November 2026 TAT Forum

This month’s contents include:

Convictions & Concerns: Pralaya, by Mike Gegenheimer.

TAT Foundation News: Including the calendar of 2026 TAT events and a listing of local & online group meetings organized by TAT members.

Humor: Scurvy; Questions to Ask; and Taxidermists.

Inspiration & Irritation: Taller than Trees; Mindfulness Automaticity; My Left Brain Understands Those Feelings; and Homage to Love.

Reader Commentary: How do you define direct experience, and what role does it play in your search?

Founder’s Wisdom: Excerpts from Transmutation, Between-ness and Transmission.

In-Person TAT Gatherings will be held at the Claymont Retreat Center for 2026.

In-person gathering
Fri. – Sun. Nov. 6 – 8, 2026

In-person intensive
Sun. – Wed. Nov. 8 – 11, 2026
More information and registration.

Keep informed of TAT events and receive our free monthly Forum filled with inspiring essays, poems and images.
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Convictions & Concerns

TAT members share their personal convictions and/or concerns

Pralaya (Or “A Walk in the Park”)

The sunrise reveals the beautiful scene of life, the forests in the mists, water gurgling in the stream, birds and animals and plants thriving.

And during the evening, untold billions have perished for this beautiful scene. 

Microbes, bacteria and cellular organisms floating in the darkness of their media responding to chemical and biological forces; insects of all kinds devouring plants and other insects; fish and birds feeding upon plants, insects, worms and other prey; larger mammals and birds feeding upon the smaller creatures; and mankind harvesting plants and slaughtering chickens, hogs, cattle and other animals all day long across the globe.

An endless cycle of death, destruction, and slaughter supports the beautiful scene.

~ See Wikipedia’s page on Pralaya. Pralaya image from Wikimedia Commons by Michael B. Gallagher in 1978. Please email reader commentary to the TAT Forum.

TAT Foundation News

It’s all about “ladder work” – helping and being helped

Richard Rose, the founder of the TAT Foundation, spent his life searching for the Truth, finding it, and helping others to find their Way. Although not well known to the public, he touched the lives of thousands of spiritual seekers through his books and lectures and through personal contacts with local study groups that continue to work with his teachings today. He felt strongly that helping others generates help for ourselves as well in our climb up the ladder to the golden find beyond the mind.

Call To Action For TAT Forum Reader

With the intention of increasing awareness of TAT’s meetings, books, and the Forum among younger serious seekers, and to increase awareness of ways to approach the search for self-definition, the TAT Foundation is now on Instagram.

You can help! A volunteer is producing shareable text-quote and video content of Richard Rose and TAT-adjacent teachers. We need your suggestions for short, provocative 1-3 sentence quotes or 1 minute or less video clips of people like Richard Rose, Art Ticknor, Bob Fergeson, Tess Hughes, Bob Cergol, Shawn Nevins, Bob Harwood, Anima Pundeer, Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, Paul Constant, Mike Gegenheimer & other favorites.

Please send favorite inspiring/irritating quotes—from books you have by those authors, from the TAT Forum, or any other place—to TAT quotes. If you have favorite parts of longer videos (ex: from a talk at a past TAT meeting), please email a link to the video and a timestamp.

Thank you!

TAT Foundation Press’s latest publication

Greatest Western Spiritual Teachers of Modern Times by Art Ticknor is now available in paperback & Kindle versions. It explores the lives and teachings of three remarkable Western mystics who pursued the question of self-Realization to its furthest reaches: Richard Rose, Douglas Harding, and Franklin Merrell-Wolff.

Please post reviews on Amazon and other websites you’re familiar with to provide visibility and promote sales.

The monthly TAT Forum newsletter has been online since November 2000 and has published hundreds and hundreds of spiritual essays, poems, images and humor. In 2014 the TAT Foundation Press compiled seven years of reader selected Forum excerpts and released the book Beyond Mind, Beyond Death. Well, they have done it again: Beyond Mind, Beyond Death II is now available.  And once again Forum readers parsed over seven years of entries to select their favorites. 

