1978-0412-Going-Within-KSU-Part-1

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Title	1978-0412-Going-Within-KSU-Part-1
Recorded date	April 12, 1978
Location	Kent State University
Number of tapes	One 60 minute tape
Other recorders audible?	Yes
Alternate versions exist?
Source	N
No. of MP3 files	2 files: 32 min; 32 min.
Total time	64 minutes
Transcription status	SH started 11/13/2009, restarted August, 2011. Distributed Aug. 24, 2011.
Link to distribution copy	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ (need password)
Link to PDF	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ Or try http://selfdefinition.org/rose/
Published in what book?
Published on which website?
Remarks	Mentions death of Wilbur Franklin, the day before.
Audio quality	Mostly good. Many questions are inaudible.
Identifiable voices
URL at direct-mind.org	https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1978-0412-Going-Within-KSU-Part-1
	For access to this wiki or the audio files please send an email to: editors@direct-mind.org
Revision timestamp	20240202020128

Notes

Venue is Kent State

On one list or tape label the location said Akron" but this is KSU ased on some clues (see Talk page) especially this:

Says: In fact when I first came to Kent, four or five years ago, I spoke in the classroom of a teacher here – I’m not going to give you his name because he may still be around, or his body may be. He was into anthropology

This is Part one <<

Part 2 was labeled and published as "1970s Going Within"

File 1

We lost one of our friends of the group today, Wilbur Franklin. , , It wasn’t common knowledge that Franklin was a friend of our group, but he was. He was interested in parapsychology. Being a scientist, he didn’t get much into spiritual work – or at least it wasn’t conducive for anyone to know he was interested in the spiritual aspects of things. We had a science group that were interested in parapsychology – there are different levels of investigation of the unknown. One of them is physical or scientific, another is mental, and the third of course is direct union with consciousness. Wilbur Franklin was in the scientific aspect of things. He was a member of the society that is associated with the Pyramid Zen group. I learned about it while I was in Cleveland yesterday. They buried him today.

01:12

This talk is scheduled to be a dialog, and by this I mean to answer questions, not that we’re going to let everybody talk. Some of you have heard me before. I’ve been coming up here for three or four years, and the Zen group has been in existence for five years. And in these talks I’ve generally hit on certain themes, such as spirituality or psychology, or the relation of Zen to psychology. And I have always felt that with seventy-five percent of the people, we didn’t have communication. There are things said that maybe would have meaning if they had asked a question – but a lot of people don’t ask questions; they just try to pick up what they can, and let it go at that.

02:25

But people do come with questions that are pertinent, or questions they are interested in on their particular level of understanding – that is, the books they have read and what they have done. The things you have read and done become your language; you get your vocabulary from that. And if you’ve been a religious or spiritual person according to the established religions, then you’ve got a distinct language, which is different from somebody who is studying Zen, or pursuing Zen. (You don’t study Zen, you pursue it or try it.) So I want to make a few statements, and then I want you to make it your business to find out what you want to know.

Meaning

03:26

I maintain that everybody wants to know the truth. This is a broad term – we hear it so much – it sounds like you’re talking about somebody who wants a hamburger and they want the truth also. But I maintain that the very nature of man is curious; , that the curiosity in rooted in his search for meaning. Viktor Frankl once said that the purpose of man’s drive was the will to meaning. Of course after I got done reading his book I found out he meant a different type of meaning. But nevertheless, he was the first psychologist who came forward and announced that the main drive in man was to find his meaning. Most of them thought that our lives were for pleasure, or our lives were for power, such as Adler. Freud’s view was pretty much that we were sexually motivated.

04:27

I maintain that everybody wants to know. But you talk to different people and you’ll get different answers. A lot of them, the more material scientists, or those who lean toward material science, may tell you that when you die you enter oblivion and your electrons go back to the atmosphere or back to the earth, and that’s the end of you. Because it’s easier to think that, than it is to speculate on numerous concepts, the years of research that have been done by spiritual or religious or philosophic groups.

05:16

There are some people of course who say that we’re just animals. And others say we are animals that have souls. Now I can almost talk to a person more easily if he thinks we’re an animal with no soul, than I can with a person who thinks we have a soul, or who believes that we have a soul. Because the majority of them don’t bother to prove it; they rest on faith – and the great democratic theme, that where everyone’s going, that’s where they’re going. And they don’t really feel secure in that, but it’s the rationale that gets them from one crisis to another.

Three levels of work

06:07

I imagine that some of the people here today are interested on one of these three levels: the physical, or the mental, or what I call the union with essence – the recognition of essence, the discovery of essence. If you get into that part of it, such as in Zen, you get into the business of becoming. You’ll see this mentioned on our posters occasionally. Zen is the business of becoming, not of learning. But for people who follow the physical, that is the beginning and I don’t want to discourage it.

