In Kent’s own words, one of his intentions in writing the manuscript was this: “I knew I needed to totally immerse myself in Rose’s teachings, work through every single aspect to the best of my understanding, and compile it into one comprehensive treatise, for my own benefit as much as for anyone else’s.”

After reading this fascinating manuscript in its entirety for the second time, I would say that Kent succeeded masterfully. He not only managed to compile Rose’s large body of work into a single publication, but has rendered it cleanly comprehensible and quite accessible; the flow is ordered and logical. Some readers of Rose’s books and essays might find parts difficult to understand due to his sometimes lyrical and enigmatic manner of communication. Kent, on the other hand, having a keen understanding because of his exposure to and inside track with Rose—combined with his strong bent toward practical clarity and discernment—has managed to deliver a version of Rose’s material that is utterly usable to a broad audience, including even those new to the topic of spiritual seeking.

At a whopping 350 pages, it’s not a quick read, but if you have a driving hunger for a deep and thorough understanding of the teachings of Richard Rose—and perhaps a left-brain leaning—you will be hard pressed to find a better book to cozy up with.

Beliefs seem to be composed of a type of energy or force that naturally resists any other force that would cause them to exist in any form other than their present form.

I believe that once a belief has been formed, it cannot be destroyed. In other words, there is nothing we can do that would cause one or more of our beliefs to cease to exist or to evaporate as if they never existed at all. This assertion is founded in a basic law of physics. According to Albert Einstein and others in the scientific community, energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed.

If beliefs are energy—structured, conscious energy that is aware of its existence—then this same principle of physics can be applied to beliefs, meaning, if we try to eradicate them, it’s not going to work.

Each individual belief is a component of what we consider to be our identity. Isn’t it reasonable to expect that, if threatened, each individual belief would respond in a way that was consistent with how all the parts respond collectively?

I like in this piece the assertion that as a belief is some form of structured conscious energy, it cannot be destroyed, it can only be transformed. There is a very easy and helpful demonstration to understand this further below, but I think this is why people often refer to ‘seeing through a belief’. The belief is still there, it’s just that the energetic component to it is no longer the same. In the last paragraph he points to the nub of the matter, beliefs form our identity, what a seeker is trying to question using the process of self-inquiry. He also makes the rhetorical question that therefore, if an individual belief is threatened it will respond in a way that the collective ‘identity’ of beliefs would respond. This holds true in my experience, if something gets close to the bone, the ego identity tends to react defensively.

1. Beliefs resist any force that would alter their present form. We may not understand the underlying dynamics of how beliefs maintain their structural integrity, but we can observe that they do so, even in the face of extreme pressure or force.

And …

The easiest and most effective way to work with our beliefs is to gently render them inactive or nonfunctional by drawing the energy out of them. I call this process deactivation. After deactivation, the original structure of the belief remains intact, so technically it hasn’t changed. The difference is that the belief no longer has any energy. Without energy, it doesn’t have the potential to act as a force on our perception of information or on our behavior.

I found this a very helpful way to look at where to try and go with one’s beliefs. They don’t need to be eradicated, destroyed, or whatever. They just need deactivated, or seen through as may be a more common term in self-inquiry. Again, the point of reference I find very helpful here is the energetic component. In many cases it is relatively easy to see the energy of a belief at work that we are not conscious of. Going back to the reaction example at the start of this piece, one just keeps reacting that way when said event happens. There is clearly a repeating energetic force at work in some form. Following this energy back to its source can lead one to the core of the belief. Following this again and again hopefully will lead one to the Source of Identity.

Here is a personal illustration: As a young child, I was taught to believe in both Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. In my mental system, both of these are perfect examples of what are now inactive, nonfunctional beliefs. However, even though they are inactive, they still exist inside my mental system, only now they exist as concepts with no energy. If you recall from the last chapter, I defined beliefs as a combination of sensory experience and words that form an energized concept. The energy can be drawn out of the concept, but the concept itself remains intact, in its original form. However, without energy, it has no ability to act on my perception of information or on my behavior.

 So, as I’m sitting here typing into my computer, if someone came up to me and said that Santa Claus was at the door, how do you think I would define and interpret this information? I would treat it as being irrelevant or a joke, of course. However, if I were five years old and my mother told me that Santa Claus was at the front door, her words would have instantly tapped me into a huge reservoir of positively charged energy that would have compelled me to jump up and run to the front door as fast as I could.

 Nothing would have been able to stop me. I would have overcome any obstacle in my path. At some point, my parents told me Santa Claus didn’t exist. Of course, my first reaction was disbelief. I didn’t believe them, nor did I want to believe them. Eventually, they convinced me. However, the process of convincing me did not destroy my belief in Santa Claus or cause it not to exist any longer; it just took all the energy out of the belief. The belief was transformed into a nonfunctional, inactive concept about how the world works. I’m not sure where all that energy went, but I know that some of it was transferred to a belief that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

 Now I have two contradictory distinctions about the nature of the world that exist in my mental system: one, Santa exists; two, Santa doesn’t exist. The difference between them is in the amount of energy they contain. The first has virtually no energy; the second has energy. So from a functional perspective, there is no contradiction or conflict. I propose that, if it’s possible to render one belief inactive, then it’s possible to deactivate any belief, despite the fact that all beliefs seem to resist any force that would alter their present form. The secret to effectively changing our beliefs is in understanding and, consequently, believing that we really aren’t changing our beliefs; we are simply transferring energy from one concept to another concept, one that we find more useful in helping us to fulfill our desires or achieve our goals.

