1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron
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| Title | 1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron |
| Recorded date | 1975 |
| Location | Theosophical Society, Kenmore Boulevard, Akron, Ohio |
| Number of tapes | 1 tape 2 sides |
| Other recorders audible? | |
| Alternate versions exist? | |
| Source | Gary Harmon |
| No. of MP3 files | 30:22 + 30:47 |
| Total time | 61:09 |
| Transcription status | First pass in process Nov 2024 |
| Link to distribution copy | http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ (need password) |
| Link to PDF | http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ Or try http://selfdefinition.org/rose/ |
| Published in what book? | |
| Published on which website? | |
| Remarks | |
| Audio quality | |
| Identifiable voices | |
| URL at direct-mind.org | https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron |
| For access to this wiki or the audio files please send an email to: editors@direct-mind.org | |
| Revision timestamp | 20241203143240 |
Last paste to Wiki was Dec 3, 2024
To do
Resolve 1975-Akron and 1975-Theosophical-Society-Akron as below.
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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)
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
Transcription
File 1
Total time 30 min 47 sec
gh1-00:01
Questions regarding prayer and faith
Q: Someone does hear you.
gh1-00:05
Rose: Who is that someone? Who is the someone that hears you?
gh1-00:10
Q: My personal God.
gh1-00:13
Rose: Well, if his final experience is one in which he is nothing but a river that's been emptied into the ocean and lost its identity, where does this God disappear to when he's emptied into the ocean? This individual that knows nothing except the ocean. Is the ocean God?
gh1-00:28
Q: My personal God. Huh? My
Rose: I see what I'm saying is rather metaphorical, but what I'm saying, the only way you should pray is to yourself. And I meant big S, not little s. See?
gh1-00:45
Q: Oh, I see. Yeah, but pray to big self.
gh1-00:48
Rose: Of course, you don't know what the big self is, but you can continually challenge yourself. You can say, Hey, I want to know who you are!
gh1-00:57
Q: I see. In focussing through, though, say, it's devotion to a person of God or to a group.
gh1-01:04
Rose: That's kidding yourself. That's putting the blinders on immediately, qualifying, postulating before you prove. So I know that Maharshi, that's what I said. I didn't say that I endorsed everything he said. He's talking a language for particular people. But if you examine, he talks about Krishna. Okay, Krishna, he may identify in the final analysis, Krishna with the absolute. But regardless, When he reached his point of enlightenment, he recognizes himself gh1-01:34 as a non-identifiable river emptied into an ocean. He's lost his identity. Now, whether he wants to call that ocean Krishna or the absolute, why I have to examine the writing and see if he's really consistent.
But when you talk about yourself and a God, a personal God, and then you're a river that's emptying into an ocean, losing your identity, it doesn't do you any good. This God's there, you're gone. Unless the God is the ocean. Then it don't matter what the name of it is.
It does matter if the name gives you a false conclusion of being something personal. For instance, this idea of God and Krishna is too often taken as something outside of us. They call it duality as opposed to monism.
I'm a monist. I cannot conceive the God as standing there watching a man become the absolute. Then you got two people, the absolute and God.
gh1-02:41
Q: Could you see a personal God as being the manifestation of that impersonal God praying to the self through that personal relative.
gh1-02:58
Rose: Yeah, 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 the impersonal God. Why pick one? Why build a church to one man? Why build a temple? You're all manifestations. Just one guy gets up and says, just like me, I'm getting up and saying, Here, look, that this is not Rosology. See? This carcass don't matter.
gh1-03:34
Q: You don't see any value in prayer?
gh1-03:37
Rose: Unless you pray to yourself. But when you start to create an icon, whether it's a metal icon or saying it's something is the living, the living. This one guy is the living incarnation of God, first of all, don't say anything until you define the word God. This is the idea. It's too easy. These are euphemisms. Nobody dares to challenge anybody when they say God. I challenge them. I say, What are you talking about? This is a mistake. This is why people don't work. Because somebody says God, and then somebody says, "I read the Bible and the Lord told me to tell you". And you say, Oh, yeah, I better do that. Somebody else comes along, starts a war because you go to Lord tolod him to tell somebody else, something else.
gh1-04:35
Q: What about all sorts of experience?
gh1-04:39
Rose: Different incarnations. The God of the Muhammadans chopped hell out of the Krishnites. If the people had realized that each one of them was an incarnation of God, they would have been fighting. No, but they objectified one name and put it up.
gh1-04:58
Q: What do you say What about the experiences many people have?
gh1-05:04 Rose: No, you've got the- What about other people's experiences where they have some illuminations through prayer or they feel-
Rose: They're good to read, but you have to go by what you feel, what you experience, they're good to read, especially after you have an experience that validates. You realize somebody else has had one, but they're no good to you until you have the experience. You're just dreaming, that's all, hoping, wishful thinking, postulating again by some man or another.
gh1-05:35
Q: From that point of view, what would you say about, say, Christian mysticism, say, relating to a God God had, which would be Christ.
gh1-05:46
Rose: Well, when you hear the accounts of Christian mystics, they have reached the same thing. Absolutely. This is what I discovered. I was born and raised to Christianity, and I went all over into Asia for my exotic trip. But when I came back, I realized that there were Christian mystics who had found it, but I couldn't pay attention to them because all I knew were hucksters. The churches that I encountered, the Christian churches I encountered, were full of hucksters, liars that were just eating off of the public and that thing, and giving you a double talk as scriptural fundamentalistic interpretations of a book. When I translate, I find out they didn't even know what they were talking about, literally. The literal translation was lost. They're taking this book and beating you on the head with it for 10% of your wages. But there are Christians, well, St. John of the Cross. There are Christians who reach it. The truth is in you, in whoever that's John of the Cross or you. The truth is in the Confucianist if he wants to find the truth. The only thing is he can't kid himself and say, Oh, it's only in Confucianism, It's only in Christianity. It's only in Zen. That's what I'm trying to get away from. When anybody tells you it's only in something, watch out.
