Q: I've heard that the Zen path begins by joining a group and helping that group. But is it possible that I could get the book and do this on my own?
Rose: You can even do it on your own without the book. I don't put any restrictions. I say that the main requisite for finding the Truth is to search for your God or your being with all of your available energy. Don't kid yourself when you're doing it, and you'll find it.
I think you'll gravitate into certain groups. This more or less explains our particular group and the way we function. I've written a book [The Albigen Papers] and in it I have ten or twenty laws that I have discovered in my lifetime as being expedient or helpful. One of them is the Law of the Ladder. In very simple terms -- and this is probably part of the reason I am here now, as I told you -- I believe that man must help somebody. This is the only human relationship.
There is always somebody you can help. Some people say, "I don't know anything -- who can I help?" That's nonsense. You know something; you've read some book. You can exchange a book with somebody, you can hold a discussion.
And most of our groups are doing this. They hold their own private meditation sessions, they hold their own confrontation sessions, and they plan and work together on three levels. Your whole being must function, not just your head. You must put the body to work, the mind -- and of course hope that by putting those two to work something else is kicked into action, which is your essence -- or let's say your spiritual quantum.
Q: It seems that the only advantage or whatever of finding this is to satisfy your curiosity?
Rose: No, no. That's the seed -- that you can't help. The advantage to finding the Truth is to find out who is curious. There's no point in being curious unless you know who is curious. There's no point in living unless you know who's living. When you say "satisfy your curiosity," who do you mean by "you"? You must first find out who is talking.
Q: And what does that mean, if I find out who I am?
Rose: Then you live serenely and die serenely. You know the answer. There's no more shaking at the guillotine -- the daily guillotine that hangs over you. You're no longer standing and shaking every day.
Q: So it's just the elimination of tension?
Rose: Oh well, you can simplify it if you want to....
Q: [Bob Martin, Rose's friend]: You're selling it too short, Dick. There's no words to describe the incredible state of being....
Rose: What good is it to talk about an incredible state if you can't bring it out here in a briefcase and show it to somebody? There's no point in talking about it. The only thing you can do in your life is retreat from error. You cannot approach wisdom, you cannot approach a given aim. You cannot postulate and reach for a postulation. The only thing you can do is try to be less ignorant.
We are a group called ignoramuses anonymous. And from this retreat from ignorance by progressive laws, by casting out that which is ridiculous, if nothing else, you will automatically push yourself like a jet away from the mundane. That is the process. What it does for you in the long run, or what it means to you -- you have to decide that.
Q: [Inaudible question about the different paths that Rose went through in his life.]
Rose: Well, I was just -- [humorously] that was some of the many things I lost.
Q: I mean, you think Zen Buddhism is it, right?
Rose: No, no. For a man who can only quench his thirst with wine, maybe wine is better than water. To each his own. There are people on certain levels. What I'm trying to do is to draw you a picture of the steps that certain people must go through -- say, meditation: this is the only thing they respond to. It's the only thing they can do or can understand.
And it actually at that time appeals to their intuition. It did to me. I thought, "That's the only thing." I was not ready to listen to any Zen teachers. Because that was my maximum -- to me the maximum reward. I drew you a picture of my life, so to speak. Whatever conclusions you draw from it, that's all right. I'm not outlawing any of these steps.
Martin: I think he's asking, "Are there not other ways, that you would not call Zen at all, that would take you all the way?"
Rose: Right, right. I said that at the beginning. The only thing is that we cannot talk about them all tonight. And I don't have much expertise in all of them. You have to do something, but not everything. If you do everything, your energy is dissipated. That's what I did when I was in my twenties. I tried to do everything at once.
I propose basically that you take one system and follow it. And I won't say it has to be this. And I say whoever reaches an exaltation, why, this is wonderful. I think one of the worst things you can do is say there's only one system.
Bob and I met a man years ago who had made the remark that there were as many systems as there are paths up the hillside [to the barn]....
Martin: ... And there are eleven million ways to walk the last mile.
Rose: And this is very true. The only thing is, not everybody can show you the eleven million ways. We've got to pick one and work on it. If your intuition leads you in a certain direction, by all means follow it and exhaust it. But exhaust it. Give it all you've got.
Q: What about sexual energy? In a system of total growth, you have to include it. This is very important. Most religions either repress is or worship it.
Rose: Are you telling me something or are you asking me something?
Q: What about it?
Rose: What do you want me to say? Do you want me to endorse one or the other? [Laughs.]
Q: I think it's a very important question.
Rose: Well, if your intuition tells you it's important, then by all means follow that path.
Q [someone else]: Are you speaking of kundalini?
Rose: That is something else. That is not the worshipping of sex. When somebody tells me they worship sex, I immediately think of some form of tantric yoga or Aleister Crowley's manipulations. But I have the highest respect for the intelligent use of kundalini yoga.
Q [the previous person]: But you are dividing it. You are saying that sexual energy is separate from spiritual energy.
Rose: Well, you know then -- you know that they're the same?
Q: I feel they are.
Rose: You feel. Well, your feelings are as good as anyone else's. But if that's what motivates you, that's what I say, then that's your path. It's not debatable. That's your particular choice, that's all.
Q: With the particular system of Zen that you follow or are talking about, you answer questions in your mind about what That is or isn't, about where you came from...?
