1986-0307-Are-You-a-Robot-Baltimore

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Title	1986-0307-Are-You-a-Robot-Baltimore
Recorded date	March 7, 1986
Location	Townsend State University, Baltimore, Maryland
Number of tapes	2 cassettes: One 90 min and one 60 min
Other recorders audible?
Alternate versions exist?
Source	N
No. of MP3 files	5 files including introduction: 1 min; 45 min; 45 min; 31 min; 11 min.
Total time
Transcription status	Transcribed. 38 pages. Published on SearchWithin
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?	SearchWithin.Org http://www.searchwithin.org/download/are_you_a_robot.pdf
Remarks	This page needs some decent section breaks. Current ones are temporary. See Discussion page for times
Audio quality	Very clear; two-channel stereo
Identifiable voices	Doron Fried
URL at direct-mind.org	https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1986-0307-Are-You-a-Robot-Baltimore
	For access to this wiki or the audio files please send an email to: editors@direct-mind.org
Revision timestamp	20150216095736

Notes

PC's paper copy says "Talk given at Townsend State University, Baltimore, Maryland. March 7, 1986."

File 0

File 0 = 1 ½ minute introduction by Doron Fried.

Scan

Title, etc

Are You a Robot?

by Richard Rose

Start

(Applause) Thank you. That's unusual - you might be throwing stuff by the time I'm finished. (Laughter)

I wanted to mention before I start that I lived here quite a few years ago, and I worked at Gunnel-Martins. I don't know if it still exists or not. I worked on the airplanes for World War II as a metallurgist. I worked as a chemist for Julian P. Frieze here, I was fairly young at the time.

I got interested quite young in finding answers. And for a good many years I thought I wouldn't find anything - except the same ignorance I started out with. But when I was about thirty years of age I had a lucky break and I got some information.

Now what I'm going to try to do here tonight - I think our time is very limited, because an hour and a half doesn't cover people's questions. And I want a sort of communication. I could stand here and talk - and have done that, I imagine, quite a few times at the university lectures and stuff - and my whole talk was in a direction understood by very few, or very few cared very little about the direction.

Consequently I'm going to "drop" some things, and if there's anything along that line that is interesting to you, or if there are any other questions that you'd like to have answered, I'll be glad to answer them. That gives us some communication, whereas just preaching in my estimation doesn't do the job. Because you all have some concepts, some ideas that may be different from mine, and you might want to know - why the difference?

The posters read something about a robot. We are all robots. People don't like to hear that. People refuse to believe it. Everyone thinks that they're self-motivated creatures. Not only self-motivated creatures, but that they are of such importance that they can with collective efforts change the destiny of the world even. Or change the psychology of the times, or the social construction of the times. When they know very little even about themselves.

This business of being a robot means that we're programmed. This is paradoxical - I do not believe in most behavioristic concepts. I do not believe that we are strictly reflex-creatures. I would say that that is the best we can do though, most of us. The best we can do is to function as reflexive creatures. And to get beyond the point of being reflexive is the big thing in life.

I heard something on TV the other day I thought really tells the difference between abject behaviorism and individualism. They were describing the attitude of the people in Russia, and the TV announcer said, "If you want to make a young Russian student angry or hurt, call him an individualist." And this is what everyone in this country wants to be, an individualist. But in Russia you want to be a zero. No one-upmanship.

And that feeling kind of went through this country a good bit too. Everyone wanted to be in great togetherness, but no one wanted to excel. Believe me, the whole biological structure of this planet is one of defeating your fellow. Going him one better. And that's the only way that the civilization improves, by the individuals there trying to be better individuals than the rest. Not just afraid of one-upmanship.

So in this business of finding the robot nature of people, I've done a lot of thinking, and some of it's in my books. This material on the board is the complete psychological structure of the human visual experience. That is, our thinking processes. And I class them all as visions, because we do not think. We conjure.

When we see something we adjust. The fact that that which we see may be inverted on our retina, so we have to adjust it in our head somewhere. Or that the colors are not the colors that they appear to be - they are maybe seemingly the opposite color, or every color but that color.

This goes all the way through. Down into social living. We're perpetually adjusting ourselves to what we think the spirit of the times is. All your great advertising media - all these people are continually thrashing around trying to find out what the voice of the populace is, so that they can create the right things to sell them. What will they buy today? What's their weakness, or what's their direction?

People do not see, they interpret. Half of their seeing is conjured. For instance... "Deliberate Mental Projections...Mental Visions...Synthetic Projections...Normal Sensory Perceptions" (see Richard Rose’s book, Psychology of the Observer, pages 22, 23 and 31). All sensory perception is abnormal. Basically abnormal as far as the Truth is concerned. Because we don't know what we see. We interpret everything that we see.

There's a little book called The Conquest of Illusion, by J. J. van der Leeuw; it's a 200-page book. And he very well puts out the explanation of how the world can be something that's an entire illusion, but interpreted according to a collective agreement. And the difference between our existence here and our existence in the next dimension is one of transcending this illusion. Transcending this collective projection.

So the normal sensory projection is actually abnormal as far as the Truth is concerned. We don't see with our eyes, we only see with our mind - and even a biologist will tell you that. The eyeballs pick up certain impressions, they translate it to a retina, which translates it to some sort of sorting mechanism. And we get an emotional reaction to it.

But "Abnormal Sensory Projection" is the mirage. The hologram.

Line A to B is the whole realm of what I call the physical perception. These are mental visions. They're all called visions - I use the word "vision" because it's conjured.

The Synthetic Visions (Mental Visions) are those that we have when we dream of riding a horse or something. And we think that's very portentous. But it may be the mind putting together little bits of previous pictures that it had. It sees that very clearly, and it dreams, and it tells you the next morning after the dream, "This is a very real dream; there must be some meaning to it." But it may be nothing more than a synthetic projection.

Then we have visions that are not projected. Those are the class of authentic stuff - he's the dead man that you meet on the corner and say hello to, and when you get home you find out he's been dead for three hours. There are visions that we have - in the field of metaphysics and esotericism there is a tremendous field of apparitions that seem to have substance, because of the quality and character of the witnesses; we trust the witnesses. These are non-projected.

By projected I mean that we project them out of our eyes. If you look at that map there on the wall: the light hits the map, the light from the map hits the retina of your eyes, and then it runs through the sorting machine of the mind. And then actually, you only see what you project. That's the reason for the use of the word "project." Stuff comes into your senses, and then you project meaning. You project what you think it is.

Strangely enough, we pretty much agree, although some people differ on colors; some people are color-blind and others see the colors a different way.

The next thing is philosophic. "Visions of Mental Projections." That's higher psychology and philosophy, whereby you sit and watch your mind working. You watch the workings of the mind. And this becomes a vision; you can actually watch it. Or you watch a series of events that represent different mind-states. This is a capacity of the human mind that most psychologists don't bother to fool with. They don't see the necessity. It doesn't fit into this flat pattern that we are just animals, with animal brains - meat - which reacts.

But we are able to create. The last one is the greatest facility of the human mind - the ability to create material with the mind. Actually to create a projection that will be seen by other people. Have you ever heard of them? "Tulpas" are one of them. Certain mentalists can create visions that can be seen, through strong or long-term periods of concentration.

Alexandra David-Neel writes about in her book about Tibet. The monks created them. And in a sort of revenge by nature or spiritual damnation they invariably created a woman, because they wanted female companionship and they weren't in the monastery. They created a tulpa that could be seen. The word is that it took them six months create one - and six years to get rid of her.

But the mind is very powerful. Now again - what is this? This is the work of robots. And if you understand them - the robot at some place along the line becomes potent. That which is inflicted upon it, it can inflict upon the environment. I have a little book called Psychology of the Observer, and I mention in it that one of the weaknesses of God was that he endowed man with the ability to create.

And in so doing, man created a lot of competition for God.

(And that's a parable, because I don't really want you to believe that I believe in God. I want you to find that out for yourself if you can.)

So we get to the business of what is the mental structure of this robot? True to behavioristic concepts, we are programmed. The thinker is programmed. We have stuff that I consider infused before birth. Naturally we have genetic characteristics, and the cell structure, and that sort of thing. But every human and every animal that we can observe, that lives anywhere close to the human, has the same characteristics. And the first one that I wanted to dwell on is the ego.

Somebody was reading a quotation from a book the other day, and it said that animals of course didn't think. Well - that stops us; the psychologist who claims that doesn't have to go to the bother of trying to find out how to test their thinking.

Even a rooster has an ego. The bull has an ego. And we find nothing wrong with the ego of a rooster. That's how he keeps alive. That's how he protects the female chickens. And yet the human race is going to damn that ego without any forethought and without any superior position. They're going to damn the egos of the people, that they want to be placid and non-roosterish.

But without that, you're not going to get anybody into the army. These people have to have enough ego to think they're immortal. And go out and get killed for the country if that's what it takes. Or to protect the family. (Of course, I realize that a lot of people don't think that they need protection by men - but nevertheless, it will be a while yet before the armies are totally manned by women.) But this is the way things were blueprinted. This is programmed into the male. And this is ego. And some people want to write it off. There are a lot of little cults and groups that get out and say you've got to drop your ego. Religious movements say you've got to get rid of your ego. True - when you are big enough to get synthetic crutches.