gh1-07:09
Q: I guess what I was trying to get around to was I've met many people who, Jesus feaks, are one extreme example, but who are trying to develop a personal relationship with that Godhead, with Christ.
gh1-07:25
Rose: I know. There's gurus in India that are homosexuals, fallen in love with their master.
gh1-07:29
Q: Do you think that's or do you think that you can go through a vehicle of, say, one Godhead, you consider a manifestation of God and go beyond that?
gh1-07:42
Rose: I don't want you to consider a one Godhead. I don't want you to consider anything.
gh1-07:46
Q: If you do that, do you think that you get stuck at a certain point?
gh1-07:49
Rose: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I don't want you to get hung up. I don't want you to accept anything until you validate it. But this is what I'm opposed to is you accepting. But I maintain I'm saying that from my point of view, from what I've discovered, and of course, you can't accept that either, you find out for yourself. I maintain that we're all an emanation of one thing. That's the idea. Yes.
Q: You keep talking about proof. When you How do you consider proof? How do you know what that is?
gh1-08:17
Rose: There's 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 the book. You have to know certain answers, that to get through life. But in the final analysis, there's no proof and there is no knowing. The method is becoming. You will gh1-08:47 become the truth. And that's the little thing in the Bible everybody misses. I am the way the truth in the life. He didn't say, I know it. He said, I am. And they read that, the preachers read it, and they never get They say, No, you got to pay. You got to learn. You've got to study. All this thing. You got to go and study theology and be a minister before you find the truth. You got to read the Bible.
These things may help. If you get a book in front of you, no matter what the book is, it'll stimulate meditation. But I'm not saying that that is the... If you're ever going to learn the truth, that means that you're never going to learn proof. But you're going to retreat from that. Again, it sounds paradoxical because we're talking about retreating from the impractical or the improbable and approaching that which is more sensible. Because this is what we're stuck with right now. We're in a relative dimension in which things are settled according to proof. In other words, to give you an example, the preacher doesn't believe in drinking booze, so we get down and catch him in a beer joint getting drunk. We have proof of his inconsistency. That's all. You know what I mean? These things, that type of proof we have, if somebody says, well, I can raise the dead, and we prove him wrong because he failed to raise the dead, these things are proof in our search for validity among mundane preachers or something that sort. But in the final analysis, why there's no theological proof. That's the reason. If you can go direct, if you can bypass all the fundamentalistic reading, whether it's the sutras. I include the sutras, the same as the Bible. Anything, it's here you don't have. When you externalize, that's time you're taking from looking at yourself. And even. Even this book, that's the reason I condensed it. I tried to write as little as I could because. Just to provoke thought, because the basic path is inside yourself. But sometimes you have to stop and go outside yourself and say, "Hey, Jack, how do I get inside myself? How did you get inside yourself?" So Jack tells you how. Then you get rid of Jack and you go inside yourself.
gh1-11:21
Q: Yeah. In that Ramana Maharishi book, he's talking about the guru and the guru as.
A way of helping you find yourself. I guess any teacher.
How important.
Okay, I guess pulling it back to this group here. Out of all of this theorizing.
gh1-11:48
Rose: How.
gh1-11:48
Q: Has it changed from having just a group of people who are trying to work together to reflect each other? If you bring someone in who is enlightened, what is your role? I guess is sort of what I'm asking.
gh1-12:03
Rose: Well, the thing for people. I say it's better to labor with a group of people who are pretty much on the same level of enlightenment or awakening. It's better to do that than to work by yourself, because you'll progress. You can get off the track and go back to sleep for a year at a time. I know people do it. The whole year of their life is shot. Forget about. Don't pick up a book for a year. Don't even think about anything. Of course, sometimes it's arrest too. They're taking a rest. But the group has that value that it'll remind you. The group has voltage. We found this out too. That voltage is generated by a group of people. "Where two or more are gathered together, I'm in their midst." That means when he says I am, that's the absolute essences in the. In the foreground, so to speak. And of course, now, if you bring in somebody that's had. What is he? He's a guide He's a guy that went down through the woods before you. He comes back and he says, "I know a shortcut. Now, you could wander around if you want to for 10 or 20 years, but I know how to get through that jungle."
gh1-13:12
Rose: So you try it. You try to validate that teacher, if possible, because he could be leading you around, too, for 20 years. But basically, when. And that's the reason I say that the. When you know the direction, you really don't need a teacher. Unless just maybe to help you over some little hurdle or something. I can say, well, I run into this problem. What do you think about it? Well, that expedites. Or a guy comes and says, what do you think of this? I'd like to join this movement. And they claim that I can get anything I want just by chanting a certain mantra. Some people approached me in Pittsburgh, well, we've got this mantra, and all we have to do chant that we get anything we want. Yeah, right. But will they get. Will they get enlightenment? Now, this is a question. Suppose they say, yes, I'll chant, I want enlightenment. Now, that's a bit of an argument there, because I'm not. Because I have never encountered anybody received enlightenment that way. I can't argue too much on it, but I do. They call them one branch Amida Buddhists that chant the name of Buddha.
gh1-14:18
Rose: And they say that there have been people reach enlightenment. Well, I can't say they haven't, but I just have never met anybody. I've met very few people in my lifetime who are enlightened. One was a Zen monk, and the other was a Christian mystic who reached it through the Lord's Prayer. So that's the reason I don't laugh at anything, you know, I mean, any group. But I do say that you got to be careful getting hung up in certain things that are, you know, like, you could say, I want to develop my aura. I've had guys that say, I want to develop my ESP. And they'd fiddle around with cards and stuff for years, thinking that if they expanded their mind, their mental potential, that they'd eventually expand that mind to it. And included Russia and China and then Mars and the moon and God knows what, see? And all sorts of fantastic.
