the way back to the Father”. The whole spiritual thing is to find your way back to the father. And it doesn’t seem to be done unless the particles desire. This seems to be the evidence from looking at it from our end of the spectrum: that the particle has to desire to find its way back to find consciousness. It goes out so far that it longs to get back, or something of that sort. There’s an intuition there, as we said before, spiritual help or whatever does it. Because I don’t think we do too much alone. I think we get a lot of help. And of course I think, there’s a reason for ?? the philosophy you may hear here, is that we believe in the law of the ladder. [talking to newcomer, so not at the farm] and it’s helping people on different rungs, just the same as we are helped, on different rungs by other people. Same as the child is helped in the first grade of school by somebody who graduated from college. There’s a whole progress, awakening. Specialization and education to end specialization and education. Priest? – concentration upon different levels of consciousness to find after all that there’s only one level of consciousness. That’s all that – that’s the paradox of finding the absolute, that’s all.

sn4b-14:38

I could? use? a hamburger? – it’s relative. [laughter] 

Somebody, maybe Dave Gold says,

Q. Let’s wrap it up.
sn4b ends at 15:02
=== End of Informal –Ashram ===

== Start of Cleveland Talk ==
Old Fragment Names: 5a and 6a

New File names

Starts with 2 because recording does not start at the beginning
sn-Cleveland-2-Zen-and-Common-Sense  (Was 5A)
sn-Cleveland-2-Zen-and-Common-Sense (Was 6A)
sn-Cleveland-2-Zen-and-Common-Sense



=== file:  sn-Cleveland-2  was 5A ===
Was  sn-5a-fragment-Zen-and-Common-Sense - Cleveland

File length is only 04:25
A fragment that is NOT part of 1977-0428-Zen and CS – KSU 
00:00
This might be Cleveland. It has a different audio quality than “5” does 

... moksha, satori. The experiences I have encountered that are ascribed as satori are what I call the eureka experiences. Satori is nothing more than like an illumination of having solved an algebraic problem. Something that happens momentarily, and you say, “Wow, that’s it.
[lots of sirens so it could be Cleveland (i.e., it’s not Kent, where sirens couldn’t reach]
and you go about your business. Enlightenment may put you in the hospital. You may not think you’re going too return, because you have to pass through the doors of death and return. You don’t do this in satori, you don’t do this in the “wow” experience, such as described in Kapleau’s books. In those different Zen teachers, where they go in for the “sesshin” and they go in and talk to the guru or the master. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesshin
And he’d say something to them, and they’d say, “Oh, that’s it.” ?? ?? that’s nonsense. Enlightenment comes with death. You die and you return. You want to know about death, what happens? You die. That’s an old saying. ?? You die and you return and you know it. ? ?? 

01:08

Q. inaudible

01:23

R. I believe that each person has a bit of ??. This ?? it’s one of ?? invented? by – it’s a mechanism. It might even ?? ?? Because you’re not prepared. I think that, first of all, I think they’re – if you are sincere, and you have? prepared yourself, if you have ?? yourself properly, you’ll get? it? [a little laughter] If you have ?? yourself properly, if you’ve committed yourself to the truth, regardless of what  ?? – you can’t postulate or believe ?? ?? Everybody’s God, everybody’s realization, or not realization but interpretation of that word, is different. And like wars, they kill off millions of people, because of different interpretations of the word God.

02:22

But it’s a postulation. You can’t say, “I’m going to find God,” or, “I’m going to find the truth.” The truth is unknown. The only thing you can do is retreat from error, retreat from foolishness, retreat from absurdity, retreat from lies. And as you retreat, you separate yourself. You get into a certain group or a cult and see the venality there, the excessive racket, excessive money. Or they try to intimidate you with fear, fear of hellfire, like. You can draw certain conclusions, and you walk away from it. And when you walk away from so many, the whole field narrows down. And that field has to go someplace, the only thing that’s left is truth.

03:06

But you can’t postulate and? name? it? This is one of the failure of all the systems of belief? They’ve lost? the theology? of ?? face of the earth practically. Is that they say, “Ho? there”? – there’s nowhere to go. ?? But if you make up your mind that you’re going to arrive there, and ?? – of course you have to get into some of the, let’s say, the formulae for health – you can’t do it if you’re drunk, you know pills? ?? – those can bring you back, you can come back crazy or jump off a bridge. Because the urge to jump off a bridge sometimes is very strong, when you come back and see what you’ve got yourself back into.