I was talking in Cleveland last night and somebody brought up the idea, “When should you use a quiescent mantra? Is it wrong to use a quiescent mantra, like in Transcendental Meditation?” But basically, the realization of any scientific discovery, or the realization of anything about yourself, does not come with peace and quiet, it comes with strife and turbulence. Of course this is Zen: Zen is the endless koan until the answer comes – “the answer” – meaning the answer that answers all questions.

07:42

And I said, “Yes, it’s good, for people who are troubled, or traumatic, people who were injured, to do TM. It’s not good, once they’ve recovered from the injury, to keep doing TM all their life.” And I’m not saying this to kick TM – I spent about seven years myself doing the equivalent of that. They didn’t have TM when I was in my twenties; it was just “Om”. One of the steps that people in hatha yoga got into eventually was breathing exercises in coordination with the use of the word Om. They called it the mantra – it’s just a word. But it has the same effect; it’s a resonant noise and it pacifies. But after about seven years of that type of pacification, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t moving, and I’d better get into something that stirred me up instead of putting me to sleep.

08:39

In the physical approach we have hatha yoga, we have psychic exploration – which is a scientific exploration – parapsychological work, spiritualism: where we’re going to talk to a person who is dead and comes back, and we will have learned first-hand from another person what death is. I’m just giving these as examples. And of course, besides hatha yoga we have tai chi, which supposedly puts you in harmony with yourself.

09:15

When you graduate to the mental pursuits, these are everything from magic to astrology. It’s like algebra, but instead of algebraic symbols you have astrological or numerological or cabalistic symbols. So you’re hassling your head with different types of symbols, for bringing about wisdom. And it’s been said that wisdom is nothing more than the persistent juggling of symbols. Joseph Chilton-Pearce more or less inferred that all of our scientific symbols or systems – whether they were chemistry or mathematical – are paradigms in which we find some sort of harmony. But the whole system may be incomplete or erroneous. But in this line, the mind, the psychological field, becomes a mental endeavor which leads to a spiritual realization.

Mind dimension

10:33

We come then to the study of esoteric systems that allow us to know more about the mind dimension. Now this is one of the hang-ups of people who are exposed to our educational processes today: nearly everyone is quite sure, because he’s been told to be sure, that nothing exists except what you see. Our psychology is based upon the observation of bodies, not upon going into a person’s head. And this is where we lose a tremendous lot.

11:18

There is a mind dimension. There’s not only an individual mind, but the individual mind has contact with an entire dimension. Even as we exist in a physical dimension, there is another dimension that is as real or more real than this, depending on where you stand. When you’re alive, this dimension is very real; but when you drop the body, then this dimension may be like something we have dreamed.

11:52

But regardless, if you’re going to enter the mental dimension, it pays to know something about the flora and fauna of that dimension. Because a tremendous percentage of people today who entered into spiritual work under the guise of mind-expansion and tinkering, and with a concept that nothing can hurt you because the body is still here, are wandering around with paralyzed bodies as the result of mental trauma – when there’s no excuse in the psychology books for it, and there’s no cure in the psychiatric field for it.

12:33

Of course the next step is the finding of methods by which you become. It’s important that I say it that way. I don’t say what you become – you become what is. Because as you approach this idea of becoming, you discover that the fellow you thought you were wasn’t real. So there has to be a trend from the false personality that you thought you were. And this is not too hard to understand: because you can look back to when you were five years of age and see that you thought you were something when you were five, which you knew that you weren’t when you were ten. And when you were fifteen, you saw that you thought you were something when you were ten, that you had matured through when you were fifteen. And with this progression in mind, where will it stop? When will you really find out who you are, once and for all, and have no more doubt that the fellow you know yourself to be is the real fellow?

13:32

But anyhow, this is the direct approach, and this is the reason we use the word Zen. It requires a change of being. Not necessarily that your being ever changes, but that the apparent, erroneous being has to change or leave.

13:49

Now there are books written on this. The reason I’m bringing these out, these three categories – I don’t think it does any good to come in and hear me talk if this stuff is too alien to you. We keep a list of books – we try to keep a few on hand for samples, so you can get an idea of what they look like. But there are books you can pick up that will give you information about this. And they are not books that are written by quacks.

Thaumaturgy

There are a lot of quacks writing today, but the books we recommend have been tried and proven down through the ages. The thaumaturgical books, Ceremonial Magic by Arthur Edward Waite and Transcendental Magic by Eliphas Levi – these are the ones to know, if you’re interested in finding out what this next dimension is like. There have been people in and out of it – they have gone there and safely returned. Because they covered themselves: they didn’t go in saturated with dope or booze or sex; they went into it according to the rules of the ritual, and came out in one piece.

14:55

And it’s good to know this stuff if you’re going to fool with it. A lot of people are fooling with magic today. In fact when I first came to Kent, four or five years ago, I spoke in the classroom of a teacher here – I’m not going to give you his name because he may still be around, or his body may be. He was into anthropology but he was more interested in black magic, and finding himself a familiar spirit by which he would be guided into endless wisdom. Well, he got his familiar spirit, and another fellow who was dabbling with him – they both got familiar spirits; and now they’re twitching and jerking so bad that they can hardly sit still for five minutes.