Yeah, Krishnamurti. Yes. I have a lot of respect for Krishnamurti. I think he's an enlightened man. I think he gets off the beam occasionally, but I think he's an enlightened man.
gh1-15:16
Q: He stretches awareness of.
gh1-15:18
Rose: Yes. Well, this is. This is basically what we're doing. This Is what we're doing is being. See, in the final analysis, you don't know anything, but you're aware. So if you. What this is, what remains is awareness. And Ramana Maharshi mentions this. Awareness, consciousness, bliss. He says, I take issue with the word bliss. I don't know why I threw that one in there, because that's a relative term. But what it is, I think is eternal content. That's what he means. See, I take a connotation from the word bliss. But the thing is awareness, that you have to become aware of your awareness.
gh1-15:52
Q: He dislikes chance, but he stresses that you have to move your mind and come to your senses. You got to stop the illness.
gh1-16:00
Rose: Yeah, yeah, yes. Energy drain. But he does a lot of it. See, it's like me, of course. I'm not going anyplace. I'm blowing out my last fuses. Yeah. What do you.
gh1-16:18
Q: Why do you aim at this ultimate truth?
gh1-16:21
Rose: You can't help yourself.
gh1-16:25
Q: And why do you want it? For eternal. Eternal contentment?
gh1-16:30
Rose: Well, you don't take it. You don't say I want. I don't say a man should want eternal contentment. You want the answer.
gh1-16:35.900
Q: I mean, what do you want? The answer. The answer to what?
gh1-16:38
Rose: To your definition. Who you are, where you came from, where you're going.
gh1-16:43
Q: And what will that do you in the final analysis?
gh1-16:45
Rose: What would it do for you? It will do nothing for you. Small "you". It won't do anything for you.
gh1-16:55
Q: What will it do for big of you?
gh1-16:57
Rose: Well, you'll be there. You'll become.
gh1-17:02
Q: And what will the value of it be?
gh1-17:03
Rose: For how can you juggle mundane ideas of values against absolute values? You're trying to talk in terms of relative values, saying, what's the utility of the absolute? And from the absolute point, you might be looking back and saying, what the hell is the value? In a nightmare or a dream that I just came from? And here the guy down the dream, he's saying, what's the value of me getting out of this dream?
gh1-17:37
Q: Okay, then what would you say the nature of. Many people have talked of the nature of the absolute as bliss. I guess that's what Maharshi must be in this book as eternal content. Do you agree with that?
gh1-17:53
Rose: Yes.
gh1-17:55
Q: Okay. And then that's awareness of.
gh1-17:59
Rose: Let me point out, first of all that you. It's impossible. It's impossible to evaluate or to describe an absolute condition. But I would say this, that from where I sit today, I'm content with what I found.
gh1-18:16
Q: And do you say that this awareness, this absolute awareness of awareness is eternal.
gh1-18:25
Rose: Yes.
gh1-18:26
Q: And some people have talked of it as there's existence, and then it becomes aware of its own existence and that takes on the aspect of consciousness.
gh1-18:38
Rose: Well, that's a psychological definition. Is that psychological definition?
gh1-18:43
Q: Do you feel that awareness is always aware of its awareness?
gh1-18:47
Rose: No, no, no, no. You're generally aware of the. You're generally aware of what you're projecting. The mundane world is a projection, so that we're fascinated by our own projection. We don't know who's projecting.
gh1-19:02
Q: I'm talking about big self being aware of big self. Big self is aware of big self, enlightened person, right?
gh1-19:11
Rose: Yes.
gh1-19:11
Q: And after they drop the body, then awareness is still present. And is awareness of is big self's awareness? I don't even talk in relative terms.
gh1-19:26
Rose: That's not the way you pretty hard talk. Otherwise.
gh1-19:34
Q: Do you feel that big self is aware of big self without this body?
gh1-19:41
Rose: Yes.
gh1-19:46
Q: And.
gh1-19:49
Rose: If it weren't, I wouldn't waste your time. Because if you were just going to oblivion, there's no sense in encouraging people just enter oblivion. The best thing is to hide it from your children then, so they won't know.
gh1-20:04
Q: Do you feel then that, say, this drop, which in essence is the ocean and becomes the ocean when you reach enlightenment, do you feel that that drop, which is, say, as it merged with the ocean, ever comes out as a drop again?
gh1-20:27
Rose: That's what Maharishi said. You remember, that which enters the ocean is never redirected. You don't redirect your river from the ocean. It's very possible that your awareness may be in the scope of that. Awareness is not predictable. From this point, I wouldn't undertake to predict what could happen. But from where we would view it, there's no meaning to redirecting your energy or your consciousness, limiting it, for instance, gh1-20:57 from a totality down to the conviction that you're one being, one little tiny ant, or one dog or one human. So I can't conceive of why that would happen. I'm not saying it might not happen. There's stories told of this that after a death we return, but then we deliberately steep ourselves or dip ourselves back into unconsciousness, which is this life as.
gh1-21:25
Q: Most people are living.