03:48

So that you have to have almost a, a good bit of meditation? to keep you here. I don’t think there’s much reason to come back. But I believe that everybody should – some of the people in the group would say to me, “Well how do I,” you know, “What could,” ?? ?? ?? how I would find the truth, what would be the first thing to do? that a person ??  ?? If you commit yourself to the truth, to yourself, not to somebody else – if you commit yourself ...
file sn-5a ends at 04:25

===file:  sn-Cleveland-3  was 6A ===
Formerly  sn6a-fragment-Zen-and-Common-Sense
total time is is 31:31
00:00 [no break from 5a]

... and accept whatever comes from that, regardless of the consequences, you’ll arrive there. Now, there are certain other little things that you learn to get along? with. Just like if you’re hiking in a swamp with the snakes; you may have to put on high boots. And the same thing with life. There are certain things that you have to, a certain armor that you have to put on, if you want to steel yourself against [? noise] . That’s the way to be sure. [?] You can’t – in other words, if a person got drunk, and a person ?? ?? what would happen? ??

[very noisy, tape rubbing, try to do over]

00:44

Number one, you’re testimony when you come back isn’t? valid, because [you were] drunk. ?? Your testimony to yourself wouldn’t be valid. Because you wouldn’t know whether you dreamed it, you know, was it a drunken dream, or maybe was the real thing, that you, ?? conceived by your consciousness very dimly.

sn6a-01:02

So I think it goes back to the old Christian concept, and also the no? fault?, in using the same word. A group of thaumaturgists – they called the science magic. It means the ?? ?? And the, certain Rosicrucians use the same term, they call it the Holy Guardian Angel, the HGA.  And if you live a certain way, you live in harmony, so that certain influences are able to protect you. 

sn6a-01:46

Now, I didn’t believe this. I didn’t believe ?? ?? this doubt ?? some day you’ll get this hunch, in a certain type of life you’ll be protected to a degree, and the other type of life is not protected. So in some way’s you ?? And some of these other things seem to make sense later. In fact, during the struggle you feel you’re totally abandoned and ?? And you have to have faith in yourself. And of course, I doubt? when I had that in myself [?] When I was in my twenties I got fed up ?? very little chance of finding anything out. But I made up my mind that I preferred to die or to go crazy. It didn’t matter. ?? if I’m going to understand, ?? That was the commitment I made ?? but I refused to become involved in life, so to speak. Because I knew if I got married and had kids ?? that would be the end of the search. I’d be busy earning the nickel for Kroger’s. So it has to be, if you want total results, that’s the law of physics, the law of proportional returns: total results come from total energy.

dm6a-03:02

Q. Long question, inaudible, woman’s voice, French accent [?]
Could this be the same lady as in 1978-0406-Group-Meeting-Pittsburgh (“nice”)

sn6a-03:55

R. How do you know that? 

Q. What?

R. How do you know that? It’s nice to think that, but how do you know that’s true? 

Q. How do I know?

R. Yes.

Q. What specifically?

R. Everything specifically that you said. All these here ?? platitudes you laid out. How do you know that’s true? How do you know that everybody’s going to get there? 

Q. Well, I understand that ?? [noise] ?? You are pointing at Zen, ??

R. No. I began my talk by saying I didn’t ?? ?? Zen. I just ?? ?? the case of a man who did it with the Lord’s Prayer. 

sn6z-04:36

Q. (somebody else)  inaudible

R. Maybe it did it. It depends on what he was doing, how much dynamism he rolled? up? with. See, what we’re talking about now, we’re talking about attitude, not proof. And I read [?] this attitude of just live with the pigs in the pigpen and we’ll all go to heaven.

Q. (French lady) No, inaudible


R. Well, sure. That’s why I said to him ?? you’re not supposed to say ?? you, we. If my language goes at right angles to it, I don’t expect to convert you and ?? ??. If you doubt what I say, that proves that, that means that you’re listening to yourself. I don’t ask you to believe. When I talk, I, there’s only one ?? I have, as I said when I first started, that I hit a similar vibration. You can only work with people who [have a] similar vibration. That’s what I say.