15:48

The teacher came to one of my lectures here a year and a half ago. And I said, “Why don’t you come down?” He had been down to my place. And he said, “I won’t come down until I get myself straightened out.” I haven’t seen him in over a year. But this is what happens when you get this idea that nothing can hurt you because you’ve got a body. You can look around and you’ll see them by the hundreds, these people. And they come to me in these meetings. One fellow followed me out to the car and demanded that I stay and exorcise him. He was possessed, and he thought I had nothing better to do than to tangle with his demons. They’ve come clear down to my house in fact. Some of them have demons that were visible, to me at least; I could see them. They’d locate them and I could point them out. And this is from tinkering with something in a sort of devil-may-care attitude.

16:51

So it’s important that if you’re interested in any of these levels of experiment, there are books of authority. Like if you’re majoring in chemistry, there’s the latest stuff on chemistry that’s available; if you go to your chemistry department they can tell you what the latest books are. And this applies in any field. But these fields are not well known; you can’t find very many people who get into them.

But if you want to follow the philosophic path – by this I mean a philosophic path that leads to the maximum knowledge – then you will go through this. Sooner or later, you’ll encounter this and it’s good to know about it. Because like in my case, I had people come to my house – the people who brought them didn’t know they were possessed – and if I hadn’t protected some of the other house guests, there would have been difficulties, to say the least.

17:49

I don’t want to give you a barrage of book titles, but if you’re interested in any phase of this, or if you want to know more about any of these lines of work, after the meeting is over we can talk about it. However, I am not interested personally in working on any level except the level of becoming, the level of essence. But I do know that some are interested, and I don’t discourage it. In other words, I don’t think that anybody should say that everybody has to follow one particular direction; because they may be tuned to another vibration.

Q & A

18:29

Now that’s all I have to say, directly. And I would like you to pick up from here, and let’s see if we can’t get some questions.

18:49

Q. If we’re interested in enlightenment, what would you suggest we do?

19:15

R. Well, this is a system. In other words, if there weren’t a chance of accelerating growth, expediting growth, it would be strictly egotism for me to be standing up here. I wouldn’t even consider it egotism; it wouldn’t be worth that much. If people are just going to progress and get there, regardless of other people, regardless of circumstances, if you can’t accelerate – then there’s no use in expounding a system, no use in having a group. And in fact there’s a book full of the instructions by which we’re talking – I’ve written a book on this – because I felt that there hadn’t been enough said.

In fact there’s been very little said on the business of enlightenment. Richard Bucke wrote a book on cosmic consciousness, the title is Cosmic Consciousness . JJ van der Leeuw has a book, Conquest of Illusion. And Ramana Maharshi also. He didn’t write, but somebody put his teachings down in a book. Now these will give you an inkling of what it’s all about. But none of the books gives you a system. They give you definitions of sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, but they don’t tell you how to get there. None of them.

20:48

Samadhi

Q. You were talking about enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness, [rest of question is inaudible].

R. What are you talking about, candy in a candy shop? Those words mean nothing. There’s cosmic consciousness – we can define that – but for those other ones you spoke of, I have never used a definition like that.

If you read Ramana Maharshi, he explains in this little book the difference between cosmic consciousness and enlightenment; he has a little diagram: Kevala nirvikalpa samadhi is the equivalent of cosmic consciousness; sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi is the equivalent of enlightenment. Kevala samadhi, or cosmic consciousness, is the bucket whose rope is on the windlass, and it’s down in the bottom of the well – meaning that the being, the person, is steeped in bliss. And at any time you can wind the bucket back up. It’s a degree of experience, and it can be re-experienced. It is associated with a relative evaluation, which is bliss. Now, sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, or enlightenment, is the river that flows into the ocean and loses its identity; you can’t tell it from the ocean. There’s no return. There’s no re-experience, only a memory.

22:46

Q. Well, cosmic consciousness to me is like dipping into that well and being submerged, and then coming out, whereas God-consciousness is [inaudible] ...

23:01

R. Basically merging with the absolute. You’re using certain words, but I don’t like to use words that are not definable. I use the word absolute – merging with the absolute. Now some people call it God, but as soon as you use the word God you get tangled up in the definitions of God. Everybody’s got a different definition; some think it’s a personal creature.

Carlos Castaneda

23:31

Q. Have you read Carlos Castaneda’s new book?

R. No. I could barely stand his first one.

Q. He made the comment that what we call reality is like an extended dream.

23:53

R. Yes – this is when you go beyond, when you die. Then this life is witnessed as a dream, and you have no doubt whatsoever that this world doesn’t exist. Now I can’t correlate this with Castaneda. First of all, you have to stay away from books that do not decide for the reader whether they are fiction or whether they are scientific, or whether the author actually went there.

