April 2026 TAT Forum

Humor {(h)yo͞omər}

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

Irish Flu Shots

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~ Thanks to Paul Constant. The image is shared across social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and Pinterest, particularly around St. Patrick’s Day.

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Funny Movie Jokes

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.” ~ Bill Murray in What About Bob? (1991)

“If we bury you ass up, I’ve got a place to park my bike.” ~ Robin Williams in Patch Adams. 

“There’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?” ~ Airplane! (1980)

“Just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do somethin’ like this — and totally redeem yourself! Ha Ha!” ~ Dumb & Dumber (1994)

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~ Humor from a now-defunct website.

Southern Cooking

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~ Sign for a restaurant near a Pilot truck stop in Van Horn, Texas , found on Facebook and other social media.

Inspiration & Irritation

Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction

Transcendental Poses

TAT founder Richard Rose wrote books and gave talks for years to detail his approach to spiritual realization. He laid out a roadmap, envisioned a ladder and provided a “Chart of the Detailed Steps” (in The Threefold Path). But sometimes, perhaps inspired by his youthful forays into scientific research, he provided a formula: a distillation of key factors into a short spiritual prescription.

Rose describes his approach as: “a system by which Truth is reached by the continual analysis (not breakage) of various transcendental poses, and by a constant vigil over the many factors within the self.”

That sentence from The Albigen Papers (in the opening paragraph of the Seventh Paper: Discernment) might sound a bit cryptic at first. Yet, Rose was pointing to a very practical way of working on oneself. His method is not about learning the Truth but is an invitation to seek truth based on careful observation, honesty, and inner investigation.

A spiritual seeker can think of Rose’s system as a disciplined form of self-inquiry combined with psychological honesty. The goal is not to become more spiritual but to discover what is actually true about the self and about reality.

~ Thanks to Michael Whitely, who added:

Over the years of seeking and experimenting with spiritual practices, I find myself seeing the wisdom of Rose’s prescription. We start not knowing. And all along the way we find ourselves exploring books, people and practices trying to find the answer. Trying to reach some kind of completion only to fall short and begin again. The path changes and we seem to change with it, but there also seems to be a limit to the progression. Something is not changing.

For me, now, there is only experience happening. Experience is aware of experiencing a sense of self and everything else. The content of experience changes but that may not matter at all because the experiencing remains the same. 

Richard Rose once called this experience that we are having a “picture show.”  So, I’m on the screen (and perhaps am the screen?) and the show continues.

The image is one of “philosophical pose” produced by Freepik.com AI.

Crowd-Following Algorithm

Q: Do you see how Taleb’s view may apply to the process of self-inquiry into our real identity at the core of being?

Free Will? Free Won’t?

~ Thanks to Colm H., who commented:

I found this an interesting watch, a neurosurgeon’s perspective on the soul. It’s rare to see a scientist in that field going into this territory as Dr Egnor mentions himself in the interview. He goes into why he believes reason and free will aren’t functions of the brain but rather, as he says, they are functions of the soul. One item he covers in the interview which I found particularly interesting was with regards to the brain experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet (section starts at around 26:20). Most people are familiar with these well known experiments where, as a very rough paraphrase summary, it was measured that the brainwave for the desire to do something occurred in the brain half a second or so before the desire consciously registered in the person’s awareness. Therefore implying there was no free will involved.

However, I wasn’t aware, until watching this, that there was apparently another aspect to these experiments that was also measured, which Dr Egnor indicates that Libet himself called ‘Free won’t’. In brief summary, this indicated that while the brainwave for desiring something, say eating a piece of cake as he references, happens a half second or so prior to the action registering as a thought in the subject’s awareness, this was not the case for a decision in the mind to veto the desire. So while the signal for a potential desire was a measurable brainwave which was happening prior to it consciously registering in awareness, the decision to veto the same desire did not show up as a measurable brainwave. So, the conclusion being that the veto can’t be said to be happening in the brain. It seems that Libet did believe in free will, although he thought the brain as more of a tool that presents a ‘sea of velleities’ firing off as brain waves in the brain, and free will comes in with the person’s ability to accept or reject from the range of desires presented. Hence, why Libet referred to it as ‘Free won’t’.

Q: The split-second veto before a decision triggers action is witnessable, just as the decision-making process is witnessable. Does the researcher’s conclusion. based on current brain-monitoring equipment’s inability to detect it, convince you that it proves the existence of an individual continuity before birth / after death?