I think this section is an excellent illustrative example that anyone can relate to about what the energy of a belief is like. I imagine most people, in the West at least, can remember the excitement that Santa Claus used to bring to them as a child. I certainly can. As I sit here now, as an adult, I can clearly still remember that belief. The difference? It no longer has any energetic force behind it as he references. He ends the section by talking about changing beliefs. In self-inquiry, we are not as much interested in changing beliefs; we want to see through them. I think the same process can be used in both cases though:

2. All active beliefs demand expression. Beliefs fall into two basic categories: active and inactive. The distinction between the two is simple. Active beliefs are energized; they have enough energy to act as a force on our perception of information and on our behavior. An inactive belief is just the opposite. It is a belief, that for any number of reasons, no longer has energy, or has so little energy that it’s no longer able to act as a force on how we perceive information or how we express ourselves.

Thinking outside of the boundaries of our beliefs is commonly referred to as creative thinking. When we purposely choose to question a belief (question what we know), and sincerely desire an answer, we make our minds available to receive a “brilliant idea,” “inspiration,” or “solution” to the issue at hand. Creativity, by definition, brings forth something— [the rest of the sentence was garbled in the book; interpreted by Colm as “ideas or thoughts that are outside of anything that already exists in our rational mind as a belief or memory“].

As a result, beliefs exist in our mental environment from the moment they are born to the moment we die, unless we consciously take steps to deactivate them.

Here, he touches on one of the unknowns of self-inquiry, in that it seems that somehow external knowledge, insights, etc., come forth when one asks an honest question and leaves room for an answer to come forth. In terms of self-inquiry, I think this points to a fundamental and critical component of the self-inquiry process: self-honesty. In my mind self-inquiry should be approached with a posture of openness and honesty about ‘oneself’. One has to be willing to take a posture like this to provide the opportunity for insights to appear. I also find it interesting to consider how much of what we observe in the world is really just a heavy layering, spiralling and interacting series of beliefs. Is the world and all that seems to be in it really just a belief!?

So, that brings us to the end of this little exploration into the subject of beliefs. As a seeker, self-inquiry is likely one of the main tools in your toolbox that one can use towards Self-definition. When I came across this book, while I did not think it was 100% accurate / relevant on the subject of beliefs in terms of self-inquiry, I still found a lot of the points in it helpful. It helped generate more food for thought and inquiry for me on how I approached the examination of my own beliefs. I hope you found this piece useful and I also hope that it generated some helpful points to investigate and consider in your own self-inquiry process.

And what about you dear reader, how do you go about exploring beliefs about your identity?

In the first stage or layer, as I set out to do some sort of creative work, to enact some nascent idea in tangible form—a story, a song, an essay—I encounter a glitch or barrier consisting of the feeling that either a lack of ideas, or a lack of skill, or the nature of outward circumstances (not enough time, too much stress from my day job, pressure from interpersonal relationships, etc.) is preventing me from carrying out the work. Or sometimes, if I’ve been in a blocked state for quite some time, I skip past these and run right into the sense of lethargy, futility, and demotivation described above. However it manifests, what happens is that I set out to do something, to do the work, and find that a challenge to my efforts arises immediately, as if by magic. It’s as if the challenge is one with the creative impulse itself, a corollary to it, an automatic accompaniment.

So that’s the first stage, the top layer: hitting the wall in whatever form. In the second stage, rather than fighting this challenge, I consent to it. This is where, no matter what form the barrier originally took, it morphs into that acquiescent apathy. I embrace the attitude of surrender toward the whole thing, a kind of capitulatory quietism. First I feel the Resistance, along with the suffering of it, then emotional stunting and the crushing sense of frustration and grief. Then I willingly embrace it. I accept the silence, the inability, the paralysis, the muteness. The fight seems hard and the reward of “winning” it seems meaningless, so I sink willingly into inertia.

And so, nothing happens. It has all been an inner drama with no outer result. Anybody watching with physical eyes alone would have seen nothing going on at all, no outward sign of an inner struggle or aborted project. But someone with spiritual sight would have witnessed a slow death taking place.

My personal experience of grappling with Resistance has devolved down over time to the question of basic existential motivation—of why to do, or not do, literally anything.

As you may have noticed, though all of the above represents a detailed inner account, it actually begs a question. This fact comes into focus when I seek to fathom the mystery of what’s really happening, and I find myself returning to the apparently automatic, complementary nature of Resistance. As I said, it’s always right there, as if by magic. This is sufficient cause for suspicion.