You've got to let the ego carry you. It'll carry you a long way. And you can get rid of your pride when you're able to discipline yourself to a point where you can walk with determination, not as a result of programming.

The next two things that everyone has - that you don't find too much about in psychology books - and these are also infused in us at birth and we have nothing to do about it; we can do something about it once we know they're there, but most people don't even know it's there. Two of the great motivating factors in the human race are desire and curiosity. They go clear back to the amoeba. Nothing foolish about it.

The amoeba manifests curiosity as it floats in the liquid - it forages and explores for food. And without that urge - it had to have an urge or it wouldn't move - it would lie there and starve to death. So everything has its motivation. The curiosity causes the young buck to hunt for new pastures when the old pastures go dry. Or when the herd gets too big.

And the desire keeps the herd reproducing. The desire may be for something that they think is entirely different. "I want a new house." No, no. You don't want a new house, you want a place to breed. Same way that the deer wants a new pasture. He's got to have enough food to raise the young ones.

So we've got three things. And these are that which makes us robots; and there's no escaping from it. And there's no legislating it out of existence. We tried - this is one of the great weaknesses of the western civilization - we're going to legislate everything and fund it in given directions. You can't fund the ego away. You can't propagandize it away. It's there; and for a very good purpose.

We see without control. This is another one of our robotic things. That we don't have control of our visions. Although there's an agreement somewhere along the line, that we all agree to see the same things.

Now also - one of the big debacles of social living is that we would like to program everybody to think alike. We want everybody to accept certain tenants. So we've got groups of people, like separate little cancers, coming up in society and saying, "You're going to think my way. You're going to think with my collective viewpoint on life. And then the world will be a better place to live." I don't know. I don't know what makes a better place to live; that isn't for me to judge. Maybe they're instrumental in causing things.

One of the biggest blocks between us and clear thinking is our language. Language and meaning. In other words, no two people know what the other person means. There's a shade of meaning - use the same words, read the same books, give a review on the same book, and you'll have people... And if you want confusion, try to get the meaning out of modern psychological terms. Which are often given backwards. Such as the term "exceptional children". They aren't exceptional, they're deficient. But we go over backwards to confuse each other. Scientifically even.

Then the next step of course is the great ego-trip of mankind, or a great segment of it, to control others. The B.F. Skinner's. That couldn't control their own family. They made an idiot of their kid trying to give an example of how to control children. But this is the attempt. We have a lot of lunatics running loose trying to collect themselves into little power units and control the thinking of the country. "We're going to think a certain way. And this is going to make a beautiful kingdom of tomorrow."

This is a manure pile. Who wants to own it? Who wants to own this manure pile and change the shape of it?

How many agencies, how many millions of dollars are spent in any city in this country on such things as advertising? Why do we need to sell a car with a woman sitting on a fender? Or a kid steering a rocket ship through space - he's going to be an airplane pilot, or he's going to take some course in school or something.

Political propaganda - it's always one-sided. It purports to be truthful, but it never goes beyond its own side that it wants to present.

Professional propaganda - I maintain that about one-fourth of the education for professional people is to tell them where to get their wisdom or where to get their expertise, and the other three-fourths is how to convert it into cash and how to hold your face a certain way so that you will collect the money from the people and keep them coming. Keep them coming. Devise ways that they have to be treated next week, next month, next year, and so on.

Spiritual propaganda - we're in a welter of spiritual propaganda in the world. And it ebbs and flows. And about the time the public gets wise to one of these isms, three more flop up on the horizon, and people are paying thousands of dollars out to get their masochistic satisfaction from somebody kicking them around in an intensive. But the public will continue to accept that. I don't know what psychopathic thing there is about the general public, that goes out and pays thousands of dollars for these things.

The Truth cannot be bought. This is one of the things that when I was a young man 20 years of age setting out - I made up my mind that I would not pay a nickel for any so-called spiritual truth. I never have. I never asked. I support myself, and I don't believe that any man should be supported because of something he doesn't know. And 99 percent of all spiritual concepts and isms are preached by people who know nothing of what they're preaching.

There is only one way to find out the answer to life and death, and that is to die. And you can do it, while you're still living. It's only from a superior dimension that knowledge of an inferior dimension can be understood.

We are taught by people from superior grades. A kid in high school can teach a child in the first grade. With a little patience. And you go to college, and somebody with a PhD teaches somebody with a BA degree, etc. And this is the whole thing in psychology. To understand the mind of man is to transcend the mind of man first, and then view it from a superior position. This is the only way education comes about.

Not by people guessing, who have been endowed with a piece of paper by other people who have written a piece of paper.

Now - I'm going to tell you a little story that you might find extreme. I'm from Wheeling, as you probably know. They brought a fellow down to my house, he was about fifty years of age. And by all extents he was very crazy. He had been an autistic child from the time he was eleven years of age. His old man wanted him to be the guy who took over the business, and this autistic child was in no way prepared to take over his business.

So they clobbered him. And they sent him to doctors. And they injected stuff into him, and they confined him in institutions. And he just got crazier, that's all. And more eloquent. And his psychiatrist committed suicide. This is the God's truth. I'm not exaggerating - I could give you the whole history of the man.

Because he knew more about the human mind than they did. All of his life he had spent from a child on, observing the behavior of people he despised. An autistic child in most cases is superior to his mentors. He has chosen a way past the paradigm. He's found a way around the paradigm. He's a direct-mind operator. And he doesn't have time for this nonsense.

I'm not saying all so-called autistic children, because the label is applied to a lot of them. But a lot of autistic children are. We have a little journal we put out. We published an article in it about a man who treated autistic children. He wasn't even a doctor; he was an attendant in a place somewhere in Texas. He found he could communicate with them by going directly to their mind. And using an emotional language rather than a vocal blaming or correcting and that sort of thing. And he got through to them.

And incidentally, this is the true psychology. You want to be a diagnostician? Learn to enter the other fellow's mind. Step into his moccasins. And that isn't too hard to do. It's done by a little process - we have a group as you probably know, back in West Virginia - it's called rapport. Once you become in rapport with another human being, his mind is no longer a mystery to you.

But when you start trying to analyze him, by the type of prints he leaves on a paper, by ink-blots, or by whether he fell in love with his mother when he was a kid or whatever - all these little gimmicks that they go through to excuse their own lack of knowledge. No. There's a very simple way. And that is to go directly into the person's mind. With your mind. And it can be done, and I think a good many of you know it.

But anyhow, we had this fellow who came down to my house. There were about 10 or 15 people of our group sitting in the room when he came in. We were having a rapport session - that was the end of it when he walked in. Because - he had very few sentences that didn't have a vulgarity in them. He cursed perpetually.

First of all I thought, "Oh, this is a hurricane." This man came in and it was like letting a hurricane into your house. But then I noticed that it made sense. Everything he said, he meant. Everything he said. And he talked of anguish. His voice was the tone of fifty years of anguish. That nobody could help him; that nobody could stop him.

But in the middle of it - we talked of psychology, psychological problems, he knew about brain chemistry - you couldn't mention a thing about neurotransmitters that he didn't know all about. He knew all the medicines, he knew all the chemical combinations they had given to him - none of them worked.

They only thing they could do, they had drugs that knocked him down - and that put him out. And then when he laid around too long, they gave him drugs to pick him up. And that is the sum total of our psychiatric psycho-chemistry system. Basically it's symptoms - change the symptoms. That doesn't change the cause.

It's like getting a flat tire. If you want to stop the flat tires, you go out and pick the nails up on the road. You quit patching tires. You'll never get done. But if you get the nails off the road - you get the cause, then you've got it.

Well - we had several people there who had psychology degrees; one boy had a Master's degree in psychology. And this man talked for six hours without stopping. If I had had a tape recorder and taped it I would consider it my most prized possession. The wisdom that came out of that man was infinite. Of course, a lot of it was parables. Metaphorical. But - he was getting on some of their nerves. I knew that. And this one fellow walked up to him and he said, "Tell me Jim, do you ever think there will be a day when you can consider yourself sane?"

And I said to him, "John, shut up. This man knows more than you'll ever know…

(Break in tape)

(RR quoting Jim speaking:) ..."and you can't think from down here. You've got to transcend this before you can understand it."

And I thought, "Oh, boy. This man's Enlightened. He had been there." He was a nut. And the devout students of esotericism thought that he was still crazy.

So what is clear thinking? How do we think clearly? Where do you start?

This so-called logical thinking at the best - you can't define things. When you start defining things you involve the whole dictionary. But logical thinking let's say we could tentatively define as clear thinking.

Conditioned people cannot think clearly. We rush into conditioning. I used to hear guys in the army say, "You better believe it." Not me. I'll never better believe it. I'll believe it if I want to believe it. But I'll never believe it just to get along with some officer. Because that's the end of your mind. That's the beginning of the deterioration of your mind, when you start accepting everything because that's the easy way out of life.