The One Question That Made Feynman a Genius

=> “Richard Feynman had an IQ of only 125 — not extraordinary by academic standards. Yet he became one of the greatest physicists in history….”

Q: What was Feynman’s approach to solving problems that was so different from most of his peers?

Q: Could it be applied to the problem of not knowing what we are at the core of our being?

Please  your impressions of the above items.

Reader Commentary

Encouraging interactive readership among TAT members and friends

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

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

Can you help make the Forum more interesting?

The Reader Commentary questions for the April TAT Forum are from Bob Cergol:

What do you hope for most in life?
What would a third-party witness to your life conclude was your main hope?

Responses follow:

From Chitra D:

For a long time I focused (hope is not the right term, as least in my mind) on knowing the Truth, but currently I have dropped hope–or more accurately hope has just dropped by itself. I might say it has become redundant. I don’t mean this negatively. I just see that hoping for something/wanting something is not useful. (Hope is only a thought that rises and falls, that focuses on a future event that has no reality). What is to happen will happen, is happening every moment, and that is just fine. There is currently a sense of being in the present, witnessing what comes up. I try to keep the attention on that. And on “feeling” the Witness, the great Mystery. Meanwhile, whatever comes up in my life feels right. Not always pleasant, but right.

What would a third-party witness to your life conclude was your main hope?
I honestly don’t know.

From Dan G:

That it was OK all along, that it will ALWAYS be OK, and that everything is OK right now.

A third-party witness might say my main hope is to take me with me. The lyrics from “Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt” come to mind, “If I could start again a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way.” This seems to be a desire I am a slave to, and so the deeper voice is a cowardice to “venture out to claim my heritage” as Douglas Harding puts it in his 8×8 fold Plebeian Path. A third-party witness might say there seems to be more of a main conflict than a main hope. Or perhaps the hope is I have a “heritage” worth claiming, held back by the fear of looking. 

I really hope if I look, I won’t regret it. I am afraid to lose love. But love is happening, so is part of my heritage.

I claim it.

From MT:

My hope is to find my way Home to God where my heart is still and content…. free of worldly entanglements. Hope is like a buoy that keeps me from straying too far from the straight and narrow Way. I don’t know what a third party witness would conclude……I have no TAT friends or friends I feel are on the same journey as I am here in Australia. I can only see the hope vector from inside but hope does influence the choices and actions of my daily life. The hoping mode is still part of self but a useful self at the moment.

From Alex D:

I’ve found it a bit confounding and revealing how this question has evoked so much, and yet simultaneously so little that could be clearly stated. A part of me, confused, wants to default to all the stock (non-dual) answers… but I’d rather feel into it.

Feeling in, I hope most for: What the moment in the vipassana retreat pointed to… what the longing that moved me to wander in the woods called me toward…  What the visions in college and in the jungle gestured to. What communion with lovers and Friends awakened, if only in moments. What rapports unveiled. The consummation of the longing captured in the Sacred Mirrors—luminous void, the twilight in the narrow crevice… the Silence in the canyons. What I was afraid to let go into at so many points along the way when the mind was quickened in stillness, connected with something greater than me, or stripped of its fortified vantage. I hope most for: The end of seeking. Resting in being. Coming home. 

What would a third-party witness to your life conclude was your main hope?

I believe someone observing my life would report that what I hope most for is to help others through my work.

From Jenny C:

What do I hope for most in life?  A balance of infinite love and joy and peace with the day-to-day challenges of managing an aging body and physical pain.

What would a third-party witness conclude was my main hope? I think they would conclude pretty much the same thing, based on my practices, actions, and words.

From Art Ticknor:

I first asked Google for a definition of hope, to focus on a perspective. Its AI Overview began with “to cherish a desire with anticipation, wanting something to happen or be true while believing it is possible.”

I’d say that what I hope for most in life is to be of help to family, friends, and strangers. I keep my metaphorical fingers crossed that my actions do more help than harm.

What would a third-party witness to your life conclude was your main hope?

For those not engaged with me in Truth-seeking, maybe to maintain my balance, both emotionally and—at my age—physically :-). With engaged seekers, maybe to disturb them (hopefully, in a productive way).

From Anima Pundeer:

Q: What do you hope for most in life?
A: I hope that I can live an uncompromised normal life.

