The TAT Forum

The Grand Work of the TAT Society
by Richard Rose

It has been my privilege to know, at different times in my life, three enlightened people. Besides those three, I know of several more whom I did not meet, but became aware of their depth of Spiritual awareness or their claim to have reached enlightenment, by writing to them.

I found a common denominator in my association with all of these people, and that was that we could not work together. I considered Spiritual Work to be the most important human function, and I am sure they did also. But privately all of them knew that we could not find a common language, nor could each find a common ground for working together in what appeared to be necessarily highly individualized systems or paths of teaching, and sometimes we could not even find a good method of just keeping in contact and exchanging ideas.

This knowledge made me feel very desperate and determined to do something about it. After all, are we not all working for the same goal, which is Truth, which is God if God is found through the search for Truth, or for the Absolute, if the Absolute is found through a search for Truth?

There are millions of people looking for the Truth through established religions, and they profess that they are equating Truth with God. And the world is continually dismayed to find religious wars by millions who profess to be killing for the "true God." They do not KNOW that they are killing for the "true God," they merely believe or have faith. And we can probably write off their isms, noting that they will not get anywhere until they quit believing and start seeking.

But there are hundreds of thousands who have turned away from blind faith, and have joined some esoteric, metaphysical or occult group in hopes that this group will be recognized (by its fruits) as a bona fide method of searching and seeking. And in this smaller group of people we find that it is really a loose conglomerate of many cults, smaller still, each of which has a language and method peculiar to itself. Divisiveness is the chief denominator of these groups also. Some of this divisiveness is caused by financial competition, or the campaign for membership that sometimes involves one movement stating its claims in such superlatives that any future demonstrations for tolerance by its leaders or writers for other movements would imply the other movements might be worthwhile.

We go on to the highest form of Spiritual Work, the Realization of the Essence of Man. The final definition of man. And with this definition, - the realization of ultimate and absolute definitions of the nature of everything visible. This last sentence is included in this level of work because of the testimony of those who claim to have reached self-definition. The claim is that self-definition brings with it the definition of all things, and a realization of the Nature, or Absolute, or God, behind all things.

And in this third category, whose membership involves no more than one in a million, if we are to believe Richard M. Bucke [Canadian M.D., friend of Walt Whitman and author of "Cosmic Consciousness" - ed.] , there is likewise no harmony between its members. The Tower of Babel casts its shadow on all levels. We are dissembled and mute.

Over a period of many years I tried to do something about this Spiritual Babel. I traveled back and forth across the country visiting people, temples, ashrams, and prelates of established churches. Everywhere I met the same smiles of patient condescension that indicated that I had just not reached their level of understanding yet. I received this attitude regardless of the level from which the person came. They did not bother to ask me about my level, - each felt that there was only one church, - one spiritual path, - and one level, and that was the one with which they identified themselves.

I did not give up. In 1956 I placed an ad in a magazine that was published for people of occult interests. I received hundreds of answers, and almost each represented a different tangent from the others. It was discouraging, but I still learned a lot from those letters.

For instance, I have just named the three major categories of seekers. The first might be called the Believers. The second group, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands, might be called the Investigators. This second group are really trying to use their heads. They are very sincere, usually, but they spend entire individual lives in a single investigative search, such as Magic, Astrology, Trance Work, Yoga, astral projection, or in the examination of any or all of the gimmicks that come out of the East packaged as holy merchandise.

The third category we might call the Becomers. These people go in for ways to find the Truth by processes which usually involve a change of state of mind and this in turn leads to a change of being. Those who have reached enlightenment (the word being synonymous with Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, an attainment of an Absolute state or ultimate trip) all equate that acquisition or realization with a necessary change of being. Man does not discover the Truth. He becomes the Truth.

I learned that you cannot just put people into these categories and pigeon-hole them securely. They infiltrate different levels and tend to convey naiveté if they are reaching upward into a group beyond their complete understanding, and they convey unwarranted encouragement if they reach down to a group that may use their name and reputation to further the aims of a lesser group.

But the most unfortunate thing that I learned was that truly enlightened people are still confused about the proper communication with those on lower levels, and this communication uses such poor systems or vehicles for conveying their instruction as to proper methods for attaining the higher consciousness, - that the general inquirer often winds up doubting that the person is enlightened at all because of the latter's preoccupation with what is often a waste of time.

Paul Wood was one of the men who I met that convinced me that he was truly enlightened. However, his system was discouraging to almost everyone he met. He insisted upon having people repeat and study the Lord's prayer. Now the Lord's prayer is basically part of the structure of organized Christianity, which is identified as being in the group called the Believers. Now the strange truth is that Paul himself came upon his Realization while clinging to the Lord's prayer for counsel and guidance. He had an opening of the mind as a result. It seems only fair to assume that if Paul is going to transmit, it will be done by the same leverage that was used upon him. But this is not true; each man blooms from a different catalyst. The only thing that the enlightened men have in common is that which they find. So that it is better to encourage an inward search, without demanding to find for the student an exact formula or discipline. Likewise, we are saying that we should pursue the search, which process may be helped by creating conditions that will help anyone regardless of their unique catalysts. These conditions include the conscious effort to bring people together, and to provide retreats or ashrams for meditative purposes.

To be continued....