June 2024 TAT Forum

Humor {(h)yo͞omər}

“One thing you must be able to do in the midst
of any experience is laugh. And experience
should show you that it isn’t real, that it’s a
movie. Life doesn’t take you seriously, so why
take it seriously.” ~ Richard Rose, Carillon

~ Thanks to Ricky C. image in the public domain.

Why are you so afraid of what you want?

~ See the Instagram video about this question submitted by a TAT member for the humor section, with the comment: “I would say it is a pretty accurate depiction of my state of mind at times. ‘It makes perfect sense in my head and no sense out loud’ is what I’d say about it.” Fear image above from the Library of Congress performing arts encyclopedia.

Complexity

~ Thanks to Michael R. Image source unknown widely spread on the web.

Inspiration & Irritation

Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction

The Trouble Is

~ Thanks to Leesa W. for the photo. Turns out it was sent to Leesa by Ike H., who bought the keychain from a local artist in Indonesia on account of liking that text.

Is Life a Dream?

Season 1 of True Detective, Rustin Cohle monologue on the dream of life. It’s worth watching the YouTube video as well, because the acting is so good, but there’s a segue at the end which I’ve left off the quote below that detracts from its power by tying the audience back to the crime drama storyline.

“This [tapping folder of photographs of dead bodies]… this is what I’m talking about. This is what I mean when I’m talking about time and death and futility.

“There are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Fourteen straight hours of staring at DBs [dead bodies], these are the things you think of. You ever done that?

“You look in their eyes, even in a picture. Doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive, you can still read them, and you know what you see? They welcomed it.

“Hmm… Not at first, but right there in the last instant. It’s an unmistakable relief. See, because they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just let go. And they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw what they were. That you, yourself, this whole big drama―it was never anything but a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will. And you could just let go. Finally, now that you didn’t have to hold on so tight.

“To realize that all your life, you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain―it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person….”

~ Thanks to Shawn Nevins.

My koan ties into this idea of unseen separate (not like me) entities: What specifically am I? Am I the same as a dog, a tree, a rock? What am I made of that makes me feel separate? What contains me, and is this container me, does it make me different, or does the thing aware of the container make the container different? What can contain awareness such that it changes the awareness from the awareness of other containers?

Extended metaphor of my questioning process flows something like this:

~ Thanks to Jane F, who sent this additional material to her reader commentary response to this month’s question below. Image above is from craiyon.com, a free AI image generator.

Freedom While Alive

Through the company of the wise or the good, there arises non-attachment; from non-attachment comes freedom from delusion; where there is freedom from delusion, there is abidance in self-knowledge, which leads to freedom while alive. ~ Adi Shankaracharya

The image, from Wikimedia Commons, is of an eight-story memorial to Shankara in the Kerala village of Kalady.

Please your thoughts on the above items.

Reader Commentary

Encouraging interactive readership among TAT members and friends

A reader wrote that what would make the Forum more interesting would be:

Hearing from people who are searching—and have questions instead of those providing endless advice and “answers.” What challenges they are facing. What their doubts and questions are. How they perceive their path is going. What they are doing in their lives. Where they think they will end up, etc., etc.

Can you help make the Forum more interesting?

The Reader Commentary question for the June TAT Forum comes from Bob Cergol:

What are your questions?

Responses follow:

From Alex S:

What are your questions? – None I am consciously aware of. I have tried other people’s questions (‘What am I?’ etc) for size, but they did not hold my attention for long. Having failed to find questions, I am now waiting for question to find me.

From Anima Pundeer:

As a seeker, one would think the “Who Am I” question would always be the burning question. Even though I considered myself a serious seeker, it didn’t feel like my question. What I knew was that I existed and I was suffering. To me, finding a permanent solution to my suffering was the quest. Life circumstances led me to Art and TAT. Doing the group work by attending Self-Inquiry meetings, retreats at the farm with fellow seekers, and confrontation sessions helped me question myself.

The ego, which I (the ego) assumed was the biggest obstacle to realizing Truth, cannot be removed from within. The question of how to get myself out of the way became my shovel. Looking back, I feel this is how self-importance and attachment to myself and mine started to chip away.

Questioning the underlying motives of my reactions to life irritations helped me understand and transcend the external facades of my self-definition.
Asking the right question can be the magical key to opening doors in yourself that you don’t even know exist. Self-confrontation is one of the most productive practices I found.
When you know who you are, ALL your questions get answered.

From lennys3cents:

 i no longer have questions. (as Wu Hsin has said “Clarity does not provide answers; it dissolves questions”) questions arise in the clouds of untruth… clarity is uncovered by retreating from untruth.

From Lieven V:

My biggest question in this moment is: Why am I (and most other human beings) living a life without realising that I am not (they are not) a separate awareness?