gh1-21:26
Rose: Yeah. Then the avatars are supposed to come down and somehow get the hunch that they have. They are eternal, and they try to shake a few people out of the nightmare. But what the purpose behind all this is. When you reach enlightenment, you'll know everything, but you'll not know how many hairs are on the Dog's head. So the details and all of the possible. It's impossible to. With our concept today of consciousness, which is focused upon one thought at a time, it's impossible for us to conceive of knowing all possible thoughts. So we can't. That's the reason you can't visualize the. What I call the magnitude of the unknowing. Because the absolute condition is somehow tied as well as knowledge, it's also tied to total unknowledge. It's a state of everythingness and nothingness. But always remember to add that second one too. It's a state of nothingness as well. As regards. When we talk about this as being something, say this something still exists, but tremendously different valuation of it.
gh1-22:48
Q: Do you agree with what Maharshi says about this guy Ramana? Maharshi talks about the relative world as if a dream. Do you agree with that too?
gh1-23:05
Rose: Yes.
gh1-23:06
Q: And what do you see as the value or how could this dream ever come out of.
gh1-23:10
Rose: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. In other words, I don't know why Cecil B. DeMille wrote a picture. All I know is I went to the show and paid to see it. Somebody projected it. Maybe I was one of the actors. I'm standing watch. I'm in the picture show. Remember you got the analogy of the picture show. I'm watching the show, that's all. Then there's a time when you say, "Hey, I could be out there sitting and watching this show instead of being up here all fevered up and imagining I'm running it." So we retire and we go back into the audience and watch the show.
gh1-24:05
Q: So is the endeavor of enlightenment. It is becoming the same as what's thought of as a God. As God.
gh1-24:21
Rose: Well, I wouldn't say what's thought of as a God. That's the reason I use the word absolute, because God's gotten to be a bad word. But you know what I mean is there's so many connotations are put on, and every huckster comes up and says, "God told me to tell you". And the result is as soon as anybody hears the word God. That's the reason we have so many of our young people today going to some other continent for religious inspiration because they're justifiably fed up with somebody abusing the most sacred thing on earth, which is our thinking. I'm opposed to this abuse. I often say we have pure food and drug laws. They can't put filth in your candy or filth in your food. But some huckster can pick up a Bible and fill your head full of crap just to get some money off of you. And they'll admit it. And if you get intimate enough with them, you get to them and get talking to them and say, "Yeah, well, we keep the old women happy. They don't interfere. These ladies come in here and they don't scream when they die, or if they do it just right before they die."
They keep them hypnotized or reassured or comforted. This is a comfort. We hold their hand when they're dying. And this is a service and we should be funded for our service. And it becomes a utility. I'm opposed to this sort of thing. And of course they're employing the word God and a whole generation of people are fed up with this abuse of the word so immediately. Not only that, but it has another connotation of somebody that talks to a huckster. It isn't somebody that talks to a huckster. The poor huckster is God. He don't know it. You know, he'd take a different path, but he's basically the God. That's why I believe in saying, "Hey, look inside yourself." Don't keep trying to buy it for $500. You give somebody 200 bucks to give you a syllable to repeat. You can get. You can get them out of a book or you can create one yourself. You can find tranquility from repeating anything. "Hocus pocus," that'll do.
gh1-26:38
Q: What do you think of an everyday, like the existence that we're leading right now, of making decisions for, like, what to buy in a store or something like that? I don't understand what disenlightment is.
gh1-27:01
Rose: I don't either. I don't understand how I can tell you. I don't want to tell you. I don't want to confuse you. In other words, it's not. You shouldn't be concerned with enlightenment. I know they come up in a conversation here and I try to talk to you, but basically this is not our objective here. If I said that the objective of this group is enlightenment, I would be lying to you. The objective of this group is to define yourself. Now, if it is a result of defining yourself, you reach an experiment, gh1-27:31 experience, which later you define as enlightenment. Good, good. But don't go at it. You're postulating. Whenever you start off with that word, you shouldn't postulate it. Yeah, what was that again? Awareness. gh1-28:03Yeah, that sounds good. Buddha laid down some good precepts on that. I mean, the Eight Fold path, those are all good. That's good advice. The Three Fold path of first knowing one thing, first studying every, then studying everything, then studying nothing. These are good, but they are not necessarily the last word. I mean, there's other little hints that you can get too, that will help. See, but what I'm trying to get you away from is.
I'm not advocating, I'm not saying if you come here, you'll get enlightened. I know this pops up and everybody's read about it and it's like Watts. Watts read a lot of books. And what was the gist of Watts's books on Zen? That enlightenment was an orgasm. So he's trying to define something in relative terms which throws the reader. Perhaps if he really didn't know, it's going to throw the reader. And there's nothing I can say about that will not throw you. gh1-29:03The only thing I can say is that we basically, if we're sincere human beings, want to know the truth and we want. And that's our self definition.
gh1-29:15
Q: How do you define truth?
gh1-29:17
Rose: That which is not untrue, I can't do. If I could define the truth for you, you'd be enlightened.
gh1-29:27
Q: How could something be untrue?
gh1-29:31
Rose: Well, by virtue of the fact if something can be true, there has to be something untrue. Now we're speaking in a relative sense again, it's manifest. In other words, if I point to a cat and tell you that's a dog, can't that be untrue? Okay, that's a simple one.
gh1-29:54
Q: We're talking about prayer before. Do you believe that one could pray to a personal God for direction, just as you ask a teacher for direction?
gh1-30:10
Rose: Well, I don't approve of either one. I mean, I don't approve of using either one of those as a system.
gh1-30:16
Q: If you need help, sometimes you make your way when you can.
gh1-30:20
Rose: Well, yeah, but see, your.