24:31

There have been several critiques written on Castaneda. I think we have a copy of Powers of Mind by Adam Smith – he and some other people have written critiques. And the conclusion is that he spun the first book out of whole cloth. He was doing his doctorate I think in anthropology and he got it printed on the university press. At the time he was either married or living with a woman, whom they interviewed, and she said he was never out of Los Angeles.

25:11

To me, if he wants people to know something about the Yaqui medicine men, he could have been a little more specific. The only contact we have in Don Juan is that he meets him at a bus station in Arizona, and from then on, that’s the only locale that’s mentioned. From then on you can only guess what happens; he doesn’t tell what road they took south, for example. And I don’t think he needs to be that mysterious.

Automatic writing

And there are a lot of books written like this. There’s another one called Seth Speaks – automatic writings. We have only so many years to analyze the authorities, and some I choose to discount almost immediately, because they can’t be established as being anything but fiction. The Aquarian Gospel, Seth Speaks – these are automatic writings. They could be divine revelations – whatever you mean by the word divine – but they could also be just cerebrations.

Brain waves

Q. What is your definition of enlightenment?.

R. I don’t have one. I just told you Ramana Maharshi’s. I don’t try to define it.

Q. According to my understanding, there are changes in the brain in the different states of consciousness – waking, dreaming and sleeping – and this could extend to enlightenment.

26:59

R. I have never considered waking, dreaming and sleeping to be other states of consciousness. We’re pretty much asleep all the time. There are times when we’re less asleep; and the dreaming may be nothing more than being half-awake.

Q. [inaudible]

R. Yes. I know. You get different waves on these machines. I realize all that. But what I’m talking about is the awareness. I know what you’re getting at: Can we identify enlightenment by a wavelength, by an alpha wave or a beta wave or something like that?

27:48

Q. Yes. Scientific research has been done with cosmic consciousness and they discovered with an electroencephalogram that the neurons in both hemispheres of the brain fired simultaneously whenever there was any intense activity.

28:09

R. It’s interesting.

Q. They have done the research. In fact, Kent State was doing some.

R. I know. They did something like that in Pittsburgh; we had several members of our group who went down and got wired up, but I don’t know what the results were. In fact they asked me if I would volunteer, and I said yes, but they never came for me.

Q. In the other stages of consciousness the neurons fired sporadically, whereas for a person in cosmic consciousness, they all fired simultaneously during intense activity.

29:11

R. The thing I’m curious about, how did they know that this fellow had cosmic consciousness?

29:16

Q. [Long statement, ending with a recount of a personal out-of-body experience.]

30:13

R. Well I’m not sure about you now, because you just used the word exaltation, but there are other levels of exaltations: you’ve heard of the word salvation, when a person gets saved by Jesus.

Q. Yes; for me that would be some kind of a transcendental state. This wasn’t that.

30:36

R. You’re using words rather loosely; they’re all transcendental experiences if they’re spiritual. In other words, you have to define. You’re talking about something they pick up with a scope, like an electroencephalogram, or alpha waves on a biofeedback machine. But how does he know the guy is in cosmic consciousness? This is where I’m getting at.

Q. [inaudible]

31:30

R. I don’t deny this. But were you wired up?

Q. During the experience? No.

R. That’s what I’m getting up. you can’t predict this. I think it’s impossible to ...

[break in tape]

[ file 1 ends at 31:45 ]

File 2

32 minutes.

Religious writings

00:00

Q. Do you say that Christ was an enlightened being?

R. I can’t say that Christ was an anything, because I never read any accounts of any illumination that he had. Of course, all we have to go by is the Bible.

Q. How about Gautama Buddha?

R. Again, all we have is writings. But my presumption is from the literature written about him, that other people presumed he was enlightened. The only accounts you can be sure of, in bona fide exaltations, are from living people. Because it’s too easy to write, once a person dies, to glorify him as to this. We were talking about this the other night. Supposing Christ wasn’t divine, but they had a commune going and they were taking tithes. Maybe they were taking the whole bundle, everything that people owned. Because there’s a case in the Bible, after Christ died, where Peter was taking a rake-off; and Ananias and Sapphira held out, and they were struck dead. They were executed for withholding money from the treasury. Also there’s the story of the widow’s mite; she gave all she had, which was a penny. And Christ said, “Look, she gave all, and you people are giving only ten percent,” or something like that.

01:33

So there was a little bit of money involved there. Now supposing these people had thrown all their wealth in there; they had dropped the fishing industry and had gone into fishing for men, and there was a whole organization involved. Christ promised to appear after he died. Now this happened quite a few hundred years ago. And I’m not saying this to ridicule Christianity; I’m saying I don’t know. That this could have happened – that he never reappeared, and then that the people said, “We’ve got to keep this thing going. We have to go out and fake an appearance on the road to Emmaus.” Also, the different stories we are told about how the stone got rolled away from the grave: three different Gospels, three different stories.