We first heard the word "conditioning" in reference to Pavlov's dogs, you know. But this went back way further than that. You get into some of this esoteric literature you find out that two to three thousand years ago there were Zen masters in Tibet that knew all about conditioning. Some of the greatest psychological renditions are little stories of an older man trying to straighten up a younger man's thinking, to get him away from conditioning and having to label certain processes as necessary in his mind.

This is not metaphysical, this is not subjective, as you might call it, or religious. It's very logical. The system of clear thinking is very logical. It involves common sense. What can be more logical than common sense? Logic in itself is nothing but generally a structure, built by some vain mind. But what I'm talking about: What is logical? It's logical for a chicken to lay eggs, for instance. It's abnormal for the chicken to not want to lay eggs.

It involves common-sense thinking. But it later, as you progress, involves another type of thinking, which they're just now starting to mention in your psychology books, and that's intuitional thinking. This is a faculty that they didn't know, or didn't want to know that existed.

Accurate intuitional readings result from intuitional development. So now - what's the difference between a psychic and a lunatic? Most people think that psychics are lunatics, people that want to escape from responsibility. What's responsibility? Paying taxes? You'd like to stay with that for the next two or three hundred years? Just pay taxes?

No. A sensible person wants to know who's paying the taxes. Why do we have to keep on paying taxes? Why does he have to keep on doing things that an animal does? Very avidly. Relentlessly. Imitating the animals. Without knowing who he is. Who's running the show? If you examine the genetic patterns of the animals you know that we aren't much different than animals. We've just got nicer names for ourselves. A little different dress.

So what a mystic is, is a person who says, "Stop. I don't care about the promotions, I don't care about making a million dollars, I want to know who's talking. I want to know who I am." This to me is logical thinking. Tell me if it isn't. Tell me if it's illogical that a person wants to know who's pulling his strings.

And in this procedure, after a while, you know you're dealing with subjective matter which is so complex, the factors are so numerous, that only a high-powered computer can handle all the factors - that are related to life and death, immortality, life before birth. How are you going to handle it? Intuition. You're not going to do it with logic. This is the higher logic - intuition.

Whereby you throw it into a computer, you meditate - this is the word they used. Meditation is a bad word - because people don't meditate. The latest rubbish that has come out is meditating on a sonorous sound. You know - it goes good with pot. That isn't meditation.

Meditation is attacking yourself. And saying, "Hey - what are you doing this for? Why did you do it yesterday and for the last two hundred days? Whether it's drinking booze or smoking dope or having sex or eating - eating something that makes you fat and destroys your body." Why do you keep doing it and never say, "Hey - why are you doing this? Are you in control of yourself?"

OK, if not - what's going on? That's a mystic. I consider myself a mystic. And I'll surprise you if you knew me very well, that I don't act or look like a mystic. I'm a fighter. I figure that this is what you have to be. You cannot surrender to the oily concepts of preachers, cultists, or whatever, that are reiterating something that is a hypnotic dogma to keep the people...

Lincoln Stephans, the great muckraker, I don't know if you ever read or heard of him - he muckraked everybody that he could get in the world, and finally somebody said to him, "Why don't you muckrake the Pope?" So he went over and had a talk with the Pope.

And he said to the Pope, "Isn't it true that the only reason you exist is because of the poor people, and aren't you encouraging poor people to exist therefore?"

And the Pope says, "No. Whether you like it or not, or I like it or not, there's always going to be poor people. There's always going to be people who don't care, don't try to get ahead, and don't think."

And this is the fortunate field for people to move into. We have a tremendous savior - you talk about ego - we've got millions of people running around over this country wanting to save everybody else, wanting to hold hands with them, wanting to love in. Deliver me. Deliver me.

Through the intuition - you throw this into the computer. You attack the computer with it. Sometimes it takes years for the answer to well. But what you do in the meantime is you practice a new system - it may be new to you, it may not - of finding the truth:

The truth postulated as an objective can never be found; because it's postulated to begin with. The truth can only be found by the eternal retreat from error. Once you say, "I'm looking for the truth," you postulate.

When you say, "I want to find God," you've already found him. You postulated him. This is what people do.

They say, "I want to find God..."

"OK, how do you go about it?"

"I'll go get the Bible, I'll get some people that have read the book, I'll get different books about different Gods."

No, no. That's all postulation. Who knows? Where would you find God? Where do you think you find God? Somebody answer me...

Question: I've heard that God is everywhere.

Rose: OK. How about somebody else?

Q: He's in our minds.

R: Anybody else?

Q: Conscience.

R: Well - you're all fairly right. You don't find Him in church, you find Him inside your own - I'd adjust this a little bit about finding it in your mind. Because you find him in spite of your mind. The mind is a barrier, a tremendous barrier.

And what happens is that the mind is a victim of certain what I call infestations. Or physical habits. It's a victim of physical habits. The mind plays tricks. It's just like when the man in the desert sees water. Well - if we thirst for things too often we find ourself walking in that direction. And the mind leads us astray.

For instance - you're looking for the Truth, supposedly with a mind. And one of the things that you discover a little ways down the road is that the mind is not a good instrument. It's not a perfect instrument. It deludes you.

We have certain things that we want - we say we want them. The truth is - some aspect of us wants them. And that information is fed into the mind, we dream of it at night - and then we say, "Oh, that's ominous. We must go out and find that," whatever it is that you dream of.

Accurate intuitional readings lead to direct-mind apprehension and communication. This is the end product of the mystical life. There's a time that comes when your analysis of other people is one of direct-mind. We all employ this a little bit, the more honest people can do it more easily; people that are stuck on other types of interpretations it won't come so easily for.

But the result of years of intuitional observation gives you a direct-mind apprehension. You apprehend what the other person is thinking of. You become one with it.

The trick is, of course, if you get into certain jungles or swamps - other minds that are jungles or swamps - you have to learn a little trick of detachment while you're wading through the swamp. Don't be too sympathetic, all the way down.

Direct mind ability leads to a change of state of being. Again - man never learns the truth. What happens? Tell me, somebody...

Q: (Inaudible.)

R: Who said that? You memorized it. (Laughter.) I hope nobody heard him. I was hoping somebody else would say it. Did you hear him? Tell me, somebody, what you think it is. I discovered this when I was - I don't want to be popping off about what my age was when I discovered things - but I came to this conclusion when I was twenty-one years of age.

I started out to find God - I was a chemist, and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to hang around in these research laboratories, and I'll help break the atom down, and we'll find out what's in the atom, and then we'll find out what's in the force field, or the cloud chamber or whatever, and I'll get a definition for matter and - here out pops God. We're going to expose him some way, by analytical chemistry."

But I didn't go along that road too long when I saw the enormous task of it. And I just quit. I got out of chemistry. And I spent my time looking at myself. Not all the time - I had to work, naturally. But I spent a lot of time watching my thoughts. And I came to the conclusion that man never learns. When it comes to spiritual matters man never learns. He becomes.

And after that happened to me - when I was about thirty years of age I had my experience - I started to pick up other books that people had written, and I saw new meaning in them - that which before had sounded to me like just abject egotism. For instance one fellow said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And I had thought, "What sort of egotistical chatter is this?"

But what this man was talking about - the fact that he was exactly that. He was the truth. And that little truth got through the Bible despite all the selfish translations that went down through the ages. That remained intact. That was the great revelation of the Bible. That Christ became the truth. And my belief is that it's kind of neglected; the people who preach the Bible don't seem to pick this up. That you can't borrow it, you can't do it by paying ten percent of your salary, you can't do it by helping the orphan up out of the gutter, helping little old ladies across the muddy street. No, no.

That doesn't mean a thing. You're just an escort, that's all you are. For eternity.

If you play the Boy Scout you'll be a Boy Scout for eternity. But if you become the Truth - you become the Truth for eternity. That's your fact status. Man is not - only except that which he does. Man is that which he does. His life is an act. And it's not so much what he learns, because the learning is so relative that only by the becoming is it cemented. That he is cemented with it. The direct mind experience leads to a change of being because you develop a direct mind contact with - more that yourself.

Let me stop there; I think it's about time. And how about asking me some questions if you want to, or giving another direction to the talk....

Opens talk for Q&A

Q: I've been inclined to searching for the truth in my own way.... When I was in college I came in contact with the Hare Krishna organization - and I believed in it for awhile. But then my mother and sister learned about what I was doing and they got me out of it. They said I was lucky that they found out. I still haven't put the Bhaghavad Gita...you've heard of it...?

R: Yes.

Q: ...and I'd like for you to size it up for me. Is it any good?

R: What?

Q: ...the Hare Krishnas. What do you think of that?

R: (Laughs.) I'll tell you - If you'll come to my house I'll tell you the truth. But I am not going to publish it here tonight. I know more than you think I know about the Hare Krishnas. I'm responsible for a lot of them.

Q: Can you tell us about your experience? Is there anything you can tell us?

R: What would you like to know about it?

Q: What happened?

R: Uh, yeah. What I'm afraid of is - the reason for asking the question. What happens is that people like to push buttons. I've had people come to my house that knew I had had an experience, and they watched every move I made. And I had a habit of drinking vinegar. This one fellow watched me.... I don't know why I drank it, but I think it was from my bad diet, and I needed something - I was getting too much alkaline or something - and the vinegar did the trick. I didn't do it forever, though. This fellow went out and bought a gallon of it. He was going to get Enlightened.

