1978-0226-Truth-an-Early-Lecture-abandon-this

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Title	1978-0226-Truth-an-Early-Lecture-abandon-this
Recorded date	1970s
Location	Columbus, Ohio
Number of tapes	One 60 min cassette: side 1 = 31 min; side 2 = 26 min
Other recorders audible?
Alternate versions exist?
Source	N
No. of MP3 files	2
Total time	57 min
Transcription status
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	Very concise early lecture. Duplicate of 1978-0226-The-Truth-University-of-Pittsburgh
Audio quality	Audio quality not good. Headset recommended. Telephone spectrum. Plays at faster rate than was recorded, increases tempo and pitch.
Identifiable voices
URL at direct-mind.org	https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1978-0226-Truth-an-Early-Lecture-abandon-this
	For access to this wiki or the audio files please send an email to: editors@direct-mind.org
Revision timestamp	20150101210134

Notes

(undated – Columbus, Ohio )

Has 2 mp3 files: 31 min. and 12 min.

This is a fragment – please advise if you have a longer version of this recording.

Audio – bad. Need headset.

File 1

File 1 = 31 minutes.

00:00

I think he said everything I was going to say. [reference to introduction]

I’ve got - a couple of those I’d like to talk about tonight; I hope for awhile to get into some points about myself. And I’ve been frustrated.

00:23 What I’d like to talk about is the Truth. And that’s a rather wide subject but I’m choosing it, choosing the mechanism for first of all [for] becoming what the truth is. You go to the dictionary and find an answer in the dictionary – but there is no real definition even in the dictionary, until everything else in the dictionary is proven.

It’s impossible to define truth – and what we find is a relative method of evaluating, that’s the best.

But regardless, almost everybody thinks that they’ve got some form of truth. And I maintain that everybody works toward that truth. And I mean everybody – in fact, some the animal kingdom – like to, prefer knowledge of the real state of things, the right answer in place of error.

01:32

But it has a tremendous range, an objective definition, to absolute understanding. But when you’re talking about the Truth and everyone responds almost automatically, “Yes, I know what he’s talking about, because I have it.”

Whereas someone who knows how many elements there are in the atomic chart or something of that sort, they think that’s the truth. But I can remember – I majored in chemistry about thirty years ago, and they told us there were only ninety-some elements; and that was the absolute truth; there couldn’t be any more, because of some peculiar circumstance. And since then, they’re still adding elements at? the? end?

02:16

This type of truth I call small-“t” truth, no matter how objective and materialistic it sounds. We like to say the material sciences are real, hard truth, found by a process of prediction, and [that] the answers are very valid. But we never look ahead. It’s impossible for us – if we have future discoveries that affect past convictions. And they had at one time the fairy-tale phlogiston in chemistry, that was superseded by the present-day theory of oxidation.

03:00

And this goes all the way down the line. And we get into social thinking: we think certain things are true. We were talking about this coming down from Akron in the car, about the people watching television. And we were talking about the commercials on cigarettes – that the best? type of man is picked to appeal to the female element. What’s the best type for a fellow? – I don’t want to get into a description, because it might sound negative. But then a certain type of female is picked for the cigarette, regardless of how they are inhibited from burping? the cigarette. Young children will go by [a billboard?], and decide that’s the thing to do, because “we handsome people” are telling them.

03:56

And sometimes the whole framework of social thinking depends on what some agency is able to flood the public with, whether it’s textbooks, or whether it’s ?? or TV, until finally a social state of mind develops. And everybody thinks, “Well, that’s it; that’s normal. That responds to the democratic majority, and the democratic majority is the will of God.”

04:24

So we get on into fat? jacks? and who? to? tell? some feel as though that the material life or the body is not permanent. There’s a few texts? these days? that you can find a thing called “translation” in which the material body is immortalized. These are very rare. There are a few instances proven – even? Elijah went up in a chariot or something, was taken up in a flying saucer and never returned. And much less, when they get up there they were immortal, physically. But most of us agree that statistics show that everybody winds up in the cemetery

05:05

So the next line of investigation is – because we’re afflicted with the ego of survival – is to find some other form of survival – it may? happen? after we die; we may have some immortality. And enough is written and enough is spoken until everybody believes – because everybody believes. That’s all. Everybody believes and [?] everybody believes. [And] we should never do anything else but believe.