The fact that Resistance arises simultaneously with the act, or even the intent, of starting to do the work is highly suggestive. On reflection it seems to imply that something about the way I have positioned myself to work, or maybe the attitude that I bring to it, involves a hidden contradiction. Because truly, why should the effort and intent to do creative work generate its own opposition? Am I missing something? Is something amiss? Could there be something wrong, on some level, with my intent itself?

Light comes from zeroing in on the act of surrender, the moment of giving in to the obstructing force. At that moment the energy from both directions, the creative impulse and the Resistance that opposes it, is discharged in a kind of culmination, however unhappy. The question is: What appears in the brief flash and its aftermath?

I said above that Resistance wins because I willingly embrace and surrender to it. But now, as I closely observe the moment when this outcome manifests, I find the matter isn’t quite as settled as it first appeared. Do I really embrace defeat? How truly willing is my surrender? Do I fully assent to the state of being becalmed, silent, and totally “unproductive” as the impetus to create passes away unfulfilled? Or do I instead wallow and simmer on some level of grief and self-recrimination? Am I actually surrendering, which means giving up entirely and thus letting go of the stress, grief, and unhappiness? Or am I just capitulating, which means I give up the fight but still hold on to an inner morass of resentment and grief?

The answer, of course, is the latter. The very fact that my “surrender” results in a state of apathy and anhedonia shows that it isn’t really surrender at all. The apathy arises because the pain is too great. Apathy isn’t surrender, it’s passive aggressive scorn. It’s a defense mechanism. I wouldn’t feel it if I had really let go.

And now, with this surprising recognition of a self-deception at the core of my supposed surrender, the moment of clarity arrives: How much of my creative block has been subliminally entwined with this self-destructive cast of mind from the start? How much is the experience of silence and quietude as suffering just an unmasking of what was already there, a revealing of the programmed thought-emotion that gave rise to, or first emerged in the guise of, the block itself?

Answer: all of it.

2. Diet. You become what you eat, how often you eat and how much you eat! Recently I partially adopted the healthy version of the ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting as espoused by Dr Berg: Ketogenic Diet Plan for Beginners. I haven’t fully adopted the diet, I still eat three meals a day, and am not “keto” strict when it comes to eating under 50 grams of carbohydrates per day, and also I probably do more protein than is recommended. But I feel the science behind the diet as explained by Dr Berg is very good and very rationally thought out on his part; it resonates as being true to me and ground breaking. When it comes to diet, I feel it is useful to study the daily recommended vitamins and minerals and see if you are getting them in your food and if not then to supplement those vitamins that you don’t get in your food, and keep a monitor on any improvements and dips in your wellbeing as a result of adopting any new diet/food/supplements. Diet is my big area at the moment where I am finding the going the most difficult; I eat too much and too much for pleasure. It is my “go-to” compensation/consolation/reward/comfort/pleasure-seeking-distraction/compulsion/mental crutch/vice that I turn to in order to try to offset the pressures of daily living. I am also only beginning this Keto venture, so I am still in the “faddy”/novelty stage of its implementation, like I am trying to “eat” my way to well being/health which feels kind of dumb. Over time I will take from it what works for me and leave the rest behind and develop a more consistent controlled plan hopefully.

3. “BAFTU”. This is the acronym for Rose’s advice to “Back Away From The Untruth”. Work to reduce social media/hobbies/activities that are chewing up your time and attention with little to no spiritual return/payoff. If you seek entertainment you are asleep is how Rose put it. So the work is to constantly be vigilant of the valueless distractions that are taking your time and energy and back away from that step by bitesize step until you can completely free yourself from all needless activity.

4. Maintaining a regular prayer routine. Prayer affects energy. Prayer undermines the ego self that feels it is in control of everything. Once I started a prayer routine I noticed that I did enter into a relationship with something of a higher nature, whether that be something in my own psyche/conscience or something beyond myself, I don’t know. I could start to let things go more easily, I could throw my hands up to God more easily at how inept at everything I seem to be. Meditation is the salve for the cogitative mind, prayer is the salve for the heart and soul, not the complete salve but an effort to that end. Prayer is a game changer. Of course the issue can become “to Whom do I pray?”, what is the recipient of my prayer? But this can add to the desperation of my practice of prayer which I feel is a good ingredient to prayer. If I was very sure of myself that I “knew” what I was praying to, then that would be an erroneous postulation and counter intuitive. I also pray the rosary every morning. A guy on a recent meeting told me how the Bible was a made up story and went into a lengthy explanation of why he believes that. It could well be made up of course but that may not detract from the power of the rosary. If, as far as I can conceive, the maximum purity/perfection of being is that of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, well then, even if they existed or not, that wouldn’t matter. As I pray I am trying to raise my heart and soul to that level of perfection, there is an effort in prayer to align with that. So whether the Bible story of Christ is real or not doesn’t seem to matter; what matters is what I conceive to be the ultimate as far as I can conceive of as capital P perfection—body, mind, heart and soul. Which begs the question, why don’t I pray to Richard Rose? He is my capital P perfection example of a human being who did his utmost to make sense of this world, to find Truth and then to go to great lengths to pass it on to his fellows. It probably feels more natural to pray to Jesus. I was brought up a Catholic, so that is my tendency. Maybe I should pray to Richard Rose too. Surely there must be the spirit of Richard Rose hanging in the ether, via universal mind/conscience, via a choir of angels, via the Holy Spirit, who really knows? Something encapsulating everything he stood for, his essence, and the message he was trying to impart to those who had ears to hear him. Maybe prayer could help draw me closer to that if I incorporate Rose in my prayers.