He said, “Zen” – I didn’t denounce his line of work. He said, “I don’t dig you.” And I said, “Well, go your way.” And if you say you don’t dig me, I say then you go your way. That’s alright. Because you can’t work – if we speak, if I speak French and you speak Chinese and that’s the only thing you understand, we just cannot work together.

sn6z-06:05

Q. inaudible

R. Well I don’t see how I implied [it]. The only think I imply is that I have made a discovery. Now if that’s a crime to make a discovery, that I should be ignorant and stupid because everyone else is, then that’s a crime, I’ll live with it. 

Q. What’s the penalty [?]  [laughter]

Q. (Some older guy.) How can you explain the taste of an orange to somebody who’s never tasted an orange?

R. You got the point. That’s what I’m driving at. That’s exactly what I’m driving at. [pause] But there’s something somewhere; this you’re bound to pick up by your intuition. There might be balm in Gilead.  

Q. [French lady, very long] ???  are you saying ??

sn6a-07:17

R. Words? be dead. 

. inaudible

R. In order to get there?

Q. Yes. 

R. Well, you don’t necessarily destroy your ego. Your egos are more or less melted, faded. They’re taken anyhow. The idea of having a system r a group is to expedite this, to hurry it up a bit. In other words, as I mentioned before: the little girl who has the beauty and the charm, and everything’s coming her way – that’s an ego. It will take forty years for nature to take it. ?? Now if by some presentation of this thought to her she can drop that ego, she can still have her looks, her youth, her power, her vigor and everything - ?? ??

Q. (inaudible)

Q. (old guy) Covering up.

R. Facade you mean? 

Q. Yes. [woman, blah, blah, blah

R. Well, it goes deeper than a facade, See, there’s such a thing as a vanity-ego. We were talking about the? case? of these? girls? I’m talking about something that’s apparent. Other ?? egos that are not apparent. For instance, the ego that you should live. That isn’t apparent but you could take it for vanity. Why should you live? ?? important. Should you be immortal? You would give up the ego of life? This is the door you, the final door you have to walk through. You have to die. You have to be convinced that there is no life, and that you’re not necessary.

sn6a-09:05

When a person reaches 80 or 90 years of age aand they’re lying in the hospital dying, this is what goes through their heads. They’re nothing, just a pile of garbage that’s going to be carted away in a few hours or a few days. No significance. They children will wish they were already dead so they can spend the money. And everyone that they know has no time to come and see them, and everything of that sort. So they’re insignificant, and they have no purpose on this earth any more. And then that may go, and they say, “Okay, it doesn’t matter what happens to me,” and they die. But that ego goes. If there’s any consciousness or any awareness, the ego of life itself goes. 

sn6a-09:44

But you can’t give ?? ?? second ?? destroyed ?? change yourself.

Q. That’s the way it feels. I feel  ?? how will you ??

R. Which self are you talking about? Which self are you talking about? You keep talking about, you test yourself – who is this self you’re testing?

Q.

R. because what I think is yourself and what you think is yourself may be two different things, and which one is real? Do you know who you are? 

Q. I’m ?? ??

R. Well, don’t be so positive? then.

Q. Why not?  ??

R. ??? ?? put you right and find out who you are.

Q. Do you want ?? I’d like to be criticized but not ??

sn6a-10:37

R. How so? What do you want me to do? Show something ?? bad faults ??

Q. Yes.  [does she leave here?  no, more at 12:50]

Q. (Somebody else.) You know, to clarify her thinking  ?? to that theory that ?? An identity of her own. There’s many, many, many ways to go out into the world, that felt very superior, now it’s ?? ?? ??

R. ??

Q. Of course living nowadays with modern women’s lib, they’re even more ? than they were before. [laughter]

sn6a-11:23

R. How are they going to redefine them? If they want to redefine themselves. [somebody coughing] ?? ?? I don’t want people that? say? police are ?? she ?? opposed to she ?? cause ?? Is it so terrible that her snooze? is ?? a part of God?  If that’s what they find out. I mean, I thought it was ?? I thought ?? the idea that I would cease to exist as a personality would be something that I didn’t want to learn about. I hope they’ll never find it. I don’t think it’s ??

sn6a-12:03

But when you say, “Be specific,” I know that to answer a question such as this ? you end up saying, “Prove.” See. Prove, or ? let’s take a case with an argument. [?] Prove. Well, there is no proof. There is no wisdom. You can’t learn. You can’t ?? Every time I go to a lecture I suspect that they [the audience] are looking for wisdom. They’re looking for something they can weigh against something else. That they can take one book and weigh it against another. You never learn. You never learn in this search, you become. Christ didn’t say, “I kow the truth,” he said, “I am the truth.” 

sn6a-12:47

Q. (the French lady)

R. How can you be more positive ?? prove? it?

Q. 