File 2
Total time 30 min 15 sec
gh2-00:00
Rose: Follow one of the two. We're either an extremely, and again, I'm saying this is the beginning of an upper path, but there is no turning back. We can't help this. We have to. Either people are in a category of unreasonable faith, extremely subjective faith, that is, or they're in a position of extremely objective logic. It's a vanity of saying, Don't tell me anything. Don't, don't, don't. I can't prove that these two conditions are untenable. I'll give you an example. One of them is modern psychology. Modern psychology says, to go directly within yourself, you must be able to search for the truth and not kid yourself. If you can do that and dynamically keep it up, you will find the truth. It don't matter what religion you're in. Of course, as you get into it, you'll more or less see less and less value to the religion you're in, or you'll see more and more meaning to certain things that are said, like Christian admonitions, seeking ye shall find means something to you now. Unless you become as a little child, you shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, has new meaning to you now. Some of the other things you look upon, maybe just political, but Some of the things they said didn't have any meaning before, but they just start on the path, they start to have meaning.
gh2-01:18
Rose: The same way with the words of Buddha, you find out that Buddha is saying us anything Christ said. But you don't become addicted any longer. You're not necessarily addicted. You You push out the misconceptions. There's millions of people that are following conceptions, say, of Christ that are not necessarily valid. That part's right. Did I answer anything? Yes. Yes.
gh2-01:51
Q: Do you ever consider search all the way?
gh2-01:53
Rose: Yes. When is that? I thought you were talking about me. For you, it's over when you know who you are. When you know who you are, you will know everything. I'm not trying to be a It's pragmatic. But it's a very simple thing. It's a very simple formula. That's knowing thyself. When you know yourself, really know yourself. If I go further, of course, I start to say things that are I'm not provable, but I can say that you are also everything. To prove that, maybe you'll pick it up, but when you know yourself, you'll know everything because you'll be everything.
gh2-02:42
Q: What are your meditations?
gh2-02:46
Rose: Well, again, that's something I can't give you in just a few words. I'll try to, but we have a paper. I've written a paper on it. The reason is because I do not agree with the meditations of placidity or peacefulness. I think that they tend to put you to sleep. As I said at the lecture I gave last Evening in theosophical society, protoplasm tends to become lethargic. Inertia sets in. We have to be continually arousing our protoplasm and our minds from that lethargy. It's not good to indulge in a form of meditation or contemplation that will put you to sleep. You have to indulge in a form of meditation that will keep you awake and keep prodding you and irritating you and looking into traumas of the past and wondering why you had those traumas, solving those problems as you go. When those things become clear to you, you become freer, you get more energy. You're not putting your energy then into feeding traumatic memories.
gh2-03:55
Q: But do you have any concept of purifying the body, the physical nervous system, so that this material body can project the living of fully spiritual life? Do Is it material being the basis of living that immaterial spirituality?
gh2-04:24
Rose: Well, you cannot live a spiritual life until you know what is, so that any form of discipline or anything of that sort that you embark upon without fully understanding it is meaningless. Now, as far as for accepting the fact that you have a body, this is valid. In other words, you hear in Zen, of course, that the material world is illusion, and you'll find out someday this is true. But until you fully realize that, you have to go along the road just as if you believe you have a body. You have to accept that body. When in the process of accepting it and understanding what goes on, you will find that you can raise energy with the body. Now, we don't necessarily need to call it spiritual. This is somatic, an exudation, which is Which is, well, for instance, I have a paper written on that also. It's called the transmutation of energy. It's similar to Kundalini yoga, but it's more specific. It's more of an engineering paper than one using a strange Hindu terms that have no meaning in the English language, such as chakras. It's basically a method of tracing your energy from the food you eat to the residual or glandular storage, stored in glands, stored in fat, stored in the muscle.
gh2-05:49
Rose: This transmutes some of it automatically into brain or neuro energy, what I call neuro energy, cerebral energy, which in turn can be transmuted into spiritual quantum. Now, that might sound enigmatic, but this is all demonstrable. They talk about auras, but only healthy people have auras, supposedly. Only healthy people seem to exude spiritual, can heal people and have that type of energy. We trace our steps in and say, Sure, it's good to have a healthy body. It's good to be able to train yourself to raise your kundalini. You want to call it that? There's no English word to It's a correlation in English, so I use the word kundalini there. But it's not a mysterious Oriental method. It's just plain sensible living and inhibition. Inhibition of the channels through which that energy is wasted.
gh2-06:50
Q: Well, many systems of meditation are based on the idea that to a degree with your system, it's free from stress and strength, to which it can function perfectly.
gh2-07:05
Rose: How do you know it's perfect?
gh2-07:06
Q: Well, it's perfect as I guess.
gh2-07:08
Rose: This is what they- I think a hog would grow fatter and be much more tender pork to eat if he had no stresses and strains. But Jesus Christ, supposedly, when they nailed him up, he was a horrible mess to look at. But he had proved his point. He had made his goal. The hog doesn't find a goal except the slaughterhouse.
gh2-07:44
Q: I don't necessarily mean on a gross level, such as just irritations on your skin, but I mean, maybe on some very subtle level, like on where your brain function, the coherent patterns of function.
gh2-08:03
Rose: Yeah. What's your point, though? Where are we going? Where are we going with your point?
gh2-08:09
Q: That if you can purify your body to a certain degree.
gh2-08:12
Rose: Yes. How do you purify it?
gh2-08:15
Q: Well, one way, I practice transimental meditation.
gh2-08:19
Rose: We're not interested in what you practice. I mean, we're interested in proving that that will purify your body.
gh2-08:25
Q: But by giving deep breaths, by allowing the body to straighten itself out.
gh2-08:32
Rose: How do you know it does that, though? How do you know that you're not kidding yourself? This is not a suggestive technique you're using. When you chant Ang or something like that, that you're just empathizing yourself.
gh2-08:42
Q: Well, I'm not trying to put this up against it.
gh2-08:48
Rose: That doesn't matter. I mean, if it's valid, it should be put up against it. There are scientific results.