05:42

But here and there somebody looked at it and said, “Ahh, it might be as full of holes as Swiss cheese. Where did this thing start?” [And] go back to the source, build? a little? fence? – maybe the ancient manuscripts and stuff, and you find out that there may have been misinterpretations; it could be – a publicity committee back there changed things as they went along to suit the particular institution at the time.

06:08

Well, this brings us to a point, if you can start to pick up what’s going on in the mass human mind: We encounter a thing which I call dreaming. And if you’re acquainted with Plato – in the cave, the shadows of Plato – some of you may not be – this is in the Republic - he talks of humanity as being a man chained in a cave, with his back to the opening. And the light, the reality, is on the outside, going by, and what he witnesses is almost – the shadows going on the opposite direction on the wall, [as he’s] seated in the cave.

06:53

And this being his only environment, he believes – this is his reality. But he’s chained – this is the significant thing – he cannot turn around. And I thought this was very worthwhile – especially if you look back upon all previous thinkers as being old-fashioned or beyond us, back behind us in evolution – intelligence evolution and that sort of thing – and nothing good came until the twentieth century.

07:26

But – facing this thing, if you understand – it means that man, is it means that man must break loose. This is called “the cave of illusion”. And there have been a few books written on it, and the average person doesn’t encounter them because he doesn’t look for them. He doesn’t dream that there’s been any investigation done in this line, or any eminent thinking done in this line.

07:45

We can take Einstein’s concept of the curving of space, which means that it might not be what we think it is – that it goes on infinitely in the ?? ?? - ?? ?? Or the present concept of black holes in space, corresponding to ancient writings in Tibet and the caves of India – you can find them in Blavatsky’s works, where they talk of the pralaya, the inbreathing and the outbreathing. The universe breathes out and then someday it breathes back in. And all our concepts about the indestructibility of matter are somehow thrown in jeopardy. And the world that [as] we look out there and seems to be so real may someday be tucked back into the hand of the magician like the handkerchief and disappear.

08:31

So we get to looking for reality. And unless we realize that we’re chained in a cave and we’re witnessing a dream – possibly more than one dream – there’s very little hope in getting loose and getting outside.

08:52

So I’d like to perhaps explore this a little further and give you an idea of what I mean. You take a child – a child is born into what I consider a projected world. Now this we cannot prove right here except to refer to writings like the cave of Plato, but by some chance all of us agree upon it in advance. In other words, we can come to the conclusion, chemically or with physics, that green is every color but green, and the reality that black is not black but the absence of color. And we wonder how we can adjust this in our heads, become? the ?? this ?? be proven – that the eye seems to see everything upside-down agree that it’s right side-up.

09:48

But we enter this projected world and somehow instantaneously accept it. And within the projected world of the massive dream is the smaller dream. And that’s the family dream – in which the child is rewarded by pleasant things like food and later by toys. Until it develops an idea almost that the parents are deific, and it develops a personality to please these exalted creatures to get whatever it wants in life. Which are basically toys and cycles? and that sort of thing. And it’s felt? that a compliance with a dream state – because before a child is born, the two people who had the child dream. It isn’t necessarily reality, they dream they’re having a family. They dream that certain little children? will be tossed? in, that would be perfect and wonderful, and grow up to be leaders of the nation or geniuses or whatever they want them to be, to take over the old man’s business or something.

11:06

But in the meantime the whole thing is dreamed ahead of time. And for a brief time the child accepts the dream, falls into it as well as he can, or as completely, one hundred percent, and loses itself in the dream. Until something else comes along; until it starts dreaming its own dream.

11:24

Now – the reason ‘m bring this out is [that] these dreams are, as I said, pretty much dependent upon the feeling that each person is impressed with – that it must conform, it must believe this dream. of half? way? tricks? As the fellow says [is told?] when he joins the army, is believe in the sergeant, don’t doubt him. I used to hear the soldiers saying, “you better believe it.” You have to throw yourself into a state of mind, regardless of how ridiculous it was. You had to throw yourself into that state of mind to preserve? your head from lumps?

12:03

So the child does this too. And a whole civilization sometimes develops. And then we have dream experts. I picked up a book, the title was The Mind Parasites – I  ?? chance? to read it – I can see where a lot of people are wise to this and they’re trying to manipulate [if Rose said he didn’t read it yet, then he might be mistaken as to its message] – they’re trying – like the cigarette adds, or like the politicians, who will say, “This poll reads, it went up from 95 to 96, and 96 to 97,” and so on, and everybody says, “I’ve got to get on that bandwagon.”