Relative and absolute

Q. The sutras talk about the supernormal abilities that every human being has. Actually they’re not supernormal, they’re just normal abilities that most people don’t use.

R. I grant that.

03:29

Q. Well, say that this could be enlightenment on a continuum.

03:37

R. No, no. You can’t put enlightenment on a continuum. How can you put something that’s absolute on a relative scale?

Q. Because you have that which is relative ...

R. Which doesn’t exist.

Q. Okay, it’s all maya, I agree. But in order for us to carry on the discussion, we have to agree that there is a separation, at least an illusion of a separation, between the relative and the absolute. That there are two separate experiences; you have the experience of the relative, and then also you have other experiences, which are experiences of the absolute.

04:12

R. Again, if you’re going to keep your terminology accurate – you don’t have an experience of the absolute; you become the absolute.

Q. Why isn’t it possible that I already am the absolute?

R. Well now you’re saying the same thing I said, that you always were the absolute. But you don’t have that experience. When you say “I” you immediately dichotomize yourself. When you become the absolute, then the experience is always there.

04:46

Q. Okay, if you do become the absolute, wouldn’t you agree that the more you act in accordance with all the laws of nature, then the more you would have ...

R. Yes, but why are you talking that way, when you just got done saying it was maya? The laws of nature are maya, then. They have no significance once you attain the absolute. This is one of the concepts that keeps seeping into all genuine (what I consider genuine) spiritual works: “Can’t we take the cruddy carcass along, and play our little games forever?”

05:19

Q. You still have a physical body, though, once you attain enlightenment.

R. The body remains until it dies.

Q. And so does the person who’s within it.

R. How do you know there’s a person within it? How do you know that?

Q. Because his identification isn’t the same as it used to be, but he still identifies himself with the absolute and he can’t tell the difference.

R. No, no. The identification remains the same; meaning that for everyone here, my identification is Rose.

Q. I’d say that the absolute is God, just between you and me.

R. No conspiracies, please. [laughs]

Q. Once you attain enlightenment, if you’re using that definition, you would have to say that you became God.

R. No, no. I don’t say that. You say it, but I don’t.

Q. You have attained the absolute.

R. No, no – what do you want me to say this for? Because I just got done telling you that you don’t attain the absolute.

Q. Sorry to be arguing.

R. Well, go ahead; go ahead. But let me interrupt a minute. I would like some other people to ask questions too. Because you’re expounding – there’s a difference between a question and expounding.

Purpose

06:36

Q. From your perspective, do you see any purpose in life?

R. Well, yes. As I said when I first started talking, that’s the purpose in life, to find yourself. Now there are different ways of putting this. Some people recognize the fact, maybe taking the word of men like Ramana Maharshi, that at one time they were one with the godhead, or one with the absolute. And that somehow the consciousness, the awareness, strayed away into particularization, or into the fantasies projected upon the void, the creation of the mind-dimension, so to speak.

07:35

Consequently, it seems as though everyone is struggling – although in a sleep – trying to arouse themselves from their sleep long enough to find reality and to find real consciousness. And this is basically not the type of consciousness we understand now, which is particularized: words, thoughts, one following the other – whereas the final consciousness is like an eternal awareness. And that is an absolute awareness.

08:05

Consequently, we don’t have too much to do with this. We can hunger for that, but not as for being able to say, “Hey, I want this; I want to send an order in to Sears and Roebuck’s,” or, “I’m going to send up an order to heaven.” The order goes inside. And if a person gets hungry enough, they start putting material into the computer, questions to the computer, data into the computer. And eventually you come up with answers that become traumatic, until the trauma helps you solve the problem.

08:39

Again, once the problem is solved, it looks like you’ve gone somewhere, but you haven’t. You have shed what you started out with. The person who started the struggle for self-definition is obliviated.

08:55

Q. So do you think your purpose is to help people reach this?

R. No, I just don’t have anything better to do; I don’t know whether I’m helping or not. I really don’t. Sometimes I think I fuel them up – they get their egos all wound up and they think they’re doing something. But the results aren’t always good, for them or for anybody else.

Hypnosis and rapport

09:23

Q. I was taking a look at your brochure on the hypnosis seminar. I’m wondering where hypnosis fits on that hierarchy, the physical, mental and change of being?

R. It’s the psychological. We put on what we call Chautauquas, or symposiums – in fact that’s how Wilbur Franklin came to be associated with the group; he was one of our speakers in Akron. But last year at a Chautauqua we had a couple hours devoted to hypnosis. And I did it purposely to show an insight into the human mind. I maintain that there’s no use studying psychology unless you study hypnosis; because you can find a method of finding rapport with the mind that is much quicker and directly to the point. For example, you can diagnose illnesses.

10:25

We had a group of people there – these were hypnotized people. The first thing I did was to go around and point to the ones who had headaches and tell them, “Here is where your head hurts,” just from looking at them. Because I was able to go inside their head. They were as far away from me as you are. And then of course I went over and put my hand on their head and reassured them, by tapping them on the head, “Here’s where your headache is.” And then I took the headache away with my hand.

