The free TAT Forum newsletter is a great way to explore everything TAT has to offer. Each monthly issue will connect you with seekers and teachers through thoughtful essays, videos and audios, lively online discussions, event announcements and updates from local spiritual study groups. In addition, the Forum mailing list is the primary means for communication with members on the whole, everything from event notifications, to TAT Center updates, and everything in between. Sign up here!
November 2024 TAT Forum
This month’s contents include:
Convictions & Concerns: Trading Beliefs, by Colm H.
TAT Foundation News: Including the calendar of 2024 TAT events and a listing of local group meetings organized by TAT members.
Humor
Inspiration & Irritation
Reader Commentary: What are your thoughts/feelings about the difference between commitment and intention?
Receive new-Forum notifications each month and keep them coming:
The TAT Forum is a free, online spiritual magazine of essays, poetry, and humor. Please subscribe to receive a notice when new issues are published. You will receive an email notice at the beginning of each month when the new issue of the TAT Forum ezine is published. You may also a few mailings per year concerning special events.
Privacy and security: Your information will be kept strictly confidential and will never be shared with any third parties, including businesses, agencies, or other organizations.
Please remember to check your email program’s spam folder and add (webmaster at tatfoundation dot org) to your list of contacts to ensure the TAT Forum notices are not mistakenly labeled as spam or junk email.
If you’re not seeing your TAT Forum new-issue email notices in your in-box, check your spam folder and other folders that your email client may be putting mail into. Gmail, for instance, now automatically places emails from Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn into the Social tab, while most email marketing campaigns find their way into the Promotions category.
When you whitelist an email address in Gmail, this ensures the email shows up in your Primary Inbox rather than other tabs. You’ll also get a notification on your device or desktop when you receive an email in your Primary Inbox, unlike emails that go into the Promotions category.
Whitelist an email sender in Gmail 1) Login to Gmail, click on the gear icon and select “Settings” 2) Select “Filters and blocked addresses” 3) Scroll past all your existing filters and select “Create a new filter” 4) Add (webmaster at tatfoundation dot org) to the “From” field and check “never send to spam.”
Primary inbox vs. Social, Promotions, etc. 1) Login to Gmail, click on the gear icon and select “Settings” 2) Select “Inbox” 3) Adjust “Categories” 4) Click on “Save Changes”
=> [I don’t use Outlook or Yahoo mail, but here’s what I’ve read about whitelisting with them. Please let me know if any of these examples are incorrect or outdated—Ed.]
Whitelist an email sender in Outlook: To do this, choose Settings, then Options. In the left pane, choose Junk Email, then Safe Senders. In the box, enter the (webmaster at tatfoundation dot org) email sender or the (tatfoundation dot org) domain, and select the Add button. Click Save, and you’re all set.
Whitelist an email sender in Yahoo mail: 1) Navigate to “Settings” icon, then click “More Settings” from the Yahoo Mail menu. 2) Select “Filters” and hit “Add” to enter the (tatfoundation dot org) domain name or (webmaster at tatfoundation dot org) sender.
If the subscription process does not work, simply send an email to (forum at tatfoundation dot org).
(As an Amazon Associate, TAT earns from qualifying purchases made through links on our website … or save this link to use.)
TAT members share their personal convictions and/or concerns
Trading Beliefs
Whether you are relatively new to ‘seeking’ or you are a seasoned seeker, or even a know it all, at some point you will likely delve or have delved into the process of self-inquiry. The key aim of self-inquiry is to look at the beliefs one has about oneself, with the ultimate aim of tackling the root belief, or keystone belief (as I heard Art T. referring to it on several occasions), about our identity. This will typically be along the lines of ‘I believe I am a body / mind’, in one form or another.
However, before getting to that keystone belief, there are usually many other beliefs that need to be examined. These are the foundational beliefs that lend support to the keystone, as such. The scope here is broad as there are varying types of beliefs and everyone will have their own mix of what forms their ‘identity’.
To touch on a few in their most simplistic forms, there are psychological beliefs, for example, ‘I believe I am an introvert / I believe I am an extrovert’; there are moral beliefs, ‘I believe I am a good person / I believe I am a bad person’; There are body based beliefs, ‘I believe I am a body / I believe have a body’; there are emotional beliefs ‘I feel and believe I am loving / I feel and believe that I am not loving’, etc. This of course can go on, as the list of beliefs for most is long and unique. Another illustrative example that I have found useful, is that of an onion. An onion has many layers, with some of those layers being comparable to a belief. See through one layer, and you are confronted with another, and so on. Some of them might even make you cry. 😉
When I first started out with self-inquiry, some years ago now, I was told by many friends and teachers to ‘look at beliefs about myself’, about ‘who I am’. Sounds simple enough, in theory. However, after looking at that for some time, it became clear to me that there was quite a lot to this.
‘Who am I?’ is probably the most well-known question in self-inquiry. When I started from there, many answers came forward and not all, in my experience at least, were initially clearly visible. First, I had to identify the beliefs that lend themselves to the question of identity, and these can be broad indeed! I believe I am a certain nationality, I believe I do x for a living, I believe I have a mother, father and siblings, and so on. Those examples are more obvious and in the view. However, I soon found that many of the deep beliefs that really seemed to make up what I think of as ‘me’, operated subconsciously and out of direct view.
This was noticed indirectly, by observation of actions and responses to situations. For example, I may always react in a certain situation in a certain way. I could see the repeating behaviour in said situation, I could see there was a pattern, but what the belief behind that pattern was, was not immediately clear. This stuff could go back to childhood, an event that happened that I had long forgotten about, but made a deep impression on me, such that it influenced my responses long after the event took place. The event happened and ended in a specific time period, but unbeknownst to me, a belief about me and/or how the world operated was also installed. And so it goes, more and more beliefs are acquired. The aim of the process then is to turn inward and back towards the source of those beliefs to establish what they are and question their validity.
One of the best examinations on beliefs that I have come across, what they are, how they operate, etc. came from an unexpected source. A few years back I joined a training group on how to trade the financial markets. They gave a wide list of materials to read, view, etc. One of those was a book called ‘Trading in the Zone’, by Mark Douglas. Aside from being the best book I have ever read on the subject of Trading, there was a surprising extra which came from the book.
In it he talks about the various things that enable one to be a successful trader. In theory, being a trader is somewhat straightforward. You need a system / set-up that on balance of probabilities, wins more than it loses. For example, if you use a system or set-up that win’s 51 times out of every 100 trades, you have a recipe for success. You also need consistent and repeatable risk management. I should add here that while this is simple in theory, it is most definitely not simple in practice as not only do you need said system / set-up, risk management, etc., you also must execute it in exactly the same way in the same scenario, again and again, and again. This is where I think the real meat and potatoes comes in with trading, as various factors have a strong influence on this. So emotions, perceptions and beliefs play a huge part in whether or not one can be successful in trading the markets.
Caveat emptor: I feel I need to sidetrack for a moment and stress here that trading the markets successfully is far from easy and only a small minority ever make a consistent success of it. Although I did some demo trading and a little live trading, I eventually did not pursue it for several reasons. Who knows, perhaps I will again in the future when I have more time, but I am very clear about the very significant risk that is involved with it and I don’t want any of my comments above to be interpreted as ‘trading is easy’. It is not.
He explores beliefs across three chapters. I found this to be easily the best examination of beliefs I have ever come across and found it helpful in terms of my own inquiry into my own beliefs. Chapter 10 in the book is titled ‘The Impact of Beliefs on Trading’. Below I have cut out some excerpts from that chapter that I found the most interesting. All three chapters are excellent.
THE ORIGINS OF A BELIEF
One of the prominent characteristics of beliefs is that they make what we experience seem self-evident and beyond question.
Many of the beliefs that have the most profound impact on our lives were not even acquired by us as an act of free will. They were instilled by other people.
This introductory piece points to how powerful our beliefs are. They shape our perception of ‘reality’ which we rarely question. Most will have heard the classic line, I think attributed to Aristotle, ‘give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man / woman.’ Clearly many beliefs about our identity are instilled in this tender period when our consciousness is effectively a blank canvas.
How Beliefs Shape Our Lives
1. They manage our perception and interpretation of environmental information in a way that is consistent with what we believe. 2. They create our expectations. Keep in mind that an expectation is a belief projected into some future moment. Since we can’t expect something we don’t know about, we could also say that an expectation is what we know projected into some future moment. 3. Anything we decide to do or any outward expression of behavior will be consistent with what we believe. 4. Finally, our beliefs shape how we feel about the results of our actions.
Another useful section is on how powerful our beliefs are in our day to day lives. Realistically, some beliefs are unavoidable to enable one to function in the world. The line ‘Outward expression of behaviour will be consistent with what we believe’ points to what I referenced at the start of this piece, observing one’s behaviour can be the bread crumb trail back to beliefs we are not consciously aware of.
If beliefs limit our awareness of the information being generated by the physical environment, so that what we perceive is consistent with whatever we believe, then how do we know what the truth is? To answer this question, we have to consider four ideas: 1. The environment can express itself in an infinite combination of ways. When you combine all the forces of nature interacting with everything created by humans, then add to that the forces generated by all the possible ways people can express themselves, the result is a number of possible versions of reality that would surely overwhelm even the most open-minded person. 2. Until we have acquired the ability to perceive every possible way in which the environment can express itself, our beliefs will always represent a limited version of what is possible from the environment’s perspective, making our beliefs a statement about reality, but not necessarily a definitive statement of reality. 3. If you find yourself taking exception to the second statement, then consider that if our beliefs were a true, 100-percent accurate reflection of physical reality, then our expectations would always be fulfilled. If our expectations were always fulfilled, we would be in a perpetual state of satisfaction. How could we feel other than happy, joyful, elated, and with a complete sense of well-being if physical reality was consistently showing up exactly as we expected it to? 4. If you can accept the third statement as being valid, then the corollary is also true. If we are not experiencing satisfaction, then we must be operating out of a belief or beliefs that don’t work very well relative to the environmental conditions. Taking these four ideas into consideration, I can now answer the question, “What is the truth?” The answer is, whatever works. If beliefs impose limitations on what we perceive as possible, and the environment can express itself in an infinite combination of ways, then beliefs can only be true relative to what we are attempting to accomplish at any given moment. In other words, the relative degree of truth inherent in our beliefs can be measured by how useful they are. Each of us has internally generated forces (curiosity, needs, wants, desires, goals, and aspirations) that compel or motivate us to interact with the physical environment. The particular set of steps we take to fulfil the object of our curiosity, needs, wants, desires, goals, or aspirations is a function of what we believe to be true in any given circumstance or situation.