Q: What would a third-party witness to your life conclude was your main hope?
A: I think a third-party witness to my life would see an ordinary person living an ordinary life.

From Bob Cergol:

It would not be surprising to me to learn that Forum readers found these very difficult questions to answer. They are as serious as it gets.
Answering them requires deep, even on-going, self-reflection. One must stop the charades and face whether one is serious about finding the Truth and discovering one’s true Self, or if one is more interested in accumulating power and glory, or a peaceful and comfortable existence. Obviously, the paired question suggests one is likely kidding oneself; that wishing isn’t the same as doing; that one’s doing is all-too-often at odds with one’s wishing – except in the case of all that enormous volume of doing to satisfy that extensive hierarchy of desires that begins in the glands and ricochets through the nervous system and coalesces into the mental construct of ego. It is one of the reasons I wrote a book [Hope! Life’s Calling: Finding Yourself on the Spiritual Path Called Life] on the subject. In it I pointed out that you are too busy being you in the world, too busy satisfying all the imposed tangential desires to see clearly where you are, who you’ve become, and how you got to wherever you find yourself now. It takes a truly serious commitment to answering the question to overcome the weight of inertia accumulated by the time the question even occurs to you or becomes of interest to you – after which it is easily forgotten in the business of being you in the business of life, aka satisfying desires (not answering questions). It takes a strong habit of trying to see oneself clearly to break the habit of deluding oneself. Don’t underestimate how deluded you are. You don’t know what you don’t know and don’t see what you can’t accept or that conflicts with your self-image. Do you see clearly enough to answer the questions posed that are consistent with each other?

Looking back on my own life I can see that even when I thought my answer to this question was that I hoped most for the Truth and for finding my true Self, that in fact my life seen objectively illustrated that my main hopes were apparently for things and outcomes other than finding Truth and my true Self. Yet, somehow, by taking small actions when I was reminded of my commitment, a counter-momentum developed, counter to the direction of working for peace and quiet and comfort. That momentum in turn became a reminder to me of my commitment, and my commitment grew stronger over the years and became self-reinforcing. The actions I took, the “doing” in service to my commitment had an impact upon my attention and upon its momentum and direction of its focus. Eventually that momentum became sufficient to at least counter the outward focus of attention on the accumulation of things and experiences that would bring pleasure, self-satisfaction, and comfort to the point that I became vulnerable to and accepting of seeing clearly who and what I really was. This doesn’t happen automatically by default. It only happens after these questions occur to you and you find in yourself, somehow, the wherewithal to go all-in on finding the answer to them.

From Mark C:

Through the process of negation, it is pretty easy to say that I know that I am going to die and that the only matter of importance leftover in my outward day-to-day life will be the quality of my relationships. As far as my inner life goes, I want an answer about what all of this really means or what true reality AKA Truth really is. I admit I am not chasing this with the passion of a drowning man, but I know there has been a big shift for me since I retired last year. It didn’t start right away as I was pretty busy last fall, but I started doing some things different at the start of December 2025 and started trying to keep to my commitments. I think this has helped, but the even bigger push has come from how much reflection I have been doing since the beginning of 2026.

Someone observing me would not necessarily see this because an internal process is not something that can be viewed. What they would likely see is that I have been sticking to a routine, trying to look after my health, and trying to get my house in order. I’m not sure that an outside viewer would be able to ascertain what my main hope was, but I think they would notice my attempts to be more disciplined.

=> The Reader Commentary question for next month, the May 2026 TAT Forum:

What question or questions would you like to ask people who say they are enlightened / know what they are / are Self-Realized / have no more questions / are Complete, etc.?

Please  your response by the 25th of April, 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?

Dandelion burning. Image by Ervin Ervin Gjata from Pixabay.

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Founder’s Wisdom

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

Faith and Science, part 2 of 2
by Richard Rose

Continued from the February 2026 TAT Forum:

When we look into the mirror and see our eyes looking—is the observer facing the mirror or facing eyes which are looking?

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Blessed are the blind for they shall never again have dual vision.

Blessed are the mindless for they shall never again suffer from dual mentation.

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Time is of your own making.
Its clock ticks in your head.
The moment you stop thought
Time too, stops dead.

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Man lives in the space between synapses.

The synapses are the contact points between mind and body.

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Carillon: Poems, Essays and Philosophy of Richard Rose, © 1982 by Richard Rose. Image from freepik.com.

Definition of Terms

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

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

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

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