10:53

Now you can say it’s suggestion; I don’t care what it is. But these are things that are the result of direct apprehension, not diagnosis with, “Where does it hurt?” or “What did you eat for breakfast?” or anything of that sort. That’s the reason for it. There are better ways of getting into the head than studying about the qualities of the human mind, which everybody is guessing about.

11:18

So this is what we’re trying to do. One of the exercises in the Zen group is to establish rapport, so that everyone is able to do that. Tonight somebody asked about expediting transmission – and it can be done. I’m not saying you can put a person into total enlightenment, but you can sure let him look in the window. In other words, when that person’s mind is in rapport with mine, they know what I’m talking about. The words are no longer necessary. And this is the secret of it.

Now this is brought about by sitting exercises; they sit together and they train to read each other’s minds; to read emotions first, and then to read actual thoughts. We have four meetings a year when the group comes down to my farm in the country, and we used to sit with maybe sixty-five, seventy-five or a hundred people there. And when we have this type of group, if the atmosphere is right, I’d go around and point out what they were thinking, what their emotions were and this sort of thing, in order to establish rapport. Because once that’s set up, it becomes almost like a living electricity in the room. It’s a charge. And in fact, it’s so strong sometimes that people actually fall; they collapse from it when it hits them.

12:53

All of this is just psychology, it’s not black magic. It’s basically psychology, and also the ability to do what they call “zapping”. But zapping is nothing more than reaching out with the mind and touching another mind. Because you’re not limited; the mind is not limited to the body. It’s only limited to its dimension. And it can travel rapidly; things can travel over two or three thousand miles. I don’t know how far it can really travel. The astronauts claimed the effect of ESP in outer space.

13:27

That’s the reason for this. In other words, you don’t put out a brochure and talk about enlightenment. You have to talk on something that has a common denominator with many people, such as their interest in psychology. And if their interest in psychology develops into a greater interest, in knowing the answers behind the psychology, then they get interested in philosophic psychology, or the essence of man.

Yardsticks and intuition

14:04

Q. Do you have guidelines to separate the quacks from the non-quacks? And also I’d like to know what your experience was with Richard Alpert, Ram Dass.

R. I never knew him. All I know about him is what I read in the book. I never met him.

Q. What was your impression?

R. Not too flattering. I don’t know. I don’t think he achieved anything. The first question – how do you tell the phonies from the real ones? This is important. Because some of you are in the same age bracket that I was when I started searching. And you can’t get into them all; you can’t read all of the books. You’ve got to start with something, and work with yardsticks.

And I would cut out certain things where the author didn’t have the courage to come out and say, “Hey, by God, this is the truth.” If he had the courage to come out and say that, then I’d listen to him. But not if he hid behind storytelling, or behind “somebody spoke through my mouth” – automatic writing, trance, mediumship, you know, some guide speaks through you. You could be possessed. I stayed away from all these things. I say that if you have to go to someone, go to a man who speaks directly and honestly.

15:36

I avoid any institution or organization that charges money. If this outfit charged, we would be worth a million dollars – if we valued our work in money. But people will pay just to be lied to. That’s all you have to do: lie to them. I never followed anyone who charged. And I never paid attention to any religion or ism that had excessive ritual or regimentation. Whenever it started to build up a political structure: priests, bishops, popes, etc., or different categories where you could pay in a little more and get a little more rank – immediately I wrote them off. Consequently I limited the field down tremendously when I was young, because all these outfits charged. But I held onto that. And my instructors were mostly people I ran into personally. They were not necessarily gurus; they were people who had done some hard digging. And I did find some outfits incidentally that did not charge, but I didn’t get into them too deeply because my intuition didn’t take me in that direction.

15:58

Now, speaking of intuition – this is what you have to do. Somewhere along the line in the beginning of your inquiry, you have to develop an intuition. You can’t logically say who’s a thief and who’s a liar. In the book I mention that people go to church and listen to a preacher for twenty years, and they find out at the end that he didn’t believe a word of what he was telling them.

17:22

We were just over at Franklin’s funeral and I met a spiritualist there; he was interested in psychic phenomena. We were talking about some of the spiritualist phenomena I had seen – I had witnessed materialization of spirits and that sort of thing. We were talking about the phonies, comparing notes. I had run into several of these ministers – they were pulling rabbits out of the hat. They had phony materializations, luminous cheesecloth and this sort of thing to bilk the old ladies. And I challenged one once. And he said, “Hey, don’t embarrass me in front of my congregation.” He said, “I get so many dollars a month to keep these old ladies happy. And the only thing I can do for them is to keep them happy, because they’re too far gone to ever reach any spiritual growth. So you lie to them, so that they’ll die easy.” And he was getting paid for it.