12:41

That ?? popularity. Popularity is ?? ??

12:44

There’s an inclination in humanity to deify democracy. That people can – just because most people agree upon it, that that will make a fact. And this same thing is carried over into theology. Today we have people, and if you give a talk and somebody says, “Do you believe in ...,” Lord knows, any of these isms they’re running around with now – revolution – and I say, “I’m not involved in politics, don’t bother me with that stuff.” And they say, “You’re not a spiritual man. Because everybody knows that anybody who is spiritual is involved in revolution.” Well? I’m not very sure about that, but that seems to be what some of the mind-mechanics are trying to enforce: the idea that everybody believes it.

13:37

Now, if this is true, if what I’m saying is true that we are probed? toward getting into dream states on a massive scale, to where even the nature of the universe ...

[break in tape]

13:52

... whole structure, would be able to perform miracles, by a new set of symbols. But the thing is, when you realize this, you see the difficulty in doing any real, honest research on a subjective level, if you want to call it that – on a philosophic level. Now we do? there? alone and say, “So what?” And we found a change in chemistry in a hundred or two hundred years, and we caught up with it and we corrected the error, and now we’re in the facts again. And if the facts change in the future that’s alright.”

14:26

But, there’s a trend for instance in sociology today, and in psychology, to believe. And to rip up sort? of? mass beliefs. That certain things are – even though they’re a lie. Absurd lies. So that we will find compatibility with each other, and that they say that the only way you can do this is to believe this stuff.

14:51

Now if this is our trend, you can? figure what will happen to your head. That you’ll be able really to hold it back after awhile. [?] You’ll either wind up with a new form of magic, in which mankind will be able as a mass to create stuff, to change matter by this clever little trick – or you’ll wind up with wholesale confusion on an increasing scale.

15:14

Psychology has the same thing: where we have two methods of finding out the truth about ourselves. Now when I say the truth, I’m limiting it to the truth about ourselves [mundane?]. Because [it’s] manifest that if you want to find the total truth about – let’s say what your nature is before birth, during life, and after death – no religion or philosophy that doesn’t answer all three questions is complete. [sentence needs work]

15:42

And you can run through them. I used to lay this yardstick down and say, “Put these cults alongside of it.” Some of them will tell you where you’re going after you die, but there’s no mention of where you came from. And some of them may tell you both where you came from and where’s you’re going after you die, but they never bother to identify who’s talking. They never bother to identify what’s here.

16:05

But there are two methods of determining this, and if you want a third one I’ll add it, without any prejudice. That’s psychology and esoteric philosophy or religion – that’s the part?

16:24

So we have gotten into a dream-state in psychology in which our – at least – I’m talking about behavioristic psychology, I’m not talking about people like [Thomas?] Garth? and Jung – whereby this seems to be the current party line, though – that there’s nothing but a body, and what you see is what you get. And there’s a – the body just reacts in certain predictable ways. And things like death, immortality, ESP, thought-projections are figments of the imagination. And until it’s proven, they can very smoothly just reject it as nonexistent.

17:10

So we’re at a loss if we’re going to leave ourselves to authority; leave ourselves in for being dependent on authority. It’s nice if you can go down to church and say, “Well, ...” I’ve had fellows tell me this. “I let the preacher do my thinking; that’s what he gets paid for.” This seems to be a tendency.

I worked in a research laboratory up at Alliance, Ohio years ago, we were working on the atomic submarine. And I thought, “Boy, these are the best brains in the nation. I’m going to pick these brains and see what they’ve come up with, [using] their little slide rules, on life after death. And I found that almost every one of them was shocked when the question was put to them. That they would be expected to answer. they were specialists, that’s all. And one of them told me flatly –he said, “I pay the preacher to do that for me. That’s his business, he spends his whole life at it, he’s an expert.”

18:06

So we find that if anybody who went through college, no matter how he got through, and comes out with a shingle is an expert. And this is legal; this is how our courts are run: if you don’t have that, you can’t testify – as an alienist, a psychologist, on behalf someone else’s life. You have to have the shingle.

18:30

So consequently the authorities are creating a tremendous dream state. To preach? themselves, so that they can sell this merchandise and package it and put it on the market without argumentation.

heading

18:44

So let’s go on then to the business of some method of say going directly into ourselves with the help of some religious or esoteric system. And again we’re faced with this business of truth. But we find not only the ones? not everyone’s? telling anyone else liars [?] I’ve often said, when I was young my sole environment had a Christian atmosphere, I mentioned that though? the [?] monastery the priest. [?]