5. Sleep. This is a recurring problem for me, committing to going to bed at a set time each night. I go to bed too late most evenings and it has the knock on effect of leaving me grouchy and tired the next day. I sometimes go on a good run of consecutive early night sleeps for a while and enjoy the benefits that come from that, but sure enough I get back into the bad habit of staying up too late again and again. So I really need to adhere to going to bed at the set time which is 10 pm for me. This requires more discipline from me right now for me to be satisfied with my progress.

6. Exercise. Exercise is key. I used to do office work and then I switched to physical jobs. There was a noticeable difference. All my energy became lodged in my head doing office work and I had no time/mental energy left to contemplate spiritual/philosophical material. For me, that led me to become highly irritable. When I started doing physical work, this all changed. It allowed me to free up my mental energy for the spiritual work. I do a lot of walking in my current job so I see that as good “aerobic” exercise. I do some cycling twice a week and this should help toward fulfilling my “cardiovascular” exercise needs. When it comes to exercise I feel I am covering all my bases but I could be overdoing it or underdoing it, I don’t really know.

7. Meditation. Now meditation probably should be higher in my list. I put it at 7 as I personally don’t give it the time and attention it probably deserves. I recently started a 30 min routine in the morning. Meditation is good for me to catch all my identities that are going off on different tangents. It is like a cool observing of everything; it aligns my energy along more neutral lines. A woman mentioned the word “neutrality” at a meeting lately, and I feel it is a good word. And so I do feel it does affect my energy for the better by starting each day from that position of neutrality. I always feel out of my league with meditation, I feel I mustn’t be able to do it right, not able to penetrate deep enough below the surface of small “s” self, the constant persistent trundling of thought energy. But I feel that by giving meditation that scheduled time, I am not dismissing it, and hope I am giving myself a chance to go deeper. I am adopting the attitude of “lets try this and see what happens” and over time I plan to extend it to an hour long meditation.

8. Studying Grace/Betweenness. Rose I think coined the term “betweenness”, maybe he was expanding on the concept of the “conciliatory principle” coined by Hubert Benoit. I feel that Grace and Betweenness have different meanings but can have the same type of effects. I feel Rose defined betweenness as a “way of holding your head to avoid the raindrops”. Grace for me I feel is similar. Graces are like mini satoris where the cognition reaches the conciliatory position over the opposing forces. You don’t reach satori without grace is my conviction, you can’t make your self reach satori on anything, even the smallest things, it just happens or doesn’t. Possibly satori is reached through your ability to hold mental tension on different topics that are irritating the mind over a period of time. Or maybe Jim Burns is right, you don’t get over your problems, you outlive them; there is a grain of truth in that too. But Jim also mentioned that he never got over anything/transcended anything without first solving it at the “gut level”. Within the topic of grace I feel that studying the 64 virtues as laid out by the Catholic theologians is a good place to start. They talk about “sanctifying grace” as meaning the “entitative habit that resides in the essence of the soul”, which can only be achieved by an “adornment of the soul with all of the virtues” not merely for a natural end such as to be a functional stand up person, but you do it primarily for “God’s sake”. You don’t want to offend God by becoming less than you could become (as a philosophical seeker God may be taken to mean your Higher Conscience, your Higher Will, etc.). The opposite of virtue is vice, so to study all of the vices and to see these operate in yourself is also a good thing to do.

9. Breathing exercises. I found this breathing technique as recommended by Tony Robbins. I find it really good, especially when I feel an unwelcome level of stress building up in the body. Here is the video I found to be of value: The Key to High Physical Energy with Tony Robbins . Generally watching stress is also a way of protecting your energy; you need to deal with the stressful situations in your life to minimise their immediate and possible future impact on you. Stress raises cortisol which raises insulin, same as a high level of carbohydrates, overeating, snacking, sugar, etc., and damages the body. Too much insulin creates “insulin resistance” which Dr Berg explains about here: How Insulin Works? – Insulin Resistance & Belly Fat Simplified by Dr. Berg.

10. Core exercises and stretches. Doing some core exercises each morning I feel helps to get the day started in the right way. To clear out the morning stiffness and start the day in the best way, I feel that core exercises with some light stretches are important to help limber up the body.

11. Two areas that I feel would have a good effect on energy but that which I can’t speak with any authority about are “Periodic Prolonged Fasting” and “Isolation Retreats”. You could combine these together for an interesting experiment, do a week long fast on an isolation retreat. Here is a good video that gives the bodily/natural benefits of doing prolonged fasting and gives some tips of how to care for your body during a prolonged fast: The Proven Benefits of Prolonged Fasting: 7 Critical Things You Need to Know.

