1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron
Data
| Title | 1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron |
| Recorded date | 1975 |
| Location | Theosophical Society Kenmore Boulevard Akron Ohio |
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Notes
In 1975-Akron-to-resolve R says that the night before, he was at Theosophical Society in Akron. (this talk)
Transcription
Title, etc
Recorded by Gary Harmon 1975 on a KSU lecture tape <<< NO - Gary's version is not Theosophiocal Society it is 1975-Akron-to-resolve
Theosophical Society Kenmore Boulevard Akron Ohio
Tape 1
File 1
Questions regarding prayer and faith
Questioner: Someone does hear you.
Rose: Yea; who is that someone… who is that someone who hears you.
Questioner: Personal God?
Rose: Well if his final experience is one that he is a river that has been emptied into the ocean and has lost his inanity where is this personal God? Where did this God disappear to when he empted into the ocean and lost his identity? This individual that emptied into the ocean and lost his identity that is nothing but the ocean? Is the Ocean God?
Questioner: Impersonal God… and I guess it…
Rose: Well what I am saying is rather metaphorical but what I am saying is the only way that you should pray is to yourself… and I meant Big S (Self) not little s, see.
Questioner: Oh I see, you pray to big self… through little self.
Rose: Yea but you don’t know what big self is, but you can continually challenge yourself we and say hey I want to know to know who you are!
Questioner: Oh Yea I see, continually question yourself through your personal God.
Rose: ah that’s… ah that’s kidding yourself. That’s putting the blinders on immediately qualifying, postulating before you prove. So I know that Maharshi; I didn’t say that I endorsed everything he said. He is talking a language for particular people. But if you examine, you talked about Krishna ok Krishna may identify in the final analysis, Krishna with the Absolute but regardless when he reached his point of enlightenment he recognizes himself as a non-identifiable river that empties into the ocean, he lost his identity. Now is he wants to call that ocean Krishna, or the Absolute, well I have to examine the writing to see if he is consistent. You see? But when you talk about yourself and God, a river that has emptied into an ocean and lost its identity, it doesn’t do you any good, there you’re done unless the God is the ocean. See, then it doesn’t matter what the name of it is. I mean it does matter if it brings you to a false conclusion of it being something personal. This idea of God and Krishna is too often taken as something out side of you and taken as duality as opposed to monism; I’m a Monist I cannot conceive of a God that is standing there watching a man become the Absolute. Then you get two people the Absolute and God.
Questioner: Yes, but can’t you see that personal God, as a manifestation of God that prays to that...
Rose: Yea, pray to the guy next to you he’s a manifestation of the impersonal God. Why pick one name? You are a manifestation of the impersonal God; everyone here is a manifestation of an impersonal God, so why pick one? Why build a church to one man? Why build a temple? You are all manifestations, one guy gets up and says it’s like me I get up and say…. Here look, but this is not Rose logy, see I don’t matter this carcass don’t matter.
Questioner: So you don’t see any value in prayer?
Rose: unless you pray to yourself. When you start to create an icon, whether it’s a mental icon or saying that, this one guy is the living incarnation of God. First of all don’t say anything until you define the word God. Yea if, it’s too easy, these are euphuism s, nobody dare challenge any one when they say God, I challenge them, and I say what you are talking about. This is a mistake; this is why people don’t work. Because somebody says God, then somebody says I read the bible and the lord told me to tell YOOOU. And you say oh yes, I better do that. Somebody else comes along and starts a war because the lord told him to tell somebody else, something else. See, it is an incarnation… the God of the Mohammad‘s chopped hell out of the Krishna its’ and if the people had realized that each one of them is a incarnation of God they wound not have been fighting. But no, they objectify a name and put it up.
Questioner: so would you say about the experience that they had some illumination through prayer?
Rose: No, they are good to read about, but you have to go for what you feel, it’s what you experience. They are good to read, especially after you have an experience, that validates. You realize that somebody else has had one but they are no good to you until you have had the experience. You’re just dreaming, hoping wishful thinking postulating again
Questioner: from that point of view what do you think about Christian Mysticism? Relating to a God head, which would be Christ.