BMBD II is organized as a roadmap of the spiritual journey.  The book follows the stages many seekers encounter: the mysterious restlessness, the practice of self-inquiry, the obstacles, the subtle traps, the discoveries and the return to ordinary life.

We’ve selected this quote to frame the perspective of the new edition: “There is no greater adventure than looking into the nature of life and reality.” 

Many thanks to the TAT Forum readers who were part of the selection process and TAT Foundation Press publisher Shawn Nevins for the book cover and layout design.

~ Michael Whitely, BMBD II Editor

Beyond Mind, Beyond Death II,  composed of selections from the second 10 years of TAT Forum monthly issues, is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and audiobook format.

Please add your review to the Amazon listing. It makes a difference!

TAT Press publications also available as audiobooks: 

1. Passages: An Introduction and Commentary on Richard Rose’s Albigen System
2. Solid Ground of Being: A Personal Story of the Impersonal
3. Beyond Relativity: Transcending the Split Between Knower and Known
4. The Listening Attention
5. Falling for Truth: A Spiritual Death And Awakening
6. This Above All: A Journey of Self-Discovery
7. A Handyman’s Common Sense Guide to Spiritual Seeking
8. Always Right Behind You: Parables & Poems of Love & Completion
9. Pouring Concrete: a Zen Path to the Kingdom of God
10. At Home with the Inner Self
11. Sense of Self: The Source of All Existential Suffering?
12. Message in a Bottle: Reflections on the Spiritual Path
13. Hope! Life’s Calling: Finding Yourself on the Spiritual Path Called Life
14. Beyond Mind, Beyond Death II
15. Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment {latest audiobook; recorded by the author}

Available as a Kindle edition. Also available to read online and download in .pdf format on SelfDefinition.org and SearchWithin.org.

2026 TAT Meeting Calendar

January “TAT Talks” online event: Saturday, January 31, noon ET.
April Gathering (Claymont Great Barn): Friday evening through Sunday noon, April 17-19, 2026
June Gathering (Claymont Mansion): Friday evening through Sunday 2 PM, June 12-14, 2026
July “TAT Talks” online event: Saturday noon ET, July 18, 2026.
August Gathering (Claymont Mansion): Friday evening through Sunday 2 PM, August 21-23, 2026
September “TAT Talks” online event: Saturday noon ET, September 12, 2026.
** November Gathering (Claymont Mansion): Friday evening through Sunday 2 PM, November 6-8, 2026 **
** Optional Intensive (Claymont Mansion): Sunday evening through Wednesday noon, November 8-11, 2026 **
December “TAT Talks” online event: TBD.

Our in-person gatherings in 2026 will be held at the Claymont Retreat Center in Charles Town, WV.

Comments or questions? Please email TAT Foundation events.

TAT’s YouTube Channel

Have you seen the TAT Foundation’s YouTube channel? Subscribe now for spiritual inspiration (and irritation)!

Volunteers have been updating the channel with hours of new content! They’ve also curated some great playlists of talks by Richard Rose, teacher talks from recent & not so recent TAT meetings, episodes of the Journals of Spiritual Discovery podcast, and other great TAT related videos from around the internet.

Featuring: Richard Rose, Bob Cergol, Shawn Nevins, Bob Fergeson, Mike Conners, Anima Pundeer, Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, Bob Harwood, Tess Hughes, Art Ticknor, Shawn Pethel, Tyler Matthew and other speakers.

This month’s video is from a November 2025 presentation by Paul Rezendes at a Pittsburgh self-inquiry group online meeting. Nature panoramas and time lapses were produced by Paul:

Local Group News

Groups with recently updated information are listed below. The complete listing of local groups is on the Find a Local Group page.

New Online Self-Inquiry group:
Women’s online self-inquiry group, alternate Wednesdays at 19.30 UTC. To participate, contact tesshghs@gmail.com.

Update for the Online Self-Inquiry Book Club:
We’re still looking for suggestions that have sufficient appeal. You can contact us at: https://meet.google.com/eqp-zucx-oww (ask to join).