18:22

Consequently, the people in that congregation didn’t have any intuition. So you have to deliberately go about developing your intuition. And there’s a method of doing it, there’s a method of expediting that. But we’ll not discuss it tonight.

Prayer

18:55

Q. Aside from something you do when you’re desperate, what is prayer? Does it fit into the flora and the fauna you were speaking of?

R. I always said that if a man prays and hears himself, he can answer and acquire. Basically, every man has God inside. The God is in there; you call him forth. Sincerely call him forth. I think it’s much more effective than the external prayer to something on a cloud. Consequently, if a man sincerely prays and hears himself, he will acquire.

19:50

And along with it there may be the danger of autosuggestion. So what? As long as you know it, as long as you’re conscious that it could be autosuggestion, then you’re not spoofing yourself completely – compared to the autosuggestion where people get to thinking that they’re holier and holier until they get to the point where you can’t live with them.

Enlightenment

20:19

Q. Is there any way, or need, to know whether someone is enlightened?

R. For your own satisfaction. If you are enlightened you will recognize another man’s enlightenment. That’s the reason I didn’t want to get into this business of defining it – you can’t define an absolute experience with relative words. No matter how many you use, it’s just impossible. But if you’ve been there, and you hear another person talking, this is the check. This is the reason that in some schools, supposedly, when a fellow has an experience he walks in and says something, and the other fellow picks him up right away and says, “Yes, I know where you’ve been.” But it’s not verbalizable. It can only be known in that respect, not so much from what he says, but that his words key in a direct-mind contact.

21:12

Q. Have you had the experience?

R. Yes. I would be wasting your time if I hadn’t been someplace, besides reading a few books.

Infinity

21:28

Q. Do you have a comprehension of what infinity means?

R. Infinity? Yes, it’s part of the experience. If you get a chance, there’s an account of it in the back of the Albigen Papers. It’s written in a rather poetic fashion in order to get the idea across, to appeal to an emotional center as well as with the words. But you’re aware of this: you’re aware of infinity. You’re aware of timelessness. You’re aware of everything, and you’re aware of nothing. Now that sounds like I’m throwing everything into the basket just for effect. But as soon as you say “everything”, it’s relative. The word everything is still relative. And “nothing” is still relative. You’re actually aware of the everythingness and the nothingness. That’s the best I can describe it, and that’s inept.

22:33

We have a certain attitude, if you want to call it that, toward time, which is a spatial-time; a time based upon space. And we know that these are tied together: Einstein brings this in, that time does not exist independent of space, nor space independent of time. But we separate them; we talk about so many hours in relation to the sun. But in relation to the galaxy, what is our time? And we never stop to think that our mental dimension might not have the same time sense – because there will be no sun, no galaxies. And when you enter the mental dimension you are very much aware of “absolute time” which you might call infinity.

Synchronicity

23:40

Q. What is the significance of synchronicity? [rest is inaudible]

R. Well, I don’t know whether you can wedge Jung in there or not. Is he the one who talks about synchronicity?

Q. There’s an article on synchronicity in the last edition of the TAT Journal.

24:45

R. Right. Yes, well, this is only a theory, of course. But I have said repeatedly that everyone who comes into this room doesn’t come in of their own volition: this is part of a pattern that they have to fulfill or go through. Now tonight we had two leave – that’s part of the pattern too. In Pittsburgh we had ten get out real fast; they got sick and left. They came here to get sick, and then they left.

25:21

But yes, I think that things mesh. When you quit struggling, when you quit trying to build empires, and then put yourselves in the hands of – whatever you choose to call it – then you notice this synchronicity. You notice that everything works. You don’t get lazy, you don’t stop, but you keep on working without any ego, and everything falls into place. You don’t work for any appetite, for any end; you just work. And if possible, work for the expansion of realization. There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s a good ego. If you’ve got to get hung up with an ego, get hung up with that.

26:10

I have felt this, and I still feel it. For instance, I’ve seen things happen and I’d think it was absolutely the end of the group. We’d have so much trouble. People would come in and cause trouble and I’d think, “Well, that’s the end of it.” And almost like it’s a rebirth of a phoenix – out of this debacle came new strength to the group; always new strength. Because I didn’t care. If I had cared and fought it, very possibly it would have come down. But the mere fact that I said, “It’s not in my hands anyhow. I’m not trying to prove anything,” – then is when you’ll notice the synchronicity.

26:54

St. Paul said this too. St. Paul said, “Of myself I do nothing.” And the people who think they’re doing so much are less effective. This is one of the reasons I took issue with Gurdjieff: Gurdjieff felt that he was helping God. And I think that’s a little egotistical.

Seth Speaks

27:17

Q. Inaudible question about Seth Speaks.

27:29

R. I wouldn’t like to tell you now. I don’t like to be dishonest: I’ve got a bad opinion, and I’ve got some details that I wouldn’t want to say in public, but privately I could tell you. Because there may be people who are clinging to Seth Speaks as the only anchor they’ve got, and I don’t want to destroy somebody’s work.