So what you're going to get from me is a part of something. I have searched this country over from the time I was a young man to find people that were Enlightened. I never found any. Until after I had the experience myself. And in a way I don't think you can actually tell who is. They don't have any special look about them.

For instance, in the way they arrive at it every one is different. And the things that they tell you are somewhat different. But the final explanation of what they tell you is - that the world is an illusion, the world is - it's like a giant acid trip - of ebbing and flowing of things that we call material reality. From one bardo or dimension to another. Until you find something solid.

And when you find that something solid, what is it? It's a combination of the experience of nothing and everything. This is the best way you can possibly describe it. You go through death with no conviction of survival. Because you have to be truthful with yourself. All the tales that are told could be dreamt up. They could be fiction. They could be things written into books by somebody who wants to be an authority.

But when you die - when you die honestly - you die with absolute despair. And the absolute despair removes the last spiritual ego that you've got in your fat head at the time. You know you're just - by all significance you're an animal and you're about to rot; these are the facts. But the amazing thing is that after you die you find yourself still observing the mess. And that observing is the secret of immortality.

I have a little book there - about three sixteenths of an inch thick - called the Psychology of the Observer. One of the keynotes of all of our psychological and esoteric metaphysical observations is the fact that the view is not the viewer. As long as you can see something, if you die and you enter another dimension - you're in another dimension. In other words, you're viewing another dimension.

This is how to identify yourself in meditation. You can conjure up pictures of yourself in a certain thing, you could conjure up picture of dead relatives coming to visit you or whatever. But you remain there, and your immortality is based upon the fact that you're viewing it. Even though you aren't conscious of having a body that's viewing it. You view the scene. And this the only proof, the only let's say point of reference that you have - your observing self.

Consequently in the business of dying and entering despair, the picture itself convinces. One of my books has something called "The Three Books of the Absolute" in it. It's a description of my experience. And of course people read it and they say, "Oh my God, this is hopeless." Because I talk about falling through the canyons of the Universe. I'm plunged into a void. Black. Nothing there. But throughout the whole thing - I was observing the fall. And when you come back out of it you realize you were never destroyed. Because you were observing. Even though you were falling. Even at one time you were everything. You experience everything. You experience that the whole universe is inside of you. And quite a few people have this.

Gurdjieff - Man number 1, 2 & 3

If you haven't read a lot of literature on this, if you want to identify how far you've gone with your spiritual experiences - George Gurdjieff also listed these things - we have the instinctive man, the emotional man, the logical man, and the philosophic man.

The instinctive man expects no immortality and believes he will die like a dog - and that the thing to do is to eat, drink, and be merry, because that's it at the end of that trip. And even though you can't remember anything after the trip they will still eat, drink and be merry. But through a medium called love - which is one of the greatest diseases that ever hit the human mind, but it helps him out - through love he transcends his instinctive nature. Or she transcends her instinctive nature.

The roughneck, the drunk, the guy who's raising hell up and down the streets - and the woman that likewise is playing things loose.... And selfish - going to have her career and going to have all these mighty things, and she's going to strut herself across the face of the earth like a victor. All this is wiped out with the birth of a child. When she becomes a mother she graduates.

All her damned college education means nothing, to that experience of being a mother. She graduates to the emotional level. If she loves Jesus she's got two lovers. The child and the Jesus. Some people can fall in love with Jesus. Or Hare Krishna, Buddha, the guru. And it's bad in a way, it has it's drawbacks, but at the same time it takes that instinctive person away from that instinctive life pattern.

OK, so you put twenty, forty years into raising kids. And you think, "Boy - that was a bad trip." Believe me. (Laughter.) So your mind goes to work. And you think, "Hey - this Jesus character may be phony. He may have been created back there by...."

A fellow came to my house the other day - they come in, and I don't keep anybody out that's really hunting for answers or is a friend of the truth or something of that sort - and we both had been down the old path together. I had studied to be a Catholic priest, he had studied in a seminary.

And he said he went up in front of one the so-called great theologians - a professor in the university - and he said, "How do I know but what you people don't have this all cooked up? That you don't even believe it yourself?"

And he says the guy looked at him and said, "That's right - you don't know."

He didn't get any satisfaction either way. But regardless, a thinking person - anybody in my estimation with the intelligence of an animal - will say, "Hey, maybe I've been had."

Try to give an animal something it doesn't like to eat. Like modern dog food. The dog knows better. He knows it's sawdust. We don't. We believe the advertisements: "It's good for Fido" - Fido knows better. The same with religion. We get a sense that the game's a fix. These guys are driving Cadillacs. What do they really want? What do they really believe in life?

So you get these doubts. And then you think, "Where am I going to look? If that isn't true where do I go? So they go out, as I say, back to the drawing board. And the average person goes into something that he considers very logical. He wants something mathematical. He goes into astrology or he belabors himself with the kabala.

A lot of you people have studied algebra and you know what I'm talking about: When I first took on algebra I thought, "This is a useless science. What do I care that 'A' and 'B' equal 'C'? Where is this going to apply?"

But they said, "You've got to go through this stuff if you want credit in this course." "OK." Well, I beat my head on the table and I solved all the problems and I knew how to get the answers. But then one day something "popped" in my head. I knew that there was a system there. This was a revelation. "X" was revealed. See what I mean? And here was a system of solving a lot of unknown X's.

It's what I call the "Wow" experience. It's also almost synonymous with the word "Satori". Or "Eureka". Where a light bulb goes on in the head. And you think, "Now I know everything." And I've heard of people going to their death working mathematical problems, they were so infatuated with it. Or something in the kabala. Or astrology. Because that seems to be - it's the vanity of this tremendous attribute we've got called the mind. They can make a curse out of it. It becomes an obsession; you can't get away from it.

And if they live long enough they get away from it. And they go back to the drawing board once more. And then from that group of people emerges the philosopher. And he's the mind that throws all of the garbage that is not real rotten into the computer, and tries to make something out of it. Tries to sort - as I say - retreat from the from the worst. Until you get something better. And then you find something better than that. And eventually it narrows down until there's no escape. You go through the funnel; that's all there is to it.

Well - I don't know if I've answered anybody's question or not. (Laughter.)

(Break in tape.)

...as opposed to a state of analyzation. He quits analyzing. He doesn't quit - it just happens automatically.

Q: Can you talk a little more about how you get from being that man number three?

R: To the philosopher?

Q: Yes.

R: Generally you can't. You can't. It's very difficult. For instance - you might wonder why I'm standing here. I left home at eight o'clock this morning and I've been moving ever since. Why do I do it? Because of the simple fact that most people cannot kick themselves loose by themselves. When you are something - when you're in love, for instance - let somebody try to change your mind.

It takes - in Zen they call it a shock. And then you happen upon it even then. The teacher happens upon it by accident, generally. You just keep fishing for something that will open that guy's head up. And the more indirect systems - the mind wants to work its foolishness in a very sensible step-by-step manner. So you break up the steps. You break up the steps with satire, irony, jokes - anything. But don't let that type of thinking continue. That's the whole thing.

Now the other thing is - what we do in the group quite a bit is to have rapport sessions. And in a rapport session sometimes that which is in one person's mind instantaneously transfers to the other person's mind. And he says, "Dammit - I know what you think. I know what it is now." Just that quick. But as far as for reaching in and arguing - no, no. Arguing cements the demon in. You can't argue people into truth.

Q: So Enlightenment is sort of the result of the process then - there's no real conscious control of it?

R: Well - I would say that's right, to a great extent. What you have to do is to associate - you can go take a PhD in say chemistry or something like that - but if you want to go beyond that you have to start loafing with your fellows. And then you'll find the graduate students are few and far between, that know maybe the right branch of polymer chemistry you're interested in.

Well, it's the same here. There are very few people on the face of the earth that are unashamed to tell you that they think - in any other pattern except this prescribed thing of getting a second nickel for Krogers. Or for the tax collector. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be a very avid character that...

But to me - I believe there's only one reality. And I can't do anything but live for reality; and for someone else's reality who's on the brink. This is what you run into - you hope for people that are on the brink. That have gotten hungry enough.

Radha Soami

I was initiated years ago into a Radha Soami sect. Some of you may ave heard of it. I used to look under every rock, and that's one of the rocks. I didn't pass anything up. If somebody said, "The Truth is there," I went into in and got initiated, and whatever, as long as they didn't charge me.

You don't pay for truth. Don't pay anybody fees. Whenever you put a price on truth - somebody says, "I'll do this for a thousand dollars".... Hey, he sold out too cheap. There's no price that you could pay that wouldn't sell out too cheap. If it could be done that way.

A person doesn't change by dropping a thousand dollars on the counter; he changes by becoming. And that's the formula that you need.

Back to the Radha Soami group: an old man that was the head of it used to fly in from Muskegan, Michigan, and I would go up to Pittsburgh where a group of people would meet. There were some inconsistencies about him that I didn't understand, and I wanted to pin him down. He believed in fatalism and yet he believed in effort. And it seemed to be incongruous.