 Update from the Pittsburgh, PA self-inquiry group:
> Use the e-mail link below for invitations to all meetings and to receive internal email announcements.
> In-person bi-weekly meetings: our home for future meetings is the Library of The Friend’s Meeting House in Oakland, Pittsburgh:  4836 Ellsworth Avenue, PA 15213. Current events are listed on Meetup “Pittsburgh Self-inquiry Live” and website http://www.pghsig.org.
– Sun, Nov 8, 2PM: “Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves” Dean will host.
– Sun, Nov 22, 2PM: “Certainty, the Unknown and the Unknowable.”
> Online group confrontation and individual contributions every Wed, 8:00 pm EDT via Zoom; current online events are listed on Meetup “Pittsburgh Self-inquiry Group” and website http://www.pghsig.org.
– Wed, Nov 4:  Eugene R. Will Host: “Various Approaches to Ego.”
– Wed, Nov 11: Guest TBD.
– Wed, Nov 18: Dave W. will Host.
– Wed, Nov 25: “Disciplines: Who Needs Them?”
> All Forum subscribers are welcome to join us.
> Email to receive weekly topics with preparatory notes and Zoom invitations. Current events are listed on Meetup as Pittsburgh Self-inquiry Group (link above) and on Pittsburgh Self-Inquiry Live.
> We advocate self-inquiry, which is to question our beliefs and opinions of ourselves and those of others through honest and sincere feedback all in a friendly environment in order to recognize errors in our thinking and assumptions. Each participant gets an allotted time to voice their thoughts on the evening’s topic to which others can question or comment.
> Our format and inspiration for self-inquiry are influenced by numerous teachers and books, none more so than the teachings of Richard Rose which can be researched here: Our format and inspiration for self-inquiry are influenced by numerous teachers and books, none more so than the teachings of Richard Rose which can be researched at TAT (Truth & Transmission) Foundation.

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See the complete listing of local groups on the Find a Local Group page.

Members-Only Area

A password-protected section of the website is available for TAT members. (Note that there’s an occasional glitch that, when you try to link to the members-only area or a sections within it, you’ll get a page-not-found error. If you try the link a second time, it should work.) Contents include:

• How you can help TAT and fellow seekers,
• Audio recordings of selected sessions from 2008-and-on in-person meetings and virtual gatherings.

Resources and ideas for those planning a group spiritual retreat.

• Photographs of TAT meeting facilities, the Richard Rose grave site, a rare 1979 photo, and aerial photos of the Rose farm,
• Presenters’ talk notes from April TAT meetings in 2005–2007, and
• TAT News Letters from 1996–2013 and Annual Retrospectives from 1973 thru 2011. The Retrospectives from 1973–1985 were written by Richard Rose and are replete with ideas on the workings of a spiritual group—rich historical content.
• TAT policies, TAT business meeting notes, and other information.

New audio recordings added in May 2026:

• April 2025 TAT Meeting (most of the meeting was recorded except for Bob Cergol’s session).
• June 2025 TAT Meeting (partial recording).
•  July 2025 TAT Talk with Bob Cergol.

There were no recordings made for the August and November 2025 meetings.

All 14 issues of the TAT Journal are available in pdf format. Paperback issues of a “Forum for Awareness” were published on a quarterly basis from 1977 until 1980 and then on an annual basis until1986. The Journal’s editorial staff members, all of whom were volunteers, described the publication as a meeting place for…

 Esoteric searchers, transcendentalists, mystics, scientists for the new frontiers…

 People who are dedicated to the development of genuine friendship among all levels of spiritual and psychological research…

 People who see the need to share ideas, but who cannot meet personally, and for those who will give support and find support while seeking a common goal…

 Specialists who see the value of broadening their perspectives by association with specialists in related fields and for people who, regardless of specialty, find a value in the psychological encounters with their fellows that help them to better understand themselves and so find peace of mind and a better understanding of their friends.

Please email TAT Foundation events if you have questions. (Look here for info on TAT membership.)

Amazon and eBay

Let your Amazon purchases and eBay sales raise money for TAT!

As an Amazon Associate, TAT earns from qualifying purchases made through the above link or other links on our website. Click on the link and bookmark it in your browser for ease of use.