We had a Chautauqua down at the farm and two ladies came up to me; they were criticizing. We had a man speak on life after death, an expansion on the Kübler Ross and Raymond Moody theme, taking data on case histories. And they said, “That was the most boring talk we ever heard.” And I said, “Well, you know, you’ve got to be patient. But you’re free to add; if you know more than he does, just let us know and we’ll put you up on the podium. Because this is basically a convention of ideas; we’re not trying to teach you. We just want people to come together and share ideas with each other.”

28:33

So she says, “Why don’t you have somebody who knows something about Seth Speaks?” And I said, “You were prejudiced against Jim speaking on life after death. But you really pulled a rabbit out of your hat with that stuff.” And she became infuriated. She said, “Where’s your broadmindedness?” I said, “You asked me for a private opinion and I’ll give it to you. I can’t lie to you. You asked me what I thought about it and I’ll tell you what I think about it.” But I don’t like to tell it to people in large groups, because what’s food for one person is poison for another. Maybe it’s food for some people to follow this; maybe it gives them something to cling to. At least while they’re clinging to that, they’re investigating something.

Entities

29:43

Q. Inaudible question about demons.

30:15

R. Well, they’re entities of another dimension, that’s all. When we talk about a demon, I prefer to use the word entity. There’s a tremendous idea that they’re evil – but they’re evil in the same respect that a stomach worm is evil: they’re unhealthy, they take a lot of your energy. But I believe that in the whole picture, the whole creation, there’s nothing really in its final sense evil. And a lot of things live in symbiotic relationship with us. I think the folly is in refusing to believe that there is anything here besides us. And also that they are not going to tap us; when something shows up, that it’s not going to tap us because we’re children of love or something of that sort.

31:17

It’s just like any parasite. You don’t have to destroy all of the fleas and lice because you get bit. Maybe they have a purpose; they may be part of the ecological plan, probably, I don’t know. But nevertheless, sure, it’s good to get rid of them. Let them get on someone else. So this is the same way with your entities.

[file 2 ends at 31:46]

Footnotes

Url: http://direct-mind.org/index.php5?title=1978-0412-Kent-State-University

Wilbur M. Franklin, Ph.D., Department of Physics, Kent State University

Measuring the Unmeasurable. http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-03.html#2

A Memorial to Wilbur Franklin. http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-04.html#6

Albigen Papers, Ch. 2: “Curiosity is an implant possibly built in the flesh and mind to guarantee a certain life-span.” ... “Curiosity is found in all forms of life where any degree of individual consciousness is found.” Ch. 7: Only the relentless study of curiosity itself will give us its meaning, and point to us the worth of applying that curiosity to self-definition.” Ch. 8: “When we employ curiosity and desire to search for our definition, we are on the path.” ... “The reversal of desire and curiosity affects the natural, relative vehicle – the relative mind.”

From Psychology of the Observer: “In the robot, the Designer placed a little curiosity … But the robot became curious about his origin, and immediately the Designer became a direction of the curiosity.”

Man's Search for Meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler

Missing tape for Cleveland, April 11, 1977.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Chilton_Pearce

See The Crack in the Cosmic Egg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumaturgy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi

The Albigen Papers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke

Full text: http://selfdefinition.org/van-der-leeuw/conquest-of-illusion.htm

Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi

See chart: http://www.albigen.com/uarelove/sahaja.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda

Referenced in the Wikipedia article; e.g., Richard de Mille, 1976: "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castaneda's books are works of fiction.”

Jane Roberts.

Levi H. Dowling.

Good synopsis of writers here: http://www.answers.com/topic/automatic-writing

Acts 5:1-11

Small coin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow's_mite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Emmaus_appearance

Actually all four Gospels: Matthew 28:1-20; Mark 16:1-20; Luke 24:1-49; John 20:1-21:25.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

Fiscal report of June, 1977 says that Chautauquas were held in 1976 and 1977 to date in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, Washington DC, and at the farm (June 1977). The Retrospect for 1978 mentions a Chautauqua in November, 1978, near Pittsburgh.

June 4-5,1977 at the farm (tape missing). See TAT News and Calendar, “June Chautauqua” at http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-04.html#7 scroll down page to Hypnosis Workshop for description and photographs.

Edgar Mitchell, 1971 moon voyage: Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science, 1974.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Dass

See 1974-1023-Laws-Columbus, 1974-1112-Obstacles-Cleveland, and others.

PDF document, 7 pages: http://www.richardrose.org/ThreeBooks.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Michael Baldrige, “The Riddle of Synchronicity”, TAT Journal vol. 1, no. 2, 1978: http://www.searchwithin.org/journal/tat_journal-02.html#4

A paraphrase of St. Paul in Philippians 4:13 that appears in a sermon by Saint Alphonsus Liguori, “On The Means Necessary For Salvation.” And Christ in John 15:5 says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

End

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