R. Yes, but you’re asking me to be more positive. BVut are you positive, when you ask for positive statements?

Q.

Q. [mass confusion]

Q. One of the guys. That’s the end of it, Mr. Rose.

R. We’re going in a tight circle. [laughter] [bunch of talking]

sn6a-13:24

Q. ... [a person can] read it, think about it, and then they’ll either accept it or they won’t. 

Q. (old guy) You know what an old timer told me? He said, “Everything is false alarm, camouflage, B.S.”

R. Well, I don’t say “all”, because, you know, cover everything ?? [away from mic, noise] 


 So don’t believe in anything.

Q. What?

R. I agree with that. Don’t believ in anything. Find out for yourself. You have to go there yourself. You hve to live.

Q. (old guy) You get burned a few times, you’ll learn.

R. Right. And in the next incarnation you stay out of the hot? pants? places?

sn6a-14:27

Q. If you bleed? in hot places.

Q. (long)

R. Suffering?

Q. ??

R. Well, I believe that – this was supposed to have been the motivation that Buddha had. That he was born to a wealthy family, supposedly a king’s son, or a ruler of some sort. And he saw this suffering all around him, in a manner that troubled him. Well this is pretty much the theme of the fellow who was the aviator,  and saw the people dying by the thousands. A hundred thousand people died. And I think it is – that all of our wisdom comes as the result of suffering. And if we’re too fat and too well fed, and too well entertained, we don’t think

sn6a-15:44

And there is a divine scheme, if you want to use the word loosely; I’m using the word divine loosely and admit it. Because I don’t want to have to prove what I mean by it. But there seems to be a scheme that – this is a schoolhouse not a bordello, alone. But we’re here to learn. And if we [don’t] suffer if we don’t. There has to be some reason for being here. I don’t like to preempt the blueprint, the designer of the blueprint. But the feeling I have is that we’re here to learn. To me, pleasure is a figment of the imagination. And also a bait that drags you away from serious thinking. And if you don’t believe it, why, watch how quickly you respond to pleasure when you think you pledged yourself to a half hour’s meditation.

sn6a-16:35

More pleasure that we ?? going to a movie or shooting a game of pool or something of that sort. ?? information taken or ?? pleasurable amount ?? to do something and there’s the direction of finding yourself. But I maintain that there are too weak. I don’t believe you can do a whole lot, you know, the only thing you can do is respond. I believe that somehow all protoplasm tends to inertia, meaning it leads to the grave. But at the same time, all human endeavor aims upward, to a higher and higher form of life. And because I think [that] back there someplace in the computer, whether that be genes, inherited genes, there’s a memory – that there is something a little better than a reproductive animal existence.

sn6a-17:34

Q. ??

R. Huh?

Q. What is ?? ??

R. Knowing – what the reproductive animal is.

Q. ??

R. Well, I don’t know that you can compare it. But I think it’s preferable to know. Now of course, if I told you there is a much better level of consciousness, I would be asked to prove it.

Q. Well, I didn’t ask you ??

R. Yes. Well it’s a better level of consciousness. The realization is better – than living in ignorance.

Q. ??

R. Well, it depends on, again on your viewpoint. But it’s a – the analogy I often draw is, I grew up on a farm. And I used to think that if the cows knew that we were going to knock the calf in the head, so that we could continue to have an even flow of milk, they would quit having calves. So that the women who saw one out of the family knocked in the head, would quit having kids. Is it just a reproductive system, or are we here for something else?