TAT has registered with the eBay Giving Works program. You can list an item there and select TAT to receive a portion of your sale. Or if you use the link and donate 100% of the proceeds to TAT, you won’t pay any seller fees when an item sells and eBay will transfer all the funds to TAT for you. Check out our Giving Works page on eBay. Click on the “For sellers” link on the left side of that page for details.

Downloadable/rental versions of the Mister Rose video and of April 2012 TAT sessions on Remembering Your True Desire:

Your Contributions to TAT News

TAT founder Richard Rose believed that working with others accelerates our retreat from untruth. He also felt that such efforts were most effective when applied with discernment, meaning working with others on the rungs of the ladder closest to our own. The TAT News section is for TAT members to communicate about work they’ve been doing with or for other members and friends. Please your “ladder work” news.

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

 

Scurvy

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~ An “internet meme” widely spread on the web.

Questions to Ask

1. What’s the funniest thing you’ve been caught muttering to yourself?
2. If you were a pizza topping, what would you be?
3. If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?
4. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever Googled?
5. If you could swap lives with a celebrity for a day, who would it be, and what would you do?

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“These versatile questions work in almost any situation, from getting to know someone new to catching up with old friends. Use them as a quick tool to fix a sudden lull in conversation or break an awkward silence with a much-needed dose of humor.” ~ Thanks to 251 Funny Questions to Ask Friends, Dates, Coworkers and More.

Taxidermists

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~ Thanks to Dan G. The Carroll County Veterinary Clinic in Westminster, Maryland, is widely known for its viral, roadside marquee signs featuring hilarious puns, animal jokes, and dad-style humor.

Inspiration & Irritation

Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction

Taller Than Trees

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees. ~ Henry David Thoreau

~ Thanks to Dan G for the quote and suggested image.  The photo above is from the National Park Service.

Mindfulness Automaticity?

Mindfulness meditation is a great tool, and I would happily see everyone in the world practicing it. As Bob Cergol said “It is a prerequisite for going within. One cannot explore the questions ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I?’ if one is not mindful.'” (https://tatfoundation.org/tat-forum-archives/forum2019-10a.htm#4) Yet, Cergol pushes further by elegantly asking, “Can a dreamer be mindful of dreaming? Would such mindfulness be part of the dream?”

It’s a question I rarely see addressed in mindfulness literature. Surprisingly, the academic article “Overcoming Automaticity Through Meditation” reveals the answer. After concluding that their study showed mindfulness meditation had an effect in reducing some types of automatic responses, the authors made a seemingly off-hand comment that struck at the core of Cergol’s question:

“Taken together, practice in meditation may resemble situations of learned automaticity more closely than it does situations of instructed automaticity.”

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Dryly stated I know, but in other words, meditation practice resembles an automated response stored in long-term memory moreso than an automated response held in short-term memory. This brings to mind (automatically!) Richard Rose’s comment that, “I maintain that Will is nothing more than a reaction to react in a fixed, planned reaction.”

Yet, the authors ignore the question that if meditation itself becomes an automaticity, then where are “we” amongst these webs of responses and reactions?

Such things are better left unsaid, so they may be felt instead….

“The thought ‘Who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.” ~Ramana Maharshi

~ Thanks to Shawn Nevins. The image is from Perchance.org AI image generator using prompt: “stick used to stir a fire – no person shown”.

My Left Brain Understands Those Feelings

I had a big revelation recently that I would like to share as it may be of help to other seekers.

Never having considered myself a “feeling person” until more recent years when I have become at least more hopeful, I have assumed that either that part of my brain had been nonfunctional, or that a defensive barrier was placed around it so that those potentially negative or hurtful feelings were avoided and would never rise to the level of experience. But a recent article arguing the short comings of artificial intelligence triggered an insight by stating that technology has yet to determine how a thinking machine could also include in symmetry, a feeling counterpart.

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If a certain statement that I read triggers a momentary “wow experience,” I usually re-read it in disbelief, as if the unknown boldly made an appearance upon which I try to rearrange it conceptually in order to understand. I think the word “symmetry” triggered a thought that my left thinking brain was seeking symmetry but inadequately by claiming to have those feelings which originated in the right feeling brain! All feelings could be in terms of thoughts that could be easily manipulated and understood and left thinking brain was taking credit for having feelings but as concepts. Actually, the left could never understand the role of the right! So it occurred to me that I may have always had feelings, but they were under the scrutiny and ownership of the realm of thought. Like a two-dimensional world of which only one was perceived along with a mere shadow of the second—I had lived in a half-world!