Added Notes: All these areas for me are open to be improved upon. My favourite football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, used to say, to paraphrase, after his team walloped its opponents usually, “the lads did well but we could have done better”. He always added in that line, “we could have done better”. So that’s the attitude that serves this work the best, a commitment to continuous never ending improvement. Always to be on the lookout for ways to tweak something that would be of benefit, even to affect the smallest of changes. Everything that you do in any of the areas above will have a compound effect of helping or hindering your progress in all the other areas. Discipline fluctuates, but you will create a vector (my definition of vector: direction/focus/accumulation of your energy toward your goal) if you stick with it. Get an accountabilibuddy, someone who will share notes with you, someone to whom you can confide where you are failing, someone who will keep you accountable to your goals and someone that you can hold accountable to their goals. My email is pkinsella@ymail.com if you feel that I would be a suitable accountabilibuddy for you and someone that you would like to confront on his efforts or lack of efforts.

Familiar spirits

Q. This is an interesting concept, that as one progresses towards spiritual understanding, he’s beset with all kinds of forces that tend to keep him from achieving this.

R. Right.

Q. And then some give in entirely to these forces, and go over to their side, so to speak. So you have this kook in California who has the Church of Satan who deliberately worships evil. And I can’t really understand that.

R. Well there are some boys sitting right here who have come down from Kent, when we still had a group up there in the university. Between the university at Kent and the University of Pittsburgh we had a half dozen to a dozen people who were possessed and didn’t mind telling you they were possessed. And some of them came for help. They said, “Hey, I know it and I’ve got to get loose from it.”

And one of them was a teacher at Kent State.¹¹⁵ He was a teacher of anthropology. In fact, I spoke in his classroom the first time I was in Kent. And somebody asked him why he was interested in hearing me talk, and he said because I had the highest form of Magick. But he had spent years—he had been consulting these old books and they said you have to get a spirit, a demon, as a familiar. And then this demon will guide your life. He’ll tell you what to do, he’ll tell you how to play the stock market, how to get rich, whatever you need.

There were two of them who were into this and both of them became fried. They were nervous wrecks: they can’t get the cigarette into their mouth and they’re shaking all the time. I saw this fellow last year in Kent.¹¹⁶ And I said to him—I knew him really well—and I said, “Why don’t you come down sometime?” And he said, “I won’t come near you until I get cured.” He realized it. He had been down there one time and I wasn’t aware of this myself. But there was another fellow there who was more psychic, a fellow from Pittsburgh, a guy about 30 years old; he looked right at him and said, “You have a demon, don’t you?” And he said, “Yes.”

———-
¹¹⁵ TM died in Canton in 2007; write for details.
¹¹⁶ Two years prior: 1975-0206-Kent-State-University

Q. How did they get rid of them?

R. Well, I think the majority of them—you know, the Oceanside Rosicrucians, that’s Max Heindel’s group,^{117, 118} believe that they just stay with you from incarnation to incarnation, which is quite a bit of baggage to carry around with you, from one bardo¹¹⁹ to another. They claim they stay with you.

Q. Then everybody has them.

R. No, I don’t say that everybody has that type. This is a conscious thing that is actually visible. I had a girl come down from Pittsburgh to my house, and the first thing I noticed that was strange about her was that her eyes weren’t under control: one of them would look in this direction and one would look in that direction, and I thought for a minute she had a glass eye. So I said to her—I apologized first for asking her—and I said, “Do you have a glass eye?” And she said, “No, they operate separately.” And I didn’t think too much of it, except that it was strange because she had to be able to see out of it; she could see out of both eyes.

Well she and another girl came down to my place and they were going to spend the night. And she was sitting in the kitchen and I thought I saw, over her left shoulder, something standing there. I couldn’t see a distinct form but I knew something was there, and I thought I’ll check it out. So I said to her, “Are you aware of the fact that you have an entity?” “Oh,” she said, “yes, I had five of them; I’m down to one.” I said, “Where is it?” And she said, “He is right here.” [pointing to the same place] So it validated the hunch that I had. I couldn’t draw you a picture of what I saw but I knew something was back there, the exact position of it.

It scared everybody in the house. A bunch of people had come down from Pittsburgh and nobody slept that night. Everybody was waiting for all hell to break loose. But the funny thing was that this girl with her, now, had been into murder, and told us so. But dope and sex and murder, all at the same time. She was with the man who bombed a laboratory in Wisconsin and killed a man.¹²⁰ She was in on the bombing. They had played with everything, thinking that the human being is immune, he’s God, you know. All you have to do is believe you’re immune. That’s what the psychology book says: you can do anything, just don’t believe there’s any harm in it. So why not kill a few people?—try that. Try it with dope, or try killing them mixed with sex, something of that sort.

And this was the direction. You’d be surprised at the college-level people who are into witchcraft, demonology, and they think it’s a sport. They think they’re brave, or—it isn’t quite the idea of being brave, it’s the idea of being impudent in the face of nature. They’re saying, “We can do this,” the human being, “We’ve finally liberated ourselves from all fears and all superstitions. And if there’s anything out there, we’re going to run it.” So you see something limping home, it looks like it’s been in an atomic explosion, and that’s the magician coming back—begging for help. But you can’t help them. Because there’s where your psychic energy—you talk about healing somebody—I’ve been close to them and watched the energy, watched the people around them losing energy. You can’t have them anyways near you. They just drag all your energy out.