gh2-08:53
Q: See?
gh2-08:55
Rose: No, I don't agree with you. I don't know of any scientific results except that it brings you peace of mind, helps your business and people are more tranquil. But so are hogs in a hog pen. Do they know does TM bring you to a realization of who you are? Do you know who you are? No. Do you know who you are? No. Then you don't know that TM will bring you there. You're talking about something with no knowledge your word will take you then, except tranquility. You're talking about purification of the body. How do you know what pure is? Are fish and worms impure?
gh2-09:30
Q: That's the last thing I do. I find a direction that seems to be taking me somewhere, so I follow it.
gh2-09:37
Rose: Seems, feels. I feel that. Seems. Yes. Be careful.
gh2-09:43
Q: I'll find that how it is, and then I answer.
gh2-09:45
Rose: I could hypnotize you and you'd feel much better than that yet. It could be done in five minutes instead of waiting for two years to make you feel good. I could hypnotize you. You'd feel wonderful. I can even get you drunk on water.
gh2-09:58
Q: I'm not going towards just feeling I want to have knowledge of myself. But I'm just saying, how do you think about this theory of purifying the system?
gh2-10:11
Rose: How do you purify? That's what I ask you. You didn't answer me. How do you purify your system?
gh2-10:15
Q: Through deep rest.
gh2-10:16
Rose: Deep rest? Yeah. Deep rest or breath.
gh2-10:21
Q: Deep rest.
gh2-10:23
Rose: Rest, R-E-S-T? Rest, yeah. Sure. I know some people in a cemetery that are into that.
gh2-10:30
Q: But I don't mean a dull rest as in sleep. This is on the brain wave studies, they find that…
gh2-10:37
Rose: I know. They have wired up a few yogis, too, who weren't in the DM, and they find out they had a good condition, whatever it is, alpha or beta. But when you use words, this is what I'm getting at. This is my challenge. What do you mean by purify? Putting yourself to sleep. We're not talking about purification. We're talking about putting yourself to sleep. You're talking about getting rest. But how do you know that purifies you? Taking dope will make you tranquil, too. But there's an after shock that comes after. The organism is not meant for rest. The organism is meant for action.
gh2-11:16
Q: The balance.
gh2-11:19
Rose: Who knows the balance? What is the balance? A physical balance in which you're able to work and feel better while you're working without the trauma or where you would have trauma, and that type of thing would balance the pleasure principle to a point where your mind did something for you. What type of balance do you speak of?
gh2-11:42
Q: You can What is it? I guess it's a progressively more enlivened life on all levels.
gh2-11:52
Rose: What good is it? Who wants to lead a more enlivened life? Is that all you're living for, so you can be more enlivened?
gh2-11:59
Q: I guess I live for more happiness.
gh2-12:02
Rose: What good is happiness? What is happiness?
gh2-12:05
Q: That's what makes me feel good.
gh2-12:08
Rose: I don't mean just- It's a state of mind. It's a state of mind. This is what we're talking about in Zen, is that people live and die in certain states of mind. That's where they get hooked.
gh2-12:21
Q: Well, happiness can be in the absolute sense, too.
gh2-12:24
Rose: It can be, but do you know? No, I don't know. Do you know? I don't know until I- Do you know? No, let Let me tell you something right now. You cannot equate happiness with absolute states of mind because happiness is a relative term and can only be related to a relative experience. Whenever you talk of bliss, this is one of the ways of defining these systems, the systems that will take you to an absolute state, whereas the systems that will keep you in a relative condition is whenever they talk about bliss in a spiritual experience, they're talking about a relative state of mind. The absolute condition of the mind does not experience relative experiences. That was by virtue of the definition of the words. Absolute means absolute, not relative. Absolute doesn't mean pleasure and pain. When you talk of pleasure, you identify it and define it in the dictionary terms with pain. It's the opposite of pain. The absolute condition doesn't talk of pleasure versus pain. It talks of absoluteness, both or neither, or both and neither.
gh2-13:30
Q: I had a question about your use of the word faith. Are you saying that it is an obstacle to you as long as you're putting faith in relative concepts and things? Well, I suppose I have a feeling that any spiritual path you go on, you know somehow, maybe some way beforehand, that it's going to take you somewhere, or you probably wouldn't be there. Or that maybe you've been brought there for some reason. Isn't that a faith? And isn't that something that maybe you have to have? If I'm going to work in this group, don't I have to know somewhat that it's going to take me somewhere?
gh2-14:14
Rose: I don't think we ever know anything until we know the final answer. For anybody to tell you, this is the reason that I more or less ask questions about these various things that people have to accept on faith. I don't believe you should accept this on faith. I don't think there's anything to accept. Accept. Basically, all we say is, Don't accept. Somebody tells you that you're going to have peace of mind from doing it. I immediately say, Where's peace of mind going to take me? You can get drunk and maybe have five seconds or five minutes or five hours of peace of mind, but you'll have misery later. And if you waste your youth in an auto-hypnotic process that goes on for 10 years, and believe me, I'm talking from first-hand experience. I was into this chanting business when I was 21 to 28. I went the whole trip and I had peace of mind, tranquility, and I cursed it later because I was hung I was like in a shell. I didn't get the proper irritation to encourage my thinking processes. I thought that I was going to heaven because I had equated somehow heaven with peace of mind.