In recent years, through no effort of mine, I have become more interested in other people and have been fascinated with the possibilities of service to others, of friendship and empathy, and of love. It made sense that there had been a barricade placed around feelings, to be contained so as to be without threat to my ambitious self and its self-esteem. Being involved with others whom I perceived to be “feeling individuals,” I realized there has always been a sense of hypocrisy in stating my own feelings about things, as if I “knew” or was correct about how I felt, not what I felt. It now seems apparent that feelings were always there, but held hostage, because if they weren’t present and expressed, my feeling abilities would have atrophied long ago with nothing left to be recognized at this time. In one sense, it would appear everything I have ever experienced must be revisited if now I can admit to a bicameral mind, with a totally new view with a feeling-reality added through which to perceive each experience. But in another sense, all experiences to date have been limited almost entirely to thought forms of that left brain, and could be forgotten or diminished in appreciation of a far more exciting, challenging and unexpected reality that could now be experienced anew. And now in two dimensions.

~ Thanks to a TAT member who wishes to remain anonymous. The “Understanding Feelings” image comes from a Virginia veterans training program.

Homage to Love

Two heads on a pillow
We lose ourselves in each other’s eyes
And feel the oneness of love.

I bow in allegiance to you, O Lord
Creator of the universe of love and hate
And misunderstood ruler thereof.

And bowing to you I lose my head
And losing my head I am no longer the I of the body
And bowing my headlessness I am no longer the I of the mind.

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But I am still here
But I and Thou are no longer two
But the melding of zero and infinity.

Love is a feeling
Love is oneness becoming twoness
Love is twoness becoming oneness.

But Love is Identity
And Love is our Home.

~ Poem by Art Ticknor. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the above image, “French Marine Gods Paying Homage to Love” by Eustace Le Soeur.

Please  your responses to the above questions.

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 November 2026 TAT Forum comes from Brett S:

I recently read a book by a spiritual teacher who advises seekers to notice their “direct experience.” How do you define direct experience, and what role does it play in your search?

Responses follow:

From John A:

Good question.  I think “direct experience” is self-explanatory.  The problem is that it is too simple.  If it were complicated most people would quickly get it.  The Bahiya Sutta, puts it succinctly:

“Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: ‘In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.’ In this way, you should train yourself, Bahiya.”

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Awareness itself cannot be cognized.  That would make it an object.  “I” see X.  But there can be no object if there is no “I”.  An object requires a subject. To look for a perceiver would lead one into an infinite regression, which is what materialist science does not yet get. Who sees the perceiver? => who sees the perceiver of the perceiver? => and  so on.

It’s easy to make a concept out of Awareness when asked what it is.  Your conceptual mind immediately starts answering that it’s presence, knowing, spaciousness, awareness itself, the witness. Just as we use “I” in everyday conversation, that can help conversation but can lead one far astray. All of those are thoughts about Awareness.

Awareness is always bright and never obscured except by thought and looking for it.  The eye sees but cannot see itself.  Glimpses can grow.

From Anonymous:

At first, I almost resented the “teacher” who asks their “students” about direct experience. It feels vague, and more indirect than it suggests. Fraught with “I have a more direct experience than you,” and “unless you can infer what I mean with this cryptic ticket to enlightenment, you won’t get there.”

Everyone’s direct experience is only knowable to them. And that is utterly gorgeous. Direct experience is a constant state of flux, like a river. For me, anyway. My only wish is that everyone’s direct experience is saturated with joy and love and presence. Anything short of that feels like a complicated method.

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For some reason, asking another person about their direct experience doesn’t feel as helpful to me. I feel like it makes a person judgmental of themselves, as if they’re supposed to be having some other direct experience than what is happening.