———-
¹¹⁷ http://www.rosicrucian.com
¹¹⁸ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Heindel
¹¹⁹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
¹²⁰ Weathermen bombing (1970). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing

Absolute

Q. This is something that maybe we haven’t covered particularly in this lecture, but I’ve been to a couple of Zen gatherings. I have a little question about what absolute truth is …

R. I imagine you would have. [laughs] I’ve got one myself.

Q. Well, everybody who was at that meeting was convinced that there was such a thing as absolute truth. But I’m not convinced that there is. And I’m curious of your views on that.

R. Well I feel you’ve got the right direction.

Q. [laughs] That there isn’t such a thing?

R. No, no. That you should not be convinced that there is. This is a danger, and I’ve often said this to people in the group: Don’t go around talking about enlightenment. Don’t go on talking about absolute truth. To you it does not exist until you’ve been there. It’s a postulation only. That’s all you can accept it as. This is the mind, taking in infinite varieties of possibility, and that’s one of them, that’s all. That’s something let’s say that would happen by gravity: If there’s something behind everything, then that which is behind, when there’s nothing more behind it, that’s absolute. And that in turn could not be definable, by virtue of the fact—remember what definition is?—that it cannot be compared from the outside; because there’s no other plane or field from which to describe it.

Q. Okay. So you feel or you say that you have achieved enlightenment, right?

R. Yes.

Q or that you know absolute truth?

R. I’ve been there.

Q. Okay, now do you say that you have experienced the absolute truth at some point in the past, or do you constantly know or experience absolute truth?

R. I became, for a very short period of time.

Q. You became the absolute truth for a very short period of time?

R. I became everything.

Q. [laughs]

R. See, you know what you’re doing, you’re doing the thing that I’m advising you not to do, and that is to try to define it. The only thing I’m trying to do—I don’t want to lie to you, and I run the risk immediately of trying to define something to you, and that’s no good. Now maybe there are words that I can use that will lead you to believe something about it, but that’s not important either. The important thing is that maybe by some intuition you pick up that there is a direction, and you perceive that direction, that’s all.

It’s good if things inspire you. Now I never ran into anybody until after I had my own experience. I only ran into one other human being who I was convinced that reached it. [Paul Wood ¹²¹] Well, I met another fellow too, a Zen master [Alfred Pulyan ^{122, 123}]. I was pretty well convinced that he knew the answer. But the majority of these Zen teachers are strictly phonies. They haven’t had any experience, they’re just into dogma, they’re just drum-pounders and mantra-chanters and koan-chanters and that kind of stuff.

But you don’t have to study Zen to be enlightened; you don’t have to study anything to be enlightened. You have to study yourself to be enlightened. You don’t have to go to any church or any religion. I don’t want anybody to ever believe you’ve got to study Zen to get enlightened—this is nonsense. Zen is a good psychological system. But enlightenment comes to anybody, anyplace in this world, by looking inside yourself with honesty.

Q. Enlightenment then in your definition would mean being everything at some point in time?

R. Yes, well, actually there is no point in time. There’s a point in space-time. There is no time, in the final analysis. When you reach this there is no time, there is no space. There’s nothing but yourself and you are everything—and you are nothing. If you can comprehend simultaneously being everything and nothing—knowing the nature of nothingness and knowing the nature of everythingness—then you’ve got a rough idea.

Q. In this concept of the absolute, is it all-pervading, all-powerful?

R. It might be all-pervading but it’s not all-powerful. The thing is, immediately you get back to the question, “What can the absolute do?” And I know nothing about what the absolute can do.

Q. You were talking about “everything”—would you say that you know everything?

R. Well, this is a term—for instance, I might tell you I know everything—but I don’t know how many hairs you’ve got on your head, so I don’t know everything. But I mean, you have to pick this up intuitionally if I tell you that I know everything: It means that I don’t have a desire for any more questions, any more self-questions. It means that I don’t look inside myself any longer, that I found what I want to know. Now, in finding what I know, there are certain experiences that you get into. And it involves being one with God, if you want to call it that. This is speaking loosely now, almost poetically. Because God is not what people think it is.

The concept of God is an externalized, bewhiskered old man, or a benign force running the universe and observing the fall of the sparrow and everything of that sort. Because the sparrow is God. But these are difficult media of expression, to try to describe what you realize about yourself. And if you read the different accounts: Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness has some accounts of people who have reached different phases or stages of this. And they’re all valid.

They’re perfectly valid and they all sound different. Because when you reach something that’s indescribable you stumble a bit with words, trying to give meaning to it. And as soon as you say something you’re back in the relative dimension. You’re trying to describe an absolute condition again with relative words. And the best way you can describe it is to say that it is nothing and it is everything. You have to realize you’re nothing before you realize you’re everything.