But - I also believe in fatalism, and also in effort. I believe in the paradox. That every step of the spiritual path is beset by the paradox. When you make a statement, the opposite also may lead you there. Because why? We've got a relative dual mind which is perpetually in error, and it only becomes free of the error when it becomes one. So when we speak in relative terms we've got to take in both considerations.

You take a dictionary. What is the definition of a kangaroo? A kangaroo is a mammal that is a marsupial. That's what it says. But it also says something else. That a kangaroo is not a rat, it's not a horse, it's not a cow, it's not a mosquito, and it implies that it is not everything else except what we call a kangaroo. That's definition. The whole dictionary is based upon the negation of all other things except one thing. When you can't escape it, then there's nothing left but the word kangaroo.

So this is the labor of going through philosophy. That we're trying to do it with relative terminology. And our psychology is so swamped with this devious type of terminology that the students are bewildered. The only thing they can do is go in there and mimic the books that are handed to them, mimic the professor that teaches the stuff so you don't get him angry, because he's stupid and he doesn't want it shown up. So the result is that you can't approach it directly.

Getting back to this Radha Soami guy, I said to him, "What are you coming in here from Chicago for?" He had come in on an airplane to talk to us. We didn't pay him either - that was his contribution to life. And I said, "What are you coming in here for if you're a fatalist?"

And he put his finger up and said, "I'm eighty years old. And I want to bend my little finger. But before I can bend that little finger, right now, I may have a stroke." And that was the way he explained it.

I thought it was pretty good. Because you can have the conceit that you're able do something, but you can get stopped. Whatever is in the books for you we really don't know. One thing he said was, "What you can have in a spiritual pursuit is hunger."

And the hunger magnifies. And if it magnifies, things seem to create in your direction. You want to be a healer? Anybody here that wants to be a healer, you can be a healer. Start working at it, that's all. Don't stop. Just start working at it. Take your ego out of it. Remove your ego. Don't say, "I am going to be a healer." Just say, "I'd like to heal. I'd like to see it happen." You can do it. It might cost you. You may lose jobs, wives, money. But if you've got the tenacity, you can be a healer.

More Q&A

Q: Do you think the process of evolution goes on as a result of the constant awareness of death in the minds of people?

R: Yes. This is nature. The entire alert state of a mouse depends upon the cat. Take that cat away and he becomes a slob.

The idea, "Why death?" I don't know. I don't know why. It's basically a curtain. What later becomes very clearly and manifestly a painful illusion. A troublesome illusion. Because we're programmed; all this stuff programs into us.

Having a child is a beautiful experience. But then the child runs out in front of a car some day and gets killed. And the agony before that even, that some day that child might get killed, is a tremendous burden.

We're caught. That's the leash around our necks: "OK - you want to reproduce? Here's the penalty. This is what you're here for, you reach it or you...."

The psychic realization is in the fact that this is your purpose; you know it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's also your purpose to suffer. It's also your purpose to suffer in total ignorance - of why. Why are we reproducing?

I've often thought of the dairy system we have in this country. Sometimes the dairymen will actually destroy the calf as soon as it's born, so as not to interrupt the production of milk. And if a cow knew that - do you think she'd stop having calves? Women know it. They never stop having kids. What is the percentage of people who are wiped out before they are twenty-five years of age in this country? Either in drugs, murder, or in the battlefield. Or in industrial competition.

But this is what you face. And you say, "Why is it?" The thing is that - number one, I have never ceased to recognize that behind this tremendous hell that I went through, that there wasn't a spiritual controller. I'm not talking about God. When you have a spiritual experience, you know what the real definition of the word "God" is. It isn't that.

But on the way through this sojourn, or whatever you want to call it, when you get a few years on you you'll realize that stuff happened to you through no control of your own. And it happened for the best. And had you had your way, it would have been just the opposite.

I see so much of that in my own life. Even my experience. I did not create my experience. And I think right on through the thing - as I said, all spiritual experiences are different. They're different because there are certain mechanical things necessary. The experience itself may be a projection. It may be a tremendous, vast mental projection. But it gets the message across to you, that beyond a shadow of a doubt this is what reality is. And without that help - I don't think we could do it. Now, where do we go further? How do you identify that? I don't intend to try to identify it. I'll never say anything that I can't demonstrate; to say that I know exactly what happened. But I believe this - that there are levels of intelligence that help other levels of intelligence.

Q: You said that you can see that something happened for the best. How do you know that it wasn't just something in nature that happened and you were able to deal with it or get around it?

R: Well - yeah - but you remind me of a lady I was talking to one time. And I was telling her about the facts of life - that certain people committed murder and little children were ground up, and so on. And I was amazed by her response. It wasn't, "Why does this happen? Is this part of a picture of something?" It was a constant reaction: Not, "What can I do about it?" But it was, "Why does it have to be that way?" And this is pretty much what you're asking, I think.

Q: Well not necessarily "why?" but...(inaudible)...

R: No - no. To give you an example, what I was talking about - I followed a certain life pattern, from the time I was twenty-one years of age. I went away and I thought I was going to be a priest, when I was twelve years old, and I became somewhat antagonistic, to say the least. I didn't like the setup. And I didn't like the limitations: You either believed or they slapped you a good one. So I didn't buy that, and I didn't waste any time getting out of it.

I didn't have anyplace to go, incidentally, but I followed a moral lifestyle. Because I felt I should put all my energy into it. If you're trying to play too many games at once - some people think you can, that one game neutralizes the other. That if you get in the habit of smoking, start chewing. No, no. Don't smoke or chew.

I was studying yoga too, at the same time, and I quit eating meat. Because I was using myself as a laboratory, so to speak. I used to say, "If these things are all necessary, if they prescribe them, I'll follow them. So what - it's just a few years of my life."

But I went on for seven or eight years. And I got fed up. I got totally fed up. I thought, "I am kidding myself; I'm just another animal, trying to exalt myself above the animals that I'm living with. And if I'm smart I'll go and get myself some woman and get married and have some kids, and conk out like the rest of the animals, and quit kidding myself."

So I would go out and run into some girl. And it never happened. I would get kicked down the steps. And I'd think, "What's wrong? I'm doing everything possible to find this so-called God, if that's what I'm going to find, or this so-called Truth that will help humanity, plus myself. And what happens? Nobody likes me. Nobody wants to associate with me."

So - six months after I had my experience I was married. But by that time - kind of fat, bald-headed; I was rejected when I had hair. (Laughter.)

So what was happening? I read into that that had anybody taken me up on that at the time, that would have been the end of my search.

Q: Taken you up on what?

R: Marriage. Romance. So I believe, I always believed, that I was protected.

Q: What happens after the Enlightenment? Teaching?

R: Not necessarily. That's one of the foolishnesses that you can follow. The thing is - you'll never know whether it does any good or not. I've talked to thousands of people. I don't know if I'm teaching. I've often thought that I should revert to a whole set of humorous approaches and tell nothing but jokes. Some of the Zen koans were just jokes. You never know what to do. You hope - again - that something sitting on your shoulder says, "Tell this one." Or somebody asks the right question.

Q: You were talking about truth. What about lies?

R: Well - if you insist... (Laughter.) That's the other side of the coin.

Q: You said you could also learn from that too.

R: Well - see, there's a word I didn't use, but I use it in the book. That's the sixty-five dollar reward for spending five bucks. When I talk about the truth - there's small "t" truth - I go into this in detail in the book. Small "t" truth is opposed by the word called "lie." That's relative balance for it. But the Truth with a capital "T" is considered Absolute Realization. When you know one thing you'll know everything. That's the reason it's absolute.

"When you know that one thing - you'll know everything." And I never found out how many hairs were on my head. That's a paradox.

Q: Would you say that that one thing is different for different people?

R: No. There is only one thing. There's no multiplicity.

Q: So it's one thing for everybody....

R: Right.

Q: ...but, different people talk about different ways to...

R: Oh, that's true - these people who don't exist say all sorts of things. I'm joking. When you have an experience, one of the explanations of it is that you are one with God. So then when another person has....

When you have this experience you see the entire field on humanity - during my experience I felt sure I saw every living creature - but I'm quite sure that any one of those people when they had the experience, would see every living creature. As part of themselves. Now - this is a paradoxical interpretation. That Man is infinitely one. But never loses his mundane, relative individualism.

Ramana Maharshi describes this as the two upper realizations we have as we go on above satori. There is Cosmic Consciousness, or Kevala Samadhi. The final samadhi is Sahaja Nirvakalpa Samadhi. Now those are long words, and I don't like using terms when we don't need them, but there's nothing in English that gives you the same meaning.

Ramana Maharshi painted it very simply, very clearly, in just a short sentence. Cosmic Consciousness, or Kevala Samahdhi, is the lowering of the bucket into the well with a rope, and drawing it back out after the experience. At Sahaja Samadhi you enter the ocean - the drop of water enters the ocean and disappears. And never returns. But the drop of water is eternally a drop of water, conscious of its perimeter.

This is the reason that it's difficult to understand. As soon as you start talking about other people - other people do not exist - in that experience, as being important. So don't worry about them.

