The TAT Forum

How to Be Happy, by Douglas Harding

 

Do You Think a Higher Power Can Help You? Comments on Richard Rose's teaching, including transmission and helping others, by Bob Cergol Part 2 of a correspondence between myself and a stranger who I will identify as simply "J," who was making a general inquiry about Richard Rose. The excerpts from J's correspondence are shown in italic font. Regarding transmission, it refers to direct mind contact with another mind. It is the "direct pointing to the soul of man" and "the special teaching outside the scriptures" mentioned in Zen. It is a paradoxical notion since when transmission occurs there is only one mind -- not mind "A" sending some gossamer substance to mind "B." Rose explained it by saying it was causing someone's mind to be on "dead center." He most definitely had the capacity to trigger this phenomena. (Rose also said that every person would "ultimately have to make the trip alone.") Franklin Merrell-Wolff used the term "induction," which implies he believed it was possible through a subtle communication to evoke in another a transcendental consciousness. I would say simply that it is that which is real in one person communicating with that which is real in another, transcending the personalities involved. (Think of a pair of tuning forks -- one causing the other to vibrate, or God talking to himself, if you like.) The result is a spontaneous seeing from a point of reference impossible to have imagined or predicted. Where that seeing leads the individual depends on what that individual is prepared to accept.... No one has ever done this alone, not even Gautama Buddha, who had teachers, whom he presumably asked for help. Each individual must enter death alone, but the events preceding it are not of our own making and certainly not within our power to control. But ultimately the Buddha had in the final moments to have been alone when it happened and had to have gone through alone. I am leery of and don't go for falling at the feet of some enlightened individual ... to me it's no different than what people do at church. Besides I have no one to help guide me, I have to go it alone! I don't mind. I agree that the trip can only be made by one. Rose once said that when you have an absolute realization you find that there is no one else there. It's you alone. But the "you" to which he refers is not the same "you" which everyone thinks. Do you think a higher power can help you? Unfortunately for me, asking for help from a higher power is just asking for more junk from my mind; no more beliefs. I don't believe or dis-believe in a higher power, I just dropped the whole business. I know if I just patiently wait and long to find a way it will show eventually. Things are getting closer for me; I sense it. I sense the calmer I can remain through all the trials of life I will see a way clear. That's pretty much what my life is about these days, just calming down and staying open and receptive. Somehow it will all work out and everything will be fine. I agree it is a mistake to postulate "God." But surely you don't believe individuals are responsible for the universe. "All things betrayest thee, who betrayest me" writes a poet. For myself, I know that there is a "higher power," but it is not separate from myself. It is the "Sat Guru" the Indians write of. It is what Rose refers to in "Three Books of the Absolute" when he says, "Where within thee have I dissolved myself?" and "All that remains of me is thee." Without "That which is," we are powerless. Not a second passes -- whether you are engrossed in work, focused in meditation or asleep dreaming -- that this "higher power" is not calling you home. But "you" cannot hear it because hearing belongs to 'you,' your hearing is egocentric, and accepting the inner call would contradict your existence. Rose was fond of saying "It's later than you think," and "You'll have plenty of time to relax in the marble orchard." He believed you had to build intensity in this direction. Even if a person defined the path as "staying open and receptive," I would argue they don't follow it. They are closed and reject everything which threatens self-supremacy. Truly being open and receptive would surely involve earnest self-examination to the point of realizing one's helplessness, at which point the ears with which one hears might belong to something else -- something else within you, perhaps something which transcends the self -- maybe a higher power. Rose also stressed the need to help others as much as anything else in his teaching -- maybe more. He said in his own case that he did not make any progress until he made the commitment to help others if he ever found an answer. He believed that you don't move until your motivation is "purified" or at least the egocentricity of it is offset by a sincere expression of something a bit less selfish. Of course Buddhism talks of compassion for all sentient beings, etc. Everyone needs help -- and they're very fortunate to find it as I did from Rose and many, many others in my life. I'm sitting here at work at lunch feeling a tightness in my gut after reading your response. Feeling in the back of my mind that once again its all been another self delusion. Your reaction of "feeling a tightness" in your gut indicates to me that you must have understood more than you think you did about what I was writing. That one wants both to know "what it is all about" AND yet wants self-preservation -- ultimately mutually exclusive goals. (The tightness is the gut-level knowing that this is so! and getting so close to it as hearing someone else affirm it!) That one realizes the capacity for self-delusion. That one saw some of the "machinery of addiction" in the process of dropping some of the barnacles of draining habit patterns. I would suggest to you that it was more the observation of that process than your "meditations" that is responsible for the feeling of separation from your thoughts that you describe. You are as a result more skeptical about what goes on inside your head. That is a good thing. I never trusted my thoughts entirely even before I became acquainted with Zen and Rose. It was a good thing, too, since the ego generates an onslaught of arguments designed to turn anything and everything that might diminish that self into something that instead magnifies and reinforces that self. (The process reminds me of the Cowardly Lion's "I do believe in spooks" mantra only modified slightly: "I DO exist, I DO exist, I do, I do, I do exist...." Well, the self that nearly everyone believes in could accurately be called a ghost in the sense that it has no substance or solidity -- except that by definition a ghost is a formerly corporeal, now non-corporeal, being, i.e. an identity without a body. Question: Do you believe you are your body? If you are like the vast majority of people you would answer "No!" So then I suppose you must be your mind. Of course when you say or think "you," you have in mind an identity -- who you are -- your sense of self. What is your sense of self? It is tied up with identity. But then, you are not your body. Well it's a good thing you have a mind to contain this identity since you know your body will die and dissipate. It's not a very good vehicle for preserving identity. So you are probably like most and believe that you are the mind or soul or something which is not dependent on the body to contain this "you" which "has" the body and the mind and the soul. Are you in fact a ghost? To be continued....