19:17

And one of the first things I heard was that we were the only true people; everyone else were liars. And I looked around a little further and I found out that other people said that everybody else than they were liars: “Don’t fool yourself; we have it. Nobody else has it.”

And the best example of this, explanation of this was given to me one time in the form of a joke that a minister told me about a certain church. A fellow went to heaven and he was being shown around, the different movements, the people would go? into the same religion. The people who were shouting were still shouting, and rolling in the lawn, [and so on].. And all the time they were walking along a big wall there. And he said, “Hey, what’s behind this wall? We’ve seen all these churches; they still exist. But what’s behind this wall?” And [the guide] said, “The Catholics are back there. Be quiet – they don’t know anybody else is up here.”

20:20

And it hit me very hard? because I was born and raised a Catholic, and I could see the sense in it. That – how could anybody, just by denouncing? actually establish any truth? There had to be something more than just brainwashing your kids into a dream state of mind, complete with love and attraction and fear – if you didn’t perform, and that sort of thing.

20:48

So it takes a bit of looking. And eventually, when I was say twenty years of age, I came to the conclusion that there was a major thing missing. I had finally got an English translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, , in which is supposed to be the proof of the existence of God. First? the immortality of man. And one of the things that was continually repeated in Christian theology was the fact that the finite mind would never perceive the infinite; that’s why we should just believe.

21:23

Well, that’s pretty hard to swallow. Because you know again that it could be the opposite. People – whole armies marched up and massacred each other, each with a profound conviction and belief. And then the almighty sword of ?? didn’t budge; there was no protestation from up above – except way back in the Old Testament when a legion of angels [not a legion but a single angel] an angel was supposed to have been sent down to help Gideon.

21:50

He wasn’t – finessed? – he? could? a reputation, incidentally, and a man with a very good reputation was crucified, labeled? and there wasn’t a rumble hardly. There was no deliverance. So it’s pretty hard to believe all this stuff without looking more deeply, or very deeply into. I’m not trying to break any stained glass windows. I’m just saying let’s look at things. Look at the translations.

22:13

And these are things I did, and I came to the conclusion that if I had about two thousand years I might be able to stuff all these factors into the computer and come up with some decisions? But I didn’t have two thousand years. I realized looking ahead, I thought that when I reached forty I’d start to crystallize – my veins [arteries] would get hard, my ability to strain? would decrease, and I wouldn’t be able to a lot of heavy strains, in pursuing these things.

22:41

But? it seemed to me that there must be a shortcut. And I got into a few books that aid, “Yess, there is a shortcut.” Now – and in these same books I had to start with a whole new crop of hucksters. ?? to get into it – that someone spinning something out of whole cloth, this is truth, and selling it on the market. So this becomes another thing – not only do you encounter the difficulties to perceive the truth, but deliberate efforts by the biggest part of humanity to deceive each other. And the problem of finding something ...

23:21

But – I found that the underlying concept was that you had to go directly within. That a person could not learn. When I was twenty-one years of age I was majoring in chemistry in college, and I gave up the whole idea of – I continued a few years in college, but I gave up the whole conceit that I would tear this universe apart and put it in a test tube and find the essence of matter.

23:46

I felt that if I wanted the truth I would have to change the vehicle. Back in tis old book on theology was this thing that the finite mind would never perceive the infinite. But what they didn’t say was that the finite mind might someday become less finite. And under this new condition observe and understand things that are not understandable by the finite mind. if you follow me on that.

24:11

So the result was experimentation, looking around, if you want to call it, hunting for wise men, wise books. But it involved a change of being, a change of vehicle. And hoping against blind hope, with all the odds in the world against you that you’re going to find anything. You’re hoping you will, but the odds are that you’re not going to find anything.

You can’t find hardly anyone who knows the answer. You pick up a book – there’s books on it – and there’s people who found the solution, like Ramana Maharshi, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ – but these people – well, Ramana Maharshi of course is still living [no, he died in 1950] but I never contacted him. But they’re out of your reach, generally. They’re either dead, and silent, and their words have been written by another and then translated, so you can’t be sure too much of anything of it.