This excerpt talks about the perception of what is true. This is of course what I would call local truth to a person, obviously not Capital T ‘Truth’. One of the main points in this is that truth can be expressed in an infinite number of ways in our experience. It is limitless and although not his intention, by extension, it points to there being no Absolute Truth in the relative domain. As he says ‘our beliefs will always represent a limited version of what is possible from the environment’s perspective, making our beliefs a statement about reality, but not necessarily a definitive statement of reality.’ He also points to the role of wants, needs, desires, etc., that come from our own unique set of beliefs. This in turn drives behaviour and direction. This touches on the free will debate, which I will not expand on here, but clearly, if so many beliefs were installed by others and our environment, without our knowledge, the existence and limits of free will must be considered.
If the external environment can express itself in an infinite combination of ways, then there’s really no limit to the number and types of beliefs available to be acquired about the nature of our existence.
How true. If we look at the world, the land of duality, there are clearly so many belief systems and theories about the nature of our existence, who we are, etc.
My personal theory is that beliefs are not only structured energy, but also energy that seems to be conscious, at least to the extent of having some degree of awareness.
In my experience, beliefs do seem to have some energetic content to them. Somehow they generate action and motion. The process is not clear, but there is clearly something energetic going on. It is interesting for me to consider beliefs as having some degree of awareness, it brings up many interesting possibilities and lines of inquiry.
To be concluded next month in the Inspiration & Irritation section.
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 Rose, Art Ticknor, Bob Fergeson, Tess Hughes, Bob Cergol, Bart Marshall, Shawn Nevins, Anima Pundeer, Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, Paul Constant, & other favorites. (An example here is selected by the TAT member who volunteers to oversee the Instagram account.)
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 publications
Message In A Bottle: Reflections On The Spiritual Path
Message In A Bottle: Reflections On The Spiritual Path relates the ongoing struggles and triumphs of fellow seekers. This collection of insightful essays serves as a testament to resilience, patience, and unwavering determination in the pursuit of inner truth and understanding. It is now available in print and Kindle versions as well as TAT Press’s first audiobook (individual purchase or membership) on Amazon.com.
What is the difference between the wisdom of seekers and the wisdom of “Finders”? This book suggests a surprising alternative to those experts, gurus, teachers and authors who are supposedly the Finders in the fields of spiritual seeking, psychology and healthy, happy and successful living.
We are a culture addicted to success, and honor those whom we consider a success by seeking their expertise, authority and insight as if to guarantee our own success. There is a huge fallacy possible in seeking advice from outside when we avoid or ignore inner guidance, intuition or wisdom that might already be active and available to us. That is just what this book is about: if one could summon their best advice to guide one’s self in the past. But really, that advice may be just as applicable in the present, if I only listen. The wisdom of 14 seekers in the book is spellbinding as they relate wrestling with night-terror, drug experiences, making commitments, “restless psyche syndrome,” the mysteries of the “unseen,” facing “a change somewhere within me now,” to “be still,” committing to solo retreats, giving in to “nostalgia and love” and the big one: pride and the ego-self. I found myself throughout the book “spinning-off” to contemplate many of the same “what if’s” and “had I onlys” along with my own ensuing insights as a result.
There’s a quote in the preface that sums up these first-hand accounts nicely: “If (someone’s) tale ends with ‘I struggled, rested, struggled, rested (and that) feels like I haven’t made a bit of progress but am still struggling’—that would be encouraging to read.” The same person adds that the wisdom of seeking is that we learn by contrast and comparison. I believe people seeking answers to life’s “Big Questions” either through spirituality, psychology, philosophy, religion or academia will find this book eye-opening by both the wisdom and folly described by seekers who experience so many things rarely revealed with which the reader might resonate and contemplate.
Please add your review to the Amazon listing. It makes a difference!
The Mister Rose video: “There’s a system that searches for the Truth, and it’s a process of challenging everything.”
Richard Rose speaks directly to the hearts and minds of his listeners. This special video serves
as an excellent introduction to his thoughts on the spiritual path. Read more
and watch a video trailer.
January TAT Talks online event: January 27, 2024 at 12 PM ET February Virtual Gathering: Saturday, February 24, 2024 March TAT Talks online event: March 23, 2024 at 12 PM ET April Gathering: Friday evening through Sunday noon, April 12-14, 2024 May TAT Talks online event: May 11, 2024 at 12 PM ET June Gathering: Friday evening through Sunday noon, June 14-16, 2024 July TAT Talks online event: July 13, 2024 at 12 PM ET August Gathering: Friday evening through Sunday noon, August 16-18, 2024 September Virtual Gathering: Saturday, September 21, 2024 October TAT Talks online event: October 26, 2024 at 1:30 PM ET ** November Gathering: Friday evening through Sunday noon, November 8-10, 2024**
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 a short clip from a Richard Rose talk c. 1980s:
Local Group News
(Groups with recently updated information are listed first. Click the “read more” link to see a complete listing of local groups. )
Update for the Online Self-Inquiry Book Club: Next we’re planning is to experiment with a combination of Rose/TAT Press/Albigen System books on the first and third Sundays of each month and another potentially heavy-hitting book on the 4th Sunday of each month.
The plan is for Energy Transmutation, Betweenness and Transmission by Richard Rose https://tatfoundation.org/tat-forum-archives/energy.htm November 3: Transmission, p. 1-9 of Energy Transmutation November 17: Tension and Life-Form, p. 9-27 of Energy Transmutation December 1: Energy and Between-ness, p. 27-37 of Energy Transmutation December 15: Transmutation and Transmission, p. 37- 40 of Energy Transmutation January 5: Creation of Mental Energy, p. 41-52 of Energy Transmutation January 19: The Mechanics of Transmission, p. 53-59 of Energy Transmutation February 2: Notes on Tension and The Way, p. 60-68 of Energy Transmutation
And for Happiness and the Art of Being: A layman’s introduction to the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana by Michael James https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Happiness-and-the-Art-of-Being-by-Michael-James.pdf November 24: Introduction of Happiness and the Art of Being December 22: What is Happiness?, Chapter 1 of Happiness and the Art of Being January 26: Who am I?, Chapter 2 of Happiness and the Art of Being February 23: The Nature of Our Mind, Chapter 3 of Happiness and the Art of Being March 23: The Nature of Reality, Chapter 4 of Happiness and the Art of Being April 27: What is True Knowledge?, Chapter 5 of Happiness and the Art of Being May 25: True Knowledge and False Knowledge, Chapter 6 of Happiness and the Art of Being June 22: The Illusion of Time and Space, Chapter 7 of Happiness and the Art of Being July 27: The Science of Consciousness, Chapter 8 of Happiness and the Art of Being June 22: Self-Investigation and Self-Surrender, Chapter 9 of Happiness and the Art of Being July 27: The Practice of the Art of Being, Chapter 10 of Happiness and the Art of Being
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 Mon. 7-9 pm: Univ. of PGH Cathedral of Learning, Main Room (look for red raincoat on the back of a chair!) – Mon, Nov 4, 7-9PM: ”Is God Dead?” – Mon, Nov 18, 7-9PM: “Am I just a Paradigm?” > Online group confrontation and individual contributions every Wed, 8:00 pm ET via Zoom. – Wed, Nov 6: Online: Shawn Pethel Guest. – Wed, Nov 13: Lenny S. will present. – Wed, Nov 20: Shawn Nevins Guest. – Wed, Nov 27: Gloria N. will present. > 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 and on www.pghsig.org.
Update for the Amsterdam, NL Self-Inquiry Group: The group is not holding meetings currently, but email for information.
Update from the Central New Jersey Self Inquiry Group: The Central Jersey Self Inquiry Group welcomes serious participants. We are a small group and meet every other Sunday from 6pm to 7pm eastern time on zoom. We had a retreat together Sunday April 28. Members of the NY City Self Inquiry Group and the Central Jersey Inquiry Group worked together to hold a one-day retreat recently. The retreat was open to the public; one new person came from a Facebook posting, 2 who drove up from Maryland, for a total of 11 people. The retreat was held in person at the Heart of Art Studio in Hamilton NJ. The retreat began with an introduction and answer to “why did I come?” by each participant. Next was a group reading and discussion of Why Bad Things Happen by Joan Tollifson. A member presented the topic “The Buildings that block out the Penny that blots out the Sun”—core wounds, attachment styles and possible methods to heal the wounds, in order to facilitate a deeper inquiry into Being. One member commented “this topic is gold.” A member led a stretching/movement exercise after lunch. The group was given two prompts for a 10-minute walking meditation: True or False: “I’m trying to be something I’m not.” And “What is my dream life? What parts of my life would I like to change or get rid of?” The final exercise of the day, was the reading of a short passage by Bob C., followed by an inquiry writing exercise “I cannot see—what I cannot accept.” ~ For meeting info: facebook.com/groups/429437321740752. Questions?for more details.
Update from the Central Ohio Non-Duality Group: The Central Ohio Non-Duality Group has continued to meet virtually during the pandemic with a group of core members. As a result, the participants now dial in beyond Central Ohio from CA, TX, MD, NC and OH. We will continue to meet virtually on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 to 8:30 PM and welcome new participants. The meetings feature confrontation sessions that are a serious effort to engage in self-inquiry with the help of friends on the path. New participants can begin by first observing the process, if they wish, to understand the purpose and nature of such efforts by like-minded seekers. The Central Ohio Non-Duality Group recently posted the meeting link to its local Meet-Up site inviting new participants. If interest is shown for in-person meetings by participants in the Central Ohio area, in-person meetings will be re-started on a second evening. ~ For further information, contactor.