Rose: When you reach that point, which is referred to as sahaja samadhi, you know everything. And nothing.
Now I'm not being facetious....
Q: I know.
Rose: In what you were asking for, I would say you know everything. But anything that we struggle for in this search for truth is almost objective. We picture a God with whiskers. You don't find a God with whiskers. You don't find a being motivated by human justice standards.
We picture a God in our own image and likeness. They didn't say it right in Genesis. God didn't create man in his own image and likeness. Man created god in man's image and likeness.
So we can't conceive of any treatment by that deity or by that absolute essence which wouldn't be answerable to human standards of justice: "He just wouldn't do that to us."
We're not that important.
Q: [Inaudible] ... were you talking about physical death or psychological death, or what?
Rose: You mean in the part of the experience?
Q. Yes.
Rose: I'm talking about both. Because you lose your physical consciousness, and you lose your hope of a spiritual life.
Q: That's part of the ego that's left...?
Rose: That's the final.
Q: But you don't necessarily have to experience the physical death.
Rose: Oh, the body actually doesn't die, no. But to your belief, it's dying. You quite believe it's dying.
Q: Is the spirit of Zen incompatible with a belief in a religion?
Rose: Absolutely not. I call it a psychoanalytic system, that's all. A self-psychoanalytic system.
There's something I wanted to tell you. If you can get a hold of a Reader's Digest, October 1974, there's an article in it: I Died at 10:52." This man [Victor Solow] went through the equivalent of an enlightenment experience. I don't know if he knew it when he submitted the article to Reader's Digest, or how it got in there, but when I read it I realized that this man had met the answer and had come back.
He had a heart attack in an automobile. His wife took him to the hospital, and he was supposedly pronounced dead for something like twenty minutes. And when he came back, strangely enough he had no aftereffects of this delayed heartbeat and everything.
But this will give you I think a very clear episode of what seems to be in the magazine at least an accidental enlightenment experience. We don't know. I don't know what the life history was. He may have been a very religious man.
Q: Can you tell us something about your experience?
Rose: Yes. Incidentally, in the book there's a short description of it ["The Three Books of the Absolute," at the end of The Albigen Papers and also in Profound Writings, East & West].
Seattle and the Cascade Mountains
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It happened when I was in Seattle, Washington. As I said, I believe it was brought about by pulling myself in two different directions. For seven years of my life, I was pulling in strictly one direction. And then I began to be pulled both by the objective world and by an intensely mental struggle. And as a result of this -- at least I blame it on that -- this experience occurred.
I was away from anyone I knew, in Seattle, in a hotel. And I was doing my yoga exercises -- I had kept it up; I was still trying to halfheartedly keep some sort of discipline. I was sitting on a bed. I would get up on the middle of the bed and tuck my legs underneath me, and I'd meditate. And a pain started in the center of my head. I was thirty-two years old, and I didn't think it was possibly a stroke. But it was intense, and I didn't think I would survive it -- it was that type of pain.
The pain was so intense that I started weeping from it, and I just couldn't stop myself. But I went out the window. The next thing I was conscious of was that I left the bed and went out the window. Now this was not a dream. I saw the people on the street, which I couldn't have seen from the bed. I saw everyone on the street.
The Cascade Mountains were out the window, also -- that's the mountains between Seattle and the sea. I remember going in that direction -- up. And the higher I got, the people on the street, the city of Seattle, seemed to be less significant. And I went through what was like a flip-over, and I saw that -- no, not even a planet -- but I saw humanity. The entire pyramid of humanity -- it was in a pyramid form, incidentally, like a maggot pile, struggling spiritually. I could see them all struggling, climbing spiritually.
And by watching it, I could find myself. I could pick myself out in this -- I call it the Cavalcade of Life. Then I realized that this tiny man and the Observer were one. And not only that, but the Observer -- the final Observer -- is the Absolute.
And I even sensed and felt, however you want to express it, the sorrow of everyone that was in that pyramid -- this whole pyramid of humanity fighting for the top. So it wasn't a pleasant experience -- until, actually, all of that ceased. And I realized that all of this was nothing. It was an illusion. Whichever way you looked at it, it was an illusion -- that it was actually nothing but Me. This is the final experience.
Now of course, after -- I don't know how many hours it happened, there was no clock -- I found myself in the room, and the pain was gone, and the memory of what I had been through, what I had witnessed.... [Break at end of tape.]
© 1974 by Richard Rose. All Rights Reserved. See the TAT Books & Audio/Video page for recordings of Richard Rose lectures.
This month's contents:
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
To step from the symbol to that which is symbolized, though this does afford a peculiarly exacting demand upon acuity of thought, yet requires much more. Here, feeling, in the best sense, must fuse with the thought. Thus the thinker must learn also to feel his thought, so that, in the highest degree, he thinks devotedly. It is not enough to think clearly, if the thinker stands aloof, not giving himself with his thought. The thinker arrives by surrendering himself to Truth, claiming for himself no rights save those that Truth herself bestows upon him. In the final state of perfection, he possesses no longer opinions of his own nor any private preference. Then Truth possesses him, not he, Truth.
In fact, during a recent discussion, I was accused of dualism. I was trying to paint a picture of my internal experience - of the ebb and flow of the strength of the manifestation of this world and the presence of something Real. "That's dualism!" was shouted out by more than one person. Apparently, I had been unmasked, exposed, and was ready to be drummed out.