From Lena S:

“What is the difference between me and reality?”
The word reality refers to what is real, but “I am” seems to be the only thing of which I am sure. But I am not convinced of anything real or substantial about me yet, and I can’t establish anything of the world around me as being real or substantial—except through five senses. So I seek but have not found a capital “R” Reality in one or the other. Some teachers say this what is around me is IT, or capital “R” Reality, others say it is a projection, an agreed-upon illusion or manifestation from something “more” real. Some teachers say there is a self and then a real capital “S” Self. Others say there is only seeing that is Real.
So to further clarify my question: Is there anything at all Real? How would I know?

From Patrick K:

• What did Rose mean when he said, “you have to create a soul”? (It was mentioned he said this in Dave Gold’s book, “After The Absolute”, at least that is where I think I got that from).

• Is Catholicism the only true religion?

• Why do all non-duality type teachers lack grit? Grit is the spiritual x-factor in my opinion. Why are they soft in the belly and always leave me feeling uninspired, frustrated, and longing for something more substantial?

• Are folks confused between being awake and being woke? (Being driven, either consciously or unconsciously, to find self acceptance within a modern societal context rather than finding the fundamental truths beyond any context).

• Is the path about adorning the soul with all of the virtues in order to achieve excellence in Grace? (taken from preachings of Fr Chad Ripperger). Is this how you enter the kingdom of God? Is this Thy will? Or is it about meditating on questions such as “who am I?”, or “am I the doer?”? Why do the latter types of questions always leave me dry? Certainly interesting to contemplate for a short time but never to the extent that I want to devote more time to.

From Jane F:

Unseen Entities. Having had many interactions with a wide variety of unseen entities since early childhood, I would welcome any discussion on these neighbors, spies, squatters, invaders, and thieves.

[As a small child up to around age seven, I could call upon a friendly crow as I was falling asleep but still most definitely awake. He would take me across the countryside riding on his back. I had to promise not to tell the adults. He was nice and fun. If he was in the room, I could see a symbol on my hand—a horse head.

As an early teen girl, I was violently attacked by an entity who was posing as a boyfriend in my dream. Once I agreed mentally to go all the way because, like I said in the dream, “this isn’t real, it is only a dream, so why not,” he turned into a demonic creature, lifted me off the bed, and I could no longer move or breathe. After the attack, I fell back down onto the bed making a horrible racket and waking my parents up to the large thud.

As an adult, I experienced many, many episodes where some thing(s) would enter my left ear, make bizarre noises, halt my ability to move my body, and scramble around in my head. I saw what looked like TV screen fuzz from the late night off air channels while this occurred. They also talked to each other in my head. When they left me, they would visit my sleeping children one at a time; I could hear their distressing grunts and moans while they went from peaceful slumber to gentle thrashing, to stillness, to suddenly awakening in terror.

I experience and sense entities all the time, many ways, and in many situations still, age 60. They slide into my dreams like walk-in characters on a stage. This is weird, but they usually try to get into a sexual situation with me. They crawl on my bed and over my legs; I feel the pressure. They buzz past my face; I feel the wind and something like electric pressure. They stand next to my bed and stare at me; I just know someone is there. I can sense them when I am going to sleep more easily than when I am already sleeping.]

This simply is a burning question I have always had—What is the cause and purpose of unseen entities and how do they fit into the big concepts of life?

From Mark W:

Yes. The very nature of life is its impermanence. No two moments are ever the same. So, my wants from life are also constantly changing. What I wanted was to transcend all my wants.

Disillusionment from what I thought would bring satisfaction — realizing that the wants are never-ending. Self-honesty about what I desire brings clarity.

From Art Ticknor:

Many of our physical actions result from decisions that haven’t been vetoed in the fraction of a second before the muscles respond to signals sent from the brain. And decisions are triggered by explicit or implicit questions. Much of that can go on without our being particularly conscious of the questions.

A critical question to put our actions into perspective is: “What do I want most from life?” When I saw clearly what I wanted most and didn’t see any holdouts, it created my top-priority commitment. Surprisingly, I found that other responsibilities and priorities then took care of themselves.

My daily meditation practice started with a reminder of what I wanted most then watching the mind’s activity. Questions would sometimes appear followed by related thoughts and feelings. I would continue watching then turn my “inner head” away when the content didn’t seem relevant to what I was looking for. I would then watch and wait to see what appeared next. I didn’t start meditations with a planned question.

Other Reader Feedback

From Alex S. regarding the Rupert Sheldrake video in the April TAT Forum:

I have not heard of Sheldrake before. I have now watched his TED talk, and what I write below is based exclusively on it. The only point I am somewhat qualified to comment on is the evolution of physical laws and of physical constants.