25:11

So the process of course is to keep on plugging, in the hope that something will break through. Now I’m saying to – well – starchism? – if you want to look into them – today there are an increasing number of them, there were none hardly, when I was a boy twenty years of age. The Depression was on, there was no way to ?? trek? to India as some people do today. You just had to stay where you were at, and if you were lucky to have a job and eat.

25:41

I get back of course to the business of ?? ?? – it went on for several years, back until I was seventeen years of age. And many a time I thought, “Boy, I am the biggest idiot on earth. I should be out getting drunk, instead of on this.” I was trying all these little things that were indicated as being the mechanism, such as a vegetable or vegetarian diet, standing on your head, and concentrating on this point or that point, and abstaining from everything that would poison your blood stream, and all that sort of thing.

26:16

And nothing was happening, except that I wore a lot of hair off my head, standing on it. And I came to the conclusion that I had been kidding myself. And you’d pick up books by psychologists and you’d say, “This guy is sick.” And why is he sick? Because he’s opposing [?] the normal curve, of life and death. And the normal curve says everybody dies, and dies ignorant. And it’s abnormal to try to live beyond the normal lifespan of three score and ten.

26:49

But I maintain that the whole system of modern psychology is survival; of course it’s form of herd survival. In other words, “If you live the way we tell you to live, you won’t cause any ripples and you won’t wind up in jail or slain? in fact your conduct will be acceptable, because it will be just like everyone else’s.

Of course, the fallacy behind this normal curve thing is that when people approach a certain common vice, this becomes normal too. Now a thousand years ago this common vice may have been a sin that sent you to hell. Today it’s an attribute of the gods or something. So by democracy we change the whole theological structure of the heavens.

27:36

The chance of survival should not be limited to just the functional survival as a back? ?? If there is a chance for a longer type of survival – whether that be translation, as some people believe, or some sort of out-of-the-body survival, if there’s an essence – then that should conform to the psychological theme – meaning survival [of survival] or better functioning. [repeats functioning]

28:14

But regardless, you encounter, if you’ve come this far – it gets interesting. If you’ve come that far you’re going to encounter a tremendous lot of obstruction, a lot to get around or survive, let’s put it this way.

And I tried to do it by myself; I thought I could do it with the books. I’d get books on yoga and I turned the page and it said stand on your head – [so] stand on your head, that’s all. And that fellow knew what he was talking about, perhaps; if he didn’t, why, where there’s smoke there’s some fire, let’s try it at least. There’s nothing else to do but experiment.

28:48

But the experiments failed, for some reason. And they fail largely because – you get tired, for one thing.

[break in tape]

28:59

You have a ? [go to?] college or something, and you get into that state of mind; that’s a state of mind you’d better believe also.

So there are time spans that go by in which you can’t do anything. There are time spans [in] which you get completely disgusted with yourself. You think, “Well, I’m just kidding myself.”

29:18

So it’s only an accident. If I have found in my life, it’s almost an accident. Because I had no real guide, except just a tenacious and a continual re-application of energy. But I realized when I was about twenty-eight years of age that I wasn’t getting anyplace. I use to kind of half-insulate? myself from society. I felt that there was a ?? disturbance? I felt influences from them. And I tried to keep by myself as much as possible; I thought I could, like the monk in the monastery or the hermit in the desert, that I could think better if I weren’t bothered by other people’s states of mind.

29:58

And yet I encountered – the biggest obstacle I encountered is this search was for [not finding] people who knew something. And I was “rewarded” with somebody who wanted something. There [were] people who claimed, but when you got to meet them they would say, “Yes, we have an esoteric group who’s headquarters are in the Himalayas, or who’s headquarters are underneath the mountains in Central Europe. We emanated from ancient Egypt and we’ve got some super-people hiding around here to ?? them. ?? discuss? that’s a thousand dollars.”

30:31

And I came to the conclusion that either these people didn’t think much of the treasure they held, when they priced it at whatever they priced it at – whether a thousand dollars or ten thousand – they didn’t think much of it, or else they were lying and they had nothing and were just running a business.

And this developed in me a tremendous anger. I built up a resentment – for all of the isms, I didn’t care what they were. I got – for certain – there were certain key significant factors that were found in movements, and they were like common denominators. And I marked them down as yardsticks, and I began to apply them. And as soon as I came into a new movement and they had these, that I considered defects, I avoided them.

31:20

And simultaneously with this, I got angry enough to make up my mind, as he said, that if I found out anything I would try to make it available to people who were capable, young enough and capable, to do something with it, and perhaps save themselves ten years fooling with, you know, ... [file 1 ends at 31:38]

File 2

File 2 = 12 minutes.