There's a whole Buddhistic group, I understand, that went about preaching that they didn't want to be Enlightened until the whole human race was - and they're calling the shots on the factors by a designer much more complex in mentality than theirs. That this seeming so-called inequality has a reason.

In other words, not all things evolve at the same rate. and to expect them, or to demand - this is one of the great plagues of silliness of civilization today, that we are making demands of God, as whatever we conjure God to be. We're going to make demands. We're going to commit suicide if we don't get what we want. And what we want isn't worth committing suicide over.

But, "We're not going to take Salvation until the whole human race becomes Saved." Absurd. Because those people who talk that way are not going anyplace anyway. They automatically build a fence that they can't get over, and they've got an excuse for not climbing it.

Q: How did this experience affect your attitude to life, and so on?

R: I tried to talk to a few people about it. And I found that the majority of them didn't know what I was talking about, or they thought I was a little off-beam. So I quit trying to talk about it. And I was in Steubenville, Ohio one time talking to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, and she said, "Mr. Rose, I'm going to give you a book." And she autographed it and handed it to me.

It was Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness; I had never read it before. I had had an experience in the meantime, but I had never had my hands on the book. And I was so utterly amazed that there had been people before, who had gone through this same thing.

And what it does - it changes your life. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. But there's an old Zen saying that is also very true: That during the experience the hills are no longer hills and the valleys are no longer valleys. But after the experience, once more the hills become hills and the valleys are valleys.

And if you're a bastard before, you're a bastard afterwards. And there are enlightened people that are rogues. But they have broken through the barrier.

Q: Did you notice the barrier as something that got broken through?

R: Oh sure, sure. When you die, that's the barrier.

Q: You die, in a sense?

R: Oh yes. Physically. Physically. Oh yeah.

Q: You talk like you feel that Enlightenment is not possible, but yet you've had an experience...

R: No, no. It's not impossible if you have a deep hunger, and an ability to catch yourself when you're rationalizing energy or opportunity away.

We have a tremendous ability to outwit ourselves. And we're always procrastinating. I've had people say to me, "Hey Rose - I've got a chance to make a million dollars. So I'm going out to make the million, and I'll see you later."

And I'll say, "No you won't." Once you get that million you can't let loose of it. You can't go to sleep at night. The stock market might fall while you're asleep, and you're up on the wrong horse or something. No, you can't procrastinate.

First of all, there's a very simple formula for finding this. A very simple formula, if you want to make a note or two. It's commitment. What you have to do if you want anything out of life - if you want to be a millionaire, you make a commitment to be a millionaire. That's the top thing. It means, over your friends, over your relatives, over your sickness, your insanity, or your death - you're going to be a millionaire. Go get Napoleon Hill's book and you'll be a millionaire. All you have to do is keep digging.

And if you want to achieve a spiritual ambition, you make a commitment in that respect. And you make it with your whole life, your whole mentality. This is what I did; I made up my mind. People said, "Hey, you dwell on that stuff and you'll go crazy." If I've gone crazy, you people are crazier than I, for listening to me. (Laughter.)

Q: During your experience with yoga, did you experience any states of awareness or consciousness that were similar to your death experience?

R: No. You get into certain blissful states by virtue of being liberated from physical habits. The kundalini experience - this is hatha yoga graduating into raja yoga. You sublimate the kundalini energy and you'll be - really in love with yourself. Because you're free. Nobody can put their finger on you. Nobody can enchant you. Nothing can captivate you; you can't get hooked on booze, you can't get hooked on dope or anything. Because your intuition has reached its peak, and you're a free man. Now that's a form of bliss. I walked in this for about seven years, from when I was twenty-one to twenty-seven. And every year I thought that any minute the sky was going to break, the bugles will blow, and here will come those chariots with the troops. They didn't come.

Q: You say that you reached certain states of definite bliss?

R: Yes.

Q: I could see how a death experience could bring about a real sense of humility, as well as an awareness for all of the brothers that you saw when you were out of your body.

R: That was in the final experience, when I was thirty years of age.

Q: You were young.

R: Yes. The co-called brotherhood that you talk about, in this final experience, is mostly the witnessing of humanity as an illusion.

Q: Could you say more about that? Humanity as an illusion?

R: Everything is an illusion. These are projections of your interior self.

Q: You said your own consciousness was reality. Your own awareness?

R: Your own observer-position. Awareness is closer than consciousness. Consciousness can be changed with drugs injected into your veins. Awareness won't.

Q: So awareness is real.

R: Right.

Q: So where do you place the distinction between your awareness, my awareness, his awareness...?

R: Because - somebody can bring us down here two glasses of whiskey, and I will have a certain experience and I will never...

(Break in tape.)

Q: ...my problem, and I admit that it's my problem, is that when someone has arrived at a great enlightenment, what I look for is compassion, gentleness, love...

R: (Laughs.)

Q: ...and what I have heard is almost trashing every level of existence.

R: Great - because these are all projections! You're projecting something you want. People want people to be nice - compassionate - so that they don't kick them! That's all you want.

Q: No - I want to be loved.

R: Why??? Are you worthy of love?! Are you worthy of it? What do you do to get loved?

Q: I am love!

R: Oh, nonsense! I don't have to accept that definition.

Q: You're awareness, I'm love.

R: Well, if you want to say you are. Have fun.

Q: That's all there is?

R: What? Fun?

Q: Love.

R: Oh. How do you know that?

Q: Well how do you know of your own awareness?

R: No, no. See - I'm saying - I'm not enforcing a dogma here. My policy is to retreat from error. And this is one of the curses of our spiritual searching, to believe that they are some creature that is loved.

And this is the reason people appoint spineless leaders for their country. Because they want somebody that's not going to kick them. They're scared to death that somebody's going to be a dictator and kick them. And the result is that you get ineffectual people. And people want to assemble a congregation around him and they preach love. Why? Because they don't want to get kicked!

Q: I think that's a real projection there.

R: No! I think everybody...

Q: What is your litmus test for reality? How do you know it's real?

R: My observer. As an observer; that's the only thing that could be erroneous. See - what you're doing is arguing definitions.

Q: Mine are fine for me, but I find myself in conflict with reality. And I find myself at fault, because I'm not projecting love to you; I'm very angry.

R: Sure. Sure. That's all right. I don't mind. I will survive. (Laughter.)

Q: So will I.

R: That's not the point. There's no point in carrying on that type of discussion. This is in my estimation one of the most hypocritical things we get into - the free use of the word "love". Number one, it's a sort of God-claim. That you're capable of some capacity that other human beings somehow lack - or else it wouldn't have to be mentioned, if everybody had it.

I was married, and lived for about twenty years with my wife, and never once did I tell her I loved her. Because I considered it a lie. If you respect your woman, you prove it. Your life should prove it. And you don't have to go around popping off about how much you love people. You give your life to that woman and those children.

Q: And people will see it, right?

R: It doesn't matter if they will see it. It matters if you know it in yourself and she knows it in herself. That's what counts. These words mean nothing.

Q: And that's precisely the point of my observance in the beginning...

R: What you're trying to say is I don't love people...

Q: I didn't say that you don't love people, but that I didn't perceive it.

R: That I don't exude love. You've got a preconception of what a man should be that who knows something. You're not entitled to that.

Q: (Etc.)

Q: (Another person.) All the words that we use are qualifying our actual experience. They are manufactured by our language. They are not the experience.

R: That's right.

Q: And one of these words is "love" - we think that love is great. And one of the reasons for that is the Bible. The Bible is one of the books that stresses love the most.

R: Right. That's the Christian principle.

Q: My question is - who is the psychologist behind the writing of the Bible? I strongly believe that he had a perception of love in him, and manifested that in the book.

R: This unfortunately isn't restricted to Christianity alone.

Q: ...and the other five or six...

R: Major religions.

Q: Yes - how do we prove - and we are drawing a blank on their lives, research is blank - that while there are many philosophers and psychologist who base their lives on these writings...

R: There are some things that I don't think you pick up about me. One of them is I don't use the word "God." Because when you say something you give it such credence that the majority of people don't see any need to find God. This is the catch.

There are words that you can throw out that are pretty cheap to throw out. And "love" is one of them. And I shy away from them. As soon as somebody says, "You believe in God, don't you?", I say, "I wait for proof. If you know about God, you'd better come with proof."

Because why? I am not an atheist. As I said a little ago when she asked me a question, I said that I believe that there's a spiritual force that follows everybody. You can call it the H.G.A., you can call it whatever you want. But that force is there. I identify it; but I don't put names on it. When you become a name-dropper you become a phony.

I've heard preachers say it: they get all aroused and they say, "God told me to tell you this." Nonsense. One guy's God is telling him to kill the other party. And he's going to heaven if he kills enough of us.

So if you want to try to do something to help people, you have eliminate the misuse - this blatant free use - of a word, and try to get to something that is impersonal. We have no proof from any of our spiritual realizations that God was he or she - or a person.

"Man creates God in his own image and likeness." That's the way the Bible should be translated. God didn't create us in his own image and likeness - we don't know what God looks like, how do we know we were created in his image and likeness? But we know that we create him in our image. He has to have human justice, and human love, and all these characteristics. "A spiritual person has to have love for his fellowman."