gh2-15:13
Rose: So And it's evident when you look around you that the whole process, this is like an aquarium where everything is eating and fighting and devouring each other. And what is the purpose of that? Why does a tree in the woods fight the tree next to it to get to the sun? And if he gets up there, he lives, and the other one dies. And this is the same thing that Gertrudeff mentions this, Bucky and cosmic conscience mentions this, only a few, Christ said it, only a few are chosen. So consequently, this is a battle. This is not where you're going to drift in and say, Hey, I don't want the sun. I'm going to sit here and meditate. I'm not going to grow. I'm not going to fight for my oxygen. I'm just going to sit here and meditate. Now, I say this is good. I'm not arguing with a system because a system of meditation, TM or anything else. I'm saying this may be very necessary for people, but it won't be good to mix it with this system because we're in for cracking stained glass windows. We're in for analyzing these things and say, why do people do this?
gh2-16:19
Rose: Why do people have to be? They take dope and the dope gets them down. They had peace of mind with it. Knowing that, they had a lot of happy visions. But sometime this here undercurrent, this subconscious mind starts telling them in a voice that isn't even audible yet, Disquietude, disquietude. You're not right. So they run and they get Jesus or something. Well, this is necessary. Good, good. But I don't want those people to tell me that they have found the tantamount now. All they have found is a pill to cure another pill. You're turbulent? Okay. Do your TM, and you won't be turbulent. Then you get your head straight so you can think. But don't go to sleep. Start thinking then, now that you got your TM. Start questioning why you're doing things. Then you'll move. But if it puts you to sleep for 10 years, you're done. That's all. You'll remember my words 10 years from now. But I didn't answer your question. Did I? Not really. No. What was it again?
gh2-17:22
Q: I was, okay- Or the faith.
gh2-17:25
Rose: Yes. Listen, this is true. In this book, I have laws, mentioned laws. One of these is the law of the paradox. Now, I say things flatly because there is a meaning, there's an import to that flat statement. I say you should never have faith in anything but your own ability. We must accept that we are able to do something. If we give up and say it's futile, there's no motion. It may be a false premise. Maybe we're not able to do anything, but we must have the faith. Now, I don't say that you should have the faith in this group. You should have the faith in yourself. But if your computer says, say, maybe something's here, then it's reasonable to stick around a few days and ask questions and come to some conclusion as to whether it's valid. If your intuition appeals, it appeals your intuition, that's all you have to go by. Now, if your intuition makes too many mistakes for you and you look back over five years of making mistakes, then the thing you go is to take make steps to check your intuition. This is part of the system also. I don't believe that any spiritual system is valid unless there's a way of checking the computer as you go.
gh2-18:40
Rose: These computers generally tell you what you want to hear. You have to All the time you're on a spiritual path, you have to have some system checking the computer. But nevertheless, you must have the faith in yourself that you are not beyond ability to find or to move ahead. Now, I say this can be in turn reassured by steps along the path. In other words, you can move along. Now, I know the person who gets into meditation or chanting or anything of this sort, when they first get into it, they are reassured, and this is valid to them. They're Our intuition has been reassured. Now, if their intuition is erroneous, they may interpret this as the total, the summum bonum, there's nothing above it. But if their intuition is valid, really valid, they will accept exactly what it is for that moment, that it is valid now. They'll keep saying this themselves, Well, it is evidently valid to me now. It is evidently filling a need. And if it's filling a need, be careful. Do we need it? Or should we just settle for things that fill a need? Or should we settle for that which is definition?
gh2-19:54
Rose: Do we get along better with it? That's what I say. People join churches and you ask them. I stopped at a church one time. I was waiting for a minister to come out and talk to him. I said, Why do you go to church? And this fellow says, Oh, he said, I take my children. I don't care of myself. This is all garbage. But I take my kids. Because why? If you think it's garbage, what do you taking your kids, keep them out of the penitentiary. It's a utility then. Another guy says, I join unity. Why? A better business. My business doubled when I joined unity. Positive thinking. My business doubled. Of course, to me, I am curious about these values. As somebody who's concerned about their creator, if there is such, we don't know it until we prove it, concerned about their definition, if there is such, can stop and trade it for 50 bucks or an advantage on the stock market. That's where I question. Or a relief from the battle. See, I maintain it there. When you go through spiritual work, you go through on levels. You Coast on a level and you rest.
gh2-21:08
Rose: Then in time, something will bring you out of it and you'll fight again. You'll go for another level. And when you reach that level, you rest. These rests are called exaltations, spiritual experiences. But this continues until you reach the final one.
gh2-21:26
Q: Does it always go up?
gh2-21:27
Rose: Always up. You can't go down. You can't go down. You can stay where you're at, but you can't go down.
gh2-21:32
Q: How long can you stay where you're at?
gh2-21:35
Rose: Can you stay there? I stayed there seven years on the level you're speaking of. See, we didn't have Ang in those days. We didn't have to pay for Om, so we used Om. Om. I did the yogi bit. I didn't have a teacher. I did a lot of books. But I remained celibate for seven years. I didn't eat meat. There was no such thing as macrobiotics in those days. You just eat whatever garbage they had left over in the kitchen in a form of salad. But I was a vegetarian for seven years, and I meditated every day, and I isolated myself from influences. I was very happy, very peaceful, except on a few rare occasions where somebody despised my peacefulness and put a gun to the side of my head. I had that happen twice. Something irritated them because I looked too smooth. So Eventually, I got tired. I looked in the mirror one day and my hair was falling out. I had a big bald spot on top at the age of 28. My teeth were falling out. I thought I'd listen to these yogi books that you lived to be 200 years old, and I I thought, Well, I'm going to look like hell by the time I'm 200 at the rate I'm going.