Rose: well when you read the accounts of Christian mystics they have reached the same thing, absolutely. This is what I discovered, I was born and raised a Christian and I went overseas for my exotic trip but when I came back I realized that there are Christian mystics that have found it. I couldn’t pay attention to them because all I knew where all hucksters. The churches that I encountered were full of hucksters, liars that where just feeding of the public and that sort of thing that they give you double talk and would stick to a fundamental interpretation of a book and when I would say anything I would find out that they didn’t even know what they were talking about literally, the literal translation was lost. And they were taking this book and they are beating on the head with it for ten percent of your wages. But there are christens, well St. John of the cross that have reached it, the Truth is in you it doesn’t matter if it is John of the cross or you the Truth is in you if you want to find it, the only thing is you can’t kid yourself and say it is only in Christianity or its only in Zen. That’s what I am trying to get away from. When anyone tells you it’s only in something, watch out.
Questioner: I guess what I am trying to get around to is I’ve meet many people who, well Jesus freaks are one extreme example who are trying to develop a personal relationship with that God head- with Christ .
Rose: I know there are homosexuals in India that fall in love with their masters.
Questioner: id that the knowledge or you can go to the vehicle of the one godhead. Is there a manifestation of---?
Rose: I don’t want you to consider one godhead; I don’t want you to consider anything.
Question: That’s what I am getting at, do you think you got stuck at a point.
Rose: Yea, That’s what I’m talking about I don’t want you to get hung up; I don’t think you should except anything until you validate it. This is what I am opposed to, accepting. But I maintain found my viewpoint, from what I discovered and of course you can’t accept that ether you find out for yourself. I maintain that we are all an emanation of the one thing.
Another questioner: you keep talking about prove, how to you prove.
Rose: there is no such thing as proof except when you become. When you talk of proof you talk of learning the answer knowing the answer, there is no such thing as knowing and yet you have to follow this, you have to read books you have to know certain answers, you have to get through life but in the final analysis this is no proof no knowing, the method is becoming. You will become the truth and that is the little thing in the bible that everyone misses he (Jesus) says I am the way the truth and the life, he didn’t say I know it, he said I AM. And the preachers read that and they never get it they say NO you got to pay. You got to learn, you got to study, all this sort of thing. You have to go and study theology and be a minister before you can find the truth you have to read the bible. These things may help; you get a book in front of you it may stimulate meditation. But I am not saying that you are ever going to learn the truth. This means that you never are going to learn proof. But you are going to retreat from that, this sounds paradoxical for it means retracting from that which is impractical or improbable and going with that which is more sensible. Because this is what we are stuck with right now, we are in a relative dimension that can be settled according to proof. In other words, to give you an example, the preacher doesn’t believe in drinking booze so go catch him in the beer joint getting drunk. We now have proof of is inconsistency, see what I mean. That type of proof we have if somebody says I can raise the dead, we can proof him wrong because he failed to raise the dead these things are proof of validity in our search for truth among mundane preachers but in the final analysis there is no theological proof. That’s the reason if you can go directly, if you can bypass all the fundamentalist reading whither it’s the sutras the same as the bible, it’s here. When you externalize that is time you are taking from looking at yourself. And even this book, that’s why I condensed it, I tried to write as little as I could, just to provoke thought. Because the basic path is inside yourself sometimes you have to go outside yourself and say, hey Jack how do I get inside myself how do you get inside yourself. So Jack tells you how and you get rid of Jack and you go inside yourself.
IST questioner: in that Ramana Maharshi book he’s talking about the Guru and the Guru has a way of helping you find yourself how important is that, pointing back to your group. How does it change by having a group of people that work together to reflect each other and you bring someone in that is enlightened? What is it you do what is your role. Well the thing is that it is better to labor with a group of people that are pretty much on the same level of enlightenment or awakening than it is to work by yourself because you’ll progress because you can get off the track and go back to sleep for a year at a time, I know people who do it. A whole year of their life is shot they will forget all about it. They won’t pick up a book for a year; of course sometimes it’s a rest sometimes it is just taking a rest. The group has that value to remind you, the group has voltage we found this out to. Voltage is generated by a group of people, when two or more are gathered together, I am in their midst. That means when he says I AM that’s Absolute essence that is in there, in the foreground. And of course if you bring in somebody that’s had the experience, what is he? He’s a guide a guy that has come out of the woods before you.