00:00

... our direction.

So one of these yardsticks is money. You can’t sell the truth and it cannot be bought. And that doesn’t mean that if you meet in a certain room or form a little group and you pay the rent – and somebody has to, somebody comes up here for nothing, that’s not that. But there should be no profit, there should be no fees?, there should be no rake-off.

No man should eat from the other man’s table; each person should support themselves. Simply because it gets to be a disease. You get a whole institutional hierarchy built up, living off of people who are sincerely ?? ?? in the hopes? of truth.

00:46

The second thing is of course that the truth does not require outward manifestation – such as robes, titles, ranks, degrees, all this sort of thing. So that when I saw – when I move into a place and people are standing around in long flowing robes, I move back out. I said? say? this doesn’t have to be, they’re playing some kind of game. They’re back in the child’s place? playing with the curtains off the window, imagining they’re princesses and princes, and hoping that this dream will catch on and everybody will become filled with awe and pay them a thousand dollars.

01:26

And priest? ??

01:30

The third thing is secrecy - a big handicap or impediment is secrecy. I could see back in the Middle Ages when they were chopping people up for religious and political reasons, it’s a good idea to keep your mouth shut if you want ?? with the times? But today I see no need for that, and yet I’d guess there’s as much secrecy now as there was then. I went into a temple out in Denver, Colorado once time - it was an immense? I won’t mention? because I don’t want to offend anyone – there ?? might be someone ?? the level it’s necessary, for you to ??

02:03

I went in off the street, I saw the sign up there and went in. I had heard about it. There were people standing around like in evening gowns. And I said, “What’s going on? I heard about this outfit and I’d like to check into it.” “How did you get in here? No one gets in here until they’ve been in the outfit seven years.” Well at least I had saved myself seven years’ time. I said, “All I want to do is ask you a few questions about what you’re doing, and then I’m on my way. What do you know? What’s the culmination of all this discipline and training?” “Seven years,” he says, “you come back. You’ve got to fill out the application form, and then when you get your certain degrees you’ll be told certain things.”

02:50

So I came to the conclusion that secrecy may well be necessary in many cases. I don’t believe in telling children about Santa Clause, but I don’t believe in telling children about weird forms of sex either, just? because it’s the truth.? So that type of secrecy should be ?? out, perhaps. But when you have people who are ?ful and mature and are capable, and it’s not going to hurt them to hear it, then secrecy only is a veil for deceit.

In many cases there is nothing.

03:28

When you finally get through it. For instance I talked to a lady – I talked to several of them, in fact - ?? lifetime? – we had a group in Ohio that for many years went from group to group and took initiations, just to learn what they were doing. And I knew of a lady in New York who had been a Rosicrucian – I ?? ?? and ?? you ?? it turns out there are about four different orders in the temple? temperate?

03:50

And the purpose of this is to find her astral master. And I found many of them who had spent their entire lives in this and finally had been told there was no more [?] I’ve been told that there are arcane? secrets that they could get into. [But] they’d say, “Well – you’ve used up all the coupons. There’s no more left we can send out. And we can’t take you any further.” So this to me becomes a sad travesty, when people are led, year after year, in the belief that there’s always something better around the corner.

04:21

So using this, we embarked upon what I call a system of search, which I have never heard described before, so I wanted to bring it up. It’s impossible to postulate God – everybody does at first, and then hopes by belief, that if they hang onto that belief he’ll magically appear.

And it’s impossible to postulate truth. In other words, it’s impossible to say, “I’m going to find God,” because we don’t know what God is. Not even the dictionary can define truth; it can say what it means to us in relation to some other word, but if it defined truth, it would be right there in the dictionary. The whole answer would be right there. Like the judge says, “The whole truth and nothing but the truth,” never realizing what a tremendous thing? he throws on that witness, to answer that question.

05:13

But we have to, if we’re sensible, it has to follow common sense. That we cannot approach a postulated objective that is subjective. That is, the mass ??al God. He might be able to approach ?? from ?? But even then, this is subjective if we’ve never been to ?? We may trust that the road leads us there, but we’ll always be pulling out that road map, hoping it’s there when we get there [arrive] We’re never quite sure what we’re going to see until we see it

05:41

But in an abstract and subjective postulation, you can’t with any ?? just say “God”. Why not “Gizmogul” [made up word?] And gizmo – say, “We’re going to find a gizmo.”