Update from the Dublin, Ireland self-inquiry group: We meet every second Wednesday on Zoom. We are working using two different approaches. The first is the standard confrontation approach of people giving an update on what was coming for them in the previous period, in terms of their path. The second is the distribution of a piece in advance for reflection. We will continue in this vein for the time being, using either a general update or a piece for reflection shared in advance. ~ Contact for information.
Update from the email self-inquiry groups: The Women’s Online Confrontation (WOC) group consists of weekly reports where participants can include: > What is on your mind? > Any projects that you want to be held accountable for? > Responses to a selected excerpt (in the previous report). > Comments/responses/questions for other participants. A philosophical/spiritual excerpt with two or three questions is included in each report. Based on what we share, participants ask questions to help get clarity about our thinking. The intention is to help each other see our underlying beliefs about who we are. One rule we try to adhere to is not to give advice or solve problems. The number of participants, to make it work efficiently, is between 4 and 7 including the leader. We continue to have two men’s email groups active. Since the beginning of the year, four participants have left and one other participant has returned. The weekly reports function like slow-motion self-inquiry confrontation meetings, which has its pros and cons. We alternate by asking each other questions one week then answering them the following week. Participants provide brief updates of highlights from the previous week and optional updates on progress toward objectives that they use the reports for accountability on. Both the women’s and the men’s email groups welcome serious participants. ~ Contact or for more information.
Update from the Gainesville, FL self-inquiry group: We continue to meet at the Alachua County main library on Saturdays from 2 to 4 PM. We typically schedule meetings for alternate Saturdays with an occasional extra week between meetings due to holidays or the TAT meeting schedule and our group’s associated retreats. We talk with newcomers about the objective of the group as a forum to stimulate the progress of self-inquirers, we ask them what their most heartfelt life-objective is, and then we usually listen to each volunteer who wants to talk and then be questioned about what they’ve said. ~ Email or for more information.
Update from the GMT Support Group for Seekers: We meet every Sunday gmt 18.30, live on Google Meet. Rapport and confrontation, talk and exchange. Someone mostly brings a theme, like a text, poem or whatever to set the mood. Then 10 minutes of silent rapport after which everyone gets their turn on the “hot seat” for 10-15 minutes—the group listens to what the person has to say about the theme then asks friendly questions—depending on how many participants we are. The questioning is aimed at providing material for self-inquiry. There have been sessions in which we just chatted, but that is more the exception. ~ Contact.
Update from the Greensburg, PA self-inquiry group: My Greensburg SIG group is currently in hiatus. I would like to have meetings in person again sometime in the future. But in the meantime, if you have any inquiries, or have an interest in helping me set up local meetings to meet again in person, you can email me at.
An update from the self-inquiry group in Houston, TX: We have merged our Zoom meetings with the Monday Night Confrontation group, which meets at 7:30 pm EST / 6:30 pm CST. ~ Contact for more information.
“Ignoramuses Anonymous” blog Ignoramuses Anonymous is for seekers to explore questions together…a fellowship of seekers for whom ignorance of the absolute truth had become a major problem. It started as a blog for Pittsburgh PSI meeting members back in 2009. Welcoming discussion on the path.
Ig Anon looks inactive again. The idea is to have a kind of seeker’s blog to process our thinking out loud and hopefully also help seekers new to group work see what we’re thinking about and if it resonates. My feeling is shorter posts in a range of 100-300 words are easier to put together and probably to read than recent 1000-word posts; however, there are no rules about it. WordPress.com free tier is starting to look like Times Square with all its ads. I think the blog needs to be hosted somewhere to really restart it, and will try first at Firstknowthyself.org. Once it’s moved, then it would be great to see if it can be useful again! See this post from a Four-day isolation retreat at TAT Center, with photos and YouTube clips.
Update from the Lynchburg, VA self-inquiry group: We have been meeting on Thursday evenings from 7pm—8:30pm, online, via zoom. Norio Kushi, Paul Rezendes, and Bob Harwood are consistent guests. We’ve also had some other interesting characters show up from time to time. Topics come from readings or questions brought up by our members. These are sent out, along with the zoom invitation each week. Recently we posted some “considerations” for joining our group: ** Try to frame your comments as questions to Norio, Paul, or Bob. Draw these questions from you own experience rather than generalities. Maintain attention and discussion on the question rather than philosophical musings. ** Question other participants, in the spirit of group-assisted self inquiry, but without attempting to lead them to any particular conclusion or bring attention to yourself. **Allow for and attend to the silence and the space that is always present. When you aren’t speaking, see that as your role—to hold that space. **Question, in yourself, the use of personal story-telling and quoting others—though sometimes both are helpful and appropriate. **Consider the way in which you are listening. Does it have a quality of acquisitiveness or openness? **Continue to question your own intention for coming to this meeting and let that guide any comments/questions/discussion. ~ Please contact if you’re interested in being on the email list.
Update from the Monday Night Confrontation Group: The Monday Night Confrontation (MNC) online meeting is going strong with a core group of participants and room for a few more. Meetings are at 7:30 pm EST / 6:30 pm CST and use the Zoom video conference platform. The group practices confrontation/self-inquiry in a spirit of helpfulness with the goal of finding answers from within. If you are interested in joining or would like more information, email.
Update from the New York City self-inquiry group: The NYC Self Inquiry Group is on indefinite hiatus. For questions about self-inquiry in New York City, contact.
Update for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area self-inquiry: We meet at the Chapel Hill Public Library on alternate Saturdays from 1:00 to 2:30 PM, in meeting room D. ~ Email with any questions.
Update from the Raleigh, NC Triangle Inquiry Group: We continue to meet on the first and third Tuesday of the month via Zoom. We usually have four to eight participants and new members are welcome. Except for a brief hiatus, we’ve been meeting regularly since the late 1990’s. Our main focus is on looking at beliefs that can get us stuck in habitual ways of thinking which can limit the possibility of seeing the true nature of things. Although I act as a sort of MC in our meetings, there’s no teacher or group leader and we all try to help each other in the search for the Real. ~ Email for more details.
Update from the San Francisco Bay area self-inquiry group: Twice-a-month meetings alternate between in-person and virtual formats. Our first in-person meeting had six attendees. Each meeting, we explore a new chapter of the Workbook of the Self, a guided set of 24 exercises designed to catalyze a spiritual realization by questioning our core beliefs. The meetings are open to anyone within driving distance of the San Francisco Bay area. ~ Email for information about upcoming meetings and events.
DC Area Self-Knowledge and Nonduality: Every week, we introduce a different philosophical or spiritual topic and split the time among all participants using question based self-inquiry. We meet at 6pm on Mondays @ the Connie Morella Library in Bethesda, a few minutes walk from the Bethesda Metro on the Red Line. For more info or to contact us, visit our Meetup 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,
11 NEW audio recordings of selected sessions from 2008-2023 in-person meetings and virtual gatherings,
Resources and ideas for those planning a group spiritual retreats,
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.
Latest recordings:
June 2023 TAT Meeting: The Search for Self-Definition: What’s Taking So Long?
September 2023 TAT Virtual Event: Pretty Lies or Ugly Truths.
October 2023 TAT Talk: Anima Pundeer.
November 2023 TAT Meeting: Knowing by Identity.
Please us if you have questions. (Look here for info on TAT membership.)
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:
“You don’t know anything until you know Everything….”
Mister Rose is an intimate look at a West Virginia native many people called a Zen Master because of the depth of his wisdom and the spiritual system he conveyed to his students. Profound and profane, Richard Rose was not the kind of man most people picture when they think of mystics or spiritual teachers. Yet, he was the truest of teachers, one who had “been there,” one who had the cataclysmic experience of spiritual enlightenment.
Filmed in the spring of 1991, the extraordinary documentary follows Mr. Rose from a radio interview, to a university lecture and back to his farm, as he talks about his experience, his philosophy and the details of his life.
Whether you find him charming or offensive, fatherly or fearsome, you will not forget him, and never again will you think about yourself, reality, or life after death in quite the same way.
2012 April TAT Meeting – Remembering Your True Desire
Includes all the speakers from the April 2012 TAT meeting: Art Ticknor, Bob Fergeson, Shawn Nevins and Heather Saunders.
1) Remembering Your True Desire … and Acting on It, by Art Ticknor Spiritual action is like diving for the Pearl beyond Price. What do you do when you don’t know what to do or how to do it? An informal discussion centered around the question: “What prevents effective spiritual action?”
2) Swimming in the Inner Ocean: Trips to the Beach, by Bob Fergeson A discussion of the varied ways we can use in order to hear the voice of our inner ocean, the heart of our true desires.
3) A Wider and Wilder Vision, by Shawn Nevins Notes on assumptions, beliefs, and perspectives that bind and free us.
4) Make Your Whole Life a Prayer, by Heather Saunders An intriguing look into a feeling-oriented approach to life.
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
The father of a school boy in New York City wrote to the boy’s teacher a letter of complaint. Possibly he welcomed the advent of prohibition—possibly not! Anyhow, the letter was as follows:
Sir: Will you please for the future give my boy some eesier somes to do at nites. This is what he brought home to me three nites ago. If fore gallins of bere will fill thirty to pint bottles, how many pint and half bottles will nine gallins fill? Well, we tried and could make nothing of it all, and my boy cried and said he wouldn’t go back to school without doing it. So, I had to go and buy a nine gallin’ keg of bere, which I could ill afford to do, and then we went and borrowed a lot of wine and brandy bottles, beside a few we had by us. Well we emptied the keg into the bottles, and there was nineteen, and my boy put that down for an answer. I don’t know whether it is rite or not, as we spilt some in doing it.
P.S.—Please let the next one be water as I am not able to buy any more bere.
~ Thanks to Dan G. The cartoon by J.C. Duffy is widely spread on the web, and a poster of it is available from fineartamerica.