———-
¹²¹ http://selfdefinition.org/christian/paul-wood-story.htm
¹²² http://the-wanderling.com/pulyan.html and http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/Pulyan.htm
¹²³ http://selfdefinition.org/pulyan/

Levels

Q. Are you saying that these guys who call themselves Jesus or Krishna are impostors?

R. No, no. They’re very sincere. I think they’re valid in their dimension.

There are different levels of experience. We have to go through these different levels. And the first level that a person gets into when he leaves the instinctive level, he does it through his emotional surrender. He surrenders his instinctive level to an emotional level. And that’s when he finds his Jesus or his guru. He becomes saved and he is genuinely exalted spiritually. The only thing is, he doesn’t think anyone else is there. That’s the difficulty. People get on these different levels and they think nobody else is there: we’ve got to go out and save the world.

Some of them may have transcended that already; they’ve given up the emotional level. They may have gone to the intellectual level, and by the study of kabala, astrology, fundamentalism or lord knows what, with the use of the intellect—popped through to another level which we call the satori level, or the eureka experience: “This is it, wow!” Suddenly a realization that their mind is able to grasp something.¹²⁴

But this they have done with the intellect. And then after a few years of meditation they realize that the intellect is a vanity. They too think they’re above everybody. They see this guy down in the emotional-salvation level and they say, “That guy’s nuts.” But they should have compassion and realize that they were in that same category.

These are gradations. And at each of these levels the person is right. It’s just that he thinks he’s at the last rung on the ladder—but there’s still a few rungs to go, that’s all. I think that in all levels there are people possibly who are trying to fool the public, I don’t deny that. I think that there are a lot of people who use religion as a method of making a living, or even a big killing, getting really rich. But I don’t deny the existence of these levels, and I don’t deny that we’ve got sincere people.

Q. Is there any value in worship?

R. Well, there’s a value in all that stuff if you know the directions. It’s like praying. When I first divorced myself from organized religion I used to think, you know, “I’m through with that stuff; I don’t have to go praying anymore.” But I think there’s a value to praying. Because these vocal things, like the mantras, I kind of joke about them, but at the same time they have their value. That’s a form of prayer. If you challenge the inside self, if you pray and hear Yourself (that’s capital “y” You) it can answer. And small “y” you can acquire, grow. You pray and hear yourself. The God within hears you. That’s the value. That’s my idea of the value of prayer, if you want to really grow.

Q. You see something in Leroy Jenkins?¹²⁵

R. I don’t know him.

Q. Many people go to him.

R. Oh, there’s lots of them, what’s his name, Oral Roberts.¹²⁶ Up there in Ohio, there’s Rex Humbard,¹²⁷ he built a big tower up there in Akron.¹²⁸ Yeah, there’s lots of them. I don’t know. You have to know them personally to know if they’re running a racket. Some people just run a racket. They don’t believe in life after death, they don’t believe in anything—except money, so they go after it, that’s all.

———-
¹²⁴ This is a rare case where Rose spells out what he means by the eureka experience, which he equates with contemporary usage of the word satori.
¹²⁵ Faith healer in South Carolina. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Jenkins_(televangelist)
¹²⁶ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Roberts
¹²⁷ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Humbard
¹²⁸ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Tomorrow

Trauma

Q. After you reached the state of enlightened, wasn’t it hard for you to come back?

R. It’s as hard to come back as it is to go in. Both are very traumatic. There’s no bliss involved in it, so don’t let anybody ever kid you into believing that the other dimensions are associated with bliss. Bliss is a relative experience. In the absolute there is no bliss and no pain. These are keynotes. As long as you’re in cosmic consciousness, the description is bliss, beauty, union with the world—this is relative experience. In enlightenment there is no bliss, no pain, no hope, no despair. There’s nothing to despair about because nothing seems to be going nowhere. And you are nothing. And it’s only from that profound abysmal bottom that you’re able to bounce back and have the peak experience.

Q. As you progressed on the path toward your enlightenment, how did you deal with the elements of fear?

R. Well, I think you have to make those decisions. There are a number of things that you do. It’s not a question of just reading a book. First of all you make a decision: are you going to get married, are you going to get yourself attached to a mortgage on a house or something that you’re going to have to worry with? Are you going to be afraid of losing your health, your sanity? A lot of people you hear say, “Oh, they go nuts thinking about religion.” I contemplated that: so I’ll take the chance. You can get killed robbing a bank, too. But you have one life and how are you going to use it? Are you going to sit around and be a slave, or are you going to rob the bank? Are you going to go for the jackpot? So I said I’ll go for the jackpot. So I’ll go nuts? So I die of cancer from ascetic practices or a vegetarian diet? I was trying everything. So you take the chance. You make up your mind, and then you cancel things out, you never look back then. From that time on, that’s behind you. You’ve made up your mind. You’re either going to be successful or you’re going to be a dead man. And it’s better to be a dead vector than to be no vector at all.

After death

Q. Do you consider it true that what happens to you after death is determined by the condition of your soul at the time of death?