05:58

Now the same thing applies to anything like immortality. You can’t say, “We’re going to find immortality,” or the truth. But there is a way, the same way as using the mind, trying to make it less finite, or capable of handling infinite valuations or values in the computer.

06:24

The same thing applies, the same tactics must be held, with the business of approaching an impossible postulate, and that is by retreating the [noise] aim? same? in any direction. Never aim in any direction. Avoid the foolishness.

06:42

This is a little trick that I call reversing te vector. The only way you can go – you’ve got to evaluate the garbage and see if you can find something good inside. And hang onto that good, and maybe check a few other garbage cans, and maybe you’ll fund a little good there. Collectively you may find some type of philosophy, or conclusion – which in ensuing years you may reject as garbage too.

07:10

But there will always be something a little more sensible, a little more evidential, that you’ll be able to investigate. And by rejecting, as I call it – using a process of rejecting the absurd, the immensely absurd – taking tentatively the possible, and working it, until all that we have is possible, or nearly, and ninety-nine percent of it though becomes totally absurd, or more absurd that something else you investigated.

07:40

And using these yardsticks, they’ll help you expedite this thing, it’s possible in a lifetime to cancel out a tremendous of major isms? Find yourself a direction; one you find it, hang onto it, and carry on until you see something happen, if it happens. If it doesn’t, why, your life, you’ve had a good hobby, at least. And that’s – and that’s what I thought my own life would be. I could see that this type of pursuit might bring me something, and it might bring me just a wasted life. But other things? certain? I came to the conclusion that nothing would be wasted.

08:14

Because I at least functioned in action, not in acceptance, of just living like a dog until the ax fell, and saying, “Well, that’s what everybody else does.” I believed that if I died without knowing anything, that my self? as an act, would be important. At least that would be the history of my life, and I think that every man – every man’s being is that which he does; not that which he thinks or that which he contends or that which he messed? up? – in some sort of fear, excess? And make his life a prayer? a friend?

08:54

But if a man acts, in other words, that’s what he is. We are a fact. Even if that fact is not immortally conscious. We are an immortal fact. And I would much rather be an active fact than one that just allows things to happen.

09:14

So consequently, pursuing this along this line, I encountered what I considered a valid experience. And the next step of course was trying to translate this so somebody else would understand it. And I spent quite a few years, and a bit of futility there.

09:34

I found that – immediately I thought that everybody who was interested in learning what it’s all about – but it’s impossible when you use words, or use the English language to convey this, that you’re not understood. For instance we said the word truth – everybody – if you use the word truth – if there are a hundred people here there will be a hundred different ideas. Unless you come down and say, “This is what is meant by the truth.” Everyone has a different idea.

10:01

So first of all you have to find people who are somewhat of the same mind. And some of the old psychologists said this business of searching for truth is a sickness. The medical materialists used to say you could define a man’s sickness by what he believed, what church he went to. And the whole population that went to church, who indulged in work toward abstract things were indicating some abnormality, as though this Christ had a martyrdom complex. And St. Paul was an epileptic fell off his horse and mistook the stars that he saw. And Buddha was a catatonic; he sat for years and couldn’t move ?? ??, see.

10:59

So you run that ?? ?? You run the risk of being [called] crazy. You run the risk of going crazy, and I remember back when I started, I said, yeah, a lot of people seem? they’re crazy with this idea of religion, maybe I’ll flip my lid and they’ll haul me away, and that will be a rather disgraceful fact. Instead of being a charge? with windmills I’ll be a gibbering idiot in some nuthouse.

11:19

But you have to take certain risks if you want to get anything done. And I maintain that these things operate according to laws. And they apply to all segments of life; if you want to be a millionaire you’ve got to set a priority. I’m presuming you’re ?? you want to be a millionaire. You’ve got to set a priority – getting that million dollars is you priority. And you’ll do without certain things and you’ll focus all your possible energy in a given direction, hoping that by throwing all the mud you can at the ceiling that some of it will stick.

11:56

The same thing applies to spiritual work. That if you are going to be a thinker, one hour a day, one day a week – that’s the degree of fact-man that you are: one twenty-fourth of one seventh. And ??

12:17

Because – and this is the reason not much is accomplished. Because everyone puts the majority of their time into vegetating, and carrying out ...

[tape ends at 12:28]