Inspiration & Irritation
Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction
What I Found Questions and Answers From a Finder Questionnaire
1. What did you find?
I became the Absolute, One Awareness, Heart, Love, Reality, Truth—which permanently resolved a profound spiritual heartache. I found an amazing confluence of nothing and everything; a metaphorical death and rebirth.
2. What is your general advice to seekers?
Carve time out of your schedule every day for your spiritual path. Persist in using every tool at your disposal. Use those tools with discernment and intuition to retraverse your individual ray of awareness back to your source. Use a combination of meditation and self-inquiry to go within. Respect your mind and body as powerful tools but understand their limitations. Find spiritual friends you genuinely want to help and who are capable of helping you. Work with a trusted spiritual teacher who prioritizes your search over money, power, sex, or control—but doubt everything he or she says until you’ve proven it for yourself, and never cede your own authority. Be honest with yourself. Have faith in your ability to realize the Absolute. Find ways to nurture your love of Truth!
3. Answer any or all of the following that you feel are relevant. What are your thoughts/feelings about:
a) Abiding and non-abiding awakening (i.e., knowledge of the Self/Truth vs. abiding as the Self/Truth)
It doesn’t matter whether Realized individuals think/feel they are abiding or not. Our fundamental source never abandons us!
b) Are “Who (or what are you), whence (where did you come from), and whither (where are you going)?” fundamental questions for a seeker?
Well, these questions might serve as koans of sorts, but they weren’t top of mind for me as a seeker. Realization answers all of them. The eternality of what we truly are definitively answers all of the questions that matter about life.
c) Bliss
Merriam-Webster dictionary: bliss (noun)
complete happiness
paradise, heaven
I haven’t found it, except in marriage. 😉
d) Doing vs. not doing
I have a strong conviction that determination and application of energy are necessary to vastly improve the odds of Realization. I feel that it is rare for someone to drift into it….
The moment of Enlightenment can be earth-shattering. A life of Enlightenment can be quite ordinary.
f) Hypnosis (influencing another person mind-to-mind)
Formal hypnosis is worth a try, as it may plant a seed. Requirements for engaging in hypnosis: (1) a willingness to participate, i.e., no pressure, promises, or coercion from the hypnotist, (2) a trusted teacher who is versed in hypnosis, and (3) one or more witnesses during the hypnosis who have your best interest at heart.
With regard to mind-to-mind influence, see my responses below on Rapport and Transmission.
g) Identity
After Realization, you know what your truly are and what you’re not. This isn’t to say that what you’re not—your small “s” self—isn’t important or should be discarded. Although Realization tends to shave off the rough edges of your old identity, much of it remains but takes a back seat to your true identity.
h) Individual consciousness of awareness
Individual consciousness of awareness is the key to Realization. It is the vantage point from which a seeker watches the mind. As a seeker, it manifests as a semi-translucent experience of Absolute Awareness. Ultimately, a finder transcends both the mind and individualized awareness to become the Absolute.
i) Meditation
Meditation was an extremely important component of my spiritual path. I recommend that seekers research the various meditative approaches, learn from trusted resources and teachers, and make it into a personalized approach that proves itself along the way. Meditation can be an amazing adventure within and certainly a fantastic way to Know Thyself!
j) No-self
At the moment of Enlightenment, a seeker dissolves into nothingness, and small “s” self disappears. I do not live a life of no-self. In fact, surprisingly over time, a profound aversion to self has evolved into a life of more compassion, more appreciation of what is bestowed, and a lot more humor—all experienced by small “s” self!
k) No-thought
I do not advise going to war with thought in an attempt at thought annihilation. In fact, thought is a means of hammering out solutions to problems, including spiritual dilemmas. Sometimes, intense thought sets the stage for intuitive insights and epiphanies about ourself and the world.
l) Rapport (contacting another person mind-to-mind)
Aha, my favorite topic! From a spiritual standpoint, rapport allows fellow seekers to know each other. It indicates a commonality that connects all of us in the mind dimension. Rapport sittings with others can provide an atmosphere where the energy or Holy Spirit, as the Quakers say, can magnify into a “one-mind state” wherein a wordless conveyance of being can transpire. I speculate that a Realized person can—for lack of better words—magnify the depth and the electricity of the rapport. Holding the head on dead center, allowing nothing to pervade the mind, allowing the false “you” to fade away or disappear—however you wish to describe it—somehow this state affects the atmosphere. There’s a lot to explore here!
m) Reality
Reality is not what you think it is, but rather, a living realization of what you truly are: an eternal, boundless awareness. Without trying to add to the confusion…a Realized person reaches an apex of dissolving into our source while also realizing that source contains the relative in its entirety. On a practical level, seekers can maintain their vulnerability to Realization by finding creative ways to fuel inspiration and their love of Reality.
n) Self-Realization (peeling away fabricated layers of one’s own personality to understand the true self and hence the true nature of reality)
There are many spiritual paths to Enlightenment. Watching the mind to better understand ourself is a more sure-footed approach. By becoming more adept at watching, we do indeed peel away layers of our small “s” self and eventually back into our source, i.e., we retraverse the ray of creation. This process of watching takes on its own gravity, around which our life revolves.
o) Silence
An incredible silence is between all things manifest. A small taste of this is always present between thoughts, and a stronger taste is often present during poignant moments in life. On a practical level, it seems highly beneficial to carve time out of each day to allow for silence. Also, being out in nature tends to set the stage for magical moments of silence.
p) Tension
Spiritual tension can stop the mind, which might afford the seeker a glimpse of his or her source. We shouldn’t artificially go looking for tension by abandoning a job or our relationships, but instead create it by seeking for the sake of seeking. At some point on the spiritual path, we back ourselves into a corner (i.e., Richard Rose’s reverse vector), where awareness struggles to become self-aware with immense frustration. For some, it’s a battle that ends in the death of the mind and a dissolution into our source.
q) Transmission
Those who are Realized have directly experienced a beingness that has no boundaries. I do not believe it is possible to transfer this state of understanding from the teacher to the student. However, rather than transferring an awareness that is already the True Nature of each person, transmission removes the seeker’s last shred of conviction that he or she is the holder of a personal awareness. A prelude or doorway may be established by conveying the mood of the “larger mind’s” Realization. For those whose resistance to Realization is nearly burned out, direct-mind contact with someone who holds a state of “nothing else but nothing” may remove the final conviction of owning or powering a personal awareness. In short, the seeker’s conviction of a personal awareness surviving death is removed. Perhaps it is akin to pushing someone over with a feather’s touch. Transmission is an area that is ripe for exploration…
r) Truth
In life, there is relative small “t” truth. We should always be truthful with ourself (“This above all: to thine own self be true”). And we should use discernment on when to be truthful with others, which is most of the time.
We should always keep our “bullshit meter” tuned for maximum sensitivity. Everyone—corporations, government, science, religion, the news media—are all trying to sell us something. We would be wise to maintain a healthy skepticism when trying to distinguish relative truth from the bullshit.
And there is also capital “T” Truth (see “Reality” above).
s) What can we know for sure: What we are? What we aren’t? Other?
Almost all of our beliefs are based on a faulty mind. An authentic Realized person knows his or her true identity, but otherwise, we (humanity) know almost nothing for sure. That said, I have known Realized people who feel they are above succumbing to erroneous beliefs but in fact are just as vulnerable as others. A fantastic antidote to our beliefs is maintaining healthy skepticism along with a dose of humility.
t) What is your certainty based on?
[No response.]
u) What prevents a seeker from knowing the truth?
What prevents most seekers from Realization is the deep-seated belief that our small “s” self is all there is. When this is fully seen through, the finder is usually amazed at just how thin the veil truly is!
v) “You are aware prior to birth and aware after you die, so you begin with awareness, but you are not conscious of awareness.” ~ Richard Rose, The Direct-Mind Experience
When seekers step outside the mind for a little while, and watch from the perspective of awareness, they have taken a significant leap within. Adroit and determined seekers may realize they are aware of awareness. And the rare seeker ultimately traces the ray of awareness back to its source and dissolves therein.
w) Other comments:
Never forget to laugh at yourself and laugh with others. Laughter is the sacred elixir of life. 😊
Longing to know Truth I begin to watch Putting everything in the view – Body, senses, mind, thought, etc. And with dogged determination Keep my attention at all times. Not off in thought, But listening within, Without an expectation. What else is there? Except intuition may arise. Enjoy the mystery Of what is really watching, And knowing. Retreating from all else.
~ Thanks to Rex H., who wrote: “A little poem came to me. It’s not much but expresses a sum-up of what I’ve learned. ” Image by andrewsbird from Pixabay.
Virtual Podcast?
Google’s NotebookLM is a viral application that takes any source document and turns it into a realistic sounding “deep dive” podcast. The AI “hosts” are instructed to be highly excited about every subject.
In the case below, it’s run on John Kent’s thesis on Richard Rose’s Albigen System: Richard Rose’s Psychology of the Observer. The program manages to extract some key points on Jacob’s Ladder and energy transmutation and tries to explain them using analogies that actually could be helpful:
That said, it also seems off in a few places. Maybe it’s like podcast hosts who read the document once, thought about it in the context of other spiritual systems, but never had the thought to apply it to themselves. No matter how fascinating they find Psychology of the Observer.
The thought comes to mind, normally it could help to confront them on this blind spot… But of course, automatons can’t turn and look at a truth, because they have no first-person point of view to look with.
Incidentally, when someone tried trolling NotebookLM’s virtual “podcasters” with info they’re unreal, an artificial identity crisis ensued:
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 TAT Forum, thanks to Dan G., is:
What are your thoughts/feelings about the difference between commitment and intention?
Responses follow:
From Patrick K:
I feel intention and commitment are poles apart qualitatively. Commitment comes from the gut whereas intention comes from the head. Hold an intention long enough in the head though, and it should eventually filter down to the gut, where actions will proceed therefrom. The first time my ears pricked up regarding commitment was during reading the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. He called it “doggedness”. Like him or loath him, which I have come to find out that many white South Africans actually really do detest him, his lived experience was a dogged one for the liberation of black people in Africa. Your ears will prick up when you listen to someone speaking with authority, it’s their lived experience. Tess Hughes mentioned before that you “love what you put your attention on”. And this is key, and a simple way to tap into what you are really committed to. When I have spare time and am sitting down alone, the first thing that comes to mind is what I am committed to the most. I am committed to what moves me in my spare time, the time where I choose to do something for me. I would love to say here that “looking within” is my top priority, but I do notice other contenders for my attention. I tend to justify the other contenders by telling myself that all my other desires are parts of me that require tuning up, for example focusing on food/diet, organising the household, etc.