For a long time, my direct experience had a lot of suffering and longing. If the teacher had asked me at that time, it would not have felt helpful. Maybe another question, rather than “What’s your experience of direct experience?” would be “How are you feeling?” or “How can I help you?” or “What’s been on your mind lately?”

I’m sorry if this response seems angry at this teacher. That’s my direct experience right now.

I’m hoping that the student who is wondering what the accurate answer is, the one that points them in the direction of what they want, gets what they want. I’m hoping that the students who are subject to this line of inquiry and feel confused instead feel loved and understood and accepted for wherever they are right now.

In my direct experience, I want more love and understanding and connection, and fewer vague questions that put the teacher in a place of ultimate knowing and leave the student with breadcrumbs. More love, less knowledge.

Is there even a teacher who can ask about your direct experience? Is there even someone who knows more than you about it? I don’t think so.

From TCW:

Whether you’re married, best friend – confident … you still only have yourself to discriminate from …. most times, one has the two biggest obstacles … learned behavior and assumations (an old slang for assumptions). If one sets those aside and enters that “quiet room”, where it is totally empty (except you) away from that busy place “upstairs”, there is where it is open to the “all ” ….. the Key … sincerity and most importantly – most importantly … the quality of the question … all the answers are there .. enter that “quiet room” clean ….

P.S. In that “quiet room” ….. that is your direct experience !!!!

From Anima Pundeer:

Most direct experience as a human being is that “I Am Anima.” How do I experience this anima-ness is dependent on the life experiences that I have as a human being. An identity as a separate, individual living being is formed.  I experience life through the data my five senses collect, which my mind interprets. So this is not a direct experience but experience of life through the apparatus, the mind. Thoughts, emotions, and beliefs also contribute to my experience of ‘me’, anima.  These, again, depend on whether my mind is alert and awake. In a state of unconsciousness, there is no experience. There is no experience of personal, anima self when I am in deep sleep as well. There is no anima without consciousness. 

Direct experience occurs when the individual anima-consciousness realizes it does not need any objects to know itself. It is Aware. It is That. The subject Anima, is aware and experiences itself without any objects.

From lennys3cents:

direct??? i don’t think so!!

All data is received by minds/consciousness: humans, animals, microbes, vegetation, rocks, planets … and every receiver takes in only a sliver of a sliver of the data available. Then the trouble starts. By the time anything reaches “me”, it has been bent at every step:

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1. The senses. Our sense organs resonate with a tiny range of what is there, and that sliver is already re-configured on the way in.
2. The nerves. They transmit the re-configured sense data electro-chemically, across synapses, to a “sub-conscious brain.”
3. Re-cognition. The sub-conscious finds the closest similar memory and forwards that to the conscious mind (Gurdjieff’s formatory apparatus). It is very fast, not accurate, and good enough for survival… the opossum scurrying into the sewer turns out to be a crumpled paper bag.
4. Belief and ego. The conscious mind further distorts and twists that mostly un-re-cognizable data to align with and support our beliefs and states of mind. Then that mish-mash is interpreted even further by egoic minds.
5. Memory. Finally it is stored in memory, which has a field day completely distorting the already un-re-cognizable data, to the point where, as our esteemed friend “Freddy shit-for-brains” puts it, a tulip becomes a flea testicle.

direct?  impossible.  BEING ITSELF… THAT IS THAT.  no direct-tion.

From Paul Constant:

Direct experience is automatic.  It involves:

• Sensory perception, including hallucinations and mirages.
• Mental perception, including thoughts, feelings, memories, intuitive epiphanies, and even the reception of thoughts and emotions of others.
• Body sensations, including emotional knots and kundalini energy.
• Creativity, by combining existing data with imagination to spontaneously produce new images and innovations.
• Observation, which is the process of watching all of the above as being “in the view” of something much larger.

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With regard to sensory perception, it is good to remember that our visual perception is about 0.0035% of the full electromagnetic spectrum.  Likewise, our auditory perception is middling among mammals and far inferior to scientific instruments that measure the full range of acoustic frequencies.  Similar limitations apply to touch, taste, and smell.  Additionally, most incoming sensory data is received unconsciously because our brain isn’t capable of consciously processing all of the data at once.  The point is that our direct experience is not only automatic, it is severely limited and prone to inaccuracies.  We do not experience the world as it truly is.