1. People who do fundamental physics (I am not one of them) are usually aware that their models may be limited. They are also aware that major progress is often achieved by noticing “blind spots” in the existing models. It is true that it is generally assumed that physical laws and fundamental constants are fixed. However, models that relax these assumptions, especially in the cosmology of the early universe, do exist. It is not true that physicists are not asking themselves the question of whether the fundamental constants are indeed ‘fundamental’ and ‘constants’, see eg. Variable speed of light – Wikipedia

2. A separate issue is that of measurements. Sheldrake in his talk does not seem to appreciate that metrology does not have an absolute point of reference. A basic tenet of metrology is—I kid you not—”measurement requires comparison”. For example, to measure time consistently, everyone in the world must compare their measurements with the same ‘clock’. This clock on itself must always be consistent. Fundamentals aside, the practical challenges are enormous. Much relies of everyone syncing their clocks with everyone else all the time and on a consensus of what the best ‘clock’ is. Variations of the early measurements of the speed of light are likely to have ‘practical’ rather than ‘fundamental’ explanations.

I think that on this issue Sheldrake is out of his league.

I do not know much about genetics or crystal growth to comment about other topics discussed in the talk. As for the question of what is primary, matter or spirit, I doubt you need my opinion 🙂

From Don A. also regarding the Rupert Sheldrake video—A Reaction to “Exposing Scientific Dogmas” or, The Trouble with You Tube:

Here’s my reaction: You Tube is THE false god of both wisdom and knowledge of our era.
Like the previous checkout counter tabloids, sprinkled with enough truths and wisdom to entice too often the fickle-minded, the new medium has become adroit at intertwining any story line, regardless of it’s veracity or wisdom, into volumes of information, some factual, some semi-facts and some lies, hearsay and popular illusion, opinions and dogma, intent on serving-up the most palatable to be mindlessly consumed. One entertainer cleverly coined the term “Infotainment”, otherwise “anything is acceptable” when it translates to entertainment, truthful or not.

Any effective lecturer, speaker or presenter strives to elicit a response from, to persuade, or to hypnotize its audience. The more slick or professionally staged the You Tube clip, the more easily digested, no matter how misleading, tasteless or untruthful the information. As a further and extremely effective step in hypnosis, Rupert Sheldrake and his “Skool” have taken on a cartooning technique where the viewer is literally hypnotized by the ‘tooning so that an enticed audience unconsciously takes in any accompanying verbiage hook, line and sinker. As the hypnotist Santanelli would (clap) and say: “WAKE-UP!”

From Shawn Pethel also regarding the Sheldrake video:

I’ve heard of him, but I don’t think he’s taken seriously. Watching the TED presentation I can see why. Animation is a good format here because Sheldrake is presenting a caricature of science, one in which he’s a maverick genius and the scientific establishment is full of morons who are unable to ask obvious questions.

The “science delusion”, as he calls it, doesn’t exist in basic science research. Scientists understand that there are huge mysteries about the nature of reality still to be sorted out (such as time, complexity, consciousness, causality, and more). I think the public is aware of this, too. Seemingly every week there are reports of the James Webb telescope discovering some new unexplainable thing.

The idea that “only details need to be filled in” can probably be sourced to the applied sciences upon which technology is built. In those cases the scientific models are very, very good, as evidenced by a century of astounding technological progress. Sheldrake may be right to complain of hubris here, but it’s hard to ignore success.

Next Month

The Reader Commentary question for the July TAT Forum is:

Do you feel that you are here for a purpose?

Please your response by the 25th of June, and indicate your preferred identification (the default is your first name and the initial letter of your last name). “Anonymous” and pen names are fine, too.

PS: What question(s) would you like to ask other TAT Forum readers?

Q: What are your thoughts on this month’s reader commentary? Please your feedback.

Richard Rose described a spiritual path as living one’s life aimed at finding the meaning of that life. Did you find anything relevant to your life or search in this month’s TAT Forum?

Zen Garden. Source unknown; widely spread on the web.

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Founder’s Wisdom

Richard Rose (1917-2005) established the TAT Foundation
in 1973 to encourage people to work together on what
he considered to be the “grand project” of spiritual work.

The Path to Truth, concluded

Group Work—Second Paper

The work that deals with development of the Inner Man, does not require always collective effort, but it is possible that no man rises without the cooperation of others. If we are interested in scientific investigation alone, then it is vitally necessary to work with others, if for no other reasons than to have witnesses to experiments. Unless of course the aim of the seeker be to satisfy his curiosity without thought to humanity, or to generations of seekers to come.

Generally there is no need to write these things, such as are expressed in the above paragraph. If a man has searched desperately, (and a person must be dynamic and persistent to be successful in any field, much less the most difficult of all endeavors) then he will have long since realized that he cannot learn too much alone. We may feel our very essence in meditation, but that which we feel is not verbalized by meditation, and our finding must be verbalized in order to remember our findings, if for no other reason.