As a final note, I feel Rose’s Jacob’s Ladder is a great diagram to meditate upon also, to get a handle on the psychology of where commitment lies. Here is just my interpretation, which may be bogus, but I will share in any event. He outlines three realms, body, mind and essence. I feel he is pointing to the going within process that reaches all the way up to the Absolute. It seems to me like a primitive/visceral drive for ultimate survival. If you believe that you are the body, you will be driven/committed to bodily survival. Commitment to the spiritual path to me means trying to determine what it is the best use of my spare time. Maybe my intentions should keep that in mind, what should I really commit my spare time to? How do I deal effectively with imposters that show up and threaten to derail my desire to reach the top of Rose’s diagram? It is so easy to get spirited away on some other tangent, some other desire, and I have seen how those other desires can nudge out my main desire, and then I see that my attention is turning more toward that other desire. It is certainly a battle for attention/energy/focus.
From Dan McLaughlin:
Commitment points at convictions existent. It’s inherent to existence. Its value in self inquiry is in its uncovering and admission. For those who admit identity is a question. It self refines. It’s lived as sincerity.
Intention points at convictions that ought to be. Its value is social currency. It’s inherent to your person. Its value in self inquiry is in its uncovering and admission. For those who admit superiority is a desire and relative status is a question. It other refines. It’s lived as believability.
Commitment reflects the best working answer to “the word written on your heart,” which is a question not an answer. Intention reflects the best compensatory reaction we have to “the word rammed down your throat, or softly whispered in your ear,” which is an answer not a question.
Commitment is an unavoidable reaction to what is most loved now. Intention is a readily avoidable response to what isn’t.
Commitment lives its conviction having admitted desire. Intention is what’s left for the other things.
Commitment is a clear today while intention is an ambiguous tomorrow.
Commitment is an admission and intention is an insistence.
Commitment dances with recognition while intention plays hide and seek with forgetting.
From Dan G:
If a victim of an accident gets pinned underneath a vehicle, the bystanders who see the person trapped have three choices: 1. Turn their head away from the thought of lifting the vehicle. That might be, “I’ll call for emergency support and let the trapped person know help is on the way.” 2. Having an intention. It might be, “I acknowledge that I’d like to move that car and will try at least a little bit.” 3. Setting a commitment to free them. e.g., “This vehicle needs to get off them for them to survive, so I’m going to call on whatever reserves I forgot I had to lift this thing and free this person, and it’s OK if some other intentions fail.”
Commitment is one of the few levers the mind has to change anything on the level it can affect change. The commitment to look within until all is seen and no stone is left unturned seems impossible, but I must remember that I don’t know all the reserves available.
Does the grace of the forgotten reserves come from the commitment, or does the commitment come from forgotten grace? In the example of the bystanders lifting the car, the commitment comes from intention and turning from intentions—from deciding among conflicting intentions, which may require surrender.
From Tyler Matthew:
From the absolute perspective, the Truth is completely non-conceptual. Manifest reality is created by Truth filtering through concepts. So the difference between “commitment” and “intention” will become for you however you choose to define each term. And you will actually experience that distinction. In other words, there is no absolute difference other than the difference you give to the words.
From a more relative (and perhaps helpful) perspective, “commitment” has always felt to me to be forward orientated. For instance, if a person is “committed” and keeps working at it, it may be believed that they can arrive at some point in the future at a million dollars, the perfect career, a healthy relationship, or enlightenment. But if you care to notice, nothing ever happens in the future. In fact, you have never made it to the future. You are forever bound to the eternal now. Focusing your time, energy, and power on achieving something in the future will keep your attention on just that: an imaginary future.
Intention, for me, is centered in the now. For instance, you can have the intention to look at your beliefs, or to feel your feelings, or to surrender to the Guru, or to even realize the Truth. But there isn’t the same sense of kicking the can down the road and hoping it happens at some future point. The intention is the activity and the activity is the intention; both of which are only powered in this Now moment. Can you feel that? There is an energetic resonance you might be able to pick up on. So my recommendation is to forget commitment and harness the power of intention. But to finish where we started, this relative distinction I am making is not gospel Truth, it is just how I define and experience the distinction.
From Ram S:
I don’t have anything to say on that question but that said it’s an excellent question and very thought provoking. That actually makes me realize that I’m not committed at all.
From lennys3cents:
Intention is a wish… effort is required. a True Commitment unfolds effortlessly in front of us.
From Rob tH:
We are, in a way, always driven by intention. I can see myself making good intentions about the right food, the amount of sleep, a running method, a meditation practice, all the time. I think the ‘problem’ of the mind is making too many ‘good’ intentions. And it is not really a problem, except when you really expect that a good intention might lead somewhere. Intentions are the driving force of the mind imo. It is what keeps (the) us going all the time. Mostly based on a feeling that things are wrong or could be better. Rarely thought over thoroughly. With attention span limited, all energy applied is spread in so many directions.
Commitment is when you set yourself to a more focused goal and stick to it until it is completed. When an Intention is thus molded into a commitment, energy is applied more focused, and lesser intentions or distractions are easily put aside. You train your mind some kind of discipline. With attention focused on the outside world, you get worldly results. When committed and focused attention is directed to self inquiry/self knowledge you can get ‘results’ there. In my view, the automatic commitment comes from a burning desire. It outshines all other and is followed without question. Like falling in love. In absence of this fire, more discipline is required, and more mind is seen.
From Andrew S:
I think it’s easier to fake/imagine an intention. Whereas a commitment will be proven to be true through action. If you question someone’s intention it can be hard to find the truth, especially if they are charismatic or you have some affection for them. If you’re questioning your own intentions it can also be tricky; people can lie to you and you can lie to yourself. A commitment is more black and white, you’re either doing what you committed to or not. Easy to argue what your intentions were to save face or present yourself in a better light after a conflict. Less so when you fall short on a commitment. Commitments are supported by fact whereas intentions have to be assumed or explained.
From NV:
A commitment, to me, seems like an umbrella term, something to which you have an overarching dedication. An intention sounds like an orientation of will towards a smaller goal that may fit in with the overall commitment. For example, if I make a commitment towards losing 15 pounds, I will need to set multiple intentions of what, when and how much to eat, what to avoid, and reset my intentions based on how it goes or new information and my changing circumstances. I can also fall off the wagon with intention and find myself in a place where I have to begin again by remembering my commitment.
From Bob Cergol:
Intentions are wishes. Commitments are promises. Why else would there be this cliché?: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or that other cliché? Don’t make promises you cannot keep or do not intend to keep? These suggest that promises do involve intention, at least a sincere and honest promise does—the wish to keep the promise! But to quote yet another cliché, wishing something doesn’t make it so!
Wishes are born of desire and are as fickle and fleeting. Promises are connected to a wish, but a promise requires a plan of action relevant to the promise, acting on that plan to fulfill the promise, reviewing those actions for failure or success, and perhaps most importantly, a visible and recurring reminder of the promise made. Absent these four things, a promise becomes nothing more than a fickle, fleeting wish.
From Jonathan P:
Almost always I feel that both arise by my will, that I “own and do” them. Just occasionally I see that they are coming up from a programmed source not of my doing.
Intentions are more evanescent; arising intermittently. Like when I sit to meditate and an intended wish to pray for guidance arises. Sure it’s become more habitual, but aren’t all actions actually habitual, rote, programmed? They seem nourished by repeated periods of energy conservation, meditating, conscious labor, mulling the what is this and who sees, sometimes just deeply relaxing.
I’m already committed (at least in the funny farm of this life!) to the belief that I-am-embodied, this body-I-am, as the underpinning of me here. It rules the arising of all mental events, always acting to seek pleasure and to spare this I-presence from destruction when the body drops. So maybe a strong countervailing force of commitment, a yearning, is needed that would persistently take over the present “I.” To be haunted, obsessed, to be truly earnest to see through that there is no essential I-feeling-monkey guiding this body-elephant to its favorite mud wallow or the eventual marble orchard. I sure can’t cause it to arise.
From Art Ticknor:
When I saw, at age 33 or 34, what I really wanted most from life, that created the most solid commitment of my life—different from the obligations and responsibilities that life had provided, especially the New-Year’s commitments to do or not do things.
I found, surprisingly, that the other responsibilities and obligations then took care of themselves.
These days when I see a habit pattern I’d like to break or one I’d like to see develop, I just park that desire so it resides in the background and then wait for the desired action/reaction to establish itself.
I do make specific action commitments to myself and others, which usually occur, but there’s always some flexibility about timing and undefined contingencies.
From Douglas W:
My approach was often quite heart centered where commitment and intention melded together into a yearning for what was true.
From Anton L:
Commitment evokes for me “this is going to hurt (at least a little bit)”—there is a battle involved. Its measurable, has edges, I know if commitment was made or not. Commitment includes some level of public announcement, which includes the fear of possible failure.
A TAT teacher speaks of commitment as a promise made to oneself, which is made under the condition of clear seeing as to what is wanted in life. A clear seeing or knowing what is wanted, without any holdouts or reservations. I appreciate this pointer intellectually; however, lived experience with bigger commitments in life feels like a steeling of myself to make a goal.
Intention feels softer; we are asked to make intentions for ourselves at a weekly mindfulness class, or similarly at some yoga sessions. These intentions may be remembered during the class (or not). Years ago I heard a speaker at TAT explain “effortless meditation,” in which it was expected that the mind would forget its intention (to pay attention), and then remember the intention, over and over again.
From Paul Constant:
Intention is the idea, the end-goal. Before we set things in motion, we first formulate our intention, and then refine it as we go along. Commitment supports the idea through determined action that coalesces around it.