What Dream of Mind? by Bob Fergeson

" Our being attracts our life." - Gurdjieff

Many of us may have had the experience of being stuck in a repeating pattern, not knowing how this particular set of circumstances is kept alive. Why do we keep running into the same situations, the same types of people, the same dead ends in our search to get beyond ourselves? Often this can be traced to the action of an archetype acting through us, by our unconscious yet willing attachment to it. Let's look at two of the most common 'parts' we can get stuck in, and how they attract a certain fixed and endlessly repeating life.

The alternating pattern of the 'child' and 'parent' is a common pitfall. Each of these 'persons' requires and attracts the other. We may wonder why we attract a certain type of person, say someone who endlessly gives us advice, and tries their best to correct or mold our behavior. They could be treating us as a child, because that's what we 'feel' like to them. In playing the role of the child, we will have unfulfilled needs, which we look outward to a new and better parent figure to provide, escaping the old parent within, thus continuing the circle. If the 'parent' is the dominant part in them, they will naturally have to find 'children' to take care of. A similar fate awaits us if we have the parent dominant in us, feeling a need to find someone to criticize and take care of, to take the pressure off the child in us. We can find that both of these types, or personalities, are within us, endlessly engaged in the parent/child dance, and that the only relief we get is to find an opposite character in others, to take the pressure off our own being. This, of course, is just a temporary measure, and doesn't bring lasting release. Through the long work of observing what archetypes or pairs of characters are at work in us, we begin to see the play in its entirety, and thus gain a higher perspective.

The observation of this interplay of opposites in us can create a new person, the 'engineer,' as Jim Burns calls it. This part can see the interactions of the other two, and reconcile them. We might visualize this as the warring factions of child and parent each being an opposite pole on the baseline of their mutual activity and the engineer as being the apex of a newly formed triangle. From this superior viewpoint, the engineer can see the needs of the child and parent, and bring harmony to the scene. Eventually, through effort, the engineer becomes the dominant part, who we are. The child and parent become integrated. This then brings about a change in our exterior life, also. We find we are no longer in the same frustrating emotion-based relationships and are more rational and capable. We have taken a step within.

All spiritual work proceeds in the above fashion. By first becoming aware of what basic motivations control us, we can begin to see what duality we are operating in. This observation puts us above the paired forces and places us farther up, or inward. Through observing this process in ourselves, we come to see the reality that we have been 'asleep' or identified, and the dangers therein. The traps of constant emotional neediness and dependency are seen for what they are. Only when we grow tired of the drama, will we become willing to face the unknown of change and jump between the gap of the opposites to a higher level. Much like the sleeping man who has been too long in bed and has tiresome dreams he longs to end, we become weary of the drama and struggle to wake up to a new day. What dream of mind are you in?

From the Mystic Missal