In other words, how glamorous – of course, we look upon ourselves as being glamorous, that we would say that this so-called life of happiness ?? ?? is important. But we can look at another level of life, and look down on – I say the reason we’re so egotistical is we have nowhere to look except down. If there were a superior race of people, then we wouldn’t be so proud, we’d be hunting spiritual values because we couldn’t compete physically. We can always look down on the pig and the horse and the cow and say, “Ho, ho – we’ve got a soul,” or something; we just take it for granted. But we can also look at that pig and say, “That is possibly the same way I’m living” just rooting for the next ear of corn, until somebody chops me in the head and takes my energy.” 

sn6a-20:04

Now – is it advantageous to live as a pig, or as a farmer?

Q. ??

R. [laughs] That’s a, that’s a – “Well, they’re all Bud’s people.” [laughter] Each must function, some fertilize the earth.

Q. It seems to me you mentioned system? assistance? And also uh, in answer to your three questions ?? ?? What, uh, first, uh, ?? identify with your system as the Zendo? and ??? recommends it?

R. Well, what recommends it is the basic thing – it does answer the three questions. I don’t deny that other systems can’t answer, or don’t answer [do?] – I don’t think there’s a – anything has a broader? ?? then. I believe that you can find enlightenment by being a good Hebrew or a good Catholic, a Mohammedan – if you’re sincere and ask yourself the questions, and pursue the questions, it doesn’t matter what system ?? that you use. 

sn6a-21:33

All that I’m saying is that – I’m – I was talking about common sense, in? and? my lectures circled around with an excessive amount misleading terminology, misleading cults, cultism, verbiage that goes with cults – and it’s not necessary. And I do think that there are some systems of course that promise – actually don’t promise? anything ?? we get to. . I don’t think that the Christian system from the second one [question] – who I am. It tells you, but that doesn’t say [mean] it proves it. I’m talking about something that determines it, that helps you find out who you are. 

I’m not talking about a system that says that after death you reincarnate. I don’t have proof of it. I’m not talking about a system that says that before you were born you were an angel. No, I want it proven.

Q. You’re addressing the question ??

R. Huh?

Q. You’re addressing the question 

sn6a-22:42

R. Does that hurt? [laughter] I use that ?? ?? had some moving ?? ?? I get a lot of ?? up there. The general theme would be ??? But you asked me of course what ?? was. The only bearing? I could say for it would be, the thing that I endorse or advise is, that it didn’t answer those three questions, and I think I’d be ?? 

Q. From saying ?? you ?? done the reading? you pointed out, you mentioned a couple that seemed to me also, also answer those three questions.

R. Such as?

Q. Well, such as magic, such as, uh, by implication huna. Any number of systems of suggestion, autosuggestion ...

R. Well I grant you, see I never criticized magic. I ?? the magic but not the critical, not the criticism. I said that they too endorse the idea of the HGA. That’s the only comment I made about magic. Now that’s not – see there’s the same thing, the kabalistic investigations; I didn’t choose that path. It’s very possible that you can reach it through the, through the analysis of the kabala. 

sn6a-24:02

Q. The point is, spending time in the library reading say any number of crypto-cult ??
[Could this be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-Christianity ]
and I come across a little piece of paper that says this ?? is supposed to be in your book.

R. Uh, huh.

Q. So a remarkable piece of ?? Obviously, whoever put that there was ??
[sn6a-24:23 -- sound of another cassette recorder changing tapes]
?? ?? had something particularly representative. Because the ?? fact that, for you the ?? these three choices ...

R. Well, I don’t think you’ll find it as ?? the kabala. I don’t know anything about huna, [in 1979, looked into it later] ?? But I don’t think that we pretend, I ever pretend, or the group has ever pretended to be the sole answer.

Q. ??

R. Well, I don’t reject things that I think, I don’t reject movements in themselves. I say for instance that, I use the word Zen but I admit that there’s a lot of corruption. Now we’ve got corruption. In other words, you have to set yourself certain guidelines when you start. You can’t join every cult on the face of the earth. Alright, what guidelines do you set for yourself. Now, I don’t know, the average person does ?? maybe it’s popularity. I just gou out? of? a meeting [when, where?] ?? ?? product because somebody gets on the radio and says, “Everybody’s reading this book”? or, “This is one of the many; this is a fruit salad, take this with the rest of them”? No, I say some are better than others. Why? Because they have certain – one of them is money. I think that you can’t afford to take a year out of your life, and work and save for an entire year, to pay for a season? at some retreat. 