If you want a maximum spiritual realization in this lifetime, verbalize and/or write down your intention by expressing your next step(s). And then make a commitment through your actions. As you develop increased clarity and momentum, you will refine and correct your intentions and commitments. In time, your life will take on a strong gravity around them. Untold serendipities will arise at the right time in support of your commitment, and untold challenges will test you. This is a powerful formula for realizing your Eternal Source!
From Lena S:
Commitments never motivated me much; they always seemed too easily made, and conveniently forgotten—as everyone expected. I always thought death or hopelessness or some ominous threat could push me into committing to a way out of danger, but could never remember having been compelled by any powerful enough negative force. It always seemed that in whatever situation, I would only muster determination in order to survive or persist. Until one day when I would swear I felt as if I had been committed, as if I had no choice in the matter, as if within a commitment of unknown origin, was where I now found myself and belonged.
Intention for me is both will and direction—it is both determination and a direction in which I face. I believe that all experiences point in either an up or down direction and that determination is to scrutinize between the two and move with one and ignore or resist the other. My spiritual life has taken an awfully circuitous route over the years, but now not due it seems, to anything that I can take credit for, finally I am committed with an intention.
From Anima Pundeer:
Commitment—originating from your prime desire or fear comes naturally and is not a burden. It actually involves an inner disposition to your goal, a decision made with seriousness, and perseverance toward its completion.
Intention directs your attention to what you plan to achieve at the end of your task. It is what lies under your plan of action. It is the ‘why’ behind what you are doing.
An example would be: I make a commitment to finding a permanent end to my fear of oblivion/fear of death / inner angst and find eternal happiness. I intend to practice meditation every day for 20 minutes, during which I’ll try to keep my attention away from distracting, laundry-list thoughts so that there is space for insights to come that are in alignment with my commitment.
Lyrics for the song “The Rose” impressed me, in that it seemed aloft and light but something was incomplete as if in the real world (like most love songs) I was left a little unconvinced. I only realized this as I started reading her article as to how the song and lyrics came about. The article started with Amanda McBroom recalling the words to a song she heard on the radio “Your love is like a razor. My heart is just a scar” and then it occurred to me that she had set herself on the task to counter that very sentiment with demonstrating it’s tender opposite, joy mixed with melancholy: the ups and downs of warm hugs and kisses and Summer Breeze, as it unfolds in time like the petals of a Rose. But the pain, the angst, the gut-feeling of the razor-like opposite nature was missing and that box-of-candy-you’ll-never-know-which-you’ll-get-like nature of love was not convincing to me, it lacked the gut- and heart-levels of passion that real life love entails: after the candy, there is the child-birthing, dirty diapers, maddening work schedules, illness, maybe even infidelity, and eventually death that test and temper and impassion an enduring and real love of a different dimension. I have come to appreciate this passion exemplified in a picture in the Catholic religion that I saw repeatedly in my youth, that of an injured bleeding heart in flames of love. Maybe like a lot of things in life, one needs to witness in full circle the extremes and the opposites of any one experience in order to understand it with more than an immediate and single emotion. Maybe, is it at all possible to experience all emotions simultaneously, and what would it mean by some ‘distance’ required from which that could all be taken in?
From Don A. regarding Lovable? in the October TAT Forum:
“Lovable?: Is this your life?” or “D.E. Harding & the Hamster Wheel”
We were enticed to enter a short Reddit flick by a cute hamster holding a bunch of flowers, but the video behind it is nothing more than a hamster running tirelessly on a hamster wheel apparently for hours at a time. In the fifty-odd comments that followed that episode, I instinctively searched for at least one redeeming existential interpretation by someone in the “you-tube” peanut gallery. I could find none noting the similarity of their own life’s habit or addiction patterns to the mindlessly repetitive cycle pursued by the rat on the wheel. But instead, I sensed a nervous distance created by the observations between a low-life rodent and themselves, even as in real life they too exhibited similar frighteningly mindless activities.
That is when it dawned on me, the distance that I place between the world experienced and me, the experiencer. In order for me to exist as an experiencer, I must be apart from that which is experienced, also described as subject-object. In fact, I as subject could not exist without there being objects separate from me—and as if at some “safe” distance. The existential fear is that of the distance suddenly collapsing, that which is experienced comes home to merge with no distinction from the experiencer. Douglas Harding described one experiment regarding this relativity with which until recently, I have labored. Art Ticknor describes his revelation when he successfully switched his paradigm to the one suggested by Harding of the world being inside and “me” outside. As I pursued this, I saw all the world as an experience of the five, six or however many senses we have, and that those experiences are all “inside.” There is nothing outside in any of my experiences. The Eiffel Tower is only a concept, the hamster I had when young is a memory of an experience—but both as well as all experiences are still inside the boundaries of a world, as if according to Harding, positioned within my mentality placed here upon my shoulders, never seen but experienced “right here.” And nowhere else. That scenario also places all other individuals (see how that word just separated them from me) inside and not separate as objects. But what happens to the subject, the me who used to inhabit this space? This is where for me it gets dicey: either I am all that is experienced, or I am still separate but not residing “in there” but elsewhere—perhaps even outside to where I really never ventured? Playing with Harding’s games of relativity poses a dilemma for me in that it solves to some degree the relationship of subject-object but in which I cannot conclude the whereabouts or placement of the subject, the me, I, or observer. Unless I jump to conclusions such as there is no difference between object and subject, or “All is One,” or that everything is on a screen and I am the screen, or that I “observe” from a seat in the theater. . . but descriptions don’t fit and these all leave me cold. Mr. Ticknor may have lost his “I,” but for me, I still looks for itself. My insight from the whole experiment is that whatever I identify with is nothing more than maintaining that gap between what I am and what I am not, a continuing ongoing attempt to convince myself I am what I am not. And hope that there has got be more than what appears here.
Next Month
The Reader Commentary question for the December TAT Forum, thanks to Jonathan P., is:
How do you or could you practically accumulate energy for the search?
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: 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?
Photo of Rishikesh on the Ganges thanks to Anima Pundeer.
Rishikesh is a city in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand, in the Himalayan foothills beside the Ganges River. The river is considered holy, and the city is renowned as a center for studying yoga and meditation. ~ Wikipedia
We like hearing from you! Please email your comments, suggestions, inquiries, and submissions.
Sign up for notices of TAT’s four annual events and free monthly Forums by email on our contact page.
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.
Psychology of Zen: Science of Knowing Transcript of a public talk at Ohio State University in 1977 (part 4 of 5) Continued from October 2024; indented paragraphs indicate where Rose was reading from notes.
Mind dimension
And of course we have a faculty in the mind that the anterior observer is capable of. The mind behind the umpire is able to pick up on the mind level, or the mind dimension: things in the mind dimension, for instance what we call telepathy. Where you don’t have to see something or read a book, or read a letter—somebody may project something into your head.
When one of the Roman emperors was killed, Apollonius of Tyana was supposed to have been walking down the street, and he stopped and said, “Good, stab him again.”67,68 He was witnessing an assassination. And we’ve heard these accounts frequently, where a person would actually at the moment witness something going on someplace else. This is because he’s able to pick up—not through his eyeballs, through his senses, but directly mind-to-mind. There are numerous instances of this. And where are they mentioned and explained in modern psychology?
Okay, now there’s a dimension behind this yet. There’s a mind behind this, and you’ll know it by its predictability, once you are able to tap it. That behind the physical mind, or what I call the manifested mind, there’s an anterior mind that we might even say communicates with God, or communicates with ultimate mentality: unmentionable, indescribable mentality.
And from it we get such revelations as Paul got when was knocked off the horse.69, 70 There was no logician or philosopher who came out there and said, “Now Paul, let me prove to you that you’ve been doing wrong; you’ve been voting on the wrong side of the ticket.” No, it was boom and he knew. That’s all there was to it. And this can only come about by some traumatic act that would divorce him from all previous forms of thinking, so he would be able to know beyond the interference of all this process thinking. You can’t think too much when you’re thinking about processes. But this is the basis of direct-mind communication.
Incidentally, when you heard Mr. Khourey talk about the mental confrontation, the workshops that they’re getting ready to do,71 this is one of the end results: The more you work with each other on this, the more you’ll be able to communicate directly. Lots of times we have sat in a circle and we’d be able to pick up what a person is thinking. One person will say, “You’re thinking this.” And then you become adept at that just by allowing yourself to do it. Don’t try, just allow yourself to do it and you can do it more frequently.
Now we’re running late on this, it’s been over an hour and a half, so if there are any questions I can answer or if there’s anything you’d like for me to explain….
Q. They said Rasputin72 could manipulate … do you think what they say about him is true?
R. Well, I don’t know. He was a healer, and of course, the impression I get about all healers who are able to use mental energy to heal physical bodies is that it’s a debasement of energy. But I don’t doubt that he was able to do this. Some of you may be acquainted with Norbu Chen, a fellow in Texas. It was written up in the Fate Magazine a while back.73, 74 He was supposed to have been working for one of the Governors of Kentucky in an underground capacity and he had to get out of the country. He got interested in healing and went over to Tibet, and they taught him how to heal. They call it zapping75—instantaneous healing: they just shout or point a finger at them and they’d be healed. Sometimes it takes two such charges of voltage.
———- 67http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana 68Philostratus, Book 8, Chapter 26: “Although this deed was done in Rome, Apollonius was a spectator of it in Ephesus” [in Greece] “And with an awful glance at the ground, and stepping forward three or four paces from his pulpit, he cried: “Smite the tyrant, smite him”—not like one who derives from some looking glass a faint image of the truth, but as one who sees things with his own eyes, and is taking part in a tragedy.” 69 Acts 9, 22, 26 and Paul’s letters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle 70 The vision was a bright light accompanied by a voice, also seen and heard by Paul’s companions. 71 Should be mentioned in the October 1977, Pyramid Zen Society Newsletter. 72http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin 73 All of Rose’s points on Norbu Chen are included in the Fate Magazine article (Aug 1974), reproduced here: http://selfdefinition.org/norbu-chen/norbu-chen-fate-magazine-august-1974-full-article.htm 74 Also at that link is a skeptical and extensively researched account by William Nolen, MD (3 chapters from his book on faith healers). Norbu Chen was written about in The National Enquirer and other tabloids, and appeared in various seminars and TV shows. 75 The word zapping is used by Rose and possibly other healers he was in touch with, but it does not appear in the articles about Norbu Chen. Rose also uses the term zapping to refer to Shaktipat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaktipat
I maintain that this is done with what is called mental quantum.76 The mind is a substance. The mind is a dimension, much more real than this dimension. When you learn how to manipulate it you can change it—to a limited degree. As I said, faith can do a lot of things, but it can’t move mountains unless everybody believes that the mountain’s going to move, not just you.