There are many questions that arise when we think of associating ourselves with others. There are many things to avoid, and there may even be some persons that must be discouraged from joining efforts with the group. Commercialism, injection of personality into the group, limitation of endeavor, and excessive secrecy among members, and insufficient secrecy with outsiders all will deter if not wreck the movement. Those persons who must be excluded from the group are those with the feeling that they have found the truth, wish the group to subordinate itself to them, yet will not to the satisfaction of the group attempt to prove their claim.

It stands to reason that all in the group are seeking the Truth. The fact that they admit seeking, means that they have not found. He who has found it is truly a master, and is obligated to furnish evidence to that claim. Nothing will bring confusion quicker than quasi-saviors and men of fanatical conviction.

In regards to the items to avoid, one of the most dangerous is commercialism. Effort must be taken to prevent involving the group in financial activities that may yield a profit for someone and thus change the original motivation of the group or of one of its members. Collections may have to be taken to purchase equipment for experimentation, or the like, but it must be done on a voluntary basis, and only subscribed in amount needed for day to day expenses. In other words try to avoid building up a balance in a treasury.

By injection of personality is meant, the allowing of one man by force of personality to dominate proceedings. The movement must be impersonal and impartial. It is advisable to be very circumspect in ascribing a name to the group, unless local law requires the meeting to have a name, since the naming of the group may throw the shadow of definition upon the work. It must be remembered firstly and above all, that The Work of the group is the most important thing for each and any of the members. If people come to amuse themselves, out of curiosity, haphazardly or dilettantely, or if they come when they have nothing else to do, it is better that they do not come at all, but rather pursue that which to them is most important.

The purpose of the activity is to increase the activity of the group. Avoid motions to limit endeavor, or suggestions to reject any line of investigation that have been deemed worthy by learned men of the past of present. The procedure must be orderly, which of course means allocation of work, but does not necessarily infer limitation of work.

Excessive secrecy among members of the group, or things hidden from one another that need not be hidden are to be avoided. It is evident that the group must protect itself from hostile outsiders, and each must protect his livelihood. Consequently, we must in the first place only admit persons who are dedicated to the Work, and once they are accepted discourage members from taunting them with pretended knowledge or mystery. It is difficult enough to understand that which is written or spoken plainly, without making words any more cryptic and ambiguous than they already are. We must all be humble together, and eager to share with those ready and anxious to learn.

Read part 1 of 2 in the May 2024 TAT Forum.

Definition of Terms

Index of many of the key terms and principles in Rose’s work, with brief definitions, from Richard Rose’s Psychology of the Observer: The Path to Reality Through the Self by John Kent.

Jacob’s Ladder © 2001 Richard Rose. See this transcript of a talk on the topic by Rose.

Homing Ground Update

… A spot on earth where people can do retreats and hold
meetings; where the emphasis is on friendship and the search.

January 2024:

As we start the new year, December donations brought us to just over 20% of our 2023 fundraising goal of $15,750. The bulk of that total came from monthly, recurring donations. A big thank you goes to those core supporters who are there for TAT month in and month out, as well as all of you who choose monthly supporting memberships in TAT. These steady commitments are greatly appreciated and very helpful for TAT’s long-term planning.

An additional $152 came from Amazon purchases in 2024. This is a simple, no-cost way to support TAT but does require remembering to visit the TAT website first and use the Amazon link on this page before you put items in your cart: https://tatfoundation.org/support-tat/. Almost any product is eligible. For example, someone purchased toothpaste on Amazon, and TAT received $0.25 on that purchase.

In 2024, expect to see less frequent, but more effective, reminders of fundraising goals. I think these monthly reminders are a bit like that inspiring quote you put on the refrigerator—it works for a few days and then you don’t notice it anymore.

Thanks to all of you for making TAT the extraordinary organization it is, and best wishes for the new year.

Sincerely,
Shawn Nevins

PS: Monthly contributions are a great way to support the TAT Center if making a larger one-time donation seems too much. If you’re so inspired, click the Donate button below, then check the box for “Make this a monthly donation” as in the example below:

Let’s bring this to life! “The job is upon us,” Richard Rose said, “and it is worthwhile.” To contribute to the TAT Center, mail a check made out to the TAT Foundation to:

TAT Foundation
PO Box 3402
Roxboro, NC 27573

Big checks, little checks, all are welcome. Or use the PayPal link above (though we lose 2.2% of your donation to PayPal fees).

* See photos and more on the Homing Ground page. *

Did you enjoy the Forum? Then buy the book!
Readers’ favorite selections from seven years of issues.
Beyond Mind, Beyond Death is available at Amazon.com.