Where does the curse start? It starts in our social relationships. You want to get into the girl's pants? You tell her you love her. And if you happen to marry her - you'll get that shoved back down your throat every day of your life: "You S.O.B., you told me you loved me."

And this is the great trick of people. We are all deceptive. We are all playing our little shell-games. And we like to use words that are uncontroversial. Who dares to stand up and say there isn't a God? I don't say there isn't a God; I just say, "Hey - how about proving your point?"

And about these great characteristics that are so much the landmark of somebody that's supposed to be knowledgeable about spiritual things: If you're knowledgeable about spiritual things, your science is to get into those people's heads, in as pure a fashion as you possible can, without any presuppositions or concept structures or nice-sounding fairy tales. Just the cold truth. And then they'll come out with a cold realization; no frills. But when you start writing stuff in....

It's like when the guy says, "Well, I don't want any part of a God that doesn't love me." Well, we may be food. And if that's what we are we've got to accept it. If you want to know the truth, you don't qualify it ahead of time. You make up your mind that whatever comes, you'll ride with it.

Q: Do you believe that loving is a weakness?

R: No - I believe that the term is a kind of an imposition. It's putting necessary qualifications on things. For instance, if you're an electronics engineer and you go out looking for a job. And the guy says, "Well, I'm not going to hire you unless you're a loving person." That has nothing to do with electronics engineering. This thing in the analysis of the human being is nowhere to be found. But it sounds nice. And people like to hear it. They think then that you're harmless. Well, I'm not harmless. I could be very dangerous.

Q: Mr. Rose, I'm still in a quandary about how you can say that awareness is a valid term, but not God.

R: I think that you want to argue, and I don't have...

Q: No, no. I came here to learn, and you're my...

R: I think you're hypocritical.

Q: But I'm just asking for an explanation.... (Pandemonium breaks loose in the audience.)

Q: Mr. Rose, I read your book, and I had the same feeling this man had, too. But talking to you tonight I don't have that feeling. Tonight, I felt that it was very good what you said.

R: That's all we have to go by. This is basically all we have to go by in our relationships with other people. There are a lot of people that because of their particular role in life, or genetically, they have to assume a certain personality appearance, that's all.

I'm trying to be the most honest person I can be with you; and I don't want to snow you. Even at the sacrifice of your good impression of me. Because, I think if you read the book, if you want to go someplace, you don't need me. Nobody needs me. All they need is their own inner determination. Maybe a few lines in the book will help you, maybe it won't.

But I figure that one thing I will not do here - I will not do it in any lecture - I will not deal with loaded questions. That the purpose behind them is to force somebody to agree with them....

Q: The purpose behind my question was to get the truth! Tell me. Speak to me. I'm open.

R: I don't care to.

Q: Don't ignore me....

R: I think you've had your answers - you've had your share - let's give somebody else a chance.

Q: Thank you. Mr. Rose, I think I might lack some of the intellectual fire that has driven people to determine what the truth is. When I see individuals who seem to be looking for some kind of higher truth, whether or not we are simply animals who got to the point to where we fear death, and we fear the idea that we're nothing more than animals, and therefore our search is nothing more than an expression of those fears.

How do you start up those fires in yourself to...

R: What you do is you face also that possibly you're rationalizing. For any direction - you could have a reason for it. As I said, I came to this almost - strong conviction - in my twenties that I was wasting my time. And I only came back because I was just drawn back. There was nothing else that made any sense to me.

Because everyplace you go you've got somebody that's hawking some wares - and you know you're in a snake pit, most people just pursuing their own selfish ends. And you want to do something valuable. Now - in the observing of the self, you go through exactly the type of thinking I'm talking about. You say, "This could all be that I want to be a special type of creature, going to be better than anybody else", and so on. But then the second question is, "Why not? Why do you want to be second-class or third-class ?"

And what does this have to do with your relationship? Is it whether you can give the guy the most money? That you're going to rub his back and make him feel good? Or that you can hand him some system of thinking that will be total consolation?

That's the thing. And I don't want consolation just for the sake of consoling, either; I mean the questions are answered. A purpose for living is established. You live with the truth. In everything. Your relations with other people - that's the reason I never told anybody...

I had a child come up to me the other day and say, "Do you love my mother?" And I didn't answer her. She asked me again, "Do you love my mother?" I said, "I love babies." Because - you can lie to babies. They feel good. (Laughter.) And I love babies, believe me. I love every one of them. But I don't have to argue with them about it.

Q: Can you successfully combine Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions?

R: I think you had people in all those religions that were very dedicated to truth. I'm not saying all people were. I'm not saying that all of the leaders were. I think that most of them decayed into politics. The institutions started out pure in motive, and not too much written material, not too many by-laws or dogmas; but after awhile they started wearing uniforms and taking titles, and politics entered into it.

And then money, of course. Great empires were formed in every major religion. Enormous temples are built, and somebody has to inherit that temple. So he has to go through the business of pretending he believes.

Q: Back to that whole concept of love...

R: I don't want to talk about it. I think you want to argue too.

Q: Just let me ask you this: Is the pursuit of feeling, compassion, and unity, in your mind something that will distract one from the truth?

R: I think any time you lie to yourself it's going to distract you. If you're not dealing with the facts you're going to have a way out, that's all. You're going to have a way to divert your energy and your attention.

Q: You said at the beginning that arguing was not a way to get somebody to truth. But isn't arguing definitions important? You said that our language is confusing because what one person says may be interpreted differently by someone else. So you need to argue with each other until you get closer to....

R: No, no you don't. I'm going to tell you something; I'll summarize this very quickly for you. I have come before many audiences. And I should before I ever start speaking say this: That I do not intend to argue you into the truth. I do not intend to prove, by material, relative language, that which I experienced.

All I can do is to present certain thoughts. And this is the only thing that anybody can present. I don't legislate. I don't say, "Refuse love." I just don't identify it.

But I say that you can read the book, or you can hear me talk, and you're going to get an impression: "This guy is full of wind", or, "Maybe he's got something." This is basically the reaction. Now, for me to argue my point - is to talk to somebody who has already made up their mind in another direction. There is no point of it; they're not picking me up.

And you know yourself - what do you listen to? You listen to that which appeals to you intuitively. Not by virtue of argument. People can argue with you, and perhaps convince you, but if your heart isn't in it, the next day you'll turn it around and say, "Well, I didn't believe him anyhow."

Q: But you've been saying two different things. You have been telling us what you have experienced - which we should not argue with, I agree - but you're also making statements about things that we really should argue with - because that was not something related to what you experienced, it's something that you now have arrived at.

R: No - I don't say you should argue. I say if you think I'm off the beam, well, reject what I say. That's all.

Q: Yeah, but...

R: Reject it. Just write me off as a nut. Go home happy.

Q: No! But if we want to know how you got to that point...

R: Well then it's up to your hunger to find with an open mind instead of closed mind and an argumentative demand that I produce the truth in your terms. You pick it up in my revelation. My terms.

Q: I've read Martin Luther's I - Thou, do you know it?

R: Yes.

Q: I relate that to what you're telling me. I think that transcends language and all that other stuff. Do you agree with me?

R: Yes, I do. The terminology in esoteric and religious matters is so complex - and each term is arguable. Like the theological argument over how many angels you can get on the head of a pin. This can go into absurdity. Arguing about theological terminology. And I either have something - or - I'm the biggest damn fool on earth to come from Wheeling, West Virginia down here to talk tonight.

I mean - this is a curse. Because of the simple fact that it shouldn't be free. Nobody respects anything they get for free. If you paid a thousand dollars for it - half of you would believe me. Because you'll never go home and admit it wasn't worth a thousand dollars. Your pride wouldn't let you. But you can walk out of here and spit on me, if you wish - because it wasn't worth a thing. It didn't cost you a cent.

More spit? Come on. (Laughter.)

Q: When you talk about a commitment - can someone who is seeking truth find it in a day to day commitment to your job, to your family, to your....

R: No, no, no. You have to make a commitment to an objective; whatever you want out of life. Most of us just go through life just, a little of this and a little of that until we're dead. But if you're young enough and have energy, and you make a commitment and say, "This is what I'm going to put my life's work to" - I maintain you can succeed.

It's like the old salesman's pitch: "If you throw enough mud at the ceiling, some of it will stick." And if you throw enough mud at the ceiling - you'll come out with an answer. You'll come out with a change of state of being. Because that's the inevitable way to go.

Q: Can it be a commitment to anything?

R: It has to be a commitment to a general direction, such as - the maximum thing you want. You don't want just to be good at your job - I don't know - if that's what you want, OK, you've got it. But I'm talking about maximum things, such as Absolute Truth. You want the total answer.

Q: Do you have to meditate? Do you have to follow a mystical path?

R: What you do, if you're dedicated in that direction, you can go find books - anything you can get your hands on. I read everything I could get my hands on - until I found out that you don't have to read to do it. It's action. A man is what he does. I've said that repeatedly. There has been a lot of stuff thrown out here tonight, if people are interested in a spiritual path. A spiritual path according to your formulas...? That's another matter. That's your business.

Q: To wait until we can go beyond words - is it possible to follow your curiosity that long?