gh2-22:50
Rose: So I better chuck this stuff and go in for some common sense. Common sense tells me I'm not going any place. I didn't even know where to start. I started all over again is what I did. But I never stopped. It was the thing. From that time on, I never stopped looking, and I had never stopped looking before that. But there was a time when I coasted, and I coasted too long. I really believe it coasted too long. Of course, in this period, I developed my intuition There's no better way to develop your intuition and shut the doors that confuse you. I think if you follow TM, you will probably develop intuition. If you follow it with by inhibiting the chief energy outlets. A lot of people get into TM. I was talking at the Ashram before I came over here. I had a boy from Pittsburgh came down, and he was into mult bisexual activities. I mean, he had homosexual and heterosexuality. He was taking dope. He was leading a very disciplined life. He meditated at exactly a certain time in the morning, and no matter where he was, he meditated, and exactly maybe another time in the day, I don't know.
gh2-23:55
Rose: But he had intercourse at an exact time of the night, and one day for boys and one day for girls. He ate macrobiotics, and he was just waiting. He was waiting for the trumpets to blow in his ear and beautiful things to happen. I don't know what happened to him. He disappeared after that. He was so happy with T. M. E. He thought that when you reached Satori, that it was the ultimate in hilariousness. He says, It doesn't get funnier as we go along? Did you ever see him again? I did saw him a little longer. I don't understand how your You're fighting for this, trying to get it, I see.
gh2-24:48
Q: But I don't see. I guess that's the part.
gh2-24:52
Rose: The only thing I really believe you have to fight for, you have to fight to keep awake. We tend to go to sleep. That's what I'm saying. I want to leave this thought in in the back of your head. If TM quiet you down or finds peace of mind for you in view of the fact that you had to have peace of mind, if you've been through a living hell or if you've been on the battlefield, I think a battlefield is good. Tm is good for somebody on the battlefield to bring them down. I'm not arguing with that, but I don't believe in a peaceful drifting. You're not going to drift into spirituality. There's no quibble with me about that. You may drift into peace of mind, but you will not drift into spirituality. Nature nature is opposed to spirituality. Nature will tolerate you if you don't indulge too much. But nature is only interested in reproduction and fertility in its various forms.
gh2-25:41
Q: But do you think the laws of nature are all guided towards more evolution, and that it's more evolution towards more spirituality?
gh2-25:50
Rose: Well, the signs don't show that. I think that there is a spiritual evolution, but it seems as like there's never been a generation of more intelligent, so many more intelligent young people, produced as there has been in the last, say, 30 years. And what do we have? The most degenerate race of people that's hit the Earth. They're into everything, dope, sex, and everything else. They're not conserving the energy, not really going for spirituality. So if you call that evolution, why?
gh2-26:24
Q: Well, maybe that's intelligence flowing.
gh2-26:26
Rose: That's intelligence flowing back down the opposite way the Kundalini goes. That's what's happening. They're using their head to design new methods of pleasure rather than using their pleasure to find more potency in the head.
gh2-26:45
Q: Well, okay. Is it the meditation technique? I don't see where... Spirituality seems immaterial to me. It seems like you're trying to go for something, but I don't understand what you're going Definition.
gh2-27:01
Rose: It's not the immaterial. It's the whole objective. Find out who you are. You find out who's meditating. That's what I want to know. Who's meditating? It's all right to meditate, but who's meditating? Why? Why, basically?
gh2-27:17
Q: But how do you find the sense?
gh2-27:20
Rose: You got to ask a lot more questions. You would have to read. In other words, there's many other systems that I've done a lot of reading, but I'm trying to understand on your meditational technique how you understand who you are. By looking at yourself, by really looking at yourself. Well, that helps, but I'm talking about looking within. It's an auto-psychanalytic method. There's no doubt about that.
gh2-27:51
Q: Exploring your relationships with others.
gh2-27:54
Rose: That helps, but that isn't the thing. You can look within yourself. If you were able to just look within yourself directly and hold that study, you would find yourself within a short period of time. But unfortunately, we're confused by things around us, people next to us. Then you have to take them into the picture. That's part of the picture then, and you have to study them, too. Your relationship to them, that is. Sometimes through inequities in your relationship with other people, you find inequities or inconsistencies within yourself where you're kidding yourself.
gh2-28:26
Q: How can you know your absolute self if you You can't know your absolute self.
gh2-28:32
Rose: You cannot know your absolute self. That's the paradox. This is the only way there is to it. The only way to go to it is what tools you have. When you reach there, your mind will be dead, but you have to use your mind to get there to a point where your mind is dead.
gh2-28:51
Q: But I'm really going to go to a state where the self knows the self.
gh2-28:57 Rose: Well, the self knows the self, capital S self will know the self. Yes. That's what I mean. But your mundane self, this logical argumentative self, never knows the capital S self. Capital of self knows the small S self. Right.
gh2-29:14
Q: But I don't see how… You seem to be saying small self, smallest self. By exploring all the small S self in its relationship with other…
gh2-29:26
Rose: That's all we got to work with. It's unfortunate, but that's all we got to work with. I know you're kidding yourself that you got the absolute self until you get there. But by this tremendous struggle to probe and find yourself, miraculously, it happens. You become closer and closer and closer. You know it as you're going along, as you're getting a clearer and clearer picture of yourself as you go.
gh2-29:47
Q: I have a question. You talk in terms of enlightenment as opposed to progressively led me into being a realized being. I mean, you're talking about enlightenment experience that hit you. I was wondering how you can lead. This is that, I guess, how you can lead up relatively and then all of a sudden hit a point where everything It's paradox. Right.
gh2-30:15
Rose: This is what happens because it isn't a gradual. It's not just a gradual changing or refinement. A lot of people think it is spiritual path. It's a gradual refinement. It's a transcendence of foolishness that you see that you're kidding yourself. When you go into, maybe for a while, you adopt more complicated forms of kidding yourself. You'll get into disciplines. In the final analysis, just like we talk about a book here, this book is not going to.