R. By the condition of what you are now. This can be explained: if you hear me talking it sounds like a different language, of what I expect to be the permanent state of man’s being. Now what do most people expect when they die? It’s very possible that this world is an illusion—suppose this world is an illusion, don’t accept it, just suppose it—that these bodies are not. Accepting the fact that our eyes don’t see clearly, that orange is not orange, that legs are not legs, and as J.J. van der Leeuw says, we might be a point in space about which all this other stuff is interpreted: beauty, ugliness, all this sort of thing. That we might just be a point, the end of a ray of God, but we put all this coloration on it by virtue of mutual agreement.

Now, here’s another party, way down the other end of the spectrum, and the only immortality he or she understands is: “Is Grandma going to be there?” And when they die, if Grandma or Grandpa isn’t there, and nothing is there—what type of immortality would they have? They’d have oblivion. That would be identified by them as oblivion, because nobody would be there. Consequently, the only other type of experience they can possibly have, that has any meaning to them, of a continuation of life, would be that Grandma has to show up. And that’s what we call a bardo. Or they have to be reborn—if they believe that—that that’s a resting place and they’re going to come back and go through this three-act play again.

I maintain of course that this is part of the ability of mankind: to create a certain amount of things, and to delude and limit themselves, too. So if this person did enter the absolute—he would never know. It would be the equivalent of oblivion. He would never know where he was. Because his whole method of cataloging things would have to be by orange and yellow, good and bad, age and childhood and all that sort of thing.

To give you an example, some people say that when a baby dies, in the next dimension or the purgatory or whatever is in between, he grows to be an adult. Now I’ve got a brother [Joe Rose] and he died at the age of 64, and I’ve seen his baby pictures at the age of 2 or 3. Suppose he had died at 2 or 3 and he showed up in heaven as I knew him at 64—I would never recognize him. So we’ve got a lot of wild concepts. And it really becomes confusing when you think that you’re going to have a heaven according to your beliefs. And we do. We’re incapable of taking into account every possibility that might happen after death, and say, “I better look out for that; that’s liable to be what it is.”

Q. In your idea then, it’s not a very desirable thing to go into oblivion after death?

R. Well, that’s what it is. Never put any qualifications on it. When you look for the truth, don’t say, “I want the truth as long as it’s not oblivion.” Because if that’s what it is, that’s what it is. You want the truth for what it is.

Q. Won’t you have any choice?

R. [laughs]

Q. Like for example, if you concentrate on going to the sun or something, wouldn’t you end up going there?

R. Well, you know, you might talk yourself into something. I knew a woman one time who believed that she could believe, that she would be what she believed. And before she died she was in diapers.¹²⁹ She didn’t want to grow old, so she went back the other way. But I’m not saying that’s an ideal state of mind for you to have, because you’d still be lost. You wouldn’t know who went to the sun, whether it was the real you or a desire-projection. But I doubt seriously whether you’d be able to go exactly where you wanted to go.

I believe that there’s a very good possibility [to predict a person’s experience] just from the observation of the type. For instance, are you acquainted with Kübler-Ross’s stories on life after death? ^{130, 131} Raymond Moody also wrote on it, Life After Life.^{132, 133} You’ll find that there are categories of stories about life after death. I’ve noticed this myself. I’ve watched them over a period of a lifetime, of different accounts, the relatives talking about when they watched so-and-so die, or a man who was in an automobile wreck and was dying.

And you’ll find that there’s one category in which they actually see their relatives; their relatives come and get them. Then there’s another category where there are no relatives, nothing but beautiful scenery, vistas, colonnades, nobody there. And then there’s this other one, that is like the cosmic consciousness experience, or an enlightenment experience, in which they realize that they are one with God. And yet when you say, “What’s God look like?” they’re not able to answer you.

Now these are cases that are actually corroborated, people who have died, dependable people, who have been written up. I think it was in October, 1974, Readers Digest, the name of the article was “I Died at 10:52.”¹³⁴ This man had a heart attack in an automobile and it was two hours before they could get him to a hospital or to an ambulance. He was pronounced dead and came back. Theoretically, his brain should have been gone but he came back and was in perfectly good shape, and he described his experience. And he wasn’t too keen about them bringing him back. But he realized that he was safe. Beyond a doubt he was safe. And it was entirely something that he had never expected.

Consequently, you find people on a certain plane. If a person has a certain hunger, I think the hunger is answered in this lifetime. Now I don’t know what chance we have in another lifetime. But a smart gambler doesn’t wait. You don’t wait. If you can break out now, you’ll break out now and see what’s outside.

Q. How should we live our lives? Should we just satisfy our senses and live for today … ?

R. [laughs]

Q. … or should we try … ?

R. That’s up to you. I never tell anybody how to live. Your intuition has to lead you.

Well, I see some of us are leaving—so, it’s been nice meeting with you. Maybe I’ll see you all again sometime.

———-
¹²⁹ An apparent reference by Rose to his devout mother, who suffered a debilitating stroke late in life.
¹³⁰ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Kubler-Ross
¹³¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Death_and_Dying (book); On_Death_and_Dying on Amazon
¹³² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Moody
¹³³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_Life_(Moody_book); Life After Life on Amazon
¹³⁴ “I Died at 10:52 A.M.” by Victor D. Solow http://tatfoundation.org/forum2003-12.htm#5