R: As soon as you say something like that you're going to realize that you're letting yourself off the hook. You're not doing anything really heavy.

Q: I'm not letting myself off the hook as long as I put it in words. Words are all I've got right now tonight. We can't transfer our thoughts to one another, surely - yet.

R: I believe there's a percentage of people that came here tonight that know what I'm talking about. I believe that. I believed that enough people have picked it up....

I don't expect - do you know what Richard Bucke says? Some of you have read Cosmic Consciousness. One in a million. That's all. That's cosmic consciousness, which is Kevala Samadhi. OK - do a little bit more division for the ones that reach Sahaja Samadhi.

I realize that we have to use words. To struggle with words. But - not ad infinitum. Not belabor the whole thing to where there's nothing but argument. You either pick up a person, or you don't pick him up. That's all there is to it. And if a person doesn't pick it up, if they think this is wind - then you're wasting your time here, that's all.

Q: I have my own preconceptions and my own ideas, and I'm sort of willing to let go of them. But I do need some time. And arguing is one way - if I argue, it doesn't mean I'm dead set in maintaining my position. Just because I'm arguing does not mean I'm not willing to change my mind.

R: You'd like to be persuaded strongly, so that you don't have to do any thinking about it.

Q: No I don’t. I want to exchange.

R: What have you got to exchange? You have nothing that I want.

Q: I am willing to take what you have to offer.

R: OK - then I offer it. It's very simple.

Q: The process of direct-mind experience - how do you practice it?

R: You just sit - you sit in a circle - it's like the old Shakers that sat until the Spirit moved them to do something. Different groups have used that, sometimes for getting different results. The people who practice this latihan, the Subud people, will stand in a circle, until some manifestation occurs. Now all those things manifest in different ways. In the latihan, the result is almost an epileptic attack. In which they fall, in semi consciousness sometimes.

But in rapport - you sit there until you start to tell people what they're thinking. People across the room. You don't have to sit for a long period of time; a half hour does it. After a half hour the energy level drops rapidly. But within the first half hour - if you do it periodically, systematically - say the same day of each week, you get together and sit - this starts to develop. And you get to the point where you can tell what people are thinking.

That's the reassurance to yourself that you're on the right track - whether the other party validates it or negates it.

Q: When you started on the path, did you find yourself breaking with your old friends and relationships?

R: You lose them. You lose a lot of people. But you lose people when you take a job and move out of town.

Q: Do you find a deliberate break from them is helpful in terms of...

R: No, no. Listen - a lot of this stuff is more in evidence in the book - but one of the things that I point out in this book, that the most important thing on a spiritual path is friendship. If a man is not capable of friendship he shouldn't be on a spiritual path, and he shouldn’t be pretending to teach. And unless you look upon those people as your friends, capable of your friendship - don't go any further.

Because what are you doing? You're dealing in a subjective matter, and that person has to understand you well enough to trust you. Because he may be spending days, weeks, or years with you. There are people who have been living with me for the past twelve, thirteen, fourteen years. And if I were an S.O.B. and didn't have any emotion toward them, they'd have been long gone, believe me. But I don't stand around popping off about it. I live my life, I don't talk about it. But friendship is very important. And if we're not capable of friendship - we're unrelated to the human race.

(Break in tape.)

Q: ...follow you for awhile and...

R: I've heard of these things, but I can't prove them. I think that people who die unprepared - may have them. I'll give you an example: Why do we talk about all this stuff? Because if you were to die today, with the knowledge that the only reality that you know was that which was taught to you in school - which is your body, and this planet, and the solar system....

Then if that stuff fades out - your body isn't there, your brain's gone with the body - what is going to appreciate the next dimension? Where has your point of reference gone? If your point of reference is still this human body, with its egotistical hangups about the needs for this or that - then if you landed in another dimension, you wouldn't even know yourself.

After-death, bardos, materializations

Now - what happens in the after-death experience is that we lose the relative dimension. Absolutely. These lights go out. And the lights include the sun. And when the sun goes out, time disappears. You don't have to go that far: Einstein formulates it mathematically that space is not independent of time. We have space-time, not space and time. That these are one. And this is the next dimension - space-time.

And the mind dimension is the immediate next bardo. We like to think that the mind is the soul, but it isn't. The mind is another shell, it's another hang-up, it's another prism through which we view reality and transform into all sorts of tricks and games.

So my guess is that unless a person reaches a certain maturity, at death, they are incapable of language. Even with each other. Christ made a remark one time, at least they said he did in the Bible: "Bury the dead and put them out of your sight. The dead know nothing." And the Bible strongly attacked people who would produce the spirits - like the Oracle at Delphi or the witch of Endor - they were criticized for bring false hope to people.

Have you ever been to a genuine materialization? I have. I've watched things materialize and come out and talk to you. And we asked some questions: "Have you met my uncle on the other side?"

"Oh, yeah - he's fine, he's fine." But they don't know his name.

"Is Jesus there?"

"Well, we have seen his light."

This was a genuine materialization. It was tested. We even took the guy's underwear off and put other underwear on him so that there could be no gimmicks. Flour on the floor. But these things walked, and yet didn't leave any tracks on the flour. Things walked out. But no consciousness. And I was always reminded of the thing in the Bible, the dead know nothing. You could conjure them up - but no information.

So what you're dealing with is something that the Tibetans call a bardo. And what's a bardo? It's another relative dimension. It's another theater. Stage two.

Q: I guess what I was wondering too - at death, what in your physical being will help you make the transition, if it isn't wiped out too rapidly?

R: I hear of stuff - I have no way of validating it or proving it - but I hear stuff for instance that people actually carry demons with them that they create while they're in this life. And that stuff interferes with them and gives them a bad time.

A lot of this stuff is going to be an open science before too many generations. If you want to get the books by Moody on life-after-life, read these accounts. These accounts of life after death fall into certain categories which more or less indicate what I'm talking about. That not everybody goes through the same experience.

They fall into categories: There are people who go through the tunnel, there are people who are met by kindly spirits, there are people who are met by people in white. You run into these categories. There's basically a reason for that; some of it might be tied to belief. Some of it might be tied to the next stage number two that they're going through.

So a lot of that stuff may be possible. And this has been the theme, down through the ages, especially in India. That they realized this. The Tibetans realized this. And a lot of the Tibetan literature is for the preparation of a man when he goes through death, so he can dodge these stages number two, number three, and so on.

Those are the bardos. There's a way to transcend it. And what do they tell you? Anybody ever read it? You should remember this. What they tell you is - always keep it in your head that this is no more real that the place you left. That's the test. In other words, don't get snowed.

Reincarnation

Q: Do you believe in reincarnation?

R: I don't disbelieve.

Q: Why not?

R: I don't advise...

Q: Well, you said that if you can't prove something then you don't believe in it.

R: No, no, listen. You're missing what I'm trying to do. This is the old argument about reincarnation: It can be a tremendous rationalization against action. I talked to a Rosicrucian years ago that came up with this. He said, "Rose, don't get excited, take your time, you've got hundreds of incarnations, beautiful experiences, take your time, do what you please. Eat, drink, and be merry."

And I say you don't have plenty of time. Nobody has plenty of time. That could well be a rationalization. So OK, somebody reassures you that there is reincarnation.... I have to be honest with you: I do not remember ever having been here before.

It must have been terrible. (Laughter.)

Q: There was a story about a man talking about a castle built of building blocks, and if the blocks are knocked down, you no longer have a castle. I have a human body built of carbon units and so, and if some of those units are destroyed by accident or disease, why should I think that I will continue as a human being with human thought-patterns, and continue as such into a heaven?

R: Well, I agree with you. It seems to be a tremendous curse: We should all commit suicide and die young if we're going to have to carry these eighty-year-old carcasses through eternity. I grant that. But see, what you're doing is identifying with the relative process. And the body doesn't mean much when you get beyond the relative process. All that matters then is the observer. That's all that matters.

A friend of mine studied with Einstein for a short period of time, and he wrote a thesis of his own. And he drew a picture of man in space-time as a strand. It looked like a big worm with hairs on it, running through a block of ice. This was a thing that was cast in that. And to us it looked like a human; but it wasn't. It was a series of humans, starting from an egg, an ovum, growing to a baby, a man, deteriorating into a bunch of bones, death, decay. That is the total picture.

No separate picture is that man. The total picture is that man. And in that space-time, that's the eternal being. It lives in space-time indefinitely.

So consequently there's all sorts of speculation, that a person can return to that and relive the whole experience over; and one of these hairs could be a variation, a new tangent, if he can build strength into it and that sort of thing, and change his destiny a little.

But I think there's no point in that speculation. The only thing that I think that is very valuable to know, is that when you go the observer still lives.

Q: What is the observer? Do I have an observer of my own?

R: You don’t have - you are. That which is really you is the observer. The body is not you; the body will decay. But you can sit and watch the body decay. Or watch them cutting legs off, in diabetes or something. And you will still observe.

Q: There are people who say they come from outer space - called "walk in's" - have you heard of that?

R: I think that's science-fiction, isn't it?

Q: ...they come in to help the world...

R: We can't begin to analyze all the divergent.... We've got to go, pretty soon. Thanks a lot.

end