But there’s a proportional control over the physical environment, that you have by use of this power. So you can throw out a certain amount of energy. This fellow, Norbu Chen, paid them a certain price—his name might have been John Anderson or something like that77 but he calls himself Norbu Chen because he studied under some Tibetan or Hindu. But they locked him up in a cave until he was able to summon this energy. Because we don’t summon it by working or by dissipating.78 Or by talking even. Talking is a tremendous outgoing of energy.
Rasputin did it the same way, incidentally. If you read the life of Rasputin—he would go into a town and he would lock himself in a cellar for two or three weeks. He wouldn’t eat, he would deprive himself of any pleasures, and then he would come out and he would look like a messiah: pale looking, holy, ascetic, all this sort of thing. And he would go around through town healing everybody. Then he would wind up in a big debauch with all the women in the town. And then he would repent. He said salvation was proportional to repentance, and you can’t repent unless you sin. So he sinned like hell, went out and repented like hell, and went down into another cellar, came out and healed a batch of people. And that’s the way he did it until finally some of the boys caught up with him. [laughs]
But he was a healer, and he was a genuine healer. And so is Norbu Chen. It had nothing to do with God or anything else. It has to do with the ability to project energy from the mind. This is the amazing thing. I don’t hesitate to rap modern psychology, because I am acquainted with the systems and techniques of tremendous results or power from the mind.79
I’m not saying that you can start your car up—some people think they can, you know, keep the tire from going flat. That would be a waste of it. It’s a waste to heal people who dissipate. It’s a waste to heal anybody, unless you’re keeping that person alive for some spiritual purpose, because they’re just going to go back and get sick again. 80
———- 76 Again, mental quantum is Rose’s term. In 1989, Deepak Chopra used the term “quantum healing” in a book by that same title, but with a different meaning. Rose refers to a human charge of energy capable of a quantum leap, and also uses the term voltage in this context. He mentions a quantum of faith in The Albigen Papers and in Energy Transmutation, Between-Ness and Transmission. And in various places he uses the terms “spiritual quantum” and “intelligence quantum”. 77 Norbu Chen’s given name was Charles Vernon Alexander II. The article in Fate Magazine says they were still trying to determine his identity at the time of publication; they knew him by an alias. 78 In an informal talk, 1981-0809-Mr-Rose-Talking-at-the-Farm, Rose states that intellectual work of the academic variety does not result in the transmutation of mental energy. He does mention, however, that this type of work is typically combined with dissipation. 79 From 1981-0809-Mr-Rose-Talking-at-the-Farm: “It’s like the pictures you see of Flash Gordon or these guys in Star Trek where they stand in a machine and a certain condition is developed by electronics in which they are projected into another dimension. This is caused by another form of tension. Of course, this is fiction, but this is what happens. A man can be studying algebra in school and his head will light up. You labor with a problem and then it becomes apparent to you, boom! you know the whole pattern. This is your quantum leap—through that quantum energy, leaping into another dimension, and that’s a mental dimension.” 80 See Richard Rose Biographical Notes (anonymous) for an account of Rose’s attempt to heal-exorcise an alcoholic friend, for which Rose paid a price. In the lecture 1975-1012-Cleveland, Rose describes how his father-in-law, a preacher and healer, saved a man from tuberculosis, but the man later “backslid” and as a result became ill again.
Q. [heavy accent] Can that work the other way, where you can get somebody to commit crimes, with this type of energy? Or use it to kill somebody. To influence them.
R. To kill them? Maybe I don’t understand you.
Q. You could order somebody to commit crimes?
R. Sure you could. Sure. It can be done. But it’s in a limited capacity and it’s a fool’s game. The egotistic use of that energy is very foolish because you only have so much. Norbu Chen himself said he’d only be good for two years; he said he’d be burnt out.81 Because you don’t get something from nothing. And basically the modern psychologists are correct about one thing: we have nothing to start with but a body. Our great mentality is generated, and we’ve got only a lifetime to do it in.82
Transmutation
We eat food, and the food is broken down into several capacities: muscle, bone, nerves. Very little goes to the nerves once they are developed; the cells of the nerves don’t reproduce, they just have to be fed.83 But our intelligence is based upon the amount of energy that we can project into that nervous system. Not into the muscles. So that the whole system of education depends upon what I call the transmutation of food and fat and muscular energy and glandular energy into what I call neural energy. [diagrams 84,85] This is done by concentration: in yoga it’s the raising of the kundalini. This is how you learn algebra. Everybody who becomes an astute mathematician like Nicola Tesla or Einstein, whether they believed in yoga or not, have had to raise some kundalini energy to become geniuses.86, 87
It’s by concentration, the focusing of their energy upon their head, making the head think and ignoring the rest of the body. This process comes from food, basically. There’s proof of this; it’s not just an easy explanation. For instance, if you’re in an accident: You have a certain amount of muscle that you can lift a weight with; you go down to the gym and maybe you can lift 200 pounds.
I have done this, which is what made me think about it. I picked a truck up, myself and another fellow one time—we picked up a two-ton truck that was filled with junk. A taxicab had hit it, there were eight people in an overcrowded cab, two or three in the truck, and two of them were pinned underneath the truck. Another fellow and I picked it up and put it back on its wheels, a dual-wheel truck.88 We got excited, that was all. We started to pick it up and we couldn’t budge it. And we got ahold of the edge of the truck bed and I started cursing, and we cursed in cadence. You know, “Come on, dammit, one, two … ,“ and up it went, that was all. The woman who was in the truck was pregnant and she was dying, she died later. I thought we could save her by getting it off of her. But the funny thing was, we didn’t look over on the other side. It was night time and I didn’t even bother to go around to the other side and see if anyone was laying over there. We could have dumped it right on somebody, we were so excited.
But this energy can’t come from your muscles. You’d rupture yourself picking up that type of weight. I’m not a weight lifter. But picking that type of weight up would rupture a muscle. I’ve seen fellows who lift weights, who are scared to death of lifting a weight a certain way. I watched one bust a muscle—it turned his arm purple—and he was only lifting 125 or 150 pounds. What would happen if he lifted a truck? I didn’t bust a muscle. I wasn’t even tired afterwards.89 But of course I had that extra energy behind it to depend on.
But it was from this that I maintain that energy is transferrable instantly. Now if you can project that into your hands or arms, you can also project it right out of your body—with the same type of synthetic urgency. Somebody needs to be healed, boom, you heal them.90 And this is nothing new; this has been practiced in India for hundreds of years. They call it zapping.91 These gurus come over here and they have somebody trained that can zap. The twelve-year old guru 92 had two “mahatmas” with him; 93 they were professional zappers. They study this stuff for ten years, projecting their mental energy, and they could knock a person right off their feet.
And in India or some primitive country—I shouldn’t say primitive, they’re further advanced than we are—but what we consider a primitive country, these people have such a respect for this type of psychology that they worship the person who’s able to do it. And so do we. They come over here and we worship them; we put up a false vision. It’s strictly just a technique that anyone can learn if they wish to.94 Of course, it means sacrificing something else, that’s all. You can’t do everything.
———- 88 See image: http://selfdefinition.org/rose/images/talks/1948-Chevrolet-2-ton-dual-wheel-truck.jpg 89 In 1981-0215-Psychology-of-Miracles-Akron (in Direct-Mind Experience) Rose tells the story but says the following: “Afterward we were totally weakened, to the point of collapse from the strain.” 90 Gurdjieff was reportedly capable of this, as told by Whitall Perry: “[Fritz] Peters tells how he in 1945, in a state of shock and shattered nerves managed to obtain military leave at Luxembourg to go to Paris, obsessed with the idea of somehow finding Gurdjieff in the war’s wake. Summoning the last ounce of energy he finally located the man’s address and apartment, where he arrived ready to collapse. Gurdjieff immediately ushered him in, preparing a coffee upon observing his visitor’s condition: “I remember being slumped over the table, sipping at my coffee, when I began to feel a strange uprising of energy within myself—I stared at him, automatically straightened up, and it was as if a violent, electric blue light emanated from him and entered into me. As this happened, I could feel the tiredness drain out of me, but at the same moment his body slumped and his face turned grey as if it was being drained of life”. From “Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition Part III.” This account is followed with a similar experience J.G. Bennett had with Gurdjieff. 91http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaktipat 92 Maharaj Ji, aka Prem Rawat. Divine Light Mission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_Rawat Also see: http://www.prem-rawat-maharaji.info/index.php?id=24 93 Mahatma Gurucharnanand (aka Charnanand) and others. 94 Rose was an expert hypnotist, using what he called a direct-mind method.
Tulpas
Q. You were speaking of thought-forms or tulpas.
R. Yes.
Q. Could you maybe explain a little more about that?
R. Well, you could get—some of the other boys here have read that. Wasn’t that Alexandra David-Neel’s Magic and Mystery in Tibet? 95 (Andy, did you read that? Isn’t that the book?) You can get that in nearly any library. A lot of phenomena—for instance a materialization—come under one of the categories I just spoke about, visions of entities. You’ll see them walking in the room in front of you. So you have to be able to determine which of those are your own creation and which are projected in from someplace, by someone else who has created them. But you can create with your mind things that are physically visible. In this case, these fellows devised this system—I don’t know, there are probably tricks they used inside their head.