sn6a-25:50

Q. ??

R. huh?

Q. Why do you have to join any cult?

R. You don’t. You don’t have to join anything. I didn’t say you had to. 

Q. ??

R. Well, you have to look them over. No, if you don’t want to know, then you’re saying you don’t want to know anything. 

Q. ??

R. Well, how can you know if you don’t know how to read and write?

Q. ??

R. Then you’re getting into words. See. The whole thing is, if you wish to discount everything that’s been written, that’s perfectly alright, if you think you can find it without any reference. I’m not arguing with that; that’s your trip. But if you’re going to analyze what’s written, you can’t just take the first thing and grab onto it either. That’s what I’m saying. You have to be able to read more than one thing. And if you read more than one thing, you better have some sort of a guide, a measuring stick, or you’ll be in it for years.

sn6a-26:54

I’ve met people – I met a man right here in Cleveland one time, he was in Rosicrucianism for 40 years. Me and another fellow went up to [see] him and said, “What did it do for you?” And he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Can you show me something – as a result of your 40 years of being in this?” He said, “Did you ever see a needle float on water?” This is the truth. I met another Rosicrucian for instance, a lady 70 years of age, who had been for many years; I don’t know exactly, it could have been 30 or 40 years. The purpose of Rosicrucianism [to her] was to stick around long enough, to keep this discipline up, until your Master appeared in astral form, in front of you, and he answered your question. So I said [thought] “Well, here’s a lady about to die.” “Did you see your Master?” She said, “Yes.” “Did you ask him a question?” She said, “Yes.” “Did he answer you?” She said, “No. He nodded, he shook his head like this and then left the foot of my bed.” 

sn6a-28:00

Well, lord knows what it was. [laughter] How much of it was created and how much came of its own.

sn6a-28:13

But regardless, you have to have some, if you’re discriminating – if you just want to pick up the first thing that comes along and follow it, that’s good. As I say, that’s your thing. But if you wish to sift and find out what’s valid, if you’re going to put some time into something, then I say use ??. If you don’t want to use it, that’s ?? that’s your business. But I maintain that there are certain yardsticks. And one of them is: no money. No attitude, no money being? God in the thing, that you’re going to buy your way into heaven, or something of that sort. Or buy your way into a gimmick? The second thing is excessive dogma and ritual – where you get snowed under and carried away, and the first thing you know all you’re doing is chanting prayers or something and you forget what you started to do. See. 

sn6a-28:59

So you can get down the line on that and you’ll find that certain things are the mark of chicanery. And you try to avoid chicanery if possible. Now you have to define what chicanery is; don’t ask me to define it. Maybe I’ll define it and you won’t like my definition. You have to define it yourself. See. 

Q. (old guy) Mr. Rose, I ?? out and there’s certain amount ?? valid here, but anyway there’s one word you haven’t ...

R. We all love you. [laughter]

Q. ... but there’s one word ?? ?? obviously this is ?? How about, suppose you believe in pyramidology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidology  where you measure ?? of the pyramid. What would ??

R. ?? [laughter]

Q. (old guy) See, the thing is, you know you use, as I said before, in the first question, you use only reference [?] and use ?? the truth.  Now, ?? ?? Now, if you used common sense, ?? have to be skeptical, because, for example, common sense tells us that this time you ?? in ?? I find references ?? the sun comes up in the morning in the east and ?? in the west. But as you increase your knowledge, you learn that the earth is not ?? and the earth is the one that’s doing the rotating. And so consequently as you increase your wisdom, ?? ?? there’s more to be learned than what common sense would tell us, than what we know today. ??

sn6a-30:46

R. [resigned] Well, of course, I didn’t, a person’s common sense doesn’t ?? Common sense ?? ?? boils down to ?? ?? ?? experience. Whether you went there or you ?? vicariously. Common sense ?? ?? comparison

sn6a-31:09

Common sense ?? foolish if we – we’ve got the pill for the cold that ?? we couldn’t see the virus.

Q. It appears ??

R. Right. Right. So common sense is different for different people. And also, I maintain that the evolutionary wisdom, or the evolutionary knowledge, is different for different people. But ?? ?? common sense. I know a lot of kids who ...

sn6a-ends at 31:36
=== End of Cleveland Talk ===

== END ==
</div>