The escape hatch out of the unreal is found by going within, by turning our attention towards that which is watching all experience.  It comes about when we have a strong desire and curiosity that is directed toward the quest for Reality.  The “direct experience” that is the most worthy of our attention is one in which we become Reality and experientially recognize our True Nature.

From Lena S:

I don’t know what Direct Experience is, but reserve the possibility that it must be other than my everyday experience. It seems to me that love, friendship, longing and grace are virtues or attributes outside what I could comprehend or understand, and maybe those are less mundane experiences and more Direct, or real. Attributes not entering consciousness through the usual channels of the five senses, thinking, feeling or memory. It seems these are the next level “up” of some transformation humans can evolve to, becoming appreciative of virtues or senses only to be recognized by some higher mental stature or maturity, as it were. Gurdjieff taught these could only be perceived through the presence of higher centers. I have a belief that if one can at least sense the presence of these attributes even as mere glimpses, then the world of usual experience will seem lacking and a yearning for more real or Direct Experiences will gradually define what one really wants from life.

From Art Ticknor:

My normal waking-state experience comes from three sources: the five senses registering perceptions we attribute to an “outside” world; the five corresponding mental senses of sights, sounds, feelings, etc.; and a 6^th sense coming from an unseen source or sources. Many years ago I experienced a waking state experience of absolute is-ness and the recognition of it as my true identity and the source of the projected cosmos of dualistic experience. It is the only experience I’d label as direct. I think Franklin Merrell-Wolff described it as a third form of knowing: not perceptual or conceptual but knowing-by-identity.

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From curiosity I asked Google: “What did spiritual teacher Richard Rose mean by direct experience?”

Google responded with an AI Overview: “… Richard Rose, direct experience meant knowing ultimate truth for yourself through personal realization rather than accepting secondhand beliefs, dogmas, or intellectual theories….” [citing Wikipedia]

From Joe Blazenski:

I spent quite a while considering this.

The first part of the question, defining direct experience, I learned by looking at what is not direct experience, neti neti.  I think this is still quite valid.  I would give an additional hint and that is to look for curated experience.  This is mediated (as in media) and narrated (as in news) experience, what we get through our phones and friends rather than what is currently in my local environment without filter.  Note that the human organism is a curation device as well.

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The second question on the place direct experience plays in my search is slightly different.  Your question, as posed, doesn’t suggest that there is an end to searching and what happens after the initial search phase is satisfied.  I would suggest that re-search occurs after the initial search is satisfied.  A tourist uses a map as a guide and tosses it or keeps it as a souvenir when the tour is over.  An explorer first creates a map from bushwacking and then uses the map as a basis for exploring for additional details that fill in the map.  We are fortunate to live in a period when most of the bushwacking has been done, we have the Buddhist path and the Prajnaparamita along with subsequent expansions such as Patanjali and Nagarjuna to fill in fuzzy parts of the earlier maps.

To summarize, direct experience is non-curated experience.  The place in the search expands into a quite open-ended exploration as I research again the areas covered during the first exploratory search phase.

=> The Reader Commentary composite question for next month, the December 2026 TAT Forum, comes from Ike H:

Do you consider yourself a serious seeker?
Who are the unserious ones (From whom do you set yourself apart)?
What makes you serious? What makes them unserious in your view?

Please  your response by the 25th of November, 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 for all: 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?

 

~ Sharing a moment below from a beach in South Goa, Colva, India. Thanks to Mahesh Iyer.

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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.

A thousand hours of argument is not as convincing as the gentle touch of a girl when we are passionate, nor as conclusive as the blow of a mace on our heads by the police when we are dissident. There is a lot of philosophy in a policeman’s mace.

To move mountains requires agreeable, believing mountains.

We look out the window at this point and observe the world as a sorrowful slaughterhouse, a place of blood and carnage, wherein the most noble efforts of nature and the whole system of Tension leads and evolves only to semen, blood, and blockheads.

 The above excerpts appear in Carillon from Energy Transmutation, Between-ness and Transmission.

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.

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.

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