I don’t like to get into this too much because I don’t want anybody to be too successful at it. There’s no real reason for it. It’s just like astral projection. Astral projection can be done, it can be demonstrated, you can by trial and error succeed. It’s very easy in fact. But the time that it takes to learn to do it, versus the benefits from it, you could be studying something else that’s more valuable. And then get a bus ticket to go wherever you want to go. Because—you might be able to perfect it to a point where you can go look in somebody’s bedroom, or check the bank account in the bank when the guy’s writing a check or something. But if you want to really do those things, it takes so much of your energy and time it’s not worth it. You can do it physically cheaper. And the same thing with the tulpas.
They have a system in Tibet of materializing different things. And one of them, the one I heard of previously, was the materialization of Yama.96 Yama was the king of hell, and once a year these monks would get together and bring this demon out to where everybody could see him: he would materialize in the circle of the Tibetan monks. A couple of times Westerners were allowed to sit with the monks and watch it happen.97 They said that what would appear first would be two eyes, in the center of the thing, and then the face would build up around it. It had extra arms and a few other fringe benefits as far as capabilities, and it was really a hideous-looking creature. And then after it became fully visible—they began to chant to dissolve it.
They would force it back. One fellow who observed it said he could feel the tremendous amount of concentration and force, almost desperate force by every monk present, to lean on that thing and dissolve it. So it’s not easily done either way. It’s not easy to produce and it’s not easy to dissolve.
Q. Can you take a picture?
R. I imagine you could. Because they can take pictures of these ectoplasmic things.98 William Crookes,99 in physics, is supposed to have been responsible for quite a few discoveries. He did a lot of research with materializations, and he photographed spirits. Katie King was produced. I’ve seen a copy of the photograph.100 He even classified the type of entity it was, and he too didn’t believe, incidentally, that it was a spirit of the dead. He believed that it was an elemental in human form. But if you can take a picture of that sort of thing, using a sensitive type of film and a certain type of light, a red light or whatever they use.101 So I think that you could take a picture of the other as well.
Now of course as I said, there are categories of visions that you see, that only you see. But this was seen by anybody who was sitting around that circle. Even the man outside the circle could see it. And this would be interesting, of course, if you could get a photograph of it. Because the Indian rope trick102 they say is not photographable; this is strictly a mental projection on the part of the people there, on their minds and by their minds.103
Q. Which kind of vision would you classify the tulpa as?
R. Well, the tulpa is a deliberate projection of yourself out of the matrix of your imagination. This is where a man attempts to be a microcosm; he finds the formula for creation and exerts it so he can create something.104
Q. So it’s not really one of those visions?
R. Yes, if he sees it, it’s something that he projects. Basically it comes under the category of a visitation, but not from the same source. Some visitations can come from outside of you, and some from inside.105 But evidently his mind projected. The definition for it, for a visitation, is something the mind projects outward. Now how it gets into the mind is the other thing, whether it’s coming in there from a true source, or it’s coming in from your creation. But people can see it, besides yourself.
Q. If you wouldn’t go to the bother of trying to dissolve it away, wouldn’t it gradually dissipate by itself anyway?
R. Well, you remember I was talking to you about this materialization I saw.106 The fellow who was the medium had a familiar spirit—they call it a cabinet guide in Spiritualism—and he called this thing “Midget”. He also had two children. Well, the first time we checked him out was something like thirty years ago. And the last time we checked him out was about ten years ago [actually 19 years]. Well the first time, he was a rather young man; his children were small. He came into Steubenville and a minister107 put him up at his house.
But if you want to know something about somebody and you don’t mind being sneaky, talk to his kids. So, we’re all curious about the real nature of this character, and the minister says to the children, “What do you think of Midget?” And the children said, “We don’t like Midget.” They saw it. “Why don’t you like Midget?” “Because he won’t let Daddy sleep. When Daddy’s trying to sleep, Midget comes out and jumps on his stomach.” You know, tugs, pulls at him, touches him and stuff.
And this is somewhat of the answer: that once anything like that is encouraged and created to the point where it seems to have a separate existence, it takes a separate existence. And this was the story that Alexandra David-Neel brought out about the tulpa, that this thing became typically feminine, and start nagging. This fellow couldn’t put up with it; he thought he had a docile creature, but he created a truly feminine form, and it found its value. Seemingly he couldn’t live without it. So he decided he’d better get a dissolution of some sorts.108
Q. You talk about healing and other things as being possibly a waste of spiritual energy—what is the value system you see as not a waste?
R. Well, healing was done in the old days—because there were no newspapers—if somebody wanted to reach prominence as a philosopher or as a leader of people. There are different forms of power: In India for instance, there’s a tremendous power involved in being able to zap people. If you get into the right country, where their money’s worth something, you can make a million. So consequently, you become powerful, you become famous.
But if you had a philosophy that you wanted to put out, you had to first become a magician. So the purpose of healing was to attract the multitude, so that the word was put out that this man was what?—possibly what the Bible scriptures had prophesied, or that he’s the reincarnation of Krishna or some person. But regardless, it gives this man a good start in publicity. And the consequences were pretty bad, because he had to get his point across before he got burnt out too bad, or even killed.
But today, unless you’re out for something of that sort, unless you’re out for just using it as an egotistical direction, you’re wasting it. In the transmutation of energy you’re starting off from a lower level, from a physical quantum of energy, and working like hell to build up a spiritual quantum. And then you’re throwing it back downhill into the garbage can. Now, I maintain that if you’re able to develop this energy and you’re able to influence people, you do it on a spiritual level. You use that ability for direct mind-to-mind communication, and communicate your spiritual truths. Which is difficult in itself.
Voices
Q. There was a book, Three Faces of Eve, and not long ago there was a movie made on this. Do you believe that this happens?
R. I don’t know anything about the book. I heard the title, that’s all. There’s a book called Sybil;109,110 it’s a good little study in psychology. [gap in tape]
———- 108 Alexandra David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, page 283 (or 223 of the pdf): “Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother’s womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.” 109http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(book) 110http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(1976_film)
I don’t doubt, as I said before, that with schizophrenia, perhaps about 75% to 90% of the real serious cases are possession. They are possession. This is the point from these notes I was reading to you: the fact that we’re able to have something projected directly into our mind. If we’re able to see a vision—just like somebody appeared to St. Paul and knocked him down—if his mind is capable of taking that in, without first learning it through the physical senses …
Or maybe you’re capable of dreaming at night that a dead relative comes to you and says, “Hey, go down to my house and dig up the third board from the wall and you’ll find my money there, and give it to so-and-so.” You never knew it was there, but you go down, dig up the board and you get the money. This is proof, this is science. It was predicted. Whether you learned it from inside your head—you can get all sorts of explanation—but your vision predicted and came true. That means that something was able to come into your head besides through your senses. Well if it can come into your head as that, it can come into your head as a real entity. Now this is something modern psychology doesn’t bother to contemplate.
Q. [strong accent, same man who earlier asked about power of suggestion] What happens if I go to the police and they take a lie detector on me, and [rest is inaudible].
R. Like that boy in Chicago, William [George] Heirens,111 who always said, “George did it.” He killed Suzanne Degnan [1946] and said, “George did it.” Well, we’ll never know whether George did it or not. First of all, I don’t believe that people commit crimes as much as people are the victims of the crime they commit.
Q. My question is, do you have to cooperate? Or does your mind have to be disposed or weak for somebody to influence you?
R. No, no. I wouldn’t say that. A stupid person cannot be hypnotized. A retarded person cannot be hypnotized. I have never been able to hypnotize retarded people. They have to be highly sensitive, people with sensitive nerve ends, people with a high degree of perception, learning ability, imaginative ability, this sort of thing. These are the people who are afflicted the worst. The idea is that you’ve got to be able to balance that. People who are too sensitive sometimes don’t know what to shut out.
Q. What leads you to believe that about schizophrenia?
R. You mean possession? Because of the testimony of a lot of people who are schizophrenic. And they talk in different voices—sometimes even in languages that they don’t know themselves. And this is all just brushed aside. To me, the evidence that they give you is enough. And then you read the case histories that are available. Sybil was one, supposedly. The book was written with the idea that there were many entities or demons afflicting her. It wasn’t; it was all coming outside of the girl herself.
Q. Where do these demon mentalities come from?
R. Well, this is another thing—remember when I was talking about defining the universe from inside the universe? There are more dimensions than man has dreamed about. And this is where we limit ourselves. The psychologist says, “Anything that I don’t know, it doesn’t exist. Anything that I can’t see doesn’t exist.” How do you know it doesn’t exist? We can’t see electricity. How about an electrical dimension, as well as a mental dimension? They come from other dimensions. How do you prove dimension? That which vibrates at a different rate. It is real, but vibrates at a different rate.112
Now this vibration or substance difference can be of a wide range. We don’t know how wide the range can be. But we can take the same atomic or electronic bits, pieces, and slow down or speed up their orbits, and you’ll have an entirely different appearance. You might be able to walk right through them, like gasses. You breathe the gas in, instead of bumping into it like a brick. But it’s there, nevertheless. Or like electricity: you touch it and it goes through you, because it’s another dimension, like an electrical dimension. It’s something that we accept by virtue of what it does, not by what it is or looks like.
And this is the same thing as thought. We accept thought by virtue of what it does, by its effects, not by pointing at it physically. And by that same token we have to accept the possibility—I’m not saying it’s proven—the possibility that there are dimensions that exist parallel to this dimension but invisible to this dimension. And I say this because things show up and go away and we can’t chase them. They’re strategically superior, incidentally. We’re so proud, saying we’re the king of the earth. But anything that is able to make a disappearing act on you—if it wished to it could destroy you, because you couldn’t stop it.
But yet we choose to just say it doesn’t exist. And this is the reason we can’t approach a lot of these phenomena, incidentally, flying saucer phenomena and that sort of thing. Because until one of them comes down here and tells us in English that he’s from another dimension, we’ll not believe him. He’ll have to do it in English and he’ll have to use our atomic chart, and he’ll have to define things according to our understanding.
… 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).
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.
Update for the Online Self-Inquiry Book Club:
TAT Press publishes Mike’s 
